@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.
Abazigal seems to cast Stoneskin about once per turn, give or take a round or two. Carving through him with just the Flail of Ages +4 took like 30 minutes for Krieg. But I realized I could just use a Protection from Magic scroll on Abby to dispel his skins and kill him.
@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.
My character has high rep because a good character can't do anything but things that make his/her reputation high.
By the time she gets to that level, gold shouldn't be a problem.
EDIT
Diary of Nigretta
We battled our way down slaying all enemies in our path. Sadly however every time we tried to rest we were ambushed. In the end we decided to return to he surface and we WERE able to rest there.
Davaeorn and his cohorts were easily defeated. (I can't understand it. My last set-up was much harder and I don't understand what has made it easier. There were more mages last time at the lowest level)
What caused us more problems was trying to rest upon exiting. The guards attacked and Imoen got hurt. However the next rest was successful. Now on to Baldur's Gate.
@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.
Abazigal seems to cast Stoneskin about once per turn, give or take a round or two. Carving through him with just the Flail of Ages +4 took like 30 minutes for Krieg. But I realized I could just use a Protection from Magic scroll on Abby to dispel his skins and kill him.
@Flashburn how did you deal with the constant mazes - did you have a PfM scroll on you as well?
Edit: just to clarify - Abazigal's maze is not the standard spell, but a custom ranged effect. I was assuming that was cast as a special ability unaffected by the PfM scroll, but perhaps that's not the case.
I wanted to have a few hours available without interruption before starting the battle at the Throne and getting up early this morning provided that.
However, it looked like the end was going to come within the first couple of minutes of the battle with Mel's initial incarnation when Burl went berserk.
That surprised me, but scrolling back through the text showed that Mel had been attacking with missiles during a timestop when I thought she was casting (there was so much text from other attacks at the end of the timestop that Mel's missile attacks didn't show on my screen initially).
Burl's high HPs kept him alive for a while though and Mel fortunately chose to back away and summon more assistance - allowing him to throw off the berserk state.
He did some running round while recovering HPs before starting a run and stab program on Mel. That got interrupted though when the movement of icons that sometimes happens during earthquakes resulted in him getting trapped. By killing neighboring enemies Burl was able to inch himself out of reach of Mel and eventually managed to hack his way free.
He continued his hit and run targets for a while, checking that Mel would throw up stoneskins when necessary. To counteract that he waited until she only had 1 skin left, then came in with a power attack. That HLA is described as stunning the opponent and Burl had 10 of those solely for the purpose of the battles with Mel. The effect only lasts 1 round, but I was hopeful that using those would give the opportunity to get a couple of unprotected attacks in (which would have been all that was required). However, though Mel was described as being unconscious the attack actually had no effect on her - I presume the HLA actually uses the sleep effect (that she's immune to) rather than the stun effect (that she's not).
I've almost never used the Slayer, but thought I should check that out. However, that was worse in defense, worse in attack and had far fewer HPs - and Burl didn't get his original HPs back when changing to normal form again.
More running round and regenerating fixed that before he came in again to see if slow would slow down her replacement of stoneskins - several attempts at that suggested it had no effect at all.
I've abbreviated the tactics tried above and the battle had been going well over 2 hours by this stage with the constant threat of being surrounded by enemies if movement wasn't perfect. I was running out of energy and ideas and it looked like the end might have come when Burl was stunned (I hadn't used a potion to boost his saving throws after they were impacted by several hits from Mel). Once more though his HPs proved good enough to recover when Mel failed to press her attack home.
Deciding to go for a death or glory assault, Burl once more launched himself at Mel wielding the FoA to try and keep her slowed. Initially she was fighting back hard and by this time Burl was out of hardinesses and taking lots of damage. With him berserk and Mel only missing with a 1 I could hear the Fat Lady warming up for her performance here.
Suddenly though there was the bare possibility of a great escape when Burl for the first time got a hit through Mel's stoneskins.
She had stopped attacking and was casting - would Burl be able to get another hit in? The answer was yes - but it didn't help him and a fuller screenshot from his successful hit showed why.
A second or two later and the Fat Lady was in full voice ...
Clearly Mel would be an extremely difficult opponent for a War Hulk, but I wouldn't say it was quite impossible based on that experience. The spells her first incarnation uses are not too lethal so it should be possible to survive those without using a PfM scroll. That leaves the possible use of 3 scrolls for later on (one via the simmy).
For attacks, if I'd made better use of the Reflection shield against her missiles I could probably have got her to below 150 HPs before she started regenerating (the lowest I noted her being at during the early battle was 199). The Ring of the Ram could add 20 or so, meaning a single hit on her might be enough to send her running. Using the Answerer could potentially allow a bit of damage from the Ring of Energy as well.
For defense, all the power attacks I took could be replaced with hardiness. I had intended to buy the Defender of Easthaven, but forgot to do so. However, that could be used productively - switching weapons in the inventory screen would avoid changes to combat rounds, thus allowing the extra resistance to apply until Burl was ready to attack again with a different weapon. I also only had equipment to boost cold resistance to 90%. Increasing that to the maximum 127 would mean he was being healed by cold damage (without worrying about dispels) and allow him to keep attacking longer. The only summons that could hurt Burl were slayer shadows and glabrezu, so killing all of those before confronting Mel would give him a decent amount of time to do some damage.
I did actually try the Soul Reaver quite a bit in that battle as well. If defences were better than mine it might be possible to nerf Mel's attacks with that, but there's still the problem of how to do damage to her.
Of course the prospects of success of those sorts of tactics might look reasonable against a single Mel, but wouldn't be too promising against multiple versions of her. Does anyone have any suggestions for better tactics?
Btw Semiticgod, I don't think SCS fireshield blocks bug spells consistently anymore. I've noticed that behavior for a while, despite having that option enabled. I've also seen a few other SCS players make the same comment. I've had to stop casting that spell when fireshield mages are around so as not to abuse it...
Regarding the war hulk, are there any weapons that strip additional stone skins per hit? I'm assuming additional APR are impossible to get by any means.
Gnasher comes to mind as a possible candidate, although I don't know if it actually strips additional stone skins in practice. I don't think it would work here anyway as mel is I believe immune to +2 weapons...
Foebane I assume would hurt her through stone skin / immunities, but perhaps not fast enough...
@Jabberwock I did try using Foebane against her, but it doesn't do any additional damage - I think that's because she's totally immune to level 1 and 2 spells (and 90% resistant to magic beyond that). I don't think stripping her stoneskins is really required as it's not particularly difficult to survive against her. The problem is either finding a way to do her damage through stoneskins or hit her again before she reapplies a new stoneskin.
I lost access to the shop selling K'Logarath, but if I'd had that would certainly have given it a go. That has a 15% chance of doing her 1d6 of crushing damage when unprotected, but I've just tested that and stoneskins prevent it entirely. Like K'Logarath, Celestial Fury and Staff of the Ram inflict a sleep type effect - which she is immune to. Daystar does an additional 1 damage against evil targets, but again that damage is blocked by stoneskins (though I don't think it should be). The same also applies to the additional damage done by Skullcrusher, Staff of the Ram, the Impaler and Ixil's Spike (that also doesn't strip additional stoneskins with continuing damage when arguably it should do).
The War Hulk kit (at least the version installed on my computer) allows multiple attacks per round with missile weapons and that would allow an easy victory if you used those (particularly if you use the Big Metal Rod with pulse ammunition as that does hit through stoneskins). However, I was not allowing any use of missile weapons in my run.
@Grond0@Alesia_BH always said that it was important to use Reflection shield if your character can against Mel, as she throws darts that dispel. Don't know if you used any buffs, but certainly if she was ranged attacking you during a time stop, the shield would have prevented that. Other than that, not sure what else you could have done.
Gnasher comes to mind as a possible candidate, although I don't know if it actually strips additional stone skins in practice. I don't think it would work here anyway as mel is I believe immune to +2 weapons...
This is positively antique knowledge, but I seem to recall that the Gnasher DOT does damage through Stoneskin, without actually removing any layers. Pre EE, anyway.
This is positively antique knowledge, but I seem to recall that the Gnasher DOT does damage through Stoneskin, without actually removing any layers. Pre EE, anyway.
It doesn't hit through stoneskins in the EE (and can't hurt Mel anyway as she needs +3 weapons to hit).
@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.
Abazigal seems to cast Stoneskin about once per turn, give or take a round or two. Carving through him with just the Flail of Ages +4 took like 30 minutes for Krieg. But I realized I could just use a Protection from Magic scroll on Abby to dispel his skins and kill him.
@Flashburn how did you deal with the constant mazes - did you have a PfM scroll on you as well?
Yes, one on myself and one for Abazigal.
Hard luck though, @Grond0. I knew you'd at least get to the Throne at the pace you were going, but I can't give you any advice about non-Ascension Mel since I think I've only played ToB without it once, a decade or longer ago.
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.
From my experience with IA 6.XX
1) Specified protagonist (Necromancer or Vagrant) is actually a must. 2) Fighters!! You need as many pure fighters (Riskbreaker is the best, I would strongly recommend two of them in the party) as possible. For example in my game four fighters was not enough for Shadow Lover. I killed Greater Crawler with duo Riskbreaker (potion of invurneability, potion of cloud giant STR, +3 weapons, haste, free action) and Clan Hunter and was overconfident before Shadow Lover. He is a nasty bastard, dispelling protections on hit, damaging you for 30/40 HP and healing himself. Four fighters was not enough! He utterly destroyed my party couple times in a row. What I did was that I simply swapped Nalia for Minsc and with five fighters and Neera (basically only for Haste) I managed to kill him pretty easy first try. It was that simple. ;p 3) You can't babysit anyone really. All party members must contribute from the start. 4) You need powerful summons even with the strongest party. Without using summons beating IA 6 is impossible imo. 6) Ranger7/Cleric dual is strongly recommended just like riskbreakers. 7) IA 6.xx is hard! I mean seriously, elemental weapon nerf alone is like "I WANT TO END YOUR FUN!! SUFFER SCRUB!!" for me. 8) Winning hard battle after even a really long time is incredibly satisfying. 9) There is still a place for some cheese, hehe ;pppp
Thanks for the tips and suggestions. Yes, I agree it is a tough mod and mostly warriors are needed with support to debuff, rebuff and heal. But it should be possible to not go that way.
I've beaten v6 twice with vagrant and necromancer already but I want to try a different approach this time. I want to use an npc party and a fun protagonist. It then comes up to planning a slow progression rather than what I normally do; forcing high gains in items by doing 5-10 restarts of the fights. I can postpone fights for weapons I do not need yet until after spellhold.
I restarted my third attempt as avenger and I have korgan, minsc, jaheira and nalia in the party now. I think I will get valygar and mazzy at some point and swap a few in and out for challenge where I need more magic. I'll see.
The vagrant is an IA ranger kit with immunity to elemental damage and a powerful summon. It gets specific gear throughout the game.
The risk breaker is an IA fighter kit based on kensai. Instead of kensai bonuses it has a higher chance to critical hit and gets some combat abilities like self improved haste and self heal.
Clanhunter is a summon from the avenger. It deals tons of damage and has iron skin memorised
Greater crawler is a beefed up carrion crawler in the sewers that gives the blood for lilrarcor.
The shadow lover is a souped up shade protecting lilrarcor. There are more protection creatures than that though.
Well, err, I forgot to post an update for JC Denton, and there's a lot to catch up, even if it isn't even remotely interesting. To give a quick picture, I just finished the Mines, at level 7. Mulahey just dropped that fancy heavy crossbow that gives +5 THAC0 and +2 dmg, we found two of the stats tomes, I'm not sure where but I think they were the CHA and DEX ones (putting my CHA at 11 I think, and my DEX at 17). I don't know why Mulahey ended up with such a valuable item, but I'm going to take it and go with it. I had forgotten to give Kylee his dagger, so I tried selling it at Nashkel, but the game crashed. I loaded the latest save, which was when I had gotten out from the Temple after identifying the crossbow, a star sapphire and other junk that put us at almost 20k gp. So after I reloaded I talked to Berrun again, and cause of SCS's reputation mingler component I didn't get it this time. Oh well. Off to kill Nimbul, and be careful because the Amazons/assassins from Gullykin are now onto us.
Since I did a lot of things, I'll just mention what we have: Medium Shield+1 -> from the guy that wants revenge on the Half-Ogres. Helm of Infravision -> assassin girl from Nashkel inn. Boots of Grounding -> no idea. I suppose Mutamin dropped them. Heavy Crossbow of Accuracy -> Mulahey. Boots of the North -> dude scared of the bear. The reaction we got wasn't favorable enough for him to give them to us, so I killed him and then donated to get our reputation back.
And there's a couple of things left for us to do outside of Baldur's Gate: Killing the Sirines. I didn't want to risk it, might not even kill them, since I don't really need the XP. Idol of Kozah quest. No magical weapon to hit the spirit monster yet. Ulcaster, the Vampiric wolves and the Mage with the Mustard Slimes are in the same bag. Haven't killed any of the Ghasts in the caves in that area because I can't kite them in a space that small, and I don't think the risk is worth it. Firewine Ruins. I was clearing them but accidentally quit the game instead of tabbing, didn't bother to go there again, although we did kill the ultimate swordsman, and the guy with the PfM scroll (which I think we have 3 now, or 2, not sure. I left them in a barrel in Beregost a couple of days ago).
Since I had the entire day free, I ended up playing most of it. I spent several hours clearing the Bandit Camp in the safest way I could think of. I'd go in there, kill one or two bandits, travel back, rest, and repeat. I used a bunch of Healing potions, but besides that it was just worth about one hour. Tranzig got obliterated by our recently purchased crossbow of speed. He was done before he knew it. Dude couldn't cast a single spell. Poor guy. Moving on, the Cloakwood posed no difficulty whatsoever, and after we got the Spider's Bane, we also took care of most of the spiders in the area with the 4 Wizards of Thay, which we're probably going to skip together with the Wraith Spider, mainly because I don't remember what on-hit effect it has.
The battle against Drasus and co. was fought in the same way as the Bandit Camp one, since I accidentaly got the group of guards north of the Mines involved. The mages were taken out as fast as possible with bolts of lightning (I did the same against the Bandit Camp wizard), then I fought for a while against the other two for a while, but they couldn't do anything about my hit and run tactics. This got us a morning star +1 which we'll be using for the rest of the game. After this came the Ulcaster ruins, which thanks to SCS and HardTimes are VERY annoying, but quickly recruiting Tiax to cast (and recast) Remove Fear on us solved most of our problems, except he got killed and was only resurrected later on to open the locks on Davaeron's storage area, which gave us a lot of stuff we sold, and thus is irrelevant to mention.
I dealt with Davaeron using a PfM scroll. I had decided against it and was going to use a Potion of magic Blocking, but those don't last too long, and I didn't want to risk it. He went down in exactly six rounds. God bless Wizard Slayers (I just hit him constantly and used the Wizard Slayer Rebalancing combat-protections dispeller innate ability). Then I recruited Safana to get the treasure, which she did, but she then died to a couple of Sirines for constantly tried to talk to me. Not a serious loss. I might deal with the Sirines later, since at some point I got the Ioun Stone of Charm protection from Thalantyr. I also recruited Yeslick for about a minute to help me with the fight on that level. His hold spells on the guards were crutial. I killed the wizard with a bolt of Biting when she was standing right next to me, since she had blinded me (the only thing that went through the buffs Yeslick put on JC).
On the stuff Safana found was the full plate +1 and the CON. We had been using a non-magical plate and then the plate+1 because the full plate the fighter with the hammer in the Bandit Camp had broke when I was kiting him (thanks, bgttweaks, thanks... Has to be the first time I deeply regret the "enemy iron items also shatter"). I'm not sure what'sup with the item randomiser, but the drops I've been getting this game feel really generous. We also got the Boots of Speed from either Aldeth Shanshestar I believe, or the pile of treasure under Centeol.
Right now JC Denton is sitting at level 9 I believe, since I am sure I got level 8 before I got inside the Cloakwood Mines. He has five stars on flails/morningstars and two on crossbows. I plan to dual-class to Cleric at level 12. Not sure whether I should do that in BG1 or in SoA.
Sorry for the lack of names and the use of unclear allusions instead of them. My memory is completely trashed, and I am not sure why. I blame studying, since I haven't had a single drink in over a week. Unrelated, but I made another install of BGT, although I believe I need to fix any bugs that might be present before starting to use it for no-reloading.
As planned, the party made their way to the Nashkel mines. Reaching Mulahey's lair was easy enough, though when the evil priest called his minions, they didn't spawn as a group, but scattered all around, some of them in melee range - which is very dangerous for my party, as two or three lucky hits are enough to kill almost anyone:
I was able to take down the nearby kobolds and skeletons before any real danger could occur, and Guðrún successfully attracted the attention of the remaining foes.
Mulahey was killed, and I started exploring the remaining wilderness areas. There isn't much to report here - with 5 skeletons leading the charge and many sleep and blind spells available, I didn't face a lot of danger - well, except when I made mistakes. Somehow, I let a ghast catch up to Ilithyia at some point. With the insane difficulty extra damage, two hits were easily enough to kill her:
This was the first of two deaths occuring during my explorations. The second one was planned, as it involved talking to Shoal. Dido was able to poison Droth with darts of wounding, making this one a rather trivial battle:
I also decided to take on Kahrk, despite my skeletons being very weak - leaving the area left him with only protection from normal missles as a defense upon my return, and while he was busy destroying the animated dead, I took him down with wand damage:
Thus, the only encounters I left for later were the Firewine Ruins, the Ulcaster School and the mustard jellies at the mines exit area. Everything else was cleared, providing me with enough money to get some great items, such as two archmagi robes and a ton of scrolls. I also found invisibility 10' radius, which I was very happy about. This will help to keep my squishy party out of trouble.
The skeleton army and some sleep spells helped with the bandit camp, though I had to rest before entering the tent. An invisible party got into a good position, taking down the mage right away. Some hold spells helped with the remaining foes:
I decided it was about time for another bit of party play. It's a while since I tried this challenge - a poverty run in an SCS / Spell Revisions installation (also Item Revisions, but that's not relevant for this party). My definition of poverty is: 1) You can never buy or sell any items (including any items required for quests). 2) You can never use or equip any items (but can pick things up for quests). 3) You may pay for quests (such as Gaelan Bayle), but not anything else (temples, inns etc).
I don't remember this party yet even being successful in escaping BG1, but that's an achievable target to aim for. However, as with previous attempts I've again found that you can't afford to leave anything to chance if you want to keep everyone alive ...
A 26th run didn't get too far when I inadvertently paid for a night's lodging at the inn while setting traps for Silke.
A 27th had a rather unfortunate end when a ghast hid inside a wall to avoid missile attacks and came out to paralyze Beggar when he moved forward to find him.
A 28th was an old favorite where I got careless tempting sirines into traps and Beggar got charmed too close to Washout's traps ...
A 29th was a hard one to avoid. I was trying to trap Elminster to get up to level 4/5 and some gibberlings interrupted my rest. After they were slept and stoned I tried resting again - and found more gibberlings. They went down easily as well, but trying to rest once more produced some wolves. All but one of those were slept, so finishing them off would have been easy enough, but apparently all the commotion had persuaded some bandits to explore and Washout died before I even knew they were present.
A 30th run seemed to be going reasonably well with everyone again close to a 3rd levelling up. The party bumped into a couple of hobgoblin elites in a location where I'd just expected standard hobgoblins and Hardup was poisoned before everyone retreated. However, he was in no immediate danger so I decided to kill them rather than running away. A spirit lion chased one of them away, while Pauper was sent in to prevent the other from firing arrows at those with less HPs. I hadn't though appreciated that there was any chance that Pauper himself, with 38 HPs, was vulnerable to being one-shotted - but there was indeed a 0.5% chance and the hobgoblin showed while he was called elite.
I could describe the great victories we had, over the bandit camp, Drassus, Daveorn (though Siur died there), but all that really matters is the end.
We were about to deal with the basilisk in the warehouse, and Corey_Russell asked Grond0 to use a mirror eyes potion to take out it out. He did not immediately agree and suggested a far more dangerous approach. But it sounded silly to me so I THOUGHT I used a mirror eyes potion and then went for a backstab. But I think stealthed before the potion actually took effect. As an elf, I promptly failed my save vs. petrification after the backstab and that was that!
RIP Corthief XVI. Gate70 will be the protagonist next run.
I've watched the screen capture of our previous session a couple of times and this indicates Corey_Russell may have set a snare instead of drinking a potion - screenshot attached. (Our rhythm had been broken by a crash and the death was 1m30 seconds after restarting from that)
Trio two of the day Nettle. Female LE halfling assassin (Gate70) Teers. Male CN elf sorcerer (Grond0) April. Female NE human berserker (Corey_Russell)
We had about 15 minutes of our session remaining once these three had been rolled up. I went for a variation on the previous assassin while Grond0 and Corey_Russell both decided one thief a day was enough and moved on to other classes.
We stomped our way out of Candlekeep and stole gear from Imoen Montaron and Xzar before heading down to pick on Shoal the nereid. With her dead we saved, meaning we will have to wertle with the mad Arcand another time.
Starting again, the Opera did a few tasks in and around Beregost, including trapping Firebead and Silke and throwing stones at the golems at High Hedge before successfully reviving Melicamp. Magic Stone would be a handy spell in Spell Revisions even if this were not a poverty run. Apart from being able to hit things requiring magical weapons, it also does crushing not missile damage - thus allowing ranged attacks on things like mustard jellies. Those encounters made half the party eligible for a level, but my general rule with parties is that no-one can level up until everyone can.
At the FAI, Joia got her ring back - if only briefly - allowing everyone to level up for the first time.
Tarnesh then died in traps, allowing the Opera inside to give property back to Landrin and Unshey. Just to the north, Tenya got her bowl back, but didn't have much time to enjoy it as she died in traps while trying to teleport away.
Over at the Lighthouse sirines were mainly dragged into traps, allowing everyone to level up again.
Spell damage sorted out the Doomsayer before Brage offered a lift to Nashkel. There was more spell damage for the Revenant, while Narcillicus' jellies were quickly finished off by Magic Stones and a Seeking Sword while concentrating on summons. Narcillicus and some ghasts got the Opera close to another level up and that was achieved in a running fight with some ogres - though Aspire took a rare hit just before that when my movement accidentally opened up the travel screen, delaying the party.
Both sorcerers took invisibility for their first L2 spell. That only has a duration of 8 hours in SR, so is less useful for travel, but it still has a wide variety of benefits. That was demonstrated at Durlag's Tower where scouting, safe resting and invisible blocking helped clear the battle horrors outside and the ghasts inside. Kirinhale died in a full set of traps and the same happened to Riggilo, while the Ghost used all its spells up on a stream of summons. On the roof a lesser basilisk died in Writhing Fogs, before a spirit lion killed the first greater one. When the lion died against the second greater basilisk I tried out some bats just in case and found that they were immune to petrification and quickly finished the other basilisks off . That meant just a few hundred more XP were needed for another level and a doppleganger provided that on the way out.
We have done many trivial tasks in Baldur's Gate. If only reputation went up above twenty, mine would be about 30 now. I spent most of my gold buying fully charged wands. Only a few more needed. We didn't spend it all, which was as well as when we went to the Iron Throne, three of us got killed and had to be raised. (I forsook my normal tactics of hit and run which was a mistake as confusion or chaos affected all but one of the party!) We also were forced to kill Desretta and Marek. We have not yet returned to Scar and will probably delay that until a few more quests are completed.
The Meatgrinder Challenge - Second Attempt, Final Update
Well, I learned something new once again. It seems like the meatgrinder challenge does teach me quite a few ways to die that were previously entirely unkown to me.
Things were proceeding very well. I cleared Cloakwood and the mines, did all the quests in the big city, returned to Candlekeep and finished the ducal palace event. The ice island was cleared, and Baldur's Island (a place where I've never ever lost a no-reload run before) was next.
Turns out that, if you talk to Dradeel and aren't polite to him (for example, if you tell him that he's insane), he will attack you, and he will start combat by using some kind of custom sunfire-like ability called Selûne's Curse.
I've since looked up this ability, quoting @Tresset here:
Make me laugh hard enough and I will promote you...
Yeah, he casts Selune's Curse, which is basically a fireball that does 20d6 magic damage, save vs. spell for half. That would be accurately called a nuke for BG1. He will insta-cast this spell twice before he runs out.
His other two unique spells are:
Selune's Blade: Creates a sword that has a to hit bonus of +4 and does 1d12+4 slashing damage but strikes as a non-magical weapon. It also grants him +1 to AC and 50% fire resist. Lasts 25 rounds.
Selune's Blessing: A modified Globe of Invulnerability that makes him immune to spells level 4 and lower. It also grants him +5 to AC. Lasts 20 rounds.
On top of this he has good saves, 90 HP, 25 MR, and has a base 1 AC before the spells (-5 after). He is also considered level 20 and has a Thac0 of 5 with Selune's Blade. He is as crazy a fight as Drizzt and Shandalar. He is also quite unstable and will very quickly turn on you if you say the wrong things.
Yet he is only worth 3000XP...
Quite interesting... as you can imagine, 20d6 damage combined with the extra damage from insane difficulty plus the low hp resulting from randomized constitution scores and randomized hp rolls did instantly kill my entire party, ending this run.
By the way, I did reload and try this battle again, just to see how powerful Dradeel would be, and once I knew what to expect he was easily slain by my party, so I wouldn't exactly agree that he's as tough as Drizzt or Shandalar - all you have to do is avoid Selûne's Curse and take him down with ranged weapons before he can get too close. He drops a robe of the neutral archmagi and another wolfsbane charm.
I've always avoided most of the Totsc content in no-reloads because I'm a huge wimp. There seem like a lot of obscure ways to die hidden within...
I had a weird fight against the twisted rune crew. I bulldozed all their normal party members, but the lich summoned a dark planetar right as he died. The weird thing was, I could not take this thing down and it spent a turn or two bullying my 3.2mm exp party before it unsummoned. Granted, I didn't feel like using my 3x LR because I didn't want to recast it, but still a bit surprising.
Apparently I've killed them quickly enough previously that I didn't notice how high their regen is. The dark planetar tore through chan + about a zillion lesser summons (skeletons, elementals) and two devas as well as somehow also held off charname w/ 4 apr crom faer, and jaheira w/ 4 apr blackblood, and anomen.
Yikes. Maybe it's that I've previously tended to have a charname with unresistable slow from the FoA...
Unrelatedly, Layene got hit with a nature's beauty early in the fight. She did eventually cast true sight, but it did not seem to fix her spellcasting. That's another SCS counter that doesn't really work...
Comments
By the time she gets to that level, gold shouldn't be a problem.
EDIT
Diary of Nigretta
We battled our way down slaying all enemies in our path. Sadly however every time we tried to rest we were ambushed.Davaeorn and his cohorts were easily defeated. (I can't understand it. My last set-up was much harder and I don't understand what has made it easier. There were more mages last time at the lowest level)
What caused us more problems was trying to rest upon exiting. The guards attacked and Imoen got hurt. However the next rest was successful. Now on to Baldur's Gate.
Edit: just to clarify - Abazigal's maze is not the standard spell, but a custom ranged effect. I was assuming that was cast as a special ability unaffected by the PfM scroll, but perhaps that's not the case.
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/990748/#Comment_990748
I wanted to have a few hours available without interruption before starting the battle at the Throne and getting up early this morning provided that.
However, it looked like the end was going to come within the first couple of minutes of the battle with Mel's initial incarnation when Burl went berserk.
He did some running round while recovering HPs before starting a run and stab program on Mel. That got interrupted though when the movement of icons that sometimes happens during earthquakes resulted in him getting trapped. By killing neighboring enemies Burl was able to inch himself out of reach of Mel and eventually managed to hack his way free.
He continued his hit and run targets for a while, checking that Mel would throw up stoneskins when necessary. To counteract that he waited until she only had 1 skin left, then came in with a power attack. That HLA is described as stunning the opponent and Burl had 10 of those solely for the purpose of the battles with Mel. The effect only lasts 1 round, but I was hopeful that using those would give the opportunity to get a couple of unprotected attacks in (which would have been all that was required). However, though Mel was described as being unconscious the attack actually had no effect on her - I presume the HLA actually uses the sleep effect (that she's immune to) rather than the stun effect (that she's not).
I've almost never used the Slayer, but thought I should check that out. However, that was worse in defense, worse in attack and had far fewer HPs - and Burl didn't get his original HPs back when changing to normal form again.
I've abbreviated the tactics tried above and the battle had been going well over 2 hours by this stage with the constant threat of being surrounded by enemies if movement wasn't perfect. I was running out of energy and ideas and it looked like the end might have come when Burl was stunned (I hadn't used a potion to boost his saving throws after they were impacted by several hits from Mel). Once more though his HPs proved good enough to recover when Mel failed to press her attack home.
Deciding to go for a death or glory assault, Burl once more launched himself at Mel wielding the FoA to try and keep her slowed. Initially she was fighting back hard and by this time Burl was out of hardinesses and taking lots of damage. With him berserk and Mel only missing with a 1 I could hear the Fat Lady warming up for her performance here.
Clearly Mel would be an extremely difficult opponent for a War Hulk, but I wouldn't say it was quite impossible based on that experience. The spells her first incarnation uses are not too lethal so it should be possible to survive those without using a PfM scroll. That leaves the possible use of 3 scrolls for later on (one via the simmy).
For attacks, if I'd made better use of the Reflection shield against her missiles I could probably have got her to below 150 HPs before she started regenerating (the lowest I noted her being at during the early battle was 199). The Ring of the Ram could add 20 or so, meaning a single hit on her might be enough to send her running. Using the Answerer could potentially allow a bit of damage from the Ring of Energy as well.
For defense, all the power attacks I took could be replaced with hardiness. I had intended to buy the Defender of Easthaven, but forgot to do so. However, that could be used productively - switching weapons in the inventory screen would avoid changes to combat rounds, thus allowing the extra resistance to apply until Burl was ready to attack again with a different weapon. I also only had equipment to boost cold resistance to 90%. Increasing that to the maximum 127 would mean he was being healed by cold damage (without worrying about dispels) and allow him to keep attacking longer. The only summons that could hurt Burl were slayer shadows and glabrezu, so killing all of those before confronting Mel would give him a decent amount of time to do some damage.
I did actually try the Soul Reaver quite a bit in that battle as well. If defences were better than mine it might be possible to nerf Mel's attacks with that, but there's still the problem of how to do damage to her.
Of course the prospects of success of those sorts of tactics might look reasonable against a single Mel, but wouldn't be too promising against multiple versions of her. Does anyone have any suggestions for better tactics?
Regarding the war hulk, are there any weapons that strip additional stone skins per hit? I'm assuming additional APR are impossible to get by any means.
Gnasher comes to mind as a possible candidate, although I don't know if it actually strips additional stone skins in practice. I don't think it would work here anyway as mel is I believe immune to +2 weapons...
Foebane I assume would hurt her through stone skin / immunities, but perhaps not fast enough...
I lost access to the shop selling K'Logarath, but if I'd had that would certainly have given it a go. That has a 15% chance of doing her 1d6 of crushing damage when unprotected, but I've just tested that and stoneskins prevent it entirely. Like K'Logarath, Celestial Fury and Staff of the Ram inflict a sleep type effect - which she is immune to. Daystar does an additional 1 damage against evil targets, but again that damage is blocked by stoneskins (though I don't think it should be). The same also applies to the additional damage done by Skullcrusher, Staff of the Ram, the Impaler and Ixil's Spike (that also doesn't strip additional stoneskins with continuing damage when arguably it should do).
The War Hulk kit (at least the version installed on my computer) allows multiple attacks per round with missile weapons and that would allow an easy victory if you used those (particularly if you use the Big Metal Rod with pulse ammunition as that does hit through stoneskins). However, I was not allowing any use of missile weapons in my run.
EDIT: Never mind. According to this site she only needs +3 to hit - I'll remember that! Guess it's just Ravager that needs +4.
Hard luck though, @Grond0. I knew you'd at least get to the Throne at the pace you were going, but I can't give you any advice about non-Ascension Mel since I think I've only played ToB without it once, a decade or longer ago.
1) Specified protagonist (Necromancer or Vagrant) is actually a must.
2) Fighters!! You need as many pure fighters (Riskbreaker is the best, I would strongly recommend two of them in the party) as possible. For example in my game four fighters was not enough for Shadow Lover. I killed Greater Crawler with duo Riskbreaker (potion of invurneability, potion of cloud giant STR, +3 weapons, haste, free action) and Clan Hunter and was overconfident before Shadow Lover. He is a nasty bastard, dispelling protections on hit, damaging you for 30/40 HP and healing himself. Four fighters was not enough! He utterly destroyed my party couple times in a row. What I did was that I simply swapped Nalia for Minsc and with five fighters and Neera (basically only for Haste) I managed to kill him pretty easy first try. It was that simple. ;p
3) You can't babysit anyone really. All party members must contribute from the start.
4) You need powerful summons even with the strongest party. Without using summons beating IA 6 is impossible imo.
6) Ranger7/Cleric dual is strongly recommended just like riskbreakers.
7) IA 6.xx is hard! I mean seriously, elemental weapon nerf alone is like "I WANT TO END YOUR FUN!! SUFFER SCRUB!!" for me.
8) Winning hard battle after even a really long time is incredibly satisfying.
9) There is still a place for some cheese, hehe ;pppp
Yes, I agree it is a tough mod and mostly warriors are needed with support to debuff, rebuff and heal. But it should be possible to not go that way.
I've beaten v6 twice with vagrant and necromancer already but I want to try a different approach this time. I want to use an npc party and a fun protagonist. It then comes up to planning a slow progression rather than what I normally do; forcing high gains in items by doing 5-10 restarts of the fights. I can postpone fights for weapons I do not need yet until after spellhold.
I restarted my third attempt as avenger and I have korgan, minsc, jaheira and nalia in the party now. I think I will get valygar and mazzy at some point and swap a few in and out for challenge where I need more magic. I'll see.
What is this all about?
The vagrant is an IA ranger kit with immunity to elemental damage and a powerful summon. It gets specific gear throughout the game.
The risk breaker is an IA fighter kit based on kensai. Instead of kensai bonuses it has a higher chance to critical hit and gets some combat abilities like self improved haste and self heal.
Clanhunter is a summon from the avenger. It deals tons of damage and has iron skin memorised
Greater crawler is a beefed up carrion crawler in the sewers that gives the blood for lilrarcor.
The shadow lover is a souped up shade protecting lilrarcor. There are more protection creatures than that though.
Since I did a lot of things, I'll just mention what we have:
Medium Shield+1 -> from the guy that wants revenge on the Half-Ogres.
Helm of Infravision -> assassin girl from Nashkel inn.
Boots of Grounding -> no idea. I suppose Mutamin dropped them.
Heavy Crossbow of Accuracy -> Mulahey.
Boots of the North -> dude scared of the bear. The reaction we got wasn't favorable enough for him to give them to us, so I killed him and then donated to get our reputation back.
And there's a couple of things left for us to do outside of Baldur's Gate:
Killing the Sirines. I didn't want to risk it, might not even kill them, since I don't really need the XP.
Idol of Kozah quest. No magical weapon to hit the spirit monster yet. Ulcaster, the Vampiric wolves and the Mage with the Mustard Slimes are in the same bag. Haven't killed any of the Ghasts in the caves in that area because I can't kite them in a space that small, and I don't think the risk is worth it.
Firewine Ruins. I was clearing them but accidentally quit the game instead of tabbing, didn't bother to go there again, although we did kill the ultimate swordsman, and the guy with the PfM scroll (which I think we have 3 now, or 2, not sure. I left them in a barrel in Beregost a couple of days ago).
The battle against Drasus and co. was fought in the same way as the Bandit Camp one, since I accidentaly got the group of guards north of the Mines involved. The mages were taken out as fast as possible with bolts of lightning (I did the same against the Bandit Camp wizard), then I fought for a while against the other two for a while, but they couldn't do anything about my hit and run tactics. This got us a morning star +1 which we'll be using for the rest of the game. After this came the Ulcaster ruins, which thanks to SCS and HardTimes are VERY annoying, but quickly recruiting Tiax to cast (and recast) Remove Fear on us solved most of our problems, except he got killed and was only resurrected later on to open the locks on Davaeron's storage area, which gave us a lot of stuff we sold, and thus is irrelevant to mention.
I dealt with Davaeron using a PfM scroll. I had decided against it and was going to use a Potion of magic Blocking, but those don't last too long, and I didn't want to risk it. He went down in exactly six rounds. God bless Wizard Slayers (I just hit him constantly and used the Wizard Slayer Rebalancing combat-protections dispeller innate ability). Then I recruited Safana to get the treasure, which she did, but she then died to a couple of Sirines for constantly tried to talk to me. Not a serious loss. I might deal with the Sirines later, since at some point I got the Ioun Stone of Charm protection from Thalantyr. I also recruited Yeslick for about a minute to help me with the fight on that level. His hold spells on the guards were crutial. I killed the wizard with a bolt of Biting when she was standing right next to me, since she had blinded me (the only thing that went through the buffs Yeslick put on JC).
On the stuff Safana found was the full plate +1 and the CON. We had been using a non-magical plate and then the plate+1 because the full plate the fighter with the hammer in the Bandit Camp had broke when I was kiting him (thanks, bgttweaks, thanks... Has to be the first time I deeply regret the "enemy iron items also shatter"). I'm not sure what'sup with the item randomiser, but the drops I've been getting this game feel really generous. We also got the Boots of Speed from either Aldeth Shanshestar I believe, or the pile of treasure under Centeol.
Right now JC Denton is sitting at level 9 I believe, since I am sure I got level 8 before I got inside the Cloakwood Mines. He has five stars on flails/morningstars and two on crossbows. I plan to dual-class to Cleric at level 12. Not sure whether I should do that in BG1 or in SoA.
Sorry for the lack of names and the use of unclear allusions instead of them. My memory is completely trashed, and I am not sure why. I blame studying, since I haven't had a single drink in over a week. Unrelated, but I made another install of BGT, although I believe I need to fix any bugs that might be present before starting to use it for no-reloading.
Previous updates:
As planned, the party made their way to the Nashkel mines. Reaching Mulahey's lair was easy enough, though when the evil priest called his minions, they didn't spawn as a group, but scattered all around, some of them in melee range - which is very dangerous for my party, as two or three lucky hits are enough to kill almost anyone:
I was able to take down the nearby kobolds and skeletons before any real danger could occur, and Guðrún successfully attracted the attention of the remaining foes.
Mulahey was killed, and I started exploring the remaining wilderness areas. There isn't much to report here - with 5 skeletons leading the charge and many sleep and blind spells available, I didn't face a lot of danger - well, except when I made mistakes. Somehow, I let a ghast catch up to Ilithyia at some point. With the insane difficulty extra damage, two hits were easily enough to kill her:
This was the first of two deaths occuring during my explorations. The second one was planned, as it involved talking to Shoal. Dido was able to poison Droth with darts of wounding, making this one a rather trivial battle:
I also decided to take on Kahrk, despite my skeletons being very weak - leaving the area left him with only protection from normal missles as a defense upon my return, and while he was busy destroying the animated dead, I took him down with wand damage:
Thus, the only encounters I left for later were the Firewine Ruins, the Ulcaster School and the mustard jellies at the mines exit area. Everything else was cleared, providing me with enough money to get some great items, such as two archmagi robes and a ton of scrolls. I also found invisibility 10' radius, which I was very happy about. This will help to keep my squishy party out of trouble.
The skeleton army and some sleep spells helped with the bandit camp, though I had to rest before entering the tent. An invisible party got into a good position, taking down the mage right away. Some hold spells helped with the remaining foes:
Next time, we venture into Cloakwood.
Enuhal
Previous update
I decided it was about time for another bit of party play. It's a while since I tried this challenge - a poverty run in an SCS / Spell Revisions installation (also Item Revisions, but that's not relevant for this party). My definition of poverty is:
1) You can never buy or sell any items (including any items required for quests).
2) You can never use or equip any items (but can pick things up for quests).
3) You may pay for quests (such as Gaelan Bayle), but not anything else (temples, inns etc).
I don't remember this party yet even being successful in escaping BG1, but that's an achievable target to aim for. However, as with previous attempts I've again found that you can't afford to leave anything to chance if you want to keep everyone alive ...
A 26th run didn't get too far when I inadvertently paid for a night's lodging at the inn while setting traps for Silke.
A 27th had a rather unfortunate end when a ghast hid inside a wall to avoid missile attacks and came out to paralyze Beggar when he moved forward to find him.
A 28th was an old favorite where I got careless tempting sirines into traps and Beggar got charmed too close to Washout's traps ...
A 29th was a hard one to avoid. I was trying to trap Elminster to get up to level 4/5 and some gibberlings interrupted my rest. After they were slept and stoned I tried resting again - and found more gibberlings. They went down easily as well, but trying to rest once more produced some wolves. All but one of those were slept, so finishing them off would have been easy enough, but apparently all the commotion had persuaded some bandits to explore and Washout died before I even knew they were present.
A 30th run seemed to be going reasonably well with everyone again close to a 3rd levelling up. The party bumped into a couple of hobgoblin elites in a location where I'd just expected standard hobgoblins and Hardup was poisoned before everyone retreated. However, he was in no immediate danger so I decided to kill them rather than running away. A spirit lion chased one of them away, while Pauper was sent in to prevent the other from firing arrows at those with less HPs. I hadn't though appreciated that there was any chance that Pauper himself, with 38 HPs, was vulnerable to being one-shotted - but there was indeed a 0.5% chance and the hobgoblin showed while he was called elite.
Xati, male gnome cleric / thief (Gate70); Slider, female human conjurer (Grond0)
Xati has carefully recorded details of todays outing and proudly reads it out. Four expressive words, with three images to back them up.
Tranzig
Bandits
Cloakwood
City
It's not entirely accurate either as the city is unexplored and a gnome called Quayle is watching intently. Go away!
Corthief XVI - thief, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Spyder - fighter/thief (Grond0)
Siur - assassin (Gate70)
I could describe the great victories we had, over the bandit camp, Drassus, Daveorn (though Siur died there), but all that really matters is the end.
We were about to deal with the basilisk in the warehouse, and Corey_Russell asked Grond0 to use a mirror eyes potion to take out it out. He did not immediately agree and suggested a far more dangerous approach. But it sounded silly to me so I THOUGHT I used a mirror eyes potion and then went for a backstab. But I think stealthed before the potion actually took effect. As an elf, I promptly failed my save vs. petrification after the backstab and that was that!
RIP Corthief XVI. Gate70 will be the protagonist next run.
(Our rhythm had been broken by a crash and the death was 1m30 seconds after restarting from that)
Trio two of the day
Nettle. Female LE halfling assassin (Gate70)
Teers. Male CN elf sorcerer (Grond0)
April. Female NE human berserker (Corey_Russell)
We had about 15 minutes of our session remaining once these three had been rolled up. I went for a variation on the previous assassin while Grond0 and Corey_Russell both decided one thief a day was enough and moved on to other classes.
We stomped our way out of Candlekeep and stole gear from Imoen Montaron and Xzar before heading down to pick on Shoal the nereid. With her dead we saved, meaning we will have to wertle with the mad Arcand another time.
Previous update
Starting again, the Opera did a few tasks in and around Beregost, including trapping Firebead and Silke and throwing stones at the golems at High Hedge before successfully reviving Melicamp. Magic Stone would be a handy spell in Spell Revisions even if this were not a poverty run. Apart from being able to hit things requiring magical weapons, it also does crushing not missile damage - thus allowing ranged attacks on things like mustard jellies. Those encounters made half the party eligible for a level, but my general rule with parties is that no-one can level up until everyone can.
At the FAI, Joia got her ring back - if only briefly - allowing everyone to level up for the first time.
Over at the Lighthouse sirines were mainly dragged into traps, allowing everyone to level up again.
Both sorcerers took invisibility for their first L2 spell. That only has a duration of 8 hours in SR, so is less useful for travel, but it still has a wide variety of benefits. That was demonstrated at Durlag's Tower where scouting, safe resting and invisible blocking helped clear the battle horrors outside and the ghasts inside. Kirinhale died in a full set of traps and the same happened to Riggilo, while the Ghost used all its spells up on a stream of summons. On the roof a lesser basilisk died in Writhing Fogs, before a spirit lion killed the first greater one. When the lion died against the second greater basilisk I tried out some bats just in case and found that they were immune to petrification and quickly finished the other basilisks off
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L6, 51 HPs, 20 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L5, 37 HPs, 27 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L5, 35 HPs, 40 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L6, 35 HPs, 22 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L5, 26 HPs, 21 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L5, 26 HPs, 17 kills, 0 deaths
Journal of Nigretta
We have done many trivial tasks in Baldur's Gate. If only reputation went up above twenty, mine would be about 30 now. I spent most of my gold buying fully charged wands. Only a few more needed.(I forsook my normal tactics of hit and run which was a mistake as confusion or chaos affected all but one of the party!) We also were forced to kill Desretta and Marek.
We have not yet returned to Scar and will probably delay that until a few more quests are completed.
Well, I learned something new once again. It seems like the meatgrinder challenge does teach me quite a few ways to die that were previously entirely unkown to me.
Things were proceeding very well. I cleared Cloakwood and the mines, did all the quests in the big city, returned to Candlekeep and finished the ducal palace event. The ice island was cleared, and Baldur's Island (a place where I've never ever lost a no-reload run before) was next.
Turns out that, if you talk to Dradeel and aren't polite to him (for example, if you tell him that he's insane), he will attack you, and he will start combat by using some kind of custom sunfire-like ability called Selûne's Curse.
I've since looked up this ability, quoting @Tresset here: Quite interesting... as you can imagine, 20d6 damage combined with the extra damage from insane difficulty plus the low hp resulting from randomized constitution scores and randomized hp rolls did instantly kill my entire party, ending this run.
By the way, I did reload and try this battle again, just to see how powerful Dradeel would be, and once I knew what to expect he was easily slain by my party, so I wouldn't exactly agree that he's as tough as Drizzt or Shandalar - all you have to do is avoid Selûne's Curse and take him down with ranged weapons before he can get too close. He drops a robe of the neutral archmagi and another wolfsbane charm.
Enuhal
I had a weird fight against the twisted rune crew. I bulldozed all their normal party members, but the lich summoned a dark planetar right as he died. The weird thing was, I could not take this thing down and it spent a turn or two bullying my 3.2mm exp party before it unsummoned. Granted, I didn't feel like using my 3x LR because I didn't want to recast it, but still a bit surprising.
Apparently I've killed them quickly enough previously that I didn't notice how high their regen is. The dark planetar tore through chan + about a zillion lesser summons (skeletons, elementals) and two devas as well as somehow also held off charname w/ 4 apr crom faer, and jaheira w/ 4 apr blackblood, and anomen.
Yikes. Maybe it's that I've previously tended to have a charname with unresistable slow from the FoA...
Unrelatedly, Layene got hit with a nature's beauty early in the fight. She did eventually cast true sight, but it did not seem to fix her spellcasting. That's another SCS counter that doesn't really work...