I've considered a few other games for no-reload purposes, mostly relating to games I've enjoyed in the past:
Skyrim (preferably heavily modded) Bioshock Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 (no grinding or low-grinding, to keep things interesting) Paper Mario Undertale
Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 is probably the game that readers are least likely to have played, but it's actually the most interesting from a no-reload perspective because luck plays a very large role, improvising is important, and avoiding death requires game knowledge and advance planning. For those who aren't familiar with the game, it's a bit like Pokemon, but more complex and focused on designing monsters than grinding levels.
I love paper Mario! Dragon warrior monsters is always good stuff from what I hear. Skyrim I agree needs mods to really work...otherwise I consider it a bit of a cakewalk really. I have never really felt all that much in danger playing skyrim unmodded
Frost: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 3
Back to the Imperial Prison! This time, I don't plan on using the duplication glitch to speed things up. Instead, we're going to seek out resources by robbing the Mages Guild. Once you join, various items--especially valuable alchemical equipment--in each guild hall are free for you to take. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul sets many of the items to be someone else's property, so you can't just take everything, but OOO also adds lots of expensive clothes to armoires and drawers, which we can also take. When things get too heavy, we drop a stack of items and use Z to hold them in midair, which doesn't affect our encumbrance.
This gets us a lot of money with little risk and little time and effort. We set up our previous character build, a low-equipped, low-level, magic-oriented build with the Staff of the Everscamp and negative Willpower to set base fatigue to 1. With a custom 100-point Fortify Fatigue effect, we can deal 101 times as much damage with every arrow.
Our defenses are still pretty terrible, though. One of OOO's very nasty imps--which has a constant effect Chameleon ability to make its already-small form even harder to hit!--launches a devastating area-effect cold spell that wipes out our scamps and takes away almost half of Frost's Health.
See that little bit of light next to the target symbol in the middle of the screen? That's the imp's spell. The imp itself is the invisible light distortion behind that bit of light.
It's almost impossible to hit a small, moving, 90% invisible target, but when I finally nail him, the imp goes down in a single shot.
Other enemies are easier to deal with. Bandits are easy to hit and also die to a single shot. But when I run into a high-end zombie in an Ayleid ruin, it takes multiple shots to bring it down. It almost kills me in a single hit, but the sheer damage of the bow deals enough knockback to keep it at a safe distance until Frost fires the final arrow.
I think it's called a Zombie Guardian or something. I don't know why it has that faint green glow.
I have no interest in fighting high-end optional critters with no clear loot reward, and I have much less interest in fighting zombies, so I immediately leave and gather ingredients to make some better defensive and healing potions.
It's time to deal with the main quest. Here's the plot of Oblivion in a nutshell:
Mehrunes Dagon is the god (Daedric Prince) of destruction. He wants to destroy the planet for giggles, but he has a problem: there's a barrier between his dimension and ours, so he can't reach us.
However, that barrier isn't permanent. In order to maintain it, each new Emperor, upon taking the throne, has to use the Amulet of Kings to light a set of fires in the Imperial City called the Dragonfires. So what does Dagon do?
First, he assassinates the Emperor and his sons. There is no heir to the throne, so the Dragonfires can't be re-lit and the barrier can't be maintained. What do we do about this?
Well, Frost was around when the Emperor was slain, and the Emperor, seeing a bit of the future and realizing he was doomed, gave us the Amulet of Kings and told us to take it to Jauffre, a former secret agent and personal guard to the Emperor. Why Jauffre?
Jauffre knows that the Emperor has an illegitimate son named Martin. With all the other heirs to the throne now dead, Martin is the only one who can light the Dragonfires and maintain the barrier. All we have to do is grab Martin, currently in the city of Kvatch, and have him travel to the Imperial City and restore that barrier.
Little problem. Something doesn't look quite right about Kvatch. We've got a camp of refugees outside the city. And as we climb the hill to the city itself, the weather...
...seems a little bit...
...off.
Apparently Dagon has already pierced the barrier and opened a gate to Oblivion, flooding the city with daedra in a desperate attempt to kill Martin, the only one who can light the Dragonfires and stop him.
With a massive Oblivion gate blocking the way inside the city, we have to go into Dagon's own plane and shut it down. Oblivion is a horrific place, a blasted wasteland of fire and brimstone in a massive sea of lava. Daedra roam the land, the plantlife itself is hostile, there are land mines everywhere, which we have to detonate from a safe distance...
...and there are dead bodies everywhere, stapled to walls, hanging from ceilings, or apparently crushed to a fine paste by one of the place's elaborate machines, colorfully called a Corpse Masher.
This Oblivion gate is sustained by a Sigil Stone at the top of the tower in the middle of the island. We need to seize that little fiery rock to force the gate to collapse. But the tower is guarded by dremora guards and daedric critters.
But we have fatigue boosting on our side. Every time a dremora comes to give us trouble, I cast our Fortify Fatigue spell and shoot him with an arrow so powerful it blasts him clear off the ground.
That's one of the most fun things about fatigue boosting. It doesn't just multiply your damage by crazy values; the killing blow knocks the victim off their feet! It's very satisfying.
With fatigue boosting, none of the enemies here last long enough to threaten us. As long as we make sure not to get speared by a trap...
...we can nab some really excellent loot, take the Sigil Stone, and scram.
The Oblivion gate collapses, we fight our way through some more daedra, and reach the chapel where Martin has been hiding with his fellow siege victims. First, though, I help the guards and some Imperial Legion scouts who noticed the fires break into Castle Kvatch, which nets me a lot of useful loot to sell off later. OOO adds valuable furnishings to upper-class homes, and Castle Kvatch can be looted without worrying about being arrested for stealing (after all, the owners are dead and everything is on fire anyway).
Anyway, now that Martin is freed, we can escort him back to Weynon Priory, where Jauffre has been keeping the Amulet of Kings safe. Unfortunately, Dagon's cult, the Mythic Dawn, has figured out what we're up to and has attacked Weynon Priory to steal the amulet. We're too late to save the amulet, but we can kill some Mythic Dawn agents who lingered too long.
Or rather, we let our followers fight the agents and charm our scamps to join the fight. Notice the weird graphical glitches on our followers, Martin and the Jemane twins.
There's actually a way to fix the glitch, but I didn't know it at the time. So, when Jauffre takes us to Cloud Ruler Temple, an ancient stronghold, in order to keep Martin safe while we figure out a plan, Martin and the twins get their heads caked with snow. They almost look headless.
We need to get the amulet back. After several quests for which I don't appear to have any screenshots, our next move is to secure a Daedric artifact.
Technically, the Staff of the Everscamp is a Daedric artifact, since it's a prank item from Sheogorath. But we can't use it as our next plot coupon; we need to pray at a Daedric shrine, perform a task for one of the gods (except for Dagon, who has little reason to offer a quest to the woman who's been thwarting his plans), and receive an artifact that Martin can use to open a portal for reasons I won't go into.
Martin suggests we do Azura's quest, which happens to be nearby and also is morally neutral, but Sheogorath's quest gives us a less useful item, so we'll use Sheogorath's instead. Still, we could really use the Azura's Star soul gem, so I head out to her shrine.
Azura wants us to break into a mine and butcher a bunch of vampires. The vampires are her own worshippers who sealed themselves away centuries ago to protect the non-vampires on the outside, and Azura wants their suffering to end.
Frost enters the dungeon, I hear a squeak, and suddenly Frost dies in one hit.
Not to a vampire, but to a trap. A pressure plate that, when pressed, released a big metal spiky ball to swing down and kill Frost.
It's another frustrating loss that could have easily been avoided. Frost is so good at shooting down critters that I've badly neglected her defenses, namely her Shield and Health values, and I've overlooked the danger of traps.
More annoying still, the trap makes no conceptual sense. Why would the vampires set up a trap to kill intruders when they sealed themselves away in the mine specifically to avoid hurting anyone, and haven't seen another living creature in hundreds of years? Cabin fever?
Regardless, we've once again lost an otherwise extremely successful run, and it's getting frustrating to start over because making this character build work requires a fair amount of repetitive grunt work in the early game just to acquire resources.
But I'm not done yet. The fundamentals of this run are strong; we just need to work out a few details.
@semiticgod: I know I'm a little bit late to the party, but I just wanted to thank you for reminding me that Morrowind exists! You made me boot up and the game and play it for the first time in 8 years, and holy nostalgia. I forgot how much a masterpiece it is!
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 159 (123 4) Xati, male gnome cleric / thief (Gate70); Slider, female human conjurer (Grond0)
Our fourth documented ouring with this pair lasts 75 minutes. Xati wants to rid himself of poison so we head for Marek and have to deal with Larze on the way. After that it is time to return to Candlekeep and avail ourselves of the items stored within the catacombs. Slider deigns to glug a potion to prevent death by Phase Spider poison - Xati being quick with Slow Poison but not quick enough.
Once these items are ours we can move on to Slythe, Krystin and the doppelganger welcome at the Coronation. Our potion buffs there are enough to see us through the thieves maze then neatly straddling Rahvin and his mercenaries. A final rest takes us into the abandoned temple of Bhaal to confront Sarevok.
Our plan is reasonably sound, Semaj teleporting into skeletons and Doom plays it's part - not sure if Slider added a Malison too.
But one of the secrets to no reload is to find out that sort of information and try again . That can take a long while of course - I've had 273 attempts so far at a no-reload challenge with Kings Bounty: the Legend. Admittedly I'm using very severe rules (only allowing the use of undead creatures and not allowing any losses from my army in combat). I've never completed that game in any form and have only made it about 2/3 of the way through with this challenge, so I'm sure there's still plenty more to learn in the coming years!
That's interesting. Maybe I gave up too easily. Unless I'm getting the games confused, I think I got as far as the dwarf or the elf lands, which is maybe about halfway through the game. The way I approached it was to avoid any fights that I couldn't tell the difficulty of until I absolutely had to fight them, and then do the main quest gating content first. That way, presumably the game is balanced such that the unseen fight will be winnable.
But it does mean you can basically never upgrade items, which was frustrating, and have to miss out on certain sidequests, which was also frustrating...
@Jabberwock I kill all enemies and do virtually all quests (there are a very limited number that are impossible under my restrictions). However, before I do any fighting in an area I explore it - dodging all the enemies in order to loot as much as possible and completing some quests. So for instance I would normally only have 2 fights (Robber and Geya) before having looted the Freedom Islands. That means my fighting abilities are exceptionally high for the stage of the game I'm at (my best run so far was about halfway through clearing the elves, having done pretty much everything prior to that - I was level 20 and spirits levels 27,26,25,25). Those high levels are necessary to get the strength and abilities to defeat enemies without taking losses - if you were just playing a normal no-reload and could upgrade your army between battles you could take a more straightforward approach.
Incidentally, if you upgrade your scouting ability you can see the exact numbers of the opposition and avoid nasty surprises.
Ok 93 and the canon party was off to a flying start helping Nib and returning Brage. I kept his sword for something fancy...
I had plans for the sword, and Minsc and Big B. Unfortunately the sword looks like all the other swords.. and after a brief scare we killed Minsc - and Bassilus.
We sold the damn sword..
The extra man power means more XP and gear is needed. It forces me to do the quests I usually skip - I found that I rather liked it.
Next up the sirenes and the treasure cave. Sadly Imoen had to go.
Felt bad about Imoen. If you ever get sent to some remote sanatarium with a crazy elf mage, I will come get you Imoen - promise!!
After the sirenes we killed the Amazones and the undead (forgetting the WoMS . We actually cleared most of the wilderness zones bar Durlags.
At the bandit camp we got the feel of how well the game scales the random encounters. Two times we faced 6 black talon elite. Luckily Minsc got some bears to soak up the damage. The camp was manageble - and was sacked after killing the lot.
Sold 47 scalps after the looting and killing .
Cloakwood was easy. I was a bit spooked when Amarande got an insect plauge off after dying. But we shook it off.
At the mine Drasus was killed. Khalid got confused and started beating his wife. She will get over him real soon - if he gets chunked...
Ok 93 got to level 7 after doing most before BG City and durlags. Next is the mine.
BTW: These sessions have rekindled my love for the spell slow poison. We have been poisoned 8 times. Only 1 time in cloakwood and 1 times in the spider lair by the red wizards. A wonderfull spell that is nice to have by.. when you least expect it
I've also been experimenting with a no-reload Skyrim run with Smilodon, Ordinator, and Morrowloot installed, with the additional restriction that my character can't use any crafting skill (no Smithing; no Alchemy; no Enchant). I came up with a rather lovely character build oriented around the Vancian Magic perk from Ordinator.
Basically, it lets you only cast 20 spells a day. You have to rest in a bed you own or an inn (so, not just any bed, but a very specific kind of bed) to restore them. The upside is that all of your spells cost no magicka and they're at double magnitude.
Better still, a sustained spell (a spell that lasts as long as you focus on it), only counts as a single spell for the purposes of that 20-spell limit, as long as you don't cancel it and try to re-start it. A character with the Vancian Magic perk can cast Flames and Healing non-stop for 16 damage on enemies per second and 20 Health restored on self per second, and once you get Destruction to 65, you can get Wall of Flames (or any elemental wall spell) and deal 100 damage per second. It also dramatically bumps up other spells--a basic Calm spell can affect up to level 18 critters in my install with Vancian Magic.
Getting Vancian Magic is pretty easy. All you have to do is isolate a bandit archer and spam Oakflesh while dodging their arrows. You can hit Alteration 30 within a few minutes in complete safety (equipping the robes from the starting dungeon makes it considerably faster, as does picking the first Alteration perk early). And, once you get it, you can train Restoration and either armor skill by finding one or two melee enemies (the draugrs in Bleak Falls Barrow work fine) and letting them attack you while you use both hands to cast Healing to restore 40 Health per second. Set the right and left hand buttons from the mouse buttons to a couple of keys, put something heavy on the keyboard, and you can let your character get up to 100 Restoration, Light Armor, and Heavy Armor in short order (I got both to 50 in maybe 20 minutes). You could hit level 19-27 very safely. If standing in fires dealt fire damage in my install, it would also be possible to level Destruction.
But after dying after running out of spells in Saarthal (which I'm almost positive was a bug, because I entered with 20 spells and only fought 7 draugrs in 3 fights in as many minutes before somehow running out) and then dying in a single hit at full health outside Bleak Falls Barrow (presumably because one of the bandits got a critical hit power attack from behind, maybe with another bandit attacking at the exact same time, and somehow dealt 110 damage at normal difficulty)... I'm not sure I'm going to bother trying again.
Without crafting skills (which honestly reward tedious grinding even more than Oblivion or Morrowind), the only growth for the character build I had would be the upgrade from Flames/Sparks to Wall of Flames/Wall of Sparks. It would be great to deal 100 damage per second indefinitely, but that's basically the only thing that would happen for the rest of the game, even if I did somehow avoid any and all instant death attacks that Smilodon apparently introduces to the game (I don't even have Realistic Damage enabled, I don't think; this is just the base mod).
There are only a few dozen spells in Skyrim, and basically all of them are just variants of another spell. There's not really anything to do in Skyrim but craft items.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 159 (1234 5) Xati, male gnome cleric / thief (Gate70); Slider, female human conjurer (Grond0)
We're in Amn according to Yoshimo - better let him get on with it on his own then.
The first area of a deadly chateau is behind us and nothing can stop us. Apart from four mephit portals that do Slider in. Never mind says Xati, it's just a brief hop to safety and then we'll get you raised.
Only another minute to shut down the portals.
Several minutes shifting equipment around (while Grond0 has gone).
Off to see the Escaped Clone. Xati has Protection from Lightning memorised but chooses not to use it. Doom is a poor spell choice, allowing the clone to kill an assassin and mirror image. Xati tries to use a bit of distance and takes a lightning bolt up the chuff as he escapes.
That was close. Although the lightning bolt has bounced. Oops
In the newest patch of Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition, they made it so that specialist mages cast spells of their school with tougher saving throws (previously specialists only had the save bonus against incoming spells from their school). So I decided to retry a playthrough I did a few months ago, but with two characters instead of one:
Icewind Dale: Jaris the Invoker and Aseigh the Abjurer/Cleric
To recap the rules, Jaris starts the game knowing every evocation spell in the game but cannot learn ANY non-evocation spells (not even things like Mirror Image, Stoneskin or Protection from Magic Weapons). Similarly, Aseigh starts the game knowing every abjuration spell in the game but cannot learn or cast any non-abjuration spells, and this rule applies to his cleric spells as well. This means, among other things, that he can't cast healing spells. However, there's a reason I put an abjurer-cleric in the party. There's something an abjurer/cleric can do that no other class can do. We'll learn what that is later on.
I'm playing on Insane. I have the double experience on because I like leveling up quickly, but for the time being Insane mode is going to make the game more dangerous.
To start off, the duo bought their equipment from Pomab and did the minor Easthaven quests. They couldn't open Apsel's door, so they couldn't complete that quest. By the time they reached the goblin fight, Jaris had almost reached level 3, so they had to beat the goblins without AoE spells.
As you might have guessed, Aseigh can't cast too many useful spells right now. However, he still served as a better tank than Jaris. The fact that he could wear a helmet meant that he didn't have to worry about being one-shotted by a quadruple-damage critical hit. He wore splint mail which disabled his mage spells, but that didn't matter too much because the only mage spell he could cast was Protection from Evil (which he could also cast as a cleric spell).
Jaris cast Sleep using the scroll from Pomab's shelf (they are allowed to use scrolls of other schools in this playthrough) to put the goblins to sleep. The goblins woke up on hit, but the duo didn't have to face so many at once. Aseigh kited the goblins to death over the course of 10 minutes or more. After the fight, I realized that I could've sped that up by buying throwing daggers for Jaris. I did so.
Jaris had been so close to leveling up that he leveled up after killing a couple of the goblins! He then gained the ability to cast 2nd level spells, like Stinking Cloud and Snilloc's Snowball Swarm. However, he didn't end up needing area damage too much - Stinking Cloud was good enough.
Long story short, the "investigate the missing caravan" quest consisted of Jaris casting Stinking Cloud on groups of enemies and the two of them flinging bullets and daggers at the unconscious enemies.
After reporting to Hrothgar, delivering the caravan contract to Gaspar, giving the supply list to Pomab, and resting, the duo embarked on the expedition!
Once the duo found themselves in the Kuldahar Pass, they were in great danger because there was no safe place to rest and nowhere to retreat to. So they had to make a run for it. Jaris put on Shield and Aseigh put Protection from Evil on both of them, and they ran. At one point Jaris almost got cornered by goblins, but they got away.
Once they spoke to Arundel and rested, the duo fought the two yetis. As with previous fights, Jaris cast Stinking Cloud on the yetis (in this case, twice because the yetis have better saving throws than previous enemies), and the two of them killed the yetis with missile weapons.
Jaris and Aseigh then ventured forth to the Vale of Shadows, intending to kill all the yetis and retrieve Silas' heirloom before going into the tombs. It was a toil to say the least. The duo had to rest after killing each yeti in order to regain the Stinking Clouds.
Finally, they enountered the yeti chieftain, and they killed it the same way they killed the other yetis. On returning to Kuldahar, they gave Silas' heirloom to Mirek and Jaris reached level 5! This is particularly great because now he can cast Fireball!
Up next, the duo delves into the tombs (bringing along Web instead of Stinking Cloud).
Making slow but consistent progress. With the item randomizer I am finding it hard to locate the usual goody basket I prefer for playthroughs. I have yet to run across a single magic item that I would normally use other than the large shield +1. This makes for a slower paced game since I cannot just lock in my boots of speed and kite the whole game. I have yet to find them or a magic sling/short sword for my fighter/thief.
I did everything in the waterfall area with the drowned cat that you give back to the girl and that was pretty much my night was that one area, selling loot, restocking on sling bullets and purchasing a protection from petrification scroll(green) to tackle the basilisk area. My last new reload ended with a basilisk so I figure I will lead with more caution this time around. I estimate this should be enough exp to give me another round of levels boosting us up to fighter 6/thief 6.
Frost: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 4
I restarted the run, did all my chores, made some progress in the main questline, and then died in the Bruma gate quest to a Dremora boss who apparently had a paralysis effect on hit. I almost made it out alive, but since all you can do while paralyzed is drink potions, I had to rely entirely on potions to survive. Problem is, OOO nerfs potion use: you can only use 3 potions at a time instead of 4 at my Alchemy level, it's no longer possible to use a short-duration effect in a potion to cancel it early and let you use a new potion earlier than normal, and the vanilla, non-player-created potions are no longer instantaneous; they have a delayed effect.
I had the option of using an Invisibility potion or a healing potion. Since the Dremora boss was already making his next attack when I entered the inventory, I wasn't sure Invisibility would keep us safe. Instead, I used a healing potion--but it just wasn't enough to save us.
If I had just used Dragonskin, there's no way we would have died. But I didn't want to use it because it's a once-per-day ability. Problem is, once we got through that one fight, we could have just waited for 24 hours to get the power back.
I need to pay much better attention to my defenses. Frost might be able to one-shot most critters, but dealing 300 damage with a bow doesn't matter if a single paralysis spell or trap can bring her down. I need to make sure her Health and Shield are very high whenever there's trouble.
I make my way back through the main quest and arrive at the vampire lair in the Azura's Star quest. This time, I make sure to trigger the trap at the entrance by firing an arrow at the tripwire.
The vampires home in on me the moment I make my presence known. An orc survives the first arrow...
...but the knockback from the massive damage pushes him far enough away for Frost to fire a second arrow and finish him off.
The other vampires use their Invisibility spells to screw with my aim, but a telltale shimmer gives them away, and I already know they're running right for me. A single arrow is enough to take down most of the others.
While wandering around, I spot a pressure plate in the area. If I hadn't been searching the ground, I might well have died again.
Now that I have Azura's Star, I have a re-usable soul gem that can hold souls from any critter I can summon with a Conjuration spell. I grind Mysticism until I can cast Soul Trap, then go about enchanting some new gear. But to my dismay, OOO makes Fortify Health enchantments--the absolute most important one for Frost--so incredibly expensive that there's essentially no reason to ever make one.
You'd need to be a compulsive dungeon delver to make the kind of money to afford that kind of enchantment, and we're avoiding optional dungeons in order to minimize danger.
Other defensive enchantments are also hideously overpriced. Azura's Star is practically useless to us. But I'm not going to give it to Martin, because there's an even less useful daedric artifact we can use instead: the Wabbajack.
The Wabbajack can actually be really overpowered and essentially kill non-human targets in one hit. But recharging it is extremely expensive (realistically, I could only do it using Azura's Star) and I can already land one-shot kills on virtually any non-human target. The human targets like Dremora are much bigger threats.
So, we go to Sheogorath's shrine to do his quest. It's fairly easy: we steal some cheese, cook the cheese to attract a plague of rats, use a village leader's rat poison to poison the sheep's food supply, and then watch Sheogorath shower a rural village with flaming dog corpses.
Sheogorath is a nut, and his quest fits him perfectly. I never liked him, though--his quirkiness always came off as rather forced to me.
I'm not quite sure I want to give up Wabbajack, though, since it does have its uses, so before I make my decision, I go over to find Umbra, whose sword is needed to fulfill Clavicus Vile's quest. Clavicus Vile has an even less useful daedric artifact as a reward, a helmet which fortifies Personality. To get it, we need to kill an extremely powerful melee wood elf fighter in a tight space.
Umbra has high-end armor, strong skills, tons of Health, and massive regeneration as well as an extremely hard-hitting sword. Fortunately for us, we can get the drop on her. I fortify the crap out of Frost's fatigue, land a brutal hit when sneaking, and finish off Umbra with a second arrow at point-blank range while she's coming up the stairs.
With our normal buffs, Frost does over 300 damage per shot. But if we cast multiple Fortify Fatigue buffs, her arrows can completely destroy the enemy's armor. We shattered Umbra's helmet, boots, and cuirass in just two shots.
We repair the armor and put it on Frost. She can really use the extra damage reduction, and it's worth the decreased efficacy of our spells. Plus, she looks really cool in it.
I decide to keep Umbra, since it's a zero-weight quest item that never runs out of arrows and can deal much more damage than our bow. The only reason we stick with the bow is that attacking with Umbra would damage our fatigue and weaken our damage multiplier, and an enemy's Reflect Damage effect could actually prove fatal if we tried to use a melee weapon on them.
I give the Wabbajack to Martin so I can keep Azura's Star and Umbra. It's time to go back to the Bruma gate quest. I foolishly fail to cast Dragonskin and the Dremora boss catches me by surprise. But while he does land a hit on me, Frost's arrows are strong enough to knock him back and then pin him down.
Next, we need to collect some allies for Bruma. But each of the other cities is threatened by an Oblivion gate, and if we want them to send soldiers to defend Bruma, we need to seal those gates for them.
But midway through the first gate, I accidentally trigger a giant sword trap. It comes crashing down and kills Frost in one hit.
It's another deeply upsetting and disappointing end to an otherwise very successful run.
I have done the various chores of the early game many times already, and it's frustrating to have to start all over. But if I resort to the item duplication glitch to speed things up, I think the run is going to feel cheap.
So I come up with a new challenge. For the next run, I will have free use of the item duplication trick--not just for grinding Alchemy, but for anything. Infinite gold and infinite copies of almost any item in the game.
But, to keep things challenging, we're going to try something interesting. First, we're not going to use fatigue boosting anymore--we can no longer multiply our damage output by bringing our base fatigue down to 1 and using Fortify Fatigue spells.
Second, we're going to play on the maximum difficulty setting.
If that doesn't sound like much, you haven't played Oblivion on the maximum difficulty setting. I've tried it once before, and it's even uglier than Legacy of Bhaal mode. In Oblivion, pushing the difficulty slider all the way to the right does two things:
1. The player does one-sixth (1/6) of their normal spell, weapon, and poison damage. 2. The player takes six times as much damage from everything.
In most games, the highest difficult makes things maybe 2 or 3 or 4 times as difficult. In Skyrim's notorious Legendary difficulty, it makes things 12 times as hard. But in Oblivion, the maximum difficulty makes things 36 times harder than at the normal difficulty.
Basically, the player can't kill anything, while anything can kill the player. Getting killed by a rat, a stray arrow, or a fall from a modest height is common at the maximum difficulty.
We're going to play a normal mage character; no Atronach birthsign for us. The item duplication trick will make things smoother, but it won't solve the problem of our 36-fold disadvantage. We can't buy or duplicate any item that will steamroll the opposition. Certainly not in OOO.
Upon travelling towards the Nashkel Mines, we were ambushed by a Vampiric Wolf, which was quickly defeated by a combination of kiting, risky melee, magical ammo and spells.
Still not sure why I took a picture of this and not other, more interesting stuff. Moving on, the Mines were a walk in the park. I made a couple of videos of half of it (which are in the spoiler right under this paragraph), but I lost interest after the game crashed. Holy Smite got us the victory against the Kobold Shaman/Chieftain battle, and the rest is in the videos (I played out the fight against the commandos the same way, except Coran didn't get hit at all, and I waited the Stinking Cloud (I think I've said this before, but in SR, Stinking Cloud requires the affected creatures to make a save vs. death or become Nauseated, which doesn't let the affected creature cast spells nor attack. This makes it extremely useful against ranged enemies) after sniping the Kobold Commandos, before engaging the rest in melee, besides having scouted out before doing the off-screen spellcasting, which is something I've been trying to make into a habit).
The fight against Mulahey went very smoothly. I had Coran place a trap near the entrance, to kill off all the kobolds that would be summoned later (when enemies are created in the sight of thief traps, they will affect every one of them, which makes them fabulous for situations such as these). Then, I move my PC to the northen side, to fend off the melee kobolds there, but not before casting Mirror Image. Coran, Jaheira and Branwen took care of Mulahey, with a tiny bit of help from Edwin near the end, as he was rather busy fending off the other kobolds and skeletons here and there with this nifty spell SR changed Deafness into.
After the Mines we completed a couple of quests, which I sadly do not remember. We also dealt with Tranzig. This particular battle took a rather comical turn on the end, because I had both Ajantis and Jaheira running after him, while he fled for his life, terrified, and the rest of the group couldn't do anything because Edwin had fallen asleep right under the door, and as if that wasn't enough, Branwen had joined him as well! Anyway, Coran saved the day by sniping the mage from the other side of the corridor. I realise now I didn't pickpocket Algernon, I'll see about doing that first thing next session.
After this, I realised I hadn't killed Nimbul, so we went get him. His attacks were rendered pretty much useless by having Edwin and Yvralline out of his line of sight until he wasted his MMs on someone with more hitpoints, and he didn't even think of casting Horror because Ajantis had used Remove Fear as soon as he had turned hostile. He almost killed Coran so we had to waste two healing potions, which doesn't really matter since we've been overflowing with them since we got out of the very early levels. Nimbul carried the IR equivalent of the Bastard Sword +1, +3 against Lycanthropes, which I find much easier to avoid describing and will post an image instead.
Instantly after we killed Nimbul we got ambushed by Molkar and co., which were dealt with with surprising ease. Again, Holy Smite did wonders, and Jaheira managed to keep the human Cleric entertained until she killed him. Our only loss was that Ajantis died after getting caught in a Hold Person spell (which their Cleric got off at the last moment right before dying to Jaheira's bloodthirsy paws. I sadly did not time it such that he would get interrupted), and getting beaten to death by a bunch of Gibberlings I hadn't bothered in killing as I was still rather busy with the rest of the bounty hunters. A couple of Hold Persons from Branwen, fire arrows from Coran and magic Missiles to interrupt enemy spells from the dwarf mage, and the two remaining shorties were dead as well. Here I decided to go look for the Bandit Camp. After clearing both of the Sharp Wood areas, Jaheira gained a level, which gave her access to this SR spell which I have no idea if is new or replaces another one.
I gained access to the Camp by joining the Bandits. Tazok was easily defeated by kiting and getting nuked with spells. I found a scroll of Slow and another one of Protection from Missiles (SR's improved version of Protection from Normal Missiles), but Edwin failed to scribe the latter. Oh well. Anyway, he decided to start this fight by attacking the man with the full plate, medium shield +1 and war hammer +1. You folks know his name better than I do. So, this man fell to Branwen's Hold Person upon the first cast, so he was spared until we had the time to deal with him. The next round all of the enemies in the Tent came out. Yvralline greeted them with a Fireball from a Wand of Fire (courtesy of Mulahey's chest), while Branwen used Holy Smite; Edwin, Slow; and Coran held off the Black Talons that approached from the other side. All of this while Jaheira and Ajantis waited, dropping attacks on the full plate armoured man that was under the effects of Hold Person. The next round was very similar, except Branwen started helping Coran by bombarding the Black Talon Elites with Hold Person, and Edwin used Horror instead. Yvralline did the same. Fireballs are very effective. After the second and last Fireball hit, Ajantis and Jaheira rushed towards the enemy, taking on priority targets first (Hakt and Vekt, respectively). Vekt ran around, and wasted some Magic Missiles on Jaheira, while Hakt was affected by Edwin's second Horror spell, so I had Ajantis switch targets to the closest Bandit, now with the help of Yvralline's crossbow. Vekt went down before Edwin could finish casting his second Slow spell, and all that remained alive were about five Bandits and several more Black Talon Elites, and all of the Chill Hobgoblins, which were being held off by Jaheira's Entangle spell (which, in SR, halves your movement rate even if you save against it, which makes it very useful against slow moving, melee opponents with awful saves). We looted everything outside, but forgot to get into the Tent.
After all this, we decided to take a break and went on visited the coast. We killed the Doomslayer by using a tactic similar to the one used against the Vampiric Wolf, on the opening of this post, failed to kill the woman with the small shield+1 before Barge talked to us, and for some reason we didn't get Brage sword's either... Very weird. On our coastal vacations, we encountered Shoal. Because of the Beguiling Aura this, uhm, woman-like creature has, Edwin and Coran stayed behind while we fought her, since Ajantis is immune to Charm, and it doesn't affect women. Shoal is quickly brought to low hit points, not before having to run her around, kill the Water Weird she summoned (a lesser Water Elemental, except it moves really fasts and can insta-kill you, but it's rather easy to kill. Another one of those friendly things aTweaks cherishes the player's life with), and shrug off her Poison spit from Yvralline. I thought it would be a good idea to take on Droth, since, you know, he normally has good stuff on him. And it was. He couldn't deal with our combined force, and perished to one of Edwin's Magic Missiles, which was just thrown to increase his surprisingly low kill count. Droth had the Shadow Armour+3, which with IR allows Arcane spellscasting for some odd reason. We gave it to Coran, and later sold the Protector of the Second+2, which in IR protects against Critical Hits, and I reckon this was a mistake, and that I should have kept it because the Armour Class bonus is minimal compared to not taking full damage from Critical Hits.
After this, we continued looking for ways to increase Edwin's kill count. Forget Sarevok. This is our main quest now. The Amazons were dealt very easily with, but not after having Coran getting nearly killed, and having Yvralline drink a Potion of Invisibility to skip this fight, so that she could fight another day. By targeting Edwin with Branwen's Hold Person, I managed to land it on both of the Assassins. Jaheira killed the leader of their group in melee, and Coran and Ajantis finished of the other one. When we're not rushed by anything to killing our enemies, we always let Edwin do it with his ever-reliable staff.
Either before or after this, I took care of the remaining Basilisks, Silke (who had the Tome of Dexterity, which we put at good use on Yvralline, who now has 19s on DEX, INT and CHA), Karlat and probably someone else, but I don't really remember about it. When we tried to go to the Cloakwood, I found out that the second and further areas were still locked, so we picked up the letters, a scroll of Fireball and some gold off the Tent in the Bandit Camp and ventured into the spiders' nest.
Pretty much everyone gained at least one level. Yvralline and Branwen are level 6, while the rest of the party is still level 5. Ajantis needs less than a thousand XP to level up, so I expect him to do so very shortly. I don't think our item layout changed that much since the last time, and most of the changes are either obvious (Ajantis is now in a Full Plate) or I talked about them (Coran's newely acquired Shadow Armour). We do have an unnatural amount of Fire Arrows, since every Kobold Commando drop about 22 of them. I'm not sure what mod is doing this but I believe I will try to fix this, as I don't think that this behaviour is intended.
@Arthas: It's doable, at least with a party run. I don't believe we have any trilogy or tetralogy successes with single-classed solo druids, but @JuliusBorisov had a rather successful solo run with a Totemic Druid that only failed against Ascension Melissan, starting here.
Another day and another random pairing hit the road.
Some early lag problems proved fatal for Laraum when he killed Xzar, but then stood helpless as Montaron rushed in to gut him in retaliation. After a diversion to the temple though, normal service was resumed as Shoal was shot down.
Inspiro was concerned at the sight of Laraum's lily-white flesh and led him down to Nashkel to find some green armor to cover him. Just to the north Hulrik refused to accept that there was no more danger from xvarts.
That can easily happen in MP if both players target different xvarts and would often be punishable by death (at least of the cow ). However, Laraum the goody-goody just turned the other cheek as he walked away to find Arghain and pick up a better sword.
The next major encounter was at the Lighthouse where Laraum used a potion of clarity to take on the sirines. Despite Inspiro attempting to rest after the first group, that potion lasted long enough to clear the initial groups of sirines. Inspiro had bought some magical crossbow bolts for the golems, but most of the damage on those was done by Laraum wading in to the attack.
Outside the cave a sirine appeared while resting to recover HPs. Laraum was immune to its charm, but not its feeblemind touch
- we waited a while for that to wear off rather than risking another sirine appearing when trying to rest again.
A quick trip through the Cloud Peak mountains saw a few more encounters ticked off the list, though Inspiro failed to kill Ingot before he walked away with the Chesley Crusher (its limitation to 1 APR doesn't impact on bards, making it arguably the best melee weapon in the game for them). Laraum did though boost his charisma with the tome before we saved the session.
@Arthas I've played multiple no-reload druids, some in this thread, some in the old Bioware forums. I consider them to be very good no-reload characters because their buffs (deathward, chaotic commands, ironskins, SotA) provide them with a lot of defenses, so they're very resilient, and their powerful summons (forest beings, fire elementals, totemic druid spirit animals) allow them to securely take tons of midgame fights. So far, I've succeeded with a vanilla druid and two totemic druids in party-based games; I've also done a solo totemic druid run which made it all the way to (vanilla) Amelyssan. However, while a solo druid can beat Mel with tons of reloads, it's pretty much impossible to defeat her in a no-reload context without a party (one would need to be the luckiest person alive to do so).
Well there goes my no reload. Got farther than ever before though almost maxing out my level and completing most everything before starting the main quest. Then hold person from Peter got me. I thought I had my defenses up but I guess not.
I think I will try a morrowind run for kicks and giggles since I have never played the game for more than an hour. @semiticgod Any advice?
@RVNS: I guess it depends on your install, but I can think of a few thing:
Sell enchanted stuff and weapons and armor to Creeper in Ghorak Manor in Caldera.
Get the Boots of Blinding Speed off of Pemenie west of Caldera. Use a Resist Magicka effect before equipping, ideally 100 so you don't suffer a miss chance with weapons.
Pick a weapon type for a major skill. It's important to have a reliable means of damage, and Destruction won't work well with a few select enemies.
Gain levels fast so you don't get stomped by a surprisingly tough enemy.
Consult the UESP wiki for game info. It's a priceless resource.
Lena the Lockpick was doing well having reached Level 3 Berserker/ level 4 thief due to killing many ankheg. Sadly however she died immediately after killing one of them, presumably from the acid. She was near to reaching level 4 berserker and if she had reached that, she would probably have been safe against ankhegs. Such is life.
Zoreii: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 5
All right! Since this is a maximum difficulty run with OOO (everything is 36 times harder and the enemies are more intelligent, high-level and aggressive), we're going to be using every dirty trick at our disposal. And since OOO rewards higher-level characters, we're going to be grinding very heavily in order to get high levels fast.
First off, it's possible to level Sneak all the way up to 100 in the starting dungeon just by entering sneak mode and walking against the wall. Since there's a dark elf in the cell across from you and his visibility is poor, you gain a bit of Sneak experience for every second you spend moving around. By putting the tail end of a shaver on my keyboard, I can also make my character, Zoreii (I meant for it to be pronounced zor-ee-ai, but I often read it as zor-ay) constantly cast a healing spell to train Restoration as well.
I leave my character alone for a couple of hours before getting tired of not seeing any progress. Our new character gets 63 skill increases for Sneak and 16 increases for Restoration right off the bat.
This is important because item duplication will give us the gold to train important skills and obviate the need for later grinding. You can only pay for training 5 times per level, so it's very valuable to be able to afford all 5 for each level.
Our first problem is rats. I failed to choose a Wood Elf for the starting dungeon, which means we can't use the Wood Elf's racial greater power to charm one and turn it against the others. As long would have it, though, a Flare spell can take down a rat in two strikes. Normally, it deals 6 damage, which amounts to 1 damage at the maximum difficulty, but OOO buffs Flare to deal 15 instead, or 2.5 damage in this run.
The dungeon is surprisingly easy because of OOO's stronger Flare spell. I still use the wait function to restore Zoreii's Dragonskin greater power for 60 seconds of 50% damage reduction to make sure I don't get butchered if I miss a Flare spell on a charging goblin (you can only use greater powers once a day, and unlike in BG, that's restricted by actual in-game time instead of resting).
Notice that Zoreii is wielding a sword. The sword's damage is far too small, and the enemy deals far too much damage, for us to engage in melee, but equipping a weapon lets you cast spells faster if you hold the block button (you can do the same thing with your fists up, but that looks weird to me).
The goblin shaman is a bigger threat. S/he uses a staff with a ranged shock attack that can deal 30 damage at the maximum difficulty, but with careful timing, I can dodge the spells, and even when I get hit, Zoreii's 50% Resist Magicka effect, courtesy of the Breton race, cuts the damage in half.
There's one last major threat in this dungeon. Right after the Emperor gets killed, the assassin goes for you, and because it's a cutscene, you're already in melee range and only have a fraction of a second before the assassin lands a hit with his dagger. The solution?
We buff with Dragonskin, then use the Invisibility greater power from the Shadow birthsign right after combat begins. The assassin lands only a single hit at 50% power before we're safely hidden.
The Shadow birthsign is largely useless for a mage character who will be grinding Illusion very heavily, but we can always change it, along with our race and class, at the end of the dungeon.
Our class is a little different from before, and since we're not using fatigue boosting in this run, we're using the Mage birthsign for a slight Magicka boost instead of the Atronach birthsign (Willpower is really strong for high-level mages; it can translate into hundreds of extra magicka per fight, and we need the convenient magicka regeneration to grind skills properly).
Notice that we've added Speed as a class attribute, as the tiny boost to movement rate could help us dodge a potentially fatal attack. All of our skills are magic skills, which are easy to grind in complete safety before we go out wrestling with high-level daedra. The one exception is Sneak, which we've already leveled many times, replacing Destruction, which is practically useless on the high difficulty setting (dealing 1/6 your normal damage makes all damage-dealing skills largely useless).
We picked up basically no loot during the starting dungeon, since we'll just use scroll duplication to finance our character building instead. We start out by buying a cheap pair of scrolls to duplicate, then move on to a more expensive scroll that yields more gold when sold.
But there's a better way to generate gold. Once we have over 12,000 gold, we buy the Veil of the Seer and duplicate that for an even more expensive item to pawn off.
This isn't even strictly necessary; Alchemy alone could buy us all the spells we need to grind our class skills. But being able to shell out thousands of gold for training, which is much faster than grinding, will save us a lot of time.
That being said, I'm not averse to using our infinite gold supply to buy overpowered items that I'd never be able to afford in a normal run.
Though I doubt I'll be using Apotheosis for anything. It only deals 16.5 damage on maximum difficulty, or 198 if I burn every last charge in the thing. That's good, but it's not a game-changer for anything past the early game.
The first skill to grind is Alchemy. It's by far the fastest to increase because making a potion takes a single click of the mouse. All I have to do is generate a massive pile of apples and cheese and click a button a thousand times.
By the time it's over, I have 800 pounds of Restore Fatigue potions pinning me down. Since selling off duplicated Veils of the Seer is faster, I just dump thousands of gold in potions on the ground so I can move again.
Traveling through the wilderness would likely be fatal for Zoreii in this run, so we just hike out to Frostcrag Spire and use the teleport pads to earn access to each of the cities. We've already leveled up several times, so we need to make sure we get some training in before we rest.
We always invest a point in Endurance at each level up. The best way to maximize Health is to increase Endurance every level, even if we only get a single point in it, and while it's a tiny bonus in the scheme of things, a single point of Health could theoretically save the run.
Free money also gets us lots of new spells. For the longest time, I had no idea how to find Ita Rienus, an important source of Illusion spells, until I realized she spent most of the day hiding in the Bravil Mages Guild basement.
We then train Conjuration and Mysticism. We gain levels extremely fast thanks to grinding Sneak at the start of the game, and since we can train 5 times per level, and it takes 10 class skill increase to gain a level, every level gives us another half-level in training opportunities.
It gets increasingly expensive, though, and we have to keep duplicating Veils of the Seer. After a lot of running around, we finally hit 100 Intelligence at level 19. We haven't done a single quest yet, but our Magicka has maxed out at 280.
Next, we train Alteration and Restoration to increase our Willpower and therefore our Magicka regeneration rate.
Funny thing is, we've gained so many levels that we can now afford pre-filled Grand Soul gems at stores (shop inventories are leveled). I could use these to enchant a set of gear with 100% Chameleon, which would be constant effect, unbreakable invisibility. Only traps, falling damage, and stray arrows and spells could threaten me.
But I've already done that a few times before. I remember the first time I did it back when I played it on an Xbox 360, and it felt weird to go into third-person view and see that nothing was there. It's really effective, but it no longer feels interesting to me, so I don't think I'll using any 100% Chameleon enchantments, or maybe even spells.
Our high levels also let us buy some stupidly overpowered potions at prices that would be ludicrous in a normal run.
I can duplicate these potions and essentially gain immunity to damage just by drinking a healing potion every single second. But that seems a little too reductive for my tastes, so I'm not sure I'll ever actually use a store-bought potion. Instead, I'll use my own--which I can also duplicate.
At 100 Alchemy and with good equipment, we can make sure pretty powerful potions of our own. The only disadvantage is that we can't drink more than 4 at a time, which means potions with long durations could actually be very dangerous. Our poisons are also very dangerous, but require a successful hit, and I'll be trying to maintain a very respectful distance from enemies.
We have a poison that can neutralize any mage for over 20 seconds, a poison that can deal over 400 damage over 20 seconds (or over 70 damage on this difficulty), and potions that can give us massive resistances or extremely fast healing.
We just have to be careful not to drink too many, because if we drink 4, we can't use another until one of the previous ones wears off.
Finally, we prepare some important spells we'll need to actually handle combat. A Calm spell will let us halt any enemy in its tracks, a Command spell will let us take control of an individual enemy, and a Shield spell, properly designed, can give us high damage reduction for low cost. The Shield spell has a total magnitude of 35, which means that if we combine it with Dragonskin, we'll have the maximum 85% damage reduction without having to use any potions.
Note that the Calm and Command spells say they only work up to level 25. That's not actually true; it'll work on anything above level 25 as well, provided that our spell effectiveness is at 100%. And as long as we're not wearing any armor, we'll never have below 100% spell effectiveness.
We max out our Willpower and hit level 30. The downside is that all sorts of enemies are going to be extremely high-level and everything will be very dangerous. But with sky-high skills and a strong magicka pool, we can maintain Invisibility indefinitely without losing magicka. All we have to do is make sure that whenever we break Invisibility to take offensive action or drink a potion, we immediately find safety before the enemy can land a hit on us.
It's no guarantee of success, since death can be very sudden at maximum difficulty, especially in OOO and at high levels. But we now have some decent options to handle the threats in front of us. Zoreii will be a highly evasive, magic-oriented character who will win fights through Illusion spells and conjuring allies.
Zoreii: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 6
Zoreii is now sufficiently equipped to handle combat. It's time to begin the main quest.
We have no trouble with bandits on the way to Kvatch, but daedra scale dramatically with levels. Now that we're over level 30, the Kvatch Oblivion gate is swarming with Xivilai--gigantic purplish humanoids with sky-high stats and 50% spell absorption, making them very difficult to harm with spells. It takes multiple Summon Clannfear spells to bring a single Xivilai down.
I tried a Summon Daedroth spell as well, but the daedroths go down too quickly. The clannfear's superior Reflect Damage effect is more important against the Xivilai's high damage output.
Thanks to a pair of Resist Magicka enchantments fueled by duplicated Grand Soul Gems combined with Zoreii's innate Breton resistance, we now have 90% resistance to all spells, but we still aren't strong enough to handle much melee pressure. We can negate the difficulty multiplier on enemy weapons by cranking our Shield up to 85, but that still leaves us vulnerable. It's basically like facing high-level enemies at normal difficulty with no shield, which is still very dangerous.
Since it takes forever for our clannfear to slay a Xivilai, I decide to just hide behind Invisibility for most of the rest of the gate.
I summon a few clannfears to distract hunting xivilai and kill the Sigil Keeper for his key, but otherwise I sneak all the way to the Sigil Stone.
In the courtyard, we actually need to fight the many daedra, but we have an immortal Savlian Matius and a few guards to help us deal damage. I stay out of the fight, only pitching in with summons.
There are a few more fights, and while the Imperial Legion suffers badly, there are a lot of them. Inside the castle, I get hit by a stray spell from a Hunger (a Shivering Isles critter that OOO adds to normal daedra spawns), which deals an alarming amount of damage in spite of Zoreii's 90% Resist Magicka.
If I hadn't created those Resist Magicka enchantments, Zoreii would have nearly died. Without her Breton resistances, she'd definitely be dead.
Bretons are spectacular in Oblivion. Enemy damage in Oblivion is fairly balanced between spells and weapons (weapons are more common in normal fights, but the dangerous encounters are closer to 50/50), which means constant-effect 50% Resist Magicka is a huge bonus when dealing with enemy mages. Having Dragonskin for 50% Shield once a day gives them another massive boost to survivability.
Once Kvatch is saved, largely no thanks to us, Oleta is available for training. This means we can finally get our Restoration up to 75, allowing us to use much higher-end buffing spells. It takes tens of thousands of gold to get us there, but it's worth it.
Restoration is the slowest magic skill to level. Casting a Restoration spell only grants a tiny experience boost because the game is designed assuming that players are spamming Restoration constantly (Conjuration is usually only cast once per fight, so it increases much faster with each casting), which means getting it to high levels takes many hours of gameplay without paying for expensive training.
While considering what new Restoration spells to create, I realize one of them has massive potential.
Fortify Magicka is normally just used to allow the player to cast high-cost Master spells that they otherwise wouldn't have the magicka to cast. But since magicka regeneration is based on total magicka, you can increase regeneration by fortifying magicka.
If I cast 6 Fortify Magicka 100 spells, Zoreii will be mostly out of magicka. But she'll regenerate three times as fast as normal, which means that she'll quickly recover and she'll be able to spam much stronger spells during a major fight. But ideally, we'd want 120-second spells, and we can't cast those at our current level.
We take Martin to Weynon Priory, let our summons fight the Mythic Dawn, and drop him off at Cloud Ruler Temple. At the Arcane University, I set Zoreii to constantly cast low-cost custom Conjuration and Illusion spells to crank her skills up to 100 while I'm away from the computer. Then, finally, I train Restoration up to 100, since Oleta requires no other special quests to offer training above 70.
We're now at essentially maximum power. We can dramatically boost our magicka regeneration and Health and cast high-end spells from each major school. We're not invincible by any means, though, and enemies do get huge bonuses from our high levels.
Case in point: the goblins during the next quest with Baurus. I use the console to check out their Health, and it's absurd.
Baurus and our summoned Dremora Lord very gradually whittle down each leveled enemy.
The Mythic Dawn is next. I spend most of my time re-casting buffs, hiding behind Invisibility, and using Command spells on individual agents to turn them to our side.
We use the same strategy at Lake Arrius Caverns, the headquarters of the Mythic Dawn: buff up Zoreii's defenses, summon a Dremora Lord, and then alternate between using Invisibility and using Command to turn the enemies against each other.
I do Sheogorath's quest real quick to sacrifice a daedric artifact to Martin, then proceed to the Bruma gate questline. The whole area is crawling with Xivilai, and they absorb half of our Command spells. Still, we manage to take control of some of them, which speeds up an otherwise slow process.
The purple coloration on the one on the right indicates a spell being absorbed. The green tint on the next one from the right indicates an illusion spell (that's our Command spell), and the white hue over the next one indicates a healing or defensive spell.
After dying in the tower in this area, I'm very careful to trigger traps before walking over them. Armor provides no defense against trap damage, so it's very easy to die to one at maximum difficulty.
Finally Zoreii arrives along at the top of the tower (Captain Burd got lost and I left him behind), where I study the same orange-armored guy who killed me in a previous run.
No one in Oblivion can see through Invisibility and Zoreii is very fast, so I decide to try and bring him down, figuring that we'll be safe as long as I'm careful. I summon a Dremora Lord to see how the Lord of Sigilum Sanguis handles it.
My Dremora Lord gets butchered in seconds. Realizing that we don't have a summons that can bring him down in any reasonable amount of time, I decide to use Command spells on the other enemies in the area. But to my dismay, the boss can slaughter even a charmed Xivilai with ease.
That warhammer just hits so hard. I'm not sure Zoreii could survive even a single hit, fully buffed or not.
I keep charming enemies and gradually wear away at the boss' Health.
He brings down them all. Before resorting to summons, I cast a lot of buffs in case I fail to cast Invisibility at the right time. Eventually, the boss goes down, but apparently I can't complete the quest without Captain Burd in the room.
I have to lead him all the way back up the tower, using our Dremora Lord to clean up the enemies. Captain Burd has neither the spells nor the AI to sneak past anyone; the player is the only character that ever uses Sneak for combat purposes.
We finally get Burd to the top, at which point we can finally grab the Sigil Stone and complete the quest.
We're not yet done with Oblivion gates, though. We still have to close some gates elsewhere in Cyrodiil to make sure the relevant lords contribute troops to an upcoming major battle outside Bruma. Some of the Oblivion gates are tedious to close, requiring the player to traipse all over the map, opening portals so you can enter the right tower. All the way, I have to pay close attention to traps, lest I run into another game-ending gigantic sword.
As strong as Zoreii is, a one-shot kill is still possible when all incoming damage is multiplied by 6. We need to be very careful about the circumstances in which she still might die.
After killing Meilum to get Laraum a bracers upgrade,
we were ready to hunt some basilisks. Inspiro had failed to learn the PfP scrolls available at High Hedge, so we decided to invest in the green scroll at the Carnival. With the basilisks all dead Laraum used true sight before advancing on Mutamin. He still survived long enough to cast horror, but Laraum saved. Inspiro succeeded in learning Mutamin's stinking cloud spell and a couple of those and a bit of help from Korax soon sorted out Kirian's mob.
Moving on to Durlag's Tower, we worked through a couple of battle horrors on the road. They were challenging, but manageable. Inspiro was singing between melee attacks there and got the odd hit in himself, though probably would have been better off just singing constantly (to give Laraum the benefit of a constant -2 bonus to AC as well as the +2 to hit and damage).
However, the 3rd one was attacked in the presence of a number of skeletons and seemed pretty dangerous - Inspiro responded to that by making a first use of wand power.
With no more defenses against basilisks on hand, we just grabbed the tome before leaving for the FAI.
Reputation was only boosted to 17 by helping Joia, so we travelled to the minesite with a view to helping Charleston Nib and Brage. That would mean that recovering a body for Farmer Brun would maximize reputation on the way to Ulgoth's Beard. Before getting too far ahead of ourselves though we had an encounter with the Doomsayer to deal with. That was hitting pretty easily and Inspiro had to unlimber wands once more to finish that off.
We've just finished resting and healing from that encounter ready for next time.
going down the mine, the party had to face bandits in great numbers. Missiles and sword was the usual remedy - and a wand once in a while
Again Khalid was confused - and again he started beating up Jaheira... whats up with that?
Daveorn was next. Safana cleared the traps and scouted hidden in the shadows. That apparantly triggered Daveorns script and he started walking - which I didnt know. He ended up stumbling into the party whilst planning/buffing....
We had plenty of magical ammunition, so he didnt last.. luckily
In BG we did almost every quest. Grinding money and XP. I am saving the gems for SoD but otherwise planning to both be selling and buying at 19 cha / 20 rep.
In CK we killed everything besides the spiders - I had been subjected to poison a bit too much in this run, so I passed.
After CK I wanted to do Durlags Tower. Actually it was for the Soultaker dagger, that I wanted for my self... and the rest of the fantastic loot.
First basement floor was done. Khalid almost died to the warders, but we prevailed. Second and third floor Khalid almost died - but prevailed courtesy of durlags goblet...
The chess game was won thanks to 4 fireballs and 4 webs. You cant have to much overkill in a no reload game...
At the bottom I got Arlas dragonbane sling, but I am reluctant about going after the dagger. I dont need the XP nor the money. And the rest of the loot is a bit meh.. I will have to think about it
Is there any mod that actually fixes the chess fight?? It turns into a brawl with no sense, especially because the lightning damages only you and not your opponents.
@Arthas not sure about mods (I don't use them), but of the many accounts I have read of the chess fight, it seems opening with mass fireballs seems to work well to whittle the enemies down quickly.
Comments
Skyrim (preferably heavily modded)
Bioshock
Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 (no grinding or low-grinding, to keep things interesting)
Paper Mario
Undertale
Dragon Warrior Monsters 1 is probably the game that readers are least likely to have played, but it's actually the most interesting from a no-reload perspective because luck plays a very large role, improvising is important, and avoiding death requires game knowledge and advance planning. For those who aren't familiar with the game, it's a bit like Pokemon, but more complex and focused on designing monsters than grinding levels.
Frost: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 3
Back to the Imperial Prison! This time, I don't plan on using the duplication glitch to speed things up. Instead, we're going to seek out resources by robbing the Mages Guild. Once you join, various items--especially valuable alchemical equipment--in each guild hall are free for you to take. Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul sets many of the items to be someone else's property, so you can't just take everything, but OOO also adds lots of expensive clothes to armoires and drawers, which we can also take. When things get too heavy, we drop a stack of items and use Z to hold them in midair, which doesn't affect our encumbrance.This gets us a lot of money with little risk and little time and effort. We set up our previous character build, a low-equipped, low-level, magic-oriented build with the Staff of the Everscamp and negative Willpower to set base fatigue to 1. With a custom 100-point Fortify Fatigue effect, we can deal 101 times as much damage with every arrow.
Our defenses are still pretty terrible, though. One of OOO's very nasty imps--which has a constant effect Chameleon ability to make its already-small form even harder to hit!--launches a devastating area-effect cold spell that wipes out our scamps and takes away almost half of Frost's Health.
See that little bit of light next to the target symbol in the middle of the screen? That's the imp's spell. The imp itself is the invisible light distortion behind that bit of light.
It's almost impossible to hit a small, moving, 90% invisible target, but when I finally nail him, the imp goes down in a single shot.
Other enemies are easier to deal with. Bandits are easy to hit and also die to a single shot. But when I run into a high-end zombie in an Ayleid ruin, it takes multiple shots to bring it down. It almost kills me in a single hit, but the sheer damage of the bow deals enough knockback to keep it at a safe distance until Frost fires the final arrow.
I think it's called a Zombie Guardian or something. I don't know why it has that faint green glow.
I have no interest in fighting high-end optional critters with no clear loot reward, and I have much less interest in fighting zombies, so I immediately leave and gather ingredients to make some better defensive and healing potions.
It's time to deal with the main quest. Here's the plot of Oblivion in a nutshell:
Mehrunes Dagon is the god (Daedric Prince) of destruction. He wants to destroy the planet for giggles, but he has a problem: there's a barrier between his dimension and ours, so he can't reach us.
However, that barrier isn't permanent. In order to maintain it, each new Emperor, upon taking the throne, has to use the Amulet of Kings to light a set of fires in the Imperial City called the Dragonfires. So what does Dagon do?
First, he assassinates the Emperor and his sons. There is no heir to the throne, so the Dragonfires can't be re-lit and the barrier can't be maintained. What do we do about this?
Well, Frost was around when the Emperor was slain, and the Emperor, seeing a bit of the future and realizing he was doomed, gave us the Amulet of Kings and told us to take it to Jauffre, a former secret agent and personal guard to the Emperor. Why Jauffre?
Jauffre knows that the Emperor has an illegitimate son named Martin. With all the other heirs to the throne now dead, Martin is the only one who can light the Dragonfires and maintain the barrier. All we have to do is grab Martin, currently in the city of Kvatch, and have him travel to the Imperial City and restore that barrier.
Little problem. Something doesn't look quite right about Kvatch. We've got a camp of refugees outside the city. And as we climb the hill to the city itself, the weather...
...seems a little bit...
...off.
Apparently Dagon has already pierced the barrier and opened a gate to Oblivion, flooding the city with daedra in a desperate attempt to kill Martin, the only one who can light the Dragonfires and stop him.
With a massive Oblivion gate blocking the way inside the city, we have to go into Dagon's own plane and shut it down. Oblivion is a horrific place, a blasted wasteland of fire and brimstone in a massive sea of lava. Daedra roam the land, the plantlife itself is hostile, there are land mines everywhere, which we have to detonate from a safe distance...
...and there are dead bodies everywhere, stapled to walls, hanging from ceilings, or apparently crushed to a fine paste by one of the place's elaborate machines, colorfully called a Corpse Masher.
This Oblivion gate is sustained by a Sigil Stone at the top of the tower in the middle of the island. We need to seize that little fiery rock to force the gate to collapse. But the tower is guarded by dremora guards and daedric critters.
But we have fatigue boosting on our side. Every time a dremora comes to give us trouble, I cast our Fortify Fatigue spell and shoot him with an arrow so powerful it blasts him clear off the ground.
That's one of the most fun things about fatigue boosting. It doesn't just multiply your damage by crazy values; the killing blow knocks the victim off their feet! It's very satisfying.
With fatigue boosting, none of the enemies here last long enough to threaten us. As long as we make sure not to get speared by a trap...
...we can nab some really excellent loot, take the Sigil Stone, and scram.
The Oblivion gate collapses, we fight our way through some more daedra, and reach the chapel where Martin has been hiding with his fellow siege victims. First, though, I help the guards and some Imperial Legion scouts who noticed the fires break into Castle Kvatch, which nets me a lot of useful loot to sell off later. OOO adds valuable furnishings to upper-class homes, and Castle Kvatch can be looted without worrying about being arrested for stealing (after all, the owners are dead and everything is on fire anyway).
Anyway, now that Martin is freed, we can escort him back to Weynon Priory, where Jauffre has been keeping the Amulet of Kings safe. Unfortunately, Dagon's cult, the Mythic Dawn, has figured out what we're up to and has attacked Weynon Priory to steal the amulet. We're too late to save the amulet, but we can kill some Mythic Dawn agents who lingered too long.
Or rather, we let our followers fight the agents and charm our scamps to join the fight. Notice the weird graphical glitches on our followers, Martin and the Jemane twins.
There's actually a way to fix the glitch, but I didn't know it at the time. So, when Jauffre takes us to Cloud Ruler Temple, an ancient stronghold, in order to keep Martin safe while we figure out a plan, Martin and the twins get their heads caked with snow. They almost look headless.
We need to get the amulet back. After several quests for which I don't appear to have any screenshots, our next move is to secure a Daedric artifact.
Technically, the Staff of the Everscamp is a Daedric artifact, since it's a prank item from Sheogorath. But we can't use it as our next plot coupon; we need to pray at a Daedric shrine, perform a task for one of the gods (except for Dagon, who has little reason to offer a quest to the woman who's been thwarting his plans), and receive an artifact that Martin can use to open a portal for reasons I won't go into.
Martin suggests we do Azura's quest, which happens to be nearby and also is morally neutral, but Sheogorath's quest gives us a less useful item, so we'll use Sheogorath's instead. Still, we could really use the Azura's Star soul gem, so I head out to her shrine.
Azura wants us to break into a mine and butcher a bunch of vampires. The vampires are her own worshippers who sealed themselves away centuries ago to protect the non-vampires on the outside, and Azura wants their suffering to end.
Frost enters the dungeon, I hear a squeak, and suddenly Frost dies in one hit.
Not to a vampire, but to a trap. A pressure plate that, when pressed, released a big metal spiky ball to swing down and kill Frost.
It's another frustrating loss that could have easily been avoided. Frost is so good at shooting down critters that I've badly neglected her defenses, namely her Shield and Health values, and I've overlooked the danger of traps.
More annoying still, the trap makes no conceptual sense. Why would the vampires set up a trap to kill intruders when they sealed themselves away in the mine specifically to avoid hurting anyone, and haven't seen another living creature in hundreds of years? Cabin fever?
Regardless, we've once again lost an otherwise extremely successful run, and it's getting frustrating to start over because making this character build work requires a fair amount of repetitive grunt work in the early game just to acquire resources.
But I'm not done yet. The fundamentals of this run are strong; we just need to work out a few details.
Xati, male gnome cleric / thief (Gate70); Slider, female human conjurer (Grond0)
Our fourth documented ouring with this pair lasts 75 minutes. Xati wants to rid himself of poison so we head for Marek and have to deal with Larze on the way. After that it is time to return to Candlekeep and avail ourselves of the items stored within the catacombs. Slider deigns to glug a potion to prevent death by Phase Spider poison - Xati being quick with Slow Poison but not quick enough.
Our plan is reasonably sound, Semaj teleporting into skeletons and Doom plays it's part - not sure if Slider added a Malison too.
On to Amn
winnable.
But it does mean you can basically never upgrade items, which was frustrating, and have to miss out on certain sidequests, which was also frustrating...
Incidentally, if you upgrade your scouting ability you can see the exact numbers of the opposition and avoid nasty surprises.
Ok 93 - more of the right stuff
PreviouslyOk 93 and the canon party was off to a flying start helping Nib and returning Brage. I kept his sword for something fancy...
I had plans for the sword, and Minsc and Big B. Unfortunately the sword looks like all the other swords.. and after a brief scare we killed Minsc - and Bassilus.
The extra man power means more XP and gear is needed. It forces me to do the quests I usually skip - I found that I rather liked it.
Next up the sirenes and the treasure cave. Sadly Imoen had to go.
Felt bad about Imoen. If you ever get sent to some remote sanatarium with a crazy elf mage, I will come get you Imoen - promise!!
After the sirenes we killed the Amazones and the undead (forgetting the WoMS
At the bandit camp we got the feel of how well the game scales the random encounters. Two times we faced 6 black talon elite. Luckily Minsc got some bears to soak up the damage. The camp was manageble - and was sacked after killing the lot.
Sold 47 scalps after the looting and killing
Cloakwood was easy. I was a bit spooked when Amarande got an insect plauge off after dying. But we shook it off.
At the mine Drasus was killed. Khalid got confused and started beating his wife. She will get over him real soon - if he gets chunked...
Ok 93 got to level 7 after doing most before BG City and durlags. Next is the mine.
BTW: These sessions have rekindled my love for the spell slow poison. We have been poisoned 8 times. Only 1 time in cloakwood and 1 times in the spider lair by the red wizards. A wonderfull spell that is nice to have by.. when you least expect it
Basically, it lets you only cast 20 spells a day. You have to rest in a bed you own or an inn (so, not just any bed, but a very specific kind of bed) to restore them. The upside is that all of your spells cost no magicka and they're at double magnitude.
Better still, a sustained spell (a spell that lasts as long as you focus on it), only counts as a single spell for the purposes of that 20-spell limit, as long as you don't cancel it and try to re-start it. A character with the Vancian Magic perk can cast Flames and Healing non-stop for 16 damage on enemies per second and 20 Health restored on self per second, and once you get Destruction to 65, you can get Wall of Flames (or any elemental wall spell) and deal 100 damage per second. It also dramatically bumps up other spells--a basic Calm spell can affect up to level 18 critters in my install with Vancian Magic.
Getting Vancian Magic is pretty easy. All you have to do is isolate a bandit archer and spam Oakflesh while dodging their arrows. You can hit Alteration 30 within a few minutes in complete safety (equipping the robes from the starting dungeon makes it considerably faster, as does picking the first Alteration perk early). And, once you get it, you can train Restoration and either armor skill by finding one or two melee enemies (the draugrs in Bleak Falls Barrow work fine) and letting them attack you while you use both hands to cast Healing to restore 40 Health per second. Set the right and left hand buttons from the mouse buttons to a couple of keys, put something heavy on the keyboard, and you can let your character get up to 100 Restoration, Light Armor, and Heavy Armor in short order (I got both to 50 in maybe 20 minutes). You could hit level 19-27 very safely. If standing in fires dealt fire damage in my install, it would also be possible to level Destruction.
But after dying after running out of spells in Saarthal (which I'm almost positive was a bug, because I entered with 20 spells and only fought 7 draugrs in 3 fights in as many minutes before somehow running out) and then dying in a single hit at full health outside Bleak Falls Barrow (presumably because one of the bandits got a critical hit power attack from behind, maybe with another bandit attacking at the exact same time, and somehow dealt 110 damage at normal difficulty)... I'm not sure I'm going to bother trying again.
Without crafting skills (which honestly reward tedious grinding even more than Oblivion or Morrowind), the only growth for the character build I had would be the upgrade from Flames/Sparks to Wall of Flames/Wall of Sparks. It would be great to deal 100 damage per second indefinitely, but that's basically the only thing that would happen for the rest of the game, even if I did somehow avoid any and all instant death attacks that Smilodon apparently introduces to the game (I don't even have Realistic Damage enabled, I don't think; this is just the base mod).
There are only a few dozen spells in Skyrim, and basically all of them are just variants of another spell. There's not really anything to do in Skyrim but craft items.
Xati, male gnome cleric / thief (Gate70); Slider, female human conjurer (Grond0)
We're in Amn according to Yoshimo - better let him get on with it on his own then.
The first area of a deadly chateau is behind us and nothing can stop us. Apart from four mephit portals that do Slider in. Never mind says Xati, it's just a brief hop to safety and then we'll get you raised.
Only another minute to shut down the portals.
Several minutes shifting equipment around (while Grond0 has gone).
Off to see the Escaped Clone. Xati has Protection from Lightning memorised but chooses not to use it. Doom is a poor spell choice, allowing the clone to kill an assassin and mirror image. Xati tries to use a bit of distance and takes a lightning bolt up the chuff as he escapes.
That was close. Although the lightning bolt has bounced. Oops
Icewind Dale: Jaris the Invoker and Aseigh the Abjurer/Cleric
To recap the rules, Jaris starts the game knowing every evocation spell in the game but cannot learn ANY non-evocation spells (not even things like Mirror Image, Stoneskin or Protection from Magic Weapons). Similarly, Aseigh starts the game knowing every abjuration spell in the game but cannot learn or cast any non-abjuration spells, and this rule applies to his cleric spells as well. This means, among other things, that he can't cast healing spells. However, there's a reason I put an abjurer-cleric in the party. There's something an abjurer/cleric can do that no other class can do. We'll learn what that is later on.
I'm playing on Insane. I have the double experience on because I like leveling up quickly, but for the time being Insane mode is going to make the game more dangerous.
To start off, the duo bought their equipment from Pomab and did the minor Easthaven quests. They couldn't open Apsel's door, so they couldn't complete that quest. By the time they reached the goblin fight, Jaris had almost reached level 3, so they had to beat the goblins without AoE spells.
As you might have guessed, Aseigh can't cast too many useful spells right now. However, he still served as a better tank than Jaris. The fact that he could wear a helmet meant that he didn't have to worry about being one-shotted by a quadruple-damage critical hit. He wore splint mail which disabled his mage spells, but that didn't matter too much because the only mage spell he could cast was Protection from Evil (which he could also cast as a cleric spell).
Jaris cast Sleep using the scroll from Pomab's shelf (they are allowed to use scrolls of other schools in this playthrough) to put the goblins to sleep. The goblins woke up on hit, but the duo didn't have to face so many at once. Aseigh kited the goblins to death over the course of 10 minutes or more. After the fight, I realized that I could've sped that up by buying throwing daggers for Jaris. I did so.
Jaris had been so close to leveling up that he leveled up after killing a couple of the goblins! He then gained the ability to cast 2nd level spells, like Stinking Cloud and Snilloc's Snowball Swarm. However, he didn't end up needing area damage too much - Stinking Cloud was good enough.
Long story short, the "investigate the missing caravan" quest consisted of Jaris casting Stinking Cloud on groups of enemies and the two of them flinging bullets and daggers at the unconscious enemies.
After reporting to Hrothgar, delivering the caravan contract to Gaspar, giving the supply list to Pomab, and resting, the duo embarked on the expedition!
Once the duo found themselves in the Kuldahar Pass, they were in great danger because there was no safe place to rest and nowhere to retreat to. So they had to make a run for it. Jaris put on Shield and Aseigh put Protection from Evil on both of them, and they ran. At one point Jaris almost got cornered by goblins, but they got away.
Once they spoke to Arundel and rested, the duo fought the two yetis. As with previous fights, Jaris cast Stinking Cloud on the yetis (in this case, twice because the yetis have better saving throws than previous enemies), and the two of them killed the yetis with missile weapons.
Jaris and Aseigh then ventured forth to the Vale of Shadows, intending to kill all the yetis and retrieve Silas' heirloom before going into the tombs. It was a toil to say the least. The duo had to rest after killing each yeti in order to regain the Stinking Clouds.
Finally, they enountered the yeti chieftain, and they killed it the same way they killed the other yetis. On returning to Kuldahar, they gave Silas' heirloom to Mirek and Jaris reached level 5! This is particularly great because now he can cast Fireball!
Up next, the duo delves into the tombs (bringing along Web instead of Stinking Cloud).
I did everything in the waterfall area with the drowned cat that you give back to the girl and that was pretty much my night was that one area, selling loot, restocking on sling bullets and purchasing a protection from petrification scroll(green) to tackle the basilisk area. My last new reload ended with a basilisk so I figure I will lead with more caution this time around. I estimate this should be enough exp to give me another round of levels boosting us up to fighter 6/thief 6.
Frost: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 4
I restarted the run, did all my chores, made some progress in the main questline, and then died in the Bruma gate quest to a Dremora boss who apparently had a paralysis effect on hit. I almost made it out alive, but since all you can do while paralyzed is drink potions, I had to rely entirely on potions to survive. Problem is, OOO nerfs potion use: you can only use 3 potions at a time instead of 4 at my Alchemy level, it's no longer possible to use a short-duration effect in a potion to cancel it early and let you use a new potion earlier than normal, and the vanilla, non-player-created potions are no longer instantaneous; they have a delayed effect.I had the option of using an Invisibility potion or a healing potion. Since the Dremora boss was already making his next attack when I entered the inventory, I wasn't sure Invisibility would keep us safe. Instead, I used a healing potion--but it just wasn't enough to save us.
If I had just used Dragonskin, there's no way we would have died. But I didn't want to use it because it's a once-per-day ability. Problem is, once we got through that one fight, we could have just waited for 24 hours to get the power back.
I need to pay much better attention to my defenses. Frost might be able to one-shot most critters, but dealing 300 damage with a bow doesn't matter if a single paralysis spell or trap can bring her down. I need to make sure her Health and Shield are very high whenever there's trouble.
I make my way back through the main quest and arrive at the vampire lair in the Azura's Star quest. This time, I make sure to trigger the trap at the entrance by firing an arrow at the tripwire.
The vampires home in on me the moment I make my presence known. An orc survives the first arrow...
...but the knockback from the massive damage pushes him far enough away for Frost to fire a second arrow and finish him off.
The other vampires use their Invisibility spells to screw with my aim, but a telltale shimmer gives them away, and I already know they're running right for me. A single arrow is enough to take down most of the others.
While wandering around, I spot a pressure plate in the area. If I hadn't been searching the ground, I might well have died again.
Now that I have Azura's Star, I have a re-usable soul gem that can hold souls from any critter I can summon with a Conjuration spell. I grind Mysticism until I can cast Soul Trap, then go about enchanting some new gear. But to my dismay, OOO makes Fortify Health enchantments--the absolute most important one for Frost--so incredibly expensive that there's essentially no reason to ever make one.
You'd need to be a compulsive dungeon delver to make the kind of money to afford that kind of enchantment, and we're avoiding optional dungeons in order to minimize danger.
Other defensive enchantments are also hideously overpriced. Azura's Star is practically useless to us. But I'm not going to give it to Martin, because there's an even less useful daedric artifact we can use instead: the Wabbajack.
The Wabbajack can actually be really overpowered and essentially kill non-human targets in one hit. But recharging it is extremely expensive (realistically, I could only do it using Azura's Star) and I can already land one-shot kills on virtually any non-human target. The human targets like Dremora are much bigger threats.
So, we go to Sheogorath's shrine to do his quest. It's fairly easy: we steal some cheese, cook the cheese to attract a plague of rats, use a village leader's rat poison to poison the sheep's food supply, and then watch Sheogorath shower a rural village with flaming dog corpses.
Sheogorath is a nut, and his quest fits him perfectly. I never liked him, though--his quirkiness always came off as rather forced to me.
I'm not quite sure I want to give up Wabbajack, though, since it does have its uses, so before I make my decision, I go over to find Umbra, whose sword is needed to fulfill Clavicus Vile's quest. Clavicus Vile has an even less useful daedric artifact as a reward, a helmet which fortifies Personality. To get it, we need to kill an extremely powerful melee wood elf fighter in a tight space.
Umbra has high-end armor, strong skills, tons of Health, and massive regeneration as well as an extremely hard-hitting sword. Fortunately for us, we can get the drop on her. I fortify the crap out of Frost's fatigue, land a brutal hit when sneaking, and finish off Umbra with a second arrow at point-blank range while she's coming up the stairs.
With our normal buffs, Frost does over 300 damage per shot. But if we cast multiple Fortify Fatigue buffs, her arrows can completely destroy the enemy's armor. We shattered Umbra's helmet, boots, and cuirass in just two shots.
We repair the armor and put it on Frost. She can really use the extra damage reduction, and it's worth the decreased efficacy of our spells. Plus, she looks really cool in it.
I decide to keep Umbra, since it's a zero-weight quest item that never runs out of arrows and can deal much more damage than our bow. The only reason we stick with the bow is that attacking with Umbra would damage our fatigue and weaken our damage multiplier, and an enemy's Reflect Damage effect could actually prove fatal if we tried to use a melee weapon on them.
I give the Wabbajack to Martin so I can keep Azura's Star and Umbra. It's time to go back to the Bruma gate quest. I foolishly fail to cast Dragonskin and the Dremora boss catches me by surprise. But while he does land a hit on me, Frost's arrows are strong enough to knock him back and then pin him down.
Next, we need to collect some allies for Bruma. But each of the other cities is threatened by an Oblivion gate, and if we want them to send soldiers to defend Bruma, we need to seal those gates for them.
But midway through the first gate, I accidentally trigger a giant sword trap. It comes crashing down and kills Frost in one hit.
It's another deeply upsetting and disappointing end to an otherwise very successful run.
I have done the various chores of the early game many times already, and it's frustrating to have to start all over. But if I resort to the item duplication glitch to speed things up, I think the run is going to feel cheap.
So I come up with a new challenge. For the next run, I will have free use of the item duplication trick--not just for grinding Alchemy, but for anything. Infinite gold and infinite copies of almost any item in the game.
But, to keep things challenging, we're going to try something interesting. First, we're not going to use fatigue boosting anymore--we can no longer multiply our damage output by bringing our base fatigue down to 1 and using Fortify Fatigue spells.
Second, we're going to play on the maximum difficulty setting.
If that doesn't sound like much, you haven't played Oblivion on the maximum difficulty setting. I've tried it once before, and it's even uglier than Legacy of Bhaal mode. In Oblivion, pushing the difficulty slider all the way to the right does two things:
1. The player does one-sixth (1/6) of their normal spell, weapon, and poison damage.
2. The player takes six times as much damage from everything.
In most games, the highest difficult makes things maybe 2 or 3 or 4 times as difficult. In Skyrim's notorious Legendary difficulty, it makes things 12 times as hard. But in Oblivion, the maximum difficulty makes things 36 times harder than at the normal difficulty.
Basically, the player can't kill anything, while anything can kill the player. Getting killed by a rat, a stray arrow, or a fall from a modest height is common at the maximum difficulty.
We're going to play a normal mage character; no Atronach birthsign for us. The item duplication trick will make things smoother, but it won't solve the problem of our 36-fold disadvantage. We can't buy or duplicate any item that will steamroll the opposition. Certainly not in OOO.
Ultimately, we'll have to win through spellpower.
After the Mines we completed a couple of quests, which I sadly do not remember. We also dealt with Tranzig. This particular battle took a rather comical turn on the end, because I had both Ajantis and Jaheira running after him, while he fled for his life, terrified, and the rest of the group couldn't do anything because Edwin had fallen asleep right under the door, and as if that wasn't enough, Branwen had joined him as well! Anyway, Coran saved the day by sniping the mage from the other side of the corridor. I realise now I didn't pickpocket Algernon, I'll see about doing that first thing next session.
After all this, we decided to take a break and went on visited the coast. We killed the Doomslayer by using a tactic similar to the one used against the Vampiric Wolf, on the opening of this post, failed to kill the woman with the small shield+1 before Barge talked to us, and for some reason we didn't get Brage sword's either... Very weird. On our coastal vacations, we encountered Shoal. Because of the Beguiling Aura this, uhm, woman-like creature has, Edwin and Coran stayed behind while we fought her, since Ajantis is immune to Charm, and it doesn't affect women. Shoal is quickly brought to low hit points, not before having to run her around, kill the Water Weird she summoned (a lesser Water Elemental, except it moves really fasts and can insta-kill you, but it's rather easy to kill. Another one of those friendly things aTweaks cherishes the player's life with), and shrug off her Poison spit from Yvralline. I thought it would be a good idea to take on Droth, since, you know, he normally has good stuff on him. And it was. He couldn't deal with our combined force, and perished to one of Edwin's Magic Missiles, which was just thrown to increase his surprisingly low kill count. Droth had the Shadow Armour+3, which with IR allows Arcane spellscasting for some odd reason. We gave it to Coran, and later sold the Protector of the Second+2, which in IR protects against Critical Hits, and I reckon this was a mistake, and that I should have kept it because the Armour Class bonus is minimal compared to not taking full damage from Critical Hits.
Pretty much everyone gained at least one level. Yvralline and Branwen are level 6, while the rest of the party is still level 5. Ajantis needs less than a thousand XP to level up, so I expect him to do so very shortly. I don't think our item layout changed that much since the last time, and most of the changes are either obvious (Ajantis is now in a Full Plate) or I talked about them (Coran's newely acquired Shadow Armour). We do have an unnatural amount of Fire Arrows, since every Kobold Commando drop about 22 of them. I'm not sure what mod is doing this but I believe I will try to fix this, as I don't think that this behaviour is intended.
Inspiro (human skald, Grond0); Laraum (human inquisitor, Gate70)
Another day and another random pairing hit the road.
Some early lag problems proved fatal for Laraum when he killed Xzar, but then stood helpless as Montaron rushed in to gut him in retaliation. After a diversion to the temple though, normal service was resumed as Shoal was shot down.
Inspiro was concerned at the sight of Laraum's lily-white flesh and led him down to Nashkel to find some green armor to cover him. Just to the north Hulrik refused to accept that there was no more danger from xvarts.
The next major encounter was at the Lighthouse where Laraum used a potion of clarity to take on the sirines. Despite Inspiro attempting to rest after the first group, that potion lasted long enough to clear the initial groups of sirines. Inspiro had bought some magical crossbow bolts for the golems, but most of the damage on those was done by Laraum wading in to the attack.
A quick trip through the Cloud Peak mountains saw a few more encounters ticked off the list, though Inspiro failed to kill Ingot before he walked away with the Chesley Crusher (its limitation to 1 APR doesn't impact on bards, making it arguably the best melee weapon in the game for them). Laraum did though boost his charisma with the tome before we saved the session.
Inspiro, Skald 6, 38 HPs, 29 kills
Laraum, Inquisitor 5, 66 HPs, 64 kills, 1 death
My most recent run with a totemic druid (a combination of solo and party play) is documented here, if you're interested:
BG1/SoD: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/994086/#Comment_994086
SoA: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/994376/#Comment_994376
ToB: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/994949/#Comment_994949
That being said, no one has done a successful trilogy/tetralogy no-reload with an avenger or a shapeshifter yet.
I think I will try a morrowind run for kicks and giggles since I have never played the game for more than an hour. @semiticgod Any advice?
Sell enchanted stuff and weapons and armor to Creeper in Ghorak Manor in Caldera.
Get the Boots of Blinding Speed off of Pemenie west of Caldera. Use a Resist Magicka effect before equipping, ideally 100 so you don't suffer a miss chance with weapons.
Pick a weapon type for a major skill. It's important to have a reliable means of damage, and Destruction won't work well with a few select enemies.
Gain levels fast so you don't get stomped by a surprisingly tough enemy.
Consult the UESP wiki for game info. It's a priceless resource.
Zoreii: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 5
All right! Since this is a maximum difficulty run with OOO (everything is 36 times harder and the enemies are more intelligent, high-level and aggressive), we're going to be using every dirty trick at our disposal. And since OOO rewards higher-level characters, we're going to be grinding very heavily in order to get high levels fast.First off, it's possible to level Sneak all the way up to 100 in the starting dungeon just by entering sneak mode and walking against the wall. Since there's a dark elf in the cell across from you and his visibility is poor, you gain a bit of Sneak experience for every second you spend moving around. By putting the tail end of a shaver on my keyboard, I can also make my character, Zoreii (I meant for it to be pronounced zor-ee-ai, but I often read it as zor-ay) constantly cast a healing spell to train Restoration as well.
I leave my character alone for a couple of hours before getting tired of not seeing any progress. Our new character gets 63 skill increases for Sneak and 16 increases for Restoration right off the bat.
This is important because item duplication will give us the gold to train important skills and obviate the need for later grinding. You can only pay for training 5 times per level, so it's very valuable to be able to afford all 5 for each level.
Our first problem is rats. I failed to choose a Wood Elf for the starting dungeon, which means we can't use the Wood Elf's racial greater power to charm one and turn it against the others. As long would have it, though, a Flare spell can take down a rat in two strikes. Normally, it deals 6 damage, which amounts to 1 damage at the maximum difficulty, but OOO buffs Flare to deal 15 instead, or 2.5 damage in this run.
The dungeon is surprisingly easy because of OOO's stronger Flare spell. I still use the wait function to restore Zoreii's Dragonskin greater power for 60 seconds of 50% damage reduction to make sure I don't get butchered if I miss a Flare spell on a charging goblin (you can only use greater powers once a day, and unlike in BG, that's restricted by actual in-game time instead of resting).
Notice that Zoreii is wielding a sword. The sword's damage is far too small, and the enemy deals far too much damage, for us to engage in melee, but equipping a weapon lets you cast spells faster if you hold the block button (you can do the same thing with your fists up, but that looks weird to me).
The goblin shaman is a bigger threat. S/he uses a staff with a ranged shock attack that can deal 30 damage at the maximum difficulty, but with careful timing, I can dodge the spells, and even when I get hit, Zoreii's 50% Resist Magicka effect, courtesy of the Breton race, cuts the damage in half.
There's one last major threat in this dungeon. Right after the Emperor gets killed, the assassin goes for you, and because it's a cutscene, you're already in melee range and only have a fraction of a second before the assassin lands a hit with his dagger. The solution?
We buff with Dragonskin, then use the Invisibility greater power from the Shadow birthsign right after combat begins. The assassin lands only a single hit at 50% power before we're safely hidden.
The Shadow birthsign is largely useless for a mage character who will be grinding Illusion very heavily, but we can always change it, along with our race and class, at the end of the dungeon.
Our class is a little different from before, and since we're not using fatigue boosting in this run, we're using the Mage birthsign for a slight Magicka boost instead of the Atronach birthsign (Willpower is really strong for high-level mages; it can translate into hundreds of extra magicka per fight, and we need the convenient magicka regeneration to grind skills properly).
Notice that we've added Speed as a class attribute, as the tiny boost to movement rate could help us dodge a potentially fatal attack. All of our skills are magic skills, which are easy to grind in complete safety before we go out wrestling with high-level daedra. The one exception is Sneak, which we've already leveled many times, replacing Destruction, which is practically useless on the high difficulty setting (dealing 1/6 your normal damage makes all damage-dealing skills largely useless).
We picked up basically no loot during the starting dungeon, since we'll just use scroll duplication to finance our character building instead. We start out by buying a cheap pair of scrolls to duplicate, then move on to a more expensive scroll that yields more gold when sold.
But there's a better way to generate gold. Once we have over 12,000 gold, we buy the Veil of the Seer and duplicate that for an even more expensive item to pawn off.
This isn't even strictly necessary; Alchemy alone could buy us all the spells we need to grind our class skills. But being able to shell out thousands of gold for training, which is much faster than grinding, will save us a lot of time.
That being said, I'm not averse to using our infinite gold supply to buy overpowered items that I'd never be able to afford in a normal run.
Though I doubt I'll be using Apotheosis for anything. It only deals 16.5 damage on maximum difficulty, or 198 if I burn every last charge in the thing. That's good, but it's not a game-changer for anything past the early game.
The first skill to grind is Alchemy. It's by far the fastest to increase because making a potion takes a single click of the mouse. All I have to do is generate a massive pile of apples and cheese and click a button a thousand times.
By the time it's over, I have 800 pounds of Restore Fatigue potions pinning me down. Since selling off duplicated Veils of the Seer is faster, I just dump thousands of gold in potions on the ground so I can move again.
Traveling through the wilderness would likely be fatal for Zoreii in this run, so we just hike out to Frostcrag Spire and use the teleport pads to earn access to each of the cities. We've already leveled up several times, so we need to make sure we get some training in before we rest.
We always invest a point in Endurance at each level up. The best way to maximize Health is to increase Endurance every level, even if we only get a single point in it, and while it's a tiny bonus in the scheme of things, a single point of Health could theoretically save the run.
Free money also gets us lots of new spells. For the longest time, I had no idea how to find Ita Rienus, an important source of Illusion spells, until I realized she spent most of the day hiding in the Bravil Mages Guild basement.
We then train Conjuration and Mysticism. We gain levels extremely fast thanks to grinding Sneak at the start of the game, and since we can train 5 times per level, and it takes 10 class skill increase to gain a level, every level gives us another half-level in training opportunities.
It gets increasingly expensive, though, and we have to keep duplicating Veils of the Seer. After a lot of running around, we finally hit 100 Intelligence at level 19. We haven't done a single quest yet, but our Magicka has maxed out at 280.
Next, we train Alteration and Restoration to increase our Willpower and therefore our Magicka regeneration rate.
Funny thing is, we've gained so many levels that we can now afford pre-filled Grand Soul gems at stores (shop inventories are leveled). I could use these to enchant a set of gear with 100% Chameleon, which would be constant effect, unbreakable invisibility. Only traps, falling damage, and stray arrows and spells could threaten me.
But I've already done that a few times before. I remember the first time I did it back when I played it on an Xbox 360, and it felt weird to go into third-person view and see that nothing was there. It's really effective, but it no longer feels interesting to me, so I don't think I'll using any 100% Chameleon enchantments, or maybe even spells.
Our high levels also let us buy some stupidly overpowered potions at prices that would be ludicrous in a normal run.
I can duplicate these potions and essentially gain immunity to damage just by drinking a healing potion every single second. But that seems a little too reductive for my tastes, so I'm not sure I'll ever actually use a store-bought potion. Instead, I'll use my own--which I can also duplicate.
At 100 Alchemy and with good equipment, we can make sure pretty powerful potions of our own. The only disadvantage is that we can't drink more than 4 at a time, which means potions with long durations could actually be very dangerous. Our poisons are also very dangerous, but require a successful hit, and I'll be trying to maintain a very respectful distance from enemies.
We have a poison that can neutralize any mage for over 20 seconds, a poison that can deal over 400 damage over 20 seconds (or over 70 damage on this difficulty), and potions that can give us massive resistances or extremely fast healing.
We just have to be careful not to drink too many, because if we drink 4, we can't use another until one of the previous ones wears off.
Finally, we prepare some important spells we'll need to actually handle combat. A Calm spell will let us halt any enemy in its tracks, a Command spell will let us take control of an individual enemy, and a Shield spell, properly designed, can give us high damage reduction for low cost. The Shield spell has a total magnitude of 35, which means that if we combine it with Dragonskin, we'll have the maximum 85% damage reduction without having to use any potions.
Note that the Calm and Command spells say they only work up to level 25. That's not actually true; it'll work on anything above level 25 as well, provided that our spell effectiveness is at 100%. And as long as we're not wearing any armor, we'll never have below 100% spell effectiveness.
We max out our Willpower and hit level 30. The downside is that all sorts of enemies are going to be extremely high-level and everything will be very dangerous. But with sky-high skills and a strong magicka pool, we can maintain Invisibility indefinitely without losing magicka. All we have to do is make sure that whenever we break Invisibility to take offensive action or drink a potion, we immediately find safety before the enemy can land a hit on us.
It's no guarantee of success, since death can be very sudden at maximum difficulty, especially in OOO and at high levels. But we now have some decent options to handle the threats in front of us. Zoreii will be a highly evasive, magic-oriented character who will win fights through Illusion spells and conjuring allies.
Proficiencies ** in Flails, ** in slings. Anyone got the foresight that she might become a cleric in due time?
Zoreii: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 6
Zoreii is now sufficiently equipped to handle combat. It's time to begin the main quest.We have no trouble with bandits on the way to Kvatch, but daedra scale dramatically with levels. Now that we're over level 30, the Kvatch Oblivion gate is swarming with Xivilai--gigantic purplish humanoids with sky-high stats and 50% spell absorption, making them very difficult to harm with spells. It takes multiple Summon Clannfear spells to bring a single Xivilai down.
I tried a Summon Daedroth spell as well, but the daedroths go down too quickly. The clannfear's superior Reflect Damage effect is more important against the Xivilai's high damage output.
Thanks to a pair of Resist Magicka enchantments fueled by duplicated Grand Soul Gems combined with Zoreii's innate Breton resistance, we now have 90% resistance to all spells, but we still aren't strong enough to handle much melee pressure. We can negate the difficulty multiplier on enemy weapons by cranking our Shield up to 85, but that still leaves us vulnerable. It's basically like facing high-level enemies at normal difficulty with no shield, which is still very dangerous.
Since it takes forever for our clannfear to slay a Xivilai, I decide to just hide behind Invisibility for most of the rest of the gate.
I summon a few clannfears to distract hunting xivilai and kill the Sigil Keeper for his key, but otherwise I sneak all the way to the Sigil Stone.
In the courtyard, we actually need to fight the many daedra, but we have an immortal Savlian Matius and a few guards to help us deal damage. I stay out of the fight, only pitching in with summons.
There are a few more fights, and while the Imperial Legion suffers badly, there are a lot of them. Inside the castle, I get hit by a stray spell from a Hunger (a Shivering Isles critter that OOO adds to normal daedra spawns), which deals an alarming amount of damage in spite of Zoreii's 90% Resist Magicka.
If I hadn't created those Resist Magicka enchantments, Zoreii would have nearly died. Without her Breton resistances, she'd definitely be dead.
Bretons are spectacular in Oblivion. Enemy damage in Oblivion is fairly balanced between spells and weapons (weapons are more common in normal fights, but the dangerous encounters are closer to 50/50), which means constant-effect 50% Resist Magicka is a huge bonus when dealing with enemy mages. Having Dragonskin for 50% Shield once a day gives them another massive boost to survivability.
Once Kvatch is saved, largely no thanks to us, Oleta is available for training. This means we can finally get our Restoration up to 75, allowing us to use much higher-end buffing spells. It takes tens of thousands of gold to get us there, but it's worth it.
Restoration is the slowest magic skill to level. Casting a Restoration spell only grants a tiny experience boost because the game is designed assuming that players are spamming Restoration constantly (Conjuration is usually only cast once per fight, so it increases much faster with each casting), which means getting it to high levels takes many hours of gameplay without paying for expensive training.
While considering what new Restoration spells to create, I realize one of them has massive potential.
Fortify Magicka is normally just used to allow the player to cast high-cost Master spells that they otherwise wouldn't have the magicka to cast. But since magicka regeneration is based on total magicka, you can increase regeneration by fortifying magicka.
If I cast 6 Fortify Magicka 100 spells, Zoreii will be mostly out of magicka. But she'll regenerate three times as fast as normal, which means that she'll quickly recover and she'll be able to spam much stronger spells during a major fight. But ideally, we'd want 120-second spells, and we can't cast those at our current level.
We take Martin to Weynon Priory, let our summons fight the Mythic Dawn, and drop him off at Cloud Ruler Temple. At the Arcane University, I set Zoreii to constantly cast low-cost custom Conjuration and Illusion spells to crank her skills up to 100 while I'm away from the computer. Then, finally, I train Restoration up to 100, since Oleta requires no other special quests to offer training above 70.
We're now at essentially maximum power. We can dramatically boost our magicka regeneration and Health and cast high-end spells from each major school. We're not invincible by any means, though, and enemies do get huge bonuses from our high levels.
Case in point: the goblins during the next quest with Baurus. I use the console to check out their Health, and it's absurd.
Baurus and our summoned Dremora Lord very gradually whittle down each leveled enemy.
The Mythic Dawn is next. I spend most of my time re-casting buffs, hiding behind Invisibility, and using Command spells on individual agents to turn them to our side.
We use the same strategy at Lake Arrius Caverns, the headquarters of the Mythic Dawn: buff up Zoreii's defenses, summon a Dremora Lord, and then alternate between using Invisibility and using Command to turn the enemies against each other.
I do Sheogorath's quest real quick to sacrifice a daedric artifact to Martin, then proceed to the Bruma gate questline. The whole area is crawling with Xivilai, and they absorb half of our Command spells. Still, we manage to take control of some of them, which speeds up an otherwise slow process.
The purple coloration on the one on the right indicates a spell being absorbed. The green tint on the next one from the right indicates an illusion spell (that's our Command spell), and the white hue over the next one indicates a healing or defensive spell.
After dying in the tower in this area, I'm very careful to trigger traps before walking over them. Armor provides no defense against trap damage, so it's very easy to die to one at maximum difficulty.
Finally Zoreii arrives along at the top of the tower (Captain Burd got lost and I left him behind), where I study the same orange-armored guy who killed me in a previous run.
No one in Oblivion can see through Invisibility and Zoreii is very fast, so I decide to try and bring him down, figuring that we'll be safe as long as I'm careful. I summon a Dremora Lord to see how the Lord of Sigilum Sanguis handles it.
My Dremora Lord gets butchered in seconds. Realizing that we don't have a summons that can bring him down in any reasonable amount of time, I decide to use Command spells on the other enemies in the area. But to my dismay, the boss can slaughter even a charmed Xivilai with ease.
That warhammer just hits so hard. I'm not sure Zoreii could survive even a single hit, fully buffed or not.
I keep charming enemies and gradually wear away at the boss' Health.
He brings down them all. Before resorting to summons, I cast a lot of buffs in case I fail to cast Invisibility at the right time. Eventually, the boss goes down, but apparently I can't complete the quest without Captain Burd in the room.
I have to lead him all the way back up the tower, using our Dremora Lord to clean up the enemies. Captain Burd has neither the spells nor the AI to sneak past anyone; the player is the only character that ever uses Sneak for combat purposes.
We finally get Burd to the top, at which point we can finally grab the Sigil Stone and complete the quest.
We're not yet done with Oblivion gates, though. We still have to close some gates elsewhere in Cyrodiil to make sure the relevant lords contribute troops to an upcoming major battle outside Bruma. Some of the Oblivion gates are tedious to close, requiring the player to traipse all over the map, opening portals so you can enter the right tower. All the way, I have to pay close attention to traps, lest I run into another game-ending gigantic sword.
As strong as Zoreii is, a one-shot kill is still possible when all incoming damage is multiplied by 6. We need to be very careful about the circumstances in which she still might die.
Inspiro (human skald, Grond0); Laraum (human inquisitor, Gate70)
Previous updates:
After killing Meilum to get Laraum a bracers upgrade,
Moving on to Durlag's Tower, we worked through a couple of battle horrors on the road. They were challenging, but manageable. Inspiro was singing between melee attacks there and got the odd hit in himself, though probably would have been better off just singing constantly (to give Laraum the benefit of a constant -2 bonus to AC as well as the +2 to hit and damage).
Reputation was only boosted to 17 by helping Joia, so we travelled to the minesite with a view to helping Charleston Nib and Brage. That would mean that recovering a body for Farmer Brun would maximize reputation on the way to Ulgoth's Beard. Before getting too far ahead of ourselves though we had an encounter with the Doomsayer to deal with. That was hitting pretty easily and Inspiro had to unlimber wands once more to finish that off.
Inspiro, Skald 7, 44 HPs, 57 kills
Laraum, Inquisitor 6, 78 HPs, 107 kills, 1 death
Ok 93 - the dagger fetichist
Previouslygoing down the mine, the party had to face bandits in great numbers. Missiles and sword was the usual remedy - and a wand once in a while
Again Khalid was confused - and again he started beating up Jaheira... whats up with that?
Daveorn was next. Safana cleared the traps and scouted hidden in the shadows. That apparantly triggered Daveorns script and he started walking - which I didnt know. He ended up stumbling into the party whilst planning/buffing....
We had plenty of magical ammunition, so he didnt last.. luckily
In BG we did almost every quest. Grinding money and XP. I am saving the gems for SoD but otherwise planning to both be selling and buying at 19 cha / 20 rep.
In CK we killed everything besides the spiders - I had been subjected to poison a bit too much in this run, so I passed.
After CK I wanted to do Durlags Tower. Actually it was for the Soultaker dagger, that I wanted for my self... and the rest of the fantastic loot.
First basement floor was done. Khalid almost died to the warders, but we prevailed. Second and third floor Khalid almost died - but prevailed courtesy of durlags goblet...
The chess game was won thanks to 4 fireballs and 4 webs. You cant have to much overkill in a no reload game...
At the bottom I got Arlas dragonbane sling, but I am reluctant about going after the dagger. I dont need the XP nor the money. And the rest of the loot is a bit meh.. I will have to think about it