The extra XP gained in BGEE and SoD meant I started BG2 at level 10. Although that should have made the opening dungeon easier, the fact that horror is now so badly bugged meant the mephits were a real threat. In the elemental plane I was stunned by the steam mephit and lost 50% of HPs before recovering and finishing it off with a drain life. I was more cautious in the portal room and shut the door on the first 2 mephits before using poisoned arrows on the third. That meant that the radiant mephit would have stood no real chance of killing me even if it had been successful with a color spray - which it wasn't.
I got up to level 11 on the second floor and did a bit of vampiric draining on Ulvaryl before exiting the dungeon.
After investing some donations into reputation I restored the Circus before reporting to Gaelan Bayle. I had enough money left to get some magical glasses there to avoid having to pay for future identifications.
The Copper Coronet provided the Tuigan Bow. The extra APR with that is handy in some fights to spread poison more widely around. I then took a route to the Docks via the Graveyard in order to trigger the Suna Seni ambush. They didn't last long after the mage saw his health drain away.
Starting Mae'Var's tasks I went to get a necklace and was rewarded when returning that with another level. I'd also come across Renfeld on the way and sorted out his quest before going after Rayic Gethras. I dodged a couple of his spells using the stairs while PfMW was active, but then got impatient and tried to melee. I hit him a couple of times, inflicting frost damage, while he was casting FoD and he also took at least 2 lots of poison during that, but that didn't stop him completing his spell ...
Grond0, don't the traps piss you off after a while? I play solo, but most of the time facing locks+traps proves to be one of the most painful thing inside a no reload playthrough.
There are times when I go solo, but actually add imoen just to disable traps and so on. Would that be forbidden? That's the point of annoyance I reached.
@semiticgod I've killed Morentherene with throwing daggers many times now, often with multiple misses before getting a hit in, and she has never woken up. While buffing in her cave makes her attack immediately, it seems that she's rather bad at noticing someone throwing daggers at her.
Actually, if you buff just outside the cave, she will attack you when you get in. It happened to me once while I was buffing the thac0 on my dagger thrower. As soon as I got in, boom ! Here she was, ready to fight.
Arctodus said: Enuhal said:@semiticgod I've killed Morentherene with throwing daggers many times now, often with multiple misses before getting a hit in, and she has never woken up. While buffing in her cave makes her attack immediately, it seems that she's rather bad at noticing someone throwing daggers at her.
Actually, if you buff just outside the cave, she will attack you when you get in. It happened to me once while I was buffing the thac0 on my dagger thrower. As soon as I got in, boom ! Here she was, ready to fight.
An ambush by Davenport has resulted in Firehelm discovering the location of the Section HQ in Beregost. The battle wasn't hard. Perhaps the Section HQ will be harder.
After doing the Grey Clan quest, Firehelm was extremely wealthy and so bought some wands. He isn't wealthy any more, but shouldn't need to buy any more wands even for SoD.
Now of course he will have to save enough gold to buy a stash of scrolls for whichever mage he chooses for SoD.
The party has made great progress since last report. We had a fun fighter against Mulahey - he couldn't do much, being hit with insects, miscast magic and also darts of wounding, not to mention Naturesfury's dagger of venom.
We have also dealt with the Bandit Camp. The party has good weapons and is well armored, it isn't easy to hit any party member now that the party has 2 full plates and 2 ankheg armors. We have cleared the harder areas as well, such has sirines, basilisks, and ankhegs. We will eventually go into Durlag's Tower, but only for the wisdom tome, and take out a few baslisks while we are there. The other area is the Wizards of Thay area. Then we will brave the Cloakwood.
While we have had a number of deaths when we are low level, now that we have access to level 3 druid spells and have better armor and more HP, it has been quite a while since we have had one. Will keep at it.
Grond0, don't the traps piss you off after a while? I play solo, but most of the time facing locks+traps proves to be one of the most painful thing inside a no reload playthrough.
There are times when I go solo, but actually add imoen just to disable traps and so on. Would that be forbidden? That's the point of annoyance I reached.
@Arthas it was a bit of a pain in the early days of SoD dying to unknown traps, but I know the ones on the main quest track well enough now that's not really a problem. I know pretty much what all the traps in BG1 and BG2 do, so if I die there it's normally because I've been keeping things interesting by taking a slight risk - things like triggering a trap with maximum damage of 80 with a character with 65 HPs.
There are items that can't be obtained without a thief or mage to unlock things, but nothing I would describe as particularly important.
My own rules don't allow NPC recruitment, but there's no reason not to recruit Imoen yourself if it makes the game more enjoyable .
@Arthas I actually prefer to play with a full or almost full party. I find that trying to get the balance right makes the game more interesting, and if you have mods installed that give interaction between the various party members, that makes it even better. Clearly which NPCs you choose will depend on the class of your PC, so that makes every game different.
Firehelm has started investigating the Section HQ. Imoen cast invisibility 10' and the party sneaked past Andrea et al before taking out Section fighters one or two at a time.
Before the patch came out, I had started another attempt at the Meatgrinder Challenge (fully randomized party, randomized hp rolls, insane difficulty), so before I create a new modded installation, I want to bring this run to its conclusion - be it victory or be it death. This is the party the dice gave me:
The Bhaalspawn: Sindri, Male Neutral Good Halfling Cleric, *Mace, *Sling Stats: 10/19/11/18/15/9
A cleric is good to have, and this one has decent stats: Great dexterity and a pip in sling will make him an early contributor to ranged damage. The 18 int is wasted on this character, but 15 wisdom isn't too bad.
Very average stats, though an overall useful class (speed bonus for kiting and rage for immunities are both nice things, plus the backstab immunity will increase her chances of survival in SoD). Still, without a stat boosting item, this one will propably have to avoid the frontlines, and the proficiencies aren't great. I will start her off with throwing daggers.
The saving grace here is the decent constittion and the pip in longbow - otherwise, not the most useful character. Sadly, there are no dual class options available. Still, with ankheg armor and gauntlets of dexterity, a certain level of tankiness could potentially be reached.
Cúchulainn, Male Lawful Good Human Stalker, *Short Sword, *Quarterstaff, *Sling, *Sword and Shield Style, *Two-Weapon Style Stats: 14/15/14/8/16/9
A character on the verge of greatness - a couple more points in the physical stats woud've made this one very useful, but sadly, the actual bonuses he has aren't worth mentioning. Also needs an intelligence tome to use scrolls/wands etc. The stalker kit might prove interesting if I make it to SoA (this party, as you will see, has no arcane spellcasters, so the stalker haste spell would come in very handy). With the right tomes, this one could be dualed to cleric... but I don't need another cleric.
Very similiar to my main character - the inevitable second single class divine spellcaster. Useful in BG1, less useful later on. At least this means that I can negate the typical terrible early thac0 of randomized parties with lots of command spells, which will provide me with auto hits.
Well, at least we do get a thief. Swashbuckler is fine by me (if I really need backstabbing, I have a stalker), the pips are a bit of a problem - swashbucklers take a long time to get the proficiencies they need anyway, and having a wasted one doesn't exactly help. Physical stats are good, so that's a positive.
As you can see, we have 4 halflings and 2 humans. A bit unusual, and 4 halflings heavily increased our chances of not getting any arcane spellcasters. However, that's not too rare for randomized parties. My last two meatgrinder groups did have arcane power, but I was lucky on both counts, and both parties were above average, while this one is really the more typical party one will roll up with my randomization system. This also means that I'm used to playing with a party like this, though, so there's certainly a chance of success - but as always with this challenge, one or two hits can easily spell a chunking or a dead bhaalspawn. Let's see.
Early game means: only fight against single opponents or very small groups, and only when command is available. With 6 command spells in total, we are in okay shape and take down the few encounters we have on our way to Nashkel. I can sell Evermemory to gain access to a wand of sleep and the green protection scroll against petrification. The basilisks are our first serious stop - we want some fast levels to get the first proficiency point for everyone, so we can actually hit things with our ranged weapons (going melee is a 100% death sentence for any character in this party until we get a bunch of levels and good equipment). Korax is very helpful:
We didn't get as much experience as we wanted, so we travel to Ulgoth's Beard, commanding down any ankhegs we meet on the way (luckily, the spell has 100% success chance against them). At the Beard, we get ourselves a wand of the heavens and some anti-petrification potions. Durlag's Tower is our next stop, and the wand charges allow us to take down Battle Horrors while Ismene is running away from them:
The greater basilisks on the roof should be easy to defeat - but I make a crucial mistake: Ismene's protection potion runs out while fighting one of the lizards, and she gets petrified. I am able to run away in time and return to save her, though:
With that, we have made it to cleric levels 5, and while two skeletons aren't that impressive, they are enough to distract anyone using mind affecting spells (sirens, bassilus, some adventuring parties, red wizards etc.) - we gain as much experience as possible, though only seeking out high value targets (I'm too lazy to clear out entire maps for this run). Things mostly go rather well - while clearing the western side of the map, we basically take zero hits from our opponents, but when going back for some extended ankheg hunting, I don't re-command an almost dead ankheg, thinking that it will fall before it can use its spit attack. Wrong - and, of course, one ankheg hit always equals an instant death with these settings:
We leave most of the eastern maps alone for now. We are at 4 skeletons now - to get to 5, we need the Ring of Holiness, so we kill Mulahey. The bandits are next (skeletons and wand of sleep make for a good distraction, and for the main tent we have to do some area transition shenanigans as our first assault on the mage fails), and we start exploring the Cloakwood, going all the way to the Iron Mine to obtain boots of speed - The first backstab of our stalker is huge success:
However, we don't feel ready for the mines, their mages and especially the mustard jelly at the very end. Why? Well, we lack that ever important cleric level 7, which will give our skeletons much better stats and, more importantly, magical weapons. Level 7 skeletons with some buffs can do most of the fighting by themselves. So we go for the eastern wilderness areas, skipping those were magical melee weapons would be required (anything involving mustard jellies or skeleton warriors is avoided). We even kill some flesh golems and phase spiders at Durlag's, because we're just not getting enough experience for level 7. In the end, I decide to use a protection from magic scroll on Aino and have her clear out the ice island with her longbow, the gauntlets of dexterity and the belt of the antipode. That does the trick.
Our new skeletons take care of the iron mine and Davaeorn - the party doesn't really need to interfere, we only need to rest on level 1 a couple of times. We make it to the gate and get some nice equipment - Aino is now relatively tanky and can take 3-4 hits from most enemies (and has enough AC to make those hits rather rare). We do a lot of luring to make several battles here easier, such as the ogre magi or the iron throne party (everyone is getting lured downstairs, and they thankfully come in small, easily defeatable groups). With wands of the heavens and skeletons as a distraction, we even manage to clear out Degrodel's House by luring the guardians outside:
It should be mentioned that I managed to kill Lothander after giving him his scroll thanks to a lucky crit (this is actually the first time I even tried this), so this party has two pairs of boots of speed.
At the Candlekeep Crypts, we face no particular problems (Ismene gets hit by a deadly phase spider (10 damage per tick on insane), but manages to drink an antidote in time). We make it back to the city and get to the Ducal Palace event. Strength of One is by now a huge part of our preparations and should increase the damage of not only the slingers in the party, but also the skeletons. We also have arrows of dispelling to get rid of any haste effects on the doppelgangers. However, any potential danger gets minimized when we realize that the patch (which got released about the time we made it to the iron mines) changed Liias script: She now actually uses her spells, including mirror image! ( @Grond0 reported this as well, so this event should be much less dangerous for solo characters now) - overall, a comfortable victory:
Time for some TotSC. With tons of magical ammo in our bags, the werewolves don't pose much of a challenge to our party. Luring all the wolves in the shipwreck outside is a bit risky for the one doing the luring (as stairways can get blocked), but I had invisibility potions at the ready for such a case - luckily, no problems occured, and I was able to get every single group downstairs, into the waiting skeletons, magical arrows and bullets. Loup Garou were taken down with wand of the heaven charges and Ismene using the Werebane Dagger, with skeletons tanking.
Durlag's started off well enough - the warders gave me no trouble (strength of one really increased the damage output of this party), though the dwarven doom guards did - they pretty much only needed a couple of rounds to kill all the skeletons while barely taking a scratch. I was forced to improvise. Melee would've been suicide, they are immune to ranged weapons, and kiting is very risky in these narrow corridors. Wand charges were my only source of damage. I decided to abuse the teleporter wardstone area to the north - teleporting back and forth, always keeping my enemies away, using wand charges as they approached:
The next two levels were far easier - with mass fireball potions and immunity to electricity allowing us to quickly clear the chessboard. The demon knight failed to do much against our skeletons. I was able to trick him into using his dispel magic and his fireball on Aino, who was protected with item-based fire immunity and a greenstone amulet.
We also hit the experience cap after the chessboard fight, but I still wanted to get back to the Beard to finish off Aec'Letec. We started by using six invisibility potions right away to avoid instant death by cult assassin, went to the north and summoned our skeletons, which allowed us to easily take down the first cultist group. The second one had enough fighters with them to deal with our skeletons, but they bunched up while taking down the final summon, which allowed us to get two very effective hold person spells in:
Now, we simply lured the final cultist group outside (Ismene is great for this job, as she's immune to the deadly backstabs one might encounter here) and our way to Aec'Letec was free. Sadly, I had lost some potions of magic shielding in earlier encounters when I had to guarantee some saving throws, so I didn't have enough for my entire party. Still, mirrored eyes potions were available to at least prevent instant death. Otherwise, cloud giant strenght, heroism, invulnerability etc. were all employed. The lack of magic shielding, however, resulted in our stalker getting hit by a hold effect right away. The only way to keep him alive was for Aino to tank Aec'Letec, thus distracting him so he wouldn't finish off his prey:
Meanwhile, the other party members took down all the cultists. I was in danger of losing Aino, so I had her take sip of Durlag's Goblet - that was enough to keep her alive until the hold effect wore off, and the battle was ours:
The party made their way to the Undercity and to Sarevok. I used agility potions and mind focusing to increase ranged damage output and prepared dispelling arrows. While luring the final boss, Angelo spotted Aino, but his only contribution to the fight was a single dispel magic (I was able to position Aino in such a way that no one else got hit by it). Sarevoks haste was dispelled, and so were Semaj's protections:
Strangely enough, Tazok decided to join the fight as well. Maybe Beamdog has changed the scripts for the final battle to make luring only Sarevok and Semaj more difficult? Anyway, Tazok was taken down instantly, and Sarevok soon followed him:
I also managed to clear Korlasz' Crypt, using skeletons and fireballs. A single class cleric is useful here, because it allows me to rest almost for free - the low level skeletons that tend to spawn can be instantly destroyed or at least turned away by Sindri. Korlasz herself didn't stand much of a chance:
Btw, this dungeon still always remains a high tension affair on insane, especially with low hitpoints. Two lifedrain hits by shadowed souls would kill most party members, one backstab would do the same, and of course, getting affected by CC is mostly also instant death - firebombing has to be very quick and efficient, any positioning mistake could be the last. Still, I have a decent amount of experience with this part of the game by now - but I wouldn't say that I feel 100% comfortable.
Next time, we will start with the Coast Way Crossing (and while this post is very long, I'm now caught up to where I'm at in the game). Some additional info on tomes and profiencies:
All wisdom tomes went to Sindri. Ismene got charisma, Aino got constitution, intelligence went to Cúchulainn and so did dexterity, while Melanthios got strength. Ismene specialized in daggers and war hammers, Aino in longbows - she also got *Quarterstaff, using the staff mace for melee combat. Cúchulainn got a second pip in slings and short swords, Mina got slings and sword and shield style, Sindri war hammer and sword and shield style and Melanthios went for shortbow and scimitar.
@grond0 said... "..meant the mephits were a real threat. In the elemental plane I was stunned by the steam mephit and lost 50% of HPs before recovering and finishing it off with a drain life."
For solo characters, I will in fact skip the plane of air if I don't have a safe way to deal with the mephits - note there are two stunners, one short duration and one longer. If I can go invisible past them to complete the genie quest I will do that. Even if your character actually uses two hand swords, you hardly need the Sword of Chaos reward since Lilacor is obtainable so early and Lilacor is better. And if solo, you don't need the exp either since you will hit the level cap before Melissan.
I'm on holiday today and had the opportunity to play some more this afternoon. Rather than another one of my long-life characters, I decided to go for one of my special challenges. This no pause challenge can feel like quite hard work, so is well suited to playing when I've not got work on my mind ...
My rules on pausing are: 1) Autopause of any sort not allowed. 2) Pausing using the space bar / clockwork button is not allowed at any time (game ending offence). 3) Pausing to look at inventory / record screen / options is allowed outside combat, but not if any enemies are active (including outside visual range). 4) Pausing for dialogue is allowed, but only for normal conversation. 5) Pausing for map screen is allowed outside combat, but not if any enemies are active (exception: travel can be initiated when running away from enemies, but once map screen is open then travel is required rather than going back to the same area). 6) In addition AI must be disabled to prevent auto-targeting using that (though that's moot for me as I never use AI in any case).
When I first started trying this it was really hard to stop myself pausing, but the previous attempt got to SoD and felt much more in control (although the run did eventually end due to an illegal pause) - and that still seems to be the case after the year or so since my last go at this.
I didn't keep notes as I was playing, but screenshots of the run through BGEE are given below.
Gaining 2 levels by returning a bowl to Tenya.
Drawing a sirine out of Beregost Temple (using Algernon's Cloak) to get to level 4.
Misclicking to give a nobleman his pantaloons back. His complaint about the state of those was rendered reasonable moments later when they were covered with blood ...
Another sirine from Beregost brought up level 5.
Out of interest I wanted to see if I could kill Drizzt early on by activating some gnolls to attack him, but not actually getting into his sight range. The idea was to kill all the gnolls except one that had broken its weapon in order to be able to kill Drizzt while he was unconscious. That all worked perfectly except that I obviously lost track of a few HPs of damage at one point and Drizzt died just before I was about to finish off the last armed gnoll.
Chopping down Greywolf to get to level 6.
Following Korax round the basilisk area to get to level 7 (he eventually died in combat with them and I hastily had to read a PfP scroll to finish them off).
Using a potion of mirrored eyes to kill more basilisks at Durlag's Tower and get to level 8.
Beating up Mulahey.
Cruising through the Bandit Camp.
I could have sworn I timed my screenshot of Davaeorn's death perfectly (using rage and magic blocking), but the computer didn't agree ...
The only point in the run where I was really worried was a basilisk ambush where I had to save once against gaze before running out of sight. The most damage I took in an encounter though was actually Larze.
The Iron Throne struggled to deal with a tough fighter running PfM.
Slythe reminded me to go and kill an ogre to get the belt of piercing before meleeing him.
At the palace the dopplegangers found their way through Liia's defenses, but didn't have time for Belt as well.
I successfully got away from Belt initially before he talked to me, only to then mis-click and let him talk when he was still potentially in danger - fortunately Sarevok tried attacking me though.
At the temple I used invisibility to prompt Sarevok's talk without activating the others. However, Semaj lasted long enough to teleport back towards the dais enough to bring the others forward. Angelo shot Caesar with a couple of exploding arrows before he disappeared using a potion - prompting Angelo to kill Semaj. Angelo just needed a little nudge to finish him off and Tazok was no match for Caesar in melee even unbuffed. A series of potions were then used to prepare for Sarevok, who was also outclassed.
Here's Caesar's character record on arrival in the SoD prologue.
Berserker L8, 108 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 439 kills
For everyone using a fighter kit solo, do you go for SCS improvement, or don't? Because I've read a post by David Weimer suggesting not to go for AI improvements without a mage.
@Arthas I'm not sure if I understand what you mean. I can't see any reason to use SCS only if you're playing a mage PC though. I suppose if you particularly like indulging in games of 'mage chess' you might feel like that and I know some people enjoy that - I don't though.
@Arthas SCS is totally beatable with a pure fighter. I personally got very deep into BG2 with a solo kitless fighter on LoB with SCS. I didn't quit because it was too hard, I quit because I got back to no-reloading (the run was with reload).
Numerous persons beated the whole saga with SCS with solo classes other than mages. That shouldn't be a concern in itself. It does make the game significantly harder and forces you to elaborate better strategies, but it's definitively doable.
- SCS (full prebuffs, full tactical challenges) - Tweak Anthology (unnerfed thac0 table, Weapon Styles for all)
Recently, I started a run with an evil Shaman in an highly modded game, with IR/SR, Deities of Faerun, Rogue Rebalancing, etc... Since Deities of Faerun has a sphere system component, it changed drastically the spells a Shaman could have. It was super well designed and not overpowered, it just gave more options to divine casters. It was super cool.
But then, the list @Enuhal posted a while ago about the classes that never finished the saga got me thinking : on the remote chance that I would make to the end, the playthrough would have an asterix aside the run, because the level of modification in my install was very far from the base game. Somehow, I think that some of the meta-knowledge left to be discovered about the game would suffer. Then, I suddenly had the urge of playing a low mod install.
After that, on the list of classes that never finished the game, I choose to go with the Shadowdancer, because it offers a very specific challenge : a thief without traps. That sounds very interesting to me. So, without further random babbling about my train of thoughts while playing this game, I present you Fryya Applesmasher, the halfling Shadowdancer.
Only two gameplay altering mods were used : SCS and Tweak Anthology. SCS for difficulty, obviously, and Tweak Anthology for two things : the unnerfing of the thac0 table of Rogues and the ability to specialized in Weapon Style (mastery for TWF). These changes won't have any effect in BG1/SoD, though. They might in BG2 (if I get there ). These are acceptable to me, because SCS (and Ascension in BG2) makes the game much harder, and they are in line with pnp rules.
The plan was to max out Find Traps first and then go all in on HiS and MS. Open Locks would be boosted by potions when necessary. She would invest proficiencies in Short bow, Dagger, Quarterstaff and Dart, for solid options all over. Since I eventually bought Aule's Staff, I was set with a +3 weapon for Belhifet, if I make it into SoD.
Sooo, after having dealt with early small quests, during which she lost quite a bit of reputation by killing Dushai and Algernon for their items, Fryya got ambushed by a bunch of thieves on the road. It's often a big middle finger the game sends you, but not when you're a Shadowdancer.
You see me......now you don't !
When Fryya got to level 8, I decided that she was strong enough to deal with Mulahey. With the help of the One Gift Lost, she took care of him easily.
After that, She spotted Nimbul, which she one-shotted with a nice backstab.
While travelling between areas, she was ambushed with a group of amazons. She went invisible on the spot and bombarded them with fireballs from the OGL.
The other ambush group was simply avoided.
In the search for xp to get to level 9, Fryya decided to delve into Durlag's Tower. She killed the Battle Horrors with a combination of hide-and-seek and wand of Magic Missile. After that, she went on the roof to kill Greater Basilisks, where she had a stupidly close call : her last potion of Mirrored Eyes expired before she had the chance to kill the last of the Basiliks. As she ran away, she was hit by the gaze...
... but she made her save. Lucky me !
The fact that she had to make that save was stupid. Big, big mistake. Nonetheless, the Basilisk was finished by a fireball.
The bandit camp was simply avoided by getting the documents while invisible, because I felt that I was a bit low on resources, so I preferred to open up Cloakwood before going further. I might go back in the camp to slay them bastards muggers later. We'll see.
The peek-a-boo strat was used to dispatched Drasus for his Boots of Speed.
The rest of the band fell soon after.
After that, Fryya went straight to Davaeorn. I thought about using potions of Magic Blocking for the fight, but the short duration of the potions was too dangerous for me. So, Prot. from Magic scroll it was. The Battle Horrors were backstab one after the other.
Since GOG hasn't updated BG1/SoD to v2.5, I was able to poison Davey through Stoneskin with the Venom Dagger until he died. Woohoo.
And I was also able to find out that Mustard Gelly do indeed got backs !
After all this, Fryya is now chilling in Baldur's Gate, after having bought a few things (and got a dex tome). She will probably do a few quests in the city to get a bit of xp, but more importantly some cash : she still has a few things she'd like to buy before going further. Also, I'll have to devise a plan to get through tougher encounters like Ducal Palace. That's a place where I feel the lack of traps can bite my rear end.
With 2.5 live, I've finally pieced together a new install and started a new run. With all the discussion flying about mage-killing and shaman's viability, I decided to run both a Shaman as the Bhaalspawn and a Wizard Slayer as a companion. Weidu:
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods // The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod // ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version] ~SETUP-WEIDU.TP2~ #0 #0 // 24600 ~DLCMERGER/SETUP-DLCMERGER.TP2~ #0 #1 // Merge DLC into game -> "Siege of Dragonspear" DLC: 1.2 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Slime Quest: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #1 // Beregost Family Quest: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #2 // Babysitting Quest, including the Carnival Encounter...: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #3 // Nashkel Monster Quest: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #4 // Fallen Paladin Quest: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #5 // Undying Love Quest: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #6 // Lovesick Half-Orc: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #7 // Unexpected Help Quest: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #8 // Many Little Paws: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #9 // Drunk near Beregost Temple: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #10 // A Warm Place for Noober: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #11 // Brage's Sword: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #12 // Legal Seachart Sources: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #13 // Additions to the House of the Lady and the Bitch Queen's Temple: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #14 // A Worried Farmer: v18 ~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #15 // Bodies for a Good Cause: v18 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #0 // The BG1 NPC Project: Required Modifications: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #1 // The BG1 NPC Project: Banters, Quests, and Interjections: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #16 // The BG1 NPC Project: NPCs can be sent to wait in an inn: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #18 // The BG1 NPC Project: Alora's Starting Location -> Alora Starts in Gullykin: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #20 // The BG1 NPC Project: Eldoth's Starting Location -> Eldoth Starts on the Coast Way: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #22 // The BG1 NPC Project: Quayle's Starting Location -> Quayle Starts at the Nashkel Carnival: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #24 // The BG1 NPC Project: Tiax's Starting Location -> Tiax Starts in Beregost: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #26 // BGEE Banter Timing Tweak: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #28 // The BG1 NPC Project: Bardic Reputation Adjustment: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #31 // The BG1 NPC Project: Sarevok's Diary Adjustments -> SixofSpades Extended Sarevok's Diary: v23.3 ~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #200 // The BG1 NPC Project: Player-Initiated Dialogues: v23.3 ~NEERABANTERS/NEERABANTERS.TP2~ #0 #10 // Neera Banters: Dialogue Banters and Interjections: v0.9.1 ~NEERABANTERS/NEERABANTERS.TP2~ #0 #20 // Neera Banters: Interaction Banters: v0.9.1 ~NEERABANTERS/NEERABANTERS.TP2~ #0 #30 // Neera Banters: DLC Portrait: v0.9.1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #60 // Weapon Animation Tweaks: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #110 // Icon Improvements: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #130 // Force All Dialogue to Pause Game: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #140 // Fix Boo's Squeak: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #182 // Unique Containers -> Unique icons and names: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1010 // More Interjections: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1070 // Improved Multi-Player Kick-out Dialogues: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1080 // Add Bags of Holding: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1120 // Stores Sell Higher Stacks of Items: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2040 // Universal Clubs: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Wear Multiple Protection Items -> P&P Restrictions: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2192 // Limit Ability of Storekeepers to Identify Items -> Hybrid of Both Methods: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2320 // Trap Cap Removal (Ardanis/GeN1e): v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2330 // Remove Delay for Magical Traps (Ardanis/GeN1e): v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3050 // Remove fatigue from restoration spells: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3060 // Remove "You Must Gather Your Party..." Sound (Weimer): v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3070 // Change Effect of Reputation on Store Prices -> Low Reputation Store Discount (Sabre): v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3125 // Neutral Characters Make Happy Comments at Mid-Range Reputation: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3200 // Sellable Items (Icelus): v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3205 // Stores Purchase All Item Types: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3293 // Personalize automatic save names -> Use scheme: 000000000-(Protagonist) Save-Name: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4031 // Consistent Stats: Edwin -> Use BG2 Values: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4041 // Consistent Stats: Jaheira -> Use BG2 Values: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4050 // Change Jaheira to Neutral Good: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4061 // Consistent Stats: Minsc -> Use BG2 Values: v5 RC 1 ~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4071 // Consistent Stats: Viconia -> Use BG2 Values: v5 RC 1 ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Initialise mod (all other components require this): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1910 // Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2020 // Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2110 // Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at 1.5 x their level (not twice their level): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3030 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4010 // Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4040 // Make party members less likely to die irreversibly: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4051 // Decrease the rate at which reputation improves -> Reputation increases at about 1/2 the normal rate: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4110 // Allow NPC pairs to separate: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5000 // Ease-of-use party AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5010 // Move Boo into Minsc's pack: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5020 // Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6031 // Smarter Mages -> Mages only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6041 // Smarter Priests -> Priests only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6102 // Potions for NPCs -> Half the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility ~DIFFTWEAK/DIFFTWEAK.TP2~ #0 #5 // Increased Ammo Stacks -> Increase Ammo by 400% ~DIFFTWEAK/DIFFTWEAK.TP2~ #0 #10 // Increased Gem and Jewelry Stacking -> Increase Gem and Jewelry by 200% ~DIFFTWEAK/DIFFTWEAK.TP2~ #0 #17 // Increased Potion Stacking -> Increase Potion by 200% ~DIFFTWEAK/DIFFTWEAK.TP2~ #0 #24 // Increased Scroll Stacking -> Increase Scroll by 200% ~RANDOMISER/RANDOMISER.TP2~ #0 #500 // Randomly replace the WIS tome normally found in TotSC with one of the 6 available types: proto-7 171126 ~RANDOMISER/RANDOMISER.TP2~ #0 #530 // Randomise scrolls: proto-7 171126 ~RANDOMISER/RANDOMISER.TP2~ #0 #570 // Randomise the appearance of cursed items: proto-7 171126 ~RANDOMISER/RANDOMISER.TP2~ #0 #1300 // Randomise items -> Mode 2: Randomise with WeiDU. No items are lost: proto-7 171126 ~SETUP-BP-BGT-WORLDMAP.TP2~ #0 #0 // Worldmap for Baldur's Gate - including colored Baldur's Gate map icons: v10.2.2 // Recently Uninstalled: ~SETUP-BWS_FINAL.TP2~ #0 #0 // Make quick-logged WeiDU-entries visible
SCS, Item Randomiser, and a bunch of very minor NPC and quest mods.
Tilly, Halfling Wizard Slayer, picture from... 3 kingdoms pack? Lost track of where I got this from.
Wrin has Axes and Slings to start, Tilly has Longbow and Longsword.
Shoal is quick to provide level 2, while Melicamp is at least dechicken-fied before dying.
Kiting spiders gives Tilly level 3, for a 3rd point in Longbow, and some wandering around the southwest wilderness gets Wrin level 3 as well.
Zal freaking hurts, but item randomiser drops... some gauntlets. I haven't identified or tried them out yet, but the only thing they can be are cursed or the gauntlets of DEX.
Wizard slayers really, really need levels: Ghost Armor and high DEX from Zordral force us to kite endlessly outside before he runs out of spells since Tilly keeps failing to interrupt his spells.
Finally, Tilly and Korax clean up Mutamin and co. Luckily enough, Mutamin was carrying the Dead Shot, so Tilly gets a weapon upgrade far before the bandit camp.
We'll be moving on to the mines or continue hunting for a couple key items.
I am really annoyed, all the saves that I made today have disappeared. I hope it is nothing to do with installing Avast. If it is I may have to uninstall it.
@Wise_Grimwald I use Avast - I have had no problems with my save games with BG, vanilla or EE.
I decided to update my SCS installation to v2.5 and have a go at a LoB run on that to see what difference it made. I'm using the Chosen One rules from here, i.e. the only items allowed are weapons, green/divine scrolls, potions and miscellaneous magic items used from the inventory or quick slots.
It quickly became apparent that things had changed in v2.5! I was expecting Drizzt to have been fixed, but all enemies now have not only the previous benefits: +5 to THAC0 +12 to levels for the purpose of what spells can affect them +5 to saves +1 to APR 3x + 80 HPs where x is their normal amount (so a xvart with 7 HPs would have 101) but also -11 to AC.
Faced with something like a hobgoblin with -6 AC you need a reasonably tough character to be able to hit without a critical - and you need to hit multiple times to kill it. In addition to making things far tougher for figher types, that's also a problem for arcane ones. Previously summons could be used to bulldoze through opposition, but with it now being so much more difficult to hit things standard summons won't last long enough to do that - and infinite numbers of those are not available.
I expect I'll try a sorcerer at some point (making heavy use of the familiar), but thought I would see how the infinite spirits from the shaman dance would do. Progress is slow and I've died 3 times already, but I think I can see a way to proceed with at least a chance of success.
Incidentally, I should just mention that SoD now seems to be bugged in v2.5 such that the game freezes if you are using a save created in an earlier version. I've got dozens of such characters, so will need to re-roll or recreate them in v2.5 in order to be able to do a full quadrilogy run.
I recreated Shagrat rather than insist on a genuine roll (he's had a few attempts before at this challenge in v2.3). He did the Candlekeep quests to pick up XP - every little helps! Then it was on to Shoal - her greatly improved AC would mean kiting her using missiles would take a very long time. However, she doesn't have a melee weapon so the +4 bonus to hit and damage meant the spirits were still able to kill her reasonably quickly.
Finding Mad Arcand's ring added a further 300 XP before leaving the area.
In Beregost, Marl and Firebead were easy quests. Shagrat also looted the manor house (potions of invisibility will almost certainly be needed at some point) and killed Neera for her gem bag. He then headed north (travelling at times to avoid bandit ambushes) to kill some fishermen and give Tenya back her bowl. He's likely to do a lot of ankheg hunting, so started with the one nearby. That involved taking advantage of the engine mechanic for spirits that only checks once per round whether dance is operational (so long as you don't take any other action to actually break the dance). That allows you to: - summon spirits - pause the game - unselect dance - move - reselect dance without the spirits disappearing. I haven't totally mastered the timing of that yet (and am not sure whether it is possible to get 100% success), but it certainly works nearly all the time if you're careful and only move a short way. Against melee opponents that makes it pretty easy to get summons active before showing yourself. A bit more care is needed with something like ankhegs - corners and obstacles are your friend there.
Of the 3 types of spirits you get initially, the snake is easily the preferred option for Shagrat. It probably does marginally more damage thanks to the occasional poison bite, but the main advantage is it doesn't cause enemies to move. The fox is also pretty good - it can confuse enemies for a round, but it's rare for even a confused enemy to move around. The hound though, which can scare enemies for a round, requires much more attention - you really don't want a scared ankheg to run up next to you before recovering . That sort of situation happened several times in this fight and required movement using the above mechanic. Eventually though the ankheg went down to get Shagrat up to level 4.
One of Shagrat's earlier deaths was in a basilisk ambush, so he went on to Ulgoth's Beard and got a potion of Mirrored Eyes there. His next objective is to get up to level 6, to get access to the improved spirits - though that's not going to be easy in this installation.
When you're travelling around unarmored, with no helmet and taking double damage, ambushes are dangerous . Shagrat had just come to the end of his equipment gathering stage by going to the Valley of the Tombs to get the +2 dagger and another potion of invisibility. Travelling back from there he came across an ambush by some missile-armed skeletons. I thought he had a pretty good chance of surviving that, so didn't use invisibility, but just before he reached the map edge he took 1 more HP than he had available.
I'll return to Shagrat, but first I think I'll see what a sorcerer can do ...
@Corey_Russell Good to know that Avast isn't causing the problems which now seem to have disappeared. I am wondering if there might be a limit to the number of saved games you can have for I deleted a bunch of them and the saves are now working fine. They are working. That's all that matters.
Firehelm swept through the Section HQ defeating all enemies with relative ease until Ajantis overruled Imoen's desire to web Paul Wolfe and use cloudkill before they became hostile. He said that it would be dishonourable.
In my opinion it would have been more honourable to have kept Imoen and Tenya alive!!
Anyway, he did the "Honourable" thing and the party prevailed but will have to raise both Imoen and Tenya as a result of his stubborness.
As a result of Imoen dying, potions of speed and invisibility were used to escape without being ambushed by the Ashikukuru who are a pain in the butt, sometimes literally so as they use backstab as much as possible.
@Grond0: If v2.5 gives -12 AC to all LoB enemies, that's a serious change in gameplay. It makes a solo run seem extremely unrealistic for characters who don't rely on summons or wands to deal damage. Granted, your own summons should also be much harder to hit (right?), but the player will be crippled. Even a fighter would struggle to land hits on all kinds of critters, and I'm not sure how well even a Cavalier or a ranger with Demon as a racial enemy would handle Belhifet. Things might operate similarly for shamans, clerics, and druids (those with long-lasting summons that can stick around long enough to make progress on the enemy with that -12 AC boost in the way), but fighter levels wouldn't be remotely as useful as they were before.
Also, I thought the previous THAC0 bonus was +5, not +12.
Druid Power - Update 5 Protagonist - Corenature, level 5 fighter/level 6 druid (half-elf) Traveling with: 4 other fighter/druids (one being Jaheira), and a totemic druid
The party continues to make progress. I decided I would delay venturing into the Wizards of Thay area. I would want a freedom potion and invis potion to safely trip the traps before engaging the group of strong spiders in that area, but need those for Cloakwood Area 2. Therefore, will come back to that area, once I have opened up access to the city of Baldur's Gate.
So instead we cleared out the zombies at the zombie farm and purchased all the mirror eyes potions the Ulgoth's Beard merchant had.
It's a really good we had auto-pause enemy sighted turned on, as that saved us in a basilisk ambush! The party ran south, but Naturesfury used a potion of mirror eyes and took out that pesky critter.
At Durlag's Tower (surface), the battle horrors succumbed in two rounds (2 shots from MM wand + wand of heavens shot each round) so that went well.
Inside, we got the wisdom tome. Since there was no fighting involved we also freed the trapped nymph at the top of the tower (gave her hair to Roger).
Next up, fighting the basilisks on the roof - though we first had to suffer the stun trap. Eventually we cleared the basilisks with no trouble. What's interesting is Corenature had put protection from fire on Naturesfury and she tripped the trap to get the +2 scimitar for Corenature - even with the protection, she took more than 50% damage! Yikes...
I decided to have Corenature use the wisdom tome, as he is the one character I will have for the whole run.
We ventured into Cloakwood area 1. Fighting here was simple enough. We sided with the druids, but they didn't give any experience for helping them. So looks like it's more advantageous to help Aldeth, as at least he will give you 2000 experience if you successfully help him, as well as the quest he gives you in Baldur's Gate.
We made it to Cloakwood area 2 and saved our session here.
@Grond0: If v2.5 gives -12 AC to all LoB enemies, that's a serious change in gameplay. It makes a solo run seem extremely unrealistic for characters who don't rely on summons or wands to deal damage. Granted, your own summons should also be much harder to hit (right?), but the player will be crippled. Even a fighter would struggle to land hits on all kinds of critters, and I'm not sure how well even a Cavalier or a ranger with Demon as a racial enemy would handle Belhifet. Things might operate similarly for shamans, clerics, and druids (those with long-lasting summons that can stick around long enough to make progress on the enemy with that -12 AC boost in the way), but fighter levels wouldn't be remotely as useful as they were before.
Also, I thought the previous THAC0 bonus was +5, not +12.
Thanks for spotting that slip of the pen - yes bonus to hit is +5, so giving such a large change to defense does radically alter balance - and not in the favor of fighters. I must admit I'm struggling to understand the rationale for the change. I can certainly believe that there was something in original documentation or code suggesting that there should be an improvement in AC as well as other attributes, but -12 seems really extreme. I wonder whether a developer did the same as I did above and replaced an intended adjustment of 5 with the 12 related to levels ... Edit: it should be -11, not -12. An explanation of the source for that is given here.
Your own summons do get the same defensive benefit so you could well see the situation where your summons and enemies are attacking each other, but all require criticals to hit. That slower pace for combat means the duration of summons is far more important than it was previously when a single charge from a wand of monster summoning would comfortably last long enough for most combats.
Fighters could use greater restoration scrolls to help with Belhifet, but I agree that the sort of run and stab tactics with high weapon speed I've used with several fighters are likely to struggle to outpace his regeneration (availability of defensive resources will also be an issue for fighters in a long battle).
- SCS (full prebuffs, full tactical challenges) - Tweak Anthology (unnerfed thac0 table, Weapon Styles for all)
Everything has been easy up to that point, but Slythe and the Ducal Palace are really the stickiest part of the run for a Shadowdancer. That's why I did some quests in the city to garner money and items. I also took the time to kill Marek for his short bow.
For Slythe, I decided to make myself immune to fire through a potion and a scroll, lure him in the upper left corner of the map where there's not a lot people and bomb the place while going hide-and-seek with him. I lured him, but Krystin decided to follow us. So, I ran outside in the sewers, where only Krystin followed me. I parked her here, went invisible and got back in the room with Slythe. The whole strategy was : drop a bomb, run like hell to avoid getting hit and got stealth as soon as possible. In NearInfinity, Slythe's base thac0 is 8. Counting his strength bonus, the enchantment level of his weapon and the potion of strength he usually drink at the start of the fight, his effective thac0 is 0. I'll never have a low enough AC to be really comfortable, specially considering that he can one-shot me on a high damage crit : his maximum possible damage is 86 and I have 80 hp. These are not good numbers.
The first two fireballs went fine, but, since you can't really see where he is because he's always invisible, he found a way to hit me anyway.
He rolled a 19, one point away from a crit. He hit me for 36 hp, when I had 72 hp. If he would have rolled a crit, the run would have been over. But that's also sloppiness from my part : I took a tiny bit of damage on Krystin's Fire Shield Blue, which in return gave a bigger probability to Slythe to outright kill me. I should have healed to full before going back with Slythe. Anyway, Slythe couldn't touch me again and fell to my fireballs.
Next was the Ducal Palace. With Algernon's cloak, I charmed two Greater Doppelgangers, who I thought were the mage and the Shaman, and parked them behind us. The plan was to fling away Dispelling arrows at those bastards to make them more manageable. The fight started and I realized that I didn't charm the right Doppelganger, because the mage fired up his defenses. That's not a good news. The mage went invisible and got away. During that time, the Assassin tagged me for some damage, but nothing too great. After a while, all the Doppelgangers were dispelled. Me and the Fist soldiers slew the first three Dopplegangers while Liia was still alive and Belt uninjured. Very good start.
The mage showed his face soon after. I needed a couple of Dispelling arrows to tag him, but I eventually did and he fell soon after.
I then pressed CTRL-T to trigger the next Doppelganger, a regular one. We slew him really fast. I then CRTL-T 8 more time to trigger the Shaman. A Dispelling arrow and a few arrows of Acid were too much for him.
I thought : "Yeah ! I did it !" Liia was still alive (but badly injured) while Belt was only barely injured. Sarevok went aggro. He went straight to Belt, who he killed in a few hits. I was really nervous, because one hit on Liia was probably enough to kill her... and she was standing right beside him. However, Sarevok targeted a Fist soldier instead. Enough time passed for Winski to appear and teleport Sarevok away.
Phew ! I got out of that jam after all ! I'm not super happy about the execution, because a lot of things could have better : didn't charm the right Doppelganger, didn't fully heal before fighting Slythe, I wasted aura by not exploiting my actions to the fullest in the Palace, ... However, I'm confident that the blueprint devised for these fights, which are by far the more troublesome for a Shadowdancer, is solid enough to be repeatable.
Fryya then went hunting a bit to get more money to stock all that she could before going into the last fight. The last fight went without a problem. I used a prot. from Magic scroll on her and first backstabbed Diarmid to death. All I had to do is run around once a hit was in and wait for the stealth timer to reactivate. Real easy.
Angelo then tried to melee me, but an arrow of Dispelling took his defenses down. He was poisoned (with the dagger of Venom) and killed at range soon after.
To give a chance to the enemy, I tried to activate Tazok and Semaj, but, after hitting Sarevok a few times, they still wouldn't do anything. I said "eff it !" to myself and bombed them from a distance. Hey, they're the one who didn't want to appear ! I was ready for a legit fight !
After that, it was merely a question of time. I was trying to hit Sarevok with an arrow of Dispelling, but Fryya just couldn't land a hit. She must have wasted a good 10 arrows on him. Fed up, Fryya drank a potion of Power and finally landed the dispel on Sarevok.
So, after trying out a shaman in v2.5 (and concluding it was doable, but very time-consuming) I've made some progress with Frey, though he's required quite a bit of luck to survive. However, while writing this I've realised I didn't recreate that character, so if he does make it past Sarevok he will probably hit a big freeze in SoD .
As usual he started with Shoal, who had no defense against the pseudo-dragon familiar.
Heading north, he returned a bowl to Tenya and then decided to have a go at blinding the ankheg while the familiar distracted it. That worked and the familiar was able to melee it - though he took a couple of nasty criticals in the process.
Back south I looked at the prospects for Drizzt and concluded it would be possible to kill him easily enough. The problem for the shaman would be keeping track of his HPs and killing gnolls without ever showing himself. That's not a problem for Frey as Drizzt doesn't react to a familiar. By the time Frey had killed a gnoll, 2 others had broken their weapons and he could just have left the area and come back to reset Drizzt's HPs.
He didn't bother with that though and just watched the gnolls finish Drizzt off.
As Frey is able to use green scrolls he went to collect a bonus PfM from Bentan.
Next he moved on to the basilisk area where the familiar slowly nibbled all the separated basilisks to death.
That meant that Korax could be kept back for the more difficult bits and he successfully paralyzed Mutamin after attacking invisibly.
He also did well to paralyze Kirian and Peter - the other two were blinded and Koraxed in due course as well.
Greywolf proved a problem due to his high HPs and tendency to run all over the place when blinded. That caused Frey to break off the attack and rest before trying again - this time though he ran around webs, while Greywolf kept trying to cut corners to his cost.
Web and blindness were used on many ankhegs and also accounted for Tarnesh.
It wasn't though a viable solution for the spiders in Beregost, so Frey trapped them in place with an invisible familiar before blinding them - that fixed them in place for a few skull traps.
Returning Landrin's goods was enough for level 7.
At Durlag's Tower the battle horrors had no immunity to web. They were fixed in place by an invisible familiar before webs set them up for the high damage done by automatically hitting MMMs.
The combination of MMM with web is vicious, but also requires a lot of care as missiles are constantly running out, prompting a manic melee attack into webs. That got Frey into trouble against a doppleganger. The familiar tried to intervene, but things could easily have gone badly there - fortunately though Frey broke free from the web quickly.
Inside the Tower there was a lot more use of webs to make a bunch of ghasts vulnerable to missiles.
With that lot gone, the familiar had more fun and games with basilisks to pick up an 8th level for Frey.
At the Lighthouse I was expecting the sirines to be troublesome, but they seemed to be moving around a lot less than I remembered and webs proved effective against them as well. I did get into trouble on one occasion there, but more forgivably this time. I'd trapped a sirine against the invisible familiar and webbed it. After it was shown as held I tried blinding it - only for it to go invisible by script while still held. Without a valid target Frey walked towards where it had been and got stuck in the web.
That would have been a painful way to go, but luckily Frey once more broke free quickly while the sirine was still webbed.
The golems couldn't be webbed, but the combination of their poor basic AC and the bonus to MMMs meant Frey only needed a 16 to hit them. He wasn't getting quite enough hits to kill them immediately, but enemies only recover 100 HPs if you rest in their area in LoB and he was able to finish them off after resting.
The Doomsayer in the next area over should have been easier, but once more I was careless about monitoring the numbers of MMMs and walked into a web with it just before it was about to die. Stoneskins absorbed the base damage of one hit, but Frey would still have soon become toast if he hadn't once more escaped quickly.
Getting a lift back to Nashkel was then enough to get his final BG1 level, so he'll probably be moving on to the Nashkel Mine shortly.
Sorcerer L9, 67 HPs (incl. 22 from familiar), 83 kills
Rather like Shagrat, Frey didn't last too much longer after his first update. He did hasten through the Nashkel Mines and web Mulahey and his armies. Webs also sorted out Nimbul and Tranzig before he used an invisibility potion for safety after looting Tazok's tent.
The Cloakwood was bypassed invisibly and Drasus & co left alone for once since Frey can't use items anyway. He made his way down through the mine to Davaeorn and skull trapped him from out of sight a couple of times before a battle horror showed itself. Frey blinded that and was about to web it when a voice spoke from the far distance - despite being well out of sight, Davaeorn had decided this was an appropriate moment to intervene. As Frey was fairly near the entrance, the stinking cloud / web sequencer missed him. However, his aura was clouded by the web spell he'd started, so his only hope seemed to be to try and run upstairs. Davaeorn's guards had arrived immediately though and a volley of arrows almost finished Frey off before he'd gone a couple of paces. Just to be sure though Davaeorn teleported in himself and claimed the kill with a MMM.
Into the Gate of Temptation! Rime the Lavaman gets some nice stat boosts early on, especially in defense and MP, but it will hardly matter; our future GoldGolem won't need the extra bonuses. Fittingly enough, the Gate of Temptation features Momonjas who use LureDance. As I've said before, LureDance is the best disabler in the game, and you can pretty easily dance-lock almost anything for 2 MP a round. Thankfully, very few enemies ever use it, because even our monsters are highly susceptible. The KingCobras are a menace, inflicting poison with PoisonHit and casting Curse. We have Antidote on hand, but not Curseoff, so hopefully we'll avoid getting cursed (being cursed lasts even after the fight is over and drains MP).
We run into a bunch of Mimics once again. StopSpell neutralizes them, and after a few fights, Rime gets a new skill: Biattack! Biattack strikes twice at 75% damage, which sounds like it would deal a total of 50% more damage than normal, but because damage rolls in DWM operate on thresholds, it's entirely possible (in fact, rather common) for Biattack to deal less damage than a normal attack, because the monster's attack stat isn't quite high enough to match the target's defense. Biattack (and especially the upgraded skill, QuadHits, which strikes 4 times at 50% strength) are better suited for critters with very high attack.
We catch a SpikyBoy, a Mommonja, and a KingCobra on the way. Since we put most of the monsters on the farm to sleep, we can spare the room. The Mommonja is a convenient source of the LureDance skill, but it doesn't fit into any good breeding patterns for us.
Deeper in the Gate of Temptation, we discover that KingCobras can also use Beat to instantly slay party members. Rime the Iceman goes down. With our KingLeo gone (we bred him into our Iceman), we no longer have any party members who are 100% immune to Beat. Fortunately, our Hornbeet can bring back our Iceman thanks to its Orc ancestor. We catch a MistyWing, a DarkEye (notable for having the rare skills Radiant and PalsyAir, an area-effect paralysis breath attack), and even catch another Lavaman! Rime and Sky by now have both succumbed to a KingCobra's Curse skill, and they're gradually losing MP as we travel through the wilderness. Worse still, I remember that Curse has a small chance of paralyzing the victim during combat... and if all of your surviving party members are paralyzed, the game is over.
If Orca dies to a Beat spell and Sky and Rime get paralyzed or killed in combat, we could get a game over.
We don't have any MoonHerbs or Laurels, which means we have no items that can cure either curses or paralysis. Also, we keep failing to run into priests who could heal our party. There's only one way to cure our curses:
I set each party member to "Command," which means none of them will use any special skills in combat. I then let Rime gradually take more and more damage until he dies. Death removes all status ailments, so we can bring back Rime and cure him of the curse! I do the same thing for Sky, then use a precious ElfWater to get Sky's MP from zero to maximum. Here we are at the end of the gate. Rime the Iceman has surprisingly excellent stats, rivaling Orca the Hornbeet's, but she suffers from a horribly low HP score, so she's not nearly as resilient as her allies.
Sky, notably, has developed the highest personality type, Hotblood, because I've been steadily giving Sky all three types of orders to maximize her bravery, cunning, and compassion. Orca and Rime aren't quite as smart, so their personalities are both Daring.
Even with our third party member reduced to a crummy Iceman (relatively crummy, anyway; that low HP is a major disadvantage compared to our Hornbeet), we're still in solid shape. Every single party member has HealAll, two have Revive while one has Vivify, and we even have TwinHits and LureDance.
The boss here is a Servant, a rare type of Zombie monster that honestly should be a Material instead (it's a suit of armor, after all). The Servant is a pyromanic destroying a village, and is curiously frustrated when it discovers that you don't share its interests. That's the "temptation" part of the Gate of Temptation. Not very tempting for non-pyromaniacs, but whatevs.
Anyhoo, the Servant comes flanked by a Centasaur and an EvilArmor--which also should be a Material, since it's a suit of armor just like a RogueNite, but EvilArmors are Devils instead for some reason. Since the Servant in this fight is joinable if you feed it enough treats, we start shelling out Sirloins. The fight turns out to be a cakewalk. The enemy has no resistance against LureDance or StopSpell, we have the stats to overwhelm them, and Orca even knows DevilCut, which can deal extra damage to the Centasaur and EvilArmor. Even Radiant works on them! We empty our inventory of meat treats, but the Servant still refuses to join us when the fight is over. Back at GreatTree, we breed a StagBug with a Mommonja for a Gophecada so we can later breed it with Orca for a stronger Hornbeet, a MistyWing with a KingCobra for another Wyvern to breed into our WhipBird, and most importantly, Rime the Iceman with a Lavaman (note that the Iceman has to be the first monster, the "pedigree," for this to work) for a GoldGolem.
GoldGolems look stupid, what with their three-clawed hands on a centaur body, bright purple mane, and dark goggles, but it'll be worth it. Hope the GoldGolem gets all of the lovely skills from our Iceman and therefore our old KingLeo, who was already a brilliant monster. Better still, GoldGolems get a suite of immunities and resistances that render them all but impervious to disablers and spell damage. On top of that, they have incredibly high stats, including the best defense in the game. Metallic Slimes get more defense per level, but GoldGolems don't grow as slowly as a Metaly, Metabble, MetalKing, or GoldSlime, and their HP isn't so terrible.
We enter the Gate of Happiness and Hope's stats begin to skyrocket. We grab a Pixy, an Oniono, and a DeadNite, but we're quickly reaching the point at which we simply don't need any others. Pixies are notable, though, for knowing the TwinHits skill. We even grab a Gigantes from a foreign trainer, though we unfortunately fail to catch a StubBird late in the gate (StubBirds also know TwinHits). Here we are at the end of the gate. Hope's defense is just as high as I expected, and his other stats are also competitive with his elders'. Curiously, our Hornbeet's HP is actually higher than our WhipBird's, even though WhipBirds are supposed to have the best HP in the game! The boss at the Gate of Happiness is a Jamirus, currently preaching to his followers on a stage and offering them meat if they vote for him or whatever. A Jamirus is an extremely hard-to-get Devil monster that really should be a Bird, because it literally is just a bird. Look at it! Why would it be a Devil?
The Jamirus is very dangerous, using Blazemost to deal heavy fire damage and QuadHits to spread around physical damage. But we have LureDance and StopSpell and TwinHits and DevilCut, so... We dance-lock it and stomp it into the ground.
We've got one last gate before tackling S class at the arena. It's time to make our way to the Gate of Judgment.
Druid Power - Update 6 Corenature -half-elf fighter/druid (protagonist)
The party has made into the Cloakwood Mines. Some of you might be wondering, what is like fighting with an all druid party, and what does it let you do? I made a video of my fight with Drassus. Newbie no-reloaders might find useful tips. Hope it's entertaining regardless.
EDIT: The party has defeated Davaeorn and safely made it out of the Cloakwood! We'll need to change our spells around a bit since so many fights will be indoor now...
With my holiday fast disappearing and still nothing of distinction achieved I thought I should have a go with that safe bet - the wild mage . This is the 15th attempt at that, though it's few months since my last go.
As usual nearly all the early work was done by sling with just the odd use of Algernon's Cloak and the occasional slash from the fairy dragon familiar. Levels were gained from: - Shoal
- sirines from Beregost temple
- basilisks in Mutamin's garden
- and more basilisks
All the basilisks were killed with the fairy dragon acting as target, which meant Korax was available for trickier matters. He quickly sorted out Mutamin, which he's almost bound to do. More impressively though, he paralyzed Baerin after he was drawn away by Algernon's Cloak and then did the same to the remaining 3 in Kirian's party.
Most of the sling work was done by standard kiting against enemies that couldn't fight back. Zal is a bit trickier as his darts hurt - but their shorter range means you can attack without retaliation with a bit of care. Doing that gained me another level.
The only consumables used up to this point had been a single charge from Imoen's magic missile wand. That changed at Durlag's Tower though where the wand of frost from Nashkel Mine area and magic missiles dealt with several battle horrors.
I thought I had enough resources for the doom guard as well, but he got lucky - surviving 4 frost blasts, 3 magic missiles, 2 flaming oils and 1 exploding potion. Rather than run away I risked using a scroll of chromatic orb to finish it off (the only spell cast to date other than the initial find familiar).
More basilisks on the roof then got me to level 8.
After picking up the wand of monster summoning from the Valley of the Tombs I used that on Narcillicus and his jellies and some sirines at the Lighthouse. The golems in the cave there were shot down, providing my final BG1 level.
More summoned monsters provided some cash courtesy of ankhegs and Bassilus, enabling me to buy the invisibility ring - the last significant item desired for the time being. I decided not to make use of the friends spell in this run, so funds are a bit shorter than normal.
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Previous updates:
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The extra XP gained in BGEE and SoD meant I started BG2 at level 10. Although that should have made the opening dungeon easier, the fact that horror is now so badly bugged meant the mephits were a real threat. In the elemental plane I was stunned by the steam mephit and lost 50% of HPs before recovering and finishing it off with a drain life. I was more cautious in the portal room and shut the door on the first 2 mephits before using poisoned arrows on the third. That meant that the radiant mephit would have stood no real chance of killing me even if it had been successful with a color spray - which it wasn't.
I got up to level 11 on the second floor and did a bit of vampiric draining on Ulvaryl before exiting the dungeon.
After investing some donations into reputation I restored the Circus before reporting to Gaelan Bayle. I had enough money left to get some magical glasses there to avoid having to pay for future identifications.
The Copper Coronet provided the Tuigan Bow. The extra APR with that is handy in some fights to spread poison more widely around. I then took a route to the Docks via the Graveyard in order to trigger the Suna Seni ambush. They didn't last long after the mage saw his health drain away.
Starting Mae'Var's tasks I went to get a necklace and was rewarded when returning that with another level. I'd also come across Renfeld on the way and sorted out his quest before going after Rayic Gethras. I dodged a couple of his spells using the stairs while PfMW was active, but then got impatient and tried to melee. I hit him a couple of times, inflicting frost damage, while he was casting FoD and he also took at least 2 lots of poison during that, but that didn't stop him completing his spell ...
There are times when I go solo, but actually add imoen just to disable traps and so on. Would that be forbidden? That's the point of annoyance I reached.
By the way, I'm sorry for your character.
Edit : Sorry your Blackguard fell, @Grond0.
Actually, if you buff just outside the cave, she will attack you when you get in. It happened to me once while I was buffing the thac0 on my dagger thrower. As soon as I got in, boom ! Here she was, ready to fight.
Edit : Sorry your Blackguard fell, @Grond0.
That happened to me too.
Sorry that your visit to Amn ended so quickly.
An ambush by Davenport has resulted in Firehelm discovering the location of the Section HQ in Beregost. The battle wasn't hard. Perhaps the Section HQ will be harder.
After doing the Grey Clan quest, Firehelm was extremely wealthy and so bought some wands. He isn't wealthy any more, but shouldn't need to buy any more wands even for SoD.
Now of course he will have to save enough gold to buy a stash of scrolls for whichever mage he chooses for SoD.
Party Stats:
April - level 5 fighter/level 5 druid - 150 kills
Jaheira - level 5 fighter/level 6 druid - 115 kills
Natureswrath - level 5 fighter/level 5 druid - 125 kills
Druidpower - level 7 totemic druid - 63 kills
Corenature - level 5 fighter/level 5 druid - 204 kills
The party has made great progress since last report. We had a fun fighter against Mulahey - he couldn't do much, being hit with insects, miscast magic and also darts of wounding, not to mention Naturesfury's dagger of venom.
We have also dealt with the Bandit Camp. The party has good weapons and is well armored, it isn't easy to hit any party member now that the party has 2 full plates and 2 ankheg armors. We have cleared the harder areas as well, such has sirines, basilisks, and ankhegs. We will eventually go into Durlag's Tower, but only for the wisdom tome, and take out a few baslisks while we are there. The other area is the Wizards of Thay area. Then we will brave the Cloakwood.
While we have had a number of deaths when we are low level, now that we have access to level 3 druid spells and have better armor and more HP, it has been quite a while since we have had one. Will keep at it.
There are items that can't be obtained without a thief or mage to unlock things, but nothing I would describe as particularly important.
My own rules don't allow NPC recruitment, but there's no reason not to recruit Imoen yourself if it makes the game more enjoyable
Clearly which NPCs you choose will depend on the class of your PC, so that makes every game different.
Firehelm has started investigating the Section HQ. Imoen cast invisibility 10' and the party sneaked past Andrea et al before taking out Section fighters one or two at a time.
Before the patch came out, I had started another attempt at the Meatgrinder Challenge (fully randomized party, randomized hp rolls, insane difficulty), so before I create a new modded installation, I want to bring this run to its conclusion - be it victory or be it death. This is the party the dice gave me:
The Bhaalspawn: Sindri, Male Neutral Good Halfling Cleric, *Mace, *Sling
Stats: 10/19/11/18/15/9
A cleric is good to have, and this one has decent stats: Great dexterity and a pip in sling will make him an early contributor to ranged damage. The 18 int is wasted on this character, but 15 wisdom isn't too bad.
Ismene, Female True Neutral Halfling Barbarian, *Dagger, *War Hammer, *Mace, *Single-Weapon Style
Stats: 11/12/13/13/12/15
Very average stats, though an overall useful class (speed bonus for kiting and rage for immunities are both nice things, plus the backstab immunity will increase her chances of survival in SoD). Still, without a stat boosting item, this one will propably have to avoid the frontlines, and the proficiencies aren't great. I will start her off with throwing daggers.
Aino, Female Human Chaotic Evil Fighter, *Katana, *Scimitar, *Longbow, *Two-Handed Weapon Style
Stats: 11/11/16/15/16/13
The saving grace here is the decent constittion and the pip in longbow - otherwise, not the most useful character. Sadly, there are no dual class options available. Still, with ankheg armor and gauntlets of dexterity, a certain level of tankiness could potentially be reached.
Cúchulainn, Male Lawful Good Human Stalker, *Short Sword, *Quarterstaff, *Sling, *Sword and Shield Style, *Two-Weapon Style
Stats: 14/15/14/8/16/9
A character on the verge of greatness - a couple more points in the physical stats woud've made this one very useful, but sadly, the actual bonuses he has aren't worth mentioning. Also needs an intelligence tome to use scrolls/wands etc. The stalker kit might prove interesting if I make it to SoA (this party, as you will see, has no arcane spellcasters, so the stalker haste spell would come in very handy). With the right tomes, this one could be dualed to cleric... but I don't need another cleric.
Mina, Female Neutral Evil Halfling Priest of Talos, *Mace, *Two-Weapon Style
Stats: 13/16/13/13/15/7
Very similiar to my main character - the inevitable second single class divine spellcaster. Useful in BG1, less useful later on. At least this means that I can negate the typical terrible early thac0 of randomized parties with lots of command spells, which will provide me with auto hits.
Melanthios, Male Chaotic Neutral Halfling Swashbuckler, *Quarterstaff, *Two-Weapon Style
Stats: 15/16/16/10/7/12
Well, at least we do get a thief. Swashbuckler is fine by me (if I really need backstabbing, I have a stalker), the pips are a bit of a problem - swashbucklers take a long time to get the proficiencies they need anyway, and having a wasted one doesn't exactly help. Physical stats are good, so that's a positive.
As you can see, we have 4 halflings and 2 humans. A bit unusual, and 4 halflings heavily increased our chances of not getting any arcane spellcasters. However, that's not too rare for randomized parties. My last two meatgrinder groups did have arcane power, but I was lucky on both counts, and both parties were above average, while this one is really the more typical party one will roll up with my randomization system. This also means that I'm used to playing with a party like this, though, so there's certainly a chance of success - but as always with this challenge, one or two hits can easily spell a chunking or a dead bhaalspawn. Let's see.
Early game means: only fight against single opponents or very small groups, and only when command is available. With 6 command spells in total, we are in okay shape and take down the few encounters we have on our way to Nashkel. I can sell Evermemory to gain access to a wand of sleep and the green protection scroll against petrification. The basilisks are our first serious stop - we want some fast levels to get the first proficiency point for everyone, so we can actually hit things with our ranged weapons (going melee is a 100% death sentence for any character in this party until we get a bunch of levels and good equipment). Korax is very helpful:
We didn't get as much experience as we wanted, so we travel to Ulgoth's Beard, commanding down any ankhegs we meet on the way (luckily, the spell has 100% success chance against them). At the Beard, we get ourselves a wand of the heavens and some anti-petrification potions. Durlag's Tower is our next stop, and the wand charges allow us to take down Battle Horrors while Ismene is running away from them:
The greater basilisks on the roof should be easy to defeat - but I make a crucial mistake: Ismene's protection potion runs out while fighting one of the lizards, and she gets petrified. I am able to run away in time and return to save her, though:
With that, we have made it to cleric levels 5, and while two skeletons aren't that impressive, they are enough to distract anyone using mind affecting spells (sirens, bassilus, some adventuring parties, red wizards etc.) - we gain as much experience as possible, though only seeking out high value targets (I'm too lazy to clear out entire maps for this run). Things mostly go rather well - while clearing the western side of the map, we basically take zero hits from our opponents, but when going back for some extended ankheg hunting, I don't re-command an almost dead ankheg, thinking that it will fall before it can use its spit attack. Wrong - and, of course, one ankheg hit always equals an instant death with these settings:
We leave most of the eastern maps alone for now. We are at 4 skeletons now - to get to 5, we need the Ring of Holiness, so we kill Mulahey. The bandits are next (skeletons and wand of sleep make for a good distraction, and for the main tent we have to do some area transition shenanigans as our first assault on the mage fails), and we start exploring the Cloakwood, going all the way to the Iron Mine to obtain boots of speed - The first backstab of our stalker is huge success:
However, we don't feel ready for the mines, their mages and especially the mustard jelly at the very end. Why? Well, we lack that ever important cleric level 7, which will give our skeletons much better stats and, more importantly, magical weapons. Level 7 skeletons with some buffs can do most of the fighting by themselves. So we go for the eastern wilderness areas, skipping those were magical melee weapons would be required (anything involving mustard jellies or skeleton warriors is avoided). We even kill some flesh golems and phase spiders at Durlag's, because we're just not getting enough experience for level 7. In the end, I decide to use a protection from magic scroll on Aino and have her clear out the ice island with her longbow, the gauntlets of dexterity and the belt of the antipode. That does the trick.
Our new skeletons take care of the iron mine and Davaeorn - the party doesn't really need to interfere, we only need to rest on level 1 a couple of times. We make it to the gate and get some nice equipment - Aino is now relatively tanky and can take 3-4 hits from most enemies (and has enough AC to make those hits rather rare). We do a lot of luring to make several battles here easier, such as the ogre magi or the iron throne party (everyone is getting lured downstairs, and they thankfully come in small, easily defeatable groups). With wands of the heavens and skeletons as a distraction, we even manage to clear out Degrodel's House by luring the guardians outside:
It should be mentioned that I managed to kill Lothander after giving him his scroll thanks to a lucky crit (this is actually the first time I even tried this), so this party has two pairs of boots of speed.
At the Candlekeep Crypts, we face no particular problems (Ismene gets hit by a deadly phase spider (10 damage per tick on insane), but manages to drink an antidote in time). We make it back to the city and get to the Ducal Palace event. Strength of One is by now a huge part of our preparations and should increase the damage of not only the slingers in the party, but also the skeletons. We also have arrows of dispelling to get rid of any haste effects on the doppelgangers. However, any potential danger gets minimized when we realize that the patch (which got released about the time we made it to the iron mines) changed Liias script: She now actually uses her spells, including mirror image! ( @Grond0 reported this as well, so this event should be much less dangerous for solo characters now) - overall, a comfortable victory:
Time for some TotSC. With tons of magical ammo in our bags, the werewolves don't pose much of a challenge to our party. Luring all the wolves in the shipwreck outside is a bit risky for the one doing the luring (as stairways can get blocked), but I had invisibility potions at the ready for such a case - luckily, no problems occured, and I was able to get every single group downstairs, into the waiting skeletons, magical arrows and bullets. Loup Garou were taken down with wand of the heaven charges and Ismene using the Werebane Dagger, with skeletons tanking.
Durlag's started off well enough - the warders gave me no trouble (strength of one really increased the damage output of this party), though the dwarven doom guards did - they pretty much only needed a couple of rounds to kill all the skeletons while barely taking a scratch. I was forced to improvise. Melee would've been suicide, they are immune to ranged weapons, and kiting is very risky in these narrow corridors. Wand charges were my only source of damage. I decided to abuse the teleporter wardstone area to the north - teleporting back and forth, always keeping my enemies away, using wand charges as they approached:
The next two levels were far easier - with mass fireball potions and immunity to electricity allowing us to quickly clear the chessboard. The demon knight failed to do much against our skeletons. I was able to trick him into using his dispel magic and his fireball on Aino, who was protected with item-based fire immunity and a greenstone amulet.
We also hit the experience cap after the chessboard fight, but I still wanted to get back to the Beard to finish off Aec'Letec. We started by using six invisibility potions right away to avoid instant death by cult assassin, went to the north and summoned our skeletons, which allowed us to easily take down the first cultist group. The second one had enough fighters with them to deal with our skeletons, but they bunched up while taking down the final summon, which allowed us to get two very effective hold person spells in:
Now, we simply lured the final cultist group outside (Ismene is great for this job, as she's immune to the deadly backstabs one might encounter here) and our way to Aec'Letec was free. Sadly, I had lost some potions of magic shielding in earlier encounters when I had to guarantee some saving throws, so I didn't have enough for my entire party. Still, mirrored eyes potions were available to at least prevent instant death. Otherwise, cloud giant strenght, heroism, invulnerability etc. were all employed. The lack of magic shielding, however, resulted in our stalker getting hit by a hold effect right away. The only way to keep him alive was for Aino to tank Aec'Letec, thus distracting him so he wouldn't finish off his prey:
Meanwhile, the other party members took down all the cultists. I was in danger of losing Aino, so I had her take sip of Durlag's Goblet - that was enough to keep her alive until the hold effect wore off, and the battle was ours:
The party made their way to the Undercity and to Sarevok. I used agility potions and mind focusing to increase ranged damage output and prepared dispelling arrows. While luring the final boss, Angelo spotted Aino, but his only contribution to the fight was a single dispel magic (I was able to position Aino in such a way that no one else got hit by it). Sarevoks haste was dispelled, and so were Semaj's protections:
Strangely enough, Tazok decided to join the fight as well. Maybe Beamdog has changed the scripts for the final battle to make luring only Sarevok and Semaj more difficult? Anyway, Tazok was taken down instantly, and Sarevok soon followed him:
I also managed to clear Korlasz' Crypt, using skeletons and fireballs. A single class cleric is useful here, because it allows me to rest almost for free - the low level skeletons that tend to spawn can be instantly destroyed or at least turned away by Sindri. Korlasz herself didn't stand much of a chance:
Btw, this dungeon still always remains a high tension affair on insane, especially with low hitpoints. Two lifedrain hits by shadowed souls would kill most party members, one backstab would do the same, and of course, getting affected by CC is mostly also instant death - firebombing has to be very quick and efficient, any positioning mistake could be the last. Still, I have a decent amount of experience with this part of the game by now - but I wouldn't say that I feel 100% comfortable.
Next time, we will start with the Coast Way Crossing (and while this post is very long, I'm now caught up to where I'm at in the game). Some additional info on tomes and profiencies:
All wisdom tomes went to Sindri. Ismene got charisma, Aino got constitution, intelligence went to Cúchulainn and so did dexterity, while Melanthios got strength.
Ismene specialized in daggers and war hammers, Aino in longbows - she also got *Quarterstaff, using the staff mace for melee combat. Cúchulainn got a second pip in slings and short swords, Mina got slings and sword and shield style, Sindri war hammer and sword and shield style and Melanthios went for shortbow and scimitar.
"..meant the mephits were a real threat. In the elemental plane I was stunned by the steam mephit and lost 50% of HPs before recovering and finishing it off with a drain life."
For solo characters, I will in fact skip the plane of air if I don't have a safe way to deal with the mephits - note there are two stunners, one short duration and one longer. If I can go invisible past them to complete the genie quest I will do that. Even if your character actually uses two hand swords, you hardly need the Sword of Chaos reward since Lilacor is obtainable so early and Lilacor is better. And if solo, you don't need the exp either since you will hit the level cap before Melissan.
Caesar, dwarf berserker {7} (update 1)
Previous run
I'm on holiday today and had the opportunity to play some more this afternoon. Rather than another one of my long-life characters, I decided to go for one of my special challenges. This no pause challenge can feel like quite hard work, so is well suited to playing when I've not got work on my mind ...
My rules on pausing are:
1) Autopause of any sort not allowed.
2) Pausing using the space bar / clockwork button is not allowed at any time (game ending offence).
3) Pausing to look at inventory / record screen / options is allowed outside combat, but not if any enemies are active (including outside visual range).
4) Pausing for dialogue is allowed, but only for normal conversation.
5) Pausing for map screen is allowed outside combat, but not if any enemies are active (exception: travel can be initiated when running away from enemies, but once map screen is open then travel is required rather than going back to the same area).
6) In addition AI must be disabled to prevent auto-targeting using that (though that's moot for me as I never use AI in any case).
When I first started trying this it was really hard to stop myself pausing, but the previous attempt got to SoD and felt much more in control (although the run did eventually end due to an illegal pause) - and that still seems to be the case after the year or so since my last go at this.
I didn't keep notes as I was playing, but screenshots of the run through BGEE are given below.
Gaining 2 levels by returning a bowl to Tenya.
Drawing a sirine out of Beregost Temple (using Algernon's Cloak) to get to level 4.
Misclicking to give a nobleman his pantaloons back. His complaint about the state of those was rendered reasonable moments later when they were covered with blood ...
Another sirine from Beregost brought up level 5.
Out of interest I wanted to see if I could kill Drizzt early on by activating some gnolls to attack him, but not actually getting into his sight range. The idea was to kill all the gnolls except one that had broken its weapon in order to be able to kill Drizzt while he was unconscious. That all worked perfectly except that I obviously lost track of a few HPs of damage at one point and Drizzt died just before I was about to finish off the last armed gnoll.
Chopping down Greywolf to get to level 6.
Following Korax round the basilisk area to get to level 7 (he eventually died in combat with them and I hastily had to read a PfP scroll to finish them off).
Using a potion of mirrored eyes to kill more basilisks at Durlag's Tower and get to level 8.
Beating up Mulahey.
Cruising through the Bandit Camp.
I could have sworn I timed my screenshot of Davaeorn's death perfectly (using rage and magic blocking), but the computer didn't agree ...
The only point in the run where I was really worried was a basilisk ambush where I had to save once against gaze before running out of sight. The most damage I took in an encounter though was actually Larze.
The Iron Throne struggled to deal with a tough fighter running PfM.
Slythe reminded me to go and kill an ogre to get the belt of piercing before meleeing him.
At the palace the dopplegangers found their way through Liia's defenses, but didn't have time for Belt as well.
At the temple I used invisibility to prompt Sarevok's talk without activating the others. However, Semaj lasted long enough to teleport back towards the dais enough to bring the others forward. Angelo shot Caesar with a couple of exploding arrows before he disappeared using a potion - prompting Angelo to kill Semaj. Angelo just needed a little nudge to finish him off and Tazok was no match for Caesar in melee even unbuffed. A series of potions were then used to prepare for Sarevok, who was also outclassed.
Here's Caesar's character record on arrival in the SoD prologue.
Berserker L8, 108 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 439 kills
Numerous persons beated the whole saga with SCS with solo classes other than mages. That shouldn't be a concern in itself. It does make the game significantly harder and forces you to elaborate better strategies, but it's definitively doable.
Fryya Applesmasher, solo halfling Shadowdancer
First post
Notable mods:
- SCS (full prebuffs, full tactical challenges)
- Tweak Anthology (unnerfed thac0 table, Weapon Styles for all)
Recently, I started a run with an evil Shaman in an highly modded game, with IR/SR, Deities of Faerun, Rogue Rebalancing, etc... Since Deities of Faerun has a sphere system component, it changed drastically the spells a Shaman could have. It was super well designed and not overpowered, it just gave more options to divine casters. It was super cool.
But then, the list @Enuhal posted a while ago about the classes that never finished the saga got me thinking : on the remote chance that I would make to the end, the playthrough would have an asterix aside the run, because the level of modification in my install was very far from the base game. Somehow, I think that some of the meta-knowledge left to be discovered about the game would suffer. Then, I suddenly had the urge of playing a low mod install.
After that, on the list of classes that never finished the game, I choose to go with the Shadowdancer, because it offers a very specific challenge : a thief without traps. That sounds very interesting to me. So, without further random babbling about my train of thoughts while playing this game, I present you Fryya Applesmasher, the halfling Shadowdancer.
Only two gameplay altering mods were used : SCS and Tweak Anthology. SCS for difficulty, obviously, and Tweak Anthology for two things : the unnerfing of the thac0 table of Rogues and the ability to specialized in Weapon Style (mastery for TWF). These changes won't have any effect in BG1/SoD, though. They might in BG2 (if I get there
The plan was to max out Find Traps first and then go all in on HiS and MS. Open Locks would be boosted by potions when necessary. She would invest proficiencies in Short bow, Dagger, Quarterstaff and Dart, for solid options all over. Since I eventually bought Aule's Staff, I was set with a +3 weapon for Belhifet, if I make it into SoD.
Sooo, after having dealt with early small quests, during which she lost quite a bit of reputation by killing Dushai and Algernon for their items, Fryya got ambushed by a bunch of thieves on the road. It's often a big middle finger the game sends you, but not when you're a Shadowdancer.
When Fryya got to level 8, I decided that she was strong enough to deal with Mulahey. With the help of the One Gift Lost, she took care of him easily.
After that, She spotted Nimbul, which she one-shotted with a nice backstab.
While travelling between areas, she was ambushed with a group of amazons. She went invisible on the spot and bombarded them with fireballs from the OGL.
The other ambush group was simply avoided.
In the search for xp to get to level 9, Fryya decided to delve into Durlag's Tower. She killed the Battle Horrors with a combination of hide-and-seek and wand of Magic Missile. After that, she went on the roof to kill Greater Basilisks, where she had a stupidly close call : her last potion of Mirrored Eyes expired before she had the chance to kill the last of the Basiliks. As she ran away, she was hit by the gaze...
The fact that she had to make that save was stupid. Big, big mistake. Nonetheless, the Basilisk was finished by a fireball.
The bandit camp was simply avoided by getting the documents while invisible, because I felt that I was a bit low on resources, so I preferred to open up Cloakwood before going further. I might go back in the camp to slay them bastards muggers later. We'll see.
The peek-a-boo strat was used to dispatched Drasus for his Boots of Speed.
The rest of the band fell soon after.
After that, Fryya went straight to Davaeorn. I thought about using potions of Magic Blocking for the fight, but the short duration of the potions was too dangerous for me. So, Prot. from Magic scroll it was. The Battle Horrors were backstab one after the other.
Since GOG hasn't updated BG1/SoD to v2.5, I was able to poison Davey through Stoneskin with the Venom Dagger until he died. Woohoo.
And I was also able to find out that Mustard Gelly do indeed got backs !
After all this, Fryya is now chilling in Baldur's Gate, after having bought a few things (and got a dex tome). She will probably do a few quests in the city to get a bit of xp, but more importantly some cash : she still has a few things she'd like to buy before going further. Also, I'll have to devise a plan to get through tougher encounters like Ducal Palace. That's a place where I feel the lack of traps can bite my rear end.
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~SETUP-WEIDU.TP2~ #0 #0 // 24600
~DLCMERGER/SETUP-DLCMERGER.TP2~ #0 #1 // Merge DLC into game -> "Siege of Dragonspear" DLC: 1.2
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Slime Quest: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #1 // Beregost Family Quest: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #2 // Babysitting Quest, including the Carnival Encounter...: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #3 // Nashkel Monster Quest: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #4 // Fallen Paladin Quest: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #5 // Undying Love Quest: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #6 // Lovesick Half-Orc: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #7 // Unexpected Help Quest: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #8 // Many Little Paws: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #9 // Drunk near Beregost Temple: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #10 // A Warm Place for Noober: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #11 // Brage's Sword: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #12 // Legal Seachart Sources: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #13 // Additions to the House of the Lady and the Bitch Queen's Temple: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #14 // A Worried Farmer: v18
~BGQE/SETUP-BGQE.TP2~ #0 #15 // Bodies for a Good Cause: v18
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #0 // The BG1 NPC Project: Required Modifications: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #1 // The BG1 NPC Project: Banters, Quests, and Interjections: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #16 // The BG1 NPC Project: NPCs can be sent to wait in an inn: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #18 // The BG1 NPC Project: Alora's Starting Location -> Alora Starts in Gullykin: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #20 // The BG1 NPC Project: Eldoth's Starting Location -> Eldoth Starts on the Coast Way: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #22 // The BG1 NPC Project: Quayle's Starting Location -> Quayle Starts at the Nashkel Carnival: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #24 // The BG1 NPC Project: Tiax's Starting Location -> Tiax Starts in Beregost: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #26 // BGEE Banter Timing Tweak: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #28 // The BG1 NPC Project: Bardic Reputation Adjustment: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #31 // The BG1 NPC Project: Sarevok's Diary Adjustments -> SixofSpades Extended Sarevok's Diary: v23.3
~BG1NPC/BG1NPC.TP2~ #0 #200 // The BG1 NPC Project: Player-Initiated Dialogues: v23.3
~NEERABANTERS/NEERABANTERS.TP2~ #0 #10 // Neera Banters: Dialogue Banters and Interjections: v0.9.1
~NEERABANTERS/NEERABANTERS.TP2~ #0 #20 // Neera Banters: Interaction Banters: v0.9.1
~NEERABANTERS/NEERABANTERS.TP2~ #0 #30 // Neera Banters: DLC Portrait: v0.9.1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #60 // Weapon Animation Tweaks: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #110 // Icon Improvements: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #130 // Force All Dialogue to Pause Game: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #140 // Fix Boo's Squeak: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #182 // Unique Containers -> Unique icons and names: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1010 // More Interjections: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1070 // Improved Multi-Player Kick-out Dialogues: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1080 // Add Bags of Holding: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1120 // Stores Sell Higher Stacks of Items: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2040 // Universal Clubs: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Wear Multiple Protection Items -> P&P Restrictions: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2192 // Limit Ability of Storekeepers to Identify Items -> Hybrid of Both Methods: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2320 // Trap Cap Removal (Ardanis/GeN1e): v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2330 // Remove Delay for Magical Traps (Ardanis/GeN1e): v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3050 // Remove fatigue from restoration spells: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3060 // Remove "You Must Gather Your Party..." Sound (Weimer): v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3070 // Change Effect of Reputation on Store Prices -> Low Reputation Store Discount (Sabre): v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3125 // Neutral Characters Make Happy Comments at Mid-Range Reputation: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3200 // Sellable Items (Icelus): v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3205 // Stores Purchase All Item Types: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3293 // Personalize automatic save names -> Use scheme: 000000000-(Protagonist) Save-Name: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4031 // Consistent Stats: Edwin -> Use BG2 Values: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4041 // Consistent Stats: Jaheira -> Use BG2 Values: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4050 // Change Jaheira to Neutral Good: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4061 // Consistent Stats: Minsc -> Use BG2 Values: v5 RC 1
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #4071 // Consistent Stats: Viconia -> Use BG2 Values: v5 RC 1
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Initialise mod (all other components require this): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1910 // Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2020 // Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2110 // Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at 1.5 x their level (not twice their level): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3030 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4010 // Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4040 // Make party members less likely to die irreversibly: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4051 // Decrease the rate at which reputation improves -> Reputation increases at about 1/2 the normal rate: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4110 // Allow NPC pairs to separate: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5000 // Ease-of-use party AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5010 // Move Boo into Minsc's pack: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5020 // Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6031 // Smarter Mages -> Mages only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6041 // Smarter Priests -> Priests only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6102 // Potions for NPCs -> Half the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~DIFFTWEAK/DIFFTWEAK.TP2~ #0 #5 // Increased Ammo Stacks -> Increase Ammo by 400%
~DIFFTWEAK/DIFFTWEAK.TP2~ #0 #10 // Increased Gem and Jewelry Stacking -> Increase Gem and Jewelry by 200%
~DIFFTWEAK/DIFFTWEAK.TP2~ #0 #17 // Increased Potion Stacking -> Increase Potion by 200%
~DIFFTWEAK/DIFFTWEAK.TP2~ #0 #24 // Increased Scroll Stacking -> Increase Scroll by 200%
~RANDOMISER/RANDOMISER.TP2~ #0 #500 // Randomly replace the WIS tome normally found in TotSC with one of the 6 available types: proto-7 171126
~RANDOMISER/RANDOMISER.TP2~ #0 #530 // Randomise scrolls: proto-7 171126
~RANDOMISER/RANDOMISER.TP2~ #0 #570 // Randomise the appearance of cursed items: proto-7 171126
~RANDOMISER/RANDOMISER.TP2~ #0 #1300 // Randomise items -> Mode 2: Randomise with WeiDU. No items are lost: proto-7 171126
~SETUP-BP-BGT-WORLDMAP.TP2~ #0 #0 // Worldmap for Baldur's Gate - including colored Baldur's Gate map icons: v10.2.2
// Recently Uninstalled: ~SETUP-BWS_FINAL.TP2~ #0 #0 // Make quick-logged WeiDU-entries visible
SCS, Item Randomiser, and a bunch of very minor NPC and quest mods.
Wrin, Half-orc Shaman, picture from thatDMan on Deviantart
Tilly, Halfling Wizard Slayer, picture from... 3 kingdoms pack? Lost track of where I got this from.
Wrin has Axes and Slings to start, Tilly has Longbow and Longsword.
Shoal is quick to provide level 2, while Melicamp is at least dechicken-fied before dying.
Kiting spiders gives Tilly level 3, for a 3rd point in Longbow, and some wandering around the southwest wilderness gets Wrin level 3 as well.
Zal freaking hurts, but item randomiser drops... some gauntlets. I haven't identified or tried them out yet, but the only thing they can be are cursed or the gauntlets of DEX.
Wizard slayers really, really need levels: Ghost Armor and high DEX from Zordral force us to kite endlessly outside before he runs out of spells since Tilly keeps failing to interrupt his spells.
Finally, Tilly and Korax clean up Mutamin and co. Luckily enough, Mutamin was carrying the Dead Shot, so Tilly gets a weapon upgrade far before the bandit camp.
We'll be moving on to the mines or continue hunting for a couple key items.
I decided to update my SCS installation to v2.5 and have a go at a LoB run on that to see what difference it made. I'm using the Chosen One rules from here, i.e. the only items allowed are weapons, green/divine scrolls, potions and miscellaneous magic items used from the inventory or quick slots.
It quickly became apparent that things had changed in v2.5! I was expecting Drizzt to have been fixed, but all enemies now have not only the previous benefits:
+5 to THAC0
+12 to levels for the purpose of what spells can affect them
+5 to saves
+1 to APR
3x + 80 HPs where x is their normal amount (so a xvart with 7 HPs would have 101)
but also -11 to AC.
Faced with something like a hobgoblin with -6 AC you need a reasonably tough character to be able to hit without a critical - and you need to hit multiple times to kill it. In addition to making things far tougher for figher types, that's also a problem for arcane ones. Previously summons could be used to bulldoze through opposition, but with it now being so much more difficult to hit things standard summons won't last long enough to do that - and infinite numbers of those are not available.
I expect I'll try a sorcerer at some point (making heavy use of the familiar), but thought I would see how the infinite spirits from the shaman dance would do. Progress is slow and I've died 3 times already, but I think I can see a way to proceed with at least a chance of success.
Incidentally, I should just mention that SoD now seems to be bugged in v2.5 such that the game freezes if you are using a save created in an earlier version. I've got dozens of such characters, so will need to re-roll or recreate them in v2.5 in order to be able to do a full quadrilogy run.
I recreated Shagrat rather than insist on a genuine roll (he's had a few attempts before at this challenge in v2.3). He did the Candlekeep quests to pick up XP - every little helps! Then it was on to Shoal - her greatly improved AC would mean kiting her using missiles would take a very long time. However, she doesn't have a melee weapon so the +4 bonus to hit and damage meant the spirits were still able to kill her reasonably quickly.
In Beregost, Marl and Firebead were easy quests. Shagrat also looted the manor house (potions of invisibility will almost certainly be needed at some point) and killed Neera for her gem bag. He then headed north (travelling at times to avoid bandit ambushes) to kill some fishermen and give Tenya back her bowl. He's likely to do a lot of ankheg hunting, so started with the one nearby. That involved taking advantage of the engine mechanic for spirits that only checks once per round whether dance is operational (so long as you don't take any other action to actually break the dance). That allows you to:
- summon spirits
- pause the game
- unselect dance
- move
- reselect dance
without the spirits disappearing. I haven't totally mastered the timing of that yet (and am not sure whether it is possible to get 100% success), but it certainly works nearly all the time if you're careful and only move a short way. Against melee opponents that makes it pretty easy to get summons active before showing yourself. A bit more care is needed with something like ankhegs - corners and obstacles are your friend there.
Of the 3 types of spirits you get initially, the snake is easily the preferred option for Shagrat. It probably does marginally more damage thanks to the occasional poison bite, but the main advantage is it doesn't cause enemies to move. The fox is also pretty good - it can confuse enemies for a round, but it's rare for even a confused enemy to move around. The hound though, which can scare enemies for a round, requires much more attention - you really don't want a scared ankheg to run up next to you before recovering
One of Shagrat's earlier deaths was in a basilisk ambush, so he went on to Ulgoth's Beard and got a potion of Mirrored Eyes there. His next objective is to get up to level 6, to get access to the improved spirits - though that's not going to be easy in this installation.
Shaman L4, 35 HPs, 3 kills
When you're travelling around unarmored, with no helmet and taking double damage, ambushes are dangerous
I'll return to Shagrat, but first I think I'll see what a sorcerer can do ...
@Corey_Russell Good to know that Avast isn't causing the problems which now seem to have disappeared. I am wondering if there might be a limit to the number of saved games you can have for I deleted a bunch of them and the saves are now working fine. They are working. That's all that matters.
Firehelm swept through the Section HQ defeating all enemies with relative ease until Ajantis overruled Imoen's desire to web Paul Wolfe and use cloudkill before they became hostile. He said that it would be dishonourable.
In my opinion it would have been more honourable to have kept Imoen and Tenya alive!!
Anyway, he did the "Honourable" thing and the party prevailed but will have to raise both Imoen and Tenya as a result of his stubborness.
As a result of Imoen dying, potions of speed and invisibility were used to escape without being ambushed by the Ashikukuru who are a pain in the butt, sometimes literally so as they use backstab as much as possible.
Now it is back to either Durlags or the Gate.
Also, I thought the previous THAC0 bonus was +5, not +12.
Protagonist - Corenature, level 5 fighter/level 6 druid (half-elf)
Traveling with: 4 other fighter/druids (one being Jaheira), and a totemic druid
The party continues to make progress. I decided I would delay venturing into the Wizards of Thay area. I would want a freedom potion and invis potion to safely trip the traps before engaging the group of strong spiders in that area, but need those for Cloakwood Area 2. Therefore, will come back to that area, once I have opened up access to the city of Baldur's Gate.
So instead we cleared out the zombies at the zombie farm and purchased all the mirror eyes potions the Ulgoth's Beard merchant had.
It's a really good we had auto-pause enemy sighted turned on, as that saved us in a basilisk ambush! The party ran south, but Naturesfury used a potion of mirror eyes and took out that pesky critter.
At Durlag's Tower (surface), the battle horrors succumbed in two rounds (2 shots from MM wand + wand of heavens shot each round) so that went well.
Inside, we got the wisdom tome. Since there was no fighting involved we also freed the trapped nymph at the top of the tower (gave her hair to Roger).
Next up, fighting the basilisks on the roof - though we first had to suffer the stun trap. Eventually we cleared the basilisks with no trouble. What's interesting is Corenature had put protection from fire on Naturesfury and she tripped the trap to get the +2 scimitar for Corenature - even with the protection, she took more than 50% damage! Yikes...
I decided to have Corenature use the wisdom tome, as he is the one character I will have for the whole run.
We ventured into Cloakwood area 1. Fighting here was simple enough. We sided with the druids, but they didn't give any experience for helping them. So looks like it's more advantageous to help Aldeth, as at least he will give you 2000 experience if you successfully help him, as well as the quest he gives you in Baldur's Gate.
We made it to Cloakwood area 2 and saved our session here.
Edit: it should be -11, not -12. An explanation of the source for that is given here.
Your own summons do get the same defensive benefit so you could well see the situation where your summons and enemies are attacking each other, but all require criticals to hit. That slower pace for combat means the duration of summons is far more important than it was previously when a single charge from a wand of monster summoning would comfortably last long enough for most combats.
Fighters could use greater restoration scrolls to help with Belhifet, but I agree that the sort of run and stab tactics with high weapon speed I've used with several fighters are likely to struggle to outpace his regeneration (availability of defensive resources will also be an issue for fighters in a long battle).
Fryya Applesmasher, solo halfling Shadowdancer
BG1 posts : 1, 2
Notable mods:
- SCS (full prebuffs, full tactical challenges)
- Tweak Anthology (unnerfed thac0 table, Weapon Styles for all)
Everything has been easy up to that point, but Slythe and the Ducal Palace are really the stickiest part of the run for a Shadowdancer. That's why I did some quests in the city to garner money and items. I also took the time to kill Marek for his short bow.
For Slythe, I decided to make myself immune to fire through a potion and a scroll, lure him in the upper left corner of the map where there's not a lot people and bomb the place while going hide-and-seek with him. I lured him, but Krystin decided to follow us. So, I ran outside in the sewers, where only Krystin followed me. I parked her here, went invisible and got back in the room with Slythe. The whole strategy was : drop a bomb, run like hell to avoid getting hit and got stealth as soon as possible. In NearInfinity, Slythe's base thac0 is 8. Counting his strength bonus, the enchantment level of his weapon and the potion of strength he usually drink at the start of the fight, his effective thac0 is 0. I'll never have a low enough AC to be really comfortable, specially considering that he can one-shot me on a high damage crit : his maximum possible damage is 86 and I have 80 hp. These are not good numbers.
The first two fireballs went fine, but, since you can't really see where he is because he's always invisible, he found a way to hit me anyway.
He rolled a 19, one point away from a crit. He hit me for 36 hp, when I had 72 hp. If he would have rolled a crit, the run would have been over. But that's also sloppiness from my part : I took a tiny bit of damage on Krystin's Fire Shield Blue, which in return gave a bigger probability to Slythe to outright kill me. I should have healed to full before going back with Slythe. Anyway, Slythe couldn't touch me again and fell to my fireballs.
Next was the Ducal Palace. With Algernon's cloak, I charmed two Greater Doppelgangers, who I thought were the mage and the Shaman, and parked them behind us. The plan was to fling away Dispelling arrows at those bastards to make them more manageable. The fight started and I realized that I didn't charm the right Doppelganger, because the mage fired up his defenses. That's not a good news. The mage went invisible and got away. During that time, the Assassin tagged me for some damage, but nothing too great. After a while, all the Doppelgangers were dispelled. Me and the Fist soldiers slew the first three Dopplegangers while Liia was still alive and Belt uninjured. Very good start.
The mage showed his face soon after. I needed a couple of Dispelling arrows to tag him, but I eventually did and he fell soon after.
I then pressed CTRL-T to trigger the next Doppelganger, a regular one. We slew him really fast. I then CRTL-T 8 more time to trigger the Shaman. A Dispelling arrow and a few arrows of Acid were too much for him.
I thought : "Yeah ! I did it !" Liia was still alive (but badly injured) while Belt was only barely injured. Sarevok went aggro. He went straight to Belt, who he killed in a few hits. I was really nervous, because one hit on Liia was probably enough to kill her... and she was standing right beside him. However, Sarevok targeted a Fist soldier instead. Enough time passed for Winski to appear and teleport Sarevok away.
Phew ! I got out of that jam after all ! I'm not super happy about the execution, because a lot of things could have better : didn't charm the right Doppelganger, didn't fully heal before fighting Slythe, I wasted aura by not exploiting my actions to the fullest in the Palace, ... However, I'm confident that the blueprint devised for these fights, which are by far the more troublesome for a Shadowdancer, is solid enough to be repeatable.
Fryya then went hunting a bit to get more money to stock all that she could before going into the last fight. The last fight went without a problem. I used a prot. from Magic scroll on her and first backstabbed Diarmid to death. All I had to do is run around once a hit was in and wait for the stealth timer to reactivate. Real easy.
Angelo then tried to melee me, but an arrow of Dispelling took his defenses down. He was poisoned (with the dagger of Venom) and killed at range soon after.
To give a chance to the enemy, I tried to activate Tazok and Semaj, but, after hitting Sarevok a few times, they still wouldn't do anything. I said "eff it !" to myself and bombed them from a distance. Hey, they're the one who didn't want to appear ! I was ready for a legit fight !
After that, it was merely a question of time. I was trying to hit Sarevok with an arrow of Dispelling, but Fryya just couldn't land a hit. She must have wasted a good 10 arrows on him. Fed up, Fryya drank a potion of Power and finally landed the dispel on Sarevok.
A couple of backstab later, Sarevok was no more.
Next up, the Siege...
So, after trying out a shaman in v2.5 (and concluding it was doable, but very time-consuming) I've made some progress with Frey, though he's required quite a bit of luck to survive. However, while writing this I've realised I didn't recreate that character, so if he does make it past Sarevok he will probably hit a big freeze in SoD
As usual he started with Shoal, who had no defense against the pseudo-dragon familiar.
Back south I looked at the prospects for Drizzt and concluded it would be possible to kill him easily enough. The problem for the shaman would be keeping track of his HPs and killing gnolls without ever showing himself. That's not a problem for Frey as Drizzt doesn't react to a familiar. By the time Frey had killed a gnoll, 2 others had broken their weapons and he could just have left the area and come back to reset Drizzt's HPs.
As Frey is able to use green scrolls he went to collect a bonus PfM from Bentan.
Greywolf proved a problem due to his high HPs and tendency to run all over the place when blinded. That caused Frey to break off the attack and rest before trying again - this time though he ran around webs, while Greywolf kept trying to cut corners to his cost.
At Durlag's Tower the battle horrors had no immunity to web. They were fixed in place by an invisible familiar before webs set them up for the high damage done by automatically hitting MMMs.
At the Lighthouse I was expecting the sirines to be troublesome, but they seemed to be moving around a lot less than I remembered and webs proved effective against them as well. I did get into trouble on one occasion there, but more forgivably this time. I'd trapped a sirine against the invisible familiar and webbed it. After it was shown as held I tried blinding it - only for it to go invisible by script while still held. Without a valid target Frey walked towards where it had been and got stuck in the web.
The golems couldn't be webbed, but the combination of their poor basic AC and the bonus to MMMs meant Frey only needed a 16 to hit them. He wasn't getting quite enough hits to kill them immediately, but enemies only recover 100 HPs if you rest in their area in LoB and he was able to finish them off after resting.
The Doomsayer in the next area over should have been easier, but once more I was careless about monitoring the numbers of MMMs and walked into a web with it just before it was about to die. Stoneskins absorbed the base damage of one hit, but Frey would still have soon become toast if he hadn't once more escaped quickly.
Sorcerer L9, 67 HPs (incl. 22 from familiar), 83 kills
Rather like Shagrat, Frey didn't last too much longer after his first update. He did hasten through the Nashkel Mines and web Mulahey and his armies. Webs also sorted out Nimbul and Tranzig before he used an invisibility potion for safety after looting Tazok's tent.
The Cloakwood was bypassed invisibly and Drasus & co left alone for once since Frey can't use items anyway. He made his way down through the mine to Davaeorn and skull trapped him from out of sight a couple of times before a battle horror showed itself. Frey blinded that and was about to web it when a voice spoke from the far distance - despite being well out of sight, Davaeorn had decided this was an appropriate moment to intervene. As Frey was fairly near the entrance, the stinking cloud / web sequencer missed him. However, his aura was clouded by the web spell he'd started, so his only hope seemed to be to try and run upstairs. Davaeorn's guards had arrived immediately though and a volley of arrows almost finished Frey off before he'd gone a couple of paces. Just to be sure though Davaeorn teleported in himself and claimed the kill with a MMM.
semi: No-Reload Dragon Warrior Monsters Run
Part 11
Into the Gate of Temptation! Rime the Lavaman gets some nice stat boosts early on, especially in defense and MP, but it will hardly matter; our future GoldGolem won't need the extra bonuses. Fittingly enough, the Gate of Temptation features Momonjas who use LureDance. As I've said before, LureDance is the best disabler in the game, and you can pretty easily dance-lock almost anything for 2 MP a round. Thankfully, very few enemies ever use it, because even our monsters are highly susceptible.The KingCobras are a menace, inflicting poison with PoisonHit and casting Curse. We have Antidote on hand, but not Curseoff, so hopefully we'll avoid getting cursed (being cursed lasts even after the fight is over and drains MP).
We run into a bunch of Mimics once again. StopSpell neutralizes them, and after a few fights, Rime gets a new skill: Biattack!
Biattack strikes twice at 75% damage, which sounds like it would deal a total of 50% more damage than normal, but because damage rolls in DWM operate on thresholds, it's entirely possible (in fact, rather common) for Biattack to deal less damage than a normal attack, because the monster's attack stat isn't quite high enough to match the target's defense. Biattack (and especially the upgraded skill, QuadHits, which strikes 4 times at 50% strength) are better suited for critters with very high attack.
We catch a SpikyBoy, a Mommonja, and a KingCobra on the way. Since we put most of the monsters on the farm to sleep, we can spare the room.
The Mommonja is a convenient source of the LureDance skill, but it doesn't fit into any good breeding patterns for us.
Deeper in the Gate of Temptation, we discover that KingCobras can also use Beat to instantly slay party members. Rime the Iceman goes down. With our KingLeo gone (we bred him into our Iceman), we no longer have any party members who are 100% immune to Beat. Fortunately, our Hornbeet can bring back our Iceman thanks to its Orc ancestor.
We catch a MistyWing, a DarkEye (notable for having the rare skills Radiant and PalsyAir, an area-effect paralysis breath attack), and even catch another Lavaman!
Rime and Sky by now have both succumbed to a KingCobra's Curse skill, and they're gradually losing MP as we travel through the wilderness. Worse still, I remember that Curse has a small chance of paralyzing the victim during combat... and if all of your surviving party members are paralyzed, the game is over.
If Orca dies to a Beat spell and Sky and Rime get paralyzed or killed in combat, we could get a game over.
We don't have any MoonHerbs or Laurels, which means we have no items that can cure either curses or paralysis. Also, we keep failing to run into priests who could heal our party. There's only one way to cure our curses:
I set each party member to "Command," which means none of them will use any special skills in combat. I then let Rime gradually take more and more damage until he dies. Death removes all status ailments, so we can bring back Rime and cure him of the curse!
I do the same thing for Sky, then use a precious ElfWater to get Sky's MP from zero to maximum. Here we are at the end of the gate.
Rime the Iceman has surprisingly excellent stats, rivaling Orca the Hornbeet's, but she suffers from a horribly low HP score, so she's not nearly as resilient as her allies.
Sky, notably, has developed the highest personality type, Hotblood, because I've been steadily giving Sky all three types of orders to maximize her bravery, cunning, and compassion.
Orca and Rime aren't quite as smart, so their personalities are both Daring.
Even with our third party member reduced to a crummy Iceman (relatively crummy, anyway; that low HP is a major disadvantage compared to our Hornbeet), we're still in solid shape. Every single party member has HealAll, two have Revive while one has Vivify, and we even have TwinHits and LureDance.
The boss here is a Servant, a rare type of Zombie monster that honestly should be a Material instead (it's a suit of armor, after all). The Servant is a pyromanic destroying a village, and is curiously frustrated when it discovers that you don't share its interests.
That's the "temptation" part of the Gate of Temptation. Not very tempting for non-pyromaniacs, but whatevs.
Anyhoo, the Servant comes flanked by a Centasaur and an EvilArmor--which also should be a Material, since it's a suit of armor just like a RogueNite, but EvilArmors are Devils instead for some reason. Since the Servant in this fight is joinable if you feed it enough treats, we start shelling out Sirloins.
The fight turns out to be a cakewalk. The enemy has no resistance against LureDance or StopSpell, we have the stats to overwhelm them, and Orca even knows DevilCut, which can deal extra damage to the Centasaur and EvilArmor. Even Radiant works on them!
We empty our inventory of meat treats, but the Servant still refuses to join us when the fight is over.
Back at GreatTree, we breed a StagBug with a Mommonja for a Gophecada so we can later breed it with Orca for a stronger Hornbeet, a MistyWing with a KingCobra for another Wyvern to breed into our WhipBird, and most importantly, Rime the Iceman with a Lavaman (note that the Iceman has to be the first monster, the "pedigree," for this to work) for a GoldGolem.
GoldGolems look stupid, what with their three-clawed hands on a centaur body, bright purple mane, and dark goggles, but it'll be worth it.
Hope the GoldGolem gets all of the lovely skills from our Iceman and therefore our old KingLeo, who was already a brilliant monster. Better still, GoldGolems get a suite of immunities and resistances that render them all but impervious to disablers and spell damage. On top of that, they have incredibly high stats, including the best defense in the game. Metallic Slimes get more defense per level, but GoldGolems don't grow as slowly as a Metaly, Metabble, MetalKing, or GoldSlime, and their HP isn't so terrible.
We enter the Gate of Happiness and Hope's stats begin to skyrocket.
We grab a Pixy, an Oniono, and a DeadNite, but we're quickly reaching the point at which we simply don't need any others.
Pixies are notable, though, for knowing the TwinHits skill. We even grab a Gigantes from a foreign trainer, though we unfortunately fail to catch a StubBird late in the gate (StubBirds also know TwinHits).
Here we are at the end of the gate. Hope's defense is just as high as I expected, and his other stats are also competitive with his elders'. Curiously, our Hornbeet's HP is actually higher than our WhipBird's, even though WhipBirds are supposed to have the best HP in the game!
The boss at the Gate of Happiness is a Jamirus, currently preaching to his followers on a stage and offering them meat if they vote for him or whatever.
A Jamirus is an extremely hard-to-get Devil monster that really should be a Bird, because it literally is just a bird. Look at it!
Why would it be a Devil?
The Jamirus is very dangerous, using Blazemost to deal heavy fire damage and QuadHits to spread around physical damage. But we have LureDance and StopSpell and TwinHits and DevilCut, so...
We dance-lock it and stomp it into the ground.
We've got one last gate before tackling S class at the arena. It's time to make our way to the Gate of Judgment.
Corenature -half-elf fighter/druid (protagonist)
The party has made into the Cloakwood Mines. Some of you might be wondering, what is like fighting with an all druid party, and what does it let you do? I made a video of my fight with Drassus. Newbie no-reloaders might find useful tips. Hope it's entertaining regardless.
https://youtu.be/JCvVT4RtmTs
EDIT: The party has defeated Davaeorn and safely made it out of the Cloakwood! We'll need to change our spells around a bit since so many fights will be indoor now...
With my holiday fast disappearing and still nothing of distinction achieved I thought I should have a go with that safe bet - the wild mage
As usual nearly all the early work was done by sling with just the odd use of Algernon's Cloak and the occasional slash from the fairy dragon familiar. Levels were gained from:
- Shoal
All the basilisks were killed with the fairy dragon acting as target, which meant Korax was available for trickier matters. He quickly sorted out Mutamin, which he's almost bound to do. More impressively though, he paralyzed Baerin after he was drawn away by Algernon's Cloak and then did the same to the remaining 3 in Kirian's party.
Most of the sling work was done by standard kiting against enemies that couldn't fight back. Zal is a bit trickier as his darts hurt - but their shorter range means you can attack without retaliation with a bit of care. Doing that gained me another level.
The only consumables used up to this point had been a single charge from Imoen's magic missile wand. That changed at Durlag's Tower though where the wand of frost from Nashkel Mine area and magic missiles dealt with several battle horrors.
After picking up the wand of monster summoning from the Valley of the Tombs I used that on Narcillicus and his jellies and some sirines at the Lighthouse. The golems in the cave there were shot down, providing my final BG1 level.
More summoned monsters provided some cash courtesy of ankhegs and Bassilus, enabling me to buy the invisibility ring - the last significant item desired for the time being. I decided not to make use of the friends spell in this run, so funds are a bit shorter than normal.
Wild mage 9, 55 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 135 kills