At the Forest of Wyrms lightning rapidly cleared some wyverns from the path.
The spider cave is another thing I don't now bother with solo, but the spiders there were no problem - and nor were the beetles that succeeded them.
Leaving Morentherene for now the druids hacked through various bugbears - they mainly use normal weapons, so can't touch totemic summons. Inside the main temple they killed Ziatar's guards before attacking the half-dragon - he was scared by insects and didn't get a chance to recover.
I attempted to burn down the Neothelid, but it got lucky with magic resistance - that wasn't sufficient to save it for long though.
The shadow Aspect got a horror away, but was never likely to last long against a pride of lions.
For Darskhelin's group, all the druids cast insect plague at a lion.
London used the boots of speed to race ahead of the insects to open the door and move the lion inside to get the insects to cover all the enemies.
Darskhelin dominated a couple of them, but that was a minor inconvenience - their THAC0 isn't good enough to hit much standing in melee range.
Just for a change I used the invisible blocker tactic beloved of mages to deal with the aerial servants (which only have a range 1 attack) before sorting out Akanna.
On the way out everyone equipped some daggers just in case they got lucky - and look what happened with the very first shot .
After compensating for the brutal slaying of Morentherene by saving a young green dragon from some hill giants, the druids moved on to Boareskyr Bridge. As they're still not even half-way to the XP cap they decided to fight here rather than surrender the fort. First though they cleared the exterior area - using a few fireballs just to speed things up.
They made armor out of the dragon scales (normally I prefer the shield, but druids can't use that, while the dragon armor is better than studded). They also made the Rhino Beetle armor, which is a marginal improvement on ankheg. I was hoping that the avengers could wear that, but there was no luck there - so the dragon armor was immediately retired to the bag of holding. While talking to the smith they also bought another +2 buckler for London - he's been getting hit a bit too much in SoD, so I think it's time for him to stop dual wielding.
After being drained by a breach in the fort's magical defenses, the druids went in search of Vichand to get a scroll to repair those. He can be just intimidated or killed, but if not quickly killed the whole camp will be alerted. I was confident he wouldn't last long, but he narrowly escaped death from initial melee attacks and buffed with stoneskin. Rather than risk him alerting others I brought wands of heavens into action (which go over the top of minor globe).
Making use of the scroll provided the opportunity to make some +3 sling bullets - adding to the +3 scimitar and +3 staff as an option for attacking Belhifet.
I primed Khalid to join in the battle once the Fist were engaged and set off for Troll Claw Woods to get them going. On the way there was a hole in the ground to negotiate. I expected the myconids there to get regular success with confusions, but in fact only a single druid failed their saving throw.
At Boareskyr the druids used some wand of fear charges to take the heat off the Fist initially, burnt down the mages and then electrocuted the Barghest.
They didn't use any summons in that, but added those in ensuring the bridge wouldn't be destroyed - the mage getting confused there even before the insects hit.
At the Coalition Camp the druids used the Spectacles of Spectacle to make Nazramu available. The 60% over base price he pays for equipment allowed them to make well over 300k by emptying their bags.
With a bit over 20k XP each needed for a 12th level I decided I wasn't bothered about grabbing every scrap and didn't do the quests in the camp. On the way to Dead Man's Pass I came across a dead magic zone. Items to cause invisibility worked, but almost immediately the magic was sucked away again - summons didn't work at all though. Normally I just leave that alone when solo, but decided this time to see if I could kill the Shadowy Figure. A round of fireballs killed some of his companions, but he survived initially.
However, he showed himself for a second in order to taunt the druids while saying goodbye and that was just long enough for London to target him with a firebreath. The other druids used the visible fire stream to block his path and the second round of damage proved just enough to be fatal.
Dead Man's Pass was cleared. By this time I was getting increasingly careless about encounters and Pixie Dust was only just in time to save Polgara after she was webbed by a Gargantuan Spider.
That lesson wasn't learned though as the same thing happened almost immediately afterwards in a nearby cave. That time though everyone's aura was clouded by casting insect plague and they couldn't quite beat the rush of spiders to attack a webbed victim.
London used a raise dead scroll to revive her immediately to avoid losing much of the XP from the encounter, but then died himself to the attack of a mimic, when again no summons or buffs were used.
After raising London and resting up I finished off the remaining bit of the area more carefully, including taking a ring from Raeanndra.
It shouldn't be long now until they get their final level.
Neither was the Ulcaster Ruins, though Sirene hurt herself and others when she panicked as a result of the Wolf of Ulcaster. She set off a trap which did damage.
The dungeons under Gullykin were easier.
They then went to deal with Aec Laetec.
On the way to find Drizzt they were ambushed by a basilisk, but Firehelm had a potion that enabled him to deal with it.
At Durlag's Tower they killed some enemies that they hadn't found before.
They then headed for the nine hells. Drizzt killed the tanari single handed using stealth.
After luring the bodyguards away from Belhifet and killing them individually, Belhifet was also killed by stealth by Drizzt.
Wulfgar avoided stun from the Demonknights using enrage and then the rest of the party aided him.
The Slayer Shadows were killed by brute force and ignorance.
Tactics were more important against Marilith. Those nearest were protected against poison.
The party then tried to rest and ended up having to fight multiple demonknights.
... And finally Errtu and its minions, during which battle Bruenor was killed
They later had to fight vampires who drained various attributes but fortunately they had found an axe that dispelled this. It hurt, but it was better than death.
Sadly the run came to an unexpected end when Firehelm was held by a Harpy and died before his friends could rescue him.
Still that run was the most enjoyable for a long time.
I'm fairly certain that Shandalar's script has been changed by the EE or a recent patch. The last time I fought him (unmodded EE, using the previous patch) he was even casting Flesh to Stone (which he certainly couldn't have done in vanilla BG1, since that spell wasn't even in the game afaik). However, in my current run the risk would be even greater, considering that I'm now playing with SCS and he's a high level spellcaster with a spellbook that's entirely unknown to me. In addition, I think that none of my spellcasters will gain access to level 4 spells before Chapter 5 anyway, so there isn't a real need to get his scrolls. I just got greedy, having already used potions of master thievery potions in order to steal Dushai's ring
@enuhal ah I see - yes, risky indeed! However, even flesh to stone isn't too much of a problem with a potion of magic shielding handy. Vanilla BG 1 had a good number of protection from magic scrolls, maybe that would be a good use for Shandalar. But thanks for the clarification in any case, good know those things.
I'm fairly certain that Shandalar's script has been changed by the EE or a recent patch. The last time I fought him (unmodded EE, using the previous patch) he was even casting Flesh to Stone (which he certainly couldn't have done in vanilla BG1, since that spell wasn't even in the game afaik).
Actually, Flesh to Stone was in the original, pre-EE, pre-Tutu Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast. The game included five sixth-level mage spells: Invisible Stalker, Globe of Invulnerability, Tenser's Transformation, Flesh to Stone, and Death Spell.
The ghost Daital in Durlag's Tower could cast Flesh to Stone and Invisible Stalker. Shandalar could cast Flesh to Stone and Globe of Invulnerability.
Here I am with another report on Yvralline's activities.
After having killed the Ogre mage terrorizing the streets of Baldur's Gate and it's cohort of Carrion Crawlers, we cleant up the rest of the sewers except for the spiders because I got sidetracked chasing a Kobold Commando out of the sewers and never got to that area. We reported back to Scar, completed a good number of quests, up to the point in which our only remaining quests are getting Alatos the stuff he needs and stealing the Telescope so that we can get another Wand of Lightning that we're most likely never going to use because SR+IR together make it rather useless.
The fight against the Iron Throne was subdued with more Wand abuse, specially the fire-based-damage ones, both Arcane and it's Divine counterpart. Then we finished off the remaining enemies with summons (from the Wand and Edwin's SR spells), the Wand of Paralyzation (god bless the Item Randomiser, for I have now five of them, and four Wands of Fire) and the occasional potion of Invisivility on Edwin because we had been to Durlag's earlier, and he had gotten level-drained to near death (in fact; we killed him, to prevent his death from being permanent) while we fought Kirinhale, which is why he now is about 2k behind in experiece, with the party being around 92-90k (which is criminally low considering all the stuff we've been doing, but again, I honestly have no clue when a party is supposed to hit what point of experience since I am much more used to playing solo). My main concern is that he is missing a level because of this. Anyway, after dispatching the Iron Throne we left for Candlekeep, and defeated the Ogre mages rather easily, but not after about a minute of doubt between me wanting to make Edwin cast Dispel Magic from a scroll and me remembering that he even had Shield memorised so we could avoid all that damage from the Magic Missiles the Ogres spammed later on. The Dispel would have probably been wasted on them anyway. They were going to target Yvralline, or so I guessed, so I made her run out of the battlefield and kept the Ogres that were inside her line of sight busy with more Summons from the Wand.
That was all that happened today, maybe a bit too resumed... Anyway, at Durlag's I just cleared the top levels except for the Ghost, and the first bottom level since it only has Ghasts anyway. We have a very large amount of treasure now, and almost no way to carry it (I ended up dropping a good amount of arrows and non-magical ammo we still had, together with a couple of +1 short swords and daggers which aren't worth carrying back to sell at this point) since having more than one container seems to slow down the game like crazy. Anyway, I like the inventory management game so this not a real problem for me. We also killed all the Basilisks outside since we had a bunch of Potions of Mirroring we bought off the merchant outside the Tower. We also killed the Basilisk in Baldur's Gate by scouting out where it was and off-screen casting. It's what any smart adventurer would do if they have to finish off a Basilisk and don't have any way to protect themselves from petrification.
Since the amount of items I have at this point is too high, I am simply going to post a bunch of screenshots for those interested. The bag of Holding is filled with Arcane scrolls I'll most likely never use, expensive gems Thalantyr is going to use to upgrade our stuff (for example, the Ring of Protection +2 was crafted by him out of two RoP+1, two pearls, one diamond and 5k gold. A real deal if you ask me), Spider's Bane, a couple of Mage robes and all the Quest letters we have found so far, together with the Golden Pantaloons and a bunch of other stuff like the Wand of Sleep and some +1 long swords.
With IR, the Hands of Takkok give +2 to STR instead of setting it to 18/100, so Ajantis gets a very nice 19, and if I give them to Jaheira after she's shapeshifted, she gets a whopping 21! And, Ajantis can make use of one of our numerous potions in the meantime (I already made use of this twice, but it's not a good strategy out of combat since Ajantis needs that extra strenght to carry all the stuff he has to carry). We got Algernon's back by making one of the Doom Guards in the residence of the guy that wants Balduran's memorabilia attack a Dominated Phierkas. Branwen has it now since I don't want to waste level 4 spellslots on Domination, since I rarely use it and Algernon's is better than everything else at this.
Another thing I wanted to mention is how I failed to scribe every single one of the spells I wanted to. Stoneskin (which I mentioned happning in my previous post), Spell Shield, Dispelling Screen (the SR version of Spell Immunity, which blocks the next enemy Remove/Dispel Magic or other sort of dispelling spells) and, Yvralline, who recently attained 20 intelligence thanks to the Item Randomiser putting another Tome of Intelligence in Durlag's, failed to scribe that level 4 spell that lets you cast two level 1-2 spells at once after you've cast it. In vanilla it's called Minor Sequencer but SR gave it some weird name I don't remember. It also changes the name of 10' Protection against Evil to Magic Circle of Protection against Evil, as well as upping it it's range to 30' which I don't think I like, mainly because I really liked the old name. The Shield Amulet Jaheira has is the Improved Shield Amulet which gives you permanent AC 4 and +1 to saves. IR's variant of the Shield Amulet was a better fit for her since it gave her +2 to AC, so the bonus also helped her while in werewolf form. Although now using her outside of werewolf mode is an option and not outright suicide. I forgot to give Edwin back his boots after he died, Branwen already has enough AC as-is, and he still uses a Kneave Robe because it's the only one that provides protection against critical hits, which I'm not fond of at all, since the real ugly ones can one-shot him (if Ajantis can critical hit for 56 damage, I presume any enemy under the effects of a strength potion and of similar level is able to, so he wears that for the same reason Yvralline still has the Mail of the Dead+2, although that's also because there are no better armours for her).
The party is taking their time to read a bunch of books at the entrance level of the Candlekeep library. It's also well worth mentioning that we pick-pocketed the Tome from the Duke that send you off to Candlekeep, and could have potentially gotten in earlier, but I don't want to bug everything out. We also looted everything in his (or is it not his?) state and robbed other places with the help of the Shadow Thieves as well. Everyone but Branwen and Edwin levelled up today, Yvralline getting 100 on Pick Pockets, and Jaheira a level 4 spellslot. Ajantis just got more HP... Same for Coran, and his Find Traps skill, which was still lacking for some of the nastiest stuff we came across on Durlag's (for example, I had Ajantis tank the Charm trap since he is immune to it anyway).
Next is getting out of Candlekeep and getting a couple more levels before we move onto either TotSC stuff or the end-game fights.
The druids rescued Skie from Dragonspear before moving on to the Underground River. Deciding I wanted to get on to BG2, they didn't try to clear that area, but just went straight for the entrance. They made a first real use of fire elementals there - most of the guards couldn't hurt those at all, so it wasn't much of a contest. They struck down Julann and Rigah in a few seconds for good measure - getting their final SoD level in the process.
Inside the caverns I realized London was still wearing the Spectacles when he caught sight of an unearthly figure. I've not come across that before, so tried talking to it and obtained a necklace for my trouble.
That proved to be a Modron Heart (+2 benefits to THAC0, damage and AC) against chaotic creatures, which looks like a decent item. They killed the ettin's ghost and placed the Bwoosh before asking Turin Brassbreaker for entry to the inner compound. The conversation line I expected to work didn't do so I distracted him by burning a potion of firebreath in the nearby firepit.
I decided I should fight Hephernaan here (which I've never dared do before). Webs kept control of the initial guards before the mages arrived.
Hephernaan scored a hit with a fireball, but once the insect plagues hit him the fight was pretty much over.
London successfully opened one chest (magic resistance defeating whatever trap defended it), but there was nothing of use for this party. Pixie Dust let them leave invisibly, though there was no sign of any hostility anyway (when playing solo the word of intruders gets passed from upstairs, but it appears that doesn't happen if all those upstairs are dead).
Back at camp the druids had a parley before preparing for an invasion. A full group of fire elementals were summoned and they enjoyed the successive baths of fireballs that knocked the stuffing out of the first 3 sets of enemies.
The final set was handled with insect plagues and lightning, though Getafix had to use a potion of invisibility after his retreat was blocked by the Dwarves of Dumathoin getting in the way.
With the camp safe, the druids rested before returning to Dragonspear. Rather than play out the whole siege battle there, Merlin went straight to find Ashatiel and challenge him to single combat. With a PfM scroll active and wearing both the Claw and Cloak of Displacement, Ashatiel had no chance there - perhaps that's why he decided to call off the challenge as soon as he took some damage .
I have limited experience in fighting the full battle there and took quite a bit of damage from traps when trying to make progress up the west side. Nymphs helped with that though and eventually Ashatiel reappeared and his fall made the crusaders retreat.
More nymphs healed everyone up before chasing after Caelar into hell. They quickly beat up the demons there themselves before moving into the next area and bringing out some summons. Several of the group were scared or dominated, but it was still an easy victory and Thrix handed over another +3 staff.
Up to this point London has occasionally used ironskins, but none of the others have. However, they all used that this time, to help guard against accidents. They also all got protection against fire, lightning and poison as well as chaotic commands before boarding the elevator. After the third combat there they all added potions of clarity, defence, power, mind focusing, speed and magic shielding.
At the top they persuaded Caelar to help them before immediately withdrawing from the possibility of a dispel magic.
They concentrated on finishing off the subsidiary demons before tackling Belhifet.
Bodhmall used magic resistance on him to reduce his MR to 24% and all of a sudden 5 of them were attacking with harmful hands as his improved invisibility disappeared.
None of them got the required touch in though and they reverted to weapons as some fire elementals joined in the fun. A LoB version of Belhifet would have shrugged off those tactics, but on Core big B had no chance and he went down before anyone had taken any damage.
I quickly went through the epilogue, remembering to pick up the pantaloons and take them out of the bag of holding in the process.
@Grond0 Further up this page Firehelm killed Belhifet and Marilith in BG1 (Drizzt Saga) and here you are killing Belhifet and maybe Marilith in BG2. Clearly it's not just Tazok who has powerful friends who will raise them.
Entering Cloakwood, my first encounter was the battle against Seniyad. I wasn't sure what spells his allied druids would be able to use, but it didn't end up mattering, as Valeria caught all of them (except Seniyad himself) in a silence spell:
The spider area was easily cleared (having a Ring of Freedom from Dushai was certainly helpful). I entered the area under invisibility 10' radius, so that I wouldn't get jumped by phase spiders right away. More noteworthy was an encounter with the shadow druid Laskal, who I decided to kill because I knew that SCS added a +2 quarterstaff to his inventory. What I didn't know is that Laskal is counted as innocent - a sharp reputation drop was the consequence:
I bought back most of my reputation at the Beregost temple, hoping to get the two last points from freeing the miners or some quests in Baldur's Gate. Drasus was killed in a relatively cheesy, but very safe way. I invisibly scouted out the party and started to spam webs with my sorcerer off screen, while a ring-protected Cadrax stood there to check the effects and eventually kill my foes. No chance for any magic or potion shenanigans, all of my opponents were disabled for the entire battle:
Hareishan turned out to be quite easy: The AI of her allies wasn't the greatest, allowing me to lure them into my waiting party in small groups, even with SCS. She herself was almost isolated, only 3 guards around her, and some elemental damage interrupted any attempts at spellcasting. Natasha was a bit more interesting, as she not only started off with improved invisibility, she also ran away straight away, before Ayla could catch her with true sight. I eventually managed to find her with a group of hobgoblins, though she went invisible again and ran away. Finally, Cadrax was able to track her down (with my entire party being invisible to avoid any unplesant encounters, as I wanted to get rid of the dangerous mage first), and she didn't have any divination spells, so it was easy to get into a great position and defeat her:
The ogre mage was killed by Cadrax and Ayla by themselves and didn't manage to cast any spells before dying.
Davaeorn required a more well thought out approch. Valeria summoned a bunch of skeletons near the entrance to intercept the spawning guards, with most of the party waiting nearby for ranged assistance. Cadrax used our PfM scroll to deal with Davaeorn by himself. The mage luckily focused his attention on the dwarf, while one of the battle horrors went after Ayla, who had wandered up to Davaeorn in order to get her true sight to work:
This worked out well, because it allowed us to free Cadrax from the burden of having to deal with battle horrors as well - taking these down with a bunch of wands is easy enough, so I lured the second one to my waiting party on purpose:
Meanwhile, the guards were able to take down 2 skeletons, but my party was over all able to deal with them. Eventually, Davaeorn drank an invisibility potion, forcing Ayla to move closer again:
Together, she and Cadrax finally defeated the mage.
I did enter the city in order to buy some scrolls and pick up the agility tome for Cadrax, but I'm done for today. The party is mostly level 6-8 now, and we got *Longsword for Nabatil as well as another point in Flails for Sarastro. I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but the level 7 sorcerer picks for Thallian were spook, mirror image and invisibility 10' radius.
Wrin and Tilly, update 1: Introduction We continue wandering around wilderness areas looking for useful items (courtesy of item randomiser). Melium has nothing useful.
Sendai is killed offscreen, I think she didn't have anything useful either.
Ankhegs are killed with a wand of sleep which interestingly enough never received nerfs similar to the Sleep spell. Tenya accidentally takes too much damage and I end up killing her instead of helping her. Oops.
No Thief? Damage gets me the Ring of Free Action instead.
Basillus dies as well to Writhing Fog/Wizard Slayer spell failure/Victor. Returning for his bounty gets Wrin another level.
Finally, Tilly becomes a decent tank. One thing the Item Randomiser can't keep from me forever!
Silke dies relatively safely. Her spells are disrupted by Tilly, and her sequencer of Invisibility/Mirror Image is negated by Detect Illusions from Wrin.
Mulahey is harmless, his skeletons hurt, we raid the tombs, and Nimbul drops us our first tome.
Now things get difficult. First ambush:
Not shown: the Hold Person hitting Tilly and them cutting her down super quickly. Wrin then uses a potion of Explosions to quickly get rid of some of them.
Ranged kiting gets rid of the last of them.
Tilly fights the Sirenes with a Spirit Ward on her; she only ends up charmed once. Sil falls, and we claim ~12 arrows from the bounty.
A first real outing of the Shaman dance gets Tilly some safe shooting at a couple of flesh golems.
We finally clean up Tranzig, despite having visited the area at least twice since Mulahey.
Call Lightning: probably the easiest way to kill Battle Horrors.
We climb the tower for a bit, but Tilly trips a Hold Person trap. She had n o way to protect herself, and Wrin watches as she dies.
One Raise Dead later, more spirit animals are used to tank a couple hits. Wrin's badly injured nontheless.
Leaving, we hit the second ambush. Hold Person is still a major problem until we can get ahold of Spider's Bane.
My two remaining potions of explosion are used to clear the Amazons. No ranged duel against Arrows of Fire and Darts of Wounding, please.
However, we get one of the tomes I've been looking for. Tilly gets it so she can use composite longbows in BG2.
I forget which zone is what and end up face to face with a bunch of angry red wizards. I... don't know how we won this. We don't have our adequate anti-mage stuff ready yet. Potions were chugged, that's all I know.
I'm pretty sure that I have better chances assaulting the entire camp than just the tent, so we abuse Writhing Fog and running like all get-out. Call Lightning is used to finish difficult targets. I think we leave and enter the zone at least 10 different times.
I almost lose the run twice against the Druids twice: one was charmed, and I left the other within range of another druid with charm twice. Ugh. Seniyad falls though.
One druid ran away, and we can't find him, so we kill Aldeth as well. No quest in Baldur's Gate, but his brother spawns so... I think net favor me? Spiders! Wrin trips the web traps, and Tilly cleans up. Another dance was used outside to tank the spiders Tilly pulled out of the cave. Level up, and level 4 spells, and more importantly Spider's Bane.
Chaos and Confusion are traded between nymphs and mages:
But we can't even kill one before they're free. We flee north, and finish Kysus with a last Call Lightning. Drasus inexplicably has 66% resistance.
Drasus finally dies after multiple Victor uses.
We clear the others quickly after, run away, and rest. Hareishan: we tackle her from the southern entrance, and Writhing Fog helps clear the first two guards we encounter. Her Stoneskins and Mirror Images aren't enough to protect her from Tilly, and she fails a spell despite not taking any damage.
Ditto with Natasha.
Buttttttt spell failure doesn't stop her from trying to toast Tilly with her Wand of Fire. Ow.
We run outside, rest, come back in for Daveaorn. Scroll of PfM on Tilly, two Nymphs from Wrin, and we attempt to go in. Doesn't work, whatever I was planning. Wrin's forced to drink a potion of invisibility early, and Tilly's stuck trying to kill two Battle Horrors. She needs a 19 to hit in melee, the Battle Horrors need a 20. It's slightly quicker to use Ice Arrows to get through them, but Tilly's PfM scroll is off by the time both are killed.
So... Davaeorn and around 20 guards are surrounding an invisible Wrin in the north. I first have Tilly try to pick off one guard at a time, but it's pretty slow going. A use of the Defend action on Wrin takes out one more, and Wrin manages to wriggle out. They're all clumped up with Davaeorn, so Writhing Fog + Spiritual Fire does massive damage, and finally Davaeorn makes his way free from his surrounding lackeys.
We went back to High Hedge to identify and sell objects, and now we're going to finish a couple encounters in the Southeast of the sword coast before heading to Baldur's gate (and class.)
The shapeshifter is somewhat different in BG2 than BG1. It can't benefit from having a shield or weapon in the off-hand and can't talk to anyone while shapechanged. That's a bit of a pain, though manageable as you get multiple uses of shapeshift each day.
Even though they arrived from SoD low on spells and didn't rest until about to leave the dungeon, they were still able to make it out with the help of some more nymph healing and the odd buff against traps. Ulvaryl managed to kill one thief before going down, but otherwise the druids got credit for everything possible in the dungeon.
After leaving they donated some money at the temple to boost reputation before going to restore the circus to normal operation. Then it was on to the Copper Coronet to once more demonstrate how over-powered fire elementals are in the early game. Going straight down into the sewers after that the druids took on the slavers - just for a change I used Pixie Dust and went through to tackle the mages first - the other guards gradually came through into support, leaving Captain Haegan all alone.
On the way to Watcher's Keep they came across Suna Seni - but were invisible so were able to stack up a fatal volley of Insect Plagues. On arrival they used Farsight to check there were no vampiric wraiths before clearing the top level. Death Ward was used for the first time in the run to ensure the FoD trapped container could be opened safely. They didn't have the strength to get the Crimson Dart yet, but Fire Elementals killed the golem guardians anyway. The same elementals then took on all the statues and I didn't add any replacement summons or use any other spells until they were all dead. By that stage there were only 3 statues left, but one of those was the archer. Belatedly, I tried to use London to drag insect plagues onto them (if directly targeted on a statue magic resistance may well prevent it working at all, but if spread from something else the insects will have a chance of working on all nearby enemies). I was therefore trying to keep London close to all the statues to spread the insects and in particular close enough to the archer to prevent it switching from melee. One of the problems of using the shapeshifter for that sort of micro-movement though is that it has an odd movement pattern - constantly going sideways at the start of each movement order rather than straight ahead. That, combined with the reach 2 attack of the golem statue, meant he got hit twice by it - and the second of those did just enough damage to chunk him.
As usual I'll end the run there rather than continue without a full party.
@Grond0 - sad to see the end of your druid run. I think you played your druids better than I played mine. That golem statue is much less a danger to my fighter/druids since we all had very good AC and good HP too (at least compared to your druids). I never used the pixie dust spell - I think I will use it in the future, seemed to be really useful in your run. That was really nice work in SoD you did.
The Hard Hitters did clear out Larswood and Pelvale, Bandit Camp is next. What's interesting, is that even though Itwibemine was in melee (she's a Kensai), she did OK even with all those archers on those maps. In fact, a random lightning bolt during a storm was far more dangerous to the party than those enemies, dropping Wertle to less than 10 HP, which the enemies on the two maps never managed to do...
I didn't particularly feel like continuing with this run, but thought I should do anyway and paid the price . I was making quick progress through SoD and used sanctuary to avoid most of the combat at the temple. I used an invulnerability potion for Ziatar and that remained active while killing the Neothelid and some crawlers. The Shadow Aspect was bypassed and I checked the potion was still working as I ran into the room with Darskhelin and circled the enemies using a firebreath potion - or not quite circled as a stun hit only a couple of seconds after checking ...
Into the Gate of Judgment! First, I breed Sky the Whipbird with Wave the Wyvern for a new Whipbird, Wave, and breed Orca the Hornbeet with a spare Gophecada for another Hornbeet, Lash. After a single fight in the Gate of Judgment, they're already at level 15 and 12, respectively. One of the important things to do in this gate is to nab a SpotKing. We bought multiple expensive Sirloins to increase our chances here, and it pays off. We even get a female one, which we can breed with Hope the GoldGolem for a GoldSlime! But GoldSlimes have poor HP and terrible, terrible growth rates. They make great late-game healers, but they require LOTS of experience to get the higher-level healing spell upgrades, so they're better suited for gates after the Starry Night Tournament (which will be the final fight in this run; we won't do any of the post-tournament stuff). You can unlock a very nice gate if you get a GoldSlime, but as I would later learn, you can't unlock it until after the tournament.
We catch a WeedBug from the wild and a WingSnake and a Rayburn from a couple of foreign priests. After earning several thousand gold by selling staffs to a wilderness merchant, we catch even more monsters: a GiantMoth, a LizardFly, and a BigEye. These are some good examples of how homely Dragon Warrior Monsters monsters can be compared to Pokemon. By the end of the gate, Lash and Wave have already hit level 32 and 28, surpassing our slower-growing GoldGolem. Everyone has sky-high stats across the board. On top of that, careful ordering during the gate has gotten all of them the best personality type in the game: Hotblood.
The boss here is an Akubar, who is very critical of the whole "train animals to murder each other" thing. Hence "Gate of Judgment." The Akubar has the high-damage spell Explodet, but... even a boss like the Akubar has little resistance against LureDance. We dance-lock him and start applying pressure. We do pretty respectable damage considering the lack of grinding, though it's a lot less than we've done to weaker bosses. The Akubar gets some Explodet spells off the ground, but they only do about 50 damage a pop, and thanks to TakeMagic, one of our monsters gets 15 MP every time the Akubar casts it--which amounts to 2 complete heals from HealAll. Wave the Whipbird summons a Diago (not an in-game monster you can catch or breed for; it's just an invisible off-screen summoned critter in battles), which shows off its Scorching breath attack. Eventually we smash the Akubar, having taken essentially no damage. Watabou and the king both reassure us that training monsters to kill each other is both ethical and legal. It's finally time to tackle S class. First up is a VooDoll and two DanceVegis, who would be more threatening if they were actually capable of dealing damage. Next we have a Slime, Dracky, and ArmyAnt. The idea is that this enemy trainer never bred for any monsters; it just trained the same early-game monsters that we encountered until they got strong. The Slime, notably, can cast Firebolt, a moderately strong fire spell, and Radiant, a blinding spell we also have access to. However, these critters have poor defenses against LureDance, Radiant, or StopSpell. The final fight is against the Medal Man, who trains metallic critters. We've got a metal slime, a Metabble, a Roboster, and a MetalDrak. The Metabble can cast Explodet, the Roboster can use Rainslash to attack all of us at once, and the MetalDrak can use Massacre to deal massive damage to a random target. They actually hit pretty hard. The Metabble is much different from a Metabble you could get and train yourself. Enemy metal slimes have ludicrously high defense (much higher than you could get from any monster without extremely high levels) and only a few points of HP, so you'll usually miss when attacking them, or deal only a single point of damage when you land a hit.
The other two monsters have good defense, but not as good as the Akubar's. We can smash right through their defenses thanks to TwinHits. The MetalDrak and Roboster go down pretty quick. With them gone, all we have to do is spend a few rounds struggling to land hits on the Metabble. We win S class handily. There is only one more gate we have to beat before the Starry Night Tournament and the end of the run: the Gate of Reflection, where we're supposed to discover our future.
The Gate of Reflection is a step above the earlier gates. It's considerably longer and has considerably tougher critters who can deal and take heavy damage, from SlimeBorgs with RainSlash to Lionexes with Vacuum to MadHornets with PoisonHit and Shadows with ThickFog and IceAir. It's a very long, taxing gate that ends with an absolutely brutal three-part boss fight.
@CrevsDaak did I read wrong, or you're using Item revision together with Item upgrade (Thalantyr)?
Nope, you've read that right, I am using both. Honestly, IR defeats the point of most of the Thalantyr upgrades, since most items in BG1 are better than in vanilla with it installed, and the majority of the upgraded items aren't that great. Since I'm the keeper of the Thalantyr mod I might give some of it's items a couple of modifications in case IR is installed, so that they get the properties of the IR items and end up being actually overpowered.
- SCS (full prebuffs, full tactical challenges) - Tweak Anthology (unnerfed thac0 table, Weapon Styles for all)
So, while travelling around the Coalition camp, I was waylaid by a Shadowy Figure. I simply could have avoided it, but I decided to try my luck against it. I started to blast these guys with OGL fireballs, hid in plain sight, OGL fireballs, ... until only a few of them were left. After a while I switched to HiPS and invisibility potion combination to stay invisible at all time while I was backtabbing them to death. I even killed the Shadowy Figure while doing so.
In the Underground Passage, I made a small detour to take the Myconid sack. Some summons could prove useful against the Coalition camp attack. After that, I pretty much went straight under the castle, where I poisoned the food and the water. I threw a few arrows of explosion at the enemy and, after the lift became usable again, I got the hell out. Nothing complicated, nothing fancy.
I also didn't do any of the sidequests in the Crusader camp.
Now it was time for the Coalition camp attack. I attacked these guys tucked under PfM and haste, so I was able to destroy the troll wave with 4 fireballs per round. They didn't last long.
Since I'm soloing, I couldn't blast my way against the mages, but they couldn't do anything against me, because PfM. I had to mix in arrows of dispelling and arrows od biting. However, the end result was the same : victory.
The paladin went exactly the same way : fireballs won the day.
The siege itself was pretty uneventful. I stayed at range and shotted arrows at the enemy. After a while, Ashatiel invited me to a duel, which I accepted. I used my last PfM here, so, again, she couldn't do shit. A mix of arrows of dispelling and of piercing wounded her much. At near death, she went under Sanctuary to heal. Not on my watch : a blast from OGL and she was gone.
Now, this is where the real stuff happened... A few kiting sessions against some demons was done before facing the Belhifet itself. I really ran my way through SoD, which means that I was probably a bit underprepared for such a fight. Potion wise, I was good, because I had 7 potions of Clarity and loads of potions of Speed, Power, Extra-Healing, Regeneration,... I accepted Caelar in my group to avoid big B Dispel, but I let her act by her script entirely. She died soon enough. I initially thought that I could take out Belhifet with Void arrows +3, but, when I faced the big man, I changed my tune. I started to kill his allies to thin the herd and then, after a while, it was obvious that I was barely denting the big demon; I was not hitting him reliably and his life didn't seem to budge much. I was not doing good and my potion buffs were not eternal.
Then, I decided to change strategy. I drank the Red potion that gives 25 strength, a potion of Toughness and 3 potion of Mind Focusing (that's all I had dex wise). That helped, because hit-and-run strat dealt a lot more damage to him per strike. However, I was still uncomfortable; I was searching for a better way to deal with him, but nothing else seemed to work. Then, when he was at Injured, Belhifet started to summon allies again. I thought that I should kill them as they appeared, but Cornugons are a bit too tough to waste time on them. Also, while I was trying to kill his allies, Belhifet was regenerating; he was back at barely injured. I was beginning to feel that I rushed too fast through SoD and lacked preparation.
But I decided to give it my best shot. If I have to die, I'll die trying at least. So, I switched all my attention to Belhifet. Hit-and-run was on the menu. With 25 strength, I was doing about 18 damage per strike with the Short Sword of Backstabbing. I was starting to hit him regualrly and he fell back at Badly Injured.
He was at this state for a long time, because he managed to disease me with his blades, which made my thac0 slightly worse off. However, my strategy was refining itself as I played; when I was under stealth, as soon as I struck him, I gulped an invisibility potion, to always stay out of harms way from the demon horde; two Cornugons were in the lot and their Lightning bolts were dangerous. When I was hitting big B from an invis potion, I went HiPS right after; that made me save quite a few potions that way.
As I kept going, Belhifet went worse; he was at near death.
I was on the edge of my chair for every hit I landed. "Is he dead ? No... Now ? No... Urgh..." Then, after several minutes at Near Death, what was supposed to happen happened :
I'm very proud of having done that. I'm also super psyched to go into Amn. Traps or not, I think that the shadowdancer has a lot of potential; I've tested a bit the Shadow Twin hla and it seems pretty nice. With the Vhailor helm, I'll be able to create myself a small army of 4/5 thieves. Combine that with UAI, and it opens up a lot of potential strategy...
Anyway, I won't make update for a little while, because I have to make an install with v2.5 and I'm moving next week. So, I'll probably be back by the end of september with Fryya.
Corey commented on the last run that the Avengers might be making it too easy. I considered restarting then as pure druids, but didn't do so. However, here are a freshly rolled selection of unkitted druids - so no shapeshifter tank, totemic summon loveliness or web extravanganzas (the names are all from the Shannara books if anyone is half-recognizing them). My feeling is that the kits make less and less difference to the way druids play as levels get higher (though it does take a while to get to that stage), so I don't expect this run to be much if any harder.
The party is essentially optimized for combat rather than spell casting. They will all have intelligence of 9 to use items (after tome) and all but one have strength 18. The one that doesn't have 18 strength has 17 strength, but 18 wisdom (in order to be able to make best use of the wisdom tomes). The others all have much lower wisdom, with few if any bonus spells. At higher levels I find the lower level druid spells never get used, so don't expect that loss to be felt much.
They've made decent progress so far. I won't post details of the run, at least for the moment, but the essential strategy so far has been:
Level 1 - run and shoot. Boosted at end by shooting Drizzt - I wasted an oil of speed there when I expected to have to kite him, but got 2 criticals almost at once to finish him off.
Level 2 - still run and shoot. The 12k XP for Drizzt had got them well on the way to the next level and it wasn't long before Greywolf tipped them over.
Level 3 - Algernon's Cloak was used on the Beregost Temple sirines. There was also considerable use of Charm Person or Mammal, particularly to break up chasing groups of gnolls, xvarts etc. They splashed out on 20 +1 bullets to kill the golems at High Hedge for their next level.
Level 4 - all the XP needed to level up again was achieved by following Korax round slaughtering basilisks.
Level 5 - they started clearing a few areas before heading for Durlag's Tower. Lightning blasted the battle horrors. The ghasts in the upper tower were shot and the basilisks on the roof taken out using a PfP scroll.
Level 6 - lots of lightning and insects were used, but still most of the kills were from shooting. Against weaker enemies Walker Boh (wearing ankheg armor) is often tanking now. He also did that while clearing the ankheg area to get a significant XP boost, but the majority of the XP was gained working through most of the southern areas.
The nymphs now available will allow them to safely do plenty more encounters. I'm aiming to try and complete at least BG1 without deaths (no-one has died or been near death to date). HPs are again very good, though there's a rather larger spread from high to low than last time.
@CrevsDaak did I read wrong, or you're using Item revision together with Item upgrade (Thalantyr)?
Nope, you've read that right, I am using both. Honestly, IR defeats the point of most of the Thalantyr upgrades, since most items in BG1 are better than in vanilla with it installed, and the majority of the upgraded items aren't that great. Since I'm the keeper of the Thalantyr mod I might give some of it's items a couple of modifications in case IR is installed, so that they get the properties of the IR items and end up being actually overpowered.
I would be interested! Please release such a mod
Thalantyr item upgrade is the reason I'm really undecided about installing that or Item revision when playing BG!
I really like the idea behind the Thalantyr mod. Combining two or more items to make it have all the qualities of the individual parts is a good concept though of course a lot of gold should have to be expended to do that.
It also gives you something worthwhile to spend your gold on!
Best of luck with your new druid run, @Grond0 ! By the way, I don't think the totemic druid or the shapeshifter made that much difference, vs. my fighter/druid party. If you had succeeded with those kits, I would have thought it would have been equivalent to my fighter/druids. I only think the avenger makes a big difference vs. my fighter/druids.
We can use our RayBurn to unlock a new gate at the bottom of the well, and getting 100 different types of monsters also unlocks a gate in the library, but I really don't think they're necessary. Instead of spending extra time grinding, or even breed our monsters to make them stronger, I just head straight for the Gate of Reflection. Honestly, we just don't need any more experience. In fact, I even purchase a BeastTail to help us navigate the gate more quickly and get to the boss faster. It'll mean we get less experience, but I'd rather hurry to the final fight.
The Gate of Reflection has some pretty high-end monsters. Right out of the gate, you have to deal with SlimeBorgs, EvilBeasts, LizardMen, Shadows, Grizzlies, Wyverns, and EvilWands. Normally, their high damage output would be very draining, but our stats are just too high for the enemy to make a real impact. Our own attacks are just too strong for them to last long. Our defenses are also very solid. An enemy Grizzly only does 30 damage to the party per hit--which is saying something, considering how strong our own Grizzly was earlier in the run. Later enemies include MadHornets and Lionexes. But even then, we can just crush them. We've barely gained any levels by the end, but it doesn't matter. We're already very strong and I have an inventory crammed with WorldDews and WorldLeafs for free party-wide heals and single-monster resurrections.
The boss here is a Durran. Basically, he's just a dude with an impractical weapon who likes fighting. But first, he sends out a couple of his servants, who can be easily dance-locked. We hit them with StopSpell and tear them down with TwinHits-boosted basic attacks. The next fighter is our future self, a swordsman with the main character's default name, Terry. Terry is a power-obsessed fanatic who somehow got enslaved by this monster. He has incredible attack stats, but he's just as vulnerable to LureDance as everyone else. While Terry is busy dancing, we apply damage with QuadHits. Durran praises us for beating his monsters and our future self, and sees us as a way of satisfying his fetish for violence. Some of his lines are kinda creepy. Despite his humanoid appearance, Durran is actually a monster, a Devil type that we actually could have gotten ourselves by breeding our GoldGolem with a Centasaur (I even bred for a GateGuard to help get the latter). But a Durran is another slow-growing, low-stat Devil monster, and would be the utter inferior to our current GoldGolem.
This one, however, is quite tough. Since his defense is so high, our QuadHits doesn't quite meet the threshold to deal serious damage. We actually do less damage than if we used a normal attack. We switch to normal attacks, still boosted by TwinHits, and spam LureDance, but Durran has some resistance to LureDance. But it doesn't matter--we have deep MP pools to fuel HealAll and Revive spells, and because this is the last fight during which we can use healing items (you can't use items at the arena), I can just keep using WorldDews to heal my party so they can focus on dealing damage. Durran is exhilarated by being defeated, and his lines are just as creepy as they are at the start of the fight. He says he's "shaking from the excitement." Our future self is more somber, telling us not to become obsessed with power like he was, and focus on our family. Notice Warubou dragging him away. I have no idea why Warubou, who is from our time and our dimension (his home, GreatLog, is in the same world as GreatTree), would be able to get his hands on our future self--or why Watabou wouldn't be able to do the same thing.
Regardless, the Gate of Reflection is over. The Starry Night Tournament is next. There are only three more fights left in the run. The first two will be quick, but the last one will be the toughest fight we've ever faced.
The Starry Night Tournament. Here we face the monster masters from three other kingdoms, the last of which is our rival, GreatLog. This is our party at the end of the game: a +9 Hornbeet, a +7 WhipBird, and a +7 GoldGolem. Normally a good party would be above +10 at this point, but this is a low-grinding run where we've only bred our monsters for a few generations. Even so, efficient choice of monsters has given us some very strong critters. Everyone in the party has ludicrous stats and some of the best skills in the game. All three of them have HealAll and Revive and we even have Surge (a party-wide cure for all status ailments), TwinHits, LureDance, TakeMagic, Radiant, StopSpell, and HealUsAll. A party doesn't really get any better than this.
The first fight is against a Centasaur, Orochi, and SwordGon, a highly offensive-oriented team that would deal lots of damage if we didn't cripple them all with LureDance. Next up, we have an Andreal, a Unicorn, and a MadDragon. The Andreal can use an extremely dangerous area-effect poison breath attack, PoisonAir, but we have Surge to cure it. The Unicorn can use HealMore (mercifully, no enemy uses HealAll in DWM) and Revive, and the MadDragon is just a brute damage dealer. But we can shut down the Unicorn's spellcasting with StopSpell, neutralize the MadDragon with Radiant, and hobble all three with LureDance. The MadDragon manages to hit some of us with LureDance, but can do little more than that. The final is against... ...our own sister. It seems that Warubou kidnapped her and forced her to become a monster master to fight at the tournament--a bit like us, except Watabou never tried to force us to do anything; he just offered us a chance to find our sister.
Ostensibly, this means the end of the game, since the whole point of the plot was to find Milayou. But the tournament must go on, and losing this fight still means a game over. Milayou has three very rare and high-end monsters: a metal slime, a MetalKing, a Coatol, and a RainHawk. Milayou has a blitzkrieg-style strategy: all three enemies use area-effect damage spells in an attempt to overwhelm the party. The MetalKing uses Zap, the Coatol uses Explodet, and the RainHawk uses MegaMagic. That last one is an absolute nightmare. MegaMagic is the highest-damage spell in the game, which deals damage based on the monster's intelligence, level, and MP. RainHawks grow slowly and are actually subpar monsters for maximizing MegaMagic, but Milayou has trained this one to a very high level, and MegaMagic alone is enough to one-shot most parties on the first try. MegaMagic takes all of the monster's MP to use, leaving the RainHawk drained, but a single use is generally enough to take down the player.
The only realistic way to survive the first round of combat without access to very heavily-grinded monsters or some remarkable luck is to set everyone to "Cautious" on the first round. Lash, Wave, and Hope all defend themselves to minimize damage, and Hope uses StrongD to boost their defense further for a single round. We brace ourselves. Lash suffers horribly, but survives due to its sky-high HP. Wave has resistance to MegaMagic and takes much less damage. Hope has even stronger resistance thanks to being a GoldGolem, and with StrongD on hand, he barely takes any damage at all. The RainHawk is drained, but the MetalKing and Coatol still have lots of MP left, and they have extremely high agility, which means they get to attack first in the next round. We can't cast HealAll in time to save Lash from the next round. But Wave and Hope are still very much alive due to their high HP and resistances, and with access to both HealAll and Revive, the party quickly recovers. The enemy can still deal plenty of damage with Zap and Explodet, but HealAll and our deep HP pools can keep us alive for many rounds with little risk of death. We blind the Coatol and RainHawk with Radiant (the MetalKing, being a metal slime, is immune to almost everything) and cast TwinHits on everyone. Once we're in a safe position, we dance-lock the enemy and start smashing them. The MetalKing has near-unbreakable defenses, but the other two critters aren't nearly as sturdy. We stomp the RainHawk, and then only the MetalKing is left. The MetalKing only has so much HP left, and eventually it breaks down. Warubou, frustrated at Milayou's failure to win the tournament for his home kingdom of GreatLog, kidnaps Milayou again despite saying she's useless. But as the winner of the tournament, we still get to make a wish, and the stars will grant it. We wish to find our sister. To find her, all we have to do is go to the Shrine of Starry Night. The old man we met at the start of the game leads us down and promises to show us the meaning of the tournament. An egg appears from the stardust, and out hatches... a Watabou! Apparently this is how the giant trees of this world reproduce. The tournament spawns a new Watabou that goes on to create new kingdoms. We touch Watabou to get our wish, and we are teleported back to our home, where Milayou is safe and sound in her bed. We check the drawer that served as the entrance to GreatLog, but find nothing. When we get back, Milayou has awoken, and tells us about a dream she had, in which we traveled to another world and fought in a tournament with monsters--then we find a spare piece of meat from GreatTree in our pocket, proving the dream was real. The credits roll, and we see a few of the monsters we never encountered in the wild or bred for: a Watabou, GoldSlime, AgDevil, and Divinegon. There are a lot more monsters than the few we've found, and a 100% playthrough to catch all the monsters would take a massive amount of time--maybe longer than the contemporary Pokemon games, depending on how much the player knows about getting new critters.
The original Watabou reappears and offers to take us back to GreatTree, and we gladly oblige. There are more gates in DWM and even a new fight at the arena, but the main quest is over.
One no-reload low-grinding run of Dragon Warrior Monsters, complete.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 163 (162) - Sessions 1-2 Dohzer (human male Abjurer, Gate70); Frei (dwarf male fighter, Grond0)
Our first session saw us drag these random rolls out of Candlekeep and a second session took in the fishermen, Joia, Samuel and Farmer Brun. Frei was muttering about a heavy load which is when we realised we had two bodies instead of one at a time.
Journal entry: Sadly, we did not bring Samuel to the Temple of Wisdom in time. Gellana Mirrorshade could not save him, and he died.
Yeldon - Half-elf cleric/range, 102 kills, protagonist (corey_russell) Denko - Human dark moon monk, 89 kills (Gate70) Keras - Dearven kensai, 126 kills (Grond0)
Despite quite a few drops, where we had to wait for Grond0 or Gate70 or even both to reconnect, the party still managed to make quite a bit of progress.
* First task was to return to Basilisk area and conduct some unfinished business with Kirinan's group. Silences and hold persons make sure Kirian's party wasn't going to win (they didn't).
* Party did a quick stop by Ulgoth's Beard for the wand of heavens - we forgot to get some potion of mirror eyes - whoops!
* We came to Durlag's and destroyed the high experience enemies on the surface. That combined with some ghasts inside the tower gave Yeldon his 1st use of skeletons. Party rested to have those available.
* The party used skeletons to take the petrification attacks. Was a little scary for Yeldon, but the party managed to kill the basilisks without any party deaths.
* Since we had skeletons now, we also did both Sirine maps. Both went well, and party got another level here.
* With the help of the CON tome, Yeldon felt confident enough to take on the Ankheg farm - he would have to tank of course. He tanked the Ankhegs well, the party killed them fast.
* With the extra cash, Yeldon got the greenstone amulet and the cloak of displacement - we then headed to the Nashkel Mines
* Greywolf made the mistake of taking on our party - he couldn't do much before he was cut down.
* Nashkel mines was a piece of cake, and Mulahey got silenced, which certainly didn't help him any.
* Silence and skeletons, combined with the melee/ranged power of the party, was just too much for the Amazons to bear.
Nimbul was silenced, then Keras one-shotted him - wasn't his day. While here, Neira was also removed from the inn so we can rest here now if we want.
* Poor Melium got doomed and held. Someone should have told him not to take on clerics.
* Brage was seen before we meant to, so we had to cut him down (or he would take us away from the area). We then made sure the Doomsayer was destroyed, which got more levels for the party.
* We had just a little bit of time left, we used a silence and some skeletons on Molkar's group. Think both the cleric and the bard got silenced. Unsurprisingly, the party easily cut down the opposition after that.
We saved the session and will try again next week.
I lied. I made my new install. And I played tonight. I probably shouldn't have, because Fryya bit the dust. To the Salt mephit of all things. I just can't believe it. My stealth failed me and bam, you're done. I'm a bit "salty" about that one...
The Salt Mephit should not be considered a minor foe. Its Salt Crystal attack, which it can use at will every round indefinitely, has a 50% chance of stunning the target with no saving throw, bypassing magic resistance and spell protections, for 1 or maybe 2 rounds a hit. Against any character without inherent immunity to stun, it's entirely capable of stun-locking the player to death.
Just because its sprite is small doesn't mean it's not a real threat. Honestly, dying to the Salt Mephit is easier than dying to Irenicus at the Tree of Life.
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At the Forest of Wyrms lightning rapidly cleared some wyverns from the path.
Leaving Morentherene for now the druids hacked through various bugbears - they mainly use normal weapons, so can't touch totemic summons. Inside the main temple they killed Ziatar's guards before attacking the half-dragon - he was scared by insects and didn't get a chance to recover.
I attempted to burn down the Neothelid, but it got lucky with magic resistance - that wasn't sufficient to save it for long though.
For Darskhelin's group, all the druids cast insect plague at a lion.
Just for a change I used the invisible blocker tactic beloved of mages to deal with the aerial servants (which only have a range 1 attack) before sorting out Akanna.
After compensating for the brutal slaying of Morentherene by saving a young green dragon from some hill giants, the druids moved on to Boareskyr Bridge. As they're still not even half-way to the XP cap they decided to fight here rather than surrender the fort. First though they cleared the exterior area - using a few fireballs just to speed things up.
After being drained by a breach in the fort's magical defenses, the druids went in search of Vichand to get a scroll to repair those. He can be just intimidated or killed, but if not quickly killed the whole camp will be alerted. I was confident he wouldn't last long, but he narrowly escaped death from initial melee attacks and buffed with stoneskin. Rather than risk him alerting others I brought wands of heavens into action (which go over the top of minor globe).
I primed Khalid to join in the battle once the Fist were engaged and set off for Troll Claw Woods to get them going. On the way there was a hole in the ground to negotiate. I expected the myconids there to get regular success with confusions, but in fact only a single druid failed their saving throw.
At the Coalition Camp the druids used the Spectacles of Spectacle to make Nazramu available. The 60% over base price he pays for equipment allowed them to make well over 300k by emptying their bags.
With a bit over 20k XP each needed for a 12th level I decided I wasn't bothered about grabbing every scrap and didn't do the quests in the camp. On the way to Dead Man's Pass I came across a dead magic zone. Items to cause invisibility worked, but almost immediately the magic was sucked away again - summons didn't work at all though. Normally I just leave that alone when solo, but decided this time to see if I could kill the Shadowy Figure. A round of fireballs killed some of his companions, but he survived initially.
Dead Man's Pass was cleared. By this time I was getting increasingly careless about encounters and Pixie Dust was only just in time to save Polgara after she was webbed by a Gargantuan Spider.
London (shapeshifter) - L11, 88 HPs (incl. 5 from Buckler), 1,011 kills, 1 death
Polgara (totemic) - L11, 79 HPs, 247 kills, 2 deaths
Merlin (totemic) - L11, 88 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 292 kills
Getafix (avenger) - L11, 79 HPs, 151 kills, 0 deaths
Bodhmall (avenger) - L11, 79 HPs, 142 kills, 0 deaths
Taliesin (pure) - L11, 77 HPs, 232 kills, 0 deaths
Firehelm Tours Faerun
Ice Island wasn't difficult.Neither was the Ulcaster Ruins, though Sirene hurt herself and others when she panicked as a result of the Wolf of Ulcaster. She set off a trap which did damage.
The dungeons under Gullykin were easier.
They then went to deal with Aec Laetec.
On the way to find Drizzt they were ambushed by a basilisk, but Firehelm had a potion that enabled him to deal with it.
At Durlag's Tower they killed some enemies that they hadn't found before.
They then headed for the nine hells. Drizzt killed the tanari single handed using stealth.
After luring the bodyguards away from Belhifet and killing them individually, Belhifet was also killed by stealth by Drizzt.
Wulfgar avoided stun from the Demonknights using enrage and then the rest of the party aided him.
The Slayer Shadows were killed by brute force and ignorance.
Tactics were more important against Marilith. Those nearest were protected against poison.
The party then tried to rest and ended up having to fight multiple demonknights.
Firehelm then visited and died in Icewind Dale
They killed: baby dragons......Tanari
... A Demonic Spider Queen
... More Demonknights
... Dragon Golem Sculls (Skulls?)
... Drow and skeleton warriors
... And finally Errtu and its minions, during which battle Bruenor was killed
They later had to fight vampires who drained various attributes but fortunately they had found an axe that dispelled this. It hurt, but it was better than death.
Sadly the run came to an unexpected end when Firehelm was held by a Harpy and died before his friends could rescue him.
Still that run was the most enjoyable for a long time.
I'm fairly certain that Shandalar's script has been changed by the EE or a recent patch. The last time I fought him (unmodded EE, using the previous patch) he was even casting Flesh to Stone (which he certainly couldn't have done in vanilla BG1, since that spell wasn't even in the game afaik). However, in my current run the risk would be even greater, considering that I'm now playing with SCS and he's a high level spellcaster with a spellbook that's entirely unknown to me. In addition, I think that none of my spellcasters will gain access to level 4 spells before Chapter 5 anyway, so there isn't a real need to get his scrolls. I just got greedy, having already used potions of master thievery potions in order to steal Dushai's ring
The ghost Daital in Durlag's Tower could cast Flesh to Stone and Invisible Stalker. Shandalar could cast Flesh to Stone and Globe of Invulnerability.
After having killed the Ogre mage terrorizing the streets of Baldur's Gate and it's cohort of Carrion Crawlers, we cleant up the rest of the sewers except for the spiders because I got sidetracked chasing a Kobold Commando out of the sewers and never got to that area. We reported back to Scar, completed a good number of quests, up to the point in which our only remaining quests are getting Alatos the stuff he needs and stealing the Telescope so that we can get another Wand of Lightning that we're most likely never going to use because SR+IR together make it rather useless.
The fight against the Iron Throne was subdued with more Wand abuse, specially the fire-based-damage ones, both Arcane and it's Divine counterpart. Then we finished off the remaining enemies with summons (from the Wand and Edwin's SR spells), the Wand of Paralyzation (god bless the Item Randomiser, for I have now five of them, and four Wands of Fire) and the occasional potion of Invisivility on Edwin because we had been to Durlag's earlier, and he had gotten level-drained to near death (in fact; we killed him, to prevent his death from being permanent) while we fought Kirinhale, which is why he now is about 2k behind in experiece, with the party being around 92-90k (which is criminally low considering all the stuff we've been doing, but again, I honestly have no clue when a party is supposed to hit what point of experience since I am much more used to playing solo). My main concern is that he is missing a level because of this. Anyway, after dispatching the Iron Throne we left for Candlekeep, and defeated the Ogre mages rather easily, but not after about a minute of doubt between me wanting to make Edwin cast Dispel Magic from a scroll and me remembering that he even had Shield memorised so we could avoid all that damage from the Magic Missiles the Ogres spammed later on. The Dispel would have probably been wasted on them anyway. They were going to target Yvralline, or so I guessed, so I made her run out of the battlefield and kept the Ogres that were inside her line of sight busy with more Summons from the Wand.
That was all that happened today, maybe a bit too resumed... Anyway, at Durlag's I just cleared the top levels except for the Ghost, and the first bottom level since it only has Ghasts anyway. We have a very large amount of treasure now, and almost no way to carry it (I ended up dropping a good amount of arrows and non-magical ammo we still had, together with a couple of +1 short swords and daggers which aren't worth carrying back to sell at this point) since having more than one container seems to slow down the game like crazy. Anyway, I like the inventory management game so this not a real problem for me. We also killed all the Basilisks outside since we had a bunch of Potions of Mirroring we bought off the merchant outside the Tower. We also killed the Basilisk in Baldur's Gate by scouting out where it was and off-screen casting. It's what any smart adventurer would do if they have to finish off a Basilisk and don't have any way to protect themselves from petrification.
Since the amount of items I have at this point is too high, I am simply going to post a bunch of screenshots for those interested. The bag of Holding is filled with Arcane scrolls I'll most likely never use, expensive gems Thalantyr is going to use to upgrade our stuff (for example, the Ring of Protection +2 was crafted by him out of two RoP+1, two pearls, one diamond and 5k gold. A real deal if you ask me), Spider's Bane, a couple of Mage robes and all the Quest letters we have found so far, together with the Golden Pantaloons and a bunch of other stuff like the Wand of Sleep and some +1 long swords.
Another thing I wanted to mention is how I failed to scribe every single one of the spells I wanted to. Stoneskin (which I mentioned happning in my previous post), Spell Shield, Dispelling Screen (the SR version of Spell Immunity, which blocks the next enemy Remove/Dispel Magic or other sort of dispelling spells) and, Yvralline, who recently attained 20 intelligence thanks to the Item Randomiser putting another Tome of Intelligence in Durlag's, failed to scribe that level 4 spell that lets you cast two level 1-2 spells at once after you've cast it. In vanilla it's called Minor Sequencer but SR gave it some weird name I don't remember. It also changes the name of 10' Protection against Evil to Magic Circle of Protection against Evil, as well as upping it it's range to 30' which I don't think I like, mainly because I really liked the old name. The Shield Amulet Jaheira has is the Improved Shield Amulet which gives you permanent AC 4 and +1 to saves. IR's variant of the Shield Amulet was a better fit for her since it gave her +2 to AC, so the bonus also helped her while in werewolf form. Although now using her outside of werewolf mode is an option and not outright suicide. I forgot to give Edwin back his boots after he died, Branwen already has enough AC as-is, and he still uses a Kneave Robe because it's the only one that provides protection against critical hits, which I'm not fond of at all, since the real ugly ones can one-shot him (if Ajantis can critical hit for 56 damage, I presume any enemy under the effects of a strength potion and of similar level is able to, so he wears that for the same reason Yvralline still has the Mail of the Dead+2, although that's also because there are no better armours for her).
The party is taking their time to read a bunch of books at the entrance level of the Candlekeep library. It's also well worth mentioning that we pick-pocketed the Tome from the Duke that send you off to Candlekeep, and could have potentially gotten in earlier, but I don't want to bug everything out. We also looted everything in his (or is it not his?) state and robbed other places with the help of the Shadow Thieves as well. Everyone but Branwen and Edwin levelled up today, Yvralline getting 100 on Pick Pockets, and Jaheira a level 4 spellslot. Ajantis just got more HP... Same for Coran, and his Find Traps skill, which was still lacking for some of the nastiest stuff we came across on Durlag's (for example, I had Ajantis tank the Charm trap since he is immune to it anyway).
Next is getting out of Candlekeep and getting a couple more levels before we move onto either TotSC stuff or the end-game fights.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005404/#Comment_1005404
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005507/#Comment_1005507
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005660/#Comment_1005660
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005698/#Comment_1005698
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005910/#Comment_1005910
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1006069/#Comment_1006069
The druids rescued Skie from Dragonspear before moving on to the Underground River. Deciding I wanted to get on to BG2, they didn't try to clear that area, but just went straight for the entrance. They made a first real use of fire elementals there - most of the guards couldn't hurt those at all, so it wasn't much of a contest. They struck down Julann and Rigah in a few seconds for good measure - getting their final SoD level in the process.
Inside the caverns I realized London was still wearing the Spectacles when he caught sight of an unearthly figure. I've not come across that before, so tried talking to it and obtained a necklace for my trouble.
I decided I should fight Hephernaan here (which I've never dared do before). Webs kept control of the initial guards before the mages arrived.
Back at camp the druids had a parley before preparing for an invasion. A full group of fire elementals were summoned and they enjoyed the successive baths of fireballs that knocked the stuffing out of the first 3 sets of enemies.
With the camp safe, the druids rested before returning to Dragonspear. Rather than play out the whole siege battle there, Merlin went straight to find Ashatiel and challenge him to single combat. With a PfM scroll active and wearing both the Claw and Cloak of Displacement, Ashatiel had no chance there - perhaps that's why he decided to call off the challenge as soon as he took some damage
More nymphs healed everyone up before chasing after Caelar into hell. They quickly beat up the demons there themselves before moving into the next area and bringing out some summons. Several of the group were scared or dominated, but it was still an easy victory and Thrix handed over another +3 staff.
Up to this point London has occasionally used ironskins, but none of the others have. However, they all used that this time, to help guard against accidents. They also all got protection against fire, lightning and poison as well as chaotic commands before boarding the elevator. After the third combat there they all added potions of clarity, defence, power, mind focusing, speed and magic shielding.
At the top they persuaded Caelar to help them before immediately withdrawing from the possibility of a dispel magic.
I quickly went through the epilogue, remembering to pick up the pantaloons and take them out of the bag of holding in the process.
Two games down, two to go ...
London (shapeshifter) - L12, 90 HPs (incl. 5 from Buckler), 1,035 kills, 1 death
Polgara (totemic) - L12, 81 HPs, 265 kills, 2 deaths
Merlin (totemic) - L12, 90 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 315 kills
Getafix (avenger) - L12, 81 HPs, 159 kills, 0 deaths
Bodhmall (avenger) - L12, 81 HPs, 155 kills, 0 deaths
Taliesin (pure) - L12, 79 HPs, 249 kills, 0 deaths
Previous updates:
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005776/#Comment_1005776
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005931/#Comment_1005931
Entering Cloakwood, my first encounter was the battle against Seniyad. I wasn't sure what spells his allied druids would be able to use, but it didn't end up mattering, as Valeria caught all of them (except Seniyad himself) in a silence spell:
The spider area was easily cleared (having a Ring of Freedom from Dushai was certainly helpful). I entered the area under invisibility 10' radius, so that I wouldn't get jumped by phase spiders right away. More noteworthy was an encounter with the shadow druid Laskal, who I decided to kill because I knew that SCS added a +2 quarterstaff to his inventory. What I didn't know is that Laskal is counted as innocent - a sharp reputation drop was the consequence:
I bought back most of my reputation at the Beregost temple, hoping to get the two last points from freeing the miners or some quests in Baldur's Gate.
Drasus was killed in a relatively cheesy, but very safe way. I invisibly scouted out the party and started to spam webs with my sorcerer off screen, while a ring-protected Cadrax stood there to check the effects and eventually kill my foes. No chance for any magic or potion shenanigans, all of my opponents were disabled for the entire battle:
Hareishan turned out to be quite easy: The AI of her allies wasn't the greatest, allowing me to lure them into my waiting party in small groups, even with SCS. She herself was almost isolated, only 3 guards around her, and some elemental damage interrupted any attempts at spellcasting. Natasha was a bit more interesting, as she not only started off with improved invisibility, she also ran away straight away, before Ayla could catch her with true sight. I eventually managed to find her with a group of hobgoblins, though she went invisible again and ran away. Finally, Cadrax was able to track her down (with my entire party being invisible to avoid any unplesant encounters, as I wanted to get rid of the dangerous mage first), and she didn't have any divination spells, so it was easy to get into a great position and defeat her:
The ogre mage was killed by Cadrax and Ayla by themselves and didn't manage to cast any spells before dying.
Davaeorn required a more well thought out approch. Valeria summoned a bunch of skeletons near the entrance to intercept the spawning guards, with most of the party waiting nearby for ranged assistance. Cadrax used our PfM scroll to deal with Davaeorn by himself. The mage luckily focused his attention on the dwarf, while one of the battle horrors went after Ayla, who had wandered up to Davaeorn in order to get her true sight to work:
This worked out well, because it allowed us to free Cadrax from the burden of having to deal with battle horrors as well - taking these down with a bunch of wands is easy enough, so I lured the second one to my waiting party on purpose:
Meanwhile, the guards were able to take down 2 skeletons, but my party was over all able to deal with them. Eventually, Davaeorn drank an invisibility potion, forcing Ayla to move closer again:
Together, she and Cadrax finally defeated the mage.
I did enter the city in order to buy some scrolls and pick up the agility tome for Cadrax, but I'm done for today. The party is mostly level 6-8 now, and we got *Longsword for Nabatil as well as another point in Flails for Sarastro. I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but the level 7 sorcerer picks for Thallian were spook, mirror image and invisibility 10' radius.
Introduction
We continue wandering around wilderness areas looking for useful items (courtesy of item randomiser). Melium has nothing useful.
Sendai is killed offscreen, I think she didn't have anything useful either.
Ankhegs are killed with a wand of sleep which interestingly enough never received nerfs similar to the Sleep spell. Tenya accidentally takes too much damage and I end up killing her instead of helping her. Oops.
No Thief? Damage gets me the Ring of Free Action instead.
Basillus dies as well to Writhing Fog/Wizard Slayer spell failure/Victor. Returning for his bounty gets Wrin another level.
Finally, Tilly becomes a decent tank. One thing the Item Randomiser can't keep from me forever!
Silke dies relatively safely. Her spells are disrupted by Tilly, and her sequencer of Invisibility/Mirror Image is negated by Detect Illusions from Wrin.
Mulahey is harmless, his skeletons hurt, we raid the tombs, and Nimbul drops us our first tome.
Now things get difficult. First ambush:
Not shown: the Hold Person hitting Tilly and them cutting her down super quickly. Wrin then uses a potion of Explosions to quickly get rid of some of them.
Ranged kiting gets rid of the last of them.
Tilly fights the Sirenes with a Spirit Ward on her; she only ends up charmed once. Sil falls, and we claim ~12 arrows from the bounty.
A first real outing of the Shaman dance gets Tilly some safe shooting at a couple of flesh golems.
We finally clean up Tranzig, despite having visited the area at least twice since Mulahey.
Call Lightning: probably the easiest way to kill Battle Horrors.
We climb the tower for a bit, but Tilly trips a Hold Person trap. She had n
o way to protect herself, and Wrin watches as she dies.
One Raise Dead later, more spirit animals are used to tank a couple hits. Wrin's badly injured nontheless.
Leaving, we hit the second ambush. Hold Person is still a major problem until we can get ahold of Spider's Bane.
My two remaining potions of explosion are used to clear the Amazons. No ranged duel against Arrows of Fire and Darts of Wounding, please.
However, we get one of the tomes I've been looking for. Tilly gets it so she can use composite longbows in BG2.
I forget which zone is what and end up face to face with a bunch of angry red wizards. I... don't know how we won this. We don't have our adequate anti-mage stuff ready yet. Potions were chugged, that's all I know.
I'm pretty sure that I have better chances assaulting the entire camp than just the tent, so we abuse Writhing Fog and running like all get-out. Call Lightning is used to finish difficult targets. I think we leave and enter the zone at least 10 different times.
I almost lose the run twice against the Druids twice: one was charmed, and I left the other within range of another druid with charm twice. Ugh. Seniyad falls though.
One druid ran away, and we can't find him, so we kill Aldeth as well. No quest in Baldur's Gate, but his brother spawns so... I think net favor me?
Spiders! Wrin trips the web traps, and Tilly cleans up. Another dance was used outside to tank the spiders Tilly pulled out of the cave. Level up, and level 4 spells, and more importantly Spider's Bane.
Chaos and Confusion are traded between nymphs and mages:
But we can't even kill one before they're free. We flee north, and finish Kysus with a last Call Lightning. Drasus inexplicably has 66% resistance.
Drasus finally dies after multiple Victor uses.
We clear the others quickly after, run away, and rest. Hareishan: we tackle her from the southern entrance, and Writhing Fog helps clear the first two guards we encounter. Her Stoneskins and Mirror Images aren't enough to protect her from Tilly, and she fails a spell despite not taking any damage.
Ditto with Natasha.
Buttttttt spell failure doesn't stop her from trying to toast Tilly with her Wand of Fire. Ow.
We run outside, rest, come back in for Daveaorn. Scroll of PfM on Tilly, two Nymphs from Wrin, and we attempt to go in. Doesn't work, whatever I was planning. Wrin's forced to drink a potion of invisibility early, and Tilly's stuck trying to kill two Battle Horrors. She needs a 19 to hit in melee, the Battle Horrors need a 20. It's slightly quicker to use Ice Arrows to get through them, but Tilly's PfM scroll is off by the time both are killed.
So... Davaeorn and around 20 guards are surrounding an invisible Wrin in the north. I first have Tilly try to pick off one guard at a time, but it's pretty slow going. A use of the Defend action on Wrin takes out one more, and Wrin manages to wriggle out. They're all clumped up with Davaeorn, so Writhing Fog + Spiritual Fire does massive damage, and finally Davaeorn makes his way free from his surrounding lackeys.
We went back to High Hedge to identify and sell objects, and now we're going to finish a couple encounters in the Southeast of the sword coast before heading to Baldur's gate (and class.)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005404/#Comment_1005404
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005507/#Comment_1005507
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005660/#Comment_1005660
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005698/#Comment_1005698
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005910/#Comment_1005910
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1006069/#Comment_1006069
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1006222/#Comment_1006222
The shapeshifter is somewhat different in BG2 than BG1. It can't benefit from having a shield or weapon in the off-hand and can't talk to anyone while shapechanged. That's a bit of a pain, though manageable as you get multiple uses of shapeshift each day.
Even though they arrived from SoD low on spells and didn't rest until about to leave the dungeon, they were still able to make it out with the help of some more nymph healing and the odd buff against traps. Ulvaryl managed to kill one thief before going down, but otherwise the druids got credit for everything possible in the dungeon.
After leaving they donated some money at the temple to boost reputation before going to restore the circus to normal operation. Then it was on to the Copper Coronet to once more demonstrate how over-powered fire elementals are in the early game. Going straight down into the sewers after that the druids took on the slavers - just for a change I used Pixie Dust and went through to tackle the mages first - the other guards gradually came through into support, leaving Captain Haegan all alone.
On the way to Watcher's Keep they came across Suna Seni - but were invisible so were able to stack up a fatal volley of Insect Plagues. On arrival they used Farsight to check there were no vampiric wraiths before clearing the top level. Death Ward was used for the first time in the run to ensure the FoD trapped container could be opened safely. They didn't have the strength to get the Crimson Dart yet, but Fire Elementals killed the golem guardians anyway. The same elementals then took on all the statues and I didn't add any replacement summons or use any other spells until they were all dead. By that stage there were only 3 statues left, but one of those was the archer. Belatedly, I tried to use London to drag insect plagues onto them (if directly targeted on a statue magic resistance may well prevent it working at all, but if spread from something else the insects will have a chance of working on all nearby enemies). I was therefore trying to keep London close to all the statues to spread the insects and in particular close enough to the archer to prevent it switching from melee. One of the problems of using the shapeshifter for that sort of micro-movement though is that it has an odd movement pattern - constantly going sideways at the start of each movement order rather than straight ahead. That, combined with the reach 2 attack of the golem statue, meant he got hit twice by it - and the second of those did just enough damage to chunk him.
As usual I'll end the run there rather than continue without a full party.
The Hard Hitters did clear out Larswood and Pelvale, Bandit Camp is next. What's interesting, is that even though Itwibemine was in melee (she's a Kensai), she did OK even with all those archers on those maps. In fact, a random lightning bolt during a storm was far more dangerous to the party than those enemies, dropping Wertle to less than 10 HP, which the enemies on the two maps never managed to do...
Will keep at it!
Previous update
semi: No-Reload Dragon Warrior Monsters Run
Part 12
Into the Gate of Judgment! First, I breed Sky the Whipbird with Wave the Wyvern for a new Whipbird, Wave, and breed Orca the Hornbeet with a spare Gophecada for another Hornbeet, Lash.After a single fight in the Gate of Judgment, they're already at level 15 and 12, respectively.
One of the important things to do in this gate is to nab a SpotKing. We bought multiple expensive Sirloins to increase our chances here, and it pays off. We even get a female one, which we can breed with Hope the GoldGolem for a GoldSlime!
But GoldSlimes have poor HP and terrible, terrible growth rates. They make great late-game healers, but they require LOTS of experience to get the higher-level healing spell upgrades, so they're better suited for gates after the Starry Night Tournament (which will be the final fight in this run; we won't do any of the post-tournament stuff). You can unlock a very nice gate if you get a GoldSlime, but as I would later learn, you can't unlock it until after the tournament.
We catch a WeedBug from the wild and a WingSnake and a Rayburn from a couple of foreign priests. After earning several thousand gold by selling staffs to a wilderness merchant, we catch even more monsters: a GiantMoth, a LizardFly, and a BigEye. These are some good examples of how homely Dragon Warrior Monsters monsters can be compared to Pokemon.
By the end of the gate, Lash and Wave have already hit level 32 and 28, surpassing our slower-growing GoldGolem. Everyone has sky-high stats across the board.
On top of that, careful ordering during the gate has gotten all of them the best personality type in the game: Hotblood.
The boss here is an Akubar, who is very critical of the whole "train animals to murder each other" thing.
Hence "Gate of Judgment." The Akubar has the high-damage spell Explodet, but... even a boss like the Akubar has little resistance against LureDance.
We dance-lock him and start applying pressure. We do pretty respectable damage considering the lack of grinding, though it's a lot less than we've done to weaker bosses.
The Akubar gets some Explodet spells off the ground, but they only do about 50 damage a pop, and thanks to TakeMagic, one of our monsters gets 15 MP every time the Akubar casts it--which amounts to 2 complete heals from HealAll. Wave the Whipbird summons a Diago (not an in-game monster you can catch or breed for; it's just an invisible off-screen summoned critter in battles), which shows off its Scorching breath attack.
Eventually we smash the Akubar, having taken essentially no damage. Watabou and the king both reassure us that training monsters to kill each other is both ethical and legal.
It's finally time to tackle S class. First up is a VooDoll and two DanceVegis, who would be more threatening if they were actually capable of dealing damage.
Next we have a Slime, Dracky, and ArmyAnt. The idea is that this enemy trainer never bred for any monsters; it just trained the same early-game monsters that we encountered until they got strong. The Slime, notably, can cast Firebolt, a moderately strong fire spell, and Radiant, a blinding spell we also have access to. However, these critters have poor defenses against LureDance, Radiant, or StopSpell.
The final fight is against the Medal Man, who trains metallic critters. We've got a metal slime, a Metabble, a Roboster, and a MetalDrak. The Metabble can cast Explodet, the Roboster can use Rainslash to attack all of us at once, and the MetalDrak can use Massacre to deal massive damage to a random target. They actually hit pretty hard.
The Metabble is much different from a Metabble you could get and train yourself. Enemy metal slimes have ludicrously high defense (much higher than you could get from any monster without extremely high levels) and only a few points of HP, so you'll usually miss when attacking them, or deal only a single point of damage when you land a hit.
The other two monsters have good defense, but not as good as the Akubar's. We can smash right through their defenses thanks to TwinHits.
The MetalDrak and Roboster go down pretty quick. With them gone, all we have to do is spend a few rounds struggling to land hits on the Metabble.
We win S class handily. There is only one more gate we have to beat before the Starry Night Tournament and the end of the run: the Gate of Reflection, where we're supposed to discover our future.
The Gate of Reflection is a step above the earlier gates. It's considerably longer and has considerably tougher critters who can deal and take heavy damage, from SlimeBorgs with RainSlash to Lionexes with Vacuum to MadHornets with PoisonHit and Shadows with ThickFog and IceAir. It's a very long, taxing gate that ends with an absolutely brutal three-part boss fight.
Fryya Applesmasher, solo halfling Shadowdancer
BG1 posts : 1, 2
SoD posts : 1, 2
Notable mods:
- SCS (full prebuffs, full tactical challenges)
- Tweak Anthology (unnerfed thac0 table, Weapon Styles for all)
So, while travelling around the Coalition camp, I was waylaid by a Shadowy Figure. I simply could have avoided it, but I decided to try my luck against it. I started to blast these guys with OGL fireballs, hid in plain sight, OGL fireballs, ... until only a few of them were left. After a while I switched to HiPS and invisibility potion combination to stay invisible at all time while I was backtabbing them to death. I even killed the Shadowy Figure while doing so.
In the Underground Passage, I made a small detour to take the Myconid sack. Some summons could prove useful against the Coalition camp attack. After that, I pretty much went straight under the castle, where I poisoned the food and the water. I threw a few arrows of explosion at the enemy and, after the lift became usable again, I got the hell out. Nothing complicated, nothing fancy.
I also didn't do any of the sidequests in the Crusader camp.
Now it was time for the Coalition camp attack. I attacked these guys tucked under PfM and haste, so I was able to destroy the troll wave with 4 fireballs per round. They didn't last long.
Since I'm soloing, I couldn't blast my way against the mages, but they couldn't do anything against me, because PfM. I had to mix in arrows of dispelling and arrows od biting. However, the end result was the same : victory.
The paladin went exactly the same way : fireballs won the day.
The siege itself was pretty uneventful. I stayed at range and shotted arrows at the enemy. After a while, Ashatiel invited me to a duel, which I accepted. I used my last PfM here, so, again, she couldn't do shit. A mix of arrows of dispelling and of piercing wounded her much. At near death, she went under Sanctuary to heal. Not on my watch : a blast from OGL and she was gone.
Now, this is where the real stuff happened... A few kiting sessions against some demons was done before facing the Belhifet itself. I really ran my way through SoD, which means that I was probably a bit underprepared for such a fight. Potion wise, I was good, because I had 7 potions of Clarity and loads of potions of Speed, Power, Extra-Healing, Regeneration,... I accepted Caelar in my group to avoid big B Dispel, but I let her act by her script entirely. She died soon enough. I initially thought that I could take out Belhifet with Void arrows +3, but, when I faced the big man, I changed my tune. I started to kill his allies to thin the herd and then, after a while, it was obvious that I was barely denting the big demon; I was not hitting him reliably and his life didn't seem to budge much. I was not doing good and my potion buffs were not eternal.
Then, I decided to change strategy. I drank the Red potion that gives 25 strength, a potion of Toughness and 3 potion of Mind Focusing (that's all I had dex wise). That helped, because hit-and-run strat dealt a lot more damage to him per strike. However, I was still uncomfortable; I was searching for a better way to deal with him, but nothing else seemed to work. Then, when he was at Injured, Belhifet started to summon allies again. I thought that I should kill them as they appeared, but Cornugons are a bit too tough to waste time on them. Also, while I was trying to kill his allies, Belhifet was regenerating; he was back at barely injured. I was beginning to feel that I rushed too fast through SoD and lacked preparation.
But I decided to give it my best shot. If I have to die, I'll die trying at least. So, I switched all my attention to Belhifet. Hit-and-run was on the menu. With 25 strength, I was doing about 18 damage per strike with the Short Sword of Backstabbing. I was starting to hit him regualrly and he fell back at Badly Injured.
He was at this state for a long time, because he managed to disease me with his blades, which made my thac0 slightly worse off. However, my strategy was refining itself as I played; when I was under stealth, as soon as I struck him, I gulped an invisibility potion, to always stay out of harms way from the demon horde; two Cornugons were in the lot and their Lightning bolts were dangerous. When I was hitting big B from an invis potion, I went HiPS right after; that made me save quite a few potions that way.
As I kept going, Belhifet went worse; he was at near death.
I was on the edge of my chair for every hit I landed. "Is he dead ? No... Now ? No... Urgh..." Then, after several minutes at Near Death, what was supposed to happen happened :
I'm very proud of having done that. I'm also super psyched to go into Amn. Traps or not, I think that the shadowdancer has a lot of potential; I've tested a bit the Shadow Twin hla and it seems pretty nice. With the Vhailor helm, I'll be able to create myself a small army of 4/5 thieves. Combine that with UAI, and it opens up a lot of potential strategy...
Anyway, I won't make update for a little while, because I have to make an install with v2.5 and I'm moving next week. So, I'll probably be back by the end of september with Fryya.
Corey commented on the last run that the Avengers might be making it too easy. I considered restarting then as pure druids, but didn't do so. However, here are a freshly rolled selection of unkitted druids - so no shapeshifter tank, totemic summon loveliness or web extravanganzas (the names are all from the Shannara books if anyone is half-recognizing them). My feeling is that the kits make less and less difference to the way druids play as levels get higher (though it does take a while to get to that stage), so I don't expect this run to be much if any harder.
The party is essentially optimized for combat rather than spell casting. They will all have intelligence of 9 to use items (after tome) and all but one have strength 18. The one that doesn't have 18 strength has 17 strength, but 18 wisdom (in order to be able to make best use of the wisdom tomes). The others all have much lower wisdom, with few if any bonus spells. At higher levels I find the lower level druid spells never get used, so don't expect that loss to be felt much.
They've made decent progress so far. I won't post details of the run, at least for the moment, but the essential strategy so far has been:
Level 1 - run and shoot. Boosted at end by shooting Drizzt - I wasted an oil of speed there when I expected to have to kite him, but got 2 criticals almost at once to finish him off.
Level 2 - still run and shoot. The 12k XP for Drizzt had got them well on the way to the next level and it wasn't long before Greywolf tipped them over.
Level 3 - Algernon's Cloak was used on the Beregost Temple sirines. There was also considerable use of Charm Person or Mammal, particularly to break up chasing groups of gnolls, xvarts etc. They splashed out on 20 +1 bullets to kill the golems at High Hedge for their next level.
Level 4 - all the XP needed to level up again was achieved by following Korax round slaughtering basilisks.
Level 5 - they started clearing a few areas before heading for Durlag's Tower. Lightning blasted the battle horrors. The ghasts in the upper tower were shot and the basilisks on the roof taken out using a PfP scroll.
Level 6 - lots of lightning and insects were used, but still most of the kills were from shooting. Against weaker enemies Walker Boh (wearing ankheg armor) is often tanking now. He also did that while clearing the ankheg area to get a significant XP boost, but the majority of the XP was gained working through most of the southern areas.
The nymphs now available will allow them to safely do plenty more encounters. I'm aiming to try and complete at least BG1 without deaths (no-one has died or been near death to date). HPs are again very good, though there's a rather larger spread from high to low than last time.
Walker Boh - L7, 65 HPs, 114 kills, 0 deaths
Bremen - L7, 51 HPs, 109 kills, 0 deaths
Galaphile - L7, 54 HPs, 92 kills, 0 deaths
Allanon - L7, 61 HPs, 112 kills
Brona - L7, 59 HPs, 90 kills, 0 deaths
Cogline - L7, 57 HPs, 68 kills, 0 deaths
Thalantyr item upgrade is the reason I'm really undecided about installing that or Item revision when playing BG!
It also gives you something worthwhile to spend your gold on!
semi: No-Reload Dragon Warrior Monsters Run
Part 12
We can use our RayBurn to unlock a new gate at the bottom of the well, and getting 100 different types of monsters also unlocks a gate in the library, but I really don't think they're necessary. Instead of spending extra time grinding, or even breed our monsters to make them stronger, I just head straight for the Gate of Reflection. Honestly, we just don't need any more experience. In fact, I even purchase a BeastTail to help us navigate the gate more quickly and get to the boss faster. It'll mean we get less experience, but I'd rather hurry to the final fight.The Gate of Reflection has some pretty high-end monsters. Right out of the gate, you have to deal with SlimeBorgs, EvilBeasts, LizardMen, Shadows, Grizzlies, Wyverns, and EvilWands. Normally, their high damage output would be very draining, but our stats are just too high for the enemy to make a real impact. Our own attacks are just too strong for them to last long.
Our defenses are also very solid. An enemy Grizzly only does 30 damage to the party per hit--which is saying something, considering how strong our own Grizzly was earlier in the run.
Later enemies include MadHornets and Lionexes. But even then, we can just crush them.
We've barely gained any levels by the end, but it doesn't matter. We're already very strong and I have an inventory crammed with WorldDews and WorldLeafs for free party-wide heals and single-monster resurrections.
The boss here is a Durran. Basically, he's just a dude with an impractical weapon who likes fighting. But first, he sends out a couple of his servants, who can be easily dance-locked.
We hit them with StopSpell and tear them down with TwinHits-boosted basic attacks.
The next fighter is our future self, a swordsman with the main character's default name, Terry. Terry is a power-obsessed fanatic who somehow got enslaved by this monster. He has incredible attack stats, but he's just as vulnerable to LureDance as everyone else. While Terry is busy dancing, we apply damage with QuadHits.
Durran praises us for beating his monsters and our future self, and sees us as a way of satisfying his fetish for violence. Some of his lines are kinda creepy.
Despite his humanoid appearance, Durran is actually a monster, a Devil type that we actually could have gotten ourselves by breeding our GoldGolem with a Centasaur (I even bred for a GateGuard to help get the latter). But a Durran is another slow-growing, low-stat Devil monster, and would be the utter inferior to our current GoldGolem.
This one, however, is quite tough. Since his defense is so high, our QuadHits doesn't quite meet the threshold to deal serious damage. We actually do less damage than if we used a normal attack.
We switch to normal attacks, still boosted by TwinHits, and spam LureDance, but Durran has some resistance to LureDance. But it doesn't matter--we have deep MP pools to fuel HealAll and Revive spells, and because this is the last fight during which we can use healing items (you can't use items at the arena), I can just keep using WorldDews to heal my party so they can focus on dealing damage.
Durran is exhilarated by being defeated, and his lines are just as creepy as they are at the start of the fight. He says he's "shaking from the excitement." Our future self is more somber, telling us not to become obsessed with power like he was, and focus on our family.
Notice Warubou dragging him away. I have no idea why Warubou, who is from our time and our dimension (his home, GreatLog, is in the same world as GreatTree), would be able to get his hands on our future self--or why Watabou wouldn't be able to do the same thing.
Regardless, the Gate of Reflection is over. The Starry Night Tournament is next. There are only three more fights left in the run. The first two will be quick, but the last one will be the toughest fight we've ever faced.
semi: No-Reload Dragon Warrior Monsters Run
Part 13
The Starry Night Tournament. Here we face the monster masters from three other kingdoms, the last of which is our rival, GreatLog. This is our party at the end of the game: a +9 Hornbeet, a +7 WhipBird, and a +7 GoldGolem.Normally a good party would be above +10 at this point, but this is a low-grinding run where we've only bred our monsters for a few generations. Even so, efficient choice of monsters has given us some very strong critters. Everyone in the party has ludicrous stats and some of the best skills in the game. All three of them have HealAll and Revive and we even have Surge (a party-wide cure for all status ailments), TwinHits, LureDance, TakeMagic, Radiant, StopSpell, and HealUsAll. A party doesn't really get any better than this.
The first fight is against a Centasaur, Orochi, and SwordGon, a highly offensive-oriented team that would deal lots of damage if we didn't cripple them all with LureDance.
Next up, we have an Andreal, a Unicorn, and a MadDragon. The Andreal can use an extremely dangerous area-effect poison breath attack, PoisonAir, but we have Surge to cure it. The Unicorn can use HealMore (mercifully, no enemy uses HealAll in DWM) and Revive, and the MadDragon is just a brute damage dealer. But we can shut down the Unicorn's spellcasting with StopSpell, neutralize the MadDragon with Radiant, and hobble all three with LureDance. The MadDragon manages to hit some of us with LureDance, but can do little more than that.
The final is against...
...our own sister. It seems that Warubou kidnapped her and forced her to become a monster master to fight at the tournament--a bit like us, except Watabou never tried to force us to do anything; he just offered us a chance to find our sister.
Ostensibly, this means the end of the game, since the whole point of the plot was to find Milayou. But the tournament must go on, and losing this fight still means a game over.
Milayou has three very rare and high-end monsters: a metal slime, a MetalKing, a Coatol, and a RainHawk. Milayou has a blitzkrieg-style strategy: all three enemies use area-effect damage spells in an attempt to overwhelm the party. The MetalKing uses Zap, the Coatol uses Explodet, and the RainHawk uses MegaMagic.
That last one is an absolute nightmare. MegaMagic is the highest-damage spell in the game, which deals damage based on the monster's intelligence, level, and MP. RainHawks grow slowly and are actually subpar monsters for maximizing MegaMagic, but Milayou has trained this one to a very high level, and MegaMagic alone is enough to one-shot most parties on the first try. MegaMagic takes all of the monster's MP to use, leaving the RainHawk drained, but a single use is generally enough to take down the player.
The only realistic way to survive the first round of combat without access to very heavily-grinded monsters or some remarkable luck is to set everyone to "Cautious" on the first round. Lash, Wave, and Hope all defend themselves to minimize damage, and Hope uses StrongD to boost their defense further for a single round. We brace ourselves.
Lash suffers horribly, but survives due to its sky-high HP. Wave has resistance to MegaMagic and takes much less damage. Hope has even stronger resistance thanks to being a GoldGolem, and with StrongD on hand, he barely takes any damage at all.
The RainHawk is drained, but the MetalKing and Coatol still have lots of MP left, and they have extremely high agility, which means they get to attack first in the next round. We can't cast HealAll in time to save Lash from the next round.
But Wave and Hope are still very much alive due to their high HP and resistances, and with access to both HealAll and Revive, the party quickly recovers.
The enemy can still deal plenty of damage with Zap and Explodet, but HealAll and our deep HP pools can keep us alive for many rounds with little risk of death. We blind the Coatol and RainHawk with Radiant (the MetalKing, being a metal slime, is immune to almost everything) and cast TwinHits on everyone.
Once we're in a safe position, we dance-lock the enemy and start smashing them. The MetalKing has near-unbreakable defenses, but the other two critters aren't nearly as sturdy.
We stomp the RainHawk, and then only the MetalKing is left.
The MetalKing only has so much HP left, and eventually it breaks down.
Warubou, frustrated at Milayou's failure to win the tournament for his home kingdom of GreatLog, kidnaps Milayou again despite saying she's useless.
But as the winner of the tournament, we still get to make a wish, and the stars will grant it. We wish to find our sister.
To find her, all we have to do is go to the Shrine of Starry Night. The old man we met at the start of the game leads us down and promises to show us the meaning of the tournament. An egg appears from the stardust, and out hatches... a Watabou!
Apparently this is how the giant trees of this world reproduce. The tournament spawns a new Watabou that goes on to create new kingdoms. We touch Watabou to get our wish, and we are teleported back to our home, where Milayou is safe and sound in her bed.
We check the drawer that served as the entrance to GreatLog, but find nothing. When we get back, Milayou has awoken, and tells us about a dream she had, in which we traveled to another world and fought in a tournament with monsters--then we find a spare piece of meat from GreatTree in our pocket, proving the dream was real. The credits roll, and we see a few of the monsters we never encountered in the wild or bred for: a Watabou, GoldSlime, AgDevil, and Divinegon.
There are a lot more monsters than the few we've found, and a 100% playthrough to catch all the monsters would take a massive amount of time--maybe longer than the contemporary Pokemon games, depending on how much the player knows about getting new critters.
The original Watabou reappears and offers to take us back to GreatTree, and we gladly oblige.
There are more gates in DWM and even a new fight at the arena, but the main quest is over.
One no-reload low-grinding run of Dragon Warrior Monsters, complete.
Dohzer (human male Abjurer, Gate70); Frei (dwarf male fighter, Grond0)
Our first session saw us drag these random rolls out of Candlekeep and a second session took in the fishermen, Joia, Samuel and Farmer Brun. Frei was muttering about a heavy load which is when we realised we had two bodies instead of one at a time.
Journal entry: Sadly, we did not bring Samuel to the Temple of Wisdom in time. Gellana Mirrorshade could not save him, and he died.
Party Stats
Denko - Human dark moon monk, 89 kills (Gate70)
Keras - Dearven kensai, 126 kills (Grond0)
Despite quite a few drops, where we had to wait for Grond0 or Gate70 or even both to reconnect, the party still managed to make quite a bit of progress.
* First task was to return to Basilisk area and conduct some unfinished business with Kirinan's group. Silences and hold persons make sure Kirian's party wasn't going to win (they didn't).
* Party did a quick stop by Ulgoth's Beard for the wand of heavens - we forgot to get some potion of mirror eyes - whoops!
* We came to Durlag's and destroyed the high experience enemies on the surface. That combined with some ghasts inside the tower gave Yeldon his 1st use of skeletons. Party rested to have those available.
* The party used skeletons to take the petrification attacks. Was a little scary for Yeldon, but the party managed to kill the basilisks without any party deaths.
* Since we had skeletons now, we also did both Sirine maps. Both went well, and party got another level here.
* With the help of the CON tome, Yeldon felt confident enough to take on the Ankheg farm - he would have to tank of course. He tanked the Ankhegs well, the party killed them fast.
* With the extra cash, Yeldon got the greenstone amulet and the cloak of displacement - we then headed to the Nashkel Mines
* Greywolf made the mistake of taking on our party - he couldn't do much before he was cut down.
* Nashkel mines was a piece of cake, and Mulahey got silenced, which certainly didn't help him any.
* Silence and skeletons, combined with the melee/ranged power of the party, was just too much for the Amazons to bear.
Nimbul was silenced, then Keras one-shotted him - wasn't his day. While here, Neira was also removed from the inn so we can rest here now if we want.
* Poor Melium got doomed and held. Someone should have told him not to take on clerics.
* Brage was seen before we meant to, so we had to cut him down (or he would take us away from the area). We then made sure the Doomsayer was destroyed, which got more levels for the party.
* We had just a little bit of time left, we used a silence and some skeletons on Molkar's group. Think both the cleric and the bard got silenced. Unsurprisingly, the party easily cut down the opposition after that.
We saved the session and will try again next week.
Just because its sprite is small doesn't mean it's not a real threat. Honestly, dying to the Salt Mephit is easier than dying to Irenicus at the Tree of Life.