As expected, the Hard Hitters lead by Plurem the half-orc Kensai, have cleared Chapter 6 without difficulty and now preparing for their chapter 7 tasks and quests.
The crypts portion of the keep went well thanks to our competent thief. Spiders or ghasts were no threat to this group. The 2nd portion of the crypts was handled by detrapping the far left trap, then walking in center to clear the skeletons. Then we backed out the way we came then hugged the edges to get the dopplegangers. A dispelling arrow was quite helpful against the greater doppleganger.
Prat can be quite dangerous, so we do a lot of buffs on one character, our berserker who of course forgot to enrage, but didn't matter he destroyed the opponents. With free action, the spiders were cleared without problem. And finally a single potion of mirror eyes was all the berserker needed to clear the basilisks, since his buffs for Prat were still running.
I could fail at the Duchal Palace, but hope not. Will keep at it.
Upon arriving at the FAI Winker took on the hobgoblins. This brought him up to level 2 as a cleric and the extra spell came in most useful. He was using Mirror Image and blur, then when a hobgoblin came in close, he used Command. It was safe but time consuming as he had to sleep after killing every two hobgoblins. He used similar tactics against Tarnesh except that Sunscorch was also used. That spell caused Tarnesh to panic and a command spell stopped him in his tracks so that a blow with his staff finished the job. The Hoodwinker of Baravar kit is interesting to play. Thought is needed for every enemy as the enemies cannot be fought toe to toe. However his skills are quite good if used wisely. Brute force and ignorance just doesn't work. The ogre with the belt fetish was a bit harder. Sunscorch followed by command followed by another sunscorch blinded it and so the sling was brought into play until the blindness wore off. Command enabled him to land another blow with his staff but then he had to rely on his blur and mirror image to stop himself being hurt. It worked but Winker was quite concerned as he knew that just out of sight there was a gibberling. Another enemy was something that he didn't need. Once the ogre was dead Winker slept and then took on the gibberling without any qualms. Hoodwinkers can't use splint mail or chain mail which makes them somewhat vulnerable. Heading south of Beregost, Winker reunited Kessey with Jumper, her pet rabbit. Whilst looking for it, Winker came across a hobgoblin wearing boots of stealth. A sunscorch spell blinded it so it was quite easy to then kill the hobgoblin with his trusty +1 sling. He then used the boots to progress without being seen. Heading further south Winker used stealth to get past the hobgoblins and pick up the Colquetle Amulet. He then tried hiding once more, but being unsuccessful, he cast an invisibility spell to get past the bandits. Lord Foreshadow gave him a ring after which Winker went to Nashkel where he found some ankheg armour which he was unfortunately unable to use. he then went to the Carnival and upon sleeping for 8 hours gained the ability to heal as an innate spell. He tried to help Bentha against Zordral, but Zordral saved against every spell, so Winker made a sharp exit, hid and then moved away before sleeping. "Clearly a battle to be postponed!" Winker thought to himself. South of Nashkel he found a wand of frost and from there he headed in an easterly direction and found a ring of fire protection before being asked to escort Samuel to the FAI where he could find some healing. This he did. Reputation now 15. In Beregost Winker tried to pick-pocket Algernon's Cloak but failed. Fortunately he had a high enough reputation to avoid repercussions and upon trying again he took the cloak without Algernon noticing anything amiss. Winker then went to find Bassilus and did so. He used the cloak to charm him and then the two of them fought Zargal et al., a bandit and a ghoul. They were totally successful and afterwards Winker pick-pocketted several items from Bassilus including his symbol. Bassilus went hostile and as Winker had no spells left, he departed for the Lathander temple. I thought that with the symbol Winker might get the reward, but he didn't. It looks like he will have to fight him on a one to one basis. Tactics will therefore not be the same in my next game particularly if I use a character who is not a tank.
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 4
Forelhorst apparently doesn't have just regular draugr. It has ghostly dragon cultists--who, unlike regular draugr, are actually quite resistant to paralysis.
I decide to let Lydia handle the monsters. Followers in Skyrim are semi-immortal in the sense that they don't quite die when they run out of health; they just fall down and then try to recover. But Lydia is pretty tough; she's a melee bruiser. Notice the goofy-looking Dwarven Helmet I've given her. I pitch in with arrows and Paralyze spells (when the enemies are draugr instead of ghosts), though I only enter melee range to strike with a dagger when Slow Time is active.
There are a fair number of Draugr Deathlords around, and Lydia isn't quite tough enough to handle critters with numbers that big, so we burn a fair number of potions slowly cutting them down. Like before, the draugr go flying whenever I cast Paralyze when they're already staggered.
There are so many Draugr Deathlords, actually, that the dungeon gets kind of tedious at times. They just take so long to kill in Legendary mode. One of the rooms has a spike trap on the ceiling...
...and if you step on the platform in the middle of the room, the platform jumps up and smashes you against the spikes. I nail the draugr with Paralyze to try to get them accordingly smashed...
...but the damage is pretty disappointing. In fact, I can't even tell that it's done any damage at all. I guess some traps don't work so well after thousands of years of inactivity.
The fight takes so long that I level up from Light Weaponry skill increases, and I invest a bunch of perks to make Frost better at knifing people.
This whole area is so incredibly slow. I burn like 10 Slow Time potions and spam Paralyze so much Frost's Alteration hits 95. The most exciting part is when we almost die to a fire trap or something. Since this is the first time we've hit extremely low health in the run, we get a notification first.
After even more Draugr Deathlords and other draugr that take ages to kill, we finally reach Rahgot the Dragon Priest. Unlike most draugr, the Dragon Priests are all immune to paralysis.
We get in a bunch of free attacks regardless thanks to a Slow Time potion, and while Rahgot blasts us with a Fireball, we've cranked up our health enough to shrug off individual blows. A Resist Fire potion and some healing potions keep us in good shape while we keep hacking at him under the effects of Slow Time. Fortify Light Weaponry potions and Restore Stamina potions keep our damage high to speed things up.
Rahgot collapses, followed shortly after by the other draugr. Rahgot has a really powerful mask that's largely useless to us because it's classified as a piece of armor, which means it can't work in concert with our Mage Armor perks (if we wore it, our armor rating would be dramatically weaker than it normally is).
Outside, Captain Valmir attacks us and nearly kills us before I enter the inventory screen to heal up. Apparently this whole Rahgot thing was a set up; the guy outside was trying to get me killed so he could steal the mask for himself. Slow Time and Paralyze put down the captain.
I use Detect Life to grind Alteration to 100 so we can crank up our armor rating with the Dragonflesh spell from Tolfdir. On the way to the College of Winterhold, though we get ambushed by a dragon--an Elder Dragon, one of the strongest types of dragons around.
Gaining levels fast is necessary to avoid getting one-shotted in Legendary mode, but it also means we have to deal with much tougher critters much earlier in the run.
The SoD part of this run isn't affected by SCS all that much (the only thing I noticed was an increase in potion use by my enemies), so, given the fact that I'm running with an optimized custom party, it wasn't all that difficult. I did a completionist run, using established tactics such as firebombing, skeletons+ranged weapons or greater malison + crowd control spells (web being the most common one). Here are some counters worth mentioning: I tried to do all the quests, including companion quests. However, I still haven't found a good way to safely do Edwin's quest without alerting the crusader camp. I think I clicked at the wrong option during his dialogue, and when I made my way into the camp (after having previously done most of the quests there, luckily), everyone started turning hostile:
I was able to get out by using six invisibility potion and running. When I returned, the coalition forces started attacking the camp, so I had to go for the fight, which was quickly won - though with the result that both Edwin's and Khalid's companion quests couldn't be completed (Khalid died during battle). Another encounter I want to talk about is the battle against the killer mimic in the following chapter - Just to mention the importance of potions of freedom to avoid any unfortunate deaths here (which was a problem in previous runs for me):
As I made my way through the underground river (using acid protection scrolls against the blind albino wyrmlings and firebombing the undead and necromancers), I eventually faced down Hephernaan. During solo runs or meatgrinder challenges, I usually run away from him, but this time, I had no reason not to fight (especially with a bunch of dispelling arrows available - SCS doesn't affect SoD stores):
The camp battle was won via fireballs, and I used Ayla and Sarastro with their bows and detonation arrows to quickly defeat the foes during the siege. I declined the duel (my skald bhaalspawn does almost zero fighting) and made my way to Ashatiel, isolating and defeating her:
I also decided to take on the group of named crusaders that still stay around after the battle is won - what purpose to these guys have anyway? Turns out their assassin, Chloe, was the only foe during SoD to successfully hit one of my party with a backstab - Ayla was the target, and the damage was high, but nowhere near lethal, and Chloe was killed soon after:
I fought my way to Belhifet and buffed my party with everything relevant. His summons died in a couple of seconds, I only had to reveal Belhifet one time before he was taken down - though Caelar managed to steal the kill:
After completing the SoD epilogue, I fought my way through the SoA opening dungeon with relative ease. Outside, I took care of the circus tent and managed to free Hendak before travelling around the city under invisibility 10' radius in order to trigger the first ambush (starting invisible is a huge advantage). Success:
My plan was to travel to the Umar Hills right away, but I was ambushed again (luckily, I once again took the precaution to travel invisibly). After returning from the docks and trying to finally make it to my destination, the third ambush happened right away - and at this time, I was low on spells. An enraged Cadrax tried to distract my foes while the others got some defensive buffs up. A couple of nukes allowed me to get rid of most of the Orogs, but the mage added by SCS proved to be troublesome. A breach was countered by renewed buffs, and teleport field + chaos prevented most of my party from hitting him. Eventually, Thallian was able to dispel his MGoI via secret word, while the confused Ayla and Valeria started to hit each other:
While physical protection remained intact, the mage was without spell protections, allowing for a quick takedown by Nabatil himself via a well-placed fireball (this is where having three arcane spellcasters is coming in handy, as I can follow up spell protection removal with nukes rather quickly). Valeria survived her small confusion battle with Ayla, and we were able to move on:
This is certainly a sign of things to come - as predicted, SoA will be much more difficult than anything before for my party, with this one being the first battle during the entire run where I actually had to pause multiple times to think about every party members next actions. Things will get much more interesting from now on.
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 5
With an Elder Dragon looming over us, we immediately drink a Slow Time potion to escape its breath weapon and apply a Ravage Health poison on some arrows. Since we have an Alchemy perk that lets poisons last for multiple strikes, we do pretty respectable damage before it flies off.
The next time the dragon lands, it blasts us with its fire breath. I drink a potion for 45% fire resistance and use the Breath Ward spell to grant 90% resistance to spells and dragon Shouts (breath weapons in Skyrim are classified as Shouts), but I don't activate it in time to block all of the damage; the first fraction of a second of fire still nearly kills us.
Worse yet, it seems that Breath Ward is bugged: the 90% reduction in spell magnitude applies to our own potions!
The smart thing to do would be to just burn a lot of extra potions until we can escape at high health. Instead, I foolishly drink only 7 potions, deactivate Breath Ward, and then re-enter the inventory screen to drink some more potions now that their magnitude is no longer crippled. It saves us a few potions (meaningless in a run where we can easily make new ones without spending money), but it nearly kills us: Frost's health is reduced to a sliver before I can start drinking new potions. She's at maybe 10% before I bail her out.
I very, very rarely ever see a character's health drop below 10%. Usually, a character dies before I notice health that low.
We maneuver out of the way under Slow Time and stack several Ravage Health poisons, applied via dagger to the dragon's wing. The dragon's health depletes at an incredible speed, far faster than I've ever done in any run before (not counting the slowdown from Slow Time).
Ravage Health poisons are terribly efficient. Lingering Damage Health poisons are about half as strong, and Damage Health poisons deal a fraction of the damage (though the last one deals it instantly). They deal about 300, 150, and 80 damage, respectively.
We deliver some Heartscales to Tolfdir and get a free copy of his brand-new spell, Dragonflesh. Combined with three ranks of the Mage Armor perk, it gives us 88.2% damage reduction. We also can buy some new, highly powerful Master-level spells from Tolfdir, though the cost is prohibitive and we can't afford most of them.
I don't know how the projectile works or how much it costs (spell tomes by themselves seldom have all the relevant details), but that looks like area-effect double damage for about 3 minutes. If we used Destruction magic, that would be horribly broken.
We make some more potions to fill up our already-bountiful supply and make some money on the side, then run into another Elder Dragon back at Winterhold. As before, I poison its wing with a dagger before retreating to shoot it while the poison does its work.
Our Alchemy grinding lets us buy a new spell that summons a floating book that chain-casts any spell in whichever direction you're facing. Here's a test save showing us locking down Lydia with a string of free Paralyze spells.
Unfortunately, since the book floats in one place and it turns to face parallel to your own crosshair, you can't really aim it accurately unless you're standing right behind it, which means moving enemies can rush past it, and you can't run around without losing control of the book. Think of it as a stationary turret: very strong if you have the right position, but otherwise pretty inconvenient for an adventurer on the move.
After some more grinding, we also buy a new summoning spell: Conjure Dremora Pit Fighter! This gives us an axe-wielding demon guy who gets 25% extra attack power for each enemy on the field. Here he is standing next to our follower, Lydia.
We have a few more tweaks to our character build. In order to solidify our defenses, we want to check out some Standing Stones to get new bonuses. We can only have Standing Stone bonus active at a time, but since our skills are already as high as they need to be, we don't really need the Mage Stone or Thief Stone anymore. I've never been to some of these Standing Stones and only know how to reach them by looking them up, so this involves some wandering around the wilderness.
We run into a Cave Bear on the way to one of the Standing Stones. Remember how we accidentally flung draugr into the air by casting Paralyze on them while they were staggered? Well, apparently the same thing can happen to animals.
This Cave Bear suffers some additional side effects.
Yes, that's a bear flying off a cliff as its legs turn to taffy. But don't worry; it gets better in midair!
It then plummets to the ground, surviving just long enough for Frost and our Dremora Pit Fighter to finish it off.
I'm also trying to learn some new dragon Shouts, namely the words for the Become Ethereal and Slow Time Shouts (the Slow Time Shout is much more balanced than our 105-second Slow Time potions) to give us some new defensive options. I run into the wrong Word Wall, getting a Frost Breath Shout word instead, and yet another Elder Dragon rushes to its death.
I find the Lord Stone, which in vanilla grants +25 to armor rating and +25% magic resistance, a powerful bonus for any no-reload run that depends on strong defenses. Unfortunately, Skyrim Redone nerfs it horribly--it actually seems like it might make us more vulnerable to damage overall.
After reviewing the available options, it seems that none of the Standing Stones offers any game-changing effects for us, so we don't bother switching to a new one. Instead, we proceed to High Hrothgar to speak with the Greybards and then head out to Ustengrav, a Nordic ruin that will introduce us to one of the last remaining members of the Blades.
We can use Breath Ward to virtually negate enemy spells and Shouts, Dragonflesh to virtually negate enemy attacks, and several dozen pounds of potions, provided that we act quickly enough to block each threat (again, a one-hit kill is still entirely possible if we're reckless). We are roughly at peak strength, so it's time to make progress on the main quest.
@Arthas To begin with, you should go in the Adventurer's Lounge if you have questions. The nice folks around here will answer any question you might have in that thread.
1) I played a while ago an install with IR and Weimer's Item Upgrade. They don't mesh too well, because the updated version of items in WIU were not designed within the scope of IR. I much prefer IR's balance. WIU items are much more powerful and less balanced, which IR is mostly about.
2) How do you like your cheese ? Strong or not ? If strong, don't install SR, because it closes a lot of overpowered combo; no more double APR with Improved Haste, for instance. However, SR gives a lot of useless spells nice utility. With SR, druids actually have decent level 2 spells now, even some awesome one at level 1 ! It all depends on what you're looking for. SR spells are all closer to the average : the strongest spells were nerfed and the weaker ones were buffed. To me, SR adds variety to the game, which is great. So, even though I'm a fan of SR's changes, it all depends on what you want.
Winker has just been to the crossing so as to be able to get to Ulgoth's Beard. he took on the ankheg and defeated it after rresting in order to recuperate. The fact that he needed two bites at the cherry to kill ONE ankheg convinced him not to go to the ankheg nest yet. However that one ankheg was sufficient to make him a level 3 thief so that battle was well worthwhile. At Ulgoth'ws Beard, Winker didn't have enough gold to buy Aule's staff so he bought some ice bullets with which he was able to kill the werewolf at High Hedge. Thalantyr rewarded him with a sword and after selling it Winker then had enough gold for a +3 staff. Winker then took a rabbit to Ugh which Ugh named Little-little Ugh. Ugh was delighted.
Upon returning to Bassilus the Air Aspect (which for some reason was invisible) killed Winker.
I'm going to explain my time in SoD mostly by the number of mistakes I've made. This was decidedly a non-completionist's run, just gathering enough +3 weapons for Big B at the end of the game: there's almost nothing else I actually want.
Party composition: Wrin, Tilly, Minsc, Dynaheir, Voghlin, Safana. We ignore almost all the sidequests in the first area, only helping out the vampire for the regeneration ioun stone. The bridge fight is solved fairly quickly using arrows of detonation, spirit fire, and a wand of fire.
Next area, we rush for Voghlin and then head to the wyvern forest. Voghlin gets hit by a Web Tangle without a potion of Free Action, and is our first death.
But Tilly levels up during that fight, and gets access to Recall Spirit, so no having to go back to camp.
We suffer some poor luck against Morenthene: the second we get a hit confirmed in console with a throwing dagger on her sleeping form, she wakes up and the insta-kill doesn't happen. We buff outside with Pro. Poison and take her down without any deaths. Ziatar suffers a similar fate shortly.
We clear out the rest of the caves successfully: this was basically the last time I had clean play this entire run
So next, the Scroll of Impactful Doom. I thought intimidating Vichard would be enough: I was... mistaken. Very mistaken. Major mistake no. 1! We try fighting for a bit, but Dynaheir, Minsc, and Safana are slaughtered quickly. Tilly makes it out with boots of speed, Wrin with an Invisibility potion, and Voghlin by... running, somehow. We reenter the fight with the coalition forces. Having an arcane spellcaster (or rather wand user) helps us save the barrels, and we don't die quite yet.
We raise all 3, try to enter Bridgefort, the negative energy aura drains the last HP from Dynaheir and Safana again, so we have to rest again. Mistake no. 2, I guess?
At the Underground River, we forget to pick of Caelar's Seal, and this causes... issues later. The only sidequest I really want to do here is the necromancer cabal to eventually get the sword from the Rashemi travelers. The mage fight is fine, but the Ghost Dragon ends up fighting a ton of undead near the entrance and dies. Whoops. Anyways, no mistakes until we get to the lift manned by the two ogres. I forgot that we need the Seal to progress peacefully, so they end up going aggressive, and I didn't know how to continue. Dynaheir made us all invisible and we just fled, thinking we could start the next thing with just BWOOSH. I ended up turning to Google, and found that we can progress by killing the right ogre and taking its gloves. Well, whatever. Mistake #3.
We don't fight Hephernaan, and travel back invisibly. We must've chosen the wrong dialogue choices, since we don't get the +3 2h sword from the Rashemi, so I guess mistake #4? The Coalition Camp fight is eventless, and mass AoE damage from the Arrows of Detonation/Spirit Fire/Wand of Fire (2x) combination wipes out almost everything. At Dragonspear, we have one scroll of Pro. Magic left over from BG1, so we give it to Wrin and he duels Ashatiel. He goes back to his shortbow, and Tilly throws over a few arrows of dispelling. Ring of the Ram charges are enough to finish her when she tries to Sanctuary herself to heal herself.
Demons... Bloody demons. I decide to fight Thrix, and holy cow was that a mistake. I didn't realize Chaotic Commands didn't protect against Fear, and I didn't cast Pro. from Fear before engaging. Safana, Dynaheir, and Minsc are all disabled and killed one after the other, and Wrin's been feared and thankfully running away from the fight. Tilly remains up, somehow, though Wrin, now unfeared, had to use a Arrow of Dispelling on her when she gets held. Voghlin lives as well, though he keeps getting Dire Charmed, and whenever he's free he needs to drink potions of extra healing to stay alive. I finally relent and have Wrin drink a potion of Clarity, and the three manage to slowly clear the fight. This was an utter disaster and only luck kept this run from ending. Mistake #5
Big B. Our +3 weapon count is 20 arrows, 40 bolts, 40 bullets, 2 Shortswords, and... I think that's it? Regardless, we exhaust our scrolls and potions of fire protection, clarity, and freedom. Everyone who can drinks a potion of power. Tilly has her arrows, Wrin bullets, and Safana bolts, while Minsc is using primarily the +2 Mace for clearing other demons before engaging Belhifet, and Voghlin is singing. Belhifet is using Gate this time around: I don't recall him doing so in the past, but we manage to keep everyone healthy with potions, and one scroll of Greater Restoration keeps Caelar up as well. Tilly runs out of arrows, and closes into melee using the Fractal Blade, and Minsc ran out of things to hit with a +2 weapon, so swaps to the Short Sword of Backstabbing +3. Caelar, fittingly, gets the final hit.
This was the furthest thing imaginable from a clean run of SoD, but somehow we come out alive and shipping off to Amn.
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 6
Ustengrav has a few enemy mages at the start, but most of the enemies are draugr. I deploy the Master-level spell, Mass Paralysis, against the draugr, but it proves disappointing. It lasts for 22 seconds with my perks, but aside from its high magic cost, it has a very slow casting animation, requires both hands, roots me in place while I cast it, and it doesn't even work all of the time--each enemy only has a chance of being affected. A brilliant flash of green, and then a few enemies are still left standing.
The area of effect is respectable, but honestly, the normal Paralyze spell is much more useful in most situations.
I'm more familiar with this area than I used to be thanks to our previous no-reload run, so I know how to avoid the fire traps deeper in the dungeon. There are a bunch of them right before a spider ambush. Like in Bleak Falls Barrow, a giant one falls from the ceiling, but I know it's coming and nail it with Paralyze before it even hits the ground. We chop it up, but it's kind of an ugly sight to get so close to the thing. We can actually see the spider's hairs up close.
There's no boss in Ustengrav because our friend Delphine already went through the dungeon and left us a note to go visit her. When we head to Riverwood to meet her, we get ambushed by some cultists from the Dragonborn expansion, but they have no special defense against Slow Time.
Delphine wants us to kill a dragon. Done. We just have to apply some Lingering Damage Health poisons under Slow Time.
Since I have high Alteration and therefore have access to the Deep Storage spell, I cram all of my gear into the Deep Storage container rather than entrusting it to the wood elf in the Diplomatic Immunity questline to make sure I don't get caught off-guard by another dragon ambush when walking the 100 feet from the wood elf to Delphine, which ended one of my other runs.
By donning Thalmor robes inside the Thalmor embassy, we can avoid drawing too much attention from the local guards, and I use a Calm spell to make sure we can walk past the captain safely. He's a bit grumpy about it, though.
We've got more guards to kill inside, but by now, the drill is pretty much set: drink Slow Time potion and spam Paralyze while hacking away with our dagger. We've dealt so much damage over the course of this run that our Light Weaponry skill is already approaching 90. We get some documents from the embassy, report back to Delphine, and she sends us to the seedy, crime-ridden town of Riften to go hunt down a dude named Esbern hiding out in the sewers. First, we report to Brynjolf, a contact of Delphine's or something, who tells us to go steal some lizard guy's ring and plant it on a dark elf for reasons that don't really matter to us.
I don't know if this quest is actually necessary, since I think you can just walk into the Ratway, where Esbern is hidden, without performing any quests. But we do it anyway. Unfortunately, we get bad luck, and a guard chooses to loiter around directly behind us when we're trying to do the deed. Unable to get the guard to move, we end up getting caught.
It doesn't even matter; Brynjolf is still happy with us for trying and gives us the referral to the Ratway, where we beat up some lowlifes (one of which is actually named "Lowlife") and Thalmor agents before finding Esbern. We take him back to Riverwood, he tells us we need to go to Sky Haven Temple. We head out to Karthspire, where we yell at some half-naked hippies called the Forsworn who give us the hairy eyeball.
Basically every time I get to this part of the game, an unusually high-level dragon joins the fight. In this case, it's a Revered Dragon, one of the absolute strongest in the entire game. I get hit by a Drain Vitality Shout, which deals crazy damage over time--about the same amount of damage as one of our Ravage Health poisons.
We slow time and apply some of poisons to the dragon's wing, but a Revered Dragon has so much health that it actually manages to fly away before the poisons kill it.
We drink another potion and finish it off when it lands.
We fight a few more hippies and head inside Sky Haven Temple. There's a big fireball trap, but I can deactivate it if I rush ahead and pull a chain.
I run over, there's a rush of fire, and then I instantly die.
No!
No! That's not okay!
This run was going so well. We were crushing everything, and then some stupid trap kills us in a single second. That trap's never killed me before.
I reload and investigate the trap. Apparently it doesn't just launch a fireball at your face if you step on the wrong pressure plate; it launches a separate fireball for each pressure plate you step on. At least half a dozen fireballs came at me at once; that's how I died so quickly.
Back to Helgen. I'm tired of the lengthy grinding process that I've been using to get high Alchemy and strong potions, so we're going to try a quicker, lower-level strategy for our next attempt at a no-reload Legendary run of Skyrim Redone.
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 7
This time around, I'm going to try to speed through the game. This way, I don't lose quite as much time if something goes wrong. Some testing found that the Slow Time potion's base duration is about 40 seconds, which means that we don't really need high Alchemy and a bunch of Alchemy perks in order to get good Slow Time potions.
Also, we're going to use bows instead of daggers to deal damage, since there's a high-level Marksmanship perk in Skyrim Redone that will be really strong and help speed things up. Normally I prefer mage-type builds, but since this whole run will be based on Alchemy and Marksmanship, with Alteration to get some decent damage reduction, we pick a Wood Elf, which gets a +25% damage bonus when using arrows against non-humanoid critters.
Since skill growth in weapons is based on your damage output, this will let us reach 80 Marksmanship much faster than a Breton could. Once we get 80 Marksmanship, we can afford a perk that will make dragons very easy to kill indeed.
Also, Wood Elves in Skyrim Redone can summon a familiar via a greater power every 10 minutes, which means we can get an easy decoy without having to train Conjuration or use any magicka. It appears to be a carbon copy of the Conjure Familiar - Wolf spell that Bretons get by default.
The early game is pretty simple: let the Stormcloaks do the fighting for us in Helgen, use a familiar to deal with a wolf on the way to Whiterun, and then do a fetch quest for Farengar and join the College of Winterhold to get some free ingredients for Slow Time potions. Before we do any fighting, though, we want a follower, and we can't get Lydia to join us until after we get through Bleak Falls Barrow.
Conveniently enough, we can get a follower in Riverwood, a fellow Wood Elf named Faendal. We just need to help him win the heart of a girl he likes, which involves sabotaging his rival, a Nord named Sven.
I feel bad by the end of the quest, though, since the girl's dialogue suggests Sven was right for her, and not Faendal. Still, what's done is done. I chop some firewood and steal some iron ingots from the local smith so I can craft some spare arrows (we'll need a lot in this run; they'll be our primary source of damage).
How do we get our Marksmanship skill all the way up to 80 without getting axed at some point? Well, most of the work will be done in dungeons, but we can get a fair amount of skill increases just by kiting mudcrabs.
Since I don't want to go to the trouble of grinding Alchemy, we won't be doing lengthy circuits of Skyrim to buy ingredients and brew potions to sell for money. Instead, we'll be getting our Slow Time ingredients from the wild: all we have to do is run around west of Whiterun and catch the many blue butterflies that inhabit the area around Rorikstead. We have to burn some Slow Time potions just to survive the process, though; we've got a lot of bandits and wolves and stuff roaming the area, and it takes a long time to kill anything in Legendary mode.
One of our early-game Marksmanship perks lets you deal extra damage with shortbows when firing at short range, and another perk increase damage when shooting at an enemy's back or side, which means the optimal strategy for dealing with basically enemy is drinking a Slow Time potion and running in circles around them, shooting them in the back at point-blank range.
Basically, we just run around the wilderness catching butterflies and killing bandits and wolves with a blinding volley of arrows. By the time it's over, we've caught 12 butterflies, which is enough to brew 24 Slow Time potions. It's a clear net gain in those potions, but the process is pretty slow; killing all those bandits and stuff took a long time, even if finding the butterflies was pretty easy.
We run around Skyrim visiting alchemists, but this time, we're not brewing potions or selling stuff; we're just doing fetch quests to get free ingredients and stealing a few from Dawnstar. The latter gets us in trouble, though; a batch of thugs attacks us outside Markarth in retaliation for our crimes sprees in Dawnstar. I deploy some poisons to put them down quickly.
But the thugs prove very sturdy; we can't bring them down without burning an unacceptable number of Slow Time potions. Instead, I run away under Slow Time and try to fast-travel to Whiterun. It takes a long time before we actually escape combat, though; you can be hundreds of feet away and the game will still consider you to be in-combat and detected, even if there's absolutely no way the enemy would ever realistically be able to find you.
We get over 40 Slow Time potions and finally decide to head to Bleak Falls Barrow to get started on the main quest. Arrows have a very high rate of staggering enemies, so we can actually keep bandits locked down pretty easily even without Paralyze to help us out. We land so many arrows so quickly that it effectively stun-locks most enemies.
Midway through the dungeon, I run low on arrows, though, since each arrow only does so much damage and there are so many enemies around. By the time I come back, the bandits at the entrance have respawned, and they catch us off-guard.
Another run ends in the space of a couple seconds.
Honestly, this strategy is probably workable. The low levels will make sure that the game is pretty quick, which means I won't lose a lot of time from deaths, but I really don't want to work with a character that can die so quickly. I decide to go back to my previous strategy, which entailed more work but gave me a character that was less likely to die from a single mistake.
The first strategy was also perfectly workable, after all, and we were doing great until that fire trap wiped us out. I'm going to take the lessons we've learned and use them to optimize our Breton build. If we focus on improving Marksmanship and don't waste time leveling the Light Weaponry skill, we'll be able to make fast progress in the game without relying on poisons.
Back to Helgen. This time, I think I have a handle on the relevant challenges.
So next, the Scroll of Impactful Doom. I thought intimidating Vichard would be enough: I was... mistaken. Very mistaken. Major mistake no. 1!
Well done for surviving SoD @Neverused - sounds like my sort of run . I think with Vichand you need to keep on going with the intimidation, i.e. threaten him with dire consequences in the final dialogue if he does anything hasty ...
As planned, the party makes their way out of Cloakwood, cleaning up loose ends on the way. Web does for the Shadow Druids in Cloakwood 3 (we leave the Archdruid alone.. he's not worth the risk for a Club +2). We clear Cloakwood 2 of the spider infestation, finishing off Centeol and her pets by immunizing Khalid and Yeslick to fire (yep, we've got enough divine slots now to comfortably provide them both 100% fire resistance when needed) and dumping a few Fireballs into the thick of things.
Finally we revisit Cloakwood 1, and to my great dismay, we don't get to battle the druids. Jaheira objects to it, and I wasn't certain if it would make her and Khalid leave the party, so Hubblepot solves the situation without bloodshed. We still get the quest reward from Aldeth Sashenstar, but no Ring of Animal Friendship and no 4k experience from Seniyad. Pfeh. The party returns to the FAI and sells off the treasure trove they've amassed.
So, the world is pretty much our oyster. This is usually when I go to work clearing out the remaining wilderness areas, and it looks like this time around will be no different. We start by heading north to at long last finish what we started so long ago (clearing the Ankhegs whose treasure trove we raided back at the very start of the game).
Not much to report here. With oodles of Command and Sleep available, we mow through the Ankhegs unimpeded, though by now we could handle them even without such spellworks. After clearing the map, we nip back south to Beregost to get Taerom started on the Ankheg Plate, then return north; we assist Tenya, and clear the 20 zombies at the northernmost part of the river. Upon returning to Beregost, our plate is finished, and goes to Yeslick (we're holding off on shopping for the additional Full Plate until we reach 18 reputation, which can take a while when you use the 1/4 reputation increase SCS component).
Alright, let's sweep up the coast. We head to Shoal's area, and for once, no one dies... apparently her kiss now grants a saving throw, which Khalid makes. Droth teleports in, and dies within a round, as the poor Ogre Mage is vulnerable to Command.
We clear the Ogre clan to the south using 2x Web, get a Potion of Magic Protection from the Surgeon, and head to the lighthouse area. I actually remembered to memorize a few Sleep to make the Hobgoblin clan here less annoying.
The first Sirine spawn is handled via 3x Web from Hubblepot and some ranged shenanigans, and the second spawn gets treated to 4 Skeleton Warriors backed up by 2x Stinking Cloud, courtesy of Imoen. No worries, really.
Coran clears the treasure cave on his own with some Arrows of Fire, we steal the treasure, and save a child from some Worgs on our way out. At long last, we arrive in Brage's area, where Barruk's pet Kobold Commandos prove they can still be a hassle (Imoen survived).
Following this minor debacle, clearing the Doomsayer out is uneventful. He gets a few hits in on Yeslick, but we can easily tank that at this stage. We pull Brage out of his madness, and deliver him to the Temple of Helm in Nashkel.
So! That's the western part of the Coast cleared. Let's do the same to the eastern part. We head to Valley of the Tombs, clear out the Revenant, and finally descend on Narcillicus. For some reason he opts to spend his first action on trying to confuse our Skeleton Warriors. After this exercise in futility, his initial Stoneskin drops, and so does he before he has time to renew it.
We also do some other minor chores: Clear the Carnival of Zordral, save Samuel, and remove the various Ogres/Xvarts/Half-Ogres/Bandits in Argain's area. Not much to report, we're brutally over-leveled by now and just carve through everything.
As always, there is great internal debate as to whether or not it is worth the bother to clear Firewine Ruins. But Lendarn has a Cloudkill scroll... grumble. Fine! Onward! We relieve Meilum of his bracers, then head into the ruins proper. Khalid and Coran detrap/de-koboldify the entire thing, until we reach Lendarn and the strangely nameless Ogre Mage (why on earth would Lendarn, who is significantly more powerful than the Ogre Mage, do the latters bidding anyway?). At any rate, Lendarn blunts his arcane edge on 4 Skeleton Warriors, followed by Khalid and Coran finishing the job. The Ogre Mage is simply charged and beaten into submission. We head into Gullykin, Command and kill Jenkal, steal everything we can lay our hands on, and move on.
We return to Beregost Temple and finally clear out the wolf pack on the eastern part of the map. At various points of the fight I manage to get both Khalid and Hubblepot caught in our own Webs... fortunately, we're able to blast the wolves to bits before they do any damage.
Next stop, Ulcaster. Clearing the Mustard Jelly at the entrance gives just enough experience for Imoen to reach Mage level 6 and thus regain her Thief levels. Better ranged options for her, and an at-will 100% Detect Illusions... good stuff. The battle with the Wolf of Ulcaster is slightly chaotic, as usual. It gets a hit on Khalid and manages to Hold him (typically I'd use Potions of Freedom beforehand to guard against this, but figured we could handle it regardless). However, it immediately swaps to attacking Yeslick instead, so all is well. Its reinforcing Dread Wolves are held off by our standard complement of 4x Skeleton Warriors, and when the Wolf dispels it (incidentally dispelling its own Hold effect on Khalid too), we just reapply Remove Fear. The Wolf falls in due course; spawning in a few Ghouls isn't enough to turn the tide.
All that remains are two (potentially) dangerous areas: Mutamin's Garden and the Red Wizard Forest. We go after the Basilisks first. Hubblepot remains under Invisibility for the entire time we are in this area, as I do not want to risk everything on a moment of inattention. 4x Skeleton Warriors and Korax do an excellent job under Hubblepot's supervision; Mutamin himself is swiftly Held and cut down.
The rest of the Basilisks actually all fall without the party members having to involve themselves, as the summons and Korax are sufficient to handle them. There is a brief moment of tension when we inadvertently trigger Kirian's party, but they're really too low-level to be any real threat, and end up failing their save against Silence 15' Radius without having accomplished anything of note.
We move to the Red Wizard Forest. Before engaging the Wizards proper, we move around the area, an invisible Hubblepot tripping the web traps, and clear the Spiders. The big spawn of these creatures (Sword Spider, Wraith Spider, Phase Spider and 3x Giant Spiders) can actually be somewhat dangerous, as the Giant Spiders spit Web. We prudently opt to burn a charge of our Wand of Monster Summoning, which turns out to be a good thing, as Khalid is swiftly Held, and that wall of summons prevents him from being pierced to death by the Sword Spider.
Alright, just a few Red Wizards to go. No matter what I do, this fight never seems to go cleanly, unless you go the cheap route and just Web them all from off-screen. Hubblepot is feeling noble today, so we'll fight them properly. 5 Skeleton Warriors will as usual bear the brunt of the fighting, with the party providing support. A few basic buffs, and we engage.
And things just go to crap. Our Skeleton Warriors successfully hold off the three Red Wizards near the center of the shrine for a few rounds, and the rest of the party manages to kill the one on the stairs... but then we are almost overrun by a veritable army of surprisingly tough summons: Ogre Berserkers, regular Ogres and Ettercaps. Khalid gets Charmed (fortunately not Dire Charmed), and so is out for 5 rounds. Then, when the Red Wizards land a Slow and Glitterdust, the remnants of the party execute a perfect tactical retreat (i.e., running in terror towards the south while desperately popping the Wand of Summoning to send hapless critters to cover us while we make good our escape).
This actually works quite well: The summons buy time for all the debuffs to wear off, and the seemingly endless hordes the Red Wizards summoned actually also start to blink out of existence. The party turns around and goes on the offensive! What few enemy summons remain are swiftly disposed of, along with one of the Red Wizards that foolishly lingered on her own near the stairs to the shrine. The other two Red Wizards went west, and when we find them, they are (understandably) out of their most potent spells, and are thus reduced to casting Blindness and Magic Missile. Denak is the last enemy to fall, and the party is victorious. Hooray!
After such a bout of epic adventuring and great conquests, the party feels the need for an ale or 17, and retires to the Friendly Arm Inn. Here they can be found still, laying plans for how best to proceed when brought face to face with the maze of dark alleyways and political powerplays that is the city of Baldur's Gate...
Hubblepot is now a L6/L5 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
After killing Sarevok, FD found herself in the starting Dungeon.
Determined to solo the game, FD headed off. Porios was scared into submission and the undead was killed whilst protected from undead
The flaming fist saved FD when she suddenly decided to take a nap
When FD woke up, she summoned her nymphs and subdued Korlasz.
The ducal palace and the city was uneventfull. It was all about money, XP and the battle tankard... succesfully doing the bucket list she got out of town.
The dwarves of dumathion quest is really easy... if you have 3 scrolls of protection from undead.
The traps again posing the biggest opposition, and the secret reveiled wasnt needed whilst protected from undead.
My completionist approach was continued doing the Menhir Quist and the disapearing refugees. FD rushed towards the level cap and level 6 druid spells (read harm...).
Things where looking good and xp was so plenty that I decided to rush for Belhifet. I just needed the temple of Bhall, surrendering the fort and survurving the crusader attack. Manageble if you stear away from trouble.
In the green dragon cave I refrained from killing the dragon and just went for the Bugbears. I died in the dragon cave the last time, so dodging the dragon cave whould set a new SoD no reload record for me.
Job done.
Snorgash and friend where tanked and killed. South of the temple entrance a couple of bugbears warm themselves by a camp fire. Truly roleplaying the Druid here, I decided to visit the bugbears by the said campfire. Considering my 21 wisdom greenstone amulet carrying character didnt need the xp nor the loot, I cant explain why - but it sure was stupid. Forgetting the trap guarding the bugbears, I rushed them, got feebleminded and killed by the hard hitting bugbears.
After completing the Umar Hill sidequests, we made our way to the temple ruins with a secret weapon at the ready: Azuredge, thrown by Ayla. A quick way to get rid of shadows and other nasty undead. This allowed us to quickly proceed to the Shade Lord. I decided to kite this foe at high range to avoid his darkling aura, with only the enraged Cadrax (being immune to level drain) venturing into melee combat. I had to wait out a PfMW spell, and Ayla got hit by a finger of death (which she resisted), but otherwise, things went according to plan - only Sarastro ended up being in range of the aura once:
My next stop was WK level 1, and I decided that with a couple of buffs, my party was strong enough to take on the 2 vampire wraiths right away:
Some magic missle spells helped to nuke the dangerous foes down relatively quickly, and the reward was some nice loot and experience from clearing the entire level except for the statues. Now, it was time to travel back to Athkatla and start minor quests and battles all over the city, for example Mencar:
Or the slavers:
At this point, I was starting to use Valeria more and more, mostly for her traps and backstabs - any mage who didn't start off with an active stoneskin already was fair game:
After that, a quick invisible retreat or the party rushing in to help ensured victory. Defeating the rakshasa, however, was more of a group effort:
Speaking of rakshasas, the druid grove was my next stop. The various trolls, shadow druids, earth elementals, shambling mounds etc. were dealt with (I don't have tactics spirit trolls installed - oh, and while I theoretically should have the "more annoying trolls" feature in this installation, it doesn't seem to work at all). The three rakshasas in the hut turned out to be far more dangerous. This ended up being somewhat of a solo mission for Cadrax, who was able to get his saves into secure negative positions with an invulnerability potion, having only to resist tons of magical nukes by the three foes. A teleport field threw him upstairs, and he ended up being trapped, unable to get past the hostile cat monsters - his only choice was to kill one of them before he would die himself - drinking potions every time his aura was clear and hacking away as fast as he could - success!
He ended up making it outside on 33 hitpoints:
After drinking a bunch of healing potions, he received additional buffs, made it back inside and easily finished the job:
However, I decided to leave Faldorn for later, as I can't kill her via cutscene thanks to SCS and I wasn't sure if I wanted to pick up a druid right now. Instead, I made my way to De'Arnise Keep. At some point in there, Thallian also got his second 6th level spell (chosing death spell after going with improved haste first), which sped up the process, since trolls don't do well against death spell. Nabatil also picked up level 15, which gave him access to the best skeleton warriors - very helful against the yuan-ti mage:
After killing the golems and forging the FoA +3, I made my way down to Tor'Gal. I thought about leaving him for later, since SCS Tor'Gal is really tough, but I decided that my party was ready - which was correct, but I ended up making a huge misplay, which turned out to be extremely punishing. Things started off well, with a death spell taking out some of the lower level foes. Ayla was tanking Tor'Gal, the others took down the remaining spirit trolls and the Yuan-Ti mages:
Tor'Gal was soon the only foe left, but I was unable to kill him, despite using fire/acid. I had to take a step back and try again. However, while trying to retreat, Cadrax, who was being attacked by the big troll at this point, wouldn't come. Due to strength drain, he was encumbered, and getting very low with his hitpoints. Now, any number of solutions would've worked here: Remove some items from his inventory, let him drink the storm giant strength potion I had... but I chose the one option that does not work (and if I thought about it longer than a second, I would have realized that). I had him drink an invisibility potion. I'm actually aware that Tor'Gal can see through invisibility (he can do that even in vanilla), but I simply forgot about it at that point. The result: With his next hit, Tor'Gal chunked Cadrax (note that I still could've run away after drinking that potion if I only had thought about throwing some items out of his inventory - this really was just a stupid mistake):
That sucks. I was doing so well, with no deaths up until now, and now we suffer a chunking of our primary fighter in a battle that was basically already won. I managed to finish Tor'Gal and return to Nalia, frustrated.
I'm not one to quit over a few chunkings, however. I decided to use this opportunity to complete some NPC quests. Right away I encountered my next problem, as I was unable to trigger Nalia's funeral quest - a bug that has happened to me before (and I don't plan to use the console in this run except for truly gamebreaking bugs). I decided to try out Cernd next, also wanting him to fight Faldorn. My first attempt failed, as she was able to cast creeping doom right as my insect plague hit her. However, Cernd was resurrected by Valeria, and in my second attempt, I got a step closer to Faldorn, reducing the "flying time" of the insect plague, allowing Cernd to come out on top (both times, I had him start under invisibility, so he would be the first to start casting):
Before doing Cernd's companion quest, I had Valeria place 3 traps in Deril's home (I should have rested to place three more, honestly). Deril with SCS has access to multiple level 9 spells, so when I realized that the traps didn't kill him outright, my hasted party ran outside - luckily before his chain contingency, which included ADHW, was able to connect. I buffed a lot, preparing for a difficult battle, unsure of my chances (I always tend to take higher risks after losing a character to chunking, as I tend to have a kind of "things aren't going great anyway, so it won't be as bad if I fail now" mentality) - but as I walked back in, it turned out the traps did succeed after all, having taken down Deril with poison ticks while I was buffing:
After completing quests for Jan, Anomen, Keldorn (I failed that one by chosing the wrong dialogue option), Mazzy and Korgan - all relatively easy - I had to pick up Edwin to do the next one, so it was time to take down Rayic Gethras. He proved to be ill-prepared to deal with improved invisiblity - Ayla was able to easily take him down thanks to this protective spell:
To clear Mae'Vars guild, I had to use Ayla's true sight and keep my vulnerable cleric/thief Valeria invisible. I didn't have a lot of spells left when attacking Mae'Var, so this fight ended up being a bit sloppy, but success was mine nonetheless:
For Edwin's companion quest, I had to fight a lich for the first time. My plan was to hopefully kill him with traps, but with Valeria's levels not being high enough, he ended up surviving this first assault. Since the lich was very slow, I ended up performing a strategic retreat, periodically animating skeleton warriors to keep my foe somehwat occupied. He chased me back to the entrance of the level, but during that time, he lost his most important protections. When I came back, a single Azuredge hit from Ayla took him out:
With all the vanilla NPC quests done (except for Jaheira's, which I'm saving for later), it was time to start doing some EE content. I recruited Dorn first, completing his first and second quest. The ambush after the second quest caught me somewhat off guard (I didn't remember it at all), but I was able to get some quick buffs up and secure victory:
Luckily, multiple foes wasted their time spamming holy smite, which only affects Dorn in this party.
I'm planning to do Dorn's third quest next and go for Rasaad, Hexxat and Neera and their quests after that. I'm not sure if I will replace Cadrax with a permanent sixth party member at some point - I might take Jaheira along, or I might pick up Korgan - or I might try SoA with five, pickping up a sixth party member only in ToB, should I make it that far.
@aldain, good progress again, you keep surviving nasty places like Ulcaster with your still lowish level party! @StummvonBordwehr, congrats on beating your own record and at the same time condolences for FD95. @Enuhal, looking very solid for someone who doesn't habitually play SCS, despite the loss of Cadrax. Keep up the good work!
Alright, only the major areas remain (Baldur's Gate, Durlag's Tower, Balduran's Isle and Ice Island). Before we get into any of that, however, it is high time to do some scribing, as we've been using the same arcane spells since Imoen/Hubblepot hit L2 spell slots.
We head into Baldur's Gate and immediately go for the Ramazith questline. I want to save some Potions of Mind Focusing for the big finale to boost Coran's already ridicolous ranged THAC0 further, and by using the Tome of Intelligence in Ramazith's possession, Hubblepot shall require only a single Potion of Genius to reach 100% spell scribing chance (there should be enough Potions of Genius that we only need to rely on them for scribing regardless, but this way it's a certainty).
We free the nymph and receive her hair, head back to a (rightfully) incensed Ramazith, and pursue him up the tower, where none of his pet monsters cause much concern. If I am being ultra careful, I'll handle Ramazith by Clerics nipping into the top floor invisibly, setting up shop behind one of the bookshelves out of sight of the dread Mage, and summoning a horde of Skeleton Warriors to overrun him. However... Ramazith is a Necromancer. Which means no defensive illusions, which means we can probably get away with just charging him. And, we do. Ramazith has time for a single Remove Magic before meeting his end.
We loot the quite awesome treasures of his tower, and head to the Elfsong Tavern. We need to do a sweep of all spell-selling establishments on the Sword Coast, so Imoen memorizes 4 Friends (we need one each for Sorcerous Sundries, Ulgoth's Beard, High Hedge and Feldepost's Inn). While we're at Sorcerous Sundries, we might as well take out the Mages upstairs. Normally, this is done via mass Web from off-screen, but again.. everything is going so well, we can probably get away with more conventional tactics. So we just summon a wall of Skeleton Warriors, buff up and rush in. Niemain obliges by killing himself with his own Wand of Fire (for some reason he didn't put up MGoI), and the rest of the enemies waste their best spells on our summoned fodder. All too easy.
Alright! We buy every potentially useful spell at Sorcerous Sundries, Ulgoth's Beard, High Hedge and Feldepost's Inn, and indulge in scribing. We now have the arcane tools to handle pretty much any situation the game might throw at us. Back to Baldur's Gate!
So, after resting up and preparing spells, we've got about 3 ingame hours before night-time, when we'll do Narlen's quest and break into the Hall of Wonders. Til then, might as well clear the sewers. An Ogre Mage at this stage is merely dust in the wind, and only gets off a single Melf's Acid Arrow (we splurge on a dual Fireball to clear his 8 or so Carrion Crawlers). The remaining sewers are even more uneventful, with Ratchild and Schlumpsha falling in quick succession.
Onward, ever onward. We finish the other quests in BG: East, then get to work on BG: Northeast. As always, Hubblepot is absolutely ruthless when it comes to permanent power boosts: Slaying a High Priestess of Umberlee to keep a +1 Wisdom tome? It barely warrants a second thought.
While his Boots of Speed would be useful, I can never bring myself to kill Lothander. Instead, we give him his scroll and let him go. On our way to beat up on Marek, Larze gets a double helping of Wand of Paralyzation, and fails both his saves.
We could probably get away with just charging Marek, bows and slings blazing, but he does cast Confusion in the middle of an innocent-packed gambling den... so, yeah, Skeletons will handle it instead. Goodbye, Marek. An ignoble end for an ignoble man.
BG: Southeast is swiftly cleansed. Taxek and Michael annoy us slightly by running up and down the stairs, but such tactics do not avail them for long. The Greater Basilisk in the Docks Warehouse is killed for Nadirin using a scroll of Protection from Petrification (the mage spell, not a green scroll).
On to BG: South. We've still got a single quest left from BG: Northeast (saving Brielbara's baby), so we head into the Low Lantern. Imoen's Detect Illusions forces Desreta out of her potion-induced Invisibility, and she falls before she can quaff another potion. Vay-Ya is distracted by a charge of the Wand of Monster Summoning, and has no dangerous spells left when we charge her. Yago is even more silly than I remember. He prebuffs with just Armor, tries to cast Sleep but is interrupted, and dies immediately afterwards. Mage of power, indeed... we return to Brielbara with the spellbook, and thus BG: East is entirely done as well.
We mop up the remaining quests in BG: South apart from the Iron Throne HQ (Ghorak, Larriaz), and head into BG: Southwest. Clearing the Seven Suns is easy, and we get a fair bit of experience and gold for handing the quests in to Scar (we cleared the Ogre Mage previously, as noted, so got that reward as well). Fergus gets an Angel Skin ring on the way out. We also help out Aldeth, and run into the bug where no one recognizes that we have in fact killed all the dopplegangers (had to use the console to fix it).
Good! Only two combat encounters left here; Sunin and friends, and the band of thieves. We opt to go after Sunin first, and suffer what might not be a truly close call, but it could certainly have turned into one.
So, we're outside Sunin's house. We apply standard buffs: Strength of One, Chant, Bless, Haste etc, and charge in! Normally, it's quite possible to power through Sunin's defenses before he starts slinging dangerous spells, especially with Haste up. However, not so much this time. Sunin goes with standard defenses, with MGoI, Mirror Image, Shadow Door, and Shield. His first action is casting Remove Magic at us, which catches the entire group and dispels almost every buff.
Here's the weirdness: Imoen spends almost 2 rounds with clear line of sight to Sunin with Detect Illusions active, but his Mirror Image and Improved Invisibility remains active. Shouldn't 100% Detect Illusions mean it pulses, with guaranteed success, once per round? Not so, apparently. With his defenses intact and our buffs dispelled, Sunin turns to his offensive spells... a Chaos catches the entire party! Hubblepot, Khalid and Imoen makes their saves, but Coran, Jaheira and Yeslick are confused.
We keep focusing on Sunin, but with only one fighter left under our control, we just can't break through his defenses, and Shadow Door prevents us from targetting him with anything. Sunin goes to town: Sunfire (Khalid thankfully makes his save, but it still hurts), another Chaos aimed at Hubblepot who fails his save but was casting Sanctuary when the spell hit, and so is temporarily safe, and finally a Lightning Bolt. By some minor miracle, said Lightning Bolt misses Hubblepot, but does hit Jaheira. And kills her in a single hit. Adding insult to injury, it brings Khalid down to 13 hitpoints with its bounces, and the poor Half-Elf panics.
Imoen being low on health is due to Sunin spending his time inbetween spell casts to target her with his Melf's Minute Meteors. By contrast, his attendant fighters have done pretty much no damage: It's all Sunin's show. Finally, Sunin seems to run out of big damage spells, but then he starts to summon Ogres and Hobgoblin Elites instead. Which normally wouldn't be a problem, but Jaheira is dead, Khalid is running around in a panic, Imoen and Coran are struggling, and Yeslick got hit by a Slow. We pop out our Wand of Monster Summoning, and thankfully, our own Ogres hold off Sunin's. Finally, after a LOT of positioning and potion quaffing, Sunin's MGoI wears off, and his second Stoneskin is pierced. With some damage already having been done to the damnable man, Hubblepot is able to sneak around back and finish Sunin off with a blast of Wand of Fire Scorcher. Burn!
That could have very easily gone much more sideways. A few more of our party affected by the initial Chaos, or an unfortunate Lightning Bolt bounce so it tapped Hubblepot twice... The party limps slowly towards the Temple of Helm and raises Jaheira. We'll need to spend a full rest cycle healing up from this debacle, but we pulled through. Phew. In retrospect, better spell picks would've done wonders: Detect Invisibility and Spell Thrust, in particular, would've been helpful. I relied entirely on Imoen's Detect Illusions, and it failed us big time. Always have a contingency, Hubblepot!
We heal everyone up, and ID our ill-gotten gains. With our remaining spell slots, we (as it turns out) over-prepare for taking on the four thieves in BG: Southwest. We steamroll them utterly, but better that than the other way around. So that's BG: Southwest done, and we did Varci Roaringhorn's quest before killing everything in the Temple of Umberlee, so BG: West is also done. Making good time! We head to BG: Central and help Nadine out, netting us another The One Gift Lost. Heh... we still have a single charge left on the one we bought right before heading into the Nashkel Mines. Seems a lifetime ago to Hubblepot.
BG: Northwest is up next. Nester's Dagger is returned to Quinn, and old Gervisse proves far less deadly than the late Sunin, the former having nothing more devastating than Monster Summoning II up his sleeve. This time, Detect Illusions works flawlessly... of course it does. Khalid and Yeslick go in against Degrodel's guardians on their own, managing to pull them into a very fine line which Hubblepot toasts using our by now plentiful Wands of Fire.
We recover both the Cloak and Helm of Balduran. Finally, it's a battle against the Maulers of Undermountain. Erring on the side of caution, we're well-prepared to dispel spell protections, Invisibility and all such shenanigans. The Maulers fall in short order.
And... that's almost it. All that remains is Jardak and his butler. Said butler apparently didn't prepare any Confusion today, and so it's just a matter of time until he drops (we were prepared to dispel multiple Invisibility/MGoI if necessary). Jardak himself only gets a single hit in before joining his manservant.
Hubblepot declares Baldur's Gate cleansed of miscreants! And, I guess, a Paladin and his loyal butler. And a High Priestess... and a Mage that was just minding his own business in his home. Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, etc. The party sells off their latest hoard at the Sorcerous Sundries, and retires to the Elfsong Tavern to lay plans. Said plans will probably include a massive shopping spree, as we have finally reached reputation 18 (19, actually), and have more than enough money for the high-priced items such as Robe of the Good Archmagi, another Full Plate Mail, and Shadow Armour. Properly equipped, we will then begin our assault on the Iron Throne headquarters.
But that is for next time. For now, Hubblepot is enjoying a few stoops of Extra Strong Black Mead and a small pouch of fine pipeweed, conferring quietly with his team mates in front of the fire on how best to proceed.
Hubblepot is now a L6/L6 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
1) Item revision or Item upgrade by Weimer 2) Spell revision or not?
1) Why not both? You can also use Daulmakan's Item Pack 1.8. All three are compatible. 2) Only if you know what you are doing.
In my opinion with Item Revisions game is easier, with Spell revisions harder. Weimer's upgrades are very cheesy but pretty useful, still worth installing. Item Pack has very useful component "more work for Cromwell".
You're obviously a quick learner. I think I've died 4 times to that trap: - excusable in early gaming when I had no idea where and what SoD traps were. - some time later I'd forgotten what the trap did and went through it to test it ... - some time later again and I mis-remembered how far down the corridor it was (basically not very far at all) and triggered it while in combat with bugbears - not paying enough attention in a fight I auto-followed a bugbear whose morale broke ...
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 8
This time, we're going with a more conservative, safer build that will have gobs of health and will carry dozens of pounds of potions for emergencies. We will deal damage primarily with bows, damage which will skyrocket once we hit Marksmanship 80 and gain access to a very special Skyrim Redone perk.
First up is grinding Alchemy. We're working much more efficiently than we used to; we now know to use the Thief Stone to boost skill growth by 20% and I have enough knowledge of recipes to make the most of each ingredient.
We pick Alchemy perks as early as possible to maximize skill growth. Our Alchemy skill climbs dramatically in very short order, and we start making lots of money by selling off our potions.
While on our typical circuit around Skyrim purchasing ingredients while burning time so each vendor's inventory will restock, we run into a street fight in Riften. I have no idea what caused it, but apparently the Black Briars, a criminal family or something, gets in a turf war with the local law enforcement. They trade crossbow bolts and lightning bolts while the townspeople scurry out of the way.
I also keep a safe distance, wary of getting nailed with a stray crossbow bolt (which could deal well over 250 damage in a single blow), but I don't want to leave the area to escape the fight entirely: while the Black Briars appear to be immortal thanks to being plot-critical to certain quests, the guards are entirely capable of dying, and each one leaves some modest loot when they fall.
It's in our best interests to stick around so we can filch goodies off of the bodies of slain guards. I speak with one of the locals, which gives us some very interesting dialogue from an otherwise innocuous food seller.
Eventually, our carrying capacity maxes out and there's no further reason to linger, so we head out to Dawnstar. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Dawnstar is home to the White Hall, the Jarl's palace, where a local court wizard has a habit of leaving around valuable alchemical ingredients, from the ever-useful Hagraven Claw to the ever-profitable Giant's Toe.
Giant's Toes are very rare and kind of gross, but if you can get a hold of them, you can mix them with Wheat for a very high-value potion. These ingredients are just lying around a room in the White Palace, but they're flagged as owned, which means that taking them is theft. You have to wait until a little after midnight before everyone around is asleep.
Honestly, though, the best mixture to level Alchemy is just to make Slow poisons. All you need is a Deathbell (easy to find, especially around Morthal) and a Salt Pile (even easier to find, especially in the fish barrels by the docks in Riften) and you can make a high-value poison. Purchasing ingredients directly from alchemists is the fastest way to grind Alchemy, but those two ingredients in particular are high priorities, since they are very productive and cost very little to purchase.
I continue the circuit around Skyrim and get into trouble in Dawnstar when I try to steal some ingredients while the owner is still awake, but by dropping all my stolen stuff and running straight to the guard, I can avoid paying a heavy fine or having to turn over our stolen goods.
Then I can just wait until the guy in the White Hall goes to sleep and I can pick the ingredients I dropped right in front of him--even the stolen items.
Unfortunately, even if you don't get caught stealing something, there's still a chance that the owner will send some hired goons after you to exact vengeance. It only happens once per game, but at low levels, and on Legendary mode, the goons can be very dangerous. We get ambushed the moment we walk out the door.
I drink potions of Slow Time and Invisibility and scurry away. I have to get several hundred feet out of town before the game finally decides the thugs are no longer looking for me.
Our Alchemy skill finally hits 90, and we now have all the best perks, which means we have just about the strongest potions available. With our potions, we can get elemental resistances above 40%, improve store prices by 14%, deal 84% more damage with bows, paralyze for 14 seconds, deal 280 damage over 10 seconds, restore 125 points of health or magicka, and slow time for 89 seconds.
But when we find a necklace that improves store prices, we nearly bankrupt ourselves buying it as a long-term investment, which means we have a little more grinding. We do another circuit and end up with Alchemy over 110 and a few thousand more gold.
Now it's time to level Alteration. Same strategy as before: annoy mudcrabs in Morthal, spam Oakflesh spells, repeat.
We accidentally get in a fight with a necromancer in the wilderness, so I down a Slow Time potion and start filling her with arrows.
The fight isn't hard, but then I run into a Chaurus Reaper, a very, very sturdy giant insect that has long been a problem for me. Chaurus bugs are extremely difficult to kill and deal massive damage. The good news is that it gives us lots of time to practice archery.
We fire so many arrows that we have to go back to Riverwood to chop wood and steal iron ingots to forge more arrows; we just can't get by on the arrows we can find and purchase. We hit level 21 and now have a little over 300 health. We also have a Marksmanship skill of 40 and some basic archery perks, so it's time to head to Bleak Falls Barrow and start making progress in the main quest.
So, this week was noticeably less intensive than the past one, so I was able to play about an hour pretty much every single day, topping out on two today. This amounted to us getting out of Candlekeep, sweeping the Werewolves Island clean, winning the Palce fight and successfully cleaning Durlag's Tower as well as the Aec'Letec cult and the demon itself, to end it with the Maze and the Undercity goons today. I still have to beat Sarevok, but have already prepared for that. I'll play it as soon as I post this comment, so that I don't keep on forgetting what I did.
Candlekeep was a cakewalk. I forgot how I fought against Prat, but I do remember chasing him around the caves, and having Ajantis solo the Basilisks after drinking a potion to counter their attacks. After this, Sarevok's assassins in the Undercellar were dealt with, although they managed to kill Jaheira with a stray Sunfire I thought was going to miss her. Cythandria or however she was called wasn't very lucky and she got a Spell Thrust thrown at her, followed by an Arrow of Dispelling and a Bolt of Biting, and culminated with two attacks made with the Wand of Heavans (one of them was re-charged afterwards, the only wand I re-charged in the entire run). Jaheira and Ajantis took care of the Golems as if they were gibberlings with a lot of hitpoints.
The Palace Fight wasn't hard for us, in fact, both Dukes survived and on Barely Injured, but this was because we had Branwen, Ajantis and Yvralline use their healing spells on Liia, because, for some odd reason, Sarevok targeted her even if she was standing several feet away. The dopplegangers didn't pose much threat, they were cleared out very easily after several debuffs were thrown, and the one closer to the Dukes were prioritized.
On Durlag's Tower, the most difficult thing definitely was the Chess game, since I misremembered and wasn't fully aware of the fact that Pawns can turn into the Queen (L9 mage) when they reach your end of the board. So I ended up fighting against several Queens which were rather difficult to deal with, but in the end we avoided getting killed, and, if you don't lose, you win. So yeah, we pretty much just won because we lasted out longer. After this, I started being much more careful and barely lost a single hitpoint on the next level. The fight against the Demonknight was far easier after proper buffing and damaging his mirror. Since the unbuffed versions of ourselves had no idea of what to do, they were dispatched to the Nine Hells very quickly, while Ajantis dealt with the demonic creature on his own.
Back to Ulgoth's Beard, we all drank Invisibility Potions before we could be spoken to, buffed, and finally let the man give his speach. We defeated those enemies without much trouble, same for the ones guarding the entrance to the storehouse. The ones inside it gave us some trouble, but in the end they proved to be rather vulnerable to Fireballs once their buffs had ran out (I retreated, came back in after getting a drink and scorched them off the face of the Earth), and the remaining Assassin didn't do very well against Branwen's Holy Word (I am still unsure of HOW the Assassin survived, since it got hit by all the Fireballs, although saved against all of them and got marvelously low damage rolls). Against Aec'Letec, I protected everyone I could against Gaze attacks (this included everyone except for Yvralline since I believe the demon does not target the player with that particular attack) using potions, and, everyone but Jaheira with Death Ward. I'm not sure why I did that, but thankfully only Ajantis lost a few hitpoints while fighting the demon in melee (they both used Scrolls of Protection from Undead, which in IR, instead of making Undead ignore you, give you a +2 to hit bonus against them (and they get a similar penalty against you as well) besides granting the player with Protection from Level Drain, for TEN turns, TEN TURNS!!), which were quickly restored with potions everytime. Coran obliterated the sorceress by landing one Arrow of Dispelling (out of the three that were shot) and quickly following up with an Arrow of Biting. The Cult Guards were taken care by gratitious amounts of summons, fireballs and a varied assorted repertoire of other projectiles, magic and not. After they were all dead, the entire party focused the demon, and after he retreated to the Ethereal Plane about twice, making good use of this opportunity, Coran set up a trap that helped us finally put Aec'Letec to rest.
After we were finished with this, I talked to the dwarf, headed back to Baldur's Gate, cleared out the fastest path on the Maze and used Potions of Explosion and the Wand of Fire to quickly deal with the Undercity goons. Tamoko got hit by two criticals from Ajantis in the same round, and everything I threw at her connected (Edwin's Fire Arrow spell, Coran's arrows, Yvralline's Bolts of Lighting and Branwen's Wand of Heavens. Jaheira wasn't in her werewolf form, so she ended up sitting close to Tamoko complaining she was carrying to much potions to be able to move) as well so at most she lasted two rounds and a half.
We entered the Temple right after sleeping, but are going to buff on the go as we need it because the fight is going to be long and I'm not willing to lose because they run out, so I'm playing extra-carefully, buffing Edwin as Angelo runs down on him. Unluckily for him, Yvralline casted Dispel Magic and got rid of all of his buffs, and the Potion of Sight Ajantis had drank took care of his invisibility spell that followed soon after losing his buffs. Ajantis tanked his attacks, Coran accidentally wasted several Arrows of Dispelling on him, and Edwin blasted three magic missiles at him. I was trying to dispel his buffs with Spell Thrust at the start, but both times it failed. So we're down to only one Dispel Magic to take care of enemy debuffs.
I tried to lure out Diarmid, but we wouldn't move from Sarevok's side, so I buffed Coran with everything we have, and sent him on for a Western duel, which lured out Tazok. I moved Tazok to where Ajantis, whom ended up tanking him, and the rest of the party was, and he was quickly killed with a minimal use of resources. I Sent Coran to deal with Diarmid once again, this time their duel uninterrupted, and obviously Coran won, and activated Semaj's script. So I had Jaheira cast this 4th level Druidic version of Ice Storm close to them, and had Edwin throw out a Malisson followed by a Cloudkill. The result? Semaj was quickly dead, and we could now finally deal with Sarevok as soon as the poisonous mist (and the Teleport Field AND the Entangle I am still unsure why I threw at them) cleared up.
Edit: welp, I accidentally clicked on Post Comment instead of Save Draft. This post is most likely going to get edited again for the real finale, unless the thread is drowned in new replis which I don't think will happen.
Edit 2: after the AoE spells finally lasted out, I had Jaheira cast one of the Animal Summoning spells SR adds, which in this case, summons 3 Leopards to fight for us. We used them to distract Sarevok as Yvralline casted her last Dispel Magic. Right after that, since Ajantis had already been buffed while we waited out the spells, we all started attacking Sarevok. Because IR changes Potions of Stone Form into basically Potions of Stoneskin that give the drinker FIVE skins as per the the 10th level-casted version of the spell, Sarevok wasn't very threatening to him nor to Jaheira. The rest of the party pelted him with an assortment of ranged attacks. Soon after, our brother was dead! In case anyone is interested, here are everyone's stats before travelling to Amn!
Starting a new run with a Champion of Helm called Watcher
The images are mostly self-explanatory. The sword that Watcher got as a reward for getting Tonner back into shape was a +1 sword which in addition does 1 fire damage. She cleared all the ankhegs that she could find including two that attacked at the same time. She became EXTREMELY poor as a result of improving the belt of piercing. Reputation ended as 19, but no gold to take advantage of it.
EDIT
By charming Galtok and getting him to cast lightning bolt on Greywolf, Greywolf was almost dead since Watcher got a critical hit. Unfortunately it was Isra who landed the final death blow, so Watcher lost out on the experience. Galtok and Watcher then went to fight Zargos Flintblade. Galtok thought that he was casting protection upon himself, but the scroll was cursed and he summoned monsters instead. As they were still out of sight of Zargos, that wasn't a problem. Galtok cast some protection on Watcher who used her magical sword whilst Galtok cast a lightning bolt on Zargos. That battle ended VERY quickly. They then scoured the rest of the area for enemies. A ghoul held Galtok and eventually killed him. Watcher then killed the ghoul with her bow. Watcher then proceeded to find Bassilus who she charmed. Bassilus buffed the two of them before taking on Zargal. He used Greater Command which put two of them out of action. The archer who was still concious was killed followed by Zargal and finally the last of Zargal's cohorts. A bandit was then killed but then Bassilus was held by a ghoul. Watcher waited until Basilus was almost dead before joining in attacking him with her bow. The ghoul then turned its attention to Watcher who had to keep one eye on the ghoul whilst sending arrows at Bassilus who finally fell. Killing the ghoul was then relatively simple.
This update is all about EE content - the NPC quests of Dorn, Rasaad, Hexxat and Neera. This is my third time doing these quests, but unlike SoD, they still feel unfamiliar to me and I tend to make a couple of mistakes during these (sometimes, dialogue and outcome can also be confusing) - still, these quests are definitely worth it for both the experience and the items (Rasaad's questline, which is the easiest one, provides a gem with a once per day use of instacast true seeing and an early Neera quest grants you an amulet of protection +2, and there's far more to gain). I already did 2/3 Dorn quests - for the third one, I decided to kill both of his patrons. The first one didn't put up much of a fight, the second one has some kind of hold/paralyze ability, but my inquisitor is immune to such things, allowing her to safely tank the Marilith:
Rasaad's first quest was very easy and straightforward (I didn't even step into any traps this time), and while I wasn't very prepared for the final battle in the second one, a couple of buffs and healing potions were enough to turn the tide. Not much else to say here. Hexxat's quests turned out to be more interesting. During the second one, I was surprised when the mind flayers showed SCS behaviour, using psionic maze and other added abilities (I didn't think SCS would affect EE content). I was suddenly very scared to see an alhoon there:
Luckily, unlike the sewer alhoon, this one wasn't a super high level spellcaster. Still, one of the illithids did manage to teleport to my most vulnerable party member, Valeria, and drain her intellect while I was distracted. Had to use a RoR charge to pick her up:
The next difficult part of this crypt was the battle against the generals. I was very low on spells&buffs, and I had forgotten that you can rest freely during Hexxat's quests. Bad positioning got almost my entire party affected by an insect plague, and though I was able to kill most of my foes while under the effect of the spell, I had to constantly drink healing potions und was unable to get a remove fear (or level 15 skald song) off:
Success was ultimately mine, and the boss mummy fell to Azuredge:
When tombwalking back, my game crashed and I had to redo the entire tomb, this time remembering to rest, so I had no trouble with the generals. Time to move on to the second quest. I forgot about some of this tomb's mechanics, but this didn't result in any serious problems. I avoided attacking the NPCs at the start of the level (they are very, very dangerous) and had skeleton warriors take care of the 3 lightning bolt spamming sorcerers while having the door locked:
I had to do the riddlewalk with Hexxat multiple times, and I think the spider endboss bugged out on me (constantly restarting her dialogue), but victory was easily achieved. On to Neera. Getting to the hidden refuge is a pain. No difficult battles, but all these traps are super annoying, especially in such a huge area (and it has to be cleared of traps for the cat quest later on). This time, I've created map markers for each trap, in case someone wants to do this and loathes waiting around to detect traps at any random point:
My big mistake for this round of EE quests happened when dealing with Reginald in the wild mage camp. I forgot how to solve his aggression issues, and when he started punching me, I thought that dialogue indicated that I should punch him back... However, he turned hostile and started unleashing spells - which is usually not all that dangerous in a wild magic zone, but I got unlucky. I lost a TON of gold (don't remember the exact number, but I'd guess it was more than 50k) when he got this wild surge:
The other wild mages stayed neutral, so I just had to avoid Reginald during future visits to the camp. I did all the minor quests without further trouble, continuing the questline until the red wizard enclave was open. With some buffs, the first room was quickly cleared (first, I used the vendor option to look for anything interesting. There was a robe of the neutral archmagi available, which would've been really really useful for me, but it was completely out of my prize range thanks to all the gold I lost due to the wild surge). I went with the aggressive dialogue option in the second room and entered a huge battle, where many of my buffs got dispelled multiple times. While most of my party survived all kinds of trouble and the skeleton warriors did great work, Neera herself, after getting her spell protections pierced, lost her life to a flame arrow spell:
I wasted a RoR charge (could have just gone outside to rest and let Valeria resurrect her) before resting anyway and moving on. Two secret words and a breach allowed Ayla and skeletons an easy go at the red wizard boss:
I was able to save all the wild mages (surprised that Reginald survived, despite me not being able to help him) and moved on to Jaheira's quests. I encountered some bugs here - it took a while to get Dermin to spawn, but by dismissing and re-recruiting Jaheira, I got him to show up without using the console. In the end, I ended up dismissing Jaheira. Currently, I'm travelling with five, but I'm seriously thinking of trying out Wilson (I think taking along Wilson in a no-reload game is not something that has been done a whole lot, and it might be fun).
Watcher's run came to an end with a pirate in the sirine area casting a spell that caused her to panic. I was hoping that it would wear off giving her a chance to escape. It didn't. She was level 5, 10,000 exp points short of level 6 at the time. As has been said before: "Good game, good game."
I will play with a party. I've got SCS Core Rules I've added a tweak - traps will net me the same amount of xp that I would be getting if I was playing baldur's gate 2 and I reached the level you're supposed to be into baldur's gate 2.
When this challenge is finished, I will play with a 104 roll chaotic evil character.
Plans have changed slightly. The party does go on a shopping spree up and down the Sword Coast: After buying everything apart from the masses of potions and magical ammunition in Baldur's Gate, we still have over 50000 gold remaining.
Now, instead of going after the Iron Throne, we'll spend some time gallivanting through TotSC areas, both for experience and items (mainly I want a few good spell scrolls for Hubblepot to enjoy). And no scroll is more exquisite than that of Stoneskin...
So, off to Ice Island! We prepare for multiple Mage battles: Detect Invisibility, Dispel Magic (to attempt to remove the inevitable Chaos/Confusion we'll be subjected to), Spell Thrust, Animate Dead.. anything that'll help. The hardest battle, of course, is right at the start. Before we get into it, an invisible Coran is sent ahead to de-trap the entire dungeon, as SCS Mages do enjoy running around while not casting, and we want to be free to pursue.
With Coran's return, we prepare. The plan is simple: Buffs are more or less pointless, as Andris is so much higher level he's all but guaranteed to dispel them. Charging head-on could work, but is more likely to end in tears. Let's try to wear Andris and his cronies down with summons. If they force the issue, we'll be ready for an all-out brawl. Coran, still invisible, will keep an eye on the action, while the rest of the party stands by around the corner.
Since we have a long dungeon ahead of us and only so many Animate Dead available, I once again turn to our Wand of Monster Summoning. Which is now down to 2 charges... maybe I should've picked another one up at Sorcerous Sundries. Oh well. Imoen pops a charge, and a hapless quartet of two Ogres, one Dire Wolf and one Hobgoblin Elite shamble forward to partake of the tender mercies of Andris and his minions. Naturally, our summons are torn to pieces in rather short order, but they do their job in that they soak up several high-value spells, including the obligatory Chaos.
With 3 of 4 summons down, Andris' friends start roaming, trying to find us, while Andris tries (and somehow fails) to kill the last Ogre for a few rounds. I think he confused and blinded the poor thing before taking it down. Beyn stumbles across us, but he's not that dangerous on his own: Hubblepot eats a Flame Arrow, but the damage is minimal.
We're a bit light on summons, but Imoen finds a scroll of Monster Summoning I, and Jaheira had Animal Summoning I prepared, which we also toss into the mix. This cat-and-mouse goes on for a few rounds: Beyn/Marcellus pop around the corner, cast something, and dip back into the central room, with us dealing some minor ranged damage to them. Andris is thankfully distracted by our meager summons.
Once the last of our summons drop, I decide that it should be safe enough to engage in earnest. Marcellus and Beyn have almost no spells left, and drop quickly, prompting Andris to teleport out. The party gets into formation (spread out in the room next to the exit), and waits. Sure enough, Andris pops his contingency, we in turn pop a few buffs, and Andris teleports back in. Andris is all but out of spells above 2nd level now, and really can only delay the inevitable. Ultimately, he falls.
That went rather well! Of course, there were some dangerous moments: It's difficult to keep on top of three enemy Mages moving around willy-nilly, and it is similarly difficult to kill any one of them quickly, given their defenses. Wearing them down seems to work best. Though to be fair, the best tactic is to turn everyone except Khalid invisible, then have Khalid pop a PfM scroll and some potions, and go to town (much like against Davaeorn). The Mages here have no defense against it, but I want to save our PfM scrolls for more important fights.
There's only one reasonably dangerous mage left in the dungeon now: Tellan. But we'll do this in good order. We head west and take out Garan and his Ankhegs. Imoen had a Sleep memorized for this very encounter, and we use the final charge of our Wand of Monster Summoning to bring up some Ogres that absorb Garan's initial Confusion. With that out of the way, Garan is bum-rushed, and doesn't even have time to get a second spell off. We had two Ogres left from our summoning, and they do a stellar job absorbing Cuchol's Confusion, whereupon Cuchol himself is treated to a dose of his own medicine, in that a Wand of Paralyzation charge spells his end.
So, Tellan. This is why we saved our six Animate Dead spells. The first Skeleton Warrior is killed in moments by Tellan summoning two Sword Spiders.. which he then proceeds to attack in melee until they are unsummoned. His AI seems to stipulate to attack the partys' enemies, whether or not you try to enlist his aid. Fine by me. We send in another five Skeleton Warriors, and all are brought down. Thinking it safe to engage after Tellan has cast so many spells, he gives us a fright by firing a Chaos! Thankfully, I see it coming, it only hits Yeslick, and the dwarf makes his save. Tellan still has a fair few low-level spells remaining, including a Flame Arrow which Imoen manages to survive, but we do bring him down without casualties.
Finally, we reach Dezkiel. We've been saving a batch of buffs, including Haste, in order to bring him down quickly. And we do, but he somehow gets Confusion off on our clumped-together party despite taking some 40 damage while casting. Dezkiel dies immediately after this screenshot is taken, and thankfully, a triple Dispel Magic from Yeslick/Imoen/Jaheira manages to clear the Confusion from the other half of the party. Victory! And Stoneskin! Especially Stoneskin!
We are teleported back and get the generous reward of 500 experience from Shandalar. With that overly verbose venture over and done with, we head to Durlag's Tower.
Clearing the exterior is entirely uneventful, as is the majority of the above-ground tower levels. Imoen memorized 2x Protection from Petrification, allowing Khalid and Coran to clear the Basilisks. This actually gets Imoen enough experience to hit Mage level 8, splendid.
There are really only two noteworthy encounters above-ground apart from the Basilisks: The Ghost on the third level, and Kirinhale on the fourth. We opt to take no chances. The ghost is very slowly, but safely, worn down by Skeleton Warriors. We of course grab the Tome of Wisdom for Hubblepot (the latter erupting in a brief power-mad cackle, but soon regaining control of himself).
Kirinhale is handled by all party members but Khalid going invisible. Khalid then pumps his Magic Resistance up to 100 with 2x Potions of Magic Protection, followed by Potion of Fire Giant Strength, Potion of Heroism and Oil of Speed. This is probably overkill, but Kirinhale can be very annoying if you fight her fairly. This time, she dies within 2 rounds, and we are never in any danger. Worth the potions, I say. On the way down, Riggilo gets Kirinhale's hair, and we get a Potion of Cloud Giant Strength. Good trade.
Alright, upper levels cleared! Into the basement, I suppose. The basement and the level with the Warders are cleared without issue (it's all melee grunts with, at worst, some kind of on-hit effect... nothing we cannot handle with ease). All that remains standing in our way are the Warders themselves.
We retreat outside and prepare thoroughly. We can of course still recall poor Lazramar the Necromancer, cut down in his arcane prime by the vile Pride... such an atrocity cannot be allowed to occur again. We'll use the tried-and-true tactic: Skeleton Warriors to hold off Pride (they are immune to the Cloudkill that gets popped at the start of the fight). The rest of the party goes after, in order, Love, Fear, and Avarice (much to Lazramar's dismay, Fear has some kind of ability that can Hold the target, and Love casts several spells). Avarice turns invisible and backstabs. Pride is dangerous, but ultimately is just a hasted melee brute, easily distracted by summons, and so saved for last.
There's no shortage of buffs: PfE 10' Radius, Defensive Harmony, Strength of One (and strength potions for Khalid and Jaheira), Bless, Chant, Remove Fear, Haste, Ghost Armor for the casters, even Potions of Invulnerability for the frontliners. Nothing left to chance! Imoen and Coran are allowed to make use of some Arrows of Fire, and similarly Jaheira and Hubblepot will be using Bullets of Fire.
Thus buffed to the hilt, we talk to Love, and the game is afoot. The party has positioned itself near Love, at the southeastern side of the chamber, while our second party (the five Skeleton Warriors) are positioned where Pride spawns, the northwestern side of the chamber. Upon spawning in, Fear first heads for Imoen, but we divert two Skeleton Warriors and they manage to get its attention. Avarice has spawned in its corner and, not being able to see anyone, apparently is content to just sit there. Pride starts chopping down the three Skeleton Warriors left to fend him off.
The entire party focuses on Love. It starts by casting Dire Charm, which Khalid resists due to his innate Half-Elf immunity. Even had that failed, he had excellent saves thanks to the Potion of Invulnerability, so he would've been fine. Love next tries to get off a Slow, but falls before it finishes. One down.
While that was happening, Fear has destroyed one Skeleton Warrior. Imoen tried and failed to Greater Malison Pride (he has a fair bit of Magic Resistance), but a Doom from Jaheira lands. The entire party turns their attention onto Fear. Following a few initial misses, the hits come in hard and heavy, and Fear, regeneration notwithstanding, cannot cope with the pressure. Two down.
Another Skeleton Warrior has fallen, but the remaining three should be more than enough. After one failed attempt, a second Greater Malison from Imoen lands on Pride. Hubblepot follows up with a Slow, which also lands, essentially sealing the fate of the massively muscled miscreant. Deprived of its Haste, Pride is quite a bit less deadly. Three down.
All that remains is the loathsome Avarice. Normally the order would be Avarice, then Pride last, but Avarice obliged us by twiddling its thumbs while we were taking out the other Warders. We send a Skeleton Warrior towards the western side of the chamber, and Avarice takes the bait. Once in view of the party, Avarice goes for Yeslick, and gets a backstab in for 24 hitpoints. Such tactics will not avail you, Avarice! Imoen manages to dispel Avarice's Improved Invisibility using Detect Illusions, and the entire party dogpiles the last warder. Four down.
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! The lower levels of Durlag's Tower are now all but open for our looting! Well not quite, but this was a fairly important battle, and we did very well. We gather up Love's wardstone and head back outside. This seems a good a time as any to take a breather around the campfire and contemplate how best to continue our assault of the dread tor. Hubblepot cooks up a big batch of his Phase Spider Surprise (the legs are entirely edible, don't you know) much to the party's professed delight, while Khalid, Yeslick and Coran have an arm-wrestling contest with no STR items or spells allowed. They all loose.
In all the commotion, Hubblepot gained his second-to-last level in BG1EE, and is quite close to his final level. He is now a L7/L6 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
I re-rolled Dario (and got a 95 or a 96 roll) and to be honest I usually play a solo barbarian and I feel weaker now with a party then I would be when playing solo.
The playthrough was not dense of events. I just explored all around, did a few quests in beregost that had no combat. Then I arrived to Nashkel and it was time to get Minsc. I'm not exactly sure he is the best choice and I'll keep thinking if I should still keep him or not.
Anyway, I risked my life more than once. When I had the encounter with the dryad, Imoen was killed instantly by one of the two thugs, leaving myself only with Dario and Minsc. I had to make Minsc flee and he met a dire wolf. So in the end it was Dario against three different npc(s)
After the encounter I went back to nashkel, resurrected imoen and got back to the dryad place, only to meet a polar bear that proved to be a hassle too
I killed him.
By the way, do I remember wrong, or is there a mod that makes you able to actually take the evil path with the dryad and make it worthwhile ? I remember that mod would make you able to skin the nymph for the cloak or something of this sort... Could it be bg1npc?
Edit: an addenda - the tweak for BG2 makes the single trap\lock give me 1k xp. I decided not to abuse it, I will abuse it in an eventual evil playthrough. With my good character I do not go in houses to lockpick and actually raid them.
Edit 2: something weird happened while I was battling the rats in reevor's storehouse. One of the rats, while I was fighting them, was charmed. Is that a rare occurrence or..?
So, I've decided to go for Bodhi next - and what the heck is this? Gellal the vampire is using an ability called "Lord Farthington Roenall" (who never showed up in my playthrough thanks to Nalia's quest being unable to trigger, btw)? Very strange indeed:
Another weird, but very welcome sight: Ayla fighting perhaps the easiest SCS Tanova battle of all time:
Azuredge did great work throughout all the battles. I do have improved Bodhi installed, but not the tactics version. She didn't do much to threaten my party in this first incarnation (the second one is much more difficult if my last run is anything to go by):
I did end up picking Wilson after that, taking him along to Firkraag's dungeon. Valeria was almost able to onehit-backstab the Rukh-Transmuter, but he survived, and we ended up in a prolonged battle eventually won by skeleton warriors:
The big group of vampires didn't stand a chance against Ayla + improved haste + Azuredge:
Conster was killed via traps, Firkraag was left for later. Mekrath was next on our list, and this time, backstabbing did the trick:
It's really nice to have lots of level 15 skeleton warriors available against yuan-ti mages - they allowed me to stay relatively safe on my way to Haer'Dalis' gem. The reason I did this quest at this point was to obtain and recharge a second wand of cloudkill, because I was going to deal with beholders next, and kiting them while spamming cloudkills from off-screen is my preferred method for dealing with SCS beholders - as seen here:
The undead city presented me with a bit of a problem. A lich. I had to face one of those eventually. After baiting out his death spell (most of these SCS casters have only one), I kept him busy with skeleton warriors, while keeping my party safely outside. The lich often would ignore the skeletons, trying to go after Ayla instead, while Ayla was trying to protect the skeletons by taking the other undead down with Azuredge. I had to dodge a few spells by leaving the building. I was making progress, having dealt with all the other undead, when I was shocked to see the lich suddenly outside, dispelling my group's protections:
Luckily, the lich was all out of protections at this point - his battle against skeletons had gone on for quite a while by now. While my party retreated, Ayla followed her foe and a single successful Azuredge hit was enough to take him down - lucky!
I cleared the beholder lair with some cloudkill wands from a safe distance and using invisibility during my approach. Skeleton warriors also helped out. A combo of traps, the rift device and buffed skeleton warriors also defeated the Unseeing Eye itself - and its death tyrants:
Next up was the Planar Sphere. I once again baited out a death spell and used my skeleton warriors to deal with the spellcaster halflings. Decent positioning got my party in a very safe position and allowed for some ranged assistance:
The second halfling group shared a similiar fate, though they were more capable of constantly killing my skeletons, forcing me to replace them quite a few times. Luckily, I have a ton of these available:
My Tolgerias "battle" was interesting - he survived the initial backstab, but a quick wand of the heavens follow-up (this is possible without having to clear the aura again first) was able to get in and finish him before he got his buffs up:
The second mage fell to true sight and the skeleton army. Lavok, however, turned out to be a bit more dangerous. He was my first mage opponent who was able to deal with the skeleton army relatively well. After his death spell took out my initial force, the two quick replacements were countered by his own skeletons and MMM attacks. I had to assist my skeletons and got myself into an unusual position to the north while evading a potentially dangerous situation. At some point, after getting my buffs dispelled, I decided to send in the very replacable Wilson as a distraction, and he immediately ate an ADHW:
Two skeleton hits followed right away, and the bear was down. Ayla went in instead, taking a ton of damage from one of those dreaded triple flame arrow sequencers:
However, in the meantime, she was able to take out Lavok's skeletons via Azuredge, and the necromancer was finally out of protections, allowing my final skeleton warrior to take him down.
I rested, and Valeria picked up Wilson. The demons outside turned out to be rather easy. At this point, Nabatil had gotten access to the level 20 skald song, which provides undispellable protection against fear, charm and stun effects. Incredibly useful. I had already killed the golems at this point, and so the Sphere was done. Finally, to acquire my actual stronghold: The Astral Prison. I went in with full buffs and was able to destroy both initial spellcasters before their buffs fired. A good start. Skeletons approached the eastern group of foes, while Thallian used his very first level 8 spell with decent success:
Some of the yuan-ti mages survived, but they didn't stand much of a chance against skeleton warriors in the long run. After dealing with the Master of Thralls, I rested before destroying the orb, intending to attack the warden with fully buffed skeletons while he was still busy dealing with the rebelling thralls. This worked out quite well - I didn't even have to do anything, really (and he didn't even try to death spell them):
After the Cadrax debacle, the other quests have worked out very well so far. I completed the bard stronghold questline and dismissed Wilson. While he certainly isn't useless (as a damage dealer, he's fine, especially with improved haste), he never really felt important to my success. I've decided to take Yoshimo along to Spellhold for the extra experience from delivering his heart. Not sure if I will replace him with Imoen or stick with 5 party members once I make it there. Sewer illithids, guarded compound, the liches + Kangaxx, the Twisted Rune and the two dragons are left for later.
Edit 2: something weird happened while I was battling the rats in reevor's storehouse. One of the rats, while I was fighting them, was charmed. Is that a rare occurrence or..?
The first thing I do in every new game I start is to remove any script from the PC - the EE assumes that you want to benefit from their AI. If you don't do that, or switch off AI, then the PC will make use of spells and special abilities - like the charm animal ability of rangers ...
Comments
The crypts portion of the keep went well thanks to our competent thief. Spiders or ghasts were no threat to this group. The 2nd portion of the crypts was handled by detrapping the far left trap, then walking in center to clear the skeletons. Then we backed out the way we came then hugged the edges to get the dopplegangers. A dispelling arrow was quite helpful against the greater doppleganger.
Prat can be quite dangerous, so we do a lot of buffs on one character, our berserker who of course forgot to enrage, but didn't matter he destroyed the opponents. With free action, the spiders were cleared without problem. And finally a single potion of mirror eyes was all the berserker needed to clear the basilisks, since his buffs for Prat were still running.
I could fail at the Duchal Palace, but hope not. Will keep at it.
He used similar tactics against Tarnesh except that Sunscorch was also used. That spell caused Tarnesh to panic and a command spell stopped him in his tracks so that a blow with his staff finished the job.
The Hoodwinker of Baravar kit is interesting to play. Thought is needed for every enemy as the enemies cannot be fought toe to toe. However his skills are quite good if used wisely. Brute force and ignorance just doesn't work.
The ogre with the belt fetish was a bit harder. Sunscorch followed by command followed by another sunscorch blinded it and so the sling was brought into play until the blindness wore off. Command enabled him to land another blow with his staff but then he had to rely on his blur and mirror image to stop himself being hurt. It worked but Winker was quite concerned as he knew that just out of sight there was a gibberling. Another enemy was something that he didn't need. Once the ogre was dead Winker slept and then took on the gibberling without any qualms. Hoodwinkers can't use splint mail or chain mail which makes them somewhat vulnerable.
Heading south of Beregost, Winker reunited Kessey with Jumper, her pet rabbit. Whilst looking for it, Winker came across a hobgoblin wearing boots of stealth. A sunscorch spell blinded it so it was quite easy to then kill the hobgoblin with his trusty +1 sling.
Heading further south Winker used stealth to get past the hobgoblins and pick up the Colquetle Amulet. He then tried hiding once more, but being unsuccessful, he cast an invisibility spell to get past the bandits. Lord Foreshadow gave him a ring after which Winker went to Nashkel where he found some ankheg armour which he was unfortunately unable to use. he then went to the Carnival and upon sleeping for 8 hours gained the ability to heal as an innate spell. He tried to help Bentha against Zordral, but Zordral saved against every spell, so Winker made a sharp exit, hid and then moved away before sleeping. "Clearly a battle to be postponed!" Winker thought to himself.
South of Nashkel he found a wand of frost and from there he headed in an easterly direction and found a ring of fire protection before being asked to escort Samuel to the FAI where he could find some healing. This he did. Reputation now 15. In Beregost Winker tried to pick-pocket Algernon's Cloak but failed. Fortunately he had a high enough reputation to avoid repercussions and upon trying again he took the cloak without Algernon noticing anything amiss.
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 4
Forelhorst apparently doesn't have just regular draugr. It has ghostly dragon cultists--who, unlike regular draugr, are actually quite resistant to paralysis.
I decide to let Lydia handle the monsters. Followers in Skyrim are semi-immortal in the sense that they don't quite die when they run out of health; they just fall down and then try to recover. But Lydia is pretty tough; she's a melee bruiser. Notice the goofy-looking Dwarven Helmet I've given her. I pitch in with arrows and Paralyze spells (when the enemies are draugr instead of ghosts), though I only enter melee range to strike with a dagger when Slow Time is active.
There are a fair number of Draugr Deathlords around, and Lydia isn't quite tough enough to handle critters with numbers that big, so we burn a fair number of potions slowly cutting them down. Like before, the draugr go flying whenever I cast Paralyze when they're already staggered.
There are so many Draugr Deathlords, actually, that the dungeon gets kind of tedious at times. They just take so long to kill in Legendary mode. One of the rooms has a spike trap on the ceiling...
...and if you step on the platform in the middle of the room, the platform jumps up and smashes you against the spikes. I nail the draugr with Paralyze to try to get them accordingly smashed...
...but the damage is pretty disappointing. In fact, I can't even tell that it's done any damage at all. I guess some traps don't work so well after thousands of years of inactivity.
The fight takes so long that I level up from Light Weaponry skill increases, and I invest a bunch of perks to make Frost better at knifing people.
This whole area is so incredibly slow. I burn like 10 Slow Time potions and spam Paralyze so much Frost's Alteration hits 95. The most exciting part is when we almost die to a fire trap or something. Since this is the first time we've hit extremely low health in the run, we get a notification first.
After even more Draugr Deathlords and other draugr that take ages to kill, we finally reach Rahgot the Dragon Priest. Unlike most draugr, the Dragon Priests are all immune to paralysis.
We get in a bunch of free attacks regardless thanks to a Slow Time potion, and while Rahgot blasts us with a Fireball, we've cranked up our health enough to shrug off individual blows. A Resist Fire potion and some healing potions keep us in good shape while we keep hacking at him under the effects of Slow Time. Fortify Light Weaponry potions and Restore Stamina potions keep our damage high to speed things up.
Rahgot collapses, followed shortly after by the other draugr. Rahgot has a really powerful mask that's largely useless to us because it's classified as a piece of armor, which means it can't work in concert with our Mage Armor perks (if we wore it, our armor rating would be dramatically weaker than it normally is).
Outside, Captain Valmir attacks us and nearly kills us before I enter the inventory screen to heal up. Apparently this whole Rahgot thing was a set up; the guy outside was trying to get me killed so he could steal the mask for himself. Slow Time and Paralyze put down the captain.
I use Detect Life to grind Alteration to 100 so we can crank up our armor rating with the Dragonflesh spell from Tolfdir. On the way to the College of Winterhold, though we get ambushed by a dragon--an Elder Dragon, one of the strongest types of dragons around.
Gaining levels fast is necessary to avoid getting one-shotted in Legendary mode, but it also means we have to deal with much tougher critters much earlier in the run.
1) Item revision or Item upgrade by Weimer
2) Spell revision or not?
Previous updates:
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005776/#Comment_1005776
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005931/#Comment_1005931
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1006256/#Comment_1006256
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007209/#Comment_1007209
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007536/#Comment_1007536
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007802/#Comment_1007802
The SoD part of this run isn't affected by SCS all that much (the only thing I noticed was an increase in potion use by my enemies), so, given the fact that I'm running with an optimized custom party, it wasn't all that difficult. I did a completionist run, using established tactics such as firebombing, skeletons+ranged weapons or greater malison + crowd control spells (web being the most common one). Here are some counters worth mentioning:
I tried to do all the quests, including companion quests. However, I still haven't found a good way to safely do Edwin's quest without alerting the crusader camp. I think I clicked at the wrong option during his dialogue, and when I made my way into the camp (after having previously done most of the quests there, luckily), everyone started turning hostile:
I was able to get out by using six invisibility potion and running. When I returned, the coalition forces started attacking the camp, so I had to go for the fight, which was quickly won - though with the result that both Edwin's and Khalid's companion quests couldn't be completed (Khalid died during battle).
Another encounter I want to talk about is the battle against the killer mimic in the following chapter - Just to mention the importance of potions of freedom to avoid any unfortunate deaths here (which was a problem in previous runs for me):
As I made my way through the underground river (using acid protection scrolls against the blind albino wyrmlings and firebombing the undead and necromancers), I eventually faced down Hephernaan. During solo runs or meatgrinder challenges, I usually run away from him, but this time, I had no reason not to fight (especially with a bunch of dispelling arrows available - SCS doesn't affect SoD stores):
The camp battle was won via fireballs, and I used Ayla and Sarastro with their bows and detonation arrows to quickly defeat the foes during the siege. I declined the duel (my skald bhaalspawn does almost zero fighting) and made my way to Ashatiel, isolating and defeating her:
I also decided to take on the group of named crusaders that still stay around after the battle is won - what purpose to these guys have anyway? Turns out their assassin, Chloe, was the only foe during SoD to successfully hit one of my party with a backstab - Ayla was the target, and the damage was high, but nowhere near lethal, and Chloe was killed soon after:
I fought my way to Belhifet and buffed my party with everything relevant. His summons died in a couple of seconds, I only had to reveal Belhifet one time before he was taken down - though Caelar managed to steal the kill:
After completing the SoD epilogue, I fought my way through the SoA opening dungeon with relative ease. Outside, I took care of the circus tent and managed to free Hendak before travelling around the city under invisibility 10' radius in order to trigger the first ambush (starting invisible is a huge advantage). Success:
My plan was to travel to the Umar Hills right away, but I was ambushed again (luckily, I once again took the precaution to travel invisibly). After returning from the docks and trying to finally make it to my destination, the third ambush happened right away - and at this time, I was low on spells. An enraged Cadrax tried to distract my foes while the others got some defensive buffs up. A couple of nukes allowed me to get rid of most of the Orogs, but the mage added by SCS proved to be troublesome. A breach was countered by renewed buffs, and teleport field + chaos prevented most of my party from hitting him. Eventually, Thallian was able to dispel his MGoI via secret word, while the confused Ayla and Valeria started to hit each other:
While physical protection remained intact, the mage was without spell protections, allowing for a quick takedown by Nabatil himself via a well-placed fireball (this is where having three arcane spellcasters is coming in handy, as I can follow up spell protection removal with nukes rather quickly). Valeria survived her small confusion battle with Ayla, and we were able to move on:
This is certainly a sign of things to come - as predicted, SoA will be much more difficult than anything before for my party, with this one being the first battle during the entire run where I actually had to pause multiple times to think about every party members next actions. Things will get much more interesting from now on.
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 5
With an Elder Dragon looming over us, we immediately drink a Slow Time potion to escape its breath weapon and apply a Ravage Health poison on some arrows. Since we have an Alchemy perk that lets poisons last for multiple strikes, we do pretty respectable damage before it flies off.The next time the dragon lands, it blasts us with its fire breath. I drink a potion for 45% fire resistance and use the Breath Ward spell to grant 90% resistance to spells and dragon Shouts (breath weapons in Skyrim are classified as Shouts), but I don't activate it in time to block all of the damage; the first fraction of a second of fire still nearly kills us.
Worse yet, it seems that Breath Ward is bugged: the 90% reduction in spell magnitude applies to our own potions!
The smart thing to do would be to just burn a lot of extra potions until we can escape at high health. Instead, I foolishly drink only 7 potions, deactivate Breath Ward, and then re-enter the inventory screen to drink some more potions now that their magnitude is no longer crippled. It saves us a few potions (meaningless in a run where we can easily make new ones without spending money), but it nearly kills us: Frost's health is reduced to a sliver before I can start drinking new potions. She's at maybe 10% before I bail her out.
I very, very rarely ever see a character's health drop below 10%. Usually, a character dies before I notice health that low.
We maneuver out of the way under Slow Time and stack several Ravage Health poisons, applied via dagger to the dragon's wing. The dragon's health depletes at an incredible speed, far faster than I've ever done in any run before (not counting the slowdown from Slow Time).
Ravage Health poisons are terribly efficient. Lingering Damage Health poisons are about half as strong, and Damage Health poisons deal a fraction of the damage (though the last one deals it instantly). They deal about 300, 150, and 80 damage, respectively.
We deliver some Heartscales to Tolfdir and get a free copy of his brand-new spell, Dragonflesh. Combined with three ranks of the Mage Armor perk, it gives us 88.2% damage reduction. We also can buy some new, highly powerful Master-level spells from Tolfdir, though the cost is prohibitive and we can't afford most of them.
I don't know how the projectile works or how much it costs (spell tomes by themselves seldom have all the relevant details), but that looks like area-effect double damage for about 3 minutes. If we used Destruction magic, that would be horribly broken.
We make some more potions to fill up our already-bountiful supply and make some money on the side, then run into another Elder Dragon back at Winterhold. As before, I poison its wing with a dagger before retreating to shoot it while the poison does its work.
Our Alchemy grinding lets us buy a new spell that summons a floating book that chain-casts any spell in whichever direction you're facing. Here's a test save showing us locking down Lydia with a string of free Paralyze spells.
Unfortunately, since the book floats in one place and it turns to face parallel to your own crosshair, you can't really aim it accurately unless you're standing right behind it, which means moving enemies can rush past it, and you can't run around without losing control of the book. Think of it as a stationary turret: very strong if you have the right position, but otherwise pretty inconvenient for an adventurer on the move.
After some more grinding, we also buy a new summoning spell: Conjure Dremora Pit Fighter! This gives us an axe-wielding demon guy who gets 25% extra attack power for each enemy on the field. Here he is standing next to our follower, Lydia.
We have a few more tweaks to our character build. In order to solidify our defenses, we want to check out some Standing Stones to get new bonuses. We can only have Standing Stone bonus active at a time, but since our skills are already as high as they need to be, we don't really need the Mage Stone or Thief Stone anymore. I've never been to some of these Standing Stones and only know how to reach them by looking them up, so this involves some wandering around the wilderness.
We run into a Cave Bear on the way to one of the Standing Stones. Remember how we accidentally flung draugr into the air by casting Paralyze on them while they were staggered? Well, apparently the same thing can happen to animals.
This Cave Bear suffers some additional side effects.
Yes, that's a bear flying off a cliff as its legs turn to taffy. But don't worry; it gets better in midair!
It then plummets to the ground, surviving just long enough for Frost and our Dremora Pit Fighter to finish it off.
I'm also trying to learn some new dragon Shouts, namely the words for the Become Ethereal and Slow Time Shouts (the Slow Time Shout is much more balanced than our 105-second Slow Time potions) to give us some new defensive options. I run into the wrong Word Wall, getting a Frost Breath Shout word instead, and yet another Elder Dragon rushes to its death.
I find the Lord Stone, which in vanilla grants +25 to armor rating and +25% magic resistance, a powerful bonus for any no-reload run that depends on strong defenses. Unfortunately, Skyrim Redone nerfs it horribly--it actually seems like it might make us more vulnerable to damage overall.
After reviewing the available options, it seems that none of the Standing Stones offers any game-changing effects for us, so we don't bother switching to a new one. Instead, we proceed to High Hrothgar to speak with the Greybards and then head out to Ustengrav, a Nordic ruin that will introduce us to one of the last remaining members of the Blades.
We can use Breath Ward to virtually negate enemy spells and Shouts, Dragonflesh to virtually negate enemy attacks, and several dozen pounds of potions, provided that we act quickly enough to block each threat (again, a one-hit kill is still entirely possible if we're reckless). We are roughly at peak strength, so it's time to make progress on the main quest.
1) I played a while ago an install with IR and Weimer's Item Upgrade. They don't mesh too well, because the updated version of items in WIU were not designed within the scope of IR. I much prefer IR's balance. WIU items are much more powerful and less balanced, which IR is mostly about.
2) How do you like your cheese ? Strong or not ? If strong, don't install SR, because it closes a lot of overpowered combo; no more double APR with Improved Haste, for instance. However, SR gives a lot of useless spells nice utility. With SR, druids actually have decent level 2 spells now, even some awesome one at level 1 ! It all depends on what you're looking for. SR spells are all closer to the average : the strongest spells were nerfed and the weaker ones were buffed. To me, SR adds variety to the game, which is great. So, even though I'm a fan of SR's changes, it all depends on what you want.
@Enuhal Well done on defeating SoD.
Winker has just been to the crossing so as to be able to get to Ulgoth's Beard. he took on the ankheg and defeated it after rresting in order to recuperate. The fact that he needed two bites at the cherry to kill ONE ankheg convinced him not to go to the ankheg nest yet. However that one ankheg was sufficient to make him a level 3 thief so that battle was well worthwhile. At Ulgoth'ws Beard, Winker didn't have enough gold to buy Aule's staff so he bought some ice bullets with which he was able to kill the werewolf at High Hedge. Thalantyr rewarded him with a sword and after selling it Winker then had enough gold for a +3 staff.Winker then took a rabbit to Ugh which Ugh named Little-little Ugh. Ugh was delighted.
Upon returning to Bassilus the Air Aspect (which for some reason was invisible) killed Winker.
Introduction
Update 1
Update 2
I'm going to explain my time in SoD mostly by the number of mistakes I've made. This was decidedly a non-completionist's run, just gathering enough +3 weapons for Big B at the end of the game: there's almost nothing else I actually want.
Party composition: Wrin, Tilly, Minsc, Dynaheir, Voghlin, Safana. We ignore almost all the sidequests in the first area, only helping out the vampire for the regeneration ioun stone. The bridge fight is solved fairly quickly using arrows of detonation, spirit fire, and a wand of fire.
Next area, we rush for Voghlin and then head to the wyvern forest. Voghlin gets hit by a Web Tangle without a potion of Free Action, and is our first death.
But Tilly levels up during that fight, and gets access to Recall Spirit, so no having to go back to camp.
We suffer some poor luck against Morenthene: the second we get a hit confirmed in console with a throwing dagger on her sleeping form, she wakes up and the insta-kill doesn't happen. We buff outside with Pro. Poison and take her down without any deaths. Ziatar suffers a similar fate shortly.
We clear out the rest of the caves successfully: this was basically the last time I had clean play this entire run
So next, the Scroll of Impactful Doom. I thought intimidating Vichard would be enough: I was... mistaken. Very mistaken. Major mistake no. 1! We try fighting for a bit, but Dynaheir, Minsc, and Safana are slaughtered quickly. Tilly makes it out with boots of speed, Wrin with an Invisibility potion, and Voghlin by... running, somehow. We reenter the fight with the coalition forces. Having an arcane spellcaster (or rather wand user) helps us save the barrels, and we don't die quite yet.
We raise all 3, try to enter Bridgefort, the negative energy aura drains the last HP from Dynaheir and Safana again, so we have to rest again. Mistake no. 2, I guess?
At the Underground River, we forget to pick of Caelar's Seal, and this causes... issues later. The only sidequest I really want to do here is the necromancer cabal to eventually get the sword from the Rashemi travelers. The mage fight is fine, but the Ghost Dragon ends up fighting a ton of undead near the entrance and dies. Whoops. Anyways, no mistakes until we get to the lift manned by the two ogres. I forgot that we need the Seal to progress peacefully, so they end up going aggressive, and I didn't know how to continue. Dynaheir made us all invisible and we just fled, thinking we could start the next thing with just BWOOSH. I ended up turning to Google, and found that we can progress by killing the right ogre and taking its gloves. Well, whatever. Mistake #3.
We don't fight Hephernaan, and travel back invisibly. We must've chosen the wrong dialogue choices, since we don't get the +3 2h sword from the Rashemi, so I guess mistake #4? The Coalition Camp fight is eventless, and mass AoE damage from the Arrows of Detonation/Spirit Fire/Wand of Fire (2x) combination wipes out almost everything. At Dragonspear, we have one scroll of Pro. Magic left over from BG1, so we give it to Wrin and he duels Ashatiel. He goes back to his shortbow, and Tilly throws over a few arrows of dispelling. Ring of the Ram charges are enough to finish her when she tries to Sanctuary herself to heal herself.
Demons... Bloody demons. I decide to fight Thrix, and holy cow was that a mistake. I didn't realize Chaotic Commands didn't protect against Fear, and I didn't cast Pro. from Fear before engaging. Safana, Dynaheir, and Minsc are all disabled and killed one after the other, and Wrin's been feared and thankfully running away from the fight. Tilly remains up, somehow, though Wrin, now unfeared, had to use a Arrow of Dispelling on her when she gets held. Voghlin lives as well, though he keeps getting Dire Charmed, and whenever he's free he needs to drink potions of extra healing to stay alive. I finally relent and have Wrin drink a potion of Clarity, and the three manage to slowly clear the fight. This was an utter disaster and only luck kept this run from ending. Mistake #5
Big B. Our +3 weapon count is 20 arrows, 40 bolts, 40 bullets, 2 Shortswords, and... I think that's it? Regardless, we exhaust our scrolls and potions of fire protection, clarity, and freedom. Everyone who can drinks a potion of power. Tilly has her arrows, Wrin bullets, and Safana bolts, while Minsc is using primarily the +2 Mace for clearing other demons before engaging Belhifet, and Voghlin is singing. Belhifet is using Gate this time around: I don't recall him doing so in the past, but we manage to keep everyone healthy with potions, and one scroll of Greater Restoration keeps Caelar up as well. Tilly runs out of arrows, and closes into melee using the Fractal Blade, and Minsc ran out of things to hit with a +2 weapon, so swaps to the Short Sword of Backstabbing +3. Caelar, fittingly, gets the final hit.
This was the furthest thing imaginable from a clean run of SoD, but somehow we come out alive and shipping off to Amn.
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 6
Ustengrav has a few enemy mages at the start, but most of the enemies are draugr. I deploy the Master-level spell, Mass Paralysis, against the draugr, but it proves disappointing. It lasts for 22 seconds with my perks, but aside from its high magic cost, it has a very slow casting animation, requires both hands, roots me in place while I cast it, and it doesn't even work all of the time--each enemy only has a chance of being affected. A brilliant flash of green, and then a few enemies are still left standing.The area of effect is respectable, but honestly, the normal Paralyze spell is much more useful in most situations.
I'm more familiar with this area than I used to be thanks to our previous no-reload run, so I know how to avoid the fire traps deeper in the dungeon. There are a bunch of them right before a spider ambush. Like in Bleak Falls Barrow, a giant one falls from the ceiling, but I know it's coming and nail it with Paralyze before it even hits the ground. We chop it up, but it's kind of an ugly sight to get so close to the thing. We can actually see the spider's hairs up close.
There's no boss in Ustengrav because our friend Delphine already went through the dungeon and left us a note to go visit her. When we head to Riverwood to meet her, we get ambushed by some cultists from the Dragonborn expansion, but they have no special defense against Slow Time.
Delphine wants us to kill a dragon. Done. We just have to apply some Lingering Damage Health poisons under Slow Time.
Since I have high Alteration and therefore have access to the Deep Storage spell, I cram all of my gear into the Deep Storage container rather than entrusting it to the wood elf in the Diplomatic Immunity questline to make sure I don't get caught off-guard by another dragon ambush when walking the 100 feet from the wood elf to Delphine, which ended one of my other runs.
By donning Thalmor robes inside the Thalmor embassy, we can avoid drawing too much attention from the local guards, and I use a Calm spell to make sure we can walk past the captain safely. He's a bit grumpy about it, though.
We've got more guards to kill inside, but by now, the drill is pretty much set: drink Slow Time potion and spam Paralyze while hacking away with our dagger. We've dealt so much damage over the course of this run that our Light Weaponry skill is already approaching 90. We get some documents from the embassy, report back to Delphine, and she sends us to the seedy, crime-ridden town of Riften to go hunt down a dude named Esbern hiding out in the sewers. First, we report to Brynjolf, a contact of Delphine's or something, who tells us to go steal some lizard guy's ring and plant it on a dark elf for reasons that don't really matter to us.
I don't know if this quest is actually necessary, since I think you can just walk into the Ratway, where Esbern is hidden, without performing any quests. But we do it anyway. Unfortunately, we get bad luck, and a guard chooses to loiter around directly behind us when we're trying to do the deed. Unable to get the guard to move, we end up getting caught.
It doesn't even matter; Brynjolf is still happy with us for trying and gives us the referral to the Ratway, where we beat up some lowlifes (one of which is actually named "Lowlife") and Thalmor agents before finding Esbern. We take him back to Riverwood, he tells us we need to go to Sky Haven Temple. We head out to Karthspire, where we yell at some half-naked hippies called the Forsworn who give us the hairy eyeball.
Basically every time I get to this part of the game, an unusually high-level dragon joins the fight. In this case, it's a Revered Dragon, one of the absolute strongest in the entire game. I get hit by a Drain Vitality Shout, which deals crazy damage over time--about the same amount of damage as one of our Ravage Health poisons.
We slow time and apply some of poisons to the dragon's wing, but a Revered Dragon has so much health that it actually manages to fly away before the poisons kill it.
We drink another potion and finish it off when it lands.
We fight a few more hippies and head inside Sky Haven Temple. There's a big fireball trap, but I can deactivate it if I rush ahead and pull a chain.
I run over, there's a rush of fire, and then I instantly die.
No!
No! That's not okay!
This run was going so well. We were crushing everything, and then some stupid trap kills us in a single second. That trap's never killed me before.
I reload and investigate the trap. Apparently it doesn't just launch a fireball at your face if you step on the wrong pressure plate; it launches a separate fireball for each pressure plate you step on. At least half a dozen fireballs came at me at once; that's how I died so quickly.
Back to Helgen. I'm tired of the lengthy grinding process that I've been using to get high Alchemy and strong potions, so we're going to try a quicker, lower-level strategy for our next attempt at a no-reload Legendary run of Skyrim Redone.
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 7
This time around, I'm going to try to speed through the game. This way, I don't lose quite as much time if something goes wrong. Some testing found that the Slow Time potion's base duration is about 40 seconds, which means that we don't really need high Alchemy and a bunch of Alchemy perks in order to get good Slow Time potions.Also, we're going to use bows instead of daggers to deal damage, since there's a high-level Marksmanship perk in Skyrim Redone that will be really strong and help speed things up. Normally I prefer mage-type builds, but since this whole run will be based on Alchemy and Marksmanship, with Alteration to get some decent damage reduction, we pick a Wood Elf, which gets a +25% damage bonus when using arrows against non-humanoid critters.
Since skill growth in weapons is based on your damage output, this will let us reach 80 Marksmanship much faster than a Breton could. Once we get 80 Marksmanship, we can afford a perk that will make dragons very easy to kill indeed.
Also, Wood Elves in Skyrim Redone can summon a familiar via a greater power every 10 minutes, which means we can get an easy decoy without having to train Conjuration or use any magicka. It appears to be a carbon copy of the Conjure Familiar - Wolf spell that Bretons get by default.
The early game is pretty simple: let the Stormcloaks do the fighting for us in Helgen, use a familiar to deal with a wolf on the way to Whiterun, and then do a fetch quest for Farengar and join the College of Winterhold to get some free ingredients for Slow Time potions. Before we do any fighting, though, we want a follower, and we can't get Lydia to join us until after we get through Bleak Falls Barrow.
Conveniently enough, we can get a follower in Riverwood, a fellow Wood Elf named Faendal. We just need to help him win the heart of a girl he likes, which involves sabotaging his rival, a Nord named Sven.
I feel bad by the end of the quest, though, since the girl's dialogue suggests Sven was right for her, and not Faendal. Still, what's done is done. I chop some firewood and steal some iron ingots from the local smith so I can craft some spare arrows (we'll need a lot in this run; they'll be our primary source of damage).
How do we get our Marksmanship skill all the way up to 80 without getting axed at some point? Well, most of the work will be done in dungeons, but we can get a fair amount of skill increases just by kiting mudcrabs.
Since I don't want to go to the trouble of grinding Alchemy, we won't be doing lengthy circuits of Skyrim to buy ingredients and brew potions to sell for money. Instead, we'll be getting our Slow Time ingredients from the wild: all we have to do is run around west of Whiterun and catch the many blue butterflies that inhabit the area around Rorikstead. We have to burn some Slow Time potions just to survive the process, though; we've got a lot of bandits and wolves and stuff roaming the area, and it takes a long time to kill anything in Legendary mode.
One of our early-game Marksmanship perks lets you deal extra damage with shortbows when firing at short range, and another perk increase damage when shooting at an enemy's back or side, which means the optimal strategy for dealing with basically enemy is drinking a Slow Time potion and running in circles around them, shooting them in the back at point-blank range.
Basically, we just run around the wilderness catching butterflies and killing bandits and wolves with a blinding volley of arrows. By the time it's over, we've caught 12 butterflies, which is enough to brew 24 Slow Time potions. It's a clear net gain in those potions, but the process is pretty slow; killing all those bandits and stuff took a long time, even if finding the butterflies was pretty easy.
We run around Skyrim visiting alchemists, but this time, we're not brewing potions or selling stuff; we're just doing fetch quests to get free ingredients and stealing a few from Dawnstar. The latter gets us in trouble, though; a batch of thugs attacks us outside Markarth in retaliation for our crimes sprees in Dawnstar. I deploy some poisons to put them down quickly.
But the thugs prove very sturdy; we can't bring them down without burning an unacceptable number of Slow Time potions. Instead, I run away under Slow Time and try to fast-travel to Whiterun. It takes a long time before we actually escape combat, though; you can be hundreds of feet away and the game will still consider you to be in-combat and detected, even if there's absolutely no way the enemy would ever realistically be able to find you.
We get over 40 Slow Time potions and finally decide to head to Bleak Falls Barrow to get started on the main quest. Arrows have a very high rate of staggering enemies, so we can actually keep bandits locked down pretty easily even without Paralyze to help us out. We land so many arrows so quickly that it effectively stun-locks most enemies.
Midway through the dungeon, I run low on arrows, though, since each arrow only does so much damage and there are so many enemies around. By the time I come back, the bandits at the entrance have respawned, and they catch us off-guard.
Another run ends in the space of a couple seconds.
Honestly, this strategy is probably workable. The low levels will make sure that the game is pretty quick, which means I won't lose a lot of time from deaths, but I really don't want to work with a character that can die so quickly. I decide to go back to my previous strategy, which entailed more work but gave me a character that was less likely to die from a single mistake.
The first strategy was also perfectly workable, after all, and we were doing great until that fire trap wiped us out. I'm going to take the lessons we've learned and use them to optimize our Breton build. If we focus on improving Marksmanship and don't waste time leveling the Light Weaponry skill, we'll be able to make fast progress in the game without relying on poisons.
Back to Helgen. This time, I think I have a handle on the relevant challenges.
BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
As planned, the party makes their way out of Cloakwood, cleaning up loose ends on the way. Web does for the Shadow Druids in Cloakwood 3 (we leave the Archdruid alone.. he's not worth the risk for a Club +2). We clear Cloakwood 2 of the spider infestation, finishing off Centeol and her pets by immunizing Khalid and Yeslick to fire (yep, we've got enough divine slots now to comfortably provide them both 100% fire resistance when needed) and dumping a few Fireballs into the thick of things.
Finally we revisit Cloakwood 1, and to my great dismay, we don't get to battle the druids. Jaheira objects to it, and I wasn't certain if it would make her and Khalid leave the party, so Hubblepot solves the situation without bloodshed. We still get the quest reward from Aldeth Sashenstar, but no Ring of Animal Friendship and no 4k experience from Seniyad. Pfeh. The party returns to the FAI and sells off the treasure trove they've amassed.
So, the world is pretty much our oyster. This is usually when I go to work clearing out the remaining wilderness areas, and it looks like this time around will be no different.
We start by heading north to at long last finish what we started so long ago (clearing the Ankhegs whose treasure trove we raided back at the very start of the game).
Not much to report here. With oodles of Command and Sleep available, we mow through the Ankhegs unimpeded, though by now we could handle them even without such spellworks. After clearing the map, we nip back south to Beregost to get Taerom started on the Ankheg Plate, then return north; we assist Tenya, and clear the 20 zombies at the northernmost part of the river. Upon returning to Beregost, our plate is finished, and goes to Yeslick (we're holding off on shopping for the additional Full Plate until we reach 18 reputation, which can take a while when you use the 1/4 reputation increase SCS component).
Alright, let's sweep up the coast. We head to Shoal's area, and for once, no one dies... apparently her kiss now grants a saving throw, which Khalid makes. Droth teleports in, and dies within a round, as the poor Ogre Mage is vulnerable to Command.
We clear the Ogre clan to the south using 2x Web, get a Potion of Magic Protection from the Surgeon, and head to the lighthouse area. I actually remembered to memorize a few Sleep to make the Hobgoblin clan here less annoying.
The first Sirine spawn is handled via 3x Web from Hubblepot and some ranged shenanigans, and the second spawn gets treated to 4 Skeleton Warriors backed up by 2x Stinking Cloud, courtesy of Imoen. No worries, really.
Coran clears the treasure cave on his own with some Arrows of Fire, we steal the treasure, and save a child from some Worgs on our way out. At long last, we arrive in Brage's area, where Barruk's pet Kobold Commandos prove they can still be a hassle (Imoen survived).
Following this minor debacle, clearing the Doomsayer out is uneventful. He gets a few hits in on Yeslick, but we can easily tank that at this stage. We pull Brage out of his madness, and deliver him to the Temple of Helm in Nashkel.
So! That's the western part of the Coast cleared. Let's do the same to the eastern part. We head to Valley of the Tombs, clear out the Revenant, and finally descend on Narcillicus. For some reason he opts to spend his first action on trying to confuse our Skeleton Warriors. After this exercise in futility, his initial Stoneskin drops, and so does he before he has time to renew it.
We also do some other minor chores: Clear the Carnival of Zordral, save Samuel, and remove the various Ogres/Xvarts/Half-Ogres/Bandits in Argain's area. Not much to report, we're brutally over-leveled by now and just carve through everything.
As always, there is great internal debate as to whether or not it is worth the bother to clear Firewine Ruins.
But Lendarn has a Cloudkill scroll... grumble. Fine! Onward!
We relieve Meilum of his bracers, then head into the ruins proper. Khalid and Coran detrap/de-koboldify the entire thing, until we reach Lendarn and the strangely nameless Ogre Mage (why on earth would Lendarn, who is significantly more powerful than the Ogre Mage, do the latters bidding anyway?).
At any rate, Lendarn blunts his arcane edge on 4 Skeleton Warriors, followed by Khalid and Coran finishing the job. The Ogre Mage is simply charged and beaten into submission. We head into Gullykin, Command and kill Jenkal, steal everything we can lay our hands on, and move on.
We return to Beregost Temple and finally clear out the wolf pack on the eastern part of the map. At various points of the fight I manage to get both Khalid and Hubblepot caught in our own Webs... fortunately, we're able to blast the wolves to bits before they do any damage.
Next stop, Ulcaster. Clearing the Mustard Jelly at the entrance gives just enough experience for Imoen to reach Mage level 6 and thus regain her Thief levels. Better ranged options for her, and an at-will 100% Detect Illusions... good stuff.
The battle with the Wolf of Ulcaster is slightly chaotic, as usual. It gets a hit on Khalid and manages to Hold him (typically I'd use Potions of Freedom beforehand to guard against this, but figured we could handle it regardless). However, it immediately swaps to attacking Yeslick instead, so all is well.
Its reinforcing Dread Wolves are held off by our standard complement of 4x Skeleton Warriors, and when the Wolf dispels it (incidentally dispelling its own Hold effect on Khalid too), we just reapply Remove Fear. The Wolf falls in due course; spawning in a few Ghouls isn't enough to turn the tide.
All that remains are two (potentially) dangerous areas: Mutamin's Garden and the Red Wizard Forest.
We go after the Basilisks first. Hubblepot remains under Invisibility for the entire time we are in this area, as I do not want to risk everything on a moment of inattention. 4x Skeleton Warriors and Korax do an excellent job under Hubblepot's supervision; Mutamin himself is swiftly Held and cut down.
The rest of the Basilisks actually all fall without the party members having to involve themselves, as the summons and Korax are sufficient to handle them. There is a brief moment of tension when we inadvertently trigger Kirian's party, but they're really too low-level to be any real threat, and end up failing their save against Silence 15' Radius without having accomplished anything of note.
We move to the Red Wizard Forest. Before engaging the Wizards proper, we move around the area, an invisible Hubblepot tripping the web traps, and clear the Spiders.
The big spawn of these creatures (Sword Spider, Wraith Spider, Phase Spider and 3x Giant Spiders) can actually be somewhat dangerous, as the Giant Spiders spit Web. We prudently opt to burn a charge of our Wand of Monster Summoning, which turns out to be a good thing, as Khalid is swiftly Held, and that wall of summons prevents him from being pierced to death by the Sword Spider.
Alright, just a few Red Wizards to go. No matter what I do, this fight never seems to go cleanly, unless you go the cheap route and just Web them all from off-screen. Hubblepot is feeling noble today, so we'll fight them properly. 5 Skeleton Warriors will as usual bear the brunt of the fighting, with the party providing support. A few basic buffs, and we engage.
And things just go to crap. Our Skeleton Warriors successfully hold off the three Red Wizards near the center of the shrine for a few rounds, and the rest of the party manages to kill the one on the stairs... but then we are almost overrun by a veritable army of surprisingly tough summons: Ogre Berserkers, regular Ogres and Ettercaps. Khalid gets Charmed (fortunately not Dire Charmed), and so is out for 5 rounds. Then, when the Red Wizards land a Slow and Glitterdust, the remnants of the party execute a perfect tactical retreat (i.e., running in terror towards the south while desperately popping the Wand of Summoning to send hapless critters to cover us while we make good our escape).
This actually works quite well: The summons buy time for all the debuffs to wear off, and the seemingly endless hordes the Red Wizards summoned actually also start to blink out of existence.
The party turns around and goes on the offensive! What few enemy summons remain are swiftly disposed of, along with one of the Red Wizards that foolishly lingered on her own near the stairs to the shrine.
The other two Red Wizards went west, and when we find them, they are (understandably) out of their most potent spells, and are thus reduced to casting Blindness and Magic Missile. Denak is the last enemy to fall, and the party is victorious. Hooray!
After such a bout of epic adventuring and great conquests, the party feels the need for an ale or 17, and retires to the Friendly Arm Inn. Here they can be found still, laying plans for how best to proceed when brought face to face with the maze of dark alleyways and political powerplays that is the city of Baldur's Gate...
Hubblepot is now a L6/L5 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
FD 95 - further than ever
PreviouslyAfter killing Sarevok, FD found herself in the starting Dungeon.
Determined to solo the game, FD headed off. Porios was scared into submission and the undead was killed whilst protected from undead
The flaming fist saved FD when she suddenly decided to take a nap
When FD woke up, she summoned her nymphs and subdued Korlasz.
The ducal palace and the city was uneventfull. It was all about money, XP and the battle tankard... succesfully doing the bucket list she got out of town.
The dwarves of dumathion quest is really easy... if you have 3 scrolls of protection from undead.
The traps again posing the biggest opposition, and the secret reveiled wasnt needed whilst protected from undead.
My completionist approach was continued doing the Menhir Quist and the disapearing refugees. FD rushed towards the level cap and level 6 druid spells (read harm...).
Things where looking good and xp was so plenty that I decided to rush for Belhifet. I just needed the temple of Bhall, surrendering the fort and survurving the crusader attack. Manageble if you stear away from trouble.
In the green dragon cave I refrained from killing the dragon and just went for the Bugbears. I died in the dragon cave the last time, so dodging the dragon cave whould set a new SoD no reload record for me.
Snorgash and friend where tanked and killed. South of the temple entrance a couple of bugbears warm themselves by a camp fire. Truly roleplaying the Druid here, I decided to visit the bugbears by the said campfire. Considering my 21 wisdom greenstone amulet carrying character didnt need the xp nor the loot, I cant explain why - but it sure was stupid. Forgetting the trap guarding the bugbears, I rushed them, got feebleminded and killed by the hard hitting bugbears.
Another lesson learned, and back to scratch
Previous updates:
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005776/#Comment_1005776
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005931/#Comment_1005931
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1006256/#Comment_1006256
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007209/#Comment_1007209
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007536/#Comment_1007536
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007802/#Comment_1007802
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1009955/#Comment_1009955
After completing the Umar Hill sidequests, we made our way to the temple ruins with a secret weapon at the ready: Azuredge, thrown by Ayla. A quick way to get rid of shadows and other nasty undead. This allowed us to quickly proceed to the Shade Lord. I decided to kite this foe at high range to avoid his darkling aura, with only the enraged Cadrax (being immune to level drain) venturing into melee combat. I had to wait out a PfMW spell, and Ayla got hit by a finger of death (which she resisted), but otherwise, things went according to plan - only Sarastro ended up being in range of the aura once:
My next stop was WK level 1, and I decided that with a couple of buffs, my party was strong enough to take on the 2 vampire wraiths right away:
Some magic missle spells helped to nuke the dangerous foes down relatively quickly, and the reward was some nice loot and experience from clearing the entire level except for the statues. Now, it was time to travel back to Athkatla and start minor quests and battles all over the city, for example Mencar:
Or the slavers:
At this point, I was starting to use Valeria more and more, mostly for her traps and backstabs - any mage who didn't start off with an active stoneskin already was fair game:
After that, a quick invisible retreat or the party rushing in to help ensured victory. Defeating the rakshasa, however, was more of a group effort:
Speaking of rakshasas, the druid grove was my next stop. The various trolls, shadow druids, earth elementals, shambling mounds etc. were dealt with (I don't have tactics spirit trolls installed - oh, and while I theoretically should have the "more annoying trolls" feature in this installation, it doesn't seem to work at all). The three rakshasas in the hut turned out to be far more dangerous. This ended up being somewhat of a solo mission for Cadrax, who was able to get his saves into secure negative positions with an invulnerability potion, having only to resist tons of magical nukes by the three foes. A teleport field threw him upstairs, and he ended up being trapped, unable to get past the hostile cat monsters - his only choice was to kill one of them before he would die himself - drinking potions every time his aura was clear and hacking away as fast as he could - success!
He ended up making it outside on 33 hitpoints:
After drinking a bunch of healing potions, he received additional buffs, made it back inside and easily finished the job:
However, I decided to leave Faldorn for later, as I can't kill her via cutscene thanks to SCS and I wasn't sure if I wanted to pick up a druid right now. Instead, I made my way to De'Arnise Keep. At some point in there, Thallian also got his second 6th level spell (chosing death spell after going with improved haste first), which sped up the process, since trolls don't do well against death spell. Nabatil also picked up level 15, which gave him access to the best skeleton warriors - very helful against the yuan-ti mage:
After killing the golems and forging the FoA +3, I made my way down to Tor'Gal. I thought about leaving him for later, since SCS Tor'Gal is really tough, but I decided that my party was ready - which was correct, but I ended up making a huge misplay, which turned out to be extremely punishing. Things started off well, with a death spell taking out some of the lower level foes. Ayla was tanking Tor'Gal, the others took down the remaining spirit trolls and the Yuan-Ti mages:
Tor'Gal was soon the only foe left, but I was unable to kill him, despite using fire/acid. I had to take a step back and try again. However, while trying to retreat, Cadrax, who was being attacked by the big troll at this point, wouldn't come. Due to strength drain, he was encumbered, and getting very low with his hitpoints. Now, any number of solutions would've worked here: Remove some items from his inventory, let him drink the storm giant strength potion I had... but I chose the one option that does not work (and if I thought about it longer than a second, I would have realized that). I had him drink an invisibility potion. I'm actually aware that Tor'Gal can see through invisibility (he can do that even in vanilla), but I simply forgot about it at that point. The result: With his next hit, Tor'Gal chunked Cadrax (note that I still could've run away after drinking that potion if I only had thought about throwing some items out of his inventory - this really was just a stupid mistake):
That sucks. I was doing so well, with no deaths up until now, and now we suffer a chunking of our primary fighter in a battle that was basically already won. I managed to finish Tor'Gal and return to Nalia, frustrated.
I'm not one to quit over a few chunkings, however. I decided to use this opportunity to complete some NPC quests. Right away I encountered my next problem, as I was unable to trigger Nalia's funeral quest - a bug that has happened to me before (and I don't plan to use the console in this run except for truly gamebreaking bugs). I decided to try out Cernd next, also wanting him to fight Faldorn. My first attempt failed, as she was able to cast creeping doom right as my insect plague hit her. However, Cernd was resurrected by Valeria, and in my second attempt, I got a step closer to Faldorn, reducing the "flying time" of the insect plague, allowing Cernd to come out on top (both times, I had him start under invisibility, so he would be the first to start casting):
Before doing Cernd's companion quest, I had Valeria place 3 traps in Deril's home (I should have rested to place three more, honestly). Deril with SCS has access to multiple level 9 spells, so when I realized that the traps didn't kill him outright, my hasted party ran outside - luckily before his chain contingency, which included ADHW, was able to connect. I buffed a lot, preparing for a difficult battle, unsure of my chances (I always tend to take higher risks after losing a character to chunking, as I tend to have a kind of "things aren't going great anyway, so it won't be as bad if I fail now" mentality) - but as I walked back in, it turned out the traps did succeed after all, having taken down Deril with poison ticks while I was buffing:
After completing quests for Jan, Anomen, Keldorn (I failed that one by chosing the wrong dialogue option), Mazzy and Korgan - all relatively easy - I had to pick up Edwin to do the next one, so it was time to take down Rayic Gethras. He proved to be ill-prepared to deal with improved invisiblity - Ayla was able to easily take him down thanks to this protective spell:
To clear Mae'Vars guild, I had to use Ayla's true sight and keep my vulnerable cleric/thief Valeria invisible. I didn't have a lot of spells left when attacking Mae'Var, so this fight ended up being a bit sloppy, but success was mine nonetheless:
For Edwin's companion quest, I had to fight a lich for the first time. My plan was to hopefully kill him with traps, but with Valeria's levels not being high enough, he ended up surviving this first assault. Since the lich was very slow, I ended up performing a strategic retreat, periodically animating skeleton warriors to keep my foe somehwat occupied. He chased me back to the entrance of the level, but during that time, he lost his most important protections. When I came back, a single Azuredge hit from Ayla took him out:
With all the vanilla NPC quests done (except for Jaheira's, which I'm saving for later), it was time to start doing some EE content. I recruited Dorn first, completing his first and second quest. The ambush after the second quest caught me somewhat off guard (I didn't remember it at all), but I was able to get some quick buffs up and secure victory:
Luckily, multiple foes wasted their time spamming holy smite, which only affects Dorn in this party.
I'm planning to do Dorn's third quest next and go for Rasaad, Hexxat and Neera and their quests after that. I'm not sure if I will replace Cadrax with a permanent sixth party member at some point - I might take Jaheira along, or I might pick up Korgan - or I might try SoA with five, pickping up a sixth party member only in ToB, should I make it that far.
@StummvonBordwehr, congrats on beating your own record and at the same time condolences for FD95.
@Enuhal, looking very solid for someone who doesn't habitually play SCS, despite the loss of Cadrax. Keep up the good work!
BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Alright, only the major areas remain (Baldur's Gate, Durlag's Tower, Balduran's Isle and Ice Island).
Before we get into any of that, however, it is high time to do some scribing, as we've been using the same arcane spells since Imoen/Hubblepot hit L2 spell slots.
We head into Baldur's Gate and immediately go for the Ramazith questline. I want to save some Potions of Mind Focusing for the big finale to boost Coran's already ridicolous ranged THAC0 further, and by using the Tome of Intelligence in Ramazith's possession, Hubblepot shall require only a single Potion of Genius to reach 100% spell scribing chance (there should be enough Potions of Genius that we only need to rely on them for scribing regardless, but this way it's a certainty).
We free the nymph and receive her hair, head back to a (rightfully) incensed Ramazith, and pursue him up the tower, where none of his pet monsters cause much concern.
If I am being ultra careful, I'll handle Ramazith by Clerics nipping into the top floor invisibly, setting up shop behind one of the bookshelves out of sight of the dread Mage, and summoning a horde of Skeleton Warriors to overrun him. However... Ramazith is a Necromancer. Which means no defensive illusions, which means we can probably get away with just charging him. And, we do. Ramazith has time for a single Remove Magic before meeting his end.
We loot the quite awesome treasures of his tower, and head to the Elfsong Tavern. We need to do a sweep of all spell-selling establishments on the Sword Coast, so Imoen memorizes 4 Friends (we need one each for Sorcerous Sundries, Ulgoth's Beard, High Hedge and Feldepost's Inn).
While we're at Sorcerous Sundries, we might as well take out the Mages upstairs. Normally, this is done via mass Web from off-screen, but again.. everything is going so well, we can probably get away with more conventional tactics.
So we just summon a wall of Skeleton Warriors, buff up and rush in. Niemain obliges by killing himself with his own Wand of Fire (for some reason he didn't put up MGoI), and the rest of the enemies waste their best spells on our summoned fodder. All too easy.
Alright! We buy every potentially useful spell at Sorcerous Sundries, Ulgoth's Beard, High Hedge and Feldepost's Inn, and indulge in scribing. We now have the arcane tools to handle pretty much any situation the game might throw at us. Back to Baldur's Gate!
So, after resting up and preparing spells, we've got about 3 ingame hours before night-time, when we'll do Narlen's quest and break into the Hall of Wonders. Til then, might as well clear the sewers.
An Ogre Mage at this stage is merely dust in the wind, and only gets off a single Melf's Acid Arrow (we splurge on a dual Fireball to clear his 8 or so Carrion Crawlers).
The remaining sewers are even more uneventful, with Ratchild and Schlumpsha falling in quick succession.
Onward, ever onward. We finish the other quests in BG: East, then get to work on BG: Northeast. As always, Hubblepot is absolutely ruthless when it comes to permanent power boosts: Slaying a High Priestess of Umberlee to keep a +1 Wisdom tome? It barely warrants a second thought.
While his Boots of Speed would be useful, I can never bring myself to kill Lothander. Instead, we give him his scroll and let him go. On our way to beat up on Marek, Larze gets a double helping of Wand of Paralyzation, and fails both his saves.
We could probably get away with just charging Marek, bows and slings blazing, but he does cast Confusion in the middle of an innocent-packed gambling den... so, yeah, Skeletons will handle it instead. Goodbye, Marek. An ignoble end for an ignoble man.
BG: Southeast is swiftly cleansed. Taxek and Michael annoy us slightly by running up and down the stairs, but such tactics do not avail them for long. The Greater Basilisk in the Docks Warehouse is killed for Nadirin using a scroll of Protection from Petrification (the mage spell, not a green scroll).
On to BG: South. We've still got a single quest left from BG: Northeast (saving Brielbara's baby), so we head into the Low Lantern. Imoen's Detect Illusions forces Desreta out of her potion-induced Invisibility, and she falls before she can quaff another potion. Vay-Ya is distracted by a charge of the Wand of Monster Summoning, and has no dangerous spells left when we charge her.
Yago is even more silly than I remember. He prebuffs with just Armor, tries to cast Sleep but is interrupted, and dies immediately afterwards. Mage of power, indeed... we return to Brielbara with the spellbook, and thus BG: East is entirely done as well.
We mop up the remaining quests in BG: South apart from the Iron Throne HQ (Ghorak, Larriaz), and head into BG: Southwest. Clearing the Seven Suns is easy, and we get a fair bit of experience and gold for handing the quests in to Scar (we cleared the Ogre Mage previously, as noted, so got that reward as well).
Fergus gets an Angel Skin ring on the way out. We also help out Aldeth, and run into the bug where no one recognizes that we have in fact killed all the dopplegangers (had to use the console to fix it).
Good! Only two combat encounters left here; Sunin and friends, and the band of thieves.
We opt to go after Sunin first, and suffer what might not be a truly close call, but it could certainly have turned into one.
So, we're outside Sunin's house. We apply standard buffs: Strength of One, Chant, Bless, Haste etc, and charge in! Normally, it's quite possible to power through Sunin's defenses before he starts slinging dangerous spells, especially with Haste up. However, not so much this time.
Sunin goes with standard defenses, with MGoI, Mirror Image, Shadow Door, and Shield. His first action is casting Remove Magic at us, which catches the entire group and dispels almost every buff.
Here's the weirdness: Imoen spends almost 2 rounds with clear line of sight to Sunin with Detect Illusions active, but his Mirror Image and Improved Invisibility remains active. Shouldn't 100% Detect Illusions mean it pulses, with guaranteed success, once per round? Not so, apparently.
With his defenses intact and our buffs dispelled, Sunin turns to his offensive spells... a Chaos catches the entire party! Hubblepot, Khalid and Imoen makes their saves, but Coran, Jaheira and Yeslick are confused.
We keep focusing on Sunin, but with only one fighter left under our control, we just can't break through his defenses, and Shadow Door prevents us from targetting him with anything. Sunin goes to town: Sunfire (Khalid thankfully makes his save, but it still hurts), another Chaos aimed at Hubblepot who fails his save but was casting Sanctuary when the spell hit, and so is temporarily safe, and finally a Lightning Bolt. By some minor miracle, said Lightning Bolt misses Hubblepot, but does hit Jaheira. And kills her in a single hit. Adding insult to injury, it brings Khalid down to 13 hitpoints with its bounces, and the poor Half-Elf panics.
Imoen being low on health is due to Sunin spending his time inbetween spell casts to target her with his Melf's Minute Meteors. By contrast, his attendant fighters have done pretty much no damage: It's all Sunin's show. Finally, Sunin seems to run out of big damage spells, but then he starts to summon Ogres and Hobgoblin Elites instead. Which normally wouldn't be a problem, but Jaheira is dead, Khalid is running around in a panic, Imoen and Coran are struggling, and Yeslick got hit by a Slow.
We pop out our Wand of Monster Summoning, and thankfully, our own Ogres hold off Sunin's. Finally, after a LOT of positioning and potion quaffing, Sunin's MGoI wears off, and his second Stoneskin is pierced.
With some damage already having been done to the damnable man, Hubblepot is able to sneak around back and finish Sunin off with a blast of Wand of Fire Scorcher. Burn!
That could have very easily gone much more sideways. A few more of our party affected by the initial Chaos, or an unfortunate Lightning Bolt bounce so it tapped Hubblepot twice...
The party limps slowly towards the Temple of Helm and raises Jaheira. We'll need to spend a full rest cycle healing up from this debacle, but we pulled through. Phew.
In retrospect, better spell picks would've done wonders: Detect Invisibility and Spell Thrust, in particular, would've been helpful. I relied entirely on Imoen's Detect Illusions, and it failed us big time. Always have a contingency, Hubblepot!
We heal everyone up, and ID our ill-gotten gains. With our remaining spell slots, we (as it turns out) over-prepare for taking on the four thieves in BG: Southwest. We steamroll them utterly, but better that than the other way around. So that's BG: Southwest done, and we did Varci Roaringhorn's quest before killing everything in the Temple of Umberlee, so BG: West is also done. Making good time!
We head to BG: Central and help Nadine out, netting us another The One Gift Lost. Heh... we still have a single charge left on the one we bought right before heading into the Nashkel Mines. Seems a lifetime ago to Hubblepot.
BG: Northwest is up next. Nester's Dagger is returned to Quinn, and old Gervisse proves far less deadly than the late Sunin, the former having nothing more devastating than Monster Summoning II up his sleeve.
This time, Detect Illusions works flawlessly... of course it does.
Khalid and Yeslick go in against Degrodel's guardians on their own, managing to pull them into a very fine line which Hubblepot toasts using our by now plentiful Wands of Fire.
We recover both the Cloak and Helm of Balduran. Finally, it's a battle against the Maulers of Undermountain. Erring on the side of caution, we're well-prepared to dispel spell protections, Invisibility and all such shenanigans. The Maulers fall in short order.
And... that's almost it. All that remains is Jardak and his butler. Said butler apparently didn't prepare any Confusion today, and so it's just a matter of time until he drops (we were prepared to dispel multiple Invisibility/MGoI if necessary). Jardak himself only gets a single hit in before joining his manservant.
Hubblepot declares Baldur's Gate cleansed of miscreants! And, I guess, a Paladin and his loyal butler. And a High Priestess... and a Mage that was just minding his own business in his home. Well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, etc. The party sells off their latest hoard at the Sorcerous Sundries, and retires to the Elfsong Tavern to lay plans. Said plans will probably include a massive shopping spree, as we have finally reached reputation 18 (19, actually), and have more than enough money for the high-priced items such as Robe of the Good Archmagi, another Full Plate Mail, and Shadow Armour.
Properly equipped, we will then begin our assault on the Iron Throne headquarters.
But that is for next time. For now, Hubblepot is enjoying a few stoops of Extra Strong Black Mead and a small pouch of fine pipeweed, conferring quietly with his team mates in front of the fire on how best to proceed.
Hubblepot is now a L6/L6 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
2) Only if you know what you are doing.
In my opinion with Item Revisions game is easier, with Spell revisions harder. Weimer's upgrades are very cheesy but pretty useful, still worth installing. Item Pack has very useful component "more work for Cromwell".
- excusable in early gaming when I had no idea where and what SoD traps were.
- some time later I'd forgotten what the trap did and went through it to test it ...
- some time later again and I mis-remembered how far down the corridor it was (basically not very far at all) and triggered it while in combat with bugbears
- not paying enough attention in a fight I auto-followed a bugbear whose morale broke ...
Frost the Breton Mage: No-Reload Legendary Mode Run of Skyrim Redone
Part 8
This time, we're going with a more conservative, safer build that will have gobs of health and will carry dozens of pounds of potions for emergencies. We will deal damage primarily with bows, damage which will skyrocket once we hit Marksmanship 80 and gain access to a very special Skyrim Redone perk.First up is grinding Alchemy. We're working much more efficiently than we used to; we now know to use the Thief Stone to boost skill growth by 20% and I have enough knowledge of recipes to make the most of each ingredient.
We pick Alchemy perks as early as possible to maximize skill growth. Our Alchemy skill climbs dramatically in very short order, and we start making lots of money by selling off our potions.
While on our typical circuit around Skyrim purchasing ingredients while burning time so each vendor's inventory will restock, we run into a street fight in Riften. I have no idea what caused it, but apparently the Black Briars, a criminal family or something, gets in a turf war with the local law enforcement. They trade crossbow bolts and lightning bolts while the townspeople scurry out of the way.
I also keep a safe distance, wary of getting nailed with a stray crossbow bolt (which could deal well over 250 damage in a single blow), but I don't want to leave the area to escape the fight entirely: while the Black Briars appear to be immortal thanks to being plot-critical to certain quests, the guards are entirely capable of dying, and each one leaves some modest loot when they fall.
It's in our best interests to stick around so we can filch goodies off of the bodies of slain guards. I speak with one of the locals, which gives us some very interesting dialogue from an otherwise innocuous food seller.
Eventually, our carrying capacity maxes out and there's no further reason to linger, so we head out to Dawnstar. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Dawnstar is home to the White Hall, the Jarl's palace, where a local court wizard has a habit of leaving around valuable alchemical ingredients, from the ever-useful Hagraven Claw to the ever-profitable Giant's Toe.
Giant's Toes are very rare and kind of gross, but if you can get a hold of them, you can mix them with Wheat for a very high-value potion. These ingredients are just lying around a room in the White Palace, but they're flagged as owned, which means that taking them is theft. You have to wait until a little after midnight before everyone around is asleep.
Honestly, though, the best mixture to level Alchemy is just to make Slow poisons. All you need is a Deathbell (easy to find, especially around Morthal) and a Salt Pile (even easier to find, especially in the fish barrels by the docks in Riften) and you can make a high-value poison. Purchasing ingredients directly from alchemists is the fastest way to grind Alchemy, but those two ingredients in particular are high priorities, since they are very productive and cost very little to purchase.
I continue the circuit around Skyrim and get into trouble in Dawnstar when I try to steal some ingredients while the owner is still awake, but by dropping all my stolen stuff and running straight to the guard, I can avoid paying a heavy fine or having to turn over our stolen goods.
Then I can just wait until the guy in the White Hall goes to sleep and I can pick the ingredients I dropped right in front of him--even the stolen items.
Unfortunately, even if you don't get caught stealing something, there's still a chance that the owner will send some hired goons after you to exact vengeance. It only happens once per game, but at low levels, and on Legendary mode, the goons can be very dangerous. We get ambushed the moment we walk out the door.
I drink potions of Slow Time and Invisibility and scurry away. I have to get several hundred feet out of town before the game finally decides the thugs are no longer looking for me.
Our Alchemy skill finally hits 90, and we now have all the best perks, which means we have just about the strongest potions available. With our potions, we can get elemental resistances above 40%, improve store prices by 14%, deal 84% more damage with bows, paralyze for 14 seconds, deal 280 damage over 10 seconds, restore 125 points of health or magicka, and slow time for 89 seconds.
But when we find a necklace that improves store prices, we nearly bankrupt ourselves buying it as a long-term investment, which means we have a little more grinding. We do another circuit and end up with Alchemy over 110 and a few thousand more gold.
Now it's time to level Alteration. Same strategy as before: annoy mudcrabs in Morthal, spam Oakflesh spells, repeat.
We accidentally get in a fight with a necromancer in the wilderness, so I down a Slow Time potion and start filling her with arrows.
The fight isn't hard, but then I run into a Chaurus Reaper, a very, very sturdy giant insect that has long been a problem for me. Chaurus bugs are extremely difficult to kill and deal massive damage. The good news is that it gives us lots of time to practice archery.
We fire so many arrows that we have to go back to Riverwood to chop wood and steal iron ingots to forge more arrows; we just can't get by on the arrows we can find and purchase. We hit level 21 and now have a little over 300 health. We also have a Marksmanship skill of 40 and some basic archery perks, so it's time to head to Bleak Falls Barrow and start making progress in the main quest.
Candlekeep was a cakewalk. I forgot how I fought against Prat, but I do remember chasing him around the caves, and having Ajantis solo the Basilisks after drinking a potion to counter their attacks. After this, Sarevok's assassins in the Undercellar were dealt with, although they managed to kill Jaheira with a stray Sunfire I thought was going to miss her. Cythandria or however she was called wasn't very lucky and she got a Spell Thrust thrown at her, followed by an Arrow of Dispelling and a Bolt of Biting, and culminated with two attacks made with the Wand of Heavans (one of them was re-charged afterwards, the only wand I re-charged in the entire run). Jaheira and Ajantis took care of the Golems as if they were gibberlings with a lot of hitpoints.
The Palace Fight wasn't hard for us, in fact, both Dukes survived and on Barely Injured, but this was because we had Branwen, Ajantis and Yvralline use their healing spells on Liia, because, for some odd reason, Sarevok targeted her even if she was standing several feet away. The dopplegangers didn't pose much threat, they were cleared out very easily after several debuffs were thrown, and the one closer to the Dukes were prioritized.
On Durlag's Tower, the most difficult thing definitely was the Chess game, since I misremembered and wasn't fully aware of the fact that Pawns can turn into the Queen (L9 mage) when they reach your end of the board. So I ended up fighting against several Queens which were rather difficult to deal with, but in the end we avoided getting killed, and, if you don't lose, you win. So yeah, we pretty much just won because we lasted out longer. After this, I started being much more careful and barely lost a single hitpoint on the next level. The fight against the Demonknight was far easier after proper buffing and damaging his mirror. Since the unbuffed versions of ourselves had no idea of what to do, they were dispatched to the Nine Hells very quickly, while Ajantis dealt with the demonic creature on his own.
Back to Ulgoth's Beard, we all drank Invisibility Potions before we could be spoken to, buffed, and finally let the man give his speach. We defeated those enemies without much trouble, same for the ones guarding the entrance to the storehouse. The ones inside it gave us some trouble, but in the end they proved to be rather vulnerable to Fireballs once their buffs had ran out (I retreated, came back in after getting a drink and scorched them off the face of the Earth), and the remaining Assassin didn't do very well against Branwen's Holy Word (I am still unsure of HOW the Assassin survived, since it got hit by all the Fireballs, although saved against all of them and got marvelously low damage rolls). Against Aec'Letec, I protected everyone I could against Gaze attacks (this included everyone except for Yvralline since I believe the demon does not target the player with that particular attack) using potions, and, everyone but Jaheira with Death Ward. I'm not sure why I did that, but thankfully only Ajantis lost a few hitpoints while fighting the demon in melee (they both used Scrolls of Protection from Undead, which in IR, instead of making Undead ignore you, give you a +2 to hit bonus against them (and they get a similar penalty against you as well) besides granting the player with Protection from Level Drain, for TEN turns, TEN TURNS!!), which were quickly restored with potions everytime. Coran obliterated the sorceress by landing one Arrow of Dispelling (out of the three that were shot) and quickly following up with an Arrow of Biting. The Cult Guards were taken care by gratitious amounts of summons, fireballs and a varied assorted repertoire of other projectiles, magic and not. After they were all dead, the entire party focused the demon, and after he retreated to the Ethereal Plane about twice, making good use of this opportunity, Coran set up a trap that helped us finally put Aec'Letec to rest.
After we were finished with this, I talked to the dwarf, headed back to Baldur's Gate, cleared out the fastest path on the Maze and used Potions of Explosion and the Wand of Fire to quickly deal with the Undercity goons. Tamoko got hit by two criticals from Ajantis in the same round, and everything I threw at her connected (Edwin's Fire Arrow spell, Coran's arrows, Yvralline's Bolts of Lighting and Branwen's Wand of Heavens. Jaheira wasn't in her werewolf form, so she ended up sitting close to Tamoko complaining she was carrying to much potions to be able to move) as well so at most she lasted two rounds and a half.
I'll deal with Sarevok and report back soon.
I tried to lure out Diarmid, but we wouldn't move from Sarevok's side, so I buffed Coran with everything we have, and sent him on for a Western duel, which lured out Tazok. I moved Tazok to where Ajantis, whom ended up tanking him, and the rest of the party was, and he was quickly killed with a minimal use of resources. I Sent Coran to deal with Diarmid once again, this time their duel uninterrupted, and obviously Coran won, and activated Semaj's script. So I had Jaheira cast this 4th level Druidic version of Ice Storm close to them, and had Edwin throw out a Malisson followed by a Cloudkill. The result? Semaj was quickly dead, and we could now finally deal with Sarevok as soon as the poisonous mist (and the Teleport Field AND the Entangle I am still unsure why I threw at them) cleared up.
Edit: welp, I accidentally clicked on Post Comment instead of Save Draft. This post is most likely going to get edited again for the real finale, unless the thread is drowned in new replis which I don't think will happen.
Edit 2: after the AoE spells finally lasted out, I had Jaheira cast one of the Animal Summoning spells SR adds, which in this case, summons 3 Leopards to fight for us. We used them to distract Sarevok as Yvralline casted her last Dispel Magic. Right after that, since Ajantis had already been buffed while we waited out the spells, we all started attacking Sarevok. Because IR changes Potions of Stone Form into basically Potions of Stoneskin that give the drinker FIVE skins as per the the 10th level-casted version of the spell, Sarevok wasn't very threatening to him nor to Jaheira. The rest of the party pelted him with an assortment of ranged attacks. Soon after, our brother was dead!
In case anyone is interested, here are everyone's stats before travelling to Amn!
The images are mostly self-explanatory.Starting a new run with a Champion of Helm called Watcher
The sword that Watcher got as a reward for getting Tonner back into shape was a +1 sword which in addition does 1 fire damage. She cleared all the ankhegs that she could find including two that attacked at the same time. She became EXTREMELY poor as a result of improving the belt of piercing. Reputation ended as 19, but no gold to take advantage of it.
EDIT
By charming Galtok and getting him to cast lightning bolt on Greywolf, Greywolf was almost dead since Watcher got a critical hit. Unfortunately it was Isra who landed the final death blow, so Watcher lost out on the experience.Watcher then proceeded to find Bassilus who she charmed. Bassilus buffed the two of them before taking on Zargal. He used Greater Command which put two of them out of action. The archer who was still concious was killed followed by Zargal and finally the last of Zargal's cohorts. A bandit was then killed but then Bassilus was held by a ghoul. Watcher waited until Basilus was almost dead before joining in attacking him with her bow. The ghoul then turned its attention to Watcher who had to keep one eye on the ghoul whilst sending arrows at Bassilus who finally fell. Killing the ghoul was then relatively simple.
Previous updates:
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005776/#Comment_1005776
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005931/#Comment_1005931
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1006256/#Comment_1006256
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007209/#Comment_1007209
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007536/#Comment_1007536
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007802/#Comment_1007802
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1009955/#Comment_1009955
Update 9: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1010800/#Comment_1010800
This update is all about EE content - the NPC quests of Dorn, Rasaad, Hexxat and Neera. This is my third time doing these quests, but unlike SoD, they still feel unfamiliar to me and I tend to make a couple of mistakes during these (sometimes, dialogue and outcome can also be confusing) - still, these quests are definitely worth it for both the experience and the items (Rasaad's questline, which is the easiest one, provides a gem with a once per day use of instacast true seeing and an early Neera quest grants you an amulet of protection +2, and there's far more to gain). I already did 2/3 Dorn quests - for the third one, I decided to kill both of his patrons. The first one didn't put up much of a fight, the second one has some kind of hold/paralyze ability, but my inquisitor is immune to such things, allowing her to safely tank the Marilith:
Rasaad's first quest was very easy and straightforward (I didn't even step into any traps this time), and while I wasn't very prepared for the final battle in the second one, a couple of buffs and healing potions were enough to turn the tide. Not much else to say here.
Hexxat's quests turned out to be more interesting. During the second one, I was surprised when the mind flayers showed SCS behaviour, using psionic maze and other added abilities (I didn't think SCS would affect EE content). I was suddenly very scared to see an alhoon there:
Luckily, unlike the sewer alhoon, this one wasn't a super high level spellcaster. Still, one of the illithids did manage to teleport to my most vulnerable party member, Valeria, and drain her intellect while I was distracted. Had to use a RoR charge to pick her up:
The next difficult part of this crypt was the battle against the generals. I was very low on spells&buffs, and I had forgotten that you can rest freely during Hexxat's quests. Bad positioning got almost my entire party affected by an insect plague, and though I was able to kill most of my foes while under the effect of the spell, I had to constantly drink healing potions und was unable to get a remove fear (or level 15 skald song) off:
Success was ultimately mine, and the boss mummy fell to Azuredge:
When tombwalking back, my game crashed and I had to redo the entire tomb, this time remembering to rest, so I had no trouble with the generals. Time to move on to the second quest. I forgot about some of this tomb's mechanics, but this didn't result in any serious problems. I avoided attacking the NPCs at the start of the level (they are very, very dangerous) and had skeleton warriors take care of the 3 lightning bolt spamming sorcerers while having the door locked:
I had to do the riddlewalk with Hexxat multiple times, and I think the spider endboss bugged out on me (constantly restarting her dialogue), but victory was easily achieved. On to Neera.
Getting to the hidden refuge is a pain. No difficult battles, but all these traps are super annoying, especially in such a huge area (and it has to be cleared of traps for the cat quest later on). This time, I've created map markers for each trap, in case someone wants to do this and loathes waiting around to detect traps at any random point:
My big mistake for this round of EE quests happened when dealing with Reginald in the wild mage camp. I forgot how to solve his aggression issues, and when he started punching me, I thought that dialogue indicated that I should punch him back... However, he turned hostile and started unleashing spells - which is usually not all that dangerous in a wild magic zone, but I got unlucky. I lost a TON of gold (don't remember the exact number, but I'd guess it was more than 50k) when he got this wild surge:
The other wild mages stayed neutral, so I just had to avoid Reginald during future visits to the camp. I did all the minor quests without further trouble, continuing the questline until the red wizard enclave was open. With some buffs, the first room was quickly cleared (first, I used the vendor option to look for anything interesting. There was a robe of the neutral archmagi available, which would've been really really useful for me, but it was completely out of my prize range thanks to all the gold I lost due to the wild surge). I went with the aggressive dialogue option in the second room and entered a huge battle, where many of my buffs got dispelled multiple times. While most of my party survived all kinds of trouble and the skeleton warriors did great work, Neera herself, after getting her spell protections pierced, lost her life to a flame arrow spell:
I wasted a RoR charge (could have just gone outside to rest and let Valeria resurrect her) before resting anyway and moving on. Two secret words and a breach allowed Ayla and skeletons an easy go at the red wizard boss:
I was able to save all the wild mages (surprised that Reginald survived, despite me not being able to help him) and moved on to Jaheira's quests. I encountered some bugs here - it took a while to get Dermin to spawn, but by dismissing and re-recruiting Jaheira, I got him to show up without using the console. In the end, I ended up dismissing Jaheira. Currently, I'm travelling with five, but I'm seriously thinking of trying out Wilson (I think taking along Wilson in a no-reload game is not something that has been done a whole lot, and it might be fun).
As has been said before: "Good game, good game."
I will play with a party.
I've got SCS
Core Rules
I've added a tweak - traps will net me the same amount of xp that I would be getting if I was playing baldur's gate 2 and I reached the level you're supposed to be into baldur's gate 2.
When this challenge is finished, I will play with a 104 roll chaotic evil character.
BG1EE Updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Plans have changed slightly. The party does go on a shopping spree up and down the Sword Coast: After buying everything apart from the masses of potions and magical ammunition in Baldur's Gate, we still have over 50000 gold remaining.
Now, instead of going after the Iron Throne, we'll spend some time gallivanting through TotSC areas, both for experience and items (mainly I want a few good spell scrolls for Hubblepot to enjoy).
And no scroll is more exquisite than that of Stoneskin...
So, off to Ice Island! We prepare for multiple Mage battles: Detect Invisibility, Dispel Magic (to attempt to remove the inevitable Chaos/Confusion we'll be subjected to), Spell Thrust, Animate Dead.. anything that'll help. The hardest battle, of course, is right at the start. Before we get into it, an invisible Coran is sent ahead to de-trap the entire dungeon, as SCS Mages do enjoy running around while not casting, and we want to be free to pursue.
With Coran's return, we prepare. The plan is simple: Buffs are more or less pointless, as Andris is so much higher level he's all but guaranteed to dispel them. Charging head-on could work, but is more likely to end in tears. Let's try to wear Andris and his cronies down with summons. If they force the issue, we'll be ready for an all-out brawl. Coran, still invisible, will keep an eye on the action, while the rest of the party stands by around the corner.
Since we have a long dungeon ahead of us and only so many Animate Dead available, I once again turn to our Wand of Monster Summoning. Which is now down to 2 charges... maybe I should've picked another one up at Sorcerous Sundries. Oh well. Imoen pops a charge, and a hapless quartet of two Ogres, one Dire Wolf and one Hobgoblin Elite shamble forward to partake of the tender mercies of Andris and his minions.
Naturally, our summons are torn to pieces in rather short order, but they do their job in that they soak up several high-value spells, including the obligatory Chaos.
With 3 of 4 summons down, Andris' friends start roaming, trying to find us, while Andris tries (and somehow fails) to kill the last Ogre for a few rounds. I think he confused and blinded the poor thing before taking it down.
Beyn stumbles across us, but he's not that dangerous on his own: Hubblepot eats a Flame Arrow, but the damage is minimal.
We're a bit light on summons, but Imoen finds a scroll of Monster Summoning I, and Jaheira had Animal Summoning I prepared, which we also toss into the mix. This cat-and-mouse goes on for a few rounds: Beyn/Marcellus pop around the corner, cast something, and dip back into the central room, with us dealing some minor ranged damage to them. Andris is thankfully distracted by our meager summons.
Once the last of our summons drop, I decide that it should be safe enough to engage in earnest. Marcellus and Beyn have almost no spells left, and drop quickly, prompting Andris to teleport out.
The party gets into formation (spread out in the room next to the exit), and waits. Sure enough, Andris pops his contingency, we in turn pop a few buffs, and Andris teleports back in. Andris is all but out of spells above 2nd level now, and really can only delay the inevitable. Ultimately, he falls.
That went rather well! Of course, there were some dangerous moments: It's difficult to keep on top of three enemy Mages moving around willy-nilly, and it is similarly difficult to kill any one of them quickly, given their defenses. Wearing them down seems to work best.
Though to be fair, the best tactic is to turn everyone except Khalid invisible, then have Khalid pop a PfM scroll and some potions, and go to town (much like against Davaeorn). The Mages here have no defense against it, but I want to save our PfM scrolls for more important fights.
There's only one reasonably dangerous mage left in the dungeon now: Tellan. But we'll do this in good order. We head west and take out Garan and his Ankhegs. Imoen had a Sleep memorized for this very encounter, and we use the final charge of our Wand of Monster Summoning to bring up some Ogres that absorb Garan's initial Confusion. With that out of the way, Garan is bum-rushed, and doesn't even have time to get a second spell off. We had two Ogres left from our summoning, and they do a stellar job absorbing Cuchol's Confusion, whereupon Cuchol himself is treated to a dose of his own medicine, in that a Wand of Paralyzation charge spells his end.
So, Tellan. This is why we saved our six Animate Dead spells. The first Skeleton Warrior is killed in moments by Tellan summoning two Sword Spiders.. which he then proceeds to attack in melee until they are unsummoned. His AI seems to stipulate to attack the partys' enemies, whether or not you try to enlist his aid. Fine by me. We send in another five Skeleton Warriors, and all are brought down. Thinking it safe to engage after Tellan has cast so many spells, he gives us a fright by firing a Chaos! Thankfully, I see it coming, it only hits Yeslick, and the dwarf makes his save. Tellan still has a fair few low-level spells remaining, including a Flame Arrow which Imoen manages to survive, but we do bring him down without casualties.
Finally, we reach Dezkiel. We've been saving a batch of buffs, including Haste, in order to bring him down quickly. And we do, but he somehow gets Confusion off on our clumped-together party despite taking some 40 damage while casting. Dezkiel dies immediately after this screenshot is taken, and thankfully, a triple Dispel Magic from Yeslick/Imoen/Jaheira manages to clear the Confusion from the other half of the party. Victory! And Stoneskin! Especially Stoneskin!
We are teleported back and get the generous reward of 500 experience from Shandalar.
With that overly verbose venture over and done with, we head to Durlag's Tower.
Clearing the exterior is entirely uneventful, as is the majority of the above-ground tower levels.
Imoen memorized 2x Protection from Petrification, allowing Khalid and Coran to clear the Basilisks.
This actually gets Imoen enough experience to hit Mage level 8, splendid.
There are really only two noteworthy encounters above-ground apart from the Basilisks: The Ghost on the third level, and Kirinhale on the fourth.
We opt to take no chances. The ghost is very slowly, but safely, worn down by Skeleton Warriors.
We of course grab the Tome of Wisdom for Hubblepot (the latter erupting in a brief power-mad cackle, but soon regaining control of himself).
Kirinhale is handled by all party members but Khalid going invisible. Khalid then pumps his Magic Resistance up to 100 with 2x Potions of Magic Protection, followed by Potion of Fire Giant Strength, Potion of Heroism and Oil of Speed. This is probably overkill, but Kirinhale can be very annoying if you fight her fairly. This time, she dies within 2 rounds, and we are never in any danger. Worth the potions, I say.
On the way down, Riggilo gets Kirinhale's hair, and we get a Potion of Cloud Giant Strength. Good trade.
Alright, upper levels cleared! Into the basement, I suppose.
The basement and the level with the Warders are cleared without issue (it's all melee grunts with, at worst, some kind of on-hit effect... nothing we cannot handle with ease).
All that remains standing in our way are the Warders themselves.
We retreat outside and prepare thoroughly. We can of course still recall poor Lazramar the Necromancer, cut down in his arcane prime by the vile Pride... such an atrocity cannot be allowed to occur again.
We'll use the tried-and-true tactic: Skeleton Warriors to hold off Pride (they are immune to the Cloudkill that gets popped at the start of the fight). The rest of the party goes after, in order, Love, Fear, and Avarice (much to Lazramar's dismay, Fear has some kind of ability that can Hold the target, and Love casts several spells). Avarice turns invisible and backstabs. Pride is dangerous, but ultimately is just a hasted melee brute, easily distracted by summons, and so saved for last.
There's no shortage of buffs: PfE 10' Radius, Defensive Harmony, Strength of One (and strength potions for Khalid and Jaheira), Bless, Chant, Remove Fear, Haste, Ghost Armor for the casters, even Potions of Invulnerability for the frontliners. Nothing left to chance! Imoen and Coran are allowed to make use of some Arrows of Fire, and similarly Jaheira and Hubblepot will be using Bullets of Fire.
Thus buffed to the hilt, we talk to Love, and the game is afoot. The party has positioned itself near Love, at the southeastern side of the chamber, while our second party (the five Skeleton Warriors) are positioned where Pride spawns, the northwestern side of the chamber. Upon spawning in, Fear first heads for Imoen, but we divert two Skeleton Warriors and they manage to get its attention. Avarice has spawned in its corner and, not being able to see anyone, apparently is content to just sit there. Pride starts chopping down the three Skeleton Warriors left to fend him off.
The entire party focuses on Love. It starts by casting Dire Charm, which Khalid resists due to his innate Half-Elf immunity. Even had that failed, he had excellent saves thanks to the Potion of Invulnerability, so he would've been fine.
Love next tries to get off a Slow, but falls before it finishes. One down.
While that was happening, Fear has destroyed one Skeleton Warrior. Imoen tried and failed to Greater Malison Pride (he has a fair bit of Magic Resistance), but a Doom from Jaheira lands.
The entire party turns their attention onto Fear. Following a few initial misses, the hits come in hard and heavy, and Fear, regeneration notwithstanding, cannot cope with the pressure. Two down.
Another Skeleton Warrior has fallen, but the remaining three should be more than enough. After one failed attempt, a second Greater Malison from Imoen lands on Pride. Hubblepot follows up with a Slow, which also lands, essentially sealing the fate of the massively muscled miscreant. Deprived of its Haste, Pride is quite a bit less deadly. Three down.
All that remains is the loathsome Avarice. Normally the order would be Avarice, then Pride last, but Avarice obliged us by twiddling its thumbs while we were taking out the other Warders. We send a Skeleton Warrior towards the western side of the chamber, and Avarice takes the bait. Once in view of the party, Avarice goes for Yeslick, and gets a backstab in for 24 hitpoints. Such tactics will not avail you, Avarice! Imoen manages to dispel Avarice's Improved Invisibility using Detect Illusions, and the entire party dogpiles the last warder. Four down.
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! The lower levels of Durlag's Tower are now all but open for our looting! Well not quite, but this was a fairly important battle, and we did very well. We gather up Love's wardstone and head back outside.
This seems a good a time as any to take a breather around the campfire and contemplate how best to continue our assault of the dread tor. Hubblepot cooks up a big batch of his Phase Spider Surprise (the legs are entirely edible, don't you know) much to the party's professed delight, while Khalid, Yeslick and Coran have an arm-wrestling contest with no STR items or spells allowed. They all loose.
In all the commotion, Hubblepot gained his second-to-last level in BG1EE, and is quite close to his final level. He is now a L7/L6 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
The playthrough was not dense of events. I just explored all around, did a few quests in beregost that had no combat. Then I arrived to Nashkel and it was time to get Minsc. I'm not exactly sure he is the best choice and I'll keep thinking if I should still keep him or not.
Anyway, I risked my life more than once. When I had the encounter with the dryad, Imoen was killed instantly by one of the two thugs, leaving myself only with Dario and Minsc. I had to make Minsc flee and he met a dire wolf. So in the end it was Dario against three different npc(s)
After the encounter I went back to nashkel, resurrected imoen and got back to the dryad place, only to meet a polar bear that proved to be a hassle too
I killed him.
By the way, do I remember wrong, or is there a mod that makes you able to actually take the evil path with the dryad and make it worthwhile ? I remember that mod would make you able to skin the nymph for the cloak or something of this sort... Could it be bg1npc?
Edit: an addenda - the tweak for BG2 makes the single trap\lock give me 1k xp. I decided not to abuse it, I will abuse it in an eventual evil playthrough. With my good character I do not go in houses to lockpick and actually raid them.
Edit 2: something weird happened while I was battling the rats in reevor's storehouse. One of the rats, while I was fighting them, was charmed. Is that a rare occurrence or..?
Previous updates:
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005776/#Comment_1005776
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1005931/#Comment_1005931
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1006256/#Comment_1006256
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007209/#Comment_1007209
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007536/#Comment_1007536
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1007802/#Comment_1007802
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1009955/#Comment_1009955
Update 9: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1010800/#Comment_1010800
Update 10: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1011493/#Comment_1011493
So, I've decided to go for Bodhi next - and what the heck is this? Gellal the vampire is using an ability called "Lord Farthington Roenall" (who never showed up in my playthrough thanks to Nalia's quest being unable to trigger, btw)? Very strange indeed:
Another weird, but very welcome sight: Ayla fighting perhaps the easiest SCS Tanova battle of all time:
Azuredge did great work throughout all the battles. I do have improved Bodhi installed, but not the tactics version. She didn't do much to threaten my party in this first incarnation (the second one is much more difficult if my last run is anything to go by):
I did end up picking Wilson after that, taking him along to Firkraag's dungeon. Valeria was almost able to onehit-backstab the Rukh-Transmuter, but he survived, and we ended up in a prolonged battle eventually won by skeleton warriors:
The big group of vampires didn't stand a chance against Ayla + improved haste + Azuredge:
Conster was killed via traps, Firkraag was left for later. Mekrath was next on our list, and this time, backstabbing did the trick:
It's really nice to have lots of level 15 skeleton warriors available against yuan-ti mages - they allowed me to stay relatively safe on my way to Haer'Dalis' gem. The reason I did this quest at this point was to obtain and recharge a second wand of cloudkill, because I was going to deal with beholders next, and kiting them while spamming cloudkills from off-screen is my preferred method for dealing with SCS beholders - as seen here:
The undead city presented me with a bit of a problem. A lich. I had to face one of those eventually. After baiting out his death spell (most of these SCS casters have only one), I kept him busy with skeleton warriors, while keeping my party safely outside. The lich often would ignore the skeletons, trying to go after Ayla instead, while Ayla was trying to protect the skeletons by taking the other undead down with Azuredge. I had to dodge a few spells by leaving the building. I was making progress, having dealt with all the other undead, when I was shocked to see the lich suddenly outside, dispelling my group's protections:
Luckily, the lich was all out of protections at this point - his battle against skeletons had gone on for quite a while by now. While my party retreated, Ayla followed her foe and a single successful Azuredge hit was enough to take him down - lucky!
I cleared the beholder lair with some cloudkill wands from a safe distance and using invisibility during my approach. Skeleton warriors also helped out. A combo of traps, the rift device and buffed skeleton warriors also defeated the Unseeing Eye itself - and its death tyrants:
Next up was the Planar Sphere. I once again baited out a death spell and used my skeleton warriors to deal with the spellcaster halflings. Decent positioning got my party in a very safe position and allowed for some ranged assistance:
The second halfling group shared a similiar fate, though they were more capable of constantly killing my skeletons, forcing me to replace them quite a few times. Luckily, I have a ton of these available:
My Tolgerias "battle" was interesting - he survived the initial backstab, but a quick wand of the heavens follow-up (this is possible without having to clear the aura again first) was able to get in and finish him before he got his buffs up:
The second mage fell to true sight and the skeleton army. Lavok, however, turned out to be a bit more dangerous. He was my first mage opponent who was able to deal with the skeleton army relatively well. After his death spell took out my initial force, the two quick replacements were countered by his own skeletons and MMM attacks. I had to assist my skeletons and got myself into an unusual position to the north while evading a potentially dangerous situation. At some point, after getting my buffs dispelled, I decided to send in the very replacable Wilson as a distraction, and he immediately ate an ADHW:
Two skeleton hits followed right away, and the bear was down. Ayla went in instead, taking a ton of damage from one of those dreaded triple flame arrow sequencers:
However, in the meantime, she was able to take out Lavok's skeletons via Azuredge, and the necromancer was finally out of protections, allowing my final skeleton warrior to take him down.
I rested, and Valeria picked up Wilson. The demons outside turned out to be rather easy. At this point, Nabatil had gotten access to the level 20 skald song, which provides undispellable protection against fear, charm and stun effects. Incredibly useful. I had already killed the golems at this point, and so the Sphere was done.
Finally, to acquire my actual stronghold: The Astral Prison. I went in with full buffs and was able to destroy both initial spellcasters before their buffs fired. A good start. Skeletons approached the eastern group of foes, while Thallian used his very first level 8 spell with decent success:
Some of the yuan-ti mages survived, but they didn't stand much of a chance against skeleton warriors in the long run. After dealing with the Master of Thralls, I rested before destroying the orb, intending to attack the warden with fully buffed skeletons while he was still busy dealing with the rebelling thralls. This worked out quite well - I didn't even have to do anything, really (and he didn't even try to death spell them):
After the Cadrax debacle, the other quests have worked out very well so far. I completed the bard stronghold questline and dismissed Wilson. While he certainly isn't useless (as a damage dealer, he's fine, especially with improved haste), he never really felt important to my success. I've decided to take Yoshimo along to Spellhold for the extra experience from delivering his heart. Not sure if I will replace him with Imoen or stick with 5 party members once I make it there. Sewer illithids, guarded compound, the liches + Kangaxx, the Twisted Rune and the two dragons are left for later.