Tenya has now joined our party and we have decided that the Nashkel mines must now be dealt with. As we don't have any more gauntlets of brawling it looks as if Ajantis won't be joining the party unless Thorin dies. Tenya is in great need of some better armour at present. On the way down the mines, we came across some duerger assassins. I had seen them when I scouted ahead using stealth, then using a combination of necklace of missiles and holy smite we weakened them enough to finish them off by conventional methods as two of them had already panicked. Tenya used command on them whilst Thorin and I finished them off. Then a cleric cast a spell which I saved against. Another command spell on him was enough to disable him and after killing him we turned our attention to Gorken. Thorin and I were making short work of him, but a hold spell from Tenya concluded the matter.
Gorken had a plus 3 axe which increased strength by one. That was given to Thorin. He also had decent plate armour as good as that found in Durlag's Tower. I donned that and so we left the mine for R & R.
We killed some caravan guards at the FAI and with some relief we discovered that Tenya was able to wear the mithral armour that one of them was wearing. We didn't lose any reputation over that which was a relief as I was a little unsure about killing them. It turned out to be the correct choice.
Alright, Hubblepot is making the transition into Siege of Dragonspear.
Importing from BG1EE into Siege of Dragonspear. Difficulty: Insane with no extra damage, max HP on level-up. Self-imposed restrictions: No using unidentified items, no recharging items by selling and buying them back. Mods: None (hopefully the spawns from Insane difficulty will add some challenge). Protagonist: Hubblepot Gogglebur, L7/L7 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
Long tirade about what Hubblepot starts with, how I try to maintain early-game balance by restricting what I import etc, read if you care about that stuff:
I will be importing in a non-standard fashion, in that I'll import only Hubblepot from the final save, in lieu of the entire party via Import game. The reason is that, if you import the entire party, you not only get the entire party inventory (which as we recall, in Hubblepot's case, was filled to the brim with expensive and powerful items of all sorts), but your characters retain their hitpoints and weapon proficiencies, and get some extra experience immediately upon SoD starting (the game keeps track of how much you're above the actual XP cap in BG1EE).
The above basically means that there is precisely zero challenge for much of SoD. So, we'll instead make do with the NPCs and items that SoD provides us, accomplished by starting a new game and thereafter importing Hubblepot from a saved game. I'll make a small allowance for Hubblepot's personal starting gear, but I've tried to keep it within reason: Hubblepot didn't wear Helm of Balduran/Balduran's Cloak/Gauntlets of Dexterity/Greenstone Amulet/etc in BG1EE, so it makes no sense he'd have them when imported. The small allowance comes in the form of Hubblepot having Arla's Dragonbane +3 and Fallorain's Plate +1, as I want him to import them into BG2EE later. For those so interested, here is Hubblepot's starting gear:
Helmet Traveler's Robe Large Shield +1 Bracers of Defense AC 6 Ring of Wizardry Ring of Holiness The Amplifier Girdle of Piercing Boots of Avoidance Cloak of Protection +1 Arla's Dragonbane +3 The Thresher +2 x80 each of Bullet +1, Bullet of Fire +1, Bullet +2 x5 Potions of Healing x1 Wand of the Heavens, 10 charges x2 Potions of Invisibility Familiar Fallorain's Plate +1
Still plenty powerful gear. I'll also add another small restriction: I may freely use the starting NPC's gear to help me through the starting dungeon. I may not, however, strip them of their most valuable items towards the end to sell later: If they came with an item and didn't use it up during the dungeon, they keep it. Of course, anything found in the dungeon is fair game to do with what I please.
With that out of the way, let us begin.
Hubblepot Gogglebur, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist, SoD Update 1 Last BG1EE Update found here SoD updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Hubblepot's starting spells are more geared toward the final BG1 fight than an undead dungeon, but we'll make due. At least he has some good general-purpose buffs and x3 Animate Dead.
We get the standard Good party: Minsc, Dynaheir, Khalid, Jaheira and Safana. The party agrees to help Ammon, and bereaves an angry Tattered Skeleton of a scroll of Invisibility 10' Radius (which Hubblepot scribes immediately, being an Illusionist). I like that such a useful spell is available for free immediately upon starting SoD, since it's quite rare to see it drop in BG1EE (Greater Dopplegangers and Ogre Mages can drop it randomly).
The first mercenary force is handled via a Protection from Evil 10' Radius to boost our AC a bit, and then a simple mass pelting. Everyone starts with decent magical ammunition and a ranged weapon, after all. Porios is treated to a Fireball from Dynaheir, and (like many of his followers) does not survive the experience. We agree to help the Mummy restore peace and quiet to the tomb, and descend deeper.
Safana scouts ahead for traps, but with Insane difficulty comes Bonebats in the undead spawns, and they are quite capable of seeing straight through Invisibility/Stealth... of course resulting in the entire spawn coming after us: Several Bonebats, Bladed/Armored/Tattered Skeletons, Skeleton Archers, Shadowed Souls, and a Skeleton Mage. Things were going fine initially, but we failed to kill off the Mage quickly enough, and he got Haste and Stinking Cloud thrown into the mix. We didn't want to risk fighting in the latter, and so fell back outside the area of effect... and this happened.
You can probably guess the outcome of the Flaming Fist tanking nearly a dozen undead on their own. Both Flaming Fist Mercenaries actually die! The Flaming Fist Healer is much tougher and survives the ordeal. I am slightly conflicted, as while it's a shame they had to die here, this means I can loot their magical weapons to sell later on...
No time for tears now however, we must press on! To the south is a very large congregation of undead with status effects on hit. This seems the most appropriate place for popping Hubblepot's x3 Animate Dead, and so I do. I am not exaggerating when I say that our three Skeleton Warriors perform absolutely admirably: They hold off five times their own number in undead! We are a little pressed and so end up using several charges of Hubblepot's Wand of the Heavens, but it's worth it. In the end, a single Skeleton Warrior survives at Near Death, but the party took almost no damage (a few Magic Missiles from the Imbued Wights is all). A shot of the action:
We swing north, clear the Beetles and subsequently spawning Mephits (our Skeleton Warrior bites it here), then press south. There are a great many Shadows here, and also level-draining Wraith. Dynaheir's Web lets us kill off most of the enemy from range, but a few Wraiths make their saves and level-drain Khalid a bit. The Flaming Fist Healer automatically (and free of charge) Restores him the first time, but the second time we have to pay for it (and it fatigues poor Khalid). Still, that went rather well.
We found a Wand of Fire previously. This proves helpful when clearing the secret room: After looting the two chests, a gaggle of undead spawn. Hubblepot and Dynaheir take turns hurling Fireballs at the center mass of the shambling creatures, and we walk away with naught but minor injuries (well, Safana got caught in the inevitable Stinking Cloud and got reduced to 9 hitpoints, but she only has 49 to begin with, so...)
By now I realize Safana starts with The One Gift Lost (5 charges). I gleefully apply this in clearing the group of mercenaries to the north. They get a few hits in, but nothing major. Apart from getting a few Flaming Fist killed, things are progressing nicely! Which of course means things must soon take a turn for the (much) worse.
I thought I had several screenshots here, but I guess I was so absorbed in the fight I forgot to document it. Anyway, Safana is spotted by a Bonebat attached to the last undead group to the east, and battle is joined. Since we're running low on healing, I have Dynaheir (under Stoneskin/Mirror Image) tank a bit, while the rest of the party kills off strays. Unfortunately, a Bonebat manages to Hold Dynaheir... and the consequences are what you would imagine, as Dynaheir bites the dust. It didn't help that the damnable Skeleton Mage again got off both Haste and Stinking Cloud, reducing our maneouverability. However, that's not all the bad news. While we studiously avoid the Stinking Cloud, the Flaming Fist Healer has no such compunctions. She ends up tanking about 6 undead on her own. She's tough, but.. not tough enough. So, she dies.
I am not conflicted at all about this: It's not good. Dead Flaming Fist Healer means no Raise Dead for Dynaheir, no buying healing etc. Grumble. We clear the spawn, and talk the mercenaries to the west into giving up. Oh, and yes, we loot the Flaming Fist Healer's personal effects.
So, we'll have to deal with Korlasz using a party of five. Fortunately, while Korlasz herself buffs to 100% Fire Resistance, her minions certainly do not. The very last charges of the Wand of Fire and The One Gift Lost clear out most of her hangers-on, enough so that the pressure on us is very light, in turn allowing us to focus on Korlasz.
She soon surrenders, but Safana and Jaheira both take a beating, and we are now well and truly out of healing. Well, unless we dip into the potions we found throughout the tomb... but no, that's just crazy!
There's a silver lining: The experience gained from de-trapping and lockpicking the chests in Korlasz's sanctum gets Jaheira to Druid level 9. Which means Harper's Call! Our first rest is interrupted, but it's mostly bog-standard Skeletons, and Hubblepot happily sets about dismantling them via blunt force. The second attempt succeeds, and Dynaheir is returned to us, along with heals for everyone. Hooray!
We gather up the loot from the Spirit to the south, and head back upstairs. There's one battle left, and we're actually quite fortunate we were able to rest beforehand: I doubt we'd have fared well here with almost no spells available. As it is, Animate Dead, Haste and the regular Cleric buffs grant us a fairly easy victory.
On the way out, the Mummy returns to his rest, granting us a very nice shield, and allowing us to loot his tomb. Ammon also gets her Moss, and a letter of recommendation.
Imagine the party's surprise as, upon returning to the entrance, both Flaming Fist Mercenaries and the Flaming Fist Healer are somehow alive again... even more hilarious, they have weapons, the same weapons we looted off their dead bodies (and that are still in our inventory). A miracle! A miracle!
Hubblepot returns to the Ducal Palace, making sure beforehand that every bit of loot we found in the dungeon is in the inventory of some party member (so that we get it transferred to our stash).
I'll refrain from extensively narrating our adventures throughout the city, as there are very few combat encounters and they are all absolutely trivial. The only one of any note is fighting Korlasz again: Hubblepot just summons a Skeleton Warrior to soak up her spells, but this turns out to be unnecessary, as Spell Thrust + rapid discharge of Melf's Minute Meteors is more than enough to kill her in a few rounds.
Hubblepot picks up Minsc, Dynaheir and Safana for companions. Safana helps us loot the chest in the basement of the ducal palace for some 10k total in gold and gems, and after doing all the little quests, we head north.
Upon arriving at the Flaming Fist camp, Safana is dismissed and replaced by Glint, and Corwin is recruited. My intended party is Minsc/Dynaheir/Corwin/Glint/Khalid (I'll bring M'Khiin along until we can get Khalid). Reason being, I am quite concerned about the final battle. I am confident in my ability to handle any other encounter via correct spell choices/tactics... apart from Big B, where I want as many good fighters with +3 weapons as possible.
So, we immediately swing north and pick up M'Khiin. Upon returning to the camp, we do a whole lot of reshuffling of items, sell off all our ill-gotten gains to the quartermaster, and invest in every single bag-type item he has (Potion Case, Ammunition Case, Scroll Case, Bag of Holding, Gem Bag). Alright, the world is our turnip! We've got a decent party with decent gear. Hopefully, Hubblepot won't do something stupid (like get Held and killed by the spiders around here...). This seems a good time to hunker down, think about tactics, and prepare our spells accordingly. Scouts have reported there may be a dwarven expedition nearby, one in dire need of aid. Hubblepot shan't be found wanting!
Hubblepot is now a L7/L8 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
We took a side trip to Gullykin where we picked up Indira. She is a bit on the weak side compared with the rest of the party but she has potential. She uses the mithral armour that Tenya was wearing as with that she can still cast spells. This means that Tenya has to wear armour which is not quite so good. WE have good armour, but she is unable to use the better items. We were ablt to give Indira a +1 shortbow and give her a +1 longsword. As the party member most likely to die, I gave her some of my own personal protective equipment. The first thing that we did was rescue some ghostly knights from an age-old curse. We then killed the ogre mage and his helpers. It was only landarn who did serious damage. It was with a fireball spell. He actually used it wisely. We had sent some summoned weasels to attack him thinking that he would focus his spells on them. However he ignored them and blasted the rest of the party who were badly injured as a result. However the weasels attacks on him did cause him to become unconscious. Indira cast a web spell and Thorin attacked. However, I had forgotten that he no longer had the ring of freedom of action and he got webbed. Tenya gave the ring to me and said, "You take it. You have the best attack apart from Thorin." I took it and finished off the enemies there before leving the dungeon and talking to Gandolar Luckyfoot who gave us a reward. The reward was hardly worth having however. At the FAI we impoverished ourselves by buying equipment for Indira aqnd a helm of charm protection for myself. We may go to the sirene area soon but it might be better to wait until Indira levels up as she is still very vulnerable.
I've been continuing to work at this challenge with various characters, but without a lot of success. The nearest I've been in recent months was a trip to the Throne with a dwarven defender before losing out to timestop there and I'll see if it can go one step further this time.
I've been very focused in the early stages with levels gained from Shoal
and Tenya, while picking up Algernon's Cloak and Dushai's ring. At the Lake area I activated a single gnoll and waited while it whacked away at Drizzt's 92 HPs. It didn't break its weapon though and I decided not to try and finish off Drizzt, but just picked up his equipment.
Some donations ensured I picked up CLW at Nashkel, along with some ankheg armor. Then it was off to the basilisk area where I followed Korax round while gaining another couple of levels.
Korax also paralyzed Mutamin and helped out against Kirian's mob after I was confused by Peter.
The +1 arrows taken from Baerin were used to shoot down the golems at High Hedge before I went to find Bassilus to get a bit more melee oomph. He confused me once more, but without support stood no chance in melee.
The sirines at the Lighthouse area had no answer to a clarity potion and more golems were then enough for level 7 - getting up to an impressive 107 HPs to date.
Well, somehow we are still alive, but things are getting harder and harder. Another huge setback occured, and this time, I'm not even sure how it happened. However, some other updates first:
The group in front of Gromnir didn't pose much of a threat, as I managed to lure the wizard downstairs, where he was in a bad position and easily slain:
The Gromnir battle itself, however, was rather difficult, as expected. I almost managed to make it easier by killing the unnamed battle mage with a delayed blast fireball from my bard's flute, but not quite - he barely survived. Meanwhile, my fighters started to take down the enemy thief first, as to remove backstabs from the equation:
Valeria was taking most of the damage, as she walked up the enemies to cast holy word. She had to retreat and barely made it out when the first timestop occured. Oh, and there is, of course, another fallen planetar:
Valeria survived via healing potions, and the timestop wasn't too bad - mostly resulting in lost buffs and a pit fiend. There was a dragon's breath and a comet, but I was able to completely evade the breath, and the comet only hit Ayla. Meanwhile, Edwin was able to take down the near death battlemage with an ADHW, and Haer'Dalis, focused by both Gromnir and the fallen planetar, went into defensive stance, trying to get PFMW up. Meanwhile, I also had to try and avoid an insect plague if possible:
Hear'Dalis was able to use PFWM just in time - one more hit would've meant death. Meanwhile, I was getting close to finishing off Gromnir's lesser allies:
Things got dicey when the fallen planetar ventured too close to Edwin. Globe of blades literally killed him in one hit - at least that meant that there was no chance of him getting chunked. On the plus side, Ayla caught Karun the Black without PFMW up and was able to start destroying him with a GWW:
With Karun soon dead and the summons suddenly turning around to follow and kill Valeria (who had renewed her death ward, as the fallen planetar already tried to kill her previously), the remaining party went after Gromnir. As you can see here, the death ward did prevent a vorpal hit:
However, Valeria was trapped - you actually can't go up to Gromnir's throne from the southern side. The planetar took her down, though once again, she avoided getting chunked:
However, her death had an unexpected positive side effect: She apparently died far away from the party, and the fallen planetar's AI didn't think to search for additional enemies - so it just stayed there, doing nothing. The pit fiend was smarter and attacked:
With the fallen planetar out of the picture, the battle was ours. I used ranged attacks to take down the minotaur, as I didn't want to get too close to the planetar:
Melissan showed up, and I just had to wait for the "unsummoned" message to move on and resurrect my party. The north forest was easily cleared, and two sunrays took down the Master Wraith's allies:
The skeleton party was mostly killed by a single deva. I set up a couple of traps in case one of them made it through, and the mage did, and promptly died:
Now, I was on the hunt for easy experience. The statues in WK level 1 certainly count at this point:
Level 2 was was mostly very easy to clear. The improved chromatic demon took some time to die (had to cycle through his forms once to get a second ice golem phase for my fire damage to do the job):
However, level 3 doesn't qualify as easy XP, especially not with the randomized maze and the possibility of going from a dead magic zone right into a room full of SCS demons. So I decided to go for the available EE content (Hexxat's quest can only be done once you reach Amkethran, but the others are fair game). I made the mistake of going for Neera's quest first, which is arguably the most difficult one, but I didn't remember these quests well enough to still know that at this point. The first difficulty: Fighting a bunch of high level wizards and fighters right after a rest. I tried to distract the foes with my fighters while having the squishy characters at the back, casting their buffs, but this plan failed when a bunch of crossbowmen took down Sarevok much faster than I imagined:
I then realized that I should've used The Reflex, and did so with Ayla, allowing her to withstand my foes much better. Meanwhile, Valeria used mass raise dead to get Sarevok back and fully heal the party (I have the SCS option to turn HLAs into special abilties active, which is why I can use unusual spells such as this one):
Luring some foes back to my waiting party and getting in a couple of inquisitor dispels quickly turned the tables, and victory was mine:
The arena part was no problem (and got me a new cloak + shield), and I cleared the wings of Vicross's estate without issue. Vicross herself, however, was an entirely different kind of tough. I really did not expect her to do all the things she did. Timestop + IA, constantly summoning in new powerful fighters, using rigged wild surges to summon an illegal amount of SCS Balor's? Damn. Oh, and she killed Neera right away with PW:Kill:
When I was forced to fight the first balor, I realised that my lack of death wards would be a huge problem (I didn't expect any vorpal hitters during this fight). Even worse, Haer'Dalis got caught by a Symbol: Stun when Nabatil's bard song wasn't active and died:
Taking down Vicross's minions didn't seem like a good strategy, and since I didn't have Edwin (can't have him and Neera in the same party), I had no way to take down my primary foe's protections. I decided to try and run to a relatively safe room to regroup:
My foes did follow me, but I was able to greet them with a globe of blades-using deva and a storm of vengeance:
Most of the (at this point three) balors were at the eastern half of the estate, so I decided to take another shot at Vicross. She had few protections left, and I was finally able to do some damage, counter her invisibility trigger with true sight and kill her:
While Balors and guards were still after me, I had taken the time to apply death ward to my fighters, allowing them to melee down the remaining foes:
Neera's quest: Done.
Next up, Rasaad: I accidentally rushed through that one a bit, because I went for the mines straight away and triggered the last battle there. At this point, Edwin was back into my party with a fallen planetar as his first HLA, so I used it to take down the enemies forces via firestorms. This must have resulted in some dwarves getting hit as well, because at some point later in the game I noticed a devastating thing when looking at Ayla - she had no true sights or dispel magics available any more, our reputation was suddenly at 3 and she was a fallen inquisitor. All the reasons I created this character: Gone, with no possibility of redemption. That's nearly as bad as getting another character chunked:
I'm not sure if the firestorms are really to blame, I just don't know. I didn't notice the reputation drop at the time, but this is the only friendly fire aoe ability I remember using at the point where it must have happened (because she wasn't fallen when fighting Vicross, as I remember using her abilities there). Anyway, I followed Algoroth into the shadow realm, quickly focusing the shadow dragon with HLAs:
Ayla, btw, is still using Carsomyr here, even though she technically can't use it - it was equipped, so it will stay equipped until I unequip it or she dies. If she survives until Sendai's, I won't even be able to upgrade it, because that will remove it from its slot. Anyway, the shadow dragon went down really fast. The SCS dragon health upgrade definitely didn't affect it:
As it turns out, going for the mines right away is a terrible idea if you're looking for XP - all the remaining foes get instakilled via script:
Finally, Dorn's quest. Mercifully, nothing went wrong during that one. It also seemed to be the easiest one. The regular crusader groups are weak, and the two silver dragons at the end died before even getting their protection spells up (they also really need that SCS hp boost!) - the second one didn't even have time to turn hostile after I killed the first:
So, yes, we're still alive, but the future is looking even darker. The fire giant temple is next.
The Nashkel Mine didn't take long to pass through and Mulahey was drawn back to the entrance and cut down.
The Bandit Camp was equally easy, with a couple of moves into and out of Tazok's tent splitting the enemies up for easy disposal.
I decided to get caught stealing in Beregost to push reputation back down to 9 in order to get horror as the next Bhaal ability. With that acquired I did the rounds of wilderness areas completing reputation quests to boost that back up to 20. That included a successful revival of Melicamp, though there was more reputation available if needed anyway. There was also a first use of defensive stance against the Doomsayer (it can be dangerous to use that at lower levels - particularly if you don't leave yourself near an exit).
Clearing the ankheg nest and reporting to Farmer Brun gave me a final BGEE level
- I think the new total of 122 HPs is the highest I've ever had for a BG1 character.
I celebrated by doing a quick shopping tour. With HPs so high it was an easy decision to make use of the Claw of Kazgaroth despite the HP penalty from that. The Greenstone Amulet was used to get the wisdom tome from Durlag's and I couldn't resist using a PfP scroll to kill the basilisks there even though I don't need the XP.
After running through the Cloakwood, Kysus changed sides and used fireball and confusion to help out.
After fighting quickly down to Davaeorn I used a potion of magic blocking to leave Davaeorn in a hopeless melee contest.
In the City I picked up another couple of necklaces of fireballs before doing the poison quest. For a change I decided to have a stand-up fight with Larze on the way there. He's pretty formidable in melee, but defensive stance was just enough to hold him off.
I did a fair amount of other work as well - including Jardak in order to be able to get charisma up to 20 for the best shop prices.
For Degrodel I used the Horn of Kazgaroth to get negative saving throws - noticing in the process that defensive stance reduces the HP loss from the Horn from 10 to 5.
The stairs were used at the Iron Throne to split up the enemies and allow an easy victory.
That opens up the route back to Candlekeep.
Dwarven defender L8, 119 HPs (incl +5 from Helm and -8 from Claw), 329 kills
I changed my mind about going to the Sirine area and finished off the Nashkel Mines instead. No issues. We killed Mulaheyn and took Xan to the surface. We agreed to part company there. If I ever need to meet him again he will be at the FAI, however he was such a miserable old git that I will try to avoid him in the future. I would have to be really desperate to welcome him back again.
I made a big mistake. I didn't get Khaled and Jaheira to join before going to the nashkel mines. (If only for their gear) Mainly however because there is always the possibility that they will be needed.
In Candlekeep, Prat's gang were overwhelmed without any damage being taken.
The basilisks then offered an XP bonus before resting to get a second DUHM and returning to Baldur's Gate.
With all preparations already complete I headed straight for Slythe. He failed to get a hit in, while Krystin didn't even manage to cast a cloudkill (which would have killed her anyway).
At the Palace I decided potions of giant strength, speed and power made the chance of failure acceptably low without bothering with use of charm. The dopplegangers actually did reasonably well, but Belt still had a few HPs left when the last went down (I'd withdrawn just before that in order to lead Belt out of sight of Sarevok).
With buffs still active the inhabitants of the maze didn't last long. I did note though that I triggered one of the maze traps despite moving carefully. It seems to me that in v2.5 the maze traps (and the lightning trap in the Candlekeep catacombs) are much more difficult to avoid - has anyone else noted that?
I didn't bother with the Undercity party, but went straight for the temple. Inside, I decided to play with firelightning. Angelo is the hardest one to target with the lightning trap, but eventually he went down and only Sarevok was left.
He was already badly injured though, so I didn't bother with any potion buffs before going in to finish him off.
One nice thing about killing Angelo like that is that it means all 8 of his exploding arrows transfer to SoD. The Flaming Fist cleric there has some useful equipment to purchase, but can also be used to identify things (allowing stacking of the exploding arrows) and pay for healing.
After levelling up, I used horror to disperse Porios' guards and persuaded him to surrender.
Downstairs, PfU allowed the first 2 areas to be cleared before some fireballs softened up the 3rd area. Korlasz starts with protection against fire and rather than bother dispelling that I just used the Ring of Energy on him - that seems to ignore mirror images when striking, so makes her surrender quite quickly.
Here's my inventory at the end of the prologue.
Dwarven defender L9, 122 HPs (incl +5 from Helm and -8 from Claw), 409 kills
In Baldur's Gate I killed various NPCs for their gear to raise money. The only quests done were picking up the Spectacles and helping Irina in order to get a helmet that banishes fatigue - the latter involving a brief reappearance from Korlasz. I also noted that the transfer between BGEE and SoD was made without properly accounting for HP adjustments - effectively meaning I was benefiting twice from Balduran's Helm and not losing the adjustment from the Claw of Kazgaroth.
While there are plenty of tricky encounters in SoD, the majority of those can just be skipped if you want to avoid risks in a no-reload. I did though start with an optional encounter with Tsolak in order to get a regeneration ioun stone. I tried to fire a dispelling arrow at Ikros there so it would be launched while she was visible, but hit as shadow door took effect - but just mistimed that by a tiny fraction of a second. Ikros died very quickly anyway, but for a moment it looked like Isabella might get lucky - Bhaal horror put paid to her chances though.
After picking up the identifying mirror I waited out the encounter at the bridge behind the tent.
Moving on I just ran through Troll Claw Woods and on to the Forest of Wyrms. Wyverns and spiders were no problem with defensive stance reducing saves vs poison to 1 on the way to the temple. Bugbears were soon meleed, with the ioun stone regenerating damage, to get inside the main precincts. Ziatar's guards were all separately killed before she was tackled.
The Neothelid didn't make much of a showing
and I bypassed the Shadow Aspect on the way to find Darskhelin - noticing as I was buffing up there that I had got the XP for the final SoD level. An opening salvo of exploding arrows hurt the mind flayer and it was finished off with a couple of acid arrows
before I worked through the remaining enemies. With no real need for any more XP or treasure I let Akanna live.
However, a dragon shield looked potentially attractive so I buffed up in the next door cave before throwing daggers at Morentherene - the first of those connected.
At Boareskyr Bridge I just intimidated Vichand to give up the scroll rather than risk attacking him and alerting the crusaders. The fort was surrendered meaning a fight was only needed with the mage on the bridge. I tried hitting him with a dispelling arrow followed by an exploding one to disrupt his spell. The first 3 arrows missed, meaning the mage just had time to complete his spell. In itself that wouldn't be too much of a problem as I've beaten up the fire portal creatures a number of times. However, on this occasion the game over screen popped up before any creatures arrived.
I've noticed on the odd occasion before there that sometimes the game has seemed to end before the fire portal creatures have had a chance to explode the barrels. I'm a slow learner, but I think that must be because I've used fireballs or exploding arrows there and created the explosion myself. One more thing to try and remember for the future ...
I meant to mention this in my last post. At Gullykin when you go down through the winehouse into the dungeon there was a room that swarmed with kobold commandoes. There weren't any there this time. Has that area been nerfed or is it that I went earlier than normal.
I also noted that the kobolds don't continuously respawn like they used to, (The same with the gnolls at the citadel). That place used to be a challenge but isn't now.
@Grond0 I can confirm that fireballs of any kind hitting these barrels will cause a game over. This is exactly what happened during my last attempt at the meatgrinder challenge (I tried to take down the group quickly via detonation arrows). Sorry for your loss.
I meant to mention this in my last post. At Gullykin when you go down through the winehouse into the dungeon there was a room that swarmed with kobold commandoes. There weren't any there this time. Has that area been nerfed or is it that I went earlier than normal.
@Wise_Grimwald your mods may make a difference, but in the unmodded game the kobold commandos are randomly generated by encounter spots (as opposed to being specifically placed like Lendarn and the ogre mage). That means that the number of kobolds you find will vary.
I meant to mention this in my last post. At Gullykin when you go down through the winehouse into the dungeon there was a room that swarmed with kobold commandoes. There weren't any there this time. Has that area been nerfed or is it that I went earlier than normal.
@Wise_Grimwald your mods may make a difference, but in the unmodded game the kobold commandos are randomly generated by encounter spots (as opposed to being specifically placed like Lendarn and the ogre mage). That means that the number of kobolds you find will vary.
I used to use that area as a cheap and reletively easy way of replenishing arrows of fire.
Hubblepot Gogglebur, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist, SoD Update 2 Last BG1EE update found here SoD updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Alright, we need to get ready. Dynaheir's spell selection alternates from good to mediocre to horrible depending on the spell level, so first order of business is fixing this. Corwin is our most charismatic member at 14 CHA, so she equips Brevin's Quarterstaff and activates Friends, giving us maximal CHA discounts. I spend about 5500 gold on two Potions of Genius and some scrolls for Dynaheir. This stings, since I know several of these scrolls will drop, many as early as during the Dumathoin questline, but with Dynaheir's 17 INT and Invoker penalty for scribing... she needs to do her scribing in batches, with INT boosted to 24 (25 in the case of 2x Potions of Genius) for guaranteed success. She now has a much more all-round spellbook, or at least as all-round as it gets for an Invoker.
We rest once, set up 2x Web sequencers on Hubblepot and Dynaheir, then rest again to fix our final spell selection. We will be fighting enormous hordes of Undead, so anything that helps against them is preferred. Too many different spells to list, but basically anything that incapacitates Undead (Web), deals Fire or Magical damage (Magic Missile/Fireball), protects against status effects or just helps in general (PfE/Free Action/Bless/Chant), and finally durable summons, i.e. Animate Dead. We've got 2 arcane and 2 divine casters total, so there's lots of spell slots to go around, thankfully. We'll also be up against some Umber Hulks, but Minsc has the helmet from Korlasz's tomb that gives Confusion immunity, as well as a Greenstone Amulet with 5 charges that we can pass around, so we'll be alright.
Off we go! We'll skirt along the south edge of the area, then swing north to reach the dig. Of course, there are the customary Sword Spiders with accompanying Gargantuan Spiders that block our path (the latter hurl Web Tangle, quite nasty). I've had a run ended here, as once someone in the party is tangled, the entire group of Spiders will converge on that person. However, I don't want to waste any of the good spells so early.. so what to do? Thinking I have a brilliant solution, I opt for M'Khiin popping her Goblin summons, then doing a bit of dancing to hopefully bring in more cannon fodder, while the rest of the party stands back behind the meat shields and pelt the Spiders to death. Seems a good plan, we conserve our powerful spells and still come out on to-
Will I ever learn that this particular spawn is brutally dangerous when underestimated? It doesn't look like it. So, what happened was this: M'Khiin summoned her Goblins, and actually got the Chieftain plus two Warriors. They held the Spiders off for all of two rounds, since the Chieftain and a Warrior immediately got Webbed and thus dropped in record time. M'Khiin kept summoning animals, but once Corwin and Minsc got Webbed, meat shields no longer mattered, as the entire swarm converged on them. I can only count my lucky stars that Hubblepot did not get Webbed, or we might be reading his eulogy (Stoneskin doesn't really matter when you're being automatically hit by four Sword Spiders). If I had to do this fight again, I'd just drop a dual Fireball and call it a day. Hrmph.
We trek back to camp, shell out 1250 gold for two scrolls of Raise Dead, and M'Khiin blows all her fourth level spells summoning Nymphs to heal our newly returned party members up. Which is fine, I guess; the Nymphs are pointless in fights against Undead. Except now we won't have Spirit Fire available.. eh. At worst, we'll just retreat back to camp and rest up if we run out of spells.
Spiders cleared, we reach the dig and head inside, saving Brother Deepvein and his fellow dwarves. We set about clearing the first level: There are all kinds of Undead here, as well as some Umber Hulks and Carrion Crawlers/Mutated Crawlers. Essentially, you want protection from and/or the ability to remove any status effect: Level Drain, Hold, Disease, Confusion. Or you can forego such things entirely and just blast every last rotten Undead to bits. We end up doing a bit of both, sometimes we buff, sometimes we Web or Fireball. We also make surprisingly good use of M'Khiin here, as the Major Animal Spirits do a reasonable job at holding the line as long as you don't expect them to do so indefinitely. I also realize that Battle Tankard on a Cleric (in this case Hubblepot) probably isn't a bad idea, as this allows said Cleric to cast Lesser Restoration with no drawback. Which was needed, as Minsc got Level Drained at one point.
While Hubblepot is never in any personal danger, Minsc and Corwin both have a close scrape: A Neo-Otyugh beats Minsc quite viciously, but we are able to shuffle around to keep it from finishing him off.
Corwin wanders into one of our own Webs and, once Glint frees her with Remove Paralysis, is reduced to 20 HP and prevented from retreating due to uncontrollable Animal Spirits blocking her path, so she has to gulp down a Potion of Invisibility.
In my view, the most dangerous group here is actually the Umberhulks and Mutated Crawlers to the south. You'd need a very stable tank, Mind Shield for everyone doing the fighting, and Free Action to take it on honourably. We opt to be weasels, and handle it with Greater Malison + Sequencer with 2x Web. Works wonderfully.
The first level cleared and looted, we head deeper. Corwin inadvertently triggers the first undead group to the south when she is spotted by Bonebats. M'Khiin gets a few critters up, but they won't be enough by themselves, so we spend one of our two Improved Invisibility on Minsc, and send him into the fray. The extra 4 AC really helps, and when we add Bless/Chant into the mix, we hold the Undead off without having to expend more important spells.
Pressing south, the rather massive Undead group with a Mummy at its centre is handled via initial Fireball and a follow-up Web. The Burning Skeletons down here are annoying, but not overly dangerous (and even Hubblepot is capable of Turning them). We just have M'Khiin dispel their Haste, and that's it for them.
Further to the east, the indomitable Bronze Sentry gets to swing its blade uselessly at an entirely too well-protected Hubblepot (Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Blur and Full Plate equipped). Minsc chips in from the back row, and everyone else pelts away with missiles.
Even further to the east, I again overstep my bounds when Corwin blunders into four Bonebats that see through her stealth, prompting a mass charge by several Drowned in blood Undead, as well as Wights, Wraiths and what have you. I deem the situation dire enough that we pull out one of our last mighty combos: Greater Malison + 2x Web Sequencer. This successfully defuses the situation.
I want to clear the entire dungeon before we go after the Lich, so, we head north for the laboratory. We are delving into our last resources here, but we're not entirely depleted yet: Three Skeleton Warriors are called forth, and along with some basic Cleric buffs (Remove Fear/Bless/Chant) and a few Major Animal Spirits, we successfully dismantle the Undead attack force laying in wait behind the doors.
We are close to on our last legs here, but just a little farther.. the remaining Undead group in the laboratory catches wind of Corwin snooping around, and charges in. We apply our final round of buffs, throw whatever we have left at the shambling corpses, and it proves enough, though we have to do a fair bit of running around, along with some emergency tanking by Hubblepot.
There are several groups of Undead left at large in the dungeon, but we literally have less than a half-dozen useful spells left. Hubblepot manages an Invisibility 10' Radius, letting us position ourselves to quickly take down the Skeleton Archers that we can now reach.
However, the Undead in the hidden room next door are attracted by the scuffle, and though most of them are melee creatures and thus cannot reach us, the Shadowed Souls can somehow cast at us, even though we lack a good line of sight to shoot back at them. With serious damage being taken and us having no real means to retaliate, Hubblepot calls for a tactical retreat. Nevertheless, we've done well: There remain only two large groups of enemies in this dungeon. The party hobbles back to camp for a good night's rest.
Properly refreshed, we re-enter the Undead warren, and launch our assault on the hidden room. Some Skeleton Warriors are summoned to hold the line, though we could've probably done with five such creatures instead of only three.. they prove insufficient, and Minsc takes a fair beating while we sort out the issue. However, we do emerge victorious, and Minsc doesn't even get Level Drained. Good stuff.
The massive Undead horde guarding the Lich's inner sanctum also prove an obstacle. A Greater Malison followed by a double Web holds everything fast, apart from two honest-to-goodness 9HD Skeleton Warriors. They consistently resist magic (of course), and equally consistently hit Minsc, even after PfE/Improved Invisibility. We win here as well, with a fair few resources expended. We have almost reached our goal.
We prepare for the final confrontation with the Lich. Nothing major, though we do conjure five Skeleton Warriors, and apply PfE 10' as well as Haste (the latter being absolute key). We rush in, challenge the dread Undead Wizard, and the game is afoot! And said game then concludes in about one round, as The Secret Revealed dispels all the Lich's buffs, and he is then rudely chopped down by Minsc and our Skeleton Warriors. No time to dally though: The Skeleton Warriors are sent towards the portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire, along with all of the party but Minsc. Minsc rushes along the secret passage north, picks up the Phylactery (second on the left), then joins the rest of the party, getting a Protection from Fire and Resist Fire/Cold cast on him as he sprints by. Guarded by the Skeleton Warriors, Minsc disposes of the Phylactery in the portal, and the dread Lich is no more!
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! The Lich never even got a spell off (contingencies excluded). The party returns to Brother Deepvein, get their reward, and enlist the noble dwarves' aid against the miserable knaves of the Crusade.
This seems like a good spot to gather our wits for a moment and contemplate our successes. Next time, the party will finish up the areas for this chapter (shouldn't take long) and proceed with the plot. We used up a LOT of Healing Potions (the 9 HP kind), but charged items are meant to be used. Not a single death either, unless you count those nefarious Spiders... Hubblepot is now a L8/L8 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 165 (1 2) Lunkh (human male Inquisitor, Gate70); Sparky (gnome female Cleric of Talos, Grond0) Our second session has Lunkh using Truesight against the Doomsayer and Sirines.
Sparky decides a Sanctuary block is suitable for use in a cave.
With no protection from petrification we use skeletons as basilisk-shields.
Lunkh has taken damage from Sparky's lightning bolt ability once (or twice - you have to test these things...) so he retreats to leave the cleric a safe distance away for the next attempt.
A stray basilisk decides to hunt us down, but we escape before it can gaze in our direction.
Plenty of progress made, and we get back on the main plot by sorting out Nashkel Mine, Nimbul and Tarnesh before setting off for the bandit camp.
After pushing Porgy’s rep to 16, Porgy entered the big city. Getting max rep was easy, and money was spent on potions mostly.
Next up the tomes:
I have to admit that I wouldnt play the game If there where no tomes. So needless to say, I enjoy Baldurs Gate the city.
The iron throne was treated to 3 charges of the necklace of missiles - and a raging beserker with godly strength and a giant sword.
The died - off course
If you like Tomes, candlekeep is the place. So going there is a treat. Prat didnt like my stay. For a non raging type the fight is tough - but not for a fire- and electricity proof beserker.
Grabbed the last tome in Durlags and ventured down for the goblet.
The warders nearly ended the run, when I - in a moment of overconfidence - let my eyes wander in the middle of the fight. A last moment scramble won the day.
With the helmet and the goblet in the bag Porgy left for the the iron throne part 2
The throne and the undercellar fell to Porgy’s rage
The palace fight is always tricky. Bellamy from the bar gave his life, while Ichtyl and the priest of helm paved the way for a comfortable win.
The final fight was done fully buffed. Porgy drew out Sarevok and Semaj, and killed his Brother face of face. A close shave, but a win non the less - no drinking from the goblet needed
The biggest challenge lies ahead. But Porgy will start SoD with sine quality loot for some easy cash and a head start on gear. Hopefully it will be enough
So illness got me into playing again about a month ago. That was with an unkitted Bard and the so-called canon party. Sadly creating some storage space on my laptop led me to accidentally delete a folder containing that run's screenshots. I may still post about her from memory and some notes I've made. Am no longer ill but still playing. In addition to the Bard I also created a Fighter/Mage/Cleric and I'll write about her first. I intended to do a LoB run with her but considering the current bug in 2.5 where enemies get a +5 penalty to saves, I chose to go for Insane instead.One of my rules is that stats have to be rolled manually and accepted without making any adjustments. I love this rule because it ensures that characters are unique. (I had actually made another F/M/C before Ineza, but with readjusted stats, but the character felt blander and cheatier.) With three 18s Ineza's got an amazing stat distribution. The fact that the 16 CON hurts a bit, especially on insane, doesn't change that. (I do play with full HPs on leveling up, so I suppose Ineza's HP pool will eventually be relatively generous.) Another limitation, in a way, is Ineza's portrait. While I would have loved to develop her as a dual-wielder with ** in flails, maces, hammers in no particular order, she's clearly holding a staff in the portrait. For that reason Ineza started out with ** in staves, in addition to ** in slings. (Starting mage spells are Find Familiar and Shield btw). A third rule I introduced for this run is that items must be identified before they can be equipped. Fourthly, we'll refrain from overtly evil actions because Ineza is LN. This is hardly a "rule" as I don't like doing evil stuff anyway, but to give an example of its implications: we even helped out Drizzt against the gnolls rather than waiting for them to kill him.
The install is a 2.5 install with my go-to mods on top of it: Mini Quests and Encounters, SCS with full prebuffs, BG1 NPC Project, Unfinished Business, Rogue Rebalancing, (some) CDTweaks, (some) aTweaks, JimFix.
1st report:
"Hey ya,it's me Imoen!" Ineza saw her friend walk up to her on the morning after Gorion's tragic fall, but she decided to run away, incapable of sharing her plight with Imoen. Ineza and Imoen had got along well enough but they had never become the most intimate of friends, possibly due to Ineza's focus on her career. Between her arcane classes with Gorion, spiritual instruction under Tethtoril and the priests and combat training with the Watchers, she'd had little time for hanging out with Imoen at the inn. In any case she didn't feel so close to Imoen as to be able to drag her into her life-threatening situation without feeling very guilty about that. She wouldn't expect Imoen to get her involved if the roles had been reversed. On Gorion's corpse she found a leter mentioning Khalid and Jaheira waiting for her at the FAI. But Ineza feared that Gorion's killers had read the letter as well, so visiting the inn wasn't an option either. No, she was on her own.
Ineza traveled south. Being poor and having no one to rely on she started hiring her herself out, as a mercenary so to speak: fetching and delivering goods on the bandit-ridden Coast Way, slaying strong but dumb monsters, etc. Her spare time she used for arcane reading and divine self-study and prayer. Little by little her ability improved and she also became a figure of some repute in the region, and almost without trouble, almost. A bandit archer ambush gave Ineza a good scare (30 HPs on insane is nothing), enough for us to cheat on the above-mentioned identification rule: an unidentified ring of protection +1 and an unidentified girdle of piercing were equipped to ensure only crits could make an impact, and a crit did land. But Ineza survived.
She had by then saved up several thousand gold and used it to buy a wide variety of arcane scrolls and copy them into her spellbook. One of those spells, the Sleep spell, allowed Ineza to slay an entire ankheg population that had been terrorizing farmers up north. The experience gave her some confidence that she was actually capable of handling more or less dangerous foes. And indeed, she soon showed herself more than a match for such creatures and figures as basilisks, an evil gnomish wizard (thanks to the charmed ghoul Korax), the self-proclaimed most skilled swordsman on the Sword Coast Meilum (Blindness), battle horrors (wand of fire), the evil priest Bassilus (Algernon's cloak, courtesy of her kleptomaniac ferret familiar), the fearsome bounty hunter Greywolf (Hold Person), Amnian braggart Kirian (Hold Person), "fastest dart-thrower" Zal (skeleton warriors) and his comrade Vax (Hold Person). It should be noted though that Ineza stayed humble despite her surge in power and confidence. She was not above helping Thalantyr restore his former human-turned-chicken apprentice Melicamp for example, and she was most pleased to see the wizard succeed at a complex restoration spell.
With the coin procured during her adventures Ineza could afford high quality gear such as a robe of the neutral archmagi, Aule's staff and a greenstone amulet. The amulet especially, proved a useful purchase, as it allowed her to loot Alaric's cave near the lighthouse.
Thus was her prowess that she even managed to handle a hostile group led by the mage Kirian in a somewhat compelling way, meaning she didn't have to just lure each of her foes away to take them on indiviually. Marksman Baerin did conveniently disappear on his own for later though. Even fully buffed, Ineza turned out to be unfit to go toe to toe with Lindin, who hit her hard. But her greenstone amulet and her skeletal summons and wands at least allowed her to fight back. Ineza Held Kirian, but Peter cast Remove Paralysis on her, only to be paralyzed himself by Ineza's wand of paralyzation. The wand of fire and some slinging were relied upon for damage dealing purposes.
(Note that this was at level 6/5/6, one Mage level shy of BGEE's level cap for her class.)
At the ruined Ulcaster school Ineza got into some trouble because of a 2.5 gameplay change: quick-looting makes an invisible character become visible. (Sanctuary still works though.) Ineza had to fight her way past dread wolves and dire wolves relatively unbuffed. She got out under Sanctuary, and with her final mage level attained from killing a few of the wolves.
Ineza 's next job was an inspection of the Nashkel Mines. She found it taken by kobolds, but she didn't bother with felling all of them. Instead, she went straight for their master, the half-orc priest Mulahey. With her potion, amulet and spell buffs the priest could do little against her, while Ineza was hitting hard (without needing good Thac0 rolls).
Back in Nashkel the assassin Nimbul struck Ineza from invisibility and went invisible again. It prompted her to go invisible as well, burn a Detect Invisibilty scroll, and scorcher her foe with the wand of fire.
Nimbul's contact Tranzig, who was much less of a threat thanks to Ineza's skeletons, owned a letter implying a link between the iron crisis and regional bandit activity. The letter mentioned a bandit camp in the Wood of Sharp Teeth. Ineza decided to try and locate the camp.
The first level of the fire giant temple was actually surprisingly easy. This has a lot to do with my willingness to abuse traps, of course, but even the fire lich didn't stand much of a chance:
Now, for something quite interesting and unique: Ayla, my fallen inquisitor, leveled up at this point, with Carsomyr still equipped. When I chose her HLA and clicked "done", the game actually gave me a message, stating that she had equipped an illegal item and that it would be removed from its weapon slot. I was able to cancel the message, but that would mean not ever being able to gain another level with her, so I decided to sacrifice her ability to carry Carsomyr - and indeed, upon accepting the condition, the item was moved to her inventory. Huh - I never new this was something the game did, though it's nice from a roleplaying perspective. Anyway, I equipped a bunch of fire resistance equipment before moving on and fighting the big group of fire giants and the red dragon Brimstone upstairs. I decided to focus all my attention on the dragon - despite its very, very big hp pool. Maybe a mistake, but I wasn't sure what spellcasting abilities it would have. I ended up using timestop+IA to remove its spell protections and deal some damage, and some GWWs later, the dragon was gone. I had to heal and or retreat with a couple of party members, due to the fire giant's high damage output, though:
Also, Sarevok used the Helm of Vhailor and The Wave to take down the prince of fire by himself:
So, with this one going rather well, it was only a matter of time until things went bad again. Surprisingly enough, it was the Nyalee battle that caused me a ton of trouble. Reasons for that are easy to find: I didn't rest after completing the fire giant temple, and I didn't prepare any buffs except for CC to counter charm spells. I simply forgot about SCS adding the mirror of opposition to her inventory and how powerful it could be. My party ended up insect plagued, webbed and attacked by powerful clones all at the same time, with Valeria being the first to fall - all because I wasn't able to focus down Nyalee right away thanks to her prebuffs:
Nabatil was relatively save due to his equipment and boosted saves, but Haer'Dalis and Edwin were still webbed (at this point in the game, I simply wasn't prepared for web anymore, since nobody had used it against me for ages). On the plus side, Ayla and the deva were finally able to bring down Nyalee:
Haer'Dalis died to the clones (who were constantly buffed by a haste effect or whirlwind attacks), Edwin made his save, and Ayla took down the last nymph:
Sarevok, buffed with Hardiness, was drinking healing potions and trying to distract the clone army, but he couldn't keep up with the damage:
However, I did finally discover a way out of this battle when I realized that the clones weren't using any spells - so I tried to get away with invisibility potions, which worked out:
I got into a position where I was able to safely grab my fallen companion's equipment, returned to the pocket plane and resurrected everyone. Upon return, I discovered that the mirror of opposition clones don't disappear after a rest, so I killed them (this time with some buffs on my side). Well, that battle could've been so much easier. Lots of bad plays on my part. Now, Yaga Shura. That one was a bit strange. I buffed up and attacked, waiting for the fire giant to return, but he simply would not show up. I killed some of his soldiers and suddenly found myself attacked by the lieutenant thief - who was alone, without the other lieutenants. An easy kill, and quite a surprise:
I scouted the map for a bit, finally finding Yaga Shura right to the west of the bridge:
I had Edwin cast time stop from off screen. He didn't have the time to break any spell protections, and the SCS version of Yaga Shura certainly wouldn't take any significant damage this early in the battle. I didn't see the lieutenant cleric, so I went after the lieutenant fighter, killing him shortly after the end of the timestop. However, after I retreated to set some snares, the lieutenant mage followed up with his own timestop, which included gating in a fallen planetar. I also got some of my buffs dispelled, and I decided not to take any chances - so I simply left the map, not wanting to take on the fallen planetar right now. This did cost me a lot of potion buffs, but I was fine with that - especially when, during my second attempt, Yaga Shura entered the bridge to attack me, without any of his lieutenants following him!
And while he did a lot of damage to my fighters, the fire giant eventually went down:
Well, that's certainly an easier way to win this fight. Strange and unusual failure by the SCS AI. Now, for the second pocket plane challenge. Once again I prepared with a ton of buffs. I opened up combat by focusing down the Nabatil clone while Edwin was casting time stop:
I noticed that Semaj was also using the same spell, but Edwin was ahead. Sadly, without the AoP (which he can't equip because he has a fixed neck slot) or the Robe of Vecna (moved to WK5 by SCS) I didn't have the casting speed to actually take down Semaj. I instead tried to take down his spell protections, which, for some reason, didn't end up working. Semaj, of course, did a very similiar thing when his timestop went off - IA, summoning a planetar, dispelling my buffs, also a comet spell on Edwin (though that was kind of pointless, as Edwin was well protected):
For the first time during this entire run, I was actually well prepared to face a fallen planetar - Haer'Dalis did what he was recruited for: Keeping his buffs active thanks to spell shield/SI:A. He was able to face the celestial with an intact death ward, and my party took down the remaining foes, leaving only Semaj - who was already losing his protections:
In a surprising twist, it was my own planetar's vorpal hit which took out the opposing celestial:
The oasis turned out to be super easy, and I did the minor Amkethran quests (not Vongoethe though - he'll be hopefully dealt with in the next update). Time to recruit Hexxat for that final piece of EE content.
Incidentally, Hexxat's ToB quest - that is, if you always have her or another thief scouting ahead invisibly, looking for traps and monsters) - is super easy, though it doesn't offer much in the way of rewards (except for another belt of hill giant strength). There are only a couple of greater mummies, sand golems, death tyrants, bone fiends and some relatively weak mages to kill, and at this point in the game, none of these pose a threat if you know that they're coming. The final boss is a lich (though you have to kill the most obvious simulacrum in the world first, and it's infuriating that the game doesn't let your character acknowledge that it was obviously a simulacrum, which is hinted at by tons of books you find throughout the dungeon - though this is only one of many, many dubious writing choices for the entire Hexxat questline) whose favorite move is spamming dragon's breath (he has at least 3 of these). This is easily countered (if you can't be bothered to get full fire immunity) by just walking around hasted and dodging the very slow spell effect:
He was able to maze my deva, but she returned rather quickly, and she, a skeleton and Ayla using trusty old Azuredge took him down once his defensive buffs were gone:
I let Hexxat die during the conclusion to her quest since I'm certainly not going to recruit her again. I guess Vongoethe (a far more dangerous lich than Korkorran) is next.
I beg to differ. You seem to lack certain metagame knowledge, but the way you keep bouncing back from adversity makes you a good player in my opinion. Enjoyable read too, Nabatil's SCS Adventures, thank you for sharing.
Thanks @Blackraven , I appreciate that Still, after any of these really intense battles I can usually think of at least one easy way to save one of the characters that ended up dying. Of course, it's nearly impossible to play perfectly with a full party in a late game situation, but I think that if I would extend my pauses a bit more, I could think of better ways to handle certain situations. I often end up forgetting about certain options in the heat of the moment.
Trio Update Yeldon Half-elf cleric/ranger, protagonist (Corey_Russell) Denko - Human Dark Moon Monk (Gate70) Keras - dwarven kensai (Grond0)
Our saved game name says destroy Iron Throne HQ, so we knew what we had to do. We entered the HQ and got up to the top. We needed to rest, so rested at the top. Yeldon sanctuaries and made a skeleton army. Then he did two silences and some hold persons. His party members then rendered assistance, and the team successfully defeated the enemies, though as usual Keras took a ton of damage.
Once we made it to Candlekeep, we went straight to the crypts. We didn't have a thief, so had to trip the traps the old fashioned way (walk into them). We used storm giant potion for two crypts and then DUHM for the STR tome crypt. For some reason Grond0 dropped from game quite a few times. We ended up losing WIS tome along the way.
With his group-mates' help, Yeldon managed to silence Prat - this made his gang far easier to deal with. We then tried to take on the spiders - Yeldon's free action potion wore off, and while held by web he got STR drained by a wraith spider to 3!!! He nearly died...but once that fight was won, he couldn't move, so he just sent his skeletons to assist his groupmates to take out the remaining spiders and basilisks while he just had to twiddle his thumbs...
The party sold their junk at FAI, rested to get DUHM, and headed to the Great City. We got a few items from Sorcerous Sundries and then tried to deal with Slythe. Grond0 went to pull, and got lag, and triggered Krystin too. But he backed off and the party attacked. We won, even with no way to dispel Slythe - we took a lot of damage though, so rested up.
We then headed for duchal palace. We didn't bother with summons, just haste and strength potions but that worked out fine.
With buffs running, we went through the maze without much trouble. Yeldon didn't want to bother with the Iron City party, so we just went around the long way.
We rested and headed into the Temple to face Yeldon's half-brother. We did a few buffs, mostly strength, haste and potions of magic shielding. Grond0 successfully pulled just Sarevok and Semaj. Semaj fell incredibly fast - and Sarevok died pretty fast as well. As Grondo so aptly commented, Sarevok really shouldn't turn his back on a hasted Kensai.
We had just enough time to clear the 1st level of Irenicus' dungeon. We will deal with the mephits next session.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 165 (12 3) Lunkh (human male Inquisitor, Gate70); Sparky (gnome female Cleric of Talos, Grond0) The bandit camp sees Lunkh test out his cloak and boots against numerous arrows. With that done the interior of the main tent has Sparky use Sanctuary and Silence before Lunkh arrives.
Cloakwood is passed through rapidly. Silence plus true sight gives us the upper hand against Drasus and his companions. In Cloakwood Mine we deal with a couple of Battle Horrors before using a potion (Lunkh) and storm shield (Sparky) against Davaeorn.
Resting in the mine is problematic, but we finally succeed before the chest to loot is buried under piles of armour.
Baldur's Gate is open to us now, so we head in and make our way around. Degrodel craftily evades one lightning bolt so Lunkh shouts through the door. Sparky obligingly moves further away from Degrodel and gets some meaningful bounce into her second attempt.
We've picked up tomes and the items we require so head into the Iron Throne HQ. Silence and skeletons is probably enough but Sparky adds in a Hold and we are victorious.
The ogre mage in the sewers and doppelgangers at the Seven Suns are our last encounters in the city before Duke Eltan sends us to Candlekeep where our stay is all too brief. After being arrested we escape into a secret library and plan our next move.
This is just a mini-update featuring some minor encounters across several maps. Nothing dramatic going on in this one for once So, I talked to Vongoethe and told him I'd bring Marlowe along. This gave me the opportunity to place spike traps next to him, which resulted in a very easy lich battle. With no one there to dispel my buffs, death wards kept me safe from the appearing Banshees:
I was now done with Amkethran and decided to clear the outside area of Sendai's Enclave to get some extra experience. I did use a couple of traps to make the various ambushes a bit easier, but still ended up having to fight a hive mother, though with bard song protections, a dark planetar and some GWWs, that was easily done:
After killing the drow woodcutter, I made my way to Draconis, the main opponent on the list for today. I did place a large group of spike traps in the middle of the area as a safe spot where I could maybe lure him to (preferably his dragon form) and added green acid protection scrolls to my buffs (I also had additional ones at the ready in case of dispels). Edwin's 3xADHW chain contingency took down the invisible stalkers, and my conjurer got rid of Draconis' spell shield, following up with spelltrike, while Draconis completed his timestop. He didn't cast IA, though - he was only able to destroy Edwin's own spellshield, renew combat protections and summon a fallen planetar:
I immediately decided to use my spike traps against the dangerous celestial instead, as it was easy to lure it back. Meanwhile, Haer'Dalis successfully breached Draconis' now exposed combat protections:
While Draconis renewed PFMW from time to time, I was always able to follow up with another breach, eventually forcing him to turn into his dragon form. However, he didn't start at full HP. My best guess is that SCS's extra dragon HP wasn't taken into account when healing up Draconis. My first move was to have Edwin cast timestop:
He followed up with IA, ruby ray (to remove SI:A) and spellstrike plus some nukes. However, when the timestop ended, the dragon was suddenly killed by the last remaining spike trap (which wasn't triggered by the fallen planetar earlier) and a hit from Sarevok:
That went quite well (though I did forget to have Edwin use his lower resistance spell trigger). After some delibaration, I decided not to go for Sendai or Abazigal for now, instead returning to WK. A randomized maze with dangerous demons awaits.
After leaving Nashkel we headed for the the sirine area. There we reunited a widow and her son. If our reputation had not been 20, that would have raised our reputation. We killed a number of sirine, hobgoblin and carrion crawlers without serious hurt. We then spoke to Sil. She asked us to deal with the pirates at the lighthouse. This we did, but a hidden thief backstabbed Indira and killed her. We therefore went to Nashkel to get her raised. We then returned and talked to Sil again before raiding the cave. After that it was shopping spree time. We sold several unneeded items and bought a few that were needed. There is still one item of armour that I quite covet, but that will have to wait until the coffers are refilled. Of course there is always something that you would like to buy. On the way to see Shoal Morvan and party attacked us and subsequently died. Indira used an arrow of explosions but neglected to switch arrows when we approached the target, Ouch! She hurt us more than they did!
SoD has until now proven quite hard, since my progress usually rely on meta gaming - and SoD is still quite new for the iOS users (yes I know its just excuses...) The last two times I have failed in the green dragon cave and the ensuing Bugbear cave. This time I went one step further.... but only one.
The starting dungeon was cleared with protection from undead, the flaming fist and the necklace of missiles
The city is quite easy and I had money to boot - thanks to planning ahead and robbing NPC’s Here is Porgy going to war. He has everything of value and is filthy rich
Well he did miss up on the spectacle of spectacles... major facepalm moment, and it did kind of spoil the game a great deal.
The warrens of the undead was cleared with 2 scrolls of protection from undead. Easy as pie, and level 9 and GM in great swords secured. Nice
Triggered the bridge blowing up amd rushed for the temple, going into the temple of Bhaal:
1) I didnt wake the dragon, 2) I raged against the Bugbears (killing in the name of Bhaal),
but forgot the greenstone amulet. A chest stood in a empty room, and my 6 wisdom big guy just couldnt resist. He stepped into a trap, got held and the invisible stalkers killed him...
He could have raged, used 1 of the 98 charges in his 2 greenstone amulets or just used spiders bane... but alas thats what you say afterwards. Rolled an unkitted ranger instead.
Ineza had little difficulty locating the bandit camp: she met a group of bandits in Larswood and attempted to be charming to their commander Teven, hoping it would get him to let her join the bandits. Teven agreed, but upon arrival at the camp it turned out Teven had never wanted her in. And his superior, the half-ogre Tazok, wasn't immediately sold on the idea either.
(Ineza wasn't even given any dialogue options to persuade Tazok.)
Tazok applied an oil of speed and attacked. Ineza, unwilling to waste consumables on what might be nothing but a sparring session, used an invisibility to wait out the half-ogre's haste, then convinced her foe with missile attacks to give her access to the camp.
Unfortunately she had never come across a Knock scroll so she didn't bother with the many locked chests and crates, heading straight for Tazok's tent instead. In there, she considered reading a Cloudkill scroll (a spell she wouldn't be learning anytime soon), for an easy clearing of the tent but eventually she went for potion buffs (heroism, invulnerability, giant strength, regeneration) plus protection from poison and MSD to let her scorcher the place unmolested.
She freed an Elven prisoner who pointed her to an Iron Throne base in Cloakwood, and with her buffs still intact, she swiftly moved out to let Black Talon leader Taugosz Khosann have a taste of her wand of fire and of her staff.
Two advantages of Ineza's specialization in staves and her level 3 proficiency pip in two-handed weapon style, are her reach and her attack speed. She could easily deal blows and move away to dodge her foe's attacks.
Ineza traversed the immense Cloakwood under the cover of invisibility, ignoring most folks and creatures that had nothing to do with her business with the Iron Throne. She did ask a Druid for directions and was given a potion of invulnerability when she explained her intentions to him. She also slew some wyverns knowing that Keldath Ormlyr would pay a handsome reward for a wyvern skull.
What gave cause for concern, was the fact that bounty hunters managed to track her down even in the vast forest, four females no less: two priestesses and two rogues. Ineza took advantage of her invisibility, and buffed right in their midst, which was pretty crucial because moving to the area border would have allowed two rogues to hide and attack from the shadows. Buffs were: giant strength and defense potions, MSD, PfE, AoF, MI, DUHM, and greenstone amulet charge. She dealt with the rogues first, wary of their backstabs. This one-shotting of Maneira was particularly satisfying:
One of the clerics managed to summon a skeleton, but otherwise their spells were harmless and physically they stood no chance against Ineza.
When Ineza reached the old dwarven Cloakwood mine, she discovered it was now operated by human ruffians: she had found the Iron Throne base that Tazok's prisoner had been talking about. It was guarded by a group of two warriors and two wizards. Ineza summoned four skeleton warriors away from them, so that she could fall back if necessary. The spokesman of the group, the warrior Drasus, did indeed prompt her to retreat when he came rushing at her with impressive speed. He enraged and he quaffed potions of magic shielding and frost giant strength. Ineza attacked him with her sling from behind her skeletons. With her summons she managed to severely injure her foe, but he dispatched her army before she could dispatch him. She went invisible, which caused Drasus to return to his companions. Ineza followed him, positioned herself where none of his companions could see her, and finished him with a single bullet.
Ineza took the boots of speed, rested, and defeated her remaining enemies relying on Silence (Kysus had no Vocalize and was defenseless against her wand of fire), the wand of paralyzation (Genthore), and, admittedly, sheer luck: Rezdan, who did cast a Vocalize, Enfeebled Ineza and saw a Dire Charm bounce off her Half-Elven charm and sleep resistance before she finished him.
Someone had been playing for too long. Will I ever learn?
Anyway, after that wake-up call, a focused Ineza found her way to the master of the mine, Davaeorn. Invisible and buffed lightly (with two potions of magic protection), she triggered traps that lay between her and her foe. When Davaeorn cast Detect Invisibility, she donned the cloak of non-detection, and she stayed invisible.
I think this is not the potions of protecion from magic at work but non-detection doing what it's supposed to do. Davaeorn teleported away giving Ineza some time to dispatch two battle horrors with her wand of fire.
Davaeorn kept moving around until his guards swarmed him in a corridor leading to his treasure chests. He cast Remove Magic at Ineza there, but it didn't remove her magic protection and besides, she could stay at a a safe distance from her foes. She sent in some skeleton warriors, which caused Davaeorn to cast some heavy damage spells with reckless disregard for his own aides.
Ineza finished the guards and eventually Davaeorn with her trusty wand of fire.
The randomized maze in WK3 can be quite fun, especially since it forced me to go back to creating a hand-drawn map to not get lost over and over again. We started off with a bang: Both no-magic areas in a row. The first one is usually very difficult, but this is were the improved bard song really shines - all the usually hard to counter fear effects simply don't do anything:
The next no magic zone involved a balor, luckily under attack by some devils. A good opportunity for some ranged assistance:
After all that, I was able to enter other areas with active buffs, but that didn't mean that all of them were easy. SCS adds a bunch of glabrezus to one of the rooms, and they summon tons and tons of creatures, also casting tons of various cloud spells. This not only lowered my framerate significantly, it also forced me to clear the room from time to time with a death spell. The Wave did great work by taking out the summoned greater fire elementals, and I was eventually able to take down the glabrezus:
The demon wraith lost his buffs after a timestop by Edwin, allowing for the fighters to take it down:
In the end, I had to try multiple portals to find the 2 demon bosses hidden in the maze, otherwise no progress could be made. I only had to fight one of them, though:
The other rooms aren't really worth mentioning, as my buffs usually gave me a decisive advantage. Gambling with the cambion, I did manage to win the spectral brand, but not the wish scroll.
Level 4: As you can read in the Adventurer's Lounge, I ran into a huge problem here. While mind flayers and githyanki are rather easy with the improved bard song to help out, I got into trouble with the demi-lich. I decided to send Haer'Dalis in there, planning to take the undead spellcaster down the same way I did Kangaxx - with sunrays. However, I forgot that this demi-lich is wearing the cloak of mirroring, making it immune to all kinds of magic damage... With my initial attempt failing, I tried to go for a prolonged battle, with my plan being to renew my buffs from time to time, waiting out any protections or summons. However, I suddenly found myself trapped between a balor, a magical sword and a fallen planetar: Haer'Dalis was completely unable to move around and run in circles, and thus his fate was sealed:
With Haer'Dalis dead, I planned to use Ayla with a better plan, involving great saving throws, lots of kiting and healing potions (this is how I finished this battle during my only other SCS ToB run), but I was unable to enter the demi-lich's cave again. So far, I have found no way to fix this problem, and while I was able to resurrect Haer'Dalis, I decided to dismiss him after that, because without his equipment (which is now lost in the cave), he's not very useful:
Most of the items no longer available aren't a big deal. The real problem: The containers lost in there. These involve all my rings and necklaces with various resistances or abilities that I keep for specific encounters and situations, all of my green scrolls and a ton of very powerful potions (lots of magic shielding, cloud giant strength, power etc.). The real trouble, though, are the 2 scrolls of protection from magic, which are crucial for my Throne strategy. I have no idea how to win the throne battle without protection from magic scrolls (well, I barely have any idea how to win it WITH them). Well, we are still moving on. Because I neglected some buffs for Saladrex, he was almost able to kill some party members with two uses of his breath weapon that came in very, very quick succession, but I in turn lured him into the traps I had set up for cases just as these to save my party:
From there, finishing level 4 was easy enough, and my party gained some nice buffs from Lum's machine. Now, for level 5. This dragon I was actually able to just beat up in regular combat:
The other fights here were relatively easy, but now it was time for the three final seals. I did watch some youtube videos featuring these encounters to get access to the exact spawning positions for specific enemies here, in order to make the best out of my traps. Thus, I was able to instantly take down the lich with the Robe of Vecna, and Ayla took out the flaming skulls. Edwin just got a huge power upgrade. Something I also randomly found out when checking those spawning locations is that the Ferrumach Rilmani, the spellcaster amongst the second group of guardians, is immune to magical damage, so spike traps don't work - but regular traps do, so I used those:
The other ones were easy to take down. I should mention that during these various WK battles, my fighters have gotten some weapon upgrades: Ayla is now using the staff of the ram +6, and Sarevok The Ravager +6, so we have some really powerful on-hit-effects available. For the third and final seal, I got rid of the succubus via spike traps and focused the hive mother (who only protected herself with improved mantle) with GWWs. The +6 weapons are really handy in a situation like this. Another member of the hostile party was taken down via vorpal hit by the fallen planetar, while Ayla distracted the archer:
The entire party now descended upon the drow cleric, and victory was soon ours:
I decided to read the scroll of helm and move on to Sendai's Enclave. Fighting my way through the first waves was easy enough, and against the spider queen, Sarevok got lucky with a nice vorpal hit right away.
The Odamaron battle was really long and quite interesting. I was able to survive his initial timestop relatively unharmed and took out his dark planetar with my protected fighters and some energy blades:
I was able to get the vampire to flee with Valeria's turn undead (both liches were unaffected), and my deva was able to take most of the enemy fire while my party retreated to the entrance:
Eventually, Odamaron ran out of combat protections, and the deva was able to land a iMoD+2 hit - a killing blow:
Eventually, I had Sarevok move up to assist the deva and also sent in some skeletons. Eventually, all foes were dealt with:
Ogremoch was easy to kill when the Staff of the Ram +6 effect took place, knocking the elemental prince down:
I sent in a deva to the drow priestess, while Edwin cast timestop. With IA, he threw in a bunch of ADHWs, dealing significant damage:
Another quick vorpal hit by Sarevok, and most of the enemies were down already:
We swarmed the hive mother and moved on to Captain Egeissag, who was killed via sling-kiting by Nabatil in a duel:
The mind flayer ambushes were easy enough to deal with thanks to improved bard song. Time for Sendai. This battle was long, with new statues constantly getting active and drow spawning in, but it was very helpful to have both a dark planetar and the Planetar of Justice summoned by the Dorn quest available (I named both Sendai and Abazigal on the scroll):
At one of the most hectic points, with multiple Sendai's, including a very annoying mage version, active, I was able to do some good stabilization with a quick mass raise dead + dragon's breath, gaining control over the battlefield:
The fallen planetar summoned by the mage Sendai was killed by my fighters with GWWs, as Valeria was successful in renewing Sarevok's death ward:
Only Edwin and Sarevok ever lost their buffs here, and I was able to compensate with potions and rebuffs quite easily. Some more GWWs, vorpal hits and the like quickly reduced the number of enemies on the field:
When the real Sendai appeared, I was able to take down her fallen deva right away:
I randomly got into a position were my party was out of Sendai's sight, and she didn't try to search for me. This allowed me to simply wait out her numerous buffs:
When I sent in some skeletons after most buffs were gone, she made the huge mistake of teleporting right into my party, with no spell protections at all. Breach and kill was all I had to do:
I also quickly finished the third pocket plane challenge:
Abazigal's Lair awaits. This one is not only notoriously difficult with SCS upgrades, I also have no idea how the actual Abazigal battle will look like, since this is the part where my mod installation kind of bugged out. The most likely scenario is that Abazigal has ascension improvements, but no SCS improvements, though I'm not even sure what the difference is. No idea what's going to happen if I make it past the quadruple dragon ambush and into his lair. Might be completely bugged. Also, if anyone has some input on SCS+Ascension throne tactics without protection from magic scrolls for Abazigal/Sendai, I'd be happy to read any tips.
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Diary of Shifty
Tenya has now joined our party and we have decided that the Nashkel mines must now be dealt with. As we don't have any more gauntlets of brawling it looks as if Ajantis won't be joining the party unless Thorin dies. Tenya is in great need of some better armour at present.On the way down the mines, we came across some duerger assassins. I had seen them when I scouted ahead using stealth, then using a combination of necklace of missiles and holy smite we weakened them enough to finish them off by conventional methods as two of them had already panicked. Tenya used command on them whilst Thorin and I finished them off. Then a cleric cast a spell which I saved against. Another command spell on him was enough to disable him and after killing him we turned our attention to Gorken. Thorin and I were making short work of him, but a hold spell from Tenya concluded the matter.
Gorken had a plus 3 axe which increased strength by one. That was given to Thorin. He also had decent plate armour as good as that found in Durlag's Tower. I donned that and so we left the mine for R & R.
We killed some caravan guards at the FAI and with some relief we discovered that Tenya was able to wear the mithral armour that one of them was wearing. We didn't lose any reputation over that which was a relief as I was a little unsure about killing them. It turned out to be the correct choice.
Importing from BG1EE into Siege of Dragonspear.
Difficulty: Insane with no extra damage, max HP on level-up.
Self-imposed restrictions: No using unidentified items, no recharging items by selling and buying them back.
Mods: None (hopefully the spawns from Insane difficulty will add some challenge).
Protagonist: Hubblepot Gogglebur, L7/L7 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
Long tirade about what Hubblepot starts with, how I try to maintain early-game balance by restricting what I import etc, read if you care about that stuff:
I will be importing in a non-standard fashion, in that I'll import only Hubblepot from the final save, in lieu of the entire party via Import game. The reason is that, if you import the entire party, you not only get the entire party inventory (which as we recall, in Hubblepot's case, was filled to the brim with expensive and powerful items of all sorts), but your characters retain their hitpoints and weapon proficiencies, and get some extra experience immediately upon SoD starting (the game keeps track of how much you're above the actual XP cap in BG1EE).
The above basically means that there is precisely zero challenge for much of SoD. So, we'll instead make do with the NPCs and items that SoD provides us, accomplished by starting a new game and thereafter importing Hubblepot from a saved game.
I'll make a small allowance for Hubblepot's personal starting gear, but I've tried to keep it within reason: Hubblepot didn't wear Helm of Balduran/Balduran's Cloak/Gauntlets of Dexterity/Greenstone Amulet/etc in BG1EE, so it makes no sense he'd have them when imported. The small allowance comes in the form of Hubblepot having Arla's Dragonbane +3 and Fallorain's Plate +1, as I want him to import them into BG2EE later.
For those so interested, here is Hubblepot's starting gear:
Helmet
Traveler's Robe
Large Shield +1
Bracers of Defense AC 6
Ring of Wizardry
Ring of Holiness
The Amplifier
Girdle of Piercing
Boots of Avoidance
Cloak of Protection +1
Arla's Dragonbane +3
The Thresher +2
x80 each of Bullet +1, Bullet of Fire +1, Bullet +2
x5 Potions of Healing
x1 Wand of the Heavens, 10 charges
x2 Potions of Invisibility
Familiar
Fallorain's Plate +1
Still plenty powerful gear.
I'll also add another small restriction: I may freely use the starting NPC's gear to help me through the starting dungeon. I may not, however, strip them of their most valuable items towards the end to sell later: If they came with an item and didn't use it up during the dungeon, they keep it. Of course, anything found in the dungeon is fair game to do with what I please.
With that out of the way, let us begin.
Hubblepot Gogglebur, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist, SoD Update 1
Last BG1EE Update found here
SoD updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Hubblepot's starting spells are more geared toward the final BG1 fight than an undead dungeon, but we'll make due. At least he has some good general-purpose buffs and x3 Animate Dead.
We get the standard Good party: Minsc, Dynaheir, Khalid, Jaheira and Safana.
The party agrees to help Ammon, and bereaves an angry Tattered Skeleton of a scroll of Invisibility 10' Radius (which Hubblepot scribes immediately, being an Illusionist). I like that such a useful spell is available for free immediately upon starting SoD, since it's quite rare to see it drop in BG1EE (Greater Dopplegangers and Ogre Mages can drop it randomly).
The first mercenary force is handled via a Protection from Evil 10' Radius to boost our AC a bit, and then a simple mass pelting. Everyone starts with decent magical ammunition and a ranged weapon, after all.
Porios is treated to a Fireball from Dynaheir, and (like many of his followers) does not survive the experience. We agree to help the Mummy restore peace and quiet to the tomb, and descend deeper.
Safana scouts ahead for traps, but with Insane difficulty comes Bonebats in the undead spawns, and they are quite capable of seeing straight through Invisibility/Stealth... of course resulting in the entire spawn coming after us: Several Bonebats, Bladed/Armored/Tattered Skeletons, Skeleton Archers, Shadowed Souls, and a Skeleton Mage. Things were going fine initially, but we failed to kill off the Mage quickly enough, and he got Haste and Stinking Cloud thrown into the mix. We didn't want to risk fighting in the latter, and so fell back outside the area of effect... and this happened.
You can probably guess the outcome of the Flaming Fist tanking nearly a dozen undead on their own.
Both Flaming Fist Mercenaries actually die! The Flaming Fist Healer is much tougher and survives the ordeal.
I am slightly conflicted, as while it's a shame they had to die here, this means I can loot their magical weapons to sell later on...
No time for tears now however, we must press on! To the south is a very large congregation of undead with status effects on hit. This seems the most appropriate place for popping Hubblepot's x3 Animate Dead, and so I do. I am not exaggerating when I say that our three Skeleton Warriors perform absolutely admirably: They hold off five times their own number in undead! We are a little pressed and so end up using several charges of Hubblepot's Wand of the Heavens, but it's worth it. In the end, a single Skeleton Warrior survives at Near Death, but the party took almost no damage (a few Magic Missiles from the Imbued Wights is all). A shot of the action:
We swing north, clear the Beetles and subsequently spawning Mephits (our Skeleton Warrior bites it here), then press south. There are a great many Shadows here, and also level-draining Wraith. Dynaheir's Web lets us kill off most of the enemy from range, but a few Wraiths make their saves and level-drain Khalid a bit.
The Flaming Fist Healer automatically (and free of charge) Restores him the first time, but the second time we have to pay for it (and it fatigues poor Khalid). Still, that went rather well.
We found a Wand of Fire previously. This proves helpful when clearing the secret room: After looting the two chests, a gaggle of undead spawn. Hubblepot and Dynaheir take turns hurling Fireballs at the center mass of the shambling creatures, and we walk away with naught but minor injuries (well, Safana got caught in the inevitable Stinking Cloud and got reduced to 9 hitpoints, but she only has 49 to begin with, so...)
By now I realize Safana starts with The One Gift Lost (5 charges). I gleefully apply this in clearing the group of mercenaries to the north.
They get a few hits in, but nothing major.
Apart from getting a few Flaming Fist killed, things are progressing nicely! Which of course means things must soon take a turn for the (much) worse.
I thought I had several screenshots here, but I guess I was so absorbed in the fight I forgot to document it.
Anyway, Safana is spotted by a Bonebat attached to the last undead group to the east, and battle is joined.
Since we're running low on healing, I have Dynaheir (under Stoneskin/Mirror Image) tank a bit, while the rest of the party kills off strays.
Unfortunately, a Bonebat manages to Hold Dynaheir... and the consequences are what you would imagine, as Dynaheir bites the dust. It didn't help that the damnable Skeleton Mage again got off both Haste and Stinking Cloud, reducing our maneouverability.
However, that's not all the bad news. While we studiously avoid the Stinking Cloud, the Flaming Fist Healer has no such compunctions. She ends up tanking about 6 undead on her own. She's tough, but.. not tough enough. So, she dies.
I am not conflicted at all about this: It's not good. Dead Flaming Fist Healer means no Raise Dead for Dynaheir, no buying healing etc. Grumble. We clear the spawn, and talk the mercenaries to the west into giving up. Oh, and yes, we loot the Flaming Fist Healer's personal effects.
So, we'll have to deal with Korlasz using a party of five. Fortunately, while Korlasz herself buffs to 100% Fire Resistance, her minions certainly do not. The very last charges of the Wand of Fire and The One Gift Lost clear out most of her hangers-on, enough so that the pressure on us is very light, in turn allowing us to focus on Korlasz.
She soon surrenders, but Safana and Jaheira both take a beating, and we are now well and truly out of healing. Well, unless we dip into the potions we found throughout the tomb... but no, that's just crazy!
There's a silver lining: The experience gained from de-trapping and lockpicking the chests in Korlasz's sanctum gets Jaheira to Druid level 9. Which means Harper's Call!
Our first rest is interrupted, but it's mostly bog-standard Skeletons, and Hubblepot happily sets about dismantling them via blunt force.
The second attempt succeeds, and Dynaheir is returned to us, along with heals for everyone. Hooray!
We gather up the loot from the Spirit to the south, and head back upstairs. There's one battle left, and we're actually quite fortunate we were able to rest beforehand: I doubt we'd have fared well here with almost no spells available. As it is, Animate Dead, Haste and the regular Cleric buffs grant us a fairly easy victory.
On the way out, the Mummy returns to his rest, granting us a very nice shield, and allowing us to loot his tomb. Ammon also gets her Moss, and a letter of recommendation.
Imagine the party's surprise as, upon returning to the entrance, both Flaming Fist Mercenaries and the Flaming Fist Healer are somehow alive again... even more hilarious, they have weapons, the same weapons we looted off their dead bodies (and that are still in our inventory).
A miracle! A miracle!
Hubblepot returns to the Ducal Palace, making sure beforehand that every bit of loot we found in the dungeon is in the inventory of some party member (so that we get it transferred to our stash).
I'll refrain from extensively narrating our adventures throughout the city, as there are very few combat encounters and they are all absolutely trivial. The only one of any note is fighting Korlasz again: Hubblepot just summons a Skeleton Warrior to soak up her spells, but this turns out to be unnecessary, as Spell Thrust + rapid discharge of Melf's Minute Meteors is more than enough to kill her in a few rounds.
Hubblepot picks up Minsc, Dynaheir and Safana for companions. Safana helps us loot the chest in the basement of the ducal palace for some 10k total in gold and gems, and after doing all the little quests, we head north.
Upon arriving at the Flaming Fist camp, Safana is dismissed and replaced by Glint, and Corwin is recruited.
My intended party is Minsc/Dynaheir/Corwin/Glint/Khalid (I'll bring M'Khiin along until we can get Khalid).
Reason being, I am quite concerned about the final battle. I am confident in my ability to handle any other encounter via correct spell choices/tactics... apart from Big B, where I want as many good fighters with +3 weapons as possible.
So, we immediately swing north and pick up M'Khiin. Upon returning to the camp, we do a whole lot of reshuffling of items, sell off all our ill-gotten gains to the quartermaster, and invest in every single bag-type item he has (Potion Case, Ammunition Case, Scroll Case, Bag of Holding, Gem Bag).
Alright, the world is our turnip! We've got a decent party with decent gear. Hopefully, Hubblepot won't do something stupid (like get Held and killed by the spiders around here...).
This seems a good time to hunker down, think about tactics, and prepare our spells accordingly.
Scouts have reported there may be a dwarven expedition nearby, one in dire need of aid. Hubblepot shan't be found wanting!
Hubblepot is now a L7/L8 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
Diary of Shifty
We took a side trip to Gullykin where we picked up Indira. She is a bit on the weak side compared with the rest of the party but she has potential. She uses the mithral armour that Tenya was wearing as with that she can still cast spells. This means that Tenya has to wear armour which is not quite so good. WE have good armour, but she is unable to use the better items.At the FAI we impoverished ourselves by buying equipment for Indira aqnd a helm of charm protection for myself. We may go to the sirene area soon but it might be better to wait until Indira levels up as she is still very vulnerable.
I've been continuing to work at this challenge with various characters, but without a lot of success. The nearest I've been in recent months was a trip to the Throne with a dwarven defender before losing out to timestop there and I'll see if it can go one step further this time.
I've been very focused in the early stages with levels gained from Shoal
Some donations ensured I picked up CLW at Nashkel, along with some ankheg armor. Then it was off to the basilisk area where I followed Korax round while gaining another couple of levels.
The +1 arrows taken from Baerin were used to shoot down the golems at High Hedge before I went to find Bassilus to get a bit more melee oomph. He confused me once more, but without support stood no chance in melee.
The sirines at the Lighthouse area had no answer to a clarity potion and more golems were then enough for level 7 - getting up to an impressive 107 HPs to date.
Dwarven defender L7, 107 HPs, 77 kills
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
Update 11: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1011845/#Comment_1011845
Update 12: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012013/#Comment_1012013
Update 13: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012543/#Comment_1012543
Update 14: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012801/#Comment_1012801
Update 15: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1014585/#Comment_1014585
Well, somehow we are still alive, but things are getting harder and harder. Another huge setback occured, and this time, I'm not even sure how it happened. However, some other updates first:
The group in front of Gromnir didn't pose much of a threat, as I managed to lure the wizard downstairs, where he was in a bad position and easily slain:
The Gromnir battle itself, however, was rather difficult, as expected. I almost managed to make it easier by killing the unnamed battle mage with a delayed blast fireball from my bard's flute, but not quite - he barely survived. Meanwhile, my fighters started to take down the enemy thief first, as to remove backstabs from the equation:
Valeria was taking most of the damage, as she walked up the enemies to cast holy word. She had to retreat and barely made it out when the first timestop occured. Oh, and there is, of course, another fallen planetar:
Valeria survived via healing potions, and the timestop wasn't too bad - mostly resulting in lost buffs and a pit fiend. There was a dragon's breath and a comet, but I was able to completely evade the breath, and the comet only hit Ayla. Meanwhile, Edwin was able to take down the near death battlemage with an ADHW, and Haer'Dalis, focused by both Gromnir and the fallen planetar, went into defensive stance, trying to get PFMW up. Meanwhile, I also had to try and avoid an insect plague if possible:
Hear'Dalis was able to use PFWM just in time - one more hit would've meant death. Meanwhile, I was getting close to finishing off Gromnir's lesser allies:
Things got dicey when the fallen planetar ventured too close to Edwin. Globe of blades literally killed him in one hit - at least that meant that there was no chance of him getting chunked. On the plus side, Ayla caught Karun the Black without PFMW up and was able to start destroying him with a GWW:
With Karun soon dead and the summons suddenly turning around to follow and kill Valeria (who had renewed her death ward, as the fallen planetar already tried to kill her previously), the remaining party went after Gromnir. As you can see here, the death ward did prevent a vorpal hit:
However, Valeria was trapped - you actually can't go up to Gromnir's throne from the southern side. The planetar took her down, though once again, she avoided getting chunked:
However, her death had an unexpected positive side effect: She apparently died far away from the party, and the fallen planetar's AI didn't think to search for additional enemies - so it just stayed there, doing nothing. The pit fiend was smarter and attacked:
With the fallen planetar out of the picture, the battle was ours. I used ranged attacks to take down the minotaur, as I didn't want to get too close to the planetar:
Melissan showed up, and I just had to wait for the "unsummoned" message to move on and resurrect my party. The north forest was easily cleared, and two sunrays took down the Master Wraith's allies:
The skeleton party was mostly killed by a single deva. I set up a couple of traps in case one of them made it through, and the mage did, and promptly died:
Now, I was on the hunt for easy experience. The statues in WK level 1 certainly count at this point:
Level 2 was was mostly very easy to clear. The improved chromatic demon took some time to die (had to cycle through his forms once to get a second ice golem phase for my fire damage to do the job):
However, level 3 doesn't qualify as easy XP, especially not with the randomized maze and the possibility of going from a dead magic zone right into a room full of SCS demons. So I decided to go for the available EE content (Hexxat's quest can only be done once you reach Amkethran, but the others are fair game). I made the mistake of going for Neera's quest first, which is arguably the most difficult one, but I didn't remember these quests well enough to still know that at this point. The first difficulty: Fighting a bunch of high level wizards and fighters right after a rest. I tried to distract the foes with my fighters while having the squishy characters at the back, casting their buffs, but this plan failed when a bunch of crossbowmen took down Sarevok much faster than I imagined:
I then realized that I should've used The Reflex, and did so with Ayla, allowing her to withstand my foes much better. Meanwhile, Valeria used mass raise dead to get Sarevok back and fully heal the party (I have the SCS option to turn HLAs into special abilties active, which is why I can use unusual spells such as this one):
Luring some foes back to my waiting party and getting in a couple of inquisitor dispels quickly turned the tables, and victory was mine:
The arena part was no problem (and got me a new cloak + shield), and I cleared the wings of Vicross's estate without issue. Vicross herself, however, was an entirely different kind of tough. I really did not expect her to do all the things she did. Timestop + IA, constantly summoning in new powerful fighters, using rigged wild surges to summon an illegal amount of SCS Balor's? Damn. Oh, and she killed Neera right away with PW:Kill:
When I was forced to fight the first balor, I realised that my lack of death wards would be a huge problem (I didn't expect any vorpal hitters during this fight). Even worse, Haer'Dalis got caught by a Symbol: Stun when Nabatil's bard song wasn't active and died:
Taking down Vicross's minions didn't seem like a good strategy, and since I didn't have Edwin (can't have him and Neera in the same party), I had no way to take down my primary foe's protections. I decided to try and run to a relatively safe room to regroup:
My foes did follow me, but I was able to greet them with a globe of blades-using deva and a storm of vengeance:
Most of the (at this point three) balors were at the eastern half of the estate, so I decided to take another shot at Vicross. She had few protections left, and I was finally able to do some damage, counter her invisibility trigger with true sight and kill her:
While Balors and guards were still after me, I had taken the time to apply death ward to my fighters, allowing them to melee down the remaining foes:
Neera's quest: Done.
Next up, Rasaad: I accidentally rushed through that one a bit, because I went for the mines straight away and triggered the last battle there. At this point, Edwin was back into my party with a fallen planetar as his first HLA, so I used it to take down the enemies forces via firestorms. This must have resulted in some dwarves getting hit as well, because at some point later in the game I noticed a devastating thing when looking at Ayla - she had no true sights or dispel magics available any more, our reputation was suddenly at 3 and she was a fallen inquisitor. All the reasons I created this character: Gone, with no possibility of redemption. That's nearly as bad as getting another character chunked:
I'm not sure if the firestorms are really to blame, I just don't know. I didn't notice the reputation drop at the time, but this is the only friendly fire aoe ability I remember using at the point where it must have happened (because she wasn't fallen when fighting Vicross, as I remember using her abilities there). Anyway, I followed Algoroth into the shadow realm, quickly focusing the shadow dragon with HLAs:
Ayla, btw, is still using Carsomyr here, even though she technically can't use it - it was equipped, so it will stay equipped until I unequip it or she dies. If she survives until Sendai's, I won't even be able to upgrade it, because that will remove it from its slot. Anyway, the shadow dragon went down really fast. The SCS dragon health upgrade definitely didn't affect it:
As it turns out, going for the mines right away is a terrible idea if you're looking for XP - all the remaining foes get instakilled via script:
Finally, Dorn's quest. Mercifully, nothing went wrong during that one. It also seemed to be the easiest one. The regular crusader groups are weak, and the two silver dragons at the end died before even getting their protection spells up (they also really need that SCS hp boost!) - the second one didn't even have time to turn hostile after I killed the first:
So, yes, we're still alive, but the future is looking even darker. The fire giant temple is next.
Previous updates:
The Nashkel Mine didn't take long to pass through and Mulahey was drawn back to the entrance and cut down.
I decided to get caught stealing in Beregost to push reputation back down to 9 in order to get horror as the next Bhaal ability. With that acquired I did the rounds of wilderness areas completing reputation quests to boost that back up to 20. That included a successful revival of Melicamp, though there was more reputation available if needed anyway. There was also a first use of defensive stance against the Doomsayer (it can be dangerous to use that at lower levels - particularly if you don't leave yourself near an exit).
Clearing the ankheg nest and reporting to Farmer Brun gave me a final BGEE level
I celebrated by doing a quick shopping tour. With HPs so high it was an easy decision to make use of the Claw of Kazgaroth despite the HP penalty from that. The Greenstone Amulet was used to get the wisdom tome from Durlag's and I couldn't resist using a PfP scroll to kill the basilisks there even though I don't need the XP.
After running through the Cloakwood, Kysus changed sides and used fireball and confusion to help out.
In the City I picked up another couple of necklaces of fireballs before doing the poison quest. For a change I decided to have a stand-up fight with Larze on the way there. He's pretty formidable in melee, but defensive stance was just enough to hold him off.
The stairs were used at the Iron Throne to split up the enemies and allow an easy victory.
Dwarven defender L8, 119 HPs (incl +5 from Helm and -8 from Claw), 329 kills
Diary of Shifty
I changed my mind about going to the Sirine area and finished off the Nashkel Mines instead. No issues. We killed Mulaheyn and took Xan to the surface. We agreed to part company there. If I ever need to meet him again he will be at the FAI, however he was such a miserable old git that I will try to avoid him in the future. I would have to be really desperate to welcome him back again.I made a big mistake. I didn't get Khaled and Jaheira to join before going to the nashkel mines.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1015000/#Comment_1015000
In Candlekeep, Prat's gang were overwhelmed without any damage being taken.
With all preparations already complete I headed straight for Slythe. He failed to get a hit in, while Krystin didn't even manage to cast a cloudkill (which would have killed her anyway).
At the Palace I decided potions of giant strength, speed and power made the chance of failure acceptably low without bothering with use of charm. The dopplegangers actually did reasonably well, but Belt still had a few HPs left when the last went down (I'd withdrawn just before that in order to lead Belt out of sight of Sarevok).
With buffs still active the inhabitants of the maze didn't last long. I did note though that I triggered one of the maze traps despite moving carefully. It seems to me that in v2.5 the maze traps (and the lightning trap in the Candlekeep catacombs) are much more difficult to avoid - has anyone else noted that?
I didn't bother with the Undercity party, but went straight for the temple. Inside, I decided to play with
firelightning. Angelo is the hardest one to target with the lightning trap, but eventually he went down and only Sarevok was left.One nice thing about killing Angelo like that is that it means all 8 of his exploding arrows transfer to SoD. The Flaming Fist cleric there has some useful equipment to purchase, but can also be used to identify things (allowing stacking of the exploding arrows) and pay for healing.
After levelling up, I used horror to disperse Porios' guards and persuaded him to surrender.
Dwarven defender L9, 122 HPs (incl +5 from Helm and -8 from Claw), 409 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1015000/#Comment_1015000
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1015160/#Comment_1015160
In Baldur's Gate I killed various NPCs for their gear to raise money. The only quests done were picking up the Spectacles and helping Irina in order to get a helmet that banishes fatigue - the latter involving a brief reappearance from Korlasz. I also noted that the transfer between BGEE and SoD was made without properly accounting for HP adjustments - effectively meaning I was benefiting twice from Balduran's Helm and not losing the adjustment from the Claw of Kazgaroth.
While there are plenty of tricky encounters in SoD, the majority of those can just be skipped if you want to avoid risks in a no-reload. I did though start with an optional encounter with Tsolak in order to get a regeneration ioun stone. I tried to fire a dispelling arrow at Ikros there so it would be launched while she was visible, but hit as shadow door took effect - but just mistimed that by a tiny fraction of a second. Ikros died very quickly anyway, but for a moment it looked like Isabella might get lucky - Bhaal horror put paid to her chances though.
After picking up the identifying mirror I waited out the encounter at the bridge behind the tent.
At Boareskyr Bridge I just intimidated Vichand to give up the scroll rather than risk attacking him and alerting the crusaders. The fort was surrendered meaning a fight was only needed with the mage on the bridge. I tried hitting him with a dispelling arrow followed by an exploding one to disrupt his spell. The first 3 arrows missed, meaning the mage just had time to complete his spell. In itself that wouldn't be too much of a problem as I've beaten up the fire portal creatures a number of times. However, on this occasion the game over screen popped up before any creatures arrived.
I meant to mention this in my last post. At Gullykin when you go down through the winehouse into the dungeon there was a room that swarmed with kobold commandoes. There weren't any there this time. Has that area been nerfed or is it that I went earlier than normal.
I also noted that the kobolds don't continuously respawn like they used to, (The same with the gnolls at the citadel). That place used to be a challenge but isn't now.
I can confirm that fireballs of any kind hitting these barrels will cause a game over. This is exactly what happened during my last attempt at the meatgrinder challenge (I tried to take down the group quickly via detonation arrows). Sorry for your loss.
Last BG1EE update found here
SoD updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Alright, we need to get ready. Dynaheir's spell selection alternates from good to mediocre to horrible depending on the spell level, so first order of business is fixing this.
Corwin is our most charismatic member at 14 CHA, so she equips Brevin's Quarterstaff and activates Friends, giving us maximal CHA discounts. I spend about 5500 gold on two Potions of Genius and some scrolls for Dynaheir. This stings, since I know several of these scrolls will drop, many as early as during the Dumathoin questline, but with Dynaheir's 17 INT and Invoker penalty for scribing... she needs to do her scribing in batches, with INT boosted to 24 (25 in the case of 2x Potions of Genius) for guaranteed success. She now has a much more all-round spellbook, or at least as all-round as it gets for an Invoker.
We rest once, set up 2x Web sequencers on Hubblepot and Dynaheir, then rest again to fix our final spell selection. We will be fighting enormous hordes of Undead, so anything that helps against them is preferred. Too many different spells to list, but basically anything that incapacitates Undead (Web), deals Fire or Magical damage (Magic Missile/Fireball), protects against status effects or just helps in general (PfE/Free Action/Bless/Chant), and finally durable summons, i.e. Animate Dead. We've got 2 arcane and 2 divine casters total, so there's lots of spell slots to go around, thankfully.
We'll also be up against some Umber Hulks, but Minsc has the helmet from Korlasz's tomb that gives Confusion immunity, as well as a Greenstone Amulet with 5 charges that we can pass around, so we'll be alright.
Off we go! We'll skirt along the south edge of the area, then swing north to reach the dig.
Of course, there are the customary Sword Spiders with accompanying Gargantuan Spiders that block our path (the latter hurl Web Tangle, quite nasty). I've had a run ended here, as once someone in the party is tangled, the entire group of Spiders will converge on that person.
However, I don't want to waste any of the good spells so early.. so what to do? Thinking I have a brilliant solution, I opt for M'Khiin popping her Goblin summons, then doing a bit of dancing to hopefully bring in more cannon fodder, while the rest of the party stands back behind the meat shields and pelt the Spiders to death.
Seems a good plan, we conserve our powerful spells and still come out on to-
Will I ever learn that this particular spawn is brutally dangerous when underestimated? It doesn't look like it. So, what happened was this: M'Khiin summoned her Goblins, and actually got the Chieftain plus two Warriors. They held the Spiders off for all of two rounds, since the Chieftain and a Warrior immediately got Webbed and thus dropped in record time.
M'Khiin kept summoning animals, but once Corwin and Minsc got Webbed, meat shields no longer mattered, as the entire swarm converged on them. I can only count my lucky stars that Hubblepot did not get Webbed, or we might be reading his eulogy (Stoneskin doesn't really matter when you're being automatically hit by four Sword Spiders). If I had to do this fight again, I'd just drop a dual Fireball and call it a day. Hrmph.
We trek back to camp, shell out 1250 gold for two scrolls of Raise Dead, and M'Khiin blows all her fourth level spells summoning Nymphs to heal our newly returned party members up. Which is fine, I guess; the Nymphs are pointless in fights against Undead. Except now we won't have Spirit Fire available.. eh. At worst, we'll just retreat back to camp and rest up if we run out of spells.
Spiders cleared, we reach the dig and head inside, saving Brother Deepvein and his fellow dwarves.
We set about clearing the first level: There are all kinds of Undead here, as well as some Umber Hulks and Carrion Crawlers/Mutated Crawlers. Essentially, you want protection from and/or the ability to remove any status effect: Level Drain, Hold, Disease, Confusion. Or you can forego such things entirely and just blast every last rotten Undead to bits. We end up doing a bit of both, sometimes we buff, sometimes we Web or Fireball. We also make surprisingly good use of M'Khiin here, as the Major Animal Spirits do a reasonable job at holding the line as long as you don't expect them to do so indefinitely. I also realize that Battle Tankard on a Cleric (in this case Hubblepot) probably isn't a bad idea, as this allows said Cleric to cast Lesser Restoration with no drawback. Which was needed, as Minsc got Level Drained at one point.
While Hubblepot is never in any personal danger, Minsc and Corwin both have a close scrape: A Neo-Otyugh beats Minsc quite viciously, but we are able to shuffle around to keep it from finishing him off.
Corwin wanders into one of our own Webs and, once Glint frees her with Remove Paralysis, is reduced to 20 HP and prevented from retreating due to uncontrollable Animal Spirits blocking her path, so she has to gulp down a Potion of Invisibility.
In my view, the most dangerous group here is actually the Umberhulks and Mutated Crawlers to the south. You'd need a very stable tank, Mind Shield for everyone doing the fighting, and Free Action to take it on honourably. We opt to be weasels, and handle it with Greater Malison + Sequencer with 2x Web. Works wonderfully.
The first level cleared and looted, we head deeper.
Corwin inadvertently triggers the first undead group to the south when she is spotted by Bonebats.
M'Khiin gets a few critters up, but they won't be enough by themselves, so we spend one of our two Improved Invisibility on Minsc, and send him into the fray. The extra 4 AC really helps, and when we add Bless/Chant into the mix, we hold the Undead off without having to expend more important spells.
Pressing south, the rather massive Undead group with a Mummy at its centre is handled via initial Fireball and a follow-up Web. The Burning Skeletons down here are annoying, but not overly dangerous (and even Hubblepot is capable of Turning them). We just have M'Khiin dispel their Haste, and that's it for them.
Further to the east, the indomitable Bronze Sentry gets to swing its blade uselessly at an entirely too well-protected Hubblepot (Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Blur and Full Plate equipped). Minsc chips in from the back row, and everyone else pelts away with missiles.
Even further to the east, I again overstep my bounds when Corwin blunders into four Bonebats that see through her stealth, prompting a mass charge by several Drowned in blood Undead, as well as Wights, Wraiths and what have you. I deem the situation dire enough that we pull out one of our last mighty combos: Greater Malison + 2x Web Sequencer. This successfully defuses the situation.
I want to clear the entire dungeon before we go after the Lich, so, we head north for the laboratory.
We are delving into our last resources here, but we're not entirely depleted yet: Three Skeleton Warriors are called forth, and along with some basic Cleric buffs (Remove Fear/Bless/Chant) and a few Major Animal Spirits, we successfully dismantle the Undead attack force laying in wait behind the doors.
We are close to on our last legs here, but just a little farther.. the remaining Undead group in the laboratory catches wind of Corwin snooping around, and charges in.
We apply our final round of buffs, throw whatever we have left at the shambling corpses, and it proves enough, though we have to do a fair bit of running around, along with some emergency tanking by Hubblepot.
There are several groups of Undead left at large in the dungeon, but we literally have less than a half-dozen useful spells left.
Hubblepot manages an Invisibility 10' Radius, letting us position ourselves to quickly take down the Skeleton Archers that we can now reach.
However, the Undead in the hidden room next door are attracted by the scuffle, and though most of them are melee creatures and thus cannot reach us, the Shadowed Souls can somehow cast at us, even though we lack a good line of sight to shoot back at them. With serious damage being taken and us having no real means to retaliate, Hubblepot calls for a tactical retreat.
Nevertheless, we've done well: There remain only two large groups of enemies in this dungeon.
The party hobbles back to camp for a good night's rest.
Properly refreshed, we re-enter the Undead warren, and launch our assault on the hidden room. Some Skeleton Warriors are summoned to hold the line, though we could've probably done with five such creatures instead of only three.. they prove insufficient, and Minsc takes a fair beating while we sort out the issue. However, we do emerge victorious, and Minsc doesn't even get Level Drained. Good stuff.
The massive Undead horde guarding the Lich's inner sanctum also prove an obstacle. A Greater Malison followed by a double Web holds everything fast, apart from two honest-to-goodness 9HD Skeleton Warriors. They consistently resist magic (of course), and equally consistently hit Minsc, even after PfE/Improved Invisibility. We win here as well, with a fair few resources expended. We have almost reached our goal.
We prepare for the final confrontation with the Lich. Nothing major, though we do conjure five Skeleton Warriors, and apply PfE 10' as well as Haste (the latter being absolute key).
We rush in, challenge the dread Undead Wizard, and the game is afoot! And said game then concludes in about one round, as The Secret Revealed dispels all the Lich's buffs, and he is then rudely chopped down by Minsc and our Skeleton Warriors. No time to dally though: The Skeleton Warriors are sent towards the portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire, along with all of the party but Minsc. Minsc rushes along the secret passage north, picks up the Phylactery (second on the left), then joins the rest of the party, getting a Protection from Fire and Resist Fire/Cold cast on him as he sprints by.
Guarded by the Skeleton Warriors, Minsc disposes of the Phylactery in the portal, and the dread Lich is no more!
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! The Lich never even got a spell off (contingencies excluded).
The party returns to Brother Deepvein, get their reward, and enlist the noble dwarves' aid against the miserable knaves of the Crusade.
This seems like a good spot to gather our wits for a moment and contemplate our successes.
Next time, the party will finish up the areas for this chapter (shouldn't take long) and proceed with the plot. We used up a LOT of Healing Potions (the 9 HP kind), but charged items are meant to be used.
Not a single death either, unless you count those nefarious Spiders...
Hubblepot is now a L8/L8 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
Lunkh (human male Inquisitor, Gate70); Sparky (gnome female Cleric of Talos, Grond0)
Our second session has Lunkh using Truesight against the Doomsayer and Sirines.
Porgy and ..... the evil good guy
PreviouslyAfter pushing Porgy’s rep to 16, Porgy entered the big city. Getting max rep was easy, and money was spent on potions mostly.
Next up the tomes:
I have to admit that I wouldnt play the game If there where no tomes. So needless to say, I enjoy Baldurs Gate the city.
The iron throne was treated to 3 charges of the necklace of missiles - and a raging beserker with godly strength and a giant sword.
If you like Tomes, candlekeep is the place. So going there is a treat. Prat didnt like my stay. For a non raging type the fight is tough - but not for a fire- and electricity proof beserker.
Grabbed the last tome in Durlags and ventured down for the goblet.
The warders nearly ended the run, when I - in a moment of overconfidence - let my eyes wander in the middle of the fight. A last moment scramble won the day.
The throne and the undercellar fell to Porgy’s rage
The palace fight is always tricky. Bellamy from the bar gave his life, while Ichtyl and the priest of helm paved the way for a comfortable win.
The final fight was done fully buffed. Porgy drew out Sarevok and Semaj, and killed his Brother face of face. A close shave, but a win non the less - no drinking from the goblet needed
The biggest challenge lies ahead. But Porgy will start SoD with sine quality loot for some easy cash and a head start on gear. Hopefully it will be enough
So illness got me into playing again about a month ago. That was with an unkitted Bard and the so-called canon party. Sadly creating some storage space on my laptop led me to accidentally delete a folder containing that run's screenshots. I may still post about her from memory and some notes I've made.
Am no longer ill but still playing. In addition to the Bard I also created a Fighter/Mage/Cleric and I'll write about her first. I intended to do a LoB run with her but considering the current bug in 2.5 where enemies get a +5 penalty to saves, I chose to go for Insane instead.
Another limitation, in a way, is Ineza's portrait. While I would have loved to develop her as a dual-wielder with ** in flails, maces, hammers in no particular order, she's clearly holding a staff in the portrait. For that reason Ineza started out with ** in staves, in addition to ** in slings. (Starting mage spells are Find Familiar and Shield btw).
A third rule I introduced for this run is that items must be identified before they can be equipped.
Fourthly, we'll refrain from overtly evil actions because Ineza is LN. This is hardly a "rule" as I don't like doing evil stuff anyway, but to give an example of its implications: we even helped out Drizzt against the gnolls rather than waiting for them to kill him.
The install is a 2.5 install with my go-to mods on top of it: Mini Quests and Encounters, SCS with full prebuffs, BG1 NPC Project, Unfinished Business, Rogue Rebalancing, (some) CDTweaks, (some) aTweaks, JimFix.
1st report:
"Hey ya,it's me Imoen!" Ineza saw her friend walk up to her on the morning after Gorion's tragic fall, but she decided to run away, incapable of sharing her plight with Imoen. Ineza and Imoen had got along well enough but they had never become the most intimate of friends, possibly due to Ineza's focus on her career. Between her arcane classes with Gorion, spiritual instruction under Tethtoril and the priests and combat training with the Watchers, she'd had little time for hanging out with Imoen at the inn. In any case she didn't feel so close to Imoen as to be able to drag her into her life-threatening situation without feeling very guilty about that. She wouldn't expect Imoen to get her involved if the roles had been reversed.
On Gorion's corpse she found a leter mentioning Khalid and Jaheira waiting for her at the FAI. But Ineza feared that Gorion's killers had read the letter as well, so visiting the inn wasn't an option either. No, she was on her own.
Ineza traveled south. Being poor and having no one to rely on she started hiring her herself out, as a mercenary so to speak: fetching and delivering goods on the bandit-ridden Coast Way, slaying strong but dumb monsters, etc. Her spare time she used for arcane reading and divine self-study and prayer. Little by little her ability improved and she also became a figure of some repute in the region, and almost without trouble, almost. A bandit archer ambush gave Ineza a good scare (30 HPs on insane is nothing), enough for us to cheat on the above-mentioned identification rule: an unidentified ring of protection +1 and an unidentified girdle of piercing were equipped to ensure only crits could make an impact, and a crit did land. But Ineza survived.
It should be noted though that Ineza stayed humble despite her surge in power and confidence. She was not above helping Thalantyr restore his former human-turned-chicken apprentice Melicamp for example, and she was most pleased to see the wizard succeed at a complex restoration spell.
With the coin procured during her adventures Ineza could afford high quality gear such as a robe of the neutral archmagi, Aule's staff and a greenstone amulet. The amulet especially, proved a useful purchase, as it allowed her to loot Alaric's cave near the lighthouse.
Thus was her prowess that she even managed to handle a hostile group led by the mage Kirian in a somewhat compelling way, meaning she didn't have to just lure each of her foes away to take them on indiviually. Marksman Baerin did conveniently disappear on his own for later though. Even fully buffed, Ineza turned out to be unfit to go toe to toe with Lindin, who hit her hard. But her greenstone amulet and her skeletal summons and wands at least allowed her to fight back. Ineza Held Kirian, but Peter cast Remove Paralysis on her, only to be paralyzed himself by Ineza's wand of paralyzation. The wand of fire and some slinging were relied upon for damage dealing purposes.
At the ruined Ulcaster school Ineza got into some trouble because of a 2.5 gameplay change: quick-looting makes an invisible character become visible. (Sanctuary still works though.) Ineza had to fight her way past dread wolves and dire wolves relatively unbuffed. She got out under Sanctuary, and with her final mage level attained from killing a few of the wolves.
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
Update 11: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1011845/#Comment_1011845
Update 12: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012013/#Comment_1012013
Update 13: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012543/#Comment_1012543
Update 14: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012801/#Comment_1012801
Update 15: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1014585/#Comment_1014585
Update 16: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1014968/#Comment_1014968
The first level of the fire giant temple was actually surprisingly easy. This has a lot to do with my willingness to abuse traps, of course, but even the fire lich didn't stand much of a chance:
Now, for something quite interesting and unique: Ayla, my fallen inquisitor, leveled up at this point, with Carsomyr still equipped. When I chose her HLA and clicked "done", the game actually gave me a message, stating that she had equipped an illegal item and that it would be removed from its weapon slot. I was able to cancel the message, but that would mean not ever being able to gain another level with her, so I decided to sacrifice her ability to carry Carsomyr - and indeed, upon accepting the condition, the item was moved to her inventory. Huh - I never new this was something the game did, though it's nice from a roleplaying perspective.
Anyway, I equipped a bunch of fire resistance equipment before moving on and fighting the big group of fire giants and the red dragon Brimstone upstairs. I decided to focus all my attention on the dragon - despite its very, very big hp pool. Maybe a mistake, but I wasn't sure what spellcasting abilities it would have. I ended up using timestop+IA to remove its spell protections and deal some damage, and some GWWs later, the dragon was gone. I had to heal and or retreat with a couple of party members, due to the fire giant's high damage output, though:
Also, Sarevok used the Helm of Vhailor and The Wave to take down the prince of fire by himself:
So, with this one going rather well, it was only a matter of time until things went bad again. Surprisingly enough, it was the Nyalee battle that caused me a ton of trouble. Reasons for that are easy to find: I didn't rest after completing the fire giant temple, and I didn't prepare any buffs except for CC to counter charm spells. I simply forgot about SCS adding the mirror of opposition to her inventory and how powerful it could be. My party ended up insect plagued, webbed and attacked by powerful clones all at the same time, with Valeria being the first to fall - all because I wasn't able to focus down Nyalee right away thanks to her prebuffs:
Nabatil was relatively save due to his equipment and boosted saves, but Haer'Dalis and Edwin were still webbed (at this point in the game, I simply wasn't prepared for web anymore, since nobody had used it against me for ages). On the plus side, Ayla and the deva were finally able to bring down Nyalee:
Haer'Dalis died to the clones (who were constantly buffed by a haste effect or whirlwind attacks), Edwin made his save, and Ayla took down the last nymph:
Sarevok, buffed with Hardiness, was drinking healing potions and trying to distract the clone army, but he couldn't keep up with the damage:
However, I did finally discover a way out of this battle when I realized that the clones weren't using any spells - so I tried to get away with invisibility potions, which worked out:
I got into a position where I was able to safely grab my fallen companion's equipment, returned to the pocket plane and resurrected everyone. Upon return, I discovered that the mirror of opposition clones don't disappear after a rest, so I killed them (this time with some buffs on my side). Well, that battle could've been so much easier. Lots of bad plays on my part.
Now, Yaga Shura. That one was a bit strange. I buffed up and attacked, waiting for the fire giant to return, but he simply would not show up. I killed some of his soldiers and suddenly found myself attacked by the lieutenant thief - who was alone, without the other lieutenants. An easy kill, and quite a surprise:
I scouted the map for a bit, finally finding Yaga Shura right to the west of the bridge:
I had Edwin cast time stop from off screen. He didn't have the time to break any spell protections, and the SCS version of Yaga Shura certainly wouldn't take any significant damage this early in the battle. I didn't see the lieutenant cleric, so I went after the lieutenant fighter, killing him shortly after the end of the timestop. However, after I retreated to set some snares, the lieutenant mage followed up with his own timestop, which included gating in a fallen planetar. I also got some of my buffs dispelled, and I decided not to take any chances - so I simply left the map, not wanting to take on the fallen planetar right now. This did cost me a lot of potion buffs, but I was fine with that - especially when, during my second attempt, Yaga Shura entered the bridge to attack me, without any of his lieutenants following him!
And while he did a lot of damage to my fighters, the fire giant eventually went down:
Well, that's certainly an easier way to win this fight. Strange and unusual failure by the SCS AI. Now, for the second pocket plane challenge. Once again I prepared with a ton of buffs. I opened up combat by focusing down the Nabatil clone while Edwin was casting time stop:
I noticed that Semaj was also using the same spell, but Edwin was ahead. Sadly, without the AoP (which he can't equip because he has a fixed neck slot) or the Robe of Vecna (moved to WK5 by SCS) I didn't have the casting speed to actually take down Semaj. I instead tried to take down his spell protections, which, for some reason, didn't end up working. Semaj, of course, did a very similiar thing when his timestop went off - IA, summoning a planetar, dispelling my buffs, also a comet spell on Edwin (though that was kind of pointless, as Edwin was well protected):
For the first time during this entire run, I was actually well prepared to face a fallen planetar - Haer'Dalis did what he was recruited for: Keeping his buffs active thanks to spell shield/SI:A. He was able to face the celestial with an intact death ward, and my party took down the remaining foes, leaving only Semaj - who was already losing his protections:
In a surprising twist, it was my own planetar's vorpal hit which took out the opposing celestial:
The oasis turned out to be super easy, and I did the minor Amkethran quests (not Vongoethe though - he'll be hopefully dealt with in the next update). Time to recruit Hexxat for that final piece of EE content.
Incidentally, Hexxat's ToB quest - that is, if you always have her or another thief scouting ahead invisibly, looking for traps and monsters) - is super easy, though it doesn't offer much in the way of rewards (except for another belt of hill giant strength). There are only a couple of greater mummies, sand golems, death tyrants, bone fiends and some relatively weak mages to kill, and at this point in the game, none of these pose a threat if you know that they're coming. The final boss is a lich (though you have to kill the most obvious simulacrum in the world first, and it's infuriating that the game doesn't let your character acknowledge that it was obviously a simulacrum, which is hinted at by tons of books you find throughout the dungeon - though this is only one of many, many dubious writing choices for the entire Hexxat questline) whose favorite move is spamming dragon's breath (he has at least 3 of these). This is easily countered (if you can't be bothered to get full fire immunity) by just walking around hasted and dodging the very slow spell effect:
He was able to maze my deva, but she returned rather quickly, and she, a skeleton and Ayla using trusty old Azuredge took him down once his defensive buffs were gone:
I let Hexxat die during the conclusion to her quest since I'm certainly not going to recruit her again. I guess Vongoethe (a far more dangerous lich than Korkorran) is next.
@StummvonBordwehr Congrats on beating the big guy.
Enjoyable read too, Nabatil's SCS Adventures, thank you for sharing.
Still, after any of these really intense battles I can usually think of at least one easy way to save one of the characters that ended up dying. Of course, it's nearly impossible to play perfectly with a full party in a late game situation, but I think that if I would extend my pauses a bit more, I could think of better ways to handle certain situations. I often end up forgetting about certain options in the heat of the moment.
Yeldon Half-elf cleric/ranger, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Denko - Human Dark Moon Monk (Gate70)
Keras - dwarven kensai (Grond0)
Our saved game name says destroy Iron Throne HQ, so we knew what we had to do. We entered the HQ and got up to the top. We needed to rest, so rested at the top. Yeldon sanctuaries and made a skeleton army. Then he did two silences and some hold persons. His party members then rendered assistance, and the team successfully defeated the enemies, though as usual Keras took a ton of damage.
Once we made it to Candlekeep, we went straight to the crypts. We didn't have a thief, so had to trip the traps the old fashioned way (walk into them). We used storm giant potion for two crypts and then DUHM for the STR tome crypt. For some reason Grond0 dropped from game quite a few times. We ended up losing WIS tome along the way.
With his group-mates' help, Yeldon managed to silence Prat - this made his gang far easier to deal with. We then tried to take on the spiders - Yeldon's free action potion wore off, and while held by web he got STR drained by a wraith spider to 3!!! He nearly died...but once that fight was won, he couldn't move, so he just sent his skeletons to assist his groupmates to take out the remaining spiders and basilisks while he just had to twiddle his thumbs...
The party sold their junk at FAI, rested to get DUHM, and headed to the Great City. We got a few items from Sorcerous Sundries and then tried to deal with Slythe. Grond0 went to pull, and got lag, and triggered Krystin too. But he backed off and the party attacked. We won, even with no way to dispel Slythe - we took a lot of damage though, so rested up.
We then headed for duchal palace. We didn't bother with summons, just haste and strength potions but that worked out fine.
With buffs running, we went through the maze without much trouble. Yeldon didn't want to bother with the Iron City party, so we just went around the long way.
We rested and headed into the Temple to face Yeldon's half-brother. We did a few buffs, mostly strength, haste and potions of magic shielding. Grond0 successfully pulled just Sarevok and Semaj. Semaj fell incredibly fast - and Sarevok died pretty fast as well. As Grondo so aptly commented, Sarevok really shouldn't turn his back on a hasted Kensai.
We had just enough time to clear the 1st level of Irenicus' dungeon. We will deal with the mephits next session.
Lunkh (human male Inquisitor, Gate70); Sparky (gnome female Cleric of Talos, Grond0)
The bandit camp sees Lunkh test out his cloak and boots against numerous arrows. With that done the interior of the main tent has Sparky use Sanctuary and Silence before Lunkh arrives.
@Gate70 Looking good.
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
Update 11: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1011845/#Comment_1011845
Update 12: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012013/#Comment_1012013
Update 13: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012543/#Comment_1012543
Update 14: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012801/#Comment_1012801
Update 15: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1014585/#Comment_1014585
Update 16: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1014968/#Comment_1014968
Update 17: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1015310/#Comment_1015310
This is just a mini-update featuring some minor encounters across several maps. Nothing dramatic going on in this one for once
So, I talked to Vongoethe and told him I'd bring Marlowe along. This gave me the opportunity to place spike traps next to him, which resulted in a very easy lich battle. With no one there to dispel my buffs, death wards kept me safe from the appearing Banshees:
I was now done with Amkethran and decided to clear the outside area of Sendai's Enclave to get some extra experience. I did use a couple of traps to make the various ambushes a bit easier, but still ended up having to fight a hive mother, though with bard song protections, a dark planetar and some GWWs, that was easily done:
After killing the drow woodcutter, I made my way to Draconis, the main opponent on the list for today. I did place a large group of spike traps in the middle of the area as a safe spot where I could maybe lure him to (preferably his dragon form) and added green acid protection scrolls to my buffs (I also had additional ones at the ready in case of dispels). Edwin's 3xADHW chain contingency took down the invisible stalkers, and my conjurer got rid of Draconis' spell shield, following up with spelltrike, while Draconis completed his timestop. He didn't cast IA, though - he was only able to destroy Edwin's own spellshield, renew combat protections and summon a fallen planetar:
I immediately decided to use my spike traps against the dangerous celestial instead, as it was easy to lure it back. Meanwhile, Haer'Dalis successfully breached Draconis' now exposed combat protections:
While Draconis renewed PFMW from time to time, I was always able to follow up with another breach, eventually forcing him to turn into his dragon form. However, he didn't start at full HP. My best guess is that SCS's extra dragon HP wasn't taken into account when healing up Draconis. My first move was to have Edwin cast timestop:
He followed up with IA, ruby ray (to remove SI:A) and spellstrike plus some nukes. However, when the timestop ended, the dragon was suddenly killed by the last remaining spike trap (which wasn't triggered by the fallen planetar earlier) and a hit from Sarevok:
That went quite well (though I did forget to have Edwin use his lower resistance spell trigger). After some delibaration, I decided not to go for Sendai or Abazigal for now, instead returning to WK. A randomized maze with dangerous demons awaits.
Remember though the chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
Diary of Shifty
After leaving Nashkel we headed for the the sirine area. There we reunited a widow and her son. If our reputation had not been 20, that would have raised our reputation.We killed a number of sirine, hobgoblin and carrion crawlers without serious hurt.
We then spoke to Sil.
She asked us to deal with the pirates at the lighthouse. This we did, but a hidden thief backstabbed Indira and killed her.
We therefore went to Nashkel to get her raised.
We then returned and talked to Sil again before raiding the cave.
After that it was shopping spree time.
We sold several unneeded items and bought a few that were needed. There is still one item of armour that I quite covet, but that will have to wait until the coffers are refilled. Of course there is always something that you would like to buy.
On the way to see Shoal Morvan and party attacked us and subsequently died. Indira used an arrow of explosions but neglected to switch arrows when we approached the target, Ouch! She hurt us more than they did!
Previously
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1014486/#Comment_1014486
SoD has until now proven quite hard, since my progress usually rely on meta gaming - and SoD is still quite new for the iOS users (yes I know its just excuses...)
The last two times I have failed in the green dragon cave and the ensuing Bugbear cave. This time I went one step further.... but only one.
The starting dungeon was cleared with protection from undead, the flaming fist and the necklace of missiles
The city is quite easy and I had money to boot - thanks to planning ahead and robbing NPC’s
Here is Porgy going to war. He has everything of value and is filthy rich
The warrens of the undead was cleared with 2 scrolls of protection from undead. Easy as pie, and level 9 and GM in great swords secured. Nice
Triggered the bridge blowing up amd rushed for the temple, going into the temple of Bhaal:
1) I didnt wake the dragon,
2) I raged against the Bugbears (killing in the name of Bhaal),
but forgot the greenstone amulet. A chest stood in a empty room, and my 6 wisdom big guy just couldnt resist. He stepped into a trap, got held and the invisible stalkers killed him...
He could have raged, used 1 of the 98 charges in his 2 greenstone amulets or just used spiders bane... but alas thats what you say afterwards. Rolled an unkitted ranger instead.
Previous report
2nd report:
Ineza had little difficulty locating the bandit camp: she met a group of bandits in Larswood and attempted to be charming to their commander Teven, hoping it would get him to let her join the bandits. Teven agreed, but upon arrival at the camp it turned out Teven had never wanted her in. And his superior, the half-ogre Tazok, wasn't immediately sold on the idea either.
Unfortunately she had never come across a Knock scroll so she didn't bother with the many locked chests and crates, heading straight for Tazok's tent instead. In there, she considered reading a Cloudkill scroll (a spell she wouldn't be learning anytime soon), for an easy clearing of the tent but eventually she went for potion buffs (heroism, invulnerability, giant strength, regeneration) plus protection from poison and MSD to let her scorcher the place unmolested.
Ineza traversed the immense Cloakwood under the cover of invisibility, ignoring most folks and creatures that had nothing to do with her business with the Iron Throne. She did ask a Druid for directions and was given a potion of invulnerability when she explained her intentions to him. She also slew some wyverns knowing that Keldath Ormlyr would pay a handsome reward for a wyvern skull.
What gave cause for concern, was the fact that bounty hunters managed to track her down even in the vast forest, four females no less: two priestesses and two rogues. Ineza took advantage of her invisibility, and buffed right in their midst, which was pretty crucial because moving to the area border would have allowed two rogues to hide and attack from the shadows. Buffs were: giant strength and defense potions, MSD, PfE, AoF, MI, DUHM, and greenstone amulet charge. She dealt with the rogues first, wary of their backstabs. This one-shotting of Maneira was particularly satisfying:
When Ineza reached the old dwarven Cloakwood mine, she discovered it was now operated by human ruffians: she had found the Iron Throne base that Tazok's prisoner had been talking about. It was guarded by a group of two warriors and two wizards. Ineza summoned four skeleton warriors away from them, so that she could fall back if necessary. The spokesman of the group, the warrior Drasus, did indeed prompt her to retreat when he came rushing at her with impressive speed. He enraged and he quaffed potions of magic shielding and frost giant strength. Ineza attacked him with her sling from behind her skeletons. With her summons she managed to severely injure her foe, but he dispatched her army before she could dispatch him. She went invisible, which caused Drasus to return to his companions. Ineza followed him, positioned herself where none of his companions could see her, and finished him with a single bullet.
Anyway, after that wake-up call, a focused Ineza found her way to the master of the mine, Davaeorn. Invisible and buffed lightly (with two potions of magic protection), she triggered traps that lay between her and her foe. When Davaeorn cast Detect Invisibility, she donned the cloak of non-detection, and she stayed invisible.
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
Update 11: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1011845/#Comment_1011845
Update 12: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012013/#Comment_1012013
Update 13: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012543/#Comment_1012543
Update 14: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012801/#Comment_1012801
Update 15: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1014585/#Comment_1014585
Update 16: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1014968/#Comment_1014968
Update 17: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1015310/#Comment_1015310
The randomized maze in WK3 can be quite fun, especially since it forced me to go back to creating a hand-drawn map to not get lost over and over again. We started off with a bang: Both no-magic areas in a row. The first one is usually very difficult, but this is were the improved bard song really shines - all the usually hard to counter fear effects simply don't do anything:
The next no magic zone involved a balor, luckily under attack by some devils. A good opportunity for some ranged assistance:
After all that, I was able to enter other areas with active buffs, but that didn't mean that all of them were easy. SCS adds a bunch of glabrezus to one of the rooms, and they summon tons and tons of creatures, also casting tons of various cloud spells. This not only lowered my framerate significantly, it also forced me to clear the room from time to time with a death spell. The Wave did great work by taking out the summoned greater fire elementals, and I was eventually able to take down the glabrezus:
The demon wraith lost his buffs after a timestop by Edwin, allowing for the fighters to take it down:
In the end, I had to try multiple portals to find the 2 demon bosses hidden in the maze, otherwise no progress could be made. I only had to fight one of them, though:
The other rooms aren't really worth mentioning, as my buffs usually gave me a decisive advantage. Gambling with the cambion, I did manage to win the spectral brand, but not the wish scroll.
Level 4: As you can read in the Adventurer's Lounge, I ran into a huge problem here. While mind flayers and githyanki are rather easy with the improved bard song to help out, I got into trouble with the demi-lich. I decided to send Haer'Dalis in there, planning to take the undead spellcaster down the same way I did Kangaxx - with sunrays. However, I forgot that this demi-lich is wearing the cloak of mirroring, making it immune to all kinds of magic damage... With my initial attempt failing, I tried to go for a prolonged battle, with my plan being to renew my buffs from time to time, waiting out any protections or summons. However, I suddenly found myself trapped between a balor, a magical sword and a fallen planetar: Haer'Dalis was completely unable to move around and run in circles, and thus his fate was sealed:
With Haer'Dalis dead, I planned to use Ayla with a better plan, involving great saving throws, lots of kiting and healing potions (this is how I finished this battle during my only other SCS ToB run), but I was unable to enter the demi-lich's cave again. So far, I have found no way to fix this problem, and while I was able to resurrect Haer'Dalis, I decided to dismiss him after that, because without his equipment (which is now lost in the cave), he's not very useful:
Most of the items no longer available aren't a big deal. The real problem: The containers lost in there. These involve all my rings and necklaces with various resistances or abilities that I keep for specific encounters and situations, all of my green scrolls and a ton of very powerful potions (lots of magic shielding, cloud giant strength, power etc.). The real trouble, though, are the 2 scrolls of protection from magic, which are crucial for my Throne strategy. I have no idea how to win the throne battle without protection from magic scrolls (well, I barely have any idea how to win it WITH them). Well, we are still moving on.
Because I neglected some buffs for Saladrex, he was almost able to kill some party members with two uses of his breath weapon that came in very, very quick succession, but I in turn lured him into the traps I had set up for cases just as these to save my party:
From there, finishing level 4 was easy enough, and my party gained some nice buffs from Lum's machine. Now, for level 5. This dragon I was actually able to just beat up in regular combat:
The other fights here were relatively easy, but now it was time for the three final seals. I did watch some youtube videos featuring these encounters to get access to the exact spawning positions for specific enemies here, in order to make the best out of my traps. Thus, I was able to instantly take down the lich with the Robe of Vecna, and Ayla took out the flaming skulls. Edwin just got a huge power upgrade. Something I also randomly found out when checking those spawning locations is that the Ferrumach Rilmani, the spellcaster amongst the second group of guardians, is immune to magical damage, so spike traps don't work - but regular traps do, so I used those:
The other ones were easy to take down. I should mention that during these various WK battles, my fighters have gotten some weapon upgrades: Ayla is now using the staff of the ram +6, and Sarevok The Ravager +6, so we have some really powerful on-hit-effects available. For the third and final seal, I got rid of the succubus via spike traps and focused the hive mother (who only protected herself with improved mantle) with GWWs. The +6 weapons are really handy in a situation like this. Another member of the hostile party was taken down via vorpal hit by the fallen planetar, while Ayla distracted the archer:
The entire party now descended upon the drow cleric, and victory was soon ours:
I decided to read the scroll of helm and move on to Sendai's Enclave. Fighting my way through the first waves was easy enough, and against the spider queen, Sarevok got lucky with a nice vorpal hit right away.
The Odamaron battle was really long and quite interesting. I was able to survive his initial timestop relatively unharmed and took out his dark planetar with my protected fighters and some energy blades:
I was able to get the vampire to flee with Valeria's turn undead (both liches were unaffected), and my deva was able to take most of the enemy fire while my party retreated to the entrance:
Eventually, Odamaron ran out of combat protections, and the deva was able to land a iMoD+2 hit - a killing blow:
Eventually, I had Sarevok move up to assist the deva and also sent in some skeletons. Eventually, all foes were dealt with:
Ogremoch was easy to kill when the Staff of the Ram +6 effect took place, knocking the elemental prince down:
I sent in a deva to the drow priestess, while Edwin cast timestop. With IA, he threw in a bunch of ADHWs, dealing significant damage:
Another quick vorpal hit by Sarevok, and most of the enemies were down already:
We swarmed the hive mother and moved on to Captain Egeissag, who was killed via sling-kiting by Nabatil in a duel:
The mind flayer ambushes were easy enough to deal with thanks to improved bard song. Time for Sendai. This battle was long, with new statues constantly getting active and drow spawning in, but it was very helpful to have both a dark planetar and the Planetar of Justice summoned by the Dorn quest available (I named both Sendai and Abazigal on the scroll):
At one of the most hectic points, with multiple Sendai's, including a very annoying mage version, active, I was able to do some good stabilization with a quick mass raise dead + dragon's breath, gaining control over the battlefield:
The fallen planetar summoned by the mage Sendai was killed by my fighters with GWWs, as Valeria was successful in renewing Sarevok's death ward:
Only Edwin and Sarevok ever lost their buffs here, and I was able to compensate with potions and rebuffs quite easily. Some more GWWs, vorpal hits and the like quickly reduced the number of enemies on the field:
When the real Sendai appeared, I was able to take down her fallen deva right away:
I randomly got into a position were my party was out of Sendai's sight, and she didn't try to search for me. This allowed me to simply wait out her numerous buffs:
When I sent in some skeletons after most buffs were gone, she made the huge mistake of teleporting right into my party, with no spell protections at all. Breach and kill was all I had to do:
I also quickly finished the third pocket plane challenge:
Abazigal's Lair awaits. This one is not only notoriously difficult with SCS upgrades, I also have no idea how the actual Abazigal battle will look like, since this is the part where my mod installation kind of bugged out. The most likely scenario is that Abazigal has ascension improvements, but no SCS improvements, though I'm not even sure what the difference is. No idea what's going to happen if I make it past the quadruple dragon ambush and into his lair. Might be completely bugged. Also, if anyone has some input on SCS+Ascension throne tactics without protection from magic scrolls for Abazigal/Sendai, I'd be happy to read any tips.