After Yahiko, my solo druid, met his end in the final battle of ToB, I decide to start a group run, which @Blackraven and @CharlestonianTemplar would call 'Completionist No Reload', with a new character.
It is so nice to see this kind of group run @bengoshi ! I am certainly going to follow this one! Good luck!
@Blackraven I am really glad you liked the intro of Norkul's run! I see your point regarding under leveled mages, the approach to get the wand of summoning is really nice and will definitely help a lot the young mage. But I am not going to do him this favor because I don't like the idea of a mage being accompanied by hordes of monsters, it ruins my game and fun (maybe only if he is a conjurer, but even so I may have done it a couple of times just for the fun). I actually meta-gamed only at start, as you will soon see at the next part. Now I actually non meta-game at all, this way I get a lot into the character, I pay more attention, I learn a lot and the game becomes different every time I restart a failed run, even if I use the same class.
Norkul is having a difficult time. He got chased by Xvarts and a big Ogre in Lionsway. He had to flee to High Hedge...where things got even worse. Four Gnolls spotted him as soon as he got there. Norkul casted a sleep spell, but unfortunately for him only 1 of them failed its saves. This is not the end... Soon a Ghoul and a giant spider joined the hunt for the poor under leveled mage. Moreover, while he was fleeing, a skeleton threw a couple of daggers that successfully got him in the back. Thx to the armor spell though he had just some minor injuries.
During his desperate attempt to save his life Norkul got lost. He realized he reached the sword coast. He knew it was a very dangerous place, but he also had no safe place in mind to go. Maybe it was a bad decision he didn't visit Beregost, it couldn't have been worse. He thought it was the end, but his luck didn't run out. He met a semi-crazy wizard, who asked him to pick a cursed ring for him. After Norkul completed this task, the Mad Arcand gave him a nice oil of fiery burning and a warning about a sirine who lived nearby.
Norkul set a trap for the sirine, he casted successfully a sleep spell followed by 3 darts per round. Jess couldn't just stand idle..
Things got a bit complicated though..(sorry for this bad image, check the carrion crawler to the left)
but not much of a worry ( by the way my game always lags when I meet carrion crawlers)
After this huge experience, Norkul felt ready to visit the town of Beregost where he heard about the mad priest Bassilus. He also visited Firebead, he was in need to find a safe place to spend a night. After some minor tasks, Norkul headed to Candlekeep where he killed some hobgoblins using his sleep and chill touch spells.
while I use chill touch, if a monster is "near death" I cast MM or shocking grasp, in order to avoid the chunking effect of chill touch. I am not 100% sure if it works this way or if chill touch has like a chance to froze enemies to pieces.
He got really excited after his accomplishment because he found a nice flamedance ring. He entered the Friendly Arm in, where he was attacked by a mage. Norkul, in his panic, threw at him the oil of fiery burning he carried...
It's the first time I kill Tarnesh this way , I did it in order to punish me for my meta-gaming, but I really laughed out loud. RIP poor Tarny
Things start to look better for the young mage! After a good night's rest Norkul decided to explore the wilderness around Beregost, before he visited the famous mage "Thalantyr" at High Hedge. He didn't have enough gold to buy something good, and a bunch of gnolls are waiting for him there.
He successfully reacted in a Tasloi ambush at the Cloakwood forrest
While he fought a bunch of hobgoblins, he came across a petrified woman
When the Hobgos were done, he rushed to the nearby temple to buy a stone to flesh scroll for the helpless woman. Thanks to his kind heart, "Corianna" warned him about an area full of basilisks nearby. Norkul wouldn't dare to go there right now, it was good to know which places to avoid!!
He then headed south from High Hedge, where he met a boy who was making fun of Bassilus! He kindly asked the boy to be careful and go home, the place caused him the creeps! A hundred yards from there he saw a wolf ready to prey a chicken! As he and Jess were really hungry he disposed the wolf really fast. But it seemed that the chicken was a polymorphed young mage...he wasn't happy at all about that! But in good fortune young "Melicamp" was the apprentice of Thalantyr! "Time to teach these gnolls a lesson" he thought...
..and he did!
Melicamp was...
successfully turned to human again!!!
In the end Norkul bought many scrolls from Thalantyr, headed back to the Friendly Arm Inn, bought a potion of genius, scribed some new spells in his repertoire and lvld up to lvl5! He currently rests there, drinking some wine and hearing a lot about the Nashkel mines...he should go check them out...but not yet as he feels it will not be so simple...
Not long ago, Gorion, whom Aidahn remembered since his was a small child, said that Aidahn had to choose 3 spells from arcane books to scribe into his new spellbook, a prize for graduating from the Candlekeep magical courses.
Putting a lot of effort in reading about spells, Aidahn finally decided to concentrate on these 3 spells:
Find Familiar (although people called him a fibber, in terms of health Aidahn couldn't boast much) Sleep (monks in the Candlekeep often told Aidahn that the best enemy is a sleeping enemy) Spook (it was a close tie between this spell and Blindness, the latter lasting 2 hours, but in the end Aidahn went with Spook due to a faster casting time)
As for his divine spells, Aidahn took 2 Commands and 1 Sanctuary - the safest of all the options, if things go bad.
When Aidahn reported to Gorion that he finally subscribed all the scrolls, he found out it was time to pack the belongings. Gorion didn't speak much about it but the little gnome figured it was a matter of a great imprortance because why otherwise all the secretness and mystery.
With several coins in his pack, Aidahn bought a mace and a sling with bullets, summoned his Familiar (Sparkyfibber was glad that everything went smoothly) and decided to finish the last tasks in the Candlekeep, which meant visiting all the houses there.
The first unpleasant surprise happened nearly immediately after leaving Winthrop. A crazy thug attacked in the barn. Spook proved useful, as well as some practice in throwing stones:
It was a relief when Aidahn's new mace, bought only several hours ago, was broken during dealing with rats for Reevor, and not in the real fight.
Spartyfibber had to buy another mace and then sleep a little, so that his magic abilities could renew.
It was a wise decision because another bounty hunter attacked Aidahn even before the gnome completed all the tasks in the Candlekeep. Carbos faced the same fate as Shank.
Aidahn thought it was a good time to find Gorion. No longer did he want to meet assassins almost anywhete he went. He asked his friend, Imoen, to go with him but she said Gorion wouldn't approve.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Spartyfibber expected many things, but what happened in the night was darker than anything he imagined. No words could describe how bad the gnome fealt when heard the last words of his father. If anything, Aidahn was scared - his father was a formidabble wizard, and still was killed easily. What could Aidahn, who only recently had scribed his first spells, do in that situation?
The only positive fact in this whole situation was that Imoen happened to be in the forest as well. At least for now, Aidahn wasn't alone.
After a long talk about the last night, Aidahn and Imoen decided it would be the best variant to seek for Gorion's friends, Khalid and Jaheira, whom the mage mentioned when he was still alive.
When leaving the place where Gorion met his end, the pair encountered a wolf. The Candlekeep lessons didn't go to a waste, so Sleep helped a lot.
Imoen's sharp eyes noticed something shiny in the tree nearby - a diamond! Maybe, in the end, some of them grow on trees.
Two humanoids stood right on the road - but Imoen didn't like them, so Aidahn decided not to listen to their offer. The gnome wanted to find Gorion's friends first.
Inspired by their success of finding a diamond, Imoen decided to check the whole forest, only to encounter a dread wolf. It saved against Aidahn's magic, so the only option was to use Imoen's potion of speed - this way the gnome could become faster, not slower, than the wolf, so that Imoen's arrows could hit it.
After that, the pair decided not to risk anymore and move as invisible as they could up until reaching the Friendly arm inn. No talks with strangers, no hunting. Right in front of the Inn, a man waited for somebody, but Aidahn was afraid of the worst and thus didn't let him notice anything.
Inside, the pair finally met Khalid and Jaheira. Imoen liked them at once and decided to call them aunt and uncle.
After several talks with people inside the inn, it became clear that the man outside, called Tarnesh, was supposed "to cause troubles". After discussing this situation with Imoen, Khalid and Jaheira, Aidahn decided to be as ready as possible. It included staying hidden for him and Imoen, while Jaheira was protected with AoF.
The man, as soon as he saw Gorion's friends, attacked, just like those assassins in the Candlekeep. He turned to be a mage, and Jaheira soon fell asleep while Khalid was hit for 12 of his 13 HP by the wizard's staff.
But to the Khalid's panic Aidahn answered with his own horrifying effect - Spook worked and Tarnesh, so this wizard was called, began running aimlessly. The gnome remembered he had to renew the spell - its effect is quite short - and then casted several Commands to be finally able to hit the mirrored wizard. It was not easy but everything worked.
In the wizard's bagpack Imoen found several scrolls and expressed her desire to learn them. Maybe she was influenced by Aidahn's magic? Anyway, Sparkyfibber was completely not against his friend to try learning.
The group then decided to go straight to Naskel - the place Jaheira and her husband wanted to visit as quick as possible.
Imoen convinced everyone to look in the nearest houses, but no more than that - they already found a woman whose ring was lost and needed to be found, and completing this task was enough for now - the need to go to Nashkel meant no further exploration here.
Thanks a lot @bengoshi ! Indeed I enjoy the run a lot and I want to make as many quests as I can. Norkul is supposed to conquer the sword coast and Baldur's gate, he is not just a guy who will avoid tough enemies and go and murder sneakily Sarevok like a chicken!! This is also the first time I post a run, which is another tricky business I guess! I got really into RP and I try to show the way I play. I understand that this is just BG1 and it is simple... But I found out that if you want to be a good player in this game you have to know the basics, which is what I consider BG1 to be.
Thanks a lot for the advise, the thing is that "Improved spiders" is an SCS option that I didn't install in this run.The idea of spiders casting spells is not appealing to me, ofc it is perfectly ok gameplaying wise. The other option I didn't install is the "Improved demon cultists". I had a really hard time beating these guys with a full party, which makes me believe I am not a good player. In a solo no-reload run it would be a suicide for me to face them, so this way I may just try it.
ps. I edited yesterday my first post to include the weidu.log, in case anyone is interested
Great stuff @Mirage and @bengoshi, such a treat having your two roleplayed runs here. I'm glad your wizard is well underway Mirage. It's nice that with a few levels under his belt, you have a wider range of options.
Bengoshi, Cleric/Illusionist Lots of fun! I wonder whether a full SCS v30 install plus insane difficulty plus random HPs are ideal ingredients for a roleplayed, non-metagamed playthrough, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see... Either way, best of luck! (Btw I think SCS already maximizes enemy HPs, the BG2Tweaks component shouldn't be necessary for that.)
After an uneventful tracking through the forests and crevaces the four end up at the Nashkel Carnival in the middle of the night. The events seem to have finished for the day and they prepare to sleep at the center campfire. In the morning Cuwaert drags Imoen through the sites, which Khalid and Jaheira ask around for news on some ironing crisis. Our duo sees a lifelike statue of a warrior woman and a peddler trying to sell them the statue under the pretense that they can get it back to life with a magic scroll. Cuwaert takes it as a jest while Imoen looks at the warrior with wonder. The price is too high for their belongings anyway and the two continue on. After an encounter with a pompous twit that kept repeating their words, they get to true entertainment. Exploding ogres! While Imoen thinks the entertainments fun has run out after one go, Cuwaert requests more of the trick. As Imoen listens to the lovely poetry of Nosferatu, Cuwaert enjoys looking at exploding bits of ogre.... until suddenly the apparently healthy ogre decides to turn on its master. Cuwaert responds by drinking one of the deflecting potions and a quick follow-through punching madness stuns the ogre and Imoen finishes him off by shooting him in the head.
The master is nowhere in sight, so the duo leave to find entertainment elsewhere. There are some artists swallowing flaming knives, but that hardly looks impressive to them, so Cuwaert convinces Imoen to search some of the tents for some other fun. The first tent they enter has chance games and soon Imoen is standing in front of the Roulette betting money on a spinning ball and Cuwaert is strangely entranced by tossing bones... somehow this looks so very familiar to him though not exactly, but he cannot put his mark on it. As he takes the bones in his hands he automatically adjust to their texture; his fingers adapt to the cracks and bulges of the bone and throws a miraculous throw to win.
Imoen already comes up to him having lost a considerate amount of gold of the party and whispers to Cuwaert not to tell Jaheira and Khalid. Cuwaert just nods and lets Imoen take him back outside.
They enter some more tents without seeing anything interesting until they are addressed by a strange merchant who wants to sell Cuwaert some mysterious potions. One to increase strength and one to increase insight. Of course Cuwaert bought both, but now he has a strange feeling that he does not know which potion does what again. Without giving it a further thought for now they go to find some other tents with drinks. When they want to enter the next tent, Khalid and Jaheira join them and not a moment too soon. A strangely robed mage tells them he will kill a witch. Cuwaert warns him but the mage kills the witch with one word and prepares to cast another spell. Jaheira instinctively lashes out with her club and interrupts him. The four then start to overwhelm him to break his concentration. Without getting any spell off the mage dies, and the heroic ordeal made Jaheira feel stronger (level up!). As Khalid stares at her Imoen picks up the magic scrolls and quickly stuffs the robes in her pack and throws two potions to Cuwaert giving him a sly wink. In the last tent they spot Khalid breathes in the black lotus smell while Jaheira is busy lecturing the addicts inside. Cuwaert and Imoen walk out again; this is not their kind of entertainment. Having seen most of the Carnival, Jaheira and Khalid suggest to go to Nashkel itself.
In Nashkel, a warrior with a hamster on his shoulder refuses to talk to them. The local bounty officer mistook them for someone but the party sets him straight. He immediately thanked them in front of everybody (rep +1 to 9). While Cuwaert stays talking, Jaheira spots the mayor and they strike up conversation with one another. A deal is made and Cuwaert agrees to all help out look into the troubles at the mines and they promptly depart. At the mines they gain entrance and go into the depths. The miners have little insight on the happenings other than that doglike demons are haunting their backs. The party pushes deeper into the depths, here and there sharing idle chatter with the miners until finally the culprits are identified, kobolds. Slaying kobolds left and right they find some mysterious potions that Cuwaert pockets quickly. Now they stand in even lower levels of the mine...
=== Nice, first NPC a level up, some (again) lucky encounters and now we are on the path down. Exciting (to me)! Unarmed barbarian really is fun.
Finally, I got back my computer. I have two ideas for a new run, one of which I'm currently doing. I might switch over midway through, to be honest. I don't know.
The one I'm considering is a spell switching run. Basically, I play with a normal party, but the mages, sorcerers, and bards cast priest spells from their spellbooks, while clerics, druids, rangers, and paladins would cast mage spells from their spellbooks. We'd have druids casting Teleport Field, clerics casting Breach, mages casting Chaotic Commands, and Bards casting Holy Smite. This opens up some new possibilities, as class-specific items, weapons, and XP growth rates get switched around, but it locks us out of level 8 and 9 mage spells.
The current idea is a revised Phase Spider kit, now based on the ranger class due to its ability to use both stealth and a small set of spells. I've re-worked the original design, and now the kit seems much more balanced and much more realistic, thematically speaking. To summarize the changes: the Phase Spider no longer has strong offensive spellpower, Dimension Door is slower, and it can no longer use missile weapons. This prevents the three biggest abuses of the Phase Spider's abilities: spamming damage spells, being able to jump to any place on the map within a single round, and kiting.
In exchange, the Phase Spider gets a set of custom spells, all of which are nonmagical in nature, and it gains special evasion abilities that allow it to automatically negate incoming attacks. There's a small passive chance of evading an attack or spell at rest, but if the Phase Spider is in the middle of casting Dimension Door, it has a 50% chance of evading anything. The kit is now much less offensive-oriented, and its strength comes more from evasion than speed.
The stuff that hasn't changed:
Immune to poison and web Immune to humanoid-specific spells (Hold Person, Charm Person, etc.) -1 penalty to Intelligence +3 to save vs. death Cannot use gauntlets, boots, helmets, rings, or armor heavier than studded leather, as they cannot fit on any part of the spider's body. Bracers and ioun stones may still be worn. Arachnophobia: +2 to AC and saving throws vs. humanoids Culture Shock: -3 penalty to Wisdom Base 5 AC, -1 AC vs. missile and piercing Infravision +25% to hide in shadows and move silently -2 penalty to hit and damage Improved Alacrity +1 bonus to Dexterity Suffers no THAC0 penalties from dual-wielding
The stuff that's changed a little:
1. Dimension Door now has a casting time of 2. But every time you begin casting the spell, you have a 50% chance (non-stackable) of avoiding all incoming spells, including beneficial ones, and all weapons for 1 second. This makes Dimension Door a little slower without making the spider too vulnerable to disruption. It also makes the spell useful for defensive purposes beyond running away. 2. Instead of receiving penalties to missile attacks, the Phase Spider can't use missile weapons at all. 3. The Phase Spider has restricted proficiencies, as some weapons would need to be strapped to its legs or back in order for it to use them. The spider can't gain any proficiencies in large and cumbersome weapons like flails, two-handed swords, spears, staffs, and halberds, since you can't just strap one to a single leg and make it work. For slightly smaller but still heavy and unwieldy weapons, like bastard swords, axes, katanas, maces, hammers, the spider may have only one proficiency point. For very small and light weapons like daggers and short swords, the spider may attain Mastery. For everything else, it's a two-pip maximum. 4. The Phase Spider can now poison and web its targets with any melee weapon, instead of having to use a natural weapon. Now the spider will have an incentive to use a broader variety of weapons. 5. The Phase Spider gets +0.5 APR at levels 4 and 11, so it doesn't have such high APR in BG1. It also can't teleport until level 3.
The stuff unique to this version:
Gains a +1 to movement rate at levels 4, 8, 12, and 16. Gains a +1 to backstab at levels 4, 11, and 15. Lightning Reflexes: At level 7, has a small chance, about 10%, to avoid any spell or any source of physical damage. At level 14 and 21, this increases to roughly 20% and 30%. Spells that bypass magic resistance also bypass this defense (the only other way to do it, via the spell deflection opcode, creates annoying visual effects I can't prevent, even with opcode 291). May cast contingencies and sequencers at higher levels, once per day each: Level 10: Minor Sequencer Level 13: Contingency Level 16: Spell Sequencer Level 19: Chain Contingency May cast a set of unique spells beginning at level 8.
The pure class' special spells:
Level 1: Cure Light Wounds (15 HP), Set Snare, Web Tangle, Protection from Energy (15%), Blur, Horror, Invisibility, Blindness Level 2: Cure Medium Wounds (25 HP), Set Special Snare, Mirror Image, Spider Spawn, Web, Haste Level 3: Cure Serious Wounds (40 HP), Non-Detection (also SI: Divination), Improved Haste, Etherealness (invisibility to all critters for 3 rounds), Poison, Protection from Normal Weapons All of these spells bypass MR and spell protections and cannot be dispelled, but they've been heavily nerfed in many places, especially duration, to make them more balanced.
High-level Abilities:
Hardiness: permanent +15% to all resistances and +2 to AC and saving throws. Selectable twice. Spider Spawn: summons 1d4 spiders with special powers and immunities. Selectable three times. Set Spike Trap: 10d6 piercing damage with a save vs. breath for half, 10d6 poison damage with a save vs. death for half. Regeneration: 1 HP regeneration per second and +25 to HP, permanent. Selectable once. Whirlwind Attack: Sets APR to 10 for one round, penalizes THAC0 and damage by -3. Backstab Damage: Adds 1 to backstab multiplier. Selectable twice. Casting Speed Bonus: grants a -1 bonus to casting speed. Selectable once.
I created a new spider, since the one before got lost or something. It's Blueberry again!
Absolutely stunning roll this time. Since this kit uses the ranger class and I haven't tweaked the requirements to be a ranger, Blueberry is now an elf instead of a gnome. Notice her spectacular stats. I haven't had a STR that high in over a year, at least.
The run is off to a good start. Thanks to the new kit abilities, Blueberry can web and poison critters even when using ordinary weapons.
Blueberry ignores Aataqah and backstabs the Duergar into oblivion. The Radiant Mephit, as always, is a pain.
No shorty bonuses means a very high chance of failing the save vs. spell. But Blueberry's 10% magic resistance, courtesy of being at level 7, let her escape the second spray. She teleports around a corner and hides. This allows her a backstab.
Backstabs take down a couple more packs of Duergar, plus the Otyugh, and allow her to avoid most of the traps in the Ellesime room. Potions and her immunity to poison help her recover from the traps she does trigger.
The Lesser Clay Golems are a problem. They hit really hard, and Blueberry has less than 60 HP unbuffed. But her Dimension Door lets her slip away.
Why is there a weapon ineffective message? This spider's Dimension Door has a 50% chance of granting the spider invulnerability for 1 second on casting. You can't repeatedly cast and cancel the spell to ensure immunity, however; the spell dispels the invulnerability if you cast it again within 1 second (this is easier in EE, but it can be done in vanilla as well using the True Seeing opcode). This invulnerability includes spell level immunity from 0-10 and 15 (blocking everything from Celestial Fury's stun to Mimic Acid to a Planetar's dispel on hit) and if that wasn't enough, it also grants immunity to both magical and nonmagical weapons.
But you've only got a 50% chance, and it only lasts for 1 second, while the spell takes 1.2 seconds to cast. It's not a reliable shield in a no-reload run (this is a minimal-reload run, thankfully), but it just might save Blueberry's life sometime.
More hit-and-fade tactics bring down Ilyich's gang. Blueberry only does double damage on backstabs, but it's enough to one-shot a mage.
After sneaking past the Air Elemental Plane Mephits and freeing the djinni, I decide to try some hit-and-fade tricks on the Cambion, whom I normally leave alone. I underestimated the Cambion.
It's not fooled by stealth. This guy is a heavy hitter and I don't know if I can take him on. We teleport away, only to linger in the library to loot the shelves.
I pay close attention to the northwest hallway. I don't know how fast that Cambion is going to follow me. Right as I find the shelf with the Oil of Speed, I spot an enemy in the hallway, and I jump in my chair.
I curse at myself for being so easy to startle. We teleport all the way to the portal and slip through. The Cambion can no longer follow us.
Blueberry sets up several traps in the room next to the Mephit Portal room in case we need to web them during a retreat. She slips into the area unseen, lays some more traps in the north corner of the room, and teleports over to one of the portals. I don't know which portals are the Radiant Mephit ones, so I guess.
Blueberry struggles to deal the final blow to the portal, but a Radiant Mephit is closing in. We have to run. She teleports away, just as the Radiant Mephit is casting Color Spray.
We flee towards our traps, and Blueberry is blinded. But the blindness allows her to hide, since stealth is based on your line of sight, not the enemy's. Any thief can use Hide in Plain Sight if he or she is blinded. I've considered starting a run based on a blind thief, but I haven't decided. Blueberry slips past the enemies once she's hidden.
She proceeds to destroy the portals, and moves on to backstab Ellesime's clone. We sneak through the hallway north, backstab the next Duergar mage to the far northeast, backstab Frennedan to death, ignore Hareishan, and sneak past the Assassins.
The circus goes quickly. We buy the Shield of Reflection before heading to the Slums and get the Glasses of Identification so we can sell off our blue-filmed loot.
Wow @semiticgod I love creating some custom spells, items and enemies too, but you really remake the game each time you have one of those swell ideas. Much interesting!
After pondering my options, I eventually decide on an orthodox route. Copper Coronet Sewers. I've really got to start trying some different early game quests. At any rate, the sewers are no trouble for a solo spider. Blueberry is innately immune to Charm Person and Hold Person, and so the shamans of the sewers pose no threat. She just backstabs her way through. Finally, she lands a significant backstab.
For the sake of perspective, some of her backstabs have done as little as 8 damage. She only does double damage at this level; spiders take time to get good at backstabbing.
Tabitha gets poisoned by some traps, but she runs around so much that the poison kills her before Blueberry has a chance to try a backstab.
The Beastmaster isn't an issue with the Shield of Reflection.
But the bears and cats have excellent THAC0 and do big damage to Blueberry, forcing her to flee to a safe spot to give her enough time to drink a potion. Her evasion ability keeps her safe on the way.
A couple of Horror spells help keep the animals split up, preventing Blueberry from getting overwhelmed. Like all of the pure class Phase Spider's spells, Horror bypasses spell protections and magic resistance and cannot be dispelled, but its effects are weaker than the mage version: it only lasts 5 rounds, which isn't very much for a solo character with limited damage output.
We rescue Viconia and decide on a whim to let her join the group. I don't remember the last time I've played through the game with her. I was planning on doing a solo run, but they get kind of boring, since you only have one set of abilities to work with. Also, we miss out on a lot of the color of the game when we play multiplayer or solo.
I also bring in Jan. I don't think I'll be using the spider gnome strategy during this run, however, since I already explored it pretty thoroughly in the Party of Spiders run. But maybe I'll bring it out sometime to screw around with an enemy I don't like.
I normally tend to think of Viconia as a weak character, since clerics have relatively limited offensive potential. I do, however, love her access to Chaotic Commands, and even the little spells can make a big difference if you use them right. She crushes Valygar's buddies in the Umar Hills.
The rangers are still effective fighters, but one of them is vulnerable to Hold Person, and Jan has a lot of damage spells alongside his flashers. With Blueberry's help, and more potions than I wish I'd spent, the rangers go down.
I've barely bought anything for our new party members. I got a mace for Viconia and a few bolts and bullets for the two of them, but I've yet to get any new scrolls for Jan.
Even without spider form, or even Firetooth, Jan's flashers still have an impact.
Next, the Temple Ruins. I have no Protection from Undead scroll, and the only magical weapons we have are Ilbratha and Jan's flashers, but we can take it on.
In search of cheap XP, we decide to fight the Shadows near the crystal mirror thingy instead of luring them into the light. After Viconia takes control of a pack of Shadows, Jan breaks his invisibility to cast Haste, while Viconia uses Defensive Harmony. Things don't go so well.
Apparently there are some Shadow Fiends in that group. Jan's Stoneskin can block damage, but not the Shadow Fiends' hold effect. Viconia's MR can block the enemy's on-hit effects, but she has no defense against the damage besides her AC. And she's only wearing a suit of splint mail with a small shield.
Luckily, Viconia manages to take control the enemies surrounding her before they can bring her down, and thanks to Jan's Stoneskins, he actually finishes casting his Haste spell when he recovers from the hold effect. Viconia summons a Flame Blade and we tear down a few Shadows before luring the rest into the light.
Fully buffed and wielding the Flame Blade, Viconia can help Blueberry take on the various enemies of the Temple Ruins. The enemies are all immune to normal weapons, and so Flame Blade is a necessity (Spiritual Hammer also works, but it does less damage and Flame Blade grants +4 to hit), but an interesting thing about the enemies is that, with SCS installed--and +1 weapons, like a Two Handed Sword +1, turned into nonmagical "masterwork" variants--the Skeleton Warriors as well as the Shadows use nonmagical weapons. So the enemies can't hurt each other, even if Viconia takes control of them.
Jan could use Protection from Normal Weapons to tank, but he's not at level 9 yet.
Mazzy joins the team, again on a whim, even though we already have a specialist (BLueberry) in short swords. She adds some needed melee power to the group, but even with Mazzy on hand, the Bone Golems are too much for us. Jan bails us out.
Against the Shade Lord, I decide we're not tough enough to take him on in a fair fight, and I'm too lazy to come back later. Instead, I use the Summon Fiend scroll from inside the temple to attack the enemy. After pre-buffing everybody with Invisibility and Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Jan sneaks down to the south and uses the scroll outside the enemy's range of sight. The Glabrezu encounters no resistance.
Unfortunately, this costs us a lot of XP. In the last run I tried, I could finish off the Shadow Altar and Shade Lord with Sunfire, but this Phase Spider has no strong offensive spells, and Jan can't reliably get past the Shade Lord's MR. The Glabrezu disables the Shade Lord midway through, allowing us to attack it without fear of reprisal.
But in the end, the Glabrezu lands the last blow, and we get no XP from the kill.
Next, I want to trigger the Suna Seni ambush. I pre-buff before the ambush, but this time, I don't enter while invisible. I've done that so many times before and I'm tired of it. Instead, we set up our defenses in battle, on the first round. Viconia leads with Defensive Harmony while Jan and Blueberry make their escape.
Jan's Detect Illusions ability allows us to break down the enemy mage's Mirror Image spell, but Mazzy can't deal the final blow in time to stop a Lightning Bolt from zapping Viconia.
Single-target spells from Jan shut down the enemy cleric's spellcasting, and Blueberry gets in Eldarin's face to stop the biggest source of damage (I could have just tossed the Shield of Reflection to Eldarin's targets, but meh). The only other real threat, the enemy thief, suffered damage from an unknown source (maybe a smite or blight spell from the enemy cleric) and was cut down by Blueberry when he broke invisibility, already at Badly Injured.
I want to go to the Planar Prison and get Kundane and maybe Haer'dalis, but first I want to go through the Mae'Var questline. It's a good opportunity for Jan to practice his thievery. Rayic Gethras, as always, is the biggest obstacle around.
Party-wide Protection from Fire keeps the Fire and Magma Mephits at bay, while flashers paralyze the Ice Mephits at the bottom of Ray-Ray's house. Viconia also keeps us safe on the second floor, as Free Action prevents the slow portion of Golem Slow (but not, unfortunately, the AC and THAC0 penalties). The wizard himself poses a substantial threat, so Blueberry, having recently hit level 10, prepares a Blindness+Web Tangle Minor Sequencer in advance. She can cast Minor Sequencer once per day as an innate spell; it's not in her spellbook.
Blindness has no chance of hitting Ray-Ray, actually, but Web Tangle will bypass his defenses if he fails a save vs. breath. We also have a full Web spell, which is significantly different from the mage version.
This web spell forces a save vs. breath instead of a save vs. spell, and has a 50% chance of slowing the target instead of webbing them. Also, the spell penalizes AC, THAC0, and save vs. breath by 1 for 4 rounds, without save, which means the web becomes harder to resist over time, and will weaken even enemies with immunities. It also means Blueberry isn't immune to all of its effects; it's a very party-unfriendly spell.
So why not put Web in the Minor Sequencer? Well, this Minor Sequencer only carries up to level 1 spells. Later, she'll get a Spell Sequencer that can carry level 2 spells, and finally a Spell Trigger that can carry level 3 spells, the max level for rangers and Phase Spiders.
We throw out both the Minor Sequencer and a Web spell on the first round of combat (for once, we're honest and tell Ray-Ray we're there to kill him), but Ray-Ray appears to make all of his saves, and there are no dialog box cues or visual effects indicating he was webbed. Nor did he appear to be stunned by Jan's flashers. Nevertheless, he stopped moving. We broke through his PFMW and Protection from Normal Missiles spells with nonmagical melee weapons. Soon his Stoneskin broke down.
Edwin joined the group and we finally scribed a whole bunch of scrolls with the help of some Potions of Genius. Jan and Mazzy both got their family quests soon after, before we went to kill Mae'Var, but Mazzy's quest got stuck when we were bringing the medicine back to her sister or niece or whatever.
I tried resting outside several times, but Mazzy didn't complain that we were neglecting her quest, so it seems the quest is stalled. We can't complete it, but we won't lose Mazzy by walking away.
When the group reached Beregost, Golin Vend described them which places deserved to be visited in the town. The need to go to Nashkel as fast as possible meant that a night in the Jovial Juggler was the only thing tired Aidahn could do here.
Besides, Aidahn wanted to visit a local temple, to check if they had any advice for his cleric spells. As it turned out, they didn't but Aidahn bought a potion of antidote and a girl called Rachel notified him about a conjurer living nearby - Thalantyr.
Aidahn still carried an unidentified magical girdle, found on Gorion's lifeless body. This is why he decided to visit Thalantyr for a Identify scroll. Long hours of training in Candlekeep helped to learn the spell from the first attempt (and to tell the truth, Aidahn felt lucky because he didn't have money for another scroll).
On a way through the forest, the party killed several gnolls and on one of them they strangely found a short blade. Imoen took the sword but said it'd better to keep it just in case.
The group met 3 Flaming Fist officers who at first thought the gnome and his friends were bandits. But Jaheira notified the officers that the group is expected by the mayor of Nahkel, himself, and the officers let them pass.
Without any problems the group finally found Nashkel and greeted its mayor, Berrun Ghastkill. The mayor asked Aidahn to investigate the Nashkel Mines, with a lot of workers disappearing and the iron worsening.
Not very far from the mayor the party met a huge warrior who needed some help in finding "a damsel in distress", as Imoen said. Minsc joined the group, and he came not alone but with a hamster. It was strange to see the warrior speaking to a hamster but the latest events proved many things were normal those days.
Minsc was a ranger and thus offered to be a party's scout. Moreover, Minsc said he could sense any evil nearby, and this is why from that moment invisible Minsc became the first to enter any location they needed.
In the Nashkel tavern, Minsc saw a suspicious woman, packed in an armour, and after a small counsel the party decided to rest at the Carnival, instead of that tavern, so that they could face any danger being prepared.
Their fears came true, because as soon as the woman saw Khalid and Jaheira (Minsc, Imoen and Aidahn were invisible), she attacked. The Command spell, casted several times, kept Neira sleeping for a few rounds, enough to kill her with weapons.
Jaheira got new levels in both her classes in that fight, bringing her 8 HPs and one additional lvl 1 spell.
On that area no other enemies were found, and the group set off for Dynaheir.
It was expecially urgent because there was a mage, Edwin, who wanted to hire Aidahn for killing the witch. Edwin was lucky that Minsc didn't hit him in that situation. Maybe the feelings he had inside forced Minsc to shout on Noober, a man who looked like he wanted to talk with the party for hours (OOC: it lead to not getting any XP from Noober).
After his long rest at the FAI (I was really busy the last 2 days ), Norkul decided to spend some more time exploring the Sword Coast to earn some additional experience and gold of course. The Nashkel mines seemed an appealing option, especially since everybody is concerned, something that worried him a lot. This thirst for honor and glory can lead to a fast death, it seemed like a trap. So Norkul before solving great mysteries he continued his wandering in the wilderness.
He found and helped a Priest of Helm, despite the bounty on his head
Killed the wanted hobgoblin raider Zargal and his crew...
During his travels Norkul met a thief named "Safana". She asked his help recovering a treasure in a cave nearby. Problem was it was guarded by Sirines and Golems. Norkul hesitated first, but the this treasure was too much to ignore...
Once again, thanks a lot invisibility spell!
He returned to Beregost to sell some loot, resupply and rest. An assassin was waiting for him...
...but he was killed in "hot" blood
After a day's rest he decided to visit Ulgoth's Beard, which he had read so much about. In his way he helped a desperate farmer with a zombie problem..
Skull trap in action
...helped an evil, but young and talented Priestess..
and recovered a farmer's dead son from an Ankheg cave
In Ulgoth's Beard he bought some really precious things including a greenstone amulet, Aule's Staff and an improved invisibility scroll!! Time to head to the Nashkel Mines...
On his way there he came across dozens of petrified animals and humans! He realized he was at the basilisk area he was warned about in the past! But it seemed that w wacko gnome was behind all this.. He paid for his crimes with his slow death...
The darts of wounding did their miracle...Seems easy? (if you are not bored read below) Well it was NOT. Actually it was the first time that my run was so close to end and Mutamin would be responsible AGAIN. You see I am such a noob that I still ignore the fact that "Spell deflection" does not affect area of effect spells like "remove magic". So before the events of the picture above Mutamin casted RM and I was "gloriously" standing there feeling totally safe...protection from petrification was dispelled... I always carry potions of mirror image or have an extra PfP scroll on me but still it was pure luck since basilisks were still around and would make me a part of this rock-garden.
There were also some very insightful meetings with famous heroes of Faerun!
But also some "annoying" ones...
I
Finally he got in the Nashkel Mines. He had some trouble there as the place was really overcrowded by Kobolds setting ambushes. He had to drink some potions of healing there and he would soon run out of resources! His plan could still work though..he had memorized the "Invisibility spell" before he got in the mines, so he casted it on him and slept in safety. When he was awake invisibility was still active, something that helped him slip through the Kobolds' defenses. He eventually met the source of the problem...the half-orc priest "Mulahey"!!
The fight is about to begin...
Norkul, as he is invisible, prebuffs with stregth, Ghost armor, mirror image and improved invisibility...
and the fight begins... Although I was well protected, I was intimidated by the past fight with Mutamin, so I also spend another charge of the greenstone amulet
Next move was to cast a skull trap, which did some damage to Mulahey and disrupted his spell. It also killed some of his lackeys (I don't know how I lost this pic.. klaps) In the meanwhile Mulahey has casted successfully a bless spell, Norkul was about to be overwhelmed by his foes...
...he casts glitterdust ... which proved to be a great move since his enemies got disoriented and had some serious trouble to find the next target. Norkul, completely unharmed, takes the risk to use his wand of fire and... Mulahey is almost done...and the funny thing is that despite this beautiful big blast Norkul is still unharmed!! he he he...the rest is easy pisy, just 1 MM
All well done, Norkul got invisible and out of the mines again, he is heading to Nashkel to inform the mayor about the situation...but he is unaware of what is going to happen to him... Chapter 3 has just started... Norkul is about to reach lvl 8 and still alive!!
By the way, I think that Norkul would like to pay the red wizards of Thay a visit in the future. I sense that a girl named "Neera" is in trouble. Do you think that recruiting-her-to-trigger-her-quest-and-kick-her-out-of-the-party-before-any-fight would break the solo no-reload rules?
Thank you for still reading! I hope you guys enjoy Norkul's run and not get bored. I would like that people are satisfied after reading this long post. Many of you know much better than me that it takes time and effort to document a run and I certainly do not want this time to be wasted. I try to include the story and some role playing to create the gaming atmosphere (I will try to work a bit more on this in my next post), but also include some step by step fights with pictures, like the last one with Mulahey ( thanks @semiticgod, I saw you do it in your posts and made me feel like it was me playing the game!!).
Have fun, enjoy and be careful..Faerun is a lovely but dangerous place!!!
By the way, I think that Norkul would like to pay the red wizards of Thay a visit in the future. I sense that a girl named "Neera" is in trouble. Do you think that recruiting-her-to-trigger-her-quest-and-kick-her-out-of-the-party-before-any-fight would break the solo no-reload rules?
Well, no one requires the no-reloads to be solo only. So, you're welcome to mix and match as you wish.
After doing Jan's quest, we ran some random errands around Athkatla. I've considered starting a new run composed entirely of thieves, but the variety of gameplay here is too good to let go. For once, I don't have a long-term plan for the party. It's a welcome change from the other runs, where I'd put tremendous thought into potential runs, only to get bored or die somewhere along the way.
One of the nice things about Edwin is that you never really need to worry about him running low on spells. He has two spare Agannazar's Scorcher spells and a Minor Sequencer memorized at all times, just so I can restore it without having to rest twice. But since the scorcher loop is horribly dangerous and usually overkill, I normally go without. The scorcher is still useful without Minor Spell Turning, though.
It's actually not that bad of a spell. The damage is decent and the unique shape of the projectile means it can be party-friendly depending on how you use it.
Somewhere along the way, I make the mistake of traveling without buffs. Blueberry and Edwin normally have Chaotic Commands active at all times, since Mazzy and Jan have good saves and Viconia has high MR, but now they're vulnerable. Sure enough, the enemy mage throws out the best possible spell she could choose.
I've seen this happen enough to know where things are going. We need to respond quickly, but we don't have a lot of options. I could have Blueberry teleport away, but if she teleports straight ahead, she won't escape the spell radius, and if she teleports behind her, the spell will hit her by the time she turns around and begins casting the spell.
Instead, I have Jan begin casting Invisibility 10' Radius, and send Edwin and Mazzy over to join him, while Viconia stays out of the way--she's the only one who can escape the spell radius. Even if the others get confused, they'll end up invisible. I also bring Blueberry closer to Jan, only to have her teleport away.
Edwin and Blueberry both fail their saves, but Blueberry is away from the battle, and Edwin is invisible.
Jan is also invisible, but I don't have a use for him just yet.
The enemy mage is shorn of her Mirror Images thanks to an early Magic Missile from Edwin, but she still has her Stoneskins, and starts casting another Enchantment spell. Mazzy puts a stop to it.
Unlike Arrows of Fire, Arrows of Ice don't offer a save vs. spell to avoid the damage. The damage isn't much, but it bypasses magic resistance and Stoneskin if not spell protections. It's an excellent way to disrupt a spell quickly, from range.
Notice Viconia casting an Abjuration spell to the south. With the other party members invisible or absent, she's got a lot of melee pressure to deal with, and she needs room to heal. A Sanctuary spell will give her that. Also notice Mazzy is using the Bow of Arvoreen instead of the Tuigan Bow. This is because I sold the Tuigan Bow to Bernard before saving Hendak, when I thought this run would be a solo run. After I freed Hendak and killed Lehtinan, Bernard's store changed out, and the Tuigan Bow and several other items were lost forever.
Another spell starts coming our way, and Mazzy rolls a critical miss. The mage is a second away from casting a spell that could break the party depending on our saves.
But Jan is already in position to put a stop to it.
Magic Missile or Chromatic Orb might have been safer options, however, as they require no attack roll.
Mazzy has been taking lots of damage in the meantime thanks to her using the bow. This gives the adjacent enemies large bonuses to hit her, and soon Mazzy is in trouble. She has to run to safety to use her Lay on Hands ability. Meanwhile, Viconia takes control of the enemy cleric's Skeleton, and Jan starts disabling the enemy, using Chaos to confuse some of the melee enemies and a flasher to stun a cleric.
Jan and Mazzy's work helps keep the enemies at bay long enough for both Edwin and Blueberry to recover from the previous Chaos spell--and a good thing, too, as Blueberry was about to kill Edwin, having already worn through his Stoneskins and much of his HP. The tide of the battle turns in our favor, and Jan brings it to a close at the cost of some loot.
Mazzy has been wearing a set of Plate Mail +1, and I feel it's time we upgraded. We return to the Promenade and confront Mencar Pennypincher.
For once, I announce our attack rather than ambush him. But the extra time doesn't do the enemy much good, as a Silence 15' Radius spell from Viconia shuts down Pooky and Sorcerous Amon of the Purple Brotherhood, and a pair of Web spells from Jan and Blueberry shut down Mencar, Smelly Porkslicer, and Brennan Risling.
Pooky and Amon are too far for us to attack safely, since no one in our party is immune to the slow and hold I effects in Blueberry's Web, but a Cloudkill from Edwin ensures that Amon and Pooky go down, despite Amon's attempts to escape using Shadow Door.
It's the oddest thing. Amon's name on-screen is Sorcerous Amon, but I've long remembered hearing about an "Amon of the Purple Brotherhood" and not knowing who it was, because this Amon was just "Sorcerous Amon." I finally looked it up in Near Infinity and discovered that "Sorcerous Amon of the Purple Brotherhood" is what Amon calls himself in a dialog, the dialog I've been skipping over for years. Even though I no longer read most of the game's text, there are still some things that have stayed buried in my memory.
I go back to Trademeet and slaughter the djinn. Edwin scribed (scrobe?) a Protection from Petrification scroll earlier on, so we can take them on without worrying about getting petrified. I've always done the Druid Grove before the djinn out of habit. It wasn't until I saw somebody else killing the djinn first that I realized it was possible to get the Shield of Harmony before going out to the Druid Grove and facing the Myconid battle where that shield is so useful.
We switch around our shields. Blueberry had been using the Shield of Reflection up until now to avoid spell disruption, but with extra characters around her, it's not really necessary. Instead, Viconia, who is much more vulnerable to disruption, gets the Shield of Reflection, while Blueberry uses the Shield of the Lost and Mazzy has the Shield of Harmony, since Blueberry already travels with Chaotic Commands active at all times.
Cernd joins the party, though I don't really want him here. I want to save that last party slot for Imoen.
Edwin now has the Robe of Vecna, though we bankrupted ourselves purchasing it. I didn't think much about it, like with most things in this run, so Edwin's new spellcasting speed takes me by surprise. He torches some spiders in the Druid Grove, while Blueberry teleports at just the right moment in order to evade its effects.
Edwin finally uses the Nether scroll.
I love Edwin's reaction, but the female Edwin's voice is almost half as obnoxious as his overly shouty BG1 voice, so I don't greet the change with much enthusiasm.
The Robe of Vecna gives us a very overpowered first round spell combination against spellcasters without MGOI. Edwin casts Greater Malison instantly, while Mazzy and Viconia throw out Silence 10' Radius shortly thereafter. It forces a save vs. spell at a -9 penalty, twice. Even mages would have difficulty handling it, but druids, with their higher saves vs. spell, have it even harder.
I've generally overlooked Silence 10' Radius because it offers a save vs. spell, which most mages can make, but the save penalty is -5. That's hard for even mages to resist.
I bring out the scorcher loop for the Troll Mound. It kills everything.
Still, I wish there was another way to perform the trick. A lot of important enemies are immune to magic, fire, and/or level 2 spells.
The Ring of Energy also uses the scorcher projectile, which means it can be bounced, and it can hurt things that the normal scorcher loop can't. The ring does magic damage instead of fire damage, and strikes as a level 4 spells instead of level 2, so it can bypass MGOI if not GOI. Unfortunately, it still won't bypass MR, the damage is 33% less than the spell (2d6 instead of 3d6), and because its spell level is higher, it can't bounce as many times. Combined with Minor Spell Turning or Spell Turning, the Ring of Energy loop does less than 100 damage. By contrast, a double scorcher Minor Sequencer and two MST spells make a 210 damage loop; a triple scorcher Spell Sequencer and two ST spells make an 819 damage loop, enough to slay an SCS dragon.
Anyway, we had Cernd fight Faldorn while still in our team. I don't have the Improved Faldorn component of SCS installed, and have no interest in installing it (just too hard, really, and rather unfair), so it wasn't very hard. I buffed Cernd before the battle with Improved Invisibility, Faldorn spent her first round using a divination spell, and Cernd hit her with Insect Plague. Faldorn failed her save, rendering the rest of the fight a non-issue.
I left Cernd at the grove. I'm just not interested in him right now.
@Mirage Don't worry, your entries are very fun and it's always a pleasure to read them. I'm more than satisfied after reading your posts. Norkul is still very lucky to be able to survive against Mulahey in that situation. Also, it's up to you on whether you include Neera in your party or not. In my RP run, I can't find a way to imagine how Aedahn kicks someone from his party only to have a look on Neera's items and maybe take one or two of them. Maybe it's because Aedahn is a good guy - I perfectly see an evil character doing it, for example.
@semiticgod Nice to see Edwin and thus watch differences in your use of two different spellcasters - Jan and Edwin. Also, an interesting take on the Silence 10' Radius spell.
A sad story for Norkul fellas... After the death of Mulahey, all this gold and the experience he got, Norkul passed away by overconfidence. Indeed he visited again old places, killed the remaining foes with relative ease and was ready to head for the bandit camp. (At this point I remembered one of my old runs and how I died as a mage again from an Ogre Magi located at the Firewine area. I don't remember his name but he is summoned after a dialogue you have with a woman. So I thought it is time to teach this guy a lesson.) So Norkul on his way to Firewine Bridge passed by the basilisk area again to have a bloody talk with the arrogant group located there. The fight started, I was covered by improved invisibility from certain magic attacks. Everything went smoothly, a couple of foes were already dead when invisibility expired. "I can handle it, I thought" I was playing kinda fighter mage, buffed with strength, spirit armor, haste and mirror image, sometimes even PfE. All of a sudden, a damn-sneaky-back-door basilisk that had kept hidden in the past appeared and...if you still like Norkul you can find him in Mutamin's rock garden.
I am sure this is a curse to me personally by the damn gnome. It is because of the picture I uploaded in a previous post, where he got poisoned and died by a dart of wounding. I was really confident during the run and believed I was going to make it. Unfortunately I found out that still I am not prepared for anything, a bit careless I would say...but enouph to pay the high price!
My reaction was to drink a potion of invisibility, but unfortunately it wasn't a start of a round so time was not enouph. I wonder if improved invisibility had not expired, whether the basilisk could have petrified Norkul or not. I think he would still be alive and well..
No hard feelings, Norkul was the mage I will always remember since it is the first time I document and post a run online...so here is how he wants you to remember him...
I already started to think about my next run. I am inspired by @bengoshi's "Tale of the Totemic Druid", I liked a lot the idea and I would like to do something similar. It is really challenging (I love the impossible quests) and you get to learn a lot about the game. Moreover, after some kind words...
@Mirage Don't worry, your entries are very fun and it's always a pleasure to read them. I'm more than satisfied after reading your posts.
...I am thinking about posting it. This would make it very exciting, since I do not consider myself an experienced player and this could may be more fun for some to read, or even offer their advice during "Hard Times". My only hesitation is that it may take some time to complete because I have a bit of "fragile" program..
Anyway,by order I am leaning to: -Avenger -Cleric/Thief multi -Ranger/cleric multi -F/M/T (though I have in mind to start a solo no-reload run in the future)
To the Planar Sphere! For the first time in ages, I take Valygar into the party. And for the first time in ages, I fight the Sahuagin. Viconia uses Wondrous Recall to gain an extra two castings of Chaotic Commands, and with Viconia holding the Shield of Reflection, only Edwin is vulnerable to stun. The Sahuagin fight goes well.
We get surprised during the fight with the halflings shortly thereafter.
We don't have many spells left, but we can handle this. Edwin, the only member of the party without Chaotic Commands or MR, gets disabled by Symbol Stun. But Blueberry disables Kayardi despite his GOI.
I try to take down Kayardi's Spell Turning with an Ice Arrow. Mazzy equips the Shield of Reflection right after firing the arrow. Arrows of Ice strike as level 6 spells, and thus bounce off of spell turning spells, while the Shield of Reflection bounces all weapon projectiles. But it doesn't work; the shield won't bounce the ice damage back to Kayardi.
No worries. Another Ice Arrow takes down Spell Turning anyway. Not that it matters, as the only one in our group who can cast hostile single-target spells above level 3 is Edwin, who is still disabled. We kill Kayardi with weapons instead.
Jan flubs up a backstab against Mogadish, and fails to stop a summoning spell.
Things start to get hectic. Aerial Servants hit hard. Soon, Blueberry is close to death. She activates her sequencer to heal herself, but it doesn't work.
She hurries away--Aerial Servants thankfully only have 1 APR, so this one can't finish her off--to heal herself, while the others put down Mogadish and work on the remaining enemies.
What about Necre and Taibela? Jan confuses them with a Chaos spell, and our own Aerial Servants cuts the battle short.
We try the scorcher loop against the Elder Orb, but apparently its resistances are airtight.
For kicks, I use the Wand of Lightning trick with Sunfire. Completely unnecessary and overpowered, but fun in moderation.
Not much can survive 66d6 damage.
Blueberry manages to web Lavok with a sneak attack--she only has a 20% of webbing any target, and the target may save vs. breath to avoid it. We also try firing a Bolt of Biting from Jan and a couple of Arrows of Biting from Mazzy and Valygar, but the poison doesn't affect Lavok.
We wait a second for him to recover, then reconsider. I don't really want to fight any Fallen Planetars if I can help it. We attack him while he's helpless, but we break the quest: Lavok's attack dialogue triggers after he changes form, and so we're left with a hostile Lavok who will never speak his dying dialogue.
I reload and try again, but Lavok's defenses seem weaker than they should be.
Where's the Protection from Fire spell? And why is he using only a Mantle spell? The last time I fought him in SCS, he used Absolute Immunity, which I hoped to bypass with darts from the Cloak of Stars.
Something is wrong, I'm sure. I let him cast his first spell, a Horrid Wilting. Things look bad. I use Dimension Door to escape the damage and wait for the next one.
He casts Chain Lightning.
Then Magic Missile.
Then PW: Stun, and another Magic Missile. Now I know it's broken.
Once again, I've ended up with a broken install somehow. All the spellcasters so far have been working without their proper SCS scripts and abilities--or at least, some of them have, including Lavok. I've seen this before, and in my experience this requires a completely clean install to fix.
But I don't want to go to all that trouble again. Instead, I finally upgrade to EE, and download SCS once more to use on a new install of BG2. Time to start from scratch.
One thing I need to know. Will I be able to use my old files to re-create the Phase Spider kit in EE? Or will I have to make the files from scratch?
@Mirage and @semiticgod - what an unfortunate coincidence! This is not what I expected to see while looking at this thread getting 2 new entries...
I can't answer about the possibility of using the Phase Spider kit in the EE. You'd better consult anyone with knowledge, maybe @subtledoctor can help here.
@Mirage ... ... it's hard to take but it often happens when you as a player get an overconfidence. I'm flattered about your words of the Tale of the Totemic Druid. I would very much like to read about the Avenger druid. It'll be a strange feeling a bit, only reading about a druid solo and not trying it myself;) A strange but very exciting.
The group cautiously went through two Cloud Peaks areas without meeting anyone and reached the Groll Fortress.
As soon as the Fortress appeared on the horizon, Khalid started talking of how dangerous it could be to face gnolls on the old wooden bridge. Minsc was amazed: no man brave to marry Jaheira would be scared of some puny gnolls. Nevertheless, as soon as Jaheira heard the loud ranger's voice, Minsc preferred to go scouting ahead.
He saw two ogrillions on the other side of the bridge and after Imoen unsuccessfully tried to speak with them the group drawn out one of them, Gnarl.
Because Jaheira had the most HP in the party, she tried to slow down the ogrillion while others could attack from the distance.
And then Grarl killed Jaheira with one blow.
The group avenged the fallen druid and decided to continue the quest. While losing Jaheira was awful and everyone was scared, they just could't give up and leave Dynaheir somewhere in the Fortress, maybe on the line of disappearing completely from this world.
Minsc's choice of the favourite enemy was very helpful here - inspired by the nearness with his witch, the ranger often one-shotted even elite gnolls.
One of his shots brought the next level for Imoen - she gained 8 HP and put 25 points into Open Locks. While in the Friendly Arm Inn, she saw a lot of closed chests everywhere and thought she could impove her lockpicking skills.
Aidahn cursed himself for not using one of his two Sleep spells on Gnarl but when a pack of 7 gnolls was close to surround the party, there was no second chance.
Finally Dynaheir was found. In one of the disgusting pits, wounded but still her spirit and mind were unbroken. She told the group that the gnolls took her journal and the gnome promised that they will find it.
Dynaheir also told them that it would be better to check the caves under the fortress while the gnolls didn't come back.
A lot of xvarts and one carrion crawler posed a substantial threat to the party because everyone was scared to rest in this place and had to rely on those healing potions they had. In one of the caves Dynaheir who still had 4 HPs, was hit by a xvart. Using everything they had at their disposal, the party managed not to lose anyone else and cleared all the area.
A strange book was found in one of the caves, while one of the ogrillions carried good-looking bracers.
Without much trouble, tired Sparkyfibber, Imoen and two very sad men, Khalid and Minsc, both of whom lost their most closed friends, came back to Nashkel.
They visited the local temple, successfully resurrecting Jaheira and Dynaheir and then rested in the inn. After that, the gnome could use his Identify spell to realise the party found the Charisma Tome.
After a small talk, everyone agreed that the Tome should go to Imoen. Aedahn offered the place of the leader to Imoen. She seemed happy to lead the group. After all, Imoen was the most charismatic in the party. She could convince people, and never gave up.
Thinking about what happened in the Gnoll Fortress, when both Jaheira and Dynaheir were killed with one hit, the party decided that it was too early to go to the Nahkel Mines. They had to learn a lot about the world around them, and monsters living in it. This is why everyone agreed to start exploring all the nearby areas first, starting from Beregost.
Hi folks. I don't have much time for foruming or playing, just checking out what's up in the no-reload forum. Commiserations to @semiticgod and @Mirage. Semiticgod, for futre reference, I think you can kill the Shadow Alter quite easily with Sunstone bullets (one hit is normally enough to kill it). Mirage I'm a big fan of the Cleric/Thief multiclass but I agree with bengoshi that an Avenger would be cool too.
Rasaad's quest just filled me with a whole bunch of overpowered items. (See repost below.) [a Mirror Image ring; a "Beholder" Helmet with 9 CC charges PER DAY; a True Seeing gem etc.]
Should I just drop them? Because I feel that they break the balance.
I'm really pissed at the EE content balance at this point and not sure if continuing with its rewards is grounds to abandon a noreload run. Or at least requiring the abandoning of the items.
[Rasaad Quest qualms follow]
Just finished Rasaad's quest and even without bugs I find it abysmal compared to the rest of SoA writing & quests.
Here are some issues: (None are bugs!)
0. Rasaad voice -- acting is fine, but there is a sound engineering problem that makes him sound like a tin kettle
1. Bad writing -- dialog choices break suspension of disbelief and nowhere nearly as witty as the writer may have imagined himself to be
2. No challenge -- it's a cake walk; a well played party has no challenge to face here; even the last fight has nothing to offer (and no rewards for the fight; see the next item)
3. disproportionate rewards -- I talk a bunch of hooey to four people at the temple and get four powerful items, not to mention some other easy to collect items earlier?! This is like some terrible pay-to-win DLC then?! Some of those items are far too awesome to collect so easily this early in the game (a Mirror Image ring; a "Beholder" Helmet with 9 CC charges PER DAY; a True Seeing gem -- easily TOB grade items, obtained with no challenge). And then the last fight gives you almost nothing.
4. Terrible resolution -- Rasaad just leaves?! I have no chance to negotiate?! No resolution or continuation to the romance even though I haven't even talked to the Shadow Thieves yet?! Is this a joke?! (I don't care if there is a dialog tree that could have led to another resolution; the writing is very opaque and weird; and I don't reload.)
In a way I am relieved that I no longer need to put up with Rasaad and can continue with the original BG2 NPCs.
This, combined with the terrible quest design of Neera (there is not even a Wild Magic zone; and again no challenge) and the abysmal writing of Hexxat that I had seen in some earlier playtroughs gives me very little faith in Beamdog's ability to pull off a well-written RPG by themselves.
I will buy Dragonspear only if many people I respect on this board try it first and vouch for me to have been wrong on this point.
Rasaad's quest just filled me with a whole bunch of overpowered items. Should I just drop them? Because I feel that they break the balance.
Actually this is the only thing that concerned me with the upcoming SOD. The developers stated that hundreds of new items will appear in the game. It seems to me it will break the balance, especially for solo no reloaders... I hope I am wrong
I finally installed BG2:EE. To my delight, both the scorcher loop and the blind thief trick, in which a blinded thief can hide in shadows even when enemies are present, as long as they don't fall within his or her line of sight, are both functional in EE.
I've decided to try a blind thief Charname. I named her Sil in honor of the Sil from the Party of Spiders. She is a human Kensai specializing in katanas, who will dual-class to thief at level 9 at latest. She got a marvelous stat roll.
Why is her INT so high? This was a mistake; I was thinking about a Kensai/Mage's stats on character creation. It makes little difference, however, as her other stats are all at the right values.
Sil will be perpetually blind, rather than being blinded every day by a friendly mage. This saves us a lot of hassle, but also limits her options. She'll never be able to cast a spell or use a weapon on a target further than a step away from her. Even after she gets UAI, she'll be basically incapable of using any missile weapons. It's a pretty big blow to her versatility over the course of the game.
Oh, and I'm playing on Nightmare mode, because why not.
Nightmare mode sets the difficulty slider to Insane (double damage, non-maximum HP rolls, and scribing failure) and grants all critters besides Charname an extra attack per round, triples their HP, and adds another 80 HP on top. It also grants 12 levels to all critters, so it's not quite the same as Heart of Fury mode in IWD and IWD2. This erroneously affects party-joinable NPCs, so I have to use EEKeeper to correct their stats and reduce them to normal levels. I use Near Infinity to check each character's normal stats (you can tell which .cre file is the right one by checking their XP), but their HP won't be correct when you load the game--it will be too low. You have to save the game again, and go use EEKeeper on them again, to make sure their HP is at the right value.
I'm happy to see that EE included some textual fixes.
In vanilla it had an extraneous apostrophe after "men." That always bothered me.
I considered sneaking past the Lightning Mephit with Minsc, but on reflecting that Mephits only do 1d3 damage per hit, I decided we could take it on if we all teamed up. The battle lasted many rounds, but Minsc only suffered minor damage.
The Duergar, however, would be too much for us. I don't want to spend our limited spells on them, so I have Minsc doff his splint mail and sneak over to Rielev. He then sneaks to the Sewage Golem to activate it, and open the way forward.
I was planning on letting Minsc die at this point. I didn't think he could handle the Duergar or the Mephit, and so I expected to sacrifice him to keep the rest of the party out of harm's way. But the Mephit was a Mineral Mephit, and Minsc managed to take it down.
He lost some potions, however, and we're running very low. He activates the golem, doffs his armor once more, and sneaks over to us.
We need to get past some other Duergar in the hall to the Otyugh room, but Jaheira and Sil can't use stealth. Instead, we have Minsc lure the Duergar out. But our plan doesn't work.
The other Duergar group is on its way to mob us. Imoen falls back and summons a Worg and a Kobold--all summons benefit from Nightmare mode bonuses--while Minsc tries to hold off the Duergar. But he gets very badly hurt, as does Sil, and we start running low on potions. Duergar are very tough with their extra APR, and doing double only makes things worse.
Notice one of the Duergar has a pale circle. Jaheira charmed him with Charm Person or Mammal. This gave us some very helpful space, though other attempts to disable them failed. One of the Duergar ignored our summons, but we surrounded him.
Worn down by our summons, the last of the Duergar falls, and we surround the one friendly Duergar.
I peek into the Otyugh room and find that the Otyugh still has a huge circle. It can't follow us into the hall, so Minsc can attack it with a two-handed sword from the doorway.
It doesn't work out.
Apparently the Otyugh has better range now. It's no longer possible to kill it safely from the doorway.
We can't go through that doorway without getting boxed in by the Otyugh, so we have Imoen and Minsc enter from the south hall, while Jaheira and Sil come from the west.
But the Otyugh proves much tougher than I thought. Jaheira's AC is too poor for her to stay safe in bear or wolf form.
Things are getting serious. Jaheira was important.
But with the Otyugh on the run, we can't finish it off before the fear effect wears off. It turns on us, and we barely make it out alive.
We can't handle this without using up our one rest. To avoid having to fight the thing, we have Minsc sneak around it. But the Otyugh wanders, and Minsc loses his invisibility.
Luckily, he scurries to the right, to safety.
Imoen and Minsc slip past the Otyugh to clear out the Duergar in the next hall. One of the Duergar is blocking the way, so you can't sneak past him. The only way to get through is to kill him or bring him out into the Otyugh room, and the latter is very unsafe for us, with the Otyugh still very alive.
Imoen has three Chromatic Orbs, three Mirror Images, and three Summon Monster I spells. She summons a couple of dogs to handle the Duergar, but it doesn't go well. The Duergar crossbowman ignores our summons, preferring to pepper Minsc with bolts. Minsc starts to go down. Worse yet, Imoen loses her Stoneskin.
I try to get the dogs to distract the crossbowman, but to no avail. Minsc can't handle this much pressure, even with all the potions we have to give him.
Half our party is gone, and Imoen is stranded--Sil is still stuck in the southern half of the dungeon, to keep her safe from the Otyugh. Imoen tries to renew her defenses, but Mirror Image doesn't cast very quickly, and her 1 AC isn't enough to hold off an axe.
Imoen keeps making progress, but she's running out of spells. If she dies here, then Sil is going to have to dual-class early so she can hide in shadows and sneak through the dungeon. A level 8 Kensai is not going to be able to handle the challenges ahead. Not in Nightmare mode.
Imoen struggles along, and eventually only one Duergar is left. It fails a save against Imoen's very last spell, a Chromatic Orb.
A level 7 Chromatic Orb stuns the target for 2 turns on a failed save vs. spell at +6. To make absolute sure we kill the Duergar in time, Imoen switches to a light crossbow for slightly better damage.
Now, Imoen can go grab the Helm of Balduran, Wand of Lightning key, and the Necklace of Metaspell Influence, as well as the Portal Key and the other goodies in the room south of the dryads.
But when she walks over the barrier, the golems will come running, and Imoen might not be able to reach the portal before the golems reach Sil and attack. How do we stay safe?
Sil runs over to the cells where we began and waits by the portal. That portal also transports you to the next area, and since only one person needs to be next to it to activate it, Sil can make the transition as soon as Imoen grabs the key.
All that's left is the Mephit Portal room. We're out of spells and two party members are already dead, but we have a few resources left.
By now I've had serious doubts the run is doable. We've had so many awful setbacks, and lost so many resources, that I'm not sure we'll be able to survive.
Yoshimo manages to lay a single Special Snare near the portal, but his other snares just hurt him. I send him into the next room while hidden, not sure exactly how I'm going to handle this situation, and notice the Mephits are different this time. We no longer have two Radiant Mephits. We have a Smoke Mephit, Magma Mephit, Ice Mephit, and a Radiant Mephit. It's not quite so dangerous, but we're already at a disadvantage anyway.
Yoshimo fails a check. We're in trouble again.
In response, Imoen summons an Ogrillon via a scroll, but I soon realize it won't last for long. It's not enough to keep Yoshimo alive. Instead we pull the whole group plus the Ogrillon into the portal room, dragging the Mephits over Yoshimo's Special Snare. Knowing we need Sil alive at all costs, we send her out into the Mephit Portal room, alone, while Imoen and Yoshimo soak up the damage.
Then I realize Imoen might just be able to slip out of the room. I send her towards the door, and find that the Mephits are moving slower than normal--a result of Yoshimo's trap. This allows Imoen to make her escape.
Yoshimo has no chance, though. He keeps the Mephits busy a while longer while Imoen and Sil start tearing down the Mephit Portals.
Another Ogrillon--I don't know from where; maybe I accidentally used a spell on Imoen that she regained when I used EEKeeper to fix Yoshimo's stats--kills a Magma Mephit, forcing a respawn right before Sil destroys its portal. It's a momentary scare, since a Mephit respawn could get Sil killed. The Ogrillon despawns soon after, so we know the threat isn't coming back.
I don't think the extra Ogrillon was the reason we lived, though. Yoshimo bought us all the time we needed.
Imoen sneaks through the rest of the dungeon, picking up the wands, the Ring of Protection +1, the Pearl Necklace, and some loot from Frennedan's room. She then heads for the exit and triggers our escape, while Sil is still waiting in the Mephit Portal room, in safety.
Imoen is taken away soon afterwards, and Sil is left alone and blind in a new city.
We sell off everything we can to raise money to bring back Jaheira and Minsc. By the time they're both raised and properly equipped with some nonmagical gear, we only have 6 gold left.
It's a necessity. Sil couldn't have handled the peasants on her own, and returning to the Circus later for Aerie would expose us to the risk of a random encounter we wouldn't be ready to tackle. Jaheira wins the battle with her Nymphs. Hold Person is pretty broken at these levels.
Aerie joins the group and we rest up to prepare for Kalah. Aerie seems glad she met us.
She's so cute.
Sil gets badly hurt on the way to Kalah. The enemies surrounded her, and her AC is very poor.
In the fight with Kalah, Jaheira loses a Call Woodland Beings spell to disruption, and Kalah makes his saves against our first disablers, including Slow. Then Sil comes over and spooks him.
Horror makes enemies much harder to hit, but Kalah doesn't have much room to run. He collapses soon after he recovers from Horror.
It seems EE renamed some items to make them sound less generic.
We ditch Minsc at the Copper Coronet. Melee muscle isn't needed in our group as much as spellpower. I replace him with Anomen. Animate Dead has always been a staple of Heart of Fury mode in IWD and IWD2, and I'm sure it will be the same with BG2.
We also bump into a rather out of it thief named Hexxat. We don't need a thief in our party, but I'm curious. We bring her along, though her quest will take us away from our normal route. Normally, you can avoid getting ambushed by traveling straight from the Promenade to the Slums to the Government District to the City Gates, which conveniently also grants you access to all of the Chapter 2 areas outside of Athkatla.
Hexxat wants us to go to the Graveyard, however, which exposes us to an ambush. And if we flee the ambush, we might lose our opportunity to get Arbane's Sword, a very nice find. So we need to go to the graveyard while hidden. Aerie has an Invisibility scroll, but she doesn't have a very good chance of scribing it.
Jan, however, is on the way and comes with both Invisibility and Invisibility 10' Radius when you meet him. We'll want him before we enter the Graveyard, but first, we want to free Viconia. Jaheira's Nymph again saves the day.
Notice in the first screenshot that Anomen is taking damage from an arrow, despite his Protection from Normal Missiles from his shield. He should be immune to nonmagical missile weapons.
I make the poor choice of charming the third fighter right as two of our spellcasters are casting Hold Person. The enemy is immune to Hold Person as long as they're charmed, which means the hold spells--a guaranteed kill in this case on a failed save vs. spell--are useless. Sil manages to disable him anyway.
He tries to run, but now we have missile weapons--we only just bought ourselves a decent supply. The Nymph pursues in dramatic form.
Next, the crypts. Skeletons hold off the spiders.
With their immunity to poison and resistance to piercing damage, Skeletons are ideal for fighting spiders.
They are not, however, very good at dealing with the undead of the next level. All of our summons attack using nonmagical weapons, and the only two enemies in the next group that are vulnerable to normal weapons are Ghasts. To escape from the Wights and other dangerous critters, we hide in Jan's Invisibility 10' Radius spell, and watch our Skeletons a fraction of the enemy.
Turn Undead won't break invisibility, but it also has no effect. It's probably because Nightmare mode gives all enemies an extra 12 levels.
We poke around the rest of the area while invisible. Jan keeps a lookout for us.
Finally I realize we're in the wrong and place and go to the right one instead: the southeastern crypt of the graveyard, where a hidden door leads to Hexxat's quest. We get ambushed by a blurry thief, who is immune to normal weapons, plus a Shade Wolf with the same immunity. Anomen and Aerie bring up some summons, but they won't be able harm the enemies here.
I expected this, but wanted to go check out the area anyway, despite our lack of magical weapons. It takes a lot of micromanagement and positioning to bring down the thief. Jaheira uses her bear form to attack, Hexxat uses a +2 dagger we found in the area, and Anomen uses the Staff of Curing from the area before.
We keep moving, and stay buffed with Invisibility and Protection from Evil. Jan has a scroll of Cacofiend we can use if things go bad. The Protection from Evil is especially pretty-looking in EE.
We finally find Dragomir, who I guess is evil or something, and attack him. I keep an eye out for any allies of his, but he's alone. I expected him to be immune to normal weapons (he was) but did not know if Flame Blade struck as a magical weapon in EE, so I had Aerie and Anomen memorize both Flame Blade and Spiritual Hammer, and stocked up on a bunch of damage spells. We surrounded him and tried out our disablers early on, but the disablers failed--he didn't even show a save vs. spell or spell ineffective message when they hit him; they had no effect at all. When disablers failed, we resorted to damage spells and melee power.
We lose many more potions and exhaust all of our healing spells in the process, but finally we wear him down.
It was a very hard fight. Dragomir had lots of HP, and our disablers were useless against him.
We meet the real Hexxat, who is a lot more awake than the first one, and also kind of rude.
I thought that last line was a come on, but then I realized she was just talking business. Too bad.
Comments
Good luck!
@Blackraven I am really glad you liked the intro of Norkul's run!
I see your point regarding under leveled mages, the approach to get the wand of summoning is really nice and will definitely help a lot the young mage.
But I am not going to do him this favor
I actually meta-gamed only at start, as you will soon see at the next part. Now I actually non meta-game at all, this way I get a lot into the character, I pay more attention, I learn a lot and the game becomes different every time I restart a failed run, even if I use the same class.
Norkul is having a difficult time. He got chased by Xvarts and a big Ogre in Lionsway. He had to flee to High Hedge...where things got even worse. Four Gnolls spotted him as soon as he got there. Norkul casted a sleep spell, but unfortunately for him only 1 of them failed its saves. This is not the end... Soon a Ghoul and a giant spider joined the hunt for the poor under leveled mage. Moreover, while he was fleeing, a skeleton threw a couple of daggers that successfully got him in the back. Thx to the armor spell though he had just some minor injuries.
During his desperate attempt to save his life Norkul got lost. He realized he reached the sword coast. He knew it was a very dangerous place, but he also had no safe place in mind to go. Maybe it was a bad decision he didn't visit Beregost, it couldn't have been worse. He thought it was the end, but his luck didn't run out. He met a semi-crazy wizard, who asked him to pick a cursed ring for him. After Norkul completed this task, the Mad Arcand gave him a nice oil of fiery burning and a warning about a sirine who lived nearby.
Norkul set a trap for the sirine, he casted successfully a sleep spell followed by 3 darts per round. Jess couldn't just stand idle..
Things got a bit complicated though..(sorry for this bad image, check the carrion crawler to the left)
but not much of a worry ( by the way my game always lags when I meet carrion crawlers)
After this huge experience, Norkul felt ready to visit the town of Beregost where he heard about the mad priest Bassilus. He also visited Firebead, he was in need to find a safe place to spend a night. After some minor tasks, Norkul headed to Candlekeep where he killed some hobgoblins using his sleep and chill touch spells.
while I use chill touch, if a monster is "near death" I cast MM or shocking grasp, in order to avoid the chunking effect of chill touch. I am not 100% sure if it works this way or if chill touch has like a chance to froze enemies to pieces.
He got really excited after his accomplishment because he found a nice flamedance ring. He entered the Friendly Arm in, where he was attacked by a mage. Norkul, in his panic, threw at him the oil of fiery burning he carried...
It's the first time I kill Tarnesh this way
Things start to look better for the young mage! After a good night's rest Norkul decided to explore the wilderness around Beregost, before he visited the famous mage "Thalantyr" at High Hedge. He didn't have enough gold to buy something good, and a bunch of gnolls are waiting for him there.
He successfully reacted in a Tasloi ambush at the Cloakwood forrest
While he fought a bunch of hobgoblins, he came across a petrified woman
When the Hobgos were done, he rushed to the nearby temple to buy a stone to flesh scroll for the helpless woman. Thanks to his kind heart, "Corianna" warned him about an area full of basilisks nearby. Norkul wouldn't dare to go there right now, it was good to know which places to avoid!!
He then headed south from High Hedge, where he met a boy who was making fun of Bassilus! He kindly asked the boy to be careful and go home, the place caused him the creeps! A hundred yards from there he saw a wolf ready to prey a chicken! As he and Jess were really hungry he disposed the wolf really fast. But it seemed that the chicken was a polymorphed young mage...he wasn't happy at all about that! But in good fortune young "Melicamp" was the apprentice of Thalantyr!
"Time to teach these gnolls a lesson" he thought...
..and he did!
Melicamp was...
successfully turned to human again!!!
In the end Norkul bought many scrolls from Thalantyr, headed back to the Friendly Arm Inn, bought a potion of genius, scribed some new spells in his repertoire and lvld up to lvl5!
He currently rests there, drinking some wine and hearing a lot about the Nashkel mines...he should go check them out...but not yet as he feels it will not be so simple...
BTW, Norkul has already shown himself quite lucky - a giant spider with the SCS can Web your character and then finish him in seconds.
Be careful with sirens and relying on the Sleep spell: according to this thread, https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/43897/are-sirens-immune-to-sleep-or-just-some-of-the-time-spoilers, not all sirens can fall under its effect.
Not long ago, Gorion, whom Aidahn remembered since his was a small child, said that Aidahn had to choose 3 spells from arcane books to scribe into his new spellbook, a prize for graduating from the Candlekeep magical courses.
Putting a lot of effort in reading about spells, Aidahn finally decided to concentrate on these 3 spells:
Find Familiar (although people called him a fibber, in terms of health Aidahn couldn't boast much)
Sleep (monks in the Candlekeep often told Aidahn that the best enemy is a sleeping enemy)
Spook (it was a close tie between this spell and Blindness, the latter lasting 2 hours, but in the end Aidahn went with Spook due to a faster casting time)
As for his divine spells, Aidahn took 2 Commands and 1 Sanctuary - the safest of all the options, if things go bad.
When Aidahn reported to Gorion that he finally subscribed all the scrolls, he found out it was time to pack the belongings. Gorion didn't speak much about it but the little gnome figured it was a matter of a great imprortance because why otherwise all the secretness and mystery.
With several coins in his pack, Aidahn bought a mace and a sling with bullets, summoned his Familiar (Sparkyfibber was glad that everything went smoothly) and decided to finish the last tasks in the Candlekeep, which meant visiting all the houses there.
The first unpleasant surprise happened nearly immediately after leaving Winthrop. A crazy thug attacked in the barn. Spook proved useful, as well as some practice in throwing stones:
It was a relief when Aidahn's new mace, bought only several hours ago, was broken during dealing with rats for Reevor, and not in the real fight.
Spartyfibber had to buy another mace and then sleep a little, so that his magic abilities could renew.
It was a wise decision because another bounty hunter attacked Aidahn even before the gnome completed all the tasks in the Candlekeep. Carbos faced the same fate as Shank.
Aidahn thought it was a good time to find Gorion. No longer did he want to meet assassins almost anywhete he went. He asked his friend, Imoen, to go with him but she said Gorion wouldn't approve.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Spartyfibber expected many things, but what happened in the night was darker than anything he imagined. No words could describe how bad the gnome fealt when heard the last words of his father. If anything, Aidahn was scared - his father was a formidabble wizard, and still was killed easily. What could Aidahn, who only recently had scribed his first spells, do in that situation?
The only positive fact in this whole situation was that Imoen happened to be in the forest as well. At least for now, Aidahn wasn't alone.
After a long talk about the last night, Aidahn and Imoen decided it would be the best variant to seek for Gorion's friends, Khalid and Jaheira, whom the mage mentioned when he was still alive.
When leaving the place where Gorion met his end, the pair encountered a wolf. The Candlekeep lessons didn't go to a waste, so Sleep helped a lot.
Imoen's sharp eyes noticed something shiny in the tree nearby - a diamond! Maybe, in the end, some of them grow on trees.
Two humanoids stood right on the road - but Imoen didn't like them, so Aidahn decided not to listen to their offer. The gnome wanted to find Gorion's friends first.
Inspired by their success of finding a diamond, Imoen decided to check the whole forest, only to encounter a dread wolf. It saved against Aidahn's magic, so the only option was to use Imoen's potion of speed - this way the gnome could become faster, not slower, than the wolf, so that Imoen's arrows could hit it.
After that, the pair decided not to risk anymore and move as invisible as they could up until reaching the Friendly arm inn. No talks with strangers, no hunting. Right in front of the Inn, a man waited for somebody, but Aidahn was afraid of the worst and thus didn't let him notice anything.
Inside, the pair finally met Khalid and Jaheira. Imoen liked them at once and decided to call them aunt and uncle.
After several talks with people inside the inn, it became clear that the man outside, called Tarnesh, was supposed "to cause troubles". After discussing this situation with Imoen, Khalid and Jaheira, Aidahn decided to be as ready as possible. It included staying hidden for him and Imoen, while Jaheira was protected with AoF.
The man, as soon as he saw Gorion's friends, attacked, just like those assassins in the Candlekeep. He turned to be a mage, and Jaheira soon fell asleep while Khalid was hit for 12 of his 13 HP by the wizard's staff.
But to the Khalid's panic Aidahn answered with his own horrifying effect - Spook worked and Tarnesh, so this wizard was called, began running aimlessly. The gnome remembered he had to renew the spell - its effect is quite short - and then casted several Commands to be finally able to hit the mirrored wizard. It was not easy but everything worked.
In the wizard's bagpack Imoen found several scrolls and expressed her desire to learn them. Maybe she was influenced by Aidahn's magic? Anyway, Sparkyfibber was completely not against his friend to try learning.
The group then decided to go straight to Naskel - the place Jaheira and her husband wanted to visit as quick as possible.
Imoen convinced everyone to look in the nearest houses, but no more than that - they already found a woman whose ring was lost and needed to be found, and completing this task was enough for now - the need to go to Nashkel meant no further exploration here.
Without any problems, the party reached Beregost.
Aidahn - Cleric/Illusionist, 1/1 lvl, 16 HP (10 from FF), 0 deaths
Imoen - Thief, 1 lvl, 8 HP, 0 deaths
Khalid - Fighter, 1 lvl, 13 HP, 0 deaths
Jaheira - Fighter/Druid, 1/1 lvl, 12 HP, 0 deaths
Indeed I enjoy the run a lot and I want to make as many quests as I can. Norkul is supposed to conquer the sword coast and Baldur's gate, he is not just a guy who will avoid tough enemies and go and murder sneakily Sarevok like a chicken!!
I got really into RP and I try to show the way I play. I understand that this is just BG1 and it is simple...
But I found out that if you want to be a good player in this game you have to know the basics, which is what I consider BG1 to be.
Thanks a lot for the advise, the thing is that "Improved spiders" is an SCS option that I didn't install in this run.The idea of spiders casting spells is not appealing to me, ofc it is perfectly ok gameplaying wise. The other option I didn't install is the "Improved demon cultists". I had a really hard time beating these guys with a full party, which makes me believe I am not a good player. In a solo no-reload run it would be a suicide for me to face them, so this way I may just try it.
ps. I edited yesterday my first post to include the weidu.log, in case anyone is interested
Bengoshi, Cleric/Illusionist
I wonder whether a full SCS v30 install plus insane difficulty plus random HPs are ideal ingredients for a roleplayed, non-metagamed playthrough, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see... Either way, best of luck! (Btw I think SCS already maximizes enemy HPs, the BG2Tweaks component shouldn't be necessary for that.)
The master is nowhere in sight, so the duo leave to find entertainment elsewhere. There are some artists swallowing flaming knives, but that hardly looks impressive to them, so Cuwaert convinces Imoen to search some of the tents for some other fun. The first tent they enter has chance games and soon Imoen is standing in front of the Roulette betting money on a spinning ball and Cuwaert is strangely entranced by tossing bones... somehow this looks so very familiar to him though not exactly, but he cannot put his mark on it. As he takes the bones in his hands he automatically adjust to their texture; his fingers adapt to the cracks and bulges of the bone and throws a miraculous throw to win.
Imoen already comes up to him having lost a considerate amount of gold of the party and whispers to Cuwaert not to tell Jaheira and Khalid. Cuwaert just nods and lets Imoen take him back outside.
They enter some more tents without seeing anything interesting until they are addressed by a strange merchant who wants to sell Cuwaert some mysterious potions. One to increase strength and one to increase insight. Of course Cuwaert bought both, but now he has a strange feeling that he does not know which potion does what again. Without giving it a further thought for now they go to find some other tents with drinks. When they want to enter the next tent, Khalid and Jaheira join them and not a moment too soon. A strangely robed mage tells them he will kill a witch. Cuwaert warns him but the mage kills the witch with one word and prepares to cast another spell. Jaheira instinctively lashes out with her club and interrupts him. The four then start to overwhelm him to break his concentration. Without getting any spell off the mage dies, and the heroic ordeal made Jaheira feel stronger (level up!). As Khalid stares at her Imoen picks up the magic scrolls and quickly stuffs the robes in her pack and throws two potions to Cuwaert giving him a sly wink.
In the last tent they spot Khalid breathes in the black lotus smell while Jaheira is busy lecturing the addicts inside. Cuwaert and Imoen walk out again; this is not their kind of entertainment. Having seen most of the Carnival, Jaheira and Khalid suggest to go to Nashkel itself.
In Nashkel, a warrior with a hamster on his shoulder refuses to talk to them. The local bounty officer mistook them for someone but the party sets him straight. He immediately thanked them in front of everybody (rep +1 to 9). While Cuwaert stays talking, Jaheira spots the mayor and they strike up conversation with one another. A deal is made and Cuwaert agrees to all help out look into the troubles at the mines and they promptly depart. At the mines they gain entrance and go into the depths. The miners have little insight on the happenings other than that doglike demons are haunting their backs. The party pushes deeper into the depths, here and there sharing idle chatter with the miners until finally the culprits are identified, kobolds. Slaying kobolds left and right they find some mysterious potions that Cuwaert pockets quickly. Now they stand in even lower levels of the mine...
===
Nice, first NPC a level up, some (again) lucky encounters and now we are on the path down. Exciting (to me)! Unarmed barbarian really is fun.
The one I'm considering is a spell switching run. Basically, I play with a normal party, but the mages, sorcerers, and bards cast priest spells from their spellbooks, while clerics, druids, rangers, and paladins would cast mage spells from their spellbooks. We'd have druids casting Teleport Field, clerics casting Breach, mages casting Chaotic Commands, and Bards casting Holy Smite. This opens up some new possibilities, as class-specific items, weapons, and XP growth rates get switched around, but it locks us out of level 8 and 9 mage spells.
The current idea is a revised Phase Spider kit, now based on the ranger class due to its ability to use both stealth and a small set of spells. I've re-worked the original design, and now the kit seems much more balanced and much more realistic, thematically speaking. To summarize the changes: the Phase Spider no longer has strong offensive spellpower, Dimension Door is slower, and it can no longer use missile weapons. This prevents the three biggest abuses of the Phase Spider's abilities: spamming damage spells, being able to jump to any place on the map within a single round, and kiting.
In exchange, the Phase Spider gets a set of custom spells, all of which are nonmagical in nature, and it gains special evasion abilities that allow it to automatically negate incoming attacks. There's a small passive chance of evading an attack or spell at rest, but if the Phase Spider is in the middle of casting Dimension Door, it has a 50% chance of evading anything. The kit is now much less offensive-oriented, and its strength comes more from evasion than speed.
The stuff that hasn't changed:
Immune to poison and web
Immune to humanoid-specific spells (Hold Person, Charm Person, etc.)
-1 penalty to Intelligence
+3 to save vs. death
Cannot use gauntlets, boots, helmets, rings, or armor heavier than studded leather, as they cannot fit on any part of the spider's body. Bracers and ioun stones may still be worn.
Arachnophobia: +2 to AC and saving throws vs. humanoids
Culture Shock: -3 penalty to Wisdom
Base 5 AC, -1 AC vs. missile and piercing
Infravision
+25% to hide in shadows and move silently
-2 penalty to hit and damage
Improved Alacrity
+1 bonus to Dexterity
Suffers no THAC0 penalties from dual-wielding
The stuff that's changed a little:
1. Dimension Door now has a casting time of 2. But every time you begin casting the spell, you have a 50% chance (non-stackable) of avoiding all incoming spells, including beneficial ones, and all weapons for 1 second. This makes Dimension Door a little slower without making the spider too vulnerable to disruption. It also makes the spell useful for defensive purposes beyond running away.
2. Instead of receiving penalties to missile attacks, the Phase Spider can't use missile weapons at all.
3. The Phase Spider has restricted proficiencies, as some weapons would need to be strapped to its legs or back in order for it to use them. The spider can't gain any proficiencies in large and cumbersome weapons like flails, two-handed swords, spears, staffs, and halberds, since you can't just strap one to a single leg and make it work. For slightly smaller but still heavy and unwieldy weapons, like bastard swords, axes, katanas, maces, hammers, the spider may have only one proficiency point. For very small and light weapons like daggers and short swords, the spider may attain Mastery. For everything else, it's a two-pip maximum.
4. The Phase Spider can now poison and web its targets with any melee weapon, instead of having to use a natural weapon. Now the spider will have an incentive to use a broader variety of weapons.
5. The Phase Spider gets +0.5 APR at levels 4 and 11, so it doesn't have such high APR in BG1. It also can't teleport until level 3.
The stuff unique to this version:
Gains a +1 to movement rate at levels 4, 8, 12, and 16.
Gains a +1 to backstab at levels 4, 11, and 15.
Lightning Reflexes: At level 7, has a small chance, about 10%, to avoid any spell or any source of physical damage. At level 14 and 21, this increases to roughly 20% and 30%. Spells that bypass magic resistance also bypass this defense (the only other way to do it, via the spell deflection opcode, creates annoying visual effects I can't prevent, even with opcode 291).
May cast contingencies and sequencers at higher levels, once per day each:
Level 10: Minor Sequencer
Level 13: Contingency
Level 16: Spell Sequencer
Level 19: Chain Contingency
May cast a set of unique spells beginning at level 8.
The pure class' special spells:
Level 1: Cure Light Wounds (15 HP), Set Snare, Web Tangle, Protection from Energy (15%), Blur, Horror, Invisibility, Blindness
Level 2: Cure Medium Wounds (25 HP), Set Special Snare, Mirror Image, Spider Spawn, Web, Haste
Level 3: Cure Serious Wounds (40 HP), Non-Detection (also SI: Divination), Improved Haste, Etherealness (invisibility to all critters for 3 rounds), Poison, Protection from Normal Weapons
All of these spells bypass MR and spell protections and cannot be dispelled, but they've been heavily nerfed in many places, especially duration, to make them more balanced.
High-level Abilities:
Hardiness: permanent +15% to all resistances and +2 to AC and saving throws. Selectable twice.
Spider Spawn: summons 1d4 spiders with special powers and immunities. Selectable three times.
Set Spike Trap: 10d6 piercing damage with a save vs. breath for half, 10d6 poison damage with a save vs. death for half.
Regeneration: 1 HP regeneration per second and +25 to HP, permanent. Selectable once.
Whirlwind Attack: Sets APR to 10 for one round, penalizes THAC0 and damage by -3.
Backstab Damage: Adds 1 to backstab multiplier. Selectable twice.
Casting Speed Bonus: grants a -1 bonus to casting speed. Selectable once.
I created a new spider, since the one before got lost or something. It's Blueberry again!
Absolutely stunning roll this time. Since this kit uses the ranger class and I haven't tweaked the requirements to be a ranger, Blueberry is now an elf instead of a gnome. Notice her spectacular stats. I haven't had a STR that high in over a year, at least.
The run is off to a good start. Thanks to the new kit abilities, Blueberry can web and poison critters even when using ordinary weapons.
Blueberry ignores Aataqah and backstabs the Duergar into oblivion. The Radiant Mephit, as always, is a pain.
No shorty bonuses means a very high chance of failing the save vs. spell. But Blueberry's 10% magic resistance, courtesy of being at level 7, let her escape the second spray. She teleports around a corner and hides. This allows her a backstab.
Backstabs take down a couple more packs of Duergar, plus the Otyugh, and allow her to avoid most of the traps in the Ellesime room. Potions and her immunity to poison help her recover from the traps she does trigger.
The Lesser Clay Golems are a problem. They hit really hard, and Blueberry has less than 60 HP unbuffed. But her Dimension Door lets her slip away.
Why is there a weapon ineffective message? This spider's Dimension Door has a 50% chance of granting the spider invulnerability for 1 second on casting. You can't repeatedly cast and cancel the spell to ensure immunity, however; the spell dispels the invulnerability if you cast it again within 1 second (this is easier in EE, but it can be done in vanilla as well using the True Seeing opcode). This invulnerability includes spell level immunity from 0-10 and 15 (blocking everything from Celestial Fury's stun to Mimic Acid to a Planetar's dispel on hit) and if that wasn't enough, it also grants immunity to both magical and nonmagical weapons.
But you've only got a 50% chance, and it only lasts for 1 second, while the spell takes 1.2 seconds to cast. It's not a reliable shield in a no-reload run (this is a minimal-reload run, thankfully), but it just might save Blueberry's life sometime.
More hit-and-fade tactics bring down Ilyich's gang. Blueberry only does double damage on backstabs, but it's enough to one-shot a mage.
After sneaking past the Air Elemental Plane Mephits and freeing the djinni, I decide to try some hit-and-fade tricks on the Cambion, whom I normally leave alone. I underestimated the Cambion.
It's not fooled by stealth. This guy is a heavy hitter and I don't know if I can take him on. We teleport away, only to linger in the library to loot the shelves.
I pay close attention to the northwest hallway. I don't know how fast that Cambion is going to follow me. Right as I find the shelf with the Oil of Speed, I spot an enemy in the hallway, and I jump in my chair.
I curse at myself for being so easy to startle. We teleport all the way to the portal and slip through. The Cambion can no longer follow us.
Blueberry sets up several traps in the room next to the Mephit Portal room in case we need to web them during a retreat. She slips into the area unseen, lays some more traps in the north corner of the room, and teleports over to one of the portals. I don't know which portals are the Radiant Mephit ones, so I guess.
Blueberry struggles to deal the final blow to the portal, but a Radiant Mephit is closing in. We have to run. She teleports away, just as the Radiant Mephit is casting Color Spray.
We flee towards our traps, and Blueberry is blinded. But the blindness allows her to hide, since stealth is based on your line of sight, not the enemy's. Any thief can use Hide in Plain Sight if he or she is blinded. I've considered starting a run based on a blind thief, but I haven't decided. Blueberry slips past the enemies once she's hidden.
She proceeds to destroy the portals, and moves on to backstab Ellesime's clone. We sneak through the hallway north, backstab the next Duergar mage to the far northeast, backstab Frennedan to death, ignore Hareishan, and sneak past the Assassins.
The circus goes quickly. We buy the Shield of Reflection before heading to the Slums and get the Glasses of Identification so we can sell off our blue-filmed loot.
For the sake of perspective, some of her backstabs have done as little as 8 damage. She only does double damage at this level; spiders take time to get good at backstabbing.
Tabitha gets poisoned by some traps, but she runs around so much that the poison kills her before Blueberry has a chance to try a backstab.
The Beastmaster isn't an issue with the Shield of Reflection.
But the bears and cats have excellent THAC0 and do big damage to Blueberry, forcing her to flee to a safe spot to give her enough time to drink a potion. Her evasion ability keeps her safe on the way.
A couple of Horror spells help keep the animals split up, preventing Blueberry from getting overwhelmed. Like all of the pure class Phase Spider's spells, Horror bypasses spell protections and magic resistance and cannot be dispelled, but its effects are weaker than the mage version: it only lasts 5 rounds, which isn't very much for a solo character with limited damage output.
We rescue Viconia and decide on a whim to let her join the group. I don't remember the last time I've played through the game with her. I was planning on doing a solo run, but they get kind of boring, since you only have one set of abilities to work with. Also, we miss out on a lot of the color of the game when we play multiplayer or solo.
I also bring in Jan. I don't think I'll be using the spider gnome strategy during this run, however, since I already explored it pretty thoroughly in the Party of Spiders run. But maybe I'll bring it out sometime to screw around with an enemy I don't like.
I normally tend to think of Viconia as a weak character, since clerics have relatively limited offensive potential. I do, however, love her access to Chaotic Commands, and even the little spells can make a big difference if you use them right. She crushes Valygar's buddies in the Umar Hills.
The rangers are still effective fighters, but one of them is vulnerable to Hold Person, and Jan has a lot of damage spells alongside his flashers. With Blueberry's help, and more potions than I wish I'd spent, the rangers go down.
I've barely bought anything for our new party members. I got a mace for Viconia and a few bolts and bullets for the two of them, but I've yet to get any new scrolls for Jan.
Even without spider form, or even Firetooth, Jan's flashers still have an impact.
Next, the Temple Ruins. I have no Protection from Undead scroll, and the only magical weapons we have are Ilbratha and Jan's flashers, but we can take it on.
Apparently there are some Shadow Fiends in that group. Jan's Stoneskin can block damage, but not the Shadow Fiends' hold effect. Viconia's MR can block the enemy's on-hit effects, but she has no defense against the damage besides her AC. And she's only wearing a suit of splint mail with a small shield.
Luckily, Viconia manages to take control the enemies surrounding her before they can bring her down, and thanks to Jan's Stoneskins, he actually finishes casting his Haste spell when he recovers from the hold effect. Viconia summons a Flame Blade and we tear down a few Shadows before luring the rest into the light.
Fully buffed and wielding the Flame Blade, Viconia can help Blueberry take on the various enemies of the Temple Ruins. The enemies are all immune to normal weapons, and so Flame Blade is a necessity (Spiritual Hammer also works, but it does less damage and Flame Blade grants +4 to hit), but an interesting thing about the enemies is that, with SCS installed--and +1 weapons, like a Two Handed Sword +1, turned into nonmagical "masterwork" variants--the Skeleton Warriors as well as the Shadows use nonmagical weapons. So the enemies can't hurt each other, even if Viconia takes control of them.
Jan could use Protection from Normal Weapons to tank, but he's not at level 9 yet.
Mazzy joins the team, again on a whim, even though we already have a specialist (BLueberry) in short swords. She adds some needed melee power to the group, but even with Mazzy on hand, the Bone Golems are too much for us. Jan bails us out.
Against the Shade Lord, I decide we're not tough enough to take him on in a fair fight, and I'm too lazy to come back later. Instead, I use the Summon Fiend scroll from inside the temple to attack the enemy. After pre-buffing everybody with Invisibility and Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Jan sneaks down to the south and uses the scroll outside the enemy's range of sight. The Glabrezu encounters no resistance.
Unfortunately, this costs us a lot of XP. In the last run I tried, I could finish off the Shadow Altar and Shade Lord with Sunfire, but this Phase Spider has no strong offensive spells, and Jan can't reliably get past the Shade Lord's MR. The Glabrezu disables the Shade Lord midway through, allowing us to attack it without fear of reprisal.
But in the end, the Glabrezu lands the last blow, and we get no XP from the kill.
Next, I want to trigger the Suna Seni ambush. I pre-buff before the ambush, but this time, I don't enter while invisible. I've done that so many times before and I'm tired of it. Instead, we set up our defenses in battle, on the first round. Viconia leads with Defensive Harmony while Jan and Blueberry make their escape.
Jan's Detect Illusions ability allows us to break down the enemy mage's Mirror Image spell, but Mazzy can't deal the final blow in time to stop a Lightning Bolt from zapping Viconia.
Single-target spells from Jan shut down the enemy cleric's spellcasting, and Blueberry gets in Eldarin's face to stop the biggest source of damage (I could have just tossed the Shield of Reflection to Eldarin's targets, but meh). The only other real threat, the enemy thief, suffered damage from an unknown source (maybe a smite or blight spell from the enemy cleric) and was cut down by Blueberry when he broke invisibility, already at Badly Injured.
I want to go to the Planar Prison and get Kundane and maybe Haer'dalis, but first I want to go through the Mae'Var questline. It's a good opportunity for Jan to practice his thievery. Rayic Gethras, as always, is the biggest obstacle around.
Party-wide Protection from Fire keeps the Fire and Magma Mephits at bay, while flashers paralyze the Ice Mephits at the bottom of Ray-Ray's house. Viconia also keeps us safe on the second floor, as Free Action prevents the slow portion of Golem Slow (but not, unfortunately, the AC and THAC0 penalties). The wizard himself poses a substantial threat, so Blueberry, having recently hit level 10, prepares a Blindness+Web Tangle Minor Sequencer in advance. She can cast Minor Sequencer once per day as an innate spell; it's not in her spellbook.
Blindness has no chance of hitting Ray-Ray, actually, but Web Tangle will bypass his defenses if he fails a save vs. breath. We also have a full Web spell, which is significantly different from the mage version.
This web spell forces a save vs. breath instead of a save vs. spell, and has a 50% chance of slowing the target instead of webbing them. Also, the spell penalizes AC, THAC0, and save vs. breath by 1 for 4 rounds, without save, which means the web becomes harder to resist over time, and will weaken even enemies with immunities. It also means Blueberry isn't immune to all of its effects; it's a very party-unfriendly spell.
So why not put Web in the Minor Sequencer? Well, this Minor Sequencer only carries up to level 1 spells. Later, she'll get a Spell Sequencer that can carry level 2 spells, and finally a Spell Trigger that can carry level 3 spells, the max level for rangers and Phase Spiders.
We throw out both the Minor Sequencer and a Web spell on the first round of combat (for once, we're honest and tell Ray-Ray we're there to kill him), but Ray-Ray appears to make all of his saves, and there are no dialog box cues or visual effects indicating he was webbed. Nor did he appear to be stunned by Jan's flashers. Nevertheless, he stopped moving. We broke through his PFMW and Protection from Normal Missiles spells with nonmagical melee weapons. Soon his Stoneskin broke down.
Edwin joined the group and we finally scribed a whole bunch of scrolls with the help of some Potions of Genius. Jan and Mazzy both got their family quests soon after, before we went to kill Mae'Var, but Mazzy's quest got stuck when we were bringing the medicine back to her sister or niece or whatever.
I tried resting outside several times, but Mazzy didn't complain that we were neglecting her quest, so it seems the quest is stalled. We can't complete it, but we won't lose Mazzy by walking away.
When the group reached Beregost, Golin Vend described them which places deserved to be visited in the town. The need to go to Nashkel as fast as possible meant that a night in the Jovial Juggler was the only thing tired Aidahn could do here.
Besides, Aidahn wanted to visit a local temple, to check if they had any advice for his cleric spells. As it turned out, they didn't but Aidahn bought a potion of antidote and a girl called Rachel notified him about a conjurer living nearby - Thalantyr.
Aidahn still carried an unidentified magical girdle, found on Gorion's lifeless body. This is why he decided to visit Thalantyr for a Identify scroll. Long hours of training in Candlekeep helped to learn the spell from the first attempt (and to tell the truth, Aidahn felt lucky because he didn't have money for another scroll).
On a way through the forest, the party killed several gnolls and on one of them they strangely found a short blade. Imoen took the sword but said it'd better to keep it just in case.
The group met 3 Flaming Fist officers who at first thought the gnome and his friends were bandits. But Jaheira notified the officers that the group is expected by the mayor of Nahkel, himself, and the officers let them pass.
Without any problems the group finally found Nashkel and greeted its mayor, Berrun Ghastkill. The mayor asked Aidahn to investigate the Nashkel Mines, with a lot of workers disappearing and the iron worsening.
Not very far from the mayor the party met a huge warrior who needed some help in finding "a damsel in distress", as Imoen said. Minsc joined the group, and he came not alone but with a hamster. It was strange to see the warrior speaking to a hamster but the latest events proved many things were normal those days.
Minsc was a ranger and thus offered to be a party's scout. Moreover, Minsc said he could sense any evil nearby, and this is why from that moment invisible Minsc became the first to enter any location they needed.
In the Nashkel tavern, Minsc saw a suspicious woman, packed in an armour, and after a small counsel the party decided to rest at the Carnival, instead of that tavern, so that they could face any danger being prepared.
Their fears came true, because as soon as the woman saw Khalid and Jaheira (Minsc, Imoen and Aidahn were invisible), she attacked. The Command spell, casted several times, kept Neira sleeping for a few rounds, enough to kill her with weapons.
Jaheira got new levels in both her classes in that fight, bringing her 8 HPs and one additional lvl 1 spell.
On that area no other enemies were found, and the group set off for Dynaheir.
It was expecially urgent because there was a mage, Edwin, who wanted to hire Aidahn for killing the witch. Edwin was lucky that Minsc didn't hit him in that situation. Maybe the feelings he had inside forced Minsc to shout on Noober, a man who looked like he wanted to talk with the party for hours (OOC: it lead to not getting any XP from Noober).
Aidahn Spartyfibber - Cleric/Illusionist, 1/1 lvl, 16 HP (10 from FF), 0 deaths
Imoen - Thief, 1 lvl, 8 HP, 0 deaths
Khalid - Fighter, 1 lvl, 13 HP, 0 deaths
Jaheira - Fighter/Druid, 2/2 lvl, 20 HP, 0 deaths
Minsc - Ranger, 1 lvl, 10 HP, 0 deaths
After his long rest at the FAI (I was really busy the last 2 days
He found and helped a Priest of Helm, despite the bounty on his head
Killed the wanted hobgoblin raider Zargal and his crew...
During his travels Norkul met a thief named "Safana". She asked his help recovering a treasure in a cave nearby. Problem was it was guarded by Sirines and Golems. Norkul hesitated first, but the this treasure was too much to ignore...
He returned to Beregost to sell some loot, resupply and rest.
An assassin was waiting for him...
After a day's rest he decided to visit Ulgoth's Beard, which he had read so much about. In his way he helped a desperate farmer with a zombie problem..
Skull trap in action
...helped an evil, but young and talented Priestess..
and recovered a farmer's dead son from an Ankheg cave
In Ulgoth's Beard he bought some really precious things including a greenstone amulet, Aule's Staff and an improved invisibility scroll!! Time to head to the Nashkel Mines...
On his way there he came across dozens of petrified animals and humans! He realized he was at the basilisk area he was warned about in the past! But it seemed that w wacko gnome was behind all this..
He paid for his crimes with his slow death...
Well it was NOT. Actually it was the first time that my run was so close to end and Mutamin would be responsible AGAIN. You see I am such a noob that I still ignore the fact that "Spell deflection" does not affect area of effect spells like "remove magic". So before the events of the picture above Mutamin casted RM and I was "gloriously" standing there feeling totally safe...protection from petrification was dispelled... I always carry potions of mirror image or have an extra PfP scroll on me but still it was pure luck since basilisks were still around and would make me a part of this rock-garden.
There were also some very insightful meetings with famous heroes of Faerun!
But also some "annoying" ones...
Finally he got in the Nashkel Mines. He had some trouble there as the place was really overcrowded by Kobolds setting ambushes. He had to drink some potions of healing there and he would soon run out of resources! His plan could still work though..he had memorized the "Invisibility spell" before he got in the mines, so he casted it on him and slept in safety. When he was awake invisibility was still active, something that helped him slip through the Kobolds' defenses.
He eventually met the source of the problem...the half-orc priest "Mulahey"!!
Norkul, as he is invisible, prebuffs with stregth, Ghost armor, mirror image and improved invisibility...
Next move was to cast a skull trap, which did some damage to Mulahey and disrupted his spell. It also killed some of his lackeys (I don't know how I lost this pic.. klaps)
In the meanwhile Mulahey has casted successfully a bless spell, Norkul was about to be overwhelmed by his foes...
which proved to be a great move since his enemies got disoriented and had some serious trouble to find the next target. Norkul, completely unharmed, takes the risk to use his wand of fire and...
Mulahey is almost done...and the funny thing is that despite this beautiful big blast Norkul is still unharmed!! he he he...the rest is easy pisy, just 1 MM
All well done, Norkul got invisible and out of the mines again, he is heading to Nashkel to inform the mayor about the situation...but he is unaware of what is going to happen to him...
Chapter 3 has just started... Norkul is about to reach lvl 8 and still alive!!
By the way, I think that Norkul would like to pay the red wizards of Thay a visit in the future. I sense that a girl named "Neera" is in trouble. Do you think that recruiting-her-to-trigger-her-quest-and-kick-her-out-of-the-party-before-any-fight would break the solo no-reload rules?
Thank you for still reading!
I hope you guys enjoy Norkul's run and not get bored. I would like that people are satisfied after reading this long post. Many of you know much better than me that it takes time and effort to document a run and I certainly do not want this time to be wasted.
I try to include the story and some role playing to create the gaming atmosphere (I will try to work a bit more on this in my next post), but also include some step by step fights with pictures, like the last one with Mulahey ( thanks @semiticgod, I saw you do it in your posts and made me feel like it was me playing the game!!).
Have fun, enjoy and be careful..Faerun is a lovely but dangerous place!!!
Nice going with Norkul so far.
One of the nice things about Edwin is that you never really need to worry about him running low on spells. He has two spare Agannazar's Scorcher spells and a Minor Sequencer memorized at all times, just so I can restore it without having to rest twice. But since the scorcher loop is horribly dangerous and usually overkill, I normally go without. The scorcher is still useful without Minor Spell Turning, though.
It's actually not that bad of a spell. The damage is decent and the unique shape of the projectile means it can be party-friendly depending on how you use it.
Somewhere along the way, I make the mistake of traveling without buffs. Blueberry and Edwin normally have Chaotic Commands active at all times, since Mazzy and Jan have good saves and Viconia has high MR, but now they're vulnerable. Sure enough, the enemy mage throws out the best possible spell she could choose.
I've seen this happen enough to know where things are going. We need to respond quickly, but we don't have a lot of options. I could have Blueberry teleport away, but if she teleports straight ahead, she won't escape the spell radius, and if she teleports behind her, the spell will hit her by the time she turns around and begins casting the spell.
Instead, I have Jan begin casting Invisibility 10' Radius, and send Edwin and Mazzy over to join him, while Viconia stays out of the way--she's the only one who can escape the spell radius. Even if the others get confused, they'll end up invisible. I also bring Blueberry closer to Jan, only to have her teleport away.
Edwin and Blueberry both fail their saves, but Blueberry is away from the battle, and Edwin is invisible.
Jan is also invisible, but I don't have a use for him just yet.
The enemy mage is shorn of her Mirror Images thanks to an early Magic Missile from Edwin, but she still has her Stoneskins, and starts casting another Enchantment spell. Mazzy puts a stop to it.
Unlike Arrows of Fire, Arrows of Ice don't offer a save vs. spell to avoid the damage. The damage isn't much, but it bypasses magic resistance and Stoneskin if not spell protections. It's an excellent way to disrupt a spell quickly, from range.
Notice Viconia casting an Abjuration spell to the south. With the other party members invisible or absent, she's got a lot of melee pressure to deal with, and she needs room to heal. A Sanctuary spell will give her that. Also notice Mazzy is using the Bow of Arvoreen instead of the Tuigan Bow. This is because I sold the Tuigan Bow to Bernard before saving Hendak, when I thought this run would be a solo run. After I freed Hendak and killed Lehtinan, Bernard's store changed out, and the Tuigan Bow and several other items were lost forever.
Another spell starts coming our way, and Mazzy rolls a critical miss. The mage is a second away from casting a spell that could break the party depending on our saves.
But Jan is already in position to put a stop to it.
Magic Missile or Chromatic Orb might have been safer options, however, as they require no attack roll.
Mazzy has been taking lots of damage in the meantime thanks to her using the bow. This gives the adjacent enemies large bonuses to hit her, and soon Mazzy is in trouble. She has to run to safety to use her Lay on Hands ability. Meanwhile, Viconia takes control of the enemy cleric's Skeleton, and Jan starts disabling the enemy, using Chaos to confuse some of the melee enemies and a flasher to stun a cleric.
Jan and Mazzy's work helps keep the enemies at bay long enough for both Edwin and Blueberry to recover from the previous Chaos spell--and a good thing, too, as Blueberry was about to kill Edwin, having already worn through his Stoneskins and much of his HP. The tide of the battle turns in our favor, and Jan brings it to a close at the cost of some loot.
Mazzy has been wearing a set of Plate Mail +1, and I feel it's time we upgraded. We return to the Promenade and confront Mencar Pennypincher.
For once, I announce our attack rather than ambush him. But the extra time doesn't do the enemy much good, as a Silence 15' Radius spell from Viconia shuts down Pooky and Sorcerous Amon of the Purple Brotherhood, and a pair of Web spells from Jan and Blueberry shut down Mencar, Smelly Porkslicer, and Brennan Risling.
Pooky and Amon are too far for us to attack safely, since no one in our party is immune to the slow and hold I effects in Blueberry's Web, but a Cloudkill from Edwin ensures that Amon and Pooky go down, despite Amon's attempts to escape using Shadow Door.
It's the oddest thing. Amon's name on-screen is Sorcerous Amon, but I've long remembered hearing about an "Amon of the Purple Brotherhood" and not knowing who it was, because this Amon was just "Sorcerous Amon." I finally looked it up in Near Infinity and discovered that "Sorcerous Amon of the Purple Brotherhood" is what Amon calls himself in a dialog, the dialog I've been skipping over for years. Even though I no longer read most of the game's text, there are still some things that have stayed buried in my memory.
We switch around our shields. Blueberry had been using the Shield of Reflection up until now to avoid spell disruption, but with extra characters around her, it's not really necessary. Instead, Viconia, who is much more vulnerable to disruption, gets the Shield of Reflection, while Blueberry uses the Shield of the Lost and Mazzy has the Shield of Harmony, since Blueberry already travels with Chaotic Commands active at all times.
Cernd joins the party, though I don't really want him here. I want to save that last party slot for Imoen.
Edwin now has the Robe of Vecna, though we bankrupted ourselves purchasing it. I didn't think much about it, like with most things in this run, so Edwin's new spellcasting speed takes me by surprise. He torches some spiders in the Druid Grove, while Blueberry teleports at just the right moment in order to evade its effects.
Edwin finally uses the Nether scroll.
I love Edwin's reaction, but the female Edwin's voice is almost half as obnoxious as his overly shouty BG1 voice, so I don't greet the change with much enthusiasm.
The Robe of Vecna gives us a very overpowered first round spell combination against spellcasters without MGOI. Edwin casts Greater Malison instantly, while Mazzy and Viconia throw out Silence 10' Radius shortly thereafter. It forces a save vs. spell at a -9 penalty, twice. Even mages would have difficulty handling it, but druids, with their higher saves vs. spell, have it even harder.
I've generally overlooked Silence 10' Radius because it offers a save vs. spell, which most mages can make, but the save penalty is -5. That's hard for even mages to resist.
I bring out the scorcher loop for the Troll Mound. It kills everything.
Still, I wish there was another way to perform the trick. A lot of important enemies are immune to magic, fire, and/or level 2 spells.
The Ring of Energy also uses the scorcher projectile, which means it can be bounced, and it can hurt things that the normal scorcher loop can't. The ring does magic damage instead of fire damage, and strikes as a level 4 spells instead of level 2, so it can bypass MGOI if not GOI. Unfortunately, it still won't bypass MR, the damage is 33% less than the spell (2d6 instead of 3d6), and because its spell level is higher, it can't bounce as many times. Combined with Minor Spell Turning or Spell Turning, the Ring of Energy loop does less than 100 damage. By contrast, a double scorcher Minor Sequencer and two MST spells make a 210 damage loop; a triple scorcher Spell Sequencer and two ST spells make an 819 damage loop, enough to slay an SCS dragon.
Anyway, we had Cernd fight Faldorn while still in our team. I don't have the Improved Faldorn component of SCS installed, and have no interest in installing it (just too hard, really, and rather unfair), so it wasn't very hard. I buffed Cernd before the battle with Improved Invisibility, Faldorn spent her first round using a divination spell, and Cernd hit her with Insect Plague. Faldorn failed her save, rendering the rest of the fight a non-issue.
I left Cernd at the grove. I'm just not interested in him right now.
@semiticgod Nice to see Edwin and thus watch differences in your use of two different spellcasters - Jan and Edwin. Also, an interesting take on the Silence 10' Radius spell.
A sad story for Norkul fellas...
After the death of Mulahey, all this gold and the experience he got, Norkul passed away by overconfidence.
Indeed he visited again old places, killed the remaining foes with relative ease and was ready to head for the bandit camp.
(At this point I remembered one of my old runs and how I died as a mage again from an Ogre Magi located at the Firewine area. I don't remember his name but he is summoned after a dialogue you have with a woman. So I thought it is time to teach this guy a lesson.)
So Norkul on his way to Firewine Bridge passed by the basilisk area again to have a bloody talk with the arrogant group located there. The fight started, I was covered by improved invisibility from certain magic attacks. Everything went smoothly, a couple of foes were already dead when invisibility expired.
"I can handle it, I thought"
I was playing kinda fighter mage, buffed with strength, spirit armor, haste and mirror image, sometimes even PfE. All of a sudden, a damn-sneaky-back-door basilisk that had kept hidden in the past appeared and...if you still like Norkul you can find him in Mutamin's rock garden.
I am sure this is a curse to me personally by the damn gnome.
It is because of the picture I uploaded in a previous post, where he got poisoned and died by a dart of wounding.
I was really confident during the run and believed I was going to make it. Unfortunately I found out that still I am not prepared for anything, a bit careless I would say...but enouph to pay the high price!
My reaction was to drink a potion of invisibility, but unfortunately it wasn't a start of a round so time was not enouph. I wonder if improved invisibility had not expired, whether the basilisk could have petrified Norkul or not. I think he would still be alive and well..
No hard feelings, Norkul was the mage I will always remember since it is the first time I document and post a run online...so here is how he wants you to remember him...
I already started to think about my next run.
I am inspired by @bengoshi's "Tale of the Totemic Druid", I liked a lot the idea and I would like to do something similar. It is really challenging (I love the impossible quests) and you get to learn a lot about the game. Moreover, after some kind words...
...I am thinking about posting it. This would make it very exciting, since I do not consider myself an experienced player and this could may be more fun for some to read, or even offer their advice during "Hard Times". My only hesitation is that it may take some time to complete because I have a bit of "fragile" program..
Anyway,by order I am leaning to:
-Avenger
-Cleric/Thief multi
-Ranger/cleric multi
-F/M/T (though I have in mind to start a solo no-reload run in the future)
We get surprised during the fight with the halflings shortly thereafter.
We don't have many spells left, but we can handle this. Edwin, the only member of the party without Chaotic Commands or MR, gets disabled by Symbol Stun. But Blueberry disables Kayardi despite his GOI.
I try to take down Kayardi's Spell Turning with an Ice Arrow. Mazzy equips the Shield of Reflection right after firing the arrow. Arrows of Ice strike as level 6 spells, and thus bounce off of spell turning spells, while the Shield of Reflection bounces all weapon projectiles. But it doesn't work; the shield won't bounce the ice damage back to Kayardi.
No worries. Another Ice Arrow takes down Spell Turning anyway. Not that it matters, as the only one in our group who can cast hostile single-target spells above level 3 is Edwin, who is still disabled. We kill Kayardi with weapons instead.
Jan flubs up a backstab against Mogadish, and fails to stop a summoning spell.
Things start to get hectic. Aerial Servants hit hard. Soon, Blueberry is close to death. She activates her sequencer to heal herself, but it doesn't work.
She hurries away--Aerial Servants thankfully only have 1 APR, so this one can't finish her off--to heal herself, while the others put down Mogadish and work on the remaining enemies.
What about Necre and Taibela? Jan confuses them with a Chaos spell, and our own Aerial Servants cuts the battle short.
We try the scorcher loop against the Elder Orb, but apparently its resistances are airtight.
For kicks, I use the Wand of Lightning trick with Sunfire. Completely unnecessary and overpowered, but fun in moderation.
Not much can survive 66d6 damage.
Blueberry manages to web Lavok with a sneak attack--she only has a 20% of webbing any target, and the target may save vs. breath to avoid it. We also try firing a Bolt of Biting from Jan and a couple of Arrows of Biting from Mazzy and Valygar, but the poison doesn't affect Lavok.
We wait a second for him to recover, then reconsider. I don't really want to fight any Fallen Planetars if I can help it. We attack him while he's helpless, but we break the quest: Lavok's attack dialogue triggers after he changes form, and so we're left with a hostile Lavok who will never speak his dying dialogue.
I reload and try again, but Lavok's defenses seem weaker than they should be.
Where's the Protection from Fire spell? And why is he using only a Mantle spell? The last time I fought him in SCS, he used Absolute Immunity, which I hoped to bypass with darts from the Cloak of Stars.
Something is wrong, I'm sure. I let him cast his first spell, a Horrid Wilting. Things look bad. I use Dimension Door to escape the damage and wait for the next one.
He casts Chain Lightning.
Then Magic Missile.
Then PW: Stun, and another Magic Missile. Now I know it's broken.
Once again, I've ended up with a broken install somehow. All the spellcasters so far have been working without their proper SCS scripts and abilities--or at least, some of them have, including Lavok. I've seen this before, and in my experience this requires a completely clean install to fix.
But I don't want to go to all that trouble again. Instead, I finally upgrade to EE, and download SCS once more to use on a new install of BG2. Time to start from scratch.
One thing I need to know. Will I be able to use my old files to re-create the Phase Spider kit in EE? Or will I have to make the files from scratch?
I can't answer about the possibility of using the Phase Spider kit in the EE. You'd better consult anyone with knowledge, maybe @subtledoctor can help here.
@Mirage ... ... it's hard to take but it often happens when you as a player get an overconfidence. I'm flattered about your words of the Tale of the Totemic Druid. I would very much like to read about the Avenger druid. It'll be a strange feeling a bit, only reading about a druid solo and not trying it myself;) A strange but very exciting.
The group cautiously went through two Cloud Peaks areas without meeting anyone and reached the Groll Fortress.
As soon as the Fortress appeared on the horizon, Khalid started talking of how dangerous it could be to face gnolls on the old wooden bridge. Minsc was amazed: no man brave to marry Jaheira would be scared of some puny gnolls. Nevertheless, as soon as Jaheira heard the loud ranger's voice, Minsc preferred to go scouting ahead.
He saw two ogrillions on the other side of the bridge and after Imoen unsuccessfully tried to speak with them the group drawn out one of them, Gnarl.
Because Jaheira had the most HP in the party, she tried to slow down the ogrillion while others could attack from the distance.
And then Grarl killed Jaheira with one blow.
The group avenged the fallen druid and decided to continue the quest. While losing Jaheira was awful and everyone was scared, they just could't give up and leave Dynaheir somewhere in the Fortress, maybe on the line of disappearing completely from this world.
Minsc's choice of the favourite enemy was very helpful here - inspired by the nearness with his witch, the ranger often one-shotted even elite gnolls.
One of his shots brought the next level for Imoen - she gained 8 HP and put 25 points into Open Locks. While in the Friendly Arm Inn, she saw a lot of closed chests everywhere and thought she could impove her lockpicking skills.
Aidahn cursed himself for not using one of his two Sleep spells on Gnarl but when a pack of 7 gnolls was close to surround the party, there was no second chance.
Finally Dynaheir was found. In one of the disgusting pits, wounded but still her spirit and mind were unbroken. She told the group that the gnolls took her journal and the gnome promised that they will find it.
Dynaheir also told them that it would be better to check the caves under the fortress while the gnolls didn't come back.
A lot of xvarts and one carrion crawler posed a substantial threat to the party because everyone was scared to rest in this place and had to rely on those healing potions they had. In one of the caves Dynaheir who still had 4 HPs, was hit by a xvart. Using everything they had at their disposal, the party managed not to lose anyone else and cleared all the area.
A strange book was found in one of the caves, while one of the ogrillions carried good-looking bracers.
Without much trouble, tired Sparkyfibber, Imoen and two very sad men, Khalid and Minsc, both of whom lost their most closed friends, came back to Nashkel.
They visited the local temple, successfully resurrecting Jaheira and Dynaheir and then rested in the inn. After that, the gnome could use his Identify spell to realise the party found the Charisma Tome.
After a small talk, everyone agreed that the Tome should go to Imoen. Aedahn offered the place of the leader to Imoen. She seemed happy to lead the group. After all, Imoen was the most charismatic in the party. She could convince people, and never gave up.
Thinking about what happened in the Gnoll Fortress, when both Jaheira and Dynaheir were killed with one hit, the party decided that it was too early to go to the Nahkel Mines. They had to learn a lot about the world around them, and monsters living in it. This is why everyone agreed to start exploring all the nearby areas first, starting from Beregost.
Aidahn Sparkyfibber - Cleric/Illusionist, 1/1 lvl, 16 HP (10 from FF), 0 deaths
Imoen - Thief, 2 lvl, 16 HP, 0 deaths
Khalid - Fighter, 1 lvl, 13 HP, 0 deaths
Jaheira - Fighter/Druid, 2/2 lvl, 20 HP, 1 death
Minsc - Ranger, 1 lvl, 10 HP, 0 deaths
Dynaheir - Invoker, 1 lvl, 6 HP, 1 death
The overall price of resurrecting - 300 gp
Semiticgod, for futre reference, I think you can kill the Shadow Alter quite easily with Sunstone bullets (one hit is normally enough to kill it). Mirage I'm a big fan of the Cleric/Thief multiclass but I agree with bengoshi that an Avenger would be cool too.
@bensoghi, nice progress there, keep it up!
Rasaad's quest just filled me with a whole bunch of overpowered items. (See repost below.)
[a Mirror Image ring; a "Beholder" Helmet with 9 CC charges PER DAY; a True Seeing gem etc.]
Should I just drop them? Because I feel that they break the balance.
I'm really pissed at the EE content balance at this point and not sure if continuing with its rewards is grounds to abandon a noreload run. Or at least requiring the abandoning of the items.
[Rasaad Quest qualms follow]
Just finished Rasaad's quest and even without bugs I find it abysmal compared to the rest of SoA writing & quests.
Here are some issues:
(None are bugs!)
0. Rasaad voice -- acting is fine, but there is a sound engineering problem that makes him sound like a tin kettle
1. Bad writing -- dialog choices break suspension of disbelief and nowhere nearly as witty as the writer may have imagined himself to be
2. No challenge -- it's a cake walk; a well played party has no challenge to face here; even the last fight has nothing to offer (and no rewards for the fight; see the next item)
3. disproportionate rewards -- I talk a bunch of hooey to four people at the temple and get four powerful items, not to mention some other easy to collect items earlier?! This is like some terrible pay-to-win DLC then?! Some of those items are far too awesome to collect so easily this early in the game (a Mirror Image ring; a "Beholder" Helmet with 9 CC charges PER DAY; a True Seeing gem -- easily TOB grade items, obtained with no challenge). And then the last fight gives you almost nothing.
4. Terrible resolution -- Rasaad just leaves?! I have no chance to negotiate?! No resolution or continuation to the romance even though I haven't even talked to the Shadow Thieves yet?! Is this a joke?! (I don't care if there is a dialog tree that could have led to another resolution; the writing is very opaque and weird; and I don't reload.)
In a way I am relieved that I no longer need to put up with Rasaad and can continue with the original BG2 NPCs.
This, combined with the terrible quest design of Neera (there is not even a Wild Magic zone; and again no challenge) and the abysmal writing of Hexxat that I had seen in some earlier playtroughs gives me very little faith in Beamdog's ability to pull off a well-written RPG by themselves.
I will buy Dragonspear only if many people I respect on this board try it first and vouch for me to have been wrong on this point.
I've decided to try a blind thief Charname. I named her Sil in honor of the Sil from the Party of Spiders. She is a human Kensai specializing in katanas, who will dual-class to thief at level 9 at latest. She got a marvelous stat roll.
Why is her INT so high? This was a mistake; I was thinking about a Kensai/Mage's stats on character creation. It makes little difference, however, as her other stats are all at the right values.
Sil will be perpetually blind, rather than being blinded every day by a friendly mage. This saves us a lot of hassle, but also limits her options. She'll never be able to cast a spell or use a weapon on a target further than a step away from her. Even after she gets UAI, she'll be basically incapable of using any missile weapons. It's a pretty big blow to her versatility over the course of the game.
Oh, and I'm playing on Nightmare mode, because why not.
Nightmare mode sets the difficulty slider to Insane (double damage, non-maximum HP rolls, and scribing failure) and grants all critters besides Charname an extra attack per round, triples their HP, and adds another 80 HP on top. It also grants 12 levels to all critters, so it's not quite the same as Heart of Fury mode in IWD and IWD2. This erroneously affects party-joinable NPCs, so I have to use EEKeeper to correct their stats and reduce them to normal levels. I use Near Infinity to check each character's normal stats (you can tell which .cre file is the right one by checking their XP), but their HP won't be correct when you load the game--it will be too low. You have to save the game again, and go use EEKeeper on them again, to make sure their HP is at the right value.
I'm happy to see that EE included some textual fixes.
In vanilla it had an extraneous apostrophe after "men." That always bothered me.
I considered sneaking past the Lightning Mephit with Minsc, but on reflecting that Mephits only do 1d3 damage per hit, I decided we could take it on if we all teamed up. The battle lasted many rounds, but Minsc only suffered minor damage.
The Duergar, however, would be too much for us. I don't want to spend our limited spells on them, so I have Minsc doff his splint mail and sneak over to Rielev. He then sneaks to the Sewage Golem to activate it, and open the way forward.
I was planning on letting Minsc die at this point. I didn't think he could handle the Duergar or the Mephit, and so I expected to sacrifice him to keep the rest of the party out of harm's way. But the Mephit was a Mineral Mephit, and Minsc managed to take it down.
He lost some potions, however, and we're running very low. He activates the golem, doffs his armor once more, and sneaks over to us.
We need to get past some other Duergar in the hall to the Otyugh room, but Jaheira and Sil can't use stealth. Instead, we have Minsc lure the Duergar out. But our plan doesn't work.
The other Duergar group is on its way to mob us. Imoen falls back and summons a Worg and a Kobold--all summons benefit from Nightmare mode bonuses--while Minsc tries to hold off the Duergar. But he gets very badly hurt, as does Sil, and we start running low on potions. Duergar are very tough with their extra APR, and doing double only makes things worse.
Notice one of the Duergar has a pale circle. Jaheira charmed him with Charm Person or Mammal. This gave us some very helpful space, though other attempts to disable them failed. One of the Duergar ignored our summons, but we surrounded him.
Worn down by our summons, the last of the Duergar falls, and we surround the one friendly Duergar.
I peek into the Otyugh room and find that the Otyugh still has a huge circle. It can't follow us into the hall, so Minsc can attack it with a two-handed sword from the doorway.
It doesn't work out.
Apparently the Otyugh has better range now. It's no longer possible to kill it safely from the doorway.
We can't go through that doorway without getting boxed in by the Otyugh, so we have Imoen and Minsc enter from the south hall, while Jaheira and Sil come from the west.
But the Otyugh proves much tougher than I thought. Jaheira's AC is too poor for her to stay safe in bear or wolf form.
Things are getting serious. Jaheira was important.
But with the Otyugh on the run, we can't finish it off before the fear effect wears off. It turns on us, and we barely make it out alive.
We can't handle this without using up our one rest. To avoid having to fight the thing, we have Minsc sneak around it. But the Otyugh wanders, and Minsc loses his invisibility.
Luckily, he scurries to the right, to safety.
Imoen and Minsc slip past the Otyugh to clear out the Duergar in the next hall. One of the Duergar is blocking the way, so you can't sneak past him. The only way to get through is to kill him or bring him out into the Otyugh room, and the latter is very unsafe for us, with the Otyugh still very alive.
Imoen has three Chromatic Orbs, three Mirror Images, and three Summon Monster I spells. She summons a couple of dogs to handle the Duergar, but it doesn't go well. The Duergar crossbowman ignores our summons, preferring to pepper Minsc with bolts. Minsc starts to go down. Worse yet, Imoen loses her Stoneskin.
I try to get the dogs to distract the crossbowman, but to no avail. Minsc can't handle this much pressure, even with all the potions we have to give him.
Half our party is gone, and Imoen is stranded--Sil is still stuck in the southern half of the dungeon, to keep her safe from the Otyugh. Imoen tries to renew her defenses, but Mirror Image doesn't cast very quickly, and her 1 AC isn't enough to hold off an axe.
Imoen keeps making progress, but she's running out of spells. If she dies here, then Sil is going to have to dual-class early so she can hide in shadows and sneak through the dungeon. A level 8 Kensai is not going to be able to handle the challenges ahead. Not in Nightmare mode.
Imoen struggles along, and eventually only one Duergar is left. It fails a save against Imoen's very last spell, a Chromatic Orb.
A level 7 Chromatic Orb stuns the target for 2 turns on a failed save vs. spell at +6. To make absolute sure we kill the Duergar in time, Imoen switches to a light crossbow for slightly better damage.
Now, Imoen can go grab the Helm of Balduran, Wand of Lightning key, and the Necklace of Metaspell Influence, as well as the Portal Key and the other goodies in the room south of the dryads.
But when she walks over the barrier, the golems will come running, and Imoen might not be able to reach the portal before the golems reach Sil and attack. How do we stay safe?
Sil runs over to the cells where we began and waits by the portal. That portal also transports you to the next area, and since only one person needs to be next to it to activate it, Sil can make the transition as soon as Imoen grabs the key.
All that's left is the Mephit Portal room. We're out of spells and two party members are already dead, but we have a few resources left.
Yoshimo manages to lay a single Special Snare near the portal, but his other snares just hurt him. I send him into the next room while hidden, not sure exactly how I'm going to handle this situation, and notice the Mephits are different this time. We no longer have two Radiant Mephits. We have a Smoke Mephit, Magma Mephit, Ice Mephit, and a Radiant Mephit. It's not quite so dangerous, but we're already at a disadvantage anyway.
Yoshimo fails a check. We're in trouble again.
In response, Imoen summons an Ogrillon via a scroll, but I soon realize it won't last for long. It's not enough to keep Yoshimo alive. Instead we pull the whole group plus the Ogrillon into the portal room, dragging the Mephits over Yoshimo's Special Snare. Knowing we need Sil alive at all costs, we send her out into the Mephit Portal room, alone, while Imoen and Yoshimo soak up the damage.
Then I realize Imoen might just be able to slip out of the room. I send her towards the door, and find that the Mephits are moving slower than normal--a result of Yoshimo's trap. This allows Imoen to make her escape.
Yoshimo has no chance, though. He keeps the Mephits busy a while longer while Imoen and Sil start tearing down the Mephit Portals.
Another Ogrillon--I don't know from where; maybe I accidentally used a spell on Imoen that she regained when I used EEKeeper to fix Yoshimo's stats--kills a Magma Mephit, forcing a respawn right before Sil destroys its portal. It's a momentary scare, since a Mephit respawn could get Sil killed. The Ogrillon despawns soon after, so we know the threat isn't coming back.
I don't think the extra Ogrillon was the reason we lived, though. Yoshimo bought us all the time we needed.
Imoen sneaks through the rest of the dungeon, picking up the wands, the Ring of Protection +1, the Pearl Necklace, and some loot from Frennedan's room. She then heads for the exit and triggers our escape, while Sil is still waiting in the Mephit Portal room, in safety.
Imoen is taken away soon afterwards, and Sil is left alone and blind in a new city.
We sell off everything we can to raise money to bring back Jaheira and Minsc. By the time they're both raised and properly equipped with some nonmagical gear, we only have 6 gold left.
It's a necessity. Sil couldn't have handled the peasants on her own, and returning to the Circus later for Aerie would expose us to the risk of a random encounter we wouldn't be ready to tackle. Jaheira wins the battle with her Nymphs. Hold Person is pretty broken at these levels.
Aerie joins the group and we rest up to prepare for Kalah. Aerie seems glad she met us.
She's so cute.
Sil gets badly hurt on the way to Kalah. The enemies surrounded her, and her AC is very poor.
In the fight with Kalah, Jaheira loses a Call Woodland Beings spell to disruption, and Kalah makes his saves against our first disablers, including Slow. Then Sil comes over and spooks him.
Horror makes enemies much harder to hit, but Kalah doesn't have much room to run. He collapses soon after he recovers from Horror.
It seems EE renamed some items to make them sound less generic.
Nice.
We also bump into a rather out of it thief named Hexxat. We don't need a thief in our party, but I'm curious. We bring her along, though her quest will take us away from our normal route. Normally, you can avoid getting ambushed by traveling straight from the Promenade to the Slums to the Government District to the City Gates, which conveniently also grants you access to all of the Chapter 2 areas outside of Athkatla.
Hexxat wants us to go to the Graveyard, however, which exposes us to an ambush. And if we flee the ambush, we might lose our opportunity to get Arbane's Sword, a very nice find. So we need to go to the graveyard while hidden. Aerie has an Invisibility scroll, but she doesn't have a very good chance of scribing it.
Jan, however, is on the way and comes with both Invisibility and Invisibility 10' Radius when you meet him. We'll want him before we enter the Graveyard, but first, we want to free Viconia. Jaheira's Nymph again saves the day.
Notice in the first screenshot that Anomen is taking damage from an arrow, despite his Protection from Normal Missiles from his shield. He should be immune to nonmagical missile weapons.
I make the poor choice of charming the third fighter right as two of our spellcasters are casting Hold Person. The enemy is immune to Hold Person as long as they're charmed, which means the hold spells--a guaranteed kill in this case on a failed save vs. spell--are useless. Sil manages to disable him anyway.
He tries to run, but now we have missile weapons--we only just bought ourselves a decent supply. The Nymph pursues in dramatic form.
Next, the crypts. Skeletons hold off the spiders.
With their immunity to poison and resistance to piercing damage, Skeletons are ideal for fighting spiders.
They are not, however, very good at dealing with the undead of the next level. All of our summons attack using nonmagical weapons, and the only two enemies in the next group that are vulnerable to normal weapons are Ghasts. To escape from the Wights and other dangerous critters, we hide in Jan's Invisibility 10' Radius spell, and watch our Skeletons a fraction of the enemy.
Turn Undead won't break invisibility, but it also has no effect. It's probably because Nightmare mode gives all enemies an extra 12 levels.
We poke around the rest of the area while invisible. Jan keeps a lookout for us.
Finally I realize we're in the wrong and place and go to the right one instead: the southeastern crypt of the graveyard, where a hidden door leads to Hexxat's quest. We get ambushed by a blurry thief, who is immune to normal weapons, plus a Shade Wolf with the same immunity. Anomen and Aerie bring up some summons, but they won't be able harm the enemies here.
I expected this, but wanted to go check out the area anyway, despite our lack of magical weapons. It takes a lot of micromanagement and positioning to bring down the thief. Jaheira uses her bear form to attack, Hexxat uses a +2 dagger we found in the area, and Anomen uses the Staff of Curing from the area before.
We keep moving, and stay buffed with Invisibility and Protection from Evil. Jan has a scroll of Cacofiend we can use if things go bad. The Protection from Evil is especially pretty-looking in EE.
We finally find Dragomir, who I guess is evil or something, and attack him. I keep an eye out for any allies of his, but he's alone. I expected him to be immune to normal weapons (he was) but did not know if Flame Blade struck as a magical weapon in EE, so I had Aerie and Anomen memorize both Flame Blade and Spiritual Hammer, and stocked up on a bunch of damage spells. We surrounded him and tried out our disablers early on, but the disablers failed--he didn't even show a save vs. spell or spell ineffective message when they hit him; they had no effect at all. When disablers failed, we resorted to damage spells and melee power.
We lose many more potions and exhaust all of our healing spells in the process, but finally we wear him down.
It was a very hard fight. Dragomir had lots of HP, and our disablers were useless against him.
We meet the real Hexxat, who is a lot more awake than the first one, and also kind of rude.
I thought that last line was a come on, but then I realized she was just talking business. Too bad.