Lost a monk to the Blind Albino Wyrmlings in SoD. They apparently have a 15% chance to inflict a sleep effect for 2 rounds via "tail constriction," which has no save. I've never heard of such a thing being usable by wyrmlings. I got very unlucky as they could only hit me on 20s anyway and the sleep effect managed to proc as well. They proceeded to devour my poor monk in 2 rounds. I think the Greenstone Amulet could block this, but I never even thought to use it against them in the first place. Prospective Hall of Famers beware.
I've got another run that I've kind of been doing on the side that I'll post about later.
The 2 rapid deaths at the end of my last session with the Wrecking Crew is probably partly indicative of having played enough with a party for the moment, so I thought I would put that run on hold for a bit. With the recent discussion about the F/M/C I decided to roll one of those up for my long-life challenge.
An hour's play last night saw him: - blinding and commanding Shoal to finish her off quickly - using sleep and command on the nearby ogre clan - killing Algernon for his cloak and Neera for her gem bag - commanding Karlat to die - charming the Beregost sirines - attempting to follow Korax round the basilisks, only for him to die unusually early against the first greater one despite having several free opportunities to paralyze it while it was commanded - sleeping the belt ogre - returning Tenya's bowl and killing the nearby ankheg with a command (no-save) + sleep combination - silencing Silke - silencing and blinding Bassilus to get a weapon upgrade. Blinding / sleeping the nearby hobgoblins - charming Dushai to be able to pull her away from nosy villagers to get her ring - gave Mirianne back a ring. Attempted to give Zhurlong back some boots, but reaction roll was too low and he just stole some cash - using clarity potion on the sirines at the Lighthouse. That gave the level to allow skeletons to support while meleeing the golems at the pirate cave
The only mage spells known at the moment are sleep and blind and, with intelligence so low, that will probably stay the same for a while. With a full selection of cleric spells though that's not really any handicap.
Some more progress this morning saw: - more skeletons allowing the High Hedge golems to be killed before talking to Thalantyr - I wasn't sure whether I would bother killing Drizzt, but the very first hit by a gnoll broke a weapon and it seemed rude after that not to invest the 20 minutes needed to render him unconscious
- Melicamp died, but my reputation of 3 was boosted by Ardrouine and Brage on the way to Nashkel. Further quick gains from Oublek, Hulrik, Mr Colquetle, Joia and Firebead ensured picking up CLW as a Bhaal power - back at the basilisk area skeletons cleaned up the rest of the monsters.
Mutamin was silenced, as was Kirian while her blinded companions were unable to help her - the battle horrors at Durlag's were smited and blinded before being finished off in melee - smite and sling accounted for ghasts inside the tower, while sanctuary and skeletons managed the basilisks. Skeletons also killed the ghost at the second attempt (after a rest) and a blinded Riggilo - the major encounters in the Cloud Peaks were all done using the standard selection of spells, though I forgot that my charisma and reputation were still relatively low and only got the last of Drienne's allowance rather than a reputation upgrade. I also hit the XP cap there - while cleaning up the remaining reputation tasks I took on the Doomsayer. He proved much more resistant to being blinded than I expected, but I finally succeeded at the 19th attempt and meleed him down
- more clean-up saw Bentan charmed and sacrificed to kobolds to get his PfM scroll and Meilum shot down for his bracers - the last area visited before the Nashkel Mine saw the Revenant making up for the Doomsayer by being blinded at the first attempt,
while a silenced Narcillicus was unable to provide and real help for his jellies
- at the mine I just sanctuaried through most of it before silencing Mulahey.
Outside the mine silenced amazons were no match for some skeletons - Nimbul also kept his mouth shut. Tranzig's saves protected him against silence, but not skeletons
- on the way to the bandit camp silence claimed another victim at the FAI in Tarnesh, where I collected the pantaloons - Mulahey's ring allowed 4 skeletons to be summoned at the Bandit Camp and they cut down enough bandits to get in sight of Taurgosz. A sanctuary and armor swap later and he was blinded, commanded and shot down
- I got a bit careless in Tazok's tent and Raemon came to talk to me while I was summoning a skeleton. The skeleton lasted long enough for me to keep out of range of Venkt's horror though and when he was silenced the odds turned heavily against the bandits. I then somehow managed to open the chest without being hit by the lightning bolt trap
I was still unwilling to pay any more than necessary for equipment, so stuck with just sleep and blindness as mage spells on the way through the Cloakwood. At the mine Drasus and Kysus were silenced, which meant Rezdan was an early target. Drasus eventually recovered his tongue (and his wits), but too late to save himself.
Sanctuary allowed a trouble-free trip through the mine. Davaeorn's guard was suborned and helped kill the battle horrors, but he and the remaining skeletons died in Davaeorn's fireball. No problem though - a rest later and some more skeletons ensured the mage was out of tricks.
Moving on to the City, the Helm of Glory was the first target. Drelik lost out to skeletons before Jardak handed over the booty. My starting charisma of 10 was pushed up to 14 by tome, Helm and Cloak and to 20 using friends. That allowed decent value prices and purchases included potions to boost intelligence and ensure all spells were learned. I spent a while doing that and collecting all the items previously stored before I knew identify. I also returned to Durlag's Tower and collected the tome using MSD for protection.
Finally though I was ready to resume work in the City. Jalantha was blinded and commanded on the way to getting one tome, with Marek failing to get a spell away under assault from skeletons hasted for the first time. Ramazith was blinded and one-shotted by a critical on the way to another tome. Degrodel was stuck in a web on the way to the Cloak of Balduran.
At the Iron Throne I equipped Evermemory to provide 8 blindness spells. However, only the first of those took effect as Naaman proved determined to keep his eyes open. Web, fireballs and skeletons helped get rid of the casters though, while Zhalimar was commanded and Gardush held (the only successful hold person in the run).
A return to Candlekeep saw me grab the tomes before sanctuarying past the dopplegangers. Prat's group were struggling in webs until Prat himself was silenced.
Even though I've not used wands this run to date, I still recharged a collection of them to use up my spare money before going to find Slythe - he lost out to some skeletons. Moving on to the palace I didn't prepare any spells beyond the standard skeleton buffs, although I knew that was taking a bit of a risk. The dopplegangers essentially ignored me, which increased the danger substantially, but I thought I was going to get away with it when only one doppleganger was left and it was apparently attacking a skeleton. However, it appeared it had actually been attacking Belt from further away than standard (which explained why Belt had seemed to lose HPs during the fight a bit quicker than expected) and it got the final blow in.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 165 (1234567 8) Lunkh (human male Inquisitor, Gate70); Sparky (gnome female Cleric of Talos, Grond0) De'Arnise keep Sparky used a flame blade and flamestrike against a few trolls while Lunkh used fire arrows against some others. A Yuan-ti mage was no match for an Inquisitor and the closest moment we had was when Sparky protected Lunkh from lightning only for a ricochet to frazzle her badly. After protecting herself a repeat performance was avoided and the keep was ours.
Umar Lunkh checked whether Sparky was a suitable level to turn undead, and the answer was YES. Unfortunately her alignment saw the enemies converted to our cause which made it difficult to work out who was who or what was what. Still, we figured it out and although not as satisfying as undead-popping it proved to be rather effective with a little bit of micro-management (client turns undead, host controls them).
Thax'llsillyia fought off five skeleton warriors and set about us. Lunkh almost won through but had to run away first. Thaxxy chased after him but he glugged an oil of speed and made sure the dragon took shortcuts through burning fires and that led to a toasty victory.
True Sight kept the Shade Lord visible for Sparky's flail, while Lunkh beat down Patrick and the Shadow Altar.
Windspear Having barely defeated one dragon, Lunk felt confident enough to take on a second of the red variety. First though the minions, where Sparky was given the best equipment (ring of Gaxx, helm of Balduran, cloak of the sewers) and took on all comers.
So, Firkraag - fancy your chances?
All was going well right up to when we had to retreat. Sparky found out her fire protection had either been dispelled or run it's due course. Having been burnt down to 30's hit points she deigned not to heal or retreat and pressed on.
Firkraag hit again. Sparky runs, and manages a multiplayer snafu - instead of fleeing through a doorway she slams the door shut thereby sealing herself in with a dragon. It doesn't look good and a mere moment later the gore setting is confirmed.
With Sparky gone forever Lunkh drops a pile of looted gear and fishes in his potion bag. A few potions later he is in for melee but a mere round or so later he is running away badly wounded. He fires an acid arrow and notices Firkraag does not follow due to the limited room available. A few more arrows follow then Firkraag drops a fiery breath and Lunkh braces for impact.
He then realises the original potion giving 50% fire resistance was still active as was a second used in the mass potion gulp. With immunity to fire he looses off several more arrows and the dragon falls to the ground.
Lunkh can see a gleaming sword on the floor - the point of coming here. Without Sparky though he turns and walks away, leaving the sword there for the next gallant adventurer to happen across. Melissan, and Irenicus, will have to regard Lunkh as one who got away and refused to continue without a trusty sidekick.
Hubblepot Gogglebur, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist, BG2EE SoA Update 3 Last BG1EE update found here Last SoD update found here BG2EE SoA updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
We start by spending some of our hard-earned gold: Mazzy gets Azuredge +3. We also shell out 15000 gold to Gaelan Bayle, and do battle with Lassal: The latter gets hit repeatedly by Azuredge, but unfortunately does not fail his save. Lassal further fuels my hatred of Improved Vampires as he disappears and reappars twice during the fight (so Mazzy's NPP expires and she gets Level Drained).
En route to the Bridge district, we get nameless scrubs ambushing us, with predictable results.
How are these scrubs so powerful? Our tanks may as well be wearing papier maché armour for all the good it does them. Though to be fair, part of the problem is we had a spell selection specially tailored to Vampires. We scramble together some healing with the help of Wondrous Recall and press on to the Bridge district, grabbing the Horn of Valhalla on the way to the Inn.
Caelos and Jaylos are treated to dual Sunfires from Hubblepot (I wanted to save these for the Crypts, but with our healing already depleted we'll have to rest anyway). I even indulge in letting Hubblepot under MI/Stoneskin tank Gracen.
We return to our favourite haunt, the Copper Coronet, and rest up. Alright, off to the Gr-
Ooooh... that's going to be a problem. Normally you can talk the Harpers out of killing you, but with reputation at 11 thanks to SCS reputation-gain reduction, they won't have it. We don't have the spells for dealing with humanoid enemies...
Yep, we are in trouble. While common wisdom states that you always kill the Mage first, we had but a single True Sight prepared, which said Mage of course managed to interrupt with MMM (why do I never hit enemy Clerics in Plate Mail when I throw MMM at them?!). And the melee brutes are absolutely horrendous, landing near every hit regardless who stands up to them. We manage to kill the Cleric, but we're badly battered.
We keep taking serious damage, but Anomen is continuously summoning Skeleton Warriors to hold off the melee brutes. Then both Anomen and Yoshimo get Confused. I cheese it a bit and have Anomen unequip his weapons before the spell hits, but do not manage to do so for Yoshimo... so Anomen beats some Commoner unconscious, with another two turning hostile. By some minor miracle, Yoshimo targets either the Harpers or our own party members while confused... and our reputation stays intact.
Jaheira got one round's breathing room, and was able to get Iron Skins up. With that in place, she got a Harm cast... and that's all the Harper Thief wrote.
Jaheira casts a second Harm! And it bugs out; the spell casts successfully, but she never gets the Harm weapon. Maybe you need to wait for the first Harm spell to fizze (3 rounds) first? Finally, Reviane falls to concerted attacks.
Alright, alright. I think we're going to live. It's just the Dwarven Fighter with a Warhammer, and the Elven Mage left. But that Dwarf is dynamite... anything that goes near gets clobbered, and with Blunt damage, he makes a mockery of our attempts to summon Skeleton Warriors to hold him off. Apparently he even has 66% resistance to Fire! What the frick?
Friggin' Dwarf... we end up having to kite him around, but even then, no one can hit him. You know you're desperate when you resort to using Wands of Magic Missile, but that's what we end up doing. Several charges later, the dread Dwarf falls.
There's just the Elven Mage left, and Minsc has literally tanked his entire spellbook (he had almost no damage spells thankfully, it was all Enchantment and Illusion), so he is swiftly defeated. We have victory!
Usually I move much faster than this through Chapter 2, and thus the Harpers appear when we emerge from the Underdark (at which point we usually have high enough reputation that they can be dissuaded from attacking), so I was unprepared for how tough this fight was. Furthermore, we had all the wrong spells for it (long-term buffs that we simply had no time to stand still to cast, no humanoid disablers, too few means of dispelling Illusions, and area-of-effect Fire damage with innocent bystanders), and thus we cut it perilously close. We got lucky in more than one respect too, as somehow Yoshimo didn't go postal on some poor Commoner while Confused.
We scoop up the loot (mostly unremarkable, though Mazzy gets a nice upgrade in a Full Plate Mail and a Small Shield +1), and retreat right back into the Copper Coronet. Having witnessed our tanks once again get annihilated in close combat, I think we'll go after Mencar before proceeding with the plot: We need every frontliner in Full Plate Mail, and Mencar has a suit of it.
So, we'll take down Mencar's crew, then push as far as we can into the Crypts (I've given up on getting through there on one rest... we'll just get ambushed by bandit scrubs en route and have half the party trashed senseless).
... I think Dwarfs might replace Trolls as the party's nemesis. So, what happened: Smaeluv dropped quickly. Brennan got a single backstab off, but we were able to kill him before he ran away (good!). By now Mencar had killed four Skeleton Warriors on his own and started chasing our frontliners. Pooky committed suicide via Lightning Bolt, taking Yoshimo down with him, and Amon just did what Mages do, i.e. be a nuisance. In hindsight, I should've just called up a few Fire Elementals or Aerial Servants: There's nothing Mencar or Brennan can do to them.
So, that's all our healing expended pretty much (Wondrous Recall saves us as always, allowing Anomen to Raise Yoshimo and toss a Mass Cure into the mix... we make up the difference by CLW, CMW and a lot of Goodberries). Let's see how far into the Crypts we get.
We arrive at the Crypts unimpeded. For once, something goes according to plan, as the Spiders are incapable of hurting a summoned Fire Elemental, leaving it free to mop them all up on its own (a Phase Spider teleports to Jaheira and poisons her twice in a row, but that's the only damage we sustain while clearing out the Spiders here).
Pai'Na also goes (almost) according to plan. Mazzy gets Protection from Fire + Resist Fire/Cold, is sent charging in, and then has a Fireball dropped on her, killing all the Spiders. Pai'Na gets an initial Chaos off, which only affects Yoshimo, and then a Chromatic Orb at Hubblepot (I was a little concerned, but realized afterwards that with the +6 save bonus, it is impossible for him to fail his save against that). Pai'Na falls, and we get the Spider Figurine, a few good scrolls (for Imoen, Hubblepot already knows Spider Spawn and Spell Immunity) and the Ioun Stone, which goes to Minsc. I'll try it out and see if he takes too many criticals for it to be worth it.
Alright. We meet up with the Mage, who is subsequently killed (his Staff Mace +2 going to Jaheira). Grimwarders have only non-magical weapons, and so (although it takes a while) another Fire Elemental can destroy them in total safety. One Grimwarder even dropped a Mordenkainen's Sword scroll.. good stuff.
Alright.. Vampire time. We'll use only Minsc and Mazzy, Minsc wearing the Amulet of Power, Mazzy under Chaotic Commands and NPP. We only manage to scrape together two Chaotic Commands though (and I put one on Jaheira just in case, since she hovers near the back ready to re-apply NPP mid-combat if necessary), so there's no way we'll have time for the whole thing.
Minsc pulls Gellal. And the vile Vampire fails his save on the second Azuredge hit! Hooray!
The Greater Ghoul is swiftly dispatched, the Fire Elemental acting as tank (a Fledgling Vampire likewise succumbs to Azuredge before even getting an attack in). We go after the Clay Golem guarding the Vampire crypts, and it drops in moments.
Alright... there are four Vampiric encounters left: Durst and his cronies to the north, the ambush downstairs, Tanova and her attendant Fledgling Vampire, and finally Lassal. Oh, and of course Bodhi. We've got literally no healing apart from half a dozen Potions of Extra Healing, one set of buffs, and one NPP. Yeah... we're going to have to retreat, rest and return. But we've got enough juice to clear Durst out. Since we're leaving after this, we go all-in: Four Skeleton Warriors from Anomen, and five traps from Yoshimo (he failed to set one). The Fledgling Vampire is undone by traps, Durst fails his save against Azuredge and disintegrates into dust, and the Greater Ghoul is helpless before our wall-o'-bones. Hooray!
Azuredge certainly is a little cheesy.. but Improved Vampires have it coming. We gather up the Mace of Disruption for Minsc. For a moment, I contemplate going after Tanova, but I see no reality in which that would go smoothly, so we opt against it. The Skeleton Warriors escort us out of the tombs, Hubblepot applies Invisibility 10' Radius, and we retreat to the Copper Coronet.
Yeah, you better run! Scrubs! We rest up, and return, making our way into the lower Vampiric crypts.
The Fledgling Vampires are much less dangerous than their named counterparts. And they make themselves even more irrelevant by being absolutely desperate to reach Mazzy.. to the point where they simply attempt to scuff our Skeleton Warriors out of the way (to no effect whatsoever), not even getting a single attack in before Azuredge ends them.
The magical Scale Mail here is actually an upgrade for Jaheira, heh. We head back upstairs. The Fledgling Vampire in the eastern pathways is swiftly destroyed, but Tanova proves a problem, as always (once she knows you're there, she starts seeking the party out instead of standing in place and wasting her spells on summons). She gleefully disassembles our Skeleton Warriors, and Mazzy gets Dominated! A Chaotic Commands landed on her a moment after the Domination kicked in. Hrmph.
However, we manage to hold Tanova off long enough for Hubblepot to get True Sight + Breach out the door. And we do have a second weapon of undead mass destruction...
Wow, we're almost through! Jaheira (under Iron Skins) heads east and attracts the attention of Lassal. He summons some Giant Rats that do precisely 1 damage per hit to our Skeleton Warriors (I assume the Rats have some kind of nasty poison or disease effect on-hit), but falls to Azuredge before accomplishing much else.
All that remains is Bodhi. Maybe we should retreat and rest.. naah, we're feeling lucky! Yoshimo sets up four traps, we boost our summoned ranks with Kitthix and the Berserk Warrior, apply buffs, and stake Lassal. Bodhi pops, drops to Injured, deals 40 damage to everything in melee range with her Death Touch (killing all our summons, since they were quite injured from Tanova), and proceeds to beat the living tar out of Minsc, Mazzy and Jaheira. We can't bring her below Injured, and so it ends with Mazzy utilizing her two Haste innates to kite Bodhi around, until Bodhi tires of the chase.
Poor Minsc was left with 4 HP. But still: We did it! Hooray! The Vampires are cleared out (almost entirely thanks to liberal use of Azuredge), we have their treasures, and the way now lies open to Brynnlaw!
Under Invisibility 10' Radius (never leave home without it) the party falls back to the Copper Coronet. We'll rest up briefly, but Imoen's rescue is almost at hand! And with it a much-needed boost in the party's arcane potency.
Hubblepot remains a L10/L11 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
Trio Update Yeldon - half-elf cleric/ranger, protagonist (corey_russell) Denko - human dark moon monk (Gate70) Keras - dwarven kensai (Grond0)
We found ourselves in D'Arnise Keep. The Trio did quite well here, and there weren't any problems. Torgal was defeated, and the Keep was saved.
We realized we hadn't even been to the Bridge District, so we went there to get the Horn of Valhalla. We also solved the skinner murders. The Rune Assassins were defeated, but they very nearly chunked Denko - Tymora was smiling at him today.
We also avenged the man buried alive and got the boots of avoidance.
We ran into a vampire ambush about this time. Unfortunately Keras got seen first. Keras ran and Yeldon was able to get the attention of one. Denko was near Keras and the vampires were out of sight of Keras - Grond0 thought ah, they are after Denko and Keras stopped moving - nope the vampires were giving Keras a false of security and killed Keras. Yeldon and Gate70 did beat the vampires and resurrected their friend.
We decided to venture into the Temple District and take on Tarnor's Gang. We thought we had a pretty good plan of silences, hold persons, skeleton distractions, and the genie lamp's stinking cloud. Our problem though was Keras couldn't wait to get into the action, Tarnor's whole gang concentrated on Keras and killed Keras. But Denko and Yeldon were able to carry the day, and their friend was once more resurrected.
With two deaths in the session already, it was pretty clear by this point that we really should get a rod of resurrection - oh hey maybe a nearby mage has one. Keras took a play out of the vampires' book by first lulling Mekrath to a false sense of security by agreeing to get the mirror for him. Then the party surrounded Mekrath and killed him pretty much immediately. We now have a rod of resurrection.
We had a little bit of time left, and were just able to work on exposing Maevar. The only part of this that is tricky is fighting the Cowled Wizard for Edwin. So Yeldon put a huge number of buffs on Keras so that Keras can safely solo that mage. It was all for naught, as Keras managed to kill the mage before the mage could even finish buffing.
Eventually we had to destroy Maevar and his allies. Denko got badly hurt, but other than that, it was pretty smooth, silences and skeletons once again assuring victory. We got our reward and saved our session here.
Back at it again trying another kit by Artemius_I, the Warhorn Shaman. It's basically an offense-oriented shaman with a slight bit of Berserker thrown in. The kit's abilities can be found here.
Playing Insane (no bonus damage, just extra spawns in SoD). Relevant mods: -Tweaks Anthology -IWDification -Enchant the Missile Launchers -Improved Shamanic Dance v4
Introducing Garos the Warhorn Shaman: First thing's first: let's test out the spirits.
Man, these guys are awesome. The warriors enrage themselves as soon as they see an enemy while the archers have Called Shot, vastly improving their effectiveness. Improved Shamanic Dance makes it so you can at least move a little bit while performing the dance. You can get the same results without the mod, but it takes careful timing to do so, similar to how the Bard Song can be maintained despite performing other actions. With level 3 in hand, I head over to the Beregost Temple for some more easy levels by having the spirits kill the wolf pack and the sirenes.
I think at this time, I give back Tenya's bowl and go up to Ulgoth's Beard, kill Dushai, then go basilisk hunting. I don't remember because it's been a a few days since I played this character and I didn't take screenshots in between leveling from Kelddath's sirenes and leveling up later from Farmer Brun. But I can say for certain with Korax leading the way backed up by my spirit bros, there is nothing to fear from Basilisk Country. No Basilisk Loop this time.
I think I did the ankheg nest next. Spirits can usually kill an ankheg after I draw its attention and before it hurts me too badly. I level up from returning Farmer Brun's son, which makes this level 6. Now I can summon the 2nd tier of warrior spirits: the berserkers. They come in dual-axe and two-hander sword varieties. I prefer the two-handers as they seem to hit the most often and the hardest compared to the dual-axe berserker.
I do some wilderness quests because my reputation is pretty bad and I don't want to go into Nashkel until its at least 4 or 5. I'm pretty sure I kill the pair of Battle Horrors (or was it Doom Guards?) outside Durlag's Tower. I level up again off Shoal.
Since the spirits are immune to mind-affecting spells, I go out for more sirine hunting. My tactic to get the spirits to attack the sirines is to walk out of the spirits' sight range so they'll follow me, then lead them to the sirenes by clicking the nearby area where the sirines are located. The spirits will instead walk there as they anticipate where I'm going, causing them to spot the sirenes and begin attacking them. However, the spirits always seem to NEED to come back and bump into me to give me a hug or something before attacking, so it does come with a risk, but you just have to position yourself so that the spirit is the nearest target to a sirene so it will get spells cast at it instead of having them cast at you.
Using this tactic, I level up off Sil's group for level 9.
The Flesh Golems inside the cave are killed and I consume the CON tome. That's about it for the easy levels, so I progress the main plot and do other wilderness quests that yield interesting loot. Around this time I discover that using non-world-map area transitions causes me to summon more spirits and the already-summoned spirits will follow me through the transition. I'm not sure if this behavior is native to the Shaman, caused by Improved Shamanic Dance, or by the Warhorn Shaman kit. It's pretty amusing and I use it to kill Dave.
Access to the city is now granted, so I start doing the sidequests for their generous XP rewards. I get level 10 from Desreta and Vay'Ya, learning Chaotic Commands. Finally.
I enter the Ogre Magi house and get reminded that Panic is not one of the things that Chaotic Commands protects against. Damn it. I also forget that Rallying Cry is what I should've used to prevent Panic in the first place.
Fortunately, I managed to survive while panicked. Horror wore off shortly after that screenshot was taken and I casted Sanctuary to heal myself with Cure Serious Wounds. Using my self-made NWN-style Cure Wounds spell line, 3d8+10 HP is enough to get me back to a comfortable HP threshold and I defeat the rest of the ogres.
Toward the end of BG's sidequest hell, I level up off Marek for level 11.
Up next is the Iron Throne. I get behind them with Sanctuary and cast Insect Plague at one of the spellcasters while they're still neutral, then walk toward Zhalimar Cloudwulfe to get them hostile while the swarm was still in flight. The swarm hits all of them as I planned and I start summoning my spirit bros. With their initial spellcasting negated, they make mincemeat of them.
At the Candlekeep Catacombs, I use the Violet Potion to crack open the tomb containing the STR tome. I ignore the WIS tome because there's 4 traps guarding it and I'm super squishy while the Violet Potion is active. Not worth the risk.
Prat's group suffers the same fate as Cloudwulfe's. Time for TotSC. Now that I'm sufficiently leveled, I can actually defend myself at range. At the Ice Island, I test out Fury of the Winds, which, for 1 turn, gives Haste and makes my weapons count as +3, in addition to extra cold+electrical damage on hit (save vs. spell for half damage). With Insect Plague, and Arrows of Biting+Fury of the Winds, these mages never stood a chance.
Next post will be Durlag's Tower and the rest of BG. Garos - Warhorn Shaman 11
Forgot to spoil the first entry. Oh well, I'll just leave it.
At Durlag's Tower, I get on the roof and drink a Potion of Magic Shielding for automatic saving throw successes. With Fury of the Winds, I shoot the basilisks with acid arrows, dealing heavy elemental damage. I manage to kill them all before Fury of the Winds expires. Inside the dungeon, I cast Protection from Lightning and use the Ring of Fire Resistance and a potion of fire resistance. I try summoning my spirits to beat the Greater Doppelgangers in the library, but they get overwhelmed and I have to kite them with my bow and boots of speed. The spirits can handle the rest of the level, but I don't trust them against the warders. I buff up with Storm Barrier and Fury of the Winds and start the fight with Insect Plague. They'll take damage twice as fast since they're hasted.
My AC isn't very good since the heaviest armor I can wear is just studded leather. They get some hits on me, but Storm Barrier helps retaliate. I drink a potion of regeneration and also an Oil of Speed to speed up the regeneration and kite the warders with my bow. Thanks to Insect Plague, it doesn't take too many hits to kill them.
Levels 2 and 3 go well enough. I reach the chessboard and copy Spaz's trap abuse strategy, buffing with Protection from Lightning and using boots of speed to trigger more traps at once.
Level 4 goes just fine. Thanks to the Ring of Free Action, I can move at normal speed while dancing, so it's just a matter of escorting the spirits to where they need to go. Against the Demon Knight, I approach from the side and shatter the mirror immediately after it initiates dialogue. The Demon Knight's Mirror Fiend kills the real version, and it dies after killing its real self. I kill the leftover mirror fiend myself.
I'm not fighting Aec'Letec, so I just leave the tower behind and drop Soultaker outside. I charm Ithtyl Calantryn, something I've never done before, and she's pretty great. I bring her to the coronation because I'm pretty sure my spirits can't do this by themselves. Ithtyl casts Slow and Chaos on the Doppelgangers, though only Chaos seems to work. Liia dies, as usual, but Belt still lives.
Inside the thieves' maze, I level up to 12 from the Doom Guards. For my first 6th level spell, Harm seems like a tempting option but I decide to go with Conjure Fire Elemental instead. I also get access to the 3rd tier of spirit: Ancestral Spirits. These spirits are fighter/cleric and cast DuHM before attacking. They have other spells memorized, but I haven't seen them use any yet.
The fire elemental does the tanking because its immune to +1 weapons and less. With access to level 6 spells, I also gain Wrath of the Skies, which does 1d10 cold+electrical/round, reduces enemies' magic resistance by 50%, and reduces their AC by 4. Against Sarevok's Undercity party, I send in the fire elemental, cast Insect Plague, followed by Wrath of the Skies, and then Fury of the Winds as I assist the fire elemental. I feel like the Stormlord Himself!
Now for Sarevok. I summon a fire elemental, initiate Sarevok's dialogue which causes Semaj to teleport forward, then go invisible. He won't activate his sequencer unless he can see me, so he wastes his time on the elemental instead. A lightning bolt rebounds off the elemental and Semaj ends up killing himself.
I command the fire elemental to move toward the throne, which aggros the rest of Sarevok's party. They can't touch the elemental because their weapons aren't enchanted high enough. Not even Sarevok can hurt it. Perfect opportunity for Insect Plague as they are all Hasted and Angelo is still casting spells. I follow up again with Wrath of the Skies and start using acid arrows imbued with Fury of the Winds. I kill Angelo with an acid arrow; Tazok dies to the elemental and Sarevok is devoured by the insect swarm.
My FMC got through SoD all right. With two spells ported from IWD on Edwin, Emotion: Hope and Emotion: Rage, the whole party had +2 to saves, +3 to hit, and +5 to damage for 50 rounds every day. The damage bonus synergized brilliantly with Corwin's high APR, and as it happens, the mod-introduced Indira NPC from BG actually continued into SoD, which meant we had a fighter/mage specializing in shortbows for even more APR.
We used Fireballs and brute force to stomp on most of the enemies in SoD, taking care to cover a few dangerous vulnerabilities, like using Protection from Poison scrolls to block the poison breath attacks in the Forest of Wyrms (EE v2.5 now makes the scrolls grant full immunity to poison damage). Enemy mages can be problematic in SoD, but we saved up a lot of Arrows of Dispelling from BG, rendering each one pretty much helpless.
Even without recharging wands, we ended up with far more wand charges than we ever needed. Corwin, Edwin, Indira and Charname all had the damage output to steamroll the opposition without dipping into limited resources. By the time we arrived at the Underground River, we could just spam Fireballs to speed things up.
I fought more battles than normal, but I still avoided some optional ones I didn't like, including most of the Underground River, Hephernaan's human form, and the dead magic zone (which I consider to be essentially a death trap).
This time, we didn't smuggle any gear into BG2, so we enter SoA completely broke. I've gotten kind of tired of that trick; it encourages intensive hoarding and the long-term rewards are actually pretty crummy. Having 200 Wand of Fire charges doesn't really do much by the time you reach BG2. All it really did was make me fuss over resources in BG and SoD to make early BG2 easier, even though BG2 is the easiest game for me by far.
A fatigue bug nearly killed Charname in Chateau Irenicus. The Lightning Mephits in my install have ranged lightning bolt attacks that can't be dodged, and we were taking 16 damage per hit because Charname had -10 luck from all the fatigue that apparently came from traveling from Dragonspear Castle to Athkatla without resting.
We accidentally triggered a Cowled Wizard ambush while buffing for the fight with Galvarey. We got hit by a Comet spell with a level 10 party of 4, instantly wiping out Jan and Edwin and nearly killing Jaheira. Charname took zero damage because I always buff them with Protection from Fire, and we fled the map under Invisibility.
Upon arrival to Baldur's Gate, Saoirse went for a shopping spree at Sorcerous Sundries for approximately 25,000 GP. But it was no vanity spending - with all the tactical ammunition, potions, arcane scrolls (for the purposes of scribing as well as multiple copies of certain spells for long fights) and green protection scrolls, we should now be ready to handle the challenges that await us. Notable additions to our spell book include Polymorph: Self, Teleportation Field, MGoI, Minor Spell Deflection, Haste and Slow. Saorise then concludes her day with a well deserved hot bath and cold beer at the Elfsong Tavern.
Before taking the ride back to Candlekeep, our only major activities involved the dealings with Marek & Lothander and Ramazith. I'm pretty certain that I followed the dialogue with Ragefast in the same diplomatic manner as usual, however, this time he went aggro and attacked (maybe a similar change in the script as the one regarding Greywolf's behaviour, as described earlier in this thread?).
Saorise simply retreated under invisibility and escalated the issue to Ramazith.
Now that we've collected Eagle Bow and Ring of Protection +2, we're ready to proceed to the Iron Throne compound. Preferring subtlety over force, Saorise avoids the war party on the top floor entirely.
Potion of Magic Blocking is sufficient to avoid the ogre magi ambush at Candlekeep. Once inside the catacombs, Saorise uses Potions of Perception and a hasted jelly form via Polymorph: Self to tackle the traps and locks protecting the two tomes (while maintainig invisibility / stealth to avoid enemies).
Moving out of my comfort zone, I decided to face Prat for once - mostly in order to get my hands on the Wraithform scroll (carried by Sakul) for the first time in my playthroughs. Using the narrow corridors to separate and repeatedly backstab his party members, Saoirse is able to take down everyone except Prat, whom is eventually left behind unharmed.
Obviously, Bor was our first target. Tam gets blinded, stumbles into Web and is quickly taken down via dual-wielding Whistling Sword and Rashad's Talon. Sakul finally yields his treasures to a backstab.
Short note on Wraitform: I was hoping for the spell to give some extra "illusionist" flavour to Saorise. Unfortunately, it not only prohibits you from casting spells but also prevents access to special abilities (!), so it doesn't provide any synergies with Polymorph: Self and sequencers. Therefore, I'm not sure if I'll find some relevant use to it.
Back in Baldur's Gate, it's time to visit the Blushing Mermaid to confront Slythe. Saoirse enters the cellar invisible and applies her regular buffs routine along with Minor Spell Deflection, Fire Shield: Red and Polymorph: Self. Since I've been unable to separate Slythe from Krystin in my recent runs, the Violet Potion is still sitting in Saorise's case in anticipation of Remove Magic from Krystin.
Saorise frustrates Slythe's backstabbing attempts by shifting into the jelly form, while Fire Shield does its work.
Following a critical hit by the jelly, he was just about to get finished by a Potion of Firebreath but abjuration incantation from Krystin meant that a dispel was on its way.
Keeping her aura clear, Saorise quaffs a PoI instead.
We rebuff with Potion of Defense, Shield, Oil of Speed, Potion of Mind Focusing, Potion of Regeneration, Blur, MIs and Improved Invisibility and break the invisibility by feeding Slythe his own medicine.
Slythe: "Hey, fellas! Guess what time it is? Yep, you got it: It's time to die." Saorise: "Excuse me, sir, but that does not seem to be the case - according to my watch it's precisely let's-burn-your-eyes-to-ashes o'clock."
Krystin eventually pulls out a Greater Malison cast but it's too late for Slythe. We collect the documents together with our new short sword and run for the palace.
This is Saoirse's character record right before engaging Belt in the palace.
She's dual-wielding Short Sword of Backstabbing with Whistling Sword and running Violet Potion, Potion of Agility, Potion of Fortitude, Potion of Fire Resistance, Potion of Mind Focusing, Potion of Magic Shielding, Potion of Power, Oil of Speed, Ghost Armor, Shield, Pro Evil, Minor Spell Deflection, Blur, MIs, Improved Invisibility and DuHM. She's also summoned some minions via Wand of Summoning and there's a telefield established in the room.
En garde, ye doppes!
Saoirse opens with Dispelling Arrows and sets the stage with a Malison scroll in preparation for further disablers. However, a large group of the doppelgangers gets teleported right next to Liia and that's it for her.
Further spells are launched into the midst of the fray - Slow by Saoirse and Chaos by the doppelganger mage.
Mercifully, Belt retains his senses and stays unaffected by the confusion. Dispelled and slowed, the melee attackers make easy targets and, one by one, we take them down with swords (while Belt faces his own confused mercenaries).
Saorise then swiflty tracks down the mage before he can put any more pressure on the lone surviving duke. She dispels his MIs and carves through his Stoneskins.
His death wish in the form of Remove Magic remains unanswered and bounces off in vain.
With all the mercenaries dead (mostly by Belt's hand), we summon more monsters to act as cannon fodder for Sarevok. And before he can cleave his way out, he resigns.
I realize that our task to protect the dukes could have easily failed. Having the benefit of hindsight, I think that the telefield was a pretty bad idea and that the spell is not well suited for the specific circumstances of the palace fight (crowed space with lots of allies combined with vulnerable dukes). I'd recommend against using it there in solo games.
Back in Baldur's Gate the party saves Duke Eltan, and Tamoko points them to Slythe and Krystin in the Undercellars. Slythe is lured into Gilyn's deadly traps while Krystin fails to get rid of Yeslick and Branwen's skeleton warriors.
Gilyn takes Slythe's short sword of backstabbing +3 as his standard melee weapon. His 4th pip had gone to short swords, so he is now proficient in all the typical elf weapons (shortbows, longswords and short swords).
The companions invite themselves to the Ducal Palace for Sarevok's ceremony. Gilyn places his traps in the main room, and Xan, Branwen, Yeslick, and Faldorn do their summoning and pre-buffing routine. Yeslick and the skeletons wade into melee. Kivan focuses his dispelling arrows on the Mage forcing it to retreat. Gilyn does a bit of backstabbing with his new blade.
The battle is a success with both Dukes surviving. Sarevok however slays Liia Jannath in frustration, but thankfully not Belt, before he's spirited away by Winski Perorate.
Next stop is the Undercity. At this point the party have their mind only on getting Sarevok and any remaining adherents. Invisible, they can afford to ignore a band of seemingly lost adventurers in the Undercity but Gilyn does stop to convince Tamoko that not all Bhaalspawn are alike. They enter Sarevok's sanctum. Gilyn sets some snares and Branwen and Yeslick summon their skeletons. Gilyn approaches Sarevok who rushes toward the elf (triggering the snares without taking any damage; should have placed them much closer to the entrance). But then Kivan appears from the shadows to remove the warrior's haste with one of his trusty dispelling arrows.
Kivan and Gilyn retreat and see Sarevok vent his wrath on the summoned skeletons. Semaj and Angelo on the other hand focus on the party. Semaj casts a Remove at Kivan, so the ranger moves away from the others. A moment later Angelo also opens with a Remove Magic while Semaj casts a Chaos at Kivan. This is actually pretty nice teamwork by the two mages, though they would have been even more successful if Semaj had cast the Remove and Angelo the Chaos. Angelo is a fighter/mage multi after all, so his Remove isn't as powerful. Kivan already stripped of his buffs lets the Remove hit him, then swigs a potion of magic blocking to avert the Chaos. Gilyn's buffs are unaffected by Angelo's remove and he's out of the AoE of Semaj's Chaos.
Kivan launches his dispelling arrows at both wizards. They have defensive sequencers/contingencies (Stoneskin, Invisibility/MI). When both wizards go invisible, Faldorn reveals them with a single Invisibility Purge.
Gilyn and Kivan keep the pressure on them with dispelling and acid arrows. The mages' offensive output is minimal: Semaj wastes a Skull Trap on Kivan who's still protected by magic blocking, and Angelo uses his wand of lightning on Yeslick. But with his Dwarven saves and boots of grounding he takes almost no damage. More problematic is that a Confusion comes his way just as he's casting his innate Dispel Magic. He finishes the spell and gets a dispelling arrow from Kivan when the Confusion kicks in. At near death status a desperate Semaj throws a Fireball at Kivan but with the right gear and a potion of fire resistance he takes not more than a single point of damage. Kivan and Gilyn finish off Semaj. Angelo is then still in pretty good health despite the efforts of Yeslick, Xan (who has summoned a Phase Spider to help out), Branwen and Faldorn, until the latter two simultaneously use their wands of the heavens on their foe.
The companions dispatch the skeleton warriors and move on to Sarevok, Diarmid (whose PfMagic sphere was still in effect), and Tazok. Faldorn casts her Insect Plague, better late than never. Initially it only really affects Tazok, who is soon slain by Gilyn, as Sarevok is invulnerable until all his aides are dispatched. Diarmid gets a dispelling arrow from Kivan (to remove his haste) and succumbs to the party's barrage of missiles.
At this point Faldorn's Insect Plague does eat away at Sarevok's health. More arrows and bullets follow and sooner rather than later Branwen gets the kill.
@Borco, thank you for your appreciation! It's been a nice run. I liked how @aldain's Cleric/Illusionist started doing the main quests at rather low levels and wanted to try the same. For a long time the party felt somewhat underleveled and underequipped. Eventually though, with the completionist approach, the party finished ended up strong anyway. Good luck with the last bit! And let's meet up north
Now in SoD, I'll get to see what the Ancestral Spirits are capable of when faced with multiple enemies. Looks like they'll also cast Hold Person, Defensive Harmony, and Bless when they get the chance.
A fire elemental and 3 spirits are just barely enough to defeat the first undead horde of the dungeon. The elemental dies to the cadaverous undead in the next room, but the spirits are conveniently immune to their additional on-hit effects. I summon an Elder fire elemental for the group of mercs guarding the hallway to Korlasz, but it eventually killed and the spirits are having trouble dealing with the mercs. I fall back and stop dancing to summon another elemental.
Korlasz is thoroughly rekt by Insect Swarm as the spirits and fire elemental do cleanup duty. Nothing noteworthy happens in the Coldhearth dungeon, though I do have to resort to using a scroll of Protection from Run-Ending Assholes, as the tides of undead overwhelm my spirit bros. The fire elemental is not quite as helpful as it usually is since it can be hit by the more powerful undead. I finally break out the Arrows of Detonation that I've been saving to soften up undead, though I'm careful not to use more than 1 or 2 per group. I level up to 13 in the easternmost pillar puzzle room.
Coldhearth is dealt with using the Secret Revealed and finished off with acid arrows.
Adventures in the Troll Claw Woods and the first half of the temple of Cyric aren't really anything to write home about, although I always love using Insect Plague when I get the chance.
The Neothelid is more annoying than difficult. When it pops out from the floor, it instantly and automatically sinks back through the floor if you move a certain distance away from it, making it so you can't click its circle to attack it. This is a bit problematic because I get more attacks/round using a bow than meleeing, and I don't want to find out if the Neothelid has any dumb on-hit effects. I try casting Harm, but the damn thing waits out the 2 round duration.
Since it won't stop hiding, I cast Fury of the Winds and get in close to melee it, dealing more damage than I thought I would. But I retreat after one attack and try to see if I can shoot it from just within range so it doesn't hide. It eventually goes down.
For Darskhelin and co., I use another Insect Plague to prevent spellcasting and lead them into a Wrath of the Skies. I kite them around with Boots of Speed and then cast Fury of the Winds to go even faster and do extra damage.
I head over to Bridgefort and enter the crusader camp, stealing the Scroll of Impactful Doom and getting Dragonscale Armor made. Since it's nighttime, I visit the potion mages topside and kill the Greater Feyr for 13k XP.
I deal with the Spellstone and make Void-Tipped Arrows out of it to save for Belhifet. I get the Flaming Fist to move on Bridgefort and the siege begins. I tag the named mages with Arrows of Dispelling and finish them off with acid arrows, covering big groups of enemies with Insect Plague. I use a couple of Arrows of Detonation buffed with Fury of the Winds to do massive AoE damage, as the extra cold+electrical damage applies to each enemy in the AoE.
As the crusaders crumble, I bring out Wrath of the Skies to finish off stragglers. The Barghest dies last.
At the bridge, I learned from my previous failed playthrough with a monk that killing the fire elemental summoned by the mage is actually enough to win that fight, as the mage will turn neutral and run away afterward if it's killed. But I kill the mage instead by using Arrows of Dispelling followed up by Insect Plague.
From giving the Dusty Chicken a bath in the well and killing the Well Spirit, I'm close to a level up. I complete the traitor quest for level 14, learning Nature's Beauty, though I was also inclined to go with Earthquake because of its huge -6 save vs. spell. I also learn Undying Fervor at this spell level. By casting it, I do 50% more physical damage and can negate death by HP loss for 1 turn. It also gives immunity to several instant-death effects.
Nature's Beauty already proves to be exceptionally useful by rendering entire groups of enemies basically immobile. The instant death effect to humanoids is just gravy.
Then in the Underground River's exterior, I give Undying Fervor a try. These crusaders are really annoying, especially the archers, so this spell basically lets me do whatever I want to them for 1 turn. I pop a Sanctuary early and heal up before Fervor's duration runs out.
Up next is the Underground River interior and Dragonspear castle. Garos - Warhorn Shaman 14
Still running the Violet Potion despite taking a nap after the Ducal Palace fight, Saoirse opts for Potion of Agility, Potion of Fortitude and light pre-buffs (Potion of Defense, Mind Focusing, Oil of Speed) in preparation for the final battle. She's memorized Improved Invisibility (2x) as her L4 spells and her scroll case remains comfortably full.
Here's the inventory screen for the record (honestly, I have no idea what that wierd THAC0 numbers mean).
Saoirse storms the temple but fails to dispel Sarevok's haste in her first round and is quickly forced to quaff a PoI upon being completely dispelled by Semaj's Remove Magic (how much I long for SI: Abjuration). That's a slow start for us, but not unexpected.
Invisible, Saoirse rebuffs with Potion of Defense, Potion of Mind Focusing, 100% resistance (green scroll and potion), Shield, Blur and MIs. She then carefully picks her targets for Arrows of Dispelling - Sarevok goes first.
We add Oil of Speed to get move movement leverage and Potion of Magic Shielding to counter Malison + Chaos combo from Semaj and Angelo (and also to mitigate non-fire elemental damage). This incoming Chromatic Orb may do some minor acid damage but nothing more.
Angelo's Flame Arrow is even less impressive.
Saoirse uses her rounds to quaff Potion of Regeneration and Potion of Power and then reduces the enemy ranks with Arrows of Detonation.
With Semaj and Diarmid out of the picture, we apply Pro Undead scroll to avoid the skellies. Having ran out of Arrows of Dispelling (combination of a self-imposed purchasing limitation and a sequence of bad attack rolls during the fight), Saorise takes down Angelo's MIs with Detect Illusion.
Dart of Stunning and hit-and-run with swords for finish.
Unseen and seemingly passive, Tazok falls to the endless fire explosions. I wonder when was the last time he actually revealed himself and tried to do something useful.
Sarevok deserves something special and so Saoirse delves to the bottom of her potion and scroll cases...and suddenly, in lieu of our little gnome, there's a backstabbing ogre (to the extent smashing other people with a big spiked thing can be considered a "stab")! Ouch!
Now we only need to use PoIs to repeat the process three times (each time dealing between 50-65 damage). I pity you, brother.
BG 1 done (although, as you may see, I'm still struggling with the bug whereby the game does not automatically end upon Sarevok's death, not even after destroying all the lingering skeleton warriors).
@Blackraven There'll be no Dragonspear for us and Saoirse's off to Athkatla instead. See you in Amn .
Hubblepot Gogglebur, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist, BG2EE SoA Update 4 Last BG1EE update found here Last SoD update found here BG2EE SoA updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
The party returns to Aran Linvail, and sets sail for Brynnlaw.
The greeting party of Vampires make our lives miserable, but no one dies.
Del also kind of broke the game a little: She turned into a bat and fled into Lady Galvena's Feasthall (which the player can't access at this stage). So Sime never told us to go look for Sanik. Fortunately, you can still go to the tavern and talk to him, which we do. We also took the opportunity to beat up on Chremy and save Ginia and Ason (should've probably waited until we had Imoen back, but I would've just forgotten about it).
Basic buffs and Breach makes the Front easy pickin's.
The Guards inside are NOT easy pickin's. They quaff Potions of Magic Shielding and hit like little Plate-Mail covered trucks. The plan was to let an Aerial Servant tank them, but they were having none of that. Still, it's just damage, and we've learned from our repeated tactical failings: We always dedicate some slots to healing nowadays.
Vadek gives us a stark reminder that high-level Mages should not be tackled head-on (at least not yet): Even a fully buffed Hubblepot, and when I say fully buffed I mean fully buffed, eventually has to retreat and let summons bear the brunt of the battle when Vadek lets loose with a Sphere of Chaos. Eventually his third Stoneskin gives way to an Aerial Servant.
We escort Claire to Captain Golin, and retire to the tavern. One careful set of spell selection later, we head over to introduce Desharik to Minsc.
While the Book of Many Spells would be rather nice, it's hardly an essential piece of loot, and given that we could barely tackle Vadek, I see no positive outcome that springs from confronting Perth: I'd not be surprised at all if he Gates in a Pit Fiend, followed by some Mordenkainen's Swords, then a few Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting... he'd destroy us utterly. No thank you. We're getting on the crazy train instead!
Fun side note: I always talk to Desharik immediately upon entering, but turns out you can actually loot his house without him reacting. I got a Longbow +2, Light Crossbow +1, 5x Potions of Extra Healing and minor gold this way. I mean why not? He's a scummy Pirate Lord anyway, and this means more money for us to spend in the Underdark.
We frolick around the Asylum for a bit (Naljier Skal conjures us a Rogue Stone.. score!), but are eventually rudely interrupted by Irenicus. Hubblepot promptly administers a royal beating to Bhaal, and we are released into the Spellhold Maze. Whereupon Imoen rejoins us, huzzah! I was worried she'd be left behind experience-wise, but she comes in at 1 million XP (almost exactly the same as Mazzy), and instantly levels to Mage level 12. Mazzy also hit Fighter level 12 here, gaining Specialization in Axes, which will certainly be helpful.
Alright, let's clear the path to the exit first, then work our way around the dungeon clockwise...
Seriously? Who thought it'd be a fun fight to tackle three Yuan-Ti Mages at once? Sigh.
Alright.. we need to get past this without expending half our spellbooks. I do not want to cheese it with mass Web and bombardment from out of sight (the Yuan-Ti Mages are supposed to have MGoI up which would prevent that if not for game quirks). We gamble: Jaheira conjures two Nymphs, and they cast Confusion. It was meant to be cast from off-screen, but of course one of them bumps Minsc into vision of the Yuan-Ti's. One Mage is affected, but the other two come after us.
What in the... what ARE these?! They have 7th level spell slots! Which they've spent on Power Word: Stun! And it seems they spent ALL their L5 slots on Chaos. OK, stop being conservative and just throw whatever we have at them. True Sight, Breach, Animate Dead, I don't care, bring them down!
So Jaheira died. Imoen takes a Power Word: Stun and is killed by a Dire Charmed Mazzy. Hubblepot eats a Flame Arrow. Then a second Flame Arrow. And a third. He is then treated to, in turn, Power Word Stun, 2x Melf's Acid Arrow sequencers (times three... each Yuan-Ti Mage had one), two regular casts of Melf's Acid Arrow, and a Chromatic Orb. Anomen is scrambling to do something, anything, but.. there's only so much punishment a Gnome can take.
That was an ignominious defeat, but given how many times we've been a hair away from death, I can't say it was unexpected. I will say that that particular group was truly nasty: Every Mage had Death Spell, so summons were kind of out of the picture. They all had Remove Magic, and being at least L13, they were very likely to strip all our buffs. I would've had to have known we'd be up against something like that to properly prepare for it, but given that we only had control over Hubblepot's spell slots (in way of arcane magic) before going into Spellhold... he would've needed something like 6 Breach to take those damnable Mages down. Still, it's a good lesson for next time.
I don't think my playstyle lends itself well to a Cleric/Illusionist: I played Hubblepot, particularly in Shadows of Amn, almost exclusively as support, his spell slots going to party-wide buffs, Animate Dead, Haste, Invisibility 10' Radius etc. I think it would've been better to leave the support to Jaheira and Anomen, and instead have Hubblepot step in for one or two difficult encounters per day, buffed to the absolute gills and laying about with every debilitating spell effect under the sun (inbetween clobbering stuff with DUHM/Holy Power active).
I did enjoy my time in Shadows of Amn, unfortunately brief though it was I'll start cooking up a new character, but will probably abbreviate his journeys through BG1 and SoD a bit.. hopefully I can speed through them to give BG2 another shot.
Really sad for your loss, @aldain ... It was an ineffable pleasure to follow your story (and of my most favorable character). Looking forward for the next one eagerly. BTW, DavidW is almost ready to release SCS v32 with quite a number of sweet improvements, so I'm eager to try them out with the same character (and in conjunction with SR/IR).
@semiticgod : spell system for mages and priests has undergone some major changes, more extensive use of the difficulty slider, more conjunction with SR and IWDification. Check it here.
Wow looks awesome! Personally I'm very interested in the inclusion of IWDEE spells... I never used IWDification because I considered it unfair to use spells that enemies don't have access to. But that's about to change
@aldain, condolences. Like @Serg_BlackStrider I thoroughly enjoyed your run with Hubblepot. Hope to see your new character soon.
Itis woke up in a dungeon, and started her steady climb towards the throne from there.
First some gear
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And the first rough spots where cleared with rage.
The level 11, 12 and 13 are all excellent levels for the barbarian - allthough the HP are lackluster. But even of XP where plenty Itis did struggle a bit.
The first quests where the circus, the ambushes, freeing Hendak and the Harper quest. No real trouble
Then things took a bad turn. The trap in the slavers quest nearly ended Itis run. She had dodged the trap enroute to killing the captain, but mistepped on the way back and was down to 1 HP...
I decided Itis needed some better gear, and bought the ring of air control and protection from petrification - Trademeet was next
Adratha was left unharmed - she has such nice potions. The druids where skipped invisible. Belm and Rashads talon are a great step up - 9/2 apr at level 13.
Still Itis struggled
No regeneration and protective gear spells out frequent resting - which I hate.
A bold idea then formed. I was going to make good use of the seven protection from undead scrolls and two protection from magic. Lich and ring hunting was next:
Courtesy of the scimitar from WK Itis now got a serious upgrade in the ring of Gaxx. The XP where not bad either.
From then on It was pure grinding. Gear money and XP galore. Nalias keep, the planar spheere and the temple ruins are honourable mentions
Still has to do the planar prison, firkraag, the temple sewer gang and the twisted rune/guarded compound before we can close chapter 2... and Itis is at 4 mill XP. Will skip a few of the nasty quests perhaps. But look at the unbuffed saving throw of Itis.
She still needs the human flesh armour and the amulet of seldarine. Once there the unbuffed saving throw aganst spell is -10... just saying
Off into the underground river. When I plant the enchanted seed it looks like I'm trapped in here with them, but the truth is that they're all trapped in here with me. The Shambling Mounds bodyblock the other monsters and keep them from getting to me, so I kill them last.
For the necromancer cabal, I use a couple of Arrows of Detonation buffed with Fury of the Winds. This nukes Kherriun and shatters the ghost jar. Halatathlaer kills the mages on the left side as I clean up on the right side.
I kill Strunk and free the water elementals, leveling up in the process. I'm really torn about my 2nd level 7 spell pick, as Impervious Sanctity of Mind is like a better version of Chaotic Commands, but I also want Creeping Doom, Earthquake, and Conjure Earth Elemental (in BG2, aTweaks gives Greater Earth Elementals 1 use of a party-friendly version of Earthquake with a casting time of 1). I end up going with Creeping Doom after spending 20 minutes deciding.
Up inside the castle basement, I poison the food and water while invisible and try to escape, but the lift isn't working. Looks like I have to aggro Hephernaan. While invisible, I cast Harm and smack Heifer with it, finishing him with an arrow.
I decide to hang out in the basement a little longer and test my abilities. I cast Insect Plague which covers a large portion of the crusaders and disablers their casters. I follow up with Nature's Beauty to get them to hold still for upcoming Arrows of Detonation+Fury of the Winds. I get surrounded but Nature's Beauty lands an instant kill, allowing me to escape.
Arrows of Detonation nuke the survivors. I would spend longer in the basement but their elite reinforcements are beefier than I thought, so I hightail it out of there and go do some quests in Dragonspear Castle's courtyard.
Once that's over, I return to the camp and turn in a bunch of sidequests and start the siege of the Coalition Camp. I summon a fire elemental into the western lane so the trolls will concentrate on it. Dispel Magic neutralizes their Haste and I follow up with good ol' Insect Plague so the ogre magi can't do anything else. Then it's just a matter of pelting them to death from range.
Next are the mages. Insect Plague works but something keeps casting Dispel Magic on the mages. I'm inclined to believe its one of the Wizard Slayers I brought, so I cast Creeping Doom instead. Acid Arrows take care of the helpless mages.
The clerics, paladins, and fighters get utterly obliterated by warmages and Insect Plague. They're held, Malisoned, Panicked, and can't cast spells.
Insect Plague wins the day again. This is undoubtedly going to change in BG2.
At Dragonspear, I buff up with Fury of the Winds and dash into the crusaders' backline, launching many Arrows of Detonation at them. They are all slaughtered in less than one turn. I've never beaten the siege that fast before. But then, I've never used Arrows of Detonation against it before.
Ashatiel appears and is killed in a duel with a single Arrow of Dispelling followed by Arrows of Biting.
Down to Hell we go. Arrows of Detonation won't avail me here since the stronger devils are immune to fire, which only makes them good for killing the trash mob Lemures and Imps. I kill Illaruel, having made sure to buff with Chaotic Commands first and go up the stairs. Against Thrix's minions, I must have accidentally hit Thrix with Arrows of Detonation, because he started attacking me and a bunch more devils appeared.
This does not look good. I wasn't planning to get surrounded by devils yet! I made sure to drink a Potion of Defense before climbing the stairs and starting the cutscene with Caelar, so my AC is at a more comfortable -13. I have 2 attacks while meleeing, but I hit pretty hard thanks to 19 STR and the Safeguard buckler. I cleave my way out of the devil horde, though Hamatulas are still as dangerous as ever. Incidentally, I level up during this fight, so I take the level then and there instead of waiting for the fight to end.
Good thing level 16 gives a THAC0 and save decrement. I eventually kill all of the devils including Thrix.
Time to fight Belhifet. I rest inside the elevator room before switching it on, and I buff with an Oil of Speed. After the elevator's final-save, I buff more with potions of magic protection, defense, and clarity. At the top, thanks to double-strength Haste, I escape Belhifet's line of sight so he wastes his Remove Magic on Caelar instead of me. I buff with Fury of the Winds and equip the Void-tipped Arrows +3 and put on the Medal of Valor for extra THAC0.
I start shooting Belhifet and the arrows are working their magic. Belhifet is taking extra cold damage from Fury of the Winds. Devils start gathering around me, so I get behind Big B and the devils focus instead on Caelar. When her health gets low, I use Greater Restoration scrolls. To my massive relief, they can be used at range.
Estimating how long it will take Caelar to get badly injured again lets me buff with Battle Ardor to improve my THAC0 and damage for a little while. Belhifet has gone Improved Invisible, so I try using Arrows of Dispelling to get rid of it. It takes.
That's cool, but he can spam it whenever he wants, so it's kind of pointless to even try to keep improved invis dispelled. I'd rather keep trying to hit him with a -4 THAC0 penalty than have him constantly disappear from sight. I use another Greater Restoration scroll on Caelar and use a Potion of Power the following round. She's held up great so far this round, so on the next, I cast Wrath of the Skies to deal damage and lower Belhifet's MR and AC. That should negate his AC bonus from Improved Invis.
Belhifet is reduced to Badly Injured and teleports away. Caelar and I focus on killing the trash surrounding her as Belhifet stumbles about. We kill the devils in two rounds.
Belhifet comes back for more after gating in reinforcements. We get him down to Near Death when I misjudge how many more hits Caelar can take. She dies to Belhifet.
But thanks to Belhifet's big inferno spell, a Hamatula's Barbed Defense procs and causes retaliation damage against him, finishing him off!
Phew... I wasn't sure my THAC0 would be good enough to hit Belhifet but I pulled through just fine. I keep forgetting that I can enrage myself for extra THAC0, AC, and immunities, so I guess I wasn't even at full power yet. But I couldn't have done it without Caelar tanking the devils. Trying it the way I used to do it would've just gotten me overwhelmed and then killed. Thanks, Shining Lady.
Well, I'm trying my hand at this once again. The run I'm describing here has started a while ago, but I didn't post any updates because I wasn't sure if I was going to continue at all at some point. I'll talk about the reasons when I get there. As a reminder, the rules for this challenge are: Playing with an entirely randomized party (the only thing that's not random and affects gameplay are thief ability points, because they take too long to randomize), randomized hitpoints per level up, insane difficulty level, no NPCs, no mods. Also, two new rules: You can't get rid of seemingly useless party members on purpose and you have to keep playing and trying to succeed until the main character dies, no matter the chunkings you suffer. My last attempt ended at Balduran's Island, and my best attempt so far didn't make it out of the Planar Prison. Both of these deaths were really strange and unusual, so I'm hoping for a relatively "normal" run here.
Introducing my party for this attempt:
The Bhaalspawn: Shamash, male neutral evil halfling fighter/thief 15/13/18/10/12/7 *Two-Handed Sword, *Flail/Morning Star, *Crossbow, *Longbow
The combination of high constitution and being a halfling makes for a good main character. I would've loved to see some kind of dexterity bonus here, but starting with *longbow is great anyway, since the meatgrinder challenge is mostly about never getting hit, so ranged combat is key.
Emer, female neutral good gnome illusionist/thief 12/17/11/12/12/11 *Dagger, *Sling
A very good class, though no constitution bonus will result in very poor hp. She has to avoid taking damage at all costs, which won't be easy early on, before she gets access to the most important protection spells. Starting with *Sling certainly helps.
Having a barbarian is useful, even with a relatively poor strength score. Generally, high hit points and immunity to backstab, plus, later on, damage resistance, is a good recipe for survival.
High stat total, but very bad distribution. The profiencies aren't great neither. The upside is the generally very useful multiclass.
Surendra, male true neutral human druid 14/15/9/10/12/15 *Dart, *Sword and Shield Style
Sadly, no kit (totemic druids are the best for this challenge), but if I make it to early SoA, this one will make my life much easier. Nothing special, but I like druids.
At least she has a decent strength score, but I didn't really need the third divine spellcaster all that much. She also can't use scrolls or wands until she gets the intelligence tome.
In total, this is a relatively average randomized party - about what you'd expect. No true powerhouse, but no completely useless character either. I've had better, I've had worse.
With randomized groups such as these, the first levels are truly annoying, mostly because you just can't hit anything. Lacking profiencies (you can't survive melee combat, so if a character has no ranged abilities, they are relatively worthless) and no or low thac0 bonuses make for a painful first couple of levels. There are some ways to remedy that: First, if you have to kill something, use command and focus all ranged weapons on the target. Second, go for high value targets right away, even if it's risky, to get your first couple of levels early.
That's why I decided to go basilisk hunting before doing anything else. I didn't even get any protection from petrification, completely relying on Corax to protect my party. He did a great job:
I skipped the adventuring party and started completing some non-combat quests in the surrounding areas. With hold person and sleep added to my arsenal, low level foes started becoming less of an issue. Eventually, I took the hidden wand of frost from the Nashkel mines to hunt and kill battle horrors:
All that brought Gunnr to cleric level 5, granting me my first skeleton summon. Though weak, this would be enough to distract the sirens:
However, when hunting the second group of sirens in the other sword coast area, the first death of the run occured when Saturnus, who tried to buy the party some time facing a trio of dire wolves, got hit two times in very quick succession, unable to retreat in time:
I now started systematically going for quests and unique encounters in the wilderness areas (no full exploration, though), with some decent success. Emer's invisibilty for positioning, having access to skeletons, strength of one (to negate the low strength scores across the board), cleric buffs and crowd control allowed for a series of decent fights. My next party death, however, occured during one of the least likely occasions: A gibberling ambush; Emer, as a multiclass with no constitution bonus, simply doesn't get a lot of hitpoints, no matter her level. A single gibberling hit while the party was just trying to move on and ignore the enemies was enough to kill her:
Emer usually casts invisibility on herself before travelling, but she was out of spells this time.
After that, things went very smoothly for a while. I took on even the most challenging wilderness encounters with success, including Kahrk: After waiting out his buffs, I had skeletons and Megaira attack him while a forest being and Emer (protected via minor spell deflection) using the wand of paralyzation tried to stun the ogre mage - it took a few tries, but we succeeded:
Now, I felt ready to deal with the main plot, taking down Mulahey with ease:
Tazok's tent was next:
Against Drasus' party, a few hold spells and a quick skeleton surround of the mages brought success:
I used storm shield, lightning bolt and skeletons as meatshields to deal with Hareishan:
However, in the next mine level this run suddenly turned on its head. Things went very wrong very quickly, mostly because I got overconfident. I was doing very well during the entirety of the Cloakwood, and I felt like my party was actually able to fight without their summons if needed, so once I had no skeletons left, I didn't return upstairs to rest, instead moving on. I took down the ogre mage with ease, but when facing Natasha, her lightning bolt, not focused on my usual skeleton horde but on Megaira instead, jumped seeminly forever and in one of the more insane ways I've ever seen - missing her intended target, going through the tiny doorframe but missing the party standing in front of it, instead going after the two characters who didn't even have a direct line of sight to the bolt. The damage was devastating - Emer, who has a hp maximum of 20, got hit with 86 damage, getting instantly chunked. Gunnr, with 42 hitpoints, took 58 damage, getting killed, but not chunked:
Well, this is where this challenge gets its name from. I killed Natasha and moved back to FAI to resurrect Gunnr and reorganize my party. After having some skeletons kill Davaeorn, I stopped playing for a while:
At this point, I was thinking about stopping this run, but I never seem to be able to give up until my main character is dead, which is why I decided to implement the new rules to stop myself from wasting time thinking about stuff like this - I would just continue playing, to see where things go. Having no arcane spellcaster anymore is bad, but it's not an unusual situation with randomized groups like this anyway.
Can we beat BG1 without Emer? Find out more in the next update!
The Hard Hitters - Disaster strikes! Plurem - half-orc kensai (protagonist) Wertle - dwarven berserker April - gnomish berserker Trapper - human level 7 kensai dualed to thief Itwibemine - gnomish kensai (CHUNKED)
The party weathered many ambushes but weathered them fine. We were working on bridge district tasks this session: 1) Horn of Valhalla obtained - Trapper did well with the traps 2) Skinner murders solved - for some reason the Rune Assassins kept targeting Plurem, but his HP managed to hold even so. Victory here as well 3) Neb defeated, and illithium obtained, which we forged into the IMoD later this session. 4) Boots of avoidance obtained, obtaining justice for the man who was buried alive. 5) Captain Dennis Battle
I knew the Captain Battle was dangerous, but I thought we had good enough weapons to take him on. I couldn't think of a way to minimize risk, so just enraged, went in, did KAI and went for the throat. Disaster struck quickly, as Itwibemine got chunked! (she was the two hand sword user).
We weren't going to let them get away with that, and went after them with all we had. However, the enemy mage was not yet out of tricks - they did some fire attack, probably fireball or sunfire, and the entire party is near death!!
After lots of heal potion gulping, finally Captain Dennis goes down - but not before Wertle is killed!
Shortly thereafter, the mage finally dies, and the party goes to a nearby temple to raise Wertle and we gather our belongings.
I figure this can't be that bad, though, as @Gate70 and @Grond0 both did the Trilogy with solo Kensais...
We press forward. After doing a lot of errands, and doing the first two shadow thief quests and the temple's 2nd quest, we finally will make our way to Umar Hills.
I decided Mazzy's resist fear would be quite useful, and she can even use her shortbow. She can use that bow to dispel mages and dragons with dispelling arrows. So we will recruit her soon as we can.
Thank you for the support, and nice to hear that someone enjoyed Hubblepot's misadventures! Hubblepot often got in over his head in an effort to save on spells, so it was inevitable that he would find himself in a situation he couldn't get out of. Still, being brought to the edge of defeat only to bounce back has its charm, and I doubt I'll be able to go from completely gung-ho to perfectly planned and executed battles... I'll just hope that the next character is even more lucky than Hubblepot. Speaking of which...
Starting: In BG1EE. Difficulty: Core rules, max HP on level up. Self-imposed restrictions: No easter eggs (tree diamond, extra Ring of Wizardry/Ankheg Plate/Ring of Fire Resistance, gold from Firebead etc), no recharging items by selling and buying them back, no using unidentified items. Mods: SCS v31 (including full pre-buffing for mages and priests), see spoiler for WeiDU.
Initialise mod (all other components require this): v31 Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v31 More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v31 Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v31 Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v31 Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): v31 Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v31 Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v31 Replace BG1-style elemental arrows with BG2 versions: v31 Replace +1 arrows with nonmagical "fine" ones: v31 Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Remove Arrows of Dispelling from stores: v31 Faster Bears: v31 Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v31 Improved shapeshifting: v31 Decrease the rate at which reputation improves -> Reputation increases at about 1/4 the normal rate: v31 Ease-of-use party AI: v31 Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v31 Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v31 Smarter general AI: v31 Better calls for help: v31 Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v31 Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v31 Potions for NPCs -> All of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v31 Improved Spiders: v31 Smarter sirines and dryads: v31 Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v31 Smarter basilisks: v31 Improved doppelgangers: v31 Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v31 Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v31 Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v31 Relocated bounty hunters: v31 Improved Ulcaster: v31 Improved Balduran's Isle: v31 Improved Durlag's Tower: v31 Improved Demon Cultists: v31 Improved Cloakwood Druids: v31 Improved Bassilus: v31 Improved Drasus party: v31 Improved Red Wizards: v31 Improved Undercity party: v31 Tougher chapter-two end battle: v31 Tougher chapter-three end battle: v31 Tougher chapter-four end battle: v31 Tougher chapter-five end battle: v31 Improved final battle: v31 Improved minor encounters: v31
Protagonist: Cassius, Elf Diviner.
Another splendiferuous roll! Not that it matters a great deal given that we are now a pure arcane caster, but still... his character sheet looks pretty.
I like Diviners. They're one of the four specialists I consider playable (along with Conjurers, Illusionists and Evokers), and by playable I mean that they do not lose out on important defenses: Cassius will have spell protections, Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Improved Invisibility and Contingencies/Sequencers available. I know, there's an SCS component (which I installed) that allows Enchanters to use Contingencies/Sequencers, but it feels wrong. We lose out on some good, but not great spells: In BG1EE lacking a familiar hurts a little at the start. Wish will probably sting the most to lose, but that's very far into the future. Needless to say, the specialist bonus is completely pointless (unless we experience an aching need to determine NPC's alignment).
Cassius starts with + in Slings. For spells, he has selected Identify (it was that or Infravision...), Sleep and Blindness. Literally everything a Mage needs when he is incapable of learning Find Familiar, this spellbook shall certainly last us until we reach level 3.
Once you go through BG1 for the 500th or so time, there aren't a lot of viable party setups left you haven't tried. Nearly every NPC needs Gauntlets of Dexterity to be able to tank, which limits you unless the protagonist is a frontliner. So: Cassius will be going with a party of Khalid, Jaheira, Imoen (as a pure Thief), Branwen and Faldorn! I had a slot left and didn't see a real need for any other class, so Faldorn it is. She's actually quite powerful once she reaches L4 spells, which happens fairly quickly since she's a pure Druid: Call Woodland Beings will let Cassius forego memorizing Confusion, freeing his 4th level slots for Greater Malison and Stoneskin (the scroll of which we will definitely be going after), and eventually having True Sight and Insect Plague available will certainly help tip the scales. Jaheira with Gauntlets of Dexterity will tank (using Club +1 initially, switching to Scimitar +2 when she gets two pips in it), with Khalid providing ranged support and off-tanking.
Cassius successfully made it out of Candlekeep, although he ran outside the priest's quarters to enlist some Watcher help with Shank. Imoen was recruited, as well as Montaron and Xzar, the latter two assisting against Tarnesh (only Montaron died, as Tarnesh failed his save against Sleep). Montaron was laid to rest on the lawn outside the FAI temple, while Xzar decided to retire at a table inside the inn, and Khalid and Jaheira joined the party.
With two-thirds of the party gathered, we headed north, where Imoen stole everything not nailed down inside the Ankheg lair, and escaped under the effect of Jaheira's starting Potion of Invisibility. We swung back down south, cleared the Hobgoblins around the FAI, identified the Wand of Fire (huzzah!) and bought a scroll of Stone to Flesh from the temple. Our business here concluded, we headed for Beregost, killing the Belt Ogre on the way.
A quick rest later, we headed south towards the Nashkel Carnival, clearing the bands of Hobgoblins in the two areas along the road. Branwen was de-petrified and recruited, we bought the Violet and Red Potion and rested. A few memorized Command later, the party cleared Neira and talked to Noober, and picked up a Potion of Invisibility from the Nashkel Manor House (so Cassius now has a survive-bandit-ambush card). Here we also spent roughly 1000 of our hard-earned gold. I used to be exceptionally stingy about buying anything before 18 reputation, but an extra 10 Potions of Healing makes the early game much less frustrating.
Another rest later, and we headed into the wilderness west of Nashkel, the plan being to complete the five low-level areas here for easy experience and some loot. We won't be recruiting a sixth temporary party member, so we will be running with five characters until we advance the plot and recruit Faldorn. Also, for once, there is no quest timer running... so we're free to take our time, if we so choose. We probably won't, but it's nice to have the option!
Sleep, Command and Entangle is all we need. The Xvart village falls without incident, but Borda is left alive (we're not robbers). We press westward.
Nigel and his merry bandits fall before us. Unfortunately, when dealing with the Ogre Berserkers and their attendant Hobgoblin Elites, we make a small tactical blunder: I wanted to find out if the Ogre Berserkers are vulnerable to Sleep when they're not enraged (they are! But they are unlikely to fail the save), but as soon as the Sleep landed from out of sight, the whole enemy party started wandering around... ultimately leading to some shuffling, and Khalid parrying a blow from an Ogre Berserker using his spleen. We thus had to trek back to Nashkel and shell out 100 gold for a Raise Dead. Upon our return, the second Ogre Berserker (the first having fallen to a Scorcher from our trusty Wand of Fire) was nowhere to be found.
Anyway, we cleared the rest of the area. Not feeling like burning potions unless necessary, we positioned ourselves to let Laurel take the brunt of the Gibberling onslaught. They can only hit her on a critical, but she doesn't wear a helmet...
Laurel's misfortune is our good fortune, as we pick up her Plate Mail, which goes to Khalid (Jaheira will take it once she gets her Gauntlets of Dexterity and can start tanking). On the way out of the area, we kill the Polar Bear and get some magical boots. This pushes Cassius into his first level-up! Hooray! 12 HP, and one step closer to Ultimate Arcane Power.
On to the Gnoll Fortress. Jaheira gets her Gauntlets of Dexterity. Branwen hit level 3 somewhere back there, and we have enough Sleep, Entangle, Command and Hold Person to fight a small army of Gnolls. Dynaheir is rescued, accepted into the party (otherwise you don't get her 800 experience) and dismissed. With the Tome of Leadership and Influence, Cassius' 19 Charisma should be enough to pass any reaction check.
Eastward! We are interrupted thrice when attempting to rest (Ingot joins our would-be ambushers), but fight through. Drienne trades a scroll of PfU for her dead cat, while Caldo and Krum are both susceptible to Sleep, but Command and Hold Person works just fine too, and so they never get a swing in. We finish the Gnolls to the north, loot the Dire Wolf Cave to the south, and head east a final time.
Rufie is returned to Albert. Sendai and her two escorts prove more than a handful: I don't know what their THAC0 is, but it's enough to (very) consistently hit Khalid in Plate Mail wearing the Girdle of Piercing. We burn a LOT of healing potions, but eventually, Command and Hold Person wins the day. Farther to the east, Zal falls to a Command, and Vax fails his save against Hold Person, but not before getting a few hits in on poor Khalid. We're running low on healing potions... good thing we're heading back to civilization now! The party treks back to Nashkel, loaded down with loot and with everyone in possession of 1-2 more levels than when they left. A small bit of the proceeds we make is re-invested in another 10 Potions of Healing.
So, we're past the initial hurdle, I think. Everyone is at least level 2, we have money, we have healing potions, we have two Potions of Invisibility (Imoen leveled up enough that her Pick Locks got the chests in the merchant's tent at the Carnival open), and we're in no rush. Might as well clear the closest areas north-west of Nashkel/west of Beregost.
Drizz't is rescued from Gnolls, and Teyngan with compatriots fall (good thing Jemby is vulnerable to Command or this would be a quite difficult fight...). We take down some Half-Ogres to the north, and when mopping up some interested Skeletons, Cassius gets another level! Hooray!
Good stuff I say! We'll buy some scrolls at High Hedge and indulge in a bit of scribing with the help of the Red Potion, but not right now. We head north. Zargal and cronies are helpless before Sleep and Command. Bassilus, however, is not helpless. We buff as extensively as our levels allow: Remove Fear, PfE on Khalid, Bless and Chant. Things go our way: Despite a Scorcher from the Wand of Fire and a Magic Missile from Imoen's Wand, Bassilus gets a Hold Person off.. but Khalid makes his save! Moments after, the dread Cleric is Doomed and subsequently Silenced by the tag-team Jaheira and Branwen. With no recourse but to engage in melee, Bassilus soon falls. Hooray! We pick up Ashideena +2 for Branwen, grab Melicamp and depart for High Hedge.
We kill a few Skeletons for a Human Skull, and get Perdue's Shortsword from the Gnolls. Thalantyr unfortunately fails to restore Melicamp (he is transformed into human form but keels over and dies.. I guess Thalantyr will just leave the body there?). We purchase a single scroll of Friends, Cassius casts it, and buys a plethora of scrolls: Invisibility, Mirror Image, Skull Trap, Protection from Cold/Fire, Horror, Minor Spell Deflection.. anything and everything useful. We swipe the aquamarine gem locked in the house and return to Beregost.
Following a rest, we do all the little quests here: Tell Bjornin that we slew the Half-Ogres, go after the Spiders (handled by Sleep, but we could've just duked it out with them at this stage), Marl, Firebead, Mr. Colquetle, Silke (whom I now always deal with using Scorcher from Wand of Fire, as she typically won't survive even one blast), Karlat, Perdue, Mirianne and Neera. Neera is recruited, relieved of her Gem Bag and Adventurer's Robe (Cassius needs that, thank you very much!), and sent on her way again. Imoen also practices a little larceny: We steal a Diamond, The Stupefier, the Potion of Invisibility from the Manor House, and the Bastard Sword +1 from the Smithy. Yes, I didn't install the "Replace +1 weapons with fine ones": I was OK with it being a pain early on, I was even OK with the weirdness that it made +2 weapons almost as common as +1 weapons, but it messes with the weapons of Skeleton Warriors! Do what you will to me, but don't you mess with my summons!
Cassius quaffs the Red Potion and a Potion of Insight, identifies almost everything in our backlog, and gets scribing. With a well-filled spellbook, we rest, Cassius casts Friends, and we shop a little: Scroll of Reflected Image from Feldepost's and a Short Bow +1 for Imoen from the Thunderhammer Smithy (it'll be so long until she gets the Eagle Bow, I figure it's worth it). We swing by the temple and get the reward for slaying Bassilus, and return to Nashkel (Cassius of course traveling under Invisibility, as he will always be doing from now on).
Here, I remember that Khalid is in fact L3 and has ++ in Longbows, so I buy him one. Jaheira will now take over tanking duties. We have another rest, preparing spells: Several Remove Fear (the Kobold Shaman and Nimbul both need to be countered), Command, Bless, Chant, Hold Person, Sleep, and Invisibility. With Cassius having access to Invisibility, we can safely trigger the Dorn ambush now, which we do. Another suit of Plate Mail which goes to Khalid and Dorn even survived, hooray! But you still can't join us, Dorn.
I think this is a good spot to call a halt for now (the update is already perilously long). The party has arrived at the Nashkel Mines and stands ready to shine a light on doubtless nefarious going-ons within! Next time, we'll cleanse the Mines, locate and similarly cleanse the Bandit Camp, and with the Cloakwood Forest thus available, pick up our sixth and final party member. It has been an almost entirely smooth ride so far (apart from Khalid's unfortunate spleen-incident), and hopefully it shall so remain.
Cassius is now a L3 Elf Diviner, and not too far from L4 at that.
Doing the quests in the big city turned out fairly well, with me luring most foes outside into the streets, into the waiting arms of my skeleton army. After everything was said and done, the party entered the Iron Throne HQ, where the same thing was done: Luring foes downstairs in small groups, allowing our summons to engage them, with the party taking shots from a safe distance:
We returned to Candlekeep and fought our way through the dungeon. No trouble here, so going back to Baldur's Gate we just had to prepare for the Ducal Palace event. I decided to go for an approach without potion use, because skeletons + strength of one + bless/chant + DUHM is a ton of damage anyway. To reduce doppelganger damage, Shamash tried hitting our foes with dispelling arrows one by one. In the end, the dukes didn't take a whole lot of damage:
With that done, it was time for some TotSC content. I had already completed the ice island via protection from magic scroll earlier on, so Balduran's Island was next. A huge setback occured early on while exploring the island when Saturnus got hit by a wolfwere. It might seem strange that at this point, a dwarven fighter/cleric will still get onehit-killed by a generic monster, but that's why we simply cannot afford to enter melee combat with most characters:
No resurrection available on the island, so we had to continue as four. At the shipwreck, Megaira kept luring down more and more wolves (which is a bit risky, but fighting in close quarters is not advisable) to the party:
However, when fighting Karoug, the party soon realized that spamming the wand of the heavens with two party members wasn't enough to kill him - his regeneration was too powerful. I lured him away with some summons and rested, picked up the anti-werewolf weapons and tried again - but with zero pips in bastard sword or dagger across my party, hitting him was difficult, and the damage just wouldn't come. I ran again and decided that I had to disabled Karou somehow. My go-to strategy of using the wand of parlyzation is impossible without an arcane spellcaster, so I went for forest beings and their hold monster spell - which did end up working. With the held Kargou suffering guaranteed hits, I was finally able to take him down:
Hold monster continued to be very effecting against the Loup Garou as well:
We resurrected Saturnus and made our way to Durlag's Tower.
The first level was easily cleared, though I had to be very careful, with our only thief being the Bhaalspawn and walking into a trap being potential instant death. Megaira being a barbarian turned out to be very helpful against the dwarven warders, as their thief kept trying to backstab her. Over all, we did very well against them:
Not much trouble with the second level, skeletons do very well against all the threats there except for the dwarven doom guards. To deal with these, I had to use quite a few wand of the heavens charges, and they took down our entire summoned army:
In the next level, we took the western path, cleared the middle path via PfU scroll and used skeletons and our barbarian to deal with the backstabbers to the east. For the chessboard, I buffed with full fire and lightning immunity (both of which turned out to be unneccessary). For some reaons, the enemies didn't start to move towards my party as I bombed them with necklaces of missles from off screen, making this a very easy and strange victory:
The final level wasn't too diffcult, skeletons once again did a great job. I made the demon knight focus my barbarian with his dispel and fireball, allowing for my party to stay safe and deal damage. I didn't notice that my druid got stunned during the battle until after victory was achieved:
Somewhere during Durlag's, our party also reached the experience cap for BG1.
Now, Ulgoth's Beard: We entered and used 5 invisibilty potion immediately to avoid instant death via backstabs. We summoned and buffed up to the north and returned with skeletons to defeat the would-be ambushers:
With our summons still going, some buffs were renewed and both the group outside the cult building and the one inside (after being lured out) were taken down:
We rested and buffed again, this time finally adding a lot of potions (we had already started using our strength potions with Megaira to turn her into an effective damage dealer and to increase her carrying capacity). Not only did we get our strength to 25 for those able to use DUHM or barbarian rage, we also used magic shielding times five and mirrored eyes to protect ourselves against most things Aec'Letec could do. Starting the battle, Saturnus had a very strong opener:
All we had to do was quickly run from cultist to cultist, killing them while avoiding the Tana'ri. Aec'Letec was finished, having done only minimal damage to our party:
Now, we made our way to Sarevok, taking down the undercity party with some careful positioning and two groups of summons. When trying to lure our final foe, I triggered some stinking cloud + web traps by accident, though Megaira was almost able to get into secure saving throw range via invulnerability potion and didn't get unlucky. Sarevok was joined by Semaj, who got hit by Shamash's dispelling arrows and died right away:
Tazok also joined the battle, but decided to attack one of my skeletons, so he was quickly killed with ranged weapons (I was using agility potions to improve my damage output and thac0). Eventually, Sarevok himself ended up getting webbed! I didn't even know he could fail that saving throw (I didn't use doom or greater malison, though I did hit him with a dispelling arrow) - this made it easy to finish the fight:
Things have gone decently well after losing Emer, not counting the loss of our fighter/cleric on Balduran's Island. Let's see if we can avoid getting backstabbed to death in SoD next!
Ah yes, the Nashkel Mines. But first: Greywolf. We pick the most bloodthirsty option to ensure Greywolf attacks, and proceed to just straight-up best him in physical combat. No need to waste charges of our Wand of Fire; Jaheira takes a couple of licks but it's nothing a potion can't fix. Into the mines!
We are of course a little too powerful for mere Kobolds at this stage. Cassius has two Sleep memorized but we do not even need them. Still, just to be safe, we clear the Kobold grunts guarding the Shaman and Chieftain with a Fireball... and get a mild surprise when the Kobold Shaman (who was invisible, even) leads with Monster Summoning I! I guess he scales a bit with our level. Still, summoning an Ogrillon won't really help the poor Kobolds at this stage, and the Shaman and Chieftain are soon undone.
We press on and reach Mulahey's sanctum. Same procedure as every time: Main tank engages Mulahey, someone holds off the Kobolds to the east, and a Fireball clears the reinforcements. Mulahey shakes up our routine a bit: This time he prepared Mental Domination instead of self-buffing with Free Action, but thankfully chose to Dominate Jaheira and not Khalid. Such antics help him not.
Alright, with Mulahey dead, it is more important than ever that Cassius is always invisible while travelling, what with us now being actively hunted. We make it back to Nashkel safely, although Nimbul tries to ruin our day with a Confusion. I had Khalid pop a Potion of Magic Protection, and it suffices to keep the dread Enchantment at bay... but looking back at it I could've just had him unequip his weapons and move someone close to him to soak up his attacks. Anyway, Nimbul is as much a failure as his spellworks, and falls to the party's combined might soon after.
With Cassius a mere 6 experience from leveling, we nip over to the Carnival and part Vitiare with his life, earning Cassius level 4. Hooray! More spells!
The following areas go by in rapid succession. Cassius is constantly invisible while traveling, but we encounter no hunters. Tranzig prepared a double Slow and Monster Summoning I (somehow getting four monsters out of the spell), but this did not avail him. In Larswood, bandits and druids alike are put down: Osmadi and Corsone both feeling the sting of the Wand of Fire in conjunction with Silence 15' Radius and, in Corsone's case, a Dart of Stunning (Imoen managed to land one!).
That Insect Plague was aimed at Branwen, who managed to run far enough away that only she were affected (and she was under Remove Fear, so no real harm done).
On to Peldvale. We've got no clever way to handle 3x Black Talon Elites, so we just charge: Jaheira on one, Branwen on another, Imoen backstabbing a third.
That's a pretty impressive backstab... but I'm sure it was just a fluke.
... Maybe I should have Imoen backstab more often. We clear the big bandit group here as well, save Viconia and send her on her way (another Plate Mail, this one going to Branwen), and head to the Bandit Camp, again not being ambushed. Imoen sneaks into the south-easternmost hut and steals the Fireball and Web scrolls, but that's all we're doing right now.
Alright! We know where the camp is, so let's prepare before going after it. We go on a shopping spree: Potions of Genius and Mind Focusing from the FAI, Potions of Explosion/Freedom/Magic Blocking as well as the scroll of PfM from High Hedge, and finally the Shield Amulet and The One Gift Lost from the Nashkel Carnival. That's about a lot of gold spent, but it is well spent. We are now prepared for what lies ahead. I indulge in quaffing two Potions of Genius solely to scribe Web and Fireball: Web is such an important spell that I want it available as soon as possible, and since we only have Cassius for an arcane caster, availability of Potions of Genius won't be a problem. Thus prepared, we return to the Bandit Camp.
Alright, spells: Web x2, Entangle x2, a lot of Command and Hold Person.. that should do us just fine. Oh, and a couple Resist Fear in case Venkt makes it through and tries to Dispel/Horror us. Khalid moves north, spots a bandit, and runs back to the party under Oil of Speed. Have at thee, ye scoundrels!
This "tactic" works flawlessly every time: For some reason, they'll all waddle into the same little kill-zone. I guess it has something to do with the script that fires once someone in the Camp detects your presence. Anyway, all the Bandits are down and we didn't even take any damage. We collect their stuff and move in to clear the rest of the camp.
That's interesting... I guess the entire camp didn't come for us this time. Oh well, we've thinned them out sufficiently that the remainder pose no threat. The Gnolls in the cave would object to being exposed to Sleep, but as they're asleep, they cannot. We loot everything and advance to the next chapter.
Still Cassius travels invisibly, still no hunters have appeared. We swing by Beregost, sell off several dozen scalps, then back to the FAI and prepare to enter the Cloakwood. Which we do!
We skip through the first area. For the second, invisible Cassius trips the Web traps in our way, and the rest of the party fights through the monsters blocking our passage. We soon arrive at the third area, and reach Faldorn. Hooray! Our party is complete!
With Faldorn in tow, we clear out Peter of the North, and head east. The Wyvern Cave is cleansed of its inhabitants (a head picked up for later delivery to the Song of the Morning Temple in Beregost), and we also nip east again, clearing only the regular Guards and Lakadar outside the Cloakwood Mine. Well, might as well clear all Cloakwood while at it. To the Spide-
Hello, ladies! A bit late to the party, aren't you? You'll find yourself sorely outmatched.
Told you. Cassius was invisible, so started with Detect Invisibility, revealing Maneira (Telka started revealed for some reason, and began shooting). Imoen landed a Dart of Stunning on Maneira, while a quick Holy Smite from Branwen interrupted both Lamalha's and Zeela's initial casts. Faldorn joined in, calling lightning down on Lamalha, who fell soon after. With only Zeela and Telka still alive and active (and Telka had Branwen tying her up in melee), there was little the amazons could do, and we carried the day! Huzzah!
That business out of the way, the party rests up and starts tackling the Spider infestation proper. Having cleansed the entire area exterior, we buff (Bless, Chant, Remove Fear, MSD on Cassius and Resist Fire/Cold on everyone else: The latter because Centeol's 1 charge Wand of Frost can deal a fair amount of damage if you're unlucky) and engage Centeol. Surprisingly, many of her minions survive the initial barrage of 2x Fireball and 1x Holy Smite, but thankfully only Branwen is Web Tangled, and a Scorcher from Cassius' Wand of Fire ensures our victory.
We deliver Chelak's body to his brother, and head into the first Cloakwood. Here, Jaheira speaks up when we are defending Aldeth, allowing for a non-violent solution. We loot the little hunter's lodge, kill the Tasloi carrying Gurke's cloak, and return to civilization.
Having tried and failed to return Gurke's cloak to him, the party cashes in on the 2000 gold for the Wyvern head, and heads south to Nashkel, retiring to the local inn for the evening. What to do now? We could take our time, touring the rest of the Sword Coast... but the Sorcerous Sundries and its vast store of scrolls beckons. We shall probably try and trigger the second ambush, but after that, it's looking like we'll go after the Wand of Summoning in the Valley of Tombs (just in case we need a quick diversion), and then prepare for an all-out assault on the Cloakwood Mine.
All in good time, however. Now is the time for sherry and a game of darts! Unfortunately, only Imoen has proficiency in them (darts, not sherry: Cassius is most certainly proficient in the quaffing of the latter), leading to minor injuries among all involved. No one holds a grudge, however!
Comments
I've got another run that I've kind of been doing on the side that I'll post about later.
The 2 rapid deaths at the end of my last session with the Wrecking Crew is probably partly indicative of having played enough with a party for the moment, so I thought I would put that run on hold for a bit. With the recent discussion about the F/M/C I decided to roll one of those up for my long-life challenge.
An hour's play last night saw him:
- blinding and commanding Shoal to finish her off quickly
- using sleep and command on the nearby ogre clan
- killing Algernon for his cloak and Neera for her gem bag
- commanding Karlat to die
- charming the Beregost sirines
- attempting to follow Korax round the basilisks, only for him to die unusually early against the first greater one despite having several free opportunities to paralyze it while it was commanded
- sleeping the belt ogre
- returning Tenya's bowl and killing the nearby ankheg with a command (no-save) + sleep combination
- silencing Silke
- silencing and blinding Bassilus to get a weapon upgrade. Blinding / sleeping the nearby hobgoblins
- charming Dushai to be able to pull her away from nosy villagers to get her ring
- gave Mirianne back a ring. Attempted to give Zhurlong back some boots, but reaction roll was too low and he just stole some cash
- using clarity potion on the sirines at the Lighthouse. That gave the level to allow skeletons to support while meleeing the golems at the pirate cave
The only mage spells known at the moment are sleep and blind and, with intelligence so low, that will probably stay the same for a while. With a full selection of cleric spells though that's not really any handicap.
F5/M4/C5, 39 HPs, 74 kills
Previous updates:
Some more progress this morning saw:
- more skeletons allowing the High Hedge golems to be killed before talking to Thalantyr
- I wasn't sure whether I would bother killing Drizzt, but the very first hit by a gnoll broke a weapon and it seemed rude after that not to invest the 20 minutes needed to render him unconscious
- back at the basilisk area skeletons cleaned up the rest of the monsters.
- the battle horrors at Durlag's were smited and blinded before being finished off in melee
- smite and sling accounted for ghasts inside the tower, while sanctuary and skeletons managed the basilisks. Skeletons also killed the ghost at the second attempt (after a rest) and a blinded Riggilo
- the major encounters in the Cloud Peaks were all done using the standard selection of spells, though I forgot that my charisma and reputation were still relatively low and only got the last of Drienne's allowance rather than a reputation upgrade. I also hit the XP cap there
- while cleaning up the remaining reputation tasks I took on the Doomsayer. He proved much more resistant to being blinded than I expected, but I finally succeeded at the 19th attempt and meleed him down
- the last area visited before the Nashkel Mine saw the Revenant making up for the Doomsayer by being blinded at the first attempt,
- Nimbul also kept his mouth shut. Tranzig's saves protected him against silence, but not skeletons
- Mulahey's ring allowed 4 skeletons to be summoned at the Bandit Camp and they cut down enough bandits to get in sight of Taurgosz. A sanctuary and armor swap later and he was blinded, commanded and shot down
F6/M6/C6, 52 HPs, 221 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1021021/#Comment_1021021
I was still unwilling to pay any more than necessary for equipment, so stuck with just sleep and blindness as mage spells on the way through the Cloakwood. At the mine Drasus and Kysus were silenced, which meant Rezdan was an early target. Drasus eventually recovered his tongue (and his wits), but too late to save himself.
Sanctuary allowed a trouble-free trip through the mine. Davaeorn's guard was suborned and helped kill the battle horrors, but he and the remaining skeletons died in Davaeorn's fireball. No problem though - a rest later and some more skeletons ensured the mage was out of tricks.
Moving on to the City, the Helm of Glory was the first target. Drelik lost out to skeletons before Jardak handed over the booty. My starting charisma of 10 was pushed up to 14 by tome, Helm and Cloak and to 20 using friends. That allowed decent value prices and purchases included potions to boost intelligence and ensure all spells were learned. I spent a while doing that and collecting all the items previously stored before I knew identify. I also returned to Durlag's Tower and collected the tome using MSD for protection.
Finally though I was ready to resume work in the City. Jalantha was blinded and commanded on the way to getting one tome, with Marek failing to get a spell away under assault from skeletons hasted for the first time. Ramazith was blinded and one-shotted by a critical on the way to another tome. Degrodel was stuck in a web on the way to the Cloak of Balduran.
At the Iron Throne I equipped Evermemory to provide 8 blindness spells. However, only the first of those took effect as Naaman proved determined to keep his eyes open. Web, fireballs and skeletons helped get rid of the casters though, while Zhalimar was commanded and Gardush held (the only successful hold person in the run).
A return to Candlekeep saw me grab the tomes before sanctuarying past the dopplegangers. Prat's group were struggling in webs until Prat himself was silenced.
Even though I've not used wands this run to date, I still recharged a collection of them to use up my spare money before going to find Slythe - he lost out to some skeletons. Moving on to the palace I didn't prepare any spells beyond the standard skeleton buffs, although I knew that was taking a bit of a risk. The dopplegangers essentially ignored me, which increased the danger substantially, but I thought I was going to get away with it when only one doppleganger was left and it was apparently attacking a skeleton. However, it appeared it had actually been attacking Belt from further away than standard (which explained why Belt had seemed to lose HPs during the fight a bit quicker than expected) and it got the final blow in.
Lunkh (human male Inquisitor, Gate70); Sparky (gnome female Cleric of Talos, Grond0)
De'Arnise keep
Sparky used a flame blade and flamestrike against a few trolls while Lunkh used fire arrows against some others. A Yuan-ti mage was no match for an Inquisitor and the closest moment we had was when Sparky protected Lunkh from lightning only for a ricochet to frazzle her badly. After protecting herself a repeat performance was avoided and the keep was ours.
Lunkh checked whether Sparky was a suitable level to turn undead, and the answer was YES. Unfortunately her alignment saw the enemies converted to our cause which made it difficult to work out who was who or what was what. Still, we figured it out and although not as satisfying as undead-popping it proved to be rather effective with a little bit of micro-management (client turns undead, host controls them).
Having
barelydefeated one dragon, Lunk felt confident enough to take on a second of the red variety. First though the minions, where Sparky was given the best equipment (ring of Gaxx, helm of Balduran, cloak of the sewers) and took on all comers.All was going well right up to when we had to retreat. Sparky found out her fire protection had either been dispelled or run it's due course. Having been burnt down to 30's hit points she deigned not to heal or retreat and pressed on.
Firkraag hit again. Sparky runs, and manages a multiplayer snafu - instead of fleeing through a doorway she slams the door shut thereby sealing herself in with a dragon. It doesn't look good and a mere moment later the gore setting is confirmed.
He then realises the original potion giving 50% fire resistance was still active as was a second used in the mass potion gulp. With immunity to fire he looses off several more arrows and the dragon falls to the ground.
Lunkh can see a gleaming sword on the floor - the point of coming here. Without Sparky though he turns and walks away, leaving the sword there for the next gallant adventurer to happen across. Melissan, and Irenicus, will have to regard Lunkh as one who got away and refused to continue without a trusty sidekick.
Last BG1EE update found here
Last SoD update found here
BG2EE SoA updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
We start by spending some of our hard-earned gold: Mazzy gets Azuredge +3.
We also shell out 15000 gold to Gaelan Bayle, and do battle with Lassal: The latter gets hit repeatedly by Azuredge, but unfortunately does not fail his save.
Lassal further fuels my hatred of Improved Vampires as he disappears and reappars twice during the fight (so Mazzy's NPP expires and she gets Level Drained).
En route to the Bridge district, we get nameless scrubs ambushing us, with predictable results.
How are these scrubs so powerful? Our tanks may as well be wearing papier maché armour for all the good it does them. Though to be fair, part of the problem is we had a spell selection specially tailored to Vampires.
We scramble together some healing with the help of Wondrous Recall and press on to the Bridge district, grabbing the Horn of Valhalla on the way to the Inn.
Caelos and Jaylos are treated to dual Sunfires from Hubblepot (I wanted to save these for the Crypts, but with our healing already depleted we'll have to rest anyway). I even indulge in letting Hubblepot under MI/Stoneskin tank Gracen.
We return to our favourite haunt, the Copper Coronet, and rest up. Alright, off to the Gr-
Ooooh... that's going to be a problem. Normally you can talk the Harpers out of killing you, but with reputation at 11 thanks to SCS reputation-gain reduction, they won't have it.
We don't have the spells for dealing with humanoid enemies...
Yep, we are in trouble. While common wisdom states that you always kill the Mage first, we had but a single True Sight prepared, which said Mage of course managed to interrupt with MMM (why do I never hit enemy Clerics in Plate Mail when I throw MMM at them?!). And the melee brutes are absolutely horrendous, landing near every hit regardless who stands up to them. We manage to kill the Cleric, but we're badly battered.
We keep taking serious damage, but Anomen is continuously summoning Skeleton Warriors to hold off the melee brutes. Then both Anomen and Yoshimo get Confused. I cheese it a bit and have Anomen unequip his weapons before the spell hits, but do not manage to do so for Yoshimo... so Anomen beats some Commoner unconscious, with another two turning hostile. By some minor miracle, Yoshimo targets either the Harpers or our own party members while confused... and our reputation stays intact.
Jaheira got one round's breathing room, and was able to get Iron Skins up.
With that in place, she got a Harm cast... and that's all the Harper Thief wrote.
Jaheira casts a second Harm! And it bugs out; the spell casts successfully, but she never gets the Harm weapon. Maybe you need to wait for the first Harm spell to fizze (3 rounds) first?
Finally, Reviane falls to concerted attacks.
Alright, alright. I think we're going to live. It's just the Dwarven Fighter with a Warhammer, and the Elven Mage left. But that Dwarf is dynamite... anything that goes near gets clobbered, and with Blunt damage, he makes a mockery of our attempts to summon Skeleton Warriors to hold him off.
Apparently he even has 66% resistance to Fire! What the frick?
Friggin' Dwarf... we end up having to kite him around, but even then, no one can hit him.
You know you're desperate when you resort to using Wands of Magic Missile, but that's what we end up doing. Several charges later, the dread Dwarf falls.
There's just the Elven Mage left, and Minsc has literally tanked his entire spellbook (he had almost no damage spells thankfully, it was all Enchantment and Illusion), so he is swiftly defeated. We have victory!
Usually I move much faster than this through Chapter 2, and thus the Harpers appear when we emerge from the Underdark (at which point we usually have high enough reputation that they can be dissuaded from attacking), so I was unprepared for how tough this fight was. Furthermore, we had all the wrong spells for it (long-term buffs that we simply had no time to stand still to cast, no humanoid disablers, too few means of dispelling Illusions, and area-of-effect Fire damage with innocent bystanders), and thus we cut it perilously close. We got lucky in more than one respect too, as somehow Yoshimo didn't go postal on some poor Commoner while Confused.
We scoop up the loot (mostly unremarkable, though Mazzy gets a nice upgrade in a Full Plate Mail and a Small Shield +1), and retreat right back into the Copper Coronet. Having witnessed our tanks once again get annihilated in close combat, I think we'll go after Mencar before proceeding with the plot: We need every frontliner in Full Plate Mail, and Mencar has a suit of it.
So, we'll take down Mencar's crew, then push as far as we can into the Crypts (I've given up on getting through there on one rest... we'll just get ambushed by bandit scrubs en route and have half the party trashed senseless).
... I think Dwarfs might replace Trolls as the party's nemesis.
So, what happened: Smaeluv dropped quickly. Brennan got a single backstab off, but we were able to kill him before he ran away (good!). By now Mencar had killed four Skeleton Warriors on his own and started chasing our frontliners. Pooky committed suicide via Lightning Bolt, taking Yoshimo down with him, and Amon just did what Mages do, i.e. be a nuisance.
In hindsight, I should've just called up a few Fire Elementals or Aerial Servants: There's nothing Mencar or Brennan can do to them.
So, that's all our healing expended pretty much (Wondrous Recall saves us as always, allowing Anomen to Raise Yoshimo and toss a Mass Cure into the mix... we make up the difference by CLW, CMW and a lot of Goodberries). Let's see how far into the Crypts we get.
We arrive at the Crypts unimpeded. For once, something goes according to plan, as the Spiders are incapable of hurting a summoned Fire Elemental, leaving it free to mop them all up on its own (a Phase Spider teleports to Jaheira and poisons her twice in a row, but that's the only damage we sustain while clearing out the Spiders here).
Pai'Na also goes (almost) according to plan. Mazzy gets Protection from Fire + Resist Fire/Cold, is sent charging in, and then has a Fireball dropped on her, killing all the Spiders.
Pai'Na gets an initial Chaos off, which only affects Yoshimo, and then a Chromatic Orb at Hubblepot (I was a little concerned, but realized afterwards that with the +6 save bonus, it is impossible for him to fail his save against that). Pai'Na falls, and we get the Spider Figurine, a few good scrolls (for Imoen, Hubblepot already knows Spider Spawn and Spell Immunity) and the Ioun Stone, which goes to Minsc. I'll try it out and see if he takes too many criticals for it to be worth it.
Alright. We meet up with the Mage, who is subsequently killed (his Staff Mace +2 going to Jaheira). Grimwarders have only non-magical weapons, and so (although it takes a while) another Fire Elemental can destroy them in total safety.
One Grimwarder even dropped a Mordenkainen's Sword scroll.. good stuff.
Alright.. Vampire time. We'll use only Minsc and Mazzy, Minsc wearing the Amulet of Power, Mazzy under Chaotic Commands and NPP. We only manage to scrape together two Chaotic Commands though (and I put one on Jaheira just in case, since she hovers near the back ready to re-apply NPP mid-combat if necessary), so there's no way we'll have time for the whole thing.
Minsc pulls Gellal. And the vile Vampire fails his save on the second Azuredge hit! Hooray!
The Greater Ghoul is swiftly dispatched, the Fire Elemental acting as tank (a Fledgling Vampire likewise succumbs to Azuredge before even getting an attack in). We go after the Clay Golem guarding the Vampire crypts, and it drops in moments.
Alright... there are four Vampiric encounters left: Durst and his cronies to the north, the ambush downstairs, Tanova and her attendant Fledgling Vampire, and finally Lassal. Oh, and of course Bodhi.
We've got literally no healing apart from half a dozen Potions of Extra Healing, one set of buffs, and one NPP. Yeah... we're going to have to retreat, rest and return.
But we've got enough juice to clear Durst out.
Since we're leaving after this, we go all-in: Four Skeleton Warriors from Anomen, and five traps from Yoshimo (he failed to set one).
The Fledgling Vampire is undone by traps, Durst fails his save against Azuredge and disintegrates into dust, and the Greater Ghoul is helpless before our wall-o'-bones. Hooray!
Azuredge certainly is a little cheesy.. but Improved Vampires have it coming. We gather up the Mace of Disruption for Minsc. For a moment, I contemplate going after Tanova, but I see no reality in which that would go smoothly, so we opt against it. The Skeleton Warriors escort us out of the tombs, Hubblepot applies Invisibility 10' Radius, and we retreat to the Copper Coronet.
Yeah, you better run! Scrubs!
We rest up, and return, making our way into the lower Vampiric crypts.
The Fledgling Vampires are much less dangerous than their named counterparts.
And they make themselves even more irrelevant by being absolutely desperate to reach Mazzy.. to the point where they simply attempt to scuff our Skeleton Warriors out of the way (to no effect whatsoever), not even getting a single attack in before Azuredge ends them.
The magical Scale Mail here is actually an upgrade for Jaheira, heh.
We head back upstairs. The Fledgling Vampire in the eastern pathways is swiftly destroyed, but Tanova proves a problem, as always (once she knows you're there, she starts seeking the party out instead of standing in place and wasting her spells on summons). She gleefully disassembles our Skeleton Warriors, and Mazzy gets Dominated! A Chaotic Commands landed on her a moment after the Domination kicked in. Hrmph.
However, we manage to hold Tanova off long enough for Hubblepot to get True Sight + Breach out the door. And we do have a second weapon of undead mass destruction...
Wow, we're almost through! Jaheira (under Iron Skins) heads east and attracts the attention of Lassal.
He summons some Giant Rats that do precisely 1 damage per hit to our Skeleton Warriors (I assume the Rats have some kind of nasty poison or disease effect on-hit), but falls to Azuredge before accomplishing much else.
All that remains is Bodhi. Maybe we should retreat and rest.. naah, we're feeling lucky! Yoshimo sets up four traps, we boost our summoned ranks with Kitthix and the Berserk Warrior, apply buffs, and stake Lassal.
Bodhi pops, drops to Injured, deals 40 damage to everything in melee range with her Death Touch (killing all our summons, since they were quite injured from Tanova), and proceeds to beat the living tar out of Minsc, Mazzy and Jaheira.
We can't bring her below Injured, and so it ends with Mazzy utilizing her two Haste innates to kite Bodhi around, until Bodhi tires of the chase.
Poor Minsc was left with 4 HP. But still: We did it! Hooray!
The Vampires are cleared out (almost entirely thanks to liberal use of Azuredge), we have their treasures, and the way now lies open to Brynnlaw!
Under Invisibility 10' Radius (never leave home without it) the party falls back to the Copper Coronet.
We'll rest up briefly, but Imoen's rescue is almost at hand! And with it a much-needed boost in the party's arcane potency.
Hubblepot remains a L10/L11 Gnome Cleric/Illusionist.
Keep it steady!
Yeldon - half-elf cleric/ranger, protagonist (corey_russell)
Denko - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Keras - dwarven kensai (Grond0)
We found ourselves in D'Arnise Keep. The Trio did quite well here, and there weren't any problems. Torgal was defeated, and the Keep was saved.
We realized we hadn't even been to the Bridge District, so we went there to get the Horn of Valhalla. We also solved the skinner murders. The Rune Assassins were defeated, but they very nearly chunked Denko - Tymora was smiling at him today.
We also avenged the man buried alive and got the boots of avoidance.
We ran into a vampire ambush about this time. Unfortunately Keras got seen first. Keras ran and Yeldon was able to get the attention of one. Denko was near Keras and the vampires were out of sight of Keras - Grond0 thought ah, they are after Denko and Keras stopped moving - nope the vampires were giving Keras a false of security and killed Keras. Yeldon and Gate70 did beat the vampires and resurrected their friend.
We decided to venture into the Temple District and take on Tarnor's Gang. We thought we had a pretty good plan of silences, hold persons, skeleton distractions, and the genie lamp's stinking cloud. Our problem though was Keras couldn't wait to get into the action, Tarnor's whole gang concentrated on Keras and killed Keras. But Denko and Yeldon were able to carry the day, and their friend was once more resurrected.
With two deaths in the session already, it was pretty clear by this point that we really should get a rod of resurrection - oh hey maybe a nearby mage has one. Keras took a play out of the vampires' book by first lulling Mekrath to a false sense of security by agreeing to get the mirror for him. Then the party surrounded Mekrath and killed him pretty much immediately. We now have a rod of resurrection.
We had a little bit of time left, and were just able to work on exposing Maevar. The only part of this that is tricky is fighting the Cowled Wizard for Edwin. So Yeldon put a huge number of buffs on Keras so that Keras can safely solo that mage. It was all for naught, as Keras managed to kill the mage before the mage could even finish buffing.
Eventually we had to destroy Maevar and his allies. Denko got badly hurt, but other than that, it was pretty smooth, silences and skeletons once again assuring victory. We got our reward and saved our session here.
Playing Insane (no bonus damage, just extra spawns in SoD). Relevant mods:
-Tweaks Anthology
-IWDification
-Enchant the Missile Launchers
-Improved Shamanic Dance v4
Introducing Garos the Warhorn Shaman:
First thing's first: let's test out the spirits.
Man, these guys are awesome. The warriors enrage themselves as soon as they see an enemy while the archers have Called Shot, vastly improving their effectiveness. Improved Shamanic Dance makes it so you can at least move a little bit while performing the dance. You can get the same results without the mod, but it takes careful timing to do so, similar to how the Bard Song can be maintained despite performing other actions. With level 3 in hand, I head over to the Beregost Temple for some more easy levels by having the spirits kill the wolf pack and the sirenes.
I think at this time, I give back Tenya's bowl and go up to Ulgoth's Beard, kill Dushai, then go basilisk hunting. I don't remember because it's been a a few days since I played this character and I didn't take screenshots in between leveling from Kelddath's sirenes and leveling up later from Farmer Brun. But I can say for certain with Korax leading the way backed up by my spirit bros, there is nothing to fear from Basilisk Country. No Basilisk Loop this time.
I think I did the ankheg nest next. Spirits can usually kill an ankheg after I draw its attention and before it hurts me too badly. I level up from returning Farmer Brun's son, which makes this level 6. Now I can summon the 2nd tier of warrior spirits: the berserkers. They come in dual-axe and two-hander sword varieties. I prefer the two-handers as they seem to hit the most often and the hardest compared to the dual-axe berserker.
I do some wilderness quests because my reputation is pretty bad and I don't want to go into Nashkel until its at least 4 or 5. I'm pretty sure I kill the pair of Battle Horrors (or was it Doom Guards?) outside Durlag's Tower. I level up again off Shoal.
Since the spirits are immune to mind-affecting spells, I go out for more sirine hunting. My tactic to get the spirits to attack the sirines is to walk out of the spirits' sight range so they'll follow me, then lead them to the sirenes by clicking the nearby area where the sirines are located. The spirits will instead walk there as they anticipate where I'm going, causing them to spot the sirenes and begin attacking them. However, the spirits always seem to NEED to come back and bump into me to give me a hug or something before attacking, so it does come with a risk, but you just have to position yourself so that the spirit is the nearest target to a sirene so it will get spells cast at it instead of having them cast at you.
Using this tactic, I level up off Sil's group for level 9.
The Flesh Golems inside the cave are killed and I consume the CON tome. That's about it for the easy levels, so I progress the main plot and do other wilderness quests that yield interesting loot. Around this time I discover that using non-world-map area transitions causes me to summon more spirits and the already-summoned spirits will follow me through the transition. I'm not sure if this behavior is native to the Shaman, caused by Improved Shamanic Dance, or by the Warhorn Shaman kit. It's pretty amusing and I use it to kill Dave.
Access to the city is now granted, so I start doing the sidequests for their generous XP rewards. I get level 10 from Desreta and Vay'Ya, learning Chaotic Commands. Finally.
I enter the Ogre Magi house and get reminded that Panic is not one of the things that Chaotic Commands protects against. Damn it. I also forget that Rallying Cry is what I should've used to prevent Panic in the first place.
Fortunately, I managed to survive while panicked. Horror wore off shortly after that screenshot was taken and I casted Sanctuary to heal myself with Cure Serious Wounds. Using my self-made NWN-style Cure Wounds spell line, 3d8+10 HP is enough to get me back to a comfortable HP threshold and I defeat the rest of the ogres.
Toward the end of BG's sidequest hell, I level up off Marek for level 11.
Up next is the Iron Throne. I get behind them with Sanctuary and cast Insect Plague at one of the spellcasters while they're still neutral, then walk toward Zhalimar Cloudwulfe to get them hostile while the swarm was still in flight. The swarm hits all of them as I planned and I start summoning my spirit bros. With their initial spellcasting negated, they make mincemeat of them.
At the Candlekeep Catacombs, I use the Violet Potion to crack open the tomb containing the STR tome. I ignore the WIS tome because there's 4 traps guarding it and I'm super squishy while the Violet Potion is active. Not worth the risk.
Prat's group suffers the same fate as Cloudwulfe's. Time for TotSC. Now that I'm sufficiently leveled, I can actually defend myself at range. At the Ice Island, I test out Fury of the Winds, which, for 1 turn, gives Haste and makes my weapons count as +3, in addition to extra cold+electrical damage on hit (save vs. spell for half damage). With Insect Plague, and Arrows of Biting+Fury of the Winds, these mages never stood a chance.
Next post will be Durlag's Tower and the rest of BG.
Garos - Warhorn Shaman 11
Garos the Warhorn Shaman
BG1: 1At Durlag's Tower, I get on the roof and drink a Potion of Magic Shielding for automatic saving throw successes. With Fury of the Winds, I shoot the basilisks with acid arrows, dealing heavy elemental damage. I manage to kill them all before Fury of the Winds expires. Inside the dungeon, I cast Protection from Lightning and use the Ring of Fire Resistance and a potion of fire resistance. I try summoning my spirits to beat the Greater Doppelgangers in the library, but they get overwhelmed and I have to kite them with my bow and boots of speed. The spirits can handle the rest of the level, but I don't trust them against the warders. I buff up with Storm Barrier and Fury of the Winds and start the fight with Insect Plague. They'll take damage twice as fast since they're hasted.
My AC isn't very good since the heaviest armor I can wear is just studded leather. They get some hits on me, but Storm Barrier helps retaliate. I drink a potion of regeneration and also an Oil of Speed to speed up the regeneration and kite the warders with my bow. Thanks to Insect Plague, it doesn't take too many hits to kill them.
Levels 2 and 3 go well enough. I reach the chessboard and copy Spaz's trap abuse strategy, buffing with Protection from Lightning and using boots of speed to trigger more traps at once.
Level 4 goes just fine. Thanks to the Ring of Free Action, I can move at normal speed while dancing, so it's just a matter of escorting the spirits to where they need to go. Against the Demon Knight, I approach from the side and shatter the mirror immediately after it initiates dialogue. The Demon Knight's Mirror Fiend kills the real version, and it dies after killing its real self. I kill the leftover mirror fiend myself.
I'm not fighting Aec'Letec, so I just leave the tower behind and drop Soultaker outside. I charm Ithtyl Calantryn, something I've never done before, and she's pretty great. I bring her to the coronation because I'm pretty sure my spirits can't do this by themselves. Ithtyl casts Slow and Chaos on the Doppelgangers, though only Chaos seems to work. Liia dies, as usual, but Belt still lives.
Inside the thieves' maze, I level up to 12 from the Doom Guards. For my first 6th level spell, Harm seems like a tempting option but I decide to go with Conjure Fire Elemental instead. I also get access to the 3rd tier of spirit: Ancestral Spirits. These spirits are fighter/cleric and cast DuHM before attacking. They have other spells memorized, but I haven't seen them use any yet.
The fire elemental does the tanking because its immune to +1 weapons and less. With access to level 6 spells, I also gain Wrath of the Skies, which does 1d10 cold+electrical/round, reduces enemies' magic resistance by 50%, and reduces their AC by 4. Against Sarevok's Undercity party, I send in the fire elemental, cast Insect Plague, followed by Wrath of the Skies, and then Fury of the Winds as I assist the fire elemental. I feel like the Stormlord Himself!
Now for Sarevok. I summon a fire elemental, initiate Sarevok's dialogue which causes Semaj to teleport forward, then go invisible. He won't activate his sequencer unless he can see me, so he wastes his time on the elemental instead. A lightning bolt rebounds off the elemental and Semaj ends up killing himself.
I command the fire elemental to move toward the throne, which aggros the rest of Sarevok's party. They can't touch the elemental because their weapons aren't enchanted high enough. Not even Sarevok can hurt it. Perfect opportunity for Insect Plague as they are all Hasted and Angelo is still casting spells. I follow up again with Wrath of the Skies and start using acid arrows imbued with Fury of the Winds. I kill Angelo with an acid arrow; Tazok dies to the elemental and Sarevok is devoured by the insect swarm.
BG1 Complete!
Garos - Warhorn Shaman 12
We used Fireballs and brute force to stomp on most of the enemies in SoD, taking care to cover a few dangerous vulnerabilities, like using Protection from Poison scrolls to block the poison breath attacks in the Forest of Wyrms (EE v2.5 now makes the scrolls grant full immunity to poison damage). Enemy mages can be problematic in SoD, but we saved up a lot of Arrows of Dispelling from BG, rendering each one pretty much helpless.
Even without recharging wands, we ended up with far more wand charges than we ever needed. Corwin, Edwin, Indira and Charname all had the damage output to steamroll the opposition without dipping into limited resources. By the time we arrived at the Underground River, we could just spam Fireballs to speed things up.
I fought more battles than normal, but I still avoided some optional ones I didn't like, including most of the Underground River, Hephernaan's human form, and the dead magic zone (which I consider to be essentially a death trap).
This time, we didn't smuggle any gear into BG2, so we enter SoA completely broke. I've gotten kind of tired of that trick; it encourages intensive hoarding and the long-term rewards are actually pretty crummy. Having 200 Wand of Fire charges doesn't really do much by the time you reach BG2. All it really did was make me fuss over resources in BG and SoD to make early BG2 easier, even though BG2 is the easiest game for me by far.
A fatigue bug nearly killed Charname in Chateau Irenicus. The Lightning Mephits in my install have ranged lightning bolt attacks that can't be dodged, and we were taking 16 damage per hit because Charname had -10 luck from all the fatigue that apparently came from traveling from Dragonspear Castle to Athkatla without resting.
We accidentally triggered a Cowled Wizard ambush while buffing for the fight with Galvarey. We got hit by a Comet spell with a level 10 party of 4, instantly wiping out Jan and Edwin and nearly killing Jaheira. Charname took zero damage because I always buff them with Protection from Fire, and we fled the map under Invisibility.
Previous entries: 1, 2, 3, 4
Upon arrival to Baldur's Gate, Saoirse went for a shopping spree at Sorcerous Sundries for approximately 25,000 GP. But it was no vanity spending - with all the tactical ammunition, potions, arcane scrolls (for the purposes of scribing as well as multiple copies of certain spells for long fights) and green protection scrolls, we should now be ready to handle the challenges that await us. Notable additions to our spell book include Polymorph: Self, Teleportation Field, MGoI, Minor Spell Deflection, Haste and Slow. Saorise then concludes her day with a well deserved hot bath and cold beer at the Elfsong Tavern.
Before taking the ride back to Candlekeep, our only major activities involved the dealings with Marek & Lothander and Ramazith. I'm pretty certain that I followed the dialogue with Ragefast in the same diplomatic manner as usual, however, this time he went aggro and attacked (maybe a similar change in the script as the one regarding Greywolf's behaviour, as described earlier in this thread?).
Saorise simply retreated under invisibility and escalated the issue to Ramazith.
Now that we've collected Eagle Bow and Ring of Protection +2, we're ready to proceed to the Iron Throne compound. Preferring subtlety over force, Saorise avoids the war party on the top floor entirely.
Potion of Magic Blocking is sufficient to avoid the ogre magi ambush at Candlekeep. Once inside the catacombs, Saorise uses Potions of Perception and a hasted jelly form via Polymorph: Self to tackle the traps and locks protecting the two tomes (while maintainig invisibility / stealth to avoid enemies).
Moving out of my comfort zone, I decided to face Prat for once - mostly in order to get my hands on the Wraithform scroll (carried by Sakul) for the first time in my playthroughs. Using the narrow corridors to separate and repeatedly backstab his party members, Saoirse is able to take down everyone except Prat, whom is eventually left behind unharmed.
Tam gets blinded, stumbles into Web and is quickly taken down via dual-wielding Whistling Sword and Rashad's Talon.
Sakul finally yields his treasures to a backstab.
Short note on Wraitform: I was hoping for the spell to give some extra "illusionist" flavour to Saorise. Unfortunately, it not only prohibits you from casting spells but also prevents access to special abilities (!), so it doesn't provide any synergies with Polymorph: Self and sequencers. Therefore, I'm not sure if I'll find some relevant use to it.
Back in Baldur's Gate, it's time to visit the Blushing Mermaid to confront Slythe. Saoirse enters the cellar invisible and applies her regular buffs routine along with Minor Spell Deflection, Fire Shield: Red and Polymorph: Self. Since I've been unable to separate Slythe from Krystin in my recent runs, the Violet Potion is still sitting in Saorise's case in anticipation of Remove Magic from Krystin.
Saorise frustrates Slythe's backstabbing attempts by shifting into the jelly form, while Fire Shield does its work.
Following a critical hit by the jelly, he was just about to get finished by a Potion of Firebreath but abjuration incantation from Krystin meant that a dispel was on its way.
Keeping her aura clear, Saorise quaffs a PoI instead.
We rebuff with Potion of Defense, Shield, Oil of Speed, Potion of Mind Focusing, Potion of Regeneration, Blur, MIs and Improved Invisibility and break the invisibility by feeding Slythe his own medicine.
Slythe: "Hey, fellas! Guess what time it is? Yep, you got it: It's time to die."
Saorise: "Excuse me, sir, but that does not seem to be the case - according to my watch it's precisely let's-burn-your-eyes-to-ashes o'clock."
Krystin eventually pulls out a Greater Malison cast but it's too late for Slythe. We collect the documents together with our new short sword and run for the palace.
Regards,
B.
Previous entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
This is Saoirse's character record right before engaging Belt in the palace.
She's dual-wielding Short Sword of Backstabbing with Whistling Sword and running Violet Potion, Potion of Agility, Potion of Fortitude, Potion of Fire Resistance, Potion of Mind Focusing, Potion of Magic Shielding, Potion of Power, Oil of Speed, Ghost Armor, Shield, Pro Evil, Minor Spell Deflection, Blur, MIs, Improved Invisibility and DuHM. She's also summoned some minions via Wand of Summoning and there's a telefield established in the room.
En garde, ye doppes!
Saoirse opens with Dispelling Arrows and sets the stage with a Malison scroll in preparation for further disablers. However, a large group of the doppelgangers gets teleported right next to Liia and that's it for her.
Further spells are launched into the midst of the fray - Slow by Saoirse and Chaos by the doppelganger mage.
Mercifully, Belt retains his senses and stays unaffected by the confusion. Dispelled and slowed, the melee attackers make easy targets and, one by one, we take them down with swords (while Belt faces his own confused mercenaries).
Saorise then swiflty tracks down the mage before he can put any more pressure on the lone surviving duke. She dispels his MIs and carves through his Stoneskins.
His death wish in the form of Remove Magic remains unanswered and bounces off in vain.
With all the mercenaries dead (mostly by Belt's hand), we summon more monsters to act as cannon fodder for Sarevok. And before he can cleave his way out, he resigns.
I realize that our task to protect the dukes could have easily failed. Having the benefit of hindsight, I think that the telefield was a pretty bad idea and that the spell is not well suited for the specific circumstances of the palace fight (crowed space with lots of allies combined with vulnerable dukes). I'd recommend against using it there in solo games.
Onto the Undercity!
Regards,
B.
1st report
2nd report
3rd report
4th report
5th report
Back in Baldur's Gate the party saves Duke Eltan, and Tamoko points them to Slythe and Krystin in the Undercellars. Slythe is lured into Gilyn's deadly traps while Krystin fails to get rid of Yeslick and Branwen's skeleton warriors.
Gilyn takes Slythe's short sword of backstabbing +3 as his standard melee weapon. His 4th pip had gone to short swords, so he is now proficient in all the typical elf weapons (shortbows, longswords and short swords).
The companions invite themselves to the Ducal Palace for Sarevok's ceremony. Gilyn places his traps in the main room, and Xan, Branwen, Yeslick, and Faldorn do their summoning and pre-buffing routine.
Yeslick and the skeletons wade into melee. Kivan focuses his dispelling arrows on the Mage forcing it to retreat. Gilyn does a bit of backstabbing with his new blade.
Next stop is the Undercity. At this point the party have their mind only on getting Sarevok and any remaining adherents. Invisible, they can afford to ignore a band of seemingly lost adventurers in the Undercity but Gilyn does stop to convince Tamoko that not all Bhaalspawn are alike.
They enter Sarevok's sanctum. Gilyn sets some snares and Branwen and Yeslick summon their skeletons. Gilyn approaches Sarevok who rushes toward the elf (triggering the snares without taking any damage; should have placed them much closer to the entrance). But then Kivan appears from the shadows to remove the warrior's haste with one of his trusty dispelling arrows.
@Borco, thank you for your appreciation! It's been a nice run. I liked how @aldain's Cleric/Illusionist started doing the main quests at rather low levels and wanted to try the same. For a long time the party felt somewhat underleveled and underequipped. Eventually though, with the completionist approach, the party finished ended up strong anyway. Good luck with the last bit! And let's meet up north
Garos the Warhorn Shaman
BG1: 1, 2A fire elemental and 3 spirits are just barely enough to defeat the first undead horde of the dungeon. The elemental dies to the cadaverous undead in the next room, but the spirits are conveniently immune to their additional on-hit effects. I summon an Elder fire elemental for the group of mercs guarding the hallway to Korlasz, but it eventually killed and the spirits are having trouble dealing with the mercs. I fall back and stop dancing to summon another elemental.
Korlasz is thoroughly rekt by Insect Swarm as the spirits and fire elemental do cleanup duty. Nothing noteworthy happens in the Coldhearth dungeon, though I do have to resort to using a scroll of Protection from Run-Ending Assholes, as the tides of undead overwhelm my spirit bros. The fire elemental is not quite as helpful as it usually is since it can be hit by the more powerful undead. I finally break out the Arrows of Detonation that I've been saving to soften up undead, though I'm careful not to use more than 1 or 2 per group. I level up to 13 in the easternmost pillar puzzle room.
Coldhearth is dealt with using the Secret Revealed and finished off with acid arrows.
Adventures in the Troll Claw Woods and the first half of the temple of Cyric aren't really anything to write home about, although I always love using Insect Plague when I get the chance.
The Neothelid is more annoying than difficult. When it pops out from the floor, it instantly and automatically sinks back through the floor if you move a certain distance away from it, making it so you can't click its circle to attack it. This is a bit problematic because I get more attacks/round using a bow than meleeing, and I don't want to find out if the Neothelid has any dumb on-hit effects. I try casting Harm, but the damn thing waits out the 2 round duration.
Since it won't stop hiding, I cast Fury of the Winds and get in close to melee it, dealing more damage than I thought I would. But I retreat after one attack and try to see if I can shoot it from just within range so it doesn't hide. It eventually goes down.
For Darskhelin and co., I use another Insect Plague to prevent spellcasting and lead them into a Wrath of the Skies. I kite them around with Boots of Speed and then cast Fury of the Winds to go even faster and do extra damage.
I head over to Bridgefort and enter the crusader camp, stealing the Scroll of Impactful Doom and getting Dragonscale Armor made. Since it's nighttime, I visit the potion mages topside and kill the Greater Feyr for 13k XP.
I deal with the Spellstone and make Void-Tipped Arrows out of it to save for Belhifet. I get the Flaming Fist to move on Bridgefort and the siege begins. I tag the named mages with Arrows of Dispelling and finish them off with acid arrows, covering big groups of enemies with Insect Plague. I use a couple of Arrows of Detonation buffed with Fury of the Winds to do massive AoE damage, as the extra cold+electrical damage applies to each enemy in the AoE.
As the crusaders crumble, I bring out Wrath of the Skies to finish off stragglers. The Barghest dies last.
At the bridge, I learned from my previous failed playthrough with a monk that killing the fire elemental summoned by the mage is actually enough to win that fight, as the mage will turn neutral and run away afterward if it's killed. But I kill the mage instead by using Arrows of Dispelling followed up by Insect Plague.
From giving the Dusty Chicken a bath in the well and killing the Well Spirit, I'm close to a level up. I complete the traitor quest for level 14, learning Nature's Beauty, though I was also inclined to go with Earthquake because of its huge -6 save vs. spell. I also learn Undying Fervor at this spell level. By casting it, I do 50% more physical damage and can negate death by HP loss for 1 turn. It also gives immunity to several instant-death effects.
Nature's Beauty already proves to be exceptionally useful by rendering entire groups of enemies basically immobile. The instant death effect to humanoids is just gravy.
Then in the Underground River's exterior, I give Undying Fervor a try. These crusaders are really annoying, especially the archers, so this spell basically lets me do whatever I want to them for 1 turn. I pop a Sanctuary early and heal up before Fervor's duration runs out.
Up next is the Underground River interior and Dragonspear castle.
Garos - Warhorn Shaman 14
Previous entries: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Still running the Violet Potion despite taking a nap after the Ducal Palace fight, Saoirse opts for Potion of Agility, Potion of Fortitude and light pre-buffs (Potion of Defense, Mind Focusing, Oil of Speed) in preparation for the final battle. She's memorized Improved Invisibility (2x) as her L4 spells and her scroll case remains comfortably full.
Here's the inventory screen for the record (honestly, I have no idea what that wierd THAC0 numbers mean).
Saoirse storms the temple but fails to dispel Sarevok's haste in her first round and is quickly forced to quaff a PoI upon being completely dispelled by Semaj's Remove Magic (how much I long for SI: Abjuration). That's a slow start for us, but not unexpected.
Invisible, Saoirse rebuffs with Potion of Defense, Potion of Mind Focusing, 100% resistance (green scroll and potion), Shield, Blur and MIs. She then carefully picks her targets for Arrows of Dispelling - Sarevok goes first.
We add Oil of Speed to get move movement leverage and Potion of Magic Shielding to counter Malison + Chaos combo from Semaj and Angelo (and also to mitigate non-fire elemental damage). This incoming Chromatic Orb may do some minor acid damage but nothing more.
Angelo's Flame Arrow is even less impressive.
Saoirse uses her rounds to quaff Potion of Regeneration and Potion of Power and then reduces the enemy ranks with Arrows of Detonation.
With Semaj and Diarmid out of the picture, we apply Pro Undead scroll to avoid the skellies. Having ran out of Arrows of Dispelling (combination of a self-imposed purchasing limitation and a sequence of bad attack rolls during the fight), Saorise takes down Angelo's MIs with Detect Illusion.
Dart of Stunning and hit-and-run with swords for finish.
Unseen and seemingly passive, Tazok falls to the endless fire explosions. I wonder when was the last time he actually revealed himself and tried to do something useful.
Sarevok deserves something special and so Saoirse delves to the bottom of her potion and scroll cases...and suddenly, in lieu of our little gnome, there's a backstabbing ogre (to the extent smashing other people with a big spiked thing can be considered a "stab")! Ouch!
Now we only need to use PoIs to repeat the process three times (each time dealing between 50-65 damage). I pity you, brother.
BG 1 done (although, as you may see, I'm still struggling with the bug whereby the game does not automatically end upon Sarevok's death, not even after destroying all the lingering skeleton warriors).
@Blackraven There'll be no Dragonspear for us and Saoirse's off to Athkatla instead. See you in Amn
Regards,
B.
Edit: Lots of typos - sorry for that.
Last BG1EE update found here
Last SoD update found here
BG2EE SoA updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
The party returns to Aran Linvail, and sets sail for Brynnlaw.
The greeting party of Vampires make our lives miserable, but no one dies.
Del also kind of broke the game a little: She turned into a bat and fled into Lady Galvena's Feasthall (which the player can't access at this stage). So Sime never told us to go look for Sanik.
Fortunately, you can still go to the tavern and talk to him, which we do.
We also took the opportunity to beat up on Chremy and save Ginia and Ason (should've probably waited until we had Imoen back, but I would've just forgotten about it).
Basic buffs and Breach makes the Front easy pickin's.
The Guards inside are NOT easy pickin's. They quaff Potions of Magic Shielding and hit like little Plate-Mail covered trucks. The plan was to let an Aerial Servant tank them, but they were having none of that.
Still, it's just damage, and we've learned from our repeated tactical failings: We always dedicate some slots to healing nowadays.
Vadek gives us a stark reminder that high-level Mages should not be tackled head-on (at least not yet): Even a fully buffed Hubblepot, and when I say fully buffed I mean fully buffed, eventually has to retreat and let summons bear the brunt of the battle when Vadek lets loose with a Sphere of Chaos.
Eventually his third Stoneskin gives way to an Aerial Servant.
We escort Claire to Captain Golin, and retire to the tavern. One careful set of spell selection later, we head over to introduce Desharik to Minsc.
While the Book of Many Spells would be rather nice, it's hardly an essential piece of loot, and given that we could barely tackle Vadek, I see no positive outcome that springs from confronting Perth: I'd not be surprised at all if he Gates in a Pit Fiend, followed by some Mordenkainen's Swords, then a few Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting... he'd destroy us utterly. No thank you. We're getting on the crazy train instead!
Fun side note: I always talk to Desharik immediately upon entering, but turns out you can actually loot his house without him reacting. I got a Longbow +2, Light Crossbow +1, 5x Potions of Extra Healing and minor gold this way. I mean why not? He's a scummy Pirate Lord anyway, and this means more money for us to spend in the Underdark.
We frolick around the Asylum for a bit (Naljier Skal conjures us a Rogue Stone.. score!), but are eventually rudely interrupted by Irenicus. Hubblepot promptly administers a royal beating to Bhaal, and we are released into the Spellhold Maze. Whereupon Imoen rejoins us, huzzah! I was worried she'd be left behind experience-wise, but she comes in at 1 million XP (almost exactly the same as Mazzy), and instantly levels to Mage level 12. Mazzy also hit Fighter level 12 here, gaining Specialization in Axes, which will certainly be helpful.
Alright, let's clear the path to the exit first, then work our way around the dungeon clockwise...
Seriously? Who thought it'd be a fun fight to tackle three Yuan-Ti Mages at once? Sigh.
Alright.. we need to get past this without expending half our spellbooks. I do not want to cheese it with mass Web and bombardment from out of sight (the Yuan-Ti Mages are supposed to have MGoI up which would prevent that if not for game quirks). We gamble: Jaheira conjures two Nymphs, and they cast Confusion. It was meant to be cast from off-screen, but of course one of them bumps Minsc into vision of the Yuan-Ti's. One Mage is affected, but the other two come after us.
What in the... what ARE these?! They have 7th level spell slots! Which they've spent on Power Word: Stun!
And it seems they spent ALL their L5 slots on Chaos.
OK, stop being conservative and just throw whatever we have at them. True Sight, Breach, Animate Dead, I don't care, bring them down!
So Jaheira died. Imoen takes a Power Word: Stun and is killed by a Dire Charmed Mazzy.
Hubblepot eats a Flame Arrow. Then a second Flame Arrow. And a third.
He is then treated to, in turn, Power Word Stun, 2x Melf's Acid Arrow sequencers (times three... each Yuan-Ti Mage had one), two regular casts of Melf's Acid Arrow, and a Chromatic Orb.
Anomen is scrambling to do something, anything, but.. there's only so much punishment a Gnome can take.
That was an ignominious defeat, but given how many times we've been a hair away from death, I can't say it was unexpected. I will say that that particular group was truly nasty: Every Mage had Death Spell, so summons were kind of out of the picture. They all had Remove Magic, and being at least L13, they were very likely to strip all our buffs. I would've had to have known we'd be up against something like that to properly prepare for it, but given that we only had control over Hubblepot's spell slots (in way of arcane magic) before going into Spellhold... he would've needed something like 6 Breach to take those damnable Mages down. Still, it's a good lesson for next time.
I don't think my playstyle lends itself well to a Cleric/Illusionist: I played Hubblepot, particularly in Shadows of Amn, almost exclusively as support, his spell slots going to party-wide buffs, Animate Dead, Haste, Invisibility 10' Radius etc. I think it would've been better to leave the support to Jaheira and Anomen, and instead have Hubblepot step in for one or two difficult encounters per day, buffed to the absolute gills and laying about with every debilitating spell effect under the sun (inbetween clobbering stuff with DUHM/Holy Power active).
I did enjoy my time in Shadows of Amn, unfortunately brief though it was
What kind of improvements? Bugfixes and tweaks, or new changes to AI?
Check it here.
@aldain, condolences. Like @Serg_BlackStrider I thoroughly enjoyed your run with Hubblepot. Hope to see your new character soon.
Itis - the grinder
Previouslyhttps://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1017382/#Comment_1017382
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1018368/#Comment_1018368
Itis woke up in a dungeon, and started her steady climb towards the throne from there.
First some gear
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And the first rough spots where cleared with rage.
The level 11, 12 and 13 are all excellent levels for the barbarian - allthough the HP are lackluster. But even of XP where plenty Itis did struggle a bit.
The first quests where the circus, the ambushes, freeing Hendak and the Harper quest. No real trouble
Then things took a bad turn. The trap in the slavers quest nearly ended Itis run. She had dodged the trap enroute to killing the captain, but mistepped on the way back and was down to 1 HP...
I decided Itis needed some better gear, and bought the ring of air control and protection from petrification - Trademeet was next
Adratha was left unharmed - she has such nice potions. The druids where skipped invisible. Belm and Rashads talon are a great step up - 9/2 apr at level 13.
Still Itis struggled
A bold idea then formed. I was going to make good use of the seven protection from undead scrolls and two protection from magic. Lich and ring hunting was next:
Courtesy of the scimitar from WK Itis now got a serious upgrade in the ring of Gaxx. The XP where not bad either.
From then on It was pure grinding. Gear money and XP galore. Nalias keep, the planar spheere and the temple ruins are honourable mentions
Still has to do the planar prison, firkraag, the temple sewer gang and the twisted rune/guarded compound before we can close chapter 2... and Itis is at 4 mill XP. Will skip a few of the nasty quests perhaps. But look at the unbuffed saving throw of Itis.
She still needs the human flesh armour and the amulet of seldarine. Once there the unbuffed saving throw aganst spell is -10... just saying
Garos the Warhorn Shaman
BG1: 1, 2SoD: 1
For the necromancer cabal, I use a couple of Arrows of Detonation buffed with Fury of the Winds. This nukes Kherriun and shatters the ghost jar. Halatathlaer kills the mages on the left side as I clean up on the right side.
I kill Strunk and free the water elementals, leveling up in the process. I'm really torn about my 2nd level 7 spell pick, as Impervious Sanctity of Mind is like a better version of Chaotic Commands, but I also want Creeping Doom, Earthquake, and Conjure Earth Elemental (in BG2, aTweaks gives Greater Earth Elementals 1 use of a party-friendly version of Earthquake with a casting time of 1). I end up going with Creeping Doom after spending 20 minutes deciding.
Up inside the castle basement, I poison the food and water while invisible and try to escape, but the lift isn't working. Looks like I have to aggro Hephernaan. While invisible, I cast Harm and smack Heifer with it, finishing him with an arrow.
I decide to hang out in the basement a little longer and test my abilities. I cast Insect Plague which covers a large portion of the crusaders and disablers their casters. I follow up with Nature's Beauty to get them to hold still for upcoming Arrows of Detonation+Fury of the Winds. I get surrounded but Nature's Beauty lands an instant kill, allowing me to escape.
Arrows of Detonation nuke the survivors. I would spend longer in the basement but their elite reinforcements are beefier than I thought, so I hightail it out of there and go do some quests in Dragonspear Castle's courtyard.
Once that's over, I return to the camp and turn in a bunch of sidequests and start the siege of the Coalition Camp. I summon a fire elemental into the western lane so the trolls will concentrate on it. Dispel Magic neutralizes their Haste and I follow up with good ol' Insect Plague so the ogre magi can't do anything else. Then it's just a matter of pelting them to death from range.
Next are the mages. Insect Plague works but something keeps casting Dispel Magic on the mages. I'm inclined to believe its one of the Wizard Slayers I brought, so I cast Creeping Doom instead. Acid Arrows take care of the helpless mages.
The clerics, paladins, and fighters get utterly obliterated by warmages and Insect Plague. They're held, Malisoned, Panicked, and can't cast spells.
Insect Plague wins the day again. This is undoubtedly going to change in BG2.
At Dragonspear, I buff up with Fury of the Winds and dash into the crusaders' backline, launching many Arrows of Detonation at them. They are all slaughtered in less than one turn. I've never beaten the siege that fast before. But then, I've never used Arrows of Detonation against it before.
Ashatiel appears and is killed in a duel with a single Arrow of Dispelling followed by Arrows of Biting.
Down to Hell we go. Arrows of Detonation won't avail me here since the stronger devils are immune to fire, which only makes them good for killing the trash mob Lemures and Imps. I kill Illaruel, having made sure to buff with Chaotic Commands first and go up the stairs. Against Thrix's minions, I must have accidentally hit Thrix with Arrows of Detonation, because he started attacking me and a bunch more devils appeared.
This does not look good. I wasn't planning to get surrounded by devils yet! I made sure to drink a Potion of Defense before climbing the stairs and starting the cutscene with Caelar, so my AC is at a more comfortable -13. I have 2 attacks while meleeing, but I hit pretty hard thanks to 19 STR and the Safeguard buckler. I cleave my way out of the devil horde, though Hamatulas are still as dangerous as ever. Incidentally, I level up during this fight, so I take the level then and there instead of waiting for the fight to end.
Good thing level 16 gives a THAC0 and save decrement. I eventually kill all of the devils including Thrix.
Time to fight Belhifet. I rest inside the elevator room before switching it on, and I buff with an Oil of Speed. After the elevator's final-save, I buff more with potions of magic protection, defense, and clarity. At the top, thanks to double-strength Haste, I escape Belhifet's line of sight so he wastes his Remove Magic on Caelar instead of me. I buff with Fury of the Winds and equip the Void-tipped Arrows +3 and put on the Medal of Valor for extra THAC0.
I start shooting Belhifet and the arrows are working their magic. Belhifet is taking extra cold damage from Fury of the Winds. Devils start gathering around me, so I get behind Big B and the devils focus instead on Caelar. When her health gets low, I use Greater Restoration scrolls. To my massive relief, they can be used at range.
Estimating how long it will take Caelar to get badly injured again lets me buff with Battle Ardor to improve my THAC0 and damage for a little while. Belhifet has gone Improved Invisible, so I try using Arrows of Dispelling to get rid of it. It takes.
That's cool, but he can spam it whenever he wants, so it's kind of pointless to even try to keep improved invis dispelled. I'd rather keep trying to hit him with a -4 THAC0 penalty than have him constantly disappear from sight. I use another Greater Restoration scroll on Caelar and use a Potion of Power the following round. She's held up great so far this round, so on the next, I cast Wrath of the Skies to deal damage and lower Belhifet's MR and AC. That should negate his AC bonus from Improved Invis.
Belhifet is reduced to Badly Injured and teleports away. Caelar and I focus on killing the trash surrounding her as Belhifet stumbles about. We kill the devils in two rounds.
Belhifet comes back for more after gating in reinforcements. We get him down to Near Death when I misjudge how many more hits Caelar can take. She dies to Belhifet.
But thanks to Belhifet's big inferno spell, a Hamatula's Barbed Defense procs and causes retaliation damage against him, finishing him off!
Phew... I wasn't sure my THAC0 would be good enough to hit Belhifet but I pulled through just fine. I keep forgetting that I can enrage myself for extra THAC0, AC, and immunities, so I guess I wasn't even at full power yet. But I couldn't have done it without Caelar tanking the devils. Trying it the way I used to do it would've just gotten me overwhelmed and then killed. Thanks, Shining Lady.
Siege of Dragonspear Complete!
Garos - Warhorn Shaman 16
Caelar - Fighter 15 (RIP)
Well, I'm trying my hand at this once again. The run I'm describing here has started a while ago, but I didn't post any updates because I wasn't sure if I was going to continue at all at some point. I'll talk about the reasons when I get there. As a reminder, the rules for this challenge are: Playing with an entirely randomized party (the only thing that's not random and affects gameplay are thief ability points, because they take too long to randomize), randomized hitpoints per level up, insane difficulty level, no NPCs, no mods. Also, two new rules: You can't get rid of seemingly useless party members on purpose and you have to keep playing and trying to succeed until the main character dies, no matter the chunkings you suffer. My last attempt ended at Balduran's Island, and my best attempt so far didn't make it out of the Planar Prison. Both of these deaths were really strange and unusual, so I'm hoping for a relatively "normal" run here.
Introducing my party for this attempt:
The Bhaalspawn: Shamash, male neutral evil halfling fighter/thief
15/13/18/10/12/7
*Two-Handed Sword, *Flail/Morning Star, *Crossbow, *Longbow
The combination of high constitution and being a halfling makes for a good main character. I would've loved to see some kind of dexterity bonus here, but starting with *longbow is great anyway, since the meatgrinder challenge is mostly about never getting hit, so ranged combat is key.
Emer, female neutral good gnome illusionist/thief
12/17/11/12/12/11
*Dagger, *Sling
A very good class, though no constitution bonus will result in very poor hp. She has to avoid taking damage at all costs, which won't be easy early on, before she gets access to the most important protection spells. Starting with *Sling certainly helps.
Megaira, female lawful evil dwarf barbarian
13/15/17/12/12/11
*Two-Handed Sword, *War Hammer, *Halberd, *Dart
Having a barbarian is useful, even with a relatively poor strength score. Generally, high hit points and immunity to backstab, plus, later on, damage resistance, is a good recipe for survival.
Saturnus, male chaotic neutral dwarf fighter/cleric
14/14/12/15/15/16
*Flail/Morning Star, **Quarterstaff, *Two-Weapon Style
High stat total, but very bad distribution. The profiencies aren't great neither. The upside is the generally very useful multiclass.
Surendra, male true neutral human druid
14/15/9/10/12/15
*Dart, *Sword and Shield Style
Sadly, no kit (totemic druids are the best for this challenge), but if I make it to early SoA, this one will make my life much easier. Nothing special, but I like druids.
Gunnr, female chaotic evil half-orc priest of talos
18/15/12/8/13/12
*War Hammer, *Quarterstaff
At least she has a decent strength score, but I didn't really need the third divine spellcaster all that much. She also can't use scrolls or wands until she gets the intelligence tome.
In total, this is a relatively average randomized party - about what you'd expect. No true powerhouse, but no completely useless character either. I've had better, I've had worse.
With randomized groups such as these, the first levels are truly annoying, mostly because you just can't hit anything. Lacking profiencies (you can't survive melee combat, so if a character has no ranged abilities, they are relatively worthless) and no or low thac0 bonuses make for a painful first couple of levels. There are some ways to remedy that: First, if you have to kill something, use command and focus all ranged weapons on the target. Second, go for high value targets right away, even if it's risky, to get your first couple of levels early.
That's why I decided to go basilisk hunting before doing anything else. I didn't even get any protection from petrification, completely relying on Corax to protect my party. He did a great job:
I skipped the adventuring party and started completing some non-combat quests in the surrounding areas. With hold person and sleep added to my arsenal, low level foes started becoming less of an issue. Eventually, I took the hidden wand of frost from the Nashkel mines to hunt and kill battle horrors:
All that brought Gunnr to cleric level 5, granting me my first skeleton summon. Though weak, this would be enough to distract the sirens:
However, when hunting the second group of sirens in the other sword coast area, the first death of the run occured when Saturnus, who tried to buy the party some time facing a trio of dire wolves, got hit two times in very quick succession, unable to retreat in time:
I now started systematically going for quests and unique encounters in the wilderness areas (no full exploration, though), with some decent success. Emer's invisibilty for positioning, having access to skeletons, strength of one (to negate the low strength scores across the board), cleric buffs and crowd control allowed for a series of decent fights. My next party death, however, occured during one of the least likely occasions: A gibberling ambush; Emer, as a multiclass with no constitution bonus, simply doesn't get a lot of hitpoints, no matter her level. A single gibberling hit while the party was just trying to move on and ignore the enemies was enough to kill her:
Emer usually casts invisibility on herself before travelling, but she was out of spells this time.
After that, things went very smoothly for a while. I took on even the most challenging wilderness encounters with success, including Kahrk: After waiting out his buffs, I had skeletons and Megaira attack him while a forest being and Emer (protected via minor spell deflection) using the wand of paralyzation tried to stun the ogre mage - it took a few tries, but we succeeded:
Now, I felt ready to deal with the main plot, taking down Mulahey with ease:
Tazok's tent was next:
Against Drasus' party, a few hold spells and a quick skeleton surround of the mages brought success:
I used storm shield, lightning bolt and skeletons as meatshields to deal with Hareishan:
However, in the next mine level this run suddenly turned on its head. Things went very wrong very quickly, mostly because I got overconfident. I was doing very well during the entirety of the Cloakwood, and I felt like my party was actually able to fight without their summons if needed, so once I had no skeletons left, I didn't return upstairs to rest, instead moving on. I took down the ogre mage with ease, but when facing Natasha, her lightning bolt, not focused on my usual skeleton horde but on Megaira instead, jumped seeminly forever and in one of the more insane ways I've ever seen - missing her intended target, going through the tiny doorframe but missing the party standing in front of it, instead going after the two characters who didn't even have a direct line of sight to the bolt. The damage was devastating - Emer, who has a hp maximum of 20, got hit with 86 damage, getting instantly chunked. Gunnr, with 42 hitpoints, took 58 damage, getting killed, but not chunked:
Well, this is where this challenge gets its name from. I killed Natasha and moved back to FAI to resurrect Gunnr and reorganize my party. After having some skeletons kill Davaeorn, I stopped playing for a while:
At this point, I was thinking about stopping this run, but I never seem to be able to give up until my main character is dead, which is why I decided to implement the new rules to stop myself from wasting time thinking about stuff like this - I would just continue playing, to see where things go. Having no arcane spellcaster anymore is bad, but it's not an unusual situation with randomized groups like this anyway.
Can we beat BG1 without Emer? Find out more in the next update!
Plurem - half-orc kensai (protagonist)
Wertle - dwarven berserker
April - gnomish berserker
Trapper - human level 7 kensai dualed to thief
Itwibemine - gnomish kensai (CHUNKED)
The party weathered many ambushes but weathered them fine. We were working on bridge district tasks this session:
1) Horn of Valhalla obtained - Trapper did well with the traps
2) Skinner murders solved - for some reason the Rune Assassins kept targeting Plurem, but his HP managed to hold even so. Victory here as well
3) Neb defeated, and illithium obtained, which we forged into the IMoD later this session.
4) Boots of avoidance obtained, obtaining justice for the man who was buried alive.
5) Captain Dennis Battle
I knew the Captain Battle was dangerous, but I thought we had good enough weapons to take him on. I couldn't think of a way to minimize risk, so just enraged, went in, did KAI and went for the throat. Disaster struck quickly, as Itwibemine got chunked! (she was the two hand sword user).
We weren't going to let them get away with that, and went after them with all we had. However, the enemy mage was not yet out of tricks - they did some fire attack, probably fireball or sunfire, and the entire party is near death!!
After lots of heal potion gulping, finally Captain Dennis goes down - but not before Wertle is killed!
Shortly thereafter, the mage finally dies, and the party goes to a nearby temple to raise Wertle and we gather our belongings.
I figure this can't be that bad, though, as @Gate70 and @Grond0 both did the Trilogy with solo Kensais...
We press forward. After doing a lot of errands, and doing the first two shadow thief quests and the temple's 2nd quest, we finally will make our way to Umar Hills.
I decided Mazzy's resist fear would be quite useful, and she can even use her shortbow. She can use that bow to dispel mages and dragons with dispelling arrows. So we will recruit her soon as we can.
Hubblepot often got in over his head in an effort to save on spells, so it was inevitable that he would find himself in a situation he couldn't get out of. Still, being brought to the edge of defeat only to bounce back has its charm, and I doubt I'll be able to go from completely gung-ho to perfectly planned and executed battles... I'll just hope that the next character is even more lucky than Hubblepot. Speaking of which...
Starting: In BG1EE.
Difficulty: Core rules, max HP on level up.
Self-imposed restrictions: No easter eggs (tree diamond, extra Ring of Wizardry/Ankheg Plate/Ring of Fire Resistance, gold from Firebead etc), no recharging items by selling and buying them back, no using unidentified items.
Mods: SCS v31 (including full pre-buffing for mages and priests), see spoiler for WeiDU.
Initialise mod (all other components require this): v31
Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v31
More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v31
Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v31
Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v31
Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): v31
Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v31
Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v31
Replace BG1-style elemental arrows with BG2 versions: v31
Replace +1 arrows with nonmagical "fine" ones: v31
Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Remove Arrows of Dispelling from stores: v31
Faster Bears: v31
Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v31
Improved shapeshifting: v31
Decrease the rate at which reputation improves -> Reputation increases at about 1/4 the normal rate: v31
Ease-of-use party AI: v31
Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v31
Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v31
Smarter general AI: v31
Better calls for help: v31
Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v31
Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v31
Potions for NPCs -> All of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v31
Improved Spiders: v31
Smarter sirines and dryads: v31
Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v31
Smarter basilisks: v31
Improved doppelgangers: v31
Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v31
Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v31
Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v31
Relocated bounty hunters: v31
Improved Ulcaster: v31
Improved Balduran's Isle: v31
Improved Durlag's Tower: v31
Improved Demon Cultists: v31
Improved Cloakwood Druids: v31
Improved Bassilus: v31
Improved Drasus party: v31
Improved Red Wizards: v31
Improved Undercity party: v31
Tougher chapter-two end battle: v31
Tougher chapter-three end battle: v31
Tougher chapter-four end battle: v31
Tougher chapter-five end battle: v31
Improved final battle: v31
Improved minor encounters: v31
Protagonist: Cassius, Elf Diviner.
Another splendiferuous roll! Not that it matters a great deal given that we are now a pure arcane caster, but still... his character sheet looks pretty.
I like Diviners. They're one of the four specialists I consider playable (along with Conjurers, Illusionists and Evokers), and by playable I mean that they do not lose out on important defenses: Cassius will have spell protections, Stoneskin, Mirror Image, Improved Invisibility and Contingencies/Sequencers available.
I know, there's an SCS component (which I installed) that allows Enchanters to use Contingencies/Sequencers, but it feels wrong.
We lose out on some good, but not great spells: In BG1EE lacking a familiar hurts a little at the start. Wish will probably sting the most to lose, but that's very far into the future.
Needless to say, the specialist bonus is completely pointless (unless we experience an aching need to determine NPC's alignment).
Cassius starts with + in Slings. For spells, he has selected Identify (it was that or Infravision...), Sleep and Blindness. Literally everything a Mage needs when he is incapable of learning Find Familiar, this spellbook shall certainly last us until we reach level 3.
Once you go through BG1 for the 500th or so time, there aren't a lot of viable party setups left you haven't tried.
Nearly every NPC needs Gauntlets of Dexterity to be able to tank, which limits you unless the protagonist is a frontliner.
So: Cassius will be going with a party of Khalid, Jaheira, Imoen (as a pure Thief), Branwen and Faldorn!
I had a slot left and didn't see a real need for any other class, so Faldorn it is. She's actually quite powerful once she reaches L4 spells, which happens fairly quickly since she's a pure Druid: Call Woodland Beings will let Cassius forego memorizing Confusion, freeing his 4th level slots for Greater Malison and Stoneskin (the scroll of which we will definitely be going after), and eventually having True Sight and Insect Plague available will certainly help tip the scales.
Jaheira with Gauntlets of Dexterity will tank (using Club +1 initially, switching to Scimitar +2 when she gets two pips in it), with Khalid providing ranged support and off-tanking.
Let's get on with it, shall we?
Cassius, Elf Diviner, BG1EE Update 1
BG1EE updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Cassius successfully made it out of Candlekeep, although he ran outside the priest's quarters to enlist some Watcher help with Shank. Imoen was recruited, as well as Montaron and Xzar, the latter two assisting against Tarnesh (only Montaron died, as Tarnesh failed his save against Sleep). Montaron was laid to rest on the lawn outside the FAI temple, while Xzar decided to retire at a table inside the inn, and Khalid and Jaheira joined the party.
With two-thirds of the party gathered, we headed north, where Imoen stole everything not nailed down inside the Ankheg lair, and escaped under the effect of Jaheira's starting Potion of Invisibility.
We swung back down south, cleared the Hobgoblins around the FAI, identified the Wand of Fire (huzzah!) and bought a scroll of Stone to Flesh from the temple. Our business here concluded, we headed for Beregost, killing the Belt Ogre on the way.
A quick rest later, we headed south towards the Nashkel Carnival, clearing the bands of Hobgoblins in the two areas along the road. Branwen was de-petrified and recruited, we bought the Violet and Red Potion and rested. A few memorized Command later, the party cleared Neira and talked to Noober, and picked up a Potion of Invisibility from the Nashkel Manor House (so Cassius now has a survive-bandit-ambush card). Here we also spent roughly 1000 of our hard-earned gold. I used to be exceptionally stingy about buying anything before 18 reputation, but an extra 10 Potions of Healing makes the early game much less frustrating.
Another rest later, and we headed into the wilderness west of Nashkel, the plan being to complete the five low-level areas here for easy experience and some loot. We won't be recruiting a sixth temporary party member, so we will be running with five characters until we advance the plot and recruit Faldorn. Also, for once, there is no quest timer running... so we're free to take our time, if we so choose.
We probably won't, but it's nice to have the option!
Sleep, Command and Entangle is all we need. The Xvart village falls without incident, but Borda is left alive (we're not robbers). We press westward.
Nigel and his merry bandits fall before us. Unfortunately, when dealing with the Ogre Berserkers and their attendant Hobgoblin Elites, we make a small tactical blunder: I wanted to find out if the Ogre Berserkers are vulnerable to Sleep when they're not enraged (they are! But they are unlikely to fail the save), but as soon as the Sleep landed from out of sight, the whole enemy party started wandering around... ultimately leading to some shuffling, and Khalid parrying a blow from an Ogre Berserker using his spleen.
We thus had to trek back to Nashkel and shell out 100 gold for a Raise Dead. Upon our return, the second Ogre Berserker (the first having fallen to a Scorcher from our trusty Wand of Fire) was nowhere to be found.
Anyway, we cleared the rest of the area. Not feeling like burning potions unless necessary, we positioned ourselves to let Laurel take the brunt of the Gibberling onslaught.
They can only hit her on a critical, but she doesn't wear a helmet...
Laurel's misfortune is our good fortune, as we pick up her Plate Mail, which goes to Khalid (Jaheira will take it once she gets her Gauntlets of Dexterity and can start tanking).
On the way out of the area, we kill the Polar Bear and get some magical boots. This pushes Cassius into his first level-up! Hooray! 12 HP, and one step closer to Ultimate Arcane Power.
On to the Gnoll Fortress. Jaheira gets her Gauntlets of Dexterity. Branwen hit level 3 somewhere back there, and we have enough Sleep, Entangle, Command and Hold Person to fight a small army of Gnolls. Dynaheir is rescued, accepted into the party (otherwise you don't get her 800 experience) and dismissed. With the Tome of Leadership and Influence, Cassius' 19 Charisma should be enough to pass any reaction check.
Eastward! We are interrupted thrice when attempting to rest (Ingot joins our would-be ambushers), but fight through. Drienne trades a scroll of PfU for her dead cat, while Caldo and Krum are both susceptible to Sleep, but Command and Hold Person works just fine too, and so they never get a swing in. We finish the Gnolls to the north, loot the Dire Wolf Cave to the south, and head east a final time.
Rufie is returned to Albert. Sendai and her two escorts prove more than a handful: I don't know what their THAC0 is, but it's enough to (very) consistently hit Khalid in Plate Mail wearing the Girdle of Piercing.
We burn a LOT of healing potions, but eventually, Command and Hold Person wins the day.
Farther to the east, Zal falls to a Command, and Vax fails his save against Hold Person, but not before getting a few hits in on poor Khalid. We're running low on healing potions... good thing we're heading back to civilization now! The party treks back to Nashkel, loaded down with loot and with everyone in possession of 1-2 more levels than when they left. A small bit of the proceeds we make is re-invested in another 10 Potions of Healing.
So, we're past the initial hurdle, I think. Everyone is at least level 2, we have money, we have healing potions, we have two Potions of Invisibility (Imoen leveled up enough that her Pick Locks got the chests in the merchant's tent at the Carnival open), and we're in no rush. Might as well clear the closest areas north-west of Nashkel/west of Beregost.
Drizz't is rescued from Gnolls, and Teyngan with compatriots fall (good thing Jemby is vulnerable to Command or this would be a quite difficult fight...). We take down some Half-Ogres to the north, and when mopping up some interested Skeletons, Cassius gets another level! Hooray!
Good stuff I say! We'll buy some scrolls at High Hedge and indulge in a bit of scribing with the help of the Red Potion, but not right now. We head north. Zargal and cronies are helpless before Sleep and Command. Bassilus, however, is not helpless.
We buff as extensively as our levels allow: Remove Fear, PfE on Khalid, Bless and Chant.
Things go our way: Despite a Scorcher from the Wand of Fire and a Magic Missile from Imoen's Wand, Bassilus gets a Hold Person off.. but Khalid makes his save! Moments after, the dread Cleric is Doomed and subsequently Silenced by the tag-team Jaheira and Branwen. With no recourse but to engage in melee, Bassilus soon falls. Hooray! We pick up Ashideena +2 for Branwen, grab Melicamp and depart for High Hedge.
We kill a few Skeletons for a Human Skull, and get Perdue's Shortsword from the Gnolls. Thalantyr unfortunately fails to restore Melicamp (he is transformed into human form but keels over and dies.. I guess Thalantyr will just leave the body there?). We purchase a single scroll of Friends, Cassius casts it, and buys a plethora of scrolls: Invisibility, Mirror Image, Skull Trap, Protection from Cold/Fire, Horror, Minor Spell Deflection.. anything and everything useful.
We swipe the aquamarine gem locked in the house and return to Beregost.
Following a rest, we do all the little quests here: Tell Bjornin that we slew the Half-Ogres, go after the Spiders (handled by Sleep, but we could've just duked it out with them at this stage), Marl, Firebead, Mr. Colquetle, Silke (whom I now always deal with using Scorcher from Wand of Fire, as she typically won't survive even one blast), Karlat, Perdue, Mirianne and Neera. Neera is recruited, relieved of her Gem Bag and Adventurer's Robe (Cassius needs that, thank you very much!), and sent on her way again.
Imoen also practices a little larceny: We steal a Diamond, The Stupefier, the Potion of Invisibility from the Manor House, and the Bastard Sword +1 from the Smithy.
Yes, I didn't install the "Replace +1 weapons with fine ones": I was OK with it being a pain early on, I was even OK with the weirdness that it made +2 weapons almost as common as +1 weapons, but it messes with the weapons of Skeleton Warriors! Do what you will to me, but don't you mess with my summons!
Cassius quaffs the Red Potion and a Potion of Insight, identifies almost everything in our backlog, and gets scribing. With a well-filled spellbook, we rest, Cassius casts Friends, and we shop a little: Scroll of Reflected Image from Feldepost's and a Short Bow +1 for Imoen from the Thunderhammer Smithy (it'll be so long until she gets the Eagle Bow, I figure it's worth it). We swing by the temple and get the reward for slaying Bassilus, and return to Nashkel (Cassius of course traveling under Invisibility, as he will always be doing from now on).
Here, I remember that Khalid is in fact L3 and has ++ in Longbows, so I buy him one.
Jaheira will now take over tanking duties. We have another rest, preparing spells: Several Remove Fear (the Kobold Shaman and Nimbul both need to be countered), Command, Bless, Chant, Hold Person, Sleep, and Invisibility.
With Cassius having access to Invisibility, we can safely trigger the Dorn ambush now, which we do.
Another suit of Plate Mail which goes to Khalid and Dorn even survived, hooray! But you still can't join us, Dorn.
I think this is a good spot to call a halt for now (the update is already perilously long). The party has arrived at the Nashkel Mines and stands ready to shine a light on doubtless nefarious going-ons within! Next time, we'll cleanse the Mines, locate and similarly cleanse the Bandit Camp, and with the Cloakwood Forest thus available, pick up our sixth and final party member. It has been an almost entirely smooth ride so far (apart from Khalid's unfortunate spleen-incident), and hopefully it shall so remain.
Cassius is now a L3 Elf Diviner, and not too far from L4 at that.
Previous updates:
Doing the quests in the big city turned out fairly well, with me luring most foes outside into the streets, into the waiting arms of my skeleton army. After everything was said and done, the party entered the Iron Throne HQ, where the same thing was done: Luring foes downstairs in small groups, allowing our summons to engage them, with the party taking shots from a safe distance:
We returned to Candlekeep and fought our way through the dungeon. No trouble here, so going back to Baldur's Gate we just had to prepare for the Ducal Palace event. I decided to go for an approach without potion use, because skeletons + strength of one + bless/chant + DUHM is a ton of damage anyway. To reduce doppelganger damage, Shamash tried hitting our foes with dispelling arrows one by one. In the end, the dukes didn't take a whole lot of damage:
With that done, it was time for some TotSC content. I had already completed the ice island via protection from magic scroll earlier on, so Balduran's Island was next. A huge setback occured early on while exploring the island when Saturnus got hit by a wolfwere. It might seem strange that at this point, a dwarven fighter/cleric will still get onehit-killed by a generic monster, but that's why we simply cannot afford to enter melee combat with most characters:
No resurrection available on the island, so we had to continue as four. At the shipwreck, Megaira kept luring down more and more wolves (which is a bit risky, but fighting in close quarters is not advisable) to the party:
However, when fighting Karoug, the party soon realized that spamming the wand of the heavens with two party members wasn't enough to kill him - his regeneration was too powerful. I lured him away with some summons and rested, picked up the anti-werewolf weapons and tried again - but with zero pips in bastard sword or dagger across my party, hitting him was difficult, and the damage just wouldn't come. I ran again and decided that I had to disabled Karou somehow. My go-to strategy of using the wand of parlyzation is impossible without an arcane spellcaster, so I went for forest beings and their hold monster spell - which did end up working. With the held Kargou suffering guaranteed hits, I was finally able to take him down:
Hold monster continued to be very effecting against the Loup Garou as well:
We resurrected Saturnus and made our way to Durlag's Tower.
The first level was easily cleared, though I had to be very careful, with our only thief being the Bhaalspawn and walking into a trap being potential instant death. Megaira being a barbarian turned out to be very helpful against the dwarven warders, as their thief kept trying to backstab her. Over all, we did very well against them:
Not much trouble with the second level, skeletons do very well against all the threats there except for the dwarven doom guards. To deal with these, I had to use quite a few wand of the heavens charges, and they took down our entire summoned army:
In the next level, we took the western path, cleared the middle path via PfU scroll and used skeletons and our barbarian to deal with the backstabbers to the east. For the chessboard, I buffed with full fire and lightning immunity (both of which turned out to be unneccessary). For some reaons, the enemies didn't start to move towards my party as I bombed them with necklaces of missles from off screen, making this a very easy and strange victory:
The final level wasn't too diffcult, skeletons once again did a great job. I made the demon knight focus my barbarian with his dispel and fireball, allowing for my party to stay safe and deal damage. I didn't notice that my druid got stunned during the battle until after victory was achieved:
Somewhere during Durlag's, our party also reached the experience cap for BG1.
Now, Ulgoth's Beard: We entered and used 5 invisibilty potion immediately to avoid instant death via backstabs. We summoned and buffed up to the north and returned with skeletons to defeat the would-be ambushers:
With our summons still going, some buffs were renewed and both the group outside the cult building and the one inside (after being lured out) were taken down:
We rested and buffed again, this time finally adding a lot of potions (we had already started using our strength potions with Megaira to turn her into an effective damage dealer and to increase her carrying capacity). Not only did we get our strength to 25 for those able to use DUHM or barbarian rage, we also used magic shielding times five and mirrored eyes to protect ourselves against most things Aec'Letec could do. Starting the battle, Saturnus had a very strong opener:
All we had to do was quickly run from cultist to cultist, killing them while avoiding the Tana'ri. Aec'Letec was finished, having done only minimal damage to our party:
Now, we made our way to Sarevok, taking down the undercity party with some careful positioning and two groups of summons. When trying to lure our final foe, I triggered some stinking cloud + web traps by accident, though Megaira was almost able to get into secure saving throw range via invulnerability potion and didn't get unlucky. Sarevok was joined by Semaj, who got hit by Shamash's dispelling arrows and died right away:
Tazok also joined the battle, but decided to attack one of my skeletons, so he was quickly killed with ranged weapons (I was using agility potions to improve my damage output and thac0). Eventually, Sarevok himself ended up getting webbed! I didn't even know he could fail that saving throw (I didn't use doom or greater malison, though I did hit him with a dispelling arrow) - this made it easy to finish the fight:
Things have gone decently well after losing Emer, not counting the loss of our fighter/cleric on Balduran's Island. Let's see if we can avoid getting backstabbed to death in SoD next!
BG1EE updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Ah yes, the Nashkel Mines. But first: Greywolf. We pick the most bloodthirsty option to ensure Greywolf attacks, and proceed to just straight-up best him in physical combat. No need to waste charges of our Wand of Fire; Jaheira takes a couple of licks but it's nothing a potion can't fix. Into the mines!
We are of course a little too powerful for mere Kobolds at this stage. Cassius has two Sleep memorized but we do not even need them. Still, just to be safe, we clear the Kobold grunts guarding the Shaman and Chieftain with a Fireball... and get a mild surprise when the Kobold Shaman (who was invisible, even) leads with Monster Summoning I! I guess he scales a bit with our level. Still, summoning an Ogrillon won't really help the poor Kobolds at this stage, and the Shaman and Chieftain are soon undone.
We press on and reach Mulahey's sanctum. Same procedure as every time: Main tank engages Mulahey, someone holds off the Kobolds to the east, and a Fireball clears the reinforcements. Mulahey shakes up our routine a bit: This time he prepared Mental Domination instead of self-buffing with Free Action, but thankfully chose to Dominate Jaheira and not Khalid. Such antics help him not.
Alright, with Mulahey dead, it is more important than ever that Cassius is always invisible while travelling, what with us now being actively hunted. We make it back to Nashkel safely, although Nimbul tries to ruin our day with a Confusion. I had Khalid pop a Potion of Magic Protection, and it suffices to keep the dread Enchantment at bay... but looking back at it I could've just had him unequip his weapons and move someone close to him to soak up his attacks.
Anyway, Nimbul is as much a failure as his spellworks, and falls to the party's combined might soon after.
With Cassius a mere 6 experience from leveling, we nip over to the Carnival and part Vitiare with his life, earning Cassius level 4. Hooray! More spells!
The following areas go by in rapid succession. Cassius is constantly invisible while traveling, but we encounter no hunters. Tranzig prepared a double Slow and Monster Summoning I (somehow getting four monsters out of the spell), but this did not avail him. In Larswood, bandits and druids alike are put down: Osmadi and Corsone both feeling the sting of the Wand of Fire in conjunction with Silence 15' Radius and, in Corsone's case, a Dart of Stunning (Imoen managed to land one!).
That Insect Plague was aimed at Branwen, who managed to run far enough away that only she were affected (and she was under Remove Fear, so no real harm done).
On to Peldvale. We've got no clever way to handle 3x Black Talon Elites, so we just charge: Jaheira on one, Branwen on another, Imoen backstabbing a third.
That's a pretty impressive backstab... but I'm sure it was just a fluke.
... Maybe I should have Imoen backstab more often.
We clear the big bandit group here as well, save Viconia and send her on her way (another Plate Mail, this one going to Branwen), and head to the Bandit Camp, again not being ambushed.
Imoen sneaks into the south-easternmost hut and steals the Fireball and Web scrolls, but that's all we're doing right now.
Alright! We know where the camp is, so let's prepare before going after it. We go on a shopping spree: Potions of Genius and Mind Focusing from the FAI, Potions of Explosion/Freedom/Magic Blocking as well as the scroll of PfM from High Hedge, and finally the Shield Amulet and The One Gift Lost from the Nashkel Carnival. That's about a lot of gold spent, but it is well spent. We are now prepared for what lies ahead. I indulge in quaffing two Potions of Genius solely to scribe Web and Fireball:
Web is such an important spell that I want it available as soon as possible, and since we only have Cassius for an arcane caster, availability of Potions of Genius won't be a problem.
Thus prepared, we return to the Bandit Camp.
Alright, spells: Web x2, Entangle x2, a lot of Command and Hold Person.. that should do us just fine. Oh, and a couple Resist Fear in case Venkt makes it through and tries to Dispel/Horror us. Khalid moves north, spots a bandit, and runs back to the party under Oil of Speed. Have at thee, ye scoundrels!
This "tactic" works flawlessly every time: For some reason, they'll all waddle into the same little kill-zone.
I guess it has something to do with the script that fires once someone in the Camp detects your presence. Anyway, all the Bandits are down and we didn't even take any damage. We collect their stuff and move in to clear the rest of the camp.
That's interesting... I guess the entire camp didn't come for us this time. Oh well, we've thinned them out sufficiently that the remainder pose no threat. The Gnolls in the cave would object to being exposed to Sleep, but as they're asleep, they cannot. We loot everything and advance to the next chapter.
Still Cassius travels invisibly, still no hunters have appeared. We swing by Beregost, sell off several dozen scalps, then back to the FAI and prepare to enter the Cloakwood. Which we do!
We skip through the first area. For the second, invisible Cassius trips the Web traps in our way, and the rest of the party fights through the monsters blocking our passage. We soon arrive at the third area, and reach Faldorn. Hooray! Our party is complete!
With Faldorn in tow, we clear out Peter of the North, and head east. The Wyvern Cave is cleansed of its inhabitants (a head picked up for later delivery to the Song of the Morning Temple in Beregost), and we also nip east again, clearing only the regular Guards and Lakadar outside the Cloakwood Mine.
Well, might as well clear all Cloakwood while at it. To the Spide-
Hello, ladies! A bit late to the party, aren't you? You'll find yourself sorely outmatched.
Told you. Cassius was invisible, so started with Detect Invisibility, revealing Maneira (Telka started revealed for some reason, and began shooting). Imoen landed a Dart of Stunning on Maneira, while a quick Holy Smite from Branwen interrupted both Lamalha's and Zeela's initial casts.
Faldorn joined in, calling lightning down on Lamalha, who fell soon after.
With only Zeela and Telka still alive and active (and Telka had Branwen tying her up in melee), there was little the amazons could do, and we carried the day! Huzzah!
That business out of the way, the party rests up and starts tackling the Spider infestation proper. Having cleansed the entire area exterior, we buff (Bless, Chant, Remove Fear, MSD on Cassius and Resist Fire/Cold on everyone else: The latter because Centeol's 1 charge Wand of Frost can deal a fair amount of damage if you're unlucky) and engage Centeol. Surprisingly, many of her minions survive the initial barrage of 2x Fireball and 1x Holy Smite, but thankfully only Branwen is Web Tangled, and a Scorcher from Cassius' Wand of Fire ensures our victory.
We deliver Chelak's body to his brother, and head into the first Cloakwood. Here, Jaheira speaks up when we are defending Aldeth, allowing for a non-violent solution. We loot the little hunter's lodge, kill the Tasloi carrying Gurke's cloak, and return to civilization.
Having tried and failed to return Gurke's cloak to him, the party cashes in on the 2000 gold for the Wyvern head, and heads south to Nashkel, retiring to the local inn for the evening.
What to do now? We could take our time, touring the rest of the Sword Coast... but the Sorcerous Sundries and its vast store of scrolls beckons. We shall probably try and trigger the second ambush, but after that, it's looking like we'll go after the Wand of Summoning in the Valley of Tombs (just in case we need a quick diversion), and then prepare for an all-out assault on the Cloakwood Mine.
All in good time, however. Now is the time for sherry and a game of darts!
Unfortunately, only Imoen has proficiency in them (darts, not sherry: Cassius is most certainly proficient in the quaffing of the latter), leading to minor injuries among all involved. No one holds a grudge, however!
Cassius is now a L5 Elf Diviner.