Coremage the human berserker update Traveling with: Ajantis, Khalid, Jaheira, Imoen, Garrick
We made it past level 3 in the Cloakwood Mines. The dangerous mages were taken Coremage, after suitable buffs like potion of magic protection and enraging. Coremage also took down Davaeorn, protected by a potion of magic shielding.
In the Great City of Baldur's Gate, we did a few quests/battles: * Deserta and Vay-ya were defeated - the strength gauntlets going to Coremage * The 4 mages at the top of the Sorcerous Sundries was defeated - our ranged attacks were just too powerful * The two necromancers were robbed by us - Nemphre and forget the other one - but we weren't able to pick-pocket Nemphre so had to kill her instead - woops. * Found two thieves in a house - we intentionally got the password wrong so we could kill them and take their stuff. * Sphene gem turned in to the Seer * Ajantis took out the basilisk in a warehouse - Garrick had protected Ajantis with protection from petrification. * Returned some guantlets lost at the docks to a lady in a warehouse - she gave us useless infravision potions. * Cleared the Seven Suns of dopplegangers and reported to Scar our success. * Also took out the Ogre Mage and his pet carrion crawlers in a sewer - reported our success
Our final action this session was selling our junk - we now have more than 76,000 gold - we have more gold than we know what to do with it. Will keep at it.
Trio Update Yeldon - half-elf cleric/mage ranger, protagonist (Corey_Russell) Keras - dwarven kensai (Grond0) Denko - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Woops, forgot to post about the Trio. We made great progress Saturday.
* We cleared the vampire nest once and for all, including destroying Bodhi for the last time. * Suldanesslar once again cleared of enemies. Denko was once again and showing off as he quivering palmed the black dragon so we can get the goblet. * Our battle with Irenicus at the Tree of Life was surprisingly simple - Grond0 said let's just all range attack him. So we did and Irenicus fell quite quick. What's funny at the initial part of the fight, the Trio got their distance and just in time Gate70 put up Kithix - Irenicus then wasted his best spells on Kithix, including two time stops. When the trio resumed attacking him after all that, he didn't have anything good left apparently. * Yeldon insisted on good routes in Hell, as you know, he didn't want to become fallen. We were able to clear out the beholders. * We all used potions of magic shielding to keep us safe from Irenicus spells. We also kept at range to minimize maze threat. And finally put up summons to distract Irenicus. This worked - success! ToB: * Illsaera was duly defeated. When you got a hard hitting Kensai and a monk with 4 attacks, it wasn't going to last very long... * We got very little done in Saradush, just dealing with Kaiser, raising the father, and fixing the spellbook problem the merchant had. We could have done more, but we got a serious problem where the party kept finding themselves in the enchanted wood where we battled Illsaera. Eventually we did CTRL + J jump to Saradush, saved it, and finallly it looks like we are ok for next week.
Dreadnought has at last finished the Secret of Bonehill. He didn't finish all the quests due to bugs in the mod. In the end he used brute force and ignorance. Since he is evil I suppose that the way he did it is OK. He just butchered the bad guys. He did finish some of the quests however, but the experience was not satisfying.
At least he has survived and is now ready to take on the Iron Throne. He is also VERY rich (over 300,000gp). He used up a lot of ordinary healing potions but largely they have been replaced by superior healing potions. He has sold all equipment less than +2 which is the reason for his wealth.
Some shopping is now in order so long as I can find some containers to put it in. Some potion containers would be ideal along with some ammo containers.
EDIT 2 Bought some ammo and potion containers. Recharged some wands and bought a lot of potions and boots. Only 8gp left, but shouldn't need to buy anything else other than some ale to get some charts. The Ice Island provided more than enough gold for that.
At the Valley of the Tombs the first 2 ghasts followed me outside their tomb to be shot down. The final one was finished off inside - its death taking me to level 8.
A charge from my new monster summoning wand cleared a route through some ankhegs to get their treasure hoard and enable another reputation upgrade from Farmer Brun.
For some time inventory space has been tight as a result of the number of potions being carried, so I decided it was time to buy a container from High Hedge. First though I bought some +1 bullets and killed the golems there. I also successfully restored Melicamp to push reputation up to 19.
The golems in the pirate cave were also shot down before I headed for the Nashkel Mine in search of a final reputation point. I retreated to the top level of the mine to safely rest and heal the odd bit of damage taken (Bhaal CLW triggered automatically by resting does not have any chance to surge). Another lot of monsters then took care of Mulahey and his supporters.
Outside the mine, exploding potions from out of sight killed 3 of the amazons, leaving just a small bit of clean up for my sling.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul was left to the tender mercies of the soldiers while Neira was shot down to give me a place to rest quickly.
Even though reputation was now up to 20 I decided I wanted to push charisma up as well before spending any significant money. That meant using friends, with a chance of causing a wild surge, so I wanted to maximize my level first in order to have the highest possible HPs and best saving throws. At Durlag's Tower, wands of frost and magic missiles were emptied against battle horrors and doom guards. Usually I kill all the ghasts inside as well, but this time I just went straight for the roof and used a green PfP scroll as protection against the basilisks. The first of the greater variety got me to level 9 and the hour was also up at that point, so the others will have a reprieve until tomorrow.
Having completed Werewolf Island Dreadnought has now finished the Ducal Palace. It looks like I will finish BG1 for the first time with an evil character. It is the most completionist run that I have ever done.
After finishing off the basilisks at Durlag's Tower I went to High Hedge and used a friends scroll to buy desired equipment. I hadn't found any other such scrolls, so paid full price for some potions of genius at the FAI temple in order to ensure I learned the remaining friends scroll (and all other scrolls found to date).
With decent HPs, basic AC of -1 and good missile protection, ambushes were no longer a significant threat and I didn't bother with safe travelling while buying and selling a few more bits and pieces. Then it was time for Tranzig to meet the monsters of his worst nightmares.
At the Bandit Camp a monster charge took me quickly through to find Taurgosz - who was greeted by a first use of wand of paralyzation.
The remaining bandits were killed by sling before I used the greenstone amulet for the first time (to avoid the potential need to waste a scorcher by running outside while that was active) and entered Tazok's tent. One wand scorcher killed Raemon and Britik and a second saw the end of Hakt and left Venkt just needing a few sling shots to finish off.
I'm sufficiently confident now of being able to avoid the lightning trap that I didn't bother with even putting on Mulahey's boots before opening the chest.
The ring of free action let me run through the Cloakwood without incident to find the mine. Rather than spend time using Algernon's cloak there I just used 3 wand fireballs from out of sight to kill the mages.
Genthore and Drasus then died to frost blasts (in the latest EE cold damage no longer destroys equipment, making that a more attractive option than before).
Inside the mine sling work cleared a route to the second level and then to the third (pulling the guards nearby the exit away to avoid alerting Hareishan). With time up there though Davaeorn will have to wait for tomorrow.
As I said in my last post, "However, there's many a slip twixt cup and lip."
Baeloth is with the party no more. He got killed in the battle against Saverok. Pity that I now have no mage to cast web, summon monsters or fireballs until I get back to Baldur's Gate. I expect that when I do get a mage he/she will be quite weak compared with the rest of the party.
The battle was fairly straightforward except for the fact that Saverok was fighting against Jarlaxle whilst the rest of the party was fighting the mages and skeleton warriors. Baeloth was trying to remove protections from the mages when he should have been running away. Tazok was already dead.
Once the skeletons and mages were dead, the party had plenty of potions of superior healing and without further buffing killed Saverok.
Tenya was out of the picture for a while due to chaos and then sleep. However when she was in that state she wasn't attacked though she was near death.
Dreadnought did use all his healing spells on her which were probably very much needed.
A rather fraught battle particularly as I have never played it with this set-up before and it played VERY differently. One thing that I do NOT like is that Saverok followed my invisible thief around.
Rather than spend the time to sling the ambushers on the 3rd level of the mine I just ran them round with a single scorcher.
The battle horrors also died to wands before the charmed guard absorbed Davaeorn's lightning bolt. A monster summoning charge drew out his remaining spells before my trusty sling finished him off.
After flooding the mine I decided to go and pick up the pantaloons before I forgot about those. Then it was on to Baldur's Gate. The poison quest was an early target there, with Jalantha failing to deal with area hopping while Lothander and Marek were faced with monsters.
Searching for the last tome, Ramazith was burnt up in a scorcher while more wand charges dealt with the inhabitants of his tower.
At that point I used more potions of genius and spent a while learning lots more spells. There was then just enough time left to burn lots of wand charges on Degrodel's guards, before the mage's chances of surviving some monsters plummeted after a first use of darts of wounding.
Next time should see a first large-scale use of my own spells for an assault on the Iron Throne.
Some of you may remember that I had a Fighter/Mage/Cleric running the game three months ago. I've been away from the game for so long that I completely forgot about the run, and failed to keep posting on its progress. Now that I've remembered it, I'll start posting on it once again.
The Planar Sphere is very dangerous in SCS for a no-reload run, but we have two very excellent anti-mage options: Keldorn's Dispel Magic, which is nerfed to level 21 thanks to SCS (I have it set to 1.5 times caster level), and Mazzy's bow, which she fires at 9 APR, enough to quickly shear through Stoneskin. The halflings are the first obstacle, and while Keldorn's Dispel Magic isn't fully reliable, we do land the dispel on Kayardi, leaving him completely vulnerable to Mazzy's arrows. Mogadish isn't any more lucky.
Necre and Taibela suffer the same fate. Necre loses his buffs to Keldorn's first Dispel Magic, while Taibela loses her buffs to the second casting. They even fail saves against Chaos!
The Elder Orb catches us by surprise when it approaches us, but we escape by using Invisibility 10' Radius. We still get 14,000 XP from the kill by letting our summons tackle it for us.
Next up is Lavok. Thus far, I've generally been allowing mages to activate their prebuffs before attacking them, but this time, I try landing a Harm spell on Lavok. It succeeds, and the battle is over before it begins.
My backup plan was to use cloud spells to disrupt his opening spells and then use Mazzy to tear down his Stoneskins. Item Randomizer grants us the Shield of Reflection.
The demon I was expecting outside the sphere is now a Glabrezu due to some mod I apparently haven't tried before. With three single-classed fighters and two single-classed fighters, we can deal damage to it very quickly (Mazzy has Enchanted Weapon active, courtesy of Edwin, so her arrows strike as +3). Edwin doesn't have spell protections active beyond SI: Abjuration and Spell Shield, though, which leaves him vulnerable to PW: Stun.
The only major fight left is Tolgerias. This time, I let his pre-buffs fire before attacking him. Due to careful positioning, only Edwin and our summons suffer any damage from his opening Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency, and since Tolgerias is buffed with PFMW instead of Absolute Immunity or Improved Mantle, we can get past his defenses with normal weapons.
Better still, Tolgerias wastes his time casting Death Spell to remove our summons (who couldn't even hurt him due to PFMW!) instead of attacking us or casting Time Stop, while his mage friend casts True Seeing. The net result: Tolgerias has made virtually no progress by the time we get past his Stoneskins.
We escape the Planar Sphere with the Helm of Defense, and both Edwin and Mazzy hit level 13. Mazzy now has 10 APR with Improved Haste and the Tuigan Bow, enough to remove a level 20+ mage's Stoneskins in a single round without assistance.
I don't find Valygar very interesting or powerful, so I kick him out of the party. We run into Dermin while doing the skinner quest in the Bridge District, a fight I did not see coming. We trigger the fight by breaking invisibility, re-cast Invisibility on Frisky Bits, and then run away to cast our buffs. But casting our buffs broke invisibility in the process, and Dermin was still close enough to spot us. Dermin manages to confuse Mazzy, and since she has no buffs active, he had a 25% chance of success.
That's bad news for tactical purposes, but then things get really ugly: before Keldorn can dispel the condition, Mazzy opens fire on a nearby child and cuts our reputation in half with a single brutal attack roll.
Once Mazzy is back under our control thanks to Keldorn's Dispel Magic, we punish Dermin with an Arrow of Dispelling and trample him. Our fire elemental is still confused, but Edwin blinds it, preventing it from attacking any innocent bystanders.
We approach Dermin's allies, who failed to follow Dermin to our hiding place, and Frisky Bits just barely fails to cast SI: Abjuration before they lose their buffs. Fortunately, the enemy mage, Chrost, has no spell protections active, allowing Edwin to disrupt his spells with Melf's Acid Arrow.
That still leaves the enemy fighters, but they're not very high-level and don't have very special equipment, so we can smash them even without having all of our buffs active.
We burn lots of gold at the local temple to bump our reputation up to 18, crush the Crypt King for Adjatha's Drinker, which Item Randomizer put in place of Namarra, and find both the Black Spider Figurine and a Spell Immunity scroll after the fight with Pai'Na.
Thanks to Edwin's Nether Scrolls quest, we have to fight Nevaziah the lich in order to keep him in the party. On the way, we run into some Greater Mummies, which apparently inflict the fatal disease effect that (nearly? I don't remember) ended one of my previous runs. Fortunately, we notice the disease early and cast Cure Affliction.
For Nevaziah, we keep Frisky Bits up front to absorb spells and have Edwin fire off a Death Fog spell, but the lich proves immune to acid damage. Fortunately, it still suffers spell disruption, and the lich fails to make any progress against us while Frisky Bits works on the lich's summoned Glabrezu using the Sling of Everard.
Edwin and Frisky Bits start firing off magic attacks to break down Nevaziah's defenses, and when his Mordenkainen's Sword floats over to slash at Mazzy, we summon an Efreeti to cast Magic Missiles on it so our mages won't have to take time away from working on the lich.
Then the lich gets Sphere of Chaos off the ground, and Frisky Bits is forced to drink a Potion of Invulnerability to ensure they don't get disintegrated. Just as the lich's PFMW wears off, it casts Horrid Wilting at our Efreeti, and while we can run away from the Efreeti to make sure no one else in the party gets hit, that buys Nevaziah enough time to re-cast PFMW.
For reasons I can't comprehend, Nevaziah's modest spell protections stand up even after numerous magic attacks by Edwin and Frisky Bits. I counted his spell protections at the start of the fight, and we cast more than enough spells to remove absolutely all of them. Yet Nevaziah flat-out ignored them--as if he was a vanilla lich, and therefore immune to ALL level 1-5 spells, including magic attacks.
Keldorn also fails to dispel the lich's buffs, but Edwin's Death Fog is still there. We stand watch as the lich struggles to cast spells, invincible to our attacks due to PFMW and some sort of bug, but nearly helpless against Death Fog.
The lich can still re-cast PFMW, but it can't do much else besides fire a fruitless Breach at Edwin. Meanwhile, we cast Improved Haste on Mazzy to land a quick kill once it runs out of PFMW spells.
But the lich still has another PFMW, and once the lich has escaped the range of the Death Fog (which has since dissipated anyway), it summons a Nabassu, which silences Jaheira and Edwin before Frisky Bits puts it down with her sling.
Nevaziah casts Cloudkill and Spell Thrust, but those aren't enough to weaken the party when it finally runs out of PFMW spells. Even a hideous Sunfire+Cloudkill+Cloudkill Spell Trigger isn't enough to fend us off.
I originally intended to side with Bodhi, as I usually do, but then Mazzy and Keldorn object, and I remember that they leave the party if you do. I side with the Shadow Thieves instead--it's more dangerous, in my opinion, but it also lets me keep two highly productive characters that I like.
Here is the party as we begin the main Shadow Thief questline:
Frisky Bits
Jaheira
Keldorn
Mazzy
Edwin
Notice that we're missing the Gauntlets of Dexterity and Belm for Keldorn and Jaheira, but we've found the Bracers of Archery for Mazzy (not that she needed them) and we have an early pair of Boots of Speed. Overall, Item Randomizer has been working against us.
Mazzy is our best damage dealer with 29% of our party kills by XP value, with Frisky Bits close behind at 28%. Jaheira, Edwin, and Keldorn are at 20%, 14%, and 6%. Mazzy's sky-high APR and extremely low THAC0 outweigh Frisky Bits' cleric buffs due to Emotion: Hope and Emotion: Courage, both spells from IWDification, granting +5 to damage and therefore benefiting high-APR characters the most. In a normal run, Jaheira would be much higher by dual-wielding Belm and Gnasher, and Frisky Bits would come out over Mazzy thanks to DUHM and the Flail of Ages (which we don't currently possess).
Before we fight any vampires, we buy two mod-introduced items: the Weary Cudgel and the Guardian, a club that imposes fatigue and a shield that can summon a Lesser Shambling Mound. I don't know if I'll use any mod items in this run, but we can afford them. We also get the Amulet of Power from Aran Linvail--fortunately, Item Randomizer doesn't touch it.
With the Amulet of Power on Keldorn and Improved Mace of Disruption on Frisky Bits, we suffer no level drains in the first task for Aran Linvail; Entropy Shield gives Jaheira spectacular AC and Mazzy can strike from afar. Terminsel finally shows up and gives Jaheira the Harper Pin, and now our fighter/druid has +5 to all saves--better than a dwarf or halfling's save bonuses.
A mod-introduced Necromancer, Ninde, joins the party in Bodhi's lair. Her spellbook is pretty empty, but she does have the Death Spell, which I'll be able to use in the De'Arnise Hold. I bring her along for the fight with the vampires, taking advantage of her immunity to level drain to make her a strong tank.
The level drain message in the dialog box is an error; she's not losing any levels. Back upstairs, Tanova loses her PFMW to Keldorn's Dispel Magic, allowing Frisky Bits to land an instant kill with her Mace of Disruption. She lands another kill on Gellal with one hit.
I understand that you can run away from Bodhi and trigger her running-away dialog, but I decide to fight her, since we have mages with PFMW and lots of attack power from our various fighters. PFMW works just fine, but it doesn't do anything to stop Bodhi's wicked innate spells.
Bodhi drops Jaheira's CON to 2, forcing her to flee. Bodhi stubbornly refuses to switch targets, and so we kite her until she decides to flee.
Time to tackle the De'Arnise Hold! In the end, I decide to just have Ninde scribe a Death Spell scroll for Edwin and kick her out of the party so Edwin can cast it instead. Unfortunately, I discover that the Death Spell no longer works against Spirit Trolls in my install, the main reason I wanted it.
But with the party around level 13 (and Frisky Bits a bit lower due to being a triple-class), Spirit Trolls aren't really that big of a threat. We're able to stomp most of the fights with little trouble. TorGal is the only real threat--and he isn't even that, because Keldorn can easily wipe out the Yuan-ti Mages' defenses, Mazzy can quickly pin them down, and Frisky Bits, now with the Flail of Ages in hand, can thrash TorGal with little assistance.
Edwin hits level 14, gaining access to a bunch of level 7 spells. Since he's providing plenty of mage spells on his own, I opt not to bring Nalia into the party. Edwin has recently activate the Nether Scroll and has transformed into a woman, much to his displeasure.
Instead, I recruit Jan, just for some extra power during the fight at the Guarded Compound. We head upstairs under invisibility, have Jan disarm some traps, and have Frisky Bits begin the fight by hurling a rock at Sion. Sion begins casting the moment she breaks invisibility, which means he loses his first spell.
Frisky Bits draws attention from numerous enemies, but with both mage and cleric buffs active, they are in little danger. Meanwhile, Edwin uses a Secret Word+Spell Thrust+Secret Word Spell Sequencer to strike at Sion's defenses in spite of his invisibility.
Secret Word can take down Spell Shield, Spell Thrust will remove all Spell Immunity spells, and the second Secret Word can take down Spell Deflection or Spell Turning. But there's no discernible effect, and to my confusion and annoyance, some of our following Secret Word spells go to the Stone Golem instead of Sion, despite the golem being distinctly further away than Sion himself. I really don't like how unreliable SCS-style magic attack targeting is.
We've slain Sion's Simulacrum, which arrived without any pre-buffs, but with all of our magic attacks somehow unable to take down his SI: Divination and render him vulnerable to Keldorn's Dispel Magic, we can't stop him from casting Improved Mantle. I keep trying to nail him with magic attacks--the whole point of SCS' revised magic attacks was to make it possible to debuff invisible mages--while our fighters switch their attention to Koshi, whose laughable defenses prove his undoing. Kensais have long been overhyped.
Our magic attacks continue to fly halfway across the room just to target the Stone Golems instead of Sion. I don't see why the invisible critters who cast those spells don't have scripts designed to keep them from targeting enemies without spell protections, which I know is possible. Since Sion's SI: Divination is completely unbreakable, just like it would be in vanilla, Keldorn's True Seeing and Jan's Detect Illusions are only good for repeatedly revealing Ketta and preventing her from landing backstabs. With nothing better to do, we stomp on Stalman.
Because Sion has no idea that he's untouchable, he casts PFMW via Spell Trigger even though we can't target him anyway. Once again, we have nothing to better to do than smash a low-priority target: Maferan, who drops the Girdle of Stone Giant Strength.
Sion casts Time Stop and fires off Dispel Magic and Dragon's Breath under Improved Alacrity, but thanks to SI: Abjuration and good positioning, only Jaheira and Jan loses their buffs (not that we need Jan anyway, if his Detect Illusions can't break SI: Divination).
Bad positioning means that Jaheira gets hit by Dragon's Breath, but she's not in much danger and she's not that important for this fight anyway.
Sion is now finally visible, but he's wasted his weapon immunity spells when he was still invisible and untargetable. As a result, he only has Mantle left. In the end, we can break through his defenses just by using Frisky Bits' Sling of Everard and Mazzy's Darts +5 from the Cloak of Stars.
What a pathetic fight. Scripting errors made Sion untouchable, and then Sion completely failed to capitalize on it by failing to cast Summon Fallen Planetar or a decent disabler.
Whatever. We now have Celestial Fury, which Mazzy will be able to use to devastating effect later on.
We clear up most of the first level of Watcher's Keep (I leave the Statues alone) through brute force, then do the same to Mencar Pennypincher and Smelly Porkslicer back at the Promenade. I return to the Druid Grove to buy some potions, but Keldorn, sensing evil behind Adratha's facade, breaks our cover and starts the fight before we have our defenses active. Frisky Bits manages to get SI: Evocation off the ground, but Skull Traps still give us grief, and ultimately we have to burn a Potion of Magic Shielding to make sure they stay healthy.
Only Mazzy's spectacular APR and THAC0 hold off the enemy rakshasas' spells long enough for us to put down Ihtafeer, who drops both the Periapt of Proof Against Poison and the Amulet of Spell Warding.
We head back to Athkatla, and in the Shadow Thief headquarters, Degardan shows up to ask about Edwin. Since we have to fight Degardan eventually anyway, I decide to reveal Edwin as a prank.
Turns out that Edwin takes that as a complete betrayal, even though we had every intention of slaying Degardan to defend him. Edwin leaves the party and turns hostile.
Edwin is easy to put down, but now we've lost our best mage. We invested over 1.5 million XP in Edwin, and now it's all gone.
Fortunately, Nalia starts out at 1.35 million XP, which means we've only lost a few hundred thousand XP in total, and while she has far fewer spell slots than Edwin, she can use a few more items, and she does have better AC and saving throws. I have Frisky Bits scribe a bunch of new scrolls to add to Nalia's spellbook.
Imoen might be a better option than Nalia due to having more thief levels (as @Alesia_BH has pointed out, she's the stronger ToB option since Imoen gets a triple backstab multiplier and therefore has better potential for Black Blade of Disaster+Mislead backstabs), but it doesn't cost that much money to re-scribe a bunch of scrolls for Imoen to serve as our new primary mage if I change my mind, and I don't have any other NPCs I'd like to add to the party.
It's time to head to Spellhold. We only have 5 party members and we're missing several major items I'd normally take with us, like the Robe of Vecna, but I have more than enough options to deal with the threats in Spellhold and the Underdark. Irenicus can be debuffed with normal magic attacks and disrupted pretty easily with darts; the Balor is highly vulnerable to Darts of Stunning bolstered by Enchanted Weapon; the Kuo-toa Prince is easy for any party with decent burst damage; Chaotic Commands can deal with the mind flayer ambush; blitzkrieg tactics work fine on the lone beholder; strong THAC0 or traps or a Limited Wish Time Stop via scroll or spell can slay the Egg Guards; and invisibility can get you past virtually all other plot-critical obstacles, including Taso Kala, the drow woman who demands you beat the Ghaundaur priests within an hour before you return the (fake) eggs to Phaere.
Hello everyone, nice to see some good progress as usual. In Throne of Bhaal Lyran has made some decent progress during my train journeys, with only occasional outbreaks of mindless violence. The party remains unchanged- I eventually allowed Verr'sza to return to the party after his bugged chunking, after rolling a die on it of course .
Illasera, the first challenge, and Saradush were quickly dealt with. We went through the sewers with the soldiers' key for once, and didn't bother with Kiser. The Gromnir battle was slightly tricky as I forgot to rest and Karun overbuffed but Lyran was never in danger. Similarly Yaga Shura's mountain temple was only difficult when the Fire Trolls were bugged to be immortal, after some persistence I found that they could be vorpaled by the Silver Sword though. Nyalee also quickly perished, followed by Yaga himself. Things were going smoothly enoug, so I then popped down to the lower levels of Watchers to pick up some treasure, though I've no intention of doing the final level. Not misclicking on Lum's machine was risky enough!
A few misordered picks of Tahazzar's death (was a bit terrified of him!), a bugged Korgan repeatedly commenting on Yaga-Shura's inadequacy, some chimeras from a mod that I left well alone, and the death of Lyran's phantom brother.
SCS hasn't been that bad... so far. On to Sendai next, as the dragons have the usual hp increase and so should be treated with caution.
As usual, I take on Perth the Adept even though there's a safer way to get into Spellhold because I like getting the Book of Daily Spell. Frisky Bits and Nalia open with Death Fog to disrupt his spells, and Jaheira casts Spike Growth, but it proves unnecessary--Keldorn lands a Dispel Magic spell. Perth suffers a bit from the area-effect damage-over-time spells, but since his Chain Contingency only granted him PFMW instead of Improved Mantle, he's exposed to the full force of Mazzy's 10 APR arrows. He doesn't stand a chance.
Unfortunately, he doesn't drop the Book of Daily Spell due to Item Randomizer. Mazzy hits level 15 and gets her second pip in katanas, giving her an extra half attack per round with Celestial Fury. Her best option for damage output remains the Tuigan Bow, however.
We tackle Galvena for the XP. The only decent mage in the area is Vadek, and while Keldorn's Dispel Magic fails to affect him despite Vadek being much lower-level than Perth the Adept, we can still break through his Mantle with Darts +5 and the Sling of Everard.
Imoen joins the party! But in my EET install, Imoen apparently never actually dual-classes unless you do it yourself... and since we didn't keep her in BG1 and didn't dual-class her in Chateau Irenicus, she's still a single-classed thief. And when she gets her massive Spellhold XP boost, she gets it as a thief.
We can still dual-class her, but whether we do it before or after leveling her up, we're still going to end up with an under-leveled mage. And since the rest of the party is already around 2 million XP, we won't have an Imoen with level 9 spells until late in ToB.
Instead, we keep Imoen as a thief. Having a single-classed thief will be interesting, and it's not like we're really strapped for powerful characters. We'll keep her around for now--but we're not going to level her up past level 15 until she can hit level 21, because level 16-20 thief traps deal one-hit fire damage instead of lingering poison damage (4d8 fire instead of 2d6 poison per round for 3 rounds), and the level 11 traps are far more useful due to their ability to bypass elemental resistance and disrupt mage spells. At level 21, thief traps deal 20 poison damage and instantly kill the target on a failed save vs. death at +4 (which bypasses MR), but that's kind of a mixed bag: you get a small chance of an instant death, but you lose the guaranteed lingering damage from level 11 traps.
The Yuan-ti Mages in Spellhold aren't nearly as frustrating as they normally are. The Coiled Cabal foolishly uses the party-unfriendly Malavon's Rage spell as a pre-buff (I don't know if this is an outright bug or just a short-sighted scripting decision by a modder somewhere along the way) and Keldorn lands a Dispel Magic spell. The enemy scatters wide enough to complicate things and throws some magic attacks at Frisky Bits, but with Frisky Bits able to switch between nonmagical bullets and the +5 bullets from the Sling of Everard, we can land some heavy ranged hits bypassing both Improved Mantle and PFMW.
We kill the nearby mind flayer with burst damage and then let Mazzy tank the beholder with the Shield of Balduran and Celestial Fury.
Frisky Bits heads over to the lich under a Protection from Undead scroll, only to see no lich visible. I bring over the other fighters, and then the lich suddenly spawns. I'm not really sure why exactly the lich suddenly appeared before it actually did anything to break an Invisibility spell, but I reacted in time to have Frisky Bits drink a Potion of Magic Shielding to ward off the lich's Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency.
Frisky Bits is otherwise well-shielded, already having SI: Abjuration active just in case, so I send away Jaheira and Keldorn and let the lich focus its attention on Jaheira's Fire Elemental while Frisky Bits waits for an opportunity. The lich's opening Time Stop can't threaten Frisky Bits, but when the lich begins casting a Conjuration spell, Frisky Bits scurries away for fear that we'll have to deal with a Fallen Planetar.
It turns out to just be a Cacofiend spell, so Frisky Bits runs over to kill it with their sling while the lich keeps summoning demons. Meanwhile, Jaheira's Call Woodland Beings spell grants us some cheap decoys for the enemy to waste time on.
Eventually, the lich's PFMW spells run out. By then, Mazzy has Improved Haste active, and she helps Frisky Bits put down the lich.
The rest of the Spellhold maze isn't too exciting, though I do see a worrying sign when Frisky Bits takes a lot of damage from Bodhi and the Cloud of Bats starts putting them deep in the red after the fight ends. The rest of the party has no healing options (we never saw a Rod of Resurrection for sale anywhere), but Keldorn can slow down the damage by using Dispel Magic to remove Frisky Bits' Improved Haste, which increases the damage rate from insect-type spells like Cloud of Bats.
All that's left is Irenicus. Mazzy and Frisky Bits start breaking through Jon-bon's Improved Mantle using Darts +5 and the Sling of Everard, while Jaheira begins casting Insect Plague, since Irenicus does not have a Fire Shield as a pre-buff (!). Mazzy loses her Improved Haste pre-buff, robbing her of crucial APR, but Nalia restores it, and soon we break through Jon-bon's defenses while the clones are stinging from Insect Plague.
Irenicus activates Spell Deflection and Spell Shield via Spell Trigger, but he does not get the PFMW spell that typically comes with that trigger--perhaps because his Improved Mantle still hasn't worn off. Our three mages have tons of Secret Word and Spell Thrust spells, so we can keep applying pressure to Jon-bon's spell protections at the same time we strike with ranged weapons. Meanwhile, Keldorn and Jaheira, who have no +5 weapons to break through Improved Mantle, work on the clones. The clones go down, and Irenicus is helpless without his defenses.
Over at City Sushi, we sell off a bunch of loot to the local priestess vendor to crank up our gold supply (her prices are better than anyone else's in the entire saga aside from Nazramu the genie in SoD), but Item Randomizer takes the Cloak of Mirroring away from the enemy Sahuagin priestess. Near the imps, we find the Ring of Fire Control in place of the Cloak of Protection +2, and Water's Edge, a +3 scimitar, near Sekolah's tooth.
City Sushi has never been that challenging--at least, as long as you make sure Charname is protected against the stunning Sahuagin Bolts and Bolts of Biting--and we butcher Ixilthetocal before he can hurt anyone with his high-damage Impaler strikes.
Keldorn has just hit level 15 (Dispel Magic caster level is now at 22!) and now has two pips in spears, which means he can deal much more damage by using the Impaler +3 and its ludicrous +10 additional on-hit damage instead of Lilarcor. Frisky Bits hits mage level 12 and can now cast PFMW!
First order of business in the Underdark, as always, is to chop up the local elementals for tens of thousands of XP. Keldorn shows off his new spear.
Keldorn completely breaks the fight with the drow. Every single mage loses their buffs to Dispel Magic, leaving them defenseless. Notice Jaheira's Static Charge going right through drow MR.
I like to deal with the Underdark Balor using Darts of Stunning, but since our normal dart user is Mazzy, who already uses Celestial Fury, we just mob the Balor. We deal so much damage that we kill the poor creature before we can stun-lock it.
I am enjoying the Imoen Romance mod. The writing is actually pretty awesome, and it feels very true to Imoen. The occasional innuendo is low-key; it's not jarring or out of place. Her reaction to being turned into a drow is perfect.
"And I have this weird urge to kill lowly surfacers in the name of Lolth."
There are only a few dangerous fights we need to get through the Underdark. First up is N'ashtar (why can't he just spell it Nashtar?), who proves helpless against Keldorn's Dispel Magic.
The mind flayer ambush goes quickly thanks to our many fighter levels. I haven't fought Qilue in years and don't see much reason to bother (only catching up on this thread let me know that the Boneblade was there, but I don't place much value on the Boneblade given the alternatives available for thieves and such), so I decide to squirm my way out of the aboleth's request. Before I speak with it, I remember that Frisky Bits' Wisdom is low (for RP reasons, using Charisma as a dump stat didn't feel right), so we down a Potion of Insight so we can get the right dialog option.
Later I realized that I completely forgot to kill the Kuo-toan Prince before entering Ust Natha, which means that we have to go hunt it down within the admittedly generous three-day period permitted by the Matron Mother. Nearby, I have Frisky Bits tackle the nearby beholder and Gauths on her own with the Shield of Balduran, but when the big beholder snatches the SoB early on, I just have them down a Potion of Invisibility and let Nalia blast the enemy with the Wand of Fire.
The Kuo-toa go down with brute force. They can apply heavy pressure to party mages due to their divination spells and innate ability to see through invisibility, but otherwise they're not too dangerous, and again, we have a high-offense party on hand.
We now have Daystar! I almost never get Daystar because I know some installs lock you up with the Crooked Crane lich (you can't run away until the lich is dead) and there's not much room to run around in, which means you either need really solid defensive characters, multiple Protection from Undead scrolls to cover the party, or a high-reliability anti-mage option that can be activated within 6 seconds.
Since Imoen would be able to make use of Soul Reaver, I decide to fight the Death Knights as well. Before combat begins, I pull back everyone who doesn't have SI: Abjuration on hand to preserve our party's buffs a little better. I only send in the fighters after a few seconds to try to land some very quick kills on the Death Knights.
Turns out they're classified as undead.
So, the Mace of Disruption can instantly kill them. A Deva's basic attack can instantly kill them. Sunray can instantly kill them. A high-level cleric could turn or control or explode them (Death Knights are level 20 critters). Repulse Undead could throw them back and let the player fight them one by one. And Protection from Undead scrolls should let you kill them without opposition.
We get the Soul Reaver from the Death Knights as well as the Girdle of Frost Giant Strength and even the Armor of the Hart, though only the first two are important to me. We report back to the Matron Mother for big XP, talk to Phaere, and kill the Egg Guards. For some parties, killing the Egg Guards can be difficult due to their 18 DEX and +5 full plate mail, but having so many fighter levels in one party means that we can just smash them.
As usual, I sneak past the golems and use invisibility to avoid speaking with Taso Kala outside Phaere's home, waiting for the local drow wizards' divination spells to go off before I approach Phaere's doorway. Once we get Phaere and Matron Mother Ardulace killed, we haste the party and escape the city under invisibility.
Then Adalon teleports us to the exit, and I remember that I forgot to fight the drow guards stationed there.
I can probably handle these guys, but it's safer to just let Adalon do most of the work. We fall back and watch her trample the enemies for us.
Back in Athkatla, we crank our gold supply past 89,000 before burning over 39,000 on high-level scrolls from Ribald.
There are still plenty of items that we've missed due to Item Randomizer, which means we could find useful items pretty much anywhere. We head back to Firkraag's lair, which by now should be a cakewalk. Mazzy gets a bruising from the golems near the entrance, but it's nothing we can't survive (how often do you lose a run to golems, honestly?). Frisky Bits smashes the local vampires with the Mace of Disruption while Keldorn, approaching under invisibility, uses Daystar to cast Sunray. The casting time is slow; it's not an instantaneous effect.
We lure Samia onto Imoen's traps (I prefer to ambush them rather than let them ambush us), but Keldorn's Dispel Magic does most of the work by neutralizing Kaol. As for the Guardians, Mazzy just hacks them up with Celestial Fury. The katana is also great for holding off the golems in the northwest, who do pretty remarkable damage with their Trample ability.
I consider fighting Conster fairly, but at this point, he's not much of a challenge anyway. I just trap him.
Nalia gets a level up after reporting to Garren Windspear, and then we head back to tackle Firkraag. Frisky Bits tanks Firkraag while Nalia hits him with Pierce Shield via Project Image. Fighter/Mage/Clerics are tanky at every stage of the game, and they only get sturdier as time goes on.
Also... Frisky Bits can cast Entropy Shield. That cranks their AC all the way down to -20. But that's not even the most interesting part.
Entropy Shield from IWDification, just like in IWD, blocks a bunch of projectiles, one of which is used by the Breach spell. This means that Entropy Shield will completely block Breach, and unlike Spell Shield, it can't be consumed. Firkraag's Breach spell is useless against Frisky Bits. Granted, this isn't a perfect defense; a cleric or druid with no access to SI: Abjuration is still perfectly vulnerable to Remove Magic, even with spells from IWDification.
I had a lot of options prepared for this fight, but in the end, Feeblemind is good enough on its own. Firkraag glows yellow for a single second, showing he failed his save.
This used to be a great relief for me, since I relied on it as my primary tactic. But here, it's kind of a letdown. We were totally ready to thrash the dragon in a fair fight, just through brute force.
I could still do that, of course. But instead, I just stage a contest to see who can land the killing blow on Firkraag. Sure enough, Mazzy wins. Imoen seems pleased.
Keldorn now has Carsomyr, though it's not nearly as game-breaking as it normally would be. My SCS install nerfs it so that the dispel effect on hit offers a save vs. spell (easy for mages to make), and Impaler actually does more damage per hit against anything that's not Chaotic Evil, in which case Carsomyr breaks even with the Impaler.
Our approach to the first encounter with Bodhi outside in the graveyard is typical: use Invisibility 10' Radius to avoid the ambush and then rest so the vampires get caught in the sunlight and have to dissipate. The first level of her lair is very simple thanks to a Protection from Undead scroll and a lucky hit from the Mace of Disruption. Keldorn cleans up with Daystar.
The Guard mage loses it buffs to Keldorn's Dispel Magic and loses its life to Frisky Bits' Mace of Disruption.
I almost never search the eastern blood pool because I don't know of anything useful you can find in it. But for the first time in years, I go ahead and check it. By spectacular luck, it contains the Cloak of Mirroring!
It's going to go right on my main character, just like always. The funny thing is that I already give my main character pre-buffs that make them immune to spell damage, even when they do wear the Cloak of Mirroring, because a small number of damage spells bypass the cloak. The Cloak of Mirroring is actually a very minor bonus for this party due to my Charname-centric buffing habits.
These days, I know how to deal with Bodhi. I always save up tons of Protection from Undead scrolls, and I know not to bother trying to hurt Hazzerbazzer or Manasseh. Instead, I focus all power on Bodhi, with a Sunray from Daystar to help clear the field. By chance, Hazzerbazzer falls to Sunray, but that's an incidental benefit--Frisky Bits is already so well-buffed that the mages would struggle to touch them even if they didn't have Protection from Undead active.
More good luck takes down Manasseh thanks to the Mace of Disruption, but Frisky Bits discovers that Bodhi's AC is much too low for us to strike her with Harm. Instead, we just crowd around Bodhi and stomp all over her.
Fun fact: Drizzt benefits from Protection from Undead just as much as you do!
We arrive at Suldanessellar (which I've been mispelling as Suldannessellar all this time!) and Frisky Bits finally hits 3 million XP. They now have two pips in flails and can now use the Flail of Ages at full APR. Our first HLA pick is Extra Level 6 Spell, the most boringly practical mage HLA there is. It's worth another PFMW, and while that's decidedly unimpressive, it's ideal for a no-reload run. Another 4 rounds of immunity to weapons can always prove the difference between life and death.
But come on. We already know how SoA is going to end, right?
After picking up the Cloak of Balduran my basic save vs spell was down to 3. Using the Horn of Kazgaroth followed by spirit armor then means there's no realistic direct danger of being killed by a surge and I did that to set up attacks on the Iron Throne. Webs, cloudkill and malison were followed up by skull traps, while I kept summons round the corner out of sight to provide possible protection just in case of a no-save hold surge. Zhalimar survived long enough to require a single MMM to finish him off.
After using some monsters to speed up killing the dopplegangers at the Seven Suns, I reported in to Duke Eltan and got sent to Candlekeep. I left the Iron Throne leaders alone there on the way to the catacombs, which were duly robbed using minor globe for protection. I bypassed the dopplegangers, but gave Prat's gang the web treatment without anyone responding - meaning the skeleton warrior was available to sort out the basilisks.
Back in Baldur's Gate, Prat got lucky to save against 2 wand of paralyzation charges and a number of hits with stunning darts while working his way through a couple of lots of summoned monsters. Tiring of that game I finished him off with a scorcher.
The running around there had brought the hour up though, so Krystin will survive until tomorrow.
Edit: reminder to myself to go and get the ring of energy before progressing to SoD.
The Imoen Romance mod can get rather grim. Imoen opens up to us about her experience with Irenicus, and painfully reminds us of all the time-consuming side quests we did while she was trapped in Spellhold.
Suldanessellar is a pretty high-pressure environment due to all the golems and rakshasas that exert heavy pressure and take many rounds to slay. Ramilaat, by contrast, is actually one of the lesser threats, simply because we can break through his PFMW with nonmagical ammunition.
I hate dealing with the rakshasas because their damage spells really build up over time and they have long-lasting defenses, but with Keldorn on hand, we can render them vulnerable with Dispel Magic. Rakshasas have excellent AC, but it's not good enough to be competitive this late in the game.
We happen upon a randomized Protection from Magic scroll while fighting rakshasas, a precious find. Item Randomizer scattered a lot of items we normally could have found on vendors, so we're missing a fair number of useful items.
I decide to tackle Nizidramanii'yt without using Feeblemind, instead using Frisky Bits as a tank to absorb his attacks and opening Remove Magic spell before bringing over the other fighters to apply pressure. Notice Nizidramanii'yt making a save vs. spell: Mazzy is using fire arrows, which in my EET install are the SoD-style fire arrows, with +2 to hit and damage on top of the fire damage.
Frisky Bits can't tank the dragon indefinitely, however. Somehow, Nizidramanii'yt's Creeping Doom spell affects Frisky Bits despite their saving throws all being -7 or lower. It seems that Creeping Doom offers no saving throw; only SI: Conjuration or possibly spell deflection/turning/trap could block it. With spell failure active, Frisky Bits can't restore their Mirror Images or Stoneskins, and Creeping Doom, like all insect spells, can chew right through Stoneskins very quickly (I've that this behavior has only been fixed in an extremely recent patch). Frisky Bits has to fall back and resort to using their sling, and Nizidramanii'yt fortunately switches targets. Our other fighters aren't nearly as sturdy since they have no Stoneskins or Mirror Images (and are just shy of getting Hardiness), but they're buffed against the dragon's acid breath and we're doing fast enough damage that Nizidramanii'yt doesn't have a lot of time to kill anyone.
Keldorn, though, has especially poor AC due to Item Randomizer robbing us of the Gauntlets of Dexterity, and he's forced to fall back as well. But Mazzy and Frisky Bits are still devastating, and finish off the dragon within a few rounds.
Mazzy and Keldorn finally hit 3 million XP, taking Power Attack (an excellent anti-mage tool, not that we need a whole lot more) and Hardiness to make Keldorn a little tougher.
For some reason, Rillifane fails to kill Suneer, only slaying the golem, rakshasa, and Glabrezu, forcing us to fight Suneer on our own. Keldorn's Dispel Magic fails to remove Suneer's Absolute Immunity spell, but Suneer does nothing to hurt us before casting Improved Mantle, which we can break through very easily. Suneer drops another Protection from Magic scroll.
I go over our inventory and realize that we're still missing a lot of very important options--namely, the Rod of Resurrection. EET allows us to revisit SoA areas during ToB, but I don't really want to do that, so we're going to scour SoA areas for treasure before we tackle Irenicus. Item Randomizer is kind to us back in Mekrath's lair, giving us our first Rod of Resurrection and Wand of Cloudkill (Mekrath and the Coiled Cabal are no threat this late in the game). Jaheira takes Power Attack and Critical Strike as her first 2 HLAs, the latter of which will allow her to land a guaranteed Harm strike once per day.
Here is our party near the end of SoA:
Frisky Bits
Mazzy
Jaheira
Keldorn
Nalia
Imoen
Since Spellhold, Mazzy has been taking an even greater share of the party's kills. Since she's been extremely productive thus far, I want to forge Crom Faeyr for her to wield in her off hand (or maybe give it to Frisky Bits; I don't know). That means we need to grab the Hammer of Thunderbolts, and while it might be randomized, there's a chance it will be in its normal place: the mind flayer hideout in the Temple sewers.
We're going to have to deal with the Alhoon, an epic-level lich with constant effect Improved Alacrity. It has high APR, strong THAC0, and like all mind flayers, it can drain 5 INT per hit. Against anyone not immune to +2 weapons, it can land rapid kills via stat drain.
The good news is that the Alhoon can't see through a Protection from Undead scroll, and a single PFMW spell is enough to let Frisky Bits wipe out the other mind flayers while the Alhoon remains blissfully unaware of our presence.
Nalia wanders over to start the fight and trigger the Alhoon's defenses. Frisky Bits and Nalia get to work breaking down its spell protections while the Alhoon remains otherwise invincible due to Absolute Immunity.
The Alhoon approaches us, but we can avoid its melee attacks simply by running away. We take down its SI: Abjuration, and Keldorn lands a Dispel Magic spell, which he casts at level 27 due to the SCS nerf.
The Alhoon is sturdier than most liches due to its 50% physical damage resistance, granted to all mind flayers because of an SCS component replicating a tweak from the old Tactics mod. More importantly, its Improved Alacrity effect allows it to cast a new weapon immunity spell at any moment. It only takes 0.6 seconds for it to cast PFMW.
But Mazzy strikes 10 times per round--every 0.6 seconds--and the Alhoon can't get a single spell off the ground before Mazzy's Power Attack stuns it, sealing its fate.
We find the Hammer of Thunderbolts! Now all we need is the Crom Faeyr Scroll from Thaxll'ssillyia. We buff with Negative Plane Protection on our front line and let Frisky Bits soak up the dragon's opening Remove Magic spell. Nalia lands Breach, taking down his PFMW spell, and Thaxll'ssillyia blasts us with his breath weapon. No one loses any levels due to NPP, and while our melee attackers still get blinded, Mazzy is out of range and Frisky Bits can quickly cure it with Cure Disease. Keldorn fails to buff with Hardiness and has to run away to cast it, while Jaheira refreshes NPP on Mazzy.
Keldorn needs to drink potions to stay safe, but in the end, it doesn't matter. Mazzy, Jaheira, and Frisky Bits are tough enough to bring down the dragon without him.
But Item Randomizer moved the Crom Faeyr Scroll; all we get from slaying the dragon is some scattered gems and Azuredge.
I'm not sure we're ever going to be able to forge Crom Faeyr. In any case, we still have work to do in SoA to make sure we have the best gear for ToB. Next up, the Planar Prison!
Most of the Planar Prison passes without incident. Keldorn has a 100% chance of dispelling buffs on the Yuan-ti Mages, rendering the primary pre-Warden sticking point a non-issue. The Warden himself is another story--he is an epic-level fighter/mage who can and will attack during Time Stop.
We quickly wipe out the defenses of the Yuan-ti Mages, but the Warden comes pre-buffed with SI: Abjuration. We can bypass its PFMW, but when Mazzy tries to strike with Power Attack, we receive no save vs. death or stun message in the dialog box, which means that the Warden is immune to stun effects.
Jaheira and Keldorn apply some pressure to the Coiled Cabal, since they don't have great APR or THAC0 with nonmagical weapons, and the Yuan-ti Mages start going down. Frisky Bits keeps their aura clear to cast PFMW in the event of a Time Stop spell by the Warden, but the Warden doesn't try to. Instead, he nails Mazzy with PW: Blind, forcing her to switch to a nonmagical shortsword until we can remove it with Cure Disease.
Otherwise, the Warden does little, wasting a triple Lower Resistance Spell Trigger on Keldorn despite none of our enemies having the spellpower to threaten him when his MR drops. We break through his Stoneskins and ignore his largely meaningless PFMW Contingency.
Now Haer'dalis is available. I want him on the team, but we have to remove someone. I decide on Jaheira: she has good damage output, but she doesn't provide anything uniquely useful at this point in the game.
Jaheira takes it hard, and leaves the party permanently (though she doesn't take any gear with her). The dialog seems based on her Harper questline difficulties, but that should already be complete; Elminster affirmed she was in the right and the attacks are long since over.
Then I realize that Haer'dalis starts the game at a very low level compared to the rest of the party; XP only scales so far based on the main character's level. I kick him out and proceed to our next challenge, the Twisted Rune, with only five party members.
Frisky Bits summons a clone, Nalia casts Project Image, and we take our positions: Nalia, Keldorn, and Imoen tucked safely away in the southwest staircase; Kitthix and a weaker Skeleton Warrior in the northwest to distract Vaxall, a Skeleton Warrior in the southwest to distract Shangalar, Nalia's clone next to Layenne, Frisky Bits' clone next to Vaxall wearing the Shield of Balduran, the real Frisky Bits in the southeast to stay away from Vaxall and Layenne, and Mazzy close to Vaxall so she can deal damage through his opening PFMW. Notice the IWDification Recitation spell cast via Frisky Bits' Contingency.
I fail to keep Kitthix and our weaker Skeleton Warrior visible, so Vaxall targets Nalia's clone with Death Ray and other spells. Her defenses hold, fortunately, and the moment Layenne breaks invisibility, Nalia disables her with the Great Shout spell from IWDification, which stuns for two rounds on a failed save and stuns for one round with no save. The only disadvantage is that it can hurt the caster (Nalia's clone is buffed against that) and it pauses the caster, which delays one's aura from clearing (you can't chain-cast Great Shout without delays in between castings)
Layenne makes her save, but it doesn't matter. We bring Keldorn over and our three fighters pin down Layenne using nonmagical ammunition.
Mazzy has gotten level drained in the meantime, but with the Staff of the Magi in Frisky Bits' hands, the fight is almost is impossible to lose. All we have to do is take down Vaxall, who quickly falls to more nonmagical ammunition that bypasses his PFMW...
...and then tackle Shangalar before he summons a Fallen Planetar that could land vorpal strikes bypassing Frisky Bits' newfound at-will invisibility. Shangalar's defenses are too tough for us to handle without using a Protection from Undead scroll on him (which I'm not doing; this is an exploit-free run), but fortunately he wastes a few rounds chasing the real Nalia while the rest of the party fights with Revanek and Shyressa. Shangalar breaks Nalia's Project Image by dealing some slight fire damage to her (I can't tell from what source, then takes down all of her buffs while she runs away--I didn't bother casting SI: Abjuration before Project Image.
Revanek and Shyressa go down, but Shangalar, too well-buffed for us to threaten, hits Keldorn with a Comet (it was aimed for Imoen, but she ran away before it hit) and gets Time Stop off the ground. Fortunately, he summons no Fallen Planetar; he just nails us with an Incendiary Cloud.
We kill Shangalar's clone, but the real lich is still well-buffed, and when Nalia fails a save against his Dragon Fear, we don't have many ways of breaking down his defenses. Instead, Imoen uses Detect Illusions to dispel Shangalar's Illusion spells, relying on her high fire resistance to shrug off the Incendiary Cloud, while the rest of the party hangs back. Eventually, Shangalar's PFMW runs out and Mazzy nails him with an Arrow of Dispelling, but Shangalar re-casts PFMW and we're stuck again.
We try to dispel the fear effect on Nalia so she can cast Breach on Shangalar or something, but the fear effect is undispellable and somehow we're out of Remove Fear spells. In the end, though, it doesn't matter: with his pre-buffs removed by Mazzy's Arrow of Dispelling, he succumbs to his own Incendiary Cloud.
Since we're in a good position to deal with liches, I decide to fight the Crooked Crane lich to see if Item Randomizer rewards us. We re-recruit Ninde for some extra arcane power and blast the lich with a series of magic attacks. Sunray does nothing; SCS liches tend to buff with Protection from Magical Energy and their base save vs. spell of 1 means they're immune to Sunray's instant death effect unless maybe the caster has Invoker levels.
We hit the lich with a Breach spell from Imoen, cast via scroll, but it completely fails--somehow, we failed to remove all of its spell protections. It replied with a devastating Dragon's Breath spell, and since we're stuck in an enclosed area, we can't run away.
Notice that Frisky Bits has taken damage; the Cloak of Mirroring does not block Dragon's Breath. We fire off more magic attacks, but the lich's spell protections just won't go down. Keldorn's Dispel Magic attempt only succeeds in removing his own buffs.
The lich casts Time Stop and blasts us with a Comet and some more fire spells, slaying Ninde and forcing other party members to drink potions. But now, finally, its spell protections are down. Problem is, now it's invisible, and Nalia can't target it with Breach.
The lich switches to Cone of Cold spells while its Improved Alacrity spell is still active, but it's nothing our fighters can't resist (it can't hit everyone at once; we've split up the party between north and south). Imoen reveals the lich, paving the way for a Breach by Nalia. It doesn't last long after that.
An inexplicable crash robs us of our progress, so I have to reload. I drop the scrolls and potions I used in the previous fight and just use CTRL-R on the lich so I don't have to repeat all the steps all over again.
It's time to fight Irenicus. I'm kind of bored and impatient, so I just set some traps to make him suffer. We blast him with magic attacks, but since we can dispel his invisibility and break through his PFMW, we can remove his Stoneskins and deal enough damage that his death dialogue triggers right after he casts Time Stop via Wish.
In the Hell trials, Nalia tries to slay the beholders by casting damage spells from behind the Staff of the Magi, but the Elder Orb wanders too close to the party, surviving Imoen's traps and taking down Frisky Bits' Spell Shield using Anti-Magic Ray. Frisky Bits re-casts Spell Shield, but Mazzy bails us out at the last minute through sheer force.
I was hoping we could get one last level up before the final battle of SoA, but Frisky Bits is just a few tens of thousands of XP away from mage and cleric level 13 (and not that much further from fighter level 13). Still, we have the Staff of the Magi, which should be enough to win us the final battle as long as we bring down the demons that can see through invisibility (the Slayer itself cannot).
I buff the party with almost everything, and careful positioning keeps our fighters and Imoen from getting hit by Remove Magic (Nalia and Frisky Bits have SI: Abjuration), but unfortunately fail to see a critical vulnerability in our defenses: Nalia has neither Chaotic Commands nor a spell turning/deflection spell active. A Glabrezu pins her with PW: Stun.
Thanks to SI: Abjuration, Nalia is immune to Remove Paralysis, which means it's impossible to cure Nalia unless we can hit her with an Arrow of Dispelling. Imoen, however, has an alternate solution: hit Nalia with the Ring of the Ram, and let the knockback carry her safely to the south while the rest of the party tackles the demons.
Unfortunately, a Glabrezu chases Nalia down, so Mazzy fires off an Arrow of Dispelling to cure her. Somehow, the arrow fails to dispel PW: Stun.
Nalia loses all her buffs and ends up dead when Keldorn tries to dispel the PW: Stun with Carsomyr, figuring that we could not save her by distracting the Glabrezu. But based on the direction the Glabrezu was facing, it looks like the Glabrezu lost interest in her right before we killed her.
The Slayer begins casting Time Stop, but we notice and have everyone go invisible, either by a potion or the Staff of the Magi. Irenicus, unable to see through invisibility, has nothing to do but kill Kitthix.
The Slayer pesters Keldorn and removes his buffs while the rest of the party hurries away to the southeast, where the Balor teleports after Mazzy and quickly succumbs to Celestial Fury.
The Slayer is alone and sees no enemies, so he takes no action as his PFMW gradually runs out. Frisky Bits restores their SI: Abjuration and smacks the Slayer with the Staff of the Magi to remove his Stoneskins and such. Unlike Carsomyr, the Staff of the Magi offers no save for its dispelling effect even with SCS installed.
The Slayer retaliates by summoning a Fallen Planetar, prompting an immediate PFMW by Frisky Bits. Mazzy manages to stun it with Celestial Fury, preventing it from healing itself and allowing us to put it down before it can hurt anyone.
Frisky Bits re-equips the Staff of the Magi to avoid the Slayer's next Time Stop, and the rest of the party runs away, figuring that distance will let them survive even if they don't have invisibility. Turns out the Slayer can see across the map during Time Stop even if it can't do so outside of Time Stop. It teleports over and kills Mazzy.
I could use the Rod of Resurrection to bring back Nalia and Mazzy, but I don't really need to. Keldorn drinks a Potion of Magic Protection to block an Enchantment spell (with Carsomyr, the potion gives him 100% magic resistance total) and then runs away from the Slayer while Frisky Bits follows after, waiting for the Slayer's PFMW to wear off. Once it's gone, Frisky Bits smacks it again with the Staff of the Magi.
Yet another PFMW forces Keldorn to keep running and Keldorn loses his Potion of Magic Protection to a dispel effect, but an Oil of Speed lets him stay ahead of the fast-moving Slayer. Still, the Slayer can deal a lot of spell damage to Keldorn when his MR is back down to 50%.
Then the Slayer hits him with Remove Magic again and follows up with PW: Stun. Frisky Bits tries to rescue him, but PW: Stun can't be dispelled even by the Staff of the Magi. Meanwhile, to the southeast, Imoen goes ahead and resurrects Nalia, since I didn't expect Keldorn to go down.
To my surprise, we manage to keep Keldorn alive simply by harassing the Slayer, who turns away from Keldorn to fight back against Frisky Bits. After losing its Stoneskins and running out of its PFMW, the Slayer is rather vulnerable, and Frisky Bits can thwart its spells with their sling.
Frisky Bits tanks the Slayer with PFMW until Keldorn recovers from PW: Stun and rejoins the fight. The Slayer has finally depleted its defenses, and Irenicus falls.
Shadows of Amn is over! Now we get to the real challenge. Throne of Bhaal is next.
Dreadnought has just left Baldur's Gate in order to deal with the menace of the Crusade. With him are his companions from BG1: Tenya the cleric of Umberlee, Jarlaxle the fighter, Artemis Entreri the thief, Shar-Teel the fighter-thief and Viconia the Cleric of Shar. Tenya is the only non-evil member of the party and she is Chaotic Neutral.
I am now treading new ground as I have never taken an evil party this far before.
Krystin was persuaded to cloudkill herself - and unfortunately succeeded in killing herself just before a wand blast could finish her off.
I then remembered to go and get the ring of energy - Denak survived a cloudkill there, but not the skeleton warrior waiting for him.
At the palace I buffed up before showing myself. Summons and MMMs were nice to haves there, but the crucial factor was the chaos scroll - that has the huge advantage of automatic success against the dopplegangers and both Belt & Liia survived the initial battle only slightly injured. I did though lead Belt away and wait until Sarevok killed Liia in order to pick up the remains .
Wand summons and damage eased the path through the maze, along with a first use of a PfU scroll. Web helped make short work of the party in the Undercity despite 2 wild surges during preparations for that - only the 2nd and 3rd of the run.
In the temple I once again abused the lightning trap. Normally I stop once Sarevok's companions are dead, but this time the bolts kept flying long enough to kill the big man himself as well.
I'd carried enough money through to the SoD prologue to buy the scrolls of greater restoration from the Flaming Fist Healer and did that before going invisibly to persuade Porios to surrender.
Another PfU scroll and a few wand scorchers made short work of the undead,
while the Flaming Fist helped with the mercenaries. Korlasz can't take much damage before giving up and the magic damage from the ring of energy (that bypasses her protections) is a quick way to make her surrender - she failed to survive her attempt to walk away though.
That encounter also got me another level and I saved the game there.
Improved anvil runs. No screenshots this time until I get proper progress.
Tails five started as a vagrant and did quite well. He ploughed through some of the early encounters including a totally unexpected Suna Seni after the first travel region! We avoided an immediate demise in a travel region with the poisoned man from the Harper hold and traveled to the docks. Jaheira needed her quests done. So we seek out player but when fighting him in the slums we die to hold and confusion.
Tails six never got very far. The swashbuckler died due to confusion and chaos spells again Prebek. Such an easy fight it should be.
I need better strategies against enchantment spells early game.
Making our way to Gromnir wasn't too difficult - a little bit of hit and run, a little bit of summons, some anti-undead weapons - with our alchemy-supplied oils of speed, we can kite most things with relative ease, especially when swapping around The Reflex or the Cloak of Mirroring to avoid any ranged damage as well.
We opened the battle against Gromnir with Smite - both Cephalus and Kaveh hit one of the mages with their respective ranged weapon and smite before their protections went up, buying us a lot of time. Gromnir was affected as well, giving us the opportunity to reposition the party and go after the other guards first. Meanwhile, Oedipus had summoned a deva. He also had true sight going, allowing the party to go after the thief first:
The mages predictably, only having the deva in their line of sight, used all their symbol spells during their timestop to try and affect it, to no avail. As they approached, the party was easily able to take them out, with their PFMWs already gone:
Now, I only had to kite Gromnir for a bit while neutralizing the archer via The Reflex:
Our party returns to the pocket plane and makes its way to the Temple. Double-sunrays from items (Daystar and Helm of Brilliance) allow us to take down the Master Wraith and its allies:
A deva and a few traps are used to destroy the remaining undead, and the Marching Mountains are our next stop. Fire giants are easily kiteable, especially with Cephalus' kuo-toa bolts (I've never really taken advantage of these before, but they're absolutely awesome). Being invisible allows us to get into a good position in order to set up small groups of traps, a few summons and ranged weapon ambushes to take down the bigger groups:
Getting access to the next level is made easier by protection from fire spells, summons and the vast amounts of traps at our disposal. No trouble here, and our next target, Berenn, is easily taken down:
Kaveh is granted fire immunity, he equips The Wave and some summons provide him with protection while he takes down Imix with one hit:
Now, we return the hearts to the Temple and make our way to Yaga Shura. We quickly wound him and get rid of the enemies on our screen, allowing us to get out of combat and set up some traps, which we plan to use for Yaga-Shuras return. With soldiers and fire giants spawning in, we have to take these out right away before they can get too close and trigger our traps. Yaga-Shura appears at the bridge, we send in our deva to draw out his mage's time stop:
Smite and GWWs allow us to get rid of the other melee fighters who could possibly walk into our traps. Pulling Yaga Shura closer to us is rather easy, as we don't even have to get in line of sight of his mage:
Though to be fair, we propably could've just killed him with 2 GWWs. The traps weren't really needed at this point.
Next, we did made our way to Amkethran. The oasis battle was quick and easy (Oedipus was using the Robe of Vecna to instantly summons a deva), and so were the Amkethran sidequests. Vongoethe trusted us to bring Marlowe to him - which we did, but not before taking the opportunity to trap the room, killing the lich instantly when we decided to turn on him. The drow woodcutter was also dealt with, and we returned to the pocket plane for the second challenge - a very difficult one, as the Bhaalspawn Clone usually goes right after the main character with GWWs, and Cephalus has no meaningful protections. He did use the Gargoyle Boots for the stoneskin effect, though, and boots of speed + oil of speed in order to kite. As it turns out, anti-Cephalus apparently had both of these effects going as well, so kiting was very tricky - pausing multiple times every round was needed to avoid any hits. First things first, though: Our initial traps sadly didn't hit anti-Cephalus, but killed Semaj instead:
While Cephalus was busy constantly running away, Oedipus used the Reflex to neutralize Angelo and the others took care of Tamoko:
Anti-Cephalus maintained his insane movement speed even after his GWWs were gone. Soon, Angelo was basically dead, but anti-Cephalus suddenly switched targets, getting a hit in on Kaveh - which almost resulted in his death:
Yeah, this guy is pretty dangerous. Cephalus was able to hit him with smite, though, and after recovering from that, he switched targets again back to our main character. Meanwhile, Angelos was killed. Eventually, Cephalus remembered that he could summon a simmy in order to finally deal some damage - this good copy started using GWWs, and Kaveh finally managed to stun Anti-Cephalus with power attack, securing our victory:
During the whole kiting process, Anti-Cephalus was able to swing at Cephalus two times in total, but the Gargoyle Boots stoneskin prevented any damage from being done. That was dangerous - I'm glad I got past that. Sendai's Enclave will be next.
Dreadnought has finished the Menhir quest and the Dwarves of Dumathoin Quest. It took some time but there was never any real danger. Not surprisingly Baeloth wasn't there, but then he was killed in BG1. Looks like the difficult work is done in this area.
The first half of the session was spent buying things in Baldur's Gate before setting out. With inventory complete the first real action was going to the Coast Way Forest to get the regeneration ioun stone. I noticed in preparing for that the Horn of Kazgaroth was no longer causing 10 damage when used. Malison + chaos affected Ikros before he was finished off with MMMs, while summons helped occupy Isabella.
On the way back, invisibility allowed me to grab a nice sling from a troll cave without any fighting. Going to the bridge invisibly then avoided any danger of being attacked before Caelar came to parley. Invisibility also took me swiftly through the Troll Claw Woods before ignoring a big hole in the ground on the way to the Forest of Wyrms. There, I sneaked through the area to find Ziatar - summons occupied him while wand damage wore him down.
Closer contact with the Neothelid is required to make it surface, so I added free action from the ring, a potion of stone form and PfP from scroll before approaching that - regrettably though, those buffs proved insufficient protection. The Neothelid has a charm attack and a psychic hold person that uses a save vs death (hence the ring of free action). It also has something called an 'ego whip' that stuns you. I was invisible at the time, so only the Neothelid was attacking. My stoneskins lasted just long enough against that for the stun to wear off, but another hit was on its way as I turned to run.
I'd thought the ego whip used a save vs spell, but if so it must have an adjustment of more than -2 to overcome my saving throw of -1. I suppose next time I'll have to bite the bullet and use a potion of magic shielding to lower all saving throws for that encounter - previous experience there shows me that a scroll of PfM doesn't help as the attacks are mental rather than magical.
We spend a minute or two discussing what our previous plan might have been (and after the session a check of update 2 shows we hadn't bothered devising one).
So off we head to visit sirines at the coast. Viper does a good job with a potion of clarity and uses a couple of others (speed and either strength or heroism or somesuch) to clear a cave of flesh golems.
Flush with confidence we move on to basilisk central. The last two are still alive when ?? (call her Sufe as that's her name) tries to cast a scorcher. This makes her step into view of Mutamin and I'm a bit annoyed about that. Not for long as it turns out; the level 1 Protection from Petrification wears off and Mutamin doesn't get a chance to get offensive before Sufe is petrified.
Hard luck, @Grond0. That Neothelid has always been a nightmare.
Looking up Ego Whip, SPIN909.spl, in Near Infinity, it looks like it's a level zero, nonmagical "Magic Attack" spell that stuns the target for 24 seconds on a failed save vs. death at no penalty, with no projectile. It seems that only immunity to stun, a save vs. death, or a non-SCS Spell Shield (if that spell is even available at that point to non-sorcerers, which I don't think it is) can block Ego Whip.
If Potions of Freedom or Rings of Free Action don't grant immunity to stun, it seems a single-classed mage would be forced to stack 3 or 4 Potions of Stone Form to block Ego Whip without relying on luck.
After our previous run hit the rocks there was plenty of time to make a new start. The random number generator this time turned up a shaman and a cleric/thief, which should provide plenty of options.
As usual we opened up by visiting Shoal - Slug dancing there to keep her occupied.
After passing through Beregost I decided that those pesky basilisks should pay for their earlier crimes. We had no protections ourselves, but following Korax round provided an easy solution. He also terminated Mutamin before being shot down so we could rest to get a fresh set of spells against Kirian. In taking her group on, Peter spent quite a while chasing Slug - successfully applying both rigid thinking and hold person to him, but both times only completing the spell when out of sight (and not following in).
Meanwhile Lindin was running in pursuit of Chorba, but never managed to catch up with her and eventually the job was completed as the duo joined forces to finish off Baerin.
A trip to Nashkel picked up the ankheg armor and Chorba put that on as her default set rather than relying on stealthy leather. Some more travel then saw Greywolf very smoothly disposed of as Chorba first gathered him up while Slug used doom on him, before Slug played tag to take on the running while Chorba used hold person.
Samuel was then safely delivered to the FAI, where Tarnesh saved against a pair of silence spells, but then had to watch in dismay as his horror spell bounced off a remove fear buff.
Further north and an ankheg nest saw plenty of commands being used to help control the pests.
Tenya got her bowl back, but we didn't push on to Ulgoth's Beard yet as reputation still needed a bit of boosting.
The final target for the session was the Lighthouse. The sirines there had no answer to skeletons,
but the L5 versions of those don't have magical weapons and are thus less suited to golems. Slug did though have some magic arrows taken from Baerin and suggested that he shoot golems while Chorba ran them round. That's easier said than done in confined quarters though - particularly for the client who's more susceptible to lag. Chorba was hit once almost immediately and the first golem still had plenty of life remaining when Chorba zigged when she should have zagged ...
After the session closed I went to get Chorba raised and then returned to the golem cave to ensure we can dive straight into adventures at the start of the next session.
A couple of sad deaths there. Dreadnought has reached chapter 9 in SoD so it won't be long before he has to face the Neothelid. The difference is that I have a party of fairly robust characters. One is a high level thief and one a fighter/thief. Perhaps I should drop one of them off to ensure that both of them don't lose both my thieves. It would have to be my dual-classed Shar-Teel as I am pretty sure that if I drop off Artemis Entreri he will leave never to come back. That's what seems to happen with Drizzt Saga NPCs. I could perhaps see if I can pick up Dorn as a temporary replacement whilst facing the Neothelid. I have decent 2-handed swords which he could use.
Knud, human transmuter, true neutral: Part 1 - Introduction
It's time to give this challenge another shot. I considered various specialist mages for my run and transmuter came out as the most appealing choice. However, I had to ask myself three questions:
1. Will I miss abjuration spells? Of course. Big time. 2. Do I expect to fail? Absolutely. Most likely because of No. 1. 3. Why do it at all? Because there'll be loads of fun to have (and hopefully share)!
So what are we waiting for?! Let's memorize some Color Sprays and hit the Coast!
Mods: SCS v31
Early adventures (with screenshots):
Knud embarked on his journey with dart proficiency and Burning Hands (mandatory alteration pick), Find Familiar and Sleep in his book. I'll note that he was also granted a Polymorph: Self scroll to help him develop his style prior to Baldur's Gate. At first, I was quite ambivalent about this modification, but then I realized that the main reason for me not playing more single class mages is the lack of accessible scrolls which restricts their early specialization (when compared to sorcerers).
At Candlekeep, Knud's freshly conjured Mr. Rabbit bashed (or rather gnawed through) a cabinet lock and we got our hands on Armor scroll. After collecting Identify from Tethoril, we're off to transmute the world.
They see me castin' Burning Hands, they hatin'.
Knud took it straight to Shoal to get two easy levels with Sleep and darts. I usually tick the "MAX HP on level up" box for my first level up - this time yielding 12 HP and thus increasing Knud's overall HP pool to comfortable 24.
With no INT increasing potions, we limited our scroll purchases at High Hedge to alteration school (Strength). Time for Mr. Rabbit to go steroid.
We completed minor quests in Beregost and took possession of Girdle of Piercing and Ring of Wizardry. In the meantime, Knud discovers the beauty of his newly scribed Chill Touch (courtesy of Xzar). Note: In the original game, and probably due to developers' oversight, Chill Touch granted an undocumented +4 THAC0 bonus and, despite its description, did not allow a save against its effects (cold damage and THAC0 penalty). With this not being the case in BGEE, the spell's utility is actually rather limited - it was style that mattered, while Sleep was doing all the dirty work.
Viccy is saved from the Flaming Fist and taken aboard for a day trip into the mountains. There's action and loot - just the way we adventurers like it.
We managed to smuggle Viccy into the Amnish jurisdiction by taking a ride with Barge and parted our ways soon thereafter. She seemed to have enjoyed it, despite the open sky.
With our monetary situation finally stabilized, Knud buys spell scrolls (Shield, Magic Missile, Blindness, Friends, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Skull Trap, Vampiric Touch, Hold Person) at High Hedge, Potions of Genius at FAI and, with a 100% success chance, proceeds to scribing.
Comments
Traveling with: Ajantis, Khalid, Jaheira, Imoen, Garrick
We made it past level 3 in the Cloakwood Mines. The dangerous mages were taken Coremage, after suitable buffs like potion of magic protection and enraging. Coremage also took down Davaeorn, protected by a potion of magic shielding.
In the Great City of Baldur's Gate, we did a few quests/battles:
* Deserta and Vay-ya were defeated - the strength gauntlets going to Coremage
* The 4 mages at the top of the Sorcerous Sundries was defeated - our ranged attacks were just too powerful
* The two necromancers were robbed by us - Nemphre and forget the other one - but we weren't able to pick-pocket Nemphre so had to kill her instead - woops.
* Found two thieves in a house - we intentionally got the password wrong so we could kill them and take their stuff.
* Sphene gem turned in to the Seer
* Ajantis took out the basilisk in a warehouse - Garrick had protected Ajantis with protection from petrification.
* Returned some guantlets lost at the docks to a lady in a warehouse - she gave us useless infravision potions.
* Cleared the Seven Suns of dopplegangers and reported to Scar our success.
* Also took out the Ogre Mage and his pet carrion crawlers in a sewer - reported our success
Our final action this session was selling our junk - we now have more than 76,000 gold - we have more gold than we know what to do with it. Will keep at it.
Yeldon - half-elf cleric/
mageranger, protagonist (Corey_Russell)Keras - dwarven kensai (Grond0)
Denko - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Woops, forgot to post about the Trio. We made great progress Saturday.
* We cleared the vampire nest once and for all, including destroying Bodhi for the last time.
* Suldanesslar once again cleared of enemies. Denko was once again and showing off as he quivering palmed the black dragon so we can get the goblet.
* Our battle with Irenicus at the Tree of Life was surprisingly simple - Grond0 said let's just all range attack him. So we did and Irenicus fell quite quick. What's funny at the initial part of the fight, the Trio got their distance and just in time Gate70 put up Kithix - Irenicus then wasted his best spells on Kithix, including two time stops. When the trio resumed attacking him after all that, he didn't have anything good left apparently.
* Yeldon insisted on good routes in Hell, as you know, he didn't want to become fallen. We were able to clear out the beholders.
* We all used potions of magic shielding to keep us safe from Irenicus spells. We also kept at range to minimize maze threat. And finally put up summons to distract Irenicus. This worked - success!
ToB:
* Illsaera was duly defeated. When you got a hard hitting Kensai and a monk with 4 attacks, it wasn't going to last very long...
* We got very little done in Saradush, just dealing with Kaiser, raising the father, and fixing the spellbook problem the merchant had. We could have done more, but we got a serious problem where the party kept finding themselves in the enchanted wood where we battled Illsaera. Eventually we did CTRL + J jump to Saradush, saved it, and finallly it looks like we are ok for next week.
We are out of time, and will keep at it.
At least he has survived and is now ready to take on the Iron Throne.
Some shopping is now in order so long as I can find some containers to put it in. Some potion containers would be ideal along with some ammo containers.
EDIT 2
Bought some ammo and potion containers. Recharged some wands and bought a lot of potions and boots. Only 8gp left, but shouldn't need to buy anything else other than some ale to get some charts. The Ice Island provided more than enough gold for that.
Previous updates at:
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At the Valley of the Tombs the first 2 ghasts followed me outside their tomb to be shot down. The final one was finished off inside - its death taking me to level 8.
For some time inventory space has been tight as a result of the number of potions being carried, so I decided it was time to buy a container from High Hedge. First though I bought some +1 bullets and killed the golems there. I also successfully restored Melicamp to push reputation up to 19.
The golems in the pirate cave were also shot down before I headed for the Nashkel Mine in search of a final reputation point. I retreated to the top level of the mine to safely rest and heal the odd bit of damage taken (Bhaal CLW triggered automatically by resting does not have any chance to surge). Another lot of monsters then took care of Mulahey and his supporters.
Outside the mine, exploding potions from out of sight killed 3 of the amazons, leaving just a small bit of clean up for my sling.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul was left to the tender mercies of the soldiers while Neira was shot down to give me a place to rest quickly.
Even though reputation was now up to 20 I decided I wanted to push charisma up as well before spending any significant money. That meant using friends, with a chance of causing a wild surge, so I wanted to maximize my level first in order to have the highest possible HPs and best saving throws. At Durlag's Tower, wands of frost and magic missiles were emptied against battle horrors and doom guards. Usually I kill all the ghasts inside as well, but this time I just went straight for the roof and used a green PfP scroll as protection against the basilisks. The first of the greater variety got me to level 9 and the hour was also up at that point, so the others will have a reprieve until tomorrow.
Wild mage L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 197 kills
However, there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.
Previous updates at:
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After finishing off the basilisks at Durlag's Tower I went to High Hedge and used a friends scroll to buy desired equipment. I hadn't found any other such scrolls, so paid full price for some potions of genius at the FAI temple in order to ensure I learned the remaining friends scroll (and all other scrolls found to date).
With decent HPs, basic AC of -1 and good missile protection, ambushes were no longer a significant threat and I didn't bother with safe travelling while buying and selling a few more bits and pieces. Then it was time for Tranzig to meet the monsters of his worst nightmares.
At the Bandit Camp a monster charge took me quickly through to find Taurgosz - who was greeted by a first use of wand of paralyzation.
The ring of free action let me run through the Cloakwood without incident to find the mine. Rather than spend time using Algernon's cloak there I just used 3 wand fireballs from out of sight to kill the mages.
Inside the mine sling work cleared a route to the second level and then to the third (pulling the guards nearby the exit away to avoid alerting Hareishan). With time up there though Davaeorn will have to wait for tomorrow.
Wild mage L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 230 kills
Baeloth is with the party no more. He got killed in the battle against Saverok.
The battle was fairly straightforward except for the fact that Saverok was fighting against Jarlaxle whilst the rest of the party was fighting the mages and skeleton warriors. Baeloth was trying to remove protections from the mages when he should have been running away.
Once the skeletons and mages were dead, the party had plenty of potions of superior healing and without further buffing killed Saverok.
Tenya was out of the picture for a while due to chaos and then sleep. However when she was in that state she wasn't attacked though she was near death.
Dreadnought did use all his healing spells on her which were probably very much needed.
A rather fraught battle particularly as I have never played it with this set-up before and it played VERY differently. One thing that I do NOT like is that Saverok followed my invisible thief around.
Now for fighting the crusade.
Previous updates at:
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https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1039285/#Comment_1039285
Rather than spend the time to sling the ambushers on the 3rd level of the mine I just ran them round with a single scorcher.
After flooding the mine I decided to go and pick up the pantaloons before I forgot about those. Then it was on to Baldur's Gate. The poison quest was an early target there, with Jalantha failing to deal with area hopping while Lothander and Marek were faced with monsters.
Searching for the last tome, Ramazith was burnt up in a scorcher while more wand charges dealt with the inhabitants of his tower.
At that point I used more potions of genius and spent a while learning lots more spells. There was then just enough time left to burn lots of wand charges on Degrodel's guards, before the mage's chances of surviving some monsters plummeted after a first use of darts of wounding.
Next time should see a first large-scale use of my own spells for an assault on the Iron Throne.
Wild mage L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 276 kills
Frisky Bits the Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Part 5: Shadows of AmnThe Planar Sphere is very dangerous in SCS for a no-reload run, but we have two very excellent anti-mage options: Keldorn's Dispel Magic, which is nerfed to level 21 thanks to SCS (I have it set to 1.5 times caster level), and Mazzy's bow, which she fires at 9 APR, enough to quickly shear through Stoneskin. The halflings are the first obstacle, and while Keldorn's Dispel Magic isn't fully reliable, we do land the dispel on Kayardi, leaving him completely vulnerable to Mazzy's arrows. Mogadish isn't any more lucky.
Necre and Taibela suffer the same fate. Necre loses his buffs to Keldorn's first Dispel Magic, while Taibela loses her buffs to the second casting. They even fail saves against Chaos!
The Elder Orb catches us by surprise when it approaches us, but we escape by using Invisibility 10' Radius. We still get 14,000 XP from the kill by letting our summons tackle it for us.
Next up is Lavok. Thus far, I've generally been allowing mages to activate their prebuffs before attacking them, but this time, I try landing a Harm spell on Lavok. It succeeds, and the battle is over before it begins.
My backup plan was to use cloud spells to disrupt his opening spells and then use Mazzy to tear down his Stoneskins. Item Randomizer grants us the Shield of Reflection.
The demon I was expecting outside the sphere is now a Glabrezu due to some mod I apparently haven't tried before. With three single-classed fighters and two single-classed fighters, we can deal damage to it very quickly (Mazzy has Enchanted Weapon active, courtesy of Edwin, so her arrows strike as +3). Edwin doesn't have spell protections active beyond SI: Abjuration and Spell Shield, though, which leaves him vulnerable to PW: Stun.
The only major fight left is Tolgerias. This time, I let his pre-buffs fire before attacking him. Due to careful positioning, only Edwin and our summons suffer any damage from his opening Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency, and since Tolgerias is buffed with PFMW instead of Absolute Immunity or Improved Mantle, we can get past his defenses with normal weapons.
Better still, Tolgerias wastes his time casting Death Spell to remove our summons (who couldn't even hurt him due to PFMW!) instead of attacking us or casting Time Stop, while his mage friend casts True Seeing. The net result: Tolgerias has made virtually no progress by the time we get past his Stoneskins.
We escape the Planar Sphere with the Helm of Defense, and both Edwin and Mazzy hit level 13. Mazzy now has 10 APR with Improved Haste and the Tuigan Bow, enough to remove a level 20+ mage's Stoneskins in a single round without assistance.
I don't find Valygar very interesting or powerful, so I kick him out of the party. We run into Dermin while doing the skinner quest in the Bridge District, a fight I did not see coming. We trigger the fight by breaking invisibility, re-cast Invisibility on Frisky Bits, and then run away to cast our buffs. But casting our buffs broke invisibility in the process, and Dermin was still close enough to spot us. Dermin manages to confuse Mazzy, and since she has no buffs active, he had a 25% chance of success.
That's bad news for tactical purposes, but then things get really ugly: before Keldorn can dispel the condition, Mazzy opens fire on a nearby child and cuts our reputation in half with a single brutal attack roll.
Once Mazzy is back under our control thanks to Keldorn's Dispel Magic, we punish Dermin with an Arrow of Dispelling and trample him. Our fire elemental is still confused, but Edwin blinds it, preventing it from attacking any innocent bystanders.
We approach Dermin's allies, who failed to follow Dermin to our hiding place, and Frisky Bits just barely fails to cast SI: Abjuration before they lose their buffs. Fortunately, the enemy mage, Chrost, has no spell protections active, allowing Edwin to disrupt his spells with Melf's Acid Arrow.
That still leaves the enemy fighters, but they're not very high-level and don't have very special equipment, so we can smash them even without having all of our buffs active.
We burn lots of gold at the local temple to bump our reputation up to 18, crush the Crypt King for Adjatha's Drinker, which Item Randomizer put in place of Namarra, and find both the Black Spider Figurine and a Spell Immunity scroll after the fight with Pai'Na.
Thanks to Edwin's Nether Scrolls quest, we have to fight Nevaziah the lich in order to keep him in the party. On the way, we run into some Greater Mummies, which apparently inflict the fatal disease effect that (nearly? I don't remember) ended one of my previous runs. Fortunately, we notice the disease early and cast Cure Affliction.
For Nevaziah, we keep Frisky Bits up front to absorb spells and have Edwin fire off a Death Fog spell, but the lich proves immune to acid damage. Fortunately, it still suffers spell disruption, and the lich fails to make any progress against us while Frisky Bits works on the lich's summoned Glabrezu using the Sling of Everard.
Edwin and Frisky Bits start firing off magic attacks to break down Nevaziah's defenses, and when his Mordenkainen's Sword floats over to slash at Mazzy, we summon an Efreeti to cast Magic Missiles on it so our mages won't have to take time away from working on the lich.
Then the lich gets Sphere of Chaos off the ground, and Frisky Bits is forced to drink a Potion of Invulnerability to ensure they don't get disintegrated. Just as the lich's PFMW wears off, it casts Horrid Wilting at our Efreeti, and while we can run away from the Efreeti to make sure no one else in the party gets hit, that buys Nevaziah enough time to re-cast PFMW.
For reasons I can't comprehend, Nevaziah's modest spell protections stand up even after numerous magic attacks by Edwin and Frisky Bits. I counted his spell protections at the start of the fight, and we cast more than enough spells to remove absolutely all of them. Yet Nevaziah flat-out ignored them--as if he was a vanilla lich, and therefore immune to ALL level 1-5 spells, including magic attacks.
Keldorn also fails to dispel the lich's buffs, but Edwin's Death Fog is still there. We stand watch as the lich struggles to cast spells, invincible to our attacks due to PFMW and some sort of bug, but nearly helpless against Death Fog.
The lich can still re-cast PFMW, but it can't do much else besides fire a fruitless Breach at Edwin. Meanwhile, we cast Improved Haste on Mazzy to land a quick kill once it runs out of PFMW spells.
But the lich still has another PFMW, and once the lich has escaped the range of the Death Fog (which has since dissipated anyway), it summons a Nabassu, which silences Jaheira and Edwin before Frisky Bits puts it down with her sling.
Nevaziah casts Cloudkill and Spell Thrust, but those aren't enough to weaken the party when it finally runs out of PFMW spells. Even a hideous Sunfire+Cloudkill+Cloudkill Spell Trigger isn't enough to fend us off.
I originally intended to side with Bodhi, as I usually do, but then Mazzy and Keldorn object, and I remember that they leave the party if you do. I side with the Shadow Thieves instead--it's more dangerous, in my opinion, but it also lets me keep two highly productive characters that I like.
Here is the party as we begin the main Shadow Thief questline:
Frisky Bits
Jaheira
Keldorn
Mazzy
Edwin
Notice that we're missing the Gauntlets of Dexterity and Belm for Keldorn and Jaheira, but we've found the Bracers of Archery for Mazzy (not that she needed them) and we have an early pair of Boots of Speed. Overall, Item Randomizer has been working against us.
Mazzy is our best damage dealer with 29% of our party kills by XP value, with Frisky Bits close behind at 28%. Jaheira, Edwin, and Keldorn are at 20%, 14%, and 6%. Mazzy's sky-high APR and extremely low THAC0 outweigh Frisky Bits' cleric buffs due to Emotion: Hope and Emotion: Courage, both spells from IWDification, granting +5 to damage and therefore benefiting high-APR characters the most. In a normal run, Jaheira would be much higher by dual-wielding Belm and Gnasher, and Frisky Bits would come out over Mazzy thanks to DUHM and the Flail of Ages (which we don't currently possess).
Before we fight any vampires, we buy two mod-introduced items: the Weary Cudgel and the Guardian, a club that imposes fatigue and a shield that can summon a Lesser Shambling Mound. I don't know if I'll use any mod items in this run, but we can afford them. We also get the Amulet of Power from Aran Linvail--fortunately, Item Randomizer doesn't touch it.
Frisky Bits the Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Part 6: Shadows of AmnWith the Amulet of Power on Keldorn and Improved Mace of Disruption on Frisky Bits, we suffer no level drains in the first task for Aran Linvail; Entropy Shield gives Jaheira spectacular AC and Mazzy can strike from afar. Terminsel finally shows up and gives Jaheira the Harper Pin, and now our fighter/druid has +5 to all saves--better than a dwarf or halfling's save bonuses.
A mod-introduced Necromancer, Ninde, joins the party in Bodhi's lair. Her spellbook is pretty empty, but she does have the Death Spell, which I'll be able to use in the De'Arnise Hold. I bring her along for the fight with the vampires, taking advantage of her immunity to level drain to make her a strong tank.
The level drain message in the dialog box is an error; she's not losing any levels. Back upstairs, Tanova loses her PFMW to Keldorn's Dispel Magic, allowing Frisky Bits to land an instant kill with her Mace of Disruption. She lands another kill on Gellal with one hit.
I understand that you can run away from Bodhi and trigger her running-away dialog, but I decide to fight her, since we have mages with PFMW and lots of attack power from our various fighters. PFMW works just fine, but it doesn't do anything to stop Bodhi's wicked innate spells.
Bodhi drops Jaheira's CON to 2, forcing her to flee. Bodhi stubbornly refuses to switch targets, and so we kite her until she decides to flee.
Time to tackle the De'Arnise Hold! In the end, I decide to just have Ninde scribe a Death Spell scroll for Edwin and kick her out of the party so Edwin can cast it instead. Unfortunately, I discover that the Death Spell no longer works against Spirit Trolls in my install, the main reason I wanted it.
But with the party around level 13 (and Frisky Bits a bit lower due to being a triple-class), Spirit Trolls aren't really that big of a threat. We're able to stomp most of the fights with little trouble. TorGal is the only real threat--and he isn't even that, because Keldorn can easily wipe out the Yuan-ti Mages' defenses, Mazzy can quickly pin them down, and Frisky Bits, now with the Flail of Ages in hand, can thrash TorGal with little assistance.
Edwin hits level 14, gaining access to a bunch of level 7 spells. Since he's providing plenty of mage spells on his own, I opt not to bring Nalia into the party. Edwin has recently activate the Nether Scroll and has transformed into a woman, much to his displeasure.
Instead, I recruit Jan, just for some extra power during the fight at the Guarded Compound. We head upstairs under invisibility, have Jan disarm some traps, and have Frisky Bits begin the fight by hurling a rock at Sion. Sion begins casting the moment she breaks invisibility, which means he loses his first spell.
Frisky Bits draws attention from numerous enemies, but with both mage and cleric buffs active, they are in little danger. Meanwhile, Edwin uses a Secret Word+Spell Thrust+Secret Word Spell Sequencer to strike at Sion's defenses in spite of his invisibility.
Secret Word can take down Spell Shield, Spell Thrust will remove all Spell Immunity spells, and the second Secret Word can take down Spell Deflection or Spell Turning. But there's no discernible effect, and to my confusion and annoyance, some of our following Secret Word spells go to the Stone Golem instead of Sion, despite the golem being distinctly further away than Sion himself. I really don't like how unreliable SCS-style magic attack targeting is.
We've slain Sion's Simulacrum, which arrived without any pre-buffs, but with all of our magic attacks somehow unable to take down his SI: Divination and render him vulnerable to Keldorn's Dispel Magic, we can't stop him from casting Improved Mantle. I keep trying to nail him with magic attacks--the whole point of SCS' revised magic attacks was to make it possible to debuff invisible mages--while our fighters switch their attention to Koshi, whose laughable defenses prove his undoing. Kensais have long been overhyped.
Our magic attacks continue to fly halfway across the room just to target the Stone Golems instead of Sion. I don't see why the invisible critters who cast those spells don't have scripts designed to keep them from targeting enemies without spell protections, which I know is possible. Since Sion's SI: Divination is completely unbreakable, just like it would be in vanilla, Keldorn's True Seeing and Jan's Detect Illusions are only good for repeatedly revealing Ketta and preventing her from landing backstabs. With nothing better to do, we stomp on Stalman.
Because Sion has no idea that he's untouchable, he casts PFMW via Spell Trigger even though we can't target him anyway. Once again, we have nothing to better to do than smash a low-priority target: Maferan, who drops the Girdle of Stone Giant Strength.
Sion casts Time Stop and fires off Dispel Magic and Dragon's Breath under Improved Alacrity, but thanks to SI: Abjuration and good positioning, only Jaheira and Jan loses their buffs (not that we need Jan anyway, if his Detect Illusions can't break SI: Divination).
Bad positioning means that Jaheira gets hit by Dragon's Breath, but she's not in much danger and she's not that important for this fight anyway.
Sion is now finally visible, but he's wasted his weapon immunity spells when he was still invisible and untargetable. As a result, he only has Mantle left. In the end, we can break through his defenses just by using Frisky Bits' Sling of Everard and Mazzy's Darts +5 from the Cloak of Stars.
What a pathetic fight. Scripting errors made Sion untouchable, and then Sion completely failed to capitalize on it by failing to cast Summon Fallen Planetar or a decent disabler.
Whatever. We now have Celestial Fury, which Mazzy will be able to use to devastating effect later on.
We clear up most of the first level of Watcher's Keep (I leave the Statues alone) through brute force, then do the same to Mencar Pennypincher and Smelly Porkslicer back at the Promenade. I return to the Druid Grove to buy some potions, but Keldorn, sensing evil behind Adratha's facade, breaks our cover and starts the fight before we have our defenses active. Frisky Bits manages to get SI: Evocation off the ground, but Skull Traps still give us grief, and ultimately we have to burn a Potion of Magic Shielding to make sure they stay healthy.
Only Mazzy's spectacular APR and THAC0 hold off the enemy rakshasas' spells long enough for us to put down Ihtafeer, who drops both the Periapt of Proof Against Poison and the Amulet of Spell Warding.
We head back to Athkatla, and in the Shadow Thief headquarters, Degardan shows up to ask about Edwin. Since we have to fight Degardan eventually anyway, I decide to reveal Edwin as a prank.
Turns out that Edwin takes that as a complete betrayal, even though we had every intention of slaying Degardan to defend him. Edwin leaves the party and turns hostile.
Edwin is easy to put down, but now we've lost our best mage. We invested over 1.5 million XP in Edwin, and now it's all gone.
Fortunately, Nalia starts out at 1.35 million XP, which means we've only lost a few hundred thousand XP in total, and while she has far fewer spell slots than Edwin, she can use a few more items, and she does have better AC and saving throws. I have Frisky Bits scribe a bunch of new scrolls to add to Nalia's spellbook.
Imoen might be a better option than Nalia due to having more thief levels (as @Alesia_BH has pointed out, she's the stronger ToB option since Imoen gets a triple backstab multiplier and therefore has better potential for Black Blade of Disaster+Mislead backstabs), but it doesn't cost that much money to re-scribe a bunch of scrolls for Imoen to serve as our new primary mage if I change my mind, and I don't have any other NPCs I'd like to add to the party.
It's time to head to Spellhold. We only have 5 party members and we're missing several major items I'd normally take with us, like the Robe of Vecna, but I have more than enough options to deal with the threats in Spellhold and the Underdark. Irenicus can be debuffed with normal magic attacks and disrupted pretty easily with darts; the Balor is highly vulnerable to Darts of Stunning bolstered by Enchanted Weapon; the Kuo-toa Prince is easy for any party with decent burst damage; Chaotic Commands can deal with the mind flayer ambush; blitzkrieg tactics work fine on the lone beholder; strong THAC0 or traps or a Limited Wish Time Stop via scroll or spell can slay the Egg Guards; and invisibility can get you past virtually all other plot-critical obstacles, including Taso Kala, the drow woman who demands you beat the Ghaundaur priests within an hour before you return the (fake) eggs to Phaere.
Illasera, the first challenge, and Saradush were quickly dealt with. We went through the sewers with the soldiers' key for once, and didn't bother with Kiser. The Gromnir battle was slightly tricky as I forgot to rest and Karun overbuffed but Lyran was never in danger. Similarly Yaga Shura's mountain temple was only difficult when the Fire Trolls were bugged to be immortal, after some persistence I found that they could be vorpaled by the Silver Sword though. Nyalee also quickly perished, followed by Yaga himself. Things were going smoothly enoug, so I then popped down to the lower levels of Watchers to pick up some treasure, though I've no intention of doing the final level. Not misclicking on Lum's machine was risky enough!
A few misordered picks of Tahazzar's death (was a bit terrified of him!), a bugged Korgan repeatedly commenting on Yaga-Shura's inadequacy, some chimeras from a mod that I left well alone, and the death of Lyran's phantom brother.
SCS hasn't been that bad... so far. On to Sendai next, as the dragons have the usual hp increase and so should be treated with caution.
Frisky Bits the Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Part 7: Shadows of AmnAs usual, I take on Perth the Adept even though there's a safer way to get into Spellhold because I like getting the Book of Daily Spell. Frisky Bits and Nalia open with Death Fog to disrupt his spells, and Jaheira casts Spike Growth, but it proves unnecessary--Keldorn lands a Dispel Magic spell. Perth suffers a bit from the area-effect damage-over-time spells, but since his Chain Contingency only granted him PFMW instead of Improved Mantle, he's exposed to the full force of Mazzy's 10 APR arrows. He doesn't stand a chance.
Unfortunately, he doesn't drop the Book of Daily Spell due to Item Randomizer. Mazzy hits level 15 and gets her second pip in katanas, giving her an extra half attack per round with Celestial Fury. Her best option for damage output remains the Tuigan Bow, however.
We tackle Galvena for the XP. The only decent mage in the area is Vadek, and while Keldorn's Dispel Magic fails to affect him despite Vadek being much lower-level than Perth the Adept, we can still break through his Mantle with Darts +5 and the Sling of Everard.
Imoen joins the party! But in my EET install, Imoen apparently never actually dual-classes unless you do it yourself... and since we didn't keep her in BG1 and didn't dual-class her in Chateau Irenicus, she's still a single-classed thief. And when she gets her massive Spellhold XP boost, she gets it as a thief.
We can still dual-class her, but whether we do it before or after leveling her up, we're still going to end up with an under-leveled mage. And since the rest of the party is already around 2 million XP, we won't have an Imoen with level 9 spells until late in ToB.
Instead, we keep Imoen as a thief. Having a single-classed thief will be interesting, and it's not like we're really strapped for powerful characters. We'll keep her around for now--but we're not going to level her up past level 15 until she can hit level 21, because level 16-20 thief traps deal one-hit fire damage instead of lingering poison damage (4d8 fire instead of 2d6 poison per round for 3 rounds), and the level 11 traps are far more useful due to their ability to bypass elemental resistance and disrupt mage spells. At level 21, thief traps deal 20 poison damage and instantly kill the target on a failed save vs. death at +4 (which bypasses MR), but that's kind of a mixed bag: you get a small chance of an instant death, but you lose the guaranteed lingering damage from level 11 traps.
The Yuan-ti Mages in Spellhold aren't nearly as frustrating as they normally are. The Coiled Cabal foolishly uses the party-unfriendly Malavon's Rage spell as a pre-buff (I don't know if this is an outright bug or just a short-sighted scripting decision by a modder somewhere along the way) and Keldorn lands a Dispel Magic spell. The enemy scatters wide enough to complicate things and throws some magic attacks at Frisky Bits, but with Frisky Bits able to switch between nonmagical bullets and the +5 bullets from the Sling of Everard, we can land some heavy ranged hits bypassing both Improved Mantle and PFMW.
We kill the nearby mind flayer with burst damage and then let Mazzy tank the beholder with the Shield of Balduran and Celestial Fury.
Frisky Bits heads over to the lich under a Protection from Undead scroll, only to see no lich visible. I bring over the other fighters, and then the lich suddenly spawns. I'm not really sure why exactly the lich suddenly appeared before it actually did anything to break an Invisibility spell, but I reacted in time to have Frisky Bits drink a Potion of Magic Shielding to ward off the lich's Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency.
Frisky Bits is otherwise well-shielded, already having SI: Abjuration active just in case, so I send away Jaheira and Keldorn and let the lich focus its attention on Jaheira's Fire Elemental while Frisky Bits waits for an opportunity. The lich's opening Time Stop can't threaten Frisky Bits, but when the lich begins casting a Conjuration spell, Frisky Bits scurries away for fear that we'll have to deal with a Fallen Planetar.
It turns out to just be a Cacofiend spell, so Frisky Bits runs over to kill it with their sling while the lich keeps summoning demons. Meanwhile, Jaheira's Call Woodland Beings spell grants us some cheap decoys for the enemy to waste time on.
Eventually, the lich's PFMW spells run out. By then, Mazzy has Improved Haste active, and she helps Frisky Bits put down the lich.
The rest of the Spellhold maze isn't too exciting, though I do see a worrying sign when Frisky Bits takes a lot of damage from Bodhi and the Cloud of Bats starts putting them deep in the red after the fight ends. The rest of the party has no healing options (we never saw a Rod of Resurrection for sale anywhere), but Keldorn can slow down the damage by using Dispel Magic to remove Frisky Bits' Improved Haste, which increases the damage rate from insect-type spells like Cloud of Bats.
All that's left is Irenicus. Mazzy and Frisky Bits start breaking through Jon-bon's Improved Mantle using Darts +5 and the Sling of Everard, while Jaheira begins casting Insect Plague, since Irenicus does not have a Fire Shield as a pre-buff (!). Mazzy loses her Improved Haste pre-buff, robbing her of crucial APR, but Nalia restores it, and soon we break through Jon-bon's defenses while the clones are stinging from Insect Plague.
Irenicus activates Spell Deflection and Spell Shield via Spell Trigger, but he does not get the PFMW spell that typically comes with that trigger--perhaps because his Improved Mantle still hasn't worn off. Our three mages have tons of Secret Word and Spell Thrust spells, so we can keep applying pressure to Jon-bon's spell protections at the same time we strike with ranged weapons. Meanwhile, Keldorn and Jaheira, who have no +5 weapons to break through Improved Mantle, work on the clones. The clones go down, and Irenicus is helpless without his defenses.
Over at City Sushi, we sell off a bunch of loot to the local priestess vendor to crank up our gold supply (her prices are better than anyone else's in the entire saga aside from Nazramu the genie in SoD), but Item Randomizer takes the Cloak of Mirroring away from the enemy Sahuagin priestess. Near the imps, we find the Ring of Fire Control in place of the Cloak of Protection +2, and Water's Edge, a +3 scimitar, near Sekolah's tooth.
City Sushi has never been that challenging--at least, as long as you make sure Charname is protected against the stunning Sahuagin Bolts and Bolts of Biting--and we butcher Ixilthetocal before he can hurt anyone with his high-damage Impaler strikes.
Keldorn has just hit level 15 (Dispel Magic caster level is now at 22!) and now has two pips in spears, which means he can deal much more damage by using the Impaler +3 and its ludicrous +10 additional on-hit damage instead of Lilarcor. Frisky Bits hits mage level 12 and can now cast PFMW!
First order of business in the Underdark, as always, is to chop up the local elementals for tens of thousands of XP. Keldorn shows off his new spear.
Keldorn completely breaks the fight with the drow. Every single mage loses their buffs to Dispel Magic, leaving them defenseless. Notice Jaheira's Static Charge going right through drow MR.
I like to deal with the Underdark Balor using Darts of Stunning, but since our normal dart user is Mazzy, who already uses Celestial Fury, we just mob the Balor. We deal so much damage that we kill the poor creature before we can stun-lock it.
I am enjoying the Imoen Romance mod. The writing is actually pretty awesome, and it feels very true to Imoen. The occasional innuendo is low-key; it's not jarring or out of place. Her reaction to being turned into a drow is perfect.
"And I have this weird urge to kill lowly surfacers in the name of Lolth."
There are only a few dangerous fights we need to get through the Underdark. First up is N'ashtar (why can't he just spell it Nashtar?), who proves helpless against Keldorn's Dispel Magic.
The mind flayer ambush goes quickly thanks to our many fighter levels. I haven't fought Qilue in years and don't see much reason to bother (only catching up on this thread let me know that the Boneblade was there, but I don't place much value on the Boneblade given the alternatives available for thieves and such), so I decide to squirm my way out of the aboleth's request. Before I speak with it, I remember that Frisky Bits' Wisdom is low (for RP reasons, using Charisma as a dump stat didn't feel right), so we down a Potion of Insight so we can get the right dialog option.
Later I realized that I completely forgot to kill the Kuo-toan Prince before entering Ust Natha, which means that we have to go hunt it down within the admittedly generous three-day period permitted by the Matron Mother. Nearby, I have Frisky Bits tackle the nearby beholder and Gauths on her own with the Shield of Balduran, but when the big beholder snatches the SoB early on, I just have them down a Potion of Invisibility and let Nalia blast the enemy with the Wand of Fire.
The Kuo-toa go down with brute force. They can apply heavy pressure to party mages due to their divination spells and innate ability to see through invisibility, but otherwise they're not too dangerous, and again, we have a high-offense party on hand.
We now have Daystar! I almost never get Daystar because I know some installs lock you up with the Crooked Crane lich (you can't run away until the lich is dead) and there's not much room to run around in, which means you either need really solid defensive characters, multiple Protection from Undead scrolls to cover the party, or a high-reliability anti-mage option that can be activated within 6 seconds.
Since Imoen would be able to make use of Soul Reaver, I decide to fight the Death Knights as well. Before combat begins, I pull back everyone who doesn't have SI: Abjuration on hand to preserve our party's buffs a little better. I only send in the fighters after a few seconds to try to land some very quick kills on the Death Knights.
Turns out they're classified as undead.
So, the Mace of Disruption can instantly kill them. A Deva's basic attack can instantly kill them. Sunray can instantly kill them. A high-level cleric could turn or control or explode them (Death Knights are level 20 critters). Repulse Undead could throw them back and let the player fight them one by one. And Protection from Undead scrolls should let you kill them without opposition.
Suddenly they seem a whole lot easier to kill.
Frisky Bits the Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Part 8: Shadows of AmnWe get the Soul Reaver from the Death Knights as well as the Girdle of Frost Giant Strength and even the Armor of the Hart, though only the first two are important to me. We report back to the Matron Mother for big XP, talk to Phaere, and kill the Egg Guards. For some parties, killing the Egg Guards can be difficult due to their 18 DEX and +5 full plate mail, but having so many fighter levels in one party means that we can just smash them.
As usual, I sneak past the golems and use invisibility to avoid speaking with Taso Kala outside Phaere's home, waiting for the local drow wizards' divination spells to go off before I approach Phaere's doorway. Once we get Phaere and Matron Mother Ardulace killed, we haste the party and escape the city under invisibility.
Then Adalon teleports us to the exit, and I remember that I forgot to fight the drow guards stationed there.
I can probably handle these guys, but it's safer to just let Adalon do most of the work. We fall back and watch her trample the enemies for us.
Back in Athkatla, we crank our gold supply past 89,000 before burning over 39,000 on high-level scrolls from Ribald.
There are still plenty of items that we've missed due to Item Randomizer, which means we could find useful items pretty much anywhere. We head back to Firkraag's lair, which by now should be a cakewalk. Mazzy gets a bruising from the golems near the entrance, but it's nothing we can't survive (how often do you lose a run to golems, honestly?). Frisky Bits smashes the local vampires with the Mace of Disruption while Keldorn, approaching under invisibility, uses Daystar to cast Sunray. The casting time is slow; it's not an instantaneous effect.
We lure Samia onto Imoen's traps (I prefer to ambush them rather than let them ambush us), but Keldorn's Dispel Magic does most of the work by neutralizing Kaol. As for the Guardians, Mazzy just hacks them up with Celestial Fury. The katana is also great for holding off the golems in the northwest, who do pretty remarkable damage with their Trample ability.
I consider fighting Conster fairly, but at this point, he's not much of a challenge anyway. I just trap him.
Nalia gets a level up after reporting to Garren Windspear, and then we head back to tackle Firkraag. Frisky Bits tanks Firkraag while Nalia hits him with Pierce Shield via Project Image. Fighter/Mage/Clerics are tanky at every stage of the game, and they only get sturdier as time goes on.
Also... Frisky Bits can cast Entropy Shield. That cranks their AC all the way down to -20. But that's not even the most interesting part.
Entropy Shield from IWDification, just like in IWD, blocks a bunch of projectiles, one of which is used by the Breach spell. This means that Entropy Shield will completely block Breach, and unlike Spell Shield, it can't be consumed. Firkraag's Breach spell is useless against Frisky Bits. Granted, this isn't a perfect defense; a cleric or druid with no access to SI: Abjuration is still perfectly vulnerable to Remove Magic, even with spells from IWDification.
I had a lot of options prepared for this fight, but in the end, Feeblemind is good enough on its own. Firkraag glows yellow for a single second, showing he failed his save.
This used to be a great relief for me, since I relied on it as my primary tactic. But here, it's kind of a letdown. We were totally ready to thrash the dragon in a fair fight, just through brute force.
I could still do that, of course. But instead, I just stage a contest to see who can land the killing blow on Firkraag. Sure enough, Mazzy wins. Imoen seems pleased.
Keldorn now has Carsomyr, though it's not nearly as game-breaking as it normally would be. My SCS install nerfs it so that the dispel effect on hit offers a save vs. spell (easy for mages to make), and Impaler actually does more damage per hit against anything that's not Chaotic Evil, in which case Carsomyr breaks even with the Impaler.
Our approach to the first encounter with Bodhi outside in the graveyard is typical: use Invisibility 10' Radius to avoid the ambush and then rest so the vampires get caught in the sunlight and have to dissipate. The first level of her lair is very simple thanks to a Protection from Undead scroll and a lucky hit from the Mace of Disruption. Keldorn cleans up with Daystar.
The Guard mage loses it buffs to Keldorn's Dispel Magic and loses its life to Frisky Bits' Mace of Disruption.
I almost never search the eastern blood pool because I don't know of anything useful you can find in it. But for the first time in years, I go ahead and check it. By spectacular luck, it contains the Cloak of Mirroring!
It's going to go right on my main character, just like always. The funny thing is that I already give my main character pre-buffs that make them immune to spell damage, even when they do wear the Cloak of Mirroring, because a small number of damage spells bypass the cloak. The Cloak of Mirroring is actually a very minor bonus for this party due to my Charname-centric buffing habits.
These days, I know how to deal with Bodhi. I always save up tons of Protection from Undead scrolls, and I know not to bother trying to hurt Hazzerbazzer or Manasseh. Instead, I focus all power on Bodhi, with a Sunray from Daystar to help clear the field. By chance, Hazzerbazzer falls to Sunray, but that's an incidental benefit--Frisky Bits is already so well-buffed that the mages would struggle to touch them even if they didn't have Protection from Undead active.
More good luck takes down Manasseh thanks to the Mace of Disruption, but Frisky Bits discovers that Bodhi's AC is much too low for us to strike her with Harm. Instead, we just crowd around Bodhi and stomp all over her.
Fun fact: Drizzt benefits from Protection from Undead just as much as you do!
We arrive at Suldanessellar (which I've been mispelling as Suldannessellar all this time!) and Frisky Bits finally hits 3 million XP. They now have two pips in flails and can now use the Flail of Ages at full APR. Our first HLA pick is Extra Level 6 Spell, the most boringly practical mage HLA there is. It's worth another PFMW, and while that's decidedly unimpressive, it's ideal for a no-reload run. Another 4 rounds of immunity to weapons can always prove the difference between life and death.
But come on. We already know how SoA is going to end, right?
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1038601/#Comment_1038601
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1038792/#Comment_1038792
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1039042/#Comment_1039042
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1039285/#Comment_1039285
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1039533/#Comment_1039533
After picking up the Cloak of Balduran my basic save vs spell was down to 3. Using the Horn of Kazgaroth followed by spirit armor then means there's no realistic direct danger of being killed by a surge and I did that to set up attacks on the Iron Throne. Webs, cloudkill and malison were followed up by skull traps, while I kept summons round the corner out of sight to provide possible protection just in case of a no-save hold surge. Zhalimar survived long enough to require a single MMM to finish him off.
After using some monsters to speed up killing the dopplegangers at the Seven Suns, I reported in to Duke Eltan and got sent to Candlekeep. I left the Iron Throne leaders alone there on the way to the catacombs, which were duly robbed using minor globe for protection. I bypassed the dopplegangers, but gave Prat's gang the web treatment without anyone responding - meaning the skeleton warrior was available to sort out the basilisks.
Back in Baldur's Gate, Prat got lucky to save against 2 wand of paralyzation charges and a number of hits with stunning darts while working his way through a couple of lots of summoned monsters. Tiring of that game I finished him off with a scorcher.
Edit: reminder to myself to go and get the ring of energy before progressing to SoD.
Wild mage L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 299 kills
Frisky Bits the Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Part 9: Shadows of AmnThe Imoen Romance mod can get rather grim. Imoen opens up to us about her experience with Irenicus, and painfully reminds us of all the time-consuming side quests we did while she was trapped in Spellhold.
Suldanessellar is a pretty high-pressure environment due to all the golems and rakshasas that exert heavy pressure and take many rounds to slay. Ramilaat, by contrast, is actually one of the lesser threats, simply because we can break through his PFMW with nonmagical ammunition.
I hate dealing with the rakshasas because their damage spells really build up over time and they have long-lasting defenses, but with Keldorn on hand, we can render them vulnerable with Dispel Magic. Rakshasas have excellent AC, but it's not good enough to be competitive this late in the game.
We happen upon a randomized Protection from Magic scroll while fighting rakshasas, a precious find. Item Randomizer scattered a lot of items we normally could have found on vendors, so we're missing a fair number of useful items.
I decide to tackle Nizidramanii'yt without using Feeblemind, instead using Frisky Bits as a tank to absorb his attacks and opening Remove Magic spell before bringing over the other fighters to apply pressure. Notice Nizidramanii'yt making a save vs. spell: Mazzy is using fire arrows, which in my EET install are the SoD-style fire arrows, with +2 to hit and damage on top of the fire damage.
Frisky Bits can't tank the dragon indefinitely, however. Somehow, Nizidramanii'yt's Creeping Doom spell affects Frisky Bits despite their saving throws all being -7 or lower. It seems that Creeping Doom offers no saving throw; only SI: Conjuration or possibly spell deflection/turning/trap could block it. With spell failure active, Frisky Bits can't restore their Mirror Images or Stoneskins, and Creeping Doom, like all insect spells, can chew right through Stoneskins very quickly (I've that this behavior has only been fixed in an extremely recent patch). Frisky Bits has to fall back and resort to using their sling, and Nizidramanii'yt fortunately switches targets. Our other fighters aren't nearly as sturdy since they have no Stoneskins or Mirror Images (and are just shy of getting Hardiness), but they're buffed against the dragon's acid breath and we're doing fast enough damage that Nizidramanii'yt doesn't have a lot of time to kill anyone.
Keldorn, though, has especially poor AC due to Item Randomizer robbing us of the Gauntlets of Dexterity, and he's forced to fall back as well. But Mazzy and Frisky Bits are still devastating, and finish off the dragon within a few rounds.
Mazzy and Keldorn finally hit 3 million XP, taking Power Attack (an excellent anti-mage tool, not that we need a whole lot more) and Hardiness to make Keldorn a little tougher.
For some reason, Rillifane fails to kill Suneer, only slaying the golem, rakshasa, and Glabrezu, forcing us to fight Suneer on our own. Keldorn's Dispel Magic fails to remove Suneer's Absolute Immunity spell, but Suneer does nothing to hurt us before casting Improved Mantle, which we can break through very easily. Suneer drops another Protection from Magic scroll.
I go over our inventory and realize that we're still missing a lot of very important options--namely, the Rod of Resurrection. EET allows us to revisit SoA areas during ToB, but I don't really want to do that, so we're going to scour SoA areas for treasure before we tackle Irenicus. Item Randomizer is kind to us back in Mekrath's lair, giving us our first Rod of Resurrection and Wand of Cloudkill (Mekrath and the Coiled Cabal are no threat this late in the game). Jaheira takes Power Attack and Critical Strike as her first 2 HLAs, the latter of which will allow her to land a guaranteed Harm strike once per day.
Here is our party near the end of SoA:
Frisky Bits
Mazzy
Jaheira
Keldorn
Nalia
Imoen
Since Spellhold, Mazzy has been taking an even greater share of the party's kills. Since she's been extremely productive thus far, I want to forge Crom Faeyr for her to wield in her off hand (or maybe give it to Frisky Bits; I don't know). That means we need to grab the Hammer of Thunderbolts, and while it might be randomized, there's a chance it will be in its normal place: the mind flayer hideout in the Temple sewers.
We're going to have to deal with the Alhoon, an epic-level lich with constant effect Improved Alacrity. It has high APR, strong THAC0, and like all mind flayers, it can drain 5 INT per hit. Against anyone not immune to +2 weapons, it can land rapid kills via stat drain.
The good news is that the Alhoon can't see through a Protection from Undead scroll, and a single PFMW spell is enough to let Frisky Bits wipe out the other mind flayers while the Alhoon remains blissfully unaware of our presence.
Nalia wanders over to start the fight and trigger the Alhoon's defenses. Frisky Bits and Nalia get to work breaking down its spell protections while the Alhoon remains otherwise invincible due to Absolute Immunity.
The Alhoon approaches us, but we can avoid its melee attacks simply by running away. We take down its SI: Abjuration, and Keldorn lands a Dispel Magic spell, which he casts at level 27 due to the SCS nerf.
The Alhoon is sturdier than most liches due to its 50% physical damage resistance, granted to all mind flayers because of an SCS component replicating a tweak from the old Tactics mod. More importantly, its Improved Alacrity effect allows it to cast a new weapon immunity spell at any moment. It only takes 0.6 seconds for it to cast PFMW.
But Mazzy strikes 10 times per round--every 0.6 seconds--and the Alhoon can't get a single spell off the ground before Mazzy's Power Attack stuns it, sealing its fate.
We find the Hammer of Thunderbolts! Now all we need is the Crom Faeyr Scroll from Thaxll'ssillyia. We buff with Negative Plane Protection on our front line and let Frisky Bits soak up the dragon's opening Remove Magic spell. Nalia lands Breach, taking down his PFMW spell, and Thaxll'ssillyia blasts us with his breath weapon. No one loses any levels due to NPP, and while our melee attackers still get blinded, Mazzy is out of range and Frisky Bits can quickly cure it with Cure Disease. Keldorn fails to buff with Hardiness and has to run away to cast it, while Jaheira refreshes NPP on Mazzy.
Keldorn needs to drink potions to stay safe, but in the end, it doesn't matter. Mazzy, Jaheira, and Frisky Bits are tough enough to bring down the dragon without him.
But Item Randomizer moved the Crom Faeyr Scroll; all we get from slaying the dragon is some scattered gems and Azuredge.
I'm not sure we're ever going to be able to forge Crom Faeyr. In any case, we still have work to do in SoA to make sure we have the best gear for ToB. Next up, the Planar Prison!
Frisky Bits the Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Part 10: Shadows of AmnMost of the Planar Prison passes without incident. Keldorn has a 100% chance of dispelling buffs on the Yuan-ti Mages, rendering the primary pre-Warden sticking point a non-issue. The Warden himself is another story--he is an epic-level fighter/mage who can and will attack during Time Stop.
We quickly wipe out the defenses of the Yuan-ti Mages, but the Warden comes pre-buffed with SI: Abjuration. We can bypass its PFMW, but when Mazzy tries to strike with Power Attack, we receive no save vs. death or stun message in the dialog box, which means that the Warden is immune to stun effects.
Jaheira and Keldorn apply some pressure to the Coiled Cabal, since they don't have great APR or THAC0 with nonmagical weapons, and the Yuan-ti Mages start going down. Frisky Bits keeps their aura clear to cast PFMW in the event of a Time Stop spell by the Warden, but the Warden doesn't try to. Instead, he nails Mazzy with PW: Blind, forcing her to switch to a nonmagical shortsword until we can remove it with Cure Disease.
Otherwise, the Warden does little, wasting a triple Lower Resistance Spell Trigger on Keldorn despite none of our enemies having the spellpower to threaten him when his MR drops. We break through his Stoneskins and ignore his largely meaningless PFMW Contingency.
Now Haer'dalis is available. I want him on the team, but we have to remove someone. I decide on Jaheira: she has good damage output, but she doesn't provide anything uniquely useful at this point in the game.
Jaheira takes it hard, and leaves the party permanently (though she doesn't take any gear with her). The dialog seems based on her Harper questline difficulties, but that should already be complete; Elminster affirmed she was in the right and the attacks are long since over.
Then I realize that Haer'dalis starts the game at a very low level compared to the rest of the party; XP only scales so far based on the main character's level. I kick him out and proceed to our next challenge, the Twisted Rune, with only five party members.
Frisky Bits summons a clone, Nalia casts Project Image, and we take our positions: Nalia, Keldorn, and Imoen tucked safely away in the southwest staircase; Kitthix and a weaker Skeleton Warrior in the northwest to distract Vaxall, a Skeleton Warrior in the southwest to distract Shangalar, Nalia's clone next to Layenne, Frisky Bits' clone next to Vaxall wearing the Shield of Balduran, the real Frisky Bits in the southeast to stay away from Vaxall and Layenne, and Mazzy close to Vaxall so she can deal damage through his opening PFMW. Notice the IWDification Recitation spell cast via Frisky Bits' Contingency.
I fail to keep Kitthix and our weaker Skeleton Warrior visible, so Vaxall targets Nalia's clone with Death Ray and other spells. Her defenses hold, fortunately, and the moment Layenne breaks invisibility, Nalia disables her with the Great Shout spell from IWDification, which stuns for two rounds on a failed save and stuns for one round with no save. The only disadvantage is that it can hurt the caster (Nalia's clone is buffed against that) and it pauses the caster, which delays one's aura from clearing (you can't chain-cast Great Shout without delays in between castings)
Layenne makes her save, but it doesn't matter. We bring Keldorn over and our three fighters pin down Layenne using nonmagical ammunition.
Mazzy has gotten level drained in the meantime, but with the Staff of the Magi in Frisky Bits' hands, the fight is almost is impossible to lose. All we have to do is take down Vaxall, who quickly falls to more nonmagical ammunition that bypasses his PFMW...
...and then tackle Shangalar before he summons a Fallen Planetar that could land vorpal strikes bypassing Frisky Bits' newfound at-will invisibility. Shangalar's defenses are too tough for us to handle without using a Protection from Undead scroll on him (which I'm not doing; this is an exploit-free run), but fortunately he wastes a few rounds chasing the real Nalia while the rest of the party fights with Revanek and Shyressa. Shangalar breaks Nalia's Project Image by dealing some slight fire damage to her (I can't tell from what source, then takes down all of her buffs while she runs away--I didn't bother casting SI: Abjuration before Project Image.
Revanek and Shyressa go down, but Shangalar, too well-buffed for us to threaten, hits Keldorn with a Comet (it was aimed for Imoen, but she ran away before it hit) and gets Time Stop off the ground. Fortunately, he summons no Fallen Planetar; he just nails us with an Incendiary Cloud.
We kill Shangalar's clone, but the real lich is still well-buffed, and when Nalia fails a save against his Dragon Fear, we don't have many ways of breaking down his defenses. Instead, Imoen uses Detect Illusions to dispel Shangalar's Illusion spells, relying on her high fire resistance to shrug off the Incendiary Cloud, while the rest of the party hangs back. Eventually, Shangalar's PFMW runs out and Mazzy nails him with an Arrow of Dispelling, but Shangalar re-casts PFMW and we're stuck again.
We try to dispel the fear effect on Nalia so she can cast Breach on Shangalar or something, but the fear effect is undispellable and somehow we're out of Remove Fear spells. In the end, though, it doesn't matter: with his pre-buffs removed by Mazzy's Arrow of Dispelling, he succumbs to his own Incendiary Cloud.
Since we're in a good position to deal with liches, I decide to fight the Crooked Crane lich to see if Item Randomizer rewards us. We re-recruit Ninde for some extra arcane power and blast the lich with a series of magic attacks. Sunray does nothing; SCS liches tend to buff with Protection from Magical Energy and their base save vs. spell of 1 means they're immune to Sunray's instant death effect unless maybe the caster has Invoker levels.
We hit the lich with a Breach spell from Imoen, cast via scroll, but it completely fails--somehow, we failed to remove all of its spell protections. It replied with a devastating Dragon's Breath spell, and since we're stuck in an enclosed area, we can't run away.
Notice that Frisky Bits has taken damage; the Cloak of Mirroring does not block Dragon's Breath. We fire off more magic attacks, but the lich's spell protections just won't go down. Keldorn's Dispel Magic attempt only succeeds in removing his own buffs.
The lich casts Time Stop and blasts us with a Comet and some more fire spells, slaying Ninde and forcing other party members to drink potions. But now, finally, its spell protections are down. Problem is, now it's invisible, and Nalia can't target it with Breach.
The lich switches to Cone of Cold spells while its Improved Alacrity spell is still active, but it's nothing our fighters can't resist (it can't hit everyone at once; we've split up the party between north and south). Imoen reveals the lich, paving the way for a Breach by Nalia. It doesn't last long after that.
An inexplicable crash robs us of our progress, so I have to reload. I drop the scrolls and potions I used in the previous fight and just use CTRL-R on the lich so I don't have to repeat all the steps all over again.
It's time to fight Irenicus. I'm kind of bored and impatient, so I just set some traps to make him suffer. We blast him with magic attacks, but since we can dispel his invisibility and break through his PFMW, we can remove his Stoneskins and deal enough damage that his death dialogue triggers right after he casts Time Stop via Wish.
In the Hell trials, Nalia tries to slay the beholders by casting damage spells from behind the Staff of the Magi, but the Elder Orb wanders too close to the party, surviving Imoen's traps and taking down Frisky Bits' Spell Shield using Anti-Magic Ray. Frisky Bits re-casts Spell Shield, but Mazzy bails us out at the last minute through sheer force.
I was hoping we could get one last level up before the final battle of SoA, but Frisky Bits is just a few tens of thousands of XP away from mage and cleric level 13 (and not that much further from fighter level 13). Still, we have the Staff of the Magi, which should be enough to win us the final battle as long as we bring down the demons that can see through invisibility (the Slayer itself cannot).
Frisky Bits the Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Part 11: Shadows of AmnI buff the party with almost everything, and careful positioning keeps our fighters and Imoen from getting hit by Remove Magic (Nalia and Frisky Bits have SI: Abjuration), but unfortunately fail to see a critical vulnerability in our defenses: Nalia has neither Chaotic Commands nor a spell turning/deflection spell active. A Glabrezu pins her with PW: Stun.
Thanks to SI: Abjuration, Nalia is immune to Remove Paralysis, which means it's impossible to cure Nalia unless we can hit her with an Arrow of Dispelling. Imoen, however, has an alternate solution: hit Nalia with the Ring of the Ram, and let the knockback carry her safely to the south while the rest of the party tackles the demons.
Unfortunately, a Glabrezu chases Nalia down, so Mazzy fires off an Arrow of Dispelling to cure her. Somehow, the arrow fails to dispel PW: Stun.
Nalia loses all her buffs and ends up dead when Keldorn tries to dispel the PW: Stun with Carsomyr, figuring that we could not save her by distracting the Glabrezu. But based on the direction the Glabrezu was facing, it looks like the Glabrezu lost interest in her right before we killed her.
The Slayer begins casting Time Stop, but we notice and have everyone go invisible, either by a potion or the Staff of the Magi. Irenicus, unable to see through invisibility, has nothing to do but kill Kitthix.
The Slayer pesters Keldorn and removes his buffs while the rest of the party hurries away to the southeast, where the Balor teleports after Mazzy and quickly succumbs to Celestial Fury.
The Slayer is alone and sees no enemies, so he takes no action as his PFMW gradually runs out. Frisky Bits restores their SI: Abjuration and smacks the Slayer with the Staff of the Magi to remove his Stoneskins and such. Unlike Carsomyr, the Staff of the Magi offers no save for its dispelling effect even with SCS installed.
The Slayer retaliates by summoning a Fallen Planetar, prompting an immediate PFMW by Frisky Bits. Mazzy manages to stun it with Celestial Fury, preventing it from healing itself and allowing us to put it down before it can hurt anyone.
Frisky Bits re-equips the Staff of the Magi to avoid the Slayer's next Time Stop, and the rest of the party runs away, figuring that distance will let them survive even if they don't have invisibility. Turns out the Slayer can see across the map during Time Stop even if it can't do so outside of Time Stop. It teleports over and kills Mazzy.
I could use the Rod of Resurrection to bring back Nalia and Mazzy, but I don't really need to. Keldorn drinks a Potion of Magic Protection to block an Enchantment spell (with Carsomyr, the potion gives him 100% magic resistance total) and then runs away from the Slayer while Frisky Bits follows after, waiting for the Slayer's PFMW to wear off. Once it's gone, Frisky Bits smacks it again with the Staff of the Magi.
Yet another PFMW forces Keldorn to keep running and Keldorn loses his Potion of Magic Protection to a dispel effect, but an Oil of Speed lets him stay ahead of the fast-moving Slayer. Still, the Slayer can deal a lot of spell damage to Keldorn when his MR is back down to 50%.
Then the Slayer hits him with Remove Magic again and follows up with PW: Stun. Frisky Bits tries to rescue him, but PW: Stun can't be dispelled even by the Staff of the Magi. Meanwhile, to the southeast, Imoen goes ahead and resurrects Nalia, since I didn't expect Keldorn to go down.
To my surprise, we manage to keep Keldorn alive simply by harassing the Slayer, who turns away from Keldorn to fight back against Frisky Bits. After losing its Stoneskins and running out of its PFMW, the Slayer is rather vulnerable, and Frisky Bits can thwart its spells with their sling.
Frisky Bits tanks the Slayer with PFMW until Keldorn recovers from PW: Stun and rejoins the fight. The Slayer has finally depleted its defenses, and Irenicus falls.
Shadows of Amn is over! Now we get to the real challenge. Throne of Bhaal is next.
With him are his companions from BG1: Tenya the cleric of Umberlee, Jarlaxle the fighter, Artemis Entreri the thief, Shar-Teel the fighter-thief and Viconia the Cleric of Shar. Tenya is the only non-evil member of the party and she is Chaotic Neutral.
I am now treading new ground as I have never taken an evil party this far before.
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1038601/#Comment_1038601
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1038792/#Comment_1038792
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1039042/#Comment_1039042
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1039285/#Comment_1039285
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1039533/#Comment_1039533
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1039789/#Comment_1039789
Krystin was persuaded to cloudkill herself - and unfortunately succeeded in killing herself just before a wand blast could finish her off.
At the palace I buffed up before showing myself. Summons and MMMs were nice to haves there, but the crucial factor was the chaos scroll - that has the huge advantage of automatic success against the dopplegangers and both Belt & Liia survived the initial battle only slightly injured. I did though lead Belt away and wait until Sarevok killed Liia in order to pick up the remains
Wand summons and damage eased the path through the maze, along with a first use of a PfU scroll. Web helped make short work of the party in the Undercity despite 2 wild surges during preparations for that - only the 2nd and 3rd of the run.
In the temple I once again abused the lightning trap. Normally I stop once Sarevok's companions are dead, but this time the bolts kept flying long enough to kill the big man himself as well.
I'd carried enough money through to the SoD prologue to buy the scrolls of greater restoration from the Flaming Fist Healer and did that before going invisibly to persuade Porios to surrender.
Wild mage L10, 58 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 359 kills
No screenshots this time until I get proper progress.
Tails five started as a vagrant and did quite well. He ploughed through some of the early encounters including a totally unexpected Suna Seni after the first travel region! We avoided an immediate demise in a travel region with the poisoned man from the Harper hold and traveled to the docks. Jaheira needed her quests done. So we seek out player but when fighting him in the slums we die to hold and confusion.
Tails six never got very far. The swashbuckler died due to confusion and chaos spells again Prebek. Such an easy fight it should be.
I need better strategies against enchantment spells early game.
Previous updates:
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1028542/#Comment_1028542
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1029429/#Comment_1029429
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1030921/#Comment_1030921
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1031740/#Comment_1031740
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1031786/#Comment_1031786
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1033031/#Comment_1033031
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1033340/#Comment_1033340
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1034874/#Comment_1034874
Update 9: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1035114/#Comment_1035114
Update 10: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1035699/#Comment_1035699
Update 11: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1035983/#Comment_1035983
Update 12: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1038285/#Comment_1038285
Update 13: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1038293/#Comment_1038293
Making our way to Gromnir wasn't too difficult - a little bit of hit and run, a little bit of summons, some anti-undead weapons - with our alchemy-supplied oils of speed, we can kite most things with relative ease, especially when swapping around The Reflex or the Cloak of Mirroring to avoid any ranged damage as well.
We opened the battle against Gromnir with Smite - both Cephalus and Kaveh hit one of the mages with their respective ranged weapon and smite before their protections went up, buying us a lot of time. Gromnir was affected as well, giving us the opportunity to reposition the party and go after the other guards first. Meanwhile, Oedipus had summoned a deva. He also had true sight going, allowing the party to go after the thief first:
The mages predictably, only having the deva in their line of sight, used all their symbol spells during their timestop to try and affect it, to no avail. As they approached, the party was easily able to take them out, with their PFMWs already gone:
Now, I only had to kite Gromnir for a bit while neutralizing the archer via The Reflex:
Our party returns to the pocket plane and makes its way to the Temple. Double-sunrays from items (Daystar and Helm of Brilliance) allow us to take down the Master Wraith and its allies:
A deva and a few traps are used to destroy the remaining undead, and the Marching Mountains are our next stop. Fire giants are easily kiteable, especially with Cephalus' kuo-toa bolts (I've never really taken advantage of these before, but they're absolutely awesome). Being invisible allows us to get into a good position in order to set up small groups of traps, a few summons and ranged weapon ambushes to take down the bigger groups:
Getting access to the next level is made easier by protection from fire spells, summons and the vast amounts of traps at our disposal. No trouble here, and our next target, Berenn, is easily taken down:
Kaveh is granted fire immunity, he equips The Wave and some summons provide him with protection while he takes down Imix with one hit:
Now, we return the hearts to the Temple and make our way to Yaga Shura. We quickly wound him and get rid of the enemies on our screen, allowing us to get out of combat and set up some traps, which we plan to use for Yaga-Shuras return. With soldiers and fire giants spawning in, we have to take these out right away before they can get too close and trigger our traps. Yaga-Shura appears at the bridge, we send in our deva to draw out his mage's time stop:
Smite and GWWs allow us to get rid of the other melee fighters who could possibly walk into our traps. Pulling Yaga Shura closer to us is rather easy, as we don't even have to get in line of sight of his mage:
Though to be fair, we propably could've just killed him with 2 GWWs. The traps weren't really needed at this point.
Next, we did made our way to Amkethran. The oasis battle was quick and easy (Oedipus was using the Robe of Vecna to instantly summons a deva), and so were the Amkethran sidequests. Vongoethe trusted us to bring Marlowe to him - which we did, but not before taking the opportunity to trap the room, killing the lich instantly when we decided to turn on him. The drow woodcutter was also dealt with, and we returned to the pocket plane for the second challenge - a very difficult one, as the Bhaalspawn Clone usually goes right after the main character with GWWs, and Cephalus has no meaningful protections. He did use the Gargoyle Boots for the stoneskin effect, though, and boots of speed + oil of speed in order to kite. As it turns out, anti-Cephalus apparently had both of these effects going as well, so kiting was very tricky - pausing multiple times every round was needed to avoid any hits.
First things first, though: Our initial traps sadly didn't hit anti-Cephalus, but killed Semaj instead:
While Cephalus was busy constantly running away, Oedipus used the Reflex to neutralize Angelo and the others took care of Tamoko:
Anti-Cephalus maintained his insane movement speed even after his GWWs were gone. Soon, Angelo was basically dead, but anti-Cephalus suddenly switched targets, getting a hit in on Kaveh - which almost resulted in his death:
Yeah, this guy is pretty dangerous. Cephalus was able to hit him with smite, though, and after recovering from that, he switched targets again back to our main character. Meanwhile, Angelos was killed. Eventually, Cephalus remembered that he could summon a simmy in order to finally deal some damage - this good copy started using GWWs, and Kaveh finally managed to stun Anti-Cephalus with power attack, securing our victory:
During the whole kiting process, Anti-Cephalus was able to swing at Cephalus two times in total, but the Gargoyle Boots stoneskin prevented any damage from being done. That was dangerous - I'm glad I got past that. Sendai's Enclave will be next.
Previous updates at:
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The first half of the session was spent buying things in Baldur's Gate before setting out. With inventory complete the first real action was going to the Coast Way Forest to get the regeneration ioun stone. I noticed in preparing for that the Horn of Kazgaroth was no longer causing 10 damage when used. Malison + chaos affected Ikros before he was finished off with MMMs, while summons helped occupy Isabella.
On the way back, invisibility allowed me to grab a nice sling from a troll cave without any fighting. Going to the bridge invisibly then avoided any danger of being attacked before Caelar came to parley. Invisibility also took me swiftly through the Troll Claw Woods before ignoring a big hole in the ground on the way to the Forest of Wyrms. There, I sneaked through the area to find Ziatar - summons occupied him while wand damage wore him down.
Closer contact with the Neothelid is required to make it surface, so I added free action from the ring, a potion of stone form and PfP from scroll before approaching that - regrettably though, those buffs proved insufficient protection. The Neothelid has a charm attack and a psychic hold person that uses a save vs death (hence the ring of free action). It also has something called an 'ego whip' that stuns you. I was invisible at the time, so only the Neothelid was attacking. My stoneskins lasted just long enough against that for the stun to wear off, but another hit was on its way as I turned to run.
I'd thought the ego whip used a save vs spell, but if so it must have an adjustment of more than -2 to overcome my saving throw of -1. I suppose next time I'll have to bite the bullet and use a potion of magic shielding to lower all saving throws for that encounter - previous experience there shows me that a scroll of PfM doesn't help as the attacks are mental rather than magical.
?? (human necromancer, Gate70); Viper (human blackguard, Grond0)
We spend a minute or two discussing what our previous plan might have been (and after the session a check of update 2 shows we hadn't bothered devising one).
So off we head to visit sirines at the coast. Viper does a good job with a potion of clarity and uses a couple of others (speed and either strength or heroism or somesuch) to clear a cave of flesh golems.
Flush with confidence we move on to basilisk central. The last two are still alive when ?? (call her Sufe as that's her name) tries to cast a scorcher. This makes her step into view of Mutamin and I'm a bit annoyed about that. Not for long as it turns out; the level 1 Protection from Petrification wears off and Mutamin doesn't get a chance to get offensive before Sufe is petrified.
Looking up Ego Whip, SPIN909.spl, in Near Infinity, it looks like it's a level zero, nonmagical "Magic Attack" spell that stuns the target for 24 seconds on a failed save vs. death at no penalty, with no projectile. It seems that only immunity to stun, a save vs. death, or a non-SCS Spell Shield (if that spell is even available at that point to non-sorcerers, which I don't think it is) can block Ego Whip.
If Potions of Freedom or Rings of Free Action don't grant immunity to stun, it seems a single-classed mage would be forced to stack 3 or 4 Potions of Stone Form to block Ego Whip without relying on luck.
Slug (half-orc male shaman, Grond0); Chorba (gnome female cleric/thief, Gate70)
After our previous run hit the rocks there was plenty of time to make a new start. The random number generator this time turned up a shaman and a cleric/thief, which should provide plenty of options.
As usual we opened up by visiting Shoal - Slug dancing there to keep her occupied.
A trip to Nashkel picked up the ankheg armor and Chorba put that on as her default set rather than relying on stealthy leather. Some more travel then saw Greywolf very smoothly disposed of as Chorba first gathered him up while Slug used doom on him, before Slug played tag to take on the running while Chorba used hold person.
Further north and an ankheg nest saw plenty of commands being used to help control the pests.
The final target for the session was the Lighthouse. The sirines there had no answer to skeletons,
After the session closed I went to get Chorba raised and then returned to the golem cave to ensure we can dive straight into adventures at the start of the next session.
Slug, shaman L5, 44 HPs, 46 kills
Chorba, cleric 5 / thief 5, 36 HPs, 21 kills, 1 death
It's time to give this challenge another shot. I considered various specialist mages for my run and transmuter came out as the most appealing choice. However, I had to ask myself three questions:
1. Will I miss abjuration spells? Of course. Big time.
2. Do I expect to fail? Absolutely. Most likely because of No. 1.
3. Why do it at all? Because there'll be loads of fun to have (and hopefully share)!
So what are we waiting for?! Let's memorize some Color Sprays and hit the Coast!
Mods: SCS v31
Early adventures (with screenshots):
At Candlekeep, Knud's freshly conjured Mr. Rabbit bashed (or rather gnawed through) a cabinet lock and we got our hands on Armor scroll. After collecting Identify from Tethoril, we're off to transmute the world.
They see me castin' Burning Hands, they hatin'.
Knud took it straight to Shoal to get two easy levels with Sleep and darts. I usually tick the "MAX HP on level up" box for my first level up - this time yielding 12 HP and thus increasing Knud's overall HP pool to comfortable 24.
With no INT increasing potions, we limited our scroll purchases at High Hedge to alteration school (Strength). Time for Mr. Rabbit to go steroid.
We completed minor quests in Beregost and took possession of Girdle of Piercing and Ring of Wizardry. In the meantime, Knud discovers the beauty of his newly scribed Chill Touch (courtesy of Xzar).
Note: In the original game, and probably due to developers' oversight, Chill Touch granted an undocumented +4 THAC0 bonus and, despite its description, did not allow a save against its effects (cold damage and THAC0 penalty). With this not being the case in BGEE, the spell's utility is actually rather limited - it was style that mattered, while Sleep was doing all the dirty work.
Viccy is saved from the Flaming Fist and taken aboard for a day trip into the mountains. There's action and loot - just the way we adventurers like it.
We managed to smuggle Viccy into the Amnish jurisdiction by taking a ride with Barge and parted our ways soon thereafter. She seemed to have enjoyed it, despite the open sky.
With our monetary situation finally stabilized, Knud buys spell scrolls (Shield, Magic Missile, Blindness, Friends, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Skull Trap, Vampiric Touch, Hold Person) at High Hedge, Potions of Genius at FAI and, with a 100% success chance, proceeds to scribing.
To be continued.
Regards,
B.
Have fun!!!