@Xzanah: Sometimes it's fun to go in unprepared, and be forced to come up with something crazy to survive. Some of the most entertaining fights I've had are those in which I've had to take on a powerful enemy with very few resources. It's not how I normally run things, but it's happened by accident on multiple occasions.
Preparation is very necessary in no-reload runs, though. Sometimes I've thought over an upcoming fight for several days, turning over the matter in my head and considering my options. It's almost as much fun as the fight itself.
I think there was a no-reload run recently in which a Blackguard Charname took on Drizzt in BG1. All present agreed it was an impressive feat.
We return to the Docks and find that the Cowled Wizards are no longer there.
I like that they vanish with the same message you'd see with a summoned Ogrillon or Cave Bear.
The Harper assassins remain. I have Sil start working on the cleric, but when she proves unable to interrupt a Sanctuary spell, Jan pitches in.
I've worried at times about a dual-classed Kensai's late-game THAC0, especially since Sil's blindness inflicts a +4 penalty, but so far she seems to be hitting quite reliably.
Without spellcasting support, the enemy fighter doesn't last long. Again, our Fire Elemental is nearly indestructible. The enemy mage has lots of Stoneskins, but Jan can get past that as well.
Honestly I wish the enemies would re-cast their buffs, but they haven't got any of their spells back during the rest period. It's not quite as much fun when they're low on spells and defenses. It's too easy to overwhelm them.
Edwin tells us the Shadow Thieves might kill us if we don't kill Mae'Var first. I've never seen that happen before, and it makes little sense given that we have yet to meet Bodhi and the Shadow Thieves are ostensibly still on our side, but I'm not willing to take any chances. We enter Mae'Var's guild hall invisible and go downstairs to fight him rather than deal with his goons upstairs first. I send out a bunch of summons with Jan to watch over them, but Jan gets hit by an area-effect spell.
I'm more or less positive that Jan is going to die. He's almost guaranteed to break his invisibility and attack, and once he's visible, the enemy will crush him. I attempt to keep him safe by throwing out Chaos, but I have no illusions of success. Sure enough, Jan goes down.
Notice Aerie is casting Silence 15' Radius. This wouldn't have worked before, at least not for Mae'Var, but Edwin broke down Mae'Var's MGOI with a Secret Word spell.
Mae'Var comes over to give us trouble, so we try hitting him with some disablers. Unfortunately, Edwin gets charmed in the middle of casting Emotion: Hopelessness, and so the spell affects us instead.
That could have gone very bad. I'm still not sure if characters will wake up after being hit by Emotion: Hopelessness, like they will with Command, but we could have been in very poor shape had more of our party members lost consciousness.
At any rate, we partially disable Mae'Var.
Much as silence can be countered with Vocalize, blindness can be removed with True Seeing, at least in SCS. But I don't think Mae'Var has such a spell.
We scramble to bring down the twin Assassins fighting with Mae'Var at the cost of several potions, then move on to the other side of the map. Meanwhile, Mae'Var is running around in circles, apparently not sure how to continue without his eyesight.
With his allies down and his spells apparently spent, Mae'Var isn't much of a threat, but he still has the resources to stay safe a while longer.
But all it does is delay the inevitable. He has no offensive options left besides his sword.
We rest and clear out the rest of the guildhouse with Fire Elementals and a bit of backstabbing. After reporting to Renal Bloodscalp, we leave town for Trademeet. We get ambushed, and Sil, having relied on stealth for her invisibility instead of Invisibility 10' Radius, has to drink a Potion of Invisibility in order to stay safe while we run away.
At Trademeet, we fail to kill Taquee, as he turns invisible and runs away. This costs us the Efreeti Bottle, which is very unfortunate, but we can still deal with his friends inside the tent. Greater Malison, Hold Monster, Chaos, and Insect Plague shut them down very easily.
A Slow spell weakens their AC enough for Jan to hit Khan Zahraa, and the stun effect holds him still long enough for us to break him down with melee weapons and backstabs.
We meet Cernd but tell him to go ahead without us. I don't think I could take on Faldorn in Nightmare mode with Cernd in the party. I'll have him win the battle for us. We will bring him into the group later, however. Jaheira is a great character, but her fighter levels mean much less than her druid levels in Nightmare mode, and she has little growth left in her more important class. Cernd will be our better option in the long run.
The team heads out for the wilderness, as thats where both Henke and Jaheira likes it best. The spend several days there tracking down monsters and bandits both. Saving a talking hen from wolves, unforunatly Melinvamp dont survive the deschickenator spell. Imoen stocks up on some scrolls that will come usefull later, dont dare to scribe them without an int potion since it seems I have very poor luck with that.
Zargal goes down easy and Henke got a nice new shortsword. Bassilus falls. The team even rescues famous ranger Drizzt from a band of gnolls, and in doing so they get a very lucky scroll of web spell.
The team now feels very confident in the wild, joking around half serious that they should go looking for a dragon to fight feeling that few things can stop them.
Stumbling in to Tengyan proves them wrong....
Tengyan and her group saves vs both sleep and hold. And starts firing away at the team. Imoen manages to hit the mage with a blind spell that gives us some respite and a chanse to engage. Somehow the mage hits both Khalid and Jaheira with a horror spell and they both panic.
Henke manages to cast remove fear but only hits Jaheira. Not only is Khalid running around scared he also gets hit with a poisoned arrow that I cant to anything to cure while hes paniced.
Emotions under control Jahiera engages the poison shooting hobgoblin and Henke and Imoen goes for the blinded mage.
We manage to survive the fight and Khalid had enough HP to fight trough beeing poisoned.
The team decides they need a rest and heads for FAI.
Heading out again they visit the carneval for some much needed recreation and Imoen picks up a fireball shooting neckless.
Then they go ogre hunting.
All goes well, they make a tactical decision to let Khalid take over tanking duties from his wife. Same AC double HP cant realy be argued with, ogre berserkers just hits to hard.
Small things of note: Greywolf fell. Lioandrins house cleaned. Neira fell. ( actualy forgot that I hadnt killed her and got caught by surprise. ) Picked up fire res ring. Saved Samuel Protected the escavation sight Saved Brage
I hoped to avoid fighting any Spirit Trolls, but they appear by surprise in the group between the Baby Wyverns and spider horde. I distract most of them with summons but I wasn't quite clear on how to deal with the Trolls. Sil can backstab Spirit Trolls, but they can see through her invisibility, which means she can't do so safely. More by accident than anything else, we lure a single Spirit Troll out of the group and can take it down from there--we have enough damage output for that, at least--and Edwin finishes it off with a Minute Meteor. It takes a lot of precise micromanagement and incessant retargeting to get it right, but we manage to bring the Spirit Trolls down one by one. Sil lands another ludicrous backstab, which is actually 6 points higher than the maximum possible considering her 4x multiplier with Kai, grandmastery, 9 Kensai levels, a +1 katana, and 22 STR from DUHM.
That's not enough to one-shot a Nightmare mode enemy, but Sil has plenty more.
She really carries the party, actually. We can't get that much output from our summons.
Edwin falls to STR drain. For all of Sil's efforts, we can't keep off the Spirit Trolls long enough to avoid massive STR drain. Aerie and Jan both had to shift around their equipment to avoid being encumbered.
To my surprise, you can't use single-target spells against fallen Spirit Trolls. We're lucky we have Firetooth. Otherwise we'd have had to hit somebody with Agannazar's Scorcher and catch the troll in between the two characters.
A fight with some spiders confirms that characters do wake up on being hit if they get knocked out by Emotion: Hopelessness. Chromatic Orb makes its presence felt.
It's not a reliable spell, but the payoff is a lot better in Nightmare mode.
We have some trouble with a Greater Earth Elemental, but we have plenty of single-target spells, Sil can hit it with the Short Sword of Backstabbing (now with a new name I don't remember). Her performance does remind us, however, that no amount of THAC0 can truly guarantee a hit.
The fight before Kyland Lind goes smoothly. We take advantage of the druid's poor save vs. spell.
The enemy mage disappears at some point--I've no idea where--and the fighter ignores us in favor of taking down the Trolls, allowing us some easy backstabs. Our summons deal with the Trolls.
Notice the Troll has been knocked out. In EE, you now get automatic hits on fallen Trolls, just like you would any other disabled enemy. The old system, in which you had to make an attack roll to hit an unarmored, unmoving Troll, made precious little sense.
Well, good to know. I wonder, though, if the situation is similar with charm and domination spells.
Aidahn Sparkyfibber, 7th BG1 update
Even with all those resurrections, Aidahn and Co managed to gather as much as 4000 gp, so they could finally buy a large shield +1 for Khalid. After that, the party went to the Nashkel mines... only to be waylaid by bandits.
At first, everyone thought it was a standard bandit gang, but it ended in a rift between a bandit's leader, Senjak, and a half-orc, Dorn was his name. With the help of some unknown skills by Dorn, all bandits were quickly dead, and in a subsequent dialogue between the half-orc and the gnome it became obvious Dorn was a blackguard seeking a revenge for something in his past. Aidahn wished the blackguard all the best but refused to be drawn in these dark matters.
OOC: The following screenshot shows how many useful items were found during this encounter - Aidahn had managed to find only 3 potions of Invisibility before, and yet here he found 5 new potions (!)
The party had to return to Nashkel, to identify and sell the new treasure. With more money to spend, everyone agreed it was a good idea to visit the Carnival - maybe new merchants there could offer other useful stuff, adding to the large shield +1.
It turned to be true. For 2800 gp, Imoen bought "The One Gift Lost" and a "Shield Amulet". She also noticed several green scrolls of protection but didn't know if it was the right time to acquire these scrolls, and not those amulets.
Entering another tent, Minsc (and his stealth skills had been constantly improving all this time) saw two strangely looking mages.
Sparkyfibber expected the worst, especially after all those assassins sent after him, so the group rested outside, prepared for a tough fight and only then entered the tent.
It happened, though, that this was not an assassination attempt. Instead, there was a crazy wizard who for some strange reason blamed another wizard - a female - for being a witch and doing all bad things to people.
Imoen tried to change Zordral's focus on the group, instead of this "witch", and then he attacked. The Command spell helped one more time (OOC: this is the most useful spell for early BG1 with the SCS mod), and the crazy wizard fell.
Jaheira got 8 HP from a new level but still was behind her husband in terms of overall health.
From one of merchants the group bought a potion of Intelligence. With 4 potions of genius in the backpack, it was time for both Aidahn and Dynaheir to learn new spells from all the scrolls they managed to find. When learning spells of 2 and 3 levels, they realized that they were still not ready for the Nashkel mines. "Detect Invisibility", "Glitterdust", "Skull trap". Who knew what sort of dangers awaited them in the mines? They needed to get more levels in order to cast these new spells, more that once or even 0 times per rest.
So, it was decided that more exploration was needed. On an area to the west of Beregost, the group encountered a talking chicken. When speaking to it, Imoen managed to find out that they needed to visit Thalantyr for an explaination.
Soon afterwards, Dynaheir got a much desired new level, with 5 HPs and two lvl 2 spells.
While scouting in that region, Minsc saw 3 hobgoblins and an army of undead, with a man called Bassilus among them. Back in Beregost, they heard that there was a bounty on his head.
Cautiously, the group delt with the hobgoblins first. The Sleep spell worked, because although these hobgoblins had names and wielded fine weapons, they still were nothing more than hobgoblins.
When Imoen entered the Bassilus's line of sight, the cleric started talking to the undead around him. Aidahn, being a cleric himself, murmured something about this cleric's family, so Imoen decided to trick Bassilus and to pretend he was speaking to one of his dead relatives.
It was a right decision because when the dialogue ended all the undead were gone, with only the cleric against the adventurers.
Khalid, who was meant to tank in this battle, was easily held from the first spell, and before Bassilus killed him, Jaheira took all his attention. Aidahn and Dynaheir tried all their repertoire (Blindness, Command, Hold Person) in an attempt to stop Bassilus but he managed to save every time.
Meanwhile, a new spell, only recently required by Dynaheir - Mirror Image - seemed to save her life when Bassilus finished casting Flame Strike on one of images instead of the real mage.
Minsc's arrows finally took down Bassilus.
When the party was back to one of Beregost's inns, Dynaheir asked Aidahn to study her historical and magical books. It was a fine evening, and the gnome thought that maybe a dance was a better idea. Inspite of Dynaheir's "No"s, Sparkyfibber insisted on dancing. It turned out she didn't know how to dance, so the gnome offered to teach her.
Maybe for the first time since leaving Candlekeep, Aidahn felt himself happy. She was a lady of the greatest mind and always full of stories about Rashemen, magic and many other things. And ... she was beautiful!
To clarify, death, petrification, and imprisonment on the main character end the game in a party run. In a solo run, charm and Maze also end the run. Other disablers merely increase the chance of death.
Moving on to Kyland Lind. I've long though of this fight as a major obstacle, but in retrospect, the last several times I've played the game, it was easy. Much of this was due to layering Web spells, which don't work well in my situation, as I am so reliant on summons and the only ones who can tolerate Webs are spiders.
We summon two Nymphs and three Skeleton Warriors and approach while invisible. We try to take over Kyland Lind with two Mental Domination spells from our Nymphs. No such luck.
With our summons in front and the party invisible, we're still safe, and the enemy quickly begins to fail. Too many disablers come out at once.
Silence 15' Radius once more shows the power of a -5 save penalty. It's almost guaranteed to work against these druids with Greater Malison active.
Kyland Lind, unfortunately, still has Ironskins, and with Nightmare mode's level boosts, he should have 10 skins. I could try to wear them down normally, but that would require mobilizing all of my party, and I want most of them to hang back. Instead, I have Jan dispel Kyland Lind's Improved Invisibility with Detect Illusions and Breach his Ironskins, opening him up for backstabs from Sil.
We slay one of the non-disabled druids, but another one, in werewolf form, proves harder to stop. Kyland Lind is still disabled thanks to Chaos, and so Sil may continue backstabbing uninterrupted.
Once Kyland Lind is gone, the werewolf druid is next. He calls out, but his friends are helpless to aid him.
We sneak past the Myconids and nab Belm. I have no interest in fighting a respawning army.
We still have to fight our way past some Shambling Mounds, and our weapons prove ineffective, but it turns out they're vulnerable to disablers, which simplifies things.
Sil can bring them down without backstabs, just using the Short Sword of Backstabbing and Belm.
Dalok is another potentially dangerous fight, as Dalok and his goons have a habit of summoning Nymphs and Fire Elementals. But this time, our Nymphs successfully charm their target, and Dalok brings another two Nymphs over to our side, who then charm Dalok's druid buddy, who in turn summons a Fire Elemental and some other critters. By the time Dalok recovers from Mental Domination, he's already out of his best spells, and he's surrounded by enemies.
The melee summons on our side are dangerous enough, but Dalok also has to deal with Nymphs, and there are only so many saves he can make.
Dalok falls in short order, and his friends aren't far behind.
Logically speaking, their summons should turn hostile when they do, since they're the ones controlling them. This is just a quirk of the game system.
Jaheira no longer has a place in the party, now that Cernd is about to join. But I underestimate Jaheira's reaction. We still haven't gotten to the end of the Harper questline yet, and she's been fighting for us for quite some time. I feel bad when she leaves. I hadn't thought about her reaction.
Had I known this would have been her reaction, I would have kept her around until the Harper quests were over. At least I know Elminster would have eventually intervened and kept Jaheira in the Harper order, so she's not screwed. Still, I feel bad about it.
We leave Faldorn to Cernd, by which I mean I tell Cernd to go kill her, and then hit her with CTRL-Y to speed things up. Cernd joins the party, finally, though he's unfortunately only at level 10.
We return to Trademeet and stumble on a minor quest. Another truly ridiculous backstab fails to slay a low-level goon.
Our reputation is getting very high. I could install a tweak to make sure Edwin doesn't leave, but instead of looking for it online, I just tweak the HAPPY.2da file myself, and accidentally make Edwin glad that we have a high reputation, instead of merely neutral. His dialog still makes sense, though.
We also stumble upon Rasaad.
Sil is good-aligned and probably wouldn't say option 3, but I'm glad that it's there. I'm interested in checking out Rasaad, and would like to see a monk in the party, but we don't have room for any fighter types in our group. We tell him we won't help him, and continue on to the Trademeet Crypt quest. For once, I remember to make Sil backstab with a blunt weapon to bypass her skeletal target's huge piercing and slashing resistances.
That fight was pretty drawn-out. The main skeleton who casts Animate Dead now summons level 15 Skeleton Warriors instead of the normal kind, which makes the enemy group a lot tougher than it otherwise would have been. It took ages to backstabs them to death.
Back in Athkatla, we hear from Igarol. I forgot about this quest. Cernd needs to find and rescue his baby son. This involves fighting a very high-level mage, which is going to be rough. On the plus side, EE fixed a typo.
They used to spell "simplest" with an "i" instead of an "e."
Deril starts out with a Simulacrum. That is easily removed.
We slip away and throw out Animate Dead and Summon Monster I, the weakest summoning spells at our disposal. Deril wastes his deadliest spell on them.
Deril casts Mislead and for some reason Jan can't dispel the clone. Also, the Mislead clone appears capable of casting spells at the same time as its owner, as if it were a simulacrum. Whatever the case, the clone appears without buffs. Acid Arrow shuts it down.
Jan maintains the pressure on the clone while the real Deril is busy fussing with our initial summons, who managed to survive Dragon's Breath thanks to their Nightmare mode bonuses. Firetooth is a monster.
Cernd joins in. Without pre-cast spells, the clone is very vulnerable.
Then the real Deril appears. We try to take down some of his defenses with Secret Word. Edwin gets his spell off the ground thanks to the Robe of Vecna, but Jan does not. Minute Meteors are faster than Secret Word.
Naturally, with the party cornered, Deril throws out Remove Magic. Aerie maintains our safety.
It's hard to tell, but Deril has just failed a save against Chaos. Edwin was able to sneak in that spell before Aerie finished casting Invisibility 10' Radius.
We lose track of the clone and spend some time trying to track it down. Cernd busies himself with summoning Nymphs, while Jan scours the place with Detect Illusions and our summons deal with Deril. Only after I peek into an unused room do I realize the clone simply despawned.
Deril casts Sphere of Chaos in the other room--generally an awful spell for no-reload runs, due to the very small chance of an instant death on Charname--and Aerie gets knocked out in the process of trying to land an Acid Arrow on Deril. Deril's (M)GOI has worn off, which means we can finally hit him with single-target spells. Edwin tries to fill in for Aerie, only to see the spell bounce back.
Had I thought a little harder, I might have tried to initiate a scorcher loop with Deril, since the spell can still damage both the caster and target, but the only thing I can think of is to try to soften Deril up for a disabler.
Notice Aerie is at 5 HP, out of 10 max, and has the spell failure icon. Her maximum HP returned to normal after a potion, and her current HP increased after a second potion (but not the first). I have no idea why this is.
Deril casts Time Stop. I didn't foresee this; he's casting it awfully late. I guess after wasting his Dragon's Breath spell, he decided to save his other big ones.
A Hold Monster spell is on the way, coming from our Nymph, but it's unlikely to have any impact. Notice that Sil is way off to the west and is hidden. She will likely survive whatever Deril throws out, but Cernd, Jan, and Edwin are very vulnerable. Deril knows what he needs to do.
A second Horrid Wilting spell comes right after this. Aere just barely escapes the area of effect, Jan and Cernd are dead, and Edwin survives with a potion, but at 6 HP, he panics and starts running in circles.
But we have good news.
Deril is doomed. Sil takes Gnasher in her off hand to wear down Deril's Stoneskins. Soon, he's vulnerable to backstabbing.
When we raise him, Cernd takes his child to the druid grove. We pick him up and return to the Windspear Hills.
For fun, I try out the Wand of Lightning trick with Sunfire on some orcs. It's pretty devastating, but one casting alone isn't a guaranteed kill for low-level critters like orcs in Nightmare mode.
It's ridiculous how sturdy these things are.
We enter Firkraag's lair invisible. To my dismay, Vampiric Mists rush in to join the opening fight, something I've never seen before. They single out Sil, but do rather little damage.
Cernd conjures a Fire Elemental and we slip away. Once again, the Fire Elemental is immune to everything.
Cernd and Sil resort to melee attacks to bring down the mists. Stealth won't keep us safe, so we need to deal that damage quickly. Since backstabs don't work on the mists, Sil just uses her stealth ability for an occasional +4 to THAC0.
The other enemies fall to brute force. No special tactics are necessary.
For the Ruhk Transmuter, Cernd summons a harem of Nymphs and sends them after the rakshasa one by one to drain its evocation spells. Aerie guides them while invisible and under the effects of MSD, in case the Ruhk Transmuter can see through invisible and tries to hit her with something. When the rakshasa starts approaching the group, Cernd calls in our best summons.
With its best spell exhausted, the rakshasa has no options against the Fire Elemental.
Jan tries to pitch in, but the rakshasa's AC is too low for Jan to hit reliably. The Ruhk Transmuter responds with an excellent disabler, but it's a waste on Jan.
Aerie and Cernd run over to Jan and Aerie casts Invisibility 10' Radius, keeping Jan safe in case we need him. Later, I take out Jan and Edwin both to help break down the rakshasa's Stoneskins with Firetooth and Minute Meteors. The rakshasa responds even more forcefully this time around.
They drink a couple of potions and go back into hiding. A brief attempt to get Cernd to help fight the rakshasa proves ineffective: the rakshasa is immune to +1 weapons as well as nonmagical weapons, and so Cernd's Werewolf Token is incapable of harming the rakshasa. Sil and the Fire Elemental alone remain to fight the Ruhk Transmuter (who as a Transmuter really shouldn't have been able to cast that PFMW spell earlier). The Fire Elemental takes all the hits, while Sil backstabs with Namarra, as her normal Katana +1 has no effect.
There's something rather unsatisfying about seeing a backstab multiplier without any damage. The rakshasa has a huge supply of Stoneskins. It's frustrating to see it keep refreshing them.
To maintain her invisibility, Sil can only land one attack per round, and the Fire Elemental doesn't always hit. Since the rakshasa is getting the maximum 10 Stoneskins per casting, this really drags out the battle. Finally, finally the rakshasa runs out of Stoneskins.
It's more fun when the enemy is trying something new every round, instead of recasting the same spells. It makes sense for rakshasas to focus on Stoneskins, since it makes them almost indestructible to parties without Horrid Wilting, but it also makes fighting them less fun.
So far, this run has been fairly similar to my earlier Heart of Fury run. Invisibility 10' Radius, Animate Dead, Call Woodland Beings, and Conjure Fire Elemental have made a huge difference in virtually every fight. Disablers and backstabbing have kept the gameplay more varied, but otherwise summons and invisibility have ruled this run so far.
I'm not sure how long that will stay, however. We're going to encounter more and more enemies who aren't fooled by invisibility and can actually damage our Fire Elementals, and when that happens, things will get a lot more complicated.
OOC: A small fix to the previous post - Jaheira got new levels both as a druid and a fighter, and chose a dagger proficiency - for the future use of the Dagger of Venom.
Anyway, with the money given by the Beregost's Temple for killing Bassilus the group managed to buy a composite longbow +1 for Minsc and a Wand of Fear - for everyone's use.
The wand was bought from Thalantyr, to whom Aidahn brought his apprentice, Melicamp. The group alread had several skulls in their backpack from previous battles with skeletons. So the Conjurer casted his Antichickenator spell... successfully. It was a great joy for Sparkyfibber to see this young man alive and breathing. Also, it surved a good lesson to everyone, especially Imoen - that the magic should be thought about and used only afterwards.
While exploring one of the areas to the east from the main road to Nashkel, the group encountered an Ogre Mage.
This kind of creatures were well known to Aidahn - the Candlekeep books offered several descriptions of possible scenarios after meeting such a foe. The gnome chose the best here - to retreat as fast as possible. He read that only a well-prepared group could face an Ogre Mage in a battle.
The decision was apparantly the right one because the Ogre Mage casted the Sleep spell - still deadly for the party - but the spell didn't affect anyone as the change or areas happened:
When the party came back to that map, they didn't find any Ogre Mages. To the east from that place they found a lot of ogres, without mages. Mincs detected their location and Aidahn, unseen, casted several sleep spells so that berserkers could fall down before going berserk.
Khalid got a new level after that, and new 6 HPs subsequently.
On that map the adventureres helped a farmer to protect his cow from xvart attacks - and back in Nashkel they heard that xvarts had been active lately. This is why they decided to put an end to xvart attacks on the Sword coast:
On the same area the group met a travelling merchant, Borda, and Aidahn bought a protection spell scroll from him, although Imoen smacked him on the head hinting that the scroll was cursed. Well, it showed better than anything else that such things as buying and selling were better left to Imoen.
A little later, Dynaheir asked Sparkyfibber about his recent dreams... It turned out she managed to see the gnome's dream about her. Dynaheir was a friend of Sparkyfibber and he was not afraid to confess that he saw nothing wrong in this situation. The feeling of trust between the two was increasing with each passing day.
On the next area Khalid was killed with one hit from an ogre-berserker. OOC: Even the best possible AC can't grant anything when the party's tank is in melee with the insane damage from enemies:
When the group returned after resurrecting Khalid in the Nashkel Temple, they decided that the best option was to send hidden Minsc first, find berserkers, lull them with the Sleep spell and only after that attack revealing themselves.
The area was hugely infested with ogres and bandits, which helped Aidahn (+2 HP), Imoen (+3 HP) and Minsc (+5 HP) to reach new levels.
They also helped a noble paladin to clear the area from hordes of gibberlings and killed a polar bear that scared a good guy there.
During one of the rests there Khalid congratulated Aidahn and told him that the lady Dynaheir had great nobility of heart and mind - maybe the best words indeed to describe her.
It was time to complete a task for Bjornin - a paladin from Beregost. While killing half-ogres wasn't problematic for the group, it was fun to meet Drizzt in the wilderness. The famous drow, who left his birthplace, said he needed some help in dealing with gnolls. But to Aidahn, the drow seemed alright alone - he killed gnolls in seconds with his deadly swords. Anyway, it was very pleasant to meet such a hero.
After reporting to Bjornin, the group got a middle shield +1 and, most importantly, reached 20 in their reputation.
Aidahn and his friends were no longer unknown in the neighbourhood, in fact, they were quite popular already in Beregost. Also, they were no longer weak adventurers who didn't know what to expect from any corner - it was time to start their main task of clearing the Nashkel Mines.
Steady progress @bengoshi and @HenkeB. @semiticgod you've been very active. You've left me a lot to read... @Mirage, can we expect any action from your Druid?
@Blackraven: Mostly it's just that screenshots are easier to take in EE, since I just need to hit the Print Screen button, instead of pressing the button and then copying it over to Paint. It doesn't actually save time, since I then have to use Photoshop to change the BMP files to JPEG, but it's easier to take them, which means I have more to post.
Also, fights in Nightmare mode take so much longer that there's a lot more happening per fight.
pressing the button and then copying it over to Paint.
I used to do that, and then I learned about a Screenshots subfolder in my BG2 folder. It contained thousands of screenshots. Are you sure your (original) BG2 folder doesn't have such a subfolder?
Mostly it's just that screenshots are easier to take in EE, since I just need to hit the Print Screen button, instead of pressing the button and then copying it over to Paint. It doesn't actually save time, since I then have to use Photoshop to change the BMP files to JPEG, but it's easier to take them, which means I have more to post.
Irfanview has a batch mode so you can convert a bunch of files at a time. You can also have it perform simple operations like resample if you want.
Downloaded it and it works. I lost about 25 images, but I think that was me mishandling some files rather than the program. I'll summarize the parts of Firkraag's dungeon for which I have no screenshots.
For the first group of orc archers, I mostly had Sil backstab everybody, though Jan had to use some illusion magic to avoid getting killed when he unlocked the secret doors for her. I snuck past the nearby golems when I realized the Juggernaut Golem could kill my Fire Elementals within a few rounds, didn't bother with the Troll Cook or the Hobgoblins or Otyugh, and walked around the trigger that spawns the undead in the room southeast of Samia. For the Greater Wraith and the other shadowy critters down the hall, I had Fire Elementals tank the Shadows and Shadow Fiends while Sil backstabbed the Wraiths and Greater Wraith, as the latter were the only monsters capable of harming our elementals.
I overwhelmed Samia and her gang with disablers. They wasted their first few rounds tackling our summons, giving us enough room to cast Greater Malison, Hold Monster, Chaos, Slow, and Hold Person, alongside the other spells from our Nymphs. Sil focused on her backstabs on whichever enemy was weakest, preventing any recovery.
From there, Sil backstabbed all of the Guardians to death. They had no idea how to deal with her, so she only got hit by four Fireballs over the course of the maze. When the Guardians turned invisible, Jan used Detect Illusions while Cernd, being hasted in werewolf form, held the exits shut. Protection from Fire let Sil and Cernd take down the final Guardian alongside Cernd's elementals.
On the way out, the elementals opened three doors to nowhere at the start of the maze. Even though Jan had already disarmed the traps, the elementals triggered all three of them.
The Greater Wolfweres were disabled with Blindness and Hold Monster. Jan's flashers also had a small impact, and Slow spells slowed down their regeneration (unless EE fixed that). Sil's backstabs did most of the heavy lifting. A pair of Stone Golems and a Juggernaut Golem, the same grouping we had seen earlier, had to be taken out to make sure we could safely deal with the Air Elemental that rises up when you get the Dragon Helm. Cernd and Sil took down the Stone Golems, followed by the Juggernaut Golem, in three rest periods, with Invisibility 10' Radius to escape. I don't like resting this often, but for some reason I never bothered to just pre-buff with Free Action to negate the Golem Slow effect, which would have allowed us to take down the group in one rest.
More wolfweres appeared and were backstabbed. Tazok and Chieftain Digdag also died to backstabbing. I left the Adamantite Golem alone.
Only Conster remained. A few traps from Jan dealt lingering damage that disrupted Conster's spells for the first few rounds, giving us enough time to summon some critters, turn invisible, and sneak into the nearby--only to return to the fight to wear down Conster's Stoneskins. Conster managed to get a PFMW spell off the ground, rendering Edwin's Minute Meteors useless.
Jan switches to normal bolts--thankfully Conster didn't pre-buff with Protection from Normal Missiles--while Aerie and Cernd use slings. Conster can't get a spell off the ground, but not because of our attacks.
That Phase Spider managed to poison Conster before it died. Notice that Conster is still trying to hit it with Fire Shield: it registers that the spider's corpse is within range. A weird property of Fire Shield is that it will continue firing due to lingering damage as long as the source of the damage is nearby, even if the source is currently doing nothing. Some of you may recall one of my characters in a Spell Revisions run killing Cookies the Acid Kensai in her sleep thanks to this behavior.
Conster casts Remove Magic at Jan, but thanks to Jan rushing forward into the spell, Edwin is allowed to maintain his Stoneskins.
It made little difference. Conster retreated, and we were able to restore our Stoneskins around the corner safely. Remove Magic isn't that bad if your only buffs are Stoneskins.
We keep pestering Conster with missile weapons, wearing down his Stoneskins. The spider keeps bothering him from afar, but there's a different message now that he's out of range of the spider's body.
With constant disruption from Firetooth and the Phase Spider's poison, Conster can do very little to harm us. We whittle him down.
We let Firkraag go. In Nightmare mode he has over 1,700 HP, which is a little too much for us. We could always try Feeblemind, but our odds aren't too good at this level, with so few castings at our disposal.
With nothing else to do here, Cernd nabs Heartseeker from the golems and runs like hell.
We go to the Graveyard to speak with Bodhi, but arrive in daylight. Edwin tells us about the Nether scroll, so we go back to the crypt that trounced us earlier on. This time, we have Fire Elementals.
Unfortunately, Fire Elementals aren't immune to level drain.
That Vampyre drains three levels per hit. Our elementals get an extra 12 levels from Nightmare mode, but the Vampyre's extra HP gives it more than enough time to level drain them to death. We have to go invisible and flee the area.
While we're there, we pay Pai'Na a visit. Our elementals keep Pai'Na and her spiders busy. Jan pitches in from afar. He does a surprising amount of damage with his flashers. Firetooth boosts the area effect damage.
He gets poisoned for his efforts, however. Pai'Na's spiders do more poison damage than anything else in the saga: 5 damage per second for 30 seconds, or 150 in total. Lashar'ra's poison in ToB acts faster, but still doesn't do as much damage. In my old vanilla SCS games, Stoneskin blocked poison (it makes sense, since most poisons aren't contact poisons), but here, it does not. Jan nearly dies in the few seconds it takes for Cernd to cure him.
Jan gets in trouble again, when Pai'Na tries casting a Conjuration spell at him. His extra Invisibility spells save us from Insect Plague.
We break our invisibility, however, to throw out some disablers. Jan manages to disrupt a spell with his flashers, keeping us safe once more.
Jan's THAC0 might not be very good, but he can hit a low AC target by firing a flasher at a nearby target with higher AC. Pai'Na's spiders have terrible AC, so he has almost guaranteed hits on Pai'Na herself. This also works with friendly critters, as Jan's flashers are party-friendly. The golems from the Golem Manual are ideal targets, with AC values of 9, 7, 5, or -2, depending on the upgrade. Only the Juggernaut Golem is particularly hard to hit with flashers.
Pai'Na fails a save against Hold Monster. It's over.
The Nether scroll is guarded by the lich Nevaziah. As a quest-required boss, he's not as tough as a normal lich, which is good for us. Also, unlike normal liches, he can't see through invisibility, and therefore has to resort to divination magic to find us. We escape an Oracle spell, but get nicked by a Remove Magic spell. Sil is hit, but that's quickly corrected.
After dealing with the ghasts and mummies, we rest and return to Nevaziah. Puttering around his room suggests that he no longer has his Oracle spell--in EE SCS, enemy spellcasters appear to be unable to regain their spells on resting.
To start the fight, we'll have to break invisibility. Since I've been casting from afar a lot, I decide this time to break our invisibility right in Nevaziah's view.
Turns out Nevaziah is a little higher level than I thought.
I draw back the party. This isn't a fight we can face head-on. Edwin stays behind, invisible, and sees his Worg summons also trying to escape. Having failed a save against Nevaziah's Dragon Fear ability (which appears to trigger once per round) the Worg panics and runs, only for Nevaziah to crush it.
Edwin decides to make his exit, but Nevaziah dispels Edwin's invisibility and Stoneskin, and Edwin fails his save against Dragon Fear.
Dead. He's definitely dead.
Nevaziah pelts Edwin with Minute Meteors, and the Magical Sword deals the final blow. Jan hurries out this time to check on Nevaziah. The world turns gray.
It's a huge waste of a very powerful spell. SCS enemies tend to assume the player is actually sticking around to fight them. Evasive setups like ours can maintain invisibility despite divination spells and Remove Magic, which means even an SCS enemy won't be able to reveal us, if we don't let them.
Nevaziah's defenses are pretty solid. The only debuffer we've got is a Secret Word. I have Jan wait around Nevaziah, and find that Nevaziah truly has no way to uncover us. His defenses are wearing low.
Finally I decide to break Jan's invisibility. I'm not sure how many spells Nevaziah has left, but he's used up a lot of good ones. Jan picks up the Robe of Vecna from Edwin's body, changes out of the Jansen Adventurewear, hits the lich with a Bolt of Lightning, and runs.
Nevaziah throws out an HLA. It could have killed Jan in one shot, but thanks to the Robe of Vecna from Edwin's corpse, Jan can negate all of the damage instantaneously.
A Minute Meteor from Nevaziah cures the unconsciousness, and when the lich tries another spell, Jan escapes it with ease.
Nevaziah tries again, but this time, Jan lands a hit.
Nevaziah tries once more. It's an evocation spell, and Jan misses with his Bolt of Lightning. How does Jan respond? Spell Immunity: Evocation.
Ice Storm has no impact. Nevaziah takes away SI: Evocation with a Ruby Ray of Reversal, only to see his next spell blocked once more.
Nevaziah keeps trying. It doesn't work.
Mages don't do well in long, drawn-out battles. Things seem to be going well, and then I remember that there's one spell Nevaziah never runs out of.
If Jan gets hit by that, he might well be done for. But Aerie is way down to the south, in safety, and if she runs up to cast Remove Fear on Jan, she'd lose her invisibility.
I have another idea. Aerie casts Remove Fear on herself, Cernd, and Sil, and Sil runs up to Jan to toss him a Potion of Clarity. Jan is still draining Nevaziah's spells.
Jan drinks the potion and keeps moving. Sil hangs back--her backstabs aren't much use until Nevaziah is out of Stoneskins.
But Nevaziah's Spell Deflection vanishes soon after, and Jan is free to hit Nevaziah with Breach.
Without Stoneskins, Nevaziah has no defense against physical or fire damage (though as a lich he should still be immune to electricity damage, and I belatedly remember to stop using Bolts of Lightning). Sil moves in for the kill.
Nevaziah restores his Stoneskins, but he starts using Magic Missile on Jan--a sure sign that he's out of good spells. Cernd and Aerie rush in with summons to help out.
Nevaziah surprises us with some Sunfire spells, but it's nothing a few potions can't fix. The lich is out of options. Sil brings him down.
Although Jan was able to counter LOTS of spells in this fight, it doesn't mean we can approach other SCS spellcasters with the same strategy. Jan had lots of counters, but there are plenty of spells for which we have no counters. Demon summons and Fallen Planetars could see through any invisibility we might use and Improved Alacrity and Time Stop allow the enemy to throw out more spells than we could possibly counter.
True Seeing is more complex. Sil can escape it easily by simply hiding after she is revealed. Jan could do the same if we blinded him beforehand, but his stealth abilities are quite poor, and Remove Magic could easily dispel a Blindness pre-buff.
I am getting impatient about Sil's progress. I want Celestial Fury and I want Boots of Speed, which together will remove the few weaknesses of Sil's backstabbing strategy (enemy weapon immunities and fast-casting spells, namely), but they're both guarded by some very tough enemies. I've been thinking over how to get those items earlier, but I'd hate to break the no-reload streak here.
I just found the missing Firkraag dungeon screenshots. I also have 44 screenshots from a protracted struggle with a bunch of Yuan-ti Mages in Mekrath's lair. It was interesting and lengthy, but I used a WoL Sunfire on a whim, and I don't like it. Still, had I come back later--the only realistic way to win that fight--the mages probably wouldn't have had all of their spells, and that wouldn't be that satisfying, either.
Long story short, four (!) Yuan-ti Mages, guarded by several Yuan-ti fighters, cleared out our summons with multiple castings of Death Spell. Edwin and Cernd had to break invisibility to restore our summons, and though they hid in the library, the Yuan-ti found them, and killed Cernd.
The rest of the fight took a hideous amount of micromanagement. We got blocked in several times and had to figure out an escape plan. Sil had to backstab every one of the fighters to death, and one of the mages. We often had to send a party member away to lure aside the mages, or just flat-out tank the mages with some disrupters and spell counters, and we wore each other down, trading blows whenever possible. We sacrificed Jan and Edwin in the process, and spent many wand charges, but eventually killed the last mage with spell damage. We spent almost every resource we had.
In much denser detail:
Early on, Jan scouted out a single Yuan-ti Mage and we assumed it would be a simple fight. Cernd hid in a corner and sent out Fire Elementals to handle the Mephits, only to see the Yuan-ti Mage come out of his room... followed, one by one, by another three mages, who repeatedly cast Death Spell and cleared out our many summons.
Edwin broke his invisibility to maintain our summons and therefore keep draining the Coiled Cabal's spells, but it lured them into the library where he and Cernd were hiding. Edwin made his save vs. spell against Chaos, but Cernd did not, and sure enough, he got killed with Minute Meteors.
We fled to the southern room through the narrow hall, turned invisible, and tried to leave, but the Yuan-ti were blocking the way. Sil had to backstab the Yuan-ti to get them moving, and escaped from the hallway, but one of them lingered in the doorway, trapping Jan and Aerie.
Edwin took over, casting some buffs and luring a mage into the eastern hallway, repeatedly interrupting the mage's spells with Acid Arrow, Magic Missile, and Minute Meteors. The Yuan-ti down south also went after him, allowing Aerie to escape. Aerie then rescued Edwin from the Coiled Cabal, drawing the Yuan-ti all the way back to the center room.
Unwilling to let the matter end, I continued the fight despite having a clear path to the exit. Sil was safe, thanks to her invisibility and Lilarcor, who gave her immunity to confusion whenever a Chaos or Confusion spell appeared on the map, and so I felt we could continue without much risk.
Jan got charmed, twice, and then Edwin, but the remaining party members kept pelting the Yuan-ti with disablers, and re-casting their defenses to stay in shape, preventing the Yuan-ti from holding onto the upper hand. While the rest were busy with the mages, Sil finished off the remaining melee Yuan-ti.
With Jan and Edwin running low, I decided to have Edwin use a WoL Sunfire blast, twice. With his fast casting time, he didn't need Stoneskin to cast it, nor did his blindness bother him. Jan died in the blast, and Edwin got disabled by a Power Word: Sleep, followed by Hold Person, but his only spells by that point were Protection from Petrification, Grease, and Web, so it wasn't a big loss.
Aerie finally burned down the last two mages with the Wand of Fire. We expended three charges from the Wand of Lightning and six charges from the Wand of Fire to make it happen, not to mention the WoL trick, but we got through the fight without having to rest.
Mekrath was more satisfying. We broke down his MGOI with a Secret Word and took down his Fire Shield with a Breach. Acid Arrow stopped his next spell, Conjure Fire Elemental held off his Skeleton Warriors, and Silence 15' Radius forced a Vocalize, which gave us enough time for another set of spells. With the Fire Shield gone, Mekrath was vulnerable to Insect Plague, and with Greater Malison active, Mekrath failed saves against Blindness and multiple flashers, allowing us to swarm him.
I only came to Mekrath's lair for the Rod of Resurrection, which was part of a more ambitious plan, but I'm not sure I'll be able to take on the next challenge like I wanted. I may have to pay a visit to the Planar Prison to get those Boots of Speed (since the unkillable version of Arkanis Gath is now immune to Feeblemind as well as stat drain). Otherwise, I don't think Sil would be able to stay safe.
I want her to be able to dodge Remove Magic spells and outrun demons and Planetars. She can't do that without Boots of Speed.
Got cought in playing and havnt posted here. Finnished BG1 and are ready to import in to BG2
The winning team: PC: Cleric/Stalker Jaheira Khalid Imoen Kivan Xan
My original plan was to tank with Jaheira and have khalid, Kivan and Coran as artillery with bows. Pretty soon Khalid proved to have far more survivability then his wife and took over the tanking role. Xan joined and somewhere I decided to keep him, I figured one more mage could be nice other then Imoen and I felt the Corans wyvern quest was too dangerous.
In the final fight Xan died in about 2 seconds due to haveing 20 HP So he didnt help much.
Jaheira dided from a friendly arrow of detonation, I thought I had her protected from fire. Henke and Khalid where protected from fire. So they kept hitting on Sarevok while Imoen shot fireballs from a wand and Kivan alternated between arrows of dispelling, arrows of detonation and arrows of piercing.
Final blow on Sarevok came from Henke, a backstab after swallowing a invis potion.
My second attempt on the no-reload: Glolien Grolio, the gnome cleric/thief:
She started at the basilisk fields too:
Killed the basilisks and Mutamin:
Then i tried out my newly worked out tactic with hold person and dropped gear. First i drop some item near a hostile creature, what i would like to defeat:
Next i move to a position, where i see only the item, not the enemy:
Cast hold person, until the enemy failed their save:
This time our Charname is Faldorcy, the half-orc (who would suspect this?) cleric/thief:
Hired up Korax:
Oh, a letter!
Yeah... Unfortunately Faldorcy can't read.
Killed Mutamin:
The young adventure party...
No, no this time.
At last Korax couldn't resist Faldorcy's sweetness:
In Beregost Faldorcy bought a book for Firebead at the Fedelpost:
Went for Bassilus:
But failed to face him without the skeletons, so i decided to move on:
Worgs and wolves are nasty without equipment, but still better, than bandits/hobgoblins with bows:
I thought Greywolf is low enough level to auto-fall against command. It turned out i remember wrong:
After a swift trip back to Naskel:
My first succesful use of the item-dropping tactic:
Poor Prism provided me the necessery level up to the access for the third level cleric spells, and to raise skeleton warriors with that:
In the mines i failed to kill a miner for bad reputation:
The attacking guard is missing on the picture
Next time i was more careful:
Otherwise, bad reputation is a must for the better Bhaal-abilities.
Poor old miner couldn't even comprehend, what happened before him:
They didn't have time to turn hostile
To my surprise 10 point in find traps was enough for manageing the traps in the low-mines
For Mulahey i used all the rescources i can. Traps, skeleton warriors, stealth, sanctuary, turn-undead, item-dropping/hold person:
And he falled as planned:
?
Yes, this time!
Only Lamalha remained alive in the end:
Nimbul saved against silence, but not against skeleton warriors:
Tranzig too:
The bandit camp was more or less cleansed with traps, hold person and skeleton warriors:
íFor the trapped barrel the 10 points was not enough, so Faldorcy needed some more experience for more skill points. She went to the Ankheg farm nearby:
With skeletons and command these bugs are manageable. One per one.
With the appropriate skillpoints the barrel was untrapped, and Cloakwood was open for my half-orc girl. It's a dangerous place:
However, Faldorcy could eliminate some ettercaps and spiders:
I always forget to rest far away from the setted traps:
So i must start setting them again.
The big preparation killed only one sword spider:
So i finished rest with Glyph of warding and backstab.
At this time only Centeol and a sword spider remained in the lair. I think i was tired up with all of the trap setting, so i made a couple of mistakes. First i didn't lay any traps, only summoned skeletons before the spider lair's entrance. Second i chose flame blade for backstabbing the sword spider, instead of Shillelagh (i always have to google this one's to write properly). Backstab multiplie only the base damage, so flame blade do only 3d4+4, while Shillelagh do 6d4+3 damage with a 3x backstab multiplier. Third, when the sword spider didn't died from my attack i escape outside, and just run in circles around my skeleton warriors, hoping they finish the arachnid before it kill me. I could have trie a command spell insted. Yeah, and maybe no-reload at work meal-time not a good idea either
Caged and tortured in an unknown place for unknown reasons. Familiar faces offers some comfort though. Dear Imoen even finds a mean of escape and releases Henke. Some exploring allows us to release Jaheira aswell. And Minsc is there, Still not sure about his sanity but he is a ranger and leaving him in caged in the cell is not an option. He seem skill enough with weapons and that will probably prove usefull in the trials to come.
First level of irenicus dungeon completed. The duergar fight did cause us to spend many healt pots, more then I had expected. Did complete the plane of air, previous experience says its a dangerous place so I go about it carefully. Two skeletonwarriors and backstabbing does the trick and the genie rewards us with Ashidhea the warhammer. could prove usefull, however not of the group have any pips in warhammers.
@lolien It was fun while it lasted! All your screenshots are interesting and self-explaining, thanks for them.
I enjoy your tactics! It seems "a letter+hold person" combination works like a trap. I.e. you can RP that you set a trap for your enemy - leave a letter on the ground for an enemy to check it - only to fell under your spell's effect.
As for the spiders, you know that you don't need to fight them to progress, right?;)
As for the spiders, you know that you don't need to fight them to progress, right?;)
Ah, so you don't need to release Centeol in order to defeat Irenicus?
It was hard enough to leave the young adventurer party, Bassilus and Lamalha alone. But i will defeat my old habits! Otherwise i used to re-load if i didn't get the experience for an enemy because some neutral ally or enemy spell
Using the portal in the dungeon and thinking they had escaped. Only to find themselves in another level of the prieson. Atleast now Henkes ranger senses told him they where closer to the surface. In the next room another would be hero joined the group. Yoshimo claims to be a bounty hunter but if so he is probably the worst at it that ever walked faerun. 1 set trap on 4 attempts. Atleast he had valuable information about the level ahead.
Cleared 2nd level and escaped. Also did the circus quest and sold som stuff att the adventurers mart. Met Gaylean Bayle and have currently rested and the copper coronet. Not sure on where to go next, will have to think on that a bit.
This city is more dangerous then the wilds around Baldurs Gate ever was. Have fought off no less then three ambushes so far. And the undead seem to be crawling around in every ally, even found a lich hiding in a tavern.. And then there is the copper coronet. Something weied is definetly going on there, but I will have to look in to it later. First I need to escort a young lady to the graveyard district and find a specific tomb. Maybe its guild about loosing Imoen, but I find it hard to refuse a requstt for aid from young women. This girl Nalia will need my help to. Going to tombs probably means fighting undead, lucky for me there happen to be an unemployed cleric at the coronet who offeres to join the team.
So used and protection from undead to kill the lich and grab daystar Figured Anomens undead summoning would be nice to have around when fighting Dragomir and his shadows and it did make it a very save enterprise. Tempted to keep him in the group but for now Ive left him at the Coronet. Fought some more undead and the crypt king to grab namarra. Jaheira got the staff of curing. Henke got Arbanes sword. Currently at the bridge district, looking in to the murders that had happened there and trying to find the kidnappers that buried tethyr.
Comments
Preparation is very necessary in no-reload runs, though. Sometimes I've thought over an upcoming fight for several days, turning over the matter in my head and considering my options. It's almost as much fun as the fight itself.
I think there was a no-reload run recently in which a Blackguard Charname took on Drizzt in BG1. All present agreed it was an impressive feat.
I like that they vanish with the same message you'd see with a summoned Ogrillon or Cave Bear.
The Harper assassins remain. I have Sil start working on the cleric, but when she proves unable to interrupt a Sanctuary spell, Jan pitches in.
I've worried at times about a dual-classed Kensai's late-game THAC0, especially since Sil's blindness inflicts a +4 penalty, but so far she seems to be hitting quite reliably.
Without spellcasting support, the enemy fighter doesn't last long. Again, our Fire Elemental is nearly indestructible. The enemy mage has lots of Stoneskins, but Jan can get past that as well.
Honestly I wish the enemies would re-cast their buffs, but they haven't got any of their spells back during the rest period. It's not quite as much fun when they're low on spells and defenses. It's too easy to overwhelm them.
Edwin tells us the Shadow Thieves might kill us if we don't kill Mae'Var first. I've never seen that happen before, and it makes little sense given that we have yet to meet Bodhi and the Shadow Thieves are ostensibly still on our side, but I'm not willing to take any chances. We enter Mae'Var's guild hall invisible and go downstairs to fight him rather than deal with his goons upstairs first. I send out a bunch of summons with Jan to watch over them, but Jan gets hit by an area-effect spell.
I'm more or less positive that Jan is going to die. He's almost guaranteed to break his invisibility and attack, and once he's visible, the enemy will crush him. I attempt to keep him safe by throwing out Chaos, but I have no illusions of success. Sure enough, Jan goes down.
Notice Aerie is casting Silence 15' Radius. This wouldn't have worked before, at least not for Mae'Var, but Edwin broke down Mae'Var's MGOI with a Secret Word spell.
Mae'Var comes over to give us trouble, so we try hitting him with some disablers. Unfortunately, Edwin gets charmed in the middle of casting Emotion: Hopelessness, and so the spell affects us instead.
That could have gone very bad. I'm still not sure if characters will wake up after being hit by Emotion: Hopelessness, like they will with Command, but we could have been in very poor shape had more of our party members lost consciousness.
At any rate, we partially disable Mae'Var.
Much as silence can be countered with Vocalize, blindness can be removed with True Seeing, at least in SCS. But I don't think Mae'Var has such a spell.
We scramble to bring down the twin Assassins fighting with Mae'Var at the cost of several potions, then move on to the other side of the map. Meanwhile, Mae'Var is running around in circles, apparently not sure how to continue without his eyesight.
With his allies down and his spells apparently spent, Mae'Var isn't much of a threat, but he still has the resources to stay safe a while longer.
But all it does is delay the inevitable. He has no offensive options left besides his sword.
We rest and clear out the rest of the guildhouse with Fire Elementals and a bit of backstabbing. After reporting to Renal Bloodscalp, we leave town for Trademeet. We get ambushed, and Sil, having relied on stealth for her invisibility instead of Invisibility 10' Radius, has to drink a Potion of Invisibility in order to stay safe while we run away.
At Trademeet, we fail to kill Taquee, as he turns invisible and runs away. This costs us the Efreeti Bottle, which is very unfortunate, but we can still deal with his friends inside the tent. Greater Malison, Hold Monster, Chaos, and Insect Plague shut them down very easily.
A Slow spell weakens their AC enough for Jan to hit Khan Zahraa, and the stun effect holds him still long enough for us to break him down with melee weapons and backstabs.
We meet Cernd but tell him to go ahead without us. I don't think I could take on Faldorn in Nightmare mode with Cernd in the party. I'll have him win the battle for us. We will bring him into the group later, however. Jaheira is a great character, but her fighter levels mean much less than her druid levels in Nightmare mode, and she has little growth left in her more important class. Cernd will be our better option in the long run.
The team heads out for the wilderness, as thats where both Henke and Jaheira likes it best.
The spend several days there tracking down monsters and bandits both.
Saving a talking hen from wolves, unforunatly Melinvamp dont survive the deschickenator spell.
Imoen stocks up on some scrolls that will come usefull later, dont dare to scribe them without an int potion since it seems I have very poor luck with that.
Zargal goes down easy and Henke got a nice new shortsword.
Bassilus falls.
The team even rescues famous ranger Drizzt from a band of gnolls, and in doing so they get a very lucky scroll of web spell.
The team now feels very confident in the wild, joking around half serious that they should go looking for a dragon to fight feeling that few things can stop them.
Stumbling in to Tengyan proves them wrong....
Tengyan and her group saves vs both sleep and hold. And starts firing away at the team. Imoen manages to hit the mage with a blind spell that gives us some respite and a chanse to engage.
Somehow the mage hits both Khalid and Jaheira with a horror spell and they both panic.
Henke manages to cast remove fear but only hits Jaheira.
Not only is Khalid running around scared he also gets hit with a poisoned arrow that I cant to anything to cure while hes paniced.
Emotions under control Jahiera engages the poison shooting hobgoblin and Henke and Imoen goes for the blinded mage.
We manage to survive the fight and Khalid had enough HP to fight trough beeing poisoned.
The team decides they need a rest and heads for FAI.
Heading out again they visit the carneval for some much needed recreation and Imoen picks up a fireball shooting neckless.
Then they go ogre hunting.
All goes well, they make a tactical decision to let Khalid take over tanking duties from his wife.
Same AC double HP cant realy be argued with, ogre berserkers just hits to hard.
Small things of note:
Greywolf fell.
Lioandrins house cleaned.
Neira fell. ( actualy forgot that I hadnt killed her and got caught by surprise. )
Picked up fire res ring.
Saved Samuel
Protected the escavation sight
Saved Brage
I've noticed Sil was mazed once. Shouldn't the game end when charname gets mazed?
That's not enough to one-shot a Nightmare mode enemy, but Sil has plenty more.
She really carries the party, actually. We can't get that much output from our summons.
Edwin falls to STR drain. For all of Sil's efforts, we can't keep off the Spirit Trolls long enough to avoid massive STR drain. Aerie and Jan both had to shift around their equipment to avoid being encumbered.
To my surprise, you can't use single-target spells against fallen Spirit Trolls. We're lucky we have Firetooth. Otherwise we'd have had to hit somebody with Agannazar's Scorcher and catch the troll in between the two characters.
A fight with some spiders confirms that characters do wake up on being hit if they get knocked out by Emotion: Hopelessness. Chromatic Orb makes its presence felt.
It's not a reliable spell, but the payoff is a lot better in Nightmare mode.
We have some trouble with a Greater Earth Elemental, but we have plenty of single-target spells, Sil can hit it with the Short Sword of Backstabbing (now with a new name I don't remember). Her performance does remind us, however, that no amount of THAC0 can truly guarantee a hit.
The fight before Kyland Lind goes smoothly. We take advantage of the druid's poor save vs. spell.
The enemy mage disappears at some point--I've no idea where--and the fighter ignores us in favor of taking down the Trolls, allowing us some easy backstabs. Our summons deal with the Trolls.
Notice the Troll has been knocked out. In EE, you now get automatic hits on fallen Trolls, just like you would any other disabled enemy. The old system, in which you had to make an attack roll to hit an unarmored, unmoving Troll, made precious little sense.
Aidahn Sparkyfibber, 7th BG1 update
Even with all those resurrections, Aidahn and Co managed to gather as much as 4000 gp, so they could finally buy a large shield +1 for Khalid. After that, the party went to the Nashkel mines... only to be waylaid by bandits.
At first, everyone thought it was a standard bandit gang, but it ended in a rift between a bandit's leader, Senjak, and a half-orc, Dorn was his name. With the help of some unknown skills by Dorn, all bandits were quickly dead, and in a subsequent dialogue between the half-orc and the gnome it became obvious Dorn was a blackguard seeking a revenge for something in his past. Aidahn wished the blackguard all the best but refused to be drawn in these dark matters.
OOC: The following screenshot shows how many useful items were found during this encounter - Aidahn had managed to find only 3 potions of Invisibility before, and yet here he found 5 new potions (!)
The party had to return to Nashkel, to identify and sell the new treasure. With more money to spend, everyone agreed it was a good idea to visit the Carnival - maybe new merchants there could offer other useful stuff, adding to the large shield +1.
It turned to be true. For 2800 gp, Imoen bought "The One Gift Lost" and a "Shield Amulet". She also noticed several green scrolls of protection but didn't know if it was the right time to acquire these scrolls, and not those amulets.
Entering another tent, Minsc (and his stealth skills had been constantly improving all this time) saw two strangely looking mages.
Sparkyfibber expected the worst, especially after all those assassins sent after him, so the group rested outside, prepared for a tough fight and only then entered the tent.
It happened, though, that this was not an assassination attempt. Instead, there was a crazy wizard who for some strange reason blamed another wizard - a female - for being a witch and doing all bad things to people.
Imoen tried to change Zordral's focus on the group, instead of this "witch", and then he attacked. The Command spell helped one more time (OOC: this is the most useful spell for early BG1 with the SCS mod), and the crazy wizard fell.
Jaheira got 8 HP from a new level but still was behind her husband in terms of overall health.
From one of merchants the group bought a potion of Intelligence. With 4 potions of genius in the backpack, it was time for both Aidahn and Dynaheir to learn new spells from all the scrolls they managed to find. When learning spells of 2 and 3 levels, they realized that they were still not ready for the Nashkel mines. "Detect Invisibility", "Glitterdust", "Skull trap". Who knew what sort of dangers awaited them in the mines? They needed to get more levels in order to cast these new spells, more that once or even 0 times per rest.
So, it was decided that more exploration was needed. On an area to the west of Beregost, the group encountered a talking chicken. When speaking to it, Imoen managed to find out that they needed to visit Thalantyr for an explaination.
Soon afterwards, Dynaheir got a much desired new level, with 5 HPs and two lvl 2 spells.
While scouting in that region, Minsc saw 3 hobgoblins and an army of undead, with a man called Bassilus among them. Back in Beregost, they heard that there was a bounty on his head.
Cautiously, the group delt with the hobgoblins first. The Sleep spell worked, because although these hobgoblins had names and wielded fine weapons, they still were nothing more than hobgoblins.
When Imoen entered the Bassilus's line of sight, the cleric started talking to the undead around him. Aidahn, being a cleric himself, murmured something about this cleric's family, so Imoen decided to trick Bassilus and to pretend he was speaking to one of his dead relatives.
It was a right decision because when the dialogue ended all the undead were gone, with only the cleric against the adventurers.
Khalid, who was meant to tank in this battle, was easily held from the first spell, and before Bassilus killed him, Jaheira took all his attention. Aidahn and Dynaheir tried all their repertoire (Blindness, Command, Hold Person) in an attempt to stop Bassilus but he managed to save every time.
Meanwhile, a new spell, only recently required by Dynaheir - Mirror Image - seemed to save her life when Bassilus finished casting Flame Strike on one of images instead of the real mage.
Minsc's arrows finally took down Bassilus.
When the party was back to one of Beregost's inns, Dynaheir asked Aidahn to study her historical and magical books. It was a fine evening, and the gnome thought that maybe a dance was a better idea. Inspite of Dynaheir's "No"s, Sparkyfibber insisted on dancing. It turned out she didn't know how to dance, so the gnome offered to teach her.
Maybe for the first time since leaving Candlekeep, Aidahn felt himself happy. She was a lady of the greatest mind and always full of stories about Rashemen, magic and many other things. And ... she was beautiful!
Aidahn Sparkyfibber - Cleric/Illusionist, 3/2 lvl, 22 HP (10 from FF), 0 deaths
Imoen - Thief, 4 lvl, 26 HP, 0 deaths
Khalid - Fighter, 3 lvl, 32 HP, 0 deaths
Jaheira - Fighter/Druid, 2/3 lvl, 28 HP, 4 deaths
Minsc - Ranger, 3 lvl, 26 HP, 1 death
Dynaheir - Invoker, 3 lvl, 14 HP, 1 death
The overall price of resurrecting - 1100 gp
We summon two Nymphs and three Skeleton Warriors and approach while invisible. We try to take over Kyland Lind with two Mental Domination spells from our Nymphs. No such luck.
With our summons in front and the party invisible, we're still safe, and the enemy quickly begins to fail. Too many disablers come out at once.
Silence 15' Radius once more shows the power of a -5 save penalty. It's almost guaranteed to work against these druids with Greater Malison active.
Kyland Lind, unfortunately, still has Ironskins, and with Nightmare mode's level boosts, he should have 10 skins. I could try to wear them down normally, but that would require mobilizing all of my party, and I want most of them to hang back. Instead, I have Jan dispel Kyland Lind's Improved Invisibility with Detect Illusions and Breach his Ironskins, opening him up for backstabs from Sil.
We slay one of the non-disabled druids, but another one, in werewolf form, proves harder to stop. Kyland Lind is still disabled thanks to Chaos, and so Sil may continue backstabbing uninterrupted.
Once Kyland Lind is gone, the werewolf druid is next. He calls out, but his friends are helpless to aid him.
We sneak past the Myconids and nab Belm. I have no interest in fighting a respawning army.
We still have to fight our way past some Shambling Mounds, and our weapons prove ineffective, but it turns out they're vulnerable to disablers, which simplifies things.
Sil can bring them down without backstabs, just using the Short Sword of Backstabbing and Belm.
Dalok is another potentially dangerous fight, as Dalok and his goons have a habit of summoning Nymphs and Fire Elementals. But this time, our Nymphs successfully charm their target, and Dalok brings another two Nymphs over to our side, who then charm Dalok's druid buddy, who in turn summons a Fire Elemental and some other critters. By the time Dalok recovers from Mental Domination, he's already out of his best spells, and he's surrounded by enemies.
The melee summons on our side are dangerous enough, but Dalok also has to deal with Nymphs, and there are only so many saves he can make.
Dalok falls in short order, and his friends aren't far behind.
Logically speaking, their summons should turn hostile when they do, since they're the ones controlling them. This is just a quirk of the game system.
Jaheira no longer has a place in the party, now that Cernd is about to join. But I underestimate Jaheira's reaction. We still haven't gotten to the end of the Harper questline yet, and she's been fighting for us for quite some time. I feel bad when she leaves. I hadn't thought about her reaction.
Had I known this would have been her reaction, I would have kept her around until the Harper quests were over. At least I know Elminster would have eventually intervened and kept Jaheira in the Harper order, so she's not screwed. Still, I feel bad about it.
We leave Faldorn to Cernd, by which I mean I tell Cernd to go kill her, and then hit her with CTRL-Y to speed things up. Cernd joins the party, finally, though he's unfortunately only at level 10.
We return to Trademeet and stumble on a minor quest. Another truly ridiculous backstab fails to slay a low-level goon.
Our reputation is getting very high. I could install a tweak to make sure Edwin doesn't leave, but instead of looking for it online, I just tweak the HAPPY.2da file myself, and accidentally make Edwin glad that we have a high reputation, instead of merely neutral. His dialog still makes sense, though.
We also stumble upon Rasaad.
Sil is good-aligned and probably wouldn't say option 3, but I'm glad that it's there. I'm interested in checking out Rasaad, and would like to see a monk in the party, but we don't have room for any fighter types in our group. We tell him we won't help him, and continue on to the Trademeet Crypt quest. For once, I remember to make Sil backstab with a blunt weapon to bypass her skeletal target's huge piercing and slashing resistances.
That fight was pretty drawn-out. The main skeleton who casts Animate Dead now summons level 15 Skeleton Warriors instead of the normal kind, which makes the enemy group a lot tougher than it otherwise would have been. It took ages to backstabs them to death.
Back in Athkatla, we hear from Igarol. I forgot about this quest. Cernd needs to find and rescue his baby son. This involves fighting a very high-level mage, which is going to be rough. On the plus side, EE fixed a typo.
They used to spell "simplest" with an "i" instead of an "e."
Deril starts out with a Simulacrum. That is easily removed.
We slip away and throw out Animate Dead and Summon Monster I, the weakest summoning spells at our disposal. Deril wastes his deadliest spell on them.
Deril casts Mislead and for some reason Jan can't dispel the clone. Also, the Mislead clone appears capable of casting spells at the same time as its owner, as if it were a simulacrum. Whatever the case, the clone appears without buffs. Acid Arrow shuts it down.
Jan maintains the pressure on the clone while the real Deril is busy fussing with our initial summons, who managed to survive Dragon's Breath thanks to their Nightmare mode bonuses. Firetooth is a monster.
Cernd joins in. Without pre-cast spells, the clone is very vulnerable.
Then the real Deril appears. We try to take down some of his defenses with Secret Word. Edwin gets his spell off the ground thanks to the Robe of Vecna, but Jan does not. Minute Meteors are faster than Secret Word.
Naturally, with the party cornered, Deril throws out Remove Magic. Aerie maintains our safety.
It's hard to tell, but Deril has just failed a save against Chaos. Edwin was able to sneak in that spell before Aerie finished casting Invisibility 10' Radius.
We lose track of the clone and spend some time trying to track it down. Cernd busies himself with summoning Nymphs, while Jan scours the place with Detect Illusions and our summons deal with Deril. Only after I peek into an unused room do I realize the clone simply despawned.
Deril casts Sphere of Chaos in the other room--generally an awful spell for no-reload runs, due to the very small chance of an instant death on Charname--and Aerie gets knocked out in the process of trying to land an Acid Arrow on Deril. Deril's (M)GOI has worn off, which means we can finally hit him with single-target spells. Edwin tries to fill in for Aerie, only to see the spell bounce back.
Had I thought a little harder, I might have tried to initiate a scorcher loop with Deril, since the spell can still damage both the caster and target, but the only thing I can think of is to try to soften Deril up for a disabler.
Notice Aerie is at 5 HP, out of 10 max, and has the spell failure icon. Her maximum HP returned to normal after a potion, and her current HP increased after a second potion (but not the first). I have no idea why this is.
Deril casts Time Stop. I didn't foresee this; he's casting it awfully late. I guess after wasting his Dragon's Breath spell, he decided to save his other big ones.
A Hold Monster spell is on the way, coming from our Nymph, but it's unlikely to have any impact. Notice that Sil is way off to the west and is hidden. She will likely survive whatever Deril throws out, but Cernd, Jan, and Edwin are very vulnerable. Deril knows what he needs to do.
A second Horrid Wilting spell comes right after this. Aere just barely escapes the area of effect, Jan and Cernd are dead, and Edwin survives with a potion, but at 6 HP, he panics and starts running in circles.
But we have good news.
Deril is doomed. Sil takes Gnasher in her off hand to wear down Deril's Stoneskins. Soon, he's vulnerable to backstabbing.
When we raise him, Cernd takes his child to the druid grove. We pick him up and return to the Windspear Hills.
It's ridiculous how sturdy these things are.
We enter Firkraag's lair invisible. To my dismay, Vampiric Mists rush in to join the opening fight, something I've never seen before. They single out Sil, but do rather little damage.
Cernd conjures a Fire Elemental and we slip away. Once again, the Fire Elemental is immune to everything.
Cernd and Sil resort to melee attacks to bring down the mists. Stealth won't keep us safe, so we need to deal that damage quickly. Since backstabs don't work on the mists, Sil just uses her stealth ability for an occasional +4 to THAC0.
The other enemies fall to brute force. No special tactics are necessary.
For the Ruhk Transmuter, Cernd summons a harem of Nymphs and sends them after the rakshasa one by one to drain its evocation spells. Aerie guides them while invisible and under the effects of MSD, in case the Ruhk Transmuter can see through invisible and tries to hit her with something. When the rakshasa starts approaching the group, Cernd calls in our best summons.
With its best spell exhausted, the rakshasa has no options against the Fire Elemental.
Jan tries to pitch in, but the rakshasa's AC is too low for Jan to hit reliably. The Ruhk Transmuter responds with an excellent disabler, but it's a waste on Jan.
Aerie and Cernd run over to Jan and Aerie casts Invisibility 10' Radius, keeping Jan safe in case we need him. Later, I take out Jan and Edwin both to help break down the rakshasa's Stoneskins with Firetooth and Minute Meteors. The rakshasa responds even more forcefully this time around.
They drink a couple of potions and go back into hiding. A brief attempt to get Cernd to help fight the rakshasa proves ineffective: the rakshasa is immune to +1 weapons as well as nonmagical weapons, and so Cernd's Werewolf Token is incapable of harming the rakshasa. Sil and the Fire Elemental alone remain to fight the Ruhk Transmuter (who as a Transmuter really shouldn't have been able to cast that PFMW spell earlier). The Fire Elemental takes all the hits, while Sil backstabs with Namarra, as her normal Katana +1 has no effect.
There's something rather unsatisfying about seeing a backstab multiplier without any damage. The rakshasa has a huge supply of Stoneskins. It's frustrating to see it keep refreshing them.
To maintain her invisibility, Sil can only land one attack per round, and the Fire Elemental doesn't always hit. Since the rakshasa is getting the maximum 10 Stoneskins per casting, this really drags out the battle. Finally, finally the rakshasa runs out of Stoneskins.
It's more fun when the enemy is trying something new every round, instead of recasting the same spells. It makes sense for rakshasas to focus on Stoneskins, since it makes them almost indestructible to parties without Horrid Wilting, but it also makes fighting them less fun.
So far, this run has been fairly similar to my earlier Heart of Fury run. Invisibility 10' Radius, Animate Dead, Call Woodland Beings, and Conjure Fire Elemental have made a huge difference in virtually every fight. Disablers and backstabbing have kept the gameplay more varied, but otherwise summons and invisibility have ruled this run so far.
I'm not sure how long that will stay, however. We're going to encounter more and more enemies who aren't fooled by invisibility and can actually damage our Fire Elementals, and when that happens, things will get a lot more complicated.
OOC: A small fix to the previous post - Jaheira got new levels both as a druid and a fighter, and chose a dagger proficiency - for the future use of the Dagger of Venom.
Anyway, with the money given by the Beregost's Temple for killing Bassilus the group managed to buy a composite longbow +1 for Minsc and a Wand of Fear - for everyone's use.
The wand was bought from Thalantyr, to whom Aidahn brought his apprentice, Melicamp. The group alread had several skulls in their backpack from previous battles with skeletons. So the Conjurer casted his Antichickenator spell... successfully. It was a great joy for Sparkyfibber to see this young man alive and breathing. Also, it surved a good lesson to everyone, especially Imoen - that the magic should be thought about and used only afterwards.
While exploring one of the areas to the east from the main road to Nashkel, the group encountered an Ogre Mage.
This kind of creatures were well known to Aidahn - the Candlekeep books offered several descriptions of possible scenarios after meeting such a foe. The gnome chose the best here - to retreat as fast as possible. He read that only a well-prepared group could face an Ogre Mage in a battle.
The decision was apparantly the right one because the Ogre Mage casted the Sleep spell - still deadly for the party - but the spell didn't affect anyone as the change or areas happened:
When the party came back to that map, they didn't find any Ogre Mages. To the east from that place they found a lot of ogres, without mages. Mincs detected their location and Aidahn, unseen, casted several sleep spells so that berserkers could fall down before going berserk.
Khalid got a new level after that, and new 6 HPs subsequently.
On that map the adventureres helped a farmer to protect his cow from xvart attacks - and back in Nashkel they heard that xvarts had been active lately. This is why they decided to put an end to xvart attacks on the Sword coast:
On the same area the group met a travelling merchant, Borda, and Aidahn bought a protection spell scroll from him, although Imoen smacked him on the head hinting that the scroll was cursed. Well, it showed better than anything else that such things as buying and selling were better left to Imoen.
A little later, Dynaheir asked Sparkyfibber about his recent dreams... It turned out she managed to see the gnome's dream about her. Dynaheir was a friend of Sparkyfibber and he was not afraid to confess that he saw nothing wrong in this situation. The feeling of trust between the two was increasing with each passing day.
On the next area Khalid was killed with one hit from an ogre-berserker. OOC: Even the best possible AC can't grant anything when the party's tank is in melee with the insane damage from enemies:
When the group returned after resurrecting Khalid in the Nashkel Temple, they decided that the best option was to send hidden Minsc first, find berserkers, lull them with the Sleep spell and only after that attack revealing themselves.
The area was hugely infested with ogres and bandits, which helped Aidahn (+2 HP), Imoen (+3 HP) and Minsc (+5 HP) to reach new levels.
They also helped a noble paladin to clear the area from hordes of gibberlings and killed a polar bear that scared a good guy there.
During one of the rests there Khalid congratulated Aidahn and told him that the lady Dynaheir had great nobility of heart and mind - maybe the best words indeed to describe her.
It was time to complete a task for Bjornin - a paladin from Beregost. While killing half-ogres wasn't problematic for the group, it was fun to meet Drizzt in the wilderness. The famous drow, who left his birthplace, said he needed some help in dealing with gnolls. But to Aidahn, the drow seemed alright alone - he killed gnolls in seconds with his deadly swords. Anyway, it was very pleasant to meet such a hero.
After reporting to Bjornin, the group got a middle shield +1 and, most importantly, reached 20 in their reputation.
Aidahn and his friends were no longer unknown in the neighbourhood, in fact, they were quite popular already in Beregost. Also, they were no longer weak adventurers who didn't know what to expect from any corner - it was time to start their main task of clearing the Nashkel Mines.
Aidahn Sparkyfibber - Cleric/Illusionist, 3/3 lvl, 24 HP (10 from FF), 0 deaths
Imoen - Thief, 5 lvl, 29 HP, 0 deaths
Khalid - Fighter, 4 lvl, 38 HP, 1 death
Jaheira - Fighter/Druid, 3/3 lvl, 28 HP, 4 deaths
Minsc - Ranger, 4 lvl, 31 HP, 1 death
Dynaheir - Invoker, 3 lvl, 14 HP, 1 death
The overall price of resurrecting - 1700 gp
@semiticgod you've been very active. You've left me a lot to read...
@Mirage, can we expect any action from your Druid?
Also, fights in Nightmare mode take so much longer that there's a lot more happening per fight.
For the first group of orc archers, I mostly had Sil backstab everybody, though Jan had to use some illusion magic to avoid getting killed when he unlocked the secret doors for her. I snuck past the nearby golems when I realized the Juggernaut Golem could kill my Fire Elementals within a few rounds, didn't bother with the Troll Cook or the Hobgoblins or Otyugh, and walked around the trigger that spawns the undead in the room southeast of Samia. For the Greater Wraith and the other shadowy critters down the hall, I had Fire Elementals tank the Shadows and Shadow Fiends while Sil backstabbed the Wraiths and Greater Wraith, as the latter were the only monsters capable of harming our elementals.
I overwhelmed Samia and her gang with disablers. They wasted their first few rounds tackling our summons, giving us enough room to cast Greater Malison, Hold Monster, Chaos, Slow, and Hold Person, alongside the other spells from our Nymphs. Sil focused on her backstabs on whichever enemy was weakest, preventing any recovery.
From there, Sil backstabbed all of the Guardians to death. They had no idea how to deal with her, so she only got hit by four Fireballs over the course of the maze. When the Guardians turned invisible, Jan used Detect Illusions while Cernd, being hasted in werewolf form, held the exits shut. Protection from Fire let Sil and Cernd take down the final Guardian alongside Cernd's elementals.
On the way out, the elementals opened three doors to nowhere at the start of the maze. Even though Jan had already disarmed the traps, the elementals triggered all three of them.
The Greater Wolfweres were disabled with Blindness and Hold Monster. Jan's flashers also had a small impact, and Slow spells slowed down their regeneration (unless EE fixed that). Sil's backstabs did most of the heavy lifting. A pair of Stone Golems and a Juggernaut Golem, the same grouping we had seen earlier, had to be taken out to make sure we could safely deal with the Air Elemental that rises up when you get the Dragon Helm. Cernd and Sil took down the Stone Golems, followed by the Juggernaut Golem, in three rest periods, with Invisibility 10' Radius to escape. I don't like resting this often, but for some reason I never bothered to just pre-buff with Free Action to negate the Golem Slow effect, which would have allowed us to take down the group in one rest.
More wolfweres appeared and were backstabbed. Tazok and Chieftain Digdag also died to backstabbing. I left the Adamantite Golem alone.
Only Conster remained. A few traps from Jan dealt lingering damage that disrupted Conster's spells for the first few rounds, giving us enough time to summon some critters, turn invisible, and sneak into the nearby--only to return to the fight to wear down Conster's Stoneskins. Conster managed to get a PFMW spell off the ground, rendering Edwin's Minute Meteors useless.
Jan switches to normal bolts--thankfully Conster didn't pre-buff with Protection from Normal Missiles--while Aerie and Cernd use slings. Conster can't get a spell off the ground, but not because of our attacks.
That Phase Spider managed to poison Conster before it died. Notice that Conster is still trying to hit it with Fire Shield: it registers that the spider's corpse is within range. A weird property of Fire Shield is that it will continue firing due to lingering damage as long as the source of the damage is nearby, even if the source is currently doing nothing. Some of you may recall one of my characters in a Spell Revisions run killing Cookies the Acid Kensai in her sleep thanks to this behavior.
Conster casts Remove Magic at Jan, but thanks to Jan rushing forward into the spell, Edwin is allowed to maintain his Stoneskins.
It made little difference. Conster retreated, and we were able to restore our Stoneskins around the corner safely. Remove Magic isn't that bad if your only buffs are Stoneskins.
We keep pestering Conster with missile weapons, wearing down his Stoneskins. The spider keeps bothering him from afar, but there's a different message now that he's out of range of the spider's body.
With constant disruption from Firetooth and the Phase Spider's poison, Conster can do very little to harm us. We whittle him down.
We let Firkraag go. In Nightmare mode he has over 1,700 HP, which is a little too much for us. We could always try Feeblemind, but our odds aren't too good at this level, with so few castings at our disposal.
With nothing else to do here, Cernd nabs Heartseeker from the golems and runs like hell.
We go to the Graveyard to speak with Bodhi, but arrive in daylight. Edwin tells us about the Nether scroll, so we go back to the crypt that trounced us earlier on. This time, we have Fire Elementals.
Unfortunately, Fire Elementals aren't immune to level drain.
That Vampyre drains three levels per hit. Our elementals get an extra 12 levels from Nightmare mode, but the Vampyre's extra HP gives it more than enough time to level drain them to death. We have to go invisible and flee the area.
While we're there, we pay Pai'Na a visit. Our elementals keep Pai'Na and her spiders busy. Jan pitches in from afar. He does a surprising amount of damage with his flashers. Firetooth boosts the area effect damage.
He gets poisoned for his efforts, however. Pai'Na's spiders do more poison damage than anything else in the saga: 5 damage per second for 30 seconds, or 150 in total. Lashar'ra's poison in ToB acts faster, but still doesn't do as much damage. In my old vanilla SCS games, Stoneskin blocked poison (it makes sense, since most poisons aren't contact poisons), but here, it does not. Jan nearly dies in the few seconds it takes for Cernd to cure him.
Jan gets in trouble again, when Pai'Na tries casting a Conjuration spell at him. His extra Invisibility spells save us from Insect Plague.
We break our invisibility, however, to throw out some disablers. Jan manages to disrupt a spell with his flashers, keeping us safe once more.
Jan's THAC0 might not be very good, but he can hit a low AC target by firing a flasher at a nearby target with higher AC. Pai'Na's spiders have terrible AC, so he has almost guaranteed hits on Pai'Na herself. This also works with friendly critters, as Jan's flashers are party-friendly. The golems from the Golem Manual are ideal targets, with AC values of 9, 7, 5, or -2, depending on the upgrade. Only the Juggernaut Golem is particularly hard to hit with flashers.
Pai'Na fails a save against Hold Monster. It's over.
Next up, the Nether scroll.
After dealing with the ghasts and mummies, we rest and return to Nevaziah. Puttering around his room suggests that he no longer has his Oracle spell--in EE SCS, enemy spellcasters appear to be unable to regain their spells on resting.
To start the fight, we'll have to break invisibility. Since I've been casting from afar a lot, I decide this time to break our invisibility right in Nevaziah's view.
Turns out Nevaziah is a little higher level than I thought.
I draw back the party. This isn't a fight we can face head-on. Edwin stays behind, invisible, and sees his Worg summons also trying to escape. Having failed a save against Nevaziah's Dragon Fear ability (which appears to trigger once per round) the Worg panics and runs, only for Nevaziah to crush it.
Edwin decides to make his exit, but Nevaziah dispels Edwin's invisibility and Stoneskin, and Edwin fails his save against Dragon Fear.
Dead. He's definitely dead.
Nevaziah pelts Edwin with Minute Meteors, and the Magical Sword deals the final blow. Jan hurries out this time to check on Nevaziah. The world turns gray.
It's a huge waste of a very powerful spell. SCS enemies tend to assume the player is actually sticking around to fight them. Evasive setups like ours can maintain invisibility despite divination spells and Remove Magic, which means even an SCS enemy won't be able to reveal us, if we don't let them.
Nevaziah's defenses are pretty solid. The only debuffer we've got is a Secret Word. I have Jan wait around Nevaziah, and find that Nevaziah truly has no way to uncover us. His defenses are wearing low.
Finally I decide to break Jan's invisibility. I'm not sure how many spells Nevaziah has left, but he's used up a lot of good ones. Jan picks up the Robe of Vecna from Edwin's body, changes out of the Jansen Adventurewear, hits the lich with a Bolt of Lightning, and runs.
Nevaziah throws out an HLA. It could have killed Jan in one shot, but thanks to the Robe of Vecna from Edwin's corpse, Jan can negate all of the damage instantaneously.
A Minute Meteor from Nevaziah cures the unconsciousness, and when the lich tries another spell, Jan escapes it with ease.
Nevaziah tries again, but this time, Jan lands a hit.
Nevaziah tries once more. It's an evocation spell, and Jan misses with his Bolt of Lightning. How does Jan respond? Spell Immunity: Evocation.
Ice Storm has no impact. Nevaziah takes away SI: Evocation with a Ruby Ray of Reversal, only to see his next spell blocked once more.
Nevaziah keeps trying. It doesn't work.
Mages don't do well in long, drawn-out battles. Things seem to be going well, and then I remember that there's one spell Nevaziah never runs out of.
If Jan gets hit by that, he might well be done for. But Aerie is way down to the south, in safety, and if she runs up to cast Remove Fear on Jan, she'd lose her invisibility.
I have another idea. Aerie casts Remove Fear on herself, Cernd, and Sil, and Sil runs up to Jan to toss him a Potion of Clarity. Jan is still draining Nevaziah's spells.
Jan drinks the potion and keeps moving. Sil hangs back--her backstabs aren't much use until Nevaziah is out of Stoneskins.
But Nevaziah's Spell Deflection vanishes soon after, and Jan is free to hit Nevaziah with Breach.
Without Stoneskins, Nevaziah has no defense against physical or fire damage (though as a lich he should still be immune to electricity damage, and I belatedly remember to stop using Bolts of Lightning). Sil moves in for the kill.
Nevaziah restores his Stoneskins, but he starts using Magic Missile on Jan--a sure sign that he's out of good spells. Cernd and Aerie rush in with summons to help out.
Nevaziah surprises us with some Sunfire spells, but it's nothing a few potions can't fix. The lich is out of options. Sil brings him down.
Although Jan was able to counter LOTS of spells in this fight, it doesn't mean we can approach other SCS spellcasters with the same strategy. Jan had lots of counters, but there are plenty of spells for which we have no counters. Demon summons and Fallen Planetars could see through any invisibility we might use and Improved Alacrity and Time Stop allow the enemy to throw out more spells than we could possibly counter.
True Seeing is more complex. Sil can escape it easily by simply hiding after she is revealed. Jan could do the same if we blinded him beforehand, but his stealth abilities are quite poor, and Remove Magic could easily dispel a Blindness pre-buff.
I am getting impatient about Sil's progress. I want Celestial Fury and I want Boots of Speed, which together will remove the few weaknesses of Sil's backstabbing strategy (enemy weapon immunities and fast-casting spells, namely), but they're both guarded by some very tough enemies. I've been thinking over how to get those items earlier, but I'd hate to break the no-reload streak here.
Long story short, four (!) Yuan-ti Mages, guarded by several Yuan-ti fighters, cleared out our summons with multiple castings of Death Spell. Edwin and Cernd had to break invisibility to restore our summons, and though they hid in the library, the Yuan-ti found them, and killed Cernd.
The rest of the fight took a hideous amount of micromanagement. We got blocked in several times and had to figure out an escape plan. Sil had to backstab every one of the fighters to death, and one of the mages. We often had to send a party member away to lure aside the mages, or just flat-out tank the mages with some disrupters and spell counters, and we wore each other down, trading blows whenever possible. We sacrificed Jan and Edwin in the process, and spent many wand charges, but eventually killed the last mage with spell damage. We spent almost every resource we had.
In much denser detail:
Early on, Jan scouted out a single Yuan-ti Mage and we assumed it would be a simple fight. Cernd hid in a corner and sent out Fire Elementals to handle the Mephits, only to see the Yuan-ti Mage come out of his room... followed, one by one, by another three mages, who repeatedly cast Death Spell and cleared out our many summons.
Edwin broke his invisibility to maintain our summons and therefore keep draining the Coiled Cabal's spells, but it lured them into the library where he and Cernd were hiding. Edwin made his save vs. spell against Chaos, but Cernd did not, and sure enough, he got killed with Minute Meteors.
We fled to the southern room through the narrow hall, turned invisible, and tried to leave, but the Yuan-ti were blocking the way. Sil had to backstab the Yuan-ti to get them moving, and escaped from the hallway, but one of them lingered in the doorway, trapping Jan and Aerie.
Edwin took over, casting some buffs and luring a mage into the eastern hallway, repeatedly interrupting the mage's spells with Acid Arrow, Magic Missile, and Minute Meteors. The Yuan-ti down south also went after him, allowing Aerie to escape. Aerie then rescued Edwin from the Coiled Cabal, drawing the Yuan-ti all the way back to the center room.
Unwilling to let the matter end, I continued the fight despite having a clear path to the exit. Sil was safe, thanks to her invisibility and Lilarcor, who gave her immunity to confusion whenever a Chaos or Confusion spell appeared on the map, and so I felt we could continue without much risk.
Jan got charmed, twice, and then Edwin, but the remaining party members kept pelting the Yuan-ti with disablers, and re-casting their defenses to stay in shape, preventing the Yuan-ti from holding onto the upper hand. While the rest were busy with the mages, Sil finished off the remaining melee Yuan-ti.
With Jan and Edwin running low, I decided to have Edwin use a WoL Sunfire blast, twice. With his fast casting time, he didn't need Stoneskin to cast it, nor did his blindness bother him. Jan died in the blast, and Edwin got disabled by a Power Word: Sleep, followed by Hold Person, but his only spells by that point were Protection from Petrification, Grease, and Web, so it wasn't a big loss.
Aerie finally burned down the last two mages with the Wand of Fire. We expended three charges from the Wand of Lightning and six charges from the Wand of Fire to make it happen, not to mention the WoL trick, but we got through the fight without having to rest.
Mekrath was more satisfying. We broke down his MGOI with a Secret Word and took down his Fire Shield with a Breach. Acid Arrow stopped his next spell, Conjure Fire Elemental held off his Skeleton Warriors, and Silence 15' Radius forced a Vocalize, which gave us enough time for another set of spells. With the Fire Shield gone, Mekrath was vulnerable to Insect Plague, and with Greater Malison active, Mekrath failed saves against Blindness and multiple flashers, allowing us to swarm him.
I only came to Mekrath's lair for the Rod of Resurrection, which was part of a more ambitious plan, but I'm not sure I'll be able to take on the next challenge like I wanted. I may have to pay a visit to the Planar Prison to get those Boots of Speed (since the unkillable version of Arkanis Gath is now immune to Feeblemind as well as stat drain). Otherwise, I don't think Sil would be able to stay safe.
I want her to be able to dodge Remove Magic spells and outrun demons and Planetars. She can't do that without Boots of Speed.
Got cought in playing and havnt posted here.
Finnished BG1 and are ready to import in to BG2
The winning team:
PC: Cleric/Stalker
Jaheira
Khalid
Imoen
Kivan
Xan
My original plan was to tank with Jaheira and have khalid, Kivan and Coran as artillery with bows.
Pretty soon Khalid proved to have far more survivability then his wife and took over the tanking role.
Xan joined and somewhere I decided to keep him, I figured one more mage could be nice other then Imoen and I felt the Corans wyvern quest was too dangerous.
In the final fight Xan died in about 2 seconds due to haveing 20 HP
So he didnt help much.
Jaheira dided from a friendly arrow of detonation, I thought I had her protected from fire.
Henke and Khalid where protected from fire. So they kept hitting on Sarevok while Imoen shot fireballs from a wand and Kivan alternated between arrows of dispelling, arrows of detonation and arrows of piercing.
Final blow on Sarevok came from Henke, a backstab after swallowing a invis potion.
Now to BG2 where everything feels dangerous...
Glolien Grolio, the gnome cleric/thief:
She started at the basilisk fields too:
Killed the basilisks and Mutamin:
Then i tried out my newly worked out tactic with hold person and dropped gear. First i drop some item near a hostile creature, what i would like to defeat:
Next i move to a position, where i see only the item, not the enemy:
Cast hold person, until the enemy failed their save:
Finish:
Oh, wait, i didn't suspect this:
I tried to run, but for no avail:
Well, i must work on this some more...
@HenkeB Congrats on beating Sarevok! Good luck in BG2.
@lolien Didn't know about that tactics. Thanks for sharing it! Also, it seems that the Mutamin Garden slowly becomes a graveyard discrict.
This time our Charname is Faldorcy, the half-orc (who would suspect this?) cleric/thief:
Hired up Korax:
Oh, a letter!
Yeah... Unfortunately Faldorcy can't read.
Killed Mutamin:
The young adventure party...
No, no this time.
At last Korax couldn't resist Faldorcy's sweetness:
In Beregost Faldorcy bought a book for Firebead at the Fedelpost:
Went for Bassilus:
But failed to face him without the skeletons, so i decided to move on:
Worgs and wolves are nasty without equipment, but still better, than bandits/hobgoblins with bows:
I thought Greywolf is low enough level to auto-fall against command. It turned out i remember wrong:
After a swift trip back to Naskel:
My first succesful use of the item-dropping tactic:
Poor Prism provided me the necessery level up to the access for the third level cleric spells, and to raise skeleton warriors with that:
In the mines i failed to kill a miner for bad reputation:
Next time i was more careful:
Poor old miner couldn't even comprehend, what happened before him:
To my surprise 10 point in find traps was enough for manageing the traps in the low-mines
For Mulahey i used all the rescources i can. Traps, skeleton warriors, stealth, sanctuary, turn-undead, item-dropping/hold person:
And he falled as planned:
?
Only Lamalha remained alive in the end:
Nimbul saved against silence, but not against skeleton warriors:
Tranzig too:
The bandit camp was more or less cleansed with traps, hold person and skeleton warriors:
íFor the trapped barrel the 10 points was not enough, so Faldorcy needed some more experience for more skill points. She went to the Ankheg farm nearby:
With the appropriate skillpoints the barrel was untrapped, and Cloakwood was open for my half-orc girl. It's a dangerous place:
However, Faldorcy could eliminate some ettercaps and spiders:
I always forget to rest far away from the setted traps:
The big preparation killed only one sword spider:
At this time only Centeol and a sword spider remained in the lair. I think i was tired up with all of the trap setting, so i made a couple of mistakes. First i didn't lay any traps, only summoned skeletons before the spider lair's entrance. Second i chose flame blade for backstabbing the sword spider, instead of Shillelagh (i always have to google this one's to write properly). Backstab multiplie only the base damage, so flame blade do only 3d4+4, while Shillelagh do 6d4+3 damage with a 3x backstab multiplier. Third, when the sword spider didn't died from my attack i escape outside, and just run in circles around my skeleton warriors, hoping they finish the arachnid before it kill me. I could have trie a command spell insted.
Yeah, and maybe no-reload at work meal-time not a good idea either
So i got new experiences for the next run!
Caged and tortured in an unknown place for unknown reasons. Familiar faces offers some comfort though.
Dear Imoen even finds a mean of escape and releases Henke.
Some exploring allows us to release Jaheira aswell. And Minsc is there, Still not sure about his sanity but he is a ranger and leaving him in caged in the cell is not an option. He seem skill enough with weapons and that will probably prove usefull in the trials to come.
First level of irenicus dungeon completed.
The duergar fight did cause us to spend many healt pots, more then I had expected.
Did complete the plane of air, previous experience says its a dangerous place so I go about it carefully.
Two skeletonwarriors and backstabbing does the trick and the genie rewards us with Ashidhea the warhammer.
could prove usefull, however not of the group have any pips in warhammers.
I enjoy your tactics! It seems "a letter+hold person" combination works like a trap. I.e. you can RP that you set a trap for your enemy - leave a letter on the ground for an enemy to check it - only to fell under your spell's effect.
As for the spiders, you know that you don't need to fight them to progress, right?;)
Using the portal in the dungeon and thinking they had escaped. Only to find themselves in another level of the prieson. Atleast now Henkes ranger senses told him they where closer to the surface.
In the next room another would be hero joined the group. Yoshimo claims to be a bounty hunter but if so he is probably the worst at it that ever walked faerun. 1 set trap on 4 attempts.
Atleast he had valuable information about the level ahead.
Cleared 2nd level and escaped.
Also did the circus quest and sold som stuff att the adventurers mart.
Met Gaylean Bayle and have currently rested and the copper coronet.
Not sure on where to go next, will have to think on that a bit.
This city is more dangerous then the wilds around Baldurs Gate ever was. Have fought off no less then three ambushes so far.
And the undead seem to be crawling around in every ally, even found a lich hiding in a tavern..
And then there is the copper coronet. Something weied is definetly going on there, but I will have to look in to it later. First I need to escort a young lady to the graveyard district and find a specific tomb.
Maybe its guild about loosing Imoen, but I find it hard to refuse a requstt for aid from young women.
This girl Nalia will need my help to.
Going to tombs probably means fighting undead, lucky for me there happen to be an unemployed cleric at the coronet who offeres to join the team.
So used and protection from undead to kill the lich and grab daystar
Figured Anomens undead summoning would be nice to have around when fighting Dragomir and his shadows and it did make it a very save enterprise. Tempted to keep him in the group but for now Ive left him at the Coronet.
Fought some more undead and the crypt king to grab namarra.
Jaheira got the staff of curing.
Henke got Arbanes sword.
Currently at the bridge district, looking in to the murders that had happened there and trying to find the kidnappers that buried tethyr.