KEY EVENT: Clearing the black at Larswood was not nearly as challenging as its northern
neighbor Peldvale, well except that Jaheira is completely lost to me, beyond resurrection.
In a Druid grove, I encountered two druids, the first of which immediately
attacked us, accusing us of murdering his fellow druids. He had two Cave Bears with him that had my
attention early, (as I wasn’t much concerned about the druid). He was more dangerous
than I expected, because as my retinue was dispatching a Cave Bear, he cast Call Lightning & obliterated
Jaheira, to the point where there was nothing that could be done to bring her
back. Shortly afterward, we defeated him, & then, upon close questioning
the 2nd druid became hostile. We defeated him quickly, as well as another Cave Bear (three
in all), a Dread Wolf & a Wild Dog that he summoned to help him.
WHAT THE HELL? (I was planning on having Jaheira & Dorn, & both got killed by stupid stuff )
I ran upon another Bandit gang, eight
of them, led by a fighter/bandit. As before, they were not a challenge. There
weren’s as many BTE here either, so I think we go further north next. The
search for Tazok continues.
After Jaheira’s
demise, I enlisted a Cleric, Drake, to fill her spot. He’s a Cleric of Tyr, so
I’m not sure. This group is getting a little too sensitive me thinks. I’ll see
how Drake performs.
Best Kill Competition:
·
Khalid (Osmadi), Eldoth (Corsone) (1000 exp ea)
·
Minsc (Tranzig, 950 exp)
·
Imoen, (Silke, 900 exp)
CASUALTIES: Jaheira, beyond raise or resurrection (Osmadi, Call Lightning)
MONSTERS DEFEATED: Osmadi (Druid/7), Corsone
(Druid/7), Tevin (Fighter-Bandit/6), Cave Bear (3), Dread Wolves (2), Black Talon
Elite (2), Dire Wolves (7), Bandits (7), Wild Dog
I had a Fighter/Shapeshifter multiclass that I had going on yesterday with SCS's werewolf tokens, but I didn't find it very satisfying to play despite the haste that the normal werewolf receives at level 7. I'll do the following instead, since I've wanted to dive deeper into Shadow Magic using a sorcerer instead of a thief/mage. Mod installation is still unchanged from the Rejects' run and Torque's run.
A Tale of Two Sorcerers
Meet Yin and Yang, Shadow Disciple and Dragon Disciple.
A Shadow Disciple is merely a sorcerer version of the Shadow Adept, whose abilities can be found here. Shadow Magic spells are listed here because there's a lot of them, since it IS a new casting system after all. I'll try to give brief descriptions to spells when I get them.
TL;DR:
Shadow Magic is generally stronger than normal magic from the Weave, but it temporarily drains CON points equal to the spell level unless the caster can save vs. death with a -1 penalty per spell level.
So, let's go. Yin takes the Ring of Wizardry from the hidey-hole at the Friendly Arm. The day/night cycle in the game is much more relevant since Yin suffers a -2 caster level & -2 casting speed penalty in daylight, so we're careful to only travel at night. The belt ogre on the Coast Way is blinded and then picked off from range by Yang's sling.
Blinding Dark: As Blindness but with a -2 save penalty. Shadow Missile: 1d4 magical damage, +1 cold per missile. -1 THAC0 penalty for each missile that hits, up to 5 at caster level 9 as Magic Missile.
Algernon is killed for his cloak and it is equipped on Yin for +1 to saves and +5% elemental resistance. Silke is charmed using the cloak and she takes care of most of the spiders for us. I let one spider finish her off since she is nothing but trouble while fighting against her.
Kelddath's sirenes are lured outside so that I can charm one using the cloak and have it kill the other. We gain a level from this.
Using the fourth sirene, I let the wolf pack wear it down but fail to get the last hit on it for its XP, so the wolf pack comes chasing after us. Yin and Yang both use their blindness spells to disable to wolves and keep them from moving. Both spells last 10 minutes real time, which gives us more than enough time to kill the wolves without fear of retaliation.
Spells gained: Curse; Grease -Curse: As IWD Curse (-1 penalty to saves/THAC0/morale) but ignores MR.
Yang tests out Grease and his new breath weapon ability on Cattack's group. I'm liking this already.
A few other easy wilderness areas are done until I decide to go for more easy XP at Shoal. Eldoth doesn't get sacrificed this time because it's not really worth fighting Droth for his helmet.
Spells gained: Night Terrors, Deep Slumber; Web, Magic Missile -Night Terrors (lv. 2): As Horror but with a -2 save penalty. At caster level 14, gains the effects of Death Spell. -Deep
Slumber (lv. 1): As Sleep but hit opponents awaken immediately. At
caster level 9, creatures above 4 HD can be affected but with no save
penalty.
Melicamp is anti-chickenated, which is usually a good omen for a playthrough. Tenya's bowl is returned and Dushai is killed for her ring after a long struggle since she's magic resistant. This will help Yang so he can operate within his Grease AoE without hindrance. The Protection from Petrification scroll from the carnival is bought and duped, which means its time for Basilisk Country.
The outside of Durlag's Tower and the ghasts on level 2 are cleared, resulting in level 6. Grease and Web are a deadly combo, especially since Grease's effect can last beyond the AoE cloud's lifetime.
Spells gained: Shadow Binding, Shadow Walk; Spell Thrust, Invisibility -Shadow Binding (lv. 3): Hold Monster but works on anything not immune to Hold Creature 2. Save vs. spell at -4 negates. Ignores MR. -Shadow Walk (lv. 2): As Dimension Door but destination can only be within sight range.
Yin gains Summon Shadow Familiar. The caster sacrifices several points of Constitution which are slowly restored over the course of a few weeks to summon a shadow familiar. Unlike normal familiars, shadow familiars can die with no penalty to the caster and will reappear after 24 hours.
Nyx is a Shadowdancer thief who will be a great asset. She has a small number of shadow magic spells that she can use, too. She performs flawlessly against Tarnesh who Yin finishes off with a Shadow Missile. She inflicts Blinding Darkness on a successful backstab which works the same as the spell does, and has a 50% chance to poison opponents on hit for 1 round, save vs. death negates.
Since the area is available, we travel to Gullykin and enter the Firewine ruins through Jenkal's house. The sorcerers use Spook and Blinding Darkness on the ogre mage, rendering it harmless. When Lendarn approaches, Yang uses Spell Thrust to tear down his Minor Globe and then he gets trapped by a Shadow Binding from Yin. The kobold nuisances are swept away and then we just pelt Lendarn to death at range for automatic hits.
You'll notice that I jacked Baeloth's Evil Archmagi robe.
Nyx basically clears out the rest of Firewine by herself. At the Valley of the Tombs, the fight with the revenant goes much differently since Yang has the Ring of Free Action. The revenant is held with Shadow Binding and killed.
Currently we are returning to Durlag's Tower to kill the roof basilisks since I forgot to do so earlier. Nyx can do this by herself if escorted by an invisible Yang.
Henn (dwarf fighter/thief, Gate70); Qat (dwarf thief, Grond0) Episode 3 of this multiplayer duo started off reasonably well, standing on the corpses of four amazons it was obvious that we were to pay Nimbul a visit. Qat welcoming him with an open quarterstaff and a fatal backstab.
Tranzig survived his backstab and ran in panic, forgetting to turn hostile which meant the three snares on the ground remained inactive. Henn tried to target him but failed several times and Qat eventually got the killing blow.
On to Cloakwood. We skipped through the first area, and had much fun with ettercaps in the second - their saving throws proving to be far better than their avoidance of arrows and bolts. The third area was skipped too, with the fourth seeing a couple of mercenaries cut down on the bridge. We found a party waiting for us inside the mine stockade, they however failed to see through our stealth. We set three snares at our feet then Qat went to backstab Kysus. Henn shot at Rezdan and by the time we ran behind the site hut both mages were dead.
Henn managed to hide (with 15 hide and 10 stealth this was not expected), and with Qat also hidden we went for more backstabs. Genthore and Drasus both survived, but with Drasus chasing Henn this left Genthore open to another decisive strike by Qat. Henn dragged Drasus around then stood to fight as Qat delivered another backstab. Henn then ran Drasus around before we repeated a stand + backstab to good effect.
With the mine now open to us we sneaked in and took care of a few enemies before Henn cleared 4 of the 5 traps leading up to Davaeorn, 80% detection doing a fair job. Qat bravely stepped into the 5th (undetected but known) trap, then we set about Davaeorn. He managed a few laps of the area, his movement annoying Qat's backstab efforts. After one attack, Davaeorn started casting at Qat so Henn took the opportunity of pegging him with an arrow and down he went.
Baldur's Gate was next, with the poison quest completed - Lothander using his boots of speed to escape before our meagre effort of killing him could even start. We thought about the ogre gauntlets so dabbled in a spot of ennui, only to confirm Qat could not wear them and they gave Henn (18/98 strength) no benefit. A potion of mirrored eyes helped down a greater basilisk and we rounded the session off by defeating Ramazith and his jellies.
Henn is wounded, slowed and this should be enough of a clue for next time that we should sneakily head up the tower to loot Ramazith's hoard.
FINAL Trio Update Yeldon - half-elf cleric/ranger, protagonist (Corey_Russell) Keras - dwarven kensai (Grond0) Denko - human dark moon monk (Grond0)
Well the Trio did well, but ran into a problem. More on that in a moment.
*1st thing we dealt with was 2nd pocket plane challenge - this went well and easy victory * Next was Oasis - Keras got killed - so instead of fighting, decided that we could pick up Answerer and then run for the border * In Amkethran, we only bought some things from the smugglers and met Saemon and helped the druid * We then worked on Sendai's lair. Keras died quite a few times here, but we did all the way through and even defeated Sendai herself.
One of the keys was going invisible and not fighting the large group of dwarven fighters. We also used Ronarch's horn on Ogremech and that worked nicely.
Finally it was time for Draconis. Yeldon had used a potion of shielding so that was good. What was not so good was when Draconis changed to dragon form.
We got the dreaded "trapped in enemy circle bug" - Yeldon was under attack and could not move!
Yeldon tried to potion but his aura was clouded. The others aura was also clouded so they could not attempt RoR either - RIP Yeldon.
With a bit of time left in our standard session, we created a new party. As usual we independently picked characters, but still managed to come up with a pretty good mix - including a tank, missileer and utility arcane and thieving support.
This trio needs to go a long way to beat the mark set by the last lot at Draconis and didn't have the opportunity to make much inroad into that today. In case we want Ogre Droth's helmet later, we left Shoal after exiting Candlekeep and went to Beregost before heading on south to Nashkel to pick up some ankheg armor for Yertone. A few encounters on the way were largely dealt with by sleep spells from Tabetha.
I've had clustering issues myself in 2.5 though not with such dramatic outcomes (yet). What are your - and other no-reloaders' - thoughts on reloading in a case like this? I think I'm generally a pretty strict no-reloader, rarely allowing myself reloads, but I think I'd be ok with myself if I reloaded here. Is the occurrence of this bug reasonably preventable? Is the player forced to attack Draconis from range (with spells/missiles) to be sure they won't get trapped in his circle?
Bug-related reloads are generally considered acceptable. I nearly died to that same bug once, against Melissan, and I would have considered a reload justified if I had not survived the bug.
Some bugs are kind of clear-cut, while others are more of a gray area, but in this case, we're talking about a type of collision behavior that is most definitely not supposed to happen, and for which there is no readily available, zero-opportunity-cost solution. Only CTRL-J, Teleport Field, a mod-introduced option, or maybe releasing a familiar could free you, and the last three such options could impose dangerous costs by requiring the use of aura.
@Grond0 mentioned that it's critical to stay at range against Draconis so you don't get ensnared by the bug issue. But Draconis was chasing Yeldon so it would have been difficult. For game-breaking bugs, the Trio isn't against reloading, but we often just accept bugs that are intrinsically part of the game and that you can't really avoid. We easily could have the bug dozen times in ToB alone - the Trio wouldn't reload that often, not even for bugs.
@Blackraven my own rule about reloading for bugs is that I can only justify a reload in circumstances where a bug occurs and causes a fatal result that I couldn't have avoided - other than total crashes the only such bug that currently springs to mind is the vanishing portrait one. I certainly agree that overlapping icons is a nasty and annoying bug, but my general feeling is that I prefer to accept the game as it is, rather than worry about whether I'm correct in my assessment of how it should be. I recognize of course though that others feel differently .
I've actually perished to that bug twice before against Draconis - in single player I now attack his human form from range to prompt a conversion to dragon (which avoids being trapped when his icon expands).
@Blackraven I would definitely reload. I'm specifically sticking with v2.3 until this issue with personal space gets fixed. This only happens in rare cases in v2.3, not with the much higher frequency that v2.5 seems to elicit.
The Blue Mage and the Black Mage vs. Legacy of Bhaal: Part 2
As a reminder:
My mods: XP Cap Remover, IWD Divine Spells in BGEE, SOD and BG2EE (note that this mod adds some IWD arcane spells to the game but not all of them; there's no Mind Blank, for example), characters do not get HLAs upon reaching 3000000 experience (this is to prevent a bug where the HLA UI doesn't show up because it doesn't exist in BG1).
Difficulty: Legacy of Bhaal
Settings: Legacy of Bhaal Bonus Experience turned on
Rules: Aseigh starts the game knowing every abjuration spell in the game but cannot learn or memorize ANY non-abjuration spells in the game. Shihuza starts the game knowing every necromancy spell in the game but cannot learn or memorize any non-necromancy spells, and this rule also applies to her divine spells. They can still cast spells from scrolls.
Time to start Siege of Dragonspear!
The party went through Korlasz's dungeon the same way they went through most of Baldur's Gate 1: they threw Skeleton Warriors at enemies until those enemies died. Though on the second floor, Shihuza cleared one encounter by repeatedly casting Skull Trap while under the effects of a Protection from Undead scroll.
The other undead encounters were worse, though. In the other encounters, there were undead that could drain levels (Wights, Cold Wights, Imbued Wights, and Wraiths). For some reason, the Skeleton Warriors summoned by Animate Dead are not immune to level drain. In those battles, Shihuza had to back up the minions by using her Wand of the Heavens on dangerous undead.
The party cleared the crypt, resting only once.
Before retiring to the Ducal Palace, the party used all their gold to buy stuff from the Flaming Fist Healer. Then when they were back in Baldur's Gate, they sold the valuable equipment they had carried over from BG1.
The party sold one of their Rings of Wizardry. Rings of Wizardry are much less useful when your party's only first level mage spells are Protection from Evil, Protection from Petrification, Larloch's Minor Drain, and Chill Touch.
In the dungeon, Korlasz broke free. This was her punishment.
The march to Dragonspear begins! The party recruited Glint (I'm still not too familiar with SOD so I don't want to be wandering around in a party without a thief where a trap could totally screw them over). Then they fought there way through the dwarven excavation. By this point, Shihuza had reached the point where she could turn weak undead creatures.
In the second part of the dungeon, Shihuza switched out her Skull Traps for Hold Undead spells. Hold Undead actually worked pretty well.
(It appears that Hold Undead can actually hold more than 1d4 undead creatures)
There was only one hitch: one encounter in which the party received a taste of their own medicine and had to fight two Skeleton Warriors, which received the full Legacy of Bhaal bonuses. The party's own Skeleton Warriors were not tough enough to beat these, so Aseigh dealt with them.
Coldhearth himself was actually easier than the fight before him. The party sent one Skeleton Warrior at him, on which he used Death Spell, then Shihuza animated another and sent all five skeletons against the lich. The party then shut the door to Coldhearth's lair, and the lich did not open the door.
The party then quickly acquired and destroyed Coldhearth's phylactery before he could respawn.
I finished up this chapter and moved on to the Boarskyr Bridge chapter. There I had intended to recruit Voghiln (I've never used him before), but during one of the encounters in the area, he got killed before I could talk to him!
I thought this was kind of lame, so I consoled Volghin in and had him join the party. As a penalty for my use of the console, for this playthrough, Voghiln is not allowed to learn or memorize any non-alteration spells, and I removed all non-alteration spells from his spellbook. He does not automatically know all alteration spells.
The troll cave was a tricky battle. This wasn't because the trolls were too tough, but because entering the cave required all party members to enter at once, and the trolls could not leave the cave (had they been able to, I could've lured them out to have them fight the Skeleton Warriors outside). There was no room in the cave to summon five Skeleton Warriors safely.
Here's how I beat the troll cave: I had all party members go invisible using an Invisibility 10' Radius scroll and enter the cave. Asiegh then cast Improved Mantle, and then he cast Imprisonment on one of the trolls. He had 3 9th-level spell slots per day, so he could imprison 3 trolls per day. I didn't let him imprison more than two trolls at a time because I was worried that Improved Mantle would wear off while he was casting Imprisonment. If that happened, he'd be dead pretty much instantly. Sometimes I'd have Shihuza kill a troll with Finger of Death, but that broke her invisibility and she didn't have any good way of protecting herself (no Mirror Image, no Stoneskin, no Protection from Magical Weapons-type spells). Mostly I just had Aseigh imprison the trolls. After doing this repeatedly, all the trolls had been imprisoned or killed.
On to the bridge. The party stopped by the goblin cave, which had the same problems as the troll cave: the entire party had to enter it, and the enemies couldn't be lured out. Instead, the party made their stand in the cave.
The party then headed out to the Forest of Wyrms. Things went fine until they got up to Morenthrene's cave. I was really scared of this fight (I've never done it before) so I made a test save to see if I could beat it.
This time, I was right to worry. My party was killed in the first two tries. The first was when I had forgotten to make my party immune to fear, and Morenthrene hit my whole party with her fear aura. The second was when one of the young dragons got past the couple of skeletons Shihuza had managed to summon in time, headed straight to the vulnerable party (even though the party was invisible) and killed several party members.
But after that, there were a couple of times when the party managed to win the fight. Aseigh got rid of Morenthrene in the only reliable way:
After that, the Skeleton Warriors, Imprisonment spells, and Finger of Death spells handled the other enemies in the fight.
But that was just a test run. I was still too scared to do this fight for real, so I decided not to do this dungeon, and I went back to the bridge to just fight the Crusaders.
They weren't that bad. Even before the Flaming Fists (who get full Legacy of Bhaal bonuses) showed up, the Skeleton Warriors were handling things pretty well, with the help of support from the party. Glint cast Recitation, then the party's mages cast Greater Malison and Confusion from scrolls on the enemy army.
After beating the Crusaders' main force, the party had to prevent them from blowing up the bridge. The five Skeleton Warriors were hasted and sent right to where the Crusaders were; this didn't turn them hostile. Then the party approached them. Aseigh and Shihuza started off by firing their Wands of Paralysis on the mage that was about to cast Summon Horrible Fire Creatures. But the mage made both saves! Uh oh. But the Skeleton Warriors saved the day at the last second!
After that, they were easy to deal with.
Next chapter! On the way to Dead Man's Pass, the party was waylaid by enemies in a dead magic area! Wands still work in dead magic, so the party used a Wand of Summoning to summon a few meatshields.
But then, Aseigh lost half his health in a backstab by a Shadowdancer, so I got scared and the party made a run for it.
Upon reaching Dead Man's Pass, the party first fought a pack of displacer beasts, which the Skeleton Warriors dealt with easily enough. Then they fought some orogs. I wasn't expecting this to be that big of deal. But then...
[spoiler] Aseigh was killed instantly (from full health) in a backstab by an Orog!
What an unsatisfying way to end a run. But yeah, that's that.
Here's my party right before the run ended:
This was a cool party. Despite the fact that Aseigh and Shihuza ended up at really high level, they were nowhere near as powerful as a regular Throne of Bhaal PC of the same class and level. Aside from Animate Dead spam, their abilities were perfectly balanced for Baldur's Gate 1 and Siege of Dragonspear on Legacy of Bhaal, because of the limitations I had placed on which spells they could use.
I had designed this party because I liked the idea of having characters who could defeat Legacy of Bhaal enemies by killing them instantly rather than by slowly dealing damage to them. But most of the game ended up consisting simply of throwing Skeleton Warriors at battles to win. The next time I try out Legacy of Bhaal, I'm planning on using a character who is overpowered but isn't allowed to summon any creature that gets Legacy of Bhaal bonuses. [/spoiler]
Condolences, @OlvynChuru. Backstabbers are absolutely deadly in LoB mode, and that dead magic area only makes things even worse. I don't even know how to win that fight--ever since I first saw it in my blind run, I've always fled from the encounter.
Item Randomizer robs us of Foebane, unfortunately for Keldorn. The statues aren't too tough, however.
[spoiler][/spoiler]
But this isn't because they buffed with PFMW or Improved Mantle, however--at least one of these mages used Absolute Immunity to guarantee a successful Time Stop. But no Fallen Planetars came out, which is basically the only thing a single-classed mage could threaten us with at this point.
Since we buff Frisky Bits with basically every defensive spell in the game before virtually every fight, the chance of death is basically nil. But we do get a brief scare when Frisky Bits wrestles with some golems and runs out of Stoneskins due to not casting PFMW.
[spoiler][/spoiler]
For the Chromatic Demon, we have our fighters pester him with ranged weapons to impose hitstun while our mages cast elemental spells. In the end, though, the Chromatic Demon proves vulnerable to a vorpal strike from Nalia's planetar... a pretty lame way to win a fight.
[spoiler][/spoiler]
Item Randomizer took away the Bronze Ioun Stone, so that Circlet of Netheril is useless to us. I could probe deeper into Watcher's Keep, but since the dead magic and wild magic zones could get ugly, I decide to call it quits and head back to the Pocket Plane. We build a Perfect Clay Golem and spend a very long time fussing over our spellbooks and items to make sure we're perfectly optimized for the fight at the Throne of Bhaal.
Potions work as normal in dead magic zones. I often use oil of fiery burning or potion of explosions in these areas. In my blind run I passed it without issues. Not lob though. I am not sure how much you would need for that...
And my "no magic items" run has just gotten through SoD, so I'll start posting on that, too. Long story short, I grossly overestimated the XP available in SoD and had to spend a long time farming trolls in a cave in order to get the levels I needed to kill Belhifet. In retrospect, I probably could have gotten away with a lot less grinding if I factored in Minor Sequencers or my Archer's racial enemy of Demons when I was doing the math.
Also, Ashatiel casts Breach, so if you've got a Charname with mage levels, make sure you cast Minor Spell Deflection before you tackle her.
I've spent some time recently trying to make progress with a solo monk in Icewind Dale Heart of Fury mode. At first sight that looks much easier than trying LoB in BGEE as:
- on the default setting you get additional XP for enemies, which allows quick early progression.
- HoF does not have the -11 to AC now added to LoB, so enemies can be hit relatively easily.
However, a lot of the IWD enemies come with follow-me AI, which means they try and surround a character operating under stealth. They also operate in quite large groups making it extremely difficult to try and pick off enemies one at a time without getting surrounded. IWD is also very linear meaning there's not the same opportunity to scout around for easy encounters and seek out helpful magic items.
On balance I suspect unmodded BG is probably a bit easier. Normally when I play LoB I do that in an SCS installation for extra challenge, but in order to provide a fair comparison with IWD I'll try and make progress in a standard v2.5 installation.
Starting off then, Mendel left Candlekeep and journeyed to Beregost where he struck down Algernon for his cloak. After going down to Nashkel to get LMD, he used the cloak to pull sirines out of Beregost temple. Wearing them down against nearby enemies before finishing them off with stealth attacks got Mendel fairly quickly up to level 4 - picking up an almost perfect additional 29 HPs for that.
Going down to the Lake area he stealthed up towards Drizzt to activate a pair of gnolls to attack him. I did that rather than just activate one of them to speed up the contest, after the first gnoll broke his weapon very early on. However, I paid for that decision when the second gnoll's weapon lasted out the entire contest and killed Drizzt.
On the way to the FAI Mendel gained the girdle of piercing by charming an ogre. A couple of charmed guards killed Tarnesh before he moved on to get a bowl from some fishermen to give back to Tenya. Further north at Ulgoth's Beard, Dushai was charmed at only the 3rd attempt and led away for a spot of kiting to get her ring. Back at the FAI, laboriously wearing down a few hobgoblins was enough to tip Mendel over to level 5 (+8 HPs) before giving Joia her ring back.
At Firewine Bentan was charmed and killed by skeletons. A charmed Poe then lost out to kobolds, while Meilum's fists proved a poor choice of weapon (for him) against some zombies. I made another mistake there in not getting Mendel to finish him off, but didn't miss out in the same way on Greywolf - who became a first victim of a stunning blow.
Moving on to the Lighthouse, Mendel spent a while charming all the sirines from stealth and wearing them down against enemies, but annoyingly lost the XP for 2 of those to criticals. A few tasks around Beregost then culminated with Silke being worn down by spider poison and finished off with a scimitar slash. The chances of that hitting were actually pretty high despite the -11 to AC in LoB - due to the combination of hiding in shadows, Silke having fists equipped, her singing a funeral dirge, using a +3 scimitar, strength of 18 and Meilum's bracers.
The Beregost encounters replaced the XP lost from the sirines and allowed Mendel to attain level 6 (+10 HPs).
Despite Mendel's exceptionally good HPs, he's still extremely vulnerable with plenty of enemies being able to one-shot him with a critical. However, even though he's missed out on a lot of XP he hasn't had any particular alarms so far and should be in decent shape to make further progress.
The clue was too much to be ignored, so we sneaked up the tower and looted Ramazith's goodies. Henn eventually hid again and was baulked down every level so decided Qat must have ignored stealth and just run down, or the guardians of the tower had wised up to him.
We grabbed a few items such as the Helm of Balduran, swept outside the city to pick up a forgotten tome of charisma and then went back to Candlekeep in search of Rieltar. We didn't find him, but were arrested instead. One jailbreak later we are helping ourselves to treasures from the catacombs when we are each poisoned by phase spiders. Henn glugs an elixir of health while throwing a scroll to Qat. Qat suggests another type of green scroll may be wise so Henn chucks them all over. Qat is still not happy and Henn eventually realises Qat is referring to a scroll obtained much earlier and tucked inside the scroll case. Qat eventually gets a scroll he is satisfied with. [spoiler]
[/spoiler] The doppelgangers take a beating, one being the first opponent to see triple-figure damage (below). [spoiler] [/spoiler] Prat hides himself away as his gang are killed, and two web traps cause problems for us. Henn is well and truly stuck so Qat drags two spiders and Prat away. Henn recovers and we make good our escape after finishing off Prat.
Baldur's Gate beckons again, and after picking up the Cloak of Balduran we defeat Slythe - as usual he put up a good show but standing on a trap and catching a dispelling arrow tends to limit one's potential.
The Coronation has been worrying Hen but Qat uses arrows of dispelling to good effect. Henn picks off the two doppelgangers attacking Liia and we still have time to save Belt. We dive into an ante-room with Belt in pursuit, show him the evidence and return to lure Sarevok away from Liia. Job done.
Not quite, says Belt, and sends us after Sarevok. We stroll through the thieves maze, Qat closing his eyes as Henn the de-trapper sets off a lightning trap then a fireball trap in rapid succession. Potions of absorbtion stop Qat taking damage and eliminate further damage to Henn, with our rings of protection from fire restricting the fire damage. We've got protection from undead scrolls running so melee the skeleton warriors and move on.
Rahvin and his gang take an early detonation as Qat targets Gorf. Henn backstabs Gorf to the floor, taking advantage of buffs to hide freely. We set about the rest of the gang and soon have them defeated.
Henn suggests we pick on the nearby skeleton warriors while protected from undead - mistake as Qat is targeted (these undead seem to ignore the scroll for clients from time to time and so it proved today). Qat engages in a bit of hit and run while Henn staggers along behind and picks off on the stragglers.
On the the temple of Bhaal, after a rest. We apply a precautionary buff each with green scrolls. [spoiler]
[/spoiler] Semaj fails to recognise his spells won't do much while the scrolls are running, and for that matter he fails to watch where he teleports to either. Henn is lined up to attack him but Qat gets a missile in first. [spoiler] [/spoiler] Qat tempts Sarevok out and dispels him with an arrow, then we run him around for a while with missiles aimed in his direction. After a while Qat lays a trap and when that hurts Sarevok we repeat a few more times. Our fourth and last trap for Sarevok may have been enough to cut short his life but Henn has added a near point-blank acid-laden arrow to make certain. [spoiler] [/spoiler] On to Shadows of Amn
Grond0 comments that a pair of thieves should make reasonable work of escaping the chateau. True enough, although the cambion caused Henn to run and as Qat was dodging around corners he landed a decent strike with his quarterstaff for Henn to be able to relax once more.
Henn did get a bit concerned about taking a fiery dousing while unable to move. Qat was likely to avoid this but Henn was not 100% certain and begged for mercy. [spoiler] [/spoiler] The only other thing of note on our way out was whether Ulvaryl would escape. She would not. [spoiler] [/spoiler] Ah. The promenade. Take a deep breath lads as things might get a bit heated next time.
With great power, or at least increasing power, comes great responsibility. Amahoro reflected on her past, on how she had left Candlekeep as a youngster who could barely cast a few level 1 spells, and here she was now leading an adventuring party that had shown itself capable of defeating deadly assassins, powerful wizards, fiends, undead, and other monsters. She was aware of her taint within, and so she reached out to the clergy of Lathander, the deity who promotes birth, and life, the opposite of Bhaal's obsession with murder. Maybe she didn't need Lathander's teachings or blessings, but she was too humble to just take her chances. And so Amahoro and party went after the cult of the Unseeing Eye.
They came across a pack of hell hounds that could see through invisibility and dealt considerable fire damage, and slew them, but not after they grievously injured Jan Jansen. Ironically beholders and gauths were easier to deal with: Haer'Dalis tanked them in Poly Self Mustard Jelly form, while Jan did the damage dealing with cloudkills and fireballs dropped from a safe distance. This worked for the eye tyrants in the old tunnels as well as for the Unseeing Eye itself - even though it fell to Jan's traps - and its death tyrants (who can cast detection spells, so careful with that.[spoiler][/spoiler]Before the fall of the Unseeing Eye, ghoul town was easier than expected due to the absence of a lich but nevertheless hard. Bone golems, skeleton warriors, and (greater) mummies can be deadly when your protection from fear gets dispelled by them. Thankfully both Anomen and Amahoro always memorize Remove Fear and Mazzy, a Truesword of Arvoreen (NPC kitpack) has innate Invoke Courage, but that's self only. Jaheira and Haer'Dalis got afflicted by (aTweaks') mummy rot, but Amahoro cured them.[spoiler]
[spoiler]Gaal and his men put up little resistance, and the party returned from their adventure with a ring of earth control, the gnasher club, and a the Mace of Disruption +1 as trophies. Cromwell upgraded the mace worthy of Anomen the undead slayer, and combined the Bone Club and Gnasher into Fulcrum +4(cf. Item Upgrades). The latter weapon, which sets proficiency in clubs to grandmastery was intended for Jaheira, who was already specialized in clubs. But somehow the grandmastery effect doesn't work with some characters, and that happened to include Jaheira and Haer'Dalis. It went therefore to Mazzy. As a Truesword of Arvoreen she can only obtain grandmastery in short swords, short bows, and slings, while she can't get more than mere proficiency in other weapons. So she greatly benefits from Fulcrum.
Upon reporting back to the church, Amahoro was accepted into the clergy of Lathander. After some hesitation, I decided to give her the priest of Lathander kit, just as Anomen had received the priest of Helm kit when he passed his test (another NPC kitpack feature). It's first and foremost a RP/flavor thing, though I'm aware that both Amahoro and Anomen get slightly stronger thanks to their kit perks.
A well-buffed party progressed Jaheira's personal quest in yet another showdown with corrupt Harpers, and then moved on to accept the Shadow Thieves' aid over that of Bodhi and vampires. Anomen crushed the crypt king with his new mace. It yielded Jaheira a second +3 scimitar (Water's Edge), so that now she could at least dual-wield two +3 scimitars, even if their equipped / on-hit effects were underwhelming. Most of the time though, Anomen, Jaheira, and Amahoro would just carry shields. The party failed to protect Mook, but they did prevent more shadow thieves from joining the other guild, and they also saved Arledrian from several vampires. Look at these three bad ass servants of the light, about to turn the tides and administer divine justice.[spoiler][/spoiler]Arledrian's rescue was worth another reputation point, allowing the party to finally upgrade Mazzy's Sword of Arvoreen to a +5 weapon (Item Upgrades again). Kitthix was improved as well. The good thing about Item Randomiser not leaving much of worth in stores, is that gold can be expended more easily on item upgrades.
Amahoro carried out her priestly duties with great care, without neglecting her job as ranger protecter of Imnesvale. The purported return of Umar proved to be a misunderstanding. But the party still had to clear the temple ruins of several undead, a glabrezu, and faux Umar. The glabrezu, spamming its teleport at will, PW:Stun and etherealness abilities, was a bit of a pain.[spoiler][/spoiler]And Umar was dangerous in her own way. She used a Greater Malison followed by a Flesh to Stone directed at Haer'Dalis. He had to quaff a potion of magic blocking as he didn't have his usual MSD up (in part because we had wanted to buff before facing her, but were surprised by her appearance). A Secret Word by Jan and a concerted attack did her in. Mairyn, spirit of the woodlands, gifted Amahoro an animal companion, Cerebus the moon dog and another, superfluous reputation point.
When the party left the mayor's house, they were completely unbuffed, the worst possible moment to be ambushed by more harpers: Dermin and co. Haer'Dalis and Jan cast Stoneskin. Anomen, Jaheira, Mazzy, and Amahoro have the advantage that they're always ready to fight (though the former three like to prebuff a lot). The efreeti, Cerebus and improved Kitthix were summoned to help out. Jaheira, Mazzy, and Haer'Dalis got slowed.; Jan and Jaheira silenced.[spoiler][/spoiler]The party prevailed but Anomen and Jan had to swig healing potions.
I had the game on pause for some time while doing other things, and I think that caused the rather early appearance of Terminsel back in Athkatla, to gift Jaheira the Harper Pin. Also in Athkatla, Amahoro was charged with murdering the Talassans, a task that didn't sit well with her. She was to enter the temple at night, and slaughter them preemptively, as they had apparently planned an assult on the church of Lathander. Amahoro put her trust in acolyte Lara, and saw the job through.
The party then moved on to the Windspear Hills. The Ruhk's kobolds were fireballed, while summons were used to make their foe waste some spells before the companions pummeled him to death. Anomen used a PfUndead scroll to deal with vampires and mummies sing his mace. Mazzy successfully dispatched greater wolfweres with tansheron's bow under Improved Haste. And Jan backstabbed six guardian genies to death with the staff of striking. A nice critical this one:[spoiler][/spoiler]Samia's party suffered from pre-set traps and a Chaos from Jan, Haer'Dalis's Remove Magic, and four hard-hitting warriors plus Kitthix. The ring of human influence was found on one of the wolfweres, Jan cast Chaos unseen on both Tazok and Chieftain DigDag. They dropped a girdle of hill giant strength, a good item for Jaheira, and the less interesting sling of seeking. Conster fell to traps, and Firkraag was left alone for the time being.
The last big Chapter 2 quest followed: the Planar Sphere. Valygar was temporarily recruited, just to open the sphere. Chaos confused most of a first group of about six halfling warriors.[spoiler][/spoiler]It's the only disabler I keep memorized. Improved Kitthix helped out with Togan and Entu. Kayardi failed to recover from Haer'Dalis's Remove Magic, and Taibela and Necre proved doable as well after they were affected by some removal spells. To their credit, Necre did injure Jaheira and Mazzy and even kill Jan with two sequencered Skull Traps.[spoiler][/spoiler]Lavok came with the following pre-cast spells:[spoiler][/spoiler]Haer'Dalis polymorphed in Mustard Jelly form again to deal with any ADHWs that might follow (he should have had fire protection in place, but luckily it proved uncalled for this time). Jan removed Lavok's Spell Shield with a Secret Word. During Time Stop Lavok summoned Skeleton Warriors, and he cast Chaos, Remove Magic (at HD) and indeed ADHW.[spoiler][/spoiler]The dispel also reached Jan, so the gnome retreated. Anomen and Amahoro dealt with the skeleton warriors. A second ADHW followed. When Anomen cast Greater Divine Protection (immunity to damage plus 100% MR for three rounds), Lavok seemed so concerned that he cast a Khelben's Warding Whip at Anomen. His PfMW expired soon after that and the party pelted him into submission. Jan found Daystar in a chest beneath Lavok. An exciting mage battle didn't take place with Tolgerias. His aide did her best, but Tolgerias was just standing still, doing nothing. Maybe an quick hit interfered with his scripting. The elemental rooms were no problem, thanks to the right buffs. Only the noble efreeti can be a pain, due to his gaseous form, but hasted Amahoro managed to finish him off.
The demons, Gilyn's bane in November last year, weren't able to repeat that feat with Amahoro. Jan and Haer'Dalis stayed back as the fully buffed warriors went to work. There was a slight upset when PfFear expired and one of the demons managed to fear Amahoro, but Anomen repaired that. The Lea'liyil, the most powerful of the three demons, dropped the Tuigan Bow and the first of two wardstones introduced by Item Randomisation, which are needed to get to Kangaxx (he is sealed further away with this mod component).[spoiler][/spoiler]
@Blackraven: How reliable is jelly form against beholders in your install? Last I checked, Death Ray bypassed magic resistance and the save penalty was at -4, and I'd think that few characters who could cast Polymorph Self would be able to hit an undispellable -3 save vs. death.
@Blackraven: How reliable is jelly form against beholders in your install? Last I checked, Death Ray bypassed magic resistance and the save penalty was at -4, and I'd think that few characters who could cast Polymorph Self would be able to hit an undispellable -3 save vs. death.
Oh wow, Haer'dalis would have certainly perished... Jelly form 100% reliable in my install. MR blocks Death Ray, see the following screenshot:[spoiler][/spoiler]Note that I'm running with SCS v32 (release candidate 8). Maybe @DavidW knows if this is intended behavior, if he's around? I'm playing on insane difficulty, so either SCS v32 has nerfed Death Ray or something is not working the way it should in my install.
Live by the sword, die by the sword... Gorch the evil half-orc shadowdancer got chunked from full health in one backstab by one of the duplicate Shennara at the top of the Iron Throne tower. Poetic justice, I guess. Fed his own medicine. He and his 3 party members were at the XP cap and the run felt unstoppable up to that point. A not-so-subtle reminder to be cautious with CHARNAME. RIP Gorch.
I'm going to update my rig with the latest SCS release candidate before starting another run. New character coming shortly
I'm giving yet another update, a brief one, because I've noticed a anomaly with my install, with the smarter dragons component.
Amahoro and company sent the Knights of Solamnia home, and had Cromwell create the Girdle of Glory (AC +3) out of the different AC belts. They went to the Umar Hills to test their mettle against Thaxll'ssillyia. Everyone pre-buffed to the max. Let me write those buffs down for once, to give an idea of what I'm doing in this run.
- Jan and Haer'dalis: Stoneskin, Strength, Ghost/Spirit Armor, MST/MSD, Spell Shield (Haer'dalis), Blur, MI, II (Jan), SI:Abjuration, Haste. Occasionally they also have fire protections in place. - Anomen and Amahoro: Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, PfE 10' Radius, Remove Fear, Prayer, Recitation, Entropy Shield, Holy Power, Righteous Magic, DuHM. Anomen also casts the level 7 spell Impervious Sanctity of Mind (usually before resting, since it lasts longer than the 8 hours the spell description advertises). - Jaheira: Ironskins and those divine buffs that she can cast. She's usually the first of the casters to be ready for battle. - Mazzy only casts one Strength on herself in case she ends up in melee (she knows Strength, Champion's Strength, and Strength of One; I always pick the first one for its duration).
Haer'dalis got the best AC items (like the recently forged belt) because he was going to tank the dragon. He was also protected from level drain, and fireshielded (red). Everyone spread out.[spoiler][/spoiler]Haer'dalis initiated combat with a Lower Resistance (30% MR reduction), and managed to land a blow with his blade, poisoning the dragon before its PfMW triggered through a contingency. A moment later Jan further reduced its MR by 23%. At that point the others already started to dish out (non-physical) damage, with wands of fire, magic missiles, and the heavens.[spoiler][/spoiler]Haer'dalis then cast a second Lower Resistance, and from that point we just kept the pressure on with Holy Smites, wands and damage spells.[spoiler][/spoiler]It was over rather fast. I checked Thaxxy's HPs in EEKeeper, and he only had 169 HPs, despite my having installed the increased dragon staying power SCS component. Its spells (Remove Magic, Breach, Death Spell) were SCS-like, and its kit is Kensai, which is also typical of SCS. So it's probably just the increased HPs that failed to install. I'm not sure the outcome would have been very different with triple HPs because HD's Lower Resistances lasted close to two turns, so that's a lot of flamestrikes, scorchers, holy smites etc. Still, I would have preferred everything to be working as they were supposed to.
Cromwell forged the shadow dragon armor, only for Amahoro to discover she can't wear in combination with her guard's ring. Afaik protection rings/cloaks/amulets can normally be used with natural armors (dragon/ankheg/beetle), no? Amahoro decided to stick to full plate, accepting she'll have to take it oof at times, when she wants to HiS.
We toggled SCS settings in-game (a new feature with SCS v32), to make sure the settings for dragons were ok. Firkraag was then paid a visit, but he too, had his normal HPs (184). The party battled him anyway. In addition to standard buffs, everyone was protected from fire. At this point we had several items anti-fire: Dragon Helm, Helm of Brilliance, Ring of Fire Resistance, Ring of Fire Control, Anomen's shield. They were complemented by spells/potions. Haer'dalis was again the one to taunt and occupy Firkraag. He cast a Strength spell, to lower the dragon's strength from 25 to 18/50. Mazzy was the only one who wasn't completely fire resistant, and Firkraag must have sensed it:[spoiler][/spoiler]Look at the insane amount of damage Firkraag's capable of: 125 damage after a successful saving throw? Yikes! Still with Jan and Haer'dalis around to breach the dragon's defenses, fear and fire damage not an issue, and some buffed up warriors pelting him, Firkraag's fate was - again, sooner rather than later - sealed.[spoiler][/spoiler]In addition to Carsomyr (not randomised presumably because of its importance for the paladin stronghold), he dropped a ring of free action, the Reflex, and a cloak of the shield.
This was in fact the second cloak of the shield we got, and that may be due to a bug I had earlier (about two updates ago) with the game crashing to desktop when I opened varying shop inventories. I uninstalled everything, the game even, and reinstalled everything with Item Randomiser's existing save game compatibility option. It may lead to some items being duplicated and other disappearing, making stuff even more random than it already is...
Anomen's turn to shine came when the party went to clean up the vampire guild. His Turn Undead skill was such that he simply blew up all the vampires, except Tanova, whose protections we removed before Anomen finished her with a crit from his Mace of Disruption.[spoiler][/spoiler]The shadow thief mage even survived. The companions staked one of the vampires, saw Bodhi appear, retreated to buff, but took too long which prompted Bodhi to call it a day.
The party acquired a ring of wizardry from the Mage stronghold, but two apprentices died in making it On that sad not they left for Spellhold to look for Imoen.
Next up Mendel spent a fair while cutting the golems at High Hedge to pieces. The sheer number of successful stealth attacks needed for that was a bit daunting, but he got the first golem done without ever being attacked himself. For the second though he dropped out of stealth surprisingly quickly when trying to make one attack and got taken down to 1 HP by a critical - good job his HP rolls have been so high!
Despite his weakened state Mendel pressed the attack and was not attacked again - finishing the golem with a critical of his own for some fitting revenge.
After resting for several weeks to heal up at the FAI (monks don't get lay on hands until level 7), Mendel made his way back to Nashkel and ventured into the nearby mine. He stealthed through there with the exception of setting a couple of spiders on each other. Inside Mulahey's cave he charmed one of the kobolds to pull the others away and then charmed Mulahey and fed him to the kobolds.
Outside the mine the Amazons went the way of many others by being charmed and worn down before Mendel attempted to administer the coup de grace. One of them was annoyingly killed by lightning, even though it didn't appear to be raining, but the others were all safely bagged, with Lamalha being rendered helpless to resist by a ghoul.
In Nashkel, Nimbul fought hard against the Amnian soldiers, killing all but one of them. When he had the last of them down to 10 HPs though, the soldier got a critical to reduce Nimbul to 3 HPs - and Mendel was ready and waiting with his LMD.
Moving on to Beregost, Karlat was sub-contracted to soak up all Tranzig's spells, before being given the traditional thank-you present.
I wanted to have the bandit Camp non-hostile to make dealing with Venkt & co easier, so got a lift there with Raiken. Raemon was successfully charmed at the first attempt before he could talk and pulled outside.
Mendel didn't have much luck with XP there, with Raemon, Britik and Taurgosz all dying to high criticals from enemies. However, the main purpose of opening up the Cloakwood was accomplished.
After resting to get Bhaal horror, Mendel was happy to see his reputation climb and completed a number of quests while doing that. Unfortunately the hard work required to acquire a skeleton skull didn't pay off as Melicamp failed his resurrection check. There was another hard bit of work at the minesite where all the diggers had to be killed for virtually no reward. Mendel started attacking the Doomsayer there, but he was hard to hit even with stealth attacks and his 300+ HPs looked too daunting to continue the attack for the moment.
Instead Mendel made his way through the Cloud Peaks, finally getting up to level 7 and acquiring Lay on Hands.
He also maintained his excellent HPs with 10 more there.
Attacking xvarts one at a time north of the Carnival allowed Mendel to save Arabelle and push his reputation up to 19. The final point was then gained by sneaking through the basilisk area to depetrify Tamah. With shop prices now looking good value, Mendel went on a quick shopping tour before considering his next step.
Fatigue reduces Luck, which skews dice rolls against you so you will deal less damage and suffer more on average. At max fatigue your Luck is penalized by 99 which means you’ll always be taking maximum damage while dealing minimum damage.
Specifically, you take more damage from enemy spells, while dealing less damage with your own weapons. It only applies to incoming spell damage and outgoing weapon damage; a party with luck penalties won't deal less damage with its own spells or take more damage from enemy weapons. Thus, your longsword will deal less damage and an enemy Fireball will deal more.
Lower fatigue doesn't imply such severe penalties, but since every luck penalties apply to every dice roll, even a few points of bad luck can be very dangerous. Once you hit -5 luck, an enemy Fireball will always do maximum damage because each d6 gets cranked up to 6.
You start taking luck penalties after you hit 7 fatigue, which amounts to -1 luck. In IWD, a Haste spell applies 7 fatigue, but in BG, it only applies 4. Casting two Haste spells in the same day would leave you with -2 luck altogether in BG, not counting other bonuses or penalties (Constitution and time without resting also affect fatigue, but I don't know by how much).
In Mendel's first update everything was pretty serene, but he found things much harder going in the second and almost died. If things continued to get worse in the third session he wasn't going to survive, but would that happen?
Well, in a two words, Hell Yes. I returned to the minesite with a view to using a newly purchased wand of the heavens on the Doomsayer. First though I thought I would get a bit more XP and treasure by killing Laryssa (I always lure Brage away from her before talking to him, so that she remains there for later). Knowing her first spell would be the potentially dangerous rigid thinking, Mendel retreated when she started casting that and successfully hid in the shadows (though as he was out of sight when she finished the spell she wouldn't have come after him anyway). The next spell would be hold person and Mendel stayed in sight attacking her secure in the knowledge his ring of free action would shrug that off - and so it would if he hadn't taken it off after just buying the Claw of Kazgaroth ...
The rooftop basilisks at Durlag's Tower are indeed killed by Nyx while escorted by an invisible Yang, earning both sorcerers a level.
Spells gained: Color Spray (aTweaks), Detect Invisibility, Skull Trap; Shadow Rope, Dark Mirage, Expunge Magic. -Shadow Rope (lv.1): Target is pulled toward the caster and cannot take any actions for 1 round. No save, no MR. -Dark Mirage (lv.2): Blur+Mirror Image. Lasts 1 hour, not counting WIS-based duration bonus. -Expunge Magic (lv.3): As Dispel Magic, but cast at 1.5x caster level, including INT-based caster level bonus.
Sirenes and flesh golems are hunted down at Alaric's Cave for level 8. Being elves, the sorcerers are pretty much immune to charm and also have good AC for mages due to wearing their respective Archmagi robes, so they were not in much danger from the sirenes.
Spells gained: Greater Malison; Summon Shadow, Minor Sequencer -Minor Sequencer is automatically gained by Shadow Weave users upon being able to cast 4th level spells. -Summon Shadow (lv.4): Summons 3 shadows for 2 hours based on caster level. -7: 3 shadows -9: 3 shadow fiends -12: 3 wraiths -16+: 2 wraiths and a devil shade
Thanks to Yin's INT-based caster level bonus, he can already summon shadow fiends. Inside the Ulcaster Ruins, 3 shadow fiends are summoned to kill Ivette Cold-Whisperer, one of Darkflame's apprentices. They win easily as they paralyze her while Nyx escorts them. The Wolf of Ulcaster is also easily culled by more shadow fiends, as they knock it away by casting Impose.
Feeling confident in the Shadow Fiends' ability to kill things, we sic them on Kahrk while invisible. He puts up quite the fight as he tries to run away, but the fiends' Impose spell gets the better of him, getting him trapped up on the ridge that leads down to Carsa. The fiends paralyze and soon devour Kahrk after his PfMW wears off.
With just about all the wilderness areas cleared out, it's time to progress the plot. I figure that sneaking in to the camp again is the best idea so we can take out Venkt without being harassed by archers and Taurgosz. A Greater Malison + Night Terrors combo sends everyone except one bandit inside the tent into a panic. The sole brave bandit is blinded by Nyx, which allows us to kill them all without retaliation.
Once we loot the bodies, the tent, and Ender Sai's chest, we try to take on the rest of the bandit camp. Web and Grease see most of the bandits incapacitated, but some make their save and Taurgosz resists both. Greater Malison + Shadow Binding weakens the bandits further and holds Tenhammer in place. It's at this point that I realize we're chock full of disablers, but with not much way to kill the disabled bandits when Yin's shadow fiends get caught in the Web too. Skull Trap kind of works, but then I realize that Yang still has 2 Cloudkill scrolls. He uses one and it instantly kills all the bandits caught in the Web + Grease trap, including a bunch from juuuust beyond the party's visual range at the bottom left.
Cloakwood is cleared by summoned shadow fiends. Baby wyverns give us the last push of XP to get to level 9.
Spells gained: Stoneskin, Minor Spell Deflection, Mirror Image; Shadeskin, Impose, Shadowfade -Shadeskin (lv.4): As Stoneskin but gives 25% elemental damage resistance as long as one skin is still up. -Impose (lv.3): Knocks one enemy at close range far away, dealing 3d6 crushing damage and stunning it for 1 round. No save, no MR. -Shadowfade (lv.2): As invisibility but with a minor healing effect if the recipient is a Shadow Weave user.
Drasus's party is thoroughly dismantled. Of their own accord, summoned Wraiths led by Nyx all cast Impose on Rezdan, sending him flying straight through the palisade despite it being a solid wall! At the same time, Kysus is blinded by a backstab from Nyx, rendering him mostly harmless. Nyx then casts Blinding Darkness on Genthore, blinding him as well. The wraiths then drain the life out of Drasus.
The fight is basically over. The mage who crashed through the wall Dragonball Z style just needs to be dealt with. He is on an inaccessible part of the moat now. This would pose a slight problem if it weren't for the fact that the summoned wraiths can cast Shadow Walk to teleport over to Rezdan.
Genthore is cleaned up with a Shadow Binding for automatic hits.
Under invisibility and stealth, both sorcerers and their mephit waltz right through the mine without attracting attention. Davaeorn's guard is dealt with by using Blindness for reduced AC. Nyx disables all but one of the traps in the secret hallway which turned out to be a Glyph of Warding trap that she saved against. Summoned wraiths and their nasty shadow weave spells kill Dave's Doom Guards without turning him hostile.
When Nyx and the wraiths attack Dave, he releases a Web + Stinking Cloud minor sequencer into the four-way intersection, but this only hinders his hired help. Dave is soon overwhelmed and drained of many levels.
After the mines are cleared, I decide I want to turn in the wyvern head to Kelddath, but I remember that I haven't killed Bassilus yet. With his ability to summon a fearsome non-aTweak'd Aerial Servant, it's a good idea not to tangle with him. But with summoned wraiths, Greater Malison, and a Shadow Binding, he is easily brought down to size. Free Action is no protection against Shadow Binding.
The Halruaan mage at the thieves guild is the first time the sorcerers are put into real danger. A lightning bolt from him apparently strikes Yin twice and does massive damage despite his Shadeskin being up. Resar also evades a Spell Thrust by leaving the small room where he and Alatos Ravenscar normally stand. I am NOT installing this component of SCS again if it still works by summoning an invisible creature in v32, and will simply turn on the flag that lets them be cast at invisible opponents. A sunfire from Resar also toasts three of the resident rogues, thankfully without turning Alatos hostile.
After Lothander is freed of his geas, Nyx and Yang block the stairway he always uses to escape the area and paralyze him with Wands of Paralysis. Now Yin also has a pair of boots of speed to use if he needs them.
The rest of the quest is resolved in short order and BG's sidequest hell is halfway done.
Comments
5 Kythorn 1368:
KEY EVENT: Clearing the black at Larswood was not nearly as challenging as its northern neighbor Peldvale, well except that Jaheira is completely lost to me, beyond resurrection. In a Druid grove, I encountered two druids, the first of which immediately attacked us, accusing us of murdering his fellow druids. He had two Cave Bears with him that had my attention early, (as I wasn’t much concerned about the druid). He was more dangerous than I expected, because as my retinue was dispatching a Cave Bear, he cast Call Lightning & obliterated Jaheira, to the point where there was nothing that could be done to bring her back. Shortly afterward, we defeated him, & then, upon close questioning the 2nd druid became hostile. We defeated him quickly, as well as another Cave Bear (three in all), a Dread Wolf & a Wild Dog that he summoned to help him.
WHAT THE HELL? (I was planning on having Jaheira & Dorn, & both got killed by stupid stuff
)
I ran upon another Bandit gang, eight of them, led by a fighter/bandit. As before, they were not a challenge. There weren’s as many BTE here either, so I think we go further north next. The search for Tazok continues.
After Jaheira’s demise, I enlisted a Cleric, Drake, to fill her spot. He’s a Cleric of Tyr, so I’m not sure. This group is getting a little too sensitive me thinks. I’ll see how Drake performs.
Best Kill Competition:
· Khalid (Osmadi), Eldoth (Corsone) (1000 exp ea)
· Minsc (Tranzig, 950 exp)
· Imoen, (Silke, 900 exp)
CASUALTIES: Jaheira, beyond raise or resurrection (Osmadi, Call Lightning)
MONSTERS DEFEATED: Osmadi (Druid/7), Corsone (Druid/7), Tevin (Fighter-Bandit/6), Cave Bear (3), Dread Wolves (2), Black Talon Elite (2), Dire Wolves (7), Bandits (7), Wild Dog
NOTEWORTHY TREASURE: (Purse = 5644gp) Armor & weapons: Gems/jewelry: Potions: Scrolls: Wands: Misc & Artifacts:
CURRENT DISPOSITION: Resting, recuperating, recovering & resupplying at The Burning Wizard.
NEXT STEPS: North of Peldvale
LEVEL UP: Eldoth, Bard/4, Khalid, Ranger (Archer)/3, Imoen, Thief (Adventurer)/4,
PARTY MAKEUP: (Reputation: 10)
· Silas Cl/3(Lorekeeper of Oghma) (HP18) S/mail +1, M/star* & Rg of Energy; Spells: Command (3), Doom;(Gnoll Veteran)(AI none)
· Khalid Rgr/2(Archer)(HP27) S/Leather w/L/bow*** & B/sword*; (Neira)(AI: Ftr Ranged Atk)(3)
· Imoen Th/4 (Adventurer)(HP25) S/Leather +2 w/S/bow* (w/Bracers of Archery) & S/sword +1* & Wand of MMs, Skills: OL 60, FT 50, PP35, MS 45, HS 40, DI 15, ST10; (Silke)(Thf Rgd Atk)(4)
· Minsc Ftr/2 (Barbarian)(HP19) C/mail +1 & 2H/sword; S/ability: Bsk, Bar Rg; (Nimbul)(AI: Ftr Def)
· Eldoth Bd/4 (HP20) S/Leather w/L/bow* & Scimitar*, Spells: MM(2), S/ability: Poison arrows; (Mulahey)(AI:Wzd Agg)(6)
· Drake Cl/3 (Holy Justice of Tyr)(HP30) S/mail, M/shield, Warhammer* & Sling*, S/ability: H/Person, Str/of One
MOD USED: BG NPC v23.3, BG NPC Music v6, Plane Touched Races _v0,0, Indira v12, Isra v2.3, Finch v4.0, Gavin v14, Drake, Sirene v2.5, Verr’sza v5.2, BG UB v16, Tweaks Anthology Beta 4, Song & Silence v9, Deities of Faerun, Rogue Rebalancing v491, Level 1 NPCs, SCS v31, aTweaks, Item Randomizer v7
Blue Font: New information;
Red Font: Monster encounters (first use)
(Best kill)(Current AI)(Chain of Command)
A Tale of Two Sorcerers
Meet Yin and Yang, Shadow Disciple and Dragon Disciple.A Shadow Disciple is merely a sorcerer version of the Shadow Adept, whose abilities can be found here. Shadow Magic spells are listed here because there's a lot of them, since it IS a new casting system after all. I'll try to give brief descriptions to spells when I get them.
TL;DR:
Shadow Magic is generally stronger than normal magic from the Weave, but it temporarily drains CON points equal to the spell level unless the caster can save vs. death with a -1 penalty per spell level.
So, let's go. Yin takes the Ring of Wizardry from the hidey-hole at the Friendly Arm. The day/night cycle in the game is much more relevant since Yin suffers a -2 caster level & -2 casting speed penalty in daylight, so we're careful to only travel at night. The belt ogre on the Coast Way is blinded and then picked off from range by Yang's sling.
Blinding Dark: As Blindness but with a -2 save penalty.
Shadow Missile: 1d4 magical damage, +1 cold per missile. -1 THAC0 penalty for each missile that hits, up to 5 at caster level 9 as Magic Missile.
Spells gained: Curse; Grease
-Curse: As IWD Curse (-1 penalty to saves/THAC0/morale) but ignores MR.
Spells gained: Night Terrors, Deep Slumber; Web, Magic Missile
-Night Terrors (lv. 2): As Horror but with a -2 save penalty. At caster level 14, gains the effects of Death Spell.
-Deep Slumber (lv. 1): As Sleep but hit opponents awaken immediately. At caster level 9, creatures above 4 HD can be affected but with no save penalty.
Spells gained: Shadow Binding, Shadow Walk; Spell Thrust, Invisibility
-Shadow Binding (lv. 3): Hold Monster but works on anything not immune to Hold Creature 2. Save vs. spell at -4 negates. Ignores MR.
-Shadow Walk (lv. 2): As Dimension Door but destination can only be within sight range.
Yin - Shadow Disciple 6
Yang - Dragon Disciple 6
Episode 3 of this multiplayer duo started off reasonably well, standing on the corpses of four amazons it was obvious that we were to pay Nimbul a visit. Qat welcoming him with an open quarterstaff and a fatal backstab.
Tranzig survived his backstab and ran in panic, forgetting to turn hostile which meant the three snares on the ground remained inactive. Henn tried to target him but failed several times and Qat eventually got the killing blow.
On to Cloakwood. We skipped through the first area, and had much fun with ettercaps in the second - their saving throws proving to be far better than their avoidance of arrows and bolts. The third area was skipped too, with the fourth seeing a couple of mercenaries cut down on the bridge. We found a party waiting for us inside the mine stockade, they however failed to see through our stealth. We set three snares at our feet then Qat went to backstab Kysus. Henn shot at Rezdan and by the time we ran behind the site hut both mages were dead.
Henn managed to hide (with 15 hide and 10 stealth this was not expected), and with Qat also hidden we went for more backstabs. Genthore and Drasus both survived, but with Drasus chasing Henn this left Genthore open to another decisive strike by Qat. Henn dragged Drasus around then stood to fight as Qat delivered another backstab. Henn then ran Drasus around before we repeated a stand + backstab to good effect.
With the mine now open to us we sneaked in and took care of a few enemies before Henn cleared 4 of the 5 traps leading up to Davaeorn, 80% detection doing a fair job. Qat bravely stepped into the 5th (undetected but known) trap, then we set about Davaeorn. He managed a few laps of the area, his movement annoying Qat's backstab efforts. After one attack, Davaeorn started casting at Qat so Henn took the opportunity of pegging him with an arrow and down he went.
Baldur's Gate was next, with the poison quest completed - Lothander using his boots of speed to escape before our meagre effort of killing him could even start. We thought about the ogre gauntlets so dabbled in a spot of ennui, only to confirm Qat could not wear them and they gave Henn (18/98 strength) no benefit. A potion of mirrored eyes helped down a greater basilisk and we rounded the session off by defeating Ramazith and his jellies.
Henn is wounded, slowed and this should be enough of a clue for next time that we should sneakily head up the tower to loot Ramazith's hoard.
Yeldon - half-elf cleric/ranger, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Keras - dwarven kensai (Grond0)
Denko - human dark moon monk (Grond0)
Well the Trio did well, but ran into a problem. More on that in a moment.
*1st thing we dealt with was 2nd pocket plane challenge - this went well and easy victory
* Next was Oasis - Keras got killed - so instead of fighting, decided that we could pick up Answerer and then run for the border
* In Amkethran, we only bought some things from the smugglers and met Saemon and helped the druid
* We then worked on Sendai's lair. Keras died quite a few times here, but we did all the way through and even defeated Sendai herself.
One of the keys was going invisible and not fighting the large group of dwarven fighters. We also used Ronarch's horn on Ogremech and that worked nicely.
Finally it was time for Draconis. Yeldon had used a potion of shielding so that was good. What was not so good was when Draconis changed to dragon form.
We got the dreaded "trapped in enemy circle bug" - Yeldon was under attack and could not move!
Yeldon tried to potion but his aura was clouded. The others aura was also clouded so they could not attempt RoR either - RIP Yeldon.
Gery - half-elf archer (Grond0)
Yertone - human inquisitor (Corey_Russell)
Tabetha - gnome illusionist / thief (Gate70)
With a bit of time left in our standard session, we created a new party. As usual we independently picked characters, but still managed to come up with a pretty good mix - including a tank, missileer and utility arcane and thieving support.
This trio needs to go a long way to beat the mark set by the last lot at Draconis and didn't have the opportunity to make much inroad into that today. In case we want Ogre Droth's helmet later, we left Shoal after exiting Candlekeep and went to Beregost before heading on south to Nashkel to pick up some ankheg armor for Yertone. A few encounters on the way were largely dealt with by sleep spells from Tabetha.
Archer - L1, 14 HPs, 9 kills
Inquisitor - L1, 15 HPs, 6 kills, 0 deaths
Illusionist/thief - L1/1, 7 HPs, 6 kills, 0 deaths
I've had clustering issues myself in 2.5 though not with such dramatic outcomes (yet). What are your - and other no-reloaders' - thoughts on reloading in a case like this? I think I'm generally a pretty strict no-reloader, rarely allowing myself reloads, but I think I'd be ok with myself if I reloaded here. Is the occurrence of this bug reasonably preventable? Is the player forced to attack Draconis from range (with spells/missiles) to be sure they won't get trapped in his circle?
Good luck with your new trio!
I've actually perished to that bug twice before against Draconis - in single player I now attack his human form from range to prompt a conversion to dragon (which avoids being trapped when his icon expands).
I would definitely reload. I'm specifically sticking with v2.3 until this issue with personal space gets fixed. This only happens in rare cases in v2.3, not with the much higher frequency that v2.5 seems to elicit.
The Blue Mage and the Black Mage vs. Legacy of Bhaal: Part 2
As a reminder:
Time to start Siege of Dragonspear!
The party went through Korlasz's dungeon the same way they went through most of Baldur's Gate 1: they threw Skeleton Warriors at enemies until those enemies died. Though on the second floor, Shihuza cleared one encounter by repeatedly casting Skull Trap while under the effects of a Protection from Undead scroll.
The other undead encounters were worse, though. In the other encounters, there were undead that could drain levels (Wights, Cold Wights, Imbued Wights, and Wraiths). For some reason, the Skeleton Warriors summoned by Animate Dead are not immune to level drain. In those battles, Shihuza had to back up the minions by using her Wand of the Heavens on dangerous undead.
The party cleared the crypt, resting only once.
Before retiring to the Ducal Palace, the party used all their gold to buy stuff from the Flaming Fist Healer. Then when they were back in Baldur's Gate, they sold the valuable equipment they had carried over from BG1.
The party sold one of their Rings of Wizardry. Rings of Wizardry are much less useful when your party's only first level mage spells are Protection from Evil, Protection from Petrification, Larloch's Minor Drain, and Chill Touch.
In the dungeon, Korlasz broke free. This was her punishment.
The march to Dragonspear begins! The party recruited Glint (I'm still not too familiar with SOD so I don't want to be wandering around in a party without a thief where a trap could totally screw them over). Then they fought there way through the dwarven excavation. By this point, Shihuza had reached the point where she could turn weak undead creatures.
In the second part of the dungeon, Shihuza switched out her Skull Traps for Hold Undead spells. Hold Undead actually worked pretty well.
(It appears that Hold Undead can actually hold more than 1d4 undead creatures)
There was only one hitch: one encounter in which the party received a taste of their own medicine and had to fight two Skeleton Warriors, which received the full Legacy of Bhaal bonuses. The party's own Skeleton Warriors were not tough enough to beat these, so Aseigh dealt with them.
Coldhearth himself was actually easier than the fight before him. The party sent one Skeleton Warrior at him, on which he used Death Spell, then Shihuza animated another and sent all five skeletons against the lich. The party then shut the door to Coldhearth's lair, and the lich did not open the door.
The party then quickly acquired and destroyed Coldhearth's phylactery before he could respawn.
I finished up this chapter and moved on to the Boarskyr Bridge chapter. There I had intended to recruit Voghiln (I've never used him before), but during one of the encounters in the area, he got killed before I could talk to him!
I thought this was kind of lame, so I consoled Volghin in and had him join the party. As a penalty for my use of the console, for this playthrough, Voghiln is not allowed to learn or memorize any non-alteration spells, and I removed all non-alteration spells from his spellbook. He does not automatically know all alteration spells.
The troll cave was a tricky battle. This wasn't because the trolls were too tough, but because entering the cave required all party members to enter at once, and the trolls could not leave the cave (had they been able to, I could've lured them out to have them fight the Skeleton Warriors outside). There was no room in the cave to summon five Skeleton Warriors safely.
Here's how I beat the troll cave: I had all party members go invisible using an Invisibility 10' Radius scroll and enter the cave. Asiegh then cast Improved Mantle, and then he cast Imprisonment on one of the trolls. He had 3 9th-level spell slots per day, so he could imprison 3 trolls per day. I didn't let him imprison more than two trolls at a time because I was worried that Improved Mantle would wear off while he was casting Imprisonment. If that happened, he'd be dead pretty much instantly. Sometimes I'd have Shihuza kill a troll with Finger of Death, but that broke her invisibility and she didn't have any good way of protecting herself (no Mirror Image, no Stoneskin, no Protection from Magical Weapons-type spells). Mostly I just had Aseigh imprison the trolls. After doing this repeatedly, all the trolls had been imprisoned or killed.
On to the bridge. The party stopped by the goblin cave, which had the same problems as the troll cave: the entire party had to enter it, and the enemies couldn't be lured out. Instead, the party made their stand in the cave.
The party then headed out to the Forest of Wyrms. Things went fine until they got up to Morenthrene's cave. I was really scared of this fight (I've never done it before) so I made a test save to see if I could beat it.
This time, I was right to worry. My party was killed in the first two tries. The first was when I had forgotten to make my party immune to fear, and Morenthrene hit my whole party with her fear aura. The second was when one of the young dragons got past the couple of skeletons Shihuza had managed to summon in time, headed straight to the vulnerable party (even though the party was invisible) and killed several party members.
But after that, there were a couple of times when the party managed to win the fight. Aseigh got rid of Morenthrene in the only reliable way:
After that, the Skeleton Warriors, Imprisonment spells, and Finger of Death spells handled the other enemies in the fight.
But that was just a test run. I was still too scared to do this fight for real, so I decided not to do this dungeon, and I went back to the bridge to just fight the Crusaders.
They weren't that bad. Even before the Flaming Fists (who get full Legacy of Bhaal bonuses) showed up, the Skeleton Warriors were handling things pretty well, with the help of support from the party. Glint cast Recitation, then the party's mages cast Greater Malison and Confusion from scrolls on the enemy army.
After beating the Crusaders' main force, the party had to prevent them from blowing up the bridge. The five Skeleton Warriors were hasted and sent right to where the Crusaders were; this didn't turn them hostile. Then the party approached them. Aseigh and Shihuza started off by firing their Wands of Paralysis on the mage that was about to cast Summon Horrible Fire Creatures. But the mage made both saves! Uh oh. But the Skeleton Warriors saved the day at the last second!
After that, they were easy to deal with.
Next chapter! On the way to Dead Man's Pass, the party was waylaid by enemies in a dead magic area! Wands still work in dead magic, so the party used a Wand of Summoning to summon a few meatshields.
But then, Aseigh lost half his health in a backstab by a Shadowdancer, so I got scared and the party made a run for it.
Upon reaching Dead Man's Pass, the party first fought a pack of displacer beasts, which the Skeleton Warriors dealt with easily enough. Then they fought some orogs. I wasn't expecting this to be that big of deal. But then...
[spoiler]
Aseigh was killed instantly (from full health) in a backstab by an Orog!
What an unsatisfying way to end a run. But yeah, that's that.
Here's my party right before the run ended:
This was a cool party. Despite the fact that Aseigh and Shihuza ended up at really high level, they were nowhere near as powerful as a regular Throne of Bhaal PC of the same class and level. Aside from Animate Dead spam, their abilities were perfectly balanced for Baldur's Gate 1 and Siege of Dragonspear on Legacy of Bhaal, because of the limitations I had placed on which spells they could use.
I had designed this party because I liked the idea of having characters who could defeat Legacy of Bhaal enemies by killing them instantly rather than by slowly dealing damage to them. But most of the game ended up consisting simply of throwing Skeleton Warriors at battles to win. The next time I try out Legacy of Bhaal, I'm planning on using a character who is overpowered but isn't allowed to summon any creature that gets Legacy of Bhaal bonuses.
[/spoiler]
Frisky Bits the Fighter/Mage/Cleric
Not lob though. I am not sure how much you would need for that...
The clue was too much to be ignored, so we sneaked up the tower and looted Ramazith's goodies. Henn eventually hid again and was baulked down every level so decided Qat must have ignored stealth and just run down, or the guardians of the tower had wised up to him.
We grabbed a few items such as the Helm of Balduran, swept outside the city to pick up a forgotten tome of charisma and then went back to Candlekeep in search of Rieltar. We didn't find him, but were arrested instead. One jailbreak later we are helping ourselves to treasures from the catacombs when we are each poisoned by phase spiders. Henn glugs an elixir of health while throwing a scroll to Qat. Qat suggests another type of green scroll may be wise so Henn chucks them all over. Qat is still not happy and Henn eventually realises Qat is referring to a scroll obtained much earlier and tucked inside the scroll case. Qat eventually gets a scroll he is satisfied with.
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
The doppelgangers take a beating, one being the first opponent to see triple-figure damage (below).
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Prat hides himself away as his gang are killed, and two web traps cause problems for us. Henn is well and truly stuck so Qat drags two spiders and Prat away. Henn recovers and we make good our escape after finishing off Prat.
Baldur's Gate beckons again, and after picking up the Cloak of Balduran we defeat Slythe - as usual he put up a good show but standing on a trap and catching a dispelling arrow tends to limit one's potential.
The Coronation has been worrying Hen but Qat uses arrows of dispelling to good effect. Henn picks off the two doppelgangers attacking Liia and we still have time to save Belt. We dive into an ante-room with Belt in pursuit, show him the evidence and return to lure Sarevok away from Liia. Job done.
Not quite, says Belt, and sends us after Sarevok. We stroll through the thieves maze, Qat closing his eyes as Henn the de-trapper sets off a lightning trap then a fireball trap in rapid succession. Potions of absorbtion stop Qat taking damage and eliminate further damage to Henn, with our rings of protection from fire restricting the fire damage. We've got protection from undead scrolls running so melee the skeleton warriors and move on.
Rahvin and his gang take an early detonation as Qat targets Gorf. Henn backstabs Gorf to the floor, taking advantage of buffs to hide freely. We set about the rest of the gang and soon have them defeated.
Henn suggests we pick on the nearby skeleton warriors while protected from undead - mistake as Qat is targeted (these undead seem to ignore the scroll for clients from time to time and so it proved today). Qat engages in a bit of hit and run while Henn staggers along behind and picks off on the stragglers.
On the the temple of Bhaal, after a rest. We apply a precautionary buff each with green scrolls.
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Semaj fails to recognise his spells won't do much while the scrolls are running, and for that matter he fails to watch where he teleports to either. Henn is lined up to attack him but Qat gets a missile in first.
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Qat tempts Sarevok out and dispels him with an arrow, then we run him around for a while with missiles aimed in his direction. After a while Qat lays a trap and when that hurts Sarevok we repeat a few more times. Our fourth and last trap for Sarevok may have been enough to cut short his life but Henn has added a near point-blank acid-laden arrow to make certain.
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
On to Shadows of Amn
Grond0 comments that a pair of thieves should make reasonable work of escaping the chateau. True enough, although the cambion caused Henn to run and as Qat was dodging around corners he landed a decent strike with his quarterstaff for Henn to be able to relax once more.
Henn did get a bit concerned about taking a fiery dousing while unable to move. Qat was likely to avoid this but Henn was not 100% certain and begged for mercy.
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
The only other thing of note on our way out was whether Ulvaryl would escape. She would not.
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]
Ah. The promenade. Take a deep breath lads as things might get a bit heated next time.
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4
SoA: 6, 7, 8
Upon reporting back to the church, Amahoro was accepted into the clergy of Lathander. After some hesitation, I decided to give her the priest of Lathander kit, just as Anomen had received the priest of Helm kit when he passed his test (another NPC kitpack feature). It's first and foremost a RP/flavor thing, though I'm aware that both Amahoro and Anomen get slightly stronger thanks to their kit perks.
A well-buffed party progressed Jaheira's personal quest in yet another showdown with corrupt Harpers, and then moved on to accept the Shadow Thieves' aid over that of Bodhi and vampires. Anomen crushed the crypt king with his new mace. It yielded Jaheira a second +3 scimitar (Water's Edge), so that now she could at least dual-wield two +3 scimitars, even if their equipped / on-hit effects were underwhelming. Most of the time though, Anomen, Jaheira, and Amahoro would just carry shields.
The party failed to protect Mook, but they did prevent more shadow thieves from joining the other guild, and they also saved Arledrian from several vampires. Look at these three bad ass servants of the light, about to turn the tides and administer divine justice.[spoiler][/spoiler]Arledrian's rescue was worth another reputation point, allowing the party to finally upgrade Mazzy's Sword of Arvoreen to a +5 weapon (Item Upgrades again). Kitthix was improved as well. The good thing about Item Randomiser not leaving much of worth in stores, is that gold can be expended more easily on item upgrades.
Amahoro carried out her priestly duties with great care, without neglecting her job as ranger protecter of Imnesvale. The purported return of Umar proved to be a misunderstanding. But the party still had to clear the temple ruins of several undead, a glabrezu, and faux Umar. The glabrezu, spamming its teleport at will, PW:Stun and etherealness abilities, was a bit of a pain.[spoiler]
When the party left the mayor's house, they were completely unbuffed, the worst possible moment to be ambushed by more harpers: Dermin and co. Haer'Dalis and Jan cast Stoneskin. Anomen, Jaheira, Mazzy, and Amahoro have the advantage that they're always ready to fight (though the former three like to prebuff a lot). The efreeti, Cerebus and improved Kitthix were summoned to help out. Jaheira, Mazzy, and Haer'Dalis got slowed.; Jan and Jaheira silenced.[spoiler]
I had the game on pause for some time while doing other things, and I think that caused the rather early appearance of Terminsel back in Athkatla, to gift Jaheira the Harper Pin. Also in Athkatla, Amahoro was charged with murdering the Talassans, a task that didn't sit well with her. She was to enter the temple at night, and slaughter them preemptively, as they had apparently planned an assult on the church of Lathander. Amahoro put her trust in acolyte Lara, and saw the job through.
The party then moved on to the Windspear Hills. The Ruhk's kobolds were fireballed, while summons were used to make their foe waste some spells before the companions pummeled him to death. Anomen used a PfUndead scroll to deal with vampires and mummies sing his mace. Mazzy successfully dispatched greater wolfweres with tansheron's bow under Improved Haste. And Jan backstabbed six guardian genies to death with the staff of striking. A nice critical this one:[spoiler]
The last big Chapter 2 quest followed: the Planar Sphere. Valygar was temporarily recruited, just to open the sphere. Chaos confused most of a first group of about six halfling warriors.[spoiler]
An exciting mage battle didn't take place with Tolgerias. His aide did her best, but Tolgerias was just standing still, doing nothing. Maybe an quick hit interfered with his scripting. The elemental rooms were no problem, thanks to the right buffs. Only the noble efreeti can be a pain, due to his gaseous form, but hasted Amahoro managed to finish him off.
The demons, Gilyn's bane in November last year, weren't able to repeat that feat with Amahoro. Jan and Haer'Dalis stayed back as the fully buffed warriors went to work. There was a slight upset when PfFear expired and one of the demons managed to fear Amahoro, but Anomen repaired that. The Lea'liyil, the most powerful of the three demons, dropped the Tuigan Bow and the first of two wardstones introduced by Item Randomisation, which are needed to get to Kangaxx (he is sealed further away with this mod component).[spoiler]
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4
SoD: 5
SoA: 6, 7, 8, 9
I'm giving yet another update, a brief one, because I've noticed a anomaly with my install, with the smarter dragons component.
Amahoro and company sent the Knights of Solamnia home, and had Cromwell create the Girdle of Glory (AC +3) out of the different AC belts. They went to the Umar Hills to test their mettle against Thaxll'ssillyia.
Everyone pre-buffed to the max. Let me write those buffs down for once, to give an idea of what I'm doing in this run.
- Jan and Haer'dalis: Stoneskin, Strength, Ghost/Spirit Armor, MST/MSD, Spell Shield (Haer'dalis), Blur, MI, II (Jan), SI:Abjuration, Haste. Occasionally they also have fire protections in place.
- Anomen and Amahoro: Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, PfE 10' Radius, Remove Fear, Prayer, Recitation, Entropy Shield, Holy Power, Righteous Magic, DuHM. Anomen also casts the level 7 spell Impervious Sanctity of Mind (usually before resting, since it lasts longer than the 8 hours the spell description advertises).
- Jaheira: Ironskins and those divine buffs that she can cast. She's usually the first of the casters to be ready for battle.
- Mazzy only casts one Strength on herself in case she ends up in melee (she knows Strength, Champion's Strength, and Strength of One; I always pick the first one for its duration).
Haer'dalis got the best AC items (like the recently forged belt) because he was going to tank the dragon. He was also protected from level drain, and fireshielded (red). Everyone spread out.[spoiler]
Cromwell forged the shadow dragon armor, only for Amahoro to discover she can't wear in combination with her guard's ring. Afaik protection rings/cloaks/amulets can normally be used with natural armors (dragon/ankheg/beetle), no? Amahoro decided to stick to full plate, accepting she'll have to take it oof at times, when she wants to HiS.
We toggled SCS settings in-game (a new feature with SCS v32), to make sure the settings for dragons were ok. Firkraag was then paid a visit, but he too, had his normal HPs (184). The party battled him anyway. In addition to standard buffs, everyone was protected from fire. At this point we had several items anti-fire: Dragon Helm, Helm of Brilliance, Ring of Fire Resistance, Ring of Fire Control, Anomen's shield. They were complemented by spells/potions.
Haer'dalis was again the one to taunt and occupy Firkraag. He cast a Strength spell, to lower the dragon's strength from 25 to 18/50. Mazzy was the only one who wasn't completely fire resistant, and Firkraag must have sensed it:[spoiler]
This was in fact the second cloak of the shield we got, and that may be due to a bug I had earlier (about two updates ago) with the game crashing to desktop when I opened varying shop inventories. I uninstalled everything, the game even, and reinstalled everything with Item Randomiser's existing save game compatibility option. It may lead to some items being duplicated and other disappearing, making stuff even more random than it already is...
Anomen's turn to shine came when the party went to clean up the vampire guild. His Turn Undead skill was such that he simply blew up all the vampires, except Tanova, whose protections we removed before Anomen finished her with a crit from his Mace of Disruption.[spoiler]
The party acquired a ring of wizardry from the Mage stronghold, but two apprentices died in making it
Mendel didn't have much luck with XP there, with Raemon, Britik and Taurgosz all dying to high criticals from enemies. However, the main purpose of opening up the Cloakwood was accomplished.
Fatigue reduces Luck, which skews dice rolls against you so you will deal less damage and suffer more on average. At max fatigue your Luck is penalized by 99 which means you’ll always be taking maximum damage while dealing minimum damage.
In Mendel's first update everything was pretty serene, but he found things much harder going in the second and almost died. If things continued to get worse in the third session he wasn't going to survive, but would that happen?
A Tale of Two Sorcerers
BG1: 1The rooftop basilisks at Durlag's Tower are indeed killed by Nyx while escorted by an invisible Yang, earning both sorcerers a level.
Spells gained: Color Spray (aTweaks), Detect Invisibility, Skull Trap; Shadow Rope, Dark Mirage, Expunge Magic.
-Shadow Rope (lv.1): Target is pulled toward the caster and cannot take any actions for 1 round. No save, no MR.
-Dark Mirage (lv.2): Blur+Mirror Image. Lasts 1 hour, not counting WIS-based duration bonus.
-Expunge Magic (lv.3): As Dispel Magic, but cast at 1.5x caster level, including INT-based caster level bonus.
Spells gained: Greater Malison; Summon Shadow, Minor Sequencer
-Minor Sequencer is automatically gained by Shadow Weave users upon being able to cast 4th level spells.
-Summon Shadow (lv.4): Summons 3 shadows for 2 hours based on caster level.
-7: 3 shadows
-9: 3 shadow fiends
-12: 3 wraiths
-16+: 2 wraiths and a devil shade
Once we loot the bodies, the tent, and Ender Sai's chest, we try to take on the rest of the bandit camp. Web and Grease see most of the bandits incapacitated, but some make their save and Taurgosz resists both. Greater Malison + Shadow Binding weakens the bandits further and holds Tenhammer in place. It's at this point that I realize we're chock full of disablers, but with not much way to kill the disabled bandits when Yin's shadow fiends get caught in the Web too. Skull Trap kind of works, but then I realize that Yang still has 2 Cloudkill scrolls. He uses one and it instantly kills all the bandits caught in the Web + Grease trap, including a bunch from juuuust beyond the party's visual range at the bottom left.
Cloakwood is cleared by summoned shadow fiends. Baby wyverns give us the last push of XP to get to level 9.
Spells gained: Stoneskin, Minor Spell Deflection, Mirror Image; Shadeskin, Impose, Shadowfade
-Shadeskin (lv.4): As Stoneskin but gives 25% elemental damage resistance as long as one skin is still up.
-Impose (lv.3): Knocks one enemy at close range far away, dealing 3d6 crushing damage and stunning it for 1 round. No save, no MR.
-Shadowfade (lv.2): As invisibility but with a minor healing effect if the recipient is a Shadow Weave user.
Drasus's party is thoroughly dismantled. Of their own accord, summoned Wraiths led by Nyx all cast Impose on Rezdan, sending him flying straight through the palisade despite it being a solid wall! At the same time, Kysus is blinded by a backstab from Nyx, rendering him mostly harmless. Nyx then casts Blinding Darkness on Genthore, blinding him as well. The wraiths then drain the life out of Drasus.
The fight is basically over. The mage who crashed through the wall Dragonball Z style just needs to be dealt with. He is on an inaccessible part of the moat now. This would pose a slight problem if it weren't for the fact that the summoned wraiths can cast Shadow Walk to teleport over to Rezdan.
Genthore is cleaned up with a Shadow Binding for automatic hits.
Yin - Shadow Disciple 9
Yang - Dragon Disciple 9