After arriving to the Mines location, the group first explored surroundings. Dealing with a 3 ghouls brought new levels for both arcane lovers in the party. Both Aidahn and Dynaheir got 3 HPs. Maybe it just confirmed they were meant to be together?
A little later, Minsc found a local sculptor, of whom they heard from people in Nashkel and Nashkel Carnival. Prism, that was his name, asked whether the adventurers were sent by Greywolf. It's the second time someone nearly took them for Greywolf or his men, after Oublek in Nashkel.
Imoen tried to ask Prism about this Greywolf but the man appeared himself. He turned to be a bounty hunter, and Aidahn just couldn't let him kill the sculptor. The fight was inevitable.
First, Greywolf panicked as a result of the Spook spell, and then he was Held. After dealing with the bounty hunter the group returned to Prism but the latter, after thanking them for a good deed, unexpectedly died. An exhaustion was a probable reason. Prism told them that as soon as he saw Ellesime, an elven queen, he couldn't live as he had done in the past.
Greywolf carried a wonderful longsword, Varskona, that Khalid immediately took to his arsenal. While scouting, Minsc found a wand that turned out to be a wand of frost. Boo wanted to play with this stick but Dynaheir strictly explained that wands are not sticks for hamsters.
A local officer, Emerson, informed the party about the recent troubles in the Mines. All the miners were scared, one of them even suggested it was a dragon down there. Jaheira asked him to stop being rediculous.
A dragon's presence is easy to notice and, from the looks of the Mines, there were no dragons hiding in the bowels.
There could be a lot of hidden traps down there, so it was decided that she would be a party's scout here, being invisible thanks to the spell from Aidahn.
As the group advanced to lower levels, they started to meet packs of kobolds, more and more of them. This is where the necklace of fireballs proved to be useful. Every time Imoen found a new group of enemies, a fireball sent from the dark was enough.
After a long route through the tunnels, the group finally came to a hidden cave, in which only two men stood in different chambers. The group returned to the guarded parts of the Mines and rested there preparing their spells.
Imoen spoke with the first man, Mulahey, and pretended to be a Tazok's agent. She didn't knew who or what this Tazok was but it was enough to open a chest nearby... Mulahey screamed something about minions and attacked.
It turned out that the adjacent room was full of kobolds and skeletons in a second. And treacherous half-orc started casting an evil spell. The necklace of fireballs took all of them down while the party concentrated on Mulahey.
Before it was too late, Mulahey surrendered and the party finished all the remaining kobolds. Yet when Aidahn attemted to actually look what was in the chest, the half-orc attacked again. This time, he didn't save against the Command spell which was enough to kill him.
Jaheira got a new druid level (+5 HPs) and everyone was cherishing new items and scrolls found in the chamber. The second man from another room, Xan, turned out to be a prisoner. Now he was free but there was a sorrow, not happiness in his eyes.
Without any problems the adventurers returned to Nashkel and reported to the mayor. After hearing the news Berrun announced that Sparkyfibber was a hero of Nashkel. Dynaheir commented that 'tis not the last good deed of his.
Imagine everyone's surprise when the tired adventurers met another assassin right in front of the tavern they wanted to rest calmly.
All the local garnison couldn't hit this assassin. With one spell Nimbul, as he was called, killed Imoen. After a series of rounds, Nimbul, nearly dead, managed to cast the Sleep spell. The fate of everyone was in local soldiers' arms, i.e. their swords.
Nimbul needed only one hit and he got it.
When everyone was back on their feet and resurrected, the group finally managed to rest in the inn. Just before saying goodnight, Dynaheir told a creeping story about how she felt back in the Gnolls' pit.
@Mirage, can we expect any action from your Druid?
Thanks a lot for the interest Blackraven! I have some bad news...I am without computer for the last 3 days. Hard disc failure...I hope it's just this. I am currently posting from a friends laptop that I use. I am waiting for a new one and then I want to check the old one to see if I can still save any data.
You know, it never crossed my mind to backup my saves, just some memorable ones and I did it when I completed the game. I got really disappointed, I was thinking about making a post about it. But in the end I was lucky since Daeryn was really early in the game, I have just reached level 5 IIRC. The worst thing was that I lost a bg2 save, the party was made from the start of BG1, completed the whole game in full SCS difficulty and reached spellhold in BG2. It was a minimal reload run but still it was an amazing quest that ended the worst way possible. I still may be able to get the files back...with a lot of luck though..
ps. Back up your current playthroughs fellas, at least the ones you really like...just in case
Managed to make this evil city a little more civil today, first tracked down kidnappers and then a murderer of the most evil kind. Jaheira fell in the battle against his henchmen though, was able to resurect her at the nearby temple of helm. Still left both of us a little unhinged. Decided to leave the city awhile after that, J needs to get away and I owe it to her. To the wilds and the Umar hills it is. Leaving Yoshimo in the city to keep an eye on it for us, bringing this nice gnome Jan with us instead.
So Accepted to find Valgyar Corthala, found him and had him join the group. Delivered mimic blood to cowled wizard and got the Ilbratha shortsword in return. Brokered a deal with madulf the ogre and the village.
trying to decide if I should go planar sphere or umar hills. both feels overwhelming. I do want Mazzy in the group so i guess its umar first. Will leave the dragon for now though, if I can resist the temptation.... choose dragon as favoured enemy.
After Yahiko, my solo druid, met his end in the final battle of ToB, I decide to start a group run, which @Blackraven and @CharlestonianTemplar would call 'Completionist No Reload', with a new character.
I want to try and make a full run, as close to being non-metagaming as possible. I will try to RP the decisions during this run, including answers on "where to go now" questions.
Also I plan that this party will continue into SoD as soon as it's released (the pace of the playthrough won't be fast because of the RP elements and the desire to 'complete everything' everywhere).
I figured out a way to get Celestial Fury safely. It's a bit less ambitious, but it involves killing Koshi early and fleeing the battle rather than continuing to fight Koshi's colleagues.
First, we have some summons to deal with. The Nishruu trap spawn sees through invisibility, so we have to backstab it rather than have our summons deal with it.
Cernd is holding off some enemies over to the left. Notice that red circle just south of the Ettercap? That's an Invisible Stalker from Edwin. He recently hit level 12 and can now summon three of them each day, plus a Mislead clone. And since they last 9 hours, you can actually cast them before you rest, and they'll be there for an hour after waking up.
The enemy Efreeti poses a problem. Lots of fire spells and lots of durability, with the ability to turn to mist and regenerate if it should be harmed. And in v30 SCS, genies have uninterruptable spells by default. Plus, that Fire Shield is a monster. But one of the benefits of backstabbing is that, although it's very slow at breaking through Stoneskins, it also doesn't trigger as many Fire Shield backlashes.
The Efreeti is a high priority target with evasive abilities and fire spells, so we make a point of disabling it.
When it fails a save against a flasher, we pin it.
We have to leave and rest to get enough Magic Missiles to kill the Magical Sword. In the middle of battle, Edwin turns into a woman. Aerie is pleased.
I hope the transformation doesn't last long. I don't like Edwina's voice.
We don't find what we're looking for on the first level, so we have to go upstairs. Sion begins casting a divination spell, but we're well out of reach, having entered at the western staircase. Unfortunately, I've never gone up the western side before, which means I don't know about the trap there. It's a pretty bad one, this trap.
Edwin goes out and casts Mislead, giving the enemies something to fuss with while we make our escape. Edwin stays in the main area to monitor the situation, while the rest of the party slips into the closest room. Sion's defenses come out.
Not that they matter. We won't even be trying to break through those defenses.
Cernd holds off Olaf Rasmussen with a Fire Elemental, but it doesn't last long. Meanwhile, Sion has cast True Seeing. Our room won't be safe for long.
Edwin, having run to the south end of the main room, summons some more critters and distracts the enemy. He then goes through the southwestern rooms and opens the secret doors for the rest of the party to slip in.
We enter the southernmost room and start to loot it. Maferan finds us.
This means the other enemies are surely on their way. But we've found what we were looking for.
Koshi is in big trouble when he gets here. But then, so are we.
Basically, the plan is to nail Koshi with the Wand of Paralyzation until he fails a save. If it doesn't work, we'll flee, recharge the wand, and try again.
Shouldn't a no-reload or minimal reload strategy avoid relying on save or else effects? Yes. Yes, they should. Our party in general has very loose security. We have tons of escape options--Sil practically has the Staff of the Magi already--but our defenses are actually pretty weak, as we use almost no prebuffs whatsoever, preferring instead to rely on invisibility and spacing to keep us out of harm's way.
Anyhoo, we send Cernd out into the main area to check things out. With his Werewolf Token and the haste it grants, he should be able to run away if a bunch of enemies should spot him. With nothing else to do, he summons a Nymph. I believe Olaf Rasmussen has some rage immunities... but if he does, they wore off.
Maferan remains active, but we get automatic hits on Olaf, and he's within reach of Cernd. We focus our attention on Olaf. Edwin tries to summon some critters. It doesn't work.
Sometimes summoning spells will have no effect if their casting time is 0. The Robe of Vecna can easily rob you of your summons. Come to think of it, Aerie should probably be wearing it, not Edwin, as Edwin has no Invisibility 10' Radius spell.
There's no room for Sil to attack Olaf, so she tries to backstab Maferan. Barbarian immunities get in the way.
Soon, Olaf falls.
Koshi appears, dashing in from the secret door behind us. He starts to attack Sil, and could have brought her within an inch of her life before we could cast Invisibility on her, but she vanishes right in front of him.
Koshi shifts gears, and the result isn't much better. Edwin doesn't have the saving throws to stop Celestial Fury's stun effect.
Thankfully, he has some Stoneskins to protect him until rescue comes.
The situation here is pretty bad. Koshi is hasted, and considering his low speed factor and the close quarters of our environment, we can't kite him. He'll hit us before we get far, even if we're hasted. We need another option. Aerie has it.
Aerie is now visible, but Edwin, who is casting Invisible Stalker, is not. Why? Well, we re-cast Invisibility 10' Radius to allow Aerie and Edwin to maintain invisibility despite casting those spells, but Aerie started casting too late--maybe because her aura was not clear.
Thanks to Teleport Field, however, she enough room to hide herself with Sanctuary. We take a moment to clear our auras.
We start hitting Koshi with the wand, as planned. On the second charge, he fails his save!
He'll be stunned for the next 10 rounds. Sil prepares to backstab Koshi into oblivion. Another enemy appears in the doorway.
I hold off Stalman with some spiders, who I figure will disrupt his spells with their poison. But clerics have good AC and saves vs. death, and he gets an important spell off the ground.
It's Remove Paralysis. Koshi is back in action.
Stalman may have more castings, which means we have two targets in need of disabling. Jan holds onto the wand, as he is the most capable of resisting a stunning attack from Koshi (his save vs. spell is 3), while our other spellcasters focus on disablers. Meanwhile, Sil follows around Stalman, looking for opportunities to backstab while he's casting a spell.
Koshi goes for Edwin again. We're running low on escape options, but I can't afford to lose him--especially when we'd need even more escape options to rescue him if he gets stunned.
Aerie is running out of disablers. She has Hold Person, but it's a little slow. Command comes out much faster.
We maintain our pressure on Stalman. Finally, Koshi fails another save vs. wand.
When the Wand of Paralyzation works, there's a slight glow on the target, and you see the same swirling effect over their head that you see after a potion or haste spell.
Stalman goes for a Necromancy spell, and I'm worried that it might free Koshi. Our auras aren't all in order, but we manage to get a spell in before he's done casting.
Sil moves in for the kill. Our spiders help out.
Koshi falls! Celestial Fury is ours! We've got all we came for. Now we can leave.
But Stalman and Maferan are already weak. There's no harm in fighting a little longer, is there?
Ketta appears. Cernd has lost his Ironskins and is getting axed by Maferan, drinking potions every round. Aerie rescues him.
Why didn't Cernd cast Ironskins? In EE, apparently, the casting time is 9. He can only do so safely if he's invisible or if nobody's around. Just as Cernd goes invisible, Sil stops Stalman from casting Sanctuary, which he could have used to cast Heal and undo all our progress.
Cernd finishes casting Ironskins and is ready to re-enter the fight. Sil finishes off Stalman.
Jan exposes Ketta with Detect Illusions, allowing Sil to flip the script on Ketta. Ketta explodes.
Maferan goes down as well, though Sil does a lot of running to avoid getting hit. Maferan attacks fast even with an axe, and Sil has to use hit-and-fade tactics just to stay alive, even if she gets no backstab multiplier.
The room is empty. Sion remains mysteriously absent. We find him in the main room.
We could easily just run past him, but I feel like taking him on. Even though he does have level 9 spells. We pester him with some weak summons, drawing out a Finger of Death, and try to interrupt his spells. But Jan misses an attack roll, and I realize the next spell is a bad one.
No-reloaders are probably very attentive to transmutation spells like that. Time Stop and Improved Alacrity are major game-changers in SCS.
I send Aerie and Jan away. Edwin stays behind to bear the brunt of the assault. Sion is going to destroy him.
We get incredibly lucky. Edwin doesn't even get hit by the first Horrid Wilting spell--the 10% magic resistance from the Robe of Vecna protects him, and a potion cures much of the rest. A message from Cernd shows we were even more fortunate than we thought.
I didn't even know Cernd was still attacking. Cernd only has 20 MR from his werewolf form, and it blocked both Horrid Wilting spells.
Jan burns through Sion's Spell Deflection with a Breach spell. Cernd also helped, having cast Charm Person or Mammal earlier, as did Aerie and/or Jan. It took some time, but Sion's spell protections are gone.
He makes his saves against most of our spells, but fails against one.
With his True Seeing spell already spent, he can't cure the blindness, and for some reason SCS enemies seem to prefer to run around aimlessly when they're blind. I'm sure Sion still had spells left, but in the end, it mattered little. With a Haste spell from Edwin, we were fast enough to break through his Stoneskins, and there was nothing Sion could do after that.
Taking on Sion was a pretty big risk, and could have killed both Cernd and Edwin at once, forcing the rest of us to turn invisible and flee. But it was well worth the risk, netting us an Adventurer's Robe and a Bloodstone Necklace, in exchange for two or three Potions of Extra Healing.
It might not seem like much, and it isn't, but we did get tons of XP out of it. 13,000 XP is nothing to sneeze at for one enemy.
Although, since this is Nightmare mode, we could have easily gotten that by killing a couple groups of sewer goblins.
We need to go shopping. Roger the Fence has some important potions for us. While we're in the area, we take down the Rakshasa with the Cloak of the Sewers, draining his spells with summons and then mobbing him to remove his Stoneskins until Sil was able to backstab him.
Since we already took down Sion et al okay, I figure we're probably in good enough shape to handle Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers. Edwin removes the Robe of Vecna to summon some critters while Jan guides Sil out to the enemy to get in a backstab. When Sil goes away, Edwin's summons lure the group to the northeast corner of the map, where Edwin takes down Gaius' MGOI with a Secret Word.
Globe of Invulnerability in my experience blocks Secret Word, but MGOI does not. This opens up Gaius to lots of potential disablers and disrupters--especially since Jan can remove all of his illusionary protections at will. Cernd hits Gaius with Insect Plague, but Gaius casts Fire Shield, which blocks all forms of Insect Plague.
So where'd that one point of damage come from? Actually, Cernd's Insect Plague hit Gaius a fraction of a second before Gaius activated his double Fire Shield Spell Sequencer. Fire Shield blocks Insect Plague, but it doesn't dispel Insect Plague.
Anyway, Gaius' friends come in and now we have three times as many spells to disrupt. Thankfully, his friends are clerics, and Magic Missile alone can disrupt their spells.
But we can't maintain that pressure forever, and eventually a spell breaks through.
Edwin is doomed once again. I could cast Invisibility on him, but Aerie has no Stoneskins and both she and Jan are wounded. If I send them out to Edwin to cast their spells, there's a good chance they'll get interrupted, and they could die alongside of Edwin. Plus, Aerie's death would cost us 800 gold, as we can't cast Raise Dead without her unless we patronize a temple.
I prioritize Aerie's safety over Edwin's.
Edwin goes down and the rest of the party flees, but our illusions don't last long. A divination spell exposes us just we're escaping the field of vision of some goblins.
But the goblins spotted us, and we have to spend some time fighting them. They're not too tough, and Sil can take them down quite readily, but Gaius appears behind us in the middle of the fight.
Fortunately for us, he's out of Stoneskins.
And when we don't make our attack rolls?
I had Roger recharge a Wand of Paralyzation, Fire, and Cloudkill, at considerable cost. They'll make a big difference in long, drawn-out fights where our resources, and the enemy's, run low. But the wand is just there to disrupt spells. Sil is there for the damage.
For fun, I have her solo the enemy fighters for a while. She only misses on a natural 1.
We throw out a Skeleton Warrior, but Sil does most of the heavy lifting. We've lost a lot of potions in these last two battles, but we've got enough money to buy more if we need them. Normally, potions are abundant in SCS, but our fights last so long that it's rare for an enemy to drop any.
As long as we're still in the sewers, we may as well do part of the Unseeing Eye quest. Ostensibly, Sil should be able to participate more fully in the quest, as she's already blind, but I think even a blind person wouldn't be too keen on the idea of having their eyes gouged out to join a religious order. It sounds painful.
Sil breaks a backstab record on a Gibberling.
Honestly, the fastest way to get XP in Nightmare mode might just be to farm kobolds, goblins, and gibberlings. Damage spells like Fireball, Cloudkill, and the Death Spell wouldn't work due to Nightmare mode's HP and level bonuses, but Hold Person, summons, and Haste would make the battles go by pretty quickly and safely.
I grievously underestimate the Wandering Horror. It stuns Sil while she's trying to run away and hide.
Aerie doesn't have Free Action or Remove Paralysis. I left them out to make room for Restoration and Animate Dead. Worse yet, invisibility spells won't work, as the Wandering Horror will see right through it. We have to kill it outright. For a moment, I think we're about to experience our first reload, but we manage to overwhelm the Wandering Horror and bring it to Near Death before it takes even half of Sil's HP... only to see Aerie snag an automatic kill.
We sneak past the beholders near the riddle bridge. SCS Nightmare mode beholders would be nearly impossible to kill. And again, the XP isn't anything I couldn't get from a gang of goblins or kobolds.
The Empathic Manifestation dies, somehow, before we get a chance to heal it.
That's pretty grim.
We avoid Ghoul Town because there's no safe place to rest in that area. Instead, we plow through the undead using Fire Elementals, who are immune to the attacks of Ghasts and Mummies. Since I left the game running for several minutes to pick up the mail, the Fire Elementals vanish before we can finish off the last group of enemies, but it's no problem. We already hit three of the surviving undead (?) with Feeblemind, and slay the fourth one with damage spells before it can reach us.
We sneak past the beholders and escape the hive. I don't think we'll be fighting any Beholders until we get 100% item-based magic resistance, which we can't get until Chapter 6 with Viconia, or the Nine Hells with Sil.
We drop off the Rift Device on the floor on the way out.
If we ever finish the quest, it'll be there when we get back.
I know trying to save sister ranger Merella was the right thing to do, but the horrars in those temple ruins are far beyond anything we have ever faced before. And I fear there are more horrors to be faced further down the road. The shadow dragon we snuck past down there for example, it gnaws on my coincience to leave it alive and spreading its evil. Especialy so near the village I have now sworn to protect since I failed to bring their ranger protector back. Atleast we saved her... sort of. The trip was not for naught though, Jaheira learned how to bring back people from the dead, or gnomes in this case. Poor Jan took a nasty bite to the neck before we even got near the temple. And Mazzy the new addition to the group, she is spreading sunshine even in the darkest places, and her sharpshooting skills surpass anything I have ever seen. She is deadlier with a bow then even Kivan.
Helping the village Trademeet from its troubles felt alot more rewarding. Even gave us an opportunity to finaly get rid of that murdering tanner. Trolls, Djinns, crazed animals and mad druids are worthy foes but atleast the feel more natural then shades. Resting a few days after that whild Mazzy watched over her sisters recovery felt well deserved. Now Jan needs our help though, trouble at home so back to that cesspool city we go.
So Finnished Umar Hills and the Ruins Cleaned up copper coronet and slaver stockade Payed the 15000 to the shadow thieves and got started on that questline. Travelled to tradmeet and did all quests there. Got Belm for Valgyar - given him 1 pip in schimitar Minsc got Azuredge - 1 pip in axes Mazzy got Trancheron bow and Tuigan bow Henke got Belt of inertial barrier and amulet of power Jaheria got cleric staff +3
It seems, somebody has broken this page (probably, due to an additional /spoiler command)
Aidahn Sparkyfibber, 10th BG1 update
During their rest, the party re-read all the letters they found in the Nashkel Mines. It was clear that in order to find answers on their questions they have to talk to a man called Tranzig in one of Beregost's inns.
While in Beregost, the group bought the Protector +1 amulet - because with the Ring of Holiness Aidahn had to wear an item +1 other than a ring for keeping his saving throws.
When approached, Tranzig declined to talk and warned that he was a dangerous wizard. Well, he had to answer for his words.
Outside, Imoen met Elminster. While everyone was glad to see a famous mage, the meeting was not only pleasant but also useful: Elminster informed the party that the roots of the Iron Crisis should be searched for in the Bandit Camp, that was located on the North, behind Peldvale and Larswood.
Sparkyfibber thanked Elminster and proposed to explore the Sword Coast a bit more. Everybody fealt their progress after the Mulahey battle but the encounter with Nimbul that ended rather OK clearly showed the need for further development before dealing with the camp full of bandits.
Dynaheir gulped 2 potions of genious and learned several additional useful spells, Web and Glitterdust among them.
As for the destination, the party decided to start with Coastway. Upon arriving to the Area, Jaheira warned about local inhabitants (OOC: I've liked this element of the BG1 NPC mod, that someone in your party who is more or less familiar with the area can give some advice about monsters).
The first of sirines, of whome Jaheira had warned, was found nearby. Instead of attacking, she insisted on kissing Imoen. When everyone was ready to avenge their fallen comrade, this nereid explained that she acted not by her own will but instead by the will of an ogre-mage who had captured her. Aidahn demanded to resurrect Imoen and only after that promised to free the nereid from her captor.
And not before the last line of their dialogue ended, this ogre-mage appeared himself. Unlike their first meeting with this kind of an opponent, the group attacked and although Dynaheir still fell asleep, both poison from Minsc's arrows and Aidahn's Hold spell worked.
Jaheira reached a new level, getting 7 HPs.
There were other sirens on the same area, "with no malice in their intent", by Jaheira's words. Still, they were enemies and the Sword Coast needed to get free from these dangerous creatures. The first two sirens fell due to a new combination of spells that Dynaheir offered: 2 Web spells combined with 1 Grease spell. This way, the party could safely kill the sirens with their bows and slings. But one siren managed to stay away from the effect of Dynaheir's spells.
Looking through their arsenal, Aidahn asked Minsc to use his Berserk ability. It was the first time after meeting Minsc when such a need came, and althouth the ranger hesitated a bit, everyone assured him that they'll stay away from him if something went wrong.
It worked.
When the group moved to another Coastway location, Dynaheir asked Aidahn about his recent dream.
OOC: Another element I've liked about the BG1 NPC mod is that Dynaheir commented on the charname's dream. To me, it is something that could be very much in the un-modded game because I always had a problem with undestanding the dream. Now, thanks to Dynaheir, I've got it
With berserkering Minsc and using the Web+Grease combination the group didn't have troubles while dealing with local sirens as well. Khalid had a lucky level up, granting him 11 HPs.
Now Khalid had 49 hit points - at least this amount could keep him from being one-shotted by the majority of BG1 enemies.
We have good news and bad news. Weird and cool stuff has happened.
First, since we're still in the Temple District, we met the final EE NPC. Hi, Dorn!
Bye, Dorn!
Next, the Planar Prison. I want those Boots of Speed so Sil can escape short-casting time spells from her targets--like Power Word: Stun--without being hasted. There's one problem with the Planar Prison, though.
This place is really hard to hide in. There are penalties associated with it, in my experience, that make stealth very difficult here. Worse yet, there are almost no places to run. Sil has to drink a Potion of Invisibility to survive, and we don't have many of them. The rest of the party, too, is quickly revealed by Remove Magic. We're in pretty bad shape by the time we take refuge.
This is what the Rod of Resurrection is for. We move away from the enemies and find a less densely populated area, only to see our previous foes return.
We had to raise her once more, and seek shelter again.
The way I dealt with this situation is awfully complicated and would take a long time to explain in depth. Basically, over the course of several rest periods, we poked around and monitored the enemy's attack patterns and found that our only realistic way to deal with them would be to concentrate our energy on one enemy at a time, sending our summons out to remove Stoneskins, if any, and then bring in Sil to backstab them. As always, our safety depended on carefully timed Invisibility 10' Radius spells. Gradually, the enemy herd thinned out.
I saved and quit the game to take a break, and when I returned to the game, I realized what went wrong.
No, it's not the enemy casting a divination spell. Sil is alone, but there's no fog of war around her. This means she's not actually blind. She's been trying to hide in plain sight, but she can't do that without being blind.
I go back to EEKeeper and check her out. There's no blindness effect on her, but then, her other save files are also missing the permanent blindness effect I gave her in Chateau Irenicus. I give it back to her and fix the problem.
I consider reloading from the auto-save, since this is a bug and it cost me a lot of potions I shouldn't have lost, but I decide it's easier to just keep playing. I'm not willing to start over just to save on potions.
The Yuan-ti Mages are the main problem with this area. They came in from the west, thanks to SCS' Better Calls for Help component, and so we have to fight two major groups of enemies at once. One of the biggest risks to Sil comes from those mages, though I didn't notice the threat until it hit Edwin.
From then on, I make a point of keeping Sil far away from the enemy mages when she tries to backstab. Later on, she dodged a potentially fatal Prismatic Spray thanks to Edwin's sacrifice.
I notice a potentially ruinous bug when Jan falls into one of the holes and has to escape. He emerges in between two of the holes.
He fell into the south hole, but because it's impossible to go back south without stepping on the hole's trigger, he can't actually get back to where he was, to the starting area. I don't know where the other hole deposits you, but the placement of the south trigger means that either those holes force you to go right up to the Warden, or they permanently stick you in between those two holes. The only way to get Jan back without walking straight to the Warden is to kill him, raise him, and then use the quick loot feature to grab his equipment. I grant myself a use of CTRL-J to avoid this. I feel you should be able to walk around those triggers.
One of the big problems we have with mages in general is that they're awfully hard to interrupt. The only party member that can hit reliably is Sil, and we like to keep her out of the way. Halcyon, the spear you can find in the crypts beneath the Graveyard District, does electrical damage on hit--the only weapon we have that deals damage through Stoneskin and that Sil can use.
To my knowledge, this is the first time I've actually ever used Halcyon.
Another highlight of the many tiny battles with the enemy horde is Cernd using Greater Werewolf form to draw a Remove Magic spell away from the rest of the party.
I really need to start prepping more with Spell Immunity: Abjuration or Divination. At least some of our party would be able to resist Remove Magic.
After a lot of micromanagement, we finally track down the last enemy and pummel him with summons. Aerie's Aerial Servant brings the days-long struggle to an end.
I can't put in words how much time this took, and how much attention it required.
Next up, the Master of Thralls, who has lots of disablers and can see through Sil's invisibility.
The Master of Thralls chain-casts Remove Magic and Death Gaze. Sil blocks Death Gaze with Arbane's Sword, while the rest of the party hides behind summons. They layer disablers on the demon while Sil backstabs the Air Elementals. The Master of Thralls resists almost everything until finally we nail him with the Wand of Paralyzation.
Cernd casts Farsight to check out the situation with the Warden. Looks pretty bad.
Yuan-ti Mages are always bad news. We send a few summons after them to trigger their MGOI spells, and wait a long while until we're sure those buffs have run out. We then lure the mages back to our position, where our spells and Minute Meteors can disrupt through the enemy's Stoneskins.
We wear down all of the mages this way. Since the Warden and the Yuan-ti fighters decided not to pursue us, we rest and re-cast Invisible Stalker so we have four summons for free the next day. Edwin needs those 6th-level spell slots for buffs. Protection from Magical Energy allows Edwin to negate the Warden's Chain Contingency spell, which includes Horrid Wilting.
When the Warden starts casting an alteration spell. Edwin flees. He equipped the Boots of Speed earlier for precisely that reason. The Warden wastes a valuable spell.
Edwin returns. The Warden casts Black Blade of Disaster. Edwin casts Protection from Magical Weapons and wades right into the fray, knowing BBoD can't hurt him.
Unfortunately, I didn't notice that third line in the dialog box. I didn't realize the Yuan-ti fighters were using nonmagical weapons. The result catches me by surprise.
It wasn't until much later that I understood what went wrong.
Edwin's death is a big loss for us, particularly since he died with the Boots of Speed that Sil needs to stay safe. Cernd runs out and nabs the boots, and some other items we wanted, using the quick loot feature.
Sil dashes out to take care of the Yuan-ti, who have drifted away from the Warden. It was not a good decision.
When the Yuan-ti are gone, we mob the Warden. He makes most of his saving throws, but a flasher spells his doom.
Now we have 2 rounds of safety. Sil runs up and stun-locks the Warden with Celestial Fury. It's over.
We're just about ready to try out our special plan. With lots of potions and scrolls, and just the right combination of spells, the only thing missing is Viconia--a good tank for the following fight.
Degardan, an old enemy of Edwin's, had appeared right after we escaped the Planar Prison, and appears again in the Graveyard District. This time, he's not fooled by Edwin's accidental disguise, and turns Edwin back to a man.
But then, he says nothing. We break invisibility on both Edwin and Sil, but Degardan won't speak. It seems the rest of the quest, which I think involved a minor mage fight, is broken. I don't much care about it, as long as Edwin is back to normal, so I walk away. Once we grab Viconia and set her up with some simple equipment, we're ready to take on the next challenge.
Our level 12 party in Nightmare mode is going to take on the Twisted Rune.
Now that we know about the fear effect, we can take measures to stop it. Specifically, Sil has to drink 3 (!) Potions of Invulnerability to make sure her saves are low enough to block the fear effect, even if it has a -4 save penalty. I don't know where the fear effect came from, but I assume Shangalar is casting it, like how Nevaziah cast Dragon Fear once per round.
So how am I going to handle this fight?
First, Shangalar, like Nevaziah, has the peculiar trait of being unable to see through invisibility, in contrast to most liches. This means Sil can escape Shangalar's notice simply using stealth.
Or so I thought. As I learned in the earlier battle, a Protection from Undead scroll was necessary to avoid him. Thankfully, I already bought several scrolls just in case I turned out to be wrong.
Sil is still not invisible to Planetars and demons, which is why we needed the Boots of Speed. Otherwise, she could not have run away from them. We also have Teleport Field on hand to manage this threat, and Sil's three Potions of Invulnerability will hopefully block a vorpal strike--unless the Planetar's dispel on hit takes effect before the vorpal strike does.
What about Comet and Dragon's Breath, or any other area-effect spells they might throw out? What about Vaxall? For that, I have a Protection from Magic scroll. In my install, Protection from Magic scrolls can't be removed by Spellstrike or Anti-Magic Rays. Later, however, I would realize that both the scroll and the install tweak were unnecessary.
But that's just Sil. What is the rest of the party going to do? They can't maintain invisibility forever, and the enemy would absolutely crush them if they became visible. Edwin, Jan, and Aerie have SI: Abjuration and SI: Divination, but Cernd and Viconia don't. And once one party member becomes visible, the whole group is at risk for area-effect attacks.
Nor can we hide, because Shangalar and Layenne occupy both chambers. So how do we keep the rest of the party safe, if and when Sil needs them?
Easy. Aerie casts a little-appreciated priest spell, and blows Shangalar away.
Repulse Undead offers no save. Shangalar is out of the way, and now the party can hide out by the staircase to nowhere as long as they like.
Of course, we still need somebody to watch out for Sil. Aerie runs out with SI: Divination active, but that doesn't help against Remove Magic. She needs a Potion of Invisibility to stay alive, and we've only got so many.
Layenne knows we're around and tries to get at us. We stay out of reach.
Aerie's SI: Divination vanishes, and Layenne goes for a True Seeing spell. It catches us by surprise, but that's why we gave Aerie the Robe of Vecna.
So those are our defensive options. How are we actually going to kill anything?
Well, PFMW only lasts so long, and we are very patient.
To my dismay, Sil gets hit by an Anti-Magic Ray in the single second it takes for her to Hide With No Sight. It won't take down a Protection from Magic scroll, but it will remove Sil's potion buffs, as the dispel effect from Anti-Magic Ray has a spell level of 0, which Protection from Magical does not block.
Had I not used a Protection from Magic scroll, I really just could have relied on potion buffs. I'm using them anyway, in case there are level 0 spells on the map, but they also block basically everything a Protection from Magic scroll does. It was kind of a waste.
Sil repeatedly tries to slay Shyressa with the Mace of Disruption, while Jan uses Detect Illusions to reveal the vampire, but Shyressa keeps making her save vs. death. It's bad luck, I'm sure; a quick look at her .cre file in NI confirms that she is undead and her save vs. death is above 0. She needs to roll a 6 to die, but keeps rolling above that.
Aerie's Robe of Vecna saves her twice more. The MR blocks an area-effect spell, and the casting speed bonus helps her cast Invisibility when her Sanctuary runs out.
Vaxall wanders off. I'm a little concerned that he's approaching the rest of the party, but I don't want them to leave their hiding place. Instead, I just turn them invisible: a Sanctuary on Viconia and a Potion of Invisibility for Cernd. I let them stay where they are.
It was a bad move on my part.
Now half the party is stuck behind Vaxall. If they break invisibility, even for a moment, he can easily kill them. We need to get them out.
Aerie finds a safe spot and summons a Skeleton Warrior. We try to lure Vaxall away from the staircase, but even when the Skeleton Warrior moves out of his line of sight, he won't pursue. Beholders in SCS, I've noticed, tend to wait rather than follow.
Vaxall isn't going anywhere. We need to continue without Edwin, Cernd, or Viconia. And Shyressa is making too many saves--there might be something wrong. I decide to leave Shyressa alone. We'll have to kill Layenne for the Staff of the Magi, and Vaxall for his eye, without which we can't leave the place, but we may have to let Revanek and Shyressa live.
I try to stun Layenne with Celestial Fury, but her save vs. spell is stellar, and all the attacks do is get Sil pelted with Energy Blades, draining our very limited Potion of Extra Healing supply. Then I remember that poison bypasses Stoneskin. It didn't work that way in my vanilla SCS game, but it's been doing that in EE. Jan has Bolts of Biting, but he can't escape if he breaks his invisibility. So how are we going to get past that Stoneskin?
Sil, as a Kensai, can't use missile weapons, and even if she equipped one later with Use Any Item, she couldn't target anything that wasn't already within melee range, and using ranged weapons up close imposes a THAC0 and AC penalty.
But Kensais can use throwing daggers. Which includes the Poisoned Throwing Daggers we picked up from the fight with Mook at the Docks. And Layenne, as a mage, has a terrible save vs. death.
Sil keeps using hit and fade tactics with the throwing daggers. Sometimes Layenne makes her save, but she gradually starts to get weaker. Even so, I'm having second thoughts about continuing.
Sil's Protection from Magic scroll has worn off. So have her potion buffs, and though I could drink more, I might need some of those potions for later. We haven't exactly been swimming in them. It took ages to get the potions we have.
Layenne tries another divination spell, and Jan can't escape the area of effect. Worse yet, Layenne has Energy Blades, a marvelous spell disrupter. But with the right timing, Jan can slip away.
Then, I realize we need Jan to be visible. He recently took a proficiency point in shortbows, and we only just bought 5 Arrows of Dispelling from the fletcher in the Promenade. Jan needs to break his invisibility, even if it makes him vulnerable.
And it does make him vulnerable, even when he hits Layenne three times a round with Arrows of Biting that Sil tossed to him. And even with the Belt of Inertial Barrier, on loan from Aerie, he can't drink potions fast enough to stay calm. He panics.
At first I write him off as doomed, but I reconsider. Aerie can save him with Remove Fear. He gets back to work on Layenne, and finally the physical damage starts to disrupt some of her spells. Layenne gets one off the ground, and I can't give him an escape option in time, but his saving throws do the job for us.
Gnomes are very sturdy critters. Finally, Layenne fails a save.
He keeps up the pressure. We want to make sure she can't recover.
Jan takes hold of the Staff of the Magi. Now two of our party members can go invisible at will.
Sil starts backstabbing Revanek, and in the process lures him closer to Aerie. In SCS, Revanek actually gets armor and weapons, including a crossbow and two-handed sword. Thankfully, we absolutely crammed our spellbooks with Invisibility spells.
With Shyressa stumped by Protection from Undead as well as persistent invisibility, Sil is free to slay Revanek with little opposition.
And yet, somehow, Shyressa manages to see through Aerie's Protection from Undead scroll. Some scripting issue, I assume. Aerie switches out the Helm of Balduran for a Hem of Charm Protection.
I'm not sure if I should keep trying to use the Mace of Disruption on Shyressa. It takes forever to chase her down and so far her saves have been very impressive. Instead, we try some disablers. The Wand of Paralyzation freezes her.
Several rounds later, Aerie uses it again to make sure Shyressa stays put. Finally, Shyressa fails her save.
Now, only Vaxall remains.
But I'm not sure how I'm going to handle him.
Sil's Protection from Magic scroll is long gone, and I believe Death Ray has a spell level of 0, which means Sil wouldn't be safe even if I used our second and last Protection from Magic scroll. I need summons to go after Vaxall, and to do that, we need to get our party members out of the stairway that Vaxall is blocking.
But how do we move Vaxall, if he won't chase anything we send after him? Actually, we have another option, now that we have the Staff of the Magi. Jan hands the staff to Aerie, who casts Teleport Field at Vaxall and immediately re-equips the staff, ensuring our invisibility while teleporting Vaxall out of the way.
We didn't memorize many summoning spells, but we've got a few good ones. Aerie summons a couple of mid-level Skeleton Warriors, who come with 75% MR. Cernd brings out his only Fire Elemental, Edwin contributes an Invisible Stalker, and Viconia adds in one low-level Skeleton Warrior as well. Aerie buffs them with Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Viconia uses Chant, Cernd uses Bless, and Edwin hastes the group. We send them out. It's the best we've got.
Multiple times, our summons make their saves. I was afraid I was going to end up the WoL trick, and I want to keep glitches minimal besides the Hide With No Sight trick. Vaxall runs out Stoneskins.
I have some good and bad news (for me ) Bad news is that my hdd is broken, so no saves left for my bg games. I was expecting it though. Good news is that I got really MAD, so I decided to start a new no-reload run, full-party but evil roleplaying this time!!
I decided not to document the run this time, I really want to play the game now. But the thing is that after posting my previous runs, although they were really short, I realized that I have a "need" to post something ! So this time I will just post my progress in the game, my thoughts on the run and of course your precious advice is always welcome!
Inspired by @bengoshi's current playthrough with Aidahn (long may he live, errr.. I mean forever), I also level up with random hp and I must say I really like it! It makes the same npc - char different in every new game! The party is currently exploring the sword coast, delivering bounties, thirsty for gold and power! Reputation is already at 3 (despised) so Flaming Fist and guards attack me at first sight. It is also the first time I truly roleplay an evil char and I found out how hard a villain's life can be. At start I got a bit frustrated with my low reputation, but this is the life of a bad guy! I really like the different outcomes on certain quests and the "new" banters this time. One of the main obstacles in the game will be the high prices due to low reputation. High charisma can mitigate it a bit but I think it is not enouph. The evil party may ofc decide to donate in Temples to "prove their GOOD intentions". Another way is to do it when you complete quests, but I have lowered the gaining reputation function via SCS. Have you guys done something else?
Moreover I would like to mention the chunking effect. I didn't reduce it through modding, but I find it very interesting since it is a game changer in a no-reload run. The game has so many npcs and I love to face this kind of challenges. It adds a lot to replayability. Do you do the same? I also think to limit resurrection to 2 times, so the third death is for good!
You're sweet, @bengoshi. Praise from Caesar, considering your epic Totemic Druid run.
To be honest, the formula for the Twisted Rune wasn't too different from my normal strategy in retrospect. The only thing I feel was truly clever was using Repulse Undead at the beginning to get Shangalar away from the party.
Our basic strategy for spellcasters is a seven step sequence: appear, fade, provoke, fade, conjure summons, disrupt spells, and backstab. We (1) trigger the enemy's buffs by appearing, then (2) vanish to wait out the buffs; (3) provoke the enemy into wasting offensive spells, either by sending summons after them or using ranged attacks or spells, and then (4) vanish again to evade the spells; then (5) summon some tougher critters to wear down the enemy's Stoneskins, (6) use Melf's Acid Arrow, Magic Missile, and Firetooth to disrupt their spells, and finally (7) send in Sil to backstab.
We need lots of escape options across multiple characters in order to make sure we can fade away when necessary. Without Invisibility, Invisibility 10' Radius, Haste, low-level summons, Teleport Field, and lots of running, we would have had to have prebuffed extensively to survive the pressure.
We had to make only minor changes in this strategy to deal with the Twisted Rune. The most important thing was shoring up our defenses, since there was so little room to hide in. We needed Repulse Undead to avoid Shangalar's True Seeing, Protection from Undead and Potions of Invisibility in case I bungled Sil's stealth, Boots of Speed to shorten Sil's period of visibility, the Rod of Resurrection to correct any fatal errors I made (and compensate for our low supply of Potions of Extra Healing), Teleport Field in case we got boxed in, the Mace of Disruption to save time on Shangalar, poisoned weapons to save time on Layenne, and Potions of Invulnerability, Magic Protection, and Magic Shielding to keep Sil safe from disablers (note that only only two Potions of Magic Protection or a Potion of Freedom could have stopped Power Word: Stun).
Vaxall's wandering off was a big blessing in restrospect. It probably saved us a lot of Potions of Invulnerability and Magic Shielding, as it allowed Sil and Jan to poison Layenne without worrying about getting blasted by a Beholder ray. With all other enemies removed from the map, Vaxall could then be taken down using summons. If I couldn't do that, we'd likely end up using lots of wands to bring him down, as he has 365 HP in Nightmare mode, and is immune to backstab. It would have been wise to buy some scrolls of Stone to Flesh, as I only had one such scroll, and we could have permanently lost several party members if we had to leave them in there.
We're now much better equipped to handle future challenges. Taking down the Shadow Thief headquarters was much simpler, as Edwin, Aerie, and Jan could trade off the Staff of the Magi and attack without breaking invisibility. It's also a marvelous debuffer. The Staff of the Magi in my install dispels magic without a save, but dispels as if it were a level 30 caster, which means, in Nightmare mode, it's not going to be able to dispel all buffs. Even against Shadow Thief mages, it couldn't always dispel their buffs, but it was fairly reliable. Without Stoneskin, Aran Linvail and his mage friend were open to backstabs. There was a major scare, however, earlier in the fight, when Sil almost got killed by a triple Flame Arrow Spell Sequencer, and was reduced to 4 HP by a followup Minute Meteor.
Cernd has hit level 13, and therefore has Greater Werewolf form, which grants 50% resistance to the elements, 40% magic resistance, -12 total AC, and 1 regeneration per second, as well as a +3 weapon at 3 APR and a very fast movement rate. It's not enough to let him tank Nightmare enemies, but he's still much harder to kill now.
I decide to go to Watcher's Keep on a whim. A Skeleton Warrior opens the main door without our permission, letting in two Vampiric Wraiths at once, one of whom targets Sil. The Mace of Disruption resolves the problem; Negative Plane Protection was not necessary.
Another issue are the Mustard Jellies, which I normally handle using fire spells. There's no way Sil is going to handle them on her own, and I doubt we have any summons that could get the job done, but normal fire magic will work fine, as long as we use the Staff of the Magi to maintain our invisibility.
Edwin and Aerie both exhausted their fire spells to take these jellies down. It took 12 Fireballs and 7 Sunfire spells to get them all.
We trigger the first fight with the Statues. Jan tries to remove the one of the clerics' defenses with the Staff of the Magi, and is badly hurt in the process.
It's not reliable anyway. The cleric statues both are level 32 in Nightmare mode, which gives us only a 30% chance of dispelling their buffs. We end up just backstabbing everybody over and over again until the fight is over.
The next fight is normally a lot harder, as it features two epic-level mages and a host of fighters supporting them. But Jan can wear down their defenses safely, again with the Staff of the Magi. The male mage is base level 25, or level 37 in Nightmare mode, which means it's impossible (unless EE fixed the Dispel Magic bug) for us to remove its defenses using the staff, but I didn't know that at the time. I just focused on wearing the enemy down.
Unfortunately, I gradually realized that bringing down the statues would take ages and essentially just boil down to Sil backstabbing them round after round. These are high-level enemies with about 300 HP on average and 50% resistance to slashing damage, which means our backstabs are limited to about 50 damage a pop. We decide to leave, but run right into a Symbol: Stun spell. Sil fails her save!
Thankfully, I finally got wise to this risk and planned accordingly. Jan casts Invisibility on himself so he can hand the Staff of the Magi to Aerie without turning visible. Aerie in turn uses it to cast Remove Paralysis without losing her invisibility. We regain control of Sil.
I remember that the portal to the next area is open, according to a line of text after the ritual, so I decide to go to the next level instead of simply leaving. Turns out the message was lying: the portal is not actually open.
We can still exit the normal way, and the Statues don't stop us. We'll probably come back when we can summon a Planetar to slay the enemy with vorpal strikes.
I'm bored and none of the available adventurers hold any interest for me, so I go shopping and report to Bodhi. We set sail for Spellhold.
After a slightly prolonged cutscene in which an Assassin has to land 5 extra hits to kill Sanik, we pay a visit to Perth the Adept. When we interrupt Perth's divination spell, he decides to get somebody else to do his searching for him.
Time to go. We scurry outside and wait for 3 minutes (I use the stopwatch on my phone), where Cernd scolds us for standing around.
We return to Perth's place and screw with him a little more. He tries another divination spell, but we're not having that.
He conjures a pair of Efreet instead, who nearly kill Jan with an insta-cast Flame Strike when he briefly appears in front of them, and attacks Aerie despite her Sanctuary. Another oddity with the scripting.
We keep hassling Perth. Finally he uses the nuclear option.
Since the demon from before didn't even follow us out, we give the Planetar a moment to come after us before leaving, just so our leaving isn't a complete negation of its presence. The moment we get outside, Edwin casts Haste and Aerie casts Teleport Field. The Teleport Field will keep us safe for a second or two, and the Haste spell will prevent the Planetar from catching up to us.
The Planetar doesn't appear, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. All it would have done is chase one of us across Brynnlaw for the next 23 rounds, and with Sil's Boots of Speed, there's no chance it would have gotten her. I come back to Perth's house and find him alone. The Planetar is waiting inside. Jan casts Invisibility and brings out the Staff of Striking, because I forgot that backstabbing in ogre form via Polymorph Self is even stronger (14*5+6, instead of 12.5*5). The damage is still impressive, at least by non-Nightmare mode standards.
He needed to cast Invisibility because you can't backstab using the Staff of the Magi. The staff itself can't backstab, and if you switch to another weapon, you turn visible. The staff helps in hiding, but can't promise automatic backstabs like Assassination or Mislead can, even if it can promise automatic invisibility.
Jan lands another hit with the Staff of Striking, but it's not quite enough to kill Perth. Sil soars in from across the map to finish him off.
It's impressive, but Sil isn't the reason we won. The Staff of the Magi won that battle. Jan, Aerie, and Edwin can use it, but Sil needs another 1.5 million XP before she can.
Also, bad news.
It's possible to duplicate the Book of Daily Spell using the Wand of Lightning trick. It'll give you 6 copies of the book, though they'll all be on the same page, which means I had a 10% chance of getting stuck with Burning Hands anyway. This means we can all but guarantee access to all of the books we want, and there are two that I really, really want to have.
Problem is, you need to drop the extra copies of the book before you try to duplicate the thing, because turning the page in one copy of the book also changes all of the other copies in your inventory to the new page. I didn't do that, which means all 6 copies of the Stinking Cloud volume turned into Burning Hands. Testing confirmed that dropping some of the books prevents this from happening, but I wasn't willing to add a second reload to our count in order to get what I wanted.
Although I may change my mind. Because if we have two copies of the Spell Turning volume of the Book of Daily spell, we can combine the Wand of Lightning trick with the Book of Daily Spell trick with the scorcher loop trick and kill any dragon in the game, even in Nightmare mode. An Agannazar's Scorcher Spell Sequencer would kill any of the dragons besides Firkraag and Saladrex (the lightning bolt projectile unfortunately doesn't get bounced in EE). Chain-casting Spell Turning appears to magnify the duplication of the scorcher spells, resulting in thousands of hits (10,000 for a triple scorcher loop) over the course of several rounds. Brings back sweet memories of vaporizing dragons in Skyrim with Lightning Storm.
I do want to try that at some point. It's about time I killed a BG2 dragon with a gigantic laser beam.
Did the thing and got my books. Tested the laser beam for funsies, using a double scorcher Minor Sequencer from Edwin across Jan and Aerie, and with Cernd casting Magic Resistance on our target.
Did you know Adalon in Nightmare mode has 2,366 HP?
That dialog box is filled entirely with fire damage. It hit Adalon so many times that the messages couldn't fit in the box. And those scorchers haven't even run out yet.
In Spellhold we get a taste of what life would be like if Sil was adventuring alone.
It's painfully slow. You can only move one circle at a time. A familiar would be a prerequisite for a blind solo run.
Outside, I discover that traps apparently can be within an enemy's view if the thief is blind. That didn't hold for vanilla, but it works in EE.
For some reason, Bhaal refuses to follow me inside, and I have to use the console to bring him inside. I think the problem is he can attack you from a considerable distance thanks to his two-handed sword, and won't get close enough to the door to follow you in.
We have a lot of trouble with the Spellhold Yuan-ti before I realize that they're optional enemies and I'd be better off farming kobolds later than fighting the Yuan-ti now. The Spellhold lich is a bigger problem, as we can't sneak past it. But Jan uses a Protection from Undead scroll and hassles the lich with the Staff of the Magi, while the rest of the party stays out of the way--aside from Edwin, whom I used to pester the lich a little, and nearly died for his efforts. Jan and Sil lay traps for the lich to wander into, gradually wearing it down, until finally Jan can chunk it.
Honestly... evasive strategies are really, really overpowered. I seldom ever did it in my other runs, but it's become a habit in Nightmare mode. Maybe it's just because I normally have enemy mages pre-buff in my installs, and I'm finally no longer facing them fully buffed, which makes them seem easier. At any rate, I think it's probably a bad idea for normal runs, to flee from battle and wait out enemy buffs. It's realistic, but it makes the battles both longer and easier, and usually a bit less fun.
I've gotten a little weary of those evasive strategies, and I leap at the chance to deal a quick death to Dace Sontan. I bring out the scorcher loop and roast him.
This isn't the Death Ray Zorcher; it's just a normal scorcher loop, though I did use the Book of Daily Spell to generate it. I also use it to deal with the kobold horde, which otherwise would have taken forever to bring down.
I forgot to buff Jan and Aerie with Protection from Fire, however, which costs me a charge from the Rod of Resurrection.
Both characters are safe for a moment, when the Spell Turning spell is still active, but once it wears off, both characters are going to get nailed by a bunch of scorcher spells. They're spared most of the blast, but even the tail ends of the loop are enough to burn both characters down.
Yuan-ti get in the way again in the next area. I try to take down the mage's GOI spell, but Edwin loses his Stoneskins and dies before he can finish casting Pierce Magic. I just wait out the GOI instead before roasting them.
Also, Sil breaks her record for backstabbing again.
I'm a little worried about the run. I've gotten impatient with the pace of the fights, hence my willingness to resort to the scorcher loop. I originally intended to only use the blind thief trick, but no other glitches or oddities, but it's just so slow. I think I might have seen all there is to see in this run, and that's usually when I restart. Sil doesn't have much growth left. She won't change much until she gets Use Any Item, and that's a long way off even now. Worse yet, a thief doesn't scale well in Nightmare mode. Backstabs won't help against late-game bosses, and traps won't do enough to scale with the enemy's increasing HP.
The scorcher loop doesn't scale either, but then, it doesn't really need to. A triple scorcher sequencer loop with two Spell Turning spells already does over 800 damage, and I don't even know how much damage the Death Ray Zorcher does.
Well, I think I'll come back. Remember me? From like page 7 or something? Yeah. I'm going to do a party in vanilla IWD, based on the rather interesting party some of my friends have rolled up for a Forgotten Realms campaign.
BAM!
Party leader: Acid McStonershrooms, human fighter. Using the barbarian fighter class from The Complete Barbarian's Handbook in table-top, but that doesn't exist in vanilla.
2nd liner: D'Ees Nots, elf ranger.
3rd liner: Béorn Axehand, dwarf cleric of Dumathoin. Using the Delvesonn kit from Demihuman Deities in table-top, but that doesn't exist in vanilla.
Healer: Oswall, human cleric of Helm. Using the Watcher kit from Faiths & Avatars in table-top, but that doesn't exist in vanilla.
Utility: De'Kal, half-elf thief/mage. Tiefling from Planewalker's Handbook and using the assassin kit from The Complete Thief's Handbook in table-top, but those don't exist in vanilla.
Caster: Wibbles, gnome illusionist.
7th, in case of permanent death: Dümwār the Crazed, halfling fighter.
I didn't name these people.
Here's the stat pics (I used DaleKeeper to input the pen-and-paper stats.
Acid:
D'Ees:
Béorn:
Oswall:
De'Kal:
Wibbles:
Strength scores will make this party a little lackluster in melee, matching their real life counterparts.
After some thought, I've decided to continue the run. I'm just going to accept the presence of the scorcher loop, because, now that I think about it, the scorcher loop was the main reason I took an interest in a Heart of Fury-style BG2 run a while back, and that's the basis of this Nightmare run as well. I'm also going to play a little more aggressively, which will speed up the fights at the cost of decreasing our safety.
We avoided fighting the Mind Flayer in the level where Bodhi attacks you. I later realized that, by also avoiding the fight with the Mind Flayer and Beholder in the previous area, we lost our chance to get a Ring of Free Action.
That's a really, really big loss for us. Unless I tweak Use Any Item to permit NPC items, Sil's only defense against stun is an easily dispellable Potion of Freedom or Free Action or Chaotic Commands spell. Aerie adds another casting of Remove Paralysis to her spellbook.
Now we have to deal with Irenicus. It won't be so bad because I tweaked my install so that we wouldn't lose all of our items during the Spellhold gauntlet. My records of the fight are sketchy--the fight was not actually all that tough.
We came pre-buffed with SI: Abjuration, as I suspected that staying invisible would not be an option, and running away was definitely not an option. This meant heavy buffs were in order. Sil was rendered visible early on, but managed to slip away from her clone in the north corner after a failed backstab attempt.
I kept Sil out of the fight for the duration. Her clone was an especially big risk, as her clone also carried a copy of Celestial Fury and could stun-lock any target.
This fight is always very hard to manage, as you have up to 7 large and diverse threats on the map: Irenicus himself, and up to 6 clones depending on your party size. The inmates are a big help, but you can't control them, which means you have to prioritize. Sometimes it makes sense to focus all of your attention on Irenicus. Other times his position is unassailable and your only option is to work on the clones. In our case, we could make progress against both, which meant we had a lot of decisions to make every round.
Jan and Imoen distributed poison effects around the clones and Irenicus when possible. We dedicated our spells to disablers, but had little success. A Time Stop from Wanev rendered our efforts moot.
We hit Irenicus repeatedly with debuffers. Since he had no GOI spell active, we could use Secret Word freely. But, to my frustration, even after removing his Spell Shield and Spell Turning, he had a Spell Immunity or Spell Deflection effect (they have the same visual, so I didn't know which it was) that I could not remove despite hitting it with several Secret Word and Pierce Magic spells. I was hoping I could hit him with Breach and Acid Arrow, but as the rounds went by, his weapon immunities vanished, allowing Imoen and Jan to hit him with Arrows and Bolts of Biting. He makes his saves vs. death, but Firetooth's fire damage doesn't offer a save.
Wanev made a huge impact on the fight with the clones, as they had no defense against Horrid Wilting. A friendly Efreeti and its level 20 Flame Arrow chipped in.
As the rounds went by, so did our buffs. SI: Abjuration vanished without my noticing, allowing an unfriendly debuffer to wipe out our buffs. Sil is out of range, and therefore keeps the largely unnecessary Potion of Magic Shielding buff she used to block her clone's copy of Celestial Fury, but Jan also keeps his Chaotic Commands and Protection from Evil buffs, despite getting hit by the spell.
Edwin is now stun-locked by Sil's clone. Aerie rescues him with Teleport Field, and we spend some time chasing around our enemies. Irenicus' Stoneskins wear off.
It's just a matter of time. When Irenicus gets to Near Death, Edwin nails him with Flame Arrow to make sure Irenicus doesn't recover.
Soon, Irenicus is on his merry way, and Saemon Havarian brings us to City Sushi.
A scorcher loop roasts many of the Sahuagin in our first fight with the rebels, but fails to harm the Priestess, who I forgot was immune by virtue of her Cloak of Mirroring.
I get interrupted and forget to save before I quit, which means I have to fight the Priestess' allies again when I reload. I want to take down the Priestess before I fight her buddies, but my only option for doing that safely is to backstab her, and the City of Caverns can be hard to hide in. Like the Planar Prison, I've noticed stealth is more difficult here than in most places.
Instead, I send out Edwin with the Staff of the Magi and have him hit her with Feeblemind... only to see her cast Chaotic Commands on herself after making no save against the Feeblemind spell. It seems she casts it even if she gets feebleminded.
I try Polymorph Other instead. It shows the visual effect, but she doesn't turn into a squirrel. I try several times over, and finally see her turn into a squirrel... only to see her immediately turn back into a sahuagin. All it does is interrupt her spell.
During my tests, I notice that she goes down to Near Death after recovering from the polymorph effect. Apparently polymorph (is this an EE thing?) can reduce the target's HP to 1, just like petrification. I spot her healing herself with a big potion.
And suddenly, she's at Uninjured again. But this is a great clue: if a Potion of Superior Healing--which heals 40 HP--brought her from Near Death to Uninjured, it must mean her max HP is less than 42. A single backstab will bring her down. Sil zips by to cut her down.
We move on to the Priestess' buddies. Apparently sahuagin count as humanoids: they're vulnerable to Hold Person.
We rely on the scorcher loop to clear up some more of the enemies. It tends to wipe out everything that isn't immune to magic. Skeleton Warriors, unfortunately, have 90% magic resistance.
We sneak past most of the rest of the fights, until we're up against King Ixilthetocal (gotta love that name). We dispatch him with a crowd of hasted summons. On to the Underdark.
By the way, either EE or SCS v30 fixed the sahuagin gold exploit. In the vanilla game, the store at the Temple of Sekolah in the far northwest corner of the map had very screwed up prices, offering you incredibly high prices in exchange for your stuff, but not charging very high prices themselves. This meant that a high CHA, high reputation party could actually make money by selling and buying back big ticket items like the Helm of Balduran. You could gather thousands of gold that way. The temple still gives you lots of gold for your stuff--it's still a good idea to save some items to sell them there, instead of in Athkatla--but it's no longer possible to get unlimited gold from them.
Comments
Wow! It's as if so many different runs are somehow teaming up across parallel universe versions of Sword Coast.
(Meanwhile, Selyna the Dragon Disciple is making modest progress... will post when able.)
After arriving to the Mines location, the group first explored surroundings. Dealing with a 3 ghouls brought new levels for both arcane lovers in the party. Both Aidahn and Dynaheir got 3 HPs. Maybe it just confirmed they were meant to be together?
A little later, Minsc found a local sculptor, of whom they heard from people in Nashkel and Nashkel Carnival. Prism, that was his name, asked whether the adventurers were sent by Greywolf. It's the second time someone nearly took them for Greywolf or his men, after Oublek in Nashkel.
Imoen tried to ask Prism about this Greywolf but the man appeared himself. He turned to be a bounty hunter, and Aidahn just couldn't let him kill the sculptor. The fight was inevitable.
First, Greywolf panicked as a result of the Spook spell, and then he was Held. After dealing with the bounty hunter the group returned to Prism but the latter, after thanking them for a good deed, unexpectedly died. An exhaustion was a probable reason. Prism told them that as soon as he saw Ellesime, an elven queen, he couldn't live as he had done in the past.
Greywolf carried a wonderful longsword, Varskona, that Khalid immediately took to his arsenal. While scouting, Minsc found a wand that turned out to be a wand of frost. Boo wanted to play with this stick but Dynaheir strictly explained that wands are not sticks for hamsters.
A local officer, Emerson, informed the party about the recent troubles in the Mines. All the miners were scared, one of them even suggested it was a dragon down there. Jaheira asked him to stop being rediculous.
A dragon's presence is easy to notice and, from the looks of the Mines, there were no dragons hiding in the bowels.
There could be a lot of hidden traps down there, so it was decided that she would be a party's scout here, being invisible thanks to the spell from Aidahn.
As the group advanced to lower levels, they started to meet packs of kobolds, more and more of them. This is where the necklace of fireballs proved to be useful. Every time Imoen found a new group of enemies, a fireball sent from the dark was enough.
After a long route through the tunnels, the group finally came to a hidden cave, in which only two men stood in different chambers. The group returned to the guarded parts of the Mines and rested there preparing their spells.
Imoen spoke with the first man, Mulahey, and pretended to be a Tazok's agent. She didn't knew who or what this Tazok was but it was enough to open a chest nearby... Mulahey screamed something about minions and attacked.
It turned out that the adjacent room was full of kobolds and skeletons in a second. And treacherous half-orc started casting an evil spell. The necklace of fireballs took all of them down while the party concentrated on Mulahey.
Before it was too late, Mulahey surrendered and the party finished all the remaining kobolds. Yet when Aidahn attemted to actually look what was in the chest, the half-orc attacked again. This time, he didn't save against the Command spell which was enough to kill him.
Jaheira got a new druid level (+5 HPs) and everyone was cherishing new items and scrolls found in the chamber. The second man from another room, Xan, turned out to be a prisoner. Now he was free but there was a sorrow, not happiness in his eyes.
Without any problems the adventurers returned to Nashkel and reported to the mayor. After hearing the news Berrun announced that Sparkyfibber was a hero of Nashkel. Dynaheir commented that 'tis not the last good deed of his.
Imagine everyone's surprise when the tired adventurers met another assassin right in front of the tavern they wanted to rest calmly.
All the local garnison couldn't hit this assassin. With one spell Nimbul, as he was called, killed Imoen. After a series of rounds, Nimbul, nearly dead, managed to cast the Sleep spell. The fate of everyone was in local soldiers' arms, i.e. their swords.
Nimbul needed only one hit and he got it.
When everyone was back on their feet and resurrected, the group finally managed to rest in the inn. Just before saying goodnight, Dynaheir told a creeping story about how she felt back in the Gnolls' pit.
Aidahn Sparkyfibber - Cleric/Illusionist, 4/3 lvl, 27 HP (10 from FF), 0 deaths
Imoen - Thief, 5 lvl, 29 HP, 1 death
Khalid - Fighter, 4 lvl, 38 HP, 1 death
Jaheira - Fighter/Druid, 3/3 lvl, 28 HP, 4 deaths
Minsc - Ranger, 4 lvl, 31 HP, 1 death
Dynaheir - Invoker, 4 lvl, 17 HP, 2 deaths
The overall price of resurrecting - 3100 gp
You know, it never crossed my mind to backup my saves, just some memorable ones and I did it when I completed the game. I got really disappointed, I was thinking about making a post about it.
But in the end I was lucky since Daeryn was really early in the game, I have just reached level 5 IIRC.
The worst thing was that I lost a bg2 save, the party was made from the start of BG1, completed the whole game in full SCS difficulty and reached spellhold in BG2. It was a minimal reload run but still it was an amazing quest that ended the worst way possible.
I still may be able to get the files back...with a lot of luck though..
ps. Back up your current playthroughs fellas, at least the ones you really like...just in case
Managed to make this evil city a little more civil today, first tracked down kidnappers and then a murderer of the most evil kind.
Jaheira fell in the battle against his henchmen though, was able to resurect her at the nearby temple of helm. Still left both of us a little unhinged.
Decided to leave the city awhile after that, J needs to get away and I owe it to her.
To the wilds and the Umar hills it is.
Leaving Yoshimo in the city to keep an eye on it for us, bringing this nice gnome Jan with us instead.
So
Accepted to find Valgyar Corthala, found him and had him join the group.
Delivered mimic blood to cowled wizard and got the Ilbratha shortsword in return.
Brokered a deal with madulf the ogre and the village.
trying to decide if I should go planar sphere or umar hills.
both feels overwhelming.
I do want Mazzy in the group so i guess its umar first.
Will leave the dragon for now though, if I can resist the temptation.... choose dragon as favoured enemy.
SoD would be Siege of Dragonspear. I understand it's an interquel for the BG saga.
First, we have some summons to deal with. The Nishruu trap spawn sees through invisibility, so we have to backstab it rather than have our summons deal with it.
Cernd is holding off some enemies over to the left. Notice that red circle just south of the Ettercap? That's an Invisible Stalker from Edwin. He recently hit level 12 and can now summon three of them each day, plus a Mislead clone. And since they last 9 hours, you can actually cast them before you rest, and they'll be there for an hour after waking up.
The enemy Efreeti poses a problem. Lots of fire spells and lots of durability, with the ability to turn to mist and regenerate if it should be harmed. And in v30 SCS, genies have uninterruptable spells by default. Plus, that Fire Shield is a monster. But one of the benefits of backstabbing is that, although it's very slow at breaking through Stoneskins, it also doesn't trigger as many Fire Shield backlashes.
The Efreeti is a high priority target with evasive abilities and fire spells, so we make a point of disabling it.
When it fails a save against a flasher, we pin it.
We have to leave and rest to get enough Magic Missiles to kill the Magical Sword. In the middle of battle, Edwin turns into a woman. Aerie is pleased.
I hope the transformation doesn't last long. I don't like Edwina's voice.
We don't find what we're looking for on the first level, so we have to go upstairs. Sion begins casting a divination spell, but we're well out of reach, having entered at the western staircase. Unfortunately, I've never gone up the western side before, which means I don't know about the trap there. It's a pretty bad one, this trap.
Edwin goes out and casts Mislead, giving the enemies something to fuss with while we make our escape. Edwin stays in the main area to monitor the situation, while the rest of the party slips into the closest room. Sion's defenses come out.
Not that they matter. We won't even be trying to break through those defenses.
Cernd holds off Olaf Rasmussen with a Fire Elemental, but it doesn't last long. Meanwhile, Sion has cast True Seeing. Our room won't be safe for long.
Edwin, having run to the south end of the main room, summons some more critters and distracts the enemy. He then goes through the southwestern rooms and opens the secret doors for the rest of the party to slip in.
We enter the southernmost room and start to loot it. Maferan finds us.
This means the other enemies are surely on their way. But we've found what we were looking for.
Koshi is in big trouble when he gets here. But then, so are we.
Glad to see it is a very active thread !!
Shouldn't a no-reload or minimal reload strategy avoid relying on save or else effects? Yes. Yes, they should. Our party in general has very loose security. We have tons of escape options--Sil practically has the Staff of the Magi already--but our defenses are actually pretty weak, as we use almost no prebuffs whatsoever, preferring instead to rely on invisibility and spacing to keep us out of harm's way.
Anyhoo, we send Cernd out into the main area to check things out. With his Werewolf Token and the haste it grants, he should be able to run away if a bunch of enemies should spot him. With nothing else to do, he summons a Nymph. I believe Olaf Rasmussen has some rage immunities... but if he does, they wore off.
Maferan remains active, but we get automatic hits on Olaf, and he's within reach of Cernd. We focus our attention on Olaf. Edwin tries to summon some critters. It doesn't work.
Sometimes summoning spells will have no effect if their casting time is 0. The Robe of Vecna can easily rob you of your summons. Come to think of it, Aerie should probably be wearing it, not Edwin, as Edwin has no Invisibility 10' Radius spell.
There's no room for Sil to attack Olaf, so she tries to backstab Maferan. Barbarian immunities get in the way.
Soon, Olaf falls.
Koshi appears, dashing in from the secret door behind us. He starts to attack Sil, and could have brought her within an inch of her life before we could cast Invisibility on her, but she vanishes right in front of him.
Koshi shifts gears, and the result isn't much better. Edwin doesn't have the saving throws to stop Celestial Fury's stun effect.
Thankfully, he has some Stoneskins to protect him until rescue comes.
The situation here is pretty bad. Koshi is hasted, and considering his low speed factor and the close quarters of our environment, we can't kite him. He'll hit us before we get far, even if we're hasted. We need another option. Aerie has it.
Aerie is now visible, but Edwin, who is casting Invisible Stalker, is not. Why? Well, we re-cast Invisibility 10' Radius to allow Aerie and Edwin to maintain invisibility despite casting those spells, but Aerie started casting too late--maybe because her aura was not clear.
Thanks to Teleport Field, however, she enough room to hide herself with Sanctuary. We take a moment to clear our auras.
We start hitting Koshi with the wand, as planned. On the second charge, he fails his save!
He'll be stunned for the next 10 rounds. Sil prepares to backstab Koshi into oblivion. Another enemy appears in the doorway.
I hold off Stalman with some spiders, who I figure will disrupt his spells with their poison. But clerics have good AC and saves vs. death, and he gets an important spell off the ground.
It's Remove Paralysis. Koshi is back in action.
Stalman may have more castings, which means we have two targets in need of disabling. Jan holds onto the wand, as he is the most capable of resisting a stunning attack from Koshi (his save vs. spell is 3), while our other spellcasters focus on disablers. Meanwhile, Sil follows around Stalman, looking for opportunities to backstab while he's casting a spell.
Koshi goes for Edwin again. We're running low on escape options, but I can't afford to lose him--especially when we'd need even more escape options to rescue him if he gets stunned.
Aerie is running out of disablers. She has Hold Person, but it's a little slow. Command comes out much faster.
We maintain our pressure on Stalman. Finally, Koshi fails another save vs. wand.
When the Wand of Paralyzation works, there's a slight glow on the target, and you see the same swirling effect over their head that you see after a potion or haste spell.
Stalman goes for a Necromancy spell, and I'm worried that it might free Koshi. Our auras aren't all in order, but we manage to get a spell in before he's done casting.
Sil moves in for the kill. Our spiders help out.
Koshi falls! Celestial Fury is ours! We've got all we came for. Now we can leave.
But Stalman and Maferan are already weak. There's no harm in fighting a little longer, is there?
Why didn't Cernd cast Ironskins? In EE, apparently, the casting time is 9. He can only do so safely if he's invisible or if nobody's around. Just as Cernd goes invisible, Sil stops Stalman from casting Sanctuary, which he could have used to cast Heal and undo all our progress.
Cernd finishes casting Ironskins and is ready to re-enter the fight. Sil finishes off Stalman.
Jan exposes Ketta with Detect Illusions, allowing Sil to flip the script on Ketta. Ketta explodes.
Maferan goes down as well, though Sil does a lot of running to avoid getting hit. Maferan attacks fast even with an axe, and Sil has to use hit-and-fade tactics just to stay alive, even if she gets no backstab multiplier.
The room is empty. Sion remains mysteriously absent. We find him in the main room.
We could easily just run past him, but I feel like taking him on. Even though he does have level 9 spells. We pester him with some weak summons, drawing out a Finger of Death, and try to interrupt his spells. But Jan misses an attack roll, and I realize the next spell is a bad one.
No-reloaders are probably very attentive to transmutation spells like that. Time Stop and Improved Alacrity are major game-changers in SCS.
I send Aerie and Jan away. Edwin stays behind to bear the brunt of the assault. Sion is going to destroy him.
We get incredibly lucky. Edwin doesn't even get hit by the first Horrid Wilting spell--the 10% magic resistance from the Robe of Vecna protects him, and a potion cures much of the rest. A message from Cernd shows we were even more fortunate than we thought.
I didn't even know Cernd was still attacking. Cernd only has 20 MR from his werewolf form, and it blocked both Horrid Wilting spells.
Jan burns through Sion's Spell Deflection with a Breach spell. Cernd also helped, having cast Charm Person or Mammal earlier, as did Aerie and/or Jan. It took some time, but Sion's spell protections are gone.
He makes his saves against most of our spells, but fails against one.
With his True Seeing spell already spent, he can't cure the blindness, and for some reason SCS enemies seem to prefer to run around aimlessly when they're blind. I'm sure Sion still had spells left, but in the end, it mattered little. With a Haste spell from Edwin, we were fast enough to break through his Stoneskins, and there was nothing Sion could do after that.
Taking on Sion was a pretty big risk, and could have killed both Cernd and Edwin at once, forcing the rest of us to turn invisible and flee. But it was well worth the risk, netting us an Adventurer's Robe and a Bloodstone Necklace, in exchange for two or three Potions of Extra Healing.
It might not seem like much, and it isn't, but we did get tons of XP out of it. 13,000 XP is nothing to sneeze at for one enemy.
Although, since this is Nightmare mode, we could have easily gotten that by killing a couple groups of sewer goblins.
Since we already took down Sion et al okay, I figure we're probably in good enough shape to handle Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers. Edwin removes the Robe of Vecna to summon some critters while Jan guides Sil out to the enemy to get in a backstab. When Sil goes away, Edwin's summons lure the group to the northeast corner of the map, where Edwin takes down Gaius' MGOI with a Secret Word.
Globe of Invulnerability in my experience blocks Secret Word, but MGOI does not. This opens up Gaius to lots of potential disablers and disrupters--especially since Jan can remove all of his illusionary protections at will. Cernd hits Gaius with Insect Plague, but Gaius casts Fire Shield, which blocks all forms of Insect Plague.
So where'd that one point of damage come from? Actually, Cernd's Insect Plague hit Gaius a fraction of a second before Gaius activated his double Fire Shield Spell Sequencer. Fire Shield blocks Insect Plague, but it doesn't dispel Insect Plague.
Anyway, Gaius' friends come in and now we have three times as many spells to disrupt. Thankfully, his friends are clerics, and Magic Missile alone can disrupt their spells.
But we can't maintain that pressure forever, and eventually a spell breaks through.
Edwin is doomed once again. I could cast Invisibility on him, but Aerie has no Stoneskins and both she and Jan are wounded. If I send them out to Edwin to cast their spells, there's a good chance they'll get interrupted, and they could die alongside of Edwin. Plus, Aerie's death would cost us 800 gold, as we can't cast Raise Dead without her unless we patronize a temple.
I prioritize Aerie's safety over Edwin's.
Edwin goes down and the rest of the party flees, but our illusions don't last long. A divination spell exposes us just we're escaping the field of vision of some goblins.
But the goblins spotted us, and we have to spend some time fighting them. They're not too tough, and Sil can take them down quite readily, but Gaius appears behind us in the middle of the fight.
Fortunately for us, he's out of Stoneskins.
And when we don't make our attack rolls?
I had Roger recharge a Wand of Paralyzation, Fire, and Cloudkill, at considerable cost. They'll make a big difference in long, drawn-out fights where our resources, and the enemy's, run low. But the wand is just there to disrupt spells. Sil is there for the damage.
For fun, I have her solo the enemy fighters for a while. She only misses on a natural 1.
We throw out a Skeleton Warrior, but Sil does most of the heavy lifting. We've lost a lot of potions in these last two battles, but we've got enough money to buy more if we need them. Normally, potions are abundant in SCS, but our fights last so long that it's rare for an enemy to drop any.
Sil breaks a backstab record on a Gibberling.
Honestly, the fastest way to get XP in Nightmare mode might just be to farm kobolds, goblins, and gibberlings. Damage spells like Fireball, Cloudkill, and the Death Spell wouldn't work due to Nightmare mode's HP and level bonuses, but Hold Person, summons, and Haste would make the battles go by pretty quickly and safely.
I grievously underestimate the Wandering Horror. It stuns Sil while she's trying to run away and hide.
Aerie doesn't have Free Action or Remove Paralysis. I left them out to make room for Restoration and Animate Dead. Worse yet, invisibility spells won't work, as the Wandering Horror will see right through it. We have to kill it outright. For a moment, I think we're about to experience our first reload, but we manage to overwhelm the Wandering Horror and bring it to Near Death before it takes even half of Sil's HP... only to see Aerie snag an automatic kill.
We sneak past the beholders near the riddle bridge. SCS Nightmare mode beholders would be nearly impossible to kill. And again, the XP isn't anything I couldn't get from a gang of goblins or kobolds.
The Empathic Manifestation dies, somehow, before we get a chance to heal it.
That's pretty grim.
We avoid Ghoul Town because there's no safe place to rest in that area. Instead, we plow through the undead using Fire Elementals, who are immune to the attacks of Ghasts and Mummies. Since I left the game running for several minutes to pick up the mail, the Fire Elementals vanish before we can finish off the last group of enemies, but it's no problem. We already hit three of the surviving undead (?) with Feeblemind, and slay the fourth one with damage spells before it can reach us.
We sneak past the beholders and escape the hive. I don't think we'll be fighting any Beholders until we get 100% item-based magic resistance, which we can't get until Chapter 6 with Viconia, or the Nine Hells with Sil.
We drop off the Rift Device on the floor on the way out.
If we ever finish the quest, it'll be there when we get back.
I know trying to save sister ranger Merella was the right thing to do, but the horrars in those temple ruins are far beyond anything we have ever faced before. And I fear there are more horrors to be faced further down the road. The shadow dragon we snuck past down there for example, it gnaws on my coincience to leave it alive and spreading its evil. Especialy so near the village I have now sworn to protect since I failed to bring their ranger protector back. Atleast we saved her... sort of.
The trip was not for naught though, Jaheira learned how to bring back people from the dead, or gnomes in this case. Poor Jan took a nasty bite to the neck before we even got near the temple.
And Mazzy the new addition to the group, she is spreading sunshine even in the darkest places, and her sharpshooting skills surpass anything I have ever seen. She is deadlier with a bow then even Kivan.
Helping the village Trademeet from its troubles felt alot more rewarding. Even gave us an opportunity to finaly get rid of that murdering tanner.
Trolls, Djinns, crazed animals and mad druids are worthy foes but atleast the feel more natural then shades.
Resting a few days after that whild Mazzy watched over her sisters recovery felt well deserved.
Now Jan needs our help though, trouble at home so back to that cesspool city we go.
So
Finnished Umar Hills and the Ruins
Cleaned up copper coronet and slaver stockade
Payed the 15000 to the shadow thieves and got started on that questline.
Travelled to tradmeet and did all quests there.
Got Belm for Valgyar - given him 1 pip in schimitar
Minsc got Azuredge - 1 pip in axes
Mazzy got Trancheron bow and Tuigan bow
Henke got Belt of inertial barrier and amulet of power
Jaheria got cleric staff +3
Aidahn Sparkyfibber, 10th BG1 update
During their rest, the party re-read all the letters they found in the Nashkel Mines. It was clear that in order to find answers on their questions they have to talk to a man called Tranzig in one of Beregost's inns.
While in Beregost, the group bought the Protector +1 amulet - because with the Ring of Holiness Aidahn had to wear an item +1 other than a ring for keeping his saving throws.
When approached, Tranzig declined to talk and warned that he was a dangerous wizard. Well, he had to answer for his words.
Outside, Imoen met Elminster. While everyone was glad to see a famous mage, the meeting was not only pleasant but also useful: Elminster informed the party that the roots of the Iron Crisis should be searched for in the Bandit Camp, that was located on the North, behind Peldvale and Larswood.
Sparkyfibber thanked Elminster and proposed to explore the Sword Coast a bit more. Everybody fealt their progress after the Mulahey battle but the encounter with Nimbul that ended rather OK clearly showed the need for further development before dealing with the camp full of bandits.
Dynaheir gulped 2 potions of genious and learned several additional useful spells, Web and Glitterdust among them.
As for the destination, the party decided to start with Coastway. Upon arriving to the Area, Jaheira warned about local inhabitants (OOC: I've liked this element of the BG1 NPC mod, that someone in your party who is more or less familiar with the area can give some advice about monsters).
The first of sirines, of whome Jaheira had warned, was found nearby. Instead of attacking, she insisted on kissing Imoen. When everyone was ready to avenge their fallen comrade, this nereid explained that she acted not by her own will but instead by the will of an ogre-mage who had captured her. Aidahn demanded to resurrect Imoen and only after that promised to free the nereid from her captor.
And not before the last line of their dialogue ended, this ogre-mage appeared himself. Unlike their first meeting with this kind of an opponent, the group attacked and although Dynaheir still fell asleep, both poison from Minsc's arrows and Aidahn's Hold spell worked.
Jaheira reached a new level, getting 7 HPs.
There were other sirens on the same area, "with no malice in their intent", by Jaheira's words. Still, they were enemies and the Sword Coast needed to get free from these dangerous creatures. The first two sirens fell due to a new combination of spells that Dynaheir offered: 2 Web spells combined with 1 Grease spell. This way, the party could safely kill the sirens with their bows and slings. But one siren managed to stay away from the effect of Dynaheir's spells.
Looking through their arsenal, Aidahn asked Minsc to use his Berserk ability. It was the first time after meeting Minsc when such a need came, and althouth the ranger hesitated a bit, everyone assured him that they'll stay away from him if something went wrong.
It worked.
When the group moved to another Coastway location, Dynaheir asked Aidahn about his recent dream.
OOC: Another element I've liked about the BG1 NPC mod is that Dynaheir commented on the charname's dream. To me, it is something that could be very much in the un-modded game because I always had a problem with undestanding the dream. Now, thanks to Dynaheir, I've got it
With berserkering Minsc and using the Web+Grease combination the group didn't have troubles while dealing with local sirens as well. Khalid had a lucky level up, granting him 11 HPs.
Now Khalid had 49 hit points - at least this amount could keep him from being one-shotted by the majority of BG1 enemies.
Aidahn Sparkyfibber - Cleric/Illusionist, 4/3 lvl, 27 HP (10 from FF), 0 deaths
Imoen - Thief, 5 lvl, 29 HP, 1 death
Khalid - Fighter, 5 lvl, 49 HP, 1 death
Jaheira - Fighter/Druid, 4/4 lvl, 35 HP, 4 deaths
Minsc - Ranger, 4 lvl, 31 HP, 1 death
Dynaheir - Invoker, 4 lvl, 17 HP, 2 deaths
The overall price of resurrecting - 3100 gp
First, since we're still in the Temple District, we met the final EE NPC. Hi, Dorn!
Bye, Dorn!
Next, the Planar Prison. I want those Boots of Speed so Sil can escape short-casting time spells from her targets--like Power Word: Stun--without being hasted. There's one problem with the Planar Prison, though.
This place is really hard to hide in. There are penalties associated with it, in my experience, that make stealth very difficult here. Worse yet, there are almost no places to run. Sil has to drink a Potion of Invisibility to survive, and we don't have many of them. The rest of the party, too, is quickly revealed by Remove Magic. We're in pretty bad shape by the time we take refuge.
This is what the Rod of Resurrection is for. We move away from the enemies and find a less densely populated area, only to see our previous foes return.
We had to raise her once more, and seek shelter again.
The way I dealt with this situation is awfully complicated and would take a long time to explain in depth. Basically, over the course of several rest periods, we poked around and monitored the enemy's attack patterns and found that our only realistic way to deal with them would be to concentrate our energy on one enemy at a time, sending our summons out to remove Stoneskins, if any, and then bring in Sil to backstab them. As always, our safety depended on carefully timed Invisibility 10' Radius spells. Gradually, the enemy herd thinned out.
I saved and quit the game to take a break, and when I returned to the game, I realized what went wrong.
No, it's not the enemy casting a divination spell. Sil is alone, but there's no fog of war around her. This means she's not actually blind. She's been trying to hide in plain sight, but she can't do that without being blind.
I go back to EEKeeper and check her out. There's no blindness effect on her, but then, her other save files are also missing the permanent blindness effect I gave her in Chateau Irenicus. I give it back to her and fix the problem.
I consider reloading from the auto-save, since this is a bug and it cost me a lot of potions I shouldn't have lost, but I decide it's easier to just keep playing. I'm not willing to start over just to save on potions.
From then on, I make a point of keeping Sil far away from the enemy mages when she tries to backstab. Later on, she dodged a potentially fatal Prismatic Spray thanks to Edwin's sacrifice.
I notice a potentially ruinous bug when Jan falls into one of the holes and has to escape. He emerges in between two of the holes.
He fell into the south hole, but because it's impossible to go back south without stepping on the hole's trigger, he can't actually get back to where he was, to the starting area. I don't know where the other hole deposits you, but the placement of the south trigger means that either those holes force you to go right up to the Warden, or they permanently stick you in between those two holes. The only way to get Jan back without walking straight to the Warden is to kill him, raise him, and then use the quick loot feature to grab his equipment. I grant myself a use of CTRL-J to avoid this. I feel you should be able to walk around those triggers.
One of the big problems we have with mages in general is that they're awfully hard to interrupt. The only party member that can hit reliably is Sil, and we like to keep her out of the way. Halcyon, the spear you can find in the crypts beneath the Graveyard District, does electrical damage on hit--the only weapon we have that deals damage through Stoneskin and that Sil can use.
To my knowledge, this is the first time I've actually ever used Halcyon.
Another highlight of the many tiny battles with the enemy horde is Cernd using Greater Werewolf form to draw a Remove Magic spell away from the rest of the party.
I really need to start prepping more with Spell Immunity: Abjuration or Divination. At least some of our party would be able to resist Remove Magic.
After a lot of micromanagement, we finally track down the last enemy and pummel him with summons. Aerie's Aerial Servant brings the days-long struggle to an end.
I can't put in words how much time this took, and how much attention it required.
Next up, the Master of Thralls, who has lots of disablers and can see through Sil's invisibility.
Cernd casts Farsight to check out the situation with the Warden. Looks pretty bad.
Yuan-ti Mages are always bad news. We send a few summons after them to trigger their MGOI spells, and wait a long while until we're sure those buffs have run out. We then lure the mages back to our position, where our spells and Minute Meteors can disrupt through the enemy's Stoneskins.
We wear down all of the mages this way. Since the Warden and the Yuan-ti fighters decided not to pursue us, we rest and re-cast Invisible Stalker so we have four summons for free the next day. Edwin needs those 6th-level spell slots for buffs. Protection from Magical Energy allows Edwin to negate the Warden's Chain Contingency spell, which includes Horrid Wilting.
When the Warden starts casting an alteration spell. Edwin flees. He equipped the Boots of Speed earlier for precisely that reason. The Warden wastes a valuable spell.
Edwin returns. The Warden casts Black Blade of Disaster. Edwin casts Protection from Magical Weapons and wades right into the fray, knowing BBoD can't hurt him.
Unfortunately, I didn't notice that third line in the dialog box. I didn't realize the Yuan-ti fighters were using nonmagical weapons. The result catches me by surprise.
It wasn't until much later that I understood what went wrong.
Edwin's death is a big loss for us, particularly since he died with the Boots of Speed that Sil needs to stay safe. Cernd runs out and nabs the boots, and some other items we wanted, using the quick loot feature.
Sil dashes out to take care of the Yuan-ti, who have drifted away from the Warden. It was not a good decision.
When the Yuan-ti are gone, we mob the Warden. He makes most of his saving throws, but a flasher spells his doom.
Now we have 2 rounds of safety. Sil runs up and stun-locks the Warden with Celestial Fury. It's over.
We're just about ready to try out our special plan. With lots of potions and scrolls, and just the right combination of spells, the only thing missing is Viconia--a good tank for the following fight.
Degardan, an old enemy of Edwin's, had appeared right after we escaped the Planar Prison, and appears again in the Graveyard District. This time, he's not fooled by Edwin's accidental disguise, and turns Edwin back to a man.
But then, he says nothing. We break invisibility on both Edwin and Sil, but Degardan won't speak. It seems the rest of the quest, which I think involved a minor mage fight, is broken. I don't much care about it, as long as Edwin is back to normal, so I walk away. Once we grab Viconia and set her up with some simple equipment, we're ready to take on the next challenge.
Our level 12 party in Nightmare mode is going to take on the Twisted Rune.
No, I'm not kidding.
Am I the only one who thought that looked an awful lot like a phallus?
Second, Sil died.
Turns out there was a fear effect, and Sil failed her save. And since she was using stealth to stay invisible, she appeared after a couple of rounds.
Number of reloads so far: 1
So how am I going to handle this fight?
First, Shangalar, like Nevaziah, has the peculiar trait of being unable to see through invisibility, in contrast to most liches. This means Sil can escape Shangalar's notice simply using stealth.
Or so I thought. As I learned in the earlier battle, a Protection from Undead scroll was necessary to avoid him. Thankfully, I already bought several scrolls just in case I turned out to be wrong.
Sil is still not invisible to Planetars and demons, which is why we needed the Boots of Speed. Otherwise, she could not have run away from them. We also have Teleport Field on hand to manage this threat, and Sil's three Potions of Invulnerability will hopefully block a vorpal strike--unless the Planetar's dispel on hit takes effect before the vorpal strike does.
What about Comet and Dragon's Breath, or any other area-effect spells they might throw out? What about Vaxall? For that, I have a Protection from Magic scroll. In my install, Protection from Magic scrolls can't be removed by Spellstrike or Anti-Magic Rays. Later, however, I would realize that both the scroll and the install tweak were unnecessary.
But that's just Sil. What is the rest of the party going to do? They can't maintain invisibility forever, and the enemy would absolutely crush them if they became visible. Edwin, Jan, and Aerie have SI: Abjuration and SI: Divination, but Cernd and Viconia don't. And once one party member becomes visible, the whole group is at risk for area-effect attacks.
Nor can we hide, because Shangalar and Layenne occupy both chambers. So how do we keep the rest of the party safe, if and when Sil needs them?
Easy. Aerie casts a little-appreciated priest spell, and blows Shangalar away.
Repulse Undead offers no save. Shangalar is out of the way, and now the party can hide out by the staircase to nowhere as long as they like.
Of course, we still need somebody to watch out for Sil. Aerie runs out with SI: Divination active, but that doesn't help against Remove Magic. She needs a Potion of Invisibility to stay alive, and we've only got so many.
Layenne knows we're around and tries to get at us. We stay out of reach.
Aerie's SI: Divination vanishes, and Layenne goes for a True Seeing spell. It catches us by surprise, but that's why we gave Aerie the Robe of Vecna.
So those are our defensive options. How are we actually going to kill anything?
Well, PFMW only lasts so long, and we are very patient.
To my dismay, Sil gets hit by an Anti-Magic Ray in the single second it takes for her to Hide With No Sight. It won't take down a Protection from Magic scroll, but it will remove Sil's potion buffs, as the dispel effect from Anti-Magic Ray has a spell level of 0, which Protection from Magical does not block.
Had I not used a Protection from Magic scroll, I really just could have relied on potion buffs. I'm using them anyway, in case there are level 0 spells on the map, but they also block basically everything a Protection from Magic scroll does. It was kind of a waste.
Sil repeatedly tries to slay Shyressa with the Mace of Disruption, while Jan uses Detect Illusions to reveal the vampire, but Shyressa keeps making her save vs. death. It's bad luck, I'm sure; a quick look at her .cre file in NI confirms that she is undead and her save vs. death is above 0. She needs to roll a 6 to die, but keeps rolling above that.
Aerie's Robe of Vecna saves her twice more. The MR blocks an area-effect spell, and the casting speed bonus helps her cast Invisibility when her Sanctuary runs out.
Vaxall wanders off. I'm a little concerned that he's approaching the rest of the party, but I don't want them to leave their hiding place. Instead, I just turn them invisible: a Sanctuary on Viconia and a Potion of Invisibility for Cernd. I let them stay where they are.
It was a bad move on my part.
Now half the party is stuck behind Vaxall. If they break invisibility, even for a moment, he can easily kill them. We need to get them out.
Vaxall isn't going anywhere. We need to continue without Edwin, Cernd, or Viconia. And Shyressa is making too many saves--there might be something wrong. I decide to leave Shyressa alone. We'll have to kill Layenne for the Staff of the Magi, and Vaxall for his eye, without which we can't leave the place, but we may have to let Revanek and Shyressa live.
I try to stun Layenne with Celestial Fury, but her save vs. spell is stellar, and all the attacks do is get Sil pelted with Energy Blades, draining our very limited Potion of Extra Healing supply. Then I remember that poison bypasses Stoneskin. It didn't work that way in my vanilla SCS game, but it's been doing that in EE. Jan has Bolts of Biting, but he can't escape if he breaks his invisibility. So how are we going to get past that Stoneskin?
Sil, as a Kensai, can't use missile weapons, and even if she equipped one later with Use Any Item, she couldn't target anything that wasn't already within melee range, and using ranged weapons up close imposes a THAC0 and AC penalty.
But Kensais can use throwing daggers. Which includes the Poisoned Throwing Daggers we picked up from the fight with Mook at the Docks. And Layenne, as a mage, has a terrible save vs. death.
Sil keeps using hit and fade tactics with the throwing daggers. Sometimes Layenne makes her save, but she gradually starts to get weaker. Even so, I'm having second thoughts about continuing.
Sil's Protection from Magic scroll has worn off. So have her potion buffs, and though I could drink more, I might need some of those potions for later. We haven't exactly been swimming in them. It took ages to get the potions we have.
Layenne tries another divination spell, and Jan can't escape the area of effect. Worse yet, Layenne has Energy Blades, a marvelous spell disrupter. But with the right timing, Jan can slip away.
Then, I realize we need Jan to be visible. He recently took a proficiency point in shortbows, and we only just bought 5 Arrows of Dispelling from the fletcher in the Promenade. Jan needs to break his invisibility, even if it makes him vulnerable.
And it does make him vulnerable, even when he hits Layenne three times a round with Arrows of Biting that Sil tossed to him. And even with the Belt of Inertial Barrier, on loan from Aerie, he can't drink potions fast enough to stay calm. He panics.
At first I write him off as doomed, but I reconsider. Aerie can save him with Remove Fear. He gets back to work on Layenne, and finally the physical damage starts to disrupt some of her spells. Layenne gets one off the ground, and I can't give him an escape option in time, but his saving throws do the job for us.
Gnomes are very sturdy critters. Finally, Layenne fails a save.
He keeps up the pressure. We want to make sure she can't recover.
Jan takes hold of the Staff of the Magi. Now two of our party members can go invisible at will.
With Shyressa stumped by Protection from Undead as well as persistent invisibility, Sil is free to slay Revanek with little opposition.
And yet, somehow, Shyressa manages to see through Aerie's Protection from Undead scroll. Some scripting issue, I assume. Aerie switches out the Helm of Balduran for a Hem of Charm Protection.
I'm not sure if I should keep trying to use the Mace of Disruption on Shyressa. It takes forever to chase her down and so far her saves have been very impressive. Instead, we try some disablers. The Wand of Paralyzation freezes her.
Several rounds later, Aerie uses it again to make sure Shyressa stays put. Finally, Shyressa fails her save.
Now, only Vaxall remains.
But I'm not sure how I'm going to handle him.
Sil's Protection from Magic scroll is long gone, and I believe Death Ray has a spell level of 0, which means Sil wouldn't be safe even if I used our second and last Protection from Magic scroll. I need summons to go after Vaxall, and to do that, we need to get our party members out of the stairway that Vaxall is blocking.
But how do we move Vaxall, if he won't chase anything we send after him? Actually, we have another option, now that we have the Staff of the Magi. Jan hands the staff to Aerie, who casts Teleport Field at Vaxall and immediately re-equips the staff, ensuring our invisibility while teleporting Vaxall out of the way.
We didn't memorize many summoning spells, but we've got a few good ones. Aerie summons a couple of mid-level Skeleton Warriors, who come with 75% MR. Cernd brings out his only Fire Elemental, Edwin contributes an Invisible Stalker, and Viconia adds in one low-level Skeleton Warrior as well. Aerie buffs them with Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Viconia uses Chant, Cernd uses Bless, and Edwin hastes the group. We send them out. It's the best we've got.
Multiple times, our summons make their saves. I was afraid I was going to end up the WoL trick, and I want to keep glitches minimal besides the Hide With No Sight trick. Vaxall runs out Stoneskins.
The Twisted Rune is no more.
I have some good and bad news (for me
Bad news is that my hdd is broken, so no saves left for my bg games. I was expecting it though.
Good news is that I got really MAD, so I decided to start a new no-reload run, full-party but evil roleplaying this time!!
I decided not to document the run this time, I really want to play the game now. But the thing is that after posting my previous runs, although they were really short, I realized that I have a "need" to post something
So here is my party:
"Elaira" - Skald Lvl 3 - 20hp (CON 15) - Charname
"Kagain" - Fighter lvl 2 - 30hp (CON 20) - 1 death
"Viconia"- Cleric lvl 3 - 18hp (CON 8)- 1 death
"Dorn" - Blackguard lvl2 - 17hp (CON 14) - 0 deaths
"Montaron" - Fighter lvl1/Thief lvl2 - 11hp (CON 15) - 0 deaths
"Xzar" - Necromancer lvl2 - 6hp (CON 10) - 0 deaths
Inspired by @bengoshi's current playthrough with Aidahn (long may he live, errr.. I mean forever), I also level up with random hp and I must say I really like it! It makes the same npc - char different in every new game!
The party is currently exploring the sword coast, delivering bounties, thirsty for gold and power! Reputation is already at 3 (despised) so Flaming Fist and guards attack me at first sight.
It is also the first time I truly roleplay an evil char and I found out how hard a villain's life can be. At start I got a bit frustrated with my low reputation, but this is the life of a bad guy! I really like the different outcomes on certain quests and the "new" banters this time. One of the main obstacles in the game will be the high prices due to low reputation. High charisma can mitigate it a bit but I think it is not enouph. The evil party may ofc decide to donate in Temples to "prove their GOOD intentions". Another way is to do it when you complete quests, but I have lowered the gaining reputation function via SCS. Have you guys done something else?
Moreover I would like to mention the chunking effect. I didn't reduce it through modding, but I find it very interesting since it is a game changer in a no-reload run. The game has so many npcs and I love to face this kind of challenges. It adds a lot to replayability. Do you do the same? I also think to limit resurrection to 2 times, so the third death is for good!
"Godspeed"- Mirage -
To be honest, the formula for the Twisted Rune wasn't too different from my normal strategy in retrospect. The only thing I feel was truly clever was using Repulse Undead at the beginning to get Shangalar away from the party.
Our basic strategy for spellcasters is a seven step sequence: appear, fade, provoke, fade, conjure summons, disrupt spells, and backstab. We (1) trigger the enemy's buffs by appearing, then (2) vanish to wait out the buffs; (3) provoke the enemy into wasting offensive spells, either by sending summons after them or using ranged attacks or spells, and then (4) vanish again to evade the spells; then (5) summon some tougher critters to wear down the enemy's Stoneskins, (6) use Melf's Acid Arrow, Magic Missile, and Firetooth to disrupt their spells, and finally (7) send in Sil to backstab.
We need lots of escape options across multiple characters in order to make sure we can fade away when necessary. Without Invisibility, Invisibility 10' Radius, Haste, low-level summons, Teleport Field, and lots of running, we would have had to have prebuffed extensively to survive the pressure.
We had to make only minor changes in this strategy to deal with the Twisted Rune. The most important thing was shoring up our defenses, since there was so little room to hide in. We needed Repulse Undead to avoid Shangalar's True Seeing, Protection from Undead and Potions of Invisibility in case I bungled Sil's stealth, Boots of Speed to shorten Sil's period of visibility, the Rod of Resurrection to correct any fatal errors I made (and compensate for our low supply of Potions of Extra Healing), Teleport Field in case we got boxed in, the Mace of Disruption to save time on Shangalar, poisoned weapons to save time on Layenne, and Potions of Invulnerability, Magic Protection, and Magic Shielding to keep Sil safe from disablers (note that only only two Potions of Magic Protection or a Potion of Freedom could have stopped Power Word: Stun).
Vaxall's wandering off was a big blessing in restrospect. It probably saved us a lot of Potions of Invulnerability and Magic Shielding, as it allowed Sil and Jan to poison Layenne without worrying about getting blasted by a Beholder ray. With all other enemies removed from the map, Vaxall could then be taken down using summons. If I couldn't do that, we'd likely end up using lots of wands to bring him down, as he has 365 HP in Nightmare mode, and is immune to backstab. It would have been wise to buy some scrolls of Stone to Flesh, as I only had one such scroll, and we could have permanently lost several party members if we had to leave them in there.
We're now much better equipped to handle future challenges. Taking down the Shadow Thief headquarters was much simpler, as Edwin, Aerie, and Jan could trade off the Staff of the Magi and attack without breaking invisibility. It's also a marvelous debuffer. The Staff of the Magi in my install dispels magic without a save, but dispels as if it were a level 30 caster, which means, in Nightmare mode, it's not going to be able to dispel all buffs. Even against Shadow Thief mages, it couldn't always dispel their buffs, but it was fairly reliable. Without Stoneskin, Aran Linvail and his mage friend were open to backstabs. There was a major scare, however, earlier in the fight, when Sil almost got killed by a triple Flame Arrow Spell Sequencer, and was reduced to 4 HP by a followup Minute Meteor.
Cernd has hit level 13, and therefore has Greater Werewolf form, which grants 50% resistance to the elements, 40% magic resistance, -12 total AC, and 1 regeneration per second, as well as a +3 weapon at 3 APR and a very fast movement rate. It's not enough to let him tank Nightmare enemies, but he's still much harder to kill now.
Also, Sil broke her backstab record.
Another issue are the Mustard Jellies, which I normally handle using fire spells. There's no way Sil is going to handle them on her own, and I doubt we have any summons that could get the job done, but normal fire magic will work fine, as long as we use the Staff of the Magi to maintain our invisibility.
Edwin and Aerie both exhausted their fire spells to take these jellies down. It took 12 Fireballs and 7 Sunfire spells to get them all.
We trigger the first fight with the Statues. Jan tries to remove the one of the clerics' defenses with the Staff of the Magi, and is badly hurt in the process.
It's not reliable anyway. The cleric statues both are level 32 in Nightmare mode, which gives us only a 30% chance of dispelling their buffs. We end up just backstabbing everybody over and over again until the fight is over.
The next fight is normally a lot harder, as it features two epic-level mages and a host of fighters supporting them. But Jan can wear down their defenses safely, again with the Staff of the Magi. The male mage is base level 25, or level 37 in Nightmare mode, which means it's impossible (unless EE fixed the Dispel Magic bug) for us to remove its defenses using the staff, but I didn't know that at the time. I just focused on wearing the enemy down.
Unfortunately, I gradually realized that bringing down the statues would take ages and essentially just boil down to Sil backstabbing them round after round. These are high-level enemies with about 300 HP on average and 50% resistance to slashing damage, which means our backstabs are limited to about 50 damage a pop. We decide to leave, but run right into a Symbol: Stun spell. Sil fails her save!
Thankfully, I finally got wise to this risk and planned accordingly. Jan casts Invisibility on himself so he can hand the Staff of the Magi to Aerie without turning visible. Aerie in turn uses it to cast Remove Paralysis without losing her invisibility. We regain control of Sil.
I remember that the portal to the next area is open, according to a line of text after the ritual, so I decide to go to the next level instead of simply leaving. Turns out the message was lying: the portal is not actually open.
We can still exit the normal way, and the Statues don't stop us. We'll probably come back when we can summon a Planetar to slay the enemy with vorpal strikes.
I'm bored and none of the available adventurers hold any interest for me, so I go shopping and report to Bodhi. We set sail for Spellhold.
After a slightly prolonged cutscene in which an Assassin has to land 5 extra hits to kill Sanik, we pay a visit to Perth the Adept. When we interrupt Perth's divination spell, he decides to get somebody else to do his searching for him.
Time to go. We scurry outside and wait for 3 minutes (I use the stopwatch on my phone), where Cernd scolds us for standing around.
We return to Perth's place and screw with him a little more. He tries another divination spell, but we're not having that.
He conjures a pair of Efreet instead, who nearly kill Jan with an insta-cast Flame Strike when he briefly appears in front of them, and attacks Aerie despite her Sanctuary. Another oddity with the scripting.
We keep hassling Perth. Finally he uses the nuclear option.
Since the demon from before didn't even follow us out, we give the Planetar a moment to come after us before leaving, just so our leaving isn't a complete negation of its presence. The moment we get outside, Edwin casts Haste and Aerie casts Teleport Field. The Teleport Field will keep us safe for a second or two, and the Haste spell will prevent the Planetar from catching up to us.
The Planetar doesn't appear, but I suppose it doesn't really matter. All it would have done is chase one of us across Brynnlaw for the next 23 rounds, and with Sil's Boots of Speed, there's no chance it would have gotten her. I come back to Perth's house and find him alone. The Planetar is waiting inside. Jan casts Invisibility and brings out the Staff of Striking, because I forgot that backstabbing in ogre form via Polymorph Self is even stronger (14*5+6, instead of 12.5*5). The damage is still impressive, at least by non-Nightmare mode standards.
He needed to cast Invisibility because you can't backstab using the Staff of the Magi. The staff itself can't backstab, and if you switch to another weapon, you turn visible. The staff helps in hiding, but can't promise automatic backstabs like Assassination or Mislead can, even if it can promise automatic invisibility.
Jan lands another hit with the Staff of Striking, but it's not quite enough to kill Perth. Sil soars in from across the map to finish him off.
It's impressive, but Sil isn't the reason we won. The Staff of the Magi won that battle. Jan, Aerie, and Edwin can use it, but Sil needs another 1.5 million XP before she can.
Also, bad news.
It's possible to duplicate the Book of Daily Spell using the Wand of Lightning trick. It'll give you 6 copies of the book, though they'll all be on the same page, which means I had a 10% chance of getting stuck with Burning Hands anyway. This means we can all but guarantee access to all of the books we want, and there are two that I really, really want to have.
Problem is, you need to drop the extra copies of the book before you try to duplicate the thing, because turning the page in one copy of the book also changes all of the other copies in your inventory to the new page. I didn't do that, which means all 6 copies of the Stinking Cloud volume turned into Burning Hands. Testing confirmed that dropping some of the books prevents this from happening, but I wasn't willing to add a second reload to our count in order to get what I wanted.
Although I may change my mind. Because if we have two copies of the Spell Turning volume of the Book of Daily spell, we can combine the Wand of Lightning trick with the Book of Daily Spell trick with the scorcher loop trick and kill any dragon in the game, even in Nightmare mode. An Agannazar's Scorcher Spell Sequencer would kill any of the dragons besides Firkraag and Saladrex (the lightning bolt projectile unfortunately doesn't get bounced in EE). Chain-casting Spell Turning appears to magnify the duplication of the scorcher spells, resulting in thousands of hits (10,000 for a triple scorcher loop) over the course of several rounds. Brings back sweet memories of vaporizing dragons in Skyrim with Lightning Storm.
I do want to try that at some point. It's about time I killed a BG2 dragon with a gigantic laser beam.
EDIT: Screw it, I'm reloading. I want my laser.
Did you know Adalon in Nightmare mode has 2,366 HP?
That dialog box is filled entirely with fire damage. It hit Adalon so many times that the messages couldn't fit in the box. And those scorchers haven't even run out yet.
I think I'll call it the Death Ray Zorcher.
Total reloads so far: 2.
It's painfully slow. You can only move one circle at a time. A familiar would be a prerequisite for a blind solo run.
Outside, I discover that traps apparently can be within an enemy's view if the thief is blind. That didn't hold for vanilla, but it works in EE.
For some reason, Bhaal refuses to follow me inside, and I have to use the console to bring him inside. I think the problem is he can attack you from a considerable distance thanks to his two-handed sword, and won't get close enough to the door to follow you in.
We have a lot of trouble with the Spellhold Yuan-ti before I realize that they're optional enemies and I'd be better off farming kobolds later than fighting the Yuan-ti now. The Spellhold lich is a bigger problem, as we can't sneak past it. But Jan uses a Protection from Undead scroll and hassles the lich with the Staff of the Magi, while the rest of the party stays out of the way--aside from Edwin, whom I used to pester the lich a little, and nearly died for his efforts. Jan and Sil lay traps for the lich to wander into, gradually wearing it down, until finally Jan can chunk it.
Honestly... evasive strategies are really, really overpowered. I seldom ever did it in my other runs, but it's become a habit in Nightmare mode. Maybe it's just because I normally have enemy mages pre-buff in my installs, and I'm finally no longer facing them fully buffed, which makes them seem easier. At any rate, I think it's probably a bad idea for normal runs, to flee from battle and wait out enemy buffs. It's realistic, but it makes the battles both longer and easier, and usually a bit less fun.
I've gotten a little weary of those evasive strategies, and I leap at the chance to deal a quick death to Dace Sontan. I bring out the scorcher loop and roast him.
This isn't the Death Ray Zorcher; it's just a normal scorcher loop, though I did use the Book of Daily Spell to generate it. I also use it to deal with the kobold horde, which otherwise would have taken forever to bring down.
I forgot to buff Jan and Aerie with Protection from Fire, however, which costs me a charge from the Rod of Resurrection.
Both characters are safe for a moment, when the Spell Turning spell is still active, but once it wears off, both characters are going to get nailed by a bunch of scorcher spells. They're spared most of the blast, but even the tail ends of the loop are enough to burn both characters down.
Yuan-ti get in the way again in the next area. I try to take down the mage's GOI spell, but Edwin loses his Stoneskins and dies before he can finish casting Pierce Magic. I just wait out the GOI instead before roasting them.
Also, Sil breaks her record for backstabbing again.
I'm a little worried about the run. I've gotten impatient with the pace of the fights, hence my willingness to resort to the scorcher loop. I originally intended to only use the blind thief trick, but no other glitches or oddities, but it's just so slow. I think I might have seen all there is to see in this run, and that's usually when I restart. Sil doesn't have much growth left. She won't change much until she gets Use Any Item, and that's a long way off even now. Worse yet, a thief doesn't scale well in Nightmare mode. Backstabs won't help against late-game bosses, and traps won't do enough to scale with the enemy's increasing HP.
The scorcher loop doesn't scale either, but then, it doesn't really need to. A triple scorcher sequencer loop with two Spell Turning spells already does over 800 damage, and I don't even know how much damage the Death Ray Zorcher does.
I'm going to do a party in vanilla IWD, based on the rather interesting party some of my friends have rolled up for a Forgotten Realms campaign.
BAM!
Party leader: Acid McStonershrooms, human fighter. Using the barbarian fighter class from The Complete Barbarian's Handbook in table-top, but that doesn't exist in vanilla.
2nd liner: D'Ees Nots, elf ranger.
3rd liner: Béorn Axehand, dwarf cleric of Dumathoin. Using the Delvesonn kit from Demihuman Deities in table-top, but that doesn't exist in vanilla.
Healer: Oswall, human cleric of Helm. Using the Watcher kit from Faiths & Avatars in table-top, but that doesn't exist in vanilla.
Utility: De'Kal, half-elf thief/mage. Tiefling from Planewalker's Handbook and using the assassin kit from The Complete Thief's Handbook in table-top, but those don't exist in vanilla.
Caster: Wibbles, gnome illusionist.
7th, in case of permanent death: Dümwār the Crazed, halfling fighter.
I didn't name these people.
Here's the stat pics (I used DaleKeeper to input the pen-and-paper stats.
Acid:
D'Ees:
Béorn:
Oswall:
De'Kal:
Wibbles:
Strength scores will make this party a little lackluster in melee, matching their real life counterparts.
We'll have a game play update in the future.
We avoided fighting the Mind Flayer in the level where Bodhi attacks you. I later realized that, by also avoiding the fight with the Mind Flayer and Beholder in the previous area, we lost our chance to get a Ring of Free Action.
That's a really, really big loss for us. Unless I tweak Use Any Item to permit NPC items, Sil's only defense against stun is an easily dispellable Potion of Freedom or Free Action or Chaotic Commands spell. Aerie adds another casting of Remove Paralysis to her spellbook.
Now we have to deal with Irenicus. It won't be so bad because I tweaked my install so that we wouldn't lose all of our items during the Spellhold gauntlet. My records of the fight are sketchy--the fight was not actually all that tough.
We came pre-buffed with SI: Abjuration, as I suspected that staying invisible would not be an option, and running away was definitely not an option. This meant heavy buffs were in order. Sil was rendered visible early on, but managed to slip away from her clone in the north corner after a failed backstab attempt.
I kept Sil out of the fight for the duration. Her clone was an especially big risk, as her clone also carried a copy of Celestial Fury and could stun-lock any target.
This fight is always very hard to manage, as you have up to 7 large and diverse threats on the map: Irenicus himself, and up to 6 clones depending on your party size. The inmates are a big help, but you can't control them, which means you have to prioritize. Sometimes it makes sense to focus all of your attention on Irenicus. Other times his position is unassailable and your only option is to work on the clones. In our case, we could make progress against both, which meant we had a lot of decisions to make every round.
Jan and Imoen distributed poison effects around the clones and Irenicus when possible. We dedicated our spells to disablers, but had little success. A Time Stop from Wanev rendered our efforts moot.
We hit Irenicus repeatedly with debuffers. Since he had no GOI spell active, we could use Secret Word freely. But, to my frustration, even after removing his Spell Shield and Spell Turning, he had a Spell Immunity or Spell Deflection effect (they have the same visual, so I didn't know which it was) that I could not remove despite hitting it with several Secret Word and Pierce Magic spells. I was hoping I could hit him with Breach and Acid Arrow, but as the rounds went by, his weapon immunities vanished, allowing Imoen and Jan to hit him with Arrows and Bolts of Biting. He makes his saves vs. death, but Firetooth's fire damage doesn't offer a save.
Wanev made a huge impact on the fight with the clones, as they had no defense against Horrid Wilting. A friendly Efreeti and its level 20 Flame Arrow chipped in.
As the rounds went by, so did our buffs. SI: Abjuration vanished without my noticing, allowing an unfriendly debuffer to wipe out our buffs. Sil is out of range, and therefore keeps the largely unnecessary Potion of Magic Shielding buff she used to block her clone's copy of Celestial Fury, but Jan also keeps his Chaotic Commands and Protection from Evil buffs, despite getting hit by the spell.
Edwin is now stun-locked by Sil's clone. Aerie rescues him with Teleport Field, and we spend some time chasing around our enemies. Irenicus' Stoneskins wear off.
It's just a matter of time. When Irenicus gets to Near Death, Edwin nails him with Flame Arrow to make sure Irenicus doesn't recover.
Soon, Irenicus is on his merry way, and Saemon Havarian brings us to City Sushi.
A scorcher loop roasts many of the Sahuagin in our first fight with the rebels, but fails to harm the Priestess, who I forgot was immune by virtue of her Cloak of Mirroring.
I get interrupted and forget to save before I quit, which means I have to fight the Priestess' allies again when I reload. I want to take down the Priestess before I fight her buddies, but my only option for doing that safely is to backstab her, and the City of Caverns can be hard to hide in. Like the Planar Prison, I've noticed stealth is more difficult here than in most places.
Instead, I send out Edwin with the Staff of the Magi and have him hit her with Feeblemind... only to see her cast Chaotic Commands on herself after making no save against the Feeblemind spell. It seems she casts it even if she gets feebleminded.
I try Polymorph Other instead. It shows the visual effect, but she doesn't turn into a squirrel. I try several times over, and finally see her turn into a squirrel... only to see her immediately turn back into a sahuagin. All it does is interrupt her spell.
During my tests, I notice that she goes down to Near Death after recovering from the polymorph effect. Apparently polymorph (is this an EE thing?) can reduce the target's HP to 1, just like petrification. I spot her healing herself with a big potion.
And suddenly, she's at Uninjured again. But this is a great clue: if a Potion of Superior Healing--which heals 40 HP--brought her from Near Death to Uninjured, it must mean her max HP is less than 42. A single backstab will bring her down. Sil zips by to cut her down.
We move on to the Priestess' buddies. Apparently sahuagin count as humanoids: they're vulnerable to Hold Person.
We rely on the scorcher loop to clear up some more of the enemies. It tends to wipe out everything that isn't immune to magic. Skeleton Warriors, unfortunately, have 90% magic resistance.
We sneak past most of the rest of the fights, until we're up against King Ixilthetocal (gotta love that name). We dispatch him with a crowd of hasted summons. On to the Underdark.
By the way, either EE or SCS v30 fixed the sahuagin gold exploit. In the vanilla game, the store at the Temple of Sekolah in the far northwest corner of the map had very screwed up prices, offering you incredibly high prices in exchange for your stuff, but not charging very high prices themselves. This meant that a high CHA, high reputation party could actually make money by selling and buying back big ticket items like the Helm of Balduran. You could gather thousands of gold that way. The temple still gives you lots of gold for your stuff--it's still a good idea to save some items to sell them there, instead of in Athkatla--but it's no longer possible to get unlimited gold from them.