To go to the FAI, or not to go to the FAI: that is the question.
If those bad guys read the note on Gorion's body they'll be expecting me there. But... the heck with it. I don't feel like waltzing around the edges of maps and mucking about in the wild right now, so I'm going. Already you're probably already starting to see why I've never completed a no reload run.
I'm not completely stupid, I expect someone to be waiting, so I send my f/t in to scout for unsavory characters. Oh, and what do you know: there's an unsavoury character.
That's ok: a backstab oughta take care of this. Aw, crap, 4 dmg on a backstab, that's pitiful.
No sweat, though. Followed up with a command spell and a crossbow salvo.
Sorry Khalid, I'm not taking you along on general principle.
On the way south we run afoul of an ogre.
In Beregost, it's time to pick up Neera.
Nooooo - just kidding. I'm crazy, but not that crazy. Neera will have to wait until I get a few more levels, and then I'll rescue her and send her on her way.
Goodnight, Marl. Thought I'd be lenient because I'm a paladin? Sorry: I don't adhere to the black/white notions of alignment in D&D. Mine is a darker, more vengeful brand of justice.
Hi, Tiax! Sorry: can't take you with me on this run. I'm not a goodie-goodie paladin, but there is a line. Really could use your ghast, though...
Now it's of to Firebead to get that scroll case. Then, time to head south towards Nashkel for some exploring and to find out what's really going on. I'm having a hard time deciding what to do with Imoen. Keep her as a second thief... Dual to a mage... Or leave her with Firebead for mage training...
Quick question for you guys: I'm assuming that the thief detect illusion ability works while using the sanctuary spell? I've never actually tried it, for some reason, but it sounds like it could really help me with some pesky mages down the road.
We did run into one setback - Minsc was imprisoned by the beholders. We were intending to replace Minsc anyways, but it was certainly a loss of certain equipment like ring of earth control, Shield of Balduran, and Helm of Brilliance. But the quest must continue...
Having killed Slythe last time, we were off to the Palace at the start of this session. Yertone checked there before entering that Gery had evidence against Sarevok in his main backpack and not a container. Some summons and minimal buffing were done before Yertone started the contest by using dispel magic to get rid of the dopplegangers' haste. They still had a good go at the dukes, but Belt was still alive when the last doppleganger fell. The danger was not over yet though as Yertone didn't manage to get away from Belt before he started talking. That meant Gery quickly nipping in to provide an alternative target for Sarevok to whack at until he decided on a tactical withdrawal.
Going through the maze Tabetha disarmed the traps, but couldn't resist helping out Yertone against the enemies there. That led to her nearly being killed by a skeleton warrior, but she had the final word there with a successful backstab.
In the Undercity the plan was to fireball the party there, but the first of those was cast too close to them and Rahvin saw the opportunity to fire his arrows of detonation. However, a bit of running and shooting from Gery dealt with the danger quickly enough.
Inside the temple Sarevok was dispelled by an arrow from Gery, prompting Semaj to teleport out in support. He landed on some traps preset by Tabetha though and died within a second or two. That left Sarevok all alone as he struggled through the web trap to confront some summons - but made little impression on them before keeling over.
In BG2 Yertone complained in the dungeon about the amount of damage being taken and the time required to heal that, but no-one was actually seriously injured there. Annoyingly, Ulvaryl was not quite finished off by a magic missile and managed to escape, but otherwise everything was completed.
A period of crashes meant we had to perfect our technique at exiting the dungeon, but after doing that 3 times we successfully moved on to the circus tent. Inquisitor true sight there meant the illusions disappeared, leaving Kalah even more vulnerable than usual.
The final action saw the Copper Coronet being set to rights - the reward for that earned levels all round.
Next time will see a trip into the sewers under the Coronet in search of a 2-handed sword upgrade for Yertone.
Archer - L9, 104 HPs, 56 kills (+315 in BG1)
Inquisitor - L9, 128 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 49 kills (+191 in BG1), 0 deaths
Illusionist/thief - L9/9, 47 HPs, 15 kills (+66 in BG1), 1 death
Fruit Hammer IV: Phase Two
Having finally (albeit narrowly) stopped dying to goblins, Fruit Hammer reached Kuldahar, nervous but eager to move on to phase two of his grand plan!
(This is heavy metagaming, but I'll see what I can do to make it entertaining.)
To Lonelywood!
Fruit Hammer was not a wealthy man when he arrived to Kuldahar. Still, he could afford three potions of mind focusing and one of invisibility, plus a few scrolls. Thus armed, he spoke to Hjollder and was promptly sent to Lonelywood. There, he reached all kinds of martial, arcane and divine insights by talking to strangers.
Moving on to the barbarian camp, Fruit Hammer cast Friends and spoke to the bouncer. The meeting with Wylfdene went as planned, and now it was just a matter of extracting a bit more experience from Angaar before leaving the place behind for the time being. But, woe was Fruit Hammer, for his Friends spell expired just a few seconds too soon!
The invisibility potion was meant for unforeseen difficulties such as this, and well did it serve Fruit Hammer, but it left him with a sinking feeling: Perhaps he should have bought another.
Burial Isle
Fruit Hammer felt a little bad for what he was about to do, but it was for the greater good, he reminded himself. He drank all three potions of mind focusing and learned Mirror Image and Expeditious Retreat. He rested (the potions last 12h, so they're still on) and prepared to plunder the barrows. He cast Death Ward and Free Action, the latter because "why not?", and followed these up with Mirror Image and of course, Sanctuary.
He was nervous, and it didn't get better when it turned out Expeditious Retreat didn't seem to work under Free Action, so instead of speeding himself up, he had spent some time casting a spell that only served to silence him. Judicious use of Shield of Lathander kept him alive in the face of deadly traps.
He managed to loot all the treasure the barrows held, and then retreated to Edion, the necromancer's, tower. This man, Fruit Hammer knew, carried valuable scrolls. All Fruit Hammer needed to do to acquire them was to sell the treasures he had found, for he knew Edion would often appease the local spirits by gifting them artifacts. But perhaps THESE artifacts might not be very pleasing...
Fruit Hammer had an idea. He offered Edion his most valuable trophy, the axe that had been owned by Fruit Slicer. What followed was a very lengthy argument where Edion:
- Called the axe plain and unremarkable
- Wondered how he even knew that axe had ever sliced fruit
- Wondered why anyone with teeth would mash fruit, indirectly calling some orc smarter than Fruit Hammer
Fruit Hammer got very annoyed with Edion, but the necromancer persisted, ultimately saying there could be no greater insult to the spirits than to offer them this axe. Fruit Hammer lost all compunctions about following through with his original plan.
First he sold Edion some easily identified items and bought two important scrolls; Mantle and Improved Haste. He was still under the effects of the potions, so he could learn these spells safely. But, Fruit Hammer decided to be extremely economical about things, so rather than paying to have the others identified and buying more scrolls at full price, he rested, identified them himself and cast Friends for better deals. This got him more scrolls, but his mind could no longer fully grasp their content, so he had to store them in the scroll case until he could get a hold of more potions.
Edion was the one with the greater problem though. Fruit Hammer thought him as savage as the barbarians, and he would shed no tear when the spirits got enraged at Sir Fishbreath for offering them the same weapons that had been stolen from their barrows.
Fruit Hammer also purchased scrolls from Kieran, then returned to the isle to find Hjollder. However, his defiling of the barrows had drawn the attention of the Sanctuary Hugger Society, and they had begun recruiting the spirits and creatures of the isle.
Fruit Hammer made it into the barrows, but made a mental note to use a different exit. He spoke to Hjollder and got yet another disproportionately large experience reward, and moved to return to Ned. In approaching the exit he had intended to use instead of the one he believed to be cramped, he found out that the SHS members had actually crowded the wrong exit and stood there in an asshole formation that would put an adult site to shame.
Fruit Hammer exited the way he had entered and left the isle behind, took care of some business in Lonelywood and set out for the Gloomfrost.
Gloomfrost
Fruit Hammer's Gloomfrost adventures were a rather unremarkable chain of walking past monsters under the shroud of Sanctuary. He had some interesting interactions with Tiernon. He regrets he could not kill Fruit Roaster:
He knew it would have been a very rewarding kill, yet he knew also it would be very risky to keep the golems at bay, and so he elected to come back much later.
Barbarian camp, again
By now, Fruit Hammer had acquired experience enough to cast level 7 spells, and he had a clear plan for how to deal with the camp. Save for one thing, the six barbarians he'd fled from might be waiting for him. Might be waiting for him right at the entrance!
Nowhere could he find another invisibility potion. He would be safe if he could cast Mantle, but if they were waiting for him right at the entrance...
Fruit Hammer decided to go there, and if they were waiting for him, he would just run back. Fortunately, they were not. Fruit Hammer decided to not cast anything and go look for them, which meant when he did find them, he had to cast Mantle.
After this, he summoned some Aerial Servants for the barbarians to fight instead. These, too, require magical weapons to hit.
Having taken care of this and rested, he went to meet Wylfdene again. Things went as expected, and after a Mantle and some Aerial Servants, the tent was cleared of Wyrm Tribe warriors. After that, all Fruit Hammer had to do was lead the other Wyrm Tribe warriors into the tent to meet the same fate.
Before and after
Fruit Hammer right before leaving for Lonelywood:
Fruit Hammer after returning to Kuldahar after having completed the HoW story to the point of exposing Icasaracht and slaying her barbarians:
Obviously it'll be a while before I have to face a challenge again, but I'll type up a new post if something entertaining comes to mind, be it a struggle, a humiliating defeat or a fruit preparation debate.
The last time I recorded an attempt on this thread was nearly a year ago and was the 10th attempt at this character. Between April and December I tried 17 more times without conspicuous success . However, I have learnt more about the dangers in SoD and think a no-reload is possible there with only a fairly small amount of luck - the failed attempts have normally been mistakes or carelessness rather than inherent difficulty.
As @semiticgod recently expressed doubt about the chances of success for the wizard slayer I've been motivated to try again and take a bit more care than usual. There have been no great alarms while:
- shooting up Shoal to get to level 3.
- activating a gnoll to attack Drizzt. It broke its weapon without even a need to leave the area to restart the combat, but I had guests coming and had to save the game during the fight. On reloading, the gnoll did not resume the attack and I had to start the fight twice more (leaving the area in between to reset Drizzt's HPs) before eventually being able to claim the kill.
The 16k XP for Drizzt was enough for level 5.
- in Nashkel picked up the ankheg armor and LMD.
- a couple of arrows and LMD finished off Bentan without needing to run from his spells (killing him is the only way for a wizard slayer to get his PfM scroll).
Meilum's bracers are not usable, but he was shot anyway to be able to sell them.
- I mis-clicked on the conversation with Prism and missed out on Greywolf, but Samuel, Joia, Brage and Oublek boosted reputation a bit. Normally I don't buy anything significant until I have 20 reputation and wouldn't buy full plate anyway. However, for a wizard slayer money is so meaningless that I quickly traded in the ankheg armor and acquired full plate and a +1 large shield.
- following Korax round the basilisk area soon got me to level 6.
He died quickly when confronting Kirian's gang, but I used a PfM scroll to be able to beat them up safely.
Baerin's +1 arrows were then used to shoot down the High Hedge golems.
- a couple of ankhegs were enough for level 7, but I cleared the rest of them anyway with just the one critical hit received.
- a quick trip through the Nashkel Mine saw Mulahey lured to the entrance and then fail to cast a spell (meaning no need to run away).
Resting in the cave then provided Bhaal CLW.
- outside the cave the amazons were attacked singly. They only completed 2 spells between them, but one of those held me. However, I was out of sight before the spell was cast so that Lamalha didn't come to investigate.
- in Nashkel I dodged into the shop to avoid Nimbul's horror and his magic missiles were then no threat.
- in Beregost I was caught stealing to reduce reputation back to 9 before shooting down Tranzig.
- at the Bandit Camp the basic bandits were never likely to be a threat, but even Taurgosz failed to land a blow.
Inside the tent 4 successful hits shut down Venkt's potential spells and the others were then quickly hacked down.
Resting provided a first horror ability.
- while passing through the Cloakwood, I stopped off to get Spider's Bane - tackling the inhabitants of Centeol's nest one or two at a time to make the fights easy.
- at the mine Drasus was contacted and pulled away to the edge of the map for disposal.
After resting, Bhaal horror was used to scare Kysus and then Rezdan (took about 20 attempts to succeed with that though). Once running, their spells could be shut down before they recovered.
- I avoided the more difficult fights on the way down to Davaeorn. Without standard magical equipment his battle horrors could hit with a 19 and I took several hits while killing them and went back up to the top of the mine to rest up. Coming back, my first two shots at Davaeorn missed before getting a whack in on him as he arrived at his first teleportation point. The next shot was successful, but with Davaeorn casting a potential dire charm I'd already started using a PfM scroll when that hit him. I was fortunately still able to cancel the order though after his spell was disrupted. Two more shots then ensured he wouldn't manage any more spells. His death also gave me my final BG1 level.
I rested to get a second horror before flooding the mine.
- a whistle-stop tour of the realms saw reputation pushed up to 20 (celebrating that by killing the Doomsayer - nipping in and out to gain an APR advantage).
- after shopping for green scrolls and magic ammunition (and picking up the pantaloons) I went to the Lighthouse. Four exploding arrows ensured each group of sirines could not cast charm at me, while standard +1 arrows were enough for the golems.
- at Durlag's Tower the battle horrors were cut down and a green scroll used on the basilisks. I didn't bother though wasting a PfM scroll to get another unneeded boost to wisdom.
The only encounters in BG1 that I normally do that concern me as a wizard slayer are the fight at the palace and the possibility of a basilisk ambush. Having completed all my travels that could prompt the latter, that should really only leave the palace fight to worry about - though things don't always go according to plan ...
Our next random rolls gave us a couple of squishies to take good care of. The well-trodden path from Candlekeep, past Shoal and Mad Arcand led us into Beregost. Siyhmun was using Sleep to distract our enemies and once that worked we switched to synchronised battering.
Travelling down to Nashkel was a bit dull so we upped the ante. Basilisks were easily dealt with while Mutamin scared Alky and used Melf's Acid Arrow to almost kill Siyhmun. The sorcerer had by this time cast sleep on a few gibberlings and moved away from Mutamin to use his only Cure Light Wounds. We then returned together and put Mutamin out of our misery.
On to Kirian and her gang, all three of which were blinded. Kirian was therefore the only threat and unconscious in a stinking cloud but Siyhmun found a way to make life more complicated. Having recently mentioned the short casting distance for Aganazzar's Scorcher he promptly tried casting it and ended up wandering into the stinking cloud. As he fell unconscious, Kirian woke up. She cast up some summons and then a lightning bolt - Alky doing a fine job of distracting the one conscious summon and somehow avoiding the bolt.
By this time the stinking cloud had dispersed so Kirian got her come-uppance. We moved on to Durlag's Tower, successfully clearing battle horrors from the outside and a few basilisks on the roof. That was enough for us so we headed across to pick on Caldo and Krumm. After that we grabbed a tome from near the gnoll fortress and deal with a polar bear before deciding our need for a potion case required a trip to High Hedge.
Having avoided death a couple of times we stopped there.
We did run into one setback - Minsc was imprisoned by the beholders. We were intending to replace Minsc anyways, but it was certainly a loss of certain equipment like ring of earth control, Shield of Balduran, and Helm of Brilliance. But the quest must continue...
Can't Imoen use freedom scrolls?
Coremage even knows freedom - but he's not high enough level. And as for scrolls, we have had money issues so couldn't afford any extra freedoms - we had to use a freedom scroll in Beholder's Lair in the Underdark to get Keldorn back, as well as Imoen flubbed her freedom scroll.
Back in the City I did the poison quest - including a first use of stunning darts to freeze Jalantha in place
and a first use of arrows of piercing on Marek to almost guarantee hits. An assault on the Iron Throne followed where the stairs were used to avoid any spell attacks before Gardush became the last to fall after running in terror at the fate of his companions.
In Candlekeep I rested to get Bhaal DUHM. That was still not enough to get either of the tomes though. The WS is the only class unable to get the strength tome when solo, which is why my starting character was re-rolled until I got 18(00) strength . DUHM is enough though to open the other tomb - with the big prize of another PfM scroll. I then couldn't resist attacking Prat, though I could have bypassed him. The main danger there was Bor's darts of stunning, but he, Sakul and Tam failed to survive 3 exploding arrows. A few more arrows finished Prat off before another PfP scroll allowed exit past the basilisks.
Once more in Baldur's Gate I had the dialogues with Tamoko. I don't normally bother with her, but for a wizard slayer her armor is an upgrade from full plate. Ramazith was cut down to raid his tower - DUHM allowing the locked chest at the top to be opened to get another PfM scroll.
Moving on to the end game, Slythe was activated, dispelled and cut down. Krystin managed to complete her opening remove magic, but was shut down before having a chance to do anything else.
At the palace I used DUHM before activating the combat. Two dopplegangers were dispelled before trying a first horror - but everyone saved.
Fortunately though 3 of the dopplegangers attacked me - if they'd all gone for the dukes, they would have had little chance. The third doppleganger on the dukes was dispelled and I switched to acid arrows as Belt finished off the first of them.
A second horror was also resisted by everyone, but my arrows helped kill the last of the attackers on the dukes and I switched to melee to complete the battle.
Dragging Belt into the back room ensured he would survive and as there was nothing left worth buying I didn't even bother waiting for Sarevok to kill Liia.
I used PfU to kill the skeleton warriors in the maze and did the same to the ones in the Under City - though I left Rahvin's group alone. I did attack Tamoko though - dragging her inside the temple. Another copy of her spawned outside, but I dodged that while traversing between areas until the original one was dead - allowing me a nice armor upgrade.
Rather than use up another irreplaceable PfM scroll I decided to go the cheesy route and use protection from lightning to trip the repeating trap - that also has the benefit of gaining another 8 exploding arrows from Angelo.
It's perfectly possible to kill Sarevok as well as the others using this trap, but I stopped well before that and attacked him directly. A dispelling arrow made it easy to kite him, but once he was at near death I went into melee to get the finishing blow.
Arriving at the SoD dungeon I found I'd only got up to 235k - I'd expected to have enough to level up immediately. However, after Porios surrendered I used PfU against the initial undead groups before picking up level 9 against some mercenaries.
Two dispelling arrows and an acid arrow prompted Korlasz to surrender, but she failed to make her getaway.
That all went pretty well, with the significant exception that I forgot to report to Fanegonorom, so missed out on a shield upgrade .
We summon a bunch of clones before tackling Illasera, which keep the Black Reavers distracted while we chase down Illasera herself. I try dual-wielding once I get into melee range, only to find that she's perfectly willing to use her arrows at point-blank range, forcing me to switch back to the Shield of Reflection.
An enemy Time Stop ends with nothing happening (SCS mages keep wasting Spell Thrust spells on me!), and when Illasera activates Hardiness, bumping her damage resistances from 50% to 90%, I switch gears and leave Illasera alone to finish off her allies, who are helpless against our constant invisibility. Once Illasera's Hardiness wears off, we summon a new clone and chop her up.
Amazingly enough, we actually get boxed in during the first Pocket Plane fight because Irenicus, Sarevok, and Bodhi showed up before I could finish off the last of the ogre magi and sahuagin. I finally relent and use a Dimension Door scroll to escape, not willing to burn a PFMW scroll to survive Sarevok's sword and the sahuagin's surprisingly hard-hitting spear.
Sarevok and Bodhi can see through invisibility, but neither have any ranged attacks, so the Staff of the Magi keeps us safe. After hiding from a couple of Time Stop spells from Irenicus, we eventually summon a clone to help us backstab Bodhi.
Irenicus' defenses run out, so we backstab him as well and proceed to Sarevok.
Normally these fights would be more complicated, but the Staff of the Magi makes things kind of reductive for a solo character. The fight with Gromnir proceeds the same way: the only enemies who can see through invisibility have no ranged weapons or spells, so we can wait out the defenses of the mages and then clear the field. Then, Gromnir is alone, and even he can't survive pressure from three dual-wielding Shadowdancers at once.
Next up, the fire giant temple. Most of the giants here use hammers, so merely equipping Roranach's Horn and activating Shadow Form gives us total immunity to their attacks (as long as we also have immunity to fire, which isn't hard to get). The Elite Fire Giants, though, use axes, and so Roranach's Horn is useless against them, and they're tough enough that Shadow Form and the Defender of Easthaven can't keep them off our backs. We end up having to backstab them before we can safely tank the other giants.
Shadowstep allows us to grab all the wardstones without fighting the enemy spawns. This does a lot to speed up the tedious first level.
I do the same thing on the second level, which is more interesting but also more dangerous. Dealing with a single dragon, Brimstone, is one thing, but fighting it alongside a dozen fire giants is just too much trouble.
Sunray gets us past all the undead in Nyalee's grove. While our Vhailor's Helm clones can't wear the Helm of Brilliance since it conflicts with Vhailor's Helm, our Shadow Clones can use the Helm of Brilliance to cast Sunray. Our first Sunray kills the skeleton mage; the second kills the cleric.
Nyalee is still immune to physical damage due to a bug (she's supposed to have 50% resistance, but both the player's and her SCS Earth Elemental Token give 100%), but I don't bother fixing it, because we can get around it just by smacking her with Firetooth +3 and Crom Faeyr until the elemental damage eventually brings her down.
Time to tackle Yaga-Shura! His regeneration will make him nearly impossible to kill even after his physical damage resistance steadily decreases over the course of the fight, so we need to hide under invisibility until we can pounce on him with our two clones.
Then I kite him with the Sling of Everard for the heck of it while I wait, and make the biggest discovery of the entire run. CTRL-M confirms it.
Yaga-Shura has no regeneration. Because it's attached to his .cre file as a permanent effect, it doesn't actually apply at all, due to the wonky ways that the Infinity Engine handles regeneration--regeneration effects require a duration of some sort to operate properly.
He was supposed to regenerate like 30 HP per round or something. He regenerates zero. We can actually just kite him to death while using Hide in Plain Sight and the Staff of the Magi to keep the other enemies from targeting us! When he hits Near Death, I close in with melee weapons to bump him off, knowing that the enemies won't have enough time to actually threaten me before Yaga-Shura croaks.
Apparently Ascension-buffed enemies have been operating with this bug the whole time. This is why I've heard of other characters being able to kite the Ravager: it doesn't have any regeneration that you have to overcome.
Any character who can use the Shield of Reflection could take it down easily. I don't think you'd even need to attack it; you could rely entirely on its own reflected darts to kill it.
Normally, regeneration lets enemies win wars of attrition. But Yaga-Shura, and presumably Abazigal and the Ravager as well, have no regeneration. All of them could be kited by practically any character, no matter how lousy their THAC0 and damage output might be.
The "un-nerfed" THAC0 tables for thieves were completely unnecessary for our success. Kiting is perfectly viable even in Ascension.
Entering Trilogy no-reload challenge with this character...
Corethief XXI
Groupmates
For those of you wondering, no Coremage is not dead - but I've been thinking about this group for some time and I thought I would give it a go. I wanted a change, but I will eventually get back to Coremage. Most of my parties are melee-heavy or summon heavy, but I've never created a party that wins most battles with stealth attacks. So I made this one in MP. April and Sarah will prioritize stealth scores and snares, while Corethief XXI will do locks/traps/illusion detection. He will use spells (or items, if available) to go invisible. Thus April and Sarah are the work-horses, and Corethief XXI offers thief/mage support.
The party has just defeated Davaeorn and will soon enter the great city of Baldur's Gate. When traveling, the party travels invisible to minimize trouble. The pure thieves are level 7. I've had some close calls, including a cave bear knocking Corethief XXI to ONE HP - only level 1 protection saved him.
The bandit camp was very difficult for this group - we only made it on the surface because of monster summon distractions, but even with that April still died. Mulahey was a mess because we got seen before we meant to, but we still managed to come through that OK. We have pretty much stealthed through the Cloakwood, only fighting when we must.
For Drassus and pals, fireballs and thrown traps made short work of them - ranged fire then finished them off. Only minimal fighting has been done in the Cloakwood Mine itself - a lot of backstabs, snares (Davaeorn's level) and number of times using the classic @Grond0 technique of invisible blockers protecting a ranged attacker.
We put snares at one of Davaeorn's spawn points, then April attacked with ranged fire protected by potion of magic shielding. Once she had his attention, then Sarah supported with her crossbow of speed. Since Davaeorn was heavily damaged by the traps, they just needed to get through his mirrors, and that they did.
The absolute bane of our existence is jellies. April got killed by Narcillicus jellies (we got seen when we didn't mean to). We only got through the jelly at Davaeorn's OK because of the Boots of Speed.
We are making rapid progress, although we are intentionally not trying to be max level - we just want to safely get through BG 1. Will keep at it.
Apparently Ascension-buffed enemies have been operating with this bug the whole time. This is why I've heard of other characters being able to kite the Ravager: it doesn't have any regeneration that you have to overcome.
Any character who can use the Shield of Reflection could take it down easily. I don't think you'd even need to attack it; you could rely entirely on its own reflected darts to kill it.
Normally, regeneration lets enemies win wars of attrition. But Yaga-Shura, and presumably Abazigal and the Ravager as well, have no regeneration. All of them could be kited by practically any character, no matter how lousy their THAC0 and damage output might be.
That was my understanding, but I didn't comment on your earlier posts as I assumed you were talking about the impact of mods in your installation .
Corethief XXI - FINAL BG 1 update
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
I am pleased to report Corethief XXI made it through BG 1 and will enter Amn next session. I had a really, really bad scare against Drelik (Jardak's butler) though - he managed to fear Corethief XXI and Sarah, and April was running for life, taking heal potions and magic missiles. That almost was a disaster though, as she ran far enough away to hide (she has haste boots), but then Corethief XXI got targeted by Drelik! April ran quickly to try to get the heat off him in time (she succeeded). Drelik finally was out of spells, and the party shook off the fear and killed the pesky mage. But Sarah died in the process. Luckily there's a nearby temple.
For good measure, we killed his master, with traps mostly. 6 traps ALMOST weren't enough, tough dude.
I was going to pass on fighting at the Iron Throne, but decided I needed the experience. We crept up invisible (spell) and setup our attack from the room in the south. After six traps were laid, (space apart, so they wouldn't all trigger at once), we then did some fireballs and summons and withdrew, with April doing backstabs on enemy casters when she can (she has the haste boots). This worked well as you can see.
We then head off to Candlekeep - we skip most things here, only getting the loot from the 3 crypts. Then we went invisible to end of the crypts, just stopping long enough to kill the basilisks.
At this point the pure thieves are level 9, which is good enough to finish BG 1. Slythe was easy with lots of traps. Was worried about Duchal palace, but Corthief XXI's slow was a huge help. I'm sure everyone being hasted didn't hurt any. And he also got some great news here as well - he made level 7 mage/level 8 thief here too!
Time to sell/buy/rest and prepare for our final push. No way we dealing with the jellies or other enemies in the maze - we just went invisible with Corthief XXI de-trapping as needed.
We aren't afraid of the Undercity Iron throne party. Lots of snares spaced out. Then with an invisible scout, some summons attack Rahvin. This worked great as his exploding arrows hit his own people and his own people killed him once the summons were dead. We were well out of sight. April once again with her haste boots would backstab the most dangerous enemy then withdraw to the party - this worked well. The mage was the last survivor. Rather than fancy a direct assault, Corethief XXI sent some monsters to attack the mage (who still had his mirrors) - somehow a goblin elite killed the mage.
Time to deal with my half-brother! We laid 4 normal snares and 2 special snares, some summons, then April managed to both pull Sarevok as well as only pull Sarevok and Semaj. Semaj died instantly to the traps, though we were ready for him as the thieves had protection from magic and Corethief XXI had potion of magic shielding active.
After that the party ranged attacked, with Corethief XXI refreshing monsters as needed. Corethief XXI also did MMM and magic missiles - took a while but success!
Whole party will move on to Amn. RUN RESTRICTION: not recruiting unless someone gets chunked. Even then, only a thief may join (multi or dual OK).
We get over 120,000 gold from selling off all the magical gear from the Oasis fight and we bankrupt ourselves buying a bunch of high-level scrolls from Lazarus Librarus in Amkrethan. Draconis' human form isn't very mobile and we have lots of room to run around in, so we can just run away and dispatch his demons before pouncing on him when his defenses are wearing off.
Draconis' dragon form is much more deadly, but the Shadow Dragon scale and Helm of the Rock give us a total of 75% undispellable acid resistance, which cripples his breath weapon, and while Draconis has spectacular combat stats, we can penalize his AC using the Answerer +4 and then land some easy hits with the Soul Reaver to penalize his THAC0. After a few rounds, Draconis can't hit us without rolling a 20, and then we can chop him up in relative safety.
Soul Reaver is pretty darn overpowered. A lot of the biggest and nastiest enemies in ToB can be totally crippled just by a few hits, since ToB bosses tend to be fighter types. You just need a character who can land a few hits with a two-handed sword.
I stop by the Pocket Plane to deal with the second challenge. The enemy Frisky Bits can see through invisibility, but Angelo, Tamoko, and Semaj cannot. We just wait out Semaj's Time Stop and then focus fire on the enemy Frisky Bits with our clone.
We picked some of the evil dialog options in our previous conversation with the Solar, which means we get the Regeneration innate ability rather than the Resurrection one. For basically all of the special abilities you get from Ascension's Pocket Plane trials, the evil ones are better than the good ones. The sole exception is the 3rd trial (I think), which is either Dark Taint, a poison spell (useless on many enemies given how many critters are immune to poison in ToB) or another casting of Draw Upon Holy Might. Choosing the evil dialog options when speaking with the Solar is basically always the best bet from a powergaming perspective.
I had plans for dealing with Anadramatis, the yellow dragon who instantly Wish-Breaches you at the start of combat and whose breath weapon deals crushing damage, but Anadramatis is still bugged to come with no weapon equipped.
I could bust out some scrolls and stuff, but since Frisky Bits is immune to +1 weapons and below, I just say "screw it" and whomp on the dragon until it dies, relying on our weapon immunities to keep Frisky Bits alive.
I use Shadowstep to skip past the demons who teleport in when we go back past the previous room. We didn't bother fighting the lizard men here, so fighting the demons and lizard men at the same time would be too complicated and risky. You can see the little white blobs of light that indicate the start of a Dimension Door visual effect.
ATweaks elementals give us grief in the water elemental and kuo-toa room. The kuo-toa can't touch us since all of their weapons strike as +1, but one of the elementals' innate powers is an area-effect blindness spell with no save.
All it does is delay our victory. These enemies don't have the damage output to bring down a Shadowdancer; Shadow Form is too strong.
I don't want to deal with the quadruple dragon ambush just yet, so I head to Sendai's lair. The drow outside are a little worrisome because their Fallen Planetar can see through our invisibility and the drow assassin can land triple-digit backstabs...
...but we can spam Shadowstep to wait out the Fallen Planetar and later use clones to avoid getting backstabbed ourselves.
Most critters in Sendai's lair cannot see through invisibility, so we can sneak and stab our way through most of the dungeon. Odamaron is another story. A Protection from Undead scroll won't keep us truly safe, since we've got three high-level mages and I know at least one of them can summon a Fallen Planetar, so I use Shadowstep, cast via our clones, to wait out Odamaron's PFMW spells and then fire Acid Arrows and Arrows of Dispelling at him.
Unfortunately, we can't apply pressure to all enemies at once, and during the precious few seconds in between our Shadowstep spells, one of Odamaron's Apprentices finishes casting Time Stop. He starts gating in demons.
Fortunately, we land a lucky kill with the Mace of Disruption just as that Time Stop ends!
We don't need to fight anything else; all we really needed was the wardstone on Odamaron's body. We use Shadowstep to guarantee a safe escape.
Now we have to deal with Ogremoch, whose attacks dispel magic on hit at his own caster level (20) and also spams Stoneskins every round or so. However, with two clones attacking at once, we can actually muster the APR to overcome his many Stoneskins.
We rush Diaytha and put her down quickly, but when the Hive Mother hits us with Anti-Magic Ray, I decide that dealing with the other enemies is unsafe and unnecessary. We hoof it to the next room.
Captain Egeissag challenges us to a duel. He can't see through invisibility. Enough said.
Our last fight before Sendai herself is with the mind flayers. A Protection from Undead scroll and the Mace of Disruption work fine against the Vampiric Illithids, but the other mind flayers require stacking Potions of Genius for us to survive. Our clone, which has no defense against INT drain besides its own crummy AC, dies in moments, but Frisky Bits is rocking over 90 Intelligence and 8 APR under Improved Haste.
Next up is Sendai herself. Thing is, none of the drow in the next fight can see through invisibility. A visible character can get overwhelmed by the numerous hard-hitting drow, but if you can stay invisible in spite of a few scattered divination spells, you can take a moment to recover if things get rough.
17 Tarsakh 1369: Silas, a servant & Lorekeeper of Ογημα, to posterity, presents greetings.
This will probably be a short, if not bloody, letter as for the most part the last few days have been uneventful compared to much of what I have shared previously. I travelled to the Fishing Village where it was raining profusely at times. The Fishing Village lies on the east bank of River Chionthar on the road that runs from Nashkel to Baldur’s Gate, southeast of the city. This is farming and fishing country. Lots of bandits here, I think I killed maybe 10 in one small skirmish but the real fun here is Ankheg’s.
KEY EVENT: (Ankheg hunting) I think I’ve have found something I truly enjoy, outside of acquiring knowledge on behalf of Ογημα – Ankheg hunting – I bagged 23 of them between here & Wyrm’s Crossing. They can be dangerous if you aren’t careful, we found the son of a local farmer dead in a network of Ankheg tunnels & both Kivan & Faldorn fell to them in the same skirmish. Note that Kivan is travelling w/me again, I decided to employee him again & left Safana @ FAI.
LAST ANKHEG
NEST AND TUNNELS CLEARED
Wyrm’s Crossing lies on the east bank of River Chionthar, across from Baldur’s Gate and serves as the chief crossing into the city, thus its name. Here also the land is rich and plentiful. When I was at the Fishing Village, I was duped by three fishermen into killing a Cleric of Umberlee who lived here. She was only a child but when confronted the discussion got out of hand & she was killed. I returned to the fisherman & on the way Neera was killed in a bandit ambush, 10 of them - & then I was doubly angry because their duplicity was going to cost me gold. I took my anger out on them. I’m conflicted about how Ογημα will see this act – they were simply trying to leverage Toril in their favor, but I didn’t appreciate being their pawn, especially when I had to dip into my treasury because of it.
I finished by going straight north of the crossing, to the west side of River Chionthar into the Farmlands. The place was infested with zombies, 20 of them, which I destroyed. The farmers there rewarded my efforts with gold, not much, but for sport it was an added bonus. Finished there, I went directly east to Ulgoth’s Beard.
“Write or copy lore of great value at least once a year.” Σιλας
Corethief XXI the elven thief/mage - update 3
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief (special: 19 STR)
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
So the party got to the business of getting out of the dungeon. It was surprisingly difficult, and some of thieves nearly died, but they did escape. Illyich's duegars are pretty tough - 4 snares and that only killed one of them (though all were injured). I was surprised on how many enemies survived backstabs - I remember Picenon (my solo fighter/thief from ages ago) just backstabbing everything in one shot. Well, I found out why the dungeon was so hard - April was using a non-proficient weapon! Doh!
Once the right weapon was equipped the party did much better. Things accomplished to date:
* Circus was put to rights - Corethief XXI put everyone invisible (spell) then he just used his detection skill to eliminate the first group of illusion wolf-weres - this worked great! Rest of the circus wasn't too bad, although Corethief XXI broke invisibility too soon and got attacked, but he pulled through.
* I wanted to trigger the Suna Seni ambush (to get it out of the way mostly), so traveled everywhere invisible until I did trigger it. As she couldn't see us, we backed away, laid some snares near the edge of the ambush area. Then Sarah used her special trap and it worked great - killed two enemies, held three, and left only one who could fight - who of course never got a chance to fight thanks to backstabs.
* So finally we wanted to head to Waukeen's Promenade to get an upgraded Katana for April - but then we got hit with the Renfeld ambush - doh! And we were low spells/traps, but we managed to pull through. We then headed to the docks - the poor cleric of Cyric failed to survive backstabs. After returning Renfeld, we decided we might as well as loot the thieve's hide-out. We also agreed to help Xzar and looted the Harper's headquarters. Although 1st we had to deal with Sansha and Prebek - April managed to backstab Prebek dead, which meant Sansha never went hostile - easy fight in the end.
* We agree to help Renal Bloodscalp by investigating Maevar - we "investigated" by looting Maevar's place dry. For once the buckler +1 is actually useful, as April usually will use Katana and she is in the front lines.
* With all this looting, we headed to the Adventurer's Mart to get some goodies - a Katana +1 for April and also the AC 3 bracers for Corethief XXI since he doesn't use armor. Ironcially, he has the best AC at the moment.
Because most attacks are from stealth or enemies die to traps, we rarely get hurt much and thus have massive amount of heal potions. Going to Watcher's Keep for the potion bag is our next priority. Will keep at it.
@Raduziel I can't comment on SoD (rarely play it) - but I believe kill count resets in BG 2 EE, as the kill counts are by chapter and game. Two chapter Ones would be confusing.
In Baldur's Gate I collected more cash than I could ever spend from selling various gems and equipment stripped from the bodies of a few NPCs. The main items acquired that I am likely to use are Kiel's helmet and the Battle Tankard.
The first real action was at the Coast Way Crossing, where missiles soon shut down Ikros' chance of casting and finished him off.
Isabella was then meleed to get the regeneration ioun stone and the Suncatcher shield.
I had no invisibility available for the encounter at the bridge, but was still able to get behind the tent quickly enough to avoid anyone attacking before Caelar called for a parley.
I ran through the Troll Claw Woods, ignoring enemies, and moved on to the Forest of Wyrms. Rather than going straight for the temple there though, I continued doing area transitions to trigger the ambush areas. Eventually getting the goblin one I cleared those before diving into the nearby hole. I wasn't worried about the confusion from the red myconids, but tried to kill the blue one with exploding arrows before it could try and pacify me. It survived that, but I also saved and a sunray finished it off.
The big prize there was the spellbreaker sword - reducing my save vs spell from 5 to 1.
Inside the cave the bugbears were pulled around to fight in ones and twos, with the small amount of damage taken being healed by regeneration. The shamans were afflicted by horror. In the temple I had no invisibility, so dealt with Ziatar's guards first - that proved more difficult than expected when the last group got very lucky with their attacks and I had to run away quickly out of the temple to recover.
Once the guards were all dead, a PfM scroll topped up with PfPoison and Kiel's helmet made Ziatar easy enough.
I didn't fancy my chances against the Neothelid, so ran straight past that to find Akanna. I drew the aerial servants out of her room and ran them round, though did have to survive one domination attempt from the dimension-walking Neothelid before I could get back to Akanna and close the door (I'm not sure whether that was blocked by PfM scroll - certainly some of the Neothelid's abilities are psionic and bypass PfM). Her use of invisibility and sanctuary though provided the Neothelid time to appear in the room and start casting more spells at me as well as producing magical swords. I therefore ran away out of the temple briefly before coming back to have another go - this time successfully finishing her off before managing to squeeze past the Neothelid and other enemies to get out.
With that troublesome set of encounters out of the way I regenerated health before throwing some daggers at Morentherene on the way out.
At Boareskyr Bridge I had the dragon scales made into a shield to provide an AC upgrade and bullet-proof my saving throw vs death. I normally kill Vichand, but decided the risk of doing that was too great for a wizard slayer and just intimidated him into giving up the scroll. Dealing with a dark wraith then allowed me to get some +3 arrows made.
After surrendering the fort the mage on the bridge managed to tag me with an Acid Arrow, but soon lost his buffs and casting ability to dispelling arrows and was easy to finish off.
That allowed me to move on to the Coalition Camp. In addition to the required tasks there, I did some training for Vigilant Halasan to get the Commanders Chain Mail and spoke to Helvdar. It took a while to plough through enemies in Dead Man's Pass (making sure to keep out of range of the acid stunning attacks from bombardier beetles), but I eventually killed the cave bear there and made some lucky boots for Helvdar - though I kept them for myself and palmed him off with some basic ones.
After rescuing Skie at the Castle, I moved on to the Underground River. Saving throws were good enough to beat up the myconids there, while Spider's Bane protected against the webs while kiting a gargantuan spider.
Wearing the lucky boots and using Spellbreaker allowed me to get spell saves down to -2 to deal with the mages attempts at domination and confusion.
The remaining enemies could then be kited or picked off one at a time.
With the entrance clear I headed on in and went to place the Bwoosh before convincing Turin to let me into the Warrens. I did initially head up in the lift with the intention of poisoning the water (but not the food), but changed my mind and deemed there was too risk of being trapped or taking high damage even trying for that - and came back down before a general alarm was spread.
Back at the Camp, exploding arrows wore the ogres and trolls down enough to let the archers finish them off.
My fellow wizard slayers were not really needed against the mages who found their casting powers removed by successive explosions.
For the clerics I used fire protection to be able to continue firing exploding arrows at point-blank range.
More explosions finished off most of the leaders quickly. Swift Rabbit managed one backstab, but didn't do much damage and Grimgor then found himself all alone.
At the Castle I used a PfM scroll and went straight to find Ashatiel. He needed a critical to hit me when using the appropriate boots - and he failed to get any.
Inside the Castle I followed Caelar, before moving straight on past Illaruel in the first area. In the second a first group of demons were hacked down before I waited for a while to regenerate. Another PfM scroll allowed me to kite the next group round - without regeneration potions I was more cautious about keeping the hamatula at range to prevent its barbed defense activating.
After resting I put on the Commanders Chain Mail and used another PfM scroll topped up by fire, electricity and poison protection. On the lift, I used up the myconids to avoid taking any damage prior to facing Belhifet.
At the top I got Caelar to be on my side, despite not normally allowing recruitment of NPCs - as I think it's only reasonable she should fight against Belhifet. I don't give her any orders in the battle though to mimic her being outside the party.
I'd been in two minds about the best way to do the battle, but decided to try and keep Caelar alive with scrolls of greater restoration. That meant I would tend to suffer from fatigue, so wore the Battle Tankard to prevent that - and hence the use of the Commanders Chain Mail to provide fear immunity. Without potions of regeneration I generally stayed out of melee combat with Belhifet, using void arrows on him or picking on gated demons. That meant it was mainly down to Caelar to do the business and she soaked up 13 restoration scrolls before completing that - though I still had 7 more remaining.
I realized at the end of that fight, I'd never got around to taking my final SoD level, so did that (and took the pantaloons out of my bag of holding) before running through the epilogue. Next up will be BG2. In theory I think that should be easier than SoD, but it's also much longer - with plenty of opportunities for mistakes ...
Wizard Slayer L10, 122 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 0 kills (652 in BGEE/SoD)
Corethief XXI the elven thief/mage - Update 4
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
RUN Restriction: No NPCs permanently join (quests OK) - if a character gets chunked, only a thief may join (dual or multi- OK)
The party is continuing to make good progress. Ambushes have been remarkably easy for this group. For one, we try to travel invisible as much as possible (though not always). But if we are, we just back away and do special snare and that pretty much carries the day, we just finish off the survivors. I also found out my character can sunfire his opponents that DOESN'T break his invisibility!!! Is that a bug or a feature? Game counting it as a buff? Means if I get number of sunfires loaded, could be a lot of fun...
A lot got done this session:
* Freed Hendak no problem - snares and backstabs carried the day
* Lilacor quest went ALMOST really smooth, the special snares were pretty effective. We failed to kill one hobgoblin shaman, however, and he managed to hold Sarah! We went all out on killing him before he killed her and we did, whew!
* Took a lot of resources to defeat slavers in moored ship, but we did - special snare once again coming through which you can see here:
* Decided we really wanted the thief equipment so worked on Maevar quest. Unsurprisingly, the Rayic Gethras portion was the hardest part. We had used fire resistance potions to make the mephits a bit easier to to deal with (and they were). Haste and MMM's were used on the golems. We laid two snares downstairs went invisible and went to the far corner of the room - I thought Rayic couldn't see us but he could! Uh, oh! We tried everything we could to try to interrupt his spells but he was immune to everything, and couldn't target him even with Detect Illusions running - SI maybe? His summons were giving us heck. One thing that came in handy is I haven't been selling my spells scrolls, so used lots of scrolls to try to help out - tried stinking cloud and web but that didn't affect Rayic at all. We were eventually damaging him but it was slow. We did catch one break though - when Rayic did FoD, he cast it at our shorty, April and she saved! If he had cast it on our half-orc or elf, they had good chances of failing. In any case, Rayic's protections didn't last forever, and when they wore off he was finished. Whew!
The rest of Edwin's quests went rather smoothly. Time to deal with the thieves proper! We entered invisible, and lots of snares had already been pre-laid, which helped a lot. We had snares outside also, just in case. We went downstairs to deal with Maevar and Corethief XXI opened with a sunfire and ran back to the party and waiting snares. The snares couldn't quite kill everyone, but direct attack carried the day.
We decided the group really could use some summons, so did the following:
* Horn of Valhalla obtained - easy enough with Corethief's traps scores
* Kithix obtained - snares/backstabs doing most work, with sunfire used to wipe out most of the small spiders.
* Genie lamp obtained via traps. Head Genie killed by traps as well, which meant Ras could also be purchased (and was) for one last summon
Last task was to finish off Trademeet. I realized this group didn't really want to deal with the strong melee power of the trolls - so realized I didn't have to since we get plenty of experience as a small group. Instead, we went to the Druid grove visible to get the dialog about shadow druids, went invisible via spell to get through entire area, talked to Cernd who didn't offer to fight Faldhorn alone, I had to let him join and do the combat myself - but I succeeded and quest is complete!
Will keep at it...next task is Daystar - we really need it, since our traps mostly aren't effective against undead with their poison immunity...
In the dungeon I was stunned by the radiant mephit, but it didn't have enough damage capability for that to be much of a concern. Annoyingly I got a minimum damage attack on Ulvaryl when the chances of finishing her off were good. In the past I could have done that anyway using LMD. I think it's a shame that's been nerfed so much in v2.5 - if it's felt LMD shouldn't work on so many things then the Bhaal power should really be replaced with something else that does (that's already been done in various mods I think).
After making some donations at the local temple, I had a relaxing outing at the circus.
I reported in to Gaelan Bayle and then went to help out Hendak at the Copper Coronet - getting to level 11 in the process.
Being scared didn't prevent Officer Dirth from switching between bow and sword and attacking pretty much at will - but nor did it prevent him being hacked down anyway to provide a further armor upgrade.
I cleared out a local pirate nest and then started Mae'Var's tasks. Unsurprisingly, that triggered the Suna Seni ambush. With full plate already acquired I didn't expect that to be a problem - and in fact horror worked well there and I didn't take a scratch.
Doing more tasks, Rayic Gethras chose to open with a long-casting spell and found that, with the use of Arbane haste, I could totally shut down his spell casting before he could complete it.
Running through the remaining tasks was enough to get up to level 12 before clearing Mae'Var's guild.
Now with the ability to defend against hold person, I returned to the Copper Coronet and dived into the sewers - picking up Lilarcor to help against charm and confusion. The slavers were then tackled in small enough groups to be pretty simple.
Neb was fittingly finished off with LMD while doing the Sir Sarles quest.
I got distracted during that though by doing some work at the same time (despite numerous confirmations in recent years that I end up doing everything badly, I still can't resist a spot of multi-tasking ) and Sir Sarles grabbed the illithium. That's not essential, but the iMoD does make things easier for a fighter, so that ended up being a bad decision by the artist.
That dropped reputation down from 17 to 9, but a few more donations at the temple and handing in Neb's head pushed it straight back up again.
Renfeld was rescued at that point and returning him was enough for level 13 and a nice saving throw boost.
Prebek and Sanasha were horrified to see me and I duly looted the harper HQ.
There was then another reputation point on offer for the skinner quest - where the enemies were dragged upstairs one at a time to leave the second Rune Assassin at a severe disadvantage on his own.
Kiting the Fallen Paladins improved reputation still further.
At the Graveyard I considered using a PfU scroll, but with a negative death saving throw the only potential source of danger was the horror from the Crypt King - and that's easily dodged.
I got to level 14 early on there by returning a stuffed bear and cleared up everything with the exception that Uncle Lester killed his nephew.
Downstairs, Pai'Na failed to cast a spell.
The vampyre managed one domination attempt before being Azuredged, but switching to Lilarcor defeated that one.
Searching for some more work in the City I went to the Temple sewers. I'd been stubborn for some time about not making things easy for myself:
- despite money being no real issue for a wizard slayer I'd decided not to buy a magic scimitar or anything else significant (like Vhailor's Helm) until reputation reached 20;
- I'd also decided not to go to Trademeet until my saving throw provided natural immunity to petrification (rather than use a green scroll), which both slowed down reputation increase and meant I didn't have the Shield of Harmony (or indeed any other shield).
That meant I had to rely on the non-proficient Lilarcor to hack down the rakshasa, though that was in fact easy enough (there was no real prize for that though as wizard slayers can't use magical cloaks). In the same area I attacked Mekrath expecting him to be quickly shut down, but he ignored spell failure to summon a skeleton warrior and try out a death spell before succumbing to the flood of arrows.
After resting I spied out that Mekrath had some umber hulk guards. Two of those were shot down from a distance as they couldn't move past another one which was out of my line of sight, but that wasn't possible with the 3 remaining. All of those were affected by horror, which I had hoped would split them up to allow them to be fought singly. However, they all came after me anyway - making for an extremely dangerous situation. The lack of a shield meant they hit far too easily; their fast movement meant they couldn't be kited with missiles and their fast weapon speed meant they would always attack first in a round (certainly against Lilarcor, which was needed to protect against confusion). Meanwhile, the use of a non-proficient weapon greatly slowed damage on them. After a couple of attempts I managed to lose two of them using area transitions, but I was already wounded by that stage and the third came the closest in the run to date to killing me when I had to switch to a scimitar just after an attempted confusion and race it to see who died first.
Even success in that wasn't the end of the danger. With no healing, the potential for rest ambushes and no safe place to move I had to leave the game for a long time while natural regeneration slowly pushed HPs back up. I was then able to get the remaining umber hulks into individual fights and they were dealt with reasonably comfortably.
Now close to another level, I got the last bit of needed XP by doing a little job for the Temple of Lathander.
That takes spell save down to 1, providing safety from petrification. I'll therefore stop playing silly buggers and head next to Trademeet to attack the genies .
Wizard Slayer L15, 137 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 427 kills (652 in BGEE/SoD)
Corethief XXI the elven thief/mage - Update 5
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
The party has made large amount of progress. To date:
* Daystar was obtained - protection from undead and melee doing the job.
* I had really thought Brennan Risling's invisibility ring might be handy for my all thief team. We didn't do much in terms of buffs, Corethief XXI did stoneskin and MMM's. We laid snares in Mencar's area, downstairs in the Inn, and also outside (the outside ones never needed to be triggered). Our last prep was Sarah threw in some special snares, she summoned the genie from the lamp as a distraction, then triggered the fight by shooting Orcslicer with her crossbow. This caused some mayhem, but eventually was forced by Mencar to retreat downstairs, where Corethief XXI and April were waiting invisible. As Sarah tried to get away with Mencar hot on her heals, then April fired her bow and Corethief XXI MMM's at Mencar. An Amnish guard saw Mencar and thought he was up to no good and moved to assist us. Right about here, Amon the mage showed up and in his zeal to kill Sarah used an Aganazer's Scorcher. But remember Mencar? He was chasing Sarah! Mencar ran into the scorcher and died. Needless to say with the three party members and the guard attacking Amon (who was already hurt), Amon didn't last long.
However, our travails weren't over. April moved upstairs only to be ambushed by Brennan! Her health was low and didn't want to run as Brennan might run - so risked going invisible by ring, though her aura wasn't clear. I thought Brennan would kill for sure, but somehow she got it off. Sarah duly arrived to try to take out Brennan, but she needed help - but when Corethief XXI moved up Brennan gave his speech and stormed off. Hmm, no ring for us. The last survivor of Mencar's gang was the imp, we converged and the pesky creature. We didn't get the invis ring, but we did get the cloak of non-detection, which will come in handy when we deal with Tarnor's gang.
* I needed to work on Umar Hills before we got too high level and got powerful undead spawns. So that's where we headed. The initial tasks were easy, snares being quite useful against the mimic and the stone golem. But our real challenge was the old Temple area. I knew this would be hard for the team, since most undead are immune to basic snare damage. So with that in mind, we went invisible to skip the undead on the surface so to minimize risk as well as not waste resources we will need once inside the temple.
The old Temple was very difficult for the team. For the initial batch of undead where the priestess bones were, we opened with skulltrap and sunray (Daystar) - this helped out quite a bit. But even mopping up the survivors was difficult. We decided we would allow Mazzy to join since we were helping her quest. But we were determined to no let her use any resources of ours. Predictably with no healing potions, she ended up dying - sorry Mazzy - we removed her from the group.
The undead just past the lava pit were hard for the group, but did get past them. During the battle with them the bone golem came and gave us heck but we did end up killing it. We needed to rest and Corethief XXI looked as his spells to see if anything would help with the undead - how about hold undead? So memorized two of them. Then Sarah moved ahead to lay a special snare - then she held still so Corethief XXI could use his new spells - out of the 3 undead he targeted twice with the spell, how many were held? ZERO. What a worthless spell, would have been much better to use MMM's.
Unfortunately Sarah paid the price for this mistake - she got killed. Corethief XXI and April were also pretty badly hurt - enough was enough. Run and hide! We successfully did this, as only the slow skeleton warriors were left. I decided a change of approach was needed. Corethief XXI went somewhere safe, while April got the business of backstabbing, running, hiding and repeating. This worked out great, as there plenty of corners to hide and April's stealth scores are very good.
Then came to the business of looting - quite difficult. But then I realized we need to get out safely, but Corethief's hiding still isn't that great - what to do? The familiar saved the group (remember large # of undead still outside) with its invis 10'. We got out of there and resurrected Sarah and then returned.
The return went much smoother. We passed on the dragon for now, and the shade lord was killed quickly - we had used our best anti-undead weapons, haste, and sunray.
* I wasn't particularly interested in dealing with the strong melee power of the trolls of D'Arnise Keep - thus we skipped as many fights as possible. If we did have to fight, we used snares and stealth along with some spells and this worked well. Nalia was allowed to join, mostly for the gold you get if she's alive when you complete the quest (you get 10500 vs. the 650 if she isn't in the group). She was of course booted out at the end.
For Torgal, attempted cloudkill x2 and snares then closed the door. This only killed one of the trolls, and Torgal and a buddy attacked the party. Our first play was summons by everyone, then everyone got to ranged distance. We all then used our best ammo, with the mages using spells (what was left anyways) - success!
* Boots of avoidance obtained from the would-be killers of the man buried alive. Snares and backstabs more than enough for this group.
* Decided to go after Reijek. But I needed a good approach - I need to be careful, as the run assassins see thru invisibility as well as could easily chunked Sarah or April. So decided would do max buffs to protect Corethief XXI and he would try to solo them, and only if he needed to he would withdraw to April and Sarah upstairs with the waiting snares. This worked out great! Corethief XXI opened with sunray to get rid of the ghasts (no bone golem), then used sunfire. He then did what damage he could to the assassins, only retreating upstairs when his mirrors were all gone. The lone remaining assassin refused to follow Corethief XXI, even after going downstairs attacking and withdrawing several times. So then April went downstairs and then the assassin was willing to follow her (he wanted a woman?). This led to his instant doom with all the snares up there.
* Last order of business was Tarnor's gang. I knew this would be much easier than Umar Hills (which it was). First we cleared all riff-raff in the area around Tarnor's group, including the Rakshashka and his kobold buddies. We also laid snares on spawn points in case any monsters re-spawned. We rested to refresh our snares, laid lots at/near Tarnor's gang. Then party then went invisible, and then Corethief XXI opened with cloudkill and went invisible via potion and waited out the damage. This did quite a bit of damage to the enemies, not to mention Sarah's special snares. When the 1st cloudkill wore off, most of Tarnor's gang was near death. So then Corethief XXI fireballed the group and then hid around a corner. The survivors went to Corethief's position but still couldn't see anyone. We moved to Tarnor's starting position, laid our last snare, then went in for some backstabs. This left a single survivor who we led to our last snare - Fini!
April still doesn't have a +3 weapon. Next session, will attempt the Guarded Compound.
Corethief XXI the elvish thief/mage - FINAL Update!
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
For a long time, I'm just totally skipped the guarded compound, even with full parties. This battle reminds me why I do. Basically, they did true sight and just destroyed us. We managed to kill 2 of them, but not before they stunned Corethief XXI - RIP Corethief XXI.
In the moods for solo play. going to try the berserk sword again...new entry soon.
30 Tarsakh 1369: Silas, a servant & Lorekeeper of Ογημα, to posterity, presents greetings.
At the request of a mage in Ulgoth’s Beard and the promise of reward, I travelled to a place called Ice Island in search of a cloak he was keen to have returned. To say I travelled is a bit misleading, I was teleported, making it somewhat clear that the mage himself, was not to be challenged. Ice Island is just that, an island, covered in ice I know not where. Beneath is a dungeon, cut into the earth with long tunnels, 10’x10’ and rooms of various shapes & sizes, generally rectangular in shape but rarely perfectly rectangular. Upon arrival, my first thought was to descend into the tunnels to avoid the blistering cold wind above - & I have come to be sensitive to Faldorn’s desire to protect nature, so if I can avoid killing animals (there was a Polar Bear there), I generally do to keep her focused & on task.
KEY EVENT: (Mage battle) Upon entering, I was almost immediately accosted by three mages of substantial ability. This turned into a long battle, & I suspect it was a good thing I never had to face all three together as they each fought their own battle, at most I was fighting two @ a time while the other was healing or casting protection spells out of sight. It will be hard to give a blow by blow or spell by spell account as I totally lost track of that during the long melee, that raged inside and outside the dungeon. Suffice it to say, that by the time all three were dead, so were Faldorn and Neera. I initially forgot I had purchased three Raise Dead scrolls, so I forged on without them until I found them in my pack. Hoping I am granted that spell soon.
GETTING THERE
FINALLY!
This dungeon was full of mages. Honestly, I think battling mages makes me more nervous than any other opponent because of the unpredictability of spells. By the time I got off that island, I’d defeated seven mages of no little power. To make matters worse, here I think there was something funky going on with magic – our spells seemed to be directed back at us at times. I never did figure out if that was a spell being used against us or something resident in Ice Island itself.
MAGES...
AND MORE MAGES. GIVE IT A REST ALREADY. DAYUMN!
After I raised Neera, she was able to identify the Wardstone that provided escape from the island. I then sold most almost all of the bounty & stocked up on arrows, darts, stones, etc. I’m planning to head to Durlag’s Tower but I appear to have found another stop first – another island.
“Curb and deny falsehoods, rumor, and deceitful tales whenever you encounter them.” Σιλας
As promised, I went straight to Trademeet to tackle the genies - picking up major benefits from the +2 scimitar and the Shield of Harmony (though I can't use the efreeti bottle).
At the Grove I thought I had just enough arrows of fire for the trolls, but failed to properly switch those when fighting a spirit troll in the mound and had to go and get more from one of the fighters further on.
With the trolls all dead I made use of Namarra for the first time to silence the druids and then took advantage of their dreadful AC by dual-wielding to finish them off before they could recover.
A few more trolls then led to another weapon upgrade in the shape of Belm. I used to like using horror on the Spore Colonies as they had a nice animation when they waddled off in panic. They no longer move, but horror still prevents them summoning myconids.
The shadow druid in the final group managed to buff with ironskin and barkskin despite being silenced, but that didn't save him for long.
Once the others had been cut down, Cernd was allowed to do his own thing against Faldorn.
Back in Trademeet I helped Tiris out before clearing the local tomb of undead.
That pushed reputation up to 20 and the first purchase I made with the 120k gold earned to date was the Blade of Roses - along with the Helm of Glory that gave charisma of 20 to minimize shop prices. It didn't take long to spend all that money though on armor and weapons (most of which I'm not likely to use much if at all). Balduran's plate though is worth a mention as a significant upgrade to a wizard slayer (and the charisma benefit allows me to ditch the Helm of Glory).
To rebuild finances I went to the de'Arnise Hold and made quick progress there - soon picking up level 16.
There were no real challenges there and TorGal was pulled out alone to his fate.
Speaking to Nalia got me to level 17 and I accepted the keep as a stronghold - though don't actually expect to return there.
Back in Athkatla I went to call on Mencar's gang. I used darts of stunning to prevent Brennan Riesling from making an escape and silenced the mage and his familiar before meleeing the others.
A couple more groups of enemies at the Bridge saw the end of Dracandros
and then Captain Dennis (beating up his mage with fists to get round PfMW).
By this time all the vampire ambushes had gone, so I went to pay Gaelan Bayle and visit Aran Linvail. Lassal was soon sent on his way
and I used a dart of stunning on the Guild Contact so he couldn't use up the potions he was carrying (a bit of a habit even though I can't use them in this run).
To make things easy I then used a PfU scroll to clear the top level of vampires - getting to level 18 in the process.
Before going downstairs I went to upgrade the MoD and, now that DuHM could push strength up to 24, also took out the Athkatla liches - I can't use or sell the Ring of Gaxx, but just the XP is still very good value for a cheap PfU scroll and Daystar is usable.
A bit more shopping included acquiring my first summons with Ras, the dancing sword and the Shield of Balduran. The latter was put to use in doing the Unseeing Eye quest, getting to level 19 early on in that.
Ras got a first outing to provide a distraction for the lich
and shortly afterwards I picked up level 20 and a first HLA from a confrontation with a large group of beholders.
Horror helped deal with the blind priests
before Ras once more played target against the Eye.
After a first use of Power Attack helped punish Gaal and his guards, reporting on the demise of the cult was enough for level 21.
Typically my characters go early to Watcher's Keep to get potion and ammo bags. With no potions being used by the wizard slayer, space in the inventory is less of an issue, but is still something of a concern - and I decided it was time to address that. The top floor presented no challenge and provided a +4 scimitar as another potential weapon for use
- though by this time I already had high mastery in long swords to provide some alternatives there as well. The only thing I didn't do is risk the finger of death trap to get the quiver of plenty - that would have had a 5% chance of killing me (I could have used Vhailor's Helm and a PfM scroll, but have steered clear of using the helm thus far). I also went to the second floor to grab the poison flail head in case I wanted that - getting another level in the process. I didn't bother completing the floor though, but just used Arbane haste to get the head before the snake could intervene.
Wizard Slayer L22, 162 HPs (incl. 5 from helm; 4 from armor), 784 kills (652 in BGEE/SoD)
The previous session felt like a bit of a chore. At these high levels there's not very much that poses a real danger, but in a no-reload run getting to that point creates its own form of danger ...
Moving on to Umar Hills I talked nicely to Madulf and picked up the Shield of the Lost - I hung on to that just in case I want to boost MR at some point. I also acquired Ilbratha before moving on to the Temple Ruins. Anath was greeted with a Power Attack there. Various undead were then destroyed on the way into the temple - where I noticed I'd got another level. Inside there the symbol spells from the liches could easily be a problem, so Ras was up to his old tricks to act as a distraction once more there. It would have made sense to leave Thaxy alone as I could easily have been affected by fear - but where would the fun be in that. A bit of stair hopping avoided the worst spells until the dragon's stoneskin was ready to disappear. Some crunching blows using critical strike then took it to near death and a WW finished it off - picking up another level as a reward.
The Shade Lord then survived a first use of sunray - but not the follow-up attack with Daystar.
Before leaving Umar I picked up Valygar's body and, after making the Shadow Dragon Scale, shoved that through the letter box at the Planar Sphere. Inside there Kayardi was shot down from range to prevent any nasty surprises - he cast a number of spells despite spell failure and I didn't want to find he could do the same with maze. I tried using smite against Mogadish, only to find that knocked him right through a door - that didn't save him for long though.
A bit further on and smite stunned an adamantite golem in order to finish that off quicker than using Azuredge - gaining another level as a result. I'd remembered only after activating the Sphere that there was a finger of death trap inside that was unavoidable - and hadn't got any protection against that. Oh well - fingers were crossed and did the job.
I very rarely fight Lavok fair - just using a summons from out of sight to beat him up. I didn't have any summons that could do that on arriving at the Sphere, but I thought I knew where to get some. Tolgerias was in the way, but smite followed by GWW stunned him for easy disposal and shortly after I had the Staff of Fire - but had forgotten I had no way to identify it for the moment. However, it was more appropriate for a wizard slayer to beat up Lavok himself anyway. A GWW procured a demon heart and a few more golems another level before the Sphere was activated for a final time to return to Athkatla.
Deciding to complete the last external area, the next job was in Windspear Hills. After the traditional hop back to Athkatla to collect the acorns, the external area was cleared and I moved into the dungeon. It didn't take long there for more golems to help acquire another level. More plentiful XP came from vampires and werewolves (and I wasn't bothering to pick up treasure any more), so a further level thanks to more golems was very quick in coming. A couple of green scrolls were used to give fire protection to work through the genies before the 'ambush'. Samia was smited before she could talk, allowing Kaol to be one-shotted while neutral - the clean-up operation after that only took seconds.
Downstairs, Firkraag set up a fight with Conster - but he was immediately scared and shot down before he could recover. For Firkraag the obvious thing to do would have been to use some fire elementals to occupy him, but I was trying to avoid any summons apart from Ras. I wanted to drag him upstairs and tried to get him to chase by shooting him from range - but was immediately affected by dragon fear. For a round or so I ran the right way and stayed out of his sight, but then the inevitable happened ...
RIP, @Grond0. I was really enjoying that, and I think you were too! Dragons are never to be trifled with. I would wish you good luck, but...luck only holds out so long. So, may you force the odds into your favour next time.
EDIT: I'm not sure which tactical mods you were using: SCS? Revised Battles? I remember the latter's Improved Firkraag being absolute hell
and quite buggy in my install: the only time I played it I eventually finished off his underground version, after which he's supposed to teleport to the surface, but he just disappeared. I had to console him in, and then found his second incarnation even more ridiculously OP/cheesy.
EDIT: I'm not sure which tactical mods you were using: SCS? Revised Battles?
@Stromael I often use SCS and occasionally spell revisions (and also play with LoB quite a bit), but all of my "long-life" runs are in an unmodded installation at core difficulty. That can make them feel a bit too easy generally (though up until fairly recently that wasn't true for that wizard slayer run), but as I suggested in my recent posts something feeling easy poses it's own type of difficulty in a long run .
Comments
To go to the FAI, or not to go to the FAI: that is the question.
If those bad guys read the note on Gorion's body they'll be expecting me there. But... the heck with it. I don't feel like waltzing around the edges of maps and mucking about in the wild right now, so I'm going. Already you're probably already starting to see why I've never completed a no reload run.
I'm not completely stupid, I expect someone to be waiting, so I send my f/t in to scout for unsavory characters. Oh, and what do you know: there's an unsavoury character.
That's ok: a backstab oughta take care of this. Aw, crap, 4 dmg on a backstab, that's pitiful.
No sweat, though. Followed up with a command spell and a crossbow salvo.
Sorry Khalid, I'm not taking you along on general principle.
On the way south we run afoul of an ogre.
In Beregost, it's time to pick up Neera.
Goodnight, Marl. Thought I'd be lenient because I'm a paladin? Sorry: I don't adhere to the black/white notions of alignment in D&D. Mine is a darker, more vengeful brand of justice.
Hi, Tiax! Sorry: can't take you with me on this run. I'm not a goodie-goodie paladin, but there is a line. Really could use your ghast, though...
Now it's of to Firebead to get that scroll case. Then, time to head south towards Nashkel for some exploring and to find out what's really going on. I'm having a hard time deciding what to do with Imoen. Keep her as a second thief... Dual to a mage... Or leave her with Firebead for mage training...
Quick question for you guys: I'm assuming that the thief detect illusion ability works while using the sanctuary spell? I've never actually tried it, for some reason, but it sounds like it could really help me with some pesky mages down the road.
Can't Imoen use freedom scrolls?
Gery - half-elf archer (Grond0)
Yertone - human inquisitor (Corey_Russell)
Tabetha - gnome illusionist / thief (Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1047141/#Comment_1047141
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1050824/#Comment_1050824
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1052228/#Comment_1052228
Having killed Slythe last time, we were off to the Palace at the start of this session. Yertone checked there before entering that Gery had evidence against Sarevok in his main backpack and not a container. Some summons and minimal buffing were done before Yertone started the contest by using dispel magic to get rid of the dopplegangers' haste. They still had a good go at the dukes, but Belt was still alive when the last doppleganger fell. The danger was not over yet though as Yertone didn't manage to get away from Belt before he started talking. That meant Gery quickly nipping in to provide an alternative target for Sarevok to whack at until he decided on a tactical withdrawal.
Going through the maze Tabetha disarmed the traps, but couldn't resist helping out Yertone against the enemies there. That led to her nearly being killed by a skeleton warrior, but she had the final word there with a successful backstab.
In the Undercity the plan was to fireball the party there, but the first of those was cast too close to them and Rahvin saw the opportunity to fire his arrows of detonation. However, a bit of running and shooting from Gery dealt with the danger quickly enough.
Inside the temple Sarevok was dispelled by an arrow from Gery, prompting Semaj to teleport out in support. He landed on some traps preset by Tabetha though and died within a second or two. That left Sarevok all alone as he struggled through the web trap to confront some summons - but made little impression on them before keeling over.
In BG2 Yertone complained in the dungeon about the amount of damage being taken and the time required to heal that, but no-one was actually seriously injured there. Annoyingly, Ulvaryl was not quite finished off by a magic missile and managed to escape, but otherwise everything was completed.
A period of crashes meant we had to perfect our technique at exiting the dungeon, but after doing that 3 times we successfully moved on to the circus tent. Inquisitor true sight there meant the illusions disappeared, leaving Kalah even more vulnerable than usual.
The final action saw the Copper Coronet being set to rights - the reward for that earned levels all round.
Archer - L9, 104 HPs, 56 kills (+315 in BG1)
Inquisitor - L9, 128 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 49 kills (+191 in BG1), 0 deaths
Illusionist/thief - L9/9, 47 HPs, 15 kills (+66 in BG1), 1 death
Having finally (albeit narrowly) stopped dying to goblins, Fruit Hammer reached Kuldahar, nervous but eager to move on to phase two of his grand plan!
(This is heavy metagaming, but I'll see what I can do to make it entertaining.)
To Lonelywood!
Moving on to the barbarian camp, Fruit Hammer cast Friends and spoke to the bouncer. The meeting with Wylfdene went as planned, and now it was just a matter of extracting a bit more experience from Angaar before leaving the place behind for the time being. But, woe was Fruit Hammer, for his Friends spell expired just a few seconds too soon!
The invisibility potion was meant for unforeseen difficulties such as this, and well did it serve Fruit Hammer, but it left him with a sinking feeling: Perhaps he should have bought another.
Burial Isle
He was nervous, and it didn't get better when it turned out Expeditious Retreat didn't seem to work under Free Action, so instead of speeding himself up, he had spent some time casting a spell that only served to silence him. Judicious use of Shield of Lathander kept him alive in the face of deadly traps.
He managed to loot all the treasure the barrows held, and then retreated to Edion, the necromancer's, tower. This man, Fruit Hammer knew, carried valuable scrolls. All Fruit Hammer needed to do to acquire them was to sell the treasures he had found, for he knew Edion would often appease the local spirits by gifting them artifacts. But perhaps THESE artifacts might not be very pleasing...
Fruit Hammer had an idea. He offered Edion his most valuable trophy, the axe that had been owned by Fruit Slicer. What followed was a very lengthy argument where Edion:
- Called the axe plain and unremarkable
- Wondered how he even knew that axe had ever sliced fruit
- Wondered why anyone with teeth would mash fruit, indirectly calling some orc smarter than Fruit Hammer
Fruit Hammer got very annoyed with Edion, but the necromancer persisted, ultimately saying there could be no greater insult to the spirits than to offer them this axe. Fruit Hammer lost all compunctions about following through with his original plan.
First he sold Edion some easily identified items and bought two important scrolls; Mantle and Improved Haste. He was still under the effects of the potions, so he could learn these spells safely. But, Fruit Hammer decided to be extremely economical about things, so rather than paying to have the others identified and buying more scrolls at full price, he rested, identified them himself and cast Friends for better deals. This got him more scrolls, but his mind could no longer fully grasp their content, so he had to store them in the scroll case until he could get a hold of more potions.
Edion was the one with the greater problem though. Fruit Hammer thought him as savage as the barbarians, and he would shed no tear when the spirits got enraged at Sir Fishbreath for offering them the same weapons that had been stolen from their barrows.
Fruit Hammer also purchased scrolls from Kieran, then returned to the isle to find Hjollder. However, his defiling of the barrows had drawn the attention of the Sanctuary Hugger Society, and they had begun recruiting the spirits and creatures of the isle.
Fruit Hammer made it into the barrows, but made a mental note to use a different exit. He spoke to Hjollder and got yet another disproportionately large experience reward, and moved to return to Ned. In approaching the exit he had intended to use instead of the one he believed to be cramped, he found out that the SHS members had actually crowded the wrong exit and stood there in an asshole formation that would put an adult site to shame.
Fruit Hammer exited the way he had entered and left the isle behind, took care of some business in Lonelywood and set out for the Gloomfrost.
Gloomfrost
He knew it would have been a very rewarding kill, yet he knew also it would be very risky to keep the golems at bay, and so he elected to come back much later.
Barbarian camp, again
Nowhere could he find another invisibility potion. He would be safe if he could cast Mantle, but if they were waiting for him right at the entrance...
Fruit Hammer decided to go there, and if they were waiting for him, he would just run back. Fortunately, they were not. Fruit Hammer decided to not cast anything and go look for them, which meant when he did find them, he had to cast Mantle.
After this, he summoned some Aerial Servants for the barbarians to fight instead. These, too, require magical weapons to hit.
Having taken care of this and rested, he went to meet Wylfdene again. Things went as expected, and after a Mantle and some Aerial Servants, the tent was cleared of Wyrm Tribe warriors. After that, all Fruit Hammer had to do was lead the other Wyrm Tribe warriors into the tent to meet the same fate.
Before and after
Fruit Hammer after returning to Kuldahar after having completed the HoW story to the point of exposing Icasaracht and slaying her barbarians:
Obviously it'll be a while before I have to face a challenge again, but I'll type up a new post if something entertaining comes to mind, be it a struggle, a humiliating defeat or a fruit preparation debate.
Previous run:
The last time I recorded an attempt on this thread was nearly a year ago and was the 10th attempt at this character. Between April and December I tried 17 more times without conspicuous success
As @semiticgod recently expressed doubt about the chances of success for the wizard slayer I've been motivated to try again and take a bit more care than usual. There have been no great alarms while:
- shooting up Shoal to get to level 3.
- activating a gnoll to attack Drizzt. It broke its weapon without even a need to leave the area to restart the combat, but I had guests coming and had to save the game during the fight. On reloading, the gnoll did not resume the attack and I had to start the fight twice more (leaving the area in between to reset Drizzt's HPs) before eventually being able to claim the kill.
- in Nashkel picked up the ankheg armor and LMD.
- a couple of arrows and LMD finished off Bentan without needing to run from his spells (killing him is the only way for a wizard slayer to get his PfM scroll).
- I mis-clicked on the conversation with Prism and missed out on Greywolf, but Samuel, Joia, Brage and Oublek boosted reputation a bit. Normally I don't buy anything significant until I have 20 reputation and wouldn't buy full plate anyway. However, for a wizard slayer money is so meaningless that I quickly traded in the ankheg armor and acquired full plate and a +1 large shield.
- following Korax round the basilisk area soon got me to level 6.
- a couple of ankhegs were enough for level 7, but I cleared the rest of them anyway with just the one critical hit received.
- outside the cave the amazons were attacked singly. They only completed 2 spells between them, but one of those held me. However, I was out of sight before the spell was cast so that Lamalha didn't come to investigate.
- at the Bandit Camp the basic bandits were never likely to be a threat, but even Taurgosz failed to land a blow.
- while passing through the Cloakwood, I stopped off to get Spider's Bane - tackling the inhabitants of Centeol's nest one or two at a time to make the fights easy.
- a whistle-stop tour of the realms saw reputation pushed up to 20 (celebrating that by killing the Doomsayer - nipping in and out to gain an APR advantage).
The only encounters in BG1 that I normally do that concern me as a wizard slayer are the fight at the palace and the possibility of a basilisk ambush. Having completed all my travels that could prompt the latter, that should really only leave the palace fight to worry about - though things don't always go according to plan ...
Wizard Slayer L8, 104 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 284 kills
Siyhmun (Sorcerer, Gate70); Alky (Transmuter, Grond0)
Our next random rolls gave us a couple of squishies to take good care of. The well-trodden path from Candlekeep, past Shoal and Mad Arcand led us into Beregost. Siyhmun was using Sleep to distract our enemies and once that worked we switched to synchronised battering.
On to Kirian and her gang, all three of which were blinded. Kirian was therefore the only threat and unconscious in a stinking cloud but Siyhmun found a way to make life more complicated. Having recently mentioned the short casting distance for Aganazzar's Scorcher he promptly tried casting it and ended up wandering into the stinking cloud. As he fell unconscious, Kirian woke up. She cast up some summons and then a lightning bolt - Alky doing a fine job of distracting the one conscious summon and somehow avoiding the bolt.
By this time the stinking cloud had dispersed so Kirian got her come-uppance. We moved on to Durlag's Tower, successfully clearing battle horrors from the outside and a few basilisks on the roof. That was enough for us so we headed across to pick on Caldo and Krumm. After that we grabbed a tome from near the gnoll fortress and deal with a polar bear before deciding our need for a potion case required a trip to High Hedge.
Having avoided death a couple of times we stopped there.
Coremage even knows freedom - but he's not high enough level. And as for scrolls, we have had money issues so couldn't afford any extra freedoms - we had to use a freedom scroll in Beholder's Lair in the Underdark to get Keldorn back, as well as Imoen flubbed her freedom scroll.
Previous updates:
Back in the City I did the poison quest - including a first use of stunning darts to freeze Jalantha in place
In Candlekeep I rested to get Bhaal DUHM. That was still not enough to get either of the tomes though. The WS is the only class unable to get the strength tome when solo, which is why my starting character was re-rolled until I got 18(00) strength
Once more in Baldur's Gate I had the dialogues with Tamoko. I don't normally bother with her, but for a wizard slayer her armor is an upgrade from full plate. Ramazith was cut down to raid his tower - DUHM allowing the locked chest at the top to be opened to get another PfM scroll.
Moving on to the end game, Slythe was activated, dispelled and cut down. Krystin managed to complete her opening remove magic, but was shut down before having a chance to do anything else.
At the palace I used DUHM before activating the combat. Two dopplegangers were dispelled before trying a first horror - but everyone saved.
I used PfU to kill the skeleton warriors in the maze and did the same to the ones in the Under City - though I left Rahvin's group alone. I did attack Tamoko though - dragging her inside the temple. Another copy of her spawned outside, but I dodged that while traversing between areas until the original one was dead - allowing me a nice armor upgrade.
Rather than use up another irreplaceable PfM scroll I decided to go the cheesy route and use protection from lightning to trip the repeating trap - that also has the benefit of gaining another 8 exploding arrows from Angelo.
Arriving at the SoD dungeon I found I'd only got up to 235k - I'd expected to have enough to level up immediately. However, after Porios surrendered I used PfU against the initial undead groups before picking up level 9 against some mercenaries.
Wizard Slayer L9, 119 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 399 kills
Part 15: Throne of Bhaal
We summon a bunch of clones before tackling Illasera, which keep the Black Reavers distracted while we chase down Illasera herself. I try dual-wielding once I get into melee range, only to find that she's perfectly willing to use her arrows at point-blank range, forcing me to switch back to the Shield of Reflection.
Sunray gets us past all the undead in Nyalee's grove. While our Vhailor's Helm clones can't wear the Helm of Brilliance since it conflicts with Vhailor's Helm, our Shadow Clones can use the Helm of Brilliance to cast Sunray. Our first Sunray kills the skeleton mage; the second kills the cleric.
Nyalee is still immune to physical damage due to a bug (she's supposed to have 50% resistance, but both the player's and her SCS Earth Elemental Token give 100%), but I don't bother fixing it, because we can get around it just by smacking her with Firetooth +3 and Crom Faeyr until the elemental damage eventually brings her down.
Then I kite him with the Sling of Everard for the heck of it while I wait, and make the biggest discovery of the entire run. CTRL-M confirms it.
He was supposed to regenerate like 30 HP per round or something. He regenerates zero. We can actually just kite him to death while using Hide in Plain Sight and the Staff of the Magi to keep the other enemies from targeting us! When he hits Near Death, I close in with melee weapons to bump him off, knowing that the enemies won't have enough time to actually threaten me before Yaga-Shura croaks.
Any character who can use the Shield of Reflection could take it down easily. I don't think you'd even need to attack it; you could rely entirely on its own reflected darts to kill it.
Normally, regeneration lets enemies win wars of attrition. But Yaga-Shura, and presumably Abazigal and the Ravager as well, have no regeneration. All of them could be kited by practically any character, no matter how lousy their THAC0 and damage output might be.
The "un-nerfed" THAC0 tables for thieves were completely unnecessary for our success. Kiting is perfectly viable even in Ascension.
Corethief XXI
Groupmates
For those of you wondering, no Coremage is not dead - but I've been thinking about this group for some time and I thought I would give it a go. I wanted a change, but I will eventually get back to Coremage. Most of my parties are melee-heavy or summon heavy, but I've never created a party that wins most battles with stealth attacks. So I made this one in MP. April and Sarah will prioritize stealth scores and snares, while Corethief XXI will do locks/traps/illusion detection. He will use spells (or items, if available) to go invisible. Thus April and Sarah are the work-horses, and Corethief XXI offers thief/mage support.
The party has just defeated Davaeorn and will soon enter the great city of Baldur's Gate. When traveling, the party travels invisible to minimize trouble. The pure thieves are level 7. I've had some close calls, including a cave bear knocking Corethief XXI to ONE HP - only level 1 protection saved him.
The bandit camp was very difficult for this group - we only made it on the surface because of monster summon distractions, but even with that April still died. Mulahey was a mess because we got seen before we meant to, but we still managed to come through that OK. We have pretty much stealthed through the Cloakwood, only fighting when we must.
For Drassus and pals, fireballs and thrown traps made short work of them - ranged fire then finished them off. Only minimal fighting has been done in the Cloakwood Mine itself - a lot of backstabs, snares (Davaeorn's level) and number of times using the classic @Grond0 technique of invisible blockers protecting a ranged attacker.
We put snares at one of Davaeorn's spawn points, then April attacked with ranged fire protected by potion of magic shielding. Once she had his attention, then Sarah supported with her crossbow of speed. Since Davaeorn was heavily damaged by the traps, they just needed to get through his mirrors, and that they did.
The absolute bane of our existence is jellies. April got killed by Narcillicus jellies (we got seen when we didn't mean to). We only got through the jelly at Davaeorn's OK because of the Boots of Speed.
We are making rapid progress, although we are intentionally not trying to be max level - we just want to safely get through BG 1. Will keep at it.
That was my understanding, but I didn't comment on your earlier posts as I assumed you were talking about the impact of mods in your installation
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
I am pleased to report Corethief XXI made it through BG 1 and will enter Amn next session. I had a really, really bad scare against Drelik (Jardak's butler) though - he managed to fear Corethief XXI and Sarah, and April was running for life, taking heal potions and magic missiles. That almost was a disaster though, as she ran far enough away to hide (she has haste boots), but then Corethief XXI got targeted by Drelik! April ran quickly to try to get the heat off him in time (she succeeded). Drelik finally was out of spells, and the party shook off the fear and killed the pesky mage. But Sarah died in the process. Luckily there's a nearby temple.
For good measure, we killed his master, with traps mostly. 6 traps ALMOST weren't enough, tough dude.
I was going to pass on fighting at the Iron Throne, but decided I needed the experience. We crept up invisible (spell) and setup our attack from the room in the south. After six traps were laid, (space apart, so they wouldn't all trigger at once), we then did some fireballs and summons and withdrew, with April doing backstabs on enemy casters when she can (she has the haste boots). This worked well as you can see.
We then head off to Candlekeep - we skip most things here, only getting the loot from the 3 crypts. Then we went invisible to end of the crypts, just stopping long enough to kill the basilisks.
At this point the pure thieves are level 9, which is good enough to finish BG 1. Slythe was easy with lots of traps. Was worried about Duchal palace, but Corthief XXI's slow was a huge help. I'm sure everyone being hasted didn't hurt any. And he also got some great news here as well - he made level 7 mage/level 8 thief here too!
Time to sell/buy/rest and prepare for our final push. No way we dealing with the jellies or other enemies in the maze - we just went invisible with Corthief XXI de-trapping as needed.
We aren't afraid of the Undercity Iron throne party. Lots of snares spaced out. Then with an invisible scout, some summons attack Rahvin. This worked great as his exploding arrows hit his own people and his own people killed him once the summons were dead. We were well out of sight. April once again with her haste boots would backstab the most dangerous enemy then withdraw to the party - this worked well. The mage was the last survivor. Rather than fancy a direct assault, Corethief XXI sent some monsters to attack the mage (who still had his mirrors) - somehow a goblin elite killed the mage.
Time to deal with my half-brother! We laid 4 normal snares and 2 special snares, some summons, then April managed to both pull Sarevok as well as only pull Sarevok and Semaj. Semaj died instantly to the traps, though we were ready for him as the thieves had protection from magic and Corethief XXI had potion of magic shielding active.
After that the party ranged attacked, with Corethief XXI refreshing monsters as needed. Corethief XXI also did MMM and magic missiles - took a while but success!
Whole party will move on to Amn. RUN RESTRICTION: not recruiting unless someone gets chunked. Even then, only a thief may join (multi or dual OK).
Part 16: Throne of Bhaal
We get over 120,000 gold from selling off all the magical gear from the Oasis fight and we bankrupt ourselves buying a bunch of high-level scrolls from Lazarus Librarus in Amkrethan. Draconis' human form isn't very mobile and we have lots of room to run around in, so we can just run away and dispatch his demons before pouncing on him when his defenses are wearing off.
I stop by the Pocket Plane to deal with the second challenge. The enemy Frisky Bits can see through invisibility, but Angelo, Tamoko, and Semaj cannot. We just wait out Semaj's Time Stop and then focus fire on the enemy Frisky Bits with our clone.
I had plans for dealing with Anadramatis, the yellow dragon who instantly Wish-Breaches you at the start of combat and whose breath weapon deals crushing damage, but Anadramatis is still bugged to come with no weapon equipped.
I use Shadowstep to skip past the demons who teleport in when we go back past the previous room. We didn't bother fighting the lizard men here, so fighting the demons and lizard men at the same time would be too complicated and risky. You can see the little white blobs of light that indicate the start of a Dimension Door visual effect.
I don't want to deal with the quadruple dragon ambush just yet, so I head to Sendai's lair. The drow outside are a little worrisome because their Fallen Planetar can see through our invisibility and the drow assassin can land triple-digit backstabs...
Most critters in Sendai's lair cannot see through invisibility, so we can sneak and stab our way through most of the dungeon. Odamaron is another story. A Protection from Undead scroll won't keep us truly safe, since we've got three high-level mages and I know at least one of them can summon a Fallen Planetar, so I use Shadowstep, cast via our clones, to wait out Odamaron's PFMW spells and then fire Acid Arrows and Arrows of Dispelling at him.
Now we have to deal with Ogremoch, whose attacks dispel magic on hit at his own caster level (20) and also spams Stoneskins every round or so. However, with two clones attacking at once, we can actually muster the APR to overcome his many Stoneskins.
Our last fight before Sendai herself is with the mind flayers. A Protection from Undead scroll and the Mace of Disruption work fine against the Vampiric Illithids, but the other mind flayers require stacking Potions of Genius for us to survive. Our clone, which has no defense against INT drain besides its own crummy AC, dies in moments, but Frisky Bits is rocking over 90 Intelligence and 8 APR under Improved Haste.
This will probably be a short, if not bloody, letter as for the most part the last few days have been uneventful compared to much of what I have shared previously. I travelled to the Fishing Village where it was raining profusely at times. The Fishing Village lies on the east bank of River Chionthar on the road that runs from Nashkel to Baldur’s Gate, southeast of the city. This is farming and fishing country. Lots of bandits here, I think I killed maybe 10 in one small skirmish but the real fun here is Ankheg’s.
KEY EVENT: (Ankheg hunting) I think I’ve have found something I truly enjoy, outside of acquiring knowledge on behalf of Ογημα – Ankheg hunting – I bagged 23 of them between here & Wyrm’s Crossing. They can be dangerous if you aren’t careful, we found the son of a local farmer dead in a network of Ankheg tunnels & both Kivan & Faldorn fell to them in the same skirmish. Note that Kivan is travelling w/me again, I decided to employee him again & left Safana @ FAI.
LAST ANKHEG
NEST AND TUNNELS CLEARED
Wyrm’s Crossing lies on the east bank of River Chionthar, across from Baldur’s Gate and serves as the chief crossing into the city, thus its name. Here also the land is rich and plentiful. When I was at the Fishing Village, I was duped by three fishermen into killing a Cleric of Umberlee who lived here. She was only a child but when confronted the discussion got out of hand & she was killed. I returned to the fisherman & on the way Neera was killed in a bandit ambush, 10 of them - & then I was doubly angry because their duplicity was going to cost me gold. I took my anger out on them. I’m conflicted about how Ογημα will see this act – they were simply trying to leverage Toril in their favor, but I didn’t appreciate being their pawn, especially when I had to dip into my treasury because of it.
I finished by going straight north of the crossing, to the west side of River Chionthar into the Farmlands. The place was infested with zombies, 20 of them, which I destroyed. The farmers there rewarded my efforts with gold, not much, but for sport it was an added bonus. Finished there, I went directly east to Ulgoth’s Beard.
“Write or copy lore of great value at least once a year.” Σιλας
Best Kill Competition:
1. Imoen, Greater Basilisk, 7000 exp
2. Faldorn, Shoal the Nereid, 5000 exp
3. Branwen & Kivan Sirine, 2000 exp
4. Neera, Lesser Basilisks, 1400 exp
ORDER OF MARCH: Kivan, Recon, Imoen (Recon, traps, Branwen (shock), Silas, Neera, Faldorn (rear guard)
MONSTERS DEFEATED:
Fishing Village: Ankheg’s (23), Bandits (9), Fisherman (3)
Wyrm’s Crossing: Tenya (cl/5)
Farmlands: Zombies: (20)
Other: Ghouls (6), Bandits (10), Skeletons (6)
CASUALTIES: Neera (Bandit ambush), Kivan & Faldorn (Ankheg’s)
NOTEWORTHY TREASURE: (Purse = 3,576gp)
Armor & weapons: Armor of Missile Attraction +2,
Jewelry: Ruby Ring, Mithril Ring, Sphene Gem
Scrolls: Lightning, Web
Potions:
Wands & Artifacts: Wand of Fire
CURRENT DISPOSITION: Resting, recovering, resupplying in the Ulgoth’s Beard Inn
ONE ROOM INN, TIGHT QUARTERS
NEXT STEPS: Ice Island
LEVEL UP: None
PARTY MAKEUP: (Reputation: 8)
Silas Cl/7 (Lorekeeper of Oghma) (HP35) S/mail +1, Boots/Grounding, Girdle of Piercing, w/Gauntlets of Dexterity & Rings, Free Action & Human Influence w/M/star* (Flail*), Spells: D/Harmony, Prot/Evil 15’, Farsight, A/Dead, C/Disease, Zone of Sweet Air, Chant, Holy Might, H/Person, Silence 15’, S/Poison, A/Faith, Bless, Cmd, Doom, Doom, Sanctuary; S/ability: Divine Wrath, Heal Touch (2), Affliction, Friends; (Doomsayer) (AI none)
Imoen Th/8 (Adventurer)(HP47) Shadow Armor +3 w/Eagle Bow +2* (w/Bracers of Archery) & S/sword +1*; Skills: OL 85, FT 90, PP 50, MS 70, HS 70, DI 25, ST 30; (Greater Basilisk) (Thf Rgd Atk)(2)
Faldorn Dr/8 (HP40) S/Leather +1 w/Club +1*, Dart +1* (Q/Staff*, Spear*) & Gauntlets of Ogre Power;
Spells: Smashing Wave, Call Woodland Beings, Hold Person, Summon Insects, CMWs, Barkskin, B/Claw,
Ch/Person/Mammal, S/Poison, Flame Blade, Ar/Faith, Bless, Entangle, CLWs, Shillelagh, (Shoal the Nereid) (Cl agg)(3)
Neera Mg/7 (Wild Mage) (HP19) Traveler’s Robe w/Bracers of Def AC6 & Cloak/Prot +2, Q/Staff +1* & Wand of Fire, Spells: Minor Sequencer, MG/Inv, Melf’s Minute Meteors, Fireball, D/magic, C/Shield, Web, Blur, Invisibility, MM, P/Evil, Blindness, ID, Ch/Person, Chr/Orb, B/Hands, P/Petrification, Nahal’s RD, Sleep; (Lesser Basilisk) ( AI: Mage Def)(4)
Branwen, Cl/7 (Battleguard of Tempus), (HP55), S/Mail, Shield +1 & RoP +2, w/Warhammer +1** (S&SS*) & Gauntlet’s of Weapons Skill; Spells: M/Domination, D/Magic, H/Smite, R/Thinking, DUHM, F/Blade, H/Person, Silence 15’, Spirit/Hammer, Armor/Faith, Cmd, Doom, P/Evil, Shillelagh; S/Ability: Enrage, Prayer (5), (Sirine) (AI: Cl Agg)
Kivan, Rgr (Archer)/7 (HP50) S/Leather +1 w/Boots of Stealth, L/bow****, Spear +1*, L/Sword* (THWS**); Skills: MS 74, HS 74; (Sirine) (AI: Ftr Rgd Atk)(6)
MOD USED: BG NPC v23.3, BG NPC Music v6, Plane Touched Races _v0,0, Indira v12, Isra v2.3, Finch v4.0, Gavin v14, Drake, Sirene v2.5, Verr’sza v5.2, BG UB v16, Tweaks Anthology Beta 4, Song & Silence v9, Deities of Faerun, Rogue Rebalancing v491, Level 1 NPCs, SCS v31, aTweaks, Item Randomizer v7
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief (special: 19 STR)
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
So the party got to the business of getting out of the dungeon. It was surprisingly difficult, and some of thieves nearly died, but they did escape. Illyich's duegars are pretty tough - 4 snares and that only killed one of them (though all were injured). I was surprised on how many enemies survived backstabs - I remember Picenon (my solo fighter/thief from ages ago) just backstabbing everything in one shot. Well, I found out why the dungeon was so hard - April was using a non-proficient weapon! Doh!
Once the right weapon was equipped the party did much better. Things accomplished to date:
* Circus was put to rights - Corethief XXI put everyone invisible (spell) then he just used his detection skill to eliminate the first group of illusion wolf-weres - this worked great! Rest of the circus wasn't too bad, although Corethief XXI broke invisibility too soon and got attacked, but he pulled through.
* I wanted to trigger the Suna Seni ambush (to get it out of the way mostly), so traveled everywhere invisible until I did trigger it. As she couldn't see us, we backed away, laid some snares near the edge of the ambush area. Then Sarah used her special trap and it worked great - killed two enemies, held three, and left only one who could fight - who of course never got a chance to fight thanks to backstabs.
* So finally we wanted to head to Waukeen's Promenade to get an upgraded Katana for April - but then we got hit with the Renfeld ambush - doh! And we were low spells/traps, but we managed to pull through. We then headed to the docks - the poor cleric of Cyric failed to survive backstabs. After returning Renfeld, we decided we might as well as loot the thieve's hide-out. We also agreed to help Xzar and looted the Harper's headquarters. Although 1st we had to deal with Sansha and Prebek - April managed to backstab Prebek dead, which meant Sansha never went hostile - easy fight in the end.
* We agree to help Renal Bloodscalp by investigating Maevar - we "investigated" by looting Maevar's place dry. For once the buckler +1 is actually useful, as April usually will use Katana and she is in the front lines.
* With all this looting, we headed to the Adventurer's Mart to get some goodies - a Katana +1 for April and also the AC 3 bracers for Corethief XXI since he doesn't use armor. Ironcially, he has the best AC at the moment.
Because most attacks are from stealth or enemies die to traps, we rarely get hurt much and thus have massive amount of heal potions. Going to Watcher's Keep for the potion bag is our next priority. Will keep at it.
Have any of you noticed if the character kill count resets from one game to another?
I mean, you finish BGEE with, IDK, 500 kills. Starting SoD it goes to 0 or keeps counting from 500?
And going to BG2EE?
And IWDEE -> HoW?
Thanks and sorry for the off-topic!
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1053453/#Comment_1053453
In Baldur's Gate I collected more cash than I could ever spend from selling various gems and equipment stripped from the bodies of a few NPCs. The main items acquired that I am likely to use are Kiel's helmet and the Battle Tankard.
The first real action was at the Coast Way Crossing, where missiles soon shut down Ikros' chance of casting and finished him off.
I had no invisibility available for the encounter at the bridge, but was still able to get behind the tent quickly enough to avoid anyone attacking before Caelar called for a parley.
I ran through the Troll Claw Woods, ignoring enemies, and moved on to the Forest of Wyrms. Rather than going straight for the temple there though, I continued doing area transitions to trigger the ambush areas. Eventually getting the goblin one I cleared those before diving into the nearby hole. I wasn't worried about the confusion from the red myconids, but tried to kill the blue one with exploding arrows before it could try and pacify me. It survived that, but I also saved and a sunray finished it off.
Inside the cave the bugbears were pulled around to fight in ones and twos, with the small amount of damage taken being healed by regeneration. The shamans were afflicted by horror. In the temple I had no invisibility, so dealt with Ziatar's guards first - that proved more difficult than expected when the last group got very lucky with their attacks and I had to run away quickly out of the temple to recover.
I didn't fancy my chances against the Neothelid, so ran straight past that to find Akanna. I drew the aerial servants out of her room and ran them round, though did have to survive one domination attempt from the dimension-walking Neothelid before I could get back to Akanna and close the door (I'm not sure whether that was blocked by PfM scroll - certainly some of the Neothelid's abilities are psionic and bypass PfM). Her use of invisibility and sanctuary though provided the Neothelid time to appear in the room and start casting more spells at me as well as producing magical swords. I therefore ran away out of the temple briefly before coming back to have another go - this time successfully finishing her off before managing to squeeze past the Neothelid and other enemies to get out.
With that troublesome set of encounters out of the way I regenerated health before throwing some daggers at Morentherene on the way out.
At Boareskyr Bridge I had the dragon scales made into a shield to provide an AC upgrade and bullet-proof my saving throw vs death. I normally kill Vichand, but decided the risk of doing that was too great for a wizard slayer and just intimidated him into giving up the scroll. Dealing with a dark wraith then allowed me to get some +3 arrows made.
After surrendering the fort the mage on the bridge managed to tag me with an Acid Arrow, but soon lost his buffs and casting ability to dispelling arrows and was easy to finish off.
After rescuing Skie at the Castle, I moved on to the Underground River. Saving throws were good enough to beat up the myconids there, while Spider's Bane protected against the webs while kiting a gargantuan spider.
With the entrance clear I headed on in and went to place the Bwoosh before convincing Turin to let me into the Warrens. I did initially head up in the lift with the intention of poisoning the water (but not the food), but changed my mind and deemed there was too risk of being trapped or taking high damage even trying for that - and came back down before a general alarm was spread.
Back at the Camp, exploding arrows wore the ogres and trolls down enough to let the archers finish them off.
At the Castle I used a PfM scroll and went straight to find Ashatiel. He needed a critical to hit me when using the appropriate boots - and he failed to get any.
After resting I put on the Commanders Chain Mail and used another PfM scroll topped up by fire, electricity and poison protection. On the lift, I used up the myconids to avoid taking any damage prior to facing Belhifet.
I'd been in two minds about the best way to do the battle, but decided to try and keep Caelar alive with scrolls of greater restoration. That meant I would tend to suffer from fatigue, so wore the Battle Tankard to prevent that - and hence the use of the Commanders Chain Mail to provide fear immunity. Without potions of regeneration I generally stayed out of melee combat with Belhifet, using void arrows on him or picking on gated demons. That meant it was mainly down to Caelar to do the business and she soaked up 13 restoration scrolls before completing that - though I still had 7 more remaining.
I realized at the end of that fight, I'd never got around to taking my final SoD level, so did that (and took the pantaloons out of my bag of holding) before running through the epilogue. Next up will be BG2. In theory I think that should be easier than SoD, but it's also much longer - with plenty of opportunities for mistakes ...
Wizard Slayer L10, 122 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 0 kills (652 in BGEE/SoD)
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
RUN Restriction: No NPCs permanently join (quests OK) - if a character gets chunked, only a thief may join (dual or multi- OK)
The party is continuing to make good progress. Ambushes have been remarkably easy for this group. For one, we try to travel invisible as much as possible (though not always). But if we are, we just back away and do special snare and that pretty much carries the day, we just finish off the survivors. I also found out my character can sunfire his opponents that DOESN'T break his invisibility!!! Is that a bug or a feature? Game counting it as a buff? Means if I get number of sunfires loaded, could be a lot of fun...
A lot got done this session:
* Freed Hendak no problem - snares and backstabs carried the day
* Lilacor quest went ALMOST really smooth, the special snares were pretty effective. We failed to kill one hobgoblin shaman, however, and he managed to hold Sarah! We went all out on killing him before he killed her and we did, whew!
* Took a lot of resources to defeat slavers in moored ship, but we did - special snare once again coming through which you can see here:
* Decided we really wanted the thief equipment so worked on Maevar quest. Unsurprisingly, the Rayic Gethras portion was the hardest part. We had used fire resistance potions to make the mephits a bit easier to to deal with (and they were). Haste and MMM's were used on the golems. We laid two snares downstairs went invisible and went to the far corner of the room - I thought Rayic couldn't see us but he could! Uh, oh! We tried everything we could to try to interrupt his spells but he was immune to everything, and couldn't target him even with Detect Illusions running - SI maybe? His summons were giving us heck. One thing that came in handy is I haven't been selling my spells scrolls, so used lots of scrolls to try to help out - tried stinking cloud and web but that didn't affect Rayic at all. We were eventually damaging him but it was slow. We did catch one break though - when Rayic did FoD, he cast it at our shorty, April and she saved! If he had cast it on our half-orc or elf, they had good chances of failing. In any case, Rayic's protections didn't last forever, and when they wore off he was finished. Whew!
The rest of Edwin's quests went rather smoothly. Time to deal with the thieves proper! We entered invisible, and lots of snares had already been pre-laid, which helped a lot. We had snares outside also, just in case. We went downstairs to deal with Maevar and Corethief XXI opened with a sunfire and ran back to the party and waiting snares. The snares couldn't quite kill everyone, but direct attack carried the day.
We decided the group really could use some summons, so did the following:
* Horn of Valhalla obtained - easy enough with Corethief's traps scores
* Kithix obtained - snares/backstabs doing most work, with sunfire used to wipe out most of the small spiders.
* Genie lamp obtained via traps. Head Genie killed by traps as well, which meant Ras could also be purchased (and was) for one last summon
Last task was to finish off Trademeet. I realized this group didn't really want to deal with the strong melee power of the trolls - so realized I didn't have to since we get plenty of experience as a small group. Instead, we went to the Druid grove visible to get the dialog about shadow druids, went invisible via spell to get through entire area, talked to Cernd who didn't offer to fight Faldhorn alone, I had to let him join and do the combat myself - but I succeeded and quest is complete!
Will keep at it...next task is Daystar - we really need it, since our traps mostly aren't effective against undead with their poison immunity...
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1053453/#Comment_1053453
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1053713/#Comment_1053713
In the dungeon I was stunned by the radiant mephit, but it didn't have enough damage capability for that to be much of a concern. Annoyingly I got a minimum damage attack on Ulvaryl when the chances of finishing her off were good. In the past I could have done that anyway using LMD. I think it's a shame that's been nerfed so much in v2.5 - if it's felt LMD shouldn't work on so many things then the Bhaal power should really be replaced with something else that does (that's already been done in various mods I think).
After making some donations at the local temple, I had a relaxing outing at the circus.
Being scared didn't prevent Officer Dirth from switching between bow and sword and attacking pretty much at will - but nor did it prevent him being hacked down anyway to provide a further armor upgrade.
Doing more tasks, Rayic Gethras chose to open with a long-casting spell and found that, with the use of Arbane haste, I could totally shut down his spell casting before he could complete it.
Now with the ability to defend against hold person, I returned to the Copper Coronet and dived into the sewers - picking up Lilarcor to help against charm and confusion. The slavers were then tackled in small enough groups to be pretty simple.
Neb was fittingly finished off with LMD while doing the Sir Sarles quest.
Renfeld was rescued at that point and returning him was enough for level 13 and a nice saving throw boost.
At the Graveyard I considered using a PfU scroll, but with a negative death saving throw the only potential source of danger was the horror from the Crypt King - and that's easily dodged.
Searching for some more work in the City I went to the Temple sewers. I'd been stubborn for some time about not making things easy for myself:
- despite money being no real issue for a wizard slayer I'd decided not to buy a magic scimitar or anything else significant (like Vhailor's Helm) until reputation reached 20;
- I'd also decided not to go to Trademeet until my saving throw provided natural immunity to petrification (rather than use a green scroll), which both slowed down reputation increase and meant I didn't have the Shield of Harmony (or indeed any other shield).
That meant I had to rely on the non-proficient Lilarcor to hack down the rakshasa, though that was in fact easy enough (there was no real prize for that though as wizard slayers can't use magical cloaks). In the same area I attacked Mekrath expecting him to be quickly shut down, but he ignored spell failure to summon a skeleton warrior and try out a death spell before succumbing to the flood of arrows.
Now close to another level, I got the last bit of needed XP by doing a little job for the Temple of Lathander.
Wizard Slayer L15, 137 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 427 kills (652 in BGEE/SoD)
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
The party has made large amount of progress. To date:
* Daystar was obtained - protection from undead and melee doing the job.
* I had really thought Brennan Risling's invisibility ring might be handy for my all thief team. We didn't do much in terms of buffs, Corethief XXI did stoneskin and MMM's. We laid snares in Mencar's area, downstairs in the Inn, and also outside (the outside ones never needed to be triggered). Our last prep was Sarah threw in some special snares, she summoned the genie from the lamp as a distraction, then triggered the fight by shooting Orcslicer with her crossbow. This caused some mayhem, but eventually was forced by Mencar to retreat downstairs, where Corethief XXI and April were waiting invisible. As Sarah tried to get away with Mencar hot on her heals, then April fired her bow and Corethief XXI MMM's at Mencar. An Amnish guard saw Mencar and thought he was up to no good and moved to assist us. Right about here, Amon the mage showed up and in his zeal to kill Sarah used an Aganazer's Scorcher. But remember Mencar? He was chasing Sarah! Mencar ran into the scorcher and died. Needless to say with the three party members and the guard attacking Amon (who was already hurt), Amon didn't last long.
However, our travails weren't over. April moved upstairs only to be ambushed by Brennan! Her health was low and didn't want to run as Brennan might run - so risked going invisible by ring, though her aura wasn't clear. I thought Brennan would kill for sure, but somehow she got it off. Sarah duly arrived to try to take out Brennan, but she needed help - but when Corethief XXI moved up Brennan gave his speech and stormed off. Hmm, no ring for us. The last survivor of Mencar's gang was the imp, we converged and the pesky creature. We didn't get the invis ring, but we did get the cloak of non-detection, which will come in handy when we deal with Tarnor's gang.
* I needed to work on Umar Hills before we got too high level and got powerful undead spawns. So that's where we headed. The initial tasks were easy, snares being quite useful against the mimic and the stone golem. But our real challenge was the old Temple area. I knew this would be hard for the team, since most undead are immune to basic snare damage. So with that in mind, we went invisible to skip the undead on the surface so to minimize risk as well as not waste resources we will need once inside the temple.
The old Temple was very difficult for the team. For the initial batch of undead where the priestess bones were, we opened with skulltrap and sunray (Daystar) - this helped out quite a bit. But even mopping up the survivors was difficult. We decided we would allow Mazzy to join since we were helping her quest. But we were determined to no let her use any resources of ours. Predictably with no healing potions, she ended up dying - sorry Mazzy - we removed her from the group.
The undead just past the lava pit were hard for the group, but did get past them. During the battle with them the bone golem came and gave us heck but we did end up killing it. We needed to rest and Corethief XXI looked as his spells to see if anything would help with the undead - how about hold undead? So memorized two of them. Then Sarah moved ahead to lay a special snare - then she held still so Corethief XXI could use his new spells - out of the 3 undead he targeted twice with the spell, how many were held? ZERO. What a worthless spell, would have been much better to use MMM's.
Unfortunately Sarah paid the price for this mistake - she got killed. Corethief XXI and April were also pretty badly hurt - enough was enough. Run and hide! We successfully did this, as only the slow skeleton warriors were left. I decided a change of approach was needed. Corethief XXI went somewhere safe, while April got the business of backstabbing, running, hiding and repeating. This worked out great, as there plenty of corners to hide and April's stealth scores are very good.
Then came to the business of looting - quite difficult. But then I realized we need to get out safely, but Corethief's hiding still isn't that great - what to do? The familiar saved the group (remember large # of undead still outside) with its invis 10'. We got out of there and resurrected Sarah and then returned.
The return went much smoother. We passed on the dragon for now, and the shade lord was killed quickly - we had used our best anti-undead weapons, haste, and sunray.
* I wasn't particularly interested in dealing with the strong melee power of the trolls of D'Arnise Keep - thus we skipped as many fights as possible. If we did have to fight, we used snares and stealth along with some spells and this worked well. Nalia was allowed to join, mostly for the gold you get if she's alive when you complete the quest (you get 10500 vs. the 650 if she isn't in the group). She was of course booted out at the end.
For Torgal, attempted cloudkill x2 and snares then closed the door. This only killed one of the trolls, and Torgal and a buddy attacked the party. Our first play was summons by everyone, then everyone got to ranged distance. We all then used our best ammo, with the mages using spells (what was left anyways) - success!
* Boots of avoidance obtained from the would-be killers of the man buried alive. Snares and backstabs more than enough for this group.
* Decided to go after Reijek. But I needed a good approach - I need to be careful, as the run assassins see thru invisibility as well as could easily chunked Sarah or April. So decided would do max buffs to protect Corethief XXI and he would try to solo them, and only if he needed to he would withdraw to April and Sarah upstairs with the waiting snares. This worked out great! Corethief XXI opened with sunray to get rid of the ghasts (no bone golem), then used sunfire. He then did what damage he could to the assassins, only retreating upstairs when his mirrors were all gone. The lone remaining assassin refused to follow Corethief XXI, even after going downstairs attacking and withdrawing several times. So then April went downstairs and then the assassin was willing to follow her (he wanted a woman?). This led to his instant doom with all the snares up there.
* Last order of business was Tarnor's gang. I knew this would be much easier than Umar Hills (which it was). First we cleared all riff-raff in the area around Tarnor's group, including the Rakshashka and his kobold buddies. We also laid snares on spawn points in case any monsters re-spawned. We rested to refresh our snares, laid lots at/near Tarnor's gang. Then party then went invisible, and then Corethief XXI opened with cloudkill and went invisible via potion and waited out the damage. This did quite a bit of damage to the enemies, not to mention Sarah's special snares. When the 1st cloudkill wore off, most of Tarnor's gang was near death. So then Corethief XXI fireballed the group and then hid around a corner. The survivors went to Corethief's position but still couldn't see anyone. We moved to Tarnor's starting position, laid our last snare, then went in for some backstabs. This left a single survivor who we led to our last snare - Fini!
April still doesn't have a +3 weapon. Next session, will attempt the Guarded Compound.
Traveling with:
April - gnomish thief
Sarah - half-orc bounty hunter
For a long time, I'm just totally skipped the guarded compound, even with full parties. This battle reminds me why I do. Basically, they did true sight and just destroyed us. We managed to kill 2 of them, but not before they stunned Corethief XXI - RIP Corethief XXI.
In the moods for solo play. going to try the berserk sword again...new entry soon.
At the request of a mage in Ulgoth’s Beard and the promise of reward, I travelled to a place called Ice Island in search of a cloak he was keen to have returned. To say I travelled is a bit misleading, I was teleported, making it somewhat clear that the mage himself, was not to be challenged. Ice Island is just that, an island, covered in ice I know not where. Beneath is a dungeon, cut into the earth with long tunnels, 10’x10’ and rooms of various shapes & sizes, generally rectangular in shape but rarely perfectly rectangular. Upon arrival, my first thought was to descend into the tunnels to avoid the blistering cold wind above - & I have come to be sensitive to Faldorn’s desire to protect nature, so if I can avoid killing animals (there was a Polar Bear there), I generally do to keep her focused & on task.
KEY EVENT: (Mage battle) Upon entering, I was almost immediately accosted by three mages of substantial ability. This turned into a long battle, & I suspect it was a good thing I never had to face all three together as they each fought their own battle, at most I was fighting two @ a time while the other was healing or casting protection spells out of sight. It will be hard to give a blow by blow or spell by spell account as I totally lost track of that during the long melee, that raged inside and outside the dungeon. Suffice it to say, that by the time all three were dead, so were Faldorn and Neera. I initially forgot I had purchased three Raise Dead scrolls, so I forged on without them until I found them in my pack. Hoping I am granted that spell soon.
GETTING THERE
FINALLY!
This dungeon was full of mages. Honestly, I think battling mages makes me more nervous than any other opponent because of the unpredictability of spells. By the time I got off that island, I’d defeated seven mages of no little power. To make matters worse, here I think there was something funky going on with magic – our spells seemed to be directed back at us at times. I never did figure out if that was a spell being used against us or something resident in Ice Island itself.
MAGES...
AND MORE MAGES. GIVE IT A REST ALREADY. DAYUMN!
After I raised Neera, she was able to identify the Wardstone that provided escape from the island. I then sold most almost all of the bounty & stocked up on arrows, darts, stones, etc. I’m planning to head to Durlag’s Tower but I appear to have found another stop first – another island.
“Curb and deny falsehoods, rumor, and deceitful tales whenever you encounter them.” Σιλας
Best Kill Competition:
1. Imoen, Greater Basilisk, 7000 exp
2. Faldorn, Shoal the Nereid, 5000 exp
3. Branwen, Tellan, 2001 exp
4. Kivan Sirine, 2000 exp
5. Neera, Lesser Basilisks, 1400 exp
ORDER OF MARCH: Kivan & Imoen (Recon & traps), Branwen (shock), Silas, Neera, Faldorn (rear guard)
MONSTERS DEFEATED: Mage (Tellan, Illusionist/13), Mage (Andris, Conjurer/11), Mage (Cuchol, Conjuror/10), Mage (Garan, Enchanter/9), Mage (Beyn, Enchanter/7), Mage (Dezkiel, Enchanter/7), Mage (Marcellus, Conjurer/6), Ankhegs (4), Winter Wolves (8), Polar Bears (2)
CASUALTIES: Faldorn & Neera (vs Andris, Beyn & Marcellus)
NOTEWORTHY TREASURE: (Purse = 1,715gp)
Armor & weapons: Mace +2, Battle Axe +2/Wizard Slayer,
Jewelry:
Scrolls:
Potions:
Wands & Artifacts: Robe of the Evil Arch Magi, Wand of Fear (2), Wand of Monster Summoning, Wand of
Paralyzation, Traveler’s Robe, Knaves Robe
CURRENT DISPOSITION: Resting, recovering, resupplying in the Ulgoth’s Beard Inn
NEXT STEPS: Isle of Balduran
LEVEL UP: None
PARTY MAKEUP: (Reputation: 8)
Silas Cl/7 (Lorekeeper of Oghma) (HP35) S/mail +1, Boots/Grounding, Girdle of Piercing, w/Gauntlets of Dexterity & Rings, Free Action & Human Influence w/Mace +2* (Flail*, SWS*), Spells: D/Harmony, Prot/Evil 15’, Farsight, A/Dead, C/Disease, Zone of Sweet Air, Chant, Holy Might, H/Person, Silence 15’, S/Poison, A/Faith, Bless, Cmd, Doom, Doom, Sanctuary; S/ability: Divine Wrath, Heal Touch (2), Affliction, Friends; (Andris) (AI none)
Imoen Th/8 (Adventurer)(HP47) Shadow Armor +3 w/Eagle Bow +2* (w/Bracers of Archery) & S/sword +1*; Skills: OL 85, FT 90, PP 50, MS 70, HS 70, DI 25, ST 30; (Greater Basilisk) (Thf Rgd Atk)(2)
Faldorn Dr/8 (HP40) S/Leather +1 w/Club +1*, Dart +1* (Q/Staff*, Spear*) & Gauntlets of Ogre Power; Spells:
Smashing Wave, Call Woodland Beings, Hold Person, Summon Insects, CMWs, Barkskin, B/Claw, H/Person/Mammal, S/Poison, Flame Blade, Ar/Faith, Bless, Entangle, CLWs, Shillelagh, (Shoal the Nereid) (Cl agg)(3)
Neera Mg/7 (Wild Mage) (HP19) Traveler’s Robe w/Bracers of Def AC6 & Cloak/Prot +2, Q/Staff +1* & Wand of Fire, Spells: Minor Sequencer, MG/Inv, Melf’s Minute Meteors, Fireball, D/magic, C/Shield, Web, Blur, Invisibility, MM, P/Evil, Blindness, ID, Ch/Person, Chr/Orb, B/Hands, P/Petrification, Nahal’s RD, Sleep; (Lesser Basilisk) ( AI: Mage Def)(4)
Branwen, Cl/7 (Battleguard of Tempus), (HP55), S/Mail, Shield +1 & RoP +2, w/Warhammer +1** (S&SS*) & Gauntlet’s of Weapons Skill; Spells: M/Domination, D/Magic, H/Smite, R/Thinking, DUHM, F/Blade, H/Person, Silence 15’, Spirit/Hammer, Armor/Faith, Cmd, Doom, P/Evil, Shillelagh; S/Ability: Enrage, Prayer (5), (Tellan) (AI: Cl Agg)
Kivan, Rgr (Archer)/7 (HP50) S/Leather +1 w/Boots of Stealth, L/bow****, Spear +1*, L/Sword* (THWS**); Skills: MS 74, HS 74; (Sirine) (AI: Ftr Rgd Atk)(6)
MOD USED: BG NPC v23.3, BG NPC Music v6, Plane Touched Races _v0,0, Indira v12, Isra v2.3, Finch v4.0, Gavin v14, Drake, Sirene v2.5, Verr’sza v5.2, BG UB v16, Tweaks Anthology Beta 4, Song & Silence v9, Deities of Faerun, Rogue Rebalancing v491, Level 1 NPCs, SCS v31, aTweaks, Item Randomizer v7
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1053453/#Comment_1053453
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1053713/#Comment_1053713
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1053921/#Comment_1053921
As promised, I went straight to Trademeet to tackle the genies - picking up major benefits from the +2 scimitar and the Shield of Harmony (though I can't use the efreeti bottle).
At the Grove I thought I had just enough arrows of fire for the trolls, but failed to properly switch those when fighting a spirit troll in the mound and had to go and get more from one of the fighters further on.
Back in Trademeet I helped Tiris out before clearing the local tomb of undead.
To rebuild finances I went to the de'Arnise Hold and made quick progress there - soon picking up level 16.
Back in Athkatla I went to call on Mencar's gang. I used darts of stunning to prevent Brennan Riesling from making an escape and silenced the mage and his familiar before meleeing the others.
By this time all the vampire ambushes had gone, so I went to pay Gaelan Bayle and visit Aran Linvail. Lassal was soon sent on his way
A bit more shopping included acquiring my first summons with Ras, the dancing sword and the Shield of Balduran. The latter was put to use in doing the Unseeing Eye quest, getting to level 19 early on in that.
Typically my characters go early to Watcher's Keep to get potion and ammo bags. With no potions being used by the wizard slayer, space in the inventory is less of an issue, but is still something of a concern - and I decided it was time to address that. The top floor presented no challenge and provided a +4 scimitar as another potential weapon for use
Wizard Slayer L22, 162 HPs (incl. 5 from helm; 4 from armor), 784 kills (652 in BGEE/SoD)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1053453/#Comment_1053453
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1053713/#Comment_1053713
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1053921/#Comment_1053921
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1054107/#Comment_1054107
The previous session felt like a bit of a chore. At these high levels there's not very much that poses a real danger, but in a no-reload run getting to that point creates its own form of danger ...
Moving on to Umar Hills I talked nicely to Madulf and picked up the Shield of the Lost - I hung on to that just in case I want to boost MR at some point. I also acquired Ilbratha before moving on to the Temple Ruins. Anath was greeted with a Power Attack there. Various undead were then destroyed on the way into the temple - where I noticed I'd got another level. Inside there the symbol spells from the liches could easily be a problem, so Ras was up to his old tricks to act as a distraction once more there. It would have made sense to leave Thaxy alone as I could easily have been affected by fear - but where would the fun be in that. A bit of stair hopping avoided the worst spells until the dragon's stoneskin was ready to disappear. Some crunching blows using critical strike then took it to near death and a WW finished it off - picking up another level as a reward.
Before leaving Umar I picked up Valygar's body and, after making the Shadow Dragon Scale, shoved that through the letter box at the Planar Sphere. Inside there Kayardi was shot down from range to prevent any nasty surprises - he cast a number of spells despite spell failure and I didn't want to find he could do the same with maze. I tried using smite against Mogadish, only to find that knocked him right through a door - that didn't save him for long though.
I very rarely fight Lavok fair - just using a summons from out of sight to beat him up. I didn't have any summons that could do that on arriving at the Sphere, but I thought I knew where to get some. Tolgerias was in the way, but smite followed by GWW stunned him for easy disposal and shortly after I had the Staff of Fire - but had forgotten I had no way to identify it for the moment. However, it was more appropriate for a wizard slayer to beat up Lavok himself anyway. A GWW procured a demon heart and a few more golems another level before the Sphere was activated for a final time to return to Athkatla.
Deciding to complete the last external area, the next job was in Windspear Hills. After the traditional hop back to Athkatla to collect the acorns, the external area was cleared and I moved into the dungeon. It didn't take long there for more golems to help acquire another level. More plentiful XP came from vampires and werewolves (and I wasn't bothering to pick up treasure any more), so a further level thanks to more golems was very quick in coming. A couple of green scrolls were used to give fire protection to work through the genies before the 'ambush'. Samia was smited before she could talk, allowing Kaol to be one-shotted while neutral - the clean-up operation after that only took seconds.
Downstairs, Firkraag set up a fight with Conster - but he was immediately scared and shot down before he could recover. For Firkraag the obvious thing to do would have been to use some fire elementals to occupy him, but I was trying to avoid any summons apart from Ras. I wanted to drag him upstairs and tried to get him to chase by shooting him from range - but was immediately affected by dragon fear. For a round or so I ran the right way and stayed out of his sight, but then the inevitable happened ...
EDIT: I'm not sure which tactical mods you were using: SCS? Revised Battles? I remember the latter's Improved Firkraag being absolute hell
@Stromael I often use SCS and occasionally spell revisions (and also play with LoB quite a bit), but all of my "long-life" runs are in an unmodded installation at core difficulty. That can make them feel a bit too easy generally (though up until fairly recently that wasn't true for that wizard slayer run), but as I suggested in my recent posts something feeling easy poses it's own type of difficulty in a long run