We burn all of our Skull Trap scrolls setting up a mine field in the far north, just in case we need a kill zone later on. We use up a bunch of scrolls and potions setting up our defenses, rearrange our inventory, and finally activate the last pool. Here is Frisky Bits, fully buffed, at the end of the game.
Unfortunately, due to poor timing, our Simulacrum and Spell Immunity scrolls wear off just as the enemies finally arrive. However, we can do without a clone for the time being (and since Simulacrum wore off normally, we can summon a new one whenever we're ready) and we don't yet need to worry about any Remove Magic scrolls, because our last Protection from Magic scroll will neutralize Abazigal (mostly to prevent his opening Time Stop spell) and we're staying out of Sendai's field of vision.
Notice our pathetically underleveled summons. We can't get anything better because scrolls don't scale properly for non-mages and I hadn't bought the level-independent Invisible Stalker or possibly Cacofiend/Summon Fiend/Gate scrolls. Kitthix and the skeletons die in seconds.
We deal some light damage to Illasera with the Sling of Everard (the Reflection Shield is a must for any solo character without PFMW, Absolute Immunity, or Physical Mirror active), and most of the enemies can't reach us due to being melee fighters without movement rate bonuses, but Sendai is very active, and since we lost our other Protection from Magic scroll curing a Maze spell from Abazigal back in his lair, we can't shut her down.
Then Balthazar disappears, and the dialog box shows Imoen (who hasn't properly despawned after leaving Slayer form) taking a bunch of magic damage. I scroll north and discover that Balthazar has triggered our Skull Traps--suffering lots of damage while simultaneously dismantling our kill zone.
Not a key part of our strategy, but an unfortunate loss.
Sendai can't see through invisibility, so we manage to cancel one of her abjuration spells by equipping the Staff of the Magi and running away. However, that only worked because the spell presumably was Breach, which doesn't bypass invisibility. Her next spell is Remove Magic, and we can't use a Spell Immunity scroll to block it before it hits.
I was hesitant to use another scroll before this because we only have so many to spare, and the duration is only 9 rounds.
Regardless, we can still stay out of range of the fighters by drinking an Oil of Speed, and our excellent saving throws and the Cloak of Mirroring will keep us safe from Sendai's other spells. Plus, by now, her Improved Alacrity effect has ended. Meanwhile, Balthazar returns to the fight and uses Second Wind to recover from the Skull Trap damage.
We have Balthazar tack on some damage to Illasera, but then he abruptly vanishes, and we're left on our own to kite a whole crowd of enemies. None of them are particularly fast, but having this many of them on the screen means that we have to spend more time micromanaging our movement to avoid getting hit.
I spread the damage around rather than trying to pin down an enemy early. Considering how few PFMW scrolls we have due to mistakes earlier in the run, I don't want to deal with Melissan until her allies are at least a little bit wounded. We want to bring all the enemies to Near Death before triggering Melissan (which is much easier considering Yaga-Shura is also erroneously missing his intended regeneration).
Since it'll take many rounds to do this, we've already lost our normal buffs, and we have lots of Shadow Twins to spare, I go ahead and summon a clone to expedite things in melee. This is especially important because the Protection from Magic scroll on Abazigal will only last two in-game hours, or 600 seconds. If I don't kill him within 100 rounds of using that scroll, he'll be free to cast his spells again.
Our clone has sky-high damage resistance thanks to Shadow Form and the Ravager trial reward, so we can actually tank the enemy reasonably well as long as we back off every now and then to make sure Frisky Bits can heal. Our clone can't use potions, but it can use our Regeneration spell from another one of the Pocket Plane trials.
Yaga-Shura's fire spells are useless against us because of the Cloak of Mirroring, but his Aura of Flaming Death doesn't count as an offensive spell, which means it deals damage directly to us, and I haven't used the potions or scrolls necessary to get immunity to fire damage without equipping certain items. Yaga-Shura proves vulnerable to poison, which actually works against us because every point of poison damage triggers a separate backlash, and that damage builds up.
Frisky Bits falls back to use the Sling of Everard instead, leaving the clone to fight in melee by itself. We make a respectable dent in the enemy's HP by the time the clone disappears.
Since we have many more Shadow Clone spells left, I summon another one, and to give our clone some breathing room, I also use charges from the Staff of the Woodlands to add Shambling Mounds to the map as a decoy. It actually does respectable damage on its own, which I didn't expect.
Notice that Sarevok is using a +1 weapon, which makes both Frisky Bits and their clone completely immune to his attacks.
Our clone can use all of our innate abilities, so it also has access to Hand of Murder, applying an additional 12 magic damage to its melee attacks. By carefully controlling our damage output, we slowly bring each enemy closer to Near Death.
Notice Illasera standing around to the southeast--she has gotten lost and has dropped out of the fight for the time being.
As we're wrapping up this phase of the fight and are almost ready to proceed to Melissan herself, our clone accidentally kills Sendai with a lucky hit. Apparently Sendai has no defense against critical hits.
Now we have to deal with Melissan while her allies are still in decent condition, a daunting prospect given a Shadowdancer's crummy damage output when not using Shadow Twin, and our clone only has so many rounds left to finish off the Five.
But then the game crashes, and while it's frustrating to lose so much progress at the exact moment when the game is at its most tense, it at least gives us a chance (i.e., forces us) to start over and make some tweaks to our strategy to optimize things and better prepare us for Melissan.
To you and anyone else that wants to answer, do you find the Horror power really worth futzing with reputation? What situations do you use it? Maybe hide in plain sight has me spoiled, but it just doesn't seem that useful. I tested it a few times during the coronation, and the greater dopplegangers saved against it every time.
I like it for a number of reasons for solo characters without access to other spells. The coronation is certainly one of those, though I agree it's not reliable and if you're prepared to abuse charm that gives you a safer route. It can also be useful when you're surrounded by enemies (though that's less of a danger to a shadowdancer than some other kits) and to split up groups of enemies that normally act together - or just to even the odds when risking a fight against a stronger enemy.
@jessejmc Personally I don't like or use the horror spell or ability - the few times I have used it, the enemies will run into locked rooms that I can't access - which in turn means I lose the loot and experience from them. I know Grond0 has had success in ambushes in BG 2 using it, but those random encounters, the enemies don't have good saves. And who knows, maybe the dopplegangers have immunity to fear - you would have to look at them with something like near infinity, though don't know if that program has been updated for EE.
I like it for a number of reasons for solo characters without access to other spells. The coronation is certainly one of those, though I agree it's not reliable and if you're prepared to abuse charm that gives you a safer route. It can also be useful when you're surrounded by enemies (though that's less of a danger to a shadowdancer than some other kits) and to split up groups of enemies that normally act together - or just to even the odds when risking a fight against a stronger enemy.
I meant to ask this earlier but forgot. How does it scale outside the first game? Is it something you use throughout the saga?
This time around, I handle things more intelligently. I maintain my buffs this time, and we use a clone early on to speed things up. Illasera manages to nail the clone, however, largely due to magic damage.
The Shield of Reflection would have prevented this, but the Belt of Inertial Barrier could have done so while still allowing our clone to dual-wield. The belt grants 50% resistance to magic damage and 25% resistance to missile damage, so our clone would be almost immune to Illasera's damage if it had the belt on.
Balthazar once again triggers our Skull Traps, but his magic resistance thankfully blocks most of it. Remembering Balthazar's disappearance during our previous attempt and considering his no-longer-dysfunctional AI now allows him to contribute to the fight, I finally think to use the Rod of Resurrection on him to keep him healthy, rather than relying on his AI-based Second Wind spells. The Rod of Resurrection is actually a huge deal here--I don't know why I haven't been using it more often in previous runs. After all, Balthazar has over 300 maximum HP!
I love that cute little flower animation when the Rod of Resurrection hits. It's just pretty.
Sendai still manages to remove our buffs eventually (I can't maintain SI: Abjuration for the tens of rounds it takes to complete this phase of the fight), but now that we can rely on Balthazar to tank, with the Rod of Resurrection to support him, we have an important new tool to bring the Five to Near Death.
You can't tell from the static screenshots, but Frisky Bits is doing a lot of moving around (Balthazar can't keep all of the Five occupied) and we're switching targets fairly frequently to split our damage dealt across the Five.
We fail several times to remove Abazigal's pesky Fire Shield spells with the Staff of the Magi, only to see the staff fail every time. We summon a new clone to help Balthazar do the heavy lifting, and finally I realize that I can simply use an Arrow of Dispelling to take down Abazigal's defenses, since the arrows dispel regardless of caster level.
As before, we use Regeneration to keep our clone healthy and summon some Shambling Mounds to speed things up and divert pressure. As before, Illasera has fled the fight and then, seeing no enemies around her, decided to stand around and wait.
The damage Balthazar takes can vary wildly. In the first screenshot, he's almost immune to damage thanks to Flip Resistances (which converts his sky-high MR to physical damage resistance), but once that wears off, he takes full damage from physical attacks, and as a monk, he's vulnerable to critical hits. It's best to play it safe with the Rod of Resurrection, and heal him early.
We add a Simulacrum clone to the map shortly before our Shadow Twin clone vanishes. Once we restore our Shadow Twin, we have four strong damage dealers on the map: Balthazar, our two clones, and Frisky Bits themself.
This time, we remember to charm Sarevok with a Control Circlet, and when Sendai casts Heal on Gromnir, we pile up on him to compensate.
Notice that Frisky Bits remains completely unbuffed save for an Oil of Speed. The reality is, our strong movement rate, the Shield of Reflection, the Cloak of Mirroring, and the Staff of the Magi can keep us safe from pretty much all of the Five. The only reason we need clones in the first place, and can't just kite everything indefinitely, is so that we can bring all of the enemies to Near Death before the Protection from Magic scroll on Abazigal wears off.
By withdrawing Sarevok from the fight before he gets overwhelmed, we can avoid an early death and ensure that we only trigger Melissan's arrival when her allies are all at the brink of death. An Arrow of Dispelling opens up Sendai, and finally we land our first kill.
But yet again, the game crashes, and this time, it really does irk me, because this run was almost perfect. We had everyone at Near Death, we had Sarevok charmed and at Badly Injured, and we had two clones with many rounds left in them as well as a healthy Balthazar and most of our HLAs unspent.
We have to start over. But don't worry--this time, we experience no crashes.
I like it for a number of reasons for solo characters without access to other spells. The coronation is certainly one of those, though I agree it's not reliable and if you're prepared to abuse charm that gives you a safer route. It can also be useful when you're surrounded by enemies (though that's less of a danger to a shadowdancer than some other kits) and to split up groups of enemies that normally act together - or just to even the odds when risking a fight against a stronger enemy.
I meant to ask this earlier but forgot. How does it scale outside the first game? Is it something you use throughout the saga?
It's definitely useful in SoA, though you need to beware that many enemies in that have scripts that allow them to overcome their fear - and if you're not expecting that you can easily get into trouble. In the unmodded game you lose Bhaal powers going into ToB, but I doubt whether it would get much use there even if you restored those given the availability of HLAs.
Attempt 12. Avoided the wolf! Killed Shoal. Went to the FAI and killed Tarnesh.
Sold Evermemory and purchased Buckley's Buckler. Killed the ogre with the girdle fetish. Went to Beregost. Forgot to get the Potion of Invisibility and wand from the mansion and was circled by bandits. Fortunately, with Elve's Bane, most of them missed, and with Buckley's Buckler, I regenerated the HP I did lose traveling to the next scene. Got the Worn Walkers, the letter, and the family necklace. Headed to Nashkel to get the ankheg armor to sell and CLW. Headed to High Hedge for the flesh golems. Have started playing at 45 fps, and one of them got a good hit in, bringing me down to 2hp. I killed it, got to level 5, killed the other (8 bullets between the pair), and celebrated my victory.
Now to see a chicken about a man. Regen on the way! Melicamp survived this time! 4th times a charm.
Turned in some misc quests in Beregost. I head to the Lighthouse. Plan on backstabbing some sirines, but they keep moving around, so I abandon that, go into the flesh golem cave, drink the Potion of Clarity, and go get my constitution tome. I get held by the first trap, and a golem beats me to death.
Attempt 13. I wake up in Candlekeep. Kill Shoal. Kill an ogre with a belt fetish.
Get and sell a ring plus other stuff, buy Buckley's Buckler. Kill Tarnesh.
Sorry Neera, but I need that bag you have. And your cloak, Algernon. I am, after all, Bhaalspawn.
I was cheap and only bought 10 +1 bullets, so I had to resort to my dagger.
Head south to Nashkel to collect one of my powers. I've bribed/donated to the temples, so I still get CLW. Drizzt falls to gnolls, but his equipment will help fund my campaign.
I stealth past the sirines into the flesh golem cave and attempt something new. I will move up the right side and see what those traps are. The first one deals 14 damage. I don't have a healing potion so cast CLW on myself. The second trap deals 10. Neither one is instant death! I grab the manual and make a run for the exit.
I wasn't going to do this, but I end up throwing daggers at the sirines and killing 2 of them. Before hunting down the others, I go to clear the worgs from the Lighthouse. With 2 worgs down, I take a lightning blast...
That's never happened before. I'm not sure what the odds are of it happening again, and while I could probably make it to the edge of the screen, I decide not to risk it and drink the Elixir of Health I just picked up in the flesh golem cave. With the extra health, I feel comfortable enough to kill the last worg and turn in that quest. I'm not struck by lightning again and head south. I'll come back for the rest of the sirines and flesh golems later.
I'm waylaid by a pair of ogres, but since my health has regenerated, I just ignore them and head back to the Lighthouse. It takes me a few to find the third of the original sirines, but I throw daggers at her. I get a little impatient when she's near dead and throw before Stealth had recharged. I of course miss, and she starts casting charm, so I shadow step away, only to return and claim victory.
I kill the two sirines near Sil by throwing daggers from the shadows, hitting level 6. I start on Sil but mess up my timing, and she gets an improved invisibility off. It's also become daytime at this point, which limits my movement to the shadows of the trees. A carrion crawler spawned, and I had to lead it on a merry chase, where I also ran into a hobgoblin. No real issues there. Sil's invisibility fades by the time I get back. She falls quickly.
I don't have any ranged equipment to tackle the flesh golems but have enough hitpoints for a few hits, so I decide to try them anyway. I draw the first one out of the cave and have no issues dispatching it. Same with the second.
All 3 of the golems were in the lower left room where the traps were still set. I was able to get a visual on the two that I was able to get out but couldn't see the third. I decide to shadow step and trigger the hold trap. I probably could have made it out of the cave, but I didn't really plan it very well. I did make it to the entrance and fortunately the golem didn't come by.
He fell without any issues. Off to High Hedge to identify and sell some loot, picking up Melicamp on the way. I had accidentally raised reputation higher than I meant to at the Temple, so I head to Durlag's Tower to buy two PoMT to steal Dushai's ring instead of killing her. Back at High Hedge. And that, as they say, is that.
I make short work of Bjornin's half-ogres and do a whirlwind tour of other reputation quests, picking up the charisma manual and Meilum's gauntlets on the way, also hitting level 7. I don't save Samuel in time and accidentally allow Greywolf to kill Prism, so I'm at 19 until I do the Nashkel mines. Tired of my +1 dagger, I travel to Durlag's Tower and trick Kirinhale into think I'm going to help her and backstab her to death.
I clear the basilisks on top of the tower using a petrification scroll and hit level 8. The battle horrors are next. I head to the Temple to clear the sirines. I don't really want to drag them out one at a time, so I charm Kelddath, drag him outside (assuming he goes hostile with what comes next), then come back in and kill all the sirines. This was risky, as I didn't have the Greenstone Amulet and had already used my PoC for Kirinhale. I then bring Kelddath back inside and rest to reset his charm.
I kill the vampiric wolves, dread wolves, and worgs, cause fuck wolves. Afterwards I head east to clear the basilisks with the help of Korax. It would be nice to have another protection from petrification scroll, as I could do the basilisks much faster that way. I do have some mirrored eye potions, but it seems a waste to use that many here. What the hell. I head to Ulgoth's Beard and Beregost and do some shopping. What's 5% extra anyway.
I hit level 9 and 3x backstab before tackling Mutamin and his guardians. Mutamin goes down in one. I clean up the other two afterwards. Takes me five potions in total, but I got lost at one point, so it could probably be done in four.
The adventurers don't know what hit them.
The preliminaries out of the way, I'm about to begin the critical path.
The third attempt doesn't play out exactly like the previous ones (Balthazar failed a save against a fear effect of some sort and spent a long time running around), but the essentials are the same: we nail Abazigal with a Protection from Magic scroll, lose our buffs to a Remove Magic spell from Sendai, alternate between kiting the enemy and using clones to tank the fighters, with Shambling Mounds summoned by the Staff of the Woodlands to serve as decoys and damage dealers, all while running around in circles and periodically fixing up Balthazar with the Rod of Resurrection. We successfully bring most of the Five to Near Death and then polish off Sendai. The game doesn't crash!
Melissan immediately begins casting Time Stop--usually she opens with other spells in my previous runs, but right here, she's going right into offensive mode. We already have Shadow Form active on both Frisky Bits and our clone, so we can easily survive a Time Stop, but by using Focus on both Frisky Bits and the clone, we can avoid taking any damage during the Time Stop and land some free hits on the Five! It also buys us time to charm Sarevok with a Control Circlet.
But we've got a problem. Melissan has just teleported on top of Frisky Bits, locking us in place. This is a known bug, but since we have a way of dealing with it, my normal rules say I'm not supposed to use CTRL-J to address the bug. Instead, I have to use a Dimension Door scroll to escape. Meanwhile, our clone lands hits on Gromnir, having already brought Abazigal to 1 HP.
Gromnir and Abazigal both die when Time Stop ends. We hurry down south to tackle Yaga-Shura while Melissan attacks the now-charmed Sarevok. Yaga-Shura, already wounded from our previous rounds of melee combat, dies soon after, and Melissan hits the floor once again.
Finally, Melissan puts down Sarevok. The last of the Five are dead! Now we have to lock down Melissan, and the safest way for a single-classed thief to stun her is a complicated process. First, we need to take down her Spell Trap effect. We have plenty of scrolls saved up for this.
Now we have to lower her magic resistance. We land some hits with the Answerer and prepare to cast Lower Resistance via scroll, but Melissan uses Divine Cleansing, which undoes the previous penalties to her AC and MR.
It doesn't stop the Lower Resistance spell from taking away 19% of her MR, but we still need to drop it to zero with more hits from the Answerer. Unfortunately, we need to re-use Focus and heal Balthazar with the Rod of Resurrection, which means we have to spend precious rounds maintaining our defenses. Safety comes first, even this late in the game.
Then we lose another round when Melissan's Divine Mantle forces us to use a Breach scroll on her. Our clone can't use any of these items, so all of them have to come from Frisky Bits themself.
Worse, we need to heal with a potion, and between all of the other actions we need to take, we can't strike before Melissan ruins our efforts with another Divine Cleansing.
That spell removes all stat penalties you might apply to her, so we have to start over. To buy time, we burn a PFMW scroll, but since Melissan has no Spell Trap, we can land a Greater Malison scroll once we land enough hits with the Answerer.
We bust out the Wand of Paralyzation and nail Melissan on the first try! This is the same strategy I used in my first no-reload run with the Party of Spiders.
Now we have 10 rounds of automatic hits. We take down her Stoneskins with a Breach scroll for good measure and gang up on her. We absolutely chop her to pieces.
But she doesn't go down, and when the stun effect wears off, she teleports away and heals herself instantly. I don't recognize this behavior. And she adds a Divine Cleansing, removing the Greater Malison effect as well.
We have to use Focus, Shadow Form, and a PFMW scroll in between Frisky Bits and our two clones, but once we've landed enough hits with the Answerer, we can use another Greater Malison scroll and finally burn some charges with the Wand of Paralyzation. With the -4 save penalty from Greater Malison and the -4 penalty from the wand, the odds of stunning her with her base save vs. wand of 3 and her MR reduced to zero are about 50%. It only takes two more charges to stun her again.
We take her down to 1 HP again, but then she teleports away and heals herself again. Balthazar delivers a dialog line I don't recognize, and then I realize the problem.
We never killed Illasera. She wandered away from the fight and avoided everything. Instant kills are possible on Melissan with stat drain, but you can't kill her with damage unless all the Five are dead.
We need to finish off Illasera, but we've still got Melissan bearing down on us, which means we still have to make sure Frisky Bits and both of their clones keep Focus, PFMW, and/or Shadow Form active, and we're running out of PFMW scrolls and Shadow Form spells.
Then we lose Balthazar to a critical hit, and things look even darker.
If we run out of Shadow Form spells and PFMW scrolls, all we have left to avoid a fatal Time Stop is Focus, and that only lasts for 5 rounds out of every 10 rounds at best. If we don't kill Illasera and Melissan soon, we could find ourselves facing Melissan all alone with only 5 rounds or less to avert that game-ending Time Stop. I've never had to rely on Focus by itself to survive against Melissan.
We still have both clones active, however, giving us the damage output to kill Illasera once we box her in.
We only have a few Greater Malison scrolls left, which could prove dangerous if Melissan dispels one of them with Divine Cleansing. After a few hits with the Answerer, we land it.
Sure enough, Melissan uses Divine Cleansing, and we have to use Focus again to make sure we can spend several consecutive rounds applying pressure to Melissan.
We nail her with another Greater Malison scroll, but our attempts to stun her with the Wand of Paralyzation fail. When our PFMW scrolls wear off and we find ourselves without either of our clones, we have to use one of our few remaining Shadow Form spells once again and face the prospect of landing a stun on Melissan with only one Shadowdancer to use the Answerer.
Melissan begins casting Time Stop, but our Shadow Form spell basically neutralizes her attacks. Shadow Form might only last 5 rounds to Hardiness' 10-15 rounds and Defensive Stance's 10 rounds, but the effect is huge.
I need several consecutive rounds of freedom in order to land the stun, so we burn an Absolute Immunity scroll, only to see it immediately Breached. I use Focus instead (we don't want to use our very finite scrolls and Shadow Form spells any more than we have to) and then bring out a new clone to help lower her MR.
But Melissan casts Absolute Immunity (Divine Mantle) herself, and we're forced to use another Absolute Immunity scroll of our own, only to see it get Breached. We respond with another Breach scroll. It's a long string of defensive options and debuffing options, all while I try to find room to land hits with the Answerer and use another Greater Malison scroll.
After many rounds, we have completely run out of PFMW and Absolute Immunity clones, but both our clones are active again and we manage to lower Melissan's MR enough to hit her with Greater Malison. We stun her!
Our Shadow Twin clone vanishes and I waste a round casting Simulacrum, thinking it was my Simularum clone that vanished, but I should be able to finish off Melissan in 10 rounds when I have two clones on hand and plenty of time left.
Then, to my disbelief, Melissan casts Divine Cleansing while she's stunned. The stun effect gets dispelled along with Greater Malison, and Melissan is free to act.
Our clone goes away, but we have one last Greater Malison spell left, and Frisky Bits has a few moments left before Shadow Form wears off. We use the scroll and try the wand.
It works!
We absolutely can't let her escape, because we can't hit her with Greater Malison anymore. We have one last shot at taking her down. We break out a Black Blade of Disaster scroll and get to work.
The process is nerve-wracking, but this time, Melissan doesn't cheat and cast spells while she's stunned.
I check her HP with CTRL-M. We made it! She's at 1 HP!
Finally, Melissan recovers from the stun effect, and there are no more tricks. The Solar arrives to end the fight.
We pick mortality. Frisky Bits is not the type to become a god of murder.
The battle is won! Throne of Bhaal is over!
One solo no-reload Shadowdancer run with SCS, Ascension, and ATweaks, complete.
The session started by ticking off a number of reputation quests not previously completed. There were also a few cheap donations at the temple (starting from 7, donations of 150, 100 and 200 will give you 3 points). Those donations meant that reputation 20 could be reached prior to going to the Nashkel Mine even if Melicamp failed to survive. At the basilisk area they not only unpetrified Tamah, but went to take on Kirian's party. Baerin and Lindin were blinded ahead of that, but preparations were not complete when an intruding gnoll resulted in Kirian spotting them. In the chaotic attack that followed Copper was held and nearly killed by Baerin, but I spotted the danger just in time and switched attacks to Baerin - who fell with Copper down to a single HP.
While going to collect Melicamp I launched an attack on a pair of ghasts. In themselves they were unlikely to cause much trouble as they normally shift attacks to whoever is attacking (as opposed to concentrating on finishing off paralyzed targets). However, a pair of hobgoblins joined the attack and took a paralyzed Brass (who hadn't bothered raging) uncomfortably low on HPs.
Melicamp died, but a few nearby ghouls provided the last bit of XP needed for everyone to get a full level up.
Bassilus was beaten up and his holy symbol taken to the Beregost Temple.
I got carried away there though and killed the priest - the killing was intentional, but I'd really intended to hand the symbol in first .
There's no reputation loss for that, so I carried on with the remaining reputation tasks. That included going to see Mr Colquetle, only to find I didn't have his amulet (I think I tried to pick that up, but probably had a full inventory at the time). In earlier versions the amulet would have disappeared if not picked up shortly after first going to that area, but in v2.5 it's been fixed to remain there.
The final reputation upgrade was gained from helping out Charleston Nib, before the Doomsayer failed to make too much impression on Brass.
A bit of shopping followed, with Mercury using friends to get rock-bottom prices. That included upgrading Brass to full plate and buying a +1 axe for Diamond so that everyone has at least one proficient melee weapon. I also got Buckley's Buckler which would allow any of the party to activate constitution regeneration, though I doubt if that will get used much in practice. Everyone, except Silver, now also has a potion of mirrored eyes equipped in a quickslot, though if a basilisk does ambush them it's likely to still be difficult to use those in time.
While in Gullykin to get a second +1 sling, I raided a few halfling dwellings. I thought even the one being watched over would be safe to steal from using sanctuary, but Copper was immediately accosted when he tried that.
The halfling didn't follow up the conversation by attacking, but I still decided to let discretion be the better part of valor and left without stealing any more. A bit further on though I suffered a first casualty in another house. I'm used to not being able to get into the back entrance of the Firewine Ruins, but couldn't remember whether that was the result of the EE or just the SCS mod. Testing the transition I found it did in fact work, but as that wasn't too much of a surprise I was able to cut down the ogre mage before it completed a spell. However, despite still being out of sight, Lendarn had obviously activated as a lightning bolt appeared down the corridor and inflicted a bit of damage before I could run away. I waited a few seconds and was just relaxing thinking Lendarn wasn't going to follow, when he appeared. I was then too slow to prevent him finishing another lightning bolt spell and this time Copper, who had already been injured by the first one, found he had insufficient resistance when hit at least a couple of times by a bouncing bolt (it was lucky it didn't bounce on the side of the room where most of the characters were).
There was a cleric handy in the winery to raise Copper, so it wasn't long before the party could continue their adventures. That included an unprovoked attack on Molkar's party - made easier by successfully silencing Molkar from out of sight (so the party didn't go hostile until attacked).
Moving on to Ulcaster the Wolf was an easy victim without its SCS upgrades.
In the Red Wizard area, Mercury tripped the web traps invisibly before using webs of his own to defeat the mages.
Going through Larswood, Copper used sanctuary to spot Baeloth and guide in a couple of webs - allowing him to be killed so Mercury could take his robe to wear as standard gear (rather than putting plate armor on and off regularly).
I was aware of the danger from the Black Talons in Larswood and Peldvale, but chose to accept that rather than muck about with scouting arrangements. For the first 3 groups of Black Talons that risk proved acceptable with the targeted character not being critically hurt. However, with the fourth group, Copper was hit several times quickly and taken down to 4 HPs before the others could get into a general melee. I thought that he would then survive, but a Black Talon found enough space to let off one more shot ...
The last bit of action in the session saw a return to Firewine to deal with Kahrk. Activating him from out of sight range allowed Copper to wait for his buffs to expire before failing with an attempted silence. Sanctuary was then used to guide the others to attack. Silver had no joy with his acid darts and Kahrk managed to release a lightning bolt, but that missed everyone (in v2.5 lightning is very poor at hitting nearby targets) and Kahrk fell almost immediately after that.
Now that Frisky Bits the Shadowdancer is all caught up (finally), I can now start posting on my solo Archer run!
If you're wondering what happened to my "no magic items" run, the answer is... nothing. They're still waiting at the start of Throne of Bhaal, and I'm kind of afraid to boot them up again. ToB is gonna be really nasty for that party for all sorts of reasons.
@semiticgod Congratulations! Another new class into the hall, and one I had a hard time imagining would be able to get past various ToB fights - but it seems like you always find a way.
Crashes during the ascension battle are, sadly, very common and frustrating. I guess there is no chance that the various causes leading to these will ever be fixed by another modder? While I don't have a run lined up right now (though I plan to have a go at it again once the final version of the new SCS is released), I currently don't think I'll play with Ascension again - sure, it's challenging and epic, but in addition to the bugs and crashes, I don't like how the entire saga is kind of shaped around this one, difficult battle for which you have to prepare starting with character generation. I feel like I'd have more freedom playing only with SCS.
Corerage IV the dwarven berserker - update 8
Proficiencies:
Two Handed Sword *****
Halberd **
Sling **
Two Handed Weapon Style **
Traveling with: Imoen - thief/mage
Beating the Trolls on Spellhold level 2 was definitely by the numbers, as they say. The rest of it wasn't though, viz:
1) The Yuan-ti were easily defeated by improved invisibility.
2) When tripping the painting traps, used improved invisibility to guarantee save vs. the save or die trap. Should have equipped fire resistance ring for the other painting traps, oh well.
3) The Illithid was defeated surprisingly fast - guess two-hand swords work well on them.
4) The room with the clay golems was a mess. First Corerage IV isn't proficient with any blunt weapons. So I had Imoen haste the group. But this wasn't enough and Corerage IV had to withdraw a corner and do RoR heal. Imoen did mirror image to try to tank them. But the golems went through her mirrors quick. Corerage IV came back and tried to GWW a clay golem - but it didn't work! Problem? Corerage IV somehow had the Ilbratha selected! Doh! Unsurprisingly, Imoen dies because of this mistake and Corerage IV has to gulp quite a few heal potions, but he does end up killing these pesky critters. Whew. RoR brought Imoen back to life, and the duo resumed their adventure.
5) Corerage IV enraged before facing Bodhi, as well as Imoen well away, so no problems with this.
6) Corerage IV did just fine vs. the minotaurs and gauth, despite no shield of balduran. Good, good.
7) Rest of spellhold went without incident. We met up with Saemon and he suggested we use the inmates - sounds good to Corerage IV so he went upstairs and somehow convinced Lonk to release them for 2000 gold. As for Irenicus, Imoen's dispelling arrows were devastating and Irenicus was forced to withdraw.
8) We went ahead and helped Saemon (Silver Sword could be useful, as well as Cloak of Reflection since I am not using SoB). We eventually find ourselves in the Shark City. We agree to help the King for now, and we find some extra healing potions off a merchant here and buy all of those.
@semiticgod Congratulations! Another new class into the hall, and one I had a hard time imagining would be able to get past various ToB fights - but it seems like you always find a way.
My intended method was to just use the Scorcher Ammunition to deal damage in ToB, but forgetting to bring the Golden Pantaloons into BG2 meant we had to rely on installing a mod component that "un-nerfed" our THAC0 and allowed it to drop from 10 all the way down to 1, a +9 boost. That was pretty overpowered and really did a lot to alter game balance.
In retrospect, I probably could have gotten by without it if I micromanaged things very finely, like making better use of the Answerer and burning certain scrolls like Time Stop and Black Blade of Disaster at key points. If I hadn't lost important PFMW scrolls in SoA, it might have even been possible to beat the game if Ascension bosses had their intended regeneration.
Other single-classed thieves might have more issues doing so, however, since they can only summon a single Simulacrum clone at a time, but having access to traps could compensate for lower melee damage output and a weaker ability to tank (Shadow Form is really strong). A lot of key enemies could be tackled using Spike Traps, especially if you (1) used Power Word, Blind scrolls on Project Image clones so they could set them anywhere or (2) set a stack of them in a distant location and then used a Time Stop scroll or Time Trap snare to lure a Time Stop-immune critter like the Ravager over to them so other enemies, like the Bone Blades from the Ravager fight, wouldn't trip them instead. Seven Spike Traps would take 490 HP off of the Ravager's 534 and 171 HP off of Abazigal's 500. The PW: Blind scrolls would be especially valuable, since the 6 rounds of blindness would let you set six Spike Traps for 420 nonmagical magic damage from any Simulacrum or Project Image clone.
I also probably could have made more progress in certain fights by using Mislead scrolls to backstab. A Shadowdancer gets almost as much out of them as a normal thief would.
I just realized I haven't done Landrin's spiders! Oh well, I'll get a point finishing Naskell Mines anyway and have basically bought all the expensive stuff. I was able to find and disarm the traps on this level with a disarm traps of 10. It's also nice that you can stealth and then find and remove traps while still in stealth. And a pair of consecutive backstabs removes Mulahey from the field.
I rest until 1) I gain my second CLW 2) it's night time again. I think about shooting the amazon from the edges and splitting them up but ultimately settle for a more direct approach.
I sell some stuff, wait until night, and one-shot Nimbul. I had forgotten to enter the inn earlier, so I go in and kill Neira as well.
Kill the main enemies at the bandit camp. Loot the chest. Turn in to Vai at the Jovial Juggler. I head to the Cloakwood. I hit level 10 on phase spiders in Cloakwood 2. I pre-emptaviley backstab Drasus and his crew. Run through the minds. Trigger the first two traps to kill battle horrors. Blunder into the other traps. I was able to detect one buy drinking 2 potions of perception to get find traps to 50. I dispel Davaeorn's mirror images and backstab him.
I loot the area then flood the mines. Head to Baldur's Gate. Kill Ragefast and get the Nymph Cloak. Kill Ramazith and get the intelligence manual. Sneak into the Iron Throne and steal the documents. Take care of Marek and Lothander, killing the Umberlee priestess and keeping the wisdom manual. I head to Candlekeep, where I take care of the leaders of the Iron Throne.
I activate the greenstone amulet just in case and tank the traps. Most are low damage, but the last is a lightning bolt that rebounded through me. A close one.
I rest, reactivate the greenstone amulet, and go tank the other traps. I trigger a lightning bolt several times on the way to the wisdom tome. I kill the phase spiders and trigger a fireball spell. I drink 2 potions of master thievery and unlock the manual tomes. The stength tome has a magic missile trap, the wisdom tome a fireball trap. I rest up and sneak out of the Catacombs. I test out arrows of detonation on Prat's team then finish him up with backstabs. I also kill the greater basilisks and Diarmid.
I go to High Hedge and other shops and engage in one last shopping spree. I make short work of Cythandria for the journal. I drink two potions of master thievery and pickpocket Quenash. I kill Slythe but no the wife and grab the invitation. I abuse charm and move the dopplegangers into hidden corners. I clear the coronation without any major issues. I rest and chase after Sarevok. I throw potions at Rahvin's party until two of them are dead and one in is morale failure. I backstab them after that.
Semaj splits off and I kill him. I trip a trap on accident and become unconscious,
but fortunately no one else near enough to see it. I draw out Angelo, arrow of dispelling him, then shoot him until he approaches me and backstab him.
I use an arrow of dispelling on Sarevok and then go to draw out Tazok. I can't find Tazok, so I move on to Sarevok. He stands no chance to my backstabs.
I start SoD with just over 300k experience, which lets me hit level 11.
My first BG:EE no-reload success! I'm not sure what I'm going to do with SoD. I think if I die I may restart it and try to beat it by itself with no-reloads using the existing character. I haven't been here yet and would like to see it, although I could copy this save and play with a party to see the new characters and dialogue. Decisions decisions.
I have been fond of Archers for many years now, mostly because of their Called Shot ability and its potential uses (though I've so seldom actually used the ability to its limit). I've finally decided to start a new solo Archer run, as a more challenging alternative to the solo Shadowdancer. Since I will be using the Scorcher Ammunition in ToB, this run will have a very different difficulty slope from the Shadowdancer: rather than being extremely easy (for a solo run, anyhoo) for most of the saga and then being rather difficult in ToB, this will be much tougher for most of the saga and then being rather easy (for a solo run, anyhoo) in ToB.
Amazingly enough, our Charname this time is not named Frisky Bits. She is Espellier!
It's another old face, though not one I've used many times before. I considered making a halfling or dwarven Archer using a mod, but for the purposes of maintaining the difficulty and a sense of "purism" I normally don't care for, I've decided to abide by vanilla race restrictions for the Archer. Espellier takes pips in scimitars and longbows--yes, we are gonna kill Drizzt in this run.
We use my typical early game strategy for BG1 runs: immediately murder Algernon, feed Silke to the last surviving spider in Beregost, use Algernon's Cloak to turn the Friendly Arm Inn guards on Tarnesh, and sell off the Ring of Wizardry for 9,000 gold.
I charm Ajantis and use him as a shield against the ankhegs, but since he has rather low HP, he ends up getting killed, so we have to head north without any further ankheg farming so we can go kill Dushai.
The Ring of Free Action allows us to deal with ghasts without worrying about a game-ending paralysis attack. But I discover a strategy that lets me take down the ghasts in the Narcillicus area without engaging in melee at all: I can just run in after using stealth and shoot the ghasts before scurrying out.
They can follow you out of the barrow, but once they're out, you have plenty of room to run around in, so ranged weapons can still take them down safely.
My install has a weird bug where Korax will constantly wander over to you in an attempt to re-start the conversation he's already had, a bug which persists even if I change his script or delete his modified .cre file from the override folder. Even if you're in the middle of combat, he'll turn his back on any nearby enemies and walk right back to you, refusing to fight. We can avoid this by using stealth, however, as he won't walk over to us if he can't see us.
These days I make a habit of tackling Mutamin, since Mutamin appears to open with two Sleep spells in a row, giving Korax a lot of time to paralyze him. Notice Espellier's 90% resistance to sleep coming into play. Sometimes elves are actually more resistant to spells than gnomes or halflings or dwarves.
Of course, Espellier is level 5, so that Sleep spell is useless anyway.
Mutamin scurries away from Korax and avoids death for a few rounds. Korax gets hit by Blindness and Slow and gets pummeled by Magic Missiles, but he manages to cling to life and finally pin down Mutamin.
Reaching level 6 gets us High Mastery in bows, giving us a THAC0 of like 5. We can now shoot down pretty much anything. We donate a whole bunch of gold to crank up our reputation and then go buy the Wand of Sleep, but we find that an Archer's crummy AC still makes fighting ankhegs really dicey if the ankheg in question makes its saving throw against our wand.
We hit level 7 and get another half attack per round, but I still want better THAC0. I hike down south to go get the Bracers of Archery from Zal. Since I don't want to fight anyone I don't have to, I carefully position myself via stealth and then use Algernon's Cloak to feed him to some local xvarts.
Now it's time to go play with Mulahey. I walk through some traps in the Nashkel mines, and to my surprise, I manage to spend more than a whole week snoozing on the ground without any of the kobolds ever bothering me.
Due to our twin murders of Algernon and Dushai, our first Bhaalspawn innate power was Larloch's Minor Drain, which means we currently have no healing spells--hence the extremely long rest periods.
Once again, Algernon's Cloak breaks the game. We tell Mulahey that Tazok is most displeased with him, and he can only win back his boss' favor by picking a fight with his kobold minions. Barehanded.
We charm Marl and Tiax over at Feldepost's inn and have them soak up some of Tranzig's spells, but their THAC0 is so terrible they can barely land any hits on the mage. We end up having to do most of the work ourselves.
Espellier might not have the virtual untouchability of Frisky Bits the Shadowdancer's near-constant invisibility, but Espellier is much more efficient at killing stuff, and that makes the game move much faster.
Without much more to do in the wilderness, I thought it was about time to do Nashkel Mine, but first it was time for an appointment with Shoal. After Mercury sacrificed herself for a kiss, I'd intended for Brass to enrage against Droth, but was too slow - fortunately though he saved against a dire charm before cutting the ogre mage down. To prevent Shoal teleporting away after completing the quest I chose to kill her without talking to her again. Brass approached the sirines in the area invisibly, but the fact that they start wandering around as soon as they are within sight range - even if they can't see anything - meant they were more spread out than intended and 2 of the party got charmed. However, little damage was done and the charm doesn't last long.
Fighting through the Nashkel Mine didn't take long and Mulahey was silenced temporarily and then permanently. Outside the mine the amazons were already dead so it was back to Nashkel to silence Nimbul. In Beregost, Tranzig's spell saves are better, but he doesn't initiate talking and had no chance to do so under a general attack. I also handed over about 50 scalps to Officer Vai.
At the Bandit Camp the enemies were not able to do much damage against their armored attackers and Taurgosz provided another armor upgrade. With the exterior clear, the party went invisibly into Tazok's tent and hacked down Venkt and the others. Hakt's bow provided Mercury with an upgrade to her standard composite long bow, though she's not been using that much recently anyway.
On the way to the Cloakwood the party stopped off at High Hedge to sell a bit of loot. As they didn't expect to return there again, Thalantyr met a slight accident.
In the first area Seniyad managed to concentrate through damage to finish a call lightning spell, but Brass was wearing both Mulahey's boots and the Gift of Peace helm and took little damage. In the second area Tin disarmed or triggered all the traps while invisible. Silver was poisoned inside the nest and took quite a bit of damage before Copper got around to curing him - he got his reward though with Spider's Bane. By this time everyone had qualified for another level, but were as usual waiting until all classes could level up at once (and that delay would prove costly for Brass).
On the way to the third level some wyverns sprang an ambush and Tin was poisoned. I saw that immediately, but the poison ticks so fast that I was still only in the middle of casting slow poison when he died.
I had already thought about that danger and considered setting up short-cut keys to make casting quicker, but I'd decided to stick to using the mouse for control to minimize the chances of pausing by mistake. On going to the FAI temple there was another encounter with the Old Man, reminding me there was still a version of him in Beregost. I set traps there and again tried to attack him, but again failed - I could really do with 3 hands to respond to his conversation, force-attack and click on him in the very short window of opportunity (thinking about it while writing this post though, I'm reasonably sure that by using a combination of sanctuary and invisibility I could set up a general attack on top of some traps). Safely back at the 3rd area, none of the druids caused any problems.
In the 4th area I had decided to use invisible blockers at the wyvern cave to avoid any danger of someone being poisoned. However, that precaution was rendered unnecessary when the party came across a group of baby wyverns while clearing the area. This time Brass was the one poisoned and, as I hadn't been scouting ahead, he wasn't enraged (selecting him and activating an ability takes too long to normally attempt in a general melee). I felt like I reacted pretty quickly to order Copper to go and cure him, but the small amount of time required to get to Brass to cast the spell proved fatal - Copper did actually complete the spell this time, but only as Brass keeled over .
I'm not sure I'll try that run again in the near future - it's a bit too much like hard work - but it looks like I will have to resort to short-cuts to combat the more venomous enemies (in theory I could also reduce game speed from 60 fps, keep the PC out of combat or permit the use of healing potions, but none of those are likely ).
Is it mandatory SCS + Ascension + Tactics? Or solo? If I die, let's say, in BG2, do I need to restart from Candlekeep or may I restart from the beginning of SoA? Can it be a IWDEE + HoW + TotLM run? Are kit mods acceptable?
@Raduziel
Mods are entirely optional - you can basically make your own rules. A lot of people play with SCS + Ascension, some people play with vanilla, some add many more mods into the mix, including kit mods. Tactics is generally considered to be somewhat obsolete, it's been a long time since I've seen anyone using that one (SCS is considered to be a better choice). IWD runs are also posted here sometimes, so feel free to do so.
Regarding death: To get into the Hall of Heroes, a character has to make it from Candlekeep to the Throne in one go, so we generally restart at Candlekeep even if we fail somewhere in SoA or even in ToB.
@Raduziel: We've discussed the possibility of a separate Hall for IWD and IWD2, or possibly other runs (I've done a no-reload DWM run of all things earlier in this thread), but I've never actually set it up.
You know, the Hall is starting to get long, and eventually the first post of this thread is going to hit a character limit. I could actually create a new thread, create two or three dummy posts to make room for new entries, and then merge the two threads. Basically, it would be the same as this thread, but the thread would belong to @System rather than @Ygramul and it would have some extra space at the start. What do you guys think?
@Raduziel: We've discussed the possibility of a separate Hall for IWD and IWD2, or possibly other runs (I've done a no-reload DWM run of all things earlier in this thread), but I've never actually set it up.
You know, the Hall is starting to get long, and eventually the first post of this thread is going to hit a character limit. I could actually create a new thread, create two or three dummy posts to make room for new entries, and then merge the two threads. Basically, it would be the same as this thread, but the thread would belong to @System rather than @Ygramul and it would have some extra space at the start. What do you guys think?
Sounds reasonable. An alternative could just be to put a link in the first post to Hall of Heroes in a separate thread - that might also be an easy way to provide credit for successful runs in other games if that was desired.
After the end of my no-pause attempt I thought I should make a start on this. Characters are as follows:
Shaman (Sky) - I thought as I suggested it, I should make him the PC - * shortbow; * sling
Barbarian (Cuwaert) - ** 2-handed style; ** sword and shield style
Swashbuckler (Star) - * long sword; * shortbow
Cleric/illusionist (Frisky Bits) - * mace; * sling
Avenger (Waiver) - * dagger
Priest of Lathander (Falesia) - * sling
Here are their character records as they join up for the first time in Candlekeep.
As others seem to want to use SCS I'll play with my standard installation for that:
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Initialise mod (all other components require this): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4040 // Make party members less likely to die irreversibly: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4110 // Allow NPC pairs to separate: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4120 // NPCs go to inns: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5020 // Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5050 // Stackable ankheg shells, winterwolf pelts and wyvern heads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6031 // Smarter Mages -> Mages only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6041 // Smarter Priests -> Priests only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6103 // Potions for NPCs -> Two thirds of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
I very rarely use RP and I don't intend to for this run, although I will restrict Cuwaert to using only non-proficient darts or fists - that should prevent him topping the kills board .
Tazok is very tough for a solo character due to the Oil of Speed he drinks immediately after activating his Enrage ability, but you can use stealth to make your escape (or just leave the map to the west and come back) and rest so the Oil of Speed wears off, making it possible to kite him. I don't bother, though; we don't need to fight him at all.
The bandit camp is too dangerous to tackle at the moment, so I just drink a Potion of Insulation and equip the Boots of Grounding to block the lightning bolt trap and use stealth to enter the tent and steal the documents from the chest by Ender Sai. A successful stealth check saves me the trouble of using a Potion of Invisibility to make my escape.
I make sure to arrive at the Cloakwood spider area at night so I can use stealth to prevent the Phase Spiders from teleporting over to me, then rely on the Ring of Free Action from Dushai to safely pass the Web traps. The Telka ambush triggers, but it looks like you can safely avoid both of the post-Mulahey ambushes as a solo character just by running away on the first round; you don't really need invisibility or a fast movement rate to escape before the first spell hits.
One of the benefits of having access to Hide in Shadows means that you can take down Drasus' party in total safety using Algernon's Cloak. No one goes hostile as long as you don't attack them or enter Drasus' field of vision, so I can sneak past them, charm the mages at the side, then sneak back down south and lure each mage to the nameless guards at the entrance to the palisade.
Having stealth also means that we can immediately hide after attempting to charm Drasus, which prevents him from going hostile when you break invisibility (immediately running away after breaking invisibility should also work). Drasus is the toughest enemy, as he drinks a Potion of Magic Shield shortly into combat, but by repeatedly ordering him not to fight back against the guards, we can get him killed as well.
We have the Boots of Speed! Now it's time to kill Drizzt.
But kiting Drizzt is going to take too longer, because we can barely land a hit on him even if we have all the right equipment and drink a Potion of Mind Focusing or whatever. Kiting takes a lot of time; you spend most of it running away. How do I speed things up?
Easy: I use a decoy to distract Drizzt for us. That way, Espellier doesn't have to run around; she can spend all of her time firing arrows instead of running. Where are we gonna get that decoy when this is a solo run?
Well, Jemby and her two friends start out neutral. They would be lovely targets for Algernon's Cloak. But I accidentally get caught in their dialog and end up turning them hostile, forcing me to flee (which is pretty safe now that I have the Boots of Speed). I do manage to charm Jemby, however, and she can help me kill the hobgoblin and paralyze Teyngan so he won't butcher her.
Then, I lure Jemby far away from Teyngan, then walk away to rest. This way, I can charm one of them without starting a fight with the other, since they can't see each other.
It takes some finagling, but I manage to establish a routine: while Espellier stands in place, spending all of her time firing arrows at Drizzt, Teyngan leads Drizzt in a very wide circle around Espellier. I can save the trouble of scrolling the map by zooming out. Notice that we get some convenient attack rolls that disrupt Drizzt's healing spells, saving us some time.
It takes a very long time to take him down, but it's much faster than kiting him. We now have two spectacular melee weapons that will last us all the way to Belhifet and also give us a toggleable 50% fire resistance.
Donations and some minor side quests bump up our reputation again. I've been having trouble finding inventory space for all of our loot, so I charm Neera and have her kill herself to steal her Gem Bag--I wasn't able to find a Gem Bag elsewhere.
With our reputation high, we can buy the Greenstone Amulet, which lets me block the traps in the flesh golem cave once we sneak past the sirines by the coast. This nets us the Constitution tome and +1 HP per level once we hit 18 CON. I buy the Necklace of Missiles and Shield Amulet and return to the bandit camp, since Hakt has the Longbow of Marksmanship, and we'll really want that for the endgame.
We charm Taurgosz Khosann, but he proves largely helpless against Tazok's sheer power.
Then I realize that I can actually feed every bandit and mercenary and hobgoblin to Tazok by charming them; they remain perfectly neutral the whole time. That saves us some charges from the Necklace of Missiles. Espellier's stealth even allows us to lure Venkt outside once we charm him, which means we don't need to use the Greenstone Amulet to block Venkt's spells, either.
I try to lure Raemon outside, but for some reason he's stuck in a wall; he can't move at all. But the other enemies are helpless: I can lure all of them outside and have Tazok dispose of them one by one.
Or so I thought. Hakt turns hostile after I charm him and order him to attack me (maybe it's different if the charmed critter has a ranged weapon?), so instead of quietly following me outside to his death, I turn the remaining enemies hostile when Raemon initiates dialog.
I can run away just fine, though, and since only a couple of Black Talon Elites follow me outside, I can run in and out of the main tent to fire arrows at the poor folks inside.
Once Hakt goes down, we have the Longbow of Marksmanship, the best bow in BG1. Now we're ready for Davaeorn.
We sneak past everyone in the Cloakwood Mines, charm the guard, and use Drizzt's scimitars to chop up the Battle Horrors once the guard lures them over.
I down a Potion of Magic Blocking to tank the traps and then order the guard to attack Davaeorn. We manage to fall back before Davaeorn initiates dialog, so Davaeorn fails to fight back and the guard eventually cuts him down. I had plenty of resources saved up for this fight, but it proves unnecessary. This one AI exploit is sufficient to take him down.
I don't like relying on this trick, since it's less interesting than a fair fight, but it does save us the Potions of Magic Blocking, Acid Arrows, and Necklace of Missiles charges I would have spent otherwise.
We make our way to Baldur's Gate and shell out about 41,000 gold to buy up all the stuff we want, including a pretty blue Bag of Holding and all the Arrows of Detonation and Arrows of Dispelling we want.
And we take a group drawing with starting equipment.
As we explore Candlekeep and complete the quests, I'm attacked by an assassin. We make short work of him.
Since we don't have engough space for her to join us, Imoen happily agrees to donate her equipment. As do Xzar and Montaron (although a bit less happily).
An old man approaches. In retrospect, I wasted a great opportunity to test my traps.
A we're attacking an ogre with a belt fetish, Cuwaert charges in, bare fists blazing.
We emerge victorious, although one party member lighter, and collect the belts.
We're on the way to the Friendly Arm Inn, and I decide to antagonize a wolf (wolves!!!), seeing as I have a full party.
The four of us arrive at the Friendly Arm Inn, dragging the corpses of our fallen behind us. It's been a harrowing journey, and we're exhausted.
We stop by the temple, but I spend so much money identifying items, I can't afford to resurrect everyone yet. Cuwaert says "Did I pass out again?"
As we prepared to enter the inn, Tarnesh attacks us, but Frisky Bits lands a Command, and Tarnesh is easy pickings.
I go inside to sell a diamond, and we're able to afford the final resurrection. Everyone is alive and ready to move on with the adventure!
@Ygramul: Right-o. We can preserve the thread as is. Though @Tresset might be able to tell me if there's a way to cram a couple dummy post after the OP without removing ownership of the thread. A separate Hall of Heroes for non-BG runs could go elsewhere.
@Ygramul: Right-o. We can preserve the thread as is. Though @Tresset might be able to tell me if there's a way to cram a couple dummy post after the OP without removing ownership of the thread. A separate Hall of Heroes for non-BG runs could go elsewhere.
Great Idea.
I suppose I could also combine some of my early posts and empty out the first follow-up post from me for some hall of fame real estate for people to edit and maintain.
I gotta also say that I appreciate the effort from you and others to take such good care of this thread. I have been silent, but nonetheless appreciated reading the stories here.
P.S. I am happy with keeping non-BG runs here. I have some of mine as well. (Love IWD and Torment both.) Opening some real estate is not that much a problem.
As noted before I'm not intending to RP this run, but was aiming to keep risks down in a more traditional no-reload fashion. I didn't really manage that in a first gaming session, but there's still next time .
In Candlekeep the first thing done was pick up a bit of extra cash to get equipment. Star had no extra stealth or lockpicking ability, but could still get into the chest upstairs watched over by a nobleman - he was knocked out rather than having to bother avoiding summoned guards.
Repeated pestering of Firebead also resulted in an eventual bonus of 300 gold. Following the no mercy line, the assassins in Candlekeep were shot down before they could talk. The other quests were done, with the exception that Frisky Bits learned identify rather than returning the scroll to Firebead.
In most of my runs I don't allow the recruitment of NPCs, so Imoen was shot down before she could talk outside the walls of Candlekeep - and Xzar and Montaron soon followed. Heading south to High Hedge, I had intended to kill the gnolls, but a rest to cure fatigue failed and the party moved on to Beregost.
Before going for a nap they shot Neera from long range to get her gem bag and calmed down Marl. Star's lock-picking abilities were just good enough to get the invisibility potion from the Manor house and she also grabbed the Stupifier mace for Frisky Bits - though I found the latter was too weak to actually use that (the same strength requirements tend to apply to magical weapons as non-magical ones - unlike what is done with armor and shields). Karlat was faced with spirits before being blinded and then commanded, but I didn't yet have Perdue's sword to return.
Star tried stealing Algernon's Cloak, but he had a firm hold of that and Star wasn't skilled enough to break his grip without harming him.
With no rangers or paladins in the party (at least yet - Falesia is due to dual to ranger at some point), there was no particular reason not to kill him. Silke was also charmed and was about to die from spider venom when given a mercy killing.
The cloak was used to pull sirines out of Beregost temple. With a pretty weak party at the moment I didn't fancy attacking those at full strength, so wore them down on enemies before attacking. All the sirines were successfully commanded to die.
As this run is supposed to be minimizing risks I levelled characters up when they got the opportunity, rather than waiting for everyone to be able to level at the same time as I usually do with parties.
North of Beregost it took a while to set traps up for an old man. Unlike with no pause there was no problem attacking him on top of those though.
Traps are not guaranteed to kill him, so you could argue whether trying that was minimizing risk. However, the chances of success are good, the pay-off of 26k XP high and the chances of Sky escaping also good if all else failed - so it seemed a decent gamble to me. An ogre was slept for its belt collection and a ring of protection fished out of a hole in a rock on the way to the FAI.
At the FAI, a ring of wizardry was grabbed by Frisky Bits before Waiver made a first use of his web spell to ensnare Tarnesh.
Inside, an attempt to charm Jaheira - in order to pull her outside for her invisibility potion - failed. I thought I'd remembered using command on her successfully in this installation to kill her before she went hostile - but if so that must have been dependent on the spell working first time, as a failed attempt instantly sent the whole inn hostile.
Jaheira cast entangle to prevent an immediate retreat and they weren't able to get away from her and Khalid before Bentley was ready to follow. That resulted in a death for Frisky Bits before they managed to shake him off briefly back inside the inn.
They returned Landrin's goods, picked up the pantaloons and healed up before venturing outside again. Another couple of area transitions later and they'd swapped positions to leave Bentley inside. Typically I would try and finish the fight, but decided to exercise discretion this time and just raised Frisky Bits before leaving.
Further north, some fishermen handed over a bowl before the party looked into an ankheg nest. Command works automatically on them, so they're an easy source of XP. That's doubly so given the ability to use spirits to tank them. That can be done as follows:
- summon spirits just out of sight of the ankheg (using stealth to scout if necessary).
- move the shaman back behind the spirits (wait until the text shows a dancing check, pause the game, move, start dancing again before the next check - checks are done once a round).
- activate the ankheg by letting it see another character and retreat to cause the ankheg to move forward slightly, activating at least one spirit.
- move the shaman back forward using the same technique (the spirits won't attack in melee unless they're a bit closer to the shaman than sight range limit).
There are plenty of potential pitfalls in doing that, such as the chance of the ankhegs being scared by a spirit hound and moving closer to the party, or one-shotting spirits quicker than expected. However, if you're aware of the problems (and take care) it's safe enough and all the ankhegs in the nest were duly eliminated without any damage being taken. I wasn't sure if the party were high enough level for multiple ankhegs to appear at once outside, but scouting showed only single ones and the rest of the area was cleared as well.
Further north still, Tenya was given her bowl back. However, as she tried to teleport away she was commanded to die. That wouldn't stop her teleporting in itself, but the automatic hits from everyone did the job.
Incidentally, if you're short of commands, sleeps and invisibility another potential tactic against ankhegs is to pre-cast webs on top of the area where they're hiding.
It was about time to save, but I thought I'd just complete the northern journey by going to get Dushai's ring. She proved very resistant to charm though and I had failed with at least 30 attempts when I made a mistake and clicked to pickpocket her rather than activating Algernon's cloak.
Dushai chased after the party pretty quickly, but after she was dead scouting showed that she'd still had time to alert villagers to the danger.
That means I'll need to be careful coming back here not to chase them inside the inn - where they would send the shopkeeper hostile as well. I'll also need to remember to do something next time about the current reputation of 3, before bounty hunters start spawning.
I've started up the simultaneous party run and went ahead and made Frisky Bits the cleric/illusionist our Charname on the grounds that it's the safest class defensively. Since I dislike BG1 portraits almost without exception, I've picked a different portrait for Cuwaert the drunken Barbarian and chose @Enuhal's Stalker over the Avenger. Since I don't have a portrait for the Stalker and didn't want to make a portrait, I just looked up the Stalker's name (apparently it's a World of Warcraft character or something) and chose the most color-appropriate portrait I had, which happened to be a dumb-looking smiley face I drew a long time ago.
This is definitely an odd group. It's very caster-heavy, but almost entirely on the divine side; we have no single-classed mages and our only source of arcane magic is Frisky Bits themself, which means we're going to have very few sources of mage spells and the best wands.
Worse yet, for RP reasons, Cuwaert the Barbarian is supposed to fight entirely with his fists, which means he won't get specialization bonuses, he will only deal nonlethal damage, he will deal very little damage, he won't be able to hit critters immune to normal weapons until we learn Enchanted Weapon (and even then he can't reach +4), and everything that attacks him will get +4 to hit and damage against him. He's pretty much dead weight.
Fortunately, this is a lighter SCS install with less pre-buffing and I won't be installing the tougher SCS stuff in BG2, unless someone else does first. My install is modeled on the previous ones. My WeiDU log is here:
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Initialise mod (all other components require this): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1910 // Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2020 // Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2110 // Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at 1.5 x their level (not twice their level): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3030 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4010 // Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5020 // Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6102 // Potions for NPCs -> Half the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5020 // Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6031 // Smarter Mages -> Mages only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6041 // Smarter Priests -> Priests only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6103 // Potions for NPCs -> Two thirds of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v31
~BETTERENCHANTEDWEAPON/BETTERENCHANTEDWEAPON.TP2~ #0 #0 // Better Enchanted Weapon: 1.0
SCS should be the only mod; I think Better Enchanted Weapon isn't really installed. I remove all of my old tweak mods, so we'll have to fuss with item depreciation and some other mundane nonsense for the sake of purism or whatever.
Comments
Part 21: Throne of Bhaal
We burn all of our Skull Trap scrolls setting up a mine field in the far north, just in case we need a kill zone later on. We use up a bunch of scrolls and potions setting up our defenses, rearrange our inventory, and finally activate the last pool. Here is Frisky Bits, fully buffed, at the end of the game.
We deal some light damage to Illasera with the Sling of Everard (the Reflection Shield is a must for any solo character without PFMW, Absolute Immunity, or Physical Mirror active), and most of the enemies can't reach us due to being melee fighters without movement rate bonuses, but Sendai is very active, and since we lost our other Protection from Magic scroll curing a Maze spell from Abazigal back in his lair, we can't shut her down.
Sendai can't see through invisibility, so we manage to cancel one of her abjuration spells by equipping the Staff of the Magi and running away. However, that only worked because the spell presumably was Breach, which doesn't bypass invisibility. Her next spell is Remove Magic, and we can't use a Spell Immunity scroll to block it before it hits.
Regardless, we can still stay out of range of the fighters by drinking an Oil of Speed, and our excellent saving throws and the Cloak of Mirroring will keep us safe from Sendai's other spells. Plus, by now, her Improved Alacrity effect has ended. Meanwhile, Balthazar returns to the fight and uses Second Wind to recover from the Skull Trap damage.
Since it'll take many rounds to do this, we've already lost our normal buffs, and we have lots of Shadow Twins to spare, I go ahead and summon a clone to expedite things in melee. This is especially important because the Protection from Magic scroll on Abazigal will only last two in-game hours, or 600 seconds. If I don't kill him within 100 rounds of using that scroll, he'll be free to cast his spells again.
Our clone has sky-high damage resistance thanks to Shadow Form and the Ravager trial reward, so we can actually tank the enemy reasonably well as long as we back off every now and then to make sure Frisky Bits can heal. Our clone can't use potions, but it can use our Regeneration spell from another one of the Pocket Plane trials.
Our clone can use all of our innate abilities, so it also has access to Hand of Murder, applying an additional 12 magic damage to its melee attacks. By carefully controlling our damage output, we slowly bring each enemy closer to Near Death.
As we're wrapping up this phase of the fight and are almost ready to proceed to Melissan herself, our clone accidentally kills Sendai with a lucky hit. Apparently Sendai has no defense against critical hits.
But then the game crashes, and while it's frustrating to lose so much progress at the exact moment when the game is at its most tense, it at least gives us a chance (i.e., forces us) to start over and make some tweaks to our strategy to optimize things and better prepare us for Melissan.
I like it for a number of reasons for solo characters without access to other spells. The coronation is certainly one of those, though I agree it's not reliable and if you're prepared to abuse charm that gives you a safer route. It can also be useful when you're surrounded by enemies (though that's less of a danger to a shadowdancer than some other kits) and to split up groups of enemies that normally act together - or just to even the odds when risking a fight against a stronger enemy.
I meant to ask this earlier but forgot. How does it scale outside the first game? Is it something you use throughout the saga?
Part 22: Throne of Bhaal
This time around, I handle things more intelligently. I maintain my buffs this time, and we use a clone early on to speed things up. Illasera manages to nail the clone, however, largely due to magic damage.
Balthazar once again triggers our Skull Traps, but his magic resistance thankfully blocks most of it. Remembering Balthazar's disappearance during our previous attempt and considering his no-longer-dysfunctional AI now allows him to contribute to the fight, I finally think to use the Rod of Resurrection on him to keep him healthy, rather than relying on his AI-based Second Wind spells. The Rod of Resurrection is actually a huge deal here--I don't know why I haven't been using it more often in previous runs. After all, Balthazar has over 300 maximum HP!
Sendai still manages to remove our buffs eventually (I can't maintain SI: Abjuration for the tens of rounds it takes to complete this phase of the fight), but now that we can rely on Balthazar to tank, with the Rod of Resurrection to support him, we have an important new tool to bring the Five to Near Death.
We fail several times to remove Abazigal's pesky Fire Shield spells with the Staff of the Magi, only to see the staff fail every time. We summon a new clone to help Balthazar do the heavy lifting, and finally I realize that I can simply use an Arrow of Dispelling to take down Abazigal's defenses, since the arrows dispel regardless of caster level.
We add a Simulacrum clone to the map shortly before our Shadow Twin clone vanishes. Once we restore our Shadow Twin, we have four strong damage dealers on the map: Balthazar, our two clones, and Frisky Bits themself.
By withdrawing Sarevok from the fight before he gets overwhelmed, we can avoid an early death and ensure that we only trigger Melissan's arrival when her allies are all at the brink of death. An Arrow of Dispelling opens up Sendai, and finally we land our first kill.
We have to start over. But don't worry--this time, we experience no crashes.
It's definitely useful in SoA, though you need to beware that many enemies in that have scripts that allow them to overcome their fear - and if you're not expecting that you can easily get into trouble. In the unmodded game you lose Bhaal powers going into ToB, but I doubt whether it would get much use there even if you restored those given the availability of HLAs.
Jase, half-orc shadowdancer:
Previous attempts
Attempt 12. Avoided the wolf! Killed Shoal. Went to the FAI and killed Tarnesh.
I'm waylaid by a pair of ogres, but since my health has regenerated, I just ignore them and head back to the Lighthouse. It takes me a few to find the third of the original sirines, but I throw daggers at her. I get a little impatient when she's near dead and throw before Stealth had recharged. I of course miss, and she starts casting charm, so I shadow step away, only to return and claim victory.
Part 23: Throne of Bhaal
The third attempt doesn't play out exactly like the previous ones (Balthazar failed a save against a fear effect of some sort and spent a long time running around), but the essentials are the same: we nail Abazigal with a Protection from Magic scroll, lose our buffs to a Remove Magic spell from Sendai, alternate between kiting the enemy and using clones to tank the fighters, with Shambling Mounds summoned by the Staff of the Woodlands to serve as decoys and damage dealers, all while running around in circles and periodically fixing up Balthazar with the Rod of Resurrection. We successfully bring most of the Five to Near Death and then polish off Sendai. The game doesn't crash!
We need to finish off Illasera, but we've still got Melissan bearing down on us, which means we still have to make sure Frisky Bits and both of their clones keep Focus, PFMW, and/or Shadow Form active, and we're running out of PFMW scrolls and Shadow Form spells.
Then we lose Balthazar to a critical hit, and things look even darker.
We still have both clones active, however, giving us the damage output to kill Illasera once we box her in.
But Melissan casts Absolute Immunity (Divine Mantle) herself, and we're forced to use another Absolute Immunity scroll of our own, only to see it get Breached. We respond with another Breach scroll. It's a long string of defensive options and debuffing options, all while I try to find room to land hits with the Answerer and use another Greater Malison scroll.
After many rounds, we have completely run out of PFMW and Absolute Immunity clones, but both our clones are active again and we manage to lower Melissan's MR enough to hit her with Greater Malison. We stun her!
Then, to my disbelief, Melissan casts Divine Cleansing while she's stunned. The stun effect gets dispelled along with Greater Malison, and Melissan is free to act.
It works!
We pick mortality. Frisky Bits is not the type to become a god of murder.
The battle is won! Throne of Bhaal is over!
One solo no-reload Shadowdancer run with SCS, Ascension, and ATweaks, complete.
I bet that was a shock. You really were running out of options at the end.
Congrats! That's fantastic. Great read.
Brass, dwarf berserker {3} (update 3)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1055163/#Comment_1055163
The session started by ticking off a number of reputation quests not previously completed. There were also a few cheap donations at the temple (starting from 7, donations of 150, 100 and 200 will give you 3 points). Those donations meant that reputation 20 could be reached prior to going to the Nashkel Mine even if Melicamp failed to survive. At the basilisk area they not only unpetrified Tamah, but went to take on Kirian's party. Baerin and Lindin were blinded ahead of that, but preparations were not complete when an intruding gnoll resulted in Kirian spotting them. In the chaotic attack that followed Copper was held and nearly killed by Baerin, but I spotted the danger just in time and switched attacks to Baerin - who fell with Copper down to a single HP.
While going to collect Melicamp I launched an attack on a pair of ghasts. In themselves they were unlikely to cause much trouble as they normally shift attacks to whoever is attacking (as opposed to concentrating on finishing off paralyzed targets). However, a pair of hobgoblins joined the attack and took a paralyzed Brass (who hadn't bothered raging) uncomfortably low on HPs.
Bassilus was beaten up and his holy symbol taken to the Beregost Temple.
The final reputation upgrade was gained from helping out Charleston Nib, before the Doomsayer failed to make too much impression on Brass.
While in Gullykin to get a second +1 sling, I raided a few halfling dwellings. I thought even the one being watched over would be safe to steal from using sanctuary, but Copper was immediately accosted when he tried that.
There was a cleric handy in the winery to raise Copper, so it wasn't long before the party could continue their adventures. That included an unprovoked attack on Molkar's party - made easier by successfully silencing Molkar from out of sight (so the party didn't go hostile until attacked).
I was aware of the danger from the Black Talons in Larswood and Peldvale, but chose to accept that rather than muck about with scouting arrangements. For the first 3 groups of Black Talons that risk proved acceptable with the targeted character not being critically hurt. However, with the fourth group, Copper was hit several times quickly and taken down to 4 HPs before the others could get into a general melee. I thought that he would then survive, but a Black Talon found enough space to let off one more shot ...
The last bit of action in the session saw a return to Firewine to deal with Kahrk. Activating him from out of sight range allowed Copper to wait for his buffs to expire before failing with an attempted silence. Sanctuary was then used to guide the others to attack. Silver had no joy with his acid darts and Kahrk managed to release a lightning bolt, but that missed everyone (in v2.5 lightning is very poor at hitting nearby targets) and Kahrk fell almost immediately after that.
Brass, berserker L6, 72 HPs, 330 kills
Diamond, dwarven defender, L6, 74 HPs (incl. -12 from Claw), 140 kills, 0 deaths
Silver, wizard slayer, L6, 76 HPs, 129 kills, 0 deaths
Tin, fighter/thief, L5/6, 60 HPs, 141 kills, 0 deaths
Copper, fighter/cleric, L5/5, 61 HPs, 134 kills, 2 deaths
Mercury, fighter/illusionist, L5/5, 55 HPs, 198 kills, 0 deaths
If you're wondering what happened to my "no magic items" run, the answer is... nothing. They're still waiting at the start of Throne of Bhaal, and I'm kind of afraid to boot them up again. ToB is gonna be really nasty for that party for all sorts of reasons.
Crashes during the ascension battle are, sadly, very common and frustrating. I guess there is no chance that the various causes leading to these will ever be fixed by another modder? While I don't have a run lined up right now (though I plan to have a go at it again once the final version of the new SCS is released), I currently don't think I'll play with Ascension again - sure, it's challenging and epic, but in addition to the bugs and crashes, I don't like how the entire saga is kind of shaped around this one, difficult battle for which you have to prepare starting with character generation. I feel like I'd have more freedom playing only with SCS.
Proficiencies:
Two Handed Sword *****
Halberd **
Sling **
Two Handed Weapon Style **
Traveling with: Imoen - thief/mage
Beating the Trolls on Spellhold level 2 was definitely by the numbers, as they say. The rest of it wasn't though, viz:
1) The Yuan-ti were easily defeated by improved invisibility.
2) When tripping the painting traps, used improved invisibility to guarantee save vs. the save or die trap. Should have equipped fire resistance ring for the other painting traps, oh well.
3) The Illithid was defeated surprisingly fast - guess two-hand swords work well on them.
4) The room with the clay golems was a mess. First Corerage IV isn't proficient with any blunt weapons. So I had Imoen haste the group. But this wasn't enough and Corerage IV had to withdraw a corner and do RoR heal. Imoen did mirror image to try to tank them. But the golems went through her mirrors quick. Corerage IV came back and tried to GWW a clay golem - but it didn't work! Problem? Corerage IV somehow had the Ilbratha selected! Doh! Unsurprisingly, Imoen dies because of this mistake and Corerage IV has to gulp quite a few heal potions, but he does end up killing these pesky critters. Whew. RoR brought Imoen back to life, and the duo resumed their adventure.
5) Corerage IV enraged before facing Bodhi, as well as Imoen well away, so no problems with this.
6) Corerage IV did just fine vs. the minotaurs and gauth, despite no shield of balduran. Good, good.
7) Rest of spellhold went without incident. We met up with Saemon and he suggested we use the inmates - sounds good to Corerage IV so he went upstairs and somehow convinced Lonk to release them for 2000 gold. As for Irenicus, Imoen's dispelling arrows were devastating and Irenicus was forced to withdraw.
8) We went ahead and helped Saemon (Silver Sword could be useful, as well as Cloak of Reflection since I am not using SoB). We eventually find ourselves in the Shark City. We agree to help the King for now, and we find some extra healing potions off a merchant here and buy all of those.
We ran out of time and ended our session here.
In retrospect, I probably could have gotten by without it if I micromanaged things very finely, like making better use of the Answerer and burning certain scrolls like Time Stop and Black Blade of Disaster at key points. If I hadn't lost important PFMW scrolls in SoA, it might have even been possible to beat the game if Ascension bosses had their intended regeneration.
Other single-classed thieves might have more issues doing so, however, since they can only summon a single Simulacrum clone at a time, but having access to traps could compensate for lower melee damage output and a weaker ability to tank (Shadow Form is really strong). A lot of key enemies could be tackled using Spike Traps, especially if you (1) used Power Word, Blind scrolls on Project Image clones so they could set them anywhere or (2) set a stack of them in a distant location and then used a Time Stop scroll or Time Trap snare to lure a Time Stop-immune critter like the Ravager over to them so other enemies, like the Bone Blades from the Ravager fight, wouldn't trip them instead. Seven Spike Traps would take 490 HP off of the Ravager's 534 and 171 HP off of Abazigal's 500. The PW: Blind scrolls would be especially valuable, since the 6 rounds of blindness would let you set six Spike Traps for 420 nonmagical magic damage from any Simulacrum or Project Image clone.
I also probably could have made more progress in certain fights by using Mislead scrolls to backstab. A Shadowdancer gets almost as much out of them as a normal thief would.
Jase, half-orc shadowdancer (attempt 13, update 2):
Previous attempts
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1055358/#Comment_1055358
Part 1: Baldur's Gate
I have been fond of Archers for many years now, mostly because of their Called Shot ability and its potential uses (though I've so seldom actually used the ability to its limit). I've finally decided to start a new solo Archer run, as a more challenging alternative to the solo Shadowdancer. Since I will be using the Scorcher Ammunition in ToB, this run will have a very different difficulty slope from the Shadowdancer: rather than being extremely easy (for a solo run, anyhoo) for most of the saga and then being rather difficult in ToB, this will be much tougher for most of the saga and then being rather easy (for a solo run, anyhoo) in ToB.
Amazingly enough, our Charname this time is not named Frisky Bits. She is Espellier!
We use my typical early game strategy for BG1 runs: immediately murder Algernon, feed Silke to the last surviving spider in Beregost, use Algernon's Cloak to turn the Friendly Arm Inn guards on Tarnesh, and sell off the Ring of Wizardry for 9,000 gold.
My install has a weird bug where Korax will constantly wander over to you in an attempt to re-start the conversation he's already had, a bug which persists even if I change his script or delete his modified .cre file from the override folder. Even if you're in the middle of combat, he'll turn his back on any nearby enemies and walk right back to you, refusing to fight. We can avoid this by using stealth, however, as he won't walk over to us if he can't see us.
These days I make a habit of tackling Mutamin, since Mutamin appears to open with two Sleep spells in a row, giving Korax a lot of time to paralyze him. Notice Espellier's 90% resistance to sleep coming into play. Sometimes elves are actually more resistant to spells than gnomes or halflings or dwarves.
Mutamin scurries away from Korax and avoids death for a few rounds. Korax gets hit by Blindness and Slow and gets pummeled by Magic Missiles, but he manages to cling to life and finally pin down Mutamin.
Once again, Algernon's Cloak breaks the game. We tell Mulahey that Tazok is most displeased with him, and he can only win back his boss' favor by picking a fight with his kobold minions. Barehanded.
Brass, dwarf berserker {3} (4th and final update)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1055163/#Comment_1055163
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1055413/#Comment_1055413
Without much more to do in the wilderness, I thought it was about time to do Nashkel Mine, but first it was time for an appointment with Shoal. After Mercury sacrificed herself for a kiss, I'd intended for Brass to enrage against Droth, but was too slow - fortunately though he saved against a dire charm before cutting the ogre mage down. To prevent Shoal teleporting away after completing the quest I chose to kill her without talking to her again. Brass approached the sirines in the area invisibly, but the fact that they start wandering around as soon as they are within sight range - even if they can't see anything - meant they were more spread out than intended and 2 of the party got charmed. However, little damage was done and the charm doesn't last long.
Fighting through the Nashkel Mine didn't take long and Mulahey was silenced temporarily and then permanently. Outside the mine the amazons were already dead so it was back to Nashkel to silence Nimbul. In Beregost, Tranzig's spell saves are better, but he doesn't initiate talking and had no chance to do so under a general attack. I also handed over about 50 scalps to Officer Vai.
At the Bandit Camp the enemies were not able to do much damage against their armored attackers and Taurgosz provided another armor upgrade. With the exterior clear, the party went invisibly into Tazok's tent and hacked down Venkt and the others. Hakt's bow provided Mercury with an upgrade to her standard composite long bow, though she's not been using that much recently anyway.
On the way to the Cloakwood the party stopped off at High Hedge to sell a bit of loot. As they didn't expect to return there again, Thalantyr met a slight accident.
In the first area Seniyad managed to concentrate through damage to finish a call lightning spell, but Brass was wearing both Mulahey's boots and the Gift of Peace helm and took little damage. In the second area Tin disarmed or triggered all the traps while invisible. Silver was poisoned inside the nest and took quite a bit of damage before Copper got around to curing him - he got his reward though with Spider's Bane. By this time everyone had qualified for another level, but were as usual waiting until all classes could level up at once (and that delay would prove costly for Brass).
On the way to the third level some wyverns sprang an ambush and Tin was poisoned. I saw that immediately, but the poison ticks so fast that I was still only in the middle of casting slow poison when he died.
In the 4th area I had decided to use invisible blockers at the wyvern cave to avoid any danger of someone being poisoned. However, that precaution was rendered unnecessary when the party came across a group of baby wyverns while clearing the area. This time Brass was the one poisoned and, as I hadn't been scouting ahead, he wasn't enraged (selecting him and activating an ability takes too long to normally attempt in a general melee). I felt like I reacted pretty quickly to order Copper to go and cure him, but the small amount of time required to get to Brass to cast the spell proved fatal - Copper did actually complete the spell this time, but only as Brass keeled over
I'm not sure I'll try that run again in the near future - it's a bit too much like hard work - but it looks like I will have to resort to short-cuts to combat the more venomous enemies (in theory I could also reduce game speed from 60 fps, keep the PC out of combat or permit the use of healing potions, but none of those are likely
Is it mandatory SCS + Ascension + Tactics? Or solo? If I die, let's say, in BG2, do I need to restart from Candlekeep or may I restart from the beginning of SoA? Can it be a IWDEE + HoW + TotLM run? Are kit mods acceptable?
Thanks.
Mods are entirely optional - you can basically make your own rules. A lot of people play with SCS + Ascension, some people play with vanilla, some add many more mods into the mix, including kit mods. Tactics is generally considered to be somewhat obsolete, it's been a long time since I've seen anyone using that one (SCS is considered to be a better choice). IWD runs are also posted here sometimes, so feel free to do so.
Regarding death: To get into the Hall of Heroes, a character has to make it from Candlekeep to the Throne in one go, so we generally restart at Candlekeep even if we fail somewhere in SoA or even in ToB.
If I understood correctly, an IWD run wouldn't qualify me for the Hall of Heroes, am I correct?
Kind of pointless as I like to be praised for eternity.
You know, the Hall is starting to get long, and eventually the first post of this thread is going to hit a character limit. I could actually create a new thread, create two or three dummy posts to make room for new entries, and then merge the two threads. Basically, it would be the same as this thread, but the thread would belong to @System rather than @Ygramul and it would have some extra space at the start. What do you guys think?
Sounds reasonable. An alternative could just be to put a link in the first post to Hall of Heroes in a separate thread - that might also be an easy way to provide credit for successful runs in other games if that was desired.
After the end of my no-pause attempt I thought I should make a start on this. Characters are as follows:
Shaman (Sky) - I thought as I suggested it, I should make him the PC - * shortbow; * sling
Barbarian (Cuwaert) - ** 2-handed style; ** sword and shield style
Swashbuckler (Star) - * long sword; * shortbow
Cleric/illusionist (Frisky Bits) - * mace; * sling
Avenger (Waiver) - * dagger
Priest of Lathander (Falesia) - * sling
Here are their character records as they join up for the first time in Candlekeep.
As others seem to want to use SCS I'll play with my standard installation for that:
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4040 // Make party members less likely to die irreversibly: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4110 // Allow NPC pairs to separate: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4120 // NPCs go to inns: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5020 // Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5050 // Stackable ankheg shells, winterwolf pelts and wyvern heads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6031 // Smarter Mages -> Mages only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6041 // Smarter Priests -> Priests only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6103 // Potions for NPCs -> Two thirds of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v30 BWP fix + K4thos' EET compatibility
I very rarely use RP and I don't intend to for this run, although I will restrict Cuwaert to using only non-proficient darts or fists - that should prevent him topping the kills board
Part 2: Baldur's Gate
Tazok is very tough for a solo character due to the Oil of Speed he drinks immediately after activating his Enrage ability, but you can use stealth to make your escape (or just leave the map to the west and come back) and rest so the Oil of Speed wears off, making it possible to kite him. I don't bother, though; we don't need to fight him at all.
The bandit camp is too dangerous to tackle at the moment, so I just drink a Potion of Insulation and equip the Boots of Grounding to block the lightning bolt trap and use stealth to enter the tent and steal the documents from the chest by Ender Sai. A successful stealth check saves me the trouble of using a Potion of Invisibility to make my escape.
One of the benefits of having access to Hide in Shadows means that you can take down Drasus' party in total safety using Algernon's Cloak. No one goes hostile as long as you don't attack them or enter Drasus' field of vision, so I can sneak past them, charm the mages at the side, then sneak back down south and lure each mage to the nameless guards at the entrance to the palisade.
But kiting Drizzt is going to take too longer, because we can barely land a hit on him even if we have all the right equipment and drink a Potion of Mind Focusing or whatever. Kiting takes a lot of time; you spend most of it running away. How do I speed things up?
Easy: I use a decoy to distract Drizzt for us. That way, Espellier doesn't have to run around; she can spend all of her time firing arrows instead of running. Where are we gonna get that decoy when this is a solo run?
Well, Jemby and her two friends start out neutral. They would be lovely targets for Algernon's Cloak. But I accidentally get caught in their dialog and end up turning them hostile, forcing me to flee (which is pretty safe now that I have the Boots of Speed). I do manage to charm Jemby, however, and she can help me kill the hobgoblin and paralyze Teyngan so he won't butcher her.
We charm Taurgosz Khosann, but he proves largely helpless against Tazok's sheer power.
We sneak past everyone in the Cloakwood Mines, charm the guard, and use Drizzt's scimitars to chop up the Battle Horrors once the guard lures them over.
We make our way to Baldur's Gate and shell out about 41,000 gold to buy up all the stuff we want, including a pretty blue Bag of Holding and all the Arrows of Detonation and Arrows of Dispelling we want.
Simultaneous run:
Since Grond0 has started, and I'm at a pausing point with my shadowdancer, and I want to test SCS:
My SCS config.
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6032 // Smarter Mages -> Mages never cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6042 // Smarter Priests -> Priests never cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6103 // Potions for NPCs -> Two thirds of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v31
Star - PC - *scimitar *shortbow
Culwaert - **dart **two-weapon style
Falesia - *war hammer *sling
Waiver - *sling *club
Frisky Bits - *quarterstaff *sling
Sky - *dagger * sling
The party created and their character sheets.
Star, swashbuckler L1, 8HPs, 2 kills
Cuwaert, barbarian L1, 12HPs, 2 kills, 1 deaths
Falesia, PoL, L1, 8HPs, 5 kills, 0 deaths
Waiver, avenger, L1, 8HPs, 3 kills, 1 deaths
Frisky Bits, C/I, L1, 8HPs, 3 kills, 0 deaths
Sky, shaman, L1, 10HPs, 5 kills, 0 deaths
Edit: Added kills/deaths
Oy! Don't take my thread away from me, please.
I spent a lot of energy in the beginning to it and dedicated much time no-reloading Baldur's Gate.
And here I am eagerly awaiting the 10,000th post with bated breath.
Great Idea.
I suppose I could also combine some of my early posts and empty out the first follow-up post from me for some hall of fame real estate for people to edit and maintain.
I gotta also say that I appreciate the effort from you and others to take such good care of this thread. I have been silent, but nonetheless appreciated reading the stories here.
P.S. I am happy with keeping non-BG runs here. I have some of mine as well. (Love IWD and Torment both.) Opening some real estate is not that much a problem.
Previous updates
As noted before I'm not intending to RP this run, but was aiming to keep risks down in a more traditional no-reload fashion. I didn't really manage that in a first gaming session, but there's still next time
In Candlekeep the first thing done was pick up a bit of extra cash to get equipment. Star had no extra stealth or lockpicking ability, but could still get into the chest upstairs watched over by a nobleman - he was knocked out rather than having to bother avoiding summoned guards.
In most of my runs I don't allow the recruitment of NPCs, so Imoen was shot down before she could talk outside the walls of Candlekeep - and Xzar and Montaron soon followed. Heading south to High Hedge, I had intended to kill the gnolls, but a rest to cure fatigue failed and the party moved on to Beregost.
Before going for a nap they shot Neera from long range to get her gem bag and calmed down Marl. Star's lock-picking abilities were just good enough to get the invisibility potion from the Manor house and she also grabbed the Stupifier mace for Frisky Bits - though I found the latter was too weak to actually use that (the same strength requirements tend to apply to magical weapons as non-magical ones - unlike what is done with armor and shields). Karlat was faced with spirits before being blinded and then commanded, but I didn't yet have Perdue's sword to return.
The cloak was used to pull sirines out of Beregost temple. With a pretty weak party at the moment I didn't fancy attacking those at full strength, so wore them down on enemies before attacking. All the sirines were successfully commanded to die.
North of Beregost it took a while to set traps up for an old man. Unlike with no pause there was no problem attacking him on top of those though.
At the FAI, a ring of wizardry was grabbed by Frisky Bits before Waiver made a first use of his web spell to ensnare Tarnesh.
Further north, some fishermen handed over a bowl before the party looked into an ankheg nest. Command works automatically on them, so they're an easy source of XP. That's doubly so given the ability to use spirits to tank them. That can be done as follows:
- summon spirits just out of sight of the ankheg (using stealth to scout if necessary).
- move the shaman back behind the spirits (wait until the text shows a dancing check, pause the game, move, start dancing again before the next check - checks are done once a round).
- activate the ankheg by letting it see another character and retreat to cause the ankheg to move forward slightly, activating at least one spirit.
- move the shaman back forward using the same technique (the spirits won't attack in melee unless they're a bit closer to the shaman than sight range limit).
Further north still, Tenya was given her bowl back. However, as she tried to teleport away she was commanded to die. That wouldn't stop her teleporting in itself, but the automatic hits from everyone did the job.
It was about time to save, but I thought I'd just complete the northern journey by going to get Dushai's ring. She proved very resistant to charm though and I had failed with at least 30 attempts when I made a mistake and clicked to pickpocket her rather than activating Algernon's cloak.
Sky, shaman L3, 29 HPs, 13 kills
Cuwaert, barbarian, L4, 31 HPs, 11 kills, 0 deaths
Star, swashbuckler, L4, 25 HPs, 14 kills, 0 deaths
Frisky Bits, cleric/illusionist, L3/2, 19 HPs, 9 kills, 1 death
Waiver, avenger, L4, 26 HPs, 16 kills, 0 deaths
Falesia, priest of Lathander, L4, 26 HPs, 17 kills, 0 deaths
Part 1: Baldur's Gate
I've started up the simultaneous party run and went ahead and made Frisky Bits the cleric/illusionist our Charname on the grounds that it's the safest class defensively. Since I dislike BG1 portraits almost without exception, I've picked a different portrait for Cuwaert the drunken Barbarian and chose @Enuhal's Stalker over the Avenger. Since I don't have a portrait for the Stalker and didn't want to make a portrait, I just looked up the Stalker's name (apparently it's a World of Warcraft character or something) and chose the most color-appropriate portrait I had, which happened to be a dumb-looking smiley face I drew a long time ago.
Worse yet, for RP reasons, Cuwaert the Barbarian is supposed to fight entirely with his fists, which means he won't get specialization bonuses, he will only deal nonlethal damage, he will deal very little damage, he won't be able to hit critters immune to normal weapons until we learn Enchanted Weapon (and even then he can't reach +4), and everything that attacks him will get +4 to hit and damage against him. He's pretty much dead weight.
Fortunately, this is a lighter SCS install with less pre-buffing and I won't be installing the tougher SCS stuff in BG2, unless someone else does first. My install is modeled on the previous ones. My WeiDU log is here:
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Initialise mod (all other components require this): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1910 // Protection from Normal Missiles also blocks Arrows of Fire/Cold/Acid and similar projectiles without pluses: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // More consistent Breach spell (always affects liches and rakshasas; doesn't penetrate Spell Turning): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2020 // Antimagic attacks penetrate improved invisibility: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2110 // Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at 1.5 x their level (not twice their level): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2120 // Slightly weaken insect plague spells, and let fire shields block them: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2150 // Make spell sequencers, spell triggers, and contingencies learnable by all mages: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3030 // Re-introduce potions of extra-healing: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4010 // Grant large, flying, non-solid or similar creatures protection from Web and Entangle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5020 // Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages -> Mages cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests -> Priests cast some short-duration spells instantly at start of combat, to simulate pre-battle casting: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6102 // Potions for NPCs -> Half the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v31
// Recently Uninstalled: ~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2030 // Iron Skins behaves like Stoneskin (can be brought down by Breach): v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5020 // Remove the blur graphic effect from the Cloak of Displacement: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6031 // Smarter Mages -> Mages only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6041 // Smarter Priests -> Priests only cast short-duration spells instantly at start of combat if they are created in sight of the PC: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6103 // Potions for NPCs -> Two thirds of the potions dropped by slain enemies break and are lost: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly harder carrion crawlers: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Dark Side-based kobold upgrade: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity party: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v31
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v31
~BETTERENCHANTEDWEAPON/BETTERENCHANTEDWEAPON.TP2~ #0 #0 // Better Enchanted Weapon: 1.0