Arriving in Baldur's Gate, the party dodged Elminster on the way to get the dexterity tome. After some deliberation I decided to give that to Falesia to benefit her AC. Star will ultimately get more skill points than necessary and using Kiel's buckler to push up dexterity is currently already giving him 100 in set traps and find traps.
The first action in the City was to deal with some mages at Sorcerous Sundries - they all died from the combination of a fireball and holy smite before a spirit fire reached them.
Next was the poison quest. As usual I killed Jalantha immediately after talking to her.
In this case she was petrified by a chromatic orb, but I've got gore turned off in the game options at the moment, meaning that items carried are not destroyed. Shortly after that Lothander provided a second pair of boots of speed and Marek a shortbow upgrade (given the enormous quantity of magical arrows picked up during the run, Sky switched to using shortbows at this point).
Next they started systematically working through all encounters in the City - sometimes using invisibility to avoid any potential problems.
Before doing the reputation quests though they had a bone to pick with Elminster - gaining another 26k there.
They also went back to the FAI, but that version of him had disappeared. A few donations and some questing later and reputation was back to 20.
The Mountain Maulers managed to charm Cuwaert (who had forgotten to rage) and got a backstab in on Frisky Bits, but otherwise went down easily.
Most enemies didn't even manage that much and Star got the group's final BG1 level while dealing with Degrodel's guards.
They picked up the wand of polymorphing from Voltine to add to their wand collection - with malison and doom that's got a decent chance of affecting most enemies.
With everything else done they sneaked into the Iron Throne and unleashed a salvo of various area damage effects. That killed several of the enemies before the follow-up skeletons went in. One of the Shennara's bypassed them though and gave Frisky Bits a nasty backstab before failing to save against a command. The skeletons lasted long enough to take down everyone except Gardush - he can easily be run around, but had actually broken his weapon anyway so was no threat.
Arriving at Candlekeep the party immediately scattered to reduce the potential impact of area effect spells. Falesia downed one ogre mage with a command and Waiver petrified another with chromatic orb, while Star used dispelling arrows for the first time to debuff a third. Frisky Bits was hit with a magic missile, but the fourth was also then commanded and failed to get another spell off. There is a 5th one, but as usual it wouldn't come out to play even in response to detect illusion (I think perhaps it gets through the wall into the keep somewhere).
I cleared the dopplegangers in Candlekeep, but didn't bother fully looting before going to find the Iron Throne leaders.
There were no alarms in the catacombs - Sky grabbed the strength tome for himself to give his standard strength the big boost from 18 to 19. One note of interest was that Falesia used her hold undead special ability for the first time there (she's still not used the Boon of Lathander at all though).
For the fight with Prat I didn't bother with summons, but just put in a few webs to discourage them. That caused a bit of a problem when hordes of spiders tried to intervene and I made one use of a wand of heavens I hadn't intended to.
I also noted an interesting point durin g that fight when a petrified phase spider continued teleporting around.
After all that I did in fact summon a couple of skeletons in order to kill the basilisks on the way out.
Back in the City Duke Eltan was rescued
and Cythandria seen off.
Slythe got in a couple of backstabs, but only on bony skeletons.
Krystin battled the skeletons for a while before disappearing by script and going all the way to the entrance to find the party - successfully avoiding detect illusions on the way. She again disappeared there after attacking, but this time her next spell was too slow and was interrupted by a chromatic orb. Once more she disappeared, but I was fed up with her apparent use of the Staff of the Magi by now and sent a couple of heavenly blasts to nearly kill her when she reappeared. That didn't stop her completing a chaos spell, but she then died before she could disappear again.
I found at that point that my reputation had dropped to 4. The last time I used area damage spells was in the Flaming Fist HQ, so I guess there must have been some innocents among the attackers there. As I bought all the important things long ago I coughed up about 16k gold in donations to push that back to 18.
The next event could be the palace, but I'm minded to complete the TotSC content first.
Illasera is even simpler than I thought. We throw her across the map using Smite, and while she's immune to the stun effect, Espellier and her clone have the damage output to slay her in a few seconds.
In the first Pocket Plane trial, we escape Irenicus' Time Stop by fleeing to the southeast and hiding. When it ends, we pepper Bodhi with the Firetooth crossbow and then turn around to stun Irenicus with Smite before he can cause any more mischief.
Irenicus dies to ranged attacks from our clone and we tank Sarevok when Bodhi falls.
Our ability to get guaranteed stuns on enemy mages and crank our damage resistance up to 85% makes most of Saradush fairly simple. For Gromnir, we enter under invisibility and run from Gromnir while I ponder our options. When the two mages begin cast Conjuration spells, I see an opportunity: Karun the Black has just clouded his aura and can now be shot down.
When the other mage begins casting an Alteration spell, we drink a Potion of Invisibility in case we need to survive a Time Stop, then summon a clone to use as a decoy so Espellier can safely use ranged attacks in the small, crowded battlefield.
Our clone eventually dies, but in the end, we find that Espellier is capable of tanking the enemy fairly well on her own, and use a Potion of Invisibility and Arrow of Dispelling to wait out a PFMW spell and then debuff the enemy mage. Gromnir is helpless once he's on his own.
Archers are surprisingly good at tanking in ToB. Their inability to use metal armor makes their AC much worse, but their access to Armor of Faith dramatically improves their physical damage resistance. We can trample the fire giants easily, though I still avoid fighting the dragon Brimstone, preferring instead to steal the two hearts and running away.
Nyalee is still erroneously immune to physical damage when using her Earth Elemental form, but we can still deal scratch damage using the Flail of Ages, and eventually she reverts to human form for some reason, allowing us to finish her off with physical damage.
Yaga-Shura doesn't last more than a single round. All we have to do is summon a clone, go invisible, cast Improved Haste via the Improved Cloak of Protection +2, use Called Shot twice, and then fire away with the Crimson Dart for 8-9 APR each, draining 2 STR per hit.
I run away from Draconis after he casts Time Stop, and his demons erroneously target him, saving me the trouble of waiting for an opportunity to fire an Arrow of Dispelling or something to take him down.
We don't have to worry about Draconis' Fallen Planetar; Draconis' Death Field spell kills all summons, including his own celestial, the moment he transforms to dragon form. We remove his defenses with an Arrow of Dispelling, but ultimately it's Called Shot that brings him down.
Anadramatis Breaches us with a Wish spell, but it's little trouble. The dragon can deal a modest amount of damage with its breath weapon...
...but Anadramatis is bugged to fight with a nonmagical weapon, so the fight doesn't require any special attention. I opt not to kill Anadramatis with Called Shot, since doing so would prevent the pre-death dialog.
Now we have to deal with the quadruple dragon ambush. The black dragons are surprisingly easy; they just can't get past our 85% damage resistance and Rod of Resurrection charges.
But I don't want to burn all of my Rod of Resurrection charges, so I flee the area to recharge our first rod (we have three) before returning to slay the second dragon.
The third dragon, Ithy'nassendra, has a poison breath weapon that's useless against Espellier due to the Ring of Gaxx, but the dragon still spams a lot of Heal spells that I find kind of annoying. I use Called Shot to land an earlier kill. Note that it wasn't this simple; we had to do some running and re-buffing when Ithy'nassendra dispelled our defenses. Carnifex falls to more Called Shots (we have many castings).
That was considerably easier than I thought; Called Shot really breaks the difficulty when dealing with enemies who don't need to deliver a dying dialog line to advance the plot. We use STR drain to kill the Tyrant Golems, who otherwise take ages to kill due to their innate 95% damage resistances.
Done! We delegate a fetch quest to Bondari the Reloader, and the Bronze Pantalettes are ours. We finally can forge the Bit Metal Unit and Scorcher Ammunition, as well as the Pulse Ammunition and Frag Grenades if I need a different projectile.
Now the game is truly broken. Since the Scorcher Ammunition strikes twice and can be combined with the Firetooth crossbow as well as all of our various damage bonuses, we can deal massive area-effect piercing damage with every hit at an effective base APR of 10, or 20 when we have Improved Haste active. The only disadvantage is that it strikes as a +1 weapon, so we can only affect certain enemies with it by using another enemy as a target and dragging the stream of fire across our intended target.
We shred everything in Sendai's lair within seconds, even Odamaron. A Protection from Undead scroll means he can take no action to defend himself.
We kill Ogremoch with lots of Greater Whirlwind Attacks with Firetooth (in retrospect, Called Shot would have been faster if we had just used the Crimson Dart) and then shred Sendai with the Scorcher Ammunition.
Once we kill Captain Egeissag, we get the Bowstring of Gond and can upgrade Firetooth to a +5 weapon, giving us another +1 damage and a now-meaningless THAC0 bonus as well.
Before the mind flayer area, we drink a few dozen Potions of Genius, but the Scorcher Ammunition kills the enemies so fast we never even get hit.
Next, we have to deal with Sendai. Normally the numerous drow warriors can apply heavy damage, but we should be able to wipe them out with the Scorcher Ammunition.
For safety's sake, I let our clone do most of the work against Sendai and the drow, leaving Espellier to hide under invisibility to the east.
Bear in mind that we're dealing over 400 damage with Improved Haste, and we're dealing it to every enemy we catch within the stream of fire--and that's not counting the fire damage, which is nonmagical and therefore goes right through the drow's MR. Our clone deals almost as much damage as Espellier herself.
Eventually, the real Sendai appears. I make a point of having our clone switch to other forms of ammunition, since the Scorcher Ammunition is party-unfriendly and could seriously injure or kill Espellier if we wander into the stream--a particularly high risk considering Sendai teleports around the map, and the stream will follow her wherever she goes. Instead, I only have Espellier herself use the Scorcher Ammunition, while the clone contributes with conventional projectiles.
Sendai can't really do anything to us; our saves are too strong and she doesn't use Maze spells, as far as I know (we're not entering melee range anyway). Her spells are useless to threaten us, and eventually her defensive spells wear off, too, opening her up for an Arrow of Dispelling.
Our obscene damage output allows us to quickly wipe out the drakes and slay all three copies of Tamah with absolutely no trouble at all. The hitstun alone makes it almost impossible for the dragons to approach us or make attack rolls.
For some reason, Abazigal doesn't hassle us much while we're butchering his three wives, but we provoked him enough to prompt his PFMW Contingency, which means he's perfectly vulnerable to an Arrow of Dispelling when we finally head over to engage him.
This isn't to remove his Stoneskins; it's to remove his Improved Haste effect, which would amplify his damage output and also make it much harder to out run him. Without it, we can keep him effectively stun-locked through hitstun alone. In fact, we hit him so many times that we even hit the 1-frame window we need to disrupt his instantaneous spellcasting!
Abazigal hits us with Ruby Ray of Reversal, robbing us of our Spell Turning effect. But we can still use Potions of Magic Protection to block a fatal Maze spell, and we're dealing so much damage that Abazigal doesn't even get a chance to make the attempt before we put him down.
We use the Bit Metal Unit to gain immunity to the Chosen of Cyric's backstabs, then head to Amkethran to meet with Balthazar. We have finally hit level 50, where the normal level cap for a ranger would be 34.
We're never going to use all those extra HLAs, and the extra 48 HP doesn't even matter. Even when we suffer massive damage by accidentally wandering into an invisible Scorcher Ammunition stream from an offscreen clone, we still survive by far more than 48 HP.
Unlucky rolls from the fire damage could have killed us, though, if we had gotten much worse luck at level 34. It's a grim reminder that the Scorcher Ammunition could kill us in less than a second if we don't have complete control over the stream--which means we can't let our clone use the Scorcher Ammunition unless we're absolutely certain that we're not going to get caught off-guard.
Espellier is Chaotic Good and has 20 reputation and Charisma with the Ring of Human Influence and Blade of Roses, as well as 18 Wisdom from a Potion of Insight, so we have no trouble convincing Balthazar to join us against Melissan.
I originally planned on using the Scorcher Ammunition on the Bone Blades to kill the Ravager, but I open with Vhailor's Helm and have our clone tank him with the Defender of Easthaven and Crom Faeyr while Espellier lobs rocks from the Sling of Everard. Turns out that's plenty sufficient to bring down the Ravager. Notice the magic damage from the Hand of Murder spell, which we got by picking the evil-aligned responses when speaking the Solar at the right times.
Arriving at Ulgoth's Beard the party went invisibly to talk to Shandalar and get sent to Ice Island. Star started off by going through there invisibly to remove all the traps. The mages then died easily enough - netting Frisky Bits a remove magic and stoneskin for her repertoire. The stoneskin is particularly useful as SCS enemies routinely target her, so stoneskin provides a way to encourage a backstabber to show himself safely. I set traps for Shandalar as he was teleporting away, but failed to do too much damage to him and he disappeared.
Next they obtained some sea charts and set sail for Balduran's Isle. After reporting to Kaishas Gan they went to clear the beasts from the other side of the island - using up some of the multitude of magic ammunition brought for the purpose. The creatures in the first 2 levels of the ship were led outside into a skeleton ambush. After a rest the same sort of thing was done for the third and fourth level. Weapons were not used against the greater werewolf, but it got wand attacks. The first round of 2 magic missiles, a frost blast and 3 heavenly blasts hurt it badly. Fast regeneration had it back up to slightly wounded in a round, but another set of blasts took it to 5 HPs. I thought it would go down in the 3rd round, but in fact there was still a magic missile on the way from the second round and that proved to be enough.
After talking with Kaishas I knew it wasn't possible to rest much as lychanthropy would kick in, so I cleared the island using up quite a bit of my hoarded magical ammunition. It was more difficult to do that without taking damage going through the narrow passages in the maze and I brought out a nymph to help heal up a bit before exiting. After killing the nymph I exited and produced a skeleton army and made Cuwaert and Star (who have less magic damage capability) invisible.
I tried to resolve the situation peacefully with Kaishas, but unsurprisingly she seemed determined to fight. With skeletons blocking her and invisible characters preventing wolfwere reinforcements arriving there should have been plenty of time to take her down even if she got lucky. However, she got unlucky instead - the first 3 attacks all bypassing her magic resistance were sufficient to finish her off.
Back on the mainland Mendas was far luckier. He managed to catch 2 of the party in an emotion and they sat out the whole combat while Mendas resisted many wand attacks. Eventually they recovered just seconds before Mendas was finally burnt up.
That still left the rest of Durlag's Tower and after sorting out inventory they travelled there. The skeleton archers near the ashirukuru provided more magic arrows before the greater wyverns failed to get past invisible blockers. For the elemental rooms:
- the winter wolves in the cold area were pulled back outside, while Cuwaert tanked Kaldron with his rage.
- in the air area the Air Aspect was doing better than I hoped against Cuwaert and Falesia, but Sky pulled out a big critical to avoid having to try and make a run for it. The invisible stalkers revealed themselves to a skeleton and were webbed.
- the Phoenix guards fell to buffed skeletons.
- I killed the fission slime with fire arrows. However, the chessboard fight did not trigger even when I revisited the other areas. Loading the save I killed the slime again with pure fire damage, but that made no apparent difference.
I know this transition has always been troublesome and that's even more the case with SCS, so I decided to use the console to travel to the chessboard. I hadn't appreciated (though I should have done) that would put them immediately in sight of the opposition. A well-judged round of fireballs killed most of the attackers, but I also hadn't appreciated (though again perhaps should have done) that in this fight the opposition would all target the PC (as the king), rather than one of the weaker characters as normal for SCS. I assume I could have avoided that by Sky taking an invisibility potion immediately on arrival, but as it was he took rapid damage from a knight in melee and two rooks firing arrows. One of the rooks was finished off almost immediately by missile fire, but there was no chance of killing the others before they got further attacks - which would probably kill Sky before his aura cleared and he could go invisible. In desperation I tried to shuffle other characters round to at least give Sky a chance of avoiding melee attacks. I knew that was dangerous, though it wasn't at all obvious how the game would treat movement as on arrival half the party were placed on the lines between squares and I didn't know which were supposed to be which chess pieces. I thus wasn't sure in which direction (if any) movement might be allowed, but it quickly became apparent that this was not going to be a lucky day as one bolt of lightning came directly at Sky and took a few more HPs away (I would guess his own movement triggered that one). Further bolts were on the way triggered by others and may have killed him, though that could also have been the result of the rook's shots. As a consolation, there was just time during the production of the end screen for Frisky Bits to kill the opposing king - so I guess we could put that contest down as a stalemate .
I'm not really sure where to go next, so I just start doing random quests for reputation. We go see Farmer Brun and turn in his son's body, which I had stashed in a chest in his house from clearing the ankheg nest earlier. Traveling to return Tenya's bowl, we're waylaid by Lamalha and her assassins.
Star charms Telka with Algernon's Cloak. Frisky Bits zaps Zeela with wand of lightning. Star shoots Zeela, canceling her spell. Maneira backstabs Frisky Bits but doesn't kill them. Star shoots Zeela again using kobold poison arrows, and Zeela dies from poison. Waiver stuns Lamalha with chromatic orb, after which everyone targets her, and she goes down quickly. Frisky Bits has been kiting Maneira, who changes target to a spirit snake. Frisky Bits turns around and blinds her. Cuwaert charges in with Rancor, and everyone else shoots her. Sky heals Frisky Bits just in case, then Telka is held and killed.
Frisky Bits was the only one to take damage. It does worry me though, as Star has no helmet and could easily be killed with a critical backstab. I had considered having Frisky Bits cast invisibility on Star when the fight started to avoid this.
We turn in the bowl to Tenya, which levels both Waiver and Star to 6 (2 traps!). We retrieve Melicamp and head to High Hedge. Melicamp dies. Landrin's spiders are slept. Snares are set around Silke. Her rapid demise levels Sky to 5. I remember to turn in Bjornin's half-ogres. Back to the FAI to to see Landrin.
Zargal, Malkax, and Geltik are webbed out of sight and killed. Bassilus is silenced, but I mess up the line of sight and don't get web off. He's held the next round, and we make short work of him. Before heading back to Beregost, we return Brage to Nashkel and tell Oublek the truth. We make a quick stop at the Dryad Falls to kill Caldo and Krumm then return to the temple for the reward from Basillus, reaching 20 reputation. Having no more use for Kelddath, he is killed.
At the Jovial Juggler, Cuwaert gets smashed before we all rent a room for the night.
Condolences, @Grond0. I've always been impressed with your gameplay--there are so many things I'd never dare to do in BG1, which you seem to find effortless. I'm sad to see Sky fall, but it was truly a glorious run while it lasted--and it lasted quite some time!
When we arrive at the Throne, we scurry away to the north and manage to avoid a Remove Magic spell from a Fallen Solar. Balthazar keeps most of the enemies occupied while Bodhi chases after us, only for the vampire to fall to the Sling of Everard. The sling does less damage than the Firetooth crossbow, but it also lets us keep the Shield of Reflection equipped and ward off any of the Fallen Solars' +5 Arrows of Dispelling.
By now, I've finally learned to use the Rod of Resurrection on Balthazar. We can heal 300 points of damage on him from across the map, and we have 30 charges between our three fully-charged Rods of Resurrection.
We head back down south to help out Balthazar. We lose our dispellable buffs, but we bring down one of the Fallen Solars with the Sling of Everard.
I stay on the move to avoid Irenicus' Magical Swords, healing Balthazar from afar with the Rod of Resurrection and lobbing rocks at the second Fallen Solar. Balthazar hits the 1-frame window for disrupting one of the Fallen Solar's spells (probably a Heal spell!), another very lucky strike.
But our luck doesn't last long. Apparently Balthazar is not immune to vorpal strikes, nor are his saving throws quite good enough to shrug off a fatal blow from the Fallen Solar.
We finish it off sooner after, but Balthazar's death is a pretty bad loss. He was a really valuable tank for us.
At any rate, the first phase is over; Irenicus is easy to bring down now that he's on his own.
Now we have to deal with the energy pools. We get a scary message when a Balor lands an Implosion spell--6 seconds of paralysis with no saving throw, bypassing magic resistance if not spell protections--but fortunately, our clone was the target; not Espellier herself.
Still, we have 85% damage resistance fully buffed and the saving throws to ward off any instant-death effects, or pretty much any on-hit effects at all, so even 6 seconds of vulnerability wouldn't matter much. We shred all the demons with the Scorcher Ammunition. We end the last of the fights with a nice critical hit.
I use the multiple rests to restore our buffs, summon a few copies of Kitty, and use Vhailor's Helm. Before I summon a clone, though, I equip the Big Metal Unit, then remove it before I start the fight. The Big Metal Unit is a huge boon for our HP, but it increases our circle size and makes it harder for us to move around, which could impede kiting and potentially get us stuck. Our clone needs the AC to improve its survivability, but Espellier needs free movement so we can kite effectively.
We've saved both of our Protection from Magic scrolls over the course of the run and can therefore nail both Abazigal and Sendai with the scrolls, shutting down both spellcasters.
Better still, we still have all of our Control Circlets from the mind flayer city, and can charm Sarevok as well.
That's two deadly spellcasters neutralized to melee fighters (one of which isn't even any good) and one fighter converted to our side. And when our clone uses Power Attack and hits Illasera with the Pulse Ammunition, we don't have to worry about dispelling arrows, either. Plus, Espellier herself is dealing very rapid damage with the Scorcher Ammunition.
Unfortunately, our clone eventually disappears. But even then, we're making excellent progress, and the enemy can't touch us; none of them is fast enough to catch up to us.
We finish off Illasera, prompting Melissan's arrival. I double check our buffs and have to spend our aura refreshing Hardiness so we can switch to the Defender of Easthaven and hit 85% damage resistance if Melissan begins casting Time Stop.
But Melissan doesn't have time to cast it before we slay Abazigal, knocking her down. She gets up and teleports over to us, only to get knocked down against when we kill Gromnir.
Melissan wastes her next round casting Storm of Vengeance. We activate Power Attack and target Yaga-Shura with the Scorcher Ammunition, stunning Melissan inside the stream.
But in my zeal to stun Melissan, I bring Yaga-Shura close to death, and I don't consider to heal him with the Rod of Resurrection so we can use him as a target to kill Melissan with STR drain via Called Shot. Yaga-Shura goes down, Melissan heals herself, and she casts Absolute Immunity right before we had a chance to nail her with Smite.
It doesn't occur to me to summon a new Kitthix, berserker, or Efreeti, any of which could serve as a target to keep stunning Melissan until Absolute Immunity wore off. Instead, we have our clone tank Melissan while Espellier strikes from afar... only to discover that Melissan can land an early kill on our clone via fire damage.
We run around until Absolute Immunity wears off, at which point we can nail Melissan with Smite, knocking her across the map to the southeast. But to my frustration, her script ignores the stun effect and allows us to cast not only Pierce Shield (a non-issue) but Absolute Immunity (a real issue) within the same round.
Melissan has a +6 bonus to casting time, so there's no way her aura was clear when she finished casting that Pierce Shield.
Worse yet, Melissan teleports over to us and locks us in place, another irritating example of the teleportation bug. She's standing right on top of us, and now we can't move.
This would justify a CTRL-J to escape... but we don't actually need to escape. We can work within this bug at almost no cost, so I decide to roll with it.
The fact is, an Archer has truly stupendous THAC0, and we can easily, easily hit her at point-blank range with any missile weapon. She's immune to +3 weapons and below, of course, so we can't use all of our options, but we can use the Firetooth crossbow, and a simple Power Attack stun-locks her.
I use another Power Attack and keep stunning her, eventually switching to the Flail of Ages +4. Hand of Murder unfortunately adds no damage to Espellier's melee attacks, since Melissan proves immunity to magical damage, but we can still disrupt the first spell she tries to cast after recovering from the stun effect.
But we still have plenty of Hardiness and Armor of Faith spells, which means we can tank Melissan for tens of rounds... and then tens of rounds more... and then tens of rounds after that.
But Melissan doesn't have enough HP left to last even a fraction of that. Still well-buffed and with lots of resources to spare, Espellier activates Greater Whirlwind Attack to land the killing blow, and finally the Solar intervenes. Espellier chooses mortality.
The battle is won! Throne of Bhaal is over! One solo no-reload Archer run, complete.
By the time we got the Scorcher Ammunition, the game was pretty much won; I picked a class that was very, very well-suited to ToB combat. We didn't even need level 50; I never ended up using all those extra HLAs. The Scorcher Ammunition meant that we didn't even need to use Called Shot to kill Melissan with the Firetooth crossbow or Darts +5 from the Cloak of Stars, much less resort to late-stage kiting with the Sling of Everard. The game was broken three times over: once by the sheer power of a high-level ranger, twice by Called Shot, and a third time by the Scorcher Ammunition.
Still, I'm quite pleased with how this run turned out, despite one or two stupid mistakes in SoA. This is the first solo no-reload run that involved no spellcaster levels or rage immunities. That was no handicap at all in ToB, but it did make BG1, SoD, and early SoA significantly more complicated.
Another impressive achievement @semiticgod - it seems like you can pull off solo SCS/Ascension runs almost at will by now, while I struggle doing the same thing with a full party at my disposal. Any chance you might up the challenge by trying your hand at a single-class divine spellcaster soon?
Also, while I'm flattered about being mentioned as a contributor of insights for this run, I am a bit surprised, as I can't remember contributing any potentially new insight since the Belhifet research I did for my LoB run 1,5 years ago
@Enuhal: That Belhifet research would be it, plus some scattered, non-specific pieces of advice I remember you giving us on other parts of SoD. You were one of the early sources of metagame knowledge on SoD back when it was still poorly understood.
I don't think I'll be working with any single-classed divine spellcasters. Historically, the only ones I've enjoyed are druids, and they're not going to beat Ascension no-reload without that mod that lets them equip the Shield of Reflection--and even then, I'm not sure I'd find them as interesting as mages or as fast-paced as warriors.
Another impressive achievement @semiticgod - it seems like you can pull off solo SCS/Ascension runs almost at will by now
Except when I die horribly to demons. Don't forget that I have a lot of failed runs as well--they just don't enjoy as much exposure in this thread because they're short-lived!
Mostly I follow the same narrow playbook for BG1 and SoD, neither of which I'm very familiar with compared to some other no-reloaders like @Grond0, and ToB is easy because I usually plan my runs around what strategies will make Melissan easy to handle. As for SoA, I can go for a more completionist route with weaker characters because I know SoA well enough to muddle through.
If I tried tackling Durlag's Tower, Balduran's Isle, Shandalar's quest thingy, Halatathlaer, the dead magic ambush in SoD, levels 3-5 of Watcher's Keep, or the EE NPC questlines besides Rasaad's, I'd be much more likely to lose a run, since those are dangerous but strictly optional challenges I have precious little experience with.
Unto the Circle Tower. I generally like this area quite a bit, even the much-maligned fade sequence. First, we pick up Wynne - now, our team is complete. She will try to get forcefield as soon as possible and some aggressive spells later on. The early parts of the tower are relatively easy, though summoning sciences can take a bit of time (especially if you like going for the hidden Lord Foreshadow cameo, as my completionist self is want to do). The first truly dangerous battle is against the desire demon protected by charmed templars, as these guys have access to holy smite, which is super-dangerous to both Wynne and Valeria. In fact, Valeria gets hit by holy smite right away, getting knocked down and hit a couple of times in the process. She falls unconscious, but Wynne picks her back up with her spirit healer revive spell. Alistair, meanwhile, gets everyones attention and is protected by a forcefield:
A quick lyrium potion and some cone of cold spells later, and the battle is won. Now, we venture into the fade. We start by getting access to the burning man form, following up with the arcane spirit and the golem before venturing into "Mage Asunder", the area full of hostile mages where my last run failed. My approach: Valeria stays in her original form, not using any fade transformations, in order to protect herself with spell shield. Spell shield offers 70% spell resistance, which stacks with items - and we already have the Spellward, which has 30% - so we get full immunity as long as we have any mana left. This is a very secure approach, and we can also include anti-magic ward for a 10 second immunity without having to check our mana levels if needed. In fact, thanks to these precautions, nothing notable happens - we do absorb a few fireballs that could've been lethal, but Valeria is able to always keep up the spell shield.
In the end, we take down the four fade demons - spell shield is also very helpful against the desire demon. Her dangerous cone of cold spell does nothing, other cc such as horror gets blocked as well:
Now, we can gather our party and take down the sloth demon, which isn't much of a problem with our anti-magic abilities and healing spells:
If I'd train Wynne to get the same spells, we could grant our entire party magic immunity for 10 seconds, but I feel that this isn't really neccessary - as long as Valeria can stay protected, we should usually be fine against mages. Having escaped from the fade, we take down another group of templars (this time without anyone getting knocked out) and challenge Uldred - which turns out to be not all that difficult:
That animation you're seeing here is a paralyze effect. How did I manage to paralyze a boss-rank enemy? Well, it seems like runes of paralyzation don't allow for a resistance check, and Leliana is using one in one of her daggers. Of course, they have only a very low chance to trigger, but I find them to be very helpful.
Having saved the circle, we make our way to Redcliffe. Sidequests are completed and the town is protected against the undead attack (super easy at this point, our healing abilities allow us to keep every NPC alive). We invade the castle and save Connor by calling on the mages for help. Valeria defeats another desire demon in a fade duel thanks to spell shield. All of that went fairly well, nothing too interesting going on. By now, we're starting to put points towards Mana Clash, the ultimate mage-killer. Basically, it destroys any normal and elite mages instantly and does huge damage to bosses (though it often gets resisted against those). The downside: The first three spells in that tree are pretty much useless (only spell might is decent for pre-buffing), so we won't be expanding our toolset for a while. With Alistair getting more and more strength, it's time to sell and rebuy the King Cailan armor set to get it to rank 7 - not for Alistair, but for Valeria, improving her armor even further. Instead, Alistair now gets to use the blood dragon armor.
The Dalish camp is our next stop, and we have some fun exploring the forest. Revenants are easy to deal with thanks to the very reliable damage done by Final Reason and the healing power of Wynne and Valeria. Spellshield and a well-placed fireball allows for a quick group of a potentially dangerous battle against the cabal of maleficarum:
Making our way down into the ruins (after helping the poet-tree), we face our first dragon (not a high dragon, so not especially challenging):
We use mind blast on our mages and Valeria's high armor stat to avoid problems against the shadow werewolves downstairs and decide to battle against Zathrian, who uses a bunch of dangerous AoE spells such as blizzard, chain lightning and the like. Wynne gets knocked out, but Valeria uses her spellshield to remain in combat, allowing her to heal up Alistair and Leliana, who are able to dish out enough damage to take down the keeper:
Finishing this quest finally provides us with enough experience to get access to Mana Clash. Mages, beware!
Next time, we're going to take on not one, but TWO high dragons (though not at the same time).
So, uh, I've got more stuff to post. There's also a solo Fighter/Mage/Cleric I want to share. Our Charname this time is Viora!
The deal with this run is, we're working with a stronger class than an Archer, so we're going to avoid some of the tricks and exploits that made things easier for my old Archer.
Start of the game is standard solo stuff: kill Montaron and Xzar for their gear (Command prevents Monty from drinking his Oil of Speed), kite Shoal, Command the Beregost spiders (since we're not going to kill Algernon for his cloak and therefore can't charm Silke into handling them for us), clear Mutamin's Garden (this time without Korax's help since we can cast Protection from Petrification, though we stop short of fighting Mutamin), and hunt ankhegs with Command. After a few brief quests to collect resources and raise our reputation, we head back to Mutamin's Garden and have Korax eat Mutamin with the help of our skeletons.
Once we get a few levels and some better gear and new spells, we're ready to handle bigger challenges like Bassilus, who fails a save against Silence 15' Radius, paving the way for some Wand of Fire charges to burn him down.
Sanctuary lets us slip past the kobolds and Mulahey also fails a save against Silence 15' Radius. Nimbul is a little more troublesome due to his MGOI, but we manage to get past it with a Wand of Paralyzation charge.
More basic enemies can be handled using Blindness and Command.
I kite Tazok once I go invisible and wait out his Oil of Speed, but most big fights need to be dealt with conventionally. I don't want to just burgle the bandit camp; we're going to destroy the place and kill everyone in it. We enter the main tent with a whole bunch of buffs, notably the Greenstone Amulet and Protection from Fire, and blast everyone with the Wand of Fire.
Venkt manages to survive long enough to hit us with Blindness, but we can still find him and finish him off with an Aganazzar's Scorcher charge.
Finishing the rest of the bandit camp while blinded is not wise, so we leave the map and come back later. The outside enemies aren't as deadly when you can kill large groups of them within moments. Taurgosz weathers the storm, but he can't survive long when he's paralyzed.
No Algernon's Cloak means no charm shenanigans to screw with Drasus and company. We still have a Dire Charm spell, which keeps most of the enemies busy while Drasus chases us to the west until we escape under Invisibility.
That Invisibility, and then a Sanctuary spell after Rezdan casts Detect Invisibility, lets us spy on Genthore, who remains on our side long after Dire Charm would have worn off... presumably because the enemy charmed him back, and when that wore off, he stayed on our side indefinitely. Turns out Rezdan runs out of spells before Genthore runs out of HP.
I flee the area under Invisibility and try to nail Drasus with the Wand of Paralyzation after we get back, but when I see him fail a save but not get stunned, I realize his rage immunities are blocking the wand. And unlike a regular Berserker, Drasus can cast Enrage an infinite number of times and restore it every 10 rounds; there's no 5-round fatigue period where he can't re-use it. That amounts to perpetual immunity to all disablers save for Web (which isn't safe for us to cast given we have no source of Free Action!).
But those immunities only trigger after he casts Enrage, and he only does that when he sees an enemy. That means we can approach him from invisibility, use the Wand of Paralyzation before he gets rage immunities, and run away if it doesn't work. After all, we can cast Invisibility whenever we want (or just flee the area, really). It doesn't take long before it makes contact.
I can do the same thing to Genthore, but instead of the Wand of Paralyzation, I use Dire Charm and use him against Kysus. Unfortunately, Kysus uses Evocation spells more than Enchantment spells, and those are much more efficient.
But now Kysus is low on spells, and when his Improved Invisibility effect wears off, he's much more susceptible to a Wand of Paralyzation.
I sneak through the Cloakwood mines and dispatch the last guard and the twin Battle Horrors over a couple of rests to save money on potions. For Davaeorn himself, we won't have the APR to handle him just using Potions of Magic Blocking and we really need to use Oils of Speed and stuff, which Potions of Magic Blocking would dispel, so instead, I use a Protection from Magic scroll on Viora.
All of Davaeorn's spells are useless against us, though I discover that our own Wand of Fire spell can hurt us just fine.
With better positioning and targeting, however, we don't get burnt any more. The Wand of Fire burns down the guards and our war hammer eventually takes down Davaeorn.
We loot the Ulcaster ruins via Sanctuary and proceed to Baldur's Gate.
Before we face our next big challenge, Valeria hits level 14, allowing her to pick a second specialization. Spirit healer is my choice. Blood mage would be powerful, but having two spirit healers with not only group heal, but, more importantly, revive, provides us with much-needed safety for no-reload play. Of course, everyone else gets to the same level as well, so Leliana gets her assassin specialization, Alistair gets champion and Wynne, for some reason, arcane warrior - which turned out to be a mistake. My secondary mage doesn't need to be extra-tanky, in fact, the additional CC of a blood mage would've been much more welcome. Sadly, there's no way to respecc until Awakening. Shouldn't matter too much, though.
In any case, the first high dragon we challenge is Flemeth (in her dragon form). We have group heal in case the initial fire breath hits the entire party. After that, Alistair is going to turn Flemeth around, so only he should get hit. To protect him, we have heal, regeneration, and, if he gets grabbed, forcefield (high dragon grabs are basically 100% death without massive, almost impossible amounts of healing or forcefield). Watch as Alistair gets suspended in mid-air thanks to a well-timed defensive forcefield:
We're using Leliana as an archer for this one, as it is very easy to keep her from doing anything too stupid during a static encounter such as this, and getting close to Flemeth would cause her to get pushed back, take damage or even take a breath weapon hit - and I don't have a lot of greater warmth balms yet (I'm saving these for the second high dragon battle). In any case, nothing goes wrong, Alistair does the tanking, our physical damage staff hits do their thing and Flemeth is defeated:
Now, we make our way to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Haven has been cleared out earlier on, and the cultists don't stand much of a chance, as all of their mages instantly die to our mana clash, and they're not exactly the most dangerous physical combatants. We make sure to kill some drakes in order to get armor crafting options:
Kolgrim loses his mage to mana clash, his two friends get shattered and he doesn't stand a chance by himself:
Now, on to face the high dragon. For this one, we have four greater warmth balms at the ready and use them right away. Indeed, the party gets hit by one fire spit attack, which is countered by group heal. After that, we once again have to keep Alistair alive with force field and healing - the fight is very similiar to Flemeth:
After that, we make our way to the urn. No trouble here, although the annoying puzzle takes some time to solve. Now that Valeria has revive, we can take the time to level up some passives - the arcane bolt line, for example. Wand specialization will be super useful considering how much auto-attacking Wynne and Valeria do. Our next stop is Orzammar, where we start by joining Harrowmont, but we're going to betray him. We do a bunch of sidequests and proving battles, which are super easy thanks to our AoE-opener options:
Leliana gets knocked out for a second during the Jarvia battle due to running into a trap, but we have two spirit healers, so she's soon up and fighting again. After all the sidequests are done and before venturing too far ino the Deep Roads, we make a move towards Denerim to finish the Gaxkang-sidequest (yes, this is indeed a reference to Kangaxx). An initial mana clash doesn't get resisted and takes about half of Gaxkang's hp away:
Now, we just have to make sure Valeria keeps her spell shield active, allowing her to heal up the party in case anything goes wrong - no problem:
Next time, we will explore the Deep Roads - propably the most annoying part of the game for me, just because of how long and bland they are until you get to the whole broodmother thing.
Shall I go ahead and add another Hall for non-BG runs to @Ygramul's starting posts?
By all means, the regulars of this thread should feel free to edit those posts on page 1, that is why I vacated them. I am certain that this will be done intelligently and considerately.
I suggest not too much segregation between BG vs IWD/NWN runs, but some sorting is, of course, sensible.
After a torrid install on android (think multiple dialog.tlks & bugs that meant kit choices varied by gender) when I could get access to a computer I have finally started rolling with a nature oriented party based on the submitted characters. In the absence of the avenger my bhaalspawn is Cu'ran, a Druid/ Mage, a class I've always wanted to try, Enuhal's Stalker comes in for Cuewart, and since priests can't dual to ranger I'm using a Zealot kit from F&P that is effectively a Ranger with some Boons of Lathander. As such it's not quite a simultaneous run, but hopefully it will be a fun group - the first time I'll be playing without ingame npcs. They seem like a rather lightly armoured bunch who'll need to use plenty of summons and special abilities to make progress in their quests to cleanse Toril of impious litterers.
After heading to Beregost early on the group have so far gained a few thousand XP each with the aid of Korax & some luck with minor quests. Still getting used to the non-SR spell system and SCS v32's quirks. Currently they're rueing my decision to install Improved Bassilus and grimly watching him summon up Aerial Servants to talk to...
While Yin and Yang could easily defeat Irenicus and steamroll ToB individually, the Tale of Two Sorcerers is over due to my own lack of interest in continuing the run.
I've been thinking about doing a Rogue Rebalanced Bounty Hunter with Trap Overhaul and argent77's Trials of the Luremaster installed, or perhaps a no-reload run of Neverwinter Nights' OC. I know NWN like the back of my hand and a no-reload run of it would be far easier and far faster than BG.
Gus Slamrock's Radical Neverwinter Adventure
Part 1: Prelude
Neverwinter Nights. A game that I adore for its ahead-of-its-time multiplayer. The single player experience is underwhelming and enemy AI in this game is not particularly smart, preferring to "attack nearest" or "cast spells in most-to-least powerful order." As far as I know, there is no equivalent to SCS for NWN, although I'm sure there are custom modules out there that have good AI scripting.
Since I've played this game for so long that I don't need to use pausing anymore (since you're just controlling one character after all), I'll use some additional rules:
-No pausing (except for taking screenshots or for breaktime)
-No dying
-D&D Hardcore Rules difficulty
Here he is, Gus Slamrock: Dwarven Monk and future Fighter. Max HP rolls are on and his first feat is Blind Fight to effectively halve enemy concealment.
You'll notice that, instead of meat-bricks for hands, Gus has actual hands with fingers. This is thanks to Community Patch 1.71. And the environment is all prettied up by NWNCQ, which improves lighting and textures, though I still prefer to crop screenshots to save space. So let's get on with this.
With initial training out of the way, I kill all the weak goblins that have invaded the Neverwinter Academy for 20 XP a pop. There is no danger from them as they can only do 1 damage if they ever hit. I use the door-hop glitch to get behind the plot-locked gates that house magical creatures, hoping to kill them for serious XP gains, but they have plot-armor as well. Darn.
The door-hop glitch involves clicking behind a door so that your character attempts to move to the selected destination, and then using the WASD keys to "force" them through. The engine will stop the character's movement once they are about halfway through the door when a movement command that leads beyond the door is issued using the mouse. If you fail to do this correctly the first time, it gets harder to move through that door using this method until you back off a fair distance and try again. The faster the character is, the easier it is to perform this glitch, which allows Monks to do this the easiest, though that's not why I chose a Monk/Fighter for this run.
Moving on, I rest and then join up with Pavel. A tough goblin drops a mildly useful cloak.
I use the door-hop glitch again and dump Pavel to kill some more goblins, hoping to level up from them and then redeem the level from Geldar, though I rethink this and return, since I think Geldar will only give you your 2nd level. Gus gains his first Fighter level and Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike.
More gobbos and skellies are beaten when we finally encounter the mage who got away near the beginning of the invasion. I let Pavel go in first to absorb the mage's first spell, which is Magic Missile. It kills Pavel.
With his best spell expended, I try Stunning Fist on the mage. It crits but the mage makes a lucky save. A nearby skelly stumbles into an Attack of Opportunity and eats a monk fist, allowing Gus to kill the mage with a Cleave.
The rest of the goblins inside the Academy stables are killed and the 4 Macguffins Waterdhavian Creatures escape. Fenthick gives Gus his 3rd level.
Onto Chapter 1. I can barely contain my excitement at killing a hundred prisoners who want to carve me up and slit my throat.
I've added some IWD entries to the "Hall of Heroes of Icewind Dale" on the third post (I'm leaving the second one open for expansions to the BG Hall of Heroes). @Mantis37, do you have any information about your party makeup, mods, difficulty, or anything else I could add to the entry? The only link I've got is this one.
Are there any IWD entries I've missed? Let me know and I'll add them on. I'll add a separate hall for NWN and PST once we get an entry for either game.
I have potential entries for DWM, Morrowind, Skyrim, and Oblivion. Shall I create a hall (maybe call it the "Hall of Weirdos") for non-IE, non-D&D runs? If so, is DWM too unrelated to D&D to qualify? The TES games are at least RPGs; DWM is a Pokemon-style game.
Gus Slamrock's Tubular Neverwinter Adventure Part 2: Chapter 1, first half.
Previous updates: 1
The first half of Chapter 1 always bores me to tears, at least when playing alone. In the Hall of Justice and the sanatorium, there are 4 nurses that have a Challenge Rating equal to yourself when first entering Chapter 1, which makes killing them highly profitable XP-wise. The only consequence is a 5 point evil alignment shift each time you kill them - which means nothing to a monk. They're worth 960 easy XP total.
The Peninsula District is up first. Really boring; just killing prisoners. I fall back to the guards when I get too injured or if a half-orc prisoner approaches. Can't risk eating a x3 handaxe critical just yet. The area surrounding the Helmite shopkeeper is cleared, so I take on the Gang Leader alone, buffing with a Potion of Barkskin. I have to drink a couple of healing potions to stay afloat, but the XP reward is huge.
The Gang Leader down in the nearby sewers is also taken care of for an equally large XP profit. Another normal prisoner provides the last XP push to level 4.
I take the long way around into the prison via the Tanglebrook Estate, which lets me kill a pair of Stink Beetles and some Fire Beetles. Inside the prison, I become very aware that my AC is rather poor at only 17. I don't have enough money to buy better equipment and the drops from chests and enemies are lousy. I have to make due with the Potions of Cure Light Wounds the game keeps throwing my way.
The gang leader on the first level of the prison is dealt with by removing his goons first. The escaped sorcerer on the next level also has his help removed before being taken on. In an unusual display of intelligence the sorcerer buffs with Endure Elements after going invisible, then shoots a fireball at point blank range. Evasion takes care of it, though a Ray of Enfeeblement temporarily hinders Gus's fighting ability. The sorcerer tries another fireball but is killed just afterward.
The level is looted and I trade the spoils for Gloves of the Yellow Rose +2. Down into the Pits, it's more prisoner mooks. Another Gang Leader killed. A guard dog gives a nice XP boost to level 5.
Another nearby sorcerer is disabled with Stunning Fist and killed easily.
The leader of all the gang leaders in the prison is Kurdan Fenkt, a half-orc wielding a double-axe with 3 attacks per round. I keep my health above a pretty high threshold in case of a crit, but I take a very stupid risk and let my health fall as Kurdan is nearly dead. If that nat20 he rolled while using Power Attack was confirmed, I would be very dead thanks to the double-axe's x3 critical multiplier.
I decide to leave the Intellect Devourer alone until I can afford several Potions of Clarity. The Beggar's Nest is next. Zombies everywhere; point, click, kill. Mind numbing grinding. I eventually kill all the zombies in the district, not counting those inside houses, and kill the Sword Coast Boy guarding Drawl. Neither were much of a fight.
A pair of traps on Drawl's side of the crypt nearly kill me after I had defeated a group of Fire Beetles and Shadows. I can never seem to remember the placement of the holy trap and cold trap.
The bloated Dire Spider guarding the entrance to the Warrens of the Damned gives me trouble. It has a strength poison on hit with a high DC of 26. I use an antidote to cure it and hit it a few more times, but it poisons me again, lowering my strength further than the last poison. I have to use a scroll of Lesser Restoration to fix the STR drain and then flee to Drawl's room. The spider follows me up there, but loses sight of me, so I rest and then kill it afterward, which gets me level 6.
The chest that the spider was guarding contains a welcome sight: a Robe of the Shining Hand +2.
Into the Warrens of the Damned, it's more mook-killing. By now, I have enough money to buy a Lesser Belt of Guiding Light which provides the precious immunity to Fear. With it, I kill the Armor of Comfort's infinitely-respawning mummy a couple of times for about 120 XP a pop. At Gulnan's sanctum, there are only weak zombies and normal zombies, plus a Curst Warrior. The Curst goes down easily and so do the zombies, then I destroy the altar that was animating the undead for 200 XP.
The fight with Gulnan herself is... odd. While fighting her, I see that she buffs with Divine Power so I back off because I don't want to fight a Cleric-turned-Fighter who is about 5 levels higher than me. I flee and close the door on her, but she opens it back up and... stands in a ready stance but never attacks or casts any further spells. I can attack her freely like this for some reason. I'll take the victory.
The XP from killing Gulnan, taking her heart, and delivering it to Aribeth is enough to gain level 7.
Gus Slamrock's Gnarly Neverwinter Adventure Part 3: Chapter 1, second half.
Previous updates: 1, 2
Meldanen's mansion in Blacklake is up next. Normally I only do about half of the first floor, starting with the locked door to the left of the entrance of the mansion, but this time I do the whole first floor. Mel's apprentice is slapped with a Stunning Fist. No casting Ice Storm for you, mister.
The lower floor of Mel's sanctum is cleared but I hold off on fighting the wizard himself. I freed a prisoner named Samuel in the mansion and Captain Thurin gives me a reward for it at the Board Laid Bare, which grants me level 8.
I sell more loot from Mel's mansion and I have enough money to be comfortable buying a few Potions of Clarity and Speed. With them in hand, I return to the bottom of the Peninsula's prison and take on the Intellect Devourer. I buff with Potions of Bless, Aid, and Bull's Strength. When the devourer is out of bodies to use, I quaff the Potion of Clarity just in time to block a Stun Bolt from it.
On the next round, I quaff the Potion of Speed and start attacking. The round after that, I attempt Stunning Fist at my highest Attack Bonus. It hits and the Devourer fails its save. The Devourer crumples against the art of Slamrock Style.
Not satisfied with taking out just 1 boss, I rush back over to Mel's mansion and re-apply Potions of Bless, Aid, Bull's Strength, and Speed. The first Stunning Fist incapacitates Meldanen for the whole fight, bypassing his usual casting of Improved Invisibility and Stoneskin.
After rescuing the dryad, the Docks district is the last place to go. This place has a serious thief infestation. I'd wager there are more muggers on the street than citizens. It's enough to get another level from them.
The Bloodsailors parked at the dock are killed for their uniform which lets me inside the Seedy Tavern. Going down one floor, a Bloodsailor lieutenant guards the entrance to the second floor down but he is easily dispatched. An acid and spike trap do lethal damage to Gus, but it was worth it for a Thayvian Circlet (+2 INT, +1 all saves).
I rest off the damage and continue on. A chest guarded by another lieutenant holds Gloves of the Yellow Rose +5! Wow! Damage Reduction is a thing of the past now!
Yet another lieutenant wielding a two-bladed sword has a Golden Circlet on his corpse, which is even better than the Thayvian Circlet because of its coveted immunity to all mind-affecting effects, which includes Fear! Thank you RNGesus!
Daranei is killed for her locket which opens up the locked door in the Silver Sails Trading Company. Back topside, I light a corpse pyre with a torch and throw about 30 total throwing axes and shurikens at it that do fire damage. Hitting corpse pyres with fire damage gives 25 XP every time you do it.
The good haul from the Docks district lets me save up a bunch of money to buy a Cloak of Movement, which grants the wearer Free Action while equipped. Now Gus has protection against the two most deadly types of disablers: mind-affecting and paralysis.
The leader of the rebel Bloodsailors, Callik, is unceremoniously killed and the Masterson amulet on his body is returned. The cockatrice feather held by Vengaul is also returned to Aribeth, which means all the McGuffins have been returned. Time for Chapter 1E.
@Flashburn I like to pass in stealth through all the enemies, get the second level and just them backtrack to kill them. I think that it is the approach that handles more XP, but is useless nonetheless because Fentick will always let you at the edge of level 3's XP (IIRC).
Long story short: none of the XP from the Academy is useful unless you can somehow achieve more than enough XP for level 3.
@semiticgod I'm sorry but I don't remember all the details for that run. There were no significant mods for difficulty though I think. The PC was Karn, a R/C, and the party were all from Kulyok's npcs mod- so not optimised! The run was on core difficulty, though it was my first ever playthrough.
@semiticgod: Thanks for posting those videos. Unfortunate getting boxed in after retrieving the charisma manual.
Using algernon's cloak to charm one of the bandits to kite Drizzt was enlightening. I realized that I'm not using charm nearly enough. I've been wanting to see someone do the basilisk loop too, so thanks for that. It's reassuring that even you have issues with it.
If you're taking requests, I'd like to see how you approach a run without access to stealth.
@jessejmc: Without access to stealth, Sanctuary, or Invisibility, it's not safe to attempt to perform the basilisk XP loop unless you're willing to burn extra Potions of Mirrored Eyes to stay safe during the 1-2 seconds you'd need to attempt a charm on a given basilisk. Korax would only buy you a single charm attempt, since resting to recharge Algernon's Cloak would run out Korax's timer and cause him to go hostile if you enter his field of vision. If you found a way to prevent that from happening, you could use Korax to paralyze basilisks and make it temporarily safe to attempt a charm. By inching forward until you just barely see a basilisk (auto-pause on enemy sighted could help) and then immediately retreating after you order Korax to attack it directly, you could spot the basilisk but still have a chance to run away before the basilisk has a chance to petrify you. Once you hear the sound effect of the basilisk getting paralyzed, it would be safe for you to approach further.
Otherwise it's a crapshoot, since the odds of charming a Lesser Basilisk on LoB mode are maybe 45%, and for a Greater Basilisk it's maybe 20%. Korax would only buy you a single shot at a safe charm, and after that you'd have to allow the basilisk to make a petrification attempt on you whenever you tried to charm them again.
If nothing else, dying would be low-cost if you did it early on, and so you could attempt it multiple times until you got it. But I wouldn't have the patience for that, so any class that has no thief, ranger, mage, or cleric levels is probably better off just killing the basilisk normally without performing the XP loop.
Gus Slamrock's Lame-o Neverwinter Adventure Part 4: Chapter 1E and Chapter 2
Previous updates: 1, 2, 3
After Desther betrays us, it's off to Helm's Hold to get him. Undead mobs outside the Hold give enough XP to gain another level from a zombie in its interior.
Chaohinon of the Void is banished and Helm's guardian spirit is returned, and I ask for the power of Helm to aid me. Upstairs in Desther's sanctum, Gus is high enough level for a Bodak to spawn. I predicted this might happen and opened the door after using an invisibility potion. A bodak's gaze is instant death if the saving throw is failed, and I have about a 15% chance of failing it, so I close the door and ignore it.
Fortunately, Desther's personal guard does not contain a Bodak, but rather a bunch of zombies. After dealing with them, Desther begins to cast spells as I destroy his ritual golems. Once all the golems are dead, I knock down Desther for a round and follow up with a successful Stunning Fist. The fight is over.
Chapter 2 begins. At the Temple of Tyr, I buy a Robe of the Dark Moon for permanent Haste. Gus has 5 attacks per round while using Flurry of Blows.
I start the werewolf quest and kill Urth.
At this time, I always start clearing out the North Road. The goblin chief, orc chief, bugbear chief, and Dergiab are all killed.
Up at the Green Griffon Inn, I clear out most of the Arcane Brother's Tomb. Brother Toras starts the fight with a Greater Stoneskin, which my Gloves of the Yellow Rose +5 will ignore. I start wailing on him but he casts Chain Lightning at me. I fail the save which causes me to take more than half of my health in damage. Improved Knockdown stalls him for a round, but I get too confident as his health depletes. He has another Chain Lightning up his sleeve and I fail the saving throw again which kills Gus.
That will teach me to underestimate Brother Toras again. This playthrough has been a soul-sucking endeavor anyway because "hit things for three rounds until they die" is only fun up to a certain point. I was hoping that a Monk/Fighter multiclass would expedite this problem with its high number of attacks, but they don't do much damage per hit.
@Flashburn Too bad your run ended. Weapon Specialization is a good thing to have to offset a little the low damage of a Monk.
I've beaten the game once with a HO Monk and basically all I did was spam IKD. I had Circle Kick, but I've used Leto to remove it as the mechanic is broken: it makes you change your target instead acting as a AoO - what is a bad thing when you're relying on IKD and Cleave to wipe the battlefield.
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Arriving in Baldur's Gate, the party dodged Elminster on the way to get the dexterity tome. After some deliberation I decided to give that to Falesia to benefit her AC. Star will ultimately get more skill points than necessary and using Kiel's buckler to push up dexterity is currently already giving him 100 in set traps and find traps.
The first action in the City was to deal with some mages at Sorcerous Sundries - they all died from the combination of a fireball and holy smite before a spirit fire reached them.
Next they started systematically working through all encounters in the City - sometimes using invisibility to avoid any potential problems.
The Mountain Maulers managed to charm Cuwaert (who had forgotten to rage) and got a backstab in on Frisky Bits, but otherwise went down easily.
With everything else done they sneaked into the Iron Throne and unleashed a salvo of various area damage effects. That killed several of the enemies before the follow-up skeletons went in. One of the Shennara's bypassed them though and gave Frisky Bits a nasty backstab before failing to save against a command. The skeletons lasted long enough to take down everyone except Gardush - he can easily be run around, but had actually broken his weapon anyway so was no threat.
Arriving at Candlekeep the party immediately scattered to reduce the potential impact of area effect spells. Falesia downed one ogre mage with a command and Waiver petrified another with chromatic orb, while Star used dispelling arrows for the first time to debuff a third. Frisky Bits was hit with a magic missile, but the fourth was also then commanded and failed to get another spell off. There is a 5th one, but as usual it wouldn't come out to play even in response to detect illusion (I think perhaps it gets through the wall into the keep somewhere).
I cleared the dopplegangers in Candlekeep, but didn't bother fully looting before going to find the Iron Throne leaders.
For the fight with Prat I didn't bother with summons, but just put in a few webs to discourage them. That caused a bit of a problem when hordes of spiders tried to intervene and I made one use of a wand of heavens I hadn't intended to.
Back in the City Duke Eltan was rescued
I found at that point that my reputation had dropped to 4. The last time I used area damage spells was in the Flaming Fist HQ, so I guess there must have been some innocents among the attackers there. As I bought all the important things long ago I coughed up about 16k gold in donations to push that back to 18.
The next event could be the palace, but I'm minded to complete the TotSC content first.
Sky, shaman L9, 72 HPs, 503 kills
Cuwaert, barbarian, L8, 73 HPs, 126 kills, 1 death
Star, swashbuckler, L10, 62 HPs, 537 kills, 2 deaths
Frisky Bits, cleric/illusionist, L7/7, 45 HPs, 241 kills, 1 death
Waiver, avenger, L10, 52 HPs, 279 kills, 0 deaths
Falesia, priest of Lathander, L8, 61 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 281 kills, 0 deaths
Part 12: Throne of Bhaal
Illasera is even simpler than I thought. We throw her across the map using Smite, and while she's immune to the stun effect, Espellier and her clone have the damage output to slay her in a few seconds.
Our ability to get guaranteed stuns on enemy mages and crank our damage resistance up to 85% makes most of Saradush fairly simple. For Gromnir, we enter under invisibility and run from Gromnir while I ponder our options. When the two mages begin cast Conjuration spells, I see an opportunity: Karun the Black has just clouded his aura and can now be shot down.
Now we have to deal with the quadruple dragon ambush. The black dragons are surprisingly easy; they just can't get past our 85% damage resistance and Rod of Resurrection charges.
Now the game is truly broken. Since the Scorcher Ammunition strikes twice and can be combined with the Firetooth crossbow as well as all of our various damage bonuses, we can deal massive area-effect piercing damage with every hit at an effective base APR of 10, or 20 when we have Improved Haste active. The only disadvantage is that it strikes as a +1 weapon, so we can only affect certain enemies with it by using another enemy as a target and dragging the stream of fire across our intended target.
We shred everything in Sendai's lair within seconds, even Odamaron. A Protection from Undead scroll means he can take no action to defend himself.
Before the mind flayer area, we drink a few dozen Potions of Genius, but the Scorcher Ammunition kills the enemies so fast we never even get hit.
Part 13: Throne of Bhaal
For safety's sake, I let our clone do most of the work against Sendai and the drow, leaving Espellier to hide under invisibility to the east.
Eventually, the real Sendai appears. I make a point of having our clone switch to other forms of ammunition, since the Scorcher Ammunition is party-unfriendly and could seriously injure or kill Espellier if we wander into the stream--a particularly high risk considering Sendai teleports around the map, and the stream will follow her wherever she goes. Instead, I only have Espellier herself use the Scorcher Ammunition, while the clone contributes with conventional projectiles.
Sendai can't really do anything to us; our saves are too strong and she doesn't use Maze spells, as far as I know (we're not entering melee range anyway). Her spells are useless to threaten us, and eventually her defensive spells wear off, too, opening her up for an Arrow of Dispelling.
Espellier is Chaotic Good and has 20 reputation and Charisma with the Ring of Human Influence and Blade of Roses, as well as 18 Wisdom from a Potion of Insight, so we have no trouble convincing Balthazar to join us against Melissan.
I originally planned on using the Scorcher Ammunition on the Bone Blades to kill the Ravager, but I open with Vhailor's Helm and have our clone tank him with the Defender of Easthaven and Crom Faeyr while Espellier lobs rocks from the Sling of Everard. Turns out that's plenty sufficient to bring down the Ravager. Notice the magic damage from the Hand of Murder spell, which we got by picking the evil-aligned responses when speaking the Solar at the right times.
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1055886/#Comment_1055886
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056195/#Comment_1056195
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056412/#Comment_1056412
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056718/#Comment_1056718
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056908/#Comment_1056908
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056999/#Comment_1056999
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1057234/#Comment_1057234
Arriving at Ulgoth's Beard the party went invisibly to talk to Shandalar and get sent to Ice Island. Star started off by going through there invisibly to remove all the traps. The mages then died easily enough - netting Frisky Bits a remove magic and stoneskin for her repertoire. The stoneskin is particularly useful as SCS enemies routinely target her, so stoneskin provides a way to encourage a backstabber to show himself safely. I set traps for Shandalar as he was teleporting away, but failed to do too much damage to him and he disappeared.
Next they obtained some sea charts and set sail for Balduran's Isle. After reporting to Kaishas Gan they went to clear the beasts from the other side of the island - using up some of the multitude of magic ammunition brought for the purpose. The creatures in the first 2 levels of the ship were led outside into a skeleton ambush. After a rest the same sort of thing was done for the third and fourth level. Weapons were not used against the greater werewolf, but it got wand attacks. The first round of 2 magic missiles, a frost blast and 3 heavenly blasts hurt it badly. Fast regeneration had it back up to slightly wounded in a round, but another set of blasts took it to 5 HPs. I thought it would go down in the 3rd round, but in fact there was still a magic missile on the way from the second round and that proved to be enough.
After talking with Kaishas I knew it wasn't possible to rest much as lychanthropy would kick in, so I cleared the island using up quite a bit of my hoarded magical ammunition. It was more difficult to do that without taking damage going through the narrow passages in the maze and I brought out a nymph to help heal up a bit before exiting. After killing the nymph I exited and produced a skeleton army and made Cuwaert and Star (who have less magic damage capability) invisible.
I tried to resolve the situation peacefully with Kaishas, but unsurprisingly she seemed determined to fight. With skeletons blocking her and invisible characters preventing wolfwere reinforcements arriving there should have been plenty of time to take her down even if she got lucky. However, she got unlucky instead - the first 3 attacks all bypassing her magic resistance were sufficient to finish her off.
Back on the mainland Mendas was far luckier. He managed to catch 2 of the party in an emotion and they sat out the whole combat while Mendas resisted many wand attacks. Eventually they recovered just seconds before Mendas was finally burnt up.
That still left the rest of Durlag's Tower and after sorting out inventory they travelled there. The skeleton archers near the ashirukuru provided more magic arrows before the greater wyverns failed to get past invisible blockers. For the elemental rooms:
- the winter wolves in the cold area were pulled back outside, while Cuwaert tanked Kaldron with his rage.
- in the air area the Air Aspect was doing better than I hoped against Cuwaert and Falesia, but Sky pulled out a big critical to avoid having to try and make a run for it. The invisible stalkers revealed themselves to a skeleton and were webbed.
- the Phoenix guards fell to buffed skeletons.
- I killed the fission slime with fire arrows. However, the chessboard fight did not trigger even when I revisited the other areas. Loading the save I killed the slime again with pure fire damage, but that made no apparent difference.
I know this transition has always been troublesome and that's even more the case with SCS, so I decided to use the console to travel to the chessboard. I hadn't appreciated (though I should have done) that would put them immediately in sight of the opposition. A well-judged round of fireballs killed most of the attackers, but I also hadn't appreciated (though again perhaps should have done) that in this fight the opposition would all target the PC (as the king), rather than one of the weaker characters as normal for SCS. I assume I could have avoided that by Sky taking an invisibility potion immediately on arrival, but as it was he took rapid damage from a knight in melee and two rooks firing arrows. One of the rooks was finished off almost immediately by missile fire, but there was no chance of killing the others before they got further attacks - which would probably kill Sky before his aura cleared and he could go invisible. In desperation I tried to shuffle other characters round to at least give Sky a chance of avoiding melee attacks. I knew that was dangerous, though it wasn't at all obvious how the game would treat movement as on arrival half the party were placed on the lines between squares and I didn't know which were supposed to be which chess pieces. I thus wasn't sure in which direction (if any) movement might be allowed, but it quickly became apparent that this was not going to be a lucky day as one bolt of lightning came directly at Sky and took a few more HPs away (I would guess his own movement triggered that one). Further bolts were on the way triggered by others and may have killed him, though that could also have been the result of the rook's shots. As a consolation, there was just time during the production of the end screen for Frisky Bits to kill the opposing king - so I guess we could put that contest down as a stalemate
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056015/#Comment_1056015
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056217/#Comment_1056217
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056244/#Comment_1056244
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056308/#Comment_1056308
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056509/#Comment_1056509
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1056742/#Comment_1056742
@Grond0: Well, it was a great run!
I'm not really sure where to go next, so I just start doing random quests for reputation. We go see Farmer Brun and turn in his son's body, which I had stashed in a chest in his house from clearing the ankheg nest earlier. Traveling to return Tenya's bowl, we're waylaid by Lamalha and her assassins.
Star charms Telka with Algernon's Cloak. Frisky Bits zaps Zeela with wand of lightning. Star shoots Zeela, canceling her spell. Maneira backstabs Frisky Bits but doesn't kill them. Star shoots Zeela again using kobold poison arrows, and Zeela dies from poison. Waiver stuns Lamalha with chromatic orb, after which everyone targets her, and she goes down quickly. Frisky Bits has been kiting Maneira, who changes target to a spirit snake. Frisky Bits turns around and blinds her. Cuwaert charges in with Rancor, and everyone else shoots her. Sky heals Frisky Bits just in case, then Telka is held and killed.
Frisky Bits was the only one to take damage. It does worry me though, as Star has no helmet and could easily be killed with a critical backstab. I had considered having Frisky Bits cast invisibility on Star when the fight started to avoid this.
Zargal, Malkax, and Geltik are webbed out of sight and killed. Bassilus is silenced, but I mess up the line of sight and don't get web off. He's held the next round, and we make short work of him. Before heading back to Beregost, we return Brage to Nashkel and tell Oublek the truth. We make a quick stop at the Dryad Falls to kill Caldo and Krumm then return to the temple for the reward from Basillus, reaching 20 reputation. Having no more use for Kelddath, he is killed.
Star, swashbuckler L6, 45HPs, 109 kills
Falesia, PoL, L5, 28HPs, 56 kills, 1 deaths
Cuwaert, barbarian L5, 43HPs, 92 kills, 1 deaths
Waiver, avenger, L6, 37HPs, 33 kills, 0 deaths
Frisky Bits, C/I, L4/4, 29HPs, 40 kills, 2 deaths
Sky, shaman, L5, 29HPs, 48 kills, 1 deaths
Part 14: Throne of Bhaal
When we arrive at the Throne, we scurry away to the north and manage to avoid a Remove Magic spell from a Fallen Solar. Balthazar keeps most of the enemies occupied while Bodhi chases after us, only for the vampire to fall to the Sling of Everard. The sling does less damage than the Firetooth crossbow, but it also lets us keep the Shield of Reflection equipped and ward off any of the Fallen Solars' +5 Arrows of Dispelling.
Now we have to deal with the energy pools. We get a scary message when a Balor lands an Implosion spell--6 seconds of paralysis with no saving throw, bypassing magic resistance if not spell protections--but fortunately, our clone was the target; not Espellier herself.
We've saved both of our Protection from Magic scrolls over the course of the run and can therefore nail both Abazigal and Sendai with the scrolls, shutting down both spellcasters.
Worse yet, Melissan teleports over to us and locks us in place, another irritating example of the teleportation bug. She's standing right on top of us, and now we can't move.
The fact is, an Archer has truly stupendous THAC0, and we can easily, easily hit her at point-blank range with any missile weapon. She's immune to +3 weapons and below, of course, so we can't use all of our options, but we can use the Firetooth crossbow, and a simple Power Attack stun-locks her.
But Melissan doesn't have enough HP left to last even a fraction of that. Still well-buffed and with lots of resources to spare, Espellier activates Greater Whirlwind Attack to land the killing blow, and finally the Solar intervenes. Espellier chooses mortality.
By the time we got the Scorcher Ammunition, the game was pretty much won; I picked a class that was very, very well-suited to ToB combat. We didn't even need level 50; I never ended up using all those extra HLAs. The Scorcher Ammunition meant that we didn't even need to use Called Shot to kill Melissan with the Firetooth crossbow or Darts +5 from the Cloak of Stars, much less resort to late-stage kiting with the Sling of Everard. The game was broken three times over: once by the sheer power of a high-level ranger, twice by Called Shot, and a third time by the Scorcher Ammunition.
Still, I'm quite pleased with how this run turned out, despite one or two stupid mistakes in SoA. This is the first solo no-reload run that involved no spellcaster levels or rage immunities. That was no handicap at all in ToB, but it did make BG1, SoD, and early SoA significantly more complicated.
I'd like to thank @Harpagornis, @histamiini, @Enuhal, @Grond0, and @Alesia_BH, all of whom contributed a lot of important insights that made this run possible.
Also, while I'm flattered about being mentioned as a contributor of insights for this run, I am a bit surprised, as I can't remember contributing any potentially new insight since the Belhifet research I did for my LoB run 1,5 years ago
I don't think I'll be working with any single-classed divine spellcasters. Historically, the only ones I've enjoyed are druids, and they're not going to beat Ascension no-reload without that mod that lets them equip the Shield of Reflection--and even then, I'm not sure I'd find them as interesting as mages or as fast-paced as warriors. Except when I die horribly to demons. Don't forget that I have a lot of failed runs as well--they just don't enjoy as much exposure in this thread because they're short-lived!
Mostly I follow the same narrow playbook for BG1 and SoD, neither of which I'm very familiar with compared to some other no-reloaders like @Grond0, and ToB is easy because I usually plan my runs around what strategies will make Melissan easy to handle. As for SoA, I can go for a more completionist route with weaker characters because I know SoA well enough to muddle through.
If I tried tackling Durlag's Tower, Balduran's Isle, Shandalar's quest thingy, Halatathlaer, the dead magic ambush in SoD, levels 3-5 of Watcher's Keep, or the EE NPC questlines besides Rasaad's, I'd be much more likely to lose a run, since those are dangerous but strictly optional challenges I have precious little experience with.
Unto the Circle Tower. I generally like this area quite a bit, even the much-maligned fade sequence. First, we pick up Wynne - now, our team is complete. She will try to get forcefield as soon as possible and some aggressive spells later on. The early parts of the tower are relatively easy, though summoning sciences can take a bit of time (especially if you like going for the hidden Lord Foreshadow cameo, as my completionist self is want to do). The first truly dangerous battle is against the desire demon protected by charmed templars, as these guys have access to holy smite, which is super-dangerous to both Wynne and Valeria. In fact, Valeria gets hit by holy smite right away, getting knocked down and hit a couple of times in the process. She falls unconscious, but Wynne picks her back up with her spirit healer revive spell. Alistair, meanwhile, gets everyones attention and is protected by a forcefield:
In the end, we take down the four fade demons - spell shield is also very helpful against the desire demon. Her dangerous cone of cold spell does nothing, other cc such as horror gets blocked as well:
Having saved the circle, we make our way to Redcliffe. Sidequests are completed and the town is protected against the undead attack (super easy at this point, our healing abilities allow us to keep every NPC alive). We invade the castle and save Connor by calling on the mages for help. Valeria defeats another desire demon in a fade duel thanks to spell shield. All of that went fairly well, nothing too interesting going on. By now, we're starting to put points towards Mana Clash, the ultimate mage-killer. Basically, it destroys any normal and elite mages instantly and does huge damage to bosses (though it often gets resisted against those). The downside: The first three spells in that tree are pretty much useless (only spell might is decent for pre-buffing), so we won't be expanding our toolset for a while. With Alistair getting more and more strength, it's time to sell and rebuy the King Cailan armor set to get it to rank 7 - not for Alistair, but for Valeria, improving her armor even further. Instead, Alistair now gets to use the blood dragon armor.
The Dalish camp is our next stop, and we have some fun exploring the forest. Revenants are easy to deal with thanks to the very reliable damage done by Final Reason and the healing power of Wynne and Valeria. Spellshield and a well-placed fireball allows for a quick group of a potentially dangerous battle against the cabal of maleficarum:
Next time, we're going to take on not one, but TWO high dragons (though not at the same time).
Part 1: Baldur's Gate
So, uh, I've got more stuff to post. There's also a solo Fighter/Mage/Cleric I want to share. Our Charname this time is Viora!
Start of the game is standard solo stuff: kill Montaron and Xzar for their gear (Command prevents Monty from drinking his Oil of Speed), kite Shoal, Command the Beregost spiders (since we're not going to kill Algernon for his cloak and therefore can't charm Silke into handling them for us), clear Mutamin's Garden (this time without Korax's help since we can cast Protection from Petrification, though we stop short of fighting Mutamin), and hunt ankhegs with Command. After a few brief quests to collect resources and raise our reputation, we head back to Mutamin's Garden and have Korax eat Mutamin with the help of our skeletons.
I kite Tazok once I go invisible and wait out his Oil of Speed, but most big fights need to be dealt with conventionally. I don't want to just burgle the bandit camp; we're going to destroy the place and kill everyone in it. We enter the main tent with a whole bunch of buffs, notably the Greenstone Amulet and Protection from Fire, and blast everyone with the Wand of Fire.
All of Davaeorn's spells are useless against us, though I discover that our own Wand of Fire spell can hurt us just fine.
Before we face our next big challenge, Valeria hits level 14, allowing her to pick a second specialization. Spirit healer is my choice. Blood mage would be powerful, but having two spirit healers with not only group heal, but, more importantly, revive, provides us with much-needed safety for no-reload play. Of course, everyone else gets to the same level as well, so Leliana gets her assassin specialization, Alistair gets champion and Wynne, for some reason, arcane warrior - which turned out to be a mistake. My secondary mage doesn't need to be extra-tanky, in fact, the additional CC of a blood mage would've been much more welcome. Sadly, there's no way to respecc until Awakening. Shouldn't matter too much, though.
In any case, the first high dragon we challenge is Flemeth (in her dragon form). We have group heal in case the initial fire breath hits the entire party. After that, Alistair is going to turn Flemeth around, so only he should get hit. To protect him, we have heal, regeneration, and, if he gets grabbed, forcefield (high dragon grabs are basically 100% death without massive, almost impossible amounts of healing or forcefield). Watch as Alistair gets suspended in mid-air thanks to a well-timed defensive forcefield:
By all means, the regulars of this thread should feel free to edit those posts on page 1, that is why I vacated them. I am certain that this will be done intelligently and considerately.
I suggest not too much segregation between BG vs IWD/NWN runs, but some sorting is, of course, sensible.
Thanks all.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/864922/#Comment_864922
After a torrid install on android (think multiple dialog.tlks & bugs that meant kit choices varied by gender) when I could get access to a computer I have finally started rolling with a nature oriented party based on the submitted characters. In the absence of the avenger my bhaalspawn is Cu'ran, a Druid/ Mage, a class I've always wanted to try, Enuhal's Stalker comes in for Cuewart, and since priests can't dual to ranger I'm using a Zealot kit from F&P that is effectively a Ranger with some Boons of Lathander. As such it's not quite a simultaneous run, but hopefully it will be a fun group - the first time I'll be playing without ingame npcs. They seem like a rather lightly armoured bunch who'll need to use plenty of summons and special abilities to make progress in their quests to cleanse Toril of impious litterers.
After heading to Beregost early on the group have so far gained a few thousand XP each with the aid of Korax & some luck with minor quests. Still getting used to the non-SR spell system and SCS v32's quirks. Currently they're rueing my decision to install Improved Bassilus and grimly watching him summon up Aerial Servants to talk to...
I've been thinking about doing a Rogue Rebalanced Bounty Hunter with Trap Overhaul and argent77's Trials of the Luremaster installed, or perhaps a no-reload run of Neverwinter Nights' OC. I know NWN like the back of my hand and a no-reload run of it would be far easier and far faster than BG.
I'll start now while I'm in the mood. This shouldn't take but a few hours.
Part 1: Prelude
Neverwinter Nights. A game that I adore for its ahead-of-its-time multiplayer. The single player experience is underwhelming and enemy AI in this game is not particularly smart, preferring to "attack nearest" or "cast spells in most-to-least powerful order." As far as I know, there is no equivalent to SCS for NWN, although I'm sure there are custom modules out there that have good AI scripting.
Since I've played this game for so long that I don't need to use pausing anymore (since you're just controlling one character after all), I'll use some additional rules:
-No pausing (except for taking screenshots or for breaktime)
-No dying
-D&D Hardcore Rules difficulty
Here he is, Gus Slamrock: Dwarven Monk and future Fighter. Max HP rolls are on and his first feat is Blind Fight to effectively halve enemy concealment.
You'll notice that, instead of meat-bricks for hands, Gus has actual hands with fingers. This is thanks to Community Patch 1.71. And the environment is all prettied up by NWNCQ, which improves lighting and textures, though I still prefer to crop screenshots to save space. So let's get on with this.
With initial training out of the way, I kill all the weak goblins that have invaded the Neverwinter Academy for 20 XP a pop. There is no danger from them as they can only do 1 damage if they ever hit. I use the door-hop glitch to get behind the plot-locked gates that house magical creatures, hoping to kill them for serious XP gains, but they have plot-armor as well. Darn.
Moving on, I rest and then join up with Pavel. A tough goblin drops a mildly useful cloak.
I use the door-hop glitch again and dump Pavel to kill some more goblins, hoping to level up from them and then redeem the level from Geldar, though I rethink this and return, since I think Geldar will only give you your 2nd level. Gus gains his first Fighter level and Weapon Focus: Unarmed Strike.
More gobbos and skellies are beaten when we finally encounter the mage who got away near the beginning of the invasion. I let Pavel go in first to absorb the mage's first spell, which is Magic Missile. It kills Pavel.
The rest of the goblins inside the Academy stables are killed and the 4 Macguffins Waterdhavian Creatures escape. Fenthick gives Gus his 3rd level.
Onto Chapter 1. I can barely contain my excitement at killing a hundred prisoners who want to carve me up and slit my throat.
Are there any IWD entries I've missed? Let me know and I'll add them on. I'll add a separate hall for NWN and PST once we get an entry for either game.
I have potential entries for DWM, Morrowind, Skyrim, and Oblivion. Shall I create a hall (maybe call it the "Hall of Weirdos") for non-IE, non-D&D runs? If so, is DWM too unrelated to D&D to qualify? The TES games are at least RPGs; DWM is a Pokemon-style game.
Part 2: Chapter 1, first half.
Previous updates: 1
The first half of Chapter 1 always bores me to tears, at least when playing alone. In the Hall of Justice and the sanatorium, there are 4 nurses that have a Challenge Rating equal to yourself when first entering Chapter 1, which makes killing them highly profitable XP-wise. The only consequence is a 5 point evil alignment shift each time you kill them - which means nothing to a monk. They're worth 960 easy XP total.
The Peninsula District is up first. Really boring; just killing prisoners. I fall back to the guards when I get too injured or if a half-orc prisoner approaches. Can't risk eating a x3 handaxe critical just yet. The area surrounding the Helmite shopkeeper is cleared, so I take on the Gang Leader alone, buffing with a Potion of Barkskin. I have to drink a couple of healing potions to stay afloat, but the XP reward is huge.
I take the long way around into the prison via the Tanglebrook Estate, which lets me kill a pair of Stink Beetles and some Fire Beetles. Inside the prison, I become very aware that my AC is rather poor at only 17. I don't have enough money to buy better equipment and the drops from chests and enemies are lousy. I have to make due with the Potions of Cure Light Wounds the game keeps throwing my way.
The level is looted and I trade the spoils for Gloves of the Yellow Rose +2. Down into the Pits, it's more prisoner mooks. Another Gang Leader killed. A guard dog gives a nice XP boost to level 5.
I decide to leave the Intellect Devourer alone until I can afford several Potions of Clarity. The Beggar's Nest is next. Zombies everywhere; point, click, kill. Mind numbing grinding. I eventually kill all the zombies in the district, not counting those inside houses, and kill the Sword Coast Boy guarding Drawl. Neither were much of a fight.
A pair of traps on Drawl's side of the crypt nearly kill me after I had defeated a group of Fire Beetles and Shadows. I can never seem to remember the placement of the holy trap and cold trap.
Into the Warrens of the Damned, it's more mook-killing. By now, I have enough money to buy a Lesser Belt of Guiding Light which provides the precious immunity to Fear. With it, I kill the Armor of Comfort's infinitely-respawning mummy a couple of times for about 120 XP a pop. At Gulnan's sanctum, there are only weak zombies and normal zombies, plus a Curst Warrior. The Curst goes down easily and so do the zombies, then I destroy the altar that was animating the undead for 200 XP.
The fight with Gulnan herself is... odd. While fighting her, I see that she buffs with Divine Power so I back off because I don't want to fight a Cleric-turned-Fighter who is about 5 levels higher than me. I flee and close the door on her, but she opens it back up and... stands in a ready stance but never attacks or casts any further spells. I can attack her freely like this for some reason. I'll take the victory.
Part 3: Chapter 1, second half.
Previous updates: 1, 2
Meldanen's mansion in Blacklake is up next. Normally I only do about half of the first floor, starting with the locked door to the left of the entrance of the mansion, but this time I do the whole first floor. Mel's apprentice is slapped with a Stunning Fist. No casting Ice Storm for you, mister.
I sell more loot from Mel's mansion and I have enough money to be comfortable buying a few Potions of Clarity and Speed. With them in hand, I return to the bottom of the Peninsula's prison and take on the Intellect Devourer. I buff with Potions of Bless, Aid, and Bull's Strength. When the devourer is out of bodies to use, I quaff the Potion of Clarity just in time to block a Stun Bolt from it.
Not satisfied with taking out just 1 boss, I rush back over to Mel's mansion and re-apply Potions of Bless, Aid, Bull's Strength, and Speed. The first Stunning Fist incapacitates Meldanen for the whole fight, bypassing his usual casting of Improved Invisibility and Stoneskin.
After rescuing the dryad, the Docks district is the last place to go. This place has a serious thief infestation. I'd wager there are more muggers on the street than citizens. It's enough to get another level from them.
The Bloodsailors parked at the dock are killed for their uniform which lets me inside the Seedy Tavern. Going down one floor, a Bloodsailor lieutenant guards the entrance to the second floor down but he is easily dispatched. An acid and spike trap do lethal damage to Gus, but it was worth it for a Thayvian Circlet (+2 INT, +1 all saves).
The good haul from the Docks district lets me save up a bunch of money to buy a Cloak of Movement, which grants the wearer Free Action while equipped. Now Gus has protection against the two most deadly types of disablers: mind-affecting and paralysis.
The leader of the rebel Bloodsailors, Callik, is unceremoniously killed and the Masterson amulet on his body is returned. The cockatrice feather held by Vengaul is also returned to Aribeth, which means all the McGuffins have been returned. Time for Chapter 1E.
Gus Slamrock - Monk 5/Fighter 4
Long story short: none of the XP from the Academy is useful unless you can somehow achieve more than enough XP for level 3.
Using algernon's cloak to charm one of the bandits to kite Drizzt was enlightening. I realized that I'm not using charm nearly enough. I've been wanting to see someone do the basilisk loop too, so thanks for that. It's reassuring that even you have issues with it.
If you're taking requests, I'd like to see how you approach a run without access to stealth.
Otherwise it's a crapshoot, since the odds of charming a Lesser Basilisk on LoB mode are maybe 45%, and for a Greater Basilisk it's maybe 20%. Korax would only buy you a single shot at a safe charm, and after that you'd have to allow the basilisk to make a petrification attempt on you whenever you tried to charm them again.
If nothing else, dying would be low-cost if you did it early on, and so you could attempt it multiple times until you got it. But I wouldn't have the patience for that, so any class that has no thief, ranger, mage, or cleric levels is probably better off just killing the basilisk normally without performing the XP loop.
Part 4: Chapter 1E and Chapter 2
Previous updates: 1, 2, 3
After Desther betrays us, it's off to Helm's Hold to get him. Undead mobs outside the Hold give enough XP to gain another level from a zombie in its interior.
Chaohinon of the Void is banished and Helm's guardian spirit is returned, and I ask for the power of Helm to aid me. Upstairs in Desther's sanctum, Gus is high enough level for a Bodak to spawn. I predicted this might happen and opened the door after using an invisibility potion. A bodak's gaze is instant death if the saving throw is failed, and I have about a 15% chance of failing it, so I close the door and ignore it.
Chapter 2 begins. At the Temple of Tyr, I buy a Robe of the Dark Moon for permanent Haste. Gus has 5 attacks per round while using Flurry of Blows.
I start the werewolf quest and kill Urth.
Up at the Green Griffon Inn, I clear out most of the Arcane Brother's Tomb. Brother Toras starts the fight with a Greater Stoneskin, which my Gloves of the Yellow Rose +5 will ignore. I start wailing on him but he casts Chain Lightning at me. I fail the save which causes me to take more than half of my health in damage. Improved Knockdown stalls him for a round, but I get too confident as his health depletes. He has another Chain Lightning up his sleeve and I fail the saving throw again which kills Gus.
That will teach me to underestimate Brother Toras again. This playthrough has been a soul-sucking endeavor anyway because "hit things for three rounds until they die" is only fun up to a certain point. I was hoping that a Monk/Fighter multiclass would expedite this problem with its high number of attacks, but they don't do much damage per hit.
Gus Slamrock - Monk 7/Fighter 4 (RIP)
Which mods are you using for the Archer game?
I've beaten the game once with a HO Monk and basically all I did was spam IKD. I had Circle Kick, but I've used Leto to remove it as the mechanic is broken: it makes you change your target instead acting as a AoO - what is a bad thing when you're relying on IKD and Cleave to wipe the battlefield.