The Deep Roads are long, but not all that dangerous to our party by now. Enemy spellcasters generally suffer death by mana clash, unable to do any harm to Valeria with her spell shield. The first true boss battle down there is against the corrupted spider queen, but we have far too much healing by now for her to be a true danger:
While we at least have to use all our mana to make sure everyone survives variour mass-webs here, the brood mother barely challenges our group. We ignore the tencacles, and Leliana uses mark of death. It's quite a short battle:
We travel on to the Anvil of the Void, which is a bit more of a problem, because the game forces us to take Oghren along - that means Alistair can stay at camp for now. However, Oghren is not exactly skilled or equipped for tanking, which means that we have to be extra-careful to keep him alive, though in practice, this only ends up being a bit more costly in terms of mana. We make our way to Branca, and we side against her. Wynne and Valeria try to shatter the non-elite golems, Branca herself is saved for last:
After turning in a lot of quests in Orzammar, we take along Shale to complete her companion quest. This one's fairly easy:
Now, it's time to call the Landsmeet and prepare for it. First, we look for Queen Anora at Arl Howe's estate. The Arl has two mages with him, but both fall to mana clash right away (well, one actually survives the initial spell, but dies a second later):
Without his mages, this foe is unable to deal any significant damage to Alistair. We decide to let Ser Cauthrien imprison us and break out ourselves. Now, it's time to go for an actually challenging encounter again (it's been a while!) - the battle against the alienage slavers. Their leader, Caladrius, is a very powerful boss-ranked mage, likely to resist mana clash (and if he does get affected, he always survives it with a significant chunk of health still left). He likes to use powerful AoE abilities and can dish out a lot of damage, and he is surrounded by other annoying enemies such as archers with scattershot. I've had trouble with him on nightmare difficulty before.
After fighting our way to his room, we first try to lure his troops into a room further back in the building:
Sadly, our foes are not interested in following us outside. We are able to lure a single crossbowman to the door at least, though we're constantly taking damage and getting knocked down by a blizzard spell, which has a gigantic AoE. We have no choice but to rush into the room - immediately getting hit by chain lightning, scattershot attacks and a devastating cone of cold once we try to engage Caladrius. The staggered stun effects of multiple scattershots interrupt Valeria's attempts of healing up Leliana - our rogue is down, and Wynne is getting swarmed - Valeria is forced to protect her with forcefield, which means we can't use Wynne for now. Even worse, Caladrius does in fact resist our mana clash:
Luckily, with the scattershots down for now, the physical damage against Alistair with his high defense and armor and Valeria with her even higher amount of armor isn't too bad. Our grey warden resurrects Leliana, and Wynne's forcefield runs out while Caladrius wasn't really able to do anything too devastating. Meanwhile, Alistair, being a templar, has done a good job of keeping the powerful blood-mage occupied and also doing a bunch of damage to him:
With a few lyrium potions, we are fully recovered. Victory is soon ours:
Now, we only have to defeat Loghain in a duel at the Landsmeet, which is quite easy with our armor rating and arsenal of spells:
Next time, we're going to enter the endgame of Dragon Age: Origins
13 Uktar 1369: Silas, a servant & Lorekeeper of Ογημα, to posterity, presents greetings.
I was preparing to solve a riddle presented by four warders on the first labyrinth level of Durlag’s Tower & I knew that there was no way it could bring anything but a negative response. One year plus 100 days since I left Candlekeep & that’s one lesson I have learned. Back then, I would have just solved it & never considered the result might not be a prize. Here though, I cautiously prepared my retinue for the worst. I’d solved all four of the riddles presented & it was time to close the deal with the last. I prepared for the worst & hoped for the best.
The level itself is built around the great hall of the entire keep. Entering from the northeast down 12 shallow steps, the Hall is 40’x120’ that opens into a larger oblong room, 60’x120’ that houses an elevator powered by a Wardstone. The great hall contains a long rectangular head table that runs parallel to the room & sits on an appropriately sized woven rug. There are tapestries lining the walls between pillars built into the wall & separated by 30’ each. Two smaller rectangular tables sit at the end of the head table, perpendicular to the head table. There are 10’ arched doorways leading out of the room 60’ down on either wall, heading NE & SW respectfully. The larger room sits down three steps & is empty save the large elevator & an assortment of barrels in the W and E corners.
KEY EVENT: (Warders) I prepared for battle. I cast Protection form Evil 10’ Radius, Holy Power on me & my fellows, then Silence 15’ Radius where two of the warders were standing. Neera cast Haste, Branwen Remove Fear & Draw on Holy Might & Faldorn Blessed us & cast Armor of Faith on herself. Then I had them approach the last warder and all the nine hells broke lose. I’m not sure Kivan took a step before he was Held. Branwen stood in the line of fire & tried to cast Dispel Magic to free him but to no avail. Kivan fell there & I directed Branwen back to the stairs where I could buy time and try to separate the four warders who were now attacking me. We got out of there & Fear came with, alone, just as I hoped – two of them would have been too much as I had lost Neera almost as soon as we passed thru the door. He’d gotten Neera but he ended there. I had us all heal & the four of us destroyed the others one at a time, singling each out for piecemeal destruction – Avarice, Pride & finally Love. By the time I got to Love, I was blasting him with the Wand of Heaven, alternately w/Divine Wrath as I was out of spells that could harm him or help me. I returned to Kelddath to have Kivan & Neera raised before I returned, determined to be more careful in my future forays.
We have nothing to Fear...
Avarice
Love Hurts!
Throughout the dungeon, I was very cautious. The place was trapped around every corner & the monsters necessitated respect.
Traps upon traps upon more traps
Careful negotiation
The first labyrinth level had the best treasure room yet, replete w/ Water Opals, over 2100gps, Arrows of Dispelling, Fire, Ice & Acid, to name a bit.
The treasures would get even larger. The battles would become more difficult as I moved deeper and farther into Durlag’s maze of death. The 2nd labyrinth level was brutal; the 3rd down allowed absolutely no room for error – but I made them, costing me time and money. I nearly walked us into a deathtrap against Greater Doppelgangers on the 2nd labyrinth, only to bounce back with a nearly perfect victory over Dwarven Doom Guards on the same level. I had an extremely difficult time with Greater Ghouls on the 3rd labyrinth level until Kivan & Imoen switched to Arrows +2 rather than Arrows of Fire & Arrows of Acid. I lost half of my retinue in another ambush of sorts on level 4 wherein I was forced to battle chess pieces. Luckily none that were slain there were beyond being raised & I was able to be sent forth from there by the ghost of Durlag’s wife. After a return visit to the Song of the Morning & resupply in Beregost I returned to battle through Greater Wyverns, more Greater Ghouls, & knowledge tests (which I thoroughly enjoyed – Ογημα has taught me well). The completion of the knowledge tests opened the door to my final battle of Durlag’s Tower, a nasty Demon Knight that had seized the empty keep for himself. Had I not come along, he might have ruled from there for centuries, but his essence has been returned to the abyss.
That was close!
Tactical perfection!
Checkmate!
Demon Knight
There was some uproarious comic relief though. Truly the funniest thing I have ever witnessed. I was attacked by two Greater Ghouls, nasty things, while resting on the steps of a fire pit on labyrinth level 3 that continuously went off like a Firebal every few seconds. I thought it was a safe place to heal and recover spells. When they were spotted by Kivan trudging through the pit, the hope was that they would be taken by explosion. They weren’t and as we prepared to battle, Neera tried to cast what she said was a Magic Missile. Instead she conjured a cow. A large heifer fell out of the air, right on top of Faldorn. It was a pain in the arse, & I returned to Kelddath once again for aid in raising one of my own. After getting Faldorn squared away, and rested we headed back from Beregost toward Durlag’s keep across the lands around the Temple of the Morning. As we were walking, all were tired and focused on just getting back to the tower, where we always rest before entering.
Suddenly, as deadpan as it could be said, Faldorn quipped, “Really Neera? You dropped a cow on my head?”
Even Kivan cracked a grin (but refrained from guffawing with the rest). It took us 30 minutes to continue. I know Ογμηα had to smile at that one.
Holy cow!
On return to Ulgoth’s Beard, I was attacked by eight maniacal cult enforcers, including wizards & assassins. This was a particularly difficult fight that I initially thought would be quick work. The wizards drew my attention to the front while assassins slipped around behind my using stealth. Before I realized they were there, they’d already struck both Imoen & Neera such that they had to disengage. They attacked seeking a dagger that a dwarf in the Ulgoth’s Beard Inn had asked that I retrieve. I had forgotten it when I found it amongst the belongings of the Demon Knight in Durlag’s keep. I beat them back but now I am in a race to keep a Tanar’ri from being released from imprisonment within the dagger – not that I really care about his being loose necessarily, I just sense his presence will drastically change the balance in this part of Faerun toward chaos and evil and that would not be ideal.
“Spread truth and knowledge so that all folk know more.” Σιλας
I saw not long ago @subtledoctor posting a fix for the current bug in LoB saving throws - giving enemies a bonus of 5 as intended. Like @semiticgod I thought I'd see how well an elven archer could do in an SCS installation with that fix. Several initial attempts have been ended with the normal sorts of mistakes, but I've got far enough to feel confident that there should be no problems in principle in BG1 - I'll document this attempt with the aim of getting at least past Sarevok.
In rolling up Mesmer I was tempted by a roll of 88 with 18(00) strength and again by a 91 with 18(93) strength. I kept going though and eventually plumped for a 94 total, albeit with low strength - that allows him to get the best shop prices at the cost of making early progress marginally more difficult (most fighting will be with a long bow anyway where strength is not an issue).
From Candlekeep Mesmer stripped the bodies of Imoen, Xzar and Montaron and continued on to Beregost. His starting reputation was 11 and killing an innocent at that level costs you 4 reputation - leaving 7 which is just enough to avoid falling. Hence he was able to shoot Algernon straight away in order to get his cloak.
Rather than restore reputation immediately, Mesmer went to the south and charmed an ogrillon to kill its companion before also helping out against some hobgoblins to get the useful boots of stealth.
He completed quests for Mirianne and Zhurlong (though immediately killing the latter to get the boots back) before travelling down to Nashkel to learn LMD - he also picked up an invisibility potion from the Manor House there, shot down Vitiare and got a first level from talking to Noober.
He returned to the Beregost temple to pay 450 gold for 3 reputation points and got another for finding a book for Firebead to get back to the safety of 11. At the temple he then charmed and drew out the first of the sirines. That was worn down to 5 HPs by a wild dog, which was just too much to finish off with LMD. He used stealth to get half a dozen or so unsuccessful shots at it, before the sirine wandered far enough to activate the wolf pack. That required a fair amount of running and use of stealth before Mesmer was able to get the sirine on its own again. This time he used a magic missile from Imoen's wand to set it up for the kill - getting him to level 3.
The combination of the extra level, the proficiency increase and the archer bonus meant his THAC0 suddenly increased by 4 .
Despite the potential danger from the wolves, Mesmer continued with the rest of the sirines - dragging those to locations away from where he'd last seen any wolves. He successfully picked up the XP for all of the sirines - gaining a further 2 levels from that.
A trip to the FAI got a belt from the ogre on the way. A couple of charmed gate guards quickly accounted for Tarnesh, allowing Jaheira to be pulled outside and assassinated for her invisibility potion. Mesmer moved on north, handing a bowl back to Tenya on the way to Ulgoth's Beard. Her improved saving throws meant it was no longer possible to charm Dushai, but the villagers near her could be charmed and dragged into a nearby house - allowing Dushai to be attacked and killed without turning anyone mobile hostile (a stationary woman near him still goes hostile, but that's not a big issue as she can't accidentally be chased into the inn (which would result in losing access to the shop there).
After restoring reputation with another 450 of donations and returning Mr Colquetle's amulet, Mesmer went to the Lake area and activated a single gnoll to attack Drizzt. I set a 30 minute timer on that to check on progress and found the gnoll had broken its weapon. Continuing to leave the battle running I found Drizzt was unconscious an hour and a half or so later and finishing him off took Mesmer to level 5.
Arrow Slinger's Sneaky Neverwinter Escapade Part 1: Prelude, Chapter 1, and Chapter 1E
I'm not one to give up so early into a no-reload run. A brawler-type Monk/Fighter sounded good on paper, but I forgot how reliant it was on STR-increasing items and good monk gloves. This time, I'll do one of my favorite tried-and-true builds that always performs well under most conditions: a Rogue/Wizard/Arcane Archer.
Meet Arrow Slinger. His starting feat is Point Blank Shot, which will let him negate the THAC0 AB penalty for firing in close quarters and actually give him a +1 bonus to AB and damage when doing so.
Arrow Slinger will have excellent AB and Reflex saves, and enough attacks per round to essentially double his sneak attack damage whenever an enemy qualifies for it. He can use stealth, pick locks, disarm traps, and has access to UMD, which gives him extra utility. His bad points are that his lowish HP leaves him rather squishy and his Fortitude and Will saves are awful.
The Prelude and Chapter 1 are mainly me retracing Gus Slamrock's steps, but with Grimgnaw the monk helping out. Grimgnaw has the best AC of all the companions and is mainly used to tank while Arrow Slinger performs ranged sneak attacks with his longbow.
At level 4, I level up as Wizard to fulfill the spellcasting requirement for Arcane Archer. Enemies killed by 4th level Rogues count as being 2 levels higher when it comes to XP calculations in NWN's OC, so this next level will come faster than when Arrow was a 3rd level Rogue. As expected, it does come pretty quickly inside the prison.
A scroll of Sound Burst stuns a bunch of prisoners, including the leader of the very small sewer.
The rest of the prison is cleared without trouble, but we save the Intellect Devourer for later like last time. Killing some of the guards in the City Core gives a lot of XP while some citizens give the last XP boost to level 7.
All the zombies in the Beggar's Nest and its warehouse give level 8.
Gulnan is killed without accidentally glitching her AI. Sneak Attacks from Arrow Slinger disrupted her spells constantly.
Blacklake plague victims give level 8.
Meldanen is killed by more Sneak Attacks but I forgot to take a screenshot of it. Grimgnaw basically solos the Intellect Devourer as I buff with Potions of Clarity and Speed. It dies as soon as I gulp the Potion of Speed.
Callik is killed via Sneak Attacks.
With the 4 McGuffins gathered, its on to Chapter 1E. The zombie lord in the lower level of Helm's Hold gives level 9 and the first level of Arcane Archer.
The fight with Desther goes poorly, as a pair of Revenants kill Grimgnaw and I can't use the Stone of Recall from within Desther's sanctum. Arrow Slinger has to do this alone. The Revenants have a rather high AB and can hit Arrow Slinger about half the time. After expending all of my invisibility potions and 3/4 of my extensive healing potion supply, I decide to give up on killing them and just fight Desther instead. The revenants are are lured outside of Desther's ritual room and use a Ring of Invisibility to escape, closing the door on them so they aren't tempted to come back inside.
After killing Desther's ritual golems, I try using a scroll of Silence on myself and get close to Desther to prevent him from casting spells. In NWN, Silence can be used on yourself to give yourself a 15' aura that automatically silences anyone in the radius. But Desther isn't too bad of a fighter and hits Arrow Slinger several times, so I back off and start letting him cast spells again. I take this opportunity to hit Desther after using a Potion of Speed as he buffs himself a bit. Soon the fight is over. Onto Chapter 2, and this time without dying to Brother Toras.
Thanks to UMD and a good Appraise roll, I can buy a Robe of the Dark Moon at the Temple of Tyr for perma-Haste for a relatively cheap 18k. Back to the North Road caves again. The goblin, bugbear, and orc chiefs are killed again easily with Grimgnaw tanking while Arrow Slinger stands back with ranged sneak attacks. Some trash mobs before Dergiab give a level.
The Arcane Brother's crypt is going to wait until later. The East Road is next and the Creator Ruins give another level.
After that, Geth is killed for more XP.
Setara in the Neverwinter Wood is killed after giving her the mirror from the nymph's home (who is also killed). Killing enemies seems to give way more XP than doing quests...which is basically the opposite of how it is in Baldur's Gate.
Once inside the realm of the spirit of the wood, we have no choice but to kill it. I was planning to give it the antidote first before killing it anyway, but its summoned Shadow Fiend would not stop attacking Grimgnaw after the spirit had surrendered. Attacking the shadow fiend caused the Spirit of the Wood to turn hostile again.
South Road is next. Silverback is killed for a level and her head is given to Farmer Pete.
Now to solve the mystery of Castle Charwood. I perform the ritual to summon Belial and get his oath.
Karlat is killed the first time around for a huge XP gain. Karlat cast Weird at me, but the Belt of Guiding Light I was wearing protected me from the death magic. After killing Karlat the first time, his Challenge Rating takes a nosedive, so it's only worth doing it once. His oath is acquired.
Quint's side of the castle is cleared. I take the long way around the bodak guard and kill it from beyond a portcullis. It tries to break it down to get at me, but it's not strong enough to do so. The Belt of Guiding Light would have protected me from its Death Gaze, but it wasn't close enough for the gaze to reach.
With Quint's oath, it is time to judge the both of them. They are both declared not guilty as it was Belial's influence that caused the events that transpired in the castle.
With the three werewolf boys dead, it's time to cure kill Sir Karathis. On the way there, we get ambushed by Darktongue Breakbone and two of his goons. He hits hard and fast, but Grimgnaw tanks him well enough for me to shoot them all down with ranged sneak attacks.
Karathis's cave is found and he is put down after being cured. Nyeh heh heh.
Alhelor is the werewolf that caused all this. That's it for this quest chain.
I bring back Relmar's journal and the Charwood cultist's journal to Aribeth, which allows entry into Luskan. I'm not quite down here yet though.
I bring back all three serpent gems to Eliath Craulnober which grants a level. That means Zamithra, Wanev, and Setara are dead.
Mutamin's dungeon is completed. Nothing noteworthy there.
With everything else in Chapter 2 cleared, it's time to get revenge on Brother Toras. I make my way to his room and buff with Protection from Evil; potions of Cat's Grace, Bull's Strength, and Endurance; and a scroll of Protection from Elements and Lesser Spell Mantle. His inital Chain Lightning is harmlessly absorbed by the spell mantle, though I find it weird that it still chained to Grimgnaw anyway.
Toras is casting spells in rapid succession because he began the fight with Haste. Toras uses Dispel Magic on me, which surprisingly only removes Protection from Evil and Protection from Elements. I have to back off because my health is somehow at 50%, so I retreat and drink a Potion of Heal. Toras follows but Grimgnaw and I ambush him when he rounds the corner, disrupting his spells. I use a scroll of Greater Spell Breach to remove his Greater Stoneskin, which leaves him open for Grimmy and I to beat him down.
And now, for a reward that I've been saving for myself for completing all of Chapter 2: Kendrack's bounty glitch. Kendrack wants the ears of 4 Waterdeep Prison escapees and will give some XP and gold for getting the ear... but he has to walk to up you to take said ear from your inventory. If you tell him you have another ear before he takes it from you, you can turn in the same ear over and over again for huge XP and gold gains. All you have to do is run around and not let him get close to you while mashing the '1' key on your keyboard to spam the dialogue option to turn in the ear. I do so with Zor's ear and gain an entire level's worth of XP from it.
After leveling up, I try again with Delilah's ear, but Kendrack now runs toward me instead of walking, so he takes the ear from me before I get enough for a level. Drat. I talk to him again with Wyvern's ear and lead him outside into Port Llast so I have more room to run around, but this time he walks. I gain a 2nd level.
I do the same with Stirge's ear for a 3rd level and do it enough times that it leaves me very close to a 4th level. Turning in Yesgar's ear should do the trick.
On the way to Port Llast's mines to kill Yesgar and take back Kendrack's daughter, Solomon ambushes us. He is certainly no challenge but drops a Ring of Protection +5!
We enter the mines and kill Yesgar and his assorted ogre and orc goons. Rescuing Shaldrissa is what gives me the 4th level I wanted.
Yesgar's ear is turned in, but you cannot perform the glitch with his ear. There is nothing else left to do in Chapter 2. Into Luskan and Chapter 2E we go.
On the way to the basilisk area Mesmer ran into a basilisk ambush. More often than not I just risk running as the basiliks tends not to try gazing until you're out of sight. However, this time I opted for safety by using one of the 2 invisibility potions found to date.
On arrival, Korax was pulled down to the bottom of the map to paralyze the basilisks before Mesmer engaged. As his charm duration is borderline for killing all the basilisks he assaulted the southern group directly rather than trying to pull them away from each other. That meant Mesmer had to be careful about not getting into range of more than one basilisk. The improved saves also meant that the greater basilisk could shrug off multiple hits and that allowed it to recover from paralysis at one point - causing Mesmer to quickly get out of sight while Korax finished it off to get him a 6th level.
Mutamin's lesser basilisk was in its rarer location near the statue of Tamah, which meant Mutamin got involved in the fight before the other basilisks were dead. He retreated after using a few spells, but the delay that caused meant Mesmer couldn't finish off the last basilisk before Korax went hostile.
Attempting to make a virtue out of necessity he tried to charm that, but failed. After a rest he tried again and failed and this time the basilisk chased him briefly and Mutamin chased him for rather longer. Eventually he was able to rest again though and this time the charm attempt took.
Mesmer bypassed where Korax had been left and went to find Mutamin. He survived plenty of gazes, but those did interrupt several spells until he resorted to melee. Deciding to join in Mesmer started shooting, only for Mutamin to finally freeze in place.
He wore the basilisk down a little more against a gnoll before using a melee attack for the first time to finish it off.
Baerin was charmed and fed to Korax and the +1 arrows he dropped were used to kill the golems at High Hedge, where Mesmer bought the potion case to help with inventory management.
Then it was back to the basilisk area to charm Peter, Lindin and Kirian - Korax helped with their safe disposal before being shot down.
Next up was the Nashkel Mine where Mesmer successfully stealthed through to find Mulahey without the kobold shaman detecting him. He charmed Mulahey at the first attempt and intended to finish him off himself after he was worn down by kobolds. However, Mulahey lost morale earlier than expected and his running round resulted in a kobold peeling off and attacking Mesmer - and the delay that caused allowed the other kobolds to get the kill.
Just for a change I pulled Neira out of the inn to fight against Nimbul. She would only obey instructions for a few seconds at a time though before lapsing back into inaction and made no real impression - Mesmer did finish her off though with a LMD.
I was caught out after that though. Even though Mesmer had never been visible when in sight of Nimbul it didn't surprise me when he went straight after him - Mesmer had immediately been running away and successfully hid before Nimbul arrived. Once Nimbul had got next to him he stopped though and I thought he would then stay there - and be an easy target for the Amnian soldiers. However, the instant Mesmer's stealth failed Nimbul reappeared and started casting - Mesmer barely getting into the inn before an emotion arrived (though he had a potion of clarity as back-up).
From inside the inn the text reports showed Nimbul was now under attack. He got to badly damaged status, but then appeared to get all his spells back and cast invisibility. Mesmer responded by resting a number of times until he eventually caught Nimbul staying still where the soldiers could get at him again - and this time he didn't disappear.
Back in Beregost Silke outlasted Tranzig in a fight, despite being held at one point.
She was supposed to just help occupy Karlat while Mesmer shot him, but I got a bit careless there and lost her XP.
That meant shooting down the spiders was a bit more time-consuming, but they were still pretty easy to hit - at least as LoB targets go.
After calling in at the FAI to give Landrin back his things, Mesmer went to Peldvale and persuaded Raiken to take him to the Bandit Camp. He talked his way past Tazok there, to give him free rein of the place. I was particularly keen to get Hakt's longbow, so charmed him and dragged him outside by becoming visible only for an instant - not allowing Raemon to focus on Mesmer.
I just let some undead kill Hakt, in order to avoid the camp going hostile and then did the same to Taurgosz. Although I was confident doing that to Hakt would be safe, trying to charm Raemon seemed less so, but I did it anyway to try and save on an invisibility potion. The first attempt was unsuccessful, but Mesmer was able to get back behind a pillar before Raemon noticed him. The second attempt though worked.
That meant Mesmer was free to loot the tent and leave. He could have hidden Raemon away and cleared the whole camp, but that seemed more trouble than it was worth, so he just left. Some travel around followed until both SCS ambushes triggered - he just ran away from those and has now arrived at the Cloakwood.
Well my turn to confess failure on the simultaneous run. After blinding Bassilus and Skie, then wandering over the map a bit, we went to Nashkel with Brage. At Nashkel carnival I underestimated Zordal who proceeded to paralyse Cu'ran and then surround him with goblins! Succumbed to the hero trap really as I couldn't imagine Cu'ran staying outside helplessly and took a big risk on him helping his buddies. Not sure what'll come next but they'll be a bit more selfish , and I'll be less hungover!
We make our way to Redcliffe, take out a horde of darkspawn and travel to Denerim, towards the final couple of battles. We entrust Morrigan with commanding our remaining party members (she does have the neccessarry defensive spells in force field, heal, regeneration, group heal and revive in case anything goes wrong) while hunting for the darkspawn generals. At the alienage, we even land a rare successful hit with mana clash at a boss-ranked opponent:
Making our way to Fort Drakon, we have to be careful: There are ramps filled with traps, archers and emissaries which could prove dangerous if we recklessly attack without thinking. We make sure to take out any spellcasters from a distance with mana clash while using long-range AoE such as fireball to knock down and kill archers while Alistair and Leliana run towards the enemy, drawing fire and disarming traps. For most of these battles, we use the dalish archers as our army, but for the final approach, we switch to the mages in order to use their guaranteed staff hits against dragons:
This battle can be a bit dangerous as the dragons have AoE stuns while multiple hostile spellcasters will approach the party throughout, so once I was able to spot a spellcaster, I activated Valeria's spell shield for additional safety. We didn't have any problems, though. Now, inside the fortress, some spellcaster elites/bosses fell to mana clash, and the potentially dangerous genlock master assassins (who can be deadly if he surrounds a low-armor spellcaster from stealth) went after Leliana instead of Wynne, allowing for a quick rescue via forcefield:
Now, we only had to deal with the archdemon. Once again we summoned the circle mages to help us, because their staff attacks never miss, even against the end boss. Our primary damage was going to come from Wynne's and Valeria's staff attacks in any case. We also activated greater spirit balms, which allowed us to ignore a lot of the archdemon's attacks, making this fight a lot easier. While one of the mages was killed early on, our party had no trouble dealing initial damage:
Eventually, the archdemon decided to fly to a safer platform away from the battlefield and called in the darkspawn horde, while our own allies such as Arl Eamon joined the fray. I mostly ignored the battle against generic darkspawn, letting Alistair, Wynne and Leliana take care of them while Valeria continued to deal damage at range, dodging various vortex spells in the process:
She had to defend against shriek attacks from time to time, but was able to stand her ground until the archdemon returned to the main field of battle - though far away from my party. I was forced to take down a bunch of darkspawn before being able to approach our final foe again, which gave him the opportunity to take down most of the allied mages - no trouble, though: Once we were in range, the archdemon didn't survive for long:
Victory! Naturally, we chose the dark ritual option, so everyone in our party survived the final battle, and we can import this character to the Awakening addon. I've decided to include Awakening for this run, despite it being a lot easier, just because I like playing it and having fun with the new high-level abilities.
So, what does Awakening mean for our general strategy? First, new NPCs: This one's simple, because Awakening allows us to respecc everyone, so we can just take the initial three - Oghren, Anders, Nathaniel - and turn them into a weapon and shield-style tank (templar, champion, spirit warrior), a mage with strong defensive and healing spells plus AoE options (spirit healer, blood mage, battle mage) and a dual-wielding dagger rogue focused on cunning (bard, assassin, shadow). Now, in Awakening, as long as you have a stringent concept for your character, everything you can do will get kicked into overdrive: Tanky warriors can gain flat out damage immunity for a time and can easily max out all resistances with the right armor runes, rogues and arcane warriors can achieve 100% dodge without thinking much about it, with rogues dealing either insane single target damage in melee or going for the max-dex accuracy archer build which is flat-out ridiculous with constant high-damage crits (can one-or two-shot most normal opponents) while mages can kill everything around them with new sustained AoE damage modes and specializations - I think two-handed warriors are still a bit lackluster compared to everything else, but I've never seriously tried playing one in Awakening.
In any case, we won't overdo things: Awakening is easy enough as it is even on nightmare difficulty (unless you get surprised by a bunch of overwhelm abilities or don't protect yourself against spells in one or two key battles), so I'm not going for any 100% dodge builds or similiar cheesy stuff. Valeria will add battle mage to her arsenal and learn a bunch of new passives. I just love the hand of winter spell, especially with two mages in the party who both can use this one plus time spiral. Two hand of winter spells with max-spellpower mages kill basically any group of foes (unless they have boss rank), and timespiral gets around the long cooldown. We're also going to finish the spirit healer tree (cleansing aura lets us sell all those injury kits), the arcane warrior tree (in case we need extra defenses) and get all the awakening-exlusive mage spells while we level up. The other characters will be built similiar to origins: Oghren going for high defense via dexterity (increasing his threat gain with air of insolence), Nathaniel using lethality and bard-passives to profit from high cunning (with sustained abilities such as momentum, weak points and shadow form), and anders copying Valeria's build, but with blood wound instead of arcane warrior stuff (and less points to spend in total). This time around, my second mage will also take the spell shield line for additional security against spellcasters.
Let's see if these ideas work out well in practice.
Arrow Slinger's Sneaky Neverwinter Escapade Part 3: Chapter 2E
Previous updates: 1, 2
In the pirate city of Luskan, we have to find a way to get inside the Host Tower and find Maugrim. The two warring High Captains will be our way in. Before that, we enter the Ruins of Illusk. Nothing challenging but I wanted to fight Voleron the lich because he guards several high-tier treasure chests. His undead army is lured out by ranged attacks. Voleron himself spends way too much time buffing himself and pays the price for it.
A Grey Robe of the Archmagi and a Scarab of Protection +5 are among the spoils! I can't use the Robe yet since Arrow Slinger's UMD skill is underleveled from all the Arcane Archer levels he's been taking. Leaving the ruins behind, Kurth is the first High Captain to go and we get the diplomatic seal required to enter the Host Tower.
We give Kurth's head to Baram and then kill Baram anyway. That's the Neverwinter Nights way. Notice that the two statues providing Baram with Stoneskin and Spell Mantle are still intact.
With those two out of the way, we give the diplomatic seal to Aarin Gend to create a forgery of a diplomatic pass to enter the Tower. We give it to Captain Islund at the entrance but kill him anyway because he has some good loot, including a Ring of Regeneration (which heals 2 HP/round instead of the normal 4/round).
Usually I climb the tower in order of level 2 -> 6 -> Pinnacle, but this time we take all 8 floors upward to make sure we don't miss out on any good loot or worthwhile minibosses. Nyphithys is the only miniboss that gives big XP even at Arrow Slinger's level 17, but I forgot to take a screenshot of killing her.
This guy always cracks me up. Fred is the training dummy next to him.
Arklem is freed after we kill an Elder Fire Elemental, a Skeletal Devourer, a Grey Slaad, and a Bone Golem.
And then, the plot twist of the century:
We return to Aarin Gend after this and begin Chapter 3.
I didn't remember to take any screenshots for much of Awakening - mostly due to a lack of situations that were interesting or challenging gameplay-wise. The most significant change compared to my DA:O strategic approach was propably taking my mages into the thick of things more often in order to use hand of winter, which served to speed up many encounters. I started with the Amaranthine sidequests before venturing to the Wending Wood, were the first mishap of the run occured - due to an annoying bug that I forgot about. You lose your equipment after you enter the Silverite Mine, and while you'll always be able to get the equipment of your party members by killing specific enemies, there's a bug which might cause your main character's equipment to be lost - which is why, in a no-reload run, you should remove your equipment before entering the mine. I forgot about this bug, so I didn't do this and lost most of Valeria's stuff, though she ended up not getting stripped of all her items as she was imprisoned for some reason, keeping her rings and her spellward, for example.
This is bad, but not a huge setback - most of her items were going to be replaced relatively soon anyway (mostly in Kal'Hirol). The only really significant loss was the staff Spellfury, one of the two best staffs in the game. Too bad - I just bought it, and it ended up costing most of my gold.
In any case, fighting our way out of the mine was very easy, especially with two mages (one of them being Velanna, as we were forced to take her along - but I had an additional respec-book at the ready to change her spell selection and make her a lot more powerful). Kal'Hirol was next on our list. While there's barely any chance to suffer problems in the Silverite Mine aside from the bug, Kal'Hirol does involve fighting a lot of darkspawn children who tend to have access to overwhelm - the danger is still relatively low with two mages, as one of them should always be able to free the other via crowd control spells or forcefield if neccessary. Hand of Winter is also very helpful here in order to speed up these battles, as the children usually try to surround your party. I made my way to The Lost and acquired the other really good staff in the game, using greater warmth balms I had still left from origins.
Now, I made my way to the Blackmarsh, where I finally started to take some screenshots again. Also, we suffered our first knockdown: Anders was hit by overwhelm by some kind of shadow wolf off-screen while I was distracted and busy fighting somewhere else, and I didn't notice that he was taking damage. Still, no serious danger in any of the battles before entering the fade. There, we quickly took care of The First:
Back in the real world, the game forced us to take along justice (who I didn't respecc because I was too lazy, despite having another book ready). The Baroness didn't stand much of a chance, as our mages were easily able to keep everyone healed up at all times:
Now, for the optional and most interesting pre-endgame encounter in this addon: The Queen of the Blackmarsh, a dragon with an electrical breath weapon and a phase that kicks in three times in which you have to destroy slow-moving sparks before they can reach and heal up the queen. Our opening move: Greater elixirs of grounding for everyone:
The first spark phase showed me that things would be fine for us: We had no trouble getting rid of every single spark in time by splitting up our damage. Soon, the queen was at 50%:
The next two spark phases worked out the same way, and our elixirs of grounding lasted throughout the entire fight. Lighning damage drains endurance in this game, but honestly, Nathaniel does good damage even without his sustained abilities and justice has second wind if needed:
Victory! Time to forge some powerful items back at the keep. Just a quick note in terms of our armor sets: Oghren will be using the sentinel armor with Valeria going for Hirol's Defense. Nathaniel won't be wearing any set, instead equipping all of the non-set-related powerful leather armor pieces in the game. Anders is using the Vestments of the Seer. Most equipment choices in awakening are fairly obvious (there isn't too much to choose from), though I should mention the armor runes I ended up going with: Paragon immunity runes for Oghren, endurance runes for Valeria and evasion runes for Nathaniel.
Now, the endgame of Awakening awaits - with at least 3 somewhat interesting battles, so there should be some screenshots for this part of the game!
Now we have to go to three areas and find the three McGuffins. I've amassed about 500k gold so I do some shopping here and get myself a Robe of the Shining Hand +3 (+3 AC), Boots of Speed, a Cloak of Fortification +3 (+3 deflection AC, +3 all saves), and a Ring of Power (cold/fire/elec resist 15/-, Free Action, Regen 1 HP/round).
Coldwood's wizard dungeon is up first. Trash mobs in Chapter 3 would be challenging for a party of level 4 adventurers at best and are only worth 6 XP a pop, so I'm not missing anything by skipping most of them with invisibility potions. I have the water elemental free Nax from his prison, but I end up killing Nax as he is a level 20 wizard, which means it's worth way more XP to kill him than to just complete the quest. When I attack him, Nax tries to flee to the dungeon exit but a Called Shot to the leg slows him down enough for Grimgnaw to disable him with Stunning Fist.
With the snowglobe retrieved, we go inside of it using Lilian's snowglobe stand at the inn at Beorunna's Well. I don't usually repair the Amulet of the Ages, but I do it this time to see if it's worth any XP. It isn't, and the white dragon guarding the McGuffin goes hostile immediately if he sees you after it's been repaired.
The first McGuffin is acquired and turned in to Aarin Gend. Fort Ilkard is next and I level up from some not-so-trash mobs on the way there, which marks the last pre-epic Arcane Archer level.
We have to travel back in time to make a trio of guardian golems weak to a certain damage type so we can unlock a big door that leads to the second McGuffin. I choose to make them weak to bludgeoning damage, so I use the Longarm bow to deal that damage type.
If you die in the past, you have to reload the game. Fortunately the Old Ones there do not pose much of a threat when Grimmy and I work together. The rituals to unlock the big door are completed but a Balor Lord is the last line of defense. It's no match for sneak attacks.
The second McGuffin is turned in. Moonwood is the last area and I kill Obould Many-Arrows while I'm there.
Akulatraxas is killed for her eggs. Grimgnaw dies to her acid fog spell just afterward so I go pick him back up at the Temple of Tyr.
Inside the fire giant lair, King Skrogg scores a nasty crit against Arrow just before dying.
The enslaved blue dragon is also killed, to which Grimgnaw dies again.
Then it's time for Klauth the ancient red dragon. I buff with Potions of Barkskin, Cat's Grace, Bull's Strength, Endurance, Bless, Aid, and use Karlat's Protection Wand on myself and Grimmy. I hand over Akulatraxas' eggs, then give him an essence orb that contains the dead blue dragon's soul, which greatly weakens Klauth.
Klauth spends two rounds activating draconic auras, then has his spells interrupted by both Arrow and Grimmy. In the end, he didn't manage to accomplish much.
Inside the chest that contains the last McGuffin, I find the Taralash longbow. Nice!
Klauth's head is delivered to the gold dragon Gorgotha for the Uthgardt Ceremonial Belt, which gives immunity to disease and death magic, along with +5 to Fortitude saves. Grimmy and I re-buff, this time with Stoneskin from a pair of Gargoyle Boots, and kill Gorgotha afterward.
Turning in the last McGuffin to Aarin Gend grants Arrow Slinger level 20. Onto Chapter 4: the finale of Neverwinter Nights.
Mesmer just ran through the Cloakwood, with the exception of picking up a potion of invulnerability from Laskal. The only encounter where care was needed was several phase spiders that teleported in to greet him in the 2nd area and tried to obstruct his progress past a bunch of ettercaps (using the ring of free action to be able to run through webs).
At the mine, Drasus and his companions were charmed and fed one by one to the nearby guards to be worn down before Mesmer finished them off. It took about 8 attempts to successfully charm Drasus himself, but stealth made that pretty risk-free. Finishing him off was also a slight problem when the end of his rage caused him to go hostile just before Mesmer was ready to attack him. Drasus got one attack in and, with another one likely to be fatal, Mesmer used an oil of speed to ensure he could keep ahead and finish Drasus off to get his boots.
In the mine, Mesmer just sneaked down to Davaeorn's level. He charmed the guard there and moved him out of the way while he laboriously set off most of the traps and healed the damage using LMD on guards trying to stop him resting. Eventually though he was ready to charm the main guard again and use it to attract the attention of the battle horrors. He sent the guard out of sight while dodging the horrors and was then finally ready for the guard to attack Davaeorn. I was planning on that being the end of the fight, but the guard broke his weapon, so Mesmer actually got the final blow in.
With the advantage of the broken weapon, the mustard jelly was too strong for the guard.
Mesmer didn't then take the time to kill it with stealth attacks - just drawing it out of the way so he could loot the treasure chests. Mesmer rested to get a second horror ability before flooding the mine, though in retrospect I'm not sure that was a good idea. I tend to use horror at the palace, but it's less useful in an SCS installation anyway and I think the dopplegangers will have an automatic save against it with the LoB +5 bonus. I also noticed on exit that Mesmer had got the XP for L7 at some point since he arrived at the mine area.
Mesmer started increasing reputation by going to sort out Greywolf. With THAC0 of 1 he was hitting pretty easily there despite the LoB -11 AC adjustment.
Officer Vai, Samuel and Joia were all done without any trouble - as was Farmer Brun thanks to the boots of speed meaning he could just run past ankhegs after robbing their treasure. Charleston Nib required a bit more work, particularly as the religious ecstasy of the diggers protected them against charm. However, shooting them all down only took a few minutes. Stealth attacking the Doomsayer would have taken far longer, so Mesmer just got a lift back to Nashkel with Brage. The major encounters in the Cloud Peaks included two more reputation points from the Dryad and a little girl, as well as an alternative pair of bracers from Zal and stealing the charisma tome from under the noses of some xvarts.
The final reputation point needed for 20/20 was gained by returning to the basilisk area to revive a statue.
After some shopping Mesmer looked on the map to see there was still plenty to do before tackling the City quests. He started in the Red Wizard area, where the mages were charmed and disposed of without trouble.
At Firewine, Bentan and Poe were charmed to get their equipment without reputation loss, while a charmed Meilum killed Kahrk before being shot down without even bothering to use kobolds to wear him down first.
On the way to Durlag's Tower there was another basilisk ambush - but this time Mesmer just ran away secure in the knowledge he had protective potions if the basilisk gazed quickly enough. He bypassed the first 2 battle horrors, but intended to kill the one on the wall by dragging it to the end and using the shield amulet to require the skeletons to roll a critical to hit - once they were out of arrows I thought I would be able to kill the battle horror without any risk of retaliation. However, I didn't seem to be able to find a position where Mesmer could attack the battle horror without being in range of the skeletons' halberds - and in the end he just left.
He got some easier XP from the basilisks on the roof though - using the greenstone amulet to get past the trap and a PFP scroll as protection. The first 3 basilisks failed to land a hit on him in melee, but the final one succeeded in poisoning him - forcing him to finish it off at range.
On the way back in from the roof I risked the possibility of ghasts moving around coming across Mesmer stunned by the trap - fortunately none appeared.
To make up for that risk though I used the greenstone amulet to protect against the charm trap rather than relying on elven resistance.
At the Lighthouse the sirines were charmed one by one. Mesmer lost the first of those to a worg critical, but picked up the next 3 despite making it hard for himself by saving time in wearing the sirines down by using 2 worgs. That proved costly with the 5th sirine when a worg bite got in fractionally before a short-ranged arrow.
As Mesmer had no further use for the worgs after Sil, they were shot down during that fight to ensure no more XP was lost.
He had 71 +1 arrows from his travels and that proved to be more than enough to shoot the 3 golems.
With a final BG1 level not that far off now, Mesmer gave up on his wilderness adventuring and headed for the bright lights of the City. He started off by acquiring the 3 Necklaces of Missiles available there - making use of stealth shots with poison arrows to wear down Shandalar's daughters.
I was hoping a single potion of mirrored eyes would be enough for the basilisk, but it switched to melee to delay things and required a second one - that was enough though for level 8.
HPs have been pretty poor, so it was nice to get a maximum from that roll.
Chapter 4 means it's time to spend this gold that I've been saving. A Robe of the Shining Hand +5, Boots of the Sun Soul +5, and Bracers of Dexterity +5 are all bought. The combined bonuses of the boots and bracers give a total of +8 to DEX, which is a +4 to AB and reflex saves.
To halt Luskan's invasion, we have to kill the wizards controlling the war golems, but the golems themselves are not totally invincible as they can be killed by elemental damage. Grimmy and I very slowly chip away at the both of them to gain a large XP reward for the kills. The wizards are also killed just to stack more XP on top of it.
Inside the house that leads to Maugrim's lair, I ambush the enemy wizard and cleric with a scroll of silence and kill the mage first. The assassin unfortunately kills Grimgnaw with sneak attacks. Grimmy's 28 AC just isn't cutting it anymore and my AC now far exceeds his at 43.
I fetch Grimmy from the Temple of Tyr and continue on. The half-dragon balor's fear aura scares off Grimmy, but sneak attacks make quick work of it.
It's time to fight Aribeth. She doesn't last long, as Arrow Slinger's sneak attacks are generally enough to disrupt her spellcasting. I allow her the courtesy of healing back to full after failing to persuade her to surrender.
Maugrim is next. He uses Time Stop to raise a pair of flesh servants who proceed to beat the crap out of Grimgnaw. Time Stop only lasts 9 seconds in NWN. I can't damage the self-buffing Maugrim with sneak attacks as self-buffing doesn't count as being flat-footed, so the pair of flesh servants kill Grimgnaw at about the same time that I kill Maugrim's main body. The servants have a much harder time hitting me and are easily culled.
In the chest beyond, the last McGuffin is acquired along with a second Taralash longbow. I return to the Temple of Tyr and buy a bunch of Potions of Heal and elemental damage arrows as you cannot use the Stone of Recall past a certain point inside the Source Stone.
We enter the Source Stone and blaze through the lizardmen. They may have a lot of HP, but Arrow Slinger's 6 attacks per round doubles his 5d6 sneak attack damage every time an enemy qualifies for it as I have Grimgnaw tank. The Arcane Archer's bonus damage is also proving to be quite deadly in addition, as Sneak Attacks that crit will hit for over 60 damage.
Next is the double dragon fight. Since they're immune to sneak attacks, I choose to engage them from extreme range and have them spend a round waddling over to us. The copper dragon goes first and so does Grimgnaw.
The silver dragon is next. When it uses its breath weapon, it has to stand there for at least 4 whole seconds, so I run away and then start shooting when it gives chase. It has trouble hitting my AC, so staying in melee range was no problem.
I retrieve Grimmy for the last time and head into the inner Source Stone. The Stone of Recall does not work in this area and there is no way back either, so if Grimmy dies here, I'm on my own. We manage to kill the Old One cleric and the chosen ones without getting Grimmy killed. It's time to fight Morag. I weaken the the Blade Barrier statue before talking to her.
After this dialogue, I finish off the statue and then help Grimmy kill one of Morag's personal guard so that he doesn't get himself killed if I have to shift aggro to him and off of me. After that, the Protector Against the Spear is killed so that Morag is rendered vulnerable to piercing damage.
With him out of the way, Morag will take full physical damage from my attacks since the Arcane Archer's Enchant Arrow also makes arrows count as +5 against DR at level 9, which bypasses Premonition's +5/30 DR. After the Protector Against the Spear is killed, I use a scroll of Greater Spell Mantle and start shooting, but Morag tears it down with Greater Spell Breach. I use another Greater Spell Mantle scroll after this but she tears that one down too.
Morag is badly wounded so I decide to just finish her off instead of trying to play mage fencing with her. She dies in short order.
One no-reload run of Neverwinter Nights' OC: complete.
Dragon Age: Origins no-reload run: Valeria, elven mage, final update
I decided to defend the keep instead of protecting the city - a choice I usually never make, but I wanted to make the game a bit more interesting, figuring that a bit of unfimiliar content might be more fun. The armored ogre alpha did indeed force me forcefield a grabbed Nathaniel and have Oghren drink a healing potion:
Now, time to chase down the Mother herself - first, we have to deal with the high dragon protecting her nest. Once again, Nathaniel gets grabbed and barely saved by a forcefield in mid-air:
Well, we've already defeated high dragons in the main game, so this one doesn't cause any further problems:
We fight our way to the Architect and decide to fight him. Why? Because his loot includes a decent belt for Anders. Oh, and good luck getting through our 2 spell shields and two anti-magic wards (which we can replace via timespiral if needed), Architect:
Now, we have to face the Mother in order to complete this run. I decide to go for a safe and defensive approach: The first thing we're going to is taking down her tentacles and all incoming adds. Hand of Winter is very helpful here. Only after that are we going to focus our attention on the boss for the first time:
With our rogue in melee range, the Mother takes a ton of damage until Nathaniel gets grabbed once again, so we forcefield him. Meanwhile, additional children spawn in:
Our mages make short work of them:
The forcefield effect ends and Nathaniel gets back to attacking. While Valeria is still busy taking down more newly-spawned adds, the final bit of damage is done, and we emerge with a relatively easy victory:
Over all, I had fun with the run, though once I got past the circle tower and had easy ways to deal with spellcasters, most of the game was maybe a bit too simple for my taste. Certainly easier than no-reloading the BG games, though possibly a bit harder than PoE1.
As a little bonus, I've decided to import Valeria into the Golems of Amgarrak, clearly the hardest part of any dragon age game - a very difficult and tactical DLC which requires either special tactics or some imported equipment and respec books to do on Nightmare difficulty. I decided to go for respeccing and imported items from Awakening instead of cheese. There are a few difficult encounters here - four are a step above the rest. One involves four high-level spellcasters, but no physical foes, and can be solved with the likes of spellshield and mana clash (though non-protected party members are likely to die). In Golems, you only have some relatively weak new companions and no secondary mage (instead, you get a weak golem with some very mediocre spells at its disposal). In any case, that one wasn't too bad for me, but I had to drink two lyrium potions to avoid getting my spellshield deactivated:
Next there's a battle against 4 elite sentinels, who have all the golem abilities such as quake or hurl bolder - this can result in tons of AoE damage and AoE stuns, and I barely survived their initial barrage. Luckily, Hand of Winter saved the day:
You can see that I've turned my warrior into a guardian instead of a spirit warrior. Why did I do this? Well, because certain enemies in this DLC deal so much damage that a) a constitution build is pretty good (and guardian abilities scale with constitution) and b) because of incredible amounts of hostile AoE damage, guardian abilities can possibly save the party.
These four sentinels are but the precurser to the second-toughest fight in these games - the enraged sentinels. There are four of these, they are boss level and have the golem abilities, plus there are 2 elite sentinels in the same encounter. This encounter is incredibly difficult to win without cheese, at least on nightmare difficulty. It can simply be skipped, though. We, however, are here for the challenge. This is my approach: First, only show your warrior with everyone else on retreat. Use grievous insult to get all the golems to focus on your warrior (otherwise, they WILL go after your remaining party despite the way threat usually works in this game). Hope they won't stunlock you before you can activate your fully-upgraded carapace ability which should give you immunity to damage for a short time.
Your party should enter - hopefully, the golems will have used their hurl boulder abilites by now. If not, spread out. Protect your tank with forcefield and spam a combination of CC and AoE damage at the golems (with maxed-out spellpower, after a few spells, you will propably get a couple of them out of combat for a while, though most likely not all due to their boss level). Now, your rogue can try taking out the elites first:
Now, we have basically stabilized - our enemies are all focused on our tank, and their CC abilties aren't syncronized perfectly, so we always have time to heal up and take out our foes one by one.
However, this fight isn't as tough as the final battle of the DLC: The Harvester, a multi-phase boss battle involving a bunch of hard-hitting AoE, huge swarms of sparming skeletons, more damage than you can usually heal, and some more incredibly powerful skeletons which can take out your entire party if you don't pay very close attention. The easiest strategy I know for this encounter involves tons of taunt-kiting, there's another one with 100% dodge, but we're going to play it straight. In order to do that, we have to respec our rogue again, this time into an archer with max dexterity and accuracy + aim. He can do a ton of damage without moving around or getting close to this deadly foe, and for this one battle, we can deal with the bad ranged AI.
For the first phase, we aggressively use the mechanics of this fight to get rid of spawning skeletons rather quickly, which leaves us without the option to do so again in phase 2. At one point, we have to use forcefield because Valeria is unable to heal our tank quickly enough otherwise, but we get lucky when it comes to the harvester's ranged attacks - only one ever hits Valeria, and she ends up surviving. Our archer is left entirely alone.
In phase 2, the Harvester runs away from us to raise a skeleton while we do some decent initial damage:
This first skeleton is destroyed right away, but the second one is boss level and does incredible amounts of damage. We are barely able to take it down before it can destroy our tank while the Harvester is busy already raising another one:
We have our bronto taunt the next skeleton - also a super-dangerous boss level one. We can't waste time fighting it, the bronto is able to kite it for a bit but is eventually taken down while we chase down the Harvester again:
We're able to call the bronto back again and take down the boss before the skeleton is able to reach the party:
I'm surprised that I was even able to win this battle without taunt-kiting the boss or using 100% evasion. Trust me, this is one's much harder than it looks - propably the only encounter in the game on par with some of the most difficult SCS-improved battles in ToB.
Finally, we also import Valeria into Witch Hunt, the final DLC. However, this one is about as easy as Awakening and quite short. Here's just two screenshots of us killing the final boss:
I'll be sure to return with another BG run once SCS v32 is fully released!
@Grond0: I admire your precision. Frisky Bits is using many of the same strategies, but I've always found your sheer breadth of knowledge incredible, handling many obstacles I still barely understand.
@semiticgod I agree with your assessment of @Grond0 - I think in Grond0's case, he benefits from his considerable PnP experience and knowledge, which I think gives him a subtler understanding of of what things work and what can be done to resolve a problem/encounter. There's also the simple fact he has massive experience - he's done many runs with many classes (every class?), and with some classes more than 100 runs (like wild mages). He also pushes himself more than the average player (solo usually, no use of healing potions), which forces him to come up with creative strategies. Of course many times his first idea doesn't work, which is why Grond0 has so many innovative ways to kill off his PC, such as forgetting his warrior party still had arrows of detonation equipped and when they all fired, Boss died - not often a player dies to self-immolation, you see.
Even though it's of no actual benefit, Mesmer did the poison quest to get access to the wisdom tome. Jalantha was shot down with stealth attacks - damage there being healed quicker than usual thanks to Mesmer now knowing a L1 divine spell - while Marek failed to complete a spell under pressure from Larze.
After picking up the Helm of Balduran, Mesmer sneaked in to find Degrodel and then went to get a matching cloak. There were more stealth shots to get the +2 ring from Ramazith (before sneaking up his tower to get the tome), the nymph cloak from Ragefast and another ring of wizardry from Sunin.
At the Iron Throne multiple attempts were needed until Diyab was eventually charmed. He pulled back the Shennaras but failed with a number of hold person attempts on them. However, he did eventually manage to sanctuary and produced 2 skeleton warriors to kill the twins. The nymph cloak was used to charm Naaman, Gardush and Aasim and they killed each other (along with Alai who was attracted by the noise of combat), leaving 4 skeleton warriors to make mincemeat of the doppleganger and Zhalimar.
That left just the Seven Suns to do prior to returning to Candlekeep. Doing that proved much more troublesome than expected though when what I thought was a clear passage proved to be a dead end and Mesmer was cornered and brought down to near death within a couple of seconds. Fortunately he'd already purchased all the potions in the City and, after going invisible, he made use of regeneration, heroism, defense, speed, giant strength and mind focusing to tank the dopplegangers.
I intended to make use of a potion of invisibility for the ogre magi ambush, but got caught out by the transition there. During the cut scene it's not always obvious whether the game has paused or not and I unpaused it again as a result - only managing to pause once more after all the ogre magi had already launched spells. A potion of magic blocking was taken too late to stop one of the chromatic orbs, but fortunately Mesmer saved against the instant death effect from that. He then quickly got out of sight and stealthed, which should have prevented any possibility of the ogre magi following him into Candlekeep. However, I've been caught out by them doing that before anyway, so Mesmer restealthed as soon as he got into the library - just in time as 2 of the ogre magi appeared immediately after him .
After resting in the inn, Mesmer went to find the Iron Throne Leaders and set them to fighting among themselves.
He then surrendered himself and got sent to the catacombs. After resting to get DUHM he emerged from the secret library to be greeted by 3 phase spiders. Rather than just use invisibility to avoid those, Mesmer took the time to run them round, despite the fact that being poisoned by one would very likely have been a death sentence (I don't allow antidotes and using green scrolls takes more time). Three of them jumping around in a small space was certainly a challenge, but once the first of them was killed things got much easier.
With the spiders out of the way he tanked the traps and looted the tombs with the help of a potion of cloud giant strength topped up by DUHM.
After bypassing the dopplegangers, Mesmer failed a couple of times to charm Tam. After the second attempt 3 phase spiders teleported on top of him. I really didn't fancy his chances in another running battle down there with so many enemies around and Prat's gang didn't actually have anything he wanted - so he ran and stealthed from the spiders. He then tried attacking the basilisks, but another phase spider tried to interrupt that. With just the single spider though I decided I couldn't justify running again . Mesmer threw 16 stunning darts at it while repeatedly dodging past it along a narrow strip (trying pretty successfully to time his runs past the spider at moments when it was not due to attack), but only hit 3 times and the spider saved each time. Still not willing to give up, Mesmer switched to frost arrows and finally killed the spider - though he did have to save against poison from one attack during that.
He then successfully meleed the basilisks before leaving - remembering to hide from any remaining ogre magi on the way to the map edge.
Back in the City he bought some dispelling arrows and went in search of Slythe. As soon as he came into view there Slythe gave his dialogue and disappeared - prompting Mesmer to run away fast. As expected, Slythe followed him into the inn and then upstairs - where Larze was waiting for him. A couple of backstabs followed, but Larze was then a clear favorite in that fight - at least he was until Krystin suddenly appeared as well . Mesmer thus decided to intervene with a frost arrow to disrupt her opening spell.
He continued mixing frost with dispelling and poison arrows, but unfortunately failed to poison her and her stream of MMMs in return meant he couldn't keep up a consistent attack. That resulted in Krystin successfully confusing Larze and then producing a skeleton warrior to help finish him off. The good news though was she had retreated far enough across the room after producing the skeleton warrior that she took no further part in the fighting.
After a potion of regeneration had got HPs back, Mesmer attacked Slythe again, but he didn't want to come back downstairs (where a charmed commoner would have invited a backstab). As that meant he would be hiding in stealth ready with a potentially fatal backstab when Mesmer came back up, he recruited Ivanne to come upstairs to soak up the backstab, while he disappeared using a potion.
Ivanne would have lasted long enough to allow Mesmer to finish Slythe off - except that the skeleton warrior decided to abandon Ivanne and attack Mesmer instead. Being forced to break off the attack meant Slythe still had 44 HPs when Ivanne went down and Mesmer had to use another potion of invisibility, followed by regeneration and other buffs before successfully finishing him off with the help of a fiery breath.
Krystin was left alone to mourn her loss.
At the palace I reduced the risk of the battle greatly by:
- charming 3 of the noblemen and putting them in side rooms
- charming 4 of the Flaming Fist to work together on my side
- charming Ithyl to come and provide some spell support
However, I got the selection of the noblemen wrong - I intended to get the shaman, mage and assassin, but missed the assassin. It didn't miss Mesmer though and wasn't a long way off one-shotting him early on.
However, it and 2 greater dopplegangers died without further trouble. Regeneration had healed Mesmer by the time he went after the shaman, who failed to complete a spell. The mage's buffs kept him going rather longer and he successfully dispelled Mesmer's buffs, along with Ithyl's charm, just before he died.
That only left a standard greater doppleganger though - who was still in nobleman form. After waiting for a few hours (for the charm to wear off) he eventually found his inner doppleganger and found himself outmatched.
Mesmer pulled Belt to a back room, but allowed Sarevok to kill Liia (to grab her equipment) before showing himself.
Liia's equipment included another invisibility ring, which Mesmer paid 13,400 to recharge - even though that required him to sell some of his hoarded jewelry and he will probably have far more invisibility potions than he can use in SoD anyway.
@Corey_Russell, @semiticgod I suspect any breadth of knowledge is largely focused around finding ways to die . It's true though that I've played BG1 a lot more than BG2, so feel more comfortable there. I've done everything in BG1 lots of times and beaten Sarevok hundreds of times. I've only finished BG2 on a handful of occasions though and there's significant parts of that I've never done at all (like the lower floors of Watcher's Keep for instance).
@Corey_Russell: The third post of the thread now contains a "Hall of Heroes of Icewind Dale" and "Hall of Heroes of Neverwinter," with @Flashburn's entry being our first NWN no-reload run. I could combine them, but a "Non-BG Runs" section doesn't have as honorable a name as a separate Hall.
The other Hall only has IWD runs, so I don't really know. semiticgod is the one who suggested I do a NWN run, so I thought he would know what to do with it if I succeeded.
I originally thought we'd divide it up by games, but I haven't posted by TES runs or the DWM run out of respect for those who might wish to keep this thread dedicated to games closer to BG. I'll bring it up in the Lounge and we can talk over how to honor things--I definitely think NWN deserves a spot, since it now has an EE and everything.
Mesmer went through the maze without killing anything. He did actually have in mind to kill the skeleton warriors, but as soon as he attacked them using a PfU scroll they started running around everywhere and he wasn't carrying enough missiles to want to use those to chase them down.
Mesmer used Algernon's cloak to charm Gorf, Shaldrissa, Wudei and Carston from the Undercity party and drag them into the temple. He then recharmed then with the nymph cloak before activating the battle. Sarevok was stranded in a corner as usual, along with Semaj, Diarmid and Tazok. One of Shaldrissa's skeleton warriors then went to tempt Angelo out of hiding. He didn't appear to have a death spell, so the other 2 skeletons joined in the fight and didn't take long to sort him out.
Once Diarmid's PfM scroll ended, Mesmer started bombarding the others with necklace fireballs. I probably got a bit too close when starting that though as a text message immediately showed Tazok enraging. Mesmer retreated immediately and stealthed and indeed found Tazok arriving to attack the rest of the group - he was on his own though, so that didn't end happily for him.
A total of 28 fireballs were too many for Semaj and a further 14 saw the back of Diarmid.
Once all the skeleton warriors were dead the army was sent in on Sarevok. He put up a credible resistance, but the odds were ultimately too great even with Mesmer barely participating (he did try a couple of called shots to see if, along with malison, he could make Sarevok vulnerable to spells - but without using any buffs or quality ammunition he only got one successful hit).
Sarevok's death did not trigger the transition to SoD, but that seems to be quite common in an SCS installation and I used the console to switch to the Undercity area. Coming back into the temple then triggered the transition.
In the SoD dungeon, Mesmer quickly showed himself to Porios and induced him to surrender.
Downstairs, PfU and stealth took him past the undead groups to open the door to Korlasz's room. After buffing up he shot Korlasz with a dispelling arrow to get rid of her fire resistance and immediately followed up with a firebreath potion. Another dispelling arrow to get rid of more mirrors, a couple of acid arrows and another firebreath were enough for her to surrender.
In the City Mesmer harvested equipment from the bodies of Rasaad, Minsc, Dynaheir and Safana (only the first of whom even fights back). He also picked up the Spectacles of Spectacle, but the only real work done was killing Korlasz once more in the process of getting the Battle Tankard helmet (though even there Mesmer just waited until the guards had done all the hard work before putting in a killing shot).
Selling those items, along with some jewelry carried over in his bag, gained Mesmer a bit over 50k gold - more than enough to buy relevant scrolls, potions and ammunition that are only for sale in BG.
After leaving the City and sorting out inventory with his new bag of holding, Mesmer headed for the Coast Way Forest. The greater HP Tsolak has in LoB meant he could tank Isabella while Mesmer shot down Ikros. Some hits with called shot using arrows of piercing then made Isabella vulnerable to being stunned and a few darts later she stuck in place.
On the way back to the Coast Way Crossing, Mesmer came across a troll cave. He picked up their treasure before continuing on his way.
He didn't hand Takos his heirlooms as he wanted to keep both the mirror and the shield, but did shoot down Teleria from distance (his script doesn't kick in until you get closer) in order to get the Stone Ally - though intelligence needs to be raised to make that usable.
Shortly after that a messenger from Tsolak gave Mesmer the troll regeneration stone and enough XP to get to level 9
- another maximum 14 HPs, an increased archer bonus and grand mastery with the longbow providing a nice boost there .
There seemed little point in fighting at the bridge - so Mesmer just hid until Caelar was ready for a parley.
He stealthed through the Troll Claw Woods before finding a large hole in the ground while travelling to the next area. He used invisibility to investigate that and pick up the Spellbreaker sword - just in case an undispellable bonus to spell saves is desired at some point.
After arriving at the Forest of Wyrms he tried to rest to recharge his identifying mirror, but repeated failures caused him to try area travel - and he found another ambush area where he saved a green dragon.
Back at the Forest of Wyrms he stealthed past the enemies on the path and a sleeping dragon at the start of a cave system. I was unsure whether the spear trap in the next cave had any chance of killing Mesmer with the doubled LoB damage, so made a first use of Armor of Faith to reduce damage slightly - in the event he easily survived.
After resting (using DUHM to heal up) he continued on into the old temple, where he will face some dangerous challenges.
Just a quick update on Coremage the human berserker 13/mage 16 - his party has defeated Nylee and also Yaga-Shura. Gold is still terrible (less than 5000), but fortunately the Oasis is next and we'll get lots of gold there (once we sell the junk we pick up), assuming we survive.
19 Uktar 1369: Silas, a servant & Lorekeeper of Ογημα, to posterity, presents greetings.
The only place worse for a demon to die than on a plane outside of the abyss, is the abyss itself. Two demons in less than three weeks. I really expected more but Aec’Letec’s essence has now been returned to the abyss where it will eventually form another demon, but only after facing torment or punishment. A demon like Aec’Letec will certainly have made some enemies of his kin.
After defeating the Cult Enforcers on return from Durlag’s Tower, I felt the need to follow up on the dwarf’s warning that a demon was about to be released in Ulgoth’s Beard by his worshipping cult of imbeciles (my words, not his). Following his instructions, I found their location in an otherwise basic warehouse. I defeated the Cult Guard situated outside & then lowered the boom on a Cult Wizard, Cult Archer, two Cult Guards and three Cult Assassins inside. It’s actually not accurate to say, I lowered the boom on them, because I struggled a bit w/the assassins – they were invisible when I arrived & were equipped w/Potions of Invisibility so that every time they struck, they were quick to go invisible again. They zeroed in on my weaker, more lightly folks armored & this made them a pain.
KEY EVENT: Aec’Letec was released just as I descended the stairs below the warehouse, where his ‘priestess’ was conducting the ceremony to release him from the dagger. With her were six cult guards in an empty cellar, save for the unmistakable markings on the floor that signified a summons in progress. When the demon was freed, he quickly used a Death Gaze that froze Branwen in place. I can’t remember if it was Faldorn or Neera, or maybe both, that tried to free her with Dispel Magic but I eventually had to pull us out. I noticed that the Cult Guards remained in place, so it was only Aec’Letec, but, yeah, it was only Aec’Letec, I pulled us back and decided to try using Potions of Mirrored Eyes to protect from his gaze, but I could only come up with three potions.
After resting, I prepared us by casting Protection from Evil 10’ and prepared me by casting Righteous
Power & Armor of Faith. Neera cast Haste on the team & Chaos Shield on herself. Faldorn slapped
Bless on us before preparing herself with Iron Skins & Armor of Faith. Kivan used Potions of Fire Giant
Strength & Heroism, Imoen used a Potion of Power. But I forgot to hand out the Potions of Mirrored
Eyes!
I don’t really know what happened to the Death Gaze, maybe it just wasn’t affecting us the second time in. But we slowly, deliberately eliminated the Cult Guards and Aec’Letec (without Branwen, as I hadn’t yet had her raised). Before I knew it, although I was bloodied, Aec’Letec was dead & Kivan had his second demon kill in a fortnight.
TOUGH FIGHT BUT WELL DONE!
It’s time for me to return to Baldur’s Gate and finish this.
“Never deliver a message falsely or incompletely.” Σιλας
I haven't actually got this far into SoD using LoB before so wasn't sure what to expect. Scouting out Ziatar though I noted that he had a couple of cultist mages accompanying him. They were also well positioned, so that Mesmer could not charm them without being in sight of Ziatar. Oh well, better charm Ziatar then and set him on the mages - and a malison and a single chromatic orb later and Ziatar was dead.
Unfortunately though the game froze on the cut scene where the madwoman is released from her prison. On the rerun he was again charmed at the first attempt before dying to a single chromatic orb - suggesting to me that his saving throws may well be bugged. However, I carried on regardless .
For the Neothelid, Mesmer used a potion of magic shielding topped up with a PfP scroll before running straight past it to find Akanna. A fireball annoyed her and her aerial servants and Mesmer quickly retreated. He successfully charmed a crawler with the nymph cloak before going invisible when the Neothelid arrived - that can see through invisibility, but I hoped it would still be distracted by the crawler. However, it quickly finished that off and came to find Mesmer where he was in combat with Akanna. That led to a retreat and run around before returning - and this time he just had time to finish Akanna off before the Neothelid could summon more than one mordy sword to complicate movement between shots.
Mesmer ran out into the bugbear area and tried resting to heal up, but some bugbears appeared. He therefore moved straight back into Morentherene's cave and tried throwing some daggers at her. I wasn't that bothered whether I killed her, so hadn't used any buffs - meaning Mesmer probably needed a critical to hit her. Lady luck was smiling though and his third dagger struck home.
After an easier time than expected in the temple, Mesmer moved on to Boareskyr Bridge. He sneaked into the fort where he turned the dragon scales into armor - normally I prefer the shield, but for an archer unable to wear heavy armor the dragon scale armor is a significant upgrade. I didn't think it was realistic to try and kill Vichand, so just intimidated him into giving up the scroll. That was soon put to use and a dark wraith shot down
Mesmer made use of the magic residue to get 80 void arrows made. He then surrendered the fort before going to tackle the mage on the bridge. Some potion buffs later and he attacked - using arrows of dispelling to negate buffs and poison arrows and the ring of energy to help disrupt casting. That worked reasonably well, though the mage did manage to complete a haste spell before being finished off.
That made the archers a bit more difficult to handle and rather than use a regeneration potion when HPs got low Mesmer went to find a bit of help.
At the Coalition Camp the Spectacles summoned the genie vendor to provide a couple of nice items (ring of purity, cloverleaf). The genie also buys at the best prices in the game and that financed the purchase of a +2 composite longbow and a few more potions and scrolls that will never be used. I also did Simonetta's quest to get the medal of valor to boost THAC0 a bit more.
In Dead Man's Pass I wanted some +3 arrows from the mimic cave. Trying to charm a wraith spider in the cave failed twice though and on the second occasion several phase spiders teleported over to me. With a dozen spiders, a neo-otyugh and several ochre jellies to defeat even before I could activate the mimic (and loads more enemies outside, so I couldn't easily retreat there) I decided the encounter looked like just too much hard work and ran away. I did though use the Spectacles for the second time to get the Ring of the Tiny Fiend in case Mesmer needs a helping hand in the odd fight.
On the way to Dragonspear Castle Mesmer ignored the dead magic ambush zone. On arrival he tried out the mephits on some guards threatening Skie. The mephits didn't last long, but one of the guards switched sides courtesy of the nymph cloak to make the battle easy. After gaining entry by warning about the threat to the Crusade from the Hero of Baldur's Gate, Mesmer adjudicated a dispute - pronouncing Corinth guilty in order to inherit a slight upgrade to his bow.
Mesmer also got the Ring of the Crusade from Deneld, though I'm not sure if I'll want to use that or not.
I don't think there's anything Mesmer wanted in Bloodbark Grove, so his next destination was the Underground River. A potion of clarity and some mephits were used to defend against some myconids there while gaining another summoning option.
After stealthing past some spiders I talked to the cyclops. Normally I don't bother with any work at Dragonspear Castle and have to fight the cyclops, but as I already had Caelar's Seal this run I was able to get in without any conflict.
In the underground section Mesmer stealthed through to Ferrusk and persuaded him to hand over an ankheg summoning amulet. I needed to be alert though as an umber hulk appeared the instant the conversation finished - Mesmer responding with an invisibility potion before it confused him.
After placing the Bwoosh, Mesmer blagged his way into the Warrens and did some looting there. I think there are +3 arrows in one of the containers, but several of those were locked and couldn't be opened even using 25 strength - so he was out of luck getting those. Mesmer used an oil of speed before going to the basement in order to poison the food and water as quickly as possible. He had to show himself to Hephernaan to unlock the lift again, but left before anyone could target him.
He ran out and away before the alarm spread.
Back at the Coalition Camp I have a funny feeling an invasion is imminent. However, having failed to get any standard +3 arrows as yet I think it would be an idea first to go back and have another think about getting the ones in the mimic cave ...
Archer L9, 116 HPs (incl. 5 from helm; 10 from ring), 204 kills
Back in the mimic cave, Mesmer tried and failed again to charm a wraith spider. However, only a single phase spider teleported to him and he beat that up in melee with the help of a potion of defense (his armor makes him immune to the threat of poison). He successfully rested in the cave, but an astral phase spider teleported to him as he woke up. Another potion of defense and equipping his shield made that require criticals - it got quite a few of those, but not enough. Another failed charm attempt saw a sword spider attack. Mephits were produced to help with that, but all the other spiders then arrived as well. Mesmer protected himself with free action and took a potion of regeneration, but a quick pair of criticals required him to go invisible as the spider horde converged on him.
Once HPs were somewhat higher he used the nymph cloak to charm a nearby phase spider - though it was disappointing to see that webbed immediately, so he didn't start shooting as originally intended. Once he had the opportunity to catch another spider on its own he tried charming it, but failed. However, he kept trying as other spiders congregated and eventually succeeded. The final attempt was taking a risk as he was down to 33 HPs. None of the gargantuan spiders were in range, but several criticals from other spiders could still have killed him before he had another chance to go invisible. His new sword spider friend was also immediately webbed and Mesmer went invisible while it was rapidly finished off by poison damage.
Rather than use up more regeneration potions, Mesmer went to rest using DUHM before coming back again. Using the same sort of tactics he gradually worked through the spiders - adding a potion of magic shielding when gargantuan spiders were in range to defend against their stunning attack. Doing that though led indirectly to his downfall just when the battle was close to being won.
Having commented this morning on @semiticgod's failure to protect against web tangle I suppose I really should have kept the ring of free action on Mesmer (or used a potion) . However, I'd taken the ring off when Mesmer took the potion of magic shielding as saving throws provided enough protection and he really needed both ring slots for other things. The length of battles in LoB though means that potions can easily run out. When the magic shielding went I decided to replace it with the use of the Greenstone Amulet (I had 50 unused charges of that and would probably only have needed a couple to finish the spiders). I suppose my logic was that the amulet would protect against the stunning attack from the gargantuan spider, but I hadn't considered it would not protect against web and Mesmer was no longer wearing the ring of free action ...
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The Deep Roads are long, but not all that dangerous to our party by now. Enemy spellcasters generally suffer death by mana clash, unable to do any harm to Valeria with her spell shield. The first true boss battle down there is against the corrupted spider queen, but we have far too much healing by now for her to be a true danger:
Now, it's time to call the Landsmeet and prepare for it. First, we look for Queen Anora at Arl Howe's estate. The Arl has two mages with him, but both fall to mana clash right away (well, one actually survives the initial spell, but dies a second later):
After fighting our way to his room, we first try to lure his troops into a room further back in the building:
Next time, we're going to enter the endgame of Dragon Age: Origins
I was preparing to solve a riddle presented by four warders on the first labyrinth level of Durlag’s Tower & I knew that there was no way it could bring anything but a negative response. One year plus 100 days since I left Candlekeep & that’s one lesson I have learned. Back then, I would have just solved it & never considered the result might not be a prize. Here though, I cautiously prepared my retinue for the worst. I’d solved all four of the riddles presented & it was time to close the deal with the last. I prepared for the worst & hoped for the best.
The level itself is built around the great hall of the entire keep. Entering from the northeast down 12 shallow steps, the Hall is 40’x120’ that opens into a larger oblong room, 60’x120’ that houses an elevator powered by a Wardstone. The great hall contains a long rectangular head table that runs parallel to the room & sits on an appropriately sized woven rug. There are tapestries lining the walls between pillars built into the wall & separated by 30’ each. Two smaller rectangular tables sit at the end of the head table, perpendicular to the head table. There are 10’ arched doorways leading out of the room 60’ down on either wall, heading NE & SW respectfully. The larger room sits down three steps & is empty save the large elevator & an assortment of barrels in the W and E corners.
KEY EVENT: (Warders) I prepared for battle. I cast Protection form Evil 10’ Radius, Holy Power on me & my fellows, then Silence 15’ Radius where two of the warders were standing. Neera cast Haste, Branwen Remove Fear & Draw on Holy Might & Faldorn Blessed us & cast Armor of Faith on herself. Then I had them approach the last warder and all the nine hells broke lose. I’m not sure Kivan took a step before he was Held. Branwen stood in the line of fire & tried to cast Dispel Magic to free him but to no avail. Kivan fell there & I directed Branwen back to the stairs where I could buy time and try to separate the four warders who were now attacking me. We got out of there & Fear came with, alone, just as I hoped – two of them would have been too much as I had lost Neera almost as soon as we passed thru the door. He’d gotten Neera but he ended there. I had us all heal & the four of us destroyed the others one at a time, singling each out for piecemeal destruction – Avarice, Pride & finally Love. By the time I got to Love, I was blasting him with the Wand of Heaven, alternately w/Divine Wrath as I was out of spells that could harm him or help me. I returned to Kelddath to have Kivan & Neera raised before I returned, determined to be more careful in my future forays.
We have nothing to Fear...
Avarice
Love Hurts!
Throughout the dungeon, I was very cautious. The place was trapped around every corner & the monsters necessitated respect.
Traps upon traps upon more traps
Careful negotiation
The first labyrinth level had the best treasure room yet, replete w/ Water Opals, over 2100gps, Arrows of Dispelling, Fire, Ice & Acid, to name a bit.
The treasures would get even larger. The battles would become more difficult as I moved deeper and farther into Durlag’s maze of death. The 2nd labyrinth level was brutal; the 3rd down allowed absolutely no room for error – but I made them, costing me time and money. I nearly walked us into a deathtrap against Greater Doppelgangers on the 2nd labyrinth, only to bounce back with a nearly perfect victory over Dwarven Doom Guards on the same level. I had an extremely difficult time with Greater Ghouls on the 3rd labyrinth level until Kivan & Imoen switched to Arrows +2 rather than Arrows of Fire & Arrows of Acid. I lost half of my retinue in another ambush of sorts on level 4 wherein I was forced to battle chess pieces. Luckily none that were slain there were beyond being raised & I was able to be sent forth from there by the ghost of Durlag’s wife. After a return visit to the Song of the Morning & resupply in Beregost I returned to battle through Greater Wyverns, more Greater Ghouls, & knowledge tests (which I thoroughly enjoyed – Ογημα has taught me well). The completion of the knowledge tests opened the door to my final battle of Durlag’s Tower, a nasty Demon Knight that had seized the empty keep for himself. Had I not come along, he might have ruled from there for centuries, but his essence has been returned to the abyss.
That was close!
Tactical perfection!
Checkmate!
Demon Knight
There was some uproarious comic relief though. Truly the funniest thing I have ever witnessed. I was attacked by two Greater Ghouls, nasty things, while resting on the steps of a fire pit on labyrinth level 3 that continuously went off like a Firebal every few seconds. I thought it was a safe place to heal and recover spells. When they were spotted by Kivan trudging through the pit, the hope was that they would be taken by explosion. They weren’t and as we prepared to battle, Neera tried to cast what she said was a Magic Missile. Instead she conjured a cow. A large heifer fell out of the air, right on top of Faldorn. It was a pain in the arse, & I returned to Kelddath once again for aid in raising one of my own. After getting Faldorn squared away, and rested we headed back from Beregost toward Durlag’s keep across the lands around the Temple of the Morning. As we were walking, all were tired and focused on just getting back to the tower, where we always rest before entering.
Suddenly, as deadpan as it could be said, Faldorn quipped, “Really Neera? You dropped a cow on my head?”
Even Kivan cracked a grin (but refrained from guffawing with the rest). It took us 30 minutes to continue. I know Ογμηα had to smile at that one.
Holy cow!
On return to Ulgoth’s Beard, I was attacked by eight maniacal cult enforcers, including wizards & assassins. This was a particularly difficult fight that I initially thought would be quick work. The wizards drew my attention to the front while assassins slipped around behind my using stealth. Before I realized they were there, they’d already struck both Imoen & Neera such that they had to disengage. They attacked seeking a dagger that a dwarf in the Ulgoth’s Beard Inn had asked that I retrieve. I had forgotten it when I found it amongst the belongings of the Demon Knight in Durlag’s keep. I beat them back but now I am in a race to keep a Tanar’ri from being released from imprisonment within the dagger – not that I really care about his being loose necessarily, I just sense his presence will drastically change the balance in this part of Faerun toward chaos and evil and that would not be ideal.
“Spread truth and knowledge so that all folk know more.” Σιλας
Best Kill Competition:
1. Kivan, (Demon Knight), 15000 exp
2. Imoen, Greater Basilisk, 7000 exp
3. Branwen (Greater Wyvern) & Faldorn, Shoal the Nereid, 5000 exp
4. Neera, Skeleton Warrior, 4000 exp ea
ORDER OF MARCH: Kivan (Recon) & Imoen (traps), Branwen (shock), Silas, Neera, Faldorn (rear guard)
MONSTERS DEFEATED:
Travel/sleep encounters: Greater Ghouls (2), Doppelgangers (6), Half Ogres (2), Worgs (2),
Gnolls (56)
Labyrinth Level 1: Greater Doppelgangers (3), Skeleton Warriors (2), Flesh Golems (2), Mustard
Jellies (2), Phase Spiders (7), Ghouls (6), Skeleton, Zombies (6)
Labyrinth Level 2: Greater Doppelgangers (9), Dwarven Doom Guards (5), Ghasts (6)
Labyrinth Level 3-4: Greater Wyverns (3), Queen, Fission Slime, Invisible Stalkers (3), Ashirukuru, Bishop, Helmeted Horrors (2), King, Sword Spiders (2), Phase Spiders (2), Greater Ghouls (23), Ettercap, Crypt Crawlers (3), Pawns (8), Phoenix Guards (2), Skeletons (9)
Ulgoth’s Beard: Cult Wizards (2), Cult Enforcers (6)
CASUALTIES: Imoen (Chess), Faldorn (Greater Doppelganger/2, Cow, Chess /3, Demon Knight/3), Neera (Warder,1, Chess/3, Demon Knight/3), Branwen (Greater Doppelganger/2, Greater Ghoul/3), Kivan (Warder/1, Greater Doppelganger/2),
NOTEWORTHY TREASURE: (Purse = 8,942gp)
Armor & weapons: Plate Mail +3, Chain Mail +3, Leather +3, Kiel’s Helm, Kiel’s Buckler,
Cloak of Displacement
Jewelry: Laeral’s Tear Necklace, Rogue Stone, Star Sapphire, Ruby Ring, Emeralds (2),
Diamonds (2), Pearl Necklace, Fire Opal Ring, Moonbar Gem, Water Opal (3), Sphene
Gem, Pearls (3)
Scrolls: Greater Malison (2), Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, Slow
Potions: Frost Giant Strength
Wands & Artifacts: Lightning,
CURRENT DISPOSITION: Resting, recovering, resupplying in Ulgoth’s Beard
NEXT STEPS: Cultists
LEVEL UP: Branwen, Cleric (Battleguard of Tempus)/8; Faldorn, Druid/10; Neera, Mage (Wild Mage)/9; Imoen, Thief (Adventurer)/10; Kivan, Ranger (Archer)/8
PARTY MAKEUP: (Reputation: 8)
Silas Cl/8 (Lorekeeper of Oghma) (HP40) C/mail +3, Boots/Grounding, Girdle of Piercing, w/Gauntlets of Dexterity & Rings, Free Action & Human Influence w/Mace +2* (Flail*, SWS*, TWS*), Spells: Farsight,, Prot/Evil 15’, M/Domination, Holy Power, A/Dead, MC/Magic, H/Smite, Str/One, K/Alignment, Holy Might, H/Person, Silence 15’, S/Poison, A/Faith, Bless, Cmd, Doom, Sanctuary, R/Fear; S/ability: Divine Wrath, Heal Touch (2), Affliction, Friends; (Andris) (AI none)
Imoen Th/10 (Adventurer)(HP59) Shadow Armor +3, Kiel’s Buckler & Cloak/Displacement w/Eagle Bow +2* (w/Bracers of Archery) & S/sword +1*; Skills: OL 90, FT 105, PP 50, MS 80, HS 95, DI 35, ST 40; (Greater Basilisk) (Thf Rgd Atk)(2)
Faldorn Dr/10 (HP44) S/Leather w/RoP +2 &Club +1*, Dart +1* (Q/Staff*, Spear*) & Gauntlets of Ogre Power; Spells: Animal Rage, Iron Skins, Call Woodland Beings, A/Summon I, Hold Person, Summon Insects, Moonblade, B/Claw (2), Ch/Person/Mammal (2), S/Poison, Flame Blade, Ar/Faith, Bless, Entangle (2), CLWs,
Shillelagh, (Shoal the Nereid) (Cl agg)(3)
Neera Mg/9 (Wild Mage) (HP25) Traveler’s Robe of the Neutral Arch Magi w/Bracers of Def AC6 & Cloak/Prot +2, Sling +3*, Staff Spear +2*, & Wand of Fire, Spells: Cloudkill, MS III, M/Sequencer, S/Word, A/Summon II, Ms/M Meteors, F/ball, D/magic, Haste, C/Shield, Melf’s AA, Web, R/Enfeeblement, MM (6), Blindness, ID, Ch/Person, Chr/Orb, Nahal’s RD; S/Ability: Scribe; (Vampiric Wolf) ( AI: Mage Def)(4)
Branwen, Cl/8 (Battleguard of Tempus), (HP63), P/mail +3, Shield +1 & RoP +2, w/Warhammer +2/+1 Elec** (S&SS*) & Gauntlet’s of Weapons Skill; Spells: CS/Wounds, M/Domination, D/Magic, MC/Magic, R/Thinking, G/Warding, DUHM, F/Blade, H/Person, Silence 15’, Spirit/Hammer, Armor/Faith, Cmd, Doom, R/Fear, Shillelagh; S/Ability: Enrage, Prayer (5), (Tellan) (AI: Cl Agg)
Kivan, Rgr/8 (Archer) (HP57) Leather +3, Boots of Stealth & Greenstone Amulet w/L/bow****, Spear +1*, L/Sword (+1 (Flame Tongue) * (THWS**); Spells: CLW; Skills: MS 86, HS 96; (Karoug) (AI: Ftr Rgd Atk)(6)
MOD USED: BG NPC v23.3, BG NPC Music v6, Plane Touched Races _v0.0, Indira v12, Isra v2.3, Finch v4.0, Gavin v14, Drake, Sirene v2.5, Verr’sza v5.2, BG UB v16, Tweaks Anthology Beta 4, Song & Silence v9, Deities of Faerun, Rogue Rebalancing v491, Level 1 NPCs, SCS v31, aTweaks, Item Randomizer v7
I saw not long ago @subtledoctor posting a fix for the current bug in LoB saving throws - giving enemies a bonus of 5 as intended. Like @semiticgod I thought I'd see how well an elven archer could do in an SCS installation with that fix. Several initial attempts have been ended with the normal sorts of mistakes, but I've got far enough to feel confident that there should be no problems in principle in BG1 - I'll document this attempt with the aim of getting at least past Sarevok.
In rolling up Mesmer I was tempted by a roll of 88 with 18(00) strength and again by a 91 with 18(93) strength. I kept going though and eventually plumped for a 94 total, albeit with low strength - that allows him to get the best shop prices at the cost of making early progress marginally more difficult (most fighting will be with a long bow anyway where strength is not an issue).
From Candlekeep Mesmer stripped the bodies of Imoen, Xzar and Montaron and continued on to Beregost. His starting reputation was 11 and killing an innocent at that level costs you 4 reputation - leaving 7 which is just enough to avoid falling. Hence he was able to shoot Algernon straight away in order to get his cloak.
Rather than restore reputation immediately, Mesmer went to the south and charmed an ogrillon to kill its companion before also helping out against some hobgoblins to get the useful boots of stealth.
He returned to the Beregost temple to pay 450 gold for 3 reputation points and got another for finding a book for Firebead to get back to the safety of 11. At the temple he then charmed and drew out the first of the sirines. That was worn down to 5 HPs by a wild dog, which was just too much to finish off with LMD. He used stealth to get half a dozen or so unsuccessful shots at it, before the sirine wandered far enough to activate the wolf pack. That required a fair amount of running and use of stealth before Mesmer was able to get the sirine on its own again. This time he used a magic missile from Imoen's wand to set it up for the kill - getting him to level 3.
Despite the potential danger from the wolves, Mesmer continued with the rest of the sirines - dragging those to locations away from where he'd last seen any wolves. He successfully picked up the XP for all of the sirines - gaining a further 2 levels from that.
A trip to the FAI got a belt from the ogre on the way. A couple of charmed gate guards quickly accounted for Tarnesh, allowing Jaheira to be pulled outside and assassinated for her invisibility potion. Mesmer moved on north, handing a bowl back to Tenya on the way to Ulgoth's Beard. Her improved saving throws meant it was no longer possible to charm Dushai, but the villagers near her could be charmed and dragged into a nearby house - allowing Dushai to be attacked and killed without turning anyone mobile hostile (a stationary woman near him still goes hostile, but that's not a big issue as she can't accidentally be chased into the inn (which would result in losing access to the shop there).
After restoring reputation with another 450 of donations and returning Mr Colquetle's amulet, Mesmer went to the Lake area and activated a single gnoll to attack Drizzt. I set a 30 minute timer on that to check on progress and found the gnoll had broken its weapon. Continuing to leave the battle running I found Drizzt was unconscious an hour and a half or so later and finishing him off took Mesmer to level 5.
Archer L5, 48 HPs, 27 kills
Part 1: Prelude, Chapter 1, and Chapter 1E
I'm not one to give up so early into a no-reload run. A brawler-type Monk/Fighter sounded good on paper, but I forgot how reliant it was on STR-increasing items and good monk gloves. This time, I'll do one of my favorite tried-and-true builds that always performs well under most conditions: a Rogue/Wizard/Arcane Archer.
Meet Arrow Slinger. His starting feat is Point Blank Shot, which will let him negate the THAC0 AB penalty for firing in close quarters and actually give him a +1 bonus to AB and damage when doing so.
Arrow Slinger will have excellent AB and Reflex saves, and enough attacks per round to essentially double his sneak attack damage whenever an enemy qualifies for it. He can use stealth, pick locks, disarm traps, and has access to UMD, which gives him extra utility. His bad points are that his lowish HP leaves him rather squishy and his Fortitude and Will saves are awful.
The Prelude and Chapter 1 are mainly me retracing Gus Slamrock's steps, but with Grimgnaw the monk helping out. Grimgnaw has the best AC of all the companions and is mainly used to tank while Arrow Slinger performs ranged sneak attacks with his longbow.
At level 4, I level up as Wizard to fulfill the spellcasting requirement for Arcane Archer. Enemies killed by 4th level Rogues count as being 2 levels higher when it comes to XP calculations in NWN's OC, so this next level will come faster than when Arrow was a 3rd level Rogue. As expected, it does come pretty quickly inside the prison.
With the 4 McGuffins gathered, its on to Chapter 1E. The zombie lord in the lower level of Helm's Hold gives level 9 and the first level of Arcane Archer.
The fight with Desther goes poorly, as a pair of Revenants kill Grimgnaw and I can't use the Stone of Recall from within Desther's sanctum. Arrow Slinger has to do this alone. The Revenants have a rather high AB and can hit Arrow Slinger about half the time. After expending all of my invisibility potions and 3/4 of my extensive healing potion supply, I decide to give up on killing them and just fight Desther instead. The revenants are are lured outside of Desther's ritual room and use a Ring of Invisibility to escape, closing the door on them so they aren't tempted to come back inside.
After killing Desther's ritual golems, I try using a scroll of Silence on myself and get close to Desther to prevent him from casting spells. In NWN, Silence can be used on yourself to give yourself a 15' aura that automatically silences anyone in the radius. But Desther isn't too bad of a fighter and hits Arrow Slinger several times, so I back off and start letting him cast spells again. I take this opportunity to hit Desther after using a Potion of Speed as he buffs himself a bit. Soon the fight is over. Onto Chapter 2, and this time without dying to Brother Toras.
Arrow Slinger - Rogue 8/Wizard 1/Arcane Archer 1
Part 2: Chapter 2
Previous updates: 1
Thanks to UMD and a good Appraise roll, I can buy a Robe of the Dark Moon at the Temple of Tyr for perma-Haste for a relatively cheap 18k. Back to the North Road caves again. The goblin, bugbear, and orc chiefs are killed again easily with Grimgnaw tanking while Arrow Slinger stands back with ranged sneak attacks. Some trash mobs before Dergiab give a level.
The Arcane Brother's crypt is going to wait until later. The East Road is next and the Creator Ruins give another level.
South Road is next. Silverback is killed for a level and her head is given to Farmer Pete.
With the three werewolf boys dead, it's time to cure kill Sir Karathis. On the way there, we get ambushed by Darktongue Breakbone and two of his goons. He hits hard and fast, but Grimgnaw tanks him well enough for me to shoot them all down with ranged sneak attacks.
I bring back Relmar's journal and the Charwood cultist's journal to Aribeth, which allows entry into Luskan. I'm not quite down here yet though.
With everything else in Chapter 2 cleared, it's time to get revenge on Brother Toras. I make my way to his room and buff with Protection from Evil; potions of Cat's Grace, Bull's Strength, and Endurance; and a scroll of Protection from Elements and Lesser Spell Mantle. His inital Chain Lightning is harmlessly absorbed by the spell mantle, though I find it weird that it still chained to Grimgnaw anyway.
And now, for a reward that I've been saving for myself for completing all of Chapter 2: Kendrack's bounty glitch. Kendrack wants the ears of 4 Waterdeep Prison escapees and will give some XP and gold for getting the ear... but he has to walk to up you to take said ear from your inventory. If you tell him you have another ear before he takes it from you, you can turn in the same ear over and over again for huge XP and gold gains. All you have to do is run around and not let him get close to you while mashing the '1' key on your keyboard to spam the dialogue option to turn in the ear. I do so with Zor's ear and gain an entire level's worth of XP from it.
On the way to Port Llast's mines to kill Yesgar and take back Kendrack's daughter, Solomon ambushes us. He is certainly no challenge but drops a Ring of Protection +5!
Arrow Slinger - Rogue 8/Wizard 1/Arcane Archer 9
Previous updates
On the way to the basilisk area Mesmer ran into a basilisk ambush. More often than not I just risk running as the basiliks tends not to try gazing until you're out of sight. However, this time I opted for safety by using one of the 2 invisibility potions found to date.
On arrival, Korax was pulled down to the bottom of the map to paralyze the basilisks before Mesmer engaged. As his charm duration is borderline for killing all the basilisks he assaulted the southern group directly rather than trying to pull them away from each other. That meant Mesmer had to be careful about not getting into range of more than one basilisk. The improved saves also meant that the greater basilisk could shrug off multiple hits and that allowed it to recover from paralysis at one point - causing Mesmer to quickly get out of sight while Korax finished it off to get him a 6th level.
Mutamin's lesser basilisk was in its rarer location near the statue of Tamah, which meant Mutamin got involved in the fight before the other basilisks were dead. He retreated after using a few spells, but the delay that caused meant Mesmer couldn't finish off the last basilisk before Korax went hostile.
Baerin was charmed and fed to Korax and the +1 arrows he dropped were used to kill the golems at High Hedge, where Mesmer bought the potion case to help with inventory management.
Next up was the Nashkel Mine where Mesmer successfully stealthed through to find Mulahey without the kobold shaman detecting him. He charmed Mulahey at the first attempt and intended to finish him off himself after he was worn down by kobolds. However, Mulahey lost morale earlier than expected and his running round resulted in a kobold peeling off and attacking Mesmer - and the delay that caused allowed the other kobolds to get the kill.
Just for a change I pulled Neira out of the inn to fight against Nimbul. She would only obey instructions for a few seconds at a time though before lapsing back into inaction and made no real impression - Mesmer did finish her off though with a LMD.
Back in Beregost Silke outlasted Tranzig in a fight, despite being held at one point.
After calling in at the FAI to give Landrin back his things, Mesmer went to Peldvale and persuaded Raiken to take him to the Bandit Camp. He talked his way past Tazok there, to give him free rein of the place. I was particularly keen to get Hakt's longbow, so charmed him and dragged him outside by becoming visible only for an instant - not allowing Raemon to focus on Mesmer.
Archer L6, 56 HPs, 57 kills
We make our way to Redcliffe, take out a horde of darkspawn and travel to Denerim, towards the final couple of battles. We entrust Morrigan with commanding our remaining party members (she does have the neccessarry defensive spells in force field, heal, regeneration, group heal and revive in case anything goes wrong) while hunting for the darkspawn generals. At the alienage, we even land a rare successful hit with mana clash at a boss-ranked opponent:
So, what does Awakening mean for our general strategy? First, new NPCs: This one's simple, because Awakening allows us to respecc everyone, so we can just take the initial three - Oghren, Anders, Nathaniel - and turn them into a weapon and shield-style tank (templar, champion, spirit warrior), a mage with strong defensive and healing spells plus AoE options (spirit healer, blood mage, battle mage) and a dual-wielding dagger rogue focused on cunning (bard, assassin, shadow). Now, in Awakening, as long as you have a stringent concept for your character, everything you can do will get kicked into overdrive: Tanky warriors can gain flat out damage immunity for a time and can easily max out all resistances with the right armor runes, rogues and arcane warriors can achieve 100% dodge without thinking much about it, with rogues dealing either insane single target damage in melee or going for the max-dex accuracy archer build which is flat-out ridiculous with constant high-damage crits (can one-or two-shot most normal opponents) while mages can kill everything around them with new sustained AoE damage modes and specializations - I think two-handed warriors are still a bit lackluster compared to everything else, but I've never seriously tried playing one in Awakening.
In any case, we won't overdo things: Awakening is easy enough as it is even on nightmare difficulty (unless you get surprised by a bunch of overwhelm abilities or don't protect yourself against spells in one or two key battles), so I'm not going for any 100% dodge builds or similiar cheesy stuff. Valeria will add battle mage to her arsenal and learn a bunch of new passives. I just love the hand of winter spell, especially with two mages in the party who both can use this one plus time spiral. Two hand of winter spells with max-spellpower mages kill basically any group of foes (unless they have boss rank), and timespiral gets around the long cooldown. We're also going to finish the spirit healer tree (cleansing aura lets us sell all those injury kits), the arcane warrior tree (in case we need extra defenses) and get all the awakening-exlusive mage spells while we level up. The other characters will be built similiar to origins: Oghren going for high defense via dexterity (increasing his threat gain with air of insolence), Nathaniel using lethality and bard-passives to profit from high cunning (with sustained abilities such as momentum, weak points and shadow form), and anders copying Valeria's build, but with blood wound instead of arcane warrior stuff (and less points to spend in total). This time around, my second mage will also take the spell shield line for additional security against spellcasters.
Let's see if these ideas work out well in practice.
Part 3: Chapter 2E
Previous updates: 1, 2
In the pirate city of Luskan, we have to find a way to get inside the Host Tower and find Maugrim. The two warring High Captains will be our way in. Before that, we enter the Ruins of Illusk. Nothing challenging but I wanted to fight Voleron the lich because he guards several high-tier treasure chests. His undead army is lured out by ranged attacks. Voleron himself spends way too much time buffing himself and pays the price for it.
A Grey Robe of the Archmagi and a Scarab of Protection +5 are among the spoils! I can't use the Robe yet since Arrow Slinger's UMD skill is underleveled from all the Arcane Archer levels he's been taking. Leaving the ruins behind, Kurth is the first High Captain to go and we get the diplomatic seal required to enter the Host Tower.
Usually I climb the tower in order of level 2 -> 6 -> Pinnacle, but this time we take all 8 floors upward to make sure we don't miss out on any good loot or worthwhile minibosses. Nyphithys is the only miniboss that gives big XP even at Arrow Slinger's level 17, but I forgot to take a screenshot of killing her.
This guy always cracks me up. Fred is the training dummy next to him.
We return to Aarin Gend after this and begin Chapter 3.
Arrow Slinger - Rogue 8/Wizard 1/Arcane Archer 9
I didn't remember to take any screenshots for much of Awakening - mostly due to a lack of situations that were interesting or challenging gameplay-wise. The most significant change compared to my DA:O strategic approach was propably taking my mages into the thick of things more often in order to use hand of winter, which served to speed up many encounters. I started with the Amaranthine sidequests before venturing to the Wending Wood, were the first mishap of the run occured - due to an annoying bug that I forgot about. You lose your equipment after you enter the Silverite Mine, and while you'll always be able to get the equipment of your party members by killing specific enemies, there's a bug which might cause your main character's equipment to be lost - which is why, in a no-reload run, you should remove your equipment before entering the mine. I forgot about this bug, so I didn't do this and lost most of Valeria's stuff, though she ended up not getting stripped of all her items as she was imprisoned for some reason, keeping her rings and her spellward, for example.
This is bad, but not a huge setback - most of her items were going to be replaced relatively soon anyway (mostly in Kal'Hirol). The only really significant loss was the staff Spellfury, one of the two best staffs in the game. Too bad - I just bought it, and it ended up costing most of my gold.
In any case, fighting our way out of the mine was very easy, especially with two mages (one of them being Velanna, as we were forced to take her along - but I had an additional respec-book at the ready to change her spell selection and make her a lot more powerful). Kal'Hirol was next on our list. While there's barely any chance to suffer problems in the Silverite Mine aside from the bug, Kal'Hirol does involve fighting a lot of darkspawn children who tend to have access to overwhelm - the danger is still relatively low with two mages, as one of them should always be able to free the other via crowd control spells or forcefield if neccessary. Hand of Winter is also very helpful here in order to speed up these battles, as the children usually try to surround your party. I made my way to The Lost and acquired the other really good staff in the game, using greater warmth balms I had still left from origins.
Now, I made my way to the Blackmarsh, where I finally started to take some screenshots again. Also, we suffered our first knockdown: Anders was hit by overwhelm by some kind of shadow wolf off-screen while I was distracted and busy fighting somewhere else, and I didn't notice that he was taking damage. Still, no serious danger in any of the battles before entering the fade. There, we quickly took care of The First:
Now, the endgame of Awakening awaits - with at least 3 somewhat interesting battles, so there should be some screenshots for this part of the game!
Part 4: Chapter 3
Previous updates: 1, 2, 3
Now we have to go to three areas and find the three McGuffins. I've amassed about 500k gold so I do some shopping here and get myself a Robe of the Shining Hand +3 (+3 AC), Boots of Speed, a Cloak of Fortification +3 (+3 deflection AC, +3 all saves), and a Ring of Power (cold/fire/elec resist 15/-, Free Action, Regen 1 HP/round).
Coldwood's wizard dungeon is up first. Trash mobs in Chapter 3 would be challenging for a party of level 4 adventurers at best and are only worth 6 XP a pop, so I'm not missing anything by skipping most of them with invisibility potions. I have the water elemental free Nax from his prison, but I end up killing Nax as he is a level 20 wizard, which means it's worth way more XP to kill him than to just complete the quest. When I attack him, Nax tries to flee to the dungeon exit but a Called Shot to the leg slows him down enough for Grimgnaw to disable him with Stunning Fist.
The first McGuffin is acquired and turned in to Aarin Gend. Fort Ilkard is next and I level up from some not-so-trash mobs on the way there, which marks the last pre-epic Arcane Archer level.
The second McGuffin is turned in. Moonwood is the last area and I kill Obould Many-Arrows while I'm there.
Klauth's head is delivered to the gold dragon Gorgotha for the Uthgardt Ceremonial Belt, which gives immunity to disease and death magic, along with +5 to Fortitude saves. Grimmy and I re-buff, this time with Stoneskin from a pair of Gargoyle Boots, and kill Gorgotha afterward.
Arrow Slinger - Rogue 9/Wizard 1/Arcane Archer 10
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058363/#Comment_1058363
Mesmer just ran through the Cloakwood, with the exception of picking up a potion of invulnerability from Laskal. The only encounter where care was needed was several phase spiders that teleported in to greet him in the 2nd area and tried to obstruct his progress past a bunch of ettercaps (using the ring of free action to be able to run through webs).
At the mine, Drasus and his companions were charmed and fed one by one to the nearby guards to be worn down before Mesmer finished them off. It took about 8 attempts to successfully charm Drasus himself, but stealth made that pretty risk-free. Finishing him off was also a slight problem when the end of his rage caused him to go hostile just before Mesmer was ready to attack him. Drasus got one attack in and, with another one likely to be fatal, Mesmer used an oil of speed to ensure he could keep ahead and finish Drasus off to get his boots.
In the mine, Mesmer just sneaked down to Davaeorn's level. He charmed the guard there and moved him out of the way while he laboriously set off most of the traps and healed the damage using LMD on guards trying to stop him resting. Eventually though he was ready to charm the main guard again and use it to attract the attention of the battle horrors. He sent the guard out of sight while dodging the horrors and was then finally ready for the guard to attack Davaeorn. I was planning on that being the end of the fight, but the guard broke his weapon, so Mesmer actually got the final blow in.
With the advantage of the broken weapon, the mustard jelly was too strong for the guard.
Mesmer started increasing reputation by going to sort out Greywolf. With THAC0 of 1 he was hitting pretty easily there despite the LoB -11 AC adjustment.
After some shopping Mesmer looked on the map to see there was still plenty to do before tackling the City quests. He started in the Red Wizard area, where the mages were charmed and disposed of without trouble.
On the way to Durlag's Tower there was another basilisk ambush - but this time Mesmer just ran away secure in the knowledge he had protective potions if the basilisk gazed quickly enough. He bypassed the first 2 battle horrors, but intended to kill the one on the wall by dragging it to the end and using the shield amulet to require the skeletons to roll a critical to hit - once they were out of arrows I thought I would be able to kill the battle horror without any risk of retaliation. However, I didn't seem to be able to find a position where Mesmer could attack the battle horror without being in range of the skeletons' halberds - and in the end he just left.
On the way back in from the roof I risked the possibility of ghasts moving around coming across Mesmer stunned by the trap - fortunately none appeared.
At the Lighthouse the sirines were charmed one by one. Mesmer lost the first of those to a worg critical, but picked up the next 3 despite making it hard for himself by saving time in wearing the sirines down by using 2 worgs. That proved costly with the 5th sirine when a worg bite got in fractionally before a short-ranged arrow.
With a final BG1 level not that far off now, Mesmer gave up on his wilderness adventuring and headed for the bright lights of the City. He started off by acquiring the 3 Necklaces of Missiles available there - making use of stealth shots with poison arrows to wear down Shandalar's daughters.
Archer L8, 87 HPs, 127 kills
Part 5: Chapter 4
Previous updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
Chapter 4 means it's time to spend this gold that I've been saving. A Robe of the Shining Hand +5, Boots of the Sun Soul +5, and Bracers of Dexterity +5 are all bought. The combined bonuses of the boots and bracers give a total of +8 to DEX, which is a +4 to AB and reflex saves.
To halt Luskan's invasion, we have to kill the wizards controlling the war golems, but the golems themselves are not totally invincible as they can be killed by elemental damage. Grimmy and I very slowly chip away at the both of them to gain a large XP reward for the kills. The wizards are also killed just to stack more XP on top of it.
It's time to fight Aribeth. She doesn't last long, as Arrow Slinger's sneak attacks are generally enough to disrupt her spellcasting. I allow her the courtesy of healing back to full after failing to persuade her to surrender.
Maugrim is next. He uses Time Stop to raise a pair of flesh servants who proceed to beat the crap out of Grimgnaw. Time Stop only lasts 9 seconds in NWN. I can't damage the self-buffing Maugrim with sneak attacks as self-buffing doesn't count as being flat-footed, so the pair of flesh servants kill Grimgnaw at about the same time that I kill Maugrim's main body. The servants have a much harder time hitting me and are easily culled.
We enter the Source Stone and blaze through the lizardmen. They may have a lot of HP, but Arrow Slinger's 6 attacks per round doubles his 5d6 sneak attack damage every time an enemy qualifies for it as I have Grimgnaw tank. The Arcane Archer's bonus damage is also proving to be quite deadly in addition, as Sneak Attacks that crit will hit for over 60 damage.
I retrieve Grimmy for the last time and head into the inner Source Stone. The Stone of Recall does not work in this area and there is no way back either, so if Grimmy dies here, I'm on my own. We manage to kill the Old One cleric and the chosen ones without getting Grimmy killed. It's time to fight Morag. I weaken the the Blade Barrier statue before talking to her.
One no-reload run of Neverwinter Nights' OC: complete.
I decided to defend the keep instead of protecting the city - a choice I usually never make, but I wanted to make the game a bit more interesting, figuring that a bit of unfimiliar content might be more fun. The armored ogre alpha did indeed force me forcefield a grabbed Nathaniel and have Oghren drink a healing potion:
Over all, I had fun with the run, though once I got past the circle tower and had easy ways to deal with spellcasters, most of the game was maybe a bit too simple for my taste. Certainly easier than no-reloading the BG games, though possibly a bit harder than PoE1.
As a little bonus, I've decided to import Valeria into the Golems of Amgarrak, clearly the hardest part of any dragon age game - a very difficult and tactical DLC which requires either special tactics or some imported equipment and respec books to do on Nightmare difficulty. I decided to go for respeccing and imported items from Awakening instead of cheese. There are a few difficult encounters here - four are a step above the rest. One involves four high-level spellcasters, but no physical foes, and can be solved with the likes of spellshield and mana clash (though non-protected party members are likely to die). In Golems, you only have some relatively weak new companions and no secondary mage (instead, you get a weak golem with some very mediocre spells at its disposal). In any case, that one wasn't too bad for me, but I had to drink two lyrium potions to avoid getting my spellshield deactivated:
These four sentinels are but the precurser to the second-toughest fight in these games - the enraged sentinels. There are four of these, they are boss level and have the golem abilities, plus there are 2 elite sentinels in the same encounter. This encounter is incredibly difficult to win without cheese, at least on nightmare difficulty. It can simply be skipped, though. We, however, are here for the challenge. This is my approach: First, only show your warrior with everyone else on retreat. Use grievous insult to get all the golems to focus on your warrior (otherwise, they WILL go after your remaining party despite the way threat usually works in this game). Hope they won't stunlock you before you can activate your fully-upgraded carapace ability which should give you immunity to damage for a short time.
Your party should enter - hopefully, the golems will have used their hurl boulder abilites by now. If not, spread out. Protect your tank with forcefield and spam a combination of CC and AoE damage at the golems (with maxed-out spellpower, after a few spells, you will propably get a couple of them out of combat for a while, though most likely not all due to their boss level). Now, your rogue can try taking out the elites first:
However, this fight isn't as tough as the final battle of the DLC: The Harvester, a multi-phase boss battle involving a bunch of hard-hitting AoE, huge swarms of sparming skeletons, more damage than you can usually heal, and some more incredibly powerful skeletons which can take out your entire party if you don't pay very close attention. The easiest strategy I know for this encounter involves tons of taunt-kiting, there's another one with 100% dodge, but we're going to play it straight. In order to do that, we have to respec our rogue again, this time into an archer with max dexterity and accuracy + aim. He can do a ton of damage without moving around or getting close to this deadly foe, and for this one battle, we can deal with the bad ranged AI.
For the first phase, we aggressively use the mechanics of this fight to get rid of spawning skeletons rather quickly, which leaves us without the option to do so again in phase 2. At one point, we have to use forcefield because Valeria is unable to heal our tank quickly enough otherwise, but we get lucky when it comes to the harvester's ranged attacks - only one ever hits Valeria, and she ends up surviving. Our archer is left entirely alone.
In phase 2, the Harvester runs away from us to raise a skeleton while we do some decent initial damage:
Finally, we also import Valeria into Witch Hunt, the final DLC. However, this one is about as easy as Awakening and quite short. Here's just two screenshots of us killing the final boss:
I'll be sure to return with another BG run once SCS v32 is fully released!
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058363/#Comment_1058363
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058544/#Comment_1058544
Even though it's of no actual benefit, Mesmer did the poison quest to get access to the wisdom tome. Jalantha was shot down with stealth attacks - damage there being healed quicker than usual thanks to Mesmer now knowing a L1 divine spell - while Marek failed to complete a spell under pressure from Larze.
After picking up the Helm of Balduran, Mesmer sneaked in to find Degrodel and then went to get a matching cloak. There were more stealth shots to get the +2 ring from Ramazith (before sneaking up his tower to get the tome), the nymph cloak from Ragefast and another ring of wizardry from Sunin.
At the Iron Throne multiple attempts were needed until Diyab was eventually charmed. He pulled back the Shennaras but failed with a number of hold person attempts on them. However, he did eventually manage to sanctuary and produced 2 skeleton warriors to kill the twins. The nymph cloak was used to charm Naaman, Gardush and Aasim and they killed each other (along with Alai who was attracted by the noise of combat), leaving 4 skeleton warriors to make mincemeat of the doppleganger and Zhalimar.
That left just the Seven Suns to do prior to returning to Candlekeep. Doing that proved much more troublesome than expected though when what I thought was a clear passage proved to be a dead end and Mesmer was cornered and brought down to near death within a couple of seconds. Fortunately he'd already purchased all the potions in the City and, after going invisible, he made use of regeneration, heroism, defense, speed, giant strength and mind focusing to tank the dopplegangers.
I intended to make use of a potion of invisibility for the ogre magi ambush, but got caught out by the transition there. During the cut scene it's not always obvious whether the game has paused or not and I unpaused it again as a result - only managing to pause once more after all the ogre magi had already launched spells. A potion of magic blocking was taken too late to stop one of the chromatic orbs, but fortunately Mesmer saved against the instant death effect from that. He then quickly got out of sight and stealthed, which should have prevented any possibility of the ogre magi following him into Candlekeep. However, I've been caught out by them doing that before anyway, so Mesmer restealthed as soon as he got into the library - just in time as 2 of the ogre magi appeared immediately after him
After resting in the inn, Mesmer went to find the Iron Throne Leaders and set them to fighting among themselves.
After bypassing the dopplegangers, Mesmer failed a couple of times to charm Tam. After the second attempt 3 phase spiders teleported on top of him. I really didn't fancy his chances in another running battle down there with so many enemies around and Prat's gang didn't actually have anything he wanted - so he ran and stealthed from the spiders. He then tried attacking the basilisks, but another phase spider tried to interrupt that. With just the single spider though I decided I couldn't justify running again
Back in the City he bought some dispelling arrows and went in search of Slythe. As soon as he came into view there Slythe gave his dialogue and disappeared - prompting Mesmer to run away fast. As expected, Slythe followed him into the inn and then upstairs - where Larze was waiting for him. A couple of backstabs followed, but Larze was then a clear favorite in that fight - at least he was until Krystin suddenly appeared as well
After a potion of regeneration had got HPs back, Mesmer attacked Slythe again, but he didn't want to come back downstairs (where a charmed commoner would have invited a backstab). As that meant he would be hiding in stealth ready with a potentially fatal backstab when Mesmer came back up, he recruited Ivanne to come upstairs to soak up the backstab, while he disappeared using a potion.
At the palace I reduced the risk of the battle greatly by:
- charming 3 of the noblemen and putting them in side rooms
- charming 4 of the Flaming Fist to work together on my side
- charming Ithyl to come and provide some spell support
However, I got the selection of the noblemen wrong - I intended to get the shaman, mage and assassin, but missed the assassin. It didn't miss Mesmer though and wasn't a long way off one-shotting him early on.
Liia's equipment included another invisibility ring, which Mesmer paid 13,400 to recharge - even though that required him to sell some of his hoarded jewelry and he will probably have far more invisibility potions than he can use in SoD anyway.
Archer L8, 92 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 156 kills
I'm not sure where an entry into the Hall of Heroes would fit for NWN, but here's mine:
Arrow Slinger the Rogue/Wizard/Arcane Archer: @Flashburn
Notable mods: Community Patch 1.71
Difficulty: Core Rules
Special: No deaths, no pausing in combat except to take screenshots
Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058344#Comment_1058344
Finish: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058546#Comment_1058546
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058363/#Comment_1058363
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058544/#Comment_1058544
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058653/#Comment_1058653
Mesmer went through the maze without killing anything. He did actually have in mind to kill the skeleton warriors, but as soon as he attacked them using a PfU scroll they started running around everywhere and he wasn't carrying enough missiles to want to use those to chase them down.
Mesmer used Algernon's cloak to charm Gorf, Shaldrissa, Wudei and Carston from the Undercity party and drag them into the temple. He then recharmed then with the nymph cloak before activating the battle. Sarevok was stranded in a corner as usual, along with Semaj, Diarmid and Tazok. One of Shaldrissa's skeleton warriors then went to tempt Angelo out of hiding. He didn't appear to have a death spell, so the other 2 skeletons joined in the fight and didn't take long to sort him out.
Once Diarmid's PfM scroll ended, Mesmer started bombarding the others with necklace fireballs. I probably got a bit too close when starting that though as a text message immediately showed Tazok enraging. Mesmer retreated immediately and stealthed and indeed found Tazok arriving to attack the rest of the group - he was on his own though, so that didn't end happily for him.
Sarevok's death did not trigger the transition to SoD, but that seems to be quite common in an SCS installation and I used the console to switch to the Undercity area. Coming back into the temple then triggered the transition.
In the SoD dungeon, Mesmer quickly showed himself to Porios and induced him to surrender.
In the City Mesmer harvested equipment from the bodies of Rasaad, Minsc, Dynaheir and Safana (only the first of whom even fights back). He also picked up the Spectacles of Spectacle, but the only real work done was killing Korlasz once more in the process of getting the Battle Tankard helmet (though even there Mesmer just waited until the guards had done all the hard work before putting in a killing shot).
After leaving the City and sorting out inventory with his new bag of holding, Mesmer headed for the Coast Way Forest. The greater HP Tsolak has in LoB meant he could tank Isabella while Mesmer shot down Ikros. Some hits with called shot using arrows of piercing then made Isabella vulnerable to being stunned and a few darts later she stuck in place.
On the way back to the Coast Way Crossing, Mesmer came across a troll cave. He picked up their treasure before continuing on his way.
There seemed little point in fighting at the bridge - so Mesmer just hid until Caelar was ready for a parley.
Back at the Forest of Wyrms he stealthed past the enemies on the path and a sleeping dragon at the start of a cave system. I was unsure whether the spear trap in the next cave had any chance of killing Mesmer with the doubled LoB damage, so made a first use of Armor of Faith to reduce damage slightly - in the event he easily survived.
Archer L9, 106 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 185 kills
The only place worse for a demon to die than on a plane outside of the abyss, is the abyss itself. Two demons in less than three weeks. I really expected more but Aec’Letec’s essence has now been returned to the abyss where it will eventually form another demon, but only after facing torment or punishment. A demon like Aec’Letec will certainly have made some enemies of his kin.
After defeating the Cult Enforcers on return from Durlag’s Tower, I felt the need to follow up on the dwarf’s warning that a demon was about to be released in Ulgoth’s Beard by his worshipping cult of imbeciles (my words, not his). Following his instructions, I found their location in an otherwise basic warehouse. I defeated the Cult Guard situated outside & then lowered the boom on a Cult Wizard, Cult Archer, two Cult Guards and three Cult Assassins inside. It’s actually not accurate to say, I lowered the boom on them, because I struggled a bit w/the assassins – they were invisible when I arrived & were equipped w/Potions of Invisibility so that every time they struck, they were quick to go invisible again. They zeroed in on my weaker, more lightly folks armored & this made them a pain.
KEY EVENT: Aec’Letec was released just as I descended the stairs below the warehouse, where his ‘priestess’ was conducting the ceremony to release him from the dagger. With her were six cult guards in an empty cellar, save for the unmistakable markings on the floor that signified a summons in progress. When the demon was freed, he quickly used a Death Gaze that froze Branwen in place. I can’t remember if it was Faldorn or Neera, or maybe both, that tried to free her with Dispel Magic but I eventually had to pull us out. I noticed that the Cult Guards remained in place, so it was only Aec’Letec, but, yeah, it was only Aec’Letec, I pulled us back and decided to try using Potions of Mirrored Eyes to protect from his gaze, but I could only come up with three potions.
After resting, I prepared us by casting Protection from Evil 10’ and prepared me by casting Righteous
Power & Armor of Faith. Neera cast Haste on the team & Chaos Shield on herself. Faldorn slapped
Bless on us before preparing herself with Iron Skins & Armor of Faith. Kivan used Potions of Fire Giant
Strength & Heroism, Imoen used a Potion of Power. But I forgot to hand out the Potions of Mirrored
Eyes!
I don’t really know what happened to the Death Gaze, maybe it just wasn’t affecting us the second time in. But we slowly, deliberately eliminated the Cult Guards and Aec’Letec (without Branwen, as I hadn’t yet had her raised). Before I knew it, although I was bloodied, Aec’Letec was dead & Kivan had his second demon kill in a fortnight.
TOUGH FIGHT BUT WELL DONE!
It’s time for me to return to Baldur’s Gate and finish this.
“Never deliver a message falsely or incompletely.” Σιλας
Best Kill Competition:
1. Kivan, (Aec’Letec), 15000 exp
2. Imoen, Greater Basilisk, 7000 exp
3. Branwen (Greater Wyvern) & Faldorn, Shoal the Nereid, 5000 exp
4. Neera, Skeleton Warrior, 4000 exp ea
ORDER OF MARCH: Kivan (Recon) & Imoen (traps), Branwen (shock), Silas, Neera, Faldorn (rear guard)
MONSTERS DEFEATED: Aec’Letec, Tracea Carol, Cult Wizard, Cult Enforcer, Cult Guards (9), Cult Assassins (3), Cult Archer
CASUALTIES: Branwen (Aec’Letec)
NOTEWORTHY TREASURE: (Purse = 2,438gp)
Armor & weapons:
Jewelry: Fire Opal Ring
Scrolls:
Potions: Fire Giant Strength, Invulnerability, Extra Healing (5), Heroism (6), Power
Wands & Artifacts: Frost (2)
CURRENT DISPOSITION: Resting, recovering, resupplying at an inn in SE Baldur’s Gate
NEXT STEPS: Back to Baldur’s Gate
LEVEL UP: None
PARTY MAKEUP: (Reputation: 8)
Silas Cl/8 (Lorekeeper of Oghma) (HP40) C/mail +3, Boots/Grounding, Girdle of Piercing, w/Gauntlets of Dexterity & Rings, Free Action & Human Influence w/Mace +2* (Flail*, SWS*, TWS*), Spells: Farsight,, Prot/Evil 15’, M/Domination, Holy Power, A/Dead, MC/Magic, H/Smite, Str/One, K/Alignment, Holy Might, H/Person, Silence 15’, S/Poison, A/Faith, Bless, Cmd, Doom, Sanctuary, R/Fear; S/ability: Divine Wrath, Heal Touch (2), Affliction, Friends; (Andris) (AI none)
Imoen Th/10 (Adventurer)(HP59) Shadow Armor +3, Kiel’s Buckler & Cloak/Displacement w/Eagle Bow +2* (w/Bracers of Archery) & S/sword +1*; Skills: OL 90, FT 105, PP 50, MS 80, HS 95, DI 35, ST 40; (Greater Basilisk) (Thf Rgd Atk)(2)
Faldorn Dr/10 (HP44) S/Leather w/RoP +2 &Club +1*, Dart +1* (Q/Staff*, Spear*) & Gauntlets of Ogre Power; Spells: Animal Rage, Iron Skins, Call Woodland Beings, A/Summon I, Hold Person, Summon Insects, Moonblade, B/Claw (2), Ch/Person/Mammal (2), S/Poison, Flame Blade, Ar/Faith, Bless, Entangle (2), CLWs, Shillelagh, (Shoal the Nereid) (Cl agg)(3)
Neera Mg/9 (Wild Mage) (HP25) Traveler’s Robe of the Neutral Arch Magi w/Bracers of Def AC6 & Cloak/Prot +2, Sling +3*, Staff Spear +2*, & Wand of Fire, Spells: Cloudkill, MS III, M/Sequencer, S/Word, A/Summon II, Ms/M Meteors, F/ball, D/magic, Haste, C/Shield, Melf’s AA, Web, R/Enfeeblement, MM (6), Blindness, ID, Ch/Person, Chr/Orb, Nahal’s RD; S/Ability: Scribe; (Vampiric Wolf) ( AI: Mage Def)(4)
Branwen, Cl/8 (Battleguard of Tempus), (HP63), P/mail +3, Shield +1 & RoP +2, w/Warhammer +2/+1 Elec** (S&SS*) & Gauntlet’s of Weapons Skill; Spells: CS/Wounds, M/Domination, D/Magic, MC/Magic, R/Thinking, G/Warding, DUHM, F/Blade, H/Person, Silence 15’, Spirit/Hammer, Armor/Faith, Cmd, Doom, R/Fear, Shillelagh; S/Ability: Enrage, Prayer (5), (Tellan) (AI: Cl Agg)
Kivan, Rgr/8 (Archer) (HP57) Leather +3, Boots of Stealth & Greenstone Amulet w/L/bow****, Spear +1*, L/Sword (+1 (Flame Tongue) * (THWS**); Spells: CLW; Skills: MS 86, HS 96; (Karoug) (AI: Ftr Rgd Atk)(6)
MOD USED: BG NPC v23.3, BG NPC Music v6, Plane Touched Races _v0.0, Indira v12, Isra v2.3, Finch v4.0, Gavin v14, Drake, Sirene v2.5, Verr’sza v5.2, BG UB v16, Tweaks Anthology Beta 4, Song & Silence v9, Deities of Faerun, Rogue Rebalancing v491, Level 1 NPCs, SCS v31, aTweaks, Item Randomizer v7
Hard luck @semiticgod - looks like a reason to go after Dushai next time
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058363/#Comment_1058363
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058544/#Comment_1058544
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058653/#Comment_1058653
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058758/#Comment_1058758
I haven't actually got this far into SoD using LoB before so wasn't sure what to expect. Scouting out Ziatar though I noted that he had a couple of cultist mages accompanying him. They were also well positioned, so that Mesmer could not charm them without being in sight of Ziatar. Oh well, better charm Ziatar then and set him on the mages - and a malison and a single chromatic orb later and Ziatar was dead.
For the Neothelid, Mesmer used a potion of magic shielding topped up with a PfP scroll before running straight past it to find Akanna. A fireball annoyed her and her aerial servants and Mesmer quickly retreated. He successfully charmed a crawler with the nymph cloak before going invisible when the Neothelid arrived - that can see through invisibility, but I hoped it would still be distracted by the crawler. However, it quickly finished that off and came to find Mesmer where he was in combat with Akanna. That led to a retreat and run around before returning - and this time he just had time to finish Akanna off before the Neothelid could summon more than one mordy sword to complicate movement between shots.
Mesmer ran out into the bugbear area and tried resting to heal up, but some bugbears appeared. He therefore moved straight back into Morentherene's cave and tried throwing some daggers at her. I wasn't that bothered whether I killed her, so hadn't used any buffs - meaning Mesmer probably needed a critical to hit her. Lady luck was smiling though and his third dagger struck home.
After an easier time than expected in the temple, Mesmer moved on to Boareskyr Bridge. He sneaked into the fort where he turned the dragon scales into armor - normally I prefer the shield, but for an archer unable to wear heavy armor the dragon scale armor is a significant upgrade. I didn't think it was realistic to try and kill Vichand, so just intimidated him into giving up the scroll. That was soon put to use and a dark wraith shot down
At the Coalition Camp the Spectacles summoned the genie vendor to provide a couple of nice items (ring of purity, cloverleaf). The genie also buys at the best prices in the game and that financed the purchase of a +2 composite longbow and a few more potions and scrolls that will never be used. I also did Simonetta's quest to get the medal of valor to boost THAC0 a bit more.
In Dead Man's Pass I wanted some +3 arrows from the mimic cave. Trying to charm a wraith spider in the cave failed twice though and on the second occasion several phase spiders teleported over to me. With a dozen spiders, a neo-otyugh and several ochre jellies to defeat even before I could activate the mimic (and loads more enemies outside, so I couldn't easily retreat there) I decided the encounter looked like just too much hard work and ran away. I did though use the Spectacles for the second time to get the Ring of the Tiny Fiend in case Mesmer needs a helping hand in the odd fight.
On the way to Dragonspear Castle Mesmer ignored the dead magic ambush zone. On arrival he tried out the mephits on some guards threatening Skie. The mephits didn't last long, but one of the guards switched sides courtesy of the nymph cloak to make the battle easy. After gaining entry by warning about the threat to the Crusade from the Hero of Baldur's Gate, Mesmer adjudicated a dispute - pronouncing Corinth guilty in order to inherit a slight upgrade to his bow.
I don't think there's anything Mesmer wanted in Bloodbark Grove, so his next destination was the Underground River. A potion of clarity and some mephits were used to defend against some myconids there while gaining another summoning option.
In the underground section Mesmer stealthed through to Ferrusk and persuaded him to hand over an ankheg summoning amulet. I needed to be alert though as an umber hulk appeared the instant the conversation finished - Mesmer responding with an invisibility potion before it confused him.
After placing the Bwoosh, Mesmer blagged his way into the Warrens and did some looting there. I think there are +3 arrows in one of the containers, but several of those were locked and couldn't be opened even using 25 strength - so he was out of luck getting those. Mesmer used an oil of speed before going to the basement in order to poison the food and water as quickly as possible. He had to show himself to Hephernaan to unlock the lift again, but left before anyone could target him.
Back at the Coalition Camp I have a funny feeling an invasion is imminent. However, having failed to get any standard +3 arrows as yet I think it would be an idea first to go back and have another think about getting the ones in the mimic cave ...
Archer L9, 116 HPs (incl. 5 from helm; 10 from ring), 204 kills
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058363/#Comment_1058363
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058544/#Comment_1058544
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058653/#Comment_1058653
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058758/#Comment_1058758
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1058961/#Comment_1058961
Back in the mimic cave, Mesmer tried and failed again to charm a wraith spider. However, only a single phase spider teleported to him and he beat that up in melee with the help of a potion of defense (his armor makes him immune to the threat of poison). He successfully rested in the cave, but an astral phase spider teleported to him as he woke up. Another potion of defense and equipping his shield made that require criticals - it got quite a few of those, but not enough. Another failed charm attempt saw a sword spider attack. Mephits were produced to help with that, but all the other spiders then arrived as well. Mesmer protected himself with free action and took a potion of regeneration, but a quick pair of criticals required him to go invisible as the spider horde converged on him.
Rather than use up more regeneration potions, Mesmer went to rest using DUHM before coming back again. Using the same sort of tactics he gradually worked through the spiders - adding a potion of magic shielding when gargantuan spiders were in range to defend against their stunning attack. Doing that though led indirectly to his downfall just when the battle was close to being won.
Having commented this morning on @semiticgod's failure to protect against web tangle I suppose I really should have kept the ring of free action on Mesmer (or used a potion)