The fight against Mae'Var went pretty well, but it wasn't very easy since I forgot to cast Dispelling Screen, so Jaheira, Minsc and Jan lost their buffs to Mae'Var's first Dispel Magic, which complicated things a bit, Jan almost gets stabbed to death and Anomen had to waste a round to save him delaying the recast of Free Action on Minsc, so his Hold Person aimed at Jan himself got the Shadow Thieves and saved the gnome. Jaheira doesn't really need her buffs, so it was fine, and Yvralline was just hiding in a corner to escape all sorts of possible danger, but she joined in later for a perfect Spell Thrust onto Mae'Var that saw that he had all of his further spells interrupted by Jan's and, if not, Aerie's Magic Missiles. The remaining Shadow Thieves were killed by our warriors, who we later had kill Mae'Var as well.
Jan is now the owner of the Thieves' Guild (courtesy of NPC_Stronghold), and he seems to be managing it rather ambitiously. I hope it works out since I don't want to lose more gold that what we'll have to pay for Spellhold/Magic license.
After taking a nap in the streets of Athkatla at midday, Aerie reminded us that she wanted to visit the Circus to talk to Quayle, and a messenger came to tell Anomen his sister had been killed. There was also one of those Shadow Thieves vs. Vampires act, but, since Yvralline is CN and I'm trying not to get killed here, I chose the safe option, let the guy get killed and also managed to pick one of them for some free, 8500 XP. Sweet. We got ambushed by the bandits that got Reynald injured. They're no big trouble, and we got him back to the Docks.
We went to the Circus, paid a visit to Anomen's father, had Anomen promise us he would not take revenge on his sister, and pickpocketed a bunch of guards then left for the Graveyard. We got the huge Fledgeling Vampires ambush; I just fled and hoped nobody would get charmed or worse. I should just pre-buff if I want to survive these ambushes without wasting Potions of Invisibility (which I didn't use here, but honestly, I could've lost, so I'm not sure whether that was the best choice after all).
At the Graveyard, we solved the paladin and orphan girl quest, gave the halfling ghost it's stuffed bear back, and killed a bunch of Mummies as well as the Crypt King, who dropped Albruin+1 and there's also the Golden Axe+2 we got off some other Tomb. We got the patch of red clothing and are ready to get the Silver Pantaloons, I just hope the exploit that lets the player pickpocket the pantaloons and then set her free so that you don't get the reputation drop still works.
On our way to the Bridge District, we got the second Slaver ambush. This one is normally a cake-walk, but seems like SCS duplicated all the creatures except for the mage, who seems like she's got a couple of extra levels on her. Of course, yours truly didn't know this, but I decided to play it safe from the get-go, which is the only thing that saved me probably.
We started off by drinking Potions of Invisibility and running to the North, barely escaping the enemy mage's Oracle spell (here was when I first realised something might be different to what I'm used to, since low-level SCS mages usually don't get this spell, but seeing the duplicated Clerics and Fighter helped and lead me to take a very cautious approach). Out of enemy reach, I had Yvralline cast Wizard Eye while the rest of the party casted their respective long duration buffs. We scouted the enemies and decided to have Jaheira bombard their frontline with two Ice Storms. Eventually, both enemy fighters wandered into us separately, and were dispatched instantly to avoid getting the rest of the group on us. We later had Jaheira cast Conjure Air Elemental, which got the thieves and clerics on us. They posed little to no problem, and we left the Air Elementals party with the Mage and her various Teleport Field spells. I think aTweaks Elementals broke the SR Banishment spell, but I'm not really certain about it. Also, summons being actually useful for once doesn't sound that bad to me.
So, finally, all that was left was the mage. Since I had used Spell Thrust on one of the Clerics, and, not exactly a smart move, I only have it memorised once, I was set on waiting out her buffs, but exactly two rounds after the last cleric's body had hit the ground she teleported with Dimension Door on top of Jan, then dropped a Sunfire (caller Fireburst under SR) on our party. Minsc suffered heavy damage, Jan managed to run out of it in time, as well as Jaheira and Yvralline. Aerie had her spell protections up and Anomen saved against it so he only took minor damage. The mage later used Cone of Cold on Minsc, whom I had healed up once already, and got him to 20 HP from like, 90. Again, this spell shows us how devastating it is, but, it can be walked out of rather easily if you're not directly next to the mage casting it, which is what Yvralline did. Then the mage decided to waste a round of her precious buffs by casting Breach on Jaheira? I'm kinda mad I made this install just a month before v32 got released, otherwise enemies wouldn't do stuff like this I believe.
Anyway, that and her buffs expiring next round gave us enough room to take down one her initial Stoneskins. Her Contingency ones triggered, and those were taken down as well. Next was the mage herself, since mages, as well all know rather well, can't do much against Minsc in melee, specially when it's not just Minsc but also Jaheira, Anomen and Jan because I was running short on bolts.
On the docks, we got ambushed by the muggers, which just served to make me seethe at having forgotten to sleep before the fight, and also gave me a bunch of bolts. After that we rested at the Five Flagons Inn and are ready to pick up Cernd if not something else that might assist us with the Spirit Trolls.
Edit: forgot the screenshots. The first one is just because I had forgotten how well that part of the Promenade looked, the second is the result of about 20 minutes of pause-heavy intensive and nervous gameplay coming off just a random ambush. Well, it wasn't that bad actually. I enjoyed the fight. Until next time!
We join our erstwhile heroes in the Grove of the Ancients, where they are soon accosted by Ilasera... who does not buff with Protection from Fire. Have a Comet, Ilasera.
We are whisked away to Hell (or something like it), and soon fight off waves of hostiles. The final wave proves a little bothersome, in that we fail to take down Irenicus quickly, leading to him causing some mischief with a Time Stop and Fallen Planetar (Jaheira almost went down to an ADHW). Of course, we still prevail.
Off to Saradush! Home of epic-level fighters that still cannot afford anything better than Plate Mail for protection. Nor do they believe in helmets, apparently.
We clear the little sidequests in Saradush, amused to discover that as dirt-poor as the epic fighters are, the mages are even worse off... this one couldn't even afford a quarterstaff! It's a good thing SCSV32 makes mages pre-buff with PfNM, as otherwise you get this (Masterwork Arrows + Power Attack).
Into the sewers next, where nothing can stand in our way (literally, we sweep all opposition aside, and Anomen casually explodes the entire spawn of Shadows). Although, as enemy THAC0's are through the roof... or I guess through the cellar, given that they're very low... we suffer some damage.
In the basement of Gromnir's keep, we almost lose Minsc to a large party of helmless wonders and their pauper mage, but a Storm of Vengeance and some shuffling saves the day.
We reach Gromnir almost unimpeded. I won't say the fight is trivial, as Karun the Black is no slouch, but we've got him out-magicked, and we've got Gromnir out-meele'd. Karun falls to area damage, and Gromnir soon follows (he never even used Vhailor's Helm).
Off into the wilderness! The regular soldiers are entirely hopeless, and the Fire Giants can just be kited. We proceed into the Marching Mountains: The Fire Giants outside are kited, and we avoid killing any of the beastial Bhaal-spawn. We proceed inside.
There's not as much room to kite here, so we utilize a combination of Hardiness and pure damage (ADHW/Skull Trap... even Magic Missile) to bring the Giants down. To my surprise, Mazzy somehow got level drained, unclear how. Anomen had a Greater Restoration, so we were able to fix it.
We start clearing the enemies behind the (now disabled) force fields. Burning Men, Flaming Skulls, Fell Cats and Fire Salamanders aren't trivial, but they're not magic immune either, so even a single Skull Trap can wreak havoc.
Just the Fire Lich and his Noble Efreeti (like regular Efreeti, but more hitpoints so more annoying) left.
We send a Planetar and some Elementals to blunt the Lich's magic arsenal, while the rest of the party dismantles its attendant Efreeti at range. With no powerful allies left, the Lich apparently decides to just lie down and die.
I don't know what happened. I thought Mazzy could've hit it with Azuredge, but she's wielding Gesen's Bow. Maybe a bug? The Lich was entirely out of big spells anyway and so not a threat, so it doesn't really matter.
We press onward into the inner sanctum, where I accidentally trigger a large group of Giants including the cleric, Berenn. Thankfully Brimstone (the SCS-introduced Red Dragon) does not join them, so we only take a little damage, easily mended by potions.
Its guardian Giants disposed of, Brimstone fares no better: He only tried to dispel our protections once using a Remove Magic Spell Sequencer. With PfFire up on everyone, the breath weapon was rendered moot, and soon, so was Brimstone.
All that remains is Imix and his two Burning Men. We conjure a few Fire Elementals of our own, but it was hardly necessary: Imix stands no chance.
The two hearts are swiped, and we return to Nyalee. Being a Druid, she has no way to keep her defenses up in SCSV31, and after a RRoR suffers an inglorious defeat at the hands of a Spell Trigger.
Now... Yaga-Shura. Benedict gets full protections, but everyone else kind of plays it by ear. We push across the bridge, wound Yaga-Shura, and proceed to remorselessly destroy his Lieutentant Cleric, Fighter and Thief while he's away (the Mage got blown off-screen by a Comet).
Once Yaga-Shura returns, a Planetar distracts him as we tear down his MR and bombard him with damage spells, the non-arcane party members content to plink away with ranged weapons. Victory!
Once more whisked away, Benedict comes face to face with what might have been... had he been a fighter. The horror! Benedict swiftly orders the disposal of this crime against the universe.
There aren't even any screenshots of the decidedly un-epic fight in the Oasis, as a handful of area-of-effect spells were sufficient for an easy victory. In Amkethran, we take care of the sidequests, and lose two reputation from simply having to see what was in two containers in the house with the sleeping boy and woman (13 gold and a silver ring...). They apparently recognize the theft when they wake up. Boo!
Just Vongoethe left. He somehow survives four Earthquakes without a scratch, though he is constantly interrupted: This is good, since it's almost impossible to remove his spell protections. This is because he constantly summons Skeleton Archers, and since SCS makes anti-magic spells ground-targetted, our RRoR are typically wasted on the Skeleton Archers due to Vongoethe shuffling around. Still, we eventually grind him and his Fallen Planetar down (Mazzy with Smite using Gesen's Bow is quite useful for this).
Of course the soul is returned to Marlowe. And that's about it for the easy stuff. The fight with Sendai is no joke, but what is truly worrisome is Improved Abazigal's lair and it's penchant for dragons. Still, we've come too far to turn back! Though we may want to make a detour to Watcher's Keep first. Mazzy could really use an upgrade to replace Frostreaver +3... but that is all for next time.
Benedict is now a L22 Human Conjurer, and has mastered all mage HLA's apart from the extra spell slots.
Then the mage decided to waste a round of her precious buffs by casting Breach on Jaheira? I'm kinda mad I made this install just a month before v32 got released, otherwise enemies wouldn't do stuff like this I believe.
Don’t bet on it, I’m afraid. It’s amazingly hard (at least within the confines of IE scripting) to work out how to prioritise renewing defenses vs debuffing vs doing damage. V32 is probably a slight improvement but the underlying problem is still there.
Brentan the halfling fighter and his band of fighters update:
It's been ages since Brentan saw some action, but his party got some things done today:
1) Sir Sarles was given the alloy but he didn't like it - the Temple did however.
2) Successfully retrieved the Dawn ring for the Temple
3) Punished Neb for his crimes and got his illithium
4) Watched Mook get murdered
5) Had to kill some thieves and their contact at the Five Flagons
6) Solved Trademeet problem but did not report to Mayor yet. This is to get lower level spawns in the old Amaunator temple area.
7) Reported to Linvail to get our goodies
8) Wiped out undead at the graveyard (surface)
9) Cleared out the spiders in the crypts including P'anaii
10) Mace of disruption obtained in Bodhi's lair - entire lair not cleared yet, again this is to get lower level spawns in the old Amaunator temple area.
10) Mace of disruption +2 formed
We rested in Umar Hills, and we will work on the Mayor of Immesvale's quest next session. party is level 11.
Not being sure what to do next in the North, we decided to finish of what needed doing at Durlag's Tower. That was not easy, but we never thought that it would be.
We used our intelligence to kill the warders. Omce they were chasing me, I ran into the cloudkill area and used an invisibility potion. This resulted in two of them killing each other and another being weakened. WE then used ordinary melee attack to finish them off.
I used my true sight to fight invisible enemies and then used invisibility myself to defeat the phoenix guards.
We were well buffed when we arrived at the chess board. Web and fireballs were useful, but Drake panicked which meant that the fireballs had to be well timed to avoid hurting him.
However we prevailed after killing all of those who opposed us.
We used invisibility to break the mirror and escape the demon knight. Again, web and fireball were very useful, but this time so was cloudkill. Of her own volition Tenya used her bowl to summon a water elemental.
This turned out to be a stroke of genius on her part for the elemental was in the middle of the coud of cloudkill. Whilst this led to her early demise, it also led to the demise of the mirrorkin attacking her.
Upon taking the soultaker to Ulgoth's Beard, we were badly hurt. If they had pressed their attack, they could have forced us to flee. We left anyway to lick our wounds in safety. As somebody once said: "I'll be back!"
I have noticed that Drake certainly has a tendency to panic. That is not helpful!
EDIT
Upon returning, we were recuperated and the cult guards had no answer to our assault.
Sadly we did have a slight problem when fighting Aec, but the gold that we had gained made the gold needed to raise Vynd mere chicken feed.
I did have to dispell magic on a couple of occasions otherwise it would have been the end for me.
Tenya also had a dispell magic in reserve in case of emergency.
Afterwards we met Reedring who gave us some advice for the future.
Hey folks, looks like I might have to abandon my Dispenser run. I think I goofed up trying to clean up some unnecessary program installs.
After taking a break to finish my semester, I'd hoped to pick up with the Cloakwood Druids the other night (that's where I left off last).
Anyway, when I opened the game noticed two things.
1) None of the NPCs I installed, i.e., Sirine, Isra and Valerie, have portraits anymore. I might have uninstalled software that was supporting that. In addition, it appears my overall game graphics are diminished.
2) None of my installed NPCs have voice tracks now, i.e., they don't respond when selected.
Everything else is as it was, levels, inventory, etc. I even had them cast spells, etc. and everything works fine.
As usual, I probably goofed myself up and I know you guys and gals always bail me out. I hate to end this run, so if you can help me that would be fantastic.
We were asked to save some dogs from some vampyric wolves so Xan cast web to stop the wolves being hurt until we managed to kill the wolves. Strangely, when Drake tried to heal one of the dogs, the spell was ineffective.
We then went in search of the cultists and cleared the area of them finishing off in the temple where we had quite a battle. [ Sadly forgot to take a screenshot at the relevant moment. ]
To fight that battle my party were buffed and invisible when thay went in. However being invisible didn't seem to be effective.
The party ran to the other end of the room setting off traps which hurt the enemy more than the party.
Another time I could send in a fighter alone who is buffed to protect him from the traps and once they are triggered, then send in the party.
Mazzy's personal quest pops up and forces us to stop by Trademeet to help her family. On the way, we use a blue Protection from Petrification scroll on Mazzy so she can cut up the djinn before proceeding to shank Barl. We then use an Invisibility 10' Radius scroll to skip most of the Druid Grove, then use an offscreen Web scroll to snare Dalok, holding him in place so we can nail him with a Fireball. Since I am not yet using the Wand of Lightning trick, Dalok survives the blast, so we finish him off with a Magic Missile scroll when Mazzy gets webbed and can't finish the job herself.
The surviving enemies deal some damage before they go down, but it's nothing life-threatening.
Then we get a really nasty rest ambush, and the enemy mage launches a Chaos spell at us. Bardy McBardface can only ward off death using a Potion of Clarity, Jaheira makes her save with a Potion of Invulnerability, and Lilarcor can cover one of our other party members, but Mazzy and Korgan both end up failing their saves vs. spell. Now we can't leave the map until either both of them are either cured or dead.
Now we have to deal with several consecutive rounds of a perfectly safe enemy wizard casting spells without interruption while a bunch of orogs with Barbarian Rage active run around slashing up the party. Normally these guys would be cake, but without access to spells, we don't have a lot of great tools at our disposal. We do our best to manage enemy pressure, but with two of our four fighters out of control, there's not much we can do to minimize damage.
Amazingly enough, we land a hit on the enemy wizard after several rounds pass, only to see her vanish via Minor Sequencer. Now we just have to run and hope for the best.
We manage to keep the enemies from bumping off any of our very badly injured party members, partly because the mage uses a PW: Sleep spell on Mazzy that makes the other enemies ignore her, but then the mage launches Emotion, Hopelessness, and we don't have the movement rate necessary to keep the damage isolated to one party member. Korgan makes his save, but Minsc is down.
By now, Korgan has recovered from confusion, but Mazzy is still unconscious, and now Minsc is pretty much out of the fight. We're all in terrible condition, and if things get any worse, we could suffer multiple deaths simply because we can't divide the pain between the party any further without knocking someone down.
Finally, I decide to break out the nuclear option, and wipe out the entire orog horde with a Death Spell scroll.
We just barely take down the mage before any party members die.
We head back to Athkatla to heal at a temple and pay a visit to the Temple Sewers rakshasa. It, too, has a confusion spell, but we switch around Lilarcor to negate the effect and spend some time running around while Mazzy tanks the rakshasa until its Mirror Images wear off and we can stomp it.
By now, we've built up over 60,000 gold, but that counts for a LOT less in a restless run, since all of our healing has to come from temples or potions, and that gets really expensive. We really need a way of regenerating HP like we had in BG1, and since pickpocketing Ribald seems risky (I don't know what value you need to guarantee success, or if a 100% success rate is even possible), our only other option is the Ring of Gaxx.
So, right after almost losing the entire party to a random ambush, we're going to take down Kangaxx the Demi-Lich. This would be a terrifying prospect if I were not perfectly willing to abuse Protection from Undead scrolls even more by using them on the Shade Lich and Elemental Lich instead of the party. For those who aren't aware, Protection from Undead scrolls prevent undead from targeting themselves if you use it on them, which creates weird scripting effects like preventing enemy liches from casting pre-buffs. Without PFMW, they're toast.
However, we still need a way of killing Kangaxx's demi-lich form, and our only realistic option is the Mace of Disruption. So, it's time to kick off the main quest. But since we always side with Bodhi, we first want to deal with the Mae'Var questline so we don't get locked out of it later. We burn down Rayic Gethras with a couple Potions of Firebreath and recruit Yoshimo and then Edwin so we can take down Mae'Var with Bounty Hunter traps and off-screen Webs and Fireballs. We can afford to have Edwin burn spell slots because we won't need him later in the game.
Then I visit Bodhi, and during the dialog, I remember that Mazzy leaves the party if you side with Bodhi. I don't know if it's possible to re-recruit Mazzy after she leaves, so I decide to pass up on Bodhi's offer to make sure Mazzy stays happy.
Now we have to fight vampires for Aran Linvail, and that prospect is even worse in a restless run. No Chaotic Commands means no easy immunity to charm, and even a single charmed party member can cause all kinds of grief.
Minsc has been hit by a Clay Golem's "Cursed Wound" effect and cannot benefit from healing potions, so ultimately, we cannot save him. Mazzy gets level drained and none of the survivors can wield the Mace of Disruption with decent APR and THAC0, so Bardy McBardface just has to burn the enemies with the Wand of Fire while everyone runs for their life.
We survive the process, but now we have to deal with Tanova.
Tanova hits Mazzy with Remove Magic, dispelling her Protection from Undead scroll, then wipes out our halfling with Horrid Wilting and charms our dwarf.
Bardy McBardface's 30% half-elf resistance to charm blocks Tanova's Domination spell, which is a damn good thing, because Tanova takes down Jaheira immediately afterwards with a CON drain hit. It's just enough to bump her off. Tanova tries to charm Bardy McBardface twice more before he escapes with a Potion of Invisibility, then slays our dwarf with CON drain as well.
Totally defeated but not dead, we flee the area to resurrect the party and try again. It costs a lot of money to bring everyone back, and we have basically no equipment left when we do, but we can turn Mazzy invisible with a scroll and have her collect our gear by right-clicking it and grabbing everything from the inventory screen, never breaking invisibility and keeping Tanova in the dark.
Then I realize that we're actually in a pretty good position. We never rested the party to return to the fight, which means Tanova doesn't have her buffs anymore! With no PFMW spells in his way, Minsc brains her on the second blow.
We finally speak with Bodhi and realize that running away isn't enough to trigger her end-of-fight dialog; you have to actually leave the area and come back.
We gain a couple levels by finishing the slayer questline and buy the Blade of Roses so Bardy McBardface can hit 20 CHA, but we've really been struggling lately and things are going to get increasingly oppressive as time goes on. I had hoped for this run to be relatively free of exploits, but since using the reverse Protection from Undead scroll trick on some liches is going to be very important to keep the party afloat, we've already used one silly exploit.
I've resisted it for a long time, but I'm finally gonna cave and use the Wand of Lightning trick. Every on-self item or quick slot item that Bardy McBardface can use is now capable of striking 6 targets at the same time. We use it to blast Mencar Pennypincher and finish off the survivors with a Flame Arrow scroll and some swordplay.
I feel a little conflicted about using the WoL trick because it's SO much stronger and more versatile than basically any other trick, but if I don't use it, I'm going to have to do some really careful and really annoying micromanagement to make sure I have enough resources for each fight. I don't want to fret about all the little details when we've already resorted to the Protection from Undead trick and one of the Reform Party trick's three functions.
Later in the game, the WoL trick will be a little more elegant, since even 6 Wand of Fire charges at once won't really be useful in the bigger fights of BG2. Fireball ain't gonna do much against a fire-immune demon, magic-resistant drow, or mage with GOI. Using the WoL trick with mage scrolls will be more interesting, since the scrolls will hit harder, do a wider variety of things, and be more finite in number than wand charges.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 187 (BG:EE 123, SoA 1 2nd and final) Corul (female half-orc priest of Helm, Gate70); Viol (male half-orc wizard slayer, Grond0)
Corul got her act together, protecting Viol as he deserves (other than a petrification trap down near an abandoned temple which saw her put her temple quest on hold and trudge back for a stone to flesh scroll).
Here, for example, she carefully protects Viol from lightning. Side effect is that the lightning bolt bounces around before hitting her and almost ending another Bhaalspawn outing.
No matter, let's turn some undead.
Turn scatters some more undead, Viol cleaning up the pieces. Corul tried to spot a beholder or gauth (low level, turned out to be gauth) with skeletons in front of her and had to retreat as the gauth targeted her. Viol is used as a blocker but the skeletons beat the gauth after a bit.
Let's turn some more undead.
After purchasing the shield and armour of Balduran for Viol we feel safe to venture into the beholder lair. Viol is merrily hacking away as Corul summons skeletons. Then a beholder turns up, ignores the skeletons and targets Corul.
She is held but it doesn't look TOO dangerous. The skeletons and Viol move to intercept but the beholder has set it's mind on half-orc cleric for lunch and Corul's fate is sealed.
We finally acquired the items which had been sought for so long. Perhaps this quest would have been better left undone. Of course if we hadn't acquired them, somebody with fewer scruples might have found them and that could have been disastrous.
We have now returned to Baldur's Gate. [Without returning to Ulgoth's Beard as I don't want to start the Drizzt Saga just yet]
This update is actually 2-in-1 - forgot to post about last week's adventure - oops! So we'll talk about last week:
Most of the city was pretty uneventful, the party's melee power is quite considerable. Did run into one hiccup, got held by a carrion crawler in the sewers - the party however managed to save Lassiter.
The other battle of note was our battle with the Iron Throne on the 5th floor. With a cleric, the battle is much smoother, as cleric can silence plus skeleton distractions. The party destroyed the iron throne.
We then reported to Duke Beltan and got sent to Candlekeep. This was pretty smooth, but we did run into one problem. Lassiter tripped the traps protected by proteciton from magic, but London was standing far too close to the repeating lightning trap and got hit hard when Lassiter was on his way back. Fortunately, London didn't die. The rest of the crypts was pretty smooth. Silence was again very effective against Prat's gang. Lassiter did most of the spiders. Grond0 and Gate70 took care of the basilisks.
Now, we are talking about the new session today, as we found ourselves at the exit of Candlekeep Crypts. We then went to FAI to identify and sell, and went after Slythe. Lassiter suggested pulling with dispelling arrows but Grond0 said silence works good. So we try that but Ulder and Lassiter got hit hard. Maybe arrows would be been better?
In any case, we then try on the Duchal Palace. Skeletons and dispelling arrows plus insect plague gave us the victory.
We breezed through the maze pretty smoothly - a brief stop with protection from magic and Lassiter tripped the traps in front of the skeleton warriors. Gate70 then soloed the undead with a protection from undead scroll. We then went out of the maze. We decided we didn't need to mess with the Iron Throne party, so went the long way around to the Temple of Bhaal.
The Sarevok battle went mostly smooth, but we took a ton of damage. It was hardest for Gate70 and Grond0 because of MP lag. Just as Gate70 got hit hard down to 5 HP and he ran for his life, An arrow from Lassiter forced Sarevok to give it up.
We then worked on the dungeon. We took a ton of damage, but we also did ton of resting. London was a great person to set off traps, as oftentimes his ironskin would protect him. We even killed the vampire. The only actual problem was Lassiter was supposed to talk to the nymphs and get the genie lamp. He did it once, we went into the air plane and Gate70 talked to the Genie, but no lamp? Doh, Corey_Russell was so tired he forgot talk to the nymphs twice! Doh, so Lassiter tried it again, and the 2nd time Grond0 did the talking.
By the time we escaped the dungeon there only about 15 min. left. We had just enough time to fix the circus problem, buy the ring of air control, and then talked to Galen Bayle. We bought the glasses of identification, and then moved to the Copper Coronet - we'll free Hendak next session.
I had a restless solo run in progress with a dwarven Fighter/Thief when my character got fatigued. Normally you can stave off non-Haste-related fatigue indefinitely by saving and loading the game, which resets the timer. However, apparently there's a substantial travel time between speaking with Teven and fighting Tazok, and even 20 Constitution can't fend that off indefinitely. We got fatigued right after fleeing the main tent in the bandit camp. A character can probably survive with one or two points of negative luck and beat Melissan, but that's a lot of whining to put up with for the rest of the way, and I don't want to use a plot-induced rest (like the forced rest at Garren Windspear's house) to cure the fatigue for purism reasons. So, that run is gone, and I'm not willing to start over.
The game is very hard on my hands, so I have little patience for runs that go poorly these days. I'm not willing to restart runs to get a win like I used to.
The formula is pretty simple. All we need to do is use a Protection from Undead scroll on him, bring him to Near Death, and nail him with an Arrow of Dispelling (the scroll prevents him from speaking to you, so it needs to be dispelled). Then we just need to use a new Protection from Undead scroll on his demilich form after he transforms and whack him with the Mace of Disruption until he fails his save vs. death!
Problem is, the Protection from Undead scroll doesn't seem to be screwing up his AI as much as it has in the past, so I end up fleeing the area when I think a Time Stop is coming out. It's just an Improved Alacrity spell, and when I go back in, Kangaxx has no PFMW or Stoneskins to avoid spell disruption, so we can shoot him down.
But, we've got a problem here.
See, the thing about using the Protection from Undead scroll trick on Kangaxx is that, if you take him down to 1 HP (or whatever the transformation threshold is) before you dispel the scroll, his transformation won't trigger... ever.
I accidentally deal too much damage to Kangaxx and break his script. I leave and enter the area and I let him regenerate, but it's hopeless. Even with the Protection from Undead scroll dispelled, he won't transform, regardless of his HP level.
I know from experience that not even leaving the area and coming back after 8 hours would fix the problem. It's truly impossible to kill Kangaxx, and while this is due to a bug, it's a bug I triggered and could have avoided if I had landed the Arrow of Dispelling earlier and used the Ring of Energy or something to make sure he hit the HP threshold to transform.
So, no Ring of Gaxx for us. That means the only realistic way for us to avoid catastrophic money loss to healing before Spellhold is to steal the Ring of Regeneration from Ribald. Since we're using the Wand of Lightning trick now, I drink 6 Potions of Mastery Thievery and snatch it from him.
We just barely have enough money to afford the recharged Wand of Cloudkill, which will be instrumental in certain fights where the Wand of Fire wouldn't cut it.
We stop by the Windspear Hills to blast the knights with Fireballs and accept the rest at Garren Windspear's place on the grounds that our HP is already full and we haven't used any per-rest abilities anyway (aside from an Enrage from Korgan, but I can remember to deduct one casting). We can't get past the rakshasa in Firkraag's dungeon, though, because it'll just blast us into oblivion and even the WoL trick won't help us against rakshasa spell level immunities (unless I have a spare Potion of Firebreath or some level 8 or 9 spells, I guess).
Instead, we head to the De'Arnise Keep. We can slay most of the enemies here with brute force, but the trolls apply some pretty heavy pressure and we end up busting out the Wand of Frost and Wand of Fire to deal with a troublesome batch of trolls.
The truly broken thing about using the WoL trick with the Wand of Cloudkill is that you can use any creature or any item on the map for the first 5 targets, which means we can set down a half-dozen arrows in the Temple Sewers and launch 5 Cloudkills right on top of Tarnor the Hatchetman's party, plus another one closer to our own party, without even getting close to the enemy. By the time anyone escapes the cloud and tries to fight us, they're weak enough for us to push over with a few strikes.
You can kill anything that's not immune to Cloudkill from all the way across the map without ever fighting them, just by burning a few charges from the Wand of Cloudkill. It's absurd.
I don't finish the Unseeing Eye quest because I might want to smuggle the Rift Device out of the sewers, so I just drop the Rift Device part and leave. I recruit Jan so another party members can use the WoL trick, but he immediately gets contacted by his family and we have to do Jan's tedious personal quest.
We need Jan's help to beat the Planar Prison, which is the only way for us to get the Bard Hat and extend our bard songs by an extra 2 rounds (!). The fight fight is simple.
The Warden, though, is a little dicier. He's a murderous Fighter/Mage who can cast Time Stop (though I haven't seen him do so in a long time), but fortunately, we can reach him from across the map using the WoL trick, provided we first use a Farsight scroll so we can see him and target him. The bad news is, the Warden is immune to both fire and poison, making our best wands useless.
We have come prepared for this, however. Jan nails him with a Lower Resistance scroll and our gnome and Bardy McBardface follow up with scrolls of Melf's Acid Arrow and Magic Missile. The Warden is helpless!
It's a terribly unfair way to win a fight, but I'm quite proud of it. It's unorthodox and surgical in its precision.
We're short of invisibility options, though, and actually getting the party up north so we can grab the Warden's key and rescue Haer'dalis and company is a trying prospect, since we get stuck in those gross orifice prison cell thingies and end up attracting unwanted attention from the local Thralls. We use our Skeleton Warriors, which we initially summoned in case the Warden decided to chase after us, to dispatch them.
I want to tackle the Master of Thralls, too, but unfortunately his Death Gaze proves much deadlier than I had expected. Korgan, Mazzy, and Jaheira all fail their saves vs. death, leaving Minsc to fight the demon on his own. He's not nearly fast enough to save Mazzy, and the demon's ability to cast Vampiric Touch keeps it healthy enough to prevent Minsc from finishing it off.
Minsc goes deep in the red. I use the WoL trick to hit the whole party with the Rod of Resurrection, despite Bardy McBardface still being far to the south, but unfortunately, we're not fast enough to save Minsc. He ends up back at full health, but his brief period of death forced him to drop his armor, and Minsc's AC is pretty darn awful when he can't equip his armor. We have to send him away and let our other fighters finish the job, since the paralysis effect has finally worn off.
Now that we have the Mastery Orb, we can free the Thralls! We bomb some Yuan-ti on the way out and recruit Haer'dalis at 1.25 million XP. We gain some level ups by dealing with the first level of Watcher's Keep (we use Mace of Disruption for the Vampiric Mists, and stop short of fighting the Statues) and head back to the De'Arnise Keep, since our access to the Wand of Cloudkill allows us to hassle the Yuan-ti Mages accompanying TorGal.
Our reliance on mage scrolls means that Haer'dalis comes without Stoneskins, and he falls to an incredibly unlucky critical hit from TorGal. The rest of the enemy is pretty much broken, but TorGal inexplicably keeps fighting even after he hits Near Death--in fact, he keeps fighting even after he becomes immune to physical damage, which is only supposed to happen when he falls down!
Worse yet, he can drink potions and continue regenerating, which means he's immune to all forms of damage except for fire and acid and also has a decent chunk of HP keeping him alive. The Flail of Ages is completely incapable of taking him down before he butchers our fighters, so we have to resort to spell damage.
As it happens, we summoned a pack of Nishruus to deal with any pesky Yuan-ti Mages who survived our Wand of Cloudkill charges, and Nishruus can cast Agannazar's Scorcher. We burn him down without even using wands.
I go hunting for bonus XP on the way out, but get overwhelmed when two herds of trolls converge on the same spot.
It's a ridiculous failure of our melee-heavy party to handle melee combat, and ultimately our only solution besides fleeing the fight is to just bomb the crap out of the trolls, killing our own fighters in the process since none of them have any resistance to fire or magic.
After returning to Baldur's Gate I rescued the Duke single handed. Xan cast invisibility on me. I then ran to the Falming Fist where I killed his "Healer." I then took a potion of invisibility and joined up with the party.
We were then attacked by the same sort of assassins who wanted Aura dead. She's dead, so why attack us? The battle was quite tough.
We then headed for the Iron Throne Building where we killed Cythandra and thuse acquired Sarevok's Diary.
We then killed two assassins beneath the Blushing Mermaid and appropriated the Invitation to the Ducal Palace.
We foiled the assassination attempt on the Dukes, but sadly one of them died despite our best efforts.
We then decided that the time was right to help Drizzt set Catta-Brie free.
We started in the Nine Hells where we met Wulfgar who was effective against Demonknights due to his immunity to fire.
Drittz on the other hand was effective against both Tanari and Belhifet due to his skill in using stealth.
We didn't have it all our own way however as both the Tanari and belhifet landed serious blows.
We then took on Marilith who caused us some injuries. When we tried to rest we were attacked so in the end we had to give up that attempt and didn't sleep until we returned temporarily to Ulgoth's Beard.
We then ended up in Ice Wind Dale where we were eventually victorious though we incurred many wounds in the process.
We eventually freed Catti-Brie
We continued on trying to help the folk of Ice Wind Dale as much as possible.
Sadly Drizzt was killed in one of the battles, so we went and picked up Thorin as he was nearby.
The battles didn't cease until we left, some of them taking place whilst we were trying to rest.
We then took on Marilith who caused us some injuries. When we tried to rest we were attacked so in the end we had to give up that attempt and didn't sleep until we returned temporarily to Ulgoth's Beard.
We then ended up in Ice Wind Dale where we were eventually victorious though we incurred many wounds in the process.
We eventually freed Catti-Brie
We continued on trying to help the folk of Ice Wind Dale as much as possible.
MP188 is underway - and this time it's personal (insert your favorite film trailer voice over artist here).
There was the usual sort of start with Shoal being shot down and a journey down to Nashkel to get Grozzul some decent armor. This time though we went straight on to the basilisk area to pick up more easy XP. The monsters didn't last long and no protest was heard from Mutamin as his pets were slaughtered.
Kirian's mob were all speechless as well and their desire to cling together for mutual support didn't end well for them.
Bassilus was given the opportunity to talk and used that to confuse Grozzul, but Reflex saved against an attempted hold person (Bassilus being one of those enemies with a nasty habit of targeting the PC even if alternative targets are closer) to avoid any real danger.
With a decent weapon to hand, Grozzul glugged a potion of clarity at the Lighthouse and made mincemeat of some sirines. That provided him with a 5th cleric level and skeletons made a first appearance inside the pirate cave. Grozzul still took the lead though and actually resorted to using a healing potion when the final golem ripped through his defenses a couple of times before falling.
Searching for reputation, Greywolf was an obvious target and he was about to die even before being held.
Returning Samuel and running through the Cloud Peaks gained enough reputation to head north. The ankhegs in the nest only managed a couple of hits between them and returning an acid-burned corpse to Farmer Brun maximised reputation. Neither character has decent charisma, but still had enough funds to buy a cloak from Ulgoth's Beard and a magical crossbow and dagger set for Reflex in Beregost.
With time in the session running out, we went to Durlag's Tower looking for some more quick XP. Grozzul tried attacking the first Battle Horror there still wearing his standard crushing girdle, but took quite a bit of damage as a result and had to run round for a while until Reflex was able to help out with some stealth attacks. Swapping to the slashing girdle meant the opponents needed a critical and the other Battle Horrors and the Doom Guard were swiftly dealt with.
On the roof Grozzul used sanctuary to get past the first basilisk and summon a skeleton. A couple more of those led the way on the upper roof to strike down the greater basilisks there.
Upon arrival in Ulgoth's Beard I left my party of heroes from the Nine Hells and Ice Wind Dale and joined up with the friends who were there waiting for me.
Immediately we set off to find Sarevok where we had a straightforward if fraught battle.
His cohorts were dealt with by a combination of web, true sight, and dispell magic.
Only Tazok caused much trouble. He almost killed Vynd who had to flee and use one of the powerful healing potions of which we have very few.
Vynd then repaid us by taking on Sarevok single-handed and backstabbing him to death. He was wounded a couple of times by Sarevok, but nothing life-threatening.
It was quite a relief when Sarevok fell as we had some quite dangerous battles on the way.
Upon arriving in SoD both my experience and that of Thorin was reduced to 500,000, a drop of about 100,000.
The rest of the party had just over 300,000 experience.
EDIT
I am now safely back in the Ducal palace, relieved to have left all enemies behind. Imoen has gone to investigate some noises, but in the safety of the Palace I am sure that it will be nothing serious. Xan and Drake seem ro have disappeared, where to I have no idea.
EDIT
It was more serious than I thought. Imoen has been poisoned. On the good side Duke Liia is alive again. Obviously her death wasn't as serious as I feared. Of course with her wealth she had access to the best treatment.
Siercal has left Sarevok pincushioned full of arrows, heading straight for Baldur's Gate after going through Candlekeep. In all honesty I was in a hurry to get the run over with and played slightly carelessly, which was a little bit of a pity as the final battle seemed slightly more interesting than before. I'm not the biggest fan of PfMW in BG1 when Breach is unavailable though, especially when the result is Sarevok becoming the main target . (Can install Angelo in BG2 again though!) Drake was unfortunately immolated by a surprise 20D6 fireball from a mod added skeleton battle in the Undercity, so Yeslick came in for the final battle. Other sticky moments included me not noticing a dialogue option added by Romantic Encounters which left Siercal (who'd fluffed learning Stoneskin...) in a small room with Slythe and Krystin talking kinky... but somehow we got through everything. No pics for now as my tablet has one or two connection problems, if they get sorted then it's on to SoD on Android for the first time, assuming mods etc. get installed OK.
~ The Temple of the Forgotten God: Archaic D&D Rules ~
Two types of enemy here: Verbeeg (“very big”?) and Acolytes, the former melee heavy-weights who can pulverise our best tank in seconds, and the latter divine spell-casters who tend to harry and annoy, although they have a nasty damage-dealing spell, Static Charge.
Outside we gang up on the suspensefully fleeing Verbeeg. We just need to surround him to ensure he doesn’t run away.
This single kill gives Dundas the Bard his coveted 11th level, unlocking the awesome song War Chant of Sith. When active it provides all affected allies with blanket -2 AC, +10% physical resistances, and 2 HP / round Regeneration. Aside from being a fantastic combat buff, it essentially absolves all our divine casters from needing to memorise healing spells, since after combat we can stand around until we’re at full health. In practice I will bypass the waiting time with Ctrl + R, since my playing time is limited (I’m also using Ctrl + J to move around more quickly). Moreover Anaya, Fango and Phlebas each still keep one Cure Medium Wounds for emergencies.
The rest of the Temple essentially is completed without major mishap, except one, detailed shortly. Our tactics are mainly summons and killing fields of Entangle + Spike Growth. We send Linaea, our F/M/T, forward to scout and harry the enemies, luring the particularly dumb Verbeeg back to our main line. We’re constantly reminded that if we engage directly, we’re still weak enough to be in serious danger from these heavy-hitting beasts. Alicorn Lance is ever useful to penalise their AC.
We’re immensely lucky to find one of my favourite random drops, the Boots of Many Paths (Blur on wearer once per day, giving great AC and saving throw boosts). There aren’t many good boots in the game, and these are some of the best.
Emboldened, we send Linaea in again to scout ‘n harry, and that’s when misfortune strikes. She draws a Verbeeg and an Acolyte, the former who can easily kill her in 2—3 hits. She manages to escape, luring the Acolyte further but breaking line of sight with the Verbeeg, who wanders off harmlessly. Hwynevyr the Paladin hurries forward to distract (we’re out of summons at this point, and should have rested, but I feel like pushing forward), and makes her Save against a Hold Person.
The Acolyte then attempts a Static Charge, which from the combat text I assume fizzled into failure.
The Verbeeg wanders back, and we buff up to continue the battle. Linaea gradually regenerates back to reasonable health (sorry the HP-values aren’t visible, I managed to switch them off by accident at some point when fiddling with configuration settings, and I only notice and turn them back on later). I presume we’ve got the battle under control, until disaster strikes.
Not really knowing the mechanics of that spell, I had assumed we were safe from it. Linaea only had around 70 max HP, and simply ends up zapped like a fly. But not to worry, I’ve got Raise Dead scrolls, right? We hurry to finish the battle before the next Static Charge blast, but a combination of heavy melee damage puts many of us at worryingly low health, and the fight drags on. Hwyn falls next to the spell.
Anaya eventually brings down the pesky Acolyte, and we hurry outside to wipe the field of the Static Charge. We only have one Raise Dead scroll left, and wanting to proceed with the level and knowing from earlier scouting that very few enemies remain in the western room (left of the entrance), we use it on Hwynevyr, then Regenerate her back to full health. With a bit of help from Fango she proceeds to clear out the rest of that side of the level, and only then do we retreat to Kuldahar. I spend some of our limited funds on another Raise Dead scroll, pass it to Fango, and he gets casting, only to find...
Damn it, she’s an Elf! I’d re-used a character from my previous HoF run, since I’d been in a hurry to start this run, and despite initially recalling Elves’ limitation in this aspect, I’d dismissed it on the grounds I wouldn’t be letting her die in the first place. Resurrection, the only available option, costs 19,050 gold, a cost we simply can’t afford. And what if she dies again? Faced with these problems I consider my options: drop her from the party and re-roll a new character, either F/M/T or F/T for a quicker catch-up, but I dislike this prospect of catching up immensely; or sell every ounce of our loot and burn the precious cash on Resurrection, with the great danger of the same thing happening again in the future.
Eventually a third option dawns on me: I can DaleKeeper Linaea to a Half-Elf, as I had intended to use a Half-Elf in the first place, and only chose not to owing to laziness. Of course that constitutes cheating, and under some interpretations would invalidate my No-Reload run. In the end, however, I remember one of the defining features of these runs has to be personal enjoyment of the run. I had intended in the very beginning to use a Half-Elf, up till now her race had played essentially no part in the game except a +1 THAC0 bonus with Bows, and here this poor choice on my part was about to cause a huge set-back to our funds and my fun, all because of an arguably rubbish D&D rule that in other Infinity Engine games wasn’t even implemented. I said “sod it”, and changed her race, then bought another Raise Dead scroll to bring her back to life.
However I am aware that this may be viewed by many as Breaking The Rules. @everybody, what do you think? I’m happy to continue in the Minimal Reload thread if you guys think it more appropriate. I would currently rather do that than restart the entire run.
@stromael as I understand it there are not a strict set of rules for the thread. What is important, within the general ethos of no-reload, is to make clear what you are doing. Personally I wouldn't make the sort of changes you refer to, but that's my own personal choice - I wouldn't want to inflict that on anyone else .
I follow just one rule; summerized in thread title: No-Reload. Take it as it comes. I've had party members in which I've invested tomes in BG1 chunked, petrified, vorpalized - so not even 20K gold could bring them back.
While I can understand the frustration of loosing a character, I'd just roll with it and continue as 5. Hell, you'll get to 19.500 eventually, there's no need to restart the game. It' s not the end of the world.
There are many times that I have realised that I have made a bad life choice, both in RL and BG. In both cases, I live with the consequences of those choices. You do have another option in BG however. You can just start another run, an option that you don't have in RL.
3/3 wouldn't do what I did. Point taken, and if I could have picked up another character I'd have carried on as was. Problem is my posts are seriously lagged behind my play. Currently the team is near the bottom of DE. No point has been overly difficult, but it's just such a long slog in HoF! Since you've convinced me, I'll conclude this run and start a Core Rules one instead, which takes just so much less time. Thanks guys for helping me find the resolve to take NR seriously. Over and out.
I don't think that anyone was telling you. "That's what you MUST do." The choice is always yours, so long as you are up front about what you are doing. It isn't a competition. The game is supposed to be fun, not something to brag about. Whenever I find that the game is getting easy, I find some way of making it harder.
I re-installed CD Tweaks before starting SoD as I realised that there were potential problems with the set-up that I had, and that between games was probably the safest time to do that.
The prologue to SoD was very straightforward. However I have now lost two companions, both Drake and Xan. That is tragic as I was getting quite fond of both of them in a non-romantic way. I think that Drake may turn up later. I'll have to wait and see. At least I know the sort of places to go looking.
I cane across a minor bug when Imoen was poisoned. The peson who was supposed to speak to me didn't turn up. Probably because I was in the next room. I was stuck there, unable to go downstairs.
I played it again and it played correctly. This time I was given a staff through which I can cast "Friends." I haven't been given that before. It will be useful when I go shopping as I will be able to reach a charisma of 25.
Various people have offered to join my party, but none of them was deemed worthy, "My rules are very strict."
Then the mage decided to waste a round of her precious buffs by casting Breach on Jaheira? I'm kinda mad I made this install just a month before v32 got released, otherwise enemies wouldn't do stuff like this I believe.
Don’t bet on it, I’m afraid. It’s amazingly hard (at least within the confines of IE scripting) to work out how to prioritise renewing defenses vs debuffing vs doing damage. V32 is probably a slight improvement but the underlying problem is still there.
I thought the problem here was that Jaheira, a Fighter/Druid, got targeted before Aerie. Thinking about this now, I'm not certain if it was due to Aerie being outside of the Mage's visual range (I believe she wasn't, but there's no way for me to check this now).
On a completely different notice, since I didn't really want to play the Druid Grove, I decided roll up a Kensai, and I hadn't gotten hit even once, when this happened:
[000AF5F1] You have been waylaid by enemies and must defend yourself!
[000AF5F3] Kobold- Yip, yip, yip!
[000AF5F3] Kobold- Attacks Lycurgus
[000AF5F5] Kobold- Attacks Lycurgus
[000AF5F5] Kobold- Attacks Lycurgus
[000AF5F7] Kobold- Attacks Lycurgus
[000AF5F9] Kobold- Attack Roll 9 + 0 = 9 : Miss
[000AF5FB] Kobold- Attack Roll 17 + 0 = 17 : Hit
[000AF5FB] Kobold- Attack Roll 15 + 0 = 15 : Hit
[000AF5FD] Kobold- Critical Hit
[000AF5FD] Kobold- Attack Roll 20 + 0 = 20 : Hit
[000AF5FC] PAUSED
[000AF5FC] Lycurgus- Done.
[000AF5FC] UNPAUSED
[000AF5FD] Kobold did 6 damage to Lycurgus
[000AF5FF] Kobold did 5 damage to Lycurgus
[000AF5FF] Kobold did 12 damage to Lycurgus
[000AF5FF] Lycurgus- Death
[000AF628] PAUSED
I'm glad this awful luck didn't affect Yvralline, since our fights against SCS ambushes went pretty well (escaped from Elder Vampires one with Potions of Invisibility and then, used a tactic very similar to the one in my previous post for a second Slaver one, although this time the Bandit Wizard was considerably more troublesome, but the rest of the enemy group got instantly dispatched with AoE direct damage spells so I didn't really mind it) and we got the Silver Pantaloons (pickpocketed them, freed the rich lady later for half the XP).
We moved onto Trademeet and kicked Jaheira in favour of Cernd. To deal with the Troll welcoming party we had Cernd cast summon Fire Elemental until we got four of them (I rested once to get back the spells when he just summoned two), and that happened in the 2nd try. I decided to add an Aerial Servant to the fry as well, and Invisible Aerie ran across the map, leading the Extra-planar invasion party campaign against the Trolls. The elementals got wiped by the Elder Earth Elemental, but the Aerial Servant killed it.
So much XP for three summoning and one illusions spell!
For the first Druid, we had Cernd spam Spike Growth and Icestorm. That did the job, except for a Wizard that survived that because she was rather far from it, but Cernd's werewolf form and a Cone of Cold from Aerie finished the job.
For the next encounter I had Aerie spam Grease and Web, as well as Silence 15' Radius. The result? Five dead Druids, Cernd not being among them. Another job well done.
The Myconids, ah, Myconids. I sent in Minsc without having cast Chaotic Commands on him, so it was an ordeal to deal with that. In the end, we Fireball'd the Spore Colonies alongside with the Myconids to death, and found out that they're extremely susceptible to Holy Blight!
The three Shambling Mounds were dealt with more summons, as well as the second group of Trolls. Fire Elementals are very good, and Aerial Servants are EXTREMELY good. Unless an enemy priest casts the spell. In that case, I just panic. Not good. Not at all.
Thankfully, we had none of that, and the other Myconids soon were nothing as well (I forgot exactly what I used against them. I probably bombarded them with Holy Blight while Minsc run around with Chaotic Commands on this time). There's a group of Grizzly Bears in my install before the Druid trio at the entrance of the Grove, which I don't really remember from other times, but they were slaughtered by another group of Fire Elementals, except for the one that almost runs into our party and Jan killed with a Magic Missile.
For the Druid trio we buffed a lot, specially Yvralline, who isn't even supposed to participate in the fight. But, the real reason for this is: I need Chaotic Commands and Free Action on everyone, since these Druids might cast Call Woodland Beings like the first group we encountered did (they were fighting the three Trolls when that happened, so the summons didn't turn on us, luckily), we had to buff or otherwise the aTweaks Woodland Beings would kick our ass.
But, before buffing I had Cernd drop around 20 Fire Traps (SR-introduced level 2 (or 3?) Druid spell similar to Glyph of Warding but (rather obviously) deals fire damage instead), for what we rested like 3 times. After that extremely useless trapping was done, we buffed and instructed Cernd to start casting Icestorm over the enemies after he had summoned four (!) Earth Elementals (very, VERY lucky). The fight went very well, and Call Woodlang Beings was never cast, and Misnc and Yvralline played cards far from the rest of the party, but nevertheless, it was an almost perfect victory after a long and rather laggy fight (too many Icestorms and Earth Elementals dropping Earthquakes).
Our only loss was around 30 HP on Anomen from a Creeping Doom while he was isolated from the rest of the casters bombing the enemy with disablers. Only one Greater Earth Elemental survived, but all of us did, and the next target on our list is Faldorn.
The fight against Faldorn was pretty hard, and a complete mess. I still have no clue why we won it, but I'll take it. Since Faldorn was very obviously going to use Creeping Doom, I gave Cernd his cloak during the challenge, since I believe IR changed it so that it gives immunity to the insect type spells. Pretty neat huh? So yeah, that's how we saved Cernd from dying to Faldorn's very first spell. Then we had Cernd summon a bunch of Earth Elementals. Luckily he got two of them. Together, the three of them danced and danced, swinging their arms at Faldorn's Stonekins, which eventually (it happened rather fast actually) gave away, only to be replaced by a second layer of them. I had Cernd protect himself from Cold and cast Icestorm over the challenge pit, which effectively disrupted two of Faldorn's spells, but, Call Woodland Beings went through and with all the Nymphs teleporting around and blinding everyone in my party I don't really know what happened, next thing I know it was over and I was fleeing after having Cernd pick up his own equipment. I thought the Blindness was permanent, so I saved the game and quit in panic. What am I gonna do? I rechecked the Monster Manual, yep, permanent Blindness. Then I decided to check the aTweaks documentation... Lasts for 24 hours? Oh, goodness, we're saved!
Then, we had an Aerial Servant take down the three Rashakas. Yep. A single one took all of them down. They're very bad news I tell you all. So we picked up the loot and left for Trademeet, only to encounter a party of Trolls ready to take on us by the door of their Cove. We had to flee from them and burn two potions of Invisibility for Jan and Yvralline since Trolls are fast and I didn't want to risk it.
Back in Trademeet we only talked to the Genies, since we're going to "complete" the other quests when we've recruited Mazzy and Keldorn; our permanent party members. Next is Umar Hills. Out visit here was rather short lived, and not as productive as destructive, since we hunted down a certain couple of villagers' chicken and gave booze to teenagers. We also picked up the journal and note in the Cabin as well as the Wand of Fear, but that's the boring stuff.
In the outside of the Temple, Anomen blew up Shadows and Shadow Wolves right and left with his X-Ray vision, and I forgot that that wouldn't affect Wraiths and didn't check if that shadowy-thing hitting Jan was a Wraith, so Jan got level-drained (just one or two levels, nothing troubling). That aside, everything went perfectly well. Strip and kick Minsc, recruit Mazzy, protect Yvralline from Fire and play guess with Amaunator's head statue. We used another Aerial Servant to take care of the Greater Mummy & Co., and then another one for the other group of them. I'm not sure who I have to thank for the lack of Liches in this level, but I'm very thankful for it.
Anyway, I did something really dumb: tried summoning a Fire Elemental in Thraxxy's room. You all know how this story ends: dragon gets mad, we flee, and now I've got not a clue of what to due against him (her?). We could use Negative Plane Protection and try running past by him, but I'm not sure if he'll get removed after we kill the Shade Lord. Otherwise, I'll spend this weekend planning a strategy to safely beat the Shadow Dragon. Or, we could just retreat and come back later, but I'm not sure how Mazzy'll feel about that.
Venduris' dudes' equipment sells for nearly 100k. I equip Venduris' Ioun Stone, as that will make it so I can never be hit when Mirror Image is up. The other effects of Luck are just gravy. Onto Suldanessellar, where the run with the Two Sorcerers ended due to boredom. Nizi goes down quickly.
The rest of the elven city is taken care of. Rillifane is summoned to deal with the goons and I use a dispelling arrow to take down Suneer's Globe, because it prevents his avatar from instantly killing him, amusingly. Back to Watcher's Keep. I create Perfect Iron Golem MK I and head down into level 3. It's not so bad being in anti-magic zones. Being true neutral allows me to work for Tahazzar instead of being immediately confronted by demons. I take out his devil nemesis easily.
The rest of level 3 is completed but my golem is destroyed by a pack of Glabrezus. I flee from the demon wraith. It's not worth it. Arriving at Aesgareth's room, I decide to skip playing the cambion for the Wish scroll and just kill his party, initiating the fight with a Power Word: Kill on their mage.
I've got the deck now. I take the proper precautions with Spell Immunity for each draw, drawing the following cards:
The Jester card did nothing since I had SI: Evocation up. Rogue was prevented using the Staff of the Magi. Erinyes is just temporary. On level 4, Saladrex is next on the chopping block. He's only about as difficult as Firkraag and Phase Arrow helps finish him off.
The demilich is next. PfU spares me from the worst that it can do, but it still seems to be able to attack me with MMM despite having PfU applied on myself and on the demilich itself. Whatever. I can still kill a demilich. It tries Time Stop and then summons a planetar, but I equip the Staff before it gets it off, so I beat the planetar to death during the Time Stop.
I wait out its PfMW that it casts at the end of its Time Stop and then cast my own PfMW when the demilich summons another planetar. With all my spell protections up, the planetar doesn't dare to cast against me. I try Phase Arrow against the Demilich, but it doesn't seem to work. I peel through its Stoneskins after a round then shoot it to death.
My PfMW wears off shortly after this, so I cast it again and shoot down the planetar for 20k XP. The illithid enclave is a repeat of the one in the Temple Sewers. Onto level 5. The nameless green dragon goes down too.
The orc horde challenge isn't so bad. Even though I can't immediately kill the mages, you just have to survive the challenge for a certain length of time before the guardian steps in and kills them all off for you. I probably could've done it just by casting invisibility and equipping Venduris' ring.
The three main challenges are completed and it's time to fight the guardians of level 5. The demon amazons are first because one of them has the Gauntlets of Extra Specialization. I back out of the Hive Mother's field of vision and pick off Nalmissra who doesn't do anything. Y'tossi gates in a pair of Nabassus, so I take her out next and equip my new gauntlets to gain an extra attack via Improved Haste. Now I have 9 attacks per round.
Next is the Huntress who is busy attacking the planetar. They kill it successfully, so now it's just me and Perfect Mithril golem MK I. When she turns her attention to me, I cast PfMW and finish her off.
I target the Hive Mother and Xei Win Toh next. The Hive Mother is not using her beholder rays, so I just have to Breach her to start doing damage. Xei Win Toh is merciless and carves through my perfect golem in short order.
After the golem splits into two normal mithril golems, I finish off the Hive Mother and then Xei Win Toh. I smack the drow priestess with the Staff of the Magi and kill her too. Next are the Rilmani. The Aurumach has permanent aura cleansing but makes the mistake of neglecting his defenses. The planetar and I almost finish him off when he gets Time Stop off the ground. He kills my planetar while it's active, though he doesn't seem to take an interest in me for some reason. In fact, all of the Rilmani completely ignore me. If memory serves, the Rilmani are a race of neutral exemplars, so since my alignment is True Neutral, maybe they can't target me at all.
Azamantes is last. Before taking him on, I build a Brain Golem. Azamantes has a ton of prebuffs, but I think it would be wiser to wait out his PfMW instead of attacking him. I expect a Time Stop from him very soon, so I equip the Staff. Then he casts Improved Alacrity.
I have my planetar leave the lich alone and start hunting the flaming skulls instead and I follow suit, backing away from the lich. It waddles over into my sight range after a few seconds, then casts Wish, which I predict will either be a Time Stop or destroying my defenses, so I re-equip my Staff. It's the Time Stop.
His PfMW expires and the lich thinks he's safe during the Time Stop when he could not be more wrong. I pummel him to death with the Staff and he tries to summon a planetar to help, but I kill it too after I kill the lich.
The way to Demogorgon is open, but I'll save him for later. The anti-solar blood that he drops is only useful to me once I get the second half of the Adamantite Golem manual, which isn't until mid-ToB. I'm beginning to suffer burnout from this playthrough too. Sometimes I think it would be better if something hurried up and killed me so I could start playing with SCS v32.
Soon after the last posted update for this challenge a 24th attempt ended when getting too close to the wolf pack at the temple while searching out dogs to wear down the sirines. My notes suggest I also had a 25th attempt, but don't record what happened to it - my guess would be an ignominious death .
For whatever reason (possibly maturing with age, or possibly just approaching senility), I've been taking slightly fewer risks while playing in the last couple of months. If that continues to be the case in this run then there is a realistic chance of going a long way - the additional restriction to my usual ones is that Bash is not allowed to receive XP for enemies killed by any means other than his sword, but he can freely use other abilities if those don't result in deaths (which means the restriction is not too great if care is taken).
Progress has included the following:
- avoiding ambushes while travelling down to find Brage and get his sword.
- after learning CLW went back up to Beregost to kill Algernon for his cloak. Also got around to summoning a familiar.
- wore down the sirines in Beregost Temple against enemies and finished 3 of them off (the other dying to a critical from a hobgoblin).
- returned to the crossroads and blinded Imoen (to prevent her joining the party, which I don't allow). Also slaughtered Xzar and Montaron to get their equipment (particularly oil of speed).
- at the Lake area Bash's cat activated a gnoll to attack Drizzt. It proved to have an extremely resilient halberd and Bash had to retreat 6 times to reset the combat until the gnoll finally broke its weapon. Bash was then able to use an oil of speed to successfully target and finish off an unconscious Drizzt before he lost control - getting up to level 4/4 there.
- in fighting the gnolls I realised Bash had not picked up the ankheg armor from Nashkel and he went to do that before heading north to Ulgoth's Beard where his reputation took another hit for killing Dushai for her free action ring.
- to boost reputation Bash helped out Hulrik (sleeping all the xvarts from out of sight to avoid going berserk there), Firebead and Joia. Some donations at the temple were then followed by further boosts from Ardrouine, Oublek, Bjornin, Mr Colquetle and Samuel.
- while at the FAI a charmed guard killed Tarnesh, Bash handed back Landrin's goods and also collected the pantaloons.
- to help with inventory management he decided to risk killing Neera. To try and avoid triggering her conversation he blinded her from range and used stinking cloud to disable her. He found it difficult to resist the cloud himself, but did eventually manage to stand up long enough to get a killing blow in.
- another risk was taken by attacking the golems at High Hedge (before speaking to Thalantyr). Bash had learnt mirror image on his travels and thought that would protect him. However, the first golem still came close to killing him - though the second died in two blows while leaving Bash untouched.
Buying the potion bag provided even more inventory room.
- clearing the ankheg nest allowed him to gain more reputation from Farmer Brun.
- Melicamp failed to survive and Bash found Charleston Nib would no longer talk to him after being charmed. However, he was successful with charming Prism (allowing him to be moved away from where Greywolf would appear before starting the combat). That's pushed reputation to 18 and that should be maximised next time in the Cloud Peaks (Bash is now at level 5/5 giving him a realistic chance of surviving a potential ogre mage ambush).
I've updated my SCS installation to the latest v32.2 release for this run. One oddity about that I've noted is that groups of enemies all have the same scroll, i.e. if one kobold has a friends scroll then any other kobold in that group with a scroll would have friends as well.
Comments
Jan is now the owner of the Thieves' Guild (courtesy of NPC_Stronghold), and he seems to be managing it rather ambitiously. I hope it works out since I don't want to lose more gold that what we'll have to pay for Spellhold/Magic license.
After taking a nap in the streets of Athkatla at midday, Aerie reminded us that she wanted to visit the Circus to talk to Quayle, and a messenger came to tell Anomen his sister had been killed. There was also one of those Shadow Thieves vs. Vampires act, but, since Yvralline is CN and I'm trying not to get killed here, I chose the safe option, let the guy get killed and also managed to pick one of them for some free, 8500 XP. Sweet. We got ambushed by the bandits that got Reynald injured. They're no big trouble, and we got him back to the Docks.
We went to the Circus, paid a visit to Anomen's father, had Anomen promise us he would not take revenge on his sister, and pickpocketed a bunch of guards then left for the Graveyard. We got the huge Fledgeling Vampires ambush; I just fled and hoped nobody would get charmed or worse. I should just pre-buff if I want to survive these ambushes without wasting Potions of Invisibility (which I didn't use here, but honestly, I could've lost, so I'm not sure whether that was the best choice after all).
At the Graveyard, we solved the paladin and orphan girl quest, gave the halfling ghost it's stuffed bear back, and killed a bunch of Mummies as well as the Crypt King, who dropped Albruin+1 and there's also the Golden Axe+2 we got off some other Tomb. We got the patch of red clothing and are ready to get the Silver Pantaloons, I just hope the exploit that lets the player pickpocket the pantaloons and then set her free so that you don't get the reputation drop still works.
On our way to the Bridge District, we got the second Slaver ambush. This one is normally a cake-walk, but seems like SCS duplicated all the creatures except for the mage, who seems like she's got a couple of extra levels on her. Of course, yours truly didn't know this, but I decided to play it safe from the get-go, which is the only thing that saved me probably.
We started off by drinking Potions of Invisibility and running to the North, barely escaping the enemy mage's Oracle spell (here was when I first realised something might be different to what I'm used to, since low-level SCS mages usually don't get this spell, but seeing the duplicated Clerics and Fighter helped and lead me to take a very cautious approach). Out of enemy reach, I had Yvralline cast Wizard Eye while the rest of the party casted their respective long duration buffs. We scouted the enemies and decided to have Jaheira bombard their frontline with two Ice Storms. Eventually, both enemy fighters wandered into us separately, and were dispatched instantly to avoid getting the rest of the group on us. We later had Jaheira cast Conjure Air Elemental, which got the thieves and clerics on us. They posed little to no problem, and we left the Air Elementals party with the Mage and her various Teleport Field spells. I think aTweaks Elementals broke the SR Banishment spell, but I'm not really certain about it. Also, summons being actually useful for once doesn't sound that bad to me.
So, finally, all that was left was the mage. Since I had used Spell Thrust on one of the Clerics, and, not exactly a smart move, I only have it memorised once, I was set on waiting out her buffs, but exactly two rounds after the last cleric's body had hit the ground she teleported with Dimension Door on top of Jan, then dropped a Sunfire (caller Fireburst under SR) on our party. Minsc suffered heavy damage, Jan managed to run out of it in time, as well as Jaheira and Yvralline. Aerie had her spell protections up and Anomen saved against it so he only took minor damage. The mage later used Cone of Cold on Minsc, whom I had healed up once already, and got him to 20 HP from like, 90. Again, this spell shows us how devastating it is, but, it can be walked out of rather easily if you're not directly next to the mage casting it, which is what Yvralline did. Then the mage decided to waste a round of her precious buffs by casting Breach on Jaheira? I'm kinda mad I made this install just a month before v32 got released, otherwise enemies wouldn't do stuff like this I believe.
Anyway, that and her buffs expiring next round gave us enough room to take down one her initial Stoneskins. Her Contingency ones triggered, and those were taken down as well. Next was the mage herself, since mages, as well all know rather well, can't do much against Minsc in melee, specially when it's not just Minsc but also Jaheira, Anomen and Jan because I was running short on bolts.
On the docks, we got ambushed by the muggers, which just served to make me seethe at having forgotten to sleep before the fight, and also gave me a bunch of bolts. After that we rested at the Five Flagons Inn and are ready to pick up Cernd if not something else that might assist us with the Spirit Trolls.
Edit: forgot the screenshots. The first one is just because I had forgotten how well that part of the Promenade looked, the second is the result of about 20 minutes of pause-heavy intensive and nervous gameplay coming off just a random ambush. Well, it wasn't that bad actually. I enjoyed the fight. Until next time!
Benedict, Human Conjurer, BG2EE ToB Update 1
BG1EE updates: 1, 2
SoD updates: 1, 2, 3, 4
BG2EE SoA updates: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
BG2EE ToB updates: 1
We are whisked away to Hell (or something like it), and soon fight off waves of hostiles. The final wave proves a little bothersome, in that we fail to take down Irenicus quickly, leading to him causing some mischief with a Time Stop and Fallen Planetar (Jaheira almost went down to an ADHW). Of course, we still prevail.
Off to Saradush! Home of epic-level fighters that still cannot afford anything better than Plate Mail for protection. Nor do they believe in helmets, apparently.
We clear the little sidequests in Saradush, amused to discover that as dirt-poor as the epic fighters are, the mages are even worse off... this one couldn't even afford a quarterstaff! It's a good thing SCSV32 makes mages pre-buff with PfNM, as otherwise you get this (Masterwork Arrows + Power Attack).
Into the sewers next, where nothing can stand in our way (literally, we sweep all opposition aside, and Anomen casually explodes the entire spawn of Shadows). Although, as enemy THAC0's are through the roof... or I guess through the cellar, given that they're very low... we suffer some damage.
In the basement of Gromnir's keep, we almost lose Minsc to a large party of helmless wonders and their pauper mage, but a Storm of Vengeance and some shuffling saves the day.
We reach Gromnir almost unimpeded. I won't say the fight is trivial, as Karun the Black is no slouch, but we've got him out-magicked, and we've got Gromnir out-meele'd. Karun falls to area damage, and Gromnir soon follows (he never even used Vhailor's Helm).
Off into the wilderness! The regular soldiers are entirely hopeless, and the Fire Giants can just be kited. We proceed into the Marching Mountains: The Fire Giants outside are kited, and we avoid killing any of the beastial Bhaal-spawn. We proceed inside.
There's not as much room to kite here, so we utilize a combination of Hardiness and pure damage (ADHW/Skull Trap... even Magic Missile) to bring the Giants down. To my surprise, Mazzy somehow got level drained, unclear how. Anomen had a Greater Restoration, so we were able to fix it.
We start clearing the enemies behind the (now disabled) force fields. Burning Men, Flaming Skulls, Fell Cats and Fire Salamanders aren't trivial, but they're not magic immune either, so even a single Skull Trap can wreak havoc.
Just the Fire Lich and his Noble Efreeti (like regular Efreeti, but more hitpoints so more annoying) left.
We send a Planetar and some Elementals to blunt the Lich's magic arsenal, while the rest of the party dismantles its attendant Efreeti at range. With no powerful allies left, the Lich apparently decides to just lie down and die.
I don't know what happened. I thought Mazzy could've hit it with Azuredge, but she's wielding Gesen's Bow. Maybe a bug? The Lich was entirely out of big spells anyway and so not a threat, so it doesn't really matter.
We press onward into the inner sanctum, where I accidentally trigger a large group of Giants including the cleric, Berenn. Thankfully Brimstone (the SCS-introduced Red Dragon) does not join them, so we only take a little damage, easily mended by potions.
Its guardian Giants disposed of, Brimstone fares no better: He only tried to dispel our protections once using a Remove Magic Spell Sequencer. With PfFire up on everyone, the breath weapon was rendered moot, and soon, so was Brimstone.
All that remains is Imix and his two Burning Men. We conjure a few Fire Elementals of our own, but it was hardly necessary: Imix stands no chance.
The two hearts are swiped, and we return to Nyalee. Being a Druid, she has no way to keep her defenses up in SCSV31, and after a RRoR suffers an inglorious defeat at the hands of a Spell Trigger.
Now... Yaga-Shura. Benedict gets full protections, but everyone else kind of plays it by ear. We push across the bridge, wound Yaga-Shura, and proceed to remorselessly destroy his Lieutentant Cleric, Fighter and Thief while he's away (the Mage got blown off-screen by a Comet).
Once Yaga-Shura returns, a Planetar distracts him as we tear down his MR and bombard him with damage spells, the non-arcane party members content to plink away with ranged weapons. Victory!
Once more whisked away, Benedict comes face to face with what might have been... had he been a fighter. The horror! Benedict swiftly orders the disposal of this crime against the universe.
There aren't even any screenshots of the decidedly un-epic fight in the Oasis, as a handful of area-of-effect spells were sufficient for an easy victory. In Amkethran, we take care of the sidequests, and lose two reputation from simply having to see what was in two containers in the house with the sleeping boy and woman (13 gold and a silver ring...). They apparently recognize the theft when they wake up. Boo!
Just Vongoethe left. He somehow survives four Earthquakes without a scratch, though he is constantly interrupted: This is good, since it's almost impossible to remove his spell protections. This is because he constantly summons Skeleton Archers, and since SCS makes anti-magic spells ground-targetted, our RRoR are typically wasted on the Skeleton Archers due to Vongoethe shuffling around. Still, we eventually grind him and his Fallen Planetar down (Mazzy with Smite using Gesen's Bow is quite useful for this).
Of course the soul is returned to Marlowe. And that's about it for the easy stuff. The fight with Sendai is no joke, but what is truly worrisome is Improved Abazigal's lair and it's penchant for dragons. Still, we've come too far to turn back! Though we may want to make a detour to Watcher's Keep first. Mazzy could really use an upgrade to replace Frostreaver +3... but that is all for next time.
Benedict is now a L22 Human Conjurer, and has mastered all mage HLA's apart from the extra spell slots.
Don’t bet on it, I’m afraid. It’s amazingly hard (at least within the confines of IE scripting) to work out how to prioritise renewing defenses vs debuffing vs doing damage. V32 is probably a slight improvement but the underlying problem is still there.
It's been ages since Brentan saw some action, but his party got some things done today:
1) Sir Sarles was given the alloy but he didn't like it - the Temple did however.
2) Successfully retrieved the Dawn ring for the Temple
3) Punished Neb for his crimes and got his illithium
4) Watched Mook get murdered
5) Had to kill some thieves and their contact at the Five Flagons
6) Solved Trademeet problem but did not report to Mayor yet. This is to get lower level spawns in the old Amaunator temple area.
7) Reported to Linvail to get our goodies
8) Wiped out undead at the graveyard (surface)
9) Cleared out the spiders in the crypts including P'anaii
10) Mace of disruption obtained in Bodhi's lair - entire lair not cleared yet, again this is to get lower level spawns in the old Amaunator temple area.
10) Mace of disruption +2 formed
We rested in Umar Hills, and we will work on the Mayor of Immesvale's quest next session. party is level 11.
We used our intelligence to kill the warders. Omce they were chasing me, I ran into the cloudkill area and used an invisibility potion. This resulted in two of them killing each other and another being weakened. WE then used ordinary melee attack to finish them off.
I used my true sight to fight invisible enemies and then used invisibility myself to defeat the phoenix guards.
We were well buffed when we arrived at the chess board. Web and fireballs were useful, but Drake panicked which meant that the fireballs had to be well timed to avoid hurting him.
However we prevailed after killing all of those who opposed us.
We used invisibility to break the mirror and escape the demon knight. Again, web and fireball were very useful, but this time so was cloudkill. Of her own volition Tenya used her bowl to summon a water elemental.
This turned out to be a stroke of genius on her part for the elemental was in the middle of the coud of cloudkill. Whilst this led to her early demise, it also led to the demise of the mirrorkin attacking her.
Upon taking the soultaker to Ulgoth's Beard, we were badly hurt. If they had pressed their attack, they could have forced us to flee. We left anyway to lick our wounds in safety. As somebody once said: "I'll be back!"
I have noticed that Drake certainly has a tendency to panic. That is not helpful!
EDIT
Upon returning, we were recuperated and the cult guards had no answer to our assault.
Sadly we did have a slight problem when fighting Aec, but the gold that we had gained made the gold needed to raise Vynd mere chicken feed.
I did have to dispell magic on a couple of occasions otherwise it would have been the end for me.
Tenya also had a dispell magic in reserve in case of emergency.
Afterwards we met Reedring who gave us some advice for the future.
After taking a break to finish my semester, I'd hoped to pick up with the Cloakwood Druids the other night (that's where I left off last).
Anyway, when I opened the game noticed two things.
1) None of the NPCs I installed, i.e., Sirine, Isra and Valerie, have portraits anymore. I might have uninstalled software that was supporting that. In addition, it appears my overall game graphics are diminished.
2) None of my installed NPCs have voice tracks now, i.e., they don't respond when selected.
Everything else is as it was, levels, inventory, etc. I even had them cast spells, etc. and everything works fine.
As usual, I probably goofed myself up and I know you guys and gals always bail me out. I hate to end this run, so if you can help me that would be fantastic.
Thanks, CT
We were asked to save some dogs from some vampyric wolves so Xan cast web to stop the wolves being hurt until we managed to kill the wolves. Strangely, when Drake tried to heal one of the dogs, the spell was ineffective.
We then went in search of the cultists and cleared the area of them finishing off in the temple where we had quite a battle. [ Sadly forgot to take a screenshot at the relevant moment.
To fight that battle my party were buffed and invisible when thay went in. However being invisible didn't seem to be effective.
The party ran to the other end of the room setting off traps which hurt the enemy more than the party.
Another time I could send in a fighter alone who is buffed to protect him from the traps and once they are triggered, then send in the party.
I love USING traps.
Part 7: Shadows of Amn
Mazzy's personal quest pops up and forces us to stop by Trademeet to help her family. On the way, we use a blue Protection from Petrification scroll on Mazzy so she can cut up the djinn before proceeding to shank Barl. We then use an Invisibility 10' Radius scroll to skip most of the Druid Grove, then use an offscreen Web scroll to snare Dalok, holding him in place so we can nail him with a Fireball. Since I am not yet using the Wand of Lightning trick, Dalok survives the blast, so we finish him off with a Magic Missile scroll when Mazzy gets webbed and can't finish the job herself.
Then we get a really nasty rest ambush, and the enemy mage launches a Chaos spell at us. Bardy McBardface can only ward off death using a Potion of Clarity, Jaheira makes her save with a Potion of Invulnerability, and Lilarcor can cover one of our other party members, but Mazzy and Korgan both end up failing their saves vs. spell. Now we can't leave the map until either both of them are either cured or dead.
Finally, I decide to break out the nuclear option, and wipe out the entire orog horde with a Death Spell scroll.
By now, we've built up over 60,000 gold, but that counts for a LOT less in a restless run, since all of our healing has to come from temples or potions, and that gets really expensive. We really need a way of regenerating HP like we had in BG1, and since pickpocketing Ribald seems risky (I don't know what value you need to guarantee success, or if a 100% success rate is even possible), our only other option is the Ring of Gaxx.
So, right after almost losing the entire party to a random ambush, we're going to take down Kangaxx the Demi-Lich. This would be a terrifying prospect if I were not perfectly willing to abuse Protection from Undead scrolls even more by using them on the Shade Lich and Elemental Lich instead of the party. For those who aren't aware, Protection from Undead scrolls prevent undead from targeting themselves if you use it on them, which creates weird scripting effects like preventing enemy liches from casting pre-buffs. Without PFMW, they're toast.
Now we have to fight vampires for Aran Linvail, and that prospect is even worse in a restless run. No Chaotic Commands means no easy immunity to charm, and even a single charmed party member can cause all kinds of grief.
Tanova hits Mazzy with Remove Magic, dispelling her Protection from Undead scroll, then wipes out our halfling with Horrid Wilting and charms our dwarf.
I've resisted it for a long time, but I'm finally gonna cave and use the Wand of Lightning trick. Every on-self item or quick slot item that Bardy McBardface can use is now capable of striking 6 targets at the same time. We use it to blast Mencar Pennypincher and finish off the survivors with a Flame Arrow scroll and some swordplay.
Later in the game, the WoL trick will be a little more elegant, since even 6 Wand of Fire charges at once won't really be useful in the bigger fights of BG2. Fireball ain't gonna do much against a fire-immune demon, magic-resistant drow, or mage with GOI. Using the WoL trick with mage scrolls will be more interesting, since the scrolls will hit harder, do a wider variety of things, and be more finite in number than wand charges.
Corul (female half-orc priest of Helm, Gate70); Viol (male half-orc wizard slayer, Grond0)
Corul got her act together, protecting Viol as he deserves (other than a petrification trap down near an abandoned temple which saw her put her temple quest on hold and trudge back for a stone to flesh scroll).
Here, for example, she carefully protects Viol from lightning. Side effect is that the lightning bolt bounces around before hitting her and almost ending another Bhaalspawn outing.
She is held but it doesn't look TOO dangerous. The skeletons and Viol move to intercept but the beholder has set it's mind on half-orc cleric for lunch and Corul's fate is sealed.
We finally acquired the items which had been sought for so long. Perhaps this quest would have been better left undone. Of course if we hadn't acquired them, somebody with fewer scruples might have found them and that could have been disastrous.
We have now returned to Baldur's Gate. [Without returning to Ulgoth's Beard as I don't want to start the Drizzt Saga just yet]
Lassiter - level 8 berserker, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Ulder - level 8 cleric/level 7 ranger (Gate70)
London - level 11 shapeshifter (Gornd0)
This update is actually 2-in-1 - forgot to post about last week's adventure - oops! So we'll talk about last week:
Most of the city was pretty uneventful, the party's melee power is quite considerable. Did run into one hiccup, got held by a carrion crawler in the sewers - the party however managed to save Lassiter.
The other battle of note was our battle with the Iron Throne on the 5th floor. With a cleric, the battle is much smoother, as cleric can silence plus skeleton distractions. The party destroyed the iron throne.
We then reported to Duke Beltan and got sent to Candlekeep. This was pretty smooth, but we did run into one problem. Lassiter tripped the traps protected by proteciton from magic, but London was standing far too close to the repeating lightning trap and got hit hard when Lassiter was on his way back. Fortunately, London didn't die. The rest of the crypts was pretty smooth. Silence was again very effective against Prat's gang. Lassiter did most of the spiders. Grond0 and Gate70 took care of the basilisks.
Now, we are talking about the new session today, as we found ourselves at the exit of Candlekeep Crypts. We then went to FAI to identify and sell, and went after Slythe. Lassiter suggested pulling with dispelling arrows but Grond0 said silence works good. So we try that but Ulder and Lassiter got hit hard. Maybe arrows would be been better?
In any case, we then try on the Duchal Palace. Skeletons and dispelling arrows plus insect plague gave us the victory.
We breezed through the maze pretty smoothly - a brief stop with protection from magic and Lassiter tripped the traps in front of the skeleton warriors. Gate70 then soloed the undead with a protection from undead scroll. We then went out of the maze. We decided we didn't need to mess with the Iron Throne party, so went the long way around to the Temple of Bhaal.
The Sarevok battle went mostly smooth, but we took a ton of damage. It was hardest for Gate70 and Grond0 because of MP lag. Just as Gate70 got hit hard down to 5 HP and he ran for his life, An arrow from Lassiter forced Sarevok to give it up.
We then worked on the dungeon. We took a ton of damage, but we also did ton of resting. London was a great person to set off traps, as oftentimes his ironskin would protect him. We even killed the vampire. The only actual problem was Lassiter was supposed to talk to the nymphs and get the genie lamp. He did it once, we went into the air plane and Gate70 talked to the Genie, but no lamp? Doh, Corey_Russell was so tired he forgot talk to the nymphs twice! Doh, so Lassiter tried it again, and the 2nd time Grond0 did the talking.
By the time we escaped the dungeon there only about 15 min. left. We had just enough time to fix the circus problem, buy the ring of air control, and then talked to Galen Bayle. We bought the glasses of identification, and then moved to the Copper Coronet - we'll free Hendak next session.
The game is very hard on my hands, so I have little patience for runs that go poorly these days. I'm not willing to restart runs to get a win like I used to.
Part 8: Shadows of Amn
Time to take down Kangaxx!
The formula is pretty simple. All we need to do is use a Protection from Undead scroll on him, bring him to Near Death, and nail him with an Arrow of Dispelling (the scroll prevents him from speaking to you, so it needs to be dispelled). Then we just need to use a new Protection from Undead scroll on his demilich form after he transforms and whack him with the Mace of Disruption until he fails his save vs. death!
Problem is, the Protection from Undead scroll doesn't seem to be screwing up his AI as much as it has in the past, so I end up fleeing the area when I think a Time Stop is coming out. It's just an Improved Alacrity spell, and when I go back in, Kangaxx has no PFMW or Stoneskins to avoid spell disruption, so we can shoot him down.
See, the thing about using the Protection from Undead scroll trick on Kangaxx is that, if you take him down to 1 HP (or whatever the transformation threshold is) before you dispel the scroll, his transformation won't trigger... ever.
I accidentally deal too much damage to Kangaxx and break his script. I leave and enter the area and I let him regenerate, but it's hopeless. Even with the Protection from Undead scroll dispelled, he won't transform, regardless of his HP level.
So, no Ring of Gaxx for us. That means the only realistic way for us to avoid catastrophic money loss to healing before Spellhold is to steal the Ring of Regeneration from Ribald. Since we're using the Wand of Lightning trick now, I drink 6 Potions of Mastery Thievery and snatch it from him.
We stop by the Windspear Hills to blast the knights with Fireballs and accept the rest at Garren Windspear's place on the grounds that our HP is already full and we haven't used any per-rest abilities anyway (aside from an Enrage from Korgan, but I can remember to deduct one casting). We can't get past the rakshasa in Firkraag's dungeon, though, because it'll just blast us into oblivion and even the WoL trick won't help us against rakshasa spell level immunities (unless I have a spare Potion of Firebreath or some level 8 or 9 spells, I guess).
Instead, we head to the De'Arnise Keep. We can slay most of the enemies here with brute force, but the trolls apply some pretty heavy pressure and we end up busting out the Wand of Frost and Wand of Fire to deal with a troublesome batch of trolls.
We need Jan's help to beat the Planar Prison, which is the only way for us to get the Bard Hat and extend our bard songs by an extra 2 rounds (!). The fight fight is simple.
We're short of invisibility options, though, and actually getting the party up north so we can grab the Warden's key and rescue Haer'dalis and company is a trying prospect, since we get stuck in those gross orifice prison cell thingies and end up attracting unwanted attention from the local Thralls. We use our Skeleton Warriors, which we initially summoned in case the Warden decided to chase after us, to dispatch them.
As it happens, we summoned a pack of Nishruus to deal with any pesky Yuan-ti Mages who survived our Wand of Cloudkill charges, and Nishruus can cast Agannazar's Scorcher. We burn him down without even using wands.
After returning to Baldur's Gate I rescued the Duke single handed. Xan cast invisibility on me. I then ran to the Falming Fist where I killed his "Healer." I then took a potion of invisibility and joined up with the party.
We were then attacked by the same sort of assassins who wanted Aura dead.
We then headed for the Iron Throne Building where we killed Cythandra and thuse acquired Sarevok's Diary.
We then killed two assassins beneath the Blushing Mermaid and appropriated the Invitation to the Ducal Palace.
We foiled the assassination attempt on the Dukes, but sadly one of them died despite our best efforts.
We then decided that the time was right to help Drizzt set Catta-Brie free.
We started in the Nine Hells where we met Wulfgar who was effective against Demonknights due to his immunity to fire.
Drittz on the other hand was effective against both Tanari and Belhifet due to his skill in using stealth.
We didn't have it all our own way however as both the Tanari and belhifet landed serious blows.
We then took on Marilith who caused us some injuries. When we tried to rest we were attacked so in the end we had to give up that attempt and didn't sleep until we returned temporarily to Ulgoth's Beard.
We then ended up in Ice Wind Dale where we were eventually victorious though we incurred many wounds in the process.
We eventually freed Catti-Brie
We continued on trying to help the folk of Ice Wind Dale as much as possible.
Sadly Drizzt was killed in one of the battles, so we went and picked up Thorin as he was nearby.
The battles didn't cease until we left, some of them taking place whilst we were trying to rest.
We then ended up in Ice Wind Dale where we were eventually victorious though we incurred many wounds in the process.
We eventually freed Catti-Brie
We continued on trying to help the folk of Ice Wind Dale as much as possible.
Reflex (male half-elf archer, Grond0); Grozzul (male dwarf fighter/cleric, Gate70)
Previous run
MP188 is underway - and this time it's personal (insert your favorite film trailer voice over artist here).
There was the usual sort of start with Shoal being shot down and a journey down to Nashkel to get Grozzul some decent armor. This time though we went straight on to the basilisk area to pick up more easy XP. The monsters didn't last long and no protest was heard from Mutamin as his pets were slaughtered.
Bassilus was given the opportunity to talk and used that to confuse Grozzul, but Reflex saved against an attempted hold person (Bassilus being one of those enemies with a nasty habit of targeting the PC even if alternative targets are closer) to avoid any real danger.
Searching for reputation, Greywolf was an obvious target and he was about to die even before being held.
With time in the session running out, we went to Durlag's Tower looking for some more quick XP. Grozzul tried attacking the first Battle Horror there still wearing his standard crushing girdle, but took quite a bit of damage as a result and had to run round for a while until Reflex was able to help out with some stealth attacks. Swapping to the slashing girdle meant the opponents needed a critical and the other Battle Horrors and the Doom Guard were swiftly dealt with.
Reflex, archer 6, 66 HPs, 88 kills
Grozzul, fighter 6 / cleric 6, 70 HPs, 71 kills
Upon arrival in Ulgoth's Beard I left my party of heroes from the Nine Hells and Ice Wind Dale and joined up with the friends who were there waiting for me.
Immediately we set off to find Sarevok where we had a straightforward if fraught battle.
His cohorts were dealt with by a combination of web, true sight, and dispell magic.
Only Tazok caused much trouble. He almost killed Vynd who had to flee and use one of the powerful healing potions of which we have very few.
Vynd then repaid us by taking on Sarevok single-handed and backstabbing him to death. He was wounded a couple of times by Sarevok, but nothing life-threatening.
It was quite a relief when Sarevok fell as we had some quite dangerous battles on the way.
Upon arriving in SoD both my experience and that of Thorin was reduced to 500,000, a drop of about 100,000.
The rest of the party had just over 300,000 experience.
EDIT
I am now safely back in the Ducal palace, relieved to have left all enemies behind. Imoen has gone to investigate some noises, but in the safety of the Palace I am sure that it will be nothing serious. Xan and Drake seem ro have disappeared, where to I have no idea.
EDIT
It was more serious than I thought. Imoen has been poisoned. On the good side Duke Liia is alive again. Obviously her death wasn't as serious as I feared. Of course with her wealth she had access to the best treatment.
Previous parts:
Part 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1063863#Comment_1063863
Part 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1068691#Comment_1068691
Party composition:
Anaya, Half-Elf F/D
Fango, Gnome F/C
Phlebas, Half-Elf F/M/C
Linaea, Elf F/M/T
Dundas, Half-Elf Bard
~ The Temple of the Forgotten God: Archaic D&D Rules ~
Two types of enemy here: Verbeeg (“very big”?) and Acolytes, the former melee heavy-weights who can pulverise our best tank in seconds, and the latter divine spell-casters who tend to harry and annoy, although they have a nasty damage-dealing spell, Static Charge.
Outside we gang up on the suspensefully fleeing Verbeeg. We just need to surround him to ensure he doesn’t run away.
The rest of the Temple essentially is completed without major mishap, except one, detailed shortly. Our tactics are mainly summons and killing fields of Entangle + Spike Growth. We send Linaea, our F/M/T, forward to scout and harry the enemies, luring the particularly dumb Verbeeg back to our main line. We’re constantly reminded that if we engage directly, we’re still weak enough to be in serious danger from these heavy-hitting beasts. Alicorn Lance is ever useful to penalise their AC.
Eventually a third option dawns on me: I can DaleKeeper Linaea to a Half-Elf, as I had intended to use a Half-Elf in the first place, and only chose not to owing to laziness. Of course that constitutes cheating, and under some interpretations would invalidate my No-Reload run. In the end, however, I remember one of the defining features of these runs has to be personal enjoyment of the run. I had intended in the very beginning to use a Half-Elf, up till now her race had played essentially no part in the game except a +1 THAC0 bonus with Bows, and here this poor choice on my part was about to cause a huge set-back to our funds and my fun, all because of an arguably rubbish D&D rule that in other Infinity Engine games wasn’t even implemented. I said “sod it”, and changed her race, then bought another Raise Dead scroll to bring her back to life.
I follow just one rule; summerized in thread title: No-Reload. Take it as it comes. I've had party members in which I've invested tomes in BG1 chunked, petrified, vorpalized - so not even 20K gold could bring them back.
While I can understand the frustration of loosing a character, I'd just roll with it and continue as 5. Hell, you'll get to 19.500 eventually, there's no need to restart the game. It' s not the end of the world.
I re-installed CD Tweaks before starting SoD as I realised that there were potential problems with the set-up that I had, and that between games was probably the safest time to do that.
The prologue to SoD was very straightforward. However I have now lost two companions, both Drake and Xan. That is tragic as I was getting quite fond of both of them in a non-romantic way. I think that Drake may turn up later. I'll have to wait and see. At least I know the sort of places to go looking.
I cane across a minor bug when Imoen was poisoned. The peson who was supposed to speak to me didn't turn up. Probably because I was in the next room. I was stuck there, unable to go downstairs.
I played it again and it played correctly. This time I was given a staff through which I can cast "Friends." I haven't been given that before. It will be useful when I go shopping as I will be able to reach a charisma of 25.
Various people have offered to join my party, but none of them was deemed worthy, "My rules are very strict."
I thought the problem here was that Jaheira, a Fighter/Druid, got targeted before Aerie. Thinking about this now, I'm not certain if it was due to Aerie being outside of the Mage's visual range (I believe she wasn't, but there's no way for me to check this now).
On a completely different notice, since I didn't really want to play the Druid Grove, I decided roll up a Kensai, and I hadn't gotten hit even once, when this happened:
[000AF5F3] Kobold- Yip, yip, yip!
[000AF5F3] Kobold- Attacks Lycurgus
[000AF5F5] Kobold- Attacks Lycurgus
[000AF5F5] Kobold- Attacks Lycurgus
[000AF5F7] Kobold- Attacks Lycurgus
[000AF5F9] Kobold- Attack Roll 9 + 0 = 9 : Miss
[000AF5FB] Kobold- Attack Roll 17 + 0 = 17 : Hit
[000AF5FB] Kobold- Attack Roll 15 + 0 = 15 : Hit
[000AF5FD] Kobold- Critical Hit
[000AF5FD] Kobold- Attack Roll 20 + 0 = 20 : Hit
[000AF5FC] PAUSED
[000AF5FC] Lycurgus- Done.
[000AF5FC] UNPAUSED
[000AF5FD] Kobold did 6 damage to Lycurgus
[000AF5FF] Kobold did 5 damage to Lycurgus
[000AF5FF] Kobold did 12 damage to Lycurgus
[000AF5FF] Lycurgus- Death
[000AF628] PAUSED
We moved onto Trademeet and kicked Jaheira in favour of Cernd. To deal with the Troll welcoming party we had Cernd cast summon Fire Elemental until we got four of them (I rested once to get back the spells when he just summoned two), and that happened in the 2nd try. I decided to add an Aerial Servant to the fry as well, and Invisible Aerie ran across the map, leading the Extra-planar invasion party campaign against the Trolls. The elementals got wiped by the Elder Earth Elemental, but the Aerial Servant killed it.
So much XP for three summoning and one illusions spell!
For the first Druid, we had Cernd spam Spike Growth and Icestorm. That did the job, except for a Wizard that survived that because she was rather far from it, but Cernd's werewolf form and a Cone of Cold from Aerie finished the job.
For the next encounter I had Aerie spam Grease and Web, as well as Silence 15' Radius. The result? Five dead Druids, Cernd not being among them. Another job well done.
The Myconids, ah, Myconids. I sent in Minsc without having cast Chaotic Commands on him, so it was an ordeal to deal with that. In the end, we Fireball'd the Spore Colonies alongside with the Myconids to death, and found out that they're extremely susceptible to Holy Blight!
The three Shambling Mounds were dealt with more summons, as well as the second group of Trolls. Fire Elementals are very good, and Aerial Servants are EXTREMELY good. Unless an enemy priest casts the spell. In that case, I just panic. Not good. Not at all.
Thankfully, we had none of that, and the other Myconids soon were nothing as well (I forgot exactly what I used against them. I probably bombarded them with Holy Blight while Minsc run around with Chaotic Commands on this time). There's a group of Grizzly Bears in my install before the Druid trio at the entrance of the Grove, which I don't really remember from other times, but they were slaughtered by another group of Fire Elementals, except for the one that almost runs into our party and Jan killed with a Magic Missile.
For the Druid trio we buffed a lot, specially Yvralline, who isn't even supposed to participate in the fight. But, the real reason for this is: I need Chaotic Commands and Free Action on everyone, since these Druids might cast Call Woodland Beings like the first group we encountered did (they were fighting the three Trolls when that happened, so the summons didn't turn on us, luckily), we had to buff or otherwise the aTweaks Woodland Beings would kick our ass.
But, before buffing I had Cernd drop around 20 Fire Traps (SR-introduced level 2 (or 3?) Druid spell similar to Glyph of Warding but (rather obviously) deals fire damage instead), for what we rested like 3 times. After that extremely useless trapping was done, we buffed and instructed Cernd to start casting Icestorm over the enemies after he had summoned four (!) Earth Elementals (very, VERY lucky). The fight went very well, and Call Woodlang Beings was never cast, and Misnc and Yvralline played cards far from the rest of the party, but nevertheless, it was an almost perfect victory after a long and rather laggy fight (too many Icestorms and Earth Elementals dropping Earthquakes).
Our only loss was around 30 HP on Anomen from a Creeping Doom while he was isolated from the rest of the casters bombing the enemy with disablers. Only one Greater Earth Elemental survived, but all of us did, and the next target on our list is Faldorn.
Then, we had an Aerial Servant take down the three Rashakas. Yep. A single one took all of them down. They're very bad news I tell you all. So we picked up the loot and left for Trademeet, only to encounter a party of Trolls ready to take on us by the door of their Cove. We had to flee from them and burn two potions of Invisibility for Jan and Yvralline since Trolls are fast and I didn't want to risk it.
Back in Trademeet we only talked to the Genies, since we're going to "complete" the other quests when we've recruited Mazzy and Keldorn; our permanent party members. Next is Umar Hills. Out visit here was rather short lived, and not as productive as destructive, since we hunted down a certain couple of villagers' chicken and gave booze to teenagers. We also picked up the journal and note in the Cabin as well as the Wand of Fear, but that's the boring stuff.
In the outside of the Temple, Anomen blew up Shadows and Shadow Wolves right and left with his X-Ray vision, and I forgot that that wouldn't affect Wraiths and didn't check if that shadowy-thing hitting Jan was a Wraith, so Jan got level-drained (just one or two levels, nothing troubling). That aside, everything went perfectly well. Strip and kick Minsc, recruit Mazzy, protect Yvralline from Fire and play guess with Amaunator's head statue. We used another Aerial Servant to take care of the Greater Mummy & Co., and then another one for the other group of them. I'm not sure who I have to thank for the lack of Liches in this level, but I'm very thankful for it.
Anyway, I did something really dumb: tried summoning a Fire Elemental in Thraxxy's room. You all know how this story ends: dragon gets mad, we flee, and now I've got not a clue of what to due against him (her?). We could use Negative Plane Protection and try running past by him, but I'm not sure if he'll get removed after we kill the Shade Lord. Otherwise, I'll spend this weekend planning a strategy to safely beat the Shadow Dragon. Or, we could just retreat and come back later, but I'm not sure how Mazzy'll feel about that.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1071330#Comment_1071330
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1071334#Comment_1071334
SoD: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1071592#Comment_1071592
BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1071877#Comment_1071877
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1071887#Comment_1071887
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1072358#Comment_1072358
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1072373#Comment_1072373
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1073313#Comment_1073313
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1073411#Comment_1073411
Venduris' dudes' equipment sells for nearly 100k. I equip Venduris' Ioun Stone, as that will make it so I can never be hit when Mirror Image is up. The other effects of Luck are just gravy. Onto Suldanessellar, where the run with the Two Sorcerers ended due to boredom. Nizi goes down quickly.
The rest of the elven city is taken care of. Rillifane is summoned to deal with the goons and I use a dispelling arrow to take down Suneer's Globe, because it prevents his avatar from instantly killing him, amusingly. Back to Watcher's Keep. I create Perfect Iron Golem MK I and head down into level 3. It's not so bad being in anti-magic zones. Being true neutral allows me to work for Tahazzar instead of being immediately confronted by demons. I take out his devil nemesis easily.
The Jester card did nothing since I had SI: Evocation up. Rogue was prevented using the Staff of the Magi. Erinyes is just temporary. On level 4, Saladrex is next on the chopping block. He's only about as difficult as Firkraag and Phase Arrow helps finish him off.
The demilich is next. PfU spares me from the worst that it can do, but it still seems to be able to attack me with MMM despite having PfU applied on myself and on the demilich itself. Whatever. I can still kill a demilich. It tries Time Stop and then summons a planetar, but I equip the Staff before it gets it off, so I beat the planetar to death during the Time Stop.
My PfMW wears off shortly after this, so I cast it again and shoot down the planetar for 20k XP. The illithid enclave is a repeat of the one in the Temple Sewers. Onto level 5. The nameless green dragon goes down too.
The three main challenges are completed and it's time to fight the guardians of level 5. The demon amazons are first because one of them has the Gauntlets of Extra Specialization. I back out of the Hive Mother's field of vision and pick off Nalmissra who doesn't do anything. Y'tossi gates in a pair of Nabassus, so I take her out next and equip my new gauntlets to gain an extra attack via Improved Haste. Now I have 9 attacks per round.
After the golem splits into two normal mithril golems, I finish off the Hive Mother and then Xei Win Toh. I smack the drow priestess with the Staff of the Magi and kill her too. Next are the Rilmani. The Aurumach has permanent aura cleansing but makes the mistake of neglecting his defenses. The planetar and I almost finish him off when he gets Time Stop off the ground. He kills my planetar while it's active, though he doesn't seem to take an interest in me for some reason. In fact, all of the Rilmani completely ignore me. If memory serves, the Rilmani are a race of neutral exemplars, so since my alignment is True Neutral, maybe they can't target me at all.
Azamantes is last. Before taking him on, I build a Brain Golem. Azamantes has a ton of prebuffs, but I think it would be wiser to wait out his PfMW instead of attacking him. I expect a Time Stop from him very soon, so I equip the Staff. Then he casts Improved Alacrity.
The way to Demogorgon is open, but I'll save him for later. The anti-solar blood that he drops is only useful to me once I get the second half of the Adamantite Golem manual, which isn't until mid-ToB. I'm beginning to suffer burnout from this playthrough too. Sometimes I think it would be better if something hurried up and killed me so I could start playing with SCS v32.
Arrow Slinger - Arcane Archer 41/Mage 32
Previous update:
Soon after the last posted update for this challenge a 24th attempt ended when getting too close to the wolf pack at the temple while searching out dogs to wear down the sirines. My notes suggest I also had a 25th attempt, but don't record what happened to it - my guess would be an ignominious death
For whatever reason (possibly maturing with age, or possibly just approaching senility), I've been taking slightly fewer risks while playing in the last couple of months. If that continues to be the case in this run then there is a realistic chance of going a long way - the additional restriction to my usual ones is that Bash is not allowed to receive XP for enemies killed by any means other than his sword, but he can freely use other abilities if those don't result in deaths (which means the restriction is not too great if care is taken).
Progress has included the following:
- avoiding ambushes while travelling down to find Brage and get his sword.
- after learning CLW went back up to Beregost to kill Algernon for his cloak. Also got around to summoning a familiar.
- wore down the sirines in Beregost Temple against enemies and finished 3 of them off (the other dying to a critical from a hobgoblin).
- at the Lake area Bash's cat activated a gnoll to attack Drizzt. It proved to have an extremely resilient halberd and Bash had to retreat 6 times to reset the combat until the gnoll finally broke its weapon. Bash was then able to use an oil of speed to successfully target and finish off an unconscious Drizzt before he lost control - getting up to level 4/4 there.
- to boost reputation Bash helped out Hulrik (sleeping all the xvarts from out of sight to avoid going berserk there), Firebead and Joia. Some donations at the temple were then followed by further boosts from Ardrouine, Oublek, Bjornin, Mr Colquetle and Samuel.
- while at the FAI a charmed guard killed Tarnesh, Bash handed back Landrin's goods and also collected the pantaloons.
- to help with inventory management he decided to risk killing Neera. To try and avoid triggering her conversation he blinded her from range and used stinking cloud to disable her. He found it difficult to resist the cloud himself, but did eventually manage to stand up long enough to get a killing blow in.
- clearing the ankheg nest allowed him to gain more reputation from Farmer Brun.
- Melicamp failed to survive and Bash found Charleston Nib would no longer talk to him after being charmed. However, he was successful with charming Prism (allowing him to be moved away from where Greywolf would appear before starting the combat). That's pushed reputation to 18 and that should be maximised next time in the Cloud Peaks (Bash is now at level 5/5 giving him a realistic chance of surviving a potential ogre mage ambush).
I've updated my SCS installation to the latest v32.2 release for this run. One oddity about that I've noted is that groups of enemies all have the same scroll, i.e. if one kobold has a friends scroll then any other kobold in that group with a scroll would have friends as well.
Fighter 5 / Illusionist 5, 53 HPs, 149 kills