Now updated to v2.5 and SCS v32, I decided to give EET a try.
I must have spent 10 hours modding it since I had to carefully figure out which mods should go in what order, and to mess up early on would mean I'd have to restart the process completely if I messed up later. SCS is supposed to be installed AFTER EET_End, which seems really weird to me. I'm pretty sure my install order is messed up already. I installed aTweaks first because of this, with the exception of PnP Fiends, as SCS didn't like having PnP Fiends installed first. As a result, I have installed the PnP Fiends component after SCS, which seems pretty unsafe, so I'll see if BG2 causes my install to explode into errors.
Torque the Rebalanced Wizard Slayer is now calling for backup from his other fanatical friends:
-Joe the Inquisitor
-Hoppy the Magekiller thief
Hoppy is the CHARNAME of the run since Wizard Slayer and Inquisitor are already in the Hall. The Magekiller is from the Artisan's Kitpack and its abilities can be found here. The highlights of the kit are that backstabs cause Dispel Effects at their class level and they get several anti-magic spells to use as innates 1x/day at various levels, but they backstab as a Shadowdancer, cannot set traps, and only get 15 skill points/level.
The Witch-Finder General.
Joe's life's duty is to root out Communists.
The belt ogre is kited to death by Joe while Torque and Hoppy shoot it from range with bows. Marl is dealt with and Landrin's spiders are also kited. The ogrillons south of Beregost are killed and we return Mirrianne's letter, gaining Hoppy his first level.
We buy Composite Bows, both Short and Long, from Feldepost's and Taerom's. Using this, Joe kites Thalantyr's flesh golems to gain everyone a level.
The next level comes from killing the wolf pack at the Beregost Temple. Careful kiting needed to be done in order to avoid getting tagged by the vampiric wolves. Already I'm starting to notice how much worse the pathfinding is in v2.5 and I hate it. v2.3's was smoother, too - not so rough and janky like v2.5's. There's no better words to describe it.
Now that we've got some HP on our bones, we take on Tarnesh to test our mage killing abilities. Joe dispels Tarnesh's Shield/Mirror Image but gets put to sleep. Without buffs, Tarnesh is easy prey for Torque's spell failure buildup.
We go down to Nashkel and get the Healing Touch bhaalpower so we have a way to heal from resting. Everyone's next level is from ankheg hunting.
With our reputation at 13, we can kill Dushai without letting Joe fall as a paladin. We also buy the Darkveil while we're there, which will let Hoppy kill baslisks at no risk to himself while slightly improving his stealth skill, which I haven't invested in at all. Basilisk Country is up next. Mutamin puts up a good fight and is quite slippery, fleeing from Torque and Hoppy in between spell castings. He's also more willing to use direct-damage spells which he targets at Hoppy. Joe puts an end to him while Korax takes care of his basilisk pets.
We leave Kirian's party alone. With just three of us, we're not strong enough to take them all on yet. Instead we go sirene hunting since we can't kill or pickpocket Algernon for his cloak. Sirenes are annoying because Joe's saves are just one point away from being able to completely ignore their on-hit Feeblemind on a save vs. death, so they target Torque and Hoppy with their Dire Charms.
Near Sil's cave, we run into a pair of Nereids. These definitely weren't here before. aTweaks must have added them here, which is weird because installing aTweaks on BG1EE didn't add them here before. They summon Water Weirds which are highly resistant to most damage, but are slowed by cold damage, as Torque discovers. However, they have an Engulf ability and a drown attack, which kills Torque.
We gather up his stuff and flee the area to get him raised. We return with revenge in our minds and kite the Water Weirds more carefully, as they are quite aware their Engulf ability won't work on Joe. I can't believe things as powerful as Nereids are only worth 975 XP. Sil and her sirenes are also killed and so are the flesh golems inside. Joe consumes the CON tome.
More wilderness areas are cleared, with Torque leveling up from the Kozah digsite quest.
We try Shoal next. As usual, we sacrifice Eldoth to her but he remains strangely unaffected, but we drop him from the party anyway. Shoal is also enhanced by aTweaks and summons a Water Weird. Torque tries to run away from her but gets caught by her Drowning Kiss.
We raise Torque again and come back, getting Shoal to surrender, which also unsummons her Water Weird. Torque gets a couple of early hits on Droth before he goes hostile. Joe erases his Mirror Image with True Sight and the ogre is defeated. Shoal is also killed for causing us so much trouble, giving Joe a level.
At this point, I decide I want Drizzt's stuff because Torque is still equipped with just splint mail and a large shield and we can't afford Taerom's full plate. I wait for ages for the gnolls to finally kill Drizzt. Twinkle is also good enough to cancel out Joe's non-proficiency THAC0 penalty and THAC0 bonus from warhammer specialization, so he now uses it as his main weapon since Bassilus is still way too strong for us to beat.
We kill the nearby half-ogres and report back to Bjornin. Hoppy is so close to a level that he just needs to pick a couple of locks to get it.
In the valley of the tombs, Narcillicus is slaughtered with Shatter Magic from Torque. This ability allows him, for one round, to remove a single combat protection per successful hit while nullifying his own magic resistance temporarily. Narcillicus is afflicted with Wizard Slayer spell failure, ensuring his demise.
We take on Kirian's party for the Golden Girdle. We somehow scrape by thanks to Dispel Magic. I'm beginning to notice that mages are much more fond of direct-damage spells than usual.
With all three AC belts assembled, we take them to Thalantyr with additional ingredients to make an awesome belt from the Thalantyr Item Upgrade mod, which I've never used before. We also upgrade the Dagger of Venom. Although its new slow ability decreases the usefulness of its poison, I think I prefer it this way so that mages can't escape on foot and Slow also decreases their spellcasting speed significantly. The extra attack is just gravy and not very useful to Hoppy right now.
The wilderness is almost completely finished. I always ignore the red wizards as the Ring of Energy is not worth it. Bringing back Samuel to the Temple of Wisdom gains Torque a level.
Time for the Nashkel Mines. We blaze right through it with no trouble and get to Mulahey. We fail to interrupt Mulahey's Hold Person and Torque fails his save, being held for 1 turn. The skeletons and kobolds pay him no mind and focus on Hoppy and Joe. Many of them are charred using a Potion of Explosions but there are still a lot left over. Mulahey keels over from a poison tick from the Dagger of Venom +3.
The bandit camp is up next. I'm also really enjoying the classic movies from BG1, brought back by EET.
Hoppy - Magekiller 7
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 7
Joe - Inquisitor 6
@Flashburn: I'm surprised you don't deem the Ring of Energy to be worth it. It might not be as necessary in your current run on account of your party being nothing but anti-mage characters, but the Ring of Energy is a level 0 effect that goes right past both MGOI and Mirror Image and deals 4d6 damage over 2 rounds with no saving throw. It's a fabulous mage killer and can even deal respectable damage to groups of enemies. Unlike the One Gift Lost, it ignores fire resistance, and it's also cheaper and deals more damage on average to critters with decent saving throws.
It's also the safest way of tackling Love in Durlag's Tower, since it goes through Love's Globe of Invulnerability. A hasted character with immunity to charm and slow can take down Love just by kiting it with the Ring of Energy.
Together with Alora we cleared the first level underground of Durlag's Tower. Only Love is left. We left the wine in a barrel and will come back for it when our party is up to finishing the task. We went to Ulgoth's Beard where Thorin joined us. We now need an arcane magic user, but all those that we have met so far have been evil and I don't trust evil mages, or anyone evil actually.
I have met a level 2 sorceress called Valerie, but would prefer someone with more experience. I will just have to be patient.
Images from Durlag's to follow next week. RL has got in the way once more.
I have just come across a rather big-headed gnome who is both a mage and an Abjurist of Mystra. For some reason he thinks that he belongs with our party and I certainly have no objection. I gave him a host of scrolls that I have acquired in my travels as I have no use for them myself. With the equipment that I have given him, he's quite a useful addition to our party.
We get Raiken to take us to the bandit camp. Once inside the tent, Torque poisons Venkt with an arrow of biting, shutting him down. Unfortunately, I underestimate how much damage Britik can do in melee and thought Torque could scrape by until the next hit to use a healing potion, which gets him killed.
Joe's AC is already rock-bottom thanks to his ankheg plate mail, Girdle of Bravery, and Twinkle. Hoppy has to hide with an invisibility potion until Joe is finished mopping up.
Once Ender Sai's chest is looted, we head straight for the Friendly Arm to get Torque raised yet again. Taurgosz and his bandits will have to be killed later. Onto the Cloakwood, Joe levels up from the Centeol's spider nest.
Using the gold from taking a wyvern head back to Kelddath, we forge the Bow of the Snow Storm +2. Now Torque can do elemental damage through stoneskins. I had to tweak the bow's .ITM file a little so that I could perform ammo toggling like the Shortbow of Gesen and the Firetooth crossbow.
Time to fight Drasus' party. I am rudely awakened to the fact that the Monster Summoning series of spells has been severely buffed and returned to BG1 style. Wow! Joe is boxed in by ogres and gnolls summoned by Rezdan. Rezdan falls quickly to Torque's Shatter Magic.
Kysus has to be killed the old-fashioned way since Joe's Dispel Magic didn't work on him. Torque's elemental damage helps me keep track of how many times he's been hit by spell failure.
Drasus is next. Hoppy immediately equips his boots. When Drasus falls, Rezdan's monsters are unsummoned so it's just Genthore.
Torque can't use invisibility potions, so we have to fight our way through the mines. It's a slog that lasts upward of 30 minutes, probably half of which was spent fighting off Davaeorn's reinforcements. Joe was getting critically low on health, so I had him drink two potions of fire resistance while Hoppy used a Potion of Firebreath to scorch the mob. This was followed by a Potion of Explosions. Joe healed quite a bit from the Firebreath potion, but was still critically injured at the end of the huge fight.
Dave amazingly fell to a critical backstab from Hoppy. I had originally planned on having him backstab Dave and escaping, letting Torque run in and shoot him and use a Potion of Magic Blocking if needed.
Now flush with cash, we head back to Thalantyr's to create the Sword of Rage from Brage's cursed sword. The enrage ability is identical to the Berserker's, which should prove useful for Joe in all kinds of situations.
Hoppy levels up from Gorpel Hind's basilisk. Again we go back to Thalantyr's to make more stuff, upgrading Hoppy's and Joe's bracers and Joe's helmet.
Torque gains a level from Scar's jobs.
We have a hair-raisingly close call when fighting Ramazith. His 2x Horror Minor Sequencer got Torque and Joe, leaving only Hoppy in control thanks to his class-based saves vs. spell being really low. The warriors panic for a whole turn, which lets Ramazith summon shadows and heavily damage Hoppy. I decide to just hide with an invis potion until the panic wears off, then Ramazith is easy prey. I also found it curious that the stairs down from the top of the tower couldn't be used...
The fight with the Iron Throne starts off well enough. Torque bombs the group with a couple of arrows of detonation until the fighters close in on him, forcing him to swap to melee. Joe dispels the group's buffs and runs in while Hasted and Enraged. Torque uses a potion of magic resistance, which gives him 100% MR when combined with his innate MR and Balduran's Cloak's MR. It seems one of the Shennara twins has been renamed.
Aasim and Diyab are down, so now it's just the fighters and the thieves. They start piling the damage on to Joe, who is reduced to critical health. I was going to have him run away and drink an extra-healing potion, but his rage expired and knocked him unconscious. Zhalimar Cloudwulfe finishes him off.
Down to Torque and Hoppy, we make the stragglers follow us near the stairs and then go down them, coming back from the other side and shooting them with arrows of detonation.
We raise Joe for the first time and then pick up his stuff and the Throne's loot. The ogre magi ambush is foiled by True Sight, Dispel Magic, and a potion of magic resistance. Joe managed to dispel that one invisible ogre mage that never comes out of hiding, too.
The catacombs are a breeze. Hoppy levels up from the ghast gang. The fight with Prat's group is nothing to write home about. Durlag's Tower is next.
Hoppy - Magekiller 10
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 8
Joe - Inquisitor 8
@Flashburn I like your idea for a party. I have decided to have a "I hate undead party" for my next run. Doing this will of course mean that the party is not as balanced as it could be. I think that you might discover that in your run through, but it will make it better from a Role Playing perspective.
Jiwan's party meanwhile defeated Mulahey with some difficulty. That was my own fault. I cast a spell that causes a cloud of cold and then summoned weasels. The weasels were hurt by the cloud and turned on me. Meanwhile Mulahey held both Alora and Thorin. It therefore turned into a long battle which only ended when the weasel spell expired. By that time Thorin was badly hurt. However 8 hours of sleep sorted thaat out.
We went to pick up Xan and discovered that he had become a bard. That was a mistake in the installation. It looks like another installation is needed. I will however persist with the current game. I am using party members that are usually ignored by me. It will make a change to use them for a while, and if I do want another mage, Indira and Dynaheir are available.
I bumped into Skeezer Lumpkin. I asked him to join the party and discovered that he is nowhere near the character that I remember. He is completely nerfed and I am not sure whether or not to keep him.
@Flashburn I like your idea for a party. I have decided to have a "I hate undead party" for my next run. Doing this will of course mean that the party is not as balanced as it could be. I think that you might discover that in your run through, but it will make it better from a Role Playing perspective.
If this I Hate Undead party is using my mod, be aware that an IWD campaign will be a breeze (except for a dungeon or two) and a BGEE campaign won't let most of the kits shine their abilities.
@Raduziel I could see that ahead of time. However, I do have DSoSC installed and those kits should shine there, perhaps in Bonehill to some extent also.
The fight against the Warders is easier than usual because I didn't install Improved Durlag's Tower on SCS because I don't like how the statues rush you down immediately, giving you only a second to react just after having switched areas.
Hoppy levels up again from a Ghoul Lord on level 3. The chess battle is beaten the old fashioned way. Torque levels up from Grael on level 4.
I always seem to overestimate the Demon Knight. The fight against him was pretty easy. Maybe his powers were changed because of aTweaks or something.
I'm skipping the Ice Island and Balduran's Isle. Maybe I'll come back to them later in BG2 or something. For now, I have Thalantyr combine two Rings of Protection +2 with Rings of Free Action, then go beat the Wolf of Ulcaster.
Time for the coronation. Krystin is killed easily thanks to Joe's Dispel Magic and then a dispelling backstab from Hoppy, followed by spell failure from Torque. Slythe can't touch Joe's ToB-level AC.
We bring Ithtyl to the coronation with Algernon's Cloak, which Hoppy pickpocketed thanks to a potion of master thievery. Now Liia can defend herself extremely well and she can cast 8th level spells! Horrid Wilting destroys the doppelganger mage. The rest are quickly slaughtered.
I bring the Undercity party except Rahvin into Sarevok's temple using the Nymph Cloak. Now the priest can summon an Aerial Bastard! Torque knows firsthand how strong these damn things are, despite only having 1 attack per round. Sarevok is lured into the southeast corner and then tricked into staying there by Hoppy, who uses an invisibility potion to escape. Diarmid goes first.
Angelo is overwhelmed by the sheer number of attacks directed at him and Hoppy dispels both of his Mirror Image spells with Detect Illusions.
That means Semaj and Tazok are chilling out where Hoppy left Sarevok. Joe uses a scroll of PfE 10' on everyone. Semaj's invisibility was revealed by an earlier casting of Joe's True Sight and everyone piles onto him. His stoneskins are rapidly extinguished. He goes invisible again without casting a spell but Hoppy reveals him and backstabs him into chunky salsa.
Tazok is next and falls quickly to concentrated attacks. Joe levels up from him.
Only Sarevok is left and despite Joe's -20something AC vs. slashing, Sarevok can still hit him quite consistently. He has to back off for a while and heal, so Shaldrissa tanks Sarevok using PfMW.
Sarevok is also overwhelmed with sheer numbers with the Aerial Servant getting the final hit on him. You may notice Haseo's very strange attack roll; I have the Artisan's Kitpack installed that reworks the Kensai (which Haseo is), so I thought I'd give Ki Focus a try since it causes the Kensai to never miss an attack for two rounds...but Haseo missed every single one. I thought that was weird so I made a test Kensai to try Ki Focus myself and it worked correctly. Strange.
BG1 complete!
Hoppy - Magekiller 11
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 9
Joe - Inquisitor 9
Most likely I set the To Hit modifier too high and when it adds to an existing bonus it's overflowing back to a negative value. I'll tone it down with the next update.
Killed camp attackers by zapping them with fireballs and won a challenge by popping insects on her holly backside
we decided to clear the camp out and almost lost the party to an otherwise easy battle
took out the mage with a 3x skull trap attack but forgot to recharge the mind blocks so had another close battle, my Ranger got chucked but we won the boss fight and got away with the murder of Skie
I'm parking Puk again until BG3 but will start another run
We make Porios surrender and then Hoppy travels through the rest of the dungeon solo using a scroll of PfU. With stealth, he bypasses Korlasz's advance guard and disarms the arrow of dispelling trap. He casts Breach on Korlasz and a single arrow of detonation is enough to make her surrender. Everything in the tomb hands over its XP except the undead in the hidden entrance with the purple torch.
The Coast Way is nondescript. Hoppy uses more scrolls of PfU and Oils of Speed to clear out the Coldhearth dungeon alone by virtue of dual-wielding with the Dagger of Venom +3 and the Short Sword of Backstabbing for 4 attacks/round. Coldhearth is shut down with the Secret Revealed. Seed is killed at the bridge fight so there is no risk of Insect Plague. Hoppy levels up upon reaching the Troll Claw Woods.
Fighting trolls is much more pleasant with SCS's rebalanced troll regeneration. Hell, they're so easy it feels like I'm fighting their incarnations from NWN which don't need fire or acid to be killed. I think we're strong enough to take on Bassilus in case he successfully summons an Aerial Servant. We go back to the Red Canyons and kill him, thankfully interrupting his summoning. Now Joe finally has a +2 warhammer.
Back to the Forest of Wyrms, I get too complacent with Torque again and he falls victim to having webbing spat at him. This is the price I pay for laziness; I know I could've swapped to Spider's Bane to prevent it but I chose not to.
Torque is brought back with a scroll of Raise Dead and he levels up from the bugbears outside of the green dragon's cave. I'm putting the infinite-range Guard ability to use with Torque now to keep him out of the way.
The dragon is killed by some throwing daggers I had been saving. Her sister Ziatar is also killed, with the mages being exterminated first by Joe and Torque.
Torque waits outside the door while Joe and Hoppy kill the Neothelid using potions of clarity. It uses its poison breath on them as a last resort just before it dies.
Darskhelin and co. are killed with arrows of detonation from Torque, who is protected with a scroll of Chaotic Commands. Time for the siege of Bridgefort. The mages are decimated by Dispel Magic from Joe and arrow of detonation from Torque. The crusader army is swiftly defeated.
The bridge mage is taken out by Dispel Magic from Joe followed by a poisonous dispelling interrupt from Hoppy. Poor bastards never stood a chance.
Joe levels up from reaching the Coalition Camp. We buy the Boots of Stealth from Waizhab and return to High Hedge to make some skill-increasing speed boots. Zhurlong's boots won't work for this recipe.
In the ambush with the Shadowy Figure, Hoppy backstabs him and then uses a Potion of Firebreath on him before he can react. Thieves rely on high Dexterity for AC, which backstabbing ignores, and thieves have awful saves vs. breath, which makes this an excellent strategy.
In Dead Man's Pass, we encounter the mimic. Despite being nowhere near the mimic and separated by a wall, the mimic still held Torque with its glue. Astral Phase Spiders teleport over to devour him.
I've had just about enough of Torque being held and killed by spiders like this. Hoppy and Joe drink Oils of Speed and come to his rescue. Joe beats down the spiders while Hoppy casts Cure Affliction on Torque to stave off the poison. But the spiders just aren't satisfied if Torque isn't poisoned, so they keep hitting him and then turn their attention to their attackers. We barely manage to take them out fast enough to save Torque with another casting of Cure Affliction.
Onto the Underground River. Vidyadhar is soundly defeated thanks to Hoppy's Breach.
Torque levels up from the undead horde inside Kanaglym.
Joe and Hoppy bomb Kherriun with Potions of Explosions, but its not enough to shatter the ghost jar. Halatathlaer comes storming in and her dragon fear aura scares Torque. Jeez...
The mages are subjected to Joe's Dispel Magic which softens them up for him to bash their skulls in. The ghost jar shatters and the dragon joins our side. She eliminates the mages on the left side while we deal with Kherriun's minions. Victorious, it's time to infiltrate Dragonspear's basement to poison their food and water. But Bhelben is especially alert and catches Hoppy sneaking in despite being under stealth. What should've gone smoothly turns into an all-out assault from the crusaders. Hoppy drinks an Oil of Speed to speed up the poisoning process and release Daeros. Joe and Torque are stuck battling crusaders until Hoppy gets Hephernaan to surrender the lift.
Using an invisibility potion, Hoppy dispels Hephernaan's illusions so he can cast Breach on him. Noob mages attempt to reveal him with Detect Invisibility but his Cloak of Non-Detection +1 protects him. Hephernaan is backstabbed and surrenders. With some fancy footwork navigating through the sea of crusaders, Hoppy returns to the group and they all escape down the lift.
Time for the siege of the camp. Arrows of Detonation do all the heavy lifting.
Time for the siege of Dragonspear. Moar arrows of detonation clear the battlefield, although I suffer the disappearing portrait bug and have to reload from before traveling to Dragonspear after winning the camp siege. Hoppy sneaks by the orc battalion and sics the trolls on the crusaders!
Ashatiel then challenges Hoppy to a 1v1. His THAC0 is acceptable enough and he gained the ability to cast Globe of Invulnerability recently, so Ashatiel does not try any offensive spells. Buffing with DuHM helps him put an end to the crusade.
Down to hell. Joe levels up from some devils shortly after arriving in Avernus. The devils are very easy to kill and very profitable XP-wise.
Belhifet boss fight. I was going to have Caelar help us, but SCS v32 changes joinable NPCs similar to the Level One NPCs mod. They start at level 0 and you can choose their proficencies from the very beginning. I leveled up Caelar to 15 but she apparently had enough XP to keep going beyond that. Maybe it was because of our combined XP or something. I kept leveling her up, wondering when it would end, but I was able to give her every fighter HLA until I decided that I should probably just restart this battle and either have Belhifet kill her off immediately or fight her instead.
So I had her become a blackguard. Joe and Hoppy start the fight with Oils of Speed while Torque uses a potion of magic resistance to gain over 100% MR. Joe is using the Sundermaul +3. We should all be fine since we can save at -6 vs. spell, and Torque will just shrug it off. Hoppy lands a backstab on Belhifet.
I decide that it would be better to kill off Big B's goons first, lest we get drowned in a sea of devils. Caelar is killed in one hit by Torque due to all level 0 joinable NPCs starting with 10 HP...which I guess includes Blackguard Caelar. How anticlimactic.
Joe is hanging in there as a tank but needs to heal often. Soon all the low-ranking devils are killed and it's only Belhifet. Hoppy runs to a corner, goes into stealth and hits Belhifet with a critical backstab!
Joe and Torque keep up the pressure with Sundermaul +3 and Void Arrows. Hoppy stealths again and lands the final hit on Belhifet with another critical backstab! Torque levels up from his death.
Meet Tabby Backguard
something about her says Fighter-Mage-Thief to me so I rolled and got 80s... WOW!
after nicking a few scrolls and Hals Longsword we headed off to try our luck
Beamdog install, no mods and insane... I intend to try Imeon as a dual to Cleric so she gets all the Wisdom books and I'll have to edit a few game files for story but no special items yet
Portraits = https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2636954
I give permission to use them as you like but suggest saving them as bmp instead of png for best results
Dreen the gnomish thief - update 3
Traveling with:
Sarah - elven bounty hunter
April - dwarven fighter/thief
Well the run is still going - somehow. We've completed most of the major quests, but still need to work on a number of minor quests. The umber hulks in D'Arnise Keep were a disaster. We pulled more than we intended to - the hulks slaughtered the party - there was one left (and the rest of the party is dead), and Dreen ran for his life. He tried to hide, but the hulk was too fast - so out of desperation, I put up the valhalla horn berserker and that moment the hulk managed to confuse Dreen!
The berserker attacks the hulk and somehow manages to kill the hulk and Dreen was near death - then the berserker attacked Dreen! Somehow, Dreen avoided the attacks and the berserker finally stopped attacking - Dreen lives!
But then he needed to gather all the equipment and put them in the statues to be held, and also tried to keep a few things that could be sold, as that needed to be done in order to have money to raise his team-mates. We returned, gathered our things, laid a ton of traps for Torgal and his buddies and success after all.
This is probably a practice that is generally frowned upon, but I stashed my equipment in a chest at dragonspear castle before leaving for BG2. I've never played EET before now, so I want to see how BG2 plays with a party fresh out of SoD with all their gear intact. Plus, having my stuff will give me the freedom to do more difficult quests earlier on instead of the same old Circus -> Coronet -> Coronet sewers -> slavers -> Mae'var -> Harper Hold -> wherever else route.
To that end, we fetch our stuff from Dragonspear castle and return to Amn to sell off excess loot which gains us more than 100k gold. We buy luxury items from the Adventure Mart: Balduran's Plate, Vhailor's Helm, Balduran's Shield, Fortress Shield +3, PfM and PfU scrolls. We're set to go wherever we want now. The wilderness awaits.
In the North Forest, Hoppy backstabs the high-level mage there who survives with 1 HP left, so Hoppy finishes him with a Firebreath potion. With him out of the way, the others are a much easier fight.
We get the Mana Bow +4 after fighting through the mist-type enemies of the Forest of Tethyr. We return to Athkatla and go Mae'var's questline just so I can get the stronghold stuff out of the way first. Joe levels up from telling Renal about Mae'var consulting with the Night Knives.
Beforehand, I used Algernon's Cloak on Mae'var to exhaust his spell list and buff Torque with Improved Haste. Hoppy backstabs the traitor after Joe talked to him while charmed, which triggered the fight. Torque levels up from returning to Bloodscalp after the deed was done.
Hoppy needs just a bit more XP for another level, so we do the circus for an easy XP windfall.
While we're there, we kill the Pebblecrusher party and manage to kill Brendan before he escapes. From their loot, we have enough money to buy a magic license (20k) and pay Gaelan (30k). Now we only have a few thousand gold. With Joe wearing the Amulet of Power, we should be able to take on the more dangerous undead, so we start going lich hunting.
The elemental lich is first and he definitely lives up to his name now. After firing his prebuffs, he casts Time Stop and Improved Alacrity, then nukes Joe with Comet and Dragon's Breath, plus a few more elemental damage spells. Joe's saves are quite safe into the negatives and he has some fire resistance, so the damage is reduced by a lot. The lich forgets to refresh PfMW at the end of his Time Stop, so Torque gets several hits on him, causing spell failure. The lich's next Time Stop is successful but he is prevented from casting several further spells because of Torque.
Stymied, the lich tries to waddle away from Joe and activates a 3x Cone of Cold sequencer, heavily damaging Joe. But Hoppy takes advantage of the lich's vulnerability and kills it with a critical hit. It was going to be a backstab but the lich turned away at the last second.
The city gates lich is next. Joe and Torque enter alone. They withstand the lich's Time Stop, Dragon Breath, Comet, Death Fog, Cloudkill, and 3x Remove Magic sequencer. The lich tries summoning a Cornugon but it is slain before it can even come out of its gate, as devils are definitely no match for us anymore. It then summons a Bone Knight, which I've never seen before, but that thing dies quickly too. The lich follows as its PfMW runs out.
At this time, I decide to go back to the BG1 areas to get the Ring of Energy. Can't hurt to have it and I'm pretty sure the Red Wizards guarding can only cast up to 3rd level spells, which we are guaranteed to save against. Joe levels up from dealing with Corsone and Osamadi of all things.
We also eliminate the entire bandit camp to pay them back for killing Torque a long time ago. The Ring of Energy is also acquired but it seems the Red Wizards can cast up to 4th level spells as one of them prebuffed with Stoneskin and another tried to cast Polymorph Other on Hoppy, whose save vs. poly was thankfully at least 1. Torque levels up from some spiders nearby as we might as well get Farhington's scroll while we're here.
I think we can handle the first couple floors of Watcher's Keep. Hoppy levels up from giving the lich priest his slippers.
The end-fight for level 1 is tough. Joe has to constantly guzzle potions to stay afloat. Torque and Hoppy just can't do damage fast enough to make this encounter quick. Hoppy's backstabs have reduced effectiveness because of the statues' 50% DR. But we're still triumphant in the end.
On the next level, Torque levels up again from luring the greater fire elementals into the poisoned ice room. Hoppy levels up from setting the Chromatic Demon free.
Damn, Chromatic Demon, you sure have gotten stronger since I recruited you! Now he's immune to all physical damage and must be defeated with elemental damage only! Torque constantly swaps arrows to help negate Chromatic Demon's regeneration. The only thing Joe and Hoppy can do is use Firebreath potions on his ice form. Even the Ring of Energy has no effect! On one occasion, CD teleports directly into Torque circle, trapping him. I ain't having that, patch 2.5! I ctrl+J him out of there next to CD. CD's -5 THAC0 also lets him hit us many times. Finally, mercifully, Torque puts his Air form down with acid arrows.
I'm glad I've bought every single extra-healing potion I've seen for sale. Joe is guzzling them like it's going out of style. We're not ready for level 3 yet, so I go to do the Umar Hills. A vampire ambush gains Joe a level.
At the Temple Ruins, we thankfully aren't high enough level to get lich spawns yet; instead its a Greater Mummy with some skeleton friends and a bone golem. This is pretty easy. The fight with Thaxll'ssillya shows us that we're not ready to take on dragons that are tougher than him. Thaxll constantly uses his breath weapon, draining Hoppy of levels many times, which he cures with restoration scrolls. Hoppy basically has to stay out of Thaxll's visual range or get targeted. Torque is staying far away by Guarding Joe.
We get the dragon down to about half health when he turns invisible and flees. Hoppy had just used the Ring of Energy on him immediately before this, which let us track where the dragon was going. Torque didn't stop shooting even though Thaxll was invisible... New exploit?
After getting Breached at the very start of the fight by Hoppy, Thaxll has only been able to use Greater Malison once and nothing else thanks to Torque. It's basically impossible to get a backstab on Thaxll normally because he will turn to face the nearest enemy, so Hoppy has to wait until he's stuck in his dragon breath animation against Joe to try it. Hoppy finishes off the dragon with a failstab critical, even though Thaxll is immune to backstabs anyway.
(Failstabs are what we Team Fortress 2 players like to call backstabs [which are instant kills] that should've connected but didn't for whatever reason, which get reduced to normal stabs which deal piddly damage.)
I explicitly did not install the Improved Shade Lord component of SCS because Shadow Magic gives him Shadow Weave spells instead. The Shade Lord still did not use Shadow Weave spells just like my previous install. I guess it needs to be installed after SCS for it to take effect, because it sure doesn't work when installed before SCS. Whatever the Shade Lord was casting, it was a normal spell and he had basically no prebuffs.
Hoppy levels up from the Shade Lord's defeat while Torque levels up from turning in the quest.
The Planar Prison is next. Hoppy takes out Gaius in the sewers which makes the rest of the party a joke. The nearby Rakshasa is shut down by Torque.
We free Haer'Dalis and kill the yuan-ti guarding the planar gem. Next update spells the end of this run.
Hoppy - Magekiller 19
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 16
Joe - Inquisitor 14
Planar Prison. Torque gets a hit on the yuan-ti mage while its neutral, hindering its casting ability somewhat. True Sight reveals the thief, who Torque guns down since the mage cast PfMW. Hoppy breaches the mage so Torque finishes him too. Joe takes cast of the archers and the guy in Melodic Chain. Hoppy gibs the yuan-ti priest with a backstab.
We make it to the fight with the Master of Thralls, a nabassu. aTweaks fiends seems to be working correctly because he gates in 3 cambions like I've seen him do before. Those are also killed by revealing them with True Sight. Now for the Warden. Hoppy summons Improved Kitthix and has it devour a yuan-ti mage. Torque Guards Joe, killing off adds. Hoppy tries Breach on the Warden but Spell Shield negates it. Joe is blinded with PW: Blind and beaten up badly enough for a PW: Stun from the Warden to take. But I cure his stun by trading Hoppy's Ring of Free Action +2 with Joe's!
Hoppy tries a second breach and commands Improved Kitthix to attack the warden instead of the mages. There he goes!
With him dropping Adjatha the Drinker, we can forge Water's Talon +4. The other scimitars required to forge it were gathered from BG1 and SoD, with Vidyadhar dropping Water's Edge +3, which is normally found in the Underdark of BG2. Hoppy is now extremely deadly, dual-wielding Water's Talon +4 with the Rogue Rebalanced Short Sword of Backstabbing. Opponents will be backstabbed for big numbers, dispelled, and automatically poisoned! Watch out, spellcasters!
Onto the Windspear Hills. If Hoppy can poison Firkraag at least once, the battle should go faster. He levels up from killing the Radiant Hearts knights.
Water's Talon gets put to work against a Greater Mithril Golem. Torque uses the Daystar longsword to nuke the huge pack of undead further in.
Samia's ambush is unsuccessful. Torque disables Kaol and Hoppy finishes him off. Legdoril is utterly shut down by a poisonous dispelling backstab from Hoppy one round later.
Joe is combo'd for high damage by a Greater Mithril Golem when it attacks with its fists and then stomps on him, resulting in his death. Fortunately we already picked up Mallon's Shifting Heart in the upper left side of this dungeon, so we escape through the lower left door and use it to teleport us back to the Temple District to get Joe rezzed. When we return, the golems are gone.
Joe levels up from freeing Windspear's daughter.
This is probably a very bad idea, but we're going to fight Firkraag now. Torque stays very far away at the stairs, ready to run through the area transition if we need to flee. Joe gets torn to shreds by Firkraag and has to use several gulps from Durlag's Goblet to survive. Hoppy summons Improved Kitthix but it gets nuked by a fire breath attack. Luckily, Hoppy has landed a successful hit on Firkraag, making him take 2 damage every half second.
Hoppy takes a couple of claw attacks from Firkraag and retreats to the stairs. Joe keeps hanging on for dear life, chugging from his Estus Flask, err, Goblet while the poison works its magic. The dragon is dead!
Next is the Alhoon so that Joe can use something one-handed that actually packs a punch. The initial fight with the mage and cleric, plus the assorted fighters, thieves, and umber hulks is frustrating because the casters summon ogres and an Aerial Servant. Joe is STILL getting hit quite often despite his -16 AC and has to take another sip from the goblet. Torque levels up from the second room.
Unfortunately for me, the Alhoon is more powerful than his v31 version. He blasts Joe with a Comet and summons a Fallen Planetar! We do not have the DPS to put down a planetar, though we are not at risk for vorpal strikes. With Joe reaching low HP, a Mind Flayer finishes him off using Ballistic Attack for high damage.
Welp, we're boned. Torque tries to remove the Alhoon's PfMW by using Shatter Magic with a normal bow and arrows, but it's ineffective. Once I realize this, I try making an escape from the Alhoon but Hoppy is low on health. I have to decide to either keep running (and risk dying from Ballistic Attack like Joe did) or healing with a potion (and staying in place just for a few frames longer and risk death by stat drain). I decide to heal and hope his Fast Legs boots keep him away from the hasted Alhoon. But the Alhoon is still faster than Hoppy. His legs were not fast enough.
Hoppy - Magekiller 21 (RIP)
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 18
Joe - Inquisitor 16 (RIP)
Final Thoughts:
I retried this battle after losing and Protection from Magic scrolls were not completely effective against the Alhoon for some reason. While it dispelled all of his buffs, he could still cast anti-weapon spells like PfMW and Improved Mantle. Fortunately he decided to stay in his room while we killed off his planetar and then him.
Then I played through the Trials of the Luremaster expansion to gauge its difficulty and loot, and it wasn't until I had finished all of it that I realized that Joe and Torque hadn't gotten their extra 0.5 attacks from levels 7 and 13! They've basically been operating at 75% - 50% of their offensive power for most of the run!! What the actual SHIT!?
I have a sneaking suspicion one of the kit mods I installed is responsible for this injustice, but I can't begin to guess which one it could be. It could be a problem related to EET itself. I have no idea. But I'm going to pay much closer attention to it for my next run, which is all fighters.
I am new to the forums and wanted to introduce myself to this community as I share a common interest. I played Baldur's Gate oh so many years ago and at the beginning of last year decided to get the EEs of my beloved games and try them once more. Needless to say since I'm posting here, I got hooked again
I discovered these threads about no reload runs, firstly by watching Davaeorn (twitch username, not the one who nuked my party to oblivion when I started playing all those years ago) do SCS insane no reload runs, and since that wasn't enough I searched for more and found Blackraven's posts (started reading about Thani, the Wizard Slayer) in a different thread which I loved and eventually led me here to you all.
I am very happy to see that there is a community for this kind of thing and love to read your stories of going through the trials and tribulations of Baldur's Gate. I plan on reading a lot of these in my spare time and was also considering contributing, if it is allowed, even though I'm not even close to being a great player. If it is, I have one question regarding this, as I was considering recording my sessions and probably uploading them to youtube. Since all I've seen so far on these threads are screen shots, I wanted to know if you guys also accept youtube links.
Sorry for the long post, and keep the great tales coming
1) anyone can post their no-reload Baldur's Gate runs in this thread
2) While people usually post screenshots, we also do the occasional video. In fact the previous page has two videos in posts, here's one of the videos.
The session opened with a search for an antidote. Lothander provided a worthless vial, but a rather more useful pair of boots.
Marek did manage to get a confusion spell off, but Trapper saved and made him pay with a backstab.
There was a moment of concern in Ramazith's Tower after killing the mustard jellies. Trapper accidentally ventured upstairs without being stealthed and hastily retreated - dragging 5 ghasts down with him. Fortunately Crest was still enraged from the battle with the jellies and didn't have to worry about being held for the few rounds required to finish the ghasts off.
Further encounters in the City all went smoothly on the way to the Iron Throne. Drubb used sanctuary to get past the 5th floor party and summon some skeletons. A silence then shut down 3 of the 4 casters, meaning the battle would have been pretty easy even without the bonus from Trapper's special traps.
Back at Candlekeep we had the luxury of a thief to disarm the traps guarding the tomes. Prat shrugged off a silence, but didn't last long in melee.
After skeletons tanked the basilisks they also blocked Diarmid's attempts to talk while he was cut down.
Returning to the City, Slythe was another to resist silence, but his friend Krystin did not and failed to make an appearance in the short time necessary to finish off Slythe.
At the palace, there was nothing fancier tried than a bit of buffing and summoned skeletons. The dopplegangers managed to take out Liia, but Belt survived comfortably.
Several of the Undercity party fought among themselves after a skeleton aggravated them - while Shaldrissa and Gorf stood there wondering what all the fuss was about (they soon found out of course).
For the final battle Trapper successfully activated just Sarevok and Semaj. The latter didn't last long after teleporting into traps and skeletons, while an arrow of dispelling nerfed Sarevok sufficiently he didn't even manage to deal with the skeletons before falling.
We had enough time left in the session to start on BG2 - clearing the first level of the dungeon without any problems.
Berserker - L8, 98 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 39 kills (+215 in BG1)
Bounty Hunter - L10, 71 HPs, 2 kills (+70 in BG1), 1 death
Fighter/cleric - L6/6, 69 HPs, 14 kills (+185 in BG1), 0 deaths
@Grond0 + others, how long do your multiplayer sessions go on for? It seems in the last one you completed a significant chunk of the first game in just one go; I start to feel pretty slow when I consider it takes me one of my one-hour sessions just to complete 1-2 minor goals or battles.
@Grond0 + others, how long do your multiplayer sessions go on for? It seems in the last one you completed a significant chunk of the first game in just one go; I start to feel pretty slow when I consider it takes me one of my one-hour sessions just to complete 1-2 minor goals or battles.
Our trio sessions are two hours (minus any late arrivals or technical issues) and we've done enough to focus on reasonably rapid progress plus these three are well suited to motoring on. The duo's are more random in duration but Grond0 and I tend to go for speed with more risk taking.
Another random roll sees a couple of monks turn up. Their first outing sees a straightforward approach through Shoal the nereid and down towards Nashkel to argue over who will carry the unwanted ankheg armour. Nebal has avoided a couple of fights, citing a lack of throwing daggers.
The second session sees us take more flak. Basilisks prove to be no problem and despite Mutamin shrugging off stunning blows he cannot overcome the physical damage. Footloose has succumbed to panic and races around the map with some critters in pursuit. He fails to run into Kirian and her gang so we can face them next.
Korax the ghoul helps out against this lot and paralyzes Kirian, but the gang are a bit too strong for us really. Peter starts to cast a spell and an intention for Nebal to retreat sees Korax try to retreat instead. By the time I return Korax to attack and Nebal to retreat, the ghoul's time is up and Nebal is not out of sight when the spell reaches him. He takes a rigid thinking.
Footloose decides to step in and distract the enemies but Nebal returns to fight. Things don't look good, and Footloose dies in short order. Nebal fights on rigidly but Kirian recovers and starts her dialogue. With Footloose dead and Nebal in a bad state, the dialogue option to have Kirian's gang leave becomes critically important. They wander off, still hostile, and Nebal chases.
He chases straight into two critters and kills one before recovering. A close call, and a temple visit is in order.
We pick up Samuel and Nebal checks if Footloose feels up to some spiders. Yes. Maybe.
After returning Samuel to the Friendly Arm Inn we hunt down Caldo and Krumm before picking on a dire wolf - which promptly reminds Nebal to be very wary of critical hits - 1hp is enough to survive though.
Footloose pulls off a set of stunning blows, two each from two abilities, and we maximise the opportunity to defeat a polar bear with no injury to ourselves.
These two feel like they live fast die young so let's see how long they can stave off the inevitable.
@Grond0 + others, how long do your multiplayer sessions go on for? It seems in the last one you completed a significant chunk of the first game in just one go; I start to feel pretty slow when I consider it takes me one of my one-hour sessions just to complete 1-2 minor goals or battles.
As @Gate70 mentioned, being a party of 3 rather than 6 significantly speeds up progress, as when we get close to the level cap, we just focus on upgrades and the main quest. Also, the Trio tend do a lot of the high experience quests/enemies and as such make rapid progress there as well. Then there's the other detail that all of us have been playing BG for probably around 20 years, so we tend to just motor on. Can't tell you how many times I've tried to give items to Gate70 or @Grond0 , but they have already moved onto the next quest target. They are like manics or have ADHD, they just never hold still.
Started a new run with a Sword Dancer, War Hulk, and an Artisan's Kitpack Kensai. They are tearing the games in half so far and working out much better than the We Hate Magic group. I am surprised by just how quickly they can kill things because I think this is the fastest I've ever gotten to BG2 before, and the Sword Dancer just killed Kangaxx like it was nothing.
Here's a run I've been wanting to do for a little while. 3 dwarves think they have the best solution to melee combat.
Melee Combat Specialists
Slashy Mc'Blenderson the Sword Dancer: Hit the enemy lots of times really fast and stack the hitstun using lingering damage ticks! Abuse on-hit effects!
Drugar the Artisan's Kitpack Kensai: Constant critical hits! If they're immune to crits, use Kai and never miss for increased damage!
Krieg III the War Hulk: BATHE IN THE MEAT CHUNKS WITH OVERWHELMING DAMAGE ONCE PER ROUND NOTHING MAKES ME STRONGER THAN A SUCKING CHEST WOUND
Since our reputation doesn't matter, we kill Algernon for his cloak and charm Silke and weaken her using Landrin's spiders. All of them are killed by us, getting us quite close to a level.
Tenya's bowl is returned for our first easy level. The ankheg behind her house is also killed.
From selling the Ring of Wizardry, we have enough money to buy Krieg the Quarterstaff +3 from Ulgoth's Beard and we also kill Dushai for her ring. Now to outfit Drugar with magic scimitars. I leave the game running for 10 minutes or so while I make dinner.
The nearby half-ogres provide level 3. Drugar learns Defensive Fighting.
DEFENSIVE FIGHTING: The Kensai sets their base AC to a value equal of 6 - (level/2, rounded up). This ability lasts indefinitely until deactivated. However, while Defensive Fighting is active, the Kensai loses his Ki Critical modifier, becomes unable to critically strike at all, and is unable to use Ki Strike or Ki Focus.
Kelddath's sirenes are lured away from the temple and killed with Algernon's Cloak. The wolf pack to the east is also slaughtered which gains everyone level 4. Slashy gains +1 lingering damage tick over time.
Tarnesh is next, who is blocking us from buying Buckley's Buckler. Slashy rushes him down while Drugar guides Tarnesh's Sleep spell away from the party. He saves against it and returns to the brawl. Tarnesh's next Sleep spell strikes true on all three dwarves, but not before he dies first.
Krieg wakes up early because of his Unstoppable ability, which lets him shake off certain disablers after a round upon a failed save vs. death at -15. The ability is supposed to let him shake it off on a *successful* save at -15, but its bugged so it occurs the other way around. This means when he is high level, decked out in save-reducing gear, and/or highly enraged, this ability will not occur.
Basilisk Country. Korax goes around and paralyzes all the basilisks so Slashy can help finish them off. Against Mutamin and his pets, Slashy gets put to sleep so Korax paralyzes the mage and then his pets. This lets Krieg and Drugar come in and clean up. Drugar gains Ki Strike from leveling up to 5.
KI STRIKE: May be used at-will. The Kensai's Ki Critical range modifier is doubled for their next successful attack within one round and deals maximum damage. The successful strike causes a cumulative fatigue penalty to the Kensai which decreases as the Kensai levels up. Ki Strike will fail if the Kensai is too fatigued.
Kirian's group is quickly eliminated. Drugar and Slashy cut through her Mirror Images and take her down. The priest is interrupted with a flurry of attacks, leaving the warriors sitting ducks.
We visit Durlag's Tower since we're in the neighborhood. Kirinhale is tricked into thinking we'll give her a new plaything, but is slashed to pieces instead for 11k XP, thanks to aTweaks. Everyone levels up from the nearby ghasts.
We go into the first floor of the dungeon since there are tons of delicious consumables there that will aid us in our journey. Krieg tanks the traps. We run into a skeleton warrior who has wandered away from his room, who crits Drugar for almost half his max health.
We kill the skeleton and take Drugar back to be raised. Now he's going to be behind on XP. I think we can take on all three of the Greater Doppelgangers hanging out in the library. It was a risky venture as they kept hitting Krieg, lowering his AC and making him liable to go berserk, but we still won in the end.
We sell the stuff we scavenged from the dungeon and get some new gear: the Deep Red ioun stone for Drugar to negate crits; the Girdle of Bravery by crafting all three AC belts into one from Thalantyr, and the Chelsey Crusher halberd from Ingot. I think we can overwhelm Shoal before she does anything too drastic with her Nereid powers, but she charms Drugar and drowns him. Dammit.
We get her to surrender and then kill Droth with just Slashy and Krieg, then raise Drugar and return to finish the job.
Bassilus is the next major target. I know we can interrupt his casting of Aerial Servant if Drugar and Slashy somehow fail by using Krieg's huge damage to kill him outright.
Thalentyr crafts the Sword of Rage +3 for us so we can go sirene hunting, which gets Slashy and Krieg level 7. Drugar follows shortly after. I use EEKeeper to give them all their extra half attack since leveling to 7 on all of them did nothing.
From the Nashkel Carnival, we buy the Shield Amulet and an Amulet of Protection +1, which are both needed to create the Improved Shield Amulet. Now Drugar has pretty decent AC. We also buy the One Gift Lost while we're there.
Time for the Nashkel Mines. It's probably the fastest I've ever gotten through the mines. Mulahey is killed by a vicious crit from Krieg. His kobold and skeleton lackeys are all fried with a Potion of Explosions.
Nimbul's Mirror Images and Stoneskin are taken out in less than a round, which makes it the easiest Nimbul kill I've ever had. Bandit camp. Not much to say but I bought the Horn of Kazgaroth for Drugar to give him extra defense. I hardly ever use it.
The entire camp is put to the torch. Taurgosz goes first, then we fake a retreat to get all the bandits to follow us, then scorch them all by taking turns using the One Gift Lost. They put up a good fight, though.
Cloakwood Mines. Slashy uses the two Arrows of Detonation found in level 1 of Durlag's Tower against Drasus' group before they can react. This softens them up. Drugar will use the Boots of Speed.
Slashy cuts through Kysus' Stoneskins and Mirror Images, causing the mage to attempt to cast another Stoneskin in response, but Krieg puts an end to him with a quick halberd thrust. Slashy uses a Potion of Magic Blocking to negate a Chaos from Rezdan. For the following round, Rezdan is cut to pieces, helpless to do anything but wait for his aura to recover.
We use three invisibility potions to avoid fighting in the mines. When we reach Dave's room, we wait several minutes for all of his reinforcements to arrive. They all gather in a big group around Dave. Once they're finished filing in, we kill all 4 Battle Horrors and Dave's guard, then incinerate all the bandits by taking turns with the One Gift Lost again.
Dave is evicerated by Slashy and Drugar. He tries to go invisible but is interrupted, spelling his doom. That was... really easy.
Slashy Mc'Blenderson - Sword Dancer 7
Drugar - Kensai 7
Krieg III - War Hulk 7
Baldur's Gate. Slashy and Krieg level up from killing the ogre mage and his crawler pets. Slashy gains another damage tick over time. Drugar levels up from bringing a golem tome to Arkion.
Lothander has his boots stolen. Now everyone can move at high speed.
Ramazith is quickly killed in his tower before he can teleport upstairs.
Iron Throne fight. Slashy goes upstairs while invisible and bombs the group with 4 arrows of detonation. Drugar and Krieg move in and slaughter the surviving spellcasters and the fighters, leaving the thief for last since he kept going invisible.
We crack open the tomb holding the STR tome using the Violet Potion. After getting through the catacombs, we take the Cloak of Protection +2 and Balduran's Cloak to Thalantyr so he can combine them.
My documentation is getting sloppy here because I'm going through the game so fast and tactics others than "group attack" aren't employed much at this point because the three dwarves just kill everything so fast. Ithtyl is brought to the coronation again but is largely unnecessary.
Krieg is now doing +50% damage.
Charming everyone except Rahvin in the Undercity party in We Hate Magic's run was a mistake on my part since I used C:Eval("ActionOverride(Player1,Rest())") to speed up the process with Algernon's Cloak since I hadn't yet noticed the Nymph Cloak actually has only 1 use/day now instead of 40 charges. So this time I only take Shaldrissa, Wudei, and Gorf with me to the fight using both cloaks. But it's still the same tactics as Arrow Slinger and We Hate Magic: summon an Aerial Servant and skeleton, lure Sarevok into the southeast corner, go invisible, and fight everyone else.
SoD. It's just a group of 3 fighters auto-attacking everything and winning really fast. Not much to say, unfortunately. Everyone gets level 10 from the spider nest in the Forest of Wyrms. Slashy learns Blade Barrier and Drugar gains Perfect Defense.
BLADE BARRIER: For 1 turn, the Sword Dancer gains a Blade Barrier that damages everyone in a small radius of the character for 2 slashing damage every 3 seconds. The Sword Dancer also gains +3 AC vs. melee weapons.
PERFECT DEFENSE: When Defensive Fighting is active, the Kensai becomes immune to backstabs. Additionally, for every enemy within 15 ft. of the Kensai, the character gains a cumulative +1 bonus to AC vs. all weapons.
Feeling cocky, we take on the Shadow Aspect. Its Mislead clones are quickly destroyed and it summons help in the form of shadows and Shadowed Souls. But even those can't save it from our blitzkrieg.
The siege of Bridgefort is over quickly as well. Slashy softens up the crowd with arrows of detonation while Drugar and Krieg go in to finish off the weakened crusaders. I think killing the Barghest is the only thing that is needed to win the siege because there were still many crusaders on the battlefield when the game decided it was time for the bridge assault.
Underground River. We failed to kill the Shadowy Figure in his ambush so he escaped. Vidyadhar is killed before he can put up PfMW. Then we just go around killing stuff like we do best and gain level 11.
Slashy goes in alone to poison the crusader food and water. Belben apparently has invisibility detection now. Hephernaan walks straight into Krieg and Drugar who are waiting by the lift. Crusaders soon swarm their position. Slashy makes it back to the group, so I see how many of the crusaders we can take out before we have to retreat. But Krieg suffers his first fatal rage spiral. I stuff his equipment into the Bag of Holding and escape down the lift to have him raised.
Coalition Camp siege. Arrows of Detonation take out the trolls but I conserve them since trolls just need to suffer any source of fire or acid to turn off their regeneration and MINHP1 item. More detonation arrows are fired at the mages and fighters. The named goons are taken out with melee attacks, and quickly. Ashatiel loses in a 1v1 duel with Slashy.
Hell is also easy, but damn those Hamatulas. Everyone levels up during the fight with Belhifet when he gates in his 3rd set of reinforcements. Slashy gains a 4th damage tick over time.
Slashy hits Belhifet with the Fractal Blade +3 which dispels his Improved Invisibility. He dies from a lingering damage tick, embarassingly.
Slashy Mc'Blenderson - Sword Dancer 12
Drugar - Kensai 12
Krieg III - War Hulk 12
Dreen the gnomish thief and his party of thieves - Update 4
Traveling with:
April - dwarven fightr/thief
Sarah - elven bounty hunter
Party has made considerable progress since last Update. In fact, only planning on doing Windspear hills before heading off off to Brynnlaw. Progress to date:
1) Sir Sarles quest complete. Our only immunity (until we get UAI) is the IMoD for April, which she would use in the off-hand. So we fobbed off the fake alloy to Sarles, who duly huffed off. The Temple accepted the alloy though. Then Neb was found - he was a bit easier than usual, as by this time Dreen has 100% in illusion detection. We then proceeded with the main quest so we can get the Mace of Disruption so we can forge the IMoD.
2) We have been in a number of vampire ambushes, and they are so hard for this group. We get level drained all the time, but have survived them nevertheless.
3) Right about here ran into a random ambush. But our special snares were a bit less useful than normal as now they are just a single target maze. So the thieves assisted April, but it was nearly the end as an odd bounce from a lightning bolt dropped Dreen to 10% health - he ran for his life, but fortunately the party by this point killed the mage and Dreen survived - whew!
4) We badly need extra heal potions, but can't seem to find any, so bought loads of the basic blue potion, but they are highly ineffective in combat, they are more a after-combat heal.
5) Mook was duly assassinated, but we avenged her.
6) Some thieves and their Contact had to be dealt with. We have literally like 12 snares we can lay if we want (though of course not all at once), so naturally was a simple fight.
7) We decided to work on a side quest while we thinking about it, the Fallen Paladin quest. This turned out to be much harder than usual as the maze trap appeared to maze a neutral. This caused one of the paladins to attack. Sarah. So the party tried to run, but Sarah was stuck in the entangle. Dreen hid and ran close and tossed Sarah the invisibility ring (from the lich in the Gates district) and managed to use it before she died. Close, almost 10% health. By this point, the neutral paladin came back and Dreen and April moved around the building and talked to Reynaud - the paladin stopped attacking. Close one. We of course got the cup and battled the paladins. Was a hard fight, party got battered and there was a lot of running, hiding, snares and backstabs, and potion gulping, but somehow we did manage to win.
8) Time to get the MoD. Yet more level drains, but we were able to get it and have Cromwell forge the IMoD. Finally April has some defense to level drain. Dreen will have to wait until he has UAI then he can use the AoP.
9) Because April's thief armor is magical, she doesn't use a ring with full plate. So I thought, if not using a ring, why not better armor? To this end, Balduran's plate looked great for her. But even with 20 rep and also 20 CHA, it still costs 22,000 gold! and without 20 CHA, costs 34,000!!!
So though was dangerous, we thought the Guarded compound was the answer to our gold issues. But was the many, many minions that spawn on 1st floor. We patiently spawned them (while hidden), and waited until the Glaberuzu killed all the basic minions. Then we gave lots of buffs to April and she attacked. She clearly needed help, but the thieves ranged attacks weren't helping much, so finally Dreen hid and backstabbed the demon to finish it off.
I was quite sure direct battle against the Guarded Compound party would be a quick death for us. So instead, Sarah and Dreen hid, and April used the invisibility ring, used thief armor, and detrapped a trap then we moved to far end of the room. We then laid 6 basic snares and Sarah tried to fireball (necklace of missiles, fully charged)/run. We could only do this once, and party had to run and hide. So Dreen and April stayed hidden, Dreen passed a haste potion to Sarah (since she has best hiding in shadows score) and she soloed all the enemies, using fireballs out of sight, and when enemies low health, backstabs to finish them off - success!
We were in fact able to afford Balduran's Plate for April.
10) Properly protected, April was now in shape to tank Bodhi's lair. In fact, she soloed most enemies. For the ambush lower level, Sarah helped with a Daystar Sunray.
11) Six basic snares were laid for Bodhi. She immediately conceded. Yay!
@semiticgod
Enemies trigger rage bonuses on the War Hulk well enough if there is a great number of them or if they're particularly strong, so the Sword Dancer doesn't really need to do that. But I bet that could actually be useful in certain situations.
The Kensai has an HLA that causes crits to reduce a creature's physical damage resistance by 5% for 4 rounds, so if I can get him to score a crit or two, I can have the Sword Dancer make the War Hulk lose control and stack the rage bonuses for inconceivable amounts of damage. This should work on creatures that have very high or 100% physical resistance but no MINHP1 item. The Chromatic Demon is the first thing that comes to mind Oops, scratch that, Chromatic Demon is immune to crits.
Comments
Now updated to v2.5 and SCS v32, I decided to give EET a try.
Torque the Rebalanced Wizard Slayer is now calling for backup from his other fanatical friends:
-Joe the Inquisitor
-Hoppy the Magekiller thief
Hoppy is the CHARNAME of the run since Wizard Slayer and Inquisitor are already in the Hall. The Magekiller is from the Artisan's Kitpack and its abilities can be found here. The highlights of the kit are that backstabs cause Dispel Effects at their class level and they get several anti-magic spells to use as innates 1x/day at various levels, but they backstab as a Shadowdancer, cannot set traps, and only get 15 skill points/level.
The Witch-Finder General.
Joe's life's duty is to root out Communists.
Now that we've got some HP on our bones, we take on Tarnesh to test our mage killing abilities. Joe dispels Tarnesh's Shield/Mirror Image but gets put to sleep. Without buffs, Tarnesh is easy prey for Torque's spell failure buildup.
With our reputation at 13, we can kill Dushai without letting Joe fall as a paladin. We also buy the Darkveil while we're there, which will let Hoppy kill baslisks at no risk to himself while slightly improving his stealth skill, which I haven't invested in at all. Basilisk Country is up next. Mutamin puts up a good fight and is quite slippery, fleeing from Torque and Hoppy in between spell castings. He's also more willing to use direct-damage spells which he targets at Hoppy. Joe puts an end to him while Korax takes care of his basilisk pets.
We leave Kirian's party alone. With just three of us, we're not strong enough to take them all on yet. Instead we go sirene hunting since we can't kill or pickpocket Algernon for his cloak. Sirenes are annoying because Joe's saves are just one point away from being able to completely ignore their on-hit Feeblemind on a save vs. death, so they target Torque and Hoppy with their Dire Charms.
Near Sil's cave, we run into a pair of Nereids. These definitely weren't here before. aTweaks must have added them here, which is weird because installing aTweaks on BG1EE didn't add them here before. They summon Water Weirds which are highly resistant to most damage, but are slowed by cold damage, as Torque discovers. However, they have an Engulf ability and a drown attack, which kills Torque.
More wilderness areas are cleared, with Torque leveling up from the Kozah digsite quest.
We try Shoal next. As usual, we sacrifice Eldoth to her but he remains strangely unaffected, but we drop him from the party anyway. Shoal is also enhanced by aTweaks and summons a Water Weird. Torque tries to run away from her but gets caught by her Drowning Kiss.
At this point, I decide I want Drizzt's stuff because Torque is still equipped with just splint mail and a large shield and we can't afford Taerom's full plate. I wait for ages for the gnolls to finally kill Drizzt. Twinkle is also good enough to cancel out Joe's non-proficiency THAC0 penalty and THAC0 bonus from warhammer specialization, so he now uses it as his main weapon since Bassilus is still way too strong for us to beat.
In the valley of the tombs, Narcillicus is slaughtered with Shatter Magic from Torque. This ability allows him, for one round, to remove a single combat protection per successful hit while nullifying his own magic resistance temporarily. Narcillicus is afflicted with Wizard Slayer spell failure, ensuring his demise.
With all three AC belts assembled, we take them to Thalantyr with additional ingredients to make an awesome belt from the Thalantyr Item Upgrade mod, which I've never used before. We also upgrade the Dagger of Venom. Although its new slow ability decreases the usefulness of its poison, I think I prefer it this way so that mages can't escape on foot and Slow also decreases their spellcasting speed significantly. The extra attack is just gravy and not very useful to Hoppy right now.
The wilderness is almost completely finished. I always ignore the red wizards as the Ring of Energy is not worth it. Bringing back Samuel to the Temple of Wisdom gains Torque a level.
Time for the Nashkel Mines. We blaze right through it with no trouble and get to Mulahey. We fail to interrupt Mulahey's Hold Person and Torque fails his save, being held for 1 turn. The skeletons and kobolds pay him no mind and focus on Hoppy and Joe. Many of them are charred using a Potion of Explosions but there are still a lot left over. Mulahey keels over from a poison tick from the Dagger of Venom +3.
The bandit camp is up next. I'm also really enjoying the classic movies from BG1, brought back by EET.
Hoppy - Magekiller 7
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 7
Joe - Inquisitor 6
It's also the safest way of tackling Love in Durlag's Tower, since it goes through Love's Globe of Invulnerability. A hasted character with immunity to charm and slow can take down Love just by kiting it with the Ring of Energy.
Together with Alora we cleared the first level underground of Durlag's Tower. Only Love is left. We left the wine in a barrel and will come back for it when our party is up to finishing the task. We went to Ulgoth's Beard where Thorin joined us. We now need an arcane magic user, but all those that we have met so far have been evil and I don't trust evil mages, or anyone evil actually.
I have met a level 2 sorceress called Valerie, but would prefer someone with more experience. I will just have to be patient.
Images from Durlag's to follow next week. RL has got in the way once more.
I have just come across a rather big-headed gnome who is both a mage and an Abjurist of Mystra. For some reason he thinks that he belongs with our party and I certainly have no objection. I gave him a host of scrolls that I have acquired in my travels as I have no use for them myself. With the equipment that I have given him, he's quite a useful addition to our party.
Previous updates:
We get Raiken to take us to the bandit camp. Once inside the tent, Torque poisons Venkt with an arrow of biting, shutting him down. Unfortunately, I underestimate how much damage Britik can do in melee and thought Torque could scrape by until the next hit to use a healing potion, which gets him killed.
Once Ender Sai's chest is looted, we head straight for the Friendly Arm to get Torque raised yet again. Taurgosz and his bandits will have to be killed later. Onto the Cloakwood, Joe levels up from the Centeol's spider nest.
Using the gold from taking a wyvern head back to Kelddath, we forge the Bow of the Snow Storm +2. Now Torque can do elemental damage through stoneskins. I had to tweak the bow's .ITM file a little so that I could perform ammo toggling like the Shortbow of Gesen and the Firetooth crossbow.
Time to fight Drasus' party. I am rudely awakened to the fact that the Monster Summoning series of spells has been severely buffed and returned to BG1 style. Wow! Joe is boxed in by ogres and gnolls summoned by Rezdan. Rezdan falls quickly to Torque's Shatter Magic.
Torque can't use invisibility potions, so we have to fight our way through the mines. It's a slog that lasts upward of 30 minutes, probably half of which was spent fighting off Davaeorn's reinforcements. Joe was getting critically low on health, so I had him drink two potions of fire resistance while Hoppy used a Potion of Firebreath to scorch the mob. This was followed by a Potion of Explosions. Joe healed quite a bit from the Firebreath potion, but was still critically injured at the end of the huge fight.
Now flush with cash, we head back to Thalantyr's to create the Sword of Rage from Brage's cursed sword. The enrage ability is identical to the Berserker's, which should prove useful for Joe in all kinds of situations.
Hoppy levels up from Gorpel Hind's basilisk. Again we go back to Thalantyr's to make more stuff, upgrading Hoppy's and Joe's bracers and Joe's helmet.
We have a hair-raisingly close call when fighting Ramazith. His 2x Horror Minor Sequencer got Torque and Joe, leaving only Hoppy in control thanks to his class-based saves vs. spell being really low. The warriors panic for a whole turn, which lets Ramazith summon shadows and heavily damage Hoppy. I decide to just hide with an invis potion until the panic wears off, then Ramazith is easy prey. I also found it curious that the stairs down from the top of the tower couldn't be used...
The fight with the Iron Throne starts off well enough. Torque bombs the group with a couple of arrows of detonation until the fighters close in on him, forcing him to swap to melee. Joe dispels the group's buffs and runs in while Hasted and Enraged. Torque uses a potion of magic resistance, which gives him 100% MR when combined with his innate MR and Balduran's Cloak's MR. It seems one of the Shennara twins has been renamed.
We raise Joe for the first time and then pick up his stuff and the Throne's loot. The ogre magi ambush is foiled by True Sight, Dispel Magic, and a potion of magic resistance. Joe managed to dispel that one invisible ogre mage that never comes out of hiding, too.
The catacombs are a breeze. Hoppy levels up from the ghast gang. The fight with Prat's group is nothing to write home about. Durlag's Tower is next.
Hoppy - Magekiller 10
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 8
Joe - Inquisitor 8
Jiwan's party meanwhile defeated Mulahey with some difficulty. That was my own fault. I cast a spell that causes a cloud of cold and then summoned weasels. The weasels were hurt by the cloud and turned on me. Meanwhile Mulahey held both Alora and Thorin. It therefore turned into a long battle which only ended when the weasel spell expired. By that time Thorin was badly hurt. However 8 hours of sleep sorted thaat out.
We went to pick up Xan and discovered that he had become a bard. That was a mistake in the installation. It looks like another installation is needed. I will however persist with the current game. I am using party members that are usually ignored by me. It will make a change to use them for a while, and if I do want another mage, Indira and Dynaheir are available.
I bumped into Skeezer Lumpkin. I asked him to join the party and discovered that he is nowhere near the character that I remember. He is completely nerfed and I am not sure whether or not to keep him.
If this I Hate Undead party is using my mod, be aware that an IWD campaign will be a breeze (except for a dungeon or two) and a BGEE campaign won't let most of the kits shine their abilities.
BG2EE is more balanced.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082682#Comment_1082682
The fight against the Warders is easier than usual because I didn't install Improved Durlag's Tower on SCS because I don't like how the statues rush you down immediately, giving you only a second to react just after having switched areas.
I'm skipping the Ice Island and Balduran's Isle. Maybe I'll come back to them later in BG2 or something. For now, I have Thalantyr combine two Rings of Protection +2 with Rings of Free Action, then go beat the Wolf of Ulcaster.
Time for the coronation. Krystin is killed easily thanks to Joe's Dispel Magic and then a dispelling backstab from Hoppy, followed by spell failure from Torque. Slythe can't touch Joe's ToB-level AC.
I bring the Undercity party except Rahvin into Sarevok's temple using the Nymph Cloak. Now the priest can summon an Aerial Bastard! Torque knows firsthand how strong these damn things are, despite only having 1 attack per round. Sarevok is lured into the southeast corner and then tricked into staying there by Hoppy, who uses an invisibility potion to escape. Diarmid goes first.
BG1 complete!
Hoppy - Magekiller 11
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 9
Joe - Inquisitor 9
Most likely I set the To Hit modifier too high and when it adds to an existing bonus it's overflowing back to a negative value. I'll tone it down with the next update.
Congratulations
Killed camp attackers by zapping them with fireballs and won a challenge by popping insects on her holly backside
we decided to clear the camp out and almost lost the party to an otherwise easy battle
took out the mage with a 3x skull trap attack but forgot to recharge the mind blocks so had another close battle, my Ranger got chucked but we won the boss fight and got away with the murder of Skie
I'm parking Puk again until BG3 but will start another run
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082682#Comment_1082682
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082878#Comment_1082878
We make Porios surrender and then Hoppy travels through the rest of the dungeon solo using a scroll of PfU. With stealth, he bypasses Korlasz's advance guard and disarms the arrow of dispelling trap. He casts Breach on Korlasz and a single arrow of detonation is enough to make her surrender. Everything in the tomb hands over its XP except the undead in the hidden entrance with the purple torch.
The Coast Way is nondescript. Hoppy uses more scrolls of PfU and Oils of Speed to clear out the Coldhearth dungeon alone by virtue of dual-wielding with the Dagger of Venom +3 and the Short Sword of Backstabbing for 4 attacks/round. Coldhearth is shut down with the Secret Revealed. Seed is killed at the bridge fight so there is no risk of Insect Plague. Hoppy levels up upon reaching the Troll Claw Woods.
Fighting trolls is much more pleasant with SCS's rebalanced troll regeneration. Hell, they're so easy it feels like I'm fighting their incarnations from NWN which don't need fire or acid to be killed. I think we're strong enough to take on Bassilus in case he successfully summons an Aerial Servant. We go back to the Red Canyons and kill him, thankfully interrupting his summoning. Now Joe finally has a +2 warhammer.
Back to the Forest of Wyrms, I get too complacent with Torque again and he falls victim to having webbing spat at him. This is the price I pay for laziness; I know I could've swapped to Spider's Bane to prevent it but I chose not to.
The dragon is killed by some throwing daggers I had been saving. Her sister Ziatar is also killed, with the mages being exterminated first by Joe and Torque.
Darskhelin and co. are killed with arrows of detonation from Torque, who is protected with a scroll of Chaotic Commands. Time for the siege of Bridgefort. The mages are decimated by Dispel Magic from Joe and arrow of detonation from Torque. The crusader army is swiftly defeated.
Joe levels up from reaching the Coalition Camp. We buy the Boots of Stealth from Waizhab and return to High Hedge to make some skill-increasing speed boots. Zhurlong's boots won't work for this recipe.
In the ambush with the Shadowy Figure, Hoppy backstabs him and then uses a Potion of Firebreath on him before he can react. Thieves rely on high Dexterity for AC, which backstabbing ignores, and thieves have awful saves vs. breath, which makes this an excellent strategy.
In Dead Man's Pass, we encounter the mimic. Despite being nowhere near the mimic and separated by a wall, the mimic still held Torque with its glue. Astral Phase Spiders teleport over to devour him.
Onto the Underground River. Vidyadhar is soundly defeated thanks to Hoppy's Breach.
The mages are subjected to Joe's Dispel Magic which softens them up for him to bash their skulls in. The ghost jar shatters and the dragon joins our side. She eliminates the mages on the left side while we deal with Kherriun's minions. Victorious, it's time to infiltrate Dragonspear's basement to poison their food and water. But Bhelben is especially alert and catches Hoppy sneaking in despite being under stealth. What should've gone smoothly turns into an all-out assault from the crusaders. Hoppy drinks an Oil of Speed to speed up the poisoning process and release Daeros. Joe and Torque are stuck battling crusaders until Hoppy gets Hephernaan to surrender the lift.
Time for the siege of the camp. Arrows of Detonation do all the heavy lifting.
Time for the siege of Dragonspear. Moar arrows of detonation clear the battlefield, although I suffer the disappearing portrait bug and have to reload from before traveling to Dragonspear after winning the camp siege. Hoppy sneaks by the orc battalion and sics the trolls on the crusaders!
Down to hell. Joe levels up from some devils shortly after arriving in Avernus. The devils are very easy to kill and very profitable XP-wise.
Belhifet boss fight. I was going to have Caelar help us, but SCS v32 changes joinable NPCs similar to the Level One NPCs mod. They start at level 0 and you can choose their proficencies from the very beginning. I leveled up Caelar to 15 but she apparently had enough XP to keep going beyond that. Maybe it was because of our combined XP or something. I kept leveling her up, wondering when it would end, but I was able to give her every fighter HLA until I decided that I should probably just restart this battle and either have Belhifet kill her off immediately or fight her instead.
So I had her become a blackguard. Joe and Hoppy start the fight with Oils of Speed while Torque uses a potion of magic resistance to gain over 100% MR. Joe is using the Sundermaul +3. We should all be fine since we can save at -6 vs. spell, and Torque will just shrug it off. Hoppy lands a backstab on Belhifet.
Hoppy - Magekiller 14
Torque - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 12
Joe - Inquisitor 11
something about her says Fighter-Mage-Thief to me so I rolled and got 80s... WOW!
after nicking a few scrolls and Hals Longsword we headed off to try our luck
Beamdog install, no mods and insane... I intend to try Imeon as a dual to Cleric so she gets all the Wisdom books and I'll have to edit a few game files for story but no special items yet
Portraits = https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2636954
I give permission to use them as you like but suggest saving them as bmp instead of png for best results
Traveling with:
Sarah - elven bounty hunter
April - dwarven fighter/thief
Well the run is still going - somehow. We've completed most of the major quests, but still need to work on a number of minor quests. The umber hulks in D'Arnise Keep were a disaster. We pulled more than we intended to - the hulks slaughtered the party - there was one left (and the rest of the party is dead), and Dreen ran for his life. He tried to hide, but the hulk was too fast - so out of desperation, I put up the valhalla horn berserker and that moment the hulk managed to confuse Dreen!
The berserker attacks the hulk and somehow manages to kill the hulk and Dreen was near death - then the berserker attacked Dreen! Somehow, Dreen avoided the attacks and the berserker finally stopped attacking - Dreen lives!
But then he needed to gather all the equipment and put them in the statues to be held, and also tried to keep a few things that could be sold, as that needed to be done in order to have money to raise his team-mates. We returned, gathered our things, laid a ton of traps for Torgal and his buddies and success after all.
Whew!
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082682#Comment_1082682
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082878#Comment_1082878
SoD: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082934#Comment_1082934
This is probably a practice that is generally frowned upon, but I stashed my equipment in a chest at dragonspear castle before leaving for BG2. I've never played EET before now, so I want to see how BG2 plays with a party fresh out of SoD with all their gear intact. Plus, having my stuff will give me the freedom to do more difficult quests earlier on instead of the same old Circus -> Coronet -> Coronet sewers -> slavers -> Mae'var -> Harper Hold -> wherever else route.
To that end, we fetch our stuff from Dragonspear castle and return to Amn to sell off excess loot which gains us more than 100k gold. We buy luxury items from the Adventure Mart: Balduran's Plate, Vhailor's Helm, Balduran's Shield, Fortress Shield +3, PfM and PfU scrolls. We're set to go wherever we want now. The wilderness awaits.
In the North Forest, Hoppy backstabs the high-level mage there who survives with 1 HP left, so Hoppy finishes him with a Firebreath potion. With him out of the way, the others are a much easier fight.
We get the Mana Bow +4 after fighting through the mist-type enemies of the Forest of Tethyr. We return to Athkatla and go Mae'var's questline just so I can get the stronghold stuff out of the way first. Joe levels up from telling Renal about Mae'var consulting with the Night Knives.
Hoppy needs just a bit more XP for another level, so we do the circus for an easy XP windfall.
While we're there, we kill the Pebblecrusher party and manage to kill Brendan before he escapes. From their loot, we have enough money to buy a magic license (20k) and pay Gaelan (30k). Now we only have a few thousand gold. With Joe wearing the Amulet of Power, we should be able to take on the more dangerous undead, so we start going lich hunting.
The elemental lich is first and he definitely lives up to his name now. After firing his prebuffs, he casts Time Stop and Improved Alacrity, then nukes Joe with Comet and Dragon's Breath, plus a few more elemental damage spells. Joe's saves are quite safe into the negatives and he has some fire resistance, so the damage is reduced by a lot. The lich forgets to refresh PfMW at the end of his Time Stop, so Torque gets several hits on him, causing spell failure. The lich's next Time Stop is successful but he is prevented from casting several further spells because of Torque.
The city gates lich is next. Joe and Torque enter alone. They withstand the lich's Time Stop, Dragon Breath, Comet, Death Fog, Cloudkill, and 3x Remove Magic sequencer. The lich tries summoning a Cornugon but it is slain before it can even come out of its gate, as devils are definitely no match for us anymore. It then summons a Bone Knight, which I've never seen before, but that thing dies quickly too. The lich follows as its PfMW runs out.
At this time, I decide to go back to the BG1 areas to get the Ring of Energy. Can't hurt to have it and I'm pretty sure the Red Wizards guarding can only cast up to 3rd level spells, which we are guaranteed to save against. Joe levels up from dealing with Corsone and Osamadi of all things.
I think we can handle the first couple floors of Watcher's Keep. Hoppy levels up from giving the lich priest his slippers.
On the next level, Torque levels up again from luring the greater fire elementals into the poisoned ice room. Hoppy levels up from setting the Chromatic Demon free.
I'm glad I've bought every single extra-healing potion I've seen for sale. Joe is guzzling them like it's going out of style. We're not ready for level 3 yet, so I go to do the Umar Hills. A vampire ambush gains Joe a level.
At the Temple Ruins, we thankfully aren't high enough level to get lich spawns yet; instead its a Greater Mummy with some skeleton friends and a bone golem. This is pretty easy. The fight with Thaxll'ssillya shows us that we're not ready to take on dragons that are tougher than him. Thaxll constantly uses his breath weapon, draining Hoppy of levels many times, which he cures with restoration scrolls. Hoppy basically has to stay out of Thaxll's visual range or get targeted. Torque is staying far away by Guarding Joe.
I explicitly did not install the Improved Shade Lord component of SCS because Shadow Magic gives him Shadow Weave spells instead. The Shade Lord still did not use Shadow Weave spells just like my previous install. I guess it needs to be installed after SCS for it to take effect, because it sure doesn't work when installed before SCS. Whatever the Shade Lord was casting, it was a normal spell and he had basically no prebuffs.
The Planar Prison is next. Hoppy takes out Gaius in the sewers which makes the rest of the party a joke. The nearby Rakshasa is shut down by Torque.
We free Haer'Dalis and kill the yuan-ti guarding the planar gem. Next update spells the end of this run.
Hoppy - Magekiller 19
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 16
Joe - Inquisitor 14
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082682#Comment_1082682
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082878#Comment_1082878
SoD: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082934#Comment_1082934
BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1083188#Comment_1083188
Planar Prison. Torque gets a hit on the yuan-ti mage while its neutral, hindering its casting ability somewhat. True Sight reveals the thief, who Torque guns down since the mage cast PfMW. Hoppy breaches the mage so Torque finishes him too. Joe takes cast of the archers and the guy in Melodic Chain. Hoppy gibs the yuan-ti priest with a backstab.
We make it to the fight with the Master of Thralls, a nabassu. aTweaks fiends seems to be working correctly because he gates in 3 cambions like I've seen him do before. Those are also killed by revealing them with True Sight. Now for the Warden. Hoppy summons Improved Kitthix and has it devour a yuan-ti mage. Torque Guards Joe, killing off adds. Hoppy tries Breach on the Warden but Spell Shield negates it. Joe is blinded with PW: Blind and beaten up badly enough for a PW: Stun from the Warden to take. But I cure his stun by trading Hoppy's Ring of Free Action +2 with Joe's!
With him dropping Adjatha the Drinker, we can forge Water's Talon +4. The other scimitars required to forge it were gathered from BG1 and SoD, with Vidyadhar dropping Water's Edge +3, which is normally found in the Underdark of BG2. Hoppy is now extremely deadly, dual-wielding Water's Talon +4 with the Rogue Rebalanced Short Sword of Backstabbing. Opponents will be backstabbed for big numbers, dispelled, and automatically poisoned! Watch out, spellcasters!
Onto the Windspear Hills. If Hoppy can poison Firkraag at least once, the battle should go faster. He levels up from killing the Radiant Hearts knights.
Joe is combo'd for high damage by a Greater Mithril Golem when it attacks with its fists and then stomps on him, resulting in his death. Fortunately we already picked up Mallon's Shifting Heart in the upper left side of this dungeon, so we escape through the lower left door and use it to teleport us back to the Temple District to get Joe rezzed. When we return, the golems are gone.
This is probably a very bad idea, but we're going to fight Firkraag now. Torque stays very far away at the stairs, ready to run through the area transition if we need to flee. Joe gets torn to shreds by Firkraag and has to use several gulps from Durlag's Goblet to survive. Hoppy summons Improved Kitthix but it gets nuked by a fire breath attack. Luckily, Hoppy has landed a successful hit on Firkraag, making him take 2 damage every half second.
Next is the Alhoon so that Joe can use something one-handed that actually packs a punch. The initial fight with the mage and cleric, plus the assorted fighters, thieves, and umber hulks is frustrating because the casters summon ogres and an Aerial Servant. Joe is STILL getting hit quite often despite his -16 AC and has to take another sip from the goblet. Torque levels up from the second room.
Hoppy - Magekiller 21 (RIP)
Torque II - Rebalanced Wizard Slayer 18
Joe - Inquisitor 16 (RIP)
Final Thoughts:
Then I played through the Trials of the Luremaster expansion to gauge its difficulty and loot, and it wasn't until I had finished all of it that I realized that Joe and Torque hadn't gotten their extra 0.5 attacks from levels 7 and 13! They've basically been operating at 75% - 50% of their offensive power for most of the run!! What the actual SHIT!?
I have a sneaking suspicion one of the kit mods I installed is responsible for this injustice, but I can't begin to guess which one it could be. It could be a problem related to EET itself. I have no idea. But I'm going to pay much closer attention to it for my next run, which is all fighters.
I am new to the forums and wanted to introduce myself to this community as I share a common interest. I played Baldur's Gate oh so many years ago and at the beginning of last year decided to get the EEs of my beloved games and try them once more. Needless to say since I'm posting here, I got hooked again
I discovered these threads about no reload runs, firstly by watching Davaeorn (twitch username, not the one who nuked my party to oblivion when I started playing all those years ago) do SCS insane no reload runs, and since that wasn't enough I searched for more and found Blackraven's posts (started reading about Thani, the Wizard Slayer) in a different thread which I loved and eventually led me here to you all.
I am very happy to see that there is a community for this kind of thing and love to read your stories of going through the trials and tribulations of Baldur's Gate. I plan on reading a lot of these in my spare time and was also considering contributing, if it is allowed, even though I'm not even close to being a great player. If it is, I have one question regarding this, as I was considering recording my sessions and probably uploading them to youtube. Since all I've seen so far on these threads are screen shots, I wanted to know if you guys also accept youtube links.
Sorry for the long post, and keep the great tales coming
1) anyone can post their no-reload Baldur's Gate runs in this thread
2) While people usually post screenshots, we also do the occasional video. In fact the previous page has two videos in posts, here's one of the videos.
my party ran past most the peons, only grabbing choice loot or to save bosses
Imoen has the Wisdom she needs to dual to cleric and stepped aside to go find training... the final insult is that a nameless peon killed Sarevok
Crest - dwarf berserker (Grond0)
Trapper - halfling bounty hunter (Corey_Russell)
Drubb - dwarf fighter/cleric (Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082132/#Comment_1082132
The session opened with a search for an antidote. Lothander provided a worthless vial, but a rather more useful pair of boots.
There was a moment of concern in Ramazith's Tower after killing the mustard jellies. Trapper accidentally ventured upstairs without being stealthed and hastily retreated - dragging 5 ghasts down with him. Fortunately Crest was still enraged from the battle with the jellies and didn't have to worry about being held for the few rounds required to finish the ghasts off.
Further encounters in the City all went smoothly on the way to the Iron Throne. Drubb used sanctuary to get past the 5th floor party and summon some skeletons. A silence then shut down 3 of the 4 casters, meaning the battle would have been pretty easy even without the bonus from Trapper's special traps.
Back at Candlekeep we had the luxury of a thief to disarm the traps guarding the tomes. Prat shrugged off a silence, but didn't last long in melee.
Returning to the City, Slythe was another to resist silence, but his friend Krystin did not and failed to make an appearance in the short time necessary to finish off Slythe.
At the palace, there was nothing fancier tried than a bit of buffing and summoned skeletons. The dopplegangers managed to take out Liia, but Belt survived comfortably.
Several of the Undercity party fought among themselves after a skeleton aggravated them - while Shaldrissa and Gorf stood there wondering what all the fuss was about (they soon found out of course).
For the final battle Trapper successfully activated just Sarevok and Semaj. The latter didn't last long after teleporting into traps and skeletons, while an arrow of dispelling nerfed Sarevok sufficiently he didn't even manage to deal with the skeletons before falling.
We had enough time left in the session to start on BG2 - clearing the first level of the dungeon without any problems.
Berserker - L8, 98 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 39 kills (+215 in BG1)
Bounty Hunter - L10, 71 HPs, 2 kills (+70 in BG1), 1 death
Fighter/cleric - L6/6, 69 HPs, 14 kills (+185 in BG1), 0 deaths
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 189 (1st update, 2 sessions, 188)
Nebal (male dark moon monk, Gate70); Footloose (male monk, Grond0)
Another random roll sees a couple of monks turn up. Their first outing sees a straightforward approach through Shoal the nereid and down towards Nashkel to argue over who will carry the unwanted ankheg armour. Nebal has avoided a couple of fights, citing a lack of throwing daggers.
The second session sees us take more flak. Basilisks prove to be no problem and despite Mutamin shrugging off stunning blows he cannot overcome the physical damage. Footloose has succumbed to panic and races around the map with some critters in pursuit. He fails to run into Kirian and her gang so we can face them next.
Footloose decides to step in and distract the enemies but Nebal returns to fight. Things don't look good, and Footloose dies in short order. Nebal fights on rigidly but Kirian recovers and starts her dialogue. With Footloose dead and Nebal in a bad state, the dialogue option to have Kirian's gang leave becomes critically important. They wander off, still hostile, and Nebal chases.
He chases straight into two critters and kills one before recovering. A close call, and a temple visit is in order.
As @Gate70 mentioned, being a party of 3 rather than 6 significantly speeds up progress, as when we get close to the level cap, we just focus on upgrades and the main quest. Also, the Trio tend do a lot of the high experience quests/enemies and as such make rapid progress there as well. Then there's the other detail that all of us have been playing BG for probably around 20 years, so we tend to just motor on. Can't tell you how many times I've tried to give items to Gate70 or @Grond0 , but they have already moved onto the next quest target. They are like manics or have ADHD, they just never hold still.
Melee Combat Specialists
Slashy Mc'Blenderson the Sword Dancer: Hit the enemy lots of times really fast and stack the hitstun using lingering damage ticks! Abuse on-hit effects!
Since our reputation doesn't matter, we kill Algernon for his cloak and charm Silke and weaken her using Landrin's spiders. All of them are killed by us, getting us quite close to a level.
From selling the Ring of Wizardry, we have enough money to buy Krieg the Quarterstaff +3 from Ulgoth's Beard and we also kill Dushai for her ring. Now to outfit Drugar with magic scimitars. I leave the game running for 10 minutes or so while I make dinner.
Kelddath's sirenes are lured away from the temple and killed with Algernon's Cloak. The wolf pack to the east is also slaughtered which gains everyone level 4. Slashy gains +1 lingering damage tick over time.
Tarnesh is next, who is blocking us from buying Buckley's Buckler. Slashy rushes him down while Drugar guides Tarnesh's Sleep spell away from the party. He saves against it and returns to the brawl. Tarnesh's next Sleep spell strikes true on all three dwarves, but not before he dies first.
Krieg wakes up early because of his Unstoppable ability, which lets him shake off certain disablers after a round upon a failed save vs. death at -15. The ability is supposed to let him shake it off on a *successful* save at -15, but its bugged so it occurs the other way around. This means when he is high level, decked out in save-reducing gear, and/or highly enraged, this ability will not occur.
Basilisk Country. Korax goes around and paralyzes all the basilisks so Slashy can help finish them off. Against Mutamin and his pets, Slashy gets put to sleep so Korax paralyzes the mage and then his pets. This lets Krieg and Drugar come in and clean up. Drugar gains Ki Strike from leveling up to 5.
We visit Durlag's Tower since we're in the neighborhood. Kirinhale is tricked into thinking we'll give her a new plaything, but is slashed to pieces instead for 11k XP, thanks to aTweaks. Everyone levels up from the nearby ghasts.
We sell the stuff we scavenged from the dungeon and get some new gear: the Deep Red ioun stone for Drugar to negate crits; the Girdle of Bravery by crafting all three AC belts into one from Thalantyr, and the Chelsey Crusher halberd from Ingot. I think we can overwhelm Shoal before she does anything too drastic with her Nereid powers, but she charms Drugar and drowns him. Dammit.
Bassilus is the next major target. I know we can interrupt his casting of Aerial Servant if Drugar and Slashy somehow fail by using Krieg's huge damage to kill him outright.
Thalentyr crafts the Sword of Rage +3 for us so we can go sirene hunting, which gets Slashy and Krieg level 7. Drugar follows shortly after. I use EEKeeper to give them all their extra half attack since leveling to 7 on all of them did nothing.
From the Nashkel Carnival, we buy the Shield Amulet and an Amulet of Protection +1, which are both needed to create the Improved Shield Amulet. Now Drugar has pretty decent AC. We also buy the One Gift Lost while we're there.
Time for the Nashkel Mines. It's probably the fastest I've ever gotten through the mines. Mulahey is killed by a vicious crit from Krieg. His kobold and skeleton lackeys are all fried with a Potion of Explosions.
Nimbul's Mirror Images and Stoneskin are taken out in less than a round, which makes it the easiest Nimbul kill I've ever had. Bandit camp. Not much to say but I bought the Horn of Kazgaroth for Drugar to give him extra defense. I hardly ever use it.
Cloakwood Mines. Slashy uses the two Arrows of Detonation found in level 1 of Durlag's Tower against Drasus' group before they can react. This softens them up. Drugar will use the Boots of Speed.
We use three invisibility potions to avoid fighting in the mines. When we reach Dave's room, we wait several minutes for all of his reinforcements to arrive. They all gather in a big group around Dave. Once they're finished filing in, we kill all 4 Battle Horrors and Dave's guard, then incinerate all the bandits by taking turns with the One Gift Lost again.
Slashy Mc'Blenderson - Sword Dancer 7
Drugar - Kensai 7
Krieg III - War Hulk 7
Baldur's Gate. Slashy and Krieg level up from killing the ogre mage and his crawler pets. Slashy gains another damage tick over time. Drugar levels up from bringing a golem tome to Arkion.
Lothander has his boots stolen. Now everyone can move at high speed.
Iron Throne fight. Slashy goes upstairs while invisible and bombs the group with 4 arrows of detonation. Drugar and Krieg move in and slaughter the surviving spellcasters and the fighters, leaving the thief for last since he kept going invisible.
We crack open the tomb holding the STR tome using the Violet Potion. After getting through the catacombs, we take the Cloak of Protection +2 and Balduran's Cloak to Thalantyr so he can combine them.
My documentation is getting sloppy here because I'm going through the game so fast and tactics others than "group attack" aren't employed much at this point because the three dwarves just kill everything so fast. Ithtyl is brought to the coronation again but is largely unnecessary.
Krieg is now doing +50% damage.
Charming everyone except Rahvin in the Undercity party in We Hate Magic's run was a mistake on my part since I used C:Eval("ActionOverride(Player1,Rest())") to speed up the process with Algernon's Cloak since I hadn't yet noticed the Nymph Cloak actually has only 1 use/day now instead of 40 charges. So this time I only take Shaldrissa, Wudei, and Gorf with me to the fight using both cloaks. But it's still the same tactics as Arrow Slinger and We Hate Magic: summon an Aerial Servant and skeleton, lure Sarevok into the southeast corner, go invisible, and fight everyone else.
SoD. It's just a group of 3 fighters auto-attacking everything and winning really fast. Not much to say, unfortunately. Everyone gets level 10 from the spider nest in the Forest of Wyrms. Slashy learns Blade Barrier and Drugar gains Perfect Defense.
PERFECT DEFENSE: When Defensive Fighting is active, the Kensai becomes immune to backstabs. Additionally, for every enemy within 15 ft. of the Kensai, the character gains a cumulative +1 bonus to AC vs. all weapons.
The siege of Bridgefort is over quickly as well. Slashy softens up the crowd with arrows of detonation while Drugar and Krieg go in to finish off the weakened crusaders. I think killing the Barghest is the only thing that is needed to win the siege because there were still many crusaders on the battlefield when the game decided it was time for the bridge assault.
Underground River. We failed to kill the Shadowy Figure in his ambush so he escaped. Vidyadhar is killed before he can put up PfMW. Then we just go around killing stuff like we do best and gain level 11.
Slashy goes in alone to poison the crusader food and water. Belben apparently has invisibility detection now. Hephernaan walks straight into Krieg and Drugar who are waiting by the lift. Crusaders soon swarm their position. Slashy makes it back to the group, so I see how many of the crusaders we can take out before we have to retreat. But Krieg suffers his first fatal rage spiral. I stuff his equipment into the Bag of Holding and escape down the lift to have him raised.
Coalition Camp siege. Arrows of Detonation take out the trolls but I conserve them since trolls just need to suffer any source of fire or acid to turn off their regeneration and MINHP1 item. More detonation arrows are fired at the mages and fighters. The named goons are taken out with melee attacks, and quickly. Ashatiel loses in a 1v1 duel with Slashy.
Hell is also easy, but damn those Hamatulas. Everyone levels up during the fight with Belhifet when he gates in his 3rd set of reinforcements. Slashy gains a 4th damage tick over time.
Slashy Mc'Blenderson - Sword Dancer 12
Drugar - Kensai 12
Krieg III - War Hulk 12
Traveling with:
April - dwarven fightr/thief
Sarah - elven bounty hunter
Party has made considerable progress since last Update. In fact, only planning on doing Windspear hills before heading off off to Brynnlaw. Progress to date:
1) Sir Sarles quest complete. Our only immunity (until we get UAI) is the IMoD for April, which she would use in the off-hand. So we fobbed off the fake alloy to Sarles, who duly huffed off. The Temple accepted the alloy though. Then Neb was found - he was a bit easier than usual, as by this time Dreen has 100% in illusion detection. We then proceeded with the main quest so we can get the Mace of Disruption so we can forge the IMoD.
2) We have been in a number of vampire ambushes, and they are so hard for this group. We get level drained all the time, but have survived them nevertheless.
3) Right about here ran into a random ambush. But our special snares were a bit less useful than normal as now they are just a single target maze. So the thieves assisted April, but it was nearly the end as an odd bounce from a lightning bolt dropped Dreen to 10% health - he ran for his life, but fortunately the party by this point killed the mage and Dreen survived - whew!
4) We badly need extra heal potions, but can't seem to find any, so bought loads of the basic blue potion, but they are highly ineffective in combat, they are more a after-combat heal.
5) Mook was duly assassinated, but we avenged her.
6) Some thieves and their Contact had to be dealt with. We have literally like 12 snares we can lay if we want (though of course not all at once), so naturally was a simple fight.
7) We decided to work on a side quest while we thinking about it, the Fallen Paladin quest. This turned out to be much harder than usual as the maze trap appeared to maze a neutral. This caused one of the paladins to attack. Sarah. So the party tried to run, but Sarah was stuck in the entangle. Dreen hid and ran close and tossed Sarah the invisibility ring (from the lich in the Gates district) and managed to use it before she died. Close, almost 10% health. By this point, the neutral paladin came back and Dreen and April moved around the building and talked to Reynaud - the paladin stopped attacking. Close one. We of course got the cup and battled the paladins. Was a hard fight, party got battered and there was a lot of running, hiding, snares and backstabs, and potion gulping, but somehow we did manage to win.
8) Time to get the MoD. Yet more level drains, but we were able to get it and have Cromwell forge the IMoD. Finally April has some defense to level drain. Dreen will have to wait until he has UAI then he can use the AoP.
9) Because April's thief armor is magical, she doesn't use a ring with full plate. So I thought, if not using a ring, why not better armor? To this end, Balduran's plate looked great for her. But even with 20 rep and also 20 CHA, it still costs 22,000 gold! and without 20 CHA, costs 34,000!!!
So though was dangerous, we thought the Guarded compound was the answer to our gold issues. But was the many, many minions that spawn on 1st floor. We patiently spawned them (while hidden), and waited until the Glaberuzu killed all the basic minions. Then we gave lots of buffs to April and she attacked. She clearly needed help, but the thieves ranged attacks weren't helping much, so finally Dreen hid and backstabbed the demon to finish it off.
I was quite sure direct battle against the Guarded Compound party would be a quick death for us. So instead, Sarah and Dreen hid, and April used the invisibility ring, used thief armor, and detrapped a trap then we moved to far end of the room. We then laid 6 basic snares and Sarah tried to fireball (necklace of missiles, fully charged)/run. We could only do this once, and party had to run and hide. So Dreen and April stayed hidden, Dreen passed a haste potion to Sarah (since she has best hiding in shadows score) and she soloed all the enemies, using fireballs out of sight, and when enemies low health, backstabs to finish them off - success!
We were in fact able to afford Balduran's Plate for April.
10) Properly protected, April was now in shape to tank Bodhi's lair. In fact, she soloed most enemies. For the ambush lower level, Sarah helped with a Daystar Sunray.
11) Six basic snares were laid for Bodhi. She immediately conceded. Yay!
Will attempt Windspear hills next session.
Enemies trigger rage bonuses on the War Hulk well enough if there is a great number of them or if they're particularly strong, so the Sword Dancer doesn't really need to do that. But I bet that could actually be useful in certain situations.
The Kensai has an HLA that causes crits to reduce a creature's physical damage resistance by 5% for 4 rounds, so if I can get him to score a crit or two, I can have the Sword Dancer make the War Hulk lose control and stack the rage bonuses for inconceivable amounts of damage. This should work on creatures that have very high or 100% physical resistance but no MINHP1 item. The Chromatic Demon is the first thing that comes to mind Oops, scratch that, Chromatic Demon is immune to crits.
I will still have to try this on something.