I have began my own run inspired by all of your's. It is RP-heavy, and without modding, so I can't promise it will provide the same kind of drama, or level of drama, as all of your's, but due to the distinction, I put it in a separate thread.
I have began my own run inspired by all of your's. It is RP-heavy, and without modding, so I can't promise it will provide the same kind of drama, or level of drama, as all of your's, but due to the distinction, I put it in a separate thread.
Great to hear.
Know that an RP-heavy run is actually very welcome here.
Nothing beats a good narrative, not even the best modding setup.
The leader of Easthaven, an old warrior named Hrothgar welcomed the group to town and asked them to come to his house later. Gudrun helped out the tavern owner by ridding her cellar of a giant insect infestation.
The party then began to explore the town, Gudrun insisted they pay their respects at the rather ornate temple of Tempus. She nearly got into an argument with head priest Everard over the sacrifice of Jerrod, but she held her tongue. It would do the mission no good to alienate the local clergy and relations between the worshipers of Tempus and the Church of Helm have always been a bit touchy. Celebrian bought a potion bag and Dunathain bought a scroll case from the temple gift shop and the group made their way back to the town center.
From Everard they learned that a messenger had arrived from the town of Kuldahar asking for help against an unspecified threat and Hrothgar was putting together an expedition. Celebrian hoped that Hrothgar was going to invite the group to join. She knew there was a strong druid presence in Kuldahar. If anyone would know about a disturbance in the natural order it would be them. Gudrun agreed that a town experiencing an unknown threat would be a good place to start their investigations.
Near the boat yard, Gudrun struck up a conversation with a man name Jhonen. He was plagued by dreams of a blue-skinned woman singing to him. Gudrun told him she'd try to help, but cautioned him there probably wasn't anything she could do. Amazingly, when exploring near the beach later that day, the group met the lake spirit responsible for the dreams. After delivering an heirloom sword to Jhonen, the spirit gave Gudrun a large freshwater pearl, then disappeared.
The party decided to see if they could sell the pearl and perhaps buy some supplies for the upcoming trip. On their way to the shop, a man named Apsel came up to them and asked for help. It seems a wolf had gotten into his shop and was destroying the place, Gudrun promised they would see to it as soon as their errand was done. They hurried on to Pomab's Emporium. Once there, the proprietor was rude and insulting, but seemed a bit put-out by Gudrun's bright smile and impeccable politeness. As she explained to Celebrian later, every noblewoman learns at an early age how to deal with obnoxious, titled twits. They sold the gem and purchased ammunition. Darien bought a gem bag. Gudrun eyed the composite longbow and magic quivers longingly, but even with the pearl, the team's finances were too tight to justify the expense.
**Head-canon interlude: Nobody goes off on an adventure with just a quarterstaff and the clothes on their backs. So in my mind, the characters didn't buy their equipment here, they were already wearing it and they just picked up a few extras. Gudrun - Splint mail, helmet, two-handed sword, quarterstaff, longbow Celebrian - Leather, helmet, buckler, sling, dagger Dunathain - Quarterstaff, sling Darien - Leather, buckler, long sword, shortbow
Back at Apsel's shop, Darien was able to open the door despite the broken key jammed in the lock. Gudrun entered first with the rest of the party behind her. The maddened wolf attacked immediately. Gudrun shot an arrow at it, then dropped her bow and fended off the beast with her sword while her companions continued to pelt it with arrows and stones. Finally it fell, and they went outside to inform Apsel. He rewarded them with a few coins and fine dagger of his own crafting which replaced Celebrian's ordinary blade.
The party's first kill. (The beetles don't count.)
Further up the coast, a young boy ran up and claimed that monsters had stolen his fish. They moved forward cautiously and found a goblin raiding party. They peppered the creatures with arrows and stones to draw them into battle, and Gudrun fought the survivors hand-to-hand. Victory cost them a sleep spell and a cure light, but netted them a small cache of gold and a few weapons to sell. They gave what was left of the fish to the boy and decided it was time to see what Hrothgar wanted.
As expected Hrothgar recruited them for the expedition, but while he was getting the rest of the force ready to travel, he asked the party to look into the problem of an overdue caravan. They decided to rest first to regain the spells used against the goblins.
A cave full of orcs
In the morning, they left town by the East road. After fighting past some wolves, they came upon the caravan's wagons guarded by an orc. They made quick work of the lone sentry, then entered the nearby cave that seemed to be the humanoids' lair. Two guards were stationed inside the entrance, but they were dispatched without raising an alarm. Darien scouted ahead and located another pair of guards. After the party killed them, he snuck ahead once again and found a much larger force.
In a large room at the end of the corridor, were at least eight orcs, including grunts, archers and at least one who looked like a spellcaster. Gudrun laid out her plan of attack: Celebrian would cast an entangle spell at the entrance of the room, the party would move up with Gudrun in the lead and use missile weapons to take down the orcs one by one. Gudrun would melee any who got through the entangle, and Dunathain would look for likely targets for a sleep spell. If the entangle didn't work, Dunathain would fire off a sleep spell, and the party would run for the exit.
With that the group moved into position, Celebrian cast her spell, then it all went wrong.
As they move toward the edge of the entanglement, the orc shaman made his appearance and began casting a spell. Gudrun moved forward to get a better shot and managed to disrupt his casting. In her haste, she moved too close and found herself caught by Celebrian's vines.* Now the trap she had planned closed around her and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Two archers were pelting her with arrows and to make matters worse, the shaman was striding toward her as if the vines didn't exist. The rest of the party was trying to keep the enemy off of her, but they couldn't reach the archers without entangling themselves and the shaman kept coming even after being hit a number of times.
Just as Gudrun broke free and was ordering the retreat, an arrow caught her in the back of the neck and she went down. Her uncle dashed to her side, threw her body over his shoulder and ran for the entrance.** The other two were close on his heels, and behind them, the shaman came relentlessly on.
The survivors ran for the road to Easthaven, but just before they were out of sight, the shaman exited the cave and continued his pursuit. Darien looked back and realized the enraged orc was actually badly injured. He told the others to keep going, then turned and began firing arrows at their pursuer. As the shaman reached him, he dropped his bow and unlimbered his sword and buckler. The spellcasters now joined in with their slings and the shaman soon fell. Darien was disappointed to see that orc shamen are apparently ascetics, as the corpse carried nothing but a quarterstaff.
Free of pursuit, the group made their way to the temple, where Everard raised Gudrun, at the cost of most of the party's gold. That night, Celebrian memorized bless instead of entangle.
* What really happened: I saw that the UH kit grants immunity to hold and assumed that meant a permanent free action. So I walked her right into the spell. ** I hadn't noticed until this point that the mage is the second strongest party member, go figure. *** Yes, I forgot to screen shot any of this.
Much more cautious, the party returned to the cave. The orcs were obviously more cautious also, as soon as the party entered, they heard the tramp of heavy boots coming closer. The entire force that had been in the central room came boiling around the corner. The shape of the corridor worked to the party's advantage and they managed to kill two of the orcs before Gudrun was forced to put away her bow and start swinging her greatsword. Still, it was a tough fight as the orc archers hung back while the grunts surged forward. Dunathain put the archers to sleep and Celebrian healed Gudrun while in the midst of the battle. Soon the floor was littered with orc bodies.
Darien resumed scouting ahead and found a few gems and scroll of protection from petrification. Unfortuately, Dunathain failed to copy it into his spellbook. He was philisophical about it though, remarking that it's not like the party's going to wander into a field full of basilisks.
Darien discovered more sentries to the North and West, the group defeated them in detail, exhausting their spells and their single healing potion. Gudrun called a halt, to go further was too much of a risk. They made their way back to town and sold their loot, garnering enough cash to purchase two healing potions. (Lux-u-ry****)
Back at the cave, Darien found the orcs leader, an ogre surrounded by bodyguards. Gudrun kept the plan simple, Celebrian blessed the group, then they rushed in with Gudrun in the lead. As soon as he cleared the doorway, Dunathain cast sleep, putting down the ogre and all but two of the orcs. The party killed them quickly, then started in on the sleeping orcs, saving the ogre for last.
Unfortunately, the ogre woke up just as the bless wore off. Worse, Gudrun was in melee range. She tried to fight, but was clearly outclassed. She changed tactics and ran away. Even wounded she was faster than the lumbering brute, and she taunted him to keep his attention as she led it in circles around the room. Finally it took one missile too many and slumped to the floor. Darien complemented her on her vocabulary while Dunathain muttered something about washing her mouth out with soap. Gudrun only grinned as Celebrian healed her.
**** Say it in Bugs Bunny's voice. I had forgotten how sparse this game is in the beginning. I know monty haul is just around the corner, but daaaamn, I want some money now.
Let's go flyyyy a kite...
The fight provided the best loot so far, a winter wolf pelt, a scroll of horror and a nice pile of gold, plus some documents from the traders. Dunathain tucked the scroll away, saying there's no use trying to write it to his spellbook, he can't cast it yet anyway. Gudrun thought about heading back to town, since the party was down to one sleep, one cure light, and no healing potions, but Darien reported there were only two small groups of orcs left, though one of them had a shaman.
They rushed the first group, killing them quickly and found another chest. This one had a magic ring of resistance and nearly 100 gold. Next they attacked the shaman. A sleep spell put the bodyguards out of action and the shaman didn't last too long on his own. The bodyguards died quickly and the party headed back to town.
Hrothgar is happy, level ups for everyone!
They took the list to Pomab. Darien and Celebrian bought magic quivers. They also bought 5 healing potions from the temple and then rested to fill their new spell slots.
Gudrun - Undead Hunter lv 2 - 20 hp - 1 death Darien - Swashbuckler lv 3 - 21 hp Celebrian - Avenger lv 2 - 14 hp Dunathain - Wild Mage lv 2 - 8 hp
Total raise cost - 100 gp
MVP - Celebrian - Surprisingly, her sling made 40% of the party's killshots, including the ogre. That, plus healing makes her the MVP. And I thought the party would have to carry her until she got summons.
Next up - A pleasant walk to Kuldahar or Goblins in the mist
We have a new solo low-reload run! Imber is back, in the form of a Dark Moon Monk.
I have a good feeling about this run. I'm enjoying the early game and have big plans about the late game. I think this is going to be good.
Imber is much more Chaotic Neutral than anything else, but she can take on whatever alignment she needs to satisfy a job requirement. I normally don't like lawful or evil alignments, but I'll put up with this one.
Imber sneaks around the Duergar for the most part, only fighting the mandatory group northeast of the Otyugh room. As is my wont, I have her delay our only rest period for as long as possible. I finally let her rest when she's triggered an awful trap to get the Portal Key. Her wounds take a long vacation to heal.
Luckily for us, the golems who noticed us trigger the alarm gave her enough time to sleep. Unfortunately, once she's awake, they come in and pummel her so badly that I deem her incapable of completing the dungeon. Since I don't want such an early reload, I restart instead.
This time, we begin in much better shape. What were we missing before?
No, it's not the Bag of Holding I just cheated in. Before, she had two castings of Vampiric Touch alongside her Dark Moon Vampiric Touch spell. Now she has two Draw Upon Holy Might spells. This is important because, as a monk with only 18 STR, she can't open certain chests that contain a lot of valuable potions. DUHM is a huge boost to her survivability. The resulting 20 STR will also dramatically improves her damage output, and conveniently enough, the mandatory Duergar hallway is right next to some locked potion chests in the Otyugh room, allowing us to do both tasks with one casting.
Imber nearly dies again, and takes an extra long nap to compensate.
Arguably, she should be trying to escape the dungeon. But she's already got a comfy bed right here. What's the rush?
The Mephit Portals collapse in two hits each thanks to DUHM, rendering my biggest worry a non-issue. But there's still one problem left: I've noticed before in EE that I couldn't find a Girdle of Bluntness in the Temple District. If that's true, the only one in the game is on the second level of Chateau Irenicus, in the northeasternmost room with a Duergar Mage in it.
There's actually a convenient cover for us as we're going in.
You can prepare short-duration buffs behind that screen and neither group of Duergar will see you. Imber prepares DUHM and Clammy Hands, or whatever you call it when Dark Moon Monks deal cold damage with their fists. The cold damage should disrupt any of the mage's spells, and it should only take two or three hits to do him in.
Unfortunately, even with a +6 bonus to its saving throw, Chromatic Orb can still be a game-ender.
I start over, again with the double DUHM charges. This time, I use a high-damage followup to make sure the mage doesn't stick around.
A Horror spell then clears the way to the exit.
I'm really enjoying the monk's high movement rate. I love high mobility characters. It lets you do crazy, epic stuff like grabbing that Web scroll in the circus before that werewolf gets in your way.
I hate that scroll-blocking Werewolf.
We go back to Viconia and charm one of the fanatics--the cleric, specifically, so we can get him to waste his spells before the fight begins.
The charm effect from the Ring of Human Influence lasts 100 seconds, or just under 17 rounds. Plenty of time to drain the target's spells and cause some trouble at least in the first few rounds of combat with any of his or her friends.
We slay the Killer Mimic of the Umar Hills after pre-buffing with a Potion of Freedom and head to Trademeet. An evil halfling throws a fit after we refuse to help him do evil stuff.
Despite Imber's nominally evil alignment, I don't want to do a whole bunch of bad stuff in this run. It always feels wrong.
MVP: ...Imber. Most Valuable Spell: DUHM, for getting us potions.
Lately I've been fighting my way through the Druid Grove, instead of sneaking past all the monsters. But I don't have a fire or acid weapon and don't feel like getting one, so we're just going to walk past everything. Hey, trolls have feelings, too! It wouldn't be right for our Lawful Evil protagonist to murder the trolls who would gladly kill her and eat her if they ever got the chance.
We do still have to turn visible once to get a group of trolls to move out of the way.
Imber's stealth skills are still pretty weak, so she often goes visible against her will. Thankfully, there's a spot just south of Kyland Lind where you can hide.
But Imber accidentally attracted an Ettercap on the way--this otherwise would have been an okay hiding space, as it keeps you out of range of all nearby enemies--and some other critters join the chase. The Ring of Air Control once again keeps us safe.
Imber's invisibility will only last 10 rounds, so she needs to find a spot where there are no enemies, or else she won't be able to hide or rest. This is the spot.
I never noticed these spots before. I also didn't know you could walk around Adratha's little tower and walk right past the Shambling Mounds who are blocking the bridge.
Cernd kills Faldorn, and we take all the credit. Lord Logan Coinpurse is impressed with our masterful delegating abilities and gives us a big cash money wad. But we still need to kill some wealthy Calishite djinns to save the town's economy (I don't know how an extraplanar critter like a djinni would be from Calimshan, but whatever).
We get ambushed by Suna Seni and her gang. A Horror spell from afar disperses all of them but Suna Seni herself and the mage. I lead the former over to the southwest so I won't get mobbed as quickly when the others recover.
Emotion: Hopelessness is a great spell, but even SCS enemies don't know how to optimize the EE version, which lets . The smartest thing they could have done--which would have absolutely destroyed me--would be for them to leave Imber alone, let the rest of their group recover from Horror, then throw disablers at me, conjure summons, throw on some buffs, and surround me before they actually hit me. This would ensure that I was trapped as well as disabled several times over, and also ensure that they were at full strength and could concentrate all their power on me at once.
Instead, Suna Seni just hits me once, and that amazing spell accomplishes nothing other than letting Suna Seni land a single hit. SCS AI is excellent, but they're not very good at capitalizing on disablers... maybe because that requires setting a complex list of priorities.
Anyway... Suna Seni crumpled to pure damage, and Imber turned her attention to disabling the remaining enemies.
Clammy Hands kept the mage in check. It's a great way of disrupting spells, as it offers no save and bypasses MR. It doesn't hurt that monks get unusually high APR.
Right after this fight, we run into the Renfeld ambush. It's an easier fight, but we're low on resources. Even so, the enemy doesn't do much. Remove Magic isn't that devastating of a spell when it wakes you up from Command. After bringing down the mage and cleric, neither of whom had any buffs besides Mirror Image, Imber takes control of the remaining thief and gets him to set a trap for himself.
That was fun.
I grab the Nymph's Cloak again and use it against Sanasha. But this time, her Fireball fails to kill Prebek, and Prebek retaliates. Sanasha gets knocked out.
I don't know what he was trying to accomplish with that Invisibility spell. Sanasha was no threat to him, and he didn't know Imber was there; she was invisible. Imber fails to reveal him with her paltry 20 Detect Illusions skill, but she doesn't have to. He breaks his own invisibility, and fails a save against the Ring of Human Influence.
Sanasha is out of spells and therefore cannot help me hurt Prebek. After we kill Sanasha, we turn Prebek's spells against him. This guy just has no luck with saving throws.
I thought I had assigned him to throw his last Minute Meteor at Sanasha during the charm effect, but when he turns hostile, he can still throw another one.
It matters little. He's out of spells and allies, and his HP is quick to follow.
We get inside the Harper Hold. I always liked that you can grab the bird from outside its cage.
On the way out, I notice there's a huge black spot in the Docks District map.
Most Valuable Item: Ring of Air Control, for keeping us from getting swarmed by critters in the Druid Grove.
How do we deal with the djinn? We've got a scroll of Protection from Petrification to block their Flesh to Stone spells, and Imber is wearing the Girdle of Bluntness to stop their sabers (which, unless EE corrected them, do crushing damage). However, it's better to go all out. After a couple of tries, Imber manages to charm Taquee with the Nymph Cloak.
We then rest, because the charm effect lasts 12 hours, which gives us another use of the charm. I assign Imber to enter the tent, and as she goes, I also assign Taquee to attack Imber, which means he follows her. Now we have Taquee inside the tent. The Nymph Cloak adds to our advantage once more.
They waste their beneficial spells (Improved Haste, Stoneskin, and Invisibility) on Imber and themselves, and use their only hostile spells against their friend, Faafirah.
We get a scare when we turn on Taquee and he lands a critical on Imber. Apparently he could kill her in two hits if he got lucky.
When Taquee is down, we use the Efreeti Bottle on Khan Zahraa.
Finally, to deal with Huntley and the debating philosophers, I lead Huntley aside and butcher him out of sight.
@BillyYank A solid writing! Thank you for trying an IWDEE run here And I see Might and Magic: Heroes 7 portraits!!! Good luck to Gudrun, Darien, Celebrian and Dunathain.
@semiticgod A dark moon monk! This is a character I've always wanted to try in a no-reload game. Have fun with Imber!
@Ygramul Noooo! Boo is too young to have to avenge Minsc! Props to you for continuing the game.
@recklessheart Maybe seeing how someone starts his own documented run through the game is the best testament this thread is a wonderful thing. Good luck to Maliel!
We venture to the Windspear Hills and turn invisible right after the paladins attack us. Imber needs the breathing room to cast her buffs (Blur, DUHM, and Frozen Fist are the standard trio) and summon the Efreeti. It takes us three rest periods to bring them down safely. Imber is pretty tough, but she's still alone. Solo characters always have a dearth of offensive power compared to parties (HLAs make you strong, but not 6 times as strong as normal).
We reach the dryad queen, Vaelasa, and receive some troubling news.
We can't free Irenicus' dryads--the acorns aren't in our inventory. I know we picked them up; we killed Ilyich and sold off his armor, so I know I looted the body. It seems like the Bag of Holding somehow ate the acorns... and if it did, we've likely lost a lot of other stuff as well. I console in the acorns to complete the quest, then go get Hexxat from the Copper Coronet to start the Dragomir questline. I get a disturbing message on the way out.
At first, I'm puzzled, because my reputation is fine, but then I remember the Radiant Heart is out for my blood. I tried to get Garren Windspear to help me before, but the game crashed when Plath Rededge teleported in to ambush us. I try again.
This time, the fight begins without any crashes. But something even weirder happens instead.
That's just silly.
Once Garren clears our name, we go to the Graveyard District and enter Dragomir's tomb. Hexxat dies after being paralyzed by some Shadow Fiends, so we have to raise her later. To keep the Shadow Fiends from paralyzing Imber, Imber uses Arbane's Sword against them. Dragomir goes down under pressure from both Imber and the Efreeti. The Efreeti doesn't last long, but it has lots of damage output, at least by early game standards.
The Efreeti is especially great for clerics, who never have the Protection from Fire or MGOI spells necessary to block the Efreeti's fire magic.
As a solo melee character without Teleport Field or the Ring of the Ram (or a similar displacement method, like Smite or the Staff of the Ram or Repulse Undead or Dimension Door), Imber is at very high risk of being boxed in. This makes it imperative that we the Ring of Air Control or Potions of Invisibility for emergency situations. When Imber gets trapped by the slavers, she uses the RoAC to activate her buffs.
The enemy moves around when she vanishes, opening up an escape route, but even if that hadn't happened, her buffs would let her tear a hole in the wall and get away.
As a monk, Imber is immune to haste, but her boosted movement rate allows her to run past the Prismatic Spray trap without getting hit by the spell itself. We can therefore safely access the rest of the area without immunity to petrification.
We purchased Ras earlier in Trademeet. It's a very pricy sword, but it allows us to draw out enemy mage's buffs. Without MGOI, even the mages are vulnerable to Fireball.
Due to negligence on my part, Imber uses a sling on one of the wizards without having Improved Invisibility active. This means the mage can nail her with a double Charm Person Minor Sequencer, and her aura isn't clear enough to drink a potion before it hits. Only her saving throws are there to protect her.
Despite there being two Charm Person spells in the sequencer, Imber only has to make one saving throw. I've noticed this in my own sequencers as well, and with the Wand of Lightning trick: if two spell effects of the same type hit at the same time, they seem to only require one saving throw. I'm not sure why.
The Efreeti comes in to fix the situation. Genies, demons, celestials, and dragons all cast spells instantly in SCS v30, which means even the slowest, heaviest spells come out quick. The rationale is that they use special powers, not proper spells, and hence cannot be disrupted.
We rest to get back the Efreeti before facing the Trolls, as we have no means of dealing fire damage without it.
The Efreeti also cuts short one of the Copper Coronet fights.
If you kill him before he can talk to you, he won't have time to call for help, and the enemy mages won't spawn. Turns out he's got really low health, so it's especially easy.
We don't have a clear plan on which quests to tackle when, so our questing is very ad hoc. Notably, we walked right past some of the tougher critters in the Temple Ruins, as well as stopping short of confronting the Shade Lord. During one of our little side quests, we see a bug.
Normally, vampires spawn in to kill Sansuki right after he speaks to you. This time, however, the vampire does nothing, as he spawned right behind a stand, which blocks his view of Sansuki.
I'm a little concerned about our emergency options, so I go to Roger to get some potions. On the way, I decide to slay the Rakshasa with the Cloak of the Sewers. After draining his better spells with Ras and the Efreeti, I shut down his spellcasting with Frozen Fist.
Frozen Fist lasts 10 rounds, so it's almost a constant effect ability.
Even though our only method of killing Trolls is the Efreeti, I go to the De'Arnise Hold on the grounds that there won't be Spirit Trolls if I visit the place early. I was wrong, and it seems that these ones are even worse than the normal kind.
They can go invisible even after collapsing. You have to remove their invisibility or use an area-effect spell just to kill them.
We have to rest after every group of Trolls to make sure we have enough fire magic to finish them off once they go down. Eventually I get tired of it and started using CTRL-Y. I don't even care if I lose the experience; it's just not worth the hassle.
Worse yet, the Trolls start to respawn in huge numbers. Even after clearing out the entire second floor of Trolls, more of them start popping up and rushing in to attack me.
This isn't okay. Trolls regenerate; they don't come back from the dead. This screenshot doesn't look like much, but over the course of the fight with Glaicas, at least 20 Trolls rushed into the room, one after the other. And the intelligence you receive earlier says there are only about 30 Trolls in total. Respawning and SCS' calls for help aren't supposed to flood a single room with an entire map's worth of enemies. I cheat them away so I can fight Glaicas in peace. I would have gotten over 50,000 XP if I had fought them all, but it's nowhere near worth it.
I also got surprised by another Spirit Troll on the roof. Looking back at the dialog box after killing it, I noticed that it made 9 attack rolls while Imber made only 5. Imber has 3 APR. Spirit Trolls vanish so frequently that they have more than double the attacks of a normal hasted fighter--and that's when I only have one Spirit Troll to target with just one character; in bigger groups, the APR advantage would be even more extreme.
Have I mentioned that I don't like Spirit Trolls and their invisibility? Because I don't. If you have to fight them, don't use weapons. Just spam Holy Smite, Fireball, and Sunfire. It'll save you a lot of trouble.
We hit level 13 on the bottom level and gain access to Quivering Palm. After drinking a Potion of Clarity to ward off confusion, Imber tries it out on the Umber Hulks.
It's very unreliable, however, in a low- or no-reload run. Also, the effect only lasts 5 seconds, which generally gives Imber only 2 attack rolls to make it count.
TorGal was a mess. His regeneration and resistances are extremely high. In order to very slowly bring him down, Imber had to drink a Potion of Invulnerability for -13 effective AC against TorGal's piercing attacks, add on all of her buffs, and drink almost half her supply of Potions of Extra Healing just to outlast him. We didn't bother his buddies--we entered the room invisible to lure TorGal away. It's one of the tricks I've been using to minimize Imber's exposure to harm. I'm more tolerant of tricks when the party is weak.
Since Imber is immune to poison by now, we can take on Pai'Na safely. First, the Efreeti clears up the spiders.
Pai'Na poisons the Efreeti, which is good news for us. Every single point of poison damage triggers its Fire Shield, so Pai'Na suffers a lot more damage than the Efreeti.
Kitty didn't do so well in her first fight, but I love her anyway.
She's only there as a decoy, anyway, to draw out enemy spells and such.
Imber has just hit level 14 and now has 42 MR. She can achieve near-immunity to magic using a single Potion of Magic Protection, and near-guaranteed saves with a Potion of Invulnerability.
Most Valuable Item: The Efreeti Bottle once again. It's an excellent tool for solo runs.
Meet my next cleric/thief. Pablo, the the half-orc.......
half-minotaur!
Pablo the first had a short story. He ended up as a statue at the basilisk meadow because of a mistake from my part.
So i went on with Pablo the second!
He stampede through the basilisk with the help of the hungry ghoul, Korax.
After Korax couldn't resist the delicious beef before it, Pablo ended its existence with some sorrow.
This time the young adventure party wasn't safe from the fury of the Bhaal-bull either:
After he had strenghten his calves at the lizard-land, Pablo strolled to the Nashkel mines. Along the journey he escort a crazy man to the Nashkel temple:
In the mines he met a somewhat similar person. He was half-orc and cleric too.
And dead, after Pablo left. Back in Nashkell a monk with the name Rasaad helped Pablo to dispose another assasin.
But stealing the letal blow from the son of Bhaal, the Lord of Murder's successor was not a good idea.
After a breef visit in Beregost:
Pablo helped a farmer to get back his dead son... because he is such a pure hearted person.
He joined to the bandits, only to acquire some knowlede about the iron throne hidout in the cloakwood area.
On the road he only stopped to stamp some spiders.
At the mine entrance the assasins were held and butted.
It has all went well until Pablo reached Davaeorn's chamber. I remembered wrong, that the third trap was about summoning the doomguards.
I tried to rest, but a guard awakened me. Then tried to move to a more secure place. And i rememberd the number of the traps wrong too. The lightning damage of the last trap made steak from Pablo.
Otherwise Pablo the second was doomed anyway. If you look at his character sheet at the top, you can see, that the custom helm, what i made him from the Helm of Balduran, didn't lost its properties (adding him all the bonuses of the original helm). I will correct this mistake with Pablo, the third!
@lolien please pardon my minute ignorance but does that portrait of Pablo belong to the real artist himself? And what is the name of it? Merci beaucoup
@lolien please pardon my minute ignorance but does that portrait of Pablo belong to the real artist himself? And what is the name of it? Merci beaucoup
It's a mistake from my part not to credit the artist, who made this inspirational masterpiece. He is Pablo Picasso, the art is "The King of the Minotaurs", 1958, if my source is true.
I'm impatient for XP and I want to get on with the main quest. It's time to take on the Shadow Thieves. I sneak past the mages and backstabbers in the first area--they're a big hassle in a small space with few places to hide, and the mages like to cast Sphere of Chaos.
Although I like the quick loot feature, there's a weird bug where it shifts automatically to the end of the list if you click something in the middle.
It actually makes things slower than clicking on each body manually, unless you're willing to pick up everything they've got--which isn't practical when each body has two sets of arrows, leather armor, and a longsword that you won't be selling anyway.
In the guillotine room, I lure a Cloudkill trap onto a cleric to help disrupt his spells. As a monk, Imber is immune to poison and therefore Cloudkill. I take out the snipers with a sling and collect their potions via the quick loot feature. In vanilla, you couldn't get those potions at all.
I wonder why they have this huge room full of guillotines if they're going to disable the traps the moment you come by.
Dedral is a problem because of his low THAC0, and Imber needs a lot of Mirror Images to protect herself. On the way down the hall, she accidentally trips a trap, but her MR protects her.
I believe that was the Maze trap, a game-ender for solo runs.
Haz kills my summons with the Death Spell, leaving me to fight him alone. To get at him through his Fire Shield, I use Darts of Wounding until his Fire Shield breaks down. Soon, his Stoneskin is gone.
Next, Aran Linvail. I use Ras to trigger the enemy's buffs, and in their haste to kill it, they actually deal a lot of damage to each other. But they heal themselves right afterward, and I don't have a followup.
To wait out their buffs, I decide to take a walk around the dungeon. In the middle of a fight with some orcs, I get a surprise.
SCS mages often use Dimension Door to chase you. But the thieves here have been dropping lots of Potions of Invisibility, and it's not hard for me to escape Aran Linvail's grasp.
I come back a moment later with a clear aura and shut down his casting. I ignore the orcs; they're not a problem for me.
In my old vanilla runs with SCS, Stoneskin blocked poison effects, which makes sense, as Stoneskin is supposed to prevent weapons from breaking your skin in the first place. But I'm willing to take advantage of enemy mages' current vulnerability to poison damage, as I haven't used poison much in the past.
Aran Linvail casts Fire Shield. I wait it out just in case I want to switch to melee attacks.
When it wears off, I pelt him with more darts, and when his Stoneskin is down and his spellcasting disrupted, I move in for the kill.
I don't need to kill anyone else, as the quest is complete, but I want to finish off Aran Linvail's henchmen. I return to his room and have the Efreeti deal with the cleric and mage.
Imber uses Frozen Fist to disrupt and destroy the surviving mage.
For reasons I don't quite remember, I decide to head to Watcher's Keep before reporting to Bodhi.
Most Valuable Item: Darts of Wounding. They won't break through PFMW or Mantle spells, but if you wait those defenses out, poisoned weapons are almost guaranteed to disrupt a mage's spells, as mages have very poor saves vs. death.
I use a Protection from Undead scroll to protect Imber from the Vampiric Wraiths of Watcher's Keep, but no such critters appear. The scroll does ward off some normal shadow-type Wraiths, although a trap I trigger still means I have to have Garlena cast Restoration on me.
I use CTRL-4 quite regularly to check on triggers on the map. I already know where all of the traps in the game are, with rare exceptions in ToB, but CTRL-4 tells me exactly how close I have to be to detect and disarm them. It also shows me where I have to stand in case certain spawns don't trigger.
Here in Watcher's Keep, it's a pretty clear cheat, as it lets me know I have to walk to the right of a trap instead of the left to escape it.
It's a petrification trap, and a potential game-ender. Even though I would have run over it had I not used CTRL-4, I don't walk over it, which unfairly lets me avoid making a savee. So the reload count goes from 0 to 0.3 or so.
I don't bother fighting the Statues. For some reason, I talk to Bodhi right after, instead of getting the Ring of Fire Resistance that I'd been meaning to nab from Firkraag's lair. We're off to Spellhold, with only a single Potion of Fire Resistance to protect us from Irenicus' Dragon's Breath spell.
There's a line from Saemon Havarian that I particularly like.
It's the unstated message behind it. He changes the name of his ship to avoid the authorities, but when Bodhi asks about it, he tries to deflect suspicion by saying the name keeps washing off, blaming the resin. It's these little details that show there's more to BG2 than you see on the surface.
At Brynnlaw , I interfere with a duel to get some extra potions.
Speaking of potions, Sanik, apparently recovering from a bar fight, takes a moment to heal himself right before he gets assassinated.
Reminds me of a quote from Archer: "He died doing what he loved... Getting shot."
I don't fuss with Prebek. I can get him after Spellhold. Instead, I use the Ring of Human Influence to convince Desharik to send me to the asylum. Irenicus doesn't appear right away, so I take a moment to chat with the locals. I like Naljier Skal's exaggerated Irish accent.
Can't you hear his voice when you read that line? I have the same thing with Dili.
Dili's so cute. I wish you could recruit some of the crazies here. Dili and Aphril would be very interesting NPCs, mechanically speaking.
Dradeel is a bit less charming.
But he gives you a great recipe for a sweet treat.
It's a real recipe, and they're quite good. I had them during my last PnP session the other day.
In the Spellhold dream, Bhaal again fails to follow me into the library. I console in a duplicate of him to solve the problem.
Imber's damage output has been getting pretty high. She lands a maximum damage critical on a Clay Golem, and it's quite impressive.
Monks unfortunately can't be hasted, and they lack versatility compared to fighters, but their attacks do big damage, and they get a lot of them.
I need the Ring of Free Action to cover a small weak point in Imber's late-game build. To do so, I have to take down a Mind Flayer and a Beholder. But by using summons to soak up the enemy's initial attacks, Imber can swoop in and finish them off. She hits very hard and very fast.
Imber gets targeted by Charm Person when fighting the kobolds. She uses a Potion of Magic Protection to stop it. It's an expensive option, but she won't need those potions for long.
We encounter no Spellhold lich. This saves us a Protection from Undead scroll.
Dace is a problem opponent for a monk, and could warrant such a scroll, but Kitty wins the fight for us with Web Tangle.
It lasts just long enough for Imber to pummel him into oblivion.
By the way... you know that riddle room where you have to click on each of the stone faces that say "Put your hand in my mouth" to start a riddle? You can wander around the room, clicking each of them once, and then click them one at a time, rather than having to click them twice every time you stop by one of them. It might save almost as much time as it took you to read this paragraph.
Imber drinks a Potion of Invulnerability to protect her from any vorpal hits that the Pit Fiend might have, but the Pit Fiend goes down quickly anyway. They have no Stoneskins to block Imber's fists.
On the next level. Imber drinks another Potion of Magic Protection to resist the traps that you trigger when you grab the monster paintings. She evades the Yuan-ti Mage until its defenses wear off, and follows up with some Darts of Wounding. The Girdle of Bluntness and some buffs are necessary to deal with the Clay Golems. To deal with the Trolls, she lets the Efreeti take a break--she no longer needs it to deal fire damage.
She bought the Sword of Flame before she left, just to make sure she had access to a fire weapon. She has no pips in longswords, but in EE, or at least EE with SCS, Trolls fall unconscious when they go down, and therefore require no attack roll to hit.
I ignore the Mind Flayer for safety's sake, and get the Boots of Speed, though they have no effect if Imber is wearing the Ring of Free Action. She can't get any other boots, however--the last tokens are in the room with Spirit Trolls, and the horseshoe-shaped wheel she needs to turn to unlock that room is itself behind a locked door, and since Sil no longer has DUHM, she doesn't have the strength to force the lock.
Why doesn't she have the Girdle of Hill Giant Strength, or a potion of giant strength? Well, she won't need those anymore. I have a trick planned that few other than a Dark Moon Monk can pull off.
Most Valuable Item: The Efreeti Bottle, for holding off the Beholder.
We've finally reached the end of the Spellhold gauntlet. There's a bug in EE that lets you use Slayer form earlier than normal, before the fight with Irenicus rather than after. We're going to use that form to bring down Jon-bon.
Normally, Slayer form only lasts 44 seconds before it kills you. But @Arunsun discovered a unique trick that allows you to survive past that point. https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/44283/bug-discovered-but-a-nice-bug-it-is#latest Mirror Image has blocked area-effect spell damage since the early days, and in multiple IE games. It persists in EE, and even blocks the damage from Slayer form. It doesn't always block all of the damage, but it almost always blocks the last blow.
Any source of Mirror Image will work, though the spell and scroll appear more reliable than Ilbratha. The process is simple. First, you cast Mirror Image.
Then you activate Slayer change. It doesn't seem to work if you do this before Mirror Image.
You'll get the message warning of your impending doom, but no damage will occur.
After 44 seconds have passed, you will be able to save and rest as normal. But even after resting, you retain Slayer form and the slayer weapon.
Why a Dark Moon Monk? First, Dark Moon Monks can cast Mirror Image at level 11, and since Ilbratha only creates 4 images while a mid- to high-level Mirror Image creates 5, it means that Dark Moon Monks have a higher chance of survival than a Sun Soul Monk or unkitted Monk using Ilbratha.
Second, and most importantly, a monk's magic resistance stacks with the Slayer form's base 40 magic resistance.
This means monks can attain undispellable 100 MR faster than any other class in EE, as they reach base 60 MR at level 20, which only takes 2.7 million XP. A thief or bard with UAI using MR items, however, takes 3.08 million XP to get to that point, and can only get to that point after the Underdark. The only exception to this would be a thief who uses an XP trick--say, the Rejiek Hidesman trick, in which you surround him with your party members, attack him, and then talk to him multiple times before he can go downstairs--to get UAI very early in the game.
But MR isn't the only advantage of Slayer form. It also sets your STR and DEX to 25, your base APR is set to 4, your AC drops below -10 even without items, your base THAC0 is set to 0, and all of your saves are set to 2. The form also comes with various immunities. In Slayer form, you are immune to normal missiles, imprisonment, charm, fear, confusion, stun, Power Word: Stun, sleep/unconsciousness, level drain, and the Finger of Death spell (but not the effect it uses, opcode 55). Also, the Slayer weapon strikes a +5 weapon and deals 2 nonmagical cold damage per hit, though it only does 1d8 base damage, plus the STR bonus.
There aren't a whole lot of things that can kill a monk in Slayer form.
We're going to use this on Irenicus. It starts out beautifully, as Irenicus uses Improved Mantle rather than Absolute Immunity or PFMW. The Slayer attack goes right through Improved Mantle.
Unfortunately, the Slayer form has no immunities to fire or cold damage, and Fire Shield backlashes are nonmagical. This means we can't safely attack Irenicus once he casts Fire Shield. But a friendly Efreeti can do that for us with Flame Arrow, once the other inmates break down some of Jon-bon's spell protections.
Imber's clone doesn't arrive in Slayer form, fortunately, and all her weapon slots are filled up with swords. She doesn't last long.
Eventually, Irenicus brings out the one spell I'm most worried about.
Imber drinks a Potion of Invulnerability to decrease her save vs. death to block the vorpal effect.
However, Potions of Invulnerability won't actually help against a Planetar's vorpal strikes. This is because the Planetar also dispels magic on hit, and the dispel effect comes before the vorpal strike, meaning any save bonuses from a potion would vanish before the vorpal strike came.
Imber runs away from the Fallen Planetar, who cuts down our remaining allies.
Soon, however, Jon-bon flees the scene, opening the doors and allowing Imber much greater freedom of movement.
She hides out in a safe place until the Planetar is gone.
Imber kills the Murderers and picks up the potions left by the inmates before resting. But the cut scene that's supposed to actually give you access to Slayer form, which only triggers after the fight with Irenicus, stalls after Imoen gets chunked in the dream.
Imoen always dies in that cut scene, but if she gets chunked, it seems it breaks the sequence. I have to reload and try again. This time, Imoen doesn't get chunked, and the scene proceeds as normal.
But the dream dispels Slayer form. I cast Mirror Image once more, activate Slayer form, leave the room, and find out that Imber is dead.
I thought at the time that a 5-image Mirror Image was a guaranteed safeguard against dying in Slayer form. Apparently it is not. But I recall hearing the sound of damage. Sometimes you take damage in Slayer form but the Mirror Image still blocks the final blow. If you really wanted to ensure your success, I suppose ending the form and trying again until you suffer no damage at all would be the best option, though your reputation would take a hit.
I try again and this time it works.
Also, I got hit by Psionic Maze during the fight with the Githyanki on board Desharik's ship, before the ship capsizes and dumps us into City Sushi.
Number of reloads: 2.3. Most Valuable Spell: Mirror Image--because Mirror Image has more uses outside of Slayer form than the other way around.
Now that we're in Slayer form, we're ready to take on Prebek. I run away from his Planetar, but after that, I just cut through his defenses. Only PFMW and Absolute Immunity can block the Slayer attack.
Even the Slayer, however, is stymied by some obstacles.
On to City Sushi. The Sahuagin here can be devastating, with access to both Bolts of Biting and Paralytic Bolts. But Imber as a monk is immune to poison, and Imber as the Slayer is immune to stun. There's nothing they can do, really.
I sold off the last of my Potions of Insight, thinking they wouldn't be needed. But there's one life we could have saved had I kept one of those potions.
In the fight with King Ixilthetocal, Imber gets hurt pretty bad. Ixilthetocal uses the Impaler, and Imber has no Stoneskin to block its hideous damage boost.
See that golden glow over Ixilthetocal's head? That's a Greater Whirlwind Attack. And he can land a hit on Imber with a 10 or better. He nearly kills her before she can down a potion to escape.
Villynaty and company do much of the work, but still praise Imber for helping out.
I spotted a bug in the Underdark.
The first journal entry assumes that I took the portal to the Underdark, instead of the City of Caverns.
I switch Imber's script to "Standard Attack" and let her fight the elementals on her own for a while. By the time she's done, she's hit level 20, and therefore has 100 magic resistance. I try out our newly magic-immune Slayer monk on the local critters.
She absolutely destroys everything. The drow are helpless. They can barely land a hit, and their spells are useless besides Fire Shield. Alchra Diagott and all of the imprisoned enemies die before their buffs even come up, but even if I had let them live, it would make no difference--Imber already tore apart the last two epic-level mages she fought just by avoiding the Planetar.
The Kuo-toa can't stun her. The Myconids can't confuse her. And when I go over to the Beholder hive and start whacking away at its denizens, they can't do anything. They just die.
Then, I get an ominous message midway through the fight.
A triple Lower Resistance Spell Trigger. Imber's MR is now at a paltry 16. But a single Potion of Invisibility allows her to slip away and wait until her MR recovers.
Another Beholder pulls the same trick. This time, we react even faster.
The entire hive goes down. All it took was two Potions of Invisibility, of which we have many. No resting, no healing; nothing. I love this.
Imber pays a visit to the Kuo-toa lair, and crushes the local fish people as well. She provokes the drow guards and flees when she hears an alteration spell being cast.
By running away from the fight, she separates the enemies, allowing her to pick them off individually.
Only the Demon Knights posed a threat. Despite Imber's immunity to level drain, her Hardiness spell, and her spectacular AC, the Demon Knights still drained 10 potions from us. It took a fair amount of running and buffing to survive. Our AC against slashing weapons is very poor, as we lack the Golden Girdle.
Back in the Underdark main area, she also suffers badly against the Balor. Though a Potion of Invulnerability will block its slay ability (it uses opcode 55, not 13, and therefore is not a vorpal strike), we have no defense against its Aura of Flaming Death, as I drank our only Potion of Fire Resistance when fighting Irenicus, thinking it was necessary to survive Dragon's Breath (apparently both DB and Comet don't bypass MR in my install), and I have no Ring of Fire Resistance, as mentioned before. It took a lot of potions to break through all of the Balor's Stoneskins.
We begin the Ust Natha questline. The Mind Flayer ambush was easy; the illithids went down quickly. Boz was a problem, dealing a fair amount of damage before I stunned him with Power Attack, but Boz's allies posed little threat. The Beholder that Phaere thought was an Elder Orb also failed to put up a fight.
With low Wisdom, Imber was forced to do the Aboleth's bidding. But Power Attack meant she could do the job quickly.
As usual, we snuck past Taso Kala to avoid fighting the oozes. The Egg Guards went down in a single hit apiece. With nothing else left to fight, Imber fled the Underdark. Maybe I'll come back later for the illithids... I want that Ring of Fire Control. Our resistances won't be quite solid without it.
One of the reasons I rushed to start the main quest was so that I could come back in Slayer form and chop up all of the Chapter 2 enemies. Draug Fea and the sewer dwellers don't even put up a fight. Nor do the Yuan-ti Mages in Mekrath's lair. Nor does Mekrath himself. Nor do any of the Beholders in the Unseeing Eye quest, or the lich I encountered in the Pit of the Faithless. There's simply nothing they could do to me.
As long as I'm around, I awaken the Shade Lich.
Another Planetar. I run away from it once again and use the time to slay Gaal and his buddies. The Planetar vanishes; the Shade Lich teleports after me.
But with no Planetar or Fire Shields to keep me busy, the Shade Lich is doomed. I just whack it until it dies.
I finally rest, and check out the blurry scenery in the dream with Ellesime.
I mentioned before that I disliked the sickly green glow in the background of the 3D movie when you enter Suldanessellar. Bioware had trouble with backgrounds, I think. I like the blurry stuff here, though, for some reason. Pixels can actually improve a look sometimes.
I visit the Bridge District to fight the Elemental Lich. I thought I dropped the Rogue Stone from my inventory before entering one of the doors on the south end of the map, but apparently not, and I clicked on the wrong door. Now I'm in the Twisted Rune area.
I roll with it and walk over the trigger to spawn the enemies. My only buff is a Potion of Invulnerability, as I still thought at the time that that would stop a Planetar's vorpal strikes. I just run around while the enemy warps the fabric of space time and conjures in extraplanar monsters to attack me.
For some reasons, the Sensate Amulet does not actually stop summoned demons from attacking me, even though I checked the item file and saw it had the right opcode.
Layenne and Shangalar both call in Fallen Planetars. They chase me around the table.
I am reminded of a scene from the Simpsons, when Chief Wiggum is chasing Homer around a tree. He asks Lou for backup, and Lou starts helping him out... by chasing Homer in the exact same direction. I run around the chamber in a clockwise loop until the Fallen Planetars finally vanish.
All the while, the enemy throws magic at me and sees it bounce off. Even their summons do nothing; they can't catch up to me. A monk moves awfully fast in the Boots of Speed.
When the Planetars are gone, I kill Vaxall first. Shyressa died before the Planetars came out, leaving Revanek, Shangalar, and Layenne. Revanek pesters me with his crossbow, so I hit him with Power Attack.
Then I wear down Shangalar, leaving only Layenne behind.
But Layenne won't break her invisibility, and despite having 100 in Detect Illusions, I can't reveal her. I bait her out with Kitty and then nail her with Power Attack.
Afterward, I kill the Elemental Lich. Which is to say, I used CTRL-Y on the Planetar, CTRL-R on the lich, and then cut him apart. I already fought this battle before.
Kangaxx is different, however, so I'll fight him fair, to the extent that Slayer form is fair.
He brings out a Fallen Planetar early on, who dispels my Potion of Invulnerability. Imber still makes her save vs. death against the vorpal strike.
Here, it looks like the vorpal strike is coming before the Dispel Magic, which would indicate that potions can block the instant death effect. But in the item files, it's ordered the other way around. Looking back, I'm not sure if Potions of Invulnerability are any good against a Planetar's vorpal strike.
In my install, as usual, mages and priests get HLAs as innate abilities rather than spells, which means each mage only gets one Planetar per day. I like this option because it increases the importance of other level 9 mage and level 7 priest spells. It also means I only have to run away from a Planetar once during this fight. This room also runs in a circle, so the Planetar doesn't have much chance of landing another hit.
When Kangaxx's summons are gone and his Fire Shields wear off, Imber rushes him. He has Stoneskin and cold immunity to protect him, but nothing else. It's just a matter of time.
Kangaxx switches to demi-lich form and tries out his HLAs. He still gets nothing out of them.
His Fire Shield still hits, though. I took a couple swings to take out some Stoneskins, hoping Kangaxx would waste a PFMW spell to stop me, but it just got me hurt.
Finally, his Fire Shield vanishes. Imber activates Power Attack and stun-locks Kangaxx.
Now our regeneration is a little better and our saves are at -2. After we get the Hell bonuses, they'll be at -4 and can't be lowered by Greater Malison.
I love this. We're progressing so fast with so little micromanagement. It's a relief to hit epic levels without slogging through the entire game to get there, and play a solo character that doesn't need to prebuff for every fight.
I just beat SoA and most of its side quests. There was one reload, for an SoA total of 3.3, in Hell, but otherwise, this has been the easiest run of BG2 I've ever done.
Firkraag's lair: Nothing interesting. I just ran up and smacked stuff in the face, and waited out Conster's Fire Shield. I left Firkraag alone, but looking back, killing him would not have been challenging.
The Mind Flayer City: I went back to the Underdark just for this. Basically, I did a lot of running around to make sure the INT drain didn't pile up. The lowest I got was 6 INT; I didn't let Imber get close to any Mind Flayers unless her INT was high or the number of Mind Flayers was low. With the Amulet of Spell Warding, her save vs. spell was at -4, which means Imber was immune to Psionic Maze as well as Psionic Blast. Detonate didn't bypass the Cloak of Mirroring, but Ballistic Attack drained some of our potions.
Bodhi: The Ancient Vampires and Elder Vampires on the first level were harmless. The Slayer form is immune to charm and level drain both, and monks are immune to the Giant Rats' disease. The fight with Bodhi herself was more challenging. Drain Blood reduced Imber's Constitution to 3 and could have slain her had she not run away. To my dismay, Protection from Undead did not keep Manasseh and Hazzerbazzer from attacking me.
It did, however, keep them from attacking Drizzt. This meant I could drink a Potion of Invisibility and lead Drizzt over to the vampires to chop them up. With Bodhi's minions gone, I could safely bring her down with Whirlwind Attacks.
Suldanessellar: For Ramilaat, I triggered his buffs and then ran off to fight golems until his Fire Shields wore off. For the Rakshasas, I triggered their buffs and then ran off to fight golems until their Fire Shields wore off. For the fight in the temple of Rillifane, I ignored Suneer and fought his cronies until his Fire Shield wore off.
Planetars are actually quite doable for Imber. They will automatically cast Heal on themselves when low on health, and we can't disrupt their spells, but Imber can actually just wear them down to nothing in spite of their healing spells. They can only cast Heal so many times. Power Attack can also stun-lock them until they're down, preventing any healing.
I thought Nizidramanii'yt would be a big problem, but he was not. A single scroll of Protection from Acid rendered his breath weapon tolerable, and though I had to pull back a few times to drink potions, his damage output wasn't overwhelming given Imber's AC and Hardiness. Whirlwind Attack sped things up a bit. It would have been very difficult without Hardiness.
The Tree of Life: I ran away from Irenicus and then pounced when his Fire Shields wore off. That was all.
Hell: EE apparently has not fixed one of my favorite tricks. You can get duplicate effects from the Hell rewards. First, you complete whichever Hell trial whose reward you want to duplicate. Take the Tear of Bhaal from that trial (drop any others) over to the door to Irenicus, click, and drop the Tear of Bhaal right after you hear the noise. You'll get the bonus, but since the Tear of Bhaal is on the ground instead of your inventory, you don't lose it, and can rearrange the Hell bonuses to your liking.
I got the evil reward from the Selfishness trial four times over. This grants a +8 bonus to her AC, putting her unbuffed AC at -23. She's almost impossible to hit.
Irenicus still killed her once, during a Time Stop. I thought SCS prevented enemy fighters from attacking during Time Stop, but apparently that's not the default option; you have to set a variable. Rather than setting the variable, however, I just use a Protection from Magic scroll on Irenicus, preventing him from casting Time Stop in the first place. The enemies could barely touch Imber, allowing her to gradually overcome Irenicus' regeneration.
Currently Imber is in ToB. She suffered one reload in the Forest of Mir when she stayed in combat to finish off a Deva when she should have fallen back to drink a potion, and she would have died to some Fire Giants using Critical Strike had she not drunk a Potion of Invisibility, but otherwise she's been doing great. Here's what she looks like at this point.
All her saving throws are all at -4. Her MR is at 118. Her HLAs are: Whirlwind Attack: 1 Greater Whirlwind Attack: 5 Power Attack: 4 Critical Strike: 1 Smite: 1 Hardiness: 7
Notice that her AC is at -25. In vanilla, the AC cap was -24; only damage-specific modifiers could drop it below that. Apparently EE either decreased or removed the AC cap. This means that AC-based tanks would actually be more resilient than resistance-based tanks, even in ToB. The sole exception might be Dwarven Defenders, but Dwarven Defenders' resistances are finite in duration.
Thanks to her abnormally low AC, Imber has been able to tank pretty much everything in the game. She can have Gromnir and his cronies and two Fallen Planetars attacking her all at once, and she barely takes any damage. There are some enemies who can hurt her more reliably than others (land a hit on a 16 instead of a 19, for example), and all enemies land critical hits every now and then, but that's about it as far as the danger goes. As long as Imber uses her high mobility to slip away and drink potions when she starts taking damage, there's really nothing that can harm her.
Her MR blocks almost all spells. Her saving throws block almost all other spell effects. Her immunities block the remainder. And her AC and Hardiness HLAs block physical damage. Hardiness can be removed with Breach, but otherwise all of her defenses are undispellable and permanent. There just isn't a lot left that the enemy can do. On top of that, she has extraordinary damage output, some disabling power in the form of Power Attack, and excellent mobility thanks to her monk bonuses and the Boots of Speed.
I'm kind of taken aback by how strong this thing is. She's almost impossible to kill, and barely requires any maintenance. And she's been like that since the midgame. The only deaths were due to stupid mistakes on my part.
There are other ways to get a magic-immune Slayer build, especially if we stack Hell bonuses, dual-wield Greater Werewolf Tokens, or use UAI or song stacking. Monks, however, get their MR ridiculously early, both in terms of the plot and in terms of XP. I'm not sure which monk kit would be best. A Dark Moon Monk can pull off the Mirror Image trick more easily than another monk using Ilbratha, but that wouldn't cost more than a few reputation points depending on one's luck. Stunning Blow, unlike Frozen Fist and Flaming Fist, can apply to the Slayer attack, so a normal monk may have an advantage here.
Bottom line is, the Slayer form is ridiculously powerful if you use the Mirror Image trick to prolong it. Combine it with the monk class and you get a character who has immunities to almost everything by the middle of the game.
@semiticgod I would just want to be a little bit more specific concerning AC: AC from gear and abilities etc... cap at -20 To this AC you can add another -6 from dex, but it is usually -4 with 18dex, hence the -24 cap you mentioned Lastly, you can add another -2 with the single weapon style. The lowest overall AC you could thus get is -28 (-20 from gear,-6 from dex, -2 from SW style) You can improve this further with Special AC modifier against this or that weapon type, with Girdles and bonus depending on your armor type (and the latter apply even if your armor does not give you the AC it would normally give you without slayer form). In the end you can get -28 "Global AC" and -35 AC against a specific type of weapon As a reminder, Amelyssan, for example has a -12 THAC0, meaning that if you get AC lower than -31 she will hit you only with critical hits. As a monk however you cannot equip an armor so you re capped at -31 or -32 depending on the weapon (some girdle give -4 against a given type, others give -3). Against Slashing however you may only get a golden Girdle as a mage, or in Neera's ToB quest. AC is still reliable even in ToB if you focus on it. You will face trouble against Abazigal, Demogorgon for their stupidly low THAC0, and Dragons because Wing Buffet, but besides that it will be much like 95% damage resistance, avoiding on hit on top of that.
@Arunsun: Ah, so there's no change to the XP cap. I was just under the impression that DEX above 18 only stopped improving your AC if your AC was already sufficiently negative (i.e., that 25 DEX was better than 18 at 0 AC, but not at -20 AC), and that Single Weapon Style didn't bypass the cap.
I did some math and found that you could get a party of three Bards and three Fighter/Clerics to roughly the AC cap by stacking the Improved Bard Song and using DUHM to bump DEX up to 25. Plus, they'd have access to Armor of Faith, Hardiness, Mirror Image, and Stoneskin.
Also, I forgot to mention: Irenicus in Spellhold took too long to appear when I was with the other inmates, so I punched Tiax to speed up Jon-bon's arrival.
I was surprised by seeing Brimstone in the second level of the Fire Giant lair, whom I thought was a Tactics enemy. Imber nearly died to Brimstone's fire breath, as I failed to notice her fire resistance was being lowered. Had she not equipped the Ring of Fire Resistance right before the breath weapon hit, she might not have survived. She retreated and came back when her fire resistance was back to normal, and slew the dragon with Greater Whirlwind Attacks.
Imber got boxed in during the fight with Yaga-Shura, and had to resort to the Rod of Resurrection to heal herself. To my surprise, the fastest way out was not to try and cut through the surrounding enemies--it was to just kill Yaga-shura himself, who had surprisingly little defense against Greater Whirlwind Attack.
We returned to Watcher's Keep and brought down the Statues. I double-checked my install and confirmed the Improved Watcher's Keep component of SCS was there, but the two epic-level mage statues were not. The Statues were therefore pretty easy.
Thanks to Imber's immunities, the 2nd level of WK was easy. The only sticking point was the Chromatic Demon. Basically, I just used Power Attack and Whirlwind Attack on his fire form to sneak in extra cold damage, but the Efreeti also helped by using its fire spells when the demon was in ice form. I also had the Book of Daily Spell on hand for his ice form, but the demon died before it became necessary.
None of the demons in the Watcher's Keep maze posed a serious threat. The various fear effects, charm effects, Lightning Bolts, and poison effects failed to harm Imber, and the enemy's melee attacks seldom made contact. Aesgareth might have been a problem had I not stunned him with Smite (which stuns without a save, unlike Power Attack) and followed up with Greater Whirlwind Attack.
Just for the hell of it, I fought the demilich. Which is to say, I killed its Planetar with Power Attack and then left the room while Imber fought the demilich itself. When I came back, he was dead.
I left Saladrex alone. He's an okay guy.
Imber died once against the Mind Flayers. She was at 11 INT and then suddenly died, so the enemy must have landed three simultaneous critical hits. I reloaded (reload count: 2) and used Greater Whirlwind Attack to get rid of the Mind Flayers early on. Level 5 opened up.
The Spirit Warrior challenged followed the common formula, grabbing the scroll, wand, and potion before hurrying off to face the mummy. The green dragon was a non-issue, as its breath weapon dealt poison damage--normally a huge problem, but not for a monk. The orc horde used nonmagical weapons and posed no threat. Finally, for the monster summoning room with the four-colored pillars, I just summoned the first group of each color and deposited the first orbs I got. You don't have to summon all of the monsters; just the first group of each color.
Azamantes did nothing. The Rilmanis did nothing. Then came the fight with Xei Win Toh et al.
The Huntress can see through invisibility and has -14 THAC0 with her Arrows of Piercing. Since a monk's AC bonus vs. missile attacks is erased by Slayer form, Imber had some trouble. She had to don the Belt of Inertial Barrier for the missile damage resistance. It was a mistake in retrospect to let the two guys who buried Tirdir run away; the Boots of Avoidance could have helped here.
Twice, Imber had to use the Rod of Resurrection to heal herself. Then, midway through the battle, I noticed that the rod had dropped down to 1 charge, from 8. I only used it twice. Later, I checked my inventory and saw that both of our Rods of Resurrection had vanished.
The Hive Mother's Anti-Magic Ray apparently drains item charges.
I deem this unacceptable. Preventing me from using a magic item is one thing, but permanently destroying two of the most useful items in the entire game, without a saving throw, bypassing magic resistance, without any defense against it, even invisibility, is not okay. Beholders in SCS take away the Shield of Balduran, but they don't break it half.
I find the spell file and reduce the probability of the item drain effect from 100 to 0. Tweaking the rods so they don't vanish when drained, or dropping the rods on the ground before the fight, also would have worked.
The fight is pretty simple after that. I run around, fading in and out of sight, draining HLAs from the enemy fighters, and Arrows of Piercing and Called Shot castings from the Huntress. I lose many potions in the process, but eventually the enemy is out of their best options. Xei Win Toh, unlike the Huntress, cannot see through invisibility, and though the Hive Mother can as well, she doesn't follow Imber when we run away, so we use stealth to lure the Huntress to a secluded place, stun her with Power Attack, and kill her with Whirlwind Attack. We do the same for Xei Win Toh, Ameralis Zauvirr, the Hive Mother, and finally Nalmissra.
ToB reloads: 1, or 2 if you count the Anti-Magic Ray tweak.
I didn't feel like fighting Demogorgon, so I didn't bother with him. I just sealed him away. Sometime I should really try him out, since it's been ages since I fought him and I don't remember if I've ever fought him in SCS, but from a normal RP and powergaming perspective, it always makes more sense to seal him away: you avoid danger, stop the evil, and get more XP.
On to Abazigal's lair. Draconis greets us, and I notice that sometimes your dialogue options can be pretty odd-sounding.
Draconis didn't put up much of a fight. He just drained some potions out of us.
Anadramatis is little different. S/he tries to lower Imber's MR with Pierce Shield, but a single Potion of Magic Protection ruins the effort. We get a little amulet from Anadramatis that blocks wing buffet, but I haven't seen a single dragon use it against me since this run began... maybe because Imber is immune to unconsciousness. Like before, I took very few screenshots, as these fights were relatively straightforward.
We do, however, have a problem with Olinissimous, Zirimanat'ryl, Ithy'nassendra, and Carnifex. SCS adds them in as part of the Abazigal's Lair edits. Olinissimous and Zirimanat'ryl are black dragons who confront you when you return to the area after fetching rope from Amkethran (the monk inside Abazigal's lair no longer carries it). They come to avenge Draconis' death and attack simultaneously.
I use a Protection from Acid scroll to block their acid breath, but only after they use Remove Magic on Imber, which ensures that her acid resistance is there when they use their breath weapon. Like with the other dragons, Imber uses Hardiness and gradually whittles down Olly and Ziri, using another scroll of Protection from Acid when they hit her with Remove Magic. I use only a single Whirlwind Attack during the fight, preferring to conserve them for a later battle.
After they die, Ithy'nassendra arrives. His breath weapon deals poison damage, and therefore he doesn't bother using it on Imber. He also drains some of our potions, but otherwise isn't a problem.
Carnifex is the last and strongest dragon, a red dragon. His abilities are only marginally better than the other dragons, but he's much more relentless, using Remove Magic and Breach many times throughout the battle, constantly removing Imber's Hardiness spells and dispelling her Protection from Fire scrolls. However, because I delay using the scrolls, she eventually ends up with fire immunity from the Ring of Fire Control and a scroll, and doesn't have to worry about Carnifex's breath weapon for the duration of the battle.
Carnifex, however, hits very hard and very fast, being able to land a hit on a 14 or higher. We have to use several charges of the Rod of Resurrection and many of our potions to stay alive. Also, Carnifex re-casts Stoneskin more frequently and regenerates at the same rate we do (2 HP per round, which makes a big difference in a long fight like this), which gives him a lot more time to hurt us. Finally, we bring him down.
I didn't feel like fighting Demogorgon, so I didn't bother with him. I just sealed him away. Sometime I should really try him out, since it's been ages since I fought him and I don't remember if I've ever fought him in SCS, but from a normal RP and powergaming perspective, it always makes more sense to seal him away: you avoid danger, stop the evil, and get more XP.
Actually, while you are right about avoid danger, stop the evil etc., you'll get more exp if you fight Him.
Seal Him: 1. You get down, chat with Him, use the scroll = 80000 quest exp 2. Talk to Him again, get out, send Odren & Co to see His demise by themselves, get another scroll from Specter (25000 exp), use it to seal both Demi and Helmites = 80000 quest exp.
So total 160000 quest exp +25000 exp
Fight Him: 1. You get down, chat with Him, use the scroll = 80000 quest exp 2. Fight Him immediately (without going outside) = 100000 quest exp 3. Talk to Odren after that = 20000 quest exp
Total 200000 quest exp +36000 exp for Demi himself not counting his Demon buddies (He could call them indefinitely).
The eyeballs (Sentinals or whatever) in Abazigal's lair were a problem until I donned the Cloak of Mirroring, which blocked their nonmagical spell damage. Some Beholders took it, but by that time there was only one eyeball left. I let Bondari fight the other Beholders for me.
Abazigal hit for 30-40 damage per hit in his human form and hit me with great frequency. I had to run frequently to drink potions, as I could not heal myself as quickly as he could deal damage. In his dragon form, I ran away from him until his Righteous Magic and Improved Haste spells wore off. After that, he was like any other dragon.
At the entrance to Sendai's Enclave, Imber got hit by an enemy Balor's Implosion spell and died. She got hit again on the reload (I thought an enemy cleric cast the spell, so I didn't see it coming the second time, either), but this time she survived. She had no Ring of Free Action for some reason--maybe I sold it off, thinking there were no sources of paralysis or hold effects that could bypass saving throws and MR--so I went back to Amkethran to buy back a couple of Potions of Freedom that I'd sold earlier, though I've ended up drinking neither.
She also died (3rd reload for ToB) when some drow surrounded her and attacked her with Greater Whirlwind Attack. Later I learned that Smite is an excellent way to avoid getting boxed in, as it knocks away drow and other melee opponents without a save.
Ogremoch cast Stoneskin once per round, so Imber could only deal cold damage to him for most of the fight. Eventually, she tried Quivering Palm, and Ogremoch went down. It would have taken ages to kill him otherwise, as he appears to be able to block 10 attacks per round, and Imber has 5.
Imber suffered another death (4th reload) against Sendai's Mind Flayers. She failed to minimize her exposure to Mind Flayer attacks, and eventually the Mind Flayers were able to land enough critical hits to kill her.
Imber died twice more in the fight against Sendai. I might have hit a brick wall here.
In my install, Sendai's clones attack together, not separately. Also, we have to deal with a couple of drow fighters, each of whom have HLAs. The map is very small and Imber is easily boxed in, even when Teleport Field is there for her to move her around. Smite would work, but the drow will have more HLAs when they recover--you can only choose Smite as an HLA once--and Smite takes away valuable time needed for healing. Even at -26 AC and with 40% damage resistance from Hardiness, and 120 max HP thanks to Slayer form, the Sensate Amulet, and Tsu-zan's Bracers, Imber cannot heal herself quickly enough to survive the drow's attacks, even if she uses the Rod of Resurrection every round to do so.
I just restarted the fight and used CTRL-Q on those drow fighters. The Record screen shows his THAC0 was -31. After consoling the party to WK, I find that they do 40 damage per hit when using Kai.
I check the character's base file, SENFOD01.cre. They are level 22 Kensais with +7 to hit and damage as passive bonuses, intended to replicate Kensai bonuses of that level plus another +4 to hit for some reason. They dual-wield +3 katanas and have 5 pips in katanas. Also, they have 16 STR.
I do the math. Based on the character file, their max damage per hit should be 26; their main hand THAC0 should be -17. They have an erroneous +14 to hit and damage, as if their passive bonuses were tripled, or their kensai kits applied double the normal kit bonuses for level 22, which stacked with their passive bonuses.
This is a bug. I'll discount the two deaths in the Sendai fight, as she died in both cases to these two drow fighters. They were dealing three times as much damage as they were supposed to. I'll try again later.
Yay, though I walk through the valley of goblins...
When they were only a few hours from Kuldahar, the expedition was ambushed by frost giants. The monsters caused an avalanche that destroyed everyone except Gudrun and Celebrian and their companions. They only survived because it was their turn on forward scout duty. Once out of the danger zone, the party met a hermit who pointed out the way to Kuldahar and warned of goblins.
The party made their way East, looking for the old mill the hermit had told them about. They were attacked by groups of goblins three times before they found it, but all together, the fights only cost them one healing potion and one cure light wounds. Now that the road to Kuldahar was clear*, Celebrian suggested exploring the old mill. She had seen something near the entrance and wanted to see what it was. It turned out to be a goblin marshal, muttering and holding it's head like it was in pain. Gudrun decided against killing it, since it wasn't actually threatening anything.
* So far, this has been the biggest change in going no-reload. Now that I can't just reload if something goes wrong, I find myself thinking: "Where's my line of retreat? What's my go-to-hell plan?"
Is it just me or does that goblin look like an alien?
The marshal had said something about his men looting the mill, so Celebrian blessed the party before they went inside. A group of orcs demanded tribute, their answer was a sleep spell from Dunathain. One of the creatures resisted the spell and lunged at the mage. He led it outside and the rest of the party followed, bringing down the orc right in front of the marshal, who gave no sign he'd even seen what happened. They went back in and dealt with the sleepers. On the bodies, they found a scroll of blur and an unidentified wand.
Down the stairs, the party surprised a group of goblins, and quickly dispatched them. They found a young boy hiding in a closet, they offered to escort him to Kuldahar, but he said he knew the way to the temple of Ilmater and would run on ahead. The group climbed into the mill tower and were ambushed in close quarters by goblins led by two marshal archers. While Gudrun drew fire and kept the main force at bay, the others fought desperately against the goblins who had flanked them. Finally, they killed the goblin who had been attacking Dunathain, and the mage was able to put the rest to sleep.
Both Gudrun and Darien had been hit several times, and had depleted the party's supply of healing. They decided to go on to Kuldahar and come back later to finish clearing the valley.
Chapter 1, I can start playing the game now.
Gudrun - Undead Hunter lv 2 - 20 hp - 1 death Darien - Swashbuckler lv 3 - 21 hp Celebrian - Avenger lv 2 - 14 hp Dunathain - Wild Mage lv 2 - 8 hp
Total raise cost - 100 gp
MVP - Dunathain - His sleep spell got the party out of a pair of tight quarters fights.
Next up - The Roots of the Problem or Tree's a Crowd
Comments
I'll add to it overtime, of course. For now, feel free to check out my Bhaalspawn's character sheet. I often find that the most interesting part..! https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/44302/maliel-the-bhaalspawn-recklessheart#latest
Know that an RP-heavy run is actually very welcome here.
Nothing beats a good narrative, not even the best modding setup.
The Alliance
A no-reload 4-character modded IWD run
Walking around Easthaven
The leader of Easthaven, an old warrior named Hrothgar welcomed the group to town and asked them to come to his house later. Gudrun helped out the tavern owner by ridding her cellar of a giant insect infestation.The party then began to explore the town, Gudrun insisted they pay their respects at the rather ornate temple of Tempus. She nearly got into an argument with head priest Everard over the sacrifice of Jerrod, but she held her tongue. It would do the mission no good to alienate the local clergy and relations between the worshipers of Tempus and the Church of Helm have always been a bit touchy. Celebrian bought a potion bag and Dunathain bought a scroll case from the temple gift shop and the group made their way back to the town center.
From Everard they learned that a messenger had arrived from the town of Kuldahar asking for help against an unspecified threat and Hrothgar was putting together an expedition. Celebrian hoped that Hrothgar was going to invite the group to join. She knew there was a strong druid presence in Kuldahar. If anyone would know about a disturbance in the natural order it would be them. Gudrun agreed that a town experiencing an unknown threat would be a good place to start their investigations.
Near the boat yard, Gudrun struck up a conversation with a man name Jhonen. He was plagued by dreams of a blue-skinned woman singing to him. Gudrun told him she'd try to help, but cautioned him there probably wasn't anything she could do. Amazingly, when exploring near the beach later that day, the group met the lake spirit responsible for the dreams. After delivering an heirloom sword to Jhonen, the spirit gave Gudrun a large freshwater pearl, then disappeared.
The party decided to see if they could sell the pearl and perhaps buy some supplies for the upcoming trip. On their way to the shop, a man named Apsel came up to them and asked for help. It seems a wolf had gotten into his shop and was destroying the place, Gudrun promised they would see to it as soon as their errand was done. They hurried on to Pomab's Emporium. Once there, the proprietor was rude and insulting, but seemed a bit put-out by Gudrun's bright smile and impeccable politeness. As she explained to Celebrian later, every noblewoman learns at an early age how to deal with obnoxious, titled twits. They sold the gem and purchased ammunition. Darien bought a gem bag. Gudrun eyed the composite longbow and magic quivers longingly, but even with the pearl, the team's finances were too tight to justify the expense. Back at Apsel's shop, Darien was able to open the door despite the broken key jammed in the lock. Gudrun entered first with the rest of the party behind her. The maddened wolf attacked immediately. Gudrun shot an arrow at it, then dropped her bow and fended off the beast with her sword while her companions continued to pelt it with arrows and stones. Finally it fell, and they went outside to inform Apsel. He rewarded them with a few coins and fine dagger of his own crafting which replaced Celebrian's ordinary blade.
The party's first kill. (The beetles don't count.)
Further up the coast, a young boy ran up and claimed that monsters had stolen his fish. They moved forward cautiously and found a goblin raiding party. They peppered the creatures with arrows and stones to draw them into battle, and Gudrun fought the survivors hand-to-hand. Victory cost them a sleep spell and a cure light, but netted them a small cache of gold and a few weapons to sell. They gave what was left of the fish to the boy and decided it was time to see what Hrothgar wanted.
As expected Hrothgar recruited them for the expedition, but while he was getting the rest of the force ready to travel, he asked the party to look into the problem of an overdue caravan. They decided to rest first to regain the spells used against the goblins.
A cave full of orcs
In the morning, they left town by the East road. After fighting past some wolves, they came upon the caravan's wagons guarded by an orc. They made quick work of the lone sentry, then entered the nearby cave that seemed to be the humanoids' lair. Two guards were stationed inside the entrance, but they were dispatched without raising an alarm. Darien scouted ahead and located another pair of guards. After the party killed them, he snuck ahead once again and found a much larger force.In a large room at the end of the corridor, were at least eight orcs, including grunts, archers and at least one who looked like a spellcaster. Gudrun laid out her plan of attack: Celebrian would cast an entangle spell at the entrance of the room, the party would move up with Gudrun in the lead and use missile weapons to take down the orcs one by one. Gudrun would melee any who got through the entangle, and Dunathain would look for likely targets for a sleep spell. If the entangle didn't work, Dunathain would fire off a sleep spell, and the party would run for the exit.
With that the group moved into position, Celebrian cast her spell, then it all went wrong.
As they move toward the edge of the entanglement, the orc shaman made his appearance and began casting a spell. Gudrun moved forward to get a better shot and managed to disrupt his casting. In her haste, she moved too close and found herself caught by Celebrian's vines.* Now the trap she had planned closed around her and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Two archers were pelting her with arrows and to make matters worse, the shaman was striding toward her as if the vines didn't exist. The rest of the party was trying to keep the enemy off of her, but they couldn't reach the archers without entangling themselves and the shaman kept coming even after being hit a number of times.
Just as Gudrun broke free and was ordering the retreat, an arrow caught her in the back of the neck and she went down. Her uncle dashed to her side, threw her body over his shoulder and ran for the entrance.** The other two were close on his heels, and behind them, the shaman came relentlessly on.
The survivors ran for the road to Easthaven, but just before they were out of sight, the shaman exited the cave and continued his pursuit. Darien looked back and realized the enraged orc was actually badly injured. He told the others to keep going, then turned and began firing arrows at their pursuer. As the shaman reached him, he dropped his bow and unlimbered his sword and buckler. The spellcasters now joined in with their slings and the shaman soon fell. Darien was disappointed to see that orc shamen are apparently ascetics, as the corpse carried nothing but a quarterstaff.
Free of pursuit, the group made their way to the temple, where Everard raised Gudrun, at the cost of most of the party's gold. That night, Celebrian memorized bless instead of entangle. Much more cautious, the party returned to the cave. The orcs were obviously more cautious also, as soon as the party entered, they heard the tramp of heavy boots coming closer. The entire force that had been in the central room came boiling around the corner. The shape of the corridor worked to the party's advantage and they managed to kill two of the orcs before Gudrun was forced to put away her bow and start swinging her greatsword. Still, it was a tough fight as the orc archers hung back while the grunts surged forward. Dunathain put the archers to sleep and Celebrian healed Gudrun while in the midst of the battle. Soon the floor was littered with orc bodies.
Darien resumed scouting ahead and found a few gems and scroll of protection from petrification. Unfortuately, Dunathain failed to copy it into his spellbook. He was philisophical about it though, remarking that it's not like the party's going to wander into a field full of basilisks.
Darien discovered more sentries to the North and West, the group defeated them in detail, exhausting their spells and their single healing potion. Gudrun called a halt, to go further was too much of a risk. They made their way back to town and sold their loot, garnering enough cash to purchase two healing potions. (Lux-u-ry****)
Back at the cave, Darien found the orcs leader, an ogre surrounded by bodyguards. Gudrun kept the plan simple, Celebrian blessed the group, then they rushed in with Gudrun in the lead. As soon as he cleared the doorway, Dunathain cast sleep, putting down the ogre and all but two of the orcs. The party killed them quickly, then started in on the sleeping orcs, saving the ogre for last.
Unfortunately, the ogre woke up just as the bless wore off. Worse, Gudrun was in melee range. She tried to fight, but was clearly outclassed. She changed tactics and ran away. Even wounded she was faster than the lumbering brute, and she taunted him to keep his attention as she led it in circles around the room. Finally it took one missile too many and slumped to the floor. Darien complemented her on her vocabulary while Dunathain muttered something about washing her mouth out with soap. Gudrun only grinned as Celebrian healed her.
Let's go flyyyy a kite...
The fight provided the best loot so far, a winter wolf pelt, a scroll of horror and a nice pile of gold, plus some documents from the traders. Dunathain tucked the scroll away, saying there's no use trying to write it to his spellbook, he can't cast it yet anyway. Gudrun thought about heading back to town, since the party was down to one sleep, one cure light, and no healing potions, but Darien reported there were only two small groups of orcs left, though one of them had a shaman.
They rushed the first group, killing them quickly and found another chest. This one had a magic ring of resistance and nearly 100 gold. Next they attacked the shaman. A sleep spell put the bodyguards out of action and the shaman didn't last too long on his own. The bodyguards died quickly and the party headed back to town.
Hrothgar is happy, level ups for everyone!
They took the list to Pomab. Darien and Celebrian bought magic quivers. They also bought 5 healing potions from the temple and then rested to fill their new spell slots. Next up - A pleasant walk to Kuldahar or Goblins in the mist
I have a good feeling about this run. I'm enjoying the early game and have big plans about the late game. I think this is going to be good.
Imber is much more Chaotic Neutral than anything else, but she can take on whatever alignment she needs to satisfy a job requirement. I normally don't like lawful or evil alignments, but I'll put up with this one.
Imber sneaks around the Duergar for the most part, only fighting the mandatory group northeast of the Otyugh room. As is my wont, I have her delay our only rest period for as long as possible. I finally let her rest when she's triggered an awful trap to get the Portal Key. Her wounds take a long vacation to heal.
Luckily for us, the golems who noticed us trigger the alarm gave her enough time to sleep. Unfortunately, once she's awake, they come in and pummel her so badly that I deem her incapable of completing the dungeon. Since I don't want such an early reload, I restart instead.
This time, we begin in much better shape. What were we missing before?
No, it's not the Bag of Holding I just cheated in. Before, she had two castings of Vampiric Touch alongside her Dark Moon Vampiric Touch spell. Now she has two Draw Upon Holy Might spells. This is important because, as a monk with only 18 STR, she can't open certain chests that contain a lot of valuable potions. DUHM is a huge boost to her survivability. The resulting 20 STR will also dramatically improves her damage output, and conveniently enough, the mandatory Duergar hallway is right next to some locked potion chests in the Otyugh room, allowing us to do both tasks with one casting.
Imber nearly dies again, and takes an extra long nap to compensate.
Arguably, she should be trying to escape the dungeon. But she's already got a comfy bed right here. What's the rush?
The Mephit Portals collapse in two hits each thanks to DUHM, rendering my biggest worry a non-issue. But there's still one problem left: I've noticed before in EE that I couldn't find a Girdle of Bluntness in the Temple District. If that's true, the only one in the game is on the second level of Chateau Irenicus, in the northeasternmost room with a Duergar Mage in it.
There's actually a convenient cover for us as we're going in.
You can prepare short-duration buffs behind that screen and neither group of Duergar will see you. Imber prepares DUHM and Clammy Hands, or whatever you call it when Dark Moon Monks deal cold damage with their fists. The cold damage should disrupt any of the mage's spells, and it should only take two or three hits to do him in.
Unfortunately, even with a +6 bonus to its saving throw, Chromatic Orb can still be a game-ender.
I start over, again with the double DUHM charges. This time, I use a high-damage followup to make sure the mage doesn't stick around.
A Horror spell then clears the way to the exit.
I'm really enjoying the monk's high movement rate. I love high mobility characters. It lets you do crazy, epic stuff like grabbing that Web scroll in the circus before that werewolf gets in your way.
I hate that scroll-blocking Werewolf.
We go back to Viconia and charm one of the fanatics--the cleric, specifically, so we can get him to waste his spells before the fight begins.
The charm effect from the Ring of Human Influence lasts 100 seconds, or just under 17 rounds. Plenty of time to drain the target's spells and cause some trouble at least in the first few rounds of combat with any of his or her friends.
We slay the Killer Mimic of the Umar Hills after pre-buffing with a Potion of Freedom and head to Trademeet. An evil halfling throws a fit after we refuse to help him do evil stuff.
Despite Imber's nominally evil alignment, I don't want to do a whole bunch of bad stuff in this run. It always feels wrong.
MVP: ...Imber.
Most Valuable Spell: DUHM, for getting us potions.
We do still have to turn visible once to get a group of trolls to move out of the way.
Imber's stealth skills are still pretty weak, so she often goes visible against her will. Thankfully, there's a spot just south of Kyland Lind where you can hide.
But Imber accidentally attracted an Ettercap on the way--this otherwise would have been an okay hiding space, as it keeps you out of range of all nearby enemies--and some other critters join the chase. The Ring of Air Control once again keeps us safe.
Imber's invisibility will only last 10 rounds, so she needs to find a spot where there are no enemies, or else she won't be able to hide or rest. This is the spot.
I never noticed these spots before. I also didn't know you could walk around Adratha's little tower and walk right past the Shambling Mounds who are blocking the bridge.
Cernd kills Faldorn, and we take all the credit. Lord Logan Coinpurse is impressed with our masterful delegating abilities and gives us a big cash money wad. But we still need to kill some wealthy Calishite djinns to save the town's economy (I don't know how an extraplanar critter like a djinni would be from Calimshan, but whatever).
We get ambushed by Suna Seni and her gang. A Horror spell from afar disperses all of them but Suna Seni herself and the mage. I lead the former over to the southwest so I won't get mobbed as quickly when the others recover.
Emotion: Hopelessness is a great spell, but even SCS enemies don't know how to optimize the EE version, which lets . The smartest thing they could have done--which would have absolutely destroyed me--would be for them to leave Imber alone, let the rest of their group recover from Horror, then throw disablers at me, conjure summons, throw on some buffs, and surround me before they actually hit me. This would ensure that I was trapped as well as disabled several times over, and also ensure that they were at full strength and could concentrate all their power on me at once.
Instead, Suna Seni just hits me once, and that amazing spell accomplishes nothing other than letting Suna Seni land a single hit. SCS AI is excellent, but they're not very good at capitalizing on disablers... maybe because that requires setting a complex list of priorities.
Anyway... Suna Seni crumpled to pure damage, and Imber turned her attention to disabling the remaining enemies.
Clammy Hands kept the mage in check. It's a great way of disrupting spells, as it offers no save and bypasses MR. It doesn't hurt that monks get unusually high APR.
Right after this fight, we run into the Renfeld ambush. It's an easier fight, but we're low on resources. Even so, the enemy doesn't do much. Remove Magic isn't that devastating of a spell when it wakes you up from Command. After bringing down the mage and cleric, neither of whom had any buffs besides Mirror Image, Imber takes control of the remaining thief and gets him to set a trap for himself.
That was fun.
I grab the Nymph's Cloak again and use it against Sanasha. But this time, her Fireball fails to kill Prebek, and Prebek retaliates. Sanasha gets knocked out.
I don't know what he was trying to accomplish with that Invisibility spell. Sanasha was no threat to him, and he didn't know Imber was there; she was invisible. Imber fails to reveal him with her paltry 20 Detect Illusions skill, but she doesn't have to. He breaks his own invisibility, and fails a save against the Ring of Human Influence.
Sanasha is out of spells and therefore cannot help me hurt Prebek. After we kill Sanasha, we turn Prebek's spells against him. This guy just has no luck with saving throws.
I thought I had assigned him to throw his last Minute Meteor at Sanasha during the charm effect, but when he turns hostile, he can still throw another one.
It matters little. He's out of spells and allies, and his HP is quick to follow.
We get inside the Harper Hold. I always liked that you can grab the bird from outside its cage.
On the way out, I notice there's a huge black spot in the Docks District map.
Most Valuable Item: Ring of Air Control, for keeping us from getting swarmed by critters in the Druid Grove.
We then rest, because the charm effect lasts 12 hours, which gives us another use of the charm. I assign Imber to enter the tent, and as she goes, I also assign Taquee to attack Imber, which means he follows her. Now we have Taquee inside the tent. The Nymph Cloak adds to our advantage once more.
They waste their beneficial spells (Improved Haste, Stoneskin, and Invisibility) on Imber and themselves, and use their only hostile spells against their friend, Faafirah.
We get a scare when we turn on Taquee and he lands a critical on Imber. Apparently he could kill her in two hits if he got lucky.
When Taquee is down, we use the Efreeti Bottle on Khan Zahraa.
Finally, to deal with Huntley and the debating philosophers, I lead Huntley aside and butcher him out of sight.
@semiticgod A dark moon monk! This is a character I've always wanted to try in a no-reload game. Have fun with Imber!
@Ygramul Noooo! Boo is too young to have to avenge Minsc! Props to you for continuing the game.
@recklessheart Maybe seeing how someone starts his own documented run through the game is the best testament this thread is a wonderful thing. Good luck to Maliel!
We reach the dryad queen, Vaelasa, and receive some troubling news.
We can't free Irenicus' dryads--the acorns aren't in our inventory. I know we picked them up; we killed Ilyich and sold off his armor, so I know I looted the body. It seems like the Bag of Holding somehow ate the acorns... and if it did, we've likely lost a lot of other stuff as well. I console in the acorns to complete the quest, then go get Hexxat from the Copper Coronet to start the Dragomir questline. I get a disturbing message on the way out.
At first, I'm puzzled, because my reputation is fine, but then I remember the Radiant Heart is out for my blood. I tried to get Garren Windspear to help me before, but the game crashed when Plath Rededge teleported in to ambush us. I try again.
This time, the fight begins without any crashes. But something even weirder happens instead.
That's just silly.
Once Garren clears our name, we go to the Graveyard District and enter Dragomir's tomb. Hexxat dies after being paralyzed by some Shadow Fiends, so we have to raise her later. To keep the Shadow Fiends from paralyzing Imber, Imber uses Arbane's Sword against them. Dragomir goes down under pressure from both Imber and the Efreeti. The Efreeti doesn't last long, but it has lots of damage output, at least by early game standards.
The Efreeti is especially great for clerics, who never have the Protection from Fire or MGOI spells necessary to block the Efreeti's fire magic.
As a solo melee character without Teleport Field or the Ring of the Ram (or a similar displacement method, like Smite or the Staff of the Ram or Repulse Undead or Dimension Door), Imber is at very high risk of being boxed in. This makes it imperative that we the Ring of Air Control or Potions of Invisibility for emergency situations. When Imber gets trapped by the slavers, she uses the RoAC to activate her buffs.
The enemy moves around when she vanishes, opening up an escape route, but even if that hadn't happened, her buffs would let her tear a hole in the wall and get away.
As a monk, Imber is immune to haste, but her boosted movement rate allows her to run past the Prismatic Spray trap without getting hit by the spell itself. We can therefore safely access the rest of the area without immunity to petrification.
We purchased Ras earlier in Trademeet. It's a very pricy sword, but it allows us to draw out enemy mage's buffs. Without MGOI, even the mages are vulnerable to Fireball.
Due to negligence on my part, Imber uses a sling on one of the wizards without having Improved Invisibility active. This means the mage can nail her with a double Charm Person Minor Sequencer, and her aura isn't clear enough to drink a potion before it hits. Only her saving throws are there to protect her.
Despite there being two Charm Person spells in the sequencer, Imber only has to make one saving throw. I've noticed this in my own sequencers as well, and with the Wand of Lightning trick: if two spell effects of the same type hit at the same time, they seem to only require one saving throw. I'm not sure why.
The Efreeti comes in to fix the situation. Genies, demons, celestials, and dragons all cast spells instantly in SCS v30, which means even the slowest, heaviest spells come out quick. The rationale is that they use special powers, not proper spells, and hence cannot be disrupted.
We rest to get back the Efreeti before facing the Trolls, as we have no means of dealing fire damage without it.
The Efreeti also cuts short one of the Copper Coronet fights.
If you kill him before he can talk to you, he won't have time to call for help, and the enemy mages won't spawn. Turns out he's got really low health, so it's especially easy.
Most Valuable Item: The Efreeti Bottle.
Normally, vampires spawn in to kill Sansuki right after he speaks to you. This time, however, the vampire does nothing, as he spawned right behind a stand, which blocks his view of Sansuki.
I'm a little concerned about our emergency options, so I go to Roger to get some potions. On the way, I decide to slay the Rakshasa with the Cloak of the Sewers. After draining his better spells with Ras and the Efreeti, I shut down his spellcasting with Frozen Fist.
Frozen Fist lasts 10 rounds, so it's almost a constant effect ability.
Even though our only method of killing Trolls is the Efreeti, I go to the De'Arnise Hold on the grounds that there won't be Spirit Trolls if I visit the place early. I was wrong, and it seems that these ones are even worse than the normal kind.
They can go invisible even after collapsing. You have to remove their invisibility or use an area-effect spell just to kill them.
We have to rest after every group of Trolls to make sure we have enough fire magic to finish them off once they go down. Eventually I get tired of it and started using CTRL-Y. I don't even care if I lose the experience; it's just not worth the hassle.
Worse yet, the Trolls start to respawn in huge numbers. Even after clearing out the entire second floor of Trolls, more of them start popping up and rushing in to attack me.
This isn't okay. Trolls regenerate; they don't come back from the dead. This screenshot doesn't look like much, but over the course of the fight with Glaicas, at least 20 Trolls rushed into the room, one after the other. And the intelligence you receive earlier says there are only about 30 Trolls in total. Respawning and SCS' calls for help aren't supposed to flood a single room with an entire map's worth of enemies. I cheat them away so I can fight Glaicas in peace. I would have gotten over 50,000 XP if I had fought them all, but it's nowhere near worth it.
I also got surprised by another Spirit Troll on the roof. Looking back at the dialog box after killing it, I noticed that it made 9 attack rolls while Imber made only 5. Imber has 3 APR. Spirit Trolls vanish so frequently that they have more than double the attacks of a normal hasted fighter--and that's when I only have one Spirit Troll to target with just one character; in bigger groups, the APR advantage would be even more extreme.
Have I mentioned that I don't like Spirit Trolls and their invisibility? Because I don't. If you have to fight them, don't use weapons. Just spam Holy Smite, Fireball, and Sunfire. It'll save you a lot of trouble.
We hit level 13 on the bottom level and gain access to Quivering Palm. After drinking a Potion of Clarity to ward off confusion, Imber tries it out on the Umber Hulks.
It's very unreliable, however, in a low- or no-reload run. Also, the effect only lasts 5 seconds, which generally gives Imber only 2 attack rolls to make it count.
TorGal was a mess. His regeneration and resistances are extremely high. In order to very slowly bring him down, Imber had to drink a Potion of Invulnerability for -13 effective AC against TorGal's piercing attacks, add on all of her buffs, and drink almost half her supply of Potions of Extra Healing just to outlast him. We didn't bother his buddies--we entered the room invisible to lure TorGal away. It's one of the tricks I've been using to minimize Imber's exposure to harm. I'm more tolerant of tricks when the party is weak.
Since Imber is immune to poison by now, we can take on Pai'Na safely. First, the Efreeti clears up the spiders.
Pai'Na poisons the Efreeti, which is good news for us. Every single point of poison damage triggers its Fire Shield, so Pai'Na suffers a lot more damage than the Efreeti.
Kitty didn't do so well in her first fight, but I love her anyway.
She's only there as a decoy, anyway, to draw out enemy spells and such.
Imber has just hit level 14 and now has 42 MR. She can achieve near-immunity to magic using a single Potion of Magic Protection, and near-guaranteed saves with a Potion of Invulnerability.
Most Valuable Item: The Efreeti Bottle once again. It's an excellent tool for solo runs.
Pablo, the the half-orc.......
Pablo the first had a short story. He ended up as a statue at the basilisk meadow because of a mistake from my part.
So i went on with Pablo the second!
He stampede through the basilisk with the help of the hungry ghoul, Korax.
After Korax couldn't resist the delicious beef before it, Pablo ended its existence with some sorrow.
This time the young adventure party wasn't safe from the fury of the Bhaal-bull either:
After he had strenghten his calves at the lizard-land, Pablo strolled to the Nashkel mines. Along the journey he escort a crazy man to the Nashkel temple:
In the mines he met a somewhat similar person. He was half-orc and cleric too.
And dead, after Pablo left.
Back in Nashkell a monk with the name Rasaad helped Pablo to dispose another assasin.
But stealing the letal blow from the son of Bhaal, the Lord of Murder's successor was not a good idea.
After a breef visit in Beregost:
Pablo helped a farmer to get back his dead son... because he is such a pure hearted person.
He joined to the bandits, only to acquire some knowlede about the iron throne hidout in the cloakwood area.
On the road he only stopped to stamp some spiders.
At the mine entrance the assasins were held and butted.
It has all went well until Pablo reached Davaeorn's chamber. I remembered wrong, that the third trap was about summoning the doomguards.
I tried to rest, but a guard awakened me. Then tried to move to a more secure place. And i rememberd the number of the traps wrong too. The lightning damage of the last trap made steak from Pablo.
Otherwise Pablo the second was doomed anyway. If you look at his character sheet at the top, you can see, that the custom helm, what i made him from the Helm of Balduran, didn't lost its properties (adding him all the bonuses of the original helm).
I will correct this mistake with Pablo, the third!
My attempts also usually end in the Sword Coast and Pablo's journeys reminded me of them.
Excellent name & portrait pick by the way!!!
Can't wait for Pablo the Third to reach his Blue Period.
Edit: source: http://www.pablo-ruiz-picasso.net/theme-minotavr.php
Although I like the quick loot feature, there's a weird bug where it shifts automatically to the end of the list if you click something in the middle.
It actually makes things slower than clicking on each body manually, unless you're willing to pick up everything they've got--which isn't practical when each body has two sets of arrows, leather armor, and a longsword that you won't be selling anyway.
In the guillotine room, I lure a Cloudkill trap onto a cleric to help disrupt his spells. As a monk, Imber is immune to poison and therefore Cloudkill. I take out the snipers with a sling and collect their potions via the quick loot feature. In vanilla, you couldn't get those potions at all.
I wonder why they have this huge room full of guillotines if they're going to disable the traps the moment you come by.
Dedral is a problem because of his low THAC0, and Imber needs a lot of Mirror Images to protect herself. On the way down the hall, she accidentally trips a trap, but her MR protects her.
I believe that was the Maze trap, a game-ender for solo runs.
Haz kills my summons with the Death Spell, leaving me to fight him alone. To get at him through his Fire Shield, I use Darts of Wounding until his Fire Shield breaks down. Soon, his Stoneskin is gone.
Next, Aran Linvail. I use Ras to trigger the enemy's buffs, and in their haste to kill it, they actually deal a lot of damage to each other. But they heal themselves right afterward, and I don't have a followup.
To wait out their buffs, I decide to take a walk around the dungeon. In the middle of a fight with some orcs, I get a surprise.
SCS mages often use Dimension Door to chase you. But the thieves here have been dropping lots of Potions of Invisibility, and it's not hard for me to escape Aran Linvail's grasp.
I come back a moment later with a clear aura and shut down his casting. I ignore the orcs; they're not a problem for me.
In my old vanilla runs with SCS, Stoneskin blocked poison effects, which makes sense, as Stoneskin is supposed to prevent weapons from breaking your skin in the first place. But I'm willing to take advantage of enemy mages' current vulnerability to poison damage, as I haven't used poison much in the past.
Aran Linvail casts Fire Shield. I wait it out just in case I want to switch to melee attacks.
When it wears off, I pelt him with more darts, and when his Stoneskin is down and his spellcasting disrupted, I move in for the kill.
I don't need to kill anyone else, as the quest is complete, but I want to finish off Aran Linvail's henchmen. I return to his room and have the Efreeti deal with the cleric and mage.
Imber uses Frozen Fist to disrupt and destroy the surviving mage.
For reasons I don't quite remember, I decide to head to Watcher's Keep before reporting to Bodhi.
Most Valuable Item: Darts of Wounding. They won't break through PFMW or Mantle spells, but if you wait those defenses out, poisoned weapons are almost guaranteed to disrupt a mage's spells, as mages have very poor saves vs. death.
I use CTRL-4 quite regularly to check on triggers on the map. I already know where all of the traps in the game are, with rare exceptions in ToB, but CTRL-4 tells me exactly how close I have to be to detect and disarm them. It also shows me where I have to stand in case certain spawns don't trigger.
Here in Watcher's Keep, it's a pretty clear cheat, as it lets me know I have to walk to the right of a trap instead of the left to escape it.
It's a petrification trap, and a potential game-ender. Even though I would have run over it had I not used CTRL-4, I don't walk over it, which unfairly lets me avoid making a savee. So the reload count goes from 0 to 0.3 or so.
I don't bother fighting the Statues. For some reason, I talk to Bodhi right after, instead of getting the Ring of Fire Resistance that I'd been meaning to nab from Firkraag's lair. We're off to Spellhold, with only a single Potion of Fire Resistance to protect us from Irenicus' Dragon's Breath spell.
There's a line from Saemon Havarian that I particularly like.
It's the unstated message behind it. He changes the name of his ship to avoid the authorities, but when Bodhi asks about it, he tries to deflect suspicion by saying the name keeps washing off, blaming the resin. It's these little details that show there's more to BG2 than you see on the surface.
At Brynnlaw , I interfere with a duel to get some extra potions.
Speaking of potions, Sanik, apparently recovering from a bar fight, takes a moment to heal himself right before he gets assassinated.
Reminds me of a quote from Archer: "He died doing what he loved... Getting shot."
I don't fuss with Prebek. I can get him after Spellhold. Instead, I use the Ring of Human Influence to convince Desharik to send me to the asylum. Irenicus doesn't appear right away, so I take a moment to chat with the locals. I like Naljier Skal's exaggerated Irish accent.
Can't you hear his voice when you read that line? I have the same thing with Dili.
Dili's so cute. I wish you could recruit some of the crazies here. Dili and Aphril would be very interesting NPCs, mechanically speaking.
Dradeel is a bit less charming.
But he gives you a great recipe for a sweet treat.
It's a real recipe, and they're quite good. I had them during my last PnP session the other day.
In the Spellhold dream, Bhaal again fails to follow me into the library. I console in a duplicate of him to solve the problem.
Imber's damage output has been getting pretty high. She lands a maximum damage critical on a Clay Golem, and it's quite impressive.
Monks unfortunately can't be hasted, and they lack versatility compared to fighters, but their attacks do big damage, and they get a lot of them.
I need the Ring of Free Action to cover a small weak point in Imber's late-game build. To do so, I have to take down a Mind Flayer and a Beholder. But by using summons to soak up the enemy's initial attacks, Imber can swoop in and finish them off. She hits very hard and very fast.
Imber gets targeted by Charm Person when fighting the kobolds. She uses a Potion of Magic Protection to stop it. It's an expensive option, but she won't need those potions for long.
We encounter no Spellhold lich. This saves us a Protection from Undead scroll.
Dace is a problem opponent for a monk, and could warrant such a scroll, but Kitty wins the fight for us with Web Tangle.
It lasts just long enough for Imber to pummel him into oblivion.
By the way... you know that riddle room where you have to click on each of the stone faces that say "Put your hand in my mouth" to start a riddle? You can wander around the room, clicking each of them once, and then click them one at a time, rather than having to click them twice every time you stop by one of them. It might save almost as much time as it took you to read this paragraph.
Imber drinks a Potion of Invulnerability to protect her from any vorpal hits that the Pit Fiend might have, but the Pit Fiend goes down quickly anyway. They have no Stoneskins to block Imber's fists.
On the next level. Imber drinks another Potion of Magic Protection to resist the traps that you trigger when you grab the monster paintings. She evades the Yuan-ti Mage until its defenses wear off, and follows up with some Darts of Wounding. The Girdle of Bluntness and some buffs are necessary to deal with the Clay Golems. To deal with the Trolls, she lets the Efreeti take a break--she no longer needs it to deal fire damage.
She bought the Sword of Flame before she left, just to make sure she had access to a fire weapon. She has no pips in longswords, but in EE, or at least EE with SCS, Trolls fall unconscious when they go down, and therefore require no attack roll to hit.
I ignore the Mind Flayer for safety's sake, and get the Boots of Speed, though they have no effect if Imber is wearing the Ring of Free Action. She can't get any other boots, however--the last tokens are in the room with Spirit Trolls, and the horseshoe-shaped wheel she needs to turn to unlock that room is itself behind a locked door, and since Sil no longer has DUHM, she doesn't have the strength to force the lock.
Why doesn't she have the Girdle of Hill Giant Strength, or a potion of giant strength? Well, she won't need those anymore. I have a trick planned that few other than a Dark Moon Monk can pull off.
Most Valuable Item: The Efreeti Bottle, for holding off the Beholder.
Normally, Slayer form only lasts 44 seconds before it kills you. But @Arunsun discovered a unique trick that allows you to survive past that point.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/44283/bug-discovered-but-a-nice-bug-it-is#latest
Mirror Image has blocked area-effect spell damage since the early days, and in multiple IE games. It persists in EE, and even blocks the damage from Slayer form. It doesn't always block all of the damage, but it almost always blocks the last blow.
Any source of Mirror Image will work, though the spell and scroll appear more reliable than Ilbratha. The process is simple. First, you cast Mirror Image.
Then you activate Slayer change. It doesn't seem to work if you do this before Mirror Image.
You'll get the message warning of your impending doom, but no damage will occur.
After 44 seconds have passed, you will be able to save and rest as normal. But even after resting, you retain Slayer form and the slayer weapon.
Why a Dark Moon Monk? First, Dark Moon Monks can cast Mirror Image at level 11, and since Ilbratha only creates 4 images while a mid- to high-level Mirror Image creates 5, it means that Dark Moon Monks have a higher chance of survival than a Sun Soul Monk or unkitted Monk using Ilbratha.
Second, and most importantly, a monk's magic resistance stacks with the Slayer form's base 40 magic resistance.
This means monks can attain undispellable 100 MR faster than any other class in EE, as they reach base 60 MR at level 20, which only takes 2.7 million XP. A thief or bard with UAI using MR items, however, takes 3.08 million XP to get to that point, and can only get to that point after the Underdark. The only exception to this would be a thief who uses an XP trick--say, the Rejiek Hidesman trick, in which you surround him with your party members, attack him, and then talk to him multiple times before he can go downstairs--to get UAI very early in the game.
But MR isn't the only advantage of Slayer form. It also sets your STR and DEX to 25, your base APR is set to 4, your AC drops below -10 even without items, your base THAC0 is set to 0, and all of your saves are set to 2. The form also comes with various immunities. In Slayer form, you are immune to normal missiles, imprisonment, charm, fear, confusion, stun, Power Word: Stun, sleep/unconsciousness, level drain, and the Finger of Death spell (but not the effect it uses, opcode 55). Also, the Slayer weapon strikes a +5 weapon and deals 2 nonmagical cold damage per hit, though it only does 1d8 base damage, plus the STR bonus.
There aren't a whole lot of things that can kill a monk in Slayer form.
We're going to use this on Irenicus. It starts out beautifully, as Irenicus uses Improved Mantle rather than Absolute Immunity or PFMW. The Slayer attack goes right through Improved Mantle.
Unfortunately, the Slayer form has no immunities to fire or cold damage, and Fire Shield backlashes are nonmagical. This means we can't safely attack Irenicus once he casts Fire Shield. But a friendly Efreeti can do that for us with Flame Arrow, once the other inmates break down some of Jon-bon's spell protections.
Imber's clone doesn't arrive in Slayer form, fortunately, and all her weapon slots are filled up with swords. She doesn't last long.
Eventually, Irenicus brings out the one spell I'm most worried about.
Imber drinks a Potion of Invulnerability to decrease her save vs. death to block the vorpal effect.
However, Potions of Invulnerability won't actually help against a Planetar's vorpal strikes. This is because the Planetar also dispels magic on hit, and the dispel effect comes before the vorpal strike, meaning any save bonuses from a potion would vanish before the vorpal strike came.
Imber runs away from the Fallen Planetar, who cuts down our remaining allies.
Soon, however, Jon-bon flees the scene, opening the doors and allowing Imber much greater freedom of movement.
She hides out in a safe place until the Planetar is gone.
Imber kills the Murderers and picks up the potions left by the inmates before resting. But the cut scene that's supposed to actually give you access to Slayer form, which only triggers after the fight with Irenicus, stalls after Imoen gets chunked in the dream.
Imoen always dies in that cut scene, but if she gets chunked, it seems it breaks the sequence. I have to reload and try again. This time, Imoen doesn't get chunked, and the scene proceeds as normal.
But the dream dispels Slayer form. I cast Mirror Image once more, activate Slayer form, leave the room, and find out that Imber is dead.
I thought at the time that a 5-image Mirror Image was a guaranteed safeguard against dying in Slayer form. Apparently it is not. But I recall hearing the sound of damage. Sometimes you take damage in Slayer form but the Mirror Image still blocks the final blow. If you really wanted to ensure your success, I suppose ending the form and trying again until you suffer no damage at all would be the best option, though your reputation would take a hit.
I try again and this time it works.
Also, I got hit by Psionic Maze during the fight with the Githyanki on board Desharik's ship, before the ship capsizes and dumps us into City Sushi.
Number of reloads: 2.3.
Most Valuable Spell: Mirror Image--because Mirror Image has more uses outside of Slayer form than the other way around.
Even the Slayer, however, is stymied by some obstacles.
On to City Sushi. The Sahuagin here can be devastating, with access to both Bolts of Biting and Paralytic Bolts. But Imber as a monk is immune to poison, and Imber as the Slayer is immune to stun. There's nothing they can do, really.
I sold off the last of my Potions of Insight, thinking they wouldn't be needed. But there's one life we could have saved had I kept one of those potions.
In the fight with King Ixilthetocal, Imber gets hurt pretty bad. Ixilthetocal uses the Impaler, and Imber has no Stoneskin to block its hideous damage boost.
See that golden glow over Ixilthetocal's head? That's a Greater Whirlwind Attack. And he can land a hit on Imber with a 10 or better. He nearly kills her before she can down a potion to escape.
Villynaty and company do much of the work, but still praise Imber for helping out.
I spotted a bug in the Underdark.
The first journal entry assumes that I took the portal to the Underdark, instead of the City of Caverns.
I switch Imber's script to "Standard Attack" and let her fight the elementals on her own for a while. By the time she's done, she's hit level 20, and therefore has 100 magic resistance. I try out our newly magic-immune Slayer monk on the local critters.
She absolutely destroys everything. The drow are helpless. They can barely land a hit, and their spells are useless besides Fire Shield. Alchra Diagott and all of the imprisoned enemies die before their buffs even come up, but even if I had let them live, it would make no difference--Imber already tore apart the last two epic-level mages she fought just by avoiding the Planetar.
The Kuo-toa can't stun her. The Myconids can't confuse her. And when I go over to the Beholder hive and start whacking away at its denizens, they can't do anything. They just die.
Then, I get an ominous message midway through the fight.
A triple Lower Resistance Spell Trigger. Imber's MR is now at a paltry 16. But a single Potion of Invisibility allows her to slip away and wait until her MR recovers.
Another Beholder pulls the same trick. This time, we react even faster.
The entire hive goes down. All it took was two Potions of Invisibility, of which we have many. No resting, no healing; nothing. I love this.
Imber pays a visit to the Kuo-toa lair, and crushes the local fish people as well. She provokes the drow guards and flees when she hears an alteration spell being cast.
By running away from the fight, she separates the enemies, allowing her to pick them off individually.
Only the Demon Knights posed a threat. Despite Imber's immunity to level drain, her Hardiness spell, and her spectacular AC, the Demon Knights still drained 10 potions from us. It took a fair amount of running and buffing to survive. Our AC against slashing weapons is very poor, as we lack the Golden Girdle.
Back in the Underdark main area, she also suffers badly against the Balor. Though a Potion of Invulnerability will block its slay ability (it uses opcode 55, not 13, and therefore is not a vorpal strike), we have no defense against its Aura of Flaming Death, as I drank our only Potion of Fire Resistance when fighting Irenicus, thinking it was necessary to survive Dragon's Breath (apparently both DB and Comet don't bypass MR in my install), and I have no Ring of Fire Resistance, as mentioned before. It took a lot of potions to break through all of the Balor's Stoneskins.
We begin the Ust Natha questline. The Mind Flayer ambush was easy; the illithids went down quickly. Boz was a problem, dealing a fair amount of damage before I stunned him with Power Attack, but Boz's allies posed little threat. The Beholder that Phaere thought was an Elder Orb also failed to put up a fight.
With low Wisdom, Imber was forced to do the Aboleth's bidding. But Power Attack meant she could do the job quickly.
As usual, we snuck past Taso Kala to avoid fighting the oozes. The Egg Guards went down in a single hit apiece. With nothing else left to fight, Imber fled the Underdark. Maybe I'll come back later for the illithids... I want that Ring of Fire Control. Our resistances won't be quite solid without it.
As long as I'm around, I awaken the Shade Lich.
Another Planetar. I run away from it once again and use the time to slay Gaal and his buddies. The Planetar vanishes; the Shade Lich teleports after me.
But with no Planetar or Fire Shields to keep me busy, the Shade Lich is doomed. I just whack it until it dies.
I finally rest, and check out the blurry scenery in the dream with Ellesime.
I mentioned before that I disliked the sickly green glow in the background of the 3D movie when you enter Suldanessellar. Bioware had trouble with backgrounds, I think. I like the blurry stuff here, though, for some reason. Pixels can actually improve a look sometimes.
I visit the Bridge District to fight the Elemental Lich. I thought I dropped the Rogue Stone from my inventory before entering one of the doors on the south end of the map, but apparently not, and I clicked on the wrong door. Now I'm in the Twisted Rune area.
I roll with it and walk over the trigger to spawn the enemies. My only buff is a Potion of Invulnerability, as I still thought at the time that that would stop a Planetar's vorpal strikes. I just run around while the enemy warps the fabric of space time and conjures in extraplanar monsters to attack me.
For some reasons, the Sensate Amulet does not actually stop summoned demons from attacking me, even though I checked the item file and saw it had the right opcode.
Layenne and Shangalar both call in Fallen Planetars. They chase me around the table.
I am reminded of a scene from the Simpsons, when Chief Wiggum is chasing Homer around a tree. He asks Lou for backup, and Lou starts helping him out... by chasing Homer in the exact same direction. I run around the chamber in a clockwise loop until the Fallen Planetars finally vanish.
All the while, the enemy throws magic at me and sees it bounce off. Even their summons do nothing; they can't catch up to me. A monk moves awfully fast in the Boots of Speed.
When the Planetars are gone, I kill Vaxall first. Shyressa died before the Planetars came out, leaving Revanek, Shangalar, and Layenne. Revanek pesters me with his crossbow, so I hit him with Power Attack.
Then I wear down Shangalar, leaving only Layenne behind.
But Layenne won't break her invisibility, and despite having 100 in Detect Illusions, I can't reveal her. I bait her out with Kitty and then nail her with Power Attack.
Afterward, I kill the Elemental Lich. Which is to say, I used CTRL-Y on the Planetar, CTRL-R on the lich, and then cut him apart. I already fought this battle before.
Kangaxx is different, however, so I'll fight him fair, to the extent that Slayer form is fair.
He brings out a Fallen Planetar early on, who dispels my Potion of Invulnerability. Imber still makes her save vs. death against the vorpal strike.
Here, it looks like the vorpal strike is coming before the Dispel Magic, which would indicate that potions can block the instant death effect. But in the item files, it's ordered the other way around. Looking back, I'm not sure if Potions of Invulnerability are any good against a Planetar's vorpal strike.
In my install, as usual, mages and priests get HLAs as innate abilities rather than spells, which means each mage only gets one Planetar per day. I like this option because it increases the importance of other level 9 mage and level 7 priest spells. It also means I only have to run away from a Planetar once during this fight. This room also runs in a circle, so the Planetar doesn't have much chance of landing another hit.
When Kangaxx's summons are gone and his Fire Shields wear off, Imber rushes him. He has Stoneskin and cold immunity to protect him, but nothing else. It's just a matter of time.
Kangaxx switches to demi-lich form and tries out his HLAs. He still gets nothing out of them.
His Fire Shield still hits, though. I took a couple swings to take out some Stoneskins, hoping Kangaxx would waste a PFMW spell to stop me, but it just got me hurt.
Finally, his Fire Shield vanishes. Imber activates Power Attack and stun-locks Kangaxx.
Now our regeneration is a little better and our saves are at -2. After we get the Hell bonuses, they'll be at -4 and can't be lowered by Greater Malison.
I love this. We're progressing so fast with so little micromanagement. It's a relief to hit epic levels without slogging through the entire game to get there, and play a solo character that doesn't need to prebuff for every fight.
Total number of reloads: 2.3.
Firkraag's lair:
Nothing interesting. I just ran up and smacked stuff in the face, and waited out Conster's Fire Shield. I left Firkraag alone, but looking back, killing him would not have been challenging.
The Mind Flayer City:
I went back to the Underdark just for this. Basically, I did a lot of running around to make sure the INT drain didn't pile up. The lowest I got was 6 INT; I didn't let Imber get close to any Mind Flayers unless her INT was high or the number of Mind Flayers was low. With the Amulet of Spell Warding, her save vs. spell was at -4, which means Imber was immune to Psionic Maze as well as Psionic Blast. Detonate didn't bypass the Cloak of Mirroring, but Ballistic Attack drained some of our potions.
Bodhi:
The Ancient Vampires and Elder Vampires on the first level were harmless. The Slayer form is immune to charm and level drain both, and monks are immune to the Giant Rats' disease. The fight with Bodhi herself was more challenging. Drain Blood reduced Imber's Constitution to 3 and could have slain her had she not run away. To my dismay, Protection from Undead did not keep Manasseh and Hazzerbazzer from attacking me.
It did, however, keep them from attacking Drizzt. This meant I could drink a Potion of Invisibility and lead Drizzt over to the vampires to chop them up. With Bodhi's minions gone, I could safely bring her down with Whirlwind Attacks.
Suldanessellar:
For Ramilaat, I triggered his buffs and then ran off to fight golems until his Fire Shields wore off.
For the Rakshasas, I triggered their buffs and then ran off to fight golems until their Fire Shields wore off.
For the fight in the temple of Rillifane, I ignored Suneer and fought his cronies until his Fire Shield wore off.
Planetars are actually quite doable for Imber. They will automatically cast Heal on themselves when low on health, and we can't disrupt their spells, but Imber can actually just wear them down to nothing in spite of their healing spells. They can only cast Heal so many times. Power Attack can also stun-lock them until they're down, preventing any healing.
I thought Nizidramanii'yt would be a big problem, but he was not. A single scroll of Protection from Acid rendered his breath weapon tolerable, and though I had to pull back a few times to drink potions, his damage output wasn't overwhelming given Imber's AC and Hardiness. Whirlwind Attack sped things up a bit. It would have been very difficult without Hardiness.
The Tree of Life:
I ran away from Irenicus and then pounced when his Fire Shields wore off. That was all.
Hell:
EE apparently has not fixed one of my favorite tricks. You can get duplicate effects from the Hell rewards. First, you complete whichever Hell trial whose reward you want to duplicate. Take the Tear of Bhaal from that trial (drop any others) over to the door to Irenicus, click, and drop the Tear of Bhaal right after you hear the noise. You'll get the bonus, but since the Tear of Bhaal is on the ground instead of your inventory, you don't lose it, and can rearrange the Hell bonuses to your liking.
I got the evil reward from the Selfishness trial four times over. This grants a +8 bonus to her AC, putting her unbuffed AC at -23. She's almost impossible to hit.
Irenicus still killed her once, during a Time Stop. I thought SCS prevented enemy fighters from attacking during Time Stop, but apparently that's not the default option; you have to set a variable. Rather than setting the variable, however, I just use a Protection from Magic scroll on Irenicus, preventing him from casting Time Stop in the first place. The enemies could barely touch Imber, allowing her to gradually overcome Irenicus' regeneration.
All her saving throws are all at -4. Her MR is at 118. Her HLAs are:
Whirlwind Attack: 1
Greater Whirlwind Attack: 5
Power Attack: 4
Critical Strike: 1
Smite: 1
Hardiness: 7
Notice that her AC is at -25. In vanilla, the AC cap was -24; only damage-specific modifiers could drop it below that. Apparently EE either decreased or removed the AC cap. This means that AC-based tanks would actually be more resilient than resistance-based tanks, even in ToB. The sole exception might be Dwarven Defenders, but Dwarven Defenders' resistances are finite in duration.
Thanks to her abnormally low AC, Imber has been able to tank pretty much everything in the game. She can have Gromnir and his cronies and two Fallen Planetars attacking her all at once, and she barely takes any damage. There are some enemies who can hurt her more reliably than others (land a hit on a 16 instead of a 19, for example), and all enemies land critical hits every now and then, but that's about it as far as the danger goes. As long as Imber uses her high mobility to slip away and drink potions when she starts taking damage, there's really nothing that can harm her.
Her MR blocks almost all spells. Her saving throws block almost all other spell effects. Her immunities block the remainder. And her AC and Hardiness HLAs block physical damage. Hardiness can be removed with Breach, but otherwise all of her defenses are undispellable and permanent. There just isn't a lot left that the enemy can do. On top of that, she has extraordinary damage output, some disabling power in the form of Power Attack, and excellent mobility thanks to her monk bonuses and the Boots of Speed.
I'm kind of taken aback by how strong this thing is. She's almost impossible to kill, and barely requires any maintenance. And she's been like that since the midgame. The only deaths were due to stupid mistakes on my part.
There are other ways to get a magic-immune Slayer build, especially if we stack Hell bonuses, dual-wield Greater Werewolf Tokens, or use UAI or song stacking. Monks, however, get their MR ridiculously early, both in terms of the plot and in terms of XP. I'm not sure which monk kit would be best. A Dark Moon Monk can pull off the Mirror Image trick more easily than another monk using Ilbratha, but that wouldn't cost more than a few reputation points depending on one's luck. Stunning Blow, unlike Frozen Fist and Flaming Fist, can apply to the Slayer attack, so a normal monk may have an advantage here.
Bottom line is, the Slayer form is ridiculously powerful if you use the Mirror Image trick to prolong it. Combine it with the monk class and you get a character who has immunities to almost everything by the middle of the game.
AC from gear and abilities etc... cap at -20
To this AC you can add another -6 from dex, but it is usually -4 with 18dex, hence the -24 cap you mentioned
Lastly, you can add another -2 with the single weapon style. The lowest overall AC you could thus get is -28 (-20 from gear,-6 from dex, -2 from SW style)
You can improve this further with Special AC modifier against this or that weapon type, with Girdles and bonus depending on your armor type (and the latter apply even if your armor does not give you the AC it would normally give you without slayer form).
In the end you can get -28 "Global AC" and -35 AC against a specific type of weapon
As a reminder, Amelyssan, for example has a -12 THAC0, meaning that if you get AC lower than -31 she will hit you only with critical hits.
As a monk however you cannot equip an armor so you re capped at -31 or -32 depending on the weapon (some girdle give -4 against a given type, others give -3). Against Slashing however you may only get a golden Girdle as a mage, or in Neera's ToB quest.
AC is still reliable even in ToB if you focus on it.
You will face trouble against Abazigal, Demogorgon for their stupidly low THAC0, and Dragons because Wing Buffet, but besides that it will be much like 95% damage resistance, avoiding on hit on top of that.
I did some math and found that you could get a party of three Bards and three Fighter/Clerics to roughly the AC cap by stacking the Improved Bard Song and using DUHM to bump DEX up to 25. Plus, they'd have access to Armor of Faith, Hardiness, Mirror Image, and Stoneskin.
Also, I forgot to mention: Irenicus in Spellhold took too long to appear when I was with the other inmates, so I punched Tiax to speed up Jon-bon's arrival.
Imber got boxed in during the fight with Yaga-Shura, and had to resort to the Rod of Resurrection to heal herself. To my surprise, the fastest way out was not to try and cut through the surrounding enemies--it was to just kill Yaga-shura himself, who had surprisingly little defense against Greater Whirlwind Attack.
We returned to Watcher's Keep and brought down the Statues. I double-checked my install and confirmed the Improved Watcher's Keep component of SCS was there, but the two epic-level mage statues were not. The Statues were therefore pretty easy.
Thanks to Imber's immunities, the 2nd level of WK was easy. The only sticking point was the Chromatic Demon. Basically, I just used Power Attack and Whirlwind Attack on his fire form to sneak in extra cold damage, but the Efreeti also helped by using its fire spells when the demon was in ice form. I also had the Book of Daily Spell on hand for his ice form, but the demon died before it became necessary.
None of the demons in the Watcher's Keep maze posed a serious threat. The various fear effects, charm effects, Lightning Bolts, and poison effects failed to harm Imber, and the enemy's melee attacks seldom made contact. Aesgareth might have been a problem had I not stunned him with Smite (which stuns without a save, unlike Power Attack) and followed up with Greater Whirlwind Attack.
Just for the hell of it, I fought the demilich. Which is to say, I killed its Planetar with Power Attack and then left the room while Imber fought the demilich itself. When I came back, he was dead.
I left Saladrex alone. He's an okay guy.
Imber died once against the Mind Flayers. She was at 11 INT and then suddenly died, so the enemy must have landed three simultaneous critical hits. I reloaded (reload count: 2) and used Greater Whirlwind Attack to get rid of the Mind Flayers early on. Level 5 opened up.
The Spirit Warrior challenged followed the common formula, grabbing the scroll, wand, and potion before hurrying off to face the mummy. The green dragon was a non-issue, as its breath weapon dealt poison damage--normally a huge problem, but not for a monk. The orc horde used nonmagical weapons and posed no threat. Finally, for the monster summoning room with the four-colored pillars, I just summoned the first group of each color and deposited the first orbs I got. You don't have to summon all of the monsters; just the first group of each color.
Azamantes did nothing. The Rilmanis did nothing. Then came the fight with Xei Win Toh et al.
The Huntress can see through invisibility and has -14 THAC0 with her Arrows of Piercing. Since a monk's AC bonus vs. missile attacks is erased by Slayer form, Imber had some trouble. She had to don the Belt of Inertial Barrier for the missile damage resistance. It was a mistake in retrospect to let the two guys who buried Tirdir run away; the Boots of Avoidance could have helped here.
Twice, Imber had to use the Rod of Resurrection to heal herself. Then, midway through the battle, I noticed that the rod had dropped down to 1 charge, from 8. I only used it twice. Later, I checked my inventory and saw that both of our Rods of Resurrection had vanished.
The Hive Mother's Anti-Magic Ray apparently drains item charges.
I deem this unacceptable. Preventing me from using a magic item is one thing, but permanently destroying two of the most useful items in the entire game, without a saving throw, bypassing magic resistance, without any defense against it, even invisibility, is not okay. Beholders in SCS take away the Shield of Balduran, but they don't break it half.
I find the spell file and reduce the probability of the item drain effect from 100 to 0. Tweaking the rods so they don't vanish when drained, or dropping the rods on the ground before the fight, also would have worked.
The fight is pretty simple after that. I run around, fading in and out of sight, draining HLAs from the enemy fighters, and Arrows of Piercing and Called Shot castings from the Huntress. I lose many potions in the process, but eventually the enemy is out of their best options. Xei Win Toh, unlike the Huntress, cannot see through invisibility, and though the Hive Mother can as well, she doesn't follow Imber when we run away, so we use stealth to lure the Huntress to a secluded place, stun her with Power Attack, and kill her with Whirlwind Attack. We do the same for Xei Win Toh, Ameralis Zauvirr, the Hive Mother, and finally Nalmissra.
ToB reloads: 1, or 2 if you count the Anti-Magic Ray tweak.
On to Abazigal's lair. Draconis greets us, and I notice that sometimes your dialogue options can be pretty odd-sounding.
Draconis didn't put up much of a fight. He just drained some potions out of us.
Anadramatis is little different. S/he tries to lower Imber's MR with Pierce Shield, but a single Potion of Magic Protection ruins the effort. We get a little amulet from Anadramatis that blocks wing buffet, but I haven't seen a single dragon use it against me since this run began... maybe because Imber is immune to unconsciousness. Like before, I took very few screenshots, as these fights were relatively straightforward.
We do, however, have a problem with Olinissimous, Zirimanat'ryl, Ithy'nassendra, and Carnifex. SCS adds them in as part of the Abazigal's Lair edits. Olinissimous and Zirimanat'ryl are black dragons who confront you when you return to the area after fetching rope from Amkethran (the monk inside Abazigal's lair no longer carries it). They come to avenge Draconis' death and attack simultaneously.
I use a Protection from Acid scroll to block their acid breath, but only after they use Remove Magic on Imber, which ensures that her acid resistance is there when they use their breath weapon. Like with the other dragons, Imber uses Hardiness and gradually whittles down Olly and Ziri, using another scroll of Protection from Acid when they hit her with Remove Magic. I use only a single Whirlwind Attack during the fight, preferring to conserve them for a later battle.
After they die, Ithy'nassendra arrives. His breath weapon deals poison damage, and therefore he doesn't bother using it on Imber. He also drains some of our potions, but otherwise isn't a problem.
Carnifex is the last and strongest dragon, a red dragon. His abilities are only marginally better than the other dragons, but he's much more relentless, using Remove Magic and Breach many times throughout the battle, constantly removing Imber's Hardiness spells and dispelling her Protection from Fire scrolls. However, because I delay using the scrolls, she eventually ends up with fire immunity from the Ring of Fire Control and a scroll, and doesn't have to worry about Carnifex's breath weapon for the duration of the battle.
Carnifex, however, hits very hard and very fast, being able to land a hit on a 14 or higher. We have to use several charges of the Rod of Resurrection and many of our potions to stay alive. Also, Carnifex re-casts Stoneskin more frequently and regenerates at the same rate we do (2 HP per round, which makes a big difference in a long fight like this), which gives him a lot more time to hurt us. Finally, we bring him down.
Seal Him:
1. You get down, chat with Him, use the scroll = 80000 quest exp
2. Talk to Him again, get out, send Odren & Co to see His demise by themselves, get another scroll from Specter (25000 exp), use it to seal both Demi and Helmites = 80000 quest exp.
So total 160000 quest exp +25000 exp
Fight Him:
1. You get down, chat with Him, use the scroll = 80000 quest exp
2. Fight Him immediately (without going outside) = 100000 quest exp
3. Talk to Odren after that = 20000 quest exp
Total 200000 quest exp
+36000 exp for Demi himself not counting his Demon buddies (He could call them indefinitely).
Abazigal hit for 30-40 damage per hit in his human form and hit me with great frequency. I had to run frequently to drink potions, as I could not heal myself as quickly as he could deal damage. In his dragon form, I ran away from him until his Righteous Magic and Improved Haste spells wore off. After that, he was like any other dragon.
At the entrance to Sendai's Enclave, Imber got hit by an enemy Balor's Implosion spell and died. She got hit again on the reload (I thought an enemy cleric cast the spell, so I didn't see it coming the second time, either), but this time she survived. She had no Ring of Free Action for some reason--maybe I sold it off, thinking there were no sources of paralysis or hold effects that could bypass saving throws and MR--so I went back to Amkethran to buy back a couple of Potions of Freedom that I'd sold earlier, though I've ended up drinking neither.
She also died (3rd reload for ToB) when some drow surrounded her and attacked her with Greater Whirlwind Attack. Later I learned that Smite is an excellent way to avoid getting boxed in, as it knocks away drow and other melee opponents without a save.
Ogremoch cast Stoneskin once per round, so Imber could only deal cold damage to him for most of the fight. Eventually, she tried Quivering Palm, and Ogremoch went down. It would have taken ages to kill him otherwise, as he appears to be able to block 10 attacks per round, and Imber has 5.
Imber suffered another death (4th reload) against Sendai's Mind Flayers. She failed to minimize her exposure to Mind Flayer attacks, and eventually the Mind Flayers were able to land enough critical hits to kill her.
Imber died twice more in the fight against Sendai. I might have hit a brick wall here.
In my install, Sendai's clones attack together, not separately. Also, we have to deal with a couple of drow fighters, each of whom have HLAs. The map is very small and Imber is easily boxed in, even when Teleport Field is there for her to move her around. Smite would work, but the drow will have more HLAs when they recover--you can only choose Smite as an HLA once--and Smite takes away valuable time needed for healing. Even at -26 AC and with 40% damage resistance from Hardiness, and 120 max HP thanks to Slayer form, the Sensate Amulet, and Tsu-zan's Bracers, Imber cannot heal herself quickly enough to survive the drow's attacks, even if she uses the Rod of Resurrection every round to do so.
I just restarted the fight and used CTRL-Q on those drow fighters. The Record screen shows his THAC0 was -31. After consoling the party to WK, I find that they do 40 damage per hit when using Kai.
I check the character's base file, SENFOD01.cre. They are level 22 Kensais with +7 to hit and damage as passive bonuses, intended to replicate Kensai bonuses of that level plus another +4 to hit for some reason. They dual-wield +3 katanas and have 5 pips in katanas. Also, they have 16 STR.
I do the math. Based on the character file, their max damage per hit should be 26; their main hand THAC0 should be -17. They have an erroneous +14 to hit and damage, as if their passive bonuses were tripled, or their kensai kits applied double the normal kit bonuses for level 22, which stacked with their passive bonuses.
This is a bug. I'll discount the two deaths in the Sendai fight, as she died in both cases to these two drow fighters. They were dealing three times as much damage as they were supposed to. I'll try again later.
SoA reload count: 3.3
ToB reload count: 4
The Alliance
A no-reload 4-character modded IWD run
Yay, though I walk through the valley of goblins...
When they were only a few hours from Kuldahar, the expedition was ambushed by frost giants. The monsters caused an avalanche that destroyed everyone except Gudrun and Celebrian and their companions. They only survived because it was their turn on forward scout duty. Once out of the danger zone, the party met a hermit who pointed out the way to Kuldahar and warned of goblins.The party made their way East, looking for the old mill the hermit had told them about. They were attacked by groups of goblins three times before they found it, but all together, the fights only cost them one healing potion and one cure light wounds.
Now that the road to Kuldahar was clear*, Celebrian suggested exploring the old mill. She had seen something near the entrance and wanted to see what it was. It turned out to be a goblin marshal, muttering and holding it's head like it was in pain. Gudrun decided against killing it, since it wasn't actually threatening anything.
Is it just me or does that goblin look like an alien?
The marshal had said something about his men looting the mill, so Celebrian blessed the party before they went inside. A group of orcs demanded tribute, their answer was a sleep spell from Dunathain. One of the creatures resisted the spell and lunged at the mage. He led it outside and the rest of the party followed, bringing down the orc right in front of the marshal, who gave no sign he'd even seen what happened. They went back in and dealt with the sleepers. On the bodies, they found a scroll of blur and an unidentified wand.
Down the stairs, the party surprised a group of goblins, and quickly dispatched them. They found a young boy hiding in a closet, they offered to escort him to Kuldahar, but he said he knew the way to the temple of Ilmater and would run on ahead. The group climbed into the mill tower and were ambushed in close quarters by goblins led by two marshal archers. While Gudrun drew fire and kept the main force at bay, the others fought desperately against the goblins who had flanked them. Finally, they killed the goblin who had been attacking Dunathain, and the mage was able to put the rest to sleep.
Both Gudrun and Darien had been hit several times, and had depleted the party's supply of healing. They decided to go on to Kuldahar and come back later to finish clearing the valley.
Chapter 1, I can start playing the game now.