Coredruid the human level 8 totemic druid and his band of druids and Imoen Update:
Traveling with:
Sarah - level 6 fighter/level 7 druid
April - level 6 fighter/level 7 druid
Alena - level 8 shapeshifter
Jaheira - level 6 fighter/level 7 druid
Imoen - level 5 thief > level 7 mage
The party is still making progress. We have just finished up business in Chapter 5 (uneventful) - and just battled the 5th floor Iron Throne Party. We will be on our way to Candlekeep next. I had one my fighter druids, April solo this group. I explained my strategy in detail in the video and then you get to see the results as well.
Dorn put the hard word on me {mid fight} to go back and kill a pally... yes sure thing. then some drow gave us all +3 weapons which came in handy at the smurf village but I got cooky.
Killing the air beasts for the mage made the brain suckers ambush us and of course that gave the mage time to put his defences up... I assume it was a trap spell
What's going on with the new UI for posting forum comments? Very strange. I hope this post doesn't look terrible.
In any case, the party started doing the minor Amkethran sidequests, with Vongoethe being the only one of potential interest. The lich made the mistake of allowing us to return with Marlowe, though, which gave Jan and Carpani the time to plant some deadly spike traps, allowing us to easily claim the Cloak of Mirroring:
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After all that, I also completed Hexxats ToB quest (the quest wouldn't trigger at first, but restarting the game solved the problem). Some easy mummies, golems, death tyrants and a lich who couldn't stand against our buff-dispelling sequencers - not much to say about that one. We traveled to Sendai's next, going through most of the dungeon with our initial buffs at a fast pace. Odamaron and his disciples were mostly killed by Korgan and a few spells from a safe range, as I didn't want to expose potentially vulnerable party members to timestops and hard-hitting damage spells:
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Diaytha's minions were lured into spike traps via summons, and a planetar actually took down the hive mother by itself:
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Constantia won her duel via energy blades, and the mind flayers (in much fewer numbers compared to WK lvl 3) failed to provide any substantial challenge, so it was time to face Sendai. Fun fact: Upon first entering her room, I was able to pause before she started talking, and some very strange creatures - 2 unseen Balors and, for some reason, Marlowe - were present in her room (all three disappeared from the screen right after that):
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The SCS version of this battle is a bit different from Ascension: The Sendai clones seem to activate even faster, but are weaker; The drow teleport into the center of the room, they don't appear at the door, and they appear upon each Sendai activation, not upon the death of a clone, so the room is filled by enemies very quickly, especially as the activations and spawn-ins don't stop during a timestop, which the first mage-Sendai used (but wasted, mostly for buffing herself up):
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There were also no mages included with the spawning drow, making it much easier to take those down. With the weaker clones, this battle was honestly much easier than I first expected upon seeing the sheer number of enemies. I was simply able to take them all down one by one, as their aggressive potential was very minimal against my well-buffed party. The real Sendai, upon re-appearing, didn't even get to use her pre-buffs:
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Draconis was the next one to go - one of the few dragons for which I actually bothered to protect everyone against his breath weapon element. However, having two spellcasters with sequencers and two gems of true seeing allowed for a quick takedown of the dangerous dragon, as he was unable to dispel the protected buffs of everyone but Korgan, who has the hitpoints to survive (he's also using the DoE +3 when fighting hard-hitting enemies such as dragons):
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In Abazigal's Lair, I had a prolonged battle against a group of lizardman shamans who kept casting timestop and spamming creeping doom, really testing the strength of my spell protections and the abundance of my healing potions for a while:
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I don't actually remember encountering this fight before, but my memory might be failing me. Anyway, I dealt with the yellow dragon, talked to the monk, got the rope at Amkethran and returned for the quadruple dragon ambush (with one of the dragons dying to spike traps that I had prepared for this encounter). I didn't even prepare against the breath weapons and kept my buffs active througout the battle. Only Korgan had to deal with a lot of physical damage, countered by hardiness + DoE:
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Korgan used the Cloak of Mirroring to fight his way to the tyrant golems on the eye-map. The tyrant golems (despite eventually snatching his cloak) were basically unable to do anything to hurt him, but it took a while to take them down:
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Abazigal himself turned out to be not quite at his Ascension level, with no other dragons by his side. The fight felt basically like the vanilla battle, and I had full electricity immunity for everyone prepared (plus a bunch of potions of absorption in my potion bags):
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I don't have any screenshots of the Balthazar fight. I didn't notice any major difference compared to what he usually brings to the table, which isn't a lot against a full party (though he wasn't even able to heal to full once this time around). Now, it was time to face the Ravager - relatively easy for this party, though - multiple ways to go about it with two high-level mages, but I decided to just cheese the fight and prepare traps (the battle doesn't trigger unless the main character walks into the room, everyone else can just go up there and start preparing the battlefield). 7 spike traps don't quite kill the Ravager, but only a few hits are needed after that:
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Now, the big question - what does SCS Amelyssan without Ascension actually do? I had no idea, and I still don't really know. I didn't see any cool new special abilties, but I didn't give her a lot of time to fight. The basic way the battle works is the same as in the unmodded game, so three pools with monsters guarding them, and a battle against Mel each time one of them is deactivated. I included a few potion buffs in addition to my usual routine. During the first Mel battle, all she got the chance to do was gate in a few Glabrezus and dispel some of Korgan's buffs (again, the only one vulnerable to dispel effects) - I re-applied improved haste and just beat her down until she retreated, not casting a single spell except for improved haste during the fight and simply just attacking:
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After that, I just defaulted to using 4 spike traps each for Mel's appearances, while taking down the first two pools with ease. For the third pool, I decided to charge at the fallen solar, ready to swap around the Cloak of the Lich if needed, but no one lost their death wards, so we didn't face any trouble.
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Some breaches for the Mariliths, and that was it: Mel once again fell to a few spike traps, and Constantia claimed godhood.
And there we go. After some big trouble and two chunkings plus a few deaths in early ToB and Watcher's Keep, we didn't face much trouble in the lategame, mainly due to the lack of Ascenion I would guess. Of course, the new spells were a huge factor here as well - being able to protect your buffs on divine spellcasters is kind of a gamechanger. I would certainly say that, at least on tactical difficulty, the IWD spells do make this challenge a bit easier in general. While enemy clerics get them as well, they still don't seem to be huge threats (maybe they are more deadly on insane, though I wouldn't count on it), while players can count on Shield of Entropy and ISOM to be amazing additional protections against all kinds of threats. Full parties also profit a lot from the sheer amount of new powerful AoE buffs, while druids have a much better early game in general thanks to some decent nukes. I'm still not too happy with my setup for this run, but I will be taking a break for a while now: Got some work-related things to do, and after that, I'm going to play WoW: Classic for a long while. I'll still be reading, of course, and when I return to BG, I will certainly play with the SCS-slider on insane and possibly Ascension installed once again. I might also look for a mod to increase BG1 difficulty specifically, though I don't want it to be one that adds a bunch of new experience and items - no content pack, some other type of difficulty-improving thing, like the old Hard Times mod (which sadly doesn't work on the EE).
Good luck to everyone,
Enuhal
Edit: No idea why my spoiler tags aren't working. Something is very strange with the forum UI.
Coredruid the totemic druid Update
Traveling with:
April the half-elf fighter/druid
Sarah the half-elf fighter/druid
Alena the human shapeshifter
Jeheira the half-elf fighter/druid
Imoen the level 5 fighter dualed to mage
Candlekeep was by the numbers. So many ways to deal with Prat's gang. Eventually had summon distractions, Alena using protection from magic scroll and werewolf form, then Imoen assisted by paralyzing two of Prat's gang using the paralyzation wand.
Chapter 7 was a breeze. Slythe had no chance, and neither did the dopplegangers. plague of insects and glitterdust just paralyzed the dopplegangers. Maze was simple enough. For the Undercity Party, we used the classic @Grond0 / @Gate70 tactic of having summons attacking Rahvin while party invisible. This made it much safer for the party to attack after summons were killed.
The Sarevok battle, on the other hand was a disaster. I couldn't remember what traps Imoen could actually disarm (100), she tripped the web trap. Semaj then spawned and we killed him, but our summons were wasted by the chaos.
Angelo then showed up but by the time the time we had killed him, 1/2 the party was dead.
Jaheira was badly hurt and didn't stand a prayer but she held her ground and was killed.
Imoen tries to one last thing before death (improved invis) but she died before she could get it off.
Imoen dies and it's only Coredruid vs a HASTED Sarevok and Tazok!!
As Coredruid runs around, it's apparent even with haste, he needs the haste boots to have a chance, so while running around he picks up haste boots off the floor.
He also does STR potion (18) + DUHM to increase Thac0/damage (his base STR is only 9). After a while, it dawned on me that killing Tazok would at least make kiting Sarevok easier, so did kill him before working on Sarevok. This battle was very hard physically (real life), hand was hurting. The battle lasted ONE HOUR of real time.
After what seemed like forever, finally Sarevok falls to a bullet! Coredruid and party move to Amn!!!
Not sure if my MP party will be dead in Amn, guess will have to see.
So, ah, what's the point of 17 Int on a Wizard Slayer? You can't dual to a spellcasting class, as one of the kit's features is to completely remove the spellcasting button. Toughness versus illithids is worth something since you can't drink Int-boosting potions, but there's no reason to take it as far as 17.
As you can see by this screenshot, @ussnorway knows what they are doing. I dualed a WS to a mage and even could memorize spells, so there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with what they are doing.
And here's that same WS dualed to mage casting burning hands from his spell button on Shank:
You can't dual to a spellcasting class, as one of the kit's features is to completely remove the spellcasting button.
not correct... you perhaps are using a mod or the gog install which is known to be buggy?
anyway yes Wizard slayer can dual to Mage and it works ok as a class but he still can't use many wizard items like {most} wands and the normal summon trinkets
what he brings to the party is range melee, hit points, backup casting & some pick pockets... the longsword is emergency use only
Version: GoG, no mods when I made the conclusion. I've installed some mods now (most notably SCS), none of which should have changed the wizard slayer ... and it's allowed, with spellcasting permitted. Huh. That effect I noticed which removes the spellcasting button is gone, too. From an old save when I was messing with things, that was SPCL 322, Instant/Permanent, Disable button 144. You don't pick up something like that by accident; it was clearly intended at some point, and very much fits the kit's theme.
OK, I guess dual-classing from wizard slayer to a caster class is allowed. It's completely against flavor to have a spellcasting wizard slayer, of course. I've got a WS/thief planned for a future no-spellcaster party, and that's the only dual class I'm likely to consider sith the kit.
We continue through Nashkel mine, and demonstrate that we may be a bit over-levelled for Mulahey - his chances were slim before the nymphs made it a moot point by holding him.
Nimbul gets a similar treatment with an electrical twist.
Tranzig fails to get a chance to beg for leniency.
Meilum finds out his metal sword is not a suitable weapon for outdoors activity but at least saves against the full damage. Some insects arrive to distract him afterwards and that's enough for him to call it a day.
Taurgosz Khosann and his bandit archers put up a solid resistance at the bandit camp but we're able to defeat them without having to retreat.
Venkt manages to mirror image and get some spells away, but we're in our stride and four enemies in this tent won't be enough to stop us today.
At Cloakwood Yifter is keen to claw away at ettercaps, while Jharrd throws axes - trying to stay in one place to stop any spiders spawning in. Luck isn't with the ettercaps, while some of our hits are decently heavy.
Drasus and his mercenary gang fancy their chances. They really shouldn't, even when Jharrd gets a little confused.
Davaeorn's Battle Horrors are taken on one at a time, then he survives five rounds of Yifter before we eventually get to grips with him.
Our first task inside the city is to relieve Lothander of his boots.
Larze is softened up with throwing axes before we close in for some still-painful trading of blows. He's a melee nightmare (albeit a dead one).
Marek manages to confuse Yifter before perishing, and a tavern patron bumps into him. Fortunately Jharrd is closer-still and becomes the target and a misfortune of reputation is averted.
Ramazith's tower shouldn't be too much of a problem for us but Jharrd is slowed by the jellies and Yifter held by a ghast. Jharrd has defensive stance active and struggles to get past Yifter to the ghast - after a couple of hits he glugs an oil of speed to safely eliminate the threat and keep Yifter alive.
We usually take the Battle Horrors outside Durlags Tower on one by one but a lightning strike lands and almost kills it so we quickly move to the second and get a second strike.
A clean strike against a Doom Guard clears the exterior of enemies.
Inside we decide that we don't have suitable defences against basilisks so nip to High Hedge and purchase three potions of mirrored eyes. On our return, Jharrd glugs a potion and races outside. We manage to kill one lesser basilisk and three greater basilisks without needing a second potion (by my estimate we took 45-50 seconds so it was getting a bit close to the potion duration of 60 seconds).
Back at the city we tick off a number of tasks and have to decide whether to do any more next time (basilisk, Vay-Ya / Desreta) or deal with the Iron Throne.
so far so good
I have cleaned up the country and everyone agrees I'm the best hero that has been in these parts for an age... now the city gates are open to me!
on a personal note I've just hit level 6 and dualed to mage.
I've got a WS/thief planned for a future no-spellcaster party, and that's the only dual class I'm likely to consider sith the kit.
I did consider thief... the main point of which is to get the UAI but from a flavor point of view my {Lawful Neutral} hero is a bit like the Dragonage Grey Wardens. There is no morality issue with good or evil... its whatever gets the job done
Today's session started in the Planar Sphere. We acquired a heart there without trouble, Trapper showing off the effects of his upgraded (or possibly downgraded) special traps.
Moving through to the engine room, we found, as suggested last time, the golems there proved to be troublesome. That was largely as a result of both groups combining in the initial combat - everyone only survived there by using invisibility potions. Even a single clay golem left on its own at the end proved difficult - mainly because Crest didn't bother trying to find a blunt weapon and instead relied on poor old Drubb to do the hard work.
After the golem experiences, for some reason the others decided they wanted to get a rod of resurrection, so the next stop was the Temple sewers - where Mekrath found himself in a sticky situation.
Some annoying connection problems caused a bit of a delay, but eventually Tarnor's gang were outclassed and dispatched.
We've previously experienced MP problems with using scrolls of undead protection, so decided to kill the lich in the sewers the old fashioned way - Azuredge doing the business once its improved mantle went down. The City Gates lich went down in a similar fashion, while the one in the Bridge District didn't get its buffs up until an instant after Azuredge was in flight - and paid the price.
The plan for Kangaxx was to kill his basic lich form, with Crest enraging at the end of that fight. He would then use the Ring of the Ram to push Kangaxx into some pre-laid traps in the corner of the tomb. I've not used that tactic for quite a while though and it may be it's no longer viable in the EE - Kangaxx took damage, but his MR appeared to block the movement aspect of the ring.
We exited the tomb before rage expired, but then had the problem of how to get back in. Crest could protect himself, but the others were vulnerable to imprisonment. I hoped that it would take Kangaxx a moment after we came back in to focus his attack - allowing Crest to move to be closest to him and absorb the imprisonment attempts. However, he showed no mercy - immediately sending Trapper into the abyss.
That was effectively the end of the run, so Crest waited until his rage expired and Kangaxx sent him to join his companion ...
The dwarves in Candlekeep were all deeply affected by the arrival of Tormson the Holy, a Tormite Priest on the point of death. Despite all the efforts of the healers it soon became clear that he would soon be departing Faerûn. He didn’t seem to be too disturbed by this news, a factor which led to several of the younger dwarves becoming his followers.
As a budding Inquisitor it was quite easy for me to choose him, and my good friend Tormaiden followed suit. She had been following Tempus, but to my surprise changed her allegiance. She already had a lawful good alignment, so the change was not too great. However it was the change in a fighter/thief friend of mine which surprised me the most as he changed his alignment to Lawful/Good in order to follow Torm. He gave up pickpocketing in order to do this, becoming a Tomb Runner. It was because of this change that I asked him to become one of my party. Of course this means that in our party there are no pick-pockets or arcane magic users. As a Dwarven Inquisitor of Torm, I am comfortable with that, however things could change.
In Candlekeep, we were attacked by three assassins. Tormaiden was invaluable in these fights as she used Command to great effect. My Fighter/thief friend also changed his name to Runner of Torm, or more usually just plain “Runner.” He benefitted greatly from these assaults, for much of their equipment could only be used by thieves. Some of it he was unable to use as it only helps pick-pockets. One of the assassins was carrying a +1 halberd which I insisted on having for myself, though nobody objected as my friends all knew that the halberd was my weapon of choice.
Tormaiden’s weapon of choice is the flail, but so far we haven’t come across decent flails. Runner, in contrast prefers to use knives, the chosen weapon of most of the assassins who attacked us. He is therefore fairly well equipped having acquired +2 knives.
It came as no great surprise when we were ambushed on the way to the Friendly Arms Inn due to the previous assaults. What did surprise me however was the fact that Gorion was unable to stave off the assaults as I thought him virtually invulnerable.
When we arrived at the inn, the assault by Tarnesh was also half-expected. As a result it wasn’t too difficult to defeat him. However, his presence made me wary of entering the inn in case he had allies awaiting us inside. We therefore headed to High hedge and from there went to Beregost where I was able to calm Marl and get a tome for Firebead.
We then headed southwards, killing ogrillon and three overly officious Flaming Fist mercenaries. We returned Perdue’s lost sword and helped in the restoration of Mellicamp before restoring Jumper to its owner and heading south. Sadly we were unable to help the werewolf, but we did get a decent sword in return for his body.
Heading south we found the Colquetle Amulet and were given a ring by Lord Foreshadow. We headed west and helped reunite Rufie with his owner after which we killed Vax and Zal. To the west we helped a dryad and helped to restore a dead cat.
We retraced our steps and killed Zargos Flintblade and Greywolf before dealing with Zordral.
Then heading eastward we picked up a ring to protect from fire and took Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn.
We are now a group of heroes, reputation 19.
We will now go in search of a ring to boost our reputation to 20.
I just lost my restless run with a Shadowdancer and Cleric of Lathander/Mage--in Shadows of Amn, no less! I haven't died in SoA in a long time. It was due to a vorpal strike from the Underdark Balor. Apparently the Balor's attack in my install is a no-save vorpal strike (opcode 13) with a 15% chance, just like in ATweaks... except I don't have ATweaks installed. I thought SCS made vorpal strikes offer a save. @DavidW, is this a bug?
Anyway, I'm okay with giving up the run. Not sure if I want to start over, though. I've been working too much on the restless run and the gameplay is getting stale. I miss being able to cast spells, and hoarding scrolls and consumables is tedious.
I'm mulling the possibility of another poverty run, this time without even using self-created items like Minute Meteors or shapeshifting weapons, and also without the mods that made the first poverty run's gameplay a bit wonky. I'm leaning towards a Bounty Hunter, four sorcerers, and a Blackguard. The Reform Party trick will let us restore the Bounty Hunter's traps and the Blackguard's Absorb Health spell, and Absorb Health does 2 magic damage per level with no save, bypassing magic resistance and spell level immunities.
If we kept the Blackguard safe, it could just spam unblockable magic damage every round, offering us a convenient way to kill Belhifet and disrupt mage spells through spell protections. The Bounty Hunter could blast our way through BG1 and much of SoD, the Blackguard could take down Belhifet if given the right support (namely, stacking Spirit Armor spells to guarantee saves against Hold Person), the sorcerers could tackle early BG2, and by the endgame the Bounty Hunter would be Mazing everything while the rest of the party was Wish-resting. We could even tag-team the Bounty Hunter and Blackguard, having the Bounty Hunter Maze everything indefinitely while the Blackguard tacks on magic damage during the brief window when enemies return from the Maze effect.
But in practice, BG1 might be kind of sluggish, and it's a pretty high-maintenance setup. I'm just trying to think of a new gimmick for a run that won't require much pressure on my hands.
@semiticgod My berserker in Constantia's run got chunked by a balor's vorpal strike as well, with all-negative saving throws. Seems likely that there might be no save available in the current version.
Constantly weaving a blackguard in and out of the party does sound a bit tedious - but if you make the bounty hunter your bhaalspawn, you could get one of the more powerful still-absent classes into the Hall of Heroes, which would be great to see
After returning Joia's ring to her, we headed north, killed the evil Sonner and his cohorts and the undead husband of a widow. We then killed all the ankhegs that we could find and returned the body of Farmer Brun's son to him. We then returned to lion's way where we found Xzar and Montaron. They were very generous and so in partial repayment, I agreed to take them to the Mayor of Nashkel. Before doing so, we visited Ulgoth's Beard and Beregost. Unbeknownst to me, Montaron relieved several people of their belongings with the result that upon fulfilling my promise to take them to Nashkel, I left them in the Amnish barracks.
EDIT
We met up with Quayle who has decided to join us. As a cleric/mage he will be a great addition to our party.
We then took Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn and killed an ogre with a belt fetish before heading west to deal with bassilus, Zordral et al.
Aaaaand I just started up another restless run with a new lineup:
Fighter/Thief (Charname)
Totemic Druid
Cleric of Lathander->Mage
Cleric of Lathander->Mage
Cleric of Lathander->Thief
Cleric of Tyr->Thief
I think it'll be more fun if I carry a whole party instead of just having 2 characters, since late game XP bloat tends to screw with the difficulty level for smaller parties and solo runs. Like before, the whole thing is geared around using the Wand of Lightning trick in BG2 to stack kit abilities.
Once we do get to BG2, infinite Boons of Lathander multiplied by the WoL trick is going to get very absurd very quickly. The limiting factor will be that Boon of Lathander is very easily dispellable, and it's especially easy to dispel a kit ability from a dual-class since those BoL spells will be cast at the character's average level--basically, any Dispel Magic effect will wipe out any of our BoL bonuses, and I won't have nearly enough Spell Immunity scrolls to cover everyone. As long as we can get a single one off the ground at a time, though, we can restore it and regain negative saving throws.
The really cool thing is going to be when our Cleric of Lathander->Thief finally gets Use Any Item and starts swinging around Carsomyr at 5 APR!
Trio attempt 15 (previous, 14) Milam - male human Avenger (Gate70)
I hadn't played this kit for a long time until a recent duo character, so decided to give it a go in the trio.
Harvey - male human Sun Soul Monk (Grond0)
Grond0 recently answered some questions Corey_Russell had about Rasaad and evidently piqued his interest in this monk kit.
Coremage - male half-elf Fighter / Mage (Corey_Russell)
Looks like a tank, walks like a tank, will no doubt be coaxed into acting like a potion-gulping tank.
Our previous unsuccess at the fingers of Kangaxx gave us just enough time to roll up a trio and get them out of Candlekeep.
Our tally to date is 5 rats + Carbos + Shank, and Shoal the nereid. Also a very angry guard who was called after Harvey helped himself to a potion in the clinic despite being the abstinent one of the trio.
Milam makes the death tally 8, however Harvey has claimed 7 kills and Coremage 2 kills so a bit more thought is called for. Either we killed something like a wolf or gibberling just outside Candlekeep without Milam noticing, or a friendly-fire incident with Imoen goes into the scores.
There were a few things left to do in the city - Vay-Ya and Desreta, the basilisk in the warehouse and Degrodel's house sprang to mind so we did them. Degrodel's minions all piled outside to swarm Jharrd but his defenses held firm and Yifter made exceptional use of lightning to speed up their destruction.
The Iron Throne HQ was easy for us, a scroll of protection from magic together with dwarven defender stance gave the defenders no chance to get on top of matters.
Candlekeep catacombs were raced through, Yifter commenting at one point that he was ready to help with the greater basilisks but a hefty critical finished the beasts off quicker than we expected.
At the Coronation we thought it was going well but Belt went and died on us (mainly due to Jharrd dawdling and the many nymph confusions landing a second or two before the preening nobles turned into doppelgangers). Liia survived though.
Neither the thieves maze or Rahvin's gang gave us much resistance, other than a scared mage running away and taking us several minutes to track her down.
Jharrd managed a poor facedown with Sarevok so all four enemies came into play. Jharrd took heavy damage as he killed Angelo, with Sarevok hitting him and Tazok getting a from-invisible strike too. Semaj was held fast by nymphs but it took us several rounds to kill him and a bit longer to down Tazok. Jharrd was still badly wounded and even after Yifter ironskinned and shifted to face Sarevok the big man turned on Jharrd whenever he could. Jharrd moves to a distance and uses his throwing axe.
Sarevok eventually concedes.
SoA
Yifter uses ironskins to foil many of the poison and spike traps, and protecting himself from lightning. This speeds up our escape and we soon emerge into the promenade. Jharrd realises he has failed to record the escape properly, only sketching one combat where nymphs used hold to great effect.
Coredruid the human totemic druid and his party of druids Update
Traveling with:
Heather - half-elf fighter/druid
April - half-elf fighter/druid
Alena - human shapeshifter
Jaheira- half-elf fighter/druid
Jan - gnomish thief/illusionist
The party has made good progress since getting out of the dungeon. Not going to mention everything, but just the highlights:
* Mencar Pebblecrusher found out that druid summons, plague of insects and chaos were way too much for his gang to handle.
* Ployer and friends also discovered chaos and plague of insects is a very strong combination:
* While we have won all ambushes so far, we definitely get smacked hard in them sometimes.
* We take out the slavers in the moored ship, also taking some damage but winning without casualty.
We are currently working on Umar Hills. We hope we don't get greater mummies, as our party has only ONE +3 weapon. We'll probably have to retreat if we encounter 1.
I have just realised that there was something very wrong with my game. My Fighter/Cleric Hand of Torm had well over 100 hp upon leaving Candlekeep. I don't know how it happened, but I will dump the game as he was clearly far too powerful.
Comments
Traveling with:
Sarah - level 6 fighter/level 7 druid
April - level 6 fighter/level 7 druid
Alena - level 8 shapeshifter
Jaheira - level 6 fighter/level 7 druid
Imoen - level 5 thief > level 7 mage
The party is still making progress. We have just finished up business in Chapter 5 (uneventful) - and just battled the 5th floor Iron Throne Party. We will be on our way to Candlekeep next. I had one my fighter druids, April solo this group. I explained my strategy in detail in the video and then you get to see the results as well.
Solo fighter/druid battles 5th floor Iron Throne Party (video)
Dorn put the hard word on me {mid fight} to go back and kill a pally... yes sure thing. then some drow gave us all +3 weapons which came in handy at the smurf village but I got cooky.
Killing the air beasts for the mage made the brain suckers ambush us and of course that gave the mage time to put his defences up... I assume it was a trap spell
Final Update: Constantia, Priestess of Tyr
Previous updates:
[spoiler]BG1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1080293/#Comment_1080293
SoD: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1085092/#Comment_1085092
SoA Part 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1087371#Comment_1087371
SoA Part 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1087704/#Comment_1087704
ToB Part 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1088796/#Comment_1088796 [/spoiler]
What's going on with the new UI for posting forum comments? Very strange. I hope this post doesn't look terrible.
In any case, the party started doing the minor Amkethran sidequests, with Vongoethe being the only one of potential interest. The lich made the mistake of allowing us to return with Marlowe, though, which gave Jan and Carpani the time to plant some deadly spike traps, allowing us to easily claim the Cloak of Mirroring:
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After all that, I also completed Hexxats ToB quest (the quest wouldn't trigger at first, but restarting the game solved the problem). Some easy mummies, golems, death tyrants and a lich who couldn't stand against our buff-dispelling sequencers - not much to say about that one. We traveled to Sendai's next, going through most of the dungeon with our initial buffs at a fast pace. Odamaron and his disciples were mostly killed by Korgan and a few spells from a safe range, as I didn't want to expose potentially vulnerable party members to timestops and hard-hitting damage spells:
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Diaytha's minions were lured into spike traps via summons, and a planetar actually took down the hive mother by itself:
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Constantia won her duel via energy blades, and the mind flayers (in much fewer numbers compared to WK lvl 3) failed to provide any substantial challenge, so it was time to face Sendai. Fun fact: Upon first entering her room, I was able to pause before she started talking, and some very strange creatures - 2 unseen Balors and, for some reason, Marlowe - were present in her room (all three disappeared from the screen right after that):
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The SCS version of this battle is a bit different from Ascension: The Sendai clones seem to activate even faster, but are weaker; The drow teleport into the center of the room, they don't appear at the door, and they appear upon each Sendai activation, not upon the death of a clone, so the room is filled by enemies very quickly, especially as the activations and spawn-ins don't stop during a timestop, which the first mage-Sendai used (but wasted, mostly for buffing herself up):
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There were also no mages included with the spawning drow, making it much easier to take those down. With the weaker clones, this battle was honestly much easier than I first expected upon seeing the sheer number of enemies. I was simply able to take them all down one by one, as their aggressive potential was very minimal against my well-buffed party. The real Sendai, upon re-appearing, didn't even get to use her pre-buffs:
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Draconis was the next one to go - one of the few dragons for which I actually bothered to protect everyone against his breath weapon element. However, having two spellcasters with sequencers and two gems of true seeing allowed for a quick takedown of the dangerous dragon, as he was unable to dispel the protected buffs of everyone but Korgan, who has the hitpoints to survive (he's also using the DoE +3 when fighting hard-hitting enemies such as dragons):
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In Abazigal's Lair, I had a prolonged battle against a group of lizardman shamans who kept casting timestop and spamming creeping doom, really testing the strength of my spell protections and the abundance of my healing potions for a while:
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I don't actually remember encountering this fight before, but my memory might be failing me. Anyway, I dealt with the yellow dragon, talked to the monk, got the rope at Amkethran and returned for the quadruple dragon ambush (with one of the dragons dying to spike traps that I had prepared for this encounter). I didn't even prepare against the breath weapons and kept my buffs active througout the battle. Only Korgan had to deal with a lot of physical damage, countered by hardiness + DoE:
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Korgan used the Cloak of Mirroring to fight his way to the tyrant golems on the eye-map. The tyrant golems (despite eventually snatching his cloak) were basically unable to do anything to hurt him, but it took a while to take them down:
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Abazigal himself turned out to be not quite at his Ascension level, with no other dragons by his side. The fight felt basically like the vanilla battle, and I had full electricity immunity for everyone prepared (plus a bunch of potions of absorption in my potion bags):
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I don't have any screenshots of the Balthazar fight. I didn't notice any major difference compared to what he usually brings to the table, which isn't a lot against a full party (though he wasn't even able to heal to full once this time around). Now, it was time to face the Ravager - relatively easy for this party, though - multiple ways to go about it with two high-level mages, but I decided to just cheese the fight and prepare traps (the battle doesn't trigger unless the main character walks into the room, everyone else can just go up there and start preparing the battlefield). 7 spike traps don't quite kill the Ravager, but only a few hits are needed after that:
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Now, the big question - what does SCS Amelyssan without Ascension actually do? I had no idea, and I still don't really know. I didn't see any cool new special abilties, but I didn't give her a lot of time to fight. The basic way the battle works is the same as in the unmodded game, so three pools with monsters guarding them, and a battle against Mel each time one of them is deactivated. I included a few potion buffs in addition to my usual routine. During the first Mel battle, all she got the chance to do was gate in a few Glabrezus and dispel some of Korgan's buffs (again, the only one vulnerable to dispel effects) - I re-applied improved haste and just beat her down until she retreated, not casting a single spell except for improved haste during the fight and simply just attacking:
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After that, I just defaulted to using 4 spike traps each for Mel's appearances, while taking down the first two pools with ease. For the third pool, I decided to charge at the fallen solar, ready to swap around the Cloak of the Lich if needed, but no one lost their death wards, so we didn't face any trouble.
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Some breaches for the Mariliths, and that was it: Mel once again fell to a few spike traps, and Constantia claimed godhood.
And there we go. After some big trouble and two chunkings plus a few deaths in early ToB and Watcher's Keep, we didn't face much trouble in the lategame, mainly due to the lack of Ascenion I would guess. Of course, the new spells were a huge factor here as well - being able to protect your buffs on divine spellcasters is kind of a gamechanger. I would certainly say that, at least on tactical difficulty, the IWD spells do make this challenge a bit easier in general. While enemy clerics get them as well, they still don't seem to be huge threats (maybe they are more deadly on insane, though I wouldn't count on it), while players can count on Shield of Entropy and ISOM to be amazing additional protections against all kinds of threats. Full parties also profit a lot from the sheer amount of new powerful AoE buffs, while druids have a much better early game in general thanks to some decent nukes. I'm still not too happy with my setup for this run, but I will be taking a break for a while now: Got some work-related things to do, and after that, I'm going to play WoW: Classic for a long while. I'll still be reading, of course, and when I return to BG, I will certainly play with the SCS-slider on insane and possibly Ascension installed once again. I might also look for a mod to increase BG1 difficulty specifically, though I don't want it to be one that adds a bunch of new experience and items - no content pack, some other type of difficulty-improving thing, like the old Hard Times mod (which sadly doesn't work on the EE).
Good luck to everyone,
Enuhal
Edit: No idea why my spoiler tags aren't working. Something is very strange with the forum UI.
Here's the info for the Hall of Heroes:
Constantia, the Priestess of Tyr: @Enuhal
Notable mods: SCS (tactical difficulty)
Difficulty: Core rules
Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1080293/#Comment_1080293 (June 2019)
Finish: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1089182/#Comment_1089182 (August 2019)
Traveling with:
April the half-elf fighter/druid
Sarah the half-elf fighter/druid
Alena the human shapeshifter
Jeheira the half-elf fighter/druid
Imoen the level 5 fighter dualed to mage
Candlekeep was by the numbers. So many ways to deal with Prat's gang. Eventually had summon distractions, Alena using protection from magic scroll and werewolf form, then Imoen assisted by paralyzing two of Prat's gang using the paralyzation wand.
Chapter 7 was a breeze. Slythe had no chance, and neither did the dopplegangers. plague of insects and glitterdust just paralyzed the dopplegangers. Maze was simple enough. For the Undercity Party, we used the classic @Grond0 / @Gate70 tactic of having summons attacking Rahvin while party invisible. This made it much safer for the party to attack after summons were killed.
The Sarevok battle, on the other hand was a disaster. I couldn't remember what traps Imoen could actually disarm (100), she tripped the web trap. Semaj then spawned and we killed him, but our summons were wasted by the chaos.
Angelo then showed up but by the time the time we had killed him, 1/2 the party was dead.
Jaheira was badly hurt and didn't stand a prayer but she held her ground and was killed.
Imoen tries to one last thing before death (improved invis) but she died before she could get it off.
Imoen dies and it's only Coredruid vs a HASTED Sarevok and Tazok!!
As Coredruid runs around, it's apparent even with haste, he needs the haste boots to have a chance, so while running around he picks up haste boots off the floor.
He also does STR potion (18) + DUHM to increase Thac0/damage (his base STR is only 9). After a while, it dawned on me that killing Tazok would at least make kiting Sarevok easier, so did kill him before working on Sarevok. This battle was very hard physically (real life), hand was hurting. The battle lasted ONE HOUR of real time.
After what seemed like forever, finally Sarevok falls to a bullet! Coredruid and party move to Amn!!!
Not sure if my MP party will be dead in Amn, guess will have to see.
Whew!
Nibbit has a dice roll of 78 so expect great things from him
I imagine the starting staff will be ditched for a long sword and longbow pretty quickly
And here's that same WS dualed to mage casting burning hands from his spell button on Shank:
not correct... you perhaps are using a mod or the gog install which is known to be buggy?
anyway yes Wizard slayer can dual to Mage and it works ok as a class but he still can't use many wizard items like {most} wands and the normal summon trinkets
what he brings to the party is range melee, hit points, backup casting & some pick pockets... the longsword is emergency use only
OK, I guess dual-classing from wizard slayer to a caster class is allowed. It's completely against flavor to have a spellcasting wizard slayer, of course. I've got a WS/thief planned for a future no-spellcaster party, and that's the only dual class I'm likely to consider sith the kit.
Jharrd (male dwarven defender, Gate70); Yifter (male half-elf shapeshifter, Grond0)
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes (3h30 total)
We continue through Nashkel mine, and demonstrate that we may be a bit over-levelled for Mulahey - his chances were slim before the nymphs made it a moot point by holding him.
Back at the city we tick off a number of tasks and have to decide whether to do any more next time (basilisk, Vay-Ya / Desreta) or deal with the Iron Throne.
I have cleaned up the country and everyone agrees I'm the best hero that has been in these parts for an age... now the city gates are open to me!
I did consider thief... the main point of which is to get the UAI but from a flavor point of view my {Lawful Neutral} hero is a bit like the Dragonage Grey Wardens. There is no morality issue with good or evil... its whatever gets the job done
@Serg_BlackStrider: I have 1.4 terabytes on my hard drive, so I'll host a spare copy of the thread if I can download the thing.
Crest - dwarf berserker (Grond0)
Trapper - halfling bounty hunter (Corey_Russell)
Drubb - dwarf fighter/cleric (Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082132/#Comment_1082132
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1083853/#Comment_1083853
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1085138/#Comment_1085138
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1086448/#Comment_1086448
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1087886/#Comment_1087886
Today's session started in the Planar Sphere. We acquired a heart there without trouble, Trapper showing off the effects of his upgraded (or possibly downgraded) special traps.
After the golem experiences, for some reason the others decided they wanted to get a rod of resurrection, so the next stop was the Temple sewers - where Mekrath found himself in a sticky situation.
We've previously experienced MP problems with using scrolls of undead protection, so decided to kill the lich in the sewers the old fashioned way - Azuredge doing the business once its improved mantle went down. The City Gates lich went down in a similar fashion, while the one in the Bridge District didn't get its buffs up until an instant after Azuredge was in flight - and paid the price.
We exited the tomb before rage expired, but then had the problem of how to get back in. Crest could protect himself, but the others were vulnerable to imprisonment. I hoped that it would take Kangaxx a moment after we came back in to focus his attack - allowing Crest to move to be closest to him and absorb the imprisonment attempts. However, he showed no mercy - immediately sending Trapper into the abyss.
The dwarves in Candlekeep were all deeply affected by the arrival of Tormson the Holy, a Tormite Priest on the point of death. Despite all the efforts of the healers it soon became clear that he would soon be departing Faerûn. He didn’t seem to be too disturbed by this news, a factor which led to several of the younger dwarves becoming his followers.
As a budding Inquisitor it was quite easy for me to choose him, and my good friend Tormaiden followed suit. She had been following Tempus, but to my surprise changed her allegiance. She already had a lawful good alignment, so the change was not too great. However it was the change in a fighter/thief friend of mine which surprised me the most as he changed his alignment to Lawful/Good in order to follow Torm. He gave up pickpocketing in order to do this, becoming a Tomb Runner. It was because of this change that I asked him to become one of my party. Of course this means that in our party there are no pick-pockets or arcane magic users. As a Dwarven Inquisitor of Torm, I am comfortable with that, however things could change.
In Candlekeep, we were attacked by three assassins. Tormaiden was invaluable in these fights as she used Command to great effect. My Fighter/thief friend also changed his name to Runner of Torm, or more usually just plain “Runner.” He benefitted greatly from these assaults, for much of their equipment could only be used by thieves. Some of it he was unable to use as it only helps pick-pockets. One of the assassins was carrying a +1 halberd which I insisted on having for myself, though nobody objected as my friends all knew that the halberd was my weapon of choice.
Tormaiden’s weapon of choice is the flail, but so far we haven’t come across decent flails. Runner, in contrast prefers to use knives, the chosen weapon of most of the assassins who attacked us. He is therefore fairly well equipped having acquired +2 knives.
It came as no great surprise when we were ambushed on the way to the Friendly Arms Inn due to the previous assaults. What did surprise me however was the fact that Gorion was unable to stave off the assaults as I thought him virtually invulnerable.
When we arrived at the inn, the assault by Tarnesh was also half-expected. As a result it wasn’t too difficult to defeat him. However, his presence made me wary of entering the inn in case he had allies awaiting us inside. We therefore headed to High hedge and from there went to Beregost where I was able to calm Marl and get a tome for Firebead.
We then headed southwards, killing ogrillon and three overly officious Flaming Fist mercenaries. We returned Perdue’s lost sword and helped in the restoration of Mellicamp before restoring Jumper to its owner and heading south. Sadly we were unable to help the werewolf, but we did get a decent sword in return for his body.
Heading south we found the Colquetle Amulet and were given a ring by Lord Foreshadow. We headed west and helped reunite Rufie with his owner after which we killed Vax and Zal. To the west we helped a dryad and helped to restore a dead cat.
We retraced our steps and killed Zargos Flintblade and Greywolf before dealing with Zordral.
Then heading eastward we picked up a ring to protect from fire and took Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn.
We are now a group of heroes, reputation 19.
We will now go in search of a ring to boost our reputation to 20.
Anyway, I'm okay with giving up the run. Not sure if I want to start over, though. I've been working too much on the restless run and the gameplay is getting stale. I miss being able to cast spells, and hoarding scrolls and consumables is tedious.
I'm mulling the possibility of another poverty run, this time without even using self-created items like Minute Meteors or shapeshifting weapons, and also without the mods that made the first poverty run's gameplay a bit wonky. I'm leaning towards a Bounty Hunter, four sorcerers, and a Blackguard. The Reform Party trick will let us restore the Bounty Hunter's traps and the Blackguard's Absorb Health spell, and Absorb Health does 2 magic damage per level with no save, bypassing magic resistance and spell level immunities.
If we kept the Blackguard safe, it could just spam unblockable magic damage every round, offering us a convenient way to kill Belhifet and disrupt mage spells through spell protections. The Bounty Hunter could blast our way through BG1 and much of SoD, the Blackguard could take down Belhifet if given the right support (namely, stacking Spirit Armor spells to guarantee saves against Hold Person), the sorcerers could tackle early BG2, and by the endgame the Bounty Hunter would be Mazing everything while the rest of the party was Wish-resting. We could even tag-team the Bounty Hunter and Blackguard, having the Bounty Hunter Maze everything indefinitely while the Blackguard tacks on magic damage during the brief window when enemies return from the Maze effect.
But in practice, BG1 might be kind of sluggish, and it's a pretty high-maintenance setup. I'm just trying to think of a new gimmick for a run that won't require much pressure on my hands.
Constantly weaving a blackguard in and out of the party does sound a bit tedious - but if you make the bounty hunter your bhaalspawn, you could get one of the more powerful still-absent classes into the Hall of Heroes, which would be great to see
After returning Joia's ring to her, we headed north, killed the evil Sonner and his cohorts and the undead husband of a widow. We then killed all the ankhegs that we could find and returned the body of Farmer Brun's son to him. We then returned to lion's way where we found Xzar and Montaron. They were very generous and so in partial repayment, I agreed to take them to the Mayor of Nashkel. Before doing so, we visited Ulgoth's Beard and Beregost. Unbeknownst to me, Montaron relieved several people of their belongings with the result that upon fulfilling my promise to take them to Nashkel, I left them in the Amnish barracks.
EDIT
We met up with Quayle who has decided to join us. As a cleric/mage he will be a great addition to our party.
We then took Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn and killed an ogre with a belt fetish before heading west to deal with bassilus, Zordral et al.
Fighter/Thief (Charname)
Totemic Druid
Cleric of Lathander->Mage
Cleric of Lathander->Mage
Cleric of Lathander->Thief
Cleric of Tyr->Thief
I think it'll be more fun if I carry a whole party instead of just having 2 characters, since late game XP bloat tends to screw with the difficulty level for smaller parties and solo runs. Like before, the whole thing is geared around using the Wand of Lightning trick in BG2 to stack kit abilities.
Once we do get to BG2, infinite Boons of Lathander multiplied by the WoL trick is going to get very absurd very quickly. The limiting factor will be that Boon of Lathander is very easily dispellable, and it's especially easy to dispel a kit ability from a dual-class since those BoL spells will be cast at the character's average level--basically, any Dispel Magic effect will wipe out any of our BoL bonuses, and I won't have nearly enough Spell Immunity scrolls to cover everyone. As long as we can get a single one off the ground at a time, though, we can restore it and regain negative saving throws.
The really cool thing is going to be when our Cleric of Lathander->Thief finally gets Use Any Item and starts swinging around Carsomyr at 5 APR!
Assuming we make it that far.
Milam - male human Avenger (Gate70)
Harvey - male human Sun Soul Monk (Grond0)
Coremage - male half-elf Fighter / Mage (Corey_Russell)
Our previous unsuccess at the fingers of Kangaxx gave us just enough time to roll up a trio and get them out of Candlekeep.
Our tally to date is 5 rats + Carbos + Shank, and Shoal the nereid. Also a very angry guard who was called after Harvey helped himself to a potion in the clinic despite being the abstinent one of the trio.
Milam makes the death tally 8, however Harvey has claimed 7 kills and Coremage 2 kills so a bit more thought is called for. Either we killed something like a wolf or gibberling just outside Candlekeep without Milam noticing, or a friendly-fire incident with Imoen goes into the scores.
Time: 5-10 minutes
Looking back, this appears to be our trio history
2 Grond0
3 Gate70
3: Milam
2: Crest (Kangaxx)
1: Lassiter (Shadow temple near Umar)
3: Steppytoes (bandit camp)
2: Gery (Kangaxx)
1: Yeldon (Draconis)
3: Nettle (Coronation)
1: Corethief (Basilisk in warehouse)
2: Peer (Conster)
1: Mikel (Watchers Keep)
3: Felai (Thax'llsillyia)
2: Grime (Rezdan)
1: Corethief (Bridge district assassin)
3: Teere (Kangaxx)
1: CorEE III (Zargal)
& before that some BGT runs (we had a couple of quad runs before that with @DOGDANCING )
Corehide (Silke)
Nugget (lightning near Shade Lord)
Friendly (Iron Throne HQ)
Corsen (Planar Prison Warden)
Unyo (Chunked companion fighting Samia at Windspear)
... may be more, working backwards to check
It was actually a random selection, but I agree it seemed appropriate
Jharrd (male dwarven defender, Gate70); Yifter (male half-elf shapeshifter, Grond0)
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes (5h15 total)
There were a few things left to do in the city - Vay-Ya and Desreta, the basilisk in the warehouse and Degrodel's house sprang to mind so we did them. Degrodel's minions all piled outside to swarm Jharrd but his defenses held firm and Yifter made exceptional use of lightning to speed up their destruction.
Jharrd managed a poor facedown with Sarevok so all four enemies came into play. Jharrd took heavy damage as he killed Angelo, with Sarevok hitting him and Tazok getting a from-invisible strike too. Semaj was held fast by nymphs but it took us several rounds to kill him and a bit longer to down Tazok. Jharrd was still badly wounded and even after Yifter ironskinned and shifted to face Sarevok the big man turned on Jharrd whenever he could. Jharrd moves to a distance and uses his throwing axe.
Sarevok eventually concedes.
SoA
Yifter uses ironskins to foil many of the poison and spike traps, and protecting himself from lightning. This speeds up our escape and we soon emerge into the promenade. Jharrd realises he has failed to record the escape properly, only sketching one combat where nymphs used hold to great effect.
Traveling with:
Heather - half-elf fighter/druid
April - half-elf fighter/druid
Alena - human shapeshifter
Jaheira- half-elf fighter/druid
Jan - gnomish thief/illusionist
The party has made good progress since getting out of the dungeon. Not going to mention everything, but just the highlights:
* Mencar Pebblecrusher found out that druid summons, plague of insects and chaos were way too much for his gang to handle.
* Ployer and friends also discovered chaos and plague of insects is a very strong combination:
* While we have won all ambushes so far, we definitely get smacked hard in them sometimes.
* We take out the slavers in the moored ship, also taking some damage but winning without casualty.
We are currently working on Umar Hills. We hope we don't get greater mummies, as our party has only ONE +3 weapon. We'll probably have to retreat if we encounter 1.
Start of new game Three Tormites