I just won the fight simply by having Tiax set some traps and then have Baeloth fry the reminder while the rest of the party just hid behind Invisibility. Apparently on Tactical difficulty, the equivalent of Core difficulty in SCS v32, only Greater Doppelgangers spawn; there is no shaman, mage, or assassin. I went with Tactical instead of Insane so the poverty run would be more doable during certain fights like Belhifet and Melissan.
Also, the poverty run is now into SoD. Imoen got us past the traps in the maze. It took a lot of work and we had to carefully isolate the Skeleton Warriors in the final fight, but by recruiting Faldorn, Tiax, Baeloth, and Viconia, we had the summons to bring down Angelo despite not having Melf's Acid Arrow on our player-created sorcerers (I picked Mirror Image first instead, which actually might have been life-saving). Once Angelo was down, we splattered Sarevok's allies with Lance of Disruption from long range, Faldorn dispelled Sarevok's Haste, and we finished him off with Magic Missiles, kicking out everyone except for our 6 base sorcerers before the final blow to make sure everyone stayed with us as we entered SoD.
Lance of Disruption and Invisibility brought down both the starting dungeon and the Coldhearth area. It's a really powerful combination; Lance of Disruption has seemingly unlimited range and enemies tend to take a long time to approach the party when they're attacked from such a long distance.
I overestimated the damage output of LoD, though, when it comes to fighting Belhifet, and I can't use Lower Resistance to cover the gap, either: we only get two level 5 spell picks at level 11, and one of them needs to be Animate Dead to survive the elevator ride. We would need both Oracle and Lower Resistance to kill Belhifet with Melf's Acid Arrows.
Or--and this is a bit of a gamble--we could try using 5 Lower Resistances on Belhifet, hit him with Greater Malison to neutralize the save bonuses from Improved Invisibility, and then Web him once he breaks invisibility, making it easier to land our Lances of Disruption. With 3 Spirit Armor spells cast before the fight, we'd all be immune to Web by default (save vs. spell of -1), while Belhifet would be almost guaranteed to be Webbed for the next 10 rounds. That's plenty of time to unload all of our Lances of Disruption, and I calculate that we'd just barely take him down even without using Minor Spell Turning to generate a scorcher loop with LoD.
I have two findings from testing, which together make the run with my current party and rules seem a lot more plausible if we make Lower Resistance our first level 5 spell pick:
1. Belhifet only casts Improved Invisibility right off the bat if the difficulty level is above NORMAL (which is "Tactical" with SCS v32, and "Core" in-game without v32). If the difficulty level is just NORMAL, he won't cast Improved Invisibility until he drops below 75% HP--which means we can easily lock him down with Webs while he's still visible, making him vulnerable to Melf's Acid Arrow. In fact, Acid Arrow could drop him with just 2 castings and a Minor Sequencer per party member.
2. Most of the elevator fights can be handled just with Magic Missile and some running around. The sole exception are two Hellcats, who are always untargetable due to Improved Invisibility. Lance of Disruption can go right through their invisibility, however, and unlike Skull Trap, LoD will also bypass MR. Thus, we don't need Animate Dead to survive the elevator.
3. A level 10 mage actually needs four castings of Spirit Armor to gain immunity to a non-Invoker's Web. Three castings is only sufficient for level 11.
If we were a single difficulty level higher, our success would depend partly on dice rolls unless everyone was level 11. At Tactical, however, we can get by without relying on luck as long as Charname is level 11 and everyone else is level 10. It would only be possible with 6 identical sorcerers in Insane mode if everyone was level 11 and you took Oracle (lame) and Lower Resistance as level 5 spell picks.
You can rest in Avernus to grind demons, and on Tactical that means 1400-XP Imps (who deal massive poison damage if we don't have Stoneskin!) and 120-XP Lemures, so XP is not a serious issue.
The funny thing is that all these long analytical posts are still just a fraction of the planning I do for these runs. I still have a checklist for my old plan, which involved taking Skull Trap before Lance of Disruption, focusing XP on half the party instead of just grinding Charname, disrupting the Bridge Mage with Ice Storm instead of a Spell Thrust->Melf's Acid Arrow from Baeloth, using Spirit Armor stacking to block SoD demon fear instead of Resist Fear (but I later learned that Avernus demons' fear forces a save vs. wands; not spells!), and strangest of all, sacrificing a sorcerer or two to Lightning Bolt traps and later raising them by using Shoal's party-wide Raise Dead effect instead of just having Tiax and Imoen deal with the traps.
How do you progress so fast? I mean, I know many people have more leisure time than me, for example, and I guess you have the locations of all traps and ambushes memorized and don't need to creep up to them carefully, but still...
Do you skip much content? I can't imagine that, either, because you miss out on XP.
Or is it just that you teleport around with the console instead of walking?
I cleared the Graveyard using Azuredge, though not bothering with PfU - getting to level 16 there.
Underground elementals did a lot of work against groups of undead and spiders. There was a rare (in BG2) use of Fog to thin the crowd around Pai'Na.
After a bit more shopping I continued work in the City by heading for the Unseeing Eye. Having died recently to the prismatic spray trap on the bridge I took the precaution of using 2 potions of Stone Form to make saving throws safe. Fire Storms and elementals dealt with the undead and beholders quickly enough that those potions could still protect against the petrification trap a bit further on.
Downstairs, the lich died in a Fire Storm without completing a spell - and none of the other undead could even hit the elementals.
Time was almost up though and it is likely to take a little while to sort out the beholders safely, so I ended the session there before starting on them.
Shaman 16, 91 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 333 kills (+515 in BG1)
How do you progress so fast? I mean, I know many people have more leisure time than me, for example, and I guess you have the locations of all traps and ambushes memorized and don't need to creep up to them carefully, but still...
Do you skip much content? I can't imagine that, either, because you miss out on XP.
Or is it just that you teleport around with the console instead of walking?
Besides familiarity with the game (not just locations, but also knowing ways to deal safely with different types of enemies without having to spend much time thinking about encounters), there are a number of things that can have a major impact on how long a game takes.
Playing with a full party takes far longer than solo.
You can reduce your playing time significantly by playing at a higher frames per second speed than the standard 30.
Whether and how you use AI can affect speed of progress.
If you use roleplay to influence decisions about your gameplay, that's likely to slow you down significantly compared to just power gaming. The same may apply if you apply restrictions to your play, e.g. putting limits on the amount you rest.
On a similar theme to the last point, you can save a lot of time on the game overall by choosing the order of your encounters carefully. If you do high XP, easy encounters early (like Shoal and the basilisks) you can very quickly pick up several levels even with a full party - which allows much quicker progress against weaker enemies later.
I don't use the console on the grounds I think it undermines the logic of a no-reload game, but you're right that you can save time if you use that, e.g. to move around within and between areas or speed up the passing of time.
For similar reasons, I don't allow resting to intentionally generate monsters for additional XP or gaining more than one lot of XP from the same monster (using petrification). If you do that sort of XP grinding though you can greatly speed up the acquisition of XP and also cut out lots of encounters without any loss of levels.
If you look at this thread by @semiticgod you will see a multitude of ways you can take advantage of exploits within the game - some of those can help speed up progress.
Another thing is that I know pretty much what I need for the final fight and what I want to bring into SoD: the only item that I consider difficult to get that I want is the Ring of Free Action from the Iron Throne fight. Besides that, 70% of items are from easy enough quests, purchased, or a very short trip (Spiders’ Bane, for example, in the Cloakwood).
And experience isn’t the biggest issue after a bit: warriors should easily be at level 7 by the Gate itself, and 7-8 is only 1 thac0 and 1d10+CON, not nearly enough to change the final fight, and everyone else is invisible while said warrior fights Sarevok and co. This is even less important now that SoD bumps you up to 161k experience even if you’re like 40k short from that.
as it turned out killing Sarevok didn't give me level 7 but killing his peons did... I went with Druid not Cleric, then killing my brother got me my 2nd level of the new class
@Neverused +3 weapons, fire balls [wands, arrows etc] (for peon killing) and enough gold to grab some raise dead scrolls are what I look for going into SoD
If you look at this thread by @semiticgod you will see a multitude of ways you can take advantage of exploits within the game - some of those can help speed up progress.
I must admit that I would hate to use most of those exploits, though I did quite like the trick of using the staff that used to enable you to change your charisma from 1 to 25. It no longer works.
Hmm. I’m definitely getting bumped to an even 161k after leaving the city for the first time if I was below it: there would’ve been no reason for me to get exp between the prologue and then. Maybe an artifact of modmerge or something?
The poverty run is out of SoD! I should start posting on it now that I've gotten it over the tough parts. We had multiple close calls and setbacks, and in the end we had to resort to grinding in Avernus to make sure we could get Charname to level 11 and finally cast Resist Fear (having six identical sources really limits your options), or else there was a modest chance of failure from Belhifet's opening Aura of Fear. We killed dozens of Imps and Lemures over the course of several weeks.
We've had a very brittle party. Invisibility was essentially our only defensive tool for all of BG1 and the vast majority of SoD; the only way we could handle the various disablers of the game was just to Web or lance the enemy from offscreen. But the sheer damage output of six sorcerers makes things remarkably fast if you don't let yourself get thrashed.
BG2 will be different, since we'll have Spell Immunity to block other disablers, Spirit Armor stacking to block the handful of nonmagical abilities like Psionic Blast, and Spell Turning to block Implosion. We'll be safe once we hit levels 14 and 18.
I duly took on the beholders. They will attempt to attack whoever caused them area damage, so it's wise to retreat and then use invisibility immediately after casting something like Fire Storm even if you've got summons active - that tactic soon killed several beholders to provide level 17.
It then didn't take long to clear the rest of the area and use the Rift Device to make the Unseeing Eye vulnerable.
I returned the Device before I could forget about that and then went to Storm Gaal.
I reported in to Oisig before remembering I'd intended to do the kidnap quest first (so that I would recover part of the 2 reputation lost for getting the pantaloons) - oh well, that's not a big deal. Coming back to the Promenade to store those I saved Sansuki from some vampires searching for him, before dealing with some troublesome occupants at a local inn.
Back at the Docks I started Mae'Var's tasks and got another level from bringing him a necklace - picking up a first HLA there.
I have not used shaman HLAs before, so will have to experiment in this run to see what's good.
Rayic had no answer to insects and the remaining tasks didn't take long.
I spent a while looting the guild though, which meant Mae'Var has got a reprieve until next time.
Shaman 18, 95 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 360 kills (+515 in BG1)
leveling
I wondered around the city picking up items and asking people to join me then I tossed a Dwarf Lich into the fire & smoked some troll flesh... I now have my Fighter levels unlocked so its time to go get my wild mage mate back
Hmm. I’m definitely getting bumped to an even 161k after leaving the city for the first time if I was below it: there would’ve been no reason for me to get exp between the prologue and then. Maybe an artifact of modmerge or something?
My game is HEAVILY modded, so that could have a LOT to do with what happens in my game. A lot of what happens with some mods I don't really understand at all.
I have abandoned my game of ther Good the Bad and the Ugly for no other reason than I wasn't enjoying it.
I have therefore started another game with a couple of Tormites. If they can find others with similar aspirations, they might be asked if they want to join the party.
Journal of Sir Geoffrey Spence, Inquisitor of Torm
In Candlekeep, the assassins though well equipped were no match for the command spell of Sir Gareth.
We made our way southward after being ambushed and ended up at High Hedge where we were able to aid Mellicamp and Tonder.
North of beregost we killed an ogre with a belt fetish.
We headed south killing ogrillon on the way and finding a girl's lost rabbit which had been found by Ugh.
We killed hobgoblins too, finding the Colquetle amulet on the way before bumping into a Lord Foreshadow who was generous enough to give us a ring.
In Nashkel we found some armour and had a fascinating conversation with Noober.
We turned down an offer that we didn't deserve from Oublek and headed eastwards where we killed Zordral who was keeping Bentha captive.
We then headed south where Zargos Flintblade unwisely accosted us. He was affixed to the spot using Command and then killed.
Further south Greywolf attacked us. He too was transfixed with Command and killed. Unfortunately it was Isra, a non-party member who dealt him the fatal blow.
Heading westward, we reunited Rufie with his owner and nearby killed Vax and Zal.
To the west we helped a dryad against Krumm and his ally. They hurt us badly, but we prevailed.
We were then asked to help a ghost after which we killed an ogre whilst in transit.
We retrurned to Nashkel where we helped Noober with a virus infection.
We returned to Nashkel where we delivered a letter found upon a dead ogrillon and returned the Colquetle amulet to the family.
Karlat was then killed
We then headed north and killed a lot of ankheg after which we were accosted by Peter who died in the physical altarcation which followed.
I don't understand why you have sox identical spell book picks. For sure you could have swapped one spell per level here and there?
Partly I just didn't want to agonize over making sure the entire party each had the perfectly complementary spellbooks, and partly I didn't want to get confused about which sorcerer had which spell. Plus, since the ideal set of spellbooks is mostly the same, I decided to just make identical spellbooks part of the challenge.
I wouldn't do it again, though. A diverse party is more interesting.
Narial the Undead Hunter, continuation of my 3rd attempt:
After a very busy week, I've had some time to continue playing at last.
I went to do the tedious stuff like Ulcaster school and Firewine Bridge first, all the small maps in between, the upstairs parts of Durlag's Tower and Shoal before heading for the Cloakwood.
In the Cloakwood, I sided with Aldeth Sashenstar against the druids. He's arrogant, but it makes sense RP wise. I had agreed to help him because he had asked, and the answer to take the druids' side (aloe vera balm?) sounds absolutely ridiculous.
Imoen took care of all the web traps in the spider map, and I was glad to have bought all the Elixier of Health that we could afford. (also because we got waylaid by wyverns and ettercaps all the time between maps.)
We recovered the dead boy and gave his body to his brother. Here's just a little photo proof that we were there, I didn't remember to take screenshots.
I had been afraid of the spiders in there, but with a Horror spell some of them scattered, I drew their melee attention to me, and the others took them down with ranged weapons.
Then we did the wyvern map and had to go back to unload our inventory (getting waylaid several times by more wyverns, which brought me to level 6).
I don't want to use metaknowledge (don't have that much of it, anyway), but with Imoen having been scouting, I felt justified to buff out of sight (Resist Fear, Chant and Bless) before meeting Drasus and friends. Imoen had spotted a cleric, a mage and two others, so I had Dynaheir creep close and cast Horror.
Rezdan and Genthore panicked, so we could focus our attack on Drasus and Kysus and then shoot down the other two. We didn't lose a single HP in that encounter.
Hareishan committed suicide. I went just close enough to be seen, then behind the corner again (thanks to the boots of speed). I was planning to attack her right after her lightning bolt, but either she killed herself along with them, or they attacked her because of it. Doesn't matter. No XP again, but no harm to us, either.
Then, the confrontation with Davaeorn. I was wearing that helmet of whatever from the ogre mage, which gives 20% resistance to various elemental damages, along with a ring of 40% fire resistance, and I took a potion of fire resistance. I thought about using the Boots of Grounding, but decided against it. Boots of Speed are just too good. I hoped to dodge the lightning.
It worked. I outran his spells (except for a fireball, but I was well protected against fire), and when he was out of his worst spells I let Dynaheir finish him with the Wand of Frost.
Neither foolproof nor original, I know, but anything that ends with me alive makes me happy .
After that, we took care of Sil and her Sirines along the coast. I didn't want to risk anything (I'm terribly afraid of charm spells, especially combined with poison), so Imoen scouted and then Dynaheir nuked them with Stinking Cloud, Fireballs (from wands, too) and the Wand of Frost. I had recharged it by selling and buying it again.I don't consider that cheating, because it's very expensive.
With everyone else using ranged weapons, I could tank the flesh golems in the cave long enough for the others to finish them.
Then we went to earn some money with Ankheg shells (one of them was made into a plate for Branwen), recovered the poor farmer's dead son (gave some of the treasure to the farmer, of course) and talked to Sonner.
After hearing Tenya's side of the story, we agreed to help her, but unfortunately there was an arrow in the air already during our conversation.
Bad luck, That had happened to me during my first playthrough, too. I went back to Sonner and told him that I knew he had lied to me, then he turned hostile and we had to kill them. Great. Now I've drawn the attention of Umberlee *and* Talos.
We have entered the city of Baldur's Gate. First stop was shopping for spells. Dynaheir can cast level 4 spells now, but doesn't have any in her book except Fireshield Red.
So, we're in the city! Things are going to get interesting soon. I'm glad to have made it until here and excited to continue soon.
Elementals provided an invulnerable target while dealing with Mae'Var's thieves on the upper floors. Downstairs, I decided to have a bit of fun by using Nature's Beauty for the first time - I hadn't previously realized that could be done while invisible! I also amused myself by casting insects on Mae'Var before Harming him.
Next on the program of City clearance was the Planar Prison. Haer'Dalis died before I got in there, but otherwise everything went smoothly as I picked up another level.
While in the Bridge District I headed for the Twisted Rune. A PfU scroll sorted out Shangalar,
but I was a bit slow in casting Pixie Dust as a follow-up to using Fire Storm on Vaxall. That allowed Vaxall to use 2 death spells in quick succession to kill both groups of my pre-summoned elementals and target me with an anti-magic ray just before I disappeared. He survived the Fire Storm long enough to follow up with a death ray, but my death saving throw of -2 shrugged that off.
Unfortunately though, my other saving throws were not all as good and that was about to prove costly. The safe thing to do against Shyressa the vampire would have been to use another PfU scroll, but I decided to play games again. I spent several rounds running round with the Spear of the Unicorn protecting against charm and was never apparently targeted with domination. Rashly concluding Shyressa didn't use that I thought I would see whether spirit summons would work against her and switched back to my standard club (without even applying chaotic commands) before starting to dance. I suspect the spirits would have struggled to overcome her regeneration and survive long enough against level drain to keep up the attack, but after a round or two of that combat the game suddenly ended anyway. I still didn't see any apparent use of domination as a targeted effect, so possibly that's just an aura Shyressa uses ...
there be Dragons here
I lost the bard storming the bridge defences and executed Dorn in his cage then we went hunting for; spiders, big bugs and very big lizards!
Journal of Sir Geoffrey Spence, Inquisitor of Torm
I battled almost unaided against Mutamin and his medusae and basilisk allies.
We then joined up with Gavin to deal with Bassilus and Zargal
Gavin then left us when we had fulfilled all the quests given to us by the Lathander Temple.
We joined up with Xzar and Montaron not realising that they were evil. I should have perhaps used detect evil when I first saw them, but didn't so I promised to accompany them to Nashkel.
While they were with the party Montarin indulged his kleptomaniac urges. I don't even know where he got all the loot that he turned up with, so I cannot return it.
When we finally got to Nashkel, I left the two of them there. What a relief to get them off my hands! However, we needed a mage. The most moral one that we could find was Quayle.
We were attacked by bandits and survived the encounter.
We then continued on our way to the gnoll stronghold in the hope of rescuing Aaron.
This we have done and we have also been able to find his ring.
We then found Dynaheir. At this point we COULD abandon Quayle, but that would be cruel. If I do decide to let him go, it will be at Nashkel or the carnival where he will be safe until he finds like-minded companions.
After clearing the area of gnolls we returned to Nashkel with Aaron. We turned down a reward and would have had a raised reputation if it weren't already 20.
We took the ring to Aaron's beloved and she is now at rest. I have decided to let Quayle stay in the part for as long as he wishes.
Now that we have some gold, I think that a visit to the sirine areas could be beneficial as we can buy some helms that prevent us being charmed before we go. I don't know how many are available, but two should suffice.
DISASTER STRUCK
After meeting up with Drizzt near the Archaeologist's excavations I thought that it would be a good idea to help him.
IT WASN'T!!!
They were FAR too powerful, and by the time I realised it, it was too late!!
A new run with a Champion, a fighter/cleric and a mage, all who, due to the visit of a Charismatic Champion of Kelemvor, decided to follow Kelemvor themselves. They are all lawful Good Dwarves, and not surprisingly were friends even before the Champion arrived in Candlekeep.
We survived without problems in Candlekeep, not even getting wounded.
Indeed nobody got wounded until we rescued Mellicamp from a wolf. That wolf hurt me quite badly.
We attempted to help both Mellicamp and Tonder, but failed both times.
However we were able to return Perdue's sword after killing Karlat. We also helped Alanna's neighbour and took a letter to Mirianne.
We then returned a rabbit to it's owner and headed south.
We were attacked by three flaming fist mercenaries and killed all three of them. A summon weasels kept two of them occupied whilst we killed the first who was disabled using command. We then killed the others before the weasels were unsummoned, one of which was killed by the mercenaries.
We then killed some hobgoblins and picked up the Colquetle amulet on the way to Nashkel where we found some ankheg armour which I am now wearing.
We talked to Noober and turned down a reward wrongly offered to us by Oublek. As a result we have become heroes.
We went to the carnival to help bentha and then helped Aerie by finding her boots. In return she have us a +1 ring of protection that can be worn alongside other protective items.
We then headed south, Killed Zargos Flintblade and picked up the wand of frost. We returned to Aerie who identified it, slept and returned to kill Greywolf. Upon doing so Isra offered to help us. We gratefully accepted the offer since she is a cavalier and hence there should be no causes of conflict between us. She is at level 2 like me.
Narial the Undead Hunter, continuation of 3rd attempt
I've cried for help already in the Adventurer's Lounge and have a plan how to continue, but not much time to play during the week, so I'd rather share my progress until now before I proceed:
After buying several scrolls for Dynaheir, we looked for directions and talked to a man in the street, who offered us money and a job. We agreed, because he seemed rather neutral, and we need contacts in this place. We followed him to a building and decided that those were not the kind of people we wanted to associate with. The leader of the Thieves' Guild, because that's what they were, tried to blackmail us into working for him, but we're forces of righteousness and won't be intimidated by criminals, by Lathander!
Magic Missiles and arrows were enough to interrupt the mage, and Fireballs, Holy Smite and simple physical force were enough against the rogues.
Most things here are probably stolen from others, but we have no reliable way to find the owners, and if we leave things here, others will certainly steal them, so we confiscated everything. I used the tome to increase my DEX to 18.
Then we entered a store that was selling extremely suspicious items. We checked the shelves to see what else he had lying around here, and then this happened:
That was annoying. We didn't pick a lock and we didn't take anything. We just looked into the shelf, and were accused of stealing without the possibility to explain ourselves. In a shop selling illegal goods, too!
With those stupid dialogue options, I chose to try to bribe them instead of threatening, and lost a point of Reputation for it. They turned hostile, but fortunately they didn't follow me outside.
We regained the lost Rep point by finding someone's gauntlets near the docks, and then I made level 7 killing an escaped basilisk.
I had a lucky roll gaining my full 15 HP.
Next:
The door was open, for the gods' sake! What happened to "This is a private home, please leave" ? No regrets here. I doubt he was a saint.
Then we were addressed by a woman who informed us that a mage called Ragefast was holding a nymph as a prisoner in his home. That was the only case where I felt justified to pick the lock of a house in the city to enter. At first, I seemed to be able to appeal to Ragefast's love for the nymph, but then I said something wrong that made him angry and we were forced to kill him.
Then, we were asked to recover a boy's body from the Temple of Umberlee. He had been foolish to sneak into her temple, but mercy has to be chosen over justice, so I went to speak to the priestess. She asked for the sum of 2000GP for his body, and when I declared that outrageous, she immediately went hostile and attacked. Great. We had already slain another priestess of Umberlee by accident, and now we have killed several of them, including their high priestess, in her own temple. I hope Lathander will be able to protect me, and I hope we will never have to sail anywhere in the future.
She was carrying a scroll to remove a geas. I've kept it, just in case.
Then we went shopping again at the Sorcerous Sundries, discovered a staircase and went up, assuming there was maybe another store. Nope. Four angry mages who freaked out when I talked to them.
They cast Horror, Branwen cast Remove Fear, we attacked, they died.
We freed Jhasso and killed the doppelgangers at the Seven Suns, met Aldeth Sashenstar and freed the Merchants' League of the doppelgangers, too, and then Scar introduced us to Duke Eltan, who asked us to investigate the Iron Throne.
Since he, as a Grand Duke, had practically ordered us to spy on them, I felt okay with lying my way through the lower levels of the Iron Throne to gather information and avoid more unnecessary corpses in my wake.
That went rather well, until we reached the 4th floor. When even the bartender kept questioning me who I was and what I was doing here, I got tired of it and told him it was none of his business.
That was a bad idea, because he immediately turned hostile, and I, not knowing if he was another doppelganger, hit him out of pure reflex.
Okay that loss of 10 reputation is not fair! At least the merchants didn't turn hostile. Come to think of it, it's rather strange that they watched without commenting. There was another person who had turned hostile and looked harmless, and the I remembered the nymph cloak and charmed him. No idea why I didn't think of that with the bartender. I guess I never expected him to count as an innocent bystander.
I went to the temple to "atone for my sins", i.e. donating enough to get my rep to 16. I can't have a paladin walk around with rep 10! I'm just glad I was at 20 when that happened, or I might have Fallen.
And then, although I had already picked up clues that Rieltar, the leader of the Iron Throne, was currently in Candlekeep, I decided to go to the 5th floor, where I hadn't gone during my first playthrough. So, I didn't know what to expect there.
Bad, bad, bad. I have no idea why we didn't run back downstairs to have at least a moment to prepare. I didn't know what they would throw at us. So, I had Branwen protect us with Remove Fear and let Dynaheir cast a Horror spell that affected two of them. Not what I had hoped, but better than facing all at once. Followed by Holy Smite, while we fighters engaged them in melee and Imoen shot arrows. Then I saw the Confusion spell flying and tried to activate the Greenstone amulet. I didn't know that it takes a moment, or I would have taken my emergency Potion of Magic Blocking instead.
Imoen was the only one unaffected, and I thought that was the end of it. I was glad that I had 60 or 70% Fire Resistance with a ring and the helmet, otherwise those repeated Flame Strikes would have killed me, They chunked Dynaheir, though. Imoen kept kiting and shooting with her Wand of Magic Missiles, interrupting some spells.
Then I got hit by Melf's Acid Arrow and Imoen was Held. I was biting my nails and waiting for the Confusion to wear off. Finally!
That was too close. Mental note: If you do a no reload, don't go to places where you haven't been before!
I was unsure for a while what to do now without a mage. Xan is gone, Quayle is mad, Edwin is evil.
I decided to dual Imoen into a mage. I know, useless to dual a level 7 thief into a level 1 mage at this point of the game. But at least this way she can Identify, use all those wonderful wands and cast from scrolls in emergencies. I've hired Alora as our new rogue. She's squishy, but she will do. I just hope she doesn't die on me in the Candlekeep catacombs.
I've thought about spam resting in ankheg or wyvern territory to gain some levels for Imoen, but decided that's too cheesy. I'm going to take it as it is. I've bought emergency scrolls of the most vital spells (going to have Imoen cast them in the worst battles), bought tons of potions, will finish some minor stuff in the city and then go to see Eltan and off to Candlekeep. Wish me luck.
I killed that bartender too in my first successful trilogy no-reload. AI was on . My ostensibly good character dumped all the companions who complained, bribed the Church, and was a somewhat more complex and interesting character as a result for the rest of the run. Good luck!
Feeling that we ought to be more experienced before facing the demons in the mine, we wandered to where Gorion was killed. There, a thief and a mage whose actions were kind asked to join us. We agreed without first checking that they were as good as they appeared and that was a mistake for Montaron was forever indulging his kleptomaniac tendencies.
Sadly we were unable to return the goods as we don't know where he acquired them and he won't tell us.
So as soon as we fulfilled our obligations to them of taking them to Nashkel, we let them go.
They intend going down the mine themselves. I wonder if we will meet them or their bodies down there.
At present we intend to boost our experience and hopefully meet some like-minded adventurers to help us.
As a result of Montaron's predations I have a cloak that increases my charisma, and Deathslayer has learned some useful spells, so there were some advantages to Xzar and Montaron being with us.
We have returned the Colquetle amulet to the family and taken Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn with the result that our reputation is now 20.
If we had gold, it would now be time to go shopping. Perhaps killing ankhegs would be the best source of gold at present since we do need experience too.
Heya, it’s me, Blackraven! Back in business, and am glad to see I'm not the only one! I'll go read up for a bit after this. My run with Cleric/Ranger Amahoro came to a halt in March, due to a multitude of bugs. I haven’t been able to solve all issues yet, despite having done a full re-install with the latest version of my mods, but I hope to continue her run at one point because she was doing great in ToB.
However after a break I also felt like making a new start about two or three weeks ago. Somehow one new start became several new starts haha, so I thought why not report on a run, and slightly increase the odds of me sticking with it? I choose to share with you a themed run I’ve only started a couple of days ago.
Alma's Arcane Army
Charname is Alma, a chaotic neutral Half-Elf Transmuter.
The theme of this run is a specialists run, i.e. taking a party of six specialist mages of different schools through the saga. (I tried this once, with a Gnomish Transmuter, but that adventure was very short-lived.) For BG1 a party is easily formed: Alma (Transmuter), Xzar (Necromancer), Dynaheir (Invoker), Edwin (Conjurer), Xan (Enchanter), and Quayle (Cleric/Illusionist). For Siege of Dragonspear and BG2 I’ll have to be creative with some of the NPCs, but rather that than running a custom party (which I find less interesting). I want the companions in SoD and BG2 to be of the same schools as the BG1 companions since those schools all have offensive spells with specialist save penalties which I find a nice motivation to play each mage differently in combat. Abjuration and Divination don’t have such spells. Anyway, let’s first focus on BG1.
As always I intend to play Alma true to her alignment and character. Alma is a flippant, free-spirited type, quirky, and not necessarily a people’s person. She is however very much a magic person, and her love for the arcane profession will lead her to founding an arcane adventuring company.
I’ll also refrain from using exploits but will use my knowledge of the game to determine which locations are visited when.
Setup: SCS (insane difficulty), BG1 NPC Project, BG1 UB, BGQE, RR, S&S (store only), PnP Free Action, some Anthology Tweaks (mostly convenience stuff and tweaks that make single classes stronger: more spells at higher levels, true grandmastery, continued Thac0 progression), some aTweaks, Jim Fix. Oh and I also installed Thalantyr Item Upgrade but that mod doesn’t seem to be working.
After Gorion’s death, Alma decided against dragging Imoen into her plight, opting to travel alone for the time being. Now with only Expeditious Retreat, Shield and Sleep as her known spells, traveling alone had the advantage of early leveling up and the disadvantage of enemy aggro being fully focused on her. She learned that from the surprisingly fast swinging Amazing Oopah,
and from an ogre mage whose PW: Sleep would have ended her incipient adventure and her life if it wasn’t for her half-elven charm/sleep resistance.
However Alma survived her first challenges and made it to the ankheg area where Sleep helped her to about 12k XP (not counting her finding Brun’s son). She got very lucky in the cave: one ankheg dropped a scroll of Invisibility and Alma, chaotic neutral as she is, tried to scribe it into her spell book despite having a 40% chance of failure. She succeeded! It gave her a lot less to worry about, such as this:
The wand of fire found in the ankheg cave was used to fry two battle horrors near Durlag’s Tower, and that was the starting point for her recruitment tour, with NPCs joining with level 3 spells. It was also the point for Alma to do a first spell scribing session.
Dynaheir was rescued first, thanks to Invisibility allowing the two to sneak past many gnolls. Edwin followed back in Nashkel. Now Alma has a CHA score of 12 (with the tome from the gnoll area), not very high. I’ve decided to have her wear Lord Foreshadow’s ring of human influencing all the time, to prevent any fights from breaking out. Quayle joined at the Carnival (thanks to relocation of some NPCs), Xan was rescued during a first covert exploration of the Nashkel Mines and then Xzar became the last addition to the party before the crew returned to the mines.
(One of the Xan mods gives him more and better equipment. Much of it was a bit too powerful for my taste, including his upgraded sword which I changed back to his original weapon, but I liked and kept a ring which gave +2 melee Thac0 and a tiara with which he could cast Find Traps once a day.)
Greywolf succumbed to lots of magic missiles and a wand scorcher but Prism refused to die so I assume he lived long and happily ever after finishing his work. In the mine, most kobolds were left alone except for one group carrying some mysterious vials. Everyone finally entered Mulahey’s room invisibly so they wouldn’t get surrounded by skellies and kobolds near the entrance and so that Xzar’s Skull Traps and the wand of fire could take them out from afar. Mulahey himself was interrupted, silenced and finished off with fire and magic missiles.
Quayle looted the tombs before the party returned to Nashkel to report their success to Berrun Ghastkill. It increased their rep by 1 unlike most reputation quests, even though the success rate should be about 50% (SCS setting). It meant that the more expensive goodies such as archmagi robes, Aule’s staff, dagger of venom (nice but not a must) had to wait while some gold was donated at the temple of Helm.
What did not wait was the encounter with Lamalha’s party. Everyone was invisible when they were ambushed, and they saw Telka and Maneira go invisible as well. Quayle dispelled that with a Detect Invisibility. Then the wand of monster summoning gave Lamalha some fodder to play with, while Dynaheir Webbed and Alma wand scorchered Telka and Maneira. Xan Held Lamalha and Edwin, Xzar and Dynaheir cast Magic Missiles at Zeela. Xzar even pulled off a Vampiric Touch on Zeela.
A neat victory was the result. Here you can see the companions contemplate the battlefield except Quayle who seems much more interested in the monsters summoned with that wand he had found.
To be continued…
Comments
Lance of Disruption and Invisibility brought down both the starting dungeon and the Coldhearth area. It's a really powerful combination; Lance of Disruption has seemingly unlimited range and enemies tend to take a long time to approach the party when they're attacked from such a long distance.
I overestimated the damage output of LoD, though, when it comes to fighting Belhifet, and I can't use Lower Resistance to cover the gap, either: we only get two level 5 spell picks at level 11, and one of them needs to be Animate Dead to survive the elevator ride. We would need both Oracle and Lower Resistance to kill Belhifet with Melf's Acid Arrows.
Or--and this is a bit of a gamble--we could try using 5 Lower Resistances on Belhifet, hit him with Greater Malison to neutralize the save bonuses from Improved Invisibility, and then Web him once he breaks invisibility, making it easier to land our Lances of Disruption. With 3 Spirit Armor spells cast before the fight, we'd all be immune to Web by default (save vs. spell of -1), while Belhifet would be almost guaranteed to be Webbed for the next 10 rounds. That's plenty of time to unload all of our Lances of Disruption, and I calculate that we'd just barely take him down even without using Minor Spell Turning to generate a scorcher loop with LoD.
1. Belhifet only casts Improved Invisibility right off the bat if the difficulty level is above NORMAL (which is "Tactical" with SCS v32, and "Core" in-game without v32). If the difficulty level is just NORMAL, he won't cast Improved Invisibility until he drops below 75% HP--which means we can easily lock him down with Webs while he's still visible, making him vulnerable to Melf's Acid Arrow. In fact, Acid Arrow could drop him with just 2 castings and a Minor Sequencer per party member.
2. Most of the elevator fights can be handled just with Magic Missile and some running around. The sole exception are two Hellcats, who are always untargetable due to Improved Invisibility. Lance of Disruption can go right through their invisibility, however, and unlike Skull Trap, LoD will also bypass MR. Thus, we don't need Animate Dead to survive the elevator.
3. A level 10 mage actually needs four castings of Spirit Armor to gain immunity to a non-Invoker's Web. Three castings is only sufficient for level 11.
If we were a single difficulty level higher, our success would depend partly on dice rolls unless everyone was level 11. At Tactical, however, we can get by without relying on luck as long as Charname is level 11 and everyone else is level 10. It would only be possible with 6 identical sorcerers in Insane mode if everyone was level 11 and you took Oracle (lame) and Lower Resistance as level 5 spell picks.
You can rest in Avernus to grind demons, and on Tactical that means 1400-XP Imps (who deal massive poison damage if we don't have Stoneskin!) and 120-XP Lemures, so XP is not a serious issue.
There are so many ways to play the game.
Do you skip much content? I can't imagine that, either, because you miss out on XP.
Or is it just that you teleport around with the console instead of walking?
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1091792/#Comment_1091792
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092077/#Comment_1092077
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092291/#Comment_1092291
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092496/#Comment_1092496
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092702/#Comment_1092702
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092938/#Comment_1092938
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093090/#Comment_1093090
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093287/#Comment_1093287
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093723/#Comment_1093723
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094389/#Comment_1094389
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094592/#Comment_1094592
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094759/#Comment_1094759
I cleared the Graveyard using Azuredge, though not bothering with PfU - getting to level 16 there. Underground elementals did a lot of work against groups of undead and spiders. There was a rare (in BG2) use of Fog to thin the crowd around Pai'Na.
After a bit more shopping I continued work in the City by heading for the Unseeing Eye. Having died recently to the prismatic spray trap on the bridge I took the precaution of using 2 potions of Stone Form to make saving throws safe. Fire Storms and elementals dealt with the undead and beholders quickly enough that those potions could still protect against the petrification trap a bit further on.
Downstairs, the lich died in a Fire Storm without completing a spell - and none of the other undead could even hit the elementals. Time was almost up though and it is likely to take a little while to sort out the beholders safely, so I ended the session there before starting on them.
Shaman 16, 91 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 333 kills (+515 in BG1)
Besides familiarity with the game (not just locations, but also knowing ways to deal safely with different types of enemies without having to spend much time thinking about encounters), there are a number of things that can have a major impact on how long a game takes.
Playing with a full party takes far longer than solo.
You can reduce your playing time significantly by playing at a higher frames per second speed than the standard 30.
Whether and how you use AI can affect speed of progress.
If you use roleplay to influence decisions about your gameplay, that's likely to slow you down significantly compared to just power gaming. The same may apply if you apply restrictions to your play, e.g. putting limits on the amount you rest.
On a similar theme to the last point, you can save a lot of time on the game overall by choosing the order of your encounters carefully. If you do high XP, easy encounters early (like Shoal and the basilisks) you can very quickly pick up several levels even with a full party - which allows much quicker progress against weaker enemies later.
I don't use the console on the grounds I think it undermines the logic of a no-reload game, but you're right that you can save time if you use that, e.g. to move around within and between areas or speed up the passing of time.
For similar reasons, I don't allow resting to intentionally generate monsters for additional XP or gaining more than one lot of XP from the same monster (using petrification). If you do that sort of XP grinding though you can greatly speed up the acquisition of XP and also cut out lots of encounters without any loss of levels.
If you look at this thread by @semiticgod you will see a multitude of ways you can take advantage of exploits within the game - some of those can help speed up progress.
And experience isn’t the biggest issue after a bit: warriors should easily be at level 7 by the Gate itself, and 7-8 is only 1 thac0 and 1d10+CON, not nearly enough to change the final fight, and everyone else is invisible while said warrior fights Sarevok and co. This is even less important now that SoD bumps you up to 161k experience even if you’re like 40k short from that.
@Neverused +3 weapons, fire balls [wands, arrows etc] (for peon killing) and enough gold to grab some raise dead scrolls are what I look for going into SoD
I don't think that it does.
We've had a very brittle party. Invisibility was essentially our only defensive tool for all of BG1 and the vast majority of SoD; the only way we could handle the various disablers of the game was just to Web or lance the enemy from offscreen. But the sheer damage output of six sorcerers makes things remarkably fast if you don't let yourself get thrashed.
BG2 will be different, since we'll have Spell Immunity to block other disablers, Spirit Armor stacking to block the handful of nonmagical abilities like Psionic Blast, and Spell Turning to block Implosion. We'll be safe once we hit levels 14 and 18.
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1091792/#Comment_1091792
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092077/#Comment_1092077
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092291/#Comment_1092291
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092496/#Comment_1092496
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092702/#Comment_1092702
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092938/#Comment_1092938
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093090/#Comment_1093090
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093287/#Comment_1093287
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093723/#Comment_1093723
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094389/#Comment_1094389
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094592/#Comment_1094592
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094759/#Comment_1094759
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094901/#Comment_1094901
I duly took on the beholders. They will attempt to attack whoever caused them area damage, so it's wise to retreat and then use invisibility immediately after casting something like Fire Storm even if you've got summons active - that tactic soon killed several beholders to provide level 17. It then didn't take long to clear the rest of the area and use the Rift Device to make the Unseeing Eye vulnerable. I returned the Device before I could forget about that and then went to Storm Gaal.
I reported in to Oisig before remembering I'd intended to do the kidnap quest first (so that I would recover part of the 2 reputation lost for getting the pantaloons) - oh well, that's not a big deal. Coming back to the Promenade to store those I saved Sansuki from some vampires searching for him, before dealing with some troublesome occupants at a local inn.
Back at the Docks I started Mae'Var's tasks and got another level from bringing him a necklace - picking up a first HLA there. I have not used shaman HLAs before, so will have to experiment in this run to see what's good.
Rayic had no answer to insects and the remaining tasks didn't take long. I spent a while looting the guild though, which meant Mae'Var has got a reprieve until next time.
Shaman 18, 95 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 360 kills (+515 in BG1)
I wondered around the city picking up items and asking people to join me then I tossed a Dwarf Lich into the fire & smoked some troll flesh... I now have my Fighter levels unlocked so its time to go get my wild mage mate back
My game is HEAVILY modded, so that could have a LOT to do with what happens in my game. A lot of what happens with some mods I don't really understand at all.
I have abandoned my game of ther Good the Bad and the Ugly for no other reason than I wasn't enjoying it.
I have therefore started another game with a couple of Tormites. If they can find others with similar aspirations, they might be asked if they want to join the party.
Journal of Sir Geoffrey Spence, Inquisitor of Torm
In Candlekeep, the assassins though well equipped were no match for the command spell of Sir Gareth.
We made our way southward after being ambushed and ended up at High Hedge where we were able to aid Mellicamp and Tonder.
North of beregost we killed an ogre with a belt fetish.
We headed south killing ogrillon on the way and finding a girl's lost rabbit which had been found by Ugh.
We killed hobgoblins too, finding the Colquetle amulet on the way before bumping into a Lord Foreshadow who was generous enough to give us a ring.
In Nashkel we found some armour and had a fascinating conversation with Noober.
We turned down an offer that we didn't deserve from Oublek and headed eastwards where we killed Zordral who was keeping Bentha captive.
We then headed south where Zargos Flintblade unwisely accosted us. He was affixed to the spot using Command and then killed.
Further south Greywolf attacked us. He too was transfixed with Command and killed. Unfortunately it was Isra, a non-party member who dealt him the fatal blow.
Heading westward, we reunited Rufie with his owner and nearby killed Vax and Zal.
To the west we helped a dryad against Krumm and his ally. They hurt us badly, but we prevailed.
We were then asked to help a ghost after which we killed an ogre whilst in transit.
We retrurned to Nashkel where we helped Noober with a virus infection.
We returned to Nashkel where we delivered a letter found upon a dead ogrillon and returned the Colquetle amulet to the family.
Karlat was then killed
We then headed north and killed a lot of ankheg after which we were accosted by Peter who died in the physical altarcation which followed.
I wouldn't do it again, though. A diverse party is more interesting.
After a very busy week, I've had some time to continue playing at last.
I went to do the tedious stuff like Ulcaster school and Firewine Bridge first, all the small maps in between, the upstairs parts of Durlag's Tower and Shoal before heading for the Cloakwood.
In the Cloakwood, I sided with Aldeth Sashenstar against the druids. He's arrogant, but it makes sense RP wise. I had agreed to help him because he had asked, and the answer to take the druids' side (aloe vera balm?) sounds absolutely ridiculous.
Imoen took care of all the web traps in the spider map, and I was glad to have bought all the Elixier of Health that we could afford. (also because we got waylaid by wyverns and ettercaps all the time between maps.)
We recovered the dead boy and gave his body to his brother. Here's just a little photo proof that we were there, I didn't remember to take screenshots.
I had been afraid of the spiders in there, but with a Horror spell some of them scattered, I drew their melee attention to me, and the others took them down with ranged weapons.
Then we did the wyvern map and had to go back to unload our inventory (getting waylaid several times by more wyverns, which brought me to level 6).
I don't want to use metaknowledge (don't have that much of it, anyway), but with Imoen having been scouting, I felt justified to buff out of sight (Resist Fear, Chant and Bless) before meeting Drasus and friends. Imoen had spotted a cleric, a mage and two others, so I had Dynaheir creep close and cast Horror.
Rezdan and Genthore panicked, so we could focus our attack on Drasus and Kysus and then shoot down the other two. We didn't lose a single HP in that encounter.
Hareishan committed suicide. I went just close enough to be seen, then behind the corner again (thanks to the boots of speed). I was planning to attack her right after her lightning bolt, but either she killed herself along with them, or they attacked her because of it. Doesn't matter. No XP again, but no harm to us, either.
Then, the confrontation with Davaeorn. I was wearing that helmet of whatever from the ogre mage, which gives 20% resistance to various elemental damages, along with a ring of 40% fire resistance, and I took a potion of fire resistance. I thought about using the Boots of Grounding, but decided against it. Boots of Speed are just too good. I hoped to dodge the lightning.
It worked. I outran his spells (except for a fireball, but I was well protected against fire), and when he was out of his worst spells I let Dynaheir finish him with the Wand of Frost.
Neither foolproof nor original, I know, but anything that ends with me alive makes me happy .
After that, we took care of Sil and her Sirines along the coast. I didn't want to risk anything (I'm terribly afraid of charm spells, especially combined with poison), so Imoen scouted and then Dynaheir nuked them with Stinking Cloud, Fireballs (from wands, too) and the Wand of Frost. I had recharged it by selling and buying it again.I don't consider that cheating, because it's very expensive.
With everyone else using ranged weapons, I could tank the flesh golems in the cave long enough for the others to finish them.
Then we went to earn some money with Ankheg shells (one of them was made into a plate for Branwen), recovered the poor farmer's dead son (gave some of the treasure to the farmer, of course) and talked to Sonner.
After hearing Tenya's side of the story, we agreed to help her, but unfortunately there was an arrow in the air already during our conversation.
Bad luck, That had happened to me during my first playthrough, too. I went back to Sonner and told him that I knew he had lied to me, then he turned hostile and we had to kill them. Great. Now I've drawn the attention of Umberlee *and* Talos.
We have entered the city of Baldur's Gate. First stop was shopping for spells. Dynaheir can cast level 4 spells now, but doesn't have any in her book except Fireshield Red.
So, we're in the city! Things are going to get interesting soon. I'm glad to have made it until here and excited to continue soon.
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1091792/#Comment_1091792
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092077/#Comment_1092077
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092291/#Comment_1092291
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092496/#Comment_1092496
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092702/#Comment_1092702
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092938/#Comment_1092938
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093090/#Comment_1093090
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093287/#Comment_1093287
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093723/#Comment_1093723
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094389/#Comment_1094389
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094592/#Comment_1094592
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094759/#Comment_1094759
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1094901/#Comment_1094901
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1095104/#Comment_1095104
Elementals provided an invulnerable target while dealing with Mae'Var's thieves on the upper floors. Downstairs, I decided to have a bit of fun by using Nature's Beauty for the first time - I hadn't previously realized that could be done while invisible! I also amused myself by casting insects on Mae'Var before Harming him.
Next on the program of City clearance was the Planar Prison. Haer'Dalis died before I got in there, but otherwise everything went smoothly as I picked up another level.
While in the Bridge District I headed for the Twisted Rune. A PfU scroll sorted out Shangalar, but I was a bit slow in casting Pixie Dust as a follow-up to using Fire Storm on Vaxall. That allowed Vaxall to use 2 death spells in quick succession to kill both groups of my pre-summoned elementals and target me with an anti-magic ray just before I disappeared. He survived the Fire Storm long enough to follow up with a death ray, but my death saving throw of -2 shrugged that off.
Unfortunately though, my other saving throws were not all as good and that was about to prove costly. The safe thing to do against Shyressa the vampire would have been to use another PfU scroll, but I decided to play games again. I spent several rounds running round with the Spear of the Unicorn protecting against charm and was never apparently targeted with domination. Rashly concluding Shyressa didn't use that I thought I would see whether spirit summons would work against her and switched back to my standard club (without even applying chaotic commands) before starting to dance. I suspect the spirits would have struggled to overcome her regeneration and survive long enough against level drain to keep up the attack, but after a round or two of that combat the game suddenly ended anyway. I still didn't see any apparent use of domination as a targeted effect, so possibly that's just an aura Shyressa uses ...
I lost the bard storming the bridge defences and executed Dorn in his cage then we went hunting for; spiders, big bugs and very big lizards!
I battled almost unaided against Mutamin and his medusae and basilisk allies.
We then joined up with Gavin to deal with Bassilus and Zargal
Gavin then left us when we had fulfilled all the quests given to us by the Lathander Temple.
We joined up with Xzar and Montaron not realising that they were evil. I should have perhaps used detect evil when I first saw them, but didn't so I promised to accompany them to Nashkel.
While they were with the party Montarin indulged his kleptomaniac urges. I don't even know where he got all the loot that he turned up with, so I cannot return it.
When we finally got to Nashkel, I left the two of them there. What a relief to get them off my hands! However, we needed a mage. The most moral one that we could find was Quayle.
We were attacked by bandits and survived the encounter.
We then continued on our way to the gnoll stronghold in the hope of rescuing Aaron.
This we have done and we have also been able to find his ring.
We then found Dynaheir. At this point we COULD abandon Quayle, but that would be cruel. If I do decide to let him go, it will be at Nashkel or the carnival where he will be safe until he finds like-minded companions.
After clearing the area of gnolls we returned to Nashkel with Aaron. We turned down a reward and would have had a raised reputation if it weren't already 20.
We took the ring to Aaron's beloved and she is now at rest. I have decided to let Quayle stay in the part for as long as he wishes.
Now that we have some gold, I think that a visit to the sirine areas could be beneficial as we can buy some helms that prevent us being charmed before we go. I don't know how many are available, but two should suffice.
DISASTER STRUCK
After meeting up with Drizzt near the Archaeologist's excavations I thought that it would be a good idea to help him.
IT WASN'T!!!
They were FAR too powerful, and by the time I realised it, it was too late!!
RIP
A new run with a Champion, a fighter/cleric and a mage, all who, due to the visit of a Charismatic Champion of Kelemvor, decided to follow Kelemvor themselves. They are all lawful Good Dwarves, and not surprisingly were friends even before the Champion arrived in Candlekeep.
We survived without problems in Candlekeep, not even getting wounded.
Indeed nobody got wounded until we rescued Mellicamp from a wolf. That wolf hurt me quite badly.
We attempted to help both Mellicamp and Tonder, but failed both times.
However we were able to return Perdue's sword after killing Karlat. We also helped Alanna's neighbour and took a letter to Mirianne.
We then returned a rabbit to it's owner and headed south.
We were attacked by three flaming fist mercenaries and killed all three of them. A summon weasels kept two of them occupied whilst we killed the first who was disabled using command. We then killed the others before the weasels were unsummoned, one of which was killed by the mercenaries.
We then killed some hobgoblins and picked up the Colquetle amulet on the way to Nashkel where we found some ankheg armour which I am now wearing.
We talked to Noober and turned down a reward wrongly offered to us by Oublek. As a result we have become heroes.
We went to the carnival to help bentha and then helped Aerie by finding her boots. In return she have us a +1 ring of protection that can be worn alongside other protective items.
We then headed south, Killed Zargos Flintblade and picked up the wand of frost. We returned to Aerie who identified it, slept and returned to kill Greywolf. Upon doing so Isra offered to help us. We gratefully accepted the offer since she is a cavalier and hence there should be no causes of conflict between us. She is at level 2 like me.
I've cried for help already in the Adventurer's Lounge and have a plan how to continue, but not much time to play during the week, so I'd rather share my progress until now before I proceed:
After buying several scrolls for Dynaheir, we looked for directions and talked to a man in the street, who offered us money and a job. We agreed, because he seemed rather neutral, and we need contacts in this place. We followed him to a building and decided that those were not the kind of people we wanted to associate with. The leader of the Thieves' Guild, because that's what they were, tried to blackmail us into working for him, but we're forces of righteousness and won't be intimidated by criminals, by Lathander!
Magic Missiles and arrows were enough to interrupt the mage, and Fireballs, Holy Smite and simple physical force were enough against the rogues.
Most things here are probably stolen from others, but we have no reliable way to find the owners, and if we leave things here, others will certainly steal them, so we confiscated everything. I used the tome to increase my DEX to 18.
Then we entered a store that was selling extremely suspicious items. We checked the shelves to see what else he had lying around here, and then this happened:
That was annoying. We didn't pick a lock and we didn't take anything. We just looked into the shelf, and were accused of stealing without the possibility to explain ourselves. In a shop selling illegal goods, too!
With those stupid dialogue options, I chose to try to bribe them instead of threatening, and lost a point of Reputation for it. They turned hostile, but fortunately they didn't follow me outside.
We regained the lost Rep point by finding someone's gauntlets near the docks, and then I made level 7 killing an escaped basilisk.
I had a lucky roll gaining my full 15 HP.
Next:
The door was open, for the gods' sake! What happened to "This is a private home, please leave" ? No regrets here. I doubt he was a saint.
Then we were addressed by a woman who informed us that a mage called Ragefast was holding a nymph as a prisoner in his home. That was the only case where I felt justified to pick the lock of a house in the city to enter. At first, I seemed to be able to appeal to Ragefast's love for the nymph, but then I said something wrong that made him angry and we were forced to kill him.
Then, we were asked to recover a boy's body from the Temple of Umberlee. He had been foolish to sneak into her temple, but mercy has to be chosen over justice, so I went to speak to the priestess. She asked for the sum of 2000GP for his body, and when I declared that outrageous, she immediately went hostile and attacked. Great. We had already slain another priestess of Umberlee by accident, and now we have killed several of them, including their high priestess, in her own temple. I hope Lathander will be able to protect me, and I hope we will never have to sail anywhere in the future.
She was carrying a scroll to remove a geas. I've kept it, just in case.
Then we went shopping again at the Sorcerous Sundries, discovered a staircase and went up, assuming there was maybe another store. Nope. Four angry mages who freaked out when I talked to them.
They cast Horror, Branwen cast Remove Fear, we attacked, they died.
We freed Jhasso and killed the doppelgangers at the Seven Suns, met Aldeth Sashenstar and freed the Merchants' League of the doppelgangers, too, and then Scar introduced us to Duke Eltan, who asked us to investigate the Iron Throne.
Since he, as a Grand Duke, had practically ordered us to spy on them, I felt okay with lying my way through the lower levels of the Iron Throne to gather information and avoid more unnecessary corpses in my wake.
That went rather well, until we reached the 4th floor. When even the bartender kept questioning me who I was and what I was doing here, I got tired of it and told him it was none of his business.
That was a bad idea, because he immediately turned hostile, and I, not knowing if he was another doppelganger, hit him out of pure reflex.
Okay that loss of 10 reputation is not fair! At least the merchants didn't turn hostile. Come to think of it, it's rather strange that they watched without commenting. There was another person who had turned hostile and looked harmless, and the I remembered the nymph cloak and charmed him. No idea why I didn't think of that with the bartender. I guess I never expected him to count as an innocent bystander.
I went to the temple to "atone for my sins", i.e. donating enough to get my rep to 16. I can't have a paladin walk around with rep 10! I'm just glad I was at 20 when that happened, or I might have Fallen.
And then, although I had already picked up clues that Rieltar, the leader of the Iron Throne, was currently in Candlekeep, I decided to go to the 5th floor, where I hadn't gone during my first playthrough. So, I didn't know what to expect there.
Bad, bad, bad. I have no idea why we didn't run back downstairs to have at least a moment to prepare. I didn't know what they would throw at us. So, I had Branwen protect us with Remove Fear and let Dynaheir cast a Horror spell that affected two of them. Not what I had hoped, but better than facing all at once. Followed by Holy Smite, while we fighters engaged them in melee and Imoen shot arrows. Then I saw the Confusion spell flying and tried to activate the Greenstone amulet. I didn't know that it takes a moment, or I would have taken my emergency Potion of Magic Blocking instead.
Imoen was the only one unaffected, and I thought that was the end of it. I was glad that I had 60 or 70% Fire Resistance with a ring and the helmet, otherwise those repeated Flame Strikes would have killed me, They chunked Dynaheir, though. Imoen kept kiting and shooting with her Wand of Magic Missiles, interrupting some spells.
Then I got hit by Melf's Acid Arrow and Imoen was Held. I was biting my nails and waiting for the Confusion to wear off. Finally!
That was too close. Mental note: If you do a no reload, don't go to places where you haven't been before!
I was unsure for a while what to do now without a mage. Xan is gone, Quayle is mad, Edwin is evil.
I decided to dual Imoen into a mage. I know, useless to dual a level 7 thief into a level 1 mage at this point of the game. But at least this way she can Identify, use all those wonderful wands and cast from scrolls in emergencies. I've hired Alora as our new rogue. She's squishy, but she will do. I just hope she doesn't die on me in the Candlekeep catacombs.
I've thought about spam resting in ankheg or wyvern territory to gain some levels for Imoen, but decided that's too cheesy. I'm going to take it as it is. I've bought emergency scrolls of the most vital spells (going to have Imoen cast them in the worst battles), bought tons of potions, will finish some minor stuff in the city and then go to see Eltan and off to Candlekeep. Wish me luck.
Edit: Sorry for the typos. Too hasty.
Feeling that we ought to be more experienced before facing the demons in the mine, we wandered to where Gorion was killed. There, a thief and a mage whose actions were kind asked to join us. We agreed without first checking that they were as good as they appeared and that was a mistake for Montaron was forever indulging his kleptomaniac tendencies.
Sadly we were unable to return the goods as we don't know where he acquired them and he won't tell us.
So as soon as we fulfilled our obligations to them of taking them to Nashkel, we let them go.
They intend going down the mine themselves. I wonder if we will meet them or their bodies down there.
At present we intend to boost our experience and hopefully meet some like-minded adventurers to help us.
As a result of Montaron's predations I have a cloak that increases my charisma, and Deathslayer has learned some useful spells, so there were some advantages to Xzar and Montaron being with us.
We have returned the Colquetle amulet to the family and taken Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn with the result that our reputation is now 20.
If we had gold, it would now be time to go shopping. Perhaps killing ankhegs would be the best source of gold at present since we do need experience too.
However after a break I also felt like making a new start about two or three weeks ago. Somehow one new start became several new starts haha, so I thought why not report on a run, and slightly increase the odds of me sticking with it? I choose to share with you a themed run I’ve only started a couple of days ago.
Alma's Arcane Army
Charname is Alma, a chaotic neutral Half-Elf Transmuter. The theme of this run is a specialists run, i.e. taking a party of six specialist mages of different schools through the saga. (I tried this once, with a Gnomish Transmuter, but that adventure was very short-lived.) For BG1 a party is easily formed: Alma (Transmuter), Xzar (Necromancer), Dynaheir (Invoker), Edwin (Conjurer), Xan (Enchanter), and Quayle (Cleric/Illusionist). For Siege of Dragonspear and BG2 I’ll have to be creative with some of the NPCs, but rather that than running a custom party (which I find less interesting). I want the companions in SoD and BG2 to be of the same schools as the BG1 companions since those schools all have offensive spells with specialist save penalties which I find a nice motivation to play each mage differently in combat. Abjuration and Divination don’t have such spells. Anyway, let’s first focus on BG1.
As always I intend to play Alma true to her alignment and character. Alma is a flippant, free-spirited type, quirky, and not necessarily a people’s person. She is however very much a magic person, and her love for the arcane profession will lead her to founding an arcane adventuring company.
I’ll also refrain from using exploits but will use my knowledge of the game to determine which locations are visited when.
Setup: SCS (insane difficulty), BG1 NPC Project, BG1 UB, BGQE, RR, S&S (store only), PnP Free Action, some Anthology Tweaks (mostly convenience stuff and tweaks that make single classes stronger: more spells at higher levels, true grandmastery, continued Thac0 progression), some aTweaks, Jim Fix. Oh and I also installed Thalantyr Item Upgrade but that mod doesn’t seem to be working.
After Gorion’s death, Alma decided against dragging Imoen into her plight, opting to travel alone for the time being. Now with only Expeditious Retreat, Shield and Sleep as her known spells, traveling alone had the advantage of early leveling up and the disadvantage of enemy aggro being fully focused on her. She learned that from the surprisingly fast swinging Amazing Oopah, and from an ogre mage whose PW: Sleep would have ended her incipient adventure and her life if it wasn’t for her half-elven charm/sleep resistance. However Alma survived her first challenges and made it to the ankheg area where Sleep helped her to about 12k XP (not counting her finding Brun’s son). She got very lucky in the cave: one ankheg dropped a scroll of Invisibility and Alma, chaotic neutral as she is, tried to scribe it into her spell book despite having a 40% chance of failure. She succeeded! It gave her a lot less to worry about, such as this: The wand of fire found in the ankheg cave was used to fry two battle horrors near Durlag’s Tower, and that was the starting point for her recruitment tour, with NPCs joining with level 3 spells. It was also the point for Alma to do a first spell scribing session.
Dynaheir was rescued first, thanks to Invisibility allowing the two to sneak past many gnolls. Edwin followed back in Nashkel. Now Alma has a CHA score of 12 (with the tome from the gnoll area), not very high. I’ve decided to have her wear Lord Foreshadow’s ring of human influencing all the time, to prevent any fights from breaking out. Quayle joined at the Carnival (thanks to relocation of some NPCs), Xan was rescued during a first covert exploration of the Nashkel Mines and then Xzar became the last addition to the party before the crew returned to the mines.
(One of the Xan mods gives him more and better equipment. Much of it was a bit too powerful for my taste, including his upgraded sword which I changed back to his original weapon, but I liked and kept a ring which gave +2 melee Thac0 and a tiara with which he could cast Find Traps once a day.)
Greywolf succumbed to lots of magic missiles and a wand scorcher but Prism refused to die so I assume he lived long and happily ever after finishing his work. In the mine, most kobolds were left alone except for one group carrying some mysterious vials. Everyone finally entered Mulahey’s room invisibly so they wouldn’t get surrounded by skellies and kobolds near the entrance and so that Xzar’s Skull Traps and the wand of fire could take them out from afar. Mulahey himself was interrupted, silenced and finished off with fire and magic missiles. Quayle looted the tombs before the party returned to Nashkel to report their success to Berrun Ghastkill. It increased their rep by 1 unlike most reputation quests, even though the success rate should be about 50% (SCS setting). It meant that the more expensive goodies such as archmagi robes, Aule’s staff, dagger of venom (nice but not a must) had to wait while some gold was donated at the temple of Helm.
What did not wait was the encounter with Lamalha’s party. Everyone was invisible when they were ambushed, and they saw Telka and Maneira go invisible as well. Quayle dispelled that with a Detect Invisibility. Then the wand of monster summoning gave Lamalha some fodder to play with, while Dynaheir Webbed and Alma wand scorchered Telka and Maneira. Xan Held Lamalha and Edwin, Xzar and Dynaheir cast Magic Missiles at Zeela. Xzar even pulled off a Vampiric Touch on Zeela. A neat victory was the result. Here you can see the companions contemplate the battlefield except Quayle who seems much more interested in the monsters summoned with that wand he had found. To be continued…