Okay, we have a new poverty run going on! We're on Tactical difficulty, the SCS v32 equivalent of Core, which means some mages get pre-buffs and a few critters won't use all of their special moves, unlike Insane mode. The WeiDU log is attached to this post.
The rules are a bit different from my old poverty run, which allowed self-created items like Goodberries, Flame Blade, Minute Meteors, and even some wands and potions from Wish. In this run, we can't use any items whatsoever unless they're part of a quest. We're also going to avoid using gold for anything besides quests and dialogs, which means we can't pay for resurrections--if somebody dies and we can't recruit a priest with access to Raise Dead, that person is going to stay dead until we can find an NPC that can bring them back.
That's not all, though. There's a special extra rule on top of all of this: all of our starting party members need to have the same stats at character creation and choose all of the same spells. We have a party of sextuplet sorcerers, all named Frisky Bits!
Because of course they are. This run actually had several deaths early on, but there are too many screenshots for me to sift through and list how we died each time, so I'll be starting with the most recent one, which is still ongoing.
Anyway, because we have so few resources at our disposal and we really need Invisibility to make sure we don't just get thrashed during some random ambush, the first Frisky Bits, our protagonist, is going to be going solo for a while so they'll be strong enough to support the littler kids.
Naturally, this means tackling Mutamin's Garden early. Korax does the work because, without access to even a pointy stick to fight our enemies, we honestly couldn't kill anything even if we did have Protection from Petrification--which we don't, because I know the placement of the basilisks well enough to just lead Korax on ahead, without ever entering a non-disabled basilisk's field of vision.
That 1 point of magic damage is due to a tweak from the Korax NPC mod, a holdover from a previous install. It's actually a nerf since it reduces Korax's hold attack to 6 seconds, but Korax is still practically invincible.
After clearing out all the lizards, we are now at level 5! That means we have Invisibility, Web, and Magic Missile. Invisibility lets us scout out enemies, Web lets us disable them from a safe distance, and Magic Missile pins them down once it's safe for us to approach.
But, with only 4 castings of Invisibility, we can't actually cover the whole party just yet, not without resting. Since our other 5 sorcerers are going to be dead weight for a long time, we still need to get the main Frisky Bits up another level or two.
I could go hunting for Sirines, but I really don't want to go to the trouble of neutralizing all the hobgoblins and chasing down the sirines while all the enemies are wandering aimlessly around the map. It's a big hassle, and frankly the ankheg farm is just a less irritating option for gathering XP.
XP farming is a bit boring, but digging up ankhegs is actually kind of scary. With 30 HP and no helmet, we could easily get one-shotted when our Sleep spells fail against the ankhegs, which means we have to hang out by the cave entrance, and a couple times we actually do have to run outside to avoid a potentially fatal hit.
We can't actually kill ankhegs with Magic Missiles alone; we actually have to punch them with our bare hands. Fortunately, having 7 Strength only imposes attack roll penalties with melee weapons; not damage penalties, which means we get to deal the full 1d2 damage per hit!
The moment I hit level 6, I call it quits--we just got the spell we need.
Why Lance of Disruption? Why not Skull Trap instead?
Skull Trap is indeed excellent, and we're going to take it later. But we need Lance of Disruption for a very specific purpose, and we need it much sooner than we need Skull Trap.
First, we take care of the littler obstacles. Invisibility lets us walk right down to Mulahey, Web him, and shoot him down. Back in Beregost, we borrow Tiax at Feldepost's inn and have his ghast paralyze Tranzig.
We then take Tiax up north, because we still need some help. Tazok has incredibly low saving throws and high HP, so Webbing him and taking him down with spell damage is not practical. Instead, we have Tiax set a bunch of traps for him, and then have our little gnome buddy snatch the documents from the bandit camp tent under Sanctuary. Notice that Tiax is erroneously carrying a staff during the fight with Tranzig--I forgot to throw away his gear until afterwards.
For some reason, the Lightning Bolt trap seems to miss us every time in my install, presumably due to a change in EE projectile behavior, but Tiax was already buffed up enough to survive a single hit, if not necessarily two. Once we have the documents, I toss Tiax aside so he doesn't take away any more of our XP.
Now it's time to take down the Cloakwood Mines. We sneak right past Drasus and the other Iron Throne goons using Invisibility and head down to Davaeorn's pad. We snare the guard with Web and nail him with Lance of Disruption. It blasts him to pieces.
Lance of Disruption has always been one of my favorite spells. Even though it didn't scale as well as Skull Trap or have the same range as Fireball, the fact that it does crushing damage is very convenient and there's something incredibly satisfying about landing a lance on just the right angle. Also, while the projectile itself is red, the impact gives off a lovely purple color I've quite fond of.
More importantly, the lance has seemingly limitless range. Guess what that means?
We can splatter Davaeorn from all the way across the map!
Unfortunately, Davaeorn has excellent saving throws and we can't actually deal enough damage to kill him with just three castings. Davaeorn survives the first volley, but since he doesn't actually retaliate, we can just head upstairs, rest, and try again until he fails a save on one of the lances and we get some moderately good dice rolls.
That actually takes a lot of attempts. Davaeorn gets nailed in the face with a giant red lance 9 times a day for almost a week without even attempting to fight back.
Finally, we get the numbers we need, and Davaeorn goes down.
I cannot overemphasize just how wicked this spell can be. The damage is pretty comparable to a Fireball and can be launched from a further distance, and while the area of effect is narrow, it's not hard to get enemies to bunch together when you're a solo character who's using no summons.
Molkar makes that mistake. The only way he can escape our Webs is if he flies out in pieces.
The extra damage also means we can safely take down the Greater Basilisks atop Durlag's Tower despite having no Protection from Petrification. We hit level 7, gaining access to Mirror Image and Protection from Fire--boring spell picks, but safe.
Frisky Bits now has 6 castings of Invisibility, which means we can finally carry around a full party without worrying about ambushes. We hike back to Beregost to collect the rest of the sextuplets and we do some of the normal early BG1 XP options, like slaying the nearby spiders, killing the ogre with a belt fetish, and taking down the ankhegs who aren't rest spawns.
I don't plan on grinding any more ankhegs, though. The benefit is very slim considering how much time we'd be investing, since our level 1 sextuplets can't contribute anything without breaking invisibility and putting themselves in danger.
By scraping together various non-grindy sources of XP, we get the other mages up to level 2 by doing the Tenya quest. Everyone but the main character is still dead weight, but we have the spells to handle the coming challenges, and it will be a very glorious day when all of the sextuplets have Lance of Disruption.
Resisting the urge to crack a joke about the power of our giant red lances fills us with determination.
We killed the evil Sonner and his party as well as nearby undead husband of a widow.
We then cleared the ankheg in the area and told Farmer Brun of his son's death.
Heading northward we met Tenya, and feeling that she was in need of moral guidance as she grew up, we invited her into the party. What surprised us was her power as a cleric. We had assumed that as a child she would need a certain ammount of molly-coddling, but instead is the strongest cleric that we have.
We also picked up Gavin, and at his Temple's request, killed Bassilus.
WE headed south and rescued a cow before killing a party of ogres and a party of gnolls. The latter provided Isra with a +1 sword.
We then went to the lighthouse area where we rescued a boy from some worgs without any problem. However we then ran into a group of sirines. Their use of blindness, poison arrows and the like were deadly and two of our party, Deathslayer and Gavin were killed.
We went to Aerie, the cheapest option of bringing them back to full health, and had them raised and healed.
Upon leaving the tent we talked to a newcomer whom I have never met before.
He warned us of assassins who he then turned on us.
He used a poison upon us which made us unable to fight. However Aerie then stepped in and helped us.
Deathslayer used web to neutralise two of the assassins whilst we attacked the other. He was quickly killed helped by a command spell.
We then used missile weapons on the others to avoid being webbed ourselves. We also used miscast magic on the mage, but that proved to be unecessary as the mage died before being released from the web.
Thael, C/M of Moander, update 1 Introduction
We return from the Cloakwood Mines to Raise Imoen, and get there with little to no problems. We drop Yeslick off at the FAI: his spells are really redundant, and more than 1 melee character in BG1 with Scales of Balance feels kind of bad. Garrick levels on the trip back, and we get to Davaeorn.
As I said in the Lounge, I use a Protection from Magic scroll on Ajantis, with Thael summoning two Skeleton warriors in the corridor intersection before turning everyone invisible. The Battle Horrors are lured by the Skeletons, and Ajantis is free to duel a mage with the Dead Shot, Acid Arrows, and Magic Immunity vs a pure Mage. It doesn't end well for the mage.
In Baldur's Gate, gold and very high experience quests are our target: Basilisk, Ogre Mage in the sewers, Lothander and Marek, Seven Suns, Merchant League, the Helm and Cloak fight, and Ramazith. Afterwards, I pick up Alora for... reasons? I can't remember why I thought it was necessary. I remembered to screenshot all of two of those above events, which sadly is probably an improvement in my screenshot rate.
The reason for that gold is for Arrows of Detonation and Dispelling, which are incredibly expensive and also really, really good in SoD. Regardless, the only fight in the city I'm actually worried about: Iron Throne. The only saving grace here is that I can cheese the heck out of them by pulling them downstairs. There's a slight hiccup as we pull 3 or 4 major threats at once, including one of the thieves. Garrick is backstabbed to death, though he's our only casualty in this fight. We end up having to kill our own summons to stop them from killing the Bartender accidentally, but otherwise we just apply pressure with ranged weapons with Ajantis tanking everything else. All of this for a second Ring of Free Action. Without SoD, I wouldn't be doing this fight 80% of the time.
Candlekeep ambush is dealt with by a Wand of Fear, and then Dispel Invisibility to actually find the suckers.
We ignore Rieltar, and go through the catacombs methodically. Imoen takes out the traps, and Thael takes the two tomes. Ghasts and Doppelgangers are cleared, and it's time for Pratt's band. Skull Trap and Holy Smite take a large chunk from their health bars, and we wade in with a potion granting saving throws to Thael for safety vs Darts of Stunning. They fall with no difficulties. Spider and Basilisks are also cleared with Free Action and Protection from Petrification respectively.
Back in the Gate, after buying even more arrows, Slythe is killed: I'm pretty sure that Might and Guile reduced his backstab multiplier accidentally, so he's not nearly as big of a threat as usual. He still almost kills someone with his sheer speed and strength, but he dies regardless. Ducal Palace... I might have to up this back to Insane just to face the real Doppelganger fights next time, because this was a stomp. Two skeleton warriors, Haste, and a few buffs later, and all the doppelgangers are slaughtered really, really quickly. I miss almost losing to this.
After some painful fights against Skeleton Warriors in the undercity, we firebomb the Undercity party. The final battle is won using my usual cheese: Protection From Magic on Ajantis, and everyone else going invisible and forming a wall at the right corner.
There's only one character that can actually hit Ajantis in this position, Diarmid. Ajantis has the Cloak of Displacement, Boots of Cat's Sense, and Elves' Bane for a -12 vs missiles. Thael has several Dispel Invisibilities memorized as well, so they can't even wait out the ProFMagic scroll. After a long, long time of shooting down skeleton warriors with arrows, Sarevok is isolated and alone, and we finally break formation. We hit him with a Arrow of Dispelling, and shoot him to death.
I've completed SoD as well, but I don't have time to put that into an update just yet. Thael is 7/8 M/P at this point, I think.
While we did kill Davaeorn, we never actually finished the Cloakwood Mines questline, since we were saving it for the little ones. The main Frisky Bits snares the Drasus party and bludgeons them with red stuff, and we run around the Cloakwood doing other, smaller fights. Notably, we use invisible characters to form a wall so we can attack the wyverns from safety, a strategy I borrowed from @Grond0. Once we take down Aldeth Sashenstar, the little ones hit level 3!
Here's the really interesting thing about us taking down Aldeth with this party: Aldeth happens to have 100% magic resistance, and yet we have no summons to deal nonmagical damage to him. How did we take him down?
Lance of Disruption bypasses magic resistances. It still strikes as a level 3 spell and deals crushing damage, so it won't bypass spell level immunities or Stoneskin, but it goes right through MR, making it a spectacular option against critters like Belhifet. Belhifet isn't reliably killable just using Lance of Disruption alone, so that doesn't solve the Belhifet fight on its own, but it's a powerful asset.
We keep running around handling minor quests as an alternative to grinding, using Web to safely bring down troublesome wild cards like Kirian. Webbing Bassilus also works just fine, but we get a cool and kind of scary bug: being snared makes Bassilus repeatedly pre-cast Aerial Servant! That would force us to flee if the Aerial Servants weren't perfectly vulnerable to Web themselves.
There's still one really excellent source of XP we haven't tackled yet. Normally, it would be completely off-limits for a party as low-level as ours, with the classes we've got, even if this wasn't a poverty run. But, as it happens, this particular source of XP relies very heavily on its melee power and magic resistance to fight, and we can completely avoid its melee power and go right through its magic resistance with Lance of Disruption. All it takes is the right position and a few rests.
We blast Drizzt Do'Urden to bits from across the map.
I am quite pleased with this trick.
We accidentally lose some additional reputation, dropping down to about 7, when a Lance of Disruption goes past Teyngan's group and kills some innocent person offscreen, and then we head east to splatter Sendai and reunite Albert and Rufie. On the way, I see a little treasure trove with a Cloudkill scroll in it--I thought the only source of that scroll was in Durlag's Tower!
Anyway, once we've run out of non-grindy sources of XP, we head to Baldur's Gate. After splattering the ogre mage and his creepy crawlies, we run into... this.
I had no idea that this guy could turn hostile if your reputation was too low.
The journal entry doesn't really match our alignment. I am not roleplaying this run at all, but I can justify Drizzt's death by saying the party was minding its own business fishing at the lake when the big Frisky Bits decided to impress the little ones by firing a series of red lances in a direction that just happened to be aimed directly at the famous drow ranger. And then we did the same thing several times, because of course we had no way of knowing that someone might be caught in the line of fire.
Anyway, we now have a potentially high-level mage casting a potentially high-level enchantment spell, and our party of low-level, unequipped elves is grossly unfit to handle anything tougher than Sleep or a charm spell. Fortunately, the mage has foolishly pre-buffed with Armor instead of Shield (maybe because they only use longer-duration pre-buffs on Tactical difficulty?), which means we can disrupt him with a simple volley of Magic Missiles.
He then vanishes, and we have no divination spells to reveal him. Rather than tempt fate, I decide to just keep the entire party invisible every single second we spend outside at the docks. No need to win a dangerous fight we can safely avoid.
Our low reputation also prevents us from giving Noralee her gauntlets. I had thought Charisma and reputation would be mostly irrelevant for a poverty run, and it is for the most part, but there are a few places where you can actually get into trouble. We slay the Greater Basilisk in the warehouse and the little ones finally hit level 4, learning Invisibility. We no longer need the big Frisky Bits to hide the little ones.
We don't do the Iron Throne fight. We might be able to pick off some of them using Web, but I wouldn't gamble the run on the assumption, however, reasonable, that none of the enemies would wrestle their way out and nail us with some hideous disablers or blow up the little ones. Instead, we just use Invisibility to grab the documents. Before we report back to Duke Eltan, we have to recruit Tiax, who sets 7 traps right outside Candlekeep to catch the ogre magi by surprise.
Unfortunately, when I consider the possibilities, I don't think it's realistic for the little ones to get Lance of Disruption by the time we reach Sarevok unless they get a LOT more XP than they would from the main quest alone. But after spending so many runs playing it safe to avoid deaths, I am woefully unprepared to handle the challenges of Balduran's Isle, and we are completely incapable of completing Durlag's Tower, since Love constantly re-casts Globe of Invulnerability and Physical Mirror, making it immune both to traps and all spells we could get without breaking past the BG1 XP cap.
In retrospect, I might have been able to bring down Love by smashing the other warders with Lance of Disruption and then having Viconia, Branwen, Tiax, Yeslick (if he reappeared somewhere) and/or Quayle spam Animate Dead until the skeletons won. But I didn't consider this, and instead resorted to grinding wyverns in the Cloakwood, using invisible characters to box out wyverns and let our visible sorcerers strike from safety.
It takes a very long time, but after killing 117 wyverns over the course of several in-game weeks, we manage to get the little ones to level 6, allowing all of the sextuplets to cast Lance of Disruption. This is more or less a requirement for us to beat Sarevok without seeding the final battle arena with dozens of Skull Traps.
The big Frisky Bits also gets a bunch of XP from the wyverns and learns Spirit Armor on reaching level 8. By stacking Spirit Armor spells, we can get our saves vs. spell down below zero and achieve immunity to Chaos spells. We can't yet do it for the whole party, but it does make our main character safer.
Living in a cave as a fugitive for weeks on end and killing everything that wanders by--we are literally a band of murder hobos. But because successfully toppling Sarevok will do so much good and we have to use every resource at our disposal, we're actually just being pragmatic and therefore perfectly reasonable.
The knowledge that we can always rationalize our bad decisions fills us with determination.
Anyway, we now have a potentially high-level mage casting a potentially high-level enchantment spell, and our party of low-level, unequipped elves is grossly unfit to handle anything tougher than Sleep or a charm spell. Fortunately, the mage has foolishly pre-buffed with Armor instead of Shield (maybe because they only use longer-duration pre-buffs on Tactical difficulty?), which means we can disrupt him with a simple volley of Magic Missiles.
He didn't use Shield because he couldn't. Entilis is an enchanter, which means evocation is banned for him - and Shield is an evocation spell (while Armor is conjuration). It's certainly a common prebuff on Tactical difficulty, but it just wasn't an option in this battle.
@semiticgod The Invisibility wall trick? For some reason, none of Sarevok’s mages have any Invisibility purges, or at least don’t cast them at Tactical SCS. I’ve been abusing stuff like this for melee bruisers in SoA like golems, or at one point Improved Vampires, so I tried it against Sarevok’s party... Not having to kite to get ranged attacks in safely saves so much time and concentration.
Here's a belated write-up of a session last Sunday ...
The first action was paying Gaelan Bayle. On our way to find Aran Linvail we came across the first vampire ambush - Hareishan was allowed to kill a couple of thieves (to get their loot) before Azuredge was put into play.
We headed for Trademeet with a view to improving reputation, though that plan didn't last long ... On the way the Renfeld ambush triggered and I was a bit surprised to see Kaliara throwing in a skull trap - there was no surprise about her including Reprise in that, but I thought the presence of Renfeld might have been a deterrent . I mentioned just too late that seemed a bit risky though, as a follow-up Fireball incinerated Renfeld .
There were no particular concerns at Trademeet. The trolls in the Mound did a fair amount of damage to Reprise, but not quite enough to make him retreat.
Back in Athkatla we paid for a license to allow Kaliara freedom to throw spells around in more places that just the continuing ambush areas.
After working through a few encounters in the Temple sewers Kaliara didn't notice an ooze mephit sneaking up behind her and fell to the floor. The mephit didn't get much chance to capitalize though as Kitthix popped out of Reprise's backpack to throw in a web tangle.
Shortly afterwards another lich was too slow to buff as Azuredge once more soared through the air.
Seeking a hat-trick of one-shot liches Reprise led the way to the City Gates. He shoots, he scores .
The sort of logic behind not using PfU scrolls on those liches was to ensure that there would not be a MP glitch of losing their protection when moving between areas (of course we were far too stingy to consider using more than 1 scroll each ). That meant that Kangaxx was properly baffled about who was attacking him to get his ring. That will help speed up the action without the need for Reprise to do so much resting to recover health.
Back in the sewers Tarnor's party and Mekrath's hide-out were swiftly cleared on the route to the Unseeing Eye.
We were still less than 1m XP each, so the undead prior to that were led only by skeleton warriors, but things could still have been dodgy there when Kaliara stayed still for a bit too long with a shadow fiend bearing down on her - that just though gave another opportunity for Azuredge to show off.
Shortly afterwards though our adventurous abjurer had a much closer shave when she got a bit too close to the skeleton warriors battling some gauths and a bouncing lightning bolt left her clinging grimly on to her last HP.
The Eye itself caused no such problems.
The final action saw us attacking Gaal's usual position from a distance. That saw him retreat before we came to pick up the pieces, but he didn't get far before we tracked him down.
Reprise, dwarven defender 10, 131 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 244 kills (+323 in BG1)
Kaliara, abjurer 11, 54 HPs, 155 kills (+97 in BG1), 0 deaths (+2 in BG1)
Thael, update 2 Introduction Update 1
So I make a slight mistake at the beginning of SoD/end of BG1, as all my arrows of dispelling and detonation are on Imoen and so I don't have them available for the initial dungeon dive. We spam Invisibility to get through safely, with Safana going in front of us to disarm traps, and arrive at the final fight without a fight on the second floor. A barrage of acid arrows and fire arrows is enough to trigger her surrender quickly, thankfully, so I don't have to fight through her entire force. We take some of the more important gear back from our leaving companions (Ring of fire resist, ring of free action, Spider's Bane are probably the most important of these items) before letting them go. I also took the Crossbow of Speed, but I don't think I ever used it: Dorn is the only one even proficient with them in SoD, I think.
We recruit Minsc and Dynaheir before leaving the city, get the spectacles, and do a minor quest for Harbizzar. In the encampment, we fill out our party quickly: M'khinn, Corwin, and Safana are our last 3. This setup is... absurdly powerful. Corwin is on the same game-breaking power level in SoD as Korgan's Berserker kit is in BG2, but without the party conflicts. We help a vampire for some regeneration, kill a mage for a stone statue, fight some trolls for a sling upgrade, and finally absolutely destroy the first crusader fight.
Spirit Fire, Arrow of Detonation, Cloudkill. This combination sums up around 70% of the fights in the game.
Thael levels during an area transition, and we start the wildlife fights. Fire arrows take trolls down conveniently, since I didn't get Minsc the trollkilling sword (I forgot where to get it and I don't care THAT much). To spice things up, M'Khinn throws some Call Lightnings down on the Wyverns, and dances to help soak up the spiders in the cave. 6 Protection from Poison scrolls are used for Morenthene, and we also throw on Shadow Door, Haste, Remove Fear, and various other minor buffs. Corwin has arrows of dispelling for the stoneskins Morenthene throws up, and everyone else just has a ton of damage. It takes a bit of kiting, but with protection from her breath and no Stoneskins, we can break her quickly.
In the Temple of Bhaal, after clearing the cultists, Dynaheir throws down a few webs and Ziatar doesn't get free before the three members with Free Action cut her down. A Potion of Clarity is given to Minsc, Improved Invisibility to Thaen to get his Save vs Spells below 0, and we get a bit lucky and the Neolithid pops above ground soon after the fight begins instead of spamming swords for a turn. Corwin is Feared, but we still have enough damage to finish it off.
M'khinn gives us Spirit animals to get the Aerial Stalkers to show themselves without taking crippling damage on Minsc, and we claim the wardstone easily after that. We want the Archer's Eyes from the last fight here, and the blade from the Shadow Aspect. The Shadow Aspect almost kills Minsc, draining enough STR that he couldn't even carry his own armor, but a nice critical finishes it off. The last fight happens in an enclosed room, which means Cloudkill and Ice Storm can be used again to clear the room.
We straight-up surrender Bridgefort, and win the mage fight. Surprisingly, the mage was the least problematic enemy, with the two archers doing some serious damage to Minsc before they finally get Webbed and we coup de grace them. At the Coalition camp, we summon the genie and sell basically everything for our almost-last item purchases and upgrades, taking almost his entire stock. For no good reason, we do a few side quests for irrelevant items and reputation, and take a couple of fights that we could've bypassed. One notable almost fatal-for-someone fight was the Displacer Beast fight in Dead Man's Pass where we managed to anger a Hill Giant squad, the Displacer Beasts, and even some Beetles by the end of the fight. Many health potions were drank to keep both Minsc and M'khinn alive.
We head to the Underground River, and the initial fight outside the gates has a slight hiccup as M'khinn and Corwin are Dire Charmed. M'khinn's our source of dispelling that particular spell effect, so there's some problems as Arrows of Dispelling are randomly shot at us: Corwin was in the middle of dispelling a mage when she was Charmed. Safana shoots an arrow at Corwin, and we finish off the mages before M'khinn can do any real damage. We kill the dark druid (I AM supposed to be a Cleric of Moander after all before doing everything invisibly. We mess up slightly when we come back down the lift, choosing the wrong dialogue, but we're already invisible except for Safana and she just drinks a potion. We leave for the Coalition.
Arrows of Detonation are absolutely absurd. We have 4 members that can use them, and I have over 40 of the things left. I only took a screenshot of one of the "fights", but it's representative of all 3 of the assaults:
They're dead before Dynaheir can actually cast a spell. The final fight is a bit more difficult, but Cloudkill and Web are enough to cement an easy victory. Time for the actual assault.
It's just chaos, with a few fireballs and some debuffs attached. Dynaheir dies trying to cast a Slow spell in the final fight before Ashatiel appears. Thael drinks a Potion of Magic Shielding, only to have it immediately dispelled; he reads a scroll of Pro. From Magic instead. He takes off his Ring of Free Action, drinks an Oil of Speed, and fight Ashatiel for around 20 rounds or so before finally winning with no damage taken.
Time to go to Avernus! Thael leveled to level 9 priest, and finally has access to Chaotic Commands and Raise Dead. With all the stuns and fears and charms being thrown around, CC is indispensable; before heading there, I purchase a couple more scrolls just to be safe. Even so, I don't prebuff before the initial descent, and M'khinn is Charmed and almost killed by the initial paladins. She recovers in time, though. Thraxx's demon squads are murdered efficiently, and we buff with CC, Remove Fear, and a ton of fire resistance.
I don't have the most +3 arrows and no +3 2h Sword, but I do have 3 castings of Enchanted Weapon courtesy of Thael. It's Dynaheir's greatest weakness in SoD, in my opinion, but another mage can easily make up for it. Anyhow, I didn't buff Minsc with CC, and he gets stunned by something and killed. M'khinn raises him as the fight with Belhifit continues. He gets killed a second time by some ridiculous damage from Belhifet, and not enough fire resistance. A second Recall Spirit later, an Enchanted Weapon spell on Corwin, and a smidgeon of Illusion detection from M'khinn, and Belhifet falls.
The game crashed trying to exit Avernus and I forgot to save, so... I redid the battle. It was messier, but it was still a success, and I probably would've allowed CTRL-Y to finish him since I won the first time. Onward to BG2! I only wish I had something more interesting to report than "Corwin and M'khinn are really, really powerful!"
@Grond0, hilarious nuking by Kaliara, poor Renfeld. @Neverused, interesting. Angelo has often cast detection spells in my games, and I believe Semaj does it too. @semiticgod, thanks man! Nice to see you make good use of the Lance of Disruption spell, I have it in mind as a tool against Belhifet as well for my arcane army.
The army had a skeleton from Quayle for Nimbul to dance with, and a Silence from the gnome all but left the assassin at their mercy, but it was Rasaad who finished him before the wizards could.
After that Alma, displeased with the monk’s shameless display of XP hunger, refused to listen to his sermons about the Moonmaiden and led her party to Beregost to pay Tranzig a visit. Held in Dynaheir’s Web the mage didn’t last long.
Speaking of Dynaheir, she and Xan came with Haste as one of their default spells added by SCS’s new NPC customization component so that spell became a standard pre-buff. Said component gives each mage five spells per spell level that they have access to and I must say they’re pretty good picks. Besides Haste, those included Remove Magic (Dynaheir, Edwin, Xan), Spell Thrust (Dynaheir, Xan), Slow (Edwin, Xzar), and Hold Person (Xan) at level 3 in addition to common damage spells such as Fireball for Dynaheir, Flame Arrow for Edwin, Skull Trap for Xzar.
Zordral was the next easy target for six mages casting stuff like Blindness and Hold Person from their own schools.
He was part of a series of mages that were to supply the adventurer’s, traveler’s, knave’s, and elemental robes for Thalantyr to transform into the Robe of Practical Protection (+20 fire/cold/electricity resistance and +1 saves) eventually , but that would have to wait till after Cloakwood, where the first traveler’s robes become available for a party that doesn’t want to rob/kill Neera. For the time being they were mainly meant to fill the wizards’ armor slots.
This robe collecting tour saw the army ambushed by Molkar’s crew, but thanks to invisibility it was the army that had the initiative: two skull traps, two hold persons, a web, and a slow (the latter unfortunately by Edwin as Alma didn’t know that spell). Since Molkar speaks and turns red-circled before any spells hit, this is fair game to me. The Hold Persons won the army the battle, freezing everyone but Drakar in place just as they closed in on them.
Narcillicus couldn’t handle the power of Xzar’s and Alma’s Skull Traps while his Mustard Jellies were too busy with a summoned skeleton before Jemby (Hold Person), Arkushule (barrage of magic missiles), and Mutamin (Korax) became other robe suppliers.
The Greater Basilisk near Mutamin delighted Alma by dropping a scroll of Polymorph Self, a spell she managed to copy into her spellbook without INT boosters. She hopes she gets to cast it before reaching the ciy of BG. Her companions copied some scrolls of their schools as well (such as Invisibility, Dire Charm, Ghost Armor, Glitterdust).
This well-timed kind of banter is why I like playing with NPCs so much:
That’s Xzar right after the last basilisk has been slain. It makes so much sense for to him eagerly take a sample of basilisk blood for his experiments. In the conversation you can also see Alma totally feeding him the type of replies he wants. She’s often like that and who knows if she’s serious or not.
Kirian’s party provided an interesting challenge with four different types of enemies: Blindness (saved against) and Hold Person (failed save) for the biggest threat Baerin the archer, Slow and a devastating Skull Trap from Xzar won them the first round.
Lindin was later Enfeebled, and Korax and magic and missile damage did the rest.
Xan’s BG1 NPC Project quest was also triggered in Mutamin’s Garden and teleported them to Spider Wood, where three dart throwing Calishite slavers and their six archer bodyguards nearly killed him upon arrival.
He swigged a potion of invisibility. The party buffed, finished off two slavers who had come looking for Xan with a Web + ranged attacks, and then dealt with the others with another Web, carefully placed wand scorchers and single target damage spells. Three elvish slaves they hoped to rescue were standing right behind their enemy, so friendly fire was a real concern.
Xan gained 10k XP as a reward through his Moonblade, putting him ahead of the others in terms of XP. The army paid a quick visit to Ulcaster School to pick up a potion of genius and a wand of fire under invisibility, and they entered Durlag’s Tower for a tome of understanding, and to have Quayle’s skeletons kill some basilisks, which saw Xan level up and gain access to level 4 spells. He learned Emotion: Hopelessness, a spell that he almost seemed to be permanently affected by. Meilum provided a pair of gauntlets of weapon expertise for Alma and Corsone (Spook, Skull Traps, Magic Missiles) the Root of the Problem club for Quayle (UB addition).
The bandit camp the army took very seriously. They reached it through Raiken, looted any unlocked containers, and entered Tazok’s tent invisibly. Haste was decided against with arrows of biting soon flying around. They buffed with what little buff spells they had (Shield/Ghost Armor, MI) and potions of agility for Dynaheir and fortitude for Xan.
Here you can see the army on the verge of launching their AoE assault: three Webs, a Slow, a Stinking Cloud, and an Emotion: Hopelessness that would stun Britik. Most of their enemies had no comeback against that. One Hobgoblin who had managed to stay away from the Webs was later Held by Alma. The army cleaned cleaned the place up with wand fireballs away from Ender Sai,
and ranged attacks.
The tent was looted with a well-protected Alma escaping the trapped chest's lightning bolt. Everyone went invisible again, but outside, Xan Dire Charmed Taurgosz,
who was then slain by his underlings, leaving his full plate and enchanted hammer and shield for the companions to sell.
With over 33 grand at their disposal the army then bought the Claw of Kazgaroth for Xzar and some headwear: Rogue Rebalancing's Deep Red Ioun Stone (+1 DEX, for Xzar) and Fragment of Enlightenment (+20 lore, for Alma) as well as a Purple Ioun Stone(infravision, for Dynaheir). They then headed for Cloakwood.
Narial the Undead Hunter, continuation of 3rd attempt (unmodded, Core Rules, no-reload newbie)
Just a short update, my worries were completely unnecessary, we have survived Candlekeep and left the catacombs.
At first I wanted to avoid fighting Rieltar, because of Lawful and all that (and because of surviving), but then I decided that this Paladin is going to be more "judge, jury and executioner" type, worried that another group of criminals would escape justice.
Thanks to @semiticgod for reminding me that one of them has Darts of Stunning! I used the Greenstone Amulet immediately after finishing the dialogue with Rieltar.
Branwen protected us with Remove Fear and then managed to target Rieltar with the Wand of the Heavens right before he turned invisible, so the flame strike still hit him. We took down the others simply by physical force with swords and arrows.
In the catacombs, Narial had a short struggle with her conscience. I usually wouldn't take anything from graves as a paladin, especially in a place where I grew up and if they're still locked and not obviously overrun by undead.
Anyway, Narial asked Lathander for guidance and decided to make an exception, because we were going to fight a dangerous enemy and were already in trouble for having lost our mage.
I decided to take the Tomes (Strength went to me, Wisdom to Branwen) and useful, potenially life saving items like scrolls and potions. We didn't take gold or jewels, which have no immediate use for us and besides were probably personal items of the dead left by loved ones.
I could live with that compromise. If I try a no-reload, I'm not going to cripple myself by exaggerating Lawful Good, at least not until I've more experience.
During my first run I lost two people in that trapped room with the many skeletons. This time I had Alora tiptoe around and disarm every trap, withdrawing into safe territory when spotted by skeletons.
Then, after the conventional doppelgangers, we had the Greater Doppelganger with a swarm of the others. I made him the archers' priority target to disrupt his casting (plus Wand of Magic Missiles by Alora), ran in to tank them, and then had Imoen throw a Fireball (I have 100% fire resistance with a helmet and two rings). He didn't finish any spell, and the others were easy meat.
Somewhere between the city and this point, Imoen had made levels 2 and 3, so I gave her a potion and had her scribe some scrolls. She can cast Invisibility now.
Then, the moment I had been fearing, having caused two reloads during my first BG:EE run: Prat.
Alora scouted, spotted them, checked the surroundings, disarmed a trap while avoiding the spiders, and then came back. She had seen a mage, another one who might have been mage or cleric, a shorty with darts and a tough fighter with a bow.
I took potions of absorption, heroism, stone or frost giant strength, and an Oil of Speed. The others were supposed to keep their distance and shoot while I rushed in to draw their attention.
Branwen added Remove Fear and Chant.
So, I ran in (boots +oil of speed), initiated the dialogue and attacked Prat, interrupting his first spell.
The others shot fire and acid arrows, Branwen targeted Bor with the Wand of Heavens and Imoen fired the Wand of Fire (and Ajantis stood around because I hadn't positioned them well enough, worried of errant lightning bolts if I was too slow). Then I remembered to use the Greenstone Amulet, which was good, because the Confusion spell followed soon. But three of us were enough to finish them.
Afterwards I had to heal myself and corner the confused Minsc to keep him from murdering Imoen and Alora with acid arrows, until finally the Confusion wore off.
Alora took care of the trap (or traps?) on the other side, but got killed by a phase spider. We carried her corpse and possessions with us, I scouted under an Invisibility spell, discovered the basilisks, went back to have Imoen cast Protection from Petrification on me and killed them.
That was mage level 4 for Imoen, that means she can cast two level 2 spells now. Fair enough.
Then we went to the FAI to Raise Alora, killed a few Ankhegs for money (I had sold and bought back the Wand of the Heavens to recharge it) and decided to take a trip to Ulgoth's Beard to be out of sight for a while and make a plan how to get back to the city, warn Duke Eltan and stop Sarevok without being caught and executed. At least that's my RP reason. I'd rather have Imoen a bit stronger before we go there, that's why.
I don't know if I dare to do Durlag's Tower and the werewolves. For now, we're on the ice island.
@Neverused What a coincidence, I'm running a Cleric of Moander too right now, the Finder's Stone Trilogy featuring Moander got me interested in D&D way back in the day. Oddly enough I think the C/M and C/T may be bugged though, they have far more spheres than the single class cleric I'm running. If you're doing a BG2 install now I concur that the bug with wands and other quickslot items is probably from M&G or SoB, a save vs. breath weapon message came up for me so it's possibly connected to the Evasion feat for thieves. I did manage to complete a trilogy run with it (though it ended my last run!) however so you might want to perservere with that set up. Good work on getting through SoD anyway.
My friends, I'm here to report the fall of Alma, at Boareskyr Bridge. (Yes, I had had plenty of reporting left to do: Cloakwood, Baldur's Gate, early SoD.) The party failed to interrupt the mage, despite a Breach, a Flamestrike, Melf's Minute Meteors and Chaos all being used against her. The warriors were Webbed and finished off easily. Once the gate was opened, the army had to contend with ever stronger fire creatures. We were positioned well, in front of the barrels, and we were doing an amazing job I think, slaying many mephits, many fire salamanders, a couple of fire elementals, two times two Greater Fire Elementals. This took lots of consumables (scrolls of Skull Trap, Hold Monster, Magic Missile, Slow, wand of frost charges), but eventually some Efreeti appeared who simply blew the bridge up with their Sunfires...
Here's a number of screenshots for an impression:
Edited because screenshots were uploaded in wrong order.
Since we've done just about all the side quests we can safely handle, it's time to head back to Candlekeep. Tiax's traps, set many days ago, kill all of the ogre magi save for one, whom we escape with a round of Invisibility spells.
Web and damage spells mostly take down Rieltar's group, but Tuth has a Potion of Magic Shielding, granting him automatic saving throws and 50% resistance to all magical damage. That really cripples our attack power, and while Lance of Disruption will ignore those resistances, it's not safe to use them on a moving target when the party has no Stoneskins and when there are a couple of innocent bystanders wandering about. We hoof it, and manage to avoid a potentially deadly slash using Mirror Image.
Mirror Image is very unsafe for us. Without melee weapons equipped, enemies get +4 to hit and damage against us with melee weapons, and we have no immunity to critical hits. A critical hit with a damage roll of 14 would be enough to kill any of the little ones in one hit, though the odds of all of those things happening at once are slim.
Since a single attack from a Phase Spider could be very quickly fatal for any of us, and since a doppelganger's critical hit could deal up to 32 damage, I deem it unsafe for us to do much fighting beneath Candlekeep. Instead, we just sneak out using invisibility. We don't tackle the basilisks, either, because breaking invisibility to Web them from out of sight could inspire a Phase Spider to teleport across the map right on top of us--a behavior I haven't seen lately, but has caused major problems in previous runs.
In SCS v32, the two Shennara clones at the Iron Throne headquarters are now Shennara and Kaalos, but they still linger at the top of the building after you get back from Candlekeep, which means we can't fight Cythandria without dealing with the two backstabbers as well. I use quick saves to find a safe point where the enemies aren't within our line of sight, then have Tiax set some traps for them. The traps fail to kill Kaalos, but Tiax's ghast can easily paralyze him.
I have Tiax set some more traps before booting him out, but since his traps are considered his weapons, it means that we get no XP when his traps kill Cythandria's golems. Cythandria herself, fortunately, is also easy to kill--like Davaeorn, she doesn't respond when struck by Lances of Disruption from afar.
We're closing in on Sarevok. Next up are Slythe and Kristin, but we can tackle them one at a time, and Slythe falls quickly to Magic Missiles once Tiax's traps put him in critical condition.
For Kristin, we bait out her PFMW and then have Tiax's Skeleton Warriors soak up her spells while Tiax monitors them under invisibility, dodging an Oracle spell when we hear the divination incantation. Once her PFMW wears off, we send in the ghast, and Kristin fails her save in short order.
I'm concerned we don't have the firepower for the Ducal Palace fight, so I recruit Baeloth, who starts out at level 8 due to the NPC customization component of SCS v32 but still gets the same wide selection of spells he does in vanilla. But the battle is very simple--since we're on Tactical/Core difficulty, the only doppelgangers are Greater Doppelgangers; there is no mage or shaman or assassin. Tiax's traps slay one of them, Baeloth's Confusion spins around two more, and Baeloth's Magic Missiles end the fight that the Flaming Fist was already easily winning.
The dynamics of the fight are very different when there is no mage or shaman or assassin, and things are even better because Liia Jannath finally defends herself.
Now we need to deal with Sarevok. We don't have quite the power to deal enough damage with all of our spells, so we need to secure some outside help. We recruit Viconia, Imoen, and Faldorn along with Baeloth and Tiax so we can tackle the maze and the final fight. We could have brought along more NPCs, but the poverty rules make most characters largely useless; I just picked the folks who could summon critters.
Imoen disarms the traps in the maze, we drop off the NPCs at Sarevok's place, and then we collect the little sorcerers we left in the Thieves' Guild headquarters before returning to the final room. Baeloth draws Sarevok over to the corner (his Stoneskin is safer than Frisky Bits' Mirror Image) and vanishes while the rest of the party camps out in the other corner.
Now we need to deal with Angelo. We bait him into breaking invisibility by sending a skeleton into his line of sight, then, once Angelo clouds his aura, we have Baeloth remove his MGOI with Spell Thrust. Against the odds, Angelo fails to take down Baeloth's buffs with his Remove Magic, and so Baeloth is free to keep peppering Angelo with Acid Arrows. I stagger the timing of the Acid Arrows to make sure they hit multiple times within a round, instead of all striking at the same time.
Angelo falls when our skeletons cut through his Stoneskins, and our three skeletons just barely manage to slay Angelo's Skeleton Warrior replacement, with only one of our skeletons surviving.
Now we wait for Diarmid's Protection from Magic scroll to wear off. I use CTRL-T to expedite the process, have Faldorn loiter around the south to keep an eye on the enemies, and then Baeloth starts bombing them with Fireball. He runs out of level 3 spell slots before killing anyone, however, and so I have to bring over one of the little sorcerers to launch a very carefully-aimed Lance of Disruption at Sarevok's gang.
The bad news is that, unlike Sarevok's gang themselves, the Skeleton Warriors that replace Sarevok's fallen comrades are willing to chase you down if you try to hit them from afar. Baeloth has to lure one of them into a corner and disappear, since the skeletons' high MR means that only Lance of Disruption and summons can realistically harm them, and we don't have many of those spell slots to spare.
In preparation for the final phase, in which we engage Sarevok himself, Faldorn throws out a bunch of Dispel Magic spells in an attempt to remove Sarevok's haste effect. Judging by his sprite's animation, the dispel works!
With enough Lances of Disruption, we take down Sarevok's other two allies, spawning two new enemy Skeleton Warriors on the map. We have immense trouble getting them to stay in place in the northeast corner, and eventually, the only way I can keep them from harrying the party and chopping up our summons is to form a wall of invisible characters and trap them in the corner.
That screenshot might look clean, but it took a LOT of careful orders and pauses to make sure we didn't leave any gaps the skeletons could slip through. The skeletons got very close to escaping that prison; we had to act very quickly to establish it.
It's time to take down Sarevok himself, who according to CTRL-M is at 138 HP when we run low on Lances of Disruption. Before we enter SoD, we need to make sure that all of the little sorcerers are in the party, because they will not follow us into SoD if they're not--they'll be lost forever. I do some finagling and manage to replace some pieces of our invisible wall.
We keep around Baeloth to use as bait for Sarevok while the rest of the party throws out Magic Missiles. When he's at the brink, we toss out Baeloth and reunite the entire party before slaying Sarevok.
Done! We enter SoD with the big Frisky Bits at level 8 and the little ones at level 6. We're actually pretty badly underleveled for SoD. Those aren't high levels even if we did have items to support us.
Poverty runs in BG1 are so heavily dependent on Invisibility and summoned critters (though we seldom ever used the latter in this run). There are so many dangers, especially enchantment spells and enemy fighters, that only certain kits or certain items can fend off. A low-level Berserker in full plate and a few potions can shrug off anything a mage might throw at the party, but take away the Berserker kit, the plate mail, and the potions, and there's no class that can shrug off Icelance, Confusion, and a summoned Phase Spider without having pretty high levels unless you're just tossing out summoned critters.
This run has been a lot more fun than most of my BG1 runs. I've long complained that BG1 gameplay is too dominated by a few key items, and while a poverty run is a very drastic alternative (a "no recharging items at stores" rule would be better), it made things a lot more interesting.
We enter the first dungeon of Siege of Dragonspear completely unarmed and highly inexperienced, but we are not alone. Seeing our old friend Imoen for the first time in weeks fills us with determination.
I think that, on balance, not recharging wands is probably better for gameplay because money is effectively an infinite resource. The bug I and Neverused have not letting us use them has probably not dented my enjoyment of the game. But don't let that stop you first time around, spam them like crazy!
True, I forgot that most people here have been playing for ages and need new challenges, while I'm still occupied enough with the normal game.
It's also true, though, that recharging them is not economical. I probably wouldn't do that again.
On the other hand, spending all my money on "just in case" potions and scrolls that I don't use is not economical, either.
@Arvia: You might want to spend the money on those "just in case" potions. A spare Potion of Invisibility or Magic Shielding, or even a more basic item like a Potion of Freedom or Invisibility scroll, can be a lifesaver in bad situations. The fate of the run seldom depends on how many charges you have in your Wand of Fire, but it will very often depend on whether you can survive a petrification trap or Horrid Wilting spell or a group of Phase Spiders swarming around your main character. It's the weird things that kill you.
No-reload runs involve a lot of risk management, and risk management isn't just about avoiding stupid mistakes and anticipating common threats; it's also about hedging against wild cards, some of which are completely unknown. Just make sure you remember what you've been hoarding, or else you might forget to use them when the time comes.
And I have to remember to take them *all* out of the potion case before the final fight with Sarevok, if I get there.
It was so frustrating the first time, to arrive in SoD and they were gone.
@Arvia: The potion case did not transfer to SoD? Have you used Modmerge to combine your BG1 and SoD installs? That's a necessary prerequisite for modding the game, but I think that would also prevent the game from failing to transfer certain items, since it sounds like your SoD install is missing the item file or the store file for the potion case.
My containers transfer properly to SoD - though I do have to remember to take anything out of containers (like the pantaloons) that I want to transfer to BG2 with an imported character.
'Long-life challenge' - wizard slayer {29} (update 1) Previous run
I'm still struggling to really get to grips with this challenge 4 1/2 years after commencing it . While druids are the only classes that I'm not confident are capable of a straightforward victory in principle, actually making it through a whole run with any class has been, well ... challenging.
Thinking it must have been a while since I'd tried a wizard slayer, I checked and found the last attempt was in March 2018 - I actually documented that one on this thread. Referring back to that helped refresh my memory about what to do while running through BG1 this morning.
Shoal was shot down to get to level 3. I bought a +1 short bow and also decided to purchase full plate and a +1 shield early. Normally I wouldn't buy those at all (waiting to inherit Taurgosz's set) and would buy almost nothing else anyway until prices are as low as possible, but money is so meaningless to a wizard slayer, it really is pointless to delay.
In going to pick up the Ring of Wizardry to sell I went a bit further north to get Tenya's bowl from some fishermen - returning that was enough for level 4.
Scimitars are my starting melee weapon proficiency. In past runs I've nearly always increased that as soon as possible, but this time decided to take the generally slightly safer option of improving bow proficiency first. However, I still wanted Drizzt's scimitars for the AC bonus and fire resistance, so went to find him. I wasn't too bothered whether I got his XP as well, so didn't plan to retreat to reset the combat when Drizzt got low on HPs under attack from a single gnoll. That meant the odds were the gnoll would kill him, but on this occasion I got lucky when its weapon broke and I was able to finish off an unconscious Drizzt to get to level 5.
Moving on to Nashkel and resting provided me with LMD. I took a further reputation hit by shooting down Meilum to get his PfM scroll. A couple of reputation quests and a few other odds and sods around Beregost were then followed by shooting down the golems at High Hedge - getting me to level 6.
Korax took the lead in the basilisk area to deal with the basilisks and Mutamin. Korax also did well to paralyze Peter, allowing me to kill him and Baerin before Lindin finished off the ghoul. Shooting down Lindin was enough for level 7 before going to find Kirian. Her attempted mirror image failed as a result of my first shot and she didn't have quite enough time to complete a second attempted spell.
A couple more reputation quests pushed that up to 10 before heading for the Nashkel Mine. Up to this point I'd avoided taking any damage, but the first kobold armed with a bow in the mine spoiled that record (there's no way to avoid two traps in there though, so it wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway).
None of the other kobolds got a hit in on the way to find Mulahey. I took no chances with him - shooting him down without letting him get within talking distance.
After resting to get CLW (I wanted that to be able to complete the Unseeing Eye quest in BG2) I dodged Nimbul's horror, but failed to interrupt his magic missile spell - but my 7% MR blocked that before chopping him down.
In Beregost I got caught stealing to reduce reputation back to 9 before Tranzig spilled the location of the Bandit Camp (along with the last of his blood).
Taurgosz and his bandits were shot down before I went into Tazok's tent. Venkt was hit by 2 acid arrows before he could react - taking him low enough on HPs for a LMD to finish him off. The others then had no chance in melee.
In the Cloakwood I wanted Spiders Bane for once, as I couldn't use a ring of free action. The SCS modded giant spiders with their web tangle ability make doing that ticklish for a wizard slayer, but the unmodded ones were no real obstacle.
At the mine I pulled Genthore away on his own and finished him off before using horror from out of sight of the others. Kysus panicked and was shot down before I rested and tried again. 4 or 5 attempts later Rezdan also panicked and he was finished off before Drasus lost out in melee.
Inside the mine I avoided the mages on the way down to Davaeorn. His battle horrors were pulled back and meleed. I then left the mine to heal up before returning for the mage. I didn't use PfM and that allowed Davaeorn to get a fireball off, but his spells were shut down before he got around to trying anything dangerous. His jelly guard then provided my final BG1 level - bringing up my century with 102 HPs.
After resting to get a second Bhaal horror, I did a tour of some wilderness areas doing more reputation quests to push that up to 20. I also recovered the charisma tome before doing a bit of shopping for green scrolls and ammunition. Some of the latter included exploding arrows and I used those on sirines at the Lighthouse to make quite certain they would not get a charm attempt off.
After shooting down the golems I recovered the tome from the cave to activate constitution regeneration (I could have used Buckley's Buckler for that earlier, but hadn't been injured enough to bother doing that).
In the City I picked up the dexterity tome. The poison quest provided a wisdom tome and a shield upgrade before Marek handed over a bow upgrade.
Ramazith was shot down to get access to the final tome. I did a few encounters in the City just to get some quick XP and for similar reasons went to clear the exterior of Durlag's Tower. I used a PfP scroll up on the basilisks, but didn't bother with a PfM scroll to get the tome there - even though I don't think I'll need all the ones I've got.
Back in the City the Iron Throne party were split up on the stairs and shot down to open the route to Candlekeep.
I had no way to get either of the tomes there, but DUHM is sufficient to loot the other tomb. A few dopplegangers later and Prat was shot down without any of the others reacting.
Bor was a potential problem because of his darts of stunning and I had to run between areas to avoid a potential hit by one of those. Deciding to take a leaf out of his book I switched to my own darts and the first hit from those stunned him.
Tam got lucky with his acid arrows while I was dealing with Sakul, but then he too was stunned.
Another PfP scroll then allowed exit through the basilisks.
For the end game, Slythe was dispelled and shot down at leisure.
It's not possible to guarantee success at the palace for a wizard slayer and there was a bad start when a first horror failed to have any effect. Fortunately though, 3 of the dopplegangers attacked me, allowing me the opportunity to dispel the haste of those attacking the dukes.
A second horror affected one of the dopplegangers, which left me still largely using a bow in melee range to try and protect the dukes. That did cost me quite a few HPs, but allowed Belt to come through relatively unscathed.
After working through the maze I left the Undercity party untouched. Arriving at the temple though I realized I'd missed something out. I normally don't talk to Tamoko, but her magical full plate is the best armor for a wizard slayer. Hence I went all the way back to the City to find her. Back at the temple I attacked her before retreating into the temple to avoid her spells. That switching of areas nearly always seems to duplicate her, but I was ready for that this time and successfully pulled away and dodged her new copy outside the temple (which was still neutral) before heading back to deal with the original.
I decided to cheese Sarevok using the repeating lightning trap. That has the advantage of getting another 8 exploding arrows from Angelo - and those are more important for the wizard slayer than other classes as it's the only way to get area damage. It is possible to kill Sarevok just by the lightning, but once Angelo became the last of the acolytes to fall I approached Sarevok and used a dispelling arrow on him. I'd forgotten though that I hadn't tripped the stinking cloud and web traps and when I was held by those things looked grim. Fortunately I saved against all the succeeding checks and was able to run out of the affected area before being too badly hurt. It didn't then take long to finish Sarevok off.
All that extra XP meant I had nearly 400k on entry to SoD and levelled up to gain grand mastery in short bows.
It really depends on how much money you collect. If you go after every trove, you can recharge everything, and that money gathering is tedious. If you don't go after every resource, you spend more time actually playing the game.
So wih yet another soul lost to the harshness of no-reload play in the person of Alma, I'll give Faera Sparklestone a chance to shine.
This is a character I finished BG1 with before I did with Alma. I'll try to just report her BG1 adventure in a single write-up. Faera was meant to avenge Addi, fellow Gnome Illusionist who fell at the hands (claws?) of Belhifet. Let's see if she can. This is a completionist playthrough and unlike Alma, Faera had to travel with a full party as soon as she could, making progress a lot slower. She was furthermore meant to meet all the (joinable) NPCs in the game, a task that she didn't succeed at I realize now, as she never ran into Viconia nor did she enter Kagain's shop. Faera would rotate companions quite a lot until she found her party of friends that worked best for her.
Mods: BG Quests and Encounters, BG1 NPC Project, Unfinished Business, Anthology Tweaks (parts), aTweaks (parts), SCS 32 (insane), P&P Free Acion, Song & Silence (shop), and Rogue Rebalancing (Bard revisions).
Faera was initially joined by Imoen (Burglar), Xzar and Montaron, and Eldoth (Dirgesinger), and with her companions she made it safely to the FAI. Montaron proved especially valuable, planting his blade into Mirror Imaged Tarnesh's back.
Khalid and Jaheira joined, and Eldoth stayed behind. The party of six did what quests they were given in the Beregost-Nashkel area, where only Dorn's foes put Faera in danger.
She was quick enough to get away from the bandit archers, and the party plus Dorn slew the bandits. One of them dropped a Find Familiar scroll, helping Faera to an early fairy dragon familiar and a welcome HP boost.
The areas south/south-west of Nashkel posed a number of genuine challenges for the low level party, most notably Sendai and her men. Jaheira (wearing ankheg plate) impressively stood her ground against Alexander, whom Faera had Blinded, and Delgod. But Sendai hit Khalid hard and instead of retreating as commanded, he went berserk. He fell before a second casting of Blindness affected Sendai.
The remaining companions prevailed however, and rested. Vax and Zal represented a second challenge, but again Faera's Blindness made a decisive difference.
In Nashkel Khalid was raised and he and Jaheira left the group. As much as Faera liked Khalid (more so than Jaheira), his berserker antics left her too uneasy to have the Half-Elf around.
With the ring of wizardry and with Sleep as one of Faera's starting spells (besides Shield and Blindness), the party went ankheg hunting. One ankheg nearly killed Imoen (21 damage, leaving her with 3 HPs) with a single ranged attack, and a member of a group of bandits insta-killed Xzar (8/8 HPs). Ajantis (Inquisitor) joined and, after a visit to the south, Kivan (Archer) did too. Everyone was level 3 when they were done, Imoen level 4. With lvl 2 spells accessible to Faera, a first spell-scribing session ensued.
Drizzt received assistance from the party for a change, and Greywolf was Blinded and slain before the party entered the Nashkel Mines. Kobold archers nearly got Monty, but everyone made it to Mulahey's lair in one piece. The wand of fire from the ankheg cave was put to good use against the kobold chieftain and shaman. Stealth (Monty, Kivan, Imoen) and Invisibility (Faera, Xzar) allowed five of the companions to enter Mulahey's chamber before revealing themselves to him. Ajantis would stay closer to the exit, to tank skellies and kobolds. Mulahey fell to a barrage of missiles, and the kobolds and skellies to a combo of ranged (kobolds) and melee (skeletons) attacks and careful use of the wand of fire.
Xan was set free and told to wait at the FAI. Nimbul was slain by a guard, and Tranzig by Ajantis and Kivan after the mage had put Faera to sleep. Still drowsy, Faera unfortunately forgot to pick up Tranzig's loot.
Kivan's side quest resulted in victory when two sahuagin were put to Sleep and their leader assaulted by the party. East of Beregost the party dealt with a variety of wolves. Ajantis (immune to Hold) and Faera (with her marvelous +2 returning throwing dagger, thank you Kivan) slew two vampric wolves.
Xzar and Montaron left the party (mainly because of issues with Xzar's BG1 NPC Project dialogue), creating space for Quayle/Xan and often shunned Neera, Faera's love interest for this run and with some banter mods. Neera's quest resulted in a satisfctory battle against Ekandor and co. Neera successfully cast a Web at the enemies. Wand Fireballs weren't an option with Adoy around. The other companions focused fire on Ekandor but that didn't stop him from reading and thus consuming his Stoneskin scroll... An Ogre Berserker and a hasted warrior that had escaped Neera's Web were Enfeebled by Xan and Blinded by Faera respectively, so that the party could finish the job with martial means.
It was nice to see the still rather low level party, with several vulnerable characters (Faera, Neera, Xan, Imoen) prevail.
Lamalha and Zeela almost Killed Kivan and severely injured Imoen with Unholy Blights. A Web held the invisible rogues but the wand of fire didn't kill them before Maneira could free herself and deliver a deadly backstab to Neera. Neera's casting had been curtailed by her comrades, so she was a very vulnerable target. (One good thing about having her around is that rogues will pick her rather than Faera for backstabs.) Interrupting the priestesses' casting with spells and missiles ensured the others made it out of he ambush alive. Molkar's gang didn't hurt the party as much, as wand scorchers neutralized the casters and Xan Enfeebled Molkar.
On the north coast Neera saved against Shoal's kiss and Faera wand-stunned Droth, whose helmet she gave to Kivan.
The Bandit Camp saw the party slay Tazok (Kivan can't stop himself from attacking the half-ogre with BG1 NPC Project) and revealed a bug in my install: Imoen was unkillable and the same turned out to be the case for Xan. Possibly there's a conflict between my customizing of NPCs and the SCS NPC customization option because it was precisely Imoen and Xan whom I had given a mod kit (Burglar) and an illegal combination (Fighter/Enchanter) respectively in EEKeeper. Testing showed that Ajantis and Kivan whom I had assigned their Inquisitor and Archer kits in-game through SCS, did not have this problem. Rather than changing their classes/kits in the middle of the game, what I did is role-play that both Imoen and Xan had suffered grievous wounds and had to leave the party to recover. Alora (unkitted Thief) and Quayle (Cleric/Illusionist) joined in their stead.
Everyone entered Tazok's tent invisibly. Neera was Shielded through the shield amulet, and cast Chaos Shield so she could hopefully cast Webs at the bandits. Faera and Quayle applied minor buffs as well (Shield, Blur). Neera cast her Web with success even though she was put under a Sleep spell from Venkt moments later.
That was ok though, as Kivan used his acid arrows to eliminate Venkt, and the others took care of Britik and the archers with fire from necklace/potion/wand.
After the battle everyone went invisible or hid in shadows, and went outside where the whole camp was cleaned up with the wand of paralyzation (Taurgosz) and with more fire.
The party didn't necessarily look forward to traversing the vast and dangerous Cloakwood at their levels so they decided to accrue some more items and XP first. The wands of frost and fire, magic missiles and ranged weapons did Bassilus in. Alora robbed Shandalar and Dushai in Ulgoth's Beard. Kivan, helped by Korax, took care of Mutamin and his basilisks while Neera's Webs and Korax's touch really helped the party deal with Kirian's crew.
Everyone had just over 20k XP, stil low for Cloakwood in my opinion but they were pretty well-equipped thanks to Alora's thieving abilities. Neera was equipped with the robe of the neutral archmagi. Faera with that of the good archmagi and the claw of kazgaroth. Ajantis was both a good tank and a competent marksman thanks to his full plate, gauntlets of dexterity, a bastard sword +1, and the light crossbow of speed. And Kivan was deadly with his composite longbow +1 and elemental arrows. Alora herself was wearing the shadow armor. The party also had plenty of potions.
Faera first sided with Aldeth. Seniyad just managed to cast an Insect Plague at Kivan before Quayle Held the druid. Kivan entered the lodge to evade the insects. Next, Alora removed the web snares in the spider area, which made the area doable for the party using spells, wands, and missiles rather than melee. At the entrance to the Cloakwood mine, Neera did a great job once again with one of her Webs initially holding Genthore, Kysus and Rezdan.
It allowed her to safely finish them with her wand and spells. However even on his own Drasus gave the companions, especially Ajantis, plenty of trouble.
Kivan eventually took him down.
Inside the mine, the dimly lit corridors gave Alora and Kivan a chance to show off their stealth skills. With a strength potion and her short sword +2 the halfling went mage hunting. Hareishan wasn't Stoneskinned so Alora was happy to deliver a first stab.
The mage then went invisible and did cast a Stoneskin but Ajantis, who was also invisible, revealed Hareishan's whereabouts with his Inquisitor True Sight. Kivan then attacked her with acid arrows. He still got Confused by her in one of the jail cells, but finished her off anyway.
Natasha was less dangerous than I'm used to thanks to IWD spells. She cast Shroud of Flame and Mordenkainen's Force Missiles at Alora, where she used to cast Lightning Bolt and Sunfire. The former spells still injured Alora quite seriously,
but at least she was alive when Kivan slew the wizard. The Ogre Mage on the same floor was tanked by Ajantis while the others attacked with ranged wapons. Quayle finished him with the wand of the heavens.
Finally the party opted to spend one of their wands of fire on Davaeorn and his cronies rather than buffing up one of the warriors with potions. The reason was that potions were relatively scarce and wands not so much with Sorcerous Sundries within reach.
At the city entrance the party ran into Immanel Silversword, a rival of Kivan's. She had his bow but refused to return it. The party took it back by felling her and her wolves. It resulted in level-ups for Faera, Neera, Quayle, and Alora. Ajantis and Kivan had leveled up in Davaeorn's lair.
In Baldur's Gate the party completed most of the available quests in order to gain more experience and good items. This stage of the game also saw Faera form a temporary alliance with Rasaad and trigger his quest. It was carried out without incident and the big fisted belt went to Alora, turning her into a deadly backstabber. She would enjoy a more prominent role in combat from that moment, often dealing with foes even on her own.
For the Iron Throne battle the party took a shock and awe approach: a fiery opening salvo was followed by Alora's precise strikes. This is her besting Kaalos in his own field
In Candlekeep Chaotic Good Faera deemed the execution of Rieltar warranted. He was fried while his men were stunned with the wand of paralyzation when they attacked.
The proven tactic of casting a Web at foes didn't quite work against Prat's gang. All but Sakul who had a MGoI up were held at first, but Sakul cast a Melf's Acid Arrow at Neera and Tam approached soon after from an unexpected side, and felled her.
Tam was then Blinded by Faera and Alora took care of Prat with backstabs, but Sakul somewhat surpsisingly Confused Kivan. (I remember Sakul as nuker rather than a disabler.) Faera stunned Sakul with her wand, and so the wizard fell and eventually so did Bor, who had remained Webbed for a long time.
Neera's second death made Faera decide to be more encouraging of her spell-casting. She'd be allowed to self-buff albeit at a safe distance from the others.
Resting between battles, the party barely suffered any damage on the Ice Island. True Sight and elemental missiles (Kivan's acid arrows, Ajantis's bolts of lightning, and Rogue Rebalancing's returning frost dart in Alora's nimble hands) helped a lot.
The party then entered Durlag's Tower, and went all the way. The Warders were fought one at a time, and in the case of Pride with the help of wand summons. Stoneskinned Faera functioned as Avarice's backstab volunteer but the devious creature would seek other marks when possible. Here's Kivan receiving a good backstab.
Brute force did him in eventually.
The second lower level didn't pose any real threats (it's mainly Greater Doppelgangers). On the third level wand summons were used as decoys to lure the Asirukuru's out of stealth, so that Alora could deal with them.
The big deal on that level was of course the chess board. Faera played it safe and had every member of the pre-buffed party open with a fireball. That strongly reduced enemy numbers. Kivan saw the King casting a spell, and interrupted him with an acid arrow.
More missiles followed and did him in.
On level 4 Faera had to rescue Alora with an Invisibility after the halfling had failed to remove one of two traps in the spider room. There was sadly no rescue for Kivan against the Demon Knight's shockingly potent fire magics (which also killed Quayle, but not permanently).
The elf who had been an invaluable companion and friend, was gone for good. His bow somehow survived the onslaught, and Faera decided to always keep it in her bag of holding in his memory. The companions spread out and attacked from a distance, while leaving melee combat to summons. I think it's fitting that a summoned ogre landed the killing blow.
Looking for another warrior to replace Kivan the party had Dorn join, but Ajantis didn't like that and left. Shar-Teel came on board in his place. Dorn's quest was completed without any incidents. In its final battle Dorn, Shar-Teel, and skeletal summons proved to be more than a match for the enemy.
Dorn and Shar-Teel left the party, mostly because Shar-Teel's aggressiveness didn't sit well with the others. Ajantis returned and Baeloth joined as the sixth member. They tested their mettle against Kahrk: summons to keep him busy, Spell Thrust to remove his MGoI (Baeloth), a Malison (Neera), Polymorph Other (Faera, you never know) but that was saved against. Kahrk Enfeebled Ajantis through a minor sequencer but that was ok because the paladin was attacking with his crossbow anyway. Quayle's Blindness hit and he was also the one to finish the ogre mage with a critical sling shot for 30 damage.
In Ulgoth's Beard the cult assassins can be a pain. Baeloth suffered a lot of Sunfire damage from one of the wizards, but he went invisible and escaped death. Ajantis got hit by a Chaos when his companions were just too far away to pass him a potion of clarity. He could have attacked some of the villagers but thankfully he continued to fight a couple of assassins. Alora was wearing the boots of speed to hide and stab, and Neera, Quayle, and Faera used wand scorchers to speed up the battle.
Speaking of wand scorchers, four wizards can create sophisticated patterns, like this:
Everyone was of course fully buffed by spells and potions. Tracea was buffed as well. Faera used a Spell Thrust to remove her globe so that she too became vulnerable to wand fire, Alora and Ajantis attacked her with their electricity/cold missiles to get rid of her Stoneskins before Ajantis struck her down with Albruin (thanks Dorn!). Quayle had summoned some skeletons to occupy Aec'letec, who was soon the last enemy standing. When Faera Blinded him,
he was easy pickings.
Wolfweres on the Isle of Balduran were very much an affair left to Ajantis and Alora (even though my run with Alma and her wizards taught me that magic damage from MMs and Skull Traps works too).
Wolfwere Daese was actually Blinded... Do I use that spell too much? Karoug, Selaad Gan and Baresh were all overmastered by buffed Ajantis (Storm Giant STR, invulnerability, haste, regen).
Back in Baldur's Gate Alora and two skeletons took care of Slythe, while Baeloth (Spell Thrust) and Faera (uhmm Blindness) neutralized Krystin.
Pre-laid snares from Alora, True Sight from Ajantis, and raw damage from the (obviously fully buffed) party resulted in a solid victory at the Ducal Palace.
Several Flaming Fist mercenaries had been hasted by Baeloth, which made them a lot more effective, something to remember.
At the final battle the party decided to wait for a bit. As soon as Diarmid's PfMagic expired, a couple of opening Fireballs injured the archer and straight up killed Semaj (whose MGoI had expired earlier).
The battle was on. An arrow of dispelling from non-proficient Ajantis slowed Sarevok down, leaving Angelo and Diarmid as the main threats. Baeloth managed to remove Angelo's buffs buying the party some time to deal with Diarmid: fire and missiles (magical and elemental) did him in.
Alora took care of Tazok.
Angelo reappeared with a minor spell turning active that I'd missed. It led to Faera injuring herself with her own wand scorcher. Minor Spell Turning doesn't protect against AoE spells, and indeed a Chaos confused Angelo, unfortunately after he finished his casting of Remove Magic directed at Faera. She had to retreat and rebuff. It was another backstab by Alora that did him in not much later.
Sarevok fell in way that sums up the latter part of this playthrough. Malison, Slow, Blindness, and two backstabs for 52 and 67 damage left him on the verge of death. Baeloth got the kill with a Minute Meteor.
Part 3 of our adventure continues not after one week but after three. The level of rustiness reflects the gap, and at the end of the session we think there have been three party deaths (Coremage x2, Harvey x1) but there could well have been more that we are blanking out.
We make a start - the save is called ankhegs so we take that as a measure of where to begin. It immediately becomes apparent that Coremage stands back from the ankhegs to swing his two handed sword +1, and whenever Harvey or Milam try to melee the ankheg decides to switch to a nearer target.
Milam is badly wounded after only one ankheg so gamely risks his life as Coremage decisively routes us around the nest in his preferred pattern and not the one preferred by Milam. We'll play it your way, for now.
We make it out of the nest alive and after resting up hunt down some sirines only to get distracted by a group of ogres. Web sorts them out nicely and a bit of blindness helps too. No need to bother the surgeon - we might need him later...
Unfortunately this means we are low on spells for the sirines but that shouldn't matter. Coremage leads using a greenstone amulet charge to prevent charm, but once more his sword reach and Harvey's proclivity to melee sees a sirine charm the monk instead.
Coremage decides to run a bit and belatedly realises this opens him up to arrows of biting. Down he goes. Harvey recovers and starts to fight but is poisoned. We decide to see if we can reach the surgeon since Harvey is averse to gulping green or blue potions. He doesn't make it so Milam is on his own - having already loaded up on Coremage's gear.
Milam picks up Harvey's gear too and leaves a couple of cheap junkets (missiles, daggers etc.). He crawls away encumbered but a sirine chases so he dumps a magical longsword and longbow so he can flee safely.
Once his companions are restored we take the fight to the sirines and have travelled quickly enough (20 hours each way, no rests) to pick up our dropped gear. Magic, job done apart from Milam has found a carrion crawler and that has to be culled.
Fresh from that lack of success we hunt down Prism and either fluff dialogue or get a low charisma choice, meaning we cannot get to meet Greywolf. Prism runs away hostile and we decide there is no point killing him.
Harvey is lumbered with a +1 longsword instead and has to make do. He suggests we go pick on the Doomsayer but Coremage wants to wait until his next level to increase the number of magic missiles he has. He quickly calculates we need only 3... 6... 18000xp to get this by which time Harvey has suggested a few chromatic orbs from Milam would help. Milam is already memorising them so off we trot. We start with a few webs and end with Harvey facing up to the Doomsayer.
At this stage we decide to visit Meilum. Remember that.
On the way we stumble into Morvin Molkar Halacan and Drakar. They would be easy pickings if only Milam could place himself properly to cast webs. He cannot...
Milam is targeted and loses control. Harvey is chased and has to double back so not to drag enemies into Milam, while Coremage is fighting a losing spellcaster duel with Halacan.
Coremage is dead. Harvey uses shadows to elude his pursuers and we grab Coremage's gear and leave, to come back when he can share xp in their death.
Once more into the breach with Morvin and his gang. Milam steps forward too soon again but a couple of webs are active and we can pick the enemies apart. We also all save against Horror. Milam uses his new Avenger spider form to try and drag Drakar into the web but after three failed attempts and three spells Harvey has run out of patience and unleashed his fists.
On to Durlags Tower. Milam uses web, call lightning and spider form to get past the first couple of enemies.
Failure to blind another enemy means more lightning assistance is required.
Inside the tower two of us are caught by a trap.
Once we're recovered, Coremage buffs us and we go deal with basilisks.
Milam uses his fire salamander form combined with a ring of fire resistance to reach 90% resistance and spring a trap on the roof to get a scimitar we have no need of.
Two of us fail the return past the trap, and the third of us decides it's a good time to get charmed while his companions can cause no mischief.
[
Then a bit of a dirty Harry moment. Did Coremage spring two traps or three. Do we feel lucky. After a minute or so of bickering we (Milam, Harvey) decide that while we may trust Coremage we don't trust him with our lives.
We wander off to do something else, only for Harvey to mutter about it taking rather a long time to go visit Meilum and yes OK we'd better go do that. Stand still so we can admire your sword skills.
Good news and bad news
I did the normal running around but this trip I used my glasses to get the ring instead of a sword and (as a non-arcane caster) I don't get the option to fight the lich so my only hope was to kill him before he talks... unfortunately this proved too hard so I missed out on his threads but still get the regen ring and the crossbow
moving on I sent my thief to rob the good loot while the rest of us cleared an exit strategy... leaving summons to fight the rear guard action
I was wondering why this battle was a bit harder then it hit me that my wild mage didn't open with her 3X skulltraps... killing Hephernaan quickly is going to need something extra!
Comments
Part 1: Baldur's Gate
Okay, we have a new poverty run going on! We're on Tactical difficulty, the SCS v32 equivalent of Core, which means some mages get pre-buffs and a few critters won't use all of their special moves, unlike Insane mode. The WeiDU log is attached to this post.
The rules are a bit different from my old poverty run, which allowed self-created items like Goodberries, Flame Blade, Minute Meteors, and even some wands and potions from Wish. In this run, we can't use any items whatsoever unless they're part of a quest. We're also going to avoid using gold for anything besides quests and dialogs, which means we can't pay for resurrections--if somebody dies and we can't recruit a priest with access to Raise Dead, that person is going to stay dead until we can find an NPC that can bring them back.
That's not all, though. There's a special extra rule on top of all of this: all of our starting party members need to have the same stats at character creation and choose all of the same spells. We have a party of sextuplet sorcerers, all named Frisky Bits!
Anyway, because we have so few resources at our disposal and we really need Invisibility to make sure we don't just get thrashed during some random ambush, the first Frisky Bits, our protagonist, is going to be going solo for a while so they'll be strong enough to support the littler kids.
Naturally, this means tackling Mutamin's Garden early. Korax does the work because, without access to even a pointy stick to fight our enemies, we honestly couldn't kill anything even if we did have Protection from Petrification--which we don't, because I know the placement of the basilisks well enough to just lead Korax on ahead, without ever entering a non-disabled basilisk's field of vision.
After clearing out all the lizards, we are now at level 5! That means we have Invisibility, Web, and Magic Missile. Invisibility lets us scout out enemies, Web lets us disable them from a safe distance, and Magic Missile pins them down once it's safe for us to approach.
I could go hunting for Sirines, but I really don't want to go to the trouble of neutralizing all the hobgoblins and chasing down the sirines while all the enemies are wandering aimlessly around the map. It's a big hassle, and frankly the ankheg farm is just a less irritating option for gathering XP.
XP farming is a bit boring, but digging up ankhegs is actually kind of scary. With 30 HP and no helmet, we could easily get one-shotted when our Sleep spells fail against the ankhegs, which means we have to hang out by the cave entrance, and a couple times we actually do have to run outside to avoid a potentially fatal hit.
The moment I hit level 6, I call it quits--we just got the spell we need.
Skull Trap is indeed excellent, and we're going to take it later. But we need Lance of Disruption for a very specific purpose, and we need it much sooner than we need Skull Trap.
First, we take care of the littler obstacles. Invisibility lets us walk right down to Mulahey, Web him, and shoot him down. Back in Beregost, we borrow Tiax at Feldepost's inn and have his ghast paralyze Tranzig.
Now it's time to take down the Cloakwood Mines. We sneak right past Drasus and the other Iron Throne goons using Invisibility and head down to Davaeorn's pad. We snare the guard with Web and nail him with Lance of Disruption. It blasts him to pieces.
More importantly, the lance has seemingly limitless range. Guess what that means?
Unfortunately, Davaeorn has excellent saving throws and we can't actually deal enough damage to kill him with just three castings. Davaeorn survives the first volley, but since he doesn't actually retaliate, we can just head upstairs, rest, and try again until he fails a save on one of the lances and we get some moderately good dice rolls.
That actually takes a lot of attempts. Davaeorn gets nailed in the face with a giant red lance 9 times a day for almost a week without even attempting to fight back.
Finally, we get the numbers we need, and Davaeorn goes down.
Molkar makes that mistake. The only way he can escape our Webs is if he flies out in pieces.
By scraping together various non-grindy sources of XP, we get the other mages up to level 2 by doing the Tenya quest. Everyone but the main character is still dead weight, but we have the spells to handle the coming challenges, and it will be a very glorious day when all of the sextuplets have Lance of Disruption.
Resisting the urge to crack a joke about the power of our giant red lances fills us with determination.
We killed the evil Sonner and his party as well as nearby undead husband of a widow.
We then cleared the ankheg in the area and told Farmer Brun of his son's death.
Heading northward we met Tenya, and feeling that she was in need of moral guidance as she grew up, we invited her into the party. What surprised us was her power as a cleric. We had assumed that as a child she would need a certain ammount of molly-coddling, but instead is the strongest cleric that we have.
We also picked up Gavin, and at his Temple's request, killed Bassilus.
WE headed south and rescued a cow before killing a party of ogres and a party of gnolls. The latter provided Isra with a +1 sword.
We then went to the lighthouse area where we rescued a boy from some worgs without any problem. However we then ran into a group of sirines. Their use of blindness, poison arrows and the like were deadly and two of our party, Deathslayer and Gavin were killed.
We went to Aerie, the cheapest option of bringing them back to full health, and had them raised and healed.
Upon leaving the tent we talked to a newcomer whom I have never met before.
He warned us of assassins who he then turned on us.
He used a poison upon us which made us unable to fight. However Aerie then stepped in and helped us.
Deathslayer used web to neutralise two of the assassins whilst we attacked the other. He was quickly killed helped by a command spell.
We then used missile weapons on the others to avoid being webbed ourselves. We also used miscast magic on the mage, but that proved to be unecessary as the mage died before being released from the web.
Introduction
We return from the Cloakwood Mines to Raise Imoen, and get there with little to no problems. We drop Yeslick off at the FAI: his spells are really redundant, and more than 1 melee character in BG1 with Scales of Balance feels kind of bad. Garrick levels on the trip back, and we get to Davaeorn.
As I said in the Lounge, I use a Protection from Magic scroll on Ajantis, with Thael summoning two Skeleton warriors in the corridor intersection before turning everyone invisible. The Battle Horrors are lured by the Skeletons, and Ajantis is free to duel a mage with the Dead Shot, Acid Arrows, and Magic Immunity vs a pure Mage. It doesn't end well for the mage.
In Baldur's Gate, gold and very high experience quests are our target: Basilisk, Ogre Mage in the sewers, Lothander and Marek, Seven Suns, Merchant League, the Helm and Cloak fight, and Ramazith. Afterwards, I pick up Alora for... reasons? I can't remember why I thought it was necessary. I remembered to screenshot all of two of those above events, which sadly is probably an improvement in my screenshot rate.
Candlekeep ambush is dealt with by a Wand of Fear, and then Dispel Invisibility to actually find the suckers.
Back in the Gate, after buying even more arrows, Slythe is killed: I'm pretty sure that Might and Guile reduced his backstab multiplier accidentally, so he's not nearly as big of a threat as usual. He still almost kills someone with his sheer speed and strength, but he dies regardless. Ducal Palace... I might have to up this back to Insane just to face the real Doppelganger fights next time, because this was a stomp. Two skeleton warriors, Haste, and a few buffs later, and all the doppelgangers are slaughtered really, really quickly. I miss almost losing to this.
After some painful fights against Skeleton Warriors in the undercity, we firebomb the Undercity party. The final battle is won using my usual cheese: Protection From Magic on Ajantis, and everyone else going invisible and forming a wall at the right corner.
I've completed SoD as well, but I don't have time to put that into an update just yet. Thael is 7/8 M/P at this point, I think.
Part 2: Baldur's Gate
While we did kill Davaeorn, we never actually finished the Cloakwood Mines questline, since we were saving it for the little ones. The main Frisky Bits snares the Drasus party and bludgeons them with red stuff, and we run around the Cloakwood doing other, smaller fights. Notably, we use invisible characters to form a wall so we can attack the wyverns from safety, a strategy I borrowed from @Grond0. Once we take down Aldeth Sashenstar, the little ones hit level 3!
Lance of Disruption bypasses magic resistances. It still strikes as a level 3 spell and deals crushing damage, so it won't bypass spell level immunities or Stoneskin, but it goes right through MR, making it a spectacular option against critters like Belhifet. Belhifet isn't reliably killable just using Lance of Disruption alone, so that doesn't solve the Belhifet fight on its own, but it's a powerful asset.
We keep running around handling minor quests as an alternative to grinding, using Web to safely bring down troublesome wild cards like Kirian. Webbing Bassilus also works just fine, but we get a cool and kind of scary bug: being snared makes Bassilus repeatedly pre-cast Aerial Servant! That would force us to flee if the Aerial Servants weren't perfectly vulnerable to Web themselves.
We blast Drizzt Do'Urden to bits from across the map.
We accidentally lose some additional reputation, dropping down to about 7, when a Lance of Disruption goes past Teyngan's group and kills some innocent person offscreen, and then we head east to splatter Sendai and reunite Albert and Rufie. On the way, I see a little treasure trove with a Cloudkill scroll in it--I thought the only source of that scroll was in Durlag's Tower!
The journal entry doesn't really match our alignment. I am not roleplaying this run at all, but I can justify Drizzt's death by saying the party was minding its own business fishing at the lake when the big Frisky Bits decided to impress the little ones by firing a series of red lances in a direction that just happened to be aimed directly at the famous drow ranger. And then we did the same thing several times, because of course we had no way of knowing that someone might be caught in the line of fire.
Anyway, we now have a potentially high-level mage casting a potentially high-level enchantment spell, and our party of low-level, unequipped elves is grossly unfit to handle anything tougher than Sleep or a charm spell. Fortunately, the mage has foolishly pre-buffed with Armor instead of Shield (maybe because they only use longer-duration pre-buffs on Tactical difficulty?), which means we can disrupt him with a simple volley of Magic Missiles.
Our low reputation also prevents us from giving Noralee her gauntlets. I had thought Charisma and reputation would be mostly irrelevant for a poverty run, and it is for the most part, but there are a few places where you can actually get into trouble. We slay the Greater Basilisk in the warehouse and the little ones finally hit level 4, learning Invisibility. We no longer need the big Frisky Bits to hide the little ones.
We don't do the Iron Throne fight. We might be able to pick off some of them using Web, but I wouldn't gamble the run on the assumption, however, reasonable, that none of the enemies would wrestle their way out and nail us with some hideous disablers or blow up the little ones. Instead, we just use Invisibility to grab the documents. Before we report back to Duke Eltan, we have to recruit Tiax, who sets 7 traps right outside Candlekeep to catch the ogre magi by surprise.
Unfortunately, when I consider the possibilities, I don't think it's realistic for the little ones to get Lance of Disruption by the time we reach Sarevok unless they get a LOT more XP than they would from the main quest alone. But after spending so many runs playing it safe to avoid deaths, I am woefully unprepared to handle the challenges of Balduran's Isle, and we are completely incapable of completing Durlag's Tower, since Love constantly re-casts Globe of Invulnerability and Physical Mirror, making it immune both to traps and all spells we could get without breaking past the BG1 XP cap.
In retrospect, I might have been able to bring down Love by smashing the other warders with Lance of Disruption and then having Viconia, Branwen, Tiax, Yeslick (if he reappeared somewhere) and/or Quayle spam Animate Dead until the skeletons won. But I didn't consider this, and instead resorted to grinding wyverns in the Cloakwood, using invisible characters to box out wyverns and let our visible sorcerers strike from safety.
The big Frisky Bits also gets a bunch of XP from the wyverns and learns Spirit Armor on reaching level 8. By stacking Spirit Armor spells, we can get our saves vs. spell down below zero and achieve immunity to Chaos spells. We can't yet do it for the whole party, but it does make our main character safer.
Living in a cave as a fugitive for weeks on end and killing everything that wanders by--we are literally a band of murder hobos. But because successfully toppling Sarevok will do so much good and we have to use every resource at our disposal, we're actually just being pragmatic and therefore perfectly reasonable.
The knowledge that we can always rationalize our bad decisions fills us with determination.
Reprise (male dwarven defender, Grond0); Kaliara (female human abjurer, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092559/#Comment_1092559
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1092815/#Comment_1092815
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1093046/#Comment_1093046
Here's a belated write-up of a session last Sunday ...
The first action was paying Gaelan Bayle. On our way to find Aran Linvail we came across the first vampire ambush - Hareishan was allowed to kill a couple of thieves (to get their loot) before Azuredge was put into play.
We headed for Trademeet with a view to improving reputation, though that plan didn't last long ... On the way the Renfeld ambush triggered and I was a bit surprised to see Kaliara throwing in a skull trap - there was no surprise about her including Reprise in that, but I thought the presence of Renfeld might have been a deterrent
There were no particular concerns at Trademeet. The trolls in the Mound did a fair amount of damage to Reprise, but not quite enough to make him retreat.
Back in Athkatla we paid for a license to allow Kaliara freedom to throw spells around in more places that just the continuing ambush areas.
After working through a few encounters in the Temple sewers Kaliara didn't notice an ooze mephit sneaking up behind her and fell to the floor. The mephit didn't get much chance to capitalize though as Kitthix popped out of Reprise's backpack to throw in a web tangle.
Seeking a hat-trick of one-shot liches Reprise led the way to the City Gates. He shoots, he scores
Back in the sewers Tarnor's party and Mekrath's hide-out were swiftly cleared on the route to the Unseeing Eye.
The final action saw us attacking Gaal's usual position from a distance. That saw him retreat before we came to pick up the pieces, but he didn't get far before we tracked him down.
Reprise, dwarven defender 10, 131 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 244 kills (+323 in BG1)
Kaliara, abjurer 11, 54 HPs, 155 kills (+97 in BG1), 0 deaths (+2 in BG1)
Introduction
Update 1
So I make a slight mistake at the beginning of SoD/end of BG1, as all my arrows of dispelling and detonation are on Imoen and so I don't have them available for the initial dungeon dive. We spam Invisibility to get through safely, with Safana going in front of us to disarm traps, and arrive at the final fight without a fight on the second floor. A barrage of acid arrows and fire arrows is enough to trigger her surrender quickly, thankfully, so I don't have to fight through her entire force. We take some of the more important gear back from our leaving companions (Ring of fire resist, ring of free action, Spider's Bane are probably the most important of these items) before letting them go. I also took the Crossbow of Speed, but I don't think I ever used it: Dorn is the only one even proficient with them in SoD, I think.
We recruit Minsc and Dynaheir before leaving the city, get the spectacles, and do a minor quest for Harbizzar. In the encampment, we fill out our party quickly: M'khinn, Corwin, and Safana are our last 3. This setup is... absurdly powerful. Corwin is on the same game-breaking power level in SoD as Korgan's Berserker kit is in BG2, but without the party conflicts. We help a vampire for some regeneration, kill a mage for a stone statue, fight some trolls for a sling upgrade, and finally absolutely destroy the first crusader fight.
Thael levels during an area transition, and we start the wildlife fights. Fire arrows take trolls down conveniently, since I didn't get Minsc the trollkilling sword (I forgot where to get it and I don't care THAT much). To spice things up, M'Khinn throws some Call Lightnings down on the Wyverns, and dances to help soak up the spiders in the cave. 6 Protection from Poison scrolls are used for Morenthene, and we also throw on Shadow Door, Haste, Remove Fear, and various other minor buffs. Corwin has arrows of dispelling for the stoneskins Morenthene throws up, and everyone else just has a ton of damage. It takes a bit of kiting, but with protection from her breath and no Stoneskins, we can break her quickly.
In the Temple of Bhaal, after clearing the cultists, Dynaheir throws down a few webs and Ziatar doesn't get free before the three members with Free Action cut her down. A Potion of Clarity is given to Minsc, Improved Invisibility to Thaen to get his Save vs Spells below 0, and we get a bit lucky and the Neolithid pops above ground soon after the fight begins instead of spamming swords for a turn. Corwin is Feared, but we still have enough damage to finish it off.
M'khinn gives us Spirit animals to get the Aerial Stalkers to show themselves without taking crippling damage on Minsc, and we claim the wardstone easily after that. We want the Archer's Eyes from the last fight here, and the blade from the Shadow Aspect. The Shadow Aspect almost kills Minsc, draining enough STR that he couldn't even carry his own armor, but a nice critical finishes it off. The last fight happens in an enclosed room, which means Cloudkill and Ice Storm can be used again to clear the room.
We straight-up surrender Bridgefort, and win the mage fight. Surprisingly, the mage was the least problematic enemy, with the two archers doing some serious damage to Minsc before they finally get Webbed and we coup de grace them. At the Coalition camp, we summon the genie and sell basically everything for our almost-last item purchases and upgrades, taking almost his entire stock. For no good reason, we do a few side quests for irrelevant items and reputation, and take a couple of fights that we could've bypassed. One notable almost fatal-for-someone fight was the Displacer Beast fight in Dead Man's Pass where we managed to anger a Hill Giant squad, the Displacer Beasts, and even some Beetles by the end of the fight. Many health potions were drank to keep both Minsc and M'khinn alive.
We head to the Underground River, and the initial fight outside the gates has a slight hiccup as M'khinn and Corwin are Dire Charmed. M'khinn's our source of dispelling that particular spell effect, so there's some problems as Arrows of Dispelling are randomly shot at us: Corwin was in the middle of dispelling a mage when she was Charmed. Safana shoots an arrow at Corwin, and we finish off the mages before M'khinn can do any real damage. We kill the dark druid (I AM supposed to be a Cleric of Moander after all
Arrows of Detonation are absolutely absurd. We have 4 members that can use them, and I have over 40 of the things left. I only took a screenshot of one of the "fights", but it's representative of all 3 of the assaults:
It's just chaos, with a few fireballs and some debuffs attached. Dynaheir dies trying to cast a Slow spell in the final fight before Ashatiel appears. Thael drinks a Potion of Magic Shielding, only to have it immediately dispelled; he reads a scroll of Pro. From Magic instead. He takes off his Ring of Free Action, drinks an Oil of Speed, and fight Ashatiel for around 20 rounds or so before finally winning with no damage taken.
Time to go to Avernus! Thael leveled to level 9 priest, and finally has access to Chaotic Commands and Raise Dead. With all the stuns and fears and charms being thrown around, CC is indispensable; before heading there, I purchase a couple more scrolls just to be safe. Even so, I don't prebuff before the initial descent, and M'khinn is Charmed and almost killed by the initial paladins. She recovers in time, though. Thraxx's demon squads are murdered efficiently, and we buff with CC, Remove Fear, and a ton of fire resistance.
I don't have the most +3 arrows and no +3 2h Sword, but I do have 3 castings of Enchanted Weapon courtesy of Thael. It's Dynaheir's greatest weakness in SoD, in my opinion, but another mage can easily make up for it. Anyhow, I didn't buff Minsc with CC, and he gets stunned by something and killed. M'khinn raises him as the fight with Belhifit continues. He gets killed a second time by some ridiculous damage from Belhifet, and not enough fire resistance. A second Recall Spirit later, an Enchanted Weapon spell on Corwin, and a smidgeon of Illusion detection from M'khinn, and Belhifet falls.
The game crashed trying to exit Avernus and I forgot to save, so... I redid the battle. It was messier, but it was still a success, and I probably would've allowed CTRL-Y to finish him since I won the first time. Onward to BG2! I only wish I had something more interesting to report than "Corwin and M'khinn are really, really powerful!"
@Neverused, interesting. Angelo has often cast detection spells in my games, and I believe Semaj does it too.
@semiticgod, thanks man! Nice to see you make good use of the Lance of Disruption spell, I have it in mind as a tool against Belhifet as well for my arcane army.
Alma's Arcane Army (2)
BG1: 1
The army had a skeleton from Quayle for Nimbul to dance with, and a Silence from the gnome all but left the assassin at their mercy, but it was Rasaad who finished him before the wizards could.
Speaking of Dynaheir, she and Xan came with Haste as one of their default spells added by SCS’s new NPC customization component so that spell became a standard pre-buff. Said component gives each mage five spells per spell level that they have access to and I must say they’re pretty good picks. Besides Haste, those included Remove Magic (Dynaheir, Edwin, Xan), Spell Thrust (Dynaheir, Xan), Slow (Edwin, Xzar), and Hold Person (Xan) at level 3 in addition to common damage spells such as Fireball for Dynaheir, Flame Arrow for Edwin, Skull Trap for Xzar.
Zordral was the next easy target for six mages casting stuff like Blindness and Hold Person from their own schools.
This robe collecting tour saw the army ambushed by Molkar’s crew, but thanks to invisibility it was the army that had the initiative: two skull traps, two hold persons, a web, and a slow (the latter unfortunately by Edwin as Alma didn’t know that spell). Since Molkar speaks and turns red-circled before any spells hit, this is fair game to me. The Hold Persons won the army the battle, freezing everyone but Drakar in place just as they closed in on them.
The Greater Basilisk near Mutamin delighted Alma by dropping a scroll of Polymorph Self, a spell she managed to copy into her spellbook without INT boosters. She hopes she gets to cast it before reaching the ciy of BG. Her companions copied some scrolls of their schools as well (such as Invisibility, Dire Charm, Ghost Armor, Glitterdust).
This well-timed kind of banter is why I like playing with NPCs so much:
Kirian’s party provided an interesting challenge with four different types of enemies: Blindness (saved against) and Hold Person (failed save) for the biggest threat Baerin the archer, Slow and a devastating Skull Trap from Xzar won them the first round.
Xan’s BG1 NPC Project quest was also triggered in Mutamin’s Garden and teleported them to Spider Wood, where three dart throwing Calishite slavers and their six archer bodyguards nearly killed him upon arrival.
The bandit camp the army took very seriously. They reached it through Raiken, looted any unlocked containers, and entered Tazok’s tent invisibly. Haste was decided against with arrows of biting soon flying around. They buffed with what little buff spells they had (Shield/Ghost Armor, MI) and potions of agility for Dynaheir and fortitude for Xan.
The tent was looted with a well-protected Alma escaping the trapped chest's lightning bolt. Everyone went invisible again, but outside, Xan Dire Charmed Taurgosz,
With over 33 grand at their disposal the army then bought the Claw of Kazgaroth for Xzar and some headwear: Rogue Rebalancing's Deep Red Ioun Stone (+1 DEX, for Xzar) and Fragment of Enlightenment (+20 lore, for Alma) as well as a Purple Ioun Stone(infravision, for Dynaheir). They then headed for Cloakwood.
Just a short update, my worries were completely unnecessary, we have survived Candlekeep and left the catacombs.
At first I wanted to avoid fighting Rieltar, because of Lawful and all that (and because of surviving), but then I decided that this Paladin is going to be more "judge, jury and executioner" type, worried that another group of criminals would escape justice.
Thanks to @semiticgod for reminding me that one of them has Darts of Stunning! I used the Greenstone Amulet immediately after finishing the dialogue with Rieltar.
Branwen protected us with Remove Fear and then managed to target Rieltar with the Wand of the Heavens right before he turned invisible, so the flame strike still hit him. We took down the others simply by physical force with swords and arrows.
In the catacombs, Narial had a short struggle with her conscience. I usually wouldn't take anything from graves as a paladin, especially in a place where I grew up and if they're still locked and not obviously overrun by undead.
Anyway, Narial asked Lathander for guidance and decided to make an exception, because we were going to fight a dangerous enemy and were already in trouble for having lost our mage.
I decided to take the Tomes (Strength went to me, Wisdom to Branwen) and useful, potenially life saving items like scrolls and potions. We didn't take gold or jewels, which have no immediate use for us and besides were probably personal items of the dead left by loved ones.
I could live with that compromise. If I try a no-reload, I'm not going to cripple myself by exaggerating Lawful Good, at least not until I've more experience.
During my first run I lost two people in that trapped room with the many skeletons. This time I had Alora tiptoe around and disarm every trap, withdrawing into safe territory when spotted by skeletons.
Then, after the conventional doppelgangers, we had the Greater Doppelganger with a swarm of the others. I made him the archers' priority target to disrupt his casting (plus Wand of Magic Missiles by Alora), ran in to tank them, and then had Imoen throw a Fireball (I have 100% fire resistance with a helmet and two rings). He didn't finish any spell, and the others were easy meat.
Somewhere between the city and this point, Imoen had made levels 2 and 3, so I gave her a potion and had her scribe some scrolls. She can cast Invisibility now.
Then, the moment I had been fearing, having caused two reloads during my first BG:EE run: Prat.
Alora scouted, spotted them, checked the surroundings, disarmed a trap while avoiding the spiders, and then came back. She had seen a mage, another one who might have been mage or cleric, a shorty with darts and a tough fighter with a bow.
I took potions of absorption, heroism, stone or frost giant strength, and an Oil of Speed. The others were supposed to keep their distance and shoot while I rushed in to draw their attention.
Branwen added Remove Fear and Chant.
So, I ran in (boots +oil of speed), initiated the dialogue and attacked Prat, interrupting his first spell.
The others shot fire and acid arrows, Branwen targeted Bor with the Wand of Heavens and Imoen fired the Wand of Fire (and Ajantis stood around because I hadn't positioned them well enough, worried of errant lightning bolts if I was too slow). Then I remembered to use the Greenstone Amulet, which was good, because the Confusion spell followed soon. But three of us were enough to finish them.
Afterwards I had to heal myself and corner the confused Minsc to keep him from murdering Imoen and Alora with acid arrows, until finally the Confusion wore off.
Alora took care of the trap (or traps?) on the other side, but got killed by a phase spider. We carried her corpse and possessions with us, I scouted under an Invisibility spell, discovered the basilisks, went back to have Imoen cast Protection from Petrification on me and killed them.
That was mage level 4 for Imoen, that means she can cast two level 2 spells now. Fair enough.
Then we went to the FAI to Raise Alora, killed a few Ankhegs for money (I had sold and bought back the Wand of the Heavens to recharge it) and decided to take a trip to Ulgoth's Beard to be out of sight for a while and make a plan how to get back to the city, warn Duke Eltan and stop Sarevok without being caught and executed. At least that's my RP reason. I'd rather have Imoen a bit stronger before we go there, that's why.
I don't know if I dare to do Durlag's Tower and the werewolves. For now, we're on the ice island.
Here's a number of screenshots for an impression:
Edited because screenshots were uploaded in wrong order.
Part 3: Baldur's Gate
Since we've done just about all the side quests we can safely handle, it's time to head back to Candlekeep. Tiax's traps, set many days ago, kill all of the ogre magi save for one, whom we escape with a round of Invisibility spells.
Since a single attack from a Phase Spider could be very quickly fatal for any of us, and since a doppelganger's critical hit could deal up to 32 damage, I deem it unsafe for us to do much fighting beneath Candlekeep. Instead, we just sneak out using invisibility. We don't tackle the basilisks, either, because breaking invisibility to Web them from out of sight could inspire a Phase Spider to teleport across the map right on top of us--a behavior I haven't seen lately, but has caused major problems in previous runs.
In SCS v32, the two Shennara clones at the Iron Throne headquarters are now Shennara and Kaalos, but they still linger at the top of the building after you get back from Candlekeep, which means we can't fight Cythandria without dealing with the two backstabbers as well. I use quick saves to find a safe point where the enemies aren't within our line of sight, then have Tiax set some traps for them. The traps fail to kill Kaalos, but Tiax's ghast can easily paralyze him.
Now we need to deal with Sarevok. We don't have quite the power to deal enough damage with all of our spells, so we need to secure some outside help. We recruit Viconia, Imoen, and Faldorn along with Baeloth and Tiax so we can tackle the maze and the final fight. We could have brought along more NPCs, but the poverty rules make most characters largely useless; I just picked the folks who could summon critters.
Imoen disarms the traps in the maze, we drop off the NPCs at Sarevok's place, and then we collect the little sorcerers we left in the Thieves' Guild headquarters before returning to the final room. Baeloth draws Sarevok over to the corner (his Stoneskin is safer than Frisky Bits' Mirror Image) and vanishes while the rest of the party camps out in the other corner.
Now we wait for Diarmid's Protection from Magic scroll to wear off. I use CTRL-T to expedite the process, have Faldorn loiter around the south to keep an eye on the enemies, and then Baeloth starts bombing them with Fireball. He runs out of level 3 spell slots before killing anyone, however, and so I have to bring over one of the little sorcerers to launch a very carefully-aimed Lance of Disruption at Sarevok's gang.
With enough Lances of Disruption, we take down Sarevok's other two allies, spawning two new enemy Skeleton Warriors on the map. We have immense trouble getting them to stay in place in the northeast corner, and eventually, the only way I can keep them from harrying the party and chopping up our summons is to form a wall of invisible characters and trap them in the corner.
It's time to take down Sarevok himself, who according to CTRL-M is at 138 HP when we run low on Lances of Disruption. Before we enter SoD, we need to make sure that all of the little sorcerers are in the party, because they will not follow us into SoD if they're not--they'll be lost forever. I do some finagling and manage to replace some pieces of our invisible wall.
We keep around Baeloth to use as bait for Sarevok while the rest of the party throws out Magic Missiles. When he's at the brink, we toss out Baeloth and reunite the entire party before slaying Sarevok.
Poverty runs in BG1 are so heavily dependent on Invisibility and summoned critters (though we seldom ever used the latter in this run). There are so many dangers, especially enchantment spells and enemy fighters, that only certain kits or certain items can fend off. A low-level Berserker in full plate and a few potions can shrug off anything a mage might throw at the party, but take away the Berserker kit, the plate mail, and the potions, and there's no class that can shrug off Icelance, Confusion, and a summoned Phase Spider without having pretty high levels unless you're just tossing out summoned critters.
This run has been a lot more fun than most of my BG1 runs. I've long complained that BG1 gameplay is too dominated by a few key items, and while a poverty run is a very drastic alternative (a "no recharging items at stores" rule would be better), it made things a lot more interesting.
We enter the first dungeon of Siege of Dragonspear completely unarmed and highly inexperienced, but we are not alone. Seeing our old friend Imoen for the first time in weeks fills us with determination.
When you think about it, poverty runs and other challenge runs are just when you make horribly bad decisions.
It's also true, though, that recharging them is not economical. I probably wouldn't do that again.
On the other hand, spending all my money on "just in case" potions and scrolls that I don't use is not economical, either.
No-reload runs involve a lot of risk management, and risk management isn't just about avoiding stupid mistakes and anticipating common threats; it's also about hedging against wild cards, some of which are completely unknown. Just make sure you remember what you've been hoarding, or else you might forget to use them when the time comes.
Think of them as plasmids!
It was so frustrating the first time, to arrive in SoD and they were gone.
I had NPC project installed, nothing else.
And I thought Modmerge was only required to mod your game while playing on Steam?
Previous run
I'm still struggling to really get to grips with this challenge 4 1/2 years after commencing it
Thinking it must have been a while since I'd tried a wizard slayer, I checked and found the last attempt was in March 2018 - I actually documented that one on this thread. Referring back to that helped refresh my memory about what to do while running through BG1 this morning.
Shoal was shot down to get to level 3. I bought a +1 short bow and also decided to purchase full plate and a +1 shield early. Normally I wouldn't buy those at all (waiting to inherit Taurgosz's set) and would buy almost nothing else anyway until prices are as low as possible, but money is so meaningless to a wizard slayer, it really is pointless to delay.
In going to pick up the Ring of Wizardry to sell I went a bit further north to get Tenya's bowl from some fishermen - returning that was enough for level 4.
Scimitars are my starting melee weapon proficiency. In past runs I've nearly always increased that as soon as possible, but this time decided to take the generally slightly safer option of improving bow proficiency first. However, I still wanted Drizzt's scimitars for the AC bonus and fire resistance, so went to find him. I wasn't too bothered whether I got his XP as well, so didn't plan to retreat to reset the combat when Drizzt got low on HPs under attack from a single gnoll. That meant the odds were the gnoll would kill him, but on this occasion I got lucky when its weapon broke and I was able to finish off an unconscious Drizzt to get to level 5.
Moving on to Nashkel and resting provided me with LMD. I took a further reputation hit by shooting down Meilum to get his PfM scroll. A couple of reputation quests and a few other odds and sods around Beregost were then followed by shooting down the golems at High Hedge - getting me to level 6.
Korax took the lead in the basilisk area to deal with the basilisks and Mutamin. Korax also did well to paralyze Peter, allowing me to kill him and Baerin before Lindin finished off the ghoul. Shooting down Lindin was enough for level 7 before going to find Kirian. Her attempted mirror image failed as a result of my first shot and she didn't have quite enough time to complete a second attempted spell.
A couple more reputation quests pushed that up to 10 before heading for the Nashkel Mine. Up to this point I'd avoided taking any damage, but the first kobold armed with a bow in the mine spoiled that record (there's no way to avoid two traps in there though, so it wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway).
After resting to get CLW (I wanted that to be able to complete the Unseeing Eye quest in BG2) I dodged Nimbul's horror, but failed to interrupt his magic missile spell - but my 7% MR blocked that before chopping him down.
In Beregost I got caught stealing to reduce reputation back to 9 before Tranzig spilled the location of the Bandit Camp (along with the last of his blood).
Taurgosz and his bandits were shot down before I went into Tazok's tent. Venkt was hit by 2 acid arrows before he could react - taking him low enough on HPs for a LMD to finish him off. The others then had no chance in melee.
In the Cloakwood I wanted Spiders Bane for once, as I couldn't use a ring of free action. The SCS modded giant spiders with their web tangle ability make doing that ticklish for a wizard slayer, but the unmodded ones were no real obstacle.
At the mine I pulled Genthore away on his own and finished him off before using horror from out of sight of the others. Kysus panicked and was shot down before I rested and tried again. 4 or 5 attempts later Rezdan also panicked and he was finished off before Drasus lost out in melee.
Inside the mine I avoided the mages on the way down to Davaeorn. His battle horrors were pulled back and meleed. I then left the mine to heal up before returning for the mage. I didn't use PfM and that allowed Davaeorn to get a fireball off, but his spells were shut down before he got around to trying anything dangerous. His jelly guard then provided my final BG1 level - bringing up my century with 102 HPs.
After resting to get a second Bhaal horror, I did a tour of some wilderness areas doing more reputation quests to push that up to 20. I also recovered the charisma tome before doing a bit of shopping for green scrolls and ammunition. Some of the latter included exploding arrows and I used those on sirines at the Lighthouse to make quite certain they would not get a charm attempt off.
In the City I picked up the dexterity tome. The poison quest provided a wisdom tome and a shield upgrade before Marek handed over a bow upgrade.
Back in the City the Iron Throne party were split up on the stairs and shot down to open the route to Candlekeep.
For the end game, Slythe was dispelled and shot down at leisure.
After working through the maze I left the Undercity party untouched. Arriving at the temple though I realized I'd missed something out. I normally don't talk to Tamoko, but her magical full plate is the best armor for a wizard slayer. Hence I went all the way back to the City to find her. Back at the temple I attacked her before retreating into the temple to avoid her spells. That switching of areas nearly always seems to duplicate her, but I was ready for that this time and successfully pulled away and dodged her new copy outside the temple (which was still neutral) before heading back to deal with the original.
I decided to cheese Sarevok using the repeating lightning trap. That has the advantage of getting another 8 exploding arrows from Angelo - and those are more important for the wizard slayer than other classes as it's the only way to get area damage. It is possible to kill Sarevok just by the lightning, but once Angelo became the last of the acolytes to fall I approached Sarevok and used a dispelling arrow on him. I'd forgotten though that I hadn't tripped the stinking cloud and web traps and when I was held by those things looked grim. Fortunately I saved against all the succeeding checks and was able to run out of the affected area before being too badly hurt. It didn't then take long to finish Sarevok off.
All that extra XP meant I had nearly 400k on entry to SoD and levelled up to gain grand mastery in short bows.
Wizard Slayer L9, 122 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 330 kills
So wih yet another soul lost to the harshness of no-reload play in the person of Alma, I'll give Faera Sparklestone a chance to shine.
Mods: BG Quests and Encounters, BG1 NPC Project, Unfinished Business, Anthology Tweaks (parts), aTweaks (parts), SCS 32 (insane), P&P Free Acion, Song & Silence (shop), and Rogue Rebalancing (Bard revisions).
Faera was initially joined by Imoen (Burglar), Xzar and Montaron, and Eldoth (Dirgesinger), and with her companions she made it safely to the FAI. Montaron proved especially valuable, planting his blade into Mirror Imaged Tarnesh's back.
The areas south/south-west of Nashkel posed a number of genuine challenges for the low level party, most notably Sendai and her men. Jaheira (wearing ankheg plate) impressively stood her ground against Alexander, whom Faera had Blinded, and Delgod. But Sendai hit Khalid hard and instead of retreating as commanded, he went berserk. He fell before a second casting of Blindness affected Sendai.
In Nashkel Khalid was raised and he and Jaheira left the group. As much as Faera liked Khalid (more so than Jaheira), his berserker antics left her too uneasy to have the Half-Elf around.
With the ring of wizardry and with Sleep as one of Faera's starting spells (besides Shield and Blindness), the party went ankheg hunting. One ankheg nearly killed Imoen (21 damage, leaving her with 3 HPs) with a single ranged attack, and a member of a group of bandits insta-killed Xzar (8/8 HPs). Ajantis (Inquisitor) joined and, after a visit to the south, Kivan (Archer) did too. Everyone was level 3 when they were done, Imoen level 4. With lvl 2 spells accessible to Faera, a first spell-scribing session ensued.
Drizzt received assistance from the party for a change, and Greywolf was Blinded and slain before the party entered the Nashkel Mines. Kobold archers nearly got Monty, but everyone made it to Mulahey's lair in one piece. The wand of fire from the ankheg cave was put to good use against the kobold chieftain and shaman. Stealth (Monty, Kivan, Imoen) and Invisibility (Faera, Xzar) allowed five of the companions to enter Mulahey's chamber before revealing themselves to him. Ajantis would stay closer to the exit, to tank skellies and kobolds. Mulahey fell to a barrage of missiles, and the kobolds and skellies to a combo of ranged (kobolds) and melee (skeletons) attacks and careful use of the wand of fire.
Kivan's side quest resulted in victory when two sahuagin were put to Sleep and their leader assaulted by the party. East of Beregost the party dealt with a variety of wolves. Ajantis (immune to Hold) and Faera (with her marvelous +2 returning throwing dagger, thank you Kivan) slew two vampric wolves.
Xzar and Montaron left the party (mainly because of issues with Xzar's BG1 NPC Project dialogue), creating space for Quayle/Xan and often shunned Neera, Faera's love interest for this run and with some banter mods. Neera's quest resulted in a satisfctory battle against Ekandor and co. Neera successfully cast a Web at the enemies. Wand Fireballs weren't an option with Adoy around. The other companions focused fire on Ekandor but that didn't stop him from reading and thus consuming his Stoneskin scroll... An Ogre Berserker and a hasted warrior that had escaped Neera's Web were Enfeebled by Xan and Blinded by Faera respectively, so that the party could finish the job with martial means.
Lamalha and Zeela almost Killed Kivan and severely injured Imoen with Unholy Blights. A Web held the invisible rogues but the wand of fire didn't kill them before Maneira could free herself and deliver a deadly backstab to Neera. Neera's casting had been curtailed by her comrades, so she was a very vulnerable target. (One good thing about having her around is that rogues will pick her rather than Faera for backstabs.) Interrupting the priestesses' casting with spells and missiles ensured the others made it out of he ambush alive. Molkar's gang didn't hurt the party as much, as wand scorchers neutralized the casters and Xan Enfeebled Molkar.
On the north coast Neera saved against Shoal's kiss and Faera wand-stunned Droth, whose helmet she gave to Kivan.
The Bandit Camp saw the party slay Tazok (Kivan can't stop himself from attacking the half-ogre with BG1 NPC Project) and revealed a bug in my install: Imoen was unkillable and the same turned out to be the case for Xan. Possibly there's a conflict between my customizing of NPCs and the SCS NPC customization option because it was precisely Imoen and Xan whom I had given a mod kit (Burglar) and an illegal combination (Fighter/Enchanter) respectively in EEKeeper. Testing showed that Ajantis and Kivan whom I had assigned their Inquisitor and Archer kits in-game through SCS, did not have this problem. Rather than changing their classes/kits in the middle of the game, what I did is role-play that both Imoen and Xan had suffered grievous wounds and had to leave the party to recover. Alora (unkitted Thief) and Quayle (Cleric/Illusionist) joined in their stead.
Everyone entered Tazok's tent invisibly. Neera was Shielded through the shield amulet, and cast Chaos Shield so she could hopefully cast Webs at the bandits. Faera and Quayle applied minor buffs as well (Shield, Blur). Neera cast her Web with success even though she was put under a Sleep spell from Venkt moments later.
The party didn't necessarily look forward to traversing the vast and dangerous Cloakwood at their levels so they decided to accrue some more items and XP first. The wands of frost and fire, magic missiles and ranged weapons did Bassilus in. Alora robbed Shandalar and Dushai in Ulgoth's Beard. Kivan, helped by Korax, took care of Mutamin and his basilisks while Neera's Webs and Korax's touch really helped the party deal with Kirian's crew.
Faera first sided with Aldeth. Seniyad just managed to cast an Insect Plague at Kivan before Quayle Held the druid. Kivan entered the lodge to evade the insects. Next, Alora removed the web snares in the spider area, which made the area doable for the party using spells, wands, and missiles rather than melee. At the entrance to the Cloakwood mine, Neera did a great job once again with one of her Webs initially holding Genthore, Kysus and Rezdan.
Inside the mine, the dimly lit corridors gave Alora and Kivan a chance to show off their stealth skills. With a strength potion and her short sword +2 the halfling went mage hunting. Hareishan wasn't Stoneskinned so Alora was happy to deliver a first stab.
Natasha was less dangerous than I'm used to thanks to IWD spells. She cast Shroud of Flame and Mordenkainen's Force Missiles at Alora, where she used to cast Lightning Bolt and Sunfire. The former spells still injured Alora quite seriously,
Finally the party opted to spend one of their wands of fire on Davaeorn and his cronies rather than buffing up one of the warriors with potions. The reason was that potions were relatively scarce and wands not so much with Sorcerous Sundries within reach.
At the city entrance the party ran into Immanel Silversword, a rival of Kivan's. She had his bow but refused to return it. The party took it back by felling her and her wolves. It resulted in level-ups for Faera, Neera, Quayle, and Alora. Ajantis and Kivan had leveled up in Davaeorn's lair.
In Baldur's Gate the party completed most of the available quests in order to gain more experience and good items. This stage of the game also saw Faera form a temporary alliance with Rasaad and trigger his quest. It was carried out without incident and the big fisted belt went to Alora, turning her into a deadly backstabber. She would enjoy a more prominent role in combat from that moment, often dealing with foes even on her own.
For the Iron Throne battle the party took a shock and awe approach: a fiery opening salvo was followed by Alora's precise strikes. This is her besting Kaalos in his own field
The proven tactic of casting a Web at foes didn't quite work against Prat's gang. All but Sakul who had a MGoI up were held at first, but Sakul cast a Melf's Acid Arrow at Neera and Tam approached soon after from an unexpected side, and felled her.
Neera's second death made Faera decide to be more encouraging of her spell-casting. She'd be allowed to self-buff albeit at a safe distance from the others.
Resting between battles, the party barely suffered any damage on the Ice Island. True Sight and elemental missiles (Kivan's acid arrows, Ajantis's bolts of lightning, and Rogue Rebalancing's returning frost dart in Alora's nimble hands) helped a lot.
The party then entered Durlag's Tower, and went all the way. The Warders were fought one at a time, and in the case of Pride with the help of wand summons. Stoneskinned Faera functioned as Avarice's backstab volunteer but the devious creature would seek other marks when possible. Here's Kivan receiving a good backstab.
The second lower level didn't pose any real threats (it's mainly Greater Doppelgangers). On the third level wand summons were used as decoys to lure the Asirukuru's out of stealth, so that Alora could deal with them.
On level 4 Faera had to rescue Alora with an Invisibility after the halfling had failed to remove one of two traps in the spider room. There was sadly no rescue for Kivan against the Demon Knight's shockingly potent fire magics (which also killed Quayle, but not permanently).
Dorn and Shar-Teel left the party, mostly because Shar-Teel's aggressiveness didn't sit well with the others. Ajantis returned and Baeloth joined as the sixth member. They tested their mettle against Kahrk: summons to keep him busy, Spell Thrust to remove his MGoI (Baeloth), a Malison (Neera), Polymorph Other (Faera, you never know) but that was saved against. Kahrk Enfeebled Ajantis through a minor sequencer but that was ok because the paladin was attacking with his crossbow anyway. Quayle's Blindness hit and he was also the one to finish the ogre mage with a critical sling shot for 30 damage.
In Ulgoth's Beard the cult assassins can be a pain. Baeloth suffered a lot of Sunfire damage from one of the wizards, but he went invisible and escaped death. Ajantis got hit by a Chaos when his companions were just too far away to pass him a potion of clarity. He could have attacked some of the villagers but thankfully he continued to fight a couple of assassins. Alora was wearing the boots of speed to hide and stab, and Neera, Quayle, and Faera used wand scorchers to speed up the battle.
Speaking of wand scorchers, four wizards can create sophisticated patterns, like this:
Wolfweres on the Isle of Balduran were very much an affair left to Ajantis and Alora (even though my run with Alma and her wizards taught me that magic damage from MMs and Skull Traps works too).
Back in Baldur's Gate Alora and two skeletons took care of Slythe, while Baeloth (Spell Thrust) and Faera (uhmm Blindness) neutralized Krystin.
At the final battle the party decided to wait for a bit. As soon as Diarmid's PfMagic expired, a couple of opening Fireballs injured the archer and straight up killed Semaj (whose MGoI had expired earlier).
Milam (Avenger)
Harvey (Sun Soul Monk)
Coremage (Fighter / Mage)
Part 3 of our adventure continues not after one week but after three. The level of rustiness reflects the gap, and at the end of the session we think there have been three party deaths (Coremage x2, Harvey x1) but there could well have been more that we are blanking out.
We make a start - the save is called ankhegs so we take that as a measure of where to begin. It immediately becomes apparent that Coremage stands back from the ankhegs to swing his two handed sword +1, and whenever Harvey or Milam try to melee the ankheg decides to switch to a nearer target.
We make it out of the nest alive and after resting up hunt down some sirines only to get distracted by a group of ogres. Web sorts them out nicely and a bit of blindness helps too. No need to bother the surgeon - we might need him later...
Coremage decides to run a bit and belatedly realises this opens him up to arrows of biting. Down he goes. Harvey recovers and starts to fight but is poisoned. We decide to see if we can reach the surgeon since Harvey is averse to gulping green or blue potions. He doesn't make it so Milam is on his own - having already loaded up on Coremage's gear.
Milam picks up Harvey's gear too and leaves a couple of cheap junkets (missiles, daggers etc.). He crawls away encumbered but a sirine chases so he dumps a magical longsword and longbow so he can flee safely.
On the way we stumble into Morvin Molkar Halacan and Drakar. They would be easy pickings if only Milam could place himself properly to cast webs. He cannot...
Milam is targeted and loses control. Harvey is chased and has to double back so not to drag enemies into Milam, while Coremage is fighting a losing spellcaster duel with Halacan.
Once more into the breach with Morvin and his gang. Milam steps forward too soon again but a couple of webs are active and we can pick the enemies apart. We also all save against Horror. Milam uses his new Avenger spider form to try and drag Drakar into the web but after three failed attempts and three spells Harvey has run out of patience and unleashed his fists.
Two of us fail the return past the trap, and the third of us decides it's a good time to get charmed while his companions can cause no mischief.
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was it in YOUR inventory i.e, not one of the other npcs?
I did the normal running around but this trip I used my glasses to get the ring instead of a sword and (as a non-arcane caster) I don't get the option to fight the lich so my only hope was to kill him before he talks... unfortunately this proved too hard so I missed out on his threads but still get the regen ring and the crossbow
moving on I sent my thief to rob the good loot while the rest of us cleared an exit strategy... leaving summons to fight the rear guard action
I was wondering why this battle was a bit harder then it hit me that my wild mage didn't open with her 3X skulltraps... killing Hephernaan quickly is going to need something extra!