After summoning a skeleton and using the scroll, Tens intended to bring Nearv back into the party. However, he found in a MP context that Gate70 could still control the character outside the party - and he immediately finished off the basilisk - annoyingly that meant we missed out on all the XP .
In that instance, Nearv acted without my involvement
(the rest of the time, yes that was my fault...)
The lower levels of Durlag's Tower provided the next challenge for Promise and party. Level 1 was mostly about the dwarven warders because the other enemies were manageable with traditional means (stuns for the greater doppelgangers and the spiders, summons for the skeleton warriors, invisible blockers for the golems, and well, avoidance for the mustard jellies). The party retreated to the northeastern rooms, which only had one corridor leading there. This would prevent any nasty surprises from Avarice. Three hastened skeletons drew the attention of Love, Pride, and Fear. They managed to hack away quite a bit of health from Love before they fell. Promise destroyed fast-regenerating Fear and later Love with wand scorchers from behind invisible and fire-protected Aura and Baeloth.
Pride was boxed in by four invisible blockers and finished by Promise and wand summons. Wand summons also dealt with Avarice, arguably the most dangerous warder with its backstabs, cloudkills, and invisibility at will.
Level 2 didn't offer the party such a hard fight. They ended up dealing with lots of greater doppelgangers, relying on the wand of paralyzation. It seemed that using said wand against the two doppelgangers that spawn in the torture room can cause some interesting behavior on the part of the Dops. If you don't kill them quick enough they shift form but since they're stunned, the stunned form stays in place and the new form spawns as a new doppelganger on top of it. This happened repeatedly with the second doppelganger. Here you can see one form slain and two forms still standing.
It's a lucrative phenomenon for XP farming purposes and for a warrior-heavy party to get full plate for everyone.
The party looted Kiel's chests but didn't fight the doom guards before proceeding to level 3.
On level 3, the the wand of paralyzation was of great help against the hard-hitting greater wyverns and three three ashirukurus that landed some backstabs on Promise, thankfully the party member who - after Stoneskinned Baeloth - was best able to take a hit. Baeloth reached level 9 here and picked Spider Spawn as a second level 4 spell, a choice that should work well with the party's ample use of Webs. Hope I won't regret it. The challenges didn't cause the party much trouble. The phoenix guard and the air aspect were stunned, and the fission slime wand-scorchered. Kaldran and the winter wolves were taken on initially by Promise who was wearing Gorion's bealt. She took out the winter wolves, and then stunned Kaldran. Everyone pre-buffed for the chess board. Invulnerability for the warriors, Spirit Armor for Baeloth, defense for Aura, giant strength for Promise and Sirene; PfE, absorption, speed, and free action for everyone. Kaldran was finished off and on the chess board Baeloth and, reading a scroll, Promise immediately cast Webs in front of them. Promise and Sirene then rushed forward to attack the held King and to make sure any other pieces would remain in the Webbed area. Baeloth added several more Webs, and Promise stunned the King with her wand.
Only the Queen found her way out of the Webs. She injured Baeloth and Aura, mostly with MMMs, and she summoned a sword spider. A smart pick for a summon considering the battlefield, but neither she nor the spider could save the King.
(Note that Aura was not buffed with Free Action. I think I'd moved her before she'd swigged the potion. Her shorty saves allowed her to reach a safe corner, h8 on the board.
On the fourth and final level two helmed horrors were meleed by still buffed Promise and Sirene, more spiders were stunned, and undead and mutated crawlers were slain from behind invisible blockers before the party faced off against the Demon Knight. Baeloth managed to summon six(!) phase spiders, somehow violating the summoning cap. Each of three castings spawned two spiders. He cast several webs at his foe from out of sight. When the enemy got held, the spiders attacked, while the others spread out to attack from range.
Thanks to his high MR and good saves, the Demon Knight didn't remain webbed for long, and he had no trouble dealing with the phase spiders. He also PW:Blinded Kivan and injured Promise and Sirene who had started to melee him, and he dealt some fire damage (not everyone was 100% resistant), but some wand spamming saw the Demon Knight stunned. Aided by some summons they finished the evil creature, with Promise getting the kill.
Lawful good Promise, Sirene, and Aura carefully studied the soultaker dagger. The weapon radiated evil. They decided against bringing it to Hurgan Stoneblade (assuming that was the dagger he'd asked them to find for him). Instead Promise held on to it, so that it wouldn't fall into the wrong hands. She would have to destroy the weapon at some point.
The party returned to Baldur's Gate, where they saved Duke Eltan by taking him away from the Flaming Fist compound under invisibility (good for Sirene, Emily and Kivan's final level-ups). They also slew two stone golems (invisible blockers) and scared Cythandria off (summons).
Slythe wasted his invisibility potions on skeleton warriors before he was taken down from behind invisible Sirene and Aura. Krystin, who had stayed behind, was revealed by detection magic and held by Webs once her protections had run out.
The Three Old Kegs' Ithtyl Calantryn and Nantrin Bellowglyn were persuaded to help prevent Sarevok from seizing power, as were two Flaming Fist Enforcers that Promise ran into in the streets. Inside the Ducal Palace, one of the charmed FF Enforcers went hostile after the charm wore off. He was slain by a colleague, saving the party from a steep reputation drop. The consternation caused the "noblemen" to move quite close to Belt and Liia.
This would have been bad news in a non-LoB run I think, but LoB made Belt, Liia, and the Fist a lot sturdier. Besides, having all the Dops together could be an advantage for Baeloth's AoE spells.
Aura summoned three skeletons and Baeloth some spiders before confronting Sarevok. Ithtyl Hasted the summons, charmed aides, and some blue-circled Flaming Fist fighters. Most of the summons and Promise and Kivan (arrows of dispelling) went after the Doppelganger Mage, who was one of the first to fall. Baeloth cast Greater Malison (from scroll) and Slow on the other Dops. The Shaman turned Sirene, so Aura had to cast Remove Fear on her. (First time I had a paladin turned by an enemy divine caster.) Nantrin went hostile at one point and was thankfully slain by a Flaming Fist guard and not by one of the party's phase spiders' poisons, but other than that the battle pretty much proceeded on auto-pilot. The Shaman cast Doom and Curse on Promise, and Aura took some magic damage early on from the Mage, but the companions, the Dukes, and all the guards were in pretty good health when the last of the Dops fell.
A short trip to the northeastern quadrant of the city followed, to see if Brielbara would spawn. (She wouldn't, haven't seen her this run.) The party were in for a nasty surprise because apparently there was another battle that was part of Aura's quest, one that should have taken place before the final battle on the bridge I think. No one was invisible, so the party moved to another area so that Baeloth could cast Invisibility on everyone. They then returned and dealt with them with Webs. This time the +2 ninja-to with a +10% crit chance I mentioned in my previous post did drop.
This post s getting long, so I'll be brief on the last bit. The party went through the maze where they slew two doom guards but ignored skeleton warriors, to the Undercity where they charmed Gorf and Haseo before they snuck past the rest of Rahvin's entourage. Sarevok was provoked and lured to the northwest corner of his temple, together with all of his minions except Angelo. When his buffs expired, the latter was Webbed, stunned, and finished.
Haseo, Gorf and wand summons took on his animated skeleton. Wand fireballs launched from a safe distance got rid of Semaj, Diarmid, and Tazok. Their skeletons were again take care of by Haseo and Gorf. Sarevok was doomed once he failed to save against the wand of paralyzation.
All in all a pretty seamless run through BG1 in an SCS/LoB context, thanks very much to hold and stun. We did use invisible blockers a couple of times, particularly with some of Aura's assassins, with the dwarven warders in Durlag's Tower, and against Slythe. Am not fond of that tactic but after numerous rather short-lived adventures I've had of late, I wanted to play it somewhat safely. There have been no NPC deaths this run so that suggests that we have been quite successful in staying safe.
I decided to give myself a Christmas treat by generating a new class for this challenge. That was randomly chosen and came out with an undead hunter - which, funnily enough, I'm currently playing in the Trio. Twenty minutes or so of rolling later and I had a paladin with maximum physical characteristics, but who was not also a total dur-brain.
After recently failing a bit unluckily against Melissan with a kensai attempt, it would be nice to go one better this time. Hence there was a no risk strategy early on as levels were racked up. Shoal was shot down for the first two.
In Beregost Neera was shot for her bag and Algernon for his cloak. The latter took reputation down from 12 to 7 - meaning any further drop would cause me to fall. To avoid that risk, 450 gold bought 3 points of reputation at the temple before Firebead was presented with a stolen book.
After purchasing a few +1 bolts, the golems at High Hedge were just walking targets and provided another level before I bought the final container from Thalantyr.
At Beregost temple the sirines were charmed and dragged outside one by one. Casting improved invisibility on me confused their scripts and allowed me to melee them without even wearing them down against other enemies. The XP from them was enough for level 5.
At the basilisk area, following Korax round as he paralyzed the wee beasties soon pushed me on to level 6.
I did though make a slight mistake there when moving forward a bit further than intended at one point into a position where a basilisk might potentially have attacked me rather than Korax. Typically I would just have retreated and risked it, but this time I used a potion of invisibility taken from the Nashkel manor house to avoid any danger.
Mutamin has virtually no chance against Korax - and performed as expected this time. Baerin was then charmed and led away from Kirian's group to his doom. Korax would now have had a small chance of success against the rest, but I decided once more to play safe. After shooting Korax I rested and then charmed Peter. His spells were wasted and he was then killed - and Lindin soon followed in the same sort of fashion. For Kirian, I charmed Shar-Teel and sent her in first - as she is unkillable by damage prior to her fight with the PC, Kirian has no way to kill her in the unmodded game.
At the Lake area I activated a single gnoll to attack Drizzt. I wasn't desperate for his XP so just let the combat run in the background, without monitoring whether the gnoll broke a weapon, while I did other things. That meant the chances were the gnoll would actually kill him - and it did. However, I was then free to pick up a couple of nice swords.
In Nashkel I picked up the ankheg armor and learnt Bhaal CLW. I also bought the Necklace of Missiles and scroll of PfP at the Carnival. The former made short work of a couple of battle horrors at Durlag's Tower (although as the battle horrors needed a critical to hit, meleeing them was actually easy enough anyway) and the latter allowed the basilisks on the roof to be dealt with, to bring up level 7.
Riggilo was trapped in the Tower by some hair, before being cut free by a pair of scimitars.
Heading north for the first time, an ogre provided a belt of piercing and a ring of protection. Tarnesh failed to cast a spell when attacked by a charmed guard. Only the final ankheg in their nest managed to inflict any damage on me on the way to Ulgoth's Beard.
Dushai was shot there for her free action ring - though undead hunters are immune to hold, they are not immune to other things affecting movement (like web).
With reputation back down to 7, I decided it was time to go to the Nashkel Mine. After carving a way through the kobolds, I rested in Mulahey's cave to heal a bit of damage before showing myself to him. Rather than letting him talk though I ran him round the little pond while shooting him down.
Resting then provided me with Bhaal LMD. Outside the mine the amazons were tackled one at a time - inching into view of them and using a crossbow before finishing the last one off in melee.
Back in Nashkel, rather than muck about dodging Nimbul's horror, I retreated after activating him and left him to the guards. Moving on to Beregost a few spiders were dealt with on the way to find Tranzig. A first shot at him was a critical that sent him running and he didn't get far.
Before going on to the Bandit Camp a quick trip to the Lighthouse got some easy XP from the sirines (at the cost of a potion of clarity).
The first 2 golems were shot with the remainder of the 20 +1 bolts bought earlier, while the last was finished in melee.
The tome there gives a few extra HPs and also allows regeneration with Buckley's Buckler - particularly helpful in case of occasions where healing while travelling is useful to protect against ambushes.
At the Bandit Camp a melee contest with Taurgosz looked even for quite a while, but 3 blows in quick succession then finished him off.
I'd splashed out on 5 bolts of biting and the first two of those tagged Venkt inside the tent. Those have quite a nasty poison and Venkt was unable to cast any spells, making the combat straight-forward.
As usual I didn't bother protecting against the lightning trap as that would miss anyway - though it did provide a small cash bonus courtesy of Ender Sai.
Seeing I was nearly at the level cap, rather than use free action to run past the ettercaps in the second Cloakwood map I enticed them out one at a time.
Regrettably I got the 1% chance of a minimum HP roll for that, but overall HPs are not too bad at this stage.
At the Cloakwood mine, Genthore was charmed and drawn away for disposal. Kysus was then charmed and his fireball was too much for Rezdan.
Kysus then successfully confused Drasus from out of sight, but acting against his companions allowed him to throw off the charm effect immediately after that. With his aura clouded though he was very vulnerable and 2 solid whacks finished him off. Drasus didn't then have time to recover from his confusion.
Only trap damage was taken while fighting through the mine and dealing with the battle horrors near Davaeorn.
With plenty of HPs left I just used a potion of magic blocking to go after the mage, rather than resting first.
A stone giant strength potion allowed a bit more looting to be done before going to flood the mine. Outside, the slave was dodged initially until I'd rested and gained a second Bhaal horror.
A few minutes doing the rounds of reputation quests left unfinished previously maximised that.
I also went on to collect the charisma tome, even though that was already up to 20 while wearing Algernon's Cloak. Shopping at bargain prices allowed me to pick up the Horn of Kazgaroth, the Greenstone Amulet and the Crossbow of Speed, as well as various potions and scrolls. I also went to find the Red Wizards and provided them with a warm welcome - the Ring of Energy is pretty helpful in SoD.
The Greenstone Amulet was used to get the tome from Durlag's Tower. A basilisk ambushed me on the way there, but by that time I'd already bought a potion of mirror eyes, so was able to just run away without taking any risk. As I'd been at the XP cap for a while now, I didn't bother with a lot of the work in the City, but did pick up the 3 Necklaces of Missiles (from Shandalar's daughters,
Nadine's quest and the shopkeeper in the Elfsong). Balduran's Helm pushed HPs into 3 figures and there was some good XP from drawing Degrodel's guards outside one or two at a time on the way to get Balduran's Cloak (using the Horn against Degrodel).
I also picked up the tomes. Typically I run downstairs to avoid Marek's confusion before shooting him, but this time I made use of the Greenstone Amulet to short-cut that encounter.
At the Iron Throne I didn't bother with using any buffs, but just stair-hopped to avoid spells and isolate opponents.
I couldn't resist chopping down Sunin for his valuable ring, but then reported in to Duke Eltan for duty in Candlekeep. Fireballs sorted out some phase spiders there on the way to loot the tombs.
All Prat's spells were either dodged or interrupted.
I was slightly wary of Bor's darts of stunning, but he died in fireballs without attacking.
After resting to get a second DUHM, I returned to the City to find Slythe. Just for fun I tried out Bor's darts of stunning on him and the 4th one thrown brought him to a grinding halt.
Krystin wasted time with a remove magic and failed to complete another spell after being tagged by a couple of bolts of biting.
At the Palace I decided to give the dopplegangers a chance by not using charm. I buffed with strength and speed before activating the fight. A first horror failed to affect anything, but one of the dopplegangers was then struck down before a second horror sent 2 more running.
My plan was to try and protect Belt (on the grounds that Liia was almost bound to die anyway). That worked pretty well and he was still only at injured status when the last doppleganger fell and was dragged into the back room to talk to ensure he didn't fight Sarevok.
After a final few purchases, the inhabitants of the maze were chopped up - with the help of using one of the 7 scrolls of undead protection I'd picked up. In the Undercity 4 more skeleton warriors waited to be cut down before I used fireballs on the party there. The main aim was never to let Rahvin into sight for long enough to allow him to fire one of his 2 exploding arrows - and that was successfully done.
After resting up I entered the temple. Angelo has another 8 exploding arrows and I made sure they would stay intact by bombarding him with lightning bolts from the repeating trap.
By that time Semaj and Tazok were also dead, though Sarevok's high resistance meant he was only at injured status. While continuing the lightning assault will eventually kill him, I chose to sight him and a single dispelling arrow slowed him down. That meant kiting him was easy before closing in for the kill.
I carried 424k XP through into SoD, so was immediately able to take level 9 there and complete my knowledge of dual wielding.
So I've had a run going the past week or so after restartitis (and Chromatic orb stuns...) kicked in hard on like 5 characters.
Introducing Jehu and Moira, a Shaman and Wizard Slayer respectively. The goal is, of course, the Fire Seed interaction for spell disruption through PfMW and Lich immunities. But I have to get through BG1 and SoD before then.
We're going to run this with 4 people, but for early experience's sake, the two are duoing until Mutamin's Garden. Shoal is shot down, an Ogre is kited, Marl is consoled, a book is obtained for Firebead, and two Shaman spirits help take down the spiders so I don't have to kite forever and ever. In Nashkel, Neira is affected by Moira's spell failure, and doesn't get anything meaningful off before her death. A quick swing to the mines gets Jehu level 3.
After buying the green Protection from Petrification and completing a few reputation quests/donations, we head to Mutamin's garden. We recruit Korax, sweeping south before heading north and confronting the illegal gnome himself. Unfortunately, the southern Basilisks' experience, split between two people, is only enough to get Moira to level 4, and she's put to sleep. I send Jehu after them to try to help Korax against Mutamin, and Mutamin hits him with a Charm Person sequencer. Fortunately, Korax finally managed to paralyze him, and Moira and Korax finish the last two Basilisks in the area.
Time to backtrack! I want Imoen dualed to a mage as the 3rd member of this crew, and she duals immediately on joining: she's given enough experience to get to level 6 Thief, but for now she's a level 1 Mage with a lot of hitpoints and a stupidly given Dagger proficiency. Oh well. Tarnesh doesn't get afflicted by spell failure so much as an arrow to the throat. Also, Moira's portrait is from here on different: on a save and reload, her portrait is just grey.
I... apparently skipped taking a lot of screenshots. We travel south again, trying and failing to save Melicamp, and kill Basillus, using the wand of magic missiles as an interruption tool. Dorn's ambush is sorted out, and we travel west from the mines to the Gnoll fortress for the glove of dexterity. Heading north, we take a lift from Brage back to Nashkel.
For more experience, we get a wand of Sleep from Thalantyr, and head to the Ankhegs. After a stop at Ulgoth's Beard, we head back to the coastal area where Shoal is located to clean off the Ogre berserkers and the 3 Sirenes there. It's not exactly safe yet, and Moira had to drink a few antidotes while eating the 15 arrows of biting, but Jehu is level 6, and has access to Call Lightning now. This means we can also take out the Battle Horrors and potentially the basilisks on the roof of Durlag's tower for a tasty 35k experience or so total, which we do. There's no more easy concentrated experience points until the lighthouse now, but I want the boots of missile protection first. It's finally time to start the main quest.
Sleep and Mastery in Longbows (Moira) is easy money against Kobolds, and Jehu summons 3 spirit animals inside Mulahey's sanctuary. In the valley of the dead, we ignore the Revenant sidequest and opt to fight Narcillus instead. His jellies fail to protect him meaningfully, and Writhing Fog and possibly a fireball or two is enough to sort him out. The jellies themselves take significantly longer, poisoning and slowing Moira at least twice before we take him down. A potion of freedom on Jehu allows him to act as bait vs some Ghasts to get the wand of monster summoning which... I think we used once total. Oh well. One final trip south gets us a scroll of Protection from Magic from Hafiz and a ring of fire resistance.
Anyhow, after reporting to the mayor, Nimbul is not as nimble as he hoped and donates a pair of boots to us.
The Sirenes now need a critical hit to hit Moira, even without the cloak of displacement or elves' bane if I recall correctly. We clean them out without any real threat to ourselves, and though we mess up our kiting once or twice against the flesh golems, it's never for lethal damage. Moira gets 20 CON and thus regeneration from the tome.
Tranzig is quickly killed for the bandit camp location, and we approach it from the Ankheg area. Moira recently hit level 7 from turning in Tenya's bowl, so has 3 APR with his longbow. Imoen still has her scroll of Cloudkill from the area west of the Nashkel mines: Writhing Fog, charges of the Wand of Fire, two Webs and apparently one cast of Spike Growth are enough to finish off the camp.
After selling off our loot, we enter Cloakwood. We side with Aldeth, and interrupt enough of the druids' spells with another Writhing Fog. An Insect Plague is dodged by running into the lodge, and the entire thing disappears. In the Spider area, getting Spider's Bane for Moira is pretty important, so Imoen casts Invisibility on Jehu who then triggers all the traps before grabbing the sword and popping a potion of Invisibility on the way out. Jehu drinks a potion of Freedom as well before they continue to slaughter all the spiders there. It was a bit touch and go vs the Phase spiders, with Imoen getting poisoned and almost dying twice, but no casualties. Imoen's now very close to level 7 and regaining her thief skills: some Wyverns provide the final bits of experience necessary.
Her thief points are put into Find Traps, Open Locks, and Pickpocket. It's high enough to get the Ring of Free Action from Dushai, so we head back to Ulgoth's Beard for it. On the way, we get ambushed by the Amazons: a Wand of Fire charge into Moira does enough to almost end the fight immediately, and the two backstabbers fail to kill Imoen instantly.
After pickpocketing a ring, we get ambushed again. Without protective items and only 17 Dex for being a dwarf, Moira is a really, really unsafe front-line for too long. Fortunately, it's long enough for Call Lightning and a wand of fire in Scorcher mode to take out their spellcaster, and then kiting is possible again.
Drasus and company: Same old same old, Webs, Fire, and random AoE spells from Jehu.
Yeslick is recruited as the final member of the 4-man squad: I need a fighter that can actually drink potions for the final battle. And he can be a generally good tank anyways, with the gloves of DEX saved specifically for him. Moira takes the Davaeorn battle, though, with a Protection from Magic scroll and Acid Arrows.
Baldur's Gate is a bit messy: a missed dialogue option means I clear the Seven Suns before being officially hired and... I guess Jhasso is just going to stay in that basement because he doesn't believe us? And Scar's fine with this? Whatever. We clear a basilisk, get poisoned, fight an Ogre mage and his crawlers, kill a lecherous mage, take a wrong dialogue option and don't fight two other mages in the Low Lantern, win a brawl fight, slaughter the temple of Umberlee, get un-poisoned, and kill like 20 doppelgangers for Aldeth. Finally, the Iron Throne fight (which we started before getting hired again. Fortunately, no consequences for this apparently.)
Jehu starts the fight taking farrrrr too much damage to friendly fire (Potion of explosions, wand of fire, his own Spirit Fire) in the top floor. We retreat and try to pull one by one, but we're forced to retreat to the 3rd floor and gets that floor hostile as well... Imoen almost dies yet again while the other three hold the 2nd floor from the top. Jehu stops the remaining thief by Detect Illusions, and Alai (the only one we actually care about...) finally dies. We have a second Ring of Free Action, which I only care about because of the Gargantuan Spiders in SoD. Bleurgh.
Ogre Mages are handled by a Silence Yeslick targets on himself, and then shot down. Imoen has two castings of Knock memorized for the tombs, and Moira is given 19 STR since she can't wear belts to achieve that in BG2. More AoE spells from long range kill Pratt and his crew except for one, who hides with the spiders.
Back in Baldur's Gate, I wanted the Full Plate +1, but forgot to talk to Tamoko outside the Flaming Fist. Whoops. Imoen and Jehu remain invisible during the Slythe fight, and we take down two Golems and a mage in the Iron Throne quarters: Yeslick is almost killed by the golems. The Ducal Palace is... significantly easier on Tactical on SCS: no mages and shamans, and Liia actually casts good spells including Mantle. There's no way she falls, and Hasted summons makes sure no one else dies either.
Penultimate fight: after carpet bombing the Undercity Party (again), we encounter 4 (!!!) Skeleton Warriors in the same area which gets both Yeslick and Moira into red health. A lot and a lot of kiting and swapping aggro happens, but somehow neither of them died.
Final fight: Yeslick is given all the necessary potions and scrolls (Pro. from magic, a potion of Mind Focusing so he can even read the scroll, Regeneration, Oil of Speed, Cloud Giant Strength, Invulnerability) and the Cloak of Displacement and Elves' bane. With a Sling and the Shield of the Falling Stars, Diarmid needs a critical hit to touch him. Even so, I mess up at the very beginning of the fight: I try to have Imoen detect their invisible people with a spell, but it's a version that targets an area rather than self, and so breaks invisibility... She survived maybe 3 seconds after that, boxed into a corner. Yeslick defeats Diarmid and the skeleton warrior, and Jehu breaks invisibility by self-talking to convince Semaj to emerge before drinking an invisibility potion again. Now even if Semaj goes invisible again, Jehu can Detect Illusions per the Shaman innate ability to find him: it doesn't work on units that are invisible by non-spell means, and they're not under a spell at the beginning of the fight. Semaj is also shot down, though the oil of speed has to be restored.
Angelo doesn't come out for a bit until Jehu summons a Nymph as a sacrifice: Yeslick is in the top left while Jehu is safe in the bottom right. Jehu goes invisible again immediately afterwards. Angelo is kited and killed, and now it's only Tazok and Sarevok left. Moira finally breaks stealth to fire a dispelling arrow, and Tazok finally comes out to play. A bit more kiting, and Tazok and his skeleton finally fall, and Sarevok soon follows.
I've started SoD, but not really gotten far enough to make an update: we've defeated Korlasz by invisibly travelling to him and Spirit Firing her into submission, and gotten out of the palace and killed some vampire hunters for some further regeneration. Dynaheir for some reason doesn't have Cloudkill known, so I'm going to have to modify my approach to the wilderness fights slightly.
In the SoD prologue dungeon, Porios was intimidated into surrendering.
A scroll of PfU made killing most of the enemies blocking the route down a doddle, while fireballs cleared Sarevok's supporters. Korlasz buffs up, but is unable to resist the Ring of Energy and a couple of charges from that, topped up by a first use of lightning bolts, saw her surrender.
She was not quite quick enough to disappear though and was cut down to avoid her popping up again in Baldur's Gate.
In the City, stripping the bodies of a few NPCs and selling the items brought from BGEE in bags raised about 90k. The only quests done were picking up the Spectacles of Spectacle and the Battle Tankard.
After exiting the City I tend to go to the Coast Way Forest to get the regeneration ioun stone. However, with full plate equipped I thought there would be limited need for regeneration and potions would be more than sufficient for occasional use, so I just went straight to the bridge. If you're quick enough there, you can get out of sight behind the tent before anyone focuses on you and avoid any combat at all - and that's what I did.
Leaving all the other encounters in the area I travelled to the Troll Claw Woods - and ran straight through that without even bothering to fight the attacking enemies. At the Forest of Wyrms I used invisibility to bypass various enemies on the way to the temple. The bugbear shaman in the caves leading in will try and detect that, but if you don't hesitate it's easy to bypass him before the spell casts.
Even without invisibility you can open the door to Ziatar's room without getting into sight of him - and a stream of necklace fireballs didn't take long to deal with him.
After releasing the prisoners it was time to face the Neothelid. Apart from poison, summons and a decent physical attack, that can hold, dominate or stun you - with attacks bypassing general magical protection. Even though I'm happy to take a bit of a risk, I've learned painfully that the odds here are too poor unless you buff - and duly consumed potions of absorption and magic shielding along with using a scroll of PfP. That combination allowed me to safely slice it up.
Akanna tried to hide in sanctuary from fireballs, but that was never going to work. With the potion of absorption still active and HPs high, I also hung around to pick up the XP for the aerial servants.
Invisible once more, I ran back past the bugbears to Morentherene's cave and watched in awe as the first non-proficient dagger thrown at her struck a vital spot.
None of the enemies then had time to react as I ran out of the cave and to the map edge. On the way to Boareskyr Bridge I saved a young green dragon from some attacking giants. It's only recently that I did that encounter and found there was a nice twist there from the game designers - if you have already converted Morentherene's skin into equipment and are wearing that, the young dragon is not disposed to be friendly!
On arrival I checked in with Kharm before going to find Vichand. It saves a bit of time to kill him at this stage, but you need to be wary as if you don't kill him quickly the whole camp will go hostile. A couple of quick hits were followed by a potion of firebreath to take him to near death. His buffs fired at that stage, but the second hit from the potion didn't care about those ...
After getting a dragon shield forged, I helped Wynan Hess re-establish the magical defenses.
I also had some void shards made into bullets (oddly, unlike the melee weapons, they do benefit from strength bonuses) - though I knew at the time those would almost certainly not get used. I bought a few more potions from Thirrim (that also wouldn't get used) before talking to Khalid and then surrendering the fort. That still left the mage on the bridge to deal with though. Area attacks are not a good idea here because of the vulnerability of the barrels to damage, but the Ring of Energy is safe and pretty reliably disrupts the mage's spells. On this occasion I could avoid the need for repeated doses of that by using an arrow of dispelling to make the mage vulnerable to melee.
On the way to the Coalition Camp I found a gathering of orcs and trolls. I'd hung on to a ring of infravision, so was able to find my way down to pick up the Firefly sling. At the Camp I used the Spectacles to summon Nazramu and sold loot to him at high prices as well as buying a couple of nice items.
After checking in with the Camp leaders I accepted some Bwoosh and the poison of terror before heading out again. There was nothing to interest me in Dead Man's Pass (or indeed the yawning pit in the ambush area encountered on the way there), so I just ran past 4 groups of enemies on the way to Dragonspear Castle. I saved Skie there before bouncing on to the Underground River map.
A potion of clarity ensured there would be no sorry end to an encounter with some myconids and the Soft Feet boots offered a more elegant alternative to the Ring of Free Action for defending against webs from a gargantuan spider (that can also stun, so was shot from a distance).
A dart of stunning incapacitated the cyclops and that was cut down before the mages teleported in - allowing me to run on into the underground entrance (where the enemies outside don't follow).
After placing the Bwoosh I tried to get into the inner caverns, only to be refused entrance - and realizing I'd forgotten to pick up the Seal of Caelar after killing the Cyclops. Quickly retracing my steps I got that invisibly and then went back to the inner entrance to try and blag my way inside - only to find that conversation option had been closed off by already talking to Turin. Oh well - it's not like I need all the potions of firebreath in my bag anyway and placing one of those in the firepit provided a diversion.
I poisoned the food and water invisibly before showing myself to make the lift available again.
My first use of my own spells set up a sanctuary to get out of the underground area and pass through the enemies outside.
After ignoring a dead magic zone, I attended a parlay at Dead Man's Pass before returning to the Camp to await an invasion. There were several possible ways to tackle that, but with 101 exploding arrows in my ammo case I saw no reason not to use that easy option. A couple of firebreath potions helped finish off the final group.
Back at Dragonspear, a PfM scroll provided protection before going to find Ashatiel and initiate a brief single combat to demonstrate once more that she can indeed be defeated.
Moving into the castle I followed Caelar through the portal and immediately used a potion of invulnerability to protect against non-magical status effects. After running through the first area. Thrix's minions didn't last long - I had plenty of HPs to offset barbed defense, so even stayed in melee to deal with the Hamatula.
After resting up I used fire, lightning and poison protection along with some potions and activated the lift. None of the enemies on that managed a hit and I added in 5 scrolls of champion's strength and a magic shielding potion before the lift reached its destination.
With such a strong offense I had no need for Caelar and allowed her to join Belhifet. I equipped a shield for a bit of extra protection, but then just attacked Belhifet and ignored the other enemies. It didn't take long to send him on his way, which caused the other devils to disappear as well.
A few more rounds and Caelar was toast as well.
Fortunately Aun Argent forgave that slaughter and sent me back before closing the portal.
I remembered to take the pantaloons out of the bag of holding in the epilogue, so that those are transferred to BG2. I had just enough XP to level up immediately on importing the character to Jon's dungeon.
Undead Hunter L10, 113 HPs, 0 kills (+565 in BGEE/SoD)
@Grond0 Congrats Journal of Oswald and the Helmites.
Last entry
Most of the time we used command to make the fights against the ankheg trivial. However when we ran out of command spells, we switched to others which led to injuries that had to be healed.
After killing all the ankheg that we could find we came across a paladin who has the same ethos that we have and so we invited him to join up with us. This caused a shortage of decent armour, but Watcher offered Ajantis his armour, saying that until we found something better, he would stay to the rear during conflict and use his crossbow even if he isn't very skilled with it.
We then headed south of Beregost where we killed a pair of ogrillon and some overly officious Flaming Fist Mercenaries. This solved our armour problem.
After that we headed east of Beregost where some powerful wolves were the next to feel our blades.
Further east still we were attacked by a party of "Adventurers." I would call them bandits!
Ajantis then used a green scroll to protect himself from basilisks and medusae having been warned about them by a girl who we rescued from petrification. She had been kind enough to give us a potion of mirrored eyes which is just as well as the spell terminated at a crucial moment. I had cast summon weasels which was fortuitous as it gave some of us the opportunity to retreat and Ajantis to use the potion. They were all killed so that is another area where it is relatively safe to roam.
We proceeded further south where we were forced to kill Zargos Flintblade.
We afterwards found Rufus for his owner.
Vax and Zal followed by Caldo and Krumm fell to our blades next.
Nereids and Water Weirds brought the game to an end near Sil. I was totally outfought. However, I replayed the battle and found a weakness so they won't be so formidable next time.
Blaggerd continues through SoD, from here. How not to do it.
The Underground River caverns sees Blaggerd upset a drow party who are looking for a pair of runaways. For a few moments it looks as though Blaggerd will get away with it but then Rasaad is caught flat-footed and we are down to five as he slumps to the ground.
Once we have mastered the drow it is simply a case of leaving for a temple. Only, someone upsets the Crusaders who were negotiating with the drow and we are straight into a second combat.
Once that group is dealt with we return to camp and get Rasaad raised. On our return we head up and locate both the water supply and food store. Poisoning these will be childs play.
Unless you've forgotten to talk to Phossey. In which case you don't have any poison. Still, it's only a few minutes travel time so we head back.
Glint dies on the way though when we decide to make an unscheduled rest. Everybody scowls at Blaggerd as a second death in the session is most unwelcome. Blaggerd tries a short-cut to see if some healing can be provided in the Bloodbark grove - it can not.
Oh well, nothing for it but to head back to camp and get Glint raised there. We had to pick the poison up anyway didn't we. Yep, all good.
On our return to camp we are informed that there is a parley taking place elsewhere. That means de Lancie is nowhere to be found and Phossey plays dumb so we can't get the poison, or the barrel of bwoosh. Still, at least Glint can be raised from the dead (and we purchase 5 raise dead scrolls because we like to be prepared after the event).
We return to the Underground river cavern anyway and deal with the Dark Magicians, meaning only the barrel / poison items are left undone. Blaggerd is a bit miffed as shoving acorns in trees, killing myconids, blind albino wyrmlings and so on isn't quite the same. All done anyway.
Time to head to the parley and make sure it fails. That's easily done, and then the camp has to be defended against enemies. The first raiders are trolls and ogres - against which Blaggerd decides the archers with their fire arrows will be helpful. He uses one poisoned arrow of detonation before switching to melee and routing the raiders.
There are two more raids, seeing us send in the assassins against a mercenary unit and wizard slayers against the mages. All goes well and Blaggerd thinks he will have to choose between two remaining groups (the fighters and the Dumathoin dwarves) to help fend off a final group of attackers.
No need for that, he is told. Just go sort the attackers out. At one point he thinks he spots a dwarf in the thick of it so maybe both groups are helping. The attacking casters are targeted first and fail to wreak much damage, leaving us free to kill off the enemy leader once he drops from Sanctuary.
With the camp secured we move on to Dragonspear Castle and have to help Phossey blow a hole in the wall because somebody didn't use the barrel of bwoosh :whistles:. Once inside we release some captive trolls and just as we are about to continue our attack the trolls cause the defenders to fire their catapult and destroy their main entrance defences. Dynaheir has cast Cloudkill so rather than try to fight through it we sit back for a few rounds and make sure we are fully healed.
When the cloud clears we surge through and mop up remnants of defenders. Glint stops to check for traps at one point and deals with several before Ashatiel teleports in to demand one-on-one combat. Blaggerd has been expecting this and accepts.
Blaggerd uses a greenstone amulet charge but Ashatiel retreats into a Sanctuary so Blaggerd uses a potion of clarity as additional precaution. He also gulps some healing potions and a short while after combat resumes Ashatiel uses a second Sanctuary. Once that wears off Blaggerd hacks away and two sets of mirror images for Ashatiel prove to be insufficient. We have the courtyard.
To the north we find some prisoners and after killing their guards we set them free. Then we head onto the castle roof and find a way inside. The ghost of Daros Dragonspear is freed and we bag his armour before confronting Caelar at the glowing portal. This looks dodgy.
Hephernaan reveals his true nature and uses the portal, closely followed by Caelar and some of her Crusaders. We follow them and immediately have a troubled battle with a welcoming party. Once we cut down their teleporting summoner bowcaster, the rest of that combat is simple and we run up some steps and across a bridge.
Three Abishai are among a group waiting for us, and they take a minute or so to deal with. Beyond them we see Caelar move on but our progress is blocked by Thrixx. We ignore his summoned help and attack him but Minsc is too slow to activate his greenstone amulet so we have to try and avoid him while dealing with the others.
Blaggerd goes for Thrixx while the rest of the party shut down any further attempts at domination. Blaggerd has to gulp two or three potions before Thrixx drops, and then we clear up the remaining minions and wait for Minsc to come back to his senses - three sets of armour and 60+ potions slow him down but are not quite enough to stop him crawling after us.
We potion-buff like crazy while going up the hellevator, working on the assumption that immunity to fire, poison and lightning will go nicely with potions of clarity, strength and freedom.
At the top of the tower we find Hephernaan is with Belhifet, and convince Caelar to side with us. Hephernaan lasts a round and then we switch to Belhifet. He does surprisingly well for several rounds and we start to consume a few blue healing potions. Then the combat log reminds Blaggerd that we require +3 weapons to injure Belhifet.
Blaggerd already has Drizzt's +3 scimitar equipped so that was his excuse for not noticing his party were observers.
Minsc swaps to a couple of non-proficient maces.
Glint has the unnatural club but isn't sure if +3 against unnatural beings is effective against big B.
Rasaad swaps to the Fractal blade, again non-proficient.
Dynaheir and Neera have nothing of use so focus on kiting summons away or standing idly by.
Rasaad isn't helping Blaggerd much, but Minsc suddenly gets into gear and whackety whack B is dead.
"That was amazing" said Minsc. "Although did you see that Undead Hunter whizz past us a while back??"
(the undead hunter also with fire, lightning and poison immunities. Bad day for big B )
I have started a new game with three Tiefling who are all Lawful Good followers of Kelemvor.
I looked up stats on Google and discovered that they should have +1 Intelligence and +2 Charisma and that there were various spells that they should also have.
I would have thought that there should be some drawbacks. Can anyone enlighten me?
I don't know how to give the innate spells that they should have for being Tiefling.
If anyone has any information to help me get it right before I start, I would be grateful.
In Jon's dungeon I think the biggest danger is the steam mephit in the elemental plane (though that can just be avoided of course). If that stuns you and the other mephits all attack together then HPs disappear very rapidly. Horror doesn't work well in BG2 and doesn't prevent opponents attacking, but it can still be useful to drag the steam mephit away from the others by itself - meaning even being stunned will only be an inconvenience. In this case though I saved against the stun anyway.
There is potentially a similar situation with the radiant mephit in the portal room, but it's easy to kill the first 2 portals from range before activating that - and horror can then be used to split up the other 2 mephits. I used the firebreath potion to make sure that Ulvaryl would not get away.
Normally I don't buy anything significant until reputation is up to 20, but I decided to make things easier early on this time by buying the ring of air control.
After restoring the circus, I reported in to Gaelan Bayle and killed some beasts before transferring the Copper Coronet to new management - getting to level 11 as a reward.
I set out for Watcher's Keep to get the potion case, but found an ambush on the way. However, Suna Seni's crew were horrified to see what they were attacking and failed to get a hit in.
At Watcher's Keep I bought the potion case - and looked longingly at the Firetooth Crossbow (which I could just have afforded) - but decided I should wait for that one until it was better value. I probably wouldn't have bothered going inside at this stage, but couldn't resist the lure of a +4 scimitar. There were no vampiric wraiths there and the undead were no risk to an undead hunter, so it didn't take long until the statues were being targeted. The main threat was the archer, but the others could be kited if they were not finished off in melee - though I did let HPs get uncomfortably low against the statue with the +4 scimitar, before finishing it off with the Crimson Dart. I probably could have won a straight melee battle against the archer, but I played safe there and went to get healed by the priestess in mid-battle before coming back to finish it off.
Back in Athkatla, a trip to the Docks provided some improved armor, courtesy of Officer Dirth.
After picking up Mae'Var's quests I was on the way to the Temple to get an amulet when ambushed. This time the mage saved against 2 horrors and I had to eat a lightning bolt before striking him down.
Returning Renfeld got me to level 12 and Prebek and Sanasha were helpless against improved invisibility (cast in the next door house to avoid annoying the Cowled Wizards).
Returning to the Copper Coronet I dived into the sewers and quickly moved through that to recover Carsomyr. Captain Haegan and his guards were pulled back into the sewers a few at a time for easy disposal, while sanctuary made resting there to heal any damage easy. The slaver mages were then no better than Prebek at dealing with improved invisibility.
That little outing had garnered a couple of reputation points and I went in search of more at the Bridge District. Typically in the skinner hideout I drag the assassins upstairs to backstab a summons, but I didn't have any of those yet. However, I thought my combat ability would still be too much for them. Was that a good decision? Well, surprisingly, it appeared to be. The first assassin missed his backstab and got only one hit in during the remainder of the battle, while the second assassin succeeded with the backstab - but missed everything else.
Reporting into Lt Aegisfield not only provided reputation, but enough XP for level 13.
That gave not just extra APR, but a very useful boost in saves and a third level spell to allow the possibility of future skeleton helpers.
Next up I took on the Fallen Paladins. They are decent fighters in straight melee, but their slow weapon speed makes them helpless against hit and run attacks. Anarg is rather quicker and was worn down with arrows a bit before being finished off.
With reputation up to 17, I moved on to Trademeet in search of the remaining 3. The action started with the destruction of some genies beaten up in melee (a summoned efreeti should really have helped out there, but I summoned it too quickly and it was hit by petrification when I was already buffed to have a negative saving throw). The genie Khan there really needs to learn that granting someone a death wish can be taken more than one way ...
At the Grove the trolls were chopped up one by one without trouble. The druids were stuck in an efreeti stinking cloud and didn't manage much resistance.
With the remaining enemies cleared, Cernd was given the chance to show what a hungry wolf can do to earn a first reputation point.
The second came pretty quickly, after killing Rejiek Hidesman - though it was more costly than it should have been after I absent-mindedly used a first restoration scroll on myself. The third came by clearing the tomb. That can be a potential challenge for a few classes - but those don't include undead hunters!
With reputation now up at 20 I did the Sir Sarles quest, with Arbane haste helping to cut down Neb before he could even go invisible.
The Helm of Glory allowed me to push charisma to 20 to minimize shop prices, but I still managed to quickly spend the nearly 100k earned to date - including eventually picking up Firetooth to finally start using a proficient missile weapon.
The Graveyard looked like a good place for an undead hunter to rebuild his fortune and I immediately picked up another level by saving Nevin.
Downstairs, I picked up Kitthix to provide another summoning option.
One of my favorite uses for its web tangle is to ensure Brennan Risling doesn't run away and he and his party were soon in trouble.
Among the other things purchased were Vhailor's Helm and scrolls of PfM and those were soon used to negate the maze trap to obtain the berserk warrior.
He got an early outing against Captain Dennis and his gang.
Work in the Temple sewers included reclaiming a cloak from a rakshasa and sorting out Gaius and his fellow highwaymen. Mekrath was then enough for level 15.
That means I can now open Gaxx's hideout without any need to use potions, so that will be the next target.
Undead Hunter L15, 143 HPs (incl, 5 from helm; 10 from bracers), 455 kills (+565 in BGEE/SoD)
Imoen arrives to unlock the cage and Blaggerd is so keen to see her that he disables both their AI scripts and welcomes her into the party. What party thinks Imoen, there is just the two of us. A minute or two later both Jaheira and Minsc have been recruited and their AI scripts disabled.
The four adventurers are able to deal with anything the first level of the dungeon can throw at them, and manage to equip themselves from stray items or the odd piece of loot. Blaggerd picks up a couple of magical longswords from one table and finds himself longing for a scimitar or bastard sword instead. He backpacks them both and continues with the non-magical bastard sword dropped by an early enemy.
Jaheira is using a +1 quarterstaff so gets to bash the jailkeep golem apart, while Minsc has a two handed sword and mace to hand. A quick visit to another plane sees an upgrade to the Sword of Chaos for him and Blaggerd picks up a +1 bastard sword from somewhere - the trapped cambion presumably.
Yoshimo is waiting for us as we arrive at the second level of the dungeon. Blaggerd is pleased to hear that this thief is feared by all and can be a fifth pair of hands to haul goods out of the dungeon. Four nearby mephit portals have recharged from a previous adventurer and do their worst. Three of the party fail their saves against a Radiant Mephit but Blaggerd saves and Imoen was out of range - so the portals are shut down safely.
As soon as the party escape Imoen is arrested but the other party members sell what loot they have collected for a surprisingly small amount of cash - four sets of retained items must add up or Blaggerd forgot to pick things up or the spells Imoen memorised were expensive.
Blaggerd looks at his party and knows things must change. Even before visiting the nearby circus he gets Gaelan Bayle out of the way and bumps into Neera. She asks him to join her at a faraway location and he agrees. After recruiting her he decides not to progress her quest in the hope she won't whine about that, and continues on to Trademeet. All that is done there is say hello to the mayor and observe fisticuffs near the fountain, so he can recruit Rasaad.
The party is now six in number, and Blaggerd needs to free up one slot. Minsc would normally be the person to go but Blaggerd has plans for him and instead Jaheira is booted leaving the party as below:
Slot 6 will have to remain empty for now until a suitable candidate can be found, or Blaggerd dies trying to find him.
A return to the city sees a few doors opened and a suit of armour taken from the ever-giving Officer Dirth. Renal Bloodscalp and Mae'Var's quest is started and a visit made into the Temple District sewers. Blaggerd looks at his gang and suspects they are not up to Tarnor the Hatchetman. Oh yes they are. This won't be too painful.
Screenshots below but a brief summary is
- Yoshimo only manages to set two special snares
- Only one enemy is affected by the snares
- Gaius survives the initial focus on casters
- Gaius casts Disintegrate at Minsc
- We have nothing to help Minsc, but he saves anyway
- Rasaad is stunned so the party have to stand their ground
- The party retreats once Rasaad recovers as the pressure is getting too much
- A green slime joins in the attack
- A defence near the exit becomes too problematic so Blaggerd reluctantly retreats
- GallchobHair and the slime follow us outside
- The prophet outside and mother + child become hostile
- We kill Gallchobhair and descend again
- The prophet follows us and holds Minsc
- We shut our eyes against reputation and kill the prophet
- With the nearby enemies dead we return to Gaius and Tarnor
The mother and child are still shown as enemies but with our AI scripts disabled we can safely ignore them and hope nobody else goes hostile.
Blaggerd was right then, his party weren't really up to dealing with Hatchetmen. Maybe they should just stick with kobolds and the odd rakshasa. Perhaps try not to get three of you held with kobolds around - Neera clearing them out with a fireball.
I accepted the Unseeing Eye quest in order to get access to the lich and also pre-prepared by opening doors to the other liches. As I needed to go into a nearby house to cast improved invisibility and negate the petrification trap, I did the quest to get the silver pantaloons there - also picking up some Boots of Avoidance, though the reflection shield is normally better than that for characters that can use that.
I was also accosted by muggers near there - it's not unknown for me to make that group instantly wealthy, but I managed to provide my intended response this time.
With preparations complete I returned to the Temple sewers and used a PfU scroll before killing the Shade Lich. The Elemental Lich and the City Gates lich were just as helpless. Kangaxx's initial lich shape sometimes plays a nasty trick by not completing its transformation properly - rendering it unkillable and meaning you can't get the Ring of Gaxx. As that's not a game-ending bug I just roll with it on the odd occasion it occurs, but it does make the game significantly harder, so it's always a bit of a relief when the transformation works properly.
Though both Usuno's Blade and Firetooth can hit Kangaxx, they only do a fraction of the damage that Daystar does (because nearly all its bonus damage bypasses Kangaxx's high physical resistance) and a few seconds later I was able to pick up My Precious.
I handed in Neb's head to get back one of the points of reputation lost in obtaining the pantaloons and decided to get the other from the Unseeing Eye quest. I'd already got the Shield of Balduran, so the beholders were in theory no obstacle - though I did need to remember to buff against a couple of potentially lethal traps on the way to get the first part of the Rift Device. I multi-tasked there by letting the beholders gently kill themselves while destroying the nearby undead using turn undead. Somewhere during that encounter I also hit level 16.
The undead in the pit were led by a lich, which was a bit more of a potential challenge (I tend to only use PfU scrolls in the lead up to Kangaxx). However, with 2 skeletons and 3 other summons available, I was able to draw out the lich's more dangerous spells before shooting it down.
I relaxed a bit after that - which is always a bad idea in no-reload . That resulted in me carefully equipping a shield to face more beholders - but not the shield I intended. Fortunately I noticed the error before HPs got critically low.
Buffed summons occupied the blind priests while I shot them down and shortly afterwards I'd got to level 17.
The remaining skeleton then distracted the Unseeing Eye while I used the Rift Device and finished it off.
The main items not bought previously were potions and I returned to the Druid Grove to get the pick of Adratha's stocks - before ensuring she wouldn't be selling to anyone else.
Once more penniless, I decided the de-Arnise Hold would be a good place to earn some more cash. It didn't take long there to get another level - providing me with a first HLA.
By this stage in the game I'm far too strong for most opponents - even without using summons you can see how overmatched TorGal and a couple of giant trolls were to finish off the Keep.
The proceeds from that expedition funded a last lot of potions from Mrs Cragmoon, with enough left over to pay Gaelan Bayle. The +2 ring from Aran Linvail took base saving throws down to -1, so there was no need to worry about buffing or charm immunities against Lassal. The Guild Contact at the Five Flagons carries a couple of potions of invulnerability and will start drinking if the fight goes on too long - he finds that difficult to do when stuck in a web of course and that encounter took me to level 19.
The basic vampires in their Graveyard HQ were no longer any threat. Tanova managed to save against an invisible attack with the MoD, but follow-up summons provided a distraction while she was being shot - though she managed to turn into bat shape just before I could finish her off.
Downstairs, a first use of sunray thinned the crowd a bit before the remainder were chopped up.
I felt it was more appropriate to send Bodhi packing without assistance - and buffing up made that a pretty simple proposition.
There were still a fair number of things to do before setting sail though. The first of those was finishing Mae'Var's tasks. I'd been hesitant early on to take on Rayic Gethras as his Power Words cast so fast that dodging them can be a problem. However, he was no longer a real threat and Gaxx haste allowed him to be punched unconscious before he could finish casting any spells.
Reporting back to Edwin was enough for level 20 and that seemed like a nice landmark to end the session.
Undead Hunter L20, 158 HPs (incl, 5 from helm; 10 from bracers), 706 kills (+565 in BGEE/SoD)
I looked at the Haer'Dalis chr file and the Sirene chr file to try and decide what effect being a Tiefling should have. The Haer'Dalis chr file would have given a much bigger advantage than the Sirene file. Indeed Sirene seems very balanced and so I have edited my chr files in the same way.
Here is what I ended up with.
The party has survived Candlekeep including the upgraded assassins.
Journal of Tigra the Tiefling Knight of the Eternal Order and his Tiefling Friends (The Tiefling Trio)
As we raised in Candlekeep I and my Tiefling friends discovered that very few of the people there really trusted us. We, as a result are reluctant to trust others, though we did make some excellent friends, Imoen and Hull for instance. We have killed all the assassins in Candlekeep, but I can see that we will soon have to leave since we are obviously being targetted.
We'd done most of the work in the City last time, but a few odd jobs remained. Sunin failed to complete a spell under a general assault.
Degrodel's guards were then split up and finished off handily.
The mage himself managed to choke out a horror spell and send us all running - what a pity he was already dead .
Corey briefly wondered whether it would be a good idea to protect against our obvious weakness against horror, but we assured him that was no real cause for concern .
At the Iron Throne, Corethief used a PfM scroll and a few potions were sufficient to keep him going while the enemies fell one by one.
Back at Candlekeep, Corethief used free action and a PfP poison to assault the phase spiders. Tonic briefly flirted with danger in a web trap and Sink had to kite a spider that teleported to him, but all was well - though Corethief had his hair well and truly singed by a couple of traps guarding the strength tome.
Moving into the next area, Corethief once more used a PfM scroll, expecting that to make an assault on Prat's gang easy. However, he immediately came under severe pressure as Tam's acid arrows slammed home. It looked like Tonic might have saved the day as a web descended and briefly put all the opposition out of action.
However, Sakul quickly broke free from the web and soon started casting horror at Corethief - just as he finished off Prat and moved towards Sakul. That meant Sink, who was throwing daggers at Bor, came into the spell's area and he started running round in terror.
The chances were good he would come into contact with the nearby spiders, but for a number of rounds his circles somehow managed to avoid activating them - but finally the inevitable happened.
With Sink stuck in a web trap and a sword spider poised to attack, his life could be measured in scant seconds. Tonic threw in a fireball hoping to do more damage to the spider than Sink (and did so), while Corethief rushed to provide melee support. Agonizingly though, the sword spider survived just long enough to stick a final talon through Sink's gut before Corethief could cut it off.
Jehu, Human Shaman and Moira, Dwarven Wizard slayer, update 1 (SoD) Introduction
I'm starting to believe more and more that the success in SoD is tied to how many items you managed to acquire in BG1. I guess the same thing can be said about ToB and SoA, so that's fair. But I can't imagine doing this without having extra wands of fire, Rings of Free Action, Spider's Bane, Magic Shielding potions, every single arrow of detonation I could buy... Anyhow.
We have Minsc, Dynaheir, Glint to start the first area. We don't do too much here: we return a few items for the +2 returning dart, fight some trolls for a fire sling, save a few people from petrification for... no reason, and start the bridge battle. Only half of them even survive the opening salvo of fireballs, potions of explosions, and Spirit Fires, and we don't manage to kill the others before the parley. They don't have any items I care about anyways.
In the next chapter, after fighting off a few spiders and trolls, we recruit Voghlin for a potential Enchanted Weapon caster for Belhifet. Also, I'm still really partial to Skald bonuses even without Rogue Rebalancing. On the other hand, Voghlin has a personality of a tankard of beer. That's... all he cares about. Whatever. Anyways, we head for the Bhaal temple area, and clear the Wyverns and a few spiders. Glint dies to a Web Tangle -> Sword Spider combination, and Jehu uses his one Raise Dead scroll purchased specifically for this. And for all of this I have a screenshot of... beetles.
6 Protection from Poison scrolls, Resist Fear, and Haste are all cast on our party, and Morenthene is a piece of cake. I think that final spell is Chant from Glint?
We progress through the temple fairly slowly, with Jehu setting up his spirit summons and slowly luring the cultists into their zone. Ziatar is hit by two Webs and Jehu, Minsc and Moira finish her off.
Minsc is originally protected with a Potion of Clarity, thinking it'd block anything the Neothelid could throw. They don't block Stun, and the Neothelid can stun. Minsc ends up being our second casualty, though we kill the psychic behemoth soon after.
A quick return to the camp for Raise Dead gets us back into the slog of the temple. Minsc almost dies again against the initial strikes from the Aerial Servants before they're tanked by the Spirit Animals, and Akanna isn't long for the world.
And I brilliantly decide to fight the Shadow Aspect without resting, though I'm frankly not sure how much it'd have helped. The innate Invisibilities and his x5 backstab multiplier along with his basically infinite STR drain, 99% Fire resistance, very good AC, randomly innate Improved Invisibility make fighting this thing an absolute nightmare. It's like Slythe turned up to 300%, and he's already been able to end several of my runs. Minsc is forced out from melee really quickly, and I sub in Moira: she's soon STR drained too much to move, and she's backstabbed to death. Voghlin is also sacrificed trying to scramble together something resembling an offence, and the Shadow Aspect locks on to Dynaheir. She doesn't have a melee weapon equipped, but that backstab would've hit for 102 regardless if my math is correct. That's a chunk.
Minsc is about to die to another backstab when Jehu rolls a 19 and manages to kill the bloody thing. I think I'm skipping this fight in future runs unless I have a ton of summons and an Archer.
After Raises, we recruit Jaheira and with SCS give her 2 points in dart. That dart is now doing like 7 - 9 +1 acid damage with 4 APR. It's wonderfully ridiculous. No screenshots of the Illithid fight, but it was basically Wand of Fire, Spirit Fire and Thorn Spray chunking them inside the room, and murdering them as soon as they dared to show their faces outside the door. Turning in the quest to the Crusaders gets Jehu level 10, and thus level 5 spells. Chaotic Commands is our pick here: we'll be completely defensively focused at least until BG2.
Rhino Beetle Shell and Dragon Scales are both turned into armors. I think shields might have been better for this run, but water under the bridge now. We complete all the Bridgefort quests, killing Vichand for the scroll, and doing the whole Tender of the Dead questline. At the end of it, I forget to collect the Void stones: I had intended to make void arrows from it, but we're going to be limited to 20 or so +3 arrows for Belhifet then. Khalid replaces Minsc, and takes GM in Short Swords to actually have the Shadow Aspect fight to have meant something. We surrender the fort, and fail to disrupt the portal summoning. We have enough damage to one-round or two-round the fire elementals, though, and we don't explode yet.
We do a couple fetch quests in the next encampment, and use the glasses on the Genie for more items. Jehu gets a belt of Luck, Khalid gets the ring of continual Charm, Jaheira gets a ring of free action, and I think that's roughly everything I ended up getting? We do full clears of the wilderness areas, with Glint dying again and apparently starting a romance? I frankly didn't even realize he had initiated one until the very end of the game (spoilers )… Not the biggest fan of his writing, to be honest, but that's not what we're here for. We're here to kill another CHARNAME. (hopefully not.) Only interesting fights here are the Vampires and Wraiths, both handled by wands of Fire in Scorch mode, and a Pro. Petrification used for the Basilisk. Also, why the heck do they make you click twice to collect the bark from that tree? Had to travel there twice after missing it the first time.
In the Underground River, we free some Druids, duel two Ogres, and start area-bombing the Crusaders. The two mages that teleport in are handled by Arrows of Dispelling and then Wizard Slayer penalties taking effect. I think one of them landed a Charm spell or something, but Spiritual Clarity from Jehu means everything's fine. Honestly, Spiritual Clarity is such a good spell for this portion in the game with Myconids and Chaos being huge threats since Chaotic Commands can't cover everyone. Khalid and Moira tank the Ankhegs and Dark Treants well enough to clear them up. Next up is the Shadow Cabal. We take on all the undead in the previous area first to avoid the absolute mess I had the last fight, and clear the left-most mages first. I screw up with my buffs, and don't have a Remove Fear up: 4 people are Feared when the dragon takes the field and before I can destroy the bottle. The bottle's shattered maybe half a second after the Dragon Fear happens, but it's still enough for Voghlin to die. Khalid is saved by Jehu's Spiritual Clarity, and we clean up the rest of the mages with dispelling arrows and spell failure via kit.
One rest later and the walking tankard is back with us. We tell a story to a pair of fish, and talk to the water-elemental-training mage. He attacks to test out the elementals, and we kill him quickly for it. Patrols are aggroed, and we kill them without apparently turning the entire cavern hostile. I don't know if there's a way to talk to that mage without triggering that fight.
We explode a potion, free an ogre, loot some +3 crossbow bolts, and Glint's cousin gets us up the lift. No fighting fair this time around: after the initial fight (in which Jaheira chides us for not getting information: can we actually do this without having to kill the sergeant? Have higher CHA maybe?) we engage the Stone Golems from the initial chamber. This avoids us getting flanked between two golems and 3 high-ish level Mages that's SUPPOSED to happen if you play fair. Playing fair sucks.
The golems are downed before anything can happen. Khalid is sent to tank one or two Crusaders coming from the direction of the lift, while the others work on destroying the less protected mages. They fall pretty quickly, though Jehu drinks an invisibility potion as he tries to avoid Hephernaan and spots a bunch of Crusaders in the top right room. Hephernaan is still kind of a issue with Blade Barrier, Improved Invisibility, and Reflected Mirror being a pretty good counter to the things I can bring to bear. Moira with Spellbreaker and Khalid with the Fractal Blade and a potion of invulnerability have very low save vs spells though, so they can tank the Blade Barrier indefinitely. Fractal blade dispels the invisibility, and spell failure against a C/M is a death sentence. Finally...
Back in the Coalition Camp, the fights are depressingly easy: Wand of Fire, Spirit Fire, and 2 Arrows of Detonation fired at the beginning of the fight end them almost as soon as they start. Jehu gets his final level up here, though! The final coalition fight is more of the same, with more damage coming from Jahira's Spike Growth (or whatever the level 3 spell is called) than the entire enemy party did.
Dragonspear fight: everyone grabs a ranged weapon and plinks away while Glint detects traps in the left corner. Ashatiel comes out to fight a lot sooner than I remember, but Potion of Magic Shielding, an Oil of Speed, and an Arrow of Dispelling are enough to shut her down. Wand of the Heavens goes through Sanctuary, and Pratt's axe goes and kills her.
We don't rest before Hell: we have more than enough consumables for this including like 11 potions of clarity and 10 scrolls of Chaotic Commands. I'm still slightly confused as to what exactly happened here: Jaheira doesn't have another source of Charm immunity besides being a Half-elf, so by my current understanding, this should've functioned normally and not like... this.
Thrixx is a bit hard: we summon 3 Myconids in preparation, and Moira is almost immediately Feared because Chaotic commands doesn't protect against Fear. Whoops. Another Spiritual Clarity is used to make her useful again, and eventually we just overpower Thrixx with +2 weapons and arrows. A bad lightning bolt bounce could've still been trouble: I recommend a potion of Absorption before this fight for anyone taking on Thrixx instead of betting.
We buff in the elevator, and a Command alerts me to the fact that the original Potions of Clarity are wearing off: that could've been bad. Potions of Fire resistance, scrolls of the same, potions of absorption, STR and Invulnerability potions for Khalid, and potions of Clarity are drank, and scrolls of Emotion: Hope and Emotion:... uh some other IWD spell that also gives +2 to hit and so on.
Big B: because of SCS' NPC customization, all joinable NPCs are level 0 so you can select proficiencies. This also includes Caelar, apparently, and she goes from full health to near death in a single hit constantly. She's useless this fight. We have 80 +3 Bolts, 80 +3 Bullets, 20 +3 Arrows, Aule's staff, that +3 Warhammer, Slythe's +3 shortsword, and the Fractal Blade, and one scroll of Enchanted weapon. Jaheira gets the scroll, and after killing Hephernaan with extreme prejudice, we turn our attention to Belhifet. Jehu Detects Illusion to get rid of Improved Invisibility, and Voghlin sings for everyone. Moira runs through all 20 arrows, and closes in with her hammer, when Khalid gets the final hit.
Belhifet groans something about an Undead Hunter and a Blackguard before collapsing. In Baldur's gate, we get the heroic ending, and they're currently waiting for a non-SoB/FoP/MnG setup of BG2 to finish before setting out for Amn.
Jehu: level 11 Human Shaman, 94 HP (5 from helm)
Moira: level 10 Dwarven Wizard Slayer, 112 HP.
An early morning session started with running through Mae'Var's remaining tasks before exposing him and meting out punishment with a first use of GWW.
Feeling it was about time an undead hunter did something about the situation in the Umar Hills, that was the next stop. With unbuffed saving throws now all negative there was nothing dangerous in the village and I quickly picked up enough XP for another level. Moving on to the old temple the initial skeleton warriors evaporated as I ran among them and I wondered whether the same would happen if I briefly showed myself to a lich - it did indeed.
Greater Mummies could only be turned, not destroyed - but old-fashioned melee worked fine on them. Downstairs, a dragon found itself under a hasted assault and thought it had stemmed the early flow of damage when PfMW kicked in. Unfortunately for it though, even the mightiest dragon can be felled by a well-placed uppercut .
Outside, a critical miss meant the Shade Lord survived long enough to buff - but the next hit finished it off immediately to push me on to level 22.
Before leaving the area I had a short discussion with Valygar and briefly returned to Athkatla to grease the locks on the Planar Sphere. Then it was off to find another dragon in Windspear Hills. A bunch of exploding vampires there soon provided a further level.
The adamantite golems as usual got stuck in doorways to provide plenty of easy XP and I hit level 24 just before taking on Samia with fully upgraded skeleton warriors.
One of those sorted out Conster before I went back downstairs to settle with Firkraag. He ignored the skeletons attacking him from the rear, while concentrating on me. I was just wondering whether I needed to do something about the malison he'd hit me with when the aptly named Dragonslayer melted away the last of the dragon's HPs.
Back in Athkatla it appeared the paladins needed a helping hand. A couple of tasks later and I had to foil some assassins attacking a fair lady. One nipped up the stairs ahead of me, but a WW caught him before he could do any damage. Detect Evil then confirmed that her genuine guardian had come to take care of her.
Tazok's key was used to get into a mind flayer hide-out, where yet another level was gained.
The flayers managed only a single hit between them (probably just as well as my intelligence of 10 could only withstand 1 suck at a time).
Next, I finally got around to the Planar Prison. I tend not to do the cells there, but for a change decided to clear all those out this time and did that without trouble. The Master of Thralls there can be nasty if your saving throws are not great, but is otherwise a bit of a wimp and only lasted a couple of seconds.
One of his elementals gave me another level before the Warden was shot down while he was concentrating on the troublesome thralls.
The final yuan-ti mage there was no threat anyway, but was used to test out power attack for the first time.
From one planar institution I zipped to another to try out the Sphere. Kayardi was a potential threat there with maze, but a skeleton warrior occupied his attention.
Soon after that I picked up smite as a bonus for level 27. A skeleton warrior knocked down an oblivious Lavok, before I grabbed a heart.
Tolgerias was attacked while he was trying to find out who an invisible intruder was - he just managed to survive long enough to buff, but his improved mantle wasn't sufficient to protect against Usuno's Blade.
Another lot of golems then pushed me on to level 28 before taking the Sphere back to Athkatla and giving Lavok one more sight of the sky.
There wasn't much more I aimed to do before heading off to Spellhold, but did investigate the Guarded Compound - pulling the enemies downstairs in dribs and drabs.
The final target was the Twisted Rune, where Shandalar was foiled by a PfU scroll. Vaxall was shot down - as was Layene while she was distracted by a skeleton warrior.
I had intended to save at that point, but it wasn't time for breakfast yet so I decided to take on the Cowled Wizards as well. Skeleton warriors worked pretty well against them - sending them in after death spells had been tempted out by other summons. I think I got level 29 from the 3rd group of those summoned in by using the Ring of Air Control. Once the last group was destroyed I sorted out inventory a bit to be ready to take ship.
Undead Hunter L29, 185 HPs (incl, 5 from helm; 10 from bracers), 1,132 kills (+565 in BGEE/SoD)
@Wise_Grimwald Tragic! I suppose you can look on the bright side - at least you didn't get to Melissan, just to be foiled at the end! That's happened to me so many times...
Blaggerd finds a way to fill the sixth party slot in his next couple of sessions. Continued from here
Session 1:
A quick trip to Neera's wild mage hideout doing very little is followed by a quick trip to Rasaad's Abandoned Ampitheatre where a group of enemies fail to slow us so Neera gives them a helping hand and then we have to share the injuries around when fighting the main group of monks.
(dodgy screenshots due to some Linux quirk of switching desktops while in fullscreen)
Now we know where the Twofold temple is it would make sense to travel there but Blaggerd decides he'd like to pick up the Foebane bastard sword. There are no Vampiric Wraiths to face inside, and Blaggerd makes sure he is suitably equipped to fight this group while Minsc safely hacks from distance.
When that is done we move on to the Twofold temple, where after starting the tests Blaggerd decides not to continue and instead speaks to the occupant of a cage. After securing the occupant's freedom Blaggerd tracks him down and agrees to travel with him.
Time for a quick test, so we decide to tackle the slavers starting from the ship entrance instead of the sewers. Wilson has to move to one side to reduce area spell effects when he is targeted by casters standing beyond a trap. Rasaad benefits from a surged globe of invulnerability.
Having cleared the slaver area Neera decides to stoneskin herself but once more Rasaad becomes the unintended target. At least the spells have been beneficial.
Blaggerd wants to progress the main plot a bit and first job is to help Mook at the docks. Lassal still manages to kill Mook and flees before he can be finished off.
Our next test is against the Rune Assassins. Despite only having early-game gear the party buffs up nicely and makes a decent fist of matters killing both assassins, two ghouls and a bone golem with only Minsc suffering a hit or two.
A couple of traitors and their recruiter are killed in the Bridge District but Blaggerd doesn't feel like the long walk to inform Aran Linvail just yet.
Session 2:
Instead we head out to the Druid Grove and arrange a suitable meal for Cernd before returning to Trademeet where some nice statues have been placed around the fountain.
The de'Arnise hold is next on the agenda. The central area is cleared of trolls before taking a break.
Isra and Saerileth never bonded the way she and Sirene did. Losing Sirene tore deeply at her heart. She was not even sure losing even her own sister could hurt like that. The empty feeling – she felt all alone in Toril after that. When her sister had gone to prison for her crimes, it surely did not bother Isra as much as losing her ‘Paladin Sister’ as they called one another. Isra and Saeileth had traveled side by side into some ugly places these past months – had defeated some terrible foes. She was proud of Saerilth when she destroyed Fiirkaag, but more as she might feel for a little sister than a friend.
Looking through Saerileth’s belonging with Dispenser, deciding what to keep and what to sell at some point, she just felt sad, but not the overwhelming sadness that enveloped her when Sirene died. Saerileth had been so young, maybe that’s why they didn’t grow closer. Oh sure, Saerileth swung a mean sword and had a righteous fury for goodness and justice. No one doubted that. But she was gone now, obliterated in Hell, whether by one of the Balor’s, the Glabrezu’s, or Irenicus, Isra did not know. It all happened so fast, and there was no time to conduct a battle review when it was over.
Irenicus was also dead – again, after confronting them in the infernal regions. Nalia’s skill as a wizardess, with precision timing, had been on display there. Irenicus’ spell protections could not save him once she started breaking him down – at first getting clear of the melee of Paladin’s, Yasraena, Skeleton Warriors, a Berserk Warrior, Irernicus, four demons, and a Nishru she had summoned to their aid. Nalia used a Spell Trigger loaded with Pierce Magic, Breach & Lower Resistance[\i], and a Spell Sequencer with Greater Malison, Secret Word & Spell Thrust, and peppered Irenicus with Pierce Shield, Kelben's Warding Whip, & Ruby Ray of Revearsal afterward as the others cut him down. They all kept at least one unenchanted weapon (that they had skill with) at the ready for just this kind of battle, and it worked to near perfection.
The next thing they all knew, they were in Suldannessellar, convalescing from their wounds. Queen Elliseme held a banquet in honor of Dispenser, all of them, and they enjoyed Elven hospitality for a few days before moving on. They needed to replace Saerileth’s sword, soonest.
Before battling Irenicus, Dispenser faced a series of Hell trials, each of which offered a Tear of Bhaal. He had choices to make that determined the nature of each tear he gained. Fear, Selfishness, Pride, Wrath, and Greed trials provided him a tear, but if his choices were evil, it would have had negative consequences. Dispenser considered each carefully, and true to form, he passed the tests, leading to the confrontation with Irenicus.
BATTLING SAREVOK FOR A TEAR OF BHAAL
PARTY INFORMATION
ORDER OF MARCH: Yasraena, Saerileth, Isra, Keldorn, Dispenser (leader), Nalia (arcane support & traps)
MONSTERS DEFEATED (ordered alphabetically by value): *
* Legend: DS = Disturb Sleep, RE = Random Encounter, SD = Suldanessellar
Dispenser: LG Cleric (Holy Justice of Tyr)/25 (HP 99) Large Shield +2, Helm of the Noble +1, Holy Symbol of Tyr, Gauntlets of Dexterity, Cloak of Balduran, Girdle of Frost Giant Strength, Rings of Fire Resistance & Regeneration & Boots of Etherealness w/ Flail of the Ages +3 (Acid, Cold, Fire) & Long Sword +3 (Blade of the Roses), (Bastard Sword*, Flail*, Long Sword*, Mace/Morning Star*, Warhammer*, SSS*, SWS*, TWS*); Abilities: Detect Invisibility, Hold person, Holy Word, Strength of One, Slayer Change; High-Level Abilities: Elemental Summoning, Energy Blades, Storm of Vengeance; Skills: None; Spells: Earthquake, Energy Blades, Finger of Death, Fire Storm, Gate, Aerial Servant, Animal Summoning III, Blade Barrier, Bolt of Glory, False Dawn, Harm, Heal, Sol’s Searing Orb, Wondrous Recall, Cause Critical Wounds, Chaotic Commands, Cure Critical Wounds, Flame Strike, Greater Command, Mass Cure, Raise Dead, Righteous Magic, Slay Living, True Seeing, Cause Serious Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, Defensive Harmony, Farsight, Free Action, Restoration, Negative Plane Protection, Free Action, Neutralize Poison, Poison, Protection from Evil 10’ (2), Animate Dead, Cure Disease, Cure Medium Wounds, Dispel Magic, Holy Smite, Invisibility Purge, Prayer, Remove Curse, Rigid Thinking, Zone of Sweet Air, Aid, Chant (2), Draw on Holy Might (2), Hold Person (2), Resist Fire & Cold, Silence 15’, Slow Poison (2), Spiritual Hammer, Armor of Faith (2), Bless (2), Command (2), Cure Light Wounds, Doom, Faerie Fire (2), Protection from Evil, Remove Fear, Sanctuary; (Adv AI) (1)
Isra: LG Paladin (Cavalier of Sune)/20 (HP 122), Red Dragon Scale Plate, Ghadir Family Ring, Painbearer’s Amulet, Pale Green Ioun Stone, Cloak of the Shield, Boots of Hastened Departure w/ Two-Handed Sword +5 (Carsomyr), Mace +3 (Storm Star), Gauntlets of Weapons Expertise, Girdle of Hill Giant Strength, (Axe**, Bastard Sword*, Mace/Morning Star**, Two-Handed Sword**, THWS**); Abilities: Cure Disease, Detect Evil (23), Lay on Hands, Protection from Evil (20), Remove Fear (20); High-Level Abilities: Death Blow, Greater Whirlwind Attack, Whirlwind Attack; Skills: None: Spells: Defensive Harmony, Free Action, Neutralize Poison, Cure Disease, Holy Smite, Zone of Sweet Air, Chant, Draw on Holy Might, Armor of Faith, Bless, Command; (Adv AI) (2)
Yasraena: CG Fighter//23 (HP 147), Full Plate +2 (Pride of the Legion), Wong Fei’s Ioun Stone, Belt of Inertial Barrier, & Boots of Speed w/ Short Sword +5 (Ironkiss), & Short Sword +5 (Fireflower) (Short Sword/Nija-to*****, Two-Weapon Style***, Warhammer**), w/ Gauntlet’s of Extraordinary Specialization, (Sword Sword*****, 2WS***) & Ring of Air Control; Abilities: None; High-Level Abilities: Death Blow, Greater Death Blow, Magic Resistance, Whirlwind Attack, Greater Whirlwind Attack; Skills: None: Spells: None; (Adv AI) (nil)
Keldorn: LG Paladin(Inquisitor)/18 (HP 137), Plate of Balduran, Helm of Charm Protection, Girdle of Stone Giant Strength, Ring of Regeneration, Cloak of the Shield, w/ Blessed Paladin’s Bracers, Horn of Valhalla & Boots of the North w/ Two-handed Sword +5 (Graham the Sword of Grief), Crossbow +4 (Firetooth), Flail +3 (Defender of Easthaven), (Crossbow**, Flail**, Long Sword**, Two-Handed Sword**, THWS**); Abilities:: Detect Evil (21), Protection from Evil (18), Dispel Magic (5), True Sight (5); High-Level Abilities: Whirlwind Attack; Skills: None; Spells: None; (Adv AI) (4)
Nalia: CG Mage/Thief//18/4 (HP 70), Necklace of Protection +1, Robe of the Good Arch-Magi,Dusty Rose Ioun Stone, Improved Cloak of Protection +2, Amulet of the Master Harper w/ Shortbow +3 (Tansheron’s Bow), Staff of the Magi; (Club*, Crossbow*, Dagger*, Dart*, Q/staff*, Short Bow*, Short Sword/Ninja-to* ); Abilities: Set Snare, Scribe Scrolls; Skills: OL 85, PP 40, FT 105, MS 55, HS 70, DI 10, ST 10 w/ Cloak of Elvenkind, Boots of Elvenkind; High Level Abilities: Extra 6th Level Spell; Skills: None; Spells: (w/ Ring of Acuity & Halruuan Component Pouch), Time Stop, Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting, Simulacrum, Khelban’s Warding Whip, Ruby Ray of Reversal, Spell Sequencer, Invisible Stalker, Chain Lightning, Invisible Stalker, Contingency, Summon Nishru, Animate Dead, Breach, Cloudkill, Cone of Cold, Lower Resistance, Monster Summoning III, Fire Shield (Blue), Fire Shield (Red), Greater Malison, Minor Sequencer, Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere, Secret Word, Stoneskin, Dispel Magic, Fireball, Flame Arrow, Haste, Lightning Bolt, Slow, Spell Thrust, Aganazzar’s Scorcher, Invisibility, Knock, Melf’s Acid Arrow, Mirror Image, Ray of Enfeeblement, Stinking Cloud, Web, Blindness, Chromatic Orb, Grease, Identify Magic Missile, Spook; (Adv AI) (nil)
Saerileth: LG Paladin (Cavalier of Tyr)/22 (HP 129), White Dragon Scale Armor, Large Shield +2, Cloak of the Shield, Amulet of Power, Saerileth’s Holy Symbol, Boots of Grounding & Girdle of Stone Giant Strength w/ Long Sword +3 (Blade of Roses) & Warhammer +2 (Hammer of Tyr), (Bastard Sword**, Flail*, Long Sword**, Mace/Morning Star**, Warhammer**, SSS**) w/ Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise; Abilities: Cure Disease, Detect Evil (25), Lay on Hands, Protection from Evil (22), Remove Fear (22); High-Level Abilities: Death Blow, Greater Death Blow, Greater Whirlwind Attack, Resist Magic, Whirlwind Attack; Skills: None; Spells: Cause Serious Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, Defensive Harmony, Zone of Sweet Air, Animate Dead, Chant, Draw on Holy Might, Hold Person, Armor of Faith, Bless, Command; (Adv AI) (3)
Having done some research into tieflings, I decided not to use Haer'Dalis is a starting point, but Sirene.
I therefore used rolled chatacters and gave then the same resistances as Sirene. That way, my characters are not overpowered.
Here are their statistics: [In real life Rhiainfelt and Oswiu were married]
And here are the resistance bonuses that I used as per Sirene.
Journal of Rhiainfelt
It is hardly surprising that the three of us bonded together so well since, apart from Imoen, we were the only good tiefling in Candlekeep and we all followed Helm. We got on well with Imoen, but her thieving tendencies meant that she wasn't quite as close to us though we all love her.
When we were attacked by assassins in Candlekeep, it came as quite a shock. We found however that the training that we had received was more than sufficient for the challenge despite their good equipment.
@Wise_Grimwald I use Plane Touched Races to make my Tieflings (and Aasamir). It's pretty good and pretty easy. You roll your PC as an Elf, then when you're done you have the option of making them one or the other.
Of course, you know me, I go back to an old D&D manual to fine-tune. CT
@Wise_Grimwald I use Plane Touched Races to make my Tieflings (and Aasamir). It's pretty good and pretty easy. You roll your PC as an Elf, then when you're done you have the option of making them one or the other.
Of course, you know me, I go back to an old D&D manual to fine-tune. CT
Presumably thay's what the author of Sirene did. I may install that in my next installation, though it isn't being supported any more. I used an installatioon program last time that doesn't allow adding other mods afterwards. A mistake. I used EE Keeper that works OK.
What I do find a problem is the lack of consensus regarding tiefling.
FinnJO's sub-race mod and the one that you recommend are totally different and Sirene is different yet again.
That is hardly surprising as the extent to which a character is affected will strongly depend on how many generations previously the infernal blood entered the character's genealogy.
With XP already so high, I didn't bother with anything in Brynnlaw apart from GWWing Perth to kill him before his buffs fired. His book of infinite spells listed a couple of boring options before sticking on Burning Hands and being discarded. I gave up some wisdom as the price to enter Spellhold, but was still wise enough not to make any mistakes there. Saying boo to a bunch of undead soon got me to level 30 and opening up an exit to level 31. A single GWW then proved too much for Irenicus and he ran away after Wanev's time stop ended.
After ending up in Fish City I agreed to help the king - then slaughtered him to get level 32. I also agreed to help the prince - before even-handedly slaughtering him as well.
Carsomyr took down a balor in the svirfneblin village before I headed for the Western Tunnels. Wearing the Cloak of Mirroring, spell damage was no longer an issue and melee damage was unlikely to be a problem. However, saving throws against spells remain a bit of a weakness for paladins and my standard save was only -1. The main things that won't fully protect against are chaos and the symbol spells. Symbol stun is particularly dangerous and I really should have taken more care against the drow there, but I just waded into battle without any buffs or summons - and died ...
@Grond0: Condolences. It was a very promising run. I find strong martial Charnames surprisingly difficult, as most encounters are easy until they're not.
@Grond0: Condolences. It was a very promising run. I find strong martial Charnames surprisingly difficult, as most encounters are easy until they're not.
They're generally my favorite, mainly because the lower amount of buffing typically required helps counteract my increasing laziness over the course of a run . I'm particularly fond of dwarves - most of them can just laugh at symbol spells at high levels ...
Comments
(the rest of the time, yes that was my fault...)
The lower levels of Durlag's Tower provided the next challenge for Promise and party. Level 1 was mostly about the dwarven warders because the other enemies were manageable with traditional means (stuns for the greater doppelgangers and the spiders, summons for the skeleton warriors, invisible blockers for the golems, and well, avoidance for the mustard jellies). The party retreated to the northeastern rooms, which only had one corridor leading there. This would prevent any nasty surprises from Avarice. Three hastened skeletons drew the attention of Love, Pride, and Fear. They managed to hack away quite a bit of health from Love before they fell. Promise destroyed fast-regenerating Fear and later Love with wand scorchers from behind invisible and fire-protected Aura and Baeloth.
Level 2 didn't offer the party such a hard fight. They ended up dealing with lots of greater doppelgangers, relying on the wand of paralyzation. It seemed that using said wand against the two doppelgangers that spawn in the torture room can cause some interesting behavior on the part of the Dops. If you don't kill them quick enough they shift form but since they're stunned, the stunned form stays in place and the new form spawns as a new doppelganger on top of it. This happened repeatedly with the second doppelganger. Here you can see one form slain and two forms still standing.
On level 3, the the wand of paralyzation was of great help against the hard-hitting greater wyverns and three three ashirukurus that landed some backstabs on Promise, thankfully the party member who - after Stoneskinned Baeloth - was best able to take a hit. Baeloth reached level 9 here and picked Spider Spawn as a second level 4 spell, a choice that should work well with the party's ample use of Webs. Hope I won't regret it. The challenges didn't cause the party much trouble. The phoenix guard and the air aspect were stunned, and the fission slime wand-scorchered. Kaldran and the winter wolves were taken on initially by Promise who was wearing Gorion's bealt. She took out the winter wolves, and then stunned Kaldran. Everyone pre-buffed for the chess board. Invulnerability for the warriors, Spirit Armor for Baeloth, defense for Aura, giant strength for Promise and Sirene; PfE, absorption, speed, and free action for everyone. Kaldran was finished off and on the chess board Baeloth and, reading a scroll, Promise immediately cast Webs in front of them. Promise and Sirene then rushed forward to attack the held King and to make sure any other pieces would remain in the Webbed area. Baeloth added several more Webs, and Promise stunned the King with her wand.
The party returned to Baldur's Gate, where they saved Duke Eltan by taking him away from the Flaming Fist compound under invisibility (good for Sirene, Emily and Kivan's final level-ups). They also slew two stone golems (invisible blockers) and scared Cythandria off (summons).
Slythe wasted his invisibility potions on skeleton warriors before he was taken down from behind invisible Sirene and Aura. Krystin, who had stayed behind, was revealed by detection magic and held by Webs once her protections had run out.
Aura summoned three skeletons and Baeloth some spiders before confronting Sarevok. Ithtyl Hasted the summons, charmed aides, and some blue-circled Flaming Fist fighters. Most of the summons and Promise and Kivan (arrows of dispelling) went after the Doppelganger Mage, who was one of the first to fall. Baeloth cast Greater Malison (from scroll) and Slow on the other Dops. The Shaman turned Sirene, so Aura had to cast Remove Fear on her. (First time I had a paladin turned by an enemy divine caster.) Nantrin went hostile at one point and was thankfully slain by a Flaming Fist guard and not by one of the party's phase spiders' poisons, but other than that the battle pretty much proceeded on auto-pilot. The Shaman cast Doom and Curse on Promise, and Aura took some magic damage early on from the Mage, but the companions, the Dukes, and all the guards were in pretty good health when the last of the Dops fell.
All in all a pretty seamless run through BG1 in an SCS/LoB context, thanks very much to hold and stun. We did use invisible blockers a couple of times, particularly with some of Aura's assassins, with the dwarven warders in Durlag's Tower, and against Slythe. Am not fond of that tactic but after numerous rather short-lived adventures I've had of late, I wanted to play it somewhat safely. There have been no NPC deaths this run so that suggests that we have been quite successful in staying safe.
Happy holidays everyone!
I decided to give myself a Christmas treat by generating a new class for this challenge. That was randomly chosen and came out with an undead hunter - which, funnily enough, I'm currently playing in the Trio. Twenty minutes or so of rolling later and I had a paladin with maximum physical characteristics, but who was not also a total dur-brain.
After recently failing a bit unluckily against Melissan with a kensai attempt, it would be nice to go one better this time. Hence there was a no risk strategy early on as levels were racked up. Shoal was shot down for the first two.
After purchasing a few +1 bolts, the golems at High Hedge were just walking targets and provided another level before I bought the final container from Thalantyr.
At the basilisk area, following Korax round as he paralyzed the wee beasties soon pushed me on to level 6.
Mutamin has virtually no chance against Korax - and performed as expected this time. Baerin was then charmed and led away from Kirian's group to his doom. Korax would now have had a small chance of success against the rest, but I decided once more to play safe. After shooting Korax I rested and then charmed Peter. His spells were wasted and he was then killed - and Lindin soon followed in the same sort of fashion. For Kirian, I charmed Shar-Teel and sent her in first - as she is unkillable by damage prior to her fight with the PC, Kirian has no way to kill her in the unmodded game.
At the Lake area I activated a single gnoll to attack Drizzt. I wasn't desperate for his XP so just let the combat run in the background, without monitoring whether the gnoll broke a weapon, while I did other things. That meant the chances were the gnoll would actually kill him - and it did. However, I was then free to pick up a couple of nice swords.
In Nashkel I picked up the ankheg armor and learnt Bhaal CLW. I also bought the Necklace of Missiles and scroll of PfP at the Carnival. The former made short work of a couple of battle horrors at Durlag's Tower (although as the battle horrors needed a critical to hit, meleeing them was actually easy enough anyway) and the latter allowed the basilisks on the roof to be dealt with, to bring up level 7.
Heading north for the first time, an ogre provided a belt of piercing and a ring of protection. Tarnesh failed to cast a spell when attacked by a charmed guard. Only the final ankheg in their nest managed to inflict any damage on me on the way to Ulgoth's Beard.
With reputation back down to 7, I decided it was time to go to the Nashkel Mine. After carving a way through the kobolds, I rested in Mulahey's cave to heal a bit of damage before showing myself to him. Rather than letting him talk though I ran him round the little pond while shooting him down.
Back in Nashkel, rather than muck about dodging Nimbul's horror, I retreated after activating him and left him to the guards. Moving on to Beregost a few spiders were dealt with on the way to find Tranzig. A first shot at him was a critical that sent him running and he didn't get far.
At the Bandit Camp a melee contest with Taurgosz looked even for quite a while, but 3 blows in quick succession then finished him off.
Seeing I was nearly at the level cap, rather than use free action to run past the ettercaps in the second Cloakwood map I enticed them out one at a time.
Undead Hunter L8, 96 HPs, 206 kills
Previous updates:
At the Cloakwood mine, Genthore was charmed and drawn away for disposal. Kysus was then charmed and his fireball was too much for Rezdan.
Only trap damage was taken while fighting through the mine and dealing with the battle horrors near Davaeorn.
A few minutes doing the rounds of reputation quests left unfinished previously maximised that.
The Greenstone Amulet was used to get the tome from Durlag's Tower. A basilisk ambushed me on the way there, but by that time I'd already bought a potion of mirror eyes, so was able to just run away without taking any risk. As I'd been at the XP cap for a while now, I didn't bother with a lot of the work in the City, but did pick up the 3 Necklaces of Missiles (from Shandalar's daughters,
At the Iron Throne I didn't bother with using any buffs, but just stair-hopped to avoid spells and isolate opponents.
After resting to get a second DUHM, I returned to the City to find Slythe. Just for fun I tried out Bor's darts of stunning on him and the 4th one thrown brought him to a grinding halt.
At the Palace I decided to give the dopplegangers a chance by not using charm. I buffed with strength and speed before activating the fight. A first horror failed to affect anything, but one of the dopplegangers was then struck down before a second horror sent 2 more running.
After a final few purchases, the inhabitants of the maze were chopped up - with the help of using one of the 7 scrolls of undead protection I'd picked up. In the Undercity 4 more skeleton warriors waited to be cut down before I used fireballs on the party there. The main aim was never to let Rahvin into sight for long enough to allow him to fire one of his 2 exploding arrows - and that was successfully done.
After resting up I entered the temple. Angelo has another 8 exploding arrows and I made sure they would stay intact by bombarding him with lightning bolts from the repeating trap.
I carried 424k XP through into SoD, so was immediately able to take level 9 there and complete my knowledge of dual wielding.
Undead Hunter L9, 115 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 375 kills
Introducing Jehu and Moira, a Shaman and Wizard Slayer respectively. The goal is, of course, the Fire Seed interaction for spell disruption through PfMW and Lich immunities. But I have to get through BG1 and SoD before then.
After buying the green Protection from Petrification and completing a few reputation quests/donations, we head to Mutamin's garden. We recruit Korax, sweeping south before heading north and confronting the illegal gnome himself. Unfortunately, the southern Basilisks' experience, split between two people, is only enough to get Moira to level 4, and she's put to sleep. I send Jehu after them to try to help Korax against Mutamin, and Mutamin hits him with a Charm Person sequencer. Fortunately, Korax finally managed to paralyze him, and Moira and Korax finish the last two Basilisks in the area.
Time to backtrack! I want Imoen dualed to a mage as the 3rd member of this crew, and she duals immediately on joining: she's given enough experience to get to level 6 Thief, but for now she's a level 1 Mage with a lot of hitpoints and a stupidly given Dagger proficiency. Oh well. Tarnesh doesn't get afflicted by spell failure so much as an arrow to the throat. Also, Moira's portrait is from here on different: on a save and reload, her portrait is just grey.
For more experience, we get a wand of Sleep from Thalantyr, and head to the Ankhegs. After a stop at Ulgoth's Beard, we head back to the coastal area where Shoal is located to clean off the Ogre berserkers and the 3 Sirenes there. It's not exactly safe yet, and Moira had to drink a few antidotes while eating the 15 arrows of biting, but Jehu is level 6, and has access to Call Lightning now. This means we can also take out the Battle Horrors and potentially the basilisks on the roof of Durlag's tower for a tasty 35k experience or so total, which we do. There's no more easy concentrated experience points until the lighthouse now, but I want the boots of missile protection first. It's finally time to start the main quest.
Sleep and Mastery in Longbows (Moira) is easy money against Kobolds, and Jehu summons 3 spirit animals inside Mulahey's sanctuary. In the valley of the dead, we ignore the Revenant sidequest and opt to fight Narcillus instead. His jellies fail to protect him meaningfully, and Writhing Fog and possibly a fireball or two is enough to sort him out. The jellies themselves take significantly longer, poisoning and slowing Moira at least twice before we take him down. A potion of freedom on Jehu allows him to act as bait vs some Ghasts to get the wand of monster summoning which... I think we used once total. Oh well. One final trip south gets us a scroll of Protection from Magic from Hafiz and a ring of fire resistance.
Anyhow, after reporting to the mayor, Nimbul is not as nimble as he hoped and donates a pair of boots to us.
The Sirenes now need a critical hit to hit Moira, even without the cloak of displacement or elves' bane if I recall correctly. We clean them out without any real threat to ourselves, and though we mess up our kiting once or twice against the flesh golems, it's never for lethal damage. Moira gets 20 CON and thus regeneration from the tome.
Tranzig is quickly killed for the bandit camp location, and we approach it from the Ankheg area. Moira recently hit level 7 from turning in Tenya's bowl, so has 3 APR with his longbow. Imoen still has her scroll of Cloudkill from the area west of the Nashkel mines: Writhing Fog, charges of the Wand of Fire, two Webs and apparently one cast of Spike Growth are enough to finish off the camp.
After selling off our loot, we enter Cloakwood. We side with Aldeth, and interrupt enough of the druids' spells with another Writhing Fog. An Insect Plague is dodged by running into the lodge, and the entire thing disappears. In the Spider area, getting Spider's Bane for Moira is pretty important, so Imoen casts Invisibility on Jehu who then triggers all the traps before grabbing the sword and popping a potion of Invisibility on the way out. Jehu drinks a potion of Freedom as well before they continue to slaughter all the spiders there. It was a bit touch and go vs the Phase spiders, with Imoen getting poisoned and almost dying twice, but no casualties. Imoen's now very close to level 7 and regaining her thief skills: some Wyverns provide the final bits of experience necessary.
Her thief points are put into Find Traps, Open Locks, and Pickpocket. It's high enough to get the Ring of Free Action from Dushai, so we head back to Ulgoth's Beard for it. On the way, we get ambushed by the Amazons: a Wand of Fire charge into Moira does enough to almost end the fight immediately, and the two backstabbers fail to kill Imoen instantly.
After pickpocketing a ring, we get ambushed again. Without protective items and only 17 Dex for being a dwarf, Moira is a really, really unsafe front-line for too long. Fortunately, it's long enough for Call Lightning and a wand of fire in Scorcher mode to take out their spellcaster, and then kiting is possible again.
Drasus and company: Same old same old, Webs, Fire, and random AoE spells from Jehu.
Yeslick is recruited as the final member of the 4-man squad: I need a fighter that can actually drink potions for the final battle. And he can be a generally good tank anyways, with the gloves of DEX saved specifically for him. Moira takes the Davaeorn battle, though, with a Protection from Magic scroll and Acid Arrows.
Baldur's Gate is a bit messy: a missed dialogue option means I clear the Seven Suns before being officially hired and... I guess Jhasso is just going to stay in that basement because he doesn't believe us? And Scar's fine with this? Whatever. We clear a basilisk, get poisoned, fight an Ogre mage and his crawlers, kill a lecherous mage, take a wrong dialogue option and don't fight two other mages in the Low Lantern, win a brawl fight, slaughter the temple of Umberlee, get un-poisoned, and kill like 20 doppelgangers for Aldeth. Finally, the Iron Throne fight (which we started before getting hired again. Fortunately, no consequences for this apparently.)
Jehu starts the fight taking farrrrr too much damage to friendly fire (Potion of explosions, wand of fire, his own Spirit Fire) in the top floor. We retreat and try to pull one by one, but we're forced to retreat to the 3rd floor and gets that floor hostile as well... Imoen almost dies yet again while the other three hold the 2nd floor from the top. Jehu stops the remaining thief by Detect Illusions, and Alai (the only one we actually care about...) finally dies. We have a second Ring of Free Action, which I only care about because of the Gargantuan Spiders in SoD. Bleurgh.
Ogre Mages are handled by a Silence Yeslick targets on himself, and then shot down. Imoen has two castings of Knock memorized for the tombs, and Moira is given 19 STR since she can't wear belts to achieve that in BG2. More AoE spells from long range kill Pratt and his crew except for one, who hides with the spiders.
Back in Baldur's Gate, I wanted the Full Plate +1, but forgot to talk to Tamoko outside the Flaming Fist. Whoops. Imoen and Jehu remain invisible during the Slythe fight, and we take down two Golems and a mage in the Iron Throne quarters: Yeslick is almost killed by the golems. The Ducal Palace is... significantly easier on Tactical on SCS: no mages and shamans, and Liia actually casts good spells including Mantle. There's no way she falls, and Hasted summons makes sure no one else dies either.
Penultimate fight: after carpet bombing the Undercity Party (again), we encounter 4 (!!!) Skeleton Warriors in the same area which gets both Yeslick and Moira into red health. A lot and a lot of kiting and swapping aggro happens, but somehow neither of them died.
Final fight: Yeslick is given all the necessary potions and scrolls (Pro. from magic, a potion of Mind Focusing so he can even read the scroll, Regeneration, Oil of Speed, Cloud Giant Strength, Invulnerability) and the Cloak of Displacement and Elves' bane. With a Sling and the Shield of the Falling Stars, Diarmid needs a critical hit to touch him. Even so, I mess up at the very beginning of the fight: I try to have Imoen detect their invisible people with a spell, but it's a version that targets an area rather than self, and so breaks invisibility... She survived maybe 3 seconds after that, boxed into a corner. Yeslick defeats Diarmid and the skeleton warrior, and Jehu breaks invisibility by self-talking to convince Semaj to emerge before drinking an invisibility potion again. Now even if Semaj goes invisible again, Jehu can Detect Illusions per the Shaman innate ability to find him: it doesn't work on units that are invisible by non-spell means, and they're not under a spell at the beginning of the fight. Semaj is also shot down, though the oil of speed has to be restored.
Angelo doesn't come out for a bit until Jehu summons a Nymph as a sacrifice: Yeslick is in the top left while Jehu is safe in the bottom right. Jehu goes invisible again immediately afterwards. Angelo is kited and killed, and now it's only Tazok and Sarevok left. Moira finally breaks stealth to fire a dispelling arrow, and Tazok finally comes out to play. A bit more kiting, and Tazok and his skeleton finally fall, and Sarevok soon follows.
I've started SoD, but not really gotten far enough to make an update: we've defeated Korlasz by invisibly travelling to him and Spirit Firing her into submission, and gotten out of the palace and killed some vampire hunters for some further regeneration. Dynaheir for some reason doesn't have Cloudkill known, so I'm going to have to modify my approach to the wilderness fights slightly.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111033/#Comment_1111033
In the SoD prologue dungeon, Porios was intimidated into surrendering.
In the City, stripping the bodies of a few NPCs and selling the items brought from BGEE in bags raised about 90k. The only quests done were picking up the Spectacles of Spectacle and the Battle Tankard.
After exiting the City I tend to go to the Coast Way Forest to get the regeneration ioun stone. However, with full plate equipped I thought there would be limited need for regeneration and potions would be more than sufficient for occasional use, so I just went straight to the bridge. If you're quick enough there, you can get out of sight behind the tent before anyone focuses on you and avoid any combat at all - and that's what I did.
Leaving all the other encounters in the area I travelled to the Troll Claw Woods - and ran straight through that without even bothering to fight the attacking enemies. At the Forest of Wyrms I used invisibility to bypass various enemies on the way to the temple. The bugbear shaman in the caves leading in will try and detect that, but if you don't hesitate it's easy to bypass him before the spell casts.
Even without invisibility you can open the door to Ziatar's room without getting into sight of him - and a stream of necklace fireballs didn't take long to deal with him.
Invisible once more, I ran back past the bugbears to Morentherene's cave and watched in awe as the first non-proficient dagger thrown at her struck a vital spot.
On arrival I checked in with Kharm before going to find Vichand. It saves a bit of time to kill him at this stage, but you need to be wary as if you don't kill him quickly the whole camp will go hostile. A couple of quick hits were followed by a potion of firebreath to take him to near death. His buffs fired at that stage, but the second hit from the potion didn't care about those ...
After getting a dragon shield forged, I helped Wynan Hess re-establish the magical defenses.
On the way to the Coalition Camp I found a gathering of orcs and trolls. I'd hung on to a ring of infravision, so was able to find my way down to pick up the Firefly sling. At the Camp I used the Spectacles to summon Nazramu and sold loot to him at high prices as well as buying a couple of nice items.
After checking in with the Camp leaders I accepted some Bwoosh and the poison of terror before heading out again. There was nothing to interest me in Dead Man's Pass (or indeed the yawning pit in the ambush area encountered on the way there), so I just ran past 4 groups of enemies on the way to Dragonspear Castle. I saved Skie there before bouncing on to the Underground River map.
A dart of stunning incapacitated the cyclops and that was cut down before the mages teleported in - allowing me to run on into the underground entrance (where the enemies outside don't follow).
I poisoned the food and water invisibly before showing myself to make the lift available again.
Back at Dragonspear, a PfM scroll provided protection before going to find Ashatiel and initiate a brief single combat to demonstrate once more that she can indeed be defeated.
After resting up I used fire, lightning and poison protection along with some potions and activated the lift. None of the enemies on that managed a hit and I added in 5 scrolls of champion's strength and a magic shielding potion before the lift reached its destination.
I remembered to take the pantaloons out of the bag of holding in the epilogue, so that those are transferred to BG2. I had just enough XP to level up immediately on importing the character to Jon's dungeon.
Undead Hunter L10, 113 HPs, 0 kills (+565 in BGEE/SoD)
Journal of Oswald and the Helmites.
Last entry
Most of the time we used command to make the fights against the ankheg trivial. However when we ran out of command spells, we switched to others which led to injuries that had to be healed.
After killing all the ankheg that we could find we came across a paladin who has the same ethos that we have and so we invited him to join up with us. This caused a shortage of decent armour, but Watcher offered Ajantis his armour, saying that until we found something better, he would stay to the rear during conflict and use his crossbow even if he isn't very skilled with it.
We then headed south of Beregost where we killed a pair of ogrillon and some overly officious Flaming Fist Mercenaries. This solved our armour problem.
Vax and Zal followed by Caldo and Krumm fell to our blades next.
Nereids and Water Weirds brought the game to an end near Sil. I was totally outfought. However, I replayed the battle and found a weakness so they won't be so formidable next time.
The Underground River caverns sees Blaggerd upset a drow party who are looking for a pair of runaways. For a few moments it looks as though Blaggerd will get away with it but then Rasaad is caught flat-footed and we are down to five as he slumps to the ground.
Once we have mastered the drow it is simply a case of leaving for a temple. Only, someone upsets the Crusaders who were negotiating with the drow and we are straight into a second combat.
Unless you've forgotten to talk to Phossey. In which case you don't have any poison. Still, it's only a few minutes travel time so we head back.
Glint dies on the way though when we decide to make an unscheduled rest. Everybody scowls at Blaggerd as a second death in the session is most unwelcome. Blaggerd tries a short-cut to see if some healing can be provided in the Bloodbark grove - it can not.
On our return to camp we are informed that there is a parley taking place elsewhere. That means de Lancie is nowhere to be found and Phossey plays dumb so we can't get the poison, or the barrel of bwoosh. Still, at least Glint can be raised from the dead (and we purchase 5 raise dead scrolls because we like to be prepared after the event).
We return to the Underground river cavern anyway and deal with the Dark Magicians, meaning only the barrel / poison items are left undone. Blaggerd is a bit miffed as shoving acorns in trees, killing myconids, blind albino wyrmlings and so on isn't quite the same. All done anyway.
Time to head to the parley and make sure it fails. That's easily done, and then the camp has to be defended against enemies. The first raiders are trolls and ogres - against which Blaggerd decides the archers with their fire arrows will be helpful. He uses one poisoned arrow of detonation before switching to melee and routing the raiders.
There are two more raids, seeing us send in the assassins against a mercenary unit and wizard slayers against the mages. All goes well and Blaggerd thinks he will have to choose between two remaining groups (the fighters and the Dumathoin dwarves) to help fend off a final group of attackers.
No need for that, he is told. Just go sort the attackers out. At one point he thinks he spots a dwarf in the thick of it so maybe both groups are helping. The attacking casters are targeted first and fail to wreak much damage, leaving us free to kill off the enemy leader once he drops from Sanctuary.
With the camp secured we move on to Dragonspear Castle and have to help Phossey blow a hole in the wall because somebody didn't use the barrel of bwoosh :whistles:. Once inside we release some captive trolls and just as we are about to continue our attack the trolls cause the defenders to fire their catapult and destroy their main entrance defences. Dynaheir has cast Cloudkill so rather than try to fight through it we sit back for a few rounds and make sure we are fully healed.
When the cloud clears we surge through and mop up remnants of defenders. Glint stops to check for traps at one point and deals with several before Ashatiel teleports in to demand one-on-one combat. Blaggerd has been expecting this and accepts.
Blaggerd uses a greenstone amulet charge but Ashatiel retreats into a Sanctuary so Blaggerd uses a potion of clarity as additional precaution. He also gulps some healing potions and a short while after combat resumes Ashatiel uses a second Sanctuary. Once that wears off Blaggerd hacks away and two sets of mirror images for Ashatiel prove to be insufficient. We have the courtyard.
To the north we find some prisoners and after killing their guards we set them free. Then we head onto the castle roof and find a way inside. The ghost of Daros Dragonspear is freed and we bag his armour before confronting Caelar at the glowing portal. This looks dodgy.
Hephernaan reveals his true nature and uses the portal, closely followed by Caelar and some of her Crusaders. We follow them and immediately have a troubled battle with a welcoming party. Once we cut down their teleporting summoner bowcaster, the rest of that combat is simple and we run up some steps and across a bridge.
Three Abishai are among a group waiting for us, and they take a minute or so to deal with. Beyond them we see Caelar move on but our progress is blocked by Thrixx. We ignore his summoned help and attack him but Minsc is too slow to activate his greenstone amulet so we have to try and avoid him while dealing with the others.
Blaggerd goes for Thrixx while the rest of the party shut down any further attempts at domination. Blaggerd has to gulp two or three potions before Thrixx drops, and then we clear up the remaining minions and wait for Minsc to come back to his senses - three sets of armour and 60+ potions slow him down but are not quite enough to stop him crawling after us.
We potion-buff like crazy while going up the hellevator, working on the assumption that immunity to fire, poison and lightning will go nicely with potions of clarity, strength and freedom.
At the top of the tower we find Hephernaan is with Belhifet, and convince Caelar to side with us. Hephernaan lasts a round and then we switch to Belhifet. He does surprisingly well for several rounds and we start to consume a few blue healing potions. Then the combat log reminds Blaggerd that we require +3 weapons to injure Belhifet.
Blaggerd already has Drizzt's +3 scimitar equipped so that was his excuse for not noticing his party were observers.
Minsc swaps to a couple of non-proficient maces.
Glint has the unnatural club but isn't sure if +3 against unnatural beings is effective against big B.
Rasaad swaps to the Fractal blade, again non-proficient.
Dynaheir and Neera have nothing of use so focus on kiting summons away or standing idly by.
Rasaad isn't helping Blaggerd much, but Minsc suddenly gets into gear and whackety whack B is dead.
(the undead hunter also with fire, lightning and poison immunities. Bad day for big B )
I looked up stats on Google and discovered that they should have +1 Intelligence and +2 Charisma and that there were various spells that they should also have.
I would have thought that there should be some drawbacks. Can anyone enlighten me?
I don't know how to give the innate spells that they should have for being Tiefling.
If anyone has any information to help me get it right before I start, I would be grateful.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111033/#Comment_1111033
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111103/#Comment_1111103
In Jon's dungeon I think the biggest danger is the steam mephit in the elemental plane (though that can just be avoided of course). If that stuns you and the other mephits all attack together then HPs disappear very rapidly. Horror doesn't work well in BG2 and doesn't prevent opponents attacking, but it can still be useful to drag the steam mephit away from the others by itself - meaning even being stunned will only be an inconvenience. In this case though I saved against the stun anyway.
Normally I don't buy anything significant until reputation is up to 20, but I decided to make things easier early on this time by buying the ring of air control.
After restoring the circus, I reported in to Gaelan Bayle and killed some beasts before transferring the Copper Coronet to new management - getting to level 11 as a reward.
I set out for Watcher's Keep to get the potion case, but found an ambush on the way. However, Suna Seni's crew were horrified to see what they were attacking and failed to get a hit in.
Back in Athkatla, a trip to the Docks provided some improved armor, courtesy of Officer Dirth.
Returning to the Copper Coronet I dived into the sewers and quickly moved through that to recover Carsomyr. Captain Haegan and his guards were pulled back into the sewers a few at a time for easy disposal, while sanctuary made resting there to heal any damage easy. The slaver mages were then no better than Prebek at dealing with improved invisibility.
That little outing had garnered a couple of reputation points and I went in search of more at the Bridge District. Typically in the skinner hideout I drag the assassins upstairs to backstab a summons, but I didn't have any of those yet. However, I thought my combat ability would still be too much for them. Was that a good decision? Well, surprisingly, it appeared to be.
Next up I took on the Fallen Paladins. They are decent fighters in straight melee, but their slow weapon speed makes them helpless against hit and run attacks. Anarg is rather quicker and was worn down with arrows a bit before being finished off.
With reputation up to 17, I moved on to Trademeet in search of the remaining 3. The action started with the destruction of some genies beaten up in melee (a summoned efreeti should really have helped out there, but I summoned it too quickly and it was hit by petrification when I was already buffed to have a negative saving throw). The genie Khan there really needs to learn that granting someone a death wish can be taken more than one way ...
At the Grove the trolls were chopped up one by one without trouble. The druids were stuck in an efreeti stinking cloud and didn't manage much resistance.
With reputation now up at 20 I did the Sir Sarles quest, with Arbane haste helping to cut down Neb before he could even go invisible.
The Graveyard looked like a good place for an undead hunter to rebuild his fortune and I immediately picked up another level by saving Nevin.
Among the other things purchased were Vhailor's Helm and scrolls of PfM and those were soon used to negate the maze trap to obtain the berserk warrior.
Undead Hunter L15, 143 HPs (incl, 5 from helm; 10 from bracers), 455 kills (+565 in BGEE/SoD)
Blaggerd moves on to SoA from here
Imoen arrives to unlock the cage and Blaggerd is so keen to see her that he disables both their AI scripts and welcomes her into the party. What party thinks Imoen, there is just the two of us. A minute or two later both Jaheira and Minsc have been recruited and their AI scripts disabled.
The four adventurers are able to deal with anything the first level of the dungeon can throw at them, and manage to equip themselves from stray items or the odd piece of loot. Blaggerd picks up a couple of magical longswords from one table and finds himself longing for a scimitar or bastard sword instead. He backpacks them both and continues with the non-magical bastard sword dropped by an early enemy.
Jaheira is using a +1 quarterstaff so gets to bash the jailkeep golem apart, while Minsc has a two handed sword and mace to hand. A quick visit to another plane sees an upgrade to the Sword of Chaos for him and Blaggerd picks up a +1 bastard sword from somewhere - the trapped cambion presumably.
Yoshimo is waiting for us as we arrive at the second level of the dungeon. Blaggerd is pleased to hear that this thief is feared by all and can be a fifth pair of hands to haul goods out of the dungeon. Four nearby mephit portals have recharged from a previous adventurer and do their worst. Three of the party fail their saves against a Radiant Mephit but Blaggerd saves and Imoen was out of range - so the portals are shut down safely.
Blaggerd looks at his party and knows things must change. Even before visiting the nearby circus he gets Gaelan Bayle out of the way and bumps into Neera. She asks him to join her at a faraway location and he agrees. After recruiting her he decides not to progress her quest in the hope she won't whine about that, and continues on to Trademeet. All that is done there is say hello to the mayor and observe fisticuffs near the fountain, so he can recruit Rasaad.
The party is now six in number, and Blaggerd needs to free up one slot. Minsc would normally be the person to go but Blaggerd has plans for him and instead Jaheira is booted leaving the party as below:
1 Blaggerd. Sword & board / longbow
2 Minsc. 2 Handed sword / longbow
3 Rasaad. Fists / darts
4 Yoshimo. Shortbow / katana
5 Neera. Sling / spells
Slot 6 will have to remain empty for now until a suitable candidate can be found, or Blaggerd dies trying to find him.
A return to the city sees a few doors opened and a suit of armour taken from the ever-giving Officer Dirth. Renal Bloodscalp and Mae'Var's quest is started and a visit made into the Temple District sewers. Blaggerd looks at his gang and suspects they are not up to Tarnor the Hatchetman. Oh yes they are. This won't be too painful.
Screenshots below but a brief summary is
- Yoshimo only manages to set two special snares
- Only one enemy is affected by the snares
- Gaius survives the initial focus on casters
- Gaius casts Disintegrate at Minsc
- We have nothing to help Minsc, but he saves anyway
- Rasaad is stunned so the party have to stand their ground
- The party retreats once Rasaad recovers as the pressure is getting too much
- A green slime joins in the attack
- A defence near the exit becomes too problematic so Blaggerd reluctantly retreats
- GallchobHair and the slime follow us outside
- The prophet outside and mother + child become hostile
- We kill Gallchobhair and descend again
- The prophet follows us and holds Minsc
- We shut our eyes against reputation and kill the prophet
- With the nearby enemies dead we return to Gaius and Tarnor
Blaggerd was right then, his party weren't really up to dealing with Hatchetmen. Maybe they should just stick with kobolds and the odd rakshasa. Perhaps try not to get three of you held with kobolds around - Neera clearing them out with a fireball.
Previous updates:
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I accepted the Unseeing Eye quest in order to get access to the lich and also pre-prepared by opening doors to the other liches. As I needed to go into a nearby house to cast improved invisibility and negate the petrification trap, I did the quest to get the silver pantaloons there - also picking up some Boots of Avoidance, though the reflection shield is normally better than that for characters that can use that.
With preparations complete I returned to the Temple sewers and used a PfU scroll before killing the Shade Lich. The Elemental Lich and the City Gates lich were just as helpless. Kangaxx's initial lich shape sometimes plays a nasty trick by not completing its transformation properly - rendering it unkillable and meaning you can't get the Ring of Gaxx. As that's not a game-ending bug I just roll with it on the odd occasion it occurs, but it does make the game significantly harder, so it's always a bit of a relief when the transformation works properly.
I handed in Neb's head to get back one of the points of reputation lost in obtaining the pantaloons and decided to get the other from the Unseeing Eye quest. I'd already got the Shield of Balduran, so the beholders were in theory no obstacle - though I did need to remember to buff against a couple of potentially lethal traps on the way to get the first part of the Rift Device. I multi-tasked there by letting the beholders gently kill themselves while destroying the nearby undead using turn undead. Somewhere during that encounter I also hit level 16.
The undead in the pit were led by a lich, which was a bit more of a potential challenge (I tend to only use PfU scrolls in the lead up to Kangaxx). However, with 2 skeletons and 3 other summons available, I was able to draw out the lich's more dangerous spells before shooting it down.
The main items not bought previously were potions and I returned to the Druid Grove to get the pick of Adratha's stocks - before ensuring she wouldn't be selling to anyone else.
Once more penniless, I decided the de-Arnise Hold would be a good place to earn some more cash. It didn't take long there to get another level - providing me with a first HLA.
The proceeds from that expedition funded a last lot of potions from Mrs Cragmoon, with enough left over to pay Gaelan Bayle. The +2 ring from Aran Linvail took base saving throws down to -1, so there was no need to worry about buffing or charm immunities against Lassal. The Guild Contact at the Five Flagons carries a couple of potions of invulnerability and will start drinking if the fight goes on too long - he finds that difficult to do when stuck in a web of course and that encounter took me to level 19.
The basic vampires in their Graveyard HQ were no longer any threat. Tanova managed to save against an invisible attack with the MoD, but follow-up summons provided a distraction while she was being shot - though she managed to turn into bat shape just before I could finish her off.
There were still a fair number of things to do before setting sail though. The first of those was finishing Mae'Var's tasks. I'd been hesitant early on to take on Rayic Gethras as his Power Words cast so fast that dodging them can be a problem. However, he was no longer a real threat and Gaxx haste allowed him to be punched unconscious before he could finish casting any spells.
Undead Hunter L20, 158 HPs (incl, 5 from helm; 10 from bracers), 706 kills (+565 in BGEE/SoD)
Here is what I ended up with.
The party has survived Candlekeep including the upgraded assassins.
Journal of Tigra the Tiefling Knight of the Eternal Order and his Tiefling Friends (The Tiefling Trio)
As we raised in Candlekeep I and my Tiefling friends discovered that very few of the people there really trusted us. We, as a result are reluctant to trust others, though we did make some excellent friends, Imoen and Hull for instance. We have killed all the assassins in Candlekeep, but I can see that we will soon have to leave since we are obviously being targetted.
Sink - undead hunter (Grond0)
Corethief XVI - berserker (Corey_Russell)
Tonic - skald (Gate70)
Previous updates:
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https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1110620/#Comment_1110620
We'd done most of the work in the City last time, but a few odd jobs remained. Sunin failed to complete a spell under a general assault.
At the Iron Throne, Corethief used a PfM scroll and a few potions were sufficient to keep him going while the enemies fell one by one.
Back at Candlekeep, Corethief used free action and a PfP poison to assault the phase spiders. Tonic briefly flirted with danger in a web trap and Sink had to kite a spider that teleported to him, but all was well - though Corethief had his hair well and truly singed by a couple of traps guarding the strength tome.
Moving into the next area, Corethief once more used a PfM scroll, expecting that to make an assault on Prat's gang easy. However, he immediately came under severe pressure as Tam's acid arrows slammed home. It looked like Tonic might have saved the day as a web descended and briefly put all the opposition out of action.
Introduction
I'm starting to believe more and more that the success in SoD is tied to how many items you managed to acquire in BG1. I guess the same thing can be said about ToB and SoA, so that's fair. But I can't imagine doing this without having extra wands of fire, Rings of Free Action, Spider's Bane, Magic Shielding potions, every single arrow of detonation I could buy... Anyhow.
We have Minsc, Dynaheir, Glint to start the first area. We don't do too much here: we return a few items for the +2 returning dart, fight some trolls for a fire sling, save a few people from petrification for... no reason, and start the bridge battle. Only half of them even survive the opening salvo of fireballs, potions of explosions, and Spirit Fires, and we don't manage to kill the others before the parley. They don't have any items I care about anyways.
In the next chapter, after fighting off a few spiders and trolls, we recruit Voghlin for a potential Enchanted Weapon caster for Belhifet. Also, I'm still really partial to Skald bonuses even without Rogue Rebalancing. On the other hand, Voghlin has a personality of a tankard of beer. That's... all he cares about. Whatever. Anyways, we head for the Bhaal temple area, and clear the Wyverns and a few spiders. Glint dies to a Web Tangle -> Sword Spider combination, and Jehu uses his one Raise Dead scroll purchased specifically for this. And for all of this I have a screenshot of... beetles.
6 Protection from Poison scrolls, Resist Fear, and Haste are all cast on our party, and Morenthene is a piece of cake. I think that final spell is Chant from Glint?
Minsc is originally protected with a Potion of Clarity, thinking it'd block anything the Neothelid could throw. They don't block Stun, and the Neothelid can stun. Minsc ends up being our second casualty, though we kill the psychic behemoth soon after.
A quick return to the camp for Raise Dead gets us back into the slog of the temple. Minsc almost dies again against the initial strikes from the Aerial Servants before they're tanked by the Spirit Animals, and Akanna isn't long for the world.
And I brilliantly decide to fight the Shadow Aspect without resting, though I'm frankly not sure how much it'd have helped. The innate Invisibilities and his x5 backstab multiplier along with his basically infinite STR drain, 99% Fire resistance, very good AC, randomly innate Improved Invisibility make fighting this thing an absolute nightmare. It's like Slythe turned up to 300%, and he's already been able to end several of my runs. Minsc is forced out from melee really quickly, and I sub in Moira: she's soon STR drained too much to move, and she's backstabbed to death. Voghlin is also sacrificed trying to scramble together something resembling an offence, and the Shadow Aspect locks on to Dynaheir. She doesn't have a melee weapon equipped, but that backstab would've hit for 102 regardless if my math is correct. That's a chunk.
Minsc is about to die to another backstab when Jehu rolls a 19 and manages to kill the bloody thing. I think I'm skipping this fight in future runs unless I have a ton of summons and an Archer.
After Raises, we recruit Jaheira and with SCS give her 2 points in dart. That dart is now doing like 7 - 9 +1 acid damage with 4 APR. It's wonderfully ridiculous. No screenshots of the Illithid fight, but it was basically Wand of Fire, Spirit Fire and Thorn Spray chunking them inside the room, and murdering them as soon as they dared to show their faces outside the door. Turning in the quest to the Crusaders gets Jehu level 10, and thus level 5 spells. Chaotic Commands is our pick here: we'll be completely defensively focused at least until BG2.
Rhino Beetle Shell and Dragon Scales are both turned into armors. I think shields might have been better for this run, but water under the bridge now. We complete all the Bridgefort quests, killing Vichand for the scroll, and doing the whole Tender of the Dead questline. At the end of it, I forget to collect the Void stones: I had intended to make void arrows from it, but we're going to be limited to 20 or so +3 arrows for Belhifet then. Khalid replaces Minsc, and takes GM in Short Swords to actually have the Shadow Aspect fight to have meant something. We surrender the fort, and fail to disrupt the portal summoning. We have enough damage to one-round or two-round the fire elementals, though, and we don't explode yet.
We do a couple fetch quests in the next encampment, and use the glasses on the Genie for more items. Jehu gets a belt of Luck, Khalid gets the ring of continual Charm, Jaheira gets a ring of free action, and I think that's roughly everything I ended up getting? We do full clears of the wilderness areas, with Glint dying again and apparently starting a romance? I frankly didn't even realize he had initiated one until the very end of the game (spoilers
In the Underground River, we free some Druids, duel two Ogres, and start area-bombing the Crusaders. The two mages that teleport in are handled by Arrows of Dispelling and then Wizard Slayer penalties taking effect. I think one of them landed a Charm spell or something, but Spiritual Clarity from Jehu means everything's fine. Honestly, Spiritual Clarity is such a good spell for this portion in the game with Myconids and Chaos being huge threats since Chaotic Commands can't cover everyone. Khalid and Moira tank the Ankhegs and Dark Treants well enough to clear them up. Next up is the Shadow Cabal. We take on all the undead in the previous area first to avoid the absolute mess I had the last fight, and clear the left-most mages first. I screw up with my buffs, and don't have a Remove Fear up: 4 people are Feared when the dragon takes the field and before I can destroy the bottle. The bottle's shattered maybe half a second after the Dragon Fear happens, but it's still enough for Voghlin to die. Khalid is saved by Jehu's Spiritual Clarity, and we clean up the rest of the mages with dispelling arrows and spell failure via kit.
One rest later and the walking tankard is back with us. We tell a story to a pair of fish, and talk to the water-elemental-training mage. He attacks to test out the elementals, and we kill him quickly for it. Patrols are aggroed, and we kill them without apparently turning the entire cavern hostile. I don't know if there's a way to talk to that mage without triggering that fight.
We explode a potion, free an ogre, loot some +3 crossbow bolts, and Glint's cousin gets us up the lift. No fighting fair this time around: after the initial fight (in which Jaheira chides us for not getting information: can we actually do this without having to kill the sergeant? Have higher CHA maybe?) we engage the Stone Golems from the initial chamber. This avoids us getting flanked between two golems and 3 high-ish level Mages that's SUPPOSED to happen if you play fair. Playing fair sucks.
The golems are downed before anything can happen. Khalid is sent to tank one or two Crusaders coming from the direction of the lift, while the others work on destroying the less protected mages. They fall pretty quickly, though Jehu drinks an invisibility potion as he tries to avoid Hephernaan and spots a bunch of Crusaders in the top right room. Hephernaan is still kind of a issue with Blade Barrier, Improved Invisibility, and Reflected Mirror being a pretty good counter to the things I can bring to bear. Moira with Spellbreaker and Khalid with the Fractal Blade and a potion of invulnerability have very low save vs spells though, so they can tank the Blade Barrier indefinitely. Fractal blade dispels the invisibility, and spell failure against a C/M is a death sentence. Finally...
Dragonspear fight: everyone grabs a ranged weapon and plinks away while Glint detects traps in the left corner. Ashatiel comes out to fight a lot sooner than I remember, but Potion of Magic Shielding, an Oil of Speed, and an Arrow of Dispelling are enough to shut her down. Wand of the Heavens goes through Sanctuary, and Pratt's axe goes and kills her.
We don't rest before Hell: we have more than enough consumables for this including like 11 potions of clarity and 10 scrolls of Chaotic Commands. I'm still slightly confused as to what exactly happened here: Jaheira doesn't have another source of Charm immunity besides being a Half-elf, so by my current understanding, this should've functioned normally and not like... this.
Thrixx is a bit hard: we summon 3 Myconids in preparation, and Moira is almost immediately Feared because Chaotic commands doesn't protect against Fear. Whoops. Another Spiritual Clarity is used to make her useful again, and eventually we just overpower Thrixx with +2 weapons and arrows. A bad lightning bolt bounce could've still been trouble: I recommend a potion of Absorption before this fight for anyone taking on Thrixx instead of betting.
We buff in the elevator, and a Command alerts me to the fact that the original Potions of Clarity are wearing off: that could've been bad. Potions of Fire resistance, scrolls of the same, potions of absorption, STR and Invulnerability potions for Khalid, and potions of Clarity are drank, and scrolls of Emotion: Hope and Emotion:... uh some other IWD spell that also gives +2 to hit and so on.
Big B: because of SCS' NPC customization, all joinable NPCs are level 0 so you can select proficiencies. This also includes Caelar, apparently, and she goes from full health to near death in a single hit constantly. She's useless this fight. We have 80 +3 Bolts, 80 +3 Bullets, 20 +3 Arrows, Aule's staff, that +3 Warhammer, Slythe's +3 shortsword, and the Fractal Blade, and one scroll of Enchanted weapon. Jaheira gets the scroll, and after killing Hephernaan with extreme prejudice, we turn our attention to Belhifet. Jehu Detects Illusion to get rid of Improved Invisibility, and Voghlin sings for everyone. Moira runs through all 20 arrows, and closes in with her hammer, when Khalid gets the final hit.
Belhifet groans something about an Undead Hunter and a Blackguard before collapsing. In Baldur's gate, we get the heroic ending, and they're currently waiting for a non-SoB/FoP/MnG setup of BG2 to finish before setting out for Amn.
Jehu: level 11 Human Shaman, 94 HP (5 from helm)
Moira: level 10 Dwarven Wizard Slayer, 112 HP.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111033/#Comment_1111033
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111103/#Comment_1111103
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111182/#Comment_1111182
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111202/#Comment_1111202
An early morning session started with running through Mae'Var's remaining tasks before exposing him and meting out punishment with a first use of GWW.
Feeling it was about time an undead hunter did something about the situation in the Umar Hills, that was the next stop. With unbuffed saving throws now all negative there was nothing dangerous in the village and I quickly picked up enough XP for another level. Moving on to the old temple the initial skeleton warriors evaporated as I ran among them and I wondered whether the same would happen if I briefly showed myself to a lich - it did indeed.
Before leaving the area I had a short discussion with Valygar and briefly returned to Athkatla to grease the locks on the Planar Sphere. Then it was off to find another dragon in Windspear Hills. A bunch of exploding vampires there soon provided a further level.
Back in Athkatla it appeared the paladins needed a helping hand. A couple of tasks later and I had to foil some assassins attacking a fair lady. One nipped up the stairs ahead of me, but a WW caught him before he could do any damage. Detect Evil then confirmed that her genuine guardian had come to take care of her.
Tazok's key was used to get into a mind flayer hide-out, where yet another level was gained.
Next, I finally got around to the Planar Prison. I tend not to do the cells there, but for a change decided to clear all those out this time and did that without trouble. The Master of Thralls there can be nasty if your saving throws are not great, but is otherwise a bit of a wimp and only lasted a couple of seconds.
From one planar institution I zipped to another to try out the Sphere. Kayardi was a potential threat there with maze, but a skeleton warrior occupied his attention.
There wasn't much more I aimed to do before heading off to Spellhold, but did investigate the Guarded Compound - pulling the enemies downstairs in dribs and drabs.
I had intended to save at that point, but it wasn't time for breakfast yet so I decided to take on the Cowled Wizards as well. Skeleton warriors worked pretty well against them - sending them in after death spells had been tempted out by other summons. I think I got level 29 from the 3rd group of those summoned in by using the Ring of Air Control. Once the last group was destroyed I sorted out inventory a bit to be ready to take ship.
Undead Hunter L29, 185 HPs (incl, 5 from helm; 10 from bracers), 1,132 kills (+565 in BGEE/SoD)
Journal of Tigra the Tiefling Knight of the Eternal Order and his Tiefling Friends (The Tiefling Trio)
Slightly misjudged positioning with the result that Tigra was killed by Shoal. Before that Mellicamp was helped and a werewolf killed.
The end
Session 1:
A quick trip to Neera's wild mage hideout doing very little is followed by a quick trip to Rasaad's Abandoned Ampitheatre where a group of enemies fail to slow us so Neera gives them a helping hand and then we have to share the injuries around when fighting the main group of monks.
(dodgy screenshots due to some Linux quirk of switching desktops while in fullscreen)
Session 2:
Instead we head out to the Druid Grove and arrange a suitable meal for Cernd before returning to Trademeet where some nice statues have been placed around the fountain.
Party equipment before session 2:
Isra and Saerileth never bonded the way she and Sirene did. Losing Sirene tore deeply at her heart. She was not even sure losing even her own sister could hurt like that. The empty feeling – she felt all alone in Toril after that. When her sister had gone to prison for her crimes, it surely did not bother Isra as much as losing her ‘Paladin Sister’ as they called one another. Isra and Saeileth had traveled side by side into some ugly places these past months – had defeated some terrible foes. She was proud of Saerilth when she destroyed Fiirkaag, but more as she might feel for a little sister than a friend.
Looking through Saerileth’s belonging with Dispenser, deciding what to keep and what to sell at some point, she just felt sad, but not the overwhelming sadness that enveloped her when Sirene died. Saerileth had been so young, maybe that’s why they didn’t grow closer. Oh sure, Saerileth swung a mean sword and had a righteous fury for goodness and justice. No one doubted that. But she was gone now, obliterated in Hell, whether by one of the Balor’s, the Glabrezu’s, or Irenicus, Isra did not know. It all happened so fast, and there was no time to conduct a battle review when it was over.
Irenicus was also dead – again, after confronting them in the infernal regions. Nalia’s skill as a wizardess, with precision timing, had been on display there. Irenicus’ spell protections could not save him once she started breaking him down – at first getting clear of the melee of Paladin’s, Yasraena, Skeleton Warriors, a Berserk Warrior, Irernicus, four demons, and a Nishru she had summoned to their aid. Nalia used a Spell Trigger loaded with Pierce Magic, Breach & Lower Resistance[\i], and a Spell Sequencer with Greater Malison, Secret Word & Spell Thrust, and peppered Irenicus with Pierce Shield, Kelben's Warding Whip, & Ruby Ray of Revearsal afterward as the others cut him down. They all kept at least one unenchanted weapon (that they had skill with) at the ready for just this kind of battle, and it worked to near perfection.
The next thing they all knew, they were in Suldannessellar, convalescing from their wounds. Queen Elliseme held a banquet in honor of Dispenser, all of them, and they enjoyed Elven hospitality for a few days before moving on. They needed to replace Saerileth’s sword, soonest.
Before battling Irenicus, Dispenser faced a series of Hell trials, each of which offered a Tear of Bhaal. He had choices to make that determined the nature of each tear he gained. Fear, Selfishness, Pride, Wrath, and Greed trials provided him a tear, but if his choices were evil, it would have had negative consequences. Dispenser considered each carefully, and true to form, he passed the tests, leading to the confrontation with Irenicus.
BATTLING SAREVOK FOR A TEAR OF BHAAL
ORDER OF MARCH: Yasraena, Saerileth, Isra, Keldorn, Dispenser (leader), Nalia (arcane support & traps)
MONSTERS DEFEATED (ordered alphabetically by value): *
* Legend: DS = Disturb Sleep, RE = Random Encounter, SD = Suldanessellar
LEVEL UP: Keldorn (Paladin (Inquisitor)/18; Yasraena, Fighter/23
CASUALTIES: Saerileth (Irenicus)
NOTEWORTHY TREASURE: (Gold earned = ~ ? GP)
Armor & Weapons: Long Sword +3 (Blackrazor)
Gems/jewelry:
Potions: Fire Giant Strength (5), Invulnerability(5), Extra Healing (7)
Scrolls:
Wands:
Misc & Artifacts: Robe of the Evil Arch-Magi, Ring of Protection +2
BEST KILL:
1) Yasraena, Bodhi (91k exp)
2) Nalia, Saladrex (64k exp)
3) Keldorn, Chromatic Demon & Isra, Demilich (55k exp ea)
CURRENT DISPOSITION: Suldanessellar
NEXT STEPS: Depart Suldanessellar
PARTY MAKEUP: (Reputation: 17 – Heroic)
Dispenser: LG Cleric (Holy Justice of Tyr)/25 (HP 99) Large Shield +2, Helm of the Noble +1, Holy Symbol of Tyr, Gauntlets of Dexterity, Cloak of Balduran, Girdle of Frost Giant Strength, Rings of Fire Resistance & Regeneration & Boots of Etherealness w/ Flail of the Ages +3 (Acid, Cold, Fire) & Long Sword +3 (Blade of the Roses), (Bastard Sword*, Flail*, Long Sword*, Mace/Morning Star*, Warhammer*, SSS*, SWS*, TWS*); Abilities: Detect Invisibility, Hold person, Holy Word, Strength of One, Slayer Change; High-Level Abilities: Elemental Summoning, Energy Blades, Storm of Vengeance; Skills: None; Spells: Earthquake, Energy Blades, Finger of Death, Fire Storm, Gate, Aerial Servant, Animal Summoning III, Blade Barrier, Bolt of Glory, False Dawn, Harm, Heal, Sol’s Searing Orb, Wondrous Recall, Cause Critical Wounds, Chaotic Commands, Cure Critical Wounds, Flame Strike, Greater Command, Mass Cure, Raise Dead, Righteous Magic, Slay Living, True Seeing, Cause Serious Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, Defensive Harmony, Farsight, Free Action, Restoration, Negative Plane Protection, Free Action, Neutralize Poison, Poison, Protection from Evil 10’ (2), Animate Dead, Cure Disease, Cure Medium Wounds, Dispel Magic, Holy Smite, Invisibility Purge, Prayer, Remove Curse, Rigid Thinking, Zone of Sweet Air, Aid, Chant (2), Draw on Holy Might (2), Hold Person (2), Resist Fire & Cold, Silence 15’, Slow Poison (2), Spiritual Hammer, Armor of Faith (2), Bless (2), Command (2), Cure Light Wounds, Doom, Faerie Fire (2), Protection from Evil, Remove Fear, Sanctuary; (Adv AI) (1)
Isra: LG Paladin (Cavalier of Sune)/20 (HP 122), Red Dragon Scale Plate, Ghadir Family Ring, Painbearer’s Amulet, Pale Green Ioun Stone, Cloak of the Shield, Boots of Hastened Departure w/ Two-Handed Sword +5 (Carsomyr), Mace +3 (Storm Star), Gauntlets of Weapons Expertise, Girdle of Hill Giant Strength, (Axe**, Bastard Sword*, Mace/Morning Star**, Two-Handed Sword**, THWS**); Abilities: Cure Disease, Detect Evil (23), Lay on Hands, Protection from Evil (20), Remove Fear (20); High-Level Abilities: Death Blow, Greater Whirlwind Attack, Whirlwind Attack; Skills: None: Spells: Defensive Harmony, Free Action, Neutralize Poison, Cure Disease, Holy Smite, Zone of Sweet Air, Chant, Draw on Holy Might, Armor of Faith, Bless, Command; (Adv AI) (2)
Yasraena: CG Fighter//23 (HP 147), Full Plate +2 (Pride of the Legion), Wong Fei’s Ioun Stone, Belt of Inertial Barrier, & Boots of Speed w/ Short Sword +5 (Ironkiss), & Short Sword +5 (Fireflower) (Short Sword/Nija-to*****, Two-Weapon Style***, Warhammer**), w/ Gauntlet’s of Extraordinary Specialization, (Sword Sword*****, 2WS***) & Ring of Air Control; Abilities: None; High-Level Abilities: Death Blow, Greater Death Blow, Magic Resistance, Whirlwind Attack, Greater Whirlwind Attack; Skills: None: Spells: None; (Adv AI) (nil)
Keldorn: LG Paladin(Inquisitor)/18 (HP 137), Plate of Balduran, Helm of Charm Protection, Girdle of Stone Giant Strength, Ring of Regeneration, Cloak of the Shield, w/ Blessed Paladin’s Bracers, Horn of Valhalla & Boots of the North w/ Two-handed Sword +5 (Graham the Sword of Grief), Crossbow +4 (Firetooth), Flail +3 (Defender of Easthaven), (Crossbow**, Flail**, Long Sword**, Two-Handed Sword**, THWS**); Abilities:: Detect Evil (21), Protection from Evil (18), Dispel Magic (5), True Sight (5); High-Level Abilities: Whirlwind Attack; Skills: None; Spells: None; (Adv AI) (4)
Nalia: CG Mage/Thief//18/4 (HP 70), Necklace of Protection +1, Robe of the Good Arch-Magi,Dusty Rose Ioun Stone, Improved Cloak of Protection +2, Amulet of the Master Harper w/ Shortbow +3 (Tansheron’s Bow), Staff of the Magi; (Club*, Crossbow*, Dagger*, Dart*, Q/staff*, Short Bow*, Short Sword/Ninja-to* ); Abilities: Set Snare, Scribe Scrolls; Skills: OL 85, PP 40, FT 105, MS 55, HS 70, DI 10, ST 10 w/ Cloak of Elvenkind, Boots of Elvenkind; High Level Abilities: Extra 6th Level Spell; Skills: None; Spells: (w/ Ring of Acuity & Halruuan Component Pouch), Time Stop, Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting, Simulacrum, Khelban’s Warding Whip, Ruby Ray of Reversal, Spell Sequencer, Invisible Stalker, Chain Lightning, Invisible Stalker, Contingency, Summon Nishru, Animate Dead, Breach, Cloudkill, Cone of Cold, Lower Resistance, Monster Summoning III, Fire Shield (Blue), Fire Shield (Red), Greater Malison, Minor Sequencer, Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere, Secret Word, Stoneskin, Dispel Magic, Fireball, Flame Arrow, Haste, Lightning Bolt, Slow, Spell Thrust, Aganazzar’s Scorcher, Invisibility, Knock, Melf’s Acid Arrow, Mirror Image, Ray of Enfeeblement, Stinking Cloud, Web, Blindness, Chromatic Orb, Grease, Identify Magic Missile, Spook; (Adv AI) (nil)
Saerileth: LG Paladin (Cavalier of Tyr)/22 (HP 129), White Dragon Scale Armor, Large Shield +2, Cloak of the Shield, Amulet of Power, Saerileth’s Holy Symbol, Boots of Grounding & Girdle of Stone Giant Strength w/ Long Sword +3 (Blade of Roses) & Warhammer +2 (Hammer of Tyr), (Bastard Sword**, Flail*, Long Sword**, Mace/Morning Star**, Warhammer**, SSS**) w/ Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise; Abilities: Cure Disease, Detect Evil (25), Lay on Hands, Protection from Evil (22), Remove Fear (22); High-Level Abilities: Death Blow, Greater Death Blow, Greater Whirlwind Attack, Resist Magic, Whirlwind Attack; Skills: None; Spells: Cause Serious Wounds, Cure Serious Wounds, Defensive Harmony, Zone of Sweet Air, Animate Dead, Chant, Draw on Holy Might, Hold Person, Armor of Faith, Bless, Command; (Adv AI) (3)
MOD USED: Amber v5, Tyris Flare v8, Foundling v4.2, Pesty v3.1, Asher v1.12, Gavin v23, Sirene for BG2, Isra v3, Paina, Tashia v1.2, Vampire Tales, Ninde, Saerileth, Arath v4, Dace v5, Tsujatha, Kelsey v5, Keto v5, Sarah v5, Nathaniel v4.4, Iylos v2.6, Adrian v4.3, Naphele v2.5, Fade v5.5, Saradas Magic v1.6, de’Arnice Romance v6, Unfinished Business v26, Plane Touched Races, Wheels of Prophecy v8.3, NPC Flirt v1.06, Romantic Encounters v14, Tweaks Anthology, Deities of Faerun, Song & Silence v9, Rogue Rebalancing v4.92, Wizard Slayer Rebalancing v1.14, SCS v32.7, Atweaks v4.53, Item Randomizer
(Current AI) (Chain of Command rank)
I therefore used rolled chatacters and gave then the same resistances as Sirene. That way, my characters are not overpowered.
Here are their statistics: [In real life Rhiainfelt and Oswiu were married]
And here are the resistance bonuses that I used as per Sirene.
Journal of Rhiainfelt
It is hardly surprising that the three of us bonded together so well since, apart from Imoen, we were the only good tiefling in Candlekeep and we all followed Helm. We got on well with Imoen, but her thieving tendencies meant that she wasn't quite as close to us though we all love her.
When we were attacked by assassins in Candlekeep, it came as quite a shock. We found however that the training that we had received was more than sufficient for the challenge despite their good equipment.
Of course, you know me, I go back to an old D&D manual to fine-tune. CT
Presumably thay's what the author of Sirene did. I may install that in my next installation, though it isn't being supported any more. I used an installatioon program last time that doesn't allow adding other mods afterwards.
@CharlestonianTemplar
What I do find a problem is the lack of consensus regarding tiefling.
FinnJO's sub-race mod and the one that you recommend are totally different and Sirene is different yet again.
That is hardly surprising as the extent to which a character is affected will strongly depend on how many generations previously the infernal blood entered the character's genealogy.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111033/#Comment_1111033
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111103/#Comment_1111103
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111182/#Comment_1111182
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111202/#Comment_1111202
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111268/#Comment_1111268
With XP already so high, I didn't bother with anything in Brynnlaw apart from GWWing Perth to kill him before his buffs fired. His book of infinite spells listed a couple of boring options before sticking on Burning Hands and being discarded. I gave up some wisdom as the price to enter Spellhold, but was still wise enough not to make any mistakes there. Saying boo to a bunch of undead soon got me to level 30 and opening up an exit to level 31. A single GWW then proved too much for Irenicus and he ran away after Wanev's time stop ended.
After ending up in Fish City I agreed to help the king - then slaughtered him to get level 32. I also agreed to help the prince - before even-handedly slaughtering him as well.
Carsomyr took down a balor in the svirfneblin village before I headed for the Western Tunnels. Wearing the Cloak of Mirroring, spell damage was no longer an issue and melee damage was unlikely to be a problem. However, saving throws against spells remain a bit of a weakness for paladins and my standard save was only -1. The main things that won't fully protect against are chaos and the symbol spells. Symbol stun is particularly dangerous and I really should have taken more care against the drow there, but I just waded into battle without any buffs or summons - and died ...
They're generally my favorite, mainly because the lower amount of buffing typically required helps counteract my increasing laziness over the course of a run