Blaggerd stumbles on from here, lucky to survive. One of his companions has a couple of closer experiences but a temple and a scroll keep the party together.
The de'Arnise Hold
After sweeping the ground floor and courtyard it is time to concoct a dog stew and head upstairs. A yuan-ti mage is treated to chaos before it sights us, then six golems are smashed apart.
There is a staircase down into the basement, and after feeding a group of umber hulks we are ready to face down TorGal and his trolls. Neera tries to simplify combat but her spell surges, and fortunately it is a low level spell that is entirely ineffective.
We report back to Nalia and head on. Blaggerd can practically smell the ring of Gaxx so we deal with three liches before using six protection from undead scrolls to take on Kangaxx in his lich and demi-lich forms.
That went well, thought Blaggerd. How about we report back in to Aran Linvail and go hunt vampires. It sounds like a lot of fun, and on the way we pick off a few groups of spiders. Rasaad tries out a special ability for the first time and apart from a little friendly fire the result is beyond our expectations.
Inside the vampire nest Blaggerd (iMoD) and Minsc (Azuredge) set about the vampires. Tanova doesn't last long and after the event Blaggerd realises that Minsc is playing "Boo said what" with him.
Wilson demonstrates he is contributing to the party. Blaggerd is trying to keep Wilson as a second line attacker to hit hard without taking too much damage, particularly when enemy effects such as level-drain are possible.
Blaggerd and Minsc use their undead-destroying weapons against Lassal. Minsc misses but Blaggerd does not.
Bodhi appears after we stake Lassal's corpse. For some reason she doesn't hang around very long.
On our way back to Aran Linvail we are ambushed by vampires. Looks like Tanova didn't get the message last time.
We're almost ready to report back to Aran Linvail, but first Blaggerd decides to pick up a few scrolls of Raise Dead. Hopefully two should be enough, although Blaggerd is now getting twitchy that obtaining a few more would have been sensible.
Aran packs us off to Brynnlaw, where we find that killing Chremy (without talking to anyone requiring assistance) shuts off that minor quest. So we pick a Spellhold wardstone up from a newly-deceased mage and head inside. Yoshimo promptly betrays us and escapes with his equipment (screenshot from previous autosave to show what went walkies).
The warden of Spellhold has been usurped by Irenicus, and we are trapped. Blaggerd loses his Bhaalspawn abilities and is sent to be hunted down by Bodhi. With the party down to five there is room to recruit Imoen although her equipment will remain sparse.
Rasaad spots a few enemies for Neera to target with a precision spell.
Blaggerd would like to say the escape from Spellhold was easy, and for the most part it was. Just don't mention the summoning altar as he was caught with his pants down by the mind flayer and saw his intelligence drop from 17 to 2 before his companions closed in and killed the tentacled terror.
Lonk the Sane failed his jailor test within a round and a showdown with Irenicus took place. Within another round Irenicus was battered and everyone stepped away to avoid any nasty effect such as a Wilt. Irenicus took the opportunity to escape as Yoshimo arrived. Ah look, there's his gear.
With nothing left to do in Spellhold we return to Brynnlaw and pick up a pirate horn for Saemon Havarian. Our stolen ship is boarded twice and sinks, sending us down to the City of Caverns. A brief bit of carelessness sees Wilson held and poisoned. Minsc tries slowing the poison as we desperately try to clear the attackers but Wilson's fate is sealed. Temple!
Blaggerd retaliates by killing both Saguagin king and prince before we use a rope to enter the Underdark.
(At the time of write-up I realise I could have obtained better gauntlets for Rasaad instead)
The Underdark
Three mind flayers wait for us. Blaggerd moves in a different direction and we enter a beholder lair. In retrospect this is highly dangerous as we don't really have anything suitable to nullify their attacks. Blaggerd shuts his eyes and the party launch into maximum overload. Which works, other than some wounds and Neera swapping sides - Blaggerd stands next to her until she returns to her senses.
With the elder orb blood secured there is no need to remain in this lair but Blaggerd pushes his luck to clear the area and a pair of skeleton warriors help out with a second elder orb.
Everybody breathes a sigh of relief as we exit the lair. This means we don't need to visit the illithid lair in search of a brain, or hunt down a kuo-toa prince. Still... here we are in the illithid game and Imoen is having a brain-drain of a time. Blaggerd throws caution to the wind and we save Imoen.
A short while later Blaggerd is dominated when he stupidly changes his equipped items. Rasaad slams a door shut on him and only lets him back in when he recovers. This of course leads to Minsc being dominated when using a ranged weapon and Wilson getting stunned. Despite our best efforts Wilson gets a noggin-slurp and his intelligence of 4 consigns him to instant death.
Imoen has tried a bit too hard to keep Wilson alive, and also gets stunned and intelligence-drained. The other four of us struggle on and manage to keep Imoen alive. Blaggerd uses one of the two raise dead scrolls.
Ugh thinks Blaggerd. Never ever deal with flayers (no doubt he'll fail to learn this lesson). Now to hand this silver sword blade over - nope let's kill the gith. Minsc can collapse on the floor during combat while Blaggerd is Mazed - that should even the odds.
It's time to kill off the drow, myconids and flayers in the main underdark area - oh and let's empty this strange device while we're at it.
Blaggerd now has two reasons to ignore the kuo-toa prince. Except...
We'll clear the area exit now so we don't get caught out later.
Blaggerd, Minsc and Rasaad had 75, 71 and 36 kills when Wilson joined.
They are currently 110, 94 and 40 kills ahead of him.
Party inventory
Oh, and importing a charater who is wearing the girdle of gender leads to problems. Namely Blaggerd is shown as female and Rasaad can't help but try his best romance lines out. Blaggerd is gamely choosing middle of the road answers.
to Hell and back
I played a few hours on Christmas day, which got me past the elf city, into and outof hell before the foks came over for dinner, no evil options picked because no body really wanted the sword
Hi everyone,
My first comment here.
Pretty cool to read people's playthroughs and learn from individual tactics and approaches.
A short introduction to my self before I post my no reload playthrough I had recently.
I have completed the whole saga before from candlekeep to Melissan once, many other playthroughs after that where I simply did not bother to go all the way because I was quickly overpowered, knew how to do the rest, and because TOB to me has a bit more hollow atmosphere and feel to it (though great fights and combat).
When I started playing these games I started off enjoying being overpowered, solo with sorcerer and after than a berserker human dualled into mage with a party. Actually the first time I ever even tried TOB (except watcher's keep, which I had already tried) it was almost like a no reload challenge (running it truly blind = not looking up stuff on the internet) and it was fun being so attentive to new encounters I had never tried.
But it was also easy due to my overpowered zerker/mage with overcautious approaches. I mean starting off all battles (already stone skin'd) with something like a spell trigger with protection from magical weapons and 2 different spell immunities, abjuration and divination, a chain contingency set to trigger and target self when hit with protection from energy, mislead and improved haste or something like that and with a contingency with another protection from magical weapons set to trigger on below x % of maximum hit points and with berserker's rage at the ready and maybe other funky stuff not to mention swinging celestial fury... I mean that was the closest thing I have tried to pretty secure immortality in this game. I think in this truly blind playthrough I reloaded once or something after one of the dragons permanently destroyed several of my companions (main char never died). This was before I had read and heard of the concept of no reload challenges, so it was not really an attempt to do a no reload playthrough and it wasn't really in anyway.
After that I learned the fun in gimping your self. Then I had much more fun playing a simple barbarian but then that even started seeming overpowered and I enjoyed just playing a dwarven fighter (no kit) to be challenged a bit more. But even just the shorty saves can be almost overpowered... damn, can be hard to challenge your self in this game sometimes. But then a truly hardcore no reload challenge has recently become the only thing that can motivate me to play this game again, otherwise I lose the drive quickly.
So for the first time I tried to do a proper no reload challenge from candlekeep and intended to go to Melissa, but I died very early on. But it was the first time I did it while taking screenshots and writing down the decisions and happenings with the intention to post it here.
I gotta say it helps me a lot using this forum and this thread to do a fun playthrough. It motivates me, it makes me abide by some reload rules here, to do it right, to not cheat and to be more careful and to not lose interest along the way.
So thanks to all for this idea, forum and thread and my next post will be the first to describe my recent no reload run I had.
Baldur's gate no reload challenge. Part 1.
Playing Baldur's Gate enhanced edition without any mods.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit. 2 pips in axes and 2 pips in morning star/ flails at level 1.
Rolled 18/16 strength, 18 dex and con, 13 int, 10 wis and charisma 18.
Hamilton starts off talking to Firebead in Candlekeep. Firebead seems a bit eager to chat and be heard, the lonely elf. Being the sympathetic and patient guy that Hamilton is, he talks to him for a lengthy while, (by clicking on him precisely 30 times) so that Firebead ends up giving him 300 gold pieces. A deep need in Firebead for conversation is satisfied and he becomes so happy because none had really really listened to him in a long time that he gives away the generous gold sum.
Hamilton also earns a bit of gold and experience by running errands for Fuller in Candlekeep, by returning a lost book to Phlydia, surviving 2 assassination attempts and killing the assassins, by killing some rats in a storehouse for a dwarf called Reevor, by delivering a long sword to a guard called Hull and by delivering a scroll to firebead. Aside from from that Hamilton found a potion of antidote, which he chose to keep and by opening a few chests and drawers around candlekeep he also found a bit of jewels, a potion of clarity and some scrolls.
Actually Fuller gives a magical dagger to Hamilton after doing the errand because Fuller sees some great potential in Hamilton (because Hamilton has high charisma)
Hamilton only priotized purchasing basic necessities in order to preserve his precious gold coins for truly important matters, so he just bought some arrows, a sling, som throwing axes, a buckler and a helmet before venturing forth and agreeing to follow Gorion out of Candlekeep and into the wilderness.
After Gorion's shocking demise and Hamilton's own escape from the ambush he finds a bit of comfort discovering Imoen followed along and they both join up and stick together.
Together Imoen and Hamilton explores the area just outside of candlekeep and they get to practice a few battle tactics, by killing 2 black bears, 2 wolfs and a few gibberlings. Usually Hamilton runs with the wolf or bear making chase, taking care to confuse his attacker by running from side to side, forcing his opponent to change direction abruptly and thereby slowing them. In the mean time Imoen shoots as many arrows at the beasts as she can, but Hamilton also throws an axe once and in awhile and sometimes even Imoen has to do the kiting while Hamilton throws the axes.
After searching Gorion's corpse they find a magical belt, a wand of magic missiles, a written note, a leather armor and a morning star.
Imoen and Hamilton find an obscure treasure hiding in a crevice in the side of a tree standing next to the main-road, a diamond was hidden in the tree! What a find!
Despite Gorion getting killed Hamilton feels like luck is with him.
Imoen and Hamilton also meet 2 strangers not far from where they found the diamond in the tree, who present them selves as Montaron and Xzar, they even give Hamilton and Imoen a healing potion and after a little talk the party is increased to 4 members and they all join together and agree to hit the Friendly Arm Inn even though Xzar and Montaron prefer to head for Nashkel right away.
Hamilton do not like these 2 fellows much, there is something that worries him about them, but nonetheless after all this tragedy and danger he deems it more safe to gang up, you never knows what danger awaits around the corner.
Hamilton's earlier feelings of luck get amplified after finding 2 magical rings hidden in the landscape on their way to the Friendly Arm Inn.
None in the party are able to identify their newly found magical items, but they agree not to spend gold on getting them identified, since the price is high and they never know when they might need their few hundred gold coins for something more critical.
Hamilton gives a sling and some bullets to Montaron who hits more well and inflicts more damage with the sling than with his short sword and Xzar recieves the magical dagger, which Imoen could identify without scrolls or spells. Hamilton talks Montaron into giving him his studded leather armor, which improves Hamilton's AC by one point and he also recieves a potion of speed from Montaron.
Before entering the inn inside the gate of the Friendly Arm Inn fortification, the party meets a woman in distress called Joia, who asks for their help in finding and returning her lost flamedance ring. Hamilton agrees to help her.
At the stairs to the entrance of the Friendly Arm Inn, another assassin makes his attempt on Hamilton's life, this time it is a mage. This mage manages to cast a mirror image spell, but soon becomes overwhelmed by the attacks from the 4 party members. Xzar used a scroll of minor lachor drain, Montaron shoots bullets with his sling, Imoen shoots arrows with her short bow and Hamilton starts of using one charge from the wand of missiles, but before he can even get to swing his axe or morning star the assassin mage is already dead, giving the party 120 exp, and some minor scrolls including a scroll of magic missiles.
Inside the Friendly Arm Inn Hamilton teams up with Khalid and Jaheira, but Xzar, Montaron and Khalid and Jaheira together creates some bad vibes for Hamilton or maybe it is just his trauma over Gorion's death that makes him want to be more alone all of a sudden, either way whatever the reason he had to follow through with this impulse, he kicks out everyone in the party except Imoen. But he keeps a potion of invisibility he got from Jaheira and persuades Khalid to swap armors, so he gets Khalid's splint mail, improving Hamilton's AC yet another point and he receives a medium shield from Khalid, improving his AC against missile attacks.
Now Imoen and Hamilton continue their journey after saying goodbye to their new friends. Just outside the walls of The Frindly Arm Inn they encounter a small gang of hostile hobgoblins. The hobgoblins end up biting the dust all of them after a few arrows and thrown axes and behold a flamedance ring was found on one of the corpses that proved to belong to Joia.
Hamilton and Imoen recieve 400 exp and one reputation point by returning her flamedance ring and then they head towards the town Beregost and in order to advance further towards Nashkel which they have heard so much about already and about the trouble that needs attention down there.
On their way to Beregost they encounter a hostile wolf, several gibberlings, at least 1 xvart but most noteworthy a hostile ogre who drops 2 magical belts. The ogre was brought down with ranged attacks while kited and never engaged in close combat.
Now Imoen and Hamilton arrive to Beregost and Hamilton sits at 1129 experience points about half way to level 2 and Imoen as a thief only needs 425 exp to advance to level 2.
Baldur's gate no reload challenge. Part 2.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit. 2 pips in axes and 2 pips in morning star/ flails.
Arriving at the Feldepost's Inn. They head for the bar for a little refreshments, but get approached by an angry man called Marl accusing them for being responsible for his son's fate, who died trying to become an adventurer like Hamilton and Imoen. But after a few good counter arguments and an offer to drink a round and make a toast in the memory of his dead son, the angry man withdraw his accusations and accepts his sons fate and the party receives 900 exp.
Imoen just reached level 2 and now has 60 points in find traps after the incident the bar.
The party stumbles upon Firebead again, but now here in Beregost and delivers a book to him as he requested and Imoen and Hamilton recieves 300 exp and 1 reputation point. Firebead also rewards them with a scroll case.
After Imoen and Hamilton walk into a random house in Beregost, they get a terrifying surprise when they discover 4 hostile huge spiders jumping at them inside the house. This encounter is so intimidating that they choose to run and retreat out of the house and back to the streets of Beregost. But the spiders follow them all the way to the streets and Hamilton and Imoen now make good use of their practised tactics of hit and run with ranged weapons, avoiding close combat with these beasts just like the wolfs and the bears. Without the slightest injury Imoen and Hamilton manage to bring the four spiders down netting 270 exp points for each spider and Hamilton reaches level 2 just as the last spider goes down.
They now enter the inn called The Jovial Juggler and receive a few job offers, to retrieve a lost coat for Gurke and also to hunt down some half ogres for a guy called Bjornin and a few moments later they meet Mirianna in a house in the eastern part of Beregost just before the temple who asks if they can keep an eye out for her husband, whom she is worried about.
At this point in this playthrough precisely 2 days and 18 hours have passed since the very first decision was made back in candlekeep. There has been no rest for Hamilton or Imoen yet during the entire game so far.
Next up is an unexpected battle with some thugs, 1 red mage and 2 fighters, trying to capture a wild mage named Neera, Hamilton and Imoen chooses to help Neera and manages to kill Neera's assailants. Imoen and Hamilton throws the wand of magic missiles back and forth to each other to use it once per turn each plus using their ranged weapons to take down the mage as quickly as possible. Neera manages to knock their enemies unconscious and inflict sleep on them, so they are not resisting while the party takes their lives.
For helping Neera Hamilton considers it a worthy payment to take Neera's gem bag before throwing her out of the party and giving her his well-wishes.
Imoen can not help her self but to sneak into a wealthy looking manor house in Beregost and look for valuables for the adventuring party and she did find a magical wand that looks very interesting, the party has not identified it yet, but they bet that Imoen's little burglary will be all worth it. Hamilton looked the other way while Imoen did this, after all it is his old friend and he knows her nature and tendencies and can't and won't control her even though he is a man of the law.
Now it is time for Hamilton and Imoen to visit The Song of The Morning Temple. They could not resist but to identify this new wand and they find out it is a wand of lightning, very powerful, but to be used carefully, unfortunately noone can use it yet they find out. They also identify one ring, which turns out to be a ring of protection +1 and they identify a belt, which turns out to be a girdle of piercing.
The party also buys a scroll of stone to flesh for 190 gold from the temple and are now down to 204 gold pieces.
Nothing has been sold yet by the party, gold has only been found and given through rewards.
Now Hamilton has an AC of -2 with his new ring and a good boost to AC against piercing and missile attack with his new belt.
Trio 18 (17) Croppy - Wizard Slayer (Gate70)
Corethief XVII - Bounty Hunter (Corey_Russell)
Dire - Blackguard (Grond0)
Our Prologue consists of the Candlekeep chores.
Bigger and better things awaited us in Chapter One getting savaged by a wolf, finding a book for Firebead, killing Neera, killing Shoal the Nereid and returning a ring to Mad Arcand.
Chapter Two is underway, and the few tasks performed include not returning Rufie to Albert but collecting the reward while we are spread across the area map, not returning a Flamedance ring to Joia while we are spread across the area map, returning Landrins possessions (Dire may or may not have had the items on the third floor or we might have had them on the ground floor). It's a similar tale where Mirianne's husbands letter is either handed to her or read out from afar.
We're definitely all clustered around Prism as he dies beside Greywolf. & we have no recollection of where we were on the Friendly Arm Inn when Samuel was dumped into the nearby temple. Zhurlong didn't really care who returned his boots or where from, since Dire promtly killed him to pick the boots up again.
Croppy has some studded leather armour and the bastard sword +1 stolen from Beregost Smithy, and early regeneration thanks to the +1 Constitution boost from Buckley's Buckler.
Corethief XVII (pronounced exvey?) also has studded leather armour to go with his shortbow and quarterstaff. He has unidentified rings of fire resistance and protection +1, together with an unidentified girdle of piercing and those far-travelled boots once owned by Zhurlong.
Dire is dressed to the nines in ankheg plate armour, with longbow, shortsword and a large shield. He also has a ring of Protection +1.
The only visual memory we have of our start is arguing with the wolf, and of meeting Shoal before matters turned unpleasant.
We end the session staring into a deep pit that smells of ankheg - we all know that Dire is itching to test his ankheg plate armour against the real thing next time out.
Baldur's gate no reload challenge. Part 3.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit. 2 pips in axes and 2 pips in morning star/ flails.
Imoen has been begging for some fun time, some funny stories or some fun sightseeing for a change, so Hamilton finally allows a change of pace and says yes to a sightseeing visit to a place east of the temple of Beregost known for its fabulous stone statues.
Their trip to the stone statue park proves to be not so much a walk in the park so to speak, as they had expected. Dangerous basilisks and hostile adventurers are bound to disturb the picnic peace. But the small party will not back down from such challenges. Hamilton just fought his first wolf in close combat before entering the stone statue park and has been aching for some close combat training ever since, so he doesn't mind a few foes disturbing Imoen's sightseeing.
First they encounter a curious specimen of a ghoul. He is calling him self Korax and ensures them that he don't want to fight them, but he want to kill their enemies and be a good dog. Well not that ghouls are Hamilton's preferred company on the road, his heart tells him to give this creature a chance to prove its friendship and off they go the little party now consisting of 3 beings.
Quickly this Korax proves to be very helpful, he is immune to the basilisks' petrification attack and he paralyzes his enemies pretty consistently. After the first basilisk is being killed by the party Imoen gains a level instantly and reaches level 3 thief and puts all thief skill points into find traps again.
Hamilton uses his scroll of stone to flesh on a statue and the statue reveals it self as a person called Tamah, who promises to speak well of him wherever she goes and the party gains 300 exp and 1 reputation point.
Then the party meets a mad wizard and his 2 basilisk friends, one greater basilisk and one lesser. Korax does not manage to paralyse the wizard at all, the wizard make his saves vs death and korax ends up on the receiving end of 2 melf's acid arrow spells and Korax only barely survives thanks to Hamilton using his paladin skill lay of hands on Korax. After the wizard goes down, Korax is smart to alternate his attacks between the 2 basilisk to keep both of them paralysed at the same time, and they go down without trouble. A massive exp boost was gained from this fight and Imoen is now level 4 thief with 100 points in find traps and 35 points into pick locks and now she dual classes into mage level 1 and Hamilton is now level 3 with 40 hp.
The exp farm with Korax killing basilisks is still going strong even though Korax is near death. Now Hamilton reaches level 4 already.
Imoen gains another level (now level 3 as mage and 4 as thief) after the party kills 1 greater basilisk and 2 lesser basilisks at the same time in the bottom of the map, korax alternates his attacks between all 3 to keep them paralysed.
Suddenly comes a real challenge; a whole band of adventurers now wants to fight the party or maybe Hamilton pissed them off with his provocative comments, anyhow combat begins. First Korax is send in as meat shield and misses Baerin, but then he hits Baerin, but Baerin saves vs death and is not paralysed. Imoen throws off a lightning bolt from the wand of lightning and nearly kills Baerin, brings Kirian to badly wounded and interrupts Peter's spell casting and without hitting Korax. But to no avail because the second after Korax takes 1 single hit and dies.
Somehow Imoen manages to get hit twice by Baerin's ranged attack and dies the second time he hits her, before she manages to throw off another lightning bolt, to the big surprise of Hamilton and Imoen, since Baerin gets 3 attacks off by the time Imoen gets to use her wand once. Anyways she should have been more careful and retreated and kept out of side until she was ready to cast another lightning bolt and should have let Hamilton done the tanking in the meantime. But to late to rectify that mistake now, Imoen is dead and without a heavy hitting lightning bolt canon in the back Hamilton doesn't feel like playing with this party anymore and quaffs an invisibility potion in time to dodge 2 spell attempts from Kirian and Peter who both have to cancel their spells when Hamilton goes invisible.
Hamilton hangs around for a short while to take a look at his enemies to prepare for his and Imoen's return and watches how their monster summoning spell and Kirias mirror image spell expire.
Then Hamilton is about to return to the temple of Beregost, but accidentally he ends up in a duel fight with a female fighter called Shar-Teel who he defeats and Shar-teel promises to fight for him. Hamilton gets the idea that maybe he can finish off at least just this one asshole archer called Baerin who killed Imoen before going back to the temple with the new party member. He gives Shar-Teel his shield, ring of protection, splint mail and sends her in to battle first, following closely behind ready to throw his axes from afar.
The battle does not last long though, Peter and Kirian starts casting spells right away, Kirian casts a lightning bolt spell and it hits and kills Shar-Teel before she can even swing a single attack at anyone and before Peter could even finish his spell casting.
While Shar-Teel gets fried like a roasted chicken, Hamilton manages to get only one ranged attack off against Baerin who is near death, but unfortunately Hamilton misses and once again has to leave this fight without any kills and with only casualties.
This band of adventurers are now declared archenemies in his heart and he is now honorbound to defeat them or he will not be able to live with him self after this second humiliation. Return and win or die trying, there is no other way anymore, not for Hamilton.
Baldur's gate no reload challenge. Part 4.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit.
When Hamilton returns to the temple he finds he does not even have enough gold to revive Imoen.
He must sell some of his gems and jewellery they found on their travels.
After selling some gems Imoen gets brought back from the dead and they both pay for some healing as well. Hamilton imagines how lovely it would be to have a cleric in the party who could do these things for free, since it really takes a toll on the party's finances. Another big defeat like this one in battle and the party would be penniless.
But no need for negativity, instead it is time to celebrate life with Imoen back and buy her an ale to get some warmth and life back into that face and then it is time to kick some ass.
But the party gets an unpleasant surprise when they attack again this time Hamilton gets shot down to near death by Baerin alone who chases Imoen and Hamilton alone, while on the run Hamilton drinks all their healing potions and Imoen ends up killing Baerin with the wand off lightning. But now demoralized once again the party cannot fight the remaining 3 enemies with only 18 hp on Hamilton and no healing potions.
Imoen even ended up using an armor scroll and tanking baerin while finishing him off with the wand of lightning.
So much for kicking ass, but at least one out of 4 asses got kicked, so a better result than last time.
On their way back to Beregost for healing and resupplying they get ambush by many gibberlings and just manages to dodge their claws.
After the second visit to the same temple due to the same enemy the party only have a few hundred gold coins left, but the party is almost at full hp, Hamilton has a protection from evil paladin skill left and Imoen has 3 charges left on the wand of lightning, though no bullets for the sling, since it has been night every time they visited the town. Imoen is fatigued, but can't rest until their archenemy bites the dust. So the party sets off once again in hope of striking a finale blow to their enemy now after the most deadly archer Baerin has fallen.
Luck has really abandoned the small party and a random basilisk waylay the party while they travel between areas, Imoen gets instantly petrified and Hamilton with no means to protect him self against petrification or turning Imoen back to flesh form, has to flee for his life and leave Imoen as a sad stone statue in a random map area in between maps.
Now Hamilton is in trouble, or Imoen more so you could say. Hamilton buys a scroll of stone to flesh and teams up with Kagain now and hopes to find the same area again where Imoen is petrified.
But luck returns, and it does not take long before Hamilton and Kagain find the exact spot where Imoen got petrified and this time they are luckily only ambushed by 3 wolves instead of a basilisk, and the basilisk from before that petrified Imoen is now long gone. So Hamilton could now easily return Imoen back to flesh with his scroll and Kagain now this whole party of 3 with Kagain as the new recruit venture forth to finally face this archenemy hopefully for the last time.
The party meets Lindin and Peter alone with Kirian and they are not going to worry about where Kirian is, because the fight is upon them. Peter tries to get a spell off but is interupted by Kagain who hurls a throwing axe at him. Imoen with only wand of missiles and wand of lightning also assist by hitting Peter with wand of lightning and actually gets the killing blow with a wand of magic missiles hit on Peter. Before Peter dies, he manages to cast a hold person spell without getting interrupted and it hits kagain and Hamilton moves out of range so he does not get affected by the spell, kagain saves vs spell and is not held, but when he drops to very low hp he goes berserk and dies soon after. Kagain gets slain by Lindin who hits like a truck with his slashing damage, 32 damage in one hit, which was not a critical hit, ouch, that effectively took away precisely half of all Kagain's hp in a single hit.
Now Imoen finds bullets on the ground and can fire her sling again and Hamilton and Imoen prepares to kill Lindin in their good old fashioned way, hit and run tactic, no close combat with this Lindin if they can avoid it.
After killing Lindin some nice items drop, including a plate mail increasing Hamilton's AC by 1 point now at -3, 1 magical long sword, 1 potion of invisibility and 1 potion of arbsorption.
Now Kirian is the last one remaining. Kririan gets her mirror image off, tries to cast another spell but gets interrupted by Imoen damaging her with wand of lightning, Imoen damages Kirian twice with wand of lightning, bringing her down to near death (lightning bolt is good against enemies protected by mirror image) but in the end Hamilton gets the killing blow with his throwing axe.
A very hard won victory is at hand, the souls of this archenemy have been sent to the dark depths of the abyss Hamilton and Imoen have kept their honor, their reputation and not least their lives and allow them selves to rejoice and agrees to taking a rest soon. Maybe by going back to the Friendly arm Inn and deliver this wine, these old boots and the spider first.
Imoen only has one single hit point left since she was turned back to flesh and now hamilton and Imoen are both very close at advancing to their next level, only a few hundred exp points each.
Baldur's gate no reload challenge. Part 5.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit.
It takes Imoen and Hamilton 24 hours to travel to the Friendly Arm Inn and after delivering the spider corpse, the boots and the wine to Landrin the party now have 7 antidote potions, and almost 1000 gold coins and Hamilton advances to level 5.
After paying the temple cleric to heal Imoen, the party travels back to Beregost. When they arrive to Beregost it is day 8 hour 1 and no single rest has been made yet. Imoen is not fatigued anymore because she had a deep rest during her petrification period and Hamilton is still not fatigued.
The party finds an old barrel in the streets of Beregost to stash some items for later.
In the center of Beregost near the obelisk a bard called Garrick approaches the party with a job proposal, which they agree to, Garrick leads the party to his superior, a woman called Silke, who wants to hire the party to kill some thugs. It seems she wants the party to kill innocent men, which Hamilton refuses to take part in and then Silke attacks the party.
First Hamilton tries to knock out Silke with his fists and he hits but she does not get knocked out, then Silke has her spellcasting interrupted by Imoen's use of wand of magic missiles, but then Silke casts a lightning bolt spell, which Hamilton dodges and Silke gets beaten to death.
Imoen is now level 4 mage and level 4 thief, needing roughly 10 k exp to get her thief skills back.
One of these innocent men called Faltis that Imoen and Hamilton saved from Silke's wrath gives the party a potion of defence as thanks.
Now that Garrick's employer is dead he asks Hamilton if he can join the party, which Hamilton agrees to, but only for a short while to identify some items that Imoen does not have enough lore to do.
Garrick identifies evermemory: ring of wizardry, the golden girdle, the belt of frost protection, some magical arrows +1, magical long swords, a magical morning star and more and all free of charge, a good little service.
Just south from Beregost the party encounters 2 ogrillons and one of them carries a letter, which the party picks up after they kill them. The letter is written to Mirianna by her husband Roe, whose corpse is lying at the road where the party found the ogrillons... not hard to imagine what might have happened here.
3 Flaming Fist Mercenaries approach Imoen and Hamilton. Hamilton is glad to see the hand of the law being active in bringing order and justice in these parts, but not so happy about being accused of theft, but anyhow he calms him self and convinces them that his party is not bandits and off they go again.
In this area just south of Beregost the party fights ghouls and hobgoblins and Hamilton quickly learns how to swap between the 2 girdles depending on what damage type he is facing, piercing or slashing.
In this area after killing a small group of 4 hobgoblins, the party loot a pair of magical boots that look interesting
In the middle of this area an interesting cave is discovered, which end up being full of healing potions, which the party really needed.
Back to Beregost, it is only a small walk taking 4 hours and the party can deliver the sad news to Mirianna about her husband Roe and see if anyone knows something about these magical boots.
First Hamilton visits Thunderhammer Smithy to buy a few more throwing axes, which pack a good punch and bring down ghouls before they have time to crawl up close to him.
In the middle of the street Garrick is still standing there in Beregost, where we left him, Hamilton wonders if he hasn't got anything better to do then he may just help us identify these magical boots, and for old friendship's sake he does so free of charge and we leave him again.
Now thirsty after a long walk the party decides to pay the inn called Red Sheaf a visit. Inside though they find a mercenary dwarf called Karlat is waiting for them and he has been sent to kill Hamilton, but he is no match for this party who now has a lot of experience and strength under their belt, not to mention decent armor and weapons. With the golden girdle equipped against Karlat's slashing axe, Karlat cannot even as much as hit Hamilton at all.
After killing Karlat the party meets Perdue who is offering 50 gold pieces for bringing him his sword back, now in the possesion of a gnoll they learn.
Now in the bar of the Burning Wizard the party meets Zhurlong who claims these magical boots of stealth belongs to him. Hamilton gives the boots to him and the party is rewarded, but Hamilton cannot let a bandit scum like this go on ruining honest people's lives after he experiences him self being robbed of coin by this one. So the party kill Zhurlong and take the boots back.
After telling Mirianne the news of her husband she gives the party a ring of protection +1, which Garrick is happy to identify free of charge. Now both Hamilton and Imoen can equip a protective ring on the same time.
The party now ventures forth even more south than ever, towards Nashkel.
Baldur's gate no reload challenge. Part 6.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit.
It is day 8 hour 12 and no rest has been used during the whole playthrough yet.
On their way south they encounter hobgoblins, kobolds and bandits who are now not much of a threat to these powerful heros of the sword coast. But Ghouls are a threat, Hamilton learns that after being struck once by a ghoul and he got held, luckily the ghoul was at near death due to Hamilton's throwing axe and Imoen's sling and bullets, so Imoen could easily finish the ghoul off before it could cause more harm to the immobilized Hamilton.
They also find Colquetle's family amulet and Hamilton recalls something about that family name in Beregost, maybe keep this amulet and see it returned to the family he thinks to him self.
It is day 9 hour 6 and the party arrive for their first time in Nashkel.
After taking a look at the outskirts of Nashkel around the farmers' fields, the party finds a real treassure, an Ankheg armor, improving Hamilton's AC 2 solid points, so now he sits at -5 AC.
In the fields of Nashkel the party also meets Noober who seems enthralled by our shiny armor and adventurous looking, he cannot stop asking questions and follow us. Hamilton has learned some wisdom from his temple elders during his days and from the sages of candlekeep, they taught him that nothing lasts for ever and accepting and patiently letting impulses and energies run their cause may sometimes be the best way instead of fighting and controlling, so Hamilton decides to let Noober go through his processes and suddenly Noobers impulses fade and his curiosity dissapears, the party gains 400 exp from this learning experience.
Berrun Ghastkill hires the party to investigate the trouble in the mines.
Oublek mistakes Hamilton for a mercenary called Greywolf, but Hamilton corrects his mistake and let him know his true identity, and the party gains a reputation point.
The party arrives to the Nashkel mines and Hamilton is level 5 with 65 maximum hit points, -5 AC and 66 kills.
In a hidden crevice within a tree the party finds a magical wand, with some cold and icy shimmering aura about it, interesting.
The party meets the artist Prism and shortly after Greywolf shows up, since Prism seems like a highly passionate but obsessed artist without any ill intent to anyone Hamilton chooses to protect Prism against Greywolf. Hamilton casts Protection of evil on him self, slaps on the golden girdle and starts swinging his magical morning star +1. But Hamilton quickly finds out that Greywolf has outmatched him in close combat and starts running to the hills while throwing axes back at his pursuer until Greywolf lies dead.
Prism finished his great work and died in peace, the praty gained a reputation point, some decent experience, a magical sword yet to be identified and they pick up the 2 emeralds that Prism stole to bring them back to Oublek, since law and order has to be upheld Hamilton reckons.
At the Temple back in Nashkel Hamilton pays the priest for some healing after those serious wounds Greywolf inflicted and the magical wand gets identified for 100 gold pieces and turns out to be a wand of frost.
In the local inn of Nashkel a woman attacks, Neira is her name, it seems she was also hired to kill Hamilton. Time to try out that wand of frost, Imoen successfully interrupts Neira's spellcasting with a heavy hit of 17 damage with the wand of frost and Hamilton then hits her twice with his morning star and down she goes.
After all this fighting and death the party decides it is time for som carnival. A merchant sells the party 2 special potions that Imoen identifies without trouble, 1 grants 25 strenght but with scary sideeffects and the other 50 % resistance to magical damage and 25 intelligence but with other side effects. Hamilton is sure however that at least one potion will be very useful at some point.
Another Merchant at the carnival sells a few interesting items and Hamilton gets tempted and buys a shield amulet.
In another tent the party gets into a fight with a mage called Zordral who has some woman captive, he casts mirror image and Imoen interrupts his spellcasting with her wand of frost and deliver 27 damage as well. Zordral casts Melf's Acid arrow on Hamilton initially inflicting 8 acid damage but the next moment Hamilton kills Zordral with an autoattack.
Bentha is freed from the grasp of Zordral and give Hamilton a potion of Heroism. Hamilton takes another 12 acid damage from Zordral's spell and finally 8 more acid damage, with one spell Zordral managed to inflict 28 dammage to Hamilton.
In another big gambling tent at the Carnival a suspicious guy approaches called Vitiare, but Hamilton knows a thief when he sees one and attacks him before he can get close, he is killed and give some decent loot.
The party wanders to the northern parts of the carnival area where small groups of kobolds attack them. Seeing how Hamilton has fought kobolds before without any trouble and with his fairly high level, good AC and items he feels very confident.
Hamilton feels so confident that he stays in close combat with the kobolds even when he goes down to 18 hp, but his confidence and arrogance towards these kobolds become his downfall for suddenly they land several hits in fast succession before Hamilton can even as much as think the word "healing potion" and everything goes black and Hamilton dies.
A glorious and epic death I am sure the gods would be proud, death to kobold hahahaha
Journal of Rhiainfelt
Upon being ambushed we followed Gorion's instructions and ran for our lives. However, rather than go to The Friendly Arms Inn where we could expect a warm welcome if they had read Gorion's letter, we returned to Candlekeep only to be turned away at the gate. We were at least able to arrange for Gorion's burial, and upon returning to the site of the ambush we found his possessions which turned out to be worth having.
Turning southwards we came upon Mellicamp and were able to help him regain human form.
We were also able to acquire a potion to try to help Tonder who was suffering from Lythancropy.
Sadly it didn't work and we were forced to kill him.
Thalantyr gave us a sword in return for the body. It is quite a good one and will come in handy until we find a better one.
Heading eastwards we ran into some ogrillon who were not friendly at all. They will kill no more travellers.
We followed the road southwards where we were attacked by Flaming Fist Mercenaries. We didn't get much experience for killing them, but we did get good armour.
We were then attacked by Tristan und Isolde.
We began to wonder if all travellers were treated like us, or was it because we had the taint of infernal blood in our veins. The number of corpses that we encountered indicated that perhaps we were being paranoid!
One of the corpses that we came across had some attractive jewelery on it. On our way south, we added to the number of corpses on the roadside.
Eventually we came across two friendly travellers, a half-orc and Lord Foreshadow, the latter of whom gave us a charisma boosting ring.
In Nashkel we found some excellent ankheg armour, spoke to Noober, and turned down a reward from Oublek before heading south where Zargos Flintblade attacked us and subsequently died.
Feeling that we had left a long enough false trail, we doubled back and went to the Friendly Arms Inn where we were once more attacked by an assassin. Upon this occasion the assassin was a mage called Tarnesh.
He ended up as dead as all the others.
We then headed north where we killed every ankheg that we could find.
We then went to bewregost to sell the ankheg shells and whilst there returned the Colquetle amulet, killed Marl when he attacked us, and delivered a tome to Firebead.
We then got into conflict with Silke, the spell silence proving to be invaluable.
In the nearby inn we were attacked by Karlat who died.
We then returned Perdue's sword and helped get Alanna's neighbour back into shape.
Heading eastwards we were asked to kill Bassilus, but first we killed a pack of wolves.
Further east, we killed a party of "Adventurers," before clearing the area of Basilisks, Medusae and finally Mutamin himself.
The Carnival is the place we visited next and it was there tyhat Aerie asked us to help bentha which we gladly did.
We then headed westwards where we reunnited Rufie with his owner and then killed Vax and Zal.
Further west still, we werer asked to help a dryad which we did, killing Caldo and Krumm in the process, followed by a winter wolf.
We continued westwards wheree we killed two ogres and then Hilgaar's party.
After investigating a nearby cave we headed northwards where we were given a welcome reward for killing a polar bear.
We then fulfilled the request of Lathander's Temple that we deal with Bassilus.
Upon receiving our reward at the temple, who should we meet but Sirene, a tiefling like we ourselves.
EDIT
Soon after that we met up with Khalid and Jaheira and immediately understood why Gorion told us to link up with them. They were both tiefling like us, so our own tiefling heritage would be no problem. We were however a bit ambivalent about Jaheira as her alignment is neutral. That could cause problems. However her husband will hopefully be able to keep her on track as we certainly don't want any friction in the group.
After a while, we realised that expecting Khalid to keep his wife's behaviour was asking far too much of him as he is decidedly henpecked. If he is to have any kind of life, he is going to have to learn to stand up to her.
Whilst at the Inn we discovered the necessity of dealing with the iron crisis, so we went to the Nashkel Mine to discover what the problem is.
Down the mine we were attacked over and over again:
We discovered that the cause of the problem was a Cyricist named Mulahey whom we killed. However, there is still the bandit problem to deal with. I left Khaled down the mine in order to be able to free a mage called Xan. Once we were out, I went back to collect Khaled after which we discovered that we continued to be attacked even outside the mine.
However, after slaying those who attacked us, we returned to the Mayor of Nashkel who rewarded us and told us where we needed to take a phial of liquid that has been causing the problem with the iron.
Blaggerd & co are stood outside the drow city of Ust Natha, continued from here.
Adalon the silver dragon has disguised us as drow although Wilson still looks a bit unchanged. Blaggerd remembers to pretend he is Veldrin from Ched Nasad or some such, and we are in. No time is wasted in purchasing items from the three merchants and we are straight onto a quest of rescuing Phaere.
Everybody knows this is a good pretext for an ambush and so it proves. While our buffs are reasonably comprehensive Blaggerd fails to spot Neera has had another wild surge until combat starts and she is effectively sitting the battle out. That's not a problem although both she and Imoen have to run around a bit to avoid the attentions of their party thief, Damien. The combat goes reasonably well with a Truesight revealing N'ashtar and Damien so each can be targeted and eliminated.
Blaggerd's master plan to use a Death spell on the kidnapping mind-flayers is in doubt since Neera is still transformed as a wolf. He panics a bit and send the party in, without really considering brain-drain on Wilson. Neera transforms back to her normal form as the flayers arrive so begins her incantation but sure as eggs are eggs the flayers latch onto our weakest ursine link and down goes Wilson.
Once we complete the rescue Blaggerd breaks out our second raise dead scroll and up pops Wilson. The bear snuffles Blaggerd and only a keen observer would see the Blackguard twitch from having no more scrolls, or even a rod of resurrection that could easily have been picked up. Plans dear boy, plans. Do some.
Let's get Ust Natha over with and head surface-side. With all three of the Matron Mother's items already at hand we could make a really quick exit. Everybody sighs as Blaggerd points to a nearby tower and equips the iMoD. Some buffs later and we are in - Minsc using Azuredge. Good shot Minsc, you got him right in the cutscene.
We draw straws as to who will switch the dragon eggs in the drow temple. Neera wins/grins and adds mirror images and invisibility to her stoneskins. Off she trots and returns courtesy of another invisibility without much of a chance to take any damage.
We double-cross the Matron Mother, and also Phaere. Blaggerd almost hands over the dragon eggs to receive a suitable reward but with no further raise dead scrolls it may be too risky (plus his saving throws are already reasonably good at -1 to -3 unbuffed). He hangs onto the light gem as he may be back - assuming Adalon is still around at a later point.
Our exit from the Underdark is less than memorable, ending with an inquisition from elven generals. We'll make our own celebrations in Windspear - although Minsc almost pays the ultimate price. A little while later Firkraag pays his own ultimate price.
So much fun later we return triumphantly to the city, only to run into Kruin. We need to see what a gith wild mage can do, and the answer turns out to be not as much as he intended. Neera takes a nap during combat so we stop what we are doing and swarm around her. For a few moments Blaggerd fears everything is going pear-shaped but our focus on one enemy at a time reaps dividends. Anyone know the number of a clean-up company, or shall we just leave the Promenade a bit smeared in Gith.
Blaggerd forks out 5000gp for a magic licence, meaning Neera and Imoen can let loose their imagination in future city combat. He also pays Cromwell to forge the Gesen bow (Imoen), Silver sword (Minsc), Equalizer longsword (spare) and red dragon scale (spare). Also purchased is the Firetooth crossbow (bagged).
Step by step Blaggerd is demonstrating why companions should be revived. Continued from here
Mekrath proves to be no bother to us, and Neera merrily casts a Death spell to thin out a group of yuan-ti.
The Rod of Resurrection has 10 charges but Blaggerd has (finally) learnt his lesson (for now) and purchases several Raise Dead scrolls too.
A check of the journal quests shows Umar Hills still needs to be resolved. The party have sufficient levels to stroll though enemies and several liches have Azuredge or the iMod as their final encounter.
Thaxll'ssillyia looks intimidating but six of us are able to deal with the dragon safely.
A Shade Lord outside lasts no longer, while Neera has used a sunstone bullet to shut down the shadow altar. We can cross Umar off our list of outstanding tasks.
Valygar's body opens up the Planar Sphere and Blaggerd exacts revenge on Necre for his previous SoA outing.
We test our melee capacity out against an Adamantite golem - and fell it before we have to retreat.
Lavok is the keeper / owner of the Planar Sphere, so we treat him to a dose of combat that he fails to stave off. As he lies dying he asks us to return him home.
We head outside the newly-moved Planar Sphere and pick up a demon heart. Tolgerias is blocking our path to the engine room, but once Minsc vorpals his mage assistant we are able to use a couple of debuffs to speed up the demise of our opponent.
Another Adamantite golem is in our way and we treat it to another dose of melee, Minsc vorpalling it to cut short the combat.
We're free to return the sphere, and allow Lavok his final wish.
Since we're in the Slums we may as well return what remains of Yoshimo to a temple of Ilmater, gaining 200,000xp and levels for Blaggerd Minsc and Rasaad.
Blaggerd is beginning to feel confident about matters, so heads back into the Temple sewers to the secret illithid lair. Rasaad uses a special ability then punches a mind flayer out before the rest of the party can arrive.
Neera summons a Mordy sword and we shoot down the next group of illithid. Against a later group the sword is unsummoned and as Neera + Imoen retreat to summon another the fighters hold the line.
Just as they are about to retreat, Rasaad is stunned. Blaggerd and Minsc think they have done enough but Rasaad falls and then Minsc is stunned. Blaggerd tries a little but Minsc also dies. At this point Blaggerd retreats and once combat ends we go to a temple to raise the two fallen party members.
On our return we empty the lair without any further incident so we leave the sewers.
Blaggerd can see a guarded compound, and the prospect of a lesson beckons. We're adequately buffed and a Power Word: Stun is wasted against the many many hit points Wilson has.
If the Guarded Compound was straightforward, Blaggerd thinks the Planar Prison should be a walk in the park. Maybe he should have made sure Neera and Imoen buff before we enter. Neera is caught flat-footed and Imoen fails to cast Invisibility 10' before Neera dies. Rasaad gets held too, but our usual tactic of ganging up on each attacker pays off again to keep him alive.
Imoen has to run around us for a few rounds until the combat ends, then Blaggerd uses a rod charge to revive Neera.
The Master of Thralls has no answer to our melee.
The Warden and his yuan-ti can be troublesome but not today. The battle is pretty much concluded by the time Neera has returned from breaking the thrall control device.
With both Planar areas complete it is time to step up to the Twisted Rune. Azuredge and the iMoD accoutn for Shangalar the lich, then Vaxall the beholder is meleed and a quick retreat sees Layene waste a Time Stop. When that ends we kill Shyressa and Revanek before striking Layene down.
Cromwell completes his forging (Shadow dragon armour, Wave halberd, Crom Faeyr) and Blaggerd stops to think about what else should be done before going after Bodhi.
Blaggerd has thought and thought, and cannot come up with anything else to do in Amn so continues straight on from here.
We push through the vampire nest, their resistance melting away before us. Even Bodhi cannot prevent us and we take great delight in staking her to her coffin.
Nearby we find what the elves have been searching for, and gain entrance to Suldanessellar. The place is under attack so we work our way round and the only minor hitch is when Blaggerd gets Mazed. Once he is back we find a black dragon and kill it.
Wilson snorfles. Minor hitch indeed. What about in the temple where he and Minsc were held - and the bear's life hung in the balance, only saved by frantic melee and perhaps by an invisibility 10' spell.
The Tree of Life is ascended and three large parasites removed. That is enough to break Irenicus out of his protective barrier and grant us a chance to battle him. We scatter as he prepares a Time Stop but he wasn't born yesterday and drops a sky full of ice onto Neera, killing her (although the power word kill probably landed first). We grab her gear while continuing the fight and Irenicus breathes his last.
Or not. What do we have to do to truly kill him?
We're in a hell, or some such place. Neera is alive once more without us having to raise her, or we are as dead as she is. It's all a bit confusing.
Blaggerd quickly works out some good tasks and only as he approaches the last confrontation with Wraith Sarevok does he deliberately say he will become the Slayer.
Only...
Only...
He has no Slayer ability. Now isn't the time to worry about it so he digs deep and finishes off Sarevok with his sword.
Now, back to Irenicus. Imoen and Neera pile on some de-buffs for his Slayer form and once his fire shields are quenched we close in to tear him apart.
With SoA complete we are thanked by the elves and get to see a part of the Forest of Tethir that is new to us.
After waking up in Jon's dungeon we put together some basic equipment and sought for an exit. For the odd fight skeletons joined in, but most of the time we were on our own. That resulted in taking a fair amount of damage, but there were no real close calls. One oddity I noted was with the assassin fighting the mephit just after the portal room. The mephit lost morale and retreated and the assassin followed - and got himself stunned by the salt mephit waiting further down the corridor. That wouldn't be easy to recreate, but was a nice way of drawing the salt mephit out.
In the Promenade we fancied a nice relaxing trip to the circus. Inside that the shadows were gathering though and Nearv was desperate to dispel those. On the second level he backstabbed one and tried to hide before going after the other. Tens dragged the werewolves over to the other side of the tent to give him that chance, but after 5 failed attempts to get into stealth was getting rather impatient (he didn't have a magical weapon, so couldn't kill it himself).
Eventually though the job was done and the circus restored to normality.
Another location ripe for a change in status was the Copper Coronet. Tens got into trouble there though when keeping his sling equipped too long and taking a lot of damage from a bunch of beasts. That resulted in him retreating a long way before slamming a door on them.
A bit of healing and buffing later though and the danger was ended.
Knowing Suna Seni and her gang were planning an ambush, we staged a little surprise for them - skeletons, silence and backstabs were far too much for them to handle ...
Officer Dirth provided an armor upgrade, as well as seeing Nearv's poison in action for the first time in awhile. In MP activating the poison tends to make you drop out of stealth before you get a chance to attack, so poison backstabs are not that easy to arrange - and enemies tend not to survive the non-poisoned ones anyway. However, when Dirth was commanded to die, a bit of poison helped him on his way .
I really only intended to get the potion case at WK, but once there couldn't resist looking inside. The only thing we had that could damage the stone golem was Arbane's sword, but Nearv made good use of his 19 strength there to plunge the non-proficient sword through the golem body.
There were no vampiric wraiths in the main room, so we also cleared the remainder of the first level, with the exception of the statues - who had nothing useful for us.
After rescuing Renfeld, Nearv went after Prebek and Sanasha. The latter was backstabbed first, which should have prompted a reaction from Prebek.
However, he didn't make the connection between Nearv and the PC and did nothing until Nearv prompted a reaction by attacking him.
The harpers' HQ was duly looted and Nearv racked up some XP there from fiddling with locks and traps. We didn't bother with summoning skeletons to surround Lucette and kill her, but Nearv did attempt a backstab to try and get a quick kill before she disappeared. The positioning looked good on my screen, but was a bit different on Gate70's and the game refused to give a backstab bonus - and Lucette made it away safely.
Some thugs picking on us just after that provided a good opportunity for Tens to try out his new greater command spell - which proved pretty nasty.
The final action saw a trip to the Temple District, where we dived into the sewers. Tens tried picking off kobolds one by one, but failed to kill the witchdoctor as quickly as he expected and started running around in terror.
That was an extremely dangerous situation with lots of potential to pull in new enemies. He did find a green slime, which I think got one attack in.
Green slime attacks are potentially lethal, but this one missed before Tens ran back among the kobolds and got stuck in an entangle. Meanwhile, Nearv had been doing his own bit of running round looking for places to hide - and was being chased by a carrion crawler and an otyugh. The crawler saw Tens in a pickle and thought that looked like an easy meal, but fortunately horror expired as it came into range and Tens used a firebreath potion to give it a spicier meal than it was expecting.
Despite being slowed by the otyugh, Nearv managed exceptionally well to keep the rakshasa occupied while Tens summoned a couple of skeletons to dispose of that ... and we could breathe again .
Tens, cleric 9 / ranger 87, 107 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 95 kills (+195 in BG1)
Nearv, assassin 12, 71 HPs, 61 kills (+158 in BG1), 0 deaths
After collecting our reward in Nashkel, we made our way back north yo Beregost. On the way we killed a couple of lady ogres and a few hobgoblin. Upon arrival we were given hints as to where to go next and ended up in the bandit camp where we fought and beat Tazok. He pretended that he was leaving of his own accord, but we knew better.
Before he left, he shouted to his cohorts to kill us, but as they couldn't see us, we had the choice of time and place.
We therefore started off by killing Brotus Bloodthirsty and his allies.
We then went to the Friendly Arms Inn where we could rest safely.
After that we headed south and killed Deke, his cohorts and the Caravan Bandits.
In Bewregost we took on Tranzig before resting and returning to the bandit camp.
We then attacked the bandits using web, fireball etc. The battle was quickly over without serious injury, or so we thought.
We therefore rested before going to plunder the camp.
What we didn't know was that there was an ambush of hobgoblin elite archers awaiting us and they were far more effective than the supposedly stronger enemies that we had defeated. They killed Khaled by poisoning him again and again.
In Tazok's tent a trap killed Ender Sai and hurt me badly.
Screenshot just before it got me for a second time!
We returned to Beregost where we came to blows with a dwarf called Teresh.
Heading north we killed his allies before dealing with some more assassins.
EDIT
Heading back to the Friendly Arms Inn we were accosted by some who thought that we were evil. Clearly, since we are all tiefling, this allowed our enemies to prey on the fears of those they decieved.
Heading back south we were attacked by Davenport and his bully boys. All died.
So, perhaps she should now make a foray into Cloakwood. Currently she needed to acquire another wand to deliver fireballs but didn't have the gold required to either buy or recharge one. She therefore found the lost cloak and made an agreement with some druids to aid them against the shadow druids. She hoped that by then she would be able to make the required purchases to enable her to progress further.
Illasera has brought companions to hunt us down, unfortunately for her we quickly despatch them and set about her. It's a bit of a rout despite Malison and Slow going against us.
Sarevok, yet again, awaits us in what he calls a Pocket Plane. Blaggerd is up for this game, and agrees to restore him but falsely recruits and dismisses him to hold him within the Plane. That'll teach him. Plus if anyone gets chunked there will be a ready-made substitute available.
We have to face a challenge to leave the Plane, and it turns out to be very easy for us - with Ellisime turning up on her own at the end with no sign of say a couple of companions for her.
Blaggerd notices he can use the Slayer Change special ability (not present in SoA for some reason), but chooses not to. Instead we travel down to Saradush and introduce ourselves to Melissan.
We use a rod charge on a hapless peasant (only the charge count remains at 8 which is what it was previously, despite Blaggerd thinking he'd used it once and not twice. Maybe he can't count).
Kiser Jhaeri is trying to pull the wool over our eyes, and we're not having it. Minsc doesn't have a suitable one-shot weapon available so uses his general vorpaliser, the silver sword. It works.
n.b. he has
Crom Faeyr for stone golems, clay golems, ettins and trolls
Azuredge for undead (saving throw allowed)
Staffs for Fire / Earth / Air elementals (saving throw allowed)
Wave Halberd for Fire elementals, Efreet and Salamanders
Having found a spellbook for the storekeep, cleared out the vampires from the jail, stopped a few fights (yes we are hypocrites) and found a safehaven for some elves we move on to the castle basement and stop when we find a scabbard. Blaggerd immediately returns to the Pocket Plane and an imp called Cespenar upgrades the Foebane sword.
Party inventory.
Blaggerd inspects his unbuffed saving throws - they look decent enough but might need a nudge against the odd enemy or when malisoned.
(any suggestions on equipment for the party welcome)
'Long-life challenge' - true class mage {65} (hour 1)
The mage is the earliest-rolled character (not yet successful) I have - created almost 4 years ago. If you're careful it's an easy class to make progress with and I've actually taken it to Mel a number of times - but a combination of bad play, bad luck and bugs has stopped me at that final hurdle .
The majority of my runs end when I start taking more chances over time. To try and minimize my tendency to do that, I'll again resort to limiting each session in this run to an hour ...
The opening hour included: Shoal (shot for XP), Neera (shot for bag), High Hedge golems (shot while going to get potion case and invisibility scroll), basilisks and Mutamin (paralysed by Korax), belt ogre (saved against 4 sleeps and was eventually just shot down), stealing ankheg treasure invisibly, activating all the gnolls to kill Drizzt (for loot - before giving them a well-deserved rest).
In the few minutes left I went to Nashkel and learnt CLW before heading on to the Nashkel Mine. A frost wand was added to the collection, before Greywolf was filled with magic missiles.
Next time I should do further reputation quests to maximise that before adding to my spell repertoire.
Cautiousness was Promise's adage as she entered the Siege of Dragonspear portion of the saga. In Korlasz's lair, she distracted a group of mercenaries with wand summons so that she could go and have a word with Porios and convince him that Korlasz's cause was a lost one. On the second level, it was Kivan who did the party one last favor before bowing out... He put on the boots of speed, read a PfUndead scroll, and applied an oil of speed. Baeloth cast Invisibility on the ranger. He then went to talk two mercenaries out of serving Korlasz, allowing himself to open the door to her room. Hugging the wall and moving at lightning speed, he bypassed a dispel trap. With potions (mind focusing for better ranged Thac0, invulnerability, magic shielding) he buffed for Korlasz. Arrows of dispelling and a number of charges from the ring of energy sufficed to make Korlasz surrender. This didn't go as smoothly as it may sound. He got hit several times and even had to go invisible at one point to heal up and he quaffed a regen potion just in case.
Only then did the party do the side quests in the dungeon. They looted the hidden chests but didn't bother with fighting the undead that spawned after opening one of said chests.
In Baldur's Gate Promise quested on her own, doing all the quests I think, pushing her XP as far as possible to 250,000. She only made it to that point in the Coastway Crossing and Forest areas, thanks to the many spiders there, Prin and the menhirs, Teleria - a quest that Promise messed up when Teleria Confused a summoned hobgoblin that struck down one of the statues,
staking a vampire and finding Takos's heirlooms. Upon reaching level 9, Promise invested a second pip in flails, an investment for BG2. For SoD her weapon proficiencies are ** scimitars, ** daggers, ** flails, and ** two-weapon style.
Promise then reunited with most of her old friends: Sirene, Baeloth, Emily (after Webbing and dispatching more planar hunters), and Aura. Captain Corwin took Kivan's place as the party's second archer.
At the Dwarven dig site the party was quite meticulous in cleaning up the first area, successfully defending the dwarves of Dumathoin,
slaying all the undead as well as some other monsters with webs and the occasional stun.
This required several rests. Semahl survived because the undead attacking him were lured toward the party.
The same diligence was not applied in clearing the next area. Promise buffed and protected herself with PfUndead, an oil of speed, and cloud giant strength, unlocked the door to Coldhearth, returned to the dwarves to obtain the Secret Revealed, and used that against the lich. He could do little more than cast Stoneskin (twice with success, once interrupted by Promise) and fall.
Promised destroyed the phylactery, but had some difficulty getting away from the broken portal, requiring summons as decoys.
She caught the Bronze Sentry in two Webs (read from scroll) and finished the construct off for a nice blade for Sirene, and she picked up three scepters for a bit of XP from the raised pool before leading the party outside and onward toward Boareskyr Bridge.
In SoD I always use stealth/invisibility/sanctuary to get past trash mobs guarding loot, but in Trollclaw Woods the party made an exception for the troll cave, with Webs allowing for easy disposal of trolls both inside and outside the cave.
In the Forest of Wyrms, the wand of paralyzation was put to good use once more to deal with wyverns while invisible Aura, Baeloth, and Sirene made sure that Corwin, Emily, and Promise could take down loads of spiders from a safe distance. The party fought their way to Morentherene's lair and entered it without any active spell effects so that Promise could slay the dragon with her throwing dagger. (A previous experience taught me that having invisble party members will cause the dragon to wake upon being approached.)
Haste and invisibility ensured that the party reached the old temple without getting detected by bugbear shamans. On the way there Aura failed to disarm a snare, suffering serious but not lethal damage as a result. In the temple Promise buffed with a potion of fire giant strength and her divine might ability and equips Death's Razor +2 in the main hand and Jin'u +1 in the off-hand (two blades from Aura's BG1 quest) for crits on attack rolls of 17-20. With some wand summons as decoys she successfully battled three invisible stalkers.
Ziatar and her two mages were then tricked into wasting spells on three skeletons before Baeloth Webbed them. Promise stunned Ziatar just in case, after which party made short work of their foes.
New skeletons occupied some dancing swords as the lightly buffed party (PfE, Haste) took care of the Neothelid.
A charge of the greenstone amulet for this encounter made sure Promise wouldn't get dominated.
Akanna's aerial servants were susceptible to stun, thankfully, and the cleric/thief herself was Webbed.
A Sanctuary allowed Aura to pick up a magical short sword right in front of the Shadow Aspect. In front of the reliquary, Webs made that only two umber hulks approached the party. Swapping the Helm of Unwavering Purpose between Emily and Promise prevented either of them from getting confused. The umber hulks were stunned and slain before the other members of Darskhelin's company attacked. Darskhelin snacked twice on Aura's potent brain, but other than that the mind flayer was fairly harmless, strong against magical attacks but weak against martial attacks. He was killed (poisoned) by Baeloth's phase spiders.
Of the others only the mage Jhan Redmoons was a threat, due to his MGoI protecting him against hold/stun. He failed to cast anything problematic though (a Teleport Field, some Blindnesses that Promise saved against), and the party prevailed relatively easily.
A visit to Bridgefort and a brief reconaissance of the Crusader Camp were followed by an attack upon the camp, with the party arriving with the Fist. The party moved forward slowly so as not to draw too many enemies to them at the same time. As usual Baeloth was the one controlling the battlefield with many castings of Web and Slow, and Chaos from scroll (bought in BG1 Sorcerous Sundries).
Hobgoblins joining in from the path to the teleportation circle were a bit of a nuisance, forcing the party to divide their attention.
On the bridge, a Cloudkill from scroll by Baeloth and a Web from scroll by Promise saw the mage disrupted in her summoning spell and her henchmen held. Poison-immune cavalier Sirene meleed the enemy with spider's bane; the others stuck to ranged attacks focused initially on the mage.
@Gate70 good stuff, keep it up! As for your call for equipment suggestions, unless you're doing sword & shield for RP reasons, would it not be preferable to have Blaggerd dual-wield, for example with Defender of Easthaven or a speed weapon? Considering his great saves the shield of harmony doesn't seem to add much as long as Blaggerd isn't Malisoned.
Jehu, Human Shaman and Moira, Dwarven Wizard slayer, update 2 (BG2 beginning) Introduction Update 1
Because of SCS's customizable NPC component, all joinable spellcasters start with 0 spells memorized, and because we're in Chateau Irenicus, we have one rest total. I toyed with the idea of using EEKeeper to simulate a rest, but I figured that with a 20 CON dwarf and Shaman summons, we'd be able to make it through more or less healthy through the first level. After claiming the initial Duergar crossbows, we take far too much damage from the lesser Golems, and accidentally triggered two additional Duergar parties. This run isn't looking very clean so far. I make some of those mistakes up by successfully taking 0 damage from the Otyugh.
That'd done via stealth attacks, running back to a corridor, and re-stealthing. The Otyugh doesn't even get to make an attack roll. The rest is a pretty standard clear: Spirit summons are used to tank whenever we have time to prepare, but otherwise Moira soaks the hits. We ignore fighting the mephits in the demiplane, and Minsc successfully stealths to the genie and back twice for the Sword of Chaos. After going through the portal, we recruit Yoshimo, and kind of botch the approach to the mephits. I had planned on Yoshimo throwing a Special trap into the room, but apparently a mephit was visible to him and all 5 mephits manage to get into the room. Miracles of miracles, no one goes down to the Radiant mephit, and Minsc and Moira break out to crush the portals while the others delay the mephits. We take our rest in that room. From there, we have the spellslots to defeat everything we need to, successfully killing Ulvaryl and Fenneden.
We quickly return a circus to normal, though Aerie is almost killed on the 3rd level: she also gets no spell slots, and a C/M with no spells is squishy. After selling some items and getting coo'd at, we attempt to fight the two muggers/whatever in front of the Copper Coronet. Our remaining health tells all the story of how weak we are right now.
Regardless, the Slavers is going to be the easiest starting questline. I really need to start purchasing reputation before doing this, but oh well. Spirit animals tank against the real animals, and a few area spells are enough to clear out the Beastmaster; Hendak takes control of the Coronet.
We traverse the sewers to get to the Slaver compound. Nothing really to report, though we again managed to avoid all Otyugh diseases, and obtained Lilarcor. We Pixie Dust into the Slaver compound, and Aerie has Emotion:Hope and Haste (I think) on all of us. Yoshimo gets himself into the bottom left corner out of sight from all enemies, and throws a Special trap to start the fight. A good number are Held, and the remaining members of our squad break invisibility and destroy the initial fight. The second fight against the mage isn't as clean, and Minsc almost dies again as he's Feared and runs into far too many archers for his own good, and the rest of us were hit by Slow. We return to Haegan, though, and think of our next steps.
I want Mazzy as a front-line: she's generally just better than Minsc in every way, shape, and form in that position except for exceptional strength. So we head to Umar Hills and quickly use a Free Action spell to get some Mimic blood, and kill the resulting Stone golem. After some quick negotiating with Madulf, we head to the Shadow Temple. I finally use this rest to fix a spell difference I had on import: Jehu had Cause Light Wounds instead of Sunscorch, and a quick EEKeeper fixed this.
We travel invisibly to the temple, though talking to the werewolves makes someone vulnerable... I believe it was Minsc? He almost gets swarmed and killed on the way to the mirror, but we get into the temple with everyone still alive. We use invisible blockers for the beginning fight, with Minsc throwing Azuredge non-proficiently. Jehu is True Neutral, and thus can't use the weapon: this might be the only reason to go Neutral Good instead. We trade Minsc for Mazzy here, sending Minsc to the Copper Coronet. And because I'm too lazy to google, I try to remember the rituals only for Moira to get her first death.
One Recall Spirit later, and we're using Jaheira's Fire Elemental for everything. It's untouchable outside of a Bone Golem, though the elemental unsummons before we hit it. Regardless, we have enough range weapons to kill it safely.
Shade Lord: we use Pixie Dust to safely get to the bottom left corner again, and engage in a ranged fight with Shadows, Shadow Patrick, and the Shadow altar. Jehu specifically doesn't break invisibility for the Shade Lord. We crucially get a hit or two from Moira onto it before it PFMW's up, and the Shade Lord fails every spell cast during its period of invulnerability. We wait it out, and it doesn't survive to recast PFMW: Jehu had dispelled the MI from invisibility.
Next up is Trademeet. We trade Jaheira for Valygar back in Umar hills first, and trade Yoshimo for Cernd since there are no traps in the druid grove. Aerie casts three Pro. Petrifications, and we take out the genies first before heading to the grove. We somehow meet no trolls outside, though we try and fail to win the troll mound: our AC simply isn't low enough to win melee slugfests yet, and the trolls keep making their saving throws vs Web and Slow. Regardless, we slog our way through the rest of the animals and druids in the grove, and manage to kill Delos before he Call Lightnings someone to oblivion.
We try to have Cernd fight Faldorn under Improved Invisibility without resting: she now starts the fight with an instant-cast Fire Elemental, and can now make herself immune to projectiles: the Guard cheese from Fighters now doesn't work against her. Needless to say, Faldorn wins, so we Recall Spirit, rest, Improved Invisibility and Insect Plague and two follow up Fire Elementals spells her end. Cernd is left to manage the grove. Jehu gets Fire Seeds by level up: the combo is now functional.
We go shopping after turning in the quest and a mantle: Tansheron's bow, Cloak of Displacement, Belt of Inertial Barrier, and Dwarven Thrower +3. That's 2 +3 ranged weapons for the Balor, though I'm broke again.
Back in Athkatla, we do the Soultaker plotline. There's honestly no real reason outside of exploring mods, and it even costs Jehu 4 permanent HP, but... Skie's saved, I guess, and a possible companion later if need be. AKA if every other Thief gets chunked.
We do the Rejiek questline. Some version of SCS changed the Rune Assassins: they no longer see through invisibility, so I can't bait their invisibility potions with an invisible Mirror Imaged, Stoneskinned mage (Aerie). Aerie summons a skeleton to try to do this a different way, but she gets Held by a Ghast for her troubles, and the rest of us come down the stairs to try to salvage this. We manage it, but Yoshimo eats one too many attacks. All our melee fighters ate too many attacks, actually.
Rest, Recall Spirit, loot everything, and I want to test out the Fire Seed combo. I don't actually know the range of the AoE, or how it works, so we go looking for some ambushes. And I learn it's a lot smaller radius than I thought, and requires a successful attack roll on something unlike arrows of detonation. Huh. The lack of True Seeing gets Yoshimo killed again, but that's fixable.
Another series of travels gets us to Renfield, and we do the Harper questline quickly. I wanted Jaheira back for her quests, so we recruit her only for her to be instantly snatched away for Harper business. We fight some pirates in the meantime, taking far too much damage and getting Valygar Petrified by a Flesh to Stone spell. Fortunately, there was no followup spell or Confusion, and after a quick trip to a temple of Oghma, he's restored. We rest at the Sea's Bounty, and Jaheira returns and gets cursed instantly. She has no luck at all.
In the Galvarey Estate fight, Jaheira ends up dying to their crossbow Fighter, and I learned that if you try to raise her while she's under her curse, she dies instantly. Huh.
We quickly head to the Slums to face Baron Ployer. Moira has her Fireseeds, but I didn't have enough time to gets summons up for easy hits. Regardless, enough of their spells are disrupted and they spend more time trying to Dispel or Breach us that their mages fall without taking a casualty, and Jaheira is Recall Spirit'd again.
I'm sick and tired of having horrific AC, so we try to take on Dennis' group for their Full plates. This fight went horrifically: Insect Plague didn't get their mage, Moira didn't manage to disable their Cleric OR their mage, Dennis utterly wrecked Mazzy in combat, and the end result after trading a ton of damage is that Aerie is hit by a Flamestrike from full health and instantly chunked. 75 damage is the average for a level 17 Cleric: these guys are ridiculously powerful.
More Recall Spirits, and we're off to find a new Mage at the De'Arnise keep. With customizable NPCs, Nalia's thief points are all dumped into Pickpocket: we'll be looking for that Ring of Regeneration from Ribald after all of this. The trolls don't pose too large of a threat with Full Plates and Spirit summons taking all the brunt of the attacks. Jehu Dispels Magic's the Charm on Glaicus, and the largest threat of the Golems is actually the Clay golem. I have no Cleric, so the curse is permanent unless I want to travel back to a city which I kinda hate doing mid-dungeon for the little roleplaying I do. So Jaheira's Fire Spirit is sacked to kill it, and the four weaker golems are systematically wiped out. Giving the Helm of Balduran to Moira gets her Save vs Death to 1, and she kills the Iron Golem from the doorway with the Dwarven Thrower. Finally, Torgal runs into a bunch of traps before the door shuts behind him with a Wizard Slayer with Improved Haste cast on her.
Finally, I want to swap out Jaheira for a Cleric (Anomen) since the lack of Remove Curse might be problematic. Apparently, the only way to do so now is permanent, so we lose Jaheira forever.
Stats: Jehu, Human Shaman 12, 87 HP (5 from Helm), 30 kills.
Spells known: 1) Armor of Faith, Cure Light Wounds, Doom, Sunscorch, Spirit Ward [While typing this up, I just realized I'm short a level 1 spell known. I'll fix it, but it says something that I don't even remember what it was. Curse, maybe?]
2) Alicorn Lance, Charm Person or Mammal, Cure Moderate Wounds, Resist Fire and Cold, Slow Poison, Writhing Fog
3) Call Lightning, Cure Disease, Dispel Magic, Spike Growth, Spiritual Clarity
4) Call Woodland Beings, Death Ward, Spirit Fire, Static Charge
5) Chaotic Commands, Ironskins, Recall Spirit
6) Fire Seeds, Spiritual Lock
Mazzy, Halfling Fighter 11, 89 HP, 59 kills. GM in Maces, Specialization in Crossbows. 1 death.
Moira, Dwarf Wizard Slayer 12, 121 HP, 114 kills. GM in Longbow, Mastery in Warhammers. 1 death.
Anomen, Human Fighter 7 -> Cleric 12, 87 HP, 0 kills. GM in Slings, Mastery in Flails, 0 deaths.
Yoshimo, Human Bounty Hunter 14, 80 HP, 37 kills. At least 3 deaths.
Nalia, Human Thief 4 -> Mage 12. 61 HP, 9 kills. 0 deaths.
and totally subdued the upper floors. The only real problem was with the basilisks. I was protected by Khalid against petrification but had a potion in the quick slot just in case. Khalid also had a spare spell memorised ready to protect me however he was stupid and got in front of me and was petrified. After killing the basilisks I used my last scroll to bring him back to life. We then freed Kirinhale.
This was followed by a visit to Firewine.
Blaggerd seeks to leave Saradush, continued from here. He has equipped the Belm scimitar off-hand (DoE was not purchased, nor was the reflection shield which is something he may regret if he reaches the Fallen Solar).
There are two more rooms underneath the castle and they are cleared without incident. The party buff before heading upstairs and deal with the guards awaiting them.
Extra buffs are added before moving into Gromnir's throne room. We see Melissan dismissed and then he threatens us. We line up a couple of Wilts but both his mages are dead before the spells complete.
Gromnir takes the Wilts in his stride and hits the Stoneskinned and Mirrored Imoen, but the rest of us have moved back and cut down all his supporting cast.
He doesn't stand much of a chance against us and takes one decent hit from Blaggerd which adds poison (Blackguard ability) and a Larloch's Minor Drain (Foebane). Before he can stagger backwards he is hit by Minsc and treated to a vorpal blow.
At is often the case when things are going well we have become complacent and the next encounter catches us off-guard. Neera has spoken to a bird called Jerome and suggest we travel somewhere. Blaggerd agrees and selects a location on our World Map but on arrival he realises we are not where Neera suggested but instead have been ambushed by Sharrans.
We immediately spot their caster so our focus lies in that direction, and allows a Sharran Monk to use a Quivering Palm to devastating effect. Neera and Minsc fall one after the other and only then does Blaggerd wake up to the danger. He is probably safe from such attacks but Rasaad is not and Wilson most certainly isn't. Wilson and Rasaad move away to re-engage once the effect expires and Blaggerd does the same because he may as well play it safe now we are two down.
On re-engagement we cut the enemy down rapidly but a Sharran Assassin strikes and down goes Rasaad. Blaggerd and Wilson try to counter but the assassin is hidden again so Blaggerd uses his gem of seeing and we end the combat before picking everything up and heading to Sister Garlena for her to raise our dead.
After re-equipping everyone Blaggerd decides Neera and Rasaad don't really want to do their quests.
The last couple of sessions have seen some, well to be charitable, adventurous play. Did we learn from that and play it safe this time - well they do say you can't teach old dogs, new tricks .
Things started off calmly enough with a couple of skeletons helping to dispose of Mekrath before he could cast anything. The nearby gang has a weakness in that Gaius only has 2 true sights (and they don't regenerate on resting). That led to him suffering a fatal backstab. A couple of the others keeled over from a greater command and the battle was quickly won.
Things got a lot dicier though once we started the Unseeing Eye quest. On the way to find Amaunator we came across a group of 3 mummies and 2 ghasts. Tens tried some run and hit tactics on the mummies, feeling secure that he could manage even if he was diseased by one of those. However, he apparently got hit twice, not only once - meaning he was losing 14 HPs a round from the disease. That was not manageable and things looked pretty grim there. I think the final mummy bit the dirt while he had 28 HPs and both Tens and Nearv successfully stealthed at the first attempt. Some gibberlings interrupted a first rest attempt and one more tick of disease took him to 21 HPs - but the second rest attempt worked.
That wasn't even the closest call in that area though. Next we were faced with 3 gauths on the other side of a bridge. Those looked like easy prey for 3 skeleton warriors, but the fight got a bit more complicated when some nearby undead joined the fray. Tens used sanctuary and turn undead to chase the undead away, but the gauths had a trick up their sleeves for that one and sent in paralyzation rays to hold Tens.
Those were the only rays that they sent in through sanctuary, but Nearv was scared that might not be the case and joined the attack - though only briefly as the gauths showed how quickly their cause wounds rays could deplete HPs when they were targeting them properly. Here, Nearv wondered whether his aura had had time to clear in order to take another healing potion just before a killing ray arrived - it hadn't.
Once the gauths were dead the couple of remaining skeletons could potentially have drawn the undead away from Tens (whose sanctuary was about to expire), but several of the undead were still battering against the wall from the effect of the previous turn undead.
With a single skeleton left, those rejoined the fray though and the skeleton tried to lead them all out of sight. It wasn't at all clear there was enough space on the battlefield to get them out of sight, but only a moment before the skeleton was finally disjointed, Tens found the enemies had indeed disappeared into the black.
Once Tens could finally move again, the Rod of Resurrection taken from Mekrath's lair allowed Nearv to be brought back.
Having had so much trouble with the first group of mummies, the obvious course of action was to find some more . In the limited space available after descending into the pit, Tens spent most of his time occupying the attention of the enemies, while Nearv used a bit of cover to hide and dish out backstabs. That was successfully done and we moved into the undead rooms. Nearv tried staying in melee against Theshal there after hitting him with a backstab, only to find the hard way that Theshal had a hold ability. Tens took a potion of speed there and attacked Theshal. That could have ended badly as Tens had no immunity to hold - but he won out and was able to kill the zombie as well to save Nearv.
After a rest a bunch of skeletons then made clearing the remainder of the area easy.
Inside the hive, a fresh lot of skeletons dealt with all the beholders. The blind priests were left to last and I had intended to nerf their response with silence, but they got activated prematurely. That led to large numbers of summons, as well as considerable use of other spells by the blind priests. One amusing thing there was when Tens was blinded by one priest, only to be cured a bit later by another using true seeing.
The most dangerous situation came after Tens was charmed - meaning if Nearv was killed or also charmed, the run would be over. Trusting his saving throws, Nearv attacked a group of blind priests anyway - and successfully saved against the volley of spells that prompted.
With the priests finally all disposed of, the Eye made an appearance. Tens used the rod on it from sanctuary and a skeleton got a killing blow in a moment later.
There was still time for more trouble though. Nearv produced a few skeletons for Gaal and his guards, but Gaal was another to be activated before preparations for the fight were complete. Trying to cut off his stream of spells, Tens threw in a silence, which worked - though only on himself . Fortunately Tens was able to bludgeon his way through Gaal's mirrors pretty quickly, but he was still distinctly low on HPs by the time the guards were all gone.
With a sigh of relief Tens realized the coast was now clear - until Nearv tripped the cloudkill trap in the next room and found himself hemmed in by a pair of vampiric mists. He successfully occupied their attention though while Tens stuck some +2 bullets in his sling and helped shoot them down.
The final action was in the Bridge District where Tens was keen to take on the Rune Assassins. He buffed up far more than usual, but was still potentially vulnerable to being held by the ghasts - but was able to kill those before they could hit him. Both the Rune Assassins hit with their backstabs though and Tens was down to 28 HPs by the time the first of those was dead. Rather than try a retreat though, he did a quick belt swap with Nearv and equipped the +3 Saving Grace shield given as a reward for taking down the Unseeing Eye. That meant the remaining Rune Assassin would probably need a critical to hit - and it failed to get one.
Tens, cleric 9 / ranger 9, 115 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 159 kills (+195 in BG1)
Nearv, assassin 14, 75 HPs, 110 kills (+158 in BG1), 1 death
Blaggerd takes a look at Watchers Keep. Then, well read on. Continued from here.
It's been a few sessions since Blaggerd last ventured into Watchers Keep. The remaining statues in the first level are outnumbered and outclassed.
The second level of the Keep has four corner chambers and none of them are any problem for us. Neither is the Chromatic Demon, when Minsc the Vorpaliser strikes again.
We descend into a third level where we attack a group of cornugons and a balor. Blaggerd is slowly getting around to thinking that the balor ought to be eliminated as a priority and maybe from a distance when a vorpal swish appears. At the same time the party portraits reduce from six to five. For a moment Blaggerd thinks Minsc must have been confused or dominated and vorpalled a party member but a quick check shows that it is Minsc who has gone and the Balor has vorpalised the vorpaliser.
The battle is ended and we return to the Pocket Plane.
This is terrible news. Blaggerd can hardly hold back a tear shoves Sarevok into the party and remonstrates with him about the lack of XP he has gained while sweeping the Pocket Plane.
Journal of Rhiainfelt
As requested, we tried to help Beador who was fighting off shadow druids. They were quite strong however, using insects to disable our spells and entangling us so that we couldn't attack them with their swords. In addition to that they charmed me. Khaled used charm to reverse that, but had to use two spells to be successful. The upshot of this is that Jaheira was killed. When all the enemy had been killed: cHammerdryads, druids, bears, and other summoned animals; we went to get Jaheira raised before attempting to converse with Beador. This proved to be the wise thing to do and so we have been sent by Beador to fight the shadow druids once more.
Wyvern still continued to be a problem however.
We fought Andarthe and Amerande and won with difficulty.
We were rewarded generously, but it was the loot on the bodies that was the most useful. Jaheira's protective items including her armour made her decidedly less squishy.
Today's session was primarily about boosting reputation, but there was a fair amount of other action done in the process. For instance, after returning Samuel to the FAI, I went to tackle Tarnesh. Rather than resorting to wands I decided to make use of grease there. That's a very powerful spell, though I don't think most people (including me) use it that regularly. The advantages over sleep include that it affects all levels, forces continual saving throws while inside the grease and persists on affected individuals for a number of rounds after they're out of the grease field itself (the latter is also an advantage compared to web). For Tarnesh the plan was to shoot at him and then use magic missiles while he tried to buff, then retreat and use horror from out of sight - but he died from the magic missiles anyway.
Melicamp was successfully restored, but while doing that I also took on Bassilus. Magic missiles interrupted a couple of his spells, but he did manage to complete a hold person. I was already out of sight before he released that though, meaning that (in the unmmodded game) there was no real danger from being held.
Helping out Charleston Nib pushed reputation to 19 and 7 magic missiles proved one too many for the Doomsayer.
Escorting Brage back to Nashkel then maximised reputation. To get the best shop prices though, I also wanted the charisma tome and set off through the Cloud Peaks to get that. So far, I've generally been lucky in this run with spell learning (I usually leave that to random chance rather than use potions to ensure success), but I did unfortunately fail to learn the cloudkill spell found there. There were a number of further uses of grease during that journey. Sendai for instance took several rounds to approach me and died without me needing to move - though she could have been kited easily anyway. Zal can also be kited, running and shooting from outside his range using darts, but that is a bit trickier - sticking him in grease though makes that easy. Another victim was a polar bear. That took a number of rounds to finish off, but changing position around the grease field could keep it inside and it would have had to survive far longer to be able to free itself.
After using the tome and buying and learning Friends, I was able to get minimum prices to buy more scrolls - along with a few other goodies like the Neutral Robe of the Archmagi. Now with my favorite skull trap available, I went to find the Red Wizards of Thay to give that a go.
The battle horrors at Durlag's Tower were next on the list and a few ghasts from the bottom of the Tower were enough for level 8.
Clearing the remainder of the upper tower next time will get me close to level 9 before heading for the Nashkel Mine.
Blaggerd fights on into the Lower Reaches of Watchers Keep, continued from here.
A quick glance at Sarevok confirms he is earning his place but has a bit to go before performing at the same level as Minsc. We clear another room in the 3rd floor maze.
The next room has several charming or otherwise ladies. Blaggerd is safe (can't remember if he already had the helm of Charm Protection or Shield of Harmony equipped), while Sarevok switches to Lilacor. Imoen grabs the Equalizer longsword, Neera uses the Staff of the Magi to disappear and Rasaad has his monk immunity. This leaves Wilson, who enrages. With the party protected against charm and domination we are able to defeat them in a straight-forward manner.
Our usual rest method of returning to the Pocket Plane and our mages stoneskinning hits a setback when Neera summons a cow onto herself and Blaggerd. He shrugs it off but Neera is dead, so Imoen summons a Planetar to raise her without using any scrolls or rods. Cheap but effective.
Ka'rashur wants a fight and we give him one. Imoen doesn't bother searching for traps so we set a few off as we close in for melee. Although we are victorious Rasaad has fallen, and is raised afterwards.
There then follows 20 minutes or so of Blaggerd lumbering around trying to work out (I'm trying to remember!) how the maze works and find a suitable way through. Eventually we stumble across some Demon Knights and set about them. They are fond of Power Words, and although Blaggerd survives a PW: Kill attempt Neera keels over.
Another Planetar is used to raise her, and we continue onwards. The Demon Wraith has several traps around him and once again Imoen is unable to find time to deal with them. We use heavy melee against him but many fireballs are exploding around us - maybe we are stood on a trap forcing it to respawn. Anyway, we defeat the Demon Wraith with a bit of health to spare even if we're not in the best of shape.
This gives us an exit from the level should we be able to negotiate with Aesgareth. Blaggerd loses a first wager but wins a second and takes the Spectral Brand scimitar. He then loses the third wager and Aesgareth departs. Blaggerd has a couple of curses but a Planetar sorts those out for him and we use another portal to descend to the Lower Reaches and arrive near the machine of Lum the Mad.
After a moments study of the machine Blaggerd realises he is short green and round, so will need to use the various clue sheets left around the Keep to work out how to operate it.
The first step is to do everything else in this area and that is duly done. Of note, he now has a +5 two handed sword that only he (in the party) can use - but unusually in his many iterations has no proficiency for it.
A demi-lich is defeated by Blaggerd, Rasaad and Sarevok under protection from undead scrolls. Wilson is snorting outside this chamber but was unable to use a scroll and nobody else bothered to use one on him. Still, moments later he helped against Saladrax the red dragon and only missed the victory when buffeted away at almost the last moment.
Another Pocket Plane rest, and another Wild Mage surge. This one was most beneficial though and the green dragon in a subsequent encounter only managed to injure Sarevok and Rasaad as a consequence.
A four pillar challenge contains sixteen encounters to retrieve four globes, and Blaggerd elects to do them all even though some are not required. Two of these encounters are sufficiently worrisome that Blaggerd can envision party members or himself dying permanently or becoming imprisoned. With no specific protections active this is the moment an Elder Orb, Hive Mother and Death Tyrant look like being a major threat until the speed of attack overwhelms them. Sarevok has his fear protection dispelled, presumably because he is a lower level than other party members.
Two liches are another of the sixteen encounters that could have broken the party up. Blaggerd tries to defeat one while the rest of the party deal with the other.
Blaggerd strolled through the eternal warrior mini-game, and this allowed us to take our choice at the Final Seal since we had all the keys. Blaggerd requests a general buff and then opens the easiest of the seals. Err, hang on Blaggerd that looks like the trickiest seal and full buffs would have been better.
(In retrospect this makes the next combat all the more interesting from a player perspective)
So we know we are up against it. Blaggerd makes the executive decision of stopping the Hive Mother first despite her improved mantle. It's a race against time but the Hive Mother doesn't manage to survive a Deathbringer Assault from Sarevok when 100 of 200 additional damage is still plenty too much.
Blaggerd is bleeding profusely by this time but opts to go for another Greater Whirlwind attack. A very brief inspection of the combat log suggests Xei Win Toh is doing the lions share of damage so much against his better judgement Blaggerd directs our ire in that direction.
Ouch. Blaggerd takes another hit and calls out for the attack to continue as he retreats. Xei Win Toh is in similar trouble but instead opts to gulp a potion.
Blaggerd's strategy works, while that of Xei Win Toh does not.
Blaggerd uses the distance to pick our next target as he equips the Firetooth crossbow. Imoen and Neera have started to de-buff Y'tossi the marilith so our attention turns to her. Sarevok graduates to a Minsc-esque level of vorpalism although given a previous hit from Rasaad she may well have been in trouble anyway.
There are only three non-summoned enemies left at this point but our melee punch rapidly turns that into two and down goes the Huntress.
Blaggerd has a swarm of insects chasing after him by this point and is running ahead of them. Rasaad has been level-drained by Nalmissra and is keeping his distance from her. Wilson also gets level-drained from her and runs. The insects finally catch up with Blaggerd then disperse onto other party members, while Neera and Imoen de-buff Nalmissra.
Ameralis has been surrounded and lasts a mere moment.
The de-buffed Nalmissra cannot defeat the odds, and it is all over. Our final act is to Dispel the insects before retiring to rest again.
The day that Blaggerd gets held next to an angry Demogorgon, continued from here.
Thanks to Neera, Blaggerd need never wonder how he'd look with Tensers Transformation active. That's a lot of hit points.
The second part of the Final Seal released Azamantes who promptly ran into the Improved Mace of Disruption.
The third and part of the seal saw another enemy who initially had the upper hand but wasted it attacking Rasaad for no damage. Imoen and Neera tried to Wilt various instances of him but by then the rest of the party had killed them off.
With the Final Seal open we descended and spoke to the Imprisoned One. Then we buffed and spoke again to request combat. Blaggerd used the +5 sword to dispel Demogorgon and the party wailed away but Demogorgon used Implosion to hold Blaggerd. This looked bad.
Blaggerd tried to shut his eyes and hoped someone would help him (Planetar Remove Paralysis, Imoen or Sarevok arrow of dispelling, anything please).
Nobody tried to help.
Instead they continued tormenting Demogorgon until he'd had enough and Blaggerd regained his mobility at that point.
After killing the mariliths, it was time to go and give Odren a few choice words.
The party are stood atop Watchers Keep both admiring the view and trying to remember where they had got to - the Marching Mountains are visible from up here.
Comments
The de'Arnise Hold
After sweeping the ground floor and courtyard it is time to concoct a dog stew and head upstairs. A yuan-ti mage is treated to chaos before it sights us, then six golems are smashed apart.
Rasaad spots a few enemies for Neera to target with a precision spell.
(At the time of write-up I realise I could have obtained better gauntlets for Rasaad instead)
The Underdark
Three mind flayers wait for us. Blaggerd moves in a different direction and we enter a beholder lair. In retrospect this is highly dangerous as we don't really have anything suitable to nullify their attacks. Blaggerd shuts his eyes and the party launch into maximum overload. Which works, other than some wounds and Neera swapping sides - Blaggerd stands next to her until she returns to her senses.
Everybody breathes a sigh of relief as we exit the lair. This means we don't need to visit the illithid lair in search of a brain, or hunt down a kuo-toa prince. Still... here we are in the illithid game and Imoen is having a brain-drain of a time. Blaggerd throws caution to the wind and we save Imoen.
A short while later Blaggerd is dominated when he stupidly changes his equipped items. Rasaad slams a door shut on him and only lets him back in when he recovers. This of course leads to Minsc being dominated when using a ranged weapon and Wilson getting stunned. Despite our best efforts Wilson gets a noggin-slurp and his intelligence of 4 consigns him to instant death.
Imoen has tried a bit too hard to keep Wilson alive, and also gets stunned and intelligence-drained. The other four of us struggle on and manage to keep Imoen alive. Blaggerd uses one of the two raise dead scrolls.
Blaggerd: Blackguard 15, 228 kills.
Minsc: Ranger 14, 212 kills.
Rasaad: Sun Soul Monk 16, 158 kills.
Wilson: Grizzly Bear 16, 118 kills.
Imoen: Thief 7 > Mage 15, 12 kills.
Neera Wild Mage 15, 66 kills.
Blaggerd, Minsc and Rasaad had 75, 71 and 36 kills when Wilson joined.
They are currently 110, 94 and 40 kills ahead of him.
Party inventory
I played a few hours on Christmas day, which got me past the elf city, into and outof hell before the foks came over for dinner, no evil options picked because no body really wanted the sword
My first comment here.
Pretty cool to read people's playthroughs and learn from individual tactics and approaches.
A short introduction to my self before I post my no reload playthrough I had recently.
I have completed the whole saga before from candlekeep to Melissan once, many other playthroughs after that where I simply did not bother to go all the way because I was quickly overpowered, knew how to do the rest, and because TOB to me has a bit more hollow atmosphere and feel to it (though great fights and combat).
When I started playing these games I started off enjoying being overpowered, solo with sorcerer and after than a berserker human dualled into mage with a party. Actually the first time I ever even tried TOB (except watcher's keep, which I had already tried) it was almost like a no reload challenge (running it truly blind = not looking up stuff on the internet) and it was fun being so attentive to new encounters I had never tried.
But it was also easy due to my overpowered zerker/mage with overcautious approaches. I mean starting off all battles (already stone skin'd) with something like a spell trigger with protection from magical weapons and 2 different spell immunities, abjuration and divination, a chain contingency set to trigger and target self when hit with protection from energy, mislead and improved haste or something like that and with a contingency with another protection from magical weapons set to trigger on below x % of maximum hit points and with berserker's rage at the ready and maybe other funky stuff not to mention swinging celestial fury... I mean that was the closest thing I have tried to pretty secure immortality in this game. I think in this truly blind playthrough I reloaded once or something after one of the dragons permanently destroyed several of my companions (main char never died). This was before I had read and heard of the concept of no reload challenges, so it was not really an attempt to do a no reload playthrough and it wasn't really in anyway.
After that I learned the fun in gimping your self. Then I had much more fun playing a simple barbarian but then that even started seeming overpowered and I enjoyed just playing a dwarven fighter (no kit) to be challenged a bit more. But even just the shorty saves can be almost overpowered... damn, can be hard to challenge your self in this game sometimes. But then a truly hardcore no reload challenge has recently become the only thing that can motivate me to play this game again, otherwise I lose the drive quickly.
So for the first time I tried to do a proper no reload challenge from candlekeep and intended to go to Melissa, but I died very early on. But it was the first time I did it while taking screenshots and writing down the decisions and happenings with the intention to post it here.
I gotta say it helps me a lot using this forum and this thread to do a fun playthrough. It motivates me, it makes me abide by some reload rules here, to do it right, to not cheat and to be more careful and to not lose interest along the way.
So thanks to all for this idea, forum and thread and my next post will be the first to describe my recent no reload run I had.
Playing Baldur's Gate enhanced edition without any mods.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit. 2 pips in axes and 2 pips in morning star/ flails at level 1.
Rolled 18/16 strength, 18 dex and con, 13 int, 10 wis and charisma 18.
Hamilton starts off talking to Firebead in Candlekeep. Firebead seems a bit eager to chat and be heard, the lonely elf. Being the sympathetic and patient guy that Hamilton is, he talks to him for a lengthy while, (by clicking on him precisely 30 times) so that Firebead ends up giving him 300 gold pieces. A deep need in Firebead for conversation is satisfied and he becomes so happy because none had really really listened to him in a long time that he gives away the generous gold sum.
Hamilton also earns a bit of gold and experience by running errands for Fuller in Candlekeep, by returning a lost book to Phlydia, surviving 2 assassination attempts and killing the assassins, by killing some rats in a storehouse for a dwarf called Reevor, by delivering a long sword to a guard called Hull and by delivering a scroll to firebead. Aside from from that Hamilton found a potion of antidote, which he chose to keep and by opening a few chests and drawers around candlekeep he also found a bit of jewels, a potion of clarity and some scrolls.
Actually Fuller gives a magical dagger to Hamilton after doing the errand because Fuller sees some great potential in Hamilton (because Hamilton has high charisma)
Hamilton only priotized purchasing basic necessities in order to preserve his precious gold coins for truly important matters, so he just bought some arrows, a sling, som throwing axes, a buckler and a helmet before venturing forth and agreeing to follow Gorion out of Candlekeep and into the wilderness.
After Gorion's shocking demise and Hamilton's own escape from the ambush he finds a bit of comfort discovering Imoen followed along and they both join up and stick together.
Together Imoen and Hamilton explores the area just outside of candlekeep and they get to practice a few battle tactics, by killing 2 black bears, 2 wolfs and a few gibberlings. Usually Hamilton runs with the wolf or bear making chase, taking care to confuse his attacker by running from side to side, forcing his opponent to change direction abruptly and thereby slowing them. In the mean time Imoen shoots as many arrows at the beasts as she can, but Hamilton also throws an axe once and in awhile and sometimes even Imoen has to do the kiting while Hamilton throws the axes.
After searching Gorion's corpse they find a magical belt, a wand of magic missiles, a written note, a leather armor and a morning star.
Imoen and Hamilton find an obscure treasure hiding in a crevice in the side of a tree standing next to the main-road, a diamond was hidden in the tree! What a find!
Despite Gorion getting killed Hamilton feels like luck is with him.
Imoen and Hamilton also meet 2 strangers not far from where they found the diamond in the tree, who present them selves as Montaron and Xzar, they even give Hamilton and Imoen a healing potion and after a little talk the party is increased to 4 members and they all join together and agree to hit the Friendly Arm Inn even though Xzar and Montaron prefer to head for Nashkel right away.
Hamilton do not like these 2 fellows much, there is something that worries him about them, but nonetheless after all this tragedy and danger he deems it more safe to gang up, you never knows what danger awaits around the corner.
Hamilton's earlier feelings of luck get amplified after finding 2 magical rings hidden in the landscape on their way to the Friendly Arm Inn.
None in the party are able to identify their newly found magical items, but they agree not to spend gold on getting them identified, since the price is high and they never know when they might need their few hundred gold coins for something more critical.
Hamilton gives a sling and some bullets to Montaron who hits more well and inflicts more damage with the sling than with his short sword and Xzar recieves the magical dagger, which Imoen could identify without scrolls or spells. Hamilton talks Montaron into giving him his studded leather armor, which improves Hamilton's AC by one point and he also recieves a potion of speed from Montaron.
Before entering the inn inside the gate of the Friendly Arm Inn fortification, the party meets a woman in distress called Joia, who asks for their help in finding and returning her lost flamedance ring. Hamilton agrees to help her.
At the stairs to the entrance of the Friendly Arm Inn, another assassin makes his attempt on Hamilton's life, this time it is a mage. This mage manages to cast a mirror image spell, but soon becomes overwhelmed by the attacks from the 4 party members. Xzar used a scroll of minor lachor drain, Montaron shoots bullets with his sling, Imoen shoots arrows with her short bow and Hamilton starts of using one charge from the wand of missiles, but before he can even get to swing his axe or morning star the assassin mage is already dead, giving the party 120 exp, and some minor scrolls including a scroll of magic missiles.
Inside the Friendly Arm Inn Hamilton teams up with Khalid and Jaheira, but Xzar, Montaron and Khalid and Jaheira together creates some bad vibes for Hamilton or maybe it is just his trauma over Gorion's death that makes him want to be more alone all of a sudden, either way whatever the reason he had to follow through with this impulse, he kicks out everyone in the party except Imoen. But he keeps a potion of invisibility he got from Jaheira and persuades Khalid to swap armors, so he gets Khalid's splint mail, improving Hamilton's AC yet another point and he receives a medium shield from Khalid, improving his AC against missile attacks.
Now Imoen and Hamilton continue their journey after saying goodbye to their new friends. Just outside the walls of The Frindly Arm Inn they encounter a small gang of hostile hobgoblins. The hobgoblins end up biting the dust all of them after a few arrows and thrown axes and behold a flamedance ring was found on one of the corpses that proved to belong to Joia.
Hamilton and Imoen recieve 400 exp and one reputation point by returning her flamedance ring and then they head towards the town Beregost and in order to advance further towards Nashkel which they have heard so much about already and about the trouble that needs attention down there.
On their way to Beregost they encounter a hostile wolf, several gibberlings, at least 1 xvart but most noteworthy a hostile ogre who drops 2 magical belts. The ogre was brought down with ranged attacks while kited and never engaged in close combat.
Now Imoen and Hamilton arrive to Beregost and Hamilton sits at 1129 experience points about half way to level 2 and Imoen as a thief only needs 425 exp to advance to level 2.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit. 2 pips in axes and 2 pips in morning star/ flails.
Arriving at the Feldepost's Inn. They head for the bar for a little refreshments, but get approached by an angry man called Marl accusing them for being responsible for his son's fate, who died trying to become an adventurer like Hamilton and Imoen. But after a few good counter arguments and an offer to drink a round and make a toast in the memory of his dead son, the angry man withdraw his accusations and accepts his sons fate and the party receives 900 exp.
Imoen just reached level 2 and now has 60 points in find traps after the incident the bar.
The party stumbles upon Firebead again, but now here in Beregost and delivers a book to him as he requested and Imoen and Hamilton recieves 300 exp and 1 reputation point. Firebead also rewards them with a scroll case.
After Imoen and Hamilton walk into a random house in Beregost, they get a terrifying surprise when they discover 4 hostile huge spiders jumping at them inside the house. This encounter is so intimidating that they choose to run and retreat out of the house and back to the streets of Beregost. But the spiders follow them all the way to the streets and Hamilton and Imoen now make good use of their practised tactics of hit and run with ranged weapons, avoiding close combat with these beasts just like the wolfs and the bears. Without the slightest injury Imoen and Hamilton manage to bring the four spiders down netting 270 exp points for each spider and Hamilton reaches level 2 just as the last spider goes down.
They now enter the inn called The Jovial Juggler and receive a few job offers, to retrieve a lost coat for Gurke and also to hunt down some half ogres for a guy called Bjornin and a few moments later they meet Mirianna in a house in the eastern part of Beregost just before the temple who asks if they can keep an eye out for her husband, whom she is worried about.
At this point in this playthrough precisely 2 days and 18 hours have passed since the very first decision was made back in candlekeep. There has been no rest for Hamilton or Imoen yet during the entire game so far.
Next up is an unexpected battle with some thugs, 1 red mage and 2 fighters, trying to capture a wild mage named Neera, Hamilton and Imoen chooses to help Neera and manages to kill Neera's assailants. Imoen and Hamilton throws the wand of magic missiles back and forth to each other to use it once per turn each plus using their ranged weapons to take down the mage as quickly as possible. Neera manages to knock their enemies unconscious and inflict sleep on them, so they are not resisting while the party takes their lives.
For helping Neera Hamilton considers it a worthy payment to take Neera's gem bag before throwing her out of the party and giving her his well-wishes.
Imoen can not help her self but to sneak into a wealthy looking manor house in Beregost and look for valuables for the adventuring party and she did find a magical wand that looks very interesting, the party has not identified it yet, but they bet that Imoen's little burglary will be all worth it. Hamilton looked the other way while Imoen did this, after all it is his old friend and he knows her nature and tendencies and can't and won't control her even though he is a man of the law.
Now it is time for Hamilton and Imoen to visit The Song of The Morning Temple. They could not resist but to identify this new wand and they find out it is a wand of lightning, very powerful, but to be used carefully, unfortunately noone can use it yet they find out. They also identify one ring, which turns out to be a ring of protection +1 and they identify a belt, which turns out to be a girdle of piercing.
The party also buys a scroll of stone to flesh for 190 gold from the temple and are now down to 204 gold pieces.
Nothing has been sold yet by the party, gold has only been found and given through rewards.
Now Hamilton has an AC of -2 with his new ring and a good boost to AC against piercing and missile attack with his new belt.
Croppy - Wizard Slayer (Gate70)
Corethief XVII - Bounty Hunter (Corey_Russell)
Dire - Blackguard (Grond0)
Our Prologue consists of the Candlekeep chores.
Bigger and better things awaited us in Chapter One getting savaged by a wolf, finding a book for Firebead, killing Neera, killing Shoal the Nereid and returning a ring to Mad Arcand.
Chapter Two is underway, and the few tasks performed include not returning Rufie to Albert but collecting the reward while we are spread across the area map, not returning a Flamedance ring to Joia while we are spread across the area map, returning Landrins possessions (Dire may or may not have had the items on the third floor or we might have had them on the ground floor). It's a similar tale where Mirianne's husbands letter is either handed to her or read out from afar.
We're definitely all clustered around Prism as he dies beside Greywolf. & we have no recollection of where we were on the Friendly Arm Inn when Samuel was dumped into the nearby temple. Zhurlong didn't really care who returned his boots or where from, since Dire promtly killed him to pick the boots up again.
Croppy has some studded leather armour and the bastard sword +1 stolen from Beregost Smithy, and early regeneration thanks to the +1 Constitution boost from Buckley's Buckler.
Corethief XVII (pronounced exvey?) also has studded leather armour to go with his shortbow and quarterstaff. He has unidentified rings of fire resistance and protection +1, together with an unidentified girdle of piercing and those far-travelled boots once owned by Zhurlong.
Dire is dressed to the nines in ankheg plate armour, with longbow, shortsword and a large shield. He also has a ring of Protection +1.
The only visual memory we have of our start is arguing with the wolf, and of meeting Shoal before matters turned unpleasant.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit. 2 pips in axes and 2 pips in morning star/ flails.
Imoen has been begging for some fun time, some funny stories or some fun sightseeing for a change, so Hamilton finally allows a change of pace and says yes to a sightseeing visit to a place east of the temple of Beregost known for its fabulous stone statues.
Their trip to the stone statue park proves to be not so much a walk in the park so to speak, as they had expected. Dangerous basilisks and hostile adventurers are bound to disturb the picnic peace. But the small party will not back down from such challenges. Hamilton just fought his first wolf in close combat before entering the stone statue park and has been aching for some close combat training ever since, so he doesn't mind a few foes disturbing Imoen's sightseeing.
First they encounter a curious specimen of a ghoul. He is calling him self Korax and ensures them that he don't want to fight them, but he want to kill their enemies and be a good dog. Well not that ghouls are Hamilton's preferred company on the road, his heart tells him to give this creature a chance to prove its friendship and off they go the little party now consisting of 3 beings.
Quickly this Korax proves to be very helpful, he is immune to the basilisks' petrification attack and he paralyzes his enemies pretty consistently. After the first basilisk is being killed by the party Imoen gains a level instantly and reaches level 3 thief and puts all thief skill points into find traps again.
Hamilton uses his scroll of stone to flesh on a statue and the statue reveals it self as a person called Tamah, who promises to speak well of him wherever she goes and the party gains 300 exp and 1 reputation point.
Then the party meets a mad wizard and his 2 basilisk friends, one greater basilisk and one lesser. Korax does not manage to paralyse the wizard at all, the wizard make his saves vs death and korax ends up on the receiving end of 2 melf's acid arrow spells and Korax only barely survives thanks to Hamilton using his paladin skill lay of hands on Korax. After the wizard goes down, Korax is smart to alternate his attacks between the 2 basilisk to keep both of them paralysed at the same time, and they go down without trouble. A massive exp boost was gained from this fight and Imoen is now level 4 thief with 100 points in find traps and 35 points into pick locks and now she dual classes into mage level 1 and Hamilton is now level 3 with 40 hp.
The exp farm with Korax killing basilisks is still going strong even though Korax is near death. Now Hamilton reaches level 4 already.
Imoen gains another level (now level 3 as mage and 4 as thief) after the party kills 1 greater basilisk and 2 lesser basilisks at the same time in the bottom of the map, korax alternates his attacks between all 3 to keep them paralysed.
Suddenly comes a real challenge; a whole band of adventurers now wants to fight the party or maybe Hamilton pissed them off with his provocative comments, anyhow combat begins. First Korax is send in as meat shield and misses Baerin, but then he hits Baerin, but Baerin saves vs death and is not paralysed. Imoen throws off a lightning bolt from the wand of lightning and nearly kills Baerin, brings Kirian to badly wounded and interrupts Peter's spell casting and without hitting Korax. But to no avail because the second after Korax takes 1 single hit and dies.
Somehow Imoen manages to get hit twice by Baerin's ranged attack and dies the second time he hits her, before she manages to throw off another lightning bolt, to the big surprise of Hamilton and Imoen, since Baerin gets 3 attacks off by the time Imoen gets to use her wand once. Anyways she should have been more careful and retreated and kept out of side until she was ready to cast another lightning bolt and should have let Hamilton done the tanking in the meantime. But to late to rectify that mistake now, Imoen is dead and without a heavy hitting lightning bolt canon in the back Hamilton doesn't feel like playing with this party anymore and quaffs an invisibility potion in time to dodge 2 spell attempts from Kirian and Peter who both have to cancel their spells when Hamilton goes invisible.
Hamilton hangs around for a short while to take a look at his enemies to prepare for his and Imoen's return and watches how their monster summoning spell and Kirias mirror image spell expire.
Then Hamilton is about to return to the temple of Beregost, but accidentally he ends up in a duel fight with a female fighter called Shar-Teel who he defeats and Shar-teel promises to fight for him. Hamilton gets the idea that maybe he can finish off at least just this one asshole archer called Baerin who killed Imoen before going back to the temple with the new party member. He gives Shar-Teel his shield, ring of protection, splint mail and sends her in to battle first, following closely behind ready to throw his axes from afar.
The battle does not last long though, Peter and Kirian starts casting spells right away, Kirian casts a lightning bolt spell and it hits and kills Shar-Teel before she can even swing a single attack at anyone and before Peter could even finish his spell casting.
While Shar-Teel gets fried like a roasted chicken, Hamilton manages to get only one ranged attack off against Baerin who is near death, but unfortunately Hamilton misses and once again has to leave this fight without any kills and with only casualties.
This band of adventurers are now declared archenemies in his heart and he is now honorbound to defeat them or he will not be able to live with him self after this second humiliation. Return and win or die trying, there is no other way anymore, not for Hamilton.
To be continued
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit.
When Hamilton returns to the temple he finds he does not even have enough gold to revive Imoen.
He must sell some of his gems and jewellery they found on their travels.
After selling some gems Imoen gets brought back from the dead and they both pay for some healing as well. Hamilton imagines how lovely it would be to have a cleric in the party who could do these things for free, since it really takes a toll on the party's finances. Another big defeat like this one in battle and the party would be penniless.
But no need for negativity, instead it is time to celebrate life with Imoen back and buy her an ale to get some warmth and life back into that face and then it is time to kick some ass.
But the party gets an unpleasant surprise when they attack again this time Hamilton gets shot down to near death by Baerin alone who chases Imoen and Hamilton alone, while on the run Hamilton drinks all their healing potions and Imoen ends up killing Baerin with the wand off lightning. But now demoralized once again the party cannot fight the remaining 3 enemies with only 18 hp on Hamilton and no healing potions.
Imoen even ended up using an armor scroll and tanking baerin while finishing him off with the wand of lightning.
So much for kicking ass, but at least one out of 4 asses got kicked, so a better result than last time.
On their way back to Beregost for healing and resupplying they get ambush by many gibberlings and just manages to dodge their claws.
After the second visit to the same temple due to the same enemy the party only have a few hundred gold coins left, but the party is almost at full hp, Hamilton has a protection from evil paladin skill left and Imoen has 3 charges left on the wand of lightning, though no bullets for the sling, since it has been night every time they visited the town. Imoen is fatigued, but can't rest until their archenemy bites the dust. So the party sets off once again in hope of striking a finale blow to their enemy now after the most deadly archer Baerin has fallen.
Luck has really abandoned the small party and a random basilisk waylay the party while they travel between areas, Imoen gets instantly petrified and Hamilton with no means to protect him self against petrification or turning Imoen back to flesh form, has to flee for his life and leave Imoen as a sad stone statue in a random map area in between maps.
Now Hamilton is in trouble, or Imoen more so you could say. Hamilton buys a scroll of stone to flesh and teams up with Kagain now and hopes to find the same area again where Imoen is petrified.
But luck returns, and it does not take long before Hamilton and Kagain find the exact spot where Imoen got petrified and this time they are luckily only ambushed by 3 wolves instead of a basilisk, and the basilisk from before that petrified Imoen is now long gone. So Hamilton could now easily return Imoen back to flesh with his scroll and Kagain now this whole party of 3 with Kagain as the new recruit venture forth to finally face this archenemy hopefully for the last time.
The party meets Lindin and Peter alone with Kirian and they are not going to worry about where Kirian is, because the fight is upon them. Peter tries to get a spell off but is interupted by Kagain who hurls a throwing axe at him. Imoen with only wand of missiles and wand of lightning also assist by hitting Peter with wand of lightning and actually gets the killing blow with a wand of magic missiles hit on Peter. Before Peter dies, he manages to cast a hold person spell without getting interrupted and it hits kagain and Hamilton moves out of range so he does not get affected by the spell, kagain saves vs spell and is not held, but when he drops to very low hp he goes berserk and dies soon after. Kagain gets slain by Lindin who hits like a truck with his slashing damage, 32 damage in one hit, which was not a critical hit, ouch, that effectively took away precisely half of all Kagain's hp in a single hit.
Now Imoen finds bullets on the ground and can fire her sling again and Hamilton and Imoen prepares to kill Lindin in their good old fashioned way, hit and run tactic, no close combat with this Lindin if they can avoid it.
After killing Lindin some nice items drop, including a plate mail increasing Hamilton's AC by 1 point now at -3, 1 magical long sword, 1 potion of invisibility and 1 potion of arbsorption.
Now Kirian is the last one remaining. Kririan gets her mirror image off, tries to cast another spell but gets interrupted by Imoen damaging her with wand of lightning, Imoen damages Kirian twice with wand of lightning, bringing her down to near death (lightning bolt is good against enemies protected by mirror image) but in the end Hamilton gets the killing blow with his throwing axe.
A very hard won victory is at hand, the souls of this archenemy have been sent to the dark depths of the abyss Hamilton and Imoen have kept their honor, their reputation and not least their lives and allow them selves to rejoice and agrees to taking a rest soon. Maybe by going back to the Friendly arm Inn and deliver this wine, these old boots and the spider first.
Imoen only has one single hit point left since she was turned back to flesh and now hamilton and Imoen are both very close at advancing to their next level, only a few hundred exp points each.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit.
It takes Imoen and Hamilton 24 hours to travel to the Friendly Arm Inn and after delivering the spider corpse, the boots and the wine to Landrin the party now have 7 antidote potions, and almost 1000 gold coins and Hamilton advances to level 5.
After paying the temple cleric to heal Imoen, the party travels back to Beregost. When they arrive to Beregost it is day 8 hour 1 and no single rest has been made yet. Imoen is not fatigued anymore because she had a deep rest during her petrification period and Hamilton is still not fatigued.
The party finds an old barrel in the streets of Beregost to stash some items for later.
In the center of Beregost near the obelisk a bard called Garrick approaches the party with a job proposal, which they agree to, Garrick leads the party to his superior, a woman called Silke, who wants to hire the party to kill some thugs. It seems she wants the party to kill innocent men, which Hamilton refuses to take part in and then Silke attacks the party.
First Hamilton tries to knock out Silke with his fists and he hits but she does not get knocked out, then Silke has her spellcasting interrupted by Imoen's use of wand of magic missiles, but then Silke casts a lightning bolt spell, which Hamilton dodges and Silke gets beaten to death.
Imoen is now level 4 mage and level 4 thief, needing roughly 10 k exp to get her thief skills back.
One of these innocent men called Faltis that Imoen and Hamilton saved from Silke's wrath gives the party a potion of defence as thanks.
Now that Garrick's employer is dead he asks Hamilton if he can join the party, which Hamilton agrees to, but only for a short while to identify some items that Imoen does not have enough lore to do.
Garrick identifies evermemory: ring of wizardry, the golden girdle, the belt of frost protection, some magical arrows +1, magical long swords, a magical morning star and more and all free of charge, a good little service.
Just south from Beregost the party encounters 2 ogrillons and one of them carries a letter, which the party picks up after they kill them. The letter is written to Mirianna by her husband Roe, whose corpse is lying at the road where the party found the ogrillons... not hard to imagine what might have happened here.
3 Flaming Fist Mercenaries approach Imoen and Hamilton. Hamilton is glad to see the hand of the law being active in bringing order and justice in these parts, but not so happy about being accused of theft, but anyhow he calms him self and convinces them that his party is not bandits and off they go again.
In this area just south of Beregost the party fights ghouls and hobgoblins and Hamilton quickly learns how to swap between the 2 girdles depending on what damage type he is facing, piercing or slashing.
In this area after killing a small group of 4 hobgoblins, the party loot a pair of magical boots that look interesting
In the middle of this area an interesting cave is discovered, which end up being full of healing potions, which the party really needed.
Back to Beregost, it is only a small walk taking 4 hours and the party can deliver the sad news to Mirianna about her husband Roe and see if anyone knows something about these magical boots.
First Hamilton visits Thunderhammer Smithy to buy a few more throwing axes, which pack a good punch and bring down ghouls before they have time to crawl up close to him.
In the middle of the street Garrick is still standing there in Beregost, where we left him, Hamilton wonders if he hasn't got anything better to do then he may just help us identify these magical boots, and for old friendship's sake he does so free of charge and we leave him again.
Now thirsty after a long walk the party decides to pay the inn called Red Sheaf a visit. Inside though they find a mercenary dwarf called Karlat is waiting for them and he has been sent to kill Hamilton, but he is no match for this party who now has a lot of experience and strength under their belt, not to mention decent armor and weapons. With the golden girdle equipped against Karlat's slashing axe, Karlat cannot even as much as hit Hamilton at all.
After killing Karlat the party meets Perdue who is offering 50 gold pieces for bringing him his sword back, now in the possesion of a gnoll they learn.
Now in the bar of the Burning Wizard the party meets Zhurlong who claims these magical boots of stealth belongs to him. Hamilton gives the boots to him and the party is rewarded, but Hamilton cannot let a bandit scum like this go on ruining honest people's lives after he experiences him self being robbed of coin by this one. So the party kill Zhurlong and take the boots back.
After telling Mirianne the news of her husband she gives the party a ring of protection +1, which Garrick is happy to identify free of charge. Now both Hamilton and Imoen can equip a protective ring on the same time.
The party now ventures forth even more south than ever, towards Nashkel.
Charname: Hamilton Challiston. Cavalier Paladin kit.
It is day 8 hour 12 and no rest has been used during the whole playthrough yet.
On their way south they encounter hobgoblins, kobolds and bandits who are now not much of a threat to these powerful heros of the sword coast. But Ghouls are a threat, Hamilton learns that after being struck once by a ghoul and he got held, luckily the ghoul was at near death due to Hamilton's throwing axe and Imoen's sling and bullets, so Imoen could easily finish the ghoul off before it could cause more harm to the immobilized Hamilton.
They also find Colquetle's family amulet and Hamilton recalls something about that family name in Beregost, maybe keep this amulet and see it returned to the family he thinks to him self.
It is day 9 hour 6 and the party arrive for their first time in Nashkel.
After taking a look at the outskirts of Nashkel around the farmers' fields, the party finds a real treassure, an Ankheg armor, improving Hamilton's AC 2 solid points, so now he sits at -5 AC.
In the fields of Nashkel the party also meets Noober who seems enthralled by our shiny armor and adventurous looking, he cannot stop asking questions and follow us. Hamilton has learned some wisdom from his temple elders during his days and from the sages of candlekeep, they taught him that nothing lasts for ever and accepting and patiently letting impulses and energies run their cause may sometimes be the best way instead of fighting and controlling, so Hamilton decides to let Noober go through his processes and suddenly Noobers impulses fade and his curiosity dissapears, the party gains 400 exp from this learning experience.
Berrun Ghastkill hires the party to investigate the trouble in the mines.
Oublek mistakes Hamilton for a mercenary called Greywolf, but Hamilton corrects his mistake and let him know his true identity, and the party gains a reputation point.
The party arrives to the Nashkel mines and Hamilton is level 5 with 65 maximum hit points, -5 AC and 66 kills.
In a hidden crevice within a tree the party finds a magical wand, with some cold and icy shimmering aura about it, interesting.
The party meets the artist Prism and shortly after Greywolf shows up, since Prism seems like a highly passionate but obsessed artist without any ill intent to anyone Hamilton chooses to protect Prism against Greywolf. Hamilton casts Protection of evil on him self, slaps on the golden girdle and starts swinging his magical morning star +1. But Hamilton quickly finds out that Greywolf has outmatched him in close combat and starts running to the hills while throwing axes back at his pursuer until Greywolf lies dead.
Prism finished his great work and died in peace, the praty gained a reputation point, some decent experience, a magical sword yet to be identified and they pick up the 2 emeralds that Prism stole to bring them back to Oublek, since law and order has to be upheld Hamilton reckons.
At the Temple back in Nashkel Hamilton pays the priest for some healing after those serious wounds Greywolf inflicted and the magical wand gets identified for 100 gold pieces and turns out to be a wand of frost.
In the local inn of Nashkel a woman attacks, Neira is her name, it seems she was also hired to kill Hamilton. Time to try out that wand of frost, Imoen successfully interrupts Neira's spellcasting with a heavy hit of 17 damage with the wand of frost and Hamilton then hits her twice with his morning star and down she goes.
After all this fighting and death the party decides it is time for som carnival. A merchant sells the party 2 special potions that Imoen identifies without trouble, 1 grants 25 strenght but with scary sideeffects and the other 50 % resistance to magical damage and 25 intelligence but with other side effects. Hamilton is sure however that at least one potion will be very useful at some point.
Another Merchant at the carnival sells a few interesting items and Hamilton gets tempted and buys a shield amulet.
In another tent the party gets into a fight with a mage called Zordral who has some woman captive, he casts mirror image and Imoen interrupts his spellcasting with her wand of frost and deliver 27 damage as well. Zordral casts Melf's Acid arrow on Hamilton initially inflicting 8 acid damage but the next moment Hamilton kills Zordral with an autoattack.
Bentha is freed from the grasp of Zordral and give Hamilton a potion of Heroism. Hamilton takes another 12 acid damage from Zordral's spell and finally 8 more acid damage, with one spell Zordral managed to inflict 28 dammage to Hamilton.
In another big gambling tent at the Carnival a suspicious guy approaches called Vitiare, but Hamilton knows a thief when he sees one and attacks him before he can get close, he is killed and give some decent loot.
The party wanders to the northern parts of the carnival area where small groups of kobolds attack them. Seeing how Hamilton has fought kobolds before without any trouble and with his fairly high level, good AC and items he feels very confident.
Hamilton feels so confident that he stays in close combat with the kobolds even when he goes down to 18 hp, but his confidence and arrogance towards these kobolds become his downfall for suddenly they land several hits in fast succession before Hamilton can even as much as think the word "healing potion" and everything goes black and Hamilton dies.
A glorious and epic death I am sure the gods would be proud, death to kobold hahahaha
THE END
Happy new year btw
Good stuff. Welcome to Toril. CT
Upon being ambushed we followed Gorion's instructions and ran for our lives. However, rather than go to The Friendly Arms Inn where we could expect a warm welcome if they had read Gorion's letter, we returned to Candlekeep only to be turned away at the gate. We were at least able to arrange for Gorion's burial, and upon returning to the site of the ambush we found his possessions which turned out to be worth having.
Turning southwards we came upon Mellicamp and were able to help him regain human form.
Heading eastwards we ran into some ogrillon who were not friendly at all. They will kill no more travellers.
One of the corpses that we came across had some attractive jewelery on it. On our way south, we added to the number of corpses on the roadside.
Eventually we came across two friendly travellers, a half-orc and Lord Foreshadow, the latter of whom gave us a charisma boosting ring.
In Nashkel we found some excellent ankheg armour, spoke to Noober, and turned down a reward from Oublek before heading south where Zargos Flintblade attacked us and subsequently died.
He ended up as dead as all the others.
We then got into conflict with Silke, the spell silence proving to be invaluable.
Heading eastwards we were asked to kill Bassilus, but first we killed a pack of wolves.
Soon after that we met up with Khalid and Jaheira and immediately understood why Gorion told us to link up with them. They were both tiefling like us, so our own tiefling heritage would be no problem. We were however a bit ambivalent about Jaheira as her alignment is neutral. That could cause problems. However her husband will hopefully be able to keep her on track as we certainly don't want any friction in the group.
Whilst at the Inn we discovered the necessity of dealing with the iron crisis, so we went to the Nashkel Mine to discover what the problem is.
Down the mine we were attacked over and over again:
Adalon the silver dragon has disguised us as drow although Wilson still looks a bit unchanged. Blaggerd remembers to pretend he is Veldrin from Ched Nasad or some such, and we are in. No time is wasted in purchasing items from the three merchants and we are straight onto a quest of rescuing Phaere.
Everybody knows this is a good pretext for an ambush and so it proves. While our buffs are reasonably comprehensive Blaggerd fails to spot Neera has had another wild surge until combat starts and she is effectively sitting the battle out. That's not a problem although both she and Imoen have to run around a bit to avoid the attentions of their party thief, Damien. The combat goes reasonably well with a Truesight revealing N'ashtar and Damien so each can be targeted and eliminated.
Once we complete the rescue Blaggerd breaks out our second raise dead scroll and up pops Wilson. The bear snuffles Blaggerd and only a keen observer would see the Blackguard twitch from having no more scrolls, or even a rod of resurrection that could easily have been picked up. Plans dear boy, plans. Do some.
Our exit from the Underdark is less than memorable, ending with an inquisition from elven generals. We'll make our own celebrations in Windspear - although Minsc almost pays the ultimate price. A little while later Firkraag pays his own ultimate price.
Party stats
Blaggerd: Blackguard 16. 314 kills (+86), Kangaxx.
Minsc: Ranger 16. 249 kills (+37), Adamantite golem.
Rasaad: Sun Soul Monk 19. 228 kills (+70), Firkraag.
Wilson: Grizzly Bear 17. 141 kills (+23), Perth the Adept.
Imoen: Thief 7 > Mage 16. 24 kills (+12), Beholder.
Neera Wild Mage 16.83 kills (+17), TorGal.
Everybody suggests visiting Mekrath to pick up a rod in the sewers next. Sounds like a good idea.
Mekrath proves to be no bother to us, and Neera merrily casts a Death spell to thin out a group of yuan-ti.
A check of the journal quests shows Umar Hills still needs to be resolved. The party have sufficient levels to stroll though enemies and several liches have Azuredge or the iMod as their final encounter.
Thaxll'ssillyia looks intimidating but six of us are able to deal with the dragon safely.
Valygar's body opens up the Planar Sphere and Blaggerd exacts revenge on Necre for his previous SoA outing.
Since we're in the Slums we may as well return what remains of Yoshimo to a temple of Ilmater, gaining 200,000xp and levels for Blaggerd Minsc and Rasaad.
Just as they are about to retreat, Rasaad is stunned. Blaggerd and Minsc think they have done enough but Rasaad falls and then Minsc is stunned. Blaggerd tries a little but Minsc also dies. At this point Blaggerd retreats and once combat ends we go to a temple to raise the two fallen party members.
Blaggerd can see a guarded compound, and the prospect of a lesson beckons. We're adequately buffed and a Power Word: Stun is wasted against the many many hit points Wilson has.
Imoen has to run around us for a few rounds until the combat ends, then Blaggerd uses a rod charge to revive Neera.
We push through the vampire nest, their resistance melting away before us. Even Bodhi cannot prevent us and we take great delight in staking her to her coffin.
Wilson snorfles. Minor hitch indeed. What about in the temple where he and Minsc were held - and the bear's life hung in the balance, only saved by frantic melee and perhaps by an invisibility 10' spell.
Blaggerd quickly works out some good tasks and only as he approaches the last confrontation with Wraith Sarevok does he deliberately say he will become the Slayer.
Only...
Only...
He has no Slayer ability. Now isn't the time to worry about it so he digs deep and finishes off Sarevok with his sword.
Now, back to Irenicus. Imoen and Neera pile on some de-buffs for his Slayer form and once his fire shields are quenched we close in to tear him apart.
Tens (male half-elf cleric/ranger, Grond0); Nearv (male dwarf assassin, Gate70)
Previous updates
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After waking up in Jon's dungeon we put together some basic equipment and sought for an exit. For the odd fight skeletons joined in, but most of the time we were on our own. That resulted in taking a fair amount of damage, but there were no real close calls. One oddity I noted was with the assassin fighting the mephit just after the portal room. The mephit lost morale and retreated and the assassin followed - and got himself stunned by the salt mephit waiting further down the corridor. That wouldn't be easy to recreate, but was a nice way of drawing the salt mephit out.
In the Promenade we fancied a nice relaxing trip to the circus. Inside that the shadows were gathering though and Nearv was desperate to dispel those. On the second level he backstabbed one and tried to hide before going after the other. Tens dragged the werewolves over to the other side of the tent to give him that chance, but after 5 failed attempts to get into stealth was getting rather impatient (he didn't have a magical weapon, so couldn't kill it himself).
Another location ripe for a change in status was the Copper Coronet. Tens got into trouble there though when keeping his sling equipped too long and taking a lot of damage from a bunch of beasts. That resulted in him retreating a long way before slamming a door on them.
Knowing Suna Seni and her gang were planning an ambush, we staged a little surprise for them - skeletons, silence and backstabs were far too much for them to handle ...
Officer Dirth provided an armor upgrade, as well as seeing Nearv's poison in action for the first time in awhile. In MP activating the poison tends to make you drop out of stealth before you get a chance to attack, so poison backstabs are not that easy to arrange - and enemies tend not to survive the non-poisoned ones anyway. However, when Dirth was commanded to die, a bit of poison helped him on his way
I really only intended to get the potion case at WK, but once there couldn't resist looking inside. The only thing we had that could damage the stone golem was Arbane's sword, but Nearv made good use of his 19 strength there to plunge the non-proficient sword through the golem body.
After rescuing Renfeld, Nearv went after Prebek and Sanasha. The latter was backstabbed first, which should have prompted a reaction from Prebek.
Some thugs picking on us just after that provided a good opportunity for Tens to try out his new greater command spell - which proved pretty nasty.
The final action saw a trip to the Temple District, where we dived into the sewers. Tens tried picking off kobolds one by one, but failed to kill the witchdoctor as quickly as he expected and started running around in terror.
Tens, cleric 9 / ranger 87, 107 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 95 kills (+195 in BG1)
Nearv, assassin 12, 71 HPs, 61 kills (+158 in BG1), 0 deaths
Journal of Rhiainfelt
After collecting our reward in Nashkel, we made our way back north yo Beregost. On the way we killed a couple of lady ogres and a few hobgoblin. Upon arrival we were given hints as to where to go next and ended up in the bandit camp where we fought and beat Tazok. He pretended that he was leaving of his own accord, but we knew better.
Before he left, he shouted to his cohorts to kill us, but as they couldn't see us, we had the choice of time and place.
We therefore started off by killing Brotus Bloodthirsty and his allies.
After that we headed south and killed Deke, his cohorts and the Caravan Bandits.
What we didn't know was that there was an ambush of hobgoblin elite archers awaiting us and they were far more effective than the supposedly stronger enemies that we had defeated. They killed Khaled by poisoning him again and again.
We returned to Beregost where we came to blows with a dwarf called Teresh.
Heading back to the Friendly Arms Inn we were accosted by some who thought that we were evil. Clearly, since we are all tiefling, this allowed our enemies to prey on the fears of those they decieved.
Illasera has brought companions to hunt us down, unfortunately for her we quickly despatch them and set about her. It's a bit of a rout despite Malison and Slow going against us.
We have to face a challenge to leave the Plane, and it turns out to be very easy for us - with Ellisime turning up on her own at the end with no sign of say a couple of companions for her.
Blaggerd notices he can use the Slayer Change special ability (not present in SoA for some reason), but chooses not to. Instead we travel down to Saradush and introduce ourselves to Melissan.
We use a rod charge on a hapless peasant (only the charge count remains at 8 which is what it was previously, despite Blaggerd thinking he'd used it once and not twice. Maybe he can't count).
Crom Faeyr for stone golems, clay golems, ettins and trolls
Azuredge for undead (saving throw allowed)
Staffs for Fire / Earth / Air elementals (saving throw allowed)
Wave Halberd for Fire elementals, Efreet and Salamanders
Having found a spellbook for the storekeep, cleared out the vampires from the jail, stopped a few fights (yes we are hypocrites) and found a safehaven for some elves we move on to the castle basement and stop when we find a scabbard. Blaggerd immediately returns to the Pocket Plane and an imp called Cespenar upgrades the Foebane sword.
Party inventory.
(any suggestions on equipment for the party welcome)
The mage is the earliest-rolled character (not yet successful) I have - created almost 4 years ago. If you're careful it's an easy class to make progress with and I've actually taken it to Mel a number of times - but a combination of bad play, bad luck and bugs has stopped me at that final hurdle
The majority of my runs end when I start taking more chances over time. To try and minimize my tendency to do that, I'll again resort to limiting each session in this run to an hour ...
The opening hour included: Shoal (shot for XP), Neera (shot for bag), High Hedge golems (shot while going to get potion case and invisibility scroll), basilisks and Mutamin (paralysed by Korax), belt ogre (saved against 4 sleeps and was eventually just shot down), stealing ankheg treasure invisibly, activating all the gnolls to kill Drizzt (for loot - before giving them a well-deserved rest).
In the few minutes left I went to Nashkel and learnt CLW before heading on to the Nashkel Mine. A frost wand was added to the collection, before Greywolf was filled with magic missiles.
Next time I should do further reputation quests to maximise that before adding to my spell repertoire.
Mage L6, 30 HPs, kills 63
Cautiousness was Promise's adage as she entered the Siege of Dragonspear portion of the saga. In Korlasz's lair, she distracted a group of mercenaries with wand summons so that she could go and have a word with Porios and convince him that Korlasz's cause was a lost one. On the second level, it was Kivan who did the party one last favor before bowing out... He put on the boots of speed, read a PfUndead scroll, and applied an oil of speed. Baeloth cast Invisibility on the ranger. He then went to talk two mercenaries out of serving Korlasz, allowing himself to open the door to her room. Hugging the wall and moving at lightning speed, he bypassed a dispel trap. With potions (mind focusing for better ranged Thac0, invulnerability, magic shielding) he buffed for Korlasz. Arrows of dispelling and a number of charges from the ring of energy sufficed to make Korlasz surrender. This didn't go as smoothly as it may sound. He got hit several times and even had to go invisible at one point to heal up and he quaffed a regen potion just in case.
In Baldur's Gate Promise quested on her own, doing all the quests I think, pushing her XP as far as possible to 250,000. She only made it to that point in the Coastway Crossing and Forest areas, thanks to the many spiders there, Prin and the menhirs, Teleria - a quest that Promise messed up when Teleria Confused a summoned hobgoblin that struck down one of the statues,
Promise then reunited with most of her old friends: Sirene, Baeloth, Emily (after Webbing and dispatching more planar hunters), and Aura. Captain Corwin took Kivan's place as the party's second archer.
At the Dwarven dig site the party was quite meticulous in cleaning up the first area, successfully defending the dwarves of Dumathoin,
The same diligence was not applied in clearing the next area. Promise buffed and protected herself with PfUndead, an oil of speed, and cloud giant strength, unlocked the door to Coldhearth, returned to the dwarves to obtain the Secret Revealed, and used that against the lich. He could do little more than cast Stoneskin (twice with success, once interrupted by Promise) and fall.
In SoD I always use stealth/invisibility/sanctuary to get past trash mobs guarding loot, but in Trollclaw Woods the party made an exception for the troll cave, with Webs allowing for easy disposal of trolls both inside and outside the cave.
Haste and invisibility ensured that the party reached the old temple without getting detected by bugbear shamans. On the way there Aura failed to disarm a snare, suffering serious but not lethal damage as a result. In the temple Promise buffed with a potion of fire giant strength and her divine might ability and equips Death's Razor +2 in the main hand and Jin'u +1 in the off-hand (two blades from Aura's BG1 quest) for crits on attack rolls of 17-20. With some wand summons as decoys she successfully battled three invisible stalkers.
Akanna's aerial servants were susceptible to stun, thankfully, and the cleric/thief herself was Webbed.
A visit to Bridgefort and a brief reconaissance of the Crusader Camp were followed by an attack upon the camp, with the party arriving with the Fist. The party moved forward slowly so as not to draw too many enemies to them at the same time. As usual Baeloth was the one controlling the battlefield with many castings of Web and Slow, and Chaos from scroll (bought in BG1 Sorcerous Sundries).
On the bridge, a Cloudkill from scroll by Baeloth and a Web from scroll by Promise saw the mage disrupted in her summoning spell and her henchmen held. Poison-immune cavalier Sirene meleed the enemy with spider's bane; the others stuck to ranged attacks focused initially on the mage.
@Gate70 good stuff, keep it up! As for your call for equipment suggestions, unless you're doing sword & shield for RP reasons, would it not be preferable to have Blaggerd dual-wield, for example with Defender of Easthaven or a speed weapon? Considering his great saves the shield of harmony doesn't seem to add much as long as Blaggerd isn't Malisoned.
Happy 2020 everyone!
Introduction
Update 1
Because of SCS's customizable NPC component, all joinable spellcasters start with 0 spells memorized, and because we're in Chateau Irenicus, we have one rest total. I toyed with the idea of using EEKeeper to simulate a rest, but I figured that with a 20 CON dwarf and Shaman summons, we'd be able to make it through more or less healthy through the first level. After claiming the initial Duergar crossbows, we take far too much damage from the lesser Golems, and accidentally triggered two additional Duergar parties. This run isn't looking very clean so far.
That'd done via stealth attacks, running back to a corridor, and re-stealthing. The Otyugh doesn't even get to make an attack roll. The rest is a pretty standard clear: Spirit summons are used to tank whenever we have time to prepare, but otherwise Moira soaks the hits. We ignore fighting the mephits in the demiplane, and Minsc successfully stealths to the genie and back twice for the Sword of Chaos. After going through the portal, we recruit Yoshimo, and kind of botch the approach to the mephits. I had planned on Yoshimo throwing a Special trap into the room, but apparently a mephit was visible to him and all 5 mephits manage to get into the room. Miracles of miracles, no one goes down to the Radiant mephit, and Minsc and Moira break out to crush the portals while the others delay the mephits. We take our rest in that room. From there, we have the spellslots to defeat everything we need to, successfully killing Ulvaryl and Fenneden.
We quickly return a circus to normal, though Aerie is almost killed on the 3rd level: she also gets no spell slots, and a C/M with no spells is squishy. After selling some items and getting coo'd at, we attempt to fight the two muggers/whatever in front of the Copper Coronet. Our remaining health tells all the story of how weak we are right now.
Regardless, the Slavers is going to be the easiest starting questline. I really need to start purchasing reputation before doing this, but oh well. Spirit animals tank against the real animals, and a few area spells are enough to clear out the Beastmaster; Hendak takes control of the Coronet.
We traverse the sewers to get to the Slaver compound. Nothing really to report, though we again managed to avoid all Otyugh diseases, and obtained Lilarcor. We Pixie Dust into the Slaver compound, and Aerie has Emotion:Hope and Haste (I think) on all of us. Yoshimo gets himself into the bottom left corner out of sight from all enemies, and throws a Special trap to start the fight. A good number are Held, and the remaining members of our squad break invisibility and destroy the initial fight. The second fight against the mage isn't as clean, and Minsc almost dies again as he's Feared and runs into far too many archers for his own good, and the rest of us were hit by Slow. We return to Haegan, though, and think of our next steps.
I want Mazzy as a front-line: she's generally just better than Minsc in every way, shape, and form in that position except for exceptional strength. So we head to Umar Hills and quickly use a Free Action spell to get some Mimic blood, and kill the resulting Stone golem. After some quick negotiating with Madulf, we head to the Shadow Temple. I finally use this rest to fix a spell difference I had on import: Jehu had Cause Light Wounds instead of Sunscorch, and a quick EEKeeper fixed this.
We travel invisibly to the temple, though talking to the werewolves makes someone vulnerable... I believe it was Minsc? He almost gets swarmed and killed on the way to the mirror, but we get into the temple with everyone still alive. We use invisible blockers for the beginning fight, with Minsc throwing Azuredge non-proficiently. Jehu is True Neutral, and thus can't use the weapon: this might be the only reason to go Neutral Good instead. We trade Minsc for Mazzy here, sending Minsc to the Copper Coronet. And because I'm too lazy to google, I try to remember the rituals only for Moira to get her first death.
One Recall Spirit later, and we're using Jaheira's Fire Elemental for everything. It's untouchable outside of a Bone Golem, though the elemental unsummons before we hit it. Regardless, we have enough range weapons to kill it safely.
Shade Lord: we use Pixie Dust to safely get to the bottom left corner again, and engage in a ranged fight with Shadows, Shadow Patrick, and the Shadow altar. Jehu specifically doesn't break invisibility for the Shade Lord. We crucially get a hit or two from Moira onto it before it PFMW's up, and the Shade Lord fails every spell cast during its period of invulnerability. We wait it out, and it doesn't survive to recast PFMW: Jehu had dispelled the MI from invisibility.
Next up is Trademeet. We trade Jaheira for Valygar back in Umar hills first, and trade Yoshimo for Cernd since there are no traps in the druid grove. Aerie casts three Pro. Petrifications, and we take out the genies first before heading to the grove. We somehow meet no trolls outside, though we try and fail to win the troll mound: our AC simply isn't low enough to win melee slugfests yet, and the trolls keep making their saving throws vs Web and Slow. Regardless, we slog our way through the rest of the animals and druids in the grove, and manage to kill Delos before he Call Lightnings someone to oblivion.
We try to have Cernd fight Faldorn under Improved Invisibility without resting: she now starts the fight with an instant-cast Fire Elemental, and can now make herself immune to projectiles: the Guard cheese from Fighters now doesn't work against her. Needless to say, Faldorn wins, so we Recall Spirit, rest, Improved Invisibility and Insect Plague and two follow up Fire Elementals spells her end. Cernd is left to manage the grove. Jehu gets Fire Seeds by level up: the combo is now functional.
We go shopping after turning in the quest and a mantle: Tansheron's bow, Cloak of Displacement, Belt of Inertial Barrier, and Dwarven Thrower +3. That's 2 +3 ranged weapons for the Balor, though I'm broke again.
Back in Athkatla, we do the Soultaker plotline. There's honestly no real reason outside of exploring mods, and it even costs Jehu 4 permanent HP, but... Skie's saved, I guess, and a possible companion later if need be. AKA if every other Thief gets chunked.
We do the Rejiek questline. Some version of SCS changed the Rune Assassins: they no longer see through invisibility, so I can't bait their invisibility potions with an invisible Mirror Imaged, Stoneskinned mage (Aerie). Aerie summons a skeleton to try to do this a different way, but she gets Held by a Ghast for her troubles, and the rest of us come down the stairs to try to salvage this. We manage it, but Yoshimo eats one too many attacks. All our melee fighters ate too many attacks, actually.
Rest, Recall Spirit, loot everything, and I want to test out the Fire Seed combo. I don't actually know the range of the AoE, or how it works, so we go looking for some ambushes. And I learn it's a lot smaller radius than I thought, and requires a successful attack roll on something unlike arrows of detonation. Huh. The lack of True Seeing gets Yoshimo killed again, but that's fixable.
Another series of travels gets us to Renfield, and we do the Harper questline quickly. I wanted Jaheira back for her quests, so we recruit her only for her to be instantly snatched away for Harper business. We fight some pirates in the meantime, taking far too much damage and getting Valygar Petrified by a Flesh to Stone spell. Fortunately, there was no followup spell or Confusion, and after a quick trip to a temple of Oghma, he's restored. We rest at the Sea's Bounty, and Jaheira returns and gets cursed instantly. She has no luck at all.
In the Galvarey Estate fight, Jaheira ends up dying to their crossbow Fighter, and I learned that if you try to raise her while she's under her curse, she dies instantly. Huh.
We quickly head to the Slums to face Baron Ployer. Moira has her Fireseeds, but I didn't have enough time to gets summons up for easy hits. Regardless, enough of their spells are disrupted and they spend more time trying to Dispel or Breach us that their mages fall without taking a casualty, and Jaheira is Recall Spirit'd again.
I'm sick and tired of having horrific AC, so we try to take on Dennis' group for their Full plates. This fight went horrifically: Insect Plague didn't get their mage, Moira didn't manage to disable their Cleric OR their mage, Dennis utterly wrecked Mazzy in combat, and the end result after trading a ton of damage is that Aerie is hit by a Flamestrike from full health and instantly chunked. 75 damage is the average for a level 17 Cleric: these guys are ridiculously powerful.
More Recall Spirits, and we're off to find a new Mage at the De'Arnise keep. With customizable NPCs, Nalia's thief points are all dumped into Pickpocket: we'll be looking for that Ring of Regeneration from Ribald after all of this. The trolls don't pose too large of a threat with Full Plates and Spirit summons taking all the brunt of the attacks. Jehu Dispels Magic's the Charm on Glaicus, and the largest threat of the Golems is actually the Clay golem. I have no Cleric, so the curse is permanent unless I want to travel back to a city which I kinda hate doing mid-dungeon for the little roleplaying I do. So Jaheira's Fire Spirit is sacked to kill it, and the four weaker golems are systematically wiped out. Giving the Helm of Balduran to Moira gets her Save vs Death to 1, and she kills the Iron Golem from the doorway with the Dwarven Thrower. Finally, Torgal runs into a bunch of traps before the door shuts behind him with a Wizard Slayer with Improved Haste cast on her.
Finally, I want to swap out Jaheira for a Cleric (Anomen) since the lack of Remove Curse might be problematic. Apparently, the only way to do so now is permanent, so we lose Jaheira forever.
Stats: Jehu, Human Shaman 12, 87 HP (5 from Helm), 30 kills.
2) Alicorn Lance, Charm Person or Mammal, Cure Moderate Wounds, Resist Fire and Cold, Slow Poison, Writhing Fog
3) Call Lightning, Cure Disease, Dispel Magic, Spike Growth, Spiritual Clarity
4) Call Woodland Beings, Death Ward, Spirit Fire, Static Charge
5) Chaotic Commands, Ironskins, Recall Spirit
6) Fire Seeds, Spiritual Lock
Moira, Dwarf Wizard Slayer 12, 121 HP, 114 kills. GM in Longbow, Mastery in Warhammers. 1 death.
Anomen, Human Fighter 7 -> Cleric 12, 87 HP, 0 kills. GM in Slings, Mastery in Flails, 0 deaths.
Yoshimo, Human Bounty Hunter 14, 80 HP, 37 kills. At least 3 deaths.
Nalia, Human Thief 4 -> Mage 12. 61 HP, 9 kills. 0 deaths.
Permanently Lost: Aerie (Flame Strike Chunk), Jaheira (Permanently left)
We went to Durlag's Tower
This was followed by a visit to Firewine.
There are two more rooms underneath the castle and they are cleared without incident. The party buff before heading upstairs and deal with the guards awaiting them.
We immediately spot their caster so our focus lies in that direction, and allows a Sharran Monk to use a Quivering Palm to devastating effect. Neera and Minsc fall one after the other and only then does Blaggerd wake up to the danger. He is probably safe from such attacks but Rasaad is not and Wilson most certainly isn't. Wilson and Rasaad move away to re-engage once the effect expires and Blaggerd does the same because he may as well play it safe now we are two down.
On re-engagement we cut the enemy down rapidly but a Sharran Assassin strikes and down goes Rasaad. Blaggerd and Wilson try to counter but the assassin is hidden again so Blaggerd uses his gem of seeing and we end the combat before picking everything up and heading to Sister Garlena for her to raise our dead.
Tens (male half-elf cleric/ranger, Grond0); Nearv (male dwarf assassin, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1110591/#Comment_1110591
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1110957/#Comment_1110957
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1111665/#Comment_1111665
The last couple of sessions have seen some, well to be charitable, adventurous play. Did we learn from that and play it safe this time - well they do say you can't teach old dogs, new tricks
Things started off calmly enough with a couple of skeletons helping to dispose of Mekrath before he could cast anything. The nearby gang has a weakness in that Gaius only has 2 true sights (and they don't regenerate on resting). That led to him suffering a fatal backstab. A couple of the others keeled over from a greater command and the battle was quickly won.
Things got a lot dicier though once we started the Unseeing Eye quest. On the way to find Amaunator we came across a group of 3 mummies and 2 ghasts. Tens tried some run and hit tactics on the mummies, feeling secure that he could manage even if he was diseased by one of those. However, he apparently got hit twice, not only once - meaning he was losing 14 HPs a round from the disease. That was not manageable and things looked pretty grim there. I think the final mummy bit the dirt while he had 28 HPs and both Tens and Nearv successfully stealthed at the first attempt. Some gibberlings interrupted a first rest attempt and one more tick of disease took him to 21 HPs - but the second rest attempt worked.
That wasn't even the closest call in that area though. Next we were faced with 3 gauths on the other side of a bridge. Those looked like easy prey for 3 skeleton warriors, but the fight got a bit more complicated when some nearby undead joined the fray. Tens used sanctuary and turn undead to chase the undead away, but the gauths had a trick up their sleeves for that one and sent in paralyzation rays to hold Tens.
Having had so much trouble with the first group of mummies, the obvious course of action was to find some more
Inside the hive, a fresh lot of skeletons dealt with all the beholders. The blind priests were left to last and I had intended to nerf their response with silence, but they got activated prematurely. That led to large numbers of summons, as well as considerable use of other spells by the blind priests. One amusing thing there was when Tens was blinded by one priest, only to be cured a bit later by another using true seeing.
There was still time for more trouble though. Nearv produced a few skeletons for Gaal and his guards, but Gaal was another to be activated before preparations for the fight were complete. Trying to cut off his stream of spells, Tens threw in a silence, which worked - though only on himself
The final action was in the Bridge District where Tens was keen to take on the Rune Assassins. He buffed up far more than usual, but was still potentially vulnerable to being held by the ghasts - but was able to kill those before they could hit him. Both the Rune Assassins hit with their backstabs though and Tens was down to 28 HPs by the time the first of those was dead. Rather than try a retreat though, he did a quick belt swap with Nearv and equipped the +3 Saving Grace shield given as a reward for taking down the Unseeing Eye. That meant the remaining Rune Assassin would probably need a critical to hit - and it failed to get one.
Tens, cleric 9 / ranger 9, 115 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 159 kills (+195 in BG1)
Nearv, assassin 14, 75 HPs, 110 kills (+158 in BG1), 1 death
It's been a few sessions since Blaggerd last ventured into Watchers Keep. The remaining statues in the first level are outnumbered and outclassed.
This is terrible news. Blaggerd can hardly hold back a tear shoves Sarevok into the party and remonstrates with him about the lack of XP he has gained while sweeping the Pocket Plane.
As requested, we tried to help Beador who was fighting off shadow druids. They were quite strong however, using insects to disable our spells and entangling us so that we couldn't attack them with their swords. In addition to that they charmed me. Khaled used charm to reverse that, but had to use two spells to be successful. The upshot of this is that Jaheira was killed.
Wyvern still continued to be a problem however.
We fought Andarthe and Amerande and won with difficulty.
We were rewarded generously, but it was the loot on the bodies that was the most useful. Jaheira's protective items including her armour made her decidedly less squishy.
Previous updates at:
Today's session was primarily about boosting reputation, but there was a fair amount of other action done in the process. For instance, after returning Samuel to the FAI, I went to tackle Tarnesh. Rather than resorting to wands I decided to make use of grease there. That's a very powerful spell, though I don't think most people (including me) use it that regularly. The advantages over sleep include that it affects all levels, forces continual saving throws while inside the grease and persists on affected individuals for a number of rounds after they're out of the grease field itself (the latter is also an advantage compared to web). For Tarnesh the plan was to shoot at him and then use magic missiles while he tried to buff, then retreat and use horror from out of sight - but he died from the magic missiles anyway.
Melicamp was successfully restored, but while doing that I also took on Bassilus. Magic missiles interrupted a couple of his spells, but he did manage to complete a hold person. I was already out of sight before he released that though, meaning that (in the unmmodded game) there was no real danger from being held.
Helping out Charleston Nib pushed reputation to 19 and 7 magic missiles proved one too many for the Doomsayer.
After using the tome and buying and learning Friends, I was able to get minimum prices to buy more scrolls - along with a few other goodies like the Neutral Robe of the Archmagi. Now with my favorite skull trap available, I went to find the Red Wizards of Thay to give that a go.
Mage L8, 41 HPs, 124 kills
A quick glance at Sarevok confirms he is earning his place but has a bit to go before performing at the same level as Minsc. We clear another room in the 3rd floor maze.
After a moments study of the machine Blaggerd realises he is short green and round, so will need to use the various clue sheets left around the Keep to work out how to operate it.
The first step is to do everything else in this area and that is duly done. Of note, he now has a +5 two handed sword that only he (in the party) can use - but unusually in his many iterations has no proficiency for it.
A demi-lich is defeated by Blaggerd, Rasaad and Sarevok under protection from undead scrolls. Wilson is snorting outside this chamber but was unable to use a scroll and nobody else bothered to use one on him. Still, moments later he helped against Saladrax the red dragon and only missed the victory when buffeted away at almost the last moment.
So we know we are up against it. Blaggerd makes the executive decision of stopping the Hive Mother first despite her improved mantle. It's a race against time but the Hive Mother doesn't manage to survive a Deathbringer Assault from Sarevok when 100 of 200 additional damage is still plenty too much.
Ouch. Blaggerd takes another hit and calls out for the attack to continue as he retreats. Xei Win Toh is in similar trouble but instead opts to gulp a potion.
Thanks to Neera, Blaggerd need never wonder how he'd look with Tensers Transformation active. That's a lot of hit points.
Nobody tried to help.
Instead they continued tormenting Demogorgon until he'd had enough and Blaggerd regained his mobility at that point.