Yes, I suspect it is because the screenshot is taken when Grond0 leaves the session and a misleading figure is shown. I spotted it the previous time, came to that conclusion and then forgot about it again
We made a quick start, clearing out the remaining enemies in the central underdark area before discussing illithid and beholders. Grond wasn't too bothered about dealing with them so Stawk shrugged his shoulders and we went to speak to Adalon. Stawk then pretended to be a drow called Veldrin and we gained entry to Ust Natha. Our first, and last as it turned out, task there was to rescue Phaere from illithid.
Stawk demonstrates my amazing lack of thought again. The Shield of Harmony protecting against an illithid stun - well of course it doesn't and not even Grond could get around the bunched enemies in time to stop the straws of death from entering Stawk's nostrils (and Grond0 was complaining about a lack of movement so it may have been exacerbated by multiplayer bumping).
With our run ended and no further excuses to hand there was just time for a quick check of Grond's actual AC without the multiplayer bork of it to provide a satisfactory response to @StummvonBordwehr
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 198 (update 1) Jar (male elf stalker, Grond0); Busta (male dwarf barbarian, Gate70)
Previous run
The early bath for the previous duo gave us a good excuse for starting again. It felt a bit like deja vu though when the random selection changed the PC from a ranger to a stalker, while his trusty companion went from a berserker to a barbarian.
In Candlekeep Busta showed off his muscles for the first time to kick open a chest with a valuable gem inside. Jar saw the vast wealth that produced and went mad - buying a composite bow, some armor and a shield (more typically I would just shell out for a helmet there ).
The early stages saw arrows and flying axes cutting down Shoal and a few more victims on the way down to Nashkel. Greywolf took a while to shoot down, but gave up a nice long sword to Jar.
Busta immediately pointed out his own lack of a magic weapon, but not to worry as Arghain can always be relied upon to provide a decent 2-handed sword.
Jar then headed towards the Firewine Ruins to get Meilum's bracers, but couldn't resist trying out his new sword with a backstab attack on Ioun Gallchobair and his archer friends on the way to the map edge. With only 26 HPs at the time that was asking for trouble, but fortunately Jar managed a clean kill with his first strike. However, he still had to run when the other archer scored a couple of hits. Busta was also looking for space, but instead found some kobolds ... and then some half ogres ... and then some ogrillons ... and then a wolf. Meanwhile Jar finally managed to hide and came back to help Busta clean up his tail before eventually backtracking to finish off Ioun.
With that bit of idiocy out of the way, Meilum didn't take long.
That improvement in combat abilities was put to good use at the basilisk area where Busta lived up to his name in cutting down the basilisks. After restraining himself to shooting against the first 3 basilisks in the southern group, Jar started circling round in stealth to get a backstab on the last one. Busta saw him coming though and unleashed a 52 HP critical to cut the basilisk in half before Jar could attack. The northern basilisks were swiftly dealt with and Mutamin stood little chance against an enraged attack.
Kirian's group looked quite challenging, so the first task was to try and improve the odds by drawing Baerin away separately. A couple of stealth shots from Jar persuaded him to follow and meet his end from Busta. Next, Jar sneaked in behind Kirian before Busta enraged and ran in to get Peter to target him. Jar successfully backstabbed Kirian, badly wounding her and interrupting her mirror image spell.
That allowed her to be finished off quickly and push the odds decisively in our favor. All Busta had to do then was survive long enough to deal with Peter, which he did, before switching to run and shoot against Lindin.
After a rare example of not only making a plan, but successfully carrying it through, we decided to end on
a high note and save it there. Busta has got a slight lead in kills, but a rather more considerable one in HPs - I guess we know which of us will be doing the tanking later in the run ...
A full session saw plenty of opportunities provided for death to reach out his skeletal hands - but he kept them in his pockets.
The first close call was on the way to find Shoal when a ghast lag-jumped Corethief - taking him down to 2 HPs and paralyzing him ready for a final blow.
Note in the screenshot though an arrow from Soygib already on its way. That didn't kill the ghast, but did make him briefly turn towards Soygib - and that provided enough time for another shot to intervene as the ghast turned back to his helpless victim.
After passing through Beregost and Nashkel, the next main target was the basilisk area. There was another close call for Corethief there when a basilisk took him down to a single HP, but once more he survived and the levels were starting to mount up.
With the basilisks all dead, the two thieves both crept in behind Mutamin aiming for a double backstab - and successfully pulled it off.
There was still trouble lurking to the south though in the shape of Kirian's party. Vince pulled Baerin away from the others, but battle was joined within calling distance and Peter and Lindin came to support him. Vince blinded Baerin, but Corethief was confused by Peter and looked in trouble. Vince failed to blind Peter and a retaliatory spell saw him held to leave only Soygib under control. Fortunately he stepped up to the plate thanks to his illusionist specialty - blinding both Peter and Lindin.
The penalty to hit while blinded helped Corethief to survive until he regained control and could disengage and help shoot the blind trio. Soygib then showed off a bit by nipping in briefly towards Kirian and blinding her before she could get a spell off.
After a bit more exploring, Vince led the way to Durlag's Tower in search of some more quick XP. The 2 battle horrors on the path were blinded. While they took a while to finish off, attacking from stealth or 2-handed range meant there was never any real threat after that. Next up were the basilisks on the roof - PfP made those easy and everyone gained another level from the first of those.
The most difficult battle at Durlag's was the battle horror on the wall. He saved against three blinds before eventually succumbing and in the meantime there was always a threat from the skeleton archers. However, once Corethief and Soygib were free to deal with those they didn't last long.
Journal of Grímarr Swiftaxe
In Centeol's Lair, he was the last to die. I could have left him alive since he wasn't hostile, but since he craved death, we obliged. After all 2000 experience pointa could come in useful.
Later on killing a pack of winter wolves provided more experience plus valuable skins.
The same is true of the body parts of wyverns.
We battled our way through to the mines where we fought Drasus et al.
It was the "et al" who caused us problems!
At that time we decided to pick up Jaheira in order to get rid of some of her enemies. On the way back we blundered into a Hamadryad and killed her.
After picking up jaheirs we fought Takiyah.
After completing as much as we could of her quest, we dropped Jaheira off and headed down the Cloakwood Mines.
Since Stephan didn't attack us, we checked his alignment to ensure that we wouldn't be killing an innocent.
Clearly he was evil, just not powerful enough or stupid enough to take us on.
That however didn't save him.
We picked up Yeslick and took him to a place of safety before flooding the mines.
Upon leaving Wendall attacked us and paid the penalty.
We then took Perwell to his mother.
Upon approaching Baldur's Gate we were assaulted by Jhaeros Auglathla who paid the price of his folly.
Most of his cohorts were then killed by a web/fireball combination.
Ygrainne Windstar however, due to positioning survived, but not for long.
We were investigating a house when the owner Sunin accompanied by his cohorts Maka and Joular attacked us only to perish.
We tried to do Aldeth's quest, but due to a bug were unable to enter his house.
However using the Control Panel Spell, we were able to enter and help him.
We did a number of minor jobs, but were faced with a predicament when faced with two enemies who both claimed to be in the right. Clearly a spell was needed!
Gervisse was found to be the evil one, so we killed him and were rewarded.
In another house we first killed the guards before being given a quest by the owner. This resulted in us acquiring a useful cloak.
We were then asked to help a woman whose morals seemed a bit iffy, but whose partner's morals were decidedly black. He forced us to kill him.
By this time, we had acquired sufficient potions of invisibility to take on the Section HQ in Beregost so we returned to Beregost.
Things started quietly with a few simple tasks in Beregost before we headed north. The ankheg nest could have been tricky if they'd had a chance to take advantage of Busta's relatively poor AC, but most of them received a backstab before they could attack and Busta typically finished then those off with a single blow. The last of them put up a better fight than most, but was still comfortable.
A few reputation quests were done successfully before failing to revive Melicamp. That left reputation still at 19, so we went to the seaside to kill a few worgs for the final point. While there Busta tried his rage out on a couple of groups of sirines. They're no danger in melee, but the golems in the cave are a bit more of a threat. Jar joined in a melee assault on the first couple of those, but by the time of the 3rd Busta was feeling a bit sick, so Jar pulled out his bow and arrow for that.
There was more melee action at Durlag's Tower, where the battle horrors would have been tricky for Busta on his own. He therefore ran them round while Jar hid, before stopping at a suitable point to facilitate a backstab.
On the roof, Busta used a potion of mirror eyes to kill the lesser basilisk and the first 2 greater basilisks. At that point we consulted and both agreed it might be wise to take a second potion - though Busta finished the final one off pretty quickly anyway with another of his vicious criticals.
On coming back inside the Tower, Jar got stunned by the trap. That gave Busta plenty of time to go upstairs in search of the tome. He was out of rages, but wasn't worried by the prospect of being charmed - fortunately stun is not counted as being out of party control (unlike charm) and hence that was not game over.
The doomsayer offered an opportunity to use similar tactics as for the battle horrors - and there was even a handy wall for Jar to hide behind. However, his backstabs were not that successful there and Busta took a lot of damage - so much so he actually consumed a couple of potions before finding a hit to end the contest.
The Nashkel Mine offered a bit of gentle exercise to stretch muscles on the way to find Mulahey. His first spell bounced off rage and he had no time to try again.
Outside the mine the Amazons also found their spells ineffective.
Nimbul and Tranzig put up their normal lack of resistance to close a pretty smooth session.
Just reading over the above before posting, I thought it might be helpful to explain the reference to Busta's poor AC. That's made in the context of our last run being with a similar pairing, but including a berserker rather than a barbarian. A berserker can wear full plate armor, which is particularly good against slashing attacks (which are the most common from dangerous enemies) with an effective AC of -3. In contrast a barbarian is limited to splint mail, with an AC of 4 against slashing damage, i.e. a gap of 7 compared to full plate (the gap is lower at 5 for piercing and 3 for crushing). In addition berserker rage improves AC by 2, while barbarian rage worsens it by 2. An enraged berserker could therefore attack a battle horror and be safe against anything but a critical hit. Meanwhile an enraged barbarian is getting hit with a 9 and is therefore far less inclined to stay there in a slugging match ...
Journal of Grímarr Swiftaxe
Having acquired sufficient potions of invisibility in Baldur's Gate, we decided to take on the Section HQ in Beregost. We killed the guard upstairs and went down a level where we killed numerous operatives and picked up some nice equipmnet.
We sneaked past a mage and her cohorts on the level below using potions of invisibility, Rube using stealth instead. We then killed many operatives and Section Elite. The experience from the Elite proved to be highly beneficial.
However, fighting them proved to be dangerous.
However healing potions enabled us to continue and as a result Rube levelled up in his other skill.
We went down a level and were once more quite successful though at the cost of injuries.
We continued down, using potions of invisibility when the enemies were too dangerous.
We successfully cleared the bottom level.
At the time we didn't realise how important clearing that level would be.
We went up some stairs to the hub of the Section HQ. We killed some guards before coming face to face with Paul Wolfe.
He proved to be too strong for us and we fled back down the stairs where we rested.
We returned to fight Paul and his cohorts once more. We prevailed, but once more we were badly hurt.
We used potions of extra healing before finishing the task.
On the way out we killed the Ashirukuru using my true sight to flush them out.
The rest of the HQ proved to be straightforward.
We patted ourselves on the back for a job well done. Most of the equipment we gained will be sold, but some of it will be of great worth. When Rube now fights like a warrior, he has a warrior's armour.
A bit of living on the edge led to one slip today, but the run goes on.
The first port of call was the Bandit Camp, where Taurgosz tried to put some heart into the bandit defenders. He did score a moral victory there when his quality armor foiled 4 attempted backstabs from Jar, while Busta kept him still. However, that just meant we defaulted to the trusty run and shoot tactics.
Inside the tent a backstab was more successful, meaning Venkt wasn't long for this world - and his colleagues were soon to follow him.
In the second Cloakwood area, Jar and Busta were both caught in a web trap with a huge spider closing in with its fangs spread wide. Fortunately though, Busta had managed to make himself the target before getting held, while Jar broke free at the first opportunity and was able to quickly skewer the spider.
Jar had taken the trouble to rest and learn slow poison before going into the Cloakwood and that came in handy in Centeol's nest when Busta went in search of a 2-handed sword upgrade.
Moving on to the Mine, one guarding mage died to a backstab. The other went invisible, but was one-shotted by Busta as soon as he started casting another spell. Jar spent a while running Drasus around and failing to hide from him, while Busta dealt with Genthore. Then it was possible to set Drasus up for a backstab.
Jar took his boots, meaning that he's now able to forge ahead rather than constantly breathing in Busta's trail dust.
Inside the mine progress was easy enough on the way downstairs, though Busta took a bit of damage. He took a lot more though in trying to intermittently hold the first battle horror in place while Jar went for a backstab. With only 15 HPs left he went to hide while Jar used a handy wall to make repeated backstabs on the second one.
A couple of CLWs and another rage on top of a potion of magic blocking allowed Busta to lead the assault on Davaeorn.
Jar did have a nasty moment during that fight though when he found the hard way that Busta had skipped over one of the corridor traps - fortunately it only took 10 of the 22 HPs he had available.
Arriving at the City some early work culminated with the completion of the poison quest.
There was a hiccup on the way there though when we tried ascending Ramazith's Tower. Busta used his rage to attack a group of ghasts, but found them doing considerable damage to him. Jar tried to intervene when he saw 3 ghasts left and Busta already at low HPs and he managed to kill one of them and drag another downstairs. The idea was that Busta would then either be able to finish off the last in melee or run it round the tower to shoot it. Unfortunately, both of us had overlooked that barbarian rage boosts HPs via an increase in constitution - and when rage runs out, those extra HPs are removed. In this case Busta had insufficient left ...
The final action saw an assault on the Iron Throne. Busta took a PfM scroll there, but Jar also thrust a handful of potions at him - the invulnerability on this occasion being useless as a boost to saving throws, but very useful to get AC sufficiently low to tank the enemies.
Jar, stalker 7, 59 HPs, 177 kills
Busta, barbarian 8, 121 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 183 kills, 1 death
Journal of Grímarr Swiftaxe Last Entry
From Beregost we headed south anfd ran into Teldorn Agents (Stone of Askavar) This caused Dug to level up, whereupon we decided that perhaps we were tough enough to take on the Section Oversight. However, on the way we thought we would take Kivan to Baldur's Gate. On the way we were attacked by an enemy of his and killed her. We dropped him off outside the Oversight.
We entered and took on the bosses on the top floor. We won, but Rube was killed. We therefore sneaked out using potions of invisibility in order to get him raised with the intention of returning to finish the job. All in all we were satisfied with the outcome as the Oversight is an extremely difficult battle.
If and when we complete the Oversight, we then have to choose between several quests which are all calling for our attention: The Stone of Askavar; The Secret of Bonehill Part 1; The Northern Tales of the Sword Coast; Durlag's Tower; Ice Island; and balduran's Isle.
We are thinking that Northern Tales should be taken on last as it was taking on the dragon that has brought runs to an end. A bit more experience would come in handy.
Grímarr now has ** in flails; ** in dual wielding; ** in long bows. Dug now has three spell slots for Cloudkill.
EDIT
Was thinking MUCH too far ahead. Probably shouldn't have returned. This shows the beginning of the end. Clearly should have had protection from fire. I'll know for the future if my memory works that well.
Yup, the hall of heroes is on page one. I’ve gone from Candlekeep to the Throne twice, and others have done it multiple times, or solo or with some other crazy restriction.
After a 3 month hiatus I finally found enough desire to continue this run. The Crew attempted to convince the guards to let them into the Courtyard of Dragonspear Castle, but failed in that attempt. That meant they needed to find a Seal elsewhere and travelled to the Underground river in search of one of those. They quickly cleared some sundry enemies before finding a cyclops with the relevant item and overpowering him. They'd already talked to Jamven so had animal helpers to take much of the pressure off as they shot down the rest of the guards. They also killed Julann and Riga, getting a nice 2-handed sword from the latter.
Rather than go underground, the Crew returned to the castle with their Seal. Inside the Courtyard I uncovered all the quests, but failed to complete some of those correctly (I don't normally do them, so wasn't generally sure what to do). Checking a walkthrough I don't think I lost anything particularly significant.
Next up was Bloodbark Grove. They cleared out a vampire's cellar there, but were unable to open either of the treasure chests with strength of 23 (I didn't use a potion this time to boost that further). A basilisk there was killed as part of the search for a cure for Covid-19The Uncommon Cold. It doesn't seem to attack at all (probably because of the game reference to it being sick), so no protection was needed against its gaze. There was a skeletal mage nearby, but it's high missile resistance was not sufficient to protect it against the sheer number of shots the Crew could deliver.
Back at the Underground River, the Crew dived into the previously ignored entrance. The first main bit of action was investigating a cave with some dead dwarves in. A sneak attack from an invisible wraith there drained Vito and I decided to go back to the Camp to get him restored. On returning I went to find Ferrusk and persuaded him to hand over the ankheg summoning amulet before attacking him.
Further to the west a couple of young drow seemed to share a naive belief that everyone would wish to help them and they were shot down while trying to run away.
A bit further on they found a ghost dragon. That required +2 weapons to hit - but everyone now has those and the dragon was dead in a few moments.
Fortunately it didn't seem to bear a grudge and a reanimated version helped attack a group of dark magicians. They confused 2 of the Crew, slept another and slowed one more - but the ones still in control had enough in hand to deal with a belated assault by undead.
Some time later everyone was healed and all new equipment identified and exploration resumed. The next thing found was a roomful of drow. I could have given them evidence that the drow runaways were dead - but where would the fun be in that . The Crew survived pretty easily, but Therli fell in the combat (I didn't plan that and think he would have handed over the Cloak of the Gargoyle anyway).
Strunk was struck down before he could buff.
However, even though that was out of sight of anyone, the next crusader patrol the Crew found was hostile, so had presumably heard something going on. The guards by the fire pit were also hostile and had to be put down before the Crew arrived at the door to the Warrens. Turin was still neutral though and rather than kill him Vito put a firebreath potion into the fire pit as a distraction.
After a bit more looting, the fight with Hephernaan will be next. I've rarely done that fight and am not sure how the Crew will stand up to it, but expect we'll see!
Vito - L9, 108 HPs, 739 kills, 2 deaths, ***** scimitar / ** darts
Baby Face - L9, 115 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 699 kills, 0 deaths, ***** long sword / ** crossbow
Mad Dog - L9, 117 HPs, 646 kills, 0 deaths, ***** axe / ** dual wielding
Carlo - L9, 96 HPs (incl. 9 from helm, -10 from morningstar), 598 kills, 0 deaths, ***** flail / ** sling
Bugsy - L9, 122 HPs, 579 kills, 2 deaths, ***** hammer / ** shortbow
Al (PC) - L9, 110 HPs (incl. -9 from Claw), 647 kills, ***** 2-handed sword / ** longbow
Despite doing pretty much all the content to date, the Crew still need about 500k between them to hit the XP cap.
In the Warrens, even 25 strength failed to open any of the locked containers - though there were plenty of unlocked ones to add to the growing congestion in backpacks. I was wary about the numbers of enemies at the top of the lift and decided on a rare use of fireballs to improve the odds.
That meant that it was an easy battle when Hephernaan and his mages arrived.
Following reinforcements fared no better, but unfortunately strength 25 only opened one of the chests up there - and that just had equipment for mages useless to the Crew.
There was another major dust-up when heading out of the Warrens, but the Crew were able to rest safely in there to heal up before going back into the river area.
There were more guards there, but they didn't last long.
After returning to the Coalition Camp there was an abortive meeting with Caelar before the crusaders tried invading the camp. The first wave was easily beaten off in straight melee using archer support.
The second wave was treated to elemental missiles while the wizard slayers helped out with spell disruption.
The third wave saw the Crew mixing missiles and melee to help warmages to make mincemeat of the opposition. However, with most of the opposition dead one of them tried to be tricky and ran round the edge of the combat towards the fire - everyone briefly switched to stunning darts to stop him, but he got just far enough to initiate the 4th wave.
By that time though the 3rd wave were already dead and a round of fireballs made the clean-up operation a simple one.
At the Castle siege everyone was issued with a few of the exploding arrows carried for so long. In the crowded conditions they wreaked havoc on the opposition (and quite a few of the friendlies as well ).
With all the basic enemies dead, Ashatiel proposed a one on one fight. Almost immediately though he disappeared without warning and his cronies restarted the fight. They caused a bit more damage before suddenly deciding they'd had enough (checking back on the text, I'd killed Ashatiel without noticing).
For once I didn't bother with all the loot in the are (I had 250k gold and nothing to spend it on anyway).
Inside the castle I rested to heal up before moving into hell - the quest bonus for doing that gave everyone their final level.
They celebrated by making quick work of the devils in the area. In the next area everyone's saving throws proved good enough to fend off various charms, holds and fear effects while cutting down more enemies.
Answering Thrix's riddle provided a +3 long sword for Baby Face - the 3rd of the Crew to have +3 weapons with grand mastery.
Up to this point I'd used no potions in SoD and very few in BGEE, so had vast quantities of those in stock - for instance 77 potions of heroism. I didn't think it was required, but just for the hell of it everyone did a major buffing exercise prior to going up the lift. No-one took any damage there and the Crew were spoiling for a real fight when they arrived at the top. I normally persuade Caelar to fight with me when playing solo, so this time for a change I got Belhifet to promote her to a blackguard and kill Hephernaan. I could have killed Belhifet pretty easily before Caelar had even finished buffing while invisible, but waited to be able to take revenge on her.
Then it was Belhifet's turn though, with Al fittingly getting the final blow.
There were no mistakes in the epilogue, so the Crew should be reappearing in Athkatla shortly.
@Grond0 Interesting run. I could never pay your way though. My mindset isn't evil enough it seems.
I changed my mind about the party that I am running. I am playing a Sunite party.
The protagonist is Rosace, a Cherub of the Ruby Rose. No armour allowed better than modified leather. The modifications that I made to Shank, Carbos and Mendas actually help in this regard as I gave them better weapons and armour to make them worth fighting. However, once they are beaten (Using Spells such as Command), it means that the decent armour is available for Rosace.
I am accompanied by Oswy, an Undead Hunter. You might think that he should be a follower of Kelemvor, but his hostility to the undead is due to the fact that they are not aesthetically pleasing. He is an aesthete and so naturally favours Sune.
The third party member is Passionata, a Heartwarden of Sune. She cannot wear metal armour either, but doesn’t want to since she is a mage as well as a cleric.
They intend to join up with Isra who is a Sunite Inquisitor.
They will also need a thief. Alora and Coran both give the impession of being Sunites even if they are not overtly religious.
Those are my thoughts before I start. Drake is clearly a frustrated Sunite. He would certainly be welcomed by Sune if he decided to change allegiance.
As a result of importing 6 separate characters into BG2 I ended up with multiple Helms of Balduran in Jon's dungeon - but resisted the temptation to equip everyone with those. There wasn't any danger going through there and they cleaned up all potential targets there, including Ulvaryl.
On exiting, everyone already had some form of magic weapon, so it didn't take long to kill some shadows and restore the circus to normal operation. Then it was off to the Slums to report to Gaelan Bayle before setting the Copper Coronet to rights. Travelling back to the Promenade, the Crew discovered Hareishan and cut her down at the expense of Mad Dog being drained. Heading to Watchers Keep to get a cheap fix for him, they triggered the Suna Seni ambush. The mage was shot down there before he could blink and the others were quickly cut down thereafter.
At Watcher's Keep, as usual I couldn't resist the opportunity to fight the vampiric wraiths. That's always rather dodgy early on with poor weapons and no protection and this time was no exception. A particular problem there is that the wraiths will by preference attack the PC and when Al was taken down to 57 HPs I thought running was the best option. However, one of the wraiths was at near death and I couldn't resist trying to get one more blow to finish it off. Unfortunately both the wraiths then hit at once and the combination of the damage from those and the drained levels was just too much for poor old Al ...
I thik that the images tell their own story Journal of Rosace
As you can see the battle with Greywolf at level one was quite tough. I had to run away and use ranged weapons. However at the end everyone was level 2.
I thought it was a while since I'd had a go at this (checking, it's actually well over 2 years), so decided to brush Biff off once more. Previous runs have been in a mix of installations, but this one will be unmodded. Biff is allowed to use any tactics he likes - but must never kill anything except through his own (not summons) melee attacks.
Early enemies were blinded and then meleed from beyond their sight range - potentially after using LMD and/or darts to wear them down. Doing that to Shoal got Biff to level 3 and he learnt color spray.
That was intended to both allow automatic attacks on affected creatures and assure that any attacks wouldn't be criticals - allowing more precise use of darts to reduce HPs to a level where a single melee hit will be fatal. Unfortunately I'd forgotten that a level limit had been put on that spell in the EE, so it's pretty much useless for this challenge.
Moving on to the basilisk area, Korax was contracted to immobilize the opposition for Biff and he picked up another quick couple of levels there - learning invisibility, identify and web.
Keeping a lesser basilisk, greater basilisk and Mutamin under control at once was a bit fiddly, but managed successfully.
I didn't have the spells available or the time left on Korax's charm to go after Kirian's party immediately, so just blinded and killed Korax.
After resting, I tried a couple of times to blind Baerin, but failed and rested again. The same happened the next day, but the following one I was successful with him at the first attempt and Peter also immediately fell victim. Web then held Kirian and she and Lindin were blinded with one of those spells still left in reserve. Wearing them down and finishing them off was then not too hard, despite the attempts of a nearby gnoll to interfere.
Progressing north, handing Tenya back her bowl was enough for level 6 and the opportunity to add haste to Biff's repertoire.
The nearby ankheg was stranded above ground using invisibility - allowing it to be webbed, blinded and finished off at leisure.
At Durlag's Tower, Biff initially bypassed the battle horrors and went to find the basilisks on the roof. Web and blindness set those up for the kill. I've decided to be nice to Dushai this run, so am not attacking inside webs. However, with +4 for attacking something without a melee weapon equipped, +4 for attacking a blinded target and +4 for attacking from invisibility, the final blows on those basilisks had a very good chance of hitting. The final basilisk got Biff to level 7 and he celebrated by taking magic missile, knock and minor spell deflection.
The latter was used to grab the wisdom tome.
The ghasts in the tower were dealt with along with Riggilo. Then it was the turn of the battle horrors outside. Magic missiles could wear them down pretty quickly and there was always the option of casting a web on a blinded individual so that they were stuck right at the edge of the web where it didn't interfere with attacks.
The battle horrors took Biff to level 8.
There are loads of good 4th level spells to choose from, but he eventually plumped for good old stoneskin.
Sorcerer L8, 42 HPs, 74 kills
Level 1 spells Blind
Makes it less likely that opponents will retaliate when briefly attacked and reduces their chances to hit if they do. BGEE version 2.5 reverted to vanilla behaviour with blind meaning most enemies stay still - making it a great spell for this challenge. LMD
This can provide a small HP top-up against damage (you only get a HP benefit from the first spell, though subsequent ones still damage opponents). It can help nudge enemies nearer to death at range, but a lot of things are now immune to the spell in BGEE. Color Spray
In the last few runs I've used friends instead of color spray, but decided to give the latter a go. Unfortunately in BGEE color spray has been limited by level of opponent in the same way as sleep, so it's a pretty useless pick for this challenge. Identify
Both keeps finances strong and allows items to be used immediately after their acquisition. Magic Missile
Quickly reduces HPs of tougher opponents in a reasonably controllable fashion.
Turning to reputation quests Biff went to pick up a chicken. Before trying his luck with that though he wanted to kill the golems at High Hedge. If you're careful you can avoid them attacking - by moving away just as they reach you and are committed to an attack you can waste their first attack in a round and get your own quick attack in before they get another chance. That's fiddly to do perfectly though, so having stoneskins available is a good insurance against the possibility of a one-shot critical.
Melicamp died anyway, but there were plenty more reputation quests available. Biff finally made his way down to Nashkel while doing the rounds of those. After doing well to save Arabelle (webbing the xvarts and showing his saves were better than theirs), he went to Firewine and blinded Meilum at the 7th attempt before finishing him off.
I'm always a little reluctant to use his bracers as they make it harder to fine-tune damage with darts - but as virtually always I go ahead and put them on anyway.
Other reputation quests also went well. The work done during those included clearing out the ankheg nest. Rather than spend the time using invisibility and web to avoid any chance of being hit, Biff just cast blindness at the ankhegs as soon as they surfaced. Their poor weapon speed means it's very rare one of them will spit before you get a chance to cast blind and withdraw if that fails.
In the event none of the ankhegs did get a chance to attack - and even if they had stoneskin meant a single hit would not have been fatal to Biff.
With reputation up to 20 and after using the charisma tome to push that to 14, Biff used friends scrolls to get cheap prices at High Hedge and Ulgoth's Beard - the +3 staff adding significantly to his melee ability.
After sneaking through the Nashkel Mine I webbed and blinded Mulahey so that I could get close to him and out of sight of any help he would summon. Fortunately Mulahey believed Biff was from Tazok, so when he lost morale after being taken down to low HPs, there was no problem about tracking him down for the kill.
Outside the mine the amazons were all blinded and smacked down.
Back in Nashkel, reporting to the Mayor was enough for a 9th and final BG1 level.
Biff took mirror image, slow and greater malison there. He also got a HP bonus by killing Nimbul for his find familiar scroll.
Back in Beregost some spiders were blinded before Biff did the same to Tranzig (taking advantage of the fact that, in the unmodded game, a failed attempt to blind a neutral does not turn them hostile).
After helping out Landrin and picking up some pantaloons, Biff continued on to the Bandit Camp. Rather than bothering to kill all the external bandits, he drew Taurgosz away from the crowds before blinding him. Malison + web (OK 2 webs as the first one fractionally missed) set him up for the kill.
Inside the tent, Raemon was still blissfully unaware of what was happening outside - making it easy to blind him and his cronies.
As usual I didn't bother with lightning protection, but just pushed Ender Sai into the path of the trap to pick up a small gold bonus.
The Cloakwood held nothing of interest and Biff moved through invisibly to get to the mine area. 8 of his 12 blinds were sufficient to disable Drasus & co and they were safely finished off before he moved on to the mine itself.
There was no killing while he sneaked down to the bottom level. The guard there was blinded, as were the battle horrors - the latter after being malisoned (they were also slowed to make them easy targets).
Webs are no use against Davaeorn so he was malisoned and then blinded (Biff having previously hasted himself in order to be able to run away quickly if necessary) before being finished off.
After flooding the mine, Biff has just travelled to Baldur's Gate.
Sorcerer L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 161 kills
Level 2 spells Invisibility
Allows both safe travel and a free hit on most opponents - meaning they can be nearly killed while blinded at range and then finished off without risk. Web
Helps to control battlefields (particularly in combination with malison) and offers the opportunity to disable opponents from out of sight (enemies don't react to being webbed as an attack). Knock
Show me the money! Mirror image
In addition to making larger scale battles safer, this will help against some types of traps. Blur
Both the AC bonus and the adjustment to saving throws are useful.
I always have issues with melee sorceresses because I like also these spells
- shield but the alternative is from amulet.
- sleep but the alternative is from wand.
- chill touch because it's cool.
Generally I don't take identify (shop), larlochs minor drain (I get the innate), colorspray (only against many foes, soo many random drops give this).
I also don't do knock because the good gear for sorceresses is bought or from bodies. I like theming Ghoul touch.
I always have issues with melee sorceresses because I like also these spells
- shield but the alternative is from amulet.
- sleep but the alternative is from wand.
- chill touch because it's cool.
Generally I don't take identify (shop), larlochs minor drain (I get the innate), colorspray (only against many foes, soo many random drops give this).
I also don't do knock because the good gear for sorceresses is bought or from bodies. I like theming Ghoul touch.
I agree my choices are not normally RP based. I have quite often used both chill touch and ghoul touch for this challenge in the past because I agree they fit well, but they're just not as useful as other spells for a power gaming approach. I have been thinking though that the next time I do this challenge I might limit Biff to only using melee attacks and potentially not allow any damaging or disabling effects for opponents, except those inflicted in melee. Getting past the fight at the palace if I was strict about that might be near impossible, but it would make chill and ghoul touch attractive options ...
Knock and identify on the other hand are not taken for power gaming purposes. Rather, they reflect a bit of desire to count coup - through things like buying potions and fully charging wands, even though I know I'm not going to make use of 90% of the stuff purchased .
Shield is something I never use these days (I still buy the amulet, but can't remember the last time I used it). Early levels are gained so quickly that MSD can be used to defend against MM, if desired, as well as other things. A slight AC buff is a potential benefit, but in the context that enemies are generally either disabled or avoided it makes no real difference to me. For similar reasons I'm less keen on spirit armor than I used to be.
The epidemic of blindness that's been raging across Faerun had reached Baldur's Gate. The Temple of Umberlee's occupants all succumbed to that, before a scroll's worth of grease ensured, rather oddly, that Lothander would not be his normal, slippery self.
Marek's opening spell was dodged using the stairs, before he had an acute attack of short-sightedness.
Biff didn't bother blinding Ramazith and that resulted in a trickier fight than expected. 4 of his first 5 attack rolls missed with a 4 or less and that meant he had to interrupt 2 spells with LMD before disappearing while Ramazith (by that time down to only 4 HPs) attempted a 3rd.
A couple of mustard jellies were beaten up and the ghasts split up using the stairs and blinded, but the other occupants of the tower were just bypassed.
Degrodel's guards offered the next significant challenge. I didn't bother splitting them up too much - the combination of malison and blind to disable them, then web, haste and melee to finish them off accounted for 2 invisible stalkers, a doom guard, a battle horror and a helmed horror that chased me out of the room initially. The other stalker and helmed horror died inside using haste, slow, blind and stoneskins. That left Biff with just 1 second and 2 third level spells, which by themselves were rather lacking for a safe combat. However, the addition of darts of stunning persuaded Biff to give it a go and he got away with it.
I was careless against Ragefast and nearly lost the run there when not checking his HPs in advance and nearly being caught out by the meagre 19 HPs total - the magic missile sent at him could very easily have killed him, but I got lucky.
There was a bit more trouble at the Iron Throne where I started off by blinding Alai. Gardush was close enough to him to go hostile as well and chased me into the back room, where he was blinded. However, I hadn't expected anyone else to be hostile, so Biff's aura was still clouded as he emerged from the room to find Aasim casting at him.
He shrugged off one stunning dart to complete a flame strike, as the other casters turned hostile as well. Rather than face those odds directly, Biff disappeared and skipped back into the main room behind them. He wore Alai down from range before sneaking up to him invisibly to make a killing blow.
One web then allowed him to blind Naaman and Diyab and a second to get Zhalimar and Aasim - leaving an easy cleaning up job.
In Candlekeep I left the phase spiders alone while looting the tombs, but couldn't resist Prat's party. Sakul saved against 7 blinds, but Biff still managed to complete the quarter by blinding Prat with the last of his daily quota of 12.
Before returning to Baldur's Gate Biff did a quick farewell tour of the Sword Coast. That including picking up the odd souvenir not yet purchased. A trip to the seaside saw sirines being hit with multiple webs, malison and blindness before being cleaned up, while some golems were just meleed directly after buffing.
On the other side of the map some Red Wizards should have found themselves in a sticky situation when I decided to make use of free action for the first time. Unfortunately I got distracted by a phone call after casting the webs and then moved in without actually equipping the ring - a bit of an old story that one . Denak broke free of the webs first, but fortunately got stuck again before casting anything at Biff - and Biff then got the chance to take the next action. He quickly put the ring on and withdrew before coming back the next day to do the job properly.
Then it was time to face Slythe. I wasn't bothered about Krystin, so just attacked Slythe, went invisible, webbed him and stunned him.
Then it was on to the Palace, which had the potential to be tricky. I decided to make use of summons for the first time here, which meant very detailed control was necessary to avoid any of them getting a kill. The dopplegangers were confused by a chaos scroll to break up their initial attacks and a malison hit them just before Belt got the first kill. He also got the second as one of the dopplegangers was slowed and he was three from three shortly after that. Biff missed an attack at the near-dead 4th - but Belt didn't. Biff did hit a 5th, but just failed to kill it and one of the Flaming Fist got the final blow while I was busy preventing the nearby hobgoblins from shooting. I was still having to work hard to prevent the hobgoblins from attacking the final one before Belt stepped up to the mark to claim an impressive 5th scalp.
For once I gave the Undercity party a miss and moved straight to the old temple. Sarevok was pulled out with a magic missile and Biff was out of sight by the time Semaj teleported out to find some summoned monsters. Angelo got dragged out as well and his exploding arrows annoyed Semaj and resulted in a fight that Semaj won.
Another lot of monsters saw Semaj catch Tazok in a fireball, but this time they didn't turn on each other. A web then provided the opportunity to finish off a near-dead Semaj despite his trigger firing while he was disabled.
Tazok followed shortly to leave just Sarevok.
A malisoned web was always going to cause him problems, but with Biff slowed down by using free action to run Sarevok around inside the web, he did manage a couple of hits to finish off a stoneskin. I was about to attend to that when Sarevok got caught for a third (and final) time.
Biff carried 363k XP over from BGEE to SoD and immediately took a 10th level there - learning shadow door.
Sorcerer L10, 59 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 255 kills
Level 3 spells Haste
While improved haste would do the job, that's some way off. In the meantime the additional attack and the iniative bonus are both potentially helpful. Minor spell deflection
Protects against single target spells (and similar traps). Slow
Makes it much easier to attack enemies trying to run away, gives a better chance to hit and normally guarantees that they won't be able to retaliate. Also tends to slow down spell responses, though I don't think you can rely on that against things like triggers and sequencers. Vampiric touch
Mainly useful to boost HPs against things like acid traps. Remove magic
Will be the only means used to remove buffs (I rarely bother with debuffing opponents).
Minor spell deflection is quite smart. I never used it in bg1 because it was never available but I also never used it yet since it did become available. I must rethink my strategies in future
In the SoD prologue, Porios was persuaded to surrender. Biff just nipped through the rest of the dungeon invisibly to find Korlasz. A single application of the Ring of Energy was enough to get her to surrender. That took Biff to level 11 and he learned blur, vampiric touch, fireshield (blue) and lower resistance - the latter 2 taken at this point with combat against Belhifet in mind.
In the City I supplemented the 50k or so of negotiables carried through from BGEE with equipment stripped from the dead bodies of various NPCs and bought more scrolls and potions.
Typically for me the first action after hitting the road is to go to the Coast Way Forest to get a regeneration ioun stone. However, that seemed unnecessary for Biff, so he just went invisibly to the bridge to wait for Caelar to appear and call a parley.
The Troll Claw Woods was also traversed invisibly on the way to the Forest of Wyrms. Nipping quickly through the dragon and bugbear caves, Biff came into the old temple. Ziatar was webbed from out of sight and stunned before being finished off in melee.
After resting, Biff ran past the Neothelid - still though after having taken a potion of magic shielding to ensure he wasn't caught out by one of its many abilities. The plan was to finish off Akanna before the Neothelid caught up with him, but he didn't manage that. However, the poison spread around by the creature did the job for him and he grabbed the wardstone.
I nearly always kill Morentherene, but with ranged daggers and magic damage ruled out and no benefit in terms of equipment, Biff left her alone and moved on to Boareskyr Bridge. Vichand is another I normally kill, but Biff settled for just intimidating him this time to get the Arcane Scroll. The void stone shards were made into Bullets of Darkness in case I want to do some ranged attacks against Belhifet.
A greater feyr on the roof put up a hard fight and proved too much for Thirrim - hence Biff missed out on a bunch of potions there. After negotiating a surrender of the fort Biff prepared for a potentially tough fight at the bridge by using several potions in addition to his spell buffs. He also produced another lot of summoned monsters before advancing. In that fight it's necessary to stop the mage completing his first spell to open a fire portal - and the ring of energy does a good job at that. That mage has a pretty decent AC and it took a while to get through mirrors and stoneskins, but eventually a final blow landed. The guards were then no problem and Biff was free to cross and move on to the Coalition Camp.
At the Camp Biff used the Spectacles to produce Nazramu for a bit of shopping before picking up some Bwoosh and poison. An invisible trip to Dragonspear released Skie before moving on to the Underground River area. Standard buffs, including shadow door, were sufficient to beat up some myconids, but I was wary of getting into melee with the gargantuan spider - I can't remember if its stun has a saving throw. Instead I reverted to older tactics and blinded it, wore it down from range and finished it off from invisibility. For the cyclops I deliberately avoided disabling it initially in order to get it to chase me away from the mages. That took a while, but eventually Biff got it sufficiently on its own to chuck stunning darts at it before closing in for the kill. The rest of the guards were still totally blocking the gate, so Biff had to show himself briefly before disappearing again (with a potion to ensure there was no interruption of his spell) and moving on the the underground entrance.
After placing the Bwoosh, Biff used friends to boost charisma and blagged his way into the Warrens. The priest there had a few more things to buy, including 5 more restoration scrolls. Taking the lift up, Biff poisoned the food and water before showing himself to Hephernaan to reopen the lift. Running out invisibly, he was already safely past trouble by the time one of the mages cast oracle to find him.
Back at the Camp an invasion was imminent. One web was pre-cast and a second added immediately to hold most of the opponents while Biff provided a focus for those that could move and relied on the archers to do most of the damage. For the second wave there was a single web, followed up by darts of stunning. Biff put on his soft feet in case his buffs were dispelled while in the web. That happened several times, but eventually the job was done. More webs were used for the third wave, before Dosia gave up some of her life force to replace the spells used.
For the final wave I was reluctant to go for a general melee due to the difficulty of establishing who was killing who. Instead Biff tried to pick enemies off one by one, using some summoned monsters to keep opponents busy and stunning darts and, latterly, webs to disable them. The fight took a while, but there were no particularly worrying moments.
At the Castle I really wanted a one-on-one fight with Ashatiel - but he apparently didn't and disappeared almost immediately the contest started. Going to find him again, a first use in the run of the paralysation wand proved successful, but one of his nearby clerics must have released him. The same happened again a bit later and I gave up trying to attack him directly, but just pumped the odd chaos into the throng while running round. Eventually Ashatiel got killed in the melee and the enemy retreated.
Biff followed Caelar through the portal and ignored the enemies in the first area. In the next he again ignored the first lot of enemies and went straight to Thrix. It took a little while to chew through the opponents with mage THAC0, but that was eventually done to open up the route onwards.
I don't normally use the violet potion, but with the melee restriction decided to give that a go this time. That allowed Biff to make pretty short work of the enemies on the lift.
I normally have a strict rule of no NPCs in solo games. However, I think it makes sense for Caelar to fight against Belhifet, though that's not normally possible solo (though she will fight on her own if you have a full party or are playing MP). Therefore I allow her to be recruited, but then don't control her at all. Typically I have two main ways of doing the battle. The first is to keep Caelar alive using greater restoration scrolls, while the second is to fight directly. A third option is to use mage skills against him - and I have much less experience with that. However, I decided to give that an initial try this time. Caelar fell after I'd used 2 lower resistance spells on Belhifet. A third of those should have given malison a better than even chance, but his remaining MR kicked in to stop that - and I was also out of stoneskins there. A second malison was also annoyingly blocked by MR. A 3rd was got off at the expense of taking a hit from Belhifet as he teleported and didn't appear to target him at all. A 4th also failed against MR and by this time I thought the initial lower resistance must have about worn off - so bang went that idea.
The next option was to melee him using fire shield (blue) while avoiding damage with stoneskins and mirror images. High strength and the lack of fatigue meant Biff only needed 17 to hit even once Belhifet used improved invisibility, so got some juicy blows in himself. Once Belhifet got to badly wounded he started summoning helpers, but he was already down to 122 HPs when the first fire shield ran out. I had been a bit concerned that the other demons would take down protections too quickly, but they found Biff far harder to hit than Belhifet and the big bad boy was soon clinging on - and then he wasn't.
In theory I should have been elated, but unfortunately I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. Early on in the combat, Hephernaan had been taken to near death by Caelar and I had in mind it would be a good idea to finish him off while running round trying to malison Belhifet. That should of course have been done using run and hit with a staff, but I had a sling equipped at least part of that time and about half way through the combat I had a sudden realization that I'd used that on him. I took a fair number of screenshots, so expected I could check on that after the battle, but I don't seem to have caught that moment. However, in retrospect I'm pretty sure I did use the sling, so will end the run here.
One good point about this though is it illustrated to me that an arcane character meleeing Belhifet is relatively easy when using the violet potion - so that will probably be my go to option in future
Biff {40} - melee sorcerer (update 1)
Previous run
The end of the previous run was rather unsatisfying, so I thought I'd try again. This time though, rather than allow Biff use of any tactics up to the point of killing the opposition, I decided he should be far more limited:
- no use of missile weapons
- no use of summons (using a familiar will be allowed, though it won't be allowed to damage enemies)
- no use of any damaging spells or items (other than through melee)
- no use of any spells or items causing status effect changes on neutral or enemy targets (other than through melee)
I think those rules strike enough of a balance to still leave the run possible. With no web, blindness, stunning darts, magic missile, slow etc, this run should at least feel somewhat different to the last one ...
After editing the start position to switch spells to find familiar and chill touch, Biff was off once more. After leaving Candlekeep he dodged Imoen (as he's not allowed to recruit NPCs and has no way to attack her from distance). The cat absorbed a couple of MLD from Xzar, allowing Biff to kill him, but he couldn't quite finish off Montaron before having to run.
With no distance attack capability, Shoal was out for now, so Biff moved on to Beregost - where Marl and Firebead offered some easy XP.
Heading north, Biff picked up a couple of rings before using his better weapon speed to kill a number of hobgoblins at the FAI.
Against low level creatures chill touch is a decent spell, but against tougher enemies the fact that your THAC0 is worse (as you don't benefit from weapon bonuses), base damage is lower (as it's using a d2 for fist damage) and enemies can save against both the bonus cold damage and the THAC0 penalty means you're usually better off using a weapon against stronger enemies. In addition it suffers from the same flaw as a number of other spells and effects that you can't recast it until the earlier cast has run out (well you can, but the cast ends at the same time anyway). In vanilla the spell was much more effective - there was no save against cold damage or THAC0 penalty, which meant chill touch was potentially a pretty useful spell throughout the game (though I don't think it was in fact widely used). On the other hand, a plus in the EE is that chill touch allows you to dual wield without any penalties - you still potentially have weapon proficiency penalties for the off-hand though (but not the main hand, which counts as fists).
Killing some fishermen and returning a bowl to Tenya provided a first level.
At High Hedge, the gnolls are another enemy with slow weapon speed offering no-risk XP. The last of those was actually chunked by cold damage, but in the EE that no longer needs to result in the destruction of equipment.
Back in Beregost the familiar did a bit of blocking to help Biff avoid Karlat while returning Perdue's sword - pushing him on to level 3.
In the basilisk area I could potentially have justified recruiting Korax (as charming him does not rely on spells or items), but decided to stick with the PfP just learned at level 3. The lesser basilisks have relatively slow weapon speed, so attacking them with chill touch is reasonably safe - if you're quick you should be able to run away as soon as they switch to a melee attack animation before an actual attack is made. The greater basilisks are much more of a threat and I left the one in the south alone while picking off the lesser ones to get a 4th level - taking invisibility.
The remaining lesser basilisks were killed before Biff went back south to the greater one. Rather than staying in melee there and watching for the basilisk to switch to melee, he did hit and run attacks so that he was only ever in melee range for a segment or two. That meant the basilisk failed to even attempt any attacks and its death took Biff to level 5 (just the 4 HPs that time though, after maximums up to then).
He learnt shield and ghoul touch.
Back in Beregost, Biff used invisibility to sneak up and attack Neera - but missed. I let her go when struck up a conversation, though I regret that a bit - with invisibility available her enemies shouldn't have been dangerous and lack of a gem bag will make inventory management significantly harder. Invisibility and ghoul touch accounted for Mirianne's hobgoblins, while Zhurlong found the return of his boots was not an unmixed blessing.
Down in Nashkel, Vitiare was attacked from invisibility to put paid to any ideas he might have had about trying to pickpocket Biff.
Ghoul touch was unnecessary there, but much more important against Greywolf. He's got reasonable weapon speed, so I was expecting to be limited to attacking from invisibility - and fortunately the second attack struck home.
Two castings of ghoul touch kept him under control and chill touch finished him off.
Samuel was taken invisibly back to FAI for some easy XP to start a sequence of a few reputation quests. Melicamp survived this time and Biff hadn't killed any neutrals, so it didn't take him long to push reputation up to 20.
Working on charisma then seemed appropriate so he set off for the Gnoll Stronghold. He broke his off-hand dagger killing Zal though so nipped over to the Valley of the Tombs to get a free +2 one. Besides being unbreakable that boosted his attacks a bit while going to get the charisma tome. That left Biff requiring just 3 more HPs for another level and one of Landrin's spiders soon provided that.
The level allowed him to eliminate weapon proficiency penalties for his off-hand dagger, making that much more effective. He learnt minor spell deflection there and added a miserable 3 HPs.
Deciding it should be relatively safe to take on Tarnesh now, Biff went back to the FAI. The mage saved against one hit, but got stuck by the second.
Biff then returned Landrin's goods while picking up the pantaloons.
The previous level had required quite a lot of fights, as there had been no high value XP involved. To change that Biff headed to Durlag's Tower. A couple of battle horrors were lured inside and blocked by an invisible cat, allowing Biff to gradually wear them down. The first of those was attacked with a standard staff and Biff needed a critical to hit. That encouraged him to go to Ulgoth's Beard and get a better staff - allowing him to hit with, well a critical (at least he would then do a bit of extra damage though - and he was at least able to hit the doom guard with a 19).
The final battle horror was lured to the end of the wall where it could be beaten up and Biff then went upstairs to sell Riggilo out to the highest bidder. His reward for that was enough for level 7, gaining 5 HPs, protection from evil, mirror image and haste.
Riggilo was another victim of invisible blocking before Biff went to the roof to find some more basilisks.
Back in Beregost, Biff's improved spell selection encouraged him to have a go at Silke and Karlat.
Looking around for more things to do, he decided to try and save Arabelle. Under melee only restrictions he didn't have much hope of killing the xvarts before they could kill the cow - but there was another way to save her.
On the plus side, that breaks the xvarts' script, so they only defend themselves when directly attacked - making the subsequent battle simple. On the minus side it also appeared to break Hulrik's script and he offered no reward . Biff took his frustrations out on Arghain and his half-ogres.
With the next level in sight, Biff went to find Shoal to see if he could get the required XP in a big lump. She saved against an invisible paralysing blow, but her Nereids Kiss was wasted on a mirror image - and a critical hit immediately made her sue for mercy.
Ogre Droth saved against one blow, but not a second - and was unable to recover. The reward from Shoal is poor in relation to killing her, so she then had to go as well to get Biff to level 8.
He took stoneskin along with another 6 HPs.
As I thought, progress is still relatively easy with the increased restrictions. I have avoided a number of optional combats due to concerns about them, but I think the first point where trouble is likely will be at the palace. There's a way still to go before that though and next up will be the Nashkel Mine.
Sorcerer L8, 48 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 99 kills
Level 1 spells Chill touch
Pretty good option to improve melee early on, though becomes obsolete later. Find familiar
Offers a boost to HPs and the opportunity to use the familiar to distract or block opponents. Protection from petrification
Basilisks = XP. What more needs to be said? Shield
In the early stages that's quite useful for the AC upgrade. Later on it still gives a marginal benefit due to the bonus vs missiles. It also has minor usefulness as a specific remedy for magic missiles. Protection from evil
Helpful AC benefit against many enemies will reduce pressure on other protections. Later on can be used to ward off summoned demons.
After sneaking through the Nashkel Mine, Biff drew Mulahey back to the door, so that he had the option of running away if necessary - that could be needed as he had no way to deal with hold person. Mulahey saved against paralysation and Biff did indeed retreat. After resting he picked off most of Mulahey's support before engaging him again - and this time succeeding in holding him.
Bypassing the amazons, Biff went back to Nashkel where Nimbul failed to survive being touched by the ghoulies. Tranzig lasted a fair while, but most of his spells were absorbed by MSD and Biff was too close to Tranzig to be hit by the initial cast of lightning bolts - and those fortunately were not bouncing directly back.
At the Bandit Camp, Biff killed the external bandits this time, in order to have a secure line of retreat from the tent if necessary. Taurgosz was hard to hit - but nothing stops a critical! Inside the tent Venkt survived the first few attacks and Biff was about to run from the expected horror when Venkt got stuck. The others forced him outside to renew stoneskins, but never threatened his victory. With cash mounting up again from the loot acquired, Biff decided to buy the Dagger of Venom, even though he had no more friends scrolls to get a charisma discount on the cost.
Before going to the Cloakwood, Biff paid a visit to a neighborhood ogre to inherit his belt. To complete his belt collection he returned to Mutamin's Garden. I was most worried about Peter there, so attacked him from invisibility and successfully paralysed him. He was finished off before Biff retreated and rested. The others were split up as a result and easily dealt with individually. While in the area, Biff also paid Mutamin and his pet basilisk a visit.
Thinking about it, it seemed like a good idea to get Biff's final level before tackling Davaeorn - so he went next to the ankheg area. That left him about 3k short and this time he did head for the Cloakwood. A group of ettercaps and spiders in the second area gave him the necessary XP and his 4 HPs were joined by learning blur, wraithform and teleport field.
At the mine he pulled Drasus away to begin with and successfully finished him off without trouble. His next assault accounted for Rezdan, but before he could retreat he got caught by a horror from Kysus. That's currently one of the holes in his defences and I had considered taking Resist Fear rather than blur for the last level. However, I thought with MSD and stoneskins active he had a decent chance of survival and, even though Kysus wore away the MSD and hurt him with a scorcher, that also proved fatal for Kysus - the fiery stream caught Genthore who was not amused. The only danger then was running too far away and bumping into something like Black Talons. However, Biff remained close by and dealt with Genthore easily once he came to his senses - making a first use of wraithform there to make himself immune to normal weapons.
After sneaking down to find Davaeorn, Biff pulled the battle horrors away. Rather than attempt the difficult job of killing those, Biff just used invisibility to dump them out of the way. He put on his usual buffs for Davaeorn and attacked. He got close enough to make a lightning bolt miss and the ring of fire resistance kept damage from a fireball pretty limited. Invisibility foiled hold person, leaving Davaeorn vastly outclassed in melee.
In the City the poison quest was an early objective. With no summons or grease to slow him down, killing Lothander depended on paralysing him immediately after a conversation. Rather to my surprise, haste to improve initiative and ghoul touch did the job. Marek then went the same way.
Most of the City encounters were easy enough. However, I thought Degrodel's guards would take too long and just left them - there's no shortage of XP anyway. I was rushing a bit at this stage and managed to sell both an intelligence tome and a wand when I was aiming to identify them. Buying back the tome cost over 5k, but Biff had no shortage of funds given that he's not buying many items (such as wands) this run and he's sold about 50k worth of gems that he would normally carry through to SoD in a gem bag.
At the Iron Throne Biff used the stairs to split up the opposition and had no problem in dealing with them piecemeal, resting between most fights. I noticed during that though that I didn't have bracers of weapon expertise equipped for some reason - going to find Meilum repaired that deficiency.
The other main omission from earlier explorations I was aware of was the constitution tome. At the Lighthouse area Biff's usual buffs would not protect against sirine touch attacks, so he added a first use of the greenstone amulet - unfortunately though I cocked that up. I'd been counting the 10 round duration of the amulet in terms of 5 rounds for ghoul touch. After a second casting of that I thought 4 rounds had expired and had just activated the amulet again - but was feebleminded before that could take effect. Thinking about it afterwards, what I accounted for wrongly was that I decided to initially use ghoul touch after activating the amulet - in order not to waste a round of the former's short duration. Hence there were only 4 rounds on the amulet left when I cast the second ghoul touch and the sirine must have got the required 19 to hit me in a short window of vulnerability - and neither magic resistance, nor saving throws gave a reprieve.
That's again a disappointing finish to the run. I won't start it again immediately, but I expect I'll try this version of Biff again at some point in the not too distant future to check whether my proposed tactics at the palace could be effective ...
With the Iron Throne completed at the end of the last session, we just had to clear up a few dopplegangers at the Seven Suns before reporting for duty in Candlekeep.
I made a mistake in looting the tombs by using a potion of cloud giant strength after already using DUHM for the day - meaning it was necessary to rest and use another potion to loot the strength tome. Then it was on to find Prat's party. Busta raged for an attack on Prat, but took heavy damage - particularly from Tam's acid arrows. That meant he was down to 9 HPs, with a clouded aura, when Prat fell and looked odds on to become a casualty. However, an instant later a second backstab on Tam shut off his arrows. Sakul then loosed a flame arrow, but by then Busta had the chance to respond and chose to take a potion of heroism to boost HPs - other potions could have prevented the flame arrow from doing damage, but his rage was also due to expire and the loss of 16 HPs from that would be fatal if he couldn't get any more. As it happened Busta's MR from cloak clicked into action to stop the spell and Sakul died almost immediately afterwards. That just left Bor to be cleaned up at our leisure.
Back in Baldur's Gate Slythe was hit by a dispelling arrow before being shot down with other varieties.
Then it was on to the palace where Busta raged and made himself a target near the dukes, while Jar hung back and shot dispelling arrows. I was slightly surprised that Jar was attacked by two of the dopplegangers and that resulted in him being taken down to 17 HPs before he ran. In the meantime though his arrows had helped neutralize the other dopplegangers and there seemed no more danger with both dukes in good shape and only a single near-death doppleganger trying to run through a wall in panic. Jar attempted to target that one with a final shot, but only succeeded in moving next to it - and being hit for what proved to be a crucial 7 HPs.
With the final doppleganger dead, Belt was enticed into the back room to look at some documents about Sarevok's misdeeds. At that point I was ignoring the game and writing up my own notes when Gate70 queried how Jar had come to die .
Looking at it I realized too late this was the same issue as ended our previous run and had nearly resulted in Busta dying earlier in this session, i.e. Jar had used DUHM and when that ended he'd lost 16 HPs - which he didn't have to lose ...
Comments
Stawk, ranger (Gate70)
Grond, berserker (Grond0)
We made a quick start, clearing out the remaining enemies in the central underdark area before discussing illithid and beholders. Grond wasn't too bothered about dealing with them so Stawk shrugged his shoulders and we went to speak to Adalon. Stawk then pretended to be a drow called Veldrin and we gained entry to Ust Natha. Our first, and last as it turned out, task there was to rescue Phaere from illithid.
Stawk demonstrates my amazing lack of thought again. The Shield of Harmony protecting against an illithid stun - well of course it doesn't and not even Grond could get around the bunched enemies in time to stop the straws of death from entering Stawk's nostrils (and Grond0 was complaining about a lack of movement so it may have been exacerbated by multiplayer bumping).
With our run ended and no further excuses to hand there was just time for a quick check of Grond's actual AC without the multiplayer bork of it to provide a satisfactory response to @StummvonBordwehr
Jar (male elf stalker, Grond0); Busta (male dwarf barbarian, Gate70)
Previous run
The early bath for the previous duo gave us a good excuse for starting again. It felt a bit like deja vu though when the random selection changed the PC from a ranger to a stalker, while his trusty companion went from a berserker to a barbarian.
In Candlekeep Busta showed off his muscles for the first time to kick open a chest with a valuable gem inside. Jar saw the vast wealth that produced and went mad - buying a composite bow, some armor and a shield (more typically I would just shell out for a helmet there
The early stages saw arrows and flying axes cutting down Shoal and a few more victims on the way down to Nashkel. Greywolf took a while to shoot down, but gave up a nice long sword to Jar.
Jar then headed towards the Firewine Ruins to get Meilum's bracers, but couldn't resist trying out his new sword with a backstab attack on Ioun Gallchobair and his archer friends on the way to the map edge. With only 26 HPs at the time that was asking for trouble, but fortunately Jar managed a clean kill with his first strike. However, he still had to run when the other archer scored a couple of hits. Busta was also looking for space, but instead found some kobolds ... and then some half ogres ... and then some ogrillons ... and then a wolf. Meanwhile Jar finally managed to hide and came back to help Busta clean up his tail before eventually backtracking to finish off Ioun.
With that bit of idiocy out of the way, Meilum didn't take long.
Kirian's group looked quite challenging, so the first task was to try and improve the odds by drawing Baerin away separately. A couple of stealth shots from Jar persuaded him to follow and meet his end from Busta. Next, Jar sneaked in behind Kirian before Busta enraged and ran in to get Peter to target him. Jar successfully backstabbed Kirian, badly wounding her and interrupting her mirror image spell.
After a rare example of not only making a plan, but successfully carrying it through, we decided to end on
a high note and save it there. Busta has got a slight lead in kills, but a rather more considerable one in HPs - I guess we know which of us will be doing the tanking later in the run ...
Jar, stalker 5, 43 HPs, 28 kills
Busta, barbarian 5, 73 HPs, 34 kills, 0 deaths
Vince - enchanter (Grond0)
Soygib - thief/illusionist (Gate70)
Corethief XXIII - fighter/thief (Corey_Russell)
Previous run
A full session saw plenty of opportunities provided for death to reach out his skeletal hands - but he kept them in his pockets.
The first close call was on the way to find Shoal when a ghast lag-jumped Corethief - taking him down to 2 HPs and paralyzing him ready for a final blow.
After passing through Beregost and Nashkel, the next main target was the basilisk area. There was another close call for Corethief there when a basilisk took him down to a single HP, but once more he survived and the levels were starting to mount up.
With the basilisks all dead, the two thieves both crept in behind Mutamin aiming for a double backstab - and successfully pulled it off.
There was still trouble lurking to the south though in the shape of Kirian's party. Vince pulled Baerin away from the others, but battle was joined within calling distance and Peter and Lindin came to support him. Vince blinded Baerin, but Corethief was confused by Peter and looked in trouble. Vince failed to blind Peter and a retaliatory spell saw him held to leave only Soygib under control. Fortunately he stepped up to the plate thanks to his illusionist specialty - blinding both Peter and Lindin.
After a bit more exploring, Vince led the way to Durlag's Tower in search of some more quick XP. The 2 battle horrors on the path were blinded. While they took a while to finish off, attacking from stealth or 2-handed range meant there was never any real threat after that. Next up were the basilisks on the roof - PfP made those easy and everyone gained another level from the first of those.
The most difficult battle at Durlag's was the battle horror on the wall. He saved against three blinds before eventually succumbing and in the meantime there was always a threat from the skeleton archers. However, once Corethief and Soygib were free to deal with those they didn't last long.
Enchanter - L5, 26 HPs, 18 kills
Thief/illusionist - L4/5, 26 HPs, 38 kills, 0 deaths
Fighter/thief - L5/5, 49 HPs, 43 kills, 0 deaths
In Centeol's Lair, he was the last to die. I could have left him alive since he wasn't hostile, but since he craved death, we obliged. After all 2000 experience pointa could come in useful.
It was the "et al" who caused us problems!
Clearly he was evil, just not powerful enough or stupid enough to take us on.
Ygrainne Windstar however, due to positioning survived, but not for long.
We did a number of minor jobs, but were faced with a predicament when faced with two enemies who both claimed to be in the right. Clearly a spell was needed!
Gervisse was found to be the evil one, so we killed him and were rewarded.
Jar (male elf stalker, Grond0); Busta (male dwarf barbarian, Gate70)
Previous updates
Things started quietly with a few simple tasks in Beregost before we headed north. The ankheg nest could have been tricky if they'd had a chance to take advantage of Busta's relatively poor AC, but most of them received a backstab before they could attack and Busta typically finished then those off with a single blow. The last of them put up a better fight than most, but was still comfortable.
A few reputation quests were done successfully before failing to revive Melicamp. That left reputation still at 19, so we went to the seaside to kill a few worgs for the final point. While there Busta tried his rage out on a couple of groups of sirines. They're no danger in melee, but the golems in the cave are a bit more of a threat. Jar joined in a melee assault on the first couple of those, but by the time of the 3rd Busta was feeling a bit sick, so Jar pulled out his bow and arrow for that.
There was more melee action at Durlag's Tower, where the battle horrors would have been tricky for Busta on his own. He therefore ran them round while Jar hid, before stopping at a suitable point to facilitate a backstab.
On the roof, Busta used a potion of mirror eyes to kill the lesser basilisk and the first 2 greater basilisks. At that point we consulted and both agreed it might be wise to take a second potion - though Busta finished the final one off pretty quickly anyway with another of his vicious criticals.
The doomsayer offered an opportunity to use similar tactics as for the battle horrors - and there was even a handy wall for Jar to hide behind. However, his backstabs were not that successful there and Busta took a lot of damage - so much so he actually consumed a couple of potions before finding a hit to end the contest.
The Nashkel Mine offered a bit of gentle exercise to stretch muscles on the way to find Mulahey. His first spell bounced off rage and he had no time to try again.
Nimbul and Tranzig put up their normal lack of resistance to close a pretty smooth session.
Just reading over the above before posting, I thought it might be helpful to explain the reference to Busta's poor AC. That's made in the context of our last run being with a similar pairing, but including a berserker rather than a barbarian. A berserker can wear full plate armor, which is particularly good against slashing attacks (which are the most common from dangerous enemies) with an effective AC of -3. In contrast a barbarian is limited to splint mail, with an AC of 4 against slashing damage, i.e. a gap of 7 compared to full plate (the gap is lower at 5 for piercing and 3 for crushing). In addition berserker rage improves AC by 2, while barbarian rage worsens it by 2. An enraged berserker could therefore attack a battle horror and be safe against anything but a critical hit. Meanwhile an enraged barbarian is getting hit with a 9 and is therefore far less inclined to stay there in a slugging match ...
Jar, stalker 6, 51 HPs, 112 kills
Busta, barbarian 7, 102 HPs, 115 kills, 0 deaths
Having acquired sufficient potions of invisibility in Baldur's Gate, we decided to take on the Section HQ in Beregost. We killed the guard upstairs and went down a level where we killed numerous operatives and picked up some nice equipmnet.
We successfully cleared the bottom level.
We went up some stairs to the hub of the Section HQ. We killed some guards before coming face to face with Paul Wolfe.
We patted ourselves on the back for a job well done. Most of the equipment we gained will be sold, but some of it will be of great worth. When Rube now fights like a warrior, he has a warrior's armour.
Jar (male elf stalker, Grond0); Busta (male dwarf barbarian, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1126536/#Comment_1126536
A bit of living on the edge led to one slip today, but the run goes on.
The first port of call was the Bandit Camp, where Taurgosz tried to put some heart into the bandit defenders. He did score a moral victory there when his quality armor foiled 4 attempted backstabs from Jar, while Busta kept him still. However, that just meant we defaulted to the trusty run and shoot tactics.
In the second Cloakwood area, Jar and Busta were both caught in a web trap with a huge spider closing in with its fangs spread wide. Fortunately though, Busta had managed to make himself the target before getting held, while Jar broke free at the first opportunity and was able to quickly skewer the spider.
Jar had taken the trouble to rest and learn slow poison before going into the Cloakwood and that came in handy in Centeol's nest when Busta went in search of a 2-handed sword upgrade.
Moving on to the Mine, one guarding mage died to a backstab. The other went invisible, but was one-shotted by Busta as soon as he started casting another spell. Jar spent a while running Drasus around and failing to hide from him, while Busta dealt with Genthore. Then it was possible to set Drasus up for a backstab.
Inside the mine progress was easy enough on the way downstairs, though Busta took a bit of damage. He took a lot more though in trying to intermittently hold the first battle horror in place while Jar went for a backstab. With only 15 HPs left he went to hide while Jar used a handy wall to make repeated backstabs on the second one.
Arriving at the City some early work culminated with the completion of the poison quest.
The final action saw an assault on the Iron Throne. Busta took a PfM scroll there, but Jar also thrust a handful of potions at him - the invulnerability on this occasion being useless as a boost to saving throws, but very useful to get AC sufficiently low to tank the enemies.
Jar, stalker 7, 59 HPs, 177 kills
Busta, barbarian 8, 121 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 183 kills, 1 death
From Beregost we headed south anfd ran into Teldorn Agents (Stone of Askavar) This caused Dug to level up, whereupon we decided that perhaps we were tough enough to take on the Section Oversight. However, on the way we thought we would take Kivan to Baldur's Gate. On the way we were attacked by an enemy of his and killed her. We dropped him off outside the Oversight.
We entered and took on the bosses on the top floor. We won, but Rube was killed. We therefore sneaked out using potions of invisibility in order to get him raised with the intention of returning to finish the job. All in all we were satisfied with the outcome as the Oversight is an extremely difficult battle.
If and when we complete the Oversight, we then have to choose between several quests which are all calling for our attention: The Stone of Askavar; The Secret of Bonehill Part 1; The Northern Tales of the Sword Coast; Durlag's Tower; Ice Island; and balduran's Isle.
We are thinking that Northern Tales should be taken on last as it was taking on the dragon that has brought runs to an end. A bit more experience would come in handy.
Grímarr now has ** in flails; ** in dual wielding; ** in long bows. Dug now has three spell slots for Cloudkill.
EDIT
Was thinking MUCH too far ahead. Probably shouldn't have returned. This shows the beginning of the end. Clearly should have had protection from fire. I'll know for the future if my memory works that well.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112203/#Comment_1112203
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112333/#Comment_1112333
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112952/#Comment_1112952
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113296/#Comment_1113296
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113457/#Comment_1113457
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113578/#Comment_1113578
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113791/#Comment_1113791
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113962/#Comment_1113962
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1114357/#Comment_1114357
After a 3 month hiatus I finally found enough desire to continue this run. The Crew attempted to convince the guards to let them into the Courtyard of Dragonspear Castle, but failed in that attempt. That meant they needed to find a Seal elsewhere and travelled to the Underground river in search of one of those. They quickly cleared some sundry enemies before finding a cyclops with the relevant item and overpowering him. They'd already talked to Jamven so had animal helpers to take much of the pressure off as they shot down the rest of the guards. They also killed Julann and Riga, getting a nice 2-handed sword from the latter.
Rather than go underground, the Crew returned to the castle with their Seal. Inside the Courtyard I uncovered all the quests, but failed to complete some of those correctly (I don't normally do them, so wasn't generally sure what to do). Checking a walkthrough I don't think I lost anything particularly significant.
Next up was Bloodbark Grove. They cleared out a vampire's cellar there, but were unable to open either of the treasure chests with strength of 23 (I didn't use a potion this time to boost that further). A basilisk there was killed as part of the search for a cure for Covid-19The Uncommon Cold. It doesn't seem to attack at all (probably because of the game reference to it being sick), so no protection was needed against its gaze. There was a skeletal mage nearby, but it's high missile resistance was not sufficient to protect it against the sheer number of shots the Crew could deliver.
Back at the Underground River, the Crew dived into the previously ignored entrance. The first main bit of action was investigating a cave with some dead dwarves in. A sneak attack from an invisible wraith there drained Vito and I decided to go back to the Camp to get him restored. On returning I went to find Ferrusk and persuaded him to hand over the ankheg summoning amulet before attacking him.
A bit further on they found a ghost dragon. That required +2 weapons to hit - but everyone now has those and the dragon was dead in a few moments.
Some time later everyone was healed and all new equipment identified and exploration resumed. The next thing found was a roomful of drow. I could have given them evidence that the drow runaways were dead - but where would the fun be in that
Strunk was struck down before he could buff.
After a bit more looting, the fight with Hephernaan will be next. I've rarely done that fight and am not sure how the Crew will stand up to it, but expect we'll see!
Vito - L9, 108 HPs, 739 kills, 2 deaths, ***** scimitar / ** darts
Baby Face - L9, 115 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 699 kills, 0 deaths, ***** long sword / ** crossbow
Mad Dog - L9, 117 HPs, 646 kills, 0 deaths, ***** axe / ** dual wielding
Carlo - L9, 96 HPs (incl. 9 from helm, -10 from morningstar), 598 kills, 0 deaths, ***** flail / ** sling
Bugsy - L9, 122 HPs, 579 kills, 2 deaths, ***** hammer / ** shortbow
Al (PC) - L9, 110 HPs (incl. -9 from Claw), 647 kills, ***** 2-handed sword / ** longbow
Despite doing pretty much all the content to date, the Crew still need about 500k between them to hit the XP cap.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112203/#Comment_1112203
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112333/#Comment_1112333
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112952/#Comment_1112952
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113296/#Comment_1113296
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113457/#Comment_1113457
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113578/#Comment_1113578
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113791/#Comment_1113791
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113962/#Comment_1113962
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1114357/#Comment_1114357
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1126934/#Comment_1126934
In the Warrens, even 25 strength failed to open any of the locked containers - though there were plenty of unlocked ones to add to the growing congestion in backpacks. I was wary about the numbers of enemies at the top of the lift and decided on a rare use of fireballs to improve the odds.
There was another major dust-up when heading out of the Warrens, but the Crew were able to rest safely in there to heal up before going back into the river area.
After returning to the Coalition Camp there was an abortive meeting with Caelar before the crusaders tried invading the camp. The first wave was easily beaten off in straight melee using archer support.
At the Castle siege everyone was issued with a few of the exploding arrows carried for so long. In the crowded conditions they wreaked havoc on the opposition (and quite a few of the friendlies as well
Inside the castle I rested to heal up before moving into hell - the quest bonus for doing that gave everyone their final level.
Up to this point I'd used no potions in SoD and very few in BGEE, so had vast quantities of those in stock - for instance 77 potions of heroism. I didn't think it was required, but just for the hell of it everyone did a major buffing exercise prior to going up the lift. No-one took any damage there and the Crew were spoiling for a real fight when they arrived at the top. I normally persuade Caelar to fight with me when playing solo, so this time for a change I got Belhifet to promote her to a blackguard and kill Hephernaan. I could have killed Belhifet pretty easily before Caelar had even finished buffing while invisible, but waited to be able to take revenge on her.
There were no mistakes in the epilogue, so the Crew should be reappearing in Athkatla shortly.
Vito - L10, 111 HPs, 775 kills, 2 deaths, ***** scimitar / ** darts
Baby Face - L10, 115 HPs, 745 kills, 0 deaths, ***** long sword / ** crossbow
Mad Dog - L10, 120 HPs, 683 kills, 0 deaths, ***** axe / ** dual wielding
Carlo - L10, 100 HPs, 625 kills, 0 deaths, ***** flail / ** sling
Bugsy - L10, 125 HPs, 603 kills, 2 deaths, ***** hammer / ** shortbow
Al (PC) - L10, 127 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 687 kills, ***** 2-handed sword / ** longbow
I changed my mind about the party that I am running. I am playing a Sunite party.
The protagonist is Rosace, a Cherub of the Ruby Rose. No armour allowed better than modified leather. The modifications that I made to Shank, Carbos and Mendas actually help in this regard as I gave them better weapons and armour to make them worth fighting. However, once they are beaten (Using Spells such as Command), it means that the decent armour is available for Rosace.
I am accompanied by Oswy, an Undead Hunter. You might think that he should be a follower of Kelemvor, but his hostility to the undead is due to the fact that they are not aesthetically pleasing. He is an aesthete and so naturally favours Sune.
The third party member is Passionata, a Heartwarden of Sune. She cannot wear metal armour either, but doesn’t want to since she is a mage as well as a cleric.
They intend to join up with Isra who is a Sunite Inquisitor.
They will also need a thief. Alora and Coran both give the impession of being Sunites even if they are not overtly religious.
Those are my thoughts before I start. Drake is clearly a frustrated Sunite. He would certainly be welcomed by Sune if he decided to change allegiance.
Wrecking Crew {23} - dwarf fighters (12th and final update)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112203/#Comment_1112203
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112333/#Comment_1112333
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112952/#Comment_1112952
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113296/#Comment_1113296
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113457/#Comment_1113457
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113578/#Comment_1113578
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113791/#Comment_1113791
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1113962/#Comment_1113962
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1114357/#Comment_1114357
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1126934/#Comment_1126934
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1126977/#Comment_1126977
As a result of importing 6 separate characters into BG2 I ended up with multiple Helms of Balduran in Jon's dungeon - but resisted the temptation to equip everyone with those. There wasn't any danger going through there and they cleaned up all potential targets there, including Ulvaryl.
On exiting, everyone already had some form of magic weapon, so it didn't take long to kill some shadows and restore the circus to normal operation. Then it was off to the Slums to report to Gaelan Bayle before setting the Copper Coronet to rights. Travelling back to the Promenade, the Crew discovered Hareishan and cut her down at the expense of Mad Dog being drained. Heading to Watchers Keep to get a cheap fix for him, they triggered the Suna Seni ambush. The mage was shot down there before he could blink and the others were quickly cut down thereafter.
At Watcher's Keep, as usual I couldn't resist the opportunity to fight the vampiric wraiths. That's always rather dodgy early on with poor weapons and no protection and this time was no exception. A particular problem there is that the wraiths will by preference attack the PC and when Al was taken down to 57 HPs I thought running was the best option. However, one of the wraiths was at near death and I couldn't resist trying to get one more blow to finish it off. Unfortunately both the wraiths then hit at once and the combination of the damage from those and the drained levels was just too much for poor old Al ...
I thik that the images tell their own story
Journal of Rosace
I thought it was a while since I'd had a go at this (checking, it's actually well over 2 years), so decided to brush Biff off once more. Previous runs have been in a mix of installations, but this one will be unmodded. Biff is allowed to use any tactics he likes - but must never kill anything except through his own (not summons) melee attacks.
Early enemies were blinded and then meleed from beyond their sight range - potentially after using LMD and/or darts to wear them down. Doing that to Shoal got Biff to level 3 and he learnt color spray.
Moving on to the basilisk area, Korax was contracted to immobilize the opposition for Biff and he picked up another quick couple of levels there - learning invisibility, identify and web.
After resting, I tried a couple of times to blind Baerin, but failed and rested again. The same happened the next day, but the following one I was successful with him at the first attempt and Peter also immediately fell victim. Web then held Kirian and she and Lindin were blinded with one of those spells still left in reserve. Wearing them down and finishing them off was then not too hard, despite the attempts of a nearby gnoll to interfere.
Progressing north, handing Tenya back her bowl was enough for level 6 and the opportunity to add haste to Biff's repertoire.
At Durlag's Tower, Biff initially bypassed the battle horrors and went to find the basilisks on the roof. Web and blindness set those up for the kill. I've decided to be nice to Dushai this run, so am not attacking inside webs. However, with +4 for attacking something without a melee weapon equipped, +4 for attacking a blinded target and +4 for attacking from invisibility, the final blows on those basilisks had a very good chance of hitting. The final basilisk got Biff to level 7 and he celebrated by taking magic missile, knock and minor spell deflection.
The ghasts in the tower were dealt with along with Riggilo. Then it was the turn of the battle horrors outside. Magic missiles could wear them down pretty quickly and there was always the option of casting a web on a blinded individual so that they were stuck right at the edge of the web where it didn't interfere with attacks.
Sorcerer L8, 42 HPs, 74 kills
Level 1 spells
Blind
Makes it less likely that opponents will retaliate when briefly attacked and reduces their chances to hit if they do. BGEE version 2.5 reverted to vanilla behaviour with blind meaning most enemies stay still - making it a great spell for this challenge.
LMD
This can provide a small HP top-up against damage (you only get a HP benefit from the first spell, though subsequent ones still damage opponents). It can help nudge enemies nearer to death at range, but a lot of things are now immune to the spell in BGEE.
Color Spray
In the last few runs I've used friends instead of color spray, but decided to give the latter a go. Unfortunately in BGEE color spray has been limited by level of opponent in the same way as sleep, so it's a pretty useless pick for this challenge.
Identify
Both keeps finances strong and allows items to be used immediately after their acquisition.
Magic Missile
Quickly reduces HPs of tougher opponents in a reasonably controllable fashion.
Previous updates:
Turning to reputation quests Biff went to pick up a chicken. Before trying his luck with that though he wanted to kill the golems at High Hedge. If you're careful you can avoid them attacking - by moving away just as they reach you and are committed to an attack you can waste their first attack in a round and get your own quick attack in before they get another chance. That's fiddly to do perfectly though, so having stoneskins available is a good insurance against the possibility of a one-shot critical.
Melicamp died anyway, but there were plenty more reputation quests available. Biff finally made his way down to Nashkel while doing the rounds of those. After doing well to save Arabelle (webbing the xvarts and showing his saves were better than theirs), he went to Firewine and blinded Meilum at the 7th attempt before finishing him off.
Other reputation quests also went well. The work done during those included clearing out the ankheg nest. Rather than spend the time using invisibility and web to avoid any chance of being hit, Biff just cast blindness at the ankhegs as soon as they surfaced. Their poor weapon speed means it's very rare one of them will spit before you get a chance to cast blind and withdraw if that fails.
With reputation up to 20 and after using the charisma tome to push that to 14, Biff used friends scrolls to get cheap prices at High Hedge and Ulgoth's Beard - the +3 staff adding significantly to his melee ability.
After sneaking through the Nashkel Mine I webbed and blinded Mulahey so that I could get close to him and out of sight of any help he would summon. Fortunately Mulahey believed Biff was from Tazok, so when he lost morale after being taken down to low HPs, there was no problem about tracking him down for the kill.
Back in Nashkel, reporting to the Mayor was enough for a 9th and final BG1 level.
Back in Beregost some spiders were blinded before Biff did the same to Tranzig (taking advantage of the fact that, in the unmodded game, a failed attempt to blind a neutral does not turn them hostile).
After helping out Landrin and picking up some pantaloons, Biff continued on to the Bandit Camp. Rather than bothering to kill all the external bandits, he drew Taurgosz away from the crowds before blinding him. Malison + web (OK 2 webs as the first one fractionally missed) set him up for the kill.
The Cloakwood held nothing of interest and Biff moved through invisibly to get to the mine area. 8 of his 12 blinds were sufficient to disable Drasus & co and they were safely finished off before he moved on to the mine itself.
Webs are no use against Davaeorn so he was malisoned and then blinded (Biff having previously hasted himself in order to be able to run away quickly if necessary) before being finished off.
Sorcerer L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 161 kills
Level 2 spells
Invisibility
Allows both safe travel and a free hit on most opponents - meaning they can be nearly killed while blinded at range and then finished off without risk.
Web
Helps to control battlefields (particularly in combination with malison) and offers the opportunity to disable opponents from out of sight (enemies don't react to being webbed as an attack).
Knock
Show me the money!
Mirror image
In addition to making larger scale battles safer, this will help against some types of traps.
Blur
Both the AC bonus and the adjustment to saving throws are useful.
I always have issues with melee sorceresses because I like also these spells
- shield but the alternative is from amulet.
- sleep but the alternative is from wand.
- chill touch because it's cool.
Generally I don't take identify (shop), larlochs minor drain (I get the innate), colorspray (only against many foes, soo many random drops give this).
I also don't do knock because the good gear for sorceresses is bought or from bodies. I like theming Ghoul touch.
I agree my choices are not normally RP based. I have quite often used both chill touch and ghoul touch for this challenge in the past because I agree they fit well, but they're just not as useful as other spells for a power gaming approach. I have been thinking though that the next time I do this challenge I might limit Biff to only using melee attacks and potentially not allow any damaging or disabling effects for opponents, except those inflicted in melee. Getting past the fight at the palace if I was strict about that might be near impossible, but it would make chill and ghoul touch attractive options ...
Knock and identify on the other hand are not taken for power gaming purposes. Rather, they reflect a bit of desire to count coup - through things like buying potions and fully charging wands, even though I know I'm not going to make use of 90% of the stuff purchased
Shield is something I never use these days (I still buy the amulet, but can't remember the last time I used it). Early levels are gained so quickly that MSD can be used to defend against MM, if desired, as well as other things. A slight AC buff is a potential benefit, but in the context that enemies are generally either disabled or avoided it makes no real difference to me. For similar reasons I'm less keen on spirit armor than I used to be.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1127168/#Comment_1127168
The epidemic of blindness that's been raging across Faerun had reached Baldur's Gate. The Temple of Umberlee's occupants all succumbed to that, before a scroll's worth of grease ensured, rather oddly, that Lothander would not be his normal, slippery self.
Biff didn't bother blinding Ramazith and that resulted in a trickier fight than expected. 4 of his first 5 attack rolls missed with a 4 or less and that meant he had to interrupt 2 spells with LMD before disappearing while Ramazith (by that time down to only 4 HPs) attempted a 3rd.
Degrodel's guards offered the next significant challenge. I didn't bother splitting them up too much - the combination of malison and blind to disable them, then web, haste and melee to finish them off accounted for 2 invisible stalkers, a doom guard, a battle horror and a helmed horror that chased me out of the room initially. The other stalker and helmed horror died inside using haste, slow, blind and stoneskins. That left Biff with just 1 second and 2 third level spells, which by themselves were rather lacking for a safe combat. However, the addition of darts of stunning persuaded Biff to give it a go and he got away with it.
I was careless against Ragefast and nearly lost the run there when not checking his HPs in advance and nearly being caught out by the meagre 19 HPs total - the magic missile sent at him could very easily have killed him, but I got lucky.
In Candlekeep I left the phase spiders alone while looting the tombs, but couldn't resist Prat's party. Sakul saved against 7 blinds, but Biff still managed to complete the quarter by blinding Prat with the last of his daily quota of 12.
Before returning to Baldur's Gate Biff did a quick farewell tour of the Sword Coast. That including picking up the odd souvenir not yet purchased. A trip to the seaside saw sirines being hit with multiple webs, malison and blindness before being cleaned up, while some golems were just meleed directly after buffing.
Then it was time to face Slythe. I wasn't bothered about Krystin, so just attacked Slythe, went invisible, webbed him and stunned him.
For once I gave the Undercity party a miss and moved straight to the old temple. Sarevok was pulled out with a magic missile and Biff was out of sight by the time Semaj teleported out to find some summoned monsters. Angelo got dragged out as well and his exploding arrows annoyed Semaj and resulted in a fight that Semaj won.
Biff carried 363k XP over from BGEE to SoD and immediately took a 10th level there - learning shadow door.
Sorcerer L10, 59 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 255 kills
Level 3 spells
Haste
While improved haste would do the job, that's some way off. In the meantime the additional attack and the iniative bonus are both potentially helpful.
Minor spell deflection
Protects against single target spells (and similar traps).
Slow
Makes it much easier to attack enemies trying to run away, gives a better chance to hit and normally guarantees that they won't be able to retaliate. Also tends to slow down spell responses, though I don't think you can rely on that against things like triggers and sequencers.
Vampiric touch
Mainly useful to boost HPs against things like acid traps.
Remove magic
Will be the only means used to remove buffs (I rarely bother with debuffing opponents).
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1127168/#Comment_1127168
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1127224/#Comment_1127224
In the SoD prologue, Porios was persuaded to surrender. Biff just nipped through the rest of the dungeon invisibly to find Korlasz. A single application of the Ring of Energy was enough to get her to surrender. That took Biff to level 11 and he learned blur, vampiric touch, fireshield (blue) and lower resistance - the latter 2 taken at this point with combat against Belhifet in mind.
In the City I supplemented the 50k or so of negotiables carried through from BGEE with equipment stripped from the dead bodies of various NPCs and bought more scrolls and potions.
Typically for me the first action after hitting the road is to go to the Coast Way Forest to get a regeneration ioun stone. However, that seemed unnecessary for Biff, so he just went invisibly to the bridge to wait for Caelar to appear and call a parley.
The Troll Claw Woods was also traversed invisibly on the way to the Forest of Wyrms. Nipping quickly through the dragon and bugbear caves, Biff came into the old temple. Ziatar was webbed from out of sight and stunned before being finished off in melee.
After resting, Biff ran past the Neothelid - still though after having taken a potion of magic shielding to ensure he wasn't caught out by one of its many abilities. The plan was to finish off Akanna before the Neothelid caught up with him, but he didn't manage that. However, the poison spread around by the creature did the job for him and he grabbed the wardstone.
I nearly always kill Morentherene, but with ranged daggers and magic damage ruled out and no benefit in terms of equipment, Biff left her alone and moved on to Boareskyr Bridge. Vichand is another I normally kill, but Biff settled for just intimidating him this time to get the Arcane Scroll. The void stone shards were made into Bullets of Darkness in case I want to do some ranged attacks against Belhifet.
A greater feyr on the roof put up a hard fight and proved too much for Thirrim - hence Biff missed out on a bunch of potions there. After negotiating a surrender of the fort Biff prepared for a potentially tough fight at the bridge by using several potions in addition to his spell buffs. He also produced another lot of summoned monsters before advancing. In that fight it's necessary to stop the mage completing his first spell to open a fire portal - and the ring of energy does a good job at that. That mage has a pretty decent AC and it took a while to get through mirrors and stoneskins, but eventually a final blow landed. The guards were then no problem and Biff was free to cross and move on to the Coalition Camp.
At the Camp Biff used the Spectacles to produce Nazramu for a bit of shopping before picking up some Bwoosh and poison. An invisible trip to Dragonspear released Skie before moving on to the Underground River area. Standard buffs, including shadow door, were sufficient to beat up some myconids, but I was wary of getting into melee with the gargantuan spider - I can't remember if its stun has a saving throw. Instead I reverted to older tactics and blinded it, wore it down from range and finished it off from invisibility. For the cyclops I deliberately avoided disabling it initially in order to get it to chase me away from the mages. That took a while, but eventually Biff got it sufficiently on its own to chuck stunning darts at it before closing in for the kill. The rest of the guards were still totally blocking the gate, so Biff had to show himself briefly before disappearing again (with a potion to ensure there was no interruption of his spell) and moving on the the underground entrance.
After placing the Bwoosh, Biff used friends to boost charisma and blagged his way into the Warrens. The priest there had a few more things to buy, including 5 more restoration scrolls. Taking the lift up, Biff poisoned the food and water before showing himself to Hephernaan to reopen the lift. Running out invisibly, he was already safely past trouble by the time one of the mages cast oracle to find him.
Back at the Camp an invasion was imminent. One web was pre-cast and a second added immediately to hold most of the opponents while Biff provided a focus for those that could move and relied on the archers to do most of the damage. For the second wave there was a single web, followed up by darts of stunning. Biff put on his soft feet in case his buffs were dispelled while in the web. That happened several times, but eventually the job was done. More webs were used for the third wave, before Dosia gave up some of her life force to replace the spells used.
For the final wave I was reluctant to go for a general melee due to the difficulty of establishing who was killing who. Instead Biff tried to pick enemies off one by one, using some summoned monsters to keep opponents busy and stunning darts and, latterly, webs to disable them. The fight took a while, but there were no particularly worrying moments.
At the Castle I really wanted a one-on-one fight with Ashatiel - but he apparently didn't and disappeared almost immediately the contest started. Going to find him again, a first use in the run of the paralysation wand proved successful, but one of his nearby clerics must have released him. The same happened again a bit later and I gave up trying to attack him directly, but just pumped the odd chaos into the throng while running round. Eventually Ashatiel got killed in the melee and the enemy retreated.
Biff followed Caelar through the portal and ignored the enemies in the first area. In the next he again ignored the first lot of enemies and went straight to Thrix. It took a little while to chew through the opponents with mage THAC0, but that was eventually done to open up the route onwards.
I don't normally use the violet potion, but with the melee restriction decided to give that a go this time. That allowed Biff to make pretty short work of the enemies on the lift.
I normally have a strict rule of no NPCs in solo games. However, I think it makes sense for Caelar to fight against Belhifet, though that's not normally possible solo (though she will fight on her own if you have a full party or are playing MP). Therefore I allow her to be recruited, but then don't control her at all. Typically I have two main ways of doing the battle. The first is to keep Caelar alive using greater restoration scrolls, while the second is to fight directly. A third option is to use mage skills against him - and I have much less experience with that. However, I decided to give that an initial try this time. Caelar fell after I'd used 2 lower resistance spells on Belhifet. A third of those should have given malison a better than even chance, but his remaining MR kicked in to stop that - and I was also out of stoneskins there. A second malison was also annoyingly blocked by MR. A 3rd was got off at the expense of taking a hit from Belhifet as he teleported and didn't appear to target him at all. A 4th also failed against MR and by this time I thought the initial lower resistance must have about worn off - so bang went that idea.
The next option was to melee him using fire shield (blue) while avoiding damage with stoneskins and mirror images. High strength and the lack of fatigue meant Biff only needed 17 to hit even once Belhifet used improved invisibility, so got some juicy blows in himself. Once Belhifet got to badly wounded he started summoning helpers, but he was already down to 122 HPs when the first fire shield ran out. I had been a bit concerned that the other demons would take down protections too quickly, but they found Biff far harder to hit than Belhifet and the big bad boy was soon clinging on - and then he wasn't.
In theory I should have been elated, but unfortunately I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. Early on in the combat, Hephernaan had been taken to near death by Caelar and I had in mind it would be a good idea to finish him off while running round trying to malison Belhifet. That should of course have been done using run and hit with a staff, but I had a sling equipped at least part of that time and about half way through the combat I had a sudden realization that I'd used that on him. I took a fair number of screenshots, so expected I could check on that after the battle, but I don't seem to have caught that moment. However, in retrospect I'm pretty sure I did use the sling, so will end the run here.
One good point about this though is it illustrated to me that an arcane character meleeing Belhifet is relatively easy when using the violet potion - so that will probably be my go to option in future
You did a nice inspirational run. Well done.
Previous run
The end of the previous run was rather unsatisfying, so I thought I'd try again. This time though, rather than allow Biff use of any tactics up to the point of killing the opposition, I decided he should be far more limited:
- no use of missile weapons
- no use of summons (using a familiar will be allowed, though it won't be allowed to damage enemies)
- no use of any damaging spells or items (other than through melee)
- no use of any spells or items causing status effect changes on neutral or enemy targets (other than through melee)
I think those rules strike enough of a balance to still leave the run possible. With no web, blindness, stunning darts, magic missile, slow etc, this run should at least feel somewhat different to the last one ...
After editing the start position to switch spells to find familiar and chill touch, Biff was off once more. After leaving Candlekeep he dodged Imoen (as he's not allowed to recruit NPCs and has no way to attack her from distance). The cat absorbed a couple of MLD from Xzar, allowing Biff to kill him, but he couldn't quite finish off Montaron before having to run.
With no distance attack capability, Shoal was out for now, so Biff moved on to Beregost - where Marl and Firebead offered some easy XP.
Heading north, Biff picked up a couple of rings before using his better weapon speed to kill a number of hobgoblins at the FAI.
Killing some fishermen and returning a bowl to Tenya provided a first level.
Back in Beregost the familiar did a bit of blocking to help Biff avoid Karlat while returning Perdue's sword - pushing him on to level 3.
In the basilisk area I could potentially have justified recruiting Korax (as charming him does not rely on spells or items), but decided to stick with the PfP just learned at level 3. The lesser basilisks have relatively slow weapon speed, so attacking them with chill touch is reasonably safe - if you're quick you should be able to run away as soon as they switch to a melee attack animation before an actual attack is made. The greater basilisks are much more of a threat and I left the one in the south alone while picking off the lesser ones to get a 4th level - taking invisibility.
Back in Beregost, Biff used invisibility to sneak up and attack Neera - but missed. I let her go when struck up a conversation, though I regret that a bit - with invisibility available her enemies shouldn't have been dangerous and lack of a gem bag will make inventory management significantly harder. Invisibility and ghoul touch accounted for Mirianne's hobgoblins, while Zhurlong found the return of his boots was not an unmixed blessing.
Down in Nashkel, Vitiare was attacked from invisibility to put paid to any ideas he might have had about trying to pickpocket Biff.
Samuel was taken invisibly back to FAI for some easy XP to start a sequence of a few reputation quests. Melicamp survived this time and Biff hadn't killed any neutrals, so it didn't take him long to push reputation up to 20.
Deciding it should be relatively safe to take on Tarnesh now, Biff went back to the FAI. The mage saved against one hit, but got stuck by the second.
The previous level had required quite a lot of fights, as there had been no high value XP involved. To change that Biff headed to Durlag's Tower. A couple of battle horrors were lured inside and blocked by an invisible cat, allowing Biff to gradually wear them down. The first of those was attacked with a standard staff and Biff needed a critical to hit. That encouraged him to go to Ulgoth's Beard and get a better staff - allowing him to hit with, well a critical (at least he would then do a bit of extra damage though - and he was at least able to hit the doom guard with a 19).
The final battle horror was lured to the end of the wall where it could be beaten up and Biff then went upstairs to sell Riggilo out to the highest bidder. His reward for that was enough for level 7, gaining 5 HPs, protection from evil, mirror image and haste.
Back in Beregost, Biff's improved spell selection encouraged him to have a go at Silke and Karlat.
With the next level in sight, Biff went to find Shoal to see if he could get the required XP in a big lump. She saved against an invisible paralysing blow, but her Nereids Kiss was wasted on a mirror image - and a critical hit immediately made her sue for mercy.
As I thought, progress is still relatively easy with the increased restrictions. I have avoided a number of optional combats due to concerns about them, but I think the first point where trouble is likely will be at the palace. There's a way still to go before that though and next up will be the Nashkel Mine.
Sorcerer L8, 48 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 99 kills
Level 1 spells
Chill touch
Pretty good option to improve melee early on, though becomes obsolete later.
Find familiar
Offers a boost to HPs and the opportunity to use the familiar to distract or block opponents.
Protection from petrification
Basilisks = XP. What more needs to be said?
Shield
In the early stages that's quite useful for the AC upgrade. Later on it still gives a marginal benefit due to the bonus vs missiles. It also has minor usefulness as a specific remedy for magic missiles.
Protection from evil
Helpful AC benefit against many enemies will reduce pressure on other protections. Later on can be used to ward off summoned demons.
Previous updates:
After sneaking through the Nashkel Mine, Biff drew Mulahey back to the door, so that he had the option of running away if necessary - that could be needed as he had no way to deal with hold person. Mulahey saved against paralysation and Biff did indeed retreat. After resting he picked off most of Mulahey's support before engaging him again - and this time succeeding in holding him.
Bypassing the amazons, Biff went back to Nashkel where Nimbul failed to survive being touched by the ghoulies. Tranzig lasted a fair while, but most of his spells were absorbed by MSD and Biff was too close to Tranzig to be hit by the initial cast of lightning bolts - and those fortunately were not bouncing directly back.
At the Bandit Camp, Biff killed the external bandits this time, in order to have a secure line of retreat from the tent if necessary. Taurgosz was hard to hit - but nothing stops a critical! Inside the tent Venkt survived the first few attacks and Biff was about to run from the expected horror when Venkt got stuck. The others forced him outside to renew stoneskins, but never threatened his victory. With cash mounting up again from the loot acquired, Biff decided to buy the Dagger of Venom, even though he had no more friends scrolls to get a charisma discount on the cost.
Before going to the Cloakwood, Biff paid a visit to a neighborhood ogre to inherit his belt. To complete his belt collection he returned to Mutamin's Garden. I was most worried about Peter there, so attacked him from invisibility and successfully paralysed him. He was finished off before Biff retreated and rested. The others were split up as a result and easily dealt with individually. While in the area, Biff also paid Mutamin and his pet basilisk a visit.
Thinking about it, it seemed like a good idea to get Biff's final level before tackling Davaeorn - so he went next to the ankheg area. That left him about 3k short and this time he did head for the Cloakwood. A group of ettercaps and spiders in the second area gave him the necessary XP and his 4 HPs were joined by learning blur, wraithform and teleport field.
At the mine he pulled Drasus away to begin with and successfully finished him off without trouble. His next assault accounted for Rezdan, but before he could retreat he got caught by a horror from Kysus. That's currently one of the holes in his defences and I had considered taking Resist Fear rather than blur for the last level. However, I thought with MSD and stoneskins active he had a decent chance of survival and, even though Kysus wore away the MSD and hurt him with a scorcher, that also proved fatal for Kysus - the fiery stream caught Genthore who was not amused. The only danger then was running too far away and bumping into something like Black Talons. However, Biff remained close by and dealt with Genthore easily once he came to his senses - making a first use of wraithform there to make himself immune to normal weapons.
After sneaking down to find Davaeorn, Biff pulled the battle horrors away. Rather than attempt the difficult job of killing those, Biff just used invisibility to dump them out of the way. He put on his usual buffs for Davaeorn and attacked. He got close enough to make a lightning bolt miss and the ring of fire resistance kept damage from a fireball pretty limited. Invisibility foiled hold person, leaving Davaeorn vastly outclassed in melee.
In the City the poison quest was an early objective. With no summons or grease to slow him down, killing Lothander depended on paralysing him immediately after a conversation. Rather to my surprise, haste to improve initiative and ghoul touch did the job. Marek then went the same way.
Most of the City encounters were easy enough. However, I thought Degrodel's guards would take too long and just left them - there's no shortage of XP anyway. I was rushing a bit at this stage and managed to sell both an intelligence tome and a wand when I was aiming to identify them. Buying back the tome cost over 5k, but Biff had no shortage of funds given that he's not buying many items (such as wands) this run and he's sold about 50k worth of gems that he would normally carry through to SoD in a gem bag.
At the Iron Throne Biff used the stairs to split up the opposition and had no problem in dealing with them piecemeal, resting between most fights. I noticed during that though that I didn't have bracers of weapon expertise equipped for some reason - going to find Meilum repaired that deficiency.
The other main omission from earlier explorations I was aware of was the constitution tome. At the Lighthouse area Biff's usual buffs would not protect against sirine touch attacks, so he added a first use of the greenstone amulet - unfortunately though I cocked that up. I'd been counting the 10 round duration of the amulet in terms of 5 rounds for ghoul touch. After a second casting of that I thought 4 rounds had expired and had just activated the amulet again - but was feebleminded before that could take effect. Thinking about it afterwards, what I accounted for wrongly was that I decided to initially use ghoul touch after activating the amulet - in order not to waste a round of the former's short duration. Hence there were only 4 rounds on the amulet left when I cast the second ghoul touch and the sirine must have got the required 19 to hit me in a short window of vulnerability - and neither magic resistance, nor saving throws gave a reprieve.
That's again a disappointing finish to the run. I won't start it again immediately, but I expect I'll try this version of Biff again at some point in the not too distant future to check whether my proposed tactics at the palace could be effective ...
Jar (male elf stalker, Grond0); Busta (male dwarf barbarian, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1126536/#Comment_1126536
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1126662/#Comment_1126662
With the Iron Throne completed at the end of the last session, we just had to clear up a few dopplegangers at the Seven Suns before reporting for duty in Candlekeep.
I made a mistake in looting the tombs by using a potion of cloud giant strength after already using DUHM for the day - meaning it was necessary to rest and use another potion to loot the strength tome. Then it was on to find Prat's party. Busta raged for an attack on Prat, but took heavy damage - particularly from Tam's acid arrows. That meant he was down to 9 HPs, with a clouded aura, when Prat fell and looked odds on to become a casualty. However, an instant later a second backstab on Tam shut off his arrows. Sakul then loosed a flame arrow, but by then Busta had the chance to respond and chose to take a potion of heroism to boost HPs - other potions could have prevented the flame arrow from doing damage, but his rage was also due to expire and the loss of 16 HPs from that would be fatal if he couldn't get any more. As it happened Busta's MR from cloak clicked into action to stop the spell and Sakul died almost immediately afterwards. That just left Bor to be cleaned up at our leisure.
Back in Baldur's Gate Slythe was hit by a dispelling arrow before being shot down with other varieties.
With the final doppleganger dead, Belt was enticed into the back room to look at some documents about Sarevok's misdeeds. At that point I was ignoring the game and writing up my own notes when Gate70 queried how Jar had come to die