@Grond0 Hard luck with your games. Better intelligence next time. Journal of Rosace
Aerie asked us to get her big boots for which of course we did. That was easy enough.
Garish, Diviner(Gate70)
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
The randomiser figured out that rangers and enraged fighters were no good for us, so threw a couple of other characters in our direction. Let's see how this pair fare.
Garish decided to leave Candlekeep when assassination went un-noticed but lifting a healing potion led to the guards being called. Get your priorities in order.
We quickly made our way out of Candlekeep and shot Shoal the Nereid down. Then we caught a trio of gnolls napping.
We tried to do a few other bits but then our multiplayer session dropped a couple of times and we gave up - hoping for better connectivity another time.
Journal of Rosace
To the East of Lathander's Temple we fought and won against some powerful wolves.
Nearby, we entered a cave and destroyed more monsters.
We found some valuable equipment in there including a tome which needed identifying. Aerie down at the Carnival identified everything in our possession for free. The tome raised my charisma.
At Lathander's Temple we had been asked to deal with Bassilus. This we did.
We then headed Eastwards and fought Kirian and his allies and also Mutamin, basilisks and medusae.
From there we headed southwards to Gullykin where we tewamed up with Alora since we got the impession that she, like us, was a follower of Sune.
Smeagol asked us to find his precious which we did.
We went down beneath Gullykin, Alora checking for traps. The very first trap proved to be beyond her competance to deal with, the result being quite injurious to us all.
We therefore decided to use the skills that she was competant in.
In Beregost she acquired a charisma enhancing cloak, and in Ulgoth's Beard a wide variety of spell scrolls, potions, a war hammer and suchlike.
In Ulgoth's Beard she proved herself to be a follower of Sune.
At that point we decided to honour our promise to Charleston Nib and went to the Firewine Ruins where we took on numerous undead.
It was the wraiths that were the first major problem as they level drained Alora.
Beacause of protection from the undead the first vampires fell easily. However the last one level drained me due to the protection running out.
After looting the dungeon we returned to Aerie who restored us at a price.
Journal of Rosace
I have a minor problem which looks like it is a bug.
I have taken the ancient armour and the idol to the ghost outside Ulcaster Ruins mut to no effect. I am wondering if I am taking them to the correct ghost. https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/The_Vampire's_Revenge
Do you have to do the book quest before he will give you the sword?
I know that I can just go and kill the undead in the cave near Lathander's Temple, but just wanted to complete the quest this time.
EDIT
Looking on the web, I've discovered that I have to do other things as well due to mods. Not at all clear
I am now seriously considering just killing the undead haunting the cave. That is straightforward!
Just wanted to let people know Cordan the dwarven barbarian is still alive. While was solo in BG 1, he decided he did want some friends in BG 2 after all. He still has lots to do. The party defeated Thaxxy, mostly by traps, melee/ranged, and summons. The newly forged scale armor fits Cordan nicely, which puts his AC at -5, which is quite good for dual-wielding and also being a barbarian. Will keep at it!
In other words: why a cleric in your party shouldn't cast raise dead? Why shouldn't you be able to cast stone to flesh? I find the constant terror of charname diyng (or being petrified, mazed, imprisoned!) really too intrusive and most of all unrealistic. And I highly doubt a fully modded EET game can be completed without some of the mentioned events happening to charname. Enjoy
Just tried my first run with an undead eliminator. I was eliminated by the undead before even getting to Beregost! Killed by a skeleton ambush with one shot!!
In other words: why a cleric in your party shouldn't cast raise dead? Why shouldn't you be able to cast stone to flesh? I find the constant terror of charname diyng (or being petrified, mazed, imprisoned!) really too intrusive and most of all unrealistic. And I highly doubt a fully modded EET game can be completed without some of the mentioned events happening to charname. Enjoy
There are arguments for and against this, given that other bhaalspawn don’t seem to have the luxury of it. It’s usually considered that you’ll lose your bhaal essence in any case if you die I think, though I’m not sure about petrification. Maze / Imprisonment Spell Revisions make a bit more palatable for me.
I’ve found this sort of tweak to be occasionally buggy in the past, though it may work a bit better these days. In any case people most certainly have completed heavily modded content... though up a stair of dead charnames in the doing of it!
Well, for me it is a matter of losing dozens of hours of gameplay
I just can't reload, it's stronger than me. Any thought about Bhaal essence be damned
I confirm that now the tweak perfectly works and never makes the game crash, as happened with the old ToBEx one. Of course it is advisable to resuscitate charname as soon as possible, since some weird cutscene/dialogue assuming he/she is living might clearly happen.
Ah, now that you make me think of it, there is only one "flaw": if you cast raise dead, charname will be resuscitated in the exact place of death, and not near the caster, so it is better to change map before so to avoid being revived near powerful enemies.
Speaking of heaviliy modded games, I'm sure it is possible, I just can't conceive playing with not incurring in death (and in BG2 there are many ways of dying), petrification, imprisonment, maze as the first and constant thought throughout the entire game. Edit: sorry, I just realized that you wrote that most people have completed heavily modded content with many charname deaths, hence reloading.. well, I absolutely agree.
@Mantis37 You are wrong in saying that other Bhaalspawn can't be raised. At least they used to be raised. You could kill Tazok and he'd be back again later. (Yes I know that they've changed that so that if you kill him the game crashes, but that was a bad move!) I'm pretty sure that others got raised too. Belhifet has to be killed several times in my games. In a world where resurrection can happen, that is right and proper.
Garish, Diviner(Gate70)
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
Not even internet woe can stop this pair, today at least. We tidied a few matters up and gamely said things seemed better - only for the slogre to use a girdle of lag to thump Visor into the ground.
Analysis of our screenshots suggests little difference but as host I could see Visor's body land away from the ogre when he'd "been standing next to it". Also, on Grondo's screenshot he hit first whereas on mine he hit last. C'est la vie with multiplayer.
Client screenshot:
Host screenshot:
Unfazed we set off from the temple to perform more derring-do (daring or reckless action, at least half-true in our case). Caldo and Krumm looked a bit dozy so we took full advantage of matters against them.
In a cave nearby we found a dire wolf to tease - having blinded and battered it's companion outside.
Garish started to rely on Sleep spells for a while. This cleared a pair of ogrillions on bridge-duty then various xvarts that Visor rounded up into a sleep - sized area.
We were on a roll so Garish decided to test his protection from petrification spells against basilisks. That went well, as did dealing with Mutamin thanks to an arcane protection from horror.
Kirian and Peter realised Lindin and Baerin were blinded, but even standing in three stinking clouds they managed to find a way to survive - Kirian getting her mirror images up in the nick of time. Peter revealed his divine mastery by completing a spell a fraction of a second after recovering from a stinking cloud bout of unconsciousness.
Garish tried to run but got himself held. Visor tried to move Kirian away from Garish only to get himself held too. Kirian spent a few spells on Visor and we were lucky that she was just out of sight from Garish as Visor died.
Garish reckoned Kirian had minimal spells left and so it proved but trying to kill her on the run proved too much so he fled north before running back to pick up Visor's equipment and head to a temple.
With Visor restores things should go much better even if our blinding of two of them had worn off. We soon had Baerin blinded and dead, albeit badly wounding Visor before he succumbed.
Lindin was led to an un-dug grave (something will no doubt turn up to snuffle away at his corpse).
Peter was in top form again, managing to aviod being blinded and give Visor some rigid thinking before casting hold person at Garish who was running a long way away - straight into a pair of gnolls. Oh this is bad, if he get's held that will be the end of matters. Fortunately his saving throw of 14 sufficed and he cast Sleep on one gnoll and blinded the other before circling back to Visor.
Peter was out of luck when we moved in on him next, and after a couple of minutes we tracked Kirian down. She was still badly wounded from our previous encounter and all alone, but we foolishly dragged in a pair of xvarts as she cast a summoning spell. Our next volley of attacks killed her, so we looted her corpse and left the minions to mourn.
By this time it felt like we'd pushed our luck enough so wrapped the session up at a store.
@Mantis37 You are wrong in saying that other Bhaalspawn can't be raised. At least they used to be raised. You could kill Tazok and he'd be back again later. (Yes I know that they've changed that so that if you kill him the game crashes, but that was a bad move!) I'm pretty sure that others got raised too. Belhifet has to be killed several times in my games. In a world where resurrection can happen, that is right and proper.
Well, for me it is a matter of losing dozens of hours of gameplay
I just can't reload, it's stronger than me. Any thought about Bhaal essence be damned
I confirm that now the tweak perfectly works and never makes the game crash, as happened with the old ToBEx one. Of course it is advisable to resuscitate charname as soon as possible, since some weird cutscene/dialogue assuming he/she is living might clearly happen.
Ah, now that you make me think of it, there is only one "flaw": if you cast raise dead, charname will be resuscitated in the exact place of death, and not near the caster, so it is better to change map before so to avoid being revived near powerful enemies.
Speaking of heaviliy modded games, I'm sure it is possible, I just can't conceive playing with not incurring in death (and in BG2 there are many ways of dying), petrification, imprisonment, maze as the first and constant thought throughout the entire game. Edit: sorry, I just realized that you wrote that most people have completed heavily modded content with many charname deaths, hence reloading.. well, I absolutely agree.
Sorry, when I wrote about the stair of dead charnames I meant that as a reference to the fact that most of us have failed at no-reloads far more than we have succeeded! So while any individual charname may go through the whole series no-reload we all have fond thoughts for the nearly-made-its and the unfortunate ones.
Yes, Imoen is the weird exception who seems to have a just a bit of Bhaalspawn essence stuck in her left ear. She’s a really interesting case of how fan reactions to a character can surprise developers and throw any notion of canon consistency out of the window.
When I did a no-reload of Icewind Dale I found it quite fun playing through with a party of which only one person *had* to survive an encounter so if you’re happy with your headcanon regarding the bhaalspawn stuff then I’m sure it could be a fun way to play through.
Journal of Rosace
The run came to a sticky end at the bandit camp. First Isra was killed. I'm not sure how, probbaly too many nasty arrows from the black talon elite. That meant that when Passionata was dominated, there was no way to get rid of the spell and things went downhill from there.
EDIT
I thought that I would try another run with an undead elimininator.
Journal of Maurice the Mace
In Candlekeep I survived three assassination attempts however only one of them gave me genuine cause for concern as I had to use one of my three healing potions. However I survived.
I made my way to Beregost where I met up with a rogue called Rose whose morals are rather elastic.
However she helped me in the fight against Silke by using her only spell 'Command' more than once which allowed me to kill her. Rose is now using a sword that I found on the body of Mendas, and I am using a mace that I found in a chest in Beregost.
Rose decided that taking all the possessions of those we had saved would be suitable recompense. Of course she didn't ask them for their opinions. She just helped herself. Since it took over three days to recover from our injuries, her opinion regarding suitable recompense may well have been a legitimate one.
After heading south she once more used her only spell to neutralise the threat posed by some ogrillon who attacked us.
After resting we headed south once more and were assaulted by three flaming fist mercenaries. Once more Rose's spell was invaluable as without it we would surely have died. Even so, I had to use my last healing potion. We tried to rest twice, but each time our rest was interrupted by gibberlings. We ended up even more seriously wounded so returned to Beregost. Rose broke into a house where we rested and afterwards she ransacked the place and other houses too. We will now be able to replace our healing potions.
Edit
Heading south Tristan and Isolde assaulted us. They died.
We afterwards met up with Kessy and agreed to find the girl's rabbit for her. It turned out to have been found by an ogre living in a nearby cave and he was surprisingly helpful.
Upon making our way to Nashkel Oublek thought that I was Greywolf and offered me the bounty due to him. Naturally being reasonably honest I turnrd it down much to the disgust of Rose.
At the carnival Aerie asked us to help Bentha. This we did by killing Zordral.
Upon returning to Beregost to return the Colquetl Amulet, we were accosted by Karlat who we killed quite easily.
Whilst at the same inn, we were asked to find Perdue's sword which we did.
We then helped Melicamp.
We also tried to help a werewolf but were unsuccessful.
To aid my poor finances I decided to go hunting ankhegs. That worked well until we were attacked by two simultaneously.
Rose was killed and it proved costly to raise her.
We afterwards fought Bassilus and won.
This was followed by killing Malkax and his friends after which we hunted more ankhegs.
To the east of lathander'a Temple we fought and defeated a mixed pack of wolves and afterwards entered a cave and killed most of the undead etc within.
We again headed south where we fought Zargos Flintblade.
This was followed by taking Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn.
Returning south we killed Vax and Zal.
We then helped a dryad before heading eastwards where we killed a Revenant after which e cleared all the undead in the caves.
After heading back north, we rescued a gnome from some goblins.
We then decided to try and rescue Aaron. We had to flee or else we would have had to pay for Dynaheir's resurrection.
We took on more bandits before opting to fight Greywolf.
We suffered from poor connectivity the week before last and made limited progress before calling it a day after dealing with Bassilus - Corethief saving the day there by successfully saving against hold person after Vince was affected by rigid thinking and Soygib held.
Last weekend we had a better connection and rather more enemies suffered as a result. The fun started with a trip to the coast where the sirines got in a sticky situation.
In the pirate cave web was not an option, so Corethief tried his luck at a bit of tanking - proving to have just enough HPs there.
The next encounter was with the Doomsayer. Vince had no damaging spells to help out there and Soygib has insufficient spells to do much damage to it - but after a blind connected on a webbed Doomsayer, there was no problem in finishing it off.
Web continued to be a staple tactic as Meilum was the next to fall. That encounter offered an amusing example of MP shenanigans. Corey made a comment about Vince being careless enough to step into the web - here's the screenshot showing that, on my screen at least, Vince was comfortably further away from the web than either of the other two .
Up to that point Vince had been limited to his starting spells and a few odd additions found during explorations.l However, with reputation having pushed up to 20, he splashed out at High Hedge and Ulgoth's Beard on a number of additions. He didn't get much use out of those in the Nashkel Mine, where Mulahey was persuaded that initial attacks on him were just Tazok's way of getting him to pay attention - renewing the attack destroyed his morale and he never got around to summoning supporters.
However, outside the mine Vince did get to use those sweet skull traps on some webbed amazons.
Nimbul was backstabbed and Tranzig failed to notice the traps laid under his feet. On the way to the Bandit Camp though we stopped off at the ankheg area to teach them a lesson - that was the difficulty of knowing which way to turn when a pair of backstabbers work in tandem.
At the Camp the basic bandits offered little threat. The same was true of Taurgosz - at least after he was blinded. Inside the tent everyone sneaked in and webs and blinds ensured no-one was in a position to react as the skull traps landed.
No-one wanted Spider's Bane, so there wasn't much action on the way to the Cloakwood Mine. There were the usual webs put down there. However, the follow-up was now even more deadly as Soygib had now got enough experience to make good use of the fireball scroll found at the Bandit Camp.
Sneaking through the mine was child's play for a party of 3 consisting of 2 mages and 2 thieves (with a bit of fighter thrown in for luck). Davaeorn was treated to a gang bang from the backstabbing twins - both of them hitting with criticals .
Garish, Diviner(Gate70)
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
Garish went into Beregost Smithy and bought some bullets before we dealt with Karlat (shot down). Then Garish realised he had no melee weapon, and no memory of where his staff went last time - maybe dropped to carry Visor to a temple but not certain.
We therefore bought a normal staff before using Blindness on Silke to upgrade to a +1. Meilum donated his bracers to Visor's cause and we then remembered why we killed Karlat, and returned to Beregost to give Perdue his sword back. The less we plan our own actions the less likely it is our enemies will predict where we are...
Off we went to the dig site, and Garish tried to put our lack of melee presence out of mind. The assorted group of diggers took great delight in shoving their spears into unprotected areas of our party and Garish had to resort to Magic Missiles to clear a path for Visor to retreat down.
Once we'd dealt with the diggers we headed outside to rest up. After a couple of rests our intended final rest was interrupted by tasloi and Garish only managed to cast sleep on most of them. As Visor ran around the others he drew the attention of the Doomsayer so we ended up getting into a fight.
Garish blinded the Doomsayer and then Gallor so we could kill the one annoying tasloi, and then it was Gallor's turn followed by the Doomsayer. Garish had enough Magic Missiles to do the job and Visor lent a helping foot.
We chickened out of the ankheg nest and instead took on a lone straggler, retrieving Nestor's dagger.
After realising we had little of interest for the Friendly Arm Inn we picked up some spiders.
Visor didn't know what was planned next, until he saw Durlag's Tower looming ahead of us. Draw this enemy a little closer - right into a blind spot.
Visor was keen to continue but Garish insisted on a rest before more blindness.
We didn't really have a plan to deal with the Battle Horror on the wall, but Visor distracted it just long enough for Garish to blind it and then we were able to tidy things up neatly.
Inside the tower a ghast thought it would have a nice relaxing monk-snack but Garish cast Magic Missile and followed up with a bullet strike to keep his companion alive.
One of us was stunned on the way to the roof and the other was stunned on the way down. Not that it made any difference to the basilisks gathered there.
Our session was just wrapping up when Grond0 dropped from the game. A quick check when rejoined confirmed he'd lost XP for the entire tower area (1 basilisk, 3 greater basilisks, 4 battle horrors / doom guards, Kirinhale) and was about 20,000xp shy so we used the console to add it back again. That's probably affected his kills tally too.
The session opened with us having already arrived at Baldur's Gate. Heading for Sorcerous Sundries, Soygib was keen to get the backstabbing going without waiting for all that unnecessary preparation. Corethief did manage to get a trap laid first, which accounted for one of the enemies and Soygib did a good job of running around scared soaking up a bit of damage while the other mages were despatched.
Nearby an ogre mage was waiting. Vince tentatively suggested sneaking in and bombing it from range, but Corethief was having none of that and went for the frontal assault. Soygib gave an evil little chuckle as the inevitable happened and Corethief froze in place - meaning Soygib had a perfect excuse for dropping a fireball on top of his companion to complement the emotion from Vince.
Emerging from the sewers lugging a body, Soygib went to look for someone to take it off his hands. Arkion proved to be only a temporary recipient after he was blinded. Nemphre then showed no interest in it, so Soygib made his feelings clear to her as well without even waiting for her to be blinded.
At the Docks, Corethief was keen to find a basilisk. Vince heard some snufflings and scratchings in one of the buildings visited and lobbed an emotion in that direction - avoiding the need to rest up to get PfP.
Nearby, a moored ship was explored to get some ogre gauntlets to further enhance Corethief's already considerable fighting abilities. Pre-laid traps might have been expected to catch Desreta. However, after she was blinded, it was Vay-ya who followed and found her mirrors were insufficient protection.
Corethief then led the way to find Nadarin with the expectation that talking to him would net him a pair of stealthy boots to provide an alternative to his speedy ones. However, he was a bit too slow to grab the dwarf and Vince nipped in to open the conversation himself - but he was not a halfling and Nadarin had no interest in providing an extra gift to this elvish creature .
The tallest landmark to the north of the City is Ramazith's tower and wandering over there we discovered a mage loitering with intent to be backstabbed. After clearing the tower, Drelik and Jardak were a bit more of a threat. The former followed backstabbers inside and outside a few times releasing sprays of magic missiles every now and then. Vince observed from a distance as a final backstab crunched home on the former.
Jardak was badly hurt by traps laid at the bottom of the stairs, but still needed a bit more punishment to see him off. Corethief might have been hard pushed to do the job on his own, as he was only wearing his studded leather to allow him to hide. However, Soygib showed once more the virtues of the staff as a weapon. Hitting a moving target with a short or slow weapon is very difficult, but a speed 0 staff is far more likely to be able to catch up to an enemy running past.
After starting the poison quest, Corethief gave Jalantha a lovetap before running off to look for shadows. He failed to find any and, as Jalantha's incantation reached a crescendo, seemed destined to become a pillar of flame - but the voice suddenly ceased and looking back he saw Soygib adding one more notch to his staff.
Vince quite fancied some speedy boots of his own, but couldn't be bothered with trying to control unruly summons. Grease to slow Lothander down to a crawl provided plenty of time for the backstabbers to get to work ...
Vince was expecting to talk to Marek to allow the others to backstab. However, Corethief was also expecting to talk with the idea of preventing Marek from focusing on Vince. The result of that was for Corthief to open the conversation, but for Marek to target Vince anyway. As he hastily back-peddled, Marek's turning meant Soygib did not get a backstab bonus. However, Marek was already badly damaged from traps and died before completing a spell anyway.
Traps were also used to particularly good effect against the Mountain Maulers. That was because, in addition to the standard 2 traps set by the expert Corethief, Soygib also managed a rare successful trap. By the time Vince unloaded emotion as his first spell, it only served to incapacitate a couple of critically injured enemies as the others were already dead.
A potentially more difficult fight was with Degrodel's guards. In the event though, they were surprisingly poor at resisting blindness and it didn't take long to finish off the last of them.
Degrodel resisted one backstab and just had time to release a horror (which failed to affect anyone) before a second landed.
The main action left in the City was at the Iron Throne. Rather than using the tank + magical protection strategy this time, Vince decided that we'd been a bit short of web action so far this session. There's a good reason for blinding Alai before using webs (due to his ring of free action), but it might have been regarded as overkill to blind the other 3 casters as well - but none of us objected to a bit of overkill . The webs were followed by skull traps and fireballs before Gardush was shot down just before the webs evaporated.
After reporting in to Duke Eltan, there was just time to get sent to Candlekeep, uncover a greater doppleganger in the library and loot some tombs underground. Prat will have to wait for next week.
Garish, Diviner(Gate70)
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
We fitted a decent amount into 1h21m of playtime, including a session drop right at the start and a second mid game - neither affecting xp though.
Our first task was to bash the ankhegs in their nest. Visor tanked cleanly while Garish exhausted first his Sleep spells then his Blindness spells. After a rest we completed the nest and returned a heavy body to farmer Brun but kept the loot for ourselves.
The next task was to increase reputation from 19 to 20. This will not be a simple task said Garish, after realising we'd already returned Captain Brage to Nashkel. Nonsense said Visor, we'll just deal with half-ogres for Bjornin (which we did, but not before Grond0 the memory machine reeled off three or four more reputation tasks I had overlooked such as Hulrik and his cow).
After killing two trios of sirenes (stinking cloud mainly) Garish pushed some potions into the maw of Visor. A bit of heroism, strength and absorbtion should do when topped up with Improved Invisibility. Three flesh golems took a pounding from Visor's club with a bit of support from Garish's staff +3.
Garish decided it was time to hit Nashkel mine (yep, some reputation there I know). Before that though, how about we pick up a magical sword from Greywolf (and get some reputation there too grumble grumble).
Mulahey the half-orc succumbed to a stinking cloud after Visor demonstrated a perfect sneak melee kill on a ghast. We went outside to fight the Amazons but Garish forgot casting blind on one of them would make a second hostile so we had to drag her off and kill her before treating the other three to stinking cloud.
Garish thought his Magic Missiles were going to work against Nimbul the assassin but Visor got two attacks in before they could even launch, and the spell was cancelled. Garish went to sell some loot and should have realised Visor would take the opportunity to kill Neira the assassin. He was alerted to the fact by Visor returning with a helm to be identified.
Tranzig cast a couple of spells at Visor before dying, and then we headed off to the bandit camp. We both took damage there as a couple of bandits in the woods shot at Garish and Visor pushed his luck against too many enemies at once. We still found time to blind and malison their leader though.
Inside the largest bandit tent Garish did a half-decent job of incapacitating our enemy, but found himself lucky not to be targeted by Hakt (had Visor blinded him, if so I missed that). Venkt died but this gave Britik chance to attack Garish - he died before he could be a problem. Raemon was all alone against us and Garish pushed his luck a little to melee him while Visor crept up and dealt the fatal blow.
We tidied up the tent by removing anything of value and rested outside ready for our next adventure. Party inventory (Grond0 will find all his items mysteriously identified next time...)
Inside the largest bandit tent Garish did a half-decent job of incapacitating our enemy, but found himself lucky not to be targeted by Hakt (had Visor blinded him, if so I missed that).
New run with unmodded Core Rules EE game (Due to having to re-install) So different to the modded game. Worth doing from time to time even if not quite so interesting. Clerics can wear plate armour! Not so many NPCs Carrying stuff is not very convenient particularly arrows and the like. Enemies are a bit easier, but available equipment is poorer. In the end it is probably just as balanced as my modded game.
Starting party is of two Sunites: An undead hunter who chose to be that due to the fact that the Undead have no beauty to recommend them. She is aided by a Fighter/Cleric. They were both rolled in the dim and distant past. So glad that the paladin has a charisma of 18 since there is no Lord Foreshadow's Ring!
After the death of Gorion we headed for Beregost and from there headed south where we killed a couple of ogrillon and three flaming fist mercenaries. The latter furnished us both with plate armour.
In transit we were accosted twice by ghasts! A bit on the dangerous side, but great experience boosters.
After killing some gnoll we were able to help Melicamp.
In transit we met another experience booster: a winter wolf. A belt that we found on Gorion's body helped considerably.
We helped a dryad against Krumm
and afterwards we found two halberd which were just what I personally needed due to my specialisation. (My partner had already found a +1 mace in Beregost
EDIT
The party headed back north, delivering the Colquetle Amulet, finding and returning Joia's ring,
killing Tarnesh
Killing the evil Sonner:
finding and returning the body of Farmer Brun's son, and finding and returning the Bowl to Tenya. Whilst doing so they also killed every ankheg that they encountered with the result that they acquired no less than 15 of them.
There were some very close battles against the ankhegs.
Reputation has now reached 20.
We picked up Xzar, Montaron, Khalid and Jaheira and allowed Montaron to acquire various goods such as a cloak, a ring, and various scrolls before heading to Nashkel where we dropped off Xzar and Montaron.
To the east of Lathander's Temple we killed some powerful wolves:
before heading out further east to wipe out a basilisk infestation.
We had to use a scroll to rescue Jaheira from petrification.
This was due to me thinking that all the basilisks were dead when there was one left.
We are now investigating the lighthouse area. That should be a little easier in this set-up as the sirine are considerably less powerful.
I decided to take on three sirine single handed. That would have been fine if I hadn't been both confused and feeble-minded. However, since I wasn't also poisoned that was not a deadly combination when my friends joined the fray.
We then continued to clear the area of sirines and golems before looting the cave. Another sirine appeared when we attempted to rest but didn't survive long.
We killed a couple of highly aggressive druids to the east of the FAI and then went to rescue Dynaheir.
Having done so, we went to High Hedge for an identify scroll as Dynaheir failed to learn several scrolls. She then identified our equipment and discovered that we are better equipped than we thought, my own halberd being not only magical, but +2. Most of our equipment is +1
EDIT
We decided to pick up Safana as a thief in order to to enter the mine in safety. (All her popints went into find traps and open locks. ) We bought her shadow armour and some darts. We went looking for a replacement sword in case hers broke, but couldn't find one.
We then dropped off Jaheira and went in search of Dorn. He died in the ambush despite me healing him! At least we got a small +1 shield out of the encounter. We then went to pick up Jaheira again.
We entered the Nashkel mines and discovered that Mulahey was the culprit regarding the tainted ore. We found Xan and took him into our party long enough to return his moonblade to him by temporarily dropping Jaheira. We then left the mine and plundered the nearby caves having had to kill a revenant to do so.
Some slime were the most difficult enemy to deal with. We3 had to use potions to survive and even so, Sunami was on the point of death. We therefore returned to the Carnival where we had a prolonged rest.
We thrn headed north, visited the bandit camp peaceably, went to kill Deke and cohorts and then Tranzig.
We will now return to the camp once we have sold shells, scalps and the like. After doing so I was able to buy Sunami some full plate armour, but sadly there was insufficient gold to buy everything that I wished. I will therefore raid the chests at the camp seek out other sources of gold before taking on the camp by force.
This thread is remarkably quiet at present. I do hope that players haven't got Covid 19. I'd have thought that lockdown would mean that people would be playing more. Of course it could mean that they are too busy looking after offspring to play.
@Wise_Grimwald I'm still healthy and still reading. My available playtime is just perilously close to 0 right now, as I started a new job May 1st (of the sort where you're literally never done with your work...), and will be moving in a few months. Thus, I've put Carran the Invoker on hiatus for now: Part of it is having so very little playtime, part of it is I'm a little bored with pure casters since my last two attempts were a Diviner and Conjurer respectively.
I've been thinking about a fighter/mage/cleric run and have one started, but I'll probably do it as a cliff notes-version if so. Detailed writeups with plenty of screenshots are fine and dandy, but they're quite timeconsuming to prepare. And at least for BG1, tactics typically start and end with Sleep/Command/Web/Wand of Fire/Animate Dead anyway, so it's not hard to fill in the blanks.
Hey,
My first post here (I think) and actually my first approach at iron man. Been playing the game for ages and SCS for a couple of months.
Started the run late April - I'm posting it now because I didn't want to jinx it
Hero: Dante
Race: Elf
Class: Shadow Adept (my first time playing the class)
Alignment: LE
Short description: Since childhood Dante was facing nightmares. Every night he fought shadows, demon or other monsters... Very soon he developed a strong fear of darkness. During his studies to become a mage he read many books about mages (both fictional and based on fact). One quote changed his life "Whatever fear you have, face it head on. This is the only way to get rid of it". Dante started looking for his monsters in the darkest places he could find... But little did he know that darkness was already waiting for him.
Personality: Raised by a caring father and many rules Dante developed a charming personality that allows him to hide his more selfish personality. He wants to be perceived as a hero and therefore he acts like one... at least when people are watching He's moral compass was always Imoen which he loves like a sister and could not let her go.
Mods: SCS (all difficulties installed, limited number of dispel arrows), aTweak Pack (mostly convenience like bag of holding, multiple stacking, ability to dual class non-humans and multiclass humans etc), *do not remember which mod does it but the ability to set NPC at level 0 and pick class* (used where it makes sense)
Key rules:
no reloads apart from fights from Shadow Magic mod (do not know where they are) and bugs/crashes
if Imoen dies the run is over
no EEKeeper or similar options
no dmg multiplier on insane difficulty
changing the classes for NPC where it makes sense for me (eg. Vicionia is a thief dualed to cleric - very drowish and besides she had to escape from Underdark without Shar, Kagain is a Dwarven Defender - just fits, Shar-Teel is a Berserker, Khalid is an Ranger/Archer - he's a coward so he would rather fight from the backline, Imoen is a Swashbuckler - fits her personality)
I focus on roleplay so some of the choices are suboptimal
The story begings (don't ask how many seasons of South Park I've watched during rolling of ability scores :
Key story points:
Recruited Imoen, Kagain, Shar-teel, Neera and did Mulahey
Changed Neera to Edwin and killed the Witch!
Explored the south
Killed Bassilus (needed to be safe)
With enough XP recruited Viconia and Baeloth
Farmed XP on ankhegs!
Attacked the Bandit Camp head on!
Did Clookwood...
Almost died during the fight with Drasus but no permanent deaths!
Reviewed the Team and went back
Argued with myself about how weak is Baeloth (no lvl 3 spells yet)
Killed Davaeorn with max buffed Shar-teel (burned like 2-3k on consumables)
During travel got ambushed... and lost Baeloth (perma death)
Angrily traveled to Friendly Arm In to recruit Edwin (so underlevel)
Did Baldurs Gate City quests and killed Sarevoks Acolytes (actually quite easy)
Arrived in Candlekeep and used the one kill-ogre-mage arrow to make sure I won't die in the ambush.
Did not kill Rieltar
Managed to not die in fight under Candlekeep
Found all missing Apprentices from Shadow Adept mod by now and bought most of the equipment
Did Ice Island and nearly died to a Confusion Spell and a trap
Did the Isle of Balduran where I helped a lot of *people* and romanced Delainy . Managed to get a peaceful resolution of the quest.
Went to Durlags Tower and cleared it up until the final fight where my PC decided that fighting a Demon Knight was not part of the deal and is not worth it and bailed
Went back to Baldurs Gate, ranted to myself that RNG is not my friend and why didn't i get the Invisibility, 10' Radius scroll... casted individual invisibilty like 2000 times
Killed everyone and saved both Belt and Janath with well placed Otiluke's Resilient Sphere
Went after Sarevok and skiped pass the fight just before Tomoko.
Had to kill Tomoko due to having fat fingers and pressing the wrong key i the dialog option
Spent 2h planing the final fight (consumables order, buffs, how to attack and who first) - I was literally scared that I will lose at the very end
Went to sleep irl (tired)
Woke up early before work
Executed the plan perfectly (everyone almost full health)... with the game crashing when Sarevok was Near Dead
Ranted and cursed for 15 minutes
Tried to repeat the plan but was pissed so (of course) made mistakes and finished the fight with Viconia, Edwin and Imoen dead (not permanently)
Celebrated with a dance that no one should ever see ...and realize that I'm late for work
...currently relaxing at the first room on SoD Prologue (I like it... apart from some absurd things in the main story line - sue me )
...and looking SAF - fully buffed
...next updated will be more detailed, with screens and hopefully won't be an epitaph
Garish, Diviner(Gate70)
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
"So, killed any monsters yet?"
On leaving the bandit camp we could see our path led deep into Cloakwood. The first part of it was safely negotiated and then we headed into a second area. Garish watched as Visor triggered a web trap and caught us both having thought he was safely through it (multiplayer funs).
Having not learnt his lesson, Visor promptly got poisoned and then suggested Garish use his slow poison special ability. This was done, albeit Garish not switching from sling to staff and then running past Visor as our computers tried to sync each others movement. Net result of that was Visor having his poison removed and Garish getting a dose of poison with a clouded aura. That's fine we have time to wait for a potion or better yet we'll just get to the edge of the map and do an area transition.
We rested up and returned to finish off the spiders, but the nearby ettercaps proved a bit troublesome to us also. This time Garish manages to slow the poison sapping away at Visor without getting caught himself. We then ran the ettercaps round and used our slings.
We avoided any further trouble on the way to Cloakwood Mine, and Garish cautiously cast Sleep on the two guards of the bridge.
Drasus found two of his mercenaries were suffering from blindness and the third took a nasty dose of monk-foot. He chased us around for a minute or so then we finally got the better of him and practiced our aim against Genthore and Rezdan.
Cloakwood mine holds no dangers for us. Garish confidently said he never ever rests down there except occasionally. Proof of why you should never ever rest there even when invisible and hidden turns up with a vengeance - and we are boxed in. Visor's hiding in shadows fails and the following potion of invisibility doesn't help other than to confirm we are even more boxed in.
Garish is concocting elaborate plans on how to get us out of here when Visor works out he just needs to kill one guard and our escape is inevitable. He's correct, right up to the point where two more guards are behind the dead one and we have no more invisibility potions.
Hareishan has come to investigate what is happening and decides the best course of action is to cast a lightning bolt in the confines of the small cramped room. She manages to kill Visor and injure herself but Garish gulps a potion of absorbtion to hold onto a sliver of life.
Garish is still concocting his escape plan and decides the best course of action is to wait patiently as Hareishan's guards shoot her as a penalty for frazzling them and their fallen.
With her dead Garish steps onto the dead Visor and picks up the best of his equipment (thus avoiding breaking invisibility). He repeats this for Hareishan and then daintily steps off her corpse onto the ground. A quick temple visit later he returns with Visor and we continue from where we left off.
Davaeorn has two battle horrors guarding him. We blind and kill the first then blind and kill the second. It's not a great strategy but sometimes the simple solution is a good one.
Visor gulps a potion of magic blocking and attacks Davaeorn. He glances over his shoulder at one point to remark how fortunate Garish was not to collect the stray lightning bolt - but Garish says it hit him and as we had two potions of magic blocking he'd gulped the second before joining the attack.
With Davaeorn dead we are free to pull the plug on the mine and head into the fine city of Baldur's Gate. There's plenty of action there so we grab a dexterity tome and then one of wisdom as we get ourselves treated to a dose of Marek's poison.
Then we head into the sewers to deal with a crazed ogre mage and his pets. Garish forgets he is visible so has to run and drag one crawler away as Visor deals with the rest. Garish returns to hear Visor cackling that they are now carrion and not crawling. It's the first time Garish (I) have heard this though Visor (Grond0) suspects it is something he has said more than once.
Larze the ogre takes a couple of attempts to blind before Visor uses Improved Invisibility to kill Marek and get ourselves cured of the poison.
Visor suggests the Iron Throne is next, then changes his mind and suggests we negotiate with Degrodel to get Garish a level. We're doing OK until Garish runs out of spells fighting his minions and matters get a bit scrappy. Visor resorts to a wand of the heavens as Garish contemplates casting Cloudkill in the streets. Perhaps not.
He activates a Scorcher from his fireball wand as the two of us say to run right. No, the other right. Visor takes as much fire damage as the enemies.
Degrodel still has a couple of guardians left. We breeze past them and kill him.
That leaves us with the Iron Throne. It doesn't start well when Visor is spotted and belatedly realises Garish cast Spirit Armour onto him rather than Improved Invisibility. Garish had assumed Visor would hide.
(& the cloak of displacement makes it difficult to tell if a character is concealed or not)
Visor pops downstairs again and only the doppelganger follows so we bludgeon it until dead.
We go back upstairs and Visor is keen to know the plan. Webs? Stinking clouds?
Garish won't admit he didn't bother with any of that. He summons a lone skeleton and well all that he has left really is the one Cloudkill spell so he casts that and retreats.
Enemies take damage and start to engage Garish but each time they do so they change their minds immediately and return to whoever else takes damage. By the time the Cloudkill dissipates we may have the upper hand. Right up until Garish stands too close as he aims his fireball wand. Everybody attacks him so he retreats as the fireball lands.
Alai and Zhalimar arrive in the back room to fight our skeleton as Garish tries and fails repeatedly to fireball wand them. Visor is brutally effective and finishes them off, then we return to the main room and discover the earlier fireball killed any "survivors" there.
We agree to stop there without considering what we will do next time.
Fellow adventurers, difficult times can inspire new ventures and I am excited to enter my first no-reload character experimenting with the SCS difficulty slider set to "Hardcore" instead of "Tactical".
Mods: SCSv32, JimFix, BGTweaks (for removing helmet animations, removing item blur effects and some other minor adjustments)
Since I have succesfully lost most of my contact with the "natural" recently, a druid character seemed like a refreshing choice. Even so, I like to depict Torosar as a down-to-earth city dweller with sympathies for certain aspects of civilization, rather than the stereotypical tree-hugging hermit covered in moss and ferns.
Character sheet:
Starting proficiencies were darts and staves.
For solo vanilla druids, the early days can be very dull. With mediocre spells at best, they are stuck with flinging darts for the first couple of levels. For totemic druids, however, this is a different story as their spirit animals provide much needed oomph and also facilitate more effective use of some of druid's low level spells.
For instance, with the belt ogre at the Coast Way Torosar we went for Summon Spirit Animal: Spirit Snake -> Entangle -> Doom -> Bless. It worked out just fine.
We used a similar approach against Joia's hobgoblins as well as the High Hedge gnolls.
Druid level ups are lightning fast and Torosar got his second level by clearing the spiders in Beregost, while levels 3 and 4 came from eliminating Shoal.
As I was keen on not overusing Wand of Sleep in the early encounters, it fell to Charm Person/Mammal to do the heavy lifting in the area south of Beregost.
The battle with hobgoblins near the cavern turned out to be a sort of a free-for-all. Enemies attacking each other in entangling vines, Torosar flinging Doom, the Spirit Snake delivering poison damage with bite-and-run tactics - we had fun.
With his archers, Zargal is a sufficiently dangerous foe to justify Wand of Sleep charge.
Torosar made it to Nashkel together with Barge and got his hands on the ankegh plate. Our next destination were the basilisks - using both the Spirit Wolf (already immune to petrification) and Korax, it was a picnic.
All this XP was sufficient to catapult Torosar to level 7. With Call Woodland Beings now in our combat arsenal, we decided to test Kirian's mettle with our rustic cold...wood(?). Torosar prepared by casting Strength of One on his two nymphs and two Spirit Snakes. He opened the battle with Entangle, followed by 2x Hold Monster from the nymphs and Charm Person/Mammal.
Next round: Hold Person + Call Lightning + Summon Insects
And that was just about it.
After selling the loot, Torosar took a little detour to the north of FAI to clear the ankegh lair and bring back the bad news to farmer Brun. He also tried to reason with Tenya, but unfortunately she got eaten by bugs when not even our nymph could help her.
Ulogth's Beard was our shopping destination where we spent a fortune on Darts of Stunning, Cloak of Displacement, Greenstone Amulet and Wand of Heavens (Aule's Staff had to wait).
With Greenstone Amulet we could now access the Tome of Wisdom at Durlag's Tower. Which meant that Torosar had to pass through the two battle horrors guarding the entrance. Carefully taking them one by one, he had the time to first debuff with Doom while his Spirit Bear was blocking the front line. In terms of damage we went for Summon Insects, Call Lightning and Wand of Missiles for the finish.
After collecting the Tome of Wisdom I realized that the rooftop basilisks will need to wait as we did not have the green ProPetrification scroll with us. And that also brings us to the end of this first entry.
Comments
Journal of Rosace
Aerie asked us to get her big boots for which of course we did. That was easy enough.
s://us.v-cdn.net/5019558/uploads/editor/b1/gb8weyzso709.png
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
The randomiser figured out that rangers and enraged fighters were no good for us, so threw a couple of other characters in our direction. Let's see how this pair fare.
Garish decided to leave Candlekeep when assassination went un-noticed but lifting a healing potion led to the guards being called. Get your priorities in order.
Party equipment.
To the East of Lathander's Temple we fought and won against some powerful wolves.
Smeagol asked us to find his precious which we did.
In Beregost she acquired a charisma enhancing cloak, and in Ulgoth's Beard a wide variety of spell scrolls, potions, a war hammer and suchlike.
In Ulgoth's Beard she proved herself to be a follower of Sune.
It was the wraiths that were the first major problem as they level drained Alora.
I have a minor problem which looks like it is a bug.
I have taken the ancient armour and the idol to the ghost outside Ulcaster Ruins mut to no effect. I am wondering if I am taking them to the correct ghost.
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/The_Vampire's_Revenge
Do you have to do the book quest before he will give you the sword?
I know that I can just go and kill the undead in the cave near Lathander's Temple, but just wanted to complete the quest this time.
EDIT
Looking on the web, I've discovered that I have to do other things as well due to mods. Not at all clear
I am now seriously considering just killing the undead haunting the cave. That is straightforward!
Traveling with: Mazzy, Anomen, Nalia, Viconia, Yoshimo
Just wanted to let people know Cordan the dwarven barbarian is still alive. While was solo in BG 1, he decided he did want some friends in BG 2 after all. He still has lots to do. The party defeated Thaxxy, mostly by traps, melee/ranged, and summons. The newly forged scale armor fits Cordan nicely, which puts his AC at -5, which is quite good for dual-wielding and also being a barbarian. Will keep at it!
Why not doing a no-reload run in a more relaxed way?
https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/28910-protagonist-can-die/?do=findComment&comment=280191
In other words: why a cleric in your party shouldn't cast raise dead? Why shouldn't you be able to cast stone to flesh? I find the constant terror of charname diyng (or being petrified, mazed, imprisoned!) really too intrusive and most of all unrealistic. And I highly doubt a fully modded EET game can be completed without some of the mentioned events happening to charname. Enjoy
There are arguments for and against this, given that other bhaalspawn don’t seem to have the luxury of it. It’s usually considered that you’ll lose your bhaal essence in any case if you die I think, though I’m not sure about petrification. Maze / Imprisonment Spell Revisions make a bit more palatable for me.
I’ve found this sort of tweak to be occasionally buggy in the past, though it may work a bit better these days. In any case people most certainly have completed heavily modded content... though up a stair of dead charnames in the doing of it!
I just can't reload, it's stronger than me. Any thought about Bhaal essence be damned
I confirm that now the tweak perfectly works and never makes the game crash, as happened with the old ToBEx one. Of course it is advisable to resuscitate charname as soon as possible, since some weird cutscene/dialogue assuming he/she is living might clearly happen.
Ah, now that you make me think of it, there is only one "flaw": if you cast raise dead, charname will be resuscitated in the exact place of death, and not near the caster, so it is better to change map before so to avoid being revived near powerful enemies.
Speaking of heaviliy modded games, I'm sure it is possible, I just can't conceive playing with not incurring in death (and in BG2 there are many ways of dying), petrification, imprisonment, maze as the first and constant thought throughout the entire game. Edit: sorry, I just realized that you wrote that most people have completed heavily modded content with many charname deaths, hence reloading.. well, I absolutely agree.
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
Not even internet woe can stop this pair, today at least. We tidied a few matters up and gamely said things seemed better - only for the slogre to use a girdle of lag to thump Visor into the ground.
Analysis of our screenshots suggests little difference but as host I could see Visor's body land away from the ogre when he'd "been standing next to it". Also, on Grondo's screenshot he hit first whereas on mine he hit last. C'est la vie with multiplayer.
Host screenshot:
Kirian and Peter realised Lindin and Baerin were blinded, but even standing in three stinking clouds they managed to find a way to survive - Kirian getting her mirror images up in the nick of time. Peter revealed his divine mastery by completing a spell a fraction of a second after recovering from a stinking cloud bout of unconsciousness.
Garish tried to run but got himself held. Visor tried to move Kirian away from Garish only to get himself held too. Kirian spent a few spells on Visor and we were lucky that she was just out of sight from Garish as Visor died.
With Visor restores things should go much better even if our blinding of two of them had worn off. We soon had Baerin blinded and dead, albeit badly wounding Visor before he succumbed.
Lindin was led to an un-dug grave (something will no doubt turn up to snuffle away at his corpse).
Peter was in top form again, managing to aviod being blinded and give Visor some rigid thinking before casting hold person at Garish who was running a long way away - straight into a pair of gnolls. Oh this is bad, if he get's held that will be the end of matters. Fortunately his saving throw of 14 sufficed and he cast Sleep on one gnoll and blinded the other before circling back to Visor.
By this time it felt like we'd pushed our luck enough so wrapped the session up at a store.
Tazok and Belhifet are bhaalspawn?
Sorry, when I wrote about the stair of dead charnames I meant that as a reference to the fact that most of us have failed at no-reloads far more than we have succeeded! So while any individual charname may go through the whole series no-reload we all have fond thoughts for the nearly-made-its and the unfortunate ones.
Yes, Imoen is the weird exception who seems to have a just a bit of Bhaalspawn essence stuck in her left ear. She’s a really interesting case of how fan reactions to a character can surprise developers and throw any notion of canon consistency out of the window.
When I did a no-reload of Icewind Dale I found it quite fun playing through with a party of which only one person *had* to survive an encounter so if you’re happy with your headcanon regarding the bhaalspawn stuff then I’m sure it could be a fun way to play through.
The run came to a sticky end at the bandit camp. First Isra was killed. I'm not sure how, probbaly too many nasty arrows from the black talon elite. That meant that when Passionata was dominated, there was no way to get rid of the spell and things went downhill from there.
EDIT
I thought that I would try another run with an undead elimininator.
Journal of Maurice the Mace
In Candlekeep I survived three assassination attempts however only one of them gave me genuine cause for concern as I had to use one of my three healing potions. However I survived.
I made my way to Beregost where I met up with a rogue called Rose whose morals are rather elastic.
However she helped me in the fight against Silke by using her only spell 'Command' more than once which allowed me to kill her. Rose is now using a sword that I found on the body of Mendas, and I am using a mace that I found in a chest in Beregost.
Rose decided that taking all the possessions of those we had saved would be suitable recompense. Of course she didn't ask them for their opinions. She just helped herself. Since it took over three days to recover from our injuries, her opinion regarding suitable recompense may well have been a legitimate one.
After heading south she once more used her only spell to neutralise the threat posed by some ogrillon who attacked us.
After resting we headed south once more and were assaulted by three flaming fist mercenaries. Once more Rose's spell was invaluable as without it we would surely have died. Even so, I had to use my last healing potion. We tried to rest twice, but each time our rest was interrupted by gibberlings. We ended up even more seriously wounded so returned to Beregost. Rose broke into a house where we rested and afterwards she ransacked the place and other houses too. We will now be able to replace our healing potions.
Edit
Heading south Tristan and Isolde assaulted us. They died.
Upon making our way to Nashkel Oublek thought that I was Greywolf and offered me the bounty due to him. Naturally being reasonably honest I turnrd it down much to the disgust of Rose.
We afterwards fought Bassilus and won.
Vince - enchanter (Grond0)
Soygib - thief/illusionist (Gate70)
Corethief XXIII - fighter/thief (Corey_Russell)
Previous updates
We suffered from poor connectivity the week before last and made limited progress before calling it a day after dealing with Bassilus - Corethief saving the day there by successfully saving against hold person after Vince was affected by rigid thinking and Soygib held.
Last weekend we had a better connection and rather more enemies suffered as a result. The fun started with a trip to the coast where the sirines got in a sticky situation.
The next encounter was with the Doomsayer. Vince had no damaging spells to help out there and Soygib has insufficient spells to do much damage to it - but after a blind connected on a webbed Doomsayer, there was no problem in finishing it off.
Web continued to be a staple tactic as Meilum was the next to fall. That encounter offered an amusing example of MP shenanigans. Corey made a comment about Vince being careless enough to step into the web - here's the screenshot showing that, on my screen at least, Vince was comfortably further away from the web than either of the other two
Up to that point Vince had been limited to his starting spells and a few odd additions found during explorations.l However, with reputation having pushed up to 20, he splashed out at High Hedge and Ulgoth's Beard on a number of additions. He didn't get much use out of those in the Nashkel Mine, where Mulahey was persuaded that initial attacks on him were just Tazok's way of getting him to pay attention - renewing the attack destroyed his morale and he never got around to summoning supporters.
Nimbul was backstabbed and Tranzig failed to notice the traps laid under his feet. On the way to the Bandit Camp though we stopped off at the ankheg area to teach them a lesson - that was the difficulty of knowing which way to turn when a pair of backstabbers work in tandem.
At the Camp the basic bandits offered little threat. The same was true of Taurgosz - at least after he was blinded. Inside the tent everyone sneaked in and webs and blinds ensured no-one was in a position to react as the skull traps landed.
No-one wanted Spider's Bane, so there wasn't much action on the way to the Cloakwood Mine. There were the usual webs put down there. However, the follow-up was now even more deadly as Soygib had now got enough experience to make good use of the fireball scroll found at the Bandit Camp.
Sneaking through the mine was child's play for a party of 3 consisting of 2 mages and 2 thieves (with a bit of fighter thrown in for luck). Davaeorn was treated to a gang bang from the backstabbing twins - both of them hitting with criticals
Enchanter - L7, 42 HPs (including 6 from familiar), 70 kills
Thief/illusionist - L5/6, 32 HPs, 101 kills, 0 deaths
Fighter/thief - L6/6, 65 HPs, 152 kills, 0 deaths
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
Garish went into Beregost Smithy and bought some bullets before we dealt with Karlat (shot down). Then Garish realised he had no melee weapon, and no memory of where his staff went last time - maybe dropped to carry Visor to a temple but not certain.
We therefore bought a normal staff before using Blindness on Silke to upgrade to a +1. Meilum donated his bracers to Visor's cause and we then remembered why we killed Karlat, and returned to Beregost to give Perdue his sword back. The less we plan our own actions the less likely it is our enemies will predict where we are...
Off we went to the dig site, and Garish tried to put our lack of melee presence out of mind. The assorted group of diggers took great delight in shoving their spears into unprotected areas of our party and Garish had to resort to Magic Missiles to clear a path for Visor to retreat down.
Garish blinded the Doomsayer and then Gallor so we could kill the one annoying tasloi, and then it was Gallor's turn followed by the Doomsayer. Garish had enough Magic Missiles to do the job and Visor lent a helping foot.
I also have had a problem with a bug which is so bad that I am abandoning my Rosace game.
Vince - enchanter (Grond0)
Soygib - thief/illusionist (Gate70)
Corethief XXIII - fighter/thief (Corey_Russell)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1129171/#Comment_1129171
The session opened with us having already arrived at Baldur's Gate. Heading for Sorcerous Sundries, Soygib was keen to get the backstabbing going without waiting for all that unnecessary preparation. Corethief did manage to get a trap laid first, which accounted for one of the enemies and Soygib did a good job of running around scared soaking up a bit of damage while the other mages were despatched.
Nearby an ogre mage was waiting. Vince tentatively suggested sneaking in and bombing it from range, but Corethief was having none of that and went for the frontal assault. Soygib gave an evil little chuckle as the inevitable happened and Corethief froze in place - meaning Soygib had a perfect excuse for dropping a fireball on top of his companion to complement the emotion from Vince.
Emerging from the sewers lugging a body, Soygib went to look for someone to take it off his hands. Arkion proved to be only a temporary recipient after he was blinded. Nemphre then showed no interest in it, so Soygib made his feelings clear to her as well without even waiting for her to be blinded.
At the Docks, Corethief was keen to find a basilisk. Vince heard some snufflings and scratchings in one of the buildings visited and lobbed an emotion in that direction - avoiding the need to rest up to get PfP.
The tallest landmark to the north of the City is Ramazith's tower and wandering over there we discovered a mage loitering with intent to be backstabbed. After clearing the tower, Drelik and Jardak were a bit more of a threat. The former followed backstabbers inside and outside a few times releasing sprays of magic missiles every now and then. Vince observed from a distance as a final backstab crunched home on the former.
After starting the poison quest, Corethief gave Jalantha a lovetap before running off to look for shadows. He failed to find any and, as Jalantha's incantation reached a crescendo, seemed destined to become a pillar of flame - but the voice suddenly ceased and looking back he saw Soygib adding one more notch to his staff.
Traps were also used to particularly good effect against the Mountain Maulers. That was because, in addition to the standard 2 traps set by the expert Corethief, Soygib also managed a rare successful trap. By the time Vince unloaded emotion as his first spell, it only served to incapacitate a couple of critically injured enemies as the others were already dead.
A potentially more difficult fight was with Degrodel's guards. In the event though, they were surprisingly poor at resisting blindness and it didn't take long to finish off the last of them.
The main action left in the City was at the Iron Throne. Rather than using the tank + magical protection strategy this time, Vince decided that we'd been a bit short of web action so far this session. There's a good reason for blinding Alai before using webs (due to his ring of free action), but it might have been regarded as overkill to blind the other 3 casters as well - but none of us objected to a bit of overkill
After reporting in to Duke Eltan, there was just time to get sent to Candlekeep, uncover a greater doppleganger in the library and loot some tombs underground. Prat will have to wait for next week.
Enchanter - L8, 47 HPs (including 6 from familiar), 84 kills
Thief/illusionist - L6/7, 36 HPs, 132 kills, 0 deaths
Fighter/thief - L6/7, 69 HPs, 199 kills, 0 deaths
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
We fitted a decent amount into 1h21m of playtime, including a session drop right at the start and a second mid game - neither affecting xp though.
Our first task was to bash the ankhegs in their nest. Visor tanked cleanly while Garish exhausted first his Sleep spells then his Blindness spells. After a rest we completed the nest and returned a heavy body to farmer Brun but kept the loot for ourselves.
The next task was to increase reputation from 19 to 20. This will not be a simple task said Garish, after realising we'd already returned Captain Brage to Nashkel. Nonsense said Visor, we'll just deal with half-ogres for Bjornin (which we did, but not before Grond0 the memory machine reeled off three or four more reputation tasks I had overlooked such as Hulrik and his cow).
After killing two trios of sirenes (stinking cloud mainly) Garish pushed some potions into the maw of Visor. A bit of heroism, strength and absorbtion should do when topped up with Improved Invisibility. Three flesh golems took a pounding from Visor's club with a bit of support from Garish's staff +3.
Tranzig cast a couple of spells at Visor before dying, and then we headed off to the bandit camp. We both took damage there as a couple of bandits in the woods shot at Garish and Visor pushed his luck against too many enemies at once. We still found time to blind and malison their leader though.
Visor had
Starting party is of two Sunites: An undead hunter who chose to be that due to the fact that the Undead have no beauty to recommend them. She is aided by a Fighter/Cleric. They were both rolled in the dim and distant past. So glad that the paladin has a charisma of 18 since there is no Lord Foreshadow's Ring!
After the death of Gorion we headed for Beregost and from there headed south where we killed a couple of ogrillon and three flaming fist mercenaries. The latter furnished us both with plate armour.
In transit we were accosted twice by ghasts! A bit on the dangerous side, but great experience boosters.
After killing some gnoll we were able to help Melicamp.
In transit we met another experience booster: a winter wolf. A belt that we found on Gorion's body helped considerably.
We helped a dryad against Krumm
and afterwards we found two halberd which were just what I personally needed due to my specialisation. (My partner had already found a +1 mace in Beregost
EDIT
The party headed back north, delivering the Colquetle Amulet, finding and returning Joia's ring,
killing Tarnesh
Killing the evil Sonner:
finding and returning the body of Farmer Brun's son, and finding and returning the Bowl to Tenya. Whilst doing so they also killed every ankheg that they encountered with the result that they acquired no less than 15 of them.
There were some very close battles against the ankhegs.
Reputation has now reached 20.
We picked up Xzar, Montaron, Khalid and Jaheira and allowed Montaron to acquire various goods such as a cloak, a ring, and various scrolls before heading to Nashkel where we dropped off Xzar and Montaron.
To the east of Lathander's Temple we killed some powerful wolves:
before heading out further east to wipe out a basilisk infestation.
We had to use a scroll to rescue Jaheira from petrification.
This was due to me thinking that all the basilisks were dead when there was one left.
We are now investigating the lighthouse area. That should be a little easier in this set-up as the sirine are considerably less powerful.
I decided to take on three sirine single handed. That would have been fine if I hadn't been both confused and feeble-minded. However, since I wasn't also poisoned that was not a deadly combination when my friends joined the fray.
We then continued to clear the area of sirines and golems before looting the cave. Another sirine appeared when we attempted to rest but didn't survive long.
We killed a couple of highly aggressive druids to the east of the FAI and then went to rescue Dynaheir.
Having done so, we went to High Hedge for an identify scroll as Dynaheir failed to learn several scrolls. She then identified our equipment and discovered that we are better equipped than we thought, my own halberd being not only magical, but +2. Most of our equipment is +1
EDIT
We decided to pick up Safana as a thief in order to to enter the mine in safety. (All her popints went into find traps and open locks. ) We bought her shadow armour and some darts. We went looking for a replacement sword in case hers broke, but couldn't find one.
We then dropped off Jaheira and went in search of Dorn. He died in the ambush despite me healing him! At least we got a small +1 shield out of the encounter.
We entered the Nashkel mines and discovered that Mulahey was the culprit regarding the tainted ore. We found Xan and took him into our party long enough to return his moonblade to him by temporarily dropping Jaheira. We then left the mine and plundered the nearby caves having had to kill a revenant to do so.
Some slime were the most difficult enemy to deal with. We3 had to use potions to survive and even so, Sunami was on the point of death. We therefore returned to the Carnival where we had a prolonged rest.
We thrn headed north, visited the bandit camp peaceably, went to kill Deke and cohorts and then Tranzig.
We will now return to the camp once we have sold shells, scalps and the like. After doing so I was able to buy Sunami some full plate armour, but sadly there was insufficient gold to buy everything that I wished. I will therefore raid the chests at the camp seek out other sources of gold before taking on the camp by force.
This thread is remarkably quiet at present. I do hope that players haven't got Covid 19. I'd have thought that lockdown would mean that people would be playing more. Of course it could mean that they are too busy looking after offspring to play.
I've been thinking about a fighter/mage/cleric run and have one started, but I'll probably do it as a cliff notes-version if so. Detailed writeups with plenty of screenshots are fine and dandy, but they're quite timeconsuming to prepare. And at least for BG1, tactics typically start and end with Sleep/Command/Web/Wand of Fire/Animate Dead anyway, so it's not hard to fill in the blanks.
My first post here (I think) and actually my first approach at iron man. Been playing the game for ages and SCS for a couple of months.
Started the run late April - I'm posting it now because I didn't want to jinx it
Hero: Dante
Race: Elf
Class: Shadow Adept (my first time playing the class)
Alignment: LE
Short description: Since childhood Dante was facing nightmares. Every night he fought shadows, demon or other monsters... Very soon he developed a strong fear of darkness. During his studies to become a mage he read many books about mages (both fictional and based on fact). One quote changed his life "Whatever fear you have, face it head on. This is the only way to get rid of it". Dante started looking for his monsters in the darkest places he could find... But little did he know that darkness was already waiting for him.
Personality: Raised by a caring father and many rules Dante developed a charming personality that allows him to hide his more selfish personality. He wants to be perceived as a hero and therefore he acts like one... at least when people are watching
Mods: SCS (all difficulties installed, limited number of dispel arrows), aTweak Pack (mostly convenience like bag of holding, multiple stacking, ability to dual class non-humans and multiclass humans etc), *do not remember which mod does it but the ability to set NPC at level 0 and pick class* (used where it makes sense)
Key rules:
The story begings (don't ask how many seasons of South Park I've watched during rolling of ability scores
Key story points:
...currently relaxing at the first room on SoD Prologue (I like it... apart from some absurd things in the main story line - sue me
...and looking SAF
...next updated will be more detailed, with screens and hopefully won't be an epitaph
Cheers!
Visor, Dark Moon Monk(Grond0)
"So, killed any monsters yet?"
On leaving the bandit camp we could see our path led deep into Cloakwood. The first part of it was safely negotiated and then we headed into a second area. Garish watched as Visor triggered a web trap and caught us both having thought he was safely through it (multiplayer funs).
Garish is concocting elaborate plans on how to get us out of here when Visor works out he just needs to kill one guard and our escape is inevitable. He's correct, right up to the point where two more guards are behind the dead one and we have no more invisibility potions.
Hareishan has come to investigate what is happening and decides the best course of action is to cast a lightning bolt in the confines of the small cramped room. She manages to kill Visor and injure herself but Garish gulps a potion of absorbtion to hold onto a sliver of life.
With her dead Garish steps onto the dead Visor and picks up the best of his equipment (thus avoiding breaking invisibility). He repeats this for Hareishan and then daintily steps off her corpse onto the ground. A quick temple visit later he returns with Visor and we continue from where we left off.
Davaeorn has two battle horrors guarding him. We blind and kill the first then blind and kill the second. It's not a great strategy but sometimes the simple solution is a good one.
Then we head into the sewers to deal with a crazed ogre mage and his pets. Garish forgets he is visible so has to run and drag one crawler away as Visor deals with the rest. Garish returns to hear Visor cackling that they are now carrion and not crawling. It's the first time Garish (I) have heard this though Visor (Grond0) suspects it is something he has said more than once.
He activates a Scorcher from his fireball wand as the two of us say to run right. No, the other right. Visor takes as much fire damage as the enemies.
(& the cloak of displacement makes it difficult to tell if a character is concealed or not)
Visor pops downstairs again and only the doppelganger follows so we bludgeon it until dead.
We go back upstairs and Visor is keen to know the plan. Webs? Stinking clouds?
Garish won't admit he didn't bother with any of that. He summons a lone skeleton and well all that he has left really is the one Cloudkill spell so he casts that and retreats.
Enemies take damage and start to engage Garish but each time they do so they change their minds immediately and return to whoever else takes damage. By the time the Cloudkill dissipates we may have the upper hand. Right up until Garish stands too close as he aims his fireball wand. Everybody attacks him so he retreats as the fireball lands.
Alai and Zhalimar arrive in the back room to fight our skeleton as Garish tries and fails repeatedly to fireball wand them. Visor is brutally effective and finishes them off, then we return to the main room and discover the earlier fireball killed any "survivors" there.
Mods: SCSv32, JimFix, BGTweaks (for removing helmet animations, removing item blur effects and some other minor adjustments)
Since I have succesfully lost most of my contact with the "natural" recently, a druid character seemed like a refreshing choice. Even so, I like to depict Torosar as a down-to-earth city dweller with sympathies for certain aspects of civilization, rather than the stereotypical tree-hugging hermit covered in moss and ferns.
Character sheet:
Starting proficiencies were darts and staves.
For solo vanilla druids, the early days can be very dull. With mediocre spells at best, they are stuck with flinging darts for the first couple of levels. For totemic druids, however, this is a different story as their spirit animals provide much needed oomph and also facilitate more effective use of some of druid's low level spells.
For instance, with the belt ogre at the Coast Way Torosar we went for Summon Spirit Animal: Spirit Snake -> Entangle -> Doom -> Bless. It worked out just fine.
We used a similar approach against Joia's hobgoblins as well as the High Hedge gnolls.
Druid level ups are lightning fast and Torosar got his second level by clearing the spiders in Beregost, while levels 3 and 4 came from eliminating Shoal.
As I was keen on not overusing Wand of Sleep in the early encounters, it fell to Charm Person/Mammal to do the heavy lifting in the area south of Beregost.
The battle with hobgoblins near the cavern turned out to be a sort of a free-for-all. Enemies attacking each other in entangling vines, Torosar flinging Doom, the Spirit Snake delivering poison damage with bite-and-run tactics - we had fun.
With his archers, Zargal is a sufficiently dangerous foe to justify Wand of Sleep charge.
Torosar made it to Nashkel together with Barge and got his hands on the ankegh plate. Our next destination were the basilisks - using both the Spirit Wolf (already immune to petrification) and Korax, it was a picnic.
All this XP was sufficient to catapult Torosar to level 7. With Call Woodland Beings now in our combat arsenal, we decided to test Kirian's mettle with our rustic cold...wood(?). Torosar prepared by casting Strength of One on his two nymphs and two Spirit Snakes. He opened the battle with Entangle, followed by 2x Hold Monster from the nymphs and Charm Person/Mammal.
Next round: Hold Person + Call Lightning + Summon Insects
And that was just about it.
After selling the loot, Torosar took a little detour to the north of FAI to clear the ankegh lair and bring back the bad news to farmer Brun. He also tried to reason with Tenya, but unfortunately she got eaten by bugs when not even our nymph could help her.
Ulogth's Beard was our shopping destination where we spent a fortune on Darts of Stunning, Cloak of Displacement, Greenstone Amulet and Wand of Heavens (Aule's Staff had to wait).
With Greenstone Amulet we could now access the Tome of Wisdom at Durlag's Tower. Which meant that Torosar had to pass through the two battle horrors guarding the entrance. Carefully taking them one by one, he had the time to first debuff with Doom while his Spirit Bear was blocking the front line. In terms of damage we went for Summon Insects, Call Lightning and Wand of Missiles for the finish.
After collecting the Tome of Wisdom I realized that the rooftop basilisks will need to wait as we did not have the green ProPetrification scroll with us. And that also brings us to the end of this first entry.
Regards,
B.