So far things have gone reasonably well and I've just completed BGEE. Outline of progress as follows:
Shoal - level 3 (+28 HPs)
Nashkel for ankheg armor and learn CLW (wait 3 mins for gnolls to kill Drizzt to raise money)
Meilum for bracers
Buy Buckley's Buckler to allow regeneration and swap ankheg armor for full plate
Ogre for belt - level 4 (+15 HPs). Pick up rings protection / wizardry
Kill Dushai for ring
Basilisks - level 6 (+15 HPs, +11 HPs). Kirian's party for belt
Grabbed Hentold's dagger
Nashkel Mine and rest to learn LMD. Amazons for potion of power
Kill spiders and return to Landrin while picking up pantaloons
Bandit Camp, picking up full plate there and rest to learn horror
Run through Cloakwood to mine and kill Drasus for boots - level 7 (+9 HPs)
Down to Davaeorn and use magic blocking to kill him. Rest for horror
City for Helm and Cloak and +2 ring among other things - level 8 (+15 HPs) and max reputation
Sirines & golems and then ankhegs
Charisma tome, nymph cloak followed by shopping
Durlag's for tome and XP
Red Wizards for Ring of Energy
Iron Throne using stairs
Candlekeep for tomes
Slythe killed, but left Krystin
Palace dopplegangers meleed
Through maze and avoided Undercity party
Activated Sarevok with a dispelling arrow and pulled him forwards using invisibility (for the first time in the run). Killed Semaj using PfM scroll. Buffed up to kill Sarevok in melee.
Total time for BGEE (playing time, including notetaking, 2 hours 29 minutes). That's pretty slow, but then this element wasn't really a speed run. As I wasn't working to a script I did a cut-down version of my typical run, to reduce the chance of forgetting something important. Here's my inventory and character record on entry to SoD - the extra work done meaning I could level up immediately.
I generally do SoD quite a bit quicker than BGEE. For this run I made a couple of mistakes, but still got through in a reasonable time:
Ran through the dungeon: Porios intimidated, Korlasz killed with dispelling, then acid arrows
Raised a bit of cash in the City by killing NPCs to add to the 25k of jewelry brought through from BGEE. First real mistake was gettting wine, but not handing it in to get Battle Tankard
At Coast Way Crossing went straight to bridge and hid while waiting for Caelar to come for parley
Ran through Troll Claw Woods and on to Forest of Wyrms where I sneaked into the temple.
Killed Ziatar from out of sight. Meleed Neothelid and Akanna. Moved slightly too close to Morentherene initially and she woke up just as I hit her with a throwing dagger - meaning I had to waste a couple of minutes and 3 firebreath potions. I then found when I got to Boareskyre bridge I hadn't released Keherrem - 2 more minutes and a couple of invisibility potions wasted (fortunately those are 10 a penny in SoD)
Surrendered the fort at Boareskyre Bridge. Disrupted mage spells on bridge with Ring of Energy
At Coalition Camp bought some things from Nazramu and picked up the Bwoosh and poison
At Underground River quickly killed cyclops and went invisible to get inside compound. Killed guards there as well as Rigah (to get his +3 2-handed sword)
Placed Bwoosh and sneaked into Warrens to poison food and water
Back at Coalition Camp used arrows of explosion on invaders
At castle went straight for Ashatiel and used darts of stunning to disable him
In hell ran through first area and killed devils to get Thrix to let me on Hellevator
Recruited Caelar, but left her to AI (as always). Without the Battle Tankard there was no incentive to keep her alive with restoration scrolls - and no need given I had such a strong attack. Belhifet went down without trouble in about 7 rounds using Rigah's sword
Ran through epilogue
Here's character record at start of SoA - again with just enough XP to take an immediate level.
Total playing time for SoD 1 hour 41 minutes, including notetaking.
It's nearly 6.30 am now. That's a bit earlier than I usually have breakfast, but this should be a good point to do that and have a little rest for tackling SoA.
SoA tends to be the longest segment of my runs. That partly reflects the size of the game itself, but also that I typically take a very completionist attitude to Chapter 2 and 3 quests. This run, with time pressing, I'm taking a somewhat more selective approach, but there's still been plenty of work done so far:
Quickly did the dungeon, picking up +2 sword and dagger
Circus to get ring of HI
Killed Amalas at the Copper Coronet (level 12)
Bought RoAC and used that to ambush Suna Seni to get Arbane
WK for potion case, then attempted to return Renfeld only to find I didn't have him (I must have killed the last of his assailants out of sight of him)
Killed Officer Dirth for full plate
Used rage to get berserk warrior
Rune assassins
Used PfP scroll to kill genies at Trademeet for Shield of Harmony
Potion case from WK
At the Druid Grove used the efreeti to kill trolls on the way through. Picked up Belm as an off-hand weapon before getting to level 13 for reporting back at Trademeet
Helped Tiris and cleared the tomb. With a few earlier donations at a temple that took reputation to 19
I got the last desired point from the Fallen Paladins, bought the Nymph Cloak and did a bit of shopping
Used strength potion to open doors to get Daystar and Ring of Gaxx - also picked up the Cloak of the Sewers and got to level 14 while doing that
Captain Dennis for Boomerang Dagger
Planar Prison for Pixie Prick and boots of speed. Using Gaxx I could get 10 APR which was far too good for the opposition and even the Warden was rendered unconscious by the Pixie. I got to level 15 there
With ammunition being a bit of a burden, I returned to Watcher's Keep and cleared the top floor (level 16). While there I went down to the second floor to get the poison flail head
At Umar Hills I did the quests in the village to get to level 17 and gain Ilbratha. I didn't go on to the temple though, but just picked up Valygar's body
At the Planar Sphere Kayardi tried a maze, but saw that bounce off rage. I to level 18 there (allowing me to get strength 25 just with DUHM) before picking up the Staff of Fire and Ring of the Ram. Taking the Sphere back home was enough for level 19
Pulled the inhabitants of the Guarded Compound downstairs to get Celestial Fury
With the total game time at 7 hours 30 minutes I gave in to my wife and went for a walk while it's still not too hot. I should be able to crack on for a while now though ...
There wasn't that much more I wanted to do in Chapter 2 and 3, but did do a bit:
the de'Arnise Hold to get the FoA (killing the golems gave me level 20 and a first HLA)
Paid Gaelan Bayle and ran through Aran's tasks (level 21). After Bodhi was sent packing, reporting back to Aran was enough for level 22
Taking ship immediately I went to Brynnlaw and attacked Perth while invisible to get his wardstone. After a few false starts his book halted at true seeing
I zipped through Spellhold with no problem, racking up level 23 and level 24
Fish City saw level 25 while killing the King and Prince and picking up the Cloak of Mirroring
In the Underdark I avoided combats where possible. Those done were the demon in the svirfneblin village, the demon knights to get Soul Reaver (level 26), kuo-toa to get bracers of blinding strike, a few drow guarding the exit and a silver dragon. I also sneaked past some beholders to get the Greenstone Amulet and bought a few things at the Drow City.
Made the Wave and Gesen and spent all my remaining money on potions that will never be used
I was just at the Graveyard on my way to find Bodhi when I realized I'd not done the kidnappers to get the silver pantaloons. A couple of minutes later I had those and went back to the Graveyard. I got level 27 beating up vampires there and 28 from finishing off Bodhi
Returning to Elhan led me to Suldanesselar
Total game time now 9 hours 47 minutes. My brain thought it would be nice to finish SoA before breaking for some food, but my stomach seems to have other ideas, so I'll take a quick break here.
I tried to avoid conflict in Suldanesselar where I could, but still got up to level 29 there. In the temple Rillifane somehow missed seeing the iron golem standing right in front of him, but that only got one hit in during the cut scene before I got back control
On the Tree, Jon spent most of his decent spells on the berserk warrior and efreeti before being taken down by Firetooth in a running battle
In the hell trials got 20% elemental resistance, immunity to +1 weapons, +2 to AC, +15 HP and +2 strength. Also got Blackrazor (stunning the genie from distance with a first use of smite and then waving him) and an alignment change, so that I can use Soul Reaver
Killing Jon's demons was enough for level 30 before Firetooth got to work again to see an end to SoA.
Playing time for SoA (including notetaking) was 6 hours 8 minutes, making 10 hours 18 minutes in total (out of total time elapsed since I started of 12 hours 10 minutes).
Here's my current character record and inventory.
ToB should be significantly quicker than SoA, so I've got plenty of time in hand - just need to concentrate on avoiding the usual sort of mistakes ...
In ToB:
Illasera had no defenses against a GWW.
Made the FoA +4
First challenge Blackrazor kept HPs high before using GWWs on final characters
Opened up Arcana Archives and made improved +2 cloak
Made an assignation with some vampires and killing a few of those was enough for level 31
Went up to Gromnir's throne room invisible. GWWs picked off the enemies one at a time, with Gromnir the last to go lying down in despair
PfU at Temple of Mir (level 32)
At Fire Temple used PfF, oil of speed and a couple of invisibilities to grab the hearts without any fighting
Back at the Temple of Mir just ran after handing in the hearts
After damaging Yaga-Shura I had to hunt for a while to find him again. He was tucked away where I couldn't get him to follow on his own. However, even with help he didn't make much progress while I took him down (level 33)
In the second challenge I'm wary of the danger if you let your clone buff up, so made use of Vhailor's Helm there for the first time in the run
At the Oasis I wanted the Answerer and a GWW meant Jamis only got 2 or 3 steps towards me.
As I'm still some way off the XP cap though I did kill some of the others at the far end of the area
Pacifying a few irate citizens in Amkethran was enough for level 34.
On to Sendai's archive where a sneak attack was too much for the drow captain. I bypassed most of the encounters there and made my way easily through to find Sendai, getting to level 35 on the way thanks to Diaytha
The statues had very little that might be dangerous to me, but I did retreat to the Pocket Plane at one point to heal up damage. True sight was helpful against Sendai herself, but PfMW still allowed her to outlast rage - but by then she was under pressure from a stream of GWWs and unable to do anything further
The third challenge saw the simmy once more in action to outclass the Slayer
For Draconis I hadn't got around to Thaxy, so had no defence against his breath weapon. He got me with that immediately after changing to dragon form, so I went to cower in the hidey-hole for a while until regenerated. He got me several times after that as well, but he was losing huge numbers of levels to Blackrazor, while that was also healing me - and the end was inevitable
I got another level on the way to find Abazigal. Once in dragon form the biggest danger is his ranged maze, so I immediately used rage before getting out of his reach. That meant I was keen to finish him off before rage expired. Using Ras for the first time occupied Abazigal for several rounds and by the time that unsummoned the dragon was on its last legs
Back in Amkethran I got the pantaloons converted into something more useful. Then Saemon got me into the compound and I dashed into the palace before the ambushers could react. I used the Greenstone Amulet to avoid being held and had 100% crushing resistance thanks to hardiness and Defender of Easthaven layered onto Roranach's Horn - unfortunately for Balthazar he did not have any resistance (level 38)
The fourth challenge saw Gargoyle Boots pressed into service for the first time to fend off the backstabbers
The fifth challenge saw the simmy acting as target while I threw in GWWs from the sidelines using the Sling of Everard for the first time. The Ravager managed to outlast the simmy, but only by a couple of seconds
I was just under level 39, so went back out into the world briefly to get enough XP to get me to the level cap.
That took 2 hours 36 minutes in among the odd phone call. I did take a number of screenshots this time and might add those in later {now added}.
That just leaves Mel. I do feel quite tired now, but hopefully will last the distance .
For Mel I decided to go with the more aggressive option and use the Big Metal Unit rather than fight running battles. For her first incarnation I attacked immediately with Soul Reaver using a GWW and managed to get a number of hits in with that. With all opponents needing criticals, I was able to switch between Blackrazor and Soul Reaver to keep Mel nerfed while wearing her down - backing away and using the pulse ammunition from the Big Metal Rod once when she tried to heal.
One rage for the vampiric wraiths and a running battle with Firetooth saw the end of Yan-C-Bin.
I got lucky with her second incarnation. She successfully cast time stop very early on, but decided to run away from me and cast rather than attacking me - the latter could easily have been fatal.
There was nothing particularly dangerous after that. However, I was unable to back away when she tried healing herself at near death and threw in another GWW to ensure that wouldn't happen - she retreated a moment later.
Cryonax was no threat. The blizzard trolls regenerate pretty fast, but not fast enough to keep up with Blackrazor (which can also kill them using level drain).
For her 3rd incarnation I started off with the safer alternative of using the pulse ammunition, with rage protecting against level drain from slayer shadows. With her stoneskins down and having just interrupted a spell, a GWW with Soul Reaver proved nasty for her. Checking her HPs showed she should be on her way and retreating a bit allowed her script to fire.
The main potential difficulty with the next final pool group is the fallen solar. However, he has a preference for using ranged attacks, so if you've got the reflection shield that solves that problem. He would eventually have killed himself anyway, but switching to the Sling of Everard greatly speeded that up.
For Mel's final incarnation, I treated myself to the simmy. I still had loads of resources in hand, so could splash out a bit and for once Mel found herself totally outclassed. I'd checked her HPs with her at near death and found she had 17 left. She had only taken 3 more damage after that, but the Gods clearly realized she stood no chance and called time.
I remained mortal as that seemed a more fitting tribute to the hordes of my characters that have not made it this far .
The final battle was 40 minutes, which means total game time was 13 hours 34 minutes out of the 16 hours 32 minutes since I started the challenge. That game time could be cut greatly (probably by as much as half) if someone was really disciplined about sticking to a plan and only acquiring the really needed equipment and XP.
I'll add a few screenshots to this and the previous post at some point - not sure whether that will be tonight or tomorrow morning as it's tea-time now and I may need to spend a bit of family time after that . {now added}
Restarting another SCS Insane run of thieves & rangers. Charname halfling swash.
Previous attempts:
I: Dead to Torgal
II: Can't remember
III: Dead to spellhold lich
IV: Dead to minsc zerk crit in Jon's dungeon (*eye roll*)
So far just getting out of Jon's dungeon. Yoshi was chunked by a backstab from one of the assassins by the exit. He took a ~30 hp crit backstab that brought him down to 2 hp, then drank an extra healing potion to bring him back up to ~30. Almost immediately thereafter, he took ANOTHER backstab crit, this time for 72 (!!!) damage and was deleted.
Tbf, I knew that was a risk and could have left him hidden in shadows and was just being lazy and sloppy. Getting to spellhold will be a little harder without him, but still probably doable (although I will miss the bounty hunter traps, which I'd only recently learned to be competent at using). The party will miss out on the ~200k exp from his betrayal arc, but probably comes out ahead from not having to share exp in chapter 2/3.
Cliff-notes adventure: A F/M/C out of time, part 3
Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Aldain continues his truncated trek across the Sword Coast. The Ulcaster School, Arghain's area and Samuel's area were all cleared very quickly. Following this, we felt confident enough to go after the basilisks: An invisible Korax snuck right up to Mutamin and managed to paralyze him on the first hit, rendering the rest of the fighting in the area moot (Kirian's party succumbed to dual Web as usual).
The massive influx of experience propelled Aldain to Cleric level 5: With some rudimentary summons finally available, we headed for Durlag's tower, where we proceeded to clear all above-ground levels (Skeleton Warriors chipping in to help drain the Ghost of spells and make his buffs expire) as well as the basement and the Warder level, leaving the Warders themselves alone for the moment.
Following this, all but one of the remaining wilderness areas were taken care of: Narcillicus and the Tombs were looted, the western seaboard cleared of Ogres and Sirines both (through a combination of Web and Animate Dead), and finally the Kobold infestation of Firewine dealt with. Lendarn proved troublesome in that he managed to tag Khalid with a 2x Chromatic Orb sequencer (naturally resulting in Khalid being stunned) and then immediately after threw a Lightning Bolt: Fortunately, said bolt only managed to kill off the attendant Ogrillons and wound Lendarn himself rather than fry any of our party members.
With content running scarce, we'll return to the main plot next time and (following the Cloakwood Mines) move on to Baldur's Gate proper, probably stopping by the Red Wizards on the way.
Aldain is now a level 5/5/5 Half-Elf Fighter/Mage/Cleric.
I've played a fair amount with arcane characters using the minimum legal stats, but don't think I've tried a fighter doing that. In some ways that makes things easier as a 9 in strength is semi-respectable, but options for quick wins against enemies are obviously much more limited without using spells. With a dexterity of 3 (+3 to THAC0) and no strength bonus, patience will be required to kill things with his sling in normal circumstances - so he might resort to using potions rather more than my characters normally do . Here's a bit of back-story for him, though it won't be an RP run: Charles was a happy boy when young. While rather clumsy and frail, he liked nothing better than scrambling around his home in Candlekeep using his sling to try and hit the occasional rat. As he grew older though he started to become aware of how alone he was. He knew nothing of his father beyond his name (Fred Atlas) and less than that of his mother. None of the other children were friendly to him and Charles was dimly conscious that they laughed at his claims that he would grow up to be a great warrior. This did not affect his conviction though and he was determined that, one day, the whole world would tremble at the name of Charles.
Here's his starting character record - showing Charles when he was younger and happier. In addition to sling, I've given him 2 pips in sword and shield to partially offset the fact that he's far more vulnerable to missiles than you would expect from a fighter.
After leaving Candlekeep, Charles shot down Imoen to loot her belongings. Before doing the same to Xzar and Montaron he had to rest though - fatigue is a constant problem when constitution is so low.
Travelling south towards Nashkel during the day (to avoid the possibility of bandit ambushes), he stopped off at the Lakes where he activated a gnoll to attack Drizzt. Checking back on the battle from time to time, the gnoll failed to break its weapon and Charles retreated when Drizzt was near death. The next time looked like being similar, but shortly before Charles would have retired, the gnoll's halberd snapped. Once Drizzt was beaten unconscious it made no difference how poor Charles' THAC0 is and he picked up a cool 12k XP for getting the kill. The 13 HPs gained may not seem much for 3 levels, but were not too bad given the -2 constitution penalty
At Nashkel he picked up the ankheg armor - that only uses 25 of his 50 weight limit and is better than anything except full plate (Drizzt's armor only weighs 7, but is slightly worse even without the inability to use protection items). He also rested to get LMD as a small addition to his ability to damage opponents.
After buying some +1 bullets, Charles took advantage of the poor AC of the golems at High Hedge (getting another level and 7 more HPs there) before buying a potion case to prevent him being encumbered by the weight of all the bottles he's likely to carry. In addition to the standard fighter potions, the ones setting strength, dexterity and constitution to 18 will be valuable to him.
Korax killed the basilisks for Charles to get him to level 6 and also accounted for Baerin before being cut down - prompting Charles to run for it.
With a +1 sling, +3 from proficiency and at level 6, Charles now had pretty respectable aim with his sling and went to take down Shoal.
He took his first damage when trying to shoot the belt ogre and failing to keep enough distance from a wolf that intervened. Once acquired, that belt further improves missile protection, though takes his standard weight carried to 46 - not leaving much to spare for carrying loot .
There was a bit more easy XP for returning a bowl to Tenya before pushing on to Ulgoth's Beard - where Dushai was (briefly) annoyed to be asked to give up her ring. With that in hand Charles went to find Laryssa, after escorting Brage back to Nashkel. With her hold person spells ineffective he could run her round to get her +1 small shield.
Shooting down some xvarts to save Arabelle restored a bit more reputation before Charles went on to Firewine Bridge. Shooting Meilum there and taking his bracers added 1 more to standard weight carried. More running round then accounted for Greywolf in the same way, before Samuel was laboriously taken to the FAI (using the quickloot feature to repeatedly pick up his body from a little distance). Charles dodged in and out of the temple there while shooting Tarnesh.
Melicamp would have been just enough for level 7, but he failed to survive. Instead the required XP was gained from finding a lost dog and killing Vax and Zal (the latter is a good shot with his darts, but their shorter range means he can be attacked with a sling without retaliation if you're careful).
@Wise_Grimwald thus far progress has been pretty easy - more so than I expected to be honest. The relatively high strength combined with good proficiency means Charles does far more damage with ranged attacks than a nerfed cleric or mage would and he's had no need yet to even consider using magical consumables. There will be occasions later in the run where his sling is no good, but there should be plenty of other resources to allow him to deal with those as well.
It took a while to clear the Cloud Peaks, thanks to the need to shuttle loot back to the shops. Charles kept hold of the Bracers of Dexterity though - they improve his THAC0 by 4 compared to using Meilum's bracers. When he finally got the tome back to civilization he was able to improve his charisma to the dizzy heights of 4.
Deciding it was time to make a bit of progress with the main quest, Charles journeyed to the Nashkel mine. The traps there put a hole in his HPs, but he still had 20 left when he arrived at the cave and could rest in safety. Rather than take any risks with Mulahey he let the cleric chase him round the pond trying to talk, while Charles filled him full of holes with sling bullets. Resting then provided him with CLW.
Back in Nashkel, Charles showed himself to Nimbul before retreating and letting the Amnian soldiers kill him. Returning to Beregost he pulled the spiders outside where they made easy target practice. Tranzig was then shot down, standing at the head of the stairs in case there was a need to retreat (there wasn't).
After giving Landrin back his goods and collecting the pantaloons, Charles moved on to the Bandit Camp. Clearing the exterior was no problem - he just needed to make sure he only tackled 1 bandit archer at a time. His low HPs were a concern though as they made him vulnerable to Venkt's damage spells if he couldn't dodge in and out of the tent. To help counter potential problems he attacked Britik as soon as he entered, before backing out again. That was successful in getting Britik to follow alone - where he could be shot at leisure. Bouncing in and out a couple of times, Venkt was the next to follow. Charles used LMD to disrupt an attempted horror and while doing more dodging managed to kill both Venkt and Raemon. However, he was damaged himself in the process and when Hakt hit him twice to take him to single figure HPs he had to retreat. Hakt didn't follow though, so Charles was free to rest up before returning to finish the job. He'd sold Mulahey's boots, which meant a hit from the lightning trap could have been fatal. However, if you approach the chest from the right angle you can not only avoid the lightning yourself, but push Ender Sai into it - gaining an extra 25 gold if he's killed by it.
Realizing just in time that his reputation was still at 10, Charles travelled to Firewine Bridge and, despite his fatigue, shot down Bentan for his PfM scroll. Resting then gained him Bhaal horror.
After running through the Cloakwood he arrived at the mine and attacked Genthore. He was happy to indulge in a shooting contest with him at the map edge. However, just as Charles was about to win that, Kysus turned up and Charles had to run away to avoid a confusion. Coming back again he was able to disrupt Kysus' first spell and kill him before he had another go. Rezdan was nearby, which was a good thing as it meant no need to risk trying to drag him to the map edge to secure a line of retreat (though he had a potion of magic blocking available if all else failed). Rezdan put up mirrors initially, so Charles stepped back slightly and waited those out before showing himself again - and his sling disrupted the 2 spells attempted. For Drasus, Bhaal horror allowed Charles to get a couple of sling hits in before a melee contest. The odds of that still didn't look favorable enough however, so Charles indulged himself with a first use of potions - absorption followed by hill giant strength. He still ran around of course, in order to leverage his better weapon speed and Drasus only managed a single attack (which missed) while being cut down. Genthore then failed to get a hit in a renewed missile contest.
The boots of speed looked very attractive, but would put Charles over his weight limit. He therefore decided to put Icingdeath into storage, rather than carry that around as a potential way of minimizing fire damage.
Inside the mine there was lots more shooting of guards. I was afraid that another potion would be needed to kick open the door behind Rill - but in fact strength of 9 proved sufficient for that . Horror did a good job of dispersing the ambush on the floor below. The battle horrors could be a handful in a fair fight, so Charles softened them up a bit with an oil of fiery burning before pulling them back from Davaeorn to where he could use a potion of firebreath to finish both of them off. After showing himself to Davaeorn Charles immediately retreated to rest and heal up trap damage. A potion of magic blocking then protected against direct spells, while a lucky shot through mirrors interrupted Davaeorn's attempt to summon some monsters and left him all alone in a hopeless melee situation. Charles took a stone giant strength potion to grab the best of the mage's treasure (possibly it would have been sensible to take that before fighting Davaeorn, but there was always the possibility that he might have wanted to retreat).
Things continue to go pretty smoothly and, after flooding the mine, Charles has arrived in Baldur's Gate.
Although a few reputation quests were unavailable due to poor charisma, there were still more than enough available to maximise that. Charles then did some shopping before running through more encounters in the City looking for improved equipment, with the help of a stone giant strength potion to break down doors where necessary. Killing Shandalar's daughters not only gained him a necklace of missiles, but the XP for his final level - just the 3 HPs there this time though. Shooting Desreta and Vay'ya gained the ogre gauntlets to make carrying loot around far easier.
I don't normally use potions at this stage, but decided Charles should gulp a few to avoid having to retreat while fighting through Degrodel's guards to get access to the Cloak of Balduran. Those potions lasted long enough to clear Ramazith's Tower as well. Charles tried to leverage them further to take on the ogre mage in the sewers, but got caught out there when not retreating quickly enough and being confused. Fortunately the ogre mage didn't have quite enough damage spell capability to get through Charles' higher than normal HPs and he was able to run away once his senses were restored and get healed at the temple before returning to get his revenge.
A few fireballs disposed of the Red Wizards to get the Ring of Energy and a few more carved a path through some battle horrors at Durlag's Castle. A couple of mirror eye potions also picked up the XP for the basilisks on the roof, while the Greenstone Amulet allowed the tome to be recovered. The final tome available for the moment was at the Lighthouse area. More Greenstone allowed the sirines to be meleed there and the rise in constitution reduced the penalty on HPs by 1 - thus giving Charles a welcome extra 8 HPs.
At the Iron Throne Charles bounced up and down the stairs while picking off the opposition. That can be a bit fiddly, but there were no real problems this time.
A potion of fire giant strength allowed him to loot the tombs at Candlekeep. On the way out he shot exploding arrows at Prat. Those were effective, although Charles took 2 painful acid arrows from Tam before he burnt up. Another mirror eyes potion accounted for the basilisks.
With no charisma discount, cash was rather shorter than I'm used to, so Slythe was allowed to talk before Charles took him outside and ran him around. Krystin then failed to get a spell away through a missile attack.
At the Palace a whole range of potions were once more taken, including fortitude and agility. Horror worked quite well, with 2 dopplegangers being affected by the first of those. That doesn't necessarily prevent enemies from attacking, but normally reduces their effectiveness quite a bit and Belt survived with only slight injuries, though Liia didn't make it. Before proceeding to the maze the strength potion provided a bit more benefit through looting various places in the City.
In the maze the skeleton warriors were pretty tough opponents and Charles had to retreat to heal a couple of times before moving on.
After bypassing the Undercity party I was intending to fight fair in the temple - but then decided what the hell, Angelo's exploding arrows were too tempting . A couple of minutes of lightning traps flashing all over the place saw Sarevok's companions dead. A single arrow then dispelled him and a bit of slinging later he'd had enough.
Here are Charles' character record and inventory at the start of SoD.
Sure - it's in an unmodded installation and played on Core difficulty. I've just discovered though that Charles will not have access to the Big Metal Rod / Unit, which is a bit of a blow. With poor saving throws as well I don't fancy his chances in the end game, even if he somehow makes it that far. That's a long way off at the moment though ...
Charles - min stats fighter (update 5)
Previous updates:
In the SoD dungeon Porios surrendered as usual. Just in case of trouble later, Charles used a couple of mind focusing potions to allow him to use PfU and clear the first 3 rooms. Fireballs and sling accounted for the enemies prior to Korlasz. She surrendered after being hit by dispelling arrows, but was shot down anyway before she could walk away.
After leaving the City the first action was at the old temple. I realized there I'd forgotten to recharge my Necklaces of Missiles, which meant I attacked Ziatar directly rather than just killing from out of sight. Low HPs made for a slightly nervous combat, but it was won without incident. The Neothelid was a pain though, remaining underground for long enough for a potion of magic shielding to run out - but eventually it showed itself for too long. Firebreath then quickly killed Akanna.
Leaving invisibly, Charles stopped off in the outer cave to send a dagger winging into a dragon's heart.
At Boareskyre Bridge the fort was surrendered without trouble. Charles got an immediate hit with dispelling arrows on the mage on the bridge, meaning he only had to use 2 charges from the ring of energy to ensure all spells were disrupted.
At the Underground River the dying myconid had his conversation as expected, but the hidden cache still did not appear - meaning I lost the chance to get myconid summons. On first approach Charles stunned the cyclops, but was unable to kill it before needing to retreat to stay safe. That meant spending a while picking off the odd guard that chased him around, but eventually he was ready to go underground.
The ettin ghost didn't like Charles, so had to be killed. Turin was also less than impressed by his charisma, so he had to sacrifice a potion of firebreath to get past into the Warrens. The poison was then applied invisibly before Charles ran away.
At the Coalition Camp, exploding arrows were the main defense against the attackers, with a couple of firebreath potions used for clean-up. None of the waves lasted more than two or three rounds.
Moving on to the siege, Charles went straight to find Ashatiel and stunned him into submission. Inside the Castle he renewed buffs before shooting down the devils around Thrix.
After resting, there were lots of potion buffs used for the lift. As with my last run, the shortest potions were renewed at the top, but this time there were no oddities about losing buffs in the cutscene. I wasn't too bothered whether Caelar got killed and she did in fact die when Belhifet still had about 150 HPs left. However, even using a non-proficient scimitar, Charles was quite capable of damaging Belhifet and managed to finish him off reasonably quickly before any of his own buffs had expired.
My evil characters' came to a sticky endf at Durlag's Tower due to the potion of mirrored eyes running out at an inopportune time.
I have started out with two neutral characters. They are not neutral in the sense of druids who actually try to keep the balance, but are neutral as a result of character defects.
Trueber would be good if it were not for her temper which causes her to do things which she later regrets.
Ravenstaff would be good if it weren't for his copmpulsion to steal.
Journal of Trueber
Gaving escaped the ambush successfully we made our way to the Friendly Arms Inn where we killed some hobgoblins before heading North with the intention of avoiding those who sought my life.
We killed the evil Sonner and his acomplices before returning the bowl to Tenya and killing a nearby ankheg.
We then doubled back on ourselves, killing some gnoll at High Hedge. We found a sword belonging to Perdue and went to Beregost to return it to him. Ravenstaff was able to do so discreetly.
We calmed down Marl andf took a tome to Firebead. He was a bit stingy with his reward so Ravenstaff helped himself to some extra items from the household to make the reward something like what it should have been.
He did the same in some other houses but without any moral justification.
We visited the Colquetle family and decided to see if we could help them.
Whilst looking for the lost family members we came across some hostile ogrillon that quickly met their doom.
Heading south we killed more hobgoblin which had the side-benefit of replenishing my quiver.
We then came across the slain Colquetle family and retrieved their amulet.
Heading south once more we killed kobolds and bandits with the result that I have a full complement of arrows once more.
In Nashkel I found some excellent armour which will make adventuring a little safer.
We met Noober and Oublek who tried to give me some gold that I hadn't earned. That turned out to be a good move as it caused my reputation tp rise.
Heading further south still, I found a wand and heading west found a magical ring before bumping into Samuel and his beaux who asked us to return him to the FAI.
On the way we used the grease spell to help os kill some Flaming Fist who attacked us and an ogre. We had found a few spells on our travels, but grease was one of those that Ravenstaff had been able to memorise.
After delivering Samuel we tried to help Melicamp but without success.
Upon returning to the FAI we had to fight Tarnesh. The ensuing battle went well.
I then took on Greywolf and Zordral, both fights being quite tough.
We then went ankheg hunting.
That proved quite dangerous as the sleep spell doesn't alwayd work. As a result we had to leave the area in order to rest.
Returning the body of his son and giving him 100gp to get him back on his feet financially was enough to make us heroes, this despite our less than perfect morality. We cleared the area of all ankhegs, though undoubtedly others will hatch in the future.
We have now bought a green scroll to make basilisk hunting a bit safer.
However, it would be good to sell our ankheg shells first.
At the start of BG2 I had a nasty realization - the pantaloons are in a locked cabinet, which Charles has no way to break into. There were other locks he couldn't break as well and progress was not easy without any of the equipment he'd relied on in BG1. Once he'd killed a duergar or two to get some ammunition for his sling things did get a lot easier. However, he still nearly died when the salt mephit stunned him (despite being panicked) and several panicked goblins also piled in to take him down to 10 HPs before he recovered and was able to nip through a door and shut it behind him.
Having eventually exited from the dungeon, Charles reviewed items for sale. The giant strength belt would have been nice, but was currently out of his price range. In any case the RoAC was probably more use to him for the moment and he bought that. Use of the ring allowed him to panic and shoot down the mage in the Suna Seni ambush and the rest eventually followed in a running fight to get Charles to level 12.
The same sort of thing happened in the Renfeld ambush. As a follow-up to that Charles used improved invisibility in Prebek's house - the mages don't know how to handle that and could be shot down without danger.
Looking for some better armor, Charles went to the Bridge District in search of an ankheg shell in the warehouse. He couldn't open that container immediately, so decided to invest the stone giant strength potion taken from Suna Seni. It still cost a painful 5k to make the armor, but at least that makes his defenses a bit less hopeless.
He bought a potion case at Watcher's Keep to lighten the load of his potions, before going to the Temple of Talos. Their security was rather lacking and strength of 14 (using DUHM) was sufficient to break the lock guarding their prize necklace. Charles didn't fancy Rayic Gethras' house though, so looked around for a suitable target for his sling. The Fallen Paladins seemed to fit the bill and he was soon running them round until they dropped. Before reporting back to the Radiant Heart, Charles went to the temple and donated a total 2.5k (enough cash for 3 reputation points).
The Circus offered the chance for another reputation point and the XP for answering a question on entry to that got Charles to level 13. That was useful as it took his sling to 3 APR and other weapons to 2 APR - it makes it a bit more difficult to micro-manage fights with 0.5 APRs as you don't always know when you're going to attack again. The ring from there (allowing cheap shopping) and the belt (improving missile defenses) were also very welcome.
The ring allowed him to get the quest at the Copper Coronet without any payment and he went there next. The fighting there was easy enough, but I thought it might be worth sharing this screenshot. That illustrates that, while a natural 1 is a critical miss, it's perfectly possible to hit opponents with adjusted die rolls of less than 1 (occurring in this case as a result of using a sling at melee range).
Moving into the sewers, Charles used Arbane to deflect the one hold person a hobgoblin shaman managed to complete. The otyugh was quite dangerous for him, so that was dragged upstairs where he could sleep at the inn mid-combat, without it healing. Most of the time he used the RoAC to rest when he needed to heal up, rather than going back to the inn (the multiple rests needed without my usual constitution regeneration would otherwise have made resting where ambushes are frequent a pain). Lilarcor only weighs 10 lb and, using DUHM I could get to strength 14 to equip it. Once equipped it could stay in a quick slot (except following a level up) and be used to defend against charm and confusion. I did though make a mistake almost immediately with that. I was dragging the slaver guards back into the sewers to be shot down and thought the priest was casting hold person at me. In fact it was charm person or mammal, which has a far quicker projectile, and I failed to switch to Lilarcor before it hit - fortunately I saved though. With his guards dead, Haegan was second best in a missile duel and I could kill the nearby trolls with fire arrows - their speed made using sling on them difficult, but Arbane haste helped with that. The slaver wizards were then shot down under improved invisibility. I ran invisibly through the poison trap, in order to be able to get outside and rest before that could take too many HPs away. Once outside I tried going invisible again - and duly received my one and only warning from the Cowled Wizards about spell casting. With many types of characters (thieves, druids, mages and bards for example) killing the Cowled Wizards is easy enough and a good source of XP and treasure - but Charles has no easy method to kill them at the moment won't be trying to antagonize them in the near future (at least not deliberately) .
Next, Charles did the Sir Sarles quest, taking quite a while laboriously dragging the fake ore around the City. He couldn't do the second temple mission, due to a locked door. However, he'd noted the final vampire ambush triggering while carrying the ore. He'd no wish to tangle with vampires at the moment, but with the ambushes done he went to pay Gaelan Bayle his 15k - getting to level 14 as a result.
Back on the illithium trail, he discovered the whereabouts of Neb. He'd opened that door when he used a stone giant strength potion in the previous session, so headed there. Rather than risk being backstabbed he went outside to rest for a day whenever Neb used an invisibility potion - that eventually allowed him to shoot Neb down at leisure.
After the illithium had been moved into storage Charles thought it would be nice to have a source of invisibility that didn't alert the Cowled Wizards. Brennan's ring seemed to fit the bill, but he needed a way to prevent him from escaping during a battle - so headed for the Graveyard. A few spiders later he'd found Pai'Na and was able to safely shoot her down using improved invisibility (the saving throw bonus from that meant the spiders couldn't poison him in addition to preventing her taking any action). Kitthix then webbed Brennan and his poison added to 4 APR of sling attacks finished him off before he could escape. Mencar was dragged downstairs and shot (though the guard there annoyingly got the final blow), but he got the XP for the others.
With a couple more points of reputation still needed to hit 20, Charles returned to the Bridge District to drop in at the tanner's. He set Kitthix up as a target at the top of the stairs before going down invisibly - retreating back up as soon as one of the Rune Assassins went invisible as a prelude to backstabbing. Even with the help of Arbane haste the battles with those weren't easy, but he triumphed. The ghasts could easily be shot down, but Charles had no magical bullets and it took 54 +1 arrows and 7 fire ones to deal with the bone golem.
Dropping Neb's head off with the Chief Inspector maximised reputation and Charles went to buy the Sword of Roses to be able to do the same with charisma. He then purchased the Maulers Arm (sets strength to 18 to carry loot more easily) and Azuredge from Bernard.
It's felt like a pretty rough introduction to BG2 so far, but Charles is starting to build up some decent equipment that will hopefully make things easier going forward.
Fighter 14, 75 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 263 kills (502 in BGEE/SoD)
SCS Insane Run of Thieves & Rangers (Minsc, Valygar, Jan, Nalia, Imoen); Charname Halfling Swash with darts and scimitars. Party is in BG2 at about 500k exp. 5th attempt.
Yoshi was previously chunked in Jon's dungeon by an assassin's crit backstab, so the party has been playing with only 5 members. The party's path through early SoA is to recruit Jan and Nalia right away (bringing the party to 4, including Minsc), then rush to 250k exp to get Valygar at his exp checkpoint and then try to get as much done as possible before Nalia leaves on day 7.
In Athkatla, the party took care of the Copper Coronet + CC Sewers + Slavers + Circus. At that point we were about 285k exp (higher than I'm used to, due to a 5 member party) and we headed to Umar to get Valygar.
At this point it's around day 4-5, so the party has enough time to do the druid grove before Nalia leaves. The druid grove started pretty straightforward: the 3x sprit troll ambush fell to fireballs, the troll cave had trolls lured out in two packs and also killed by fireballs, and the enemy party fighting trolls was left to mostly get killed by them. However, their druid got off an insect plague on the party after going hostile, which led to Valygar panicking and getting killed.
The party decided to press onward without Valygar, as we were mindful of Nalia's timer. The squad of druids was killed by chaos and cloudkill. We then bought some potions from the rakshasas, including an extremely helpful 10x invisible potions. Jan was left outside so he wouldn't trigger the rakshasas in dialogue. Charname also picked up belm, although he is sticking with darts to stay safer.
Minsc charmed most of the grizzly pack (finally a decent use of his ranger animal charm!). The final 3 druids fell to chaos + wand of cold. Cernd story-mode killed Faldorn, and the quest was complete.
Nalia unfortunately left the party before we could kill the Djinni's, so we held off on finishing the second half of the Trademeet quest. The party briefly headed back to Athkatla to buy explosive potions from Roger and firebreath from the Adventurer Mart, then headed to the Keep.
The Keep was straightforward up until the final fight. Fireballs cleared troll packs reliably, and the yuanti mage missed his spell save vs. chaos. Golems were fought one at a time, with the djinni used to kill the clay golem safely and Lilacor used to destroy the iron golem.
Torgal however nearly wiped the party, and despite his defeat managed to subsequently get revenge from beyond the grave.
The plan had been to set traps on the edge of Torgals room, then: lure Torgal into the traps to kill him, use cloudkill and chaos on the yuanti mages, and use a djinni fireball + thrown fireball potions to alphastrike the trolls. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned. Torgal survived the traps at near death, despite getting an unexpected flamestrike from the djinni.
Torgal quickly regenerated up to badly injured, which I knew would end the run if he weren't dealt with quickly. Magic missiles from Jan + Imoen + 2 potions of firebreath + 1 explosive potion got him back to near death. A charge of the wand of cold finally froze and shattered him - he made his save so it only did ~10 damage, but fortunately it was enough.
Unfortunately, because the djinni cast flamestrike on Torgal and then failed his save vs. spirit troll greater command, that meant he couldn't open with a fireball on the other trolls. And because Yoshi was chunked earlier, that meant that he wasn't there to throw a fireball potion either. So, what would have been 3x opening fireballs was 1x and half a dozen spirit/spectral/giant trolls were still alive to rush the party, alongside the elder umber hulk. In addition, only one yuanti mage got confused and the other was casting spells.
Jan got his stoneskins stripped and was killed before he could drink invisibility. Minsc got kill by the troll pack. Nalia got killed by the yuanti mage's chain lightning, MM and meteors.
I was pretty sure the run was over at this point, but charname and Valygar were able to use invisibility potions to regroup and then take out the remaining foes. The confused yuanti mage had finally died to cloudkill, and most of the trolls had been killed by fire or minsc during the fight, and so the only enemies left were the umber hulk elder, a giant troll, and the other yuanti mage (with a mostly depleted spell book it turned out).
The yuanti mage was separated from the other two, and focused on first. Charname dodged a cone of cold, while using dispel illusion + physical attacks to try to whittle him down. Eventually he fell. The umber hulk was already injured, so an opening backstab from Valygar took him most of the rest of the way. Valygar then kited with Lilicor while charname threw darts. The giant troll was killed with help from the berserker horn.
Then the party moved all the equipment to a box, so they could leave to resurrect the fallen and come back and re-equip. If anyone is still reading and knows the game well, they may see the coming problem.
Upon return to the Keep map, with the revived party in tow, Nalia immediately began her end of quest dialogue, at the end of which she chooses to stay with the party. Locking the Keep forever. Oops.
The nice gentleman at the (now raised) drawbridge was kind enough to inform me that I was no longer welcome inside and that anything left in the keep was now the property of the family. The party lost everything that wasn't equipped to Valygar and charname, plus charname's pack except 2 potions of invisibility. FoA, Djinni lamp, Tuigin, Helm of Balduran, sewer cloak, ring of earth control, ring of human influence, Jan's personal equipment, the meta amulet, all the scrolls and potions and wands, the dryad acorns, and a bunch of lesser equipment was gone forever.
Fortunately, the party still had Kithix, the berserker horn, lilicor (thank god Valygar was carrying it at the end to protect against the umber hulk's confusion), belm, the talos amulet (almost locked that whole quest arc plus the thief stronghold), and the ring of regen and air control.
Painful losses, but I think survivable. FoA, sewer cloak, helm of balduran and djinni lamp are all pretty big losses. The loss of consumables also makes the party considerably less safe until they restock over time. Minsc already has one point in Flails, which is probably wasted. C'est la vie!
With the Mauler's Arm Charles could easily recover the Dawn Ring for the Temple of Lathander.
With Azuredge, Charles returned to the Graveyard and cleared the tombs there - getting to level 15 by helping a, not yet undead man, out of his grave. The underneath area, including the Southern Tombs, got the same treatment.
Deciding that an ammo case would be nice, Charles went back to Watcher's Keep and this time entered. He killed a golem and some undead easily enough, but decided not to bother with a strength potion to get the Crimson Dart. On opening the main door he was greeted with a pair of vampiric wraiths. Kitthix successfully webbed one of those, but that saved against a hit by Azuredge and Charles had to retreat as the other wraith pressed the attack.
However, that initial encounter suggested he would have a decent chance of claiming a victim if the vampiric wraiths didn't start right next to the door (and they don't always do so). He therefore rested and went back in - to find the wraiths waiting about mid-way into the room. They're fast, so there was no chance of getting a thrown attack in before they were upon him and Charles immediately tried to run away again without even attempting an attack. However, both of them hit in the time it took him to take 2 steps backwards - one of them draining a level. He then started to leave, but one of the problems with the exit there is it's not quite instant. You start fading out on the screen, but can still be hit at that stage. I've had a number of characters killed as a result of that, but still all too often I can't resist taking a chance on those vampiric wraiths - and Charles became another victim of that compulsion .
I should have used Arbane haste as well as DUHM before going in. The problem with doing that is that because the transition uses time a significant amount of the haste effect would have been gone before he even arrived inside - but the bit that remained would have saved him when he tried to leave ...
Proficiency point in flails for Minsc is not wasted. With SCS on insane he will have to use Hardiness, Armor of Faith and Defender of Easthaven to (barely) survive. Of course he can use Defender in off-hand without any proficiency but it is +3 weapon so it would be shame not to use also offensively.
Good point. I'm now thinking Crom Faeyr / Easthaven for minsc.
In other news, apparently the ogre form of polymorph self can backstab haha. 4d6+1 base damage. Crunch!
I've really been leaning on that spell early-midgame to try to keep hp damage down on the rangers (healing is scarce) and its been a pretty good workhorse.
I am finding these unmodded games quite strange. Far fewer quests, vast areas of added terrain aren't there, and so few NPCs to choose from.
Trueber and Ravenstaff completed most of the possible areas with the exception of Gullykin, Ulcaster, Werewolf Island and Firewine Bridge.
They then picked up Khaled and Jaheira and took them to Nashkel. Then Xzar and Montaron and took them to Nashkel.
Then Branwen and Dorn. Dorn became the leader of the party and we went shopping for decent armour, the light crossbow of speed, the composite longbow +1, the poisoned dagger, and all the spells from High Hedge that Ravenstaff could use.
We were then poor again!
We cleared the Nashkel Mines without difficulty and picked up Xan.
I have been wishing that a neutral fighter was available. Sadly not.
EDIT
Perhaps in my next game I will start with two very different neutral fighters.
Upon gaining our reward from the mayor, Dorn left the party. Previous comments by him caused me to expect this so he wasn't carrying equipment of note other than Rancor.
We fought various enemies north of the carnival with the result that we had a +1 2 handed sword for Ajantis who joined us when we headed north. We are now heading for the bandit camp.
SCS Insane Run of Thieves & Rangers (Minsc, Valygar, Jan, Nalia, Imoen); Charname Halfling Swash with darts and scimitars. Party is in BG2, now at 1.500m experience. 3rd update. 5th attempt.
Party entered spellhold. Imoen's spawn appears to cap at 1.25m experience, so unfortunately she has 250k less than the other 5 in the party.
The party finished Umar except the shadow dragon, Windspear except Firkraag, first floor of WK except the statues, and the Athkatla content except liches/rune and sphere/prison.
Umar was relatively easy with azure edge and rapid debuff of the shadow lord. I used to think he was a tough opponent (he will cast black blade e.g.), but as I've gotten better I've come to see Umar as little more dangerous than the trademeet druids.
Windspear was a nightmare like it frequently is for me. I think the vampires forced me off the map at least twice. Eventually they fell to malison + hasted valygar wielding azure edge + AoP + Harmony. The latest version of SCS has changed their animal spawns, so they spawn closer and are a bit more of an issue. Bigger issue was just that the ancient vampires have very good saves, so are tough to slay unless you land a malison first and they do a lot of damage and can backstab.
The first windspear golem pack (juggernaught, 2x clay, 2x stone) wasn't too bad. But the second met up with a bunch of orogs and forced the party to flee. I don't have the djinni lamp, so I was sneaking in hits on the clay golems with Minsc, trying to avoid being cursed. The party failed to bottleneck them at a door and was getting swarmed by too many golems + other monsters at once. In hindsight, potions of absorption could be used against golems to probably get to only be hit on crits but I only thought of that after.
Burned a dozen invisibility potions hiding from vampires and golems.
The party did the unseeing eye quest, which I normally leave to chapter 6, because I wanted to try getting enough exp to spawn Imoen at 1.5mm and wanted to take advantage of Yoshi's chunking leaving the party with 5 members for chapter 2/3 and therefore a bit more experience. Unfortunately, Imoen appears to cap at 1.25mm so that plan didn't work.
Valygar managed to trip both the prismatic trap and the petrify trap in the underground ruin. He rolled green on the prismatic and made his save, so fortunately was not disintegrated and perma-killed. He also made his save against the petrify. Yikes.
Got into a bit of trouble with the unseeing eye itself. I didn't want to rest in the unseeing eye cavern itself as the game suggests there is time pressure (although in reality I don't think there is. After clearing out the cavern, I had used all 4 of Nalia's skeletons and only had the flesh golem as a summon that could stand up to the Eye and his two death tyrants.
The party's plan was to hit the eye with the rift, and then use 2x sequencers of 2x MM to remove the rest of his hit points before he could gaze anyone. Unfortunately, he contingency cast spell turning, so that wasn't an option. He killed the flesh golem with a death spell.
I decided to try to kill him with out of LoS evocations and started with a cloudkill from the wand. Which turned out to be sufficient to kill him as he didn't move. However, the death tyrants were immune to cloud kill. Out of other options, Nalia and Jan shapeshifted into mustard jelly, landing the final blow just before the spell wore off. I'm not sure if its an exploit or not that anti-magic doesn't turn shapeshifted mages back humans (merely cost them control over it), but in any case the party took advantage of it.
In brynlaw, the party forgot to bring enough AoE spells to disable Perth and was forced to burn a potion of magic shielding to let valygar go toe to toe with him until the mage's weapon immunity ran out. Charname had snuck in under invisibility to set traps out of sight in the bottom of his house, but unfortunately as he was level 16 they did fire damage not poison and were therefore mostly worthless.
Infinite spellbook was burning hands on first page turn, so there's that.
Lots of buggy behavior in spellhold for some reason. First Bhaal wouldn't follow charname into the keep (I THINK it's because charname was hasted, but I don't see why that should matter). Then the party's equipment didn't get removed when they landed in Bodhi's dungeon.
I wound up replaying a substantial portion of Brynlaw to get the proper game behavior, and was careful to leave the party in the same end state (including throwing out the infinite spellbook, despite it rolling spell turning this time!). I'm not sure if that was better or worse than teleporting the party to a location they could leave their items, but I decided to treat the bugs as a crash and go back to the last available save.
The first thing to do today was generate new characters and the random roller produced a decent result. The mix of arcane and divine spells available provides a good range of options and the druid is able to tank reasonably well in BG1 with ankheg armor, while in BG2 the blade becomes a great tank using defensive spin and back-up spells.
However, we of course didn't let our thinking get too far ahead, but concentrated hard in the early stages to make sure there were no unfortunate events - we wouldn't want anything like this to happen for example:
though to be fair that was the result of a lag hit rather than lack of concentration
Once the temple got Noht up and running again, Shoal was made to suffer. It's relatively rare for us to go after Drizzt's equipment, but his armor is the best available in the game for Noht, while Symon was keen to get a decent scimitar - so the gnolls were activated and left to chew through Drizzt's defenses for a few minutes. Symon then picked up a decent suit of armor for himself at Nashkel.
Arabelle was saved on the way to Firewine Bridge to relieve Meilum of his bracers. Then we went north, past the FAI and returned a bowl to Tenya. We'd decided that the ankheg nest looked a bit too intimidating on the way, but the single ankheg near Tenya seemed fair game and Noht did a good job on that by making a first use of offensive spin.
Back in the south, Noht commented that he was a bit wary of Greywolf's ability to one-shot him. However, Symon thought he should be able to tank Greywolf, while Noht spun into him from behind. Unfortunately Greywolf got an early critical on Symon - and then another when he tried to heal himself. That led to Symon backing away, but Noht chose not to follow instantly - and discovered he was right to have initially felt wary about Greywolf.
After another temple trip Symon tried once more to tank - and this time Greywolf failed to get a single hit in.
The Cloud Peaks were safely negotiated and Noht picked up a number of decent spells along the way - including magic missile, blindness, stinking cloud and the chromatic orb that ruined Vax's day (not to mention his life).
We just had time to emerge from the mountains and deal with a bear to get a final level before saving.
Trio 25, Core rules, unmodded (update 1) Fini - female, human illusionist (Grond0)
Corepally - male, human undead hunter (Corey_Russell)
Plinker - male, human blackguard (Gate70)
Previous run
We'd selected new characters after dying the previous week, so were ready to make a start immediately this time. Looking at my character I was surprised I'd got a human illusionist, but eventually remembered that the random choice I'd used had come up with a dual-class. I couldn't remember what Fini should be dualling to, but still had the appropriate scrap of paper confirming that would be thief - if they survive long enough.
We picked up some decent XP (though not enough for any levels) from Shoal before heading to Beregost. Corepally was keen to buy some better armor there, but Fini decided on a cheaper option and led the way to a group of Flaming Fist to the south. As the captain approached her, he was suddenly struck by an attack of blindness. That infuriated him, but his companions didn't see a need to be annoyed with anyone else and attempted to restrain him - though forgetting to unequip their swords first.
With the captain dead, Fini blinded one of the others - that turned both of them hostile, but the other was duly blinded as well to make the fight easy.
After getting a further armor upgrade in Nashkel, we went north to help out Tenya. Fini thought it would be reasonable to attack the nearby ankheg and see if that could be put to sleep. The others agreed, so Fini opened her spell book in order to memorize more than the 1 sleep she currently had - emerging from that to see the others already engaged. She hurriedly cast her single sleep at the ankheg - the projectile for that arrived just as the ankheg went underground after dissolving Plinker in a spray of acid . Fini did then manage to blind the ankheg and a bit of potioning kept Corepally alive long enough to finish it off.
After the Beregost temple stitched the bits together again, we did a few tasks around the town. That included blinding Silke, although she proved pretty obstinate and only succumbed at the 4th attempt.
Greywolf was another potentially dangerous adversary, made much less so by being unable to see his attackers properly.
We then went next door to pick up Samuel. Fini was making a habit of resting at the edge of the map before transitioning and attempted to do that here as well. It is possible to rest once with Samuel and still get him to the FAI before he expires, but she didn't deliberately try doing that - some xvarts interrupted her anyway and Samuel got back in good time.
Bassilus was the next to be blinded, allowing Plinker to stock up on spare 2-handed swords.
A couple of those broke against the sirines at the Lighthouse, but he still had about 7 left at that stage. We could have killed the golems in the pirate cave by shooting arrows of biting at them, but it seemed a shame to use that expensive option and we left them for now.
By this time increasing HPs, better armor and Evermemory boosted spell selection meant the ankheg nest looked like a good target. As an illusionist, Fini is particularly good at blinding things, but stocked up with 8 sleeps instead (the problem with blinding ankhegs is you have to stay in close melee with them or they dive under the surface - so you can't use 2-handed weapons to hit them from outside their sight range). She would have expected 5 or 6 successes from those sleeps, but in fact got only a single victim . Plinker was happy to forge ahead though and did a good job tanking the remaining ankhegs.
A trip through the Cloud Peaks maximised reputation and gained the charisma tome (allowing Fini to reach 20 charisma with the help of friends). The action there saw Plinker's stock of swords further dwindling though, as was Corepally's - who had actually paid for spare bastard swords - so the next bit of work was finding magical alternatives. Corepally used a hill giant strength potion to loot something to his taste from Beregost smithy, while Plinker sought out Arghain to find a weapon worthy of a real half-ogreman.
Meilum gave up some decent bracers, which Fini surprisingly took ownership of (Corepally had compromised on dexterity during character generation and was using the bracers of dexterity to compensate for that, while Plinker generously decided to stick with his bracers of archery until an alternative could be found at the Bandit Camp).
A trip to High Hedge saw Melicamp reconstituted, while Fini bought a selection of spells to give her alternatives at 2nd and 3rd levels. Unfortunately, as an illusionist she can't use skull trap so will have to wait to find fireball to get the satisfaction of bombing her companions .
Now that Fini knew PfP the last bit of action in the session was a quick trip round the basilisk area. Kirian's party was left until next time, but we did spend a few seconds finishing off Mutamin as our final victim.
@Grond0 et al. A well thought out campaign so far.
Trueber meanwhile used guile to get to the bandit camp without having to take on the bandits.
They then went to take on Deke and cohorts, defeating them easily.
Tranzig was next much to Branwen's satisfaction. He didn't get off a single spell before dying to a flurry of blows.
We went back to the camp clearing it bit by bit.
Ravenstaff usedd web against their top fighter, but he saved and walked on towards the party. Command gave some respite with the result that he was almost dead and didn't have time to do much damage before he fell. Ravenstaff memorised fireball.
The enemies inside the tent proved to be no problem.
In Cloakwood we found Gurke's Cloak and returned to Beregost to give it to him. He didn't want it so Ravenstaff decided to wear it.
We then thought that a trip to Durlag's would be a good idea as our wand of fire only had one charge. we sold it to the merchant there and bought two, one for Ravenstaff and one for Xan.
Whilst there we decided to find what treasure could be easily looted.
We gained experience without suffering too much harm getting into the tower.
Ravenstaff proved his skill at disabling traps and opening locks which gained us some potions, loot and a tome of understanding for Branwen.
I used the cloak of protection that we found as the others couldn't use it due to having rings of protection.
We passed on Kirinhale's lock of hair to a dupe. She was delighted and we were delighted by the experience so gained.
We did feel a bit sorry for the dupe though, so we killed him so that he wouldn't be trapped there forever.
Not having any protections from petrification we decided not to take on the basilisks there just yet.
Comments
Previous updates:
So far things have gone reasonably well and I've just completed BGEE. Outline of progress as follows:
Shoal - level 3 (+28 HPs)
Nashkel for ankheg armor and learn CLW (wait 3 mins for gnolls to kill Drizzt to raise money)
Meilum for bracers
Buy Buckley's Buckler to allow regeneration and swap ankheg armor for full plate
Ogre for belt - level 4 (+15 HPs). Pick up rings protection / wizardry
Kill Dushai for ring
Basilisks - level 6 (+15 HPs, +11 HPs). Kirian's party for belt
Grabbed Hentold's dagger
Nashkel Mine and rest to learn LMD. Amazons for potion of power
Kill spiders and return to Landrin while picking up pantaloons
Bandit Camp, picking up full plate there and rest to learn horror
Run through Cloakwood to mine and kill Drasus for boots - level 7 (+9 HPs)
Down to Davaeorn and use magic blocking to kill him. Rest for horror
City for Helm and Cloak and +2 ring among other things - level 8 (+15 HPs) and max reputation
Sirines & golems and then ankhegs
Charisma tome, nymph cloak followed by shopping
Durlag's for tome and XP
Red Wizards for Ring of Energy
Iron Throne using stairs
Candlekeep for tomes
Slythe killed, but left Krystin
Palace dopplegangers meleed
Through maze and avoided Undercity party
Activated Sarevok with a dispelling arrow and pulled him forwards using invisibility (for the first time in the run). Killed Semaj using PfM scroll. Buffed up to kill Sarevok in melee.
Total time for BGEE (playing time, including notetaking, 2 hours 29 minutes). That's pretty slow, but then this element wasn't really a speed run. As I wasn't working to a script I did a cut-down version of my typical run, to reduce the chance of forgetting something important. Here's my inventory and character record on entry to SoD - the extra work done meaning I could level up immediately.
Berserker 8, 113 HPs, 258 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133732/#Comment_1133732
I generally do SoD quite a bit quicker than BGEE. For this run I made a couple of mistakes, but still got through in a reasonable time:
Ran through the dungeon: Porios intimidated, Korlasz killed with dispelling, then acid arrows
Raised a bit of cash in the City by killing NPCs to add to the 25k of jewelry brought through from BGEE. First real mistake was gettting wine, but not handing it in to get Battle Tankard
At Coast Way Crossing went straight to bridge and hid while waiting for Caelar to come for parley
Ran through Troll Claw Woods and on to Forest of Wyrms where I sneaked into the temple.
Killed Ziatar from out of sight. Meleed Neothelid and Akanna. Moved slightly too close to Morentherene initially and she woke up just as I hit her with a throwing dagger - meaning I had to waste a couple of minutes and 3 firebreath potions. I then found when I got to Boareskyre bridge I hadn't released Keherrem - 2 more minutes and a couple of invisibility potions wasted (fortunately those are 10 a penny in SoD)
Surrendered the fort at Boareskyre Bridge. Disrupted mage spells on bridge with Ring of Energy
At Coalition Camp bought some things from Nazramu and picked up the Bwoosh and poison
At Underground River quickly killed cyclops and went invisible to get inside compound. Killed guards there as well as Rigah (to get his +3 2-handed sword)
Placed Bwoosh and sneaked into Warrens to poison food and water
Back at Coalition Camp used arrows of explosion on invaders
At castle went straight for Ashatiel and used darts of stunning to disable him
In hell ran through first area and killed devils to get Thrix to let me on Hellevator
Recruited Caelar, but left her to AI (as always). Without the Battle Tankard there was no incentive to keep her alive with restoration scrolls - and no need given I had such a strong attack. Belhifet went down without trouble in about 7 rounds using Rigah's sword
Here's character record at start of SoA - again with just enough XP to take an immediate level.
Total playing time for SoD 1 hour 41 minutes, including notetaking.
It's nearly 6.30 am now. That's a bit earlier than I usually have breakfast, but this should be a good point to do that and have a little rest for tackling SoA.
Berserker 10, 126 HPs, 406 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133732/#Comment_1133732
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133738/#Comment_1133738
SoA tends to be the longest segment of my runs. That partly reflects the size of the game itself, but also that I typically take a very completionist attitude to Chapter 2 and 3 quests. This run, with time pressing, I'm taking a somewhat more selective approach, but there's still been plenty of work done so far:
Quickly did the dungeon, picking up +2 sword and dagger
Circus to get ring of HI
Killed Amalas at the Copper Coronet (level 12)
Bought RoAC and used that to ambush Suna Seni to get Arbane
WK for potion case, then attempted to return Renfeld only to find I didn't have him (I must have killed the last of his assailants out of sight of him)
Killed Officer Dirth for full plate
Used rage to get berserk warrior
Rune assassins
Used PfP scroll to kill genies at Trademeet for Shield of Harmony
Potion case from WK
At the Druid Grove used the efreeti to kill trolls on the way through. Picked up Belm as an off-hand weapon before getting to level 13 for reporting back at Trademeet
Helped Tiris and cleared the tomb. With a few earlier donations at a temple that took reputation to 19
I got the last desired point from the Fallen Paladins, bought the Nymph Cloak and did a bit of shopping
Used strength potion to open doors to get Daystar and Ring of Gaxx - also picked up the Cloak of the Sewers and got to level 14 while doing that
Captain Dennis for Boomerang Dagger
Planar Prison for Pixie Prick and boots of speed. Using Gaxx I could get 10 APR which was far too good for the opposition and even the Warden was rendered unconscious by the Pixie. I got to level 15 there
With ammunition being a bit of a burden, I returned to Watcher's Keep and cleared the top floor (level 16). While there I went down to the second floor to get the poison flail head
At Umar Hills I did the quests in the village to get to level 17 and gain Ilbratha. I didn't go on to the temple though, but just picked up Valygar's body
At the Planar Sphere Kayardi tried a maze, but saw that bounce off rage. I to level 18 there (allowing me to get strength 25 just with DUHM) before picking up the Staff of Fire and Ring of the Ram. Taking the Sphere back home was enough for level 19
Pulled the inhabitants of the Guarded Compound downstairs to get Celestial Fury
With the total game time at 7 hours 30 minutes I gave in to my wife and went for a walk while it's still not too hot. I should be able to crack on for a while now though ...
Berserker 19, 158 HPs, 398 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133732/#Comment_1133732
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133738/#Comment_1133738
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133757/#Comment_1133757
There wasn't that much more I wanted to do in Chapter 2 and 3, but did do a bit:
the de'Arnise Hold to get the FoA (killing the golems gave me level 20 and a first HLA)
Paid Gaelan Bayle and ran through Aran's tasks (level 21). After Bodhi was sent packing, reporting back to Aran was enough for level 22
Taking ship immediately I went to Brynnlaw and attacked Perth while invisible to get his wardstone. After a few false starts his book halted at true seeing
I zipped through Spellhold with no problem, racking up level 23 and level 24
Fish City saw level 25 while killing the King and Prince and picking up the Cloak of Mirroring
In the Underdark I avoided combats where possible. Those done were the demon in the svirfneblin village, the demon knights to get Soul Reaver (level 26), kuo-toa to get bracers of blinding strike, a few drow guarding the exit and a silver dragon. I also sneaked past some beholders to get the Greenstone Amulet and bought a few things at the Drow City.
Made the Wave and Gesen and spent all my remaining money on potions that will never be used
I was just at the Graveyard on my way to find Bodhi when I realized I'd not done the kidnappers to get the silver pantaloons. A couple of minutes later I had those and went back to the Graveyard. I got level 27 beating up vampires there and 28 from finishing off Bodhi
Returning to Elhan led me to Suldanesselar
Total game time now 9 hours 47 minutes. My brain thought it would be nice to finish SoA before breaking for some food, but my stomach seems to have other ideas, so I'll take a quick break here.
Berserker 28, 185 HPs, 715 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133732/#Comment_1133732
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133738/#Comment_1133738
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133757/#Comment_1133757
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133765/#Comment_1133765
I tried to avoid conflict in Suldanesselar where I could, but still got up to level 29 there. In the temple Rillifane somehow missed seeing the iron golem standing right in front of him, but that only got one hit in during the cut scene before I got back control
On the Tree, Jon spent most of his decent spells on the berserk warrior and efreeti before being taken down by Firetooth in a running battle
In the hell trials got 20% elemental resistance, immunity to +1 weapons, +2 to AC, +15 HP and +2 strength. Also got Blackrazor (stunning the genie from distance with a first use of smite and then waving him) and an alignment change, so that I can use Soul Reaver
Killing Jon's demons was enough for level 30 before Firetooth got to work again to see an end to SoA.
Playing time for SoA (including notetaking) was 6 hours 8 minutes, making 10 hours 18 minutes in total (out of total time elapsed since I started of 12 hours 10 minutes).
Here's my current character record and inventory.
ToB should be significantly quicker than SoA, so I've got plenty of time in hand - just need to concentrate on avoiding the usual sort of mistakes ...
Berserker 30, 206 HPs, 740 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133732/#Comment_1133732
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133738/#Comment_1133738
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133757/#Comment_1133757
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133765/#Comment_1133765
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133773/#Comment_1133773
In ToB:
Illasera had no defenses against a GWW.
Made the FoA +4
First challenge Blackrazor kept HPs high before using GWWs on final characters
Opened up Arcana Archives and made improved +2 cloak
Made an assignation with some vampires and killing a few of those was enough for level 31
Went up to Gromnir's throne room invisible. GWWs picked off the enemies one at a time, with Gromnir the last to go lying down in despair
At Fire Temple used PfF, oil of speed and a couple of invisibilities to grab the hearts without any fighting
Back at the Temple of Mir just ran after handing in the hearts
After damaging Yaga-Shura I had to hunt for a while to find him again. He was tucked away where I couldn't get him to follow on his own. However, even with help he didn't make much progress while I took him down (level 33)
Pacifying a few irate citizens in Amkethran was enough for level 34.
On to Sendai's archive where a sneak attack was too much for the drow captain. I bypassed most of the encounters there and made my way easily through to find Sendai, getting to level 35 on the way thanks to Diaytha
The statues had very little that might be dangerous to me, but I did retreat to the Pocket Plane at one point to heal up damage. True sight was helpful against Sendai herself, but PfMW still allowed her to outlast rage - but by then she was under pressure from a stream of GWWs and unable to do anything further
That took 2 hours 36 minutes in among the odd phone call. I did take a number of screenshots this time and might add those in later {now added}.
That just leaves Mel. I do feel quite tired now, but hopefully will last the distance
Berserker 40, 236 HPs, 967 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133732/#Comment_1133732
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133738/#Comment_1133738
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133757/#Comment_1133757
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133765/#Comment_1133765
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133773/#Comment_1133773
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1133799/#Comment_1133799
For Mel I decided to go with the more aggressive option and use the Big Metal Unit rather than fight running battles. For her first incarnation I attacked immediately with Soul Reaver using a GWW and managed to get a number of hits in with that. With all opponents needing criticals, I was able to switch between Blackrazor and Soul Reaver to keep Mel nerfed while wearing her down - backing away and using the pulse ammunition from the Big Metal Rod once when she tried to heal.
One rage for the vampiric wraiths and a running battle with Firetooth saw the end of Yan-C-Bin.
I got lucky with her second incarnation. She successfully cast time stop very early on, but decided to run away from me and cast rather than attacking me - the latter could easily have been fatal.
Cryonax was no threat. The blizzard trolls regenerate pretty fast, but not fast enough to keep up with Blackrazor (which can also kill them using level drain).
For her 3rd incarnation I started off with the safer alternative of using the pulse ammunition, with rage protecting against level drain from slayer shadows. With her stoneskins down and having just interrupted a spell, a GWW with Soul Reaver proved nasty for her. Checking her HPs showed she should be on her way and retreating a bit allowed her script to fire.
The main potential difficulty with the next final pool group is the fallen solar. However, he has a preference for using ranged attacks, so if you've got the reflection shield that solves that problem. He would eventually have killed himself anyway, but switching to the Sling of Everard greatly speeded that up.
For Mel's final incarnation, I treated myself to the simmy. I still had loads of resources in hand, so could splash out a bit and for once Mel found herself totally outclassed. I'd checked her HPs with her at near death and found she had 17 left. She had only taken 3 more damage after that, but the Gods clearly realized she stood no chance and called time.
I remained mortal as that seemed a more fitting tribute to the hordes of my characters that have not made it this far
The final battle was 40 minutes, which means total game time was 13 hours 34 minutes out of the 16 hours 32 minutes since I started the challenge. That game time could be cut greatly (probably by as much as half) if someone was really disciplined about sticking to a plan and only acquiring the really needed equipment and XP.
I'll add a few screenshots to this and the previous post at some point - not sure whether that will be tonight or tomorrow morning as it's tea-time now and I may need to spend a bit of family time after that
Previous attempts:
I: Dead to Torgal
II: Can't remember
III: Dead to spellhold lich
IV: Dead to minsc zerk crit in Jon's dungeon (*eye roll*)
So far just getting out of Jon's dungeon. Yoshi was chunked by a backstab from one of the assassins by the exit. He took a ~30 hp crit backstab that brought him down to 2 hp, then drank an extra healing potion to bring him back up to ~30. Almost immediately thereafter, he took ANOTHER backstab crit, this time for 72 (!!!) damage and was deleted.
Tbf, I knew that was a risk and could have left him hidden in shadows and was just being lazy and sloppy. Getting to spellhold will be a little harder without him, but still probably doable (although I will miss the bounty hunter traps, which I'd only recently learned to be competent at using). The party will miss out on the ~200k exp from his betrayal arc, but probably comes out ahead from not having to share exp in chapter 2/3.
Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
The massive influx of experience propelled Aldain to Cleric level 5: With some rudimentary summons finally available, we headed for Durlag's tower, where we proceeded to clear all above-ground levels (Skeleton Warriors chipping in to help drain the Ghost of spells and make his buffs expire) as well as the basement and the Warder level, leaving the Warders themselves alone for the moment.
Following this, all but one of the remaining wilderness areas were taken care of: Narcillicus and the Tombs were looted, the western seaboard cleared of Ogres and Sirines both (through a combination of Web and Animate Dead), and finally the Kobold infestation of Firewine dealt with. Lendarn proved troublesome in that he managed to tag Khalid with a 2x Chromatic Orb sequencer (naturally resulting in Khalid being stunned) and then immediately after threw a Lightning Bolt: Fortunately, said bolt only managed to kill off the attendant Ogrillons and wound Lendarn himself rather than fry any of our party members.
With content running scarce, we'll return to the main plot next time and (following the Cloakwood Mines) move on to Baldur's Gate proper, probably stopping by the Red Wizards on the way.
Aldain is now a level 5/5/5 Half-Elf Fighter/Mage/Cleric.
I've played a fair amount with arcane characters using the minimum legal stats, but don't think I've tried a fighter doing that. In some ways that makes things easier as a 9 in strength is semi-respectable, but options for quick wins against enemies are obviously much more limited without using spells. With a dexterity of 3 (+3 to THAC0) and no strength bonus, patience will be required to kill things with his sling in normal circumstances - so he might resort to using potions rather more than my characters normally do
Charles was a happy boy when young. While rather clumsy and frail, he liked nothing better than scrambling around his home in Candlekeep using his sling to try and hit the occasional rat. As he grew older though he started to become aware of how alone he was. He knew nothing of his father beyond his name (Fred Atlas) and less than that of his mother. None of the other children were friendly to him and Charles was dimly conscious that they laughed at his claims that he would grow up to be a great warrior. This did not affect his conviction though and he was determined that, one day, the whole world would tremble at the name of Charles.
Here's his starting character record - showing Charles when he was younger and happier. In addition to sling, I've given him 2 pips in sword and shield to partially offset the fact that he's far more vulnerable to missiles than you would expect from a fighter.
Previous updates:
After leaving Candlekeep, Charles shot down Imoen to loot her belongings. Before doing the same to Xzar and Montaron he had to rest though - fatigue is a constant problem when constitution is so low.
Travelling south towards Nashkel during the day (to avoid the possibility of bandit ambushes), he stopped off at the Lakes where he activated a gnoll to attack Drizzt. Checking back on the battle from time to time, the gnoll failed to break its weapon and Charles retreated when Drizzt was near death. The next time looked like being similar, but shortly before Charles would have retired, the gnoll's halberd snapped. Once Drizzt was beaten unconscious it made no difference how poor Charles' THAC0 is and he picked up a cool 12k XP for getting the kill. The 13 HPs gained may not seem much for 3 levels, but were not too bad given the -2 constitution penalty
At Nashkel he picked up the ankheg armor - that only uses 25 of his 50 weight limit and is better than anything except full plate (Drizzt's armor only weighs 7, but is slightly worse even without the inability to use protection items). He also rested to get LMD as a small addition to his ability to damage opponents.
After buying some +1 bullets, Charles took advantage of the poor AC of the golems at High Hedge (getting another level and 7 more HPs there) before buying a potion case to prevent him being encumbered by the weight of all the bottles he's likely to carry. In addition to the standard fighter potions, the ones setting strength, dexterity and constitution to 18 will be valuable to him.
Korax killed the basilisks for Charles to get him to level 6 and also accounted for Baerin before being cut down - prompting Charles to run for it.
With a +1 sling, +3 from proficiency and at level 6, Charles now had pretty respectable aim with his sling and went to take down Shoal.
He took his first damage when trying to shoot the belt ogre and failing to keep enough distance from a wolf that intervened. Once acquired, that belt further improves missile protection, though takes his standard weight carried to 46 - not leaving much to spare for carrying loot
There was a bit more easy XP for returning a bowl to Tenya before pushing on to Ulgoth's Beard - where Dushai was (briefly) annoyed to be asked to give up her ring. With that in hand Charles went to find Laryssa, after escorting Brage back to Nashkel. With her hold person spells ineffective he could run her round to get her +1 small shield.
Shooting down some xvarts to save Arabelle restored a bit more reputation before Charles went on to Firewine Bridge. Shooting Meilum there and taking his bracers added 1 more to standard weight carried. More running round then accounted for Greywolf in the same way, before Samuel was laboriously taken to the FAI (using the quickloot feature to repeatedly pick up his body from a little distance). Charles dodged in and out of the temple there while shooting Tarnesh.
Melicamp would have been just enough for level 7, but he failed to survive. Instead the required XP was gained from finding a lost dog and killing Vax and Zal (the latter is a good shot with his darts, but their shorter range means he can be attacked with a sling without retaliation if you're careful).
@Wise_Grimwald thus far progress has been pretty easy - more so than I expected to be honest. The relatively high strength combined with good proficiency means Charles does far more damage with ranged attacks than a nerfed cleric or mage would and he's had no need yet to even consider using magical consumables. There will be occasions later in the run where his sling is no good, but there should be plenty of other resources to allow him to deal with those as well.
Fighter 7, 39 HPs, 54 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134092/#Comment_1134092
It took a while to clear the Cloud Peaks, thanks to the need to shuttle loot back to the shops. Charles kept hold of the Bracers of Dexterity though - they improve his THAC0 by 4 compared to using Meilum's bracers. When he finally got the tome back to civilization he was able to improve his charisma to the dizzy heights of 4.
Deciding it was time to make a bit of progress with the main quest, Charles journeyed to the Nashkel mine. The traps there put a hole in his HPs, but he still had 20 left when he arrived at the cave and could rest in safety. Rather than take any risks with Mulahey he let the cleric chase him round the pond trying to talk, while Charles filled him full of holes with sling bullets. Resting then provided him with CLW.
Back in Nashkel, Charles showed himself to Nimbul before retreating and letting the Amnian soldiers kill him. Returning to Beregost he pulled the spiders outside where they made easy target practice. Tranzig was then shot down, standing at the head of the stairs in case there was a need to retreat (there wasn't).
After giving Landrin back his goods and collecting the pantaloons, Charles moved on to the Bandit Camp. Clearing the exterior was no problem - he just needed to make sure he only tackled 1 bandit archer at a time. His low HPs were a concern though as they made him vulnerable to Venkt's damage spells if he couldn't dodge in and out of the tent. To help counter potential problems he attacked Britik as soon as he entered, before backing out again. That was successful in getting Britik to follow alone - where he could be shot at leisure. Bouncing in and out a couple of times, Venkt was the next to follow. Charles used LMD to disrupt an attempted horror and while doing more dodging managed to kill both Venkt and Raemon. However, he was damaged himself in the process and when Hakt hit him twice to take him to single figure HPs he had to retreat. Hakt didn't follow though, so Charles was free to rest up before returning to finish the job. He'd sold Mulahey's boots, which meant a hit from the lightning trap could have been fatal. However, if you approach the chest from the right angle you can not only avoid the lightning yourself, but push Ender Sai into it - gaining an extra 25 gold if he's killed by it.
Realizing just in time that his reputation was still at 10, Charles travelled to Firewine Bridge and, despite his fatigue, shot down Bentan for his PfM scroll. Resting then gained him Bhaal horror.
After running through the Cloakwood he arrived at the mine and attacked Genthore. He was happy to indulge in a shooting contest with him at the map edge. However, just as Charles was about to win that, Kysus turned up and Charles had to run away to avoid a confusion. Coming back again he was able to disrupt Kysus' first spell and kill him before he had another go. Rezdan was nearby, which was a good thing as it meant no need to risk trying to drag him to the map edge to secure a line of retreat (though he had a potion of magic blocking available if all else failed). Rezdan put up mirrors initially, so Charles stepped back slightly and waited those out before showing himself again - and his sling disrupted the 2 spells attempted. For Drasus, Bhaal horror allowed Charles to get a couple of sling hits in before a melee contest. The odds of that still didn't look favorable enough however, so Charles indulged himself with a first use of potions - absorption followed by hill giant strength. He still ran around of course, in order to leverage his better weapon speed and Drasus only managed a single attack (which missed) while being cut down. Genthore then failed to get a hit in a renewed missile contest.
The boots of speed looked very attractive, but would put Charles over his weight limit. He therefore decided to put Icingdeath into storage, rather than carry that around as a potential way of minimizing fire damage.
Inside the mine there was lots more shooting of guards. I was afraid that another potion would be needed to kick open the door behind Rill - but in fact strength of 9 proved sufficient for that
Things continue to go pretty smoothly and, after flooding the mine, Charles has arrived in Baldur's Gate.
Fighter 7, 39 HPs, 171 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134092/#Comment_1134092
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134147/#Comment_1134147
Although a few reputation quests were unavailable due to poor charisma, there were still more than enough available to maximise that. Charles then did some shopping before running through more encounters in the City looking for improved equipment, with the help of a stone giant strength potion to break down doors where necessary. Killing Shandalar's daughters not only gained him a necklace of missiles, but the XP for his final level - just the 3 HPs there this time though. Shooting Desreta and Vay'ya gained the ogre gauntlets to make carrying loot around far easier.
I don't normally use potions at this stage, but decided Charles should gulp a few to avoid having to retreat while fighting through Degrodel's guards to get access to the Cloak of Balduran. Those potions lasted long enough to clear Ramazith's Tower as well. Charles tried to leverage them further to take on the ogre mage in the sewers, but got caught out there when not retreating quickly enough and being confused. Fortunately the ogre mage didn't have quite enough damage spell capability to get through Charles' higher than normal HPs and he was able to run away once his senses were restored and get healed at the temple before returning to get his revenge.
A few fireballs disposed of the Red Wizards to get the Ring of Energy and a few more carved a path through some battle horrors at Durlag's Castle. A couple of mirror eye potions also picked up the XP for the basilisks on the roof, while the Greenstone Amulet allowed the tome to be recovered. The final tome available for the moment was at the Lighthouse area. More Greenstone allowed the sirines to be meleed there and the rise in constitution reduced the penalty on HPs by 1 - thus giving Charles a welcome extra 8 HPs.
At the Iron Throne Charles bounced up and down the stairs while picking off the opposition. That can be a bit fiddly, but there were no real problems this time.
A potion of fire giant strength allowed him to loot the tombs at Candlekeep. On the way out he shot exploding arrows at Prat. Those were effective, although Charles took 2 painful acid arrows from Tam before he burnt up. Another mirror eyes potion accounted for the basilisks.
With no charisma discount, cash was rather shorter than I'm used to, so Slythe was allowed to talk before Charles took him outside and ran him around. Krystin then failed to get a spell away through a missile attack.
At the Palace a whole range of potions were once more taken, including fortitude and agility. Horror worked quite well, with 2 dopplegangers being affected by the first of those. That doesn't necessarily prevent enemies from attacking, but normally reduces their effectiveness quite a bit and Belt survived with only slight injuries, though Liia didn't make it. Before proceeding to the maze the strength potion provided a bit more benefit through looting various places in the City.
In the maze the skeleton warriors were pretty tough opponents and Charles had to retreat to heal a couple of times before moving on.
After bypassing the Undercity party I was intending to fight fair in the temple - but then decided what the hell, Angelo's exploding arrows were too tempting
Here are Charles' character record and inventory at the start of SoD.
Fighter 8, 55 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 346 kills
Grond0 do you mind sharing whether you are running vanila or any particular mods?
Charles - min stats fighter (update 5)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134092/#Comment_1134092
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134147/#Comment_1134147
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134199/#Comment_1134199
In the SoD dungeon Porios surrendered as usual. Just in case of trouble later, Charles used a couple of mind focusing potions to allow him to use PfU and clear the first 3 rooms. Fireballs and sling accounted for the enemies prior to Korlasz. She surrendered after being hit by dispelling arrows, but was shot down anyway before she could walk away.
After leaving the City the first action was at the old temple. I realized there I'd forgotten to recharge my Necklaces of Missiles, which meant I attacked Ziatar directly rather than just killing from out of sight. Low HPs made for a slightly nervous combat, but it was won without incident. The Neothelid was a pain though, remaining underground for long enough for a potion of magic shielding to run out - but eventually it showed itself for too long. Firebreath then quickly killed Akanna.
Leaving invisibly, Charles stopped off in the outer cave to send a dagger winging into a dragon's heart.
At Boareskyre Bridge the fort was surrendered without trouble. Charles got an immediate hit with dispelling arrows on the mage on the bridge, meaning he only had to use 2 charges from the ring of energy to ensure all spells were disrupted.
At the Underground River the dying myconid had his conversation as expected, but the hidden cache still did not appear - meaning I lost the chance to get myconid summons. On first approach Charles stunned the cyclops, but was unable to kill it before needing to retreat to stay safe. That meant spending a while picking off the odd guard that chased him around, but eventually he was ready to go underground.
The ettin ghost didn't like Charles, so had to be killed. Turin was also less than impressed by his charisma, so he had to sacrifice a potion of firebreath to get past into the Warrens. The poison was then applied invisibly before Charles ran away.
At the Coalition Camp, exploding arrows were the main defense against the attackers, with a couple of firebreath potions used for clean-up. None of the waves lasted more than two or three rounds.
Moving on to the siege, Charles went straight to find Ashatiel and stunned him into submission. Inside the Castle he renewed buffs before shooting down the devils around Thrix.
After resting, there were lots of potion buffs used for the lift. As with my last run, the shortest potions were renewed at the top, but this time there were no oddities about losing buffs in the cutscene. I wasn't too bothered whether Caelar got killed and she did in fact die when Belhifet still had about 150 HPs left. However, even using a non-proficient scimitar, Charles was quite capable of damaging Belhifet and managed to finish him off reasonably quickly before any of his own buffs had expired.
Character record at start of BG2EE.
Fighter 10, 58 HPs, 0 kills (502 in BGEE/SoD)
I have started out with two neutral characters. They are not neutral in the sense of druids who actually try to keep the balance, but are neutral as a result of character defects.
Trueber would be good if it were not for her temper which causes her to do things which she later regrets.
Ravenstaff would be good if it weren't for his copmpulsion to steal.
Journal of Trueber
Gaving escaped the ambush successfully we made our way to the Friendly Arms Inn where we killed some hobgoblins before heading North with the intention of avoiding those who sought my life.
We killed the evil Sonner and his acomplices before returning the bowl to Tenya and killing a nearby ankheg.
We then doubled back on ourselves, killing some gnoll at High Hedge. We found a sword belonging to Perdue and went to Beregost to return it to him. Ravenstaff was able to do so discreetly.
We calmed down Marl andf took a tome to Firebead. He was a bit stingy with his reward so Ravenstaff helped himself to some extra items from the household to make the reward something like what it should have been.
He did the same in some other houses but without any moral justification.
We visited the Colquetle family and decided to see if we could help them.
Whilst looking for the lost family members we came across some hostile ogrillon that quickly met their doom.
Heading south we killed more hobgoblin which had the side-benefit of replenishing my quiver.
We then came across the slain Colquetle family and retrieved their amulet.
Heading south once more we killed kobolds and bandits with the result that I have a full complement of arrows once more.
In Nashkel I found some excellent armour which will make adventuring a little safer.
We met Noober and Oublek who tried to give me some gold that I hadn't earned. That turned out to be a good move as it caused my reputation tp rise.
Heading further south still, I found a wand and heading west found a magical ring before bumping into Samuel and his beaux who asked us to return him to the FAI.
On the way we used the grease spell to help os kill some Flaming Fist who attacked us and an ogre. We had found a few spells on our travels, but grease was one of those that Ravenstaff had been able to memorise.
After delivering Samuel we tried to help Melicamp but without success.
Upon returning to the FAI we had to fight Tarnesh. The ensuing battle went well.
I then took on Greywolf and Zordral, both fights being quite tough.
We then went ankheg hunting.
That proved quite dangerous as the sleep spell doesn't alwayd work. As a result we had to leave the area in order to rest.
Returning the body of his son and giving him 100gp to get him back on his feet financially was enough to make us heroes, this despite our less than perfect morality. We cleared the area of all ankhegs, though undoubtedly others will hatch in the future.
We have now bought a green scroll to make basilisk hunting a bit safer.
However, it would be good to sell our ankheg shells first.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134092/#Comment_1134092
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134147/#Comment_1134147
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134199/#Comment_1134199
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134307/#Comment_1134307
At the start of BG2 I had a nasty realization - the pantaloons are in a locked cabinet, which Charles has no way to break into. There were other locks he couldn't break as well and progress was not easy without any of the equipment he'd relied on in BG1. Once he'd killed a duergar or two to get some ammunition for his sling things did get a lot easier. However, he still nearly died when the salt mephit stunned him (despite being panicked) and several panicked goblins also piled in to take him down to 10 HPs before he recovered and was able to nip through a door and shut it behind him.
Having eventually exited from the dungeon, Charles reviewed items for sale. The giant strength belt would have been nice, but was currently out of his price range. In any case the RoAC was probably more use to him for the moment and he bought that. Use of the ring allowed him to panic and shoot down the mage in the Suna Seni ambush and the rest eventually followed in a running fight to get Charles to level 12.
The same sort of thing happened in the Renfeld ambush. As a follow-up to that Charles used improved invisibility in Prebek's house - the mages don't know how to handle that and could be shot down without danger.
Looking for some better armor, Charles went to the Bridge District in search of an ankheg shell in the warehouse. He couldn't open that container immediately, so decided to invest the stone giant strength potion taken from Suna Seni. It still cost a painful 5k to make the armor, but at least that makes his defenses a bit less hopeless.
He bought a potion case at Watcher's Keep to lighten the load of his potions, before going to the Temple of Talos. Their security was rather lacking and strength of 14 (using DUHM) was sufficient to break the lock guarding their prize necklace. Charles didn't fancy Rayic Gethras' house though, so looked around for a suitable target for his sling. The Fallen Paladins seemed to fit the bill and he was soon running them round until they dropped. Before reporting back to the Radiant Heart, Charles went to the temple and donated a total 2.5k (enough cash for 3 reputation points).
The Circus offered the chance for another reputation point and the XP for answering a question on entry to that got Charles to level 13. That was useful as it took his sling to 3 APR and other weapons to 2 APR - it makes it a bit more difficult to micro-manage fights with 0.5 APRs as you don't always know when you're going to attack again. The ring from there (allowing cheap shopping) and the belt (improving missile defenses) were also very welcome.
The ring allowed him to get the quest at the Copper Coronet without any payment and he went there next. The fighting there was easy enough, but I thought it might be worth sharing this screenshot. That illustrates that, while a natural 1 is a critical miss, it's perfectly possible to hit opponents with adjusted die rolls of less than 1 (occurring in this case as a result of using a sling at melee range).
Moving into the sewers, Charles used Arbane to deflect the one hold person a hobgoblin shaman managed to complete. The otyugh was quite dangerous for him, so that was dragged upstairs where he could sleep at the inn mid-combat, without it healing. Most of the time he used the RoAC to rest when he needed to heal up, rather than going back to the inn (the multiple rests needed without my usual constitution regeneration would otherwise have made resting where ambushes are frequent a pain). Lilarcor only weighs 10 lb and, using DUHM I could get to strength 14 to equip it. Once equipped it could stay in a quick slot (except following a level up) and be used to defend against charm and confusion. I did though make a mistake almost immediately with that. I was dragging the slaver guards back into the sewers to be shot down and thought the priest was casting hold person at me. In fact it was charm person or mammal, which has a far quicker projectile, and I failed to switch to Lilarcor before it hit - fortunately I saved though. With his guards dead, Haegan was second best in a missile duel and I could kill the nearby trolls with fire arrows - their speed made using sling on them difficult, but Arbane haste helped with that. The slaver wizards were then shot down under improved invisibility. I ran invisibly through the poison trap, in order to be able to get outside and rest before that could take too many HPs away. Once outside I tried going invisible again - and duly received my one and only warning from the Cowled Wizards about spell casting. With many types of characters (thieves, druids, mages and bards for example) killing the Cowled Wizards is easy enough and a good source of XP and treasure - but Charles has no easy method to kill them at the moment won't be trying to antagonize them in the near future (at least not deliberately)
Next, Charles did the Sir Sarles quest, taking quite a while laboriously dragging the fake ore around the City. He couldn't do the second temple mission, due to a locked door. However, he'd noted the final vampire ambush triggering while carrying the ore. He'd no wish to tangle with vampires at the moment, but with the ambushes done he went to pay Gaelan Bayle his 15k - getting to level 14 as a result.
Back on the illithium trail, he discovered the whereabouts of Neb. He'd opened that door when he used a stone giant strength potion in the previous session, so headed there. Rather than risk being backstabbed he went outside to rest for a day whenever Neb used an invisibility potion - that eventually allowed him to shoot Neb down at leisure.
After the illithium had been moved into storage Charles thought it would be nice to have a source of invisibility that didn't alert the Cowled Wizards. Brennan's ring seemed to fit the bill, but he needed a way to prevent him from escaping during a battle - so headed for the Graveyard. A few spiders later he'd found Pai'Na and was able to safely shoot her down using improved invisibility (the saving throw bonus from that meant the spiders couldn't poison him in addition to preventing her taking any action). Kitthix then webbed Brennan and his poison added to 4 APR of sling attacks finished him off before he could escape. Mencar was dragged downstairs and shot (though the guard there annoyingly got the final blow), but he got the XP for the others.
With a couple more points of reputation still needed to hit 20, Charles returned to the Bridge District to drop in at the tanner's. He set Kitthix up as a target at the top of the stairs before going down invisibly - retreating back up as soon as one of the Rune Assassins went invisible as a prelude to backstabbing. Even with the help of Arbane haste the battles with those weren't easy, but he triumphed. The ghasts could easily be shot down, but Charles had no magical bullets and it took 54 +1 arrows and 7 fire ones to deal with the bone golem.
Dropping Neb's head off with the Chief Inspector maximised reputation and Charles went to buy the Sword of Roses to be able to do the same with charisma. He then purchased the Maulers Arm (sets strength to 18 to carry loot more easily) and Azuredge from Bernard.
It's felt like a pretty rough introduction to BG2 so far, but Charles is starting to build up some decent equipment that will hopefully make things easier going forward.
Fighter 14, 75 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 263 kills (502 in BGEE/SoD)
Yoshi was previously chunked in Jon's dungeon by an assassin's crit backstab, so the party has been playing with only 5 members. The party's path through early SoA is to recruit Jan and Nalia right away (bringing the party to 4, including Minsc), then rush to 250k exp to get Valygar at his exp checkpoint and then try to get as much done as possible before Nalia leaves on day 7.
In Athkatla, the party took care of the Copper Coronet + CC Sewers + Slavers + Circus. At that point we were about 285k exp (higher than I'm used to, due to a 5 member party) and we headed to Umar to get Valygar.
At this point it's around day 4-5, so the party has enough time to do the druid grove before Nalia leaves. The druid grove started pretty straightforward: the 3x sprit troll ambush fell to fireballs, the troll cave had trolls lured out in two packs and also killed by fireballs, and the enemy party fighting trolls was left to mostly get killed by them. However, their druid got off an insect plague on the party after going hostile, which led to Valygar panicking and getting killed.
The party decided to press onward without Valygar, as we were mindful of Nalia's timer. The squad of druids was killed by chaos and cloudkill. We then bought some potions from the rakshasas, including an extremely helpful 10x invisible potions. Jan was left outside so he wouldn't trigger the rakshasas in dialogue. Charname also picked up belm, although he is sticking with darts to stay safer.
Minsc charmed most of the grizzly pack (finally a decent use of his ranger animal charm!). The final 3 druids fell to chaos + wand of cold. Cernd story-mode killed Faldorn, and the quest was complete.
Nalia unfortunately left the party before we could kill the Djinni's, so we held off on finishing the second half of the Trademeet quest. The party briefly headed back to Athkatla to buy explosive potions from Roger and firebreath from the Adventurer Mart, then headed to the Keep.
The Keep was straightforward up until the final fight. Fireballs cleared troll packs reliably, and the yuanti mage missed his spell save vs. chaos. Golems were fought one at a time, with the djinni used to kill the clay golem safely and Lilacor used to destroy the iron golem.
Torgal however nearly wiped the party, and despite his defeat managed to subsequently get revenge from beyond the grave.
The plan had been to set traps on the edge of Torgals room, then: lure Torgal into the traps to kill him, use cloudkill and chaos on the yuanti mages, and use a djinni fireball + thrown fireball potions to alphastrike the trolls. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned. Torgal survived the traps at near death, despite getting an unexpected flamestrike from the djinni.
Torgal quickly regenerated up to badly injured, which I knew would end the run if he weren't dealt with quickly. Magic missiles from Jan + Imoen + 2 potions of firebreath + 1 explosive potion got him back to near death. A charge of the wand of cold finally froze and shattered him - he made his save so it only did ~10 damage, but fortunately it was enough.
Unfortunately, because the djinni cast flamestrike on Torgal and then failed his save vs. spirit troll greater command, that meant he couldn't open with a fireball on the other trolls. And because Yoshi was chunked earlier, that meant that he wasn't there to throw a fireball potion either. So, what would have been 3x opening fireballs was 1x and half a dozen spirit/spectral/giant trolls were still alive to rush the party, alongside the elder umber hulk. In addition, only one yuanti mage got confused and the other was casting spells.
Jan got his stoneskins stripped and was killed before he could drink invisibility. Minsc got kill by the troll pack. Nalia got killed by the yuanti mage's chain lightning, MM and meteors.
I was pretty sure the run was over at this point, but charname and Valygar were able to use invisibility potions to regroup and then take out the remaining foes. The confused yuanti mage had finally died to cloudkill, and most of the trolls had been killed by fire or minsc during the fight, and so the only enemies left were the umber hulk elder, a giant troll, and the other yuanti mage (with a mostly depleted spell book it turned out).
The yuanti mage was separated from the other two, and focused on first. Charname dodged a cone of cold, while using dispel illusion + physical attacks to try to whittle him down. Eventually he fell. The umber hulk was already injured, so an opening backstab from Valygar took him most of the rest of the way. Valygar then kited with Lilicor while charname threw darts. The giant troll was killed with help from the berserker horn.
Then the party moved all the equipment to a box, so they could leave to resurrect the fallen and come back and re-equip. If anyone is still reading and knows the game well, they may see the coming problem.
Upon return to the Keep map, with the revived party in tow, Nalia immediately began her end of quest dialogue, at the end of which she chooses to stay with the party. Locking the Keep forever. Oops.
The nice gentleman at the (now raised) drawbridge was kind enough to inform me that I was no longer welcome inside and that anything left in the keep was now the property of the family. The party lost everything that wasn't equipped to Valygar and charname, plus charname's pack except 2 potions of invisibility. FoA, Djinni lamp, Tuigin, Helm of Balduran, sewer cloak, ring of earth control, ring of human influence, Jan's personal equipment, the meta amulet, all the scrolls and potions and wands, the dryad acorns, and a bunch of lesser equipment was gone forever.
Fortunately, the party still had Kithix, the berserker horn, lilicor (thank god Valygar was carrying it at the end to protect against the umber hulk's confusion), belm, the talos amulet (almost locked that whole quest arc plus the thief stronghold), and the ring of regen and air control.
Painful losses, but I think survivable. FoA, sewer cloak, helm of balduran and djinni lamp are all pretty big losses. The loss of consumables also makes the party considerably less safe until they restock over time. Minsc already has one point in Flails, which is probably wasted. C'est la vie!
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134092/#Comment_1134092
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134147/#Comment_1134147
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134199/#Comment_1134199
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134307/#Comment_1134307
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134347/#Comment_1134347
With the Mauler's Arm Charles could easily recover the Dawn Ring for the Temple of Lathander.
With Azuredge, Charles returned to the Graveyard and cleared the tombs there - getting to level 15 by helping a, not yet undead man, out of his grave. The underneath area, including the Southern Tombs, got the same treatment.
Deciding that an ammo case would be nice, Charles went back to Watcher's Keep and this time entered. He killed a golem and some undead easily enough, but decided not to bother with a strength potion to get the Crimson Dart. On opening the main door he was greeted with a pair of vampiric wraiths. Kitthix successfully webbed one of those, but that saved against a hit by Azuredge and Charles had to retreat as the other wraith pressed the attack.
However, that initial encounter suggested he would have a decent chance of claiming a victim if the vampiric wraiths didn't start right next to the door (and they don't always do so). He therefore rested and went back in - to find the wraiths waiting about mid-way into the room. They're fast, so there was no chance of getting a thrown attack in before they were upon him and Charles immediately tried to run away again without even attempting an attack. However, both of them hit in the time it took him to take 2 steps backwards - one of them draining a level. He then started to leave, but one of the problems with the exit there is it's not quite instant. You start fading out on the screen, but can still be hit at that stage. I've had a number of characters killed as a result of that, but still all too often I can't resist taking a chance on those vampiric wraiths - and Charles became another victim of that compulsion
I should have used Arbane haste as well as DUHM before going in. The problem with doing that is that because the transition uses time a significant amount of the haste effect would have been gone before he even arrived inside - but the bit that remained would have saved him when he tried to leave ...
In other news, apparently the ogre form of polymorph self can backstab haha. 4d6+1 base damage. Crunch!
I've really been leaning on that spell early-midgame to try to keep hp damage down on the rangers (healing is scarce) and its been a pretty good workhorse.
Trueber and Ravenstaff completed most of the possible areas with the exception of Gullykin, Ulcaster, Werewolf Island and Firewine Bridge.
They then picked up Khaled and Jaheira and took them to Nashkel. Then Xzar and Montaron and took them to Nashkel.
Then Branwen and Dorn. Dorn became the leader of the party and we went shopping for decent armour, the light crossbow of speed, the composite longbow +1, the poisoned dagger, and all the spells from High Hedge that Ravenstaff could use.
We were then poor again!
We cleared the Nashkel Mines without difficulty and picked up Xan.
I have been wishing that a neutral fighter was available. Sadly not.
EDIT
Perhaps in my next game I will start with two very different neutral fighters.
Upon gaining our reward from the mayor, Dorn left the party. Previous comments by him caused me to expect this so he wasn't carrying equipment of note other than Rancor.
We fought various enemies north of the carnival with the result that we had a +1 2 handed sword for Ajantis who joined us when we headed north. We are now heading for the bandit camp.
Party entered spellhold. Imoen's spawn appears to cap at 1.25m experience, so unfortunately she has 250k less than the other 5 in the party.
The party finished Umar except the shadow dragon, Windspear except Firkraag, first floor of WK except the statues, and the Athkatla content except liches/rune and sphere/prison.
Umar was relatively easy with azure edge and rapid debuff of the shadow lord. I used to think he was a tough opponent (he will cast black blade e.g.), but as I've gotten better I've come to see Umar as little more dangerous than the trademeet druids.
Windspear was a nightmare like it frequently is for me. I think the vampires forced me off the map at least twice. Eventually they fell to malison + hasted valygar wielding azure edge + AoP + Harmony. The latest version of SCS has changed their animal spawns, so they spawn closer and are a bit more of an issue. Bigger issue was just that the ancient vampires have very good saves, so are tough to slay unless you land a malison first and they do a lot of damage and can backstab.
The first windspear golem pack (juggernaught, 2x clay, 2x stone) wasn't too bad. But the second met up with a bunch of orogs and forced the party to flee. I don't have the djinni lamp, so I was sneaking in hits on the clay golems with Minsc, trying to avoid being cursed. The party failed to bottleneck them at a door and was getting swarmed by too many golems + other monsters at once. In hindsight, potions of absorption could be used against golems to probably get to only be hit on crits but I only thought of that after.
Burned a dozen invisibility potions hiding from vampires and golems.
The party did the unseeing eye quest, which I normally leave to chapter 6, because I wanted to try getting enough exp to spawn Imoen at 1.5mm and wanted to take advantage of Yoshi's chunking leaving the party with 5 members for chapter 2/3 and therefore a bit more experience. Unfortunately, Imoen appears to cap at 1.25mm so that plan didn't work.
Valygar managed to trip both the prismatic trap and the petrify trap in the underground ruin. He rolled green on the prismatic and made his save, so fortunately was not disintegrated and perma-killed. He also made his save against the petrify. Yikes.
Got into a bit of trouble with the unseeing eye itself. I didn't want to rest in the unseeing eye cavern itself as the game suggests there is time pressure (although in reality I don't think there is. After clearing out the cavern, I had used all 4 of Nalia's skeletons and only had the flesh golem as a summon that could stand up to the Eye and his two death tyrants.
The party's plan was to hit the eye with the rift, and then use 2x sequencers of 2x MM to remove the rest of his hit points before he could gaze anyone. Unfortunately, he contingency cast spell turning, so that wasn't an option. He killed the flesh golem with a death spell.
I decided to try to kill him with out of LoS evocations and started with a cloudkill from the wand. Which turned out to be sufficient to kill him as he didn't move. However, the death tyrants were immune to cloud kill. Out of other options, Nalia and Jan shapeshifted into mustard jelly, landing the final blow just before the spell wore off. I'm not sure if its an exploit or not that anti-magic doesn't turn shapeshifted mages back humans (merely cost them control over it), but in any case the party took advantage of it.
In brynlaw, the party forgot to bring enough AoE spells to disable Perth and was forced to burn a potion of magic shielding to let valygar go toe to toe with him until the mage's weapon immunity ran out. Charname had snuck in under invisibility to set traps out of sight in the bottom of his house, but unfortunately as he was level 16 they did fire damage not poison and were therefore mostly worthless.
Infinite spellbook was burning hands on first page turn, so there's that.
Lots of buggy behavior in spellhold for some reason. First Bhaal wouldn't follow charname into the keep (I THINK it's because charname was hasted, but I don't see why that should matter). Then the party's equipment didn't get removed when they landed in Bodhi's dungeon.
I wound up replaying a substantial portion of Brynlaw to get the proper game behavior, and was careful to leave the party in the same end state (including throwing out the infinite spellbook, despite it rolling spell turning this time!). I'm not sure if that was better or worse than teleporting the party to a location they could leave their items, but I decided to treat the bugs as a crash and go back to the last available save.
Symon (male half-elf druid, Grond0); Noht (male half-elf blade, Gate70)
Previous run
The first thing to do today was generate new characters and the random roller produced a decent result. The mix of arcane and divine spells available provides a good range of options and the druid is able to tank reasonably well in BG1 with ankheg armor, while in BG2 the blade becomes a great tank using defensive spin and back-up spells.
However, we of course didn't let our thinking get too far ahead, but concentrated hard in the early stages to make sure there were no unfortunate events - we wouldn't want anything like this to happen for example:
Once the temple got Noht up and running again, Shoal was made to suffer. It's relatively rare for us to go after Drizzt's equipment, but his armor is the best available in the game for Noht, while Symon was keen to get a decent scimitar - so the gnolls were activated and left to chew through Drizzt's defenses for a few minutes. Symon then picked up a decent suit of armor for himself at Nashkel.
Arabelle was saved on the way to Firewine Bridge to relieve Meilum of his bracers. Then we went north, past the FAI and returned a bowl to Tenya. We'd decided that the ankheg nest looked a bit too intimidating on the way, but the single ankheg near Tenya seemed fair game and Noht did a good job on that by making a first use of offensive spin.
Back in the south, Noht commented that he was a bit wary of Greywolf's ability to one-shot him. However, Symon thought he should be able to tank Greywolf, while Noht spun into him from behind. Unfortunately Greywolf got an early critical on Symon - and then another when he tried to heal himself. That led to Symon backing away, but Noht chose not to follow instantly - and discovered he was right to have initially felt wary about Greywolf.
The Cloud Peaks were safely negotiated and Noht picked up a number of decent spells along the way - including magic missile, blindness, stinking cloud and the chromatic orb that ruined Vax's day (not to mention his life).
Druid 5, 37 HPs, 32 kills
Blade 5, 35 HPs, 63 kills, 2 deaths
Fini - female, human illusionist (Grond0)
Corepally - male, human undead hunter (Corey_Russell)
Plinker - male, human blackguard (Gate70)
Previous run
We'd selected new characters after dying the previous week, so were ready to make a start immediately this time. Looking at my character I was surprised I'd got a human illusionist, but eventually remembered that the random choice I'd used had come up with a dual-class. I couldn't remember what Fini should be dualling to, but still had the appropriate scrap of paper confirming that would be thief - if they survive long enough.
We picked up some decent XP (though not enough for any levels) from Shoal before heading to Beregost. Corepally was keen to buy some better armor there, but Fini decided on a cheaper option and led the way to a group of Flaming Fist to the south. As the captain approached her, he was suddenly struck by an attack of blindness. That infuriated him, but his companions didn't see a need to be annoyed with anyone else and attempted to restrain him - though forgetting to unequip their swords first.
After getting a further armor upgrade in Nashkel, we went north to help out Tenya. Fini thought it would be reasonable to attack the nearby ankheg and see if that could be put to sleep. The others agreed, so Fini opened her spell book in order to memorize more than the 1 sleep she currently had - emerging from that to see the others already engaged. She hurriedly cast her single sleep at the ankheg - the projectile for that arrived just as the ankheg went underground after dissolving Plinker in a spray of acid
After the Beregost temple stitched the bits together again, we did a few tasks around the town. That included blinding Silke, although she proved pretty obstinate and only succumbed at the 4th attempt.
Greywolf was another potentially dangerous adversary, made much less so by being unable to see his attackers properly.
Bassilus was the next to be blinded, allowing Plinker to stock up on spare 2-handed swords.
By this time increasing HPs, better armor and Evermemory boosted spell selection meant the ankheg nest looked like a good target. As an illusionist, Fini is particularly good at blinding things, but stocked up with 8 sleeps instead (the problem with blinding ankhegs is you have to stay in close melee with them or they dive under the surface - so you can't use 2-handed weapons to hit them from outside their sight range). She would have expected 5 or 6 successes from those sleeps, but in fact got only a single victim
A trip through the Cloud Peaks maximised reputation and gained the charisma tome (allowing Fini to reach 20 charisma with the help of friends). The action there saw Plinker's stock of swords further dwindling though, as was Corepally's - who had actually paid for spare bastard swords - so the next bit of work was finding magical alternatives. Corepally used a hill giant strength potion to loot something to his taste from Beregost smithy, while Plinker sought out Arghain to find a weapon worthy of a real half-ogreman.
Meilum gave up some decent bracers, which Fini surprisingly took ownership of (Corepally had compromised on dexterity during character generation and was using the bracers of dexterity to compensate for that, while Plinker generously decided to stick with his bracers of archery until an alternative could be found at the Bandit Camp).
A trip to High Hedge saw Melicamp reconstituted, while Fini bought a selection of spells to give her alternatives at 2nd and 3rd levels. Unfortunately, as an illusionist she can't use skull trap so will have to wait to find fireball to get the satisfaction of bombing her companions
Now that Fini knew PfP the last bit of action in the session was a quick trip round the basilisk area. Kirian's party was left until next time, but we did spend a few seconds finishing off Mutamin as our final victim.
Illusionist - L5, 28 HPs, 39 kills
Undead hunter - L5, 51 HPs, 46 kills, 0 deaths
Blackguard - L5, 58 HPs, 70 kills, 1 death
Trueber meanwhile used guile to get to the bandit camp without having to take on the bandits.
They then went to take on Deke and cohorts, defeating them easily.
Tranzig was next much to Branwen's satisfaction. He didn't get off a single spell before dying to a flurry of blows.
We went back to the camp clearing it bit by bit.
Ravenstaff usedd web against their top fighter, but he saved and walked on towards the party. Command gave some respite with the result that he was almost dead and didn't have time to do much damage before he fell. Ravenstaff memorised fireball.
The enemies inside the tent proved to be no problem.
In Cloakwood we found Gurke's Cloak and returned to Beregost to give it to him. He didn't want it so Ravenstaff decided to wear it.
We then thought that a trip to Durlag's would be a good idea as our wand of fire only had one charge. we sold it to the merchant there and bought two, one for Ravenstaff and one for Xan.
Whilst there we decided to find what treasure could be easily looted.
We gained experience without suffering too much harm getting into the tower.
Ravenstaff proved his skill at disabling traps and opening locks which gained us some potions, loot and a tome of understanding for Branwen.
I used the cloak of protection that we found as the others couldn't use it due to having rings of protection.
We passed on Kirinhale's lock of hair to a dupe. She was delighted and we were delighted by the experience so gained.
We did feel a bit sorry for the dupe though, so we killed him so that he wouldn't be trapped there forever.
Not having any protections from petrification we decided not to take on the basilisks there just yet.
We then decided to loot a little in the basement.