Trueber's run came to an end in Cloakwood when she was both webbed and poisoned. Branwen didn't have slow poison memorised. Quite an oversight! Trueber should have had the ring os freedom of action. She could then have used potions. If Ajantis had died it wouldn't have been a problem.
A new run with a neutral fighter/thief character. Amazed that no re-rolling was necessary.
Initial proficiencies ** daggers ** single weapon all thieving proficiencies initially in open locks in order to get the valuable stone in Candlekeep
I was given a +1 dagger which was highly useful when it came to dealing with the assassins in Candlekeep. I then donned their equipment which provided me with +1 studded leather armour and the +1 daggers that they were using.
The added equipment of those assassins is the only modification to my EE game.
Playing core rules.
Well, it turns out if you take Adalon's advice a little too seriously and tell the Ust Natha gate patrol to get out of your way or die.. the city goes hostile. Oops.
On the other hand, the gate isn't actually *closed*, which makes me think the party should try to make lemonade out of lemons by attacking the city at some point later on (when the party is at 3mm+ exp).
Looking at the wiki, seems the party lost about 500k exp per member by losing all the ust natha quests.
The session started with reputation at 19, so we went to kill some half-ogres before reporting to Bjornin. While in Beregost Silke was blinded and disposed of.
With prices low, Noht bought some spells at High Hedge before we went to the basilisk area to try some of those out. The basilisks caused no trouble, while Mutamin failed to recognize the danger from stinking clouds despite owning the spell.
Peter did manage to recover from a cloud long enough to inflict rigid thinking on Noht, but when he went down only Baerin and Lindin were left - and both were blind.
At the Lighthouse it took a bit longer than expected to kill the first 2 sirines and the third recovered before charming Symon. Of course that meant it didn't attack him further, so Noht just retreated out of harm's way to wait for a bit before rejoining to finish the job.
In the cave, some animals provided a bit of distraction for the golems - and a bit proved fatal for them with Noht spinning enchanted arrows at them.
We briefly stopped to blind Bassilus on the way to Durlag's Tower. Lightning and magic missiles made pretty short work of the battle horrors there and the basilisks on the roof provided a nice XP boost.
By this time the Nashkel Mine offered no real threat. Mulahey, rather surprisingly, managed to get up within a cloud, but at near death and already panicking he couldn't do anything effective.
Still, he fared better than the amazons. Blindness, stinking cloud, lightning and offensive spin would have been far too much for them, but Noht added a bit more injury to the insults by adding a first use of skull trap into the mixture.
In Nashkel Symon produced a couple of nymphs for the first time to neatly package Neira for slaughter.
Tranzig has a habit of saying he's going to put up a fight a split-second before going down like a rock. At least this time his panic meant he survived a bit longer - even if he was not exactly fighting .
The session ended with us stopping off at the FAI on the way to the Bandit Camp. Tarnesh had not yet been dealt with and surprise enabled him to send Noht running - but the skies were rapidly darkening above him ...
In Candlekeep Shank and Carbos both got backstabbed. Shank died immediately but Carbos was more of a challenge. He followed me outside and when he got held up by some wardens I took the opportunity to use my crossbow.
Tarnesh was the next to be back-stabbed.
I killed some hobgoblins and Sonner before trying to hole up in Baldur's Gate, but was denied access.
I then returned Tenya's bowl before returning to Beregost where I killed Karlat.
I killed an ogre on the way to Beregost.
Upon leaving the inn sfter killing Karlat I was badly hurt by lightning. The lightning was worse than any of the enemies that I have faced so far. As a result I holed up in an inn for quite a long time.
I then headed out to find Perdue's Sword and in the process ended up helping Mellicamp.
I returned Perdue's sword and killed some spiders before taking the loot to the Friendly Arms Inn.
Having become a decent thief, I headed to Durlag's Tower where I ransacked it until I was so badly hurt by a skeleton warrior that I left as fast as I could. Nevertheless I gained excellent equipment whilst there as well as experience:
I thought that the kindest thing to do was to kill Rigglio.
Upon leaving Durlag's, I took on Vax and Zal before helping a dryad and Drienne's cat.
On the way to the gnoll's stronghold I killed a winter wolf.
I decided at last to take Khaled and Jaheira to Nashkel.
I then picked up Xzar and Montaron and went on their versdion of "shopping."
I left Xzar in Nashkel and Montaron at Urlag's Beard.
Upon returning to Nashkel Dorn joined me.
He tried to help against Bassilus, but I ended up helping him!
He did however help against Geltik and his "friends."
When my reputation increased he left. I was quite pleased about that as his presence made me nervous. I was a lot happier when Branwen joined with me however.
She helped against a large number of basilisks and finally Mutamin himself.
Jaheira then rejoined us and together we cleared the Nashkel mines.
It was then that Xan joined the party. His ability to use the wand of fire together with my use of the necklace of missiles and Branwen's silence spell made the Amazons fall very quickly.
We then went to Beregost where we met a weird mage once more.
In Beregost we sold a plethora of ankheg shells that we had collected earlier. With the gold we bought Shadow Armour for me so I gave my ankheg armour to Jaheira. I also bought her a sling +1 and a large shield +1. I bought Branwen a medium shield +1 as she is not always able to use the large shield. For myself I bought the scythe crossbow. All Xan got from the shopping spree was some scrolls that were being sold at Feldpost's.
SCS insane party of thieves and rangers. Halfling swash. ~2mm exp in the underdark.
After making ust natha hostile by being overly brusque with the gate guard, the party decided to stage a daring raid on the temple of loth to try to steal the silver dragon eggs.
The original plan was to have the party fight drow by the entrance to the city, while a hasted/cheetah boots jan with invisible + SI:D went for the eggs in the temple. This was a decent plan, up until the game informed me that "you must gather your party before venturing forth". Oops.
Retreated and came up with a new plan. The new plan was to remove everyone from the party except charname and imoen and send them in alone. Imoen couldn't be removed because she automatically goes to the copper coronet for some reason and I didn't want that. Charname took the boots, Imoen took a bunch of invisible casts + teleport field and everybody prebuffed then we went for it.
Unfortunately, while charname somehow managed to get out alive with unhealing wounds curse and 3 hp, Imoen was killed in the temple during the round between a cast of sequencer 3x teleport field and being able to restore invisibility. Her sacrifice was not in vain: in the confusion, an invisible charname was able to sneak out and escape with the eggs.
I consider Imoen permanently killed as the party wouldn't have been able to retrieve her body. In addition, the party also lost the amulet of power, Ras, the golem book, and some more minor treasure.
I did retry the plan a few times just to see if i could make it through unscathed. Out of 5 attempts, charname escaped with the eggs in all 5, but Imoen only survived once. It's a really tough situation as the temple gets extremely clogged with drow due to the improved ust natha reinforcements, and they walk towards charname even when he is invisible (due to the scripting - they can't see him). Once they block the way, someone has to lose invisibility for a round to dislodge them. The one time Imoen survived was when the drow clog happened outside the temple, rather than inside. It's possible that if I had removed Imoen from the party at the start, charname would have been able to succeed alone. Or, he could have been trapped without the teleport field and the run would have ended.
All in all, the party is certainly worse off than before the raid. But the run isn't over, and I suppose the party can recruit Sarevok in ToB and dual him to a thief as a 6th member if it wants to. Painful to lose Imoen though, both for party power and story reasons.
Edit: nevermind the run is over haha. The drow follow you out of the city and several dozen drow eventually overmatched the party.
Tough luck @Jabberwock - taking on the Ust Natha drow is really a handful with SCS installed . If the quests are not available, killing Adalon is a far easier route to escape the Underdark, though not all parties would be keen on that of course ...
Enemies in LoB mode have a flat 80 HP boost in addition to triple their normal HP. This, combined with their obscene -11 boost to AC, makes it so even the weakest creature takes forever to kill. Although my previous run ended at the Twisted Rune in LoB mode, I do not want to waste time constantly watching my dudes miss enemies again. My solution is to use @Crevsdaak's Level Adder mod to triple the HP of all non-joinable NPCs in the game. I find this to be much more reasonable as a puny kobold no longer has 100+ HP and rock-bottom AC, but rather about 20-ish HP and can be easily hit. Likewise, enemies with higher HP will have better staying power and be rather similar to their LoB counterparts in beefiness.
This run will be on Insane with double damage enabled again but with double kill XP/double quest XP. I hope it won't be too unbalancing. I'll probably turn off the bonus XP in BG2 or SoD. I also updated to SCS v33 from v32.4.
Blaggy: Artisan's Kitpack Blackguard. They're similar to vanilla blackguards but at level 3, they start emitting an aura of despair which lowers the saves, morale, and damage of living enemies (non-living enemies are unaffected). This aura improves over time and is about as strong as a Nightsinger's song and stacks with it.
Cactank: Dwarven Defender/Cleric. Damage resistance will prove to be more reliable than Morpheus' werewolf regeneration, especially against burst damage. Cleric buffs are just plain better than druids' too.
Stabby: Fighter/Artisan's Kitpack Assassin. This version of the Assassin gets hardly any skill points but makes up for it with small passive stealth improvements per level. When stealthed or invisible, the assassin gains a stacking bonus to hit and damage each round which is depleted upon hitting an enemy - with deadly results, as this bonus is subject to multiplication from backstabbing. They also can inflict certain statuses upon backstabs: Hold, Silence, halved movement speed and DEX, extra damage over time, or even instant death.
Spaz V: Warlock, back again for attempt #5. The warlock's invocations have undergone balance changes since Spaz IV's run - notably, Dark One's Own Luck and Leaps and Bounds aren't quite as good as they were.
Debuff: Nightsinger. Back again from the last run to make saving throws harder for enemies in hearing range. In conjunction with Blaggy's Aura of Despair, enemies are going to have a hard time saving successfully, which is good news for Spaz, Yin, and Stabby.
Yin II: Shadow Disciple. Shadow Magic has undergone some balance changes and now many spells cause extra effects if enemies are physically or mentally hindered (held, asleep, silenced, poisoned, diseased, slowed, blinded; stunned, panicked, berserk, charmed, feebleminded, confused).
The early game routine is done: get Algernon's cloak, charm Silke with it, feed her to the spiders,
to her own phase spider, summoned with Spider Spawn,
charm Kelddath and have him kill the nearby wolf pack and then his sirene harem, return Tenya's bowl, get Dushai's Ring of Free Action, buy the Darkveil at Ulgoth's Beard and go basilisk hunting,
Would've been safer to silence Mutamin from a distance, but he still died from the poison.
go ankheg hunting, buy the Greenstone Amulet and recharge it, kill Shoal and Droth, go sirene hunting, get the CON and CHA tomes, loot Durlag's Tower's upstairs and kill the basilisks there, go down to the first level of the dungeon and get all the tasty consumables, use the loot from that to buy a wand of Nightshade from Kryn Darkflame and use it to kill the Ghost Knights in Firewine for more money and Helms of Charm Protection,
Nightshade bypasses damage resistance and MR, so only spell defenses or immunity to 5th level spells can stop it. I used the Wand of Lightning trick to speed up the process as it takes 7 charges to kill a ghost knight without it.
assemble the ingredients for Thalantyr to make the Dagger of Venom +3, kill Drizzt,
who is noticeably weaker since I gave him his AD&D stats and removed his invis detection, damage resistance, and invisible helmet,
blaze through the Nashkel Mines, have Raiken recruit us to the bandit camp, kill all the dudes inside the tent,
Shadow Missile does half damage compared to Magic Missile now, but does extra damage and confusion to physically hindered targets (save vs. spell on each missile to negate confusion). Taurgosz was also charmed and led inside the tent to fight on our behalf.
run away and get to the Cloakwood Mines,
Drasus is still an absolute beast due to the Artisan's Kitpack berserker rage. I charmed Kysus using Spaz's Charm invocation and had him summon all his minions. Neutral targets must now save vs. spell at -5 in addition to the penalty from the Warlock's CHA score for every 2 points above 17 (total -7 for Spaz's 21 CHA). Hostiles only get the save penalty from the invoker's CHA score.
blaze through those too, kill Davaeorn's hired help,
Spaz has a summoned Revenant active via The Dead Walk who is rather meaty and has undead immunities. Only 1 can be active at a time, so no more skellybro armies like before.
and then kill Dave.
Without his mercs backing him up, taking out Dave was trivial even though he saved against Stabby's poison and cutthroat attempt.
I neglected to take screenshots of many of these events just because I do things in this order nearly every no-reload attempt, as it's a safe way to level up. And it's not that some of the later encounters weren't difficult (Drasus' party in particular was hard), I'm just tired of documenting them in detail every run.
Nature's half-dozen - Core rules, unmodded druids party {3} (update 1)
Previous run
I created this party of unkitted druids about 3 years ago, but only had a single attempt with them (there was a previous attempt with a mixture of different sorts of druids, which is why this is shown above as the 3rd attempt) - that ended when one of them was chunked by Firkraag's breath.
They've progressed so far as follows:
Level 1 - run and shoot (for simplicity all of them are using slings). At the lighthouse Walker Boh received a deadly kiss from Shoal, but he was revived and the group shot down Droth for his helmet without further injury, before killing Shoal as well.
They left the sirines for now, but cleared the rest of the area. A few spiders in Beregost then gave everyone a first level.
Level 2 - more running and shooting in Beregost and nearby areas culminated in a trip to the Lake area. Gnolls wore Drizzt down a bit before the druids attacked him. One of them was charmed, but had already retreated out of sight of the others to avoid any complexities. That left the simple matter of running Drizzt round until the criticals on him proved too much.
Level 3 - immediately after killing Drizzt, I went to find Teyngan, but moved fractionally too far and came into his sight before I intended. That resulted in 5 of the party being scared, which was far and away the most dangerous situation so far. Everyone had managed to get out of Jemby's sight and fortunately none of the scared druids doubled back far enough to activate her. That still left Zekar's arrows as a major hazard, but Cogline did an excellent job in occupying him, along with Teyngan, in close enough quarters to make him keep his sword equipped. On the down side Brona ran far enough to activate a pair of war dogs and was killed by them before they chased down Galaphile as well.
Once the fear finally ended the remaining druids were able to run away and get to Nashkel temple. Walker Boh got some green armor there, while Allanon learnt LMD. A few more areas were ticked off, while reputation suffered a bit more with the deaths of Meilum and Dushai. A couple of tasks helped partially restore that, to ensure the party would be tolerated in civilized areas. Another horror caused a bit of concern when the druids spread out, but Borda targeted Allanon. However, the others soaked up magic missiles with CLW spells and were able to keep Borda occupied until Allanon recovered and could join in the shooting gallery - the bit of XP from that was enough to allow everyone to level up once more.
Level 4 - following Korax round slaughtering basilisks gained some quick XP. I made a mistake in not shifting Walker Boh back to a missile weapon after killing some gnolls though and came just into view of Mutamin before the last of the basilisks were dead. However, a first LMD from Allanon interrupted an acid arrow spell that would have killed Korax and allowed Mutamin and his pets to be finished off. A few gnolls and flinds were then enough for another level.
Level 5 - after Kirian's companions were tempted away by charm spells, she was battered by a first use of lightning.
That also made short work of some battle horrors at Durlag's Tower and some vampiric wolves. Clearing the remainder of the Beregost Temple area was enough for level 6.
Level 6 - shooting continued to be the main attack method, though there was plenty of use of lightning and even some insects where lightning was not available or effective (such as the Doomsayer).
Walker Boh (wearing the ankheg armor) was often tanking now and did that while clearing the ankheg area to get a significant XP boost. There was another decent haul at the Lighthouse area, where lightning did the main damage to the sirines before a carrion crawler took everyone to level 7.
The druids have still got a full stack each of the ammunition they bought at Candlekeep, but I think it's about time to treat them to a resupply. After that they'll be off to the Nashkel Mines.
Walker Boh - L7, 59 HPs, 102 kills, 1 death
Bremen - L7, 59 HPs, 104 kills, 0 deaths
Galaphile - L7, 59 HPs, 178 kills, 1 death
Allanon - L7, 55 HPs, 184 kills
Brona - L7, 57 HPs, 164 kills, 1 death
Cogline - L7, 55 HPs, 134 kills, 0 deaths
HPs are good and closely spread (which is helpful as it means I don't need to be quite as careful about identifying which druid is which in battle).
Agreed Grond0. I'm still glad the party went for it. I did have a run several years ago that survived getting caught swapping the eggs. They successfully ran to the exit, only to find that is was blocked by Ardulace's spell. They then somehow survived going all the way back to the temple, killing Ardulace in combat, and running out. As I recall, Haer'dalis was killed during the final run, so they weren't unscathed.
Anyway, that party was much stronger than the thieves/rangers party I was running here.
If I had planned ahead better there would have been fewer drow and I probably could have made it. I'd still do the same thing again on another run that started in BG2 - if the party somehow wound up in a similar situation - but probably not on an import from BG1.
Anyway, starting a new SCS Insane run. This time a trilogy run of fighters. Charname is a wiz slayer -> thief (either 9 or 13 dual). Companions in BG1 are Jahiera, Khalid, Yeslick, Sharteel (dual to thief), and Coran.
Party is at about 40k exp and is in the cloakwood mines, having just rescued Yeslick, and is now deciding how to deal with the mage + bandit room on the second floor. Previously got Charisma and Constitution books and cleared basilisks from M's garden.
Most difficult part so far has been inability to use the better tier of wands. The fireball amulet was used to clear the bandit camp (after the initial fight in the tent), A potion of firebreath was used to kill the two mages outside the mines entrance (although one of them refused to be interrupted and finished a chaos cast, leading to the deaths of both Coran and Sharteel).
Jahiera is the tank, using dex gauntlets, ring of protection, medium shield +1 and Ankheg plate. I am giving her points in darts, which has been OK before, but never really feels optimal.
Khalid is using a longbow, which I tend to think is a much better build than the traditional (perhaps) Varscona + shield.
Charname is running bows + 2h (planning on using Carsomyr in SoA).
Yeslick is TBD. I thought he had points in axes, but its actually warhammers. For the time being he is just going to cast cleric spells.
I dualed Sharteel to Thief at Fighter 3 and have been giving her points in daggers. The plan was to use the venom dagger +2 and backstab aggressively. That plan has... not really worked. Putting thief points in find traps means she can't hide in shadows effectively. And she doesn't really do well in melee combat due to her very low hp + relatively crummy AC if she is wearing a light armor to be able to hide. I think I might just go crossbows next time, if there is a next time.
Coran is being an archer per usual. I put points in set traps, which I now think might be a waste and would have been better put in detect illusion or the HiS abilities.
I've started another foursome of neutral characters. Once again they are not like druids that are striving for balance, but would-be good characters with moral weaknesses.
Cnut for example hates mages because his parents were killed in a fireball when two mages were having a duel. Every mage that he kills whether good or bad makes him feel good.
Knightro has a problem with rage. Whilst sometimes that is an advantage as he can go berserk in battle, at other times he will over-react which can be quite a bad trait.
Hugin has a problem with greed, always wanting a bit more than he has.
My character weakness is quite obvious. It is quite useful in that my sensual nature helps to bond the group, but I often wish that I had it within me to be monogamous.
Journal of Sinna.
After being ambushed we fled back to Candlekeep but were denied access.
We therefore returned to the ambush site on the way to Beregost. On being attacked by a wolf, Cnut was badly hurt.
Upon reaching Beregost, we were attacked by karlat and to our horror Hugin was killed. We couldn't afford to get him fully healthy, but he did that himself after we paid to bring him back to life.
When Silke attacked us, she wasn't a problem and she quickly fell.
I then pickpocketted those whom Silke wanted dead. I successfully pickpocketted three potions, but when I tried to get the jewels I was attacked and had to kill Faltis. I was relieved that the other two didn't attack. I felt bad enough by Faltis' death.
and was again hurt when we were attacked by the Flaming Fist.
Upon being offered a reward for Perdue's sword, we went in search of it and found it.
Before returning it, we also helped Mellicamp.
As we went went to Nashkel we found the Colquetle amulet and were unbelievably patient with Noober. We turned down Oubliek's reward thus gaining reputation. We picked up a wand of frost and a ring of fire protection before taking Samuel to the FAI. We had found some good armour in Nashkel.
SCS Insane trilogy run of a fighter party. Charname human wizard slayer. Currently in baldur's gate with ~45k exp.
The party finished out the cloakwood mines. Coran backstabbed the mage on the second floor, assuming that he could use the cheetah boots to run away. Unfortunately, she immediately hit him with a minor sequencer -> 2x enfeeble and he couldn't move. A potion of invisibility temporarily saved him, but she also had dispel invisibility and after he was revealed a second time he was killed by the mass of bandits. This became an issue later.
The party decided to go to Beregost temple to revive Coran, reasoning we may as well kill the vampiric wolves while we are at it for a little extra exp. We then decided to clear firewine bridge for the gauntlets. While on the bridge map, Yeslick warned us that he was getting impatient with our efforts to flood the cloakwood mine. I did not know he had a quest timer!
Looking online suggested the timer was 14 days. It turns out to be 10, and by the time the party arrived back at cloakwood, despite traveling directly, Yeslick was over the timer and left permanently. Oops.
There is one other fighter in BG1, Kagain, who we may be able to get (although we dismissed him previously so perhaps not - TBD). Otherwise the party will have to try to finish BG1 with 5 members, and in any case it won't have a cleric.
Davaeorn himself wasn't too tough. Charname got caught in the web/stinking cloud sequencer due to its borders being a little larger than they visually appeared. However, Jaheira was able to tank the bandits (assisted with some explosive potions and fear wand charges), and Coran and Khalid were able to pretty quickly focus Davaeorn down with magic arrows. I guess I've decided that magic blocking potions are the easiest way to reliably beat Davaeorn. They really give him a lot of trouble and can be bought in high hedge.
The battle horrors ran forward early in the fight, so they were dispatched prior to engaging the mage. That felt a little cheesy, but after losing Yeslick the party thought it might need some help.
I'm trying to think what really difficult fights are left that might wipe the party. I think it's only the final fight or possibly the doppelganger / noble fight (although I've never actually lost a run there).
Edit: I love how broken firebreath potions are in BG1. Complete steamroll of the mages in the upstairs of sorcerous sundries in exchange for one firebreath potion.
A very close shave this session, but the run marcheslimps on.
The first action was, as promised, the assault on Kirian. Her companions were blinded out of sight of her before stinking clouds put her out of action long enough to be fatal.
Durlag's Tower was next door and got the next action. The battle horrors on the path were both blinded, allowing them to be finished off easily enough. However, the one on the wall resisted a couple of blinding spells and was hard to hit. Corepally was getting bored with flailing around with his sword, so Fini unlimbered a wand to speed things up.
Upstairs, Riggilo was foolish enough to accept a lock of hair before being struck down. More basilisks then provided some easy XP.
The golems in the pirate cave were left last session due to the lack of magical weapons. With that no longer an issue they were quickly despatched. The sirines at the Lighthouse had already been killed, but there was another group further up the coast to pick on - the paladins there took a few stinking mouthfuls, but took no permanent harm.
The doomsayer then found that it hard to breach Corepally's defenses thanks to the belt he was wearing.
By this stage the Nashkel Mine offered little challenge and we soon made our way through to find Mulahey. I did try to take an action shot here of some trap magic missiles just failing to reach us, but though the next area did not appear on my screen until comfortably after that screenshot, it was clearly already available in the background.
There was no advance preparation for Mulahey - Corepally, with his hold immunity, led the charge and Mulahey failed to deal with it.
Outside the mine things were much more problematic. The amazons are pretty easy targets if you take care and Fini's prophecy that "they shouldn't prove too much trouble" assumed that would be done - but it wasn't . She started by blinding the cleric, Zeela. The problem with doing that, without having web or stinking cloud up first, is that Maneira is close enough to also go hostile as a result. The paladins were too far away to be the target for her poison darts and Maneira got an attack in before Fini could finish another blindness spell. In single player there would have been enough time to reach the edge of the map and travel to stop the poison, but in MP that seemed unlikely. Fini tried curing herself a couple of times, but the Bhaal ability is quite slow and, as expected, both attempts failed - apparently leaving her with only seconds to live here.
However, in this sort of situation every HP counts and Fini had just enough of those in the bank to survive.
Regrettably though, the same could not be said of Plinker. He had moved up to stop the amazons from chasing Fini and was targeted by rigid thinking. That left him unable to dodge further attacks, while Fini threw in a couple of blinds and a hold person without effect. Corepally was still there to take revenge though.
The stable door was firmly closed prior to attacking Nimbul - he was stuck in a web and would have died even without being blinded.
Tranzig has pretty good saving throws, so it was a surprise when he also lost his sight - possibly that's why he never tried to surrender, or possibly the damage coming in was just too heavy for him to get around to that.
At the Bandit Camp the bandit archers were scoring plenty of hits and we were all rather wounded by the time Taurgosz was left alone and blinded.
For the tent, Corepally requested the use of a couple of potions of magic protection to ensure Venkt's spells would be ineffective - but only actually took 1 of those. His 50% MR was then not sufficient to stop him running scared as a result of Venkt's horror spell, but Plinker was able to deal with the situation.
In the Cloakwood, we had a rare bit of action in the first area - Corepally cutting down Aldeth there to get an upgrade for his bastard sword. In the second area, Fini used invisibility to trigger the web traps before working through some spiders and ettercaps to get Spider's Bane for Plinker. In the third area the hamadryad put up a decent defense by charming both Corepally and Fini. If she's had a third charm available here things would have been decidedly dodgy.
However, the spell being cast was hold person - which bounced off Spider's Bane.
Fini had by now got to L7 and decided to take a detour to Ulgoth's Beard in search of a L4 spell or two. That allowed her to improve the effectiveness of her webs with greater malison and the emotion that affected Drasus and his companions was then just the icing on the cake.
Journal of Sinna
At the FAI we were attacked by Tarnesh. Hugin's "True sight" made him easy to kill.
We then killed Sonner and took the bowl to Tenya.
The nearby ankheg was put out of comission using "Command" and that was sufficient to enable it's demise.
We then headed to the Carnival where we took on Zordral.
Knightro was a bit slow in going berserk which resulted in him panicking due to Zordral's spell. Hugin however had cast "True Sight" which dispelled Zordral's many images. Cnut then attacked and after that Zordral miscast several of his spells and subsequently died.
Hugin was badly hurt, but levelling up was sufficient to save his life and subsequently he cast healing spells which was sufficient to reagain his health when we slept to memorise our spells.
EDIT
We then reunitrd Rufie with his owner, Killed Vax and Zal, helped a Dryad and took 'Drienne's cat to her gaining a reward in the process.
We then proceeded to the gnoll fortress and killed some ogres.
Charname human wizard slayer. Currently in BG1 approaching the bandit camp with ~36k exp. Third attempt.
Attempt #1 made it to the chapter 5 fight in the iron throne headquarters and got completely crushed. I way underestimated how difficult that fight was. The party was rapidly swarmed by high damage melee opponents (two backstabbing thieves with several invis potions a piece and a dual wielding fighter with a giant strength potion). A few fireball potions and fear wand charges weren't enough to rescue the fight.
Attempt #2 was ended by the lighthouse sirens. Charname had planned to use Kagain to kill them at level one, and had picked up the ogre belt, dex gloves, and ankheg plate as defense for the dwarf. Plan was for Kagain to drink the clarity potion from candlekeep + the giant strength potion from the gnoll fortress and go to work (charname cannot drink clarity as wizard slayers are disallowed). Unfortunately, the first pack of three sirens rolled 15, 18, 19, 18 and while the 15 missed, the two 18s and the 19 did not, and Kagain was killed before he could drink a potion of healing or retreat.
At this point charname faced a conundrum. Facing the sirens would almost certainly end in death due to dire charm, but losing the dex gloves and ankheg plate only an hour into the run seemed unappealing and I didn't know how long they might last on the ground if charname left to get new party members. In the end, charname decided to chance it and missed his save to dire charm. Which is not too surprising.
Attempt #3 ran a much cleaner first hour. The new path was to take charname alone to M's garden and get to level 5 (basilisks + mutamin all together are about 25k exp). During basilisk hunting, a secondary goal was to avoid meeting the adventurer party with the slashing belt, so they could be saved for later when charname was better prepared to deal with them. Shar teel was avoided as well, so that we could meet her at 32k exp later on.
After reaching level 5 via the basilisks, charname returned to beregost to recruit kagain. This time, he would face the sirens at level 5 with much better base hp and thac0 and with axe mastery. One potion of clarity was enough to clear both groups without too much effort. The 12k siren exp brought charname to level 6 at 32k exp and he left to drop kagain off at the FAI and get Jaheira and Khalid and then get Shar teel.
Attempt #1 didn't do a great job developing Shar teel, and Attempt #3 is seeking to rectify that. One interesting quirk is that Shar teel can actually reach grandmastery in daggers or longswords, but only by following a very specific leveling path. Level to Fighter 6, then dual to thief, then level to 3, then hold at 3 until 40k exp to level up in one gulp to level 7, then hold at 7 until able to level in one gulp to 9. That allows mastery at fighter 6, high mastery at thief 7 (using the point from thief 4, which was held until the fighter levels were unlocked at thief 7), and finally grandmastery at thief 9 (using the point from thief 8, which was held until level 9 because the game does not allow grandmastery prior to 9). I don't think the benefits of grandmastery are actually worth all this headache, but I am going to try it anyway at least once.
Shar teel is putting all thief skill points into HiS, except for levels 1-3 when they go into find traps. In addition, she is going to wear light armor and use the speed boots. If all goes well, she should be a strong backstabber by chapter 5 when she hits thief 7, and a fearsome one by the end of the game when she gets thief 9 for grandmastery and backstab x4. She should ultimately be able to hit for an average of 49 = 4 x ([2.5 dagger dice] + [2 dagger enchantment] + [2 gauntlets bonus] + [5 grandmastery]) + [3 strength] = 4 x 11.5 + 3. Backstab + firebreath is a brutal combo that few enemies can survive, and the speed boots make it easy to get into position and then run around hitting other enemies with the breath ray.
Granted, plain mastery in quarterstaff and the staff of striking would be even more damaging, but I gather that the staff of striking is at the bottom of durlag's and the party isn't planning on going that far into the tower.
Shar teel ultimately decided to go daggers over longswords for the better accuracy against plate armor (which gets -3 to slashing) and because she still really wanted to try the venom dagger out. Which is just as well because the party accidentally failed to get varscona by not being aggressive enough with greywolf in dialogue.
Anyway, the party has just cleared up the Nashkel mines and Mr. Nimble and is going to get a few more scattered items (specialization gauntlets from firewine e.g.) and then go deal with the bandit camp.
Edit: Cleared the bandit camp. Got spicier than the party was hoping, but was able to get through it with a lot of healing potions (including ~3 extra healing). Fight inside the tent went OK and the party managed to not kill the hostage this time. But the fight outside the tent was more chaotic. The plan was to retreat to the north, use jaheira with a potion of absorption to tank, and then shoot fireballs from the amulet at the clumping bandits.
But, the bandits split up, with a squad of hobgoblins coming from the west. As the party retreated further north and east into the woods to try to get the two enemy squads to combine, bandits started to get LoS issues and walk to melee range. The party hit the edge of the map + an impenetrable wall of trees and couldn't retreat any further. I think Jaheira was only hittable on crit, but when 2-3 dozen bandits are all shooting at once, that starts to be a pretty slim margin. Still, 4-5 fireballs brought the bandits at range under control and the dozen or so that were on top of the party were eventually killed at the cost of a fairly large number of healing potions.
The party is now at the cloakwood mines, packing firebreath and magic blocking potions; the former for the gate party and the latter for Davaeorn.
Fun With Saving Throws 2: Electric Boogaloo
The sidequest hell of Baldur's Gate is completed, so it's time to tackle the Iron Throne top floor. Stabby, Spaz, and Yin are sent upstairs first while invisible. Spaz's revenant and Yin's Shadow Fiends lure the two hostile thieves out from the rest of the gang and are slaughtered thanks to shadow fiend paralyzation. Our summons attack the Iron Throne to deplete their spells and the two berserkers' rage.
After the berserkers' health goes down to about 50% from their self-inflicted damage, Blaggy, Cactank, and Debuff then go up the stairs and clean up the mess. A couple of the Iron Throne spellcasters were paralyzed by shadow fiends, making it easier to finish them all off.
At Candlekeep, I ctrl+m'd Tethtoril to check his HP: a few shy of 3000!! Shadow Fiends were summoned to hopefully paralyze him (didn't work, the paralysis checks for MR and Teth has 100%). When this failed, the fiends' Impose spell served to stun Tethtoril long enough for us to use Blaggy and Stabby's poisons on him, which cut his CON score to 1 after repeatedly failing saving throws thanks to Blaggy's aura, Debuff's song, and Yin's Sigil of Despair. Many brutal backstabs later, Tethtoril finally dies.
Spaz uses Charm to dismantle Prat's party in the Candlekeep cave. We return to Durlag's Tower after this and kill Kirinhale, then make our way through the dungeons. The demon knight is overwhelmed by our party, plus some wraiths and a revenant.
Back in Ulgoth's Beard, we kill Shandalar after getting teleported to the ice island. Wraiths cast Impose on him for an automatic stun, which allows Stabby and Blaggy to poison him after Yin casts Sigil of Mortality to negate his damage resistance. Each wraith has one casting of Impose so I keep the stun-lock going with the ones who haven't used their Impose yet. Now that Shandalar is hostile, his saves are reduced by Blaggy's aura and Debuff's improved 11th level song for a total to -3 to saves. A charge from the Wand of Polymorphing works on the mage and he is laid low for 52k XP.
We use this same tactic on Elminster at Lion's Way but his saves are worse than Shandalar's, making him more susceptible to Blaggy and Stabby's poisons. The wand of polymorphing won't work against his 100% MR so we have to beat him down. This takes longer, so we use the wraiths' castings of Shadow Rope to buy us more time. It's not a true stun like Impose which allows automatic hits, but it still causes the victim to cease their actions.
At the coronation, most of the doppelgangers are level drained to death by summoned wraiths in only 1 hit, which makes the fight a breeze. How weird.
Gorf, Wudei, and Shaldrissa are charmed into fighting Sarevok on our behalf. Stabby leads our summons and Gorf toward Sarevok, hoping to just level drain him to death like I've done before, but I trigger his dialogue even though Stabby is stealthed, which begins the fight in earnest. The fun way it is, then. Gorf's charm is dispelled by Semaj. All the bad guys are gathered up there except Diarmid, so Yin tries Expunge Sunder Magic. It fails, even though at his current level it acts as a level 17 dispel. Suddenly most of the enemies scatter from morale failure due to Debuff's song, including Sarevok. Semaj joins the fray and gets struck with Arrows of Dispelling from Spaz, allowing Stabby to attack and poison him with impunity. Yin fires a Shadow Missile to try to confuse Semaj now that he's poisoned.
Tazok and Semaj die, then the rest of the bad guys panic into a group long enough for Yin to cast Sigil of Misfortune to further penalize their saves. Angelo flees far enough from Debuff to recover his morale but his minor globe wears off and he gets held by a casting of Shadow Binding from Debuff. Cactank and Blaggy retreat from Diarmid slightly to get him to expose his back to Stabby so he'll stop chugging healing potions. Stabby uses an invis potion and runs over to help finish off Diarmid. Now it's only a panicking Sarevok left. Shaldrissa slows him with a spell while Cactank fires off Recitation to further worsen Sarevok's saves. His morale recovers but it's far too late for him, as his saves are penalized by -9 (-1 blackguard aura, -2 nightsinger song, -2 recitation, -4 sigil). Yin is casting Sigil of Despair to crank up the penalty to -11 but it's cut short by Sarevok's death.
Before leaving the Lighthouse area the druids dealt with some golems in order to loot the pirate treasure. The party were still a bit short on magical weapons, but could now change form and while bears have weak defences, they're vicious when attacking.
The Nashkel Mine provided no real challenge, with Mulahey changing sides early on before being held courtesy of a first use of nymphs.
Nimbul then was blasted by lightning, while Tranzig was doomed to die the death of a thousand insect bites. At the Bandit Camp, Venkt & co were pulled out of their tent and struck down.
There were lots of poisoning incidents in the Cloakwood, but with everyone having slow poison available, none were particularly problematic. To keep things simple summons weren't used much, but they did get a run out against Drasus. In the mine nymphs helped deal with the mages on the way down. A horde of insects killed the battle horrors near Davaeorn, allowing everyone to take their 8th level.
Davaeorn survived a round of hold monsters, but was then dominated by nymphs - allowing plenty of time to doom him and smother him with insects.
After resting for Allanon to get a second horror, the mine was flooded.
At High Hedge I sold a bunch of stuff when I intended to identify it. To get that back at a reasonable cost I did a quick run round completing various reputation quests left previously in order to maximise that. A quick trip to Baldur's Gate followed to get the Helm of the Noble in order to maximise spending power.
It didn't take long to spend the 170k or so of ready cash available - providing everyone with fully-charged wands of the heavens is an expensive business (though I haven't used a single charge from those up to now anyway) . However, running through all the encounters in the City generated a fair amount more wealth. There was plenty of XP as well and level 9 came up while cleansing the sewers.
Initial work in the City was completed at the Iron Throne. A full round of insect plagues were used there which, along with nymphs, made a mess of the defenders.
Rather than reporting in to Duke Eltan though, the druids decided to return to the wilderness to complete clearing the non-TotSC areas not previously finished. That was straightforward enough, though I did spend a long time in the Firewine Ruins. Navigating the narrow corridors is always a bit of a pain, but the bulk of time was spent killing the ghost knights just for a change. They have 100% resistance to everything except poison and have saving throws of 1. However, casting magic resistance on them, followed by doom, gave a chance for the druid poison spell to work and eventually they were all down.
Notable equipment included a helm of charm protection each; various magic armor, including full plate and full plate +1, and a long bow of marksmanship.
Even clearing that lot still left the druids short of their last level, but there was more XP waiting at Candlekeep after they finally reported for duty there. The violet potion was used to grab the tomes before they moved on. Insects and nymph confusion made Prat's gang an easy target and the 10th level came up during that fight.
The druids are now back at the entrance to Baldur's Gate. I'm not going to bother with the main TotSC content this time, so they don't have a lot to do before going to find Sarevok.
At the Flaming Fist HQ, nymphs proved better than mercenaries at holding their enemies.
A single greater doppleganger was then insufficient to stop the druids rescuing Duke Eltan.
Bears also made short work of Arghh and Ughh at the Iron Throne, before Cythandria was swarmed by insects.
Slythe did at least get one successful attack in - but found even that bounced off a rare use of stoneskins.
Krystin was treated to a first use of insect plague being dragged in by an invisible attacker to make absolutely sure she didn't try anything nasty before being bitten.
At the palace everyone used iron skins for the first time and bear attacks, with supporting nymphs and insect swarms was far too much for a few dopplegangers - neither duke took any damage.
After clearing the maze, the druids worked through the undead in the Undercity. Tamoko failed to complete a spell under bear attack, while Rahvin's party got insects.
In the old temple Walker Boh approached Sarevok invisibly to activate the enemies. Semaj killed a nymph when he teleported out, but got a single swarm of insects in response.
More insects followed an invisible Walker Boh to the dais, but Sarevok still knew where the damage came from and charged out. The others followed, but Angelo's initial spells failed and he died before he could switch to arrows.
After that I was trying to avoid attacking Sarevok in order to kill Tazok and get a clean sweep. However, he stubbornly refused to appear before Sarevok was bitten to death.
The druids transferred to SoD with about 156k XP, so I managed to get reasonably close to the XP cap.
Charname is a human wizard slayer. Currently in BG1 at Chp. 6 Candlekeep with ~94k exp. Third attempt.
One near death experience during a cloakwood forest giant spider ambush, when we didn't notice that charname had a bow equipped instead of the spider sword, and charname got webbed and nearly killed while immobilized.
The cloakwood mines themselves went better. The enemy party outside the mines got dumpstered by a firebreath potion from an invisible Shar Teel. The bandits on the second floor were fought from the jail/stairs instead of the kitchen and safely dispatched. The various enemies on the third floor weren't very threatening.
Davaeron himself was a little trickier. Previously, the party had lured the two battle horrors away from him and killed them separately, which allowed the party to pretty quickly focus down Davaeorn with archer fire. This time however, we decided to fight all three at once and be a little nicer.
Unfortunately, what actually happened is that the battle horrors clogged the hallway, and kept Davaeron out of range - unless the archers were willing to get swung at by the battle horrors. The battle horrors are pretty hard to kill quickly without magic due to their -5 AC (particularly if magic blocking wipes Khalid's giant strength buff). The party started to get a little worried, especially after the first set of magic blocking potions ran out after 5 rounds.
Nevertheless, Davaeron eventually wandered too close and was killed with missile fire. His death killed the battle horrors, which was too bad as the party would have liked the additional 8k exp. The mine was then flooded, and the party left for BG.
The party did a few minor quests in the city (thieves guild, ramazith for his ring and tome, etc.) and then headed to the iron throne headquarters, the setting of its Attempt #1 wipe.
The party was a bit stronger than during its past attempt. This time, Shar Teel is a F6/T7, instead of a F3/T7, and she has higher hp as well as 2 better base thac0 and an additional proficiency point. Yeslick is still with the party, and is carrying genius potions and a wand of fear (his base 7 intelligence does not let him use the wand without assistance). Jaheira also has a wand of fear, Khalid and Coran both have explosive potions, and charname has detonation arrows. Khalid has done very well with his hp rolls, and has 80 hp at level 7. Nice job buddy.
Fight opens with two fear wand charges, 3 fireballs (two from explosive potions, 1 from a detonation arrow). Once Shar Teel - buffed with Jaheira's protection from fire and wearing speed boots - is in position behind Zhalimar, she backstabs the archer and then firebreaths him, and then runs around trying to tag as many enemies as she can with the fire beam.
One thief was killed by the fireballs, one failed their save against fear, and the third was "near death" from fireballs and then killed with arrows after getting in only one backstab. Archers then focused down the cleric and the mage, now that the thieves were all dead/disabled and couldn't backstab the shooting archers. Shar teel got 3 backstabs in over the course of the fight, two against Zhalimar and one against Gardush, the fighter.
IMHO this is the second toughest fight in BG1, excepting optional TotSC fights (Sarevok 'n Co are the first). SCS insane adds two invisible thieves to the starting 6 opponents, and it's easy to get surprised and overwhelmed by the various sources of melee dps if the player doesn't start out very aggressively.
In any case, the party now at candlekeep, just dealt with the ogre mage ambush outside. I had thought this was a threatening fight but I increasingly think it isn't - the ogres don't appear to have particularly good melee or spells and a bunch of mirror image fighter / mages slashing and using magic missiles just isn't that threatening at this point in the game.
Once the Candlekeep dungeons are done, there's not much left to do other then head for Sarevok. We may deal with the first underground floor of Durlags to get the +3 Plate armor there. Somewhat interestingly, enchanted armor is unusually good for wizard slayers, as they can't wear rings/cloaks/amulets of protection anyway.
Charname is a human wizard slayer. Now in BG2, just starting Jon's dungeon with ~135k exp. Third attempt, first to get to SoA.
After returning from candlekeep, the party headed back to BG. First stop was the flaming fist headquarters, where we were attacked upon entering. Turns out the mercenary in the basement is innocent, so we managed to lose 8 rep and after saving the duke had to make a pit-stop at the temple to wash the blood off our hands.
We then headed to the iron throne headquarters to see what was going on with our old buddies, only to find it in disarray. At the top was a high level mage with two golems, intent on our death. This fight was a little messier than I was expecting - I had thought a single mage wouldn't be a match for three archers with acid arrows +1, not least because one of the archers was a wizard slayer. Golems were no big deal, as jaheira could easily tank them with the help of an absorption potion, but the wizard was a little sturdier than I thought.
Most mages in BG1, unlike BG2, don't have improved invisible. But the later mages do, and between that and shield and possibly 18 dex or blur, can be quite hard to hit (around -6 up to -9 AC). So the fight was a little messier than I was expecting because I didn't realize that my ~5 thac0 archers were missing around 75% of their shots. Nevertheless, eventually she was overwhelmed. I, RPing a simp as I mostly do in real life, let her go after she asked for mercy.
Next stop was the assassins in the Undercellar. Poor Slythe, the thief, drank an invisibility potion a hair's breadth before Coran's detect illusion ability ticked, leaving the hapless murderer hopelessly exposed. He received a few arrows and a final ~40 damage backstab from Shar Teel to send him to the shadows permanently.
Kristin, the mage, had some weird (I think) bug where she kept going invisible. I panicked after a sunfire killed half my party and used a PfM scroll on charname, who eventually with the help of Khalid took her out during the brief windows during which she was visible. Then the game crashed and we had to do it all over again.
Having retrieved the invitations to the palace from the assassins, we headed over to join the party. I've never had an issue with this fight - although SCS makes the dopplegangers much tougher, it also seems to make the mage more powerful and so she is quite difficult to take out behind her various protections. The dopple shaman took a backstab and was then killed with a few arrows. The dopple mage was focused down with acid arrows and the other dopples were subsequently chopped up.
After Sarevok fled, the party did a little last minute consumable shopping and then tracked down the helm and cloak of balduran as well as the noble helm. Vail was left to live and his girlfriend willingly handed over the cloak to the party. The party was swollen with consumables, including 100s of acid arrows, dozens of detonation arrows, half a dozen magic blocking, shielding and protection potions, and 2 arrows of dispelling from Durlag's tower.
The Undercity started out smoothly: the various denizens of the maze were dispatched for a little bit of final XP - although unfortunately not enough to get Shar Teel to level 9 for GM and x4 backstab.
Disaster struck during the fight with the party outside the temple. The plan had been to open with a salvo of fireball potions + detonation arrows and a backstab for the enemy archer that himself has detonation arrows. However, I noticed during the fight in the undercellar that PfM has a long duration, and as I was planning on using it on several characters during the final fight in the temple, I decided to get a headstart on it now and have Shar Teel cast it to protect her from the fireball potions.
As it turns out, PfM does NOT protect from explosive potions OR detonation arrows, which surprised me to say the least! Also unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the various damage dice that hit Shar Teel, she went to -20 or even -30 hp and was perma-killed. In a normal fight, she would have been protected from fire by Jaheira, but had thought incorrectly in this case that PfM would protect her. Big oops.
While Shar Teel was getting killed, the enemy cleric had gotten off a greater command and knocked out Khalid and charname. Yeslick, Jaheira, and Coran remained awake and finished off the remaining wounded enemies.
Now preparing to face Sarevok and his gang, the party was a bit concerned. Shar Teel was no longer around to backstab Diarmid, who would be free to fire detonation arrows at the party. In addition, despite Jaheira's -9 AC with an additional -7 to slashing, she was probably unable to standup to Sarevok and would have to spend the fight jogging around distracting him. On the plus side, we did have a ton of consumables, and still had both arrows of dispelling.
Khalid, Charname and Coran got PfM, while Yeslick and Jaheira got potions of protection/shielding and charges from the greenstone amulet. Various other potions were chugged, and then the party headed inside.
Once inside, Jaheira summoned a nymph and the party stepped forward.
As an aside, I think I've finished BG1 on SCS insane two or possibly three times, and this is the first time I got through the fight with no deaths and felt like we were in control the whole time - despite Shar Teel not being around to help.
Jaheira had -11 AC (-9 base, -1 from Mind Focusing, -1 from Defense). She tanked Tazok and Sarevok (who had his haste removed by a dispel arrow from Coran), while the archers focused on Diarmid. Yeslick tanked (or at least tried to) Angelo and Semaj was mostly ignored for the time being. Magic shielding potions were re-drank when dispelled by one of the mages.
Diarmid fell quickly: he really couldn't stand up to 3x archers with 3 APR doing ~15 damage a hit between the piercing and acid. Tazok likewise went down rapidly, and then Khalid and Koran switched to swords to clear their skeletons.
Jaheira was forced to start kiting Sarevok once she ran out of extra healing potions. Despite -16 vs. slashing (having had the potion buffs dispelled), she could still only dodge about 1/3 of Sarevoks attacks. I think with potion buffs, pfE, and improved invisible, it's possible to get Sarevok down to missing 60-70% of attacks and tankable. But we had no way to cast II and forgot to cast pfE. It's also tough to prevent her from being dispelled by remove magic.
Yeslick wasn't making much progress against Angelo, despite 24 strength and ** in hammers / 2WF. In fact, Angelo was making progress against him, and had depleted his half dozen extra healing potions. Then yeslick asked Angelo whether he had remembered to cast protection from fire, and when he hesitated, blew firebreath in his face and killed him on the second tick. Probably should have done that at the start of the fight.
Now left with only Semaj remaining of the 4 acolytes, Coran (still under pfM) headed over to use dispel illusion and then hit him with the remaining dispel arrow. That probably could have been done earlier too, but with the party so well protected from magic, it wasn't really a priority.
At that point only Sarevok was left. Yeslick closed out the fight with two ~25 damage hits from his sling as Sarevok chased after Jaheira.
I'm going to apologize for the bad etiquette of posting three times in a row because I wanted to share a few final thoughts on the wizard slayer class as well as the experience of trying to GM Shar Teel as a F6->T9.
First the wizard slayer. This is generally thought to be one of the weaker charname classes. The player starts with a default fighter, then gives up rings, cloaks, amulets, bracers and most potions. In return the player gets the ability to apply stacking 25% cast fail on hit to arcane casters as well as 1% MR a level up to 20 (~3% a level thereafter).
Is it worth it?
Well, sometimes.
Against enemies without arcane magic, the wizard slayer is just a gimped vanilla fighter, and a vanilla fighter isn't exactly the strongest class to begin with.
Against arcane casters, if you can hit them, the cast failure will rapidly (mostly) neutralize them as a threat. This is an effective ability.. sometimes. One problem is you have to hit them. If they have protection from normal missiles you need +1/2 arrows to hit them. If they have pfNM AND pfMW, then you need to approach in melee. And you do need to hit them. If you miss, because they are II and shielded and dexterous and blurred... then nothing happens.
The other, perhaps larger, problem is that wizard slayers can't use many items that would otherwise protect them FROM magic, so they are MORE vulnerable to arcane casters than even a vanilla fighter would be. No, you can't drink a potion of invisibility in an emergency to break LoS. No, you can't drink a potion of magic shielding to guarantee your save. You can't even drink a potion of invulnerability to get -5 to saves temporarily, or use a +2 RoP to buff your saves to begin with.
Because the wizard slayer is charname and the run is over if charname dies, this dynamic frequently means that against a NON-arcane the wizard slayer is just a gimped fighter and when finally facing an arcane the wizard slayer actually wants to hide out of LoS because he is extremely vulnerable to any spells a mage does get off.
And they will get off some spells. You can't stop them from using abilities or wands or scrolls, and you are unlikely to stop them from casting in the first round or two. There are several level 10+ mages in SCS with minor sequencer -> 2x chromatic that can easily kill you through 100% cast failure. Fortunately, in this run, Khalid bit the dust, not charname.
However, this issue is mitigated once the wizard slayer becomes an epic level thief with UAI or an epic level fighter with very high magic resistance. I haven't gotten there yet though. Also, note that a wizard slayer CAN use pfM.
--
For Shar Teel F6->T9, a few quick comments.
I really liked her this run, after being underwhelmed the first time around when she was F3->Thief. The two points of extra base thac0 and extra weapon proficiency point were quite helpful, as were the extra hps. The bigger change was better equipment and focusing exclusively on HiS after investing 3 levels in find traps (if she doesn't need find traps, put more points in HiS imo). With shadow leather, she could successfully hide ~70% of the time and use invis potions as backup if she failed. The cheetah boots were essential to get her into position rapidly and then run out of LoS to avoid damage and re-hide.
Dagger of venom was OK but mostly didn't matter because her primary source of damage was backstabs, and the DoT didn't always proc and even when it did it didn't matter much. It's proc is better against mages but she doesn't backstab mages due to stoneskin/mirror image so it's kind of hard to leverage. Clerics would be a better target except... they have excellent save vs. death. It might be more interesting on a heavily armored warrior build, but I think that's a less effective build than a backstabbing thief - not least as the tanking warrior will struggle with her low hp.
I think daggers are better than longswords for the +3 to hit plate wearers. But I'm not 100% sure.
The other factor of note is that there is a hidden (I believe) +4 damage +8 to hit against archers, when using a melee weapon against them. As best I could tell, the damage bonus stacks with backstab, so she was a ferocious backstabber against those targets despite not reaching level 9 for x4. Even at x3, she would regularly do 45+ damage with the dagger of venom to archers at 95% accuracy. At which point they could easily be shot down with a few more arrows or killed with a potion of firebreath.
However, she was still ~20k exp short of T9 by the temple, and so a party that isn't planning on doing the TotSC content probably can't reasonablely expect to reach thief level 9 and will be stuck with level 8 max.
We may deal with the first underground floor of Durlags to get the +3 Plate armor there. Somewhat interestingly, enchanted armor is unusually good for wizard slayers, as they can't wear rings/cloaks/amulets of protection anyway.
If you talk to Tamoko, so that she appears in the Undercity, you can get her armor - full plate +1 is better than the plate mail +3.
The other factor of note is that there is a hidden (I believe) +4 damage +8 to hit against archers, when using a melee weapon against them. As best I could tell, the damage bonus stacks with backstab, so she was a ferocious backstabber against those targets despite not reaching level 9 for x4.
The bonus applies against anything not using a melee weapon (or equivalent natural weapon). That includes any targets that start off with fists equipped, as well as those with missile weapons.
We may deal with the first underground floor of Durlags to get the +3 Plate armor there. Somewhat interestingly, enchanted armor is unusually good for wizard slayers, as they can't wear rings/cloaks/amulets of protection anyway.
If you talk to Tamoko, so that she appears in the Undercity, you can get her armor - full plate +1 is better than the plate mail +3.
A good point! But I'm a Nice Guy™ that doesn't like to kill Tamoko. Also, the +3 plate can be gotten considerably earlier.
SCS Insane Trilogy run of fighters.
Charname is a human wizard slayer. Now in BG2, finishing up chapter 3 with ~990k exp. Third attempt, first in SoA.
Jon's dungeon started out smoothly. The party scored probably the cleanest win ever against the ogre mage - a bully I mostly avoid, but this time we felt a WS charname could probably turn the tables on him. In actuality, Imoen opened with a chromatic orb and the ogre mage failed his save and was stunned, and that was the end of the fight.
Then we successfully got 75% of the party horror'd by a duergar mage, and later on minsc nearly killed during a mephit stun in the air plane. Nevertheless, we survived and soon exited the dungeon into Athkatla proper.
The party's plan for this run was the WS charname dualing to thief at level 13, joined by Yoshi dualed to fighter, korgan, Anomen, jaheira and mazzy. That makes 6 fighters in Chp 2-3, and 5 after Yoshi leaves. It also leaves the party without a thief until Yoshi hits fighter 11 at 750k exp to reactivate his starting bounty hunter 10.
The lack of a thief was really painful and led to such highlights as the party being bullied by the trapped door/walkway in the slums sewers, which is apparently an infinite charge petrification trap. Yoshi was petrified on the wrong side; however, it turns out that if you walk really carefully you can walk around it. I was not brave enough to walk around it with charname though.
The party was trying really hard to hit 250k exp before recruiting korgan and anomen and without leaving the slums (fearing the suna seni ambush). We finally got the last points we needed from Bregg and Cahrvale outside the CC, who turn out to give a generous 4k and 6k each.
Once Korgan and Anomen were recruited, the party, now at 5 members, settled on a system to deal with traps. Jaheira casts find traps (she doesn't have much to do with level 2 spells anyway). Then, Korgan with death ward and berserk can trigger the trap and see what happens and whether it has more than 1 charge. He's still vulnerable to petrification, but he has good saves and the party has plenty of stone to flesh scrolls. We unfortunately ran through our supply of green protection from petrification scrolls pretty quickly.
Suna Seni ambushed the party shortly thereafter, and out of an abundance of caution was roasted by a firebreath potion from jaheira. We then headed off to the graveyard to get Korgan's quest out of the way, leaning on azure edge from the CC. Turns out it is usable by good characters only, so Korgan unfortunately can't use it, but charname was an OK shot even without proficiency due to his 19 dex and fighter thac0.
At this point the party was trying to get to 500k exp before recruiting mazzy, and focusing on saving the quest XP for after she was recruited. We were also trying to avoid areas with too many traps.
We did the druid grove, but held off turning in the quest. We also held off on dealing with the Djinnis as we couldn't pickpocket the lamp and didn't know whether the Djinni holding the lamp would disappear when he went hostile (or put up a bigger fight than we were prepared for -- it turned out later that the answer to both was no).
We did the DK prior to Torgal (chaotic commands makes this whole area a lot safer than in the ranger/thief run!). The Yuanti mage succumbed to WS cast failure and the trolls couldn't really deal with a pack of sleep-immune fighters.
At 500k exp, mazzy was rescued in the temple ruins. The greater mummy / bone golem /skeleton warrior spawns provided a little bit of pain, but were eventually taken out at the price of a lot of extra healing potions. Azure edge works against the greater mummies, but not the golems, and it needed a ~20% or less roll against the mummies as the party had no malison casters.
The shade lord put up a bit more fight than normal as the party had no way to remove his pfMW or spell turning and so had trouble interrupting his casts - he also has intrinsic immunity to normal weapons, so no WS disabling until pfMW expires. He cast black blade and a finger of death, but the party had enough death wards active that it wasn't too big of a deal. Jaheira used a potion of invulnerability and managed to survive the finger of death. Eventually the shade's pfMW expired, and then mazzy and charname rapidly shot him to death.
After doing a few more quests in athkatla (bridge district killings, slavers, fallen paladins, Maevar, etc.) and turning in the various quests it had held in stock (harpers, druid grove, etc.) the party decided to head back to the DK to deal with Torgal.
SCS has buffed this fight so much that I am starting to think it is the toughest fight in chapter 2/3 (provided you skip the planar prison, sphere and unseeing eye until later). Unfortunately, this iteration provided another example of why.
The plan had been open with: (i) 3 explosive potions to kill or at least injure the trolls, (ii) smite from Anomen for more damage and one round of save or blind, (iii) dolorous decay on Torgal from Jaheira to slow down his attacks, movement and regen, (iv) two confusion casts from nymphs to try to hit the yuanti mages, and (v) Korgan's aura held in reserve for a firebreath potion.
This plan started OK, with the trolls severely injured and charname / mazzy able to quickly shoot down the 3 spirit trolls with acid arrows. However, Torgal rolled magic resistance against the slow from the decay as well as a save vs. the poison.
Then.. (semi) disaster struck. Yoshi got targeted by Torgal, and despite running at half hp, couldn't get away and got chunked. I think his aura was still clouded from the explosive potion, but in any case he could not drink a potion of invisibility in time. Dead 50k exp short of unlocking his thief levels!
So the party is STILL stuck without a thief for another 250k exp, unless charname wants to dual at 12, which he doesn't. Also means we lose the 200k from Yoshi's heart quest. Whoops.
Mazzy got hit with a 3x sequencer fireballs from one of the yuantis, but other than that the rest of the fight wasn't too dangerous. The firebreath from Korgan (hasted with oil of speed) killed Torgal and crushed the remaining trolls, while the yuanti mages mostly hung back for the few rounds the fight lasted. I think in hindsight the party should have had better fire resistance coverage and brought true-seeing and divine wands to better interrupt the yuanti, but we got away with it.
Will try to handle windspear and the first floor of WK as best we can with no trap removal and then head off to spellhold. Charname is going to be without his fighter levels for probably brynlaw, spellhold and most of the underdark, so that may be the most dangerous part of the run. We also have no way to dispel mage protections, which will become an increasing problem as the party won't be able to avoid high level arcane casters forever.
I'm also realizing charname won't get UAI until ToB. I think if I get killed and ever try the run again I'll dual WS at 9 instead of 13.
---
A few comments on the Yoshi dual to fighter, as I think that is a relatively rare build.
It was... OK? I didn't get to unlock his thief levels, but in general practice there is really only a brief window from thief unlock at 910k exp (160k T; 750k F) to the party's passage to spellhold at which point yoshi will leave. So he spends the vast majority of his time as a single class fighter.
Which he is OK at? He has 16 con so he doesn't get any bonus hp. I gave him grandmaster long swords and ** in 2WS (wielding varscona, burning earth), but in hindsight I think he would have been better as a longbow or xbow grandmaster to take advantage of his 18 dex. The party already had enough frontliners and he didn't really shine as "yet another sword swinger". He might be more interesting in that role in a party that really needs another fighter for some reason. And I suppose at level 11 he can start using backstabs, but I'm not sure that counts for much.
In a melee fighter (or longbow) build, he would benefit from a party member that can cast Strength, which most parties can but mine can't. Probably army scythe xbow would have been the best build in my party, to take advantage of the extra +1 APR and the various enchanted bolts that we weren't using. That would give him 3.5 APR as a grandmaster and pretty strong back-row damage output with lightning or biting bolts.
Losing trap detection is pretty awful unless the party has someone else that can do it. Charname with duhm could bash most locks though.
But even in the most favorable circumstances for "Fighter Yoshi", when the party might have an extra thief for find traps and have the ability to give Yoshi additional strength, I think he is still weaker as that build than trap yoshi. Bounty hunter traps are just too strong to be worth giving up.
Having said that, it is kind of fun seeing him in plate with a helmet and two longswords, so there's that. I'd still go ranged if I were going to do it again though (with xbow, shortbow or longbow depending on party comp). Maybe darts would be interesting but there are't a lot of stunning darts early and the lack of a thac0 bonus from either a bow or the arrows hurts as well.
Cliff-notes adventure: A F/M/C out of time, part 4
Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Aldain decided to be honorable, fighting Drasus & friends behind a mere screen of 5 assorted Hobgoblins/Gnolls/Ogres from the Wand of Summoning. With predictable results (really, we're engaging two SCS Mages, what did we think would happen? The answer is horrific death):
As always, killing Drasus and Genthore was easily accomplished at range, but Kysus and Rezdan completely destroyed us. Dynaheir dropped to a Lightning Bolt, Jaheira ate a Fireball, Imoen took one too many Melf's Minute Meteors, Aldain got stunned by an Ice Lance, Khalid got Dire Charmed, Confusion/Chaos flying around etc... all bad things.
Of course, this is still only BG1. Meaning a single Potion of Firebreath is usually enough to defuse even the stickiest of situations.
Imoen ended up dropping since she kept Khalid from killing Aldain (Dire Charmed allies will always target nearest), but amazingly, we got through it: Though if Khalid's Dire Charm had lasted another round, we would've been done for.
Lots of loot shuffling, trekking back to the FAI and Raise Dead fees later, we returned and cleared the remainder of the mines, this time with no issues: Hareishan went with MSD instead of MGoI and so died along with her guards to Fireball sniping, and Natasha got a taste of the Bombardier Beetles Jaheira can now summon, as she's reached Druid level 7. Finally, Davaeorn was handled via a scroll of PfM on Khalid.
On our way towards civilization, we swung by the final unexplored wilderness area and took out the Red Wizards.
Owing to us being quite grossly over-leveled, Baldur's Gate itself went (mostly) smoothly: Khalid went down in the sewers after having been Web Tangled and subsequently poisoned three times in a row by Phase Spiders, but otherwise no fatalities.
On a completely random note, sending in 2-3 Bombardier Beetles and parking them next to enemy Mages before they go hostile is probably something I should refrain from doing; Mages are all but guaranteed to fail at least one of their saving throws against the acidic vapors and be stunned, making the fight a foregone conclusion (it feels cheap!).
With everything else in the city cleared, we ascended the Iron Throne. As usual, the party snuck into the back room (Imoen and Minsc stealthed, Aldain under Sanctuary and the rest under Invisibility) and set up shop. This time we did a proper job of using invisible characters with cloaks of non-detection to block the doorway, and so were able to slowly whittle down enemy resources using highly expendable summons courtesy of Dynaheir, who really doesn't have much else to do with her L4 slots. You'll note my chivalry has limits... always facing much higher level enemies head-on is not advisable if one wishes to stay in good health.
Once drained of buffs and their most devastating magics, Zhalimar & co felt the fury of a few Nymphs with 2x Confusion, and that was it.
Nymphs really are great value for a 4th level druid slot against humanoid enemies.
We looted everything and headed back to the Elfsong, identifying and selling off what we didn't need.
The party is at about 110k xp, and I'm seriously considering just blazing through Candlekeep and finishing BG1 below the level cap, since at my current rate finishing Durlag's in order to reach 161k by the end is likely to take a month... we'll see what happens.
Aldain is now a level 6/5/6 Half-Elf Fighter/Mage/Cleric.
A few dodgy bits of play in today's session, but none of those proved costly.
At the Cloakwood Mine we made our way downstairs to find Davaeorn and dragged his battle horrors back one by one. A potion of magic blocking protected Corepally's charge, but Davaeorn still managed to pick out Fini with his lightning bolt - fortunately she saved.
With the damage spells gone, Plinker joined the attack and poisoned arrows spelled doom for the mage.
In the City an early target was the ogre mage. Corepally and Plinker were both immune to hold, but the carrion crawlers were all lying down on the job anyway.
Another group finding the stress of battle all rather too much for them were the Mountain Maulers.
Lothander attempted to make a quick getaway after talking to us, but failed to get a grip on the slippery floor.
Marek then failed to get a spell off.
That was a common failing in fact during an extermination campaign targeting nearly all the mages in the City - Fini learned a lot from observing the carnage of her fellows.
One of the last to be visited was Ramazith - he obviously knew what was coming and decided to commit suicide.
We took a fair amount of damage in some of the combats and retreated fairly regularly outside the City walls to rest for free in order to heal up. Of course Plinker was not always willing to wait to get Bhaal CLWs .
At the Iron Throne we sneaked in initially and Fini blinded 3 of the casters. A web, with malison and fireballs, proved pretty nasty for the enemies and they failed to make an impact on Corepally when he made himself the center of attention with a PfM scroll.
The final action was back at Candlekeep where we picked up the tomes. Fini managed to trigger the lightning trap there - as it's not long since that trap ended a MP run though I decided Fini should use a protective potion (which she gulped just in time).
Prat's gang didn't last long and Fini got some extra enjoyment there from fireballing Corepally (the fun only slightly spoiled by the 90% resistance the paladin had).
Pretty slow progress through SoD so far, but the druids continue to move forwards.
There were no problems in the SoD prologue - Korlasz was surrounded by invisible nymphs and killed by cause wounds spells.
In the City I did various quests, while picking up a bit more equipment from the bodies of NPCs. On leaving the first action was at the Coast Way Forest. I went with my normal approach of helping the vampire, though regeneration isn't of much benefit to this party. Walker Boh was stunned by a wand of paralysation blast from Ikros right at the start of the contest, but 5 insect plagues were already homing in on him.
Those quickly killed Ikros, as well as scaring Isabella away for a round until call lightnings hammered down on him.
Back at the Coast Way Crossing the druids scoured the area. They had no problems killing the party on the bridge with call lightning, but hit the menhir quest bug (one of the menhirs not activating properly even using a character with 20 charisma). I adopted my standard approach with non game-ending bugs and just left the menhirs rather than resetting their global variables. In the dwarven dig site many of the undead were very resistant to missiles, but insect spells were pretty effective against them. They made use of wands once, when Walker Boh was sent running by a mummy
- somewhere in that battle the druids got the XP for level 11, providing them with new summoning possibilities. Miscast magic from the Secret Revealed kept the lich quiet while he was cut down and his phylactery was then quickly taken to a fiery doom.
Moving on to the Troll Claw Woods the druids cleared that area. They made limited use of summons, but Walker Boh's returning acid dart got plenty of use for finishing off trolls. The only encounter requiring much thought was in the troll cave, where Walker Boh originally tried to cluster the trolls round himself while the others cast. However, as soon as anyone else appeared the trolls attacked them and the druids had to retreat. Coming back again, Walker Boh led the trolls right to the back of the cave before the others produced some summons - which lasted long enough to break the back of the defenders.
On the way to the Forest of Wyrms an ambush encounter with orcs and trolls proved pretty easy. They worked through the external area without difficulty and free action allowed them to deal with some spiders and beetles without trouble. Moving on, they sneaked past a dragon before elementals led the way through some bugbears and various cultists towards Ziatar. There was an unexpected death at that point for Cogline though. There's a fireball trap in the corridor and Allanon went to trigger that with 110% fire resistance thanks to scimitar, helm and ring. The others were sent well away from the blast, but I didn't notice quickly enough that pathfinding problems had slowed movement down and 2 of the druids were caught by the fringes of the fireball. That should have still been no problem, but unfortunately Cogline was wearing Gorion's belt and failing his save allowed the trap to do just enough damage to kill him ...
Cogline was brought back with a scroll before the last of the cultists were killed. Ziatar would have been in trouble just from the swarms of insects, but a nymph hold made quite sure he was unable to respond to attacks.
Summons then provided enough distraction to take down the Neothelid.
The Shadow Aspect is resistant to magic damage, but that didn't help it when a fire elemental dragged swarms of insects into its lair.
Darskhelin had magic resistance to help him against insects, but there was no such luck for his companions and once the illithid was shot down the others didn't last long.
Akanna was then crushed by a pair of elementals. On the way out, Allanon's second non-proficient attack sent a dagger into the heart of Morentherene (I wondered afterwards if I should have let the dragon fight properly in order to get the XP for more greater wyverns as well, but dragon fear could have made that risky unless I resorted to buffing).
Another ambush triggered on the way to Boareskyr Bridge. This time Allanon initially paid his debt to green dragons by rescuing one of their youngsters from a couple of hill giants - before going even deeper into debt by killing it .
At Boareskyr the druids improved their defenses by making armor from rhino beetle and dragon leftovers - though unfortunately the smith didn't know the trick of making ankheg armor from a shell . They did a few minor quests before deciding to fight their way through the fort's besiegers, rather than surrendering as I normally do. A first use of wands of horror made the opening stages easier and, once the Barghest became the last of the initial enemies to fall, they were able to move on to the bridge.
The Ring of Energy disrupted the mage's opening spell there and, with insects on the way, he got no further chance to cause mischief.
The quest reward for getting to the Coalition Camp took everyone close to another level.
Walker Boh - L11, 76 HPs, 577 kills, 1 death
Bremen - L11, 83 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 373 kills, 0 deaths
Galaphile - L11, 77 HPs, 424 kills, 1 death
Allanon - L11, 83 HPs (incl. 5 from buckler, 568 kills
Brona - L11, 74 HPs, 443 kills, 1 death
Cogline - L11, 74 HPs, 330 kills, 1 death
Trio 25, Core rules, unmodded (update 3)
Fini - female, human illusionist (Grond0)
Corepally - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Plinker - male, human blackguard (Corey_Russell)
It looks like you are bit confused in your post @Grond0 - were you sleepy? Corepally is of course me, Corey_Russell, not Gate70.
Well I'm always a bit sleepy, but the introductory bit is copied from previous updates, so the original error was made a couple of weeks ago - I've now corrected the previous two updates as well as this latest one .
Comments
A new run with a neutral fighter/thief character. Amazed that no re-rolling was necessary.
Initial proficiencies ** daggers ** single weapon all thieving proficiencies initially in open locks in order to get the valuable stone in Candlekeep
I was given a +1 dagger which was highly useful when it came to dealing with the assassins in Candlekeep. I then donned their equipment which provided me with +1 studded leather armour and the +1 daggers that they were using.
The added equipment of those assassins is the only modification to my EE game.
Playing core rules.
On the other hand, the gate isn't actually *closed*, which makes me think the party should try to make lemonade out of lemons by attacking the city at some point later on (when the party is at 3mm+ exp).
Looking at the wiki, seems the party lost about 500k exp per member by losing all the ust natha quests.
Symon (male half-elf druid, Grond0); Noht (male half-elf blade, Gate70)
Previous updates:
The session started with reputation at 19, so we went to kill some half-ogres before reporting to Bjornin. While in Beregost Silke was blinded and disposed of.
With prices low, Noht bought some spells at High Hedge before we went to the basilisk area to try some of those out. The basilisks caused no trouble, while Mutamin failed to recognize the danger from stinking clouds despite owning the spell.
At the Lighthouse it took a bit longer than expected to kill the first 2 sirines and the third recovered before charming Symon. Of course that meant it didn't attack him further, so Noht just retreated out of harm's way to wait for a bit before rejoining to finish the job.
We briefly stopped to blind Bassilus on the way to Durlag's Tower. Lightning and magic missiles made pretty short work of the battle horrors there and the basilisks on the roof provided a nice XP boost.
By this time the Nashkel Mine offered no real threat. Mulahey, rather surprisingly, managed to get up within a cloud, but at near death and already panicking he couldn't do anything effective.
In Nashkel Symon produced a couple of nymphs for the first time to neatly package Neira for slaughter.
Tranzig has a habit of saying he's going to put up a fight a split-second before going down like a rock. At least this time his panic meant he survived a bit longer - even if he was not exactly fighting
The session ended with us stopping off at the FAI on the way to the Bandit Camp. Tarnesh had not yet been dealt with and surprise enabled him to send Noht running - but the skies were rapidly darkening above him ...
Druid 8, 66 HPs, 99 kills
Blade 7, 48 HPs, 131 kills, 2 deaths
In Candlekeep Shank and Carbos both got backstabbed. Shank died immediately but Carbos was more of a challenge. He followed me outside and when he got held up by some wardens I took the opportunity to use my crossbow.
Tarnesh was the next to be back-stabbed.
I killed some hobgoblins and Sonner before trying to hole up in Baldur's Gate, but was denied access.
I then returned Tenya's bowl before returning to Beregost where I killed Karlat.
I killed an ogre on the way to Beregost.
Upon leaving the inn sfter killing Karlat I was badly hurt by lightning. The lightning was worse than any of the enemies that I have faced so far. As a result I holed up in an inn for quite a long time.
I then headed out to find Perdue's Sword and in the process ended up helping Mellicamp.
I returned Perdue's sword and killed some spiders before taking the loot to the Friendly Arms Inn.
Having become a decent thief, I headed to Durlag's Tower where I ransacked it until I was so badly hurt by a skeleton warrior that I left as fast as I could. Nevertheless I gained excellent equipment whilst there as well as experience:
I thought that the kindest thing to do was to kill Rigglio.
Upon leaving Durlag's, I took on Vax and Zal before helping a dryad and Drienne's cat.
On the way to the gnoll's stronghold I killed a winter wolf.
After leaving, I killed a polar bear.
I then helped Charleston and killed Gallor.
And ended up in this state:
Which is quite enough for one post.
I decided at last to take Khaled and Jaheira to Nashkel.
I then picked up Xzar and Montaron and went on their versdion of "shopping."
I left Xzar in Nashkel and Montaron at Urlag's Beard.
Upon returning to Nashkel Dorn joined me.
He tried to help against Bassilus, but I ended up helping him!
He did however help against Geltik and his "friends."
When my reputation increased he left. I was quite pleased about that as his presence made me nervous. I was a lot happier when Branwen joined with me however.
She helped against a large number of basilisks and finally Mutamin himself.
Jaheira then rejoined us and together we cleared the Nashkel mines.
It was then that Xan joined the party. His ability to use the wand of fire together with my use of the necklace of missiles and Branwen's silence spell made the Amazons fall very quickly.
We then went to Beregost where we met a weird mage once more.
In Beregost we sold a plethora of ankheg shells that we had collected earlier. With the gold we bought Shadow Armour for me so I gave my ankheg armour to Jaheira. I also bought her a sling +1 and a large shield +1. I bought Branwen a medium shield +1 as she is not always able to use the large shield. For myself I bought the scythe crossbow. All Xan got from the shopping spree was some scrolls that were being sold at Feldpost's.
After making ust natha hostile by being overly brusque with the gate guard, the party decided to stage a daring raid on the temple of loth to try to steal the silver dragon eggs.
The original plan was to have the party fight drow by the entrance to the city, while a hasted/cheetah boots jan with invisible + SI:D went for the eggs in the temple. This was a decent plan, up until the game informed me that "you must gather your party before venturing forth". Oops.
Retreated and came up with a new plan. The new plan was to remove everyone from the party except charname and imoen and send them in alone. Imoen couldn't be removed because she automatically goes to the copper coronet for some reason and I didn't want that. Charname took the boots, Imoen took a bunch of invisible casts + teleport field and everybody prebuffed then we went for it.
Unfortunately, while charname somehow managed to get out alive with unhealing wounds curse and 3 hp, Imoen was killed in the temple during the round between a cast of sequencer 3x teleport field and being able to restore invisibility. Her sacrifice was not in vain: in the confusion, an invisible charname was able to sneak out and escape with the eggs.
I consider Imoen permanently killed as the party wouldn't have been able to retrieve her body. In addition, the party also lost the amulet of power, Ras, the golem book, and some more minor treasure.
I did retry the plan a few times just to see if i could make it through unscathed. Out of 5 attempts, charname escaped with the eggs in all 5, but Imoen only survived once. It's a really tough situation as the temple gets extremely clogged with drow due to the improved ust natha reinforcements, and they walk towards charname even when he is invisible (due to the scripting - they can't see him). Once they block the way, someone has to lose invisibility for a round to dislodge them. The one time Imoen survived was when the drow clog happened outside the temple, rather than inside. It's possible that if I had removed Imoen from the party at the start, charname would have been able to succeed alone. Or, he could have been trapped without the teleport field and the run would have ended.
All in all, the party is certainly worse off than before the raid. But the run isn't over, and I suppose the party can recruit Sarevok in ToB and dual him to a thief as a 6th member if it wants to. Painful to lose Imoen though, both for party power and story reasons.
Edit: nevermind the run is over haha. The drow follow you out of the city and several dozen drow eventually overmatched the party.
Enemies in LoB mode have a flat 80 HP boost in addition to triple their normal HP. This, combined with their obscene -11 boost to AC, makes it so even the weakest creature takes forever to kill. Although my previous run ended at the Twisted Rune in LoB mode, I do not want to waste time constantly watching my dudes miss enemies again. My solution is to use @Crevsdaak's Level Adder mod to triple the HP of all non-joinable NPCs in the game. I find this to be much more reasonable as a puny kobold no longer has 100+ HP and rock-bottom AC, but rather about 20-ish HP and can be easily hit. Likewise, enemies with higher HP will have better staying power and be rather similar to their LoB counterparts in beefiness.
This run will be on Insane with double damage enabled again but with double kill XP/double quest XP. I hope it won't be too unbalancing. I'll probably turn off the bonus XP in BG2 or SoD. I also updated to SCS v33 from v32.4.
The early game routine is done: get Algernon's cloak, charm Silke with it, feed her to the spiders,
I neglected to take screenshots of many of these events just because I do things in this order nearly every no-reload attempt, as it's a safe way to level up. And it's not that some of the later encounters weren't difficult (Drasus' party in particular was hard), I'm just tired of documenting them in detail every run.
Blaggy - Artisan's Kitpack Blackguard 7
Cactank - Dwarven Defender 7/Cleric 7
Stabby - Fighter 7/Artisan's Kitpack Assassin 7
Spaz V - Warlock 9
Debuff - Nightsinger 9
Yin II - Shadow Disciple 8
Previous run
I created this party of unkitted druids about 3 years ago, but only had a single attempt with them (there was a previous attempt with a mixture of different sorts of druids, which is why this is shown above as the 3rd attempt) - that ended when one of them was chunked by Firkraag's breath.
They've progressed so far as follows:
Level 1 - run and shoot (for simplicity all of them are using slings). At the lighthouse Walker Boh received a deadly kiss from Shoal, but he was revived and the group shot down Droth for his helmet without further injury, before killing Shoal as well.
Level 2 - more running and shooting in Beregost and nearby areas culminated in a trip to the Lake area. Gnolls wore Drizzt down a bit before the druids attacked him. One of them was charmed, but had already retreated out of sight of the others to avoid any complexities. That left the simple matter of running Drizzt round until the criticals on him proved too much.
Level 3 - immediately after killing Drizzt, I went to find Teyngan, but moved fractionally too far and came into his sight before I intended. That resulted in 5 of the party being scared, which was far and away the most dangerous situation so far. Everyone had managed to get out of Jemby's sight and fortunately none of the scared druids doubled back far enough to activate her. That still left Zekar's arrows as a major hazard, but Cogline did an excellent job in occupying him, along with Teyngan, in close enough quarters to make him keep his sword equipped. On the down side Brona ran far enough to activate a pair of war dogs and was killed by them before they chased down Galaphile as well.
Level 4 - following Korax round slaughtering basilisks gained some quick XP. I made a mistake in not shifting Walker Boh back to a missile weapon after killing some gnolls though and came just into view of Mutamin before the last of the basilisks were dead. However, a first LMD from Allanon interrupted an acid arrow spell that would have killed Korax and allowed Mutamin and his pets to be finished off. A few gnolls and flinds were then enough for another level.
Level 5 - after Kirian's companions were tempted away by charm spells, she was battered by a first use of lightning.
Level 6 - shooting continued to be the main attack method, though there was plenty of use of lightning and even some insects where lightning was not available or effective (such as the Doomsayer).
The druids have still got a full stack each of the ammunition they bought at Candlekeep, but I think it's about time to treat them to a resupply. After that they'll be off to the Nashkel Mines.
Walker Boh - L7, 59 HPs, 102 kills, 1 death
Bremen - L7, 59 HPs, 104 kills, 0 deaths
Galaphile - L7, 59 HPs, 178 kills, 1 death
Allanon - L7, 55 HPs, 184 kills
Brona - L7, 57 HPs, 164 kills, 1 death
Cogline - L7, 55 HPs, 134 kills, 0 deaths
HPs are good and closely spread (which is helpful as it means I don't need to be quite as careful about identifying which druid is which in battle).
Anyway, that party was much stronger than the thieves/rangers party I was running here.
If I had planned ahead better there would have been fewer drow and I probably could have made it. I'd still do the same thing again on another run that started in BG2 - if the party somehow wound up in a similar situation - but probably not on an import from BG1.
Anyway, starting a new SCS Insane run. This time a trilogy run of fighters. Charname is a wiz slayer -> thief (either 9 or 13 dual). Companions in BG1 are Jahiera, Khalid, Yeslick, Sharteel (dual to thief), and Coran.
Party is at about 40k exp and is in the cloakwood mines, having just rescued Yeslick, and is now deciding how to deal with the mage + bandit room on the second floor. Previously got Charisma and Constitution books and cleared basilisks from M's garden.
Most difficult part so far has been inability to use the better tier of wands. The fireball amulet was used to clear the bandit camp (after the initial fight in the tent), A potion of firebreath was used to kill the two mages outside the mines entrance (although one of them refused to be interrupted and finished a chaos cast, leading to the deaths of both Coran and Sharteel).
Jahiera is the tank, using dex gauntlets, ring of protection, medium shield +1 and Ankheg plate. I am giving her points in darts, which has been OK before, but never really feels optimal.
Khalid is using a longbow, which I tend to think is a much better build than the traditional (perhaps) Varscona + shield.
Charname is running bows + 2h (planning on using Carsomyr in SoA).
Yeslick is TBD. I thought he had points in axes, but its actually warhammers. For the time being he is just going to cast cleric spells.
I dualed Sharteel to Thief at Fighter 3 and have been giving her points in daggers. The plan was to use the venom dagger +2 and backstab aggressively. That plan has... not really worked. Putting thief points in find traps means she can't hide in shadows effectively. And she doesn't really do well in melee combat due to her very low hp + relatively crummy AC if she is wearing a light armor to be able to hide. I think I might just go crossbows next time, if there is a next time.
Coran is being an archer per usual. I put points in set traps, which I now think might be a waste and would have been better put in detect illusion or the HiS abilities.
Cnut for example hates mages because his parents were killed in a fireball when two mages were having a duel. Every mage that he kills whether good or bad makes him feel good.
Knightro has a problem with rage. Whilst sometimes that is an advantage as he can go berserk in battle, at other times he will over-react which can be quite a bad trait.
Hugin has a problem with greed, always wanting a bit more than he has.
My character weakness is quite obvious. It is quite useful in that my sensual nature helps to bond the group, but I often wish that I had it within me to be monogamous.
Journal of Sinna.
After being ambushed we fled back to Candlekeep but were denied access.
We therefore returned to the ambush site on the way to Beregost. On being attacked by a wolf, Cnut was badly hurt.
Upon reaching Beregost, we were attacked by karlat and to our horror Hugin was killed. We couldn't afford to get him fully healthy, but he did that himself after we paid to bring him back to life.
When Silke attacked us, she wasn't a problem and she quickly fell.
I then pickpocketted those whom Silke wanted dead. I successfully pickpocketted three potions, but when I tried to get the jewels I was attacked and had to kill Faltis. I was relieved that the other two didn't attack. I felt bad enough by Faltis' death.
and was again hurt when we were attacked by the Flaming Fist.
Upon being offered a reward for Perdue's sword, we went in search of it and found it.
Before returning it, we also helped Mellicamp.
As we went went to Nashkel we found the Colquetle amulet and were unbelievably patient with Noober. We turned down Oubliek's reward thus gaining reputation. We picked up a wand of frost and a ring of fire protection before taking Samuel to the FAI. We had found some good armour in Nashkel.
The party finished out the cloakwood mines. Coran backstabbed the mage on the second floor, assuming that he could use the cheetah boots to run away. Unfortunately, she immediately hit him with a minor sequencer -> 2x enfeeble and he couldn't move. A potion of invisibility temporarily saved him, but she also had dispel invisibility and after he was revealed a second time he was killed by the mass of bandits. This became an issue later.
The party decided to go to Beregost temple to revive Coran, reasoning we may as well kill the vampiric wolves while we are at it for a little extra exp. We then decided to clear firewine bridge for the gauntlets. While on the bridge map, Yeslick warned us that he was getting impatient with our efforts to flood the cloakwood mine. I did not know he had a quest timer!
Looking online suggested the timer was 14 days. It turns out to be 10, and by the time the party arrived back at cloakwood, despite traveling directly, Yeslick was over the timer and left permanently. Oops.
There is one other fighter in BG1, Kagain, who we may be able to get (although we dismissed him previously so perhaps not - TBD). Otherwise the party will have to try to finish BG1 with 5 members, and in any case it won't have a cleric.
Davaeorn himself wasn't too tough. Charname got caught in the web/stinking cloud sequencer due to its borders being a little larger than they visually appeared. However, Jaheira was able to tank the bandits (assisted with some explosive potions and fear wand charges), and Coran and Khalid were able to pretty quickly focus Davaeorn down with magic arrows. I guess I've decided that magic blocking potions are the easiest way to reliably beat Davaeorn. They really give him a lot of trouble and can be bought in high hedge.
The battle horrors ran forward early in the fight, so they were dispatched prior to engaging the mage. That felt a little cheesy, but after losing Yeslick the party thought it might need some help.
I'm trying to think what really difficult fights are left that might wipe the party. I think it's only the final fight or possibly the doppelganger / noble fight (although I've never actually lost a run there).
Edit: I love how broken firebreath potions are in BG1. Complete steamroll of the mages in the upstairs of sorcerous sundries in exchange for one firebreath potion.
Fini - female, human illusionist (Grond0)
Corepally - male, human undead hunter (Corey_Russell)
Plinker - male, human blackguard (Gate70)
Previous updates:
A very close shave this session, but the run marcheslimps on.
The first action was, as promised, the assault on Kirian. Her companions were blinded out of sight of her before stinking clouds put her out of action long enough to be fatal.
Durlag's Tower was next door and got the next action. The battle horrors on the path were both blinded, allowing them to be finished off easily enough. However, the one on the wall resisted a couple of blinding spells and was hard to hit. Corepally was getting bored with flailing around with his sword, so Fini unlimbered a wand to speed things up.
The golems in the pirate cave were left last session due to the lack of magical weapons. With that no longer an issue they were quickly despatched. The sirines at the Lighthouse had already been killed, but there was another group further up the coast to pick on - the paladins there took a few stinking mouthfuls, but took no permanent harm.
By this stage the Nashkel Mine offered little challenge and we soon made our way through to find Mulahey. I did try to take an action shot here of some trap magic missiles just failing to reach us, but though the next area did not appear on my screen until comfortably after that screenshot, it was clearly already available in the background.
Outside the mine things were much more problematic. The amazons are pretty easy targets if you take care and Fini's prophecy that "they shouldn't prove too much trouble" assumed that would be done - but it wasn't
The stable door was firmly closed prior to attacking Nimbul - he was stuck in a web and would have died even without being blinded.
At the Bandit Camp the bandit archers were scoring plenty of hits and we were all rather wounded by the time Taurgosz was left alone and blinded.
In the Cloakwood, we had a rare bit of action in the first area - Corepally cutting down Aldeth there to get an upgrade for his bastard sword. In the second area, Fini used invisibility to trigger the web traps before working through some spiders and ettercaps to get Spider's Bane for Plinker. In the third area the hamadryad put up a decent defense by charming both Corepally and Fini. If she's had a third charm available here things would have been decidedly dodgy.
Fini had by now got to L7 and decided to take a detour to Ulgoth's Beard in search of a L4 spell or two. That allowed her to improve the effectiveness of her webs with greater malison and the emotion that affected Drasus and his companions was then just the icing on the cake.
Illusionist - L7, 45 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 92 kills
Undead hunter - L6, 70 HPs, 104 kills, 0 deaths
Blackguard - L6, 65 HPs, 167 kills, 2 deaths
At the FAI we were attacked by Tarnesh. Hugin's "True sight" made him easy to kill.
We then killed Sonner and took the bowl to Tenya.
The nearby ankheg was put out of comission using "Command" and that was sufficient to enable it's demise.
We then headed to the Carnival where we took on Zordral.
Knightro was a bit slow in going berserk which resulted in him panicking due to Zordral's spell. Hugin however had cast "True Sight" which dispelled Zordral's many images. Cnut then attacked and after that Zordral miscast several of his spells and subsequently died.
Hugin was badly hurt, but levelling up was sufficient to save his life and subsequently he cast healing spells which was sufficient to reagain his health when we slept to memorise our spells.
EDIT
We then reunitrd Rufie with his owner, Killed Vax and Zal, helped a Dryad and took 'Drienne's cat to her gaining a reward in the process.
We then proceeded to the gnoll fortress and killed some ogres.
I meanwhile have become even more charismatic!
Charname human wizard slayer. Currently in BG1 approaching the bandit camp with ~36k exp. Third attempt.
Attempt #1 made it to the chapter 5 fight in the iron throne headquarters and got completely crushed. I way underestimated how difficult that fight was. The party was rapidly swarmed by high damage melee opponents (two backstabbing thieves with several invis potions a piece and a dual wielding fighter with a giant strength potion). A few fireball potions and fear wand charges weren't enough to rescue the fight.
Attempt #2 was ended by the lighthouse sirens. Charname had planned to use Kagain to kill them at level one, and had picked up the ogre belt, dex gloves, and ankheg plate as defense for the dwarf. Plan was for Kagain to drink the clarity potion from candlekeep + the giant strength potion from the gnoll fortress and go to work (charname cannot drink clarity as wizard slayers are disallowed). Unfortunately, the first pack of three sirens rolled 15, 18, 19, 18 and while the 15 missed, the two 18s and the 19 did not, and Kagain was killed before he could drink a potion of healing or retreat.
At this point charname faced a conundrum. Facing the sirens would almost certainly end in death due to dire charm, but losing the dex gloves and ankheg plate only an hour into the run seemed unappealing and I didn't know how long they might last on the ground if charname left to get new party members. In the end, charname decided to chance it and missed his save to dire charm. Which is not too surprising.
Attempt #3 ran a much cleaner first hour. The new path was to take charname alone to M's garden and get to level 5 (basilisks + mutamin all together are about 25k exp). During basilisk hunting, a secondary goal was to avoid meeting the adventurer party with the slashing belt, so they could be saved for later when charname was better prepared to deal with them. Shar teel was avoided as well, so that we could meet her at 32k exp later on.
After reaching level 5 via the basilisks, charname returned to beregost to recruit kagain. This time, he would face the sirens at level 5 with much better base hp and thac0 and with axe mastery. One potion of clarity was enough to clear both groups without too much effort. The 12k siren exp brought charname to level 6 at 32k exp and he left to drop kagain off at the FAI and get Jaheira and Khalid and then get Shar teel.
Attempt #1 didn't do a great job developing Shar teel, and Attempt #3 is seeking to rectify that. One interesting quirk is that Shar teel can actually reach grandmastery in daggers or longswords, but only by following a very specific leveling path. Level to Fighter 6, then dual to thief, then level to 3, then hold at 3 until 40k exp to level up in one gulp to level 7, then hold at 7 until able to level in one gulp to 9. That allows mastery at fighter 6, high mastery at thief 7 (using the point from thief 4, which was held until the fighter levels were unlocked at thief 7), and finally grandmastery at thief 9 (using the point from thief 8, which was held until level 9 because the game does not allow grandmastery prior to 9). I don't think the benefits of grandmastery are actually worth all this headache, but I am going to try it anyway at least once.
Shar teel is putting all thief skill points into HiS, except for levels 1-3 when they go into find traps. In addition, she is going to wear light armor and use the speed boots. If all goes well, she should be a strong backstabber by chapter 5 when she hits thief 7, and a fearsome one by the end of the game when she gets thief 9 for grandmastery and backstab x4. She should ultimately be able to hit for an average of 49 = 4 x ([2.5 dagger dice] + [2 dagger enchantment] + [2 gauntlets bonus] + [5 grandmastery]) + [3 strength] = 4 x 11.5 + 3. Backstab + firebreath is a brutal combo that few enemies can survive, and the speed boots make it easy to get into position and then run around hitting other enemies with the breath ray.
Granted, plain mastery in quarterstaff and the staff of striking would be even more damaging, but I gather that the staff of striking is at the bottom of durlag's and the party isn't planning on going that far into the tower.
Shar teel ultimately decided to go daggers over longswords for the better accuracy against plate armor (which gets -3 to slashing) and because she still really wanted to try the venom dagger out. Which is just as well because the party accidentally failed to get varscona by not being aggressive enough with greywolf in dialogue.
Anyway, the party has just cleared up the Nashkel mines and Mr. Nimble and is going to get a few more scattered items (specialization gauntlets from firewine e.g.) and then go deal with the bandit camp.
Edit: Cleared the bandit camp. Got spicier than the party was hoping, but was able to get through it with a lot of healing potions (including ~3 extra healing). Fight inside the tent went OK and the party managed to not kill the hostage this time. But the fight outside the tent was more chaotic. The plan was to retreat to the north, use jaheira with a potion of absorption to tank, and then shoot fireballs from the amulet at the clumping bandits.
But, the bandits split up, with a squad of hobgoblins coming from the west. As the party retreated further north and east into the woods to try to get the two enemy squads to combine, bandits started to get LoS issues and walk to melee range. The party hit the edge of the map + an impenetrable wall of trees and couldn't retreat any further. I think Jaheira was only hittable on crit, but when 2-3 dozen bandits are all shooting at once, that starts to be a pretty slim margin. Still, 4-5 fireballs brought the bandits at range under control and the dozen or so that were on top of the party were eventually killed at the cost of a fairly large number of healing potions.
The party is now at the cloakwood mines, packing firebreath and magic blocking potions; the former for the gate party and the latter for Davaeorn.
The sidequest hell of Baldur's Gate is completed, so it's time to tackle the Iron Throne top floor. Stabby, Spaz, and Yin are sent upstairs first while invisible. Spaz's revenant and Yin's Shadow Fiends lure the two hostile thieves out from the rest of the gang and are slaughtered thanks to shadow fiend paralyzation. Our summons attack the Iron Throne to deplete their spells and the two berserkers' rage.
At Candlekeep, I ctrl+m'd Tethtoril to check his HP: a few shy of 3000!! Shadow Fiends were summoned to hopefully paralyze him (didn't work, the paralysis checks for MR and Teth has 100%). When this failed, the fiends' Impose spell served to stun Tethtoril long enough for us to use Blaggy and Stabby's poisons on him, which cut his CON score to 1 after repeatedly failing saving throws thanks to Blaggy's aura, Debuff's song, and Yin's Sigil of Despair. Many brutal backstabs later, Tethtoril finally dies.
Back in Ulgoth's Beard, we kill Shandalar after getting teleported to the ice island. Wraiths cast Impose on him for an automatic stun, which allows Stabby and Blaggy to poison him after Yin casts Sigil of Mortality to negate his damage resistance. Each wraith has one casting of Impose so I keep the stun-lock going with the ones who haven't used their Impose yet. Now that Shandalar is hostile, his saves are reduced by Blaggy's aura and Debuff's improved 11th level song for a total to -3 to saves. A charge from the Wand of Polymorphing works on the mage and he is laid low for 52k XP.
At the coronation, most of the doppelgangers are level drained to death by summoned wraiths in only 1 hit, which makes the fight a breeze. How weird.
Blaggy - Blackguard 9
Cactank - Dwarven Defender 8/Cleric 8
Stabby - Fighter 8/Assassin 10
Spaz V - Warlock 11
Debuff - Nightsinger 11
Yin II - Shadow Disciple 11
Previous updates:
Before leaving the Lighthouse area the druids dealt with some golems in order to loot the pirate treasure. The party were still a bit short on magical weapons, but could now change form and while bears have weak defences, they're vicious when attacking.
The Nashkel Mine provided no real challenge, with Mulahey changing sides early on before being held courtesy of a first use of nymphs.
There were lots of poisoning incidents in the Cloakwood, but with everyone having slow poison available, none were particularly problematic. To keep things simple summons weren't used much, but they did get a run out against Drasus. In the mine nymphs helped deal with the mages on the way down. A horde of insects killed the battle horrors near Davaeorn, allowing everyone to take their 8th level.
At High Hedge I sold a bunch of stuff when I intended to identify it. To get that back at a reasonable cost I did a quick run round completing various reputation quests left previously in order to maximise that. A quick trip to Baldur's Gate followed to get the Helm of the Noble in order to maximise spending power.
It didn't take long to spend the 170k or so of ready cash available - providing everyone with fully-charged wands of the heavens is an expensive business (though I haven't used a single charge from those up to now anyway)
Initial work in the City was completed at the Iron Throne. A full round of insect plagues were used there which, along with nymphs, made a mess of the defenders.
Even clearing that lot still left the druids short of their last level, but there was more XP waiting at Candlekeep after they finally reported for duty there. The violet potion was used to grab the tomes before they moved on. Insects and nymph confusion made Prat's gang an easy target and the 10th level came up during that fight.
The druids are now back at the entrance to Baldur's Gate. I'm not going to bother with the main TotSC content this time, so they don't have a lot to do before going to find Sarevok.
Walker Boh - L10, 76 HPs, 416 kills, 1 death
Bremen - L10, 81 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 272 kills, 0 deaths
Galaphile - L10, 75 HPs, 346 kills, 1 death
Allanon - L10, 76 HPs, 429 kills
Brona - L10, 72 HPs, 341 kills, 1 death
Cogline - L10, 72 HPs, 253 kills, 0 deaths
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1135471/#Comment_1135471
At the Flaming Fist HQ, nymphs proved better than mercenaries at holding their enemies.
Slythe did at least get one successful attack in - but found even that bounced off a rare use of stoneskins.
At the palace everyone used iron skins for the first time and bear attacks, with supporting nymphs and insect swarms was far too much for a few dopplegangers - neither duke took any damage.
After clearing the maze, the druids worked through the undead in the Undercity. Tamoko failed to complete a spell under bear attack, while Rahvin's party got insects.
In the old temple Walker Boh approached Sarevok invisibly to activate the enemies. Semaj killed a nymph when he teleported out, but got a single swarm of insects in response.
The druids transferred to SoD with about 156k XP, so I managed to get reasonably close to the XP cap.
Walker Boh - L10, 76 HPs, 426 kills, 1 death
Bremen - L10, 81 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 304 kills, 0 deaths
Galaphile - L10, 75 HPs, 363 kills, 1 death
Allanon - L10, 76 HPs, 455 kills
Brona - L10, 72 HPs, 367 kills, 1 death
Cogline - L10, 72 HPs, 269 kills, 0 deaths
Charname is a human wizard slayer. Currently in BG1 at Chp. 6 Candlekeep with ~94k exp. Third attempt.
One near death experience during a cloakwood forest giant spider ambush, when we didn't notice that charname had a bow equipped instead of the spider sword, and charname got webbed and nearly killed while immobilized.
The cloakwood mines themselves went better. The enemy party outside the mines got dumpstered by a firebreath potion from an invisible Shar Teel. The bandits on the second floor were fought from the jail/stairs instead of the kitchen and safely dispatched. The various enemies on the third floor weren't very threatening.
Davaeron himself was a little trickier. Previously, the party had lured the two battle horrors away from him and killed them separately, which allowed the party to pretty quickly focus down Davaeorn with archer fire. This time however, we decided to fight all three at once and be a little nicer.
Unfortunately, what actually happened is that the battle horrors clogged the hallway, and kept Davaeron out of range - unless the archers were willing to get swung at by the battle horrors. The battle horrors are pretty hard to kill quickly without magic due to their -5 AC (particularly if magic blocking wipes Khalid's giant strength buff). The party started to get a little worried, especially after the first set of magic blocking potions ran out after 5 rounds.
Nevertheless, Davaeron eventually wandered too close and was killed with missile fire. His death killed the battle horrors, which was too bad as the party would have liked the additional 8k exp. The mine was then flooded, and the party left for BG.
The party did a few minor quests in the city (thieves guild, ramazith for his ring and tome, etc.) and then headed to the iron throne headquarters, the setting of its Attempt #1 wipe.
The party was a bit stronger than during its past attempt. This time, Shar Teel is a F6/T7, instead of a F3/T7, and she has higher hp as well as 2 better base thac0 and an additional proficiency point. Yeslick is still with the party, and is carrying genius potions and a wand of fear (his base 7 intelligence does not let him use the wand without assistance). Jaheira also has a wand of fear, Khalid and Coran both have explosive potions, and charname has detonation arrows. Khalid has done very well with his hp rolls, and has 80 hp at level 7. Nice job buddy.
Fight opens with two fear wand charges, 3 fireballs (two from explosive potions, 1 from a detonation arrow). Once Shar Teel - buffed with Jaheira's protection from fire and wearing speed boots - is in position behind Zhalimar, she backstabs the archer and then firebreaths him, and then runs around trying to tag as many enemies as she can with the fire beam.
One thief was killed by the fireballs, one failed their save against fear, and the third was "near death" from fireballs and then killed with arrows after getting in only one backstab. Archers then focused down the cleric and the mage, now that the thieves were all dead/disabled and couldn't backstab the shooting archers. Shar teel got 3 backstabs in over the course of the fight, two against Zhalimar and one against Gardush, the fighter.
IMHO this is the second toughest fight in BG1, excepting optional TotSC fights (Sarevok 'n Co are the first). SCS insane adds two invisible thieves to the starting 6 opponents, and it's easy to get surprised and overwhelmed by the various sources of melee dps if the player doesn't start out very aggressively.
In any case, the party now at candlekeep, just dealt with the ogre mage ambush outside. I had thought this was a threatening fight but I increasingly think it isn't - the ogres don't appear to have particularly good melee or spells and a bunch of mirror image fighter / mages slashing and using magic missiles just isn't that threatening at this point in the game.
Once the Candlekeep dungeons are done, there's not much left to do other then head for Sarevok. We may deal with the first underground floor of Durlags to get the +3 Plate armor there. Somewhat interestingly, enchanted armor is unusually good for wizard slayers, as they can't wear rings/cloaks/amulets of protection anyway.
Charname is a human wizard slayer. Now in BG2, just starting Jon's dungeon with ~135k exp. Third attempt, first to get to SoA.
After returning from candlekeep, the party headed back to BG. First stop was the flaming fist headquarters, where we were attacked upon entering. Turns out the mercenary in the basement is innocent, so we managed to lose 8 rep and after saving the duke had to make a pit-stop at the temple to wash the blood off our hands.
We then headed to the iron throne headquarters to see what was going on with our old buddies, only to find it in disarray. At the top was a high level mage with two golems, intent on our death. This fight was a little messier than I was expecting - I had thought a single mage wouldn't be a match for three archers with acid arrows +1, not least because one of the archers was a wizard slayer. Golems were no big deal, as jaheira could easily tank them with the help of an absorption potion, but the wizard was a little sturdier than I thought.
Most mages in BG1, unlike BG2, don't have improved invisible. But the later mages do, and between that and shield and possibly 18 dex or blur, can be quite hard to hit (around -6 up to -9 AC). So the fight was a little messier than I was expecting because I didn't realize that my ~5 thac0 archers were missing around 75% of their shots. Nevertheless, eventually she was overwhelmed. I, RPing a simp as I mostly do in real life, let her go after she asked for mercy.
Next stop was the assassins in the Undercellar. Poor Slythe, the thief, drank an invisibility potion a hair's breadth before Coran's detect illusion ability ticked, leaving the hapless murderer hopelessly exposed. He received a few arrows and a final ~40 damage backstab from Shar Teel to send him to the shadows permanently.
Kristin, the mage, had some weird (I think) bug where she kept going invisible. I panicked after a sunfire killed half my party and used a PfM scroll on charname, who eventually with the help of Khalid took her out during the brief windows during which she was visible. Then the game crashed and we had to do it all over again.
Having retrieved the invitations to the palace from the assassins, we headed over to join the party. I've never had an issue with this fight - although SCS makes the dopplegangers much tougher, it also seems to make the mage more powerful and so she is quite difficult to take out behind her various protections. The dopple shaman took a backstab and was then killed with a few arrows. The dopple mage was focused down with acid arrows and the other dopples were subsequently chopped up.
After Sarevok fled, the party did a little last minute consumable shopping and then tracked down the helm and cloak of balduran as well as the noble helm. Vail was left to live and his girlfriend willingly handed over the cloak to the party. The party was swollen with consumables, including 100s of acid arrows, dozens of detonation arrows, half a dozen magic blocking, shielding and protection potions, and 2 arrows of dispelling from Durlag's tower.
The Undercity started out smoothly: the various denizens of the maze were dispatched for a little bit of final XP - although unfortunately not enough to get Shar Teel to level 9 for GM and x4 backstab.
Disaster struck during the fight with the party outside the temple. The plan had been to open with a salvo of fireball potions + detonation arrows and a backstab for the enemy archer that himself has detonation arrows. However, I noticed during the fight in the undercellar that PfM has a long duration, and as I was planning on using it on several characters during the final fight in the temple, I decided to get a headstart on it now and have Shar Teel cast it to protect her from the fireball potions.
As it turns out, PfM does NOT protect from explosive potions OR detonation arrows, which surprised me to say the least! Also unfortunately, due to the vagaries of the various damage dice that hit Shar Teel, she went to -20 or even -30 hp and was perma-killed. In a normal fight, she would have been protected from fire by Jaheira, but had thought incorrectly in this case that PfM would protect her. Big oops.
While Shar Teel was getting killed, the enemy cleric had gotten off a greater command and knocked out Khalid and charname. Yeslick, Jaheira, and Coran remained awake and finished off the remaining wounded enemies.
Now preparing to face Sarevok and his gang, the party was a bit concerned. Shar Teel was no longer around to backstab Diarmid, who would be free to fire detonation arrows at the party. In addition, despite Jaheira's -9 AC with an additional -7 to slashing, she was probably unable to standup to Sarevok and would have to spend the fight jogging around distracting him. On the plus side, we did have a ton of consumables, and still had both arrows of dispelling.
Khalid, Charname and Coran got PfM, while Yeslick and Jaheira got potions of protection/shielding and charges from the greenstone amulet. Various other potions were chugged, and then the party headed inside.
Once inside, Jaheira summoned a nymph and the party stepped forward.
As an aside, I think I've finished BG1 on SCS insane two or possibly three times, and this is the first time I got through the fight with no deaths and felt like we were in control the whole time - despite Shar Teel not being around to help.
Jaheira had -11 AC (-9 base, -1 from Mind Focusing, -1 from Defense). She tanked Tazok and Sarevok (who had his haste removed by a dispel arrow from Coran), while the archers focused on Diarmid. Yeslick tanked (or at least tried to) Angelo and Semaj was mostly ignored for the time being. Magic shielding potions were re-drank when dispelled by one of the mages.
Diarmid fell quickly: he really couldn't stand up to 3x archers with 3 APR doing ~15 damage a hit between the piercing and acid. Tazok likewise went down rapidly, and then Khalid and Koran switched to swords to clear their skeletons.
Jaheira was forced to start kiting Sarevok once she ran out of extra healing potions. Despite -16 vs. slashing (having had the potion buffs dispelled), she could still only dodge about 1/3 of Sarevoks attacks. I think with potion buffs, pfE, and improved invisible, it's possible to get Sarevok down to missing 60-70% of attacks and tankable. But we had no way to cast II and forgot to cast pfE. It's also tough to prevent her from being dispelled by remove magic.
Yeslick wasn't making much progress against Angelo, despite 24 strength and ** in hammers / 2WF. In fact, Angelo was making progress against him, and had depleted his half dozen extra healing potions. Then yeslick asked Angelo whether he had remembered to cast protection from fire, and when he hesitated, blew firebreath in his face and killed him on the second tick. Probably should have done that at the start of the fight.
Now left with only Semaj remaining of the 4 acolytes, Coran (still under pfM) headed over to use dispel illusion and then hit him with the remaining dispel arrow. That probably could have been done earlier too, but with the party so well protected from magic, it wasn't really a priority.
At that point only Sarevok was left. Yeslick closed out the fight with two ~25 damage hits from his sling as Sarevok chased after Jaheira.
First the wizard slayer. This is generally thought to be one of the weaker charname classes. The player starts with a default fighter, then gives up rings, cloaks, amulets, bracers and most potions. In return the player gets the ability to apply stacking 25% cast fail on hit to arcane casters as well as 1% MR a level up to 20 (~3% a level thereafter).
Is it worth it?
Well, sometimes.
Against enemies without arcane magic, the wizard slayer is just a gimped vanilla fighter, and a vanilla fighter isn't exactly the strongest class to begin with.
Against arcane casters, if you can hit them, the cast failure will rapidly (mostly) neutralize them as a threat. This is an effective ability.. sometimes. One problem is you have to hit them. If they have protection from normal missiles you need +1/2 arrows to hit them. If they have pfNM AND pfMW, then you need to approach in melee. And you do need to hit them. If you miss, because they are II and shielded and dexterous and blurred... then nothing happens.
The other, perhaps larger, problem is that wizard slayers can't use many items that would otherwise protect them FROM magic, so they are MORE vulnerable to arcane casters than even a vanilla fighter would be. No, you can't drink a potion of invisibility in an emergency to break LoS. No, you can't drink a potion of magic shielding to guarantee your save. You can't even drink a potion of invulnerability to get -5 to saves temporarily, or use a +2 RoP to buff your saves to begin with.
Because the wizard slayer is charname and the run is over if charname dies, this dynamic frequently means that against a NON-arcane the wizard slayer is just a gimped fighter and when finally facing an arcane the wizard slayer actually wants to hide out of LoS because he is extremely vulnerable to any spells a mage does get off.
And they will get off some spells. You can't stop them from using abilities or wands or scrolls, and you are unlikely to stop them from casting in the first round or two. There are several level 10+ mages in SCS with minor sequencer -> 2x chromatic that can easily kill you through 100% cast failure. Fortunately, in this run, Khalid bit the dust, not charname.
However, this issue is mitigated once the wizard slayer becomes an epic level thief with UAI or an epic level fighter with very high magic resistance. I haven't gotten there yet though. Also, note that a wizard slayer CAN use pfM.
--
For Shar Teel F6->T9, a few quick comments.
I really liked her this run, after being underwhelmed the first time around when she was F3->Thief. The two points of extra base thac0 and extra weapon proficiency point were quite helpful, as were the extra hps. The bigger change was better equipment and focusing exclusively on HiS after investing 3 levels in find traps (if she doesn't need find traps, put more points in HiS imo). With shadow leather, she could successfully hide ~70% of the time and use invis potions as backup if she failed. The cheetah boots were essential to get her into position rapidly and then run out of LoS to avoid damage and re-hide.
Dagger of venom was OK but mostly didn't matter because her primary source of damage was backstabs, and the DoT didn't always proc and even when it did it didn't matter much. It's proc is better against mages but she doesn't backstab mages due to stoneskin/mirror image so it's kind of hard to leverage. Clerics would be a better target except... they have excellent save vs. death. It might be more interesting on a heavily armored warrior build, but I think that's a less effective build than a backstabbing thief - not least as the tanking warrior will struggle with her low hp.
I think daggers are better than longswords for the +3 to hit plate wearers. But I'm not 100% sure.
The other factor of note is that there is a hidden (I believe) +4 damage +8 to hit against archers, when using a melee weapon against them. As best I could tell, the damage bonus stacks with backstab, so she was a ferocious backstabber against those targets despite not reaching level 9 for x4. Even at x3, she would regularly do 45+ damage with the dagger of venom to archers at 95% accuracy. At which point they could easily be shot down with a few more arrows or killed with a potion of firebreath.
However, she was still ~20k exp short of T9 by the temple, and so a party that isn't planning on doing the TotSC content probably can't reasonablely expect to reach thief level 9 and will be stuck with level 8 max.
If you talk to Tamoko, so that she appears in the Undercity, you can get her armor - full plate +1 is better than the plate mail +3.
The bonus applies against anything not using a melee weapon (or equivalent natural weapon). That includes any targets that start off with fists equipped, as well as those with missile weapons.
A good point! But I'm a Nice Guy™ that doesn't like to kill Tamoko. Also, the +3 plate can be gotten considerably earlier.
SCS Insane Trilogy run of fighters.
Charname is a human wizard slayer. Now in BG2, finishing up chapter 3 with ~990k exp. Third attempt, first in SoA.
Jon's dungeon started out smoothly. The party scored probably the cleanest win ever against the ogre mage - a bully I mostly avoid, but this time we felt a WS charname could probably turn the tables on him. In actuality, Imoen opened with a chromatic orb and the ogre mage failed his save and was stunned, and that was the end of the fight.
Then we successfully got 75% of the party horror'd by a duergar mage, and later on minsc nearly killed during a mephit stun in the air plane. Nevertheless, we survived and soon exited the dungeon into Athkatla proper.
The party's plan for this run was the WS charname dualing to thief at level 13, joined by Yoshi dualed to fighter, korgan, Anomen, jaheira and mazzy. That makes 6 fighters in Chp 2-3, and 5 after Yoshi leaves. It also leaves the party without a thief until Yoshi hits fighter 11 at 750k exp to reactivate his starting bounty hunter 10.
The lack of a thief was really painful and led to such highlights as the party being bullied by the trapped door/walkway in the slums sewers, which is apparently an infinite charge petrification trap. Yoshi was petrified on the wrong side; however, it turns out that if you walk really carefully you can walk around it. I was not brave enough to walk around it with charname though.
The party was trying really hard to hit 250k exp before recruiting korgan and anomen and without leaving the slums (fearing the suna seni ambush). We finally got the last points we needed from Bregg and Cahrvale outside the CC, who turn out to give a generous 4k and 6k each.
Once Korgan and Anomen were recruited, the party, now at 5 members, settled on a system to deal with traps. Jaheira casts find traps (she doesn't have much to do with level 2 spells anyway). Then, Korgan with death ward and berserk can trigger the trap and see what happens and whether it has more than 1 charge. He's still vulnerable to petrification, but he has good saves and the party has plenty of stone to flesh scrolls. We unfortunately ran through our supply of green protection from petrification scrolls pretty quickly.
Suna Seni ambushed the party shortly thereafter, and out of an abundance of caution was roasted by a firebreath potion from jaheira. We then headed off to the graveyard to get Korgan's quest out of the way, leaning on azure edge from the CC. Turns out it is usable by good characters only, so Korgan unfortunately can't use it, but charname was an OK shot even without proficiency due to his 19 dex and fighter thac0.
At this point the party was trying to get to 500k exp before recruiting mazzy, and focusing on saving the quest XP for after she was recruited. We were also trying to avoid areas with too many traps.
We did the druid grove, but held off turning in the quest. We also held off on dealing with the Djinnis as we couldn't pickpocket the lamp and didn't know whether the Djinni holding the lamp would disappear when he went hostile (or put up a bigger fight than we were prepared for -- it turned out later that the answer to both was no).
We did the DK prior to Torgal (chaotic commands makes this whole area a lot safer than in the ranger/thief run!). The Yuanti mage succumbed to WS cast failure and the trolls couldn't really deal with a pack of sleep-immune fighters.
At 500k exp, mazzy was rescued in the temple ruins. The greater mummy / bone golem /skeleton warrior spawns provided a little bit of pain, but were eventually taken out at the price of a lot of extra healing potions. Azure edge works against the greater mummies, but not the golems, and it needed a ~20% or less roll against the mummies as the party had no malison casters.
The shade lord put up a bit more fight than normal as the party had no way to remove his pfMW or spell turning and so had trouble interrupting his casts - he also has intrinsic immunity to normal weapons, so no WS disabling until pfMW expires. He cast black blade and a finger of death, but the party had enough death wards active that it wasn't too big of a deal. Jaheira used a potion of invulnerability and managed to survive the finger of death. Eventually the shade's pfMW expired, and then mazzy and charname rapidly shot him to death.
After doing a few more quests in athkatla (bridge district killings, slavers, fallen paladins, Maevar, etc.) and turning in the various quests it had held in stock (harpers, druid grove, etc.) the party decided to head back to the DK to deal with Torgal.
SCS has buffed this fight so much that I am starting to think it is the toughest fight in chapter 2/3 (provided you skip the planar prison, sphere and unseeing eye until later). Unfortunately, this iteration provided another example of why.
The plan had been open with: (i) 3 explosive potions to kill or at least injure the trolls, (ii) smite from Anomen for more damage and one round of save or blind, (iii) dolorous decay on Torgal from Jaheira to slow down his attacks, movement and regen, (iv) two confusion casts from nymphs to try to hit the yuanti mages, and (v) Korgan's aura held in reserve for a firebreath potion.
This plan started OK, with the trolls severely injured and charname / mazzy able to quickly shoot down the 3 spirit trolls with acid arrows. However, Torgal rolled magic resistance against the slow from the decay as well as a save vs. the poison.
Then.. (semi) disaster struck. Yoshi got targeted by Torgal, and despite running at half hp, couldn't get away and got chunked. I think his aura was still clouded from the explosive potion, but in any case he could not drink a potion of invisibility in time. Dead 50k exp short of unlocking his thief levels!
So the party is STILL stuck without a thief for another 250k exp, unless charname wants to dual at 12, which he doesn't. Also means we lose the 200k from Yoshi's heart quest. Whoops.
Mazzy got hit with a 3x sequencer fireballs from one of the yuantis, but other than that the rest of the fight wasn't too dangerous. The firebreath from Korgan (hasted with oil of speed) killed Torgal and crushed the remaining trolls, while the yuanti mages mostly hung back for the few rounds the fight lasted. I think in hindsight the party should have had better fire resistance coverage and brought true-seeing and divine wands to better interrupt the yuanti, but we got away with it.
Will try to handle windspear and the first floor of WK as best we can with no trap removal and then head off to spellhold. Charname is going to be without his fighter levels for probably brynlaw, spellhold and most of the underdark, so that may be the most dangerous part of the run. We also have no way to dispel mage protections, which will become an increasing problem as the party won't be able to avoid high level arcane casters forever.
I'm also realizing charname won't get UAI until ToB. I think if I get killed and ever try the run again I'll dual WS at 9 instead of 13.
---
A few comments on the Yoshi dual to fighter, as I think that is a relatively rare build.
It was... OK? I didn't get to unlock his thief levels, but in general practice there is really only a brief window from thief unlock at 910k exp (160k T; 750k F) to the party's passage to spellhold at which point yoshi will leave. So he spends the vast majority of his time as a single class fighter.
Which he is OK at? He has 16 con so he doesn't get any bonus hp. I gave him grandmaster long swords and ** in 2WS (wielding varscona, burning earth), but in hindsight I think he would have been better as a longbow or xbow grandmaster to take advantage of his 18 dex. The party already had enough frontliners and he didn't really shine as "yet another sword swinger". He might be more interesting in that role in a party that really needs another fighter for some reason. And I suppose at level 11 he can start using backstabs, but I'm not sure that counts for much.
In a melee fighter (or longbow) build, he would benefit from a party member that can cast Strength, which most parties can but mine can't. Probably army scythe xbow would have been the best build in my party, to take advantage of the extra +1 APR and the various enchanted bolts that we weren't using. That would give him 3.5 APR as a grandmaster and pretty strong back-row damage output with lightning or biting bolts.
Losing trap detection is pretty awful unless the party has someone else that can do it. Charname with duhm could bash most locks though.
But even in the most favorable circumstances for "Fighter Yoshi", when the party might have an extra thief for find traps and have the ability to give Yoshi additional strength, I think he is still weaker as that build than trap yoshi. Bounty hunter traps are just too strong to be worth giving up.
Having said that, it is kind of fun seeing him in plate with a helmet and two longswords, so there's that. I'd still go ranged if I were going to do it again though (with xbow, shortbow or longbow depending on party comp). Maybe darts would be interesting but there are't a lot of stunning darts early and the lack of a thac0 bonus from either a bow or the arrows hurts as well.
Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
As always, killing Drasus and Genthore was easily accomplished at range, but Kysus and Rezdan completely destroyed us. Dynaheir dropped to a Lightning Bolt, Jaheira ate a Fireball, Imoen took one too many Melf's Minute Meteors, Aldain got stunned by an Ice Lance, Khalid got Dire Charmed, Confusion/Chaos flying around etc... all bad things.
Of course, this is still only BG1. Meaning a single Potion of Firebreath is usually enough to defuse even the stickiest of situations.
Imoen ended up dropping since she kept Khalid from killing Aldain (Dire Charmed allies will always target nearest), but amazingly, we got through it: Though if Khalid's Dire Charm had lasted another round, we would've been done for.
Lots of loot shuffling, trekking back to the FAI and Raise Dead fees later, we returned and cleared the remainder of the mines, this time with no issues: Hareishan went with MSD instead of MGoI and so died along with her guards to Fireball sniping, and Natasha got a taste of the Bombardier Beetles Jaheira can now summon, as she's reached Druid level 7. Finally, Davaeorn was handled via a scroll of PfM on Khalid.
On our way towards civilization, we swung by the final unexplored wilderness area and took out the Red Wizards.
Owing to us being quite grossly over-leveled, Baldur's Gate itself went (mostly) smoothly: Khalid went down in the sewers after having been Web Tangled and subsequently poisoned three times in a row by Phase Spiders, but otherwise no fatalities.
On a completely random note, sending in 2-3 Bombardier Beetles and parking them next to enemy Mages before they go hostile is probably something I should refrain from doing; Mages are all but guaranteed to fail at least one of their saving throws against the acidic vapors and be stunned, making the fight a foregone conclusion (it feels cheap!).
With everything else in the city cleared, we ascended the Iron Throne. As usual, the party snuck into the back room (Imoen and Minsc stealthed, Aldain under Sanctuary and the rest under Invisibility) and set up shop. This time we did a proper job of using invisible characters with cloaks of non-detection to block the doorway, and so were able to slowly whittle down enemy resources using highly expendable summons courtesy of Dynaheir, who really doesn't have much else to do with her L4 slots. You'll note my chivalry has limits... always facing much higher level enemies head-on is not advisable if one wishes to stay in good health.
Once drained of buffs and their most devastating magics, Zhalimar & co felt the fury of a few Nymphs with 2x Confusion, and that was it.
Nymphs really are great value for a 4th level druid slot against humanoid enemies.
We looted everything and headed back to the Elfsong, identifying and selling off what we didn't need.
The party is at about 110k xp, and I'm seriously considering just blazing through Candlekeep and finishing BG1 below the level cap, since at my current rate finishing Durlag's in order to reach 161k by the end is likely to take a month... we'll see what happens.
Aldain is now a level 6/5/6 Half-Elf Fighter/Mage/Cleric.
Fini - female, human illusionist (Grond0)
Corepally - male, human undead hunter (Corey_Russell)
Plinker - male, human blackguard (Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1135353/#Comment_1135353
A few dodgy bits of play in today's session, but none of those proved costly.
At the Cloakwood Mine we made our way downstairs to find Davaeorn and dragged his battle horrors back one by one. A potion of magic blocking protected Corepally's charge, but Davaeorn still managed to pick out Fini with his lightning bolt - fortunately she saved.
In the City an early target was the ogre mage. Corepally and Plinker were both immune to hold, but the carrion crawlers were all lying down on the job anyway.
Lothander attempted to make a quick getaway after talking to us, but failed to get a grip on the slippery floor.
We took a fair amount of damage in some of the combats and retreated fairly regularly outside the City walls to rest for free in order to heal up. Of course Plinker was not always willing to wait to get Bhaal CLWs
At the Iron Throne we sneaked in initially and Fini blinded 3 of the casters. A web, with malison and fireballs, proved pretty nasty for the enemies and they failed to make an impact on Corepally when he made himself the center of attention with a PfM scroll.
The final action was back at Candlekeep where we picked up the tomes. Fini managed to trigger the lightning trap there - as it's not long since that trap ended a MP run though I decided Fini should use a protective potion (which she gulped just in time).
Illusionist - L8, 51 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 110 kills
Undead hunter - L7, 84 HPs, 153 kills, 0 deaths
Blackguard - L7, 84 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 229 kills, 2 deaths
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1135471/#Comment_1135471
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1135568/#Comment_1135568
Pretty slow progress through SoD so far, but the druids continue to move forwards.
There were no problems in the SoD prologue - Korlasz was surrounded by invisible nymphs and killed by cause wounds spells.
In the City I did various quests, while picking up a bit more equipment from the bodies of NPCs. On leaving the first action was at the Coast Way Forest. I went with my normal approach of helping the vampire, though regeneration isn't of much benefit to this party. Walker Boh was stunned by a wand of paralysation blast from Ikros right at the start of the contest, but 5 insect plagues were already homing in on him.
Back at the Coast Way Crossing the druids scoured the area. They had no problems killing the party on the bridge with call lightning, but hit the menhir quest bug (one of the menhirs not activating properly even using a character with 20 charisma). I adopted my standard approach with non game-ending bugs and just left the menhirs rather than resetting their global variables. In the dwarven dig site many of the undead were very resistant to missiles, but insect spells were pretty effective against them. They made use of wands once, when Walker Boh was sent running by a mummy
Moving on to the Troll Claw Woods the druids cleared that area. They made limited use of summons, but Walker Boh's returning acid dart got plenty of use for finishing off trolls. The only encounter requiring much thought was in the troll cave, where Walker Boh originally tried to cluster the trolls round himself while the others cast. However, as soon as anyone else appeared the trolls attacked them and the druids had to retreat. Coming back again, Walker Boh led the trolls right to the back of the cave before the others produced some summons - which lasted long enough to break the back of the defenders.
On the way to the Forest of Wyrms an ambush encounter with orcs and trolls proved pretty easy. They worked through the external area without difficulty and free action allowed them to deal with some spiders and beetles without trouble. Moving on, they sneaked past a dragon before elementals led the way through some bugbears and various cultists towards Ziatar. There was an unexpected death at that point for Cogline though. There's a fireball trap in the corridor and Allanon went to trigger that with 110% fire resistance thanks to scimitar, helm and ring. The others were sent well away from the blast, but I didn't notice quickly enough that pathfinding problems had slowed movement down and 2 of the druids were caught by the fringes of the fireball. That should have still been no problem, but unfortunately Cogline was wearing Gorion's belt and failing his save allowed the trap to do just enough damage to kill him ...
Cogline was brought back with a scroll before the last of the cultists were killed. Ziatar would have been in trouble just from the swarms of insects, but a nymph hold made quite sure he was unable to respond to attacks.
Another ambush triggered on the way to Boareskyr Bridge. This time Allanon initially paid his debt to green dragons by rescuing one of their youngsters from a couple of hill giants - before going even deeper into debt by killing it
The quest reward for getting to the Coalition Camp took everyone close to another level.
Walker Boh - L11, 76 HPs, 577 kills, 1 death
Bremen - L11, 83 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 373 kills, 0 deaths
Galaphile - L11, 77 HPs, 424 kills, 1 death
Allanon - L11, 83 HPs (incl. 5 from buckler, 568 kills
Brona - L11, 74 HPs, 443 kills, 1 death
Cogline - L11, 74 HPs, 330 kills, 1 death
It looks like you are bit confused in your post @Grond0 - were you sleepy? Corepally is of course me, Corey_Russell, not Gate70.
Well I'm always a bit sleepy, but the introductory bit is copied from previous updates, so the original error was made a couple of weeks ago - I've now corrected the previous two updates as well as this latest one