At the Bandit Camp Noht initially attacked in melee, but took quite a bit of damage from the bandit archers and Symon (wearing the Boots of Avoidance) took over the tanking for a while. Taurgosz got a couple of hefty blows in on him and Symon was in the process of running away from him when Noht's glitterdust stopped Taurgosz in his tracks. Symon produced a nymph and both he and the nymph started casting at Taurgosz. The nymph died to Noht's skull trap before she could finish her spell, but Symon's was sufficient .
Invisibility was used to sneak into the tent and a bit of blindness and webbing saw Venkt & co downed without us taking any damage.
After the usual minimal exploration in the Cloakwood, the mine beckoned. Drasus & co didn't deal well with web and stinking cloud and put up no resistance.
Davaeorn's battle horrors were dragged back and despatched without trouble. The mage himself survived nymph attempts to confuse and hold him, so Noht took a potion of magic blocking and hunted him down.
Symon wasted time trying to attack the mustard jelly in black bear shape (that uses a piercing attack, that the jelly is immune to) and changed back to human form during the fight. Without another bear transformation available he couldn't break open the chest next to the jelly and decided to leave that. However, he also left (less consciously) the key to the river plug and rested before coming back for that - so did loot that chest after all .
After arriving in the City our internet connection got spotty and we cut the session short there.
Corethief XXV the dwarven fighter/thief - FINAL Update!
Just wanted to let you know my party of thieves met their end in Yaga's fire giant temple. Thieves worked real good in BG1 and SoA, but were woefully underpowered in ToB. Back to the drawing board! Thinking of making party of clerics, we'll see...
Charname is a human WS13 -> Thief. Now in BG2, having just exited Bodhi's dungeon and defeated Jon. ~1.7mm exp. Third attempt, first in SoA.
Traveling with Jaheira, Anomen, Korgan, and Mazzy. Permadeaths: Shar Teel, Yoshi.
After killing Torgal, charname took the Keep as his stronghold. I tend to think the only stronghold that "matters" is the mage stronghold, and so we took the Keep right away rather than waiting for the Guild after dual-ing. We then headed off to tangle with Bodhi.
Bodhi in chapter 3 is kind of a push over imo. She only has a view vampires defending her, which aren't too threatening now that their SCS blood/con suck has been toned down. Jaheira with AoP plus Korgan with Berserk plus hasted Mazzy with azure edge was more than enough to take out the scattered vampires. Tanova put up a bit of a fight as we couldn't remove her spell protections, but once Tanova's pfMW wore off she fell quickly. Bodhi was distracted with summons and then kited until she had seen enough.
Nevin survived Uncle Lester due to a lucky (ish) azure edge hit.
In Windspear, the vampires were overwhelmed by the number of level drain immune and/or undead slaying party members (Anomen with upgraded MoD, Korgan with Berserk, Jaheira with AoP, Mazzy hasted with Azure Edge). Melee resistant skeletons were summoned to slow the vampires down. Charname used a pixie dust from Jaheira to hide during the fight.
Absorption and summons were used against the two golem packs, with an aerial servant from Anomen particularly useful against the clay golems. Firkraag was left for later, and the party returned to Athkatla to sail to Brynlaw.
In Brynlaw, the party had two tough fights on its hands, as it had no way to dispel mage protections or reliably disrupt arcane casters. Normally, cloud kill can be used to lock down human mages throughout the entire saga, as they have no way to protect themselves from a level 5 cloud spell that does poison damage. But the party has no way to cast cloudkill until charname gets UAI and can use a scroll or wand or Saverok gets to level 10 Mage in ToB. So we had to fight Vadek and Perth the old fashioned way.
Vadek managed to petrify (!) Anomen, but charname had a stack of stone->flesh green scrolls from dealing with petrification traps earlier in the game and Anomen was freed, rejoined and (partially) healed within the same round. Vadek died once his weapon protection wore off. Nevertheless, a scary fight, and reminder of why Wizard slayers aren't actually very good at fighting wizards, particularly if they themselves don't have access to arcane buffs. Charname had no way to protect himself from flesh to stone other than a green protection scroll, which are too scarce to use against every level 10+ enemy mage.
The party was even more worried about Perth, because he can cast level 9 spells. Thankfully, he did not cast anything too threatening until his weapon protections wore off, at which point he got locked down by insects and elemental melee attacks.
The lich in Bodhi's dungeon was defeated by luring away the other undead around it (bone golems, etc.) and then draining its spellbook with summons. I don't like doing that, but the lich is just too dangerous imo to face at less than 1.5mm exp with little to no equipment. It's possible he can be beaten in a fair fight with a cleric casting holy word, but it seemed too risky - particularly with no means of reducing damage from ADHW or blocking timestop or preventing the lich from summoning a balor.
Nothing else in Bodhi's dungeon was too eventful. The portal pitfiend went down fairly easily, with the final blow dealt by an aerial servant rolling for 36. The vampire was killed by summons and berserk Korgan.
Jon proved more difficult, and nearly ended the run several times.
As with prior high level mages, the party had no way to reliably interrupt his casting (as a normal party with cloudkill could do with relative ease). The plan was to use holy word from Anomen and insect plague from Jaheira, provided that Jon didn't have a fireshield (which it turned out he didn't).
Unfortunately, the insect plague missed due to some carelessness on my part, and in any case it wouldn't have blocked casting until his improved mantle / stoneskins wore off.
Holy word was more effective, and did manage to block several spells, but was not enough to block timestop or dragon's breath. Jon did not get to cast dark planetar though, which probably would have killed us, so we can be thankful for that!
When the dragon's breath hit, the party was fire immune from Jaheira's druid pfF, but the spellhold mages were not (excepting Wanev) and they perished.
Wanev never cast ADHW, which normally helps a lot. He wasn't super helpful this iteration of the fight. However, eventually Jon's weapon protections ran out and he went down.
And then the murderers came, and repeatedly nearly ended the run.
I had no way to make charname invisible, nor to detect the hidden murderers (dispel illusion does not work), and the murders just WOULD NOT let up off of charname. Every time I thought the murderers were all dead, charname would get hit by another backstab. He repeatedly got down to 10-20 hp, and only survived with a lot of jogging as nymphs and then Jahiera/Anomen cast healing spells on him. Yikes.
Eventually the murderers truly were all dead, and our party, alive but with its pride in tatters, went upstairs to reclaim our equipment.
If I were redoing the fight with the same party, I think I would cast firestorm on Jon and try to use NPCs to block him onto the little platform he starts on. I think that might be better than holy word. I would also endeavor not to miss with the insect plague... I would also come up with a better solution for the murderers at the end...
--
One quick comment on the wizard slayer build. Dual at 13 in this run was a fairly large mistake. What I wasn't really considering is that this build is extremely dependent on UAI, and so the dual at 13 (1.25mm exp) means that the build isn't really operational until early-mid ToB with ~4.3mm exp when it gets its first HLA.
Dualing at 9 or 10 costs a little bit of MR, a bit of Thac0, some material saves, and of course 1/2 APR, but I think in hindsight would have been a much better choice.
In addition, I think playing a good character is probably a mistake. Having now run the numbers, it's impossible to get 100 base MR without either using human leather, or using Vecna or going up to WS15. WS15 is pretty awful as it means not unlocking WS until end of SoA and not unlocking UAI until mid-late ToB at 4.8mm exp. So the better thing to do would be to play neutral or evil and kill Adalon, and then hitting 100 base MR is pretty easy.
WS10 + upg. Purifier + Lum + Hell + Seldarine + Gaxx = 75 MR. So with human leather, charname is at 95 and then can either use a holy symbol and wield any 2nd weapon, or use any second ring and wield FoA +5 or hindo +4 (or balduran). At WS9, charname would have to use Hindo, or FoA and holy symbol, otherwise would be at 99.
Without human leather, the only way to get base 100 MR is to go up to WS15 and then use hindo AND the holy symbol AND wear either enkidu (blocks thief skills) or an archmage robe (OK but not great AC or secondaries). Vecna gives an extra +5% (=10%) over the base 5% of the archmage robe, but using that on a thief for the MR probably isn't your best use for it.
WS21 is kind of interesting as it gives 25 base MR and two uses of hardiness, which would mean charname could use purifier and either easthaven or foebane. But of course with enormous downtime and delay of UAI such that the build isn't available until nearly the end of ToB.
In addition, I think playing a good character is probably a mistake. Having now run the numbers, it's impossible to get 100 base MR without either using human leather, or using Vecna or going up to WS15. WS15 is pretty awful as it means not unlocking WS until end of SoA and not unlocking UAI until mid-late ToB at 4.8mm exp. So the better thing to do would be to play neutral or evil and kill Adalon, and then hitting 100 base MR is pretty easy.
@Jabberwock is Carsomyr not available in your game, or are you ruling that out because of it being a pain to re-equip items to get high MR?
@Grond0 I'm actually planning on using Carsomyr and the WS13 has 5* in two handers. But, I think stacking MR with Carsomyr + other items is semi-exploity so I'm going to avoid it.
However, Carsomyr + Hell + Lum + WS13 = 78, which is pretty good. And then depending on how magic protection potions stack, I may or may not use them to get to 100 in important fights.
I'm planning on UAI scroll casting for tough fights, so that will also help with protections. I unfortunately did not get spell turning from the book of infinite spells, but will (I think) be able to use spell trap from the magi staff and that should keep me pretty safe.
TBH, I'm most concerned about end of SoA liches and the twisted rune, as I won't yet have UAI. I also don't think I have any way of casting freedom. I think the fate spirit probably summons imprisoned party members, but I don't know, and I would be surprised if they kept their levels/equipment...
I may have to chicken out of those fights, due to not dualing at WS9...
Temporary buffs like potions and spells pretty much always stack on top of "when equipped" effects. The timestamp order only really matters when you're trying to combine effects in the same group.
Even better, potions of magic protection don't trigger the AI conditions for "I need to dispel that". A pure fighter can drink two potions of magic protection and clear out a hive of beholders, only having to worry about their melee attacks.
If you're willing to allow temporary party members who aren't fighters, any of the arcane characters can earn you and your party a ton of XP by scribing scrolls. Post-underdark, that's as far as your gold carries it with Ribald's infinite Freedom scrolls. That should at least get you to UAI before the end of SoA, so your protagonist can use Freedom scrolls to save any imprisoned party members.
If you really want a lot of experience, such as say, ToB level cap, the real way to do that is take a character (or characters) with a weapon that returns or is infinite ammo, like Tasheron's bow. Set script of that character to auto-attack (standard attack). Stand them up on the walls on the upper right part of Saradush, being careful not to stand where fireballs appear. Your character will then attack fire giants off screen. The giants are infinite and combined with your return weapon/infinite ammo, getting to ToB level cap is a snap!
There's also the wand of wonders who has a chance to petrify. Buy a lot of stone to flesh scrolls, and go petrify/unpetrify some dragon, recharge the wand as needed. A bit more time consuming because of the randomness and the need to recharge the wand (I actually never did that but I saw it done somewhere, maybe it needed reloads though because of the randomness)
I didn't bother with most of the quests in the Coalition Camp, but did buy a few choice items from Nazramu before picking up some Bwoosh and poison. On the way to Dead Man's Pass the druids hit an ambush area and found their spells ineffective. However, they each had a necklace of missiles and those functioned as normal - the Shadowy Figure survived a first round of those, but not a follow-up treatment.
After working through a group of ogres the last bit of XP needed for another level came from a few boars.
Shortly after that the druids had difficulty with a couple of shambling mounds accompanying a hamadryad. They were immune to lightning and a lot of weapon damage and had lots of HPs so insects were slow to work - and entangle meant that anyone low on HPs couldn't just run away. A couple of the party came close to death there, but just survived.
The rest of the area was cleared without any significant concerns before the druids moved on to Dragonspear Castle - just staying there long enough to rescue Skie.
Moving on to Bloodbark Grove the druids started systematically clearing that. I don't bother visiting that with solo characters and was pleasantly surprised to find that Onoroth sold a suit of ankheg armor. That wouldn't be much use to most parties at this stage, but was just the ticket for a group of druids. There was another shambling mound there, but on its own that was easy prey for insects. A skeletal mage failed to survive even the first of the call lightning spells aimed at it - the others being targeted on it were still useful though as, with the druids at level 12, each spell now produces 3 bolts and the follow-ups soon cleaned up the burning skeletons.
The Underground River offered a few more obstacles. They called lightning down on a couple of trapped druids - gaining the Root of the Problem club that can be used on Belhifet. Murs apparently decided that Allanon was taking too long to kill some ogres and went hostile - and thus became a victim herself. The cyclops with the Seal of Caelar died to lightning before it knew what was happening - which apparently meant no mages appearing for a fight. The rest of the crusaders guarding the underground entrance couldn't hit fire elementals, making that an easier fight than I'd expected.
Underground, the druids set out to explore. One encounter I've rarely done is with a group of blind, albino wyrmlings and I didn't realize they have at least a couple of different methods of rendering characters helpless - using wands of heavens saved Galaphile from a likely death after he became unconscious there.
Carrying on, insects and summons helped sort out the mages in Kanaglym.
With the rest of the encounters done, a fire breath potion was thrown into the fire to get access to the Warrens.
Before going up in the lift the druids all put on stoneskins for only the second time in their run. Invisible blockers on the doorway to the lift room greatly helped control the initial fight before insects spread out to nerf the casters.
That made for an easy fight, though the druids had nothing to gain there beyond the XP.
Back at the Coalition Camp, there are mutterings about an imminent invasion ...
Walker Boh - L12, 80 HPs, 618 kills, 1 death
Bremen - L12, 85 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 409 kills, 0 deaths
Galaphile - L12, 79 HPs, 456 kills, 1 death
Allanon - L12, 85 HPs (incl. 5 from buckler, 652 kills
Brona - L12, 76 HPs, 479 kills, 1 death
Cogline - L12, 76 HPs, 360 kills, 1 death
Charname is a human WS13 -> Thief. Now in BG2 at the start of the underdark. ~2mm exp. Third attempt, first in SoA.
Traveling with Jaheira, Anomen, Korgan, and Mazzy. Permadeaths: Shar Teel, Yoshi.
After narrowly surviving the fight with Jon, the party made a deal with Saemon for passage back to Athkatla. We broke into the pirate king's girlfriend's house looking for the horn at 4am when it was still dark out. Unfortunately, the horn was missing, but we grabbed a rogue stone off the table.
Despite being robbed only that morning, by around 10pm the girlfriend was sound asleep with the horn on the table and we relieved her of it, ultimately leading to her untimely death. TBH, a lot of the "good" party actions in Brynlaw seem morally suspect to me. Leaping to murder Chremy based on the word of a single individual seems suspect as well...
Anyway! Once on the boat, we were shortly thereafter attacked by Githyanki and then Sahuagin. We were pretty careful to make sure no monkey business risked charname during the short engagement (charname still can't easily go invisible). The githyanki captain appears to have a minhp item, which is somewhat interesting.
We ran through the underwater city content, choosing to side with the prince. Unfortunately for the prince, charname couldn't drink master thievery or other pick-pocket buff potions, and wasn't able to successfully steal the wave head. The prince did not survive the fight that followed the failed thieving attempt.
Once in the underdark, the party cleared the elemental portals and the first drow war party. We accidentally bumped into the mindflayers after the fight and had to deal with them too. I noticed at that point that much of the party has 10 intelligence and started feeling a little more concerned about the flayer lair, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The final thing the party did this session was deal with the dwarf balor. I laid 3 thief traps then buffed and started the fight. In hindsight, I probably should have taken this fight a little more seriously. It wasn't THAT bad, but the balor had a lot of staying power and did more damage than I had wanted. I learned later that he has -12 AC and 40% physical resistance. The lack of improved haste is also really showing in key fights that depend on melee DPS.
In any case, the party had a lot more trouble damaging him than I was expecting. Mazzy couldn't do anything after she ran out of +5 darts (no +3 arrows to get through his +2 weapon immunity). Korgan was getting pretty banged up and the party had run out of death wards. Mazzy survived an implosion. Eventually, I decided to just slayer change and that ended the fight fairly quickly. I'm not sure whether the slayer is vorpal immune - I don't think it is - so charname took a small chance of death in the fight but came out on top.
I didn't bother mucking about with the coalition invaders. Everyone had necklaces of missiles which had only been used against 1 enemy previously - and wouldn't be any good to them in hell. A single round of blasts targeted on a fire elemental was enough to pretty much eliminate the first 3 groups, though the final one got a few extra fireballs to leave only Grimgor alive - and he only lasted a few seconds longer.
At Dragonspear, Allanon sought out Ashatiel for single combat, but the latter ran away almost immediately. That was the cue for a lot more fireballs - the opposition got the druids with one, but were hit themselves many times, culminating in the death of Ashatiel, which opened the way into the castle.
Following Caelar into hell, the druids cleared the opening area. That was complicated by Walker Boh getting charmed and having to initially keep the other druids away from him and latterly try and avoid a couple of remaining crusaders. That should have been possible using invisibility, but the crusaders kept popping in and out of reality (or possibly visibility) and in the end I just killed them instead (with no loss of reputation).
In the next area everyone used a potion of clarity and produced summons before engaging. Wholesale use of darts of stunning also helped ensure the devils didn't make much impact.
After putting on ironskins and resting, the druids buffed up prior to taking the Hellevator. They dealt with the enemies on that without difficulty and topped up their buffs just before reaching the top. Caelar was persuaded to fight for the druids before Walker Boh started off by casting magic resistance at Belhifet while the others dealt with some stray devils. Belhifet was then doomed before the insects started pouring in. Walker Boh tried a Dolorous Decay on him to try and make him easier to hit, but he was immune to the slow effect. Bremen attempted to Harm Belhifet, but missed. However, Walker Boh's attempt smacked home. The druids had stocked up with Wondrous Recall spells, so had far more insects than they needed anyway - but the successful Harm at least cut short Belhifet's agony.
They finished SoD with about 485k, still just below the XP cap. After cutting their way out of the final SoD dungeon, they've found themselves landing straight in another one. For many parties the loss of equipment means a big power reduction. However, as the druids' strength is primarily in their spells the early stages of BG2 should still be pretty easy for this lot.
Walker Boh - L12, 80 HPs, 0 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bremen - L12, 80 HPs, 0 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L12, 79 HPs, 0 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Allanon - L12, 80 HPs, 0 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L12, 76 HPs, 0 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Cogline - L12, 76 HPs, 0 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Fun With Saving Throws II: Electric Boogaloo
Not every enemy in SoD has had their HP tripled by the Level Adder mod, so I turned off double XP. We start the expansion with nearly 400k XP so we're still in level range - we'll probably only get a couple of levels from SoD.
Not much else to say about it. Many enemies flee from morale failure from Blaggy's improved aura of despair combined with Debuff's improved nightsinger song. We at least got to insta-kill Morentherene this time because it seems that the spells that the Nightsinger and Shadow Disciple use to update the bonuses from their mental stats don't wake the dragon up.
The Bridgefort crusaders hardly stand a chance with a massive saving throw penalty from Blaggy (-2), Cactank (-2), Debuff (-2), and Yin (-4). Spaz's revenant panics most of them with a casting of Horror.
We manage to destroy the Dragonspear basement although Cactank is killed in the process from being confused. Blaggy brings him back into the fight using a scroll of Raise Dead, having Cactank equip Kiel's Helm, and then have him drink from Durlag's Goblet. Blaggy has a drink from it as soon as he can after doing this. The crusaders were scattered and disabled from castings of Inertia, Horror/Night Terrors, and Deep Slumber.
At Dragonspear, Yin softens up the crusaders with Sigil of Misfortune and then Stabby fires a poisoned Arrow of Detonation. Spaz recently learned Electrifying Blast, which allows him to paralyze enemies for 1 round/10 levels if they fail a save vs. breath at -2 (-1 more for every two points of CHA above 17, so -4 total for Spazs 21 CHA). With the Chain blast shape, it can hit up to 5 enemies at his current level, 13.
Ashatiel eventually challenges Blaggy but withdraws it sometime during the fight. I think a debuff spell we put on an enemy wore off and it triggered the "in combat" state where everyone's health bars appear so Ashatiel took that to mean we weren't fighting fair. However, she does not teleport away, so we gang up on her and kill her, ending the crusade.
Hell isn't too difficult thanks to Inertia. Time for Belhifet. Yin tricks Belhifet into wasting his opening Dispel Magic on him. Thanks to Shadow Screen, it does nothing.
Belhifet's HP is 1050. Even so, we are still able to kill any reinforcements he gates in within a couple of rounds so we aren't swamped in devils. His Blazing Inferno causes us some trouble, but we're knee-deep in potions of extra healing. Blaggy, Cactank, and Stabby melee Belhifet. Yin casts Sigil of Misfortune which now properly bypasses MR to lower his saves even further. Stabby successfully holds Belhifet with an enhanced backstab, but he's so tanky that even 2 rounds of continuous beating from our fighters doesn't phase him much.
But Stabby manages to backstab him again and paralyze him, which finally spells his doom. However, I'm made quite aware that we have trouble against Improved Invisibility, as only Cactank knows True Sight (which I dumbly forgot I even had). We could've killed Belhifet earlier if I did use it and then follow up with Sigil of Mortality to reduce Belhifet's physical DR to -20%.
Coreheal's band of Clerics - Core rules, unmodded, cleric-only party (except Imoen) Update 1
Coreheal - halfing, priest of Lathander (protagonist)
April - dwarven fighter/cleric
Sarah - gnomish fighter/cleric
Paja - half-orc cleric/thief
(Imoen) - human mage/thief
We made it past Sarevok into Irenicus' dungeon. I wasn't sure we could defeat Sarevok since we couldn't dispel his haste without a bow user, but we managed to just the same. We just cleared out level 1 of the dungeon, and are about to meet Yoshimo. We intend to recruit Aerie and Viconia to round out our cleric group once we escape the dungeon. Naturally, with skeleton escorts, the battles have been pretty smooth so far. Will keep at it!
A power cut meant I lost my notes recording quite a bit of progress. Rather than try and reconstruct those, suffice it to say the druids cleared, without any real problems, the Promenade (including the Cowled Wizards), the Bridge District (except the Twisted Rune), the Docks and the Graveyard (except vampire HQ). They got to level 13 when reporting back to Bloodscalp.
With reputation up at 17 they left the City for the first time to go to Trademeet. After clearing the Grove, Allanon challenged Faldorn and gave her some insects to eat.
Clearing the tomb and helping Tiris then pushed reputation up to 20 and it didn't take long to spend the 160k gold they had earned up to then on goodies.
Items bought included some potions and I decided to go to Watcher's Keep to get something to store those in. Checking with farsight showed a pair of vampiric wraiths waiting to attack. Though they're very dangerous to soloers, I felt that this party should be able to take them easily enough. A couple of attempted Harms missed, but elementals and insects helped do the job anyway.
The top floor was then cleared and the statues destroyed by elementals.
Back in Athkatla the Temple sewers were the next target - there was nothing there that could stand up to elementals and insects.
On the way to the Unseeing Eye there were beholders waiting. In principle they could have destroyed elementals with their gaze attacks, but after an initial burst of those they defaulted to melee attacks - which the beholders are poor at, while the gauths can't hurt elementals all all .
The Rift Device then made the Unseeing Eye vulnerable.
At the Planar Prison the druids all rested to get ironskins before entering invisibly. Trying to get a whole party out of sight of the mage before he casts true sight is fiddly, so they just attacked him. Bear form hasn't been used so much in BG2EE, but this was a good place to demonstrate its continued usefulness.
Summons did the bulk of the work while clearing the prison. It's a bit fiddly dealing with all the individual prisons first, but the only slightly worrying moment was against the Githyanki. Improved invisibility didn't prevent targeting of their psionic blast and the others had to act prematurely to save Walker Boh when he fell unconscious while attempting to center the enemies' attention on himself - poor druidic saving throws then left the others very vulnerable in turn to psionic blast.
With everything else done, the Warden fell almost immediately when hit by a big elemental critical.
With work in the City becoming scarce, the druids took another side trip to the de'Arnise Hold. I gave TorGal a sliver of a chance there by attacking him and his bodyguards together, but they still just failed to deal with a handful of elementals.
They moved on to Umar Hills, where they acquired the Shield of the Lost - that's usable by druids as its made of hair rather than metal, so gives a nice AC bonus to Walker Boh. The greater mummies in the ruined temple didn't last long against elementals and the druids were soon facing a dragon. He survived 3 attempts to Harm him, but a magic resistance spell had left him vulnerable to insects and he was already at near death from multiple infestations when a critical bullet finished him off.
I tried using Fire Seeds on the Shade Lord, but they were less effective than I hoped - a number missing and others being nerfed by magic resistance. However, once some insects got past his defenses he could be shot down without further trouble.
Valygar had been bagged on the way back from the temple so, after forging the Shadow Dragon Armor, the druids went to the Planar Sphere. There they finally got another level - though the 750k required for that one is dwarfed by the 1.5m before they will get the chance again .
Walker Boh - L14, 84 HPs, 90 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bremen - L14, 84 HPs, 66 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L14, 83 HPs, 55 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Allanon - L14, 89 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 121 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L14, 80 HPs, 59 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Cogline - L14, 80 HPs, 52 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Journal of Sinna
After defeating Mulahey we freed a mage and were saddened when he wouldn't join us.
We then killed the Revenant, Narcillicus and some jellies.
I was then at this level.
We then travelled to the bandit camp where we were recruited by them.
We then rescued Branwen and with her killed Tranzig
We then wiped out the bandits at the camp.
Branwen was killed at that point so we returned to the temple to revive her after doing some minor chores.
We helped Aldeth in Cloakwood and killed Centeol and a number of wyvern
When we got to the Cloakwood Mine things were quite straightforward.
Coreheal's band of Clerics - Core rules, unmodded, cleric-only party (except Imoen) Update 2
Coreheal - halfling, priest of Lathander (protagonist)
April - dwarven fighter/cleric
Sarah - gnomish fighter/cleric
Paja - half-orc cleric/thief
Viconia - drow cleric
Aerie - avariel mage/cleric
Party continues to make great progress. We decided to try something a little risky and battled Thaxxy pretty early. We had only weak summons. Surprisingly, the scorcher from a wand was highly effective. Our melee/range wasn't very effective, so in the end, people started using their magic missile wands too (we had 3). Victory! Shade Lord also defeated, quite quickly as well. Will keep at it.
Starting at Sorcerous Sundries we considered hunting the ogre mage in the sewers. However, with no memorized way to protect against hold or sneak down we decided to take the cautious approach - Gate70's comment was "it would be a shame to die within 2 minutes (again)".
That reprieve was to be short-lived though as we made our way through the City to find Degrodel. His guards were mostly pulled outside and blindness, nymphs and lightning dealt with them easily enough to provide Symon with a 9th level.
Inside the house there was a Helmed Horror left and, despite being at near death, that hit Symon at least 4 times before Noht eventually got a hit on it. Though it got a bit lucky there, that illustrated that Symon was much more vulnerable to crushing than slashing attacks, which was to be a problem shortly afterwards ...
After healing up, Symon went to talk to Degrodel, but unfortunately a fit of depression came over him and he told the mage he wanted to die.
Degrodel of course didn't need asking twice to do that and summoned some helpers while throwing out a horror. Noht managed to wriggle out of the tight position and saved against the horror, but Symon achieved neither.
Noht tried to kill the mage before he could target Symon again, but an invisible stalker appeared before he could do that and he had to run - gulping potions to stay alive. He did succeed though in dragging all but a Doom Guard and a Helmed Horror away, but on the downside those 2 successfully corralled Symon into a corner. If Symon had got lucky there he could have survived those attacks with minimal damage - but he got unlucky instead. Both the attackers rolled consistently high and Symon was dead comfortably before he would have got his senses back ...
The randomator spreadsheet decided Grond0 should have another chance to mangle a druid, leaving me with an assassin. A quick check confirmed Grond0 was thinking about using a staff or failing that a dagger. Rather than get into a fight about things or more importantly compromise Polgara's melee, Lowbar opted to not use a staff and settle for a long sword instead.
This way we wouldn't bicker over items now or later. Mainly now.
After the Candlekeep chores we assassinated Shoal the nereid before heading into Beregost. Lowbar busied himself with finding a book for Firebead and a drink for Marl while Polgara arranged a sparsely-attended funeral for Neera and took her gembag to use for the collection.
Next we headed south towards Nashkel, stopping only to pick up a letter from ogrillions, some boots from hobgoblins and a necklace from a bit further on. Polgara equipped the ankheg plate once we'd wiped away much of the mud in which it was buried. Noober thought he'd got away with insulting us but just as he was about to leave one of our missiles hit him and he stopped to remonstrate with us. Wrong move Noober as we've got a couple more missiles and they are all we need to finish the job.
We've got lots to do so head south where we can return Rufie the 'dog' to his owner and kill off Zal plus Vax. From there we head west but Lowbar notices Polgara is looking a little piqued and has lost some XP - and after another minute or so Grond0 is dropped from the game.
Polgara's XP is consoled back but a couple of attempts to rejoin are unsuccessful and we decide not to push our (well, my) internet woes any further.
After travelling back from Candlekeep and resting for a final Bhaal power, we went to find Slythe. A pair of summoned monsters and a spot of haste saw him quickly cut down. The ogre perished while persuading Krystin to cloudkill Quenash (in order to get the Cloak of Balduran) and Krystin then failed to cast further spells thanks to Plinker's arrows. Her death also gave Fini her final level.
The same basic set-up was used at the palace, though the paladins used a couple of potions each as well. Their enhanced strength went through the dopplegangers pretty quickly. Fini used chaos to try and disrupt their attacks and Belt survived easily enough, even though Liia still snuffed it.
In the maze things looked under control went Corepally used a scroll of PfU and potions of absorption and fire resistance to tackle a pair of skeleton warriors. Regrettably though, Plinker had not spotted the small hole in the wall where he was leaning and died before he could blink - fortunately not chunked though.
One of the dopplegangers had dropped an arrow of detonation at the palace and Plinker swapped that with one of Rahvin's. The latter was then confused by another chaos spell and attacking his own side contributed to our victory. That left Plinker just short of his final level, so we hunted down a few ghasts to get that.
The fight at the temple didn't take long. Plinker used a dispelling arrow on Sarevok and retreated ahead of the big man as a web trap spawned. Plinker had already taken a potion of magic shielding, so was able to run Sarevok around in the web. He quickly got stuck, giving us the chance to finish Semaj off before turning back to Sarevok. Sarevok freed himself, but by this time he was malisoned and he got stuck again in the edge of the web while trying to confront a couple of summoned monsters. He did manage to break free again, but by this time he was nearly dead and a bit easier to hit than usual thanks to being affected by the Blackguard Aura of Despair - a couple of final arrows from Plinker saw him on his way.
Progress through the enemies in Jon's dungeon was generally fast, but things were slowed down by healing the large amount of damage taken. That was largely from traps, but Corepally did take significant damage in the portal room after being laid out by a Color Spray.
In Athkatla the Circus provided a nice easy start, but a harder than expected battle with Cohrvale and Bregg pointed up the need for some better armor.
Hendak was freed and, when he eventually discovered the right route to Lehtinan, found himself the new proprietor of the Copper Coronet.
Corepally took advantage of the expanded selection of items for sale at the Coronet by purchasing the Sleeper. The final action of the session saw that claim a first victim as a Mad Cleric briefly slumped to the floor.
Officer Dirth should provide an armor upgrade next time.
Illusionist - L10, 62 HPs, 36 kills (+115 in BGEE)
Undead hunter - L9, 110 HPs, 30 kills (+174 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Blackguard - L8, 97 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 61 kills (+241 in BGEE), 3 deaths
The remainder of the Planar Sphere was no problem. With their new L7 spells, the druids used firestorm to make Lavok surrender, while Tolgerias failed to make an impression against the more standard insects.
Moving on to Windspear Hills, clearing the exterior area included an ankheg victim and that shell was put to good use to make a second suit of armor. In the dungeon I was conscious that Firkraag ended my last druids run (when chunking one of them who was slow to cast protection from fire). This time there were a couple of insect plagues going in, to potentially provide the finishing touch to a Harm after resist magic took effect, but the three druids attempting that missed their attacks. However, there was also a Nature's Beauty being cast and the blinding effect of that was successful to effectively end the contest early on.
Back in Athkatla the druids used Tazok's key to open up a new area in the sewers. Chaotic commands provided protection against the illithids' psionic attacks, while Fire Storm cleaned up the Ulitharids (the basic illithids are immune to fire).
I typically wait until all the vampire ambushes have triggered before paying Gaelan Bayle. I don't remember having seen the last one, but it's possible I missed that and I decided to pay up the 15k. Lassal and the Guild Contact were quickly done before I decided to have a whip round to buy up any last goodies on offer. An unexpected bonus doing that was found with the thief near the temple in the Slums. I don't normally patronize him, so was surprised to find he had the Buckler of the Fist - in vanilla BG2 magic bucklers are unreasonably short in supply, so it's good to see the EE has helped to address that. Then it was time to revisit the Graveyard. The pressure of attacks on Bodhi kept her from talking for a while once she reached near death, but eventually she choked out her speech and ran away.
The druids reported back to Gaelan Bayle, but they still had a bit more work to do before taking ship. First was the Guarded Compound. Typically there, I drag enemies downstairs into summons one or two at a time, but I thought the druids could be braver than that. Sion threw up a true sight as soon as they went upstairs, but their buffs protected them while they produced some insects followed by a pair of fire storms.
I would have done the Twisted Rune and Kangaxx, but Allanon could only reach strength 23 with DUHM and was unable to break down the relevant doors yet. However, he did still have an appointment at the Druid Grove where another arena fight saw him granted the title of Great Druid - gaining another +2 ring as a reward. Undertaking a bit of work for the Spirit of the Grove then saw Nilthiri's trolls burnt up before lightning restored the balance against Chaos.
The party still needs nearly another 6m XP to get to level 15. I didn't really fancy trying to get that in Watcher's Keep, so set off for Spellhold - even though that means losing DUHM to be able to bash more locks.
Walker Boh - L14, 84 HPs, 145 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bremen - L14, 84 HPs, 105 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L14, 83 HPs, 88 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Allanon - L14, 89 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 174 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L14, 80 HPs, 118 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Cogline - L14, 80 HPs, 99 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
At Brynnlaw, Perth died in Fire Storms cast out of his sight. His book produced farsight, wyvern call and true seeing as the first 3 options - all potentially useful to some parties, but not really this one. The 4th choice though was spell turning and I stuck with that, even though I'll probably never actually use it in practice.
In Spellhold I picked up a ring of regeneration. Walker Boh was soon making use of that after taking high damage from a Pit Fiend fireball.
A bit further on a beholder took longer to die that I expected and petrified Galaphile as well as spreading various other effects and injuries around - Walker Boh had to receive healing spells after being infested with insects after being charmed.
Despite the experience with a beholder I couldn't resist attacking a gauth without preparation and Walker Boh only just survived there as a result.
In the battle with Irenicus, he was covered in insects and was soon at near death, but refused to give up (the rapidity of damage caused by insects being particularly bad at prevented scripts from firing). That lasted long enough for him to release a multiple lightning bolt. That not only hurt the druids, causing them to make a rare use of potions to protect against further bounces, but also turned the inmates hostile.
Fortunately, by that time the insects had worn off and Irenicus finally surrendered moments later - the inmates dying as a result.
Pixie dust then put the hidden murderers off their aim. It was only after leaving Spellhold that I realized I'm so used to playing solo I didn't make some boots of speed there, which I had intended to.
After stealing a worn-out ship the druids arrived in Fish City. They recovered a tooth and killed various groups of rebels before accepting the prince's offer to support him. Shortly afterwards the king was dead, though the prince didn't long survive him.
Once the city was depopulated the druids used a magical rope to let themselves down into the Underdark.
Summons did much of the work against a group of drow before the druids moved into the Western Tunnels. I had a potential problem there when all the elementals died or were charmed when fighting kuo-toa. The druids all had chaotic commands memorized, but hadn't bothered casting it and Cogline was stunned.
His chances didn't look good, but a rare use of wands cut down some of the opposition before the last elemental recovered from charm. The prince couldn't hurt the elemental, so the druids were able to prepare at their leisure to fight him. Spells were not effective against his magic resistance (and none of them had magic resistance memorized), but even his regeneration couldn't stand up against multiple bears.
Elementals didn't survive too long against the demon knights, but did help use up their spells to allow the druids to shoot them down - gaining another giant strength girdle in the process.
At the svirfneblin village all but one of the fire elementals succumbed to a symbol stun from the balor. Only Allanon had a missile weapon that could hurt the balor and the druids didn't fancy trying melee against it, so retreated. Coming back with new elementals, they protected those with chaotic commands. That didn't prevent 3 of them getting scared, but that attack did allow some decent damage to be done. Once fear wore off, a further attack did better than expected when Walker Boh nipped in and put the balor to sleep with the Pixie Prick. A first use of the Ring of the Ram helped finish it off before it could recover.
With the drow shops now open for business, the druids bought a few more goodies, including improving their ranged attacks with the purchase of Firetooth. I don't often do work inside the drow city, but everything went well this time. I did pick up the rope for Deirex's tower, but it's been years since I did that and I wasn't sure whether there was a timer on the temple ritual - so in the end left the lich alone and went to watch Matron Ardulace and Phaere get burned up before quickly leaving the city.
I had the real eggs, but still decided to burn Adalon rather than seek her help to exit the area.
The drow quests give quite a bit of XP, but there was still a fair bit more needed to get to level 15, so the druids headed off to the illithid's lair. Chaotic commands for protection and invisibility for resting should have allowed them to clear that without trouble. However, I could only be bothered to protect Walker Boh with chaotic commands and got into trouble when one of the other druids got bumped while moving and became a target for umber hulk confusion before getting stunned. That problem rapidly escalated as I attempted to save him, with another pair of druids getting confused, while the one sent in to try and save the day with Pixie Dust was also stunned before they could complete that.
Only Walker Boh and Cogline were still under control at this stage and Allanon could easily have become a target in that situation. Walker Boh did well to lead 4 surviving illithids away, though not before they'd had a good snack on Brona and Galaphile.
I don't allow the use of Rods of Resurrection in my games, but druids can use raise dead scrolls, so the dead pair could be brought back once the danger had passed. After that I was marginally more careful and there were no more fatalities on the way to lobotomize the brain.
With only about 800k more XP required, the druids moved on to the beholder hive. They tried to Harm the Elder Orb at the entrance, but 2 hits bounced off its magic resistance. Running away immediately, I was surprised to see the beholder following - fortunately though, the Orb stayed put and the beholder was dealt with pretty quickly. Going back down again after resting, they intended to just run past the Orb out of sight range - but it insta-triggered a true sight and they had to hastily run again. The next time it started casting true sight normally, so the druids could have run past - but they were already committed to attacking this time. A charge from the Ring of the Ram pushed it away a bit, while several lots of insects scared it. Before it could recover wand blasts had finished it off.
Elementals dealt with the bulk of the beholders, though more insects and fire storms ensured there would be no problems with the second Elder Orb.
After fighting through some drow to escape the Underdark, the druids convinced Elhan to let them go in search of Bodhi. On the way back to Athkatla they came across Drizzt and some friends. Drizzt's fire resistance and healing capability allowed him to survive several fire storms, but with his companions dead he could be easily shot down - though killing him in BGEE costs reputation, there's no such penalty in BG2EE.
Back in Athkatla, call lightning got a workout when Kruin didn't ask nicely enough for his Silver Sword blade.
Leaving the City for Umar Hills, I was ambushed by clones. Rather oddly, they were immune to insect plague and a clutch of acid arrow spells caused lots of damage before things could be tidied up.
At Umar I collected the upgraded human flesh armor (that's not usable by druids, so the main aim of making it was just to get a bit of extra XP) and taught Fael not to try ambushes in future.
Returning to Athkatla, the druids went to find some vampires in the Graveyard. There were plenty on offer there and the XP racked up sufficiently to finally hit level 15 without even going downstairs. In addition to a first HLA that gave everyone 5 additional level 7 spells to help make use of those. No new spells were used against Bodhi though and, despite Bremen being drained a couple of times, the druids had an easy victory.
Walker Boh - L15, 86 HPs, 237 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bremen - L15, 86 HPs, 152 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L15, 85 HPs, 137 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Allanon - L15, 91 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 259 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L15, 82 HPs, 173 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Cogline - L15, 82 HPs, 147 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Just stopping by to say hello to all the runners keeping this challenge alive! I've been screwing around in BG and the Elder Scrolls games for a while without posting on any of them. I got another Skyrim Redone no-reload through the main quest, but lost interest before completing the expansions.
I've long since forgotten which BG runs I left uncompleted. I dimly remember a poverty run somewhere in ToB, there's a restless run in SoA, a solo Sword Dancer I don't remember ever dying, and I think a Fighter/Mage/Cleric is right before Melissan in an out-of-date SCS+Ascension install. There were several failed runs I haven't documented and might not have mentioned, including a solo Cleric of Talos who apparently died to a Slayer-related rage spiral at Sendai, a solo Illusionist/Thief that got stunned by a Neothelid, a solo Sky Dancer, a solo Sky Dancer that died to a swarm at the Coalition Camp (don't let the Coldhearth lich's skeleton mage blind any enemies; they might run south to the barrels), and a solo Psionicist Fighter who died by accidentally charming herself. I actually had to look up a screenshots folder to even remember most of them.
I've been trying increasingly easy runs as time has gone on, since topping a solo LoB run is barely possible and way too stressful (LoB mode really burned me out). Recently I started a new Shapeshifter with a full party, which is now in endgame SoA. I lost interest after gaining HLAs, though, and so I created a simple solo elven fighter/mage from Candlekeep, which has just taken down Belhifet. The deal was that it would be exploit-free, but I still stacked a few Webs and Skull Traps at the Coalition Camp for safety's sake, and I drank a whole bunch of Potions of Heroism at Belhifet, though I never ended up taking damage anyway.
The Shapeshifter run had party members because I was tired of agonizing over solo build bottlenecks (will this Flare Dancer struggle in ToB due to low damage resistances? will this Cleric of Lathander be too slow in BG1 unless I dual-class it to mage before the ideal level 11?). The fighter/mage is solo just because I wanted a basic, straightforward powergaming class that required minimal micromanagement and wouldn't require exploits to function well. I even specialized in longswords and longbows just because it's optimal for BG1 (normally I find both proficiencies boring).
I've found myself steadily drifting towards @Alesia_BH's more purist ethos, and I've even noticed myself getting less sloppy as I take fewer risks and conduct fewer experiments. Deaths barely faze me at this point, and sometimes I greet death as a relief because my runs tend to get a lot farther into the game, when I've lost interest in a character build or strategy.
Right now I kinda just want to get a trans female character into the Hall, just because I already crammed it with nonbinary critters named Frisky Bits and I haven't finished a run since I started my transition.
My fighter/mage is named Pearl after my new middle name. Her portrait is a self-portrait I drew in Photoshop when I was designing a custom T-shirt for my girlfriend. I'm kinda proud of it because it feels like me and it has my new hairstyle.
Whilst Sinna is progressing satisfactorily through the City of Baldur's Gate, and expect to be heading out from there soon, another party of Chaotic Evil Characters has also set out. It is Wormwood the Blackguard and Chaosbringer the Sorceress. Both have a charisma of 18 which is new for me as I usually use Charisma as a dump stat. It is the first time that I have played with a sorcerer so I don't expect great things of the party. Wait and see what happens. Having the PC as a Blackguard may keep his sidekick alive.
@semiticgod Good to see you again. I don't really know much about the personal lives of the members of our little no-reload community, but congratulations on your transition, and I hope you're doing well!
I've also started a new undocumented run a few months ago, but I'm playing only a couple of hours a week. It's an SCS party run with an Undead Hunter protagonist, and I've recently made it to the big city. I have made tons of screenshots, though I'll propably only start posting a few of them if I get at least close to the endgame or if I get more time and motivation to play.
While you were gone, there have been quite a few successful quadrilogy no-reload runs, and it would be great if they could be added into the Hall of Heroes at some point in the future:
It's also quite possible that there's been another success that I'm forgetting about right now. Maybe someone else can recall if that's every run still missing?
This also means that the shaman and the illusionist can be removed from the list of classes/kits missing from the combined Hall of Heroes. I think it's also been discovered that, shockingly, there hasn't been an actual fighter/thief multiclass success, so that one could be added to the list (though I'm not 100% sure about that, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
Nice! Thank you, @Enuhal. I've added those entries to the Hall of Heroes, though I'm missing:
1. A starting post link and the difficulty level for @CharlestonianTemplar's Holy Justice of Tyr
2. A mod list and the difficulty level for @Neverused's Shaman
3. A mod list and the difficulty level for @Gate70's Blackguard and Illusionist
I'll add them to the entries whenever; just tag me here. If there are any other missing entries, let me know.
I've removed the Shaman and Illusionist from the missing class list and added the Fighter/Thief. If anyone knows of a Fighter/Thief run, I'll remove it.
Coreheal the halfling Priest of Lathander and his band of clerics (update 3)
April - dwarven fighter/cleric
Sarah - gnomish fighter/cleric
Paja - half-orc thief/cleric
Aerie - avariel cleric/mage
Anomen - human fighter/cleric
(Viconia) - drow cleric (chunked against Nizi)
Guarded compound was difficult, the silences weren't as helpful as I hoped a lot of potion gulping and Aerie dead but we did win all the same.
We had hoped to kill Firkraag quickly, as we had harms ready to go but Firkraag was ready for that and did a dispel which basically meant we had to fight without buffs. Was dicey but we did eventually prevail.
Our initial battle with Bodhi went well, she gave up quickly.
The party makes good progress and after doing all chapter two quests they are intending, they go to Brynnlaw. They meet Sanik, who promptly is assassinated - however, we had laid traps for this assassin, and the assassin himself is also promptly assassinated by said traps. We helped Ginia and Ason, then go to deal with the guild mistress who is causing so much trouble for the courtesans. A single aerial servant was more than enough to claim the victory, partly because the mage foolishly fired off a lightning bolt which killed himself.
Spellhold itself was ALMOST by the numbers - except just before dealing with Dace the program crashed! I had to redo all of level 1 Spellhold - was very annoying. I started doing a lot more quick-saves after that.
As for Irenicus himself, he gave up quite fast, I hardly had to do anything as the AI script was more than enough to deal with him.
We eventually get to Suldensslar. We had cleared the entire city, was fighting Nizi and the game worked great CRASHED!
And then even though Nizi is a party required area, the only auto-save was before entering the City!!! Which meant had to do it all again, grrr... but I did. However, the battle with Nizi went very, very badly. Viconia got CHUNKED and EVERYONE dead but Coreheal!!!
What to do? Can't get equipment, dragons see through invis. But that means too can't get RoR to bring people to life. So Coreheal memorizes 4 raise deads, heals everyone best he can, and prepares to fight with 5 aerial servants and 4 NAKED adventurers!!! Keep in mind Nizi has healed to full in the mean-time.
This time around only Coreheal and his love Aerie survive - but thanks to Paja's traps (she was able to lay more traps after being brought back), Nizi dies and the run continues! I almost gave up there.
My battle with Irenicus at the Tree of Life was almost anti-climatic, as he couldn't kill anyone before succumbing himself. He also couldn't kill anyone before dying in Hell as well. On to ToB!
Anomen is replacing Viconia - she will be sorely missed, she had loads of spells.
Rather than go straight to Suldanesselar, I decided to have a look at the additional map areas available that I don't bother with when solo. There was very little in Small Teeth Pass, but the druids did kill a few ankhegs and returned to the City to make up 3 more sets of armor, meaning only one of them is not now dressed in druidic green .
They explored the Wild Forest, finding loads of traps, but nothing else of particular interest. One of those traps polymorphed Galaphile and the druids had to leave the area and try dispel magic multiple times before that eventually worked. They did discover the way to Neera's Hidden Refuge, where they rejected for the third time Neera's attempt to force herself into the party - which appeared to mean they had no way into the compound ...
There was more XP on offer at the North Forest and it wasn't long before the druids got to level 16 (after the long haul to level 15, the next 6 levels only require 150k each before progress starts slowing again). Immediately before that though I had an unexpected death when I was concentrating on the mage in a powerful party and not looking at the damage dealers - with the help of a backstab those quickly went through Walker Boh's HPs after chewing through ironskins.
At the Forest of Tethir it looked like it would be another easy area when the druids completed their searching activities at Coran's hut. However, on entry there everyone but Cogline was either confused or scared and the acid fog they were standing in did plenty of damage before they started to come to their senses - after that though they were able to scatter to the edge of the room and avoid further damage.
Thinking about it, I realized there was still a bit of work the druids could do in Athkatla. Although Gaxx himself was inaccessible, there were a couple of liches that could be got at. A first use of a deva destroyed them before the druids headed for the Underdark exit and on to Suldanesselar. There were plenty of golems and other high XP targets there and that soon provided another level.
Nizi then died in fire storms and the last of the area was cleared on the way to the temple.
Rather than sub-contract work to Rillifane there, they sneaked in and managed to kill Suneer before his buffs triggered.
They were already buffed themselves though and had no trouble finishing the others off.
On the Tree of Life they hacked down some parasites before insects thwarted Jon's attempted time stop and he was on his way to hell before he could complete a spell.
On arrival, Allanon did his trials:
- let the dragon live to get 20% elemental resistances.
- used deva fear protection to get immunity to normal and +1 weapons.
- he intended to carry out a druid sacrificial ritual on Bremen to get -2 to AC. However, something went wrong and the sacrifice wasn't completed (I rarely get here with a party, so am not sure if this is a bug/exploit or intentional). Bremen was held and badly hurt, but not killed. Attempts by the druids to use spells to dispel the hold failed, but a first use of Vhailor's Helm to get a simulacrum and a consequent free use of a PfM scroll freed him.
- handed over Blackrazor to get +2 to saving throws (but still killed the genie after doing that - if alignment is important, doing this is a way to avoid the evil path, while still getting Blackrazor).
- after gaining weapon immunity, he gave Sarevok a good spanking to get +2 to strength.
A casting of energy blades saw off all the demons in a couple of rounds while they were attacking some pre-cast bears. True seeing to expose Irenicus and more energy blades to beat him down soon had him at near death. Stopping the attack for a couple of seconds then let him draw breath and transform to a man for his final farewell.
Walker Boh - L17, 90 HPs, 260 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Bremen - L17, 90 HPs, 170 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L17, 89 HPs, 170 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Allanon - L17, 95 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 308 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L17, 86 HPs, 188 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Cogline - L17, 86 HPs, 172 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Nice! Thank you, @Enuhal. I've added those entries to the Hall of Heroes, though I'm missing:
1. A starting post link and the difficulty level for @CharlestonianTemplar's Holy Justice of Tyr
2. A mod list and the difficulty level for @Neverused's Shaman
3. A mod list and the difficulty level for @Gate70's Blackguard and Illusionist
I'll add them to the entries whenever; just tag me here. If there are any other missing entries, let me know.
I've removed the Shaman and Illusionist from the missing class list and added the Fighter/Thief. If anyone knows of a Fighter/Thief run, I'll remove it.
@semiticgod has anyone succeeded as an assassin or as a swashbuckler? I could not find them in the successful entries list. If no, the only successful single class thief seems a shadowdancer.
Comments
Symon (male half-elf druid, Grond0); Noht (male half-elf blade, Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1134853/#Comment_1134853
At the Bandit Camp Noht initially attacked in melee, but took quite a bit of damage from the bandit archers and Symon (wearing the Boots of Avoidance) took over the tanking for a while. Taurgosz got a couple of hefty blows in on him and Symon was in the process of running away from him when Noht's glitterdust stopped Taurgosz in his tracks. Symon produced a nymph and both he and the nymph started casting at Taurgosz. The nymph died to Noht's skull trap before she could finish her spell, but Symon's was sufficient
After the usual minimal exploration in the Cloakwood, the mine beckoned. Drasus & co didn't deal well with web and stinking cloud and put up no resistance.
After arriving in the City our internet connection got spotty and we cut the session short there.
Druid 8, 66 HPs, 133 kills
Blade 8, 54 HPs, 171 kills, 2 deaths
Just wanted to let you know my party of thieves met their end in Yaga's fire giant temple. Thieves worked real good in BG1 and SoA, but were woefully underpowered in ToB. Back to the drawing board! Thinking of making party of clerics, we'll see...
Charname is a human WS13 -> Thief. Now in BG2, having just exited Bodhi's dungeon and defeated Jon. ~1.7mm exp. Third attempt, first in SoA.
Traveling with Jaheira, Anomen, Korgan, and Mazzy. Permadeaths: Shar Teel, Yoshi.
After killing Torgal, charname took the Keep as his stronghold. I tend to think the only stronghold that "matters" is the mage stronghold, and so we took the Keep right away rather than waiting for the Guild after dual-ing. We then headed off to tangle with Bodhi.
Bodhi in chapter 3 is kind of a push over imo. She only has a view vampires defending her, which aren't too threatening now that their SCS blood/con suck has been toned down. Jaheira with AoP plus Korgan with Berserk plus hasted Mazzy with azure edge was more than enough to take out the scattered vampires. Tanova put up a bit of a fight as we couldn't remove her spell protections, but once Tanova's pfMW wore off she fell quickly. Bodhi was distracted with summons and then kited until she had seen enough.
Nevin survived Uncle Lester due to a lucky (ish) azure edge hit.
In Windspear, the vampires were overwhelmed by the number of level drain immune and/or undead slaying party members (Anomen with upgraded MoD, Korgan with Berserk, Jaheira with AoP, Mazzy hasted with Azure Edge). Melee resistant skeletons were summoned to slow the vampires down. Charname used a pixie dust from Jaheira to hide during the fight.
Absorption and summons were used against the two golem packs, with an aerial servant from Anomen particularly useful against the clay golems. Firkraag was left for later, and the party returned to Athkatla to sail to Brynlaw.
In Brynlaw, the party had two tough fights on its hands, as it had no way to dispel mage protections or reliably disrupt arcane casters. Normally, cloud kill can be used to lock down human mages throughout the entire saga, as they have no way to protect themselves from a level 5 cloud spell that does poison damage. But the party has no way to cast cloudkill until charname gets UAI and can use a scroll or wand or Saverok gets to level 10 Mage in ToB. So we had to fight Vadek and Perth the old fashioned way.
Vadek managed to petrify (!) Anomen, but charname had a stack of stone->flesh green scrolls from dealing with petrification traps earlier in the game and Anomen was freed, rejoined and (partially) healed within the same round. Vadek died once his weapon protection wore off. Nevertheless, a scary fight, and reminder of why Wizard slayers aren't actually very good at fighting wizards, particularly if they themselves don't have access to arcane buffs. Charname had no way to protect himself from flesh to stone other than a green protection scroll, which are too scarce to use against every level 10+ enemy mage.
The party was even more worried about Perth, because he can cast level 9 spells. Thankfully, he did not cast anything too threatening until his weapon protections wore off, at which point he got locked down by insects and elemental melee attacks.
The lich in Bodhi's dungeon was defeated by luring away the other undead around it (bone golems, etc.) and then draining its spellbook with summons. I don't like doing that, but the lich is just too dangerous imo to face at less than 1.5mm exp with little to no equipment. It's possible he can be beaten in a fair fight with a cleric casting holy word, but it seemed too risky - particularly with no means of reducing damage from ADHW or blocking timestop or preventing the lich from summoning a balor.
Nothing else in Bodhi's dungeon was too eventful. The portal pitfiend went down fairly easily, with the final blow dealt by an aerial servant rolling for 36. The vampire was killed by summons and berserk Korgan.
Jon proved more difficult, and nearly ended the run several times.
As with prior high level mages, the party had no way to reliably interrupt his casting (as a normal party with cloudkill could do with relative ease). The plan was to use holy word from Anomen and insect plague from Jaheira, provided that Jon didn't have a fireshield (which it turned out he didn't).
Unfortunately, the insect plague missed due to some carelessness on my part, and in any case it wouldn't have blocked casting until his improved mantle / stoneskins wore off.
Holy word was more effective, and did manage to block several spells, but was not enough to block timestop or dragon's breath. Jon did not get to cast dark planetar though, which probably would have killed us, so we can be thankful for that!
When the dragon's breath hit, the party was fire immune from Jaheira's druid pfF, but the spellhold mages were not (excepting Wanev) and they perished.
Wanev never cast ADHW, which normally helps a lot. He wasn't super helpful this iteration of the fight. However, eventually Jon's weapon protections ran out and he went down.
And then the murderers came, and repeatedly nearly ended the run.
I had no way to make charname invisible, nor to detect the hidden murderers (dispel illusion does not work), and the murders just WOULD NOT let up off of charname. Every time I thought the murderers were all dead, charname would get hit by another backstab. He repeatedly got down to 10-20 hp, and only survived with a lot of jogging as nymphs and then Jahiera/Anomen cast healing spells on him. Yikes.
Eventually the murderers truly were all dead, and our party, alive but with its pride in tatters, went upstairs to reclaim our equipment.
If I were redoing the fight with the same party, I think I would cast firestorm on Jon and try to use NPCs to block him onto the little platform he starts on. I think that might be better than holy word. I would also endeavor not to miss with the insect plague... I would also come up with a better solution for the murderers at the end...
--
One quick comment on the wizard slayer build. Dual at 13 in this run was a fairly large mistake. What I wasn't really considering is that this build is extremely dependent on UAI, and so the dual at 13 (1.25mm exp) means that the build isn't really operational until early-mid ToB with ~4.3mm exp when it gets its first HLA.
Dualing at 9 or 10 costs a little bit of MR, a bit of Thac0, some material saves, and of course 1/2 APR, but I think in hindsight would have been a much better choice.
In addition, I think playing a good character is probably a mistake. Having now run the numbers, it's impossible to get 100 base MR without either using human leather, or using Vecna or going up to WS15. WS15 is pretty awful as it means not unlocking WS until end of SoA and not unlocking UAI until mid-late ToB at 4.8mm exp. So the better thing to do would be to play neutral or evil and kill Adalon, and then hitting 100 base MR is pretty easy.
WS10 + upg. Purifier + Lum + Hell + Seldarine + Gaxx = 75 MR. So with human leather, charname is at 95 and then can either use a holy symbol and wield any 2nd weapon, or use any second ring and wield FoA +5 or hindo +4 (or balduran). At WS9, charname would have to use Hindo, or FoA and holy symbol, otherwise would be at 99.
Without human leather, the only way to get base 100 MR is to go up to WS15 and then use hindo AND the holy symbol AND wear either enkidu (blocks thief skills) or an archmage robe (OK but not great AC or secondaries). Vecna gives an extra +5% (=10%) over the base 5% of the archmage robe, but using that on a thief for the MR probably isn't your best use for it.
WS21 is kind of interesting as it gives 25 base MR and two uses of hardiness, which would mean charname could use purifier and either easthaven or foebane. But of course with enormous downtime and delay of UAI such that the build isn't available until nearly the end of ToB.
@Jabberwock is Carsomyr not available in your game, or are you ruling that out because of it being a pain to re-equip items to get high MR?
However, Carsomyr + Hell + Lum + WS13 = 78, which is pretty good. And then depending on how magic protection potions stack, I may or may not use them to get to 100 in important fights.
I'm planning on UAI scroll casting for tough fights, so that will also help with protections. I unfortunately did not get spell turning from the book of infinite spells, but will (I think) be able to use spell trap from the magi staff and that should keep me pretty safe.
TBH, I'm most concerned about end of SoA liches and the twisted rune, as I won't yet have UAI. I also don't think I have any way of casting freedom. I think the fate spirit probably summons imprisoned party members, but I don't know, and I would be surprised if they kept their levels/equipment...
I may have to chicken out of those fights, due to not dualing at WS9...
Even better, potions of magic protection don't trigger the AI conditions for "I need to dispel that". A pure fighter can drink two potions of magic protection and clear out a hive of beholders, only having to worry about their melee attacks.
If you're willing to allow temporary party members who aren't fighters, any of the arcane characters can earn you and your party a ton of XP by scribing scrolls. Post-underdark, that's as far as your gold carries it with Ribald's infinite Freedom scrolls. That should at least get you to UAI before the end of SoA, so your protagonist can use Freedom scrolls to save any imprisoned party members.
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I didn't bother with most of the quests in the Coalition Camp, but did buy a few choice items from Nazramu before picking up some Bwoosh and poison. On the way to Dead Man's Pass the druids hit an ambush area and found their spells ineffective. However, they each had a necklace of missiles and those functioned as normal - the Shadowy Figure survived a first round of those, but not a follow-up treatment.
After working through a group of ogres the last bit of XP needed for another level came from a few boars.
The rest of the area was cleared without any significant concerns before the druids moved on to Dragonspear Castle - just staying there long enough to rescue Skie.
Moving on to Bloodbark Grove the druids started systematically clearing that. I don't bother visiting that with solo characters and was pleasantly surprised to find that Onoroth sold a suit of ankheg armor. That wouldn't be much use to most parties at this stage, but was just the ticket for a group of druids. There was another shambling mound there, but on its own that was easy prey for insects. A skeletal mage failed to survive even the first of the call lightning spells aimed at it - the others being targeted on it were still useful though as, with the druids at level 12, each spell now produces 3 bolts and the follow-ups soon cleaned up the burning skeletons.
The Underground River offered a few more obstacles. They called lightning down on a couple of trapped druids - gaining the Root of the Problem club that can be used on Belhifet. Murs apparently decided that Allanon was taking too long to kill some ogres and went hostile - and thus became a victim herself. The cyclops with the Seal of Caelar died to lightning before it knew what was happening - which apparently meant no mages appearing for a fight. The rest of the crusaders guarding the underground entrance couldn't hit fire elementals, making that an easier fight than I'd expected.
Underground, the druids set out to explore. One encounter I've rarely done is with a group of blind, albino wyrmlings and I didn't realize they have at least a couple of different methods of rendering characters helpless - using wands of heavens saved Galaphile from a likely death after he became unconscious there.
Before going up in the lift the druids all put on stoneskins for only the second time in their run. Invisible blockers on the doorway to the lift room greatly helped control the initial fight before insects spread out to nerf the casters.
Back at the Coalition Camp, there are mutterings about an imminent invasion ...
Walker Boh - L12, 80 HPs, 618 kills, 1 death
Bremen - L12, 85 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 409 kills, 0 deaths
Galaphile - L12, 79 HPs, 456 kills, 1 death
Allanon - L12, 85 HPs (incl. 5 from buckler, 652 kills
Brona - L12, 76 HPs, 479 kills, 1 death
Cogline - L12, 76 HPs, 360 kills, 1 death
Charname is a human WS13 -> Thief. Now in BG2 at the start of the underdark. ~2mm exp. Third attempt, first in SoA.
Traveling with Jaheira, Anomen, Korgan, and Mazzy. Permadeaths: Shar Teel, Yoshi.
After narrowly surviving the fight with Jon, the party made a deal with Saemon for passage back to Athkatla. We broke into the pirate king's girlfriend's house looking for the horn at 4am when it was still dark out. Unfortunately, the horn was missing, but we grabbed a rogue stone off the table.
Despite being robbed only that morning, by around 10pm the girlfriend was sound asleep with the horn on the table and we relieved her of it, ultimately leading to her untimely death. TBH, a lot of the "good" party actions in Brynlaw seem morally suspect to me. Leaping to murder Chremy based on the word of a single individual seems suspect as well...
Anyway! Once on the boat, we were shortly thereafter attacked by Githyanki and then Sahuagin. We were pretty careful to make sure no monkey business risked charname during the short engagement (charname still can't easily go invisible). The githyanki captain appears to have a minhp item, which is somewhat interesting.
We ran through the underwater city content, choosing to side with the prince. Unfortunately for the prince, charname couldn't drink master thievery or other pick-pocket buff potions, and wasn't able to successfully steal the wave head. The prince did not survive the fight that followed the failed thieving attempt.
Once in the underdark, the party cleared the elemental portals and the first drow war party. We accidentally bumped into the mindflayers after the fight and had to deal with them too. I noticed at that point that much of the party has 10 intelligence and started feeling a little more concerned about the flayer lair, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
The final thing the party did this session was deal with the dwarf balor. I laid 3 thief traps then buffed and started the fight. In hindsight, I probably should have taken this fight a little more seriously. It wasn't THAT bad, but the balor had a lot of staying power and did more damage than I had wanted. I learned later that he has -12 AC and 40% physical resistance. The lack of improved haste is also really showing in key fights that depend on melee DPS.
In any case, the party had a lot more trouble damaging him than I was expecting. Mazzy couldn't do anything after she ran out of +5 darts (no +3 arrows to get through his +2 weapon immunity). Korgan was getting pretty banged up and the party had run out of death wards. Mazzy survived an implosion. Eventually, I decided to just slayer change and that ended the fight fairly quickly. I'm not sure whether the slayer is vorpal immune - I don't think it is - so charname took a small chance of death in the fight but came out on top.
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I didn't bother mucking about with the coalition invaders. Everyone had necklaces of missiles which had only been used against 1 enemy previously - and wouldn't be any good to them in hell. A single round of blasts targeted on a fire elemental was enough to pretty much eliminate the first 3 groups, though the final one got a few extra fireballs to leave only Grimgor alive - and he only lasted a few seconds longer.
At Dragonspear, Allanon sought out Ashatiel for single combat, but the latter ran away almost immediately. That was the cue for a lot more fireballs - the opposition got the druids with one, but were hit themselves many times, culminating in the death of Ashatiel, which opened the way into the castle.
Following Caelar into hell, the druids cleared the opening area. That was complicated by Walker Boh getting charmed and having to initially keep the other druids away from him and latterly try and avoid a couple of remaining crusaders. That should have been possible using invisibility, but the crusaders kept popping in and out of reality (or possibly visibility) and in the end I just killed them instead (with no loss of reputation).
In the next area everyone used a potion of clarity and produced summons before engaging. Wholesale use of darts of stunning also helped ensure the devils didn't make much impact.
After putting on ironskins and resting, the druids buffed up prior to taking the Hellevator. They dealt with the enemies on that without difficulty and topped up their buffs just before reaching the top. Caelar was persuaded to fight for the druids before Walker Boh started off by casting magic resistance at Belhifet while the others dealt with some stray devils. Belhifet was then doomed before the insects started pouring in. Walker Boh tried a Dolorous Decay on him to try and make him easier to hit, but he was immune to the slow effect. Bremen attempted to Harm Belhifet, but missed. However, Walker Boh's attempt smacked home. The druids had stocked up with Wondrous Recall spells, so had far more insects than they needed anyway - but the successful Harm at least cut short Belhifet's agony.
They finished SoD with about 485k, still just below the XP cap. After cutting their way out of the final SoD dungeon, they've found themselves landing straight in another one. For many parties the loss of equipment means a big power reduction. However, as the druids' strength is primarily in their spells the early stages of BG2 should still be pretty easy for this lot.
Walker Boh - L12, 80 HPs, 0 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bremen - L12, 80 HPs, 0 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L12, 79 HPs, 0 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Allanon - L12, 80 HPs, 0 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L12, 76 HPs, 0 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Cogline - L12, 76 HPs, 0 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Not every enemy in SoD has had their HP tripled by the Level Adder mod, so I turned off double XP. We start the expansion with nearly 400k XP so we're still in level range - we'll probably only get a couple of levels from SoD.
Not much else to say about it. Many enemies flee from morale failure from Blaggy's improved aura of despair combined with Debuff's improved nightsinger song. We at least got to insta-kill Morentherene this time because it seems that the spells that the Nightsinger and Shadow Disciple use to update the bonuses from their mental stats don't wake the dragon up.
The Bridgefort crusaders hardly stand a chance with a massive saving throw penalty from Blaggy (-2), Cactank (-2), Debuff (-2), and Yin (-4). Spaz's revenant panics most of them with a casting of Horror.
We manage to destroy the Dragonspear basement although Cactank is killed in the process from being confused. Blaggy brings him back into the fight using a scroll of Raise Dead, having Cactank equip Kiel's Helm, and then have him drink from Durlag's Goblet. Blaggy has a drink from it as soon as he can after doing this. The crusaders were scattered and disabled from castings of Inertia, Horror/Night Terrors, and Deep Slumber.
At Dragonspear, Yin softens up the crusaders with Sigil of Misfortune and then Stabby fires a poisoned Arrow of Detonation. Spaz recently learned Electrifying Blast, which allows him to paralyze enemies for 1 round/10 levels if they fail a save vs. breath at -2 (-1 more for every two points of CHA above 17, so -4 total for Spazs 21 CHA). With the Chain blast shape, it can hit up to 5 enemies at his current level, 13.
Ashatiel eventually challenges Blaggy but withdraws it sometime during the fight. I think a debuff spell we put on an enemy wore off and it triggered the "in combat" state where everyone's health bars appear so Ashatiel took that to mean we weren't fighting fair. However, she does not teleport away, so we gang up on her and kill her, ending the crusade.
Hell isn't too difficult thanks to Inertia. Time for Belhifet. Yin tricks Belhifet into wasting his opening Dispel Magic on him. Thanks to Shadow Screen, it does nothing.
But Stabby manages to backstab him again and paralyze him, which finally spells his doom. However, I'm made quite aware that we have trouble against Improved Invisibility, as only Cactank knows True Sight (which I dumbly forgot I even had). We could've killed Belhifet earlier if I did use it and then follow up with Sigil of Mortality to reduce Belhifet's physical DR to -20%.
Blaggy - Blackguard 10
Cactank - Dwarven Defender 9/Cleric 9
Stabby - Fighter 9/Assassin 11
Spaz V - Warlock 13
Debuff - Nightsinger 13
Yin II - Shadow Disciple 12
Coreheal - halfing, priest of Lathander (protagonist)
April - dwarven fighter/cleric
Sarah - gnomish fighter/cleric
Paja - half-orc cleric/thief
(Imoen) - human mage/thief
We made it past Sarevok into Irenicus' dungeon. I wasn't sure we could defeat Sarevok since we couldn't dispel his haste without a bow user, but we managed to just the same. We just cleared out level 1 of the dungeon, and are about to meet Yoshimo. We intend to recruit Aerie and Viconia to round out our cleric group once we escape the dungeon. Naturally, with skeleton escorts, the battles have been pretty smooth so far. Will keep at it!
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A power cut meant I lost my notes recording quite a bit of progress. Rather than try and reconstruct those, suffice it to say the druids cleared, without any real problems, the Promenade (including the Cowled Wizards), the Bridge District (except the Twisted Rune), the Docks and the Graveyard (except vampire HQ). They got to level 13 when reporting back to Bloodscalp.
With reputation up at 17 they left the City for the first time to go to Trademeet. After clearing the Grove, Allanon challenged Faldorn and gave her some insects to eat.
Items bought included some potions and I decided to go to Watcher's Keep to get something to store those in. Checking with farsight showed a pair of vampiric wraiths waiting to attack. Though they're very dangerous to soloers, I felt that this party should be able to take them easily enough. A couple of attempted Harms missed, but elementals and insects helped do the job anyway.
Back in Athkatla the Temple sewers were the next target - there was nothing there that could stand up to elementals and insects.
At the Planar Prison the druids all rested to get ironskins before entering invisibly. Trying to get a whole party out of sight of the mage before he casts true sight is fiddly, so they just attacked him. Bear form hasn't been used so much in BG2EE, but this was a good place to demonstrate its continued usefulness.
With work in the City becoming scarce, the druids took another side trip to the de'Arnise Hold. I gave TorGal a sliver of a chance there by attacking him and his bodyguards together, but they still just failed to deal with a handful of elementals.
They moved on to Umar Hills, where they acquired the Shield of the Lost - that's usable by druids as its made of hair rather than metal, so gives a nice AC bonus to Walker Boh. The greater mummies in the ruined temple didn't last long against elementals and the druids were soon facing a dragon. He survived 3 attempts to Harm him, but a magic resistance spell had left him vulnerable to insects and he was already at near death from multiple infestations when a critical bullet finished him off.
Valygar had been bagged on the way back from the temple so, after forging the Shadow Dragon Armor, the druids went to the Planar Sphere. There they finally got another level - though the 750k required for that one is dwarfed by the 1.5m before they will get the chance again
Walker Boh - L14, 84 HPs, 90 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bremen - L14, 84 HPs, 66 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L14, 83 HPs, 55 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Allanon - L14, 89 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 121 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L14, 80 HPs, 59 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Cogline - L14, 80 HPs, 52 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
After defeating Mulahey we freed a mage and were saddened when he wouldn't join us.
We then killed the Revenant, Narcillicus and some jellies.
I was then at this level.
We then travelled to the bandit camp where we were recruited by them.
We then rescued Branwen and with her killed Tranzig
We then wiped out the bandits at the camp.
Branwen was killed at that point so we returned to the temple to revive her after doing some minor chores.
We helped Aldeth in Cloakwood and killed Centeol and a number of wyvern
When we got to the Cloakwood Mine things were quite straightforward.
Coreheal - halfling, priest of Lathander (protagonist)
April - dwarven fighter/cleric
Sarah - gnomish fighter/cleric
Paja - half-orc cleric/thief
Viconia - drow cleric
Aerie - avariel mage/cleric
Party continues to make great progress. We decided to try something a little risky and battled Thaxxy pretty early. We had only weak summons. Surprisingly, the scorcher from a wand was highly effective. Our melee/range wasn't very effective, so in the end, people started using their magic missile wands too (we had 3). Victory! Shade Lord also defeated, quite quickly as well. Will keep at it.
Symon (male half-elf druid, Grond0); Noht (male half-elf blade, Gate70)
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Starting at Sorcerous Sundries we considered hunting the ogre mage in the sewers. However, with no memorized way to protect against hold or sneak down we decided to take the cautious approach - Gate70's comment was "it would be a shame to die within 2 minutes (again)".
That reprieve was to be short-lived though as we made our way through the City to find Degrodel. His guards were mostly pulled outside and blindness, nymphs and lightning dealt with them easily enough to provide Symon with a 9th level.
Inside the house there was a Helmed Horror left and, despite being at near death, that hit Symon at least 4 times before Noht eventually got a hit on it. Though it got a bit lucky there, that illustrated that Symon was much more vulnerable to crushing than slashing attacks, which was to be a problem shortly afterwards ...
After healing up, Symon went to talk to Degrodel, but unfortunately a fit of depression came over him and he told the mage he wanted to die.
Lowbar (male assassin, Gate70); Polgara (female druid, Grond0)
The randomator spreadsheet decided Grond0 should have another chance to mangle a druid, leaving me with an assassin. A quick check confirmed Grond0 was thinking about using a staff or failing that a dagger. Rather than get into a fight about things or more importantly compromise Polgara's melee, Lowbar opted to not use a staff and settle for a long sword instead.
This way we wouldn't bicker over items now or later. Mainly now.
After the Candlekeep chores we assassinated Shoal the nereid before heading into Beregost. Lowbar busied himself with finding a book for Firebead and a drink for Marl while Polgara arranged a sparsely-attended funeral for Neera and took her gembag to use for the collection.
Next we headed south towards Nashkel, stopping only to pick up a letter from ogrillions, some boots from hobgoblins and a necklace from a bit further on. Polgara equipped the ankheg plate once we'd wiped away much of the mud in which it was buried. Noober thought he'd got away with insulting us but just as he was about to leave one of our missiles hit him and he stopped to remonstrate with us. Wrong move Noober as we've got a couple more missiles and they are all we need to finish the job.
We've got lots to do so head south where we can return Rufie the 'dog' to his owner and kill off Zal plus Vax. From there we head west but Lowbar notices Polgara is looking a little piqued and has lost some XP - and after another minute or so Grond0 is dropped from the game.
Polgara's XP is consoled back but a couple of attempts to rejoin are unsuccessful and we decide not to push our (well, my) internet woes any further.
Current inventory.
Fini - female, human illusionist (Grond0)
Corepally - male, human undead hunter (Corey_Russell)
Plinker - male, human blackguard (Gate70)
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After travelling back from Candlekeep and resting for a final Bhaal power, we went to find Slythe. A pair of summoned monsters and a spot of haste saw him quickly cut down. The ogre perished while persuading Krystin to cloudkill Quenash (in order to get the Cloak of Balduran) and Krystin then failed to cast further spells thanks to Plinker's arrows. Her death also gave Fini her final level.
The same basic set-up was used at the palace, though the paladins used a couple of potions each as well. Their enhanced strength went through the dopplegangers pretty quickly. Fini used chaos to try and disrupt their attacks and Belt survived easily enough, even though Liia still snuffed it.
In the maze things looked under control went Corepally used a scroll of PfU and potions of absorption and fire resistance to tackle a pair of skeleton warriors. Regrettably though, Plinker had not spotted the small hole in the wall where he was leaning and died before he could blink - fortunately not chunked though.
One of the dopplegangers had dropped an arrow of detonation at the palace and Plinker swapped that with one of Rahvin's. The latter was then confused by another chaos spell and attacking his own side contributed to our victory. That left Plinker just short of his final level, so we hunted down a few ghasts to get that.
The fight at the temple didn't take long. Plinker used a dispelling arrow on Sarevok and retreated ahead of the big man as a web trap spawned. Plinker had already taken a potion of magic shielding, so was able to run Sarevok around in the web. He quickly got stuck, giving us the chance to finish Semaj off before turning back to Sarevok. Sarevok freed himself, but by this time he was malisoned and he got stuck again in the edge of the web while trying to confront a couple of summoned monsters. He did manage to break free again, but by this time he was nearly dead and a bit easier to hit than usual thanks to being affected by the Blackguard Aura of Despair - a couple of final arrows from Plinker saw him on his way.
Progress through the enemies in Jon's dungeon was generally fast, but things were slowed down by healing the large amount of damage taken. That was largely from traps, but Corepally did take significant damage in the portal room after being laid out by a Color Spray.
In Athkatla the Circus provided a nice easy start, but a harder than expected battle with Cohrvale and Bregg pointed up the need for some better armor.
Corepally took advantage of the expanded selection of items for sale at the Coronet by purchasing the Sleeper. The final action of the session saw that claim a first victim as a Mad Cleric briefly slumped to the floor.
Illusionist - L10, 62 HPs, 36 kills (+115 in BGEE)
Undead hunter - L9, 110 HPs, 30 kills (+174 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Blackguard - L8, 97 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 61 kills (+241 in BGEE), 3 deaths
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https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1136885/#Comment_1136885
The remainder of the Planar Sphere was no problem. With their new L7 spells, the druids used firestorm to make Lavok surrender, while Tolgerias failed to make an impression against the more standard insects.
Moving on to Windspear Hills, clearing the exterior area included an ankheg victim and that shell was put to good use to make a second suit of armor. In the dungeon I was conscious that Firkraag ended my last druids run (when chunking one of them who was slow to cast protection from fire). This time there were a couple of insect plagues going in, to potentially provide the finishing touch to a Harm after resist magic took effect, but the three druids attempting that missed their attacks. However, there was also a Nature's Beauty being cast and the blinding effect of that was successful to effectively end the contest early on.
Back in Athkatla the druids used Tazok's key to open up a new area in the sewers. Chaotic commands provided protection against the illithids' psionic attacks, while Fire Storm cleaned up the Ulitharids (the basic illithids are immune to fire).
I typically wait until all the vampire ambushes have triggered before paying Gaelan Bayle. I don't remember having seen the last one, but it's possible I missed that and I decided to pay up the 15k. Lassal and the Guild Contact were quickly done before I decided to have a whip round to buy up any last goodies on offer. An unexpected bonus doing that was found with the thief near the temple in the Slums. I don't normally patronize him, so was surprised to find he had the Buckler of the Fist - in vanilla BG2 magic bucklers are unreasonably short in supply, so it's good to see the EE has helped to address that. Then it was time to revisit the Graveyard. The pressure of attacks on Bodhi kept her from talking for a while once she reached near death, but eventually she choked out her speech and ran away.
The druids reported back to Gaelan Bayle, but they still had a bit more work to do before taking ship. First was the Guarded Compound. Typically there, I drag enemies downstairs into summons one or two at a time, but I thought the druids could be braver than that. Sion threw up a true sight as soon as they went upstairs, but their buffs protected them while they produced some insects followed by a pair of fire storms.
I would have done the Twisted Rune and Kangaxx, but Allanon could only reach strength 23 with DUHM and was unable to break down the relevant doors yet. However, he did still have an appointment at the Druid Grove where another arena fight saw him granted the title of Great Druid - gaining another +2 ring as a reward. Undertaking a bit of work for the Spirit of the Grove then saw Nilthiri's trolls burnt up before lightning restored the balance against Chaos.
The party still needs nearly another 6m XP to get to level 15. I didn't really fancy trying to get that in Watcher's Keep, so set off for Spellhold - even though that means losing DUHM to be able to bash more locks.
Walker Boh - L14, 84 HPs, 145 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bremen - L14, 84 HPs, 105 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L14, 83 HPs, 88 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Allanon - L14, 89 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 174 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L14, 80 HPs, 118 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Cogline - L14, 80 HPs, 99 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1135471/#Comment_1135471
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1135568/#Comment_1135568
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1136228/#Comment_1136228
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1136632/#Comment_1136632
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1136714/#Comment_1136714
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1136885/#Comment_1136885
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1137035/#Comment_1137035
At Brynnlaw, Perth died in Fire Storms cast out of his sight. His book produced farsight, wyvern call and true seeing as the first 3 options - all potentially useful to some parties, but not really this one. The 4th choice though was spell turning and I stuck with that, even though I'll probably never actually use it in practice.
In Spellhold I picked up a ring of regeneration. Walker Boh was soon making use of that after taking high damage from a Pit Fiend fireball.
In the battle with Irenicus, he was covered in insects and was soon at near death, but refused to give up (the rapidity of damage caused by insects being particularly bad at prevented scripts from firing). That lasted long enough for him to release a multiple lightning bolt. That not only hurt the druids, causing them to make a rare use of potions to protect against further bounces, but also turned the inmates hostile.
After stealing a worn-out ship the druids arrived in Fish City. They recovered a tooth and killed various groups of rebels before accepting the prince's offer to support him. Shortly afterwards the king was dead, though the prince didn't long survive him.
Summons did much of the work against a group of drow before the druids moved into the Western Tunnels. I had a potential problem there when all the elementals died or were charmed when fighting kuo-toa. The druids all had chaotic commands memorized, but hadn't bothered casting it and Cogline was stunned.
At the svirfneblin village all but one of the fire elementals succumbed to a symbol stun from the balor. Only Allanon had a missile weapon that could hurt the balor and the druids didn't fancy trying melee against it, so retreated. Coming back with new elementals, they protected those with chaotic commands. That didn't prevent 3 of them getting scared, but that attack did allow some decent damage to be done. Once fear wore off, a further attack did better than expected when Walker Boh nipped in and put the balor to sleep with the Pixie Prick. A first use of the Ring of the Ram helped finish it off before it could recover.
With the drow shops now open for business, the druids bought a few more goodies, including improving their ranged attacks with the purchase of Firetooth. I don't often do work inside the drow city, but everything went well this time. I did pick up the rope for Deirex's tower, but it's been years since I did that and I wasn't sure whether there was a timer on the temple ritual - so in the end left the lich alone and went to watch Matron Ardulace and Phaere get burned up before quickly leaving the city.
The drow quests give quite a bit of XP, but there was still a fair bit more needed to get to level 15, so the druids headed off to the illithid's lair. Chaotic commands for protection and invisibility for resting should have allowed them to clear that without trouble. However, I could only be bothered to protect Walker Boh with chaotic commands and got into trouble when one of the other druids got bumped while moving and became a target for umber hulk confusion before getting stunned. That problem rapidly escalated as I attempted to save him, with another pair of druids getting confused, while the one sent in to try and save the day with Pixie Dust was also stunned before they could complete that.
With only about 800k more XP required, the druids moved on to the beholder hive. They tried to Harm the Elder Orb at the entrance, but 2 hits bounced off its magic resistance. Running away immediately, I was surprised to see the beholder following - fortunately though, the Orb stayed put and the beholder was dealt with pretty quickly. Going back down again after resting, they intended to just run past the Orb out of sight range - but it insta-triggered a true sight and they had to hastily run again. The next time it started casting true sight normally, so the druids could have run past - but they were already committed to attacking this time. A charge from the Ring of the Ram pushed it away a bit, while several lots of insects scared it. Before it could recover wand blasts had finished it off.
After fighting through some drow to escape the Underdark, the druids convinced Elhan to let them go in search of Bodhi. On the way back to Athkatla they came across Drizzt and some friends. Drizzt's fire resistance and healing capability allowed him to survive several fire storms, but with his companions dead he could be easily shot down - though killing him in BGEE costs reputation, there's no such penalty in BG2EE.
Leaving the City for Umar Hills, I was ambushed by clones. Rather oddly, they were immune to insect plague and a clutch of acid arrow spells caused lots of damage before things could be tidied up.
Returning to Athkatla, the druids went to find some vampires in the Graveyard. There were plenty on offer there and the XP racked up sufficiently to finally hit level 15 without even going downstairs. In addition to a first HLA that gave everyone 5 additional level 7 spells to help make use of those. No new spells were used against Bodhi though and, despite Bremen being drained a couple of times, the druids had an easy victory.
Walker Boh - L15, 86 HPs, 237 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bremen - L15, 86 HPs, 152 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L15, 85 HPs, 137 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Allanon - L15, 91 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 259 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L15, 82 HPs, 173 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Cogline - L15, 82 HPs, 147 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
I've long since forgotten which BG runs I left uncompleted. I dimly remember a poverty run somewhere in ToB, there's a restless run in SoA, a solo Sword Dancer I don't remember ever dying, and I think a Fighter/Mage/Cleric is right before Melissan in an out-of-date SCS+Ascension install. There were several failed runs I haven't documented and might not have mentioned, including a solo Cleric of Talos who apparently died to a Slayer-related rage spiral at Sendai, a solo Illusionist/Thief that got stunned by a Neothelid, a solo Sky Dancer, a solo Sky Dancer that died to a swarm at the Coalition Camp (don't let the Coldhearth lich's skeleton mage blind any enemies; they might run south to the barrels), and a solo Psionicist Fighter who died by accidentally charming herself. I actually had to look up a screenshots folder to even remember most of them.
I've been trying increasingly easy runs as time has gone on, since topping a solo LoB run is barely possible and way too stressful (LoB mode really burned me out). Recently I started a new Shapeshifter with a full party, which is now in endgame SoA. I lost interest after gaining HLAs, though, and so I created a simple solo elven fighter/mage from Candlekeep, which has just taken down Belhifet. The deal was that it would be exploit-free, but I still stacked a few Webs and Skull Traps at the Coalition Camp for safety's sake, and I drank a whole bunch of Potions of Heroism at Belhifet, though I never ended up taking damage anyway.
The Shapeshifter run had party members because I was tired of agonizing over solo build bottlenecks (will this Flare Dancer struggle in ToB due to low damage resistances? will this Cleric of Lathander be too slow in BG1 unless I dual-class it to mage before the ideal level 11?). The fighter/mage is solo just because I wanted a basic, straightforward powergaming class that required minimal micromanagement and wouldn't require exploits to function well. I even specialized in longswords and longbows just because it's optimal for BG1 (normally I find both proficiencies boring).
I've found myself steadily drifting towards @Alesia_BH's more purist ethos, and I've even noticed myself getting less sloppy as I take fewer risks and conduct fewer experiments. Deaths barely faze me at this point, and sometimes I greet death as a relief because my runs tend to get a lot farther into the game, when I've lost interest in a character build or strategy.
Right now I kinda just want to get a trans female character into the Hall, just because I already crammed it with nonbinary critters named Frisky Bits and I haven't finished a run since I started my transition.
My fighter/mage is named Pearl after my new middle name. Her portrait is a self-portrait I drew in Photoshop when I was designing a custom T-shirt for my girlfriend. I'm kinda proud of it because it feels like me and it has my new hairstyle.
I've also started a new undocumented run a few months ago, but I'm playing only a couple of hours a week. It's an SCS party run with an Undead Hunter protagonist, and I've recently made it to the big city. I have made tons of screenshots, though I'll propably only start posting a few of them if I get at least close to the endgame or if I get more time and motivation to play.
While you were gone, there have been quite a few successful quadrilogy no-reload runs, and it would be great if they could be added into the Hall of Heroes at some point in the future:
We got @CharlestonianTemplar with Dispenser, a Holy Justice of Tyr - final post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1115491/#Comment_1115491
@Neverused with Jehu, the Shaman: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1114776/#Comment_1114776
@Gate70 with Blaggerd, the Blackguard: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1112293/#Comment_1112293
@Gate70 with Michio, the Illusionist: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1115359/#Comment_1115359
It's also quite possible that there's been another success that I'm forgetting about right now. Maybe someone else can recall if that's every run still missing?
This also means that the shaman and the illusionist can be removed from the list of classes/kits missing from the combined Hall of Heroes. I think it's also been discovered that, shockingly, there hasn't been an actual fighter/thief multiclass success, so that one could be added to the list (though I'm not 100% sure about that, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
1. A starting post link and the difficulty level for @CharlestonianTemplar's Holy Justice of Tyr
2. A mod list and the difficulty level for @Neverused's Shaman
3. A mod list and the difficulty level for @Gate70's Blackguard and Illusionist
I'll add them to the entries whenever; just tag me here. If there are any other missing entries, let me know.
I've removed the Shaman and Illusionist from the missing class list and added the Fighter/Thief. If anyone knows of a Fighter/Thief run, I'll remove it.
April - dwarven fighter/cleric
Sarah - gnomish fighter/cleric
Paja - half-orc thief/cleric
Aerie - avariel cleric/mage
Anomen - human fighter/cleric
(Viconia) - drow cleric (chunked against Nizi)
Guarded compound was difficult, the silences weren't as helpful as I hoped a lot of potion gulping and Aerie dead but we did win all the same.
We had hoped to kill Firkraag quickly, as we had harms ready to go but Firkraag was ready for that and did a dispel which basically meant we had to fight without buffs. Was dicey but we did eventually prevail.
Our initial battle with Bodhi went well, she gave up quickly.
The party makes good progress and after doing all chapter two quests they are intending, they go to Brynnlaw. They meet Sanik, who promptly is assassinated - however, we had laid traps for this assassin, and the assassin himself is also promptly assassinated by said traps. We helped Ginia and Ason, then go to deal with the guild mistress who is causing so much trouble for the courtesans. A single aerial servant was more than enough to claim the victory, partly because the mage foolishly fired off a lightning bolt which killed himself.
Spellhold itself was ALMOST by the numbers - except just before dealing with Dace the program crashed! I had to redo all of level 1 Spellhold - was very annoying. I started doing a lot more quick-saves after that.
As for Irenicus himself, he gave up quite fast, I hardly had to do anything as the AI script was more than enough to deal with him.
We eventually get to Suldensslar. We had cleared the entire city, was fighting Nizi and the game worked great CRASHED!
And then even though Nizi is a party required area, the only auto-save was before entering the City!!! Which meant had to do it all again, grrr... but I did. However, the battle with Nizi went very, very badly. Viconia got CHUNKED and EVERYONE dead but Coreheal!!!
What to do? Can't get equipment, dragons see through invis. But that means too can't get RoR to bring people to life. So Coreheal memorizes 4 raise deads, heals everyone best he can, and prepares to fight with 5 aerial servants and 4 NAKED adventurers!!! Keep in mind Nizi has healed to full in the mean-time.
This time around only Coreheal and his love Aerie survive - but thanks to Paja's traps (she was able to lay more traps after being brought back), Nizi dies and the run continues! I almost gave up there.
My battle with Irenicus at the Tree of Life was almost anti-climatic, as he couldn't kill anyone before succumbing himself. He also couldn't kill anyone before dying in Hell as well. On to ToB!
Anomen is replacing Viconia - she will be sorely missed, she had loads of spells.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1135471/#Comment_1135471
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1135568/#Comment_1135568
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1136228/#Comment_1136228
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1136632/#Comment_1136632
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1136714/#Comment_1136714
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1136885/#Comment_1136885
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1137035/#Comment_1137035
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1137177/#Comment_1137177
Rather than go straight to Suldanesselar, I decided to have a look at the additional map areas available that I don't bother with when solo. There was very little in Small Teeth Pass, but the druids did kill a few ankhegs and returned to the City to make up 3 more sets of armor, meaning only one of them is not now dressed in druidic green
They explored the Wild Forest, finding loads of traps, but nothing else of particular interest. One of those traps polymorphed Galaphile and the druids had to leave the area and try dispel magic multiple times before that eventually worked. They did discover the way to Neera's Hidden Refuge, where they rejected for the third time Neera's attempt to force herself into the party - which appeared to mean they had no way into the compound ...
There was more XP on offer at the North Forest and it wasn't long before the druids got to level 16 (after the long haul to level 15, the next 6 levels only require 150k each before progress starts slowing again). Immediately before that though I had an unexpected death when I was concentrating on the mage in a powerful party and not looking at the damage dealers - with the help of a backstab those quickly went through Walker Boh's HPs after chewing through ironskins.
At the Forest of Tethir it looked like it would be another easy area when the druids completed their searching activities at Coran's hut. However, on entry there everyone but Cogline was either confused or scared and the acid fog they were standing in did plenty of damage before they started to come to their senses - after that though they were able to scatter to the edge of the room and avoid further damage.
Thinking about it, I realized there was still a bit of work the druids could do in Athkatla. Although Gaxx himself was inaccessible, there were a couple of liches that could be got at. A first use of a deva destroyed them before the druids headed for the Underdark exit and on to Suldanesselar. There were plenty of golems and other high XP targets there and that soon provided another level.
On the Tree of Life they hacked down some parasites before insects thwarted Jon's attempted time stop and he was on his way to hell before he could complete a spell.
- let the dragon live to get 20% elemental resistances.
- used deva fear protection to get immunity to normal and +1 weapons.
- he intended to carry out a druid sacrificial ritual on Bremen to get -2 to AC. However, something went wrong and the sacrifice wasn't completed (I rarely get here with a party, so am not sure if this is a bug/exploit or intentional). Bremen was held and badly hurt, but not killed. Attempts by the druids to use spells to dispel the hold failed, but a first use of Vhailor's Helm to get a simulacrum and a consequent free use of a PfM scroll freed him.
A casting of energy blades saw off all the demons in a couple of rounds while they were attacking some pre-cast bears. True seeing to expose Irenicus and more energy blades to beat him down soon had him at near death. Stopping the attack for a couple of seconds then let him draw breath and transform to a man for his final farewell.
Walker Boh - L17, 90 HPs, 260 kills (636 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Bremen - L17, 90 HPs, 170 kills (424 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Galaphile - L17, 89 HPs, 170 kills (481 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Allanon - L17, 95 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 308 kills (669 in BGEE/SoD)
Brona - L17, 86 HPs, 188 kills (492 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Cogline - L17, 86 HPs, 172 kills (381 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
@semiticgod has anyone succeeded as an assassin or as a swashbuckler? I could not find them in the successful entries list. If no, the only successful single class thief seems a shadowdancer.