Other people have said that about the level 1 component, but it doesn't work like that for me. In my installation NPCs can't be killed from an initial attack, but doing that will turn them hostile and a script resets their HPs (and removes their immunity) - after that they can be killed.
No dangers at the High Hall. If you try and steal in the first hall while guards are present, then hostile reinforcements turn up - but you can just run away or use stealth / invisibility (or just avoid them by going in the late evening when the place is empty).
Journal of Bloodrager the Blackguard
After helping Khaled and Jaheira get to Nashkel, I picked up Xzar and Montaron.
We went to Beregost first and Montaron spent some time picking locks and acquiring treasure. He then found me a very fetching cloak before helping me in a battle with Silke and we also killed Karlat and gave Perdue his sword.
Montaron then relieved those we had saved of the jewels and potions that were weighing them down and they then voluntarily gave us an extra potion..
We sold the ankheg shells before going to Ulgoth's Beard to spend the gold on some useful items. Sadly our gold was insufficient to buy all the items that I coveted.
Whilst I was busy shopping Montaron honed his pickpocketting skills.
We then picked up Khaled and Jaheira and spoke to the mayor after which I left all four of them there.
At the carnival I bought a necklace of missiles and a scroll of protection from petrification.
These helped me a lot when I took on Mutamin and the basilisks.
In the forest I killed a couple of druids before heading south where I joined up with Dorn.
I was badly hurt by lightning, but survived to tell the tale.
In Beregost we were attacked by another assassin who quickly died and later on four more.
I picked up Xzar to take on Shoal and Droth, thinking that Xzar was disposable. As it happened he survived and so did Shoal as we didn't kill her soon enough.
Lowbar steps inside the house and realises four giant spiders are there. OK, maybe he should have entered from the shadows. He runs outside again and Polgara joins him. She duly gets poisoned twice but as we try to make our way to the edge of town the poison wears off, so we kill the spiders as quickly as our limited attacks allow.
Greywolf and his sword are looking for us. Lowbar uses his 10% set traps ability wisely (for the only time in the session) and we finish him off from range. Lowbar picks up the sword, a nice upgrade for him.
Next we improve our reputation by returning the drowned cat that has been drying in Polgara's backpack for a week. Then we venture inside an ankheg nest for Polgara to stand her ground as Lowbar tries his best to backstab. A hit for 86 is followed by 36, 34, 25, 16 - and then we stop paying attention to the steadily reducing backstabs.
Farmer Brun gives us another reputation boost (to 18 perhaps) and we stumble across what we hope is the final ankheg of our travels through the Sword Coast.
We purchase a couple of green scrolls (protection from petrification and stone to flesh) before dealing with Mutamin and his basilisks. All goes well there with Polgara being immune to basilisk gazes and Lowbar sneaking around for as many backstabs as he can manage.
Polgara charms a bowman called Baerin, so Lowbar can draw him away from his companions into a rather unsubtle arrangement.
With Baerin eliminated we fancy our chances against his companions. More so as Polgara uses a Call Lightning to badly wound Lindin. He chases us around the map and on his own is unable to prevent us from turning the tables, and missiles, on him.
Our return to deal with Kirian and Peter is complicated by Lowbar failing to spot them from the shadows and Polgara also failing to spot them from not-the-shadows. Our first realisation is when a lightning bolt zaps towards Polgara who in turn uses a wand of the heavens on Peter.
Polgara survives, Peter does not.
Lowbar gets Kirian with a couple of backstabs but she retaliates with two Melf's Acid Arrows. Lowbar fails to hide a third time while Polgara has tired of this game and killed Kirian with another blast from her heavenly wand.
So we move on and clear Nashkel Mine. Lowbar has upped his trap-setting-worthiness to 15% and duly fails to successfully set any several times. He gives up and goes in for a backstab on Mulahey, Polgara arriving to both finish off the half-orc and draw the attention of his minions.
We kill a jelly each on the way out of the mine and run into the Amazons. Lowbar tries to envenom his weapon for a poisoned backstab but the amount of time taken means Lamahla sees this happening and reacts as he drops from the shadows before his attack. Lowbar is duly incapacitated and staggers off as everybody else gets into a fight.
Polgara gets held, but so do the Amazons and our pair of summoned nymphs clear matters up without our assistance.
Our noses and a helpful letter lead us to Feldepost's Inn in Beregost where we charm Algernon only for Tranzig to slaughter him. Vengeance is ours... and a cloak too!
Another helpful letter points us in the direction of a bandit camp so we go there next. Polgara demonstrates how a couple of nymphs will greatly simplify matters for us here.
They're not done yet, oh no. One bandit is charmed and as he attacks another the nymphs cast more hold person spells.
Polgara wants to know how we'll deal with the bandits inside the largest tent. Lowbar's cunning plan is to fail to set a couple of snares before poisoning his weapon and hiding to deliver a backstab on Venkt the caster. It works nicely and he makes for the door as Polgara enters.
Britik the gnolly flind chases after Lowbar but loses track of him. Lowbar returns inside the tent to discover Polgara has killed Raemon and is attacking Hakt. Time for a backstab.
Then we go outside and deal with Britik.
Lowbar flexes his fingers, ready to deal with a trapped chest. Too late as Polgara decides she wants to spring the trap and see if she can frazzle Ender Sai - which she fails to do and glumly leaves.
With that done we have a bit of room left in our backpacks so decide not to visit a store but instead seek out Cloakwood. We outrun a pack of wolves in the first area before dealing with spiders and ettercaps in the second.
By this time Lowbar says his little legs are tired and we decide to stop. It's been a good session and our inventory is filling up nicely.
Since we brought in so many resources from BG1, the first dungeon is simple: use high CHA from Friends and high STR to intimidate Porios into surrendering, use a Protection from Undead scroll to hide from the undead and the Greenstone Amulet to block disablers, torch everything with a Wand of Fire, and then finish off Korlasz herself with an Arrow of Dispelling. We sell everything we don't need at Sorcerous Sundries and buy wands and arrows and stuff, since Sorcerous Sundries has better prices than anything in SoD until Nazramu at the Coalition Camp. We kill Teleria with an Arrow of Dispelling, making sure to protect ourselves from her Flesh to Stone and Slow spells.
Normally I'd side with the Coldhearth Lich to better help with the Coalition Camp invasion later in the game, but I've been skeptical about the lich's help in non-LoB mode runs ever since his skeleton mage's Glitterdust spell ended a run by making one of the orcs at the invasion wander randomly south to the barrels. So this time, we'll be taking down the lich. We have an extra Protection from Undead scroll, which means we can safely torch all of the undead with a Wand of Fire and still rest once before tackling the lich itself with another Protection from Undead scroll.
Unfortunately, Pearl has low Charisma, and apparently returning to Brother Deepvein to report on his buddy becoming a lich results in him turning hostile if you don't have the CHA to convince him you're telling the truth.
We slay the dwarves with a Wand of Fire and side with the lich since I've never fought the Coalition Camp invasion without either the dwarves or the skeletons on my side.
Mage buffs keep us safe from the trolls and other nasty critters in the Trollclaw Woods (don't underestimate their THAC0 and APR; they can get through Stoneskins and Mirror Images if they swarm you), while the Wand of Fire does most of the heavy lifting. We kill Morentherene with a throwing dagger, making sure not to cast any spells inside her cave until after she's dead, then use a Protection from Poison scroll to safely tackle Ziatar, whom we slay with more Wand of Fire charges (Arrows of Dispelling help us bring down her mage buddies quickly).
The Neothelid is really nasty, with plenty of stunning and charm attacks that don't all use saves vs. spell, so we buff with plenty of save-boosting options and go invisible when the Neothelid vanishes so we don't have to worry about its Magical Swords butchering us in the meantime.
This is a novel strategy for me, since I thought that the Neothelid would have just hid indefinitely if you remained invisible. Turns out you don't have to fight the Magical Swords or survive their attacks while the Neothelid is hidden; you can just use invisibility and wait for the Neothelid to come back. With STR buffs and two pips in dual-wielding, we take down the Neothelid after its second appearance.
For Darskhelin, we drink a few Potions of Genius in case we have to survive INT drain, but Arrows of Detonation wipe out most of the enemy and Darskhelin dies in one sword slash by the time he engages in melee.
Next is the Bridgefort fight. This one has multiple mages on hand and lasts a long time, so we use a Protection from Magic scroll and some potion buffs to run around wrecking stuff with Arrows of Detonation without worrying about being disabled or suffering too much damage. An Arrow of Dispelling renders the bridge mage vulnerable, though the Ring of Energy is a reliable alternative for disrupting her spells.
Mage buffs, kiting, and Wand of Fire charges get us through most of the next several fights, but we use Invisibility to avoid a confrontation with Hephernaan; I haven't fought him since I heard you could just run back down the elevator without killing him. Unfortunately, I arrive at the treasure chest without any Knock spells or scrolls on hand, and apparently 25 STR isn't enough to break open the chest with the Spell Immunity scroll on it (notably, one of the two chests has a Maze trap on it that would be fatal to any solo character).
One advantage to getting this scroll early is that it lets you block a Remove Magic spell by Rhayla, a high-level bard in the Coalition Camp invasion that has wrecked my buffs in the past. We'll have to accept that risk later on. We escape using invisibility and brace for the invasion.
But since we have 4 APR with Arrows of Detonation and the ability to stack Webs, Skull Traps, and Cloudkill spells via scrolls we bought over the course of the game, the first three waves of the Coalition Camp invasion are all very basic. No trolls or orcs wander towards the barrels, no mages dispel our buffs or throw disablers at us, and the clerics and paladins don't live long enough to swarm us, nor does Rhayla have the opportunity to get Remove Magic off the ground.
We slay Grimgor's buddies with a volley of Arrows of Detonation and kill him with Wand of Fire charges when he tries to hide behind Sanctuary.
For the siege at Dragonspear Castle itself, we use a Protection from Magic scroll, go invisible, and hurry northwest until Ashatiel demands a one-on-one challenge. We nail her with an Arrow of Dispelling and chop her up.
We then use a Knock scroll to finally get the Spell Immunity scroll from the locked chest in the castle basement and proceed to Avernus. Normal mage buffs and swordplay get us past the early devils, and we solve Thrix's riddle (3, "You speak of murder, devil.") to get a +3 longsword that does 1d4 nonmagical acid damage on hit, an ideal choice for Belhifet.
We buff with EVERYTHING, including multiple Potions of Heroism in case I ever have to tank with Durlag's Goblet. Pearl is in pretty good shape to solo Belhifet.
We make sure to cast SI: Abjuration before we tackle Belhifet, then use a couple Greater Restoration scrolls to keep Caelar alive. When she gets overwhelmed but a bug keeps her from dying, we remove her immortality with CTRL-R and kill her with CTRL-Y to simulate the bug being fixed.
Belhifet is no contest at all; we have deeply subzero saves, AC, and THAC0; sky-high damage with maxed-out STR and Emotion, Hope and Courage scrolls; an Enchanted Weapon scroll to let us hit him with both our main hand and off hand weapons; a Wand of Monster Summoning to distract the other devils; mage buffs to avoid taking damage; and plenty of Durlag's Goblet charges and Greater Restoration scrolls to heal any damage we take. Ultimately, we take zero; the only reason our HP isn't at max is because we equipped the Helm of Balduran.
SoD is done! SoD is very clean as long as you have money and buy and save the right supplies from BG1, but BG2 will take a bit more art, since the game-breaking items of BG2 require winning difficult fights (like the Twisted Rune for the Staff of the Magi) rather than buying from vendors using crap you found on the ground (like selling Ulcaster Ruins loot for Protection from Magic scrolls).
Due to disabling the XP cap, we start BG2 with 1.4 million XP, giving us a few extra spell slots and a huge stepping stone to epic levels. We are at level 10/11 instead of 6/6 (if you started in BG2 anew) or 7/7 (if you imported from a normal BG1 endgame save) or 8/9 (if you imported from a normal SoD endgame save).
At first, I try to conserve resources in Chateau Irenicus so I can tackle it with just one rest, but since I don't like the idea of skipping Ilyich for RP reasons, I decide to go ahead and rest multiple times. We have plenty of spell slots to deal with the two big threats of Chateau Irenicus, the Radiant Mephit with its -3 sleep effect from Color Spray and the Salt Mephit with its no-save stun spells.
In Athkatla, we foolishly tackle Kalah without SI: Abjuration active (in the past I've lost buffs to him; he's tougher in SCS v32), but win out by tanking him until his defenses run low. For Mencar Pennypincher et al, we use Cloudkill to disrupt Amon and Pooky, finish them off with Sunfire, and then use a double Web Minor Sequencer to hold down the survivors.
Being at level 9 and having access to Spell Immunity already makes a fighter/mage in basically peak condition, but the extra levels make things even faster since we can use Sunfire to expedite early battles like Suna Seni and the Druid Grove trolls.
I'll skip over much of the early game, because a fighter/mage at this stage is already operating at minimal risk even at lower levels than ours. Suffice to say that Mirror Image and Stoneskin kept us safe from weapons and Improved Invisibility helped get our saves low enough to deal with simple disablers. By choosing quests carefully, we avoided stretching ourselves thin.
By the time we were midway through the Umar Hills questline, we hit 3 million XP, using our first two HLAs to get an extra level 6 and 7 spell slot, mostly just because the extra casting of PFMW was the safest option. HLAs are actually not a very big step for fighter/mages; they don't radically alter gameplay. But then, fighter/mages are already solid characters across the board.
Protection from Undead and SI: Abjuration let us deal with the Temple Ruins lich surprisingly easily. It didn't summon any planetars; only a demon that ended up getting boxed in by the nearby mummies and skeletons. Waiting out PFMW and hitting the lich with the Flail of Ages was sufficient. The Shade Lord and Ruhk Transmuter over in Firkraag's lair received the same treatment.
Conventional mage fights aren't too crazy, either. With Spell Thrust, Secret Word, and Breach, we can take down the defenses of many mages in short order, and Detect Invisibility is a cheap way to reveal hidden spellcasters. Conster was an unusual case that I found fun: when he used PFMW, we managed to get through his Stoneskins by equipping Belm in the off hand and punching him unconscious.
We slay Firkraag without using HLAs or Feeblemind tricks. Mirror Image, Stoneskin, Protection from Fire, SI: Abjuration, and Improved Haste let us take him down using Peridan through brute force.
HLAs are useful in the Unseeing Eye quest, however. We buy the Shield of Balduran and Vhailor's Helm so we can summon a clone with immunity to beholder rays (beholders can't steal a clone's Shield of Balduran; only a player character's SOB), and Greater Whirlwind Attack lets us compensate for our clone's lack of Improved Haste. We still have to wait out the Unseeing Eye's Improved Mantle, though.
For some reason, our expended Rift Device is missing from our inventory after the fight, so we console it in to finish the quest.
Once we gain access to level 8 spells, we can cast Spell Trigger. That paves the way for three anti-magic attacks in one round: Spell Thrust, Pierce Magic, and another Pierce Magic or Breach can take down any standard mage setup short of Spell Trap. We debuff Aran Linvail with standard options (I always side with Bodhi when I don't have Mazzy in the party; I don't like fighting vampires), and Detect Invisibility->Spell Trigger renders his mage friend vulnerable.
Detect Invisibility is not appreciated enough. It bypasses any spell protections besides SI: Divination (it strikes as a level 0 spell), affects an unusually wide area, and only costs a level 2 spell slot, but can break through Improved Invisibility and Shadow Door.
After some straightforward chores and resource gathering, we proceed to Spellhold. Perth the Adept proves surprisingly easy to take down: our clone can cast Detect Invisibility to reveal him and has a casting of Breach since clone spellbooks are memorized alphabetically, which means we can keep Perth on the defensive just by having Pearl and our clone hammer him with Detect Invisibility and magic attacks, including our anti-magic Spell Trigger. By the time he restores his PFMW spell, he's already low on Stoneskins, and a lucky hit through Mirror Image disrupts his Time Stop.
PFMW is useless against normal arrows, and a prior Breach ensures he had no Protection from Normal Missiles by the time his Stoneskins ran out, either. If we had used True Seeing to remove his Mirror Images, we wouldn't have had to get good luck against his duplicates, either.
By the way: there's a slightly faster way to deal with the riddle faces in Spellhold. Activate all of them one by one, once, and then you can just access the next riddle by clicking on the nearest face, rather than walking to the next one.
The Spellhold lich summons a planetar on us, but PFMW and Improved Haste let us whomp it into submission (and Detect Invisibility even robs it of us +4 AC and ST bonus from Improved Invisibility). The lich can't remove our SI: Abjuration as long as we have Protection from Undead active, so all it can do is spam area-effect spells that we can either resist or dodge. All we have to do is fight its allies until its PFMW runs out.
We use a Pierce Magic+Spell Thrust+Breach Spell Trigger on Irenicus, but he holds onto his Improved Mantle. Fortunately, he has no Stoneskins active, so we can use the upgraded Mace of Disruption to get past his Improved Mantle, disrupting his spells immediately.
It's smooth sailing all the way to the Underdark, by which time we have 6 million XP and therefore access to Summon Planetar, whose Holy Word spell lets us screw with Alchra Diagott's spellcasting until we can nail him with an Arrow of Dispelling. Normally I wouldn't bother with the hostile imprisonment sphere critters since a couple of them are really dangerous, but with the Cloak of Mirroring on top of all of our other defenses, we're not really in trouble.
PFMW keeps us safe as we tackle the Balor, the Kuo-toan Prince, and the Demon Knights, as well as N'ashtar and the mind flayer ambush at the start of the Ust Natha questline. Since things are going so well, I decide to do the Aboleth's bidding and slay Qilue instead of using high WIS to dodge the quest. Turns out Qilue herself has few defenses.
I linger many rounds afterwards to finish off her mage guards because I'm not sure if it's safe to leave before they're down. For some reason I was worried that the drow city might turn hostile if mages with red circles followed me outside or something.
Anyway, the rest of the Ust Natha questline is straightforward, and Critical Strike ensures that we kill the Egg Guards with no chance of missing them. Back in Athkatla, I go hunting for Daystar to help against Bodhi, hiding under Protection from Undead and nailing the Crooked Crane lich, the Shade Lich, and the Elemental Lich with the Mace of Disruption.
Every single one of them fails their save vs. death on the second swing, averting all three fights. We get similar luck against the vampires. Notice that we've finally learned Time Stop and are now fighting on gray battlefields.
Bodhi takes no offensive action while we have Protection from Undead active, so we take the time to focus on Mannaseh and Hazzerbazzer, slaying one with Sunray spells from Pearl's Daystar and Helm of Brilliance and those of her clone, and finishing the other with anti-magic spells and melee. In my experience, liches pre-buff against Sunray using Protection from Magical Energy and have the saves to guarantee survival against the instant death effect, but these two vampires apparently have no resistance to magic damage.
With Bodhi alone, all we have to do is chop her up. We use Time Stop to avoid taking magical cold damage from her fire shield effect, but it's not really necessary.
At this point, all that's left is to go collecting unique items we might want for ToB. Next on the agenda: the Twisted Rune. We'll want the Staff of the Magi for the fight against Sendai.
The Twisted Rune was briefly scary due to Layenne not showing up on casting Detect Invisibility (Vaxall can quickly turn the tide with his Anti-Magic Ray), but a True Seeing spell from the Book of Daily spell succeeded, and good timing with Time Stop gave us three rounds of automatic hits on her. Her Improved Mantle was no defense against the upgraded Mace of Disruption, and Improved Haste and Belm let us chew right through her Stoneskins.
Another Time Stop took down Vaxall. Then we tanked Shangalar for a while, removing his defenses with the Staff of the Magi's on-hit dispel effect once PFMW wore off, then removing his defenses again with anti-magic spells when he re-cast PFMW via a Spell Trigger.
Then I realized that Sunray worked against him, and we finished him off with Sunrays from Daystar and some charges from the Ring of Energy, which strikes as a level 0 effect in EE (level 4 in vanilla).
Now we tackle Kangaxx. For some reason we fail to remove his defenses during Time Stop (maybe Breach hit him before the other anti-magic spells removed his spell protections), but we disrupt his spells using the Ring of Energy despite his immunity to magic damage.
Then we manage to Breach him, and a few strikes from Daystar brought him to Near Death. He lingered for several rounds, making me suspect we had yet again run into a bug that made him immortal (Protection from Undead on any party member seems to make him permanently immortal in my experience, even after the scroll wears off), but finally he transformed.
We use a Protection from Undead scroll after he transforms, causing Kangaxx to waste his opening Time Stop on trying to kill our clone, who survived long enough to take down Kangaxx's invisibility with another simple level Detect Invisibility spell. We use PFMW to guard against his planetar's dispelling vorpal sword and stomp it while Kangaxx watches his celestial die to a foe he cannot see.
Kangaxx dies to Daystar during Time Stop, and the ring is ours.
With the Staff of the Magi and multiple Time Stop spells (Pearl is level 24/20 at this point), the remaining quests in SoA are non-issues. In the Planar Prison, the Warden loses his buffs to the Staff of the Magi's on-hit dispel effect and gets chewed up during Time Stop. In the Underdark, the Elder Orb and Hive Mother suffer the same fate. The mind flayer city falls to the Flail of Ages and Belm while Pearl is buffed with Improved Haste, save-boosting spells, the Cloak of Mirroring (which blocks Detonate, a psionic magic damage spell), and PFMW and Mantle to avoid INT drain, with a Time Stop to slay the Master Brain itself. Thaxll'ssilliyia dies to Peridan under Time Stop, Lavok loses his defenses to a Spell Trigger, and both the Guarded Compound and the Alhoon fall to a single Time Stop each. Seven major fights solved through sheer force of high levels.
We finally have all the little bits of gear we could need for ToB. We head to Suldannessellar, kill various critters with Black Blade of Disaster under Time Stop, shatter Nizidramanii'yt via BBoD's level drain effect, and take down Irenicus' pathetic Improved Mantle with a single bonk from the Staff of the Magi, paving the way to the Nine Hells.
I originally planned on breaking the RP rules to try to kill the djinni in Hell after giving him Blackrazor so I could steal back the sword, but unfortunately I rolled a critical miss, and the djinn made it out alive.
For the final fight with the Slayer, I immediately cast PFMW in case the Slayer opened with Time Stop (he can see through invisibility in SCS v32, so the Staff of the Magi no longer means safety) and ran away so my clone could fuss with the demons. The clone managed to bring down a Balor, but the rest of the demons put her down before she could do much more.
Still out of visual range of the demons, we then cast Time Stop, and while a PFMW Contingency kept the Slayer safe from our attacks, we could still put down the other Balor and the twin Glabrezus while time was stopped.
Another Time Stop let us nail the Slayer with the Staff of the Magi and then crush it with melee attacks. Unfortunately, a bug stalled the game, presumably because the transformation happened while time was stopped.
I started the fight over, and this time the Slayer opened with Time Stop and added a Fallen Planetar to the map. Pearl responded with a Time Stop of her own, killing both Balors and a Glabrezu, and the blast from a Balor's death disrupted the Slayer's spell when time returned to normal.
After another Time Stop, the Fallen Planetar and Glabrezu were also gone, and the Slayer's PFMW had worn off. We hurried away to summon a new clone in safety, then pelted the Slayer with anti-magic attacks to repeatedly lower its defenses, landing more hits every moment the Slayer remained vulnerable.
Finally, the Slayer croaked. Pearl moves on to ToB, though only the fight with Melissan is truly a threat.
We get a brief scare at the start of ToB when Illasera lands a dispelling arrow on us and removes our defenses while we were casting a Time Stop spell. Fortunately, I spotted the change in time and switched to the Shield of Reflection, bouncing her next arrow and letting Pearl finish casting Time Stop. Then we could take down Illasera with GWW and Crom Faeyr.
In the Pocket Plane, we use some Wand of Cloudkill charges to clear the herd (we're immune thanks to the Ring of Gaxx) and while Irenicus makes little use of his opening Time Stop, we use ours to slay Bodhi and bring Sarevok to Badly Injured. Our True Seeing spell from the Book of Daily Spell reveals him, allowing us to stop time once again and chop him up using nonmagical longswords to get past his PFMW.
After a few uneventful skirmishes, we arrive at Gromnir. This is normally a respectable fight, but we can easily kill Gromnir during Time Stop.
We also take down his allies, though I don't think it's really required.
I don't want to spend time messing with fire giants or the Fire Lich in the fiery fire giant fire temple, so I just steal all the relevant wardstones under the Staff of the Magi, and snatch two of them under Time Stop so the Fire Lich and the Burning Men don't run after me.
We only stop to kill Brimstone, and even then, we do the whole thing during two Time Stop spells. Once we get the hearts in the temple, we're out; we don't need any more XP from fighting monsters. In the swamp, we butcher the undead with Daystar and a Protection from Undead scroll and smash Nyalee under Time Stop.
Yaga-Shura himself is a bit time-consuming. It takes a while for him to show up after being injured, but we can pass the time hidden with the Staff of the Magi. After Yaga-Shura returns, I wait a moment for his resistances to decrease (I think they start out at 99% and then gradually go down in Ascension) before casting Time Stop and getting to work.
Jamis Tombelthen and the fighters at the Oasis fall to Time Stop, and we use the proceeds to buy more scrolls.
Draconis summons a planetar, but we don't need to fight it because it vanishes as soon as Draconis transforms into a dragon; all summoned critters die during the transition. Instead, we just whomp Draconis with the Staff of the Magi. Since it dispels at level 30, it doesn't reliably take down his defenses, but it does go right through Mantle and Improved Mantle, and Greater Whirlwind Attack brings his human form down quickly.
We wait for him to use his acid breath weapon and then cast Time Stop, slaying him with Peridan.
Inside Abazigal's lair, the lizard men and Anadramatis also fall to Time Stop. The only time we take damage is when we fight Olhydra without casting Protection from Cold to block its cold damage backlash.
We grab rope from Amkethran and return to face the quadruple dragon ambush. We have lots of Mirror Image and Stoneskin spells prepared, so we can tank the first two dragons without much trouble. We save our Time Stop spells for later.
Ithynassendra, the green dragon, has multiple Heal spells and takes more work to bring down, but otherwise she's just a melee bruiser; the Ring of Gaxx makes us immune to her breath weapon just like Protection from Acid blocked the black dragons'. We chop her up with a Simulacrum clone until she runs out of Heal spells, then finally bust out the Time Stop spells for Carnifex, the fourth and final dragon.
One more fight and we can grab the Bronze Pantalettes and therefore the Scorcher Ammunition. Since fighting the Tyrant Golems is a nightmare, I just stop time and slay them one by one across multiple rest periods using the Black Blade of Disaster. The level drain from BBoD helps (when it actually triggers).
We forge the Big Metal Unit, buy the Firetooth crossbow, and prepare for Abazigal. I use my standard strategy, which is just to kite the enemies with the Scorcher Ammunition and make sure we have spell protections to block any Maze spells from Abazigal. Abazigal's PFMW is meaningless since we spend the first however many rounds attacking Tamah and the drakes instead, catching him within the stream. The fact that he summons a Magical Sword makes it even easier, because the Magical Sword can't be killed using the Scorcher Ammunition; it's a perfect target.
The Scorcher Ammunition obviates the need for Time Stop since it kills stuff even faster, dealing more damage and striking multiple targets at once. A lot of enemies in Sendai's lair die just by having the stream dragged over them (we use a Protection from Undead scroll for Odamaron just in case). When I combine both Time Stop and the Scorcher Ammunition against Diaytha, the sheer number of scorcher projectiles actually lags the game for a moment.
The Scorcher Ammunition also makes Sendai a non-issue, when the Staff of the Magi already gave us every advantage against her. The drow can't actually run towards us fast enough to make attack rolls before the stream kills them; they die just by walking into the projectile.
We only really need to cast PFMW when the final Sendai summons a Fallen Planetar. But it only takes another Time Stop to end the fight; Sendai is not very tough without PFMW to protect her.
We cast Friends and drink a Potion of Insight to make sure we can convince Balthazar to side with us against Melissan, then buy more scrolls and finish the Pocket Plane challenges with Time Stop and PFMW. The Ravager doesn't last longer than a single PFMW spell; we deal too much damage fully-buffed for even it to survive any longer than that.
The 12 magic damage with each hit comes from Hand of Murder, an Ascension ability. The best rewards from the Ascension Pocket Plane challenge come from giving the "evil" responses to the Solar during cutscenes, but a lot of those responses can be interpreted as grumpy or sarcastic (I don't like picking the actually evil dialog options).
Now we have to tackle Melissan. This is the only fight I was ever really worried about after we survived the Coalition Camp invasion way back in late SoD.
We reorganize our spellbook, filling all four level 9 spell slots with Wish and stocking up on Project Image spells as well. We're playing on Insane, and in the most recent version of Ascension, that means we won't be getting free rests from the energy pools at the Throne (though the in-game text suggests that you do). Since having access to lots of PFMW and Spell Immunity spells will be super important for the final battle, we'll want to be able to refresh our spells after the first fight, with Irenicus, Bodhi, and two Fallen Solars, is over.
The first fight proves surprisingly simple; the Fallen Solars don't spam Heal spells on themselves or nail us with Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells. We kill the nearest one before it tries healing itself, and since the other one wanders off somewhere along the way, we just hit Bodhi with the Pulse Ammunition while we're safe in the meantime.
Somehow the Fallen Solar teleports all the way to the north end of the map, prompting a PFMW spell from Pearl, but it, too, falls before casting Heal on itself. To the southwest, Irenicus is waiting around not seeing any enemies in range, as usual.
We bonk Irenicus with the Staff of the Magi, use a PFMW spell or two to deal with the first batch of demons at the energy pools, and then start casting Wish via Project Image (Pearl's WIS is 17, so we need to equip the Axe of Hrothgar before casting Project Image). After burning about half of our spells, we finally get a rest option, and use the fresh spell slots to take down the rest of the demons at the energy pools.
All that's left is to prepare for Melissan and the Five. I buff both Pearl and Balthazar with everything I possibly can think of, then get to work on landing a Wish-rest. We end up with the perfect result: an Improved Haste wish followed immediately by a rest, ensuring we enter fully buffed with the absolute maximum number of free spell slots.
We open with my standard option: a Protection from Magic scroll on Abazigal to shut down his spellcasting. But I hit him before his Chain Contingency triggers, which means he still gets his PFMW pre-buff. Worse yet, I see him attempting to cast an alteration spell, and I rush to fire a nonmagical arrow at him in the hopes of disrupting a fatal Time Stop spell while my aura is fogged. Fortunately, the spell was Improved Haste.
Still, it's an indication that Abazigal ignores spell failure, which he did not in early versions of Ascension.
We engage the enemy with PFMW active and start attacking with no particular target; I'm not in a rush to kill one of them and therefore summon Melissan and the extra two Fallen Solars that join her on Insane difficulty. Balthazar takes heavy damage, so I pull him aside to cast Flip Resistance, granting him 90% physical damage resistance at the cost of reducing his magic resistance to just 10%.
Balthazar has an extremely high HP pool, so we get a very powerful tank as long as we keep him healthy with Rod of Resurrection charges.
Sendai still isn't visible and I don't want to waste precious aura casting True Seeing, so we keep focusing on dealing damage. Since I want to save our PFMW spell slots for faster casting, I run away to switch to scrolls, but get spooked when I realize that using an Absolute Immunity scroll is useless if PFMW is still active.
We lost a valuable scroll and clouded our aura for nothing. In order for our remaining two Absolute Immunity scrolls to be useful, we'd have to let PFMW drop, and there aren't many safe times to do that in this fight.
We use a PFMW scroll instead, and when Sendai finally makes herself visible and we have a clear aura to do so, we hit her with our second and last Protection from Magic scroll. But to my dismay, I find that I haven't exercised close enough control over the damage we've been dealing: Illasera has died earlier than expected, and that means Melissan will show up in seconds.
Melissan immediately casts Time Stop, and while Pearl is covered by PFMW, our clone is not. Melissan starts breaking down our Simulacrum clone while Balthazar finds himself helpless against Melissan's Divine Mantle spell.
Then I realize I can still hassle Melissan during Time Stop by killing Gromnir, who is at Near Death. Unfortunately, I don't do it in time to keep Melissan from killing our clone (who was pretty much doomed anyway), but it does demonstrate that the Feedback knockdown can briefly disable Melissan even during Time Stop.
One of Pearl's PFMW spells is still intact (though the dialog box makes me think she's vulnerable, since a previous one has worn off), so Melissan waits around for the remaining few seconds of Time Stop while Balthazar punches Abazigal.
Abazigal is at Near Death, but he casts Absolute Immunity, preventing us from polishing him off. Meanwhile, Balthazar has to run away due to being badly wounded until we can heal him with the Rod of Resurrection (not yet; we had to re-cast PFMW first), and Melissan casts Spellstrike on Sendai.
For a moment, I thought that Spellstrike was bad AI, and that Melissan was supposed to hit me with Spellstrike. But looking back, I realize that this was Melissan's way of thwarting the Protection from Magic scroll that otherwise would have kept Sendai from casting spells: Spellstrike can take down a Protection from Magic scroll in SCS, and this is the one time I've seen the spell used defensively, on an ally.
Balthazar gets targeted by both Fallen Solars and their vorpal dispelling arrows, but we manage to heal him with the Rod of Resurrection at Near Death. At 320 HP, he's an important tank to keep around.
I run over to chip away at Yaga-Shura with the Scorcher Ammunition, only for Melissan to teleport on top of me, pinning me in place.
I decide to recast PFMW via scroll, knowing that Melissan will be on top of me until I can teleport one of us away, then spot Sendai casting a triple Remove Magic Spell Sequencer that could have easily taken away all of our defenses. On checking the Record screen, I realize that our SI: Abjuration is indeed down, and thanks to the Robe of Vecna and Amulet of Power, and the fact that Spell Immunity, like Nahal's Reckless Dweomer, ignores aura, means that we can get SI: Abjuration back on Pearl in the fraction of a second before the Remove Magic spells hit.
Finally, we make a breakthrough: Balthazar takes down the first Fallen Solar, who otherwise is out of reach due to its immunity to +3 weapons and below (otherwise the Scorcher Ammunition would be great for it). Unfortunately, we have a problem: Pearl is taking heavy damage from Melissan despite having PFMW active.
I realize that, whether it's because of stray hits when PFMW was down or because of Melissan's no-save Globe of Blades effect, Pearl is out of Stoneskins, and she can't run away from that Globe of Blades spell without using Teleport.
But if we teleport away and Melissan teleports after us anyway, we've lost a round of PFMW, taken even more damage, and still gotten no closer to safety.
The wiser choice would be to re-cast Stoneskin, but for some reason I didn't trust it to stick--maybe the triple Remove Magic sequencer from Sendai made me think "our buffs are in trouble; we can't rely on dispellable stuff right now."
Instead, I teleport away and pray that Melissan doesn't follow. As it happens, this was the ideal call: while I thought that a bug had dispelled our contingencies, since none of them showed up in the spellbook when I last checked it, the contingencies were all still active, and they kick in while we're running away to the west. The net result?
We get our best defenses back.
We heal ourselves with a Rod of Resurrection charge, destroying our first of three copies of the rod, and get back to work with the Scorcher Ammunition. Our target is Sendai since she's the furthest away, but Yaga-Shura has been under greater pressure over the past rounds, and he falls first. Illasera, Gromnir, and Yaga-shura have fallen; only Sendai, Abazigal, and Sarevok remain.
We heal up Balthazar with another Rod of Resurrection charge and are about to kill Sarevok, but Melissan teleports on top of us and prevents us from dragging the stream across Sarevok to finish him off. We're trapped again.
Balthazar finishes off Sarevok for us, and Melissan takes another 100 damage. Sendai has wandered off and Melissan is immortal until Sendai falls, so I have to teleport away and re-cast PFMW so Pearl can shoot down Sendai.
We lose a Spell Immunity spell to spell failure from deafness, a factor of a Holy Word spell Melissan cast much earlier, but a second attempt at casting Spell Immunity succeeded.
Finally we kill Sendai, and Melissan is vulnerable. We have no Improved Haste left, so I restore it via scroll while Balthazar keeps Melissan occupied. Melissan summons new critters, whose importance I fail to appreciate at first.
I find myself without SI: Abjuration active. Thanks to that deafness-induced spell failure, I'm out of SI spells; I only have scrolls. I have to stop for a moment to use a scroll instead. When Melissan hits me with Spellstrike immediately after, I begin to worry that I'm going to be spending all my time trying to keep my buffs from being dispelled... until my buffs simply wear off instead.
Another Secret Word hits, and I panic. If multiple critters can nail me with anti-magic spells at once, there's nothing stopping the enemy from just dispelling my buffs with Remove Magic or Breach, the latter of which would also take down Hardiness--not that I had had time to cast that, anyway.
I teleport away. Melissan follows and begins casting an alteration spell. I hit her once or twice with the Flail of Ages, but I fail to disrupt her, and she gets Time Stop off the ground. It's the classic death scenario for a solo Ascension run.
But Melissan is still slowed by the Flail of Ages, which decreases her APR and also doubles the casting time of her spells. Normally Melissan's +6 bonus to casting time makes her spellcasting incredibly fast, but since Divine Cleansing has a base casting time of 6, its slowed casting time is 12, for a total casting time of 6. Melissan misses several opportunities to attack Pearl by casting this during Time Stop.
Balthazar can't knock her down, knock her back, or stun her even with his unique innate abilities. All he can do is tack on little bits of extra damage while Melissan strikes us in slow motion.
Pearl runs out of Stoneskins and Melissan lands a hit, dropping us below full HP again. We burn our very last PFMW scroll, and have 4 rounds to win the fight before we have to let PFMW drop and rely on Hardiness or an Absolute Immunity scroll instead.
But between all the damage Balthazar and Pearl had been doing with the Flail of Ages, Melissan is at Near Death. It only takes a few seconds before we bring her down low enough for the Solar to finally intervene. We give up godhood and power for mortality and freedom.
One solo tetralogy run with a fighter/mage, complete.
Journal of Bloodrager the Blackguard
Upon going to the lighthouse area we attacked some sirine. Baoloth cast web and fireballs. This killed two but one retreated out of danger.
Impatience was the cause of some trouble. Dorn wearing the ring to protect from hold went through the web to fight melee. The last sirine was almost dead when Dorn was charmed. Baoloth skirted round to attack from the other side and used fireball to wipe out some tasloi.
He then killed the remaining sirine, but not before being poisoned. He used a slow poison potion but was immediately poisoned again and didn't have another. Dorn was still charmed so couldn't pass him another potion and I was too far away. As a result Baoloth was killed and we had to return to a temple to get him raised.
I had to land the final blow to kill the sirine.
We returned and sent in Dorn alone to attack the next group of sirine.
Again he was charmed and feebleminded despite some protection from magic. We moved away to avoid conflict with him. We awaited his return to our party and attacked again, this time with fireballs. This time, they were routed.
Upon entering the cave baoloth was held by a trap and was badly hurt before we killed the flesh golem. We went outside to sleep before returning.
The next trap charmed Dorn. Having learned our lesson, we just moved out of sight until the charm wore off.
We then plundered the cave aand a tome boosted my constitution.
We picked up Xan and swapped him for Edwin. Everything quite easy.
I have realised why katranas are poor. Because they aren't magical they don't work against some enemies.
Chapter 4 before you get a magical one!
I have not really enjoyed playing with an evil party, so despite being exceedingly powerful. Dorn + Baoloth make a powerful duo I am bringing this run to an end. I have learned a lot from it, but the game is primarily for fun and it wasn't.
@WarChiefZeke commented recently that the wizard slayer run seemed hard. It certainly needs some luck to get through both BGEE and SoD, but not an unreasonable amount I think - most of my 34 failures to date have involved mistakes or sub-optimal play and, as it's 6 months since I attempted this class, I felt it was about time to have another go and see if I can do better.
I decided at the start of the run (as I quite often do) not to take any risks. That sort of resolution is typically about as well kept as the average New Year's resolution, but I'll see if I maintain resolve this time. At least for the first session there was no hint of trouble .
Shoal provided a couple of levels and a pretty good addition of 25 HPs before I moved to Beregost to do a bit of looting. That provided plenty of money to upgrade to a +1 shortbow before heading to the basilisk area. Following Korax around there is usually an easy way to get lots of extra XP (so long as you know where the basilisks are of course ) and I picked up 14 HPs for level 4 and 12 each for levels 5 and 6 there. Korax lasted long enough to paralyze Baerin, allowing me to finish him off and grab his magic arrows before running (to avoid the casters latching on to me).
Lindin did follow on his own though, so he got shot down as well.
The +1 arrows were put to use at High Hedge to shoot the golems before I talked to Thalantyr. Then it was on down to Nashkel to learn CLW. The ankheg armor found there was traded in to buy full plate in Beregost. I didn't have enough money for a magical shield there as well immediately, but a couple of rings found on the way to the FAI brought a good price after I shot Tarnesh (having the temple available for retreat just in case that proved necessary).
The FAI provided Buckley's Buckler to allow regeneration, while the Thunderhammer Smithy sold me a +1 large shield.
I'd seriously considered switching the starting proficiencies to use long sword as a melee weapon. That's because the +4 to spell saves from using the Spellbreaker long sword in SoD is so important to get through some of the fights there. However, the AC bonus from Twinkle does make it easier to get there in the first place and in the end I kept the melee proficiency as scimitars. Hence, the next port of call was the Lake area. A single gnoll was activated to attack Drizzt there and I ate my lunch while it hacked away 73 HPs - at which point I retreated to another map to reset the combat. The second attempt was a similar story and the third time proved not to be the charm. The fourth was a further waste of time and when the fifth went by as well I considered just letting the gnolls kill Drizzt. However, even though the EE has substantially reduced the chance of the halberds of these particular gnolls breaking, this was an unusually long time to wait for that to happen and I perservered. The sixth attack also came to nothing, but finally on the seventh the over-stressed halberd gave way - and some time later I was able to pick up 12k for finishing off the unconscious drow.
A series of more minor tasks included picking up the pantaloons and reducing reputation further by shooting down Bentan.
For most characters there are vast numbers of potions available to defend against magic, but the wizard slayer is limited to green scrolls, so the PfM ones become much more important.
A few tasks in the Cloud Peaks, on the way to get the charisma tome, included a first use of melee to chop down Zal. Immediately after that a common wolf was enough for level 7 and another lot of 12 HPs.
The kobolds in the Nashkel Mine managed to muster only a single hit to add to the trap damage - but both were quickly healed in Mulahey's cave. As this is supposed to be a minimal-risk run, I didn't give Mulahey a chance to talk, but ran him round the little pond while shooting arrows.
Outside the mine, the amazon archers were drawn away and destroyed in melee. For the clerics I could ignore the potential danger of rigid thinking, so long as I retreated out of sight before that cast (and there was nothing else around to trigger movement while confused). I could have used a similar tactic with hold person, but decided just to shoot instead (with the option of running off the map if a spell completed). Lamalha's first attempt at that spell was disrupted and she died before finishing the second. Zeela made 2 attempts, but failed both times and was also shot down.
Back at Nashkel I rested to get LMD before confronting Nimbul. It's pretty safe to dodge in and out of the shop against him, as a decent level fighter has enough HPs to tank a number of magic missiles - so only the slower casting horror really needs to be dodged. However, in this case I just let the guards and Rasaad kill him instead.
Tranzig was then shot from the stairs (though he never finished a spell in any case), to open up the Bandit Camp.
At the Camp, Nimbul's boots meant the bandit archers needed criticals and they only got a couple of those. Taurgosz had no distance attacks at all - and thus no chance of doing any damage. For Tazok's tent, the only likely problem was Venkt's horror. He didn't follow me back outside though and the others would have needed to be pretty lucky to have a chance - once the archers were dead, Britik could just be run round.
Back inside, I dodged Venkt's horror, but didn't bother avoiding the acid arrow he managed before his casting was shut down.
As usual I approached the trapped chest from the right of Ender Sai - both pushing him into the bolt of lightning and getting close enough to it for it to pass over me without hitting. On this occasion though he survived, so I didn't get the possible small gold bonus from his body.
I'd kept my reputation down to 9, so resting got me Bhaal horror - that's pretty crucial for a wizard slayer to shift the odds in your favor at the coronation.
Before going to the Cloakwood, I bought 10 arrows of piercing at the Carnival for use against Davaeorn. The only bit in the Cloakwood I didn't run straight through was the second area. The first web trap there could be tripped after checking to see if there were any spiders close by - the one there was duly killed.
The second web trap is more difficult because of the 5 ettercaps nearby. The first 4 of those could be pulled back and shot, but the last one can't be seen without going onto or past the trap. It is just possible though to sneak past the trap on the left hand side - I don't display the traps on my game, but have done so (using ctrl+4) for this screenshot to illustrate the point.
With those traps out of the way, the spiders in the nest were drawn out one or two at a time and killed without me taking any damage (the fast sword spiders in melee and everything else using arrows). That allowed me to take Spider's Bane from Centeol.
At the mine, Drasus is fast on his feet, but slow with his morningstar - and only managed a single hit on me while being chopped down in a running fight.
Genthore died in basic melee before, over the course of at least half a dozen rests, horror was used to disable the mages from out of sight and shoot them down.
I took very little damage while going through the mine to find Davaeorn, but the first battle horror got a couple of licks in and the second a couple more - which meant I needed to rest before tackling the traps and Davaeorn.
The chance of a rest interruption is very high on the bottom level, but much lower on the next one up. When guards do turn up though, they do so in force, so choosing where to rest is crucial to avoid being trapped. My initial choice for a rest attempt is at the top of the stairs, but it's important to be precise about where you try that. The arrival point when you come upstairs is shown in the screenshot as dodgy because guards can block the doorway, but the second is safe as all the guards would appear on the stairs, leaving the doorway free.
Also, unlike normal enemies, you can try resting again as soon as you're out of sight of these guards. It's thus possible to take a couple of steps round the edge of the doorway and try resting again - if more guards appear as a result they will be close enough to you that you can safely run round them to the other exit to the room. In a similar fashion there are several other places where you can safely rest without a chance of being trapped - so that it's very rare for me to get interrupted enough trying that to be forced up onto the next level. {thinking about it the above explanation is probably superfluous. It's mainly relevant to solo play anyway - in a full party it's much more difficult to avoid the chance of anyone getting trapped - and the need to rest is mainly because I don't use healing potions}
I've used four main tactics with a wizard slayer against Davaeorn. The easiest is to use a scroll of PfM, but those are in limited supply and I haven't used one here for a long time. The next is to snipe shot him, trying to always remain close enough to the exit to run from his spells. That needs a lot of patience though as he's running round and it's easy to get drawn in too far - particularly if Davaeorn decides to stop running around and settle somewhere. The third is to retreat upstairs after the combat starts and rest. That often interferes with his script and may well result in him having no spells left when you return. Conversely though, I've also seen him get unlimited charm and hold spells trying that. On balance I think the fourth option is the least risky - that's to press the attack immediately and try to shut down his casting early on. His first two spells are lightning and fireball and, with 50% protection available against both of those, they're unlikely to do too much damage - while multiple shots at him are highly likely to score before he has a chance to do anything more dangerous. With the arrows of piercing purchased, my THAC0 was 4 here and Davaeorn was hit 3 times before he dimension doored away - meaning he had 75% spell failure and it wasn't surprising his attempted lightning failed. After a 4th hit I switched to cheap +1 arrows to finish him off.
After resting to get a second horror, I flooded the mine and got rewarded by a slave. Baldur's Gate is now open, so I can seek out another equipment upgrade there.
I hadn't travelled north of the FAI before, so slaughtered some fishermen to get Tenya's bowl. Returning that got me my final BG1 level, with yet another 12 extra HPs.
Getting over 100 at level 8, without use of Balduran's Helm is a good result.
After killing a nearby ankheg I went into the City and quickly picked up some improvements. The first of those was the dexterity tome - that pushed dexerity to 18, with a consequent bonus to AC. The next was the Helm of Balduran - that not only benefits THAC0, AC and saves, but even provides a few extra HPs for good measure. Note that the wizard slayer class is able to use magical items where those are defined as armor or weapons. Unsurprisingly that does not include rings, or amulets (though the amulet of Seldarine is an exception to that in ToB). However, it seems slightly odd that boots are counted as armor, while cloaks, belts and (especially) gauntlets are not.
The next item desired at this stage was Marek's +2 short bow (unlike in vanilla, that's not the best bow in BG1, but I've taken short bow proficiency to benefit from the extra APR available early in BG2 and the ability to hit creatures requiring +4 to hit later in BG2). At the temple Jalantha was shot down after offering her quest (I dodged one of her flame strikes before interrupting the second).
For Marek, I didn't try attacking him immediately after speaking to him. That ensured I had plenty of time to run downstairs before he could cast confusion. He was then horrified from out of sight and shot while running around. I deliberately avoided killing him before he came to his senses to taunt him as his attempt to cast a spell fizzled.
The final items gained for now were much more minor. Returning a body to Varci and visiting the local temple provided a minor improvement for my shield and an unneeded increase to wisdom.
Even in a minimal risk run, I couldn't resist doing a further tour of the Sword Coast to do the remaining major encounters while maximising reputation. One justification for that is the easy XP gained now will carry forward into SoD (so long as I don't reload the game prior to that) and make that marginally easier. Work done included:
- clearing the ankheg nest, without suffering a scratch (or even an acid burn).
- beating up the Doomsayer in a fair fight (I didn't bother with micro-managing movement to give me an APR advantage).
- Narcillicus was persuaded to summon a couple of mustard jellies, which were drawn away separately to be squished. The mage failed his spell save at the 5th attempt and was shot down while running around in terror.
- at Durlag's Tower, the battle horrors now needed a critical to hit and didn't get many of those. On the roof a PfP scroll was used to deal with the basilisks.
I decided not to waste a PfM scroll on getting the wisdom tome there though.
Back in the City I tend to go and get the Helm of the Noble to boost charisma for lower prices. However, with far more money than I need I didn't bother with that this time, but just stocked up on green scrolls and magic ammunition. The latter was needed for one final expedition to the coast, in search of sirines. There's a pretty good chance of shutting down their casting with more standard arrows, but to avoid any risk I used exploding ones - they automatically hit, as well as spreading spell failure through the explosion.
It would have been easy to melee the golems - by retreating at the point they are committed to an attack you can make them miss that attack as part of their combat turn and nip back in to attack them before they get their next attack (assuming you have a quick weapon speed). However, I had too many sundry types of magic arrows anyway, so just shot them down.
Once more in Baldur's Gate I made use of the tome to push natural constitution to 20 and sold Buckley's Buckler (though a higher constitution slightly improves the regeneration rate, that difference no longer seemed to justify using up an inventory slot on it). A few more encounters included killing the basilisk using horror - the Bhaal version of that only lasts 4 rounds, but that was more than enough to be safe when using acid arrows at 3 APR.
Ramazith was also shot down and his tower stormed to get at the intelligence tome (though that again provides virtually no benefit).
With the Seven Suns cleared, I decided to go for a little bonus by doing the ogre mage in the sewers as well - Spider's Bane being crucial there to avoid any danger of being held by the carrion crawlers.
That just left the Iron Throne to do. Rather than use a frontal assault there, I used the stairs to break the opposition up into manageable chunks and dodge any spells that looked like being successfully cast. Zhalimar put up a decent fight, doing damage both with arrows while I was occupied with casters and in melee when I got around to him - but it was still a comfortable victory (if HPs had got lower, I always had the option of running away and getting healing at a temple).
At Candlekeep I accused Shistal of being an imposter and cut down the resulting greater doppleganger. I then headed on upstairs to give myself up, though not until I'd looted another PfP scroll.
Resting in the secret library gained me DUHM and that was used to loot 1 tomb to get another PfM scroll (the others with the wisdom tome and strength tome need 22 and 24 strength respectively and were left). In the next area I waited out the greater doppleganger's haste before killing that. In the final area I bypassed Prat rather than use up exploding arrows on his party (he has a small chance of seeing you rush by, but normally doesn't even notice - and even if he does his companions can't catch you if you keep running).
The basilisks were killed with the scroll collected in Candlekeep (I had a spare from the Iron Throne and as a last resort could have used horror to try and get past, but with 2 of them that would not be risk-free).
After resting outside the City to get a second DUHM, I'm ready for the final stages of BGEE. Up to now the chances of dying, without making a mistake, have been minimal - but a little bit of luck will be needed to get past the coronation.
After talking twice to Tamoko (so that she will appear in the Undercity), I returned to Ramazith's Tower and used DUHM to kick open the container at the top of that - gaining a sixth PfM scroll there. Next, I went in search of Slythe. I wasn't bothered about Krystin, so just shot Slythe with a dispelling arrow without talking and beat him up.
At the coronation I reckoned my chances of success were probably as high as 80% if everything went to plan. That involved:
- using DUHM to boost attack and defense
- using horror as soon as the dopplegangers spawned and again a round later
- using dispelling arrows to nerf those still attacking the dukes (ignoring any attacking me, despite the melee bonus that gives them)
- switching to melee to finish things off
The first use of horror is important as it disrupts the AI of any dopplegangers attacking. It doesn't mean they won't start attacking again even while scared, but the initial blip may well mean they switch from the dukes to other targets. In this case horror affected 2 of them, which was a pretty good result. However, none of the dopplegangers initially appeared to be attacking me, meaning the lives of the dukes could still be very short-lived if the dopplegangers got lucky (I've seen the dukes killed several times in less than 2 rounds). Belt is much more robust than Liia, so I shot at the ones near him first - and found one of those decided to switch to attacking me. After a third successful dispelling arrow, a second horror sent the still-hasted one attacking Liia running. Things looked pretty good at this point with 1 dispelled doppleganger each on the dukes and another dispelled one attacking me, while the other 3 were panicking.
However, after I switched to melee, all the panicked dopplegangers returned to attacking the dukes and things started looking tight as the hits mounted up. Belt was taken to near death, but a moment after that there was relief as the last of the dopplegangers fell. It takes Belt a second or two to realize the opposition are dead, so I was able to move away from him before he could talk and drag him to safety in the back room before Sarevok started looking for victims.
With nothing else to buy, I stocked up with some more magical ammunition before heading for the Thieves maze. I used a PfU scroll there to make killing a pair of skeleton warriors easy and the scroll lasted long enough to account for 4 more of those in the Undercity after I bypassed Rahvin's party there. I have sometimes killed that party to get Rahvin's 2 exploding arrows, but that either requires the use of a PfM or opens up a bit of a risk (and even horror on him won't necessarily stop him using the arrows anyway) - and I decided to leave him this time.
I maneuvered Tamoko to where I could attack her and retreat into the temple if necessary. However, doing that very often results in her duplicating (that happens occasionally with anything, but is common with her) - so I just tanked her flame strikes when those failed to be disrupted (I suspect they are ForceSpell casts) while shooting her down.
That provided me with her full plate +1, which represents an upgrade for a wizard slayer from standard full plate (one of the problems with the Baldur's Gate games I think, right from the first release of BG1, is that in most circumstances expensive magic armor is clearly inferior to mundane versions). There are 2 P&P rules that have not been implemented in the unmodded game that would help make that situation far less common. First, you could be allowed to benefit from saving throw bonuses granted by protection items worn with armor. Second the magical bonus from the armor could adjust saving throws related to physical effects that armor might be expected to help with (such as fireballs).
Inside the temple there were 8 more exploding arrows on offer from Angelo. Fighting him fairly would require the use of a PfM scroll, entail some risk and almost certainly end up with some of the arrows being used. However, if you don't fight fair then you can get the lot for the cost of a single green PfE scroll . Angelo is the hardest to hit of the group with bouncing lightning bolts, but he also doesn't have resistance to them, so is almost certain to die before Sarevok - and he did.
I could have then continued activating the trap to kill Sarevok as well, but decided to give him a sporting chance this time.
I wandered around for a while (including in extreme sight range of Sarevok) to see whether the stinking cloud and web effects would trigger. I don't know exactly what causes this, but they do often trigger at this stage when they pose no danger. However, they stubbornly refused to do so this time. The risk-free way to proceed would have been to use a PfM scroll and I had enough available to do that without causing problems in SoD. However, I couldn't resist trying to avoid using any in BGEE and eventually shot Sarevok with a dispelling arrow. As sometimes happens, the trigger this time seemed to be Sarevok's conversation and suddenly things looked bleak with him advancing and area effects spawning. The stinking cloud arrived without me even spotting the projectile, but I saved against that and tried to activate PfM.
I knew that would not work before web arrived, but I could survive a few hits from Sarevok and there was always a chance he would get stuck in the web anyway. As it happened though I successfully saved against the web as well and the scroll activated a moment later.
Just for the hell of it, I ran Sarevok around in the web until he got stuck and then came in for the killing blow.
Edit: it was only after doing this write-up I remembered I had Spider's Bane, so could have avoided any danger from the web (and assuming the stinking cloud offers the standard +3 save vs death I actually had an automatic save against that )
I think the odds comfortably favor getting through BGEE, but mucking about at the end there was definitely pushing my luck . I had almost 400k XP on transfer to SoD, so was able to level up immediately.
That provided grand mastery in short bow, a useful reduction in saving throws and a maximum 15 HPs with the last of my level up die rolls. Despite that starting benefit, I think SoD is a significantly harder challenge, so I'll have to try hard to maintain focus and minimize risk there.
I wasn't working this morning, so was able to crack on immediately with SoD. In the starting dungeon, Porios saw his guards scattered by horror and was persuaded to surrender. PfU made clearing the first 3 areas downstairs easy and the mercenaries in the 4th area were pulled back for the Flaming Fist to help with. A couple of dispelling arrowed destroyed Korlasz's defences and a roll of 2 was enough for an arrow of piercing to strike home and prompt her to surrender. I tried shooting her down to avoid her appearing in the City, but thought she was going to get away when I had a critical miss - she hung around a fraction of a second too long though. I collected a shield upgrade from Fanegonorom before leaving for the Ducal Palace.
In the City I killed a few NPCs for their equipment. With the 65k or so worth of items brought from BGEE in bags there was no particular need for that, though the protection from fear provided by Kiel's helmet worn by Minsc could be useful. I also did the quest to get the Battle Tankard that provides immunity to fatigue.
On leaving the City the first action was to travel to the Coast Way Forest in search of a regeneration ioun stone. I tend not to bother with that these days with other characters, as there are far more regeneration potions available than I ever use, but it still seems potentially helpful for a wizard slayer. Once it became clear I was double-crossing Ikross and Isabella, I shot the mage twice his shadow door triggered and then ran out of sight - so the next spell would target the vampire. However, that spell fizzled allowing me to attack again. An acid arrow then finished the job. Isabella was meleed at close quarters to avoid her attacking Tsolak.
On the way back I came across a group of orcs and trolls. For sling users that encounter offers a useful upgrade, but not for me and I left them alone. I gave Takos his items back, but demanded one of them as a reward. Normally I take the mirror of identification, but as I couldn't use that kept the Suncatcher shield instead. I also bought a marginal bow upgrade from Herod with the Savage Shortbow.
At the bridge I paused immediately after the cutscene and ran behind the tent - there's just enough time to do that before the enemies fixate on you, thus allowing you to avoid any combat before Caelar arrives for a parley.
Moving on to the Troll Claw Woods, I ran straight through there - ignoring the hobgoblins who were the only enemies visible. I then bounced back and forth to the Forest of Wyrms until I triggered an encounter with a young green dragon. A bit more bouncing and I found a big hole in the ground - which was the reason for all the bouncing. The goblin witchdoctor guarding it was shot down before he could react. The rest of the goblins were no threat, but I short-circuited that fight by using a shield sunfire. Inside the hole, the first group of myconids could only confuse me and I was confident I could kill them even while confused - but I saved against that anyway. The second group had a blue myconid that could pacify me, which seemed slightly more of a threat - a couple of arrows of detonation were used there, though once again I saved against the effects. That gave me the Spell Breaker long sword - equipping that reduces spell saves from a very vulnerable 5 right down to a much less vulnerable 1.
It was only at this stage that I realized I hadn't received the regeneration ioun stone - I guess that was intended to be delivered at some point when I was bouncing around and I didn't notice it. Oh well, it shouldn't be crucial. There were no casters on the way to Morentherene's cave so progress was easy to there. In the next cave a bugbear shaman was kind enough to stay out of the way while I killed the greeting party. The shaman then saved against horror from out of sight, but on its own had little chance against an arrow onslaught anyway. A spike trap in the passage would have been repaired by the regeneration ioun stone, but instead I successfully rested to get full health back. The next group of bugbears were pulled away one by one before the shaman there failed against horror and was shot down.
Inside the temple proper there's a hold trap just after some worgs, so they need to be killed before progressing. Without the ability to kill Ziatar from out of sight I worked through the various groups of guards to ensure they wouldn't complicate that fight. I wanted to have PfM and PfP active against the Neothelid, so decided to use those for Ziatar first rather than use up exploding arrows. Sanctuary allowed her to heal, but it still didn't take too long to finish her off. However, even though Ziatar had been out of sight of the cells, her cries had apparently annoyed the Crusaders and I was at a loss about what to do with them. While leaning against the wall thinking about that, however, I must have activated some sort of trap mechanism and inherited Keherrem's badge .
I was wary about the varied abilities the Neothelid has to hold, charm and stun you, so just ran past it with Spell Breaker equipped to find Akanna. Two exploding arrows almost killed Akanna, but she just survived and disappeared. Despite me running round the room following that, her aerial servants took advantage of their good weapon speed to both hit me hard from invisibility. However, that made them potential targets and a further exploding arrow was enough to finish off the invisible Akanna.
That gave me my final SoD level and should have allowed me to pick up the wardstone and run away before the Neothelid arrived. Incredibly annoyingly though, the Neothelid produced a magical sword which somehow filled enough space to prevent me running past it near the doorway - and then the Neothelid itself surfaced to prevent me retreating (and its icon was in a position it shouldn't really have been able to take up as it overlapped territory that included the door that had been blocking me).
To emphasize the point that there were shenanigans going on with the Neothelid's location, one of the aerial servants cheated by layering itself over the Neothelid's icon and then moving past it, which made quite sure that even if the Neothelid went underground again, I would still be trapped. A last play of the dice then saw a horror failing to panic any of the opponents, just before the Neothelid did indeed thumb it's big nose at me by disappearing underground again.
I survived a bit longer than I expected at near death and took the aerial servant blocking the door to badly wounded, but those things have extremely good THAC0 and it would have needed a lot of luck to successfully get away from that situation - and I didn't.
The way that played out was pretty irritating, but the Neothelid is one of the encounters I've not found a really reliable solution for. I have in the past tried to drag it further away to make certain it can't get back in time to block me in. It's also possible to drag the aerial servants away while invisible by leaving immediately after attacking Akanna. That strategy has potential drawbacks of its own, such as alerting other opponents and giving the Neothelid more opportunity to use its special abilities - but maybe I'll revert to some variation of that when I try this character again.
Clean up Candlekeep, then dodge Imoen, Xzar, and Montaron. At High Hedge, I kill the gnolls for Perdue's Short Sword. I skip Shoal for now. I plan on recruiting party members once I hit the level cap and want to get the helm.
In Beregost, Marl brings me to level 2. Firebead's book and Landrin's spiders bring me to level 3.
I purchase some +1 bolts and head back to High Hedge for the flesh golems, which bring me to level 4.
I purchase a potion case and a potion of mirrored eyes then head to Nashkel. At the Carnival, I kill Vitiare for his potion of master thievery.
I wonder around near Beregost to get level 5 by killing the ogre for belts. Afterwards, I quaff the potion of master thievery and pickpocket Algernon.
With Algernon's Cloak, I head to the Temple and charm Kelddath to cast Animate Dead. Kelddath is brought out of the temple and the skeleton warrior wreaks havoc on the sirines. I make a mistake by peaking and am almost charmed by a sirine. I rest in Beregost then charm Kelddath again for his skeleton warrior. It's used to clear the vampiric wolves, getting me to level 6.
Low on funds, I retrieve Evermemory and sell it at the Nashkel Store, with the plan of stealing it back later. I stock up on scrolls from High Hedge and use two potions of genius to memorize them all. Under cover of invisibility, I activate the gnolls around Drizzt but get greedy, and while he doesn't initiate dialogue, he does kill all the gnolls. I'll return later with a cleric capable of casting Farsight, but for now Drizzt lives.
I use PfP to kill the basilisks without Korax and hit level 7.
Back in Beregost, I charm Silke to help save Neera. It's going well, but Neera hits Silke with color spray, which turns Silke hostile (at least I think it was the color spray). Silke targets Neera but is unable to kill her, and I manage to get the killing blow. Neera is deprived of her gem bag and removed from the party. I use a Strength spell to enter the mansion and retrieve the lightning wand.
Skull Trap, Magic Missiles, and the lightning wand are used to kill the Battle Horrors at Durlag's Tower. One of them drops a Knock scroll. I use invisibility to get to the roof and kill the greater basilisks, which gets me to level 8.
I skipped the lesser basilisk on the way it and hit it with a Skull Trap and a Magic Missile on the way out. Unfortunately, I forgot to recast PfP, and thus ends my run.
After talking twice to Tamoko (so that she will appear in the Undercity)...
I maneuvered Tamoko to where I could attack her and retreat into the temple if necessary.
If you're going to do it anyway, why not just kill her the first time she appears?
Maybe I should. However, in my version of no-reload I don't allow any testing (with the limited exception of reloading an autosave if I died in a battle without the reason for that being clear). Finding out if a new tactic works can thus be pretty painful if that ends the run. In this case though, I agree the implications are unlikely to be so serious. If, for instance, Tamoko proved to be immortal or disappeared if you attacked when you first met her (and then didn't appear in the Underdark) that would just reduce my AC in SoD by 1 - noticeable, but not enough to seriously reduce the chance of success.
A return to the type of character that I prefer, an Inquisitor. At the beginning of this game, luck was certainly with me: A good initial roll, followed by 180 gold, followed by helping Mellicamp. However I am well aware that luck runs out, but so far it hasn't.
Journal of Ronald the Righteous
On the way to Beregost, I won several minor battles including a couple of ogrillon which brought me up to level 2.
Heading North, I took on an ogre and won before taking on some gnoll.
I then killed Karlat.
and helped Mellicamp which raised me to level 3.
Zordral caused some trouble
After that battle I rested for 10 days!
I then took on Greywolf. Because he was more powerful than me, I let the guards wound him badly before finishing him off myself with my bow.
I then rested before killing Oopah.
In transit I killed a ghast and again levelled up.
I them took on Tarnesh. I was lucky once more. I was panicked by his spell and helpless when a guard killed him.
To the North after killing ankhegs I levelled up again.
I then killed more ankheg.
After killing Sonner, I gave Tenya the bowl.
Vax and Zal died easily.
Caldo and Krumm were next.
I then trashed the gnoll stronghold and released a mage from there. She was surprised that I didn't want her help, but then she doesn't understand my aversion to arcane magic.
In transit I killed a polar bear and shortly afterwards another,
Further North I killed Neville so I now have two magical swords.
I then took Brage to the temple.
and nearby killed Niera.
While looking for Mutamin I killed Linden, Peter et al.
In Beregost I cleared a nest of spiders before heading out to kill Bassilus.
Bassilus cast rigid thinking which allowed him to hurt me badly, but I got my revenge.
Upon returning to Beregost, Silke attacked me and died.
Heading west, because they couldn't charm me, killing sirine was remarkably easy. I was protected from evil which seems to have protected me from poison.
I also killed Shoal and Droth.
The mines proved to be easy
Once again I spurned a mage's help.
Outside Lamalha et al were killed followed by a revenant.
Jeanluc and his band of paladins and Imoen - Update 1
Jeanluc - inquisitor, protagonist
Sarah - undead hunter
April - undead hunter
Forrest- paladin
Heather - cavalier
Imoen - thief
I haven't been posting on this run, mostly because it's been pretty uneventful. In BG 1 a band of paladins is a strong force, and often won battles in just seconds. The group just made it past Sarevok and is moving onto BG 2. The 6th slot is reserved for a thief class character. If a paladin gets chunked, we will recruit Keldorn. If another paladin gets chunked we will recruit Mazzy, as she kind of a halfling paladin. However, no other characters will be recruited this run. Paladins (+1 thief) or bust! Here's one interesting screenshot - paladins throwing fireballs on 5 ogre mages in a house in southern Baldur's Gate.
Much work and little play for me during quarantine, to such an extent that I decided to park slow-paced Eyulf (Priest of Helm) and his comrades in Durlag's Tower, enabling faster solo play with a TN Elven Fighter/Thief named Stil the Blackraven. Stil starts out specialized in long swords and shortbows in what for me constitutes a standard setup with SCS v32 on insane difficulty.
Early on, Stil did some low risk questing for items and XP (rogue ogre, Beregost and Nashkel quests). He took on Tarnesh early on, at level 2/3, as he forgot to hide while leaving the FAI. A backstab, an area transition (evading a Horror), and an arrow later, Tarnesh was down. At level 3/4 (thanks to Brun and Tenya), Stil felt confident enough to bad-mouth Greywolf. Several arrows felled the bounty hunter and rewarded the elf with Varscona.
Stil then went on an excursion to Mutamin's garden. One of the gnome's closest pets was a bit further west from its usual location, but after two arrows launched at the basilisk, the wizard showed up anyway. With his ability to cast Remove Magic and with several basilisks left to kill still, this was inconvenient. The hasted gnome forced Stil to quaff his only potion of clarity when he cast a Horror at our hero, and also dealt some Magic Missile damage before Stil went invisible.
The elf waited out the gnome's Mirror Images and then retaliated with brutal force. He was happy to pick up two invisibility potions from Mutamin's corpse.
(Stil left Kirian alone, as it has become increasingly difficult for me from a role-playing perspective to take her on with a non-evil character.) More basilisks as well as three battle horrors, an Invisibility 10' Radius dropping Doppelganger (wrong playthrough friend Doppelganger), and several ghasts provided more XP at Durlag's Tower's upper levels. Stil continued to hone his skills away from the prying eyes of civilization in general and of the bounty hunters his invisible enemy had sent after him in particular. He intended to be damn ready for the confrontation with his enemy. Meilum, ankhegs, sirines (greenstone amulet), flesh golems, and Bassilus (greenstone amulet) further added to the XP count.
Some vampiric and other wolves and finally the dwarf Karlat, as a message to his enemies, brought Stil to level 7/8, his max BG1 levels.
Now rather than getting the main quest going, Stil decided to do things very differently. He wasn't aware of any "main quest" (not talked to Khalid, Jaheira, Xzar, Monty, or Berrun Ghastkill), and he was aware that while he had been training his left arm into a proper sword arm (** in TWF at levels 3 and 6), he still had only one proper long sword. Stil returned to Durlag's Tower, the ideal place to become an even more accomplished warrior and if there was any place that could be expected to hold a quality long sword, it had to be the forsaken tower.
On the first underground level, the Blackraven stalked around patiently, assassinating spiders, greater doppelgangers, and undead here and there.
His stealth skill was reliable, and he had some potions of invisibility and the sandthief's ring for emergency cases. Of four dwarven warders, Stil sufficed with slaying one, Love, using some nearby fire and lightning traps that he'd made himself invulnerable to (a Cloudkill snare was competently disarmed).
The second level wasn't very challenging, as Stil had already proved to be well capable of taking out greater doppelgangers. However, he was in for a bit of surprise when trying to sneak past some ghasts. They sensed his presence and swarmed him. Invisibility, frost giant strength, and free action allowed him to finish all seven though.
He stole Kiel's buckler and morningstar (hiding immediately after picking up the goods to escape the wrath of some dwarven doom guards) before he moved on to the third level. Stil didn't bother with the garden or the wyverns. He went straight for four elemental rooms. Starting with the ice room, Stil saw his first triple digit strike finish off a winter wolf.
Kaldran the Bear followed Stil outside, so he hid and dealt with a fission slime first (necklace fireballs). He then buffed with his only identified PfM scroll, and lots of potions: mind focusing, cloud giant strength, heroism (x3), defense, and speed. Thus, Kaldran, a phoenix guard, and an air aspect were overcome with ease, and Stil saw himself transported to a chessboard. Wreaking havoc with two arrows of detonation and one arrow of dispelling (aimed at the King), all found on the first level, the first round was for Stil.
The elf then launched a number of acid arrow at the King, but he also took substantial missile damage himself. He went invisible away from the Queen (who can cast detection spells IIRC), and quaffed a potion of regeneration and healed himself. When his health was restored, Stil started to Detect Illusions (50%), removing the King's Mirror Images. Next, he finished the King with a single backstab.
On the fourth and final level there wasn't much fighting to be done. Stil took down Grael the ghoul and two or three more greater ghouls, but other than that he kept to the shadows. He was most pleased to find Flametongue, a beautiful and powerful blade to be wielded alongside Varscona, a staff of striking, and more treasure.
The Blackraven took a moment to deliberate about his next step: to attack the Demon Knight that had taken control over the level if not the entire tower, or to leave. He opted for the former. Light buffs (fire resistance) to get his enemy to waste two castings of Remove Magic,
two potions of magic protection to neutralize the fell warrior's PW spells, several acid arrows, and the steel of his blades saw Stil prevail.
Leaving the tower Stil understood that he was now one of the wealthiest, best equipped and most experienced adventurers on the Sword Coast, and yet still a relative nobody. He decided he was going to use that fact to his advantage.
He traveled to the Nashkel Carnival to get a lot of loot identified (why are we still penny-pinching with tens of thousands of GP?), and some of it sold. In Nashkel he accepted a commission from Berrun Ghastkill to investigate the Nashkel Mines, and that's where the story finally takes off. Mulahey (greenstone amulet), a hard-hitting revenant, and Nimbul (greenstone amulet) were no match for the Blackraven.
Nor were Tranzig (backstab) and, at the Bandit Camp, Venkt who was the first of Stil's enemies to get a taste of the staff of striking.
Buffed with the greenstone amulet (a precaution vs Venkt), potions of defense and frost giant strength and the cloak of the shield, Stil didn't take long in making short work of the bandits in the tent.
In Cloakwood, Stil secured a cloak of non-detection, Spider's Bane (relying on stealth to loot Centeol's den), and a potion of invulnerability. He also had a run-in with four amazons, who weren't much of a threat thanks again to the greenstone amulet. Stil played hide and seek with Drasus and his gang, applying one of few oils of speed for the occasion. A potion of defense (from Silke's supposed thugs) a greenstone charge, and the staff of striking did most of the work.
Inside the mine the Blackraven only stopped to arrange the slaves' evacuation and to pick up some potions at the temple before he confronted Davaeorn. He tried to take the wizard out before any buffs triggered, but was found out by a detection spell (not wearing the cloak of non-detection). He retreated, hit the wizard with his second and last arrow of dispelling, and struck his foe down with the staff of striking.
He looted the chambers, set the miners free, ran from a combined Molkar-wyvern ambush,
and made it to Baldur's Gate.
Character record (fantastic initial roll of 96) and inventory after arrival in Baldur's Gate, with lots of gold spent on potions and ammo and with the dex tome read:
As has been said before "Luck runs out sooner than you would think"
I had been so used to my saving rolls saving me that when two failed saves against web and poison arrived in Cloakwood, I was still expecting to be able to survive.
I didn't. I had reached level 8 when this happened.
@Wise_Grimwald not sure if you are aware, but web has a penalty of -2 to saves vs being webbed. This means if you don't have free action, or -1 to spell save, you can be webbed. Cloakwood Area 2 can be quite dangerous, as you no doubt know. A technique I often use if have a single character gulp a potion of freedom (you can get from Thalantyr) and go invisible, either by potion or spell. Then, with AI off, go through all areas in area 2 and set off the traps. After setting off traps, return to the party and then you can clear out the spiders/ettercaps here in relative safety.
Fun With Saving Throws II: Electric Boogaloo:
The Morale Failening
Spellhold: Irenicus gets slapped with a critical backstab from Stabby and has his magic devoured by Spaz.
Underdark: The siege of Ust Natha. Stabby breaks his backstab damage record early on in the fight. Yin keeps the drow corralled on the left path of the big room I prefer to fight in with a Merciless Blizzard.
The siege continues. Spaz devours the magic of any priests and mages that appear. The Nightwalker cleans house but even it can kill things only so fast. Teleport Fields give us trouble so drow start invading the center room.
Since the army spawns off-screen and we spend our time near the center and north of the big room waiting out the Teleport Fields, the army gets concentrated on the left side. Matron Mother Ellavere appears, with her elites and demons clogging the left pathway to the center room. An archmage gates in a planetar. Stabby poisons an Arrow of Detonation and looses it into the huge crowd while Yin casts Shadowplague to suppress any casting coming from the horde, followed by Malefic Bomb to shake them up. Debuff sings to them and nearly everyone suffers morale failure. Balors cast Fire Storm at us, causing significant damage to Blaggy, Debuff, Yin, and Cactank while killing Spaz.
Cactank dies shortly after this from what I assume was an Implosion cast by a Balor. This is unusual because aTweak'd demons do not also have SCS demon powers.
This situation is untenable. Even if Debuff keeps the drow in permanent morale failure, the demons will keep casting Fire Storm and gating in other demons if they aren't dealt with. Yin heals up with a potion and kicks it into overdrive with Relentless Assault. Stabby reveals the planetar with Detect Illusions who has also been suffering morale failure since it was first summoned. Yin casts Oblivion Pull to get rid of it, which refreshes Relentless Assault's duration. Yin goes ballistic on the drow by casting Sunder Magic (Annulment would've been better but I wanted to save 8th level spells) -> Sigil of Misfortune -> Inertia -> Shadowblast, and finally, his most powerful spell of all, Dark Meteor.
Dark Meteor: Ignores MR; Fireball-sized AoE. Deals 5d10 fire/cold/electric/magical damage, instantly kills 11 HD creatures and lower (no save), instantly kills 12+ HD creatures on a failed save vs. breath; renders survivors unconscious (no save), and lowers their Luck and saving throws by 10 for 8 rounds. The caster takes 75% of their max HP in backlash damage which cannot be reduced or negated in any way.
Demons, drow, golems - doesn't matter - anyone who failed to save vs. breath at -9 in the Dark Meteor's radius is completely annihilated. The save could've been made steeper if Blaggy was nearby, but I pulled him away from the crowd because he was wounded and we were down two party members. The only survivors are a few scattered drow and some summons that Spaz had stunned with Binding Blast before he died. Blaggy uses the Rez Rod on Cactank who casts Mass Raise Dead to bring back Spaz and fully heal the party.
That could've gone much worse if Debuff hadn't kept most of the drow on morale failure lockdown. Debuff and Blaggy are the bane of all living things that aren't outright immune to morale failure, as Adalon soon experienced. She is stat drained to death by the Nightwalker.
Lost another bard. Completed what the previous bard had done more smoothly. Was off to the Lighthouse for the sirines and flesh golems which would have brought me to level 9. It was down to Sil and I when my Greenstone Amulet charge wore off. I had just used one of the Wand of Fire's Aganazzar's Scorcher charges, which she resisted, leaving my aura cloudy. I almost made it into the cave before her Dire Charm landed. No luck on a saving throw or half-elf's innate charm resistance.
Edit: Bard 3 fell immediately after leaving Candlekeep. A wild dog ambush on the way to High Hedge. A melee weapon was equipped, but mayhaps next time I won't skimp on the chain mail...
Comments
No dangers at the High Hall. If you try and steal in the first hall while guards are present, then hostile reinforcements turn up - but you can just run away or use stealth / invisibility (or just avoid them by going in the late evening when the place is empty).
After helping Khaled and Jaheira get to Nashkel, I picked up Xzar and Montaron.
We went to Beregost first and Montaron spent some time picking locks and acquiring treasure. He then found me a very fetching cloak before helping me in a battle with Silke and we also killed Karlat and gave Perdue his sword.
Montaron then relieved those we had saved of the jewels and potions that were weighing them down and they then voluntarily gave us an extra potion..
We sold the ankheg shells before going to Ulgoth's Beard to spend the gold on some useful items. Sadly our gold was insufficient to buy all the items that I coveted.
Whilst I was busy shopping Montaron honed his pickpocketting skills.
We then picked up Khaled and Jaheira and spoke to the mayor after which I left all four of them there.
At the carnival I bought a necklace of missiles and a scroll of protection from petrification.
These helped me a lot when I took on Mutamin and the basilisks.
In Beregost we were attacked by another assassin who quickly died and later on four more.
I picked up Xzar to take on Shoal and Droth, thinking that Xzar was disposable. As it happened he survived and so did Shoal as we didn't kill her soon enough.
Xzar was then left at the Morningstar temple.
Lowbar (male assassin, Gate70); Polgara (female druid, Grond0)
Lowbar steps inside the house and realises four giant spiders are there. OK, maybe he should have entered from the shadows. He runs outside again and Polgara joins him. She duly gets poisoned twice but as we try to make our way to the edge of town the poison wears off, so we kill the spiders as quickly as our limited attacks allow.
Lowbar gets Kirian with a couple of backstabs but she retaliates with two Melf's Acid Arrows. Lowbar fails to hide a third time while Polgara has tired of this game and killed Kirian with another blast from her heavenly wand.
So we move on and clear Nashkel Mine. Lowbar has upped his trap-setting-worthiness to 15% and duly fails to successfully set any several times. He gives up and goes in for a backstab on Mulahey, Polgara arriving to both finish off the half-orc and draw the attention of his minions.
We kill a jelly each on the way out of the mine and run into the Amazons. Lowbar tries to envenom his weapon for a poisoned backstab but the amount of time taken means Lamahla sees this happening and reacts as he drops from the shadows before his attack. Lowbar is duly incapacitated and staggers off as everybody else gets into a fight.
Polgara gets held, but so do the Amazons and our pair of summoned nymphs clear matters up without our assistance.
With that done we have a bit of room left in our backpacks so decide not to visit a store but instead seek out Cloakwood. We outrun a pack of wolves in the first area before dealing with spiders and ettercaps in the second.
By this time Lowbar says his little legs are tired and we decide to stop. It's been a good session and our inventory is filling up nicely.
Part 3
Here we are at the start of SoD!
Normally I'd side with the Coldhearth Lich to better help with the Coalition Camp invasion later in the game, but I've been skeptical about the lich's help in non-LoB mode runs ever since his skeleton mage's Glitterdust spell ended a run by making one of the orcs at the invasion wander randomly south to the barrels. So this time, we'll be taking down the lich. We have an extra Protection from Undead scroll, which means we can safely torch all of the undead with a Wand of Fire and still rest once before tackling the lich itself with another Protection from Undead scroll.
Unfortunately, Pearl has low Charisma, and apparently returning to Brother Deepvein to report on his buddy becoming a lich results in him turning hostile if you don't have the CHA to convince him you're telling the truth.
Mage buffs keep us safe from the trolls and other nasty critters in the Trollclaw Woods (don't underestimate their THAC0 and APR; they can get through Stoneskins and Mirror Images if they swarm you), while the Wand of Fire does most of the heavy lifting. We kill Morentherene with a throwing dagger, making sure not to cast any spells inside her cave until after she's dead, then use a Protection from Poison scroll to safely tackle Ziatar, whom we slay with more Wand of Fire charges (Arrows of Dispelling help us bring down her mage buddies quickly).
But since we have 4 APR with Arrows of Detonation and the ability to stack Webs, Skull Traps, and Cloudkill spells via scrolls we bought over the course of the game, the first three waves of the Coalition Camp invasion are all very basic. No trolls or orcs wander towards the barrels, no mages dispel our buffs or throw disablers at us, and the clerics and paladins don't live long enough to swarm us, nor does Rhayla have the opportunity to get Remove Magic off the ground.
We then use a Knock scroll to finally get the Spell Immunity scroll from the locked chest in the castle basement and proceed to Avernus. Normal mage buffs and swordplay get us past the early devils, and we solve Thrix's riddle (3, "You speak of murder, devil.") to get a +3 longsword that does 1d4 nonmagical acid damage on hit, an ideal choice for Belhifet.
We buff with EVERYTHING, including multiple Potions of Heroism in case I ever have to tank with Durlag's Goblet. Pearl is in pretty good shape to solo Belhifet.
Belhifet is no contest at all; we have deeply subzero saves, AC, and THAC0; sky-high damage with maxed-out STR and Emotion, Hope and Courage scrolls; an Enchanted Weapon scroll to let us hit him with both our main hand and off hand weapons; a Wand of Monster Summoning to distract the other devils; mage buffs to avoid taking damage; and plenty of Durlag's Goblet charges and Greater Restoration scrolls to heal any damage we take. Ultimately, we take zero; the only reason our HP isn't at max is because we equipped the Helm of Balduran.
Part 4
Due to disabling the XP cap, we start BG2 with 1.4 million XP, giving us a few extra spell slots and a huge stepping stone to epic levels. We are at level 10/11 instead of 6/6 (if you started in BG2 anew) or 7/7 (if you imported from a normal BG1 endgame save) or 8/9 (if you imported from a normal SoD endgame save).
At first, I try to conserve resources in Chateau Irenicus so I can tackle it with just one rest, but since I don't like the idea of skipping Ilyich for RP reasons, I decide to go ahead and rest multiple times. We have plenty of spell slots to deal with the two big threats of Chateau Irenicus, the Radiant Mephit with its -3 sleep effect from Color Spray and the Salt Mephit with its no-save stun spells.
In Athkatla, we foolishly tackle Kalah without SI: Abjuration active (in the past I've lost buffs to him; he's tougher in SCS v32), but win out by tanking him until his defenses run low. For Mencar Pennypincher et al, we use Cloudkill to disrupt Amon and Pooky, finish them off with Sunfire, and then use a double Web Minor Sequencer to hold down the survivors.
I'll skip over much of the early game, because a fighter/mage at this stage is already operating at minimal risk even at lower levels than ours. Suffice to say that Mirror Image and Stoneskin kept us safe from weapons and Improved Invisibility helped get our saves low enough to deal with simple disablers. By choosing quests carefully, we avoided stretching ourselves thin.
By the time we were midway through the Umar Hills questline, we hit 3 million XP, using our first two HLAs to get an extra level 6 and 7 spell slot, mostly just because the extra casting of PFMW was the safest option. HLAs are actually not a very big step for fighter/mages; they don't radically alter gameplay. But then, fighter/mages are already solid characters across the board.
Protection from Undead and SI: Abjuration let us deal with the Temple Ruins lich surprisingly easily. It didn't summon any planetars; only a demon that ended up getting boxed in by the nearby mummies and skeletons. Waiting out PFMW and hitting the lich with the Flail of Ages was sufficient. The Shade Lord and Ruhk Transmuter over in Firkraag's lair received the same treatment.
Conventional mage fights aren't too crazy, either. With Spell Thrust, Secret Word, and Breach, we can take down the defenses of many mages in short order, and Detect Invisibility is a cheap way to reveal hidden spellcasters. Conster was an unusual case that I found fun: when he used PFMW, we managed to get through his Stoneskins by equipping Belm in the off hand and punching him unconscious.
Once we gain access to level 8 spells, we can cast Spell Trigger. That paves the way for three anti-magic attacks in one round: Spell Thrust, Pierce Magic, and another Pierce Magic or Breach can take down any standard mage setup short of Spell Trap. We debuff Aran Linvail with standard options (I always side with Bodhi when I don't have Mazzy in the party; I don't like fighting vampires), and Detect Invisibility->Spell Trigger renders his mage friend vulnerable.
After some straightforward chores and resource gathering, we proceed to Spellhold. Perth the Adept proves surprisingly easy to take down: our clone can cast Detect Invisibility to reveal him and has a casting of Breach since clone spellbooks are memorized alphabetically, which means we can keep Perth on the defensive just by having Pearl and our clone hammer him with Detect Invisibility and magic attacks, including our anti-magic Spell Trigger. By the time he restores his PFMW spell, he's already low on Stoneskins, and a lucky hit through Mirror Image disrupts his Time Stop.
By the way: there's a slightly faster way to deal with the riddle faces in Spellhold. Activate all of them one by one, once, and then you can just access the next riddle by clicking on the nearest face, rather than walking to the next one.
Anyway, the rest of the Ust Natha questline is straightforward, and Critical Strike ensures that we kill the Egg Guards with no chance of missing them. Back in Athkatla, I go hunting for Daystar to help against Bodhi, hiding under Protection from Undead and nailing the Crooked Crane lich, the Shade Lich, and the Elemental Lich with the Mace of Disruption.
Every single one of them fails their save vs. death on the second swing, averting all three fights. We get similar luck against the vampires. Notice that we've finally learned Time Stop and are now fighting on gray battlefields.
Part 5
The Twisted Rune was briefly scary due to Layenne not showing up on casting Detect Invisibility (Vaxall can quickly turn the tide with his Anti-Magic Ray), but a True Seeing spell from the Book of Daily spell succeeded, and good timing with Time Stop gave us three rounds of automatic hits on her. Her Improved Mantle was no defense against the upgraded Mace of Disruption, and Improved Haste and Belm let us chew right through her Stoneskins.
For the final fight with the Slayer, I immediately cast PFMW in case the Slayer opened with Time Stop (he can see through invisibility in SCS v32, so the Staff of the Magi no longer means safety) and ran away so my clone could fuss with the demons. The clone managed to bring down a Balor, but the rest of the demons put her down before she could do much more.
Part 6
We get a brief scare at the start of ToB when Illasera lands a dispelling arrow on us and removes our defenses while we were casting a Time Stop spell. Fortunately, I spotted the change in time and switched to the Shield of Reflection, bouncing her next arrow and letting Pearl finish casting Time Stop. Then we could take down Illasera with GWW and Crom Faeyr.
I don't want to spend time messing with fire giants or the Fire Lich in the fiery fire giant fire temple, so I just steal all the relevant wardstones under the Staff of the Magi, and snatch two of them under Time Stop so the Fire Lich and the Burning Men don't run after me.
Draconis summons a planetar, but we don't need to fight it because it vanishes as soon as Draconis transforms into a dragon; all summoned critters die during the transition. Instead, we just whomp Draconis with the Staff of the Magi. Since it dispels at level 30, it doesn't reliably take down his defenses, but it does go right through Mantle and Improved Mantle, and Greater Whirlwind Attack brings his human form down quickly.
We grab rope from Amkethran and return to face the quadruple dragon ambush. We have lots of Mirror Image and Stoneskin spells prepared, so we can tank the first two dragons without much trouble. We save our Time Stop spells for later.
Now we have to tackle Melissan. This is the only fight I was ever really worried about after we survived the Coalition Camp invasion way back in late SoD.
Part 7
We reorganize our spellbook, filling all four level 9 spell slots with Wish and stocking up on Project Image spells as well. We're playing on Insane, and in the most recent version of Ascension, that means we won't be getting free rests from the energy pools at the Throne (though the in-game text suggests that you do). Since having access to lots of PFMW and Spell Immunity spells will be super important for the final battle, we'll want to be able to refresh our spells after the first fight, with Irenicus, Bodhi, and two Fallen Solars, is over.
The first fight proves surprisingly simple; the Fallen Solars don't spam Heal spells on themselves or nail us with Mordenkainen's Disjunction spells. We kill the nearest one before it tries healing itself, and since the other one wanders off somewhere along the way, we just hit Bodhi with the Pulse Ammunition while we're safe in the meantime.
We open with my standard option: a Protection from Magic scroll on Abazigal to shut down his spellcasting. But I hit him before his Chain Contingency triggers, which means he still gets his PFMW pre-buff. Worse yet, I see him attempting to cast an alteration spell, and I rush to fire a nonmagical arrow at him in the hopes of disrupting a fatal Time Stop spell while my aura is fogged. Fortunately, the spell was Improved Haste.
We engage the enemy with PFMW active and start attacking with no particular target; I'm not in a rush to kill one of them and therefore summon Melissan and the extra two Fallen Solars that join her on Insane difficulty. Balthazar takes heavy damage, so I pull him aside to cast Flip Resistance, granting him 90% physical damage resistance at the cost of reducing his magic resistance to just 10%.
Sendai still isn't visible and I don't want to waste precious aura casting True Seeing, so we keep focusing on dealing damage. Since I want to save our PFMW spell slots for faster casting, I run away to switch to scrolls, but get spooked when I realize that using an Absolute Immunity scroll is useless if PFMW is still active.
We use a PFMW scroll instead, and when Sendai finally makes herself visible and we have a clear aura to do so, we hit her with our second and last Protection from Magic scroll. But to my dismay, I find that I haven't exercised close enough control over the damage we've been dealing: Illasera has died earlier than expected, and that means Melissan will show up in seconds.
Abazigal is at Near Death, but he casts Absolute Immunity, preventing us from polishing him off. Meanwhile, Balthazar has to run away due to being badly wounded until we can heal him with the Rod of Resurrection (not yet; we had to re-cast PFMW first), and Melissan casts Spellstrike on Sendai.
Balthazar gets targeted by both Fallen Solars and their vorpal dispelling arrows, but we manage to heal him with the Rod of Resurrection at Near Death. At 320 HP, he's an important tank to keep around.
But if we teleport away and Melissan teleports after us anyway, we've lost a round of PFMW, taken even more damage, and still gotten no closer to safety.
The wiser choice would be to re-cast Stoneskin, but for some reason I didn't trust it to stick--maybe the triple Remove Magic sequencer from Sendai made me think "our buffs are in trouble; we can't rely on dispellable stuff right now."
Instead, I teleport away and pray that Melissan doesn't follow. As it happens, this was the ideal call: while I thought that a bug had dispelled our contingencies, since none of them showed up in the spellbook when I last checked it, the contingencies were all still active, and they kick in while we're running away to the west. The net result?
We get our best defenses back.
Finally we kill Sendai, and Melissan is vulnerable. We have no Improved Haste left, so I restore it via scroll while Balthazar keeps Melissan occupied. Melissan summons new critters, whose importance I fail to appreciate at first.
I find myself without SI: Abjuration active. Thanks to that deafness-induced spell failure, I'm out of SI spells; I only have scrolls. I have to stop for a moment to use a scroll instead. When Melissan hits me with Spellstrike immediately after, I begin to worry that I'm going to be spending all my time trying to keep my buffs from being dispelled... until my buffs simply wear off instead.
I teleport away. Melissan follows and begins casting an alteration spell. I hit her once or twice with the Flail of Ages, but I fail to disrupt her, and she gets Time Stop off the ground. It's the classic death scenario for a solo Ascension run.
But Melissan is still slowed by the Flail of Ages, which decreases her APR and also doubles the casting time of her spells. Normally Melissan's +6 bonus to casting time makes her spellcasting incredibly fast, but since Divine Cleansing has a base casting time of 6, its slowed casting time is 12, for a total casting time of 6. Melissan misses several opportunities to attack Pearl by casting this during Time Stop.
Upon going to the lighthouse area we attacked some sirine. Baoloth cast web and fireballs. This killed two but one retreated out of danger.
Impatience was the cause of some trouble. Dorn wearing the ring to protect from hold went through the web to fight melee. The last sirine was almost dead when Dorn was charmed. Baoloth skirted round to attack from the other side and used fireball to wipe out some tasloi.
He then killed the remaining sirine, but not before being poisoned. He used a slow poison potion but was immediately poisoned again and didn't have another. Dorn was still charmed so couldn't pass him another potion and I was too far away. As a result Baoloth was killed and we had to return to a temple to get him raised.
I had to land the final blow to kill the sirine.
We returned and sent in Dorn alone to attack the next group of sirine.
Again he was charmed and feebleminded despite some protection from magic. We moved away to avoid conflict with him. We awaited his return to our party and attacked again, this time with fireballs. This time, they were routed.
Upon entering the cave baoloth was held by a trap and was badly hurt before we killed the flesh golem. We went outside to sleep before returning.
The next trap charmed Dorn. Having learned our lesson, we just moved out of sight until the charm wore off.
We then plundered the cave aand a tome boosted my constitution.
We picked up Xan and swapped him for Edwin. Everything quite easy.
I have realised why katranas are poor. Because they aren't magical they don't work against some enemies.
Chapter 4 before you get a magical one!
I have not really enjoyed playing with an evil party, so despite being exceedingly powerful. Dorn + Baoloth make a powerful duo I am bringing this run to an end. I have learned a lot from it, but the game is primarily for fun and it wasn't.
@WarChiefZeke commented recently that the wizard slayer run seemed hard. It certainly needs some luck to get through both BGEE and SoD, but not an unreasonable amount I think - most of my 34 failures to date have involved mistakes or sub-optimal play and, as it's 6 months since I attempted this class, I felt it was about time to have another go and see if I can do better.
I decided at the start of the run (as I quite often do) not to take any risks. That sort of resolution is typically about as well kept as the average New Year's resolution, but I'll see if I maintain resolve this time. At least for the first session there was no hint of trouble
Shoal provided a couple of levels and a pretty good addition of 25 HPs before I moved to Beregost to do a bit of looting. That provided plenty of money to upgrade to a +1 shortbow before heading to the basilisk area. Following Korax around there is usually an easy way to get lots of extra XP (so long as you know where the basilisks are of course
The +1 arrows were put to use at High Hedge to shoot the golems before I talked to Thalantyr. Then it was on down to Nashkel to learn CLW. The ankheg armor found there was traded in to buy full plate in Beregost. I didn't have enough money for a magical shield there as well immediately, but a couple of rings found on the way to the FAI brought a good price after I shot Tarnesh (having the temple available for retreat just in case that proved necessary).
I'd seriously considered switching the starting proficiencies to use long sword as a melee weapon. That's because the +4 to spell saves from using the Spellbreaker long sword in SoD is so important to get through some of the fights there. However, the AC bonus from Twinkle does make it easier to get there in the first place and in the end I kept the melee proficiency as scimitars. Hence, the next port of call was the Lake area. A single gnoll was activated to attack Drizzt there and I ate my lunch while it hacked away 73 HPs - at which point I retreated to another map to reset the combat. The second attempt was a similar story and the third time proved not to be the charm. The fourth was a further waste of time and when the fifth went by as well I considered just letting the gnolls kill Drizzt. However, even though the EE has substantially reduced the chance of the halberds of these particular gnolls breaking, this was an unusually long time to wait for that to happen and I perservered. The sixth attack also came to nothing, but finally on the seventh the over-stressed halberd gave way - and some time later I was able to pick up 12k for finishing off the unconscious drow.
A series of more minor tasks included picking up the pantaloons and reducing reputation further by shooting down Bentan.
A few tasks in the Cloud Peaks, on the way to get the charisma tome, included a first use of melee to chop down Zal. Immediately after that a common wolf was enough for level 7 and another lot of 12 HPs.
Next up will be the Nashkel Mine.
Wizard Slayer L7, 90 HPs, 81 kills
Previous updates:
The kobolds in the Nashkel Mine managed to muster only a single hit to add to the trap damage - but both were quickly healed in Mulahey's cave. As this is supposed to be a minimal-risk run, I didn't give Mulahey a chance to talk, but ran him round the little pond while shooting arrows.
Outside the mine, the amazon archers were drawn away and destroyed in melee. For the clerics I could ignore the potential danger of rigid thinking, so long as I retreated out of sight before that cast (and there was nothing else around to trigger movement while confused). I could have used a similar tactic with hold person, but decided just to shoot instead (with the option of running off the map if a spell completed). Lamalha's first attempt at that spell was disrupted and she died before finishing the second. Zeela made 2 attempts, but failed both times and was also shot down.
Back at Nashkel I rested to get LMD before confronting Nimbul. It's pretty safe to dodge in and out of the shop against him, as a decent level fighter has enough HPs to tank a number of magic missiles - so only the slower casting horror really needs to be dodged. However, in this case I just let the guards and Rasaad kill him instead.
At the Camp, Nimbul's boots meant the bandit archers needed criticals and they only got a couple of those. Taurgosz had no distance attacks at all - and thus no chance of doing any damage. For Tazok's tent, the only likely problem was Venkt's horror. He didn't follow me back outside though and the others would have needed to be pretty lucky to have a chance - once the archers were dead, Britik could just be run round.
I'd kept my reputation down to 9, so resting got me Bhaal horror - that's pretty crucial for a wizard slayer to shift the odds in your favor at the coronation.
Before going to the Cloakwood, I bought 10 arrows of piercing at the Carnival for use against Davaeorn. The only bit in the Cloakwood I didn't run straight through was the second area. The first web trap there could be tripped after checking to see if there were any spiders close by - the one there was duly killed.
At the mine, Drasus is fast on his feet, but slow with his morningstar - and only managed a single hit on me while being chopped down in a running fight.
I've used four main tactics with a wizard slayer against Davaeorn. The easiest is to use a scroll of PfM, but those are in limited supply and I haven't used one here for a long time. The next is to snipe shot him, trying to always remain close enough to the exit to run from his spells. That needs a lot of patience though as he's running round and it's easy to get drawn in too far - particularly if Davaeorn decides to stop running around and settle somewhere. The third is to retreat upstairs after the combat starts and rest. That often interferes with his script and may well result in him having no spells left when you return. Conversely though, I've also seen him get unlimited charm and hold spells trying that. On balance I think the fourth option is the least risky - that's to press the attack immediately and try to shut down his casting early on. His first two spells are lightning and fireball and, with 50% protection available against both of those, they're unlikely to do too much damage - while multiple shots at him are highly likely to score before he has a chance to do anything more dangerous. With the arrows of piercing purchased, my THAC0 was 4 here and Davaeorn was hit 3 times before he dimension doored away - meaning he had 75% spell failure and it wasn't surprising his attempted lightning failed. After a 4th hit I switched to cheap +1 arrows to finish him off.
After resting to get a second horror, I flooded the mine and got rewarded by a slave. Baldur's Gate is now open, so I can seek out another equipment upgrade there.
Wizard Slayer L7, 90 HPs, 203 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1138049/#Comment_1138049
I hadn't travelled north of the FAI before, so slaughtered some fishermen to get Tenya's bowl. Returning that got me my final BG1 level, with yet another 12 extra HPs.
After killing a nearby ankheg I went into the City and quickly picked up some improvements. The first of those was the dexterity tome - that pushed dexerity to 18, with a consequent bonus to AC. The next was the Helm of Balduran - that not only benefits THAC0, AC and saves, but even provides a few extra HPs for good measure. Note that the wizard slayer class is able to use magical items where those are defined as armor or weapons. Unsurprisingly that does not include rings, or amulets (though the amulet of Seldarine is an exception to that in ToB). However, it seems slightly odd that boots are counted as armor, while cloaks, belts and (especially) gauntlets are not.
The next item desired at this stage was Marek's +2 short bow (unlike in vanilla, that's not the best bow in BG1, but I've taken short bow proficiency to benefit from the extra APR available early in BG2 and the ability to hit creatures requiring +4 to hit later in BG2). At the temple Jalantha was shot down after offering her quest (I dodged one of her flame strikes before interrupting the second).
The final items gained for now were much more minor. Returning a body to Varci and visiting the local temple provided a minor improvement for my shield and an unneeded increase to wisdom.
Even in a minimal risk run, I couldn't resist doing a further tour of the Sword Coast to do the remaining major encounters while maximising reputation. One justification for that is the easy XP gained now will carry forward into SoD (so long as I don't reload the game prior to that) and make that marginally easier. Work done included:
- clearing the ankheg nest, without suffering a scratch (or even an acid burn).
- beating up the Doomsayer in a fair fight (I didn't bother with micro-managing movement to give me an APR advantage).
Back in the City I tend to go and get the Helm of the Noble to boost charisma for lower prices. However, with far more money than I need I didn't bother with that this time, but just stocked up on green scrolls and magic ammunition. The latter was needed for one final expedition to the coast, in search of sirines. There's a pretty good chance of shutting down their casting with more standard arrows, but to avoid any risk I used exploding ones - they automatically hit, as well as spreading spell failure through the explosion.
Once more in Baldur's Gate I made use of the tome to push natural constitution to 20 and sold Buckley's Buckler (though a higher constitution slightly improves the regeneration rate, that difference no longer seemed to justify using up an inventory slot on it). A few more encounters included killing the basilisk using horror - the Bhaal version of that only lasts 4 rounds, but that was more than enough to be safe when using acid arrows at 3 APR.
With the Seven Suns cleared, I decided to go for a little bonus by doing the ogre mage in the sewers as well - Spider's Bane being crucial there to avoid any danger of being held by the carrion crawlers.
At Candlekeep I accused Shistal of being an imposter and cut down the resulting greater doppleganger. I then headed on upstairs to give myself up, though not until I'd looted another PfP scroll.
After resting outside the City to get a second DUHM, I'm ready for the final stages of BGEE. Up to now the chances of dying, without making a mistake, have been minimal - but a little bit of luck will be needed to get past the coronation.
Wizard Slayer L8, 107 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 343 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1138049/#Comment_1138049
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1138050/#Comment_1138050
After talking twice to Tamoko (so that she will appear in the Undercity), I returned to Ramazith's Tower and used DUHM to kick open the container at the top of that - gaining a sixth PfM scroll there. Next, I went in search of Slythe. I wasn't bothered about Krystin, so just shot Slythe with a dispelling arrow without talking and beat him up.
At the coronation I reckoned my chances of success were probably as high as 80% if everything went to plan. That involved:
- using DUHM to boost attack and defense
- using horror as soon as the dopplegangers spawned and again a round later
- using dispelling arrows to nerf those still attacking the dukes (ignoring any attacking me, despite the melee bonus that gives them)
- switching to melee to finish things off
The first use of horror is important as it disrupts the AI of any dopplegangers attacking. It doesn't mean they won't start attacking again even while scared, but the initial blip may well mean they switch from the dukes to other targets. In this case horror affected 2 of them, which was a pretty good result. However, none of the dopplegangers initially appeared to be attacking me, meaning the lives of the dukes could still be very short-lived if the dopplegangers got lucky (I've seen the dukes killed several times in less than 2 rounds). Belt is much more robust than Liia, so I shot at the ones near him first - and found one of those decided to switch to attacking me. After a third successful dispelling arrow, a second horror sent the still-hasted one attacking Liia running. Things looked pretty good at this point with 1 dispelled doppleganger each on the dukes and another dispelled one attacking me, while the other 3 were panicking.
With nothing else to buy, I stocked up with some more magical ammunition before heading for the Thieves maze. I used a PfU scroll there to make killing a pair of skeleton warriors easy and the scroll lasted long enough to account for 4 more of those in the Undercity after I bypassed Rahvin's party there. I have sometimes killed that party to get Rahvin's 2 exploding arrows, but that either requires the use of a PfM or opens up a bit of a risk (and even horror on him won't necessarily stop him using the arrows anyway) - and I decided to leave him this time.
I maneuvered Tamoko to where I could attack her and retreat into the temple if necessary. However, doing that very often results in her duplicating (that happens occasionally with anything, but is common with her) - so I just tanked her flame strikes when those failed to be disrupted (I suspect they are ForceSpell casts) while shooting her down.
Inside the temple there were 8 more exploding arrows on offer from Angelo. Fighting him fairly would require the use of a PfM scroll, entail some risk and almost certainly end up with some of the arrows being used. However, if you don't fight fair then you can get the lot for the cost of a single green PfE scroll
I wandered around for a while (including in extreme sight range of Sarevok) to see whether the stinking cloud and web effects would trigger. I don't know exactly what causes this, but they do often trigger at this stage when they pose no danger. However, they stubbornly refused to do so this time. The risk-free way to proceed would have been to use a PfM scroll and I had enough available to do that without causing problems in SoD. However, I couldn't resist trying to avoid using any in BGEE and eventually shot Sarevok with a dispelling arrow. As sometimes happens, the trigger this time seemed to be Sarevok's conversation and suddenly things looked bleak with him advancing and area effects spawning. The stinking cloud arrived without me even spotting the projectile, but I saved against that and tried to activate PfM.
I think the odds comfortably favor getting through BGEE, but mucking about at the end there was definitely pushing my luck
Wizard Slayer L9, 122 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 362 kills
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1138049/#Comment_1138049
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1138050/#Comment_1138050
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1138062/#Comment_1138062
I wasn't working this morning, so was able to crack on immediately with SoD. In the starting dungeon, Porios saw his guards scattered by horror and was persuaded to surrender. PfU made clearing the first 3 areas downstairs easy and the mercenaries in the 4th area were pulled back for the Flaming Fist to help with. A couple of dispelling arrowed destroyed Korlasz's defences and a roll of 2 was enough for an arrow of piercing to strike home and prompt her to surrender. I tried shooting her down to avoid her appearing in the City, but thought she was going to get away when I had a critical miss - she hung around a fraction of a second too long though. I collected a shield upgrade from Fanegonorom before leaving for the Ducal Palace.
In the City I killed a few NPCs for their equipment. With the 65k or so worth of items brought from BGEE in bags there was no particular need for that, though the protection from fear provided by Kiel's helmet worn by Minsc could be useful. I also did the quest to get the Battle Tankard that provides immunity to fatigue.
On leaving the City the first action was to travel to the Coast Way Forest in search of a regeneration ioun stone. I tend not to bother with that these days with other characters, as there are far more regeneration potions available than I ever use, but it still seems potentially helpful for a wizard slayer. Once it became clear I was double-crossing Ikross and Isabella, I shot the mage twice his shadow door triggered and then ran out of sight - so the next spell would target the vampire. However, that spell fizzled allowing me to attack again. An acid arrow then finished the job. Isabella was meleed at close quarters to avoid her attacking Tsolak.
On the way back I came across a group of orcs and trolls. For sling users that encounter offers a useful upgrade, but not for me and I left them alone. I gave Takos his items back, but demanded one of them as a reward. Normally I take the mirror of identification, but as I couldn't use that kept the Suncatcher shield instead. I also bought a marginal bow upgrade from Herod with the Savage Shortbow.
At the bridge I paused immediately after the cutscene and ran behind the tent - there's just enough time to do that before the enemies fixate on you, thus allowing you to avoid any combat before Caelar arrives for a parley.
Moving on to the Troll Claw Woods, I ran straight through there - ignoring the hobgoblins who were the only enemies visible. I then bounced back and forth to the Forest of Wyrms until I triggered an encounter with a young green dragon. A bit more bouncing and I found a big hole in the ground - which was the reason for all the bouncing. The goblin witchdoctor guarding it was shot down before he could react. The rest of the goblins were no threat, but I short-circuited that fight by using a shield sunfire. Inside the hole, the first group of myconids could only confuse me and I was confident I could kill them even while confused - but I saved against that anyway. The second group had a blue myconid that could pacify me, which seemed slightly more of a threat - a couple of arrows of detonation were used there, though once again I saved against the effects. That gave me the Spell Breaker long sword - equipping that reduces spell saves from a very vulnerable 5 right down to a much less vulnerable 1.
It was only at this stage that I realized I hadn't received the regeneration ioun stone - I guess that was intended to be delivered at some point when I was bouncing around and I didn't notice it. Oh well, it shouldn't be crucial. There were no casters on the way to Morentherene's cave so progress was easy to there. In the next cave a bugbear shaman was kind enough to stay out of the way while I killed the greeting party. The shaman then saved against horror from out of sight, but on its own had little chance against an arrow onslaught anyway. A spike trap in the passage would have been repaired by the regeneration ioun stone, but instead I successfully rested to get full health back. The next group of bugbears were pulled away one by one before the shaman there failed against horror and was shot down.
Inside the temple proper there's a hold trap just after some worgs, so they need to be killed before progressing. Without the ability to kill Ziatar from out of sight I worked through the various groups of guards to ensure they wouldn't complicate that fight. I wanted to have PfM and PfP active against the Neothelid, so decided to use those for Ziatar first rather than use up exploding arrows. Sanctuary allowed her to heal, but it still didn't take too long to finish her off. However, even though Ziatar had been out of sight of the cells, her cries had apparently annoyed the Crusaders and I was at a loss about what to do with them. While leaning against the wall thinking about that, however, I must have activated some sort of trap mechanism and inherited Keherrem's badge
I was wary about the varied abilities the Neothelid has to hold, charm and stun you, so just ran past it with Spell Breaker equipped to find Akanna. Two exploding arrows almost killed Akanna, but she just survived and disappeared. Despite me running round the room following that, her aerial servants took advantage of their good weapon speed to both hit me hard from invisibility. However, that made them potential targets and a further exploding arrow was enough to finish off the invisible Akanna.
The way that played out was pretty irritating, but the Neothelid is one of the encounters I've not found a really reliable solution for. I have in the past tried to drag it further away to make certain it can't get back in time to block me in. It's also possible to drag the aerial servants away while invisible by leaving immediately after attacking Akanna. That strategy has potential drawbacks of its own, such as alerting other opponents and giving the Neothelid more opportunity to use its special abilities - but maybe I'll revert to some variation of that when I try this character again.
If you're going to do it anyway, why not just kill her the first time she appears?
I love your insights into strategy in the Infinity Engine.
Difficulty: Core
Mods: None
Clean up Candlekeep, then dodge Imoen, Xzar, and Montaron. At High Hedge, I kill the gnolls for Perdue's Short Sword. I skip Shoal for now. I plan on recruiting party members once I hit the level cap and want to get the helm.
In Beregost, Marl brings me to level 2. Firebead's book and Landrin's spiders bring me to level 3.
I purchase some +1 bolts and head back to High Hedge for the flesh golems, which bring me to level 4.
I purchase a potion case and a potion of mirrored eyes then head to Nashkel. At the Carnival, I kill Vitiare for his potion of master thievery.
I wonder around near Beregost to get level 5 by killing the ogre for belts. Afterwards, I quaff the potion of master thievery and pickpocket Algernon.
With Algernon's Cloak, I head to the Temple and charm Kelddath to cast Animate Dead. Kelddath is brought out of the temple and the skeleton warrior wreaks havoc on the sirines. I make a mistake by peaking and am almost charmed by a sirine. I rest in Beregost then charm Kelddath again for his skeleton warrior. It's used to clear the vampiric wolves, getting me to level 6.
Low on funds, I retrieve Evermemory and sell it at the Nashkel Store, with the plan of stealing it back later. I stock up on scrolls from High Hedge and use two potions of genius to memorize them all. Under cover of invisibility, I activate the gnolls around Drizzt but get greedy, and while he doesn't initiate dialogue, he does kill all the gnolls. I'll return later with a cleric capable of casting Farsight, but for now Drizzt lives.
I use PfP to kill the basilisks without Korax and hit level 7.
Back in Beregost, I charm Silke to help save Neera. It's going well, but Neera hits Silke with color spray, which turns Silke hostile (at least I think it was the color spray). Silke targets Neera but is unable to kill her, and I manage to get the killing blow. Neera is deprived of her gem bag and removed from the party. I use a Strength spell to enter the mansion and retrieve the lightning wand.
Skull Trap, Magic Missiles, and the lightning wand are used to kill the Battle Horrors at Durlag's Tower. One of them drops a Knock scroll. I use invisibility to get to the roof and kill the greater basilisks, which gets me to level 8.
I skipped the lesser basilisk on the way it and hit it with a Skull Trap and a Magic Missile on the way out. Unfortunately, I forgot to recast PfP, and thus ends my run.
Maybe I should. However, in my version of no-reload I don't allow any testing (with the limited exception of reloading an autosave if I died in a battle without the reason for that being clear). Finding out if a new tactic works can thus be pretty painful if that ends the run. In this case though, I agree the implications are unlikely to be so serious. If, for instance, Tamoko proved to be immortal or disappeared if you attacked when you first met her (and then didn't appear in the Underdark) that would just reduce my AC in SoD by 1 - noticeable, but not enough to seriously reduce the chance of success.
Journal of Ronald the Righteous
On the way to Beregost, I won several minor battles including a couple of ogrillon which brought me up to level 2.
Heading North, I took on an ogre and won before taking on some gnoll.
I then killed Karlat.
and helped Mellicamp which raised me to level 3.
Zordral caused some trouble
After that battle I rested for 10 days!
I then took on Greywolf. Because he was more powerful than me, I let the guards wound him badly before finishing him off myself with my bow.
I then rested before killing Oopah.
In transit I killed a ghast and again levelled up.
I them took on Tarnesh. I was lucky once more. I was panicked by his spell and helpless when a guard killed him.
To the North after killing ankhegs I levelled up again.
I then killed more ankheg.
After killing Sonner, I gave Tenya the bowl.
Vax and Zal died easily.
Caldo and Krumm were next.
I then trashed the gnoll stronghold and released a mage from there. She was surprised that I didn't want her help, but then she doesn't understand my aversion to arcane magic.
In transit I killed a polar bear and shortly afterwards another,
Further North I killed Neville so I now have two magical swords.
I then took Brage to the temple.
and nearby killed Niera.
While looking for Mutamin I killed Linden, Peter et al.
In Beregost I cleared a nest of spiders before heading out to kill Bassilus.
Bassilus cast rigid thinking which allowed him to hurt me badly, but I got my revenge.
Upon returning to Beregost, Silke attacked me and died.
Heading west, because they couldn't charm me, killing sirine was remarkably easy. I was protected from evil which seems to have protected me from poison.
I also killed Shoal and Droth.
Once again I spurned a mage's help.
Outside Lamalha et al were killed followed by a revenant.
Then some ghasts, Narcillicus and Nimbul
I arrived safely in Beregost.
Jeanluc - inquisitor, protagonist
Sarah - undead hunter
April - undead hunter
Forrest- paladin
Heather - cavalier
Imoen - thief
I haven't been posting on this run, mostly because it's been pretty uneventful. In BG 1 a band of paladins is a strong force, and often won battles in just seconds. The group just made it past Sarevok and is moving onto BG 2. The 6th slot is reserved for a thief class character. If a paladin gets chunked, we will recruit Keldorn. If another paladin gets chunked we will recruit Mazzy, as she kind of a halfling paladin. However, no other characters will be recruited this run. Paladins (+1 thief) or bust! Here's one interesting screenshot - paladins throwing fireballs on 5 ogre mages in a house in southern Baldur's Gate.
Much work and little play for me during quarantine, to such an extent that I decided to park slow-paced Eyulf (Priest of Helm) and his comrades in Durlag's Tower, enabling faster solo play with a TN Elven Fighter/Thief named Stil the Blackraven. Stil starts out specialized in long swords and shortbows in what for me constitutes a standard setup with SCS v32 on insane difficulty.
Early on, Stil did some low risk questing for items and XP (rogue ogre, Beregost and Nashkel quests). He took on Tarnesh early on, at level 2/3, as he forgot to hide while leaving the FAI. A backstab, an area transition (evading a Horror), and an arrow later, Tarnesh was down. At level 3/4 (thanks to Brun and Tenya), Stil felt confident enough to bad-mouth Greywolf. Several arrows felled the bounty hunter and rewarded the elf with Varscona.
Stil then went on an excursion to Mutamin's garden. One of the gnome's closest pets was a bit further west from its usual location, but after two arrows launched at the basilisk, the wizard showed up anyway. With his ability to cast Remove Magic and with several basilisks left to kill still, this was inconvenient. The hasted gnome forced Stil to quaff his only potion of clarity when he cast a Horror at our hero, and also dealt some Magic Missile damage before Stil went invisible.
Now rather than getting the main quest going, Stil decided to do things very differently. He wasn't aware of any "main quest" (not talked to Khalid, Jaheira, Xzar, Monty, or Berrun Ghastkill), and he was aware that while he had been training his left arm into a proper sword arm (** in TWF at levels 3 and 6), he still had only one proper long sword. Stil returned to Durlag's Tower, the ideal place to become an even more accomplished warrior and if there was any place that could be expected to hold a quality long sword, it had to be the forsaken tower.
On the first underground level, the Blackraven stalked around patiently, assassinating spiders, greater doppelgangers, and undead here and there.
The Blackraven took a moment to deliberate about his next step: to attack the Demon Knight that had taken control over the level if not the entire tower, or to leave. He opted for the former. Light buffs (fire resistance) to get his enemy to waste two castings of Remove Magic,
He traveled to the Nashkel Carnival to get a lot of loot identified (why are we still penny-pinching with tens of thousands of GP?), and some of it sold. In Nashkel he accepted a commission from Berrun Ghastkill to investigate the Nashkel Mines, and that's where the story finally takes off. Mulahey (greenstone amulet), a hard-hitting revenant, and Nimbul (greenstone amulet) were no match for the Blackraven.
In Cloakwood, Stil secured a cloak of non-detection, Spider's Bane (relying on stealth to loot Centeol's den), and a potion of invulnerability. He also had a run-in with four amazons, who weren't much of a threat thanks again to the greenstone amulet. Stil played hide and seek with Drasus and his gang, applying one of few oils of speed for the occasion. A potion of defense (from Silke's supposed thugs) a greenstone charge, and the staff of striking did most of the work.
Character record (fantastic initial roll of 96) and inventory after arrival in Baldur's Gate, with lots of gold spent on potions and ammo and with the dex tome read:
As has been said before "Luck runs out sooner than you would think"
I had been so used to my saving rolls saving me that when two failed saves against web and poison arrived in Cloakwood, I was still expecting to be able to survive.
I didn't. I had reached level 8 when this happened.
The Morale Failening
Spellhold: Irenicus gets slapped with a critical backstab from Stabby and has his magic devoured by Spaz.
Underdark: The siege of Ust Natha. Stabby breaks his backstab damage record early on in the fight. Yin keeps the drow corralled on the left path of the big room I prefer to fight in with a Merciless Blizzard.
The siege continues. Spaz devours the magic of any priests and mages that appear. The Nightwalker cleans house but even it can kill things only so fast. Teleport Fields give us trouble so drow start invading the center room.
Since the army spawns off-screen and we spend our time near the center and north of the big room waiting out the Teleport Fields, the army gets concentrated on the left side. Matron Mother Ellavere appears, with her elites and demons clogging the left pathway to the center room. An archmage gates in a planetar. Stabby poisons an Arrow of Detonation and looses it into the huge crowd while Yin casts Shadowplague to suppress any casting coming from the horde, followed by Malefic Bomb to shake them up. Debuff sings to them and nearly everyone suffers morale failure. Balors cast Fire Storm at us, causing significant damage to Blaggy, Debuff, Yin, and Cactank while killing Spaz.
Cactank dies shortly after this from what I assume was an Implosion cast by a Balor. This is unusual because aTweak'd demons do not also have SCS demon powers.
This situation is untenable. Even if Debuff keeps the drow in permanent morale failure, the demons will keep casting Fire Storm and gating in other demons if they aren't dealt with. Yin heals up with a potion and kicks it into overdrive with Relentless Assault. Stabby reveals the planetar with Detect Illusions who has also been suffering morale failure since it was first summoned. Yin casts Oblivion Pull to get rid of it, which refreshes Relentless Assault's duration. Yin goes ballistic on the drow by casting Sunder Magic (Annulment would've been better but I wanted to save 8th level spells) -> Sigil of Misfortune -> Inertia -> Shadowblast, and finally, his most powerful spell of all, Dark Meteor.
Demons, drow, golems - doesn't matter - anyone who failed to save vs. breath at -9 in the Dark Meteor's radius is completely annihilated. The save could've been made steeper if Blaggy was nearby, but I pulled him away from the crowd because he was wounded and we were down two party members. The only survivors are a few scattered drow and some summons that Spaz had stunned with Binding Blast before he died. Blaggy uses the Rez Rod on Cactank who casts Mass Raise Dead to bring back Spaz and fully heal the party.
That could've gone much worse if Debuff hadn't kept most of the drow on morale failure lockdown. Debuff and Blaggy are the bane of all living things that aren't outright immune to morale failure, as Adalon soon experienced. She is stat drained to death by the Nightwalker.
Blaggy - Blackguard 24
Cactank - Dwarven Defender 17/Cleric 19
Stabby - Fighter 18/Assassin 21
Spaz V - Warlock 32
Debuff - Nightsinger 32
Yin II - Shadow Disciple 23
Edit: Bard 3 fell immediately after leaving Candlekeep. A wild dog ambush on the way to High Hedge. A melee weapon was equipped, but mayhaps next time I won't skimp on the chain mail...