At the Underground River I used chaotic commands to deal with some ankhegs and get a summoning option.
Soft feet boots allowed me to ignore the gargantuan spider's web on the way to find the cyclops. It was blasted with nymph lightning, allowing me to pick up the seal invisibly and continue on to the underground entrance.
Inside, I remembered that I'd intended yesterday to pick up a club upgrade first, but decided to do that on the way out.
A single shot on the ettin ghost persuaded it to be reasonable while I placed the Bwoosh. Then I persuaded Turin to let me into the Warrens by telling him knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I poisoned the food and water invisibly before showing myself to Hephernaan to re-open the elevator.
More invisibility allowed me to run past all the guards on the way out. I successfully remembered though that I still needed that club upgrade ...
Back at the Coalition Camp the other leaders would not allow me to surrender to Caelar, so I decided to make the best of a bad job and fight instead. When the coalition attacked, the first wave saw a nymph and moved to attack her - leaving them vulnerable to exploding arrows from behind. I didn't worry about collateral damage while taking them down .
The second wave was a similar story, before the third was finished off by wand to bypass a cleric's sanctuary.
The final wave saw nymphs spreading confusion ahead of them before more explosions took only a few seconds to cut short the fight among the invaders.
After resting I pushed on to the Castle and immediately went to find Ashatiel. A PfM scroll was used in case he managed a spell and in fact he did better than I expected. Often he will be stunned right at the start of the contest, but this time he saved several times before using his potion of magical shielding - requiring me to dispel that before eventually tagging him with a dart.
Inside the Castle, I rested up before following Caelar through a portal. A couple of stone form potions protected against potential status effects while running through the first area. Most of the types of devils are susceptible to stunning and I did that to the hamatula in order to reduce the threat from its barbed defense.
Once the devils were all dead I played Thrix's little game, despite him offering nothing I wanted, then moved on to the Hellevator. After buffing up I activated that and just meleed my way through 3 groups of opponents. Immediately after finishing the last of those off, I used 6 Champions Strength scrolls before arriving at the final destination.
On arrival at Belhifet I recruited Caelar and renewed my magic shielding potion before attacking. I took the safe option of keeping Caelar alive with restoration scrolls, rather than relying on my own fighting ability. That meant a slightly longer fight, but I was still just within the hour's session when Belhifet died.
Rather than save it there though, I did just run through the epilogue so that I can start in BG2EE next time. I also remembered to take the pantaloons out of my bag so that they will transfer.
We make a great start, with Thredbehr enraging to loot a precious gem and Grue using his charisma of 18 to obtain an unidentifiable +1 dagger from one of the guards. Grue splashes out on leather armour while Thredbehr pays for a helmet, and with that the big spenders leave Candlekeep behind them.
Our path crosses that of Shoal the dead nereid, and Mad Arcand. Upon reaching the coast we realise we have taken a wrong turn so head back to High Hedge and kill a trio of gnolls there before finding our way to Beregost (it's the town on the map marked Beregost).
Thredbehr can hardly believe his eyes as we leave town - not only have we failed to pick up a gem bag but Neera is still alive. We push on to Nashkel and then head back to the coast. A slight misunderstanding occurs when Thredbehr silently waits three seconds for Grue to cast a web and then attacks a pair of ogrillions. By this time Grue has silently realised what Thredbehr was waiting for and casts web. We'll be OK though.
We pay more attention to our web when we hear rustling in undergrowth to the north and a polar bear finds it is in a prickly position as our missiles pepper it's posterior.
Having grabbed a few items such as a sword from Greywolf, a +2 dagger from a revenant-shirker, a shield from Bjornin we find our reputation is at 20. Half a nest of ankhegs have been slain so we celebrate by purchasing a cloak at Ulgoths Beard and the dagger of venom from Beregost. A couple of scrolls later we are ready for basilisks and we've even found time to relive Neera of her gem bag (life).
Grue asks what is planned for Mutamin and Thredbehr enrages. That'll do nicely.
More webs foil Kirian and her gang - Lindin making a late break for us but only getting one stride before failing his save again.
Then we kill Teyngan's party - the last of which has us standing either side and keeps turning to face whoever attacked it last.
A slight accident happened here as Thredbehr scouted out a group of angry gnolls then went to relieve himself before fighting them. On his return he found Drizzt was mildly wounded so waited to observe the master drow finish the gnolls off - only he didn't and the gnolls were victorious. We'll honour him as best as we can (say Thredbehr wears his armour and keeps one sword while Grue keeps the other).
After retrieving Melicamp Thredbehr enrages against Bassilus the cleric. Grue notices the enraged thredbehr is shown as Held but the flailing dwarven weapon confirms this is not the case. Then we kill a trio of hobgoblins.
We find ourselves back at the coast thinking of sirenes. Thredbehr decides his enrage may not help against the likes of feeblemind so glugs a potion of clarity. Six sirenes later we've fought and poisoned our way to the cave of Black Alaric.
Inside the cave Thredbehr uses +1 arrows to kill three flesh golems while Grue tries out his fire salamander form and finds it's mini-fireball range to be short - taking a hit. Grue switches to bear form for the last golem and manages to get bashed to within an inch of death - fantastic that's how Grue likes to live (and almost die).
We made our way to Baldur's Gate and started to gather some of the best gear in the city, such as the Helm and Cloak of Balduran. Most of the minor quests were completed quickly and without trouble, though when facing Shandalr's daughters, two of my party ended up getting hit by a chaos spell:
Luckily, I was able to block their way out of the room, and they didn't start attacking all that much - still, this won't be the last time the chaos spell will play a negative role for Dassareth, and this battle would go on to have some consequences, as you will see later in this post.
One of the higher level wizards in the city is of course Sunin - and he did pre-buff with spell deflection among other things, and as I had no way to remove it, I had to either silence him (which I think was just not an option on my mind at this point) or get through his physical defenses quickly. He has this Kensai with him who has a great thac0 and can deal tons of damage, but Rowin was able to spook him right away, while the others took down Sunin's second servant:
However, Sunin proved to be quite good at renewing his defenses - I think he might've thrown down a fireball (almost killing Rowin) and some monster summoning spells before the party was able to finally take him down:
I left some of the harder quests in the city for later in order to make a quick trip to Ulgoth's Beard in order to steal the Ring of Free Action. However, I forgot about something - I had just killed Shandalar's daughters, and the man wasn't too pleased when he spotted me - so I was forced to take an early trip to Ice Island. Luckily, I had a protection from magic scroll with me (my usual approach for this place is to have my most powerful fighter use one of these and basically solo the entire thing). However, one of the wizards in the first group of three wasn't all that happy with fighting a spell-immune foe and ended up teleporting right to my party - which was hidden near the entrance. Rowin was almost killed once again in the battle, but in the end, the party prevailed (the level up you can see in the screenshot gave Rowin access to stoneskin, so he shouldn't be as vulnerable going forward):
Cadrax had a relatively easy time tracking down the remaining wizards, though some tried to hide from him, which resulted in some prolonged chases. His PfM scroll duration just ended as he finally killed the final foe still escaping his wrath:
Back in the city, I completed a few more quests - during the Marek&Lothander questline, I made sure to surround and kill Lothander to get a second pair of Boots of Speed. Next up, I finally felt prepared to complete the few open world dungeons I hadn't visited yet - Ulcaster was first. Dassareth, with her boots of grounding and her undead hunter bonus, did quite well against improved Icharyd, while the Wolf of Ulcaster stood no chance against a party buffed with Remove Fear, Bless, Haste, PfE 10' radius, the skald song and some individual buffs:
Now, for the Firewine Ruins, I had an invisible Galderan disarm all of the traps while Cadrax took down most of the kobolds by himself. I was able to rush the human wizard and kill him before he was able to cast any spells, and the ogre mage was affected by Galderan's Silence:
I also cleared the upper levels of Durlag's Tower, using a few wand charges against battle horrors, more PfP spells against Basilisks and a Wand of Paralyzation charge against the spellcasting ghost:
During my next visit to the Big City, I cleared Degrodel's House. At this point, Rowin was tanky enough to deal with invisible stalkers in melee range without trouble.
With only the Iron Throne left to explore, I decided to take a small detour in order to complete the three EE NPC quests for Neera, Dorn and Rasaad:
I did this mostly for the sake of completeness, but the rewards from the Dorn quest (mostly the elven chain mail and the sword with the ability to cast detect invisibility) were a nice bonus.
Next time - well, things have been going pretty well so far, but we're in for some trouble. Overconfidence can be deadly, and some of the following fights are among the hardest with SCS added into the mix. How many mistakes in a row can this party survive?
I love how Minsc allows you to automatically succeed at convincing the pirate king to condemn you to spellhold.
In other news, SCS party of rangers and thieves are heading towards our first confrontation with Jon.
Biggest concern is the spellhold lich, which we will probably have to cheese by draining his spellbook with summons.
Next biggest concern is Jon, who has never actually wiped me but is always a scary fight considering he can cast both dragon's breath and summon dark planetar. He tends to be pretty easy to spell interrupt in the spellhold encounter, however.
Edit: Second run in a row where the first page turn on infinite spellbook is burning hands. Ugh.
Edit #2: For some reason, half of my traps failed to trigger against the spellhold portal pitfiend, so we had to fight him. Turns out SCS pit fiends can cast 20d6 fireballs at will. I knew they could cast fireballs, but I did not know they could go above the normal 10d6 cap! Anyway:
Note that the pit fiend rolled an 84 damage fireball against Nalia. Yikes! Charname has 81 hp and spell save of 4.
This situation is not good, as the party cannot resurrect anyone until we reach the Sahuagin city... However, the party is probably OK as long as it doesn't make any more mistakes. Lack of Jan's invisibility 10' radius will make Yoshi and his thieves more dangerous (should we make it that far). And we will certainly miss the third caster in the fight against Jon.
And I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that everyone made their saves, and Jan was the only death (and he was not perma'd). It is unfortunate that I was just thinking before the fireball that "maybe I should heal Jan to full with an extra healing potion, just to be safe". And I was like, nah nothing can do 30 damage to Jan in one round. Wrong!
Edit #3: Interesting that there is a scroll of limited wish in spell hold dungeon. That might be interesting to use against Jon and the clones. Particularly the wail of the banshee one time wish is something I never use, but would likely kill several of the clones, especially if paired with Malison. Unfortunately the wiki suggests that it requires 12 wisdom and while Jan has 14, he is currently dead and Nalia/Imoen top out at 11..
I'd gone past my standard allotted hour in the previous session and had decided to compound that offense by importing into BG2EE, so I was able to make an immediate start on game play this morning.
Quite early on in the dungeon I thought I'd do a bit more experimentation with spirit summons and try to use them for all the encounters. They proved much more reluctant than in BGEE/SoD to move after me in between activating the dance, so keeping them going between enemies was difficult. They're generally a relatively slow method of making progress anyway, so it took a while to do the first level. The only enemy which fought hard enough to beat off an initial attack - forcing me to run away and establish a new group - was the cambion. It's luck ran out though when it failed to resist a bear stun - that's non-magical, so can affect most enemies. It's particularly vicious in that the spirits have poor THAC0, so normally struggle to hit, but several of them can rack up a lot of damage during even the single round duration of a stun.
Shortly after that encounter I got up to level 12 by talking to Rielev.
That gave me the opportunity to summon fire elementals, but I kept going with the spirits, benefiting from an increase from 3 to 4 in the maximum number of spirits available and the chance to generate lesser nature spirits - the otyugh being the first victim of those.
Spirits were not easy to use in the mephit portal room as they had a preference for attacking the unlimited mephits rather than the portals, but by locking a couple of the mephits in the transport room I eventually succeeded.
The clone killed herself with a lightning bolt, but other than that spirits dealt with all the enemies on that level - except Ulvaryl, who I never thought I had a realistic chance at.
The final assassin fell with just a few minutes left in the hour.
That left me with just time to sell a few things and donate most of the money to boost reputation.
Shaman 12, 92 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), kills 3 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
After the mucking about in Jon's dungeon last time, I cracked on today. The circus was restored to normality with a few doses of Spirit Fire. At the inn I concentrated on ensuring Brennan couldn't run away, but only Mencar survived the initial assault and spell barrage - but he couldn't do damage quickly enough to deal with spirits.
Elementals meant dealing with the Copper Coronet was quick and simple.
Suna Seni realized too late that an unsuspecting victim might not be all that unsuspecting (and invisible).
Immediately after that I saved Renfeld - it always tends to be annoying when that happens and I couldn't quite carry all the loot from that.
At the Docks elementals dealt with a first vampire ambush.
I then dropped off Renfeld and went to deal with Sanasha and Prebek.
Returning 'Montaron' to Xzar got me a level, before I exacted some posthumous revenge for Xzar on Lucette.
Some pirates were smoked out of their nest before I headed for Watcher's Keep.
There were no vampiric wraiths there, so a bunch of elementals were able to clear the initial mobile occupants.
There was just time for more elementals to kill the archer statue and spirits to deal with one of the others.
The remaining two statues should really have had to wait for next time, but I decided to permit a few minutes of overtime to allow spirits to claim a couple more victims.
Shaman 13, 94 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), kills 42 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
I made my way up the Iron Throne building, feeling fairly confident. Overconfident, in fact - I had no trouble with any previous hostile adventuring parties, so I thought I could simply take on the Iron Throne party head on. Usually, I don't do this - I tend to wait on the previous level with some summons and traps while luring the opponents downstairs. This tends to be a fairly safe and reliably strategy.
Going upstairs, I started by firing my two wands of fire and one necklace of missles at my opponents. A decent opening, but no one died. In retrospect, I should've gone all out and thrown two more fireballs (I had at least one more necklace of missles and some explosion potions):
My hasted party rushed in in order to take out the enemy spellcasters as quickly as possible - one wizard fell right away, but the other was able to go invisible, and the cleric threw up sanctuary:
I wasn't willing to throw more AoE at these guys and forgot about Albruin and its ability to detect invisibility, so I started to go after the fighters. At this point, the thieves added by SCS started to appear, and one of them almost killed Galderan outright with a backstab:
At this point, I somehow had forgotten about the invisible wizard, which allowed him to cast the devastating greater malison + chaos combo. This was certainly the single largest mistake of my run so far - I simply was too focused on the thieves at this point, trying to prevent another deadly backstab. I didn't watch the combat log closely enough, I didn't pause often enough. I could've used potions of clarity , I could've used berserker rage, but I simply didn't even realize that the wizard was still around. Galderan avoided the chaos, because I had pulled him away after he almost died to the backstab. Rowin was the only one to make his saving throw. The other four got confused. While the wizard was casting, I had taken out most enemies, except for the wizard himself, the cleric (protected by his sanctuary spell), one invisible thief and one of the fighters - so it was Rowin (still fully buffed, but affected by greater malison) plus a near-death Galderan against a wizard, a cleric, a thief and a fighter, with four our-of-ontrol party members - and I had basically no way to protect Dassareth, so with some bad luck and others randomly attacking her, the run could be over at any point:
As you can see, Dassareth was already down to 52 hp - this was due to a few random attacks by Cadrax. My biggest fear at this point was that the thief would simply backstab and kill Dassareth right away, but he went after Khelbara instead. He and Cadrax, who started attacking Khelbara as well, got the Kensai down to 45 hp, but Rowin took the opportunity to take down the now-revealed thief with magic missles while tanking the three remaining foes with his stoneskins and other defensive spells:
At this point, I scrolled up the combat log to see if the remaining wizard had pre-buffed with shield. He didn't. Rowin was able to magic missle him down next, while also hastily evading another spell cast by the cleric (I believe it was Silence). At the same time, Cadrax continued to attack Khelbara:
Rowin rushed back into battle as Cadrax sadly killed Khelbara with a crit:
My trusty sorcerer took down the cleric with another round of magic missles. Before the remaining fighter was able to take down Cadrax, the berserker's chaos spell ran out - I acivated his rage immediately, and he was able to destroy the sole remaining foe:
This could've easily been the end of the run, if the chaos spell had played out differently and more of the party had started attacking Dassareth. Rowin basically saved the party by himself. A terrible combination of bad tactics, overconfidence and an extreme lack of attention.
After resurrecting Khelbara, the party had enough tough encounter at the gates of Candlekeep - the ogre mage ambush. We started off with a combination of haste, prayer and remove fear:
I learned from my mistakes, also using berserker rage and Albruin to reveal the invisible ogres while buffing up some more and starting to whittle down enemy defenses:
However, suddenly, all of the ogre makes assaulted Rowin with magic missles - I had prioritized stoneskin instead of shield or invisibility, and Rowin died immediately. At the same time, the party was able to take down a couple of ogre mages:
Before we were able to kill the final foe, Khelbara got hit by a charm spell - luckily, Galderan was also able to hit her with hold person, and so the battle was ours:
Rowin was resurrected at the temple in Candlekeep. Two tough fights, two deaths, but we're still alive. In previous runs, I had everyone in the part use invisibility potions as soon as the ogre mages turned up, in order to get into a good position, buff up, summon help etc. - once again, I didn't go for the safest strategy and had to pay for it.
Next time, the party will explore Candlekeep and return to Baldur's Gate once more. We will also be more diligent with preparing for difficult encounters, though chaos does get to make a return appearance.
Bork is not true neutral in the sense that he actually AIMS for balance. In general he aims to be good, but he's got a bit of a temper so does things that he later regrets.
Trilogy Run of Rangers & Thieves (SCS Insane; PC Halfling Swashbuckler)
Since last update have progressed from Bodhi's dungeon in Spellhold to Ust Natha.
I cheesed the spellhold lich by draining most of his spells with summons. I then bum rushed him with archers that were buffed with enchanted weapon so they hit with +3.
He did not cast spelltrap, so it's possible that the party would have had a chance in a fair fight, but to be honest we just didn't think we had the spell power for it (especially with Jan being killed by the pit fiend in the first part of the dungeon).
If we had cleric spells (CC, DW, holy word, false dawn, and raise dead), plus Edwin so that a reasonable number of NPCs could be covered by protection from magical energy, I might have given it a try. As it was, it just seemed too dangerous. I think that is the only fight I have to cheese for the rest of the run.
I fought Jon, who managed to get timestop off a fraction of a second before a cloudkill hit. Somehow I got Nalia's aura timing off and he slipped the cast through.
Fortunately, he cast a defensive spell, followed by Improved Alacrity, and then spent most the rest of the fight getting interrupted. He easily could have used the Alacrity to throw up a bunch of defensive buffs, but for some reason he didn't.
Wanev eventually got off an ADHW and effectively ended the fight.
In the Underwater City, Jan got a few opportunities to practice his backstabs. I'm not going to say that Ogre-stabs are *good* per-se, but they can be hilarious when they land. He struggles with poor thac0 and APR and of course MI, SS and Immunity to normal weapons all protect from the ogre stab, but some enemies don't have any of those, and well...
Note that I don't think this is an exploit as I interpret the ogre "morningstar" to effectively be a club in an ogre's hands.
Later on in the underdark, the party had a little bit of trouble against the first drow war band. The drow mage cast sphere of chaos, which can disintegrate on a failed save vs. spell. The party can't cast death ward, so this created a large no-go area as well as a very dangerous moment when Jan failed his save. Fortunately he was polymorphed rather than disintegrated.
In addition, the mushrooms to the west aggroed and started spawning myconids.
Some invulnerability potions + improved invisibility potions got the human rangers low enough saves and eventually the drown were killed.
The fight against the Light Gem Balor went... OK? I think he can cast symbol death/stun, but he didn't. He did land a large number of Vorpal hits on Valygar, who was tanking using AC/Ilbratha mirrors. But, Invulnerability potions + Improved invisibility gave save vs. death in the -5 zone and so he resisted all the vorpals (save vs. death -4). He did cast implosion, but it was on my summoned Efreeti, which was very nice of him.
Imoen lowered the Balor's resistance 3x and then he was killed with a very large number of magic missiles, plus a little bit of ranged attacks from Minsc and PC. It turns out that he is immune to +2 weapons, so it was a little hard to damage him with ranged weapons (boomerang dagger didn't work e.g.), but Minsc and PC at least were able to get a few hits in with the +3 ammo from Watcher's Keep as well as the +5 darts from the cloak of stars. If I had known in advance, we could have used enchant weapon.
Lastly, we rescued Phaere in a moderately scary fight against her mindflayer captors.
Minsc and Valygar immediately failed their saves against the flayer stun and were then killed. I kept the mages far away because they weren't protected from the umber hulk confusion and I worried that they might accidentally attack the drow, and ruin the entire Ust Natha quest line.
PC was stun immune (has -6 save vs. spell), and alongside Phaere, Solaufein and a few skellies + the flesh golem were enough to finish off the attackers. Unfortunately, the traps set by Jan and PC failed to do much damage as the Mindflayers portal in blue and then go hostile sequentially. Phaere got to "badly injured" but survived.
We also murdered Qilue, who returned to her normal status of "road bump" after shockingly wiping my party of fighters back in the summer. Imoen and Nalia casting Remove Magic stripped her mages' combat protections, leaving them with little hope against the rangers.
I am somewhat concerned about the mindflayer city, but I will probably do it after getting the greenstone amulet from the beholders, which makes it less concerning. I may have to skip both Deirex and the House Jaelet fight as too dangerous. May also skip the soul prison lich (forget his name).
I was paying more attention to the US election this morning than my game, but still managed to make a bit of progress. That started with diving into the sewers under the Copper Coronet. A rare use of Chaotic Commands allowed me to dance up some spirits to deal with myconids.
Spirits and Spirit Fire did much of the work to clear the way to the slavers and end their threat.
I then got to level 14 by reporting success to Hendak.
I took Fire Storm as my first level 7 spell. Buffing up with fire protection allowed me to walk around in fire and that was used several times in the Graveyard. One particular advantage of that spell is that it ignores magic resistance, so is effective against skeleton warriors.
Reputation is now up to 18. Next time a visit to Trademeet should maximise that and prompt a bit of shopping.
After reaching the FAI enrage helped me to defeat Tarnesh.
I then cleared the area of hobgoblins and returned Joia's ring before heading northwards to kill the evil Sonner. I returned Tenya's bowl before taking on an ankheg with the help of enrage.
Its death helped me to reach level 3 and *** in long swords having started at Candlekeep with ** in long swords, * in longbows, and * in sword and shield style.
Upon making my way to Beregost, I got into conflict with Silke and was exceedingly lucky. Rather than her magic hurting me, instead it killed those that I was trying to protect with the result that I was soon able to kill her myself.
Upon entering the inn I was able to kill Karlat immediately afterwards.
When attacked by a horde of undead I had enough wisdom to flee.
But when a solitary ghast attacked, I kited it and gained 650 exp.
Yet more luck enabled me to aid Mellicamp.
Upon killing some gnolls, I was able to locate Perdue's Sword.
I then headed for nashkel, found some armour, and turned down a reward from Oubliek.
In the nearby Carnival I helped Bentha.
To the south I helped Prism against Greywolf and in turn I was helped by the guards at the mine who pumped Greywolf full of arrows. He followed me when I moved away from them not realising that when I became enraged, I would be the better fighter.
I then helped Samuel get to the FAI.
I helped farmer Brun against the ankhegs and as a result reached level 6 and **** in long swords and also became a hero.
Of course by this time I also had taken possession of Greywolf's sword.
After making their way through the Candlekeep library and catacombs, our party dealt with Prat and his allies with a quick, decisive and fully-buffed strike:
Back in Baldur's Gate, Dassareth avoided any encounters with the Flaming Fist, took down Cythandria and prepared to face Slythe and Krystin. Albruin's ability to detect invisibility came in quite handy here:
Slythe was taken down rather quickly, but Krysten's powerful defenses allowed her to cast chaos - this time, though, I was careful and watching the combat log. I realized she was targeting Sentenza, and so she hastily moved far away from the others, so chaos would only be able to affect her. I could've used a potion of clarity, due to a risk of reputation loss in case Sentenza would start attacking nearby innocents, but decided against it, because I had tons of gold to buy back reputation, but limited amounts of clarity potions. Krysten was also able to finish a charm spell before her defenses failed and she died, this time targeting Dassareth. Once again, I was watching the combat log carefully, and Dassareth moved out of sight before the charm spell hit her, so she didn't do anything while charmed:
At the ducal palace, the fully-buffed party was easily able to take down the doppelgangers, saving both dukes (in fact, I think none of them took any damage at all):
Following Sarevok to the Undercity (for now - still TotSC content to do), the hostile party there didn't do very well against a bunch of fireballs (this time, I went for the full six) - only one ogre survived, with little hp left:
After taking down Tamoko, Dassareth returned upstairs and prepared to journey to the Isle of Balduran.
Next time, we will deal with Greater Wolfweres, Loup Garous and Durlag's Tower. Can we maintain our new-found focus, or will we fall into bad old habits again? We shall see...
Today started with Taquee being blasted with lightning, while pre-summoned elementals dealt with the genies in the tent.
Moving on to the Grove, elementals on their own are pretty efficient killers - but adding a fire storm or two added that little finishing touch.
Cernd dealt with Faldorn for me.
I hadn't yet done the skinner quest, but just clearing the tomb was enough to push reputation up to 20.
That prompted a return to the Docks in Athkatla to buy a nymph cloak to also raise charisma to 20. Deciding to take on Mae'Var's tasks I went to get a necklace from the Talos temple before returning to the Docks and picking up a level thanks to some optimistic muggers.
I learnt insect plague there and that helped to make short work of Rayic.
There was still time to run through a few more tasks for Mae'Var, watch Sansuki get drained by some vampires and stage a takeover of the thieves guild.
The last few minutes were occupied with spending some of the 140k earned to date at the Promenade. One of the items purchased was the Ring of Air Control and that will probably be used to annoy the Cowled Wizards next time.
After reuniting Rufie and Albert, killing Vax an Zal, helping a dryad, and killing Ingot, I bought the necklace of missiles and a couple of scrolls of protection for use against some adventurers, the basilisks and Mutamin.
Enrage proved to be invaluable against Bassilus and Zargal.
It proved equally useful against sirine, flesh golems and traps.
Whilst enrage was still highly useful at Durlag's Tower, the monsters there were not a pushover.
When I reached 161000 experience, I deemed it wise to enlist some help so that they too could gain some experience.
I want to have a neutral party so Neera, Safana and Jaheira are obvious candidates as they can be recruited in SoD. It's a pity that Branwen and Xan aren't available there. Instead of them I suppose that Khaled is one possibility as the game seems to want a Khaled/Jaheira combo.
Perhaps in future I should continue my recent pattern of starting with a party of 2 or 3..
Various groups of Cowled Wizards were attracted by my use of the Ring of Air Control - and one by one those fell to insect plagues being sent after approaching elementals (one going in alone first as a death spell sacrifice). For the final group I added in a couple of Fire Storms to quickly deal with Zallanora before he tried to run away.
At the Bridge District Shield of the Archons protected against various traps, including the potentially deadly maze one to get the berserk warrior. Investigating the skinner murders then gained me another level.
The Rune Assassins in the house couldn't even hit fire elementals - the bone golem could, but didn't get much opportunity to do so.
A similar process of pulling enemies into elementals dealt with Dracandros, while some insects chased an elemental round Captain Dennis's room until a Fire Storm had the chance to join in the fun.
Collecting a ransom for a kidnapped noblewoman set my reputation back a couple of points, but reporting in to Lt Aegisfield and then using elementals on the Fallen Paladins soon remedied that.
Sir Sarles got some genuine illithium (as I can't use the MoD) after Neb was burnt to a crisp.
I hadn't used spirits so far today, so gave them an outing to recover a relic for the Lathander temple.
While in that area I also bought the Buckler of the Fist from the Black Market Thief - I'd made sure to keep that in inventory at the end of SoD, so that it would be available for sale in BG2EE.
Those temple quests take quite a long time for not much reward, but there were still a few minutes left in the session - time enough to dive into the Temple sewers to grab a cloak and eliminate a troll problem in the sewers.
Next time I'll dive a bit deeper there on the way to getting the Ring of Gaxx.
Lately I've been dusting off old Charnames. One of them is Promise, a Bhaalspawn you haven't heard of since early February. She's spent all this time waiting in SoA somewhat indignantly while I occupied myself with a few more role-played runs, some PoE, BG3, and even RL. How could I leave her like that?
Promise has to get by in rather challenging conditions: a SCS/LoB setup with NPCs rather than a customised, optimised party. On the flip side, bonus damage is disabled, I'm not playing with the saving throws fix for LoB, and unlike some players like @Lord_Tansheron, I do allow the use of summons, so things surely could have been harder. Nevertheless I'm apprehensive about continuing Promise's adventure. In BG1 and SoD several Free Action items made a Web-based strategy highly successful but in SoA Promise and her companions don't have such items (Aerie can cast the spell, but it can expire or get dispelled). For the time being the party is somewhat reliant on summons and stacked damage-over-time magic (think Cloudkill at this earlyish stage), although the warriors have begun to cautiously engage foes in melee.
Promise is currently traveling with Korgan, Valygar, Mazzy, Jan, and Aerie. Having restored the Temple Ruins to the light, the party traveled back to Athkatla to pick up the Cloak of the Sewers (thanks to stacked Cloudkills),
before moving to the d'Arnise Hold to see what could be found there. Individual trolls were manageable. Here the party is seen felling one only moments after it killed a servant.
But the party avoided the larger packs (not least because of the spirit trolls). Under the cover of a Sanctuary, Aerie picked up a key in the library, leaving a yuan-ti mage and some trolls be. A Greater Malison and a Domination brought Glaicus back to his senses. Umber hulks (from behind some invisible blockers) and golems fell to ranged attacks from Promise and Mazzy. TorGal was lured toward the dungeons, where some skeleton warriors kept him busy as Jan and Aerie cast Lower Resistance, Malison, Doom, and Feeblemind. An umber hulk elder came to TorGal's aid, but it was too late,
and no match for a well-buffed party.
Another pending quest was the search for evidence that would compromise Mae'Var. The party had previously postponed an attempt to take out Rayic Gethras. Wand summons and Valygar's backstabs helped the party dispatch a bunch of mephits.
Some of the mephits followed the ranger outside but Aerie had prepared some skeleton warriors for them to play with. Valygar also managed to separate the two stone golems and have them follow him outside. Shooting from stealth, he would even hit the creatures on a hit roll of 2 with his Strong Arm longbow and enchanted arrows, which surprised me.
Expectedly, Rayic Gethras started out well-protected,
so Aerie's skeleton warriors were a welcome distraction for their foe to contend with during the first few rounds before a Malison and a Hold Monster spelled the wizard's doom.
Jan littered Mae'Var's stronghold with snares while it was still friendly to them. Aerie animated some skeleton warriors in Mae'Var's cells. On the ground floor, Promise and Korgan (the beefiest members of the crew) had a fairly easy job thanks to Jan's traps, some Hold spells, and underwhelming enemy backstabs.
Downstairs life wasn't so easy. Aerie's skeleton warriors weren't sturdy enough to deal with all the assassins and Mae'Var summoned some monsters between invisible blockers Jan and Aerie, and the rest of the party.
(I've said before that I don't really like using invisible blockers. I was happy not to depend on them in BG1/SoD, but at this point I don't see how this party can quickly dispose of not so trashy trash mobs.) Promise, Korgan, Valygar, and Mazzy went back upstairs. Once the monsters were unsummoned, they focused fire on Mae'Var and the priest of Cyric. Mae'Var fell first,
but the priest surprised the party by casting a Chaos.
Lilarcor, the Shield of Harmony and some potions ensured the party prevailed without further incident.
The companions retrieved Spider's Bane for Pai'na, got Kitthix and had it improved by Cromwell. They also slew Neb as part of their quest for illithium. Invisible blockers ensured that no fighting had to take place between the party and the child spirits.
These little tasks were just an interlude before the next big adventure though: stopping the Unseeing Eye and its cult. Promise tested her mettle against some hell hounds and shadows, and found that despite being susceptible only to critical hits, she struggled to stand her ground.
She also got level-drained by vampiric mists, but got by with summons helping her out. Jan pickpocketed Gaal's belt before the party moved on to seek out the avatar of Amaunator. Skeleton warriors proved their amazingness against the party's first beholders,
while Improved Kitthix, Jan and Aerie did a fine job Holding and Webbing gauths.
Promise looted the undead village for a pair of Brawling Hands gauntlets for Korgan. The crew then entered the Unseeing Eye's lair and snuck toward the area with the 2nd half of the rift device. An enraged Korgan dispatched the gauth guarding it. Jan placed some traps and Aerie summoned four skeleton warriors, before Korgan amalgamated the device, calling forth the Unseeing Eye. Jan's traps dealt a negligible 1 point of damage apiece, before Korgan could use the device on their foe.
The skeletons shrugged off most of the Unseeing Eye's attacks and those of two death tyrants, but Korgan ran for cover when the Unseeing Eye dropped an ADHW.
Cloudkills and the skeleton warriors' attacks did the Unseeing Eye in.
The first remaining death tyrant was slain by the skeleton warriors, while a once more enraged and optimally equipped Korgan finished the second one. All in all this was a relatively easy victory for the party.
And ever subtle Korgan even had a moment for some comic relief lol:
More Cloudkills and buffed skeleton warriors allowed the party to really clean the place up before they went to report back to Amaunator and to the church.
The party retrieved a stolen ring for the temple of Lathander (a fairly easy task because the thieves weren't as successful with their backstabs as they could be), paid the Shadow Thieves for their help in finding Imoen, and stopped by at the Guarded Compound. Promise had to take down a Nishruu downstairs,
but upstairs it was Valygar who stole the show, really earning himself that Celestial Fury (and putting it to good use that same fight, as Koshi was his first victim). Haste and fire giant strength were his only buffs, and the shadows and invisibility potions were his protections.
The party handled their first two tasks for Aran Linvail without any trouble and then ventured out to the Windspear Hills.
Notwithstanding their (physical) buffs (PfE, Emotion spells, Haste) and summons the party had a hard time dealing with the disguised paladins. Valygar had to retreat to shoot his bow.
Firkraag's bandits offered less resistance thanks to some effective Webbing,
although Plath Rededge badly injured Valygar, Mazzy and Aerie with Unholy Blights before she fell.
After Irenicus' dryads were finally reunited with their sisters, the party entered the dungeon. Defeating the hobgoblins and mists without summons was hard work even with several successful Hold spells, but not nearly as hard as dealing with the infamous Ruhk Transmuter. The party's first problem was my poor memory of kamikaze kobolds' behavior. I'd forgotten that they tend to blow themselves up immediately instead of attacking first.
Fire protecion prebuffswould have made a big difference here. Thankfully the kobolds did all die rather than surviving despite LoB HP boosts. Even so, a severely injured party was up against an untouchable (PfMW) full health Ruhk that cast toxic clouds around him and that decided to call a dark planetar to his side. The hasted celestial cast Fire Storms to further compromise the companions' health, and it had its eyes on Mazzy for some reason.
Several rounds were spent healing (just to prevent one-shotting) and moving around. The group was split in two: Promise, Valygar and Korgan faced the Ruhk, while Jan, Mazzy, and Aerie tried to keep the dark planetar at bay. Promise had to retreat and resort to ranged attacks with her returning throwing dagger. Valygar was stunned by an Emotion Hopelessness, and Korgan failed to heal up fast enough and fell. The gem of true seeing from Rasaad's quest and Kitthix slowly turned the tide of the battle against the Ruhk, with Valygar even surviving his predicament.
In the meantime the fallen planetar had three Insect Plagues pursue Jan (two) and Aerie (one), while it kept the pressure on Mazzy. She eventually suffered one blow too many, and fell.
Promise drank the party's only potion of magic shielding to ward of a Symbol: Fear from the dark planetar, but recovered Valygar was affected by a second Symbol Fear. Aerie failed to remove it, and Valygar was duly finished off by the merciless planetar before Promise, Aerie, and Jan fled the scene.
I seriously thought the run was going to end here. Up till this point there had been one death (Jaheira in the slaver compound), but now three in one encounter. Ouch!
With everyone revived the party is now ready to venture forth in Firkraag's dungeon. In fact they've already dispatched a group of golems. Lower Resistance and Chromatic Orb prove to be quite effective.
I don't understand why the percentage of MR lowered isn't displayed in the action log.
An otyugh can attest to that, well it could if it were still alive.
Journal of Bork the Berserker
After leaving Durlag's, I met up with Xzar and Montaron. There was an unoccupied house in Beregost hwere I left Xzar: unoccupied by humans that is. There were some spiders in there, so let's hope that he isn't an arachnaphobe. Meanwhile Montaron "found" a cloak that improves my charisma. We then went to Ulgoth's Beard. Whilst I went to the inn to do some shopping, Montaron picked up a lot of items free of charge.
I dropped Montaron off in Joia's house. She had left it, so I assume that she wouldn't object to his presence.
I joined up with Khalid and Jaheira. Khalid stayed near Landrin and Jaheira accompanied me to deal with some half-ogres that Bjornin told me about.
Pearl, Ruva, Valos, Rila Lira, Poppy, and Yi Grovana in IWD2:EE
Part 4
Guthma's chambers are crawling with enemies, including some of the largest concentrations of spellcasters in the game. Web is very important for disrupting spells and holding the numerous fighters at bay.
Up north, Valos is tanking a gang of spellcasters with her innate spell resistance and ludicrous Deep Gnome monk AC. When a Hold Person gets past her excellent defenses, though, we have to haul the whole party over to bail her out, since sending in our cleric alone could get her killed. Unfortunately, this exposes our vulnerable sorcerer to a sudden death by Flame Arrow.
Undaunted, we press forward and tackle Guthma and his top cronies rather than leave to resurrect our sorcerer. Yi Grovana nails the enemy spellcasters with a lucky Sleep spell, Rila Lira paralyzes a couple more critters with Hold Monster, and Ruva butchers the bugbear chieftain with the returning throwing axe we looted from Vunarg's body. Those triple damage critical hits are so satisfying.
We clear out the fortress and head home, burning thousands of gold on resurrecting our sorcerer and buying an Elemental Breach Wand, which imposes a non-cumulative -10 penalty to elemental damage to a single target with no save.
That means, for example, a flaming morningstar will deal 10 extra fire damage to a critter with no resistances. That could be very useful against a certain half-dragon fighter/mage coming up soon.
It's time to leave Targos forever and make our way to the ice temple. Normally the ice temple is a nightmare to navigate, but it's a lot smoother in EE.
We hit level 8 after crashing in the hills, go bankrupt again when Yi Grovana gets gobbled up by some stray spiders, and trudge north to face an entire village of druids and rangers--Andora.
Andora is really tough in EE. The enemies will gleefully spam Entangle, animal summoning spells, and Alicorn Lance, dealing non-resistable 4d6 piercing damage per hit and bypassing AC, and both the rangers and druids attack with ammunition that deals 1d6 cold damage on hit. It's an absolute swarm of little bits of piercing and cold damage, and the leader, a VERY high-level ranger that deals crazy damage with a crossbow and can cast Improved Invisibility as well as healing spells on himself, can easily butcher any of our characters one-on-one.
Fortunately, Yi Grovana can cast Protection from Missiles on several party members, and both our cleric and druid can cast long-last Minor Elemental Barrier spells that will give everyone 10/- cold resistance or better. We can still take huge damage from the summoned enemies and Alicorn Lance, but we'll be much sturdier in this long, drawn-out fight.
First up, we have a high-level druid to tackle, Odea Winterthaw, and a band of humans and winter wolves on top. Pearl holds back most of the enemies with Entangle while Valos shuts down Odea Winterthaw's spellcasting with the Moonblade.
Notice the highly-visible Call Lightning spell--this hit only did 10 damage (it's 1d10/level), but Call Lightning is actually stronger than in vanilla, striking every 5 rounds instead of every 10 rounds. The drawback is that it can't be stacked; vanilla druids used to be able to cast one Call Lightning after another and have them strike round after round.
We clean house pretty easily thanks to the Moonblade and Pearl's giant bear claws, but we get caught in our own Entangle spells, and lose precious rounds of our defensive buffs on the way to the next phase of the fight.
Illium Ar'Ghrenoir, the head ranger of Andora, has an incredible attack bonus of +50. Valos' AC is 46. All other enemies around have a 5% hit chance against Valos, but Illium has a 95% hit rate for his first two attacks per round. And because I didn't think she would need it, Valos has no Protection from Arrows buff to reduce the damage.
Illium casts Improved Invisibility, which we counter with a simple Dispel Illusions spell. Then we nail him with the Wand of Elemental Breaching and Pearl launches a Rainstorm spell, which also lowers his electricity resistance. He starts taking heavy electricity damage, along with all his buddies.
Yi Grovana tries to damage him with Minute Meteors, but his resistances hold strong in spite of the Wand of Elemental Breaching. Rila Lira, however, can deal huge damage with acid bullets.
But Illium is very sturdy, with a massive HP pool, and we can't take him down fast. He falls back and lures us closer, putting a few of us into Entangle spells and exposing Ruva to attack from the other rangers and druids. I foolishly let Valos stray away from Rila Lira, who has been keeping her alive with spontaneously-cast healing spells all the while.
She downs a potion and barely makes it back to our cleric in time to survive. Our defenses run low as we make our way to the next batch of enemies, so I speed things up with a Potion of Explosions to save us from some high-damage Arrows of Ice.
A crash erases our victory, but we get through it a second time with a similar strategy. We use Poppy's party-friendly Web spells instead of relying just on Pearl's party-unfriendly Entangle spells, and while a mis-timed Dispel Illusions spell lets Illium keep his Improved Invisibility buff, he nonetheless rolls a 1 against a Shout spell and gets stunned. We deal enough damage with acid bullets despite his invisibility for Poppy to finish him off with a Lance of Disruption.
Now we have to deal with the Aurilite priests in the ice temple, and a round of Minor Elemental Barriers will not be enough. These priests can cast Ice Storm, dealing 4d6 crushing and 4d6 cold damage with no saving throw. Valos' evasion is useless.
However, we have an amazing trump card: Remove Magic! As a druid, Pearl can cast it as a level 4 spell, and with 2 pips in Spell Focus: Abjuration/Transmutation and maxed-out Wisdom, it has a save DC of over 30. It completely destroy the enemies' buffs!
Remove Magic will be absolutely key throughout the game. EE spellcasters use pre-buffs, and a solid Remove Magic save DC can break a lot of spellcaster fights, especially with mages.
Before we get into the ice temple interior, we have to take down Sherincal, the high-level fighter/mage with an innate fear aura, lots of lightning bolts from her breath weapon, and high spell resistance. She has amazing stats across the board, and she comes bolstered by a wave of enemies, both barbarians and various priests (though fortunately we dispatched the nearby necromancers so they can't ambush us during this fight).
Here's our party right before our first bout with a half-dragon:
We have a lot of tools at our disposal. But the battle proves anti-climactic.
Sherincal only has a Will save of 11. She easily fails her save against Pearl's jacked-up Remove Magic spell, wrecking her defenses. We nail her with the Wand of Elemental Breaching and concentrate our fire on her, and Yi Grovana lands the killing blow with Minute Meteors.
We finally hit level 9, right before entering the temple itself. Poppy won't be leveling up until she can use her level 9 feat to take another rank in Safe Spell, making her 3rd- and 4th-level spells party-friendly, but the rest of the party moves up.
Rila Lira takes another rank in the Extended Spell feat, and since we've just bought a Ring of Lesser Extending, that means ALL of her spells, even the level 5 ones, have double duration. She can now cast Ethereal Jaunt.
Elementals made short work of Mekrath and occupied the attention of some yuan-ti mages while Fire Storm did its job.
A similar thing then happened to Tarnor's gang (who had no less than 3 Laeral's Tear necklaces) .
Moving on, elementals killed a few enemies on the way to Gaal. I noticed just prior to that I'd got another level - and looking back one of the ettercaps had provided that.
PfU allowed me to kill the Shade Lich at my leisure. There was a bit of a delay in the Bridge District while I dealt with some muggers and then Tanova and her vampire companions provided a further interruption.
The Elemental Lich then got its share of the Crimson Dart, before I speeded things up a bit with the City Gates lich by using Fire Storm. Moving on to Kangaxx, I found the delays had meant my PfU scroll had run out, so a further one was used before applying a liberal dose of the Ring of Energy to him.
With all the vampire ambushes now out of the way, I paid Gaelan Bayle his 15k gold and went to find Aran Linvail. Chaotic commands provided protection while chasing Lassal away at the Docks.
The Guild Contact then died in a Fire Storm.
Rather than report back after that though, I went down into the basement to find the Planar Prison. I entered that invisibly and quickly got out of sight before true sight activated. After summoning elementals I sent them to kill the mage bounty hunter before he could cast another true sight. The elementals and Fire Storm worked their way round to kill some more yuan-ti mages, before I stayed well out of the way while the elementals went on to deal with the Master of Thralls - taking me close to my first HLA.
However, time was up there, so the Warden will survive until tomorrow.
I did a no reload run of IWDII several years ago. Your run @semiticgod is giving me good memories. So many charming game elements. I just wish the whole package had come together better.
Also the lack of SCS makes the AI a little dumb *sad face*.
---
Trilogy Run of Rangers & Thieves (SCS Insane; PC Halfling Swashbuckler)
Since last update we have done a few of the underdark quests and dungeons.
Nothing run ending but the underdark has been a little bumpier than it could be. Easily the toughest part of the game imo though, so I suppose some difficulty is to be expected.
I messed up Vithal's quest arc and accidentally told him that I was OK with his measly rod as a reward and he disappeared, keeping his death helm and a bunch of level 8 and 9 scrolls.
I messed up fighting the beholders in their dungeon and left a rod of resurrection in Nalia's inventory while she was scouting for skeleton warriors. The hive mother can see through invisibility and hit her with an anti-magic ray, which drained all the raise dead charges from the rod (only noticed later). I also let two characters get stunned and killed by the mindflayers in the beholder dungeon.
As I had already used three charges on one rod, that leaves me with zero charges of raise dead remaining, and no way to revive further fallen party members.
So, we are going to skip every fight we can and just focus on survival. We are definitely skipping Deirex and House Jaelet. Those fights will be lost forever. I had planned to bring Vithal's time stop scroll to help debuff and use pc's slayer change in the event of a balor or planetar summon, but without time stop or resurrection it's just too dangerous imo.
We are also skipping the mind flayer dungeon, and the soul prison facets. We will return for them in chapter 6 if the game lets us. We will NOT skip the demon knight squad, as I want to forge crom faeyr and I'm not sure whether we can come back for it. If we can't return, the mind flayer loot will be a big loss as the harp
in particular represents the party's only means of curing stun since we have no cleric spells (ring of fire control and staff of command would be nice too).
We do still have to fight the beholder at ust natha landing, as well as the mage/ slime party, and the drow party guarding the underdark exit (although if that one gets too dicey we can probably get help from Adalon). And of course we still need to fight the demon knights, and not mess up the egg replacement arc + run out of Ust Natha.
I give us decent odds, but I really wish we had not gotten our resurrect rod drained and that we had brought some scrolls of raise dead from the surface.
Trio 29, Core rules, unmodded (Part 1234 in BG:EE and 5 6 in BGII:EE)
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Loury has spent his week lazing around but finds 10-15 minutes to concoct a plan by looking at our relative lack of equipment. All he has to do is drag Swish and Corecleric around a few places and pick up various items. On his list are a ring + amulet from Aran Linvail, a stinky cloak from the sewers and a bunch of other stuff. He figures there is little point going into more detail as it's unlikely the plan will be followed.
Once Corey_Russell and Grond0 joined we set about our two hour session to see what mayhem we could cause - being slightly hindered with the game taking a couple of minutes to join and Grond0 dropping two or three times during the session. The transatlantic connection to Corey_Russell is OK but the less than 80 miles to Grond0 is a bit more glitchy.
We were off though - our first task to pay Gaelan Bayle went smoothly enough, and then we went around the slaver ship 'the wrong way'. Corecleric had mentioned that he had Raise Dead memorised and wondered if it had been for Swish. A brief pre-mortem confirmed it would be useless on Loury or Corecleric so must have been for our swashybuckler.
Anyway, back to the slaver ship - good job we had Raise Dead memorised as our thief forgot how to ply his trade and once more blobbed himself in the largest pile of acid we could imagine.
After raising him we killed Captain Haegan and his two remaining trolls before moving on to pick up the items required for recovering the worthless-to-us Lilacor sword. We didn't bother resting, just shared the pain around.
Loury decided to hold back so Corecleric risked the wrath of a wrong answer - but he got the item order correct and we bagged Lilacor.
After reporting back to Hendak we duly rested and went to the Docks. Aran Linvail gave us a ring of protection +2 (Loury) and the Amulet of Power (Corecleric) so we decided to try them out on the nearest bunch of pirates you've ever seen.
On our way to the Temple district we are waylaid and rescue Renfeld from certain death. Loury heads to the Temple district to retrieve an amulet for Mae'var and is about to head into the sewers as Corecleric asks about Renfeld. Right, better return him first.
We've picked up a couple of quests for the temple of Helm too, but shelve that to get Renfeld returned and after Swish shows himself to a roomful of goblins and Xzar's apprentices he and Corecleric manage to get that under control just as Loury arrives. Better late than dead thinks the undead hunter.
We return to the Temple sewers and deal with a rakshasa and sea troll, tell Keldorn to keep to himself and pick up a rod of resurrection from Mekrath's former quarters. Loury starts to describe his plan of dealing with Tarnor the Hatchetman where we would each play to our strengths.
Doh. Loury would use his 'it's obvious' approach so the others wouldn't know what he had planned
Doh. Swish would draw out Gaius' True Sight
Doh. Corecleric would buff before we are ready
We're playing three different games here so Tarnor and his men must be in triple trouble. Only, Swish is distracted by Loury's inaction and Coreclerics casting - and forgets Gaius has a True sight running. He promptly gets stunned in a situation where we can't easily rescue him.
We only take a round or so to move our distractions in but that is long enough for Swish to be killed. We are in disarray and Loury finally voices his plan. We shall retreat and leave the skeletons as a distraction. The plan is stupendous (if you don't think about the Disintegrate cast at an aura'd Corecleric).
So Corecleric saves against Disintegrate, and we raise Swish. No potions, and no rod, so he takes minor healing before we crank our efforts up to 11 and engage once more. Rengaard somehow notices Swish laying snares and moves to attack, meaning the rest of his party follow. That's not our plan!
Loury tells Corecleric to draw the enemies south and we do that. Swish is somewhere, and we attack until Gaius appears again. He casts at Loury who looks a bit perturbed (ok, quaking) until Corecleric reminds him the incoming spell is nullified by a previously cast Chaotic Commands - nice buffing job there.
So Corecleric faces Draug Fea while Loury goes through Gaius' stoneskins to kill him in 2-3 rounds. Loury then returns to deal with Draug Fea as Corecleric has to retreat. Swish has re-appeared from killing someone else (Zorl maybe?) and helps out. The battle, and their loot, is ours.
We fit in a quick visit to the Bridge district where we grab a berserker horn and solve the skinner murders - using our buffs including True Sight, Bless, Protection from Evil, Armour of Faith and Arbane Haste to kill off two ghast and two Rune Assassins.
Then to the Government district to pick up another quest (we have Windspear, Umar, Trademeet and de'Arnise all lined up now), agree to track down Valygar and as Loury speaks to Sir Sarles his companions are rescuing Viconia from a bonfire night situation.
Loury thinks back to his plan. Most of it has transpired, more through luck than good judgement. He does head to the Graveyard district and after returning a teddy bear to the spirit of a child we descend into the tombs to pick up some headgear for Swish. Once more our plan is tripartite, when facing Pai'Na with a concealed entry;
Loury reckons to do whatever is necessary but says nothing
Swish lays a few snares
Corecleric silences Pai'Na and attacks
Corecleric is happy to have avoided lots of itchy spider bites but Swish is a bit upset he didn't get to pull their legs off. Anyway, we've got what we came for.
We sell off more gear, and at some point (might have been earlier) Loury splashes out on the Hill Giant strength girdle for Corecleric (raising his strength from 16 to 19 so an exceptional investment).
Corecleric and Swish both fancy dealing with Mencar Pebblecrusher and his motley crue. Loury is noncommital (I never bother with them in single player and reluctantly get dragged along in duo or trio, same as against Neira in BG1). Loury aims his bow at Brennan Riesling as everybody attacks and then has to switch to melee to defend himself. Swish is merrily attacking the enemy caster as Corecleric is taking the brunt of melee. Loury is busy helping Corecleric and then calls for a time-out to check Swish is happy.
Yes yells Swish. I'm fine. Carry on. Uh, OK.
Party gear at session end - with no sign of Swish having died twice during the session as his limbs have grown back nicely.
Loury, Undead Hunter 10
Swish, Swashbuckler 12
Corecleric Priest of Lathander 11
Loury is reminded of the ungainly amulet he is wearing and has a much nicer alternative ready so our first order for next time should be to report in to Mae'Var.
(as usual I am trying not to bag plot items as multiplayer doesn't like that sort of thing if a client talks to whoever wants the item)
@GemHound You don't really need a healer in BG 1. There are loads of blue potions around. Also, I see you have 3 fighter types. Fighters can just burn down enemies quick in BG 1. You got Kivan too, and bows are strong in BG 1. Keep in mind I'm speaking of vanilla EE - if you have SCS, that may change things.
@GemHound You don't really need a healer in BG 1. There are loads of blue potions around. Also, I see you have 3 fighter types. Fighters can just burn down enemies quick in BG 1. You got Kivan too, and bows are strong in BG 1. Keep in mind I'm speaking of vanilla EE - if you have SCS, that may change things.
I'm fully aware. I've soloed BG1 as an assassin. I think her name was something like Victasaadi Falconsflight.
Edit: Added a picture from 2013
The Warden was no problem, with plague after plague of insects keeping him and his yuan-ti mages under control.
I'd got the XP for level 18 early in that fight, though didn't level up until afterwards. For my first HLA I took energy blades - that not only gives a direct damage alternative for finishing battles, but can also be a quick and convenient way to increase movement speed.
Returning to the sewers I pursued the Unseeing Eye quest. Elementals and Fire Storm were used against the beholders near the bridge. I danced my way through most of the undead, though another Fire Storm accounted for the lich.
The same treatment for more beholders, while I stayed out of the way, pushed me up to level 19.
That provided me with Spirit Form (for 5 rounds acts as improved invisibility and reduces physical damage by 50%). The Eye was hammered by energy blades after being nerfed.
Gaal and his guards then died in another fiery storm after I'd dropped off the rod.
There wasn't much left to do in Athkatla, but one bit of business remaining was the nearby Guarded Compound. A glabrezu and its friends ran into blades before the upstairs enemies were dragged down one at a time to melee some elementals - the original group of those just outlasting their competition.
There was just time left to sell off the various bits of loot before saving.
Comments
You could say that I suppose, though the place Wacky and Voka are now making more crowded is the cemetery
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151349/#Comment_1151349
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151491/#Comment_1151491
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151645/#Comment_1151645
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151758/#Comment_1151758
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151849/#Comment_1151849
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151956/#Comment_1151956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152043/#Comment_1152043
At the Underground River I used chaotic commands to deal with some ankhegs and get a summoning option.
A single shot on the ettin ghost persuaded it to be reasonable while I placed the Bwoosh. Then I persuaded Turin to let me into the Warrens by telling him knowledge can be a dangerous thing. I poisoned the food and water invisibly before showing myself to Hephernaan to re-open the elevator.
Back at the Coalition Camp the other leaders would not allow me to surrender to Caelar, so I decided to make the best of a bad job and fight instead. When the coalition attacked, the first wave saw a nymph and moved to attack her - leaving them vulnerable to exploding arrows from behind. I didn't worry about collateral damage while taking them down
After resting I pushed on to the Castle and immediately went to find Ashatiel. A PfM scroll was used in case he managed a spell and in fact he did better than I expected. Often he will be stunned right at the start of the contest, but this time he saved several times before using his potion of magical shielding - requiring me to dispel that before eventually tagging him with a dart.
Inside the Castle, I rested up before following Caelar through a portal. A couple of stone form potions protected against potential status effects while running through the first area. Most of the types of devils are susceptible to stunning and I did that to the hamatula in order to reduce the threat from its barbed defense.
Once the devils were all dead I played Thrix's little game, despite him offering nothing I wanted, then moved on to the Hellevator. After buffing up I activated that and just meleed my way through 3 groups of opponents. Immediately after finishing the last of those off, I used 6 Champions Strength scrolls before arriving at the final destination.
On arrival at Belhifet I recruited Caelar and renewed my magic shielding potion before attacking. I took the safe option of keeping Caelar alive with restoration scrolls, rather than relying on my own fighting ability. That meant a slightly longer fight, but I was still just within the hour's session when Belhifet died.
Shaman 11, 90 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 479 kills
ThredBehr (male dwarf barbarian, Gate70); Grue (male half elf Avenger, Grond0)
(Bring out the next victims)
We make a great start, with Thredbehr enraging to loot a precious gem and Grue using his charisma of 18 to obtain an unidentifiable +1 dagger from one of the guards. Grue splashes out on leather armour while Thredbehr pays for a helmet, and with that the big spenders leave Candlekeep behind them.
Our path crosses that of Shoal the dead nereid, and Mad Arcand. Upon reaching the coast we realise we have taken a wrong turn so head back to High Hedge and kill a trio of gnolls there before finding our way to Beregost (it's the town on the map marked Beregost).
Thredbehr can hardly believe his eyes as we leave town - not only have we failed to pick up a gem bag but Neera is still alive. We push on to Nashkel and then head back to the coast. A slight misunderstanding occurs when Thredbehr silently waits three seconds for Grue to cast a web and then attacks a pair of ogrillions. By this time Grue has silently realised what Thredbehr was waiting for and casts web. We'll be OK though.
After retrieving Melicamp Thredbehr enrages against Bassilus the cleric. Grue notices the enraged thredbehr is shown as Held but the flailing dwarven weapon confirms this is not the case. Then we kill a trio of hobgoblins.
Previous updates:
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151944/#Comment_1151944
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152025/#Comment_1152025
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152123/#Comment_1152123
We made our way to Baldur's Gate and started to gather some of the best gear in the city, such as the Helm and Cloak of Balduran. Most of the minor quests were completed quickly and without trouble, though when facing Shandalr's daughters, two of my party ended up getting hit by a chaos spell:
One of the higher level wizards in the city is of course Sunin - and he did pre-buff with spell deflection among other things, and as I had no way to remove it, I had to either silence him (which I think was just not an option on my mind at this point) or get through his physical defenses quickly. He has this Kensai with him who has a great thac0 and can deal tons of damage, but Rowin was able to spook him right away, while the others took down Sunin's second servant:
Next time - well, things have been going pretty well so far, but we're in for some trouble. Overconfidence can be deadly, and some of the following fights are among the hardest with SCS added into the mix. How many mistakes in a row can this party survive?
In other news, SCS party of rangers and thieves are heading towards our first confrontation with Jon.
Biggest concern is the spellhold lich, which we will probably have to cheese by draining his spellbook with summons.
Next biggest concern is Jon, who has never actually wiped me but is always a scary fight considering he can cast both dragon's breath and summon dark planetar. He tends to be pretty easy to spell interrupt in the spellhold encounter, however.
Edit: Second run in a row where the first page turn on infinite spellbook is burning hands. Ugh.
Edit #2: For some reason, half of my traps failed to trigger against the spellhold portal pitfiend, so we had to fight him. Turns out SCS pit fiends can cast 20d6 fireballs at will. I knew they could cast fireballs, but I did not know they could go above the normal 10d6 cap! Anyway:
Note that the pit fiend rolled an 84 damage fireball against Nalia. Yikes! Charname has 81 hp and spell save of 4.
This situation is not good, as the party cannot resurrect anyone until we reach the Sahuagin city... However, the party is probably OK as long as it doesn't make any more mistakes. Lack of Jan's invisibility 10' radius will make Yoshi and his thieves more dangerous (should we make it that far). And we will certainly miss the third caster in the fight against Jon.
And I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that everyone made their saves, and Jan was the only death (and he was not perma'd). It is unfortunate that I was just thinking before the fireball that "maybe I should heal Jan to full with an extra healing potion, just to be safe". And I was like, nah nothing can do 30 damage to Jan in one round. Wrong!
Edit #3: Interesting that there is a scroll of limited wish in spell hold dungeon. That might be interesting to use against Jon and the clones. Particularly the wail of the banshee one time wish is something I never use, but would likely kill several of the clones, especially if paired with Malison. Unfortunately the wiki suggests that it requires 12 wisdom and while Jan has 14, he is currently dead and Nalia/Imoen top out at 11..
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151349/#Comment_1151349
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151491/#Comment_1151491
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151645/#Comment_1151645
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151758/#Comment_1151758
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151849/#Comment_1151849
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151956/#Comment_1151956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152043/#Comment_1152043
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152150/#Comment_1152150
I'd gone past my standard allotted hour in the previous session and had decided to compound that offense by importing into BG2EE, so I was able to make an immediate start on game play this morning.
Quite early on in the dungeon I thought I'd do a bit more experimentation with spirit summons and try to use them for all the encounters. They proved much more reluctant than in BGEE/SoD to move after me in between activating the dance, so keeping them going between enemies was difficult. They're generally a relatively slow method of making progress anyway, so it took a while to do the first level. The only enemy which fought hard enough to beat off an initial attack - forcing me to run away and establish a new group - was the cambion. It's luck ran out though when it failed to resist a bear stun - that's non-magical, so can affect most enemies. It's particularly vicious in that the spirits have poor THAC0, so normally struggle to hit, but several of them can rack up a lot of damage during even the single round duration of a stun.
Shortly after that encounter I got up to level 12 by talking to Rielev.
Spirits were not easy to use in the mephit portal room as they had a preference for attacking the unlimited mephits rather than the portals, but by locking a couple of the mephits in the transport room I eventually succeeded.
The final assassin fell with just a few minutes left in the hour.
Shaman 12, 92 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), kills 3 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151349/#Comment_1151349
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151491/#Comment_1151491
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151645/#Comment_1151645
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151758/#Comment_1151758
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151849/#Comment_1151849
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151956/#Comment_1151956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152043/#Comment_1152043
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152150/#Comment_1152150
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152234/#Comment_1152234
After the mucking about in Jon's dungeon last time, I cracked on today. The circus was restored to normality with a few doses of Spirit Fire. At the inn I concentrated on ensuring Brennan couldn't run away, but only Mencar survived the initial assault and spell barrage - but he couldn't do damage quickly enough to deal with spirits.
Elementals meant dealing with the Copper Coronet was quick and simple.
Suna Seni realized too late that an unsuspecting victim might not be all that unsuspecting (and invisible).
Some pirates were smoked out of their nest before I headed for Watcher's Keep.
Shaman 13, 94 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), kills 42 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
In Durlag's Tower an Ashirukuru killed Wyrmbane.
Commiserations Wise, the mysterious Ashirukuru are a dangerous bunch.
Previous updates:
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151944/#Comment_1151944
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152025/#Comment_1152025
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152123/#Comment_1152123
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152203/#Comment_1152203
Going upstairs, I started by firing my two wands of fire and one necklace of missles at my opponents. A decent opening, but no one died. In retrospect, I should've gone all out and thrown two more fireballs (I had at least one more necklace of missles and some explosion potions):
After resurrecting Khelbara, the party had enough tough encounter at the gates of Candlekeep - the ogre mage ambush. We started off with a combination of haste, prayer and remove fear:
Next time, the party will explore Candlekeep and return to Baldur's Gate once more. We will also be more diligent with preparing for difficult encounters, though chaos does get to make a return appearance.
Finding the image inspired this new run.
Poor saving rolls compared with shorties, but at least he's got muscle power and has a good constitution.
The roll is an old one. The portrait is a new one made from a photo of mine plus this image which I came across last week:
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/490329478153661693/
Bork is not true neutral in the sense that he actually AIMS for balance. In general he aims to be good, but he's got a bit of a temper so does things that he later regrets.
Since last update have progressed from Bodhi's dungeon in Spellhold to Ust Natha.
I cheesed the spellhold lich by draining most of his spells with summons. I then bum rushed him with archers that were buffed with enchanted weapon so they hit with +3.
He did not cast spelltrap, so it's possible that the party would have had a chance in a fair fight, but to be honest we just didn't think we had the spell power for it (especially with Jan being killed by the pit fiend in the first part of the dungeon).
If we had cleric spells (CC, DW, holy word, false dawn, and raise dead), plus Edwin so that a reasonable number of NPCs could be covered by protection from magical energy, I might have given it a try. As it was, it just seemed too dangerous. I think that is the only fight I have to cheese for the rest of the run.
I fought Jon, who managed to get timestop off a fraction of a second before a cloudkill hit. Somehow I got Nalia's aura timing off and he slipped the cast through.
Fortunately, he cast a defensive spell, followed by Improved Alacrity, and then spent most the rest of the fight getting interrupted. He easily could have used the Alacrity to throw up a bunch of defensive buffs, but for some reason he didn't.
Wanev eventually got off an ADHW and effectively ended the fight.
In the Underwater City, Jan got a few opportunities to practice his backstabs. I'm not going to say that Ogre-stabs are *good* per-se, but they can be hilarious when they land. He struggles with poor thac0 and APR and of course MI, SS and Immunity to normal weapons all protect from the ogre stab, but some enemies don't have any of those, and well...
Note that I don't think this is an exploit as I interpret the ogre "morningstar" to effectively be a club in an ogre's hands.
Later on in the underdark, the party had a little bit of trouble against the first drow war band. The drow mage cast sphere of chaos, which can disintegrate on a failed save vs. spell. The party can't cast death ward, so this created a large no-go area as well as a very dangerous moment when Jan failed his save. Fortunately he was polymorphed rather than disintegrated.
In addition, the mushrooms to the west aggroed and started spawning myconids.
Some invulnerability potions + improved invisibility potions got the human rangers low enough saves and eventually the drown were killed.
The fight against the Light Gem Balor went... OK? I think he can cast symbol death/stun, but he didn't. He did land a large number of Vorpal hits on Valygar, who was tanking using AC/Ilbratha mirrors. But, Invulnerability potions + Improved invisibility gave save vs. death in the -5 zone and so he resisted all the vorpals (save vs. death -4). He did cast implosion, but it was on my summoned Efreeti, which was very nice of him.
Imoen lowered the Balor's resistance 3x and then he was killed with a very large number of magic missiles, plus a little bit of ranged attacks from Minsc and PC. It turns out that he is immune to +2 weapons, so it was a little hard to damage him with ranged weapons (boomerang dagger didn't work e.g.), but Minsc and PC at least were able to get a few hits in with the +3 ammo from Watcher's Keep as well as the +5 darts from the cloak of stars. If I had known in advance, we could have used enchant weapon.
Lastly, we rescued Phaere in a moderately scary fight against her mindflayer captors.
Minsc and Valygar immediately failed their saves against the flayer stun and were then killed. I kept the mages far away because they weren't protected from the umber hulk confusion and I worried that they might accidentally attack the drow, and ruin the entire Ust Natha quest line.
PC was stun immune (has -6 save vs. spell), and alongside Phaere, Solaufein and a few skellies + the flesh golem were enough to finish off the attackers. Unfortunately, the traps set by Jan and PC failed to do much damage as the Mindflayers portal in blue and then go hostile sequentially. Phaere got to "badly injured" but survived.
We also murdered Qilue, who returned to her normal status of "road bump" after shockingly wiping my party of fighters back in the summer. Imoen and Nalia casting Remove Magic stripped her mages' combat protections, leaving them with little hope against the rangers.
I am somewhat concerned about the mindflayer city, but I will probably do it after getting the greenstone amulet from the beholders, which makes it less concerning. I may have to skip both Deirex and the House Jaelet fight as too dangerous. May also skip the soul prison lich (forget his name).
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151349/#Comment_1151349
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151491/#Comment_1151491
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151645/#Comment_1151645
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151758/#Comment_1151758
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151849/#Comment_1151849
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151956/#Comment_1151956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152043/#Comment_1152043
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152150/#Comment_1152150
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152234/#Comment_1152234
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152373/#Comment_1152373
I was paying more attention to the US election this morning than my game, but still managed to make a bit of progress. That started with diving into the sewers under the Copper Coronet. A rare use of Chaotic Commands allowed me to dance up some spirits to deal with myconids.
I took Fire Storm as my first level 7 spell. Buffing up with fire protection allowed me to walk around in fire and that was used several times in the Graveyard. One particular advantage of that spell is that it ignores magic resistance, so is effective against skeleton warriors.
Reputation is now up to 18. Next time a visit to Trademeet should maximise that and prompt a bit of shopping.
Shaman 14, 91 HPs, kills 127 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
After reaching the FAI enrage helped me to defeat Tarnesh.
I then cleared the area of hobgoblins and returned Joia's ring before heading northwards to kill the evil Sonner. I returned Tenya's bowl before taking on an ankheg with the help of enrage.
Its death helped me to reach level 3 and *** in long swords having started at Candlekeep with ** in long swords, * in longbows, and * in sword and shield style.
Upon making my way to Beregost, I got into conflict with Silke and was exceedingly lucky. Rather than her magic hurting me, instead it killed those that I was trying to protect with the result that I was soon able to kill her myself.
Upon entering the inn I was able to kill Karlat immediately afterwards.
When attacked by a horde of undead I had enough wisdom to flee.
But when a solitary ghast attacked, I kited it and gained 650 exp.
Yet more luck enabled me to aid Mellicamp.
Upon killing some gnolls, I was able to locate Perdue's Sword.
I then headed for nashkel, found some armour, and turned down a reward from Oubliek.
In the nearby Carnival I helped Bentha.
To the south I helped Prism against Greywolf and in turn I was helped by the guards at the mine who pumped Greywolf full of arrows. He followed me when I moved away from them not realising that when I became enraged, I would be the better fighter.
I then helped Samuel get to the FAI.
I helped farmer Brun against the ankhegs and as a result reached level 6 and **** in long swords and also became a hero.
Of course by this time I also had taken possession of Greywolf's sword.
Previous updates:
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151944/#Comment_1151944
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152025/#Comment_1152025
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152123/#Comment_1152123
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152203/#Comment_1152203
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152452/#Comment_1152452
After making their way through the Candlekeep library and catacombs, our party dealt with Prat and his allies with a quick, decisive and fully-buffed strike:
Next time, we will deal with Greater Wolfweres, Loup Garous and Durlag's Tower. Can we maintain our new-found focus, or will we fall into bad old habits again? We shall see...
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151349/#Comment_1151349
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151491/#Comment_1151491
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151645/#Comment_1151645
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151758/#Comment_1151758
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151849/#Comment_1151849
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151956/#Comment_1151956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152043/#Comment_1152043
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152150/#Comment_1152150
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152234/#Comment_1152234
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152373/#Comment_1152373
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152495/#Comment_1152495
Today started with Taquee being blasted with lightning, while pre-summoned elementals dealt with the genies in the tent.
I hadn't yet done the skinner quest, but just clearing the tomb was enough to push reputation up to 20.
There was still time to run through a few more tasks for Mae'Var, watch Sansuki get drained by some vampires and stage a takeover of the thieves guild.
Shaman 15, 93 HPs, kills 175 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
After reuniting Rufie and Albert, killing Vax an Zal, helping a dryad, and killing Ingot, I bought the necklace of missiles and a couple of scrolls of protection for use against some adventurers, the basilisks and Mutamin.
Enrage proved to be invaluable against Bassilus and Zargal.
It proved equally useful against sirine, flesh golems and traps.
Whilst enrage was still highly useful at Durlag's Tower, the monsters there were not a pushover.
When I reached 161000 experience, I deemed it wise to enlist some help so that they too could gain some experience.
I want to have a neutral party so Neera, Safana and Jaheira are obvious candidates as they can be recruited in SoD. It's a pity that Branwen and Xan aren't available there.
Perhaps in future I should continue my recent pattern of starting with a party of 2 or 3..
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151349/#Comment_1151349
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151491/#Comment_1151491
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151645/#Comment_1151645
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151758/#Comment_1151758
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151849/#Comment_1151849
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151956/#Comment_1151956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152043/#Comment_1152043
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152150/#Comment_1152150
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152234/#Comment_1152234
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152373/#Comment_1152373
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152495/#Comment_1152495
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152759/#Comment_1152759
Various groups of Cowled Wizards were attracted by my use of the Ring of Air Control - and one by one those fell to insect plagues being sent after approaching elementals (one going in alone first as a death spell sacrifice). For the final group I added in a couple of Fire Storms to quickly deal with Zallanora before he tried to run away.
At the Bridge District Shield of the Archons protected against various traps, including the potentially deadly maze one to get the berserk warrior. Investigating the skinner murders then gained me another level.
Collecting a ransom for a kidnapped noblewoman set my reputation back a couple of points, but reporting in to Lt Aegisfield and then using elementals on the Fallen Paladins soon remedied that.
Sir Sarles got some genuine illithium (as I can't use the MoD) after Neb was burnt to a crisp.
Those temple quests take quite a long time for not much reward, but there were still a few minutes left in the session - time enough to dive into the Temple sewers to grab a cloak and eliminate a troll problem in the sewers.
Shaman 16, 95 HPs, kills 215 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
BG1: 1, 2, 3
SoD: 1, 2
SoA: 1, 2, 3, 4
Lately I've been dusting off old Charnames. One of them is Promise, a Bhaalspawn you haven't heard of since early February. She's spent all this time waiting in SoA somewhat indignantly while I occupied myself with a few more role-played runs, some PoE, BG3, and even RL. How could I leave her like that?
Promise has to get by in rather challenging conditions: a SCS/LoB setup with NPCs rather than a customised, optimised party. On the flip side, bonus damage is disabled, I'm not playing with the saving throws fix for LoB, and unlike some players like @Lord_Tansheron, I do allow the use of summons, so things surely could have been harder. Nevertheless I'm apprehensive about continuing Promise's adventure. In BG1 and SoD several Free Action items made a Web-based strategy highly successful but in SoA Promise and her companions don't have such items (Aerie can cast the spell, but it can expire or get dispelled). For the time being the party is somewhat reliant on summons and stacked damage-over-time magic (think Cloudkill at this earlyish stage), although the warriors have begun to cautiously engage foes in melee.
Promise is currently traveling with Korgan, Valygar, Mazzy, Jan, and Aerie. Having restored the Temple Ruins to the light, the party traveled back to Athkatla to pick up the Cloak of the Sewers (thanks to stacked Cloudkills),
Another pending quest was the search for evidence that would compromise Mae'Var. The party had previously postponed an attempt to take out Rayic Gethras. Wand summons and Valygar's backstabs helped the party dispatch a bunch of mephits.
The companions retrieved Spider's Bane for Pai'na, got Kitthix and had it improved by Cromwell. They also slew Neb as part of their quest for illithium. Invisible blockers ensured that no fighting had to take place between the party and the child spirits.
And ever subtle Korgan even had a moment for some comic relief lol:
The party retrieved a stolen ring for the temple of Lathander (a fairly easy task because the thieves weren't as successful with their backstabs as they could be), paid the Shadow Thieves for their help in finding Imoen, and stopped by at the Guarded Compound. Promise had to take down a Nishruu downstairs,
Notwithstanding their (physical) buffs (PfE, Emotion spells, Haste) and summons the party had a hard time dealing with the disguised paladins. Valygar had to retreat to shoot his bow.
After Irenicus' dryads were finally reunited with their sisters, the party entered the dungeon. Defeating the hobgoblins and mists without summons was hard work even with several successful Hold spells, but not nearly as hard as dealing with the infamous Ruhk Transmuter. The party's first problem was my poor memory of kamikaze kobolds' behavior. I'd forgotten that they tend to blow themselves up immediately instead of attacking first.
I seriously thought the run was going to end here. Up till this point there had been one death (Jaheira in the slaver compound), but now three in one encounter. Ouch!
With everyone revived the party is now ready to venture forth in Firkraag's dungeon. In fact they've already dispatched a group of golems. Lower Resistance and Chromatic Orb prove to be quite effective.
After leaving Durlag's, I met up with Xzar and Montaron. There was an unoccupied house in Beregost hwere I left Xzar: unoccupied by humans that is. There were some spiders in there, so let's hope that he isn't an arachnaphobe. Meanwhile Montaron "found" a cloak that improves my charisma. We then went to Ulgoth's Beard. Whilst I went to the inn to do some shopping, Montaron picked up a lot of items free of charge.
I dropped Montaron off in Joia's house. She had left it, so I assume that she wouldn't object to his presence.
I joined up with Khalid and Jaheira. Khalid stayed near Landrin and Jaheira accompanied me to deal with some half-ogres that Bjornin told me about.
Part 4
Guthma's chambers are crawling with enemies, including some of the largest concentrations of spellcasters in the game. Web is very important for disrupting spells and holding the numerous fighters at bay.
That means, for example, a flaming morningstar will deal 10 extra fire damage to a critter with no resistances. That could be very useful against a certain half-dragon fighter/mage coming up soon.
It's time to leave Targos forever and make our way to the ice temple. Normally the ice temple is a nightmare to navigate, but it's a lot smoother in EE.
We hit level 8 after crashing in the hills, go bankrupt again when Yi Grovana gets gobbled up by some stray spiders, and trudge north to face an entire village of druids and rangers--Andora.
Andora is really tough in EE. The enemies will gleefully spam Entangle, animal summoning spells, and Alicorn Lance, dealing non-resistable 4d6 piercing damage per hit and bypassing AC, and both the rangers and druids attack with ammunition that deals 1d6 cold damage on hit. It's an absolute swarm of little bits of piercing and cold damage, and the leader, a VERY high-level ranger that deals crazy damage with a crossbow and can cast Improved Invisibility as well as healing spells on himself, can easily butcher any of our characters one-on-one.
Fortunately, Yi Grovana can cast Protection from Missiles on several party members, and both our cleric and druid can cast long-last Minor Elemental Barrier spells that will give everyone 10/- cold resistance or better. We can still take huge damage from the summoned enemies and Alicorn Lance, but we'll be much sturdier in this long, drawn-out fight.
First up, we have a high-level druid to tackle, Odea Winterthaw, and a band of humans and winter wolves on top. Pearl holds back most of the enemies with Entangle while Valos shuts down Odea Winterthaw's spellcasting with the Moonblade.
We clean house pretty easily thanks to the Moonblade and Pearl's giant bear claws, but we get caught in our own Entangle spells, and lose precious rounds of our defensive buffs on the way to the next phase of the fight.
Illium Ar'Ghrenoir, the head ranger of Andora, has an incredible attack bonus of +50. Valos' AC is 46. All other enemies around have a 5% hit chance against Valos, but Illium has a 95% hit rate for his first two attacks per round. And because I didn't think she would need it, Valos has no Protection from Arrows buff to reduce the damage.
Before we get into the ice temple interior, we have to take down Sherincal, the high-level fighter/mage with an innate fear aura, lots of lightning bolts from her breath weapon, and high spell resistance. She has amazing stats across the board, and she comes bolstered by a wave of enemies, both barbarians and various priests (though fortunately we dispatched the nearby necromancers so they can't ambush us during this fight).
Here's our party right before our first bout with a half-dragon:
Sherincal only has a Will save of 11. She easily fails her save against Pearl's jacked-up Remove Magic spell, wrecking her defenses. We nail her with the Wand of Elemental Breaching and concentrate our fire on her, and Yi Grovana lands the killing blow with Minute Meteors.
Rila Lira takes another rank in the Extended Spell feat, and since we've just bought a Ring of Lesser Extending, that means ALL of her spells, even the level 5 ones, have double duration. She can now cast Ethereal Jaunt.
And Ethereal Jaunt lets us walk through walls.
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151349/#Comment_1151349
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151491/#Comment_1151491
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151645/#Comment_1151645
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151758/#Comment_1151758
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151849/#Comment_1151849
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151956/#Comment_1151956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152043/#Comment_1152043
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152150/#Comment_1152150
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152234/#Comment_1152234
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152373/#Comment_1152373
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152495/#Comment_1152495
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152759/#Comment_1152759
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152979/#Comment_1152979
Elementals made short work of Mekrath and occupied the attention of some yuan-ti mages while Fire Storm did its job.
Moving on, elementals killed a few enemies on the way to Gaal. I noticed just prior to that I'd got another level - and looking back one of the ettercaps had provided that.
With all the vampire ambushes now out of the way, I paid Gaelan Bayle his 15k gold and went to find Aran Linvail. Chaotic commands provided protection while chasing Lassal away at the Docks.
Shaman 17, 97 HPs, kills 257 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
Also the lack of SCS makes the AI a little dumb *sad face*.
---
Trilogy Run of Rangers & Thieves (SCS Insane; PC Halfling Swashbuckler)
Since last update we have done a few of the underdark quests and dungeons.
Nothing run ending but the underdark has been a little bumpier than it could be. Easily the toughest part of the game imo though, so I suppose some difficulty is to be expected.
I messed up Vithal's quest arc and accidentally told him that I was OK with his measly rod as a reward and he disappeared, keeping his death helm and a bunch of level 8 and 9 scrolls.
I messed up fighting the beholders in their dungeon and left a rod of resurrection in Nalia's inventory while she was scouting for skeleton warriors. The hive mother can see through invisibility and hit her with an anti-magic ray, which drained all the raise dead charges from the rod (only noticed later). I also let two characters get stunned and killed by the mindflayers in the beholder dungeon.
As I had already used three charges on one rod, that leaves me with zero charges of raise dead remaining, and no way to revive further fallen party members.
So, we are going to skip every fight we can and just focus on survival. We are definitely skipping Deirex and House Jaelet. Those fights will be lost forever. I had planned to bring Vithal's time stop scroll to help debuff and use pc's slayer change in the event of a balor or planetar summon, but without time stop or resurrection it's just too dangerous imo.
We are also skipping the mind flayer dungeon, and the soul prison facets. We will return for them in chapter 6 if the game lets us. We will NOT skip the demon knight squad, as I want to forge crom faeyr and I'm not sure whether we can come back for it. If we can't return, the mind flayer loot will be a big loss as the harp
in particular represents the party's only means of curing stun since we have no cleric spells (ring of fire control and staff of command would be nice too).
We do still have to fight the beholder at ust natha landing, as well as the mage/ slime party, and the drow party guarding the underdark exit (although if that one gets too dicey we can probably get help from Adalon). And of course we still need to fight the demon knights, and not mess up the egg replacement arc + run out of Ust Natha.
I give us decent odds, but I really wish we had not gotten our resurrect rod drained and that we had brought some scrolls of raise dead from the surface.
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Loury has spent his week lazing around but finds 10-15 minutes to concoct a plan by looking at our relative lack of equipment. All he has to do is drag Swish and Corecleric around a few places and pick up various items. On his list are a ring + amulet from Aran Linvail, a stinky cloak from the sewers and a bunch of other stuff. He figures there is little point going into more detail as it's unlikely the plan will be followed.
Once Corey_Russell and Grond0 joined we set about our two hour session to see what mayhem we could cause - being slightly hindered with the game taking a couple of minutes to join and Grond0 dropping two or three times during the session. The transatlantic connection to Corey_Russell is OK but the less than 80 miles to Grond0 is a bit more glitchy.
We were off though - our first task to pay Gaelan Bayle went smoothly enough, and then we went around the slaver ship 'the wrong way'. Corecleric had mentioned that he had Raise Dead memorised and wondered if it had been for Swish. A brief pre-mortem confirmed it would be useless on Loury or Corecleric so must have been for our swashybuckler.
Anyway, back to the slaver ship - good job we had Raise Dead memorised as our thief forgot how to ply his trade and once more blobbed himself in the largest pile of acid we could imagine.
After reporting back to Hendak we duly rested and went to the Docks. Aran Linvail gave us a ring of protection +2 (Loury) and the Amulet of Power (Corecleric) so we decided to try them out on the nearest bunch of pirates you've ever seen.
We've picked up a couple of quests for the temple of Helm too, but shelve that to get Renfeld returned and after Swish shows himself to a roomful of goblins and Xzar's apprentices he and Corecleric manage to get that under control just as Loury arrives. Better late than dead thinks the undead hunter.
We return to the Temple sewers and deal with a rakshasa and sea troll, tell Keldorn to keep to himself and pick up a rod of resurrection from Mekrath's former quarters. Loury starts to describe his plan of dealing with Tarnor the Hatchetman where we would each play to our strengths.
Doh. Loury would use his 'it's obvious' approach so the others wouldn't know what he had planned
Doh. Swish would draw out Gaius' True Sight
Doh. Corecleric would buff before we are ready
We're playing three different games here so Tarnor and his men must be in triple trouble. Only, Swish is distracted by Loury's inaction and Coreclerics casting - and forgets Gaius has a True sight running. He promptly gets stunned in a situation where we can't easily rescue him.
We fit in a quick visit to the Bridge district where we grab a berserker horn and solve the skinner murders - using our buffs including True Sight, Bless, Protection from Evil, Armour of Faith and Arbane Haste to kill off two ghast and two Rune Assassins.
Then to the Government district to pick up another quest (we have Windspear, Umar, Trademeet and de'Arnise all lined up now), agree to track down Valygar and as Loury speaks to Sir Sarles his companions are rescuing Viconia from a bonfire night situation.
Loury thinks back to his plan. Most of it has transpired, more through luck than good judgement. He does head to the Graveyard district and after returning a teddy bear to the spirit of a child we descend into the tombs to pick up some headgear for Swish. Once more our plan is tripartite, when facing Pai'Na with a concealed entry;
Loury reckons to do whatever is necessary but says nothing
Swish lays a few snares
Corecleric silences Pai'Na and attacks
Corecleric is happy to have avoided lots of itchy spider bites but Swish is a bit upset he didn't get to pull their legs off. Anyway, we've got what we came for.
Corecleric and Swish both fancy dealing with Mencar Pebblecrusher and his motley crue. Loury is noncommital (I never bother with them in single player and reluctantly get dragged along in duo or trio, same as against Neira in BG1). Loury aims his bow at Brennan Riesling as everybody attacks and then has to switch to melee to defend himself. Swish is merrily attacking the enemy caster as Corecleric is taking the brunt of melee. Loury is busy helping Corecleric and then calls for a time-out to check Swish is happy.
Yes yells Swish. I'm fine. Carry on. Uh, OK.
Swish, Swashbuckler 12
Corecleric Priest of Lathander 11
Loury is reminded of the ungainly amulet he is wearing and has a much nicer alternative ready so our first order for next time should be to report in to Mae'Var.
(as usual I am trying not to bag plot items as multiplayer doesn't like that sort of thing if a client talks to whoever wants the item)
4 digit #: 6362
6 - Female
3 - Elf
6 - Mage
4 - Diviner
3 digit #: 855
8 - Neutral Evil
5 - # of rerolls for ability scores
5 - Female Jester(Changed it to 2d8)
*5 rolls, the best was:
Str 14
Dex 15
Con 12
Int 18
Wis 16
Cha 10
Total 85 points
Party(1d29):
14 - Kagain
6 - Dorn
22 - Safana
3 - Baeloth
16 - Kivan
Interesting Party without a healer. Lets see...
I'm fully aware. I've soloed BG1 as an assassin. I think her name was something like Victasaadi Falconsflight.
Edit: Added a picture from 2013
Previous updates at:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151349/#Comment_1151349
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151491/#Comment_1151491
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151645/#Comment_1151645
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151758/#Comment_1151758
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151849/#Comment_1151849
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1151956/#Comment_1151956
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152043/#Comment_1152043
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152150/#Comment_1152150
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152234/#Comment_1152234
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152373/#Comment_1152373
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152495/#Comment_1152495
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152759/#Comment_1152759
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152979/#Comment_1152979
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153162/#Comment_1153162
The Warden was no problem, with plague after plague of insects keeping him and his yuan-ti mages under control.
Returning to the sewers I pursued the Unseeing Eye quest. Elementals and Fire Storm were used against the beholders near the bridge. I danced my way through most of the undead, though another Fire Storm accounted for the lich.
There wasn't much left to do in Athkatla, but one bit of business remaining was the nearby Guarded Compound. A glabrezu and its friends ran into blades before the upstairs enemies were dragged down one at a time to melee some elementals - the original group of those just outlasting their competition.
Shaman 19, 101 HPs, kills 304 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)