After telling Bjornin all about our victory over the half-ogres, I joined up with Branwen and Safana before returning to Beregost where Neera joined us.
After picking up bits of experience that we didn't have to fight to get in Durlag's Tower we ended up seeking out Adoy and getting his belt. We rested at the Carnival and went to investigate the mines, demons or no demons. The "demons" turned out to be very squishy kobolds. Mulahey also turned out to be nothing special compared with others we have killed.
Xan joined our party and helped us clear the caves when we left the mine. He also helped against Narcilicus and the slimes.
We rested at the Carnival before heading off to Beregost where we gave Officer Vai some scalps befor setting off to the bandit camp via Peldvale where we helped Viconia.
The bandits there took us to their camp where things ended peacably enough. We then headed back to Beregost killing Deke on the way.
In Beregost we rested before going in search of Tranzig who was killed by Safana.
We took a further six scalps to Officer Vai, killed a few spiders and took the items wanted by Landrin to him.
After going back to the camp we killed every bandit that we came across. We then went to High Hedge to buy a robe of the neutral arch mage. In addition we bought a small quantity of ammunition. To do that we had to sell most of our surplus equipment. We now have 1gp left.
I am just checking that this is OK before I start.
I was wanting to run an all-half-orc party headed up by a Cavalier and including an illusionist.
To get the Cavalier I rolled a fighter and used Keeper to change him to a Cavalier.
To get the Illusionist I rolled a human Illusionist and used Keeper to move two intelligence points, one to con and one to strength. Then changed the race and appearance to that of a half-orc.
The Helmite cleric and the fighter thief were rolled as per usual.
2e rules make these characters illegal, but the devs must have done something similar to create Dorn.
So just wondered about peoples thoughts about doing this. Creating an illusionist like this actually makes her weaker than a gnomish illusionist would be.
The Helmite Cleric that I rolled actually had this roll. My eyes just about jumped out of their sockets. It was bound to happen to somebody some day, but before this my highest ever roll was 103!
At the Twisted Rune, I talked to Shangalar before retreating and using a PfU scroll. After he was shot down I sent a Fire Storm in to Vaxall, while a single fire elemental moved in with it as a sacrifice to his death spell. The others then poured forward to finish him off.
Layene killed those, but a replacement dragged in some insects, making her an easy victim.
I got to L20 there and took Favored of the Spirits. That protects from death magic and casts an auto-heal if you go below 10% HPs. As anyone will know from attacking enemies with contingencies that's an incredibly low figure and will probably only kick in when you're dead - but every little helps!
With work in Athkatla complete for the moment, I moved on to the de'Arnise Hold. Elementals did most of the work there, though I did have to finish off the iron golem myself.
For TorGal I gave spirits the chance to see what they could do. They could potentially have won, but wouldn't finish off trolls on the ground, so I had to step in myself to help out.
Moving on to Umar Hills, a few little chores around the village soon gained me another level.
At the Ruined Temple area Anath's regeneration proved useless after the Pixie Prick opened him up to elemental attack.
Elementals also tore through most of the undead opposition there, though they got some spell support for the liches.
I tried Harm out on Thaxy, but MR kicked in to prevent that - MR was useless against Fire Storm though .
Despite a Fire Storm and energy blades attack, the Shade Lord got off a chromatic orb - but that bounced off a Shield of the Archons. A few seconds later he was dead and I had gained another level.
Time was up there, so I'll pick up Valygar's body on the way to collect my reward from Minister Lloyd next time.
We visited Cloakwood and rather aptly gained a cloak. I then realised that safana hadn't got the boots to aid stealth so we went in search of it. Nearby we also found some potions of health. We tried to return Gurke's Cloak but were unsuccessful, but we were able to sell a few more scalps that were obtained due to a bandit ambush. We returned to Cloakwood where Safana set off a trap which webbed her despite her looking for it. Fortunately she was hidden at the time so I moved forward to defend her in case she became visible. I was wearing a ring that protects me from hold. The others were using ranged weapons but because Neera's were darts she got too close and she too was webbed. Afterwards we were quite tired and so slept.
A sword spider became fixated upon killing Safana with the result that we had to flee the area. In transit we were attacked by two wyvern and only just survived. They didn't.
We rested in order to recover somewhat. The big question was: "Do we return in order to fulfil our promise to find Chelak?" Hopefully we will be able to restore our financial situation somewhat if we can sell the wyvern tails.
In the end we decided to return. On this occasion the sword spider turned its attention to me and died as a result.
However upon meeting Centeol Branwen was killed so we will had to return to civilisation soon afterwards. Xan levelled up to 6.
Upon returning to the temple, we received a reward for killing the wyvern and used some of the gold to raise Branwen.
We then proceeded to the mines where Drasus and his cohorts were killed without mercy.
We killed every enemy that we could find in the mines. Hareishan fell when Xan was able to send a lightning bolt in her direction which badly hurt the guards as well. This was not a planned tactic, he just took full advantage of an oportunity that presented itself. Another mage used confusion. That caused some of us to attack each other, but because the mage was already dead, we just had to avoid the confused members of the party until the spell wore off.
Davaeorn was the easiest to deal with. After the traps were disabled Xan summoned some monsters. davaeorn wasted his spells on them but did eventually kill them. However, he had no reply to a second wave of monsters.
His death was unseen by our party however we did find his remains. We have now entered Baldur's Gate and found a tome that has increased my dexterity. I bought some wands in Sorcerous Sundries. That virtually emptied my purse! Upstairs we were attacked by mages. A horror spell affected everyone but Safana. However our spells had killed all but one of the mages and Safana eventually killed him. We then just had to wait for the effects to wear off.
Later on we were poisoned by Marek, but the poison was eradicated after killing him.
@Wise_Grimwald I don't see a problem in using half-orcs for a wider range of classes - if that's what you want to do, go for it .
After picking up Valygar's body, I returned to Athkatla and activated the Planar Sphere. Most of the combat there was fairly similar to before, but I did start making a bit of use of Nature's Beauty.
The huge advantage of that is you can cast it without breaking invisibility - and even those not instantly killed are pretty much doomed after being blinded. I got to level 23 by warming up the cold room with a nice fire.
After escorting Lavok outside, I moved on to Windspear Hills. In the dungeon Nature's Beauty is no help against undead, so I had to use Fire Storm to deal with a bunch of vampires and get to level 24.
Progress was generally pretty rapid, but I had no really quick method of dealing with golems (repeated Energy Blades being the best of a bad lot) and I ran out of time while working through genies.
@Wise_Grimwald I don't see a problem in using half-orcs for a wider range of classes - if that's what you want to do, go for it .[/i]
After thinking about it, I decided that you are quite correct as there are mods around that make all classes available to all races.
Journal of Bork the Berserker
We have gone round Baldur's Gate doing many trivial tasks without difficulty. That was our downfall as we were almost wiped out.
Only I escaped and I spent a fortune in healing at the temple. Upon returning I was able to finish the task of eliminating them.
I had sufficient funds to raise 3 of the party which I did. I then sold a considerable amount of equipment to pay for the others to be raised.
As I redistributed the equipment I discovered that several pieces of highly useful pieces of equipment had disappeared including Xan's Moonblade and my scroll case that had several highly useful items in it including quite a few green scrolls . It's just as well that it had no vital items in it!! At that point I decided to retire him as he wouldn't be going to SoD anyway. I thought of recruiting Quayle but decided against it. When he retired Xan was at the point of reaching level 7. [1000 experience points needed] [I play better with smaller parties. Sadly I wasted the gold on raising Xan as I didn't notice the missing equipment soon enough. I afterwards thought about the battle and realised that summoning monsters beforehand would probably have made the battle easy. Even easier would have been to sneak Safana past them and not fight at all.]
I have now collected Balduran's Cloak and am about to enter the Iron Throne.
EDIT
Upon thinking about it, I decided that since it was a bug that caused the items to disappear when most of the party died, I would re-enlist Xan and use Keeper to restore as many missing items as I could remember, the moonblade and the scrollcase being those of most import. To my surprise, when I restored the scrollcase, it restored its contents too.
The party therefore went to Candlekeep which they are now exploring.
Samia's intended ambush died in fire and I moved quickly on to find Firkraag - picking up another level on the way.
I was dubious about winning a fair fight and Harm failed to work, so I dragged Firkraag upstairs and bombarded him with energy blades.
When first at Trademeet I hadn't done the Rune Assassins, so returning there now allowed me to help Tiris.
I also did some shopping and bought some potions at the Grove before dealing with the rakshasas there.
Back in Athkatla I put Tazok's key to use in the sewers. I made things more interesting by relying almost entirely on spirits there - they did a better job than I expected as they appeared to be immune to brain devouring as well as charm and stun (though not maze).
That left the final bit of work in Athkatla as dealing with a nest of vampires. I hadn't reported back to Aran Linvail after the Guild Contact and doing that pushed me to level 26.
However, the session ran out on arrival back at the Graveyard, so Bodhi will have to wait for next time.
Indeed, all shaman spirits have the same immunity item as magical swords. No charm, stun, fear, hold, psionics, or Int drain. Also no poison or backstabs, from a different immunity item. There's really nothing illithids can do against them except for melee damage, and they're very bad at that.
Indeed, all shaman spirits have the same immunity item as magical swords. No charm, stun, fear, hold, psionics, or Int drain. Also no poison or backstabs, from a different immunity item.
One of the spirits did get mazed. Is that a spell then, rather than a psionic effect?
Trilogy Run of Rangers & Thieves (SCS Insane; PC Halfling Swashbuckler)
Bit the dust in the underdark again.
A few too many mistakes.
Party (Minsc, Valygar, Jan, Imoen, Nalia, PC) had trouble resurrecting in the underdark, as there is no priest NPC to pay for raise dead. Not knowing this, we did not bring any scrolls of raise dead from the surface. We had to make do with the 10 charges from the two rods of resurrection.
Unfortunately, 5 of those charges got drained by the hive mother in the beholder dungeon. That was a big mistake.
The rest got spent on 5 deaths. Minsc and Valygar died once when fighting the mindflayer ambush rescuing phaere - they were immediately stunned as the party has no chaotic commands. Minsc got touched by a fish priest with slay living while fighting the fish prince. Then two more deaths from the mindflayers in the beholder dungeon. That left the party with no way to raise dead.
Despite playing relatively carefully, Nalia and Imoen got killed fighting the slime mage in Ust Natha when he - while silenced, panicked and near death - got off a 3x skull trap sequencer and hit them.
Jan got killed fighting the drow guarding the surface exit - one of the demons power word stunned him. At this point, PC, Minsc and Valygar were forced to flee the western tunnels. One of the high level mages and a few others followed, but PC slayer changed and killed them. We then headed to Adalon and had her clean up the remaining defenders.
The last thing I wanted to do before leaving the underdark and reviving the dead was to get the frost giant belt. I was concerned we wouldn't be able to return for it. Unfortunately, I did not realize how accurate demon knights were and 5 of them at once were tougher than I was expecting.
For the fight with the knights, we had no way to summon skeletons, and Minsc and Valygar would be relatively useless with no ability to resist their magic (power words, symbols, 20d6 fireballs, remove magic, etc.). So we decided to use the slayer against them.
Which was a decent idea! Except I forgot that I did not have immunity to power word kill and needed to keep hp well above 60. When only one of the knights was left, I thought it would be safe to run my hp lower. It was not. He power word killed me at ~45 hp and the slayer failed his 50 MR roll.
Curtains.
Anyway, not sure what or when my next party will be, but I'm thinking either a party of:
Mages: PC - wildmage w/ Edwin, Jan, Nalia, Imoen, Aerie; or,
Weirdos: PC - monk w/ Haerdalis, Cernd, Keldorn, Minsc, Valygar [no thief, which might be too annoying]
Sorry about your Rangers and Thieves @Jabberwock. I've enjoyed your posts and I like these themed runs. I'm sure I'll also enjoy reading about whichever of the two parties you choose to go with next (with a slight preference for the Wild Mage).
Elementals made short work of the upper layer of the vampire HQ. I didn't bother resting for downstairs as a Fire Storm and some blades were more than enough. Back upstairs the elementals were still waiting to overwhelm Bodhi.
At Brynnlaw, Perth died in a Fire Storm cast from out of his sight. His book delayed me a while by offering literally dozens of options (including 5 different copies of Wyvern Call), before I eventually settled for Spell Turning.
In Spellhold I picked up a welcome Bag of Holding before my incredible ability to solve a puzzle I've only done hundreds of times earned another level.
I didn't bother with anything fancy there - elementals, Fire Storm and blades generally providing the necessary answers (though the odd bit of Pixie Prick and spirits were used when blades ran out). I got another level shortly before being sent for judgment and a second shaman-specific item to boost spirit abilities was offered up by some trolls.
However, time ran out before I could have a reckoning with Irenicus.
The only incident of note in Candlekeep was the battle against Prat. Yes phase spiders had hurt us badly due to their venom and their propensity to attack squishy party members, but nobody died.
How different was that Prat! Not having true sight was a disadvantage and both Jaheira and Xan got killed but not chunked.
On the way out we killed Diarmid before we proceeded to the Temple at Beregost to raise the slain.
In the Ducal Palace Branwen was killed as was Liia. After the battle I noticed that our reputation was 10. I have no idea how it got from 20 to 10. However gold helped us get it back to 15.
We raised Branwen and then said goodbye to her as she won't be in SOD.
We are now trying to accumulate gold in order to get decent wands. Wand of sleep has been upgraded to 100 charges and wand of fire to 50 charges, the wand of monster summoning to 100 charges, and the wand of ice to 100 charges so far. A few more still need upgrading particularly the wand of the heavens.
We rescued Annabel from the xvarts and a boy from some worgs with the result that I am a hero once more.
We also killed the doomsayer for a bit of experience.
I convinced Lonk to release the inmates ahead of the confrontation with Irenicus. I've found the easiest way to defeat him is with physical damage, so just hit him with a few seconds worth of Energy Blades. His script doesn't acknowledge defeat immediately, but he was soon on his way.
Often I run immediately after that to avoid being bothered by murderers, but this time stuck around to see what Nature's Beauty could do to them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they didn't seem to be too troubled by the blinding radiance from my invisible countenance and only 2 of them died from 3 spells cast .
After an abortive ship journey with Saemon I proved myself to the king of Fish City by demonstrating how effective Energy Blades are even against enemies immune to missiles.
I grabbed a couple of nice cloaks in the area before ensuring a fair outcome of a royal struggle by killing both the king and the prince - I was out of L7 spells for the latter, but a rare use of Harm helped ensure he didn't get away.
In the Underdark some elementals helped gain me another level from a bunch of drow.
The 4 remaining elementals, after a further struggle with some myconids, were all stunned by a balor - but blades took it close enough to death to require only a single stab.
In the northern tunnels I shamelessly took advantage of Nature's Beauty to nerf beholder gazes and bypass the kuo-toa ability to see through invisibility.
The kuo-toa prince shrugged that off with his MR and his regeneration was too much for spirits to get past - but elementals and blades did the job.
I then spent the rest of the session fighting the Demon Knights. Three of those died in an initial attack by elementals and blades, before I tried to finish the others off with spirits. That was a slow business though as the 2 remaining Demon Knights could kill the spirits much quicker than they were replaced - so I had to keep running away to set up new ambushes. I got level drained at one point doing that and, a bit later, I got caught with a symbol fear - and was lucky to run round without getting attacked further during that. Deciding it was time to stop mucking about I used a potion of clarity before putting Pixie Prick to work.
I changed my mind about branwen when I realised that I needed her freedom of action spell for Balduran's isle.
Fortunately she was happy to rejoin the party.
The Isle was straightforward though things did get a little difficult inside the ship. Fortunately I was able to separate the Greater wolfwere from his companions and was therefore able to whittle them down until only he was left. Safana used stealth to loot the top deck and when he followed her down a deck she hid whilst the nymph there got into combat with him.
We took the spellbook to Dradeel which brought Neera up to level 9.
We therefore returned to the village to enable safe resting.
Neera memorised two cloudkill spells which we intended to use while everyone used spells on him.
However a nymph held the greater wolfwere so we switched tactics slightly. I used Balduran's Sword while everyone else used spells. Didn't even have to use web.
He fell without hurting any of us in the slightest.
I've learnt another way of disabling him.
Now back at Ulgoth's Beard Loup Garou is dead.
The only question now is. Do we go after Sarevok or do we investigate Durlag's? Everyone is so near the level cap that I am thinking that Durlag's would be a waste of time.
I do want to recharge my wand of polymorphing before facing Sarevok however.
I got exposed early on in the beholder nest when the Elder Orb's true sight beat a Nature's Beauty to the punch. My saving throws then left me vulnerable and with a clouded aura, but I managed to run out of sight. Elementals and Fire Storms then started walking through the area - soon picking me up a penultimate level.
I decided though not to clear the place, but just went to get the Greenstone Amulet.
I was also not bothered about the illithid hive, so went to find Adalon and then do some shopping with the drow merchants (somehow managing to resist the usual strong temptation to proclaim that I'd just come from the lair of Adalon). Then it was back to burn up Adalon and kill a few more drow in order to exit the Underdark.
After speaking to Elhan, I ignored Drizzt on the way back to Athkatla and handed over the Silver Sword to Kruin there. I spent a little while on inventory management, including forging Gesen, before heading for Umar Hills. An Insect Plague ensured the mages there caused no problem after I'd picked up the Human Flesh Armor - I can't wear that yet, but my time will come .
At the Graveyard I remembered to put on the Amulet of Power to avoid getting drained while burning some vampires up. Doing that to Bodhi was enough for my final level.
I reported to Elhan and entered Suldanesselar. I still had 5 minutes of the session available, but decided to save the game there before starting on the city.
Shaman 31, 125 HPs, kills 629 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
Spells learned (in order of selection, though the first spells listed at each level are shaman only additions not requiring a pick):
L1 - Spirit Ward, CLW, Bless, Armor of Faith, Entangle, Doom
L2 - Writhing Fog, Charm P / M, Resist Fire / Cold, Slow Poison, Barkskin, Goodberry
L3 - Spiritual Clarity, Call Lightning, Summon Insects, Protection from Fire, Dispel Magic, Cure Disease
L4 - Spirit Fire, Call Woodland Beings, Death Ward, Defensive Harmony, Protection from Lightning, Farsight
L5 - Recall Spirit, Pixie Dust, Ironskins, Chaotic Commands, Insect Plague, True Seeing
L6 - Spiritual Lock, Conjure Fire Elemental, Harm, Physical Mirror, Dolorous Decay, Wondrous Recall
L7 - Ether Gate, Fire Storm, Shield of the Archons, Nature's Beauty, Regeneration, Earthquake
I've taken all the HLAs available except Mass Raise Dead. In retrospect I shouldn't have bothered with some of those, like Storm of Vengeance and Globe of Blades - more copies of Spirit Form would have been more likely to be useful.
It's almost a fortnight since this pair had their first outing so we shook off the rust and realised we couldn't remember what we'd been doing or what was next. Our usual situation then.
A quick check of equipment, journal and map suggested we had dealt with basilisks and sirenes but not Durlag's Tower or Nashkel Mine.
So off we trotted to the tower, Thredbehr meleeing battle horrors as Grue calls lightning onto them.
Then we had a near-miss as Grue cast web just as Thredbehr moved to attack a skeleton - Grue shouting anxiously and Thredbehr retreating to the exact point of safety and allowing the web to work to maximum effect.
We braved the interior of the tower next, but Grue found his salamander form problematic in talking to Kirinhale the succubus (or it might have just been a poor dialogue selection). Anyway, he got charmed and Thredbehr bravely waited downstairs for his companion to come to his senses.
After a rest we used a nymph to find Kirinhale, who had returned to her starting position, and then relied on an enrage to kill her. She ran off in a panic which gave her one or two more rounds of safety.
As we turned to deal with more basilisks on the roof we realised we hadn't packed any potions of mirrored eyes. Three of them from High Hedge should be enough but we fitted in time to web ourselves against skeletons and although we emerged victorious our health was badly affected.
So we rested and prepared to return, but Thredbehr checked and we had each assumed the other had bought the potions. Thredbehr ignored his lack of charisma to pay top dollar and quick-slotted the potions. We tracked back to Durlag's Tower where we both knew Thredbehr would try his hardest to only glug one potion of mirrored eyes.
This he duly did and after killing the lesser basilisk he raced upstairs to kill two greater basilisks. Grue was ably assisting but by the time we reached the final greater basilisk Thredbehr knew his minute of protection was running out.
Just as he paused to say his time was up, the protection expired as did the basilisk. What a jammy barbarian he is (and I'm quite surprised how accurate my 60 second count was with a couple of pauses in the mix).
We're now at our penultimate levels as a result and with only 91hp Thredbehr asks if Grue thinks he is up to Nashkel Mine. We breeze our way through it, and Grue uses web > spider form to occupy the minions as an enraged Thredbehr kills Mulahey.
We rest once more and take on the Amazons. Thredbehr fancies his chances but Grue uses Call Lightning to dispose of Zeela, Telka and Maneira. Lamahla just hangs on long enough for Thredbehr to kill her.
Nimbul the assassin thinks mirror image will help him but Thredbehr picks the right target to down him in one. Tranzig only lasts moments and the bandit camp exterior is strolled through - Taurghoz getting some insects just before he dies.
Grue uses improved invisibility to scout out the bandit tent and add a pair of nymphs as Thredbehr enrages to kill Venkt. Hakt is held while Raemon dies confused and Britik is outnumbered at the end. Letters in the tent point to Cloakwood mine so we go there next and defeat Drasus outside. Grue takes his boots of speed so our movement rate is increased nicely - he can just outrun Thredbehr.
This is another mine that we can safely progress through but at one point we rely on saving throws agains a ghast and although Thredbehr saves, Grue is held. Thredbehr is able to kill the ghast before it can eat too much of Grue, and we carry on until only Davaeorn is left. By this time Grue is in bear form so we each gulp a potion of magic blocking and chase him down.
Flooding the mine will hide evidence of our presence, and with the mine out of action we can get into the city of Baldur's Gate so do that. We make our mark by killing Marek and Lothander (thus restoring Thredbehr as the faster of the party with boots of speed plus barbarian increased movement), emptying Ramazith's tower (improved invisibility plus spider form plus enrage worked nicely against the group of ghasts there), killing Degrodel and his guardians, and obtaining a nice shield from Varci.
We are each at 122k xp, 3k shy of our final BG:EE levels. Party equipment and loot:
We braved the interior of the tower next, but Grue found his salamander form problematic in talking to Kirinhale the succubus (or it might have just been a poor dialogue selection).
Trio 29, Core rules, unmodded (Part 1234 in BG:EE and 56 7 in BGII:EE)
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Loury reminded himself the first action should be to hand in the necklace of Talos to Mae'Var. That no doubt will lead to further work but he has a few more items that he wants to collect this session.
- Corecleric is looking as though the Flail of Ages +3 might suit him, with a Shield of Harmony
- Swish could probably step right into Mae'Var's boots, and Belm might be a nice offhand weapon
- The ring of Gaxx is tempting. We don't have any Protection from Undead scrolls (1 at spell store 2 at Ribald 1 at Lady Yuth in the Promenade, 2 at temple of Ilmater in the slums, 2 at temple of Helm in Bridge district, 2 each at temples of Helm Lathander and Talos mean 14 so 8 more than we would safely require).
Corecleric could probably throw his unenchanted and +1 bullets away now he has the Sling of Seeking.
Oh well. Let's see what happens thinks Loury as he waits for Swish and Corecleric to ready themselves.
Our first task is to hand in the amulet to Mae'Var who then tells us to speak to Edwin who in turn wants us to kill Rayic Gethras. Loury is a bit sceptical about this but Corecleric has his set of 'anti-mage buffs' to hand and all proceeds very smoothly so we soon have our thiefs feet ensconced in Mae'Var's boots.
Loury has a plan to save time acquiring scrolls of protection from undead - he heads to the Helm temple as Corecleric goes to the Lathander one and Swish goes to the Talos temple. This is a masterplan with no flaw. Right up until Swish shouts that the Talosians have turned in for an early night so we rest 12 hours and purchase her scrolls in the wee hours of the morning.
With six scrolls we use three of them on the temple lich and gulp an oil of speed each. Then we race over to the city gates and deal with the lich there - making sure Swish picks up the Daystar longsword. From there we continue on to the Bridge district and destroy that lich before ending up in Kangaxx's tomb. Swish and Corecleric apply a second protection from undead (despite Corecleric saying his original was still active we convince him it is not) and then we kill Kangaxx.
With that done we set straight off to the De'Arnise keep (after selling anything we don't want to take). As experienced adventurers there is nothing there we should fear, although the charmed captain of the guard Glaicus has to be approached from the shadows so Loury and Corecleric leave this to Swish.
Who nearly pays for this with his life as Glaicus is like a dog with a bone and initially refuses to stop chasing Swish. He eventually switches to Loury before being held and our swashbuckler is left with a sliver of life. Such pain is the reward for killing many of the trolls (Loury being too lazy to switch to arrows so Swish having to alternate between melee and ranged weapons.
Loury refuses the company of Nalia after she refuses his impromptu proposal (if only that would teach him to stop clicking '1' without considering what he will then say).
We move on from the de'Arnise keep to Trademeet (Corecleric having changed from the Ashideena warhammer to the Flail of Ages +3 before we had faced Tor'Gal). A group of Dao Djinn are problematic for the townsfolk but Corecleric has an army of undead to turn the tables on them.
The trolls at the nearby druid grove get a mix of flail and arrow, Loury even bothering to switch to arrows occasionally.
Swish offhands the Belm scimitar to become quicker with his main hand, and Loury takes care not to step inside a dwelling in case the sweet old lady inside is revealed as another tiger-headed abominiation. Instead we continue past Cernd to kill another trio of druids despite one of their call lightning spells badly wounding Swish. Loury and Corecleric are having an easy day which suits them, while Swish is getting badly injured from time to time - and that seems to suit him.
We double back and invite Cernd to snack on Faldorn, and afterwards he tries to rejoin the party. Oh no says Loury, I said the wrong thing earlier and having you in the party for seven seconds was too long for comfort. Be off with you.
We head back to Trademeet to collect our reward, and to deal a final blow to Rejiek Hidesman. We also stop a dispute between two families by stiffing them both and handing in a heirloom to the mayor. We're done with Trademeet so next stop will be Umar Hills.
The tasks around Umar don't take us too long at all and the evidence there means our path continues on to nearby temple ruins. We just have enough time to believe Anath is not the source of the problem and to use Turn Undead x2 to scare and pop various shadows before saving descent into the temple for another day.
Party levels, kills, and items:
Loury Undead Hunter level 11 has 231 kills
Swish Swashbuckler level 14 has 127 kills
Corecleric Priest of Lathander level 13 has 81 kills
Loury sneaks a peek at his companions. Corecleric still has both lots of aforementioned bullets - just sell or drop them, and sell the Wyvern's Tail morning star too. As for Swish, there is clearly a lot of prep work going on around a golem manual, shortbow and flesh armour being useful far into the future.
(Loury being a paladin, he overlooks the 200lb of illithium he palmed-off to Corecleric and the Ilbratha shortsword that we may never use)
Loury sneaks a peek at his companions. Corecleric still has both lots of aforementioned bullets - just sell or drop them, and sell the Wyvern's Tail morning star too. As for Swish, there is clearly a lot of prep work going on around a golem manual, shortbow and flesh armour being useful far into the future.
Corecleric, being a wily old veteran, knows that equipping bullets on top of the sling means damage is the sum of that from the sling and the bullet (and if the bullets are enchanted they add to the THAC0 as well). Of course he's far too polite to contradict his leader, so leaves doing that to the party member able to quickly duck into the shadows to avoid any stray sword swings .
Neera was killed near in an ambush as she approached Sarevok. We didn't have the gold to raise her so we will kill a few ankheg. That will allow us to stock up on potions at Sorcerous Sundries too.
We did go to the final battle site, killed two battle horrors and disabled some traps. We then went back up to the surface.
Eventually we fought Sarevok.
It was touch and go, but sadly Bork the Berserker died.
Suldanesselar was no problem. Spirits and blades dealt with most of the encounters, though a full helping of elementals was produced to keep an eye on Nizi while he burnt up.
At the temple I tend to move away from the altar after loading it up, in order that all the enemies will be in sight when the Avatar arrrives, without giving them a chance to attack me (if they're not in sight they won't be destroyed). I was careful this time to avoid accidentally clicking on the exit - as leaving before the Avatar has spoken bugs the encounter, leaving no way to get access to the Tree of Life.
On the Tree, spirits overcame the elementals defending the parasites.
These encounters illustrated the fact it is often possible to pre-summon spirits even without using fancy movement. Although there is a cooldown period after stopping dancing that prevents you from casting spells or using special abilities, you can do other things. Talking is often enough to trigger an encounter, but here I could do that by attacking - though the cooldown means I couldn't actually make an attack before spirits disappear, the mere intention to attack is enough to trigger the parasites' defenses.
A pre-summoned elemental persuaded Irenicus to waste all his initial spells and more elementals provided a distraction until I moved in for the kill.
In hell, I took the good alternatives with the dragon and nymph cloak (using a potion of clarity to avoid being scared there). As I wouldn't be relying on MR, I went evil with the sacrifice. I couldn't use Blackrazor, so was happy to hand that over for a saving throw improvement, before boosting strength by getting annoyed with Sarevok.
A couple of helpings of blades killed the demons left behind by Sarevok. True sight then exposed the real Slayer and more blades beat him down to reveal Irenicus.
Unfortunately I think he must have taken damage at the critical moment of his transformation as he refused to utter his farewell speech. It wasn't possible to rest even out of his sight and he's unkillable in that form. In similar situations I've tended to abandon the run, but I felt reluctant to do that this time and eventually loaded the autosave to see what would happen. Initially, that only caused more heartache when it became apparent the Slayer had much faster regeneration than I expected. To start with that seemed to be enormous, but by the time I got around to testing it more accurately it seemed to have settled down to about 40 HPs per round. I was able to outpace that using blades, but the limited supply of those ran out just too soon - I saw him at single figure HPs with ctrl+M, but am not sure that I ever actually got him down to 1 - he didn't transform in any case.
After spending a while trying a few tactics, I concluded that it was unlikely I could beat him on my own (or with spirits) and decided to make use of Vhailor's Helm (typically I don't resort to that in SoA). That took him down more easily than I expected though and I suspect his regeneration had again dropped significantly (possibly he had somehow had various stacked haste effects, which were gradually wearing off). This time all went as expected and Irenicus disappeared into the Abyss, leaving me free to move on to ToB.
I'll consider tomorrow whether to continue the run further, or give it up here.
Shaman 31, 125 HPs, kills 644 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
Edit: on second thoughts, I don't need to wait until tomorrow. Though the immediate disappointment made me reluctant to give up the run, I would never be happy in the longer term with counting it as a success, so it will be back to Candlekeep once more ...
I tried a solo run with an illusionist/thief. I was doing well having killed Tarnesh using two backstabbings. Then heading southwards I was ambushed by ten bandits! My armour spell wore of during transit and that was the end. I will try the same character again with hopefully better results.
I have found that starting spells of Friends and Sleep are excellent for this character as Friends gets the +1 dagger { he has * in daggers and * in single weapon use.} Sleep is usually enough to disable the early enemies.
Next run stopped by Vax when he saved against my spells.
Third death today was from another ambush of archers, this time hobgoblins.
We quickly recap, are both nearing our final level and have reached the city of Baldur's Gate.
There is time to pick up a cloak from Quenash and kill a greater doppelganger after killing an ogre mage and emptying the Seven Suns of doppelgangers. Then it's on to the Iron Throne headquarters where Thredbehr goes for melee and Grue goes for insects, and a successful chromatic orb petrification.
That's enough for us to be sent back to Candlekeep, where Grue warns Thredbehr about a web but the barbarian has equipped a ring of free action.
Only a few feet further Thredbehr is admiring his mighty DUHM + enraged physique when Grue casually mentions even more hit points would have been available with potions of heroism or power. Quite.
Prat and his gang are nullified by insect bites, while we experiment with glow-in-the-dark greater basilisks.
Having fought our way out of the Candlekeep catacombs we make our way back into the city and liven up the Coronation.
Having foiled Sarevok's attempt to kill off the remaining dukes we chase him into the nearby thieves maze. Here we are admiring our nifty footwork where we only set off one lightning trap and one fireball trap.
We avoid Rahvin and his gang, before entering the once-abandoned temple of Bhaal. Thredbehr successfully hits Sarevok with an arrow of dispelling but this means Semaj and Tazok are able to join in th fight. Thredbehr continues a running fight as Grue dooms Sarevok and adds web plus insects into the fray.
After a little while both Semaj and Tazok lie dead, and we can focus on Sarevok. He is webbed a few times but Thredbehr has been wounded in combat and sticks to arrows initially before closing in for the kill.
SoD
For a change we take the longer route to Melissan, and import ourselves to a Siege of Dragonspear campaign. Thredbehr is a bit miffed as he forgot to debag various items but Grue seems unperturbed. Fine, we'll make do and we have the golden pantaloons. Our first task is to get rid of the ever optimistic group of joiners who have tagged along. Toodle-pip.
We make steady progress, Thredbehr noticing with astonishment that Grue is using the Flaming Fist healer to keep us healthy. This means we don't need to rest.
At one point a shadowed soul is problematic as it keeps moving so Thredbehr can only almost kill it several times. Eventually he switches to arrows and kills it immediately.
Grue uses his webs to simplify combat against the undead guardian and a group of mercenaries. Thredbehr has to ask the healer to remove a level-drain from a wraith that crept up invisible on him, and then we show Korlasz no mercy. With her dead we grab her book and leave.
At the Ducal palace we have a good night's rest and retrieve our equipment ready for next time:
'Long-life challenge' - shaman {44} (update 1)
Previous run
After the disappointing end to the previous attempt I quickly started a new run to see if I can get a bit further. This time though I didn't do any experimentation in BGEE, or bother with much of the unnecessary XP or treasure, but just cracked on.
There has been almost no trouble in the run to date. Spirits were used only once prior to the last battle (to kill the mustard jelly near Davaeorn as I had no magic weapon at the time), as there are normally quicker ways to resolve encounters. However, I felt it was appropriate to give them the finishing hit against Sarevok and doing that gave me the nearest thing to a problem so far. Once Sarevok was down to a few HPs left, I danced out of sight of him to set up 3 spirits and then moved so he could see me. As tends to happen the spirits didn't move forward to intercept him, but headed for his destination, i.e. me. That didn't seem like a problem, because I could always move away - except that one of the spirits moved on top of me, so that I couldn't actually do that. I took a couple of hits while trying to break free and the slight delay in spirits disappearing after you stop dancing could then have been painful if I had no other options. However, although combat, spells and special abilities are all unavailable while dancing (or during the cooldown period after you stop dancing), taking potions can still be done - allowing me to disappear. Moments afterwards I was able to move and a second or two later Sarevok's time was up.
My eyes gave the game away. I am an Aasimar and everyone knew it. It is therefore hardly surprising that I was targetted for elimination first by assassins inside Candlekeep and then outside.
After Gorion's death I headed for Baldur's Gate thinking to lose myself in the crowds there.
On the way I found three unusual rings. One improves protection slightly: one improves spell casting and one appears to belong to Joia whoever that is!
North of the FAI we got into conflict with Sonner and his mates. On his body we found a basin which Tenya was delighted to have returned to her.
Nearby we kiled an ankheg.
Since we were not allowed entry into Baldur's Gate we returned to the Friendly Arms Inn where we bumped into Joia and returned her ring. Five minutes later we were in conflict with another assassin, this time a mage called Tarnesh. Between us we managed to kill him without being hurt ourselves.
In Beregost we calmed Marl and took a tome to Firebead before heading south where we killed both ogrillons and Flaming Fist Morons who attacked us without cause. They too died.
We delivered a letter to Mirianne and then proceeded all the way to Nashkel, clearing the road of bandits as we went.
In Nashkel we found some armour, chatted to Noober, and turned down an undeserved reward from Oublek.
Further south we protected Prism in vain as he died anyway.
Nearby we found a wand of frost.
We headed east where we found a ring that protects somewhat against fire before coming across Samuel. We willingly delivered him to the Friendly Arms Inn.
We headed south again and were able to help Mellicamp.
As we looked for Bassilus we ended up fighting Zargal first.
We then helped Charleston Nib and Brage.
Upon looking for Bassilus, we killed him thus gaining a reward.
We are currently resting in Bergost having become famous heroes, reputation 20.
A shopping spree was now due as we could do with a few spells and we do have gold at present. We bought indentify as being of prime importance and in addition bought the army scythe.
Clearing the ankheg burrow was quite time consuming due to us needing two command spells to kill an ankheg.
Having cleared it we went to the Friendly Arms Inn to rest and recuperate. This also gave us a chance to identify all the items that we found as well as giving Firestorm a chance to memorise some spells from the scrolls that we found. Every memorisation was successful!! one of them being Agannazer's Scorcher though he cannot cast it yet. When he can he will indeed be a Firestorm. The only fire spell that he can currently cast is Burning Hands.
I had a quick run through SoD this morning, though with one dangerous encounter. On arrival at Boareskyr Bridge I realized I'd not picked up the Ring of Energy in BGEE. That resulted in narrowly failing to interrupt the mage on the bridge and having once more to fight creatures emerging from the fire portal he opened - darts of stunning doing just enough there to prevent the mephits exploding the barrels.
I used Champions Strength scrolls at the top of the Hellevator to push my THAC0 to -15. That allowed the bullets of darkness loaded into my sling to take Belhifet down very rapidly.
Comments
After telling Bjornin all about our victory over the half-ogres, I joined up with Branwen and Safana before returning to Beregost where Neera joined us.
After picking up bits of experience that we didn't have to fight to get in Durlag's Tower we ended up seeking out Adoy and getting his belt. We rested at the Carnival and went to investigate the mines, demons or no demons. The "demons" turned out to be very squishy kobolds. Mulahey also turned out to be nothing special compared with others we have killed.
Xan joined our party and helped us clear the caves when we left the mine. He also helped against Narcilicus and the slimes.
We rested at the Carnival before heading off to Beregost where we gave Officer Vai some scalps befor setting off to the bandit camp via Peldvale where we helped Viconia.
The bandits there took us to their camp where things ended peacably enough. We then headed back to Beregost killing Deke on the way.
In Beregost we rested before going in search of Tranzig who was killed by Safana.
We took a further six scalps to Officer Vai, killed a few spiders and took the items wanted by Landrin to him.
After going back to the camp we killed every bandit that we came across. We then went to High Hedge to buy a robe of the neutral arch mage. In addition we bought a small quantity of ammunition. To do that we had to sell most of our surplus equipment. We now have 1gp left.
I was wanting to run an all-half-orc party headed up by a Cavalier and including an illusionist.
To get the Cavalier I rolled a fighter and used Keeper to change him to a Cavalier.
To get the Illusionist I rolled a human Illusionist and used Keeper to move two intelligence points, one to con and one to strength. Then changed the race and appearance to that of a half-orc.
The Helmite cleric and the fighter thief were rolled as per usual.
2e rules make these characters illegal, but the devs must have done something similar to create Dorn.
So just wondered about peoples thoughts about doing this. Creating an illusionist like this actually makes her weaker than a gnomish illusionist would be.
The Helmite Cleric that I rolled actually had this roll. My eyes just about jumped out of their sockets. It was bound to happen to somebody some day, but before this my highest ever roll was 103!
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At the Twisted Rune, I talked to Shangalar before retreating and using a PfU scroll. After he was shot down I sent a Fire Storm in to Vaxall, while a single fire elemental moved in with it as a sacrifice to his death spell. The others then poured forward to finish him off.
With work in Athkatla complete for the moment, I moved on to the de'Arnise Hold. Elementals did most of the work there, though I did have to finish off the iron golem myself.
Moving on to Umar Hills, a few little chores around the village soon gained me another level.
Time was up there, so I'll pick up Valygar's body on the way to collect my reward from Minister Lloyd next time.
Shaman 22, 107 HPs, kills 359 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
We visited Cloakwood and rather aptly gained a cloak. I then realised that safana hadn't got the boots to aid stealth so we went in search of it. Nearby we also found some potions of health. We tried to return Gurke's Cloak but were unsuccessful, but we were able to sell a few more scalps that were obtained due to a bandit ambush. We returned to Cloakwood where Safana set off a trap which webbed her despite her looking for it. Fortunately she was hidden at the time so I moved forward to defend her in case she became visible. I was wearing a ring that protects me from hold. The others were using ranged weapons but because Neera's were darts she got too close and she too was webbed. Afterwards we were quite tired and so slept.
A sword spider became fixated upon killing Safana with the result that we had to flee the area. In transit we were attacked by two wyvern and only just survived. They didn't.
We rested in order to recover somewhat. The big question was: "Do we return in order to fulfil our promise to find Chelak?" Hopefully we will be able to restore our financial situation somewhat if we can sell the wyvern tails.
In the end we decided to return. On this occasion the sword spider turned its attention to me and died as a result.
However upon meeting Centeol Branwen was killed so we will had to return to civilisation soon afterwards. Xan levelled up to 6.
Upon returning to the temple, we received a reward for killing the wyvern and used some of the gold to raise Branwen.
We then proceeded to the mines where Drasus and his cohorts were killed without mercy.
We killed every enemy that we could find in the mines. Hareishan fell when Xan was able to send a lightning bolt in her direction which badly hurt the guards as well. This was not a planned tactic, he just took full advantage of an oportunity that presented itself. Another mage used confusion. That caused some of us to attack each other, but because the mage was already dead, we just had to avoid the confused members of the party until the spell wore off.
Davaeorn was the easiest to deal with. After the traps were disabled Xan summoned some monsters. davaeorn wasted his spells on them but did eventually kill them. However, he had no reply to a second wave of monsters.
His death was unseen by our party however we did find his remains. We have now entered Baldur's Gate and found a tome that has increased my dexterity. I bought some wands in Sorcerous Sundries. That virtually emptied my purse! Upstairs we were attacked by mages. A horror spell affected everyone but Safana. However our spells had killed all but one of the mages and Safana eventually killed him. We then just had to wait for the effects to wear off.
Later on we were poisoned by Marek, but the poison was eradicated after killing him.
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@Wise_Grimwald I don't see a problem in using half-orcs for a wider range of classes - if that's what you want to do, go for it
After picking up Valygar's body, I returned to Athkatla and activated the Planar Sphere. Most of the combat there was fairly similar to before, but I did start making a bit of use of Nature's Beauty.
After escorting Lavok outside, I moved on to Windspear Hills. In the dungeon Nature's Beauty is no help against undead, so I had to use Fire Storm to deal with a bunch of vampires and get to level 24.
Shaman 24, 111 HPs, kills 438 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
That seems like a bit of a flavor fail. How are they supposed to look upon you and suffer when they can't see you?
After thinking about it, I decided that you are quite correct as there are mods around that make all classes available to all races.
Journal of Bork the Berserker
We have gone round Baldur's Gate doing many trivial tasks without difficulty. That was our downfall as we were almost wiped out.
Only I escaped and I spent a fortune in healing at the temple. Upon returning I was able to finish the task of eliminating them.
I had sufficient funds to raise 3 of the party which I did. I then sold a considerable amount of equipment to pay for the others to be raised.
As I redistributed the equipment I discovered that several pieces of highly useful pieces of equipment had disappeared including Xan's Moonblade and my scroll case that had several highly useful items in it including quite a few green scrolls
[I play better with smaller parties. Sadly I wasted the gold on raising Xan as I didn't notice the missing equipment soon enough. I afterwards thought about the battle and realised that summoning monsters beforehand would probably have made the battle easy. Even easier would have been to sneak Safana past them and not fight at all.]
I have now collected Balduran's Cloak and am about to enter the Iron Throne.
EDIT
Upon thinking about it, I decided that since it was a bug that caused the items to disappear when most of the party died, I would re-enlist Xan and use Keeper to restore as many missing items as I could remember, the moonblade and the scrollcase being those of most import. To my surprise, when I restored the scrollcase, it restored its contents too.
The party therefore went to Candlekeep which they are now exploring.
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Samia's intended ambush died in fire and I moved quickly on to find Firkraag - picking up another level on the way.
When first at Trademeet I hadn't done the Rune Assassins, so returning there now allowed me to help Tiris.
Back in Athkatla I put Tazok's key to use in the sewers. I made things more interesting by relying almost entirely on spirits there - they did a better job than I expected as they appeared to be immune to brain devouring as well as charm and stun (though not maze).
That left the final bit of work in Athkatla as dealing with a nest of vampires. I hadn't reported back to Aran Linvail after the Guild Contact and doing that pushed me to level 26.
Shaman 26, 115 HPs, kills 460 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
One of the spirits did get mazed. Is that a spell then, rather than a psionic effect?
Bit the dust in the underdark again.
A few too many mistakes.
Party (Minsc, Valygar, Jan, Imoen, Nalia, PC) had trouble resurrecting in the underdark, as there is no priest NPC to pay for raise dead. Not knowing this, we did not bring any scrolls of raise dead from the surface. We had to make do with the 10 charges from the two rods of resurrection.
Unfortunately, 5 of those charges got drained by the hive mother in the beholder dungeon. That was a big mistake.
The rest got spent on 5 deaths. Minsc and Valygar died once when fighting the mindflayer ambush rescuing phaere - they were immediately stunned as the party has no chaotic commands. Minsc got touched by a fish priest with slay living while fighting the fish prince. Then two more deaths from the mindflayers in the beholder dungeon. That left the party with no way to raise dead.
Despite playing relatively carefully, Nalia and Imoen got killed fighting the slime mage in Ust Natha when he - while silenced, panicked and near death - got off a 3x skull trap sequencer and hit them.
Jan got killed fighting the drow guarding the surface exit - one of the demons power word stunned him. At this point, PC, Minsc and Valygar were forced to flee the western tunnels. One of the high level mages and a few others followed, but PC slayer changed and killed them. We then headed to Adalon and had her clean up the remaining defenders.
The last thing I wanted to do before leaving the underdark and reviving the dead was to get the frost giant belt. I was concerned we wouldn't be able to return for it. Unfortunately, I did not realize how accurate demon knights were and 5 of them at once were tougher than I was expecting.
For the fight with the knights, we had no way to summon skeletons, and Minsc and Valygar would be relatively useless with no ability to resist their magic (power words, symbols, 20d6 fireballs, remove magic, etc.). So we decided to use the slayer against them.
Which was a decent idea! Except I forgot that I did not have immunity to power word kill and needed to keep hp well above 60. When only one of the knights was left, I thought it would be safe to run my hp lower. It was not. He power word killed me at ~45 hp and the slayer failed his 50 MR roll.
Curtains.
Anyway, not sure what or when my next party will be, but I'm thinking either a party of:
Mages: PC - wildmage w/ Edwin, Jan, Nalia, Imoen, Aerie; or,
Weirdos: PC - monk w/ Haerdalis, Cernd, Keldorn, Minsc, Valygar [no thief, which might be too annoying]
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Elementals made short work of the upper layer of the vampire HQ. I didn't bother resting for downstairs as a Fire Storm and some blades were more than enough. Back upstairs the elementals were still waiting to overwhelm Bodhi.
At Brynnlaw, Perth died in a Fire Storm cast from out of his sight. His book delayed me a while by offering literally dozens of options (including 5 different copies of Wyvern Call), before I eventually settled for Spell Turning.
In Spellhold I picked up a welcome Bag of Holding before my incredible ability to solve a puzzle I've only done hundreds of times earned another level.
Shaman 28, 119 HPs, kills 538 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
The only incident of note in Candlekeep was the battle against Prat. Yes phase spiders had hurt us badly due to their venom and their propensity to attack squishy party members, but nobody died.
How different was that Prat! Not having true sight was a disadvantage and both Jaheira and Xan got killed but not chunked.
On the way out we killed Diarmid before we proceeded to the Temple at Beregost to raise the slain.
In the Ducal Palace Branwen was killed as was Liia. After the battle I noticed that our reputation was 10. I have no idea how it got from 20 to 10. However gold helped us get it back to 15.
We raised Branwen and then said goodbye to her as she won't be in SOD.
We are now trying to accumulate gold in order to get decent wands. Wand of sleep has been upgraded to 100 charges and wand of fire to 50 charges, the wand of monster summoning to 100 charges, and the wand of ice to 100 charges so far. A few more still need upgrading particularly the wand of the heavens.
We rescued Annabel from the xvarts and a boy from some worgs with the result that I am a hero once more.
We also killed the doomsayer for a bit of experience.
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I convinced Lonk to release the inmates ahead of the confrontation with Irenicus. I've found the easiest way to defeat him is with physical damage, so just hit him with a few seconds worth of Energy Blades. His script doesn't acknowledge defeat immediately, but he was soon on his way.
After an abortive ship journey with Saemon I proved myself to the king of Fish City by demonstrating how effective Energy Blades are even against enemies immune to missiles.
In the Underdark some elementals helped gain me another level from a bunch of drow.
In the northern tunnels I shamelessly took advantage of Nature's Beauty to nerf beholder gazes and bypass the kuo-toa ability to see through invisibility.
Shaman 29, 121 HPs, kills 595 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
I changed my mind about branwen when I realised that I needed her freedom of action spell for Balduran's isle.
Fortunately she was happy to rejoin the party.
The Isle was straightforward though things did get a little difficult inside the ship. Fortunately I was able to separate the Greater wolfwere from his companions and was therefore able to whittle them down until only he was left. Safana used stealth to loot the top deck and when he followed her down a deck she hid whilst the nymph there got into combat with him.
We took the spellbook to Dradeel which brought Neera up to level 9.
We therefore returned to the village to enable safe resting.
Neera memorised two cloudkill spells which we intended to use while everyone used spells on him.
However a nymph held the greater wolfwere so we switched tactics slightly. I used Balduran's Sword while everyone else used spells. Didn't even have to use web.
He fell without hurting any of us in the slightest.
I've learnt another way of disabling him.
Now back at Ulgoth's Beard Loup Garou is dead.
The only question now is. Do we go after Sarevok or do we investigate Durlag's? Everyone is so near the level cap that I am thinking that Durlag's would be a waste of time.
I do want to recharge my wand of polymorphing before facing Sarevok however.
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153278/#Comment_1153278
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153408/#Comment_1153408
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153600/#Comment_1153600
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153696/#Comment_1153696
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153921/#Comment_1153921
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154171/#Comment_1154171
I got exposed early on in the beholder nest when the Elder Orb's true sight beat a Nature's Beauty to the punch. My saving throws then left me vulnerable and with a clouded aura, but I managed to run out of sight. Elementals and Fire Storms then started walking through the area - soon picking me up a penultimate level.
I was also not bothered about the illithid hive, so went to find Adalon and then do some shopping with the drow merchants (somehow managing to resist the usual strong temptation to proclaim that I'd just come from the lair of Adalon). Then it was back to burn up Adalon and kill a few more drow in order to exit the Underdark.
After speaking to Elhan, I ignored Drizzt on the way back to Athkatla and handed over the Silver Sword to Kruin there. I spent a little while on inventory management, including forging Gesen, before heading for Umar Hills. An Insect Plague ensured the mages there caused no problem after I'd picked up the Human Flesh Armor - I can't wear that yet, but my time will come
At the Graveyard I remembered to put on the Amulet of Power to avoid getting drained while burning some vampires up. Doing that to Bodhi was enough for my final level.
I reported to Elhan and entered Suldanesselar. I still had 5 minutes of the session available, but decided to save the game there before starting on the city.
Shaman 31, 125 HPs, kills 629 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
Spells learned (in order of selection, though the first spells listed at each level are shaman only additions not requiring a pick):
L1 - Spirit Ward, CLW, Bless, Armor of Faith, Entangle, Doom
L2 - Writhing Fog, Charm P / M, Resist Fire / Cold, Slow Poison, Barkskin, Goodberry
L3 - Spiritual Clarity, Call Lightning, Summon Insects, Protection from Fire, Dispel Magic, Cure Disease
L4 - Spirit Fire, Call Woodland Beings, Death Ward, Defensive Harmony, Protection from Lightning, Farsight
L5 - Recall Spirit, Pixie Dust, Ironskins, Chaotic Commands, Insect Plague, True Seeing
L6 - Spiritual Lock, Conjure Fire Elemental, Harm, Physical Mirror, Dolorous Decay, Wondrous Recall
L7 - Ether Gate, Fire Storm, Shield of the Archons, Nature's Beauty, Regeneration, Earthquake
I've taken all the HLAs available except Mass Raise Dead. In retrospect I shouldn't have bothered with some of those, like Storm of Vengeance and Globe of Blades - more copies of Spirit Form would have been more likely to be useful.
Thredbehr (male dwarf barbarian, Gate70); Grue (male half elf Avenger, Grond0)
It's almost a fortnight since this pair had their first outing so we shook off the rust and realised we couldn't remember what we'd been doing or what was next. Our usual situation then.
A quick check of equipment, journal and map suggested we had dealt with basilisks and sirenes but not Durlag's Tower or Nashkel Mine.
So off we trotted to the tower, Thredbehr meleeing battle horrors as Grue calls lightning onto them.
This he duly did and after killing the lesser basilisk he raced upstairs to kill two greater basilisks. Grue was ably assisting but by the time we reached the final greater basilisk Thredbehr knew his minute of protection was running out.
Just as he paused to say his time was up, the protection expired as did the basilisk. What a jammy barbarian he is (and I'm quite surprised how accurate my 60 second count was with a couple of pauses in the mix).
We rest once more and take on the Amazons. Thredbehr fancies his chances but Grue uses Call Lightning to dispose of Zeela, Telka and Maneira. Lamahla just hangs on long enough for Thredbehr to kill her.
Grue uses improved invisibility to scout out the bandit tent and add a pair of nymphs as Thredbehr enrages to kill Venkt. Hakt is held while Raemon dies confused and Britik is outnumbered at the end. Letters in the tent point to Cloakwood mine so we go there next and defeat Drasus outside. Grue takes his boots of speed so our movement rate is increased nicely - he can just outrun Thredbehr.
This is another mine that we can safely progress through but at one point we rely on saving throws agains a ghast and although Thredbehr saves, Grue is held. Thredbehr is able to kill the ghast before it can eat too much of Grue, and we carry on until only Davaeorn is left. By this time Grue is in bear form so we each gulp a potion of magic blocking and chase him down.
Flooding the mine will hide evidence of our presence, and with the mine out of action we can get into the city of Baldur's Gate so do that. We make our mark by killing Marek and Lothander (thus restoring Thredbehr as the faster of the party with boots of speed plus barbarian increased movement), emptying Ramazith's tower (improved invisibility plus spider form plus enrage worked nicely against the group of ghasts there), killing Degrodel and his guardians, and obtaining a nice shield from Varci.
We are each at 122k xp, 3k shy of our final BG:EE levels. Party equipment and loot:
No 'might' about it
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Loury reminded himself the first action should be to hand in the necklace of Talos to Mae'Var. That no doubt will lead to further work but he has a few more items that he wants to collect this session.
- Corecleric is looking as though the Flail of Ages +3 might suit him, with a Shield of Harmony
- Swish could probably step right into Mae'Var's boots, and Belm might be a nice offhand weapon
- The ring of Gaxx is tempting. We don't have any Protection from Undead scrolls (1 at spell store 2 at Ribald 1 at Lady Yuth in the Promenade, 2 at temple of Ilmater in the slums, 2 at temple of Helm in Bridge district, 2 each at temples of Helm Lathander and Talos mean 14 so 8 more than we would safely require).
Corecleric could probably throw his unenchanted and +1 bullets away now he has the Sling of Seeking.
Oh well. Let's see what happens thinks Loury as he waits for Swish and Corecleric to ready themselves.
Our first task is to hand in the amulet to Mae'Var who then tells us to speak to Edwin who in turn wants us to kill Rayic Gethras. Loury is a bit sceptical about this but Corecleric has his set of 'anti-mage buffs' to hand and all proceeds very smoothly so we soon have our thiefs feet ensconced in Mae'Var's boots.
Loury has a plan to save time acquiring scrolls of protection from undead - he heads to the Helm temple as Corecleric goes to the Lathander one and Swish goes to the Talos temple. This is a masterplan with no flaw. Right up until Swish shouts that the Talosians have turned in for an early night so we rest 12 hours and purchase her scrolls in the wee hours of the morning.
With six scrolls we use three of them on the temple lich and gulp an oil of speed each. Then we race over to the city gates and deal with the lich there - making sure Swish picks up the Daystar longsword. From there we continue on to the Bridge district and destroy that lich before ending up in Kangaxx's tomb. Swish and Corecleric apply a second protection from undead (despite Corecleric saying his original was still active we convince him it is not) and then we kill Kangaxx.
Who nearly pays for this with his life as Glaicus is like a dog with a bone and initially refuses to stop chasing Swish. He eventually switches to Loury before being held and our swashbuckler is left with a sliver of life. Such pain is the reward for killing many of the trolls (Loury being too lazy to switch to arrows so Swish having to alternate between melee and ranged weapons.
We move on from the de'Arnise keep to Trademeet (Corecleric having changed from the Ashideena warhammer to the Flail of Ages +3 before we had faced Tor'Gal). A group of Dao Djinn are problematic for the townsfolk but Corecleric has an army of undead to turn the tables on them.
Swish offhands the Belm scimitar to become quicker with his main hand, and Loury takes care not to step inside a dwelling in case the sweet old lady inside is revealed as another tiger-headed abominiation. Instead we continue past Cernd to kill another trio of druids despite one of their call lightning spells badly wounding Swish. Loury and Corecleric are having an easy day which suits them, while Swish is getting badly injured from time to time - and that seems to suit him.
We head back to Trademeet to collect our reward, and to deal a final blow to Rejiek Hidesman. We also stop a dispute between two families by stiffing them both and handing in a heirloom to the mayor. We're done with Trademeet so next stop will be Umar Hills.
The tasks around Umar don't take us too long at all and the evidence there means our path continues on to nearby temple ruins. We just have enough time to believe Anath is not the source of the problem and to use Turn Undead x2 to scare and pop various shadows before saving descent into the temple for another day.
Party levels, kills, and items:
Loury Undead Hunter level 11 has 231 kills
Swish Swashbuckler level 14 has 127 kills
Corecleric Priest of Lathander level 13 has 81 kills
(Loury being a paladin, he overlooks the 200lb of illithium he palmed-off to Corecleric and the Ilbratha shortsword that we may never use)
Corecleric, being a wily old veteran, knows that equipping bullets on top of the sling means damage is the sum of that from the sling and the bullet (and if the bullets are enchanted they add to the THAC0 as well). Of course he's far too polite to contradict his leader, so leaves doing that to the party member able to quickly duck into the shadows to avoid any stray sword swings
Neera was killed near in an ambush as she approached Sarevok. We didn't have the gold to raise her so we will kill a few ankheg. That will allow us to stock up on potions at Sorcerous Sundries too.
We did go to the final battle site, killed two battle horrors and disabled some traps. We then went back up to the surface.
Eventually we fought Sarevok.
It was touch and go, but sadly Bork the Berserker died.
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153278/#Comment_1153278
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153408/#Comment_1153408
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153600/#Comment_1153600
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153696/#Comment_1153696
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1153921/#Comment_1153921
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154171/#Comment_1154171
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154324/#Comment_1154324
Suldanesselar was no problem. Spirits and blades dealt with most of the encounters, though a full helping of elementals was produced to keep an eye on Nizi while he burnt up.
On the Tree, spirits overcame the elementals defending the parasites.
A pre-summoned elemental persuaded Irenicus to waste all his initial spells and more elementals provided a distraction until I moved in for the kill.
In hell, I took the good alternatives with the dragon and nymph cloak (using a potion of clarity to avoid being scared there). As I wouldn't be relying on MR, I went evil with the sacrifice. I couldn't use Blackrazor, so was happy to hand that over for a saving throw improvement, before boosting strength by getting annoyed with Sarevok.
A couple of helpings of blades killed the demons left behind by Sarevok. True sight then exposed the real Slayer and more blades beat him down to reveal Irenicus.
After spending a while trying a few tactics, I concluded that it was unlikely I could beat him on my own (or with spirits) and decided to make use of Vhailor's Helm (typically I don't resort to that in SoA). That took him down more easily than I expected though and I suspect his regeneration had again dropped significantly (possibly he had somehow had various stacked haste effects, which were gradually wearing off). This time all went as expected and Irenicus disappeared into the Abyss, leaving me free to move on to ToB.
I'll consider tomorrow whether to continue the run further, or give it up here.
Shaman 31, 125 HPs, kills 644 (+479 in BGEE/SoD)
Edit: on second thoughts, I don't need to wait until tomorrow. Though the immediate disappointment made me reluctant to give up the run, I would never be happy in the longer term with counting it as a success, so it will be back to Candlekeep once more ...
I have found that starting spells of Friends and Sleep are excellent for this character as Friends gets the +1 dagger { he has * in daggers and * in single weapon use.} Sleep is usually enough to disable the early enemies.
Next run stopped by Vax when he saved against my spells.
Third death today was from another ambush of archers, this time hobgoblins.
I think that I will now try a trio see below.
Thredbehr (male dwarf barbarian, Gate70); Grue (male half elf Avenger, Grond0)
We quickly recap, are both nearing our final level and have reached the city of Baldur's Gate.
SoD
For a change we take the longer route to Melissan, and import ourselves to a Siege of Dragonspear campaign. Thredbehr is a bit miffed as he forgot to debag various items but Grue seems unperturbed. Fine, we'll make do and we have the golden pantaloons. Our first task is to get rid of the ever optimistic group of joiners who have tagged along. Toodle-pip.
At one point a shadowed soul is problematic as it keeps moving so Thredbehr can only almost kill it several times. Eventually he switches to arrows and kills it immediately.
Grue uses his webs to simplify combat against the undead guardian and a group of mercenaries. Thredbehr has to ask the healer to remove a level-drain from a wraith that crept up invisible on him, and then we show Korlasz no mercy. With her dead we grab her book and leave.
At the Ducal palace we have a good night's rest and retrieve our equipment ready for next time:
Previous run
After the disappointing end to the previous attempt I quickly started a new run to see if I can get a bit further. This time though I didn't do any experimentation in BGEE, or bother with much of the unnecessary XP or treasure, but just cracked on.
There has been almost no trouble in the run to date. Spirits were used only once prior to the last battle (to kill the mustard jelly near Davaeorn as I had no magic weapon at the time), as there are normally quicker ways to resolve encounters. However, I felt it was appropriate to give them the finishing hit against Sarevok and doing that gave me the nearest thing to a problem so far. Once Sarevok was down to a few HPs left, I danced out of sight of him to set up 3 spirits and then moved so he could see me. As tends to happen the spirits didn't move forward to intercept him, but headed for his destination, i.e. me. That didn't seem like a problem, because I could always move away - except that one of the spirits moved on top of me, so that I couldn't actually do that. I took a couple of hits while trying to break free and the slight delay in spirits disappearing after you stop dancing could then have been painful if I had no other options. However, although combat, spells and special abilities are all unavailable while dancing (or during the cooldown period after you stop dancing), taking potions can still be done - allowing me to disappear. Moments afterwards I was able to move and a second or two later Sarevok's time was up.
Shaman 9, 73 HPs (incl, 5 from helm), kills 234
My eyes gave the game away. I am an Aasimar and everyone knew it. It is therefore hardly surprising that I was targetted for elimination first by assassins inside Candlekeep and then outside.
After Gorion's death I headed for Baldur's Gate thinking to lose myself in the crowds there.
On the way I found three unusual rings. One improves protection slightly: one improves spell casting and one appears to belong to Joia whoever that is!
North of the FAI we got into conflict with Sonner and his mates. On his body we found a basin which Tenya was delighted to have returned to her.
Since we were not allowed entry into Baldur's Gate we returned to the Friendly Arms Inn where we bumped into Joia and returned her ring. Five minutes later we were in conflict with another assassin, this time a mage called Tarnesh. Between us we managed to kill him without being hurt ourselves.
In Beregost we calmed Marl and took a tome to Firebead before heading south where we killed both ogrillons and Flaming Fist Morons who attacked us without cause. They too died.
We delivered a letter to Mirianne and then proceeded all the way to Nashkel, clearing the road of bandits as we went.
In Nashkel we found some armour, chatted to Noober, and turned down an undeserved reward from Oublek.
Further south we protected Prism in vain as he died anyway.
Nearby we found a wand of frost.
We headed east where we found a ring that protects somewhat against fire before coming across Samuel. We willingly delivered him to the Friendly Arms Inn.
We headed south again and were able to help Mellicamp.
As we looked for Bassilus we ended up fighting Zargal first.
We then helped Charleston Nib and Brage.
Upon looking for Bassilus, we killed him thus gaining a reward.
We are currently resting in Bergost having become famous heroes, reputation 20.
A shopping spree was now due as we could do with a few spells and we do have gold at present. We bought indentify as being of prime importance and in addition bought the army scythe.
Clearing the ankheg burrow was quite time consuming due to us needing two command spells to kill an ankheg.
Having cleared it we went to the Friendly Arms Inn to rest and recuperate. This also gave us a chance to identify all the items that we found as well as giving Firestorm a chance to memorise some spells from the scrolls that we found. Every memorisation was successful!!
Previous updates:
I had a quick run through SoD this morning, though with one dangerous encounter. On arrival at Boareskyr Bridge I realized I'd not picked up the Ring of Energy in BGEE. That resulted in narrowly failing to interrupt the mage on the bridge and having once more to fight creatures emerging from the fire portal he opened - darts of stunning doing just enough there to prevent the mephits exploding the barrels.
I used Champions Strength scrolls at the top of the Hellevator to push my THAC0 to -15. That allowed the bullets of darkness loaded into my sling to take Belhifet down very rapidly.
Shaman 11, 87 HPs, kills 407