Apologies for taking a break in updating my undead hunter run - a sudden surge of RL responsibilities forced me to stop for a while - but now I'm back:
Dassareth, Undead Hunter with a custom party, Update 7
Balduran's Island turned out to be a short, quick and easy affair - Very much helped by Khelbara being great with daggers. Every Greater Wolfwere or Loup Garou I happened to meet was quickly attacked with two wand of paralyzation charges at a time, and, once stunned, killed by the Kensai:
The party entered Durlag's Tower, carefully getting rid of any traps and using some traps of their own to help with the dwarven warders - with a careful approach, love was killed by a buffed Cadrax, the thief was revealed via detect invisibility (Albruin) and the other two were mostly killed by skeletons - the cleanest version of this fight I have achieved to date:
Having three fighter-types is quite helpful against the Dwarven Doom Guards on the next level, the most serious challenge down there in my opinion. Due to poor pathfinding and a lack of attention, our most vulnerable party member, Galderan (no stoneskins, no good AC), got pushed into melee combat and took quite a lot of damage, but I was able to get him out in time:
I cleared the three paths downstairs - the wyvners with sheer force, the skeletons with a PfU scroll and the backstabbers by always leading with skeletons or Cadrax, drawing out their backstabs. For the ice chamber, Cadrax donned the belt from Gorion's corpse - these guys are not very good at choosing their targets, and full frost immunity is, in effect, immunity to damage here:
I had tons of consumables with me (already having some type of giant strength potion active on my fighters, because I just had too many of them), and did my usual chess event preparation, which involves potions of absorption for everybody in order to be able to ignore the rules of chess. I barely ended up moving, though - just shooting fireballs and double web sequencers at the approaching hordes before taking down the king:
For the Demon Knight, I instead opted for immunity to fire (via resistance scrolls and potions) in order to counter his fireball, plus berserker rage on Cadrax because of his stun abilities. He tends to open with a dispel magic, and I made sure that only Cadrax was in range - the others, still fully buffed, were able to quickly deal with this foe:
Next time, the final challenges of BG1 await us - going back to Ulgoth's Beard (always a fun one, especially with SCS) and facing Sarevok in the Undercity.
Upon going to the Carnival for the necklace of missiles, shield amulet and scroll of protection from petrification. we also helped Bentha
We headed north and killed some half-ogres, the leader of whom had a +1 two handed sword.
Now all the party have magical weapons with which they are skilled.
Heading west we killed some bandits led by Teyngan followed by more half-ogres.
Having purchased the scroll of petrification we decided to go to the basilisk area where we killed Linden and allies followed by basilisks and finally Mutamin.
It was then that we decided to get some ankheg armour for Hal. The cost jjust about wiped our reserve of gold and as we had seen a wand of the heavens for sale in Ulgoth's Beard, we decided on ankheg hunting once more.
We had collected quite a few when we were unexpectedly attacked by three of them simultaneously with the result that Firestorm was killed. That however wasn't a disaaster as we got 1500 gold pieces for those three anheg shells and raising him cost 800 gold pieces, a profit of 700 gold pieces, not to mention the experience.
Upon returning to Beregost to raise Firestorm and sell the shells we discovered that Hal's armour was ready.
We went to an inn to rest only to be attacked by Karlat who was quickly despatched.
The wand of the heavens is now affordable.
A mage called Silke then rather foolishly attacked us. As a result shee is now pushing up the daisies and Hal is a level 7 cleric.
I'm a bit peeved about that since I am still level 6.
Immediately upon arriving in Ulgoth's Beard, the whole party drank invisibility potions in order to avoid the initial ambush and buff up/summon help safely. Detect invisibility was used against the dangerous cult assassins (with vulnerable party members staying invisible until they were dealt with), while Rowin, using his superior magical defenses, made sure to engange the archers:
With most buffs still going, the party engaged the next cultist group right away, also starting to lure cultists inside their building to the outside. Combat went well, but the cultist wizard was able to get out a chaos spell. I wasn't willing to get hit by another one of those, as they have been the most dangerous part of this playthrough to so far - some defensive potions (magic protection and clarity) were used to keep the party safe:
Sadly, I accidentally deleted quite a bunch of screenshots following this one, but my Aec'Letec strategy was the same I always use - full buffs, including potions of magic shielding and mirrored eyes, with the hasted party taking down cultists one by one, ignoring Aec'Letec until the cultists are dead, and destroying the demon. Very safe if you have the right potions at your disposal and the party has enough physical damage output.
I'm also missing some screenshots of the early parts of the Sarevok battle, but I think it went a bit like this: Cadrax and Dassareth (with great saving throws and the ability to protect themselves with potions in case their buffs got dispelled) went aggressively against the enemy spellcasters, and since Tazok and Sarevok decided to persue Rowin, I had an easy time separating the enemies from each other. I think Cadrax managed to disrupt Semaj's spells through his stoneskins with the Ashideena electrical damage, or maybe Semaj somehow targeted some skeletons with his dispel magic instead of a player character - in any case, I got to keep my buffs:
Dassareth, being an undead hunter, and Cadrax, being a grand master with war hammers, did great work taking down the spawning skeleton warriors, and Rowin was easily capable of tanking Sarevok with stoneskins, mirror image and a potion of defense lowering his AC:
I'll also quickly cover Korlasz's Tomb here - not much to say, as I had Cadrax drink an oil of speed, some type of giant strength potion and use a PfU scroll to clear most of the lower level by himself:
Korlasz herself got her allies taken out by our initial fireball barrage, and we ended up just brute-forcing through her defensive spells by virtue of our combined high thac0 and APR:
Next time, I will cover most of SoD - since it's barely affected by SCS, this tends to be a relatively straightforward part of these types of full-party runs, at least if you don't skimp out on necklace of missles-charges and wand of fire charges and know which buffs are essential for which specific encounter.
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).
Nice to hear!
Probably going to try to get through BG1 this weekend. I'm leaning towards the monk party, only because I'm actually most excited about the wild mage run and don't want to run through my most interesting parties first.
The lack of a thief I worry is going to be super annoying, but with Heardalis for knock and Cernd for infinite hp, I'm hoping it isn't ultimately too bad. I don't know what the most threatening traps are, outside of maybe chapter 2/3. I do know there are a few disintegrate and petrify traps.. I guess the most concerning are the permakill traps, the repeater traps and any that are in combat areas (like the guarded compound).
Maybe some BG1 traps like in the catacombs are going to be an issue..
We joined up with Xzar and Montaron and after leaving Montaron in Joia's house, we met up with Khaled and Jaheira.
We then completyed their request, dropping them off in Nashkel after speaking to the mayor.
We then went to pick up Montaron who helped us to acquire much needed goods at Ulgoth's Beard. He also acquired Algernon's Cloak for us. We left him to have a rest in Beregost as the three of us went through the mines in Nashkel like a dose of salts. We picked up Xan, but left him just outside the exit from the mine. We will probably take him somewhere safe such as the Carnival when we have finished what we are presently doing.
EDIT
We cleared the caves of all undead before plundering them. We also killed Narcillicus when he attacked us for no reason. After chatting to Elminster and a little girl we visited Officer Rai and sold our bandit scalps.
After rescuing Viconia we went to the bandit camp where we were recruited. We scoured the camp for items and were lucky enough to find a fireball scroll.
We then headed back to Beregost killing Deke and his "friends" on the way.
In Beregost we killed Tranzig and cleared a spider infestation.
While I mostly just fireball my way through SoD, I did at least set myself the goal not to recharge my necklaces of missles this time around - and I'm also planning to tackle a few risky encounters I usually either avoid or tend to do in a safer way. Still, not much to report in the city, the Coast Way Crossing or the Coast Way Forest (vampire hunting is quite easy for Dassareth). My first interesting encounter occured in the Lair of Morentherene - Somehow, the throwing dagger oneshot failed to materialize, so I was forced to fight the dragon straight up. First, I left her cave to buff up, including the important protection from poison green scrolls, which negate the breath weapon. With that, my usual combat buffs and remove fear going, Cadrax was quite capable of tanking the dragon, and the party took her down:
The good thing about doing this fight the proper way: I still had my green scrolls going when fighting Ziatar, countering her breath weapon as well:
And, with an enraged Cadrax leading the way to avoid the Neothelid's mental attacks, the monster in the centre of the area was taken down as well:
I made my way to the altar, summoned some skeletons and threw fireballs at the enemy party. Two survived and were quickly taken out:
Next, I lured the shadow aspect out of its lair, and skeletons absorbed the backstab. This one's fairly easy because the SCS tactical setting implies core rules difficulty for SoD, so no mislead-backstab-cheese here:
I made my way to Bridgefort, taking along Edwin for his quest to backstab Vichand:
At Bridgefort, I decided to try the option to charge out of the fort and across the bridge instead of going through the front gate with the flaming fist or surrendering - a new one, and a bit risky, but I felt confident. Cadrax was equipped with high fire resistance, allowing me to take down everything not protected by MGOI with fireballs, while Galderan used his Wand of the Heavens against the MGOI-protected mages:
I used arrows of dispelling to take down the wizard at the bridge battle:
One of the harder fights in the next chapter - the cave full of spiders, killer mimics and slimes. Having six potions of freedom here is really helpful:
With a careful and sometimes stealthy approach, I did all the sidequests for the Coalition Camp and entered the Underground River, making sure to have all the relevant buffs active. For the first time, I also tried to take down the lich Zadroth (made visible by spectacles), using The Secret Revealed - which made this a rather easy attempt:
During the Siege of Dragonspear Castle, I decided not to kill all the enemies, instead quickly making my way to the duel site. Dassareth used a PfM scroll and just started attacking, resulting in an easy victory. Following Caelar, these are her buffed stats in preparation of facing Belhifet:
With full buffs, including immunity to all elemental damage types, I went for an all-out assault on the devil:
I had +3 ammo at the ready, and Khelbara was buffed with Enchant Weapon. Belhifet's invisibility attempts got countered by Galderan's True Sight:
Besides his inital gate, Belhifet only got the opportunity to summon in 1 additional Cornugon. He was basically dead at this point:
Victory - and time for SoA, where things should get more interesting. Some final stats for BG1+SoD:
Web and fireballs/holy smite were used ouside the camp, web silence, and holy smite inside the tent.
EDIT
Between the Camp and Cloakwood Mines we first of all helped Aldeth and then we killed Centeol et al.
We then had several incidents with Wyverns and bandits.
Inside the mine Hareishan inadvertently killed herself with a lightning bolt which did us little harm.
Natasha was also no problem
And after he had used up his spells in killing summoned monsters, neither was Davaeorn.
After picking up our reward from the temple for killing the wyvern, we spent all but 32 gold pieces to buy green scrolls and potions at High Hedge. There were a few more potions there which we would have liked to have bought but they will have to wait.
Upon arrival in Baldur's Gate, Firestorm found a tome which improved his dexterity and through that his thieving ability. His name is now quite appropriate as he can cast three fireball spells without needing to rest.
@Jabberwock On page 405 for my current run I wrote "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."
Walkthroughs will also tell you of this option. Warning. If you have certain party members with you, that option may not be available. If they are in the party, you need to leave them outside while talking to Marl. That is something that I have only recently discovered.
Our rest in the ducal palace was most relaxing and we felt right at home as assassins attacked us. They were soon put to the sword and we did everything we wanted to do in the city (pick up a container from Sorcerous Sundries and the glasses from the nearby inn) before departing.
The open road led us to Coastways Crossing, and all we did there was pay over the top prices for a bag of holding (Thredbehr really should have left the charismatic negotiation to Grue) and pick up a mirror plus cloak from the burned building before continuing on to the bridge.
Grue had made us both invisible so we stood and observed as a Crusader mage panicked and exploded barrels to destroy the bridge. With this done we returned to camp and suggested we find another way across the river.
Our travels are interrupted by an ambush, and after a brief conferral we decide to look for a sling.
Continuing our way we divert slightly from Bridgefort and face down some wyverns. Thredbehr is confident he can melee them, right up until he is poisoned. A check of his save vs poison (3) and he retreats after Grue slows the poison.
Grue has found time to call lightning as his nymph charms one of the wyverns and confuses others. Thredbehr briefly stops to inspect the lightning damage - yep, it's not quite ideal and just perhaps a better target could have been found.
We battle past spiders and bugbears - the latter taking healthy chunks out of Thredbehr. Then we play a little inventory game, passing items between ourselves, and by the end of this we realise Grue has a problem.
See, he's invisible and cannot move either when controlled by client or host. Thredbehr has by this time entered and exited the nearby cave, and we find loading a save has no effect.
So we agree to investigate this later, and find an earlier save. This takes us back to leaving Coastways Crossing and this time we don't get the Firefly sling ambush area. Thredbehr is more careful around the wyverns and Grue decides to use a smarter way against the bugbears.
We stroll past a sleeping dragon, and into the next group of enemies. They don't last long against an unbackstabbable barbarian and an insect-swilling druid. The same can't be said for the next group and we push our luck somewhat by casting webs and fighting at the edge of it. Thredbehr is badly wounded but sticks around, and then takes another hit. He should really stagger backwards but sticks around longer and then hears the ominous noise of Grue getting himself webbed. A few seconds later and it looks like Grue will break free but another blow lands and the barbarian admits defeat.
(& inspection of a borked save shows Grue has 4 effects disable creature, disable visual effects, remove foot circle, remove item so I would guess that I did something like enter the cave while his spider > normal form transformation was taking place)
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 214, Core rules + unmodded (1st and final update) Salix (male human abjurer, Grond0); Rewh (male elf sorcerer, Gate70)
Previous run
Salix took a hit from one of the assassins in Candlekeep, but survived to lead the way to the coast to find Shoal. She was blinded and already dead meat before Rewh showed that (in v2.6 anyway) she's also vulnerable to sleep.
On the downside in that area, Mad Arcand refused to acknowledge a ring found nearby was anything to do with him.
After travelling to Beregost, Salix just attacked Neera rather than bothering to try blinding her first. That proved to be a problem when Neera failed to get annoyed and try to run, but just sprinted forward to seek help from the person doing their best to kill her .
Rather than risk that encounter, Salix let her run away with her gem bag. Silke though was blinded before talking to her. Her last-ditch effort to disappear proved unsuccessful and she was rapidly finished off.
Salix had started with Protection from Petrification as his required abjuration spell, so headed for the basilisk area to get some mileage from that. Blind was regularly used to make hitting the monsters easier and the southern group died without any concerns.
The greater basilisk near Mutamin stays neutral in v2.5, even when under attack, but that's no longer the case in v2.6 - so it was a good job that Salix was close enough to draw its gaze there (as Rewh was not protected).
By this time Rewh had learned web, but Mutamin has very good saves and managed to stay active for some time there. Salix was lucky to save against horror before a scorcher spell finished Mutamin off.
Rather than take on Kirian's gang, we went down to Nashkel to seek some Bhaal healing. Noober thought he was going to walk away there after a nice chat - but failed to reckon with a web pre-cast to cover his intended exit.
In the Valley of the Tombs, Salix picked up a free magical dagger before watching as Rewh successfully blinded the revenant. His magic missiles ran out before the revenant's HPs, but there was enough room in the tomb to catch the revenant in a web - while allowing Rewh to thrust out his staff from just outside it.
Salix convinced some ghasts to chase him out of another tomb - two were blinded and posed no problem, but Salix took his life in his hands by using a scorcher on the last. That spell imposes quite a long delay after casting before permitting movement, so it was no great surprise that Salix was attacked and held. However, he'd calculated that Rewh would be able to finish off the ghast before dying himself - and was proved correct.
He then suggested dealing with Narcillicus to round off work there. Rewh sent in a web, but was spotted in the process and ended up drawing away a couple of mustard jellies. Despite his previous troubles, Salix tried to use a scorcher once more on the webbed Narcillicus, but he broke free just before Salix could complete his spell. Narcillicus had started casting improved invisibility before failing his saving throw and picked up that spell where he'd left off as soon as he was free - meaning he finished it almost instantly, still just before Salix could cast. The AI reacted to the loss of target by sending Salix into the web before I could override that and he got stuck immediately. Just to add to his troubles, a skeleton had obviously appeared on the encounter spot outside the ghast tomb and wandered in to see if there was anything worth shooting at. Salix just survived a lightning bolt from Narcillicus, but didn't get a last chance to break free from the web thanks to a skeleton arrow.
Trio 29, Core rules, unmodded (Part 1234 in BG:EE and 567 8 in BGII:EE)
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Loury wasn't in great form today and everything was a bit scrappy. We started off with the temple near Umar and in about 20 minutes we cleared this out and dealt with the dragon and Shade Lord. The first greater mummy caused us a lot of pain while fighting with it's cohorts so we split the second one out and made life easier for ourselves. Images of the dragon and lord:
Our return to Umar hills was marred by a terrible misunderstanding with Valygar and his friends. Suffice to say we won't be making the same mistake again as they are all dead.
Back in the city we returned what was left of Valygar to his ancestry, and then sold some loot so we had room for any more we would find in the Planar Sphere.
Corecleric got a bit panicked in the Planar Sphere while Loury was busy fending off a confused Arial Servant. By the time we were able to consider a rescue this was more of a sweep-up, and Loury used a first Rod of Resurrection charge mid combat so Corecleric didn't miss out on any XP.
On we went, Swish getting a bit confused against the final group of halflings and trying to make a new exit to the Northwest. By that time he'd done enough to soften up the enemy and stayed safe while Loury and Corecleric concluded the encounter.
Corecleric buffed us enough to head outside the Sphere and pick up a spare demon heart. Spareish. The demon has no further need for it.
Back inside the sphere Corecleric buffs us but we mostly rely on summons to distract Tolgarias and his mage before we move in. Corecleric then re-buffs Loury and tells him to crack on in the fire room. Loury makes hard work of this and after a few rounds he runs away but his companions stick out the heat.
With the fire room clear we try an incendiary cloud in the cold room but none of the occupants take damage. Loury makes himself known and retreats - it looks like this should have worked but by the time the enemies move towards us the cloud has burnt itself out so weapons have to suffice.
The engine room has golems, and we take turns to stare death in the face. Some of us more than once, but we survive and have fed the demon heart into the engine. The sphere has travelled once more, so we escape and sell Lavok's belongings before recovering the Dawn ring from Borinall.
At some earlier point we have upset Sir Sarles and returned the illithium alloy to the temple of Helm. We now take the opportunity to retrieve the genuine illithium and hand in Neb's head, before venturing into the Planar Prison.
Buffs and Sanctuaries plus stealth allow us to vanquish the mage at the entrance and the rest of his gang are easy marks for us as a result.
Corecleric is muttering about how to deal with the next group of enemies, and as his plan is forming our swashbuckler drops a snare and sees the plan unfold in a completely different direction. It's a painful direction but not fatal for us. There is a bit of unfriendly Incendiary Cloud fire involved at the final breath of combat too.
Loury prepares for a rest but Corecleric has drawn the attention of the next group of enemies with his summons. We're in no shape for combat but needs must. A couple of lightning bolts look distinctly dodgy but we fail to perish to them.
Loury manages to get a decent rest in and we breeze past the Master of Thralls to set about the Warden as our final act of the session.
Not Loury's finest two hours, but good enough for the three of us to be still in the hunt.
Apart from fetching and carrying the first thing that we did in Baldur's Gate was to heal myself of poison.
We thn went to the Low Lantern where we fought Desreta. She was tough and I therefore went for R & R afterwards.
We delivered a body to Arkion and re-enlisted Montaron before pickpocketting both Arkion and Nemphre.
After killing yago we were able to release Brielbara's baby from a curse.
We then released Ghorak from the curse upon him, and after rescuing a boy's body from Umberlee's Temple, we killed the High Priestess and were therefore able to increase Hal's Wisdom.
Casson was then raised and we were given a shield as a reward.
To the east we were approached by the evil Razemith and we decided that the Gate would be a better place without him.
We investigated Jardak's home whereupon he attacked and killed Firestorm. We retaliated in like manner.
Laerta and her sister were then rescued.
We then went in search of Vail, were told the location of Balduran's Cloak and then killed all the petrified thieves after first using stone to fleah scolls upon them.
Starting with SoA, I fought my way out of Irenicus' Dungeon and started with the Circus Tent quest, using Galderan's True Sight and some quick magic missles:
Next up, I quickly freed Hendak and the slaves and invested in the first of two axes for Dassareth: Azuredge. The powerful weapon was put to good use, as I decided to use my early undead hunter advantage to get some easy experience at the graveyard, clearing out all of the crypts:
One thing I'm always doing in early SoA after a previous death due to ambushes is only ever travel from map to map with invisibility 10' radius active - this was very helpful this time around, allowing for me to buff and summon help before taking down Suna Seni:
I started doing the non-stronghold-related quests around the city, such as the harper quest:
I made sure to travel to the bridge in order to steal the Boomerang Dagger from Captain Dennis - thus granting all of my fighter types quite powerful magical weapons early on - I used those, and a quick true sight to avoid backstabs, in order to solve the skinner murders:
With the help of traps, a backstab, Rowin's magical defenses and the usual array of buffs, I cleared out Mencar's party:
A few more minor quests and encounters gave Rowin access to sixth level spells - Death Spell was my first choice, quite effective not only against trolls and summons, but in general in the early levels, as a bunch of slavers soon discovered:
Having maxed out my reputation, I bought, among other things, a magic license and Stonefire. The final minor encounter in the city for now was fought against the bridge district party:
No need for wizard chess yet. Even PFMW is a poor protection against my three fighter-types + skald + a bunch of poweful buffs super-low-thac0 combo - we can simply swap to normal weapons and will usually just get through any stoneskins before the mage can do something dangerous (and the tactical setting scripts, due to their limited pre-buffs, will often start out with some type of GOI spell, which is fairly useless against my current strategy). Of course, later opponents will get access to more powerful congencies, mantle, improved mantle, AI or simply be liches, so this certainly won't last.
Next time, we shall explore the Druid Grove, the Umar Hills, the Sewers, De'Arnise keep and Mae'Var's guild.
@Jabberwock On page 405 for my current run I wrote "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."
Walkthroughs will also tell you of this option. Warning. If you have certain party members with you, that option may not be available. If they are in the party, you need to leave them outside while talking to Marl. That is something that I have only recently discovered.
I guess that's on me for not reading carefully enough!
I do love all the little corner case dialogue interactions. It's not super obscure, but I got a good laugh out of Minsc's interaction with the pirate king, wherein the king is appalled by Minsc's behavior and immediately condemns the entire party to spellhold. I had not seen that in probably two decades of play as, when I played as a kid I took Minsc but I didn't go the pirate king route (preferring to just fight inside with the wardstone), and as an adult I did go the pirate king route for the XP but never took Minsc.
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An SCS Insane Trilogy Run of Weirdos [Human Monk; No F/T/M/C allowed]
We're about two thirds of the way through BG1, about to tackle the iron throne. I'll share some of the highlights below.
Overall the run has gone decently smoothly. Monks in BG1 are... not good. They're like a swashbuckler without thieving abilities. And swashbucklers are not good in BG1, as they are like a generic fighter with a bunch of equipment penalties, proficiency caps, and no bonus APR. But hanging back and throwing daggers with 18/18 str/dex is OK and every now and again PC can land a stunning blow on a weaker enemy for some style points, so it isn't a complete loss.
The core party is Ajantis, Kivan, Garrick and Faldorn. Ajantis is playing sword & board tank, Kivan is a DPS archer, Garrick a wand slinger, and Faldorn is mostly hanging out waiting to get level 5 spells so she can abuse people with insect plague. There were one or two fights where she was able to cast call lightning, but she mostly doesn't do much. She can use fear and heaven wands though, if needed.
Some highlights:
Char-gen with a roll of 88
Minsc was used early game while grinding to 32k xp as I couldn't think of another way to deal with the sirens. PC didn't have the clarity potion from candlekeep, as monks start with 18 flat strength, and in any case may not have been able to stand up to the sirens alone. The plan was to use Minsc's rage for its charm immunity and then rely on his high strength for accuracy and damage.
First the elite hobgoblin pack was cleared with some help from the High Hedge sleep wand. A large number of hobgoblins spawn when you show up at level 5, and they can actually be quite dangerous if not taken seriously.
The plan kind of worked. Minsc got a ~40 damage crit off on one siren and killed her, while heavily injuring a second. But, the sirens stacked too many poison arrows on him and he couldn't drink antidote because he was zerked.
However, a sleep charge from the wand took down the 1/3 siren that was level 4, and two out of LoS fireballs from the lost amulet killed the remaining injured siren.
As an aside, Minsc's rage making him uncontrollable is one of my least favorite design choices in the entire saga. Minsc would be a much, much (much) stronger NPC if his rage wasn't nerfed in that way.
Bandit camp went smoothly. Garrick used a scroll-cast web plus fireballs from the ankheg horde to disable and clear the enemy forces. I skipped the Kivan / Tazok encounter as that just seemed like unnecessary trouble.
(As another aside, I don't know why some players think Garrick is weak. He can use wands! That alone makes him stronger than many other NPCs.)
First near death experience. Tazok tent lightning trap hit once for 8 damage (save + 50 res boots), but hit a second time for 22 on a failed save bringing PC down to 9/39.
Another near death very shortly thereafter. A 24 damage crit from bear-form Seniyad (the duid leader in Cloakwood-1) brought PC down to 11/39. This is the point at which I realize I need to stop trying to punch and stun people and stick to dagger throwing or I'm not going to make it.
The fight outside the cloakwood mines started out fine, but didn't end well. The mages were killed with firebreath as is my general standard play, but Drasus (wearing the cheetah boots) lived long enough to drink a frost giant strength potion and then got some unexpectedly effective hits off.
Kivan was already dead from melf's acid that I didn't realize was still ticking, when Drasus landed a 22 hp hit on Ajantis, who was tanking but running too thin an hp margin. Drasus then chased down Eldoth and immediately landed a 46 hp crit, killing him in a single blow (note that PC has 46 max hp himself...).
But, a monster summon charge plus some magic missiles saved the day and ended the fight.
I was extremely concerned about being ambushed by giant spiders on the travel back to a temple. To help protect against this risk, I had Garrick cast invisibility on himself and PC, and had Faldorn travel with a potion of freedom in inventory. We also stuck to smaller map hops, so that our 24 hour invisibility wouldn't run out in transit.
This precaution turned out to be warranted, when we were ambushed by the very same giant spiders we were worried about and were immediately attacked with save. vs breath ranged web attacks. Faldorn drank the freedom potion and we fled the map.
Davaeron was killed without too much trouble - he really does poorly against magic-blocked archers with acid arrows. Ajantis tanked the battle horrors while Garrick killed them with wands. Kivan was webbed when his first magic blocking potion ran out, but Ajantis is a decent archer himself and was able to finish the job. The dex gauntlets made the shooting easier.
I had planned on Garrick memorizing the knock scroll from Davaeorn using the red potion, and then resting on D's level to knock all the locks. Unfortunately, Garrick was killed by a rest ambush. Instead, Ajantis was able to open most of the chests (missing only the wand chest) with a cloud giant strength potion.
Kivan roasted the SS mages with a firebreath, restocking Garrick with a fresh fire wand after his original began to run low.
The party went for a cheeky kill against Droth (Shoal's master) with the ogre-slaying arrow from SS. Unfortunately, for some reason Shoal never started her second dialogue and eventually died to arrow fire.
So, we decided to go fight Kahrk, the level 12 ogre mage in the jar by the firewine bridge. Normally I would never take this fight, as there is no real reward and it is fairly dangerous, but I wanted a cheeky kill on an ogre mage and one of the candlekeep ogres didn't really seem like it would be satisfying.
Kivan managed to critical miss with the slaying arrow a moment before Kahrk fired a pfMW, so that maneuver didn't work on multiple levels.
Magic block + firebreath + 2 detonation arrows took him out though.
HOWEVER - we had our third near death experience when charname somehow joined the fight off screen and got hit by the first detonation arrow, bringing him down to 14/46. A single magic missile could have easily killed him. But an extra healing potion got him back up to 41/46 and he was able to get away.
The party will shortly fight the iron throne, and assuming fireball spam carries it to victory, will head off to candlekeep and then do its best to close out the end game.
As an aside, Minsc's rage making him uncontrollable is one of my least favorite design choices in the entire saga. Minsc would be a much, much (much) stronger NPC if his rage wasn't nerfed in that way.
Surely that's exactly the point. His rage (stemming from old injuries) is not really supposed to make him a better character overall. However, it provides the opportunity for players to take advantage of the changed balance of strengths and weaknesses for particular encounters.
Kivan managed to critical miss with the slaying arrow a moment before Kahrk fired a pfMW, so that maneuver didn't work on multiple levels.
The point at which PfMW (and similar spells) is assessed is when the attack is made, not when it takes effect. If the arrow had rolled as a hit it would have worked, even if PFMW had gone up in the interval between the shot being fired and it hitting.
I've been pretty busy this week, but not busy enough to stop my shaman from completing SoA . That was done a lot quicker than the previous run as a result of using much less variety of tactics this time (fire elementals and fire storm featuring very heavily) and missing out a lot of quests. As a result of the latter, I've only got 5.3m XP, rather than being already stuck at the XP cap for some time as is usual.
For the encounter with the Slayer I used Vhailor's Helm for the first time in case the Slayer displayed the sort of crazy regeneration the previous shaman run encountered. There were no glitches on show this time though and Irenicus duly departed in search of a nice big lava bath.
However, my recent problems with bugs have unfortunately continued. This time, as occasionally happens, Kangaxx didn't complete his transition to demi-lich form - making the Ring of Gaxx unobtainable. The loss of saving throw bonus, AC and regeneration will all be much missed and may well prove costly in ToB ...
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 215, Core rules + unmodded (214) Junte, Male dwarf wizard slayer (Gate70)
Duplo, Male human undead hunter (Grond0)
We take longer to roll our characters than to see our first party death - Xzar avoiding an arrow to cast a spell and Montaron breaking his sword on our unlucky undead hunter. After killing them both, 100gp at Beregost temple sees Junte welcome Duplo back into the land of the breathing.
We head south towards Nashkel where Junte decides Duplo can wear the best armour and front up to enemies while he prods from behind with his quarterstaff.
This equipmentisation confused us both slightly, as Duplo also had a quarterstaff to go with his shield, and his long sword proficiency. All Junte had spare was a dagger so he handed that over for Duplo to ask what he was meant to do with that instead of a staff, and the answer of use it with your shield was a less than resounding response. So we hauled our level 1 butts towards Nashkel Mine and shot Greywolf down to gain his sword but not his services.
To the east we acted as a breakdown recovery team and each grabbed one of Samuel's legs before dragging him back to the Friendly Arm Inn.
Then we went west in search of a tome of leadership, stopping on the way to admire Caldo and Krumm actually doing what they have always threatened to do. As Junte attacked them Duplo wondered if the tree would have eventually succumbed to their blows and that's something these two will never know now.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 215, Core rules + unmodded (1 2) Junte, Male dwarf wizard slayer (Gate70)
Duplo, Male human undead hunter (Grond0)
Junte and Duplo set about doing what they do best (Junte making many screenshots and Duplo killing anything that moves including himself).
Here we are as lumbering oafs, Duplo having played at target for a polar bear while Junte shot arrows from a safe distance.
On our way to get the tome of leadership identified we picked off Bjornin's half-ogres and confirmed that Drizzt v2.6 now defended himself from unsolicited gnoll attacks. Seeing as this was happening we moved in and helped him so we could claim to have done so for evermore.
Next we stopped off at the valley of the tombs where Duplo used his undead hunter skills to realise Junte's quarterstaff was ineffective against a revenant. He passed a +2 magical dagger to the wizard slayer and continued his frantic assault only to see Junte land a glancing blow for the kill.
With our reputation at 19 we made Melicamp's day (so avoiding having to clear an ankheg nest) and with a new reputation of 20 Duplo bought a staff +3 for Junte and a cloak of displacement - which Junte returned for him to use as it was most un-wizard-slayerly. Duplo also had a greenstone amulet for emergencies.
We had a decision to make after this, whether to head for basilisk territory or hunt down sirenes. We opted for basilisks and Duplo had to ask Junte to use a green scroll of protection on him (one having limited intellect and the other allowed to use items despite their magical connotations).
After killing the basilisks and Mutamin we set about Kirian and her gang - Junte telling Duplo this was an amulet charge emergency so the first charge was duly used and lasted longer than the two enemy casters.
(edit: Now I think about it I reckon Grond0 said he'd used a charge against Mutamin earlier)
After that it was time to go for the sirenes. By this time we had become aware that neither of us had gone upstairs at Winthrop's inn so we had no potion of clarity. Two more amulet charges were enough for the sirenes while Duplo couldn't help but test his hold immunity against a carrion crawler.
Three flesh golems inside a cave were of no danger to us (unless you consider Duplo being badly mauled a problem, which he did not) so we ransacked the cave and left.
A quick inspection of our gear proved Duplo had most of what he wanted (including Meilum's bracers) so we decided it was high time to visit Nashkel Mine and use another greenstone amulet charge. Mulahey the half-orc took a slicing blow, an arrow and a second slicing blow which left us facing his minions. Between a hefty quarterstaff (skeletons) and a pair of long swords (kobolds) the minions didn't last long.
Lamahla and her amazons failed to survive another greenstone amulet emergency.
Taurgoz found his bandit had been through the mill, and he joined them in short order.
There was deaths aplenty inside the largest bandit camp tent. Venkt failed to survive our initial onslaught (with another greenstone amulet charge used) while Junte shot at Hakt and Duplo killed Raemon and Britik.
Deaths aplenty. Here's one more, with Junte observing it from within his inventory and finding little need to ask if Duplo required the boots of grounding. Not now thank you.
After trekking back to a temple and raising Duplo we used our proven method of healing. Earlier in the session Junte had only had Larloch's Minor Drain so Duplo would heal 1hp per rest. After Nashkel Mine we had a Cure Light Wounds available so Duplo could be healed a little more, but we had used the tome of constitution to raise Duplo's CON to 19. Then we'd purchased Buckley's Buckler so we each could get to CON 20 as required.
(an added bonus was that the repeated passing of the buckler between us tested item-swapping in multiplayer to make sure it wasn't as laggy in v2.6 as in v2.5 and also less likely for items to vanish when passed - so far so good but still plenty of time to test it further)
So anyway. Duplo had 2hp and we travelled. By the time we are ambushed by bandits he has 13hp. Junte is feeling glad he packed Duplo's armour but wishing he'd found room for a helmet too. We run, and manage to escape. By the time our travel is complete we've spent enough hours for Duplo to fully heal and make the close-call look anything but.
The pair of bridge guards at Cloakwood fort (for it is a fort according to the druid with a potion of invulnerability) make for Junte but one runs onto his quarterstaff and Duplo kills them.
Another emergency use of the greenstone amulet is used so we can kill Drasus' two casters and Duplo manly sets about Drasus and Genthore. After a couple of rounds he is forced to run just as Junte has switched from arrows to quarterstaff. Junte manages to stand his ground long enough for us to gain the victory.
Junte gives the boots of speed to Duplo, as he'd rather not run head first into trouble. That's a paladin's job!
We rest before entering Cloakwood mine, and it's a good job too as Junte takes the brunt of enemy attacks to start and then gets poisoned. He has antidotes and elixirs in his quick-slot but a touch of Duplo-icity is present and he elects to let the poison run it's course.
By the time we defeat the final guard Duplo is looking slightly worse for wear too, and Junte realises he has no potions of regeneration packed (which is about all Duplo consumes health-wise). So he passes the undead hunter potions of strength, heroism and speed before tanking a battle horror and allowing Duplo to attack in safety.
This works OK but Duplo reckons his armour class is better so he should tank the second battle horror. Junte reluctantly agrees and calls a time-out after two hits. Carry on says Duplo, highly unlikely another hit would be fatal. Uh ok (says Junte thinking last hit was 14+3, and 15hp remaining).
Sure enough, another hit. Duplo finally moves away and allows Junte to be targeted, and then returns for the kill.
Junte fishes out a potion of magic blocking and realises it will have to be consumed by Duplo the 3hp wonder. Davaeorn v.2.6 deviates from our expectation of his routine meaning Junte is slow to engage but we pin him down on his second visit to the northerly room.
There is just time to reach Baldur's Gate and sell lots of loot then argue about who has the tome of dexterity. Junte loses that argument and has to read it.
Equipment:
edit2: Bonus points for Grond0 if he can spot why enemies seem to be damaging him quite so badly. I've bolded a bit of the writeup so it may be a tad too easy to spot but if you want to work it out don't look at the below.
edit2: Bonus points for Grond0 if he can spot why enemies seem to be damaging him quite so badly. I've bolded a bit of the writeup so it may be a tad too easy to spot but if you want to work it out don't look at the below.
Easy enough - I did actually mention during the session that I'd lost a helmet as a result of dying at the Bandit Camp. Admittedly I could have replaced it after noticing that, but it seemed more appropriate to wait until we could loot a helm or two in the City .
The early stages of ToB proved pretty easy, with invisibility allowing me to pick my fights, while Nature's Beauty was used a bit more frequently to confound enemies.
On arrival at the Fire Temple I decided I should try and clear the place to boost XP, but that proved harder than expected. The enemies tend to congregate in big groups and a number of them can see through invisible and have attacks that can disrupt spells even if they do no damage. Other than the useless Fire Storm, I didn't have much suitable to deal with enemies with lots of HPs from a distance, so progress was relatively slow. However, I was down to the last 2 or 3 enemies on the lower level when trouble struck - I was about to complete shooting down an erinyes when it charmed me.
I had obviously spent too much time running around, with the odd dance thrown in to defeat isolated enemies, and even the long-lived chaotic commands had run out. Without the Ring of Gaxx my basic spell saving throw of 1 was vulnerable to anything applying a saving throw penalty - which includes erinyes ...
As an aside, Minsc's rage making him uncontrollable is one of my least favorite design choices in the entire saga. Minsc would be a much, much (much) stronger NPC if his rage wasn't nerfed in that way.
Surely that's exactly the point. His rage (stemming from old injuries) is not really supposed to make him a better character overall. However, it provides the opportunity for players to take advantage of the changed balance of strengths and weaknesses for particular encounters.
Kivan managed to critical miss with the slaying arrow a moment before Kahrk fired a pfMW, so that maneuver didn't work on multiple levels.
The point at which PfMW (and similar spells) is assessed is when the attack is made, not when it takes effect. If the arrow had rolled as a hit it would have worked, even if PFMW had gone up in the interval between the shot being fired and it hitting.
Is it established that his rage is due to his injuries? I thought it was just a rashaman thing and that he was designed before barbarian existed as a class, so he still has some legacy weirdness associated with him.
I've actually never played a true barbarian, but I don't think that they have the "lose control" disability when they rage. I guess one could say that it's Minsc's injuries that reduce his control, but the design still feels a little too punitive to me.
Very interesting wrt the pfMW engine behavior!
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An SCS Insane Trilogy Run of Weirdos [Human Monk; No F/T/M/C allowed]
Now with more BG2!
Run highlights below. Some thoughts on the BG1 party.
Faldorn
She was OK! She got her first level 5 druid spell shortly before the ducal palace. Insect plague was cast twice, once in the palace, and once in the temple of bhaal. It completely smashed the greater / kitted doppelgangers, causing about half to break morale and disabling the casters. It missed in the fight against Sarevok, but that was my fault as I tried to be sneaky and target a bat to get around Semaj's spell turning.
Purge invisibility is also good. Summon nymph is also good. A noticeably weaker character than Viccy, at least until level 4 or 5 spells are available late game.
Kivan
Kivan as a DPS archer is a crummier version of Coran, but he's still pretty good. I gave him bassilus's warhammer for the times when he needed to go melee. He wore plate, but sometimes swapped to studded leather for HiS. He missed his first dispel arrow against Sarevok (!), but the second connected.
Detonate arrows are OP, as always.
Garrick
Wands OP. Used web a few times early to mid game, but I don't think I cast it after chapter 4 as using wands was too often superior. Spent the game with a dispel memorized, planning on using his higher bard spell levels, and never used it. Enemy mages are still too high level.
His relatively low hp, middling AC and lack of a helmet made him fairly vulnerable, but it was manageable, particularly with mirror image for important fights.
Ajantis
Ran him as a tank with the dex gauntlets. It was fine. Lay on hands is an OK heal. PfE is a decent buff, although the party had other sources to cast it. He was -18 vs. slashing against Sarevok but still got hit half the time. Sarevok's effective thac0 is nutty. I originally wanted to cast improved invisible on him, but forgot about that plan and gave him a PfM globe at the start of the final fight. He spent about half the time of the final fight tanking. I think if he had gotten II he could have stood toe to toe with Big S, but he didn't, so he still had to spend a little time kiting.
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Run highlights:
Me, like an idiot, getting Garrick killed in the catacombs. Fortunately, the party had a cloud giant strength potion and did *not* miss the strength tome.
Things got a little spicy rescuing Eltan. Too many enemy casters with AoE damage and disables. This fight really needs silence. A cheesy ring swap protected Faldorn from hold and we eventually pulled it out.
I got more aggressive about using paralysis wands this run. Enemy mage saves are pretty good, but if you can sneak in a malison (of which SS has 20 scrolls), it's effective against casters without spell turning.
Faldorn finally getting work done. She is probably a stronger character if the player is completing more TotSC content (I just rob the first dungeon floor of Durlag's for the two dispel arrows and leave it at that).
Garrick triggering traps as a mustard jelly. This was my first BG1 run without a thief. It was annoying, but manageably so. The worst parts by far were the catacombs and Durlag's Tower. DT has repeating lightning and fireball traps, and it was pretty gross. The catacombs has a repeating lightning trap - although it turns out you can walk around it if you are very careful.
For single use traps, mustard jelly was immune to everything or nearly everything and was an effective late-game solution (using polymorph scrolls from SS). I don't know if a jelly can open containers, but it can definitely trigger floor traps.
Me forgetting about Tamoko *again* and having to fight her. Then bumping into a pack of a dozen skeletons and zombies (nothing a fireball potion couldn't solve, but still).
This shot shows probably the worst point in the final fight. Angelo was dead, but Faldorn's insects had missed Semaj, Diarmid and Tazok were still up, and Sarevok had drained most of Ajantis's extra healing potions. I had tried to malison / web Sarevok, but he kept rolling magic resistance. I think he may have additional protections until his supporters are killed (not sure if that is SCS content or not).
Fortunately, PC monk buffed with a storm giant strength potion had strong DPS with throwing daggers and then could swap to unarmed to kick the skeleton warriors to death with crushing damage. Semaj summoned an air elemental, but got a small one that didn't do much. Faldorn killed Semaj with a heaven wand plus a third firebreath potion (two having been used earlier to kill Angelo). Diarmid and Tazok fell to thrown daggers from PC and acid arrows from Kivan.
Ajantis had to do a little kiting vs. Sarevok, but after the four others were killed, Sarevok was stunned with a paralysis rod and the fight was over.
A few comments on a PC monk in BG1. Overall rating, not good.
In many ways, a BG1 monk is just a BG1 swash without thieving abilities, and a BG1 swash in combat is in many ways just a crippled fighter with equipment, stat and proficiency penalties.
However, there are a few bright spots.
(i) A monk can use giant strength potions, and gets both warrior thac0 and bonus level 7/13 APR. So, a PC monk can combine relatively cheap/common giant strength potions with DUHM to give an enormous strength bonus to a relatively safe ranged attack with throwing daggers. Swash can't use giant strength potions, and don't have the warrior thac0 table or bonus APR (but do have swash bonus and specialization bonus).
So the monk gets an extra 1/2 APR with roughly equal damage and thac0.
(ii) Monks move quickly without haste, and can wear RoFA without penalty.
Unfortunately, they are terrible tanks and can't really wade into a web and start swinging.
(iii) Throwing daggers are pretty good. Provided the monk has at least 19 strength, he doesn't do *that* much less damage than an archer. Unfortunately however, there are no magical much less elemental throwing daggers in BG1.
(iv) Fists do crushing damage.
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The issues are numerous:
(i) Can't wear a helmet! Being hit by critz iz bad.
(ii) Max constitution bonus to hp is +2. Base hp is d8. A level 8 monk (110k) will end the game with about 55 hp. This is not good, and combined with (i), makes it almost impossible for the monk to engage in melee safely. Even the smallest scrapes put the monk in range of an instakill on enemy crit. This makes it very difficult to get any use out of stunning fists.
(iii) Melee DPS isn't good vs. a fighter. Fists hit as normal weapons until BG2 and do not deal elemental damage. Using a weapon gives up the unarmed APR bonus and compares even more poorly vs. a fighter.
(iv) Very little use of thief abilities. Can't disarm traps/locks or backstab or detect illusion.
(v) Poor AC vs. a fighter
(vi) +2 saving throw bonus is outshone by shorty saves (monk must be human).
(vii) Haste/slow immunity is generally a net loss.
(viii) Can't wear a helmet! Unlike mages and thieves, to my knowledge there is no way for a monk to gain critical hit immunity throughout the entire saga. It's gonna be rough.
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Anyway, I am still enjoying the monk kit because it is so unique. Hopefully the tradeoffs will look a lot better by the end of SoA.
@Grond0 Hard luck with the shaman. @Jabberwock Well done against Sarevok.
Journal of Bryant Brighteyes
We did enough killing of minor enemies for Neera to go up a level and for us to have enough gold to buy her an archmage robe.
We then killed Meilum before going in search of Amoy. That resulted in him giving Neera a belt.
We returned to Baldur's Gate where killing a mage provided Neera with a ring of wizardry.
We decided it was time to investigate the Iron Throne and having done so realise that we will have to return to Candlekeep.
Before doing so, we thought it best to honour our agreement to help Shandalar as it appeared urgent.
It was a profitable venture and Neera is on the point of levelling up. The kiss that she gave me indicates that she is rather fond of me. Let's see what develops. Perhaps it was the cold on ice island that made her reluctant to shed clothes. Everyone but Neera has reached the level cap.
On to the Druid Grove - mostly in order to get Cadrax the Dwarven Thrower +3. With Death Spell, I felt ready to take on any number of trolls - though it turns out that the current version of SCS spirit trolls on tactical are a) not affected by Death Spell and b) use their flame strikes and greater commands in rather unpredictable ways. Still, there aren't that many of those. After dealing with the shadow druid groups, clearing the troll mound was no trouble:
To kill the Rakshasa, I used the "Enchant Weapon" spell (this one does get a bit of use in this run, not only for Belhifet - Dassareth won't get a +3 throwing dagger until we enter Ust'Natha, and there are a decent amount of opponents which can only be hit by +3 weapons or better) and a few traps. Cernd took down Faldorn, and I bought myself the Dwarven Thrower, also getting Dassareth the Shield of Harmony, greatly increasing her survivability thanks to the various immunities.
Next up, I made my way to the Umar Hills. Being an Undead Hunter with Azuredge made getting to the Shade Lord relatively simple:
So, the Shade Lord: First order of business: Run away in order to avoid his aura, while also dealing some ranged damage:
Next up: Wait out the the Shade Lord's immediate physical defenses while taking down the Altar. I caught the Shade Lord casting some type of Necromancy Spell at Rowin and was able to activate SI:Necromancy just in time:
Finally: Kite and kill the Shade Lord while avoiding his spells as best as possible:
Around this point, I generally started adding SI:A and Spell Shield for my spellcasters to my buff-list. Rowin is generally really well-protected by now - the only thing he usually doesn't have at his disposal is some kind of spell deflection effect. In any case, we went back to the city to buy a few more items before clearing out the main level of the sewers:
De'Arnise keep was Dassareth's next target. The lone Yuan-ti mage, our first possibly challenging encounter, had insufficient prebuffs to deal with our hasted charge:
With their heavy physical damage output and strong combat buffs, the party is set up quite well against golems:
SCS Tor'Gal has previously given me trouble. I decided to try and burst him down, trying to ignore his mages for the first few rounds of combat (with the plan to isolate any character being targeted by dispel magic in order to save as many buffs as possible). We started via Death Spell, taking down the non-mages. Cadrax was profiting from Rowin's newest spell: Improved Haste.
Tor'Gal died within moments, and the yuan-ti mage soon followed:
Finally, I took care of Mae'Var's guild. Since Mae'Var is quite weak in this version of SCS and we can have our vulnerable characters stay invisible to avoid backstabs, Rayic Gethras was the only challenge across the way. We countered PFMW with normal (or rather, excellent) weapons and his improved invisibility contingency with true sight:
Next time, we will seek out the Windspear Hills and deal with Bodhi. Should be fun - vampire hunting is the perfect mid-level activity for our Undead Hunter bhaalspawn.
Only Prat and the phase spiders caused problems at Candlekeep.
Prat disappeared and we couldn't find him. We went for a rest and uppon returning he was there and somehow managed to avoid our webs. He sent two lightning bolts before his death which meant resting again. It was as well that we did as a couple of spiders attacked weaker party members and poisoned them.
The basilisks were no problem as I used a potion of mirrored eyes and fought them seingle handed.
W e then decided to at least visit Durlag's Tower as Neera is still some way off reaching level 9.
The upper floors were cleared first.
Then we got as far as the warders. We killed them, but they killed Hal and Neera.
We raised them at Beregost and both the party and I myself are now resting. Zzzzzzzzzz
EDIT
Upon returning to Baldur's Gate, Firestorm went to rescue Duke Eltan. The plan was for him to kill Rashad but since Firestorm was losing the battle, he lured Rashad away from the duke and hid as soon as he was out of sight. He then returned to the party carrying the duke over his shoulder.
We took the duke to the harbour master and went to tell Shaella about the book of unknowing however I am confused. I was told that I had found it though I have no recllection of the fact.
We then went to the Iron Throne and killed Cynthandria and her pet ogres before going to kill Slythe and Kirstin.
The battle at the Ducal palace went well but the game crashed just after Sarevok left. It went even better the second time round as I was fully healed when we left the palace.
EDIT
The wand of monster summoning now only had three charges left and we only had about 600 gold pieces so we earned some money killing ankhegs, rechargeg the wand, and will now go after Sarevok.
Neera is now level 9 and has now reached the level cap. Lily has some items that we would like. Perhaps as we follow Sarevok we will find items that will enable us to buy them. We have already sold our non-magical jewellery and weapons that are +1 or less in order to recharge as many items as we could.
In the Windspear Hills, after quickly taking down the Rukh Transmuter, I planned on having Dassareth deal with the vampires and other undead by herself, using Azuredge and Improved Haste. However, some of her foes slipped through the door she was attempting to close off, so the others had to defend themselves, using some quick nukes in order to minimize any level drain effects - though some minor restorations where needed:
The party once again proved their effectiveness against any type of golem:
Conster was trapped to death (and Firkraag left for later), and we used summons to deal with Samia's Guardians before taking her down as well.
Next up, the party prepared to face Bodhi. Her most dangerous servant at this point, Tanova, immediately fell to the Azuredge effect:
With that out of the way, it was easy for our Undead Hunter to chase down the remaining undead, with Lassal being the last one standing:
Bodhi was defeated - even without traps - right as she appeared:
Now, I thought about going to Spellhold, leaving the Planar Sphere, the Unseeing Eye and the Planar Prison for later. However, I decided not to do that - because I remembered that I have all the SCS options installed, including the one where all your items are taken away as you enter Spellhold - since I've never played with that one before, I want to gather a lot of experience before making my trip to Brynnlaw.
So next time, we are going to see the three remaining potential Strongholds.
Firestorm lured Sarevok to the left hand side of the room before using a potion of invisibility which took Sarevok out of the battle.
Neera cast web and cloudkill which badly hurt Semaj but was not quite sufficient to kill him. Another web and another cloudkill was.
She then used her wand of monster summoning which lured Tazok and Angelo. Hal used true sight which enabled the party to target Tazok.
Angelo used his arrows of detonation which hurt himself and Tazok as well as the summoned monsters.
Neera summoned more monsters to replace the slain. I think that one of Angelo's arrows actually killed Tazok though Tazok was already near death. Ogres killed Angelo.
We then buffed ourselves to fight Sarevok and summoned more monsters. Firestorm used arrows of dispelling. Once more an ogre landed the killing blow, whilst Hal supplied essential healing and Neera used the wand of monster summoning to replace the monsters that Sarrevok killed.
Dassareth makes her way to the Planar Sphere and takes down the halflings. Galderan adds Entropy Shield to his pre-buffs against spellcasters, so we now have 3 party members protected against dispels, and one with undispellable protections (berserker rage). Dassareth has a ton of item-based immunities and great saving throws, and she is usually also protected with chaotic commands and death ward. Khelbara remains our most vulnerable party member against spellcasters.
Tolgerias' prebuffs arrive way too late to protect him against our quick attacks and a backstab - a bit strange.
Lavok, as usual, doesn't do very well when faced with one skeleton warrior after the other:
Our spell protections and berserker rage help us in taking down the demons, and the golems aren't much of a problem either - Rowin can tank them for as long as it takes, with Cadrax doing great damage. Planar Sphere - done.
Next up, the Unseeing Eye. This one is a bit more tricky, because we have to face Beholders for the first time. In preparation, I've decided to buy a fully-charged cloudkill wand, so the first group is mostly dealt with by throwing down cloudkills while staying out of sight:
There's no lich in the undead city, so Dassareth can easily clean up the place. The other beholders we meet are mostly dealt with via skeletons warriors, cloudkills and fireballs, with the party staying invisible. The Unseeing Eye fires up its defenses, but is stripped of them by the Rift Device, allowing a skeleton warrior to kill it. Cadrax, protected via rage, is the only one in range, in order to avoid any deadly high level spells:
The Planar Prison remains - we enter with full buffs and rush down most of the place, though our assault slows down upon meeting the army of the Master of Thralls:
However, Rowin has access to Mordenkainen's Swords by now (his first 7th level spell) - as one of the swords takes the attention of the horde, a death spell and some quick damage allow us to deal with this foe, an I decide to rush the Warden as well while he's still fighting thralls instead of resting and buffing up. Now, the Warden did have the time to buff up his defenses, so we have to - for one of the first times - take down his buffs - our two arcane spellcasters quickly combine secret words and breaches, while we try to avoid the spheres of chaos on the ground:
The Warden is still busy killing thralls and our ranged attacks are enough to take him down before he can renew any defenses or start assaulting us with his spells:
One other thing I decided to do before going to Brynnlaw: Doing all the companion quests in the game. I discovered a weird bug while doing so - some companions, for no apparent reason, seem to start at the experience cap:
I'm only taking them into the party for their specific quests, so I don't mind all that much, but it's still very strange. As for the few interesting fights: We have the lich for Edwin's quest - I draw out some of his spells with skeleton warriors. Once his PFMW is down, Dassareth uses Azuredge to kill him:
Deril is killed via traps. Dorn's quests aren't too difficult at this point (with our experience level, the demon near the end doesn't stand much of a chance thanks to our defensive buffs and high physical damage), and neither are Rasaads (generally quite easy). For Neera, we make sure to avoid battle as much as possible (using tricks such as starting a fight between Mercenaries and Thayans in the Red Wizard Enclave) and make sure to renew any dispelled buffs as quickly as possible. Hexxat's mind flayers are mostly rushed down by Cadrax, who now has 10 APR with Improved Haste (Dwarven Thrower + Kundane):
Dassareth destroyed the vampires at the Brynnlaw docks, while Galderan used backstab to take down Perth:
So - next time, we will enter Spellhold, and we'll lose all of our equipment upon doing so. This should be interesting.
Comments
Dassareth, Undead Hunter with a custom party, Update 7
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
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152705/#Comment_1152705
Balduran's Island turned out to be a short, quick and easy affair - Very much helped by Khelbara being great with daggers. Every Greater Wolfwere or Loup Garou I happened to meet was quickly attacked with two wand of paralyzation charges at a time, and, once stunned, killed by the Kensai:
Upon going to the Carnival for the necklace of missiles, shield amulet and scroll of protection from petrification. we also helped Bentha
We headed north and killed some half-ogres, the leader of whom had a +1 two handed sword.
Now all the party have magical weapons with which they are skilled.
Heading west we killed some bandits led by Teyngan followed by more half-ogres.
Having purchased the scroll of petrification we decided to go to the basilisk area where we killed Linden and allies followed by basilisks and finally Mutamin.
It was then that we decided to get some ankheg armour for Hal. The cost jjust about wiped our reserve of gold and as we had seen a wand of the heavens for sale in Ulgoth's Beard, we decided on ankheg hunting once more.
We had collected quite a few when we were unexpectedly attacked by three of them simultaneously with the result that Firestorm was killed. That however wasn't a disaaster as we got 1500 gold pieces for those three anheg shells and raising him cost 800 gold pieces, a profit of 700 gold pieces, not to mention the experience.
Upon returning to Beregost to raise Firestorm and sell the shells we discovered that Hal's armour was ready.
We went to an inn to rest only to be attacked by Karlat who was quickly despatched.
The wand of the heavens is now affordable.
A mage called Silke then rather foolishly attacked us. As a result shee is now pushing up the daisies and Hal is a level 7 cleric.
I'm a bit peeved about that since I am still level 6.
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
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152705/#Comment_1152705
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154705/#Comment_1154705
Immediately upon arriving in Ulgoth's Beard, the whole party drank invisibility potions in order to avoid the initial ambush and buff up/summon help safely. Detect invisibility was used against the dangerous cult assassins (with vulnerable party members staying invisible until they were dealt with), while Rowin, using his superior magical defenses, made sure to engange the archers:
I'm also missing some screenshots of the early parts of the Sarevok battle, but I think it went a bit like this: Cadrax and Dassareth (with great saving throws and the ability to protect themselves with potions in case their buffs got dispelled) went aggressively against the enemy spellcasters, and since Tazok and Sarevok decided to persue Rowin, I had an easy time separating the enemies from each other. I think Cadrax managed to disrupt Semaj's spells through his stoneskins with the Ashideena electrical damage, or maybe Semaj somehow targeted some skeletons with his dispel magic instead of a player character - in any case, I got to keep my buffs:
Nice to hear!
Probably going to try to get through BG1 this weekend. I'm leaning towards the monk party, only because I'm actually most excited about the wild mage run and don't want to run through my most interesting parties first.
The lack of a thief I worry is going to be super annoying, but with Heardalis for knock and Cernd for infinite hp, I'm hoping it isn't ultimately too bad. I don't know what the most threatening traps are, outside of maybe chapter 2/3. I do know there are a few disintegrate and petrify traps.. I guess the most concerning are the permakill traps, the repeater traps and any that are in combat areas (like the guarded compound).
Maybe some BG1 traps like in the catacombs are going to be an issue..
We joined up with Xzar and Montaron and after leaving Montaron in Joia's house, we met up with Khaled and Jaheira.
We then completyed their request, dropping them off in Nashkel after speaking to the mayor.
We then went to pick up Montaron who helped us to acquire much needed goods at Ulgoth's Beard. He also acquired Algernon's Cloak for us.
EDIT
We cleared the caves of all undead before plundering them. We also killed Narcillicus when he attacked us for no reason. After chatting to Elminster and a little girl we visited Officer Rai and sold our bandit scalps.
After rescuing Viconia we went to the bandit camp where we were recruited.
We then headed back to Beregost killing Deke and his "friends" on the way.
In Beregost we killed Tranzig and cleared a spider infestation.
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
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1152705/#Comment_1152705
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154705/#Comment_1154705
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154817/#Comment_1154817
While I mostly just fireball my way through SoD, I did at least set myself the goal not to recharge my necklaces of missles this time around - and I'm also planning to tackle a few risky encounters I usually either avoid or tend to do in a safer way. Still, not much to report in the city, the Coast Way Crossing or the Coast Way Forest (vampire hunting is quite easy for Dassareth). My first interesting encounter occured in the Lair of Morentherene - Somehow, the throwing dagger oneshot failed to materialize, so I was forced to fight the dragon straight up. First, I left her cave to buff up, including the important protection from poison green scrolls, which negate the breath weapon. With that, my usual combat buffs and remove fear going, Cadrax was quite capable of tanking the dragon, and the party took her down:
Journal of Bryant Brighteyes
We thoroughly trashed the bandit camp!
Web and fireballs/holy smite were used ouside the camp, web silence, and holy smite inside the tent.
EDIT
Between the Camp and Cloakwood Mines we first of all helped Aldeth and then we killed Centeol et al.
We then had several incidents with Wyverns and bandits.
Inside the mine Hareishan inadvertently killed herself with a lightning bolt which did us little harm.
Natasha was also no problem
And after he had used up his spells in killing summoned monsters, neither was Davaeorn.
After picking up our reward from the temple for killing the wyvern, we spent all but 32 gold pieces to buy green scrolls and potions at High Hedge. There were a few more potions there which we would have liked to have bought but they will have to wait.
Upon arrival in Baldur's Gate, Firestorm found a tome which improved his dexterity and through that his thieving ability. His name is now quite appropriate as he can cast three fireball spells without needing to rest.
Doing the early solo xp grind to 32k.
I just this run realized you can talk marl down for 900 xp.
So many runs came to blows that I started feeling bad and just leaving the bar to prevent bloodshed.
Learn something new every...
I was also gifted this game as a kid when it came out (!)
Walkthroughs will also tell you of this option. Warning. If you have certain party members with you, that option may not be available. If they are in the party, you need to leave them outside while talking to Marl. That is something that I have only recently discovered.
Thredbehr (male dwarf barbarian, Gate70); Grue (male half elf Avenger, Grond0)
Our rest in the ducal palace was most relaxing and we felt right at home as assassins attacked us. They were soon put to the sword and we did everything we wanted to do in the city (pick up a container from Sorcerous Sundries and the glasses from the nearby inn) before departing.
The open road led us to Coastways Crossing, and all we did there was pay over the top prices for a bag of holding (Thredbehr really should have left the charismatic negotiation to Grue) and pick up a mirror plus cloak from the burned building before continuing on to the bridge.
Grue had made us both invisible so we stood and observed as a Crusader mage panicked and exploded barrels to destroy the bridge. With this done we returned to camp and suggested we find another way across the river.
Our travels are interrupted by an ambush, and after a brief conferral we decide to look for a sling.
Grue has found time to call lightning as his nymph charms one of the wyverns and confuses others. Thredbehr briefly stops to inspect the lightning damage - yep, it's not quite ideal and just perhaps a better target could have been found.
See, he's invisible and cannot move either when controlled by client or host. Thredbehr has by this time entered and exited the nearby cave, and we find loading a save has no effect.
(& inspection of a borked save shows Grue has 4 effects disable creature, disable visual effects, remove foot circle, remove item so I would guess that I did something like enter the cave while his spider > normal form transformation was taking place)
Salix (male human abjurer, Grond0); Rewh (male elf sorcerer, Gate70)
Previous run
Salix took a hit from one of the assassins in Candlekeep, but survived to lead the way to the coast to find Shoal. She was blinded and already dead meat before Rewh showed that (in v2.6 anyway) she's also vulnerable to sleep.
After travelling to Beregost, Salix just attacked Neera rather than bothering to try blinding her first. That proved to be a problem when Neera failed to get annoyed and try to run, but just sprinted forward to seek help from the person doing their best to kill her
Salix had started with Protection from Petrification as his required abjuration spell, so headed for the basilisk area to get some mileage from that. Blind was regularly used to make hitting the monsters easier and the southern group died without any concerns.
Rather than take on Kirian's gang, we went down to Nashkel to seek some Bhaal healing. Noober thought he was going to walk away there after a nice chat - but failed to reckon with a web pre-cast to cover his intended exit.
In the Valley of the Tombs, Salix picked up a free magical dagger before watching as Rewh successfully blinded the revenant. His magic missiles ran out before the revenant's HPs, but there was enough room in the tomb to catch the revenant in a web - while allowing Rewh to thrust out his staff from just outside it.
Poor Salix.
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Loury wasn't in great form today and everything was a bit scrappy. We started off with the temple near Umar and in about 20 minutes we cleared this out and dealt with the dragon and Shade Lord. The first greater mummy caused us a lot of pain while fighting with it's cohorts so we split the second one out and made life easier for ourselves. Images of the dragon and lord:
Corecleric got a bit panicked in the Planar Sphere while Loury was busy fending off a confused Arial Servant. By the time we were able to consider a rescue this was more of a sweep-up, and Loury used a first Rod of Resurrection charge mid combat so Corecleric didn't miss out on any XP.
Back inside the sphere Corecleric buffs us but we mostly rely on summons to distract Tolgarias and his mage before we move in. Corecleric then re-buffs Loury and tells him to crack on in the fire room. Loury makes hard work of this and after a few rounds he runs away but his companions stick out the heat.
The engine room has golems, and we take turns to stare death in the face. Some of us more than once, but we survive and have fed the demon heart into the engine. The sphere has travelled once more, so we escape and sell Lavok's belongings before recovering the Dawn ring from Borinall.
At some earlier point we have upset Sir Sarles and returned the illithium alloy to the temple of Helm. We now take the opportunity to retrieve the genuine illithium and hand in Neb's head, before venturing into the Planar Prison.
Buffs and Sanctuaries plus stealth allow us to vanquish the mage at the entrance and the rest of his gang are easy marks for us as a result.
Corecleric is muttering about how to deal with the next group of enemies, and as his plan is forming our swashbuckler drops a snare and sees the plan unfold in a completely different direction. It's a painful direction but not fatal for us. There is a bit of unfriendly Incendiary Cloud fire involved at the final breath of combat too.
Apart from fetching and carrying the first thing that we did in Baldur's Gate was to heal myself of poison.
We thn went to the Low Lantern where we fought Desreta. She was tough and I therefore went for R & R afterwards.
We delivered a body to Arkion and re-enlisted Montaron before pickpocketting both Arkion and Nemphre.
After killing yago we were able to release Brielbara's baby from a curse.
We then released Ghorak from the curse upon him, and after rescuing a boy's body from Umberlee's Temple, we killed the High Priestess and were therefore able to increase Hal's Wisdom.
Casson was then raised and we were given a shield as a reward.
To the east we were approached by the evil Razemith and we decided that the Gate would be a better place without him.
We investigated Jardak's home whereupon he attacked and killed Firestorm. We retaliated in like manner.
Laerta and her sister were then rescued.
We then went in search of Vail, were told the location of Balduran's Cloak and then killed all the petrified thieves after first using stone to fleah scolls upon them.
We returned to Beregost and rescued Neera
Previous updates:
BG1 End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154817/#Comment_1154817
SoD Start&End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154915/#Comment_1154915
Starting with SoA, I fought my way out of Irenicus' Dungeon and started with the Circus Tent quest, using Galderan's True Sight and some quick magic missles:
Next time, we shall explore the Druid Grove, the Umar Hills, the Sewers, De'Arnise keep and Mae'Var's guild.
I guess that's on me for not reading carefully enough!
I do love all the little corner case dialogue interactions. It's not super obscure, but I got a good laugh out of Minsc's interaction with the pirate king, wherein the king is appalled by Minsc's behavior and immediately condemns the entire party to spellhold. I had not seen that in probably two decades of play as, when I played as a kid I took Minsc but I didn't go the pirate king route (preferring to just fight inside with the wardstone), and as an adult I did go the pirate king route for the XP but never took Minsc.
----
An SCS Insane Trilogy Run of Weirdos [Human Monk; No F/T/M/C allowed]
We're about two thirds of the way through BG1, about to tackle the iron throne. I'll share some of the highlights below.
Overall the run has gone decently smoothly. Monks in BG1 are... not good. They're like a swashbuckler without thieving abilities. And swashbucklers are not good in BG1, as they are like a generic fighter with a bunch of equipment penalties, proficiency caps, and no bonus APR. But hanging back and throwing daggers with 18/18 str/dex is OK and every now and again PC can land a stunning blow on a weaker enemy for some style points, so it isn't a complete loss.
The core party is Ajantis, Kivan, Garrick and Faldorn. Ajantis is playing sword & board tank, Kivan is a DPS archer, Garrick a wand slinger, and Faldorn is mostly hanging out waiting to get level 5 spells so she can abuse people with insect plague. There were one or two fights where she was able to cast call lightning, but she mostly doesn't do much. She can use fear and heaven wands though, if needed.
Some highlights:
Char-gen with a roll of 88
Minsc was used early game while grinding to 32k xp as I couldn't think of another way to deal with the sirens. PC didn't have the clarity potion from candlekeep, as monks start with 18 flat strength, and in any case may not have been able to stand up to the sirens alone. The plan was to use Minsc's rage for its charm immunity and then rely on his high strength for accuracy and damage.
First the elite hobgoblin pack was cleared with some help from the High Hedge sleep wand. A large number of hobgoblins spawn when you show up at level 5, and they can actually be quite dangerous if not taken seriously.
The plan kind of worked. Minsc got a ~40 damage crit off on one siren and killed her, while heavily injuring a second. But, the sirens stacked too many poison arrows on him and he couldn't drink antidote because he was zerked.
However, a sleep charge from the wand took down the 1/3 siren that was level 4, and two out of LoS fireballs from the lost amulet killed the remaining injured siren.
As an aside, Minsc's rage making him uncontrollable is one of my least favorite design choices in the entire saga. Minsc would be a much, much (much) stronger NPC if his rage wasn't nerfed in that way.
Bandit camp went smoothly. Garrick used a scroll-cast web plus fireballs from the ankheg horde to disable and clear the enemy forces. I skipped the Kivan / Tazok encounter as that just seemed like unnecessary trouble.
(As another aside, I don't know why some players think Garrick is weak. He can use wands! That alone makes him stronger than many other NPCs.)
First near death experience. Tazok tent lightning trap hit once for 8 damage (save + 50 res boots), but hit a second time for 22 on a failed save bringing PC down to 9/39.
Another near death very shortly thereafter. A 24 damage crit from bear-form Seniyad (the duid leader in Cloakwood-1) brought PC down to 11/39. This is the point at which I realize I need to stop trying to punch and stun people and stick to dagger throwing or I'm not going to make it.
The fight outside the cloakwood mines started out fine, but didn't end well. The mages were killed with firebreath as is my general standard play, but Drasus (wearing the cheetah boots) lived long enough to drink a frost giant strength potion and then got some unexpectedly effective hits off.
Kivan was already dead from melf's acid that I didn't realize was still ticking, when Drasus landed a 22 hp hit on Ajantis, who was tanking but running too thin an hp margin. Drasus then chased down Eldoth and immediately landed a 46 hp crit, killing him in a single blow (note that PC has 46 max hp himself...).
But, a monster summon charge plus some magic missiles saved the day and ended the fight.
I was extremely concerned about being ambushed by giant spiders on the travel back to a temple. To help protect against this risk, I had Garrick cast invisibility on himself and PC, and had Faldorn travel with a potion of freedom in inventory. We also stuck to smaller map hops, so that our 24 hour invisibility wouldn't run out in transit.
This precaution turned out to be warranted, when we were ambushed by the very same giant spiders we were worried about and were immediately attacked with save. vs breath ranged web attacks. Faldorn drank the freedom potion and we fled the map.
Davaeron was killed without too much trouble - he really does poorly against magic-blocked archers with acid arrows. Ajantis tanked the battle horrors while Garrick killed them with wands. Kivan was webbed when his first magic blocking potion ran out, but Ajantis is a decent archer himself and was able to finish the job. The dex gauntlets made the shooting easier.
I had planned on Garrick memorizing the knock scroll from Davaeorn using the red potion, and then resting on D's level to knock all the locks. Unfortunately, Garrick was killed by a rest ambush. Instead, Ajantis was able to open most of the chests (missing only the wand chest) with a cloud giant strength potion.
Kivan roasted the SS mages with a firebreath, restocking Garrick with a fresh fire wand after his original began to run low.
The party went for a cheeky kill against Droth (Shoal's master) with the ogre-slaying arrow from SS. Unfortunately, for some reason Shoal never started her second dialogue and eventually died to arrow fire.
So, we decided to go fight Kahrk, the level 12 ogre mage in the jar by the firewine bridge. Normally I would never take this fight, as there is no real reward and it is fairly dangerous, but I wanted a cheeky kill on an ogre mage and one of the candlekeep ogres didn't really seem like it would be satisfying.
Kivan managed to critical miss with the slaying arrow a moment before Kahrk fired a pfMW, so that maneuver didn't work on multiple levels.
Magic block + firebreath + 2 detonation arrows took him out though.
HOWEVER - we had our third near death experience when charname somehow joined the fight off screen and got hit by the first detonation arrow, bringing him down to 14/46. A single magic missile could have easily killed him. But an extra healing potion got him back up to 41/46 and he was able to get away.
The party will shortly fight the iron throne, and assuming fireball spam carries it to victory, will head off to candlekeep and then do its best to close out the end game.
The point at which PfMW (and similar spells) is assessed is when the attack is made, not when it takes effect. If the arrow had rolled as a hit it would have worked, even if PFMW had gone up in the interval between the shot being fired and it hitting.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154677/#Comment_1154677
I've been pretty busy this week, but not busy enough to stop my shaman from completing SoA
For the encounter with the Slayer I used Vhailor's Helm for the first time in case the Slayer displayed the sort of crazy regeneration the previous shaman run encountered. There were no glitches on show this time though and Irenicus duly departed in search of a nice big lava bath.
However, my recent problems with bugs have unfortunately continued. This time, as occasionally happens, Kangaxx didn't complete his transition to demi-lich form - making the Ring of Gaxx unobtainable. The loss of saving throw bonus, AC and regeneration will all be much missed and may well prove costly in ToB ...
Shaman 24, 98 HPs, kills 509 (+407 in BGEE/SoD)
Junte, Male dwarf wizard slayer (Gate70)
Duplo, Male human undead hunter (Grond0)
We take longer to roll our characters than to see our first party death - Xzar avoiding an arrow to cast a spell and Montaron breaking his sword on our unlucky undead hunter. After killing them both, 100gp at Beregost temple sees Junte welcome Duplo back into the land of the breathing.
This equipmentisation confused us both slightly, as Duplo also had a quarterstaff to go with his shield, and his long sword proficiency. All Junte had spare was a dagger so he handed that over for Duplo to ask what he was meant to do with that instead of a staff, and the answer of use it with your shield was a less than resounding response. So we hauled our level 1 butts towards Nashkel Mine and shot Greywolf down to gain his sword but not his services.
To the east we acted as a breakdown recovery team and each grabbed one of Samuel's legs before dragging him back to the Friendly Arm Inn.
Then we went west in search of a tome of leadership, stopping on the way to admire Caldo and Krumm actually doing what they have always threatened to do. As Junte attacked them Duplo wondered if the tree would have eventually succumbed to their blows and that's something these two will never know now.
Junte, Male dwarf wizard slayer (Gate70)
Duplo, Male human undead hunter (Grond0)
Junte and Duplo set about doing what they do best (Junte making many screenshots and Duplo killing anything that moves including himself).
Here we are as lumbering oafs, Duplo having played at target for a polar bear while Junte shot arrows from a safe distance.
We had a decision to make after this, whether to head for basilisk territory or hunt down sirenes. We opted for basilisks and Duplo had to ask Junte to use a green scroll of protection on him (one having limited intellect and the other allowed to use items despite their magical connotations).
(edit: Now I think about it I reckon Grond0 said he'd used a charge against Mutamin earlier)
A quick inspection of our gear proved Duplo had most of what he wanted (including Meilum's bracers) so we decided it was high time to visit Nashkel Mine and use another greenstone amulet charge. Mulahey the half-orc took a slicing blow, an arrow and a second slicing blow which left us facing his minions. Between a hefty quarterstaff (skeletons) and a pair of long swords (kobolds) the minions didn't last long.
(an added bonus was that the repeated passing of the buckler between us tested item-swapping in multiplayer to make sure it wasn't as laggy in v2.6 as in v2.5 and also less likely for items to vanish when passed - so far so good but still plenty of time to test it further)
So anyway. Duplo had 2hp and we travelled. By the time we are ambushed by bandits he has 13hp. Junte is feeling glad he packed Duplo's armour but wishing he'd found room for a helmet too. We run, and manage to escape. By the time our travel is complete we've spent enough hours for Duplo to fully heal and make the close-call look anything but.
Another emergency use of the greenstone amulet is used so we can kill Drasus' two casters and Duplo manly sets about Drasus and Genthore. After a couple of rounds he is forced to run just as Junte has switched from arrows to quarterstaff. Junte manages to stand his ground long enough for us to gain the victory.
We rest before entering Cloakwood mine, and it's a good job too as Junte takes the brunt of enemy attacks to start and then gets poisoned. He has antidotes and elixirs in his quick-slot but a touch of Duplo-icity is present and he elects to let the poison run it's course.
This works OK but Duplo reckons his armour class is better so he should tank the second battle horror. Junte reluctantly agrees and calls a time-out after two hits. Carry on says Duplo, highly unlikely another hit would be fatal. Uh ok (says Junte thinking last hit was 14+3, and 15hp remaining).
Equipment:
edit2: Bonus points for Grond0 if he can spot why enemies seem to be damaging him quite so badly. I've bolded a bit of the writeup so it may be a tad too easy to spot but if you want to work it out don't look at the below.
Easy enough - I did actually mention during the session that I'd lost a helmet as a result of dying at the Bandit Camp. Admittedly I could have replaced it after noticing that, but it seemed more appropriate to wait until we could loot a helm or two in the City
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154677/#Comment_115467
The early stages of ToB proved pretty easy, with invisibility allowing me to pick my fights, while Nature's Beauty was used a bit more frequently to confound enemies.
On arrival at the Fire Temple I decided I should try and clear the place to boost XP, but that proved harder than expected. The enemies tend to congregate in big groups and a number of them can see through invisible and have attacks that can disrupt spells even if they do no damage. Other than the useless Fire Storm, I didn't have much suitable to deal with enemies with lots of HPs from a distance, so progress was relatively slow. However, I was down to the last 2 or 3 enemies on the lower level when trouble struck - I was about to complete shooting down an erinyes when it charmed me.
Is it established that his rage is due to his injuries? I thought it was just a rashaman thing and that he was designed before barbarian existed as a class, so he still has some legacy weirdness associated with him.
I've actually never played a true barbarian, but I don't think that they have the "lose control" disability when they rage. I guess one could say that it's Minsc's injuries that reduce his control, but the design still feels a little too punitive to me.
Very interesting wrt the pfMW engine behavior!
---
An SCS Insane Trilogy Run of Weirdos [Human Monk; No F/T/M/C allowed]
Now with more BG2!
Run highlights below. Some thoughts on the BG1 party.
Faldorn
She was OK! She got her first level 5 druid spell shortly before the ducal palace. Insect plague was cast twice, once in the palace, and once in the temple of bhaal. It completely smashed the greater / kitted doppelgangers, causing about half to break morale and disabling the casters. It missed in the fight against Sarevok, but that was my fault as I tried to be sneaky and target a bat to get around Semaj's spell turning.
Purge invisibility is also good. Summon nymph is also good. A noticeably weaker character than Viccy, at least until level 4 or 5 spells are available late game.
Kivan
Kivan as a DPS archer is a crummier version of Coran, but he's still pretty good. I gave him bassilus's warhammer for the times when he needed to go melee. He wore plate, but sometimes swapped to studded leather for HiS. He missed his first dispel arrow against Sarevok (!), but the second connected.
Detonate arrows are OP, as always.
Garrick
Wands OP. Used web a few times early to mid game, but I don't think I cast it after chapter 4 as using wands was too often superior. Spent the game with a dispel memorized, planning on using his higher bard spell levels, and never used it. Enemy mages are still too high level.
His relatively low hp, middling AC and lack of a helmet made him fairly vulnerable, but it was manageable, particularly with mirror image for important fights.
Ajantis
Ran him as a tank with the dex gauntlets. It was fine. Lay on hands is an OK heal. PfE is a decent buff, although the party had other sources to cast it. He was -18 vs. slashing against Sarevok but still got hit half the time. Sarevok's effective thac0 is nutty. I originally wanted to cast improved invisible on him, but forgot about that plan and gave him a PfM globe at the start of the final fight. He spent about half the time of the final fight tanking. I think if he had gotten II he could have stood toe to toe with Big S, but he didn't, so he still had to spend a little time kiting.
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Run highlights:
Me, like an idiot, getting Garrick killed in the catacombs. Fortunately, the party had a cloud giant strength potion and did *not* miss the strength tome.
Things got a little spicy rescuing Eltan. Too many enemy casters with AoE damage and disables. This fight really needs silence. A cheesy ring swap protected Faldorn from hold and we eventually pulled it out.
I got more aggressive about using paralysis wands this run. Enemy mage saves are pretty good, but if you can sneak in a malison (of which SS has 20 scrolls), it's effective against casters without spell turning.
Faldorn finally getting work done. She is probably a stronger character if the player is completing more TotSC content (I just rob the first dungeon floor of Durlag's for the two dispel arrows and leave it at that).
Garrick triggering traps as a mustard jelly. This was my first BG1 run without a thief. It was annoying, but manageably so. The worst parts by far were the catacombs and Durlag's Tower. DT has repeating lightning and fireball traps, and it was pretty gross. The catacombs has a repeating lightning trap - although it turns out you can walk around it if you are very careful.
For single use traps, mustard jelly was immune to everything or nearly everything and was an effective late-game solution (using polymorph scrolls from SS). I don't know if a jelly can open containers, but it can definitely trigger floor traps.
Me forgetting about Tamoko *again* and having to fight her. Then bumping into a pack of a dozen skeletons and zombies (nothing a fireball potion couldn't solve, but still).
This shot shows probably the worst point in the final fight. Angelo was dead, but Faldorn's insects had missed Semaj, Diarmid and Tazok were still up, and Sarevok had drained most of Ajantis's extra healing potions. I had tried to malison / web Sarevok, but he kept rolling magic resistance. I think he may have additional protections until his supporters are killed (not sure if that is SCS content or not).
Fortunately, PC monk buffed with a storm giant strength potion had strong DPS with throwing daggers and then could swap to unarmed to kick the skeleton warriors to death with crushing damage. Semaj summoned an air elemental, but got a small one that didn't do much. Faldorn killed Semaj with a heaven wand plus a third firebreath potion (two having been used earlier to kill Angelo). Diarmid and Tazok fell to thrown daggers from PC and acid arrows from Kivan.
Ajantis had to do a little kiting vs. Sarevok, but after the four others were killed, Sarevok was stunned with a paralysis rod and the fight was over.
In many ways, a BG1 monk is just a BG1 swash without thieving abilities, and a BG1 swash in combat is in many ways just a crippled fighter with equipment, stat and proficiency penalties.
However, there are a few bright spots.
(i) A monk can use giant strength potions, and gets both warrior thac0 and bonus level 7/13 APR. So, a PC monk can combine relatively cheap/common giant strength potions with DUHM to give an enormous strength bonus to a relatively safe ranged attack with throwing daggers. Swash can't use giant strength potions, and don't have the warrior thac0 table or bonus APR (but do have swash bonus and specialization bonus).
Lvl. 9 Halfling Swash (110k xp): d4 [base] + 9 [21 str] + 2 [specialization] + 1 [swash] = 14.5 damage @ 15 [base] - 4 [23 dex] - 1 [specialization] -2 [bracers] - 1 [swash] = 7 thac0 w/ 2 APR
Lvl. 8 Human Monk (110k xp): d4 [base] + 12 [24 str] = 14.5 @ 13 [base] - 4 [21 dex] - 2 [bracers] = 7 thac0 w 5/2 APR
So the monk gets an extra 1/2 APR with roughly equal damage and thac0.
(ii) Monks move quickly without haste, and can wear RoFA without penalty.
Unfortunately, they are terrible tanks and can't really wade into a web and start swinging.
(iii) Throwing daggers are pretty good. Provided the monk has at least 19 strength, he doesn't do *that* much less damage than an archer. Unfortunately however, there are no magical much less elemental throwing daggers in BG1.
(iv) Fists do crushing damage.
---
The issues are numerous:
(i) Can't wear a helmet! Being hit by critz iz bad.
(ii) Max constitution bonus to hp is +2. Base hp is d8. A level 8 monk (110k) will end the game with about 55 hp. This is not good, and combined with (i), makes it almost impossible for the monk to engage in melee safely. Even the smallest scrapes put the monk in range of an instakill on enemy crit. This makes it very difficult to get any use out of stunning fists.
(iii) Melee DPS isn't good vs. a fighter. Fists hit as normal weapons until BG2 and do not deal elemental damage. Using a weapon gives up the unarmed APR bonus and compares even more poorly vs. a fighter.
(iv) Very little use of thief abilities. Can't disarm traps/locks or backstab or detect illusion.
(v) Poor AC vs. a fighter
(vi) +2 saving throw bonus is outshone by shorty saves (monk must be human).
(vii) Haste/slow immunity is generally a net loss.
(viii) Can't wear a helmet! Unlike mages and thieves, to my knowledge there is no way for a monk to gain critical hit immunity throughout the entire saga. It's gonna be rough.
---
Anyway, I am still enjoying the monk kit because it is so unique. Hopefully the tradeoffs will look a lot better by the end of SoA.
@Jabberwock Well done against Sarevok.
Journal of Bryant Brighteyes
We did enough killing of minor enemies for Neera to go up a level and for us to have enough gold to buy her an archmage robe.
We then killed Meilum before going in search of Amoy. That resulted in him giving Neera a belt.
We returned to Baldur's Gate where killing a mage provided Neera with a ring of wizardry.
We decided it was time to investigate the Iron Throne and having done so realise that we will have to return to Candlekeep.
Before doing so, we thought it best to honour our agreement to help Shandalar as it appeared urgent.
It was a profitable venture and Neera is on the point of levelling up. The kiss that she gave me indicates that she is rather fond of me. Let's see what develops. Perhaps it was the cold on ice island that made her reluctant to shed clothes. Everyone but Neera has reached the level cap.
Previous updates:
BG1 End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154817/#Comment_1154817
SoD Start&End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154915/#Comment_1154915
SoA Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155140/#Comment_1155140
On to the Druid Grove - mostly in order to get Cadrax the Dwarven Thrower +3. With Death Spell, I felt ready to take on any number of trolls - though it turns out that the current version of SCS spirit trolls on tactical are a) not affected by Death Spell and b) use their flame strikes and greater commands in rather unpredictable ways. Still, there aren't that many of those. After dealing with the shadow druid groups, clearing the troll mound was no trouble:
Next up, I made my way to the Umar Hills. Being an Undead Hunter with Azuredge made getting to the Shade Lord relatively simple:
Only Prat and the phase spiders caused problems at Candlekeep.
Prat disappeared and we couldn't find him. We went for a rest and uppon returning he was there and somehow managed to avoid our webs. He sent two lightning bolts before his death which meant resting again. It was as well that we did as a couple of spiders attacked weaker party members and poisoned them.
The basilisks were no problem as I used a potion of mirrored eyes and fought them seingle handed.
W e then decided to at least visit Durlag's Tower as Neera is still some way off reaching level 9.
The upper floors were cleared first.
Then we got as far as the warders. We killed them, but they killed Hal and Neera.
We raised them at Beregost and both the party and I myself are now resting. Zzzzzzzzzz
EDIT
Upon returning to Baldur's Gate, Firestorm went to rescue Duke Eltan. The plan was for him to kill Rashad but since Firestorm was losing the battle, he lured Rashad away from the duke and hid as soon as he was out of sight. He then returned to the party carrying the duke over his shoulder.
We took the duke to the harbour master and went to tell Shaella about the book of unknowing however I am confused. I was told that I had found it though I have no recllection of the fact.
We then went to the Iron Throne and killed Cynthandria and her pet ogres before going to kill Slythe and Kirstin.
The battle at the Ducal palace went well but the game crashed just after Sarevok left. It went even better the second time round as I was fully healed when we left the palace.
EDIT
The wand of monster summoning now only had three charges left and we only had about 600 gold pieces so we earned some money killing ankhegs, rechargeg the wand, and will now go after Sarevok.
Neera is now level 9 and has now reached the level cap. Lily has some items that we would like. Perhaps as we follow Sarevok we will find items that will enable us to buy them. We have already sold our non-magical jewellery and weapons that are +1 or less in order to recharge as many items as we could.
Previous updates:
BG1 End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154817/#Comment_1154817
SoD Start&End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154915/#Comment_1154915
SoA Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155140/#Comment_1155140
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155258/#Comment_1155258
In the Windspear Hills, after quickly taking down the Rukh Transmuter, I planned on having Dassareth deal with the vampires and other undead by herself, using Azuredge and Improved Haste. However, some of her foes slipped through the door she was attempting to close off, so the others had to defend themselves, using some quick nukes in order to minimize any level drain effects - though some minor restorations where needed:
Next up, the party prepared to face Bodhi. Her most dangerous servant at this point, Tanova, immediately fell to the Azuredge effect:
So next time, we are going to see the three remaining potential Strongholds.
Firestorm lured Sarevok to the left hand side of the room before using a potion of invisibility which took Sarevok out of the battle.
Neera cast web and cloudkill which badly hurt Semaj but was not quite sufficient to kill him. Another web and another cloudkill was.
She then used her wand of monster summoning which lured Tazok and Angelo. Hal used true sight which enabled the party to target Tazok.
Angelo used his arrows of detonation which hurt himself and Tazok as well as the summoned monsters.
Neera summoned more monsters to replace the slain. I think that one of Angelo's arrows actually killed Tazok though Tazok was already near death. Ogres killed Angelo.
We then buffed ourselves to fight Sarevok and summoned more monsters. Firestorm used arrows of dispelling. Once more an ogre landed the killing blow, whilst Hal supplied essential healing and Neera used the wand of monster summoning to replace the monsters that Sarrevok killed.
Previous updates:
BG1 End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154817/#Comment_1154817
SoD Start&End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1154915/#Comment_1154915
SoA Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155140/#Comment_1155140
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155258/#Comment_1155258
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155438/#Comment_1155438
Dassareth makes her way to the Planar Sphere and takes down the halflings. Galderan adds Entropy Shield to his pre-buffs against spellcasters, so we now have 3 party members protected against dispels, and one with undispellable protections (berserker rage). Dassareth has a ton of item-based immunities and great saving throws, and she is usually also protected with chaotic commands and death ward. Khelbara remains our most vulnerable party member against spellcasters.
Next up, the Unseeing Eye. This one is a bit more tricky, because we have to face Beholders for the first time. In preparation, I've decided to buy a fully-charged cloudkill wand, so the first group is mostly dealt with by throwing down cloudkills while staying out of sight: