Losing all your equipment in Spellhold turned out to be a fun, but challenging experience. I adjusted my spellbook, taking out some self-buffs for more summoning spells. There are no good weapons in the Asylum, considering my proficiency points, the exception being Flame of the North for Dassareth. A lot of the heavy lifting was done by skeleton warriors and magical swords:
With no armor to speak off, anyone not protected by magic defenses could easily take tons of damage once even revealed to an enemy. I had to play carefully, keeping vulnerable party members at the back. Traps were used for the magical tome on the second level, and I had to turn to Enchant Weapon + Improved Haste to kill the Undead on the second level, as I had no good summons left at this point. The fight with Dace ended up being decently close:
Enchant Weapon is really invaluable here with a party as focused on physical damage as this one. Rowin's tanking, enchanted blunt weapons and aerial servants also were my only way to deal with the Clay Golems on the next level. My various combat buffs were once again quite important, because without any gear, the thac0 boosts are really helpful.
Jon himself turned out to be one of the easier fights around here, as I was able to rush him and burst him down before he was able to adequately protect himself:
That was fun! We got our gear back and killed everything in the City of Caverns. Now, it's time for the Underdark. I think I'm going to use the "get your gear stolen" option again - certainly not suitable for every type of party (or solo play), but with a well-balanced group, an interesting addition.
An SCS Insane Trilogy Run of Weirdos [Human Monk; No F/T/M/C allowed]
The party is now in the underdark. We narrowly survived a crisis in Bodhi's dungeon, which generated several *extremely* spicy fights which I'll get into below.
Prior to that, most of the chapter 2/3 stuff was pretty standard fare. Tanova gave the party a little bit of trouble, summoning a Glabrezu and just generally being troublesome after Haer'dalis's single breach proved insufficient to deal with her ability to recast her combat buffs. Eventually, she ran out of weapon protections and missed a save against azure edge. In hindsight, Haer'dalis could have burned a few secret word/breach scrolls and saved some heartburn.
We finally got spell turning on the infinite spellbook, after several runs in a row of failure.
Then came Bodhi's dungeon. The ruhk fight went more smoothly than usual - he actually failed a save vs. a "hold monster" spell cast by a nymph. Which surprised me as I figured he would be immune to level 5 spells, but maybe he doesn't have full rakshasa immunities. The pit fiend was overmatched by ranged attackers with enchant weapon + two fire elementals, one of which rolled a piping hot 46 damage crit, followed up by a 36 damage crit from the other to end the fight.
But we still hadn't dealt with the real challenge, which was the fight with the hated spellhold lich on the second floor. Our first task was to lure away his companion party of greater mummies, bone golems and skeleton warriors. The plan was to clump them up in the adjacent hallway, clog the path with fire elementals and our own skeletons, and then kill the undead foes safely with enchanted ranged attacks. It was a decent plan, but nevertheless disaster struck quickly.
First, Haer'dalis used up his stack of MMMs while I wasn't paying attention, and then charged a greater mummy unarmed and got himself diseased. The greater mummy disease is ferocious, and does 20-30 damage a round for 5-6 rounds.
But, the party had 2 potions of extra healing, and Cernd had several healing spells, so I thought H might at least have a change of surviving. Except, while I was moving H to safety, I didn't notice that Cernd had ALSO charged a greater mummy, resulting in him ALSO getting himself diseased.
Normally, I think he would be able to shapechange to GWW and survive with its 12hp / round regen, except the current implementation of the SCS "remove party items in spellhold" module takes away Cernd's shapechange token and he doesn't get it back until after defeating Jon.
Long story short, both Haerdalis and Cernd die, leaving the party with no way to revive them until after beating Jon. The party now has just PC monk, Minsc, Valygar and Keldorn - all with next to no equipment - to get there. And we still hadn't even fought the lich!
Well this wasn't a good situation at all, but I thought if I played very slowly and carefully we might still have a chance. The first thing we did was get to work on draining the lich's spellbook. We had a fire elemental and two skeleton warriors (one near death) from back when H & C were alive. I didn't dare rest as I didn't want to lose the few summons we had. Not that resting would have done much, as no one can cast anything that matters.
Fortunately, we generated a lich that did not have any demon summons, and also fortunately he was not aggressive about chasing the party. Less fortunately, our summons were quickly killed by death spells and did not accomplish much. More fortunately, Valygar managed to dodge what I think was an ADHW, which for some reason didn't track him when he left LoS. A FoD did track him, but he made his save vs. spell (rolling 16 vs. 10).
I then decided to take spell hits with Keldorn, who had an invulnerability potion active and much better saves. We also got a bit of luck from some engine cheese that is apparently still in the game. While SCS prevents 0 damage elemental attacks from spells from interrupting casters, it turns out that it doesn't stop 0 damage elemental attacks from weapons. So if an enemy mage has pfMW active, that disparity won't help you, but if the mage is down to stoneskins then you can still interrupt them (although maybe shouldn't).
Anyway, desperate times call for desperate measures, and Keldorn was able to time electrical bolts to interrupt several ADHW and a few other spells, while running away any time the lich cast a weapon protection. Eventually, Minsc and Valygar joined with Piercing and +2 arrows respectively, and we were able to rapidly shoot through stone skins and kill the lich.
Then we had to deal with the vampire Dace, who it turns out is immune to +2 weapons and below. That meant the only weapons that we could hurt him with were the +3 spear from the first map and the +3 quarterstaff from the second map (PC monk still has +2 fists, ugh). We also had to have some way to deal with his level drain and dire charm ability.
The settled on solution was to use Minsc's horrible, no good rage ability, which provides immunity to both charm and level drain but of course makes him uncontrollable and unhealable. We would need to act quickly to kill the vampire and hope for the best.
The fight started off on the wrong foot. Minsc raged prior to entering LoS to protect against charm. The first thing Dace did was hide, which caused an uncontrollable Minsc to retarget on PC and begin attacking him.
I thought we might be doomed at this point, but because Dace stayed hidden throughout the rest of the round, and Minsc couldn't see any other enemies, Minsc returned to control and we were able to recover the situation. I gave Keldorn the +3 quarterstaff, reasoning that he had the best saves, and Minsc was using the +3 spear. Despite both warriors lacking proficiency, they got in some good hits and started working their way through Dace's hp.
Then Dace got a dire charm on Valygar, which caused the ranger to start shooting Minsc in the back.
My first thought was that PC could get close to Valygar and maybe pull his aggro. That didn't work. My second thought was maybe PC could hit Valygar with a stunning dart, and at least take him out of the fight until dire charm wore off. That might have worked, except Minsc killed Dace, and then switched to the next visible enemy, which was... Valygar.
And now, even if I could stun Valygar, I had no way to stun Minsc due to his rage, and Valygar would be dead well before the dire charm wore off.
Then I remembered that Keldorn had dispel magic from his Inquisitor kit. Except... he had gotten hit by Dace and was level drained down to level 9. First dispel, no effect. Second dispel, no effect.
Finally, the third and final dispel cleared the charm, and Minsc shortly thereafter returned to player control. Yikes.
The party then spent 10 minutes healing from the regen ring before resting and heading to the third floor.
The third floor, if one plays as cowardly as possible, turns out to have very little necessary combat. We skipped the entire north side of the map with the paintings, mithril coin machine, and clay golem vault. The paintings are guarded by a yuanti mage, and there was no way to safely kill him, not least because yuanti mages can cast flesh to stone. We also had no way to retrieve the paintings safely, not least because one of them has a disintegration trap. Fighting clay golems with their no-heal curse was right out.
Avoiding the north side of the map meant that the party would miss out on the cheetah boots and Gesen bow. But it also meant there were only a handful of easily dispatchable minotaurs between us and the exit. We met Bodhi, and got the slayer scene. But, either SCS or Ascension no longer allows you to get slayer form in Spellhold, so we wouldn't have it for the fight with Jon.
Once back in Spellhold proper, we grabbed the five dispel arrows and prepared for the battle. There wasn't much preparation to do, as we didn't have any casters, but Keldorn was at least able to cast protection from evil on everybody. It was critical that Keldorn survive the fight with Jon so that he could use true sight on the murderers, or we would almost certainly be killed by backstabs. We headed upstairs and told Lonk to free the prisoners and the fight began.
One silver lining of our own casters being dead was that Jon's clones wouldn't be able to cast any useful spells either. Jon opened the fight by protecting himself with an improved mantle and then contingency summoning two djinni. There wasn't much we could do against any of them, so we started focusing on the clones. PC monk got a sweet quivering palm kill against clone Minsc.
Unfortunately, clone monk turned out to be more dangerous than I was expecting, due to his fast, high damage auto-attacks and rapid movement speed. He was able to kill Minsc, and a djinni stinking cloud disabled Keldorn. As a bit of luck in the other direction, Jon wasted his time stop with an extra healing potion and a shadow door. I have seen him time stop cast planetar and Dragon Breath in other runs, so this was a very good outcome.
In addition, Valygar was able to take advantage of a gap in Jon's weapon protections after the time stop and hit him with a dispel arrow. But, Jon immediately put on another improved mantle and we once against couldn't do anything to hurt him.
Then, Wanev finished eating his spinach and cast a time stop + ADHW combo that took down the remaining clones, including the clone monk that was causing so much trouble. The ADHW did not, however, hit Jon, and I once again thought the fight might be lost, as Jon was casting a second time stop and we had no way to interrupt him through his improved mantle.
Then I realized that Wanev's time stop probably stripped Jon's mantle, and even a normal dagger thrown in time would interrupt Jon's cast. Which it did!
His next cast was PfMW, which did not help him much, and we quickly shot him down with arrows, bolts and daggers. Overall we got very lucky with Jon's casts, which were mostly defensive, I think perhaps because we got off an early dispel arrow after he wasted his initial time stop.
Keldorn survived the fight with 9 hp, and true seeing + kiting allowed PC monk to shoot down the murderers while Valygar ran around trying not to get stabbed to death.
When the room was again quiet, we walked upstairs to speak with Saemon...
I then decided to take spell hits with Keldorn, who had an invulnerability potion active and much better saves. We also got a bit of luck from some engine cheese that is apparently still in the game. While SCS prevents 0 damage elemental attacks from spells from interrupting casters, it turns out that it doesn't stop 0 damage elemental attacks from weapons. So if an enemy mage has pfMW active, that disparity won't help you, but if the mage is down to stoneskins then you can still interrupt them (although maybe shouldn't).
Sounds like you've been having some exciting times @Jabberwock.
I seem to remember that the interruption by weapon damage, even of 0, has been explained by DavidW as a deliberate design decision - based on the fact it's difficult to concentrate when elemental hits are exploding in your face, even if they don't actually damage you.
Normally, I think he would be able to shapechange to GWW and survive with its 12hp / round regen, except the current implementation of the SCS "remove party items in spellhold" module takes away Cernd's shapechange token and he doesn't get it back until after defeating Jon.
A workaround: you can get a new token by dismissing Cernd from your party and then having him immediately rejoin. It won't help with HLA tokens, but it does get werewolf shifting back. The all-werewolf party still works in v33, as long as the Shapeshifter supplying the tokens isn't the protagonist.
But ... it wouldn't actually help you. The mummy weapon inflicts 13 instances of disease with 1/round poison damage each (5-round duration). The haste on the token would double that damage, for a net of 14 HP lost per round instead of the original 13. What you really needed from him was some instances of Cure Disease or Neutralize Poison memorized - they're fast-casting, and easy to get in between the ticks. That, or reaching level 15 for permanent poison immunity.
I then decided to take spell hits with Keldorn, who had an invulnerability potion active and much better saves. We also got a bit of luck from some engine cheese that is apparently still in the game. While SCS prevents 0 damage elemental attacks from spells from interrupting casters, it turns out that it doesn't stop 0 damage elemental attacks from weapons. So if an enemy mage has pfMW active, that disparity won't help you, but if the mage is down to stoneskins then you can still interrupt them (although maybe shouldn't).
Sounds like you've been having some exciting times @Jabberwock.
I seem to remember that the interruption by weapon damage, even of 0, has been explained by DavidW as a deliberate design decision - based on the fact it's difficult to concentrate when elemental hits are exploding in your face, even if they don't actually damage you.
Ah interesting. I guess I'm suspicious that argument is a post-hoc justification for something that turned out to be difficult to implement in the engine, but at least there is a narrative .
Normally, I think he would be able to shapechange to GWW and survive with its 12hp / round regen, except the current implementation of the SCS "remove party items in spellhold" module takes away Cernd's shapechange token and he doesn't get it back until after defeating Jon.
A workaround: you can get a new token by dismissing Cernd from your party and then having him immediately rejoin. It won't help with HLA tokens, but it does get werewolf shifting back. The all-werewolf party still works in v33, as long as the Shapeshifter supplying the tokens isn't the protagonist.
But ... it wouldn't actually help you. The mummy weapon inflicts 13 instances of disease with 1/round poison damage each (5-round duration). The haste on the token would double that damage, for a net of 14 HP lost per round instead of the original 13. What you really needed from him was some instances of Cure Disease or Neutralize Poison memorized - they're fast-casting, and easy to get in between the ticks. That, or reaching level 15 for permanent poison immunity.
Ahhhhh, I should have thought of that. I thought maybe level up would fix it - later testing showed that it didn't (and anyway Cernd was at ~1.35mm exp and not really that close to a levelup). I didn't think of trying a rejoin.
Interesting note on the exact disease mechanic. I think it must stack then and each of them got hit twice so I was taking 26 per round. During the run, I had thought that maybe the disease had a special schedule that caused it to trigger more times a round either randomly or in the back half of its triggers. But I think in hindsight they were probably just double diseased.
5 * 13 = 65 they could have withstood with an extra healing potion (at least Cernd, who started with most of his hps). But 2 * 65 = 130 they could not.
I did very much regret not having cure disease memorized on any of the two rangers or the druid, but of course in normal times the party carries a few health elixirs, which do clear disease as well as poison...
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 215, Core rules + unmodded (part 1 2) Junte, Male dwarf wizard slayer (Gate70)
Duplo, Male human undead hunter (Grond0)
Junte wastes no time shoving his undead hunter into the sewers to face an ogre mage and carrion crawlers. He even manages to shoot down a crawler on the run and return to help dispose of the last two crawlers.
It's a good start, so we get ourselves poisoned before Duplo says the wrong thing and fails to find out who can cure Lothander of his geas. We try waiting 8 hours but it proves to be a full day before we discover Jalantha Mistmyr is the person we should seek out.
Junte makes sure to follow the clues and not metagame Jalantha's quest (a distant memory suggests 2.6 is a bit stricter in this regard) so we pick up a tome and recover a body before killing her. On our way back Junte realises we don't have a potion of mirror eyes to help deal with a basilisk so we pick one up and cross that job off our list after stunning it with a dart. Lothander escapes before we can pause or hit him with a dart (he was the reason why we bought some). Then we play ennui with Desreta and Vay-ya - testing another dart of stunning on the former.
Larze the ogre is another stunning victim.
Degrodel is also stunned after we carve through his guardians - Junte taking first melee position and Duplo picking up once Junte has been suitably mauled.
We make our way to the Iron Throne HQ where Junte hands several potions to Duplo and uses a scroll of protection from magic on himself. While the encounter was still somewhat bruising we're never in danger of being defeated.
Reporting back to Duke Eltan has us sent to find the Iron Throne leaders at Candlekeep. We fail to find them but are falsely arrested for their murders. Tethtoril knows we are innocent and frees us, so we make the best of a bad job by looting the catacombs and crypts below. More darts of stunning are used against spiders.
Prat saves against the darts though so we have to kill him the traditional way, and as Duplo melees the two greater basilisks Junte uses yet more darts to stun at least one of them.
It is time to clear the upper floors of Durlag's Tower - Junte realising to his chagrin that we only have one potion of mirror eyes left. Duplo's eyes light up at this news, he's clearly been affected by the one-turn basilisk madness of recent runs and gulps a few other potions to help his cause and then gulps the mirror eyed potion and starts his basilisk run. Junte guesstimates that 1 basilisk and three greater basilisks lasted about 40-45 seconds so that may be a new record for us.
Having consumed the last of our mirror eye potions against these monsters it's not good news when another one ambushes us (not that Junte could gulp a potion anyway).
We play a quick game of Duplo suggesting that Junte use his boots of speed before he insists he has passed them to Junte and we can each clearly see the boots in the other's inventory. Never mind, we manage to run away anyway and on arrival at our destination Duplo has the boots and re-equips them.
We head off to the Coronation, making sure Tamoko and her lovely armour will be waiting for us later. Slythe gets two arrows of dispelling (volley with one from each of us) and falls easily.
At the Coronation Junte hands a few more potions (strength, power) to Duplo and aims arrows of dispelling at the emerging greater doppelgangers. Duplo, and Belt, do a sterling job against the debuffed doppelgangers and this leaves us free to sell a final set of loot and head into the Thieves Maze.
A brief conversation ensues here as Junte appears to have purchased three unwanted antidotes from Black Lily and doesn't have the three oils of speed he was going to overpay for Duplo. Duplo confirms he was also in the store and must have purchased the oils of speed first so Junte purchased without realising his selected items moved on one store slot for an unintentional purchase.
Anyway, back to the maze where Duplo uses his buffs and boots to slice through enemies before Junte can help too much. We set off at least one lightning trap (Junte's magic resistance works) and one fireball trap (Duplo's ring of fire protection helps) but are safely through, and avoid Rahvins gang by travelling north of them.
We kill Tamoko and Junte eases into her full plate +1 armour. Nice, and as good as a wizard slayer can hope for.
Semaj decides to help Sarevok and is dispelled twice before dying. Junte has given Duplo a potion of genius so he too can use a protection from magic so Semaj was never any danger to us.
This leaves Sarevok alone to face us - and Duplo is keen to melee. Junte eventually gets the hint and we surround Sarevok (Junte makes a crude comment about our two large spheres being part of Sarevok's ego or similar) but then Duplo is forced to run so Junte changes back to arrows a round or two later and Sarevok falls to possibly the first shot.
SoD
After a very brief interlude Junte reforms his party - deciding the tagalong gang of Edwin, Viconia, Safana and Dorn can guard the Safehouse entrance.
Starting equipment (Duplo has remembered to hang onto potions but Junte has lost his containered potions and scrolls) :
I had a short-lived BG run with a solo Psionicist monk until Venkt landed an Icelance spell and stunned us. I thought all we had to worry about was level 2 spells, and the Potion of Magic Blocking ran out before the One Gift Lost and a Detonation spell could finish off Venkt. Otherwise the fight was won.
The Psionicist kit is fun. It's not too different from a conventional monk; it's just weaker in combat and has some spells based on BG2 psionic abilities (Mind Blast, Ego Whip, Ballistic Attack, Detonate, Psionic Blast, Psionic Domination, Cure Serious Wounds, Planar Travel, Psionic Maze, and some mage-y HLAs).
I'm not sure how much time I'll spend on BG in the future. Mostly I'm interesting in BG2, but after so many saga runs, it feels weird to do a BG run that doesn't start at Candlekeep, and I'm not sure I'd enjoy using exploits (like using the Reform Party trick to spam Totemic Druid summons or blind Bounty Hunter traps) to speed through BG1 and SoD.
Baeloth and M'Khinn are now available as allies. I dropped Minsc and Dynaheir off at the camp.
We then went in search of missing people and items and managed to kill Teleria before she managed to cast a petrification spell. The golum however was more of a problem.
We then came across Skie and managed to persuade her to be more responsible. Killing a nearby vampire proved to be straightforward but on the way back a cave full of trolls was less so. Hal had forgotten stoneskin and so was badly hurt. However we escaped, rested and returned this time with more success.
We returned the missing items, keeping the shield as part of the reward.
We then helped Cromnus and when we entered the barrow where his treasure is kept we saved Semahl.
Trio 29, Core rules, unmodded (Part 1234 in BG:EE and 5678 9 in BGII:EE)
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Recap...
We'd previously made our way back from the Planar Prison, and only have 5 spare inventory slots between us so the merchant outside will be most pleased to see us. Then, according to ye olde worlde mappe the only place unvisited looks to be Windspear Hills. The journal of unforgetfulness suggests he can add the Unseeing Eye quest and that appears to be everything apart from completing jobs for Aran Linvail to reach for Spellhold. Other than that the Twisted Rune and Guarded Compound spring to mind as all that is left to interfere with.
Loury is offhanding the Kundane shortsword for +1 APR (suggested by Swish) and looks to be fully geared up
Swish is also looking remarkably well-attired, offhanding Belm for +1 APR
Corecleric may not have bonus APR but is using the Flail of Ages +3, or the Sling of Everard +5 from range.
Loury intends to make an impressive start today before the inevitable slide into mediocrity. His plan is to head for Windspear Hills and should that pan out he'll have a key to use in the sewers on the way to the Unseeing Eye.
We start. Loury promptly realises we haven't looted the top of the graveyard nor have we found an orphan child for the paladin or started the graveyard kidnap victim quests when Corecleric notices the locked door in the bridge district. So we do that first and drop reputation to 18 by obtaining the silver pantaloons, and then we move on to Windspear Hills.
Our stroll through there is briefly interrupted as Loury gets confused. Swish tries to help but is battered away and almost dead, and Corecleric steps in once his summoning spell completes. Loury survives.
A bit further on Corecleric blunders into a trap, and is berated by Swish who says it is his job to blunder through traps. Corecleric is nonplussed as his boots of grounding are working nicely against the lightning trap and he also saves vs spell.
We kill a few wolfweres and golems before Swish makes good his word and blunders into the next trap. He feels much better for it.
Conster puts up a good fight, and successfully works out which of the three of us doesn't have Death Ward but Swish saves against the spell and our melee attacks wear his patience thin and his stoneskins thinner. Down he goes.
Firkraag gets a good going-over, with Loury making a determined stand and failing to retreat. If Firkraag could have held out another round he might have forced Loury to flee but his luck was out.
We sell much loot at Watchers Keep and return to the city. In the Temple district sewers we duly open up the mind flayer lair and Loury uses all 6 of his intelligence to alternate between caution and foolhardiness. We clear a few rooms but then Corecleric takes two brain-drains in succession and down he goes.
Loury may well have had at least one mind focusing potion in his bag and felt a bit bad as Corecleric had said he liked to have them to hand. We defeated the remaining enemies with missiles and used a rod of resurrection charge on Corecleric (2 used, 8 left).
Corecleric then tried a Firestorm against the Alhoon and remaining flayers but once more they had stayed out of range until Loury ventured into the storm and drew then nearer. They just caught the tail of the storm so we had to put them out of their misery.
On then, to the Unseeing Eye. Corecleric demonstrated his eye-popping undead turn capability on the way.
Our plan, such as it was, involved Loury using the Shield of Balduran against the many beholders and gauth. With hindsight there was a clear flaw in our thinking, that being our expectation that Swish would stay out of the way but no he kept sneaking in and trying to help - getting targeted a few times for his pains.
Corecleric meanwhile had occupied himself with fighting the blind clerics. Loury completed his sweep for eyestalkers and returned so we could focus together on the Unseeing Eye. That didn't last very long and we reported in for our reward.
Then we went to forge the red dragon scale armour, getting ambushed by Parisa on the way there and ambushed a second time by Tanova once forging was complete. Corecleric observed how easy it was for us to deal with vampires as he cast a lesser restoration on the snacked-upon Swish.
We still had a bit of time left in the session so grabbed a bunch of stakes from Aran Linvail and set about the vampire lair. Nothing was a problem upstairs, and the same was true downstairs. Loury killed Lassal and we were all set to pick on Bodhi.
So we thought.
Loury ran into Tanova (who had run away scared earlier and left her simmie to die). She had recovered and was busy being pummelled when she mazed Loury. His amazing intelligence of 6 gave Swish and Corecleric plenty of time to amble across and kill her and amble back while Loury remained mazed. He eventually returned and we ended the session there - a few minutes past our alloted end-time.
Party equipment:
We'll probably upgrade the Mace of Disruption next time, Swish is only a couple of levels off High Level Abilities now so won't be long before we all have options to avoid level-drain.
In the Underdark, the first significant challenge we had to face was our first Bhalor - quite deadly with SCS, as they have vorpal attacks in melee, and can use dangerous spells such as firestorm and defenses such as stoneskin at will - so I had to kite him, while doing enough damage at range to actually get through his frequently-renewed stoneskins while avoiding death by firestorm. This gets significantly easier with HLAs, which I didn't quite have yet, but I barely pulled it off:
However, I did get my first HLA right after that - Dassareth's Summon Deva. It, some traps and our high level skald song immunties (undispellable immunity to fear, stun and confusion - so good) were put to great use against the Demon Knight ambush:
For the Beholder Lair, I buffed fully, including protection from petrification - though only Khelbara ended up getting her buffs dispelled:
Further into the lair, I at first relied on skeleton warriors and my deva:
After the Hive Mother got rid of my summons, I instead went for some invisible cloudkill-kiting:
At the Illithid City, I mostly buffed up my melees with improved haste and chaotic commands, letting them handle the fighting - though I had to use quite a few healing potions here while rushing through the complex:
In Ust'Natha, I completed the first couple of quests (using quite a few traps) while also winning some arena battles:
I also had to face Deirex - essentially my first real lich battle in an enclosed space, forcing me to get rid of his buffs. Rowin used his new spell strike (might have been a spell trigger loaded with anti-magic stuff instead, I can't remember), while my skald cast a breach spell off her own, giving Cadrax the opportunity to disrupt the lich (likely his time stop attempt), which resulted in his downfall:
Not much trouble in the remaining Underdark - we have a few fighter HLAs and UAI at our disposal now, so our skald and cleric/thief have greatly improved defenses, while our fighters can dish out tons of damage, so battles mostly based on physical damage shouldn't be a problem until we get to ToB. Next time, we will go back for some unfished business in and around Athkatla, such as liches, dragons, mind flayers, the guarded compound and the twisted rune - also, WK level 1+2.
As we carried on, we have found two amulets of the Keeper of Secrets under the mountain.
Now after going down a level we fought and killed a bronze sentry, but it killed Safana costing us 800 gp to raise her.
Gradually we worked our way inside but the undead were strong and we repeatedly went to the surface to rest.
While we were doing this, Hal reached level 9 which means that he can now raise the dead. Death is now not a major problem.
Returning back to Athkatla, we forged new weapons and killed some liches via traps. The city gates lich had a really strange combination of pre-buffs, which did, for some reason, NOT include any kind of protection against physical damage:
Or maybe there simply wasn't time for him to trigger all of the prebuffs he was going to have.
One guy who did have all the buffs he would need was the alhoon in the sewers - I hit him with a sequencer and a spell trigger, spellstrike and multiple breaches, forcing him to spend all of his time on renewing his buffs instead of doing anything dangerous:
Kangaxx was killed in the manner I always use for his SCS version - kill his lich form with traps, and his demi-lich form with two quick sunrays:
I don't have any screenshots from the dragon battles - nothing of note happened here, the dragons don't seem to get their SCS HP boost on tactical setting, so they died within seconds. The Guarded Compound was slightly worrying - Sion was the first spellcaster I encountered capable of completing a time stop spell against my party (though, to be fair, this is on me - I decided to get rid of his allies first instead focusing on him). Luckily, he doesn't seem to get HLA's on the tactical setting, and he instead mostly improved his defenses and tried to get us with a Horrid Wilting - which didn't work, as I was able to give the Belt of Inertial Barrier to the affected party member and move them away from the others before the spell hit.
The Twisted Rune turned out the way I expected it to go: The lich died to traps, Rowin's triple ADHW CC helped in aggressively taking down the others with the enemy mage sadly out of range - this mage managed to get rid of any of our unprotected buffs, but we still had the enhanced bard song going, so plenty of immunities to go around, and we used a sequencer + spellstrike + true sight + breach combo to take down her buffs (though not before she summoned three efreeti via chain contingency, a move that seems to be a bit more common with this SCS version).
The most difficult fight we actually faced this time around was against the Statues at WKI. Bad work at focusing the right targets, general confusion and poor planning and understimating our foes resulted in us getting hit by, among other things, a greater malison + chaos combo (classic! Cadrax got affected, which is a double failure on my part - he should've had a) his rage up and b) the enhanced bard song immunities), a time stop, a bunch of area of effect spells (including ADHW) and a Sphere of Chaos (which, I believe, turned Sentenza into a squirrel, almost resulting in her death) - we did end up winning in the end, but it was far too close and propably our worst fight since the Iron Throne Party in BG1:
WKII was much easier for us, greatly helped by always getting the correct imunities, types of elemental damage and some silver sword vorpal hits:
For the chromatic demon, I had a surprise prepared: Galderan's thief levels still allowed him to set up traps with extra fire damage, so.... we waited for him to turn into an ice golem:
Next time, we will face Bodhi again and move on to the elven city.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 215, Core rules + unmodded (part 12 3) Junte, Male dwarf wizard slayer (Gate70)
Duplo, Male human undead hunter (Grond0)
Junte and Duplo made their way out of the Safehouse with their pride intact - having an undead hunter around certainly made a difference here and Junte made certain to ask Duplo to eliminate the shadowed soul before anything else once we entered the second level.
After a rest at the Ducal Palace we noticed our reputation had reset to 8 so used about 5000gp repairing church roofs to give ourselves some headroom to avoid any nasty paladin-falling scenarios. Better safe than sorry.
After setting off for Dragonspear our first waypoint is Coastways Crossing. Junte gave Duplo a potion of mirror eyes as we investigated a group of too-lifelike statues. Duplo stared at the potion and asked what he'd need that for to which Junte pointed at Teleria with her spellbook open. Duplo shrugged and shot her down from a distance which meant no potion required and no hostile golem (which we killed anyway).
We tried hiding around the back of a tent after the bridge was destroyed, but Duplo had hold person cast at him and Junte had both hold person and slow cast at him. Duplo was immune to his hold and Junte saved against his but we were both slowed as the combat segued into a cutscene where Junte shouted across the bridge to Caelar Argent.
We trudged back to camp and set off for Troll Claw woods, fitting in the investigation of an ambush area to retrieve the Firefly sling on the way. Once at the woods we heroically ran past enemies and Jaheira to move on to the Forest of Wyrms.
A group of wyverns there proved to be no problem, nor were phase spiders. We chose too let a sleeping dragon lie and almost repeated MP213 attempt by struggling against the main group of bugbears in the cave beyond it. Once we'd disposed of them we cleared out much of the temple of Bhaal / Cyric, including a too-keen neothelid which was eager to be slashed apart by the suitably-buffed Duplo and shot at by Junte.
A bit further on Duplo ran into Akanna and although he killed one of her arial servants and stunned the second she managed to kill him with an unholy blight for 9 damage when he had 9hp remaining. Junte used DUHM to kill the arial servant and then Akanna before returning to camp and getting Duplo raised. At this point we realised Duplo's main weapon had vanished so he was down to the Harrower longsword and a +1 longsword instead of Varscona + Harrower.
We headed into the Crusader camp next to the bridge and Junte tried to grab Vichand's scroll but failed repeatedly. Eventually Duplo asked what he was doing and said we need to kill Vichand. So Junte attacked and then although we stunned Vichand it wasn't quick enough and everybody went hostile. We ran but an unhastened Junte managed to get himself held. From that point it wasn't long before he was swarmed by Crusaders and cut to pieces with nothing that Duplo could do.
(in retrospect Junte should have grabbed Duplo's boots of speed and Duplo could have relied on an oil of speed)
There were a few MP differences and a couple of exploits in that session about how we deal with SoD
- I'd usually do more sidequests while Grond0 would do fewer
- I'd talk to Teleria, shooting her from range was new to me (his exploit)
- I'd speak to Akanna on the way out of the temple and not choose to fight her
- I'd normally open + pause to get Vichand's scroll, seemingly not possible in multiplayer (my exploit)
@Enuhal Had a similarly tough fight against the UD Balor. His circa -11 AC combined with 40% physical resistance can make him pretty tough to take down. I sort of mentally benchmarked his power level from back when I used to run stronger parties and would have 4 or even 5 characters that could cast SI:A and had plenty of breach and LR casts and then could just MM him to death like a chump.
Anyway, I had him down to only about 70% when I realized I wasn't winning the fight and resorted to a slayer change. Which STILL wasn't enough because he happened to almost immediately recharge his stoneskins. And almost killed me when I lost control and he "remove magicked" my pfF, causing my auto-attacks to take aura-of-flaming-death damage.
Fortunately, after last run, I realized the rod of resurrection can save the slayer in a pinch like that and the heal landed just in time.
Then I panicked and had Haer'dalis use three LR scrolls followed by a PW:Stun scroll, which landed (I think the balor would have still had 30% MR at that point).
I did unfortunately get gonged later on in the Ust Natha quests. It turns out that Solaufein has a hidden timer that goes off much faster than the journal says it does. The timer is three days starting at the "few days" remark in the quest log and does ***NOT*** refresh when Phaere gives you an additional 3 days to meet her after killing the "Eye Tyrant".
On another note, I don't know how people are getting HLAs in the underdark. I always leave UD with about 2.5mm XP, with the only athkatla quests I haven't done being planar sphere and planar prison...
This time I will leave with more like 2.1mm XP due to lack of mage & thief XP and the lost off ~250k quest XP from the rest of the Ust Natha line.
I suspect that I may have to resort to trying to get through WK 1/2 in order to get HLAs to deal with the liches / kangaxx / TW / Bodhi. I have never fought the statues without HLAs before, so that might be a spicy fight.
@Jabberwock I expect that other people might have more experience because they have more mods. Quest mods invariably give experience. However it could also be that they play with smaller parties at first.
On another note, I don't know how people are getting HLAs in the underdark. I always leave UD with about 2.5mm XP, with the only athkatla quests I haven't done being planar sphere and planar prison...
I can't speak for everyone else, but here's how my most recent party got their first HLAs at or before Spellhold, while leaving three stronghold quests (Planar Sphere, Windspear Hills, most of Umar Hills) unfinished:
- Play with one or two characters to 1.25 million XP, and then recruit the permanent party. Five party members joining that way is worth around five million XP in joining triggers.
- Shoplift all the scrolls, scribe and erase for XP. There's more than 2 million XP worth of scrolls you can shoplift in act 2, and most of them are available without even doing any quests. Some of this XP goes to that initial push to 1.25 million; my fighter/thief protagonist picked up Aerie and used scrolls to exceed a million XP before even visiting the slums for the first time.
- Start high. By running the last two chapters of BG1 ironman, my protagonist entered BG2 at nearly 300K XP. (The XP cap is only applied when you load a save. You can't level up past it, but you do keep accumulating experience.) Starting after SoD would be worth even more here.
- Do all the character quests, especially the EE characters with their additional areas. None of the rewards are huge, but they add up.
- High difficulty SCS means generally higher monster counts, and extra XP from that.
- A bit of Watcher's Keep; my latest party stopped just short of the Chromatic Demon.
Dassareth is a seasoned vampire killer at this point, so Bodhi's lair wasn't much of a problem. When facing the vampire boss, I sent my fighters right at her - two of them at 10 APR with improved haste, the other was an Undead Hunter. Bodhi did get to use her special insect plague, but it seems like she doesn't get her cold-based ADHW on tactical. She barely lived for a round, though, so I can't say much about her abilities:
At the elven city, Cadrax got into a bit of trouble when facing the large group of Rakshasa in front of the Temple of Rilifane. As he tried to draw out some spells and show off his combat prowess, I once again didn't think to activate his rage, and, after being hit with a few nukes, a power word:stun got him - he was isolated, far from the party:
Though I thought he was going to die for sure, the party still rushed in in an attempt to save him - mostly focused on Sentenza casting an invisibility spell to avoid him being targeted by more spells. Luckily, none of the Raskhasa used their physical attacks, instead casting spells with long casting time - miraculously, the party arrived in time:
Cadrax ended up barely surviving, and we moved through the city, on to the dragon, who did not live for long:
After summoning the Avatar of Rilifane, Galderan and Sentenza killed Tree-Irenicus via traps:
With my HLA trap choices, I am going for a bit more variety this time around - there will be more explosive traps and time traps later on. In hell, I made sure to preserve Dassareth's paladin status, using a planetar and skeleton warriors for the beholder battle. In order to defeat Irenicus's demons as quickly as possible, I made sure to place two groups of traps just outside of his range (if he's too close to them, they will trigger on him, but they will basically not affect him). The traps to the east killed the balor + glabrezu there right away, the ones to the west only weakened both. Dispel magic cost our fighters their buffs from the get go, so I started with fighter HLAs in order to burst down the remaining demons, making sure to keep Dassareth away from the Balor and his vorpal attacks - though Cadrax took quite a risk staying in melee combat:
Cadrax didn't get vorpaled - we dealt with the 3 efreeti Irenicus had summoned with his CC while also trying to take down his numerous buffs - this did take us some time, but eventually, we got him to where we wanted him:
And there he goes, transforming back into humanoid form, signaling our victory:
Next time, we'll start ToB and deal with our Pocket Plane + Saradush.
Jaheira has now joined the party and together we have killed LOTS of trolls and bandits. I am using decapitator of trolls which does fire damage which means that Safana doesn't need to use fire arrows. The firefly sling also does fire damage. We are therefore accumulating fire arrows and are only having to buy arrows +1, indeed we don't actually NEED them. It's just quicker.
I have exchanged Safana for Corwin as I certainly don't need her thieving ability so a better archer is prreferable.
Corwin killed a dragon with a throwing knife.
I have discovered that I should have talked to the bugbears. That was impossible because they were dead. I had used web, Holy Smite and Fireballs. I'm hoping that hasn't messed anything up.
When the cultist fled he ran into a previously cast web with the result that I was able to kill him.
We are now exploring a lower level where most of the cultists won't talk to me. Very rude of them!
We were badly hurt by a trap when Firestorm neglected to look for them. We rcovered by sleeping in the wyrm's lair.
Forther down a shadow aspect caused us problems by confusing Firestorm. He was the only one who could dispell magic so we ran away leaving a summoned wolf behind to distract him whilst we got out of sight. We then had to wait it out until the spell wore off.
The next battle was touch and go as to whether we would survive! Corwin died Firestorm was all but dead with 2 hp remaining and I was reduced to less than the 30 shown in the image. That was recorded after I had consumed a healing potion and cure light wounds. We did however survive, the summoned monsters having performed a vital role by distracting the enemy whilst we healed.
At least we now have the ability to raise the dead.
The dragon's sister was easily dealt with.
We released the crusaders which gave us the ability to enter the cruasader camp and grab some beer for the irregulars.
While Illasera did manage to get one hit with her dispelling arrows on Rowin, she wasn't able to stand up against our buffed-up fighters for very long:
The first pocket plane challenge has given me trouble in the past, especially the one time Jon summoned a fallen planetar. I made sure to dispel his buffs and kill him right away and was able to do so just in time before Bodhi's insect plague hit my spellcasters:
After taking down Kiser in Saradush, I made my way to Gromnir:
Some vampires foolishly decided that going up against an Undead Hunter was a good idea:
The Gromnir battle was the first serious fight the party had to face in ToB, with both enemy mages fully capable of casting timestop and doing massive damage to the party. My plan to avoid that: Get Rowin to cast timestop first (he has the AoP, so he's going to be a bit faster) and kill them - in this case, using his high strength to whack them with the SotM (which also happens to dispel their buffs):
However, with low APR, I wasn't able to get Kharun the Black as well, and he was able to cast his own timestop. He got out his efreeti (man, SCS scripts really love these guys now!), though the most dangerous thing he did was cast a Dragon's Breath. I tried to get everyone out of the blast radius and equip vulnerable party members with some fire resistance - I didn't take too much damage in the end:
Eventually, I was able to get rid of Kharun's buffs, though not before he also managed to summon a fallen planetar, which was taken down by the still fully-buffed Cadrax while Rowin was tanking Gromnir - though some risk of getting vorpaled was involved:
Without his mages, Gromnir's death was inevitable. Now I only had to chase down his remaining allies:
I could've been more aggressive during this fight - maybe Rowin should've just cast a second timestop before the first one was ending. Took some healing potions to get through this, but I have tons of them, more than I can use.
One final fun screenshot for today: I guess the Master Wraith's PFMW didn't actually fire up in time to protect him from Azuredge, though the screenshot suggests that it should have been there to save him:
Next time, we will enter the Fire Giant Temple and deal with Yaga-Shura!
Warheyd, LE Priestess of Helm (1)
When my Invoker (3) -> Fighter Promise navigated the Windspear Hills with relative ease (still have to post an update on that) in an LoB setting without double damage and without the saving throws fix, I got curious as to how playing SCS/LoB with those added difficulties would feel.
I lost a Stalker in this set-up in Baldur's Gate in the fight against the Maulers of the Undermountain when she went upstairs to hide in shadows, failed at that, got boxed in between two neutrals who wouldn't move, and then got charmed by the enemy mage that had followed her. My current character Warheyd has just reached the city as well. Hopefully she'll fare better than her predecessor, but let's first see how she made it there.
Character creation:The portrait, a cropped version of this fine piece of art by Rippark on Deviant Art, screams evil cleric to me, so lawful evil it is. One benefit is that that alignment offers some IWD spells at higher levels that good/neutral characters don't get acces to like Circle of Bones, Cloud of Pestilence, and Destruction. The latter, which imposes death on a failed save vs death at a -4 penalty, looks particularly appealing. Warheyd starts out with * flails/morningstars and * slings.
Without a massive warrior HP pool and without Stoneskin/Ironskin, she'll focus focus on maximizing AC and avoiding melee combat before trying to get damage resistances as low as possible. Armor of Faith (25% all), Defender of Easthaven (20% crushing/piercing/slashing), Roranoch's Horn (50% crushing), Belt of Inertial Barrier (25% missile), neutral Revised Hell trials solution to selfishness test in Hell (20% slashing), ToB-Ascension Bhaalspawn power (25% all) mean that she could turn into a highly damage resistant character, albeit in a rather distant future...
Warheyd will run with a party, the only way I can conceive her survival in SoD. To ensure a relatively smooth experience in BG1, I had to change my approach from the one I used with Promise (which was all about Webbing enemies as they had such bad saves). Warheyd first works her way to 13k XP, i.e. level 5 and Animate Dead, through quests that don't require any killing:
– Candlekeep 400 XP (incl. BGQE 100 XP for Sir Trun while forgoing XP from rats/Reevor, Carbos and Shank)
– Firebead 300 XP
– Marl 900 XP
– Alanna’s neighbor (BGQE) 500 XP
– Family heirloom (BGQE) 500 XP
– Coquetle 250 XP
– Brun 1500 XP (using Sanctuary to loot the ankheg hoard)
– Tenya 2500 XP
– Neville 100 XP (you have to threaten him)
– Albert & Rufie 1000 XP
– Drienne 200 XP
– Brage 1000 XP
– Landrin 600 XP (Sanctuary for the boots and wine, Spider has to wait)
– Corianna (BGQE) 100 XP
– Tamah 300 XP
– Frightened widow (BGQE) 300 XP (holding her to a contract with her undead husband, in keeping with her LE alignment)
– Arcand the mad 300 XP
– Noober 400 XP
– Samuel 500 XP
– Dynaheir 800 XP (Sanctuary to reach her, recruit her, and immediately dismiss her)
– Drunk near Beregost temple (BGQE) 100 XP
– Wounded hobgoblin in Drizzt area 200 XP
– Noober and Joseph’s wife (BGQE) 150 XP
– Kylee’s dagger 200 XP
As you can see 1,650 XP from a mod, but in returning the Revenant's dagger (900 XP), Joseph’s ring (800 XP), and Ulcaster’s tome (1000 XP), the vanilla game provides more than enough XP for a Cleric to reach level 5 without combat. Well I cannot say entirely without combat of course, Tenya needs to get hurt. After several failed attempts (getting Commanded and hit by Tenya's spiritual hammer), Warheyd manages to get Commanded out of sight of Tenya and subsequently injure her with a Magical Stone.
Level 5 means not only Animate Dead but also the availability of Baeloth. Recruiting him this early doesn't affect his 40k XP and doing some questing as a duo will unlock Invisibility and Invisibility 10' Radius as soon as possible, so as to turn events like this one (or possibly worse) into a thing of the past:
About 40k XP is needed for that and for Warheyd to surpass 32k XP and recruit other NPCs at their highest levels.
Warheyd's skeleton warriors, eventually aided by Korax, and Sanctuary for inspection purposes allow the duo to pocket about 26k XP in Mutamin's garden without even needing a scroll of PfPetrification.
Instead of going for big XP next, the pair take on many of the smaller combat quests that one normally performs right away on a lower difficulty setting. They revolve around Warheyd's summoning of skeleton warriors, and Baeloth's Hasting them. Quests include Landrin's spiders, Mirianne's ogrillons, Karlat, Tarnesh, Greywolf, Charleston Nib, Gnarl and Hairtooth, Jared's polar bear, Bjornin's half-ogres, some of the wolves east of the Beregost temple (not the vampiric ones though, they turn out to be too strong), Meilum, the Revenant's dagger, and even Silke who lands an Emotion Hopelessness on Warheyd, fortunately at a safe distance.
Before any other NPCs are recruited the duo first sees if gnolls can take out Drizzt. This is pretty important as what weapons any new recruits will specialize in. The gnolls prevail but barely with only one left standing eventually. (Drizzt sometimes fights back.)
(The halved HPs on Warheyd are from a lightning strike.)
Shar-Teel (level 6 Berserker immediately dualled to Thief), Edwin (Conjurer), and Kivan (Archer) join the party on a long-term basis and Xzar on a temporary basis. The idea is to try and keep Dorn alive so that he can become a 6th party member. The wand of monster summoning from the Nashkel mines exit, the wand of paralyzation from Black Alaric's cave and Xzar's Horror are our means to that end. But with twelve additional hobgoblins and two hits from bandit archers Dorn lies dead before we can do anything. That's quite a bummer... We leave without revealing ourselves and Xzar is released from the party. Kagain comes to mind as a replacement for Dorn, but when we recruit Alora for shoplifting purposes, we decide to keep her on board (as a Fighter/Thief).
Alora's first contributions are nicking Algernon's cloak and Dushai's ring of free action. She fails at first with Dushai, but Warheyd charms her with Algernon's cloak and has the gnome follow her into one of the homes, where Alora tries again with more success. She also steals back some high tier gear we sell at the Nashkel Carnival, so that we can acquire expensive gear from shops such as full plate, the Claw of Kazgaroth, and the Cloak of Displacement for Warheyd, the Sandthief ring, several potions, scrolls for Edwin, Shadow Armor for Shar-Teel, and the Army Scythe for Alora.
The party then goes ankheg hunting with Warheyd's skeleton warriors and Baeloth's wand summons doing the risky melee work.
In the pic you can see Edwin and Baeloth wielding colorful staves. They are a mod addtion, from More stuff for Mages, which lets the wizard shoot projectiles with them that deal 2d2 + damage. They rarely hit of course, but I like undepletable ammo on my characters. Warheyd, Kivan, and Alora have (unenchanted) bullets, arrows and bolts of plenty.
Vax and Zal and Sendai and company are defeated with summons and stuns / Hold Person.
On the northern coast I almost regret my decision to let Warheyd talk to Shoal. I know it no longer kills Charname but saving vs breath, and still being reduced to 1 HP and falling unconscious upon running away makes one feel very vulnerable. Alora (buffed by a hill giant strength potion) hits Shoal from the shadows, and Warheyd gets up just as combat with Droth starts. Thankfully Droth targets Alora with a Lance of Disruption, which she deftly evades as Warheyd quaffs a potion of invsibility.
Skeleton warriors, wand summons, and a Blindness from Baeloth for Droth deal with the ogre mage and the nereid. Warheyd dons her foe's Gift of Peace.
In the same area we also take on the three sahuagins as part of Kivan's BG1NPC Project's Jozzi Seasnake quest. We're lucky as two of the three get hit by lightning, substantially reducing the amount of HPs we have to whittle away. With another batch of wand summons, ranged attacks and two LoB allies (Jozzi and her elven companion) we prevail.
The reward, the returning throwing dagger +2, will be Shar-Teel's (initially non-proficient) ranged weapon.
We managed to raise the siege, just! We had great difficulty with the salamanders and only just came out on top. With only 2700 gold it's just as well that I don't have to pay to raise dead as I now have to buy decent arrows having used hundreds in the battle. [I have Corwin in the party]
I recruited Dorn and used him to absorb the spells and suchlike of the crusaders. When he was killed I replaced him with Neera which means that he is no longer available. It doesn't grieve me as it is one fewer blackguard on the Coast.
Entering Yaga-Shura's Temple, I dealt with big fire giant groups by using magical swords, Cadrax with Hardiness or Rowin for tanking, while the others stayed mostly at range, dealing focused damage to vulnerable giants:
Some traps and fire resistance spells helped to get to the second part of the area, though it was once again Dassareth's Azuredge which killed the Fire Lich:
Now, to face the big battle against Berenn and his red dragon ally, Brimstone (added by SCS). I decided to try and get rid of their fire giant servants first, and also had to take down a summoned fallen deva while avoiding Brimstone for now:
Throwing down some powerful AoE spells while cycling through my fighter-types, healing them up and getting them back to the front again, I was able to take down Brimstone next with some GWWs, mostly because he didn't use a whole lot of magical defenses:
Now, I only had to chase down Berenn, who failed to do anything too dangerous:
For the Prince of Fire, I used Dassareth, with improved haste and immunity to fire damage, wielding The Wave - which turns him and his elementals into a one hit kill:
After killing Yaga Shura's mother with traps and summons, we made our way to the fire giant leader himself.
Unluckily, it took quite a while for Yaga Shura to show up, so some of our short-duration buffs were gone by the start of the battle. His mage lieutenant was able to cast a timestop, buffing himself up and throwing down a Dragon's Breath, which forced most of my characters to move away or equip some crucial fire resistance gear:
With Yaga-Shura still almost immune to damage, I focused on his lieutenants. I was unable to get to the heavily-protected mage without exposing my party to massive damage - only Cadrax, who would be able to rely on his rage if needed, engaged him. The others took down the unprotected thief and fighter first, while summons and a simulacrum were holding off Yaga-Shura:
As the second PFMW of the mage lieutenant ran out, Cadrax was able to take him down, though not before the enemy dispelled some of our buffs. On his way back to the party, Cadrax got essentially surrounded by Yaga-Shura and a bunch of officers, forcing me to activate his Hardiness while healing him with RoR charges, as he was taking tons of damage - at this point, the resistances of the second of the five were weakened enough to go for the kill:
Finally, I completed the second pocket plane challenge. You can walk into these rooms. as long as it is not your main character doing it, without triggering the events - so with some well-placed traps, the only real threat of the bunch, Semaj, was instantly taken down:
Next time, we will move to Amkethran and do all four of the BG2:EE:ToB companion quests!
After the death of Gorion I helped Mellicamp, calmed Marl, took a tome to Firebead, picked up a ring of protection +1 and a ring of wizardry, helped Joia, killed Sonner and took the bowl to Tenya. Level 2 fighter, level 2 illusionist.
We then headed south and put two ogrillon to sleep. They never woke up again!
We continued south, killing hpbgoblins and picking up the Colquetle Amulet.
In nashkel I found some good armour, taleked to Noober and turned down a reward from Oublek.
Near the mines I found a wand and in a building was savaged by dogs. I put them down before heading east where I found a ring of fire protection.
I then took Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn. My intention is now to deliver the amulet.
Burning hands x 2 plus Protections of "Shield, Reflected Image and Protection from evil" killed Tarnesh.
The Sleep spell was used to acquire the girdle of piercing.
EDIT
I then went to help Prism. The mine guards were quite helpful and I could have let them finish the job. However I wanted the kudos for killing him and so led him away. My wand seriously hurt him but didn't kill him.
THAT was intentional as I wanted his sword. I used magic missile thinking that would be sufficient, but it wasn't and I had to use a healing potion as he hurt me badly. My second magic missile WAS sufficient to finish the job.
After returning to Prism I became a hero. The Carnival was an ideal spot for a wll deserved rest.
Reuniting Albert and Rufie together with killing Vax and Zal came next.
After heading west I helped a dryad and was about to return a cat to 'Drienne when I remembered just in time that my charisma is a bit on the low side. I will have to return later with a charismatic party member.
I then killed Ingot.
Helping an archaeologist made me a level 4 fighter as well as raising my reputation to 19.
By helping Brage, my reputation reached 20.
Xzar and Montaron joined me and after leaving Xzar in a house Montaron and I went "Shopping." Montaron picked up a cloak in Beregost. We then went to Ulgoth's Beard where he "found" a decent war hammer, a ring of freedom of action, several potions as well as scrolls. I left him and the cat there, the cat being in a barrel in the inn.
The party of Warheyd continue their adventure with a visit to Durlag's Tower, defeating two battle horrors with wand scorchers, at least fifteen ghasts thanks to Kivan and Alora's sharpshooting, four basilisks with Warheyd's skeleton warriors, and downstairs some spiders and three greater doppelgangers.
Bassilus is one of Warheyd's very few kills as he falls to a flamestrike from her wand of the heavens. His spells are mostly touch spells (cause wounds), soaked up by our summons, and a dangerous aerial servant everyone steers clear of. Zargal (wand of paralyzation), Krum and Caldo (Blindness), Ingot (skeleton warriors), Osmadi and Corsone (summons, who take massive 80+ lightning damage from Corsone's Call Lightning spells), spiders and wolves in Ulcaster ruins and in Spiderwood (ranged attacks) are all slain for loot and XP.
The companions clear the tombs near the Nashkel mine exit, and dispatch Kirian's gang with relative ease when a Silence from Warheyd shuts up Kirian, Peter fails his save against the wand of fear, while Lindin is stunned by Edwin or Baeloth. With summons tanking the enemy, the party can comfortably take their foes down one by one.
Destroying the three flesh golems in Black Alaric's cave with ranged returning throwing dagger attacks sees Warheyd reach level 7. The upgraded skeleton warriors she can summon as a result, buffed by her and Baeloth, make short work of nine sirines in the coastal areas. Warheyd occasionally lets her skeletons warriors do battle in a Cloud of Pestilence: a 4-round toxic cloud that deals a bit of magic damage, and imposes -3 STR, -3 DEX and Blindness for one turn on those who fail their save vs breath. Enemies having to save four times if they don't leave the cloud and the one turn duration of the penalties make this SCS/IWD addition a pretty potent level 4 spell, especially when paired with saves lowering spells. Warheyd and her skeleton warriors are immune to the effects.
Not all is well though, as my own negligence leads to a first casualty on the northern coast. This is Baeloth's Invisibility 10' Radius saving Edwin, who's held by carrion crawlers that side with three sirines against us.
But I fail to make Kivan cease his attacks. He breaks invisibility, and gets held immediately. The carrion crawlers nibble his health away at a frightening, and well, deadly pace. Our MVP, whose kill count far exceeds that of the others combined, gets a taste of his own medicine.
Borda falls to skeleton warriors before the party visits the Ice Island for Shandalar in an effort to really milk as much XP out of the optional areas before starting the main quest. Warheyd isn't quite as dexterous as little Alora and unlike the halfling in the confrontation with Droth some time ago, the priestess fails to evade a Lance of Disruption from Marcellus. For some reason the combat log says she suffers "41 damage (41 damage bonus)" as if without the double damage enabled she'd have avoided all damage.
Warheyd takes the hit as a warning and the island is cautiously navigated without incident. Buffed skeleton warriors, a couple of wand summons, and a charmed polar bear are more than the mages on the island can handle, even Garan and his ankhegs.
The adventure is especially profitable for Edwin, who reaches level 7 on the island and gets to celebrate that with Stoneskin, and a robe of the evil archmagi from Tellan. Baeloth reaches level 8 and picks Stoneskin as his first level 4 spell too. There's a lot of XP on the island as I play with the Unfinished Business mod's restored Ice Island, which adds at least sixteen winter wolves and two snow golems (2,5k XP a piece) who have ranged cold attacks but are slow moving and can be taken down from afar.
Alora picks Shandalar's pockets before he is given his cloak, and Edwin scribes a slew of spells into his spellbook though not all the spells I had anticipated. I'm not very familiar with the IWD system of opposition schools but several attractive IWD spells are out of bounds for Edwin. These include Cat's Grace (Alteration), Lance of Disruption (as well as some other, less interesting Invocation spells), and Emotion: Hope and Emotion: Courage (Enchantment). I decide not to add them through EEKeeper as Edwin is powerful enough as is. It does mean that Baeloth's level 4 picks besides Stoneskin will have to be Emotion: Hope and Emotion: Courage because I really want those buffs.
Everyone has over 64k XP, and Baeloth over 90k XP, when the party stealths through the Nashkel mine. Mulahey and his aides offer little resistance as the former is stunned while the latter can't handle our skeleton warriors and wand summons. Nimbul I find quite dangerous (more so than Tranzig even though Tranzig nets us more XP when our skeleton warriors down him). He is tackled with skeleton warriors as well, with an invisible Warheyd casting her innate True Sight to keep Nimbul visible.
I should have mentioned True Sight before, as it's seen quite a bit of use already, much more than Seeking Sword unfortunately. I really want to try and get the most out of Seeking Sword, but LoB isn't the setting for that, at least not at this stage of the saga. I've cast it once or twice to speed up the killing of held or stunned foes.
We infiltrate the bandit camp via Raiken but Kivan blows our cover when we meet Tazok, as I knew he would. What I didn't foresee is that some of the bandits turn hostile right away. I was used to having some time to fight Tazok before the other bandits join him. Baeloth takes a massive blow from Raiken but manages to cast his invisibility 10' Radius on the party.
As his companions seek shelter in the ruins, a hasted Kivan easily avenges his Deheriana. The well-equipped level 6 elven archer with high mastery in longbows and ogres as his racial enemy really makes a pincushion out of Tazok even on LoB difficulty.
A fine display of his skill. But as darkness falls it is Alora who gets to be the brightest star that evening. Now the bandit camp is a backstabber's playground what with all the bow-wielding bandits giving a +4 Thac0 bonus. And with lucky Alora as a Twinkle-wielding Fighter/Thief in this run, she can quaff strength potions for further Thac0 (and damage) boosts. She has little difficulty reminding me why I love Fighter/Thieves so much. With potions of defense, cloud giant strength, cold resistance, perception (for better stealth) and oils of speed, she chops up those bandits all by herself. Venkt manages to Blind her but that turns out to be an advantage, making it easier to hide in shadows, while the Thac0 penalty doesn't stop her from hitting hard, think 60+ damage per hit, and often. Her most damaging hit she saves for Venkt himself:
A successful mission even though we forget to pick up Taurgosz's stuff which includes a suit of full plate armor. Time to traverse Cloakwood...
I accidentally overwrote the files on my last game so am starting a new game with some Lawful Good Helmite Triplets.
When we were ambushed the first time Gorion was killed. The second time Tarnesh was killed.
We returned Jpia's ring and headed north where we discovered that Sonner and his cohorts were evil,
We killed them and returned Tenyas bowl.
We then killed a nearby ankheg at which point Marcia lvelled up.
In transit we were ambushed by a ghast and with difficulty we killed it.
We were later able to help Mellicamp.
We calmed Marl down and took a tome to Firebead next.
When Garrick took us to Silke, we discovered that she was evil and so were ready for her attack. This enabled us to kill her with ease.
We were still buffed when Karlat attacked us, not that it was necessary as Command stopped him in his tracks.
We were then able to return Perdue's sword.
Heading south we killed a couple of ogrillon and delivered a letter one of them was carrying. We then killed some officious flaming fist which provided us with plate armour.
Further south we killed ogrillon and picked up the Colquetle Amulet and we eventually ended up in Nashkel. There we found some ankheg armour, turned down an undeserved reward from Oublek and had a chat with Noober.
Not much to report on in Amkethran - Vongoethe died to traps, so no difficult battles around for our party. Now, we decided to take a time out from the main quest and instead complete the EE Companion Quests. Hexxat's was first, because it is very easy at this point of the game, especially for an Undead Hunter. We have killed many greater mummies and liches, not much trouble here. Dorn's, which has given me no trouble in the past, turned out to be a bit more interesting, in a way - because this is where our first character death of ToB occured. We entered the initial ambush side, and while the ambush party isn't all that strong, I did not remember the presence of invisible aerial servants. Rowin was without any stoneskins, because I just entered the area and I didn't know of anything to fear. Two immediate hits from invisibility were enough for his lowly 74 hp:
Aside from that mild inconvenience, this wasn't a challenging battle - I don't think the Planetar of Justice even has a vorpal sword. Instead of staying mostly peaceful in the heavenly realm we entered, I slaughtered pretty much everything - and I have to say: Come on, EE writers. My paladin does not get fallen status for murdering the most loyal followers of his own god? Anyway, I had no trouble with the two silver dragons near the end - they don't have strong defenses - and so I moved on to Rasaad's quest.
Most of the dwarven fortress is easy to clear, though the final battle befor entering the portal requires the use of AoE spells (Dragon's Breath and some ADHWs helped greatly). Down in the realm of shadows, the shadow dragon didn't do much better than the silver dragons:
Now, for the most difficult of these quests: Neera's wild mage problem. Some traps and good saving throws on my fighter-types helped to deal with the initial ambush, and we managed to get through the guards in Vicross' estate while disarming traps, staying hasted and stealthy, without anyone sounding the alarm. Vicross is kind of tough - there are dispel magic traps on the way to her courtyard, but if you take the time to disarm them, you will meanwhile be under attack, giving her time to use her timestop and summon entire groups of Balors, if you are unlucky. She also has a fairly strong setup of buffs. However, this time, I did much better compared to my usual attempts, mostly by being very aggressive with my whole approach, firing a spell trigger, followed by a sequencer (both loaded with spells to get rid of magical defenses), while casting secret word and breach on my skald, in order to get rid of her buffs before she would get to unleash much of her dangerous wild magic. I also approached from two side at once, to avoid getting stuck in the door and to give my group more space to work with - my initial assault succeeded, and after the trouble I had with previous Vicross-battles, I definitely recommend going very aggressive during this battle - if you try to draw out her spells or wait out her buffs, she will gate in multiple balors via wild magic script, and those do have the usual SCS powers:
Quite a bit of extra experience and two very nice cloaks for us (via the Rasaad quest in Algoroth's Room and the Neera quest, from one of the vendors) - next time, we will take on Watcher's Keep levels 3-5 - with a randomized maze.
Our journey ride came to an end in the Ducal Palace. We successfully navigated Cloakwood, Baldur's Gate, and Candlekeep. We even had some well-executed group battles (Molkar, amazons, Prat's gang). In Durlag's Tower we lost Shar-Teel, as she was permanently slain in a single stab by an Asirukuru. We skipped the chessboard when I learned from @AvidGamerFan that you can, and overcame the Demon Knight with loads of summons. At the Ducal Palace Warheyd was instantly slain from full health by the doppelganger assassin. She wasn't in the middle of the battlefield but was nevertheless sought out by the doppelganger. I'll have to see who will be able to avenge her.
I have more time to play as of this week, so I hope to be back soon with a new Charname. I still feel like playing LoB, but will probably look for a Charname less reliant on summons. I found that Warheyd's well-buffed skeleton warriors did the bulk of the work with only Alora (backstabs) and Kivan (archery) really contributing in battle. Shar-Teel spent most of her time trying to regain her fighter levels and proficiencies, and Baeloth and Edwin were most useful for their invisibility spells and occasional wand use.
Aside from that mild inconvenience, this wasn't a challenging battle - I don't think the Planetar of Justice even has a vorpal sword.
It does; all versions of the Planetar of Justice have the standard planetar weapon. What they lack, along with the other celestials from Dorn's quest, are the SCS celestial upgrades. No instant casting, no improved spell AI. If that's what you're used to fighting, they're pretty lackluster.
Comments
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
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155495/#Comment_1155495
Losing all your equipment in Spellhold turned out to be a fun, but challenging experience. I adjusted my spellbook, taking out some self-buffs for more summoning spells. There are no good weapons in the Asylum, considering my proficiency points, the exception being Flame of the North for Dassareth. A lot of the heavy lifting was done by skeleton warriors and magical swords:
We joined up with Imoen and killed Korlasz.
We had some minor adventures in Baldur's Gate and have joined up with Minsc, Dynaheir and Safana.
The party members that I would really like however are to the North.
We have camped with the army and it is now time for rest.
The party is now in the underdark. We narrowly survived a crisis in Bodhi's dungeon, which generated several *extremely* spicy fights which I'll get into below.
Prior to that, most of the chapter 2/3 stuff was pretty standard fare. Tanova gave the party a little bit of trouble, summoning a Glabrezu and just generally being troublesome after Haer'dalis's single breach proved insufficient to deal with her ability to recast her combat buffs. Eventually, she ran out of weapon protections and missed a save against azure edge. In hindsight, Haer'dalis could have burned a few secret word/breach scrolls and saved some heartburn.
We finally got spell turning on the infinite spellbook, after several runs in a row of failure.
Then came Bodhi's dungeon. The ruhk fight went more smoothly than usual - he actually failed a save vs. a "hold monster" spell cast by a nymph. Which surprised me as I figured he would be immune to level 5 spells, but maybe he doesn't have full rakshasa immunities. The pit fiend was overmatched by ranged attackers with enchant weapon + two fire elementals, one of which rolled a piping hot 46 damage crit, followed up by a 36 damage crit from the other to end the fight.
But we still hadn't dealt with the real challenge, which was the fight with the hated spellhold lich on the second floor. Our first task was to lure away his companion party of greater mummies, bone golems and skeleton warriors. The plan was to clump them up in the adjacent hallway, clog the path with fire elementals and our own skeletons, and then kill the undead foes safely with enchanted ranged attacks. It was a decent plan, but nevertheless disaster struck quickly.
First, Haer'dalis used up his stack of MMMs while I wasn't paying attention, and then charged a greater mummy unarmed and got himself diseased. The greater mummy disease is ferocious, and does 20-30 damage a round for 5-6 rounds.
But, the party had 2 potions of extra healing, and Cernd had several healing spells, so I thought H might at least have a change of surviving. Except, while I was moving H to safety, I didn't notice that Cernd had ALSO charged a greater mummy, resulting in him ALSO getting himself diseased.
Normally, I think he would be able to shapechange to GWW and survive with its 12hp / round regen, except the current implementation of the SCS "remove party items in spellhold" module takes away Cernd's shapechange token and he doesn't get it back until after defeating Jon.
Long story short, both Haerdalis and Cernd die, leaving the party with no way to revive them until after beating Jon. The party now has just PC monk, Minsc, Valygar and Keldorn - all with next to no equipment - to get there. And we still hadn't even fought the lich!
Well this wasn't a good situation at all, but I thought if I played very slowly and carefully we might still have a chance. The first thing we did was get to work on draining the lich's spellbook. We had a fire elemental and two skeleton warriors (one near death) from back when H & C were alive. I didn't dare rest as I didn't want to lose the few summons we had. Not that resting would have done much, as no one can cast anything that matters.
Fortunately, we generated a lich that did not have any demon summons, and also fortunately he was not aggressive about chasing the party. Less fortunately, our summons were quickly killed by death spells and did not accomplish much. More fortunately, Valygar managed to dodge what I think was an ADHW, which for some reason didn't track him when he left LoS. A FoD did track him, but he made his save vs. spell (rolling 16 vs. 10).
I then decided to take spell hits with Keldorn, who had an invulnerability potion active and much better saves. We also got a bit of luck from some engine cheese that is apparently still in the game. While SCS prevents 0 damage elemental attacks from spells from interrupting casters, it turns out that it doesn't stop 0 damage elemental attacks from weapons. So if an enemy mage has pfMW active, that disparity won't help you, but if the mage is down to stoneskins then you can still interrupt them (although maybe shouldn't).
Anyway, desperate times call for desperate measures, and Keldorn was able to time electrical bolts to interrupt several ADHW and a few other spells, while running away any time the lich cast a weapon protection. Eventually, Minsc and Valygar joined with Piercing and +2 arrows respectively, and we were able to rapidly shoot through stone skins and kill the lich.
Then we had to deal with the vampire Dace, who it turns out is immune to +2 weapons and below. That meant the only weapons that we could hurt him with were the +3 spear from the first map and the +3 quarterstaff from the second map (PC monk still has +2 fists, ugh). We also had to have some way to deal with his level drain and dire charm ability.
The settled on solution was to use Minsc's horrible, no good rage ability, which provides immunity to both charm and level drain but of course makes him uncontrollable and unhealable. We would need to act quickly to kill the vampire and hope for the best.
The fight started off on the wrong foot. Minsc raged prior to entering LoS to protect against charm. The first thing Dace did was hide, which caused an uncontrollable Minsc to retarget on PC and begin attacking him.
I thought we might be doomed at this point, but because Dace stayed hidden throughout the rest of the round, and Minsc couldn't see any other enemies, Minsc returned to control and we were able to recover the situation. I gave Keldorn the +3 quarterstaff, reasoning that he had the best saves, and Minsc was using the +3 spear. Despite both warriors lacking proficiency, they got in some good hits and started working their way through Dace's hp.
Then Dace got a dire charm on Valygar, which caused the ranger to start shooting Minsc in the back.
My first thought was that PC could get close to Valygar and maybe pull his aggro. That didn't work. My second thought was maybe PC could hit Valygar with a stunning dart, and at least take him out of the fight until dire charm wore off. That might have worked, except Minsc killed Dace, and then switched to the next visible enemy, which was... Valygar.
And now, even if I could stun Valygar, I had no way to stun Minsc due to his rage, and Valygar would be dead well before the dire charm wore off.
Then I remembered that Keldorn had dispel magic from his Inquisitor kit. Except... he had gotten hit by Dace and was level drained down to level 9. First dispel, no effect. Second dispel, no effect.
Finally, the third and final dispel cleared the charm, and Minsc shortly thereafter returned to player control. Yikes.
The party then spent 10 minutes healing from the regen ring before resting and heading to the third floor.
The third floor, if one plays as cowardly as possible, turns out to have very little necessary combat. We skipped the entire north side of the map with the paintings, mithril coin machine, and clay golem vault. The paintings are guarded by a yuanti mage, and there was no way to safely kill him, not least because yuanti mages can cast flesh to stone. We also had no way to retrieve the paintings safely, not least because one of them has a disintegration trap. Fighting clay golems with their no-heal curse was right out.
Avoiding the north side of the map meant that the party would miss out on the cheetah boots and Gesen bow. But it also meant there were only a handful of easily dispatchable minotaurs between us and the exit. We met Bodhi, and got the slayer scene. But, either SCS or Ascension no longer allows you to get slayer form in Spellhold, so we wouldn't have it for the fight with Jon.
Once back in Spellhold proper, we grabbed the five dispel arrows and prepared for the battle. There wasn't much preparation to do, as we didn't have any casters, but Keldorn was at least able to cast protection from evil on everybody. It was critical that Keldorn survive the fight with Jon so that he could use true sight on the murderers, or we would almost certainly be killed by backstabs. We headed upstairs and told Lonk to free the prisoners and the fight began.
One silver lining of our own casters being dead was that Jon's clones wouldn't be able to cast any useful spells either. Jon opened the fight by protecting himself with an improved mantle and then contingency summoning two djinni. There wasn't much we could do against any of them, so we started focusing on the clones. PC monk got a sweet quivering palm kill against clone Minsc.
Unfortunately, clone monk turned out to be more dangerous than I was expecting, due to his fast, high damage auto-attacks and rapid movement speed. He was able to kill Minsc, and a djinni stinking cloud disabled Keldorn. As a bit of luck in the other direction, Jon wasted his time stop with an extra healing potion and a shadow door. I have seen him time stop cast planetar and Dragon Breath in other runs, so this was a very good outcome.
In addition, Valygar was able to take advantage of a gap in Jon's weapon protections after the time stop and hit him with a dispel arrow. But, Jon immediately put on another improved mantle and we once against couldn't do anything to hurt him.
Then, Wanev finished eating his spinach and cast a time stop + ADHW combo that took down the remaining clones, including the clone monk that was causing so much trouble. The ADHW did not, however, hit Jon, and I once again thought the fight might be lost, as Jon was casting a second time stop and we had no way to interrupt him through his improved mantle.
Then I realized that Wanev's time stop probably stripped Jon's mantle, and even a normal dagger thrown in time would interrupt Jon's cast. Which it did!
His next cast was PfMW, which did not help him much, and we quickly shot him down with arrows, bolts and daggers. Overall we got very lucky with Jon's casts, which were mostly defensive, I think perhaps because we got off an early dispel arrow after he wasted his initial time stop.
Keldorn survived the fight with 9 hp, and true seeing + kiting allowed PC monk to shoot down the murderers while Valygar ran around trying not to get stabbed to death.
When the room was again quiet, we walked upstairs to speak with Saemon...
Sounds like you've been having some exciting times @Jabberwock
I seem to remember that the interruption by weapon damage, even of 0, has been explained by DavidW as a deliberate design decision - based on the fact it's difficult to concentrate when elemental hits are exploding in your face, even if they don't actually damage you.
A workaround: you can get a new token by dismissing Cernd from your party and then having him immediately rejoin. It won't help with HLA tokens, but it does get werewolf shifting back. The all-werewolf party still works in v33, as long as the Shapeshifter supplying the tokens isn't the protagonist.
But ... it wouldn't actually help you. The mummy weapon inflicts 13 instances of disease with 1/round poison damage each (5-round duration). The haste on the token would double that damage, for a net of 14 HP lost per round instead of the original 13. What you really needed from him was some instances of Cure Disease or Neutralize Poison memorized - they're fast-casting, and easy to get in between the ticks. That, or reaching level 15 for permanent poison immunity.
Ah interesting. I guess I'm suspicious that argument is a post-hoc justification for something that turned out to be difficult to implement in the engine, but at least there is a narrative
Ahhhhh, I should have thought of that. I thought maybe level up would fix it - later testing showed that it didn't (and anyway Cernd was at ~1.35mm exp and not really that close to a levelup). I didn't think of trying a rejoin.
Interesting note on the exact disease mechanic. I think it must stack then and each of them got hit twice so I was taking 26 per round. During the run, I had thought that maybe the disease had a special schedule that caused it to trigger more times a round either randomly or in the back half of its triggers. But I think in hindsight they were probably just double diseased.
5 * 13 = 65 they could have withstood with an extra healing potion (at least Cernd, who started with most of his hps). But 2 * 65 = 130 they could not.
I did very much regret not having cure disease memorized on any of the two rangers or the druid, but of course in normal times the party carries a few health elixirs, which do clear disease as well as poison...
Junte, Male dwarf wizard slayer (Gate70)
Duplo, Male human undead hunter (Grond0)
Junte wastes no time shoving his undead hunter into the sewers to face an ogre mage and carrion crawlers. He even manages to shoot down a crawler on the run and return to help dispose of the last two crawlers.
It is time to clear the upper floors of Durlag's Tower - Junte realising to his chagrin that we only have one potion of mirror eyes left. Duplo's eyes light up at this news, he's clearly been affected by the one-turn basilisk madness of recent runs and gulps a few other potions to help his cause and then gulps the mirror eyed potion and starts his basilisk run. Junte guesstimates that 1 basilisk and three greater basilisks lasted about 40-45 seconds so that may be a new record for us.
We play a quick game of Duplo suggesting that Junte use his boots of speed before he insists he has passed them to Junte and we can each clearly see the boots in the other's inventory. Never mind, we manage to run away anyway and on arrival at our destination Duplo has the boots and re-equips them.
At the Coronation Junte hands a few more potions (strength, power) to Duplo and aims arrows of dispelling at the emerging greater doppelgangers. Duplo, and Belt, do a sterling job against the debuffed doppelgangers and this leaves us free to sell a final set of loot and head into the Thieves Maze.
A brief conversation ensues here as Junte appears to have purchased three unwanted antidotes from Black Lily and doesn't have the three oils of speed he was going to overpay for Duplo. Duplo confirms he was also in the store and must have purchased the oils of speed first so Junte purchased without realising his selected items moved on one store slot for an unintentional purchase.
Anyway, back to the maze where Duplo uses his buffs and boots to slice through enemies before Junte can help too much. We set off at least one lightning trap (Junte's magic resistance works) and one fireball trap (Duplo's ring of fire protection helps) but are safely through, and avoid Rahvins gang by travelling north of them.
We kill Tamoko and Junte eases into her full plate +1 armour. Nice, and as good as a wizard slayer can hope for.
Semaj decides to help Sarevok and is dispelled twice before dying. Junte has given Duplo a potion of genius so he too can use a protection from magic so Semaj was never any danger to us.
After a very brief interlude Junte reforms his party - deciding the tagalong gang of Edwin, Viconia, Safana and Dorn can guard the Safehouse entrance.
Starting equipment (Duplo has remembered to hang onto potions but Junte has lost his containered potions and scrolls) :
The Psionicist kit is fun. It's not too different from a conventional monk; it's just weaker in combat and has some spells based on BG2 psionic abilities (Mind Blast, Ego Whip, Ballistic Attack, Detonate, Psionic Blast, Psionic Domination, Cure Serious Wounds, Planar Travel, Psionic Maze, and some mage-y HLAs).
I'm not sure how much time I'll spend on BG in the future. Mostly I'm interesting in BG2, but after so many saga runs, it feels weird to do a BG run that doesn't start at Candlekeep, and I'm not sure I'd enjoy using exploits (like using the Reform Party trick to spam Totemic Druid summons or blind Bounty Hunter traps) to speed through BG1 and SoD.
Baeloth and M'Khinn are now available as allies. I dropped Minsc and Dynaheir off at the camp.
We then went in search of missing people and items and managed to kill Teleria before she managed to cast a petrification spell. The golum however was more of a problem.
We then came across Skie and managed to persuade her to be more responsible. Killing a nearby vampire proved to be straightforward but on the way back a cave full of trolls was less so. Hal had forgotten stoneskin and so was badly hurt. However we escaped, rested and returned this time with more success.
We returned the missing items, keeping the shield as part of the reward.
We then helped Cromnus and when we entered the barrow where his treasure is kept we saved Semahl.
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Recap... Loury intends to make an impressive start today before the inevitable slide into mediocrity. His plan is to head for Windspear Hills and should that pan out he'll have a key to use in the sewers on the way to the Unseeing Eye.
We start. Loury promptly realises we haven't looted the top of the graveyard nor have we found an orphan child for the paladin or started the graveyard kidnap victim quests when Corecleric notices the locked door in the bridge district. So we do that first and drop reputation to 18 by obtaining the silver pantaloons, and then we move on to Windspear Hills.
Our stroll through there is briefly interrupted as Loury gets confused. Swish tries to help but is battered away and almost dead, and Corecleric steps in once his summoning spell completes. Loury survives.
Firkraag gets a good going-over, with Loury making a determined stand and failing to retreat. If Firkraag could have held out another round he might have forced Loury to flee but his luck was out.
Loury may well have had at least one mind focusing potion in his bag and felt a bit bad as Corecleric had said he liked to have them to hand. We defeated the remaining enemies with missiles and used a rod of resurrection charge on Corecleric (2 used, 8 left).
On then, to the Unseeing Eye. Corecleric demonstrated his eye-popping undead turn capability on the way.
Then we went to forge the red dragon scale armour, getting ambushed by Parisa on the way there and ambushed a second time by Tanova once forging was complete. Corecleric observed how easy it was for us to deal with vampires as he cast a lesser restoration on the snacked-upon Swish.
So we thought.
Loury ran into Tanova (who had run away scared earlier and left her simmie to die). She had recovered and was busy being pummelled when she mazed Loury. His amazing intelligence of 6 gave Swish and Corecleric plenty of time to amble across and kill her and amble back while Loury remained mazed. He eventually returned and we ended the session there - a few minutes past our alloted end-time.
Party equipment:
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
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155495/#Comment_1155495
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155580/#Comment_1155580
In the Underdark, the first significant challenge we had to face was our first Bhalor - quite deadly with SCS, as they have vorpal attacks in melee, and can use dangerous spells such as firestorm and defenses such as stoneskin at will - so I had to kite him, while doing enough damage at range to actually get through his frequently-renewed stoneskins while avoiding death by firestorm. This gets significantly easier with HLAs, which I didn't quite have yet, but I barely pulled it off:
As we carried on, we have found two amulets of the Keeper of Secrets under the mountain.
Now after going down a level we fought and killed a bronze sentry, but it killed Safana costing us 800 gp to raise her.
Gradually we worked our way inside but the undead were strong and we repeatedly went to the surface to rest.
While we were doing this, Hal reached level 9 which means that he can now raise the dead. Death is now not a major problem.
A LICH IS NO MORE
[/i][/b]
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
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155495/#Comment_1155495
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155580/#Comment_1155580
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155657/#Comment_1155657
Returning back to Athkatla, we forged new weapons and killed some liches via traps. The city gates lich had a really strange combination of pre-buffs, which did, for some reason, NOT include any kind of protection against physical damage:
One guy who did have all the buffs he would need was the alhoon in the sewers - I hit him with a sequencer and a spell trigger, spellstrike and multiple breaches, forcing him to spend all of his time on renewing his buffs instead of doing anything dangerous:
Junte, Male dwarf wizard slayer (Gate70)
Duplo, Male human undead hunter (Grond0)
Junte and Duplo made their way out of the Safehouse with their pride intact - having an undead hunter around certainly made a difference here and Junte made certain to ask Duplo to eliminate the shadowed soul before anything else once we entered the second level.
After a rest at the Ducal Palace we noticed our reputation had reset to 8 so used about 5000gp repairing church roofs to give ourselves some headroom to avoid any nasty paladin-falling scenarios. Better safe than sorry.
After setting off for Dragonspear our first waypoint is Coastways Crossing. Junte gave Duplo a potion of mirror eyes as we investigated a group of too-lifelike statues. Duplo stared at the potion and asked what he'd need that for to which Junte pointed at Teleria with her spellbook open. Duplo shrugged and shot her down from a distance which meant no potion required and no hostile golem (which we killed anyway).
We tried hiding around the back of a tent after the bridge was destroyed, but Duplo had hold person cast at him and Junte had both hold person and slow cast at him. Duplo was immune to his hold and Junte saved against his but we were both slowed as the combat segued into a cutscene where Junte shouted across the bridge to Caelar Argent.
We trudged back to camp and set off for Troll Claw woods, fitting in the investigation of an ambush area to retrieve the Firefly sling on the way. Once at the woods we heroically ran past enemies and Jaheira to move on to the Forest of Wyrms.
A group of wyverns there proved to be no problem, nor were phase spiders. We chose too let a sleeping dragon lie and almost repeated MP213 attempt by struggling against the main group of bugbears in the cave beyond it. Once we'd disposed of them we cleared out much of the temple of Bhaal / Cyric, including a too-keen neothelid which was eager to be slashed apart by the suitably-buffed Duplo and shot at by Junte.
A bit further on Duplo ran into Akanna and although he killed one of her arial servants and stunned the second she managed to kill him with an unholy blight for 9 damage when he had 9hp remaining. Junte used DUHM to kill the arial servant and then Akanna before returning to camp and getting Duplo raised. At this point we realised Duplo's main weapon had vanished so he was down to the Harrower longsword and a +1 longsword instead of Varscona + Harrower.
We headed into the Crusader camp next to the bridge and Junte tried to grab Vichand's scroll but failed repeatedly. Eventually Duplo asked what he was doing and said we need to kill Vichand. So Junte attacked and then although we stunned Vichand it wasn't quick enough and everybody went hostile. We ran but an unhastened Junte managed to get himself held. From that point it wasn't long before he was swarmed by Crusaders and cut to pieces with nothing that Duplo could do.
(in retrospect Junte should have grabbed Duplo's boots of speed and Duplo could have relied on an oil of speed)
There were a few MP differences and a couple of exploits in that session about how we deal with SoD
- I'd usually do more sidequests while Grond0 would do fewer
- I'd talk to Teleria, shooting her from range was new to me (his exploit)
- I'd speak to Akanna on the way out of the temple and not choose to fight her
- I'd normally open + pause to get Vichand's scroll, seemingly not possible in multiplayer (my exploit)
Anyway, I had him down to only about 70% when I realized I wasn't winning the fight and resorted to a slayer change. Which STILL wasn't enough because he happened to almost immediately recharge his stoneskins. And almost killed me when I lost control and he "remove magicked" my pfF, causing my auto-attacks to take aura-of-flaming-death damage.
Fortunately, after last run, I realized the rod of resurrection can save the slayer in a pinch like that and the heal landed just in time.
Then I panicked and had Haer'dalis use three LR scrolls followed by a PW:Stun scroll, which landed (I think the balor would have still had 30% MR at that point).
I did unfortunately get gonged later on in the Ust Natha quests. It turns out that Solaufein has a hidden timer that goes off much faster than the journal says it does. The timer is three days starting at the "few days" remark in the quest log and does ***NOT*** refresh when Phaere gives you an additional 3 days to meet her after killing the "Eye Tyrant".
On another note, I don't know how people are getting HLAs in the underdark. I always leave UD with about 2.5mm XP, with the only athkatla quests I haven't done being planar sphere and planar prison...
This time I will leave with more like 2.1mm XP due to lack of mage & thief XP and the lost off ~250k quest XP from the rest of the Ust Natha line.
I suspect that I may have to resort to trying to get through WK 1/2 in order to get HLAs to deal with the liches / kangaxx / TW / Bodhi. I have never fought the statues without HLAs before, so that might be a spicy fight.
I can't speak for everyone else, but here's how my most recent party got their first HLAs at or before Spellhold, while leaving three stronghold quests (Planar Sphere, Windspear Hills, most of Umar Hills) unfinished:
- Play with one or two characters to 1.25 million XP, and then recruit the permanent party. Five party members joining that way is worth around five million XP in joining triggers.
- Shoplift all the scrolls, scribe and erase for XP. There's more than 2 million XP worth of scrolls you can shoplift in act 2, and most of them are available without even doing any quests. Some of this XP goes to that initial push to 1.25 million; my fighter/thief protagonist picked up Aerie and used scrolls to exceed a million XP before even visiting the slums for the first time.
- Start high. By running the last two chapters of BG1 ironman, my protagonist entered BG2 at nearly 300K XP. (The XP cap is only applied when you load a save. You can't level up past it, but you do keep accumulating experience.) Starting after SoD would be worth even more here.
- Do all the character quests, especially the EE characters with their additional areas. None of the rewards are huge, but they add up.
- High difficulty SCS means generally higher monster counts, and extra XP from that.
- A bit of Watcher's Keep; my latest party stopped just short of the Chromatic Demon.
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
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155495/#Comment_1155495
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155580/#Comment_1155580
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155657/#Comment_1155657
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155718/#Comment_1155718
Dassareth is a seasoned vampire killer at this point, so Bodhi's lair wasn't much of a problem. When facing the vampire boss, I sent my fighters right at her - two of them at 10 APR with improved haste, the other was an Undead Hunter. Bodhi did get to use her special insect plague, but it seems like she doesn't get her cold-based ADHW on tactical. She barely lived for a round, though, so I can't say much about her abilities:
Jaheira has now joined the party and together we have killed LOTS of trolls and bandits. I am using decapitator of trolls which does fire damage which means that Safana doesn't need to use fire arrows. The firefly sling also does fire damage. We are therefore accumulating fire arrows and are only having to buy arrows +1, indeed we don't actually NEED them. It's just quicker.
I have exchanged Safana for Corwin as I certainly don't need her thieving ability so a better archer is prreferable.
Corwin killed a dragon with a throwing knife.
I have discovered that I should have talked to the bugbears. That was impossible because they were dead. I had used web, Holy Smite and Fireballs. I'm hoping that hasn't messed anything up.
When the cultist fled he ran into a previously cast web with the result that I was able to kill him.
We are now exploring a lower level where most of the cultists won't talk to me. Very rude of them!
We were badly hurt by a trap when Firestorm neglected to look for them.
Forther down a shadow aspect caused us problems by confusing Firestorm. He was the only one who could dispell magic so we ran away leaving a summoned wolf behind to distract him whilst we got out of sight. We then had to wait it out until the spell wore off.
The next battle was touch and go as to whether we would survive! Corwin died Firestorm was all but dead with 2 hp remaining and I was reduced to less than the 30 shown in the image. That was recorded after I had consumed a healing potion and cure light wounds. We did however survive, the summoned monsters having performed a vital role by distracting the enemy whilst we healed.
At least we now have the ability to raise the dead.
The dragon's sister was easily dealt with.
We released the crusaders which gave us the ability to enter the cruasader camp and grab some beer for the irregulars.
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
SoA End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155796/#Comment_1155796
While Illasera did manage to get one hit with her dispelling arrows on Rowin, she wasn't able to stand up against our buffed-up fighters for very long:
One final fun screenshot for today: I guess the Master Wraith's PFMW didn't actually fire up in time to protect him from Azuredge, though the screenshot suggests that it should have been there to save him:
When my Invoker (3) -> Fighter Promise navigated the Windspear Hills with relative ease (still have to post an update on that) in an LoB setting without double damage and without the saving throws fix, I got curious as to how playing SCS/LoB with those added difficulties would feel.
I lost a Stalker in this set-up in Baldur's Gate in the fight against the Maulers of the Undermountain when she went upstairs to hide in shadows, failed at that, got boxed in between two neutrals who wouldn't move, and then got charmed by the enemy mage that had followed her. My current character Warheyd has just reached the city as well. Hopefully she'll fare better than her predecessor, but let's first see how she made it there.
Character creation:
Without a massive warrior HP pool and without Stoneskin/Ironskin, she'll focus focus on maximizing AC and avoiding melee combat before trying to get damage resistances as low as possible. Armor of Faith (25% all), Defender of Easthaven (20% crushing/piercing/slashing), Roranoch's Horn (50% crushing), Belt of Inertial Barrier (25% missile), neutral Revised Hell trials solution to selfishness test in Hell (20% slashing), ToB-Ascension Bhaalspawn power (25% all) mean that she could turn into a highly damage resistant character, albeit in a rather distant future...
Warheyd will run with a party, the only way I can conceive her survival in SoD. To ensure a relatively smooth experience in BG1, I had to change my approach from the one I used with Promise (which was all about Webbing enemies as they had such bad saves). Warheyd first works her way to 13k XP, i.e. level 5 and Animate Dead, through quests that don't require any killing:
– Candlekeep 400 XP (incl. BGQE 100 XP for Sir Trun while forgoing XP from rats/Reevor, Carbos and Shank)
– Firebead 300 XP
– Marl 900 XP
– Alanna’s neighbor (BGQE) 500 XP
– Family heirloom (BGQE) 500 XP
– Coquetle 250 XP
– Brun 1500 XP (using Sanctuary to loot the ankheg hoard)
– Tenya 2500 XP
– Neville 100 XP (you have to threaten him)
– Albert & Rufie 1000 XP
– Drienne 200 XP
– Brage 1000 XP
– Landrin 600 XP (Sanctuary for the boots and wine, Spider has to wait)
– Corianna (BGQE) 100 XP
– Tamah 300 XP
– Frightened widow (BGQE) 300 XP (holding her to a contract with her undead husband, in keeping with her LE alignment)
– Arcand the mad 300 XP
– Noober 400 XP
– Samuel 500 XP
– Dynaheir 800 XP (Sanctuary to reach her, recruit her, and immediately dismiss her)
– Drunk near Beregost temple (BGQE) 100 XP
– Wounded hobgoblin in Drizzt area 200 XP
– Noober and Joseph’s wife (BGQE) 150 XP
– Kylee’s dagger 200 XP
As you can see 1,650 XP from a mod, but in returning the Revenant's dagger (900 XP), Joseph’s ring (800 XP), and Ulcaster’s tome (1000 XP), the vanilla game provides more than enough XP for a Cleric to reach level 5 without combat. Well I cannot say entirely without combat of course, Tenya needs to get hurt. After several failed attempts (getting Commanded and hit by Tenya's spiritual hammer), Warheyd manages to get Commanded out of sight of Tenya and subsequently injure her with a Magical Stone.
Level 5 means not only Animate Dead but also the availability of Baeloth. Recruiting him this early doesn't affect his 40k XP and doing some questing as a duo will unlock Invisibility and Invisibility 10' Radius as soon as possible, so as to turn events like this one (or possibly worse) into a thing of the past:
Warheyd's skeleton warriors, eventually aided by Korax, and Sanctuary for inspection purposes allow the duo to pocket about 26k XP in Mutamin's garden without even needing a scroll of PfPetrification.
Shar-Teel (level 6 Berserker immediately dualled to Thief), Edwin (Conjurer), and Kivan (Archer) join the party on a long-term basis and Xzar on a temporary basis. The idea is to try and keep Dorn alive so that he can become a 6th party member. The wand of monster summoning from the Nashkel mines exit, the wand of paralyzation from Black Alaric's cave and Xzar's Horror are our means to that end. But with twelve additional hobgoblins and two hits from bandit archers Dorn lies dead before we can do anything. That's quite a bummer... We leave without revealing ourselves and Xzar is released from the party. Kagain comes to mind as a replacement for Dorn, but when we recruit Alora for shoplifting purposes, we decide to keep her on board (as a Fighter/Thief).
Alora's first contributions are nicking Algernon's cloak and Dushai's ring of free action. She fails at first with Dushai, but Warheyd charms her with Algernon's cloak and has the gnome follow her into one of the homes, where Alora tries again with more success. She also steals back some high tier gear we sell at the Nashkel Carnival, so that we can acquire expensive gear from shops such as full plate, the Claw of Kazgaroth, and the Cloak of Displacement for Warheyd, the Sandthief ring, several potions, scrolls for Edwin, Shadow Armor for Shar-Teel, and the Army Scythe for Alora.
The party then goes ankheg hunting with Warheyd's skeleton warriors and Baeloth's wand summons doing the risky melee work.
Vax and Zal and Sendai and company are defeated with summons and stuns / Hold Person.
In the same area we also take on the three sahuagins as part of Kivan's BG1NPC Project's Jozzi Seasnake quest. We're lucky as two of the three get hit by lightning, substantially reducing the amount of HPs we have to whittle away. With another batch of wand summons, ranged attacks and two LoB allies (Jozzi and her elven companion) we prevail.
Uhm, that's it for now because duty calls...
We managed to raise the siege, just! We had great difficulty with the salamanders and only just came out on top. With only 2700 gold it's just as well that I don't have to pay to raise dead as I now have to buy decent arrows having used hundreds in the battle. [I have Corwin in the party]
I recruited Dorn and used him to absorb the spells and suchlike of the crusaders. When he was killed I replaced him with Neera which means that he is no longer available. It doesn't grieve me as it is one fewer blackguard on the Coast.
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
SoA End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155796/#Comment_1155796
ToB Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155855/#Comment_1155855
Entering Yaga-Shura's Temple, I dealt with big fire giant groups by using magical swords, Cadrax with Hardiness or Rowin for tanking, while the others stayed mostly at range, dealing focused damage to vulnerable giants:
Unluckily, it took quite a while for Yaga Shura to show up, so some of our short-duration buffs were gone by the start of the battle. His mage lieutenant was able to cast a timestop, buffing himself up and throwing down a Dragon's Breath, which forced most of my characters to move away or equip some crucial fire resistance gear:
I discovered that Col was a traitor and when I killed him a mage teleported in and Gated me.
That's something that I won't be doing again!!
The end.
After the death of Gorion I helped Mellicamp, calmed Marl, took a tome to Firebead, picked up a ring of protection +1 and a ring of wizardry, helped Joia, killed Sonner and took the bowl to Tenya. Level 2 fighter, level 2 illusionist.
We then headed south and put two ogrillon to sleep. They never woke up again!
We continued south, killing hpbgoblins and picking up the Colquetle Amulet.
In nashkel I found some good armour, taleked to Noober and turned down a reward from Oublek.
Near the mines I found a wand and in a building was savaged by dogs. I put them down before heading east where I found a ring of fire protection.
I then took Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn. My intention is now to deliver the amulet.
Burning hands x 2 plus Protections of "Shield, Reflected Image and Protection from evil" killed Tarnesh.
The Sleep spell was used to acquire the girdle of piercing.
EDIT
I then went to help Prism. The mine guards were quite helpful and I could have let them finish the job. However I wanted the kudos for killing him and so led him away. My wand seriously hurt him but didn't kill him.
THAT was intentional as I wanted his sword. I used magic missile thinking that would be sufficient, but it wasn't and I had to use a healing potion as he hurt me badly. My second magic missile WAS sufficient to finish the job.
After returning to Prism I became a hero. The Carnival was an ideal spot for a wll deserved rest.
Reuniting Albert and Rufie together with killing Vax and Zal came next.
After heading west I helped a dryad and was about to return a cat to 'Drienne when I remembered just in time that my charisma is a bit on the low side. I will have to return later with a charismatic party member.
I then killed Ingot.
Helping an archaeologist made me a level 4 fighter as well as raising my reputation to 19.
By helping Brage, my reputation reached 20.
Xzar and Montaron joined me and after leaving Xzar in a house Montaron and I went "Shopping." Montaron picked up a cloak in Beregost. We then went to Ulgoth's Beard where he "found" a decent war hammer, a ring of freedom of action, several potions as well as scrolls. I left him and the cat there, the cat being in a barrel in the inn.
BG1: 1
The party of Warheyd continue their adventure with a visit to Durlag's Tower, defeating two battle horrors with wand scorchers, at least fifteen ghasts thanks to Kivan and Alora's sharpshooting, four basilisks with Warheyd's skeleton warriors, and downstairs some spiders and three greater doppelgangers.
Bassilus is one of Warheyd's very few kills as he falls to a flamestrike from her wand of the heavens. His spells are mostly touch spells (cause wounds), soaked up by our summons, and a dangerous aerial servant everyone steers clear of. Zargal (wand of paralyzation), Krum and Caldo (Blindness), Ingot (skeleton warriors), Osmadi and Corsone (summons, who take massive 80+ lightning damage from Corsone's Call Lightning spells), spiders and wolves in Ulcaster ruins and in Spiderwood (ranged attacks) are all slain for loot and XP.
The companions clear the tombs near the Nashkel mine exit, and dispatch Kirian's gang with relative ease when a Silence from Warheyd shuts up Kirian, Peter fails his save against the wand of fear, while Lindin is stunned by Edwin or Baeloth. With summons tanking the enemy, the party can comfortably take their foes down one by one.
Borda falls to skeleton warriors before the party visits the Ice Island for Shandalar in an effort to really milk as much XP out of the optional areas before starting the main quest. Warheyd isn't quite as dexterous as little Alora and unlike the halfling in the confrontation with Droth some time ago, the priestess fails to evade a Lance of Disruption from Marcellus. For some reason the combat log says she suffers "41 damage (41 damage bonus)" as if without the double damage enabled she'd have avoided all damage.
Everyone has over 64k XP, and Baeloth over 90k XP, when the party stealths through the Nashkel mine. Mulahey and his aides offer little resistance as the former is stunned while the latter can't handle our skeleton warriors and wand summons. Nimbul I find quite dangerous (more so than Tranzig even though Tranzig nets us more XP when our skeleton warriors down him). He is tackled with skeleton warriors as well, with an invisible Warheyd casting her innate True Sight to keep Nimbul visible.
I should have mentioned True Sight before, as it's seen quite a bit of use already, much more than Seeking Sword unfortunately. I really want to try and get the most out of Seeking Sword, but LoB isn't the setting for that, at least not at this stage of the saga. I've cast it once or twice to speed up the killing of held or stunned foes.
We infiltrate the bandit camp via Raiken but Kivan blows our cover when we meet Tazok, as I knew he would. What I didn't foresee is that some of the bandits turn hostile right away. I was used to having some time to fight Tazok before the other bandits join him. Baeloth takes a massive blow from Raiken but manages to cast his invisibility 10' Radius on the party.
When we were ambushed the first time Gorion was killed. The second time Tarnesh was killed.
We returned Jpia's ring and headed north where we discovered that Sonner and his cohorts were evil,
We killed them and returned Tenyas bowl.
We then killed a nearby ankheg at which point Marcia lvelled up.
In transit we were ambushed by a ghast and with difficulty we killed it.
We were later able to help Mellicamp.
We calmed Marl down and took a tome to Firebead next.
When Garrick took us to Silke, we discovered that she was evil and so were ready for her attack. This enabled us to kill her with ease.
We were still buffed when Karlat attacked us, not that it was necessary as Command stopped him in his tracks.
We were then able to return Perdue's sword.
Heading south we killed a couple of ogrillon and delivered a letter one of them was carrying. We then killed some officious flaming fist which provided us with plate armour.
Further south we killed ogrillon and picked up the Colquetle Amulet and we eventually ended up in Nashkel. There we found some ankheg armour, turned down an undeserved reward from Oublek and had a chat with Noober.
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
SoA End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155796/#Comment_1155796
ToB Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1155855/#Comment_1155855
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1156013/#Comment_1156013
Not much to report on in Amkethran - Vongoethe died to traps, so no difficult battles around for our party. Now, we decided to take a time out from the main quest and instead complete the EE Companion Quests. Hexxat's was first, because it is very easy at this point of the game, especially for an Undead Hunter. We have killed many greater mummies and liches, not much trouble here. Dorn's, which has given me no trouble in the past, turned out to be a bit more interesting, in a way - because this is where our first character death of ToB occured. We entered the initial ambush side, and while the ambush party isn't all that strong, I did not remember the presence of invisible aerial servants. Rowin was without any stoneskins, because I just entered the area and I didn't know of anything to fear. Two immediate hits from invisibility were enough for his lowly 74 hp:
Most of the dwarven fortress is easy to clear, though the final battle befor entering the portal requires the use of AoE spells (Dragon's Breath and some ADHWs helped greatly). Down in the realm of shadows, the shadow dragon didn't do much better than the silver dragons:
BG1: 1, 2
Our journey ride came to an end in the Ducal Palace. We successfully navigated Cloakwood, Baldur's Gate, and Candlekeep. We even had some well-executed group battles (Molkar, amazons, Prat's gang). In Durlag's Tower we lost Shar-Teel, as she was permanently slain in a single stab by an Asirukuru. We skipped the chessboard when I learned from @AvidGamerFan that you can, and overcame the Demon Knight with loads of summons. At the Ducal Palace Warheyd was instantly slain from full health by the doppelganger assassin. She wasn't in the middle of the battlefield but was nevertheless sought out by the doppelganger. I'll have to see who will be able to avenge her.
I have more time to play as of this week, so I hope to be back soon with a new Charname. I still feel like playing LoB, but will probably look for a Charname less reliant on summons. I found that Warheyd's well-buffed skeleton warriors did the bulk of the work with only Alora (backstabs) and Kivan (archery) really contributing in battle. Shar-Teel spent most of her time trying to regain her fighter levels and proficiencies, and Baeloth and Edwin were most useful for their invisibility spells and occasional wand use.