I thought I'd again take a break from racking up more deaths in my long-life challenge by trying something different. Biff has had plenty of work in the past killing enemies with melee, but he's normally been allowed to disable them first. This time I thought I would see how far he could get if the only way he could affect enemies directly was melee.
In Candlekeep chill touch showed its virtue as a couple of assassins were punched unconscious, but failed their saves and immediately died of additional cold damage.
Although Biff was far too vulnerable to make it sensible to attack Xzar and Montaron at the Crossroads, he did it anyway - and recklessness was on this occasion rewarded as two attacks brought two kills.
With no way to attack Imoen before she could join the party (which I don't allow), she got left for now though. On the way to Beregost I took advantage of the slow weapon speed of halberds to kill 3 gnolls without giving them a chance to attack. The last of those was actually chunked by the cold damage, but I don't have gore active so loot was not destroyed.
Despite having already taken a big risk against Xzar, I was actually conscious that Biff would be very vulnerable early on, so looked for some quest XP to help him out. Marl and Firebead offered easy instalments before a hobgoblin showed up his own hopelessly slow weapon to allow Biff to relieve him of some boots for Zhurlong. After travelling down to Nashkel during the day (to avoid bandits), Noober then offered enough XP for level 2, before shutting up permanently - 6 welcome additional HPs there.
After Mr Colquetle got his amulet back, Biff moved up to the FAI. The ring of wizardry there is of pretty limited benefit in this run, without the ability to use either damaging or disabling spells. However, the hobgoblins there added a bit more XP to his total before he returned Joia's ring. North of FAI, Biff then chased some fishermen into a corner and finished them off to get a bowl. Returning that to Tenya was enough for another level, but just the 4 HPs this time.
He'd learned PfP with that level and moved on to the basilisk area to try that out. The lesser basilisks have a relatively slow weapon speed, meaning it's normally possible to retreat after they switch to attacking in melee, but before they get an attack in - hence chill touch was used there while killing the 3 in the group to the south - that was enough for level 4.
Normally I take invisibility as an initial second level spell, but this time I decided to be more aggressive and go for ghoul touch to add to the 5 extra HPs.
Greater basilisks are far more dangerous in melee, so Biff initially just nipped in and out rather than attacking continuously. On his second casting of ghoul touch though he successfully tagged the basilisk with paralysis.
That meant just another couple of lesser basilisks were required for a quick further level, with 5 more HPs added to increase safety against potential criticals.
The rest of the basilisks were finished off before Biff turned to Mutamin. He used invisibility to negate horror and then 2 acid arrows - but got the timing wrong on the last of the latter. However, after resting to heal himself, he was able to tank a few LMDs before beating Mutamin up in melee.
After a decent start, I decided to play safe and allow Kirian's party to be left undisturbed for now.
Sorcerer L5, 32 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 36 kills
With each update I'll post a summary of the spells proposed for each level, with a brief description of why they've been chosen for this run.
Level 1 spells Chill touch
Pretty good option to improve close-up melee early on (including disabling dual-wielding penalties), though becomes obsolete later. Find familiar
Offers a HP boost, as well as potential games with invisible blocking. Protection from evil
Decent improvement against the many evil foes. Reflected image
A pretty poor cousin of mirror image, but with the additional restrictions this time ruling lots of spells out, it can just about justify its place for once. Shield
Useful AC improvement early on as well as immunity to the magic missiles used by many mages and the odd trap.
Entering the northern Sword Coast, we let Shoal summon Droth and got lucky, interrupting his spellcasting attempts right away thanks to some elemental damage:
After dealing with the carrion crawlers and ogre band in the centre, we also took on the three sirens to the south-west, using some skeletons and Amel herself, because of her elven resistance to charm effects:
At the southern Sword Coast, we backstabbed Arkushule before dealing with more sirens in a similiar fashion:
We entered the cave, shooting the flesh golems with the magical ammo we had bought from High Hedge for the vampire wolves, and looted their treasure. Next up: Narcillicus. I thought that he would be able to survive an initial 2* backstab, allowing for us to gain 4000 extra xp from killing his mustard jellies - but, alas, he apparently doesn't have all that many hitpoints:
Now, we travelled to Durlag's Tower, killing the initial battle horrors with two wand charges (one frost, one fire) and a ton of magic missles plus some attacks - a process repeated later on at the ramparts:
Dealing with basilisks and ghasts didn't give us any trouble, but the ghost inside has access to 6th level spells, so we had to take a careful approach. He started off with some strong pre-buffs and added PFMW immediately, which caused me to retreat with the hasted party. He didn't follow us, so we were able to wait out the short-duration buffs he had going:
In stealth, Amel checked the state of his buffs from time to time, and once most of the short-term effects were gone, we approached under another haste spell, quickly punching through his stoneskins and renewed mirror images:
We helped Kirinhale, looted the wisdom tome and returned to the outside, entering the red wizard area. First, we dealt with the scroll of wisdom. Next, we disarmed the north-eastern web trap and approached the big group of spiders. Amel got hit by a web tangle, so I moved Ajantis in front of her and activated a wand of monster summoning charge, while we used haste, chaos of battle and slow in order to get an advantage:
With these powerful spells, the battle turned into a one-sided affair, with only Ajantis getting hit by the wraith spider:
The more dangerous fight here: The red wizards. We approached from near the stairs, first trapping the primary wizard with webs from off-screen, having to wait until he failed his save - this allowed us to take him down with ranged weapons unopposed:
Of the other three red wizards, two escaped the webs before we were able to kill them, allowing them to activate their pre-buffs, which included MGOI - in one case, PFNM was also involved, and Dynaheir got hit by a vitriolic sphere, though she made her second save, so the spell wasn't fatal. However, after sniping the one of the three unable to save against the webs, I was able to lure the next one out of there, which allowed us to get through with our melee weapons:
The final wizard didn't have PFNM active, so, while a slow spell affected two of our party, the others were able to take her down with ranged weapons:
A somewhat risky battle to take, even with the web cheese, but it worked out fine.
Next up, we made our way to Ulcaster, first fighting Icharyd. I knew that his second phase would dispel all of our buffs, so no pre-buffs for him. When the night and thunderstorm started, I used haste and chaos of battle, just trying to kill him before he'd be able to do too much damage:
Not the easiest fight for us, but we prevailed. Next, we entered the ruins, taking down spiders, slimes and dire wolves until encountering the Wolf of Ulcaster. With remove fear, PFE, Haste, chaos of battle and holy power, we felt ready for the battle, and success was imminent. We quickly brought the wolf to near death, but right at this point, we were hit with remove magic, removing crucial buffs from our arsenal:
It took a few more attacks to finally deal with the powerful foe, which resulted in Imoen getting paralyzed by a ghoul. We had to move quickly to deal with the remaining enemies, but in the event, everyone survived rather easily:
Could've gone pretty bad if the wolf had used a fear effect after our buffs were gone.
Next up, the other outside dungeon, the Firewine Ruins. Took us a while to fight our way to Lendarn. Funny thing - the mage himself didn't even survive an initial risky backstab:
We have some experience with killing ogre mages by now, so we didn't have much to fear with this one. Now, on to the Doomsayer - mostly magic missles here:
In an alarming display of overconfidence, I decided to also go for the final available outside encounter: Khark. In my defense, I did prepare a decent strategy - I noticed that Imoen had both spell thrust and secret word in her spellbook, and Dynaheir had spell thrust as well, so I thought - let's get rid of his spell defenses and go for a magic-based approach in stead of my usual physical one. Khark's prebuffs were interesting - he started both with his "vanilla prebuffs" (MGOI, PFNM and one more I think) plus his SCS prebuffs, which also happened to include MGOI again. Not sure if he had two MGOIs going at once, so I used both secret word and spell thrust with my two mages to open up things, while putting on some pressure with hasted melees (though not a lot: Just like the Durlag ghost, Kahrk also had PFMW going, so I had to use "excellent" weapons). With hasted party members running away as soon as they were taking damage, the assault on spell protections succeeded right away:
With the next round starting, Kahrk was about to cast another spell - but Dynaheir had prepared chromatic orbs (not blocked by shield, but with a fast casting time and guaranteed damge - good for interrupting) and Imoen had wand of frost charges at the ready. While Branwen tried and failed to apply silence (tried this one instead of any other spells beacuse of the saving throw penalty), Dynaheir's attempt to interrupt Kahrk with chromatic orb worked, while Imoen was starting to do some damage with the wand of frost:
To my surprise, Branwen's second silence spell succeeded - now Kahrk would have to spend his time casting vocalize:
He tried to do so - but once again, Dynaheir interrupted him with another chromatic orb:
Branwen failed to apply a hold spell, but we had done enough - with her penultimate wand of frost charge, Imoen took down this foe (also freezing him in the process, but his loot isn't very important):
Well, not really worth the risk, but it was a very fun and challenging encounter, and I'm quite happy with my chosen approach. Luckily, we won't need any wand of frost charges in the near future as far as I can tell. Now, time to finally deal with the main plot and move to the Nashkel Mines!
Just wandering through areas picking on the odd victim, Biff got hit by a critical for the first time - pulling a rapid disappearing act saved him from the possibility that Malkax would switch back to arrows and shoot him down.
In most cases though enemies had no distance attacks, so there was no real danger when attacking from invisibility - and with the 5 round paralyzation inflicted by ghoul touch, even targets with quite high HPs like Greywolf stood little chance once affected.
During this period I noted my inventory was full at one stage and went to find Neera to increase my bag collection - it was a good job though that I didn't have items destroyed by chunking active.
Zal was a potential problem with his missiles and he hit Biff once before he could scurry out of sight. However, after resting it didn't take long to get revenge.
Soon after that, Biff had finished clearing all the main encounters in the Cloud Peak Mountains and returned to Nashkel. He dealt with Neira there, with his new MSD blocking rigid thinking, before a couple of invisibilities stymied hold persons and his final attempt at paralysis worked.
With reputation up at 20, it was time to make some purchases with the help of a friends scroll (purchased after using invisible attacks to kill the golems at High Hedge).
An archmage's cloak, Claw of Kazgaroth and various scrolls and potions used up my liquid resources.
Looking for more things to sell, Biff went to find Meilum (though the best of his treasure was kept rather than sold). He saved at least a dozen times against paralysis, but that just meant he was quicker to get finished off when he finally was affected.
Similarly an ogre with a belt fetish provided some more equipment to wear before robbing an ankheg nest did yield some items to sell (the ankhegs themselves could easily kill Biff with a critical if he wasn't careful and they were just left alone).
Selling the ring of wizardry and a few gems I'd kept back before generated enough for the greenstone amulet, +3 staff and invisibility ring from Ulgoth's Beard.
Deciding it was time to let his cat out of the bag, Biff went to Durlag's Tower where his new staff bludgeoned a first battle horror to death to get him to level 7, with 5 more HPs.
Inside, MSD let him loot the tome, while more invisible blocking sorted out Riggilo after he inherited a lock of hair. Invisible attacks on a ghast made passage easier onto the roof, where a first use of haste quickly provided another level, though only a woeful 3 HPs this time.
Now with stoneskin, staying in melee with powerful melee opponents becomes a viable proposition.
I was planning for Biff to just attack Shoal, but it appeared he was not invisible when I thought he was and he suffered a near-fatal kiss when she suddenly turned on him. After getting away and resting to heal up, Biff gave Shoal a taste of her own touch-based medicine.
Biff will be moving on to the Nashkel Mine next.
Sorcerer L8, 40 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 92 kills
Level 2 spells Blur
Both the AC bonus and the adjustment to saving throws should be useful. Ghoul touch
Works in the same way as chill touch, but requires a save vs spell to prevent being paralyzed for 5 rounds. Invisibility
Allows both safe travel and free hits on most opponents. Luck
The short duration of this spell makes it far less attractive, but it can still be helpful in both attack and defense, so I thought I would give it a spin. One particular benefit, if you're short of stoneskins, is that even one positive luck ensures that an enemy always attacks a mirror image and not the real mage. Mirror image
In addition to making larger scale battles safer, this will help against some types of traps.
During this period I noted my inventory was full at one stage and went to find Neera to increase my bag collection - it was a good job though that I didn't have items destroyed by chunking active.
It wouldn't have mattered. All bags are flagged as critical items, so they can never be destroyed by chunking. The only way to lose one is to leave it behind on a map you can't come back to.
Biff wandered through the Nashkel Mine mainly invisibly, though he did buff up to deal with a pair of spiders.
For Mulahey, Biff lured him over to the door to allow a retreat if necessary. However, he was paralyzed even before he finished his first spell (rigid thinking, which would have been stopped by MSD if necessary).
Outside the mine, the Amazons were pulled away individually. Zeela's cleric spells were wasted using invisibility before Lamalha failed to survive an initial attack.
In Nashkel, Biff used a strength scroll to return Joseph's ring before buffing up for Nimbul. Rather as I expected, an initial greeting tap on the shoulder saw him run in terror - but he didn't get far.
Moving on to Beregost, Biff checked in with Officer Vai and shared paralysis around on a roomful of spiders.
The main objective though was to find Tranzig. His spells bounced off shield and MSD and his pleas for mercy were of no avail.
Rather than go straight to the Bandit Camp, Biff headed for the Lighthouse. With stoneskins and MSD, the sirines were not much trouble - he just had to avoid getting attacked in melee by them with the usual help of ghoul touch and invisibility. Note that, while ghoul touch is active, Biff's attacks all tend to be non-lethal. One difference with chill touch is that the latter consistently allows the extra attack with an off-hand weapon to do normal damage (there's also the possibility of deadly cold damage with the main hand). Where speed is important therefore, such as if other enemies are in the vicinity, casting chill touch over ghoul touch is a way of finishing off paralyzed enemies more quickly.
With stoneskins available, I didn't bother using invisible attacks against the golems.
The tome there counter-acted the constitution drop from using the Claw to give Biff back some missing HPs. I also kept hold of Relair's Cloak for a bit, which allows an additional attack in wolf form. You can't then cast, but pre-casting haste would push total APR up to 4 a round. I thought that using minor sequencer to cast ghoul touch would dispel the wolf shape and confirmed that later.
Another overdue encounter waited back at the basilisk area. An initial feint drew away Peter and Baerin, leaving the casters a bit exposed to provide Biff with his final BGEE level and 6 more HPs.
The same sort of thing then happened to the others. In order to experiment I took minor sequencer to confirm you can't dispel just the weapon from a polymorphed shape in the way you once could.
At the Bandit Camp, the bandit archers needed criticals to hit against shield and boots and failed to cause any trouble. Taurgosz was paralysed by the first attack on him.
In Tazok's tent, Venkt stubbornly saved against paralysis and Biff had to run to avoid his horror spell. The others all followed him outside though and fell victim to the ghoulies. Back inside, MSD could protect against all Venkt's remaining spells, while he was beaten up.
With finances looking a bit healthier again, Biff swapped out his standard +2 dagger in the offhand for the Dagger of Venom. In the Cloakwood, he used invisibility to get past the web traps in the second area, but did try his new dagger out for size on a bear a bit further along.
At the mine, Biff stuck with quarterstaff for an initial attack on Kysus - hoping (successfully) to kill him with straight damage before he could buff. Drasus and Genthore followed him away, leaving Rezdan exposed at the rear. Genthore was then drawn away and lost out in a straight melee contest. Despite being badly fatigued, Biff didn't rest, but used his final available ghoul touch to have a go at Drasus - and struck lucky.
Inside the mine, Biff used invisibility to avoid most combats. He did though once more tell his cat to lie down in a strategic position to deal with the initial guard and the battle horrors on the bottom level.
With the cat once more safely bagged, Biff rested before tackling Davaeorn. He dodged a lightning bolt, was immune to a fireball thanks to PfF and used invisibility to escape attempted charm and hold spells. I thought Davaeorn might try calling for help from summons, but he foolishly tried to mix it in melee - playing into Biff's strengths.
With the mine flooded behind him, Biff is about to enter Baldur's Gate.
Sorcerer L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 174 kills
Level 3 spells Minor spell deflection
Protects against single target spells (and similar traps). Haste
While improved haste would do the job, that's some way off. In the meantime the additional attack and the initiative bonus are both helpful. Protection from cold
Not much use early on, but comes into its own later in BG2EE. Protection from fire
Does what it says on the tin. Remove magic
Potential way to strip enemy defenses quickly.
As we'd done with Nashkel Mine we headed out to Durlags Tower, only turning back after defeating several enemies when we realised once more we had forgotten potions to deal with basilisks. A quick purchase later we completed our ransack of the upper levels and departed for good.
At the bandit camp we relied on backstabs and writhing fog to clear the exterior and invited the occupants of the main tent outside (via a backstab) to play with a couple of spirit summons.
Our day of excellence continued on through Cloakwood until Drasus put a spanner in the works and killed Spiky inside the guard hut. Crow had used lightning to kill Kysus and waited for his summons to kill Rezdan. Then he picked up his fallen companion and went to a temple.
With a freshly raised Spiky we thought our luck was in but an attempt at resting over Drasus' dead corpse saw a new group of guards appear. Spiky ran them around the mine entrance as Crow decided to tackle the two guards inside.
He gulped a couple of healing potions as a third guard arrived from outside, and then realised two more guards had turned up and hemmed him in. He was unable to gulp a potion of invisibility so soon after a healing potion and lamented to the still-outside Spiky that 7hp was not looking good. He survived one hit through his leather armour but not a second.
I’m going to give this a go with a berserker dualled to mage. I’m not sure if I should dual at 9 or 13, but I’m thinking 9 is safer.
I’m also not sure what the best weapon set up is.
On one hand, I think going for dual wielding scimitars and flails is a great set up, especially if you take Drizzt’s scimitars to breeze through the first game, part of me thinks you do most of your damage as a mage anyway, so while it doesn’t matter, why not just focus on scimitar since you can grab Usuno’s Blade +4 pretty much whenever you want, and that’ll be enough, especially when dualled with Belm in the offhand.
Unlike Michaela they are not generous, though they are honest.
They follow the Yorkshireman's motto:
“Ear all, see all, say nowt;
Eyt all, sup all, pay nowt;
And if ivver tha does owt fer nowt -
Allus do it fer thissen”
For the benefit of those who don't know the Yorkshire dialect this means:
Hear everything, see everything, say nothing.
Eat everything, drink everything, pay nothing.
And if you do anything for nothing, always do it for yourself.
[There is a saying about Yorkshiremen that they are like the Scots only not quite so generous. Both stereotypes being completely false]
However these two being honest will return Joia's ring, but being stingy would not give Farmer Brun 100 gp to get him back on his feet.
Details here:
They have returned Joia's ring and Tenya's Bowl and killed the ankheg near Tenya with the aid of the Command spell.
4 Broken hammers and 2 broken halberds caused us to wonder if a god had it in for us. However we gained quite a lot of experience from ankhegs and Helmud eventually got a proficiency point in flails. We had Sonner's flail +1 so he at least had an unbreakable wapon. I replaced one of my broken halberds when I took on a gnoll at High Hedge.
That was enough to keep me going until I got a +2 halberd by killing Ingot.
Heading south from beregost we killed a couple of ogrillon and recieved a ring of protection for delivering the letter one of them was carrying. We picked up the Colquetle Amulet and in Nashkel found some decent armour. We chatted to Noober and turned down an undeserved reward from Oublek.
We then helped Albert and 'Drienne before fighting Ingot.
I would dual at 9.
For weapon I would suggest hammers.
In BG1 you can get Ashideena early even with SCS. The key is to hire clerics (Viconia, Branwen) and cast the combination of Doom/Silence. Then follow with Commands. Just be carefull when he starts with Blade Barrier. Don´t approach to him and take him down from afar. And if he somewhat cast Aerial Servant, run away.
In Siege there is Sundermaul but I would not risk using it and stick with Ashideena. But for the most part you will be mage and rely on your party.
In BG2 you get Ashideena in the starting dungeon and it will be your weapon until you get Crom. It can be problem because +2 is not enough to hit planetars and some golems/demons. Of course you can try to take down Alhoon in chapter 2 or 3 but he is very dangerous oponent (at least with SCS). You can put one proficiency point in some weapon as axe/short sword and use the appropriate weapon agains enemies that are immune to +2 weapons.
With Crom + Helm of Balduran + some gauntlets your THACO will be - 5. Add emotions and some combination of Chant, Prayer and Recitation and you will reliably hit even the toughest oponents.
In offhand Belm or Kundane, for TOB (after you get Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization) I would consider the combination of Crom + Runehammer.
But if you want to play as mage and have berserker´s rage and hitpoints, then any weapon will do it. When I play this class, I do not use damaging spells and instead use all my spell slots on protection and fight with weapons.
Well we didn't get very far. We just rolled up some characters and finished off the Candlekeep chores. Nothing much happened, except a dialog caused Grond0 to get spotted by a guard and he had to run for his life. Luckily Gorion was willing to bring us out of Candlekeep to safety. We then saved here. If interested in character stats, click the spoiler.
Trio 29, Core rules, unmodded (Part 1234 in BG:EE and 567891011 12 in BGII:EE)
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Loury sighed. He'd written the entire story up apart from the last sentence (and then I clicked something and my browser closed. I'll just capture the key parts.)
We headed to the vampire nest, let Swish clear the traps with his feet rather than bothering to actually remove them properly, and staked Bodhi before taking her heart and the Lanthorn.
At Suldanesselar we used suitable weapons to nullify trolls, golems and arcane buffs. The black dragon got spike traps as did Irenicus at the Tree of Life.
In Hell we did the good trials, managed not to get ourselves killed or vorpalled by balors and allowed Irenicus two jumps before letting him land on life-ending snares.
In the Throne of Bhaal grove more snares killed Illasera without us having to fight.
The first Pocket Plane challenge went well, with Bodhi falling to snare > melee, Sarevok falling to group melee and Irenicus falling to Carsomyr dispel > melee and ranged attacks.
At Saradush Loury almost died against the opening guard fight but just realised in time he was leaking too much blood and ran. The guards found themselves unable to follow or to switch back to him on his return.
Kiser Jhaeri found his house looted despite Swish's protests at low-grade loot. Loury discovered a bunch of cheap gems in his inventory as a reward for making Swish waste his time here.
We did the remaining Saradush quests and went through the dungeon into the castle. The guards there badly wounded Loury again, and we healed slightly before facing Gromnir.
There followed a somewhat careless battle where Corecleric took heavy wounds, Loury got himself hemmed in on the stairs and had to GWW his way out before Gromnir closed right in, and then just as we were getting on top of matters we took a Wilting leaving Swish in single figure health and Corecleric a bit better.
Then Corecleric was chunked by Gromnir. Swish and Loury duly won the battle and quit the game.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 218, Core rules + unmodded (1st and final update) Oopsi (female elf wild mage, Grond0); Tintop O'Spamhand (male dwarf cleric, Gate70)
Previous run
Things didn't look great when the random selection produced a wild mage for a protagonist. In single player that can be made to work by casting few or no spells for a long time, but I wasn't going to do that in MP .
There was a quiet start with Oopsi's first couple of spells both casting correctly, but failing to blind Shoal. Tintop's commands worked better, but it still took a while to finish her off with sling bullets. Mad Arcand obviously knew there was something dodgy about this partnership and refused to say anything intelligible.
Things started to warm up when Oopsi's 3rd attempted spell (a sleep on some gnolls) briefly looked like it was a game ender - but the 'explosion' proved to be just smoke and mirrors.
In Beregost Oopsi's 4th attempted spell was another blind - intended to prevent Neera from chasing after her. In fact the spell served that purpose well as a surge fireball wiped out Neera - fortunately without catching any innocents in the blast.
Keen to demonstrate how spells should work, Tintop cast a silence at Silke and grinned evilly at her as it took effect and he closed in for the kill. She grinned evilly back as she ignored the supposed silence and unleashed a lightning bolt. In v2.6 that hits even if you get close to the caster - and Tintop was unfortunately standing close to a wall which reflected the blast to finish him off. Meanwhile, Oopsi had been trying her 5th spell. Rather than blinding Silke though, she got her 3rd surge in a row (at theoretical odds of around 1 in 10,000, raising the possibility that the random surge selection is not quite as random as it might be) - inflicting encumbered movement on herself.
That was a major concern as she lumbered towards a nearby house after seeing Tintop fall - just ducking inside in time as another lightning bolt was unleashed.
Oopsi was able to exit the house unobserved and, after selling a few odds and ends, Tintop was raised by the local priest. Despite his rough treatment he healed himself a bit and immediately set off for another encounter with the bard. His grin as his silence from a distance once more proved successful looked just a trifle strained - and turned quickly into a grimace as Silke unleashed another magic missile.
Now down to 1 HP, Tintop took the obvious course of action and pressed the attack . Silke grinned even more evilly than before as she chanted for another magic missile, but turned that into a curse as Oopsi perfectly timed a wand magic missile to disrupt it.
Silke now looked pretty sick herself, but was still extremely dangerous and Oopsi's next magic missile was too slow to prevent a stream of them coming the other way to conclusively finish Tintop off.
By this time though Oopsi felt committed to the fight and pressed forward herself. Having already attempted 3 magic missiles, Silke should theoretically have needed to be at least a 16th level bard to try a 4th. However, it was no surprise to see her produce one of those. With only 9 HPs that was certain death for Oopsi, but she did have the grim satisfaction of unleashing a sling shot of her own and ensuring the last participants in the fight would fall to the ground together ...
Delving into the mines, Imoen turned invisible at level three in order to disarm the traps. We ran into some trouble during the battle against the kobold shaman and chieftain due to a very bouncy lightning bolt and our lack of strategy - the party was quite injured, but survived without any need for spell usage:
I was a lot more careful and prepared when facing Mulahey - with the buffed up party approaching the cleric (moving into his room with haste), a quick and critical Amel backstab and a Wand of Fire charge into the kobold archers ended this battle within seconds:
Returning to Nashkel, we faced Nimbul. Since he has stoneskins, MI and armor, I once again decided to break through with spells - he only had MGOI for spell protections in his prebuffs, so one spell thrust was enough to make him vulnerable:
A few magic missles, and he was done. Next up was Tranzig. He got into a dialogue with Branwen, but somehow didn't turn hostile, so I just killed him with a backstab and a hit:
We explored Larswood, killing Teven and moving on to the druids:
They can shift into their animal forms at will with the shapeshifting tokens, but at least they are no longer bugged when it comes to their spells.
Just after this encounter, upon travel to Peldvale, we encountered the amazon ambush:
We still had our stoneskins, so no need for immediate protection. Instead, I prepared a) haste on the party, b) silence on the western amazon cleric, with Minsc attacking in case of failure, c) the others attacking the eastern amazon cleric. Amel was able to immediately interrupt spellcasting, and silence succeeded:
The clerics were already neutralized, so I only had to deal with the thieves - both stealthed at this point. Imoen turned our most vulnerable party member, Branwen, invisible, and both backstabs missed - a quick victory:
Now, we fought our way to the north of Peldvale, taking down Raiken (using some wand of sleep charges):
Next time, we shall make our way to the bandit camp.
In the City, attacking the ogre mage in the cellars without being exposed to the carrion crawlers was a potential problem. However, they were lured away using invisibility before the ogre's spells were depleted by invisibility and MSD and it could be safely meleed.
The poison quest was next. Lothander saved against ghoul touch as he dashed away. Larze was paralyzed at the first attempt, but his generally decent saves and high HPs gave him the rare distinction of just surviving that - though a single staff hit then finished him off. Invisibility stopped Marek from casting confusion before he was paralyzed - without Larze's HPs to help him ...
I beat up Ramazith for his ring, but with strength of just 18 there were a number of doors I couldn't open and I chose to leave those for now and just go to the Iron Throne. As I normally do anyway the enemies were pulled downstairs and isolated, making most of them easy victims - and the roof was easily available for resting to refresh spells. Zhalimar was the most resistant to paralysis and he went through 3 lots of stoneskins and was only finally tagged when already near dead.
The dopplegangers failed to even get through a single lot of stoneskins between them, allowing Biff to take a trip back to Candlekeep. DUHM gained there gave his melee abilities a major boost, along with the knock scrolls that allowed him to loot the tomes. The spiders were tackled one by one and all paralyzed with no trouble (stoneskin acting as a protection against any potential poison).
Biff managed to bypass the lightning trap without activating it on the way to the tomb, but got hit (just once) on the way back.
I couldn't resist taking on Prat's gang on the way out. There was a good start there when Bor was paralyzed by an opening attack.
Using invisibility to retreat allowed him to be finished off and spread the others out, so they could be picked off individually.
Back in the City, there were a few more bits and pieces to do - including sneaking into Degrodel on the way to get Balduran's Cloak and ascending Ramazith's tower to get the final tome. With that done, Biff went to find Slythe. I saw no reason to involve Krystin, so Biff just attacked invisibly - and a single blow effectively ended the contest.
The fight at the palace, without summons or disablers, had the potential to be tricky. Hence Biff used potions for the first time to buff himself up. He started the contest by using a scroll to put spirit armor on Belt. Two of the dopplegangers attacked him, while just one went for Belt. The other 3 went for Liia and didn't take long to deal with her before all turning on Belt. By then the original one attacking Belt was unconscious with morale failure, but the odds still seemed far from a racing certainty - so Biff turned Belt invisible to refocus the dopplegangers on himself.
They made no impact (unsurprisingly, given Biff's effective -16 AC against slashing attacks as well as stoneskins) and Belt was still only at injured status when Biff tracked down the final doppleganger and stopped it in its tracks.
Biff managed to bypass all the traps in the maze on the way to the Undercity. Rahvin's party was left alone there, leaving just Sarevok to deal with. Rather than cheese him, I decided to fight fair there. After approaching the dais invisibly to activate Sarevok, Biff used a PfM scroll to protect against Semaj until he teleported away. When Angelo appeared, Biff used a potion to disappear - leaving Angelo annoyed at taking damage from Semaj's cloudkill and eliminating one of the opponents.
Potion and scroll buffs were used before attacking Angelo. He responded with exploding arrows, prompting Biff to disappear again - leaving Tazok annoyed with Angelo and eliminating a second opponent .
Tazok was then on the wrong end of a staff, leaving Sarevok all alone.
Rather than just wait for his PfM to expire, Biff chose to attack Sarevok without stoneskins. He had a marginal initiative advantage, so was able to get a number of unanswered attacks in, but still suffered a number of hits and used regeneration potions to keep his own HPs up. Sarevok was also suffering the odd hit though and he was down to single figure HPs when the scroll finally expired. That allowed Biff to apply stoneskins and close in for the kill with a single attack.
The automatic transfer to SoD allows you to keep any excess XP earned during the current session (since you last loaded the game). That meant Biff arrived in the prologue dungeon with 338k XP and could take an immediate 10th level - gaining a disappointing 4 HPs for his final die roll, along with shadow door. As I was writing up these notes though I got a slight sinking feeling and checking in Biff's potion bag confirmed he hadn't picked up the violet potion. That will make tackling Belhifet slightly harder, but that should still be not too difficult with the use of mage scrolls.
Sorcerer L10, 58 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 247 kills
Level 4 spells
While there's a fairly restricted number of useful spells for this challenge at most levels, level 4 still offers plenty of viable choices. I decided to leave improved invisibility, which I usually take (shadow door offering an alternative) and similarly wait for GoI, rather than use its lesser cousin. Enchant item had some attraction, but would only rarely be needed and the odd scroll can substitute there. Eventually I decided the same was true for fireshield blue, partly because I don't normally use minor sequencer or polymorph self much and thought this run would be appropriate to do that. Greater malison
Improves prospects for disabling opponents with touch effects. Minor sequencer
Allows quick rebuffing or to apply spells while polymorphed. Polymorph self
Makes available high APR in spider form, good mage defenses in jelly form or high damage per hit in ogre form. Spirit armor
Provides both an AC improvement and better save vs spells. Stoneskin
Removes the threat of the big critical.
In the SoD prologue dungeon Biff went invisibly to find Porios and persuade him to surrender. Korlasz needs more active persuasion - and her buffs and movement makes that difficult using just melee. However, the opponents also found it difficult to hit Biff and eventually he successfully stopped her with paralyzation.
Rather than finish her off though he waited for her to recover so she could surrender all her forces and he wouldn't have to deal with lots of remaining enemies. Biff got his final SoD level straight after that fight.
In the City, some NPCs died so I could sell their equipment and buy up more potions and scrolls to hoard. Then it was off to take a minimalist route to sort out the Crusade.
- at the Coast Way Crossing Biff used invisibility to avoid combat at the bridge.
- he skipped through the Troll Claw Woods invisibly.
- all ambush areas were ignored.
- at the Forest of Wyrms he avoided combat on the way into the temple. Ziatar was pretty quickly paralyzed.
However, I forgot to fully buff death saving throw before heading for the Neothelid and, despite a spell saving throw of -8, the use of the Claw left death at just 5 and Biff was held immediately. When you want the Neothelid to surface it has a nasty habit of not doing so. However, this time rather than stand off and cast spells it chose to attack immediately - and invisibility & stoneskins offered little resistance ...
The session after my last update didn't last long at all. The party visited the Ice Island and cleared it with Eldoth's dispelling arrows, and physical attacks. We then went to the Iron Throne, where I wanted a fair fight. The party buffed, then went to the upper floor, and retreated to avoid a Remove Magic that we had no way of protecting ourselves against. The idea was to return and fight the battle upstairs, but Zhaalimar and Gardush followed us downstairs. Irmgard got boxed in between the two of them and they jumped at the opportunity to expose Irmgard for what she really was: a wannabe warrior.
(As you can see from the screenshot, she was about to free herself with the wand of the heavens when she took a massive hit from Gardush for 44 damage. She canceled the wand charge for an invisibility potion but failed to quaff it before a second, fatal hit landed.)
We returned to Beregost where we calmed Marl before killing Silke and Karlat. We sold some shells and used the prtoceeds to pay for another set of ankheg armour. That has left us poor so perhaps we should now see if there are any ankheg left for us to kill in the nest.
Due to good positioning against Silke, the battle was more profitable than usual.
At that point we were both level 4.
We re-entered the ankheg nest and took the body of his son back to Farmer Brun.
We then got some belts by fighting an ogre and upon returning to Beregost were given another suit of ankheg armour.
After seeking out Perdue's sword we were given a reward for it, not much but adequate.
Helmud reached level 5 and has memorised some healing spells to make our travels a little safer.
Some merenaries attacked us and paid the price. They provided little experience but did give three suits of plate armour.
Zordral similarly paid the price of attacking us as did Greywolf.
We then accrued a party which would hopefully be sufficient to gain me godhead.
My renewed delight with no-reload BG play and my unwavering love for clerics (in spite of my poor results with them) have made me start a new run, with a priest of Talos, Mallus:
Hopefully the top tier portrait and my best roll ever for a single-class cleric will help me look after him. It might also help that I'm back to no difficulty-based damage changes (learned my lesson there, will leave that for LoB). Mallus is Chaotic Neutral rather than evil so I won't have to feel bad about not picking evil options all the time. Where Irmgard and party were all about martial combat with non-martial characters, I intend to make this run revolve around the elements. As a child Mallus was fascinated the forces of nature: storms, fire, lightning, and he was touched by Talos as a young lad in Candlekeep. (Touched by Talos means getting hit by a red lightning stroke that does the recipient no harm, and tells them they're chosen to serve the Stormstar.)
We shall focus on dealing elemental spell and weapon damage and raising elemental resistances. A priest of Talos seems to be a perfect Charname to me mechanically (with their Storm Shield and Lightning Bolt innates), lore-wise, and because there are no priest of Talos NPCs or NPCs who could credibly be edited into a priest of Talos. Mallus starts out with * in hammers and * in slings.
Rather than soloing the first 5 or 6 levels, Mallus sets out to form a full party with companions that fit the theme as soon as reasonably possible. This will make progress slower, but I'm enjoying the game a lot lately, so that's probably a good thing. The first companion is the exception to the 'elemental' rule, at least for the time being: good old Imoen as a plain Thief (* short swords, * crossbows). I've installed @jastey's Imoen 4 Ever mod, which should allow me to keep her on board throughout the saga. Imoen is to dual to Mage at level 9, and I intend to give her the Invoker specialization for more potent elemental spells (of which SCS adds many from IWD). Imoen joins after Mallus has cleared the first two maps (with the exception of the four bandits from Kagain's BG1 NPC Project quest).
I installed the SCS NPC customisation component that has been discussed in the Adventurer's Lounge. It makes NPCs join at the exact amount of XP needed to match the experience level that Charname has (if they share the same XP table), or that Charname would have in the NPC's class (if they have different XP tables). So recruiting another cleric at 13k XP will see the cleric join with 13k XP, but recruiting a fighter at 13k XP will see the fighter join with 8k XP. We avoid "wasting" XP this way, by having Mallus and Imoen do some of the early quests in Beregost (BGQE Alanna's neighbor and Family quarrel quests, Firebead, Landrin's spiders), so that Mallus reaches just over 2250 XP, enough for @AionZ's Cavalier Sirene to join as a level 2 character (** axes, ** two-handed swords). A tiefling and a Cavalier, she has good innate elemental resistances (20 acid, 10 cold, 10 electricity, 30 fire). The idea is to boost those further with items and spells, so that she can melee enemies while other party members unleash the elements upon them.
It then only takes two ogrillons and a letter for Mirianne to attain the 2500 XP point. The party travels to Nashkel, to the Carnival to be more precise, where Branwen becomes the fourth party member, not as a cleric but as a shaman (* clubs, * shortbows). According to the Faiths & Avatars sourcebook In some societies, such as that of the Northmen of the Moonshae Islands and the barbarians of Icewind Dale, Tempus is served by shamans, so this appears to be an excellent alternative kit for her. I haven't played with Shamans much, but I know they get Writhing Fog and Spirit Fire for free, and they can of course add some more elemental spells appropriate for the theme of this run. However they only get to pick five spells per level, and I intend to use other valuable spells as well, so one or two elemental damage spells per spell level should be enough. My install includes @argent77's Improved Shamanic Dance, which allows Branwen to move at half speed while dancing. Her first spell picks are Doom and Sunscorch.
Back in Beregost, the first fireworks are put on display when the party helps out Neera against three Thayans. Mallus is pleased to see Neera cast Burning Hands at one of her attackers, while Branwen blinds and burns the wizard (Commanded by Mallus), with a Sunscorch.
Neera joins the group as a Dragon Disciple (* staves). This is a bit of stretch because of the whole Wild Magic theme surrounding her persona. But then SCS NPC Customisation tells me to save and load game if I want to give Neera her wild mage spells (Nahal's, Chaos Shield and Improved Chaos Shield). When I do and then make her a Dragon Disciple, those spells are in her spellbook but they don't actually do anything, and she has no surges when casting normal spells. All in all I think she makes a fine 'wild' Dragon Disciple considering her struggle with a couple of non-functioning Wild Mage spells, her vocation as an intuitive sorcerer rather than an academic mage, and her breath weapon as a possible explanation for how she accidentally set her fellow students on fire, which caused her to flee the High Forest. I let her keep Burning Hands as a level 1 spell and I pick Blindness as a second level 1 spell. Every future spell level shall have at least one elemental spell, but I'm inclined to go with different types of elemental damage as fire damage alone would make her less effective against the game's many fire-resistant foes.
We talk Marl down, warn Keldath Ormlyr of a drunk nearby, and then we travel back to Nashkel, where some babysitting and a chat with Noober suffice for Mallus to hit 3000 XP. Time to talk to our final recruit: Rasaad (* scimitars, * daggers). No need to change his class/kit, he's perfect as a Sun Soul Monk with all his fire-based kit abilities.
Hobgoblins and Joia at the FAI, Tarnesh (Command, Blindness, ranged attacks and Shamanic spirits), Landrin's spiders, boots, and wine provided more XP. Karlat in Beregost did not, as he was slain by Finch while Commanded, Sunscorched and Blinded by the party. Oh well, I can't blame the sweet Gnome for helping out. Bjornin's half-ogres are softened up with a Lightning Bolt from Mallus,
before we pick them off. We travel back to Beregost, taking down a ghast that ambushes us, and killing some gnolls for Perdue. Bardolan has told us about Nashkel's missing guard captain Brage, so we're probably go and look for him next.
We approached the bandit camp from the west, laying down two webs immediately. This held off basically all of the non-named bandits, though Taugosz was approaching with an oil of speed. To speed up the killing, Dynaheir also cast fireball:
Two more webs, and a wand of paralyzation charge plus a command spell on Taugosz (both worked) granted us victory against the first wave, but now the tent officers approached, with Venkt leading the charge - while he didn't have MGOI, he still made all of his saves against web, and he dealt some damage to the party with his lance of disruption:
However, the very same lance also ended up killing Taugosz for us:
Venkt also didn't have PFNM, so we were able to just shoot him with ranged weapons. The other named enemies got caught in the webs:
Victory was ours, and we turned in a few quests, purchased a few items and encountered the Molkar ambush:
I split up the party, casting haste and recitation. Most of the pressure was put on the enemy mage, who indeed failed to finish any spells, while the priest was able to cast hold person, but Ajantis made his saving throw:
We interruped any further cleric spells with magic missles, and victory was ours:
The party entered Cloakwood, siding with Aldeth and dealing with the spider cave by luring our foes outside:
Next up, the shadow arch druid Amarande fell to our blades, though he was close to finishing a dangerous uninterruptable spell (I assume it was insect plague), because getting through his ironskins wasn't easy:
After backstabbing the Hamadryad and clearing the wyvern cave, we made it to Drasus, starting the battle with two webs out of sight, which allowed us to take down the two fighters:
The mages fired off their pre-buffs, with one including MGOI and the other making his saves anyway. Skeletons approached, and Dynaheir, protected with her own MGOI, used spell thrust on the protected mage, while Minsc equipped Spider's Bane to charge at our foes. Using some arrows +2 to counter PFNM, Amel + Skeletons + Minsc took down one of the mages, though the other managed to escape the webs and charm Minsc:
Luckily for us, this mage was out of sight of the remaining party, and he was happy to just stand there, doing nothing, until both the webs and the charm effect ended, giving the party an opportunity to swarm him. He was able to cast a monster summoning spell, but perished shortly after that:
Bassilus attacked us but spells such as silence, command and suchlike were sufficient to defeat him. Zargal and his cronies were killed next before we moved to the archaeological site which was straightforward. We then took on the sirine in the lighthouse area. They were easy enough, but not so the flesh golems. Helmud was held by a trap and the flesh golem attacked and my attacks on the golem were ineffective. Helmud died so I picked up his equipment and ran. I had to leave behind a lot of bullets, but they are cheap enough.
I didn't have the gold to raise him so earned a bit more before going to the temple.
We returned to the cave and we kited the golem. Helmud ran around the cave whilst I pumped arrows of piercing into the golem.
When we looted the cave, we avoided the other golems.
Getting revenge on the half-ogres that injured Bjornin brought our reputation to 19.
We went to hunt basilisks as we had the requisite equipment and killed Mutamin, Kirian et al as well without having to use the necklace of missiles.
We picked up a ring of protection from fire and took Samuel to the FAI.
We spent a few minutes rolling this pair up yesterday and saved. They set out today, managed to not get any levels when defeating Shoal the Nereid and at level 1 foolishly decided to face Greywolf and run past him instead of away from him. Barrieo's level 1 protection counted for nothing with 10 of his 11hp bashed away and the final hit point nullified by cold damage.
Entering the Iron Mines, there were four crucial battles we had to face: Hareishan, Natasha, the ogre mage and Davaeorn. First up, Hareishan - an invisible Imoen disarmed the traps, and Dynaheir entered first, protected with stonekins - just moving into sight for a very short time in order to throw down her double web minor sequencer. With her invoker specialization, this held everyone but Hareishan herself, who was immune thanks to MGOI. Dynaheir immediately turned around again, moving out of sight:
Hareishan made the mistake of following her, moving outside of the webs - this also put her into melee range of our hasted party. We quickly worked our way through her stoneskins while she was busy casting remove magic, and while she had another mirror image at her disposal, we had enough APR to get through any protections she would try to renew:
Now, I only had to shoot down the webbed archers and guards. Moving on to Natasha - Amel moved in stealthed, to maybe get a backstab in, but Natasha appears to start under invisibility - so I had the visible Ajantis move in (I chose him because of his paladin bonus saving throws). Natasha started dispelling his buffs while Amel killed the hobgoblin elites:
Everyone else moved in, and Dynaheir + Imoen started to cast spell thrust, with the others attacking. Natasha, meanwhile, had cast a slow spell, but everyone in range was able to make their saving throw:
She wouldn't get another chance - our fighters moved through her stoneskins, interrupting her final spell attempt, and my mages didn't even get the chance to take advantage of the removal of her spell protections.
The ogre mage also is initially invisble, so once again Ajantis moved in. The usual chromatic orb opening wasn't much of a problem - the paladin made his save, everyone else rushed in, and we interrupted all other spellcasting attempts. We cleared the remaining level, moved back to level 1 and rested (least dangerous rest ambushes up there). Onto Davaeorn - New minor sequencers (magic missles, to quickly kill battle horrors), and an invisible Imoen started disarming traps. Amel donned the boots of speed and used a PFM-Scroll, charging Davaeorn. Imoen (still invisible, so in no danger) actually got affected by Davaeorns own minor sequencer (web + stinking cloud), but the others were positioned out of range to deal with incoming guards (though none arrived). The battle horrors moved in sight of the party while Davaeorn was teleporting around, followed by Amel, who was working through his physical defenses - Branwens skeletons made sure to engage them in melee while Dynaheir started firing off her magic missles (with the help of some of the others using magic missle wands as well):
We quickly got rid of the first battle horror, with most of the party still holding back:
Then, suddenly, Davaeorn teleported directly into the party. Huh. I've never seen him teleport to this position before. However, just like with Hareishan, this turned out to be a bad idea for the mage: Amel had already removed his stoneskins at this point, and he was now surrounded and weakly protected - with the skeletons holding off the second battle horror, all I had to do was attack:
We killed the second battle horror and left the mine - that went rather well. I entered the city and picked up Balduran's Helmet. Now, the party is resting after the exhausting journey. Next time: City sidequests!
@Enuhal Not that it matters now since it went fine, but Natasha's Hobgoblin Elites aren't "paired" with her in any way. If you move a stealthed/invisible character into her room, the Elites will start wandering around, leaving you free to pick them off without Natasha intervening once they eventually head outside the room.
This can be useful in order to reduce how many targets you need to consider at once in that fight since Natasha is pretty damn deadly if she gets a chance (Cone of Cold, Sunfire, Lightning Bolts, even a 2x Magic Missile Minor Sequencer on occasion...). I find her dangerous enough that I usually solve the fight using summons.
Mallus and his elementally inclined party have been through enough adventures for an update, starting with the Cloudpeaks areas. These provide easy XP through Albert & Rufie, Ingot, Ludrug, and Petrine. However, at level 2-3 Vax (separated from Zal) turns out to be too much of an obstacle for the party. He consistently makes his saves, so we leave the area to look for Bassilus. That one too is a dangerous foe, and we need a retreat and a rest when he summons an aerial servant, but we prevail thanks to a Silence from Mallus, a Blindness from Neera, Branwen's spirits, and a Hold Person from Mallus. The Cyricist is then subjected to an onslaught of physical and elemental (fire) attacks. Fittingly our Halfling hero lands the killing blow, breaking his mundane hammer just when he has no more use for it.
He now wields Ashideena, the perfect BG1 weapon for a priest of Talos. We also pick up Melicamp and then travel west to the coast.
Upon her reaching level 3 I discover I gave Sirene ** in two-handed weapon style, and not in two-handed swords as I thought. (She comes with her own +1 greatsword.) Instead of making her proficient in two-handed swords I give her a first pip in scimitars, because there is a certain +3 scimitar that can help her become 100% fire resistant. And thankfully a certain dark elf has no more use for it, slain as he is by gnolls (which is also good news for Rasaad's AC). Sirene shall be a sword and board paladin until BG2. I intend to give her a second pip at level 6 and maybe a first pip in dual-wielding at level 9. Maybe, with lots of potions, she can dual-wield against Belhifet. Two-handed weapons will have to wait for a long time.
The Gift of Peace, the last piece of the puzzle for Sirene's item-based 100 fire resistance lies with Droth, and boy does he make us pay dearly for it. Mallus approaches under Sanctuary, and gets knocked unconscious by Shoal. With his Sanctuary still intact, all he needs to do is wait a bit to get back on his feet, then retreat to heal up. So far so good, but as we retreat back toward the area border we are greeted by three ghouls that weren't there before. Mallus barely has time to heal, and Neera gets paralyzed by one ghoul as we try to move past them. She falls. There goes our caster of Blindness. We decide to try and kill the creatures, but without solid AoE damage we are slow at that. We're barely done when Droth catches up with us. Mallus immediately starts a casting of Silence, but Droth is much faster with a Sleep cast at Imoen. She doesn't make her save, though neither does Droth. Mallus tries to buy the party some time with two Commands and Branwen manages to briefly blind the ogre mage with a Sunscorch, but he still finds his way to Imoen and finishes her off.
Once the Silence wears off, Droth is at near death, which is clearly not dead enough for us to prevent him from casting another Sleep. This time Sirene is affected; Branwen and Rasaad make their saves. Droth extends the mayhem with an Icelance that, with its 5d6 cold damage, kills Branwen from full health (18 HPs). Out of curiosity I check Droth's HPs with ctrl-M. The bastard has 1 HP left at this point. Mallus dodges a conjuration spell by retreating out of our enemy's sight before he finishes him with his trusty sling.
A very hard-fought victory, that would have gone better without the ghouls I suspect. Rasaad decides to have a word with the Surgeon, hoping he might raise our fallen, but all he does is heal Mallus. We thank him anyway. Rasaad's little excursion alerts the ogres, and he fails to shake them off, so we have to kite them around a bit as Sirene is still asleep.
No further incidents occur and we make it safely back to Beregost where we get Neera, Imoen, and Branwen back on their feet. Those three all gain a level (3, 4, and 3 respectively) from Mallus's looting of the ankheg cave under Sanctuary and bringing farmer Brun his dead son's body. Rasaad and Mallus gain a level (4) from the party's dispatchment (with Commands) of the ankheg with Nester's dagger, and from their intervention in a conflict between Talos-venerating fisherman and a priestess of Umberlee.
Mallus gets a pip in two-weapon style, Rasaad in single-weapon style. Branwen picks Curse as her 3rd level 1 spell (in addition to Doom and Sunscorch), and Neera Shield (in addition to Blindness and Burning Hands). Imoen gets a pip in two-weapon fighting and invests some skill points into pickpocketing because one of the lessons learned from Droth is that we want to be better equipped. It also fits from a lore-perspective since priests of Talos are wont to pursue wealth and luxury according to the sourcebooks.
We acquire a potion of mind focusing from the Temple of Wisdom, and then travel to the High Hedge for a potion of perception. However before we speak with Thalantyr, Rasaad first lures the wizard's flesh golems outside, where Branwen is performing her shamanic dance. The spirits can barely take two or three hits as the golems hit on a roll of 2 or better, and for serious damage, but Branwen manages to keep a fairly steady stream going and Rasaad, fleet-of-foot as he is, repeatedly rushes in and out to strike at the golems with Twinkle.
Soon we're 4k XP richer, followed by another 2k when Thalantyr retransforms Melicamp. We buy a potion of perception (well actually three, the others will come in handy later), and with a potion of master thievery from the Nashkel Carnival and the aforementioned potion of mind focusing, Imoen does an excellent job stealing gear back from a merchant at the Nashkel Carnival.
We conclude our business with Vax and Zal, with Sirene acting as our fire tank,
and we dispatch Neira in the Nashkel inn, thanks to Mallus Holding her while her Hold Person is saved against by Sirene.
Up north we kill close to 20 ankhegs, with the help of the wand of sleep (passed around between the companions when an ankheg saves) and Mallus's Commands. Neera escapes with her life once (2/18 HPs), but other than the hunting trip is uneventful, and we're rewarded with level-ups for Imoen, Branwen, and Neera. Branwen becomes proficient in the use of darts. I don't like their range, but she has to be somewhat close to enemies anyway for her spirits to attack them. Furthermore 3 APR is good and I want to see if she can dance twist with darts. She also learns a first tier 2 spell: Cure Moderate Wounds, an SCS/IWD addition. Makes sense to me as that spell level is notoriously poor for druids, and it leaves open a tier 1 spell pick that would otherwise be Cure Light Wounds. Neera's first level 2 spell is Mirror Image, as she really needs some defense.
Three battle horrors, a doom guard, and four basilisks (slain by skeleton warriors) at Durlag's Tower provide the next significant XP boost (after the ankhegs).
The same goes for Mutamin and his basilisks and Kirian's party. Sirene reads the green PfPetrification scroll, drinks a stone giant strength potion, and together with two skeleton warriors, she deals with the basilisks with her throwing axes. Korax holds Mutamin before he can kill the ghoul. Upon reaching level 5, Branwen learns Bless and Slow Poison, and Neera Magic Missile and Invisibility. When all the basilisks are taken care of, Branwen heals our two skeleton warriors. Korax and the two summons then position themselves close to Kirian and her men, and when the latter go hostile, Neera Blinds Baerin and Mallus Silences Kirian and, on the second try, Peter. We defeat them with physical attacks and precise fire damage from Rasaad and Neera (to avoid friendly fire).
Some wolves east of the Temple of the Morning,
Zargal and his friends, and nine sirines and three flesh golems are the source of yet another surge in XP. With Cavalier Sirene immune to charm and poison and Mallus immune to charm thanks to the Helmet of Charm Protection bought at Feldepost's Inn, and with the contributions of some skeleton warriors and Branwen's shamanic spirits, the sirines stand no chance.
The flesh golems are dealt with the same way as Thalantyr's flesh golems: with shamanic spirits doing the tanking and sneak attacks from Rasaad. Sirene helps out with her Beruel's Retort throwing axes.
The XP gained suffices for another level (5) for Mallus and Rasaad. Mallus gets the manual of bodily health identified, reads it for 18 CON, and then levels up, so as to immediately profit from +1 shorty saves against death, wands, and spells. He also equips the Claw of Kazgaroth. As a priest (best saves vs death) with full shorty saves, the Claw's penalties are very limited for him.
Finally we clear the Firewine Plains map, defeat Meilum,
and we complete Neera's quest. We do a bit of pre-buffing for the battle against Ekandor and co: Remove Fear, Shield for Rasaad (using the Shield Amulet) and Neera, and Mirror Image for Neera. Neera also applies an oil of speed as she's going to be rushed by the enemy warriors (two bodyguards and an ogre). Mallus summons two skeleton warriors. Once combat starts, Ekandor casts Stoneskin (not from scroll but from memory), but then Neera stuns him with the wand of paralyzation. Rasaad and Imoen focus their physical attacks on him.
Sirene engages the ogre together with the skeletons. She takes quite a bit of damage and we consider a potion of absorption, but the ogre's weapon breaks so he deals limited, non-lethal damage now. Mallus Silences the second mage and together with Branwen he attacks the wizard in melee. He also drops his first Holy Smite on most of the enemies.
Neera finishes one of the two bodyguards with wand scorchers. When all foes lie dead on the ground, the companions take down the second bodyguard in a joint effort, and everyone survives even if Branwen's wounds are pretty grievous.
Our rewards: Adoy's belt and a scroll of Stoneskin. The scroll isn't that great a prize for this party, since Neera as a Dragon Disciple doesn't learn spells from scrolls, and Imoen shall only reach Mage level 6 in BG1 if we dual her at level 9.
Everyone is around 30k XP now. There are still several wilderness areas we can cover, or we might just go to the Nashkel Mines.
We continued our pursuit of Caelar, killing many minor foes on the way. Safana proved that she has what it takes by killing Morentherine with a throwing dagger.
We went to the Temple of Bhaal taken over by acolytes of Cyric. We rescued some followers of Caelar and told a Priestess of Bhaal to henceforward do good which she agreed to do due to my lineage.
Safana going on ahead of us enabled us to use area of effect spells effectively with the result that even mindflayers were defeated quite easily.
The Neothelid was the hardest enemy to beat. We didn't have to defeat the seeking sword. It attacked a summoned skeleton whilst the rest of us made a sharp exit. When we returned the spell was no longer active.
After saving a dragon we ended up at the Boareskyr Bridge and after getting a planatar wing, some ale and a scroll, we ended up inside the fortress. Dorn was also released.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 220, Core rules + unmodded (update 1) Retro (female gnome bounty hunter, Grond0); Doppel (male human sun soul monk, Gate70)
Previous run
The random character selection produced a thief for me. However, Gate70 pointed out that, as I'd recently rolled up a thief, when I'd intended to produce a bounty hunter, balance in the universe could be restored by doing the reverse here .
It didn't take long to find the way to Shoal - and this time (unlike the previous abortive run with 2 triple classes) pick up immediate levels.
Retro's good charisma allowed her to coax a reward out of Mad Arcand.
In Beregost, Retro attacked Neera, but failed to finish her off with a single shot and therefore tried to withdraw before she could initiate a conversation. Unfortunately, just at that point Doppel started talking to Marl and, by the time that was over, Neera was starting her own speech. Retro let her Thayan opponents appear, forgetting that the EE has now updated that encounter such that Neera can no longer be killed by them (or by us during it ). In the end we therefore helped her win the battle.
We attempted to take her last HP as she walked away - but 3 shots all missed and we said goodbye to the gem bag .
Our problems with bags continued when the potion case, which had been bought only seconds earlier at High Hedge, evaporated from Retro's inventory - leaving just the scroll case to help with inventory management in BGEE.
In Nashkel, Retro learnt Bhaal CLW before heading off in search of Meilum. Doppel suggested stopping on the way to throw a trap at some xvarts. The first attempt at that failed as Retro moved forward a step in the act of throwing and came into sight of a xvart, but a follow-up attempt was more successful.
Meilum was slowed down by a couple of traps of his own and didn't last long.
At the basilisk area, Doppel was protected by a green scroll and mixed up his time hitting them while they were gazing and running away from them as they attempted to switch to melee. Killing that lot produced more levels before Doppel sneaked up on Mutamin and took advantage of him being slowed by a special trap to hammer in fists and finish him off with a sun soul ray.
The 0 speed casting of that is great against mages even when they're not slowed. There's nothing like seeing a sudden flare of panic in a mage's eye as they realize that even their reliable magic missile spells now cast too slowly.
A couple of traps pushed out from behind a pillar killed Kirian and Lindin as Doppel showed himself to cause all that party to go hostile at the same time.
The others were near death and didn't last long.
Back in Beregost, Silke may pay no attention to being silenced, but is vulnerable to traps. On my screen it looked odd that Doppel hit and killed her after she had gone invisible, but that's asynchronicity for you.
Walking from that encounter to the edge of the map, Doppel spotted Neera apparently still hanging about. He could even hit her, but at this point my screen was in control of the game and 'Neera' just laughed at Doppel until we went on our way.
At the coast Retro had a cunning plan - suggesting that Doppel venture unprotected into the midst of some sirines . If all went well, she would interrupt their invisibility with one special trap thrown from out of sight and then interrupt attempted charms with a second. There shouldn't then be much left to finish off. The first stage went to plan.
However, only 1 of the 3 sirines was interrupted when charming - and Doppel switched sides. Fortunately he didn't see Retro and stayed where he was, so it was a sirine that wandered into a couple of back-up traps. Once Doppel recovered, Retro was free to backstab the second sirine (with much less danger the run would be ended by all of the party being out of control at once), while Doppel finished off the last one.
Retro was keen to try that again on Sil's group, but this time made even more of a pig's ear of it - getting too close with the first trap attempt and failing with the cast. Now very exposed, Doppel was again charmed while Retro killed a sirine following him with a couple more traps. When he recovered, Doppel tried to complete the job at his end, but picked up a feeblemind effect as the sirines switched to melee. However, they don't do much damage like that and Retro had plenty of time to shoot them down.
Inside the pirate cave, traps were much more productively used. The first golem died to a couple of normal traps, while both the second and third were injured and slowed by a special one each and easily finished off.
Comments
I thought I'd again take a break from racking up more deaths in my long-life challenge by trying something different. Biff has had plenty of work in the past killing enemies with melee, but he's normally been allowed to disable them first. This time I thought I would see how far he could get if the only way he could affect enemies directly was melee.
In Candlekeep chill touch showed its virtue as a couple of assassins were punched unconscious, but failed their saves and immediately died of additional cold damage.
Despite having already taken a big risk against Xzar, I was actually conscious that Biff would be very vulnerable early on, so looked for some quest XP to help him out. Marl and Firebead offered easy instalments before a hobgoblin showed up his own hopelessly slow weapon to allow Biff to relieve him of some boots for Zhurlong. After travelling down to Nashkel during the day (to avoid bandits), Noober then offered enough XP for level 2, before shutting up permanently - 6 welcome additional HPs there.
After Mr Colquetle got his amulet back, Biff moved up to the FAI. The ring of wizardry there is of pretty limited benefit in this run, without the ability to use either damaging or disabling spells. However, the hobgoblins there added a bit more XP to his total before he returned Joia's ring. North of FAI, Biff then chased some fishermen into a corner and finished them off to get a bowl. Returning that to Tenya was enough for another level, but just the 4 HPs this time.
He'd learned PfP with that level and moved on to the basilisk area to try that out. The lesser basilisks have a relatively slow weapon speed, meaning it's normally possible to retreat after they switch to attacking in melee, but before they get an attack in - hence chill touch was used there while killing the 3 in the group to the south - that was enough for level 4.
Greater basilisks are far more dangerous in melee, so Biff initially just nipped in and out rather than attacking continuously. On his second casting of ghoul touch though he successfully tagged the basilisk with paralysis.
The rest of the basilisks were finished off before Biff turned to Mutamin. He used invisibility to negate horror and then 2 acid arrows - but got the timing wrong on the last of the latter. However, after resting to heal himself, he was able to tank a few LMDs before beating Mutamin up in melee.
Sorcerer L5, 32 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 36 kills
With each update I'll post a summary of the spells proposed for each level, with a brief description of why they've been chosen for this run.
Level 1 spells
Chill touch
Pretty good option to improve close-up melee early on (including disabling dual-wielding penalties), though becomes obsolete later.
Find familiar
Offers a HP boost, as well as potential games with invisible blocking.
Protection from evil
Decent improvement against the many evil foes.
Reflected image
A pretty poor cousin of mirror image, but with the additional restrictions this time ruling lots of spells out, it can just about justify its place for once.
Shield
Useful AC improvement early on as well as immunity to the magic missiles used by many mages and the odd trap.
Previous updates:
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157381/#Comment_1157381
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157462/#Comment_1157462
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157900/#Comment_1157900
Entering the northern Sword Coast, we let Shoal summon Droth and got lucky, interrupting his spellcasting attempts right away thanks to some elemental damage:
Next up, we made our way to Ulcaster, first fighting Icharyd. I knew that his second phase would dispel all of our buffs, so no pre-buffs for him. When the night and thunderstorm started, I used haste and chaos of battle, just trying to kill him before he'd be able to do too much damage:
Next up, the other outside dungeon, the Firewine Ruins. Took us a while to fight our way to Lendarn. Funny thing - the mage himself didn't even survive an initial risky backstab:
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158154/#Comment_1158154
Just wandering through areas picking on the odd victim, Biff got hit by a critical for the first time - pulling a rapid disappearing act saved him from the possibility that Malkax would switch back to arrows and shoot him down.
During this period I noted my inventory was full at one stage and went to find Neera to increase my bag collection - it was a good job though that I didn't have items destroyed by chunking active.
Zal was a potential problem with his missiles and he hit Biff once before he could scurry out of sight. However, after resting it didn't take long to get revenge.
With reputation up at 20, it was time to make some purchases with the help of a friends scroll (purchased after using invisible attacks to kill the golems at High Hedge).
Looking for more things to sell, Biff went to find Meilum (though the best of his treasure was kept rather than sold). He saved at least a dozen times against paralysis, but that just meant he was quicker to get finished off when he finally was affected.
Selling the ring of wizardry and a few gems I'd kept back before generated enough for the greenstone amulet, +3 staff and invisibility ring from Ulgoth's Beard.
Deciding it was time to let his cat out of the bag, Biff went to Durlag's Tower where his new staff bludgeoned a first battle horror to death to get him to level 7, with 5 more HPs.
I was planning for Biff to just attack Shoal, but it appeared he was not invisible when I thought he was and he suffered a near-fatal kiss when she suddenly turned on him. After getting away and resting to heal up, Biff gave Shoal a taste of her own touch-based medicine.
Biff will be moving on to the Nashkel Mine next.
Sorcerer L8, 40 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 92 kills
Level 2 spells
Blur
Both the AC bonus and the adjustment to saving throws should be useful.
Ghoul touch
Works in the same way as chill touch, but requires a save vs spell to prevent being paralyzed for 5 rounds.
Invisibility
Allows both safe travel and free hits on most opponents.
Luck
The short duration of this spell makes it far less attractive, but it can still be helpful in both attack and defense, so I thought I would give it a spin. One particular benefit, if you're short of stoneskins, is that even one positive luck ensures that an enemy always attacks a mirror image and not the real mage.
Mirror image
In addition to making larger scale battles safer, this will help against some types of traps.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158204/#Comment_1158204
Biff wandered through the Nashkel Mine mainly invisibly, though he did buff up to deal with a pair of spiders.
Outside the mine, the Amazons were pulled away individually. Zeela's cleric spells were wasted using invisibility before Lamalha failed to survive an initial attack.
In Nashkel, Biff used a strength scroll to return Joseph's ring before buffing up for Nimbul. Rather as I expected, an initial greeting tap on the shoulder saw him run in terror - but he didn't get far.
Moving on to Beregost, Biff checked in with Officer Vai and shared paralysis around on a roomful of spiders.
Rather than go straight to the Bandit Camp, Biff headed for the Lighthouse. With stoneskins and MSD, the sirines were not much trouble - he just had to avoid getting attacked in melee by them with the usual help of ghoul touch and invisibility. Note that, while ghoul touch is active, Biff's attacks all tend to be non-lethal. One difference with chill touch is that the latter consistently allows the extra attack with an off-hand weapon to do normal damage (there's also the possibility of deadly cold damage with the main hand). Where speed is important therefore, such as if other enemies are in the vicinity, casting chill touch over ghoul touch is a way of finishing off paralyzed enemies more quickly.
With stoneskins available, I didn't bother using invisible attacks against the golems.
Another overdue encounter waited back at the basilisk area. An initial feint drew away Peter and Baerin, leaving the casters a bit exposed to provide Biff with his final BGEE level and 6 more HPs.
At the Bandit Camp, the bandit archers needed criticals to hit against shield and boots and failed to cause any trouble. Taurgosz was paralysed by the first attack on him.
With finances looking a bit healthier again, Biff swapped out his standard +2 dagger in the offhand for the Dagger of Venom. In the Cloakwood, he used invisibility to get past the web traps in the second area, but did try his new dagger out for size on a bear a bit further along.
At the mine, Biff stuck with quarterstaff for an initial attack on Kysus - hoping (successfully) to kill him with straight damage before he could buff. Drasus and Genthore followed him away, leaving Rezdan exposed at the rear. Genthore was then drawn away and lost out in a straight melee contest. Despite being badly fatigued, Biff didn't rest, but used his final available ghoul touch to have a go at Drasus - and struck lucky.
Inside the mine, Biff used invisibility to avoid most combats. He did though once more tell his cat to lie down in a strategic position to deal with the initial guard and the battle horrors on the bottom level.
With the mine flooded behind him, Biff is about to enter Baldur's Gate.
Sorcerer L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 174 kills
Level 3 spells
Minor spell deflection
Protects against single target spells (and similar traps).
Haste
While improved haste would do the job, that's some way off. In the meantime the additional attack and the initiative bonus are both helpful.
Protection from cold
Not much use early on, but comes into its own later in BG2EE.
Protection from fire
Does what it says on the tin.
Remove magic
Potential way to strip enemy defenses quickly.
Crow (female half-orc shaman, Gate70); Spiky (female gnome thief, Grond0)
As we'd done with Nashkel Mine we headed out to Durlags Tower, only turning back after defeating several enemies when we realised once more we had forgotten potions to deal with basilisks. A quick purchase later we completed our ransack of the upper levels and departed for good.
At the bandit camp we relied on backstabs and writhing fog to clear the exterior and invited the occupants of the main tent outside (via a backstab) to play with a couple of spirit summons.
Our day of excellence continued on through Cloakwood until Drasus put a spanner in the works and killed Spiky inside the guard hut. Crow had used lightning to kill Kysus and waited for his summons to kill Rezdan. Then he picked up his fallen companion and went to a temple.
With a freshly raised Spiky we thought our luck was in but an attempt at resting over Drasus' dead corpse saw a new group of guards appear. Spiky ran them around the mine entrance as Crow decided to tackle the two guards inside.
He gulped a couple of healing potions as a third guard arrived from outside, and then realised two more guards had turned up and hemmed him in. He was unable to gulp a potion of invisibility so soon after a healing potion and lamented to the still-outside Spiky that 7hp was not looking good. He survived one hit through his leather armour but not a second.
The end.
I’m also not sure what the best weapon set up is.
On one hand, I think going for dual wielding scimitars and flails is a great set up, especially if you take Drizzt’s scimitars to breeze through the first game, part of me thinks you do most of your damage as a mage anyway, so while it doesn’t matter, why not just focus on scimitar since you can grab Usuno’s Blade +4 pretty much whenever you want, and that’ll be enough, especially when dualled with Belm in the offhand.
Unlike Michaela they are not generous, though they are honest.
They follow the Yorkshireman's motto:
“Ear all, see all, say nowt;
Eyt all, sup all, pay nowt;
And if ivver tha does owt fer nowt -
Allus do it fer thissen”
For the benefit of those who don't know the Yorkshire dialect this means:
Hear everything, see everything, say nothing.
Eat everything, drink everything, pay nothing.
And if you do anything for nothing, always do it for yourself.
[There is a saying about Yorkshiremen that they are like the Scots only not quite so generous. Both stereotypes being completely false]
However these two being honest will return Joia's ring, but being stingy would not give Farmer Brun 100 gp to get him back on his feet.
Details here:
They have returned Joia's ring and Tenya's Bowl and killed the ankheg near Tenya with the aid of the Command spell.
4 Broken hammers and 2 broken halberds caused us to wonder if a god had it in for us. However we gained quite a lot of experience from ankhegs and Helmud eventually got a proficiency point in flails. We had Sonner's flail +1 so he at least had an unbreakable wapon. I replaced one of my broken halberds when I took on a gnoll at High Hedge.
That was enough to keep me going until I got a +2 halberd by killing Ingot.
Heading south from beregost we killed a couple of ogrillon and recieved a ring of protection for delivering the letter one of them was carrying. We picked up the Colquetle Amulet and in Nashkel found some decent armour. We chatted to Noober and turned down an undeserved reward from Oublek.
We then helped Albert and 'Drienne before fighting Ingot.
For weapon I would suggest hammers.
In BG1 you can get Ashideena early even with SCS. The key is to hire clerics (Viconia, Branwen) and cast the combination of Doom/Silence. Then follow with Commands. Just be carefull when he starts with Blade Barrier. Don´t approach to him and take him down from afar. And if he somewhat cast Aerial Servant, run away.
In Siege there is Sundermaul but I would not risk using it and stick with Ashideena. But for the most part you will be mage and rely on your party.
In BG2 you get Ashideena in the starting dungeon and it will be your weapon until you get Crom. It can be problem because +2 is not enough to hit planetars and some golems/demons. Of course you can try to take down Alhoon in chapter 2 or 3 but he is very dangerous oponent (at least with SCS). You can put one proficiency point in some weapon as axe/short sword and use the appropriate weapon agains enemies that are immune to +2 weapons.
With Crom + Helm of Balduran + some gauntlets your THACO will be - 5. Add emotions and some combination of Chant, Prayer and Recitation and you will reliably hit even the toughest oponents.
In offhand Belm or Kundane, for TOB (after you get Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization) I would consider the combination of Crom + Runehammer.
But if you want to play as mage and have berserker´s rage and hitpoints, then any weapon will do it. When I play this class, I do not use damaging spells and instead use all my spell slots on protection and fight with weapons.
Dreen - halfling thief, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Drimler - dwarven defender (Gate70)
Rex - half-orc shaman (Grond0)
Well we didn't get very far. We just rolled up some characters and finished off the Candlekeep chores. Nothing much happened, except a dialog caused Grond0 to get spotted by a guard and he had to run for his life. Luckily Gorion was willing to bring us out of Candlekeep to safety. We then saved here. If interested in character stats, click the spoiler.
Loury - male, human undead hunter (Gate70)
Swish - male, dwarf swashbuckler (Grond0)
Corecleric - male, halfling priest of Lathander (Corey_Russell)
Loury sighed. He'd written the entire story up apart from the last sentence (and then I clicked something and my browser closed. I'll just capture the key parts.)
We headed to the vampire nest, let Swish clear the traps with his feet rather than bothering to actually remove them properly, and staked Bodhi before taking her heart and the Lanthorn.
At Suldanesselar we used suitable weapons to nullify trolls, golems and arcane buffs. The black dragon got spike traps as did Irenicus at the Tree of Life.
In Hell we did the good trials, managed not to get ourselves killed or vorpalled by balors and allowed Irenicus two jumps before letting him land on life-ending snares.
In the Throne of Bhaal grove more snares killed Illasera without us having to fight.
The first Pocket Plane challenge went well, with Bodhi falling to snare > melee, Sarevok falling to group melee and Irenicus falling to Carsomyr dispel > melee and ranged attacks.
At Saradush Loury almost died against the opening guard fight but just realised in time he was leaking too much blood and ran. The guards found themselves unable to follow or to switch back to him on his return.
Kiser Jhaeri found his house looted despite Swish's protests at low-grade loot. Loury discovered a bunch of cheap gems in his inventory as a reward for making Swish waste his time here.
We did the remaining Saradush quests and went through the dungeon into the castle. The guards there badly wounded Loury again, and we healed slightly before facing Gromnir.
There followed a somewhat careless battle where Corecleric took heavy wounds, Loury got himself hemmed in on the stairs and had to GWW his way out before Gromnir closed right in, and then just as we were getting on top of matters we took a Wilting leaving Swish in single figure health and Corecleric a bit better.
Then Corecleric was chunked by Gromnir. Swish and Loury duly won the battle and quit the game.
Screenshots:
Oopsi (female elf wild mage, Grond0); Tintop O'Spamhand (male dwarf cleric, Gate70)
Previous run
Things didn't look great when the random selection produced a wild mage for a protagonist. In single player that can be made to work by casting few or no spells for a long time, but I wasn't going to do that in MP
There was a quiet start with Oopsi's first couple of spells both casting correctly, but failing to blind Shoal. Tintop's commands worked better, but it still took a while to finish her off with sling bullets. Mad Arcand obviously knew there was something dodgy about this partnership and refused to say anything intelligible.
Things started to warm up when Oopsi's 3rd attempted spell (a sleep on some gnolls) briefly looked like it was a game ender - but the 'explosion' proved to be just smoke and mirrors.
In Beregost Oopsi's 4th attempted spell was another blind - intended to prevent Neera from chasing after her. In fact the spell served that purpose well as a surge fireball wiped out Neera - fortunately without catching any innocents in the blast.
Keen to demonstrate how spells should work, Tintop cast a silence at Silke and grinned evilly at her as it took effect and he closed in for the kill. She grinned evilly back as she ignored the supposed silence and unleashed a lightning bolt. In v2.6 that hits even if you get close to the caster - and Tintop was unfortunately standing close to a wall which reflected the blast to finish him off. Meanwhile, Oopsi had been trying her 5th spell. Rather than blinding Silke though, she got her 3rd surge in a row (at theoretical odds of around 1 in 10,000, raising the possibility that the random surge selection is not quite as random as it might be) - inflicting encumbered movement on herself.
Oopsi was able to exit the house unobserved and, after selling a few odds and ends, Tintop was raised by the local priest. Despite his rough treatment he healed himself a bit and immediately set off for another encounter with the bard. His grin as his silence from a distance once more proved successful looked just a trifle strained - and turned quickly into a grimace as Silke unleashed another magic missile.
Silke now looked pretty sick herself, but was still extremely dangerous and Oopsi's next magic missile was too slow to prevent a stream of them coming the other way to conclusively finish Tintop off.
Previous updates:
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157381/#Comment_1157381
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157462/#Comment_1157462
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157900/#Comment_1157900
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158160/#Comment_1158160
Just after this encounter, upon travel to Peldvale, we encountered the amazon ambush:
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158204/#Comment_1158204
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158215/#Comment_1158215
In the City, attacking the ogre mage in the cellars without being exposed to the carrion crawlers was a potential problem. However, they were lured away using invisibility before the ogre's spells were depleted by invisibility and MSD and it could be safely meleed.
The poison quest was next. Lothander saved against ghoul touch as he dashed away. Larze was paralyzed at the first attempt, but his generally decent saves and high HPs gave him the rare distinction of just surviving that - though a single staff hit then finished him off. Invisibility stopped Marek from casting confusion before he was paralyzed - without Larze's HPs to help him ...
I beat up Ramazith for his ring, but with strength of just 18 there were a number of doors I couldn't open and I chose to leave those for now and just go to the Iron Throne. As I normally do anyway the enemies were pulled downstairs and isolated, making most of them easy victims - and the roof was easily available for resting to refresh spells. Zhalimar was the most resistant to paralysis and he went through 3 lots of stoneskins and was only finally tagged when already near dead.
The dopplegangers failed to even get through a single lot of stoneskins between them, allowing Biff to take a trip back to Candlekeep. DUHM gained there gave his melee abilities a major boost, along with the knock scrolls that allowed him to loot the tomes. The spiders were tackled one by one and all paralyzed with no trouble (stoneskin acting as a protection against any potential poison).
I couldn't resist taking on Prat's gang on the way out. There was a good start there when Bor was paralyzed by an opening attack.
Back in the City, there were a few more bits and pieces to do - including sneaking into Degrodel on the way to get Balduran's Cloak and ascending Ramazith's tower to get the final tome. With that done, Biff went to find Slythe. I saw no reason to involve Krystin, so Biff just attacked invisibly - and a single blow effectively ended the contest.
The fight at the palace, without summons or disablers, had the potential to be tricky. Hence Biff used potions for the first time to buff himself up. He started the contest by using a scroll to put spirit armor on Belt. Two of the dopplegangers attacked him, while just one went for Belt. The other 3 went for Liia and didn't take long to deal with her before all turning on Belt. By then the original one attacking Belt was unconscious with morale failure, but the odds still seemed far from a racing certainty - so Biff turned Belt invisible to refocus the dopplegangers on himself.
Biff managed to bypass all the traps in the maze on the way to the Undercity. Rahvin's party was left alone there, leaving just Sarevok to deal with. Rather than cheese him, I decided to fight fair there. After approaching the dais invisibly to activate Sarevok, Biff used a PfM scroll to protect against Semaj until he teleported away. When Angelo appeared, Biff used a potion to disappear - leaving Angelo annoyed at taking damage from Semaj's cloudkill and eliminating one of the opponents.
Rather than just wait for his PfM to expire, Biff chose to attack Sarevok without stoneskins. He had a marginal initiative advantage, so was able to get a number of unanswered attacks in, but still suffered a number of hits and used regeneration potions to keep his own HPs up. Sarevok was also suffering the odd hit though and he was down to single figure HPs when the scroll finally expired. That allowed Biff to apply stoneskins and close in for the kill with a single attack.
The automatic transfer to SoD allows you to keep any excess XP earned during the current session (since you last loaded the game). That meant Biff arrived in the prologue dungeon with 338k XP and could take an immediate 10th level - gaining a disappointing 4 HPs for his final die roll, along with shadow door. As I was writing up these notes though I got a slight sinking feeling and checking in Biff's potion bag confirmed he hadn't picked up the violet potion. That will make tackling Belhifet slightly harder, but that should still be not too difficult with the use of mage scrolls.
Sorcerer L10, 58 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 247 kills
Level 4 spells
While there's a fairly restricted number of useful spells for this challenge at most levels, level 4 still offers plenty of viable choices. I decided to leave improved invisibility, which I usually take (shadow door offering an alternative) and similarly wait for GoI, rather than use its lesser cousin. Enchant item had some attraction, but would only rarely be needed and the odd scroll can substitute there. Eventually I decided the same was true for fireshield blue, partly because I don't normally use minor sequencer or polymorph self much and thought this run would be appropriate to do that.
Greater malison
Improves prospects for disabling opponents with touch effects.
Minor sequencer
Allows quick rebuffing or to apply spells while polymorphed.
Polymorph self
Makes available high APR in spider form, good mage defenses in jelly form or high damage per hit in ogre form.
Spirit armor
Provides both an AC improvement and better save vs spells.
Stoneskin
Removes the threat of the big critical.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158204/#Comment_1158204
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158215/#Comment_1158215
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158326/#Comment_1158326
In the SoD prologue dungeon Biff went invisibly to find Porios and persuade him to surrender. Korlasz needs more active persuasion - and her buffs and movement makes that difficult using just melee. However, the opponents also found it difficult to hit Biff and eventually he successfully stopped her with paralyzation.
In the City, some NPCs died so I could sell their equipment and buy up more potions and scrolls to hoard. Then it was off to take a minimalist route to sort out the Crusade.
- at the Coast Way Crossing Biff used invisibility to avoid combat at the bridge.
- he skipped through the Troll Claw Woods invisibly.
- all ambush areas were ignored.
- at the Forest of Wyrms he avoided combat on the way into the temple. Ziatar was pretty quickly paralyzed.
Previous instalments:
- BG1: 1, 2
The session after my last update didn't last long at all. The party visited the Ice Island and cleared it with Eldoth's dispelling arrows, and physical attacks. We then went to the Iron Throne, where I wanted a fair fight. The party buffed, then went to the upper floor, and retreated to avoid a Remove Magic that we had no way of protecting ourselves against. The idea was to return and fight the battle upstairs, but Zhaalimar and Gardush followed us downstairs. Irmgard got boxed in between the two of them and they jumped at the opportunity to expose Irmgard for what she really was: a wannabe warrior.
(As you can see from the screenshot, she was about to free herself with the wand of the heavens when she took a massive hit from Gardush for 44 damage. She canceled the wand charge for an invisibility potion but failed to quaff it before a second, fatal hit landed.)
We returned to Beregost where we calmed Marl before killing Silke and Karlat. We sold some shells and used the prtoceeds to pay for another set of ankheg armour. That has left us poor so perhaps we should now see if there are any ankheg left for us to kill in the nest.
Due to good positioning against Silke, the battle was more profitable than usual.
At that point we were both level 4.
We re-entered the ankheg nest and took the body of his son back to Farmer Brun.
We then got some belts by fighting an ogre and upon returning to Beregost were given another suit of ankheg armour.
After seeking out Perdue's sword we were given a reward for it, not much but adequate.
Helmud reached level 5 and has memorised some healing spells to make our travels a little safer.
Some merenaries attacked us and paid the price. They provided little experience but did give three suits of plate armour.
Zordral similarly paid the price of attacking us as did Greywolf.
We then accrued a party which would hopefully be sufficient to gain me godhead.
My renewed delight with no-reload BG play and my unwavering love for clerics (in spite of my poor results with them) have made me start a new run, with a priest of Talos, Mallus:
Hopefully the top tier portrait and my best roll ever for a single-class cleric will help me look after him. It might also help that I'm back to no difficulty-based damage changes (learned my lesson there, will leave that for LoB). Mallus is Chaotic Neutral rather than evil so I won't have to feel bad about not picking evil options all the time. Where Irmgard and party were all about martial combat with non-martial characters, I intend to make this run revolve around the elements. As a child Mallus was fascinated the forces of nature: storms, fire, lightning, and he was touched by Talos as a young lad in Candlekeep. (Touched by Talos means getting hit by a red lightning stroke that does the recipient no harm, and tells them they're chosen to serve the Stormstar.)
We shall focus on dealing elemental spell and weapon damage and raising elemental resistances. A priest of Talos seems to be a perfect Charname to me mechanically (with their Storm Shield and Lightning Bolt innates), lore-wise, and because there are no priest of Talos NPCs or NPCs who could credibly be edited into a priest of Talos. Mallus starts out with * in hammers and * in slings.
Rather than soloing the first 5 or 6 levels, Mallus sets out to form a full party with companions that fit the theme as soon as reasonably possible. This will make progress slower, but I'm enjoying the game a lot lately, so that's probably a good thing. The first companion is the exception to the 'elemental' rule, at least for the time being: good old Imoen as a plain Thief (* short swords, * crossbows). I've installed @jastey's Imoen 4 Ever mod, which should allow me to keep her on board throughout the saga. Imoen is to dual to Mage at level 9, and I intend to give her the Invoker specialization for more potent elemental spells (of which SCS adds many from IWD). Imoen joins after Mallus has cleared the first two maps (with the exception of the four bandits from Kagain's BG1 NPC Project quest).
I installed the SCS NPC customisation component that has been discussed in the Adventurer's Lounge. It makes NPCs join at the exact amount of XP needed to match the experience level that Charname has (if they share the same XP table), or that Charname would have in the NPC's class (if they have different XP tables). So recruiting another cleric at 13k XP will see the cleric join with 13k XP, but recruiting a fighter at 13k XP will see the fighter join with 8k XP. We avoid "wasting" XP this way, by having Mallus and Imoen do some of the early quests in Beregost (BGQE Alanna's neighbor and Family quarrel quests, Firebead, Landrin's spiders), so that Mallus reaches just over 2250 XP, enough for @AionZ's Cavalier Sirene to join as a level 2 character (** axes, ** two-handed swords). A tiefling and a Cavalier, she has good innate elemental resistances (20 acid, 10 cold, 10 electricity, 30 fire). The idea is to boost those further with items and spells, so that she can melee enemies while other party members unleash the elements upon them.
It then only takes two ogrillons and a letter for Mirianne to attain the 2500 XP point. The party travels to Nashkel, to the Carnival to be more precise, where Branwen becomes the fourth party member, not as a cleric but as a shaman (* clubs, * shortbows). According to the Faiths & Avatars sourcebook In some societies, such as that of the Northmen of the Moonshae Islands and the barbarians of Icewind Dale, Tempus is served by shamans, so this appears to be an excellent alternative kit for her. I haven't played with Shamans much, but I know they get Writhing Fog and Spirit Fire for free, and they can of course add some more elemental spells appropriate for the theme of this run. However they only get to pick five spells per level, and I intend to use other valuable spells as well, so one or two elemental damage spells per spell level should be enough. My install includes @argent77's Improved Shamanic Dance, which allows Branwen to move at half speed while dancing. Her first spell picks are Doom and Sunscorch.
Back in Beregost, the first fireworks are put on display when the party helps out Neera against three Thayans. Mallus is pleased to see Neera cast Burning Hands at one of her attackers, while Branwen blinds and burns the wizard (Commanded by Mallus), with a Sunscorch.
We talk Marl down, warn Keldath Ormlyr of a drunk nearby, and then we travel back to Nashkel, where some babysitting and a chat with Noober suffice for Mallus to hit 3000 XP. Time to talk to our final recruit: Rasaad (* scimitars, * daggers). No need to change his class/kit, he's perfect as a Sun Soul Monk with all his fire-based kit abilities.
Hobgoblins and Joia at the FAI, Tarnesh (Command, Blindness, ranged attacks and Shamanic spirits), Landrin's spiders, boots, and wine provided more XP. Karlat in Beregost did not, as he was slain by Finch while Commanded, Sunscorched and Blinded by the party. Oh well, I can't blame the sweet Gnome for helping out. Bjornin's half-ogres are softened up with a Lightning Bolt from Mallus,
Previous updates:
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157381/#Comment_1157381
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157462/#Comment_1157462
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157900/#Comment_1157900
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158160/#Comment_1158160
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158294/#Comment_1158294
Bassilus attacked us but spells such as silence, command and suchlike were sufficient to defeat him. Zargal and his cronies were killed next before we moved to the archaeological site which was straightforward. We then took on the sirine in the lighthouse area. They were easy enough, but not so the flesh golems. Helmud was held by a trap and the flesh golem attacked and my attacks on the golem were ineffective. Helmud died so I picked up his equipment and ran. I had to leave behind a lot of bullets, but they are cheap enough.
I didn't have the gold to raise him so earned a bit more before going to the temple.
We returned to the cave and we kited the golem. Helmud ran around the cave whilst I pumped arrows of piercing into the golem.
When we looted the cave, we avoided the other golems.
Getting revenge on the half-ogres that injured Bjornin brought our reputation to 19.
We went to hunt basilisks as we had the requisite equipment and killed Mutamin, Kirian et al as well without having to use the necklace of missiles.
We picked up a ring of protection from fire and took Samuel to the FAI.
Reputation now 20.
Level now 6. Time for bed.
Barrieo (male half-elf Fighter / Mage ? Cleric, Gate70); Tritium (male half-elf Fighter / Mage / Thief, Grond0)
We spent a few minutes rolling this pair up yesterday and saved. They set out today, managed to not get any levels when defeating Shoal the Nereid and at level 1 foolishly decided to face Greywolf and run past him instead of away from him. Barrieo's level 1 protection counted for nothing with 10 of his 11hp bashed away and the final hit point nullified by cold damage.
Not our shortest run, but not far off.
Previous updates:
Update 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157381/#Comment_1157381
Update 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157462/#Comment_1157462
Update 3: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1157900/#Comment_1157900
Update 4: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158160/#Comment_1158160
Update 5: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158294/#Comment_1158294
Update 6: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158391/#Comment_1158391
Entering the Iron Mines, there were four crucial battles we had to face: Hareishan, Natasha, the ogre mage and Davaeorn. First up, Hareishan - an invisible Imoen disarmed the traps, and Dynaheir entered first, protected with stonekins - just moving into sight for a very short time in order to throw down her double web minor sequencer. With her invoker specialization, this held everyone but Hareishan herself, who was immune thanks to MGOI. Dynaheir immediately turned around again, moving out of sight:
The ogre mage also is initially invisble, so once again Ajantis moved in. The usual chromatic orb opening wasn't much of a problem - the paladin made his save, everyone else rushed in, and we interrupted all other spellcasting attempts. We cleared the remaining level, moved back to level 1 and rested (least dangerous rest ambushes up there). Onto Davaeorn - New minor sequencers (magic missles, to quickly kill battle horrors), and an invisible Imoen started disarming traps. Amel donned the boots of speed and used a PFM-Scroll, charging Davaeorn. Imoen (still invisible, so in no danger) actually got affected by Davaeorns own minor sequencer (web + stinking cloud), but the others were positioned out of range to deal with incoming guards (though none arrived). The battle horrors moved in sight of the party while Davaeorn was teleporting around, followed by Amel, who was working through his physical defenses - Branwens skeletons made sure to engage them in melee while Dynaheir started firing off her magic missles (with the help of some of the others using magic missle wands as well):
This can be useful in order to reduce how many targets you need to consider at once in that fight since Natasha is pretty damn deadly if she gets a chance (Cone of Cold, Sunfire, Lightning Bolts, even a 2x Magic Missile Minor Sequencer on occasion...). I find her dangerous enough that I usually solve the fight using summons.
Previous reports:
BG1: 1
Mallus and his elementally inclined party have been through enough adventures for an update, starting with the Cloudpeaks areas. These provide easy XP through Albert & Rufie, Ingot, Ludrug, and Petrine. However, at level 2-3 Vax (separated from Zal) turns out to be too much of an obstacle for the party. He consistently makes his saves, so we leave the area to look for Bassilus. That one too is a dangerous foe, and we need a retreat and a rest when he summons an aerial servant, but we prevail thanks to a Silence from Mallus, a Blindness from Neera, Branwen's spirits, and a Hold Person from Mallus. The Cyricist is then subjected to an onslaught of physical and elemental (fire) attacks. Fittingly our Halfling hero lands the killing blow, breaking his mundane hammer just when he has no more use for it.
Upon her reaching level 3 I discover I gave Sirene ** in two-handed weapon style, and not in two-handed swords as I thought. (She comes with her own +1 greatsword.) Instead of making her proficient in two-handed swords I give her a first pip in scimitars, because there is a certain +3 scimitar that can help her become 100% fire resistant. And thankfully a certain dark elf has no more use for it, slain as he is by gnolls (which is also good news for Rasaad's AC). Sirene shall be a sword and board paladin until BG2. I intend to give her a second pip at level 6 and maybe a first pip in dual-wielding at level 9. Maybe, with lots of potions, she can dual-wield against Belhifet. Two-handed weapons will have to wait for a long time.
The Gift of Peace, the last piece of the puzzle for Sirene's item-based 100 fire resistance lies with Droth, and boy does he make us pay dearly for it. Mallus approaches under Sanctuary, and gets knocked unconscious by Shoal. With his Sanctuary still intact, all he needs to do is wait a bit to get back on his feet, then retreat to heal up. So far so good, but as we retreat back toward the area border we are greeted by three ghouls that weren't there before. Mallus barely has time to heal, and Neera gets paralyzed by one ghoul as we try to move past them. She falls. There goes our caster of Blindness. We decide to try and kill the creatures, but without solid AoE damage we are slow at that. We're barely done when Droth catches up with us. Mallus immediately starts a casting of Silence, but Droth is much faster with a Sleep cast at Imoen. She doesn't make her save, though neither does Droth. Mallus tries to buy the party some time with two Commands and Branwen manages to briefly blind the ogre mage with a Sunscorch, but he still finds his way to Imoen and finishes her off.
No further incidents occur and we make it safely back to Beregost where we get Neera, Imoen, and Branwen back on their feet. Those three all gain a level (3, 4, and 3 respectively) from Mallus's looting of the ankheg cave under Sanctuary and bringing farmer Brun his dead son's body. Rasaad and Mallus gain a level (4) from the party's dispatchment (with Commands) of the ankheg with Nester's dagger, and from their intervention in a conflict between Talos-venerating fisherman and a priestess of Umberlee.
Mallus gets a pip in two-weapon style, Rasaad in single-weapon style. Branwen picks Curse as her 3rd level 1 spell (in addition to Doom and Sunscorch), and Neera Shield (in addition to Blindness and Burning Hands). Imoen gets a pip in two-weapon fighting and invests some skill points into pickpocketing because one of the lessons learned from Droth is that we want to be better equipped. It also fits from a lore-perspective since priests of Talos are wont to pursue wealth and luxury according to the sourcebooks.
We acquire a potion of mind focusing from the Temple of Wisdom, and then travel to the High Hedge for a potion of perception. However before we speak with Thalantyr, Rasaad first lures the wizard's flesh golems outside, where Branwen is performing her shamanic dance. The spirits can barely take two or three hits as the golems hit on a roll of 2 or better, and for serious damage, but Branwen manages to keep a fairly steady stream going and Rasaad, fleet-of-foot as he is, repeatedly rushes in and out to strike at the golems with Twinkle.
We conclude our business with Vax and Zal, with Sirene acting as our fire tank,
Up north we kill close to 20 ankhegs, with the help of the wand of sleep (passed around between the companions when an ankheg saves) and Mallus's Commands. Neera escapes with her life once (2/18 HPs), but other than the hunting trip is uneventful, and we're rewarded with level-ups for Imoen, Branwen, and Neera. Branwen becomes proficient in the use of darts. I don't like their range, but she has to be somewhat close to enemies anyway for her spirits to attack them. Furthermore 3 APR is good and I want to see if she can dance twist with darts. She also learns a first tier 2 spell: Cure Moderate Wounds, an SCS/IWD addition. Makes sense to me as that spell level is notoriously poor for druids, and it leaves open a tier 1 spell pick that would otherwise be Cure Light Wounds. Neera's first level 2 spell is Mirror Image, as she really needs some defense.
Three battle horrors, a doom guard, and four basilisks (slain by skeleton warriors) at Durlag's Tower provide the next significant XP boost (after the ankhegs).
Some wolves east of the Temple of the Morning,
Finally we clear the Firewine Plains map, defeat Meilum,
Everyone is around 30k XP now. There are still several wilderness areas we can cover, or we might just go to the Nashkel Mines.
We continued our pursuit of Caelar, killing many minor foes on the way. Safana proved that she has what it takes by killing Morentherine with a throwing dagger.
We went to the Temple of Bhaal taken over by acolytes of Cyric. We rescued some followers of Caelar and told a Priestess of Bhaal to henceforward do good which she agreed to do due to my lineage.
Safana going on ahead of us enabled us to use area of effect spells effectively with the result that even mindflayers were defeated quite easily.
The Neothelid was the hardest enemy to beat. We didn't have to defeat the seeking sword. It attacked a summoned skeleton whilst the rest of us made a sharp exit. When we returned the spell was no longer active.
After saving a dragon we ended up at the Boareskyr Bridge and after getting a planatar wing, some ale and a scroll, we ended up inside the fortress. Dorn was also released.
Retro (female gnome bounty hunter, Grond0); Doppel (male human sun soul monk, Gate70)
Previous run
The random character selection produced a thief for me. However, Gate70 pointed out that, as I'd recently rolled up a thief, when I'd intended to produce a bounty hunter, balance in the universe could be restored by doing the reverse here
It didn't take long to find the way to Shoal - and this time (unlike the previous abortive run with 2 triple classes) pick up immediate levels.
In Beregost, Retro attacked Neera, but failed to finish her off with a single shot and therefore tried to withdraw before she could initiate a conversation. Unfortunately, just at that point Doppel started talking to Marl and, by the time that was over, Neera was starting her own speech. Retro let her Thayan opponents appear, forgetting that the EE has now updated that encounter such that Neera can no longer be killed by them (or by us during it
Our problems with bags continued when the potion case, which had been bought only seconds earlier at High Hedge, evaporated from Retro's inventory - leaving just the scroll case to help with inventory management in BGEE.
In Nashkel, Retro learnt Bhaal CLW before heading off in search of Meilum. Doppel suggested stopping on the way to throw a trap at some xvarts. The first attempt at that failed as Retro moved forward a step in the act of throwing and came into sight of a xvart, but a follow-up attempt was more successful.
At the basilisk area, Doppel was protected by a green scroll and mixed up his time hitting them while they were gazing and running away from them as they attempted to switch to melee. Killing that lot produced more levels before Doppel sneaked up on Mutamin and took advantage of him being slowed by a special trap to hammer in fists and finish him off with a sun soul ray.
A couple of traps pushed out from behind a pillar killed Kirian and Lindin as Doppel showed himself to cause all that party to go hostile at the same time.
Back in Beregost, Silke may pay no attention to being silenced, but is vulnerable to traps. On my screen it looked odd that Doppel hit and killed her after she had gone invisible, but that's asynchronicity for you.
At the coast Retro had a cunning plan - suggesting that Doppel venture unprotected into the midst of some sirines
Retro was keen to try that again on Sil's group, but this time made even more of a pig's ear of it - getting too close with the first trap attempt and failing with the cast. Now very exposed, Doppel was again charmed while Retro killed a sirine following him with a couple more traps. When he recovered, Doppel tried to complete the job at his end, but picked up a feeblemind effect as the sirines switched to melee. However, they don't do much damage like that and Retro had plenty of time to shoot them down.
Inside the pirate cave, traps were much more productively used. The first golem died to a couple of normal traps, while both the second and third were injured and slowed by a special one each and easily finished off.
Bounty hunter 6, 43 HPs, 49 kills
Sun soul monk 6, 52 HPs, 38 kills, 0 deaths