So far, we've done all BG sidequests except for the ones involving a) Marek and Lothander, b) the Sewers, c) pickpocketing and d) Degrodel's house. I won't talk about every single on of them, though here are some highlights:
The mages above Sunderous Sorceries were supposed to be webbed off-screen, but I only hit three of the four. Minsc did most of the work, wielding Spider's Bane, because I foolishly got others trapped while moving into the webs (could've gone to the east to avoid that):
The battles against thieves, such as Taxek or Wiven, went fairly well - no dangerous backstabs. They usually go for Branwen, but she has very good AC, so most backstabs are misses:
Sunin and his two aides have given me trouble in the past. Imoen was able to blind the dangerous Kensai with a strange minor sequencer I had accidentally set up earlier (blind + mm), with the others going after Sunin and the other fighter, who had already quaffed an oil of speed, making him quite dangerous:
Sunin used his time for dispel magic + slow while his servant was killed and his spell protections dispelled via double spell thrust:
However, my follow-up against Sunin was weak, and some unlucky rolls resulted in misses, which allowed him to cast two final spells before his demise - monster summoning and a fireball, heavily damaging my party (though nobody was killed):
My worst battle so far in terms of execution was against Shandalar's daughters. This is the one time I didn't take a wizard battle seriously, and I immediately got punished for my recklessness. Because they had no stoneskins, it was easy to kill the first two:
The third one, though, was able to cast confusion, affecting four of our party - only Dynaheir and Imoen remained (we got rid of the third daughter's buffs, and the confused Ajantis ended up killing her). Minsc and Amel started attacking each other nonstop. This could've been the end of Amel, but she won the fight, killing Minsc instead:
Amel survived with 27 hp, and we got lucky that no one bothered to kill the neutral servant, which would've resulted in a huge reputation loss.
We brought Minsc to the Temple of Helm to resurrect him. Our battles against subsequent wizards were more successful - Vay-ya, for example, only managed to cast a single chromatic orb:
Jardak's servant and the man himself did some damage to Branwen, but she was able to retreat in time, and eventually, the fighter was killed via magic missles:
The Maulers of the Undermountain stood little chance - their spellcasters don't seem to use pre-buffs, so they were immediately killed:
Next time, we will try our hands at the few remaining encounters in the city.
Minsc was killed whilst we looked for the final menhir. A spider webbed him and there was nothing that we could do other than kill the spiders and raise him afterwards. We are now in troll claw woods and Marcia can now raise the dead.
As we sought to defeat Coldearth one room proved to be exceptionally dangerous, but we did prevail.
Subsequently with the aid of the secret revealed, we were victorious and returned to the camp, relieved to have survived such an epic battle.
We eventually prevailed at the Boareskyr Bridge but it was a close run thing due to being incapacitated myself, I had to rely on my allies.
Now at the Coalition Camp having raised my dead comrades.
A quick check at the start of the session suggested working on reputation would be useful, so Retro led the way to Greywolf. A failure to rest in advance meant no easy kill using traps. However, it was easy enough to escape into stealth, allowing sneak attacks from Doppel to be followed up with punishing backstabs from Retro.
After taking Samuel to the FAI and handing over Joia's ring, reputation was up to 20. However, that didn't prevent Doppel from sneaking into the ankheg nest to loot that and then return a battered body to Farmer Brun. Some bandits in that area became a few of the victims of Retro's special traps. As usual Doppel acted as a focal point, while Retro withdrew a few steps before a rasping, humming sound (reminiscent of WWII buzz bombs) proclaimed for those in the know that a trap had been launched.
A few purchases at Ulgoth's Beard included mirror image potions, as the next destination was Durlag's Tower. The first battle horror there was run round by Doppel until Retro could hide and wait for Doppel to position the battle horror for an attempted backstab. Once it was near dead, a sun soul ray kept things tidy by providing a combination of execution and incineration.
Keeping the attention of battle horrors like that though meant risking being hit and Doppel took a few whacks for his pains - meaning he stayed out of the way for the second battle horror on the path while Retro found bits of shade to hide in.
With the exterior sanitised, the route up onto the roof was clear - except for a single ghast. Retro laid a trap outside the room with the intention of dragging the ghast out, but it proved a bit quicker to respond to a stealth attack than Doppel expected and he duly froze in place. Retro tried hiding to go for a one-shot backstab, but failed the stealth check - and it was dubious whether Doppel would last long enough to try that again. Instead, Retro tried to attract the attention of the ghast to get it to come after him. It moved a bit, but then latched onto Doppel again. However, Retro tried attacking once more and this time the ghast moved after him just far enough to trigger the trap laid earlier.
On the roof, Doppel went mad - consuming a potion of cloud giant strength as well as another of heroism, so that he could boost his damage for the short time potions of mirrored eyes work. It was pretty clear though that he wouldn't be able to kill all 4 basilisks using a single protection potion and gulped another down while attacking the second greater basilisk.
Inside, Riggilo looked like he might expire after being poisoned by the Dagger of Venom - Retro put him out of his misery to make sure though.
A trip through the Cloud Peak mountains proved no trouble, with just the odd thrown trap used there. Then it was time for the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey just survived a couple of special traps set for him, but was finished off before he could think of responding - leaving his support crew inadequate to deal with the threat they faced.
Outside the mine, Retro threw a couple of special traps into the midst of the amazons, before sneaking in to add a normal one as well. That killed the casters, but Telka and Maneira were only hit by one trap each and required a bit of beating up to finish them off.
Gate70's tip of the day there was to set the traps slightly further away - meaning that they would still hit targets who were fractionally delayed in going hostile after a conversation.
First up, we recruited Alora in order to go on a pickpocketing spree - Dushai, Shandalar, the Cloak of Balduran and Algernon's Cloak. Back with Imoen, we started the Marek&Lothander questline, making sure to kill the high priestess of Umberlee in order to keep the tome. We also surrounded Lothander after turning in the quest to prevent him from fleeing, force-attacking him to get his boots of speed. We buffed up for Marek and just went all-in with melee attacks, just about breaking his stoneskins and mirror images before he was able to finish another spell:
Next up, we went down into the sewers. The ogre mage starts without defenses, so I backstabbed him - sadly, not enough damage for a kill, but he didn't fire off any buffs immediately, so the next hit was enough:
Also killed some spiders, backstabbed Ratchild, killed the sewer king and also dealt with Arkion and Nemphre.
Degrodel's house was next - we buffed up (Recitation, Prayer, Bless, PfE, Haste, with Branwen adding in Holy Strength and Chaos of Battle later on) and went inside, melee weapons equipped:
I used a few magic missle spells against the invisible stalkers, otherwise, my three fighter-types did their job well enough without any help.
Talked to Degrodel, used his scrolls on the statues and killed the resulting 1 hp adventurers (nice xp for no work, as they die instantly). Back to Degrodel, I made sure to surround him, so he wouldn't be able to run away with Balduran's Helmet (a bit of a risky move, but I've done it before):
Minsc took a lot of damage from the guardians, so he retreated out of the melee range, while the others finished the fight:
I decided to move on to the Iron Throne Battle - this was the fight I wanted to do again and do much better after it almost ended in total defeat in my previous run. This time, I planned to make full use of the stairs. After buffing, Ajantis went upstairs and immediately back down. Most of the Iron Throne party followed him, though the archer and one of the two mages remained at the top. I took the opportunity to kill one warrior right away, as I was able to do so before one of the enemy spellcasters finished a spell. Before the first spell could impact us, I moved back up - and only the two rogues followed. This gave me a great opportunity to take down the mage upstairs - I interrupted his spellcasting, while Imoen blinded the archer:
The two rogues tried to hit Branwen, but failed due to her good AC, allowing us to take them down:
Now, we only had a mage, the cleric and the primary fighter remaining, all of them waiting downstairs. Took down the mage first, once again getting through his defenses before he was able to finish a spell. The cleric was interrupted in the same round - a fairly clean victory compared to the near-disaster last time around:
Turns out using the stairs to divide this party makes a huge difference.
Oh, and I had to be very careful to stop my skeletons from attacking the now hostile merchants. Luckily, they don't attack once you leave the area (they only seem to turn active as you enter again).
A few purchases at Ulgoth's Beard included ... The first battle horror there was run round by Doppel until Retro could hide and wait for Doppel to position the battle horror for an attempted backstab.
No wand of the heavens? The monk can use it, and it's perfect for taking down battle horrors.
At around 30k XP per character, we decide to continue exploring the wilderness areas, hoping to push our Dragon Disciple Neera and our Shaman Branwen to level 6. But first Imoen pickpockets Dushai's ring of free action, several scrolls from Shandalar, and a hammer from Hurgan Stoneblade in Ulgoth's Beard.
Krumm and Caldo succumb to fire and ice but we refrain from talking to to the dryad of the Cloudpeaks because of aTweaks' Revised Bhaalpowers component, which offers a useful damage and knockback ability for low rep Charnames as an alternative to DUHM: Divine Wrath. For a single-class Cleric Charname, DUHM will of course be readily available from the divine spellbook so we intend to reduce reputation later on for the last two Bhaalpowers, and raise it afterwards with the help of the dryad and others.
We burn down a gnoll fortress and a xvart village, and we fight Borda with Ashideena (Mallus), acid arrows (Branwen) and bolts of lightning (Imoen) to pierce his defenses. He doesn't accomplish more than a Hold Person on Rasaad before he goes down. At the archaeological site Neera uses wand scorchers against the rabid diggers as they attack fire immune Sirene, to speed up their demise - they're quite beefy in SCS.
The Doomsayer is tanked by Branwen's spirit animals while we expose it to fire, cold and magic damage and to Sirene and Rasaad's scimitars.
We then return to Durlag's Tower to deal with the ghasts on the upper levels and with Kirinhale, who gets stunned by Neera.
Downstairs, a phase spider, another ghast or two, and three greater doppelgangers help Sirene reach level 6, to take a second pip in scimitars.
We proceed to clear the three tombs in the Nashkel mine exit, relying on the ring of free action and better movement speed to neutralize the Revenant's threat. After that, we visit Ulcaster. There we first lure the dread wolves from the room in front of the Wolf of Ulcaster's hideout toward us so we can dispatch them without the big wolf joining them. Then we use missiles against the evil wizard Rick from Recorder's quest, again to prevent the Wolf of Ulcaster from appearing before we want it to. (BTW I should play with Skitia's NPCs next time now that the BG2 versions are also available).
When we do engage the Wolf of Ulcaster we prevail very easily as Neera's first Blindness disables the creature.
It doesn't use any of its abilities and we can just pick it off with ranged attacks. Mallus finishes the creature off with the wand of the heavens.
At 40k XP, Neera's first level 3 spell is Flame Arrow while Branwen learns Call Lightning as her first level 3 spell, for more elemental might. Those spells don't see much usage during our first quests in the main plot line though. Call Lightning can only be cast in the open air, and Flame Arrow is neither as effective against mobs as the wand of fire nor as damaging against single targets as the wands of frost and the heavens, as the kobold shaman and Mulahey experience in the Nashkel Mines.
We leave the mines to deal with Narcillicus and his two mustard jellies. Mallus's skeleton warriors and Branwen's spirit summons do the tanking against these dangerous foes.
The same strategy works against Nimbul, even though he's a bit more aware than Narcillicus that his real enemies are hanging back, as this damaging Lance of Disruption shows:
I may pick this level 3 spell for Neera at some point so that she can deal physical burst damage when the occasion calls for it.
As usual, Tranzig is no threat for a party of six, and we soon find ourselves in the Wood of Sharp Teeth, where we help Nim Furlwing, slay Osmadi and Corsone, and dispatch all bandits that attack us except for Raiken and his men. The bandit camp we loot before we wipe Tazok's tent clean with fire damage from Neera's wand, a necklace of missiles and some potions. Only Mallus takes a bit of damage from a black talon crit; Ender Sai remains unscathed.
Venkt survives the assault but not the subsequent barrage of missiles the party has in store for him. Outside the lightly buffed party (Shield for Rasaad and Neera, MI for Neera) continues to aggressively attack the enemy with fire and missiles.
A second suit of full plate, our biggest prize, is donned by Sirene.
We are about as thorough in Cloakwood, clearing entire maps instead of cherry-picking specific locations. Branwen casts Call Lightning a lot, and to great effect.
Mallus and Rasaad reach level 7 here.
Both the Lamalha and the Molkar ambushes take place in Cloakwood. The amazons are first. As we're not traveling invisibly, they have the initiative. Zeela Holds Rasaad, but the rest of the party save Neera gang up on the priestess and stop her from taking down our monk. Neera deals with Lamalha and Telka, who does land a backstab on her, and injures Maneira using wand scorchers.
She goes invisible after that to avoid a potentially deadly second backstab, but Maneira's morale fails her, so she can be finished off without risk.
In the third Cloakwood area, Branwen and Neera reach level 7. Branwen adds three defensive spells to her repertoire: Armor of Faith, Resist Fire/Cold, and Storm Shell. Neera learns Spook, Melf's Acid Arrow, and Spell Thrust. (I would have preferred Secret Word for her instead of Spell Thrust, but the 4th spell level has too many other important spells. In any event, Imoen should be able to cast Secret Word in the future.)
Molkar's aide Halacan has a slightly injured Neera quaff a potion of magic blocking to stop a Melf's Acid Arrow and possibly other spells the hasted gnome has in store for her. Sirene locks Morvin in melee combat, Imoen pelts Molkar with bolts of lightning, and Rasaad, Branwen, and Mallus stop Drakar from casting any of his disablers. Mallus does some nice AoE damage with Holy Smite, and blinds two enemies in the process.
With a non-evil Charname cleric in a neutral/good party, this spell has been quite useful already; a pleasant change from my previous evil clerics and parties. With extra wand damage, we prevail without incident.
At the mine, skeleton warriors and, for the first time, wand summons are called upon to keep Drasus at bay and to soak up some of his wizards' most dangerous spells: Emotion and Chaos. Mallus actually has to roll to save against the Emotion spell, and succeeds with a 5 thanks to his shorty saves and protective gear. We manage to defeat the warriors with ranged attacks and some wand and spell damage (Drasus's potion of magic shielding has him automatically make his saves, but half damage is still damage).
The wizards have already wasted their nastiest spells, and of those only a Slow has affected Branwen. Neera puts her newly learned Spell Thrust to good use, dispelling the enemy mages' MSD and MGoI spells, and making it easy for the party to hurt them.
On the second level of the mine we're in for a bit of a surprise when we take too long to kill a single guard on our way to the corridor with the two ghasts. Other guards and Hareishan decide to come and take a look. Mallus immediately uses a charge of the wand of fear, which thankfully affects most of of the guards. Nevertheless a rather chaotic battle ensues, literally, as Branwen, Imoen, Rasaad, and Sirene all suffer the effects of a Chaos spell cast by Hareishan just after Branwen has cast a Writing Fog at the appearing enemies.
Neera attacks Hareishan with a Spell Thrust, to expose her to Branwen's Writhing Fog, and Mallus casts Holy Smite. Thankfully the confused companions don't immediately start to slaughter one another. Sirene keeps on attacking the guards she has been fighting, while the others wander around aimlessly. Mallus and Neera take down a few non-panicked guards with wands, and a scroll of Dispel Magic is used by Neera to try and get her confused companions back. It only works with Branwen, arguably the most important companion to have on board again. Not only can she cast Spiritual Clarity to remove confusion, she also has several castings of Writhing Fog left to disrupt Hareishan with. Since we're not in bad shape, she goes for the Writhing Fogs. The confused companions survive their state, but Rasaad gets Dire Charmed almost immediately after it. Mallus engages the monk and takes a hit or two for the team, but he and the others have to run when Hareishan casts a Confusion at him. Mallus saves, Neera fails her save but is brought back to her senses by Branwen, and the others avoid the spell's AoE.
Mallus Silences the mage (and himself) and just as she completes a casting of Vocalize, Neera finishes her off with the wand of frost.
An exciting battle with somewhat surprisingly no casualties. I suspect it would have gone quite differently without that wand of fear charge at the beginning.
The remainder of the mines offer not nearly as much entertainment for the party as Hareishan's surprise attack. The ogre mage falls when Commanded by Mallus and attacked by the party, Natasha succumbs to some fireballs thrown at her by Neera from out of sight, wand scorchers take down two battle horrors, and several Writhing Fogs Davaeorn's guards.
When his MIs expire, Davaeorn is attacked with ranged weapons and spells. Branwen deservedly gets the kill as her Writhing Fogs have done most of the work.
We loot the place, evacuate the miners, flood the mines, and travel to the shadow druids to report our success to Amarande (with Faldorn temporarily in the party). Amarande rewards us with an enchanted shield called 'White Oak', usable only by true neutral warriors and divine casters, courtesy of the BG1 NPC Project. It's a very nice shield for Branwen as it grants her +1 to AC, +1 to AC vs missiles, and +1 to CON.
The companions are currently in Baldur's Gate sitting on 70-72k XP per person. Imoen has only one level and 40k XP to go before dual-classing. I'm not sure what the most comfortable way is for the party to get by without her Thief skills. I'm considering the following approach: (1) travel to Candlekeep asap (i.e. postpone most Chapter 5 quests until Chapter 7), (2) tackle Durlag's Tower, (3) defeat Slythe & Krystin and save the Dukes, (4) de-trap the maze below the Shadow Thieves guild, (5) dual-class Imoen, and (6) do all the quests we skipped in Chapter 5 (without the Flaming Fist harassing us).
A few purchases at Ulgoth's Beard included ... The first battle horror there was run round by Doppel until Retro could hide and wait for Doppel to position the battle horror for an attempted backstab.
No wand of the heavens? The monk can use it, and it's perfect for taking down battle horrors.
We tend to be pretty light in our use of magic items in general - though I agree that wand is very handy and I'm more likely to make use of it than Gate70. Retro did actually offer the wand to Doppel when he was shopping there, but didn't really expect that offer to be taken up - and it wasn't .
We started with Neera's quest first, because it's by far the easiest and quickest. We got our first and only wild surge when buffing stoneskin at the entrance, and, luckily, it was a beneficial one:
We killed the goblins because of a dialogue misclick - they do some backstabs, but even if they hit, the damage is survivable. The mages at the end don't have SCS scripts (I think), and they didn't come with any pre-buffs (or mabye they didn't have time to activate them? I remember them at least having some defenses in the past):
Next, we recruited Rasaad and made our way to the docks in order to unlock the Cloudpeak Temple - Branwen actually has quite a bit of dialogue up there. Imoen went invisible in order to disarm the traps before the party buffed up and rolled through the area:
We went through the tunnel, solved the riddle (which seems to yield zero rewards, not even XP, so I propably won't bother next time) and rebuffed haste and recitation before defeating Gamaz - no trouble here, as we're at the XP cap already and quite prepared for anything facing us (the traps would've been the only possible dangers).
Finally, we recruited Baeloth to lower our reputation to 18, which in turn allowed us to recruit Dorn (he doesn't join at 19 or 20). Buffing remove fear before engaging the necromancer removes any difficulty from this battle:
We met Simmeon at the city gates and managed to snipe his mage before she could buff herself. The cleric was swarmed and disrupted, and the battle was ours:
Some decent loot for little effort - I really like to have Albruin available, if only for the detect invisibility. Now, we will make our return to Candlekeep.
So apparently I forgot as host I am supposed to take screenshots of our more interesting parts - doh! Well I'll remember next time...We made good progress, although we got off to a slow start as you'll soon see...
So we found ourselves just outside of Candlekeep. Rex and Drimler grumbled about Imoen being in our party, and as I was transferring her items, Rex was "sharing" his daggers with Imoen by throwing them at her. She duly died.
Our next intention was to head to Shoal. We got hit with a gibberling ambush. A gibberling can hit for 12 damage and Rex had 10 HP, so certainly a danger. Partly due to MP lag and also it's likely Rex had his throwing daggers equipped - the gibberlings wasted no time in taking out easy meat and sure enough Rex snuffed it in the ambush. We were able to loot his items and head to Beregost Temple to raise him, though not before relieving Neera of her gem bag (by killing her).
Finally we are ready to head for Shoal. Some spirit summons kept her busy as ranged weapons were pelting her - this got an easy level for Dreen. After talking to Mad Arcand the duo then headed south to Nashkel. Some ogrillions were in the way, and Drimler bravely tanked them (he was still quite low level) and he took damage but we did win that fight. We also picked up the stealth boots nearby for Dreen. We then proceeded south once more.
In Nashkel, the ankheg armor was picked up for our dwarven tank. We had a "nice" conversation with Noober before some missile weapons made him pay for wasting our time. We then returned Merrianne's letter, that noble family necklace, and took out some spiders while we were here. Grond0 also did a favor for a local thief before then killing him. We also took down Karlat. Drimler messed up the conversation with Perdue, so we could not do that quest. Fortunately this problem is not a big deal for a party of 3 - lots of experience to be had for us. Finally Dreen picked up a magical sling.
Dreen then mentioned Greywolf's sword would be helpful, so we headed down to Nashkel Mines (surface). Drimler took some damage, but Greywolf took a lot of magic missiles (wand) - this helped to speed up the kill. We are still pretty low level, so our Thac0 is still pretty bad.
About this point Dreen mentioned let's get a potion bag. We did that and Rex and Drimler messed with some skeletons to get a skull - wonder if that will come in handy? We then go south, save a talking chicken, and then Rex demonstrated our great planning by being seen by Bassilus before we had finshed our preparations. Drimler bravely charged into melee, and Dreen used the last of the magic missile wand charges to good effect as he interrrupted some of Bassilus' spells - victory! Drimler appreciated the new magical hammer. Naturally the local hobgoblin bandits were killed to get their magical short sword, not that anyone in the party needs it.
Rex and Drimler then wordlessly headed West. Dreen realized they were intent on headed to the Pirate's Cave. But then talked about the golems and realized that Rex didn't have anything that could hurt them. So the party duly went to the Valley of the Three Tombs and picked up a magical +2 dagger, then we headed back to the Pirate's Cave area. Sirines were taken down with the Candlekeep potion of clarity, like usual. In the Pirate's Cave, Dreen did excellent trap work, and Drimler did a great job keeping the golems busy while Dreen pumped the golems with arrows of biting.
We then did a few errands like selling, restoring Melicamp, and reporting to the gal at FAI that her house was now free of spiders, and picking up some pantaloons. Rex mentioned he would eventually want the dagger of venom. This would be cheaper if Dreen had 18 CHA (he has 17 CHA right now). So the party headed West toward the gnoll fortress. Caldo and Krumm were no problem, especially with a 44 pt. Dreen backstab. A dead cat was returned to a poor girl, then we cleared out the gnoll fortress, getting gauntlets of DEX for Drimler and CHA tome for Dreen. We then briefly headed north to kill a bear and get free, useless boots from a noble (why this noble is in the middle of nowhere is anyone's guess....)
We then got the dagger of venom for Rex and shortbow +1 for Dreen. Dreen said it was time to take on the Nashkel Mines. Unsurprisingly, the kobolds were mere speedbumps for the party. The battle with Mulahey was a bit dicey. Mulahey did get a spell off, but Drimler saved, and we couldn't quite kill him before Mulahey starting running everywhere. Worse, Rex was in a bind, surrounded by large amounts of enemies, including enemies rather resistant to his dagger (skeletons). Drimler quickly rushed to Rex's defense, while Dreen took out Mulahey with a sling. Rex managed to survive, though not by much.
We then duly took out the Amazons. Drimler's dwarven stance was highly effective, and combined by arrows of biting from Dreen and a fog from Rex it was a clean victory. Nimbul was then sought out and taken down. As a matter of principle, Dreen shot at Neira and ran outside whose friends then took her down. Dreen claimed he didn't like riff raff in his inn, but Rex wondered weren't we the riff raff?
As time was winding down, we headed to the Basilisk's area next, and will clear this area next session.
The latest session started with an assault on the Bandit Camp. There was lots of stealthing and running round there, culminating with the death of Taurgosz.
Though we both took damage, we were able to complete the exterior before resting to heal up. Inside Tazok's tent, stealth allowed traps to be laid before Doppel showed himself. Britik went hostile fractionally after the others and survived - though not for long.
In the Cloakwood there was an early moment of danger when our intended tactics to deal with the first web trap collided. Retro moved into sight of the first huge spider, attempting to draw it away to be disposed of, while Doppel activated the web trap with the intention of running away to pull it far enough to miss Retro. However, a non-registered click meant the trap arrived at the original target - holding Retro with a spider now bearing down on him. Doppel fired off a soul ray before moving into the web to provide a new target - he successfully attracted the spider's attention, though got held himself in the process. Retro broke free himself and Doppel urged him to flee, but Retro decided to stick around (fortunately not literally) and finished off the spider.
The other traps near the ettercap are much easier to disarm and Retro did that to make dealing with the ettercaps easier. There was still an element of risk in running them round and setting up backstabs, but we had fun doing that .
At the mine, traps killed one of the mages and the other died to an immediate backstab. Drasus was slowed for a while by a special trap, while Retro dealt with Genthore. Even once Drasus was back running at full speed, Doppel was fast enough to be able to nip round a corner and hide - stranding Drasus and setting up a critical backstab to finish him.
After moving through the mine without trouble, Retro was keen to get the XP for the battle horrors. One at a time would have been not too much of a challenge, using stealth to hide round corners. However, both of them arrived at once which greatly complicated things - resulting in a couple of trips upstairs to hide before sneaking down again. After that bore fruit, Davaeorn died to traps - a normal one laid round a corner providing fatal after a couple of special ones had already been thrown near him.
On arrival in the City, there was another slight glitch after the ogre mage was successfully trapped. A number of his crawler companions chased us down a tunnel and 3 survived traps and missiles. Doppel turned to attack, but froze in his tracks and Retro sighed regretfully as he went on his waypulled an emergency firebreath potion out of his bag to warm things up for the crawlers.
More traps made getting the ogre gauntlets from Vay-Ya easy before we activated the poison quest. While running round doing that we were accosted by Ramazith and felt compelled to teach him not to talk to strangers.
Some jellies at the bottom of his tower were beaten up, but we stealthed past the remainder of the occupants to grab some loot. Then it was back to the poison quest with Jalantha helpfully loitering in a dead end well away from any support from her acolytes.
The odds of getting Lothander's boots looked low, but Doppel set himself up by the stairs and started to attack Lothander with darts of stunning just as Retro opened a conversation with him. Despite that fractional advantage, Lothander's speed would have seen him downstairs before the first dart arrived - but he was unable to get past Doppel. That saw him stunned by a dart and Retro took the opportunity to backstab him, before Doppel switched to his dagger to get a finishing blow before Lothander could disappear.
It seemed rude not to continue to use those darts against Larze and he eventually froze in place too and treated us to his well-known impression of the Jolly Green Giant.
There was no need for those against Marek though. Traps felled him instantly and the only question was whether Retro's attempted backstab against the falling body would impact on Doppel instead - it didn't .
The final action saw lots more running round and stealth against Degrodel's guards. Retro was finding it hard to hit those and Doppel took several blows when pausing briefly to allow Retro to attempt a backstab.
I think that resulted in a rare use of healing potions before we finally dealt with the last of the guards and got in to discuss things with Degrodel. With HPs down and out of soul rays that could have been dangerous, even though Doppel activated his greater sun ability for the first time to aid the attack. In the event though the encounter was easy as a critical backstab thumped home.
Returning to Candlekeep, we went straight into the ogre mage ambush. We started with Albruin's detect invisibility, recitation and 2* stoneskin while sending the fighters to attack. All saves against inital chromatic orbs were made, but Branwen got affected by horror:
Luckily, Dynaheir also had resist fear memorized. As the ogre mages hit her with magic missles, she was barely alive, but got to cast the spell. Meanwhile, Imoen started haste and Branwen started prayer as soon as resist fear hit:
Now, as the first ogre mage died, we expected Dynaheir to die to the next round of nukes, so to save her, I wanted to have her drink an invisibility potion. Her aura was still clouded, though - but an ogre mage hit her with PW:Sleep instead of a nuke and this caused the enemy to ignore her for the rest of the fight:
With our party now sufficiently buffed - also adding in Chaos of Battle - and the ogre mages mostly out of spells, melee combat was enough to take down our foes:
Now, we entered the library after a short rest. I decided not to kill Rieltar this time around, instead going for the greater doppelganger upstairs. After some exploring in the catacombs, we made it to Prat, and Amel took out his mage with a successful backstab right before combat:
Prat started off with a quick "Shout"-spell, but we made our saves, and this was the only spell he got to cast before getting swarmed by our melees. We only had to chase down the two remaining foes:
We almost got into a bit of trouble when a couple of phase spiders teleported to the party (and Amel got web tangled for a short time), but everyone made it out alive:
Amel used PfP for the basilisks, and we rested up, learned some spellscrolls, bought some ammo and are now preparing to re-enter Baldur's Gate.
The first order of the day was picking up the Cloak of Balduran to complete our equipment roster. Then it was off to investigate the Iron Throne. Retro set traps in the middle of the group, aiming to cover everyone. However, most of the enemies were only hit by 2 of the 4 traps and all of them survived. That didn't do them much good though when they chased the stealthy duo downstairs. Doppel was hit by a flamestrike after his transition at one point, but otherwise things were easy enough and Retro celebrated as his first 3 figure backstab of the run dealt with Gardush.
In Candlekeep we beat up a greater doppleganger before diving into the tombs area. Doppel had purchased a potion of perception for Retro - boosting disarm traps to 70 and allowing all those to be cleared. Traps were spaced out a bit more for Prat's gang and Bor died instantly while the others were badly hurt and finished off with a single hit each.
The basilisks provided some more easy XP with the help of a potion of mirrored eyes.
Back in Baldur's Gate a review of inventory disclosed a child's body snuggled in Retro's backpack and that was soon exchanged for a shield - which was just as useless to us. Then it was on to find Slythe, who found he was having a bad day - dispelled, trapped and backstabbed in quick succession.
At the palace more traps helped rebalance the odds early on. Belt was still only slightly injured when the dopplegangers were down to 3 of them - and all of those had been dispelled by arrows.
They did little if any further damage after that.
In the maze Retro was able to disarm all the traps - other than the fireball one that Doppel tripped in his haste to get at the skeleton warriors (who couldn't see through his PfU anyway).
Retro got out some exploding arrows to make short work of Rahvin & co. However, looking at his inventory after that he was struck by the shortage of pantaloons. Investigating, he realized that after turning the Beregost spiders down as too risky early in the run, he'd never been back - and taking Landrin's gear back is our normal trigger for grabbing the pantaloons. It didn't take long to remedy that though.
Back at the old temple, Retro rested in order to set a full quota of traps for the first time. Sarevok was then dispelled, prompting Semaj to show his transformation skills by turning into a dead body as he teleported out.
On his own and slowed down, Sarevok was no match for stealthy characters - even if we were struggling a bit to hide successfully.
Journal of Michaela the Mighty and friends, last entry.
We had reached the underground river and got past the dragon.
Then everything went wrong. The enemy mages cast spells that disabled some of us and panicked Dynaheir. She attacked the dragon and after that it was all downhill.
I was just about to continue with Halba and Helmud who have now picked up a full party are about to enter the Candlekeep mines. Continued from page 410
However I saw this character that intrigued me so herre she is:
I was assaulted by assassins, not once, but twice in Candlekeep. The first followed me outside whereupon I was aided by a watcherr. I killed the assasssin with a thrown blade. The second asssassin did not follow me. I therefore hid, crept up behind him and slew him with a single backstab.
Outside another assassination attempt ended up with Gorion being killed. I buried him and am wondering what to do next. I have an expensive jewel in my pocket so buying equipment could be a good idea.
Gorion's note said "Go to the FAI," so that is what I did, only to be ambushed by Tarnesh. He said, "Hold still," so i did the opposite by dashing inside the inn whilst he cast mirror image. I had a good night's sleep, hid and backstabbed him. I hurt him quite badly and dashed inside whilst he cast horror. It never reached me, so I hid again. The next backstab was lethal. I then memorised the spells on his scrolls before setting out once more into the unknown.
Sadly a blow from Greywolf brought the run to an end.
Returning to the city, we avoided any guards, with Amel distracting the two standing in the way of the Flaming fist HQ. In there, we tried to interrupt as many initial divine spells as possible, though all in all, three unholy smites went through (why is every mercenary in there a cleric? I can't see any decent explanation for this in game):
We took out the greater doppelganger upstairs, turned in the body and moved on to Cythandria - without resting first, which was a mistake, because we were badly wounded due to the unholy smites. Cythandria's first spell was remove magic, aimed at Ajantis, which I realized early enough to move the others to safety:
We took down the golems, but getting through Cythandria's defenses was much harder, mostly because I forgot to simply target her spell defenses (we don't have breach yet, and she was surprisingly hard to hit, so her stoneskins and MIs held up) - she managed to cast both slow and a nearly lethal acid orb at Dynaheir:
She drank a healing potion to survive the follow-up damage, and with some magical arrows, we barely got our foe to surrender:
We rested and moved on to Slythe and Krystin, with the former dying early on. Albruin revealed the latter, and we made sure her remove magic only hit Ajantis while dispelling her spell protections. She used PFMW, but didn't have PFNM going, which allowed our party to just shoot her with ranged weapons:
On to the ducal palace, after another rest. Once again, we used Albruin to reveal the doppelganger assassin while spell-thrusting the mage:
By this time, I had remedied a common mistake from earlier in the run, where I wouldn't have any followup nukes once spell defenses were removed, except for magic missle, which doesn't work against shielded opponents - Dynaheir had an ice lance, a melfs acid arrow and some minor drains at her disposal, and she interrupted the next spellcasting attempt by the mage with a minor drain:
The others took down the doppelganger shaman, and victory was soon ours:
Next up, I moved through the thieve's maze (Amel actually almost killed her party down there by triggering a lighning bolt + fireball trap, but everyone made it out, with low hp) and entered the undercity. Down there, we webbed the opposing party out of sight:
However, the webs ran out before we were able to kill the final party member - the cleric. Well protected with Shield of Entropy and other spells, she actually proved to be quite the challenge, dealing some damage with greater command, holy smites, inflict wound spells and the like:
We rested before facing Tamoko, and with her impressive array of pre-buffs, I decided to move back and let Amel check on her from time to time - we could afford to wait for some of her spells to time out:
Eventually, I moved my skeletons and Amel herself forward to go for a quick backstab:
She was able to cast sanctuary, but wands still work against that - so we killed her with six wand of magic missle charges, shared between three characters:
Time to move back upstairs - there's still expansion content to do. For now, I quickly wanted to add the ice island, though I screwed that up. SCS on insane really turns up the AI on these mages compared to tactical, and every one of them seems to have multiple summoning spells memorized (some even multiple summon lesser elemental spells - very strange), so cheesing the place with a PfM scroll doesn't work quite as well, because you have to dodge tons of summons, and the mages just turn invisible and stand around, so... well, it took quite a while for Amel, who was trying to do the place solo with PfM, to kill anything at all. Dezkiel, the one with the cloak, was one of the few who failed to adequately protect himself:
Earlier on, I also got the one with the wand of paralyzation and on of the three inital opponents, plus all the winter wolves and ankhegs. I even dared to kill some of the summoned elementals:
I was close to beating Andris, who had teleported to Dezkiel's old position, when my PfM scroll ran out. I grabbed the cloak as a security measure in case I needed to flee (I still had potions of magic blocking and the like, and two more PfM scrolls if needed), thinking that I'd have to use the stairs with the cloak in my inventory to leave the island. However, it seems that just having the cloak with you is enough - Amel and the whole party got teleported back to the Beard, with four mages still alive.
Honestly, not too much of a problem - there wasn't any good reason for me to go there anyway, except for completionism - I don't need any of the wands and scrolls available, and I've been at the XP cap for a long time by now. Still, not too happy with the outcome and my performance on the island.
Next time, Balduran's Island. At least there won't be as many pesky mages around.
We moved around Balduran's Island, taking out groups of wolves and wolfweres while taking some significant damage, which forced us to rest after clearing the first level of the shipwreck with buffs. After buffing up again - adding in a hill giant strength potion for Ajantis, because he has Kondar - we moved upstairs. Recitation, prayer, bless, haste (and stoneskin + shield on our mages) were enough to get us to Karoug and his mage ally. Checking her initial actions, her pre-buffs would allow for a direct physical assault with our combined APR. She started with a 2*Ray of Enfeeblement minor sequencer on Ajantis, but, luckily, he made both of his saving throws:
Branwen added in holy strength and chaos of battle while the others took down the mage - she didn't get to cast another spell, as her stoneskins crumbled. Karoug mostly tried to follow Dynaheir or Branwen around, and both would make sure to kite him if at all possible:
With the others quickly taking down the wolfweres, I started my attempts to stun Karoug with Dynaheir's Icelance - which turned out to work right away, effectively ending the battle:
Ajantis was easily capable of killing the stunned enemy with Kondar. We looted the shipwreck, rested up and returned to the village, coming to a peaceful resolution with Kaishas (I really don't need the experience right now, and there are no item drops at all). Back in the Beard, we took on Mendas and his ally. He tried to use his mage form to dispel our buffs, but we simply left his hut, returning and turning both of them in their Loup Garou forms, where we started using wands of paralyzation - one got stunned right away:
With Ajantis using the golden sword, Amel with Kondar and Minsc with the silver dagger, the stunned Loup Garou was killed within seconds. Another round of wands didn't affect the second one, but regular attacks were enough (once again, Ajantis was using a hill giant strength potion - I won't have much use for these otherwise, because there are many more powerful strength potions available).
Orientals - Infinity run using unmodded core rules {9} (update 1)
Previous run
Since the last posted run I've had six abortive new runs with the aim of minimising party deaths (starting off by avoiding any in BG1). Each time though I've suffered an unintended loss and abandoned the runs (I think there was a genuine loss in there and a couple of chunkings that would normally be counted as the run ending anyway).
I've considered changing the party a couple of times, but the same logic as I used originally remains - it would be easy to come up with a more capable party, but taking advantage of those capabilities would take more effort than I would be likely to put into it. Not taking the time to reroll a new party also has its attractions ...
This time I've finally made it past Sarevok, as usual for my parties with almost no use of items and relatively little spell use. Sarevok's 2-handed sword and the different pathfinding in vanilla meant it was hard to avoid getting hit by him even after dispelling his haste. However, he ran out of HPs before the Orientals did ...
Originally I was planning to get the helm from Ogre Droth, but ultimately decided to forgo that in order to keep a clean record of deaths. I did a completionist run, exploring fully all areas and undertaking all encounters - which means kills were much higher than last time. XP, at about 140k each, is way above the original BG1 cap (and hence the party are all due level ups ahead of starting TotSC).
Stats to date:
Tobet - M CN gnome F/I (18(46),18,18,19,2,18) used charisma and strength
Small sword, missile weapons Kills: BG1-306
Indie - F TN half-elf F/D (18(94),18,18,8,18,15) used intelligence, wisdom and constitution
Large sword, missile weapons Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-348
Brutan - M CN dwarf F/Cl (18(00),17,19,10,18,2) used dexterity
Blunt weapons, missile weapons Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-411
Nipal - M CG dwarf F/T (18(00),17,19,11,3,10)
Blunt weapons, bow Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-603
Chila - M CG elf F/M (18(00),19,17,18,3,9)
Axe, bow Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-314
Hapan - M CE gnome F/T (18(00),18,18,11,2,8)
Large sword, missile weapons Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-323
Nipal took advantage of being the usual backstabber with his +3 staff and also was pretty vicious using Hakt's bow with the gauntlets of weapon expertise (I forgot about the need to get invited into the camp to get the other pair of those from Tazok).
A corrupted file brought the Halba and Helmud run to an end. Sadly no back-up files.
A new run with Tharl, a gnomish berserker. ** in axes, ** in dual wield.
When my rage expired, I collapsed and I slept for over four days. Just as well the place was friendly!I then cleared the area of hobgoblins before heading north where I killed Sonner and returned Tenya's bowl
I then helped Mellicamp, calmed Marl, took a tome to Firebead, and "found" an indestructable mace .
Silke attacked me, missing twice with lightning bolts, hitting instead the three that she wanted me to kill and then Garrick. I didn't give her a third chance!
Upon going into a nearby inn to rest, Karlat attacked me and paid the price of doing so.
I headed south killing ogrillons and hobgoblins en route.
In Nashkel I found some armour, chatted to Noober and turned down an undeserved reward before fighting Greywolf near the mines.
After picking up a wand and a ring I took Samel to the FAI.
Upon returning to Beregost I took the Colquetle Amulet to Mr. Colquetle and killed some spiders. I then spent nearly all my gold on a +1 axe.
After returning to Nashkel I headed south west where I reunited Albert and Rufie before killing Vax and Zal.
I then helped a dryad and 'Drienne, my reputation increasing to 20 as I did so.
Mallus and his party of elementalists have not been idle since their first visit to Baldur's Gate. The companions do not stay long that first time, as we postpone most quests for Chapter 7. After some shopping and stealing around, the only quests we take on are Narlen and Alatos's tasks, the Merchants' League, Marek and Lothander, and for Scar the Seven Suns, the Missing Citizens, and the Iron Throne.
None of these give us any real trouble.
At the Iron Throne we make use of the stairs to split the enemy up. Properly positioning a not invisible full party upon arrival upstairs is undoable, and we're not going to accept a fight on such disadvantageous terms. In a previous update I wrote that I wasn't too happy with Neera's Spell Thrust as a level 3 pick, as I would have preferred the level 4 spell Secret Word, but in this part of the saga it proves a very useful spell time and again. Naaman and Alai for example, the most dangerous foes in this encounter, are easily made vulnerable to our elemental damage spells and attacks.
BG1 NPC Project's Bards lower our reputation to 9 for us, so that Mallus will get his Divine Wrath Bhaalpower in Chapters 6 and 7. (I'm such a do-gooder even with a chaotic neutral priest of Talos that I just don't feel like killing innocents.)
We have a somewhat hard time in front of the Candlekeep gate as we're all visible and unbuffed as we get ambushed by the five ogre magi. Everyone engages one of the mages, because attacking one foe a time allows too many others to cast spells at us. Isra finishes off one after it's been Commanded by Mallus. Our hero easily stands his ground, but he's not fast at killing enemies. He does cast Holy Smite to injure and disable several foes at a time. Rasaad's foe manages to Charm the monk, and Branwen's foe Blinds her, but as she's in melee range she can still cast her Call Lightning spells at it. Imoen takes significant damage but we all survive.
In Candlekeep we get wrongfully accused of the murder of Iron Throne and Knights of the Shield representatives, loot the crypts that Tehthoril teleports us to, and take on another Iron Throne party. We dispatch Prat with a Spell Thrust and ranged attacks while spirit animals and skeletons do the tanking, before the others bring themselves into view.
Prat leaves our Cavalier Sirene a very good ranged weapon upgrade. Sakul is another example of a potentially dangerous enemy, fond as we of damaging elemental spells, who suffers from our Dragon Disciple Neera's Spell Thrust. The other foes are straightforward warriors who simply aren't as strong as our 6-man party. More trouble are the phase spiders in fact, who for some reason prefer to single out Neera and poison her twice. Mallus can cure her on both occasions with his innate Bhaalpowers. Clearing the area gets Neera to level 8, which sees her learn Stoneskin, while our Shaman Branwen picks Static Charge as her first 4th level spell.
We return to Durlag's Tower and move through it fairly fast. For the warders we rely on divide and conquer tactics. Avarice is the first one we engage. Its invisibility at will makes it hard to target it, and while it does land a backstab on Mallus (20 damage), we manage to finish it off with wand flamestrikes. We've rarely used summons so far, but have them help out against Pride as that one hits so hard that none of us can tank it for long enough.
Summons also help against Fear, but we have Sirene, Mallus, and Rasaad fighting in melee range as well as they're all protected from its paralyzation ability. Love finally, gets Spell Thrusted by Neera and beaten down by the others.
The second level doesn't give us any problems beyond the severe physical damage some doppelgangers deal in Durlag's shape.
On the third lower level, the same applies, none of the enemies can really mess this party up. The Ashirukurus are not nearly as dangerous as on LoB difficulty, especially with extra damage disabled as in this run. Mallus reaches level 8 here, and takes a proficiency in flails/morningstars. Sirene, fully fire resistant, takes on the phoenix guards alone. Having lost the Belt of Antipode at some point, we have Sirene equip the Boots of the North and drink a potion of cold resistance, so she can be Caldran and the winter wolves' target, while the other companions attack with fire. The dangerous Air Aspect is wand stunned for easy disposal, and after we do some pre-buffing for the chessboard, Neera takes down the fission slime with her wand of fire.
On the chessboard we fail to wipe out the enemy entirely with six fireballs, and the survivors actually kill Rasaad (one of the rook archers especially makes a pincushion out of him), before we can repair things in close combat.
We move on to the final level, where Rasaad quickly makes it to level 8 (picking up a proficiency in katanas for what that's worth). Imoen reaches level 9, the level at which we want her to dual into Mage. We don't dual her quite yet though, as we need her to de-trap and unlock all the treasure holding areas and containers. Mallus profits the most here, with Arla's Dragonbane and Pellan's Shield. Imoen dual-classes before we take on the Demon Knight. We pre-buff for that encounter, split up, and decide to fight it without summons. Considering the Demon Knight's resistances we're going to have to rely on physical damage. We soon see confirmed that it's not the safest way to go about things. Mallus and Rasaad lose their buffs to a Remove Magic. For Rasaad especially this means he has to get close for a strike and retreat because he's too vulnerable to stand his ground. I don't do a good job at handling him this way, and he falls a second time.
The Demon Knight is badly injured at this point. When Sirene gets PW: Blinded and Branwen Feared, we summon some monsters after all, to distract our foe a bit. This works well enough, and it allows Mallus to finish the creature off with his new sling and +2 bullets.
We return to Baldur's Gate to tackle most of the Chapter 5 quests as well as the new Chapter 7 quests while staying under the radar of the Flaming Fist. Three donations at temples and eight reputation quests (including Officer Vai and the Dryad of the Cloudpeaks) restore our reputation to 20. Branwen and Neera obtain their final BG1 level and thus more spells. Those spells are Find Traps (somewhat useful as Imoen will not get her thief levels back anytime soon), Spike Growth (a physical damage spell to complement her mostly elemental repertoire), and Produce Fire for Branwen. Neera gets Blur, Invisibility 10' Radius, and Spirit Armor, all blue spells and none that go with the elemental theme really, but they will allow Neera to uncork her elemental fury up close and personal without being turned into mincemeat by enemies.
With some luck we successfully separate Slythe from Krystin and stun him with the wand of paralyzation so we can easily dispatch him.
We have to run from some of Krystin's spells but with detection spells (and Branwen's slowly improving detect illusions skill), Spell Thrusts, and elemental damage for spell disruption we soon remove the sting, and the life, out of her.
At the Ducal Palace we take several rounds to pre-buff with potions and spells. Neera opens with a Malison, and Imoen follows that up with a Slow. Branwen has arrows of dispelling for the mage. And Sirene, Mallus, and Rasaad are in fighting mode. The shaman falls first. The mage follows after it manages to confuse some of the Flaming Fist enforcers, but none of our party (thanks to our well-buffed saves). We finish off the others and both Belt and Liia survive the encounter and Sarevok's fit of rage.
We deal with Sunin for his ring (for Imoen), and then embark on Rasaad's quest. I worry a bit about the traps in the temple, and generally about all the traps that await us elsewhere without a Thief, but neither the traps not the Dark Moon agents can stop us. I've said it before but I really like Rasaad's story and his character. He'd definitely be in a party consisting of favorite companions (personality-wise). I also like this cinematic view right before the final showdown with Gamaz.
Rasaad gets the bracers his brother used to wear, but we haven't given the Big-Fisted Belt to anyone. Both Rasaad and Sirene can use strength potions of which we have several, and the others like to be able to use wands, so we'll keep the belt in our bag of holding for now. I think I like it best for single-class thieves (like Safana in SoD, whom we won't recruit.)
Back in Baldur's Gate we still have a bit of unfinished business. We deal with Drelik (detecting illusions/invisibility) and Jardak (whose helmet is merged with the helm of defense by Thalantyr for Sirene), and Degrodel and his minions.
The second group of minions, summoned by Degrodel if you refuse to do his bidding, is a hard one to deal with because of the cramped space. Besides Degrodel himself is a dangerous mage. We have Mallus, Sirene and Rasaad melee the minions, while Branwen, Imoen, and Neera deal elemental AoE damage, carefully aiming so that their companions don't get hurt.
A summoned fire elemental is stunned, and Degrodel himself Spell Thrusted, so that he too can be harmed. The wizard nevertheless affects Rasaad and Branwen with a Chaos, an effect that Mallus removes on the latter with an Exaltation spell. Thus we enable Branwen to dispel Degrodel's buffs with arrows of dispelling.
We prevail without anyone sustaining any serious injuries or afflictions.
We include the Ice Island (making sure to sneak past the cult assassins to Shandalar), if only for the XP for Imoen who's 10k behind from not immediately dualling at Thief level 9. Oh speaking of that, Imoen is a generalist mage rather than an Invoker as I'd intended her to be. The reason is that she only got one level 1 spell instead of two and running an Invoker without the extra spell per level just isn't that appealing to me despite the save penalties on Evocation spells.
Anyway, we make quick progress through the dungeon thanks to an aggressive approach to combat, more aggressive than my usual style of play. This goes not just for the Ice Island but basically for the entire playthrough so far. With detection spells and abilities, Spell Thrust, the occasional arrow of dispelling, and lots of disruptive elemental spells and weapons, we just don't have that much to fear from these mages. We do split up the first three (Andris, Beyn, and Marcellus). Another factor is that not every mage casts Chaos, Emotion Hopelessness, and Confusion anymore in SCS, spells which would still require a more cautious approach. Many wizards go with summons now, which I find a welcome change, but it's not as difficult to deal with as those disablers, at least when not playing on LoB difficulty.
Finally we clear the entire maze beneath the Thieves Guild (Mallus's Storm Shield and the arcane Shield spell tank the traps there) and we do the same with the Undercity. We get into a dispute with Rahvin's gang and fail to surprise them with six fireballs when one of our party walks into their line of sight. Instead we take them on one by one.
Mallus tanks Tamoko on his own, when three of his comrades (Sirene, Imoen, Neera) are put to sleep by a Greater Command. Mallus isn't sure whether to be pleased or not when he finds he has little to no trouble standing his ground, suffering some damage from Cause Moderate Wounds, but saving against two Poison spells. Will he be as unthreatening as she once he reaches her level of experience? Rasaad (wand of the heavens and throwing dagger), Branwen (Static Charge, great spell!), and Mallus (melee attacks and wand of the heavens) don't need Sirene, Imoen, and Neera to defeat her.
In the old temple, Mallus kills all of Sarevok's aides with fireballs.
Sirene and Rasaad help him dispatch the enemies' animated skeletons. And then Neera, buffed with Stoneskin, Spirit Armor, Blur, Luck (which lasts 1 turn in my install, thanks to @Tresset's choice tweaks) and Mirror Image, stands up against Sarevok. She Malisons him, Branwen Curses him, and Mallus Dooms him. Neera proceeds to turn him into a squirrel with the wand of polymorphing, and Mallus finishes him off with his sling.
Not really in keeping with the elementalist approach, but still my favorite way of defeating Sarevok.
This party moves on to Siege of Dragonspear! We've been able to focus on elemental spell and weapon damage, occasionally complemented by buffs/debuffs, for most of the run. We've barely used any summons or disabling magic from the beginning till the end. We'll see how long we can keep this up.
This post is going to be a bit longer, since it covers the entirety of Durlag's Tower and the return to Ulgoth's Beard:
We entered the first lower level of Durlag's, making sure to clear out any phase spiders, skeleton warriors, greater doppelgangers and flesh golems. I buffed up for the trio of doppelgangers to the east, because they have given me trouble before. Returning to the dwarven warders, we buffed up again and immediately ran away, with only Pride and Fear following us all the way to the entrance (we do this not only to separate the warders, but also to get away from the cloudkill). This allowed us to take these two least dangerous warders down with relative ease:
Moving up a bit, Ajantis managed to lure out the stealthed Avarice, who tried - as usual - to backstab Branwen, which resulted in his death:
Now, only love remained. Not wanting to take any risks, I sent in my buffed-up skeletons and waited for a good time to finish the final warder with Amel's backstab:
Very clean battle, happy with the strategy and execution.
Down to level 2 - a careful approach with traps, waiting out any cloud spells and making sure to quickly and decisively focus greater doppelgangers made a big difference when it came to clearing the level. Once again, the most dangerous encounter involves three of them, in changing forms, in the room with the bridge. Here, I summoned and buffed up. I was able to lure one of them outside by itself, which greatly reduced the diffulty. The others started as Islanne, but luckily changed into their relatively harmless doppelganger form after casting a lightning bolt spell (only hitting skeletons - they did this as I was luring the first one outside with my summons) and summoning a lesser earth elemental each:
Finally for this level, we dealt with the dwarven doom guards - still buffed from the previous encounter. These are always dangerous, and they started dealing huge damage to Ajantis (I didn't realize this yet at this point, but he didn't have the gauntlets of dexterity equipped, so his AC wasn't that great), so I had to support my fighters with the wand of the heavens and magic missle spells do deal some quick damage:
In level three, I went the western path first, getting all of my allies killed while fighting the wyverns. Next, Ajantis used a PfU scroll for the middle path:
We explored the eastern path next, with Imoen taking the lead with her trap disarming skills and stoneskins. No trouble here, only one backstab hit Branwen. In the elemental rooms, Ajantis equipped the belt of the antipode before moving in to the ice room, making sure the focus was on him:
Luckily, the animals don't have smart targeting. We shot ice arrows at the phoenix guards and defeated the invisible stalkers with some summoned skeletons before resting for the chess event. The fission slime would be killed with fire wands, but we prepared with potions of absorption first (in addition to the usual buffs). Once entering the chessboard, we immediately used our two double web minor sequencers in order to stop the charging enemies:
As you can see, we equipped our two rings of free action on Amel and Ajantis. We forgot to have Minsc switch to Spider's Bane though (but he would eventually make his save and swap his weapon). Imoen and Dynaheir continued to cast webs, and Branwen helped out with her sling, though most of the work was done by our free-actioned fighters:
You're looking at 6 webs in total, three of them with invoker saving throw penalties. Pretty good stuff.
Down to level 4. We used our remaining haste + recitation spell to deal with the big spider group:
We rested and fought our way to Grael, equipping free action items from time to time if needed:
Soon, it was time to face the demon knight. I didn't use any potions for this fight (except for Ajantis' frost giant strength potion - he always had some kind of giant strength potion going in the tower, because I have too many of them and won't use the lower ones otherwise), only the usual buffs, plus chaotic commands from the one scroll found in the tower (I want to protect Ajantis against Symbol:Stun). Sending in my summons first (I sometimes add spider spawn to help out the skeletons), I got what I wanted: The immediate Remove Magic, hitting only summons and keeping my own buffs perfectly safe:
The party moved in with +2 ammunition and Ajantis was ready for melee combat, joining the summons:
Some immediate damage, but it was clear that the demon knight would get another spell in - would it be fireball, or symbol stun? No, it was PW:Blind, hitting Imoen and Minsc - not much I could do against that one. However, that was all - Ajantis killed him soon after that:
We moved around the map, buying the remaining potions and green scrolls we still wanted, and moved to the Beard from Baldur's Gate - the journey is short enough for invisibility 10' radius to still run once you move in, which allowed us to avoid the initial ambush. Instead, we moved northward, summoned help and buffed up before facing our foes. No easy backstabbing targets here - and the one cult enforcer somehow moved away instead of trying to buff up, resulting in his early death:
One cult assassin landed a backstab on Branwen, but it didn't deal too much damage, and that was their only success - a quick victory, and as our buffs were still going, we moved on to the cultists in front of the building, killing them as well. Now, we rested and prepared to enter, once again under invisibility 10' radius. One cult enforcer and one cult wizard here - the powerful enforcer had invisibility among his many pre-buffs, so no chance to get him right away, but the Wizard fell to Amel's backstab, opening up the fight:
As the enforcer returned to visibility, we tried to focus him, and he attempted to dispel our buffs. I realized that I couldn't interrupt him in time, but at least he only hit Amel. He continued with a slow spell, once again we were unable to interrupt, and Imoen started to re-cast haste to counter the effect. Meanwhile, we got in some hits at last, and Branwen countered his attempt to recharge his stoneskins with a deadly wand of the heavens charge:
In a now purely physical fight, our party had no trouble dealing with the remaining cultists:
We rested again, now preparing for Aec'Letec. Besides our usual buffs, here are the many, many potions I added: Storm giant strength/strength, defense/invulnerability, heroism, agility/fortitude, oil of speed, and, most importantly, magic shielding + mirrored eyes. We opened up on the mage, Tracea, but couldn't quite finish her before her pre-buffs fired - so we moved upstairs for a second to avoid her remove magic spell (losing our buffs could've easily ended the run). We returned and successfully destroyed her stoneskins before she was able to cast another spell:
As long as magic shielding is up, Aec'Letec can't do much (I don't think that mirrored eyes is even needed, because there should be a saving throw against death gaze, and you can't fail saves under magic shielding) - we just started killing the cultists one by one, ignoring the demon. During combat, we added in Chaos of Battle and Holy Strength on Branwen, and soon, the cultists were all gone, and the one-turn duration of mirrored eyes wasn't done, so we felt pretty good:
Indeed, seconds later, Amel got the killing blow:
All done within less than one turn. We used our remaining gold to recharge some wands and fully charge our necklaces of missles. Still have tons of stuff in our various bags - mostly to sell it in SoD.
I continued on to the Gnoll stronghold where I defeated Hairtooth and Gnarl before progressing to a cave where I found a valuable looking tome.
Heading North, I killed a polar bear and was rewarded for doing so. I killed Neville before proceeding to the archaeological site where I helped Charleston Nib and killed Gallor.
After helping Brage, I killed Neira.
I then hunted down Bassilus
and then killed Zargal.
Proceeding to Farmer Brun's farm, I cleared the area of ankhegs, both above and below ground.
By doing this, I reached level 6.
Killing Meilum was not easy.
Neither was killing Zordral.
I now have to decide whether to continue solo, or pick up a party.
Here's a detailed account of the final battle against Sarevok:
First off, we summoned 3 skeletons and buffed up - our regular stuff (recitation, prayer, bless, PfE, remove fear, stoneskins and shields, MI) and used a ton of potions (defense/invulnerability, heroism, strength/storm giant/cloud giant strength, fortitude, agility, mind focusing, speed). Amel approached Sarevok stealthed, with a skeleton summon at her side, in order to try and lure some of the opponents to us. While our foes fired up their pre-buffs, they weren't easily fooled and refused to waste any spells on the single skeleton. It died before being able to effectively lure a non-Sarevok foe to us (getting Sarevok would be pointless - he can't be killed in SCS unless all of his allies are dead first).
I sent in a second skeleton, and this one got a lot more attention. From a save distance, while luring Sarevok through the center, this allowed Minsc to get a single shot in with a dispelling arrow (removed from stores, but still can be looted from skeletons in lvl 3 of Durlags) - this one was crucial for removing Sarevok's haste:
This second Skeleton also was able to lure a trio of opponents to us: Tazok, Sarevok and Angelo. As it was about to die, I sent the third one in and used a wand of monster summoning charge to keep Diarmid and Semaj busy. Checking Angelo's pre-buffs, we decided to go the magic damage route and prepared 2* spell thrust (one of the reasons: he had already cast PfMW as his first spell), while the others started shooting Tazok with their now extremely high agility and their most damaging ammo (Branwen also added in chaos of battle). At the same time, Semaj wasted his first two spells, sleep and chaos, on the wand-summoned monsters:
Semaj and Angelo started summoning an elemental each (earth + water). We started using wand charges (heavens and frost) on Angelo, with Dynaheir also casting Icelance. In the meantime, Tazok died to our ranged assault, and Sarevok got rid of our final skeleton, so from now on, we started to kite him (which is easy if he's unhasted):
Angelo finished his next spell, Chaos targetting Imoen, so I moved Imoen away from the remaining party. This would also be his last spell, because he failed his save against Dynaheir's Icelance - so he got stunned:
Diarmid moved in, with his PfM scroll going, starting to attack us with arrows - but he's not much of a danger. Instead, we started targeting the water elemental. Imoen's aura was clouded, so she wasn't able to drink a potion of clarity to protect against chaos, but she luckily made her save:
While Imoen and Branwen used more wand charges to kill Angelo, the others got rid of the elementals and the first skeleton warrior with success - Dynaheir was now tanking with stoneskins and MI, and Ajantis + Amel helped out in melee combat:
I'm not quite sure which spell Semaj was casting at this point - might have been a chromatic orb targeting a summon. Nothing dangerous to us, in any case. Now, Amel and Dynaheir started approaching Semaj, while the others shot their +2 ammo at Diarmid. Semaj started to cast remove magic on Amel, so she moved away from Dynaheir - indeed, only Amel got hit. I prepared a potion of magic shielding (my last one) in case a save-or-else spell would be cast on Amel, though she moved to the back for increased safety, helping out with Diarmid. Dynaheir stayed near Semaj, casting spider spawn to put some pressure on the mage, while Amel moved away from the party to prevent major impact from a greater malison spell (which she ended up blocking via magic resistance anyway):
While most of the part was shooting Diarmid, Angelo (who was near death) actually got out of the stun effect and used a minor sequencer (shield + MI), so we were forced to finish him with more wand charges:
This only occured because Diarmid kept drinking concentrated healing potions, staying alive much longer than anticipated. However, he wouldn't last forever. While Angelo's skeleton warrior moved to Dynaheir, she used a monster summoning charge to keep pressure up on Semaj, who cast horror, affecting the summons (though not Dynaheir, who still had her remove fear). Diarmid was killed while the party kept kiting Sarevok around:
To help out with the two new skeletons, Ajantis and Minsc, grabbing their blunt weapons, moved to Dynaheir in melee combat. Branwen cast remove fear to re-gain control over our summons:
Semaj's next spell turned out to be Vitriolic Sphere, targeting Imoen - she took quite a bit of damage, which she countered with a concentrated healing potion. Meanwhile, we got rid of the skeletons. Seeing the animation of Semaj's next spell, I expected it to be slow and moved Ajantis away from Minsc, so only one would be affected. I was correct, though Minsc ended up making his save. Meanwhile, we started getting through Semaj's mirror images with +2 ammo:
Minsc took a few hits from Sarevok, but I didn't move him away yet, as we were just getting through Semaj's stoneskins, dealing our first real damage to the mage:
His minor sequencer, shield + MI, wasn't enough to save him - he didn't get to cast another spell:
Minsc moved in again to help with the final skeleton warrior:
Meanwhile, I removed Imoen's entire gear, because I would lose her at the start of SoD - I had removed her armor pre-combat, knowing that a potion of defense would take care of any AC trouble. Now, all we had to do was kiting Sarevok around with our oils of speed, shooting him from all sides:
Only our potion buffs, PfE and remove fear were left, but this was easily enough to quickly get him to near death:
Aaaand Ajantis got in the last bolt:
That went very well, except maybe for wasting the initial skeleton. Quite happy that I was observant enough to avoid any AoE spells potentially hitting multiple party members. I also equipped and leveled up Safana, though I don't plan to keep her past Korlasz's tomb. I will keep Minsc and Dynaheir, though.
Next time, we will try to fight our way through the tomb.
@Wise_Grimwald Thanks I don't often get to record a battle in such detail, but I was able to write this report just after playing through it, so my memory was very fresh.
Korlasz's tomb: We now have Safana instead of Imoen, and she starts with a necklace of missles in her inventory - so we now have 5 of them, plus a wand of fire. We fireballed the first group, got the second one to surrender and made our way downstairs, where Ajantis used a frost giant strength potion, PfU scroll, heroism potion and oil of speed in order to clear most of the area by himself:
Overall, this was fairly easy - we needed the party a few times - once to flush out the invisible wraiths/greater shadows to the west (Amel got actually drained down to level 5 here, but the flaming fist cleric was able to help her out with a lesser restoration), the second time for the humanoid group near Korlasz, which was once again instantly fireballed to death. Everything else was cleared by Ajantis himself, with his protections active for just the right amount of time (the oil of speed had to be renewed, though). Facing Korlasz, we summoned allies and buffed up (with a few spells missing, because Branwen got level drained as well). We included invisibility 10' radius - and it turns out Korlasz doesn't have the spells or the AI to detect the party, so I was able to just position everyone perfectly in order to initiate combat with six quick fireballs, which wouldn't hurt Korlasz, but instantly kill all of her allies:
Going after Korlasz, we noticed that she didn't use PfNM, so we just attacked her with ranged weapons and summons, getting through her defenses before she was able to cast any aggressive spells - took some time, though, because she renewed her stoneskins after we declined her surrender. Amel actually did take some damage here, because one of Korlasz's allies seems to have been outside the initial fireball AoE, and hit her with darts of stunning - but in the end, victory was achieved:
We made sure to remove all equipment from Branwen and Ajantis before entering the city. Doing all the minor sidequests, selling equipment, learning spellscrolls, we moved on to the Coast Way Crossing, where I recruited my party for SoD: Minsc + Dynaheir can stay, but we now add Glint, Corwin and Baeloth. It took me about an hour of inventory to set everything up and decide on what to sell, what to keep and which items to equip on the new characters. Once again, I didn't use SCS to change any classes or kits - only a few minor weapon skill adjustments and sorcerer spell choices. Minsc will be our only true melee fighter (though with the gauntlets of dexterity, he's still a decent archer), as we're mostly going to fireball our opponents. Amel will switch between melee and ranged as needed, with Corwin as a ranged specialist. Glint is here for support, with Dynaheir and Baeloth providing crucial buffs, debuffs and nukes.
I have picked up Branwen, Minsc and Dynaheir and am kicking myself for not picking up Jaheira before she disappeared.
We have killed Tranzig and Deke along with his cohorts and are now returning to the ankheg area as we would like to have sufficient gold to buy the wand of the heavens at Ulgoth's Beard prior to taking on the bandit camp.
This should be straightforward as I was able to take on the ankhegs previously single-handed.
EDIT
It was indeed straightforward as was defeating everything in the basilisk area.
What was much harder was defeating a couple of wyvern that ambushed us. We could have fled, but decided not to. We discovered that in order to beat them we had to use four charges of the wand of ice, primarily because we had few spells memorised. It was touch and go, but we arrived back at the bandit camp safe and sound but ready for a prolonged rest.
Mallus and his party of elementalists have met an untimely end at Boareskyr Bridge. Getting blown up at the bridge, at least they went in style
SoD had been going quite smoothly up till the point. Elemental wand and spell damage works very well in that part of the saga. We had a bit of a hard time with the Shadow Aspect as M'Khiin still had Static Charge running when she was supposed to detect the Shadow Aspect's Invisibility/Mislead. Mallus used a PfUndead scroll and M'Khiin a PfMagic scroll to safely deal with the dangerous creature.
We attacked the crusaders at Bridgefort with the Fist and defeated them soundly. It was the first time we were reliant on status effects (Malison, Emotion: Hopelessness, Silence) rather than direct damage. At the bridge it was a combination of surprise and bad luck that did us in. We knew we had to subdue the mage asap. With two Cloudkills from Imoen and Neera and an Insect Plague from M'Khiin we interrupted her elemental summoning spell. She did however manage to cast two Lightning Bolts, something I'd never seen her do, and those bounced back at the barrels. I registered that the barrels took some damage but all seemed well when we killed her and had only two crusader warriors left to deal with.
Although the barrels cannot have taken more damage, they exploded some time after that anyway.
And so my poor streak with single-class Clerics continues. I think my best performance has been with Ansgar the battleguard of Tempus, who fell against Belhifet when affected by an Earthquake from his own Sundermaul. I may take a break from Clerics and play a thief next, either a Bounty Hunter or a Fighter/Thief if I want something more powerful. I've installed @kjeron's recoverable traps mod, and I think it'll be fun to play around with that... I guess Bounty Hunter fits better.
This was a bit dodgy session, as Gate70 and Grond0 kept dropping their connection, but we did make progress all the same.
At the start of the session we found ourselves in the basilisks' area. Gate70 duly donned the PfP scroll (green scroll) and cleared the basilisks easily. Mutamutin got hit with a fog from Rex and also arrows of biting from Dreen II and unsurprisingly that spelled Mutamutin's doom.
For Kirian's party we had a novel approach of charming them one by one, bringing the charmed person away from the enemy party and killing them one at a time. Kirian eventually spotted us, but by the time she did, all her groupmates were no where to be seen. She didn't do too well by herself.
We decided to pay Melium in Firewine Bridge (surface) area a visit next. Some shaman spells and a backstab were too much for Melium, but Melium managed to get a piece of Rex before Melium died. While Molkar's party was pretty close we dealt with them as well. Some snares and fog was used. We tried to divide and conquer here too, but Drimler got spotted. But the party still won all the same - the dwarven defender stance is very effective.
Next up, did Bjornin's quest and got a shield for Drimler. Ankhegs were our next target. Drimler tanked them great with his -6 AC - he only got hit once the entire time in fact. This clearing went smooth. We returned the bowl to Tenya then got a few goodies from Ulgoth's Beard. One of those goodies was the greenstone amulet, which meant we can now safely deal with the Sirines (not the ones in the Pirate Cave area) which we did. On the way back we dealt with Tranzig to get a protection item for Rex. Although not before Rex charmed Algernon and Algeron attacked Tranzig and died. However, justice was served as Tranzig himself died to Dreen II's traps.
Durlag's seemed like a good next stop. Dreen II bought some acid arrows and the party proceeded to clear the surface of Durlag's Tower. With Dreen II's backstabs and acid arrows, Drimler's impressive melee, and Rex's powerful spells, we made very rapid progress here. Inside the tower, we then cleared the roof of basilisks with the help of two potions of mirror eyes. Dreen II did some nice backstabs, doing about 45 damage a pop.
We also did the Rigilio quest, as well as killing him afterwards to put him out of his misery. Dreen II decided to take on the ghost with the help of a snare. Drimler got confused, but the party was eventually able to kill the ghost.
Time for the bandit camp! The poor bandits on the surface were killed quickly. Even Khosahnn couldn't put up enough fight as Rex's call lightning was particularly vicious.
As for Tazok's tent, Dreen II crept inside to the back and tried to lay some snares, but was spotted! However he hid in the shadows and went back outside. Drimler used greenstone amulet and charged Venkt. Once the horror was drawn out, Rex and Dreen then assisted - success!
After selling we then headed to the Cloakwood Mines. We just went straight there, but there was one incident of note. We were trying to get past Area 2 (spiders/traps area) and it was taking a long time to find the traps - so long Dreen II tripped one! While he saved, Drimler and Rex were held! The party prevailed but it was a close one.
We tried to divide and conquer for Drassus as well but Drimler got spotted! It became a battle royale! Drimler and Rex got incapacitated, so Dreen II was shooting his acid arrows as fast as he could. The party everntually won, but not before Rex bit it. So we gathered his things and resurrected him at the Beregost Temple. There was just enough time to get back to the surface of Cloakwood Mines. We will venture into the interior of this evil place next session.
After importing our characters into SoD, we took the easy route against Porios by intimidating him into surrendering. We had no PfU scrolls, but had no real problems with the undead downstairs - thanks to the Flaming Fist healer topping up our HPs when necessary.
The healer died in combat against the group of Sarevok's henchmen, but Korlasz offered no resistance anyway - a group of traps persuaded her to surrender and she was shot down while attempting to leave the scene.
In Baldur's Gate we just did a bit of shopping and picked up the Spectacles before leaving. As neither of us can wear helms it seemed appropriate to go and get the regeneration ioun stone and more traps made that a simple affair. On the way back to the Coast Way Crossing we ran into a group of orcs and trolls. Inside the cave there it looked initially as though there was no way down.
However, the game must have registered that Doppel was looking (as the closest one), even though Retro was the one clicking - and Retro was eventually allowed to make use of her infravision. Doppel took a bit of a chance by drawing all the enemies to one side there to allow Retro space to throw traps. He was surrounded at one point, but a rare use of his wand of the heavens and some trap damage opened up gaps for him.
He still got badly mauled, but was able to run the last few of them round while they were finished off with arrows and a fresh trap or two.
At the bridge we both sneaked behind the tent and hid. Retro attempted a backstab, but that bounced off stoneskins just before Caelar arrived and called a parley. The only other action in that area was shooting down an oblivious Teleria from long range.
After stealthing through the Troll Claw Woods we arrived at the Forest of Wyrms. Doppel was soon pushing the boundaries again there - this time managing to find a deadly critical just after a wyvern took him down to 3 HPs.
Various bugbears on the way in fell victim to melee and traps.
We then assaulted several groups of guards with the aim of ensuring they would not come to Ziatar's aid. The largest group though managed a concerted assault on Doppel. His lay on hands healing ability allowed him to retain a single HP after being hit with a critical and for a moment it looked like he might once more just survive.
This time though a follow-up attack struck home and necessitated a trip back to the camp to find Mizhena and get a first raise dead of the run. In fact those guards wouldn't have had any chance to intervene anyway as the half-dragon failed to survive getting annoyed by a backstab while standing close to a number of traps.
That death proved painful in more ways than one as several of Doppel's items disappeared into thin air before Retro could pick them up - including a +2 ring and bracers of weapon expertise.
The Neothelid was an even more threatening enemy, due to the difficulty of setting traps for it in advance. Retro did try laying some outside the chamber, but the Neothelid didn't surface there until just after it had summoned a sword to harmlessly absorb the trap missiles. Although it has a huge icon, only part of that is actually targetable and it had managed to position itself in a doorway where Retro couldn't affect it with thrown traps. Killing it in melee looked pretty challenging, but Doppel had a secret weapon with his Greater Sun fire shield effect. Other than a single hit each from fists and bow, the Neothelid killed itself just from self-inflicted fire damage.
I tend to kill Akanna, though Gate70 doesn't - which meant the possibility of confusion there. Things seemed to be going well though when Doppel successfully pulled both aerial servants out of the room, leaving Akanna helpless against a 3 figure backstab.
Unfortunately, Doppel got a bit too cocky in the meantime and decided to stand and fight for a moment against the hard-hitting aerial servants. The first aerial servant lived up to its billing by hitting him hard and, before he could retaliate, the second hit even harder with a critical to inflict a quick second death.
Although not essential to come back once more, we did so in order to practice throwing daggers at a sleeping dragon. Doppel had proficiency with those, as well as fighter THAC0 - but it was Retro that found a killing shot first.
The final action of the session saw us moving on to Boareskyr Bridge. Vichand was an early victim there of more traps.
We then fought through various worg-kin to get into the fort - where we arranged a surrender. Next time, we will have to find a way to deal with the mage on the bridge before he can blow up the barrels.
Bounty hunter 11, 69 HPs, 83 kills (+218 in BGEE)
Sun soul monk 9, 75 HPs, 59 kills (+154 in BGEE), 2 deaths
Comments
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
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158484/#Comment_1158484
So far, we've done all BG sidequests except for the ones involving a) Marek and Lothander, b) the Sewers, c) pickpocketing and d) Degrodel's house. I won't talk about every single on of them, though here are some highlights:
The mages above Sunderous Sorceries were supposed to be webbed off-screen, but I only hit three of the four. Minsc did most of the work, wielding Spider's Bane, because I foolishly got others trapped while moving into the webs (could've gone to the east to avoid that):
We brought Minsc to the Temple of Helm to resurrect him. Our battles against subsequent wizards were more successful - Vay-ya, for example, only managed to cast a single chromatic orb:
@Wise_Grimwald in v2.5 he does, but he's much more picky in the current draft of v2.6
Minsc was killed whilst we looked for the final menhir. A spider webbed him and there was nothing that we could do other than kill the spiders and raise him afterwards. We are now in troll claw woods and Marcia can now raise the dead.
As we sought to defeat Coldearth one room proved to be exceptionally dangerous, but we did prevail.
Subsequently with the aid of the secret revealed, we were victorious and returned to the camp, relieved to have survived such an epic battle.
We eventually prevailed at the Boareskyr Bridge but it was a close run thing due to being incapacitated myself, I had to rely on my allies.
Now at the Coalition Camp having raised my dead comrades.
Having reached level 9, I put a * in katanas.
Retro (female gnome bounty hunter, Grond0); Doppel (male human sun soul monk, Gate70)
Previous updates
A quick check at the start of the session suggested working on reputation would be useful, so Retro led the way to Greywolf. A failure to rest in advance meant no easy kill using traps. However, it was easy enough to escape into stealth, allowing sneak attacks from Doppel to be followed up with punishing backstabs from Retro.
After taking Samuel to the FAI and handing over Joia's ring, reputation was up to 20. However, that didn't prevent Doppel from sneaking into the ankheg nest to loot that and then return a battered body to Farmer Brun. Some bandits in that area became a few of the victims of Retro's special traps. As usual Doppel acted as a focal point, while Retro withdrew a few steps before a rasping, humming sound (reminiscent of WWII buzz bombs) proclaimed for those in the know that a trap had been launched.
A few purchases at Ulgoth's Beard included mirror image potions, as the next destination was Durlag's Tower. The first battle horror there was run round by Doppel until Retro could hide and wait for Doppel to position the battle horror for an attempted backstab. Once it was near dead, a sun soul ray kept things tidy by providing a combination of execution and incineration.
With the exterior sanitised, the route up onto the roof was clear - except for a single ghast. Retro laid a trap outside the room with the intention of dragging the ghast out, but it proved a bit quicker to respond to a stealth attack than Doppel expected and he duly froze in place. Retro tried hiding to go for a one-shot backstab, but failed the stealth check - and it was dubious whether Doppel would last long enough to try that again. Instead, Retro tried to attract the attention of the ghast to get it to come after him. It moved a bit, but then latched onto Doppel again. However, Retro tried attacking once more and this time the ghast moved after him just far enough to trigger the trap laid earlier.
On the roof, Doppel went mad - consuming a potion of cloud giant strength as well as another of heroism, so that he could boost his damage for the short time potions of mirrored eyes work. It was pretty clear though that he wouldn't be able to kill all 4 basilisks using a single protection potion and gulped another down while attacking the second greater basilisk.
A trip through the Cloud Peak mountains proved no trouble, with just the odd thrown trap used there. Then it was time for the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey just survived a couple of special traps set for him, but was finished off before he could think of responding - leaving his support crew inadequate to deal with the threat they faced.
Outside the mine, Retro threw a couple of special traps into the midst of the amazons, before sneaking in to add a normal one as well. That killed the casters, but Telka and Maneira were only hit by one trap each and required a bit of beating up to finish them off.
Bounty hunter 7, 47 HPs, 117 kills
Sun soul monk 7, 59 HPs, 93 kills, 0 deaths
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
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158484/#Comment_1158484
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158564/#Comment_1158564
First up, we recruited Alora in order to go on a pickpocketing spree - Dushai, Shandalar, the Cloak of Balduran and Algernon's Cloak. Back with Imoen, we started the Marek&Lothander questline, making sure to kill the high priestess of Umberlee in order to keep the tome. We also surrounded Lothander after turning in the quest to prevent him from fleeing, force-attacking him to get his boots of speed. We buffed up for Marek and just went all-in with melee attacks, just about breaking his stoneskins and mirror images before he was able to finish another spell:
Degrodel's house was next - we buffed up (Recitation, Prayer, Bless, PfE, Haste, with Branwen adding in Holy Strength and Chaos of Battle later on) and went inside, melee weapons equipped:
Talked to Degrodel, used his scrolls on the statues and killed the resulting 1 hp adventurers (nice xp for no work, as they die instantly). Back to Degrodel, I made sure to surround him, so he wouldn't be able to run away with Balduran's Helmet (a bit of a risky move, but I've done it before):
I decided to move on to the Iron Throne Battle - this was the fight I wanted to do again and do much better after it almost ended in total defeat in my previous run. This time, I planned to make full use of the stairs. After buffing, Ajantis went upstairs and immediately back down. Most of the Iron Throne party followed him, though the archer and one of the two mages remained at the top. I took the opportunity to kill one warrior right away, as I was able to do so before one of the enemy spellcasters finished a spell. Before the first spell could impact us, I moved back up - and only the two rogues followed. This gave me a great opportunity to take down the mage upstairs - I interrupted his spellcasting, while Imoen blinded the archer:
Oh, and I had to be very careful to stop my skeletons from attacking the now hostile merchants. Luckily, they don't attack once you leave the area (they only seem to turn active as you enter again).
Next up: The three EE companion quests.
No wand of the heavens? The monk can use it, and it's perfect for taking down battle horrors.
Previous reports:
BG1: 1, 2
At around 30k XP per character, we decide to continue exploring the wilderness areas, hoping to push our Dragon Disciple Neera and our Shaman Branwen to level 6. But first Imoen pickpockets Dushai's ring of free action, several scrolls from Shandalar, and a hammer from Hurgan Stoneblade in Ulgoth's Beard.
Krumm and Caldo succumb to fire and ice but we refrain from talking to to the dryad of the Cloudpeaks because of aTweaks' Revised Bhaalpowers component, which offers a useful damage and knockback ability for low rep Charnames as an alternative to DUHM: Divine Wrath. For a single-class Cleric Charname, DUHM will of course be readily available from the divine spellbook so we intend to reduce reputation later on for the last two Bhaalpowers, and raise it afterwards with the help of the dryad and others.
We burn down a gnoll fortress and a xvart village, and we fight Borda with Ashideena (Mallus), acid arrows (Branwen) and bolts of lightning (Imoen) to pierce his defenses. He doesn't accomplish more than a Hold Person on Rasaad before he goes down. At the archaeological site Neera uses wand scorchers against the rabid diggers as they attack fire immune Sirene, to speed up their demise - they're quite beefy in SCS.
We then return to Durlag's Tower to deal with the ghasts on the upper levels and with Kirinhale, who gets stunned by Neera.
We proceed to clear the three tombs in the Nashkel mine exit, relying on the ring of free action and better movement speed to neutralize the Revenant's threat. After that, we visit Ulcaster. There we first lure the dread wolves from the room in front of the Wolf of Ulcaster's hideout toward us so we can dispatch them without the big wolf joining them. Then we use missiles against the evil wizard Rick from Recorder's quest, again to prevent the Wolf of Ulcaster from appearing before we want it to. (BTW I should play with Skitia's NPCs next time now that the BG2 versions are also available).
At 40k XP, Neera's first level 3 spell is Flame Arrow while Branwen learns Call Lightning as her first level 3 spell, for more elemental might. Those spells don't see much usage during our first quests in the main plot line though. Call Lightning can only be cast in the open air, and Flame Arrow is neither as effective against mobs as the wand of fire nor as damaging against single targets as the wands of frost and the heavens, as the kobold shaman and Mulahey experience in the Nashkel Mines.
As usual, Tranzig is no threat for a party of six, and we soon find ourselves in the Wood of Sharp Teeth, where we help Nim Furlwing, slay Osmadi and Corsone, and dispatch all bandits that attack us except for Raiken and his men. The bandit camp we loot before we wipe Tazok's tent clean with fire damage from Neera's wand, a necklace of missiles and some potions. Only Mallus takes a bit of damage from a black talon crit; Ender Sai remains unscathed.
We are about as thorough in Cloakwood, clearing entire maps instead of cherry-picking specific locations. Branwen casts Call Lightning a lot, and to great effect.
Both the Lamalha and the Molkar ambushes take place in Cloakwood. The amazons are first. As we're not traveling invisibly, they have the initiative. Zeela Holds Rasaad, but the rest of the party save Neera gang up on the priestess and stop her from taking down our monk. Neera deals with Lamalha and Telka, who does land a backstab on her, and injures Maneira using wand scorchers.
In the third Cloakwood area, Branwen and Neera reach level 7. Branwen adds three defensive spells to her repertoire: Armor of Faith, Resist Fire/Cold, and Storm Shell. Neera learns Spook, Melf's Acid Arrow, and Spell Thrust. (I would have preferred Secret Word for her instead of Spell Thrust, but the 4th spell level has too many other important spells. In any event, Imoen should be able to cast Secret Word in the future.)
Molkar's aide Halacan has a slightly injured Neera quaff a potion of magic blocking to stop a Melf's Acid Arrow and possibly other spells the hasted gnome has in store for her. Sirene locks Morvin in melee combat, Imoen pelts Molkar with bolts of lightning, and Rasaad, Branwen, and Mallus stop Drakar from casting any of his disablers. Mallus does some nice AoE damage with Holy Smite, and blinds two enemies in the process.
At the mine, skeleton warriors and, for the first time, wand summons are called upon to keep Drasus at bay and to soak up some of his wizards' most dangerous spells: Emotion and Chaos. Mallus actually has to roll to save against the Emotion spell, and succeeds with a 5 thanks to his shorty saves and protective gear. We manage to defeat the warriors with ranged attacks and some wand and spell damage (Drasus's potion of magic shielding has him automatically make his saves, but half damage is still damage).
On the second level of the mine we're in for a bit of a surprise when we take too long to kill a single guard on our way to the corridor with the two ghasts. Other guards and Hareishan decide to come and take a look. Mallus immediately uses a charge of the wand of fear, which thankfully affects most of of the guards. Nevertheless a rather chaotic battle ensues, literally, as Branwen, Imoen, Rasaad, and Sirene all suffer the effects of a Chaos spell cast by Hareishan just after Branwen has cast a Writing Fog at the appearing enemies.
The remainder of the mines offer not nearly as much entertainment for the party as Hareishan's surprise attack. The ogre mage falls when Commanded by Mallus and attacked by the party, Natasha succumbs to some fireballs thrown at her by Neera from out of sight, wand scorchers take down two battle horrors, and several Writhing Fogs Davaeorn's guards.
The companions are currently in Baldur's Gate sitting on 70-72k XP per person. Imoen has only one level and 40k XP to go before dual-classing. I'm not sure what the most comfortable way is for the party to get by without her Thief skills. I'm considering the following approach: (1) travel to Candlekeep asap (i.e. postpone most Chapter 5 quests until Chapter 7), (2) tackle Durlag's Tower, (3) defeat Slythe & Krystin and save the Dukes, (4) de-trap the maze below the Shadow Thieves guild, (5) dual-class Imoen, and (6) do all the quests we skipped in Chapter 5 (without the Flaming Fist harassing us).
We tend to be pretty light in our use of magic items in general - though I agree that wand is very handy and I'm more likely to make use of it than Gate70. Retro did actually offer the wand to Doppel when he was shopping there, but didn't really expect that offer to be taken up - and it wasn't
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
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158484/#Comment_1158484
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158564/#Comment_1158564
Update 9: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158815/#Comment_1158815
We started with Neera's quest first, because it's by far the easiest and quickest. We got our first and only wild surge when buffing stoneskin at the entrance, and, luckily, it was a beneficial one:
Finally, we recruited Baeloth to lower our reputation to 18, which in turn allowed us to recruit Dorn (he doesn't join at 19 or 20). Buffing remove fear before engaging the necromancer removes any difficulty from this battle:
Dreen - halfling thief, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Rex - half-orc shaman (Grond0)
Drimler - dwarven defender (Gate70)
So apparently I forgot as host I am supposed to take screenshots of our more interesting parts - doh! Well I'll remember next time...We made good progress, although we got off to a slow start as you'll soon see...
So we found ourselves just outside of Candlekeep. Rex and Drimler grumbled about Imoen being in our party, and as I was transferring her items, Rex was "sharing" his daggers with Imoen by throwing them at her. She duly died.
Our next intention was to head to Shoal. We got hit with a gibberling ambush. A gibberling can hit for 12 damage and Rex had 10 HP, so certainly a danger. Partly due to MP lag and also it's likely Rex had his throwing daggers equipped - the gibberlings wasted no time in taking out easy meat and sure enough Rex snuffed it in the ambush. We were able to loot his items and head to Beregost Temple to raise him, though not before relieving Neera of her gem bag (by killing her).
Finally we are ready to head for Shoal. Some spirit summons kept her busy as ranged weapons were pelting her - this got an easy level for Dreen. After talking to Mad Arcand the duo then headed south to Nashkel. Some ogrillions were in the way, and Drimler bravely tanked them (he was still quite low level) and he took damage but we did win that fight. We also picked up the stealth boots nearby for Dreen. We then proceeded south once more.
In Nashkel, the ankheg armor was picked up for our dwarven tank. We had a "nice" conversation with Noober before some missile weapons made him pay for wasting our time. We then returned Merrianne's letter, that noble family necklace, and took out some spiders while we were here. Grond0 also did a favor for a local thief before then killing him. We also took down Karlat. Drimler messed up the conversation with Perdue, so we could not do that quest. Fortunately this problem is not a big deal for a party of 3 - lots of experience to be had for us. Finally Dreen picked up a magical sling.
Dreen then mentioned Greywolf's sword would be helpful, so we headed down to Nashkel Mines (surface). Drimler took some damage, but Greywolf took a lot of magic missiles (wand) - this helped to speed up the kill. We are still pretty low level, so our Thac0 is still pretty bad.
About this point Dreen mentioned let's get a potion bag. We did that and Rex and Drimler messed with some skeletons to get a skull - wonder if that will come in handy? We then go south, save a talking chicken, and then Rex demonstrated our great planning by being seen by Bassilus before we had finshed our preparations. Drimler bravely charged into melee, and Dreen used the last of the magic missile wand charges to good effect as he interrrupted some of Bassilus' spells - victory! Drimler appreciated the new magical hammer. Naturally the local hobgoblin bandits were killed to get their magical short sword, not that anyone in the party needs it.
Rex and Drimler then wordlessly headed West. Dreen realized they were intent on headed to the Pirate's Cave. But then talked about the golems and realized that Rex didn't have anything that could hurt them. So the party duly went to the Valley of the Three Tombs and picked up a magical +2 dagger, then we headed back to the Pirate's Cave area. Sirines were taken down with the Candlekeep potion of clarity, like usual. In the Pirate's Cave, Dreen did excellent trap work, and Drimler did a great job keeping the golems busy while Dreen pumped the golems with arrows of biting.
We then did a few errands like selling, restoring Melicamp, and reporting to the gal at FAI that her house was now free of spiders, and picking up some pantaloons. Rex mentioned he would eventually want the dagger of venom. This would be cheaper if Dreen had 18 CHA (he has 17 CHA right now). So the party headed West toward the gnoll fortress. Caldo and Krumm were no problem, especially with a 44 pt. Dreen backstab. A dead cat was returned to a poor girl, then we cleared out the gnoll fortress, getting gauntlets of DEX for Drimler and CHA tome for Dreen. We then briefly headed north to kill a bear and get free, useless boots from a noble (why this noble is in the middle of nowhere is anyone's guess....)
We then got the dagger of venom for Rex and shortbow +1 for Dreen. Dreen said it was time to take on the Nashkel Mines. Unsurprisingly, the kobolds were mere speedbumps for the party. The battle with Mulahey was a bit dicey. Mulahey did get a spell off, but Drimler saved, and we couldn't quite kill him before Mulahey starting running everywhere. Worse, Rex was in a bind, surrounded by large amounts of enemies, including enemies rather resistant to his dagger (skeletons). Drimler quickly rushed to Rex's defense, while Dreen took out Mulahey with a sling. Rex managed to survive, though not by much.
We then duly took out the Amazons. Drimler's dwarven stance was highly effective, and combined by arrows of biting from Dreen and a fog from Rex it was a clean victory. Nimbul was then sought out and taken down. As a matter of principle, Dreen shot at Neira and ran outside whose friends then took her down. Dreen claimed he didn't like riff raff in his inn, but Rex wondered weren't we the riff raff?
As time was winding down, we headed to the Basilisk's area next, and will clear this area next session.
Retro (female gnome bounty hunter, Grond0); Doppel (male human sun soul monk, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158813/#Comment_1158813
The latest session started with an assault on the Bandit Camp. There was lots of stealthing and running round there, culminating with the death of Taurgosz.
In the Cloakwood there was an early moment of danger when our intended tactics to deal with the first web trap collided. Retro moved into sight of the first huge spider, attempting to draw it away to be disposed of, while Doppel activated the web trap with the intention of running away to pull it far enough to miss Retro. However, a non-registered click meant the trap arrived at the original target - holding Retro with a spider now bearing down on him. Doppel fired off a soul ray before moving into the web to provide a new target - he successfully attracted the spider's attention, though got held himself in the process. Retro broke free himself and Doppel urged him to flee, but Retro decided to stick around (fortunately not literally) and finished off the spider.
At the mine, traps killed one of the mages and the other died to an immediate backstab. Drasus was slowed for a while by a special trap, while Retro dealt with Genthore. Even once Drasus was back running at full speed, Doppel was fast enough to be able to nip round a corner and hide - stranding Drasus and setting up a critical backstab to finish him.
After moving through the mine without trouble, Retro was keen to get the XP for the battle horrors. One at a time would have been not too much of a challenge, using stealth to hide round corners. However, both of them arrived at once which greatly complicated things - resulting in a couple of trips upstairs to hide before sneaking down again. After that bore fruit, Davaeorn died to traps - a normal one laid round a corner providing fatal after a couple of special ones had already been thrown near him.
On arrival in the City, there was another slight glitch after the ogre mage was successfully trapped. A number of his crawler companions chased us down a tunnel and 3 survived traps and missiles. Doppel turned to attack, but froze in his tracks and Retro sighed regretfully as he went on his waypulled an emergency firebreath potion out of his bag to warm things up for the crawlers.
More traps made getting the ogre gauntlets from Vay-Ya easy before we activated the poison quest. While running round doing that we were accosted by Ramazith and felt compelled to teach him not to talk to strangers.
It seemed rude not to continue to use those darts against Larze and he eventually froze in place too and treated us to his well-known impression of the Jolly Green Giant.
The final action saw lots more running round and stealth against Degrodel's guards. Retro was finding it hard to hit those and Doppel took several blows when pausing briefly to allow Retro to attempt a backstab.
Bounty hunter 9, 60 HPs, 175 kills
Sun soul monk 8, 66 HPs, 126 kills, 0 deaths
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
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158484/#Comment_1158484
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158564/#Comment_1158564
Update 9: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158815/#Comment_1158815
Update 10: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158846/#Comment_1158846
Returning to Candlekeep, we went straight into the ogre mage ambush. We started with Albruin's detect invisibility, recitation and 2* stoneskin while sending the fighters to attack. All saves against inital chromatic orbs were made, but Branwen got affected by horror:
Retro (female gnome bounty hunter, Grond0); Doppel (male human sun soul monk, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158813/#Comment_1158813
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158872/#Comment_1158872
The first order of the day was picking up the Cloak of Balduran to complete our equipment roster. Then it was off to investigate the Iron Throne. Retro set traps in the middle of the group, aiming to cover everyone. However, most of the enemies were only hit by 2 of the 4 traps and all of them survived. That didn't do them much good though when they chased the stealthy duo downstairs. Doppel was hit by a flamestrike after his transition at one point, but otherwise things were easy enough and Retro celebrated as his first 3 figure backstab of the run dealt with Gardush.
In Candlekeep we beat up a greater doppleganger before diving into the tombs area. Doppel had purchased a potion of perception for Retro - boosting disarm traps to 70 and allowing all those to be cleared. Traps were spaced out a bit more for Prat's gang and Bor died instantly while the others were badly hurt and finished off with a single hit each.
Back in Baldur's Gate a review of inventory disclosed a child's body snuggled in Retro's backpack and that was soon exchanged for a shield - which was just as useless to us. Then it was on to find Slythe, who found he was having a bad day - dispelled, trapped and backstabbed in quick succession.
At the palace more traps helped rebalance the odds early on. Belt was still only slightly injured when the dopplegangers were down to 3 of them - and all of those had been dispelled by arrows.
In the maze Retro was able to disarm all the traps - other than the fireball one that Doppel tripped in his haste to get at the skeleton warriors (who couldn't see through his PfU anyway).
Retro got out some exploding arrows to make short work of Rahvin & co. However, looking at his inventory after that he was struck by the shortage of pantaloons. Investigating, he realized that after turning the Beregost spiders down as too risky early in the run, he'd never been back - and taking Landrin's gear back is our normal trigger for grabbing the pantaloons. It didn't take long to remedy that though.
Back at the old temple, Retro rested in order to set a full quota of traps for the first time. Sarevok was then dispelled, prompting Semaj to show his transformation skills by turning into a dead body as he teleported out.
Siege of Dragonspear will be next.
Bounty hunter 10, 67 HPs, 218 kills
Sun soul monk 8, 66 HPs, 154 kills, 0 deaths
We had reached the underground river and got past the dragon.
Then everything went wrong. The enemy mages cast spells that disabled some of us and panicked Dynaheir. She attacked the dragon and after that it was all downhill.
I was just about to continue with Halba and Helmud who have now picked up a full party are about to enter the Candlekeep mines. Continued from page 410
However I saw this character that intrigued me so herre she is:
I was assaulted by assassins, not once, but twice in Candlekeep. The first followed me outside whereupon I was aided by a watcherr. I killed the assasssin with a thrown blade. The second asssassin did not follow me. I therefore hid, crept up behind him and slew him with a single backstab.
Outside another assassination attempt ended up with Gorion being killed. I buried him and am wondering what to do next. I have an expensive jewel in my pocket so buying equipment could be a good idea.
Gorion's note said "Go to the FAI," so that is what I did, only to be ambushed by Tarnesh. He said, "Hold still," so i did the opposite by dashing inside the inn whilst he cast mirror image. I had a good night's sleep, hid and backstabbed him. I hurt him quite badly and dashed inside whilst he cast horror. It never reached me, so I hid again. The next backstab was lethal. I then memorised the spells on his scrolls before setting out once more into the unknown.
Sadly a blow from Greywolf brought the run to an end.
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
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158484/#Comment_1158484
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158564/#Comment_1158564
Update 9: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158815/#Comment_1158815
Update 10: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158846/#Comment_1158846
Update 11: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158894/#Comment_1158894
Returning to the city, we avoided any guards, with Amel distracting the two standing in the way of the Flaming fist HQ. In there, we tried to interrupt as many initial divine spells as possible, though all in all, three unholy smites went through (why is every mercenary in there a cleric? I can't see any decent explanation for this in game):
We rested and moved on to Slythe and Krystin, with the former dying early on. Albruin revealed the latter, and we made sure her remove magic only hit Ajantis while dispelling her spell protections. She used PFMW, but didn't have PFNM going, which allowed our party to just shoot her with ranged weapons:
Honestly, not too much of a problem - there wasn't any good reason for me to go there anyway, except for completionism - I don't need any of the wands and scrolls available, and I've been at the XP cap for a long time by now. Still, not too happy with the outcome and my performance on the island.
Next time, Balduran's Island. At least there won't be as many pesky mages around.
Xan was rescued and taken to the surface.
Then Lamalha and others were dealt with.
At Dorn's suggestion, I sought out and killed Kryll.
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
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158484/#Comment_1158484
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158564/#Comment_1158564
Update 9: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158815/#Comment_1158815
Update 10: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158846/#Comment_1158846
Update 11: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158894/#Comment_1158894
Update 12: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158978/#Comment_1158978
We moved around Balduran's Island, taking out groups of wolves and wolfweres while taking some significant damage, which forced us to rest after clearing the first level of the shipwreck with buffs. After buffing up again - adding in a hill giant strength potion for Ajantis, because he has Kondar - we moved upstairs. Recitation, prayer, bless, haste (and stoneskin + shield on our mages) were enough to get us to Karoug and his mage ally. Checking her initial actions, her pre-buffs would allow for a direct physical assault with our combined APR. She started with a 2*Ray of Enfeeblement minor sequencer on Ajantis, but, luckily, he made both of his saving throws:
Now, Durlag's Tower remains.
Previous run
Since the last posted run I've had six abortive new runs with the aim of minimising party deaths (starting off by avoiding any in BG1). Each time though I've suffered an unintended loss and abandoned the runs (I think there was a genuine loss in there and a couple of chunkings that would normally be counted as the run ending anyway).
I've considered changing the party a couple of times, but the same logic as I used originally remains - it would be easy to come up with a more capable party, but taking advantage of those capabilities would take more effort than I would be likely to put into it. Not taking the time to reroll a new party also has its attractions ...
This time I've finally made it past Sarevok, as usual for my parties with almost no use of items and relatively little spell use. Sarevok's 2-handed sword and the different pathfinding in vanilla meant it was hard to avoid getting hit by him even after dispelling his haste. However, he ran out of HPs before the Orientals did ...
Originally I was planning to get the helm from Ogre Droth, but ultimately decided to forgo that in order to keep a clean record of deaths. I did a completionist run, exploring fully all areas and undertaking all encounters - which means kills were much higher than last time. XP, at about 140k each, is way above the original BG1 cap (and hence the party are all due level ups ahead of starting TotSC).
Stats to date:
Tobet - M CN gnome F/I (18(46),18,18,19,2,18) used charisma and strength
Small sword, missile weapons Kills: BG1-306
Indie - F TN half-elf F/D (18(94),18,18,8,18,15) used intelligence, wisdom and constitution
Large sword, missile weapons Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-348
Brutan - M CN dwarf F/Cl (18(00),17,19,10,18,2) used dexterity
Blunt weapons, missile weapons Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-411
Nipal - M CG dwarf F/T (18(00),17,19,11,3,10)
Blunt weapons, bow Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-603
Chila - M CG elf F/M (18(00),19,17,18,3,9)
Axe, bow Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-314
Hapan - M CE gnome F/T (18(00),18,18,11,2,8)
Large sword, missile weapons Deaths-0 Kills: BG1-323
Nipal took advantage of being the usual backstabber with his +3 staff and also was pretty vicious using Hakt's bow with the gauntlets of weapon expertise (I forgot about the need to get invited into the camp to get the other pair of those from Tazok).
A new run with Tharl, a gnomish berserker. ** in axes, ** in dual wield.
When my rage expired, I collapsed and I slept for over four days. Just as well the place was friendly!I then cleared the area of hobgoblins before heading north where I killed Sonner and returned Tenya's bowl
I then helped Mellicamp, calmed Marl, took a tome to Firebead, and "found" an indestructable mace .
Silke attacked me, missing twice with lightning bolts, hitting instead the three that she wanted me to kill and then Garrick. I didn't give her a third chance!
Upon going into a nearby inn to rest, Karlat attacked me and paid the price of doing so.
I headed south killing ogrillons and hobgoblins en route.
In Nashkel I found some armour, chatted to Noober and turned down an undeserved reward before fighting Greywolf near the mines.
After picking up a wand and a ring I took Samel to the FAI.
Upon returning to Beregost I took the Colquetle Amulet to Mr. Colquetle and killed some spiders. I then spent nearly all my gold on a +1 axe.
After returning to Nashkel I headed south west where I reunited Albert and Rufie before killing Vax and Zal.
I then helped a dryad and 'Drienne, my reputation increasing to 20 as I did so.
Previous reports:
BG1: 1, 2, 3
Mallus and his party of elementalists have not been idle since their first visit to Baldur's Gate. The companions do not stay long that first time, as we postpone most quests for Chapter 7. After some shopping and stealing around, the only quests we take on are Narlen and Alatos's tasks, the Merchants' League, Marek and Lothander, and for Scar the Seven Suns, the Missing Citizens, and the Iron Throne.
None of these give us any real trouble.
At the Iron Throne we make use of the stairs to split the enemy up. Properly positioning a not invisible full party upon arrival upstairs is undoable, and we're not going to accept a fight on such disadvantageous terms. In a previous update I wrote that I wasn't too happy with Neera's Spell Thrust as a level 3 pick, as I would have preferred the level 4 spell Secret Word, but in this part of the saga it proves a very useful spell time and again. Naaman and Alai for example, the most dangerous foes in this encounter, are easily made vulnerable to our elemental damage spells and attacks.
We have a somewhat hard time in front of the Candlekeep gate as we're all visible and unbuffed as we get ambushed by the five ogre magi. Everyone engages one of the mages, because attacking one foe a time allows too many others to cast spells at us. Isra finishes off one after it's been Commanded by Mallus. Our hero easily stands his ground, but he's not fast at killing enemies. He does cast Holy Smite to injure and disable several foes at a time. Rasaad's foe manages to Charm the monk, and Branwen's foe Blinds her, but as she's in melee range she can still cast her Call Lightning spells at it. Imoen takes significant damage but we all survive.
In Candlekeep we get wrongfully accused of the murder of Iron Throne and Knights of the Shield representatives, loot the crypts that Tehthoril teleports us to, and take on another Iron Throne party. We dispatch Prat with a Spell Thrust and ranged attacks while spirit animals and skeletons do the tanking, before the others bring themselves into view.
We return to Durlag's Tower and move through it fairly fast. For the warders we rely on divide and conquer tactics. Avarice is the first one we engage. Its invisibility at will makes it hard to target it, and while it does land a backstab on Mallus (20 damage), we manage to finish it off with wand flamestrikes. We've rarely used summons so far, but have them help out against Pride as that one hits so hard that none of us can tank it for long enough.
The second level doesn't give us any problems beyond the severe physical damage some doppelgangers deal in Durlag's shape.
On the chessboard we fail to wipe out the enemy entirely with six fireballs, and the survivors actually kill Rasaad (one of the rook archers especially makes a pincushion out of him), before we can repair things in close combat.
We return to Baldur's Gate to tackle most of the Chapter 5 quests as well as the new Chapter 7 quests while staying under the radar of the Flaming Fist. Three donations at temples and eight reputation quests (including Officer Vai and the Dryad of the Cloudpeaks) restore our reputation to 20. Branwen and Neera obtain their final BG1 level and thus more spells. Those spells are Find Traps (somewhat useful as Imoen will not get her thief levels back anytime soon), Spike Growth (a physical damage spell to complement her mostly elemental repertoire), and Produce Fire for Branwen. Neera gets Blur, Invisibility 10' Radius, and Spirit Armor, all blue spells and none that go with the elemental theme really, but they will allow Neera to uncork her elemental fury up close and personal without being turned into mincemeat by enemies.
With some luck we successfully separate Slythe from Krystin and stun him with the wand of paralyzation so we can easily dispatch him.
At the Ducal Palace we take several rounds to pre-buff with potions and spells. Neera opens with a Malison, and Imoen follows that up with a Slow. Branwen has arrows of dispelling for the mage. And Sirene, Mallus, and Rasaad are in fighting mode. The shaman falls first. The mage follows after it manages to confuse some of the Flaming Fist enforcers, but none of our party (thanks to our well-buffed saves). We finish off the others and both Belt and Liia survive the encounter and Sarevok's fit of rage.
We deal with Sunin for his ring (for Imoen), and then embark on Rasaad's quest. I worry a bit about the traps in the temple, and generally about all the traps that await us elsewhere without a Thief, but neither the traps not the Dark Moon agents can stop us. I've said it before but I really like Rasaad's story and his character. He'd definitely be in a party consisting of favorite companions (personality-wise). I also like this cinematic view right before the final showdown with Gamaz.
Back in Baldur's Gate we still have a bit of unfinished business. We deal with Drelik (detecting illusions/invisibility) and Jardak (whose helmet is merged with the helm of defense by Thalantyr for Sirene), and Degrodel and his minions.
We include the Ice Island (making sure to sneak past the cult assassins to Shandalar), if only for the XP for Imoen who's 10k behind from not immediately dualling at Thief level 9. Oh speaking of that, Imoen is a generalist mage rather than an Invoker as I'd intended her to be. The reason is that she only got one level 1 spell instead of two and running an Invoker without the extra spell per level just isn't that appealing to me despite the save penalties on Evocation spells.
Anyway, we make quick progress through the dungeon thanks to an aggressive approach to combat, more aggressive than my usual style of play. This goes not just for the Ice Island but basically for the entire playthrough so far. With detection spells and abilities, Spell Thrust, the occasional arrow of dispelling, and lots of disruptive elemental spells and weapons, we just don't have that much to fear from these mages. We do split up the first three (Andris, Beyn, and Marcellus). Another factor is that not every mage casts Chaos, Emotion Hopelessness, and Confusion anymore in SCS, spells which would still require a more cautious approach. Many wizards go with summons now, which I find a welcome change, but it's not as difficult to deal with as those disablers, at least when not playing on LoB difficulty.
Finally we clear the entire maze beneath the Thieves Guild (Mallus's Storm Shield and the arcane Shield spell tank the traps there) and we do the same with the Undercity. We get into a dispute with Rahvin's gang and fail to surprise them with six fireballs when one of our party walks into their line of sight. Instead we take them on one by one.
This party moves on to Siege of Dragonspear! We've been able to focus on elemental spell and weapon damage, occasionally complemented by buffs/debuffs, for most of the run. We've barely used any summons or disabling magic from the beginning till the end. We'll see how long we can keep this up.
Final stats:
Mallus, Priest of Talos, level 8, 235 kills (Demon Knight)
Sirene, Cavalier, level 8, 261 kills (Greater Basilisk)
Branwen, Shaman, level 9, 110 kills (Davaeorn)
Rasaad, Sun Soul Monk, level 8, 210 kills (Andris)
Neera, Dragon Disciple, level 9, 511 kills (Queen)
Imoen, Thief (9) -> Mage (6), 219 kills (Jardak)
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
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158484/#Comment_1158484
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158564/#Comment_1158564
Update 9: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158815/#Comment_1158815
Update 10: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158846/#Comment_1158846
Update 11: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158894/#Comment_1158894
Update 12: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158978/#Comment_1158978
Update 13: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1159085/#Comment_1159085
This post is going to be a bit longer, since it covers the entirety of Durlag's Tower and the return to Ulgoth's Beard:
We entered the first lower level of Durlag's, making sure to clear out any phase spiders, skeleton warriors, greater doppelgangers and flesh golems. I buffed up for the trio of doppelgangers to the east, because they have given me trouble before. Returning to the dwarven warders, we buffed up again and immediately ran away, with only Pride and Fear following us all the way to the entrance (we do this not only to separate the warders, but also to get away from the cloudkill). This allowed us to take these two least dangerous warders down with relative ease:
Down to level 2 - a careful approach with traps, waiting out any cloud spells and making sure to quickly and decisively focus greater doppelgangers made a big difference when it came to clearing the level. Once again, the most dangerous encounter involves three of them, in changing forms, in the room with the bridge. Here, I summoned and buffed up. I was able to lure one of them outside by itself, which greatly reduced the diffulty. The others started as Islanne, but luckily changed into their relatively harmless doppelganger form after casting a lightning bolt spell (only hitting skeletons - they did this as I was luring the first one outside with my summons) and summoning a lesser earth elemental each:
In level three, I went the western path first, getting all of my allies killed while fighting the wyverns. Next, Ajantis used a PfU scroll for the middle path:
Down to level 4. We used our remaining haste + recitation spell to deal with the big spider group:
We moved around the map, buying the remaining potions and green scrolls we still wanted, and moved to the Beard from Baldur's Gate - the journey is short enough for invisibility 10' radius to still run once you move in, which allowed us to avoid the initial ambush. Instead, we moved northward, summoned help and buffed up before facing our foes. No easy backstabbing targets here - and the one cult enforcer somehow moved away instead of trying to buff up, resulting in his early death:
Now, we have to take down Sarevok.
I continued on to the Gnoll stronghold where I defeated Hairtooth and Gnarl before progressing to a cave where I found a valuable looking tome.
Heading North, I killed a polar bear and was rewarded for doing so. I killed Neville before proceeding to the archaeological site where I helped Charleston Nib and killed Gallor.
After helping Brage, I killed Neira.
I then hunted down Bassilus
and then killed Zargal.
Proceeding to Farmer Brun's farm, I cleared the area of ankhegs, both above and below ground.
By doing this, I reached level 6.
Killing Meilum was not easy.
Neither was killing Zordral.
I now have to decide whether to continue solo, or pick up a party.
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
Update 7: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158484/#Comment_1158484
Update 8: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158564/#Comment_1158564
Update 9: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158815/#Comment_1158815
Update 10: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158846/#Comment_1158846
Update 11: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158894/#Comment_1158894
Update 12: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158978/#Comment_1158978
Update 13: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1159085/#Comment_1159085
Update 14: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1159199/#Comment_1159199
Here's a detailed account of the final battle against Sarevok:
First off, we summoned 3 skeletons and buffed up - our regular stuff (recitation, prayer, bless, PfE, remove fear, stoneskins and shields, MI) and used a ton of potions (defense/invulnerability, heroism, strength/storm giant/cloud giant strength, fortitude, agility, mind focusing, speed). Amel approached Sarevok stealthed, with a skeleton summon at her side, in order to try and lure some of the opponents to us. While our foes fired up their pre-buffs, they weren't easily fooled and refused to waste any spells on the single skeleton. It died before being able to effectively lure a non-Sarevok foe to us (getting Sarevok would be pointless - he can't be killed in SCS unless all of his allies are dead first).
I sent in a second skeleton, and this one got a lot more attention. From a save distance, while luring Sarevok through the center, this allowed Minsc to get a single shot in with a dispelling arrow (removed from stores, but still can be looted from skeletons in lvl 3 of Durlags) - this one was crucial for removing Sarevok's haste:
Next time, we will try to fight our way through the tomb.
Previous updates:
BG1 end: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1159376/#Comment_1159376
Korlasz's tomb: We now have Safana instead of Imoen, and she starts with a necklace of missles in her inventory - so we now have 5 of them, plus a wand of fire. We fireballed the first group, got the second one to surrender and made our way downstairs, where Ajantis used a frost giant strength potion, PfU scroll, heroism potion and oil of speed in order to clear most of the area by himself:
I have picked up Branwen, Minsc and Dynaheir and am kicking myself for not picking up Jaheira before she disappeared.
We have killed Tranzig and Deke along with his cohorts and are now returning to the ankheg area as we would like to have sufficient gold to buy the wand of the heavens at Ulgoth's Beard prior to taking on the bandit camp.
This should be straightforward as I was able to take on the ankhegs previously single-handed.
EDIT
It was indeed straightforward as was defeating everything in the basilisk area.
What was much harder was defeating a couple of wyvern that ambushed us. We could have fled, but decided not to. We discovered that in order to beat them we had to use four charges of the wand of ice, primarily because we had few spells memorised. It was touch and go, but we arrived back at the bandit camp safe and sound but ready for a prolonged rest.
Previous reports:
BG1: 1, 2, 3, 4
Mallus and his party of elementalists have met an untimely end at Boareskyr Bridge. Getting blown up at the bridge, at least they went in style
SoD had been going quite smoothly up till the point. Elemental wand and spell damage works very well in that part of the saga. We had a bit of a hard time with the Shadow Aspect as M'Khiin still had Static Charge running when she was supposed to detect the Shadow Aspect's Invisibility/Mislead. Mallus used a PfUndead scroll and M'Khiin a PfMagic scroll to safely deal with the dangerous creature.
We attacked the crusaders at Bridgefort with the Fist and defeated them soundly. It was the first time we were reliant on status effects (Malison, Emotion: Hopelessness, Silence) rather than direct damage. At the bridge it was a combination of surprise and bad luck that did us in. We knew we had to subdue the mage asap. With two Cloudkills from Imoen and Neera and an Insect Plague from M'Khiin we interrupted her elemental summoning spell. She did however manage to cast two Lightning Bolts, something I'd never seen her do, and those bounced back at the barrels. I registered that the barrels took some damage but all seemed well when we killed her and had only two crusader warriors left to deal with.
And so my poor streak with single-class Clerics continues. I think my best performance has been with Ansgar the battleguard of Tempus, who fell against Belhifet when affected by an Earthquake from his own Sundermaul. I may take a break from Clerics and play a thief next, either a Bounty Hunter or a Fighter/Thief if I want something more powerful. I've installed @kjeron's recoverable traps mod, and I think it'll be fun to play around with that... I guess Bounty Hunter fits better.
Dreen II - halfing thief, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Rex - half-orc shaman (Grond0)
Drimler - dwarven defender (Gate70)
This was a bit dodgy session, as Gate70 and Grond0 kept dropping their connection, but we did make progress all the same.
At the start of the session we found ourselves in the basilisks' area. Gate70 duly donned the PfP scroll (green scroll) and cleared the basilisks easily. Mutamutin got hit with a fog from Rex and also arrows of biting from Dreen II and unsurprisingly that spelled Mutamutin's doom.
For Kirian's party we had a novel approach of charming them one by one, bringing the charmed person away from the enemy party and killing them one at a time. Kirian eventually spotted us, but by the time she did, all her groupmates were no where to be seen. She didn't do too well by herself.
We decided to pay Melium in Firewine Bridge (surface) area a visit next. Some shaman spells and a backstab were too much for Melium, but Melium managed to get a piece of Rex before Melium died. While Molkar's party was pretty close we dealt with them as well. Some snares and fog was used. We tried to divide and conquer here too, but Drimler got spotted. But the party still won all the same - the dwarven defender stance is very effective.
Next up, did Bjornin's quest and got a shield for Drimler. Ankhegs were our next target. Drimler tanked them great with his -6 AC - he only got hit once the entire time in fact. This clearing went smooth. We returned the bowl to Tenya then got a few goodies from Ulgoth's Beard. One of those goodies was the greenstone amulet, which meant we can now safely deal with the Sirines (not the ones in the Pirate Cave area) which we did. On the way back we dealt with Tranzig to get a protection item for Rex. Although not before Rex charmed Algernon and Algeron attacked Tranzig and died. However, justice was served as Tranzig himself died to Dreen II's traps.
Durlag's seemed like a good next stop. Dreen II bought some acid arrows and the party proceeded to clear the surface of Durlag's Tower. With Dreen II's backstabs and acid arrows, Drimler's impressive melee, and Rex's powerful spells, we made very rapid progress here. Inside the tower, we then cleared the roof of basilisks with the help of two potions of mirror eyes. Dreen II did some nice backstabs, doing about 45 damage a pop.
We also did the Rigilio quest, as well as killing him afterwards to put him out of his misery. Dreen II decided to take on the ghost with the help of a snare. Drimler got confused, but the party was eventually able to kill the ghost.
Time for the bandit camp! The poor bandits on the surface were killed quickly. Even Khosahnn couldn't put up enough fight as Rex's call lightning was particularly vicious.
As for Tazok's tent, Dreen II crept inside to the back and tried to lay some snares, but was spotted! However he hid in the shadows and went back outside. Drimler used greenstone amulet and charged Venkt. Once the horror was drawn out, Rex and Dreen then assisted - success!
After selling we then headed to the Cloakwood Mines. We just went straight there, but there was one incident of note. We were trying to get past Area 2 (spiders/traps area) and it was taking a long time to find the traps - so long Dreen II tripped one! While he saved, Drimler and Rex were held! The party prevailed but it was a close one.
We tried to divide and conquer for Drassus as well but Drimler got spotted! It became a battle royale! Drimler and Rex got incapacitated, so Dreen II was shooting his acid arrows as fast as he could. The party everntually won, but not before Rex bit it. So we gathered his things and resurrected him at the Beregost Temple. There was just enough time to get back to the surface of Cloakwood Mines. We will venture into the interior of this evil place next session.
Retro (female gnome bounty hunter, Grond0); Doppel (male human sun soul monk, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158813/#Comment_1158813
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158872/#Comment_1158872
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1158916/#Comment_1158916
After importing our characters into SoD, we took the easy route against Porios by intimidating him into surrendering. We had no PfU scrolls, but had no real problems with the undead downstairs - thanks to the Flaming Fist healer topping up our HPs when necessary.
In Baldur's Gate we just did a bit of shopping and picked up the Spectacles before leaving. As neither of us can wear helms it seemed appropriate to go and get the regeneration ioun stone and more traps made that a simple affair. On the way back to the Coast Way Crossing we ran into a group of orcs and trolls. Inside the cave there it looked initially as though there was no way down.
At the bridge we both sneaked behind the tent and hid. Retro attempted a backstab, but that bounced off stoneskins just before Caelar arrived and called a parley. The only other action in that area was shooting down an oblivious Teleria from long range.
After stealthing through the Troll Claw Woods we arrived at the Forest of Wyrms. Doppel was soon pushing the boundaries again there - this time managing to find a deadly critical just after a wyvern took him down to 3 HPs.
The Neothelid was an even more threatening enemy, due to the difficulty of setting traps for it in advance. Retro did try laying some outside the chamber, but the Neothelid didn't surface there until just after it had summoned a sword to harmlessly absorb the trap missiles. Although it has a huge icon, only part of that is actually targetable and it had managed to position itself in a doorway where Retro couldn't affect it with thrown traps. Killing it in melee looked pretty challenging, but Doppel had a secret weapon with his Greater Sun fire shield effect. Other than a single hit each from fists and bow, the Neothelid killed itself just from self-inflicted fire damage.
I tend to kill Akanna, though Gate70 doesn't - which meant the possibility of confusion there. Things seemed to be going well though when Doppel successfully pulled both aerial servants out of the room, leaving Akanna helpless against a 3 figure backstab.
Although not essential to come back once more, we did so in order to practice throwing daggers at a sleeping dragon. Doppel had proficiency with those, as well as fighter THAC0 - but it was Retro that found a killing shot first.
The final action of the session saw us moving on to Boareskyr Bridge. Vichand was an early victim there of more traps.
Bounty hunter 11, 69 HPs, 83 kills (+218 in BGEE)
Sun soul monk 9, 75 HPs, 59 kills (+154 in BGEE), 2 deaths