Jon 1 wasn't too bad. At some point he seems to have gotten 100 poison immunity, so he can no longer be trivially bullied with cloudkill. He also seemed to resist dispel from the SoM - not sure what was going on there.
For the poison immunity - minimum HP items all grant it. If the creature has something to say before they can die, they have one of those items and they're immune to poison. Irenicus on the tree is one such case.
As for resisting the dispel ... he's level 30. 50% chance.
Then again, I usually just set some traps for that encounter - he's such an obvious target. Did you use up your daily traps on earlier encounters in Suldanesselar?
Also, Carsomyr still dispels at level 30 on every hit. Did you install some mod that specifically nerfs it?
Late getting back to you here, but thanks for the comment on poison immunity.
I did use traps, but I try to avoid using traps if I think they are going to hit an enemy before they can prebuff. So I had two time traps a screen or so away from Jon, which I used to clear at least one of the planetars he summoned.
Re: Carsomyr, I have the SCS nerf which I believe keeps the level 30 dispel, but adds a save vs. spell check. I personally don't like this change, but it means that SoM is a much better dispel weapon as it does not have the save vs. spell check.
Tragically, the Kenthief bit the dust against Gromnir. This was a winnable fight, but I didn't take it seriously enough until it was too late. I'm not that familiar with the ToB content at this point, which probably didn't help.
With just charname and Korgan alive from the original SoA cast, and Sarevok relatively ineffective as a recently dual-ed mage, the party lost control of the fight pretty quickly and then could not get it back under control. Charname was eventually taken down.
This is the start of the fight. One thing I had forgotten is just how many enemy pieces are involved. Gromnir + Sim, some type of animal, two high level mages, then three pieces that show up by the top of the stairs, and an additional two by the door at the bottom (not shown). The mages have a full set of summons (including a planetar each), so the fight can get very busy pretty quickly.
If you look carefully at the bottom of the screen, you can see Sarevok's cloudkill shot, but it was a few moments too late to interrupt Karun's TS -> Planetar.
Here Sarevok gets petrified. I defended him very poorly in this fight. I had sort of thought he could hang back out of LoS, but because it's a small room and the party is quickly surrounded, this wasn't ultimately a workable option. I should have aggressively scroll-cast to protect him, in hindsight.
At this point, the fight is clearly out of control. There are 14-15 enemy pieces in play, and Sarevok has been petrified. Unfortunately, Karun's TS went off almost immediately after I triggered assassination on charname, so ~70-80% of his most dangerous ability was wasted. In addition, the lack of availability of HLA traps meant that charname just wasn't getting a lot of use out of his HLAs.
I think I still could have retaken control of the fight here, but I didn't use the right scrolls in the right order. What I should have done (I think) is scroll-cast my last timestop to clear the planetars with melee. Then, use my 2 pfMW scrolls + slayer change to clear gromnir and the norther pieces. And then I think I could have slugged it out with the rest of them.
Instead I scroll-cast timestop and then teleport field and then slayer changed. I don't use teleport field that often, and was unprepared for it making it essentially impossible for me to hit anything in melee. So even after the time stop and mfPW scrolls, I really hadn't cleared any enemy pieces. After that, I was taking too much damage to do much more than run around and try to heal. Eventually I got worn down and killed.
Having said all that, I think some of my lazy play in this fight was not wanting to finish the run with Jaheira perma'd . I thought the chunked NPCs would be available via the fate spirit, at least to hang out in Hell while they waited for me to try to win at the throne. But, perma dead characters are not reachable by the fate spirit.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this run. The kenthief is a really fun character with great resource management dynamics due to the scroll casting capability. The party felt reasonably balanced with just charname, Jaheira and Korgan, and it was a lot of fun figuring out how to deal with the late SoA fights. Too bad for Jaheira's unlucky fate in Suldanessellar.
SCS Insane Assassin(13)->Fighter w/ party of thieves
Just dipped a toe into BG1 with the new party. Human assassin, planning on dualing to fighter at 13. Level 13 gives the full poison weapon ability, plus 5x backstab and keeps the +1/+1 kit bonus of course. Because of grandmaster damage bonus, this character does nearly the same amount of backstab damage as a full 7x assassin.
However, he gives up shorty bonuses, and trades thief HLAs for fighter HLAs. I'm not sure whether that makes him stronger or weaker than a pure assassin - I think it probably depends on the scenario. I'd guess that the pure assassin is probably stronger due to HLA traps, UAI weapons (particularly SoM) and UAI scroll casting.
But, because the other characters in the party are all thieves, I think from a party perspective it's probably more helpful to have someone with fighter HLAs.
I don't know how much this character will ultimately backstab, but I am looking forward to finding at least a few targets for some juicy critical strike backstabs. I considered going Assassin(21)->Fighter for 7x backstabs *plus* the GM damage bonuses, but the unlock is at 6mm exp and I decided not worth it for obvious reasons.
The post-nerf poison weapon ability I gather is not all that useful, but he will be able to give it a try as well.
Party in BG1 is charname, Imoen, Shar-teel, Safana (later probably swap to Alora), Coran, and Tiax. I already screwed up by recruiting Shar-teel at 32k exp, so now I have to get her 40k more experience to unlock her fighter levels. This is very inconvenient, as I have no one to wear armor and tank, so the bandit camp in particular may need to wait for later. Would have been much better to recruit her at F(3) so she could grab the proficiency point and then quickly unlock the ability to wear real armor at T(4).
Assuming we get to BG2, our party will be charname, Jan, Yoshi -> Imoen, Nalia. If we make it to ToB, Sarevok will be recruited and dualed to thief. Should be interesting. It's always fun when the party has another thief so Yoshi can lean into traps. We will struggle with physical damage and tanking in the early game, so I'm expecting Jan to pick up some of the slack. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Our last session was a couple of weeks ago, so my memory of what we'd done previously was even more hazy than usual. However, the world map showed we'd not yet been to Durlag's Tower, so we started with that. A raging berserker with end-game equipment is pretty hard to stop - and the battle horrors were certainly not up to the job. The basilisks on the roof might have had more of a chance - if it hadn't been for the 3 potions of mirrored eyes Reelan consumed while chewing through those.
Back in the City the Iron Throne party still waited. Reelan used a scroll of PfM there and occupied the enemies while Bunty sniped from the sidelines and Dib nipped in and out sticking his nose (and poisoned dagger) into people's business.
The fight was clearly a bit too easy for Reelan as he went searching for the odd guard left in the building to claim a few more victims.
At Candlekeep another PfM scroll allowed Reelan to ignore most of the traps while using a potion of storm giant strength to grab the tomes. The scroll was still active after dealing with some dopplegangers on the way to find Prat and Reelan positioned himself to ensure that Prat's lightning was more of a problem for his own side than us.
Slythe was attacked as he came out, to avoid needing to deal with Krystin as well. Reelan's comment there was "well he didn't last very long". The palace was potentially a greater threat and we used potion buffs there ahead of the fight. The dopplegangers didn't last too long either, but were still able to take Belt to near death - though Liia also survived for once.
Bunty had her eye on getting her final BGEE level before taking on Sarevok. Inhabitants of the maze provided much of the XP needed and showing Rahvin how to use exploding arrows added to that.
The final required dollop was gained by using a PfU scroll on the nearby skeleton warriors. Inside the temple Sarevok was shot from range with a dispelling arrow. Semaj teleported out in support, but could make no impression on Reelan inside yet another PfM scroll. For a bit it looked like Reelan might be able to see Sarevok off in melee as well, but a couple of big hits saw him retreat - though he still got the kill with a flying axe.
There was still time enough left to make a start on BG2EE. While that didn't seem particularly dangerous, we took lots of damage there from wading through traps. Our relatively poor AC also meant enemies like the duergar got plenty of licks in as well.
That meant quite a bit of resting to heal up. Bunty had DUHM to activate constitution regeneration to speed that up, while Dib used his vampiric touch on Bunty to hasten his own recovery. Reelan had no such tricks, having to wait for Bunty to use Bhaal healing - and got a bit fed up with the time that took. We were still able to get to the end of the dungeon though and will exit next time and look for some better armor.
Undead Hunter - L8, 88 HPs, 32 kills (+194 in BGEE)
Berserker - L8, 102 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 35 kills (+193 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Dark Moon Monk - L8, 65 HPs, 27 kills (+89 in BGEE), 0 deaths
After Voxil's run from Sep 2020 to April 2021 ended in a sulky and romanceless defeat, I rolled a few characters and selected:
An elven Archer for my second attenpt of the year.
He strolled and stealthed nicely through the start of BG:EE before taking on Lamahla and her gang. Disdain for opening with the Greenstone Amulet and a late attempt at applying it saw a bit of rigid thinking take hold, and his continued use of arrows against melee enemies proved his undoing. Failing to make it out of BG:EE.
So, onto 2021 run 3 which like recent runs involves numerous small sessions over time. A few more rolled characters saw me select:
A half-orc Cleric / Thief - who needs shorty saving throws (me?)
After an initial effort gets Reputation up to 20 Dulca purchases the +3 quarterstaff and sets about basilisks. Mutamin is Silenced.
Kirian and her gang are also Silenced, and a few skeletons are enough to win this battle too.
Dulca then gets on with the game, clearing out Nashkel Mine and making her way to a bandit camp over the dead bodies of Lamahla Telka Zeela Maneira Nimbul and Tranzig.
Taurgosz Khosann survived a backstab but a subsequent Command allowed Dulca and a pair of skeletons to make a mess of him.
Cloakwood sees Dulca kill off a hamadryad and backstab a family of wyverns.
Drasus' two casters expire in a pair of fiery necklace of missile charges, and a Draw Upon Holy Might backstab almost kills him but he survives for a bit. Dulca runs, swings, runs and swings again. Two more hits are enough for Drasus and then Genthore finds he can't cope with a backstabber using his bosses boots.
Dulca descends into Cloakwood Mine. She uses her stealth to pick apart the defenders and a trio of skeletons to hunt down and murderise Davaeorn. Dulca wonders if Davaeorn has perished from dehydration so just adds some water as she leaves.
With the city of Baldur's Gate open for business Dulca familiarises herself with the area. A few quests later she is back into Candlekeep and clears that out before returning to the city. More skeletons turn up uninvited at the Coronation and prevent Belt + Liia being assassinated.
Dulca has some fun in the Thieves Maze but trips a lightning trap in her haste - and decides to use a potion of absorbtion - a mighty good call as the v2.6 lightning bolt forces several saves and a few more saves are failed. Dulca and her double figure hit points reckon there must have been a potential for several hundred damage from the more than ten reverberations of the bolt.
Rahvin and his gang have a serious in-fight, one skeleton being enough for everyone to turn on he who shot it in their midst with an arrow of detonation. Their party looks a bit ragged as a result but a second and third skeleton fail to make much more of an impression. Dulca is just hiding in the shadows to do the job herself when everyone turns on Shaldrissa as her caustic cloudkill irritates them. By the time the cloudkill clears only Gorf is left standing - which a backstab soon resolves.
Sarevok manages to get his entire gang into action inside the abandoned temple of Bhaal. Dulca and her skeletons fail to overwhelm Semaj as a result and she runs away to hide. Angelo has by this time upset his party with more friendly fire arrows of detonation and dies at Tazok's hand. Dulca has a scroll of Protection from Magic active and has parked Sarevok behind a pillar so she is able to kill Tazok with four backstabs. Semaj is then meleed into submission as is a battle horror that is accidentally triggered.
That just leaves Sarevok.
Oh, he's not in sight. Dulca drops her stealth and acts as a huge lure but no amount of strolling around the pillars tempts Sarevok out. After a minute or two Dulca is resigning herself to a game-ending draw. Before doing so she looks through all her equipment and drags out some potions (explosions, fire breath and fiery burning).
The explosion and fiery burning potions do nothing - not even appearing to force Sarevok to take damage or save. Dulca throws a spare cloak (displacement) onto the ground and activates a fire breath potion onto it before running around the pillar.
Success - Sarevok takes damage and attacks. Dulca is pleased to see him as she only had three potions of fire breath and if Sarevok had stayed concealed she'd have no way to kill him.
Several minutes later Dulca has hidden a few times and backstabbed a few times. The combination of regular failing to hide and regular failing to hit means Sarevok is still in rude health. Dulca persists though on the presumption that Sarevok can do nothing.
Dulca is wrong - Sarevok once more conceals himself within a pillar.
This is frustrating, as Dulca really needs the pillars to hide. She uses a second fire breath potion and Sarevok emerges again. More failed hides and attacks follow, while Sarevok lands a couple of hits. Dulca is trying hard to hide a bit further away from the pillars so Sarevok doesn't conceal again. She hides, moves away and heals before resuming her attacks.
Eventually Sarevok can take no more and down he goes - leaving Dulca free to progress to SoD (and her likely doom, in Siege of Death )
(I can't remember Sarevok's behaviour being this bad against a thief before - not sure if he is clipping the pillar or if the area map is slightly off but it feels very buggy)
Daiyn looked at the Underground River entrance, having put it off for two weeks she no longer had that option and had to convince Jack that she wasn't at all nervous about what lay ahead. Not at all. No sir.
Planning and preparation were key. If only Daiyn had done some.
So we boldly moved on and after only a minute or so the game crashed as Daiyn tried to equip the stone dowser necklace having just taken it out from a container.
A touch of deja-vu reload post-crash saw us repeat our actions, only for the game to crash after speaking to Bellowgulp and the Concoctioner.
Deja-vu mk II had us repeat the above with a few additional saves. No further crash, but we discovered we had the poison and no barrel of bwoosh. Jack and Daiyn looked at each other - was it going to be one of those days.
We pressed on, poisoning both the food and the water before retreating without partaking in combat. Back to camp we went and were forced to defend it against three groups of attackers. It was a long and valiant battle short set of encounters thanks to previously laid snares. The opening group of trolls and ogres were badly wounded for arrows and a Holy Smite to finish them quickly, while the second and third groups were reduced to one or two enemies before combat started in earnest.
Our next task was to repel the main group of enemies at the camp entrance. Jack sent his skeletons in but they only had a couple of mortally wounded attackers to defeat thanks to more snares.
Daiyn wasted no time in heading to Dragonspear Castle and challenging Ashatiel to one-on-one combat. This went well, although Jack was left to suggest various obvious changes to Daiyn's tactics as she wasn't really on the ball. With his advice being heeded all went well though.
We made our way through the castle and into a portal to pursue Caelar Argent. A potion of clarity each allowed us to ignore the initial group of demons and Jack fought two larger groups beyond the large staircase. Daiyn threw him a potion of regeneration here.
Daiyn was unable to convince Thrix to help and we had to face two waves of his minions - Jack again dealing with them. Then we ascended the Hellevator and started to buff for Belhifet. It was becoming clear by now that Daiyn's lack of planning had left us with many useless potions and few of value.
Caelar survived for a minute or two, fighting on our side. Belhifet took some initial damage and a few backstabs.
Jack was starting to feel the heat though - Daiyn had 50% fire resistance but Jack had none. Daiyn was also struggling to hide for more backstabs until Jack suggested using potions of invisibility. Unfortunately this was looking like it might be too little too late.
Daiyn kept a close eye on Jack, concerned that he may be fading away. This meant she took her eye off the ball and stayed a bit too close to Belhifet when she shouldn't.
With Daiyn dead, Belhifet was free to feast on another Bhaalspawn.
Bouncing back up off the ground into our saddles we chose another random pair. I once more got a multi-class - this time a fighter/cleric. That should in theory complement Gate70's enchanter well.
Progress so far has been pretty good. Shoal was blinded and then finished off quickly with the help of commands.
Neera was also commanded to avoid her running into talking range.
Also in Beregost Conk had a go at blinding Silke each time he passed by - eventually succeeding with that on the 5th attempt.
There was more quick XP at the basilisk area, where Conk provided the PfP protection. Mutamin's mirrors helped him survive longer than was comfortable and Wark, who was already suffering from 2 helpings of MAA was glad to see Mutamin eventually collapse, while a blinded basilisk 'looked' on.
Baerin and Lindin lost their sight, while Kirian and Peter were speechless as that party quickly fell.
A quick trip to the FAI saw Conk pick up the Ring of Wizardry while Wark silenced Tarnesh for disposal. Further equipment upgrades included some armor at Nashkel, bracers at Firewine Bridge and a +2 dagger from the Valley of the Tombs.
Some reputation quests saw Greywolf relieved of his sword, Samuel put back together, Joia reunited with her ring and Melicamp reconstituted. While doing that Bassilus also made his last stand. The plan for Conk to show himself and set Bassilus up to be silenced worked - though as Conk was also struck dumb it was perhaps a good job it did.
Conducting Brage home to do penance took reputation to 19 and we headed for the ankheg nest. Conk had a fistful of sleep spells there and all but the last 2 ankhegs took naps. The last couple had their own problems - commands ensuring they also got no real opportunity to fight back.
With reputation now up at 20, we'll do a bit of shopping next.
Just a small update. We made it past Sarevok and did quite well in BG 1. But this is what we expected since BG 1 is so generous with the gold and the many potions and scrolls (which we of course used a lot with our ranger saves). We are expecting a much sterner challenge in BG 2. We've recruited Minsc and are on our way out of the dungeon. Here were a few screenies of the adventure so far:
One of the pictures shows a near miss - April got held by the hamadryad (her greenstone amulet charge wore off) and then a bear and the hamadryad attacked! The party rushed to her defense and incredibly managed to both kill the bear and hamadryad before our party member died...
Candlekeep turned out to be easy as was rescuing Duke Elthan and killing Cythandra.
Killing the assassins was a lot more touch and go. I accidentally got spotted by Kirstin before I was buffed and she cast confusion.
As a result I killed a nobleman (Fortunately only one so I didn't fall) Also I had just done my shopping.
I paid enough gold to increase reputation to 10 after returning a dagger. Now very poor. I had been intending to recharge some wands but will now drop that idea.
We were successful at the Ducal Palace, though only one duke survived. (Belt) We had time to heal him during the battle which may have helped somewhat.
EDIT 2
We are now in the undercity and have killed two battle horrors and set several traps ready for the battle against Sarevok. However as we haven't yet reached the level cap and are short on potions we have left Baldur's Gate in search of gold and experience.
I will not be going to Durlag's as I am currently more interested in trying to finish SoD and there is not much loot of note further down.
Coreranger X and his band of rangers - FINAL Update!
I feel so embarrassed! I was playing my game late at night and was on the top level of Irenicus dungeon. I absently mindly moved forward instead of moving to the pedestals and using the keys to disarm the traps - a huge number of fireballs landed on the party and killed Coreranger X - who was already wasn't full health as he had to trip the large trap on the bridge.
I always figured traps would be the undoing of a party of rangers, just didn't expect that to happen so soon...
Coreranger X and his band of rangers - FINAL Update!
I feel so embarrassed! I was playing my game late at night and was on the top level of Irenicus dungeon. I absently mindly moved forward instead of moving to the pedestals and using the keys to disarm the traps - a huge number of fireballs landed on the party and killed Coreranger X - who was already wasn't full health as he had to trip the large trap on the bridge.
I always figured traps would be the undoing of a party of rangers, just didn't expect that to happen so soon...
I have put Tisiphone the Sorceress on hold before the Dukes. It felt like I was bullying the game, rather than the game bullying me as it should be. Messing aroundd with the Improved Heart of Fury mod for Icewind Dale instead which is punishing me terribly.
So I rolled up a party of Kensais. 6th spot taken by a thief. Non-kensais can join if a kensai gets chunked since there are no Kensai NPCs. Should be fun - name of my character is Krennum.
I have put Tisiphone the Sorceress on hold before the Dukes. It felt like I was bullying the game, rather than the game bullying me as it should be. Messing aroundd with the Improved Heart of Fury mod for Icewind Dale instead which is punishing me terribly.
Your posts on it have been quite interesting and informative thanks. I’ll have to try it under some sort of limited reload rules sometime, I’m a bit too addicted to no-reloading to switch to the challenge-beating frame of mind.
Have started doing no reloads of modded Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate. The former is just a chance to try the new npcs, the latter has been quite fun due to some surprising new content and the very random approach taken by the CN protagonist Fall. He’s a half elven F/M Hexblade (Might & Guile), who randomises most of his decisions concerning quests & party composition. As a result he hasn’t yet visited the basilisk area and has worked his way slowly through the early levels. He’s helpful to the common folk but dislikes authority figures & faerie so I suppose he’s in denial of the elven half of his nature. Will have to see how far he can survive... (though if he does go down I think the next party will be an all gnome one!)
My party of kensais are now level 6. We have had a couple of deaths, but no chunkings. Much of chapter 3 complete.
We did have one big scare (see the screenshot below) - Mutamutin managed to fear 2/3 of the party and the party was running everywhere and getting attacked by new enemies. Mutamutin himself went down almost immediately after casting horror, but one of our characters was getting attacked by the one basilisk left! I foolishly did not clear that basilisk before engaging Mutamutin. By blind luck, the only party member seen was Paja, who happened be the one character protected from petrifiacation! We eventually killed the pesky baslisk, whew!
For Kirian, we had one Kensai run as a distraction protected by potion of magic blocking while rest of the party ranged - this was effective.
After exiting the dungeon, it didn't take long to clear the circus - providing Dib with a quick level in the session.
Officer Dirth put up a struggle, but not quite enough to keep hold of his armor. Reelan took that to boost his defenses, but still wanted a proficient magical weapon. He knew of an axe sitting in one of the Graveyard tombs, but Bunty was not quite strong enough to get at it. While there Reelan enraged to have a go at the Crypt King - that fight showed his defenses still needed a bit more boosting.
With Bunty limited to a couple of Bhaal healing spells, she decided to head for the Temple sewers to seek some regeneration. The Cloak of the Sewers offered one source of that and was duly obtained.
However, Bunty wanted to press on to get the Ring of Gaxx as well. The first stage of that was to open up access to the lich and that was soon done. However, to avoid forgetting about it later it seemed appropriate to trigger the lightning trap nearby. One potential problem was the lack of protection against that (though thinking about it now, I suspect Bunty had a green protection scroll from the dungeon in her scroll case ). There seemed to be a lack of enthusiasm from the others to volunteer for the job, so I proudly proclaimed "I'd be quite happy to trigger that trap".
Bunty strode forward with the intention of activating the trap as she went through and pulling the lightning forward to hit any waiting undead around the bend of the corridor. However, despite her not even being hasted, the trap failed to trigger. In any case the behavior of lightning has been changed in v2.6, so previous experience would not be a good guide. As Bunty came back, the lightning fired - and she was immediately hit at least a couple of times as it bounced across the corridor. The bolt then went horizontally - hitting her again as it went to the left along the corridor and one final time as it went back the other way into the lich's tomb. Even repeatedly playing the video Gate70 makes of our session, I can't tell how damage occurred. Here's the final moment of life with Bunty still apparently alive and the lightning safely on its way. However, the game engine had obviously been struggling to process the damage quickly enough and Bunty collapsed a moment later.
While it looks like traps may have affected my class selection I had already decided last session to roll a Shadowdancer next. Corey_Russell chose a Bounty Hunter and Grond0 presumably rolled a random selection to get a Shaman.
Brief summary of these three kits:
Shadowdancer advantages:
Hide in Plain Sight, even when enemies are visible
10% bonus to hide in shadows and move silently
+1 to saving throws
Shadowstep: Step into the shadow plane and move for 7 seconds while others are frozen in time but cannot attack or cast spells during this time
Shadowdancer disadvantages:
-1 to backstab multiplier
Cannot set snares
20 skill points per level
Bounty Hunter advantages:
15% bonus to set traps
Set Special Snare at level 1 and every 5 levels thereafter
Bounty Hunter disadvantages:
20 skill points per level
Shaman (includes the below, and a bit more):
Can only equip leather / studded / hide armours, and bucklers
Can have one pip in allowable weapons (axe, dagger, spear, quarterstaff, shortbow, sling, dart, club)
Can have one pip in any weapon styles
Selects druid spells to cast at each level (similar to a sorcerer), with additional shaman spell selections
Shamanic dance to summon spirits
We quickly crossed off the Candlekeep chores and Shoal the Nereid. After adding a trio of gnolls to our tally we marched into Beregost and set about Neera - Corethief survived a set of Magic Missiles from the mage while Surely did not as the Red Wizard Mage cast a Flame Arrow at him. After some thiefly sneak attacks we raised Surely and told Neera to wait for us at the Friendly Arm Inn while we travel the Sword Coast with her gem bag.
(at this point Grond0 mentioned that his sling and Perdue's sword had both departed the realm while laying on the ground for the minute that it took to go to the temple and back. We bought the +1 sling and continued but the game froze when leaving town - forcing us to load the temple auto-save and Grond0 discovering both sling and sword were present once more. We still bought the +1 sling though)
We fancied our chances against Karlat (he died twice as a result of the above mentioned crash)
We also fancied our chances against Silke with snares, summons and stealth. She also fancied her chances.
She cast a rebounding lightning bolt to kill a pair of fox spirits but we were a bit wary of that and had all retreated to a Brave Sir Robin safe distance. She also survived an attempted backstab, a dagger in the side and various missiles. We were wearing her down but she managed to land a set of Magic Missiles onto Lightfinger before dealing a second set to Surely. Corethief got a critical miss with his backstab and Silke rewarded him with a third casting of Magic Missile plus a fatal staff blow. Surely landed a bullet onto Silke at the same time so she slumped over with Corethief.
So for the second time in 5 minutes we are at the temple raising one of our party. Corethief thanked us for our efforts then realised his shortbow had vamooshed on death. Another cheap bow was purchased.
The Mail-robbing ogrillions were despatched next, then Lightfinger suggested Corethief should use Zhurlong's Boots (since his backstab is not nerfed in the same way as Lightfoot's).
Our way to Nashkel was briefly blocked by six kobolds. We shot them down but Corethief made a hopefully not too prescient remark about such minimal enemies being troubling for us to deal with. Yes, a valid point but we'll do what we can to stay in three pieces.
One way to make do was for Surely to talk to Noober, and then when he finally refused to talk Surely gunned him down. Lightfinger was inside a house trying to 'ease Mrs Joseph's concern' about her missing husband and shouted out that perhaps Noober had more to say before he was untimely demised. Tough.
We then re-united Rufie the demonic dog with his demonic owner, killed off Caldo and Krumm then picked up a tome from beneath the Gnoll fortress. We called our adventure to a close after failing to obtain boots despite killing a polar bear and having grabbed a +2 dagger which the Revenant will have no chance of seeing.
Surely is carrying a few items our reputation and charisma is preventing us from returning (Mad Arcand's ring and the drowned cat). We are leaving our options open - return them later, throw them at Sarevok or post them to the captain's mother in Icewind Dale.
Here are our characters - note the success Corethief has had convincing Surely to swap his non-proficient quarterstaff for a magical non-proficient club...
We have arrived at Coast Way Crossing having picked up Dynaheir and Minsc. Reputation now 14.
Freed Crommus and the petrified refugees. Killed the vampire and will now return to the Coastway Crossing
On the way back from killing the vampire web made the troll cave very straightforward.
We are now helping the dwarves.
The lich cast protection from magical weapons which I didn't notice. The battle was therefore longer than usual and I had to use two of the crystals given by the dwarves.
I also couldn't find enough of the white potions so only got two visions in the scrying pool.
It could have been worse.
The bridge has been destroyed and we are now at the Forest of Wyrms having investigated the myconid lair thouroughly.
EDIT2
After casting improved invisibility on Minsc he killed Morentherene with his sixth throwing dagger.
Lightfinger, Corethief and Surely were considering Nashkel Mine, or our reputation, or Meilum's bracers. Decisions decisions. Bye bye Meilum.
With the famous swordsman dead we picked up Samuel and headed back to Beregost to sell a few trinkets, whereupon Corethief suggested we could remove some spiders. Lightfinger couldn't resist an opening backstab and that meant he could draw the spiders outside. They arrived quicker than he did though so he went in and out many times before picking up some poison and gulping two blue potions needlessly (he'd have survived with 1hp).
After a bit more tidying up of the Sword Coast (here's Neira finding Lightfinger vanished before her eyes and she doesn't get the chance to cast another spell) we move on.
Our day at the basilisks went reasonably well - the first (lower) greater basilisk chased Surely which meant Lightfinger and Corethief had to scatter as another basilisk followed.
Surely closed in for some melee and as he moved out of the lesser basilisk's view it switched to Lightfinger but for once he clocked the danger and retreated in time to avoid a petrifying gaze.
Mutamin thought his luck was in. Today though, his luck was out and his time was up.
Kirian failed to spot her archer Baerin being charmed and led to his death, and Surely followed up by supplying her with a fatal bullet. Peter managed to cast a spell at Corethief but today was turning out to be our day as the plucky bounty hunter saved and we emerged victorious.
Our reputation was by this time a decent 20 or so, having returned a ring to Arcand the Mad and a cat to a girl playing near a waterfall. So we headed towards Ulgoth's Beard, stopping so Lightfinger could amble into an ankheg nest and loot everything including a dead body without having to fight anything.
One other ankheg was wiser to us though, Lightfinger tanking it as his companions decisively made inroads and allowed him to get the last blow.
We bought Corethief a +3 staff to go with his shadow thief armour, while Lightfinger remained glued to his dagger of venom bought a short while earlier.
Corethief wanted to head into Nashkel Mine next but Lightfinger decided we should play with sirines. They put up a good fight but Surely's potion of clarity helped us defeat them. We took our chances inside the flesh golem cave and with only a few painful blows we defeated the three occupants inside.
Lightfinger decided to play with a carrion crawler - Corethief getting held and Lightfinger deciding not to fight but to drag it away from his stricken companion. We remained at his side until he recovered went and collected a reward for rescuing a child from the lighthouse while he was stuck.
On our way back we rescued Melicamp (Surely has kept him as a familiar for the time being) and defeated Bassilus. Surely wasted no time moving on to a trio of hobgoblins.
The hobgoblins got the only enemy luck of the day when Corethief missed his backstab and they didn't miss their retaliation. Down he went, so we were outnumbered. Surely fought two in a freezing fog while Lightfinger hid in plain sight twice and landed 2 venomous x2 backstabs. Then we headed to a temple and restored Corethief. His shortbow +1 was the item to multiplayer-vamoosh on death today so we spent 29gp on a plain shortbow for him.
Our session was 75% over so we quicly headed into Nashkel Mine, killed Mulahey (backstab and snares) then killed the Amazons outside with freezing fog, snares, and missiles.
Nimbul fell to a venomous backstab, while Tranzig killed a charmed Algernon before perishing. We headed over to the bandit camp where our determined course of action was to rest for at least a week in the name of scouting it out.
With reputation up to 20 last time, we started the session en route to Ulgoth's Beard. On the way Conk suggested dropping the bowl before talking to Tenya, to see if that made a difference to her conversation options. It did - rather than automatically taking back the bowl she automatically gave the lesser reward for killing the fishermen .
Next up was a trip to the coast where skeletons made sirines easy prey. There was an oddity there though when Conk successfully put a sirine to sleep.
Inside the pirate cave the first two golems killed a skeleton each, meaning Wark had nothing to hide behind for the final one - but found a nice critical to cut short the struggle.
The Cloud Peaks yielded the charisma tome without trouble. On the way back though a bear put up more of a fight than expected - saving against 2 blinds and 5 commands before running out of HPs.
That fight was a rarity for Wark - most of the time he was either slaughtering sleeping opponents on the ground or slaughtering blinded opponents (attacking with his staff from outside their vision range).
Durlag's saw the battle horrors all blinded, before Conk dug PfP out of the recesses of his memory to deal with the basilisks on the roof. Riggilo was the proud possessor of some 'nymph' hair - though not for long.
With not much left on the map, we headed for the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey put up no resistance after being silenced, with the follow up blind just added a small insult to the injury.
Outside the mine the same combination was supplemented with a couple of skeletons to make short work of the amazons.
Nimbul was another silenced victim, but Tranzig was allowed to put up a bit more of a struggle - at least until he killed Algernon .
Then it was on to the Bandit Camp where Wark expected a pretty easy time against the bandit archers, but found them collecting far more critical hits than expected. That resulted in a running retreat until Taurgosz collapsed.
After a rest though Venkt & co found silence and skull traps a deadly combination after we sneaked invisibly inside. Wark took the precaution of using boots of grounding before opening the trapped chest and, although hit twice, he didn't take much damage.
In the Cloakwood Conk displayed his versatility when he cast a couple of skull traps back over his head to kill a group of ettercaps already softened up by greater malison.
At the mine only Genthore was blinded initially. However, skull traps disposed of the mages before they could do much and Wark got some crushing blows in on Drasus.
It took something like a dozen attempts to rest in the mine, but progress after that was rapid. Davaeorn and his battle horrors all died from a couple of skull traps cast alongside a couple of holy smites.
After flooding the mine we journeyed to the City ready to start exploring that next time.
We have arrived at Boareskyr Bridge having cleansed the Temple of Cyric.
Fighting the mind flayers was tough, both Minsc and Helm the Honest fell, however we raised Helm who in turn raised Minsc.
EDIT
Upon reaching the Teleport Circle we realised that we weren't able to operate it. We therefore returned to the Temple of Bhaal/Cyric and talked to Akanna, the High Priestess of Cyric. She was so pleased at getting the mindflayers out of her head that she rewarded us with the wardstone, so we are now in Bridgefort and Jegg has made the dragonscale into an excellent shield which I gave to Helm the Honest.
I was in two minds as to whether to kill Akanna. In the end I decided to let her live for the moment at least.
Sadly Bridgefort was never relieved as I was fatally wounded when I was on the verge of killing the Barghest.
Realised afterwards that buffing the fighters with potions of heroism and invulnerability would have been enough for the party to prevail.
Genetically all three of us are identical. However the three of us took very different paths. I chose to be a Cavalier whilst my brother Justin chose to be Inquisitor and Gregor a Blackguard. At first nobody realised that Gregor was a Blackguard as this was hidden by his lawful nature. However a more astute individual eventually sussed him out. While we were still in Candlekeep Gorion asked us to try and turn Gregor away from the dark side. After Gorion's death we felt obliged to do so. Since we are all followers of Helm we do at least have that in common and if Gregor does change for the better he won't need to change the deity that he worships.
After the ambush in which Gorion was killed we headed northwards intending to hide in the back streets of Baldur's Gate, however we failed to gain admittance.
However, whilst in the area we returned Tenya's bowl much to her delight, and then killed a nearby ankheg.
Heading back south we returned Joia's ring much to her delight.
We headed south to Nashkel avoiding as much conflict as possible, picking up some ankheg armour when we got there. After heading south-east we picked up a ring of fire protection and agreed to take Samuel to the FAI.
Returning to Beregost we took the Colquetle amulet back to the family before going in search of an ogre with a belt fetish.
Heading south again, we were assaulted by the Flaming Fist. Although the experience was minimal, we did get some good armour.
South of Nashkel we were attacked by Vax and Zal.
We headed west where we helped a dryad.
Nearby we killed Ingot.
We were obliged to head back to the Carnival to rest. Afterwards we headed North where we obtained a decent sword for Gregor from Arghain.
We then decided to earn some gold by hunting ankheg.
We then killed Greywolf which provided Justin with a long sword. Meanwhile we had splashed out the gold to buy an axe +1 for myself.
Being well-equipped, Silke was now no match for us.
I don’t expect to play anytime soon, but I have been thinking about BG recently, and I look forward to reading everyone’s adventures. Best wishes to all the challengers!
I too am glad to see everyone at it, and I hope you're all doing well. Most of my play-throughs are still no reloads. Just started one today, in fact - another undead hunter run. As you can see, I'm off to a rather troubling start, breaking my two-hander on Shank. Still, it's better than breaking your two-hander on a rat in Reevor's storehouse, which I have done, so maybe this is a positive thing, looked at in a certain light...
Comments
We have done numerous minor quests in Baldur's gate. At one time Dorn left us, but he is now back in the part, our reputation being 17.
We are now outside Candlekeep, just about to enter.
Late getting back to you here, but thanks for the comment on poison immunity.
I did use traps, but I try to avoid using traps if I think they are going to hit an enemy before they can prebuff. So I had two time traps a screen or so away from Jon, which I used to clear at least one of the planetars he summoned.
Re: Carsomyr, I have the SCS nerf which I believe keeps the level 30 dispel, but adds a save vs. spell check. I personally don't like this change, but it means that SoM is a much better dispel weapon as it does not have the save vs. spell check.
Tragically, the Kenthief bit the dust against Gromnir. This was a winnable fight, but I didn't take it seriously enough until it was too late. I'm not that familiar with the ToB content at this point, which probably didn't help.
With just charname and Korgan alive from the original SoA cast, and Sarevok relatively ineffective as a recently dual-ed mage, the party lost control of the fight pretty quickly and then could not get it back under control. Charname was eventually taken down.
This is the start of the fight. One thing I had forgotten is just how many enemy pieces are involved. Gromnir + Sim, some type of animal, two high level mages, then three pieces that show up by the top of the stairs, and an additional two by the door at the bottom (not shown). The mages have a full set of summons (including a planetar each), so the fight can get very busy pretty quickly.
If you look carefully at the bottom of the screen, you can see Sarevok's cloudkill shot, but it was a few moments too late to interrupt Karun's TS -> Planetar.
Here Sarevok gets petrified. I defended him very poorly in this fight. I had sort of thought he could hang back out of LoS, but because it's a small room and the party is quickly surrounded, this wasn't ultimately a workable option. I should have aggressively scroll-cast to protect him, in hindsight.
At this point, the fight is clearly out of control. There are 14-15 enemy pieces in play, and Sarevok has been petrified. Unfortunately, Karun's TS went off almost immediately after I triggered assassination on charname, so ~70-80% of his most dangerous ability was wasted. In addition, the lack of availability of HLA traps meant that charname just wasn't getting a lot of use out of his HLAs.
I think I still could have retaken control of the fight here, but I didn't use the right scrolls in the right order. What I should have done (I think) is scroll-cast my last timestop to clear the planetars with melee. Then, use my 2 pfMW scrolls + slayer change to clear gromnir and the norther pieces. And then I think I could have slugged it out with the rest of them.
Instead I scroll-cast timestop and then teleport field and then slayer changed. I don't use teleport field that often, and was unprepared for it making it essentially impossible for me to hit anything in melee. So even after the time stop and mfPW scrolls, I really hadn't cleared any enemy pieces. After that, I was taking too much damage to do much more than run around and try to heal. Eventually I got worn down and killed.
Having said all that, I think some of my lazy play in this fight was not wanting to finish the run with Jaheira perma'd
Anyway, I really enjoyed this run. The kenthief is a really fun character with great resource management dynamics due to the scroll casting capability. The party felt reasonably balanced with just charname, Jaheira and Korgan, and it was a lot of fun figuring out how to deal with the late SoA fights. Too bad for Jaheira's unlucky fate in Suldanessellar.
Just dipped a toe into BG1 with the new party. Human assassin, planning on dualing to fighter at 13. Level 13 gives the full poison weapon ability, plus 5x backstab and keeps the +1/+1 kit bonus of course. Because of grandmaster damage bonus, this character does nearly the same amount of backstab damage as a full 7x assassin.
However, he gives up shorty bonuses, and trades thief HLAs for fighter HLAs. I'm not sure whether that makes him stronger or weaker than a pure assassin - I think it probably depends on the scenario. I'd guess that the pure assassin is probably stronger due to HLA traps, UAI weapons (particularly SoM) and UAI scroll casting.
But, because the other characters in the party are all thieves, I think from a party perspective it's probably more helpful to have someone with fighter HLAs.
I don't know how much this character will ultimately backstab, but I am looking forward to finding at least a few targets for some juicy critical strike backstabs. I considered going Assassin(21)->Fighter for 7x backstabs *plus* the GM damage bonuses, but the unlock is at 6mm exp and I decided not worth it for obvious reasons.
The post-nerf poison weapon ability I gather is not all that useful, but he will be able to give it a try as well.
Party in BG1 is charname, Imoen, Shar-teel, Safana (later probably swap to Alora), Coran, and Tiax. I already screwed up by recruiting Shar-teel at 32k exp, so now I have to get her 40k more experience to unlock her fighter levels. This is very inconvenient, as I have no one to wear armor and tank, so the bandit camp in particular may need to wait for later. Would have been much better to recruit her at F(3) so she could grab the proficiency point and then quickly unlock the ability to wear real armor at T(4).
Assuming we get to BG2, our party will be charname, Jan, Yoshi -> Imoen, Nalia. If we make it to ToB, Sarevok will be recruited and dualed to thief. Should be interesting. It's always fun when the party has another thief so Yoshi can lean into traps. We will struggle with physical damage and tanking in the early game, so I'm expecting Jan to pick up some of the slack. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.
Bunty - female, human undead hunter (Grond0)
Reelan - male, dwarf berserker (Corey_Russell)
Dib - male, human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1168061/#Comment_1168061
Our last session was a couple of weeks ago, so my memory of what we'd done previously was even more hazy than usual. However, the world map showed we'd not yet been to Durlag's Tower, so we started with that. A raging berserker with end-game equipment is pretty hard to stop - and the battle horrors were certainly not up to the job. The basilisks on the roof might have had more of a chance - if it hadn't been for the 3 potions of mirrored eyes Reelan consumed while chewing through those.
Back in the City the Iron Throne party still waited. Reelan used a scroll of PfM there and occupied the enemies while Bunty sniped from the sidelines and Dib nipped in and out sticking his nose (and poisoned dagger) into people's business.
At Candlekeep another PfM scroll allowed Reelan to ignore most of the traps while using a potion of storm giant strength to grab the tomes. The scroll was still active after dealing with some dopplegangers on the way to find Prat and Reelan positioned himself to ensure that Prat's lightning was more of a problem for his own side than us.
Slythe was attacked as he came out, to avoid needing to deal with Krystin as well. Reelan's comment there was "well he didn't last very long". The palace was potentially a greater threat and we used potion buffs there ahead of the fight. The dopplegangers didn't last too long either, but were still able to take Belt to near death - though Liia also survived for once.
Bunty had her eye on getting her final BGEE level before taking on Sarevok. Inhabitants of the maze provided much of the XP needed and showing Rahvin how to use exploding arrows added to that.
There was still time enough left to make a start on BG2EE. While that didn't seem particularly dangerous, we took lots of damage there from wading through traps. Our relatively poor AC also meant enemies like the duergar got plenty of licks in as well.
Undead Hunter - L8, 88 HPs, 32 kills (+194 in BGEE)
Berserker - L8, 102 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 35 kills (+193 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Dark Moon Monk - L8, 65 HPs, 27 kills (+89 in BGEE), 0 deaths
An elven Archer for my second attenpt of the year.
He strolled and stealthed nicely through the start of BG:EE before taking on Lamahla and her gang. Disdain for opening with the Greenstone Amulet and a late attempt at applying it saw a bit of rigid thinking take hold, and his continued use of arrows against melee enemies proved his undoing. Failing to make it out of BG:EE.
So, onto 2021 run 3 which like recent runs involves numerous small sessions over time. A few more rolled characters saw me select:
A half-orc Cleric / Thief - who needs shorty saving throws (me?)
After an initial effort gets Reputation up to 20 Dulca purchases the +3 quarterstaff and sets about basilisks. Mutamin is Silenced.
Dulca then gets on with the game, clearing out Nashkel Mine and making her way to a bandit camp over the dead bodies of Lamahla Telka Zeela Maneira Nimbul and Tranzig.
Taurgosz Khosann survived a backstab but a subsequent Command allowed Dulca and a pair of skeletons to make a mess of him.
Drasus' two casters expire in a pair of fiery necklace of missile charges, and a Draw Upon Holy Might backstab almost kills him but he survives for a bit. Dulca runs, swings, runs and swings again. Two more hits are enough for Drasus and then Genthore finds he can't cope with a backstabber using his bosses boots.
Dulca descends into Cloakwood Mine. She uses her stealth to pick apart the defenders and a trio of skeletons to hunt down and murderise Davaeorn. Dulca wonders if Davaeorn has perished from dehydration so just adds some water as she leaves.
With the city of Baldur's Gate open for business Dulca familiarises herself with the area. A few quests later she is back into Candlekeep and clears that out before returning to the city. More skeletons turn up uninvited at the Coronation and prevent Belt + Liia being assassinated.
Dulca has some fun in the Thieves Maze but trips a lightning trap in her haste - and decides to use a potion of absorbtion - a mighty good call as the v2.6 lightning bolt forces several saves and a few more saves are failed. Dulca and her double figure hit points reckon there must have been a potential for several hundred damage from the more than ten reverberations of the bolt.
Rahvin and his gang have a serious in-fight, one skeleton being enough for everyone to turn on he who shot it in their midst with an arrow of detonation. Their party looks a bit ragged as a result but a second and third skeleton fail to make much more of an impression. Dulca is just hiding in the shadows to do the job herself when everyone turns on Shaldrissa as her caustic cloudkill irritates them. By the time the cloudkill clears only Gorf is left standing - which a backstab soon resolves.
Sarevok manages to get his entire gang into action inside the abandoned temple of Bhaal. Dulca and her skeletons fail to overwhelm Semaj as a result and she runs away to hide. Angelo has by this time upset his party with more friendly fire arrows of detonation and dies at Tazok's hand. Dulca has a scroll of Protection from Magic active and has parked Sarevok behind a pillar so she is able to kill Tazok with four backstabs. Semaj is then meleed into submission as is a battle horror that is accidentally triggered.
That just leaves Sarevok.
Oh, he's not in sight. Dulca drops her stealth and acts as a huge lure but no amount of strolling around the pillars tempts Sarevok out. After a minute or two Dulca is resigning herself to a game-ending draw. Before doing so she looks through all her equipment and drags out some potions (explosions, fire breath and fiery burning).
The explosion and fiery burning potions do nothing - not even appearing to force Sarevok to take damage or save. Dulca throws a spare cloak (displacement) onto the ground and activates a fire breath potion onto it before running around the pillar.
Success - Sarevok takes damage and attacks. Dulca is pleased to see him as she only had three potions of fire breath and if Sarevok had stayed concealed she'd have no way to kill him.
Several minutes later Dulca has hidden a few times and backstabbed a few times. The combination of regular failing to hide and regular failing to hit means Sarevok is still in rude health. Dulca persists though on the presumption that Sarevok can do nothing.
Dulca is wrong - Sarevok once more conceals himself within a pillar.
This is frustrating, as Dulca really needs the pillars to hide. She uses a second fire breath potion and Sarevok emerges again. More failed hides and attacks follow, while Sarevok lands a couple of hits. Dulca is trying hard to hide a bit further away from the pillars so Sarevok doesn't conceal again. She hides, moves away and heals before resuming her attacks.
Eventually Sarevok can take no more and down he goes - leaving Dulca free to progress to SoD (and her likely doom, in Siege of Death
(I can't remember Sarevok's behaviour being this bad against a thief before - not sure if he is clipping the pillar or if the area map is slightly off but it feels very buggy)
Daiyn (female dwarf bounty hunter, Gate70); Jack (male half elf fighter / mage / cleric, Grond0)
Daiyn looked at the Underground River entrance, having put it off for two weeks she no longer had that option and had to convince Jack that she wasn't at all nervous about what lay ahead. Not at all. No sir.
Planning and preparation were key. If only Daiyn had done some.
So we boldly moved on and after only a minute or so the game crashed as Daiyn tried to equip the stone dowser necklace having just taken it out from a container.
A touch of deja-vu reload post-crash saw us repeat our actions, only for the game to crash after speaking to Bellowgulp and the Concoctioner.
Deja-vu mk II had us repeat the above with a few additional saves. No further crash, but we discovered we had the poison and no barrel of bwoosh. Jack and Daiyn looked at each other - was it going to be one of those days.
We pressed on, poisoning both the food and the water before retreating without partaking in combat. Back to camp we went and were forced to defend it against three groups of attackers. It was a long and valiant battle short set of encounters thanks to previously laid snares. The opening group of trolls and ogres were badly wounded for arrows and a Holy Smite to finish them quickly, while the second and third groups were reduced to one or two enemies before combat started in earnest.
Daiyn was unable to convince Thrix to help and we had to face two waves of his minions - Jack again dealing with them. Then we ascended the Hellevator and started to buff for Belhifet. It was becoming clear by now that Daiyn's lack of planning had left us with many useless potions and few of value.
Caelar survived for a minute or two, fighting on our side. Belhifet took some initial damage and a few backstabs.
Wark (male dwarf fighter/cleric, Grond0); Conk (male elf enchanter, Gate70)
Previous run
Bouncing back up off the ground into our saddles we chose another random pair. I once more got a multi-class - this time a fighter/cleric. That should in theory complement Gate70's enchanter well.
Progress so far has been pretty good. Shoal was blinded and then finished off quickly with the help of commands.
There was more quick XP at the basilisk area, where Conk provided the PfP protection. Mutamin's mirrors helped him survive longer than was comfortable and Wark, who was already suffering from 2 helpings of MAA was glad to see Mutamin eventually collapse, while a blinded basilisk 'looked' on.
A quick trip to the FAI saw Conk pick up the Ring of Wizardry while Wark silenced Tarnesh for disposal. Further equipment upgrades included some armor at Nashkel, bracers at Firewine Bridge and a +2 dagger from the Valley of the Tombs.
Some reputation quests saw Greywolf relieved of his sword, Samuel put back together, Joia reunited with her ring and Melicamp reconstituted. While doing that Bassilus also made his last stand. The plan for Conk to show himself and set Bassilus up to be silenced worked - though as Conk was also struck dumb it was perhaps a good job it did.
Conducting Brage home to do penance took reputation to 19 and we headed for the ankheg nest. Conk had a fistful of sleep spells there and all but the last 2 ankhegs took naps. The last couple had their own problems - commands ensuring they also got no real opportunity to fight back.
With reputation now up at 20, we'll do a bit of shopping next.
Fighter 4 / cleric 5, 50 HPs, 80 kills
Enchanter 5, 27 HPs, 17 kills, 0 deaths
Just a small update. We made it past Sarevok and did quite well in BG 1. But this is what we expected since BG 1 is so generous with the gold and the many potions and scrolls (which we of course used a lot with our ranger saves). We are expecting a much sterner challenge in BG 2. We've recruited Minsc and are on our way out of the dungeon. Here were a few screenies of the adventure so far:
One of the pictures shows a near miss - April got held by the hamadryad (her greenstone amulet charge wore off) and then a bear and the hamadryad attacked! The party rushed to her defense and incredibly managed to both kill the bear and hamadryad before our party member died...
Candlekeep turned out to be easy as was rescuing Duke Elthan and killing Cythandra.
Killing the assassins was a lot more touch and go. I accidentally got spotted by Kirstin before I was buffed and she cast confusion.
As a result I killed a nobleman (Fortunately only one so I didn't fall) Also I had just done my shopping.
I paid enough gold to increase reputation to 10 after returning a dagger. Now very poor. I had been intending to recharge some wands but will now drop that idea.
We were successful at the Ducal Palace, though only one duke survived. (Belt) We had time to heal him during the battle which may have helped somewhat.
EDIT 2
We are now in the undercity and have killed two battle horrors and set several traps ready for the battle against Sarevok. However as we haven't yet reached the level cap and are short on potions we have left Baldur's Gate in search of gold and experience.
I will not be going to Durlag's as I am currently more interested in trying to finish SoD and there is not much loot of note further down.
I feel so embarrassed! I was playing my game late at night and was on the top level of Irenicus dungeon. I absently mindly moved forward instead of moving to the pedestals and using the keys to disarm the traps - a huge number of fireballs landed on the party and killed Coreranger X - who was already wasn't full health as he had to trip the large trap on the bridge.
I always figured traps would be the undoing of a party of rangers, just didn't expect that to happen so soon...
Back to the drawing board! Doh!
My condolences. Lack of sleep is a nasty enemy!
Your posts on it have been quite interesting and informative thanks. I’ll have to try it under some sort of limited reload rules sometime, I’m a bit too addicted to no-reloading to switch to the challenge-beating frame of mind.
Have started doing no reloads of modded Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate. The former is just a chance to try the new npcs, the latter has been quite fun due to some surprising new content and the very random approach taken by the CN protagonist Fall. He’s a half elven F/M Hexblade (Might & Guile), who randomises most of his decisions concerning quests & party composition. As a result he hasn’t yet visited the basilisk area and has worked his way slowly through the early levels. He’s helpful to the common folk but dislikes authority figures & faerie so I suppose he’s in denial of the elven half of his nature. Will have to see how far he can survive... (though if he does go down I think the next party will be an all gnome one!)
We did have one big scare (see the screenshot below) - Mutamutin managed to fear 2/3 of the party and the party was running everywhere and getting attacked by new enemies. Mutamutin himself went down almost immediately after casting horror, but one of our characters was getting attacked by the one basilisk left! I foolishly did not clear that basilisk before engaging Mutamutin. By blind luck, the only party member seen was Paja, who happened be the one character protected from petrifiacation! We eventually killed the pesky baslisk, whew!
For Kirian, we had one Kensai run as a distraction protected by potion of magic blocking while rest of the party ranged - this was effective.
Will keep at it.
Sarevok fell as did Semaj. Dorn and Jaheira weren't at the level cap, but those who started out at Candlekeep were.
Now in SoD.
Having killed Korlasz we are about to enter the city once more.
Bunty - female, human undead hunter (Grond0)
Reelan - male, dwarf berserker (Corey_Russell)
Dib - male, human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1168061/#Comment_1168061
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1168755/#Comment_1168755
After exiting the dungeon, it didn't take long to clear the circus - providing Dib with a quick level in the session.
Officer Dirth put up a struggle, but not quite enough to keep hold of his armor. Reelan took that to boost his defenses, but still wanted a proficient magical weapon. He knew of an axe sitting in one of the Graveyard tombs, but Bunty was not quite strong enough to get at it. While there Reelan enraged to have a go at the Crypt King - that fight showed his defenses still needed a bit more boosting.
With Bunty limited to a couple of Bhaal healing spells, she decided to head for the Temple sewers to seek some regeneration. The Cloak of the Sewers offered one source of that and was duly obtained.
Bunty strode forward with the intention of activating the trap as she went through and pulling the lightning forward to hit any waiting undead around the bend of the corridor. However, despite her not even being hasted, the trap failed to trigger. In any case the behavior of lightning has been changed in v2.6, so previous experience would not be a good guide. As Bunty came back, the lightning fired - and she was immediately hit at least a couple of times as it bounced across the corridor. The bolt then went horizontally - hitting her again as it went to the left along the corridor and one final time as it went back the other way into the lich's tomb. Even repeatedly playing the video Gate70 makes of our session, I can't tell how damage occurred. Here's the final moment of life with Bunty still apparently alive and the lightning safely on its way. However, the game engine had obviously been struggling to process the damage quickly enough and Bunty collapsed a moment later.
The Studded Leathers
While it looks like traps may have affected my class selection I had already decided last session to roll a Shadowdancer next. Corey_Russell chose a Bounty Hunter and Grond0 presumably rolled a random selection to get a Shaman.
Brief summary of these three kits:
Hide in Plain Sight, even when enemies are visible
10% bonus to hide in shadows and move silently
+1 to saving throws
Shadowstep: Step into the shadow plane and move for 7 seconds while others are frozen in time but cannot attack or cast spells during this time
Shadowdancer disadvantages:
-1 to backstab multiplier
Cannot set snares
20 skill points per level
Bounty Hunter advantages:
15% bonus to set traps
Set Special Snare at level 1 and every 5 levels thereafter
Bounty Hunter disadvantages:
20 skill points per level
Shaman (includes the below, and a bit more):
Can only equip leather / studded / hide armours, and bucklers
Can have one pip in allowable weapons (axe, dagger, spear, quarterstaff, shortbow, sling, dart, club)
Can have one pip in any weapon styles
Selects druid spells to cast at each level (similar to a sorcerer), with additional shaman spell selections
Shamanic dance to summon spirits
We quickly crossed off the Candlekeep chores and Shoal the Nereid. After adding a trio of gnolls to our tally we marched into Beregost and set about Neera - Corethief survived a set of Magic Missiles from the mage while Surely did not as the Red Wizard Mage cast a Flame Arrow at him. After some thiefly sneak attacks we raised Surely and told Neera to wait for us at the Friendly Arm Inn while we travel the Sword Coast with her gem bag.
(at this point Grond0 mentioned that his sling and Perdue's sword had both departed the realm while laying on the ground for the minute that it took to go to the temple and back. We bought the +1 sling and continued but the game froze when leaving town - forcing us to load the temple auto-save and Grond0 discovering both sling and sword were present once more. We still bought the +1 sling though)
We fancied our chances against Karlat (he died twice as a result of the above mentioned crash)
She cast a rebounding lightning bolt to kill a pair of fox spirits but we were a bit wary of that and had all retreated to a Brave Sir Robin safe distance. She also survived an attempted backstab, a dagger in the side and various missiles. We were wearing her down but she managed to land a set of Magic Missiles onto Lightfinger before dealing a second set to Surely. Corethief got a critical miss with his backstab and Silke rewarded him with a third casting of Magic Missile plus a fatal staff blow. Surely landed a bullet onto Silke at the same time so she slumped over with Corethief.
The Mail-robbing ogrillions were despatched next, then Lightfinger suggested Corethief should use Zhurlong's Boots (since his backstab is not nerfed in the same way as Lightfoot's).
Our way to Nashkel was briefly blocked by six kobolds. We shot them down but Corethief made a hopefully not too prescient remark about such minimal enemies being troubling for us to deal with. Yes, a valid point but we'll do what we can to stay in three pieces.
One way to make do was for Surely to talk to Noober, and then when he finally refused to talk Surely gunned him down. Lightfinger was inside a house trying to 'ease Mrs Joseph's concern' about her missing husband and shouted out that perhaps Noober had more to say before he was untimely demised. Tough.
We then re-united Rufie the demonic dog with his demonic owner, killed off Caldo and Krumm then picked up a tome from beneath the Gnoll fortress. We called our adventure to a close after failing to obtain boots despite killing a polar bear and having grabbed a +2 dagger which the Revenant will have no chance of seeing.
Surely is carrying a few items our reputation and charisma is preventing us from returning (Mad Arcand's ring and the drowned cat). We are leaving our options open - return them later, throw them at Sarevok or post them to the captain's mother in Icewind Dale.
Here are our characters - note the success Corethief has had convincing Surely to swap his non-proficient quarterstaff for a magical non-proficient club...
We have arrived at Coast Way Crossing having picked up Dynaheir and Minsc. Reputation now 14.
Freed Crommus and the petrified refugees. Killed the vampire and will now return to the Coastway Crossing
On the way back from killing the vampire web made the troll cave very straightforward.
We are now helping the dwarves.
The lich cast protection from magical weapons which I didn't notice. The battle was therefore longer than usual and I had to use two of the crystals given by the dwarves.
I also couldn't find enough of the white potions so only got two visions in the scrying pool.
It could have been worse.
The bridge has been destroyed and we are now at the Forest of Wyrms having investigated the myconid lair thouroughly.
EDIT2
After casting improved invisibility on Minsc he killed Morentherene with his sixth throwing dagger.
Lightfinger, Corethief and Surely were considering Nashkel Mine, or our reputation, or Meilum's bracers. Decisions decisions. Bye bye Meilum.
Mutamin thought his luck was in. Today though, his luck was out and his time was up.
One other ankheg was wiser to us though, Lightfinger tanking it as his companions decisively made inroads and allowed him to get the last blow.
Corethief wanted to head into Nashkel Mine next but Lightfinger decided we should play with sirines. They put up a good fight but Surely's potion of clarity helped us defeat them. We took our chances inside the flesh golem cave and with only a few painful blows we defeated the three occupants inside.
Our session was 75% over so we quicly headed into Nashkel Mine, killed Mulahey (backstab and snares) then killed the Amazons outside with freezing fog, snares, and missiles.
Nimbul fell to a venomous backstab, while Tranzig killed a charmed Algernon before perishing. We headed over to the bandit camp where our determined course of action was to rest for at least a week in the name of scouting it out.
Party equipment:
Wark (male dwarf fighter/cleric, Grond0); Conk (male elf enchanter, Gate70)
Previous updates
With reputation up to 20 last time, we started the session en route to Ulgoth's Beard. On the way Conk suggested dropping the bowl before talking to Tenya, to see if that made a difference to her conversation options. It did - rather than automatically taking back the bowl she automatically gave the lesser reward for killing the fishermen
Next up was a trip to the coast where skeletons made sirines easy prey. There was an oddity there though when Conk successfully put a sirine to sleep.
The Cloud Peaks yielded the charisma tome without trouble. On the way back though a bear put up more of a fight than expected - saving against 2 blinds and 5 commands before running out of HPs.
Durlag's saw the battle horrors all blinded, before Conk dug PfP out of the recesses of his memory to deal with the basilisks on the roof. Riggilo was the proud possessor of some 'nymph' hair - though not for long.
With not much left on the map, we headed for the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey put up no resistance after being silenced, with the follow up blind just added a small insult to the injury.
Nimbul was another silenced victim, but Tranzig was allowed to put up a bit more of a struggle - at least until he killed Algernon
In the Cloakwood Conk displayed his versatility when he cast a couple of skull traps back over his head to kill a group of ettercaps already softened up by greater malison.
Fighter 6 / cleric 6, 67 HPs, 268 kills
Enchanter 8, 42 HPs, 59 kills, 0 deaths
We have arrived at Boareskyr Bridge having cleansed the Temple of Cyric.
Fighting the mind flayers was tough, both Minsc and Helm the Honest fell, however we raised Helm who in turn raised Minsc.
EDIT
Upon reaching the Teleport Circle we realised that we weren't able to operate it. We therefore returned to the Temple of Bhaal/Cyric and talked to Akanna, the High Priestess of Cyric. She was so pleased at getting the mindflayers out of her head that she rewarded us with the wardstone, so we are now in Bridgefort and Jegg has made the dragonscale into an excellent shield which I gave to Helm the Honest.
I was in two minds as to whether to kill Akanna. In the end I decided to let her live for the moment at least.
Sadly Bridgefort was never relieved as I was fatally wounded when I was on the verge of killing the Barghest.
Realised afterwards that buffing the fighters with potions of heroism and invulnerability would have been enough for the party to prevail.
Genetically all three of us are identical. However the three of us took very different paths. I chose to be a Cavalier whilst my brother Justin chose to be Inquisitor and Gregor a Blackguard. At first nobody realised that Gregor was a Blackguard as this was hidden by his lawful nature. However a more astute individual eventually sussed him out. While we were still in Candlekeep Gorion asked us to try and turn Gregor away from the dark side. After Gorion's death we felt obliged to do so. Since we are all followers of Helm we do at least have that in common and if Gregor does change for the better he won't need to change the deity that he worships.
After the ambush in which Gorion was killed we headed northwards intending to hide in the back streets of Baldur's Gate, however we failed to gain admittance.
However, whilst in the area we returned Tenya's bowl much to her delight, and then killed a nearby ankheg.
Heading back south we returned Joia's ring much to her delight.
We headed south to Nashkel avoiding as much conflict as possible, picking up some ankheg armour when we got there. After heading south-east we picked up a ring of fire protection and agreed to take Samuel to the FAI.
Returning to Beregost we took the Colquetle amulet back to the family before going in search of an ogre with a belt fetish.
Heading south again, we were assaulted by the Flaming Fist. Although the experience was minimal, we did get some good armour.
South of Nashkel we were attacked by Vax and Zal.
We headed west where we helped a dryad.
Nearby we killed Ingot.
We were obliged to head back to the Carnival to rest. Afterwards we headed North where we obtained a decent sword for Gregor from Arghain.
We then decided to earn some gold by hunting ankheg.
We then killed Greywolf which provided Justin with a long sword. Meanwhile we had splashed out the gold to buy an axe +1 for myself.
Being well-equipped, Silke was now no match for us.
We then sought out Bassilus.
Zargal was the next to fall.
Glad to see the thread is still active!
I don’t expect to play anytime soon, but I have been thinking about BG recently, and I look forward to reading everyone’s adventures. Best wishes to all the challengers!
A.