The Planar Sphere SCS AI isn't very good when dealing with invisible enemies, it seems - I was able to approach the halflings under mass invisibility and just backstab one spellcaster while opening on the other with my berserkers - both died before their stoneskins or mantles went up:
The second group of halflings relies heavily on illusions/invisibility, which I countered with detect illusions while getting rid of their spell protections via warding whip and ruby ray.
Once again mass invisibility did the job against Tolgerias - Chadia backstabbed his companion, the berserkers attacked him, his buffs didn't fire in time:
After that, I cleared the fire + ice rooms, rested and buffed with iHaste + some combat buffs in order to take down the golems. I had three remove curse memorized, which turned out to be exactly enough to deal with cursed wounds.
Lavok was much more of a challenge, though mostly because I miscalculated my approach with Tria - I originally wanted to see how SCS handles an enemy buffed with SI:A, Spell Shield, SI:D and II, but Tria only had one SI memorized, and I attacked solo with her anyway. Lavok's list of buffs was decent, and I started working on them with warding whip:
As I approached with some other characters, Lavok used time stop in order to renew some of his protections and throw down another horrid wilting:
The fact that I had warding whip up proved to be invaluable, as this forced Lavok to spend much of his time on new spell protections instead of aggressive spells. As I finally got through his protections and was able to breach, he was able to throw down a third horrid wilting, heavily wounding Tria and Cadri, but without his buffs, he was defeated within seconds:
With that, I only had to return a demon heart - not much of a problem, as I had enough chaotic command spells to protect the entire party, and the stun effect is the only dangerous things these tana'ris tend to do. Not sure what I'll do next!
Oh, and Yasmina got her first 8th level spell - I chose ADHW.
No update tomorrow, instead I'll post another update today. I decided to take a bit of a risk and go for the Planar Prison next. First of, to get to Haer'Dalis, we had to deal with some more dreaded Yuan-Ti mages - three of them, at once, in fact. This is how we did it - as they didn't start casting true sight right away, Chadia got a backstab in on mass invisibility - one down. Next up, Yasmina got the second one with her ADHW - and finally, after dispelling illusions, we switched to nonmagical weapons against PFMW instead of taking the time to dispel all spell protections for the third one - with improved haste, we can punch through stoneskins rather quickly:
Mekrath also was unable to deal with an invisible approach and quick hits before his buffs went up:
We got the gem, the bard, helped at the portal and rested up before entering the planar prison, with a vast array of buffs - by now, our list for tougher battles is something like: PfE, Remove Fear, Death Ward, CC, Prayer, Recitation, AoF, Entropy Shield, ISOM, SotA/Spell Deflection from our clerics (sometimes adding in combat buffs such as holy power, DUHM, righteous magic, and, in combat, chaos of battle) - MI on our berserker via items - Stoneskin, Shield, Blur, MI, Spell Shield, SI:A, Improved Haste, Mass Invisibility, Emotions Courage and Hope from our Mages, adding in Protection from Magical Energy and Fire for weaker party members against powerful mages, and sometimes spirit armor (mostly on Chadia) if I decide to put in additional effort. In any case, we have two spellcasters here - starting invisible, one was backstabed, the other destroyed by berserkers:
We wanted to make the best of our massive buffs, so we moved east immediately, killed the next mage with non-magical weapons and encountered a group of yuan-ti mages with two human spellcasters at their side - none of their various protections did much against Horrid Wilting, though:
One of them kept invisible, and I wasn't able to get him with detect illusions right away, so my fighters moved on to the Master of Thralls:
Eventually, I was able to reveal and kill the final mage - returning with the orb, I prepared with some oils of speed for dispelled party members, plus new prayer and recitation spells. One thing I discovered in my previous non-SCS run is that the Warden will be quite busy with killing slaves if you rush him right away after destroying the orb, so I wanted to try the same thing for SCS. When I arrived, far fewer slaves were alive compared to non-SCS, but some were still around. The warden started with a vast array of buffs, and his CC included summoning two Djinni, so I opened with death spell - also, as I was still busy detecting illusions with Chadia, I had Yasmina fire off a Horrid Wilting instead of going for spell protections right away, which should maybe get me an interrupt. The warden was protected by PFMW, so I tried to hit him with normal weapons, but didn't really get through his protections - and he (being ihasted) does tons of melee damage, as you can see with Cadri, just seconds after entering combat:
While I retreated with Cadri, my deathspell somehow failed to kill the Djnni, but the Horrid Wilting did the job. The Warden had a spell shield, so I first started with secret word, followed by ruby ray - he used his own spellcasts to finger of death a slave once per round:
Following up with a warding whip, his spell protections were gone, and Yasmina started to cast breach - meanwhile, I took the opportunity to deal some damage with the wand of the heavens - the warden was still busy killing slaves:
Breach succeeds, and after that it's basically over:
A dangerous foe, but since he only hit us with weapon attacks instead of spells (being busy with the slaves), victory was ours.
The only remaining stronghold quest is the priest one, where we will have to face another lich and our first beholders. As I had checked the list of mages with HLAs recently, I decided that, first, I wanted to kill the city gates lich - he doesn't get any. Adding PFME and fire protections, I expected a fight similiar to the temple ruins liches, but this one had a different strategy in mind - his chain contingency had two mordy swords and mass invisibility in it, his pre-buffs had spell trap as his only spell protection - he still was immune to all elemental and magical damage, so I would have to get rid of this spell trap. First off, death spell to get rid of the swords and detect illusion for the mass invisibility. He tried to go invisible again, but was detected. As I was using my ruby ray to take down spell trap, the only thing he did was breach Cadri, who has great saves and berserker rage anyway, so I wasn't too scared - however, using the wand of spell striking-breach failed after the ruby ray, so I added another ruby ray (there seemed to be some kind of hidden spell protection, or the lich is immune to breach via wand) before casting breach. At this point, the lich had dealt zero damage to my party:
And, with his defenses gone, he died right away. I used my remaining buffs to clear the lower level of the guarded compound (the upper one will have to wait). Next up, the old tunnels.
Okay, I lied - I found time to write up another update today
We entered the old tunnels, spoke to Ghaal and made our way to the riddle bridge. For the beholders, we simply decided to send 5 hasted skeleton warriors towards them and let them fight from off-screen. No trouble here, their magic resistance prevailed. In the undead pit, we had to face another lich - going in with full buffs, we started with detect illusions, turn undead, ruby ray + warding whip. The lich had a ADHW in his CC, but I saw it in time, and only Cadri was in range (her magic resistance ended up blocking it):
The lich used timestop, during which he used a spell trigger to renew magic protections - but warding whip was still going and removed them. He also decided to cast greater malison, but didn't get to use a followup - as I was casting sunray to get the remaining undead, our breach hit him and Ayla got an instant kill with the iMoD +2:
In the beholder hive, everything (except for the blind priests, who we killed with our remaining buffs from the lich battle) was done by skeleton warriors - easy enough with two high-level priests. Not a single one of them died. We summoned the unseeing eye, used the rod and killed it - and for some reason, no death tyrants came in - no idea why. I'm pretty sure with my installation, the unseeing eye should be assisted by two of these:
Maybe it needs time to summon these and we killed it too fast? Not sure.
In any case, now we were finally able to do the cleric stronghold with a few rests. SCS buffs up the mage in the temple of talos quite a lot, though we didn't go all out on buffs this time. While getting rid of storm knights, we started with our usual ruby ray + warding whip, following up with breach. The mage countered with a defensive spell trigger:
However, we had detect illusions + another breach ready, resulting in a quick victory:
There's not much left to do in this chapter. Aside from the really difficult fights (the two dragons, which are heavily buffed by SCS, kangaxx and his two liches, all of whom have HLAs, the Twisted Rune, which has them as well, the Alhoon, which is turned into a deadly, well-protected improved-haste attacker by the mod, and the guarded compound, which would involve fighting high-level spellcasters, fighters and thieves on very uncomfortable, trapped territory), we can try the remaining statues and level 2 of Watcher's Keep (level 3 involves a randomized maze and should be saved for ToB).
The WKI statues are no joke on SCS insane, as they have two high level mages in their number. One of them had added spell trap to additional magic protections, the other one SI:A. Luckily, their spells aren't well coordinated - while one of them started with protection from fire and incendiary cloud, the other one got almost killed by said cloud due to friendly fire, while my party started to take care of all the non-protected enemies as Chadia was detecting illusions and Yasmina use her ruby ray to dispel the spell trap:
The well-protected mage used his timestop and started with true sight, following up with death fog to clear out my skeleton warriors and a horrid wilting, which did significant damage to my party (I only fully protected Yasmina against magical damage). As his second horrid wilting started, we were about done with the other statues - I noticed he was targetting Cadri, so I ran away from the party with her before the wilting would hit. Meanwhile, two hakaeshars started working on Yasmina, quickly draining her spellslots:
My own horrid wilting did nothing, sadly, but I was able to get the near death mage with The Victor, which does go through any spell protections:
As summoned mordy swords, the death fog and the incendiary clouds kept hurting my party, I was finally able to dispel and breach the final mage:
This might have been the toughest fight we've taken so far, and I'm glad I waited so long before tackling this challenge. We went downstairs to level 2, where we immediately had to face fire giants with HLAs at their disposal, and I didn't really bother buffing my party. Luckily, Tria has power word blind:
The blinded fire giant fled, the other one I had to finish with horrid wilting - you just can't get near a fire giant with whirlwind attacks for too long at this level:
The blinded one eventually died to Cadri's throwing axes, and we cleared the other libraries with ease. Next up, we buffed everyone with cc and protection from lightning and made sure to clear the elemental rooms (including a protection from frost for Cadri for the ice room):
Now, at this point, I got one of the milestones I wanted on Chadia, one of the reasons I delayed going to Spellhold for this long - thief level 16 - which, according to the Baldur's Gate Wiki, should get me more powerful traps with additional fire damage: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Traps
However, either this information is wrong or these traps are currently broken, as we shall see. With the amount of fire damage they would deal in theory, I thought I could just trap the chromatic demon to death in his iceform. Yasmina also gained new spells, I picked sequencer and spell trigger, charging both with three flame arrows for backup. As I had laid down my traps, I saw him shifting into ice form - my party was mostly not buffed, but I didn't want to wait for another ice form, so I started combat. However, the traps did absolutely zero fire damage for some reason, so I was in a bad spot.
Yasmina threw down her first 3*flame arrows, getting him to badly wounded, our clerics used their wands of the heavens. Now the spell trigger, near death - but before I could finish him, he switched forms to shamblind mound and teleported directly into Chadia (as in her character circle, making her unable to move thanks to the movement bug that is somehow still in the game):
I at least got a slow off with FoA. Invisibility via ring did nothing, the demon can see through that it seems, neither did bolt of glory. My only source of electricity damage at this point was Usano's Blade:
He switched to air form next, which was good for me - I have frostreaver, FoA and blackblood. Activating improved hastes on the characters using these, I had Chadia drink healing potions constantly - and finally, the demon died:
Clearly, I had been lazy by not buffing up the party. Still, the character circle movement bug remains annoying. Now, usually, with seven of these lvl 16 traps, you should be able to trap enemies such as the shade lich and elemental lich to death, right? Well, apparently not. Because they had failed me already with the chromatic demon, I went to the shade lich with extra care - after placing seven traps, everyone but Cadri went to the entrance of the old tunnels (Cadri has great saves, rage and boots of speed, so she can always get away). This is the result of our seven traps:
Seriously, what is going on here? Only three traps seemed to work at all, none of them doing any extra damage (also no "enemy is immune to this type of damage" messages either - just nothing, only some initial missle damage). Needless to say, we retreated, left the area, and made our way to Brynnlaw instead. I basically stopped here, only turning the three vampires at the docks (which took some time for the last one):
edit: I did some additional testing on completely normal, non-resistant, non-immune humanoid enemies and can confirm now: The level 16 traps DO NOT WORK, at least in my installation. They seem to have the same effect as level 1 traps, not even having the poison damage you start getting at level 11. Let's see if this will change on thief level 17. It's certainly quite disappointing.
Thief traps, as innate spells, use your innate caster level - the average of the levels of all of your classes. A pure thief will get that fire damage at level 16. A multiclass thief will have to wait longer; a multiclass mage/thief first gets there at level 14/17 (3.08 M XP) and doesn't move on to the final trap type with lethal poison until level 18/23 (6 M XP).
The other half of the problem ... were some of your traps a bit farther away? Your first three traps did almost exactly wht should be expected against a poison-immune enemy (instead of dealing zero damage, there's a silent block on the poison effects against poison-immune enemies). After that, it's possible the prebuffs fired fast enough that the other four traps ran into a Stoneskin. In which case, four skins removed but no damage dealt.
Still, you tested against humanoids as well. And you should be getting the poison damage; this is a dwarf multiclass, not a super-early dual.
The relevant spell here is SPCL411, the payload of standard Set Snare. SCS shouldn't change it at all, so feel free to remove that from your override and go back to the default version if there's anything at all.
Oh, and demons in general have "See invisible". You can backstab them, but only if someone else is playing distraction.
I'm pretty sure with my installation, the unseeing eye should be assisted by two of these [Death Tyrants]
Maybe it needs time to summon these and we killed it too fast? Not sure.
It gets a Chain Contingency with two instances of "Summon Death Tyrant", a spell used only in this encounter. The trigger is "under 75% HP", so I'm pretty sure you got from there to dead fast enough to skip it. Actually, it's a Contingency and Chain Contingency combined; the other two spells are Spell Deflection and Improved Mantle, which you definitely would have noticed.
@jmerry Some good information here, thanks I had no idea that traps use average class levels for multiclass characters. There are explanations for the other observations I have made regarding these traps, so there propably isn't any bug at all, just a lack of detailed knowledge on my part.
Luriana, Priest of Tempus - Seventeenth Update
Brynnlaw: Chadia goes in to backstab Perth, gets a critical miss, runs out (hasted) - we rest immediately, hoping this will reset combat and stop Perth from following us outside. It doesn't, he follows, but resting has removed his initial prebuffs except for stoneskins - and his new ones don't fire in time with all of my party surrounding and attacking him:
Not the way I wanted to do this, but I'll take it. We took Galvena's mage out by attacking from mass invisibility:
Completed the one sidequest here and entered Spellhold by talking to the pirate lord. Bhaal has a bunch of potions on him in SCS, and I had to buff up Luriana's combat abilities to defeat him:
This is also the last time I got to use my equipment in this update - as this is a full SCS installation with every component active, Irenicus takes all of our gear. How do we deal with this? Well, first, we have summons - tons of skeleton warriors, and we can add aerial servants. We also will get a few nonmagical weapons early on, and we can enchant those with "enchant weapon", letting them hit as +3 weapons in order to hurt some of the harder enemies here. Lastly, we of course have our aggressive mage spells - honestly, our sorcerer has barely any of these, but ADHW is one of them, and high level enough to take down a Ruhk:
This guy can't be hit by skeleton warriors, so we had to resort to magic, as I didn't have aerial servants memorized yet - I realized that I would have to do that as soon as I saw my first clay golem - after resting and summoning five of these guys, that one was no problem:
Some interesting finds: The yuan-ti mage in the southern part of the map is replaced by some minotaurs and orogs - propably in order to give the party some non-magical gear, which we really do need. The yuan-ti mage to the north is still here, but he didn't have death spell, so he died to our skeletons. In any case, our buffed-up aerial servants also dealt with the genie portal:
Cadri, with improved haste, enchanted weapons, and two nonmagical axes plus a splint mail and a helmet as her only gear, is helping a bit, but the summons run the show. Now, on the next map, we have a big group of undead - but I was basically only able to turn the greater mummies with Luriana as she approached under sanctuary - Luriana had to run to evade a time stop by the lich:
At this point, I thought that I might be able to take the lich. Problem is, my summons were on the other map, and I couldn't add new ones due to the summoning limit. Two bone golems, three skeleton warriors and a lich were simply too much to deal with - I didn't have the buffs or fighting power to take this fight, so while I did manage to get rid of the lich's spell protections, my party got hit by greater malison and pummeled by bone golems, and as the lich renewed his buffs with a spell trigger, I decided to haste and retreat:
After resting, I re-entered the area from the other side, were all of the undead except for the lich randomly showed up again - though this time, I had a full group of skeleton warriors and a buffed Cadri at the ready. Next up, I dealt with the book monsters, including the first SCS mind flayer, who teleported to my back line right away, but luckily didn't use his psy blast:
Skeletons dealt with the beholder and the kobolds. I split up my skeletons - my experience is that two summons will generally force out a death spell, while sometimes the SCS AI won't waste one on a single summon (instead dealing with it via counter summons, MMM attacks etc.) - after sending in two and getting the expected outcome, three more followed, and indeed, the lich had no more death spell left. He got through the magic resistance of one with control undead and summoned a bunch of shadows, but I simply sent in more skeleton warriors to replace the fallen ones until he ran out of summons and PFMWs, which didn't take all that long:
This approach requires patience, but it's super safe.
For Dace, I used my flame arrow sequencer/spell trigger:
I rested again and memorized a few anti-troll spells (though I had fire arrows and MMMs anyway) before entering the next level, there, I sent in skeleton warriors towards another yuan-ti mage (once again he seemed not to have death spell), but this activated the Ulitharid, despite his door being closed - he teleported into my party and died:
The noble djinni ended up doing the same, and we cleared out the trolls. We rested, learned negative plane protection and summoned aerial servants for the triple clay golem encounter:
Protected with various divine spells, Luriana encountered Bodhi and transformed:
The rest of the level and the trials were easily cleared, we got boots of speed (and of the north) and moved on to deal with Lonk - I tried to bribe him, but without my rings Luriana didn't have enough charisma - just to see what would happen, I told him I would go back to my cell, expecting him to turn hostile anyway - but he stayed neutral, so I immediately attacked (having full buffs going for Irenicus):
Irenicus in Spellhold has a huge weakness that isn't adressed by SCS - he spends the first round of combat summoning clones, and his buffs only fire up after that - with our hasted and buffed party, it was easy to get him to near death right away, which triggers him abandoning the battle as soon as his opening spell is done - though a horrid wilting via CC would end up still going off:
It took me 45 minutes to re-sort my inventory and equipment. There are some very strange issues here - everything you have in containers is split up, there's a stack of one of everything - gems, ammo, scrolls, potions. Terribly time consuming, and propably the biggest downside of this component (at least I didn't lose any gear). On the plus side, this is now officially the furthest I've ever gotten with these or comparable settings, and we got our first couple of HLAs: Luriana got summon deva, Yasmina summon planetar (and timestop), Cadri has power attack and Chadia UAI. This should be quite helpful.
By the way, can anyone tell me in advance what damage type the new illithid psionic powers do in SCS?
SCS illithids use two damaging powers. "Ballistic Attack" deals single-target crushing damage, "Detonate" deals area-effect magic damage. Everything else they use is negated by a spell save, with the toughest modifiers at -4. Or by Chaotic Commands.
In my SCS runs, I've taken to buffing the whole party with whatever combination of consumables and spell boosts I have so they're all immune to the non-damaging powers, adding on some "kill things faster" buffs because there aren't any dispels before the Elder Brain, and rushing through as a group to slaughter everything before the buffs run out. You can't really keep a back line safe with the way they teleport anyway; might as well bring everybody along.
Oh, and whatever you do? Never, ever, use Project Image in an area with illithids active. The original copy of that mage is considered helpless, so any illithids that teleport in get free hits. And if Stoneskin is up, those hits don't even deal damage to break the image. Even a basic mind flayer gets 4 APR...
I agree with that tactic against SCS Illithids. Killing them quickly is essential, since Detonate/Ballistic Attack damage will accrue very quickly (even Skeleton Warriors tend not to last long with Ballistic Attack spam, although it does help having some fodder to absorb hits). Improved Haste is worth it against larger groupings.
Thanks for your input I already have experience with SCS mind flayers (on tactical difficulty) and handled them as described. I just remembered that when facing large groups of them, detonate would be really dangerous to my more vulnerable characters, but didn't quite remember the damage type - seems like I might want to cast protection from magical energy at least on Yasmina and maybe Luriana.
An even more belated update than usual, partly as a result of my wife tidying my desk . However, I have now tracked down my scribbled notes from the session which saw:
- a purchase of a couple of PfU scrolls to deal with the lich problem in the City. Kangaxx thought he had a momentary reprieve when Foebane proved ineffective against him, but Mist had already picked up Daystar from the City Gates.
- the route to Mae'Var led through Rayic Gethras. There was a slight glitch in the attack on him when Mist failed to release the intended dispel immediately, but once that was remedied the mage didn't last long. Mae'Var himself never got a glimmer of hope.
- an ambush provided Trile with a good excuse to skull trap her partner.
- the Fallen Paladins found there was still a little way to go for them to reach the bottom.
- skeleton warriors pretty much ensured a failure of the attempt of the Trademeet druids to follow a different path before we picked up reputation boosts from Tiris and the local tomb.
- moving on to Umar Hills, a first use of Gaxx haste rendered Anath's regeneration pretty useless, before Daystar provided a quick way to dispel shadows. Mist made a rare use of Ilbratha mirrors to occupy Thaxy long enough for Trile to finish the job with magic missiles. The Shade Lord survived a sunray, but was dispelled and shot down.
Inquisitor 14, 142 HPs (inc. 5 from Helm), 363 kills (+575 in BG1)
Mage 15, 62 HPs (incl. 5 from ioun stone), 144 kills (+152 in BG1), 0 deaths
Importing from BG1 -> SoD into BG2 SoA.
Difficulty: Insane with no difficulty-based damage increase.
Mods: Full SCS 34.3, see spoiler for WeiDU.
Include arcane spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 34.3
Include divine spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 34.3
Move or modify some overpowered magic items: 34.3
Replace +1 arrows and other projectiles with nonmagical "fine" ones: 34.3
Replace many +1 magic weapons with nonmagical "fine" ones: 34.3
Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Remove Arrows of Dispelling from stores: 34.3
Wider selection of random scrolls: 34.3
Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): 34.3
Increase the power of Cure Wounds and Cause Wounds spells to the level found in 3rd Edition D&D -> Spells heal or inflict a random amount of damage (1d8 per level of the spell, plus 1 point per caster level, to a maximum of 5 points per spell level): 34.3
Restoration and Lesser Restoration spells heal ability-score damage: 34.3
Faster Bears: 34.3
Improved shapeshifting: 34.3
Decrease the rate at which reputation improves -> Reputation increases at about 1/4 the normal rate: 34.3
Thieves assign skill points in multiples of five: 34.3
Allow the Cowled Wizards to detect spellcasting in most indoor, above-ground areas in Athkatla: 34.3
Remove unrealistically helpful items from certain areas: 34.3
Remove unrealistically convenient ammunition from the game -> Remove all ammo from random containers: 34.3
Delay the arrival of the "bonus merchants" in the Adventurers' Mart and the Copper Coronet: 34.3
Treat mages' and priests' High-Level Abilities as innate abilities rather than memorisable spells (each may be taken only once): 34.3
Ease-of-use party AI: 34.3
Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): 34.3
Smarter general AI: 34.3
Better calls for help: 34.3
Smarter Mages: 34.3
Smarter Priests: 34.3
Potions for NPCs: 34.3
Improved Spiders: 34.3
Improved golems: 34.3
Improved fiends and celestials: 34.3
Smarter genies: 34.3
Smarter dragons: 34.3
Smarter beholders: 34.3
Smarter mind flayers: 34.3
Smarter githyanki: 34.3
Improved Vampires: 34.3
Smarter Throne of Bhaal final villain: 34.3
Make the starting dungeon slightly harder: 34.3
Improved Shade Lord: 34.3
Spellcasting Demiliches: 34.3
Tie difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings to the difficulty slider: 34.3
Improved Random Encounters: 34.3
Improved de'Arnise Keep ("Tactics Remix"): 34.3
Improved Unseeing Eye: 34.3
Improved Bodhi: 34.3
Party's items are taken from them in Spellhold: 34.3
Improved battle with Irenicus in Spellhold: 34.3
Improved Sahuagin: 34.3
Improved Beholder hive: 34.3
Rebalanced troll regeneration: 34.3
Improved Drow: 34.3
Improved Watcher's Keep: 34.3
Improved Fire Giant temple: 34.3
Improved Sendai's Enclave: 34.3
Improved Abazigal's Lair: 34.3
Improved Minor Encounters: 34.3
Since SCS 34.3 deprecates the innate sequencers/contingencies component due to bugs, I'll add minor sequencer/contingency/spell sequencer/spell trigger/chain contingency to party member spellbooks as they reach the required levels to simulate the functionality. I don't think it's gamebreakingly powerful (considering every enemy mage always has every sequencer/contingency they qualify for prepared...).
Aldain will be shooting for a party of Imoen, Jaheira, Minsc, Aerie and Jan. I'm not entirely sure how my thought process behind this choice went, as I started the run months ago... Scroll availability and scribing (due to the need to provide four casters with pricey Potions of Genius) are going to be a problem. We'll have to, at least initially, only do 1 - 2 big batches of scribing, which means making do with patchwork spell selections for parts of the game.
As before, updates will be condensed.
Cliff-notes adventure: A F/M/C out of time, BG2 SoA part 1
Final SoD update found here
BG2 SoA updates: 1, 2, 3
Irenicus' dungeon poses no difficulties; Aldain has a great number of spells after all, and we make it through without even resting once. Imoen gets captured (Yoshimo will be substituting for her), and the party sets out to grab its remaining two members. A True Sight from Jaheira is enough to get through the Circus safely, and we add Aerie to our ranks. Some minor shopping is done as well whilst in the Promenade; a Gem Bag and three Scroll Cases (Galoomp, Rimbal and Jayes on the east end of the area during night).
Traveling under Invisibility 10' Radius (this will always be the case, at least pre-Underdark, given how nasty the SCS ambushes can be) we arrive safely at the Government district, picking up Jan and saving Viconia for good measure (and a Plate Mail). Party complete!
Here is where we diverge from the common path, in that the party goes for Watcher's Keep. We buy the Potion Case and, after some convincing, are allowed into the Keep proper. Since we've got most of our spells still available, we push inside a ways; an initial Stone Golem poses no difficulty, but the next group of enemies certainly does.
That's... bad. It's a result of SCS tying difficulty of monster groupings to difficulty slider. We manage to down a single Troll before Aldain has to Sanctuary and block the rest off. We're forced to retreat and come back with full buffs (including CC); even then we take a fair bit of damage. Pushing onward, we run into two Vampiric Wraiths that make a mockery of our woefully under-leveled Skeleton Warriors, and we are once again forced to retreat. A rest later, we manage to clear these out as well, along with a room chock-full of Spiders (Chaos and Slow helped a lot). Finally, Jaheira takes one for the team.
Got a bit too enthusiastic there and missed a trap.. meh. We buy a Stone to Flesh scroll from Sister Galvena and fix Jaheira up; at least her romance seems intact. This proves to be the last of the WK mishaps for now. The net gain? A bit of cash, a Chainmail +2 (which we don't need), infinite +1 Arrows/Bolts (which again, we don't need...), Crimson Dart (cute... but we don't need it!), and the Golem Manual (this might actually come in handy). We depart for the Slums.
Saving Hendak and obliterating the Slavers is no problem given our levels. The Slaver Wizards are treated to Chaos (Jan) and Confusion (Nymph), rendering them harmless enough for our Fire Elementals to make short work of them; there's no need to push through their spell protections this way. Next, we gallivant (invisibly, of course) around Athkatla, doing a few minor chores: Taking out Mencar goes swimmingly, since we manage to place traps outside his room so that only Brennan is in their line of sight: The latter dies instantly, ensuring we get his lovely ring. Pooky and Amon fail their saves against Chaos and the rest is history.
We also expose Reijek, and at long last get the Suna Seni ambush. We're invisible of course, so there's nothing they can do but fail their saves against Chaos x1 + Confusion x2.
I would have liked to kill Officer Dirth and clear out the pirates at the Docks too, but that will trigger Baron Ployer (or wait... will it? As I recall he has to spot Jaheira, so if we just keep her invisible... eh), and I feel less than confident about tackling three enemy mages at point-blank range right now; we did swing by Ikert and purchase his Scroll Case. We retreat to the Copper Coronet; although we've managed to scrape together enough money to pay off Gaelan, I'd like to do one major quest before embarking (mainly so we'll have some gold to actually buy things in the Underdark). Leaning towards De'Arnise Keep, mainly for the FoA on account of Aldain (and it's not terribly difficult, barring the two Yuan-Ti Mages during the final fight).
Aldain is now a L9/L10/L9 Half-Elven Fighter/Mage/Cleric. His 9th level Fighter pip went into Quarterstaff, meaning his specializations are now ++ Warhammer, ++ Flail, ++ Two Weapon Style, + Quarterstaff. I debated maxing TWS first, but I want him to be able to eventually wield Staff of the Magi well, and Fighter L15 will be a long time in coming. Also having reached Mage L9 is good, as this means two 5th level slots: SI: A and Spell Shield running simultaneously should be useful.
We left Brynnlaw by ship, buffed up and cleared the entire city of caverns in one go:
Nothing dangerous here, unlike in the Underdark main area, which I did as well today - first, after resting and buffing with cc + combat buffs, we dealt with the three mind flayers to the north:
We rushed to the first drow party with our buffs still active, killed everything but the mages quickly while we dispelled their buffs and breached them - the only thing they did in return was remove some of our buffs and cast suffocate:
No trouble with the trapped individuals, as we targeted and killed them while they were still spawning in:
We helped Vithal with the elemental portals and stole all the items he acquired via pickpocketing:
The second drow party was dealt with via planetar (a bit of a waste), we dealt with the kuo-toans and returned to the svirfneblin village in order to face the Balor. Preparing with traps, fire resistance spells on weaker party members, full buffs + buff protections, skeletons and a deva - turns out we finally have our fire damage traps (not that great against balors):
Firestorm and Aura of Flaming Death dealt some damage, Chadia (unprotected) had to retreat, but as we had our improved hasted berserkers going at full speed and we got a FoA slow in right away, the Balor didn't do much - in fact, I started bolt of glory on Luriana as soon as he appeared, and she didn't get to finish her cast before the demon was dead:
Next time, we will start exploring the caves around here.
Another question - concerning Balors and Planetars in SCS, who have a vorpal hit (as far as I know, with saves vs. death at -4/-2). I know that Planetars dispel on hit (do Balors do that too? not sure, would be good to know - I think they just can cast remove magic at will instead?) - if you have a character with death ward active, does the attack first dispel the death ward and then consider the vorpal hit? Or does death ward prevent at least that one vorpal hit from being potentially lethal before getting dispelled? I guess I have SI:A and Entropy Shield on most characters, which should also protect against a planetar's dispel hit, but would be interesting to know for Chadia and Cadri.
Balors have access to the demon version of Remove Magic - an innate spell, cast at their full caster level. Their vorpal weapons merely have the kill chance, no dispel.
Planetars have access to priest Dispel Magic, cast at their priest caster level of 1. And of course, the SCS AI doesn't use priest Dispel Magic anyway. Their sword has a 25% (actually 26%) chance to dispel, coinciding exactly with the vorpal hits. And the dispel is first in the stack, so if it succeeds Death Ward won't protect you; by the time the vorpal effect is evaluated, your protection is already gone. I'm not sure what level the sword dispels at, but it seems low.
Dispelling hits are not a spell. Spell Immunity definitely won't protect against them. Not sure about Entropy Shield, as I've never modded the spell system that much myself. If it's set up to protect against specific spells, it won't help. Only directly protecting against the dispel effect would do anything.
The planetar stuff is one thing I've addressed in my tweak mod; I have a tweak that turns celestials into cleric/mages instead of pure clerics and pure mages so all of their spells get cast at level 25. Also, the planetar sword's dispel is improved to dispel at a fixed level of 25, but moved to the end of the stack so Death Ward is a guaranteed protection against one hit.
Domino had survived for two weeks by not going out. Eventually Coretrue and Dopple grew wise to this so we ventured out for our second session of the attempt. The extended break combined with not having time to recap meant Domino could see we were at the now empty basilisk map. A very brief check on the world map suggested we'd already been to deal with sirines at the coast so instead we emptied our backpacks and headed to Durlags Tower. Via Melicamp Bassilus, Zargal's hobgoblins, Nashkel Mine, the Amazons, Greywolf, the bandit camp. Let's just call it a 45 minute detour.
Anyway, Mulahey wrestled wildly with us right up until Domino danced around him and Dopple used his two handed sword under berserk. The Amazons also struggled to deal with berserk.
Now Domino has a masterplan to deal with Nimbul. Try to blind him and run if it fails. Nimbul fails his save and Domino lets loose with bullets thinking you have to get up early in the morning to get the better of him.
Unfortunately for Domino, @Grond0 gets up really early in the morning. Technically, the middle of the night, and as Dopple swooped in to melee this gave the blinded Nimbul chance to cast Horror. No problem at all for Dopple but the not quite distant enough Domino ran off in a panic which allowed his companions to complete the kill and empty their backpacks at the store while he ran a jaunty pace around town.
At the bandit camp our party were suitably tough to wipe the floor with bandits. Dopple courteously offered Taurghosz's armour to Coretrue and we stepped inside the main tent to deliver justice to the occupants. Yes, including Ender Sai.
Finally the recap of what I forgot was complete and so we can resume back to Durlag's Tower.
Coretrue asked if we had anything to nullify basilisk gazes, so Domino said he might have a potion of mirrored eyes. A potion said Coretrue - clearly a concern to him given the ten turn (60 second duration). Domino duly checked his potion case and said there were four potions.
The battle horrors outside put up a good fight but all three of us were able to hit (Domino with more difficulty) and we made our way inside with only severe injuries. Dopple took the brunt of it, without full plate armour and unable to heal - plus we couldn't rest as Coretrue had used a strength potion and it seemed sub-optimal to waste it with a rest.
After resting inside Dopple used two potions to fend off basilisks while Coretrue used one. The last basilisk went into melee early which was fortuitous for Dopple as his second potion was either near expiry or had expired (screenshot was after the event so which of the monster or buff went first remains unknown. OK I checked the session recording and Dopple had about 9 seconds to spare so safer than Grond0 or I thought, and if I'd actually looked at the screenshot that also confirms he was safe.
On to Cloakwood. Domino fished out a potion of freedom for Dopple who duly made his way to the area exit before both Domino and Coretrue asked why the 2HS wielding dwarf was eschewing the Spiders Bane 2HS. Ahahaha back goes Dopple who was just figuring out himself the slight omission as it had been his masterplan all along. We patted Dopple on the back as we pushed him inside the spiders nest, and duly helped him as he staggered out under attack.
Domino looted the nest as his companions finished off the last enemy, realising he was overburdened so threw the heftiest item (a body) at Coretrue and ran back to the area arrival point. Coretrue was already complaining that he was overburdened and threw the body at Dopple (but foolishly announced his intention). Dopple was of sturdier build than his companions and was merely burdened to the point of being slowed. Coretrue started to concoct a plan but Dopple said surely the monk will be about to return the body and duly it was so - and the two fighters hefted the body from the nest, outside, to the other side of the map.
The final part of the Cloakwood was a mine guarded by Drasus and three assistants. Domino failed to blind Kysus while Coretrue wanted to throw a potion of explosions (or fiery burning) and Dopple reckoned he could handle the enemies while berserked. He surely could but who are we to refuse Coretrue a potion throw and then mop up the rest behind berserk.
Cloakwood mine was a place of many levels, and our instructions are to batter it then just add water. Davaeorn's guard was a pushover for us.
A pair of battle horrors were sterner stuff but still not up to snuffing us out. We disposed of them then Domino gave his companions a potion of magic blocking each. Coretrue used his and attacked while Dopple waited patiently before springing a trap that Coretrue had raced over without springing it. This allowed Domino to join in and we quickly finished Davaeorn off as Coretrue used True Sight to remove Mirror Image and Domino hit with his Dagger of Venom.
He made a cheeky comment about nobody knowing he'd rush in for the kill, to which Dopple dryly pointed out that Domino had just told everybody that he'd rushed in for the kill. Quite.
In the fine city of Baldur's Gate we did our usual circuit of quests but added in a second Sashenstar fate (Dabron objecting to how Coretrue picked up Aldeth's bastard sword earlier).
We could have sneaked into Degrodel's house but Dopple looked like he was in need of donating some of his excess blood.
n.b. at some point this session Dopple stunned I SAID STUNNED Domino and Coretrue by asking Coretrue to purchase him some full plate armour. Yes, even dwarven pockets can be visited for essential purchases when you have 20 reputation and 19 charisma.
As for Degrodel, without his protectors he was easy prey.
The session was going really well - fast progress and no deaths, but our two hours was almost up and I called a halt with a couple of minutes to go rather than risk an embarrassing finale.
@jmerry Thanks, that's very helpful. According to the wiki, the Planetar sword already dispels at level 25 (unless SCS has made it less dangerous, which I doubt) - so right now, it would be extremely dangerous to me (Luriana is at level 21, as far as I recall). Seems like PFMW or great saving throws are my best option if I should face a planetar.
Nope. I've tested it. Doing so again ... Level 20 sorcerer with Stoneskin and Death Ward (level 19) active summons a planetar and has it attack. First vorpal on the seventh hit - nothing gets dispelled. Second vorpal on the 11th hit. Save failed, no effects. Third vorpal on the 14th hit, still nothing dispelled. 22nd hit. 23rd hit. 24th. 25th. 27th. 28th.
Three full stoneskins, nine vorpal hits, no effects dispelled. I'd say that's pretty conclusive - the standard version of the planetar sword does not dispel at level 25. Or anything close to the level you'll be when planetars start coming into things.
While SCS changes many things about planetars, it doesn't change their sword.
The standard version of the sword ... dispel type "use caster level". In 2.5, it had "power" 15, which I'm pretty sure doesn't mean anything; that's only relevant for spell level immunities and the like, none of which apply at level 15. That number was changed to zero in 2.6.
Mh - in that case, death ward will be much more useful.
Luriana, Priest of Tempus - Nineteenth Update
As we are now getting into HLA levels, a lot of late SoA content is getting a lot easier. In the kuo-toa caverns, we summoned skeletons for the beholders, used some traps to thin out the demon knights and charged them with a buffed party:
The kuo-toa prince actually dealt a decent amount of damage to Chadia before I weakened and killed him:
The beholder caves were mostly done by skeletons. We encountered a hive mother relatively early on, which made me gate in a planetar - hive mother, meet vorpal sword:
The party took down the mind flayers to the south before sending the summons further into the cave, and the planetar almost cleared out the entire thing before his duration ran out:
Next up, the illithid lair. I buffed up with chaotic commands and combat buffs, plus improved haste on at least two fighters at all times. Smaller illithid groups posed no problem. I made sure to have Yasmina away from the party instead of casting PFME because I wanted sixth level slots for improved haste. The room before the elder brain was the only one with a really big group of enemies - as they hit Cadri with their psionic abilities, she had to retreat due to overwhelming damage. Ayla took her spot:
Ayla was getting attacked by a ton of enemies, but her good ac prevailed. In the meantime, the healing component of the Rod of Resurrection seems to never work in my installation. This is the second time I tried to use it, it did literally nothing. As Ayla got hit by her first int drain, I decided to gate in a planetar to help her out, which gave us the advantage we needed to achieve victory:
We focused our attention on the master brain and took it down before anything dangerous would happen (as I don't know what abilities this thing actually has):
Ayla cleared out the golems, the others took care of the mind flayers:
As a bonus, we did the first Ust'Natha mission after resting for a bit - we placed some traps near where the underdark party would appear, and the remainig members were easily cleared up:
As we already had experience with mind flayers, the Phaere ambush wasn't very troublesome:
As part of the 2.6 update to resurrection spells, the Rod of Resurrection no longer heals living characters. It casts the subspell of Resurrection that carries the effects, restricted to dead creatures. Use it on someone that's already alive, and it will do precisely nothing. Use it on a dead party member, and it'll bring them back at full health.
Also, on the beholder hive ... oh come on, staying out of the way and sending in summons? Bah. I'd have everybody charge and fight as a group. After buffing them to be immune to beholder rays for at least an hour, of course. I'm not suicidal.
After visiting the Gate we were asked to investigate the North. The shamans there are quite dangerous, but we were careful so none of us died.
We rescued some children and others in the field of the dead. We are now in the wood of the dead after returning to tell of our exploits.
We also went to a new area at Firewine that had fledgling vampires.
We saw them so I used protection from domination before taking them on single handed.
Some useful equipment but nothing overwhelming.
The vampires did give useful experience 8,500 each. I think that there were 6.
I was glad that we had some warning of them. I certainly wasn't expecting vampires at Firewine.
[I thought that you didn't get vampires until Amn]
On the way back from Umar temple we collected Valygar's body and soon put that to use to grease the lock on the Planar Sphere. Early progress there was easy, though there was a reminder of the need to concentrate when Mist was taken a bit low on HPs as a result of not switching from Foebane to FoA against a clay golem.
Spirit armor boosted Mist's saves while asking a demon whether it "had a heart".
Tolgerias saw us coming, but his buffs disappeared thanks to an immediate dispel and he was unable to re-establish them against incoming missiles.
There were more golems to fight in the engine chamber. Trile had the Crimson Dart, which is an efficient weapon against adamantite golems, but Mist didn't have an appropriate missile weapon of his own. However, by now he had learnt to use flails properly and the slow effect from the FoA let him stay in melee combat.
Fancying a bit more planar travel, we moved on to the Planar Prison. The intention there was to go in invisible and attack the mage while it was trying to detect us. Unfortunately, Mist used PfE as a final buff before entering and doing that appears to break invisibility. Fortunately she still had the standard inquisitor option and quickly backed away (to protect her improved invisibility and other buffs) before releasing a dispel.
Shortly afterwards the mage was dead and none of the other initial bounty hunters posed a problem. Trile was now wearing Lavok's ring and was eager to make use of the additional spells that gave access to. A group of yuan-ti mages survived a wilting, but their reduced HPs meant they were much less able to stand around in a Death Fog than Mist.
The "Master" can be troublesome thanks to his vampiric abilities and paralyzing gaze, but he doesn't have many HPs and it only took about a second for Mist to achieve the two hits necessary on him.
The Warden lasted much longer thanks to his stoneskins - Mist only used Truesight there and not dispel - but didn't achieve any more.
Trile did mention at this point that she didn't yet have the key and Mist made a mental note not to go down the trapped corridor - before sheepishly retreating when she immediately did so as a result of targeting a yuan-ti with her bow just as it was killed by skeleton warriors ...
The final target for the session was Windspear Hills. Neither of us could remember exactly how that figured into the paladin quest line, so after being tricked into killing a few paladins we went to the Order of the Radiant Heart to confess our sins - but no-one there appeared to have heard of them yet. Back at Windspear we dived into the dungeon and beat up more golems on the way to find a group of vampires. More of those survived a Daystar sunray than expected, but they had nothing that could hurt Mist anyway.
However, there was a problem further along after another group of golems had been dismantled. We annoyed an air elemental hiding in a hole and, as Trile moved around to avoid it, she triggered a lightning trap (Mist had wrongly thought that had gone off earlier). Mist was still a bit low on HPs from the combat with golems, but still had enough to shrug off the shock, but Trile was caught by a bounce and was not so lucky - recording her first death of the run there.
Mist had a rod, so that only caused a slight delay and we were soon bearing down on Tazok and then Conster.
Mindful of the need not to kill Firkraag yet, to keep the paladin quest line open, we left him while going to teach Samia a lesson. The mage in her group lasted just long enough to banish our skeleton warriors, but by that time the battle was pretty much won.
Inquisitor 17, 151 HPs (inc. 5 from Helm), 557 kills (+575 in BG1)
Mage 17, 59 HPs, 176 kills (+152 in BG1), 1 death
@jmerry I don't know enough details about SCS Beholder mechanics to go straight in, and only two of my characters would be able to get their item-based saves high enough to ensure survival - in general, I like my no-reload tactics to be boring and reliable
Luriana, Priest of Tempus - Twentieth Update
In the drow city, we completed the arena battles - first on the right, later on the duels. Sending in a buffed Ayla was a good choice for the first two:
For the others, our mages made use of a planetar summon. After that, we also had to help the Aboleth, which isn't trivial, simply because of the sheer number of mages in Quile's home. Still, with full buffs, an aggressive approach and some quick pierce shield + breach combos, we made short work of our opponents:
Ah yes, I forgot to mention our new sorcerer picks: Pierce Shield, Chain Contingency, later on Spellstrike as well. I'm not going to mention HLAs for now - the casters will get all available ones eventually anyway, Cadri is going for critical strikes + hardiness, Chadia is, for now, content with spike traps after taking UAI (once I have 7 spike traps available, I will add time traps, critical strikes and hardiness).
I used traps and Cadri to defeat the beholder and completed the following Ust'Natha quests in a peaceful manner before getting the final quest, where I took a break to do some sidequests - the slime worshippers:
And our first actual battle against a fully powered HLA-using high level spellcaster, Deirex. That one was a bit scary, because I thought Luriana had entropy shield up, but she didn't (I might have canceled the spell by starting the SotA cast too early and didn't notice at the time). Deirex opened with both spell shield and spell trap with all relevant immunities and PFMW, so we would need at least two spells to pierce his protections. He also had an instant remove magic as part of his pre-buffs, which dispelled Chadia and Luriana (who, luckily, still had her SotA). While I got rid of his spell protections, I was unable to finish my breach cast before Deirex used his opening timestop, and he immediately followed up with Improved Alacrity:
His followup: Greater Malison, Dragon's Breath, centered on Tria, Summon Planetar, centered on Yasmina. After that, a cloudkill. Breach went through before the Dragon's Breath hit, but I was unable to get through his stoneskins before that. Only my berserkers were in range for the breath, and because I had moved Luriana away from cobat due to her missing buffs, she wasn't in range to quickly hand them fire resistance gear or potions from our bags. Still, these guys have tons of HP (and Ayla has high fire resistance), and all of them survived, though it was close for Cadri, who didn't make her saving throw:
Meanwhile, Yasmina had to deal with a Planetar. Luckily, jmerry was correct - the dispel from his sword wasn't powerful enough to get through our buffs, so she had her death ward and stoneskins at the ready. She decided to counter with her own Planetar, while the berserkers and Luriana, armed with energy blades, moved back in to get Deirex - he was unable to rebuff in time and died:
I made sure to not get close to the Planetar with Chadia, because she wasn't protected against vorpal hits at all. Luriana stayed away as well with her energy blades, the others had death ward and charged the celestial, getting our first kill on this scary enemy type:
As a reward, we got to clear out house Jae'llat. There is, by the way, something very wrong with enemy classes and names here - we got enemies that are called mages who can't cast spells, priestesses who only use mage spells, mages who use priest spells and the like:
After performing the egg swap and leaving the city, I was able to get a satisfying result with my own dragon's breath:
Lastly, I wanted to return to the Slums this session to finally get to buy the Sling of Arvoreen, the Defender of Easthaven and the Scarlet Ninja-To, but I did meet the githyanki before that. I was unbuffed, had to use some quick HLAs to turn the tides and hide my party via mass invisibility from a dominated Ayla after the battle:
Let's see - next time, I'll get to visit Cromwell, gather allies, maybe do some remaining battles from earlier chapters or explore the new forest regions instead. Not sure.
You don't need a deep dive into SCS beholder mechanics to make my strategy work. All you need is to figure out how to prevent your immunity buffs from being removed by antimagic rays.
- For the mages, there's a vanilla solution that SCS doesn't touch. Spell Shield. Blocks the ray, sticks around to block more of them until it expires.
- For the priests, SCS adds a spell: Impervious Sanctity of Mind (from IWD), with the improvement giving it a Spell Shield.
- For the non-casters, SCS beholders won't use antimagic rays on a character without a primary-casting class unless they detect buffs. Potions of magic protection don't get detected this way, so as long as you avoid other buffs on these characters, you can drink two such potions for full immunity.
The casters stack immunity buffs; 100% resistance against electric and magic damage plus specific immunities to charm/domination, fear, paralysis, slow, petrification, and death/disintegration. All of those can be done with durations of at least an hour, and not only on the caster. You might get smacked around a bit by their telekinesis ray, but that's a pretty low priority for them.
For my own games, I've decided the Spell Shield/antimagic interaction is just too good, and included a component in my tweak mod to nerf that - SS only blocks one ray before being consumed. With that change, it's a good way to protect a mage for one fight, but it won't let you tank a hive.
On the new post's content ... I've reported that House Jae'llat thing. The "mages" are clerics, and the "priestesses" are mages.
Oh, and a little tip on dealing with liches that use Spell Shield: while they're immune to level 1-4 spells, a Spell Thrust will still break their Spell Shield. It won't help against the likes of Spell Immunity, but it can still be your sacrificial spell for the first line of defense.
i WAS GETTING A BIT BORED WITH MY EVIL CHARACTER SO AM STARTING AGAIN WITH A LAWFUL NEUTRAL PARTY OF HELMITES LED BY A CLERIC OF HELM
I have now returned to my evil party. Putting this to one side
NPCs that will be permanent members of the party will be Xan and Ajantis. Xan is also Lawful Neutral and Ajantis is a self-declared Helmite so the party more or less picked itself. There are no barbarian NPCs or Lawful neutral thieves hence starting with this party in Candlekeep.
The Barbarian can smash open chests, so my thief started with being good at pickpocketting. No Blackguard in the party so I made Picky an assassin for poisoning ability.
@jmerry I thought that SCS beholders had a random chance to punch through spell shield. Maybe this is not the case anymore or was never the case. My alternate strategy for SCS beholders (which I've used in two previous runs with no clerics in my party) is to just use their slow movement speed by throwing down tons of death fogs and cloudkills and slowly luring them through these.
Luriana, Priest of Tempus - Twentyfirst Update
I bought the Helm of Brilliance, forged every item at Cromwell's except for Crom Faeyr and the dragonscale armor pieces (still lacking the materials), also bought Ras which I forgot to buy earlier (though I'll propably never use it). After recruiting allies for Bodhi, I killed Renal Bloodscalp for another pair of boots of speed before travelling to the forest areas. I prepared very well for the mage at the North Forest, but it turns out he has serious trouble with invisible opponents:
The other somewhat high level mage (at the Forest of Tethyr) died to a triple ADHW CC:
I helped Coran, fetched the Mana Bow, and, to finish the session, returned to the Graveyard, put on my helmets of charm protection +iMoD, turned Yasmina invisible via potion and took down the vampire ambush:
(yes, I would go on to use my berserker rages, I just forgot to start with them right away - luckily didn't get hit by level drain before that)
I guess we will visit Bodhi the next time around
Being a single class priest has some perks - your turn undead level gets really high later on, which is why Bodhi's Lair wasn't all that challenging. Vampire mages such as the Guard simply got turned through their defenses:
The improved Bodhi battle can be challenging, but I've done that one a couple of times before, so I protected my entire party against ice damage before engaging. Luriana started strong with a turn on one of the added named vampires:
As the other vampire mage appeared, I started dispelling its buffs, but turn undead was once again faster (also doesn't get blocked by Bodhi's insect swarm, which was somewhat annoying for other spellcasters):
Thanks to our ice protections, Bodhi stood little chance against our fighters - however, she kind of bugged out, stuck in a corner, at near death (and taking hundreds of more damage after that), trying to run away instead of triggering her tactics phase and frost-based horrid wilting:
I decided to just leave the area and hope that this would fix it - and it did. As I returned, I saw her using her new abilities against Eric. All we needed to do was charge, trigger her dialogue and take her down once again:
I deliverd the Lanthorne, got a new sorcerer spell (PFMW) and returned to rest. Next up, we have lots of high level opponents remaining that we saved in chapters 2/3.
During this session, I spent most of my time buffing up the party for each opponent - combat was usually quite short. I started with the shadow dragon - his only notable defense was PFMW, I used breach via wand of spell striking => he died:
Firkraag was next. I buffed the entire party with protection from fire, and he did get to use a breath weapon before his death, so good thing I prepared for that. No notable defenses:
The elemental lich was the only enemy this time around we could just simply trap to death:
Crucial for our guarded compound battle was a quick assault on Sion and a 3*Horrid Wilting CC, which eliminated a bunch of opponents immediately:
Clearup was easy - only had to activate my gem of true seeing and defeat the thief.
The shade lich, who was already active due to my earlier failed trap experiment, was sufficiently pre-buffed, so I decided to evade his timestop by running - after that, I decided to send in a planetar, assisted by one of my berserkers, until his PFMW was gone:
For the Alhoon, I used my first timestop after fighting my way to his room. Yasmina went in, laying down a bunch of horrid wiltings and a dragon's breath, taking down a few (but not nearly all) opponents. I had laid down some traps in the previous room, expecting the remaining foes to teleport in, but they didn't:
Three mind flayers and the alhoon remained, and the alhoon didn't even follow Yasmina outside. The berserkers charged in to take down the two ulitharids and one mind flayer. The alhoon still didn't do anything, staying in the back off screen. I decided to buff Tria with the improved invisibility + SI:D combination to check out the situation. The alhoon didn't really know what to do with that at first, which gave me time to cast warding whip:
After that, he unleashed a triple remove magic sequencer - I retreated, and, finally the alhoon followed, straight into my traps:
For Kangaxx, I executed the strategy I've always used against his SCS version: Kill his first form with traps:
And unleash sunrays upon his transformation - the instant sunray from the helm of brilliance was enough to get him before any prebuffs were activated:
We only had the twisted rune left. This one was a bit weird - after I had prebuffed (I included protection of fire for everyone, as we are fighting against 2 HLA-capable mages here) and laid down some traps, I went to talk to Shangalar, but he didn't start with dialogue - instead, he fired up his prebuffs and used a timestop, throwing some spells at our skeleton warriors and planetar. Only then did he start his dialogue, teleported to the entrance and now, being protected against magical damage, the spike traps did nothing to him. Thus, he was able to gate in a fallen planetar, and, with his protections intact, I decided to send my berserkers after other foes first. They took down the fighter and started working on the fallen planetar. Meanwhile, Yasmina and Tria both started working on a timestop, Luriana cast storm of vengeance, Chadia detected illusions. Yasmina used her timestop to dispel the lich: spellstrike => back up => spellstrike => back up => breach. She also started throwing a spellstrike at Vaxall. Tria, who doesn't have the AoP, got her timestop right after that. I wasted some time with her, but in the end she did some good by taking down the fallen planetar while before timestop ran out:
Vaxal was able to use a powerful cone of cold, dealing significant damage to us before finally dying as well. Meanwhile, Layene made her presence known in a big way, having already summoned two efreeti, casting timestop, gating in a planetar of her own (who immediately cast firestorm), casting improved alacrity and starting with some dispelling attempts. Shangalar, now being vulnerable even to simple skeleton warriors, was in trouble, and the new opposing fallen planetar was soon taking heavy damage:
Layene got some of our buffs with remove magic, interrupting Yasmina's second timestop as her fire protection was now gone and firestorm did some damage to her. The fighters, having killed the second planetar, returned to take down Shangalar once and for all, Layened used the final seconds of her IA to use powerword: stun on our summoned efreeti as we sent our planetar after her:
With my berserkers now going after Layene (she used PW: Silence on Tria, but she had vocalize ready), the vampire finally showed herself, going after the seemingly vulnerable Luriana and Yasmina - however, Yasmina used one of her flame arrow sequencers to great effect:
Finally, while I was hunting down the remaining efreeti, Layene was simply vorpaled by the planetar as her absolute immunity (or improved mantle, not sure what she was using) ran out:
That was a fun battle, with two enemy planetars added into the mix - though the only thing that actually was somewhat dangerous was a cone of cold - but I just don't have the patience to buff protections against such a rare element all the time.
I will have to take some time to go on a shopping trip next time before venturing into the elven city.
Cliff-notes adventure: A F/M/C out of time, BG2 SoA part 2
Final SoD update found here
BG2 SoA updates: 1, 2, 3
So I forgot that you can actually just move the entire party sans Jaheira past Baron Ployer without him reacting; thus we were able to clear out the Pirate Cave behind the Sea's Bounty in peace. Following this, we finally got the Renfield ambush, and duly cleared out Sanasha (who died without accomplishing much) and Prebek (who wasted the single action he had time for attempting to dispel our buffs).
There were a few more ambushes after this, but always being invisible meant they didn't amount to much. We opted for clearing out the Graveyard before tackling a major quest. I seem to recall the Crypt King being a real menace during some iteration of SCS, but this time he just threw out a Horror then hopelessly tried to melee us all to death. We actually had a little luck with random scroll drops; Spell Deflection off the Crypt King and Horrid Wilting off a random Skeleton Warrior. I'll take it.
Into the tombs! Pai'Na wasted her initial action by Dooming Jaheira (no idea what the rationale behind that was), and that was it for her. The only real (minor) problem was the Vampyre down here that really likes running circles around you, but we were able to pin him down eventually, some Skeleton Warriors helping to hold the line against the plethora of other undead.
We finished by successfully killing off Camitis and Reti before they could flee, resulting in a pair of Boots of Avoidance (eh... better than nothing), and taking care of Lynis. We wound up going for De'Arnise Keep as our sole major quest before Spellhold, mainly due to the Flail of Ages. En route, the Orog ambush was defeated without much fanfare, but man... those trolls at the Keep. The result after fighting the first big group:
Aldain is the only one that can really stand toe to toe with them for any length of time, so we let him handle the heavy lifting. The Yuan-Ti Mage upstairs turns out to be an Enchanter and happily wastes all of his Chaos/Confusion/Dominate/Dire Charm on Skeleton Warriors... thanks, I guess. Glaicas was a bit of a bother as he saved against 2 Charm Person and 2 Dominate, but the third Dominate stuck (I prefer not killing him even though he's got a Full Plate Mail). Turns out the Flesh Golem from the Golem Manual strikes as at least a +3 weapon, not bad.
We clear out the basement Trolls/Umber Hulks before Tor'Gal, then went outside to rest, and got the Jaheira romance ambush. Very good... that means we'll have a Ring of Wizardry soon. Turns out VERY soon, as Meronia showed up immediately after the battle, taking Jaheira with her. Ah well, we're not on the clock (we've spoken to Daleson), so might as well swing back to the city for a spell.
We grossly overprepared for the Galvarey fight. Neither mage used Fire Shield, so a single Insect Plague basically decided the fight. Sweet, sweet Ring of Wizardry (will go to Imoen once she's back).
Alright, time for the big bad: Tor'Gal. Idea is kill (or at the very least severely wound) Tor'Gal using traps. He can see through invisibility so will charge ahead of his chronies, guaranteeing he eats all the traps on his own. The Giant Trolls/Umber Hulk Elder/Spirit Troll aren't a real concern beyond being fairly heavy hitters; the two Yuan-Ti mages may well pose a threat, however. So, after suitable buffs, Aldain lays down a Cloudkill near the doorway, while Jan drops another from the starting dungeon wand. It works beatifully: Tor'Gal drops to Badly Wounded the moment he steps through the door, and we bring him down within a round.
The Yuan-Ti Mages already move quite slowly, they're staggered several times due to taking Cloudkill damage, and waste actions casting Death Spell on our carefully spread out Skeleton Warriors. By the time they actually arrive on the battlefield, they're Near Death/Badly Wounded respectively, there's only a single melee thug left standing, we've got True Sight running, and... both mages just sort of crumple without doing anything.
Hooray! Couldn't be happier about how that went. We collect the quite paltry remaining loot, grab our even paltrier reward from Nalia, turn down the keep (definitely want the Mage stronghold), and bugger off. Intending to clear up all loose ends, we return to Watcher's Keep briefly, taking down the Guardian Golems for a little experience, and performing the first step of the ritual to get Foebane (Minsc is going Bastard Sword). Guardian golems aren't a problem, the first wave of statue Fighters have some HLA's but they drop before they can really make much use of them; the Cleric statues just kind of stand there casting pointless buffs.
And yes, we do go after Baron Ployer next. By now we have such good THAC0 (as well as plentiful True Sight) that his wizardly goons stand literally no chance. We even manage to dispel some of their buffs using Remove Magic. Leaving Ployer's hovel however, Reviane appears! Since we're still only at average reputation, she actually attacks... but for some reason, the Harper Mage doesn't spawn, making this a very easy battle (especially considering we were rather low on good spells since we had just prepped to the gills before taking on Ployer's Mage Menagerie).
And of course as you'd figure, the one time we travel non-invisibly, we get the ambush with two L12ish Mages. Fortunately we were able to spread out a bit and eventually grind them down, but at one point Aldain had to eat a Chromatic Orb with a 1/20 chance of failing his save (he made it, thankfully).
Alright, into the tombs (again). We pay Gaelan, talk to Aran, and go for Bodhi. Goes pretty smoothly really; there are mostly Fledgling Vampires at this stage, and they're not much of a threat (the named ones hurt us a bit). Tanova is slowly grinded down beneat the heel of endless summons; she's kind of scary and we don't have the spell selection to remove her protections right now. As we leave to rest up before tackling Bodhi proper, Jan's quest triggers, so we spend a little time doing that (mostly just shuffling around Athkatla with a single rather easy battle). Following a lot of buffing (and two particularly brutal hits by Aldain under Righteous Magic... frightening spell that), Bodhi retreats.
Off to Brynnlaw! Initial vampire ambush is dealt with, we do the small stuff up to and including Lady Galvena. Aldain is buffed to the hilt, pummels Galvena herself in one round, following which Vadek lasts about 4 rounds (he kept renewing his defensive illusions after True Sight took them down).
Now the question is: Do we feel lucky? No. But let's tempt fate anyway. Perth, I hear you have a lovely book...
This fight never seems to go to plan for me. There's a tiny piece of Perth's house where you can stand and he won't see you from his initial position, so it's possible to send in a first wave of summons. Unfortunately, you have to cross Perth's line of sight to then get outside (you really don't want to be inside the house with him once he's spotted you unless you're literally immune to everything... which we aren't at this stage). Since we just can't stand up to Perth's arsenal, we'll do a fighting retreat across Brynnlaw, slowly grinding him down with summons. Aldain and Minsc gets a handful of key long-lasting buffs in case they have to finish things in melee, then Jaheira sneaks inside invisibly, conjures a bunch of Beetles, and it's on! Perth leads with a Time Stop and wastes it brutalizing the Beetles, Jaheira somehow manages to sneak outside without dying, and Perth follows!
We start a desperate scramble through the streets, trying to guess where Perth is at any one time. At some point he tosses out a Lighting Bolt which singes us, but thankfully doesn't kill anyone. Unfortunately, Perth spots Yoshimo at some point, and tosses out an ADHW!
Yoshimo was still a little hurt, otherwise he'd actually have survived. Jaheira had to quaff an Oil of Speed to get out of there before the projectile hit, but the rest of the party was well out of range. We keep throwing everything we have at Perth, and eventually he's down to casting Burning Hands. I don't trust him to not be sitting on another ADHW or something equally horrifying though, so we leave the summons to their work, and sure enough, after what feels like half an eternity, the damnable mage drops.
Friggin' nerve-wracking, but it worked. Phew. We collect the loot, as well as swipe the minor gems from Perth's home, and retreat to rest up and raise Yoshimo. Following this, Aldain buffs with Prayer/Recitation/Chant/Luck (I don't think this matters.. idea was to max out luck), turns a single page in the Book of Many Spells, and tadaaa:
That... is really, really good for us. Aldain will have serious high-level spell slot problems for the entirety of the game, yet has to be able to maintain spell defences. Eventually he'll get a Spell Trap per day from Staff of the Magi, but until he does, at least now he'll have one proper spell protection. Huzzah!
Finally, we head to Spellhold and clear out the minor chaff outside (Mists and Shadows). We retreat to the Vulgar Monkey, content to rest and strategize. Next time, we'll head into Spellhold proper, and have to navigate our way through the maze with none of our fabled equipment. I'm contemplating actually splurging for Potions of Genius (there's a bunch of them for sale at the Temple of Umberlee) so that at least Jan and Aerie can improve their pitiful spell selection before then...
Aldain is now a L9/L11/L9 Half-Elven Fighter/Mage/Cleric, and is very slowly working his way up to the point where he has the spell slots to fully protect himself whilst maintaining (at least some) anti-mage capacity.
Comments
The Planar Sphere SCS AI isn't very good when dealing with invisible enemies, it seems - I was able to approach the halflings under mass invisibility and just backstab one spellcaster while opening on the other with my berserkers - both died before their stoneskins or mantles went up:
Lavok was much more of a challenge, though mostly because I miscalculated my approach with Tria - I originally wanted to see how SCS handles an enemy buffed with SI:A, Spell Shield, SI:D and II, but Tria only had one SI memorized, and I attacked solo with her anyway. Lavok's list of buffs was decent, and I started working on them with warding whip:
Oh, and Yasmina got her first 8th level spell - I chose ADHW.
No update tomorrow, instead I'll post another update today. I decided to take a bit of a risk and go for the Planar Prison next. First of, to get to Haer'Dalis, we had to deal with some more dreaded Yuan-Ti mages - three of them, at once, in fact. This is how we did it - as they didn't start casting true sight right away, Chadia got a backstab in on mass invisibility - one down. Next up, Yasmina got the second one with her ADHW - and finally, after dispelling illusions, we switched to nonmagical weapons against PFMW instead of taking the time to dispel all spell protections for the third one - with improved haste, we can punch through stoneskins rather quickly:
The only remaining stronghold quest is the priest one, where we will have to face another lich and our first beholders. As I had checked the list of mages with HLAs recently, I decided that, first, I wanted to kill the city gates lich - he doesn't get any. Adding PFME and fire protections, I expected a fight similiar to the temple ruins liches, but this one had a different strategy in mind - his chain contingency had two mordy swords and mass invisibility in it, his pre-buffs had spell trap as his only spell protection - he still was immune to all elemental and magical damage, so I would have to get rid of this spell trap. First off, death spell to get rid of the swords and detect illusion for the mass invisibility. He tried to go invisible again, but was detected. As I was using my ruby ray to take down spell trap, the only thing he did was breach Cadri, who has great saves and berserker rage anyway, so I wasn't too scared - however, using the wand of spell striking-breach failed after the ruby ray, so I added another ruby ray (there seemed to be some kind of hidden spell protection, or the lich is immune to breach via wand) before casting breach. At this point, the lich had dealt zero damage to my party:
Okay, I lied - I found time to write up another update today
We entered the old tunnels, spoke to Ghaal and made our way to the riddle bridge. For the beholders, we simply decided to send 5 hasted skeleton warriors towards them and let them fight from off-screen. No trouble here, their magic resistance prevailed. In the undead pit, we had to face another lich - going in with full buffs, we started with detect illusions, turn undead, ruby ray + warding whip. The lich had a ADHW in his CC, but I saw it in time, and only Cadri was in range (her magic resistance ended up blocking it):
In any case, now we were finally able to do the cleric stronghold with a few rests. SCS buffs up the mage in the temple of talos quite a lot, though we didn't go all out on buffs this time. While getting rid of storm knights, we started with our usual ruby ray + warding whip, following up with breach. The mage countered with a defensive spell trigger:
The WKI statues are no joke on SCS insane, as they have two high level mages in their number. One of them had added spell trap to additional magic protections, the other one SI:A. Luckily, their spells aren't well coordinated - while one of them started with protection from fire and incendiary cloud, the other one got almost killed by said cloud due to friendly fire, while my party started to take care of all the non-protected enemies as Chadia was detecting illusions and Yasmina use her ruby ray to dispel the spell trap:
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Traps
However, either this information is wrong or these traps are currently broken, as we shall see. With the amount of fire damage they would deal in theory, I thought I could just trap the chromatic demon to death in his iceform. Yasmina also gained new spells, I picked sequencer and spell trigger, charging both with three flame arrows for backup. As I had laid down my traps, I saw him shifting into ice form - my party was mostly not buffed, but I didn't want to wait for another ice form, so I started combat. However, the traps did absolutely zero fire damage for some reason, so I was in a bad spot.
Yasmina threw down her first 3*flame arrows, getting him to badly wounded, our clerics used their wands of the heavens. Now the spell trigger, near death - but before I could finish him, he switched forms to shamblind mound and teleported directly into Chadia (as in her character circle, making her unable to move thanks to the movement bug that is somehow still in the game):
edit: I did some additional testing on completely normal, non-resistant, non-immune humanoid enemies and can confirm now: The level 16 traps DO NOT WORK, at least in my installation. They seem to have the same effect as level 1 traps, not even having the poison damage you start getting at level 11. Let's see if this will change on thief level 17. It's certainly quite disappointing.
The other half of the problem ... were some of your traps a bit farther away? Your first three traps did almost exactly wht should be expected against a poison-immune enemy (instead of dealing zero damage, there's a silent block on the poison effects against poison-immune enemies). After that, it's possible the prebuffs fired fast enough that the other four traps ran into a Stoneskin. In which case, four skins removed but no damage dealt.
Still, you tested against humanoids as well. And you should be getting the poison damage; this is a dwarf multiclass, not a super-early dual.
The relevant spell here is SPCL411, the payload of standard Set Snare. SCS shouldn't change it at all, so feel free to remove that from your override and go back to the default version if there's anything at all.
Oh, and demons in general have "See invisible". You can backstab them, but only if someone else is playing distraction.
SCS changes summoned djinni and efreeti to not have the "summoned" gender. They're exempt from Death Spell.
It gets a Chain Contingency with two instances of "Summon Death Tyrant", a spell used only in this encounter. The trigger is "under 75% HP", so I'm pretty sure you got from there to dead fast enough to skip it. Actually, it's a Contingency and Chain Contingency combined; the other two spells are Spell Deflection and Improved Mantle, which you definitely would have noticed.
No problems so far.
Luriana, Priest of Tempus - Seventeenth Update
Brynnlaw: Chadia goes in to backstab Perth, gets a critical miss, runs out (hasted) - we rest immediately, hoping this will reset combat and stop Perth from following us outside. It doesn't, he follows, but resting has removed his initial prebuffs except for stoneskins - and his new ones don't fire in time with all of my party surrounding and attacking him:
For Dace, I used my flame arrow sequencer/spell trigger:
By the way, can anyone tell me in advance what damage type the new illithid psionic powers do in SCS?
In my SCS runs, I've taken to buffing the whole party with whatever combination of consumables and spell boosts I have so they're all immune to the non-damaging powers, adding on some "kill things faster" buffs because there aren't any dispels before the Elder Brain, and rushing through as a group to slaughter everything before the buffs run out. You can't really keep a back line safe with the way they teleport anyway; might as well bring everybody along.
Oh, and whatever you do? Never, ever, use Project Image in an area with illithids active. The original copy of that mage is considered helpless, so any illithids that teleport in get free hits. And if Stoneskin is up, those hits don't even deal damage to break the image. Even a basic mind flayer gets 4 APR...
Mist (female human inquisitor, Grond0); Trile (female elf mage, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1182126/#Comment_1182126
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1183183/#Comment_1183183
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1183542/#Comment_1183542
An even more belated update than usual, partly as a result of my wife tidying my desk
- a purchase of a couple of PfU scrolls to deal with the lich problem in the City. Kangaxx thought he had a momentary reprieve when Foebane proved ineffective against him, but Mist had already picked up Daystar from the City Gates.
Inquisitor 14, 142 HPs (inc. 5 from Helm), 363 kills (+575 in BG1)
Mage 15, 62 HPs (incl. 5 from ioun stone), 144 kills (+152 in BG1), 0 deaths
Difficulty: Insane with no difficulty-based damage increase.
Mods: Full SCS 34.3, see spoiler for WeiDU.
Include divine spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 34.3
Move or modify some overpowered magic items: 34.3
Replace +1 arrows and other projectiles with nonmagical "fine" ones: 34.3
Replace many +1 magic weapons with nonmagical "fine" ones: 34.3
Reduce the number of Arrows of Dispelling in stores -> Remove Arrows of Dispelling from stores: 34.3
Wider selection of random scrolls: 34.3
Reduce the power of Inquisitors' Dispel Magic -> Inquisitors dispel at their level (not twice their level): 34.3
Increase the power of Cure Wounds and Cause Wounds spells to the level found in 3rd Edition D&D -> Spells heal or inflict a random amount of damage (1d8 per level of the spell, plus 1 point per caster level, to a maximum of 5 points per spell level): 34.3
Restoration and Lesser Restoration spells heal ability-score damage: 34.3
Faster Bears: 34.3
Improved shapeshifting: 34.3
Decrease the rate at which reputation improves -> Reputation increases at about 1/4 the normal rate: 34.3
Thieves assign skill points in multiples of five: 34.3
Allow the Cowled Wizards to detect spellcasting in most indoor, above-ground areas in Athkatla: 34.3
Remove unrealistically helpful items from certain areas: 34.3
Remove unrealistically convenient ammunition from the game -> Remove all ammo from random containers: 34.3
Delay the arrival of the "bonus merchants" in the Adventurers' Mart and the Copper Coronet: 34.3
Treat mages' and priests' High-Level Abilities as innate abilities rather than memorisable spells (each may be taken only once): 34.3
Ease-of-use party AI: 34.3
Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): 34.3
Smarter general AI: 34.3
Better calls for help: 34.3
Smarter Mages: 34.3
Smarter Priests: 34.3
Potions for NPCs: 34.3
Improved Spiders: 34.3
Improved golems: 34.3
Improved fiends and celestials: 34.3
Smarter genies: 34.3
Smarter dragons: 34.3
Smarter beholders: 34.3
Smarter mind flayers: 34.3
Smarter githyanki: 34.3
Improved Vampires: 34.3
Smarter Throne of Bhaal final villain: 34.3
Make the starting dungeon slightly harder: 34.3
Improved Shade Lord: 34.3
Spellcasting Demiliches: 34.3
Tie difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings to the difficulty slider: 34.3
Improved Random Encounters: 34.3
Improved de'Arnise Keep ("Tactics Remix"): 34.3
Improved Unseeing Eye: 34.3
Improved Bodhi: 34.3
Party's items are taken from them in Spellhold: 34.3
Improved battle with Irenicus in Spellhold: 34.3
Improved Sahuagin: 34.3
Improved Beholder hive: 34.3
Rebalanced troll regeneration: 34.3
Improved Drow: 34.3
Improved Watcher's Keep: 34.3
Improved Fire Giant temple: 34.3
Improved Sendai's Enclave: 34.3
Improved Abazigal's Lair: 34.3
Improved Minor Encounters: 34.3
Protagonist: Aldain, Half-elven Fighter/Mage/Cleric.
Since SCS 34.3 deprecates the innate sequencers/contingencies component due to bugs, I'll add minor sequencer/contingency/spell sequencer/spell trigger/chain contingency to party member spellbooks as they reach the required levels to simulate the functionality. I don't think it's gamebreakingly powerful (considering every enemy mage always has every sequencer/contingency they qualify for prepared...).
Aldain will be shooting for a party of Imoen, Jaheira, Minsc, Aerie and Jan. I'm not entirely sure how my thought process behind this choice went, as I started the run months ago... Scroll availability and scribing (due to the need to provide four casters with pricey Potions of Genius) are going to be a problem. We'll have to, at least initially, only do 1 - 2 big batches of scribing, which means making do with patchwork spell selections for parts of the game.
As before, updates will be condensed.
Cliff-notes adventure: A F/M/C out of time, BG2 SoA part 1
Final SoD update found here
BG2 SoA updates: 1, 2, 3
Traveling under Invisibility 10' Radius (this will always be the case, at least pre-Underdark, given how nasty the SCS ambushes can be) we arrive safely at the Government district, picking up Jan and saving Viconia for good measure (and a Plate Mail). Party complete!
Here is where we diverge from the common path, in that the party goes for Watcher's Keep. We buy the Potion Case and, after some convincing, are allowed into the Keep proper. Since we've got most of our spells still available, we push inside a ways; an initial Stone Golem poses no difficulty, but the next group of enemies certainly does.
That's... bad. It's a result of SCS tying difficulty of monster groupings to difficulty slider. We manage to down a single Troll before Aldain has to Sanctuary and block the rest off. We're forced to retreat and come back with full buffs (including CC); even then we take a fair bit of damage. Pushing onward, we run into two Vampiric Wraiths that make a mockery of our woefully under-leveled Skeleton Warriors, and we are once again forced to retreat. A rest later, we manage to clear these out as well, along with a room chock-full of Spiders (Chaos and Slow helped a lot). Finally, Jaheira takes one for the team.
Got a bit too enthusiastic there and missed a trap.. meh. We buy a Stone to Flesh scroll from Sister Galvena and fix Jaheira up; at least her romance seems intact. This proves to be the last of the WK mishaps for now. The net gain? A bit of cash, a Chainmail +2 (which we don't need), infinite +1 Arrows/Bolts (which again, we don't need...), Crimson Dart (cute... but we don't need it!), and the Golem Manual (this might actually come in handy). We depart for the Slums.
Saving Hendak and obliterating the Slavers is no problem given our levels. The Slaver Wizards are treated to Chaos (Jan) and Confusion (Nymph), rendering them harmless enough for our Fire Elementals to make short work of them; there's no need to push through their spell protections this way. Next, we gallivant (invisibly, of course) around Athkatla, doing a few minor chores: Taking out Mencar goes swimmingly, since we manage to place traps outside his room so that only Brennan is in their line of sight: The latter dies instantly, ensuring we get his lovely ring. Pooky and Amon fail their saves against Chaos and the rest is history.
We also expose Reijek, and at long last get the Suna Seni ambush. We're invisible of course, so there's nothing they can do but fail their saves against Chaos x1 + Confusion x2.
I would have liked to kill Officer Dirth and clear out the pirates at the Docks too, but that will trigger Baron Ployer (or wait... will it? As I recall he has to spot Jaheira, so if we just keep her invisible... eh), and I feel less than confident about tackling three enemy mages at point-blank range right now; we did swing by Ikert and purchase his Scroll Case. We retreat to the Copper Coronet; although we've managed to scrape together enough money to pay off Gaelan, I'd like to do one major quest before embarking (mainly so we'll have some gold to actually buy things in the Underdark). Leaning towards De'Arnise Keep, mainly for the FoA on account of Aldain (and it's not terribly difficult, barring the two Yuan-Ti Mages during the final fight).
Aldain is now a L9/L10/L9 Half-Elven Fighter/Mage/Cleric. His 9th level Fighter pip went into Quarterstaff, meaning his specializations are now ++ Warhammer, ++ Flail, ++ Two Weapon Style, + Quarterstaff. I debated maxing TWS first, but I want him to be able to eventually wield Staff of the Magi well, and Fighter L15 will be a long time in coming. Also having reached Mage L9 is good, as this means two 5th level slots: SI: A and Spell Shield running simultaneously should be useful.
We left Brynnlaw by ship, buffed up and cleared the entire city of caverns in one go:
Another question - concerning Balors and Planetars in SCS, who have a vorpal hit (as far as I know, with saves vs. death at -4/-2). I know that Planetars dispel on hit (do Balors do that too? not sure, would be good to know - I think they just can cast remove magic at will instead?) - if you have a character with death ward active, does the attack first dispel the death ward and then consider the vorpal hit? Or does death ward prevent at least that one vorpal hit from being potentially lethal before getting dispelled? I guess I have SI:A and Entropy Shield on most characters, which should also protect against a planetar's dispel hit, but would be interesting to know for Chadia and Cadri.
Planetars have access to priest Dispel Magic, cast at their priest caster level of 1. And of course, the SCS AI doesn't use priest Dispel Magic anyway. Their sword has a 25% (actually 26%) chance to dispel, coinciding exactly with the vorpal hits. And the dispel is first in the stack, so if it succeeds Death Ward won't protect you; by the time the vorpal effect is evaluated, your protection is already gone. I'm not sure what level the sword dispels at, but it seems low.
Dispelling hits are not a spell. Spell Immunity definitely won't protect against them. Not sure about Entropy Shield, as I've never modded the spell system that much myself. If it's set up to protect against specific spells, it won't help. Only directly protecting against the dispel effect would do anything.
The planetar stuff is one thing I've addressed in my tweak mod; I have a tweak that turns celestials into cleric/mages instead of pure clerics and pure mages so all of their spells get cast at level 25. Also, the planetar sword's dispel is improved to dispel at a fixed level of 25, but moved to the end of the stack so Death Ward is a guaranteed protection against one hit.
Domino, Dark Moon Monk
Coretrue, Inquisitor: @Corey_Russell
Dopple, Berserker: @Grond0
Domino had survived for two weeks by not going out. Eventually Coretrue and Dopple grew wise to this so we ventured out for our second session of the attempt. The extended break combined with not having time to recap meant Domino could see we were at the now empty basilisk map. A very brief check on the world map suggested we'd already been to deal with sirines at the coast so instead we emptied our backpacks and headed to Durlags Tower. Via Melicamp Bassilus, Zargal's hobgoblins, Nashkel Mine, the Amazons, Greywolf, the bandit camp. Let's just call it a 45 minute detour.
Anyway, Mulahey wrestled wildly with us right up until Domino danced around him and Dopple used his two handed sword under berserk. The Amazons also struggled to deal with berserk.
Unfortunately for Domino, @Grond0 gets up really early in the morning. Technically, the middle of the night, and as Dopple swooped in to melee this gave the blinded Nimbul chance to cast Horror. No problem at all for Dopple but the not quite distant enough Domino ran off in a panic which allowed his companions to complete the kill and empty their backpacks at the store while he ran a jaunty pace around town.
Coretrue asked if we had anything to nullify basilisk gazes, so Domino said he might have a potion of mirrored eyes. A potion said Coretrue - clearly a concern to him given the ten turn (60 second duration). Domino duly checked his potion case and said there were four potions.
The battle horrors outside put up a good fight but all three of us were able to hit (Domino with more difficulty) and we made our way inside with only severe injuries. Dopple took the brunt of it, without full plate armour and unable to heal - plus we couldn't rest as Coretrue had used a strength potion and it seemed sub-optimal to waste it with a rest.
The final part of the Cloakwood was a mine guarded by Drasus and three assistants. Domino failed to blind Kysus while Coretrue wanted to throw a potion of explosions (or fiery burning) and Dopple reckoned he could handle the enemies while berserked. He surely could but who are we to refuse Coretrue a potion throw and then mop up the rest behind berserk.
He made a cheeky comment about nobody knowing he'd rush in for the kill, to which Dopple dryly pointed out that Domino had just told everybody that he'd rushed in for the kill. Quite.
As for Degrodel, without his protectors he was easy prey.
Three full stoneskins, nine vorpal hits, no effects dispelled. I'd say that's pretty conclusive - the standard version of the planetar sword does not dispel at level 25. Or anything close to the level you'll be when planetars start coming into things.
While SCS changes many things about planetars, it doesn't change their sword.
The standard version of the sword ... dispel type "use caster level". In 2.5, it had "power" 15, which I'm pretty sure doesn't mean anything; that's only relevant for spell level immunities and the like, none of which apply at level 15. That number was changed to zero in 2.6.
Luriana, Priest of Tempus - Nineteenth Update
As we are now getting into HLA levels, a lot of late SoA content is getting a lot easier. In the kuo-toa caverns, we summoned skeletons for the beholders, used some traps to thin out the demon knights and charged them with a buffed party:
Next time, I will try to finish Ust'Natha.
Also, on the beholder hive ... oh come on, staying out of the way and sending in summons? Bah. I'd have everybody charge and fight as a group. After buffing them to be immune to beholder rays for at least an hour, of course. I'm not suicidal.
After visiting the Gate we were asked to investigate the North. The shamans there are quite dangerous, but we were careful so none of us died.
We rescued some children and others in the field of the dead. We are now in the wood of the dead after returning to tell of our exploits.
We also went to a new area at Firewine that had fledgling vampires.
We saw them so I used protection from domination before taking them on single handed.
Some useful equipment but nothing overwhelming.
The vampires did give useful experience 8,500 each. I think that there were 6.
I was glad that we had some warning of them.
[I thought that you didn't get vampires until Amn]
Mist (female human inquisitor, Grond0); Trile (female elf mage, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1182126/#Comment_1182126
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1183183/#Comment_1183183
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1183542/#Comment_1183542
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1184320/#Comment_1184320
On the way back from Umar temple we collected Valygar's body and soon put that to use to grease the lock on the Planar Sphere. Early progress there was easy, though there was a reminder of the need to concentrate when Mist was taken a bit low on HPs as a result of not switching from Foebane to FoA against a clay golem.
Fancying a bit more planar travel, we moved on to the Planar Prison. The intention there was to go in invisible and attack the mage while it was trying to detect us. Unfortunately, Mist used PfE as a final buff before entering and doing that appears to break invisibility. Fortunately she still had the standard inquisitor option and quickly backed away (to protect her improved invisibility and other buffs) before releasing a dispel.
The final target for the session was Windspear Hills. Neither of us could remember exactly how that figured into the paladin quest line, so after being tricked into killing a few paladins we went to the Order of the Radiant Heart to confess our sins - but no-one there appeared to have heard of them yet. Back at Windspear we dived into the dungeon and beat up more golems on the way to find a group of vampires. More of those survived a Daystar sunray than expected, but they had nothing that could hurt Mist anyway.
Inquisitor 17, 151 HPs (inc. 5 from Helm), 557 kills (+575 in BG1)
Mage 17, 59 HPs, 176 kills (+152 in BG1), 1 death
Luriana, Priest of Tempus - Twentieth Update
In the drow city, we completed the arena battles - first on the right, later on the duels. Sending in a buffed Ayla was a good choice for the first two:
I used traps and Cadri to defeat the beholder and completed the following Ust'Natha quests in a peaceful manner before getting the final quest, where I took a break to do some sidequests - the slime worshippers:
- For the mages, there's a vanilla solution that SCS doesn't touch. Spell Shield. Blocks the ray, sticks around to block more of them until it expires.
- For the priests, SCS adds a spell: Impervious Sanctity of Mind (from IWD), with the improvement giving it a Spell Shield.
- For the non-casters, SCS beholders won't use antimagic rays on a character without a primary-casting class unless they detect buffs. Potions of magic protection don't get detected this way, so as long as you avoid other buffs on these characters, you can drink two such potions for full immunity.
The casters stack immunity buffs; 100% resistance against electric and magic damage plus specific immunities to charm/domination, fear, paralysis, slow, petrification, and death/disintegration. All of those can be done with durations of at least an hour, and not only on the caster. You might get smacked around a bit by their telekinesis ray, but that's a pretty low priority for them.
For my own games, I've decided the Spell Shield/antimagic interaction is just too good, and included a component in my tweak mod to nerf that - SS only blocks one ray before being consumed. With that change, it's a good way to protect a mage for one fight, but it won't let you tank a hive.
On the new post's content ... I've reported that House Jae'llat thing. The "mages" are clerics, and the "priestesses" are mages.
Oh, and a little tip on dealing with liches that use Spell Shield: while they're immune to level 1-4 spells, a Spell Thrust will still break their Spell Shield. It won't help against the likes of Spell Immunity, but it can still be your sacrificial spell for the first line of defense.
I have now returned to my evil party. Putting this to one side
NPCs that will be permanent members of the party will be Xan and Ajantis. Xan is also Lawful Neutral and Ajantis is a self-declared Helmite so the party more or less picked itself. There are no barbarian NPCs or Lawful neutral thieves hence starting with this party in Candlekeep.
The Barbarian can smash open chests, so my thief started with being good at pickpocketting. No Blackguard in the party so I made Picky an assassin for poisoning ability.
Luriana, Priest of Tempus - Twentyfirst Update
I bought the Helm of Brilliance, forged every item at Cromwell's except for Crom Faeyr and the dragonscale armor pieces (still lacking the materials), also bought Ras which I forgot to buy earlier (though I'll propably never use it). After recruiting allies for Bodhi, I killed Renal Bloodscalp for another pair of boots of speed before travelling to the forest areas. I prepared very well for the mage at the North Forest, but it turns out he has serious trouble with invisible opponents:
I guess we will visit Bodhi the next time around
Being a single class priest has some perks - your turn undead level gets really high later on, which is why Bodhi's Lair wasn't all that challenging. Vampire mages such as the Guard simply got turned through their defenses:
During this session, I spent most of my time buffing up the party for each opponent - combat was usually quite short. I started with the shadow dragon - his only notable defense was PFMW, I used breach via wand of spell striking => he died:
The shade lich, who was already active due to my earlier failed trap experiment, was sufficiently pre-buffed, so I decided to evade his timestop by running - after that, I decided to send in a planetar, assisted by one of my berserkers, until his PFMW was gone:
We only had the twisted rune left. This one was a bit weird - after I had prebuffed (I included protection of fire for everyone, as we are fighting against 2 HLA-capable mages here) and laid down some traps, I went to talk to Shangalar, but he didn't start with dialogue - instead, he fired up his prebuffs and used a timestop, throwing some spells at our skeleton warriors and planetar. Only then did he start his dialogue, teleported to the entrance and now, being protected against magical damage, the spike traps did nothing to him. Thus, he was able to gate in a fallen planetar, and, with his protections intact, I decided to send my berserkers after other foes first. They took down the fighter and started working on the fallen planetar. Meanwhile, Yasmina and Tria both started working on a timestop, Luriana cast storm of vengeance, Chadia detected illusions. Yasmina used her timestop to dispel the lich: spellstrike => back up => spellstrike => back up => breach. She also started throwing a spellstrike at Vaxall. Tria, who doesn't have the AoP, got her timestop right after that. I wasted some time with her, but in the end she did some good by taking down the fallen planetar while before timestop ran out:
I will have to take some time to go on a shopping trip next time before venturing into the elven city.
Final SoD update found here
BG2 SoA updates: 1, 2, 3
There were a few more ambushes after this, but always being invisible meant they didn't amount to much. We opted for clearing out the Graveyard before tackling a major quest. I seem to recall the Crypt King being a real menace during some iteration of SCS, but this time he just threw out a Horror then hopelessly tried to melee us all to death. We actually had a little luck with random scroll drops; Spell Deflection off the Crypt King and Horrid Wilting off a random Skeleton Warrior. I'll take it.
Into the tombs! Pai'Na wasted her initial action by Dooming Jaheira (no idea what the rationale behind that was), and that was it for her. The only real (minor) problem was the Vampyre down here that really likes running circles around you, but we were able to pin him down eventually, some Skeleton Warriors helping to hold the line against the plethora of other undead.
We finished by successfully killing off Camitis and Reti before they could flee, resulting in a pair of Boots of Avoidance (eh... better than nothing), and taking care of Lynis. We wound up going for De'Arnise Keep as our sole major quest before Spellhold, mainly due to the Flail of Ages. En route, the Orog ambush was defeated without much fanfare, but man... those trolls at the Keep. The result after fighting the first big group:
Aldain is the only one that can really stand toe to toe with them for any length of time, so we let him handle the heavy lifting. The Yuan-Ti Mage upstairs turns out to be an Enchanter and happily wastes all of his Chaos/Confusion/Dominate/Dire Charm on Skeleton Warriors... thanks, I guess. Glaicas was a bit of a bother as he saved against 2 Charm Person and 2 Dominate, but the third Dominate stuck (I prefer not killing him even though he's got a Full Plate Mail). Turns out the Flesh Golem from the Golem Manual strikes as at least a +3 weapon, not bad.
We clear out the basement Trolls/Umber Hulks before Tor'Gal, then went outside to rest, and got the Jaheira romance ambush. Very good... that means we'll have a Ring of Wizardry soon. Turns out VERY soon, as Meronia showed up immediately after the battle, taking Jaheira with her. Ah well, we're not on the clock (we've spoken to Daleson), so might as well swing back to the city for a spell.
We grossly overprepared for the Galvarey fight. Neither mage used Fire Shield, so a single Insect Plague basically decided the fight. Sweet, sweet Ring of Wizardry (will go to Imoen once she's back).
Alright, time for the big bad: Tor'Gal. Idea is kill (or at the very least severely wound) Tor'Gal using traps. He can see through invisibility so will charge ahead of his chronies, guaranteeing he eats all the traps on his own. The Giant Trolls/Umber Hulk Elder/Spirit Troll aren't a real concern beyond being fairly heavy hitters; the two Yuan-Ti mages may well pose a threat, however. So, after suitable buffs, Aldain lays down a Cloudkill near the doorway, while Jan drops another from the starting dungeon wand. It works beatifully: Tor'Gal drops to Badly Wounded the moment he steps through the door, and we bring him down within a round.
The Yuan-Ti Mages already move quite slowly, they're staggered several times due to taking Cloudkill damage, and waste actions casting Death Spell on our carefully spread out Skeleton Warriors. By the time they actually arrive on the battlefield, they're Near Death/Badly Wounded respectively, there's only a single melee thug left standing, we've got True Sight running, and... both mages just sort of crumple without doing anything.
Hooray! Couldn't be happier about how that went. We collect the quite paltry remaining loot, grab our even paltrier reward from Nalia, turn down the keep (definitely want the Mage stronghold), and bugger off. Intending to clear up all loose ends, we return to Watcher's Keep briefly, taking down the Guardian Golems for a little experience, and performing the first step of the ritual to get Foebane (Minsc is going Bastard Sword). Guardian golems aren't a problem, the first wave of statue Fighters have some HLA's but they drop before they can really make much use of them; the Cleric statues just kind of stand there casting pointless buffs.
And yes, we do go after Baron Ployer next. By now we have such good THAC0 (as well as plentiful True Sight) that his wizardly goons stand literally no chance. We even manage to dispel some of their buffs using Remove Magic. Leaving Ployer's hovel however, Reviane appears! Since we're still only at average reputation, she actually attacks... but for some reason, the Harper Mage doesn't spawn, making this a very easy battle (especially considering we were rather low on good spells since we had just prepped to the gills before taking on Ployer's Mage Menagerie).
And of course as you'd figure, the one time we travel non-invisibly, we get the ambush with two L12ish Mages. Fortunately we were able to spread out a bit and eventually grind them down, but at one point Aldain had to eat a Chromatic Orb with a 1/20 chance of failing his save (he made it, thankfully).
Alright, into the tombs (again). We pay Gaelan, talk to Aran, and go for Bodhi. Goes pretty smoothly really; there are mostly Fledgling Vampires at this stage, and they're not much of a threat (the named ones hurt us a bit). Tanova is slowly grinded down beneat the heel of endless summons; she's kind of scary and we don't have the spell selection to remove her protections right now. As we leave to rest up before tackling Bodhi proper, Jan's quest triggers, so we spend a little time doing that (mostly just shuffling around Athkatla with a single rather easy battle). Following a lot of buffing (and two particularly brutal hits by Aldain under Righteous Magic... frightening spell that), Bodhi retreats.
Off to Brynnlaw! Initial vampire ambush is dealt with, we do the small stuff up to and including Lady Galvena. Aldain is buffed to the hilt, pummels Galvena herself in one round, following which Vadek lasts about 4 rounds (he kept renewing his defensive illusions after True Sight took them down).
Now the question is: Do we feel lucky? No. But let's tempt fate anyway. Perth, I hear you have a lovely book...
This fight never seems to go to plan for me. There's a tiny piece of Perth's house where you can stand and he won't see you from his initial position, so it's possible to send in a first wave of summons. Unfortunately, you have to cross Perth's line of sight to then get outside (you really don't want to be inside the house with him once he's spotted you unless you're literally immune to everything... which we aren't at this stage). Since we just can't stand up to Perth's arsenal, we'll do a fighting retreat across Brynnlaw, slowly grinding him down with summons. Aldain and Minsc gets a handful of key long-lasting buffs in case they have to finish things in melee, then Jaheira sneaks inside invisibly, conjures a bunch of Beetles, and it's on! Perth leads with a Time Stop and wastes it brutalizing the Beetles, Jaheira somehow manages to sneak outside without dying, and Perth follows!
We start a desperate scramble through the streets, trying to guess where Perth is at any one time. At some point he tosses out a Lighting Bolt which singes us, but thankfully doesn't kill anyone. Unfortunately, Perth spots Yoshimo at some point, and tosses out an ADHW!
Yoshimo was still a little hurt, otherwise he'd actually have survived. Jaheira had to quaff an Oil of Speed to get out of there before the projectile hit, but the rest of the party was well out of range. We keep throwing everything we have at Perth, and eventually he's down to casting Burning Hands. I don't trust him to not be sitting on another ADHW or something equally horrifying though, so we leave the summons to their work, and sure enough, after what feels like half an eternity, the damnable mage drops.
Friggin' nerve-wracking, but it worked. Phew. We collect the loot, as well as swipe the minor gems from Perth's home, and retreat to rest up and raise Yoshimo. Following this, Aldain buffs with Prayer/Recitation/Chant/Luck (I don't think this matters.. idea was to max out luck), turns a single page in the Book of Many Spells, and tadaaa:
That... is really, really good for us. Aldain will have serious high-level spell slot problems for the entirety of the game, yet has to be able to maintain spell defences. Eventually he'll get a Spell Trap per day from Staff of the Magi, but until he does, at least now he'll have one proper spell protection. Huzzah!
Finally, we head to Spellhold and clear out the minor chaff outside (Mists and Shadows). We retreat to the Vulgar Monkey, content to rest and strategize. Next time, we'll head into Spellhold proper, and have to navigate our way through the maze with none of our fabled equipment. I'm contemplating actually splurging for Potions of Genius (there's a bunch of them for sale at the Temple of Umberlee) so that at least Jan and Aerie can improve their pitiful spell selection before then...
Aldain is now a L9/L11/L9 Half-Elven Fighter/Mage/Cleric, and is very slowly working his way up to the point where he has the spell slots to fully protect himself whilst maintaining (at least some) anti-mage capacity.