In Suldanessalar, golems posed no trouble for my berserkers, and the drow wizard failed to counter a mass invisibility opening:
Luckily, with two high level mages, we can exploit the weakness of all these rakshas walking around here - while it would take a long time to dispel their buffs, make them vulnerable and melee them down, they usually have zero protections against dragon's breath and horrid wilting - so walking into a group of them with a triple horrid wilting CC is enough to destroy the lot of them (in this case, one survived at near death, so another manually cast one was needed):
Nizidramanii'yt did basically nothing except for one dragon's breath and a bunch of attacks, not even his entangle or insect plague spells:
We used the three artifacts to summon the avatar and trapped Irenicus at the tree:
All hell trials were completed the good way, just to preserve more conversation options when dealing with Balthazar later on. I used a planetar + a timestop and some nukes for the beholder group:
The final battle of SoA had us prepare with everything + some invulnerability, heroism and fire giant strength potions (I won't mention protection from fire again separately - you can assume that it's usually buffed when facing HLA-capable mages). Since you can't kill Jon here via traps, they were laid out a bit further away, with the hopes of catching out the balors. For the one on the right we got the correct positioning, the one on the left was left in a wounded state. We immediately got hit by remove magic, and to my confusion, Luriana herself got dispelled. I would've sworn that she had entropy shield up. In any case, Chadia and Cadri lost their buffs (no surprise there), and I had them throw in some oils of speed and invulnerability pots now and then to keep them mobile and protected. I had to pull Luriana away, not wanting to take any risks. The others (mostly Tria and Ayla) took down the remaining Balor and started dealing with the glabrezus:
As I was done with the last glabrezu, Jon finished his timestop and started unleashing his HLAs: IA, Fallen Planetar, Dragon's Breath. I retreated with Cadri (no fire protection), had Ayla focus the planetar and started chain contingencies with Tria and Yasmina - Yasmina with triple pierce shield, Yasmina with triple horrid wilting:
With the dragon's breath over, Cadri and Tria joined Ayla in dealing with the planetar (I actually might have put Cadri in some danger here, as she had no death ward and I'm not sure her saving throws would've been good enough if her invulnerability pot would've been dispelled). While my pierce shields didn't do enough and horrid wiltings failed as a result, we got the planetar rather quickly, Jon's combat protection of choice faded naturally, and Yasmina started a spellstrike as Ayla was able to land a crucial slow effect via FoA:
Yasmina landed her spellstrike, sealing Jon's fate - even if he had thrown up a new absolute immunity, I would've easily breached it:
Done with SoA! I also couldn't stop right here, just wanted to get to my pocket plane, so I prepared some traps, a few buffs, a planetar, and challenged Illasera. She survived the traps, two of her allies didn't. Took a second to take down the enemy mage, but soon, Illasera was on her own:
We aren't fully buffed, as you can see - only did the things we got in during the wait for her arrival. Propably a mistake, but I thought the traps would just instantly kill her, which they didn't. In any case, she only dispelled Tria and Cadri with her dispelling arrows before finally dying:
I had Cespenar forge some gear (everything we got so far, minus wondrous gloves because I accidentally sold two of the needed gems). I've read that the FoA +4 bug got fixed, so I crafted that one as well - hopefully that is correct. I should mention that Yasmina got her final third level spell (skull trap) and a new 7th level one (mordy sword). Next time, we will face Irenicus again and hopefully make our way to Saradush.
Cliff-notes adventure: A F/M/C out of time, BG2 SoA part 3
Final SoD update found here
BG2 SoA updates: 1, 2, 3
Should've upgraded Jan and Aerie's spellbooks when I had the chance.. you can only do so much with their default selection. But more on that in a moment.
As intimated in the previous post, we descended into Spellhold after Aldain defeated Bhaal in one-on-one combat. This is the first time I'm playing with the component that strips you of your gear, and so we didn't actually go after the Orogs/Minotaurs guarding the statue to the west (as usually there's Yuan-Ti Mages there and I figured we'd leave them for later). So we basically pushed ahead with no armour for no good reason...
Anyway. We did things in a bit of a round-about fashion, but eventually we arrived outside Dace's abode with little trouble. Makes sense, since the trouble was waiting for us inside.
Come on, we have no gear! That's 2 Bone Golems, 2 Greater Mummies, 2 Skeleton Warriors (melee), 2 Skeleton Warriors (ranged), and a friggin' Lich. This is why I like keeping a Farsight memorized... at least we didn't unwittingly open the door and have the whole lot descend on us.
Of course, we have to clear them somehow, so there's nothing for it but summon a few meatshields. We don't have many available, since we needed Chaotic Commands x6 to safely deal with the Mind Flayer (in hindsight it would've been more economical to just use 2 CC and raise whoever inevitably croaked, but eh), but a few Skeleton Warriors take the front, and we open the door. Thankfully, the Lich isn't coupled with his guardians, so even though it's quite a difficult fight (especially given that we lack magical weapons and have to rely on stuff like Phantom Blade), we eventually muddle through with the help of a lot of Stoneskins.
We're in no shape to tackle a Lich after clearing (most of) the level, so we finish off the Ruhk (barely... he's really hard to land a hit on) and rest up. So, how do we take down a Lich? Jan/Aerie/Imoen have precisely nothing that can strip spell protections. Aldain has Spell Thrust (...) and Secret Word, but this seems very iffy. It will turn out this hunch is correct, as the Lich in question pops a Spell Trap which we have zero recourse against. Thus, we're left with the tried and true tactic: Throw summons at it until it breaks.
So, we proceed to do just that. Imoen at least knows Monster Summoning III, so we lead with bunches of Ettercaps/Ogre Berserkers. The Lich pops a Death Spell, a second Death Spell, Time Stop, Horrid Wilting.. then starts spamming Suffocate.
Many, many monsters and Skeleton Warriors later, he starts throwing Skull Trap and Acid Arrows. Aldain puts on a few vital (Death Ward/PfF/PfC etc) long-lasting buffs, puts up his spell protections, and charges in! To which the crafty Lich responds with a Chain Contingency, so Aldain charges straight back out.
We HAVE to wait out that fiend. While doing so, Aldain's spell protections drop. We're really low on summons, but send our final two Skeleton Warriors in alongside Aldain. The Lich is casting Magic Missiles, surely he's about to go down? Nope. He somehow pops defenses again (no Contingency or Sequencer, just somehow instantly casts three spells... maybe they were part of his prebuffs but didn't fire correctly at first) and starts meleeing/MM'ing Aldain. Then whips out a Suffocate, another Suffocate, PW: Silence and PW: Blind. Aldain flees for his paltry life, and I swear that FRIGGIN' LICH sneers as he pulls out his trump card: Another Horrid Wilting.
To not much surprise, 23 HP isn't enough to reliably survive a Horrid Wilting, and poor Aldain drops. That Lich really was on his last legs; a few elemental summons (which we would've had if we'd done some scribing) would likely have tipped the scales. I'll be less of a scrooge when it comes to potentially life-or-death battles from now on.
So, run over. F/M/C was kind of fun, but mostly felt like a F/M that could summon a few extra Skeleton Warriors. It was undeniably powerful having a fighter that could protect his own buffs whilst simultaneously being (almost) invulnerable to physical attacks though. I'd also forgotten how much fun Jan's interactions can be; I'll definitely bring him along for the next run.
@aldain When I played with the "steal your items"-component at Spellhold for the first time, I was in a similiar situation - in my case, it was a few years ago with a much earlier SCS version, and the Yuan-Ti mages (where there are now the weapon and armor-dropping orogs/minotaurs) were still there. They both had two death spells, easily dealt with my limited summons and absolutely destroyed my party, which was, to make matters worse, heavily focused on physical combat. There's definitely some preparation needed, or, at least, high levels (from what I've seen in your reports, you went to Spellhold crazy early compared to what I'd usually do - I think it's reasonable to initially leave out the planar prison, planar sphere and/or unseeing eye, but I'd certainly do the other stronghold quests before making my way to there).
Still, a very good effort and very brave to try and tackle a lich at this level at all (I think the reason I've finally made it through SoA on insane SCS this time, aside from a very powerful custom party, is just the willingness to avoid all high level arcane spellcaster battles for as long as possible; the difficulty spike as soon as opponents get access to level 7-9 spells in SCS is just so extreme) - looking forward to your next run!
@Enuhal Thank you! Yes, I tend to go for Spellhold extremely early (used to do it straight after clearing the Slavers in the Slums... that was fairly intense). I still think it's entirely doable, but requires careful planning and some arguably cheesy tactics. Or tactic as in singular, since I really haven't found anything that consistently works beyond summon spam and waiting out enemy defenses: You have no way of protecting yourself against magical damage so Horrid Wilting completely wrecks you, and you stand no chance dealing with Lich-summoned high-level fiends spamming Remove Magic...
I would and will do it again though. No guts, no glory
Bash {27} - berserk melee run (update 1) Previous run
After getting a first success for a year in my long-life challenge, I thought I'd have another go with Bash about 3 years on from the last attempt. Bash has had several different incarnations, but in this one he's a fighter/illusionist. While he doesn't have any totally forbidden tactics (except my standard personal rules against healing potions etc), those are severely restricted in practice as he's not allowed to acquire XP for killing anything except by use of the cursed berserking sword. Most previous attempts have been in an SCS installation, but I don't currently have an up to date version of that and this one is just using the unmodded game. To compensate for that being easier, I won't make any use of Algernon's cloak this run.
Bash just had to run past a single hobgoblin on the way to find Brage and claim his sword. He didn't actually equip that though until after making his way to find Shoal, blinding her and wearing her down a bit with his sling. A single devastating swipe with his sword then claimed the kill to get a quick level up.
In Beregost, blindness allowed him to get close enough to Neera to get her gem bag and mage robe.
He also got some XP there for talking down Marl and finding a book for Firebead. South of Beregost, there was a bit more easy XP thanks to using sleep from out of sight on Mirianne's ogrillons and Zhurlong's hobgoblins. The latter provided him another fighter level, as well as dropping an identify scroll - which he did well to memorize despite being a bit intellectually challenged for a mage (11).
After that encounter I also realized that Bash had not previously bought a helmet and he quickly grabbed one from the floor. Back in Beregost Bash got a little bonus XP and gold by waiting until Zhurlong's movement took him into the back room of the inn and blinding him. I thought that would stop him moving around, but apparently it didn't - so it was a good job that a single hit killed him before he could lure Bash back into sight of the innkeeper.
Karlat was more safely dragged out of sight before being engaged and Bash went to get Perdue's sword in order to return that. Moving north, a sleeping ogre was then enough to get to mage level 3 - and provide a Blur scroll, which was successfully learnt. At the FAI, Tarnesh was dragged behind the temple before being blinded and finished off.
Bash bought Buckley's Buckler there with the idea of triggering regeneration, though subsequently realised it's not much good at the moment as he can't unequip his 2-handed sword except with the help of a temple.
Further north Bash tried to avoid killing all the fishermen, in order to get the maximum XP for returning Tenya's bowl without her going hostile (which would have resulted in either her or his own death). He was unfortunately unsuccessful with that and had to settle for 1,000 XP, rather than 2,000. That was topped up though by killing the ankheg nearby, with a first use of Blur there.
Back in the south, a trip to the Cloudpeaks didn't end well for Rufie thanks to a skeleton annoying Bash - fortunately the demon was too heartbroken to seek revenge.
Vax was dragged away from Zal and both were blinded for easy disposal. Dragging Caldo & Krumm out of sight of the Dryad of the Cloudpeaks was more ticklish, but a long-distance chromatic orb did the job and reporting in took Bash to fighter level 4.
After grabbing the charisma tome without trouble, Bash had his first near death experience when ambushed by an ogre mage and hit by an acid arrow and two volleys of magic missiles before he could chop it down to size.
After successfully resting several times without any ambushes, he took on a polar bear that was threatening a local merchant - wearing the Destroyer of the Hills girdle reduced the risk there to an acceptable level. That provided a 4th illusionist level.
A bit of reputation work saw an amulet returned to Mr Colquetle and some half-ogres slaughtered for Bjornin. Bash was lucky after the latter when he took the wrong route back to Beregost and triggered an ambush by a couple of ghouls - his substandard splint armor successfully shrugging off 4 attacks while he cut them down.
At Firewine Bridge though, his failure to upgrade armor proved more costly. Bash tried blinding Meilum 3 times there without success. Rather than run away and return for further tries he used Blur and then followed in a Chromatic Orb to engage in melee (switching to his splint armor while the projectile was in mid-air to avoid the restriction against changing armor in combat). To his surprise Meilum did not show a saving throw there and stayed in place - checking the spell description for level 4 appeared to explain that, as spell failure results in being blinded for one turn. That should have made a dangerous encounter pretty one-sided, but it didn't work out like that. Bash did not appear to be getting the expected bonus to hit and Meilum not taking the expected penalty - and with both of them at near death, it was Meilum who got the final blow in.
Loading the autosave confirmed that Meilum was not suffering the effects of being blinded (or possibly, that the duration was one round, rather than the stated one turn).
At the Low Lantern Desreta finally gets past a pair of commoners to discuss ennui with us. Domino drew her out then hid in shadows meaning Dopple took the brunt of her conversation.
Lothander found his usual exits (the stairs, and jumping down from the upper stairs) blocked but instead disappeared to the south. Dopple was most put out by this, exclaiming that he jumped out of the <bleeping> window. There was no way we could have covered that eventuality (until Dopple mentioned darts of stunning and Domino admitted he had five in his backpack).
Marek handed over his antidote without complaint. Or we cut him down. You decide.
This left us free to investigate the Iron Throne HQ. Coretrue opted for potions to foil magic, while Domino and Dopple kept a safe distance. In Dopple's case this safe distance of zero led to him getting scared for much of the battle but he finally dwarfed-up and helped end matters decisively.
Jardak and his butler couldn't stop us borrowing a helmet.
Dopple and a greater doppelganger traded blows in Candlekeep.
Prat and his gang caused the closest scrape so far, with Prat's second lightning bolt heading straight for Domino who had tried to move away from where he thought it would be cast. Silly boy.
Anyway, he survived with about 20hp left and looted the bodies as his companions dealt with spiders. Then Dopple used protection from petrification against the two greater basilisks. Diarmid died as we made our way out, and we headed back to the city.
Slythe dies almost in sight of Krystin, so we re-unite her with him after this touching visual.
On to the coronation. Coretrue has True Sight running and adds a Dispel. Liia dies while Belt is looking increasingly poorly. Just as Domino is about to cast a cure light wounds onto Belt both the remaining doppelgangers succumb so instead we retreat to a side-room before convincing Sarevok to depart. Belt sends us after him.
Coreture bashes through the Thieves Maze, using his boots to keep ahead of Dopple.
The undercity welcoming committee survive an initial set of exploding arrows but we whittle them down.
Sarevok obstinately refuses to engage us inside the temple. Semaj on his own is easy pickings, while Dopple tries again to lure Sarevok out. Angelo arrives instead so we kill him just as Tazok arrives (not hidden so wondering if Coretrue had True Sight running as a counter for Semaj's Mirror Image).
Finally Sarevok chases after Dopple. Coretrue tags him with a dispelling arrow and we play a lumbering game of piggy in the middle until Dopple judges we've applied enough missile damage and closes in for a melee finale.
The end of the first pocket plane challenge is turned into a serious threat by SCS, involving a battle against Sarevok, Bodhi (with her new abilities) and Irenicus (HLA-capable).
Bodhi used her insect plague, but pretty much only hit Chadia, who was detecting illusions, but somehow didn't reveal Jon until later. Meanwhile, the party quickly took down Sarevok:
As you can see, Yasmina started a timestop, but she ended up getting interrupted (I think by a wand of frost, which Irenicus used throughout the battle) while Jon opened with his own timestop:
He followed up with IA, Fallen Planetar - no dragon's breath, but a warding whip on Luriana instead - we refocused our efforts on the fallen planetar and got him down rather quickly:
As we changed our focus to Bodhi, Yasmina started a second attempt at timestop while Chadia, having been hit by another wand of frost, drank a healing potion:
Bodhi did some damage to Cadri, but hitting her with melee attacks, implosion and sunray was enough to take her down. Yasmina got her timestop to work this time, and she went with spellstrike => move back => spellstrike => start breach. Jon followed up with PFMW:
This, however got breached soon, and victory was ours:
I also entered Saradush and defeated the first group of hostile soldiers. These guys actually get fighter HLAs (at least they had whirlwind attack), so they are not completely non-threatening. We hid in the first available building and stopped playing for now.
The rest of Candlekeep was easy enough as was the top part of Durlag's Tower, however when we went down to the area where the warders are, I forgot a trap. Montaron didn't find it and was killed. I went for his equipment and triggered the trap again in so doing. I was also badly hurt but recovered after sleeping for sixteen hours.
Now need to raise Montaron.
We need to buy some more potions for Montaron as his trap detection is poor, so poor that he can't deal with some traps when fully buffed, the problem with assassins.
Upon return we had no further problems even with the warders. Traps and summoned skeletons made them quite easy.
I cane well remember the time when that battle was always touch and go as to whether the party would survive. Wise tactics are everything.
@Grond0
Sorry to learn about Bash. @Gate70
Congratulations.
Wrecking Crew {25} - dwarf fighters (update 1) Previous run
After losing Bash, I thought I would pick up another long-standing challenge with the Wrecking Crew of 6 dwarf fighters. Their last documented run was a couple of years ago, though I have a note that there was one run after that ended by Vito being chunked by an ogre berserker. That one was in LoB and the majority of their runs have been in SCS, but this is an unmodded standard run.
As usual their aim is to explore all areas and undertake all quests & encounters. Their weight of shot means enemies are typically unable to even close with them and, with no buffs to think about, progress is pretty rapid by party standards. However, I wasn't going after quick XP early on, so had already cleared about 10 areas before getting a first level up thanks to a couple of golems at High Hedge.
Soon after that there was a first death when Vito sacrificed himself for the cause, but that was rewarded by good loot and XP from the deaths of Ogre Droth and Shoal.
That meant it didn't take much more to get another level each - some of the nearby ogre clan providing the necessary XP.
There was still more on offer though thanks to the sirines. They managed to charm Vito, but that didn't do them much good.
On the way to more sirines they stopped off at Bassilus's area. He quickly died, but unfortunately so did Melicamp. Arriving back at the coast they ploughed through plenty of hobgoblins on the way to the first lot of sirines on that map. This time two of the Crew were charmed, but that was still not enough to cause a problem and everyone got another level.
After sorting out the last lot of sirines, the Crew went into the cave. They all had decent HPs and some sort of magical weapon by now, so meleed each of the golems rather than using the standard missile tactics.
There was nothing in the Cloudpeaks that I thought was likely to cause trouble - and nothing did. That got the Crew relatively close to another level and cleaning up in Brage's area tipped them over.
They celebrated by taking on the Doomsayer. Only 2 of them had proficient magical weapons, but by sharing the damage around they won easily enough.
Having a character chunked is the most common way for me to lose this run and there will be plenty of opportunities for that to happen in the future, but at least it's so far so good.
All right, Saradush sidequests! We revived a peasant, helped the elves, broke up a fight, got back the spellbook (bought 2*boots of speed, learned all remaining spells we were still missing), cleared the barracks and started Kiser's quest - except for one thief and the mage, all opponents there died to an initial 3*ADHW CC:
We sent a planetar after the mage, he drained him of a lot of spells but didn't get through his protections before his time ran out. Still, shortly after that, his combat protection was gone and the party simply hacked him down:
I entered the prison, having Ayla deal with most vampires - for the final fight there, Tria and Cadri helped out with active rages:
We also made our way to the sewers. We used our second planetar and deva summons to help with the clearing, and Tria killed the final mage here under timestop:
I entered Gromnir's fortress via the sewers and upgraded Foebane and the Bronze Ioun Stone. Next time, we will try to clear the fortress and defeat Gromnir!
We had ended the previous session standing outside the Order of the Radiant Heart to remind ourselves that the paladin quests were underway. Well, that didn't work . Mist suggested doing the Unseeing Eye and we'd bought Balduran's Shield and were in the sewers when Gate70 asked if there was something else we were supposed to be doing. A quick check of the journal disclosed an urgent appointment in Umar Hills and shortly afterwards a powerful force of ogre kin realised they were not powerful enough.
After returning to Athkatla to report in we were sent straight back to Umar to 'mediate' in a discussion. Sorcerous Amin did well to both release an initial lightning bolt at Mist (fortunately that didn't repeatedly bounce around) and take Trile out with a PW:stun - but the latter was only with his last gasp.
The most challenging of the tasks was to defend against a group of assassins. One of those in particular can be a problem as they start invisible and aim to sneak upstairs to do their dirty deed. That assassin survived a wilting, but was revealed by Mist's true sight and Mist also successfully blocked the stairs to provide her with enough time to get a killing strike in.
Mist was now tasked with finishing off Firkraag, but the route to get to him proved a bit more complicated than expected. On the way Trile took a slight detour and ran into some gibberlings. Mist turned back from the cave entrance to deal with those, while Trile ran back out of their way. Unfortunately Trile wasn't paying attention to what else might be in that direction and some orcs decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
While slightly embarrassing, Mist had a resurrection wand to allow the pair to get quickly underway again. Firkraag himself proved easier than expected. Trile protected both of us against fire and we hung back at the start of the combat to avoid buffs being dispelled. Firkraag would make short work of most summons, but was unable to do that against a Mordy sword. That gave Mist time to help out the summons in wounding the dragon severely before Trile's second attempted wilting got past the dragon's magic resistance (slightly undermined by a Pierce Magic).
The great reward from that encounter of course is Carsomyr - which Mist immediately sold . Garren Windspear and his daughter offered only a few words of congratulation, but there was at least a bit of additional XP provided by the Order of the Radiant Heart.
Back in the temple sewers we stopped off to deal with some illithid. Trile buttressed Mist's protections there with Spirit Armor to ensure she wouldn't be affected by the illithid's mental attacks. By paladin standards her intelligence of 11 was also pretty high, allowing her to shrug off one intelligence drain, while still maintaining a safety margin. Mordy swords are also handy against illithid as, unlike skeleton warriors, they cannot be stat-drained. That meant the first 2 rooms were quickly and easily cleared.
For the final room, Mist stayed back to avoid the possibility of being attacked by multiple opponents at once. Trile got a bit too close and was stunned, but a sword acted as a blocker while Mist shot down several opponents.
That meant only 2 were left by the time the sword unsummoned and Mist rapidly disposed of those in melee before they could come and feast on the still unmoving Trile.
Finally moving on to the Unseeing Eye, Mist hid behind Balduran's Shield, while Trile sped things up with area damage from afar.
Gaining the first part of the Rift Device from the temple was then enough for both of them to reach epic levels.
Trile now had access to a planetar, which might have made an appearance against a local lich - if Mist had not cut that fight short by dispelling and dashing in to kill it.
The planetar did though get a first outing against the blind priests - meaning those were even more thoroughly doomed than they would have been anyway.
The Unseeing Eye did manage to get off a wilting, but Mist and Trile were both lurking outside the area of effect of that and shot the Eye down after the Rift Device had done the heavy lifting.
After returning the Device to the temple and ensuring Gaal would cause no more trouble, we prepared for the next session by saving the game while standing outside the Guarded Compound. Let's see whether that will be enough of a clue next time ...
Inquisitor 18, 154 HPs (inc. 5 from Helm), 682 kills (+575 in BG1)
Mage 18, 60 HPs, 203 kills (+152 in BG1), 2 deaths
Gromnir's mages aren't very fond of spell shield, it seems - they use a lot more SI:A compared to SoA mages, but I'm not using remove magic anyway. Spellstrike + Breach while detecting illusions was usually enough to kill one of them as I cleared out the dungeons:
Opening up under improved invisibility is, of course, quite helpful, as they are forced to cast an entire true sight spell before being able to do anything - the one upstairs suffered a similiar fate to his friend:
Gromnir himself not only gets additional help, Karun is HLA-capable and he himself is a decently powerful barbarian with high resistances + hardiness. We prepared our triple ADHW CCs and approached again under improved invisibility, though, because I didn't want to rebuff the entire party, with no improved haste (using oils of speed instead). Yasmina opened with timestop, Tria with Dragon's Breath, Luriana with Storm of Vengeance, Ayla and Cadri went after Gromnir, Chadia was detecting illusions - the AoP wasn't enough to give Yasmina the advantage, as Karun was faster with his timestop - however, two of Gromnirs allies in the back died to our chain contingencies at the same time:
Karun started with true sight, following up with IA. After that... secret word on Ayla, followed by a shout? Relatively weak compared to earlier mages... Needless to say, I wasn't too scared, and Yasmina got her own timestop right after that. She started with IA, following up with a planetar (to help against the new medusa + minotaur allies, which I honestly can't remember from any previous runs - the medusa tried to petrify Yasmina, but her buffed saves luckily were too good for that) and spellstrike against Karun (despite his impressive list of prebuffs, maybe the longest we had seen yet, there was no spell shield included) and a few ADHWs (the other mage hadn't buffed with protection from magical energy) - the first mage went down as timestop ended, and Karun was hit by the spellstrike:
As the planetar and Tria dealt with their opponents, another horrid wilting + Cadri and Ayla took down Gromnir himself (first having killed his simulacrum). Chadia was finally able to detect illusions on Karun (who had used his time to cast spellstrike on Ayla, for whatever reason). Cadri did actually suffer a decent amount of damage from Gromnir's attacks, but not enough:
Finally, Karun was breached and killed as the last remaining foes to the east fell as well:
Over all, a decent victory, even though Karun's AI script made some relatively poor choices.
A number of further areas to the south were ticked off and reputation had built up to 18 by the time they got to the Lake area. There was a reputation crash there though, when Drizzt got dizzy running in circles and blamed his heart attack on the Crew.
The Crew were not that far short of a 6th level when they arrived at the basilisk area and following Korax round there soon provided the necessary boost.
The Red Wizard area to the NE can be pretty dangerous because of the combination of web traps and spiders. I still didn't use any buffs there though, but probed ahead with Vito - who relied on the others to shoot attackers down quickly when he was webbed.
The Red Wizards had no answer to a sneak attack, though Denak did last just long enough to choke out a few threats.
With original wilderness areas running short, I cleared Larswood and moved onto Peldvale. At this point it had been a long time since anyone took major damage, but I know from old the potential danger from groups of Blacktalons and should have been more careful. However, rather than pick off one or two of those from range I charged one group when I spotted them. The result of that was that all of them targeted Baby Face and shot him down before the rest of the Crew could get into melee.
After finishing off the Blacktalons, the Crew made a lucrative visit to the ankheg area - their combined strength allowing them to haul off 15 shells at a time for sale . The last of the wilderness areas to be tackled were Gullykin and Firewine Bridge. The reason for delaying those was that the ruins linking them are a pain, but going in the backdoor allowed the Crew to shoot down the ogre mage and Lendarn before any spells could be cast.
A first use of buffs to protect against electricity and fire then allowed trap damage to be reduced to manageable proportions while the Crew eliminated the opposition inside.
After resting, they cleared the remaining exteriors. The plan was to share damage from Kahrk around, but he continued targeting Baby Face when I thought he was out of sight and I resorted to another potion to protect against a potentially fatal bolt of lightning there before going on to chop Kahrk down to size.
The Nashkel Mine was about as much trouble as might be expected and Mulahey failed to even summon any help before being shot down.
Nimbul's boots proved ineffective against a missile assault and Tranzig also failed to cast a spell. The defenders at the Bandit Camp did no better as the Crew opened up access to the Cloakwood. Most of the enemies there weren't much threat, with none of the druids living long enough to cast any spells.
The poison of phase spiders and wyverns could potentially be lethal pretty quickly, but Al now had the ability to cure that once a day and used that a couple of times. I was fighting in all the ambushes, rather than running as I would do while solo, and that significantly increased the XP gained - with the result that everyone was able to take their 7th level on the way to the final area.
I cleared the north forest with ease (still using my Gromnir buffs) and entered the temple, rested, buffed up again - the master wraith and his allies stood little chance against double sunrays and 2 triple ADHW CCs:
The skeleton mage and cleric are both HLA-capable, so I approached with caution and started Yasmina off with a timestop, the others using powerful spells as well or going after the cleric, while Luriana was turning undead. Turns out level 31 is enough to just kill the skeleton mage via turning:
Well, that saves me from getting through tons of buffs. After that, we took down the cleric, and, with true sight going, the assassin was easily dealt with:
We placed some traps near Nyalee for later and went on to the marching mountains, where we will continue tomorrow.
So impressed with all the knowledge and skill that it takes to do this type of thing
I've decided to give this a try, though I am nowhere near an expert player and haven't played Icewind Dale in a couple of years. I don't know if this is even viable, but I'm going to try a solo no-reload Icewind Dale game with a Shaman. I've never played a Shaman and don't even know what spells it has available to choose from, so this will be interesting and probably more of a comedic effort than a serious one, but let's see how it goes
Welcome, one and all, to the comedy stylings of Unga-Bunga, Half-Orc Shaman!
Game: Icewind Dale and expansions
Special: Solo
Class: Shaman
Difficulty: Heart of Fury
Mods: none
Me Unga-Bunga. Unga-Bunga like spirits, animals, spirit animals and dancing. Unga-Bunga dance like Madonna in Lucky Star video.
Unga-Bunga coming of age. Elders tell Unga-Bunga it's time for vision quest. Unga-Bunga pour water over hot coals and take lots of peyote, have vision of backwater human village Easthaven. Unga-Bunga wonder if he take too much peyote but go to Easthaven anyway.
Unga-Bunga meet Hrothgar, town leader, and agree to help out around town:
Help lady in tavern with bugs in cellar. Unga-Bunga dance for hours summoning spirits, get real tired
Help man with wolf in building. Unga-Bunga run outside and wolf follows outside, so easy. Hard part killing wolf. Unga-Bunga dance more hours...
Help man and water lady talk to each other. Who Unga-Bunga to stand in way of love?
Buy wine for old guy. Unga-Bunga buy some for self too, wonder when vision quest will start
Unga-Bunga find boy on bridge leading out of town. Boy say monsters steal fish. Unga-bunga like kids, mad at monsters, so goes to find them. Unga-Bunga finds lots of goblins, runs like hell then remembers terrain inside of town, leads goblins there and dances. Unga-Bunga try to summon spirit animals between him and goblins, so spirits fight and Unga-Bunga dance:
Unga-Bunga and spirits finally kill all goblins, give fish bones to kid. Hrothgar ask Unga-Bunga to find lost caravan traveling from east. Unga-Bunga goes into passes east of Kuldahar, slay wolves, and find broken waggon. Unga-Bunga spot orc run into cave nearby.
Unga-Bunga tell Hrothgar. Hrothgar ask Unga-Bunga if ready to leave with caravan to Kuldahar. Unga-Bunga say no, will see if can find caravan goods. Unga-Bunga return to cave in east and go inside.
Unga-Bunga dance, and dance, and dance some more, watch spirits slay many orcs and smiles. Unga-Bunga clear out many caves until come to last chamber with 4 ogres and many orcs. Unga-Bunga summon bombardier beetles, tell them to guard narrow passage before opening into chamber. When orcs and ogres come, Unga-Bunga summons many Spike Growth from ground where orcs and ogres stand, laugh as they yelp in pain. First time Unga-Bunga actually slay foes on his own, without spirits.
Unga-Bunga beat chest some, then look around, find letter in chest with other things. Unga-Bunga take letter to caravan man then go to tell Hrothgar ready to leave:
I didn't think to note what spells I chose at each level. Here's the current list at Level 9:
Armor of Faith, Cure Light Wounds, Entangle, Protection from Evil, Sunscorch
Barkskin, Charm Person or Mammal, Find Traps, Goodberry
Call Lightning, Protection from Fire, Spike Growth
Giant Insect, Protection from Lightning
Not sure if those are good picks or not, particularly Giant Insect. It had by far the longest duration of the summoning spells, so I figured I would use those to lure foes to where I'm dancing with (spirit) wolves, since I can't move.
I play casually, so not sure when the next update will be, but having fun so far, even though the battles take forever...
Not sure if those are good picks or not, particularly Giant Insect. It had by far the longest duration of the summoning spells, so I figured I would use those to lure foes to where I'm dancing with (spirit) wolves, since I can't move.
@Ariakus best of luck. Shaman is one of my favorite classes and I was just thinking yesterday that I will probably choose that for my next solo game.
Giant Insect is a good pick. It's particularly helpful in LoB as you get a chance of no-save stuns from the beetles, which can radically reduce the amount of time required to kill things.
Incidentally, there is a bit of a work-round to allow you to do some moving while dancing. While it's true summons will disappear if you move while the dance is in progress, the game only checks once a round whether you are actually dancing - and in the meantime your existing spirits will remain whether you're dancing or not. That means you can:
- have text active, which shows when the dancing check is made
- as soon as a check is made pause the game (not necessary, but will make it easier for you)
- turn dancing off before you move
- you can then move around for several seconds before stopping and re-establishing the dance before the next check is made.
While that may seem cumbersome, with a bit of practice you might be surprised just how much ability to move while spirits are active you actually have .
A lot of damage in Yaga-Shura's home was mitigated by having constant fire protection buffs active on my party. Not too difficult, as most opponents here can't dispel your buffs. I snuck past the first big group of fire giants in order to prepare magical sword summons as damage-immune tanks and some ADHW CCs:
Our berserkers, especially Tria, can tank a few fire giant hits, the others have to stay back. I went for a similiar approach with the northern fire giant group:
Next, I kind of randomly walked into the fire lich - I thought that he's on the left side of the temple, so I was quite surprised. I retreated, summoned a planetar, had Yasmina cast timestop and approach for a death fog, horrid wilting (for his allies) and a quick retreat - but the fire lich caught her in his own timestop, throwing two horrid wiltings at her in the process (and a teleport field on himself). Because I didn't expect to fight him here, I had no spell trap or protection from magical energy on Yasmina (which I usually do against high level spellcasters), so she barely survived the assault:
That was a big mistake, one I'll hopefully not make again. Luckily, I realized that this is the one lich I've met in the game so far without protection from acid in his pre-buffs, and he wasn't even moving out of the death fog, so as the planetar took down any additional adds, Yasmina threw down another death fog, eventually killing the fire lich:
No trouble with the other fire creatures, as they can't deal with fire protection and fear immunity very well. Upstairs, we went to the east, trying to sneak by and buff up, but one fire giant spotted us. He called one elite, another fire giant, and the red dragon Brimstone to his aid, who used his breath weapon, but our entire party was still had full fire immunity:
Both my mages prepared timestop. Yasmina used hers to get some improved hastes and a planetar into the mix. Tria decided to just attack with her extra time, taking out the elite fire giant and tearing down Brimstone's stoneskin:
Well, it turns out that this dragon has no protection against instant death effects, to my surprise:
I thought all ToB dragons had one, but SCS seems to not have added it here. Before approaching Berenn, I protected some of my buffs, as he is a high level spellcaster. We approached, started stripping down his spell protections (which took some time thanks to his ISOM) and eventually breached him:
Cadri equipped The Wave in order to get a one-hit-kill on the prince of fire:
And finally, we returned to Nyalee, against whom our previous traps and chaotic commands against the various Nymphs did the job:
A run by some twins, born with identical attributes but one turns to the dark side and the other to the radiant side. The big question that I had before starting was whether to make Radiant an Inquisitor or a Priest of Helm. Both give True Sight and both would be apt from a role playing point of view.
We buffed up for Yaga-Shura and made sure to seek him out quickly to get him to despawn. There are quite a few mages around the area, and they tend to use spell thrust, breach and the like, weakening my buff protections - their most significant achievement was a successful breach on Cadri, getting rid of her buffs. As we encountered Yaga-Shura gain, I opened with timestop on Yasmina, dragon's breath on Tria to get rid of most of the minor soldiers and some short-duration buffs. The only lieutenant we saw at this point was the cleric (to the north-west). All lieutenants are HLA-capable, and Yaga-Shura takes almost no damage initially, so its a good idea to take them out. Yasmina completed her timestop and opened with IA, she gated in a planetar, and essentially took Yaga-Shura out of the fight by casting a PW:Blind on him, which made him wander away. She followed up with another dragon's breath on the remaining soliders/mages and ruby rays at the lieutenant. Meanwhile, unknown to me, the lieutenant mage approached from the east and opened with his own timestop:
He followed up with the typical HLA trio: IA, Dark Planetar and Dragon's Breath, centered on Cadri (the only one without fire immunity, as she had been breached earlier on). We made sure to run out of the Dragon's Breath, while Tria had completed her CC, which happened to hit and kill a fire giant to the north with 3*ADHW and weaken the lieutenant cleric. A tthis point, the lieutenant fighter appeared, whom Luriana targeted with implosion while both of our mages prepared another timestop. The fighters, meanwhile, were busy taking down the dark planetar:
Tria's timestop turned out to be perfectly timed, as the lieutenant thief appeared right at this point - three easy hits to take her down:
She also took down the fighter as the timestop ended. Now, it was again Yasmina's turn - she renewed some improved hastes, threw a spellstrike at the cleric and prepared her energy blades. The cleric ended up taking some more damage (I think from one of Yaga-Shuras firebombs, though I'm not sure if that can actually hit friendlies) - he had low hitpoints but was protected by sanctaury, so I had Yasmina throw a horrid wilting in his direction. In the meantime, we had actually gotten away from the mage while evading his dragon's breath, but he and a bunch of new soldiers started approaching from the south-east as the horrid wilting took down the cleric:
Yasmina and Tria both threw their meteor towards this new wave of enemies, and, to my surprise, they ended up killing the mage - seems like he had no fire protections:
With all lieutenants down, it was time to focus our efforts on Yaga-Shura. Whenever Cadri approached him, she took some heavy hits, but with four fighter-types and two energy blades, it didn't take long to get our victory:
We rested and travelled to the Oasis for a followup, just throwing our HLAs at the enemy to secure an easy win - this area isn't really buffed by SCS all that much, and with an opening timestop and a planetar, we basically just walked through the place and destroyed everything:
Next time, we can explore Amkethran. Oh, and we are changing Chadia's weapons to the Answerer + the Equalizer (she now has **Longsword and **Two-Weapon Style).
A short little update for today - I completed the minor Amkethran sidequests, pretended to deal with Vongoethe peacefully, which gave me the opportunity to place 7 spike traps next to him - after buffing up, I spoke to Marlowe and betrayed the lich:
After taking down his undead, I left the city, quickly picked up Clangeddin's rune and travelled back to the pocket plane. I had placed spike traps near Semaj's spawn point for the second pocket plane challenge, and they did their job immediately:
My fully buffed party had no trouble taking out the remaining opponents without their powerful spellcaster at their side:
Now, we have access to three EE companion quests - Hexxat, Dorn, Rasaad. We can't do Neera's quest, because we can't summon her to the pocket plane. Getting desintegrated in SoA seems to be a very permanent way to go - still the only time someone in my party died, which is kind of amazing. This means that I'll miss out on the powerful Cloak of the Lich and a bit of experience - Oh well. I will propably start with Hexxat.
When Obsidian turned to the dark side it distressed Gorion greatly with the result that he asked me to do my utmost to turn her back to the light.
I must admit that of late Obsidian is not the best of company, but I promised that I would do my utmost. Her burning red eyes give me the creeps.
Journal of Obsidian
The first time that I was caught stealing in Candlekeep, the fine was only 1 gold piece, far less than I had stolen. Needless to say it was totally ineffective in restraining my thieving ways. The next time I was caught stealing, I had stolen a pearl worth 100 goldd pieces. This time I wasn't fined. The guard whipped me before using me. That was far more effective! There was however a modicum of pleasure along with the pain.
By the time we left we were reasonably well equipped and Imoen gave us some healing potions, a wand and a potion.
We arranged forGorion to be buried and was given 100 gold pieces by the guard. It won't go far, but every little helps.
We found some bags of holding on Gorion's body. They will be useful.
In Beregost we bade Imoen farewell. She should be safe enough there.
My sister calmed down Marl and took a tome to Firebead. That raised our reputation which is good, just so long as she doesn't expect me to do things like that!
South of Beregost we killed some ogrillon. We returned a letter to Mirianne. In return she gave us a ring of protection, more than adequate compensation for the gold we had to spend on replacement throwing axes.
Further south three overly officious flaming fist attacked us. We used three healing potions just to survive, but at least it provided us both with plate armour and one spare suit.
Further south still a battle with hobgoblins and a solitary bandit replaced the arrows we have been using.
In Nashkel we found Ankheg armour and Radiant insisted that we turn down a reward we were offered. It did our reputation some good, but it's not what I would have done without her influence.
In the Carnival I gained the ability to cure light wounds and a cleric/illusionist called Quayle joined us. Despite his strange manner both I and Radiant get on with him reasonably well.
At the Carnival we killed Zordral due to true sight, poison weapon, protection from fear, bless, and magic missiles. None of us were even wounded and no scrolls or potions used.
EDIT
To the south Quayle's cpmmand spell made the battles against Zargos Flintblade and Greywolf relatively painfree. They resulted in Radiant getting an axe +1, and me getting Varscona.
We returned to Beregost and returned the Colquetle amulet.
At high hedge we tried to help both Tonder and Mellicamp but failed on both occasions. At least we were given a half-decent sword as a reward for Tonder's body, so all was not wasted.
We then headed north where we killed an ogre with a belt fetish before heading for the Friendly Arms Inn where we returned Joia's ring, killed Tarnesh and recruited Khalid and Jaheira before returning to Nashkel where Khalid and Jaheira left the party. Aerie identified our items
Going to try to make this a quick update: Atheo died due to using Sundermaul and getting the 1/100 Earthquake while he was fighting a Skeleton Warrior and going unconscious. After messing around with a few more characters, decided on one of my more theory-craft builds - the low level Mage -> Fighter dual.
The theory's basically: I get to play early BG with wands, and get to use scrolls in BG2, while not really stunting my HP (Familiar makes up for any lost). It's basically a kit of being able to use Mage items while not benefiting from Shorty bonuses or another Fighter kit. I picked Invoker - while I'll miss having a few Enchantment scroll options, I judged it to be the most... convenient, at least.
BG1 was a very standard solo run for me: Shoal got me Invoker 3 and I dual'd immediately. I'm going for Crossbow GM, with the other two pips in Longswords.
From there, it's Spiders and Marl at Beregost, cutting down to retrieve a necklace and ending up doing some frustrating kiting to kill Neira. Listening to Noober was enough for a level. After killing Greywolf, I cut west - I normally would never have done this before SOD, but the Gauntlets of DEX are too important in SOB for party-play, and there's a certain scroll to the west of the mines I want to get my hands on. I complete my dual sometime around here.
One of my level 1 spell picks was Pro. from Petrification, and we clear out the Basilisks using this. Korax gets the paralyze down on Mutamin, the only thing that can possibly go wrong here. We're level 6 now, and 7's the only level that's a real power bump with the extra half APR. Aquinus gambles a bit at High Hedge now, and get lucky on one of the Invisibility scrolls - we can now transition pretty safely without having to deal with random mobs. He uses this to solve the Mines fairly quickly. It turns out that if you attack Mulahey after saying the whole "Tranzig is unfair", his script breaks in SCS, and never calls for help and never actually attacks.
Aquinus uses a Potion of Freedom for the Ghasts at the tombs: Wand of Monster Summoning is pretty important. He continues to kill Tranzig with a bit of zone unloading-reloading, killing a bunch of Ankhegs and getting his first Wand of Fire, and gets level 7 returning a bowl to Tenya.
The assassin ambushes hurt a bit - had to drink another Potion of Freedom for the Amazons, and a few charges of the Wand of Fire to assist with the other party. No real danger in either though, I think. Aquinus finishes everything else he wants to do in the lower Sword Coast: Sirenes were dealt with via Greenstone Amulet, and the Flesh Golems were... shot, I think, with magic bolts. Tome acquired and used, and on the way back he kills off Bassilus as well. Scorcher mode for Wand of Fire is really convenient to shut down the spellcasting of even high level Priests.
Bandit camp: this is where I use that Cloudkill scroll from earlier. Cast Web from my own spellbook out of range, put on armor, and cast the Cloudkill spell over it. I only had to fight off Taugosz after this: everyone else important died to the fumes. Talos' boots were sufficient to open the chest safely.
Cloakwood - I trigger all the Web traps I can find invisibly, and belatedly realize I have to drink my last Potion of Freedom here anyways because of the ranged Web Tangle abilities the 450 exp Giant Spiders have. No matter; after getting Spider's Bane, I backtrack a bit to get Safana to pick pocket the RIng of Free Action off of Dushai so I don't have to worry about this again. Drasus' party is dealt with via Web x2 and a bit of Wand of Fire action, though crossbow bolts do a consider amount of damage as well. One of the mages escapes the webs, but is melee'd down after a Greenstone Amulet charge.
I tried to do all of the mines invisibly, but it turns out that either I got really unlucky or SCS specifically adds guards in places where there's no hole to slip through. I broke invisibility to get them to move, and then booked it past. They managed to follow me down to the final level, where they all died to yet more fire. Davaeorn was the standard for almost all of my runs - Pro. Magic and hit him until he dies.
Baldur's gate is really quick, picking up tomes, doing the main quests for Belt for gold, and doing a shopping spree which was really more of a potion and scroll refill, and getting a few arrows for later. The only slight detour is getting The Guide from Dabroth Sashenstar, as the additional accuracy might be more useful than the Light Crossbow of Speed. For the Iron Throne, he came, he saw, and he ran away. He did the same to the Ogre assassins with a Potion of Magic Blocking before getting sent to Candlekeep jail.
Aquinus cleared all of the first area of the catacombs: besides the Tomes, there's another Wand of Fire that I want to have. He ignores the Doppelgangers, and Webs and Fireballs Pratts' party - he engages with a Potion of Magic Shielding to stop a potential Dart of Stunning, but the wielder of them died to fireballs beforehand anyways. Woops.
Back in Baldur's Gate, I clear the duo in the Low Lantern for yet another Wand of Fire and the gauntlets of ogre strength, though they're... really not that important. A couple wands are purchased for replacements - they're getting quite low. I also realize Aquinus' hat is rather lackluster, and we go pilfer a better one behind a trapped painting. After that it's time for Slythe. He baits out the first backstab with summons, and keep making meat walls that he can safely shoot him from. I hear Krystin's spellcasting as Slythe dies: we collect his stuff and nope out of there. Ducal palace fight is easy with the upgraded AI for Belt and Liia (as it, Liia casts useful spells...) Summoned monsters, Haste guarantee an easy fight.
Maze and Undercity are done invisibly and with proper resistances for the traps. Except for the Magic Missile traps, as I keep forgetting to actually memorize Shield even if it's in my spellbook. Whoops. Sarevok and co. time! Aquinus leads with the Protect from Magic scroll, and I'm fairly confident I can outduel Diarmid even without the use of a shield. I do, and bait out the invisible mages with the Wand of Summoning. It's only now that I realize my ammunition is really low, so I swap to the Guide to make my shots count for more. It's a lot of kiting, and I only have 27 normal bolts left and Aquinus didn't deal with a single Skeleton, but Sarevok falls in the end.
In SoD, it turns out that Aquinus has enough to get to level 9 - I have free license to just rush the game with a party and take no risks, since experience is pretty meaningless for him now. But that's for another post, I guess.
Hexxat's ToB quest is really quite easy - only a few greater mummies, two death tyrants, a few sand golems, bone fiends, a rogue and four mages to deal with in total. These mages don't use SCS scripts, so their prebuffs aren't nearly as comprehensive as the mages I usually face. The first one had no PFMW and was just killed from improved invisibility, the second one died to backstab + hit:
Skeletons dealt with the beholder-types, I had to use remove curse for sand golem hits, and Hexxat, during her solo part, lured any bone fiends back to the party, as she isn't a very good fighter. The first lich has terrible pre-buffs and died immediately, and so did his rogue companion (finally - she kept using assassination, but only ever got one hit on Luriana). Korkorran himself at least does something. He didn't have any spell protections in his pre-buffs, but countered my breach of his PFMW by going invisible while I was casting the spell. After Hexxat revealed him, another beach hit and I started to deal damage to him, while he, so far, had only cast a dispel magic (only affecting Cadri and a few of Hexxat's spells) plus cone of cold:
Before he could die, he activated another PFMW+Shadow Door+GOI combo, which forced me to detect illusions again and try to get another breach in. During that time, the lich was able to cast 2 dragon's breath, which really didn't do anything, as everyone except for Hexxat (who has 65 passive fire resistance due to items) and Cadri (who I simply moved away) had protected fire immunity buffs going. After that, Hexxat dispelled his illusions, he got breached and died. We let Hexxat become mortal - next time, we will take either Rasaad or Dorn along.
Trio 41 (part 123 SoA 4)
Domino, Dark Moon Monk
Coretrue, Inquisitor: @Corey_Russell
Dopple, Berserker: @Grond0
Last week we had defeated Sarevok in the temple of Bhaal, but this week we find ourselves cooped up in a dungeon. Imoen briefly appears to let us out then suggests we meet her outside. Who needs a thief?
Domino imagines a heroic escape from the dungeon before his companions appear. How true to life will this be.
CoreTrue and Dopple equip themselves from the meagre equipment left near our cages. We brush aside a lightning mephit, answer a question about pressing a button, smack down some kobolds, bash apart a brace of golems, mix in with mephits duergar and a cambion. Add an otyugh and another golem together with a few traps and the opening area is ours to loot.
After picking up a 2 handed sword for Dopple (thanks, Sarevok) we make our way into the second area of the dungeon and more or less repeat our earlier actions but golems making way for a clone a vampire and a doppleganger. With three of us attacking we expect to be able to kill the vampire.
& in reality?
Domino was lucky to only be flambe'd mildly as he snuck around the pedastals - a running duergar causing a firebally that took most of our protagonist's health away. Ulvaryl confounded us and escaped our clustered weaponry.
With that done we escaped and fell into the circus. CoreTrue used Truesight to dispel illusions and we made short work of it.
Domino looked at his companions. Somebody needed better armour.
Since we were at the docks we picked up Mae'Vars quest, and did enough with the harpers to deal with Xzar and his students, and also his assassin who was slightly unquick enough to escape our grasp.
We picked off a few easy jobs around town and added a couple more (Unseeing Eye, Sir Sarles, Fallen Paladins) to our list before paying Gaelan Bayle and meeting Aran Linvail. Aran gave us a +2 ring and an Amulet of Power, both for CoreTrue.
With Dopple and CoreTrue having protection from level drain we dropped into Watchers Keep to pick up the paladin bracers, quiver of plenty, crimson dart, and finally Foebane. A handy little cache of gear for us to share with future enemies.
There was just time to return to the Slums and investigate the Copper Coronet. Hendak was duly handed ownership and we purloined Lilacor from the sewers. Dopple takes that and we will try our best to remember to deal with Captain Haegan next time.
A sneak peek at the party ending their session. The agreement is for Dopple to hand the Sword of Chaos to CoreTrue (although Foebane is likely a better weapon for him now).
Postscript:
* Domino used some of the poisoned throwing daggers against the beastmaster's bears (I usually pick them up and think they will be great against mages but then carry them until dying)
* Dopple and CoreTrue picked Littleman the bear while Domino emptied his containers at a store
* Domino unlocked a door and joined in once he was certain the vampiric wraiths were on holiday at Watchers Keep
... It turns out that if you attack Mulahey after saying the whole "Tranzig is unfair", his script breaks in SCS, and never calls for help and never actually attacks.
Nothing to do with SCS here. Mulahey's script goes into stutter mode if you knock him down to below half health before he first goes hostile, and from there it's a free win. Even without mods.
A fix will be in the EE Fixpack (currently in development).
Bandit camp: this is where I use that Cloudkill scroll from earlier. Cast Web from my own spellbook out of range, put on armor, and cast the Cloudkill spell over it. I only had to fight off Taugosz after this: everyone else important died to the fumes. Talos' boots were sufficient to open the chest safely.
Davaeorn's another good spot to use a Cloudkill scroll. It has a decent chance of killing him outright without a fight when cast from beyond visual range, just from the damage. And even if it doesn't, he'll be low enough that a few fireballs can finish the job.
Of course, only the first Cloudkill scroll is easy to get. For the second, you need to go through the Firewine Ruins to take down Lendarn.
I didn't know that about Mulahey - every time I tried this I must've either led via wand or Backstab then.
I'm honestly more confident with Davaeorn than with the Bandit Camp - Davaeorn's major threat is magical, so a Pro. from Magic pretty much nullifies him, whereas the Bandit Camp's main threat is HP attrition through a stupid amount of missiles - 2 APR per archer and no easy way to get a choke point means that there's always a threat of a Critical Hit dealing another dice of damage.
Aquinus, update 1: BG1 Introduction
As Aquinus is already level 9, as I mentioned last time, the risk/reward of going to level 10 in SoD is really, really bad. It'd be 3 HP and -1 THAC0 for dealing with a bunch of quests and items I'm not used to - no thank you.
Initial dungeon: Aquinus uses Invisibility to get all the way to Korlasz without difficulty. Arrow of Dispelling -> Critical Crossbow Bolt before she could react gives us an easy surrender.
In Baldur's Gate, he picks up Minsc and Dynaheir, sells a few extra items from his Bag of Holding to Sorcerous Sundries, and picks up extra scrolls/potions. Corwin, Glint, and M'khiin are going to be our companions for the majority of the game, so we pick them up in the first area. We go west to get the Ioun stone of Regeneration and the returning Dart, and begin the Bridge fight. Spirit Fire, Wand of Fire, Arrow of Detonation, and a Fireball from Dynaheir make this a very one-sided affair, maybe 3 rounds or so from beginning to end.
Just because it's a habit now, I take out the spider's den despite its lack of real importance. I guess I just like to get rid of that Rhinoceros Beetle. All the spiders swarm us this time instead of one room at a time, but a good Scorcher charge puts an end to them without casualties. We go from here to Morentherene. M'khiin has two level 5 picks, and I chose Chaotic Commands for her second one. She applies them on the warrior-classes and herself in case a Spiritual Clarity is necessary, Glint casts Remove Fear, and Dynaheir uses Haste. A Dispelling arrow to remove the Stoneskins, and it's just a bunch of projectiles.
I stubbornly attempt to clear the rest of the temple without resting. Spirit Animals and the regeneration Ioun stone gets us through the Bugbear area, and bait higher damage targets (Aerial Servants, Invisible Stalkers) into Spirit Animals. Ziatar is Webbed and killed, and Minsc manages to survive being Held by the Neothelid after the rest of the party nukes it with more projectiles.
Aerial Servants are lured to Spirit Animals, and we get the Wardstone. We continue to the Illithid for the Archer's Eyes. Even with our slightly depleted spellbooks, we have enough AoE damage to troll this battle - M'khiin's spent most of the temple on Spirit Animal duty, and thus had Spirit Fire and Spike Growth available to her. No one was injured when the last of them fell.
I decided to take another unnecessary risk here by fighting the Shadow Aspect. We use summons to absorb the stupid high damage backstabs, and eventually manage to shoot it to death. I can't even really use the Fractal Sword - for some reason I thought it was a Longsword and not a Shortsword.
Aquinus surrenders the fort after doing a bunch of fetch quests and retrieving the Scroll of Impactful Doom to get the proper +3 weapon (Void Longsword) just in case he'll need it for Belhifet. I doubt he will - there's a certain plan for that later... At the bridge, Arrow of Dispelling -> damage stops the portal opening, and we clear up everyone easily after that.
After selling a bunch of junk to the genie for a massive amount of gold and buying the good items he has (Belt of Luck, ring of Chant, wizzard hat I think), we get Dynaheir to learn Invisibility 15'. We rescue Skie, and then head to the Underground River. Somehow the mages outside never teleport to stop us, and the only issue is a group of Myconids to the south that we wandered in range of during the fight, but no important saves were failed, and everyone else dies in Webs and Cloudkills.
The only fight in the Underground River we take is to purify the tree - the Ankheg amulet could be useful in the final fight. Everything else is ignored invisibly, and we don't bother with the Hephernaan fight either: we travel back as invisibly as we arrive.
There's no more Traps in the game, and so we swap out Glint for Voghlin. He'll be important for Hephernaan, and he also is yet another Wand of Fire user if we need to blow up groups of enemies. Fortunately, we'll be doing that for the entire camp defense. All 3 waves die to some mix of 2xWand of Fire, Spirit Fire, Arrow of Detonation, and the final wave performs little better. Arriving at Dragonspear, the Coalition forces actually look like they're losing the fight overall - Aquinus bets it all on the duel instead, and under the safety of a Potion of Magic Shielding, dispels with an Arrow and ends the fight in two more hits with crossbow bolts.
I look at my spellbooks and judge that I'm pretty sure I can win this game without another rest. We buy the remaining Fire Resistance potions and scrolls we need, and buy 10x Chaotic commands and 10x Remove Fears before descending into Avernus. M'khiin buffs up everyone via scroll while we travel through the Hellscape, and we safely clear Thrix (twice - the game crashed the first time and bizarrely brought up a screen all the way back from the Temple of Bhaal). Everyone drinks a Potion of Fire Resistance and Dynaheir gets a Scroll of Fire Resistance on everyone, and a few other defenses are finalized (Aquinus - Potion of Magic Shielding. Minsc - Fire Giant Strength and Regeneration), and finally at the top of the elevator, Enchanted Weapon on Corwin.
Voghlin makes this so very easy: you can bypass the entire irritating minigame of finding +3 weapons and ammunition with that spell. I had a scroll as backup - interestingly, that particular scroll isn't sold in the shop. Using Ankhegs as slightly more tanky distractions, the party slowly whittles Belhifet down. Voghlin sings, M'khiin Detects Illusions, Aquinus shoots +3 bolts from the Guide, and Corwin shoots whatever the heck she wants, and Minsc and Dynaheir pretend to be usefully taking down the other demons. Aquinus is down to his last 10 bolts, but Belhifet was on his last 10 HP, and so we're through with SoD.
Comments
In Suldanessalar, golems posed no trouble for my berserkers, and the drow wizard failed to counter a mass invisibility opening:
Cleared the top floor of the Iron Throne, but forgot to take screenshot.
Now working our way up Candlekeep
If we survive, we intend to visit Durlag's afterwards.
Final SoD update found here
BG2 SoA updates: 1, 2, 3
As intimated in the previous post, we descended into Spellhold after Aldain defeated Bhaal in one-on-one combat. This is the first time I'm playing with the component that strips you of your gear, and so we didn't actually go after the Orogs/Minotaurs guarding the statue to the west (as usually there's Yuan-Ti Mages there and I figured we'd leave them for later). So we basically pushed ahead with no armour for no good reason...
Anyway. We did things in a bit of a round-about fashion, but eventually we arrived outside Dace's abode with little trouble. Makes sense, since the trouble was waiting for us inside.
Come on, we have no gear! That's 2 Bone Golems, 2 Greater Mummies, 2 Skeleton Warriors (melee), 2 Skeleton Warriors (ranged), and a friggin' Lich. This is why I like keeping a Farsight memorized... at least we didn't unwittingly open the door and have the whole lot descend on us.
Of course, we have to clear them somehow, so there's nothing for it but summon a few meatshields. We don't have many available, since we needed Chaotic Commands x6 to safely deal with the Mind Flayer (in hindsight it would've been more economical to just use 2 CC and raise whoever inevitably croaked, but eh), but a few Skeleton Warriors take the front, and we open the door. Thankfully, the Lich isn't coupled with his guardians, so even though it's quite a difficult fight (especially given that we lack magical weapons and have to rely on stuff like Phantom Blade), we eventually muddle through with the help of a lot of Stoneskins.
We're in no shape to tackle a Lich after clearing (most of) the level, so we finish off the Ruhk (barely... he's really hard to land a hit on) and rest up. So, how do we take down a Lich? Jan/Aerie/Imoen have precisely nothing that can strip spell protections. Aldain has Spell Thrust (...) and Secret Word, but this seems very iffy. It will turn out this hunch is correct, as the Lich in question pops a Spell Trap which we have zero recourse against. Thus, we're left with the tried and true tactic: Throw summons at it until it breaks.
So, we proceed to do just that. Imoen at least knows Monster Summoning III, so we lead with bunches of Ettercaps/Ogre Berserkers. The Lich pops a Death Spell, a second Death Spell, Time Stop, Horrid Wilting.. then starts spamming Suffocate.
Many, many monsters and Skeleton Warriors later, he starts throwing Skull Trap and Acid Arrows. Aldain puts on a few vital (Death Ward/PfF/PfC etc) long-lasting buffs, puts up his spell protections, and charges in! To which the crafty Lich responds with a Chain Contingency, so Aldain charges straight back out.
We HAVE to wait out that fiend. While doing so, Aldain's spell protections drop. We're really low on summons, but send our final two Skeleton Warriors in alongside Aldain. The Lich is casting Magic Missiles, surely he's about to go down? Nope. He somehow pops defenses again (no Contingency or Sequencer, just somehow instantly casts three spells... maybe they were part of his prebuffs but didn't fire correctly at first) and starts meleeing/MM'ing Aldain. Then whips out a Suffocate, another Suffocate, PW: Silence and PW: Blind. Aldain flees for his paltry life, and I swear that FRIGGIN' LICH sneers as he pulls out his trump card: Another Horrid Wilting.
To not much surprise, 23 HP isn't enough to reliably survive a Horrid Wilting, and poor Aldain drops. That Lich really was on his last legs; a few elemental summons (which we would've had if we'd done some scribing) would likely have tipped the scales. I'll be less of a scrooge when it comes to potentially life-or-death battles from now on.
So, run over. F/M/C was kind of fun, but mostly felt like a F/M that could summon a few extra Skeleton Warriors. It was undeniably powerful having a fighter that could protect his own buffs whilst simultaneously being (almost) invulnerable to physical attacks though. I'd also forgotten how much fun Jan's interactions can be; I'll definitely bring him along for the next run.
Still, a very good effort and very brave to try and tackle a lich at this level at all (I think the reason I've finally made it through SoA on insane SCS this time, aside from a very powerful custom party, is just the willingness to avoid all high level arcane spellcaster battles for as long as possible; the difficulty spike as soon as opponents get access to level 7-9 spells in SCS is just so extreme) - looking forward to your next run!
I would and will do it again though. No guts, no glory
Previous run
After getting a first success for a year in my long-life challenge, I thought I'd have another go with Bash about 3 years on from the last attempt. Bash has had several different incarnations, but in this one he's a fighter/illusionist. While he doesn't have any totally forbidden tactics (except my standard personal rules against healing potions etc), those are severely restricted in practice as he's not allowed to acquire XP for killing anything except by use of the cursed berserking sword. Most previous attempts have been in an SCS installation, but I don't currently have an up to date version of that and this one is just using the unmodded game. To compensate for that being easier, I won't make any use of Algernon's cloak this run.
Bash just had to run past a single hobgoblin on the way to find Brage and claim his sword. He didn't actually equip that though until after making his way to find Shoal, blinding her and wearing her down a bit with his sling. A single devastating swipe with his sword then claimed the kill to get a quick level up.
Further north Bash tried to avoid killing all the fishermen, in order to get the maximum XP for returning Tenya's bowl without her going hostile (which would have resulted in either her or his own death). He was unfortunately unsuccessful with that and had to settle for 1,000 XP, rather than 2,000. That was topped up though by killing the ankheg nearby, with a first use of Blur there.
Back in the south, a trip to the Cloudpeaks didn't end well for Rufie thanks to a skeleton annoying Bash - fortunately the demon was too heartbroken to seek revenge.
Previous updates
A bit of reputation work saw an amulet returned to Mr Colquetle and some half-ogres slaughtered for Bjornin. Bash was lucky after the latter when he took the wrong route back to Beregost and triggered an ambush by a couple of ghouls - his substandard splint armor successfully shrugging off 4 attacks while he cut them down.
At Firewine Bridge though, his failure to upgrade armor proved more costly. Bash tried blinding Meilum 3 times there without success. Rather than run away and return for further tries he used Blur and then followed in a Chromatic Orb to engage in melee (switching to his splint armor while the projectile was in mid-air to avoid the restriction against changing armor in combat). To his surprise Meilum did not show a saving throw there and stayed in place - checking the spell description for level 4 appeared to explain that, as spell failure results in being blinded for one turn. That should have made a dangerous encounter pretty one-sided, but it didn't work out like that. Bash did not appear to be getting the expected bonus to hit and Meilum not taking the expected penalty - and with both of them at near death, it was Meilum who got the final blow in.
Domino, Dark Moon Monk
Coretrue, Inquisitor: @Corey_Russell
Dopple, Berserker: @Grond0
At the Low Lantern Desreta finally gets past a pair of commoners to discuss ennui with us. Domino drew her out then hid in shadows meaning Dopple took the brunt of her conversation.
Anyway, he survived with about 20hp left and looted the bodies as his companions dealt with spiders. Then Dopple used protection from petrification against the two greater basilisks. Diarmid died as we made our way out, and we headed back to the city.
Slythe dies almost in sight of Krystin, so we re-unite her with him after this touching visual.
Finally Sarevok chases after Dopple. Coretrue tags him with a dispelling arrow and we play a lumbering game of piggy in the middle until Dopple judges we've applied enough missile damage and closes in for a melee finale.
Off to Amn next time.
The end of the first pocket plane challenge is turned into a serious threat by SCS, involving a battle against Sarevok, Bodhi (with her new abilities) and Irenicus (HLA-capable).
Bodhi used her insect plague, but pretty much only hit Chadia, who was detecting illusions, but somehow didn't reveal Jon until later. Meanwhile, the party quickly took down Sarevok:
The rest of Candlekeep was easy enough as was the top part of Durlag's Tower, however when we went down to the area where the warders are, I forgot a trap. Montaron didn't find it and was killed. I went for his equipment and triggered the trap again in so doing. I was also badly hurt but recovered after sleeping for sixteen hours.
Now need to raise Montaron.
We need to buy some more potions for Montaron as his trap detection is poor, so poor that he can't deal with some traps when fully buffed, the problem with assassins.
Upon return we had no further problems even with the warders. Traps and summoned skeletons made them quite easy.
I cane well remember the time when that battle was always touch and go as to whether the party would survive. Wise tactics are everything.
@Grond0
Sorry to learn about Bash.
@Gate70
Congratulations.
Previous run
After losing Bash, I thought I would pick up another long-standing challenge with the Wrecking Crew of 6 dwarf fighters. Their last documented run was a couple of years ago, though I have a note that there was one run after that ended by Vito being chunked by an ogre berserker. That one was in LoB and the majority of their runs have been in SCS, but this is an unmodded standard run.
As usual their aim is to explore all areas and undertake all quests & encounters. Their weight of shot means enemies are typically unable to even close with them and, with no buffs to think about, progress is pretty rapid by party standards. However, I wasn't going after quick XP early on, so had already cleared about 10 areas before getting a first level up thanks to a couple of golems at High Hedge.
Vito - L5, 63 HPs, kills 65, 1 death, ** scimitar / *** darts
Baby Face - L5, 68 HPs, kills 76, 0 deaths, ** long sword / *** crossbow
Mad Dog - L5, 70 HPs, kills 65, 0 deaths, *** axe / ** dual wielding
Carlo - L5, 61 HPs, kills 106, 0 deaths, ** flail / *** sling
Bugsy - L5, 70 HPs, kills 71, 0 deaths, ** hammer / *** shortbow
Al (PC) - L5, 66 HPs, kills 93, ** 2-handed sword / *** longbow
All right, Saradush sidequests! We revived a peasant, helped the elves, broke up a fight, got back the spellbook (bought 2*boots of speed, learned all remaining spells we were still missing), cleared the barracks and started Kiser's quest - except for one thief and the mage, all opponents there died to an initial 3*ADHW CC:
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1184421/#Comment_1184421
We had ended the previous session standing outside the Order of the Radiant Heart to remind ourselves that the paladin quests were underway. Well, that didn't work
Back in the temple sewers we stopped off to deal with some illithid. Trile buttressed Mist's protections there with Spirit Armor to ensure she wouldn't be affected by the illithid's mental attacks. By paladin standards her intelligence of 11 was also pretty high, allowing her to shrug off one intelligence drain, while still maintaining a safety margin. Mordy swords are also handy against illithid as, unlike skeleton warriors, they cannot be stat-drained. That meant the first 2 rooms were quickly and easily cleared.
Finally moving on to the Unseeing Eye, Mist hid behind Balduran's Shield, while Trile sped things up with area damage from afar.
Inquisitor 18, 154 HPs (inc. 5 from Helm), 682 kills (+575 in BG1)
Mage 18, 60 HPs, 203 kills (+152 in BG1), 2 deaths
Gromnir's mages aren't very fond of spell shield, it seems - they use a lot more SI:A compared to SoA mages, but I'm not using remove magic anyway. Spellstrike + Breach while detecting illusions was usually enough to kill one of them as I cleared out the dungeons:
Over all, a decent victory, even though Karun's AI script made some relatively poor choices.
Previous updates
A number of further areas to the south were ticked off and reputation had built up to 18 by the time they got to the Lake area. There was a reputation crash there though, when Drizzt got dizzy running in circles and blamed his heart attack on the Crew.
Baby Face - L7, 84 HPs, kills 272, 1 death, *** long sword / *** crossbow
Mad Dog - L7, 99 HPs, kills 218, 0 deaths, **** axe / ** dual wielding
Carlo - L7, 87 HPs, kills 327, 0 deaths, *** flail / *** sling
Bugsy - L7, 92 HPs, kills 235, 0 deaths, *** hammer / *** shortbow
Al (PC) - L7, 90 HPs, kills 309, *** 2-handed sword / *** longbow
I cleared the north forest with ease (still using my Gromnir buffs) and entered the temple, rested, buffed up again - the master wraith and his allies stood little chance against double sunrays and 2 triple ADHW CCs:
I've decided to give this a try, though I am nowhere near an expert player and haven't played Icewind Dale in a couple of years. I don't know if this is even viable, but I'm going to try a solo no-reload Icewind Dale game with a Shaman. I've never played a Shaman and don't even know what spells it has available to choose from, so this will be interesting and probably more of a comedic effort than a serious one, but let's see how it goes
Welcome, one and all, to the comedy stylings of Unga-Bunga, Half-Orc Shaman!
Game: Icewind Dale and expansions
Special: Solo
Class: Shaman
Difficulty: Heart of Fury
Mods: none
Entire List of Updates:
Character Sheet:
Me Unga-Bunga. Unga-Bunga like spirits, animals, spirit animals and dancing. Unga-Bunga dance like Madonna in Lucky Star video.
Unga-Bunga coming of age. Elders tell Unga-Bunga it's time for vision quest. Unga-Bunga pour water over hot coals and take lots of peyote, have vision of backwater human village Easthaven. Unga-Bunga wonder if he take too much peyote but go to Easthaven anyway.
Unga-Bunga meet Hrothgar, town leader, and agree to help out around town:
Unga-Bunga find boy on bridge leading out of town. Boy say monsters steal fish. Unga-bunga like kids, mad at monsters, so goes to find them. Unga-Bunga finds lots of goblins, runs like hell then remembers terrain inside of town, leads goblins there and dances. Unga-Bunga try to summon spirit animals between him and goblins, so spirits fight and Unga-Bunga dance:
Unga-Bunga and spirits finally kill all goblins, give fish bones to kid. Hrothgar ask Unga-Bunga to find lost caravan traveling from east. Unga-Bunga goes into passes east of Kuldahar, slay wolves, and find broken waggon. Unga-Bunga spot orc run into cave nearby.
Unga-Bunga tell Hrothgar. Hrothgar ask Unga-Bunga if ready to leave with caravan to Kuldahar. Unga-Bunga say no, will see if can find caravan goods. Unga-Bunga return to cave in east and go inside.
Unga-Bunga dance, and dance, and dance some more, watch spirits slay many orcs and smiles. Unga-Bunga clear out many caves until come to last chamber with 4 ogres and many orcs. Unga-Bunga summon bombardier beetles, tell them to guard narrow passage before opening into chamber. When orcs and ogres come, Unga-Bunga summons many Spike Growth from ground where orcs and ogres stand, laugh as they yelp in pain. First time Unga-Bunga actually slay foes on his own, without spirits.
Unga-Bunga beat chest some, then look around, find letter in chest with other things. Unga-Bunga take letter to caravan man then go to tell Hrothgar ready to leave:
I didn't think to note what spells I chose at each level. Here's the current list at Level 9:
Not sure if those are good picks or not, particularly Giant Insect. It had by far the longest duration of the summoning spells, so I figured I would use those to lure foes to where I'm dancing with (spirit) wolves, since I can't move.
I play casually, so not sure when the next update will be, but having fun so far, even though the battles take forever...
@Ariakus best of luck. Shaman is one of my favorite classes and I was just thinking yesterday that I will probably choose that for my next solo game.
Giant Insect is a good pick. It's particularly helpful in LoB as you get a chance of no-save stuns from the beetles, which can radically reduce the amount of time required to kill things.
Incidentally, there is a bit of a work-round to allow you to do some moving while dancing. While it's true summons will disappear if you move while the dance is in progress, the game only checks once a round whether you are actually dancing - and in the meantime your existing spirits will remain whether you're dancing or not. That means you can:
- have text active, which shows when the dancing check is made
- as soon as a check is made pause the game (not necessary, but will make it easier for you)
- turn dancing off before you move
- you can then move around for several seconds before stopping and re-establishing the dance before the next check is made.
While that may seem cumbersome, with a bit of practice you might be surprised just how much ability to move while spirits are active you actually have
A lot of damage in Yaga-Shura's home was mitigated by having constant fire protection buffs active on my party. Not too difficult, as most opponents here can't dispel your buffs. I snuck past the first big group of fire giants in order to prepare magical sword summons as damage-immune tanks and some ADHW CCs:
We buffed up for Yaga-Shura and made sure to seek him out quickly to get him to despawn. There are quite a few mages around the area, and they tend to use spell thrust, breach and the like, weakening my buff protections - their most significant achievement was a successful breach on Cadri, getting rid of her buffs. As we encountered Yaga-Shura gain, I opened with timestop on Yasmina, dragon's breath on Tria to get rid of most of the minor soldiers and some short-duration buffs. The only lieutenant we saw at this point was the cleric (to the north-west). All lieutenants are HLA-capable, and Yaga-Shura takes almost no damage initially, so its a good idea to take them out. Yasmina completed her timestop and opened with IA, she gated in a planetar, and essentially took Yaga-Shura out of the fight by casting a PW:Blind on him, which made him wander away. She followed up with another dragon's breath on the remaining soliders/mages and ruby rays at the lieutenant. Meanwhile, unknown to me, the lieutenant mage approached from the east and opened with his own timestop:
A short little update for today - I completed the minor Amkethran sidequests, pretended to deal with Vongoethe peacefully, which gave me the opportunity to place 7 spike traps next to him - after buffing up, I spoke to Marlowe and betrayed the lich:
Journal of Radiant
When Obsidian turned to the dark side it distressed Gorion greatly with the result that he asked me to do my utmost to turn her back to the light.
I must admit that of late Obsidian is not the best of company, but I promised that I would do my utmost. Her burning red eyes give me the creeps.
Journal of Obsidian
The first time that I was caught stealing in Candlekeep, the fine was only 1 gold piece, far less than I had stolen. Needless to say it was totally ineffective in restraining my thieving ways. The next time I was caught stealing, I had stolen a pearl worth 100 goldd pieces. This time I wasn't fined. The guard whipped me before using me. That was far more effective! There was however a modicum of pleasure along with the pain.
By the time we left we were reasonably well equipped and Imoen gave us some healing potions, a wand and a potion.
We arranged forGorion to be buried and was given 100 gold pieces by the guard. It won't go far, but every little helps.
We found some bags of holding on Gorion's body. They will be useful.
In Beregost we bade Imoen farewell. She should be safe enough there.
My sister calmed down Marl and took a tome to Firebead. That raised our reputation which is good, just so long as she doesn't expect me to do things like that!
South of Beregost we killed some ogrillon. We returned a letter to Mirianne. In return she gave us a ring of protection, more than adequate compensation for the gold we had to spend on replacement throwing axes.
Further south three overly officious flaming fist attacked us. We used three healing potions just to survive, but at least it provided us both with plate armour and one spare suit.
Further south still a battle with hobgoblins and a solitary bandit replaced the arrows we have been using.
In Nashkel we found Ankheg armour and Radiant insisted that we turn down a reward we were offered.
In the Carnival I gained the ability to cure light wounds and a cleric/illusionist called Quayle joined us. Despite his strange manner both I and Radiant get on with him reasonably well.
At the Carnival we killed Zordral due to true sight, poison weapon, protection from fear, bless, and magic missiles. None of us were even wounded and no scrolls or potions used.
EDIT
To the south Quayle's cpmmand spell made the battles against Zargos Flintblade and Greywolf relatively painfree. They resulted in Radiant getting an axe +1, and me getting Varscona.
We returned to Beregost and returned the Colquetle amulet.
At high hedge we tried to help both Tonder and Mellicamp but failed on both occasions. At least we were given a half-decent sword as a reward for Tonder's body, so all was not wasted.
We then headed north where we killed an ogre with a belt fetish before heading for the Friendly Arms Inn where we returned Joia's ring, killed Tarnesh and recruited Khalid and Jaheira before returning to Nashkel where Khalid and Jaheira left the party. Aerie identified our items
The theory's basically: I get to play early BG with wands, and get to use scrolls in BG2, while not really stunting my HP (Familiar makes up for any lost). It's basically a kit of being able to use Mage items while not benefiting from Shorty bonuses or another Fighter kit. I picked Invoker - while I'll miss having a few Enchantment scroll options, I judged it to be the most... convenient, at least.
One of my level 1 spell picks was Pro. from Petrification, and we clear out the Basilisks using this. Korax gets the paralyze down on Mutamin, the only thing that can possibly go wrong here. We're level 6 now, and 7's the only level that's a real power bump with the extra half APR. Aquinus gambles a bit at High Hedge now, and get lucky on one of the Invisibility scrolls - we can now transition pretty safely without having to deal with random mobs. He uses this to solve the Mines fairly quickly. It turns out that if you attack Mulahey after saying the whole "Tranzig is unfair", his script breaks in SCS, and never calls for help and never actually attacks.
Aquinus uses a Potion of Freedom for the Ghasts at the tombs: Wand of Monster Summoning is pretty important. He continues to kill Tranzig with a bit of zone unloading-reloading, killing a bunch of Ankhegs and getting his first Wand of Fire, and gets level 7 returning a bowl to Tenya.
The assassin ambushes hurt a bit - had to drink another Potion of Freedom for the Amazons, and a few charges of the Wand of Fire to assist with the other party. No real danger in either though, I think. Aquinus finishes everything else he wants to do in the lower Sword Coast: Sirenes were dealt with via Greenstone Amulet, and the Flesh Golems were... shot, I think, with magic bolts. Tome acquired and used, and on the way back he kills off Bassilus as well. Scorcher mode for Wand of Fire is really convenient to shut down the spellcasting of even high level Priests.
Bandit camp: this is where I use that Cloudkill scroll from earlier. Cast Web from my own spellbook out of range, put on armor, and cast the Cloudkill spell over it. I only had to fight off Taugosz after this: everyone else important died to the fumes. Talos' boots were sufficient to open the chest safely.
Cloakwood - I trigger all the Web traps I can find invisibly, and belatedly realize I have to drink my last Potion of Freedom here anyways because of the ranged Web Tangle abilities the 450 exp Giant Spiders have. No matter; after getting Spider's Bane, I backtrack a bit to get Safana to pick pocket the RIng of Free Action off of Dushai so I don't have to worry about this again. Drasus' party is dealt with via Web x2 and a bit of Wand of Fire action, though crossbow bolts do a consider amount of damage as well. One of the mages escapes the webs, but is melee'd down after a Greenstone Amulet charge.
I tried to do all of the mines invisibly, but it turns out that either I got really unlucky or SCS specifically adds guards in places where there's no hole to slip through. I broke invisibility to get them to move, and then booked it past. They managed to follow me down to the final level, where they all died to yet more fire. Davaeorn was the standard for almost all of my runs - Pro. Magic and hit him until he dies.
Baldur's gate is really quick, picking up tomes, doing the main quests for Belt for gold, and doing a shopping spree which was really more of a potion and scroll refill, and getting a few arrows for later. The only slight detour is getting The Guide from Dabroth Sashenstar, as the additional accuracy might be more useful than the Light Crossbow of Speed. For the Iron Throne, he came, he saw, and he ran away. He did the same to the Ogre assassins with a Potion of Magic Blocking before getting sent to Candlekeep jail.
Aquinus cleared all of the first area of the catacombs: besides the Tomes, there's another Wand of Fire that I want to have. He ignores the Doppelgangers, and Webs and Fireballs Pratts' party - he engages with a Potion of Magic Shielding to stop a potential Dart of Stunning, but the wielder of them died to fireballs beforehand anyways. Woops.
Back in Baldur's Gate, I clear the duo in the Low Lantern for yet another Wand of Fire and the gauntlets of ogre strength, though they're... really not that important. A couple wands are purchased for replacements - they're getting quite low. I also realize Aquinus' hat is rather lackluster, and we go pilfer a better one behind a trapped painting. After that it's time for Slythe. He baits out the first backstab with summons, and keep making meat walls that he can safely shoot him from. I hear Krystin's spellcasting as Slythe dies: we collect his stuff and nope out of there. Ducal palace fight is easy with the upgraded AI for Belt and Liia (as it, Liia casts useful spells...) Summoned monsters, Haste guarantee an easy fight.
Maze and Undercity are done invisibly and with proper resistances for the traps. Except for the Magic Missile traps, as I keep forgetting to actually memorize Shield even if it's in my spellbook. Whoops. Sarevok and co. time! Aquinus leads with the Protect from Magic scroll, and I'm fairly confident I can outduel Diarmid even without the use of a shield. I do, and bait out the invisible mages with the Wand of Summoning. It's only now that I realize my ammunition is really low, so I swap to the Guide to make my shots count for more. It's a lot of kiting, and I only have 27 normal bolts left and Aquinus didn't deal with a single Skeleton, but Sarevok falls in the end.
In SoD, it turns out that Aquinus has enough to get to level 9 - I have free license to just rush the game with a party and take no risks, since experience is pretty meaningless for him now. But that's for another post, I guess.
Hexxat's ToB quest is really quite easy - only a few greater mummies, two death tyrants, a few sand golems, bone fiends, a rogue and four mages to deal with in total. These mages don't use SCS scripts, so their prebuffs aren't nearly as comprehensive as the mages I usually face. The first one had no PFMW and was just killed from improved invisibility, the second one died to backstab + hit:
Domino, Dark Moon Monk
Coretrue, Inquisitor: @Corey_Russell
Dopple, Berserker: @Grond0
Last week we had defeated Sarevok in the temple of Bhaal, but this week we find ourselves cooped up in a dungeon. Imoen briefly appears to let us out then suggests we meet her outside. Who needs a thief?
Domino imagines a heroic escape from the dungeon before his companions appear. How true to life will this be.
CoreTrue and Dopple equip themselves from the meagre equipment left near our cages. We brush aside a lightning mephit, answer a question about pressing a button, smack down some kobolds, bash apart a brace of golems, mix in with mephits duergar and a cambion. Add an otyugh and another golem together with a few traps and the opening area is ours to loot.
After picking up a 2 handed sword for Dopple (thanks, Sarevok) we make our way into the second area of the dungeon and more or less repeat our earlier actions but golems making way for a clone a vampire and a doppleganger. With three of us attacking we expect to be able to kill the vampire.
& in reality?
Domino was lucky to only be flambe'd mildly as he snuck around the pedastals - a running duergar causing a firebally that took most of our protagonist's health away. Ulvaryl confounded us and escaped our clustered weaponry.
With Dopple and CoreTrue having protection from level drain we dropped into Watchers Keep to pick up the paladin bracers, quiver of plenty, crimson dart, and finally Foebane. A handy little cache of gear for us to share with future enemies.
A sneak peek at the party ending their session. The agreement is for Dopple to hand the Sword of Chaos to CoreTrue (although Foebane is likely a better weapon for him now).
Postscript:
* Domino used some of the poisoned throwing daggers against the beastmaster's bears (I usually pick them up and think they will be great against mages but then carry them until dying)
* Dopple and CoreTrue picked Littleman the bear while Domino emptied his containers at a store
* Domino unlocked a door and joined in once he was certain the vampiric wraiths were on holiday at Watchers Keep
Nothing to do with SCS here. Mulahey's script goes into stutter mode if you knock him down to below half health before he first goes hostile, and from there it's a free win. Even without mods.
A fix will be in the EE Fixpack (currently in development).
Davaeorn's another good spot to use a Cloudkill scroll. It has a decent chance of killing him outright without a fight when cast from beyond visual range, just from the damage. And even if it doesn't, he'll be low enough that a few fireballs can finish the job.
Of course, only the first Cloudkill scroll is easy to get. For the second, you need to go through the Firewine Ruins to take down Lendarn.
I'm honestly more confident with Davaeorn than with the Bandit Camp - Davaeorn's major threat is magical, so a Pro. from Magic pretty much nullifies him, whereas the Bandit Camp's main threat is HP attrition through a stupid amount of missiles - 2 APR per archer and no easy way to get a choke point means that there's always a threat of a Critical Hit dealing another dice of damage.
Aquinus, update 1:
BG1 Introduction
As Aquinus is already level 9, as I mentioned last time, the risk/reward of going to level 10 in SoD is really, really bad. It'd be 3 HP and -1 THAC0 for dealing with a bunch of quests and items I'm not used to - no thank you.
Initial dungeon: Aquinus uses Invisibility to get all the way to Korlasz without difficulty. Arrow of Dispelling -> Critical Crossbow Bolt before she could react gives us an easy surrender.
In Baldur's Gate, he picks up Minsc and Dynaheir, sells a few extra items from his Bag of Holding to Sorcerous Sundries, and picks up extra scrolls/potions. Corwin, Glint, and M'khiin are going to be our companions for the majority of the game, so we pick them up in the first area. We go west to get the Ioun stone of Regeneration and the returning Dart, and begin the Bridge fight. Spirit Fire, Wand of Fire, Arrow of Detonation, and a Fireball from Dynaheir make this a very one-sided affair, maybe 3 rounds or so from beginning to end.
Just because it's a habit now, I take out the spider's den despite its lack of real importance. I guess I just like to get rid of that Rhinoceros Beetle. All the spiders swarm us this time instead of one room at a time, but a good Scorcher charge puts an end to them without casualties. We go from here to Morentherene. M'khiin has two level 5 picks, and I chose Chaotic Commands for her second one. She applies them on the warrior-classes and herself in case a Spiritual Clarity is necessary, Glint casts Remove Fear, and Dynaheir uses Haste. A Dispelling arrow to remove the Stoneskins, and it's just a bunch of projectiles.
I stubbornly attempt to clear the rest of the temple without resting. Spirit Animals and the regeneration Ioun stone gets us through the Bugbear area, and bait higher damage targets (Aerial Servants, Invisible Stalkers) into Spirit Animals. Ziatar is Webbed and killed, and Minsc manages to survive being Held by the Neothelid after the rest of the party nukes it with more projectiles.
Aerial Servants are lured to Spirit Animals, and we get the Wardstone. We continue to the Illithid for the Archer's Eyes. Even with our slightly depleted spellbooks, we have enough AoE damage to troll this battle - M'khiin's spent most of the temple on Spirit Animal duty, and thus had Spirit Fire and Spike Growth available to her. No one was injured when the last of them fell.
I decided to take another unnecessary risk here by fighting the Shadow Aspect. We use summons to absorb the stupid high damage backstabs, and eventually manage to shoot it to death. I can't even really use the Fractal Sword - for some reason I thought it was a Longsword and not a Shortsword.
Aquinus surrenders the fort after doing a bunch of fetch quests and retrieving the Scroll of Impactful Doom to get the proper +3 weapon (Void Longsword) just in case he'll need it for Belhifet. I doubt he will - there's a certain plan for that later... At the bridge, Arrow of Dispelling -> damage stops the portal opening, and we clear up everyone easily after that.
After selling a bunch of junk to the genie for a massive amount of gold and buying the good items he has (Belt of Luck, ring of Chant, wizzard hat I think), we get Dynaheir to learn Invisibility 15'. We rescue Skie, and then head to the Underground River. Somehow the mages outside never teleport to stop us, and the only issue is a group of Myconids to the south that we wandered in range of during the fight, but no important saves were failed, and everyone else dies in Webs and Cloudkills.
The only fight in the Underground River we take is to purify the tree - the Ankheg amulet could be useful in the final fight. Everything else is ignored invisibly, and we don't bother with the Hephernaan fight either: we travel back as invisibly as we arrive.
There's no more Traps in the game, and so we swap out Glint for Voghlin. He'll be important for Hephernaan, and he also is yet another Wand of Fire user if we need to blow up groups of enemies. Fortunately, we'll be doing that for the entire camp defense. All 3 waves die to some mix of 2xWand of Fire, Spirit Fire, Arrow of Detonation, and the final wave performs little better. Arriving at Dragonspear, the Coalition forces actually look like they're losing the fight overall - Aquinus bets it all on the duel instead, and under the safety of a Potion of Magic Shielding, dispels with an Arrow and ends the fight in two more hits with crossbow bolts.
I look at my spellbooks and judge that I'm pretty sure I can win this game without another rest. We buy the remaining Fire Resistance potions and scrolls we need, and buy 10x Chaotic commands and 10x Remove Fears before descending into Avernus. M'khiin buffs up everyone via scroll while we travel through the Hellscape, and we safely clear Thrix (twice - the game crashed the first time and bizarrely brought up a screen all the way back from the Temple of Bhaal). Everyone drinks a Potion of Fire Resistance and Dynaheir gets a Scroll of Fire Resistance on everyone, and a few other defenses are finalized (Aquinus - Potion of Magic Shielding. Minsc - Fire Giant Strength and Regeneration), and finally at the top of the elevator, Enchanted Weapon on Corwin.
Voghlin makes this so very easy: you can bypass the entire irritating minigame of finding +3 weapons and ammunition with that spell. I had a scroll as backup - interestingly, that particular scroll isn't sold in the shop. Using Ankhegs as slightly more tanky distractions, the party slowly whittles Belhifet down. Voghlin sings, M'khiin Detects Illusions, Aquinus shoots +3 bolts from the Guide, and Corwin shoots whatever the heck she wants, and Minsc and Dynaheir pretend to be usefully taking down the other demons. Aquinus is down to his last 10 bolts, but Belhifet was on his last 10 HP, and so we're through with SoD.