We stay far enough away to escape his initial Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency. That could have slain both of our thieves and ended the run if we weren't lucky.
Lavok's prebuffs are pretty comprehensive--it's not normally possible for a party to disrupt his first spells. But a level 11 standard trap will do the job. All the same, we run away, just in case.
Notice that he was immune to our damage. Lavok is immune to both poison and poison damage, as well as all disablers, but since our traps deal poison damage without using the poison opcode, they can disrupt his spells even if they can't actually harm him.
We're safely secreted away in the hall, but rather than wait out his prebuffs, I decide to do things the hard way and go right back out to fight him.
Greater Malison is his first choice. SCS mages love this spell. I move around our characters to minimize the damage. Zalos' saves remain strong.
By now, we have the Sling of Everard, which gives us another +5 weapon besides darts. Gloomwort equips the +5 darts from the Cloak of Stars, even though he has no pips in them, while Xiaohei uses the sling. Both of them can therefore bypass Lavok's still-active Improved Mantle spell.
Unfortunately, we do not exert sufficient pressure on Lavok. We should have used more normal traps. Lavok gets a spell off the ground, the absolute most dangerous spell he can use on this party.
After considering my options, I decide to take the easy path. We wait outside.
We really have no defense against a Fallen Planetar, or even a Deva, nor do we have the power to take it down... or even slow it down. Only luck would have kept us alive. In SCS, those vorpal strikes offer a save at -2, but we just don't have the saving throws to ensure our survival. And even without the vorpal strikes, Planetars hit hard enough to chunk anyone in the group through sheer damage alone.
We return and resume our assault. Gloomwort and Xiaohei attack with their usual weapons, Firetooth and darts, respectively, while our thieves set their remaining traps. Just as Lavok transforms and the battle is won, a high-powered damage spell comes our way.
I give Zalos a Potion of Fire Resistance to drink before unpausing and hope for the best.
We're safe.
I wish enemies could always follow you through area transitions. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to, and it would add some tactical dimensions to the gameplay. Fleeing an area would no longer completely break challenges like Fallen Planetars; it would just give you more room to run around in.
I have gotten tired of posting on Zalos' run. See, the run ended a long time ago and I'm just now posting it, since there was a long time where I couldn't access the Internet on my laptop. I have a new run I'm more interested in that I'd like to start posting on.
So, I'm going to post the lengthy remainder of Zalos' blind party run in one big post after this one. Attached to this post are ALL of the screenshots of Zalos' run up until Lavok... because I'm putting all of the rest of the screenshots, after Lavok, in a big honkin' zip file attached to the next post, in lieu of posting every single one, or posting none at all.
Okay. This is the story of the rest of Zalos' run. Attached is a zip file with all of the screenshots relating to the last half of the run, in case anyone wants to flip through them.
Tolgerias: This guy uses big spells and comes with a lesser mage by his side. The other mage died to poison damage from our traps, but Tolgerias survived long enough to pelt Xiaohei with a Dragon's Breath spell she survived using a Potion of Fire Resistance. When Tolgerias' weapon immunities ran out, our Archers tore him apart.
The Tanar'ri: We need to kill this thing to get a demon heart to escape the Planar Sphere. Problem is, this guy uses Death Gaze and Silence 15' Radius and can see through invisibility. Our monks drink Potions of Invulnerability to resist Death Gaze, while our halfling Bounty Hunters drink Potions of Freedom for the same purpose. Zalos has Arbane's Sword but I'm not willing to trust it to block the paralysis effect. Our preparations were wasted. The demon died in seconds to trap damage.
Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers: We baited some buffs out of the enemy with item-based summons, then rushed in to damage and disable with traps. Gaius failed a save vs. spell, surprisingly, and got paralyzed by a Special Snare. With Gaius gone, there was no real threat of disablers. We chopped up the clerics and then trapped the remaining enemies to death.
Mekrath's Lair, the Coiled Cabal: We got a single Arrow of Detonation as a random drop after the fight with Draug Fea. I used it via a Simulacrum (Vhailor's Helm) to hurt the Yuan-ti Mages to the east, but it did little damage. We ran away from the enemy and hid, eventually sending out Nibidda on his own to set his traps and weaken the enemy. Later, we got bolder, bringing out Gloomwort to attack directly, with Zalos adding her own traps. Some of us got confused, but we divided the enemy enough so that we never got overwhelmed.
Mekrath's Lair, the Battle with Mekrath Himself: Mekrath himself failed a save against Stunning Blow. There was no battle.
The Riddle Bridge Beneath the Temple Sewers: There's a cluster of Beholders on the other side. I usually prefer to sneak past them, but there's a bug here. A Gauth beholder paralyzed Gloomwort despite his invisibility. But then it used a Repulsion ray to knock him out of their line of sight, saving his life. Since Gauths aren't supposed to see through invisibility, I decided to blast the whole group of Beholders with CTRL-Y. It was more fair than buffing with potions to run past them, and more satisfying than CTRL-J.
The Pit of the Faithless: Zalos snatched the Gauntlets of Dexterity and slipped away from the undead with stealth.
We went no further in the Unseeing Eye quest. We're not equipped to handle Beholders. Not yet.
The Guarded Compound: Yes, we did the Guarded Compound. And no, it wasn't hard. We entered the area invisible. Nibidda used the Ring of Air Control to remain invisible while he disarmed the nearby traps, while Gelimbi drank a potion to compensate for his failed stealth roll. We snuck around the southern rooms and escaped to the southern portion of the area, without drawing the enemy's attention.
We baited out LOTS of spells from Sion and waited out the duration of his Cornugons, who would have seen through our invisibility had we strayed anywhere near it. We then sent out our Bounty Hunters, with Xiaohei to clear the fog of war for them.
Traps absolutely wrecked the enemy party, and there was nothing they could do. Sion died from poison damage during his own Time Stop. Traps killed Koshi, Stalman, and Ketta, and paralyzed Maferan and Olaf Rasmussen, allowing our monks to slay the last two with ease.
We got Celestial Fury. We don't even need it, but it feels great.
The Planar Prison: The first fight was terribly complex. We had few places to hide, and had to choose where to break invisibility very carefully to manage the enemy's pressure. Ultimately, it boiled down to us maneuvering around to avoid the enemy's disablers, and ganging up on the mages to minimize the number of spells they could cast before dying.
The Coiled Cabal to the east was badly weakened by traps, but it required a lot of retreating and hiding in order to avoid getting punished by a Confusion or Chaos spell. When the enemy started to run out of buffs, our Archers finished the job with poisonous ammunition.
The Master of Thralls is a powerful foe, but it has no Stoneskins, and that is a big weakness for a party like ours. We can deal lots of missile damage without needing an attack roll, and the only defense against it is Stoneskin or damage resistance.
The Warden is another story. Early on, he summoned a Fallen Planetar right next to Azorre. The solution was very nerve-wracking, but rewarding in the end. First, we had our thieves and Archers drink an Oil of Speed and flee to the east with the monks (who cannot drink Oils of Speed in EE). Most of the party then fled south to escape the Planetar's attention, but Azorre lingered in the northeast room, leading the Planetar on a merry chase. She circled around the room and stayed just out of the Planetar's reach for round after round, drinking a Potion of Invulnerability to block a vorpal strike from a sword that only once managed to hit her in the first place (the potion still helped block Symbol Fear spells), and using a Rod of Resurrection (borrowed from Zalos to the south, which we got from Mekrath earlier on) to heal Azorre when the Planetar resorted to Fire Storm spells.
Planetars are tough cookies, but they can't move as fast as a monk with the Boots of Speed... or any hasted character, I think, with the Boots of Speed. If you stay out of reach, all you have to worry about are its spells: Symbol Fear, Fire Storm, and Unholy Word. A high-enough level character will only get deafened by Unholy Word, Symbol Fear can be blocked by Resist Fear, Remove Fear, or a Potion of Clarity, and Fire Storm can be blocked with simple fire resistance (but not magic resistance, which Fire Storm bypasses). But in the chaos of battle, it may be very difficult to keep multiple characters away from the Planetar. It would be better to keep the Planetar focused on only one decoy.
With the Planetar gone, it was safe to fight the Warden. He hit us with Power Word: Blind and Meteor Swarm, but nothing we couldn't handle. Traps and missile weapons broke down his Stoneskins and took him down.
Cookies, the Acid Kensai: We got ambushed by Cookies on the way out of the Five Flagons. I hadn't thought about him at all. Now that we have Celestial Fury, he's going to be coming after us whenever we show up in Athkatla, until one of us is dead.
Cookies is a Tactics enemy, a Kensai(13)->Mage with saving throws below -10, immunity to elemental damage, and a special sword, Sanchuudoku, a +4 katana that grants immunity to acid, deals 2d4 acid damage on hit, and lowers acid resistance by 25% on hit, with no save. It also has an infamous Acidic Backlash ability, which will pelt a very weak acid arrow spell at attackers. Problem is, that spell can't be blocked, and it fires every single time you take any offensive action against him. Merely by attacking him, you expose yourself to acid damage, and that damage builds up. Worse yet, Cookies himself does about 40 damage per hit, and he's equipped with undroppable versions of late-game BG2 items. Basically, he's a duplicate of a Kensai/Mage Charname, but with a stupidly powerful katana.
We flee the area and set some traps in the Slums. Cookies shows up later, but the traps do almost nothing to him. He has lots of Stoneskin spells, and is immune to poison damage, and thanks to his subzero saving throws, there is no chance of him getting paralyzed by a Special Snare.
Cookies will attack Charname preferentially, but if you run away while invisible, eventually he'll stop chasing you. We lure him across many traps, making a big circle around the Slums, and eventually resort to having Gloomwort attacking him. But we take too long, and Cookies decides to leave. He always leaves the area after 6 turns if the battle isn't yet over, and will return later on to try again.
I don't know how to deal with Cookies, so I continue instead to the main questline.
Bodhi's Lair: We keep everyone invisible but Xiaohei. Xiaohei has a pip in maces, so we give her the Improved Mace of Disruption and a scroll of Protection from Undead, and send her around Bodhi's lair to smite undead most explosively. The Clay Golem can see through Protection from Undead, so she sneaks past it.
I know from @Blackraven's runs that it's possible to cut the fight with Bodhi short by running away from her, which triggers her retreating dialogue early. I don't remember if that worked here, though, or if Xiaohei just damaged Bodhi enough to get her to leave. After clearing up the remaining Grimward Archers (the Shield of Reflection helped a lot here), we rested and left the area.
The Return of the Acid Kensai: Cookies appears outside, right on top of Xiaohei. He hits her two or three times before she can drink a potion and slip away.
He casts Death Fog, tacking on a little more damage. It'll take a full round to escape the cloud, but Zalos had 9 HP left--she can take one hit from Death Fog and keep running.
Cookies gets stuck behind Xiaohei, so Zalos is safe from Cookies' katana. I consider ducking into the Crypt King's former hideout to heal up, but if Cookies follows us in, he might appear right on top of Zalos, and she could get chunked within a second. Instead, I have Zalos try to drink a second potion.
Right before she dies, I realize my mistake.
Cookies lowered her acid resistance with Sanchuudoku. Those strikes brought her acid resistance into the negatives, which means Death Fog does more than 8 damage to her. The Death Fog finishes her off before she can drink another potion and escape to safety.
Thus ends Zalos' run. I'm still disappointed we never got to use Maze traps. I've never actually gotten a Bounty Hunter to level 21 before. I hoped this run would be it. It likely would have been, if I had gotten one of our Archers to use the Rod of Resurrection on Zalos before she died in the Death Fog spell. We were doing marvelously well against every other enemy in the game.
The party we created had some very distinct vulnerabilities and very distinct powers. It had poor saving throws and almost no immunities, which left us reliable on a finite supply of potions to avoid getting disabled. Most of the time, we survived mages with disablers using stealth to avoid their spells, a habit I developed during a Nightmare mode run with a blind Kensai/Thief. We also had terrible, terrible AC. I can't stress how big of a difference that 4 AC makes. Blindness makes characters very, very squishy. It also made our front line ineffectual against low AC enemies, as our monks also suffered a -4 THAC0 penalty.
However, blindness gave us some invaluable resources. Our monks could kite enemy spellcasters mercilessly, hitting once and then escaping combat a second later, triggering prebuffs and waiting them out, or prompting a spell that would get canceled the moment the monk disappeared.
More importantly, blindness let our Bounty Hunters set their traps almost anywhere. Only when an enemy was right next to them could they not set a trap. And traps are extremely powerful, especially at level 11, when normal snares deal lingering damage for three rounds, shutting down enemy spellcasting and dealing damage through Stoneskin. Traps from a blind thief are instant-casting, uninterruptable area-effect damage spells that bypass magic resistance and spell protections. The potential for spell disruption and mass damage is incredible. Blindness doesn't come without weaknesses, but it's a powerful asset to any character with stealth, and Bounty Hunters especially benefit from it.
The new run is a departure from my old habits. In fact, it's a departure from a lot of things.
In this run, I will refrain from using all of the items, all of the spells, and all of the NPCs that I use most often. This includes about five spells per spell level, for both priest and mage spells, most NPCs, and one item of every item type. This means I will not use the following things:
Mage spells: Magic Missile, Chromatic Orb, Shield, Spook, Blindness Mirror Image, Web, Invisibility, Melf's Acid Arrow, Agannazar's Scorcher Fireball, Skull Trap, Flame Arrow, Invisibility 10' Radius, Melf's Minute Meteors, Vampiric Touch, Slow Stoneskin, Teleport Field, Polymorph Self, Improved Invisibility, Greater Malison Sunfire, Spell Immunity, Breach, Hold Monster, Chaos Feeblemind Protection from Magical Weapons, Improved Haste, Death Fog, Pierce Magic, True Seeing, Protection from Magical Energy Project Image, Ruby Ray of Reversal, Khelben's Warding Whip, Limited Wish, Mordenkainen's Sword Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting, Simulacrum, Maze, Power Word: Blind, Pierce Shield Time Stop, Spellstrike, Shapechange, Wish, Black Blade of Disaster
Priest spells: Armor of Faith, Command, Doom, Sanctuary, Remove Fear Draw Upon Holy Might, Slow Poison, Silence, Charm Person or Mammal, Hold Person Animate Dead, Remove Paralysis, Cure Disease, Zone of Sweet Air, Protection from Fire Death Ward, Free Action, Call Woodland Beings, Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Holy Power Chaotic Commands, True Seeing, Greater Command, Ironskins, Insect Plague Wondrous Recall, Conjure Fire Elemental, Aerial Servant, Blade Barrier, Harm Nature's Beauty, Earthquake, Holy Word, Firestorm, Gate
HLAs: Greater Whirlwind Attack Summon Planetar Summon Deva Summon Deva (paladin version) Set Spike Trap Improved Bard Song
Weapons: Rifthome Axe Jhor the Bleeder Namarra Arbane's Sword Poisoned Throwing Daggers Staff of Striking Tuigan Bow Arrows (nonmagical) Heartseeker Firetooth (crossbow) Bolts (nonmagical) Gnasher Runehammer Mace of Disruption Flail of Ages Belm Celestial Fury Spear of the Unicorn Duskblade Sling of Everard Bullets (nonmagical) Darts (nonmagical)
Equipment: Full Plate Mail (nonmagical) Plate Mail (nonmagical) Splint Mail (nonmagical) Mail of the Dead Studded Leather (nonmagical) The Night's Gift Helm of Balduran Pale Green Ioun Stone Shield of Harmony Buckler +1 Shield of the Lost Tower Shield +1, +4 vs. missiles Boots of Speed Girdle of Bluntness Ring of Protection +1 Amulet of Power Robe of Vecna Gauntlets of Weapon Skill Bracers of Defense AC 6 Cloak of Protection +1
Other items: Protection from Undead scroll Rod of Resurrection Potions of Extra Healing
These aren't all the most powerful options necessarily, but they're the ones I'm most familiar with. The idea is to figure out how to use the things I've long deemed useless. Our Charname is once against Zalos, this time a Fighter/Mage, one of the classes I almost never use.
We can't fight the Duergar as we are. The only set of armor we can wear is a single suit of Chain Mail and Leather Armor, since other nonmagical variants are my normal favorites. Instead, we have Minsc and Imoen sneak over to fight the second enemy, the Radiant Mephit.
We will enter the Otyugh room from the south so we have to fight a Mephit instead of more Duergar, who might call for help. In the process, Imoen gets blinded, which lets her use Hide With No Sight to escape.
The Otyugh itself is a trial. I try to minimize hits by running around, but all it does is get all of my fighters slowed and diseased.
The process makes healing impossible. We have to tough out the damage.
One of the critical problems with this dungeon in this run is that we can't use the many Potions of Extra Healing scattered around. Combined with the lack of strong armor, and we have very little HP to work with.
We bust out a Stinking Cloud to deal with a large group of Duergar to the north. Jaheira, with her low save vs. death, can resist the cloud, but the Duergar struggle.
I ruled out Imoen as an NPC, since I used her so often, but I'm willing to make an exception for the first dungeon. But since the other characters seldom every remain in my party outside Chateau Irenicus, they will be with us for a while.
We get the portal key and hurry to the portal before the Lesser Clay Golems can get to us. Yoshimo tries to throw a Special Snare at the Mephits in the Mephit Portal room from the north corner, but fails and gets surrounded by the Mephits. This lets the rest of the party tackle the Mephit Portals unchallenged.
Yoshimo plays a bigger role against the Escaped Clone. Her prebuffs only trigger when she turns hostile, not when she's fighting the Assassin, so she's an easy target.
We use some light summons to deal with the Salt Mephit further north.
That Mephit can stun its target on a failed save vs. breath, and it can do so multiple times, locking in a character. Notice Imoen is using the ever-popular spell, Haste. It's a strong spell, but I seldom use it because I hate fatigue, so I can use it in this run.
We move on and encounter our first major setback. We forgot to get the Wand of Fire Key, and when the Duergar in the wand room went running and we gave chase, the whole party got blasted by a Fireball trap. Jaheira didn't do so well.
We're already down a character and we have yet to rest. This will make things difficult.
After resting, Zalos prepares for the next fight, with the Lesser Clay Golems. Imoen, hidden in shadows, watches out for them.
I seldom use Ghost Armor because Shield is much cheaper and has a similar effect. Unfortunately for us, Ghost Armor isn't quite enough to keep Zalos safe.
Nevertheless, we pull through with a bit of luck. The AC does ward off some attacks.
Yoshimo sets the scene for the fight with Ilyich's goons. Imoen follows up with a disabler.
Since Zalos has neither Stoneskins nor Mirror Image thanks to our restrictions, she's quite vulnerable to enemy attacks. But a seldom-used mage spell blocks the Duergar bolts entirely, and an Improved Invisibility spell ensures she won't suffer too much from the Stinking Cloud. Unlike in vanilla, EE Improved Invsibility really does give +4 to saves.
Note that Improved Invisibility is one of my banned spells. I forgot this at the time--the list of forbidden spells wasn't exactly solid at the start of the game.
Zalos chopped up the Duergar with ease, only to encounter trouble when she engaged some of the Duergar outside the cloud in melee.
An odd thing about our restrictions is that we can't cast the cleric spell Hold Person, but we can cast the mage version.
Ilyich has excellent THAC0 and remains functional, so we still have a lot of pressure to deal with. Summons keep him busy once we move out of the way. Yoshimo tries a snare.
Notice that Minsc is using Masterwork Bolts. He can't use normal bolts due to our restrictions, so we can't use more of the ammunition we find in this dungeon.
Yoshimo's snare succeeds. Ilyich is helpless.
We move on to the Duergar Mage and get lucky. The Mage fails a save.
But the Mage's running costs us a lot. Without ammunition, we can't actually hit him while he's running. And once he stops moving, the spells come. He responds with his own Horror spell, and Imoen's attempt to knock him out with Stinking Cloud misses the mark.
Imoen is left to fight him alone. His damage spells nearly slay Minsc.
Yoshimo recovers from Stinking Cloud and helps Imoen wear down the Mage.
On the way back to the portal we get surprised by a group of Duergar that wasn't there before. We're in terrible shape, but another Horror spell (Zalos has both the innate version and the mage version) sends them running. We hunt them down individually.
More Duergar remain on the next level, guarding a Girdle of Bluntness that I would only later realize I could not use--I thought the Girdle of Piercing was my most commonly-used belt, since I remember counting on it to protect me from Trolls, but in retrospect, the Girdle of Bluntness is more common, as it comes earlier in the game and you can buy a second one later in the Temple District.
Yoshimo lays a series of traps and attempts to backstab one of the Duergar. He botches it.
The rest of the party hurries to the rescue. Another Stinking Cloud spell arrives, but does not help Yoshimo. Zalos uses Ghoul Touch for the first time, and starts disabling the enemy.
When we get close to the enemy Mage, we throw out some summons. They absorb the Mage's Horror spell.
We clear up the melee enemies before approaching the Mage. But we have a problem.
The Mage has Minor Spell Deflection active. That means we can't nail him with Power Word: Sleep. The Mage only has 16 maximum HP, so PW: Sleep actually works on him even at Uninjured. But it can't bypass MSD. Zalos can't take him down, and since she approached him first, she gets hit by Horror.
We use some of our last spells to hurry up the battle. Off-screen, Zalos is running around.
Zalos hits the Fireball trap. We still have yet to disable it.
The party is way too far away to attempt to disarm it, and we're out of healing spells. All I can do is hope that she doesn't trigger it again.
She does.
Finally, the fear effect wears off, and Zalos takes refuge in a hallway.
We get together and fix up the Fireball trap so it doesn't bother us anymore. On the way to the dryads, we spot an injured Duergar. Zalos knocks him down with PW: Sleep, but he gets right back up, so she just goes over and chops him up.
We use stealth to retrieve the djinni's flask, and get an absolutely ideal weapon for Zalos.
She already specializes in axes, since Frostreaver is a powerful weapon I seldom ever use, but this is an early prize.
I check the stats in Near Infinity. The spell strikes as a +0 magical weapon with no combat bonuses, and inflicts an 80% spell failure chance on every hit at a failed save vs. spell at -2. The spell failure applies to both priest spells and mage spells.
Most spellcasters have strong saves vs. spell, but that spell failure lasts 100 seconds, and it has a 100% chance of forcing a save every hit. It could easily take down an enemy mage or cleric early on. This is actually going to be a fantastic weapon.
The last fight in the dungeon besides Hareishan (whom I never bother with anymore) is the triple Assassin attack right before the exit. We slip Minsc and Yoshimo past the visible mage--the two other backstabbers start out hidden--and then use Imoen to tank the backstabs before sending in the far more valuable Zalos.
Imoen nearly dies, only rescued by her plot immunity. She leaves the party, forcing us to reorganize a lot of our gear before moving on.
We break out into the sunlight. The Underused Spells run has finally kicked off.
At the circus, I first discover that Bala's axe has a minor bug. It displays the wrong message when an opponent fails a save against the spell failure.
Because we have so many spells restricted from us, Jaheira has to spend her spell slots on some rather odd spell choices. It works out against Kalah, though.
We've got Yoshimo in the party, which is a little unusual for this group, but it means we have some nice options against humanoid foes.
I decide to take on Amalas, even though he's often a rather tough foe. I think I can paralyze him with Ghoul Touch, but he drinks a potion that negates the effect.
We still have plenty of spells at our disposal, and enough disablers to keep Amalas occupied while Zalos casts her spells uninterrupted.
Yoshimo and Zalos trash the hobgoblins in the sewers.
Power Word: Sleep finally sees a positive use, preventing a Kobold Shaman from healing itself after an initial attack.
We lay siege to the slaver stockade. We don't have the levels we normally do when we tackle this obstacle, or the items, but I think we can manage. Minsc holds down the enemy cleric with arrows.
Notice that Anomen is casting Holy Smite. I understand that's a popular spell for many, but I seldom ever use it (later I decide not to use it, since its uses are already well-known to me). Notice also that Jaheira is casting Pixie Dust, where normally I'd spend that spell slot on Chaotic Commands or Ironskins. This lets us escape any pressure the enemy might exert on us in the early rounds.
This choice comes with a high cost, however. Without Ironskins, Jaheira will be highly vulnerable to spell disruption for the rest of the run.
Even though Zalos is keeping off enemy arrows using Protection from Normal Missiles, Jaheira is still vulnerable to Captain Haegan and the guard who always stands next to him.
The enemy cleric comes for us again. Zalos shuts down an enchantment spell with Larloch's Minor Drain.
We really have to use every resource if we're going to survive in this run. That disruption gives Zalos enough time to get a failed save with Bala's Axe.
That cleric is no longer an issue. But the guards by now have caught on to the fact that their arrows weren't working against Zalos, and they're coming around with melee weapons to fight the rest of the party. Jaheira's low-level disablers aren't much help with the whole enemy pack focused on us.
Zalos does a lot more with her own disablers. While the enemy is temporarily broken, we take the time to heal ourselves.
Polymorph Other has the peculiar effect of lasting only 1 second for reasons I don't understand, but it still reduces the target's HP to 5. An interesting thing to note is that this applies even if the enemy is immune to polymorph, as the HP change does not rely on the polymorph opcode. Polymorph Other works using the Create Weapon opcode in EE, so it's effectively a Harm spell with a save vs. polymorph instead of an attack roll. Zalos uses it against the enemy with the highest health, then slays him with a single hit.
We clean up the remaining enemies, rest, and proceed to the next part of the level. Yoshimo wreaks havoc with a Special Snare.
An interesting fact about Ghoul Touch is that it deals fist damage. This means it can't finish off opponents; it can only knock them out.
Another character finishes off the mage instead.
There's still one mage left, and Minsc fails a save against Chromatic Orb. That spell is precisely why I made sure Zalos entered with MGOI. Ghoul Touch wears off, so Zalos switches to Bala's Axe. The mage fails a save and becomes a non-issue.
Jaheira has Flame Blade to deal damage through any Stoneskins the enemy might possess. With both mages neutralized, the remaining enemies are no threat to us. Once we're done, we move on to fight the Copper Coronet Guards.
Both of the Copper Coronet mages crumple under Bala's Axe. I always thought this axe must be useless, since it offers a save vs. spell, and so many spellcasters have excellent saves vs. spell, but with multiple attacks per round, the enemy has to make a lot of those saves to retain its spellcasting.
Against other enemies, Zalos has another excellent option. Ghoul Touch paralyzes the target for 5 rounds on a failed save vs. spell (not a save vs. death, as the description states), which lets her take out problematic fighter types.
The slaver questline is soon complete. We sell off the Tuigan Bow I hold so dear and move on to the Suna Seni ambush. Pixie Dust lets us enter the fight invisible and therefore set up buffs before the fight, as well as toss out a crippling Special Snare from Yoshimo.
Zalos hits Eldarin with Cone of Cold, freezing him and costing us his equipment. I thought this might happen, but deemed it to be worth the risk. Zalos takes on Suna Seni single-handedly.
With Suna Seni gone, Yoshimo is no longer in range of any of the enemies, letting him throw a second Special Snare onto the field and slay the enemy mage, who was paralyzed by the previous snare but invisible due to her pre-buffs. Zalos switches to Ghoul Touch for the final enemy, who unlike Suna Seni has no immunities to the attack.
The Renfeld ambush is next, a much easier fight. Zalos once again proves devastating against enemy spellcasters, using Bala's Axe against the mage and disrupting the cleric with Larloch's Minor Drain.
Yoshimo backs up far enough to throw out a Special Snare, holding down the cleric and letting us focus on the enemy backstabber.
We run into the cleric of Cyric in the Docks on the way to Rylock. He paralyzes most of the party, including Zalos, but Yoshimo rushes to our defense.
After handing over Renfeld to Rylock, we get a surprise visitor thanks to the minor gold reward we got from Rylock.
When you can't equip your favorite items, you end up selling a lot of stuff, and that gold builds up fast. We're already past the 15,000 gold mark.
Most Valuable Spell: Horror Most Valuable Item: Bala's Axe MVP: Zalos. She can take down a whole pack of fighters with Horror and Ghoul Touch, and neutralize spellcasters within seconds using Bala's Axe.
It seems we forgot to take a screenshot of the character record, or maybe inadvertently overwrote it. Here are the character record and the inventory screen at end of the game, when Palla was facing Sarevok.
According to the Races of Stone supplement, Palla is an actual Gnomish feminine name, with Pall meaning Cloak, Cloth, Soft, Supple. Palla commonly cloaks herself in shadows, and she's soft-spoken and makes little noise otherwise. Her initial stats were 16-18-17-16-14-12, a great total but not min-maxed. A male Gnome Illusionist/Thief I had rolled before (and referenced in my penultimate post), did have min-maxed stats. I found his 18 Strength unrealistic, so that's how Palla came to life. Her starting weapon profs were Staves and Short Bows, her spells Blindness, Find Familiar, and Shield.
I almost got myself killed early on, shortly after Gorion's death, in a skeleton ambush. Gorion had taught me the Find Familiar spell, and I had even memorized it for our trip, but I'd neglected to cast it. (Typical, Blackraven. Palla got away with one HP.)
I found a Ring of Wizardry near the FAI and decided to hold on to it even though Bentley Mirrorshade was willing to pay me 9k GP for it. This meant I actually had to work for my gold, my goods, and my reputation, and this I did. I procured a book for Firebead Elvenhair, returned a necklace to Mr Colquette and a ring to Joia, protected Charleston Nib, escorted Captain Brage to Nashkel, took a bowl from three fishermen for the young priestess Tenya, slew four Half-Ogres for Bjornin, saved a tree for a Dryad of the Cloudpeaks, and reunited a girl named Drienne with her (dead) cat. Thalantyr successfully anti-chickenated Melicamp.
There weren't many incidents. In Mutamin's garden the evil Basilisk tamer surprised me when he left the statues where I had scouted him earlier, to greet me with a Remove Magic and with a Basilisk in sight.
I went invisible, walked off, and escaped the Remove Magic. With a Wand of Fire I finished him.
At Durlag's Tower, Battle Horrors and Doom Guards were no threat thanks to my wands and backstabs, but a couple of hardy Ghasts nearly cornered me, and I had no potions of freedom and a turbid aura after using the wand of fire. I danced around, eluding the undead, until an invisibility potion saved the day for me.
We had another scare in the Ankheg cave. Blackraven temporarily left the game running, apparently unpaused, to use the internet for a moment. When he re-opened the game screen, Palla had been badly injured by an Ankheg. The game was auto-paused.... This would have been a game over if it weren't for Blackraven's settings.
When my rapport with the small folk of the Sword Coast had reached a peak and I had a couple o' thousand gold to spend, I bought most of Thalantyr's scrolls, but messed up with copying all level 3 spells into my spellbook (at 23 Int), except Flame Arrow and Hold Person. It would make me use the former spell a lot, and quite effectively so, for example against a woman named Sendai and her fellow brigands, and against the mad priest Bassilus.
In fact, relying a lot on stealth - Palla had her aggregate stealth skill up to 140 after her first level ups - I could sneak around and repeatedly backstab enemies, so I didn't really need to keep defensive spells like Ghost Armor or Minor Spell Deflection active all the time.
I made a tour of the Sword Coast, cherry-picking my way through its different regions. E.g. my only feat at the Firewine Ruins was beating a ruffian named Meilum. Equipped with the Robe of the Good Archmagi, enchanted gauntlets (weapon expertise, archery), the Cloak of Displacement, Aule's Staff, Boots of Stealth, Girdle of Piercing, Red Ioun Stone and a composite shortbow, and close to the BG1 XP cap, I started to investigate the iron crisis and the bandit plague.
In the Nashkel Mines I felled not a single Kobold, but their master Mulahey I held with the wand of paralyzation and I dispatched him before he could call forth any minions, thus solving the iron crisis. I paralyzed and slew Nimbul as well, but finished Tranzig with my spells. Those two men, I would learn not much later, were members of the organization behind the iron crisis and the bandits, the Iron Throne. Through the latter's documents I located the Bandit Camp, where I used the wand of fire (while protected from fire myself) in bandit leader Tazok's tent. I did their mage Venkt in with arrows and the others that survived the fire I finished with arrows and spells. In the Cloakwood, where the Iron Throne had a hidden base of operations, a mine, I dealt with a hunting party led by one Aldeth and with many Spiders. It yielded me several enchanted weapons and items that I would sell. My backstabs weren't generally devastating but a critical one sufficed to take out an evil wizard named Kysus who stood guarding the Iron Throne base with three companions.
The companions I defeated with fire (Genthore), fire plus backstab (Drasus), and poisonous and acidic arrows (Rezdan) while I was protected a Greenstone Amulet.
Two potions of magic protection supplemented with fire protection kept me safe in the lair of Davaeorn, the master of the mine. I defeated the wizard's Battle Horrors with my wand of frost and the guards with wand-fireballs, before I assaulted Davaeorn with acid arrows and wand-scorchers.
My journey then led me to Baldur's Gate.
There, Ramazith was one of my first targets. Not only did his home hold a tome that would boost my Int to 17, Ramazith also had a ring and a necklace that I coveted. I accepted to work for him but also covertly placed two snares in his home. When I returned from freeing the Nymph he had requested me to procure, I attacked and Ramazith. My traps finished the wizard.
I then bought a big stack of spell scrolls at the Sorcerous Sundries plus a few from the Ulgoth's Beard inn, and with potions of genius and mind focusing boosted my Int. It seems that the 100% spell learning rate at 24 or 25 Int also applies to specialist mages even though they incur a 15% penalty for scribing scrolls from schools that aren't theirs. Palla successfully copied all the spells into her book.
I had Ulgoth's Beard benefactor Shandalar send me off to an ice island to fetch a cloak for him. Two potions of magic protection allowed me to slay the wizards Andris and later, when Andris turned out not to own a Stoneskin scroll, Dezkiel.
I dealt another mage named Beyn my most devastating backstab (98 damage) and returned to Ulgoth's Beard to pickpocket Shandalar and give him his cloak. It yielded me a Feeblemind scroll. Back in Baldur's Gate I worked with the rogue Narlen Darkwalk who killed a Haalruan wizard Resar for me, helping me to a Fireshield spell scroll. At the Iron Throne HQ I killed several guards, including the wizards Alai and Naaman. The former dropped a very nice Minor Sequencer scroll. I scribed it together with the Stoneskin, Feeblemind, Fireshield, and a Remove Magic into my spellbook.
The Flaming Fist gave me a book to enter Candlekeep, where the Iron Throne leadership were staying on business. I got arrested for purportedly killing the Iron Throne leaders, but good ol' Tethtoril bailed me out. I returned to Baldur's Gate where the assassin Slythe had nothing on me thanks to my Stoneskins and Mirror Images and a potion of defense.
With an invitation for the induction of Sarevok as duke of Baldur's Gate that I took from Slythe's corpse, I obtained access to the Ducal Palace. I placed seven traps there, buffed with about a dozen of potions, and killed six Doppelgangers. Two fell to my traps, others succumbed to my (poisoned) arrows.
Dukes Belt and Liia Jannath survived the battle and directed me to the Thieves Guild, from where I reached a maze that led to Baldur's Gate's Undercity. An old temple of Bhaal was the sanctum of Sarevok. One of his henchmen dispelled most of my buffs right after I cast a detection spell. With a turbid aura I worried about my well-being for a moment, but I escaped with an invisibility potion, which enabled me to re-buff. Poisoned arrows of detonation sped up the fight considerably, as they helped me finish the wizard Semaj and the warriors Diarmid and Tazok.
Flaming Fist intrigant Angelo didn't survive my arrows of dispelling and acid arrows. Sarevok fell to a combination MMMs, elemental arrows, frosty and fiery wand blasts, and Magic Missiles.
On to the Harper Hold questline. Two Cloak of Fear spells from Anomen and Jaheira fail to affect Sanasha or Prebek, but Bala's Axe leaves them helpless.
Later, when the quest is done, Jaheira leaves the party after seeing a friend of hers.
She comes back later, starting Jaheira's questline.
This questline is rather difficult, as it throws several tough enemy encounters at you. The first one at the Harper Hold itself, though, nets you a Ring of Wizardry. But first, we have to beat it, and that's not easy with our group. Yoshimo begins with a Special Snare before the enemy goes hostile. We only disable one enemy, a heavy hitter with a katana.
Pre-buffs go up. The enemy targets Yoshimo, as he's the only visible target around (we arrived under Pixie Dust), and he has to down a potion before he dies.
Yoshimo struggles to capitalize on his disabling Kail. But he just can't make it happen. She has too much HP.
He slips away. I've been leaving the rest of the party alone this whole time, so when an enemy mage starts casting a divination spell, I panic.
Minsc attempts to stop the spell with an Acid Arrow. This, too, is a failure.
Unbuffed and out in the open, we're forced to fight. We go after Kail, who has the most damage output. This, too, is a failure. Kail still has too much HP, and she knows enough to attack the party member with the worst AC.
We struggle along, but we can't make much headway. It takes too long to kill Kail. Jaheira has to drink a Potion of Invisibility to escape. Then Zalos has to do the same, despite having drunk a Potion of Invulnerability to help her AC. Finally, Anomen has to escape as well, even after Kail finally goes down.
But by removing so many party members from the fight, it concentrates pressure on the remaining party members. Minsc can't keep up.
We heal and buff up in a separate room, and Zalos runs out to chunk Galvarey. From there, we chase down the enemy thief, an easy target.
We're doing quite well. Then one of the enemy mages catches us by surprise.
We switch gears and go after the mage, but he slips away right before we finish him off.
Instead, we go for Bessen, the other mage. Bessen has no spell protections left, leaving him vulnerable to a Poison spell from Jaheira.
Nadinal returns, nearly killing an already wounded Anomen.
But Nadinal has no Stoneskins left. He is defenseless, and Bessen is still struggling with poison.
Before Bessen has a chance to recover, we mob him. Zalos' summons, conjured earlier as a distraction, hasten his demise.
Some of the most entertaining fights I've ever had have been the ones that nearly kill me. They're also the most painful. I like fighting stronger parties at a disadvantage, and making the most of limited resources.
Findings: Using an escape option on a single character may help them survive, but it also exposes the rest of the party to a lot more danger.
I visit the De'Arnise Hold, but don't finish it. I'm not equipped to handle all of those Trolls just yet. On the way out, we get a visit from Reviane, a former friend of Jaheira's who wants to kill us. We're invisible when Reviane appears, but she does not care. She chases us across the map, leaving her own party behind. Worse yet, she has fantastic THAC0.
I assume this is a bug, but I prefer to roll with bugs if possible. I try to disable her, but I misjudge the distances when I'm trying to hurl a Special Snare at her.
Then things get a whole lot worse.
Those guys pop up a lot, and it always bothers me that you can't wander around outside the keep without getting hassled.
I run back across the map, and to my surprise, the De'Arnise guards attack Reviane's group, though their THAC0 is terrible and they don't help much. We struggle to bring down the Spirit Trolls that have been following us.
We get overwhelmed. I decide to grant myself a reload--Reviane shouldn't be able to see through invisibility.
Then I check the files. Turns out it's not a scripting error. Reviane really does have the ability to see through invisibility; it's attached to her .cre file.
My reload was unjustified. I implement my normal solution for problems like this: I reload and do what I would have done had I known at the time that Reviane's attacking us was supposed to happen. This means I don't pre-buff before the fight, since I didn't do so the first time. But since I don't have any real hope of winning this fight without said pre-buffs, I decide to flee the area, escaping the fight entirely.
We return to Athkatla and try our luck against Rayic Gethras. His save vs. death is poor, allowing us to disable and damage him on the first round. Yoshimo's traps bump him off.
Normally I only do the Mae'Var quest early because I prefer to side with Bodhi, which cuts off this questline. But in this case, the primary benefit is that we get Edwin in the party. I started this run in order to use a broader variety of spells, and Edwin will make that a lot easier.
Right before entering Mae'Var's guild hall for the last time to finish the quest, I talk-block Gorch so I can buy the Nymph Cloak from him before he turns hostile.
For the fight with Mae'Var, we send out some minor summons to hassle him, and set up a Grease barrier to hold off any who come looking for us. Eventually, they track us down, albeit in a slightly weakened state. Mae'Var is much higher level than we are, so he has some pretty nasty options at his disposal.
Luckily, we didn't rely on the Grease barrier alone to keep us safe. Yoshimo has been seeding the area with traps for several rounds, and Mae'Var's spells won't help him against the poison damage of Yoshimo's standard traps.
We try to split our attention between Mae'Var and the Priest of Cyric, but manage to fully disable neither. Our low pressure on the cleric was a mistake. He disables a third of our party. Meanwhile, Anomen soaks up damage until he has to drink a Potion of Invisibility on his last hit point.
Anomen flees, heals himself, and follows up with Chant, which does not break invisibility in BG2:EE. Meanwhile, Zalos finally shuts down the cleric. Mae'Var fails his own save vs. spell soon after.
All that happened within a single round. Bala's Axe can change things really quickly... but it can take time before that happens.
PW: Sleep brings down the cleric.
When Mae'Var's MGOI wears off, we use Horror. Mae'Var fails his save, we hunt him down, and cast Pixie Dust before slipping out of the guild, to avoid the backstabbers upstairs.
We're off to Trademeet! The Nymph Cloak makes the fight with the djinn a lot safer.
Jaheira finally hits druid level 11, granting us access to Fire Seeds. These can be made permanent by dropping them on the ground, so I cheat in a whole bunch of Fire Seeds for convenience's sake and pass them around. Everyone can use them, and when the party does so in concert, the damage can be overwhelming. They're fantastic against Trolls.
But Giant Trolls are quite tough, so I use stealth for the Troll Mound.
I normally don't bother with Shadow Door, but since Invisibility, Invisibility 10' Radius, and Improved Invisibility are all standard spells for me, it's the only invisibility spell Zalos can cast.
We firebomb the fight before Kyland Lind. It's over pretty quickly.
Kyland Lind is no more difficult. Yoshimo disables the druids and we torch them with Fire Seeds.
We have trouble with the Myconids. Zalos got her save vs. spell down to 1 using Shadow Door, but she still failed a save against the Myconids' confusion. She turned on us, and shut down Edwin's spellcasting in the process.
Zalos gets confused again when fighting the other Myconids, so we use the Ring of Air Control to hide Cernd, lest she attack him in her confusion.
Apparently spell failure can influence healing spells cast on rest, much like spell protections.
Dalok is no harder than Kyland Lind. Yoshimo traps him and the poor druid goes up in flames.
Back at Trademeet, after reporting our success and selling off the Shield of Harmony we can't use, we use the Nymph Cloak to save the poor philosopher in the market.
Next, the Temple Ruins. Anomen is now high enough level to explode Shadows.
He's not so good with Shadow Fiends, however, so Jaheira has to rescue him and Edwin when they get paralyzed.
For the Shadow Altar, we have a Sunstone Bullet, which destroys it in one hit. For the Shade Lord, we have a lot of Negative Plane Protection spells, but they won't protect us from his Black Blade of Disaster. We hold him off briefly with summons, and concentrate our fire on Shadow Patrick.
For reasons I can't understand, Shadow Patrick slays Edwin in one hit, at full health.
A Shadow appears over Edwin's body. Anomen chunks it.
Our summons run out, so I send Anomen up north to distract the Shade Lord, with a Negative Plane Protection spell to thwart his Darkling Aura.
The Shade Lord doesn't take the bait. He goes after Minsc instead.
A Potion of Invulnerability keeps him alive.
Shadow Patrick falls to our Efreeti. The Shade Lord cuts Anomen's HP in half and shields himself from direct attacks.
He's barely damaged at all. Zalos uses the Wand of Fire on him, hoping to start a scorcher loop. It doesn't deal much damage, but we do bring down the Shade Lord's spell turning effect.
The Shade Lord chases us, draining our levels before we have a chance to buff with NPP. Zalos keeps using the Wand of Fire, tacking on the damage.
It's an arduous process, as his MR protects him, but finally we bring him down.
So much happened since my last update, I have so many stories to tell. I was so into the game that I only wanted to continue my run but now that I nearly lost my party, I feel the need to write what happened. It will also contain spoilers about Dorn and Hexxat's quests, beware!
First, the Shade Lord, I really overestimated it quite a bit. After buffing my party a lot I rushed in, destroyed the Shadow Altar and the Shadows while Edwin was busy dispelling the Shade Lord spell protections before casting a Breach spell. Then it fell really fast. Overall I was a bit disapointed, everyone was dead in 3 or 4 rounds and they didn't hit or cast once.
Then I came all the way back to the Minister Lloyd to get my money, I'm a bad guy afterall.
In Athkatla I was ambushed once again by the guards and the Cowled Wizards, but I passed through them, invisible thanks to Invisibility 10 Radius. I'll deal with them later on and many more.
From now on I'm following Dorn's quest, which require to kill some people of course.
First, you need to find and 'kill' Guardian Telwyn to force him to reveal you the location of another priest of Helm.
Telwyn is alone and weak, his death triggers the hostility of every Shield Knights around. I cut them down to escape from the city once again.
Then we head to the Helmite camp.
On the way back, we are attacked by a bunch of priests and templars who wanted to avenge their comrades. They joined them soon enough.
Then we deal with the next part of the quest which involves killing either Dorn's patron, or its rival. We chose to kill the rival for better rewards but a bug occured and prevented me to resurrect the druid to sacrifice him again. So we need to kill a party member.
I'm stuck, until I think of something very, very evil ...
Good bye Nalia, I took your castle, then I took your life. The fight afterward was straightforward.
Back to Athkatla, the guards try to arrest us once again. This time we aren't going to flee.
This city is now our city.
After his quest, we are now doing Hexxat's one.
This quest involves looting some ancient tomb that you acces through tombwalking which is like teleporting but from a tomb to another. There are traps everywhere and the difficulty is higher than it was in Dorn's quest.
Soon we are ambushed by Mind Flayers and an Alhoon who are teleporting behind us. To be honest, this is my first time ever dealing with Mind Flayers with a full party. I'm that much inexperienced with BG2, as I only completed the game once with a solo F/M/T without any mods. Hopefully the fight goes well without casualties. The Alhoon can be poisoned so it fell easily to Dorn and Anselm ranged attacks.
During the rest of the quest, we kill a bunch of undeads which is a simple task considering we have two Blackguards and a Berserker for the immunities, so I won't describe the others encounters.
We move on to the Windspear Hills. We've been doing pretty okay considering the circumstances. The fight with the Ruhk Transmuter follows my normal procedure: bait his buffs and evocation spells with summons, turn invisible when he approaches, set traps whenever possible, and when he's out of his best spells and his Fire Shields are gone, rush him. And as usual, we sneak past the vampires.
We have trouble with Samia. Edwin dies in two hits thanks to Ferric Ironblade.
Yoshimo follows soon after. He got cornered by Legdoril, who had a Slay Living spell on hand.
We hold down the enemy's spells with Fire Seeds, but due to miscalculation on our part, we also rob Jaheira of her spellcasting.
We bring in the Efreeti, our best summons. Its best spell falls flat.
SCS gives potions to all sorts of enemies, and they tend to drink the best potions first. Hence the magic resistance.
Kaol debuffs us with one spell. We're in trouble now.
We shift Jaheira to the back and have her start casting Pixie Dust. Zalos takes the Golem Manual from Edwin's body and brings out the Flesh Golem as a further barrier to disrupting Jaheira's spell. It succeeds!
Notice that Anomen and Minsc both have +3 maces. This is a convenience cheat to reflect Edwin's Enchanted Weapon spell. Kaol has an enchantment spell on the way, so Zalos is drink a Potion of Invulnerability to try and stave it off.
Our Efreeti collapses, but our invisibility lets us heal and re-buff ourselves. Anomen has Mass Cure specifically for this purpose--it does not break invisibility.
Once we're ready, we start hurling Fire Seeds. Zalos begins casting Cone of Cold.
The enemy comes for us. Zalos, with her stupendous AC, can weather the pressure with ease. But Anomen and Minsc are not so well defended, and they suffer badly.
Finally, we get a breakthrough. Samia goes down, and Legdoril fails a save.
Minsc tries to flee through the maze to seek safety, but Kaol follows after.
The enemy is falling apart, but so are we. Jaheira finds safety to heal herself, while Zalos hits Kaol with Polymorph Self. He fails his save.
Jaheira gets healed, but Anomen is still disabled by Chaos and has a Skeleton Warrior on him and is nearly dead. Kaol fails a save against Bala's Axe.
Anomen falls to the Skeleton Warrior, but Kaol is finished.
Jaheira has Harper's Call and can raise the whole group without us having to run to a local temple. We continue.
We have trouble with a Juggernaut Golem later on, but otherwise Firkraag's dungeon isn't a problem. Conster doesn't put up much of a fight.
Back at Athkatla, we finally go get Pai'Na. Bala's Axe works its magic. But one strike from the axe still lets 20% of all spells get through.
Fire Seeds torch the spiders and the nymph. Kitty is ours. We also find a nice random drop on one of the undead down south.
I barely ever get that spell before ToB.
Turns out SCS made Nevaziah, the guardian of the Nether Scroll, a lot tougher than he normally is. When we see his prebuffs, we start running.
Turns out SCS actually gave Nevaziah HLAs. Edwin is about to die.
A Potion of Fire Resistance bails him out, but he's still in trouble.
We escape a newly-created Sphere of Chaos and Edwin throws some cheap summons in Nevaziah's way.
Nevaziah chases us along, and another Sphere of Chaos spell comes out. Zalos gets lucky.
A failed save could have been fatal.
Nevaziah is slow, being a lich, but there's only so much space for us to flee unless we're willing to escape the area. His Minute Meteors put a stop to Edwin's summoning.
Edwin retreats and tries to bring out some spiders. Nevaziah nukes him.
Amazingly, Edwin survives, and so does his spider.
We move Edwin aside so Jaheira can heal him up. Our Efreeti enters the stage. The rest of the party stays out of the way, waiting out Nevaziah's PFMW spell.
After a moment, we test Nevaziah's defenses. PFMW is still active. To the north, Edwin gets healed and brings some more fodder to the table. Meanwhile, the lich is debuffing Zalos.
It takes ages before we can hit the lich, and even then, he's immune to the damage. Nevertheless, most of his spells are getting disrupted.
But spell disruption doesn't work very well against sequencers.
Half our party loses half of their HP, but nobody dies. Finally, we break through Nevaziah's Stoneskins, and then he fails a save against Bala's Axe. The battle is won.
Since both Edwin and Zalos had spell protections active (deflection and reflection, respectively) when we rested after the battle, no spells were cast on healing, so the rest period was quite long.
We accept to clean the Windspear Hills, we start by a few Werewolves who dropped some very nice (or lucky) scrolls, lile Simulacrum and Mislead.
We struggle a bit versus Ruhk Transmuter, his Fireball took us by surprise, disrupting our Invisibility 10 Radius spell, then he followed by a few Cloudkills and some Vampiric Wraiths joined the fight.
We cleared the dungeon, dealing with undeads, adventurers, werewolves, golems and a Beholder.
I really hate them, and fear them at the same time. I really really hate Beholders, so I send a commando of 5 Skeletons Warriors fully buffed to deal with him while I hid my entire party elsewhere. Sometimes a big Iron Golem blocks the path and the others smaller golems can't reach, it's funny and handy so I don't mind. I also dispatched Tazok, but forgot to pick up the Sewers Key, so I had to came back later ...
Of course I'm not dealing with Firkraag, yet ...
Back in Athkatla, Degardan wanted to kill Edwina after transforming him back to Edwin.
Then I tried to do the Unseeing Eye quest, but the High Watcher Oisig bugued and became hostile after his initial talk. So I had to cluaconsole him in the sewers to open the door, before killing him again.
In the dungeon, we faced the Shade Lich. I used the door to bait his Fallen Planetar and his prebuffs, plus two Skeletons Warriors to also bait a few others spells.
Finally, the Fallen Planetar dissapeared, I send Hexxat to check if the Lich is doing okay.
Looks like it is. As soon as I opened the door, it greeted me with a Dragon's Breath. Hopefully I foresaw it, and gave Hexxat a Potion of Fire Resistance, she drank it just before the impact.
Finally, I lure the beast in the sewers, where it fell by my poisoned Flail of Ages.
Beneath, we encountered a group of Beholders and Gaunts. I send them a present, 5 Skeletons Warriors + Korgan fully buffed, invisible and equiped with the Shield of Balduran while the rest of my party is far away.
Did I mention I hate them ?
We pretty much cleared the whole area with this strategy. I took no risks here.
Soon, the Unseeing eye fell before us.
Then we headed back to the cult and destroyed it, finally I consoled Oisig one last time to complete the quest, before killing him for the third time (poor Oisig)!
While I'm still in the sewers, I wanted to do the Mind Flayers area (I learn of its existence today! It is very thrilling.) So I went back to loot the key on Tazok's corpse before returning to Athkatla.
But things didn't go as expected, I lost both Dorn and Viconia to the squids. Their ability to teleport at will make them very dangerous foes as they can close the distance between them and my weakest party members.
I decided to not try the further rooms as I read on the internet that the last one is pretty hard. Considering I lost two characters, I decided to go for Hexxat's quest instead.
On my path, I crossed Jan Jensen and defied the law once again.
We go after Mencar Pebblecrusher and the gang. We surround Brennan Risling at the start and beat him down, then hit Amon with Bala's Axe. There isn't much to it.
With little else to do, we decide to get back to work on the main quest. We head for the Shadow Thief headquarters to crack some skulls. We sneak past the enemies on the first level, since the mages there cast Sphere of Chaos, and clean up the southern and western halves of the dungeon. We leave from a shortcut and rest where we are.
Bad news.
It's the next ambush in Jaheira's questline. We're stuck on a narrow platform and the enemy is blocking the only exit. We can't go back in the way we came.
We're unbuffed, cornered, and outside in Athkatla without a magic license. Neither Zalos nor Edwin can use their mage spells--not even one, because we already triggered a warning once from using Vhailor's Helm.
We go invisible using Pixie Dust. But we're still trapped.
And soon, our invisibility is dispelled, and the party disabled by Confusion.
Zalos slips into the corner to drink a potion and boost her AC and saves. Edwin and Anomen try to keep the enemy occupied with summons, but we haven't got very many.
We can't keep them off. Kitty vanishes to a Death Spell, and with Emotion and Chaos added to the mix, our entire party is disabled.
Yoshimo recovers from Confusion; he was the only one who made saves against both Chaos and Emotion. Chrost has a spell on the way. Yoshimo isn't close enough to land a melee hit, and his arrows would just bounce off of Physical Mirror.
The answer? A Wand of Magic Missiles.
It's a tiny victory amidst a series of setbacks. An Aerial Servant arrives and starts tearing apart our Flesh Golem. Aerial Servants only have 1 APR, but they do huge damage, and Flesh Golems have 9 AC.
The party recovers from Chaos. Only Jaheira and Edwin remain incapacitated, thanks to Emotion. Anomen pulls us up with Mass Cure. Zalos rushes to the fore, providing cover for the rest of the party, and when she gets badly hurt as a result, Anomen once again pulls her back up.
We finally break through the enemies harassing us. Only the enemy mage remains, who ended up away from the fray.
He's just far enough out of sight that Yoshimo can disable him with a Special Snare.
Invisibility Purge reveals the mage, who is now helpless for the next several rounds. The mage goes down.
Haz is sometimes a problem, so we always make sure we're prepared for him. First, Yoshimo takes out the lonely priest of Cyric that Haz keeps in the hall.
Haz doesn't come up with a Mantle spell, so Zalos rushes in to hit him with Bala's Axe. A Sphere of Chaos spell appears to my surprise. Jaheira gets disabled, but Zalos is protected by Shadow Door and its massive save boost.
Haz fails his save! His spellcasting is shot.
I'm not quite willing to trust Zalos' saves, so I bring her out of the Sphere of Chaos rather than try to break through Haz' Stoneskins. We bring in a simulacrum to help out.
Jaheira is low on HP because she failed a save against the polymorph effect of Sphere of Chaos. Despite being confused out of her mind and nearly dead, she still kills our own summons with ease.
Only when she tries to mess with Haz does she finally fall.
The rest of the party focuses on Haz' allies, but Haz himself still has some sequencers to pull on us. As with Nevaziah, the sequencers aren't affected by spell failure, as they fire as innate spells.
Since I've got nothing else to do, I have Anomen raise Jaheira, just in case Haz gets a resurgence and we need her. She slips on the Ring of Air Control and turns herself invisible so she can cast Heal on herself later, in safety.
When Haz' spell protections go down, we can hit him with single-target spells. Anomen poisons him.
Jaheira finishes casting Heal and we surround Haz. With his buffs gone, the Sphere of Chaos dispersed, his spells at 80% spell failure, and a poison effect active, there's nothing else he can do.
Time to fight the head honcho. Aran Linvail awaits. Kitty poisons his friend as the fight begins, with Yoshimo hiding nearby to guide her.
Their prebuffs fire but the mage has no cure for the poison. She falls as Aran Linvail advances on us.
Our Berserk Warrior doesn't bother Aran Linvail, nor do our Horror or Cloak of Fear spells affect him. Even though we make little progress on harming him, while his Slow spell made a big impact on us, he still slips away instead of pressing his advantage.
Midway through the fight, I realize Jaheira is not wearing her armor.
It was a product of raising her. I couldn't put on her armor during the fight with Haz, and forgot to do so afterwards.
Aran Linvail backstabs Anomen and takes advantage of his lowered HP to disable him. No saving throw will stop this.
He finishes off Anomen during the stun. An Aerial Servant from the priest of Cyric offscreen joins the fight. Jaheira's AC is terrible, so I move the party away for her safety.
We slay the Aerial Servant while Aran Linvail is busy fussing with Edwin. When I bring Edwin and Yoshimo over to keep the party together, Aran Linvail takes advantage of our proximity to hit the party with Chain Lightning. I move some people away to minimize the damage.
It made little difference. Chain Lightning seldom does very much damage.
We catch Aran trying to charm Minsc with Domination. Minsc equips the Helm of Charm Protection to block it.
Our Fire Seeds aren't having much impact. Aran Linvail lands a critical hit on Yoshimo, and renews his defenses.
But now his Fire Shield is gone. Zalos can safely attack him in melee with Bala's Axe. Aran Linvail fails the saving throw--twice.
Spell failure stacks. Aran Linvail has a 100% chance of miscasting any spell for the next 15 rounds.
Not that it makes much of a difference this late in the battle. He's already low on spells and his Stoneskins are nearly gone. Jaheira brains him with Blackblood.
Lore has it that Aran Linvail is just a figurehead, and the real leaders of the Shadow Thieves are much better hidden. So we didn't really accomplish much of anything.
Whatever. A quest is a quest. And now we finally have the Amulet of Power! Too bad we're not allowed to equip it. We do still get to wear the Ring of Protection +2, though.
On to Watcher's Keep. We handle things the normal way, trapping the Vampiric Wraiths and rushing them with Haste, and Fireballing the slimes in the northwest with the Efreeti. The Statues are a bit tougher and require more preparation, as the fighters have HLAs and the clerics come well buffed, and all of them have solid resistances to magic and physical damage.
We begin very aggressive. The clerics both start out with Physical Mirror, so most missile attacks are useless against them. We focus on melee instead.
But SCS enemies are great at targeting, and they know Edwin has poor AC and no Stoneskins or Mirror Images. They nearly kill him, forcing our little Red Wizard to flee to the south and make himself scarce. Jaheira has the same problem, but since she can turn invisible via an item rather than a spell, she can vanish in the middle of the fight without risk of disruption.
Anomen and Minsc have both failed saves against Greater Command, but since critters wake up on hit during sleep in BG2:EE, the enemy doesn't mess with them. Zalos gets lucky with Bala's Axe. An early failed save.
We've got a lot of enemies to deal with, but Yoshimo puts a stop to the summoning with a well-timed backstab.
Impatient to get back Anomen and Minsc back in the fight, I toss a Fire Seed at them. Since they're unconscious, the hit is guaranteed, and since the Fire Seed does area-effect damage, I can wake both of them up with one attack roll.
Yoshimo gets blasted by Slay Living, but he makes his save.
Notice the large group of animals around Zalos. I want them gone as soon as possible, so I send Yoshimo away to hide, and have Edwin distract the enemy fighters with some summons of his own. Yoshimo hurries in for a tremendous backstab on a Panther.
As usual, our Potions of Healing aren't enough to keep us healthy, as they only heal 9 HP apiece, so I have Anomen use Mass Cure again. It's a terribly useful rescue spell.
With our party back in order, we descend upon the Statues. Then I see a troubling message.
That's one of the best HLAs out there, though it receives little attention. Power Attack lasts 2 rounds and stuns the target on a failed save vs. death at -4 every hit for 2 rounds. Magic resistance and spell protections are no defense against Power Attack.
Only Zalos' AC and saving throws can protect her from the Statue's next attack. And they do not.
The run could be over in a few seconds. We need to do everything we can to keep Zalos safe from that Statue. Everyone plays a role.
We have a Berserk Warrior to distract the Statue, Edwin casting Polymorph Other to bring it to Near Death, Yoshimo and Minsc using Darts of Stunning to disable the Statue, Anomen casting Mental Domination to control the statue, and Jaheira casting Pixie Dust to hide Zalos.
All attempts to subdue the Statue fail. Only Jaheira manages to save Zalos.
Anomen casts Mass Cure once more and we bring out some new summons to hold off the Statues.
Summons are badass. They can weather as many as one whole attack apiece before collapsing.
It's a slow process and we get beaten up a lot, but we manage to bring down the Statues. Yoshimo lands the final blow.
To clarify, these posts are also based on screenshots made days and weeks ago, like the blind Bounty Hunter run right before it. Hence the chain of long posts.
Edwin has just hit mage level 12. Now we can cast Death Spell, and slay Trolls without fighting. We return to the De'Arnise Hold. Apparently the Harpers are still here.
We turn invisible and rest before heading west to find Reviane awaiting us.
Zalos' AC is no better, but now that we've gained some levels and some items, our damage output is enough to overcome Reviane. We swarm her.
The other Harpers are further west. One of them comes with lots of mage buffs, but they don't last. We've just gotten too strong for this group.
Kitty gets cranky and tries to munch on one of the local guards. Edwin subdues her before she can turn anyone hostile.
Back inside the De'Arnise Hold, Edwin tries out the Death Spell. It works marvelously.
Even Spirit Trolls fall to the Death Spell. Hit level 12 as a mage, and even the worst Trolls around are helpless. Unless you're an illusionist, of course.
Glaicas has a shiny suit of full plate mail I'd like to pawn off. First, we knife one of his buddies, a halfling thief with a dirty mouth.
Glaicas comes bolstered by a cleric and a mage. We flood the air with Fire Seeds, shutting down our spellcasting as well as the enemy's. Once again, Jaheira is frustrated by our interference.
Glaicas dies to a friendly trap, costing us some XP. Edwin, flush with spells, disables the cleric with one of my least favorite spells.
I normally never bother, because I always figure that Chaos is a better bet, even though they occupy different spell levels and don't conflict with each other.
The cleric dies a moment later anyway. The Efreeti manages to disrupt one of the mage's spells despite the mage's spell protections and Stoneskin.
Fire Shields can trigger each other, but normally don't do so indefinitely. Mod-created items with similar backlash effects, like Sanchuudoku, can more reliably trigger each other. The feedback loop can kill one or both targets within seconds, or paralyze them with damage animations. In a previous run, I managed to kill Cookies with a sleeping character, because she had an Item Revisions version of Yamato that included its own backlash spell.
As with the previous run, the enemy mage confuses us right before dying, and we suffer a lot of damage in the interim--in this case, because we were bashing each other's faces in.
We finally get around to fighting the Yuan-ti Mage. Fire Seeds disrupt all of his spells.
No challenge there. And Death Spell brings down all of the Umber Hulks as well.
Time for TorGal. Only 150 screenshots left before we're caught up on the party's progress.
Thank you, @semiticgod , @Blackraven and @Gotural for all you stories. It's not an easy business, to create these reports, and it takes time. But these reports are so useful, they can serve to other players.
@semiticgod , it's especially not easy to write about things which happened "days and weeks ago". Nice to see new spells in your playthrough. "For every Web there's Stinking Cloud".
@Blackraven Congrats once again! Am I right in understanding your fiancee participates in your run, at least from a stalking point of view? Also, wands and wands. They help a lot, don't they?
@Gotural It's always right to take a no-risk path, even with insanely powerful Blackguards in the party
You are right, I often read other players reports to learn about BG2, especially from @semiticgod because we are actually playing the same part of the game at the same time which is funny I think. I was wondering if I could take down the first level of Watcher's Keep and boom, he posted a report about it, how he dealt with their HLAs and so forth which is going to be tremendously useful.
It is also nice to see that sometime he struggles during a fight that I thinked was easy and sometimes it is the opposite, the Shadow Thief Guildhall is a good example as I nearly lost my run there and drained a lot of my ressources.
As soon as I entered the new tomb, a fight occured with a group of specters, two of them are powerful spellcasters able to cast Time Stop.
I saw they had no spell protections on, so I ordered Edwin to use Power Word : Stun but it went very badly.
She finished her Time Stop just before Edwin's cast, and she casted Spell Turning during the Time Stop, which means that as soon as the Time Stop ends, Edwin will stun himself with his own Power Word : Stun as I won't have the time to tell him to stop. It was such a great play from the IA, I was really pleased by SCS.
Another Time Stop, by the second spellcaster who casts the same spell than the first one.
Hexxat get blasted away, and Korgan suffers greatly.
We managed to hold them, thanks to Korgan, until their protections wear off. It took some time though, because of their Chain Contingency. But at some point, Anselm poisoned them and soon after they fell.
Many traps here, as expected from a Thief quest. Some riddles too but nothing too difficult even with my poor english.
There is another big fight with 3 spellcasters but I send 5 Skeletons Warriors to get rid of them, not very interesting.
When we come back to Athkatla, we are attacked by some far more dangerous foes than usual. It is a party composed of high level Fighters, Paladins and Mages. And they are not here to take a joke.
We retreated to the southwest corner to buff a bit while Korgan held Sir Jolus.
Then we came back to finish the job, using our spells at disposal.
Just before killing the last knight, the Mage summoned a Planetar then escaped. The Planetar was still very strong for us, so we tried to split the group and Hexxat died again.
We wait in the inn for Hexxat to reappear, then as soon as we left, we are ambushed by another group of guards. A double group this time. Hopefully Death Spell made short work of the majority of them. Then we went to the Planar Sphere, a dangerous place at least.
The first rooms are easily cleared, until we faced Tolgerias of course.
He casted a combination of Improved Alacrity, Fallen Planetar, Time Stop, Dragon's Breath, and so forth.
Hopefully Dorn was hasted so he managed to escape the area of effect of the Dragon's Breath. But Tolgerias casted a Remove Magic in his direction, so he drank an Oil of Speed just after the dispell to continue to kite the Fallen Planetar.
During this time, the Fallen Planetar used two Firestorms so we had to run around like mad. Korgan get blinded, and Dorn was killed by the vorpal sword. But Tolgerias wasn't protected anymore. Anselm rushed in and poisoned him to death.
Afterward, we fought Lavok.
There is not much space to flee or run here, so we needed to fight fair this time. I scattered my party a bit, to avoid AoE spells as much as possible. Soon enough, he unleashed his Time Stop.
And as usual, a Fallen Planetar was chasing us. This time, I decided to confront her directly and send Anselm to deal with her (he has a save vs death below -2 so 'normally' he cannot die).
He killed her rather fast, then Lavok fell aswell.
After finishing the Planar Sphere, we are attacked by the high level group again and again. Now I confront the Planetar everytime, Anselm can take her out safely and she is worth 20,000 XP which is strange for a summon. Still the Planetar is a lot stronger than her Fallen counterpart because she can instantly cast the Heal spell at least 3 times. So I need to take her down 4 times to kill her which is draining.
In this part I have something exciting to show you. I took down Firkraag! It also could have been my last update, I was close to losing in the Shadow Thief Guildhall.
I went back to his lair, drank every Potions of Fire Resistance I had, and used every Protection from Fire scrolls at my disposal. I also used tons of Potions of Heroism, and every buffs I could think about. Dragons have very low AC and you need an excellent THAC0 to hit them reliably.
I opened the fight with Magic Resistance from Viconia to set his MR to 30%, then I reduced it to 5% with a Lower Resistance spell. Then I casted Doom + Greater Malison and finished the job with a Chaos spell while my party was pelting him down with poisoned arrows and bolts.
Luckily, his heavily powerful breath didn't kill my initial summons.
In the end, I wasted every scrolls and potions I had because nobody in my party was hit by the Dragon's Breath, but it was well worth it. It's better to waste a few consumables than to see your run end.
Afterward we headed to the Shadow Thief Guildhall to complete Bodhi's quest. The group had to deal with many guards on their way, Edwin and Viconia were already tired. I made a huge mistake because I didn't know you couldn't rest or escape the dungeon as long as you didn't kill Aran, so I went in casually, using a lot of spells during every minor fights.
I also suffered from a bug as Hexxat was afflicted by Cursed Wounds, then died during the fight with Haz. The problem is, when Hexxat comes back to life and leaves her coffin, she is at 1HP for a few seconds. Normally she heals to full health at this moment and everything is fine, but here, because she was affected by Cursed Wounds (from the Clay Golems in SCS) she couldn't heal, stay at 1HP a few more seconds then dies again in an infinite loop. Poor Hexxat Of course we can't leave the area nor rest, so it's impossible for us to try to cure her curse. And doing the rest of this maze without a Thief is quite hard. Traps, traps everywhere.
Haz blasted Hexxat away from existence, then used a Minor Spell Sequencer with Stinking Cloud + Web. Anselm failed his fail despite having a negative saving throw which proves that you can, in some circumstances, critically fail a saving throw. It's the third time of my life it happens to me, but this time I have a formal proof.
During the round Anselm is webbed, he took heavy physical damage from Clay Golems which forced us to flee for a long time, until Haz followed us and we finished him off.
I managed to heal Anselm during the fight with a Potion of Regeneration which bypassed Cursed Wounds, hence the extensive kitting.
At this point, we really are exhausted. My warriors don't have any innate abilities left, Hexxat is dead and cannot be brought back to life, Viconia and Edwin are also pretty much depleted of their spells. I know that Aran can chop down everyone with Improved Haste + Mislead and will backstab everyone to death in a few seconds. I considered my options, but I see nothing. I really thought my run would end here, so I left the game for a moment, I took a bath and thinked about how I will do this fight.
I returned to Baldur's Gate and told myself : "I'm not going to lose now that I defeated Firkraag, no way! I can make it without much ressources or Hexxat."
Things are getting serious. I looked at my remaining spells, all of them. And I see that Edwin has a Mordenkainen Sword left. Then I thought of something extremely, extremely uncommon to do.
Yup that's right, I summoned the Magical Sword, used all my Potions of Fire Breath on it, opened the door, and send it to greet Aran. Magical Swords are immune to everything but magical damage as far as I know, so I prayed a bit and YOLO. I protected Anselm and Korgan from fire before, just in case, because they were the closest to the door.
And it worked. Aran was burned to death instantly by the 48d10. What a relief. I drank every potions I could during the rest of the fight, and even though Viconia died aswell, I made it.
Needless to say I was very happy of the outcome and also a bit proud of my strange strategy with the Magical Sword.
We lure him over using invisibility and then surround him. Recent AI changes mean the other enemies will still come after us, but this way, we won't have to deal with them right away.
The other enemies hurry to the scene. By the time they arrive, TorGal is already crying. Four of our party members have fighter levels, and all have +3 weapons or better, so it's not surprising TorGal was so easy to damage.
Yoshimo gets bashed around for daring to fight alongside the real fighters, so he has to down a Potion of Invisibility to stave off death. TorGal, to my surprise, falls down the moment I give him a bit of space. Edwin roasts him.
Several characters need healing. We slip away to the northwest to heal ourselves and turn invisible. Yoshimo's traps from the day before, originally intended for TorGal, find a new target.
I went invisible in order to flee the area and avoid further danger, but after the group is healed, I figure we're okay to handle the rest of the enemies. Edwin clears up the Trolls, and Edwin removes one of the Yuan-ti fighters.
Only the Yuan-ti Mages remain. Edwin disables one of them.
Confusion isn't very reliable against mages, but it does bypass their MGOI spells.
The other mage remains functional, and hurls a nasty spell at Zalos. A Potion of Invulnerability ensures her safety.
In personal experience and testing, @Gotural and I have had completely different experiences when it comes to saving throws. Gotural has seen evidence that critical failures are possible in saving throws by having a character with a -2 save vs. spell get webbed, while I have found it impossible to get a failed save with a custom spell against a character with a save vs. spell of 1, even after dozens of iterations. We don't know what's causing the difference.
Zalos demonstrates it again, as her friends fail saves against an unfriendly disabler.
Lots of little optimizations have been going on in the background. Edwin got debuffed by a Warding Whip and slightly injured, so he ran away to cast summoning spells from afar. Minsc, unable to attack the mages without putting himself in danger, took the time to cast Cure Light Wounds on Edwin, just because he had the spell on him.
I don't even know why I took this screenshot. Lots of stuff is happening but I'm not sure which part is the important one.
Zalos finally gets disabled. Where Confusion and Sphere of Chaos failed, Chaos, with its -4 save penalty, managed to succeed.
She actually fails a save against another Chaos spell cast right afterwards.
We gradually wear down the mages. The Flesh Golem chunks one of them, while the other struggles along. It's a slow process because so many of us are confused--Anomen actually Jaheira by accident. We manage to charm the Yuan-ti Mage twice, but because we were attacking it at the time, it immediately turned hostile. Finally, Yoshimo poisoned it with a Bolt of Biting, and the last enemy finally went down.
There's another big fight atop the ramparts of the De'Arnise Hold, but I see nothing truly special in the screenshots. A Death Spell removed the Trolls, and a slow barrage of spells and attacks eventually wore down the Yuan-ti, with lots of careful spacing to keep damage pressure and disablers off of the weaker party members, and also to keep Anomen and Jaheira out of harm's way when they were casting healing spells.
Planar Sphere! We're running out of pre-Spellhold quests.
These days, the halfling cannibals of the Planar Sphere aren't as scary for me as they used to be. But they remain interesting fights. Death Spell remains a lot of fun.
As for Togan and his fellows, the real fight, Yoshimo disables several halflings at once, but Mogadish's Physical Mirror bounces Yoshimo's trap, allowing him to reverse Yoshimo's progress with a single spell.
Yoshimo runs away, tossing a second trap on the way out. The most dangerous enemy fails his save.
Mogadish no longer has Remove Paralysis on hand. Kayardi is going to stay defenseless until the 5-round hold effect wears off. We use Fire Seeds to bypass any defenses Kayardi might possess. Fire Seeds are quite flashy.
Fire Seeds burn down the whole enemy group. There was barely any fight.
For Necre and Taibela, I try a slightly different approach. Instead of attacking from the south and using the chokepoint there, I have Yoshimo initiate the battle from the east.
Fire Seeds keep the enemy's spells off when we do engage. Necre falls to Anomen, and finally Taibela fails a save against Bala's Axe, twice, before Zalos deals the final blow.
I've gotten accustomed to snatching items without fighting enemies, so I do it with Yoshimo and whatever items lie in the room east of Taibela. All I remember is that it has 10 Tchazar Gems and maybe a quest item thingy.
Not having Remove Fear, Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Stoneskin, and Spell Immunity makes the little buffs a lot more important. Every bonus to your saves could mean the difference.
Chant has the notable effect of decreasing spell damage, like the luck effect. It reduces the damage rolls of spells like Fireball. For your enemies, it increases the rolls. And it actually affects enemies properly in EE; not like in vanilla.
We go invisible and attack with Bala's Axe. If we get a failed save, this fight is basically won.
Edwin tries a Power Word: Silence spell, but Lavok is immune to silence by virtue of the MINHP1 item.
Right after our first efforts fail, I realize there was a substantial cost to sending in Zalos for a shot at Bala's Axe.
It's easy to forget about those Chain Contingencies. Zalos survives, albeit with a lot less health. We hold off Lavok's next two spells with Fire Seeds, allowing Jaheira and Anomen to cast Heal.
Our recovery is short-lived. Our Berserk Warrior is dead, either to Lavok's Fire Shield or our Fire Seeds, and we can't hit Lavok so easily and disrupt his spells.
It's very bad timing. We can't block his next spell, and this one is his most dangerous.
I consider trying to kite the thing, but eventually decide it's not worth the risk. Once again, we flee the area to escape a vorpal strike.
Edwin takes the time to lecture Anomen on human rights.
He's awfully mouthy for a mage without Stoneskin.
We wait a very long time, losing most of our buffs in the process, to make sure the Fallen Planetar is gone before we restart the fight. Lavok's defenses are also mostly gone, though he has backups.
That PFMW is useless when we have a spare summons to throw at him. Fire Seeds work great with summons, though the former usually destroys the latter.
We keep disrupting his spells with Fire Seeds. It goes on and on like this.
When we run out of summons, the same things happens as when we lost our Berserk Warrior. Lavok gets another big spell off the ground.
And because that's not enough, the whole party also gets fatigued. See, we had a Haste spell wear off after the Fallen Planetar arrived, and then another Haste spell got dispelled when we got back, and those penalties added up. Also, Zalos loses her Shadow Door spell.
We're now especially vulnerable to spell damage. But Jaheira can reliably disrupt his spells with Blackblood, at the cost of triggering two Fire Shield backlashes.
Comments
We stay far enough away to escape his initial Horrid Wilting Chain Contingency. That could have slain both of our thieves and ended the run if we weren't lucky.
Lavok's prebuffs are pretty comprehensive--it's not normally possible for a party to disrupt his first spells. But a level 11 standard trap will do the job. All the same, we run away, just in case.
Notice that he was immune to our damage. Lavok is immune to both poison and poison damage, as well as all disablers, but since our traps deal poison damage without using the poison opcode, they can disrupt his spells even if they can't actually harm him.
We're safely secreted away in the hall, but rather than wait out his prebuffs, I decide to do things the hard way and go right back out to fight him.
Greater Malison is his first choice. SCS mages love this spell. I move around our characters to minimize the damage. Zalos' saves remain strong.
By now, we have the Sling of Everard, which gives us another +5 weapon besides darts. Gloomwort equips the +5 darts from the Cloak of Stars, even though he has no pips in them, while Xiaohei uses the sling. Both of them can therefore bypass Lavok's still-active Improved Mantle spell.
Unfortunately, we do not exert sufficient pressure on Lavok. We should have used more normal traps. Lavok gets a spell off the ground, the absolute most dangerous spell he can use on this party.
After considering my options, I decide to take the easy path. We wait outside.
We really have no defense against a Fallen Planetar, or even a Deva, nor do we have the power to take it down... or even slow it down. Only luck would have kept us alive. In SCS, those vorpal strikes offer a save at -2, but we just don't have the saving throws to ensure our survival. And even without the vorpal strikes, Planetars hit hard enough to chunk anyone in the group through sheer damage alone.
We return and resume our assault. Gloomwort and Xiaohei attack with their usual weapons, Firetooth and darts, respectively, while our thieves set their remaining traps. Just as Lavok transforms and the battle is won, a high-powered damage spell comes our way.
I give Zalos a Potion of Fire Resistance to drink before unpausing and hope for the best.
We're safe.
I wish enemies could always follow you through area transitions. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to, and it would add some tactical dimensions to the gameplay. Fleeing an area would no longer completely break challenges like Fallen Planetars; it would just give you more room to run around in.
So, I'm going to post the lengthy remainder of Zalos' blind party run in one big post after this one. Attached to this post are ALL of the screenshots of Zalos' run up until Lavok... because I'm putting all of the rest of the screenshots, after Lavok, in a big honkin' zip file attached to the next post, in lieu of posting every single one, or posting none at all.
Tolgerias:
This guy uses big spells and comes with a lesser mage by his side. The other mage died to poison damage from our traps, but Tolgerias survived long enough to pelt Xiaohei with a Dragon's Breath spell she survived using a Potion of Fire Resistance. When Tolgerias' weapon immunities ran out, our Archers tore him apart.
The Tanar'ri:
We need to kill this thing to get a demon heart to escape the Planar Sphere. Problem is, this guy uses Death Gaze and Silence 15' Radius and can see through invisibility. Our monks drink Potions of Invulnerability to resist Death Gaze, while our halfling Bounty Hunters drink Potions of Freedom for the same purpose. Zalos has Arbane's Sword but I'm not willing to trust it to block the paralysis effect.
Our preparations were wasted. The demon died in seconds to trap damage.
Draug Fea and the Sewer Dwellers:
We baited some buffs out of the enemy with item-based summons, then rushed in to damage and disable with traps. Gaius failed a save vs. spell, surprisingly, and got paralyzed by a Special Snare. With Gaius gone, there was no real threat of disablers. We chopped up the clerics and then trapped the remaining enemies to death.
Mekrath's Lair, the Coiled Cabal:
We got a single Arrow of Detonation as a random drop after the fight with Draug Fea. I used it via a Simulacrum (Vhailor's Helm) to hurt the Yuan-ti Mages to the east, but it did little damage.
We ran away from the enemy and hid, eventually sending out Nibidda on his own to set his traps and weaken the enemy. Later, we got bolder, bringing out Gloomwort to attack directly, with Zalos adding her own traps. Some of us got confused, but we divided the enemy enough so that we never got overwhelmed.
Mekrath's Lair, the Battle with Mekrath Himself:
Mekrath himself failed a save against Stunning Blow. There was no battle.
The Riddle Bridge Beneath the Temple Sewers:
There's a cluster of Beholders on the other side. I usually prefer to sneak past them, but there's a bug here. A Gauth beholder paralyzed Gloomwort despite his invisibility. But then it used a Repulsion ray to knock him out of their line of sight, saving his life. Since Gauths aren't supposed to see through invisibility, I decided to blast the whole group of Beholders with CTRL-Y. It was more fair than buffing with potions to run past them, and more satisfying than CTRL-J.
The Pit of the Faithless:
Zalos snatched the Gauntlets of Dexterity and slipped away from the undead with stealth.
We went no further in the Unseeing Eye quest. We're not equipped to handle Beholders. Not yet.
The Guarded Compound:
Yes, we did the Guarded Compound. And no, it wasn't hard. We entered the area invisible. Nibidda used the Ring of Air Control to remain invisible while he disarmed the nearby traps, while Gelimbi drank a potion to compensate for his failed stealth roll. We snuck around the southern rooms and escaped to the southern portion of the area, without drawing the enemy's attention.
We baited out LOTS of spells from Sion and waited out the duration of his Cornugons, who would have seen through our invisibility had we strayed anywhere near it. We then sent out our Bounty Hunters, with Xiaohei to clear the fog of war for them.
Traps absolutely wrecked the enemy party, and there was nothing they could do. Sion died from poison damage during his own Time Stop. Traps killed Koshi, Stalman, and Ketta, and paralyzed Maferan and Olaf Rasmussen, allowing our monks to slay the last two with ease.
We got Celestial Fury. We don't even need it, but it feels great.
The Planar Prison:
The first fight was terribly complex. We had few places to hide, and had to choose where to break invisibility very carefully to manage the enemy's pressure. Ultimately, it boiled down to us maneuvering around to avoid the enemy's disablers, and ganging up on the mages to minimize the number of spells they could cast before dying.
The Coiled Cabal to the east was badly weakened by traps, but it required a lot of retreating and hiding in order to avoid getting punished by a Confusion or Chaos spell. When the enemy started to run out of buffs, our Archers finished the job with poisonous ammunition.
The Master of Thralls is a powerful foe, but it has no Stoneskins, and that is a big weakness for a party like ours. We can deal lots of missile damage without needing an attack roll, and the only defense against it is Stoneskin or damage resistance.
The Warden is another story. Early on, he summoned a Fallen Planetar right next to Azorre. The solution was very nerve-wracking, but rewarding in the end. First, we had our thieves and Archers drink an Oil of Speed and flee to the east with the monks (who cannot drink Oils of Speed in EE). Most of the party then fled south to escape the Planetar's attention, but Azorre lingered in the northeast room, leading the Planetar on a merry chase. She circled around the room and stayed just out of the Planetar's reach for round after round, drinking a Potion of Invulnerability to block a vorpal strike from a sword that only once managed to hit her in the first place (the potion still helped block Symbol Fear spells), and using a Rod of Resurrection (borrowed from Zalos to the south, which we got from Mekrath earlier on) to heal Azorre when the Planetar resorted to Fire Storm spells.
Planetars are tough cookies, but they can't move as fast as a monk with the Boots of Speed... or any hasted character, I think, with the Boots of Speed. If you stay out of reach, all you have to worry about are its spells: Symbol Fear, Fire Storm, and Unholy Word. A high-enough level character will only get deafened by Unholy Word, Symbol Fear can be blocked by Resist Fear, Remove Fear, or a Potion of Clarity, and Fire Storm can be blocked with simple fire resistance (but not magic resistance, which Fire Storm bypasses). But in the chaos of battle, it may be very difficult to keep multiple characters away from the Planetar. It would be better to keep the Planetar focused on only one decoy.
With the Planetar gone, it was safe to fight the Warden. He hit us with Power Word: Blind and Meteor Swarm, but nothing we couldn't handle. Traps and missile weapons broke down his Stoneskins and took him down.
Cookies, the Acid Kensai:
We got ambushed by Cookies on the way out of the Five Flagons. I hadn't thought about him at all. Now that we have Celestial Fury, he's going to be coming after us whenever we show up in Athkatla, until one of us is dead.
Cookies is a Tactics enemy, a Kensai(13)->Mage with saving throws below -10, immunity to elemental damage, and a special sword, Sanchuudoku, a +4 katana that grants immunity to acid, deals 2d4 acid damage on hit, and lowers acid resistance by 25% on hit, with no save. It also has an infamous Acidic Backlash ability, which will pelt a very weak acid arrow spell at attackers. Problem is, that spell can't be blocked, and it fires every single time you take any offensive action against him. Merely by attacking him, you expose yourself to acid damage, and that damage builds up. Worse yet, Cookies himself does about 40 damage per hit, and he's equipped with undroppable versions of late-game BG2 items. Basically, he's a duplicate of a Kensai/Mage Charname, but with a stupidly powerful katana.
We flee the area and set some traps in the Slums. Cookies shows up later, but the traps do almost nothing to him. He has lots of Stoneskin spells, and is immune to poison damage, and thanks to his subzero saving throws, there is no chance of him getting paralyzed by a Special Snare.
Cookies will attack Charname preferentially, but if you run away while invisible, eventually he'll stop chasing you. We lure him across many traps, making a big circle around the Slums, and eventually resort to having Gloomwort attacking him. But we take too long, and Cookies decides to leave. He always leaves the area after 6 turns if the battle isn't yet over, and will return later on to try again.
I don't know how to deal with Cookies, so I continue instead to the main questline.
Bodhi's Lair:
We keep everyone invisible but Xiaohei. Xiaohei has a pip in maces, so we give her the Improved Mace of Disruption and a scroll of Protection from Undead, and send her around Bodhi's lair to smite undead most explosively. The Clay Golem can see through Protection from Undead, so she sneaks past it.
I know from @Blackraven's runs that it's possible to cut the fight with Bodhi short by running away from her, which triggers her retreating dialogue early. I don't remember if that worked here, though, or if Xiaohei just damaged Bodhi enough to get her to leave. After clearing up the remaining Grimward Archers (the Shield of Reflection helped a lot here), we rested and left the area.
The Return of the Acid Kensai:
Cookies appears outside, right on top of Xiaohei. He hits her two or three times before she can drink a potion and slip away.
He casts Death Fog, tacking on a little more damage. It'll take a full round to escape the cloud, but Zalos had 9 HP left--she can take one hit from Death Fog and keep running.
Cookies gets stuck behind Xiaohei, so Zalos is safe from Cookies' katana. I consider ducking into the Crypt King's former hideout to heal up, but if Cookies follows us in, he might appear right on top of Zalos, and she could get chunked within a second. Instead, I have Zalos try to drink a second potion.
Right before she dies, I realize my mistake.
Cookies lowered her acid resistance with Sanchuudoku. Those strikes brought her acid resistance into the negatives, which means Death Fog does more than 8 damage to her. The Death Fog finishes her off before she can drink another potion and escape to safety.
The party we created had some very distinct vulnerabilities and very distinct powers. It had poor saving throws and almost no immunities, which left us reliable on a finite supply of potions to avoid getting disabled. Most of the time, we survived mages with disablers using stealth to avoid their spells, a habit I developed during a Nightmare mode run with a blind Kensai/Thief. We also had terrible, terrible AC. I can't stress how big of a difference that 4 AC makes. Blindness makes characters very, very squishy. It also made our front line ineffectual against low AC enemies, as our monks also suffered a -4 THAC0 penalty.
However, blindness gave us some invaluable resources. Our monks could kite enemy spellcasters mercilessly, hitting once and then escaping combat a second later, triggering prebuffs and waiting them out, or prompting a spell that would get canceled the moment the monk disappeared.
More importantly, blindness let our Bounty Hunters set their traps almost anywhere. Only when an enemy was right next to them could they not set a trap. And traps are extremely powerful, especially at level 11, when normal snares deal lingering damage for three rounds, shutting down enemy spellcasting and dealing damage through Stoneskin. Traps from a blind thief are instant-casting, uninterruptable area-effect damage spells that bypass magic resistance and spell protections. The potential for spell disruption and mass damage is incredible. Blindness doesn't come without weaknesses, but it's a powerful asset to any character with stealth, and Bounty Hunters especially benefit from it.
In this run, I will refrain from using all of the items, all of the spells, and all of the NPCs that I use most often. This includes about five spells per spell level, for both priest and mage spells, most NPCs, and one item of every item type. This means I will not use the following things:
Mage spells:
Magic Missile, Chromatic Orb, Shield, Spook, Blindness
Mirror Image, Web, Invisibility, Melf's Acid Arrow, Agannazar's Scorcher
Fireball, Skull Trap, Flame Arrow, Invisibility 10' Radius, Melf's Minute Meteors, Vampiric Touch, Slow
Stoneskin, Teleport Field, Polymorph Self, Improved Invisibility, Greater Malison
Sunfire, Spell Immunity, Breach, Hold Monster, Chaos Feeblemind
Protection from Magical Weapons, Improved Haste, Death Fog, Pierce Magic, True Seeing, Protection from Magical Energy
Project Image, Ruby Ray of Reversal, Khelben's Warding Whip, Limited Wish, Mordenkainen's Sword
Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting, Simulacrum, Maze, Power Word: Blind, Pierce Shield
Time Stop, Spellstrike, Shapechange, Wish, Black Blade of Disaster
Priest spells:
Armor of Faith, Command, Doom, Sanctuary, Remove Fear
Draw Upon Holy Might, Slow Poison, Silence, Charm Person or Mammal, Hold Person
Animate Dead, Remove Paralysis, Cure Disease, Zone of Sweet Air, Protection from Fire
Death Ward, Free Action, Call Woodland Beings, Protection from Evil 10' Radius, Holy Power
Chaotic Commands, True Seeing, Greater Command, Ironskins, Insect Plague
Wondrous Recall, Conjure Fire Elemental, Aerial Servant, Blade Barrier, Harm
Nature's Beauty, Earthquake, Holy Word, Firestorm, Gate
HLAs:
Greater Whirlwind Attack
Summon Planetar
Summon Deva
Summon Deva (paladin version)
Set Spike Trap
Improved Bard Song
Weapons:
Rifthome Axe
Jhor the Bleeder
Namarra
Arbane's Sword
Poisoned Throwing Daggers
Staff of Striking
Tuigan Bow
Arrows (nonmagical)
Heartseeker
Firetooth (crossbow)
Bolts (nonmagical)
Gnasher
Runehammer
Mace of Disruption
Flail of Ages
Belm
Celestial Fury
Spear of the Unicorn
Duskblade
Sling of Everard
Bullets (nonmagical)
Darts (nonmagical)
Equipment:
Full Plate Mail (nonmagical)
Plate Mail (nonmagical)
Splint Mail (nonmagical)
Mail of the Dead
Studded Leather (nonmagical)
The Night's Gift
Helm of Balduran
Pale Green Ioun Stone
Shield of Harmony
Buckler +1
Shield of the Lost
Tower Shield +1, +4 vs. missiles
Boots of Speed
Girdle of Bluntness
Ring of Protection +1
Amulet of Power
Robe of Vecna
Gauntlets of Weapon Skill
Bracers of Defense AC 6
Cloak of Protection +1
Other items:
Protection from Undead scroll
Rod of Resurrection
Potions of Extra Healing
These aren't all the most powerful options necessarily, but they're the ones I'm most familiar with. The idea is to figure out how to use the things I've long deemed useless. Our Charname is once against Zalos, this time a Fighter/Mage, one of the classes I almost never use.
We can't fight the Duergar as we are. The only set of armor we can wear is a single suit of Chain Mail and Leather Armor, since other nonmagical variants are my normal favorites. Instead, we have Minsc and Imoen sneak over to fight the second enemy, the Radiant Mephit.
We will enter the Otyugh room from the south so we have to fight a Mephit instead of more Duergar, who might call for help. In the process, Imoen gets blinded, which lets her use Hide With No Sight to escape.
The Otyugh itself is a trial. I try to minimize hits by running around, but all it does is get all of my fighters slowed and diseased.
The process makes healing impossible. We have to tough out the damage.
One of the critical problems with this dungeon in this run is that we can't use the many Potions of Extra Healing scattered around. Combined with the lack of strong armor, and we have very little HP to work with.
We bust out a Stinking Cloud to deal with a large group of Duergar to the north. Jaheira, with her low save vs. death, can resist the cloud, but the Duergar struggle.
I ruled out Imoen as an NPC, since I used her so often, but I'm willing to make an exception for the first dungeon. But since the other characters seldom every remain in my party outside Chateau Irenicus, they will be with us for a while.
We get the portal key and hurry to the portal before the Lesser Clay Golems can get to us. Yoshimo tries to throw a Special Snare at the Mephits in the Mephit Portal room from the north corner, but fails and gets surrounded by the Mephits. This lets the rest of the party tackle the Mephit Portals unchallenged.
Yoshimo plays a bigger role against the Escaped Clone. Her prebuffs only trigger when she turns hostile, not when she's fighting the Assassin, so she's an easy target.
We use some light summons to deal with the Salt Mephit further north.
That Mephit can stun its target on a failed save vs. breath, and it can do so multiple times, locking in a character. Notice Imoen is using the ever-popular spell, Haste. It's a strong spell, but I seldom use it because I hate fatigue, so I can use it in this run.
We move on and encounter our first major setback. We forgot to get the Wand of Fire Key, and when the Duergar in the wand room went running and we gave chase, the whole party got blasted by a Fireball trap. Jaheira didn't do so well.
We're already down a character and we have yet to rest. This will make things difficult.
After resting, Zalos prepares for the next fight, with the Lesser Clay Golems. Imoen, hidden in shadows, watches out for them.
I seldom use Ghost Armor because Shield is much cheaper and has a similar effect. Unfortunately for us, Ghost Armor isn't quite enough to keep Zalos safe.
Nevertheless, we pull through with a bit of luck. The AC does ward off some attacks.
Yoshimo sets the scene for the fight with Ilyich's goons. Imoen follows up with a disabler.
Since Zalos has neither Stoneskins nor Mirror Image thanks to our restrictions, she's quite vulnerable to enemy attacks. But a seldom-used mage spell blocks the Duergar bolts entirely, and an Improved Invisibility spell ensures she won't suffer too much from the Stinking Cloud. Unlike in vanilla, EE Improved Invsibility really does give +4 to saves.
Note that Improved Invisibility is one of my banned spells. I forgot this at the time--the list of forbidden spells wasn't exactly solid at the start of the game.
Zalos chopped up the Duergar with ease, only to encounter trouble when she engaged some of the Duergar outside the cloud in melee.
An odd thing about our restrictions is that we can't cast the cleric spell Hold Person, but we can cast the mage version.
Ilyich has excellent THAC0 and remains functional, so we still have a lot of pressure to deal with. Summons keep him busy once we move out of the way. Yoshimo tries a snare.
Notice that Minsc is using Masterwork Bolts. He can't use normal bolts due to our restrictions, so we can't use more of the ammunition we find in this dungeon.
Yoshimo's snare succeeds. Ilyich is helpless.
We move on to the Duergar Mage and get lucky. The Mage fails a save.
But the Mage's running costs us a lot. Without ammunition, we can't actually hit him while he's running. And once he stops moving, the spells come. He responds with his own Horror spell, and Imoen's attempt to knock him out with Stinking Cloud misses the mark.
Imoen is left to fight him alone. His damage spells nearly slay Minsc.
Yoshimo recovers from Stinking Cloud and helps Imoen wear down the Mage.
On the way back to the portal we get surprised by a group of Duergar that wasn't there before. We're in terrible shape, but another Horror spell (Zalos has both the innate version and the mage version) sends them running. We hunt them down individually.
More Duergar remain on the next level, guarding a Girdle of Bluntness that I would only later realize I could not use--I thought the Girdle of Piercing was my most commonly-used belt, since I remember counting on it to protect me from Trolls, but in retrospect, the Girdle of Bluntness is more common, as it comes earlier in the game and you can buy a second one later in the Temple District.
Yoshimo lays a series of traps and attempts to backstab one of the Duergar. He botches it.
The rest of the party hurries to the rescue. Another Stinking Cloud spell arrives, but does not help Yoshimo. Zalos uses Ghoul Touch for the first time, and starts disabling the enemy.
When we get close to the enemy Mage, we throw out some summons. They absorb the Mage's Horror spell.
We clear up the melee enemies before approaching the Mage. But we have a problem.
The Mage has Minor Spell Deflection active. That means we can't nail him with Power Word: Sleep. The Mage only has 16 maximum HP, so PW: Sleep actually works on him even at Uninjured. But it can't bypass MSD. Zalos can't take him down, and since she approached him first, she gets hit by Horror.
We use some of our last spells to hurry up the battle. Off-screen, Zalos is running around.
Zalos hits the Fireball trap. We still have yet to disable it.
The party is way too far away to attempt to disarm it, and we're out of healing spells. All I can do is hope that she doesn't trigger it again.
She does.
Finally, the fear effect wears off, and Zalos takes refuge in a hallway.
We get together and fix up the Fireball trap so it doesn't bother us anymore. On the way to the dryads, we spot an injured Duergar. Zalos knocks him down with PW: Sleep, but he gets right back up, so she just goes over and chops him up.
We use stealth to retrieve the djinni's flask, and get an absolutely ideal weapon for Zalos.
She already specializes in axes, since Frostreaver is a powerful weapon I seldom ever use, but this is an early prize.
I check the stats in Near Infinity. The spell strikes as a +0 magical weapon with no combat bonuses, and inflicts an 80% spell failure chance on every hit at a failed save vs. spell at -2. The spell failure applies to both priest spells and mage spells.
Most spellcasters have strong saves vs. spell, but that spell failure lasts 100 seconds, and it has a 100% chance of forcing a save every hit. It could easily take down an enemy mage or cleric early on. This is actually going to be a fantastic weapon.
The last fight in the dungeon besides Hareishan (whom I never bother with anymore) is the triple Assassin attack right before the exit. We slip Minsc and Yoshimo past the visible mage--the two other backstabbers start out hidden--and then use Imoen to tank the backstabs before sending in the far more valuable Zalos.
Imoen nearly dies, only rescued by her plot immunity. She leaves the party, forcing us to reorganize a lot of our gear before moving on.
We break out into the sunlight. The Underused Spells run has finally kicked off.
Because we have so many spells restricted from us, Jaheira has to spend her spell slots on some rather odd spell choices. It works out against Kalah, though.
We've got Yoshimo in the party, which is a little unusual for this group, but it means we have some nice options against humanoid foes.
I decide to take on Amalas, even though he's often a rather tough foe. I think I can paralyze him with Ghoul Touch, but he drinks a potion that negates the effect.
We still have plenty of spells at our disposal, and enough disablers to keep Amalas occupied while Zalos casts her spells uninterrupted.
Yoshimo and Zalos trash the hobgoblins in the sewers.
Power Word: Sleep finally sees a positive use, preventing a Kobold Shaman from healing itself after an initial attack.
We lay siege to the slaver stockade. We don't have the levels we normally do when we tackle this obstacle, or the items, but I think we can manage. Minsc holds down the enemy cleric with arrows.
Notice that Anomen is casting Holy Smite. I understand that's a popular spell for many, but I seldom ever use it (later I decide not to use it, since its uses are already well-known to me). Notice also that Jaheira is casting Pixie Dust, where normally I'd spend that spell slot on Chaotic Commands or Ironskins. This lets us escape any pressure the enemy might exert on us in the early rounds.
This choice comes with a high cost, however. Without Ironskins, Jaheira will be highly vulnerable to spell disruption for the rest of the run.
Even though Zalos is keeping off enemy arrows using Protection from Normal Missiles, Jaheira is still vulnerable to Captain Haegan and the guard who always stands next to him.
The enemy cleric comes for us again. Zalos shuts down an enchantment spell with Larloch's Minor Drain.
We really have to use every resource if we're going to survive in this run. That disruption gives Zalos enough time to get a failed save with Bala's Axe.
That cleric is no longer an issue. But the guards by now have caught on to the fact that their arrows weren't working against Zalos, and they're coming around with melee weapons to fight the rest of the party. Jaheira's low-level disablers aren't much help with the whole enemy pack focused on us.
Zalos does a lot more with her own disablers. While the enemy is temporarily broken, we take the time to heal ourselves.
Polymorph Other has the peculiar effect of lasting only 1 second for reasons I don't understand, but it still reduces the target's HP to 5. An interesting thing to note is that this applies even if the enemy is immune to polymorph, as the HP change does not rely on the polymorph opcode. Polymorph Other works using the Create Weapon opcode in EE, so it's effectively a Harm spell with a save vs. polymorph instead of an attack roll. Zalos uses it against the enemy with the highest health, then slays him with a single hit.
We clean up the remaining enemies, rest, and proceed to the next part of the level. Yoshimo wreaks havoc with a Special Snare.
An interesting fact about Ghoul Touch is that it deals fist damage. This means it can't finish off opponents; it can only knock them out.
Another character finishes off the mage instead.
There's still one mage left, and Minsc fails a save against Chromatic Orb. That spell is precisely why I made sure Zalos entered with MGOI. Ghoul Touch wears off, so Zalos switches to Bala's Axe. The mage fails a save and becomes a non-issue.
Jaheira has Flame Blade to deal damage through any Stoneskins the enemy might possess. With both mages neutralized, the remaining enemies are no threat to us. Once we're done, we move on to fight the Copper Coronet Guards.
Against other enemies, Zalos has another excellent option. Ghoul Touch paralyzes the target for 5 rounds on a failed save vs. spell (not a save vs. death, as the description states), which lets her take out problematic fighter types.
The slaver questline is soon complete. We sell off the Tuigan Bow I hold so dear and move on to the Suna Seni ambush. Pixie Dust lets us enter the fight invisible and therefore set up buffs before the fight, as well as toss out a crippling Special Snare from Yoshimo.
Zalos hits Eldarin with Cone of Cold, freezing him and costing us his equipment. I thought this might happen, but deemed it to be worth the risk. Zalos takes on Suna Seni single-handedly.
With Suna Seni gone, Yoshimo is no longer in range of any of the enemies, letting him throw a second Special Snare onto the field and slay the enemy mage, who was paralyzed by the previous snare but invisible due to her pre-buffs. Zalos switches to Ghoul Touch for the final enemy, who unlike Suna Seni has no immunities to the attack.
The Renfeld ambush is next, a much easier fight. Zalos once again proves devastating against enemy spellcasters, using Bala's Axe against the mage and disrupting the cleric with Larloch's Minor Drain.
Yoshimo backs up far enough to throw out a Special Snare, holding down the cleric and letting us focus on the enemy backstabber.
We run into the cleric of Cyric in the Docks on the way to Rylock. He paralyzes most of the party, including Zalos, but Yoshimo rushes to our defense.
After handing over Renfeld to Rylock, we get a surprise visitor thanks to the minor gold reward we got from Rylock.
When you can't equip your favorite items, you end up selling a lot of stuff, and that gold builds up fast. We're already past the 15,000 gold mark.
Most Valuable Spell: Horror
Most Valuable Item: Bala's Axe
MVP: Zalos. She can take down a whole pack of fighters with Horror and Ghoul Touch, and neutralize spellcasters within seconds using Bala's Axe.
Palla, Gnome Illusionist/Thief
has just saved the Sword Coast.
It seems we forgot to take a screenshot of the character record, or maybe inadvertently overwrote it. Here are the character record and the inventory screen at end of the game, when Palla was facing Sarevok.
Her initial stats were 16-18-17-16-14-12, a great total but not min-maxed. A male Gnome Illusionist/Thief I had rolled before (and referenced in my penultimate post), did have min-maxed stats. I found his 18 Strength unrealistic, so that's how Palla came to life. Her starting weapon profs were Staves and Short Bows, her spells Blindness, Find Familiar, and Shield.
I almost got myself killed early on, shortly after Gorion's death, in a skeleton ambush. Gorion had taught me the Find Familiar spell, and I had even memorized it for our trip, but I'd neglected to cast it. (Typical, Blackraven. Palla got away with one HP.)
There weren't many incidents. In Mutamin's garden the evil Basilisk tamer surprised me when he left the statues where I had scouted him earlier, to greet me with a Remove Magic and with a Basilisk in sight.
When my rapport with the small folk of the Sword Coast had reached a peak and I had a couple o' thousand gold to spend, I bought most of Thalantyr's scrolls, but messed up with copying all level 3 spells into my spellbook (at 23 Int), except Flame Arrow and Hold Person. It would make me use the former spell a lot, and quite effectively so, for example against a woman named Sendai and her fellow brigands, and against the mad priest Bassilus.
I made a tour of the Sword Coast, cherry-picking my way through its different regions. E.g. my only feat at the Firewine Ruins was beating a ruffian named Meilum. Equipped with the Robe of the Good Archmagi, enchanted gauntlets (weapon expertise, archery), the Cloak of Displacement, Aule's Staff, Boots of Stealth, Girdle of Piercing, Red Ioun Stone and a composite shortbow, and close to the BG1 XP cap, I started to investigate the iron crisis and the bandit plague.
In the Nashkel Mines I felled not a single Kobold, but their master Mulahey I held with the wand of paralyzation and I dispatched him before he could call forth any minions, thus solving the iron crisis. I paralyzed and slew Nimbul as well, but finished Tranzig with my spells. Those two men, I would learn not much later, were members of the organization behind the iron crisis and the bandits, the Iron Throne. Through the latter's documents I located the Bandit Camp, where I used the wand of fire (while protected from fire myself) in bandit leader Tazok's tent. I did their mage Venkt in with arrows and the others that survived the fire I finished with arrows and spells.
In the Cloakwood, where the Iron Throne had a hidden base of operations, a mine, I dealt with a hunting party led by one Aldeth and with many Spiders. It yielded me several enchanted weapons and items that I would sell. My backstabs weren't generally devastating but a critical one sufficed to take out an evil wizard named Kysus who stood guarding the Iron Throne base with three companions.
Two potions of magic protection supplemented with fire protection kept me safe in the lair of Davaeorn, the master of the mine. I defeated the wizard's Battle Horrors with my wand of frost and the guards with wand-fireballs, before I assaulted Davaeorn with acid arrows and wand-scorchers.
There, Ramazith was one of my first targets. Not only did his home hold a tome that would boost my Int to 17, Ramazith also had a ring and a necklace that I coveted. I accepted to work for him but also covertly placed two snares in his home. When I returned from freeing the Nymph he had requested me to procure, I attacked and Ramazith. My traps finished the wizard.
I then bought a big stack of spell scrolls at the Sorcerous Sundries plus a few from the Ulgoth's Beard inn, and with potions of genius and mind focusing boosted my Int. It seems that the 100% spell learning rate at 24 or 25 Int also applies to specialist mages even though they incur a 15% penalty for scribing scrolls from schools that aren't theirs. Palla successfully copied all the spells into her book.
I had Ulgoth's Beard benefactor Shandalar send me off to an ice island to fetch a cloak for him. Two potions of magic protection allowed me to slay the wizards Andris and later, when Andris turned out not to own a Stoneskin scroll, Dezkiel.
At the Iron Throne HQ I killed several guards, including the wizards Alai and Naaman. The former dropped a very nice Minor Sequencer scroll. I scribed it together with the Stoneskin, Feeblemind, Fireshield, and a Remove Magic into my spellbook.
The Flaming Fist gave me a book to enter Candlekeep, where the Iron Throne leadership were staying on business. I got arrested for purportedly killing the Iron Throne leaders, but good ol' Tethtoril bailed me out. I returned to Baldur's Gate where the assassin Slythe had nothing on me thanks to my Stoneskins and Mirror Images and a potion of defense.
Later, when the quest is done, Jaheira leaves the party after seeing a friend of hers.
She comes back later, starting Jaheira's questline.
This questline is rather difficult, as it throws several tough enemy encounters at you. The first one at the Harper Hold itself, though, nets you a Ring of Wizardry. But first, we have to beat it, and that's not easy with our group. Yoshimo begins with a Special Snare before the enemy goes hostile. We only disable one enemy, a heavy hitter with a katana.
Pre-buffs go up. The enemy targets Yoshimo, as he's the only visible target around (we arrived under Pixie Dust), and he has to down a potion before he dies.
Yoshimo struggles to capitalize on his disabling Kail. But he just can't make it happen. She has too much HP.
He slips away. I've been leaving the rest of the party alone this whole time, so when an enemy mage starts casting a divination spell, I panic.
Minsc attempts to stop the spell with an Acid Arrow. This, too, is a failure.
Unbuffed and out in the open, we're forced to fight. We go after Kail, who has the most damage output. This, too, is a failure. Kail still has too much HP, and she knows enough to attack the party member with the worst AC.
We struggle along, but we can't make much headway. It takes too long to kill Kail. Jaheira has to drink a Potion of Invisibility to escape. Then Zalos has to do the same, despite having drunk a Potion of Invulnerability to help her AC. Finally, Anomen has to escape as well, even after Kail finally goes down.
But by removing so many party members from the fight, it concentrates pressure on the remaining party members. Minsc can't keep up.
We heal and buff up in a separate room, and Zalos runs out to chunk Galvarey. From there, we chase down the enemy thief, an easy target.
We're doing quite well. Then one of the enemy mages catches us by surprise.
We switch gears and go after the mage, but he slips away right before we finish him off.
Instead, we go for Bessen, the other mage. Bessen has no spell protections left, leaving him vulnerable to a Poison spell from Jaheira.
Nadinal returns, nearly killing an already wounded Anomen.
But Nadinal has no Stoneskins left. He is defenseless, and Bessen is still struggling with poison.
Before Bessen has a chance to recover, we mob him. Zalos' summons, conjured earlier as a distraction, hasten his demise.
Some of the most entertaining fights I've ever had have been the ones that nearly kill me. They're also the most painful. I like fighting stronger parties at a disadvantage, and making the most of limited resources.
Findings:
Using an escape option on a single character may help them survive, but it also exposes the rest of the party to a lot more danger.
I assume this is a bug, but I prefer to roll with bugs if possible. I try to disable her, but I misjudge the distances when I'm trying to hurl a Special Snare at her.
Then things get a whole lot worse.
Those guys pop up a lot, and it always bothers me that you can't wander around outside the keep without getting hassled.
I run back across the map, and to my surprise, the De'Arnise guards attack Reviane's group, though their THAC0 is terrible and they don't help much. We struggle to bring down the Spirit Trolls that have been following us.
We get overwhelmed. I decide to grant myself a reload--Reviane shouldn't be able to see through invisibility.
Then I check the files. Turns out it's not a scripting error. Reviane really does have the ability to see through invisibility; it's attached to her .cre file.
My reload was unjustified. I implement my normal solution for problems like this: I reload and do what I would have done had I known at the time that Reviane's attacking us was supposed to happen. This means I don't pre-buff before the fight, since I didn't do so the first time. But since I don't have any real hope of winning this fight without said pre-buffs, I decide to flee the area, escaping the fight entirely.
We return to Athkatla and try our luck against Rayic Gethras. His save vs. death is poor, allowing us to disable and damage him on the first round. Yoshimo's traps bump him off.
Normally I only do the Mae'Var quest early because I prefer to side with Bodhi, which cuts off this questline. But in this case, the primary benefit is that we get Edwin in the party. I started this run in order to use a broader variety of spells, and Edwin will make that a lot easier.
For the fight with Mae'Var, we send out some minor summons to hassle him, and set up a Grease barrier to hold off any who come looking for us. Eventually, they track us down, albeit in a slightly weakened state. Mae'Var is much higher level than we are, so he has some pretty nasty options at his disposal.
Luckily, we didn't rely on the Grease barrier alone to keep us safe. Yoshimo has been seeding the area with traps for several rounds, and Mae'Var's spells won't help him against the poison damage of Yoshimo's standard traps.
We try to split our attention between Mae'Var and the Priest of Cyric, but manage to fully disable neither. Our low pressure on the cleric was a mistake. He disables a third of our party. Meanwhile, Anomen soaks up damage until he has to drink a Potion of Invisibility on his last hit point.
Anomen flees, heals himself, and follows up with Chant, which does not break invisibility in BG2:EE. Meanwhile, Zalos finally shuts down the cleric. Mae'Var fails his own save vs. spell soon after.
All that happened within a single round. Bala's Axe can change things really quickly... but it can take time before that happens.
PW: Sleep brings down the cleric.
When Mae'Var's MGOI wears off, we use Horror. Mae'Var fails his save, we hunt him down, and cast Pixie Dust before slipping out of the guild, to avoid the backstabbers upstairs.
Jaheira finally hits druid level 11, granting us access to Fire Seeds. These can be made permanent by dropping them on the ground, so I cheat in a whole bunch of Fire Seeds for convenience's sake and pass them around. Everyone can use them, and when the party does so in concert, the damage can be overwhelming. They're fantastic against Trolls.
But Giant Trolls are quite tough, so I use stealth for the Troll Mound.
I normally don't bother with Shadow Door, but since Invisibility, Invisibility 10' Radius, and Improved Invisibility are all standard spells for me, it's the only invisibility spell Zalos can cast.
We firebomb the fight before Kyland Lind. It's over pretty quickly.
Kyland Lind is no more difficult. Yoshimo disables the druids and we torch them with Fire Seeds.
We have trouble with the Myconids. Zalos got her save vs. spell down to 1 using Shadow Door, but she still failed a save against the Myconids' confusion. She turned on us, and shut down Edwin's spellcasting in the process.
Zalos gets confused again when fighting the other Myconids, so we use the Ring of Air Control to hide Cernd, lest she attack him in her confusion.
Apparently spell failure can influence healing spells cast on rest, much like spell protections.
Dalok is no harder than Kyland Lind. Yoshimo traps him and the poor druid goes up in flames.
Back at Trademeet, after reporting our success and selling off the Shield of Harmony we can't use, we use the Nymph Cloak to save the poor philosopher in the market.
Next, the Temple Ruins. Anomen is now high enough level to explode Shadows.
He's not so good with Shadow Fiends, however, so Jaheira has to rescue him and Edwin when they get paralyzed.
Time to fight the Shade Lord.
For reasons I can't understand, Shadow Patrick slays Edwin in one hit, at full health.
A Shadow appears over Edwin's body. Anomen chunks it.
Our summons run out, so I send Anomen up north to distract the Shade Lord, with a Negative Plane Protection spell to thwart his Darkling Aura.
The Shade Lord doesn't take the bait. He goes after Minsc instead.
A Potion of Invulnerability keeps him alive.
Shadow Patrick falls to our Efreeti. The Shade Lord cuts Anomen's HP in half and shields himself from direct attacks.
He's barely damaged at all. Zalos uses the Wand of Fire on him, hoping to start a scorcher loop. It doesn't deal much damage, but we do bring down the Shade Lord's spell turning effect.
The Shade Lord chases us, draining our levels before we have a chance to buff with NPP. Zalos keeps using the Wand of Fire, tacking on the damage.
It's an arduous process, as his MR protects him, but finally we bring him down.
So much happened since my last update, I have so many stories to tell. I was so into the game that I only wanted to continue my run but now that I nearly lost my party, I feel the need to write what happened. It will also contain spoilers about Dorn and Hexxat's quests, beware!
First, the Shade Lord, I really overestimated it quite a bit. After buffing my party a lot I rushed in, destroyed the Shadow Altar and the Shadows while Edwin was busy dispelling the Shade Lord spell protections before casting a Breach spell. Then it fell really fast. Overall I was a bit disapointed, everyone was dead in 3 or 4 rounds and they didn't hit or cast once.
Then I came all the way back to the Minister Lloyd to get my money, I'm a bad guy afterall.
In Athkatla I was ambushed once again by the guards and the Cowled Wizards, but I passed through them, invisible thanks to Invisibility 10 Radius. I'll deal with them later on and many more.
From now on I'm following Dorn's quest, which require to kill some people of course.
Telwyn is alone and weak, his death triggers the hostility of every Shield Knights around. I cut them down to escape from the city once again.
Then we head to the Helmite camp.
On the way back, we are attacked by a bunch of priests and templars who wanted to avenge their comrades.
They joined them soon enough.
Then we deal with the next part of the quest which involves killing either Dorn's patron, or its rival.
We chose to kill the rival for better rewards but a bug occured and prevented me to resurrect the druid to sacrifice him again. So we need to kill a party member.
I'm stuck, until I think of something very, very evil ...
Good bye Nalia, I took your castle, then I took your life.
The fight afterward was straightforward.
Back to Athkatla, the guards try to arrest us once again. This time we aren't going to flee.
This city is now our city.
After his quest, we are now doing Hexxat's one.
There are traps everywhere and the difficulty is higher than it was in Dorn's quest.
Soon we are ambushed by Mind Flayers and an Alhoon who are teleporting behind us. To be honest, this is my first time ever dealing with Mind Flayers with a full party. I'm that much inexperienced with BG2, as I only completed the game once with a solo F/M/T without any mods.
Hopefully the fight goes well without casualties. The Alhoon can be poisoned so it fell easily to Dorn and Anselm ranged attacks.
During the rest of the quest, we kill a bunch of undeads which is a simple task considering we have two Blackguards and a Berserker for the immunities, so I won't describe the others encounters.
We have trouble with Samia. Edwin dies in two hits thanks to Ferric Ironblade.
Yoshimo follows soon after. He got cornered by Legdoril, who had a Slay Living spell on hand.
We hold down the enemy's spells with Fire Seeds, but due to miscalculation on our part, we also rob Jaheira of her spellcasting.
We bring in the Efreeti, our best summons. Its best spell falls flat.
SCS gives potions to all sorts of enemies, and they tend to drink the best potions first. Hence the magic resistance.
Kaol debuffs us with one spell. We're in trouble now.
We shift Jaheira to the back and have her start casting Pixie Dust. Zalos takes the Golem Manual from Edwin's body and brings out the Flesh Golem as a further barrier to disrupting Jaheira's spell. It succeeds!
Notice that Anomen and Minsc both have +3 maces. This is a convenience cheat to reflect Edwin's Enchanted Weapon spell. Kaol has an enchantment spell on the way, so Zalos is drink a Potion of Invulnerability to try and stave it off.
Our Efreeti collapses, but our invisibility lets us heal and re-buff ourselves. Anomen has Mass Cure specifically for this purpose--it does not break invisibility.
Once we're ready, we start hurling Fire Seeds. Zalos begins casting Cone of Cold.
The enemy comes for us. Zalos, with her stupendous AC, can weather the pressure with ease. But Anomen and Minsc are not so well defended, and they suffer badly.
Finally, we get a breakthrough. Samia goes down, and Legdoril fails a save.
Minsc tries to flee through the maze to seek safety, but Kaol follows after.
The enemy is falling apart, but so are we. Jaheira finds safety to heal herself, while Zalos hits Kaol with Polymorph Self. He fails his save.
Jaheira gets healed, but Anomen is still disabled by Chaos and has a Skeleton Warrior on him and is nearly dead. Kaol fails a save against Bala's Axe.
Anomen falls to the Skeleton Warrior, but Kaol is finished.
Jaheira has Harper's Call and can raise the whole group without us having to run to a local temple. We continue.
Back at Athkatla, we finally go get Pai'Na. Bala's Axe works its magic. But one strike from the axe still lets 20% of all spells get through.
Fire Seeds torch the spiders and the nymph. Kitty is ours. We also find a nice random drop on one of the undead down south.
I barely ever get that spell before ToB.
Turns out SCS made Nevaziah, the guardian of the Nether Scroll, a lot tougher than he normally is. When we see his prebuffs, we start running.
Turns out SCS actually gave Nevaziah HLAs. Edwin is about to die.
A Potion of Fire Resistance bails him out, but he's still in trouble.
We escape a newly-created Sphere of Chaos and Edwin throws some cheap summons in Nevaziah's way.
Nevaziah chases us along, and another Sphere of Chaos spell comes out. Zalos gets lucky.
A failed save could have been fatal.
Nevaziah is slow, being a lich, but there's only so much space for us to flee unless we're willing to escape the area. His Minute Meteors put a stop to Edwin's summoning.
Edwin retreats and tries to bring out some spiders. Nevaziah nukes him.
Amazingly, Edwin survives, and so does his spider.
We move Edwin aside so Jaheira can heal him up. Our Efreeti enters the stage. The rest of the party stays out of the way, waiting out Nevaziah's PFMW spell.
After a moment, we test Nevaziah's defenses. PFMW is still active. To the north, Edwin gets healed and brings some more fodder to the table. Meanwhile, the lich is debuffing Zalos.
It takes ages before we can hit the lich, and even then, he's immune to the damage. Nevertheless, most of his spells are getting disrupted.
But spell disruption doesn't work very well against sequencers.
Half our party loses half of their HP, but nobody dies. Finally, we break through Nevaziah's Stoneskins, and then he fails a save against Bala's Axe. The battle is won.
Since both Edwin and Zalos had spell protections active (deflection and reflection, respectively) when we rested after the battle, no spells were cast on healing, so the rest period was quite long.
We earned a break.
We accept to clean the Windspear Hills, we start by a few Werewolves who dropped some very nice (or lucky) scrolls, lile Simulacrum and Mislead.
We struggle a bit versus Ruhk Transmuter, his Fireball took us by surprise, disrupting our Invisibility 10 Radius spell, then he followed by a few Cloudkills and some Vampiric Wraiths joined the fight.
We cleared the dungeon, dealing with undeads, adventurers, werewolves, golems and a Beholder.
I really hate them, and fear them at the same time. I really really hate Beholders, so I send a commando of 5 Skeletons Warriors fully buffed to deal with him while I hid my entire party elsewhere.
Sometimes a big Iron Golem blocks the path and the others smaller golems can't reach, it's funny and handy so I don't mind.
I also dispatched Tazok, but forgot to pick up the Sewers Key, so I had to came back later ...
Of course I'm not dealing with Firkraag, yet ...
Back in Athkatla, Degardan wanted to kill Edwina after transforming him back to Edwin.
Then I tried to do the Unseeing Eye quest, but the High Watcher Oisig bugued and became hostile after his initial talk. So I had to cluaconsole him in the sewers to open the door, before killing him again.
In the dungeon, we faced the Shade Lich. I used the door to bait his Fallen Planetar and his prebuffs, plus two Skeletons Warriors to also bait a few others spells.
Finally, the Fallen Planetar dissapeared, I send Hexxat to check if the Lich is doing okay.
Looks like it is. As soon as I opened the door, it greeted me with a Dragon's Breath.
Hopefully I foresaw it, and gave Hexxat a Potion of Fire Resistance, she drank it just before the impact.
Finally, I lure the beast in the sewers, where it fell by my poisoned Flail of Ages.
Beneath, we encountered a group of Beholders and Gaunts. I send them a present, 5 Skeletons Warriors + Korgan fully buffed, invisible and equiped with the Shield of Balduran while the rest of my party is far away.
Did I mention I hate them ?
We pretty much cleared the whole area with this strategy. I took no risks here.
Soon, the Unseeing eye fell before us.
Then we headed back to the cult and destroyed it, finally I consoled Oisig one last time to complete the quest, before killing him for the third time (poor Oisig)!
While I'm still in the sewers, I wanted to do the Mind Flayers area (I learn of its existence today! It is very thrilling.) So I went back to loot the key on Tazok's corpse before returning to Athkatla.
But things didn't go as expected, I lost both Dorn and Viconia to the squids. Their ability to teleport at will make them very dangerous foes as they can close the distance between them and my weakest party members.
I decided to not try the further rooms as I read on the internet that the last one is pretty hard. Considering I lost two characters, I decided to go for Hexxat's quest instead.
On my path, I crossed Jan Jensen and defied the law once again.
With little else to do, we decide to get back to work on the main quest. We head for the Shadow Thief headquarters to crack some skulls. We sneak past the enemies on the first level, since the mages there cast Sphere of Chaos, and clean up the southern and western halves of the dungeon. We leave from a shortcut and rest where we are.
Bad news.
It's the next ambush in Jaheira's questline. We're stuck on a narrow platform and the enemy is blocking the only exit. We can't go back in the way we came.
We're unbuffed, cornered, and outside in Athkatla without a magic license. Neither Zalos nor Edwin can use their mage spells--not even one, because we already triggered a warning once from using Vhailor's Helm.
We go invisible using Pixie Dust. But we're still trapped.
And soon, our invisibility is dispelled, and the party disabled by Confusion.
Zalos slips into the corner to drink a potion and boost her AC and saves. Edwin and Anomen try to keep the enemy occupied with summons, but we haven't got very many.
We can't keep them off. Kitty vanishes to a Death Spell, and with Emotion and Chaos added to the mix, our entire party is disabled.
Yoshimo recovers from Confusion; he was the only one who made saves against both Chaos and Emotion. Chrost has a spell on the way. Yoshimo isn't close enough to land a melee hit, and his arrows would just bounce off of Physical Mirror.
The answer? A Wand of Magic Missiles.
It's a tiny victory amidst a series of setbacks. An Aerial Servant arrives and starts tearing apart our Flesh Golem. Aerial Servants only have 1 APR, but they do huge damage, and Flesh Golems have 9 AC.
The party recovers from Chaos. Only Jaheira and Edwin remain incapacitated, thanks to Emotion. Anomen pulls us up with Mass Cure. Zalos rushes to the fore, providing cover for the rest of the party, and when she gets badly hurt as a result, Anomen once again pulls her back up.
We finally break through the enemies harassing us. Only the enemy mage remains, who ended up away from the fray.
He's just far enough out of sight that Yoshimo can disable him with a Special Snare.
Invisibility Purge reveals the mage, who is now helpless for the next several rounds. The mage goes down.
Haz doesn't come up with a Mantle spell, so Zalos rushes in to hit him with Bala's Axe. A Sphere of Chaos spell appears to my surprise. Jaheira gets disabled, but Zalos is protected by Shadow Door and its massive save boost.
Haz fails his save! His spellcasting is shot.
I'm not quite willing to trust Zalos' saves, so I bring her out of the Sphere of Chaos rather than try to break through Haz' Stoneskins. We bring in a simulacrum to help out.
Jaheira is low on HP because she failed a save against the polymorph effect of Sphere of Chaos. Despite being confused out of her mind and nearly dead, she still kills our own summons with ease.
Only when she tries to mess with Haz does she finally fall.
The rest of the party focuses on Haz' allies, but Haz himself still has some sequencers to pull on us. As with Nevaziah, the sequencers aren't affected by spell failure, as they fire as innate spells.
Since I've got nothing else to do, I have Anomen raise Jaheira, just in case Haz gets a resurgence and we need her. She slips on the Ring of Air Control and turns herself invisible so she can cast Heal on herself later, in safety.
When Haz' spell protections go down, we can hit him with single-target spells. Anomen poisons him.
Jaheira finishes casting Heal and we surround Haz. With his buffs gone, the Sphere of Chaos dispersed, his spells at 80% spell failure, and a poison effect active, there's nothing else he can do.
Their prebuffs fire but the mage has no cure for the poison. She falls as Aran Linvail advances on us.
Our Berserk Warrior doesn't bother Aran Linvail, nor do our Horror or Cloak of Fear spells affect him. Even though we make little progress on harming him, while his Slow spell made a big impact on us, he still slips away instead of pressing his advantage.
Midway through the fight, I realize Jaheira is not wearing her armor.
It was a product of raising her. I couldn't put on her armor during the fight with Haz, and forgot to do so afterwards.
Aran Linvail backstabs Anomen and takes advantage of his lowered HP to disable him. No saving throw will stop this.
He finishes off Anomen during the stun. An Aerial Servant from the priest of Cyric offscreen joins the fight. Jaheira's AC is terrible, so I move the party away for her safety.
We slay the Aerial Servant while Aran Linvail is busy fussing with Edwin. When I bring Edwin and Yoshimo over to keep the party together, Aran Linvail takes advantage of our proximity to hit the party with Chain Lightning. I move some people away to minimize the damage.
It made little difference. Chain Lightning seldom does very much damage.
We catch Aran trying to charm Minsc with Domination. Minsc equips the Helm of Charm Protection to block it.
Our Fire Seeds aren't having much impact. Aran Linvail lands a critical hit on Yoshimo, and renews his defenses.
But now his Fire Shield is gone. Zalos can safely attack him in melee with Bala's Axe. Aran Linvail fails the saving throw--twice.
Spell failure stacks. Aran Linvail has a 100% chance of miscasting any spell for the next 15 rounds.
Not that it makes much of a difference this late in the battle. He's already low on spells and his Stoneskins are nearly gone. Jaheira brains him with Blackblood.
Lore has it that Aran Linvail is just a figurehead, and the real leaders of the Shadow Thieves are much better hidden. So we didn't really accomplish much of anything.
Whatever. A quest is a quest. And now we finally have the Amulet of Power! Too bad we're not allowed to equip it. We do still get to wear the Ring of Protection +2, though.
We begin very aggressive. The clerics both start out with Physical Mirror, so most missile attacks are useless against them. We focus on melee instead.
But SCS enemies are great at targeting, and they know Edwin has poor AC and no Stoneskins or Mirror Images. They nearly kill him, forcing our little Red Wizard to flee to the south and make himself scarce. Jaheira has the same problem, but since she can turn invisible via an item rather than a spell, she can vanish in the middle of the fight without risk of disruption.
Anomen and Minsc have both failed saves against Greater Command, but since critters wake up on hit during sleep in BG2:EE, the enemy doesn't mess with them. Zalos gets lucky with Bala's Axe. An early failed save.
We've got a lot of enemies to deal with, but Yoshimo puts a stop to the summoning with a well-timed backstab.
Impatient to get back Anomen and Minsc back in the fight, I toss a Fire Seed at them. Since they're unconscious, the hit is guaranteed, and since the Fire Seed does area-effect damage, I can wake both of them up with one attack roll.
Yoshimo gets blasted by Slay Living, but he makes his save.
Notice the large group of animals around Zalos. I want them gone as soon as possible, so I send Yoshimo away to hide, and have Edwin distract the enemy fighters with some summons of his own. Yoshimo hurries in for a tremendous backstab on a Panther.
As usual, our Potions of Healing aren't enough to keep us healthy, as they only heal 9 HP apiece, so I have Anomen use Mass Cure again. It's a terribly useful rescue spell.
With our party back in order, we descend upon the Statues. Then I see a troubling message.
That's one of the best HLAs out there, though it receives little attention. Power Attack lasts 2 rounds and stuns the target on a failed save vs. death at -4 every hit for 2 rounds. Magic resistance and spell protections are no defense against Power Attack.
Only Zalos' AC and saving throws can protect her from the Statue's next attack. And they do not.
The run could be over in a few seconds. We need to do everything we can to keep Zalos safe from that Statue. Everyone plays a role.
We have a Berserk Warrior to distract the Statue, Edwin casting Polymorph Other to bring it to Near Death, Yoshimo and Minsc using Darts of Stunning to disable the Statue, Anomen casting Mental Domination to control the statue, and Jaheira casting Pixie Dust to hide Zalos.
All attempts to subdue the Statue fail. Only Jaheira manages to save Zalos.
Anomen casts Mass Cure once more and we bring out some new summons to hold off the Statues.
Summons are badass. They can weather as many as one whole attack apiece before collapsing.
It's a slow process and we get beaten up a lot, but we manage to bring down the Statues. Yoshimo lands the final blow.
Kudos, Yoshi.
Edwin has just hit mage level 12. Now we can cast Death Spell, and slay Trolls without fighting. We return to the De'Arnise Hold. Apparently the Harpers are still here.
We turn invisible and rest before heading west to find Reviane awaiting us.
Zalos' AC is no better, but now that we've gained some levels and some items, our damage output is enough to overcome Reviane. We swarm her.
The other Harpers are further west. One of them comes with lots of mage buffs, but they don't last. We've just gotten too strong for this group.
Kitty gets cranky and tries to munch on one of the local guards. Edwin subdues her before she can turn anyone hostile.
Back inside the De'Arnise Hold, Edwin tries out the Death Spell. It works marvelously.
Even Spirit Trolls fall to the Death Spell. Hit level 12 as a mage, and even the worst Trolls around are helpless. Unless you're an illusionist, of course.
Glaicas has a shiny suit of full plate mail I'd like to pawn off. First, we knife one of his buddies, a halfling thief with a dirty mouth.
Glaicas comes bolstered by a cleric and a mage. We flood the air with Fire Seeds, shutting down our spellcasting as well as the enemy's. Once again, Jaheira is frustrated by our interference.
Glaicas dies to a friendly trap, costing us some XP. Edwin, flush with spells, disables the cleric with one of my least favorite spells.
I normally never bother, because I always figure that Chaos is a better bet, even though they occupy different spell levels and don't conflict with each other.
The cleric dies a moment later anyway. The Efreeti manages to disrupt one of the mage's spells despite the mage's spell protections and Stoneskin.
Fire Shields can trigger each other, but normally don't do so indefinitely. Mod-created items with similar backlash effects, like Sanchuudoku, can more reliably trigger each other. The feedback loop can kill one or both targets within seconds, or paralyze them with damage animations. In a previous run, I managed to kill Cookies with a sleeping character, because she had an Item Revisions version of Yamato that included its own backlash spell.
As with the previous run, the enemy mage confuses us right before dying, and we suffer a lot of damage in the interim--in this case, because we were bashing each other's faces in.
We finally get around to fighting the Yuan-ti Mage. Fire Seeds disrupt all of his spells.
No challenge there. And Death Spell brings down all of the Umber Hulks as well.
Time for TorGal. Only 150 screenshots left before we're caught up on the party's progress.
@semiticgod , it's especially not easy to write about things which happened "days and weeks ago". Nice to see new spells in your playthrough. "For every Web there's Stinking Cloud".
@Blackraven Congrats once again! Am I right in understanding your fiancee participates in your run, at least from a stalking point of view? Also, wands and wands. They help a lot, don't they?
@Gotural It's always right to take a no-risk path, even with insanely powerful Blackguards in the party
I was wondering if I could take down the first level of Watcher's Keep and boom, he posted a report about it, how he dealt with their HLAs and so forth which is going to be tremendously useful.
It is also nice to see that sometime he struggles during a fight that I thinked was easy and sometimes it is the opposite, the Shadow Thief Guildhall is a good example as I nearly lost my run there and drained a lot of my ressources.
We started with Hexxat's quest.
I saw they had no spell protections on, so I ordered Edwin to use Power Word : Stun but it went very badly.
She finished her Time Stop just before Edwin's cast, and she casted Spell Turning during the Time Stop, which means that as soon as the Time Stop ends, Edwin will stun himself with his own Power Word : Stun as I won't have the time to tell him to stop. It was such a great play from the IA, I was really pleased by SCS.
Another Time Stop, by the second spellcaster who casts the same spell than the first one.
Hexxat get blasted away, and Korgan suffers greatly.
We managed to hold them, thanks to Korgan, until their protections wear off. It took some time though, because of their Chain Contingency. But at some point, Anselm poisoned them and soon after they fell.
Many traps here, as expected from a Thief quest. Some riddles too but nothing too difficult even with my poor english.
There is another big fight with 3 spellcasters but I send 5 Skeletons Warriors to get rid of them, not very interesting.
When we come back to Athkatla, we are attacked by some far more dangerous foes than usual. It is a party composed of high level Fighters, Paladins and Mages. And they are not here to take a joke.
We retreated to the southwest corner to buff a bit while Korgan held Sir Jolus.
Then we came back to finish the job, using our spells at disposal.
Just before killing the last knight, the Mage summoned a Planetar then escaped.
The Planetar was still very strong for us, so we tried to split the group and Hexxat died again.
We wait in the inn for Hexxat to reappear, then as soon as we left, we are ambushed by another group of guards. A double group this time. Hopefully Death Spell made short work of the majority of them.
Then we went to the Planar Sphere, a dangerous place at least.
The first rooms are easily cleared, until we faced Tolgerias of course.
He casted a combination of Improved Alacrity, Fallen Planetar, Time Stop, Dragon's Breath, and so forth.
Hopefully Dorn was hasted so he managed to escape the area of effect of the Dragon's Breath.
But Tolgerias casted a Remove Magic in his direction, so he drank an Oil of Speed just after the dispell to continue to kite the Fallen Planetar.
During this time, the Fallen Planetar used two Firestorms so we had to run around like mad.
Korgan get blinded, and Dorn was killed by the vorpal sword. But Tolgerias wasn't protected anymore.
Anselm rushed in and poisoned him to death.
Afterward, we fought Lavok.
I scattered my party a bit, to avoid AoE spells as much as possible.
Soon enough, he unleashed his Time Stop.
And as usual, a Fallen Planetar was chasing us.
This time, I decided to confront her directly and send Anselm to deal with her (he has a save vs death below -2 so 'normally' he cannot die).
He killed her rather fast, then Lavok fell aswell.
After finishing the Planar Sphere, we are attacked by the high level group again and again. Now I confront the Planetar everytime, Anselm can take her out safely and she is worth 20,000 XP which is strange for a summon. Still the Planetar is a lot stronger than her Fallen counterpart because she can instantly cast the Heal spell at least 3 times. So I need to take her down 4 times to kill her which is draining.
In this part I have something exciting to show you. I took down Firkraag! It also could have been my last update, I was close to losing in the Shadow Thief Guildhall.
I went back to his lair, drank every Potions of Fire Resistance I had, and used every Protection from Fire scrolls at my disposal.
I also used tons of Potions of Heroism, and every buffs I could think about. Dragons have very low AC and you need an excellent THAC0 to hit them reliably.
Then I casted Doom + Greater Malison and finished the job with a Chaos spell while my party was pelting him down with poisoned arrows and bolts.
Luckily, his heavily powerful breath didn't kill my initial summons.
In the end, I wasted every scrolls and potions I had because nobody in my party was hit by the Dragon's Breath, but it was well worth it. It's better to waste a few consumables than to see your run end.
Afterward we headed to the Shadow Thief Guildhall to complete Bodhi's quest.
The group had to deal with many guards on their way, Edwin and Viconia were already tired.
I made a huge mistake because I didn't know you couldn't rest or escape the dungeon as long as you didn't kill Aran, so I went in casually, using a lot of spells during every minor fights.
I also suffered from a bug as Hexxat was afflicted by Cursed Wounds, then died during the fight with Haz.
The problem is, when Hexxat comes back to life and leaves her coffin, she is at 1HP for a few seconds.
Normally she heals to full health at this moment and everything is fine, but here, because she was affected by Cursed Wounds (from the Clay Golems in SCS) she couldn't heal, stay at 1HP a few more seconds then dies again in an infinite loop. Poor Hexxat
Of course we can't leave the area nor rest, so it's impossible for us to try to cure her curse.
And doing the rest of this maze without a Thief is quite hard. Traps, traps everywhere.
Haz blasted Hexxat away from existence, then used a Minor Spell Sequencer with Stinking Cloud + Web.
Anselm failed his fail despite having a negative saving throw which proves that you can, in some circumstances, critically fail a saving throw. It's the third time of my life it happens to me, but this time I have a formal proof.
During the round Anselm is webbed, he took heavy physical damage from Clay Golems which forced us to flee for a long time, until Haz followed us and we finished him off.
I managed to heal Anselm during the fight with a Potion of Regeneration which bypassed Cursed Wounds, hence the extensive kitting.
At this point, we really are exhausted. My warriors don't have any innate abilities left, Hexxat is dead and cannot be brought back to life, Viconia and Edwin are also pretty much depleted of their spells.
I know that Aran can chop down everyone with Improved Haste + Mislead and will backstab everyone to death in a few seconds.
I considered my options, but I see nothing. I really thought my run would end here, so I left the game for a moment, I took a bath and thinked about how I will do this fight.
I returned to Baldur's Gate and told myself : "I'm not going to lose now that I defeated Firkraag, no way! I can make it without much ressources or Hexxat."
So I went on youtube and put this music.
Things are getting serious. I looked at my remaining spells, all of them. And I see that Edwin has a Mordenkainen Sword left.
Then I thought of something extremely, extremely uncommon to do.
Yup that's right, I summoned the Magical Sword, used all my Potions of Fire Breath on it, opened the door, and send it to greet Aran. Magical Swords are immune to everything but magical damage as far as I know, so I prayed a bit and YOLO. I protected Anselm and Korgan from fire before, just in case, because they were the closest to the door.
And it worked. Aran was burned to death instantly by the 48d10. What a relief. I drank every potions I could during the rest of the fight, and even though Viconia died aswell, I made it.
Needless to say I was very happy of the outcome and also a bit proud of my strange strategy with the Magical Sword.
We lure him over using invisibility and then surround him. Recent AI changes mean the other enemies will still come after us, but this way, we won't have to deal with them right away.
The other enemies hurry to the scene. By the time they arrive, TorGal is already crying. Four of our party members have fighter levels, and all have +3 weapons or better, so it's not surprising TorGal was so easy to damage.
Yoshimo gets bashed around for daring to fight alongside the real fighters, so he has to down a Potion of Invisibility to stave off death. TorGal, to my surprise, falls down the moment I give him a bit of space. Edwin roasts him.
Several characters need healing. We slip away to the northwest to heal ourselves and turn invisible. Yoshimo's traps from the day before, originally intended for TorGal, find a new target.
I went invisible in order to flee the area and avoid further danger, but after the group is healed, I figure we're okay to handle the rest of the enemies. Edwin clears up the Trolls, and Edwin removes one of the Yuan-ti fighters.
Only the Yuan-ti Mages remain. Edwin disables one of them.
Confusion isn't very reliable against mages, but it does bypass their MGOI spells.
The other mage remains functional, and hurls a nasty spell at Zalos. A Potion of Invulnerability ensures her safety.
In personal experience and testing, @Gotural and I have had completely different experiences when it comes to saving throws. Gotural has seen evidence that critical failures are possible in saving throws by having a character with a -2 save vs. spell get webbed, while I have found it impossible to get a failed save with a custom spell against a character with a save vs. spell of 1, even after dozens of iterations. We don't know what's causing the difference.
Zalos demonstrates it again, as her friends fail saves against an unfriendly disabler.
Lots of little optimizations have been going on in the background. Edwin got debuffed by a Warding Whip and slightly injured, so he ran away to cast summoning spells from afar. Minsc, unable to attack the mages without putting himself in danger, took the time to cast Cure Light Wounds on Edwin, just because he had the spell on him.
I don't even know why I took this screenshot. Lots of stuff is happening but I'm not sure which part is the important one.
Zalos finally gets disabled. Where Confusion and Sphere of Chaos failed, Chaos, with its -4 save penalty, managed to succeed.
She actually fails a save against another Chaos spell cast right afterwards.
We gradually wear down the mages. The Flesh Golem chunks one of them, while the other struggles along. It's a slow process because so many of us are confused--Anomen actually Jaheira by accident. We manage to charm the Yuan-ti Mage twice, but because we were attacking it at the time, it immediately turned hostile. Finally, Yoshimo poisoned it with a Bolt of Biting, and the last enemy finally went down.
There's another big fight atop the ramparts of the De'Arnise Hold, but I see nothing truly special in the screenshots. A Death Spell removed the Trolls, and a slow barrage of spells and attacks eventually wore down the Yuan-ti, with lots of careful spacing to keep damage pressure and disablers off of the weaker party members, and also to keep Anomen and Jaheira out of harm's way when they were casting healing spells.
These days, the halfling cannibals of the Planar Sphere aren't as scary for me as they used to be. But they remain interesting fights. Death Spell remains a lot of fun.
As for Togan and his fellows, the real fight, Yoshimo disables several halflings at once, but Mogadish's Physical Mirror bounces Yoshimo's trap, allowing him to reverse Yoshimo's progress with a single spell.
Yoshimo runs away, tossing a second trap on the way out. The most dangerous enemy fails his save.
Mogadish no longer has Remove Paralysis on hand. Kayardi is going to stay defenseless until the 5-round hold effect wears off. We use Fire Seeds to bypass any defenses Kayardi might possess. Fire Seeds are quite flashy.
Fire Seeds burn down the whole enemy group. There was barely any fight.
For Necre and Taibela, I try a slightly different approach. Instead of attacking from the south and using the chokepoint there, I have Yoshimo initiate the battle from the east.
Fire Seeds keep the enemy's spells off when we do engage. Necre falls to Anomen, and finally Taibela fails a save against Bala's Axe, twice, before Zalos deals the final blow.
I've gotten accustomed to snatching items without fighting enemies, so I do it with Yoshimo and whatever items lie in the room east of Taibela. All I remember is that it has 10 Tchazar Gems and maybe a quest item thingy.
Lavok awaits Zalos. Again.
Chant has the notable effect of decreasing spell damage, like the luck effect. It reduces the damage rolls of spells like Fireball. For your enemies, it increases the rolls. And it actually affects enemies properly in EE; not like in vanilla.
We go invisible and attack with Bala's Axe. If we get a failed save, this fight is basically won.
Edwin tries a Power Word: Silence spell, but Lavok is immune to silence by virtue of the MINHP1 item.
Right after our first efforts fail, I realize there was a substantial cost to sending in Zalos for a shot at Bala's Axe.
It's easy to forget about those Chain Contingencies. Zalos survives, albeit with a lot less health. We hold off Lavok's next two spells with Fire Seeds, allowing Jaheira and Anomen to cast Heal.
Our recovery is short-lived. Our Berserk Warrior is dead, either to Lavok's Fire Shield or our Fire Seeds, and we can't hit Lavok so easily and disrupt his spells.
It's very bad timing. We can't block his next spell, and this one is his most dangerous.
I consider trying to kite the thing, but eventually decide it's not worth the risk. Once again, we flee the area to escape a vorpal strike.
Edwin takes the time to lecture Anomen on human rights.
He's awfully mouthy for a mage without Stoneskin.
We wait a very long time, losing most of our buffs in the process, to make sure the Fallen Planetar is gone before we restart the fight. Lavok's defenses are also mostly gone, though he has backups.
That PFMW is useless when we have a spare summons to throw at him. Fire Seeds work great with summons, though the former usually destroys the latter.
We keep disrupting his spells with Fire Seeds. It goes on and on like this.
When we run out of summons, the same things happens as when we lost our Berserk Warrior. Lavok gets another big spell off the ground.
And because that's not enough, the whole party also gets fatigued. See, we had a Haste spell wear off after the Fallen Planetar arrived, and then another Haste spell got dispelled when we got back, and those penalties added up. Also, Zalos loses her Shadow Door spell.
We're now especially vulnerable to spell damage. But Jaheira can reliably disrupt his spells with Blackblood, at the cost of triggering two Fire Shield backlashes.
Soon his Stoneskins break down. Lavok falls.