Nashkel mine and Tranzig were easy, so I tried to infiltrate the bandits but forgot than Kivan wanted Tazok dead.
I didn't paid attention to fatigue and all my team had big difficulties to hit and kill the first wave of bandits, all healing potions were used.
After that we retreat a little to rest, and then clean the camp. Silence and fear worked great in Tazok's tent.
We headed next to Larswood for recruiting Baeloth, and then to Cloackwood for Coran. Coran's detect trap sucks, so I decided to explore some wilderness areas for leveling him a bit.
I also remembered lately than in unmodded game, a shapeshifter can wear a weapon in his secondary hand for another APR, and without losing the benefit of single weapon style ! Varuca is now clearly the best front-liner, with thac0 14 and 13, 3 APR, and great damages from 19 strength.
At Gullykin village, Kivan with stealth saw the bounty hunters and after two webs from Baeloth and some arrows from Kivan and Coran, they were all dead bounty hunters...
We just did Firewine, and the ogre mage died easily, but not the other mage, which casted lightning bolt!
Luckily Varuca and Baeloth were saved by their magic resistance, and the party could go back in the secret passage before the lightning bounced...
We then made a counter-strike and kill all the foes there.
Varuca is now level 5 and soon level 6. She will probably switch her boots of the cat for Talos's gift...
I've finally found some motivation to play again - quickly made it through the City of Caverns and the Underdark this time. I'm starting to get to the point where I tend to keep up chaotic commands and death ward at least on my player character, sometimes on the others when facing specific foes - didn't get to HLA-status yet to this being a low experience run, but gained level 8 spells (though I only had simulacrum at that point). The Shield of Balduran with the help of some kuo-toan bolts allowed Keldorn to clear the beholder hive, CC helped with the illithids - we have a low-int frontline, but good armor classes. Death spell solved the Phaere Ambush, Deidrex fell to double sunrays. Over all, since Anomen now has so many priest spells at his disposal, we can just buff up and attack for most fights, making this a bit of a more straightforward and boring run compared to BG1 and early SoA, where we had more use for our transmuter bonus. And yes, it is getting a bit annoying that only Nalia can cast breach, considering the power of this spell in the vanilla game. Still using slow from time to time, though having lots of mind flayers and drow with high magic resistance was, of course, not favorable. Here are a bunch of screenshots from our Underdark adventures:
Back outside, I met Terminsel, Drizzt, Aran and the prelate, got Cromwell to forge a few artifacts, remembered to finally complete the wish quest and learned some new spells - also killed the city gate lich. Next time, I can start dealing with all of the liches, dragons, mind flayers, twisted rune, guarded compound and propably WKII, plus the forest areas.
Sadly when fighting Lethe, Xzar got chunked. He was replaced by Edwin.
Kagain then joined the party.
Dorn has reached level 7.
We are a bit tank-heavy. Perhaps Baeloth, Tiax, or Viconia would be preferable to Kagain, probably not Tiax as he is not available in SoD . Devs mde a mistake there!
Perhaps if I complete the Drizzt Saga I could use some of the evil characters from there. Never tried it.
Upon heading to Cloakwood, web and poison combined were deadly and almost ended the game. We did survive and headed to a temple for raising the dead.
The Cloakwood mines went relatively smoothly.
To deal with Davaeorn I sent Montaron and a summoned skeleton. Once the conversation was triggered Montaron left the skeleton to deal with him.
Davaeorn and his summoned monsters killed the skeleton whereupon Tenya summoned two more and buffed them with Blass and Chant whilst Edwin buffed one of them with strength.
The two skeletons were sufficient to deal with Davaeorn unaided and went on to kill his assistant.
Having sold surplus stock we bought a fully charged wand of monster summonimg.
Now poor again but well equipped, though it would be nice to have all my wands fully charged.
Dorn is now happy that he has had his revenge.
We are all level seven except Montaron who is level eight and we have been cured of poison.
I started my clearup with the liches, using double or triple sunrays, and continued on with the mind flayer stronghold, as I already gained enough experience dealing with these foes in the Underdark:
I'm not going to forge Crom Faeyr in this run, so this is mostly for experience. Next up: Guarded compound. I approached under mass invisibility and disarmed the traps before starting my assault and breaching Sion. Also, transmuter slow still works on most opponents:
Kangaxx was killed with a PfM scroll. For the Twisted Rune, sunrays killed the lich as Keldorn charged in to kill the Beholder via silver sword, quickly retreating again to avoid timestop:
With Athkatla done, time to hunt down two dragons - the first, no trouble:
Firkraag, though, was the first opponent to successfully dispel basically all of my buffs. Getting caught without fire protection could've been quite dangerous with my low hitpoints, but I got lucky - he died before using his breath weapon:
This was my first major misstep in this run, and it wouldn't be the last for today. The second (and luckily, last) one happened at WKII, the ice room - I had been relatively careful with the other rooms, using lightning protection, chaotic commands etc, but didn't prepare anything for the ice golem (despite knowing that he can be dangerous to a weak party) - here, Minsc, being at decent hp, failed a save against his cone of cold and died - thankfully without getting chunked. Luckily, the others were able to kill the golem before he used his CoC again:
My first character death so far, and a sign of sloppy play - so I stopped this session after dealing with the chromatic demon, who died to a vorpal hit (which is good, otherwise this would've been a long fight):
I gave Minsc chaotic commands, iMoD +2 and improved haste, allowing him to easily clear out most of Bodhi's Lair by himself. A sunray and deva helped out in the final room:
Finally, I took the opportunity to kill Bloodscalp, as I wanted another pair of Boots of Speed:
After buying a few potions and dispelling arrows, I made my way to Elhan - next up, the elven city.
As I entered the elven city and buffed up, I cleared all of it in one go, with an inquisitor dispel for the rakshasa group in the centre and a fallen planetar for the ones near the temple:
The drow wizard was simply attacked from mass invisibility, and the dragon died to a surprise vorpal hit - which only happened because I forgot to swap out the Silver Sword for Carsomyr:
Following Jon to the tree, for the first time in a while, I had no traps available to instantly kill Jon, and I decided against just sending a planetar after him - deciding that a straight-up battle would be interesting to try again after so long. Well, it didn't turn out that way - the party, under improved haste, just dealt too much damage too quickly - he fell before his defenses fired up:
In hell, I went the good route and prepared for Jon with a bunch of buffs (my usual for now: cc, death ward, improved haste remove fear, pfe, bless, chant, mass invisibility, and for individual buffs: mages with blur, mi, sometimes mmm, spirit armor, spell deflection/spell trap, armor of faith for all who can cast it, Anomen also with the traditional triple strength buffs, and SotA for him, ring of minor spell turning for Keldorn, spell turning via the book for Minsc - that way, everyone except for Jaheira also has spell protections going in additional to combat buffs. I also had simulacrum active for Keldorn and Nalia, so we have double carsomyr, double breach, many true sights etc. - with an opening whirlwind attack and my ihasted group, this was the fastest jon-in-hell kill I ever had, despite taking down the demons first - he didn't even get to teleport:
Also took down Illasera, who spawned even without a mage:
Also did the first pocket plane challenge, with no Jon and Bodhi here, propably thanks to our relatively low levels. Forged a few items via Cespenar and stopped playing for now.
Short little Saradush update: Bought tons of scrolls, but didn't have enough money to get every single one for Beringia and Nalia, so I continued to play for a while, taking down Kiser with malison, slow, dragon's breath, his mage from mass invisibility:
Minsc took down the vampires with the iMoD and I made my way through the basement to Gromnir (skipping the sewers). I found out that if you kill the group before Gromnir in the palace and go outside again (which I did to sell), walking back in the same way won't get you into their area again, but instead, straight to Gromnir - so I ended up being underprepared and almost out of spells (I had planned to get to that area, pocket plane and rest), which is why I immediately had Beringia use the timestop scroll I had saved up, which gave her the time to throw down ADHWs while throwing MMMs at the Il-Khan battlemage:
Both enemy mages fell to this, and as my fighters used their HLAs in order to boost their melee capabilities, while Keldorn and Minsc got hurt quite a bit, the enemy ultimately stood no chance without his mages.
Hopefully I won't need that scroll later - though I think I can still buy two more if needed. All in all, this gave us enough money to buy the remaining scrolls for Nalia and get Cespenar to forge all new avaliable upgrades.
Added, congratulations! Next time just tag me in such posts (or PM, of course) and I'll get a notification, I'm not as active on this forum as I used to be.
As the knowledgeable one in the party (lore of 3 compared to 0 for the others), Burdock had been doing some thinking and concluded that Flydian could still safely rest a few times without expiring of poison. Three attempts were sufficient to trigger his second DUHM before going through the maze - just lightly tickled by one of the lightning traps.
The Undercity party were shot down in no time using exploding arrows and a few skeleton warriors beaten up on the way to find Sarevok.
Dispelling arrows were used to get his attention and sort out Semaj when he teleported out in support. Sarevok then failed to resist the combined assault from 3 warrior types.
There were no real problems getting out of Jon's clutches at the start of SoA. The lack of thieving abilities meant we took quite a bit of trap damage, but a few rests sorted that out. Burdock made good use of the potion of firebreath to make sure Ulvaryl didn't get away.
At the circus, Flydian was badly mauled by a werewolf, to the point Corefighter started to get concerned - though Flydian still felt comfortable himself.
The Copper Coronet provided some easy experience and gave Corefighter the opportunity to acquire Azuredge.
For once, Hendak actually made his way directly to find Lehtinan rather than wandering around aimlessly for a while.
Officer Dirth provided some decent armor for Corefighter.
There was a quick side-trip to Watcher's Keep for the potion bag before Flydian set off for Trademeet in search of some protection against status effects - an ambush by Suna Seni providing only a slight delay on the way.
Flydian had forgotten to get a PfP scroll in Athkatla and the local temple doesn't sell those, but Burdock did pick up a couple of stone to flesh scrolls in case of emergencies. As it happened though, Taquee was panicked by the initial assault and didn't get around to casting anything nasty before Corefighter did well to cut him down on the run.
A quick rest then allowed Burdock to identify the efreeti bottle (using his Glasses) and sneak in to the tent to use that to absorb the petrification attempts from the other genies.
With the Shield of Harmony in hand, Flydian left the rest of Trademeet for now and headed back to Athkatla in search of another upgrade for Corefighter - this time the Ring of Gaxx. The first item on the agenda was to get access to the lich in the temple sewers. Corefighter was held by a kobold shaman when approaching the rakshasa, but the others stayed back while dealing with the kobolds and waited for Corefighter to recover before overwhelming the rakshasa.
Burdock demonstrated in a web trap that his spell saves were not great, but the local shadows were even worse and failed to take advantage.
Corefighter was protected by a PfU scroll while taking down the Shade Lich with a single shot from Azuredge, before 2 more accounted for the Elemental Lich. A storm giant strength potion from Roger allowed Corefighter to deal with the final lich at the City Gates and bash open the door to Kangaxx's tomb, ready to enter there next time.
Wizard slayer 9, 110 HPs, 60 kills (+185 in BGEE)
Fighter 9, 101 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 42 kills (+202 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Dark moon monk 9, 75 HPs, 65 kills (+106 in BGEE), 1 death
These two appeared right after the death of our last pair and finally set out today. It was a long and arduous trek right up to the point where Crust attacked Xzar and failed to kill him. While fleeing for his life he received a Larloch's Minor Drain and staggered away but foolishly tried to cut a corner and allowed Xzar into sight for a second and conclusive drain.
Cain somehow did not laugh out loud at the demise of his bardic leader.
Given the previous pairing went for such an early bath, we had plenty of time available to generate a new random selection and make a start with them. While the archer is not exactly a tank, it's a step up in survivability from a skald and has managed at least to see the session out.
Naturally, the first stop off after Candlekeep chores was to remonstrate with Xzar about his habit of picking on defending himself against adventurers.
Some standard fare saw us pick up a level each against Shoal, stop off at High Hedge & Beregost to acquire a set of containers and then nip down to Nashkel to get some Bhaal healing. Then it was off to the basilisk area to take advantage of Gate70's penchant for starting mage characters with PfP. The early basilisks took a bit of running round when they switched into melee, but with the ability to rest and recast PfP that was no real trouble.
Mutamin successfully scared Yodahl, which looked like a major problem. However, Robthem bravely showed himself to take his share of acid arrows and Yodahl managed to avoid getting trapped and giving the local tasloi a chance to attack, or wandering far enough to activate Kirian & co.
Yodahl learned horror from that encounter and put that to good use against Kirian's mob.
Lindin ran far enough away to take a bit of effort to track down, but Yodahl managed to do that and bring him back so Korax could scratch him with his mucky fingers.
The FAI provided a ring to boost Yodahl's spellpower, before we went in search of Meilum. On the way we stopped off to save Arabelle - Robthem was prepared to activate and shoot down the xvarts one by one, but Yodahl had a better solution there.
Meilum saved against horror, but was shot down pretty quickly anyway.
Heading back to the FAI with Samuel's body, we encountered 3 successive ambushes on the journey - it was a good job Yodahl was wearing the girdle of piercing or he would probably have been in trouble.
Yodahl wanted to plan his spells to counteract Tarnesh's own spell selection, but Robthem was happy to just one-shot him without fiddling around.
During this period Yodahl went on a really good run, with a succession of enemies all failing their saves. Stronger enemies like Greywolf and Bassilus were sent running by horror, while slightly weaker ones like Zargal just lay down and accepted the inevitable.
A trip through the Cloudpeaks yielded a charisma tome and more reputation and finishing off the odd quest like that for Mr Colquetle pushed the latter to 20. Robthem took advantage of the improvement in prices to acquire the light crossbow of speed and dagger of venom. Then it was off to the coast to find some sirines. Robthem was a bit scornful there when seeing that Yodahl had given him protection from normal missiles, but in fact that was pretty helpful against the first group of sirines.
Robthem used the potion of clarity to protect against status effects there, but his relatively poor abilities in melee meant he took more damage from the sirines than expected and protection from the nearby hobgoblins was definitely worthwhile. The second group of sirines was no trouble and Robthem used magical bolts to shoot down the golems, after Yodahl successfully saved against the hold trap in the pirate cave.
After completing a Solo Shaman HoF run, I was really missing the ability to melee things down. So I've decided to try a Solo Dwarven Defender run through Icewind Dale. Not Heart of Fury, of course, but we'll see how Insane difficulty goes
I'm not going to do a full "story mode" account this time. Instead, I'll mainly cover risky situations, difficult battles, and my thoughts and strategies (such that they are) for the run.
Dwarven Defenders are obviously very durable, getting 5% physical resistance every 5 levels, with a cap of 20% physical resistance at 20th level and a d12 HD. They also get use of Defensive Stance (+50% physical resistance, +2 Saves, -50% movement penalty) for 1 turn): 1 use at 1st level and then another use at 4th level and every 4 levels thereafter. So by 20th level, Dwarven Defenders can have 70% physical resistance just from innate abilities. If you can find any items to increase that even more, you could potentially be immune to physical damage, at least for a time.
The weakness of Dwarven Defenders is vulnerability to magic, of course. And Defensive Stance can be risky. You won't be able to retreat from anything while having a -50% movement penalty, or even do much maneuvering around the battlefield, so you had better be sure when you activate it. I'm hoping the shorty saves for dwarves (+5 Saves with 19 Con to Paralysis/Poison/Death, Rod/Staff/Wand and Spells) will help mitigate the risk of magic and other automatic loss conditions. We'll see how that goes...
Game: Icewind Dale (v.2.6.6) and expansions
Special: Solo
Class: Dwarven Defender
Difficulty: Insane
Mods: none
Prologue and Chapter 1
Meet our protagonist: Havar Battlehammer, Dwarven Defender, and very likeable (as far as dwarves tend to go)
When choosing starting weapon proficiencies, I debated long and hard whether to forego normal ranged weapons or not. Dwarven Defenders can only put two pips into every weapon proficiency except axes, into which they can put 4. I was considering maybe just relying on axes, and using throwing axes for ranged weapons when necessary (mostly in the early adventure). I decided not to go that route though, because the early adventure is very dangerous and the extra APR with bows would give me more chances to disrupt spell casters' initial casting attempts. So the starting weapon proficiencies I chose were:
Flail/Morning Star ++
Longbow ++
There are lots of skeletons once you get to the Vale of Shadows. I figured I could pick up Axes at Levels 3, 6.
Easthaven was mostly a breeze, of course, with the exception of the Goblins with bows on the outskirts of the village. Havar tried to engage them one at a time. He took some damage but that's what inns are for WIth no innate healing ability this is going to be a long adventure timewise...
The most dangerous battle before leaving with the caravan is the last battle in the caves. On Insane difficulty, there are 4 Ogres with maybe a dozen orcs. Definitely liked having the bow here:
Off with the caravan, until the avalanche hits. Havar finds himself on the western side of Kuldahar Pass needing to traverse a valley teeming with goblins in order to get to safety. Many of the goblins here have bows, so with double the normal attacks, and it being very risky to rest, this is definitely a tough stretch:
Havar would trade arrows with the goblins and then retreat to the path leading to the hermit's cave. There's a narrowing of the path where only one goblin at a time could attack Havar. It was like a mini-Thermopylae
The battles raged on, with Havar wearing down bit by bit:
One last group of Goblin Marshals seek Havar's demise:
Rough, but Havar pulls through! Havar rests in Ghereg's ruined tower and explores Kuldahar before returning to clear the Mill and northern area of the Pass (much easier to do being able to rest in Ghereg's tower). Havar finds Glinglam's Cloak in the Mill (+1 AC, +1 Saves) which will be very nice to have when he starts facing magic users.
Havar is tasked to find the source of the disappearances plaguing Kuldahar by Arundel. Havar clears the outside paths of the Vale of Shadows first and then explores the Yeti cave. Havar encounters a 5 Yeti tribe, which he defeats largely with his bow and some boot leather:
After raiding the Yeti cave, Havar begins searching the tombs. The greatest danger in the first four tombs are the large numbers of foes and the traps, but he gets through by being sure to slay all foes nearby before triggering any traps he suspects could be around:
Havar begins to search Kresselack's Tomb where things get much more serious. There are undead here that require magical weapons to hit. Thankfully, Havar found a +1 Morning Star earlier on and found another in the Yeti cave. An encounter with Bone Dancer Mytos nearly ends Havar's adventure, but shorty saves come through this time:
Another example of why to slay foes as soon as they are in sight:
Havar saves against the Color Spray trap further into the tomb:
Havar encounters the Skeletal Mage on Level 2. He tries to clear the area of undead first, so he only has to face the mage alone. However, a Skeleton crashes the party. Havar decides to stick with the bow and try to shoot down the mage, disrupting its spellcasting, even with a 2-H Sword wielding skeleton in his face:
Then Havar faces the Imbued Wights who cast double damage Magic Missile that are impossible to avoid. Havar is very worn but pulls through, then is off to rest for a few weeks:
On to the 3rd level of the tomb, with traps and nasty undead galore:
In the final chamber before Kresselack is another Skeletal Mage. Havar is more careful about clearing the area first, and shorty saves rescue his rotund behind yet again:
Havar clears the tomb and is promised by Kresselack to be told where the villain who is cursing the Vale of Shadows is hiding out. There's only one catch: Slay the Priestess of Auril who wants to open Kresselack's tomb to the cold of winter. Havar seeks out the priestess, discovering that it's the barmaid Lysan hiding out in the Yeti Cave with 5 more Yetis...
Havar suspects Lysan can only be hit by magic weapons and is a very capable cleric. Havar drinks the only Potion of Freedom he has and puts his +1 arrows in his quiver, planning to lure everything outside where it's more open. Lysan surprises Havar by trying to Charm him instead of Hold him, but Havar resists:
Lysan chooses not to chase Havar outside, so Havar puts the Yetis down with his bow:
Havar enters the Yeti cave again. This time, Lysan is not going to let Havar go:
Havar runs outside and waits for Lysan to emerge, shooting her with a magic arrow and disrupting her spell:
Lysan decides to try her mace instead, but in a melee battle Havar has the upper hand. He wears her down with a couple more arrows and then finishes her off with his morning star:
Of course, Kresselack doesn't know who is cursing the Vale, and tells Havar that once Havar's played the sucker. Arundel tells Havar to search for the Heartstone Gem in the Temple of the Forgotten God. First, Havar has Lysan's cloak identified, learning among its other powers is the ability to cast Free Action on the wearer lasting 4 turns. This will be a great boost to Havar's survivability, planning to use the cloak's Free Action power and then switch to Glimglam's Cloak for the +1 Saves bonus.
In the Temple of the Forgotten God, Havar battles many Acolytes and Verbeeg. The Verbeeg hit like trucks, and the Acolytes cast nasty spells like Hold Person, Charm Person, Static Charge and even Magical Stone which deals significant damage:
Havar uses the same tactics here: try to interrupt the Acolytes with his bow, then use Defensive Stance and outlast the Verbeeg. It's not a foolproof plan, but it's the best Havar can come up with:
Havar encounters more traps in the temple which reinforces the need to remove foes whenever able from the battlefield. You never know what will happen with every step:
Havar encounters large numbers of Verbeeg and Acoytles on the second level of the temple:
Further into the temple, one Acolyte lands the spell Havar feared the most. Havar hopes the end comes soon and painless:
But the overzealous Acolyte frees Havar from the prison he constructed himself!
Havar shoots down the Acolyte and wonders how someone with a lower Wisdom score than Havar had ever found a place in the clergy...
Havar rummages through the temple's coffers and finds Lady Tymora hasn't left him yet! He finds:
Helm of Charm Protection, giving him immunity to a game-ending condition
Flaming Bastard Sword +1, a weapon that will permanently put down trolls, which will soon be an issue
Reinforced Leather +1, a suit of +1 Studded Leather that grants +35% Crushing Resistance! Against the appropriate enemies, this could be very handy.
The last resistance Havar faces in the temple is a group composed of two Verbeeg and 3 Acolytes, very dangerous:
Havar tries to interrupt the Acolytes but has to retreat from the Verbeeg, slowly shooting them down while shrugging off spells from the Acolytes, before finally putting down the last of the resistance:
Havar reaches the inner sanctum of the temple, only to find the Heartstone Gem taken from its pedestal. Arundel identifies the vial of snake venom Havar brings back from the temple as belonging to Priests of Valona and suggests Havar resume his search in the (supposedly) dormant volcano of Dragon's Eye.
Havar rests up a good while before deciding he wants a sneak peek at what is to come:
Havar is confronted by some Ice Trolls outside Dragon's Eye. Thankfully, these trolls don't regenerate, and Havar puts them down:
Havar decides to return to Kuldahar before entering Dragon's Eye. He sells the Wand of Armory and Ring of Shadows he can't use to Orrick, netting him over 17k gold pieces, and buys the Shimmering Sash with the proceeds. The Shimmering Sash grants a constant Blur spell (+3 AC, +1 Saves) to the wearer, and since it's a spell effect, it's cumulative with any other +AC item.
Havar goes to the Root Cellar Tavern in Kuldahar, buys an ale, and puts his feet up (Character Sheet):
Long Sword +
Axe ++
Flail/Morning Star ++
Longbow ++
Saves (with Glinglam's Cloak)
Paralysis/Poison/Death: 1
Rod/Staff/Wand: 3
Petrification/Polymorph: 7
Breath Weapon: 6
Spell: 4
Of course, some spells have negative save modifiers, and some attacks aren't subject to saving throws. How will Havar fare in the battles to come...
I was fully expecting a major drop in reputation for following the evil path in the Serpents of Abbathor quest, and surprised that it didn't occcur. We have now got to Nashkel for what I think will be the final battle there.
However we discovered that the mines were exceedingly well defended and that progress was both exceedingly slow and dangerous.
We therefore decided to return when we had more experience as we were using provisions up very quickly.
Dealing with the Iron Throne and Durlag's Tower look like being easier options at present as there were parties of a dozen skeleton archers even near the top of the mines which had to be defeated using divide and conquer tactics.
@Trouveur Looks like you will soon be overtaking my party as my mods give so many extra quests.
Varuca, half elf shapeshifter update 3
After Gullykin, the party explored some wilderness areas.
The mage in tombs area managed to cast a lightning bolt despite being hit.
Coran then reminded me a wyvern was waiting be killed, so we headed to Cloakwood. We met some ettercaps and Branwen died from poison, because we forgot to bring more antidotes.
After a quick backstep to FAI for raising Branwen and take some antidotes, we hurry to Wyverns cave and used wand of summoning to contain the wyverns while Coran and Kivan shooted them.
Drassus and his friends didn't survive webs and fireballs.
In the mines, fear and web helped against the guards.
Natasha couldn't beat summoned monsters.
Coran and Baeloth alone succeed in killing Davaeorn. A potion of perception helped Coran to disarm all traps and open all chests.
In Baldur's Gate, most quests were easily made, and soon Varuca worn ring of protection +2 and Helm of Balduran.
Before trying to fight Degrodel's guards for activating the quest leading to the Cloak of Balduran, we made some purchases in Ulgoth's beard and explore more wilderness areas. Sirines was easily killed by Coran and Kivan, and soon Varuca with the tome of constitution was able to wear Claw of Kazgaroth without HP penalty.
She now is level 8 with an AC of -6, and a third attack with the dagger of venom. She have by far the best percentage of kills, ahead of Coran. Clearly unmodded shapeshifter is a top tier choice for BG1, with druid spells up to level 5 and melee skills as strong as most warriors.
Next steps : doing Neera, Rasaad and Dorn's quests mainly for big fist belt, finish cleaning Cloakwood 2 and 3 for recovering Spiders's Bane for Ajantis, and then pay Degrodel a visit. After that it will be time to clear upper floor of Durlag's Tower.
No screenshots this time because i'm away from home and type this on my smartphone.
We made our way to the temple and sunray'd the master wraith:
Magical swords distracted any big groups of fire giants in the Marching Mountains, allowing our fighters to take them down one by one:
Some fire protection buffs to clear most of the place were quite helpful, and we buffed up a bit more to take down Berenn:
Keldorn equipped the Wave in order to one-shot the elemental prince:
Taking down Yaga-Shura was quick work - once he re-appeared, he didn't even last a full round:
We rushed down Semaj in the second pocket plane challenge, which allowed for a quick victory:
In Amkethran, I skipped Vongoethe, so our visit was very short - we also immediately attacked the drow captain at Sendai's and only did one of the tunnels:
I didn't bother with the groups surrounding Odamaron's lair and used planetars (needed a second one) for Diaytha:
The duel was easily won with a few summons, the illithids were just too few in numbers to pose a threat, and I rested and buffed before taking on Sendai. No trouble here - aside from attacks and combat buffs, we only needed two breach spells and true sight to bring this battle to a very fast end:
Beringia, classic transmuter, seventeenth and final update
There we go, now we are finally at the part of the game where I tend to struggle even with unmodded play - and since we've skipped quite a bit of content (we also aren't going to visit Watcher's Keep again), the party is certainly not at the same level - Jaheira has no chance to get to her big druid spell unlock, we only have a few HLAs with not even every HLA spell unlocked. However, the difficulty with Draconis is not what it should be - the main problem, as usual, is the maddening "getting stuck in the selection circle of hostile NPCs" bug, which pretty much always happens if some of the party are in melee range with Draconis' human form when he transforms. Incredibly annoying, I wish this would get fixed at some point.
Here is the moment of transformation:
Keldorn isn't stuck, but Minsc, Jaheira and Anomen are - we have no way to avoid the dispel magic or the dragon's breath, and since vanilla Draconis has a ridiculous breath weapon, the fighters go from almost full to almost dead within a second (that is with me having equipped them with acid resistance items such as shadow dragon's armor, the +10 all resistances shield and the gorgon plate):
Without that, they would propably all be dead at this point, Jaheira most likely chunked. Luckily, the dragon isn't quite able to finish things before everyone takes a potion + Anomen casts mass heal, somewhat stabilizing the party:
Beringia renews Jaheira's improved haste, and with Keldorn's GWWs, we get to 3 fully-active 9-10 APR fighters again - this turns into a damage race, as we can't run and won't survive another breath weapon - but our fighters are deadly, and faster than the dragon:
The lair is easily cleared without even resting. Thankfully, Abazigal knocks the party away upon his transformation, so we don't get stuck in his selection circle as well. We have lightning resistance on everyone, and the battle is rather short, even though he manages to hit a dispel magic:
After dealing with the Chosen of Cyric, we enter Amkethran, buff up and go after Balthazar - directly attacking him without paying attention to his monks. For one round, he knocks us away with solar stance (I think), but the next round, we are in melee range, activate our HLAs, and he dies pretty much instantly:
Now, we get to the Ravager. Here's the thing: For many runs now, I've simply killed this guy with 7 spike traps and a few attacks. Before that, I always lowered his magic resistance and nuked him via skull traps/ADHWs. This time, I decided, with a staggering amount of overconfidence, that I didn't need my established tactics and could just kill him in direct melee combat. However, I didn't quite count on his level 25 dispel magic on hit. Usually, my groups wouldn't really be bothered by that, but we are underleveled and unprotected - so this turned out to be a brutal fight with tons of potion usage, hardinesses, HLAs, renewing improved haste, armor of faith, kiting bone blades, clearing the battlefield with ADHWs, eventually even equipping the Answerer on Keldorn to have a better shot at dealing damage to this guy. There were several times where bad RNG could've killed some of my fighters, often they just barely were able to run and drink a potion. Wouldn't recommend this approach if you're low enough level to get dispelled here:
In the end, what really gave us the time to win was the juggernaut golem, who took the attention of most bone blades, allowing our very wounded fighters to approach again and deal the final blows.
Now, a bit of a similiar story for the throne - it's been a very long time since I've actually fought vanilla Melissan in a fair fight, that being without using spike traps, especially for her third appearance. I prepared well, with additional potion buffs (mostly strength and invulnerability), had my timestop scrolls, wisdom potions for wishes etc. First phase: No problem, as I had my CCs with 3*ADHW and a spell trigger with 3*pierce magic:
However, I wasn't going to be able to repeat this due to a lack of spellslots (though a more clever allocation would've allowed me to do things very differently) - we cleared out the first pool with the help of a deva, all our buffs still going. The deva turned out to be super helpful, as she took all of the damage in phase 2 and instantly healed herself when near death, giving us an easy victory:
Nalia started buffing the party with frost protection spells as we approached and cleared the second pool:
The third phase is the one I knew to be tough, but I still underestimated it - I forgot that she follows up the slayer shadow summoning + teleporting away with a timestop. If I had known that, my approach would have been different. I had some NPP-items equipped to avoid level drain on most characters, and a simulacrum of Keldorn was kept busy with the initial slayer shadows while we chased down Mel - however, during her timestop, she just straight up murderer Minsc with auto attacks, despite his immunity to frost damage:
I struggled to keep up with both the summons and Mel's damage. She was only lightly injured while going after Jaheira, who crumbled like paper within seconds - she also started a maze spell with Anomen at her target. Meanwhile, the only one doing good work was the Keldorn simmy, who started thinning out the slayer shadow army. Nalia almost died but was able to run away, getting healed by a newly summoned Planetar. Meanwhile, Keldorn kept two balors busy and Beringia started using the Rod of Resurrection, Minsc being her first target:
At this point, I was almost convinced that this would be the end, but Melissan made the crucial mistake of turning her attentions towards the planetar - this allowed Beringia to also resurrect Jaheira. The Keldorn simmy won 1 vs 3 against three slayer shadows, using all of his HLAs, and joined us - meanwhile, while Anomen was mazed, Keldorn and the newly resurrected Minsc and Jaheira, about to receive improved haste again to turn them into damage machines, were starting to thin out the slayer shadow lines:
And there we are, stabilized again: Melissan with almost no allies left and still busy with a planetar, our party up and ready, getting buffed again, about to summon an elemental prince:
Finally, we are starting to deal some damage to Mel:
The simmy is still active here, and we are using our last HLAs, bringing her quickly to badly injured now - the planetar is dead, but an elemental prince takes its place, distracting the balors:
This round of HLAs does the trick - didn't take a screenshot here, but Mel has to retreat. She almost took Jaheira with her, as our fighter/druid got held during the final round of battle, but ended up surviving, as the others dealt enough damage. We still had enough buffs left, but very little HLAs, which was a bit concerning to me regarding our damage output. However, Beringia now drank a wisdom potion and started casting her three wish spells - the second wish gave us the rest option:
Great! The party buffed up lightly, as my plan was to simply kill the fallen solar during timestop, as I usually do - though generally, this is done with some kind of fighter/mage multi, not with a pure mage. I thought that a full 20 energy blades would be enough, but I was completely wrong - the fallen solar was still at injured. I had to send in my party, sniping the fallen solar, while the mariliths dealt lots of damage to us:
After that, we took down the succubus + alu fiend and retreated, as potions couldn't keep up with marilith damage. Still, these guys are easy to kite, so we did that - run away, wait for Nalia to breach, and then kill one - repeat:
The final Ameliyssan appearance was a bit anticlimactic. With full buffs, a prince, a planetar, and fighter HLAs active at all times, she simply didn't get to do anything - our damage output was just too high for her to keep up:
Victory was ours.
Well, this was a relatively short playthrough, with all the skips. In the end, we made it to around 4,81m XP. Obviously, even with the resting/hp/content restrictions in this run, this was relatively simple and straightforward, being a vanilla run with a full party - and I lost a bit of motivation once we made it to the Underdark and had basically all the tools at our disposal. I'm a bit surprised that we actually faced some really tough challenges in the end, with Draconis (though mostly due to a bug), Ravager (mostly due to me not having prepared a real strategy) and the third incarnation of Amelyssan (that one was REALLY close - if she didn't switch towards the planetar and went after Beringia herself or even Nalia, that might have been it - and I didn't even play that poorly here, I just forgot about the timestop). I think whatever I will play next, it will propably be a group or character without access to many buffs - this is what really gets a bit annoying with time, the constant buffing interrupting the flow of gameplay - which, of course, is the only thing to actually make no-reload party play safe, but I still want to do less of it in the future if possible.
@Arvia I'd appreciate if you could add this run into the Hall of Heroes and remove Transmuter from the list of classes/kits without a no-reload success
@Enuhal Congratulations, and well done. Another class struck from the list.
I can emphasize with the constant buffing becoming grating too. The only way I see around it is excellent saves all-around, but there aren't enough shorty NPC's in BG2 to fill more than half the party. Still, with a durable/passive defenses protagonist (Dwarven Fighter/Cleric?) you'd be a lot less reliant on buffing that way.
@Arvia I'd appreciate if you could add this run into the Hall of Heroes and remove Transmuter from the list of classes/kits without a no-reload success
We rescued four people in the Field of the Dead before returning to Ulgoth's Beard to tell our story.
Then cleared the top floors of Durlag's. That was easy.
We went back to Baldur's Gate to take on the Throne and were then sent to Candlekeep having first stocked our carrying case with potions. Candlekeep was straightforward and we have now defeated the warders at Durlag's and are now on the chessboard. Sadly Tenya did not obey instructions and as a result got chunked. That could have significant ramifications later.
'Long-life challenge' - thief to dual to cleric {1} (update 1)
I've had a couple more failed attempts at my long-life challenge since the last run I posted and feel I really should do better . For my next attempt I rolled a random selection and came up with a thief dualling to cleric. That's a new class for me - the first of those I've generated for quite a while. I decided to make the starting class a shadowdancer, to increase scope for clerical-assisted backstabs. I'll aim to dual late I think - later cleric levels add very little to that class anyway, so losing a few potential cleric levels should not be an issue. One problem with that choice of class is that stats relevant to dual classing a shadowdancer include charisma, as well as strength and dexterity. With wisdom wanted for the cleric, that only leaves intelligence to use as a dump stat - and 9 is really wanted in that to use items. I rolled for a while before eventually settling for a 92 total as being just about good enough.
To give myself an extra incentive to play safely, I sometimes see how far I can get without taking damage. Improving stealth with a few levels helps with that and I was soon up to level 4 thanks to Shoal.
After picking up gem and scroll bags, I completed my collection for now by going to High Hedge for the potion case. I normally do that later, once I've picked up some means of killing the golems for free. This time though I paid for some +1 bullets and pulled the golems outside - shooting them down got me to level 5.
Korax makes the basilisks an easy source of high XP and the southern group of those was enough for level 6.
Korax successfully dealt with the remaining ones as well and just survived an acid arrow before paralyzing Mutamin.
To play safe I left Kirian's crew for now.
One likely source of damage is from ranged attackers during travel ambushes. While choice of routes and timing can reduce that, I wanted equipment to further mitigate that danger and an ogre provided the belt of piercing. The next target was the cloak of displacement and on the way I took advantage of hide in plain sight to backstab an ankheg to death (if stealth had failed, I now had shadowstep available to retreat). That was enough for level 7.
I couldn't afford the +3 staff from Ulgoth's Beard without selling the ring of wizardry - and I tend to keep high value jewelry to use in Siege of Dragonspear - so backstabs have been pretty poor to date. It took 5 of those to take down Meilum, with the final one being a more respectable effort, thanks to a critical.
The use of his bracers will improve things in future though.
Heading down to Nashkel provided Bhaal CLW, though hopefully that won't be needed for a while yet.
Here's my current character record, showing I've already got pretty decent stealth abilities.
Congrats @Enuhal! That last battle sounds very intense!
Hopefully not a foreshadowing of your next attempt with fewer buffs, but my poor Dwarven Defender bit the dust against Yxonemei in Icewind Dale:
On the previous level, on Insane difficulty, you face 3 Yuan-ti Mages who Stoneskin instantly, then Protection from Normal Missiles. With the double damage, they do 30+ damage on Magic Missile and 40+ on Vitriolic Sphere. The only real way for a non-spell user to deal with that (that I can think of) is chucking Flaming Oil/Potions of Explosions/etc. at them. There are only 3 of those for sale at this point in the game, and I used all three in that battle.
Against Yxonemei on Insane difficulty you get 3 more Yuan-ti Mages, and it was just too much. Back to the drawing board...
@Arvia I'd appreciate if you could add this run into the Hall of Heroes and remove Transmuter from the list of classes/kits without a no-reload success
Added, congratulations on another great success!
Anyone who wants the honour of wiping a remaining class or kit from the list, hurry up or Enuhal will have finished them all
With stealth now pretty reliable it was fairly easy to kill things using successive backstabs - starting to force attack to end stealth, but only actually attacking when the cooldown period to restealth had expired. Encounters like Bassilus provided decent cash, while others boosted reputation. It was nice not to have to run around the wall in order to restealth to take down the Doomsayer.
A trip through the Cloud Peaks was safely negotiated and helped push reputation to 20. Without a charisma bonus prices still didn't feel cheap, but I had more than enough to invest in the +3 staff to give backstabs a big boost. I celebrated that by going to Durlag's Tower to deal with some battle horrors and picking up an 8th level.
My trap skills were not good enough to allow me onto the roof, but I did intend to do the quest for Riggilo. My concentration slipped in talking to Kirinhale though and she went hostile - forcing me to just kill her and then Riggilo.
I used the Greenstone Amulet to recover the tome.
Unlike Durlag's, the traps in the Nashkel Mine are kid's stuff and I had no trouble in getting through to Mulahey. Three backstabs (with a critical miss as well) finished him off before he could summon any help.
Outside the mine I planned to attack the amazons, but stealth broke quicker than expected as I was lining up a backstab on Telka - resulting in a first use of shadowstep to disappear before the enemies could attack. I rested to get that special ability back, though in the event that wasn't needed during a second assault.
One of the reasons that backstabs are so useful for a thief is that you not only get the stealth attack bonus of +4, but also negate any dexterity bonuses to AC the enemy have. Here, Nimbul proved not so nimble.
After backstabbing Tranzig, I headed for the Bandit Camp - stopping off at the FAI to pick up the pantaloons. I only bothered with Taurgosz outside Tazok's tent. I aimed to kill all those inside, though that proved more difficult than expected. A critical stealth failure allowed Hakt to get an attack in before shadowstep activated, but I'd moved next to him to protect against that and the -8 penalty for attacking with a missile weapon in melee saved me. Unfortunately the shadowstep ability didn't last quite as long as I hoped and 2 archers outside got attacks in just before I got out of sight.
Trying to shrug off the disappointment of taking that damage, I moved through the Cloakwood. Without the same incentive to avoid damage though some lack of care immediately set in - here I took damage again after not realising immediately that an attempt to restealth had failed.
There were no stealth failures on arrival at the mine though and taking down Drasus & co was enough for level 9 - pushing backstabs up to x3 damage.
At the bottom of the mine I deliberately tripped the trap to get the battle horrors to appear and harvest their XP. After exhausting Davaeorn's spells, I had a contest with him to see who had the biggest staff.
On arrival at Baldur's Gate I easily got a new record backstab by one-shotting the ogre mage in the sewers.
Next up was the poison quest. Jalantha's spells were dodged before she was struck down. I tried to tag Lothander with a stunning dart. Making him run round you to the stairs gives you a decent chance of hitting him before he gets away, but this time the dart didn't quite catch him up before he made his escape. Four decent backstabs were enough to send Larze crashing to the floor and gain me a final BGEE level. Marek is rather less sturdy, and has a bow equipped, and 2 backstabs were enough for him.
The final action of the session saw me fighting my way up Ramazith's tower to recover the tome there - that will enable me to use scrolls in future.
Comments
Thanks!
Nashkel mine and Tranzig were easy, so I tried to infiltrate the bandits but forgot than Kivan wanted Tazok dead.
I didn't paid attention to fatigue and all my team had big difficulties to hit and kill the first wave of bandits, all healing potions were used.
After that we retreat a little to rest, and then clean the camp. Silence and fear worked great in Tazok's tent.
We headed next to Larswood for recruiting Baeloth, and then to Cloackwood for Coran. Coran's detect trap sucks, so I decided to explore some wilderness areas for leveling him a bit.
I also remembered lately than in unmodded game, a shapeshifter can wear a weapon in his secondary hand for another APR, and without losing the benefit of single weapon style ! Varuca is now clearly the best front-liner, with thac0 14 and 13, 3 APR, and great damages from 19 strength.
At Gullykin village, Kivan with stealth saw the bounty hunters and after two webs from Baeloth and some arrows from Kivan and Coran, they were all dead bounty hunters...
We just did Firewine, and the ogre mage died easily, but not the other mage, which casted lightning bolt!
Luckily Varuca and Baeloth were saved by their magic resistance, and the party could go back in the secret passage before the lightning bounced...
Varuca is now level 5 and soon level 6. She will probably switch her boots of the cat for Talos's gift...
Beringia, classic transmuter, eleventh update
I've finally found some motivation to play again - quickly made it through the City of Caverns and the Underdark this time. I'm starting to get to the point where I tend to keep up chaotic commands and death ward at least on my player character, sometimes on the others when facing specific foes - didn't get to HLA-status yet to this being a low experience run, but gained level 8 spells (though I only had simulacrum at that point). The Shield of Balduran with the help of some kuo-toan bolts allowed Keldorn to clear the beholder hive, CC helped with the illithids - we have a low-int frontline, but good armor classes. Death spell solved the Phaere Ambush, Deidrex fell to double sunrays. Over all, since Anomen now has so many priest spells at his disposal, we can just buff up and attack for most fights, making this a bit of a more straightforward and boring run compared to BG1 and early SoA, where we had more use for our transmuter bonus. And yes, it is getting a bit annoying that only Nalia can cast breach, considering the power of this spell in the vanilla game. Still using slow from time to time, though having lots of mind flayers and drow with high magic resistance was, of course, not favorable. Here are a bunch of screenshots from our Underdark adventures:
We have cleared the bandit camp.
Sadly when fighting Lethe, Xzar got chunked. He was replaced by Edwin.
Kagain then joined the party.
Dorn has reached level 7.
We are a bit tank-heavy. Perhaps Baeloth, Tiax, or Viconia would be preferable to Kagain, probably not Tiax as he is not available in SoD
Perhaps if I complete the Drizzt Saga I could use some of the evil characters from there. Never tried it.
Upon heading to Cloakwood, web and poison combined were deadly and almost ended the game. We did survive and headed to a temple for raising the dead.
The Cloakwood mines went relatively smoothly.
To deal with Davaeorn I sent Montaron and a summoned skeleton. Once the conversation was triggered Montaron left the skeleton to deal with him.
Davaeorn and his summoned monsters killed the skeleton whereupon Tenya summoned two more and buffed them with Blass and Chant whilst Edwin buffed one of them with strength.
The two skeletons were sufficient to deal with Davaeorn unaided and went on to kill his assistant.
Having sold surplus stock we bought a fully charged wand of monster summonimg.
Now poor again but well equipped, though it would be nice to have all my wands fully charged.
Dorn is now happy that he has had his revenge.
We are all level seven except Montaron who is level eight and we have been cured of poison.
Now fetching and carrying in the Gate.
I started my clearup with the liches, using double or triple sunrays, and continued on with the mind flayer stronghold, as I already gained enough experience dealing with these foes in the Underdark:
I gave Minsc chaotic commands, iMoD +2 and improved haste, allowing him to easily clear out most of Bodhi's Lair by himself. A sunray and deva helped out in the final room:
(Agree)
As I entered the elven city and buffed up, I cleared all of it in one go, with an inquisitor dispel for the rakshasa group in the centre and a fallen planetar for the ones near the temple:
Short little Saradush update: Bought tons of scrolls, but didn't have enough money to get every single one for Beringia and Nalia, so I continued to play for a while, taking down Kiser with malison, slow, dragon's breath, his mage from mass invisibility:
Reading about your runs is making me very nostalgic for Baldur's Gate. Looking forward to more!
Added, congratulations! Next time just tag me in such posts (or PM, of course) and I'll get a notification, I'm not as active on this forum as I used to be.
Flydian - dwarf wizard slayer (Grond0)
Corefighter - dwarf fighter (Corey_Russell)
Burdock - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1186431/#Comment_1186431
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1186706/#Comment_1186706
Officer Dirth provided some decent armor for Corefighter.
With the Shield of Harmony in hand, Flydian left the rest of Trademeet for now and headed back to Athkatla in search of another upgrade for Corefighter - this time the Ring of Gaxx. The first item on the agenda was to get access to the lich in the temple sewers. Corefighter was held by a kobold shaman when approaching the rakshasa, but the others stayed back while dealing with the kobolds and waited for Corefighter to recover before overwhelming the rakshasa.
Wizard slayer 9, 110 HPs, 60 kills (+185 in BGEE)
Fighter 9, 101 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 42 kills (+202 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Dark moon monk 9, 75 HPs, 65 kills (+106 in BGEE), 1 death
Crust (male Skald, Gate70); Cain (male Illusionist, Grond0)
These two appeared right after the death of our last pair and finally set out today. It was a long and arduous trek right up to the point where Crust attacked Xzar and failed to kill him. While fleeing for his life he received a Larloch's Minor Drain and staggered away but foolishly tried to cut a corner and allowed Xzar into sight for a second and conclusive drain.
Cain somehow did not laugh out loud at the demise of his bardic leader.
Robthem (male elf archer, Grond0); Yodahl (female elf enchanter, Gate70)
Previous run
Given the previous pairing went for such an early bath, we had plenty of time available to generate a new random selection and make a start with them. While the archer is not exactly a tank, it's a step up in survivability from a skald and has managed at least to see the session out.
Naturally, the first stop off after Candlekeep chores was to remonstrate with Xzar about his habit of picking on defending himself against adventurers.
Enchanter 5, 22 HPs, 20 kills, 0 deaths
I'm not going to do a full "story mode" account this time. Instead, I'll mainly cover risky situations, difficult battles, and my thoughts and strategies (such that they are) for the run.
Dwarven Defenders are obviously very durable, getting 5% physical resistance every 5 levels, with a cap of 20% physical resistance at 20th level and a d12 HD. They also get use of Defensive Stance (+50% physical resistance, +2 Saves, -50% movement penalty) for 1 turn): 1 use at 1st level and then another use at 4th level and every 4 levels thereafter. So by 20th level, Dwarven Defenders can have 70% physical resistance just from innate abilities. If you can find any items to increase that even more, you could potentially be immune to physical damage, at least for a time.
The weakness of Dwarven Defenders is vulnerability to magic, of course. And Defensive Stance can be risky. You won't be able to retreat from anything while having a -50% movement penalty, or even do much maneuvering around the battlefield, so you had better be sure when you activate it. I'm hoping the shorty saves for dwarves (+5 Saves with 19 Con to Paralysis/Poison/Death, Rod/Staff/Wand and Spells) will help mitigate the risk of magic and other automatic loss conditions. We'll see how that goes...
Game: Icewind Dale (v.2.6.6) and expansions
Special: Solo
Class: Dwarven Defender
Difficulty: Insane
Mods: none
Prologue and Chapter 1
Meet our protagonist: Havar Battlehammer, Dwarven Defender, and very likeable (as far as dwarves tend to go)
When choosing starting weapon proficiencies, I debated long and hard whether to forego normal ranged weapons or not. Dwarven Defenders can only put two pips into every weapon proficiency except axes, into which they can put 4. I was considering maybe just relying on axes, and using throwing axes for ranged weapons when necessary (mostly in the early adventure). I decided not to go that route though, because the early adventure is very dangerous and the extra APR with bows would give me more chances to disrupt spell casters' initial casting attempts. So the starting weapon proficiencies I chose were:
Flail/Morning Star ++
Longbow ++
There are lots of skeletons once you get to the Vale of Shadows. I figured I could pick up Axes at Levels 3, 6.
Easthaven was mostly a breeze, of course, with the exception of the Goblins with bows on the outskirts of the village. Havar tried to engage them one at a time. He took some damage but that's what inns are for
The most dangerous battle before leaving with the caravan is the last battle in the caves. On Insane difficulty, there are 4 Ogres with maybe a dozen orcs. Definitely liked having the bow here:
Off with the caravan, until the avalanche hits. Havar finds himself on the western side of Kuldahar Pass needing to traverse a valley teeming with goblins in order to get to safety. Many of the goblins here have bows, so with double the normal attacks, and it being very risky to rest, this is definitely a tough stretch:
Havar would trade arrows with the goblins and then retreat to the path leading to the hermit's cave. There's a narrowing of the path where only one goblin at a time could attack Havar. It was like a mini-Thermopylae
The battles raged on, with Havar wearing down bit by bit:
One last group of Goblin Marshals seek Havar's demise:
Rough, but Havar pulls through! Havar rests in Ghereg's ruined tower and explores Kuldahar before returning to clear the Mill and northern area of the Pass (much easier to do being able to rest in Ghereg's tower). Havar finds Glinglam's Cloak in the Mill (+1 AC, +1 Saves) which will be very nice to have when he starts facing magic users.
Havar is tasked to find the source of the disappearances plaguing Kuldahar by Arundel. Havar clears the outside paths of the Vale of Shadows first and then explores the Yeti cave. Havar encounters a 5 Yeti tribe, which he defeats largely with his bow and some boot leather:
After raiding the Yeti cave, Havar begins searching the tombs. The greatest danger in the first four tombs are the large numbers of foes and the traps, but he gets through by being sure to slay all foes nearby before triggering any traps he suspects could be around:
Havar begins to search Kresselack's Tomb where things get much more serious. There are undead here that require magical weapons to hit. Thankfully, Havar found a +1 Morning Star earlier on and found another in the Yeti cave. An encounter with Bone Dancer Mytos nearly ends Havar's adventure, but shorty saves come through this time:
Another example of why to slay foes as soon as they are in sight:
Havar saves against the Color Spray trap further into the tomb:
Havar encounters the Skeletal Mage on Level 2. He tries to clear the area of undead first, so he only has to face the mage alone. However, a Skeleton crashes the party. Havar decides to stick with the bow and try to shoot down the mage, disrupting its spellcasting, even with a 2-H Sword wielding skeleton in his face:
Then Havar faces the Imbued Wights who cast double damage Magic Missile that are impossible to avoid. Havar is very worn but pulls through, then is off to rest for a few weeks:
On to the 3rd level of the tomb, with traps and nasty undead galore:
In the final chamber before Kresselack is another Skeletal Mage. Havar is more careful about clearing the area first, and shorty saves rescue his rotund behind yet again:
Havar clears the tomb and is promised by Kresselack to be told where the villain who is cursing the Vale of Shadows is hiding out. There's only one catch: Slay the Priestess of Auril who wants to open Kresselack's tomb to the cold of winter. Havar seeks out the priestess, discovering that it's the barmaid Lysan hiding out in the Yeti Cave with 5 more Yetis...
Havar suspects Lysan can only be hit by magic weapons and is a very capable cleric. Havar drinks the only Potion of Freedom he has and puts his +1 arrows in his quiver, planning to lure everything outside where it's more open. Lysan surprises Havar by trying to Charm him instead of Hold him, but Havar resists:
Lysan chooses not to chase Havar outside, so Havar puts the Yetis down with his bow:
Havar enters the Yeti cave again. This time, Lysan is not going to let Havar go:
Havar runs outside and waits for Lysan to emerge, shooting her with a magic arrow and disrupting her spell:
Lysan decides to try her mace instead, but in a melee battle Havar has the upper hand. He wears her down with a couple more arrows and then finishes her off with his morning star:
Of course, Kresselack doesn't know who is cursing the Vale, and tells Havar that once Havar's played the sucker. Arundel tells Havar to search for the Heartstone Gem in the Temple of the Forgotten God. First, Havar has Lysan's cloak identified, learning among its other powers is the ability to cast Free Action on the wearer lasting 4 turns. This will be a great boost to Havar's survivability, planning to use the cloak's Free Action power and then switch to Glimglam's Cloak for the +1 Saves bonus.
In the Temple of the Forgotten God, Havar battles many Acolytes and Verbeeg. The Verbeeg hit like trucks, and the Acolytes cast nasty spells like Hold Person, Charm Person, Static Charge and even Magical Stone which deals significant damage:
Havar uses the same tactics here: try to interrupt the Acolytes with his bow, then use Defensive Stance and outlast the Verbeeg. It's not a foolproof plan, but it's the best Havar can come up with:
Havar encounters more traps in the temple which reinforces the need to remove foes whenever able from the battlefield. You never know what will happen with every step:
Havar encounters large numbers of Verbeeg and Acoytles on the second level of the temple:
Further into the temple, one Acolyte lands the spell Havar feared the most. Havar hopes the end comes soon and painless:
But the overzealous Acolyte frees Havar from the prison he constructed himself!
Havar shoots down the Acolyte and wonders how someone with a lower Wisdom score than Havar had ever found a place in the clergy...
Havar rummages through the temple's coffers and finds Lady Tymora hasn't left him yet! He finds:
The last resistance Havar faces in the temple is a group composed of two Verbeeg and 3 Acolytes, very dangerous:
Havar tries to interrupt the Acolytes but has to retreat from the Verbeeg, slowly shooting them down while shrugging off spells from the Acolytes, before finally putting down the last of the resistance:
Havar reaches the inner sanctum of the temple, only to find the Heartstone Gem taken from its pedestal. Arundel identifies the vial of snake venom Havar brings back from the temple as belonging to Priests of Valona and suggests Havar resume his search in the (supposedly) dormant volcano of Dragon's Eye.
Havar rests up a good while before deciding he wants a sneak peek at what is to come:
Havar is confronted by some Ice Trolls outside Dragon's Eye. Thankfully, these trolls don't regenerate, and Havar puts them down:
Havar decides to return to Kuldahar before entering Dragon's Eye. He sells the Wand of Armory and Ring of Shadows he can't use to Orrick, netting him over 17k gold pieces, and buys the Shimmering Sash with the proceeds. The Shimmering Sash grants a constant Blur spell (+3 AC, +1 Saves) to the wearer, and since it's a spell effect, it's cumulative with any other +AC item.
Havar goes to the Root Cellar Tavern in Kuldahar, buys an ale, and puts his feet up (Character Sheet):
Saves (with Glinglam's Cloak)
Of course, some spells have negative save modifiers, and some attacks aren't subject to saving throws. How will Havar fare in the battles to come...
I was fully expecting a major drop in reputation for following the evil path in the Serpents of Abbathor quest, and surprised that it didn't occcur. We have now got to Nashkel for what I think will be the final battle there.
However we discovered that the mines were exceedingly well defended and that progress was both exceedingly slow and dangerous.
We therefore decided to return when we had more experience as we were using provisions up very quickly.
Dealing with the Iron Throne and Durlag's Tower look like being easier options at present as there were parties of a dozen skeleton archers even near the top of the mines which had to be defeated using divide and conquer tactics.
@Trouveur Looks like you will soon be overtaking my party as my mods give so many extra quests.
After Gullykin, the party explored some wilderness areas.
The mage in tombs area managed to cast a lightning bolt despite being hit.
Coran then reminded me a wyvern was waiting be killed, so we headed to Cloakwood. We met some ettercaps and Branwen died from poison, because we forgot to bring more antidotes.
After a quick backstep to FAI for raising Branwen and take some antidotes, we hurry to Wyverns cave and used wand of summoning to contain the wyverns while Coran and Kivan shooted them.
Drassus and his friends didn't survive webs and fireballs.
In the mines, fear and web helped against the guards.
Natasha couldn't beat summoned monsters.
Coran and Baeloth alone succeed in killing Davaeorn. A potion of perception helped Coran to disarm all traps and open all chests.
In Baldur's Gate, most quests were easily made, and soon Varuca worn ring of protection +2 and Helm of Balduran.
Before trying to fight Degrodel's guards for activating the quest leading to the Cloak of Balduran, we made some purchases in Ulgoth's beard and explore more wilderness areas. Sirines was easily killed by Coran and Kivan, and soon Varuca with the tome of constitution was able to wear Claw of Kazgaroth without HP penalty.
She now is level 8 with an AC of -6, and a third attack with the dagger of venom. She have by far the best percentage of kills, ahead of Coran. Clearly unmodded shapeshifter is a top tier choice for BG1, with druid spells up to level 5 and melee skills as strong as most warriors.
Next steps : doing Neera, Rasaad and Dorn's quests mainly for big fist belt, finish cleaning Cloakwood 2 and 3 for recovering Spiders's Bane for Ajantis, and then pay Degrodel a visit. After that it will be time to clear upper floor of Durlag's Tower.
No screenshots this time because i'm away from home and type this on my smartphone.
We made our way to the temple and sunray'd the master wraith:
There we go, now we are finally at the part of the game where I tend to struggle even with unmodded play - and since we've skipped quite a bit of content (we also aren't going to visit Watcher's Keep again), the party is certainly not at the same level - Jaheira has no chance to get to her big druid spell unlock, we only have a few HLAs with not even every HLA spell unlocked. However, the difficulty with Draconis is not what it should be - the main problem, as usual, is the maddening "getting stuck in the selection circle of hostile NPCs" bug, which pretty much always happens if some of the party are in melee range with Draconis' human form when he transforms. Incredibly annoying, I wish this would get fixed at some point.
Here is the moment of transformation:
Now, a bit of a similiar story for the throne - it's been a very long time since I've actually fought vanilla Melissan in a fair fight, that being without using spike traps, especially for her third appearance. I prepared well, with additional potion buffs (mostly strength and invulnerability), had my timestop scrolls, wisdom potions for wishes etc. First phase: No problem, as I had my CCs with 3*ADHW and a spell trigger with 3*pierce magic:
Well, this was a relatively short playthrough, with all the skips. In the end, we made it to around 4,81m XP. Obviously, even with the resting/hp/content restrictions in this run, this was relatively simple and straightforward, being a vanilla run with a full party - and I lost a bit of motivation once we made it to the Underdark and had basically all the tools at our disposal. I'm a bit surprised that we actually faced some really tough challenges in the end, with Draconis (though mostly due to a bug), Ravager (mostly due to me not having prepared a real strategy) and the third incarnation of Amelyssan (that one was REALLY close - if she didn't switch towards the planetar and went after Beringia herself or even Nalia, that might have been it - and I didn't even play that poorly here, I just forgot about the timestop). I think whatever I will play next, it will propably be a group or character without access to many buffs - this is what really gets a bit annoying with time, the constant buffing interrupting the flow of gameplay - which, of course, is the only thing to actually make no-reload party play safe, but I still want to do less of it in the future if possible.
Beringia, the Transmuter: @Enuhal
Notable Mods: None
Difficulty: Core Rules
Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1186139/#Comment_1186139
End: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1187093/#Comment_1187093
I can emphasize with the constant buffing becoming grating too. The only way I see around it is excellent saves all-around, but there aren't enough shorty NPC's in BG2 to fill more than half the party. Still, with a durable/passive defenses protagonist (Dwarven Fighter/Cleric?) you'd be a lot less reliant on buffing that way.
Your ToB stories will greatly help me if I ever beat SoA.
We rescued four people in the Field of the Dead before returning to Ulgoth's Beard to tell our story.
Then cleared the top floors of Durlag's. That was easy.
We went back to Baldur's Gate to take on the Throne and were then sent to Candlekeep having first stocked our carrying case with potions. Candlekeep was straightforward and we have now defeated the warders at Durlag's and are now on the chessboard. Sadly Tenya did not obey instructions and as a result got chunked. That could have significant ramifications later.
'Long-life challenge' - thief to dual to cleric {1} (update 1)
I've had a couple more failed attempts at my long-life challenge since the last run I posted and feel I really should do better
To give myself an extra incentive to play safely, I sometimes see how far I can get without taking damage. Improving stealth with a few levels helps with that and I was soon up to level 4 thanks to Shoal.
One likely source of damage is from ranged attackers during travel ambushes. While choice of routes and timing can reduce that, I wanted equipment to further mitigate that danger and an ogre provided the belt of piercing. The next target was the cloak of displacement and on the way I took advantage of hide in plain sight to backstab an ankheg to death (if stealth had failed, I now had shadowstep available to retreat). That was enough for level 7.
Heading down to Nashkel provided Bhaal CLW, though hopefully that won't be needed for a while yet.
Here's my current character record, showing I've already got pretty decent stealth abilities.
Hopefully not a foreshadowing of your next attempt with fewer buffs, but my poor Dwarven Defender bit the dust against Yxonemei in Icewind Dale:
On the previous level, on Insane difficulty, you face 3 Yuan-ti Mages who Stoneskin instantly, then Protection from Normal Missiles. With the double damage, they do 30+ damage on Magic Missile and 40+ on Vitriolic Sphere. The only real way for a non-spell user to deal with that (that I can think of) is chucking Flaming Oil/Potions of Explosions/etc. at them. There are only 3 of those for sale at this point in the game, and I used all three in that battle.
Against Yxonemei on Insane difficulty you get 3 more Yuan-ti Mages, and it was just too much. Back to the drawing board...
Added, congratulations on another great success!
Anyone who wants the honour of wiping a remaining class or kit from the list, hurry up or Enuhal will have finished them all
Previous updates
Unlike Durlag's, the traps in the Nashkel Mine are kid's stuff and I had no trouble in getting through to Mulahey. Three backstabs (with a critical miss as well) finished him off before he could summon any help.
Shadowdancer 10, 73 HPs, 203 kills
I will continue Varuca's journey this weekend.