Our Trio got taken down by a green slime last session, so here we are in BG 1 yet again. Candlekeep chores were handled simply enough. Shoal taken down early as usual. We headed down south, defeated Merrianne's ogres, but somehow lost her letter so we didn't get the ring. We also didn't turn in Colchette's necklace as Coreranger XX may had sold it not realizing what it was. Whoops! We make our way south to the map with the little girl with the dead cat. We are still pretty low level. Swoog tries to distract in werewolf form but is hurt bad and has to run. We run Kaldo and Krumm around and then Krumm whacks Swoog dead. We pick up his stuff, resurrect him in Naskel and come back and avenge him. We pass on the cat and the girl since none of us have really good CHA.
The ogrillions at the gnoll fortress were toast and we were able to get the DEX gauntlets for Swoog. Getting the CHA tome was simple enough. Coreranger XX decides we might be able to do Basilisk hunting. Near the end of that, we caught a snag when Swoog activated Mutamutin while the greater basilisk was still alive and activated. But somehow we killed Mutamutin before he could kill us. We rested and prepared for Kirian. The idea was to charm them and then bring them one at a time away and pick them off. This plan worked perfectly for the 1st of Kirian's gang. But then in trying to charm the 2nd enemy Coreranger's XX stealth broke! Run! Well poor Relay didn't quite make it and was held and killed.
So we picked up Relay's stuff and went to a temple and brought him back. When we returned we did manage to pick off Kirian and her friend, so we did win after all! Whew.
After selling we took a side detour and picked up a +2 dagger for Swoog from the Revenant area while also taking the down the Revenant as well. We then headed to the Sirine's area. Relay tanked this area well with his clarity potion. For the hold person trap Coreranger passed a freedom potion to Relay for that. Relay got hurt bad but we did get the 2nd golem and then the rest of the party healed him up some. For the last golem Relay got confused because he thought a charmed bat was Coreranger and Relay nearly died but we did get the golem because the golem did go after the bat. Then Coreranger XX foolishly tried to sleep in the cave and we got a carrion crawler but we managed to kill it.
We ran out of time and saved here. A chaotic session but the run continues...
I have two large sessions behind me where I got a bit lost (engaged) with the game and the modifications done by SotSC. Some nice unique gear was found such as this club which Reynaert is using currently (since all axes break and I did not find a magical axe yet. Moreover, Kagain is contesting the axes as well).
Tranzig was easily disposed of and Branwen got her revenge. I then started to explore everything down the east side of the map
We start at Ulcaster outside by besting Icharyd, and then move inside to fight the spiders and wolves. At the end there is an extra cave from SotSC where more spiders reside. Really fun additions, and so much in line with the base game.
Cold is my friend. Fire is my friend. Command is my friend. Shiny! And at the end, cold kills the spider boss. There is some nice loot down here... a dagger with AC+1 casting insect swarm on a critical hit. A plate AC2 with lore +10 and melee thac0 +1. I found a spider shell here, but I have no idea yet what to do with it.
After Ulcaster, Gullykin is next. First we scout outside, and solve a new quest with a ghost dog that leads us to a dead body. When we retrieve it we gain a reward, but I forgot which by now. Outside we fight the gang in the south. Fire and Cold are very goooooood.
Until I burn half my party to near death... or death...
And then, who do you give this to?
Firewine is next. I enter via the halfling house and... anticlimax the thing. I think I got these arrows from the body quest maybe...
Firewine is actually a wild magic zone. Funzies! I only do the maze and exit again via Gullykin.
Overall not difficult. We go clear out the mines exit area without problems, and we kill Narcillius and his slimes. The tombs were explored as well. I recall I did part of the south first until I needed to raise Kagain and I returned only now. After that we travel to the Firewine bridge itself. Kahrk is gotten rid of similarly to the Firewine dungeon ogre mage. Then I forgot that Firewine is a wild magic zone and I got a nice surprise that made me run like crazy.
We finish the area and move to the area with the Basilisks. There Aura mentions, "let me scout first, because my goggles protect me from gaze attacks". Sure, and then every time a Basilisk targets her they keep doing the ranged attack on Aura while my party kills them one by one. I did not even meet our nice undead friend here.
The party made good progress today. We had just finished off the golems and sirines at the pirate's cave last session. Coreranger wanted to get the other sirines at the other map. Then Coreranger XX had an idea - what if we charmed some animals and had them distract the sirines while we shot them up? This worked even better than Coreranger had hoped, as the sirines appeared to be using some sort of charm person, so they couldn't charm our animals which meant their sure defeat.
We made a quick stop to get the shield from Bjornin for Relay. With that upgrade, we decided we could take on the ankhegs. This worked well, with Relay only getting hit once. The party was hard hitting, with Relay dual-wielding, Coreranger with his staff and bow, and Swoog with his werewolf form.
We then made a quick stop at the zombie farm to get the +1 cloak for Swoog. It required using a cloud giant potion, as we have no thief. Despite killing all the zombies, the farmer refused to believe we had done the deed, so no reward. Oh well.
Once at Ulgoth's Beard, we got the usual trinkets, all of which happened to go to Coreranger. Coreranger also got the mirror eyes potions. We then headed to Durlag's Tower. The battle horrors were defeated easy enough.
Once we got past the stun trap, Relay tanked the basilisks easily enough. Swoog used some fire protection to get the scimitar for Relay, which was much appreciated.
After selling, time for more upgrades. We worked our way to Melium, but first had a talk with Molkar. Swoog's druid spells were devastating.
Melium of course had no chance, the gauntlets were welcome upgrade for Coreranger. Then we decided to work on the main quest a bit. Kobolds were getting shot to pieces, so no hope for them. Greenstone amulet made Mulahey pretty straight-forward.
Time to engage the amazon assasins. It wasn't much of a fight, as druid spells ravaged them just like Molkar's group. The powerful bowmanship of Coreranger and Relay didn't help them either.
While here, we also took down the undead in the caves and Narcillicus and his jellies. Greenstone amulet enabled Coreranger to tank the 3 ghasts in the tomb. We also picked up Samuel and the fire resistance ring which was nearby, and of course we returned Samuel to the Frienly Arm and did some selling while here.
After pretty being annoyed that Rashad once again took our kill (Rashad killed Nimbul), we took down Tranzig, although not before letting Tranzig kill a charmed Algernon which enabled Swoog to get a nice cloak.
Time for the bandit camp! Swoog used mostly his werewolf form, Relay mostly tanked and Coreranger XX used mostly his bow. While this did work, Relay took massive damage (he was down to 12 HP and still was tanking as if he had fuil health). Swoog and Coreranger did what heals they could for their comrade. After a rest, Coreranger used the greenstone amulet to do a surprise attack on Venkt which dropped him to 1/2 health. Coreranger's comrades then moved in now that it was safe. The enemies fell quickly.
We then went to Cloakwood. We got to area 2, but we noticed we didn't have any freedom potions which would make this area much safer since we have no thief. Coreranger XX decided to head to High Hedge to get some freedom potions. We were trying to return to area 2 when the game crashed. We were out of time so saved here.
Relay has a slight lead in kills with his dual-wielding.
We'd rolled up this pair of randoms at the conclusion of attempt 234 and set about the Sword Coast this morning. Things started off well as we were accused of stealing in Winthrop's inn. Initially I thought Saunter had been observed looting the upstairs rooms but on reflection it's more likely I clicked Steal by mistake instead of Buy.
This curtailed our Candlekeep chores and we left; Fancy having bought himself a shortbow by mistake as well as a longbow. Saunter had nothing from the store so she helped herself to Imoen's gear and now had two unpurchased shortbows which was not good news for Xzar and Montaron. After disposing of them we moved on to shoot down Shoal the Nereid and confirm we could not get any sense out of Mad Arcand.
So instead we nipped down to Nashkel and geared up. Or not. How about we shoot Noober before he finishes talking. This is becoming a textbook lesson of how not to no-reload. Noober, despite running, injures Saunter. Saunter meanwhile does not attack Noober but the screenshot screams otherwise.
We move on, and so does Noober. Saunter has recognised that Fancy is using a non-proficient quarterstaff having eschewed dropped short-swords along the way. She hunts down a trio of hobgoblins for their whistling shortsword but then decides we would be outfought so we retreat unseen.
Not very much later we return and make our presence known. Not even an interfering ghoul, or the steady effect of poison can deter us.
We continue to bolster our reputation wherever possible and at some point Saunter lands her first successful backstab on the second of three worgs sniffing around a lighthouse. It survives but Fancy and his arrows rectify matters.
With our reputation reaching 20 we purchase a cloak of displacement for Fancy, and upgrade from Silke's +1 quarterstaff to a +3 quarterstaff for Saunter. Then it is on to Nashkel Mine where four or five snares are too much for Mulahey the half-orc to bear. His minions have been thinned out but the remaining kobolds are put to the sword as skeletons are bashed apart by quarterstaff.
Lamahla and her amazons are waiting for us outside the mine, but with Maneira blinded a single web and our arrows are enough to kill the four of them without us retreating past our emergency snare (bottom of screenshot).
Nimbul the assassin manages to cast horror at Saunter before she can get inside the nearby store, but she makes her saving throw. Nimbul joins her in the store but fails to follow outside, so she lays a snare (fails, injures herself) before hiding and returning. Nimbul has his back to a store cupboard so cannot be backstabbed but a critical hit is enough to separate him from his boots and the mortal realm.
Tranzig observes as a snare fails to set, and tries to give up as a backstab lands. We give no quarter and he hits Saunter with at least two spells before we finish him off.
The bandit camp sees us take a beating, then a second and a third but we are persistent and eventually stand outside the main tent. Saunter sneaks in, lays a few traps and returns outside. We rest and Saunter starts on Venkt with a backstab which he survives - only for a snare to take his life. Saunter exits again and nobody follows so she returns to backstab Raemon as Fancy arrives. There is a bit of to and fro as everybody chases everybody else but in the end we stand undefeated and the four occupants are vanquished.
As the session ends we show off our hoard of loot.
The underground battle against Hezpharnon was tricky. Tenya got confused and Chaos caused chaos. Regis and Tenya were killed, but after the dust settled I used the first charge of resurrection on Tenya and she raised Regis. Haste was used to escape.
We are slowly but surely took Dragonspear.
Phossey Dugdeep had blown down some gates and I defeated Caelar's Champion.
The last part in the nine hells was actually quite easy.
Now in Amn having finished SoD no reloads for the first time.
However, I am not going to continue as it seems that I cannot continue with my party.
In my next run-through I edited Mendas to be a good fighter who had inadvertently put on the helmet of opposite alignment.
That causes him to attack. I gave him plate armour and a +1 sword. Upon testing it with a cleic, beating him was a struggle, so it looks like I made him about the right strength. I think that he would beat a solo mage or thief. See below for next run through.
Trio 48 - Final Update Coreranger XX - human beastmaster, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Relay - elven ranger (Grond0)
Swoog - shapeshifter (Gate70)
Well, the session started well enough. We made our way to Drassus without too much trouble. We thought druid spells would win the day against them, but Gate70 didn't bother to do entangle but probably should have. The Nymphs died quickly and Swoog got in trouble and Grond0 confused. But Coreranger just kept whacking away but somehow Gate70 kept himself alive long enough for Relay to get ahold of himself and decide things with his entry. Fortunately the mages were killed quickly by Coreranger's arrows of biting.
The Cloakwood mines went mostly well, but we ran into one problem. Swoog had meant to bash the door by Rill but instead opened it. Sure enough Heirashan the mage came right into the tiny room we were in. A lightning bolt would have been disaster. We unloaded into her but she still managed to get off a lightning bolt before dying. While we were hurt bad, somehow no one died.
We made it to Davaeorn's level. Relay tried to pull a single Battle Horror but the enemy wouldn't come. But his arrows weren't doing anything. Coreranger tried to see if he could pull the Battle Horror, but got 2 at once. Whoops! Somehow we managed to kill both and stay alive. Then Coreranger used a potion of magic blocking and his acid arrows killed Daveorn quickly.
Time for the City of Baldur's Gate! We did some of the usual quests, Vayya and Deserta, the basilisk, no problem there. But we ran into a problem quickly as Relay killed the High Priestess of Umberlee but the geas scroll disappeared. This meant we needed to hurry and stick to needed upgrades and the main story line. So we did a few more tasks like get the helm of Balduran and helm of Glory and the intelligence tome and the +2 ring from Razamith.
We then dealt with the dopplegangers at the Seven Suns, skipped the Ogre Mage in the Sewers. Coreranger also did stealth to get the quest update so we could go to Candlekeep. Relay handled the crypts well with the help of a protection from the magic and storm giant potion. The poor Elminster doppleganger got dispelled and died quick. Druid spells worked well against Prat and his gang - Relay and Coreranger are both deadly with their bows. We skipped the spiders and with a potion of mirror eyes Relay tanked the Basilisks.
Slythe got dispelled and Krystin was nice enough to cloudkill Quenash for us so we got the cloak of balduran.
Time for the key event! We buffed for Duchal Palace. Gate70 summoned nymphs tried to get rid of their dangerous spells. Problem though? He was supposed to get rid of their domination spells not confusion. Sure enough a doppleganger gets dominated, hits a duke (while supposedly under our control), and Coreranger then suffers the unstoppable scripted death - RiP Coreranger XX!
This happened at the end of the session, so we will roll up new characters next session.
I set aside my annoyance at messing up our last trio session, and instead concentrated on whether I'd be able to do the same here.
Saunter double checked; yes she had looted the main bandit tent last time.
We headed towards Cloakwood, but after one ettercap dropped a protection from petrification scroll and Fancy successfully memorised it we changed direction and cleared out Mutamin and his basilisks. Baerin and Lindin succumbed to blindness while a web gave us ample opportunity to shoot down Kirian and Peter.
This worked well enough for us to blind Genthore and shoot his companions in another web.
We entered Cloakwood mine rested and confident, but the guards inside had reasonable armour and by the time we reached the penultimate level we were rather worse for wear. Saunter managed to get a couple of rests in but pushed her luck and we had to run from a large group of guards. We ran past hobgoblins and some guards joined us in the final area. We only had one potion of invisibility so Saunter glugged a few healing potions on the hoof as Fancy cast blindness and glitterdust to little effect. Eventually he used his bow to end matters.
Fancy had managed to scare one guard with two charges of a wand of horror, and this gave us challenges as the guard fled and Fancy followed before we realised. Back comes Fancy but he had tripped enough traps for a pair of battle horrors to hove into sight and support of Davaeorn.
With Fancy badly wounded Saunter cleared what traps she could, then dropped two oils of fiery burning and a potion of explosions. Both battle horrors and Davaeorn survived so as Fancy cast web and caught both horrors Saunter looted a nearby container which contained more potions. Another explosions potion left just Davaeorn, and without mirror images. Saunter sneaked in for a backstab only to realise the web extended a bit further than she thoughts.
A few tense moments later Saunter saved against a repeat webbing, and she was still in the shadows. Davaeorn survived a backstab and started an incantation but Saunter gulped a potion of firebreath and stopped him dead.
We made our way into the city, headed to Durlags Tower - returning promptly as poison from Marek made itself known. We did enough to kill him and cure Saunter, and then rapidly worked around the upper floors of Durlags Tower.
Then we returned to the city and did a few more quests. Lothander and his boots of speed had earlier survived (see below) despite a concentrated application of grease that gave us all the excuses we needed to tell Larze these were not the squishies he was after.
(He didn't really believe us, but decided we were far too slow to be who he was looking for)
Always love reading these posts and decided to write my own. I've done quite a few of these, been playing BG since it came out. I've wanted to do a trilogy run of a solo wild mage, no reloads on SCS insane for a while. I think it's a pretty interesting challenge because you've got a very powerful class but with a lot of janky randomness that can ruin a run. I spent some time plotting it out before going, doing some experiments. It's an interesting challenge to try and map out the safest way through the game using this class. I am writing this a bit like a walkthrough so I can remember what I did and to help anyone else who wants to try this.
When playing the Wild Mage as safely as possible there are two things to look out for, a directly deadly surge of which there are only a few really and the indirect death caused by the loss of a round of spellcasting. This indirect thing is going to be the real problem and we want to avoid things like casting invisibility to get out of bad situations as much as possible, it's a 5% chance of a failure.
Max HP rolls are on, SCS set to insane using AI and IWD spells. I don't have any tactical challenges on, so the fights are mostly the default just with the improved AI. To start, we went with an elf for the charm resist named Goldblum, chaotic neutral and channeling the energy of Jeff Goldblum. Stats are 13 str, 19 dex, 17 con, 18 int, 15 wis, 12 chr. Go for extra con (above 16) so you can get the +1 from the book and wear the Claw with no hp penalty.
So BG1 is actually very easy as a Wild Mage. You aren't really a Wild Mage, more of a Wand Mage. I was able to beat the game in about 4 hours using my usual no-reload plan. Went to Korax kill the Basilisks for XP. Friendly Arm Inn for the ring. High Hedge, sold the ring and bought scrolls of invisibility, skull trap and protection from petrification. I actually wont cast many first level spells at all, so might as well sell it. Went to the Ankheg farm, to get the Wand of Fire, cast invisibility as soon as I grabbed it. This is a 5% chance of dying roughly, could buy a wand of sleep but we're so early in the game it doesn't seem like a huge issue to die at this point and restart. Headed up to Ulgoth's Beard and got the Greenstone Amulet. As a note, you should cast invisibility on yourself at every screen transition because the odds of dying from the 10 bandit pack or the SCS spiders near cloakwood is higher than the odds of dying from a wild surge at this point.
Now down to the mines, grabbed the frost wand, cast invisibility and fried Mulahey. Scorch him and quickly walk backwards to fry all the kobolds and skeletons that come in. You can use Greenstone to be extra safe. Make sure you take the potion of absorption. Got the Wand of Summoning from the Ghoul Tombs. Killed Tranzig (use Greenstone and Fire), grabbed the +1 ring and then go to High Hedge. At this point, I went to Durlag's Tower and killed the Horrors using my Frost Wand. Cast invisibility and protection from petrification and went to the second floor to kill the basilisks on the top. I was pretty close to level 7 at this point and in the end will have a save vs. spells of 6 with the ring and claw, with enough HP to survive most surges (lightning bolt in close quarter is a threat though for a while).
The Bandit Camp, I didn't want to deal with so I went invisible, popped my absorption potion and just took the loot from the chest, cast invisibility and left.
Cloakwood needs invisibility at all transitions so don't forget that! I want the boots of speed so I set a few skull traps and pull the boots guy into them, finished him off with the wand while running back towards the transition in case I need to leave screens. Grabbed the boots, cast invisibility and into the mines... again. Made my way to Daevorn, fried the Horrors with the last of my fire wand being very careful not to pull the mage himself. Now to deal with him I like to hide in the back corner and use the wand of summoning. Send out just one or two monsters at a time to conserve charges. He likes to use AOE spells at first so waste them on individual monsters. Again be very careful you don't pull Daevorn at the start because his web and stinking cloud trigger will mess you up. He ran out of spells before I ran out of charges and my monsters killed him.
Baldur's Gate time! After selling everything I've got quite a bit of gold, picked up another wand of fire and wand of summoning. Time for some sewer crawling. Those SCS phase spiders can be deadly if you aren't paying attention. I went down invisible and fried them and the ogre mage. Killed the dopplegangers, got the poison cure through the Malek quest for some easy xp as well. I didn't feel like fighting the Iron Throne goons, just walked up invisible and talked to the rogue in the back for the info to complete the quest and went back to the Duke.
Next chapter was super easy as well, cheesed my way through everything using invisibility. I decided to fight the two greater basilisks near the end using the protection from petrification and my wand of fire for some extra xp.
The final stretch! With SCS Slythe is very deadly, something I've learned on previous runs. I overwhelmed him with summons and the fire wand scorcher in the end though. To be safe I had an oil of speed with my boots so if I needed to I could zoom out of there. Kept the greenstone amulet on in case Krystin saw me but I was off the screen from her since Slythe charged right into the monster pit.
The Ducal Palace is always scary although with SCS I think it's easier since the mage buffs herself up like crazy and is pretty hard to kill. Started by summoning a horde and surrounding the dukes with them, then scroll of Chaos and wand of sleep spam. They killed the warrior Duke but the mage was safe. This fight always freaks me out...
To deal with Sarevok, I like to get the ring of energy from those red wizards in the forest. Before going into the maze, bought some potions: speed, and resisting lightning and fire are important. Used the potions to resist all the traps except the magic missiles below while invisible. Once you're in the Sarevok lair, it's easy to zap the hell out of all the minions using the never ending lightning trap. It doesn't wake them up even on SCS insane. It takes way too long to kill Sarevok with this though so I pull him down into some skull traps I set up. Finished him with my monsters and the ring of energy (he doesn't resist magic damage, unlike the fire/elec). In any case you can run circles around him with boots + oil and just keep frying him with the ring.
That's it for BG1. I've done this too many times, it's a bit of a chore so I rush through it to get to BG2. I'd say I ended up casting less than 50 spells in the end and had a grand total of 3 wild surges, none of any consequence (besides changing my gender temporarily).
@Goldblum nice to read about your solo wild mage adventures. I've played that sort of game many times and you're right that the danger of surges, though small in BGEE, adds a bit of extra spice. I've never actually succeeded in a full run since the Enhanced Edition came out, but I've made good enough progress to feel confident about eventual success. The run that felt most hurtful to me was when, deep into ToB, I managed to imprison myself. I've also mazed myself in another run, so these days I try to avoid using 8th and 9th level spells as much as possible. Best of luck to you .
@Goldblum nice to read about your solo wild mage adventures. I've played that sort of game many times and you're right that the danger of surges, though small in BGEE, adds a bit of extra spice. I've never actually succeeded in a full run since the Enhanced Edition came out, but I've made good enough progress to feel confident about eventual success. The run that felt most hurtful to me was when, deep into ToB, I managed to imprison myself. I've also mazed myself in another run, so these days I try to avoid using 8th and 9th level spells as much as possible. Best of luck to you .
@Grond0
Thanks a lot! That's great advice and that's something I didn't consider. I guess the surges that redirect your spells are pretty deadly. I'll have to be careful with that one, although imprisoning yourself with a surge seems like a classic Wild Mage move.
I just finished the first bits of SoA. I think I've found a plan that makes things as safe as possible so I can move away from wands and on to casting my own spells.
I cleared Irenicus' Dungeon with Animate Dead mostly and spent some time grinding on Ice Mephits (they do almost no damage to skeletons if you leave that portal for last). I wanted to get as close to level 11 as possible for the +2 save boost Mages get at that point. No real wild surge issues, I have some goodberries though, I think I'll keep a goodberry counter. I have 5 now, let's see how many I have by the time I finish or die trying...
Now that I am out I went to Ribald's and picked up the main item to keep me safe: the Ring of Air Control. I often overlook this thing but it lets you cast Improved Invisibility once per day. This can't cause any surges and will boost my saves by 4. Got to level 11 by doing some safe quests. Now I've got these saves after casting Improved Invisibility:
So at this point I don't have to fear turning to stone or anything. This isn't really required but it feels a lot safer mentally even though the risk is minimal. I can buff up and cast my summons without that little fear of turning to stone or something. I buy a potion of invisibility as well and go to my next stop: Watcher's Keep. I sneak in, cast invisibility and then go to get the Golem Manual. Then I grab about 2000 gold from a nearby bookshelf.
Now that I can do some combat, I need gold and I want some reputation points as well to make buying scrolls and the robe of Vecna cheaper. I spent a bit of gold at the church to get my reputation to 13, now it will be pretty easy to get it to 19-20 because many of the early quests to get points are easy and safe. I have to remember to spend my gold ASAP and hoard items for when I need them because of the gold melting risk...
I was thinking of dropping my last run for the moment and doing a dwarven cleric one since I've been knocking together some portraits. I'm not happy with my Tempus portrait though. The shield doesn't look natural.
Also the first one should be a follower of Torm. However, I think that I have too many clerics for balance. Perhaaps two would be better.
I therefore decided on the Helmite and the Holy Redeemer. I must however try out some of the other cleric kits.
In Candlekeep I killed some assassins who carried some useful loot together with some useless loot.
After helping Mellicamp we made our way south to Nashkel, killinng ogrillons and hobgoblins on the way. We picked up the Colquetle amulet and some ankheg armour as we went.
South of Nashkel we killed Zargos Flintblade and Greywolf before going to the Carnival where we killed Zordral.
We returned the Colquetle amulet and killed Silke before killing Karlat.
We returned Perdue's sword and helped Eltoth.
Heading North we killed an ogre and then Tarnesh.
Further north we killed every ankheg that we could find before returning to High Hedge where we killed a werewolf.
EDIT
With being away for a week, I lost track of this game so I am about to start a new one.
Trio 49 - update 1 Cruiser - dwarf kensai (Grond0)
Core-orc - orc berserker (Corey_Russell)
Clop - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous run
The session started with generating new characters independently. The result is a combat heavy party that will allow quick progress - if we survive of course (Corey mentioned early on that we seem to have spent a lot of time in BGEE recently ).
The action soon got under way with a visit to the coast after the Candlekeep chores. There, the remarkably charismatic Core-orc was able to get a reward from Mad Arcand before shooting Shoal provided enough XP for a new level for Clop. The closest escape of the session happened shortly afterwards when Cruiser was savaged by a dog - only his dwarven heritage providing sufficient HPs to survive that.
At Beregost we've had the odd problem recently with Neira surviving intended assassinations, but this time Clop blinded her from a distance to ensure she wouldn't run towards her attackers. Then it was on to Nashkel to pick up some green armor for Core-orc. The intention was to shut Noober's mouth permanently while there, but he somehow survived attacks by 3 fighter-types while wandering away.
We bought a PfP scroll at the Carnival and headed back north to find some basilisks - though with a slight detour to save Arabelle and grab Meilum's bracers.
Cutting down the basilisks provided several more levels before Core-orc shrugged off Mutamin's spells, while his rage also allowed him to ignore spells from Peter as Kirian's crew kicked the bucket.
Cruiser was specializing in daggers and ignored the fact that Clop was also keen on them to grab a free +2 version from Hentold. Then the group headed for the FAI, briefly stopping off to relieve an ogre of its belt collection. Core-orc made use of a ring of protection also picked up on the way and he also purchased Buckley's Buckler to allow him to regenerate at will and reduce the need to heal the party. With his defences already pretty formidable, Core-orc was happy to take on the ankhegs at this point and cleared their nest at the cost of being hit just once.
After finishing off a few quests in Beregost and putting a blinded Silke out of her misery, we travelled over to the coast to find some sirines. Unlike barbarian rage, the berserker version if proof against feeblemind as well as charm - so Core-orc had no problem in getting up close and personal with the first group of sirines to ensure he was able to grab all their arrows.
The intention was to rage again to handle Sil, but Core-orc's second rage of the day was lost when attempted while still suffering fatigue from the first one. He put some of the arrows of biting recovered to use in shooting down sirines, but the rest of those just picked up were wasted when he was charmed.
Inside the pirate cave the golems got a few hits in, but didn't last long enough to cause too much trouble.
Cruiser took the constitution tome, to allow him to regenerate as well, leaving Clop as the only one needing healing in this super-fit grouping.
While golems are easy to hit, the attacking strength of this party was clear as the Doomsayer also fell in seconds - that partly being explained by Clop's successful attempt at blinding it.
Brage then provided a lift back to Nashkel before we moved on to the nearby mine area. While Greywolf avoided being blinded, he was quickly cut down anyway. Inside the mine, Mulahey's chances of survival were never great and diminished further when he did lose his sight.
Outside the back door to the mine, rage meant the amazons had no easy target. Core-orc and Cruiser then headed for the ghoul's tomb, while Clop scouted in the direction of the ghast tomb. Seeing an ogre berserker on the way there, Clop decided to attack - which was nearly his downfall. The berserker successfully trod on him, trapping him in place. A few quick whacks took him to near death, despite gulping several healing potions. His companions were rushing to his aid, but the chances of arriving in time looked limited. However, the ogre ran out of luck with its attacks at this point and Clop did survive long enough for the cavalry to appear.
The final action of the session saw Nimbul being confronted. He put up mirrors, but Core-orc picked his target well and a single critical hit tore Nimbul in half.
Unlike barbarian rage, the berserker version if proof against feeblemind as well as charm - so Core-orc had no problem in getting up close and personal with the first group of sirines to ensure he was able to grab all their arrows.
The sirine melee attack isn't actually that big a deal for a tank anyway as long as they have backup; feeblemind doesn't count as helplessness so AC protection still applies, and it does very little damage. I see ankheg plate and a helm, and I'm assuming 18 Dex ... that's an AC of -3 or better. At THAC0 12, 1 APR, and 1d2 (crushing) damage per hit, that's less than half a point of damage per round per sirine. Very easy for allies to kill them before they can inflict much pain.
The feeblemind effect does last 25 rounds, so they'll probably reapply it before it wears off if you let them. You do need the backup.
The link above to our previous run doesn't disclose how that ended. As you know there are many ways to fail a run and we've got experience of a lot of those . In this case the culprit was mis-clicking when deleting an unwanted install and consigning all saved games to oblivion ...
This randomly selected pairing is another pretty squishy combination - at least as far as BGEE is concerned. We tend to use very little in the way of wands and not buy new spells early on, so the early stages of the run saw lots of running around while shooting enemies. Use of pausing in MP is problematic and we don't do that a great deal and we don't use AI to help with targeting of enemies. That does mean there's a fair bit of hokey cokey dancing in and out against enemies, like Meilum, with decent AC and defence.
Looking to get a few extra levels we went to find some basilisks. Voka had taken PfP as one of her starting spells, so a bit of care duly saw the back of those monsters. However, the run nearly came to an end against Mutamin when he was able to shrug off hits from chromatic orb and magic missiles and send Janus running in terror. He came perilously close to running into sight of Kirian, but changed direction just in time. Meanwhile, Voka had taken one acid arrow from Mutamin before briefly breaking contact, but came into sight again just as Janus was attempting to link up once more. Fortunately, Janus was now sufficiently close to hand over a stash of healing potions just as another acid arrow was launched. Taking one of those allowed Voka to survive the initial damage and shortly afterwards Mutamin was shot down. Unfortunately, Voka was so busy celebrating the kill that she forgot to take another potion to protect against the continuing damage from the acid arrow and followed Mutamin into his grave.
After a visit to the temple we did a bit of re-equipping - noting in the process that Voka's +1 sling had evaporated (loss of equipment when moving items in MP can be reduced by leaving significant gaps between each move, but that requires patience ). Janus had taken the opportunity to grab and learn Mutamin's stinking cloud spell while Voka was incapacitated and that meant Silke was an easy kill.
Voka still only knows 1st level spells, but once she gets a bit more knowledge the going should get much easier next time.
@Grond0
The randomly selected duo sounds like a fun idea, I think I'll have to give that a try sometime. Good luck!
I was going to write some more posts here but lost a bit of motivation after dying in the Underdark. I'll summarize everything that happened now though.
Actually, most of SoA was quite smooth. With my save vs. spells being below 0, I went a bit overboard and even started using reckless dwoemer in battle, rapid firing skull traps. Most SCS mages were handled easily using cloud kill. The Rakshasa for the druids was probably the hardest fight early on, which was won with door cheese, minute meteors and tenser's transformation (and mislead). I don't really recommend doing that at all early on it just isn't worth it but I was trying to complete all the major quests. I spent some time grinding on skeleton warriors and gauths for the Eye questline. It wasn't that long until I had robe of vecna, planetar and was basically napped my way through the rest of the early game with that, using alacrity and dragon's breath when needed as well. But using planetar allowed me to minimize the number of spells I cast until I learned project image at least.
There were two wild surges of note. The first one was pretty funny (and ended very fortunately for me). Fighting the bandits in the temple sewers, I was entangled which apparently has no save... See I completely overlooked this one when I was studying the Wild Surge table. Imagine me standing there entangled with a mislead spell wearing off, wondering which was going to end first. I was kicking myself for not memorizing any 2nd level invisibility. My mislead wore off first and I thought I was screwed. But something funny happened... Because I never killed the Hatchetman and never spoke to them, just started rapid firing skull traps in their direction, when the mislead ended they walked up to me hostile and asked me to give my money. Of course I obliged... And survived, they left right after. Although the loss of gold and all the loot was a bit of a downer...
The second wild surge of note was a cow dropping on the Svirfneblin guards in the underdark, they went hostile but that didn't seem to cause any issues completing the quest to get the gem.
My death was so stupid and anticlimactic. I was doing the "good" way to get out of Underdark. I never do it on no reload runs. I was a bit more hesitant to fight a dragon this time. This ended up being my downfall. It had been so long that I'd done this that I forgot a lot of details. I thought that the dragon teleported you out in a scripted thing and killed the guards. Such was not the case... The SCS AI guards sniped me, stunned me and for whatever reason the dragon took her sweet time killing them and I died to some skeletons. I was really kicking myself because I was getting lazy with the "helpless" invisibility contingencies since they trigger on project image and I forgot to renew it.
I have to say I am disappointed with the death... If I'd died to some insane wild surge like imprisoning myself I could at least have had a laugh about it. At the end of the day, the wild surges weren't that threatning and I honestly didn't notice them all that much even when I started casting reckless dwoemer.
A few things I'll say about the wild mage. I like it a lot actually for no reloads, it's nice to have the extra spell slots and not lose any schools of magic. Even conjurers miss out on far sight (which is quite frankly an amazing spell for SCS). Reckless Dwoemer saved me a few times when I forgot to memorize something or a strategy went wrong and I needed to fall back on a planetar summon. I'll probably give the trilogy another shot again later.
When a Helmite Cleric arrived in Candlekeep we had little idea of how much it would change our lives. I Bjorn the Black and my twin brother Bjornin Twinaxe were very similar except for one thing, our alignment. Bjornin is a lawful good Inquisitor and I am a lawful evil Blackguard. The aforementioned Cleric persuaded us bot to follow Helm and to help us assigned a Helmite Acolyte to accompany us, his name being Hal the Helmite.
Despite our difference in alignment, Bjornin and I get on well together as it is only our motivations that are different. I have a shrewd idea that my brother would like to change my motivations, but I cannot see that happening.
After eavesdropping upon Bjornin and Hal, I have discovered that Gorion has charged them with diverting me from the evil path. Fat chance of that!
In Candlekeep we were assaulted by two assassins who were thieves. Command dealt with them easily enough. The third assassin was hidden in plain sight by being disguised as a Watcher. He too was killed after Hal used Command on him.
Upon examining his helm Bjornin realised that it had unusual properties and decided to keep it.
After the death of Gorion we ended up in High Hedge after rescuing Mellicamp from a wolf. Mellicamp was transformed back into human form.
We proceeded to The FAI where we killed Tarnesh.
Heading North we helped Leila and killed a lot of ankheg.
We returned Joia's ring and in Beregost helped Eltoth.
When Silke attacked us, she didn't live long enough to regret it.
We then headed east where we found a lot of useful items as well as experience in a cave, one of the items being a tome which improved my charisma.
We headed south to Nashkel where I found some ankheg armour, and at the carnival we killed Zordral.
To the south we killed Greywolf after which we took Samuel to the FAI.
We took Khalid and Jaheira to Nashkel and headed south where we joined up with Dorn who stayed with us until we had killed Krill.
Bassilus was dealt with next followed by Zargal.
To the west we killed a number of Sirine and looted a cave.
We then helped Charleston Nib and Brage
We killed Vax and Zal before killing some thugs who were about to destroy a dryuad's tree.
Then at the Gnoll stronghold we killed two ogres and some assassins.
We looted a cave at the Gnoll stronghold before going to rescue Tonder from Lycanthropy.
We then went for the reward for killing Bassilus and sold ankheg shells in Beregost.
Neera joined us and we killed some half-ogres.
We also did her quest with no problems.
She has now gone to rest at the FAI.
Whilst there I tried on a belt that changed my gender. That was interesting to say the least. My brother then gave me a helm to try on which he said that I might like. It turned out to be cursed like the belt. However Bentley gave me a potion which enabled their removal.
It is strange how my outlook on life has now changed. I now have no desire to follow Helm, not that he would want me. Haela Brightaxe is the deity that I now choose to serve. Bjornin is quite pleased by my change of alignment despite the fact that I no longer serve Helm. Strangely I still have the powers of a blackguard despite my change of alignment. I'm not complaining as being Chaotic, I couldn't be a Cavalier or an Inquisitor.
Xzar and Montaron have now joined the party.
Montaron acquired a cloak from Algernon and we have now arrived at Ulgoth's Beard where Montaron picketted a lot of equipment before we bade him and Xzar farewell. We then sold our spare equipment before buying as much as we could afford..
There was a difficult start to the session due to difficulties with Discord, which we normally use to communicate with each other. That led to Cruiser deciding to attack Tranzig on his own. Clop noticed that and headed towards the conflict, though not expecting to arrive in time. However, Cruiser's decision to attack with dual-wielded weapons, despite having no proficiency either with his main weapon or with 2-weapon skill resulted in very few hits and ultimately Cruiser ran downstairs just as Clop arrived to get the killing blow.
While Cruiser's initial plan was to head for the Bandit Camp, Clop pointed out that he currently had no belt. That resulted in a change in destination to take a scenic tour of the Cloud Peak mountains, gaining a girdle and the charisma tome in the process.
By the time we eventually got to the Bandit Camp we'd sorted out our communications by using Skype and soon worked through the bandit fodder. Taurgosz was a rather tougher target, but Cruiser shrugged off Clop's warning that he was being targeted by an archer to continue the attack and find a deadly critical.
Clop sneaked into Tazok's tent and successfully blinded Venkt - leaving the others no realistic chance against our fighting abilities.
In the Cloakwood Cruiser tripped the first web trap out of sight of any spiders. He started the process of pulling ettercaps away from the next trap, but Clop was in a hurry and used stealth to trip that. Cruiser looked slightly askance at that, in the instant before he was held by the web with an ettercap bearing down on him. Fortunately though, he saved at the next attempt and only suffered a single hit.
Core-orc was keen to get some free action courtesy of Spider's Bane and that was acquired without problems.
The only other real action while travelling through the Cloakwood was Core-orc raging to take down the Hamadryad. On arrival at the mine, Core-orc suggested that he could consume a spicy meat ball and breathe on the waiting mages and that proved a highly effective tactic.
There were no great problems working down through the mine. The battle horrors near Davaeorn were pulled back and meleed individually before attacking Davaeorn. Trap damage there left Cruiser and Clop potentially vulnerable to the mage's spells, but Davaeorn had forgotten to pre-cast his mirror images and a succession of missile hits soon put paid to him.
In the City, Core-orc was protected by his rage while tanking the ogre mage - allowing the others to retreat to a safe distance.
A few more encounters included the Mountain Maulers to get a +2 weapon for Core-orc. One of the mages there managed to get a lightning bolt off, but the room there is large enough that bounces are not too much of a problem and the battle was comfortably won.
Core-orc demonstrated his toughness by dealing with Degrodel's guards before deciding he could do with a pair of speedy boots to keep up with the others. With no summons or mage spells, killing Lothander is not easy, but darts of stunning sometimes work. The stairs he uses to exit were successfully blocked, giving an extra instant in which Clop managed to land a hit - but Lothander saved and disappeared.
Clop had a few spare stunning darts left and put one of those to good use against Larze before Marek was overcome by weight of attacks.
The last few minutes of the session saw us fighting up Ramazith's Tower. Clop hit potential problems when he stealthed past the mustard jellies and ghasts and attacked the hobgoblins - he had to run away with HPs down into single figures after being poisoned twice in quick succession. However, everyone survived (maintaining the record of no deaths in the run so far).
I left Xzar and Montaron at Ulgoth's Beard before heading south once more.
We cleared the area to the north of the Gnoll Stronghold withh little difficulty.
Then Tanya told me of her need to visit Lethe. Tanya was hurt badly, but not as much as Lethe.
Returning to the Gnoll Stronghold, we rescued Aaron and then Dynaheir before dealing with Mutamin, the basilisks and the medusae.
It seems that it is now time to deal with the demons in the Nashkel Mines. It would have been good if there were a thief in the party but sadly that is not the case.
I'm back with another run, played a couple of weeks ago while listening to a bunch of podcasts over the course of maybe 3 weeks. I needed something to play that wouldn't take much of my attention, so I decided to play without mods and with a class combo I'm quite familiar with, but which isn't represented in the hall of heroes yet (at least not as a multiclass). Since the druid spells serve mainly as support, I focused on physical stats on character creation, also got int to 11 for mind flayer safety, and ignored wisdom:
Since I had no interest in a long and involved run, I basically made things as quick as possible with my plan being a quick solo rush to the recruitment xp cap (32k) before gathering a high level party. First, though, I had Montaron backstab Tarnesh:
I made my way south, selling Evermemory, getting some quick experience at Beregost, picking up ankheg mail, buying the petrification protection scroll, and moving a bit further south to Samuel. On the way back to FAI, I encountered the dreaded bandit ambush, which might have ended this run rather quickly, but the archers didn't get a single hit in:
Ariehaj made her way east to the basilisk area, recruiting Korax to take down Mutamin:
Korax was sadly killed by a basilisk via melee hits before I was able to clear the area, so I had Ariehaj drink oil of speed + potion of heroism to improve her melee combat chances and kiting abilities:
Not much else was needed to get to 32k - I couldn't pick up Khalid, Jaheira or Imoen, as they spawned at a lower level, but I could still get Branwen, Ajantis, Minsc and Dynaheir. As far as non-evil thieves, Safana was really the only choice, which forced me to deal with the sirens/flesh golem cave early on. Not too difficult, because with Branwen's starting levels, she already had access to skeleton summons:
I didn't have the weapons/ammo to easily defeat flesh golems, so I used an invisibility potion and made a stealthy getaway:
With my party recruited, it was just a matter of clearing up wilderness areas. With access to spells such as silence, hold person, fireball, stinking cloud (soon replaced by web, which is especially powerful when used by Dynaheir due to her invoker bonus) etc., we had no trouble with that. We also got our hands on some wands (of the heavens, paralyzation, fire, frost, monster summoning), which turned every fight were we used them to our immediate advantage - even Kahrk got hit by paralyzation:
Essentially, 90% of difficult battles in the early game can just be won by web + shooting if needed. I didn't make too much use of this, as it wasn't needed at all most of the time, but Drasus and companions got a taste of this treatment:
Hareishan, meet Dynaheir's fireball:
Davaeorn failed to do anything against Ariehaj protected via PfM:
We made it to the big city, picked up a bunch of spellscrolls (most importantly, haste) and tomes (all on Ariehaj). Also, we made our first significant mistake here by accidentally selecting conversation options which didn't allow us to get gauntlets of ogre strength:
After eventually dealing with Marek&Lothander and even clearing out Dregrodel's house, we went to Iron Throne HQ:
At the top, some wand action and thrown fireballs (also via potions/necklaces) was all that was required:
Back in Candlekeep, we started using our vast arsenal of potions - hasted and strength-buffed, our warriors easily defeated all available foes. So far propably the biggest mistakeof the run came back in BG1 while storming the flaming fist IQ, where I failed to protect my party, including Ariehaj, against the huge amounts of clerics spamming hold person - I was lucky to be able to counter with Branwen's own hold person spells, otherwise this could've ended badly:
On the other hand, the ducal palace went quite well, with both dukes taking 0 damage:
We bought a bunch of arrows and potions, used webs against the undercity party and prepared for Sarevok. No expansion content needed, no SoD planned - we will be underleveled in SoA, but that's fine - druids are very overpowered in vanilla early SoA anyway. Safana stopped Sarevok's haste and Semaj's buffs with her dispelling arrows:
With that, Semaj was easily dealt with, and Sarevok failed to stand up to the group of fully buffed up 24 strength warriors:
No deaths in the entire run so far, though I did lose control of Ariehaj twice (once at Flaming Fist HQ, also one time early on when fighting Mulahey due to rigid thinking, though there was no danger here as our foe died during the same combat round). With this true and tried approach to the vanilla game, there's not too much that can go wrong once the recruitment xp cap is reached - most deaths happen very early, or not at all. BG2 will be played in a more interesting fashion.
My plan for SoA was entirely different from the one for BG1 - in the past, I've finished two successful playthroughs with a player character (some type of Monk both times), Jaheira and Jan - with the latter two having the flexibility to deal with anything the game would throw at you. Now that my player character was a fighter/druid, a duo with Jan seemed like a quick and easy route to success, plus I've never done a duo run before - full solo play felt too risky (due to my lack of solo experience), but Jan would provide just the skills missing from my main character. For the dungeon, I recruited only Imoen to get out - which wasn't all that easy, because I tried to go with only one rest as if I was playing with SCS. I actually had to make full use of all our spells and even a few minor healing potions:
Out of the dungeon, we got access to fifth level spells (insect plague!) anr recruited Jan. With our final party composition already achieved, we decided to travel to the druid grove right away, seeing as this is the only place to get decent weapons for a dual-wielding fighter/druid such as Ariehaj. Blackblood + Belm was our planned weaponset for the entirety of SoA until the later levels of Watcher's Keep. We didn't have access to fire elementals yet due to our low starting experience, but insect plague can win any battle early on:
How to deal with trolls though? Summoning flaming swords via the druid spell was basically our only way, and they aren't exactly very strong weapons:
However, challenging Faldorn was quite easy thanks to forest beings:
We had Gnasher + Belm now, which allowed us to take down the rakshasa group - we used one of our giant strength potions here:
We finished the first druid stronghold quests right away after returning to Trademeet, bought Blackblood and now, finally, felt ready to take down pretty much everything in the early game. While doing minor quests around Athkatla (such as the slavers) we gained access to fire elementals, who can deal with a majority of challenges for a long part of the game due to their weapon immunities. With two fire elementals, three forest beings, insect plague and the ability to open combat with a backstab from Jan, even powerful enemy groups such as the sewer party weren't off limits:
With the minor quests and battles around the city done, we started doing the stronghold quests one by one - De'Arnise Keep, Temple Ruins, Mae'Var's Guild (at this point we had improved haste, turning Ariehaj into quite a damage machine, especially when using DUHM or potions), Planar Prison, Unseeing Eye (using Shield of Balduran), Windspear Hills (with PfU for the vampires) and, finally, Planar Sphere - here are some assorted screenshots:
Btw, in the second to last screenshot, Jan is indeed dodging an ADHW via SI:Necromancy thanks to Robe of Vecna casting speed. Now, with our small party size, we quickly caught up on our XP disadvantage. Right when finishing the Planar Sphere, our final stronghold quest, we reached HLA levels, getting UAI and summon deva, which is why I decided not to go to Brynnlaw yet - instead, we cleared the first two levels of Watcher's Keep:
Jan was at the level at which his traps had the fire damage, making the chromatic demon an easy foe to deal with. At this point, we had most of our tools available - iron/stoneskins, resist fear, chaotic commands, death wards, improved haste, often times fire resistance spells and more defensive buffs for Jan. Not much else needed, really, besides a few breach spells. Bodhi and her vampires stood little chance, but we continued in P3 for now by going for the harder opponents - guarded compound, where I decided to use greater malison + slow on a whim, a few liches and Kangaxx, who fell to the iMoD +2 due to Jan's UAI, our first group of mindflayers - distracted by summons, taken down by maximum damage - the two dragons, and finally, the twisted rune, who died quickly to a very aggressive approach (and a few traps):
Next up: The second part of SoA, from Brynnlaw to hell.
Making our way through the asylum and past Jon was easy enough:
After getting the Cloak of Mirroring for Jan, there was little left that could seriously hurt us in SoA. The demon knights certainly weren't it:
I used a bunch of mind focusing potions in the mind flayer city to improve intelligence and AC:
In Ust'Natha, we got our buffs dispelled for what I think is the first time when facing Deirex, though Ariehaj has all-negative saving throws and a bunch of potions of invulnerability and magic shielding in her inventory - plus, Deirex was late with his dispell, as his PFMW ran out right after that:
Getting out of the Underdark was easy enough, and Bodhi stood little chance against Daystar + Helm of Brilliance:
On to the elven city. Flaming Cloud is really good against rakshasa groups:
Both shadow dragon and Jon were quickly dealt with:
For the hell trials, I decided to take two evil routes to get +2 strength and +2 con - due to that, I could wear the belt of inertial barrier instead of a giant strength belt, for more defensive security. When facing Jon for the last time, I first dealt with his demons, breached him twice (or three times?) and killed him:
I had bought all potions of heroism, cloud + storm giant strength, invulnerability and a bunch of mind focusing available in SoA, so I'd be able to have a few of these active at almost all points in ToB. I bought a huge amount of spellscrolls for Jan, who is a decent fighter by himself at this point with a point in two-weapon style, a strength belt and some good thac0-boosting ear + potions. Gromnir fell quickly, without hurting the party at all due to their powerful defenses:
After leaving the city, we entered Watcher's Keep right away. There's some risk here, but this is pretty much the only place where we could upgrade Ariehaj's weapons - Dagger of the Stars, Club of Detonation, with a little bit of luck Specral Brand - all okay mainhand options.
Here, we suffered our first character death (with the victim obviously being Jan, otherwise the run would be over) - in a no-magic zone of course. At this point, I was used to Jan being a decent front-liner and forgot how incredibly squishy he truly would be without his defenses, and he died to a bunch of cornugon bleed/poison effects:
After using the RoR and getting past the no-magic zones, the rest of the zone was relatively easy. Even the demon wraith was okay with 9 APR and permanent critical strikes:
I got the most lucky I've ever been in a no-reload run when gambling with the cambion. I think I've only won the spectral brand around 4 times in my successful runs, but this time, I even won the wish scroll as well:
Saladrex posed a little bit of a challenge due to dispelling Jan's buffs (I might have been out of spell immunity spells at this point), though his fire resistance prevented death via breath weapon:
The demli-lich fell to our second PfM scroll, and we completed the final trials - using a bunch of spike traps for initial burst, instantly taking our Azamanthes and other dangerous spellcasters. At the final seal, Jan did lose his buffs to the hive mother before she was killed, but Ariehaj kept hers.
This was enough to finish the battle, and we read Helm's scroll. Now, we have a bunch of great weapons, can get to 10 APR with improved haste, and we've also just hit the experience cap, which means that we can invisibly skip a bunch of encounters going forward. The remainder of ToB will be up next!
We made our way to the Marching Mountains, leaving a lot of fire giants behind by just walking past them invisibly. With constant fire resistance buffs active, we didn't face any real dangers here - magical swords are quite good at tanking even large hordes of fire giants:
Yaga-Shura was a bit elusive - I encountered all of his lieutenants first - propably the first time I've killed every single one of them before taking down the giant:
At the oasis, I quickly looted the Answerer (a good weapon for Jan) and used invisibility potions before running off to Amkethran:
With no reason to challenge Vongeothe, my time in Amkethran was short, and I quickly started clearing Sendai's Enclave. Ogremuch turned out to be a rather challenging encounter - he just wouldn't stick on magical swords, always going after my two party members instead, and due to his constantly renewing stoneskins and very high damage (I had no ironskins left at this point), the battle forced me to use a bunch of potions and was relatively close:
The same couldn't be said for any other encounters here, including Sendai, who really stood very little chance once she was breached:
Now, preparing for Draconis, I equipped the shadow dragon armor on Ariehaj, while Jan took up the Helm of the Rock. Both used acid resistance scolls, Jan buffed with both SI:N (for horrid wilting) and SI:A for remove magic. While beating down the human form of our foe, we made sure to separate Ariehaj and Jan from the enemy once he was near death, in order to avoid getting stuck in his selection circle:
Draconis turned into a dragon, and while we went all out in terms of damage and breach spells for his frequent PFMWs, he showed us the power of his breath weapon, which would've instantly killed Jan and taken Ariehaj down to 61 HP if not for our preparations:
However, Draconis wasn't able to successfully heal to full after going invisible as he likes to do:
Abazigal is also quite challenging for our duo, but not nearly as dangerous as his son in the vanilla game. With immunity to electricity easily achievable via items, the main problem was Ariehaj's inability to protect most of her buffs against dispels - she had to use hardiness and constantly renew AoF in order to take the high incoming damage from the dragon:
Balthazar, on the other hand, has no dispel abilities and just died without much of a challenge:
I made use of Jan's spike traps (I had him take spike trap 12 times in total, crucial for a safe Amelyssan victory) in the pocket plane challenges, which allowed us to finish the Ravager within seconds:
Now, we prepared for the Throne with a bunch of potions, various immunities and most importantly, a long-hatched plan similiar to what I did for my FMT solo run - the first Amelyssan fight is essentially our only one we have to take, the others will be dealt with by 4 spike traps each, so the fallen solar is essentially our final battle - and for that one, we have saved a bunch of timestop scrolls and spells (including timestop via limited wish). First, we have to beat Amelyssan once fair and square - it's all about constant critical strikes under improved haste:
Some electricity immunity via potions and we dealt with the first pool (both character have immunity to level drain via Spectral Brand / AoP). No dispels yet. Amelyssan #2 dies to traps, we buff with scrolls+potions to gain frost immunity and deal with the second pool:
After Amelyssan #3 fails to survive four spike traps, we make sure to re-buff Jan. It's his time to shine, he casts timestop via limited wish, with a few timestops ready in his spellbook and via spellscrolls - attack for a while, cast another timestop, attack for a while, another timestop, and so on:
This was enough to take down the fallen solar, the nymph and the alu fiend. After the timestops ended, we only had the mariliths left, which were easily breached and killed. Here's the buffed Jan:
7 APR with -1/3 thac0 - not too bad I think, though more is certainly possible. In any case, we were pretty much done now - 4 more spiketraps, and victory was ours:
It was a short but fun run, especially since ToB didn't drag as much with the very small party size and ability to skip a bunch of later battles due to already being at the experience cap. Honestly, I expected to succeed once I made it to 32k XP, as I'm very familiar with the involved classes, used very established strategies and have succeeded with a similiar setup two times before, so I'm not too surprised by the result. Still, I'm happy to add another (multi)class to the hall.
@Enuhal I have a successful run with a fighter druid. He was a level 7 fighter dualed to druid. I forget his name off-hand. It was on the BioWare site.
I'm still alive with Reynaert the shaman, but I have not posted in a while. One illness at home and work were keeping me away from an update. I did finish quite a lot of the game. I have to check when my last update was, but the short story is that I finished all the quests on first the west coast and then the Eastern wilderness.
I cleared the bandit camp last, so now everything above the friendly arm Inn is still to be done while I just passed cloakwood area one.
I will gather my screenies hopefully soon.... Although I have a holiday coming up as well. Hehe
The quests from Shades of the Sword Coast were numerous but fun, and I spent some time going through them.
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Coreranger XX - human beastmaster, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Relay - elven ranger (Grond0)
Swoog - shapeshifter (Gate70)
Our Trio got taken down by a green slime last session, so here we are in BG 1 yet again. Candlekeep chores were handled simply enough. Shoal taken down early as usual. We headed down south, defeated Merrianne's ogres, but somehow lost her letter so we didn't get the ring. We also didn't turn in Colchette's necklace as Coreranger XX may had sold it not realizing what it was. Whoops! We make our way south to the map with the little girl with the dead cat. We are still pretty low level. Swoog tries to distract in werewolf form but is hurt bad and has to run. We run Kaldo and Krumm around and then Krumm whacks Swoog dead. We pick up his stuff, resurrect him in Naskel and come back and avenge him. We pass on the cat and the girl since none of us have really good CHA.
The ogrillions at the gnoll fortress were toast and we were able to get the DEX gauntlets for Swoog. Getting the CHA tome was simple enough. Coreranger XX decides we might be able to do Basilisk hunting. Near the end of that, we caught a snag when Swoog activated Mutamutin while the greater basilisk was still alive and activated. But somehow we killed Mutamutin before he could kill us. We rested and prepared for Kirian. The idea was to charm them and then bring them one at a time away and pick them off. This plan worked perfectly for the 1st of Kirian's gang. But then in trying to charm the 2nd enemy Coreranger's XX stealth broke! Run! Well poor Relay didn't quite make it and was held and killed.
So we picked up Relay's stuff and went to a temple and brought him back. When we returned we did manage to pick off Kirian and her friend, so we did win after all! Whew.
After selling we took a side detour and picked up a +2 dagger for Swoog from the Revenant area while also taking the down the Revenant as well. We then headed to the Sirine's area. Relay tanked this area well with his clarity potion. For the hold person trap Coreranger passed a freedom potion to Relay for that. Relay got hurt bad but we did get the 2nd golem and then the rest of the party healed him up some. For the last golem Relay got confused because he thought a charmed bat was Coreranger and Relay nearly died but we did get the golem because the golem did go after the bat. Then Coreranger XX foolishly tried to sleep in the cave and we got a carrion crawler but we managed to kill it.
We ran out of time and saved here. A chaotic session but the run continues...
I have two large sessions behind me where I got a bit lost (engaged) with the game and the modifications done by SotSC. Some nice unique gear was found such as this club which Reynaert is using currently (since all axes break and I did not find a magical axe yet. Moreover, Kagain is contesting the axes as well).
Tranzig was easily disposed of and Branwen got her revenge. I then started to explore everything down the east side of the map
After Ulcaster, Gullykin is next. First we scout outside, and solve a new quest with a ghost dog that leads us to a dead body. When we retrieve it we gain a reward, but I forgot which by now. Outside we fight the gang in the south. Fire and Cold are very goooooood.
And then, who do you give this to?
Before I finish the area I take a break.
Coreranger XX - human beastmaster, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Relay - elven ranger (Grond0)
Swoog - shapeshifter (Gate70)
The party made good progress today. We had just finished off the golems and sirines at the pirate's cave last session. Coreranger wanted to get the other sirines at the other map. Then Coreranger XX had an idea - what if we charmed some animals and had them distract the sirines while we shot them up? This worked even better than Coreranger had hoped, as the sirines appeared to be using some sort of charm person, so they couldn't charm our animals which meant their sure defeat.
We made a quick stop to get the shield from Bjornin for Relay. With that upgrade, we decided we could take on the ankhegs. This worked well, with Relay only getting hit once. The party was hard hitting, with Relay dual-wielding, Coreranger with his staff and bow, and Swoog with his werewolf form.
We then made a quick stop at the zombie farm to get the +1 cloak for Swoog. It required using a cloud giant potion, as we have no thief. Despite killing all the zombies, the farmer refused to believe we had done the deed, so no reward. Oh well.
Once at Ulgoth's Beard, we got the usual trinkets, all of which happened to go to Coreranger. Coreranger also got the mirror eyes potions. We then headed to Durlag's Tower. The battle horrors were defeated easy enough.
Once we got past the stun trap, Relay tanked the basilisks easily enough. Swoog used some fire protection to get the scimitar for Relay, which was much appreciated.
After selling, time for more upgrades. We worked our way to Melium, but first had a talk with Molkar. Swoog's druid spells were devastating.
Melium of course had no chance, the gauntlets were welcome upgrade for Coreranger. Then we decided to work on the main quest a bit. Kobolds were getting shot to pieces, so no hope for them. Greenstone amulet made Mulahey pretty straight-forward.
Time to engage the amazon assasins. It wasn't much of a fight, as druid spells ravaged them just like Molkar's group. The powerful bowmanship of Coreranger and Relay didn't help them either.
While here, we also took down the undead in the caves and Narcillicus and his jellies. Greenstone amulet enabled Coreranger to tank the 3 ghasts in the tomb. We also picked up Samuel and the fire resistance ring which was nearby, and of course we returned Samuel to the Frienly Arm and did some selling while here.
After pretty being annoyed that Rashad once again took our kill (Rashad killed Nimbul), we took down Tranzig, although not before letting Tranzig kill a charmed Algernon which enabled Swoog to get a nice cloak.
Time for the bandit camp! Swoog used mostly his werewolf form, Relay mostly tanked and Coreranger XX used mostly his bow. While this did work, Relay took massive damage (he was down to 12 HP and still was tanking as if he had fuil health). Swoog and Coreranger did what heals they could for their comrade. After a rest, Coreranger used the greenstone amulet to do a surprise attack on Venkt which dropped him to 1/2 health. Coreranger's comrades then moved in now that it was safe. The enemies fell quickly.
We then went to Cloakwood. We got to area 2, but we noticed we didn't have any freedom potions which would make this area much safer since we have no thief. Coreranger XX decided to head to High Hedge to get some freedom potions. We were trying to return to area 2 when the game crashed. We were out of time so saved here.
Relay has a slight lead in kills with his dual-wielding.
A nice touch letting Tranzig kill a charmed Algernon.
I often use a similar trick charming Oublek and getting him killed by a baby dragon which I think comes via a mod.
Before that I used to set him against one of the assassins which was much trickier. I had to protect him from fear and cast charm more than once.
Saunter (female halfling thief, Gate70); Fancy (male half-elf bard, Grond0)
We'd rolled up this pair of randoms at the conclusion of attempt 234 and set about the Sword Coast this morning. Things started off well as we were accused of stealing in Winthrop's inn. Initially I thought Saunter had been observed looting the upstairs rooms but on reflection it's more likely I clicked Steal by mistake instead of Buy.
This curtailed our Candlekeep chores and we left; Fancy having bought himself a shortbow by mistake as well as a longbow. Saunter had nothing from the store so she helped herself to Imoen's gear and now had two unpurchased shortbows which was not good news for Xzar and Montaron. After disposing of them we moved on to shoot down Shoal the Nereid and confirm we could not get any sense out of Mad Arcand.
So instead we nipped down to Nashkel and geared up. Or not. How about we shoot Noober before he finishes talking. This is becoming a textbook lesson of how not to no-reload. Noober, despite running, injures Saunter. Saunter meanwhile does not attack Noober but the screenshot screams otherwise.
Not very much later we return and make our presence known. Not even an interfering ghoul, or the steady effect of poison can deter us.
Tranzig observes as a snare fails to set, and tries to give up as a backstab lands. We give no quarter and he hits Saunter with at least two spells before we finish him off.
The bandit camp sees us take a beating, then a second and a third but we are persistent and eventually stand outside the main tent. Saunter sneaks in, lays a few traps and returns outside. We rest and Saunter starts on Venkt with a backstab which he survives - only for a snare to take his life. Saunter exits again and nobody follows so she returns to backstab Raemon as Fancy arrives. There is a bit of to and fro as everybody chases everybody else but in the end we stand undefeated and the four occupants are vanquished.
As the session ends we show off our hoard of loot.
The underground battle against Hezpharnon was tricky. Tenya got confused and Chaos caused chaos. Regis and Tenya were killed, but after the dust settled I used the first charge of resurrection on Tenya and she raised Regis. Haste was used to escape.
We are slowly but surely took Dragonspear.
Phossey Dugdeep had blown down some gates and I defeated Caelar's Champion.
The last part in the nine hells was actually quite easy.
Now in Amn having finished SoD no reloads for the first time.
However, I am not going to continue as it seems that I cannot continue with my party.
In my next run-through I edited Mendas to be a good fighter who had inadvertently put on the helmet of opposite alignment.
That causes him to attack. I gave him plate armour and a +1 sword. Upon testing it with a cleic, beating him was a struggle, so it looks like I made him about the right strength. I think that he would beat a solo mage or thief. See below for next run through.
Coreranger XX - human beastmaster, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Relay - elven ranger (Grond0)
Swoog - shapeshifter (Gate70)
Well, the session started well enough. We made our way to Drassus without too much trouble. We thought druid spells would win the day against them, but Gate70 didn't bother to do entangle but probably should have. The Nymphs died quickly and Swoog got in trouble and Grond0 confused. But Coreranger just kept whacking away but somehow Gate70 kept himself alive long enough for Relay to get ahold of himself and decide things with his entry. Fortunately the mages were killed quickly by Coreranger's arrows of biting.
The Cloakwood mines went mostly well, but we ran into one problem. Swoog had meant to bash the door by Rill but instead opened it. Sure enough Heirashan the mage came right into the tiny room we were in. A lightning bolt would have been disaster. We unloaded into her but she still managed to get off a lightning bolt before dying. While we were hurt bad, somehow no one died.
We made it to Davaeorn's level. Relay tried to pull a single Battle Horror but the enemy wouldn't come. But his arrows weren't doing anything. Coreranger tried to see if he could pull the Battle Horror, but got 2 at once. Whoops! Somehow we managed to kill both and stay alive. Then Coreranger used a potion of magic blocking and his acid arrows killed Daveorn quickly.
Time for the City of Baldur's Gate! We did some of the usual quests, Vayya and Deserta, the basilisk, no problem there. But we ran into a problem quickly as Relay killed the High Priestess of Umberlee but the geas scroll disappeared. This meant we needed to hurry and stick to needed upgrades and the main story line. So we did a few more tasks like get the helm of Balduran and helm of Glory and the intelligence tome and the +2 ring from Razamith.
We then dealt with the dopplegangers at the Seven Suns, skipped the Ogre Mage in the Sewers. Coreranger also did stealth to get the quest update so we could go to Candlekeep. Relay handled the crypts well with the help of a protection from the magic and storm giant potion. The poor Elminster doppleganger got dispelled and died quick. Druid spells worked well against Prat and his gang - Relay and Coreranger are both deadly with their bows. We skipped the spiders and with a potion of mirror eyes Relay tanked the Basilisks.
Slythe got dispelled and Krystin was nice enough to cloudkill Quenash for us so we got the cloak of balduran.
Time for the key event! We buffed for Duchal Palace. Gate70 summoned nymphs tried to get rid of their dangerous spells. Problem though? He was supposed to get rid of their domination spells not confusion. Sure enough a doppleganger gets dominated, hits a duke (while supposedly under our control), and Coreranger then suffers the unstoppable scripted death - RiP Coreranger XX!
This happened at the end of the session, so we will roll up new characters next session.
Saunter (female halfling thief, Gate70); Fancy (male half-elf bard, Grond0)
I set aside my annoyance at messing up our last trio session, and instead concentrated on whether I'd be able to do the same here.
Saunter double checked; yes she had looted the main bandit tent last time.
We headed towards Cloakwood, but after one ettercap dropped a protection from petrification scroll and Fancy successfully memorised it we changed direction and cleared out Mutamin and his basilisks. Baerin and Lindin succumbed to blindness while a web gave us ample opportunity to shoot down Kirian and Peter.
A few tense moments later Saunter saved against a repeat webbing, and she was still in the shadows. Davaeorn survived a backstab and started an incantation but Saunter gulped a potion of firebreath and stopped him dead.
Then we returned to the city and did a few more quests. Lothander and his boots of speed had earlier survived (see below) despite a concentrated application of grease that gave us all the excuses we needed to tell Larze these were not the squishies he was after.
(He didn't really believe us, but decided we were far too slow to be who he was looking for)
Always love reading these posts and decided to write my own. I've done quite a few of these, been playing BG since it came out. I've wanted to do a trilogy run of a solo wild mage, no reloads on SCS insane for a while. I think it's a pretty interesting challenge because you've got a very powerful class but with a lot of janky randomness that can ruin a run. I spent some time plotting it out before going, doing some experiments. It's an interesting challenge to try and map out the safest way through the game using this class. I am writing this a bit like a walkthrough so I can remember what I did and to help anyone else who wants to try this.
When playing the Wild Mage as safely as possible there are two things to look out for, a directly deadly surge of which there are only a few really and the indirect death caused by the loss of a round of spellcasting. This indirect thing is going to be the real problem and we want to avoid things like casting invisibility to get out of bad situations as much as possible, it's a 5% chance of a failure.
Max HP rolls are on, SCS set to insane using AI and IWD spells. I don't have any tactical challenges on, so the fights are mostly the default just with the improved AI. To start, we went with an elf for the charm resist named Goldblum, chaotic neutral and channeling the energy of Jeff Goldblum. Stats are 13 str, 19 dex, 17 con, 18 int, 15 wis, 12 chr. Go for extra con (above 16) so you can get the +1 from the book and wear the Claw with no hp penalty.
So BG1 is actually very easy as a Wild Mage. You aren't really a Wild Mage, more of a Wand Mage. I was able to beat the game in about 4 hours using my usual no-reload plan. Went to Korax kill the Basilisks for XP. Friendly Arm Inn for the ring. High Hedge, sold the ring and bought scrolls of invisibility, skull trap and protection from petrification. I actually wont cast many first level spells at all, so might as well sell it. Went to the Ankheg farm, to get the Wand of Fire, cast invisibility as soon as I grabbed it. This is a 5% chance of dying roughly, could buy a wand of sleep but we're so early in the game it doesn't seem like a huge issue to die at this point and restart. Headed up to Ulgoth's Beard and got the Greenstone Amulet. As a note, you should cast invisibility on yourself at every screen transition because the odds of dying from the 10 bandit pack or the SCS spiders near cloakwood is higher than the odds of dying from a wild surge at this point.
Now down to the mines, grabbed the frost wand, cast invisibility and fried Mulahey. Scorch him and quickly walk backwards to fry all the kobolds and skeletons that come in. You can use Greenstone to be extra safe. Make sure you take the potion of absorption. Got the Wand of Summoning from the Ghoul Tombs. Killed Tranzig (use Greenstone and Fire), grabbed the +1 ring and then go to High Hedge. At this point, I went to Durlag's Tower and killed the Horrors using my Frost Wand. Cast invisibility and protection from petrification and went to the second floor to kill the basilisks on the top. I was pretty close to level 7 at this point and in the end will have a save vs. spells of 6 with the ring and claw, with enough HP to survive most surges (lightning bolt in close quarter is a threat though for a while).
The Bandit Camp, I didn't want to deal with so I went invisible, popped my absorption potion and just took the loot from the chest, cast invisibility and left.
Cloakwood needs invisibility at all transitions so don't forget that! I want the boots of speed so I set a few skull traps and pull the boots guy into them, finished him off with the wand while running back towards the transition in case I need to leave screens. Grabbed the boots, cast invisibility and into the mines... again. Made my way to Daevorn, fried the Horrors with the last of my fire wand being very careful not to pull the mage himself. Now to deal with him I like to hide in the back corner and use the wand of summoning. Send out just one or two monsters at a time to conserve charges. He likes to use AOE spells at first so waste them on individual monsters. Again be very careful you don't pull Daevorn at the start because his web and stinking cloud trigger will mess you up. He ran out of spells before I ran out of charges and my monsters killed him.
Baldur's Gate time! After selling everything I've got quite a bit of gold, picked up another wand of fire and wand of summoning. Time for some sewer crawling. Those SCS phase spiders can be deadly if you aren't paying attention. I went down invisible and fried them and the ogre mage. Killed the dopplegangers, got the poison cure through the Malek quest for some easy xp as well. I didn't feel like fighting the Iron Throne goons, just walked up invisible and talked to the rogue in the back for the info to complete the quest and went back to the Duke.
Next chapter was super easy as well, cheesed my way through everything using invisibility. I decided to fight the two greater basilisks near the end using the protection from petrification and my wand of fire for some extra xp.
The final stretch! With SCS Slythe is very deadly, something I've learned on previous runs. I overwhelmed him with summons and the fire wand scorcher in the end though. To be safe I had an oil of speed with my boots so if I needed to I could zoom out of there. Kept the greenstone amulet on in case Krystin saw me but I was off the screen from her since Slythe charged right into the monster pit.
The Ducal Palace is always scary although with SCS I think it's easier since the mage buffs herself up like crazy and is pretty hard to kill. Started by summoning a horde and surrounding the dukes with them, then scroll of Chaos and wand of sleep spam. They killed the warrior Duke but the mage was safe. This fight always freaks me out...
To deal with Sarevok, I like to get the ring of energy from those red wizards in the forest. Before going into the maze, bought some potions: speed, and resisting lightning and fire are important. Used the potions to resist all the traps except the magic missiles below while invisible. Once you're in the Sarevok lair, it's easy to zap the hell out of all the minions using the never ending lightning trap. It doesn't wake them up even on SCS insane. It takes way too long to kill Sarevok with this though so I pull him down into some skull traps I set up. Finished him with my monsters and the ring of energy (he doesn't resist magic damage, unlike the fire/elec). In any case you can run circles around him with boots + oil and just keep frying him with the ring.
That's it for BG1. I've done this too many times, it's a bit of a chore so I rush through it to get to BG2. I'd say I ended up casting less than 50 spells in the end and had a grand total of 3 wild surges, none of any consequence (besides changing my gender temporarily).
Wise advice.
Thanks a lot! That's great advice and that's something I didn't consider. I guess the surges that redirect your spells are pretty deadly. I'll have to be careful with that one, although imprisoning yourself with a surge seems like a classic Wild Mage move.
I just finished the first bits of SoA. I think I've found a plan that makes things as safe as possible so I can move away from wands and on to casting my own spells.
I cleared Irenicus' Dungeon with Animate Dead mostly and spent some time grinding on Ice Mephits (they do almost no damage to skeletons if you leave that portal for last). I wanted to get as close to level 11 as possible for the +2 save boost Mages get at that point. No real wild surge issues, I have some goodberries though, I think I'll keep a goodberry counter. I have 5 now, let's see how many I have by the time I finish or die trying...
Now that I am out I went to Ribald's and picked up the main item to keep me safe: the Ring of Air Control. I often overlook this thing but it lets you cast Improved Invisibility once per day. This can't cause any surges and will boost my saves by 4. Got to level 11 by doing some safe quests. Now I've got these saves after casting Improved Invisibility:
So at this point I don't have to fear turning to stone or anything. This isn't really required but it feels a lot safer mentally even though the risk is minimal. I can buff up and cast my summons without that little fear of turning to stone or something. I buy a potion of invisibility as well and go to my next stop: Watcher's Keep. I sneak in, cast invisibility and then go to get the Golem Manual. Then I grab about 2000 gold from a nearby bookshelf.
Now that I can do some combat, I need gold and I want some reputation points as well to make buying scrolls and the robe of Vecna cheaper. I spent a bit of gold at the church to get my reputation to 13, now it will be pretty easy to get it to 19-20 because many of the early quests to get points are easy and safe. I have to remember to spend my gold ASAP and hoard items for when I need them because of the gold melting risk...
Also the first one should be a follower of Torm. However, I think that I have too many clerics for balance. Perhaaps two would be better.
I therefore decided on the Helmite and the Holy Redeemer. I must however try out some of the other cleric kits.
In Candlekeep I killed some assassins who carried some useful loot together with some useless loot.
After helping Mellicamp we made our way south to Nashkel, killinng ogrillons and hobgoblins on the way. We picked up the Colquetle amulet and some ankheg armour as we went.
South of Nashkel we killed Zargos Flintblade and Greywolf before going to the Carnival where we killed Zordral.
We returned the Colquetle amulet and killed Silke before killing Karlat.
We returned Perdue's sword and helped Eltoth.
Heading North we killed an ogre and then Tarnesh.
Further north we killed every ankheg that we could find before returning to High Hedge where we killed a werewolf.
EDIT
With being away for a week, I lost track of this game so I am about to start a new one.
Cruiser - dwarf kensai (Grond0)
Core-orc - orc berserker (Corey_Russell)
Clop - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous run
The session started with generating new characters independently. The result is a combat heavy party that will allow quick progress - if we survive of course (Corey mentioned early on that we seem to have spent a lot of time in BGEE recently
The action soon got under way with a visit to the coast after the Candlekeep chores. There, the remarkably charismatic Core-orc was able to get a reward from Mad Arcand before shooting Shoal provided enough XP for a new level for Clop. The closest escape of the session happened shortly afterwards when Cruiser was savaged by a dog - only his dwarven heritage providing sufficient HPs to survive that.
We bought a PfP scroll at the Carnival and headed back north to find some basilisks - though with a slight detour to save Arabelle and grab Meilum's bracers.
After finishing off a few quests in Beregost and putting a blinded Silke out of her misery, we travelled over to the coast to find some sirines. Unlike barbarian rage, the berserker version if proof against feeblemind as well as charm - so Core-orc had no problem in getting up close and personal with the first group of sirines to ensure he was able to grab all their arrows.
While golems are easy to hit, the attacking strength of this party was clear as the Doomsayer also fell in seconds - that partly being explained by Clop's successful attempt at blinding it.
Kensai 6, 73 HPs, 94 kills
Berserker 6, 78 HPs, 69 kills, 0 deaths
Dark moon monk 6, 52 HPs, 51 kills, 0 deaths
The feeblemind effect does last 25 rounds, so they'll probably reapply it before it wears off if you let them. You do need the backup.
Janus (male half-elf blade, Grond0); Voka (female human invoker, Gate70)
Previous run
The link above to our previous run doesn't disclose how that ended. As you know there are many ways to fail a run and we've got experience of a lot of those
This randomly selected pairing is another pretty squishy combination - at least as far as BGEE is concerned. We tend to use very little in the way of wands and not buy new spells early on, so the early stages of the run saw lots of running around while shooting enemies. Use of pausing in MP is problematic and we don't do that a great deal and we don't use AI to help with targeting of enemies. That does mean there's a fair bit of hokey cokey dancing in and out against enemies, like Meilum, with decent AC and defence.
Blade 5, 39 HPs, 35 kills
Invoker 4, 20 HPs, 15 kills, 1 death
The randomly selected duo sounds like a fun idea, I think I'll have to give that a try sometime. Good luck!
I was going to write some more posts here but lost a bit of motivation after dying in the Underdark. I'll summarize everything that happened now though.
Actually, most of SoA was quite smooth. With my save vs. spells being below 0, I went a bit overboard and even started using reckless dwoemer in battle, rapid firing skull traps. Most SCS mages were handled easily using cloud kill. The Rakshasa for the druids was probably the hardest fight early on, which was won with door cheese, minute meteors and tenser's transformation (and mislead). I don't really recommend doing that at all early on it just isn't worth it but I was trying to complete all the major quests. I spent some time grinding on skeleton warriors and gauths for the Eye questline. It wasn't that long until I had robe of vecna, planetar and was basically napped my way through the rest of the early game with that, using alacrity and dragon's breath when needed as well. But using planetar allowed me to minimize the number of spells I cast until I learned project image at least.
There were two wild surges of note. The first one was pretty funny (and ended very fortunately for me). Fighting the bandits in the temple sewers, I was entangled which apparently has no save... See I completely overlooked this one when I was studying the Wild Surge table. Imagine me standing there entangled with a mislead spell wearing off, wondering which was going to end first. I was kicking myself for not memorizing any 2nd level invisibility. My mislead wore off first and I thought I was screwed. But something funny happened... Because I never killed the Hatchetman and never spoke to them, just started rapid firing skull traps in their direction, when the mislead ended they walked up to me hostile and asked me to give my money. Of course I obliged... And survived, they left right after. Although the loss of gold and all the loot was a bit of a downer...
The second wild surge of note was a cow dropping on the Svirfneblin guards in the underdark, they went hostile but that didn't seem to cause any issues completing the quest to get the gem.
My death was so stupid and anticlimactic. I was doing the "good" way to get out of Underdark. I never do it on no reload runs. I was a bit more hesitant to fight a dragon this time. This ended up being my downfall. It had been so long that I'd done this that I forgot a lot of details. I thought that the dragon teleported you out in a scripted thing and killed the guards. Such was not the case... The SCS AI guards sniped me, stunned me and for whatever reason the dragon took her sweet time killing them and I died to some skeletons. I was really kicking myself because I was getting lazy with the "helpless" invisibility contingencies since they trigger on project image and I forgot to renew it.
I have to say I am disappointed with the death... If I'd died to some insane wild surge like imprisoning myself I could at least have had a laugh about it. At the end of the day, the wild surges weren't that threatning and I honestly didn't notice them all that much even when I started casting reckless dwoemer.
A few things I'll say about the wild mage. I like it a lot actually for no reloads, it's nice to have the extra spell slots and not lose any schools of magic. Even conjurers miss out on far sight (which is quite frankly an amazing spell for SCS). Reckless Dwoemer saved me a few times when I forgot to memorize something or a strategy went wrong and I needed to fall back on a planetar summon. I'll probably give the trilogy another shot again later.
When a Helmite Cleric arrived in Candlekeep we had little idea of how much it would change our lives. I Bjorn the Black and my twin brother Bjornin Twinaxe were very similar except for one thing, our alignment. Bjornin is a lawful good Inquisitor and I am a lawful evil Blackguard. The aforementioned Cleric persuaded us bot to follow Helm and to help us assigned a Helmite Acolyte to accompany us, his name being Hal the Helmite.
Despite our difference in alignment, Bjornin and I get on well together as it is only our motivations that are different. I have a shrewd idea that my brother would like to change my motivations, but I cannot see that happening.
After eavesdropping upon Bjornin and Hal, I have discovered that Gorion has charged them with diverting me from the evil path. Fat chance of that!
In Candlekeep we were assaulted by two assassins who were thieves. Command dealt with them easily enough. The third assassin was hidden in plain sight by being disguised as a Watcher. He too was killed after Hal used Command on him.
Upon examining his helm Bjornin realised that it had unusual properties and decided to keep it.
After the death of Gorion we ended up in High Hedge after rescuing Mellicamp from a wolf. Mellicamp was transformed back into human form.
We proceeded to The FAI where we killed Tarnesh.
Heading North we helped Leila and killed a lot of ankheg.
We returned Joia's ring and in Beregost helped Eltoth.
When Silke attacked us, she didn't live long enough to regret it.
We then headed east where we found a lot of useful items as well as experience in a cave, one of the items being a tome which improved my charisma.
We headed south to Nashkel where I found some ankheg armour, and at the carnival we killed Zordral.
To the south we killed Greywolf after which we took Samuel to the FAI.
We took Khalid and Jaheira to Nashkel and headed south where we joined up with Dorn who stayed with us until we had killed Krill.
Bassilus was dealt with next followed by Zargal.
To the west we killed a number of Sirine and looted a cave.
We then helped Charleston Nib and Brage
We killed Vax and Zal before killing some thugs who were about to destroy a dryuad's tree.
Then at the Gnoll stronghold we killed two ogres and some assassins.
We looted a cave at the Gnoll stronghold before going to rescue Tonder from Lycanthropy.
We then went for the reward for killing Bassilus and sold ankheg shells in Beregost.
Neera joined us and we killed some half-ogres.
We also did her quest with no problems.
She has now gone to rest at the FAI.
Whilst there I tried on a belt that changed my gender. That was interesting to say the least. My brother then gave me a helm to try on which he said that I might like. It turned out to be cursed like the belt. However Bentley gave me a potion which enabled their removal.
It is strange how my outlook on life has now changed. I now have no desire to follow Helm, not that he would want me. Haela Brightaxe is the deity that I now choose to serve. Bjornin is quite pleased by my change of alignment despite the fact that I no longer serve Helm. Strangely I still have the powers of a blackguard despite my change of alignment. I'm not complaining as being Chaotic, I couldn't be a Cavalier or an Inquisitor.
Xzar and Montaron have now joined the party.
Montaron acquired a cloak from Algernon and we have now arrived at Ulgoth's Beard where Montaron picketted a lot of equipment before we bade him and Xzar farewell. We then sold our spare equipment before buying as much as we could afford..
Cruiser - dwarf kensai (Grond0)
Core-orc - orc berserker (Corey_Russell)
Clop - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous updates
By the time we eventually got to the Bandit Camp we'd sorted out our communications by using Skype and soon worked through the bandit fodder. Taurgosz was a rather tougher target, but Cruiser shrugged off Clop's warning that he was being targeted by an archer to continue the attack and find a deadly critical.
The only other real action while travelling through the Cloakwood was Core-orc raging to take down the Hamadryad. On arrival at the mine, Core-orc suggested that he could consume a spicy meat ball and breathe on the waiting mages and that proved a highly effective tactic.
Berserker 7, 97 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 136 kills, 0 deaths
Dark moon monk 7, 59 HPs, 93 kills, 0 deaths
I left Xzar and Montaron at Ulgoth's Beard before heading south once more.
We cleared the area to the north of the Gnoll Stronghold withh little difficulty.
Then Tanya told me of her need to visit Lethe. Tanya was hurt badly, but not as much as Lethe.
Returning to the Gnoll Stronghold, we rescued Aaron and then Dynaheir before dealing with Mutamin, the basilisks and the medusae.
It seems that it is now time to deal with the demons in the Nashkel Mines. It would have been good if there were a thief in the party but sadly that is not the case.
I'm back with another run, played a couple of weeks ago while listening to a bunch of podcasts over the course of maybe 3 weeks. I needed something to play that wouldn't take much of my attention, so I decided to play without mods and with a class combo I'm quite familiar with, but which isn't represented in the hall of heroes yet (at least not as a multiclass). Since the druid spells serve mainly as support, I focused on physical stats on character creation, also got int to 11 for mind flayer safety, and ignored wisdom:
My plan for SoA was entirely different from the one for BG1 - in the past, I've finished two successful playthroughs with a player character (some type of Monk both times), Jaheira and Jan - with the latter two having the flexibility to deal with anything the game would throw at you. Now that my player character was a fighter/druid, a duo with Jan seemed like a quick and easy route to success, plus I've never done a duo run before - full solo play felt too risky (due to my lack of solo experience), but Jan would provide just the skills missing from my main character. For the dungeon, I recruited only Imoen to get out - which wasn't all that easy, because I tried to go with only one rest as if I was playing with SCS. I actually had to make full use of all our spells and even a few minor healing potions:
Making our way through the asylum and past Jon was easy enough:
Here, we suffered our first character death (with the victim obviously being Jan, otherwise the run would be over) - in a no-magic zone of course. At this point, I was used to Jan being a decent front-liner and forgot how incredibly squishy he truly would be without his defenses, and he died to a bunch of cornugon bleed/poison effects:
We made our way to the Marching Mountains, leaving a lot of fire giants behind by just walking past them invisibly. With constant fire resistance buffs active, we didn't face any real dangers here - magical swords are quite good at tanking even large hordes of fire giants:
Ariehaj, the fighter/druid: @Enuhal
Notable mods: None
Difficulty: Core rules
Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1192119/#Comment_1192119
Finish: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1192150/#Comment_1192150
I'm still alive with Reynaert the shaman, but I have not posted in a while. One illness at home and work were keeping me away from an update. I did finish quite a lot of the game. I have to check when my last update was, but the short story is that I finished all the quests on first the west coast and then the Eastern wilderness.
I cleared the bandit camp last, so now everything above the friendly arm Inn is still to be done while I just passed cloakwood area one.
I will gather my screenies hopefully soon.... Although I have a holiday coming up as well. Hehe
The quests from Shades of the Sword Coast were numerous but fun, and I spent some time going through them.