@lroumen I'm looking forward to hearing about Shades of the Sword Coast. That's new as far as I am concerned.
Meanwhile I am doing a mainly neutral evil run. A Berserker, a Barbarian and a necromancer p[lus NPCs. I am currently doing a recruitment drive prior to going to the Nashkel Mines. I might need to equip the new members and I also need to finish Neera's quest before dumping her. We dumped Dorn after killing Kryll. I've recruited Tenya and done her quest. I intend to keep herr as I haven't done her SoD quests yet. I intend to keep Montaron after recruiting him and will probably recruit an evil arcane user for the final slot.
New run of neutral evil shorties. The simaralities in our eyes has caused many to conclude that an evil deity was free with his seed and that we are half-siblings. That however is pure conjecture, but from our greedy behaviour most think that our father is Abbathor.
I feel like I would spend more time typing then actually playing the game itself. It could be amount of free time I had recently and spent on lot of playtroughs but its super hard for me to keep up. By the time I posted Sarevok kill I was already on Abazigal.
Quick summary of my hardmode no-reload adventures for anyone interested. Sadly I have tinkered a lot with my installations. First to get another BG install for other mods. Then it was pure torture to install Siege of Dragonspear right. After that it was even harder to get it all working with BGEET. In the end I lost most of my screenshots and even some saves.
Dwarfen Barbarian - after absolutely dominating Sword Coast and destroying poor Sarevok he moved to Amn with high spirits. Spirits that were immediately crushed in BG2. Couldn't do shit with him. Every encounter was super deadly without arcane might. Almost died to a fricking Prebek! Polymorphed into rat and barely escaped like a rat with invi potion. Improved Trolls wrecked me in Trademeet and Nalia's keep. Once again barely escaped with my life after tanking Unholy Blight and Flame strike. Things started looking a bit better once I got Genie summoning flask by charming genie guard with Nymph's cloak and making him attack other genies. Got Vhailor's helmet and together with clone and Genie cleared entire Druid's Grove. Did some minor quests and got to lvl 15. While looking for easy killing I decided to get "easy" fire resistance ring and kill Rukh. Mr. Rukh said "Not on my watch mfker" tho. And then proceeded to drop Comet for 118 dmg on my head. I wasnt even aware that he is 18+ lvl caster... After that narrow escape I chose Mekrath's quest as the most easy one. Which was mistake cuz I forgot about 3x Yuan-ti mage waiting there. Killed one of them and got other two to Near Death. Wasn't expecting both of them to time their Cone of Colds perfectly and nuke me for 160 cold dmg in one round lol. That was rather poor performance from me but honestly I couldnt see it getting any better later on. After that I got angry at SCS mages and decided to bring big guns. Before that did some more BG1 runs.
Half-Orc Fighter/Thief - Ultimate killing machine. Proficencies in Long Bow and Quarterstaff. Absolute bane of all wizards. Felt a bit like cheating. Almost every enemy was oneshotted. Nasty 100 dmg backstabs. Able to equip full plate mail while still in stealth, deliver backstab and then tank rest of enemies. One of strongest combinations I played in BG1. Did kind of speedrun with him. Ignored most of enemies and skipped completely my usual completionist detours. Mulahey, Venkt, Raemon, Davaeorn, Sarevok's lover all were oneshotted. Final fight was done with Missile Necklace+Invis+Backstabs. Didn't even bother starting BG2 with him.
Gnome Thief/Illusionist - not much difference from elf mage/thief but wanted to try the run with focus on crossbows and quarterstaffs instead of sword and bow. Went with my usual route of going straight to Shoal for easy starting exp, collecting hidden rings, killing ogre for best belt and going straight to Ulgoth's beard. After few runs Ring of Free Action became crucial item for me and its definitely worth the reputation loss. The fact it comes together with web makes it only better. So slay the peasant grab the items and go back to Beregost(in thiefs case I prefer buying few thieving mastery elixirs and just steal the ring together with algernon's cloak). Kill ogrillions for Miria's letter and proceed to buy reputation back, then farm it to max in Nashkel and surroinding areas. Everything was going according to plan until I made novice mistake in cave next to Dryad's falls. Shoting arrow before casting blind was mistake. And even bigger was staying with crossbow instead of changing to shield for casting time. My poor gnome was savaged by a single wolf bite for 44dmg.
After that fail it was time to start BG2 seriously. To do that I have finished Elf Mage/Thief run finally and killed Sarevok with his friends using wand of fire + some buffed backstabs. Irenicus chateau was done quickly with lots of buffs and some aoe spells to get rid of duergars. In akhatla started with some easy exp and killed Mencar's groups with a bit of web/clouds/skulls cheese. Managed even to kill thief for invi ring. Also one of first things to buy was air control ring with imp invi. With some easy mobs, quests and scrolls in Akhatla and unlocking 6 and 7 spell levels this char starts to shine. Im of the opinion that Fighter/Illusionist is the most op char in BG2 but this run had me thinking that in terms of BG2 alone without ToB it may not be so true. In terms of versatility and starting stage mage/thief could be superior in my opinion.
This char turned to be one of my most succesfull in terms of no-reload run. For difficulty setting I have stayed with insane double dmg, almost everything of SCS isntalled at maximum difficulty and ascension. The only components I skipped were the ones nerfing my own char. So I have left overpowered items, arrows of detonation/dispell, no reduced reputation gains and watcher keep available from the start. In terms of solo gameplay I allow recruiting NPC's just for a moment to steal items or use them for something like Valygar opening planar sphere doors. Using them for anything else is banned. I decided to go full cheese due to number of dificulties and handicaps stacked against me. For the start of the game I avoided some super cheese moves tho. Havent abused mislead till late SoA, started spamming traps only after Spellhold. No infinite gold untill I bought most op items and paid shadow thieves. Another handicap is that for years I played mostly solo completionist and handicapped runs. Meaning I havent been using potions/wands/scrolls/op items/op spells for last 15-20 years. Some of my runs ended in BG1 cuz I walked into trap or got hit by some spell which could be avoided with simple elixir but my brain stopped to consider potions or additional scrolls options lol. In fact during this run I rediscovered some op things and strats. Must be first time in 15 years when I casted Project Image spell or transformed into slayer.
Mage/thief destroyed everything in his path. With buffs, belm and scarlet ninja-to he was even quite the capable fighter. With staff of striking he could land some really nasty backstabs. UAI was first picked ofc. From more dangerous moments I remember first one in Planar Prison. I honestly forgot that the Warden was quite a high lvl mage. Wasn't expecting him to summon fallen planetar as a greetings. Was a good thing I cleared whole prison before moving to fight him cuz it was a LOT of running around there. I managed to kite his planetar away from him and just smacked it 1v1 with imp haste and PfMWs. Spell sequencer with 3x Secret Word, Ruby Ray and breach took care of Warden's buffs quite easily. BUT at this moment I havent noticed my own SI:A going down and he shot his own sequencer with 3x remove magic at me. I was casting at the moment and almost died cuz I wanted to finish the cast. Got two sword smacks from him for around 100dmg. And then we started running. Mid-run managed to recast some basic things like stoneskins, image and finished the Warden.
Another close encounter was in first level of watchers keep. I was tempted to just stack traps under some squishy enemies like mages but decided against it. I did not know if these mage could cast HLA. Yes. Yes they could... Once again there was a bit of running around entire level of watchers keep. Epic 1v1 with fallen planetar took place in a fricking kitchen lmao. I cheated a bit and helped myself with time trap to smack planetar faster. Entire fight was ultra messy. Enemies scattered around entire main hall, planetar was chasing me whenever I ran and there were two high lvl mages sneaking on me invisible and dropping Dragon Breath on my head. In the end I had to retreat. Killed planetar, one mage and got another to critical injuries. BUT once again they outsmarted me. The second mage that was left alive had actually conserved his spells well. He waited untill most of my buffs was gone(it was looong fight) and only then dropped comet and dragons breath on me. Barely survived dragons breath with around 10hp left. Both of these fight were poor decisions from me cuz I started them without my own mage HLA's and without lots of spells.
After that I decided it was time for spellhold and max level before engaging stronger enemies. So once again I broke my own rule and havent cleared everything before going to spellhold. I cant remember if I left planar sphere for later which was definitely mistake. I learned that Lavok couldnt cast 10th level spells and was overall weak compared to other mages. Additionally quests from mage stronghold award you some awesome things. About abi-dalizm scroll I knew, but I completely forgot about this epic op ring from your apprentices. That ring + dakkon's zerth blade give you +1 spell slot for 1-7 levels. Its huge for solo runs imo. I was lucky also cuz my apprentice havent managed to scribe horrid wilting scroll but they succeded with ring. In future runs I think I will be going much faster for planar sphere and order apprentices to do the ring right away so theres no chance that they will fail it.
After spellhold it was rampage. Started using time stop, mislead, black blade, tons of traps, project image, spell chain: 3x abi-dalizm and 10th spells. Some fights were over so quickly that I was surprised. Kangaxx was deleted by traps in his first form. His second form was dispelled and annihilated with black blade of disaster. Dragons could be hacked during time stop, lured and deleted with traps or alacrity> MR lower > greater malison and then nuked by abi-dalizm+comet+dragons breath. All of SCS bonuses didnt change anything for almost every dragon. The only problematic one was Abazigal himself. Liches before kangaxx were dead the moment they appered on a pile of traps. Shandalar and Daystar lich were killed by spell chain before fight could even start. Irenicus and Bodhi were a joke in every encounter. In ToB the rampage continued. Illasera, Gromnir, Marching mountains were all slain with brute force. Yaga-Shura fell to timestop+IH+mislead. Draconis and dragon army were slaughtered brutally as well.I have even managed 4 dragon ambush without rest, ofc I was heavily prepared for them.
The hardest fight during the run so far was definitely Abazigal. What was hardest was once again my lack of knowledge and a bug? Each time I played SCS/Tactics/Ascension there were always some changes. It could be due to installation or how old my version of the game was. I dont know if I said it before but for all these years I was always playing vanilla Baldurs Gate and disliked EE quite a lot. Decided to get EE only when I got hooked with no-reloads. That turned out to be best decision ever cuz not only game ha very nice QoL changes but also difficulty mods are actual. And there are a lot of chagnes between SCS 32 and SCS 34. In fact I have quite a lot questions that I will have to bring to reddit or other forum due to these changes. One of the changes was that my favourite spell Sunfire is even more OP now than ever. I dont remember it hitting mages so well. usually they had protections from it or mirror image tanked the spell. But now? Most of my mage fights were done with backstab+sunfire. Its one of the best spells in game but now its even more OP. Could it be because EE changed how mirror image works? Anyway back to Abazigal first red light was that he was immune to time stop. Hell I could forget that but I always thought only Demogorgon, Amelissan and Balthazar were the only immune ones. So there went my option of slashing him apart while frozen in time. But thats okay, we will adapt. From there it got only funnier cuz I discovered that both Abazigal and Tamah were stuck in place!! They didn't move at all whole fight. I think it could be because they spawned to close? Or I killed abazigals human form when he was too close to other dragon?
Unfortunately Abazigal isn't even visible on this screenshot cuz I casted project image while he wasn't in range of my MC.
You may think it made it easier for me but quite the contrary. Because Abazigal was stuck in place I couldnt lure him into my traps! It was my starting strategy, I have preprared them all with Project Image while still having all of them up my sleeve. Changing strat again I decided to go with Mephistopheles' wisdom. "There are few problems that cannot be solved through the application of overwhelming arcane firepower". Unfortunately he was wrong in this case. After Throwing ~15x Horrid wiltings and tons of HLA with project image+alacrity I brought Abazigal ONLY to serious injuries. I still had millions of powerful spell scrolls but I wanted to save them for the final fight cuz there is no single rest on my difficulty there. Melee was out of the options cuz I could barely hit him with his AC and my shitty THAC0 while he was ripping my stoneskins apart. In a moment of desperation it hit me. Slayer transformation! I cant remember last time I used that but it was pretty strong so why the hell no? I had all the protections. He dispelled me fully once but I have rebuffed to full on alacrity using spell slots while pre-fight buff was done using scrolls for this exact scenario. I had imp haste and he was quite low on hp so nothing could go wrong. So I transformed and had another shocking moment of realisation. I forgot that ascension buffed slayer! Now I could turn into Ravager and turned I did. Holy shit! That has to be one of the most OP things ever. That behemoth has tons of hp/resistances/thaco/dmg and with Imp haste I had 10 APRs. My ravager absolutely SHREDDED Abazigal. Poor lizard got rekt so hard that I couldn't believe my eyes. Ofc he was quite low on hp but man! On another hand I forgot that completing pocket sphere trials on ascension grants you some special abilities.
That fight was so intense that Im tired even now lol. He must have had 600+ hps, it felt more like LoB fight. Even tho I finished the fight I feel unsatisfied. This bug that made Abazigal stand in place may hurt me more than helped but I still feel a bit cheated. Also there is the fact that against enemies who are immune to time stop/magical dmg/backstabs Im a bit stumped. Honestly there may be some problems with how to deal with Amelissan and Five, wasnt she immune to traps on ascension/SCS? It may be the moment where Fighter/mage beats thief/mage soundly. At this moment I took a little break from this run and decided to both get finally SoD and try to bring Fighter/Illusionist to ToB so if I fail with mage/thief I will have another chance. Enemies that remain are Demogorgon, Sendai, Balthazar, Ravager and Amelissan.
That fight was so intense that Im tired even now lol. He [Abazigal] must have had 600+ hps, it felt more like LoB fight.
Abazigal in dragon form has 200 HP before mods. Then Ascension (Tougher Abazigal) increases that to 500. And finally, SCS (Smarter dragons) triples the hit points of dragons. Including Abazigal. Final HP total: 1500. Well, not quite; Abazigal dies by script once you get him below 20 HP, so that's really 1481. More than eight times the 181 effective HP he has in the base game.
That fight was so intense that Im tired even now lol. He [Abazigal] must have had 600+ hps, it felt more like LoB fight.
Abazigal in dragon form has 200 HP before mods. Then Ascension (Tougher Abazigal) increases that to 500. And finally, SCS (Smarter dragons) triples the hit points of dragons. Including Abazigal. Final HP total: 1500. Well, not quite; Abazigal dies by script once you get him below 20 HP, so that's really 1481. More than eight times the 181 effective HP he has in the base game.
Woah that's a lot. In previous SCS version it was only 50% hp bonus I think?
Was he always immune to time stop? I'm not sure about that one. Also do you maybe know what would be the cause of this immobilization of both him and Tamah?
Immunity to Time Stop is something that dragon Abazigal has even before any mods. No idea on the immobilization, though. Dragons should be chasing you around to try to attack in melee. It's possible for Abazigal's transformation to glitch and get him stuck along with some other unfortunate victim when their selection circles overlap due to the changing size. There's a "blow everything away" effect to try to avoid that, but that's not 100% reliable. Still, that wouldn't apply to Tamah unless it was Tamah that Abazigal overlapped with - and your screenshot indicates those two were far enough apart.
One of the changes was that my favourite spell Sunfire is even more OP now than ever. I dont remember it hitting mages so well. usually they had protections from it or mirror image tanked the spell. But now? Most of my mage fights were done with backstab+sunfire. Its one of the best spells in game but now its even more OP. Could it be because EE changed how mirror image works?
The EE added a flag effects can use: "Bypass mirror image". Area damage spells almost always have it, and Sunfire is no exception.
Then, how can a mage protect against the spell? The various protections in the Spell Deflection/Spell Turning/Spell Trap family don't help; they only work against directly targeted spells, and are useless against area effects like a Sunfire blast. (Minor) Globe of Invulnerability blocks spells up to level 3, or up to level 4 - and Sunfire is level 5, going over that. Protection from Fire? That works; 100% fire resistance completely eliminates the threat of a Sunfire. And SCS mages do use that, once they get enough levels.
But even against mages that have PfF, you can get away with things sometimes. It's one of their prebuffs, and those are applied by script once the mage becomes aware of you. Scripts that take a moment to run, so you can sometimes preempt them and get your spell in first, especially if it has a short casting time.
Also, SCS mages never reapply those resistance spells. If you dispel/breach their PfF or PfME, those aren't coming back. Combat protections like Stoneskin and PfMW get reapplied all the time. Spell protections like Spell Deflection sometimes show up in a mid-battle sequencer or contingency. But specific elemental protections like PfF will only ever appear once in the initial prebuffs. My fire-themed party was quite fond of hitting enemy mages with a dispel, then incinerating them with area damage while they tried to re-establish protections against physical attacks and directly targeted spells.
Immunity to Time Stop is something that dragon Abazigal has even before any mods. No idea on the immobilization, though. Dragons should be chasing you around to try to attack in melee. It's possible for Abazigal's transformation to glitch and get him stuck along with some other unfortunate victim when their selection circles overlap due to the changing size. There's a "blow everything away" effect to try to avoid that, but that's not 100% reliable. Still, that wouldn't apply to Tamah unless it was Tamah that Abazigal overlapped with - and your screenshot indicates those two were far enough apart.
One of the changes was that my favourite spell Sunfire is even more OP now than ever. I dont remember it hitting mages so well. usually they had protections from it or mirror image tanked the spell. But now? Most of my mage fights were done with backstab+sunfire. Its one of the best spells in game but now its even more OP. Could it be because EE changed how mirror image works?
The EE added a flag effects can use: "Bypass mirror image". Area damage spells almost always have it, and Sunfire is no exception.
Then, how can a mage protect against the spell? The various protections in the Spell Deflection/Spell Turning/Spell Trap family don't help; they only work against directly targeted spells, and are useless against area effects like a Sunfire blast. (Minor) Globe of Invulnerability blocks spells up to level 3, or up to level 4 - and Sunfire is level 5, going over that. Protection from Fire? That works; 100% fire resistance completely eliminates the threat of a Sunfire. And SCS mages do use that, once they get enough levels.
But even against mages that have PfF, you can get away with things sometimes. It's one of their prebuffs, and those are applied by script once the mage becomes aware of you. Scripts that take a moment to run, so you can sometimes preempt them and get your spell in first, especially if it has a short casting time. Also, SCS mages never reapply those resistance spells. If you dispel/breach their PfF or PfME, those aren't coming back. Combat protections like Stoneskin and PfMW get reapplied all the time. Spell protections like Spell Deflection sometimes show up in a mid-battle sequencer or contingency. But specific elemental protections like PfF will only ever appear once in the initial prebuffs. My fire-themed party was quite fond of hitting enemy mages with a dispel, then incinerating them with area damage while they tried to re-establish protections against physical attacks and directly targeted spells.
Bolded: I actually hadn't realized that (though it fits perfectly with the behaviour I've observed... just never made the connection). Good find, thank you for sharing.
I have upgraded Mendas, an assassin introduced by a mod into Candlekeep, by giving him plate armour and a +1 sword.
A cleric has no problems, but a well equiped Blackguard with excellent stats only defeats him 50% of the time. I would probably avoid him with a mage or thief, though changing tactics could work.
My current game is with a Cyricist Blackguard,
My previous run was halted by a lucky blow from an ankheg.
After a couple of weeks off for Christmas this Trio has had another chance to bludgeon their way through the game. Early on a quick review of areas already covered showed that we had not yet been to Durlag's Tower. A first trip to Ulgoth's Beard provided us with potion protection against basilisks before we shrugged off no less than 3 separate ambushes while travelling to Durlag's. The battle horrors there were shrugged aside contemptuously and we picked up the tome before cashing in the XP for the basilisks.
Back in the City we went to sort out the Iron Throne party. An enraged berserker in full plate was very difficult for them to hit and the scroll of PfM he used stymied the casters. Zhalimar got a few licks in when Cruiser closed for the kill, but there was no danger there.
After dealing with a few dopplegangers infesting the Seven Suns we took a return trip to Candlekeep. It was slightly unusual there that Cruiser chose to use full lightning protection while grabbing the tomes, while Core-orc just relied on his boots for doing that and smacking down Prat's gang.
Back in the City Slythe found the odds against him were much too steep even though he managed to approach without being targeted with a dispelling arrow.
A few potion buffs meant the dopplegangers at the palace didn't last long at all. That was just as well though as they had themselves been chewing through Belt's HPs very quickly.
While going through the maze Cruiser once more used protection while charging through a group of lightning traps. He didn't check that all of those were triggered though, which meant one was left for Core-orc. His high HPs and boots meant he was safe enough, even before Balduran's Cloak MR kicked in to avoid any damage. Clop had hung back for this precise contingency, though the lightning bolt still came pretty close to bouncing through him.
Cruiser circled Rahvin's party in order to target a group of skeleton warriors behind them while his scroll of PfU was still active. He hadn't quite finished doing that when Core-orc got a bit too close to Rahvin and was spotted.
A couple of arrows of detonation mixed in with other attacks took away nearly all his HPs, but he retreated just in time to preserve his life and Cruiser hastened to join in to deal with the attackers.
The fight with Sarevok proved even easier than expected, thanks to the bad guys forgetting to prepare against their own traps. Core-orc fired a dispelling arrow at Sarevok to activate him and Semaj teleported out in support. Cruiser and Clop were waiting for him, but found the kill simple when Semaj was held by the web trap. Sarevok was also held as he tried to rush to the rescue. He did briefly struggle free, but was caught again as the final blows rained down on him.
There was still just enough time in the session to make our way through the opening dungeon in BG2. Core-orc suggested that Cruiser should perhaps be more careful after he entered the fight with Ilych already wounded and suffered more damage in that combat.
Just after that Core-orc suffered worse wounds himself when misjudging how much damage the trap guarding the portal key would do and being briefly worried about whether continuing poison damage might be fatal. However, all was well and we struck down Ulvaryl before plowing through some ambushing thieves to find the exit.
Kensai 8, 99 HPs, 57 kills (+228 in BG1)
Berserker 8, 105 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 25 kills (+170 in BG1), 0 deaths
Dark moon monk 9, 73 HPs, 27 kills (+109 in BG1), 0 deaths
Last time we were at the Basilisk area. We find a cave in the area introduced by Shades of the Sword Coast. All the way down, we find a tree. When you interact with it, you can let it feel some of your adventures and experiences in exchange for some boons. I will not spoil them, but there are some nice things to be had.
I beat the Doomsayer. I first tried my best with call lightning only to find out it is immune to the damage. Then I simply revert back to melee.
Drizzt is treated to my dance partners. I can only use the armor though.
I travel to the south west and clear out a new area introduced by SotSC. It has some lingering skeletal creatures called Ormyrr and they are quite talkative, have some humour and send you on a quest for a few trinkets in return for an item. They just want to look nice for eternity. Soo cute.
By now I gathered quite some gear from SotSC. A small selection...
I think the club and robe are from the Ormyrr. The spider armor is from crafting a spider shell that I beat underneath the Ulcaster school (also from a new area by SotSC). Some of these might be from the tree I mentioned before. The items are refreshingly unique. I just do not know what to do with them all.
I kind of go through the bandit camp without issues. I clear a lot of areas and then I am up for cloakwood. Inside cloackwood I find the last of the four gates introduced by a SotSC mod through which you go to retrieve an orb. The quest actually starts in the FAI and upon retrieval the questgiver Mal'meto leaves a nice throwing orb, kind of made for mages.
The gates look like this. The item reward is very nice.
I muck around in cloakwood with the bandits, and I get to clear an invasive threat to the local wildlife; a wild cat.
So unlucky with these immunities...But the dryad that gave the quest to get rid of the starfang tiger collects bounties and trades them 5 a piece for a nice herb that heals 20% of your health. Nifty!
Inside the cloakwood mines I found a 4th shard which is another long time search quest from SotSC. Find them all and you can do something with the shards. It summons a nice Cambion like foe
Thankfully it is only protection from normal weapons, which we do not have much of anymore.... The mirror image and spell turning make the fight last a little while, but 6 beating 1 is over within a few rounds. Nice drops.
Then on the way to the city bridge I meet a kobold that wants to set up shop somewhere. I think immediately of the FAI, and indeed they can help him there. He sets up shop in the tower behind Gellana's building which has a new entrance. Quite a charming quest this.
More things that happened... I traded Finch for Dorn. I did not think I needed two cleric powers at the moment and I finished her quest by finding ~8 books throughout the coast. I do not know whether I will find more books for her library in Baldur's Gate, but I grew a little bit tired with the party and I needed a change. I might also in future change Xan into Edwin, but for now I actually have a lot of fun with Xan as a melee mage.
I sided with Tenya versus the fishermen and then went to Ulgoths beard. From there I found a SotSC quest in the lighthouse, which is a charming ghost story where you have to find some perfume, and you can get that from a perfume salesman at the FAI. I clear out the Ice area from Shandalar with ease. I simply bomb most foes from afar with the wand of lightning or wand of fire. I find an ice item for a SotSC quest there and part of a mace that I can upgrade at the Thunderhammer Smithy (quite a few items can be forged with SotSC there).
Then I closed off by going through Durlags tower today. It is long trudging around traps, but I take it with a slow pace and nothing is really a threat at my level. I found out the demon knight can be stunned... easiest last fight ever. I redid the fight without the wand and even then it was over in 3-4 rounds of pounding with the warriors.
Aec'Letec was next. I bombed the cultists in the cellar with exploding potions and then did a melee versus Aec. He was a lot tougher and it took a few rounds of summons to distract him. Aura's golem helped a lot as well.
Now I am standing at the doorstep of Baldur's Gate. I will go into the city this week to see the new SotSC content but I will rush each area as much as I can because I want to graduate to Baldurans island and then to BG2.
I beat the Doomsayer. I first tried my best with call lightning only to find out it is immune to the damage. Then I simply revert back to melee.
For the record, the Doomsayer is immune to electric, missile, and poison damage, plus 50% resistant to other elements and standard construct immunities. I find magic damage and backstabs (with non-slashing weapons) most useful for speeding things up.
I found out the demon knight can be stunned... easiest last fight ever. I redid the fight without the wand and even then it was over in 3-4 rounds of pounding with the warriors.
Despite their demonic flavor, demon knights don't get any blanket immunities. They just get a ton of resistances - the Durlag's Tower demon knight is 85% resistant to magic and elements, with the saves of a level 13 fighter. Any given shot with the wand of paralyzation has a 7.5% chance of working. You got really lucky there.
The demon knight is really more notable for its offensive threat - high-powered fireballs, symbol spells, and general melee prowess. Plus Remove Magic if you try to protect yourself from the spells.
Another session for this pair saw them starting off in a similar fashion to last time with lots of running round and shooting. Janus did try out the odd horror spell to stop opponents from attacking. Voka wasn't too keen on that because of the danger that scared targets will run into additional enemies, but it worked nicely on Greywolf.
Progress through the Cloud Peak mountains wasn't easy and we were both badly injured by the time we'd finished off a horde of xvarts and arrived at the cave with the charisma tome. Fortunately the xvarts there were not disturbed by the sound of snoring as we healed up!
Finally getting tired of only having magic missile as a useful spell, Voka suggested we pay a visit to the Red Wizards of Thay. Stinking cloud is pretty effective against them and some easy kills provided a selection of additional spells.
We travelled back via the basilisk area to deal with Kirian. Her compatriots were blinded and she was quickly killed while in a stinking cloud - meaning Voka's misjudgement of the distance required to cast an Aganazzar's Scorcher went unpunished.
With most areas to the south dealt with, our travels eventually took us through the Friendly Arm Inn, where Voka increased her firepower by grabbing the Ring of Wizardry. That made filling the Doomsayer full of magical missiles an easy enough job.
After opening up access from that area to the Lighthouse area we were going back to find Brage when we came in sight of an obstreperous hobgoblin. His first arrow poisoned Janus so we just ran away to talk to Brage. Unlike normal travel, getting a lift from him does not stop poison from ticking and Voka suggested we talk to the priest at the temple to get a cure. Janus was unwilling to shell out our hard won gold and thought the poison would stop before things got critical - but he did agree to run to the map's edge just in case. As it happened though he still had a bit of margin in hand before needing to risk travelling.
Our reputation had now hit 20 and we celebrated by actually buying some new spells, along with a few other bits and pieces. Voka's +1 sling had evaporated in the previous session and she wanted a replacement for that. None were on sale prior to Baldur's Gate, but we thought the one in Gullykin should be accessible with the use of Voka's new strength spell. However, apparently the lock on that cabinet needs more than 18(50) strength to bash. The mechanic for that spell says that it will add 50 onto any existing exceptional strength (up to a maximum of 18(100)), which suggested the possibility the spell would stack - but unfortunately that proved not to be the case.
Moving on to the coast, stinking clouds proved effective once more in setting up 2 groups of sirines for the kill - gaining us another level each.
Spells were not much use against the golems in the cave, but Janus had a stock of +1 arrows taken from Baerin which did the job. Voka made things easier against the first couple of golems by running those round, but suffered a blow in the process and wisely kept out of the way for the last one.
@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.
Damn that's awesome run.
I would be interested in reading more about those.
I learned a bit in my first solo run as Rowena, a Helmite Dwarf. Firstly, to get the +1 mace in Beregost, you need to be level 3 to get enough strength to open the chest. With a party opening it was no problem. Second thing I discovered was that if fighting solo you need to have protections when fighting Silke who killed all those I was protecting before sending another lightning bolt as well as two magic missile spells my way to finish me off too.
Here she is. I've improved the portrait since my original run when I didn't have photoshop. I like the fact that the portrait matches the character, a mace wielding Helmite.
I learned a bit in my first solo run as Rowena, a Helmite Dwarf. Firstly, to get the +1 mace in Beregost, you need to be level 3 to get enough strength to open the chest. With a party opening it was no problem. Second thing I discovered was that if fighting solo you need to have protections when fighting Silke who killed all those I was protecting before sending another lightning bolt as well as two magic missile spells my way to finish me off too.
Here she is. I've improved the portrait since my original run when I didn't have photoshop. I like the fact that the portrait matches the character, a mace wielding Helmite.
Very brave to start solo runs with single class cleric. Imo one of the tougher ones to do solo.
In BG1 its alright as you can solo with every class but in BG2 it becomes painful
Amulet of Shield, protection scrolls, protection potions and buffs are our friends. Later in SoA it gets a bit tedious when you have to be fully buffed for almost every fight.
Man these nostalgic fighting styles bring back memories
I learned a bit in my first solo run as Rowena, a Helmite Dwarf. Firstly, to get the +1 mace in Beregost, you need to be level 3 to get enough strength to open the chest. With a party opening it was no problem. Second thing I discovered was that if fighting solo you need to have protections when fighting Silke who killed all those I was protecting before sending another lightning bolt as well as two magic missile spells my way to finish me off too.
Very brave to start solo runs with single class cleric. Imo one of the tougher ones to do solo.
In BG1 its alright as you can solo with every class but in BG2 it becomes painful
Amulet of Shield, protection scrolls, protection potions and buffs are our friends. Later in SoA it gets a bit tedious when you have to be fully buffed for almost every fight.
Man these nostalgic fighting styles bring back memories
I'll see how it goes. I am playing without an experience cap which should be helpful later on.
Rowena is now in Beregost having been to Nashkel and back. She is level 3 and a hero.
She has picked up the +1 mace in the inn and bought another, also a +1 sling.
Intention is now to kill an ogre with a belt fetish before going ankheg hunting.
That should pay for better equipment if I survive. Amulets, necklace of missiles, scroll of protection from petrification etc.
As usual with this party opponents were dying quickly. Unfortunately the same fate eventually befell Cruiser .
We started the session by rapidly clearing the circus tent and followed up with the Copper Coronet (in order to be able to buy Azuredge).
As usual, we picked up some high quality armor from Officer Dirth before a trip to Watcher's Keep snagged the potion case. We didn't immediately venture inside there though as we had no strength potions to bust open the chest holding the Crimson Dart. Roger provided that in the temple sewers and, while there, Core-orc collected a new cloak to help him regenerate damage.
Back at Watcher's Keep we beat up some undead before Cruiser and Clop locked themselves in a side room and invited Core-orc to enrage and investigate whether there were vampiric wraiths in the main room. This time there were not and we soon cleared the top level of active enemies. The others were ready to leave at this point, but Cruiser fancied a bit of statue action and activated a pair of those by picking up a holy book. Core-orc kept one of those statues busy while Cruiser and Clop smacked down the other one - though both took a lot of damage in the process. The aim was then to help Core-orc finish his one off, but Cruiser found that difficult to do as he had to get close to use his dual-wielded daggers and that resulted in the statue switching attacks to him. The statue was down to near death, but so was Cruiser and he tried to retreat, but managed to get hung up on the pedestal that had contained the book - giving the statue the opportunity to get one final blow in.
... investigate whether there were vampiric wraiths in the main room. This time there were not...
I checked the conditions on that - what gets the level to deactivate some of the statues and swap the spawn points for weaker ones?
The conditions: global variable "StartMP" is zero, and either the number of characters in the party is less than 5 or the party's average level is below 14. With a three-player multiplayer party, you definitely meet the second condition. The first ... is that variable something that's supposed to be set if you start a multiplayer game? It might be that the intended design is for multiplayer games to always get the hard version of the first level of Watcher's Keep.
In the end all I have done with the gold is upgrade the girdle of piercing as I was able to defeat both Silke and Bassilus just by using my own spells, primarily Animate Dead, but other spells as well. Command didn't work well.
I am currently impoverished as the upgrade cost 10,000 gp. When wearing the belt my strength becomes 22. Probably worth the gold in the long term, but I definitely need gold. I'll have to test Draw upon Holy Might to see if it stacks with the belt. EDIT: It does. With DUHM strength becomes 23.
I'll have to do something about that. I haven't killed the ankhegs outside the nest yet. Now that I have gone up a level, they should be straightforward. In the nest they hurt me badly.
Trio 50 (49)
Betsof - human male dark moon monk Gate70
DIsco - elf female diviner @Grond0
CoreThief XXXI - dwarf male Fighter / Thief @Corey_Russell
Grond0 rolled another random, I stuck with what I had last game and Corey_Russell split his attention between tank and utility. A diviner is quite a difficult roll so Grond0 decided to sacrifice a bit of intelligence to ensure hearty strength.
We worked our way out of Candlekeep, through Shoal the nereid and then made a beeline for the ring of wizardry located near the Friendly Arm Inn. Shoal saved against one blind but not another.
We also took an early ambush which could easily have ended our game, but escaped.
We picked up a magical tome and some gauntlets (dexterity). On our way to pick up Samuel we realised CoreThief desired a decent longsword so we helped ourselves to perhaps the best you can get.
We had a couple of other blinding events during our opening session, Silke being one. As time drew to a close we established camp outside the High Hedge store - intending to empty our backpacks next time before doing something like finding a girdle of piercing for DIsco.
I haven't killed the ankhegs outside the nest yet. Now that I have gone up a level, they should be straightforward. In the nest they hurt me badly.
@Wise_Grimwald If you are solo, remember the protection from acid from Thalantyr is a good investment as that will confer 50% protection from the ankheg's acid attacks. Also, another way to minimize damage from ankhegs is maximizing missile defense: good armor, large shield, belt of piercing, boots of avoidance, cloak of displacement, etc. Finally, to resist their melee, for a fighter girdle of bluntness helps a lot, but if non-fighter and you get into melee, then you may want to use a potion of absorption.
... investigate whether there were vampiric wraiths in the main room. This time there were not...
I checked the conditions on that - what gets the level to deactivate some of the statues and swap the spawn points for weaker ones?
The conditions: global variable "StartMP" is zero, and either the number of characters in the party is less than 5 or the party's average level is below 14. With a three-player multiplayer party, you definitely meet the second condition. The first ... is that variable something that's supposed to be set if you start a multiplayer game? It might be that the intended design is for multiplayer games to always get the hard version of the first level of Watcher's Keep.
@jmerry thanks for the info (I should also say that I'm generally grateful for the time you spend in explaining nuances of the game to us). When you say swap the spawn points though, does that refer to whether it's mephits or something else that greets you in the main room? The vampiric wraiths and their associates are an additional group that sometimes joins the other group and whether they appear or not doesn't seem to depend on level or number of characters (they can also appear in both single player and multiplayer games).
Yes, whether it's mephits or mists is what I'm talking about - along with several other changes. There are four pairs of spawn points in the level, each with an easy version and a hard version.
Entrance to the main room, easy: mephits (RDMEPHIT, air + smoke + fire + ice).
Entrance to the main room, hard: mists (RDMIST3, 2 vampiric wraith + 1 poison mist + 1 mist horror).
Library on the left, easy: spectral undead (RDUNDEA2, 2 shadow + 2 wraith + 1 shadow fiend) or orogs (RDOROG, 4 orog).
Library on the left, hard: trolls (RDTROLL2, 2 troll + 2 giant + 1 spectral + 1 spirit) or mephits (RDMEPHIT, as above).
I think you always get the undead/trolls on this one due to how the possibilities are weighted.
Library on the right, easy: spiders (RDSPID2, 2 ettercap + 2 sword) or spectral undead (RDSHAD, 4 shadow + 2 shadow fiend)
Library on the right, hard: spiders (RDSPID3, 2 phase + 6 sword) or spectral undead (RDSHAD2, 6 sh. fiend + 2 devil shade)
I think this one always spawns the spiders.
Fireplace room, easy: oozes (RDSLIM1, 3 green + 1 ochre + 1 ooze mephit).
Fireplace room, hard: oozes (RDSLIM2, 6 mustard jelly).
All of this, plus whether you face all twelve statues or just six of them at the end of the level, are controlled by a single trigger in the area script. The area is initially set up as the hard version, and if you enter it without enough levels, the trigger goes off to remove half the levels, deactivate the four hard spawn points, and activate the four easy spawn points.
If you see both the mists and the mephits, things went wrong. My best guess on that one is that the mist spawn point is just close enough to the level entrance that it sometimes activates and spawns its monsters the moment you enter the level, before the area script has a chance to run and deactivate that spawn point. Once the monsters are spawned, it doesn't matter whether the spawn point is still active.
Hi
This does not appear to be level / party dependent. I have attached screen capture of it happening where I use the same quick save repeatedly.
When you enter the keep one of two things happens
The screen fades to black before control is returned inside. This happens most of the time.
The screen fades to black, an inside view is shown, fades to black a second time and control is returned. Opening the door after this has the additional creatures. See the second and last instances on the recording
Grond0 will probably be able to use this to determine if they are present or not in future games by seeing if the game fades to black twice - I tend to forget to look for these kind of shows.
The spawned creatures are both HGMIS01, Vampiric Wraith. I'm rusty with NearInfinity and I can't see immediately how they are spawned. Looking at their resources and tracking back some appear with Yaga Shura or the Gorion Wraith in the swamp, but these look to be SPAWNGRP.2DA under RDMIST3 as they appear with a poison mist and a wandering horror with a difficulty of 180.
Edit: save attached in case anyone wanted to dig further
I would be interested in reading more about those.
It's a little while since I played my long-life challenge, so I was thinking it was time to try something - and @Rayga's post prompted me to have another go at the wild mage. In case it's of interest I have recorded some previous attempts at this class on this thread - here's a reference to a previous run I just came across when looking for notes on earlier attempts https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1040213/#Comment_1040213. There have been more attempts in the last few years since that post though - this is the 28th with this character class (that's still some way short of the 66 attempts I required to get a success with a true class mage ).
'Long-life challenge' - wild mage {28} (update 1)
I decided to do some early work to boost HPs to protect against stray damage. I won't cast many spells for quite a while, but an opening one in Candlekeep produced a familiar. Then it was off to kite Shoal to get a couple of extra levels, gaining a decent 11 HPs.
I don't generally use it these days, but decided to treat myself to Algernon's Cloak while in Beregost - that provides a charming ability without the danger of surges. After buying a +1 sling and shooting down Neera for her gem bag, I moved on to the basilisk area. Following Korax round various basilisks produced 2 more levels and 9 more HPs before he took on Mutamin. The mage did better than usual, surviving a number of hits on him before eventually being paralyzed.
Baerin saved against an attemted charm and Korax would have little chance against Kirian's full group, so I left them alone and just showed my gratitude to Korax by gifting him a few sling bullets.
On the way to the FAI I shot an ogre for its belt collection, to provide better protection against missile attacks. I did pick up the ring of wizardry there, though it's currently not much use. The only L1 spell I'll use for a while is identify (using that does not trigger a chance of a wild surge).
Recovering Joia's ring pushed reputation back to 10 and I made my way down to Nashkel to learn CLW as a Bhaal ability. I saved Arabelle on the way to find Meilum - his bracers will add a bit more oomph to my sling shots.
That was demonstrated at High Hedge where 11 of the 20 +1 bullets purchased were enough to see off a couple of golems and get me another level (+6 HPs).
I purchased a potion bag there to complete the BGEE set of containers.
Looking to increase reputation I went to find Melicamp, who successfully survived his transformation. While in the area I shot Bassilus (retreating out of sight between his spells, so that he wouldn't take advantage if I were confused or held). I also charmed one of the hobgoblin archers and they killed each other with poison arrows to leave Zargal helpless against missiles.
I talked to Brage out of sight of Laryssa. That meant she was still there after I returned from a trip to Nashkel with Brage. Shooting her down, using the same tactics as against Bassilus, provided me with a magic shield to sell. At the nearby minesite I helped Charleston Nib deal with some rabid miners, but had no current way to kill the Doomsayer. Confessing my name to Oublek, reassuring Ardrouine and returning an amulet to Mr Colquetle got more reputation. While back in Beregost I also charmed Silke and took her to play with some spiders. I timed it to attack her as she was about to die from poison, but missed - so lost out on her XP.
Rescuing Samuel was another good deed. While at the FAI I dodged Tarnesh's spells using the 2 entrances to the temple before shooting him down. Landrin got his goods back and I picked up the pantaloons. I also charmed Jaheira and got her to follow me outside where she was executed for her invisibility potion.
At the Nashkel mine area I collected a frost wand for an alternative source of damage, but stuck to my trusty sling to shoot down Greywolf. Helping out the Dryad of the Cloud Peaks was then sufficient to maximise my reputation.
I pushed on though to the Gnoll Stronghold to pick up the charisma tome - taking that stat to 14. I also got to level 7 there by shooting up a pair of ogrillons, with 4 more HPs taking that total to 42.
At High Hedge I used a friends scroll to raise charisma to 20, giving the cheapest possible purchase price. Other scrolls were bought, along with the Claw and a Robe of the Good Archmagi, before I went to buy potions of genius at the FAI temple. Typically I just take my chances when learning spells with a mage, but with intelligence of only 9 doing that felt a bit too wasteful .
On the way to purchase a few more things at Ulgoth's Beard, I returned a bowl to Tenya.
My spell save is down to 8, but that's still much too high to cast spells in combat (the greatest risk of doing that is to get held). I will though start casting next time from out of sight of enemies. That involves a slight potential risk from surges, but it seems only fair to offer up some sort of chance to the gods ...
Wild mage L7, 42 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 93 kills
No surges to date (only a couple of spells cast)
I was wondering when you would continue that challenge.
I would have expected you would take more chances, but you are correct. It is easier to use items to accomplish the same thing and prevent wild surges.
I was wondering when you would continue that challenge.
I would have expected you would take more chances, but you are correct. It is easier to use items to accomplish the same thing and prevent wild surges.
Typically I do get bored/careless as a run (with any character class) progresses and take more chances. Given the inherent risks involved with a wild mage I should really try and stay disciplined, but we'll see in due course whether I manage to do that ...
Comments
Meanwhile I am doing a mainly neutral evil run. A Berserker, a Barbarian and a necromancer p[lus NPCs. I am currently doing a recruitment drive prior to going to the Nashkel Mines. I might need to equip the new members and I also need to finish Neera's quest before dumping her. We dumped Dorn after killing Kryll. I've recruited Tenya and done her quest. I intend to keep herr as I haven't done her SoD quests yet. I intend to keep Montaron after recruiting him and will probably recruit an evil arcane user for the final slot.
I think I said it before but I really like the mod. It has quests all over the game so far
Added (with delay because of the holidays), congrats!
@Corey_Russell the difference was that you had a dual fighter/druid, but as multiclass it was still missing. Until now.
I feel like I would spend more time typing then actually playing the game itself. It could be amount of free time I had recently and spent on lot of playtroughs but its super hard for me to keep up. By the time I posted Sarevok kill I was already on Abazigal.
Quick summary of my hardmode no-reload adventures for anyone interested. Sadly I have tinkered a lot with my installations. First to get another BG install for other mods. Then it was pure torture to install Siege of Dragonspear right. After that it was even harder to get it all working with BGEET. In the end I lost most of my screenshots and even some saves.
Dwarfen Barbarian - after absolutely dominating Sword Coast and destroying poor Sarevok he moved to Amn with high spirits. Spirits that were immediately crushed in BG2. Couldn't do shit with him. Every encounter was super deadly without arcane might. Almost died to a fricking Prebek! Polymorphed into rat and barely escaped like a rat with invi potion. Improved Trolls wrecked me in Trademeet and Nalia's keep. Once again barely escaped with my life after tanking Unholy Blight and Flame strike. Things started looking a bit better once I got Genie summoning flask by charming genie guard with Nymph's cloak and making him attack other genies. Got Vhailor's helmet and together with clone and Genie cleared entire Druid's Grove. Did some minor quests and got to lvl 15. While looking for easy killing I decided to get "easy" fire resistance ring and kill Rukh. Mr. Rukh said "Not on my watch mfker" tho. And then proceeded to drop Comet for 118 dmg on my head. I wasnt even aware that he is 18+ lvl caster... After that narrow escape I chose Mekrath's quest as the most easy one. Which was mistake cuz I forgot about 3x Yuan-ti mage waiting there. Killed one of them and got other two to Near Death. Wasn't expecting both of them to time their Cone of Colds perfectly and nuke me for 160 cold dmg in one round lol. That was rather poor performance from me but honestly I couldnt see it getting any better later on. After that I got angry at SCS mages and decided to bring big guns. Before that did some more BG1 runs.
Half-Orc Fighter/Thief - Ultimate killing machine. Proficencies in Long Bow and Quarterstaff. Absolute bane of all wizards. Felt a bit like cheating. Almost every enemy was oneshotted. Nasty 100 dmg backstabs. Able to equip full plate mail while still in stealth, deliver backstab and then tank rest of enemies. One of strongest combinations I played in BG1. Did kind of speedrun with him. Ignored most of enemies and skipped completely my usual completionist detours. Mulahey, Venkt, Raemon, Davaeorn, Sarevok's lover all were oneshotted. Final fight was done with Missile Necklace+Invis+Backstabs. Didn't even bother starting BG2 with him.
Gnome Thief/Illusionist - not much difference from elf mage/thief but wanted to try the run with focus on crossbows and quarterstaffs instead of sword and bow. Went with my usual route of going straight to Shoal for easy starting exp, collecting hidden rings, killing ogre for best belt and going straight to Ulgoth's beard. After few runs Ring of Free Action became crucial item for me and its definitely worth the reputation loss. The fact it comes together with web makes it only better. So slay the peasant grab the items and go back to Beregost(in thiefs case I prefer buying few thieving mastery elixirs and just steal the ring together with algernon's cloak). Kill ogrillions for Miria's letter and proceed to buy reputation back, then farm it to max in Nashkel and surroinding areas. Everything was going according to plan until I made novice mistake in cave next to Dryad's falls. Shoting arrow before casting blind was mistake. And even bigger was staying with crossbow instead of changing to shield for casting time. My poor gnome was savaged by a single wolf bite for 44dmg.
After that fail it was time to start BG2 seriously. To do that I have finished Elf Mage/Thief run finally and killed Sarevok with his friends using wand of fire + some buffed backstabs. Irenicus chateau was done quickly with lots of buffs and some aoe spells to get rid of duergars. In akhatla started with some easy exp and killed Mencar's groups with a bit of web/clouds/skulls cheese. Managed even to kill thief for invi ring. Also one of first things to buy was air control ring with imp invi. With some easy mobs, quests and scrolls in Akhatla and unlocking 6 and 7 spell levels this char starts to shine. Im of the opinion that Fighter/Illusionist is the most op char in BG2 but this run had me thinking that in terms of BG2 alone without ToB it may not be so true. In terms of versatility and starting stage mage/thief could be superior in my opinion.
This char turned to be one of my most succesfull in terms of no-reload run. For difficulty setting I have stayed with insane double dmg, almost everything of SCS isntalled at maximum difficulty and ascension. The only components I skipped were the ones nerfing my own char. So I have left overpowered items, arrows of detonation/dispell, no reduced reputation gains and watcher keep available from the start. In terms of solo gameplay I allow recruiting NPC's just for a moment to steal items or use them for something like Valygar opening planar sphere doors. Using them for anything else is banned. I decided to go full cheese due to number of dificulties and handicaps stacked against me. For the start of the game I avoided some super cheese moves tho. Havent abused mislead till late SoA, started spamming traps only after Spellhold. No infinite gold untill I bought most op items and paid shadow thieves. Another handicap is that for years I played mostly solo completionist and handicapped runs. Meaning I havent been using potions/wands/scrolls/op items/op spells for last 15-20 years. Some of my runs ended in BG1 cuz I walked into trap or got hit by some spell which could be avoided with simple elixir but my brain stopped to consider potions or additional scrolls options lol. In fact during this run I rediscovered some op things and strats. Must be first time in 15 years when I casted Project Image spell or transformed into slayer.
Mage/thief destroyed everything in his path. With buffs, belm and scarlet ninja-to he was even quite the capable fighter. With staff of striking he could land some really nasty backstabs. UAI was first picked ofc. From more dangerous moments I remember first one in Planar Prison. I honestly forgot that the Warden was quite a high lvl mage. Wasn't expecting him to summon fallen planetar as a greetings. Was a good thing I cleared whole prison before moving to fight him cuz it was a LOT of running around there. I managed to kite his planetar away from him and just smacked it 1v1 with imp haste and PfMWs. Spell sequencer with 3x Secret Word, Ruby Ray and breach took care of Warden's buffs quite easily. BUT at this moment I havent noticed my own SI:A going down and he shot his own sequencer with 3x remove magic at me. I was casting at the moment and almost died cuz I wanted to finish the cast. Got two sword smacks from him for around 100dmg. And then we started running. Mid-run managed to recast some basic things like stoneskins, image and finished the Warden.
Another close encounter was in first level of watchers keep. I was tempted to just stack traps under some squishy enemies like mages but decided against it. I did not know if these mage could cast HLA. Yes. Yes they could... Once again there was a bit of running around entire level of watchers keep. Epic 1v1 with fallen planetar took place in a fricking kitchen lmao. I cheated a bit and helped myself with time trap to smack planetar faster. Entire fight was ultra messy. Enemies scattered around entire main hall, planetar was chasing me whenever I ran and there were two high lvl mages sneaking on me invisible and dropping Dragon Breath on my head. In the end I had to retreat. Killed planetar, one mage and got another to critical injuries. BUT once again they outsmarted me. The second mage that was left alive had actually conserved his spells well. He waited untill most of my buffs was gone(it was looong fight) and only then dropped comet and dragons breath on me. Barely survived dragons breath with around 10hp left. Both of these fight were poor decisions from me cuz I started them without my own mage HLA's and without lots of spells.
After that I decided it was time for spellhold and max level before engaging stronger enemies. So once again I broke my own rule and havent cleared everything before going to spellhold. I cant remember if I left planar sphere for later which was definitely mistake. I learned that Lavok couldnt cast 10th level spells and was overall weak compared to other mages. Additionally quests from mage stronghold award you some awesome things. About abi-dalizm scroll I knew, but I completely forgot about this epic op ring from your apprentices. That ring + dakkon's zerth blade give you +1 spell slot for 1-7 levels. Its huge for solo runs imo. I was lucky also cuz my apprentice havent managed to scribe horrid wilting scroll but they succeded with ring. In future runs I think I will be going much faster for planar sphere and order apprentices to do the ring right away so theres no chance that they will fail it.
After spellhold it was rampage. Started using time stop, mislead, black blade, tons of traps, project image, spell chain: 3x abi-dalizm and 10th spells. Some fights were over so quickly that I was surprised. Kangaxx was deleted by traps in his first form. His second form was dispelled and annihilated with black blade of disaster. Dragons could be hacked during time stop, lured and deleted with traps or alacrity> MR lower > greater malison and then nuked by abi-dalizm+comet+dragons breath. All of SCS bonuses didnt change anything for almost every dragon. The only problematic one was Abazigal himself. Liches before kangaxx were dead the moment they appered on a pile of traps. Shandalar and Daystar lich were killed by spell chain before fight could even start. Irenicus and Bodhi were a joke in every encounter. In ToB the rampage continued. Illasera, Gromnir, Marching mountains were all slain with brute force. Yaga-Shura fell to timestop+IH+mislead. Draconis and dragon army were slaughtered brutally as well.I have even managed 4 dragon ambush without rest, ofc I was heavily prepared for them.
The hardest fight during the run so far was definitely Abazigal. What was hardest was once again my lack of knowledge and a bug? Each time I played SCS/Tactics/Ascension there were always some changes. It could be due to installation or how old my version of the game was. I dont know if I said it before but for all these years I was always playing vanilla Baldurs Gate and disliked EE quite a lot. Decided to get EE only when I got hooked with no-reloads. That turned out to be best decision ever cuz not only game ha very nice QoL changes but also difficulty mods are actual. And there are a lot of chagnes between SCS 32 and SCS 34. In fact I have quite a lot questions that I will have to bring to reddit or other forum due to these changes. One of the changes was that my favourite spell Sunfire is even more OP now than ever. I dont remember it hitting mages so well. usually they had protections from it or mirror image tanked the spell. But now? Most of my mage fights were done with backstab+sunfire. Its one of the best spells in game but now its even more OP. Could it be because EE changed how mirror image works? Anyway back to Abazigal first red light was that he was immune to time stop. Hell I could forget that but I always thought only Demogorgon, Amelissan and Balthazar were the only immune ones. So there went my option of slashing him apart while frozen in time. But thats okay, we will adapt. From there it got only funnier cuz I discovered that both Abazigal and Tamah were stuck in place!! They didn't move at all whole fight. I think it could be because they spawned to close? Or I killed abazigals human form when he was too close to other dragon?
Unfortunately Abazigal isn't even visible on this screenshot cuz I casted project image while he wasn't in range of my MC.
You may think it made it easier for me but quite the contrary. Because Abazigal was stuck in place I couldnt lure him into my traps! It was my starting strategy, I have preprared them all with Project Image while still having all of them up my sleeve. Changing strat again I decided to go with Mephistopheles' wisdom. "There are few problems that cannot be solved through the application of overwhelming arcane firepower". Unfortunately he was wrong in this case. After Throwing ~15x Horrid wiltings and tons of HLA with project image+alacrity I brought Abazigal ONLY to serious injuries. I still had millions of powerful spell scrolls but I wanted to save them for the final fight cuz there is no single rest on my difficulty there. Melee was out of the options cuz I could barely hit him with his AC and my shitty THAC0 while he was ripping my stoneskins apart. In a moment of desperation it hit me. Slayer transformation! I cant remember last time I used that but it was pretty strong so why the hell no? I had all the protections. He dispelled me fully once but I have rebuffed to full on alacrity using spell slots while pre-fight buff was done using scrolls for this exact scenario. I had imp haste and he was quite low on hp so nothing could go wrong. So I transformed and had another shocking moment of realisation. I forgot that ascension buffed slayer! Now I could turn into Ravager and turned I did. Holy shit! That has to be one of the most OP things ever. That behemoth has tons of hp/resistances/thaco/dmg and with Imp haste I had 10 APRs. My ravager absolutely SHREDDED Abazigal. Poor lizard got rekt so hard that I couldn't believe my eyes. Ofc he was quite low on hp but man! On another hand I forgot that completing pocket sphere trials on ascension grants you some special abilities.
That fight was so intense that Im tired even now lol. He must have had 600+ hps, it felt more like LoB fight. Even tho I finished the fight I feel unsatisfied. This bug that made Abazigal stand in place may hurt me more than helped but I still feel a bit cheated. Also there is the fact that against enemies who are immune to time stop/magical dmg/backstabs Im a bit stumped. Honestly there may be some problems with how to deal with Amelissan and Five, wasnt she immune to traps on ascension/SCS? It may be the moment where Fighter/mage beats thief/mage soundly. At this moment I took a little break from this run and decided to both get finally SoD and try to bring Fighter/Illusionist to ToB so if I fail with mage/thief I will have another chance. Enemies that remain are Demogorgon, Sendai, Balthazar, Ravager and Amelissan.
Abazigal in dragon form has 200 HP before mods. Then Ascension (Tougher Abazigal) increases that to 500. And finally, SCS (Smarter dragons) triples the hit points of dragons. Including Abazigal. Final HP total: 1500. Well, not quite; Abazigal dies by script once you get him below 20 HP, so that's really 1481. More than eight times the 181 effective HP he has in the base game.
Woah that's a lot. In previous SCS version it was only 50% hp bonus I think?
Was he always immune to time stop? I'm not sure about that one. Also do you maybe know what would be the cause of this immobilization of both him and Tamah?
Oh, and another point:
The EE added a flag effects can use: "Bypass mirror image". Area damage spells almost always have it, and Sunfire is no exception.
Then, how can a mage protect against the spell? The various protections in the Spell Deflection/Spell Turning/Spell Trap family don't help; they only work against directly targeted spells, and are useless against area effects like a Sunfire blast. (Minor) Globe of Invulnerability blocks spells up to level 3, or up to level 4 - and Sunfire is level 5, going over that. Protection from Fire? That works; 100% fire resistance completely eliminates the threat of a Sunfire. And SCS mages do use that, once they get enough levels.
But even against mages that have PfF, you can get away with things sometimes. It's one of their prebuffs, and those are applied by script once the mage becomes aware of you. Scripts that take a moment to run, so you can sometimes preempt them and get your spell in first, especially if it has a short casting time.
Also, SCS mages never reapply those resistance spells. If you dispel/breach their PfF or PfME, those aren't coming back. Combat protections like Stoneskin and PfMW get reapplied all the time. Spell protections like Spell Deflection sometimes show up in a mid-battle sequencer or contingency. But specific elemental protections like PfF will only ever appear once in the initial prebuffs. My fire-themed party was quite fond of hitting enemy mages with a dispel, then incinerating them with area damage while they tried to re-establish protections against physical attacks and directly targeted spells.
Bolded: I actually hadn't realized that (though it fits perfectly with the behaviour I've observed... just never made the connection). Good find, thank you for sharing.
A cleric has no problems, but a well equiped Blackguard with excellent stats only defeats him 50% of the time. I would probably avoid him with a mage or thief, though changing tactics could work.
My current game is with a Cyricist Blackguard,
My previous run was halted by a lucky blow from an ankheg.
Cruiser - dwarf kensai (Grond0)
Core-orc - orc berserker (Corey_Russell)
Clop - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1192057/#Comment_1192057
After a couple of weeks off for Christmas this Trio has had another chance to bludgeon their way through the game. Early on a quick review of areas already covered showed that we had not yet been to Durlag's Tower. A first trip to Ulgoth's Beard provided us with potion protection against basilisks before we shrugged off no less than 3 separate ambushes while travelling to Durlag's. The battle horrors there were shrugged aside contemptuously and we picked up the tome before cashing in the XP for the basilisks.
Berserker 8, 105 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 25 kills (+170 in BG1), 0 deaths
Dark moon monk 9, 73 HPs, 27 kills (+109 in BG1), 0 deaths
A biggie. Much has been achieved until now.
Last time we were at the Basilisk area. We find a cave in the area introduced by Shades of the Sword Coast. All the way down, we find a tree. When you interact with it, you can let it feel some of your adventures and experiences in exchange for some boons. I will not spoil them, but there are some nice things to be had.
I sided with Tenya versus the fishermen and then went to Ulgoths beard. From there I found a SotSC quest in the lighthouse, which is a charming ghost story where you have to find some perfume, and you can get that from a perfume salesman at the FAI. I clear out the Ice area from Shandalar with ease. I simply bomb most foes from afar with the wand of lightning or wand of fire. I find an ice item for a SotSC quest there and part of a mace that I can upgrade at the Thunderhammer Smithy (quite a few items can be forged with SotSC there).
Then I closed off by going through Durlags tower today. It is long trudging around traps, but I take it with a slow pace and nothing is really a threat at my level. I found out the demon knight can be stunned... easiest last fight ever. I redid the fight without the wand and even then it was over in 3-4 rounds of pounding with the warriors.
Aec'Letec was next. I bombed the cultists in the cellar with exploding potions and then did a melee versus Aec. He was a lot tougher and it took a few rounds of summons to distract him. Aura's golem helped a lot as well.
Now I am standing at the doorstep of Baldur's Gate. I will go into the city this week to see the new SotSC content but I will rush each area as much as I can because I want to graduate to Baldurans island and then to BG2.
Despite their demonic flavor, demon knights don't get any blanket immunities. They just get a ton of resistances - the Durlag's Tower demon knight is 85% resistant to magic and elements, with the saves of a level 13 fighter. Any given shot with the wand of paralyzation has a 7.5% chance of working. You got really lucky there.
The demon knight is really more notable for its offensive threat - high-powered fireballs, symbol spells, and general melee prowess. Plus Remove Magic if you try to protect yourself from the spells.
Only for bg2 do I remember most of them.
Janus (male half-elf blade, Grond0); Voka (female human invoker, Gate70)
Previous updates
Another session for this pair saw them starting off in a similar fashion to last time with lots of running round and shooting. Janus did try out the odd horror spell to stop opponents from attacking. Voka wasn't too keen on that because of the danger that scared targets will run into additional enemies, but it worked nicely on Greywolf.
Finally getting tired of only having magic missile as a useful spell, Voka suggested we pay a visit to the Red Wizards of Thay. Stinking cloud is pretty effective against them and some easy kills provided a selection of additional spells.
Invoker 6, 27 HPs, 41 kills, 1 death
Damn that's awesome run.
I would be interested in reading more about those.
Here she is. I've improved the portrait since my original run when I didn't have photoshop. I like the fact that the portrait matches the character, a mace wielding Helmite.
Very brave to start solo runs with single class cleric. Imo one of the tougher ones to do solo.
In BG1 its alright as you can solo with every class but in BG2 it becomes painful
Amulet of Shield, protection scrolls, protection potions and buffs are our friends. Later in SoA it gets a bit tedious when you have to be fully buffed for almost every fight.
Man these nostalgic fighting styles bring back memories
I'll see how it goes. I am playing without an experience cap which should be helpful later on.
Rowena is now in Beregost having been to Nashkel and back. She is level 3 and a hero.
She has picked up the +1 mace in the inn and bought another, also a +1 sling.
Intention is now to kill an ogre with a belt fetish before going ankheg hunting.
That should pay for better equipment if I survive. Amulets, necklace of missiles, scroll of protection from petrification etc.
Cruiser - dwarf kensai (Grond0)
Core-orc - orc berserker (Corey_Russell)
Clop - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1192057/#Comment_1192057
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1192609/#Comment_1192609
As usual with this party opponents were dying quickly. Unfortunately the same fate eventually befell Cruiser
We started the session by rapidly clearing the circus tent and followed up with the Copper Coronet (in order to be able to buy Azuredge).
Back at Watcher's Keep we beat up some undead before Cruiser and Clop locked themselves in a side room and invited Core-orc to enrage and investigate whether there were vampiric wraiths in the main room. This time there were not and we soon cleared the top level of active enemies. The others were ready to leave at this point, but Cruiser fancied a bit of statue action and activated a pair of those by picking up a holy book. Core-orc kept one of those statues busy while Cruiser and Clop smacked down the other one - though both took a lot of damage in the process. The aim was then to help Core-orc finish his one off, but Cruiser found that difficult to do as he had to get close to use his dual-wielded daggers and that resulted in the statue switching attacks to him. The statue was down to near death, but so was Cruiser and he tried to retreat, but managed to get hung up on the pedestal that had contained the book - giving the statue the opportunity to get one final blow in.
I checked the conditions on that - what gets the level to deactivate some of the statues and swap the spawn points for weaker ones?
The conditions: global variable "StartMP" is zero, and either the number of characters in the party is less than 5 or the party's average level is below 14. With a three-player multiplayer party, you definitely meet the second condition. The first ... is that variable something that's supposed to be set if you start a multiplayer game? It might be that the intended design is for multiplayer games to always get the hard version of the first level of Watcher's Keep.
Journal of Rowena
In the end all I have done with the gold is upgrade the girdle of piercing as I was able to defeat both Silke and Bassilus just by using my own spells, primarily Animate Dead, but other spells as well. Command didn't work well.
I am currently impoverished as the upgrade cost 10,000 gp. When wearing the belt my strength becomes 22. Probably worth the gold in the long term, but I definitely need gold. I'll have to test Draw upon Holy Might to see if it stacks with the belt.
EDIT: It does. With DUHM strength becomes 23.
I'll have to do something about that. I haven't killed the ankhegs outside the nest yet. Now that I have gone up a level, they should be straightforward. In the nest they hurt me badly.
Betsof - human male dark moon monk Gate70
DIsco - elf female diviner @Grond0
CoreThief XXXI - dwarf male Fighter / Thief @Corey_Russell
Grond0 rolled another random, I stuck with what I had last game and Corey_Russell split his attention between tank and utility. A diviner is quite a difficult roll so Grond0 decided to sacrifice a bit of intelligence to ensure hearty strength.
We worked our way out of Candlekeep, through Shoal the nereid and then made a beeline for the ring of wizardry located near the Friendly Arm Inn. Shoal saved against one blind but not another.
Character inventories at session end.
@Wise_Grimwald If you are solo, remember the protection from acid from Thalantyr is a good investment as that will confer 50% protection from the ankheg's acid attacks. Also, another way to minimize damage from ankhegs is maximizing missile defense: good armor, large shield, belt of piercing, boots of avoidance, cloak of displacement, etc. Finally, to resist their melee, for a fighter girdle of bluntness helps a lot, but if non-fighter and you get into melee, then you may want to use a potion of absorption.
@jmerry thanks for the info (I should also say that I'm generally grateful for the time you spend in explaining nuances of the game to us). When you say swap the spawn points though, does that refer to whether it's mephits or something else that greets you in the main room? The vampiric wraiths and their associates are an additional group that sometimes joins the other group and whether they appear or not doesn't seem to depend on level or number of characters (they can also appear in both single player and multiplayer games).
Entrance to the main room, easy: mephits (RDMEPHIT, air + smoke + fire + ice).
Entrance to the main room, hard: mists (RDMIST3, 2 vampiric wraith + 1 poison mist + 1 mist horror).
Library on the left, easy: spectral undead (RDUNDEA2, 2 shadow + 2 wraith + 1 shadow fiend) or orogs (RDOROG, 4 orog).
Library on the left, hard: trolls (RDTROLL2, 2 troll + 2 giant + 1 spectral + 1 spirit) or mephits (RDMEPHIT, as above).
I think you always get the undead/trolls on this one due to how the possibilities are weighted.
Library on the right, easy: spiders (RDSPID2, 2 ettercap + 2 sword) or spectral undead (RDSHAD, 4 shadow + 2 shadow fiend)
Library on the right, hard: spiders (RDSPID3, 2 phase + 6 sword) or spectral undead (RDSHAD2, 6 sh. fiend + 2 devil shade)
I think this one always spawns the spiders.
Fireplace room, easy: oozes (RDSLIM1, 3 green + 1 ochre + 1 ooze mephit).
Fireplace room, hard: oozes (RDSLIM2, 6 mustard jelly).
All of this, plus whether you face all twelve statues or just six of them at the end of the level, are controlled by a single trigger in the area script. The area is initially set up as the hard version, and if you enter it without enough levels, the trigger goes off to remove half the levels, deactivate the four hard spawn points, and activate the four easy spawn points.
If you see both the mists and the mephits, things went wrong. My best guess on that one is that the mist spawn point is just close enough to the level entrance that it sometimes activates and spawns its monsters the moment you enter the level, before the area script has a chance to run and deactivate that spawn point. Once the monsters are spawned, it doesn't matter whether the spawn point is still active.
This does not appear to be level / party dependent. I have attached screen capture of it happening where I use the same quick save repeatedly.
When you enter the keep one of two things happens
- The screen fades to black before control is returned inside. This happens most of the time.
- The screen fades to black, an inside view is shown, fades to black a second time and control is returned. Opening the door after this has the additional creatures. See the second and last instances on the recording
Grond0 will probably be able to use this to determine if they are present or not in future games by seeing if the game fades to black twice - I tend to forget to look for these kind of shows.The spawned creatures are both HGMIS01, Vampiric Wraith. I'm rusty with NearInfinity and I can't see immediately how they are spawned. Looking at their resources and tracking back some appear with Yaga Shura or the Gorion Wraith in the swamp, but these look to be SPAWNGRP.2DA under RDMIST3 as they appear with a poison mist and a wandering horror with a difficulty of 180.
Edit: save attached in case anyone wanted to dig further
It's a little while since I played my long-life challenge, so I was thinking it was time to try something - and @Rayga's post prompted me to have another go at the wild mage. In case it's of interest I have recorded some previous attempts at this class on this thread - here's a reference to a previous run I just came across when looking for notes on earlier attempts https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1040213/#Comment_1040213. There have been more attempts in the last few years since that post though - this is the 28th with this character class (that's still some way short of the 66 attempts I required to get a success with a true class mage
'Long-life challenge' - wild mage {28} (update 1)
I decided to do some early work to boost HPs to protect against stray damage. I won't cast many spells for quite a while, but an opening one in Candlekeep produced a familiar. Then it was off to kite Shoal to get a couple of extra levels, gaining a decent 11 HPs.
On the way to the FAI I shot an ogre for its belt collection, to provide better protection against missile attacks. I did pick up the ring of wizardry there, though it's currently not much use. The only L1 spell I'll use for a while is identify (using that does not trigger a chance of a wild surge).
Recovering Joia's ring pushed reputation back to 10 and I made my way down to Nashkel to learn CLW as a Bhaal ability. I saved Arabelle on the way to find Meilum - his bracers will add a bit more oomph to my sling shots.
Looking to increase reputation I went to find Melicamp, who successfully survived his transformation. While in the area I shot Bassilus (retreating out of sight between his spells, so that he wouldn't take advantage if I were confused or held). I also charmed one of the hobgoblin archers and they killed each other with poison arrows to leave Zargal helpless against missiles.
I talked to Brage out of sight of Laryssa. That meant she was still there after I returned from a trip to Nashkel with Brage. Shooting her down, using the same tactics as against Bassilus, provided me with a magic shield to sell. At the nearby minesite I helped Charleston Nib deal with some rabid miners, but had no current way to kill the Doomsayer. Confessing my name to Oublek, reassuring Ardrouine and returning an amulet to Mr Colquetle got more reputation. While back in Beregost I also charmed Silke and took her to play with some spiders. I timed it to attack her as she was about to die from poison, but missed - so lost out on her XP.
At the Nashkel mine area I collected a frost wand for an alternative source of damage, but stuck to my trusty sling to shoot down Greywolf. Helping out the Dryad of the Cloud Peaks was then sufficient to maximise my reputation.
On the way to purchase a few more things at Ulgoth's Beard, I returned a bowl to Tenya.
My spell save is down to 8, but that's still much too high to cast spells in combat (the greatest risk of doing that is to get held). I will though start casting next time from out of sight of enemies. That involves a slight potential risk from surges, but it seems only fair to offer up some sort of chance to the gods ...
Wild mage L7, 42 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 93 kills
No surges to date (only a couple of spells cast)
I would have expected you would take more chances, but you are correct. It is easier to use items to accomplish the same thing and prevent wild surges.
Typically I do get bored/careless as a run (with any character class) progresses and take more chances. Given the inherent risks involved with a wild mage I should really try and stay disciplined, but we'll see in due course whether I manage to do that ...