Corey - human inquisitor, protagonist
Alesia - half-elf mage/thief
Grond0 - dwarven barbarian (petrified)
Grim Face - gnomish cleric/illusionist
Enuhal - human totemic druid
So the party needed some cash. Turns out Greywolf's sword is worth a huge chunk of change, and Alesia was nice enough to blind him for us. We then got some mirror eyes potions and Alesia memorized sleep as that could help safeguard Grond0.
We head to the basilisk area, and get ambushed and in our very first ambush we see our friend's statue! Time to get to work!
Corey charges the kobold in the upper left. Alesia manages to sleep two kobolds. Enuhal un-petrifies Grond0, gets him to join then he and Grim Face heal Grond0 while Grond0 uncharacteristically used a blue potion. He couldn';t believe he did that, but he did. Alesia then tried to blind the kobold in the lower left corner and Corey used his bow on it. Grond0 was eager to get into the action and his throwing axes took down both sleeping kobolds.
To celebrate the reunion, the friends went to the Jovial Juggler and Corey splurged and got the party royal accommodations and drank the night away. The casters of the group feel safer now that Grond0 is back. Interestingly, even though Grond0 is several levels back, he's not doing bad HP-wise compared to the rest of the party, so he will be fine. He'll enjoy the challenge I'm sure.
Just a quick note. The mages of the party can cast level two spells now. So Alesia cast invisibility on Grond0 then Grond0 creeped forward so we could do entangle and stinking cloud on Kirian's party - this time we destroyed them and got our revenge for their killing of Alesia and Enuhal. Generally the party is doing much better weapon wise as everyone has a magical melee weapon and everyone has good armor except Alesia - it requires massive gold for hers (Robe of the Good Arch magi), but her armor is on our shopping list.
Think we are tough enough to venture into Nashkel Mines. As predicted, Grond0 is doing just fine, as though he's far behind experience wise he is #2 in the party HP wise. Alesia just got the belt of piercing so hopefully it will help her as enemy archers for some reason often target her.
@Grond0 Can understand why you used a blue potion. Sometimes such things just HAVE to be done. I don't buy them, but do use them. Having just arrived at the gate I currently have 26 of them due to the fact that with items, constitution is currently 23! 20 without them. I only use them for convenience, not necessity.
@Grond0 Can understand why you used a blue potion. Sometimes such things just HAVE to be done. I don't buy them, but do use them. Having just arrived at the gate I currently have 26 of them due to the fact that with items, constitution is currently 23! 20 without them. I only use them for convenience, not necessity.
Just to clarify, it was my avatar that used the potion and he was most certainly not under my control .
The randomized maze from improved Watcher's Keep forces me to take out a pencil & paper, which is always fun. We started with the balor + cornugo no-magic room, attacking the balor from range and with the cloak of the lich on Gardi:
The next room we went into was the summoning glabrezu room, propably the most dangerous encounter in Watcher's Keep thanks to the somewhat overdone SCS changes. Luckily, I recognized the obelisk upon entering the room, which allowed me to use pocket plane and buff up fully, turning this one from incredibly difficult to fairly doable with diligent use of breach spells. The bhaalspawn regeneration power from the second challenge, used on Hans, helped a lot here. That's still a ton uf summons that constantly try to kill us, even with hardiness and a lot of hitpoints - breach one, focus them down, breach the next one, go again, try to move in order to not get surrounded, make sure to check stoneskins on the spellcasters... it was still quite stressful and Hans got into some trouble early on, but with a few potions and regeneration, we made it:
And here's our second no-magic room - this one is rather easy if the traps at the entrance are disarmed:
As we encountered the demon knights next - I recognized the tree - we once again returned to the pocket plane to buff up. This was in the hopes that we wouldn't randomly go back to one of the no-magic zones in the near future (because otherwise, buffing up for that long only to lose all your buffs instantly is quite frustrating):
We were able to charge the tieflings before the mage got to use any spells:
And pretty soon after that (after an encounter with the succubi and the quasits) we found ourselves playing cards with the cambion. The luck we had in the previous run didn't last at all - I lost every bet and even had to get a cursed Gardi out of backstabbing trouble with an invisibility potion:
Back into the maze - we needed to find the scepter gems. We found the demon wraith instead - this foe was nice enough to walk up to us instead of going for a timestop right away. Illuminata disarmed some traps, we threw down pierce shield followed up by a secret word sequencer and were able to cast breach, activated fighter HLAs and went for the kill:
That was surprisingly easy. I wonder if the demon wraith's script is broken in current SCS.
We still had to find the gems, so we searched for the demons - the first one was the friendly one, and it took us quite a while to find nr. 2 - when we encountered him, I was able to take the small window before everyone went hostile in order to cast pocket plane:
And we returned with full buffs:
Lvl 4: We went for the mind flayers first, using greater deathblow for quick kills on Hans (he has 2 of these, for one specific encounter later on):
The githyanki captain got really unlucky - I summoned a plentar before facing him, and the planetars script made him use insect plague while I was still buffing somewhere off screen - and the captain actually got feared by the insect plague, making this one a cakewalk:
We checked our fire protection and protected our buffs before taking on Saladrex:
Everyone had SI:A, Entropy Shield or beserker enrage going, so I didn't feel like I needed to re-buff for the demi-lich. The key here was to get past his defenses as quickly as possible, which we were able to do with sequencers and wand-breach:
As you can see he dispelled Hans, but we were able to re-apply improved haste, everyone else had their buffs protected and we were able to interrupt any further attempts at spellcasting with smite:
Just a few seconds after this screenshot, Hans' enrage would run out, so it's good we killed him as quickly as we did:
Okay, killing the minotaurs was trivial, so onwards to level 5. We took out the golems first with some Hans solo action (to prevent cone of cold deaths), solved the orb riddle and survived the orcs. The green dragon got to use his breath weapon, and since I neglected to equip any more poison immunity items or use green scrolls, he actually did some damage before his quick death:
No trouble during the spirit warrior maze. I made sure not to drink from the fountain, open the drawer or enter the ghost room:
For the three guardian groups, I used some traps, but not enough, because I didn't want to rest and have to re-buff the entire party. The Aurumach Rilmani was damaged by some normal traps and finished off by the party before he could do anything dangerous:
Since I had very few traps left, Azamantes actually got to cast some spells for once. Strangely enough, my time traps didn't trigger, otherwise this wouldn't have been the case. Illuminata was lacking PFME, and Hansi got completely dispelled, so I had to spread out the party and go after some flaming skulls first:
However, soon after that, PFMW for Azamantes ran out (he hadn't used improved alacrity during his timestop, strangely enough, despite wearing the Robe of Vecna), and I was able to get the Runehammer instant kill:
With so many buffs gone, I decided to rest for the final group and prepare traps to take out the succubus. Breach and quick attacks against the hive mother:
Breach for Y'tossi as well - no throwing energy blades into the physical mirror:
And our final foe dies:
We read the scroll and left the keep.
Now, the improved enclaves - The party has hit the peak of its power with the Watcher's Keep items, and I know the new SCS encounters quite well by now, so I feel fairly confident, but enemies such as lizardmen shaman, some of the dragons or some random mistakes could still easily spell a lot of trouble.
Trio 51 Update
Corecleric - halfling priest of lothander, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Swazi - human mage (Grond0)
Betson - human monk (Gate70)
This session got off to a rocky start as the guys in Britian didn't know the daylight savings had kicked in, so Corey_Russell had to wait an hour until his group-mates showed up.
But once they did we made some good progress. We forgot to trip the battle horrors one by one and Betson tripped them and Davaeorn all at once. He did manage to park them. Davaeorn spent some spells at Betson and Swazi and also my skeletons. By the time my skeletons were dead, he was out of spells then simple ranged/mlee attacks carried the day. Swazi was eager to throw some fireballs out of sight to take down the battle horrors.
The jelly went down simply enough, with Swazi being very surprised she got the kill shot even though she's a mage and non-proficient with a staff.
We arrive in the city of Baldur's Gate and do some usual quests for the Trio:
* the mages upstairs at Sorcerous Sundries fell quickly to buffed skeletons
* Ogre mage and his crawlers dealt with. This was dicey as Betson's hide failed the moment before zone in. Everyone ran though Swazi a different direction. Corecleric offered to give Betson some free action, together they worked on the enemies. Swazi was using Aganazer's Scorcher to very good effect. Betson grabs a body before we got, encumbering him.
* One of the necromancers of the city wanted a body - we gave it to him, then made him a body.
* His ex-girlfriend was nearby, we gave her the amulet she wanted and then she joined her ex in death.
* Some thieves were found in a house. While Corecleric was bashing one, Swazi decided to expose herself to other archer, and Swazi very nearly died.
* Vayya and Deserta destroyed. Vayya got blinded and Deserta couldn't make a dent on a cleric buffed with anti-mage buffs.
* Basilisk in a warehouse piece of cake with 3 skeleton distractions.
* We realized we needed to do the poison quest if Corecleric wants the wisdom tome.
* Jalantha and her priestess buddies were destroyed, so we could get the boy's body and the geas scroll.
* Corecleric gets a nice shield after returning the boy's body to the Priest of Tymora.
* The party managed to box in Lathander and got his boots for Swazi.
* Larze was dragged around but once blinded the result was not in doubt.
* Marek do nothing against a buffed Corecleric.
* We did the usual task of recovering the cloak of balduran.
Time for the main quest!
* The Seven Suns did not go quite as planned, as Corecleric got a negative CHA response by Jhasso. But it didn't seem to affect getting our reward.
* Time for dealing with the 5th floor of the Iron Throne. Skeletons were a great distraction, and Corecleric held 4 enemies at once - needless to say this was fatal. The result was uncertain as Swazi didn't keep his distance from the enemies and found himself silenced by Corecleric. But it didn't seem to hurt our battle.
* With no thief, things were a bit confused at Candlekeep Crypts. Two phase spiders teleported near Corecleric and Swazi but Swazi didn't seem to immediately respond - in inventory maybe? Well she got poisoned by a phase spider and she might have been able to save herself with a elixir of health, but Swazi was hearing none of that and would rather die - which she duly did.
It took a lot of time, but Betson and Corecleric all they could and left the crypts, only stopping long enough to beat up some basilisks, once again with skeleton distractions.
Last part of the session was to resurrect our friend Swazi - she came back and got healed, but lamented she is missing her staff. Guess we will need that martial staff after all...
Currently performing trivial quests in Baldur's Gate. This included wiping out doppelgangers at an inn, giving an Angel Ring to a gitl, Returning the corpse of a girl to her mother and ridding the city of an evil mage. Actually it wasn't me that did that. One blow brought him near to death, but one of the Flaming Fist Elite stole my experience!
I lured an ogre outside the Blushing Mermaid where he was killed by skeletons that I had prepared earlier.
@Grond0 Can understand why you used a blue potion. Sometimes such things just HAVE to be done. I don't buy them, but do use them. Having just arrived at the gate I currently have 26 of them due to the fact that with items, constitution is currently 23! 20 without them. I only use them for convenience, not necessity.
Just to clarify, it was my avatar that used the potion and he was most certainly not under my control .
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 237, Core rules + unmodded part 5 (links to earlier episodes: 123+45)
Sorrarm the sorcerer and Laughalot the Jester
Korlasz didn't survive her family tomb, but then again neither did Sorrarm - having studiously avoided enemies only to play fast and loose with traps and that meant a certain death. Laughalot said a few words in remembrance, along the lines of that's why I never open the container near Korlasz' familiar (what with it releasing a lightning bolt in a contained space).
Recent runs have seen plenty of arcane characters, but this one is a much harder hitting combination. That should be a nice change even if Gate70 isn't all that enamoured of berserkers as a class. His usual protest against being typecast as a tank involved refusing to buy a helm or armor while in Candlekeep and taking a bit of damage from Carbos as a result. He did pick up the studded leather from Montaron's body, but it wasn't until right at the end of the session that finally got traded in for some ankheg armor.
After gaining an early level from Shoal we made our way through Beregost and down to Nashkel. Byrd was intending to visit Meilum next, but Gulpo wanted a small diversion to pick up a magical 2-handed sword from a group of half-ogres.
We did then go on to shoot down Meilum and grab his bracers.
Next on the agenda was finding some basilisks. Gulpo made a throwaway comment about the possibility of using Byrd's fairy dragon familiar as a petrification shield and Byrd of course jumped at the chance to do that. Things progressed well initially with that plan as we chewed through all but the greater basilisk near Mutamin.
However, events went rapidly downhill when the familiar moved too far forward against that basilisk and came into sight of Mutamin as well. That error was compounded by retreating in the wrong direction, resulting in Byrd being affected by the subsequent horror. Gulpo threw caution to the winds and rushed forward to attack in melee, trying to prevent Byrd from being targeted. That was more successful than might be expected as the greater basilisk initially chose to use its physical attack rather than petrification gaze. However, Gulpo was not quite quick enough to prevent the familiar from being targeted with Melf's Acid Arrow and Byrd's constitution took a hammering from its death.
It looked like that might though be a relatively small price to pay as Byrd recovered his senses to deal with Mutamin (now out of spells), while Gulpo successfully ran out of sight of the basilisk. There was a sting in the tale though when Gulpo's enrage ended and he collapsed unconscious - making a nice target for the basilisk to gaze at.
Byrd went to get a stone to flesh scroll before coming to revive Gulpo and inviting him back into the party - which immediately resulted in a dead body.
Normally, being petrified will reduce HPs to 1, but Gulpo had gone unconscious when HPs went to 0 and it appeared that had remained the same when he was stoned. That meant another trip to the temple to revive him before we went back once more to the basilisk area to shoot down the last basilisk. We then recruited Korax and had a go at Kirian's mob. They made short work of Korax and hit Gulpo hard, but he survived in melee long enough to leave only Lindin alive - and he could be run around and shot.
At that stage Gulpo was once more in danger of passing out unconscious when his rage expired, but this time he forestalled that by using a healing potion.
Back in Beregost Gulpo decided he would throw caution to the winds and take on Silke. Standing with a wall just behind him was begging for a lightning bolt and Silke duly obliged - only Gulpo's additional HPs from the rage allowing him to avoid being chunked there.
A quick trip through the Cloud Peak Mountains provided Byrd with a magical club to improve his dual-wielding, while Gulpo got some bracers to improve his AC and a girdle to fend off crushing attacks. After turning in some spiders at the FAI, the girdle helped while exploring an ankheg nest. Only one of the monsters managed a hit on Gulpo, though that one did dissolve a fair chunk of his flesh before falling.
The final bit of the session saw us at the Lighthouse area. Rage made dealing with the sirines there simple, while Byrd's bow helped ensure the golems had limited opportunities to break through Gulpo's defenses.
Beast master 6, 70 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 77 kills
Berserker 6, 77 HPs, 56 kills, 2 deaths
Gulpo has had his full share of kills from throwing axes, but the slow speed of his 2-handed sword has allowed Byrd to kill the majority of weaker opponents when in melee
The party is making good progress. Most of the chapter 3 areas have been cleared, we will soon need to make a visit to the bandit camp. The casters of the group are quite a bit more durable now, and Grond0 and Corey are tanking great. We now have a dizzying amount of spells at our disposal, so if we have time to prepare our attack it's always a route. Ambushes have been a lot less worrisome, though Alesia still does lots of running from wolves. The only major upgrade left is to get Alesia's armor, but perhaps after the bandit camp we'll have enough. Will keep at it.
lol @Alesia_BH yes I'm considering the robe of the good arch-magi armor. Grim Face can use plate if he needs armor, so he doesn't need it. It would be a nice item for your character though.
I finally got around to paying Gaelan Bayle and picked up my goodies from Aran Linvail. Armed with level drain protection I returned to Watcher's Keep and beat up the vampiric wraiths and their associates. Clearing the top level was then easy enough, gaining me a 12th cleric level in the process.
Next I went to the de'Arnise Hold in search of a better melee weapon. Skeletons and MMMs made pretty short work of the trolls infesting that.
Then it was on to Trademeet to find some more work for skeletons against trolls and druids. Three points of reputation were on offer, pushing that up to 18 - once that's maximised I'll splash a bit of the cash I've been earning. I also got to level 13 in each class there.
Cleric 13 / Illusionist 13, 81 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar, 5 from helm), 238 kills (+237 in BGEE/SoD)
The party has made finally made it to the city of Baldur's Gate. But the Cloakwood Forest ambushes were tough for our party. At one point, almost the entire party gets poisioned - Alesia and Grim Face end up dying. We had to leave some armor behind, and even as it was the entire party was encumbered. But at least the mages weren't chunked.
I'm away from my games PC for some days, I will post a full update when I come back.
Radagast is at SoA end, beside the illithids and beholders lairs in the Underdark still left intact, I'm just passing time for Elminster to show up in Jaheira's quest, for the red wizard guy to change Edwina back to Edwin, and I'm at the end of first level of Watcher's Keep.
I forgot Hexxat is no longer available in chapter 6, and decided not to do Dorn's quests with both Keldorn and Anomen (the best replacement for poor Mazzy since I didn't want Haer'Dalis to fuck up my romance with Aerie) in the party.
Radagast is now at 3,600,000 XP.
Taking into account the initial 500,000 XP, I calculated than an XP reduction at 75% would mean finish SoA between 2,900,000 and 3,200,000 XP, which would be far more reasonable and more challenging. I'm waiting to see how ToB fares, but I will probably install SCS AI enhancements (not the challenges, and I'm still on the fence for IWD spells, since SCS priests really benefit from them. But I will probably not install the arcane pack) and XP reduced to 75% for my next reloads runs.
Destroying the Twisted Rune with a planetar and an elemental prince felt wrong somehow...
I always thought its banned in these multiplayer runs.
Well first of all, this is not an MP run but an AVATAR run - that is, I have characters who represent other forumites, but aren't actually played by the forumites themselves, which is why Grond0 in my run uses blue potions when the actual Grond0 wouldn't think of it. They all have their own avatars in their single player runs as well. And pause is used in the Trio (which is MP), but very rarely.
@Rayga most people doing no-reload runs use pause extensively in single player games. There are various reasons for using it much less in multiplayer games - like the difficulty of coordinating between different players, the problems that lag delays cause and the potential annoyance for players when play is interrupted by others. However, pause does still get used from time to time in our MP games - usually in an attempt to defuse life-threatening situations.
Pausing is also very important for basically any run that you're documenting. My usual process for the runs that I report involves frequent pausing; any screenshots I take are always done while paused (you can turn off the monochrome effect), and I also pause to take notes in a text file I keep open while playing. Something interesting happens, I pause and write it down.
If you're not pausing all the time to take notes, that most likely means that either you're playing shorter sessions so you remember things better at the end, or you're documenting things in less detail.
Sendai's Enclave, the outside: Luckily, Hive Mothers usually don't protect their buffs early on, so I just had to breach, activate critical strike and deal as much damage at possible:
Only Illuminata lost her buffs, so after a quick personal rebuff we tried to trigger the second ambush, but the woodcutter/drow captain bugged out and wouldn't talk to us - our only choice was just to force attack the remaining disguised drow, finishing off the final wizard with a quick backstab:
The initial forces in the enclave aren't any trouble, and we equipped a few poison immunity items for the spider tunnel after taking down the duergar by walking invisibly past them, killing the slavedriver and clearing up the tunnels. Fighting my way to Odamaron wasn't very troublesome - enemy wizards were low enough level that I could just cast remove magic to dispel them. Odamaron was Gardi's time to shine - or rather, the last time we could make use of the Runehammer's anti undead powers. My opening didn't quite work out - Andi started with a timestop, but because the game started a mini cutscene after that to introduce Odamaron's SCS improved allies, the timestop didn't actually happen despite being successfully cast:
Andi followed up with another timestop - he does have the Robe of Vecna after all. Illuminata threw one of her sequencers at the lich to break his spell shield, Andis second timestop triggered. Successful actions by our opponents so far included dispelling Hans (the only one with unprotected buffs) and silencing Pietro. Andi used his time to fully dispel Odamaron and start with taking down the defenses of the unnamed lich. After the end of the timestop, Gardi's very first hit instantly destroyed Odamaron (a 2 on the attack roll was enough):
Just as I breached the lich, but before any hit could land on him, he was able to timestop:
However, he didn't use his timestop wisely. A greater malison was thrown out, I don't even remember the other spells - as soon as the timestop ended, Gardi got him with the Runehammer:
The others dispelled the final apprentice while Hans and Gardi turned around back to him. Pietro and Andi had lost their stoneskins, so it was time to end the fight - with another instant Runehammer kill:
3 out of 3. Not bad.
After resting and rebuffing at the pocket plane, I was actually able to kill Ogremoch within a single dispelling of his stoneskin, making this fight much less annoying:
We charged right into Diaytha's room, where we aggressively breached and attacked the hive mother, while Andi got the kill with a horrid wilting:
At the end of the battle, I noticed that most of Illuminatas spells were gone, which made me realize that I had completely missed that the demon knight and ancient vampire here had almost completely drained her levels - my first major mistake in ToB I think:
Luckily, disaster was averted, a quick restoration followed (which I followed up with unfailing endurance), and Gardi won her duel against the captain in just 3 hits:
As we still had PFME on everyone, we easily cleared out the mind flayer ambush:
So... before I talk about the Sendai fight - before her initial dialogue and cutscene triggered, I was able to pause and noticed this guy in the northern part of the screen - why the hell is he here, who is he? (he even had a name, though I don't remember it - you can see his selection circle, he has the Winthrop model) What's going on here? Does anybody know?
All right, so I was quite well prepared for Sendai, adding to my usual buffs some HLA buffs (the flame shield and blade orb, mostly), potions (cloud giant strength, invulnerability, defense, speed for non-fighters, heroism) and some item buffs (stoneskin for Gardi via boots included). Our planetar of justice from Dorn's quest spawned in, assisted by a regular summoned planetar. A sequencer dispelled mage Sendai's spell protections, we followed up with breach while the others killed cleric Sendai and Hans took down the first spawning drow:
Before the breach went through, Sendai finished improved alacrity, which allowed her to renew her defenses with absolute immunity right away - time for a wand of spellstriking instant breach:
Meanwhile, Gardi solo killed thief Sendai, Hans moved on to finish the once again breached mage (seems like she had no second absolute immunity left), Pietro took his spot in dealing with the drow, helped by his globe of blades and we had to actually dispel fear to get our regular planetar back:
A vorpal hit got fighter Sendai, and we were suddenly left without enemies - this is propably the first time this has ever happened to me against improved Sendai, so we were definitely doing well:
The second mage Sendai activated, but was countered by a secret word sequencer and a quick breach + vorpal hit - spawning drow were also instantly taken out by our planetar + fighter force:
As the archer Sendai fell, the real one finally appeared, but didn't really do anything, because a few hits hit got through before all of her buffs triggered, and this was enough to defeat her:
I also completed pocket plane challenge Nr. 3 (the good way this time, as intended). Sendai's Enclave, even if improved by SCS, has never given me too much trouble - the first really big ToB challenge, aside from Neera's quest and Watcher's Keep, will be Abazigal's Lair. Some of the improvements here are a propably a bit overdone, but at least I know what to expect.
Pausing is also very important for basically any run that you're documenting. My usual process for the runs that I report involves frequent pausing; any screenshots I take are always done while paused (you can turn off the monochrome effect), and I also pause to take notes in a text file I keep open while playing. Something interesting happens, I pause and write it down.
If you're not pausing all the time to take notes, that most likely means that either you're playing shorter sessions so you remember things better at the end, or you're documenting things in less detail.
Very True. I have great difficulty remembering details at the end of a session. I use screenshots to jog memory but still get things out of order as a 74 year old brain doesn't work that well!
Corey - human inquisitor, protagonist
Alesia - half-elf mage/thief
Grond0 - dwarven barbarian (petrified)
Grim Face - gnomish cleric/illusionist
Enuhal - human totemic druid
This party now has a vast array of options in dealing with enemies, with many divine and arcane spells at our disposal, many wands, plus the considerable melee of Corey & Grond0. As such, the City of Baldur's Gate quests/battles went pretty smooth. A buffed Grond0 took down the baddies at the Iron Throne HQ. We have just been sent to Candlekeep.
Ofc I cant imagine playing without pause in any run
I just thought you banned it for MP runs both because of how annoying it can be, and as a handicap to compensate for having 2-3 pro adventurers operating their characters separately. That and I was wondering how can one of you die shuffling in his inventory, when another can press pause
Abazigal's Lair went surprisingly well, by far the smoothest time I've had here with SCS improvements installed. Granted, this is only tactical, but even on tactical I've always had some amount of trouble here. Improvements came down to much better encounter knowledge, I think.
We start of with Draconis, so everyone gets acid protection - Hans, who is likely to get dispelled, also wears one of our two pieces of shadow dragon armor, Gardi grabs the other one, just in case the battle is super long and her entropy shield runs out. We fire a spell trigger at Draconis' protections and follow up with breach, but he is able to finish his timestop. He casts greater malison and shadow door, which a lot of enemies seem to do during their timestops in this run, at least when my party is fully protected (they could do damage with lightning, acid or frost spells, but it seems like they usually have none memorized or have other priorities). He also renews combat protections, timestop ends, and just as he gets breached again, he finishes casting improved alacrity - however, this won't save him. He gates in a fallen planetar, we immediately take the celestial down, and as Draconis doesn't seem to have any more physical protection spells, we spread out has he is near death and finish the fight with ranged weapons to avoid the dreaded EE "getting stuck in an opponents selection circle" bug, which pretty much always happens if you stand next to Draconis as he transforms:
Like most dragons, Draconis' significant defenses are spell deflection + PFMW - a quick and easy spell pierce + breach is required, though the dragon dodges our breach by going invisible at the perfect time - he also casts MGOI as he is revealed, but that won't be relevant. He really tries to hurt Gardi with melee attacks as we cast a second breach (we have to use Illuminata this time around - due to the PFA casts, Andi has no 5th level spells left) - but with Defender of Easthaven, Armor of Faith and Hardiness, he struggles to do anything significant, as she resists 25 points of damage from a 30 point hit:
The breach goes through, we start doing damage:
We activate critical strikes, and the dragon is unable to do anything else before his quick demise:
He didn't even get to dispel Hans.
Well, we enter the lair and make sure not to underestimate the lizardmen, though I want to rest before facing the lizardman shaman group, and we also recharge our wands of spell striking. The two shaman are super-powerful high level mage/druid multiclasses who will not hestitate to cast timestop, spam creeping doom and use some of the best pre-buffs from both divine and arcane spellcasting - this isn't even the full list, and that's only on tactical:
I know this encounter by now, so I add SI:Conjuration into my buffs to counter any type of insect plague spells. We immediately fire off both of our dragon's breath spells to deal with the non-shaman lizardmen, and we try our luck with a storm of vengeance just in case there's a hole in our opponents defenses (there is: they still take lightning damage, and Pietro actually interrupts 2 spells). Actually, I'm fairly sure he interrupted one of the opening timestops, because we only got hit by one. During this timestop, the shaman casts another creeping doom (bound to only affect Hans, who can take it), and does the inevitable greater malison + shadow door thing - however, his PFMW expires, and we can take him out:
The other one, who didn't get to timestop (and gets another spell interrupted by storm of vengeance), is able to renew PFMW - instead of going through all the layers of spell protection, we just wait out the buff and kill him after that - our buffs are still going strong, he really can't hurt us by himself, especially with the lightning interrupts he is taking:
We didn't lose any buffs, so we just take down the yellow dragon right away:
The same fate is shared by kuo-toa and water elementals:
And before we leave to get the rope from Amkethran, Illuminata prepares 7 spike traps - four to the north, 3 to the south - in preparation for the quadruple dragon ambush. The northern dragon dies instantly, the southern one is heavily wounded. We buff up in the meantime, making sure to include fire immunity and green poison protection scrolls on the three characters who don't have poison immunity anyway. The already wounded dragon dies before their defenses fire up:
Next up we have a green dragon - not using PFMW in time doesn't help them, and the breath weapon is utterly countered by our poison immunity:
Carnifex puts up the usual spell deflection + PFMW, we quickly use wand spell pierce + breach, and he's gone, though he does do some damage to Gardi, because her hardiness wasn't up at the beginning of combat:
I still constantly learn new things about BG, and one of the most recent things I learned is that tyrant golems die to greater deathblow - which is one of the reasons I picked this HLA up for Hans (also helpful in Sendai's enclave, as it kills many drow and mind flayers in one hit):
His saving throws and high life total keep him safe as the others swoop in to help with the eye tyrants (who don't get affected by the deathblow). We reverse the gaeas on another dragon and prepare for Abazigal. Lightning protection for everyone is added, oils of speed for non-fighters, invulnerability and cloud giant strength for fighters. Medium buffs all in all. A quick showcase - this is how our fighters character screens look for this encounter:
Of course, Hans can easily lose all of these buffs, but Gardi is pretty safe.
Our opening is very simple - Andi kites Abazigal around the southern part of the map while the others take down all of the other dragons and salamanders:
I make the mistake of starting without Hardiness active - during phase 1 of this fight, this will be rectified - we put up Hardiness + AoF, regeneration (the bhaalspawn version) on Hans, and Pietro casts a heal spell, because Tamah has done a ton of damage to Hans:
Tamah goes ethereal after being heavily wounded, and we damage Abazigal a bit before spreading out to make sure that we don't get stuck in his selection circle or thrown away too far by his initial wing buffet:
Throughout all of this, the Planetar of Justice (from Dorn's quest) is still alive and tanks a few hits for uns, though his constant attempts to remove magic from Abazigal never work. We once again spell pierce + breach the dragon, making him vulnerable:
He activates a PFMW contingency - while we start to breach him once again, Tamah re-appears and is quickly taken down.
We're quite stable right now, so we make sure to renew AoF and Hardiness just in case and death spell the magical sword that was randomly included in our opponents opening preparations. However, with seemingly no new PFMW at the horizon, the dragon just takes way too much damage - a triple remove magic sequencer on Hans does stem the bleeding as our berserker gets completely dispelled, and he finally is able to cast his first earthquake, but by that time, he's done, and even the planetar of justice has survived:
We renew stoneskins, use gargoyle boots to give those to Gardi and Hans as well and take down the Favored of Cyric, granting us immunity from level drain, which is barely useful, but I'd propably forget to ever use the evil power anyway.
Mini-update: I entered Amkethran, cast mass invisibility, entered the Smuggler's Cave, returned to pocket plane, rested and buffed up before talking to Seamon. The monastery guards mostly died to a 3*ADHW cc, so our buffs weren't really needed:
We talked to Balthazar - with 19 wisdom, 18 charisma (boosted via ring), being lawful good and having 20 reputation, I had a variety of dialogue options to recruit him for the final battle - I ended up simply pointing out my own good deeds, shaming him for the actions of his mercenaries and monks, questioning on how he's going to deal with Mel and asking him to join me - which he did:
As I was stilly mostly buffed - only had to renew entropy shield, SI:A and improved haste - I decided to save a few minutes and only use 4 spike traps for the ravager, which would leave him with more hitpoints (I only have the HLA 4 times, and I didn't want to rebuff, so no rest for 3 more). With our critical strikes and high APR, our foe still didn't last very long:
Before that, I made sure to pick the most power hungry dialogue options when talking with the Solar, because I wanted the evil ascension power for this encounter. And now, look at Gardi's damage resistances with Hardiness and FoA (and the Defender of Easthaven):
Yep, that's full immunity against melee attacks and 90% against missle weapons Now I just need to make sure not to drop these buffs, and I might even survive a failed focus (though I hope it doesn't come to this, but the past has shown that I'm not very good with focus). We shall see.
@Enuhal Does the bug with getting stuck on dragons circle after transformation really happens that often? I've only started noticing it recently. Before I have played on vanilla though.
@Enuhal Not to rain on your parade, because I really appreciate the skill and amount of foresight that goes into curb-stomping the improved ToB encounters, but... this really doesn't get you psyched up about tackling a full trilogy no-reload with all the SCS bells and whistles.
Buff up to the point where literally nothing can hurt you, so you have time to completely remove all the buffs of enemies that are in turn buffed up so nothing can hurt them (because if they're not, your party annihilates them in two seconds flat); once you do that, do it over again, because they renewed all of their buffs. Maybe SCS, at least come ToB, is more enjoyable without all the improved encounters after all..
@Rayga It doesn't happen in vanilla, it's only an EE thing. If you surround Draconis in his caster form (i.e. everyone is meleeing him) and he transforms, yes, this is most likely to happen, and it can easily be deadly in no-reload. It usually doesn't happen with Abazigal because he will push everyone away upon his transformation. It can also happen on area transitions sometimes (though this is rare), and it is very likely to happen in the Abazigal's Lair dungeon with the floating eyeballs - the neutral eyeballs, called vigilants, will zone into your characters and cause them to be stuck, which is why I immediately kill those vigilants when i see them nowadays.
@aldain I can see why my approach might not always look enjoyable. It is propably the most reliable way to succeed (ultimately, my goal is to get this class into the hall of heroes), and a move from tactical to insane would take a lot of the buffing that I do from overkill to somewhat neccessary, if risk eliminiation is the goal (which it is for me in no-reload). I don't usually go quite this overbord on buffing earlier in the game (in SoA, I did multiple longer questchains restless in this same run, despite additional risks), but I really don't like losing a run this late into the series.
While the same is not true for SoA, both the SCS additions to ToB and especially the Ascension battles are definitely (and purposefully, I think) over the top (at least that seems to be true for Sendai's Enclave, most certainly Abazigal's Enclave and of course, the Throne, which one-ups these even more). This lizardman shaman encounter, for example, would most likely absolutely destroy me if I was unprepared. I think these "improved Encounters" are designed with the assumption that people absolutely make full use the dozens of super powerful spells, abilities, items etc. given to you by this point.
The constant buffing is always getting on my nerve eventually, which is why I play ToB in short sessions, where I don't notice it as much - because if I get bored with rebuffing, I will eventually skip some buffs, get careless and risk losing the run. Missing crucial buffs because I got lazy is my nr. 2 source of lost runs in recent times. That being said, I don't enjoy ToB combat all that much even in the vanilla game. I much prefer BG1 and early-mid SoA in terms of tactical challenges, when you don't have all these options, all these potential immunities and really need to make a choice on what to focus on in terms of strategic priorities - but it is part of the challenge, so I have to endure it to get back to the good stuff again
Also, the randomized spellbooks of SCS opponents can still absolutely surprise me from time to time (much less so in this run, where most things seem fairly samey in terms of spell choices by our foes, for some reason) - in an earlier SCS version (I remember that sequencers and spell triggers were still automatically learned in that one), I lost a run in SoA because I really didn't expect an enemy wizard to suddenly throw a 3*Vitriolic Sphere sequencer at me, as I generally only buff acid protection for Draconis.
I’m lowering the difficulty back to core and I’m trying a self made party of four characters, all with minimized stats.
I think I found a good mix:
Dragon disciple (elf, LN for familiar that can pick some pockets)
Dwarven defender (damage sponge), only decent ranged character with throwing axes
Gnome cleric/thief (traps and clerical magic)
Half elf shapeshifter (werewolf form is nice, but HP are still really low).
I’m planning on powergaming the f*** out of this run. Taking very few risks.
One of my biggest fears is the fact that nobody can use a wand or scroll until I get to Baldur’s Gate and get the Tome to increase INT by 1 (then the sorcerer will have a 9).
That means no abusing Mutamin’s garden for easy XP early.
I’m flirting with tweaking the lineup as this is really tough early on. I really prefer 4 man parties though.
Some other minimum stat superstars I’ve found are the half elf cleric/ranger (they have enough STR to use a flail!), the elf ranger (the highest minimum stats, clocking in at 70), and the gnome illusionist/thief or fighter/illusionist (illusionists have 16 minimum DEX and the 9 INT allows wands and scrolls).
Comments
Corey - human inquisitor, protagonist
Alesia - half-elf mage/thief
Grond0 - dwarven barbarian (petrified)
Grim Face - gnomish cleric/illusionist
Enuhal - human totemic druid
So the party needed some cash. Turns out Greywolf's sword is worth a huge chunk of change, and Alesia was nice enough to blind him for us. We then got some mirror eyes potions and Alesia memorized sleep as that could help safeguard Grond0.
We head to the basilisk area, and get ambushed and in our very first ambush we see our friend's statue! Time to get to work!
Corey charges the kobold in the upper left. Alesia manages to sleep two kobolds. Enuhal un-petrifies Grond0, gets him to join then he and Grim Face heal Grond0 while Grond0 uncharacteristically used a blue potion. He couldn';t believe he did that, but he did.
To celebrate the reunion, the friends went to the Jovial Juggler and Corey splurged and got the party royal accommodations and drank the night away. The casters of the group feel safer now that Grond0 is back. Interestingly, even though Grond0 is several levels back, he's not doing bad HP-wise compared to the rest of the party, so he will be fine. He'll enjoy the challenge I'm sure.
Just a quick note. The mages of the party can cast level two spells now. So Alesia cast invisibility on Grond0 then Grond0 creeped forward so we could do entangle and stinking cloud on Kirian's party - this time we destroyed them and got our revenge for their killing of Alesia and Enuhal. Generally the party is doing much better weapon wise as everyone has a magical melee weapon and everyone has good armor except Alesia - it requires massive gold for hers (Robe of the Good Arch magi), but her armor is on our shopping list.
Think we are tough enough to venture into Nashkel Mines. As predicted, Grond0 is doing just fine, as though he's far behind experience wise he is #2 in the party HP wise. Alesia just got the belt of piercing so hopefully it will help her as enemy archers for some reason often target her.
The run continues...
Just to clarify, it was my avatar that used the potion and he was most certainly not under my control
The randomized maze from improved Watcher's Keep forces me to take out a pencil & paper, which is always fun. We started with the balor + cornugo no-magic room, attacking the balor from range and with the cloak of the lich on Gardi:
We still had to find the gems, so we searched for the demons - the first one was the friendly one, and it took us quite a while to find nr. 2 - when we encountered him, I was able to take the small window before everyone went hostile in order to cast pocket plane:
Lvl 4: We went for the mind flayers first, using greater deathblow for quick kills on Hans (he has 2 of these, for one specific encounter later on):
Now, the improved enclaves - The party has hit the peak of its power with the Watcher's Keep items, and I know the new SCS encounters quite well by now, so I feel fairly confident, but enemies such as lizardmen shaman, some of the dragons or some random mistakes could still easily spell a lot of trouble.
Corecleric - halfling priest of lothander, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Swazi - human mage (Grond0)
Betson - human monk (Gate70)
This session got off to a rocky start as the guys in Britian didn't know the daylight savings had kicked in, so Corey_Russell had to wait an hour until his group-mates showed up.
But once they did we made some good progress. We forgot to trip the battle horrors one by one and Betson tripped them and Davaeorn all at once. He did manage to park them. Davaeorn spent some spells at Betson and Swazi and also my skeletons. By the time my skeletons were dead, he was out of spells then simple ranged/mlee attacks carried the day. Swazi was eager to throw some fireballs out of sight to take down the battle horrors.
The jelly went down simply enough, with Swazi being very surprised she got the kill shot even though she's a mage and non-proficient with a staff.
We arrive in the city of Baldur's Gate and do some usual quests for the Trio:
* the mages upstairs at Sorcerous Sundries fell quickly to buffed skeletons
* Ogre mage and his crawlers dealt with. This was dicey as Betson's hide failed the moment before zone in. Everyone ran though Swazi a different direction. Corecleric offered to give Betson some free action, together they worked on the enemies. Swazi was using Aganazer's Scorcher to very good effect. Betson grabs a body before we got, encumbering him.
* One of the necromancers of the city wanted a body - we gave it to him, then made him a body.
* His ex-girlfriend was nearby, we gave her the amulet she wanted and then she joined her ex in death.
* Some thieves were found in a house. While Corecleric was bashing one, Swazi decided to expose herself to other archer, and Swazi very nearly died.
* Vayya and Deserta destroyed. Vayya got blinded and Deserta couldn't make a dent on a cleric buffed with anti-mage buffs.
* Basilisk in a warehouse piece of cake with 3 skeleton distractions.
* We realized we needed to do the poison quest if Corecleric wants the wisdom tome.
* Jalantha and her priestess buddies were destroyed, so we could get the boy's body and the geas scroll.
* Corecleric gets a nice shield after returning the boy's body to the Priest of Tymora.
* The party managed to box in Lathander and got his boots for Swazi.
* Larze was dragged around but once blinded the result was not in doubt.
* Marek do nothing against a buffed Corecleric.
* We did the usual task of recovering the cloak of balduran.
Time for the main quest!
* The Seven Suns did not go quite as planned, as Corecleric got a negative CHA response by Jhasso. But it didn't seem to affect getting our reward.
* Time for dealing with the 5th floor of the Iron Throne. Skeletons were a great distraction, and Corecleric held 4 enemies at once - needless to say this was fatal. The result was uncertain as Swazi didn't keep his distance from the enemies and found himself silenced by Corecleric. But it didn't seem to hurt our battle.
* With no thief, things were a bit confused at Candlekeep Crypts. Two phase spiders teleported near Corecleric and Swazi but Swazi didn't seem to immediately respond - in inventory maybe? Well she got poisoned by a phase spider and she might have been able to save herself with a elixir of health, but Swazi was hearing none of that and would rather die - which she duly did.
It took a lot of time, but Betson and Corecleric all they could and left the crypts, only stopping long enough to beat up some basilisks, once again with skeleton distractions.
Last part of the session was to resurrect our friend Swazi - she came back and got healed, but lamented she is missing her staff. Guess we will need that martial staff after all...
Currently performing trivial quests in Baldur's Gate. This included wiping out doppelgangers at an inn, giving an Angel Ring to a gitl, Returning the corpse of a girl to her mother and ridding the city of an evil mage. Actually it wasn't me that did that. One blow brought him near to death, but one of the Flaming Fist Elite stole my experience!
Vai gave me a cloak.
Skeletons were again useful against attackers.
Sorrarm the sorcerer and Laughalot the Jester
Korlasz didn't survive her family tomb, but then again neither did Sorrarm - having studiously avoided enemies only to play fast and loose with traps and that meant a certain death. Laughalot said a few words in remembrance, along the lines of that's why I never open the container near Korlasz' familiar (what with it releasing a lightning bolt in a contained space).
Byrd (male half-elf beast master, Grond0); Gulpo (male dwarf berserker, Gate70)
Previous run
Recent runs have seen plenty of arcane characters, but this one is a much harder hitting combination. That should be a nice change even if Gate70 isn't all that enamoured of berserkers as a class. His usual protest against being typecast as a tank involved refusing to buy a helm or armor while in Candlekeep and taking a bit of damage from Carbos as a result. He did pick up the studded leather from Montaron's body, but it wasn't until right at the end of the session that finally got traded in for some ankheg armor.
After gaining an early level from Shoal we made our way through Beregost and down to Nashkel. Byrd was intending to visit Meilum next, but Gulpo wanted a small diversion to pick up a magical 2-handed sword from a group of half-ogres.
Next on the agenda was finding some basilisks. Gulpo made a throwaway comment about the possibility of using Byrd's fairy dragon familiar as a petrification shield and Byrd of course jumped at the chance to do that. Things progressed well initially with that plan as we chewed through all but the greater basilisk near Mutamin.
Back in Beregost Gulpo decided he would throw caution to the winds and take on Silke. Standing with a wall just behind him was begging for a lightning bolt and Silke duly obliged - only Gulpo's additional HPs from the rage allowing him to avoid being chunked there.
Berserker 6, 77 HPs, 56 kills, 2 deaths
Gulpo has had his full share of kills from throwing axes, but the slow speed of his 2-handed sword has allowed Byrd to kill the majority of weaker opponents when in melee
The party is making good progress. Most of the chapter 3 areas have been cleared, we will soon need to make a visit to the bandit camp. The casters of the group are quite a bit more durable now, and Grond0 and Corey are tanking great. We now have a dizzying amount of spells at our disposal, so if we have time to prepare our attack it's always a route. Ambushes have been a lot less worrisome, though Alesia still does lots of running from wolves. The only major upgrade left is to get Alesia's armor, but perhaps after the bandit camp we'll have enough. Will keep at it.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1193875/#Comment_1193875
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194527/#Comment_1194527
The party has made finally made it to the city of Baldur's Gate. But the Cloakwood Forest ambushes were tough for our party. At one point, almost the entire party gets poisioned - Alesia and Grim Face end up dying. We had to leave some armor behind, and even as it was the entire party was encumbered. But at least the mages weren't chunked.
Will keep at it.
I always thought its banned in these multiplayer runs.
Radagast is at SoA end, beside the illithids and beholders lairs in the Underdark still left intact, I'm just passing time for Elminster to show up in Jaheira's quest, for the red wizard guy to change Edwina back to Edwin, and I'm at the end of first level of Watcher's Keep.
I forgot Hexxat is no longer available in chapter 6, and decided not to do Dorn's quests with both Keldorn and Anomen (the best replacement for poor Mazzy since I didn't want Haer'Dalis to fuck up my romance with Aerie) in the party.
Radagast is now at 3,600,000 XP.
Taking into account the initial 500,000 XP, I calculated than an XP reduction at 75% would mean finish SoA between 2,900,000 and 3,200,000 XP, which would be far more reasonable and more challenging. I'm waiting to see how ToB fares, but I will probably install SCS AI enhancements (not the challenges, and I'm still on the fence for IWD spells, since SCS priests really benefit from them. But I will probably not install the arcane pack) and XP reduced to 75% for my next reloads runs.
Destroying the Twisted Rune with a planetar and an elemental prince felt wrong somehow...
Well first of all, this is not an MP run but an AVATAR run - that is, I have characters who represent other forumites, but aren't actually played by the forumites themselves, which is why Grond0 in my run uses blue potions when the actual Grond0 wouldn't think of it. They all have their own avatars in their single player runs as well. And pause is used in the Trio (which is MP), but very rarely.
If you're not pausing all the time to take notes, that most likely means that either you're playing shorter sessions so you remember things better at the end, or you're documenting things in less detail.
Sendai's Enclave, the outside: Luckily, Hive Mothers usually don't protect their buffs early on, so I just had to breach, activate critical strike and deal as much damage at possible:
After resting and rebuffing at the pocket plane, I was actually able to kill Ogremoch within a single dispelling of his stoneskin, making this fight much less annoying:
All right, so I was quite well prepared for Sendai, adding to my usual buffs some HLA buffs (the flame shield and blade orb, mostly), potions (cloud giant strength, invulnerability, defense, speed for non-fighters, heroism) and some item buffs (stoneskin for Gardi via boots included). Our planetar of justice from Dorn's quest spawned in, assisted by a regular summoned planetar. A sequencer dispelled mage Sendai's spell protections, we followed up with breach while the others killed cleric Sendai and Hans took down the first spawning drow:
I also completed pocket plane challenge Nr. 3 (the good way this time, as intended). Sendai's Enclave, even if improved by SCS, has never given me too much trouble - the first really big ToB challenge, aside from Neera's quest and Watcher's Keep, will be Abazigal's Lair. Some of the improvements here are a propably a bit overdone, but at least I know what to expect.
Very True. I have great difficulty remembering details at the end of a session. I use screenshots to jog memory but still get things out of order as a 74 year old brain doesn't work that well!
Corey - human inquisitor, protagonist
Alesia - half-elf mage/thief
Grond0 - dwarven barbarian (petrified)
Grim Face - gnomish cleric/illusionist
Enuhal - human totemic druid
This party now has a vast array of options in dealing with enemies, with many divine and arcane spells at our disposal, many wands, plus the considerable melee of Corey & Grond0. As such, the City of Baldur's Gate quests/battles went pretty smooth. A buffed Grond0 took down the baddies at the Iron Throne HQ. We have just been sent to Candlekeep.
I just thought you banned it for MP runs both because of how annoying it can be, and as a handicap to compensate for having 2-3 pro adventurers operating their characters separately. That and I was wondering how can one of you die shuffling in his inventory, when another can press pause
Abazigal's Lair went surprisingly well, by far the smoothest time I've had here with SCS improvements installed. Granted, this is only tactical, but even on tactical I've always had some amount of trouble here. Improvements came down to much better encounter knowledge, I think.
We start of with Draconis, so everyone gets acid protection - Hans, who is likely to get dispelled, also wears one of our two pieces of shadow dragon armor, Gardi grabs the other one, just in case the battle is super long and her entropy shield runs out. We fire a spell trigger at Draconis' protections and follow up with breach, but he is able to finish his timestop. He casts greater malison and shadow door, which a lot of enemies seem to do during their timestops in this run, at least when my party is fully protected (they could do damage with lightning, acid or frost spells, but it seems like they usually have none memorized or have other priorities). He also renews combat protections, timestop ends, and just as he gets breached again, he finishes casting improved alacrity - however, this won't save him. He gates in a fallen planetar, we immediately take the celestial down, and as Draconis doesn't seem to have any more physical protection spells, we spread out has he is near death and finish the fight with ranged weapons to avoid the dreaded EE "getting stuck in an opponents selection circle" bug, which pretty much always happens if you stand next to Draconis as he transforms:
Well, we enter the lair and make sure not to underestimate the lizardmen, though I want to rest before facing the lizardman shaman group, and we also recharge our wands of spell striking. The two shaman are super-powerful high level mage/druid multiclasses who will not hestitate to cast timestop, spam creeping doom and use some of the best pre-buffs from both divine and arcane spellcasting - this isn't even the full list, and that's only on tactical:
I still constantly learn new things about BG, and one of the most recent things I learned is that tyrant golems die to greater deathblow - which is one of the reasons I picked this HLA up for Hans (also helpful in Sendai's enclave, as it kills many drow and mind flayers in one hit):
Our opening is very simple - Andi kites Abazigal around the southern part of the map while the others take down all of the other dragons and salamanders:
Next up, back to Amkethran.
Mini-update: I entered Amkethran, cast mass invisibility, entered the Smuggler's Cave, returned to pocket plane, rested and buffed up before talking to Seamon. The monastery guards mostly died to a 3*ADHW cc, so our buffs weren't really needed:
Buff up to the point where literally nothing can hurt you, so you have time to completely remove all the buffs of enemies that are in turn buffed up so nothing can hurt them (because if they're not, your party annihilates them in two seconds flat); once you do that, do it over again, because they renewed all of their buffs. Maybe SCS, at least come ToB, is more enjoyable without all the improved encounters after all..
While the same is not true for SoA, both the SCS additions to ToB and especially the Ascension battles are definitely (and purposefully, I think) over the top (at least that seems to be true for Sendai's Enclave, most certainly Abazigal's Enclave and of course, the Throne, which one-ups these even more). This lizardman shaman encounter, for example, would most likely absolutely destroy me if I was unprepared. I think these "improved Encounters" are designed with the assumption that people absolutely make full use the dozens of super powerful spells, abilities, items etc. given to you by this point.
The constant buffing is always getting on my nerve eventually, which is why I play ToB in short sessions, where I don't notice it as much - because if I get bored with rebuffing, I will eventually skip some buffs, get careless and risk losing the run. Missing crucial buffs because I got lazy is my nr. 2 source of lost runs in recent times. That being said, I don't enjoy ToB combat all that much even in the vanilla game. I much prefer BG1 and early-mid SoA in terms of tactical challenges, when you don't have all these options, all these potential immunities and really need to make a choice on what to focus on in terms of strategic priorities - but it is part of the challenge, so I have to endure it to get back to the good stuff again
Also, the randomized spellbooks of SCS opponents can still absolutely surprise me from time to time (much less so in this run, where most things seem fairly samey in terms of spell choices by our foes, for some reason) - in an earlier SCS version (I remember that sequencers and spell triggers were still automatically learned in that one), I lost a run in SoA because I really didn't expect an enemy wizard to suddenly throw a 3*Vitriolic Sphere sequencer at me, as I generally only buff acid protection for Draconis.
I’m lowering the difficulty back to core and I’m trying a self made party of four characters, all with minimized stats.
I think I found a good mix:
Dragon disciple (elf, LN for familiar that can pick some pockets)
Dwarven defender (damage sponge), only decent ranged character with throwing axes
Gnome cleric/thief (traps and clerical magic)
Half elf shapeshifter (werewolf form is nice, but HP are still really low).
I’m planning on powergaming the f*** out of this run. Taking very few risks.
One of my biggest fears is the fact that nobody can use a wand or scroll until I get to Baldur’s Gate and get the Tome to increase INT by 1 (then the sorcerer will have a 9).
That means no abusing Mutamin’s garden for easy XP early.
I’m flirting with tweaking the lineup as this is really tough early on. I really prefer 4 man parties though.
Some other minimum stat superstars I’ve found are the half elf cleric/ranger (they have enough STR to use a flail!), the elf ranger (the highest minimum stats, clocking in at 70), and the gnome illusionist/thief or fighter/illusionist (illusionists have 16 minimum DEX and the 9 INT allows wands and scrolls).
I’ll figure out what works and update y’all.