@Ignatius Thanks! Alicorn Lance is one of many spells added by an SCS component that introduces Icewind Dale spells into Baldur's Gate - it's a level 2 druid spell and deals minor piercing damage and also takes away (or rather: increases) 2 points of AC. This component is quite good for divine spellcasters, as it somewhat equals the playing field in terms of lategame protections, adding a spell shield-type effect and a protection from remove magic to their arsenal (in the form of impervious sanctity of mind and entropy shield) - without them, divine spellcasters suffer greatly in late SCS gameplay (of course, opponents will use all these spells as well). It's also great for the traditionally weak druid spell levels 1+2, adding sunscorch as a great first level spell with some fire damage and a chance to blind for a very short duration, and the aforementioned alicorn lance for level 2, to name a few examples.
@Enuhal : impressive fight in Firewine dungeon, so well executed. SCS looks and feels almost like a different game when I read you guys' stories. What is an alicorn lance btw?
One of the options in more recent versions of Strategems / SCS is to incorporate spells that were used in Icewind Dale. Druids particularly benefit from those as they get some really nice spells at lower levels compared to the standard ones in BG. The Alicorn Lance is a L2 spell that does 3d6 damage (save for 50%), which is not too bad in itself. Additionally though it penalizes the enemy AC by 2 for 3 rounds, which can be very helpful when a party is attacking.
Edit: oh dear - I really should check whether there are more posts on another page ...
And so we arrive to the Undercellar - the shadiest of places with even shadier dwellers, with Slythe the Slim Shady above them all. We had two options here - either use the Polymorph: Self jelly form (cast via scroll) for magic and piercing resistance and blast our way through with wands, scrolls and Firebreath potions or rely on our spell defences only to keep more offensive options more open (including our offensive spells, Remove Magic and MMMs). Driven mainly by our intention to set aside as many Firebreaths as possible for the final battle against Diarmid's green ProMagic scroll, we opted for the second option.
Daelat buffed with Stoneskin, MMMs, Spirit Armor (scroll), Shield, Resist Fear, Oil of Speed, ProEvil, MIs and II and summoned some cannon fodder via Wand of Monster Summoning. Once we revealed ourselves to Slythe the battle was on. Although tactically a questionable move, we gotta give it to Krystin that this was a rather impressive opener for a BG1 fight.
We threw our summons at Slythe, hoping to buy Daelat enough time to try and dispel his potion buffs. Success.
We spend the next six seconds throwing meteors at 5APR, considering our next move. Targeting Slythe with spells is tricky due to his frequent PoI quaffs, but using the Wand of Paralysis carried no risk of wasting our round (given that we could still use the time for another action in case he would manage to go invisible before us being able to fire the wand). Eventually, he quaffed his potion just shortly before he got hit by the projectile. Failing his saving throw, we now had invisible and stunned Slythe on our hands.
Krystin was still not to be seen, applying various buffs further back down the corridor. I instructed Daelat to do what I thought to be the most logical step at that stage - remove Slythe's invisibility with Glitterdust (scroll). He seemed to shrug at that, but carried out the command nevertheless.
Note to future self: Glitterdust offers save vs. spell not only against blindness, but also against the invisibility dispel.
Oh, nevermind. With our summons entertaining Krystin in a teleport field far out, we still had the time to get this done right. Daelat -> Detect Invisibility (scroll).
Note to future self: Never try to dispel invisibility against someone running Non-detection (via cloak or otherwise). And if you're silly enough to do so, at least try and remember the previous note above so that you only waste one round instead of two.
You can see that this was not going well. Our next though was something along the lines "If we can't detect him, then we'll just need to dispel him.". Daelat -> Remove Magic.
Nothing. Seeing that our summons were now down to a single hobgoblin archer, we resorted to the desperate tactics of blasting the place with Wand of Fire (fireball).
Despite managing to kill Slythe, the collateral damage of murdering the innocent bystanders was huge and our reputation dropped down to 2. So much for the Sword Coast heroics. While Daelat's career was in shatters after becoming accused of murders in Candlekeep, committing various legal offences in Beregost and now this incident, his nemesis Sarevork was about to get coronated in front of the city's elite. Let's hope they'll at least admit us to the ceremony so we can still get this right.
When checking the status our supplies ahead of the Ducal palace, we realized that we're short on Oils of Speed. We needed at least two more, particularly for the final battle in the Undercity in order to compensate for possible dispels from the Angelo-Semaj duo. And I'll tell you, shopping around with reputation 2 is not exactly Black Friday. For sake of one's own conscience, it was not an option to buy back our soul with church donations - we'd have to redeem ourselves though our deeds instead. And so Daelat ended up paying 20k+ for the two inconspicuous vials of the precious liquid at the Hall of Wonders. Being clergy of Gond and all that, I hope they'll at least use it for something beneficial, like supporting research grants for young fellows and such.
With that out of the way, we're ready to hit the palace. Surprisingly, despite being actively hunted by Flaming Fist enforcers all around the town, nobody seemed to take heed of us when presenting the invitations. Our arcane buffs comprised of Stoneskin, MMMs, Spirit Armor (scroll), Shield, Resist Fear, ProEvil, MIs and II. In addition, Daelat also quaffed Potion of Clarity and Potion of Regeneration, summoned couple of monsters (via Wand of Monster Summoning + Monster Summoning II scroll) and boosted everyone with Haste (scroll).
When the fight broke loose, we opened with Remove Magic, dispelling Blur/Haste from some of the doppelgangers.
Daelat followed up with his meteors, preparing his Chaos scroll. He, Liia and the doppelganger mage each started their respective incantations at the same time - theirs was an abjuration cast, indicating Remove Magic.
Just as the smoke cleared and the spells got resolved, we saw that our buffs held against the doppe mage's dispel, but Liia's not. In turn, Liia's Remove Magic dispelled the remaining doppes except the mage, which surprisingly became the only enemy to fail his save against Daelat's Chaos (going above MGoI and ignoring his MSD). What a mumble jumble!
With the mage threat out of the way, we were able to quickly finish the unbuffed melee grunts by using the joint power of the Flaming Fist guards, our hasted summons and Daelat' MMMs, .
Alone and confused, the doppelganger mage then became an easy target for our group.
Having defeated all the doppelgangers, Daelat summoned additional fodder via Wand of Monster Summoning to prevent Sarevok from chopping down our dukes during the short intermezzo until Wanev's arrival.
Once teleported to the Thieves' Guild, we use the green ProMagic scroll and PoI to safely rush through the maze into the Undercity, wherein we avoid the mercenaries and take a well deserved rest in front of the Temple of Bhaal. I'll report on the final battle in the next.
Bree Appledrum is a solitary Chaotic Good Halfling Cleric.
Over the years as a child in Candlekeep, Gorion and the local priests have gradually tamed her inner wild. Although she frowns on the company of others and remains unpredictable, her spiritual connections to benevolent deities such as Tymora, Lathander or Ilmater have helped Bree find a sense of purpose in Faerun. She has now reluctantly accepted that the world is corrupt and refuses to embark into any organized attempt to restore order or any other greater good motive; she will however not hesitate to step out of her way in help of the defenseless and innocent.
Her stats at the beginning of her successful solo no-reload run of BG1EE (no mods) were 13/18/15/11/17/14 - a solid 88 roll. They are now improved by the tomes she read - all but the INT one, she did not dare enter that tower in Baldur's Gate city.
Bree is proficient in slings, maces, clubs and the (now mostly useless) single-weapon style.
For most of BG1 she has been wielding the Stupefier +1 or a sling +1, clad in Ankheg armor, equipped with small shield and helmet.
Her preferred spell picks at each level have so far been:
- Sanctuary, Command, CLW, Remove Fear
- Silence, Hold Person, Spiritual Hammer, Chant, DUHM, Find Traps
- Animate Dead, Strength of One, Dispel Magic, Protection from Fire
- Protection from Evil 10', Holy Power, Animal Summoning I, Defensive Harmony, Mental Domination
Siege of Drangonspear is another kettle of fish (done with zero meta knowledge). Smarter enemies in large groups. I am happy to take any advice from veterans as it seems Bree Applebrum's fate is hanging thin...
@Bosco : what a fight in the undercellar ! What do you reckon was the % chance of Remove Magic to work on Slythe? What would you do differently in hindsight once he got invisible? And finally how did you deal with Krystin?
@Ignatius There's a ton to say about SoD, but here are 3 minor pieces of advice that might be helpful specifically for a solo cleric:
a) There are a ton of good cleric scrolls available from vendors - there's a lot of value in using those (especially the many chaotic command scrolls, so you can spend your level 5 slots on different things if needed).
b) Keep necklaces of missles on you, don't hesitate to spam them, and keep multiple ones/recharge them. Otherwise, you might be lacking AoE damage for certain encounters, though you can propably skip many with sanctuary/invisibility effects
c) Protection from undead scrolls are incredibly useful in the prologue and in the Repository of Undeath in chapter 1, if you have any left from BG1
If you don't know SoD at all, know that there are at least 2 points in the game with alternate losing conditions. At a place called Bridgefort, you can't let your opponents blow up a certain bridge. Using "The Victor" is one way to stop the wizard there from completing a spell that will make this task a lot more problematic. Also, don't use the necklace of missles near the explosive barrels there. At one point later, your Coalition Camp will be under siege. You have to stop the attackers in time (or it will be game over), and you will propably need many necklace of missles charges to do so (or other sources of strong AoE damage).
Blind SoD no-reload is incredibly tough. I tried it my first time around and failed almost immediately. However, once you get the hang of the encounters, it's actually relatively deterministic and one of the easier parts of the game to no-reload, unless you play legacy of bhaal solo or something equally ridiculous.
@Bosco : what a fight in the undercellar ! What do you reckon was the % chance of Remove Magic to work on Slythe?
If I'm not mistaken then the odds here would be 45:55 in favour of Slythe not getting dispelled (our caster level 9 vs. Slythe's potions that should be treated as caster level 10 for these purposes).
@Bosco : What would you do differently in hindsight once he got invisible?
I'd go straight for the AoE damage instead of spending 3 rounds on trying to get rid of his invisibility, preferably by using the Wand of Fire scorcher or Potion of Firebreath on an item on the ground (as much as I dislike the idea) in order to better control any spillover damage to the neutral NPCs.
@Enuhal : thanks !!
a) have not yet really figured out which lvl5 spells to put to good use... but am concerned that Chaotic Commands will be needed in SoD! (as in, to protect against something greenstone amulet would not)
b) oh I am holding close my One Gift Lost, that's for sure; however I am not exactly swimming in gold to recharge at will...
c) I have I think two of those but have not used them yet, and in hindsight I should have...
Only once I ran halfway through SoD with a party and I threw a huge fireball right on the barrels at Boareskyr so that one I know of ! Nice tip about The Victor, thanks.
I also remember a green dragon which was a tough kill, but its scales were useful to forge a very nice green shield which would look great on Bree, along with her (green) Ankheg armor ...
The opening Korlasz Tomb dungeon was going quite ok, well except for the fact that we lost the three Flaming Fist soldiers one by one (including the priest) as Bree was progressing through the lower level.
And then as she and her skeleton army stumbled upon a large group of enemies in the central room (the one just south of Korlasz quarters), someone or something stunned her - greenstone amulet, I wish your effect lasted an hour rather than a turn. She ran like a headless chicken through the compound, only very fast with the boots of cheetah... until she got cornered by a mob in the top-left small round room. As she was getting cut bit by bit, she suddenly regained her senses and reached her bag for an invisibility potion ! that was very close. She sneaked out the room, healed and blasted the mercenaries to oblivion.
After strange happenings in Baldur's Gate city, she reluctantly decided to march forward with the army against the crusade...
In Coastway Crossing, Bree had another close call when, as she was walking in the woods right next to camp, a new type of spider threw a targeted web right at her. Was not expecting this, resulted in being held next to a sword spider down to about 20 HP when a save vs spell was made and Bree ran away...
Another shameful moment was our encounter with the Dwarves of Dumathoin. These shorty Fighter/Clerics looked like a great bunch, buffing up in unison (it reminded me I really have to run a custom-made dwarf cleric party one day, "Brother Deepvein" what a cool name and voice acting)... we fought several undead groups side by side... until Bree somehow unleashed a bigger horde of undead and Umber Hulks and got stunned (again) as she was running towards the dwarves. She ended up my miracle isolated in one corner of the cavern and when she came to her senses and cautiously crawled back under sanctuary, the dwarves were all dead, lying in their blood
With the proper buffs and the help of skeletons Bree cleared out the first level and proceeded to the Repositary of Undeath. I thought this particular side quest, dungeon layout and atmosphere were all great. The One Gift Lost was put to use in every other room as we progressed, until she stumbled on a huge figure : the Bronze Sentry. We tried lvl5 spell Magic Resistance (to lower MR of the sentry) followed by wand of the heavens : no damage. Sanctuary -> Holy Power + DUHM + Spiritual Hammer... and Bree proceeded to melee the big metal guy, dual-wielding therefore with 2APR and -7 AC. He was brought down in around 1 turn but landed ~5 hard hits on the Halfling, who mitigated the damage with potions of extra healing. Not so groovy but still, it took quite some guts for our little hero to face such a big foe toe-to-toe.
We somehow cleaned the laboratory area, which involved more necklace of missile charges and a lot of kiting. We then tried to figure what were those 4 pillars spamming mephits every time we touched them, but could not make sense of it all. It was becoming obvious that deep down in that complex we would end up fighting a damn lich and so after another room of undead hordes and more healing potions consumed, we decided to leave it at that and head back to the surface.
Later on the bridge at Coastway Crossing, I thought Bree was toast when she got trapped in a small area against a group of 6 crusaders ! but Sanctuary saved the day and soon after Caelar Argent wanted to talk and called off her minions. Despite an inconclusive discussion, she somehow let go free a defenseless Bree, weird...
It was all very laborious, I feel I lack firepower (or efficient AoE spells) and am being dominated by the game. But somehow Bree is still alive and now sleeping at camp at Troll Claw Woods in Chapter 9...
In Coastway Crossing, Bree had another close call when, as she was walking in the woods right next to camp, a new type of spider threw a targeted web right at her. Was not expecting this, resulted in being held next to a sword spider down to about 20 HP when a save vs spell was made and Bree ran away...
Gargantuan spiders cast "Web Tangle", which webs (paralyzes) you for two rounds on a failed breath save at -2, as a one-time effect. If there were spell saves involved, that was a trap casting the normal Web spell.
She ended up my miracle isolated in one corner of the cavern and when she came back to her senses and cautiously crawled back under sanctuary, the dwarves were all dead, lying in their blood
...
We somehow cleaned the laboratory area, which involved more necklace of missile charges and a lot of kiting. We then tried to figure what were those 4 pillars spamming mephits every time we touched them, but could not make sense of it all. It was becoming obvious that deep down in that complex we would end up fighting a damn lich and so after another room of undead hordes and more healing potions consumed, we decided to leave it at that and headed back to the surface.
Making a deal with the lich is also a possibility. He wants the amulets the dwarves had - if they're already dead, all you have to do is pick the trinkets up. And the dwarves aren't around to reward you for eliminating the lich, or to make that fight easier with a really nice anti-lich item.
As for the pillars, touching them in the right order will unlock an essential door, with no mephit spawns. What's the right order for this puzzle? Think back to some of the writing you found earlier...
Bree first ventured to the south-east of the map, charmed a bear and a panther (druid ring) and managed to defeat displacer beasts and a pack of orcs. She then encountered a group of ogres, including an ogre mage who saved vs silence and proceeded to haste the full gang damn I love this game but it ain't easy. Bree had to flee as fast as she could and barely made it to camp where no less than 4 Flaming Fist Scouts got killed until the ogres were collectively handled. So much for the "hero of Baldur's Gate" lads.
But that was just an appetizer.
Walking north Bree stumbled upon a very large group of trolls, like 6 of them... again she tried to fry them with fireballs but they had quite a lot of HP and were moving fast, and regenerating.... so here we go, hello fellow soldiers it's me again a first group of 5 FF soldiers + Lieutenant Otilda + Captain Corwin were literally torn apart while Bree was kiting, at that point only one Troll got killed (by Bree, she has stocked up on bullets of fire before hand, her sole smart move in this chapter thus far). As the trolls rushed further into camp they faced stronger opposition with Edwin, Soralis, Baeloth, Glint and the rest and we (or rather they) prevailed.
So... 9 Fist soldiers killed + an NPC + a key companion (maybe storyline breaking?). I am out of my depth here.
But the no-reload challenge continues... bets can be taken on when you think it will end ! somehow though Bree Appledrum is a tough cookie and is still very much alive after 150 days of venturing forth.
That's right Gargantuan spiders. Then it was no save, I just somehow survived 2 rounds (or maybe only one, since it had to move to contact in melee) of sword spider attacks...
I later looked up about the lich and how you can make a deal with it. No regrets though, it felt like the right thing to do RP wise.
As for the pillars, I guess I did not pay enough attention to the various notes and journals I found down there. Will take a closer look next time.
@Ignatius You certainly have the required tenacity for a successful run Though SoD will propably throw a few more curveballs your way. It's likely to continue being a rough ride.
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update VII
All right, we're back to the iron mine. First level - easy clear. Level 2: We move around Hareishan's room, an invisible Alesia gets rid of traps as we scout the area and decide on our approach. In the end, we take the trapped corridor. A single skeleton moves forward, with Alesia, Grim Face and Grond0 following. The mages throw down a wand of fire charge each, Grond0 adds the necklace of missles. We had originally planned to just clear out most of the guards and bandits here, but it turns out that Hareishan, despite having the required level, had no MGOI as part of her pre-buffs - so she got roasted as well:
With a few hold and MM spells, we clear up the remaining guards:
Down to level 3. We use sleep and a few more spells for the initial groups of guards and make our way to the ogre mage. Our approach is simple, as this guy doesn't have the level for stoneskins - 2 spirit lions and Grond0, protected by rage, move in. He reveals himself, casting chromatic orb. Corey true sights, the lions and Grond0 tear our foe apart, with his only other action being an acid arrow on our barbarian:
We summon a nymph to heal up the party and a skeleton to aid the other summons for a move on Natasha. We let our summons run in first to absorb the first ~2 spells. Natasha casts chromatic orb on a lion, our nymph casts a spell - it's hold monster, it hits Natasha. She is held:
Wait, what? Her opening buffs were usual fare for late BG1 spellcasters on insane and included both MGOI and minor spell deflection. Hold monster is supposed to get absorbed by MSD, right? It should get any spell up to 7th level - or so I thought. This confused me a lot. I opened the wiki, looked up hold monster (nothing of interest), looked up the nymph (not much of note here, though some interesting notes on minimum spell levels) and finally, looked up minor spell deflection. As it turns out, minor spell deflection actually has only a limited list of spells it can block! NOT included in this list are, for example, hold person and hold monster. Very strange, but good to know: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Minor_Spell_Deflection
Recommended reading if you didn't know about this and plan to use this spell in a no-reload game at any point. I had never even heard whispers of this limitation.
Well, that certainly turned this battle into a free win. After clearing the remainder of the level and killing the guard downstairs, we move back to level 1 to rest (very weak interrupt spawns here) before going into Davaeorn's lair. Here, Alesia goes invisible again, we prepare our summons and buffs. Alesia disarms a few traps, and I decide to first send my summons near Davaeorn so they'll immediately be a threat. I haven't seen the wizard yet. However, as the summons walk in his direction, the battle horrors trigger, but Davaeorn himself doesn't open dialogue or cast anything, so he's propably still neutral. Interesting. We move our summons back. Now, we can simply take down these battle horrors by themselves with a few wand charges, magic missles, alicorn lances and melee hits:
Well, Davaeorn is isolated now. Should be relatively easy prey - we move in further, trigger a glpyh of warding. Our nymph heals us back up. That explains why I hadn't seen Davaeorn yet - I wasn't as deep into his lair as I thought. Well, we usually use a PfM scroll on our best fighter for Dav and solo him, but now that he's alone, I decide that this won't be required. We go in and attack - a spirit lions gets a hit in before he teleports away and activates his pre-buffs:
This is the typical list at this point (though lacking shield). His spell protections are strong enough, but we can work on his physical protections. His AC isn't going to be great. We true sight the MI, equip magical ammo and go for it. He throws a few MMMs back at us. Before he can finish teleporting again, his stoneskins are all gone:
Grond0 lands a devastating critical hit and the fight is over:
We clear out the jelly, take our loot and make our way to the city. Before closing the session, I want Grim Face and Alesia to level up (Corey leveled up in Dav's lair), as they are super super close. We kill the greater basilisk in the warehouse using 2 PfP spells:
And we do a few non-combat quests: Delivering the gauntlets from the Umberlee temple, Kereph's skull, delivering a sphene gem and an angelskin ring and Tremain's son (which provides a new shield for Grim Face - despite being large, this one has lower strength requirements!). This grants us the level ups we wanted, and finally, we sell Baeloth's robe to black lily, buy a flail +2 for Grond0 and obtain the dexterity tome. I ponder a while - who should use it? It's quite good for every single party member. In the end, I decide on Grond0, as he switches from being an archer to being on the front lines (with relatively weak armor) all the time and can make use of both the ac bonus and the ranged thac0 bonus right now.
Hold monster is supposed to get absorbed by MSD, right? It should get any spell up to 7th level - or so I thought. This confused me a lot.
Spell deflection effects only work against single-target spells. Hold Person and Hold Monster, despite needing to target a creature, are actually area spells that can hit multiple targets.
There is no ordinary spell defense that works against Hold Monster. If you want to protect against it, you need to go after the effect side; either immunity to Hold or unbeatable saves.
Hold monster is supposed to get absorbed by MSD, right? It should get any spell up to 7th level - or so I thought. This confused me a lot.
Spell deflection effects only work against single-target spells. Hold Person and Hold Monster, despite needing to target a creature, are actually area spells that can hit multiple targets.
There is no ordinary spell defense that works against Hold Monster. If you want to protect against it, you need to go after the effect side; either immunity to Hold or unbeatable saves.
I thought this was the most likely explanation as well, but the wiki article mentions that MSD works against Agannazar's Scorcher (even if you're not the original target), which arguably has more of an AoE function than hold spells, lightning bolt (only if you're the original target) and chain lightning (only if you're the original target). Seems strange that it would work against these semi-AoE spells and not against hold spells, which are somewhat similiar.
It is a little weird, but it's all down to projectile properties in the end. And ... I don't actually know exactly what the line is. For current lightning bolts, at least, the original projectile is truly single-target. Bounces and the ability to hit anything else only come into play after that initial bolt lands. (This is a change in 2.6.) Scorchers use the "lined up AoE" flag, which behaves different from the "explosion" most AoE projectiles use.
What a sad way to end... still busy clearing that same Troll Claw Woods area, Bree decided it would be a good idea to melee a group of giant beetles, with proper combat buffs of course. Little I knew that the bombardier version can do acid damage and stun the victim.
I watched in agony my brave little Halfing Cleric (level 9) get eaten alive by insects, after so many grand achievements.
I will remember her as one of my favorite BG characters. SoD was too much for me to handle !
Sorry to hear that @Ignatius. SoD is not too difficult if you only do the minimum required. However, there are a lot of pitfalls for the unwary, so you did really well to get that far without much meta-knowledge. I'm sure you'll build on that success next time .
On arrival at Candlekeep we found a reception committee of ogre mages waiting for us. They'd got the drop on us and had already completed one spell before I could pause, which influenced our response. Originally I had been thinking of trying to send out area damage to disrupt some attacking spells, but instead everyone took an invisibility potion (22 of those had been accumulated to date). A few webs and area damage later left only a single ogre mage to be shot down.
Inside, I looted a few scrolls before searching out the Iron Throne leaders. I don't normally bother with them, but hey if you're going to take the blame you might as well take the rewards as well!
We rested up in the secret library to let Grond0 learn Bhaal DUHM then ventured out to clear the tombs. Alesia had 100% in find traps and open locks, so we only needed a bit of patience there. The wisdom tome went to Enuhal, but I didn't see anyone having a particularly compelling case for the strength tome - so Grond0 snagged it.
In the next area, Corey's new bastard sword enjoyed feasting on shapechangers - the greater doppleganger there being dispelled first. Moving on, we strolled past Prat invisibly before sending in area damage. The initial impact of that killed his companions and disrupted Prat's first spell. A nymph confusion ensured he would get no second chance.
We hunted down the spiders easily enough, but there was nearly a nasty accident against the basilisks. Corey got PfP to solo those, but before he went in Enuhal came to give him a CLW to top up HPs. I didn't deselect him properly and Enuhal actually came briefly face to face with the basilisks - but hastily retreated before they could react, leaving Corey to do his thing.
We arrived back in Baldur's Gate with inventory stuffed to the gills and quickly disposed of much of that. A bit of work in the City included using web at the Flaming Fist HQ on the way to saving Duke Eltan.
Then, at the Iron Throne, Alesia spotted Cythandria before using a potion of invisibility to avoid attacks. Ungh and Argh were shot down before Cythandria was webbed and confused. The latter helped her escape the former, but with 2 characters having free action there was no problem in hunting her down anyway.
Rather than move onto the end game, I decided to go back out into the world and finish exploring. There were a few areas where I hadn't cleared the entire map when there before and finished those off. One of those was Firewine Bridge, where potential trouble waited. Bentan and Poe were charmed with a first use of the nymph cloak, with the potential thought of sacrificing those to Kahrk. However, a large group of kobolds spawned just after we passed across their encounter spot and shot down Poe before sleep got to work.
The remainder of the area was fumigated before we brought Kahrk into play - running out of his sight before he fully appeared. I lined Grond0 up for an assassination shot, but even though he approached invisibly Kahrk instantly cast true sight and PfMW when he reached visual range. Kahrk saved against an ice lance and several wolf paralyzation attacks while chewing through the summons. He was taking damage from magical attacks though and, once Bentan was dead and the PfMW had expired, I tried to finish him off by letting Grond0 shoot his arrow of slaying. That did the job, though Kahrk was already at near death with no more stoneskins, so would have gone down pretty soon anyway even without the slay effect.
I don't remember seeing his katana before - that's a +2 weapon that improves casting speed and casting level by 1 each. That makes it attractive enough for Alesia to carry, though I don't suppose I'll get around to making actual use of it ...
Moving into the ruins, Alesia did a de-trapping job initially before Corey led the others through, dealing with a Dead Knight on the way.
Arriving at the other end, Alesia dodged a detect invisibility from Lendarn and then kept watch while nearby kobolds filtered out to be killed by the rest of the party.
Even though all the rest of the ruins had been exhaustively cleared, there were still quite a few newly spawned kobolds coming up from behind, so it was essential to keep alert in both directions. Lines of sight along the narrow corridor were a bit dodgy for casting spells, but eventually Alesia and Grim Face were able to throw webs at Lendarn. When he got stuck they followed up with area damage to get a quick kill.
Grim Face managed to learn the cloudkill scroll, though it's still going to be a long time before he can use that. The ogre mage managed to free itself from the webs sufficiently long to give a threatening speech, but then got stuck again and was quickly disposed of.
In @Borco's honour I had Alesia backstab Jenkal on exit from the ruins. She didn't have luck active though and Jenkal survived that - though not the other attacks on him.
We dodged the guards while looting the rest of the houses in Gullykin and cleared the rest of the area. Then it was back to Ulcaster to finish off Icharyd - everyone being protected against lightning there (in retrospect, retreating after his first incarnation and then coming back later is actually a good way to reduce resource costs and make the second fight easy).
Inside the dungeon I didn't forsee any problem when Corey led the attack on a mustard jelly. He stood as close as possible, with the expectation that would stop the jelly from switching targets when the others arrived. That meant it was a surprise when Alesia took a critical hit and had to hastily withdraw.
There were no further problems on the way to find the Wolf though. I felt a bit as though I'd cheated there as I'd recently read @Enuhal's report, which reminded me to protect against fear - something I rarely do in the game. That helped ensure no hiccups as the wolf died under the party's fire. Some ghouls, summoned by one of its howls, appeared shortly after its death and after those went down I noticed that everyone was now eligible for their final level up in BGEE .
With just 3 of the non-TotSC areas left, we moved on to find the Red Wizards. Alesia did her usual job of detrapping there before we shot down various spiders and ettercaps - and resorted to wand use at one point when Grim Face was webbed and being attacked.
For the Red Wizards, webs were followed by a spike growth and a fireball. Alesia tossed in a skull trap that I thought would kill the others, but probably not Denak - but he went down too.
Moving on to Larswood, I think Osmadi would have been in trouble in any case from the weight of attacks. If those failed to kill him he would also have been in trouble from Enuhal being busy casting a first use of insect plague. All the other attacks became pretty academic though when a stunning dart struck home.
I didn't bother with any special attacks against Corsone - he went down before he could complete a spell anyway. Baeloth was another to be just shot down, though no-one can benefit from his Robe of the Evil Archmagi. One reason for having left this area so late is past bad experiences with Black Talons here. They're not as much danger to a party of course, but I still felt slightly short-changed to finish clearing the area without coming across any of them. We did though find a number of groups of them in Peldvale, which allowed us to stock up on magic arrows with the help of the odd web and command. The danger they pose to individual characters was still evident though when Alesia got blocked briefly when trying to run from a newly sighted group (to set up a better tactical position) and a single salvo of arrows took her close to death.
After seeking out Erdane to sell Baeloth's robe (which has the stolen marker, so most merchants won't touch it) my cash pile was close to 100k and I decided to help inventory management by trading in a lot of the wands acquired to date for a smaller number of fully-charged versions. That was done at Ulgoth's Beard and I'll stay there next time to undertake some of the TotSC content.
Thank you for sharing your brave hearted halfling with us! She will be remembered!
I believe I can speak for our SoD players, Grond0 and Enuhal, when I say that Bree will be avenged. Those beetles will die horrible deaths, will they not, @Grond0 and @Enuhal ?
I know I speak for all of us when I wish you the best on the adventurers ahead. Great things are to come, I'm sure. It was a pleasure getting to know you and Bree. We hope to hear from you again!
Cheers,
A.
Btw, fellow Avatars runners, there is still the open matter of what we'll do if one of our characters gets chunked. We wanted reserves. Shall we invite characters who fall while we're running to join a reserve pool, where they may serve as NPC replacements, to be played by us in the event of a chunking?
Here comes the BG1 finale (and apologies for the long post).
Even though I don't recall ever losing a no-reload character at this particular stage of the game, I still had substantial doubts regarding Daelat's chances and tactics for the final battle. Our main concerns were his vulnerability when unbuffed and the fact that facing two arcane casters at once carried the risk of getting hit by Remove Magic in combination with a disabler (most notably Chaos) in the same round.
Therefore, the basic hypothesis of our strategy was to utilize our movement speed for positioning advantage and to manage our aura in a way that would allow us to apply appropriate counters as required (most notably our remaining Potion of Magic Shielding and PoIs). It looks good on paper, but more about execution later.
Our initial buffs were MMMs, Stoneskin, Spirit Armor (scroll), Shield, Resist Fear, MIs and Potion of Mind Focusing. We decided to hold back on using the more valuable potions until at least the first dispel.
During our preparations we also found out that the Bhaalspawn Vampiric Touch in my current install does not provide the HP bonus when cast on self (which I agree makes a lot of sense). Furthermore, when targetting other creatures, it only drains them up to their total HPs rather than the actual damage roll - thus our plan to leech the bats outside the temple for extra hitpoints didn't really work out as intended.
Following the brief small talk with Sarverok, the battle was on. Keeping our distance, we observe the log to assess the situation. Invisible Semaj opened with PfMW in addition to his contingencies, while Angelo, also invisible, fired off his protective buffs including MGoI and MSD. Meanwhile, Diarmid activated his ProMagic scroll and Tazok, ever being the irrelevant one, enraged himself.
The flow of events accelerated when Angelo brought in Slow, which Daelat countered with Potion of Stone Form.
You may ask why on earth I'm not running ProEvil and/or Improved Invisibility. And you'd be right - I was wrong to omit these buffs merely on the grounds of expecting an early dispel. Still, the potion quaff brought our save vs. spells down to -3, providing us with a guaranteed save in light of Slow's -4 save penalty. And yes, the whole situation could have entered the shifty realm of probability in case that Semaj'd hit us with Chaos and its -5 save penalty at the same time.
But Semaj kept it cool and broke his invisibility by removing our relative saving throw advantage with Malison instead. Nicely played.
In a display of well coordinated effort, Angelo followed with his own Chaos cast. With our aura clear, we had three options at that stage - take our chances at making the save with the effective saving throw of 6 (too risky), quaff Potion of Magic Shielding (too precious), Potion of Magic Blocking or Potion of Clarity. At that moment we also saw that Semaj was starting an abjuration incantation, which could only mean that Remove Magic was about to his us shortly after Angelo's Chaos. With that in mind, we opted for the confusion immunity granted via Potion of Clarity.
Daelat moved in a half circle to try and put as much time as possible in between our potion quaff and the dispel, while making sure that the Chaos projectile hits first.
Eventually, the odds were in our favour and our buffs held.
Sensing an opportunity window, we decided to strike back, targeting Diarmid with our Wand of Fire scorcher…
I'm pretty sure you can already see what I had not. Putting aside that Semaj just wasted his round trying to cast Chaos after failing to dispel our confusion immunity, we got caught by his Minor Spell Turning. Ouch!
Already smelling blood, Angelo pushed forward with another Remove Magic. This time it worked flawlessly and our only hope was to quaff an emergency PoI, while trying to hide behind one of the statues.
We try to catch our breath, mindful of not becoming encircled in the narrow space. But our enemies do not relent - Angelo, smart as ever, casts Oracle to dispel Daelat's invisibility and deprive him of the much needed respite.
With our aura almost clear, we retreat a bit further into the open space and quaff another PoI (and Semaj's fortunately unable to finish his spell).
Admitting that we just got us asses kicked, we finally find some cover to regroup our strengths and rebuff under invisibility. There'd be no mistakes this time around. Dealat goes for MMMs, Stoneskin, Shield, Resist Fear, Blur (scroll), ProEvil, MIs (scroll), II (scroll), Potion of Regeneration, Oil of Speed and Potion of Magic Shielding.
It’s payback time. Daelat fires off a Skull Trap, followed by Wand of Fire scorchers.
Despite his stellar performance up until now, Angelo loses it and Sunfires Semaj to ashes. That one's not going to look good on his résumé. One down, four left.
Daelat then uses ProUndead scroll to avoid the incoming skeletal minions, refreshes his MIs and pulls out his own Sunfire (scroll).
Tazok the Cameo is finished with MMMs. Two down, three left.
Angelo casting Magic Missiles (against our Shield) hinted that his spellbook was now depleted. That was a promising sign. Daelat targets him with Spell Thrust (scroll) in return.
In hindsight that seemed unnecessary given that we were about to start quaffing our Potions of Firebreath, with Diarmid being the main vessel for the scorcher. Angelo died from the second damage tick. Three down, two left.
Afterwards we tried to work our way through Diarmid's HP with our remaining fire potions (2x Firebreath and 2x Fiery Burning) and a fresh set of MMMs. Frustratingly, he managed to keep himself alive with health potions.
With no further means of getting through his ProMagic, we could either wait out its effects or try and finish him with weapons. Daelat felt like going for the second option, arguing that we should be able to get some hits on a shieldless opponent. We quaffed Potion of Mind Focusing, summoned some monster fodder via our wand and equipped Darts of Wounding. Daelat was right - four down, one left.
Assessing our resources, we counted 7 charges of Wand of Fire, 8 charges of Wand of Frost, 6 charges of Necklace of Missiles and the Wand of Lightning we had just picked up from one of the dead bodies. Using our speed advantage to outrun him, it was more than enough to beat Sarevok's regeneration rate.
It was messy, I was clumsy, we were lucky, but in the end we prevailed. The overall takeaway at this stage is that, despite being fun to play, I do struggle with arcane casters and I admit that I don't always know what I'm doing. This has probably to do with the difficulty of finding the right balance for picking priorities between offensive and defensive actions in an environment that only allows you one spell-equivalent action per round. At that's BG1 I'm talking about - I'm absolutely positive that this issue will become much more pronounced in SoA, where the margin for error is to become more and more limited. But let's see how it goes.
I believe I can speak for our SoD players, Grond0 and Enuhal, when I say that Bree will be avenged. Those beetles will die horrible deaths, will they not, @Grond0 and @Enuhal ?
Not from me I'm afraid. I tend to find it hard to keep concentrating throughout a run. That's particularly so when using a party where there's so much going on and playing with SCS this time will exacerbate that further. As a result I wasn't intending to do SoD anyway, but I don't think in fact I'll be doing the TotSC content either - I'll just skip on to Amn and save my energies for that.
Btw, fellow Avatars runners, there is still the open matter of what we'll do if one of our characters gets chunked. We wanted reserves. Shall we invite characters who fall while we're running to join a reserve pool, where they may serve as NPC replacements, to be played by us in the event of a chunking?
I normally play that a chunking in the party ends the run and will probably stick with that approach this time as well.
The Avatars 2023: The Bandit Camp (Or How Alesia Got Her Groove Back)
Despite some super-shaky play from super-rusty me, my Avatars have made solid progress, moving along the storyline with nary a mishap. Their long term future looks bleak, I’ll admit, given the quality of my play, but I have made my peace with that. I’m content to be where I am, to play as I am. Progress will come: I’ll find the beat- whatever the tune may be. Has this update turned into a lecture on the metaphysics of groove? Not yet.
Bandit camp is a tough nut that can be cracked in three ways: 1) stealth and avoid all conflict; 2) divide and conquer; 3) setup a kill zone and take on all comers. Seeking some action, but hoping to remain true to the roguish nature of my thief led crew, I went with option 2, divide and conquer. That went well.
We set off the alarm, drawing the principles out of the tent. We then vanished, buffed and planned our attack.
Venkt, Hakt, et al gathered just outside of the tent, in a tight formation and -crucially- without their black talon elite protectors. Perfect. Time for an assassination.
Corey, Serg and I buffed our fire resistance to 100% and then approached invisible while the rest of the crew waited in the wings. I opened with a backstab on Venkt. It connected, killing the mage instantly.
I felt so groovilicious that I was all:
Send in the demolition squad. Serg and Corey!
And that was that for Venkt et al. Only one principle remained: Taugosz. Serg, Corey and I vanished, with the intent of reconvening with our brethren and commencing the hunt.
Reunited again, we were ready to begin the search. But then, lo and behold! Look who walked by! Where is he going?
He was checking out the scene of the crime, accompanied by a pair of black talon elites. What to do?
A backstab was a no go, given that armor and Taugosz’s Potion of Fortitude enhanced HP. How about a bit of subterfuge? We had a spirit lion give him a sniff. It then raced behind the tent to our ready and waiting crew. Grim Face prepared his Wand of Paralyzation, Enuhal his Darts of Stunning. My friends, meet Sir Spam: Meat in a Can. Fire at will.
I got the kill, thanks to LCoS + Bolts of Lightning
From there it was just a matter a matter of cleanup. Take it away, boys! Hooray!
And that, my fellow adventurers, is how I got my groove back. Was this battle a grand achievement? No- not at all. It was a simple fight, won with simple tactics. The important thing is that I enjoyed myself, and that, I submit, is what groove is. It’s not attaining some arbitrary standard of proficiency. It’s going with the flow, feeling the beat: being in the moment and enjoying that moment- whoever you are, however you are, and wherever you are. And so, gentle friends, I’d like to officially change the theme song of this run from JYP’s Groove Back to Dee-Lite’s Groove is in the Heart. Because that’s where my groove is: In the heart.
When it came to it I decided not to continue with the TotSC content, but just push on to Sarevok. I'm reasonably confident I could have done everything, but with the party already almost at the XP cap there was little game benefit from continuing. In addition I'm well aware that my energy / enthusiasm is likely to sag as the run continues and cutting short BGEE may help forestall that to some extent.
So, the next step was to seek out Slythe and Krystin. Slythe was pulled away from Krystin and ran the gauntlet of a couple of nymphs, saving against their hold monster spells. However, a humble command proved his undoing.
Krystin ignored the skeleton warrior sent to meet her and charged towards the rest of the party. However, a dispelling arrow from Corey opened up her defenses and she died within a second or two.
At the palace I couldn't remember for sure which doppleganger was which, but decided anyway not to indulge in any funny business with charms. Summons and buffs were put in place before activating the fight - including a first general use of potions. The buffing proved a slight problem when Grim Face tried to cast malison just prior to chaos (from scroll) hitting from Alesia. I hadn't appreciated though that having chant active affected the speed of spell casting as well as of movement and the chaos was completed first. Alesia's immediate follow-up shot was a good one though - a dispelling arrow disrupting a first cast by the shaman. Then the chaos hit and hit hard - despite the lack of malison only the shaman saved against that (in the unmodded game the standard greater dopplegangers get no saving throw - I'm not sure if that was still the case here). That was pretty much that, with all the dopplegangers going down rapidly - without doing any damage to Liia and with Belt only slightly scratched.
We took the most direct route through the maze, rather than clearing everything, and bypassed the party in the Undercity - though we did have to beat up several skeleton warriors that spotted us sauntering by. After resting, we entered the old temple for the final fight. I wondered here whether the AI in more recent versions of SCS would defeat the cheesy tactics available in older ones (and I'm not sure yet about the extent of improvement). While the others waited invisibly by the door, Corey showed himself to Sarevok and dragged him into a corner before using an invisibility potion.
That meant that I expected only Angelo to be wandering round, with the others hugging up to Sarevok. Angelo was duly collected and matched with a skeleton warrior, while insect plague reduced his spell repertoire. He did still manage to put up more buffs with a minor sequencer, which allowed him to triumph against the skeleton, but he died just after that. The flame strike shown is the result of his death generating a new skeleton warrior (which happens when each of Sarevok's companions dies) - but that was quickly shot down as well.
We checked that the rest of the gang were indeed all gathered together.
In the past it was possible to use area damage from out of sight to kill Sarevok's companions without him reacting (and you have to kill his companions before he can die, unlike in the unmodded game). Trying that now, we waited for a while for Diarmid's PfM scroll to expire before bombardment killed Semaj and then Tazok. I'm not certain if I edged in too close and activated Sarevok at that point, but I suspect his script has been changed to react to damage and the reason he didn't come out earlier was that the others had been blocking him in .
Everyone quickly used an oil of speed to prevent Sarevok from being able to close in melee. Corey then dispelled him, to make dodging him even simpler and Grim Face took Sarevok for a stroll round the temple, while Corey went to sort out Diarmid to prevent his use of missiles.
The remaining skeleton warriors there got critical hits on a 19 and did more damage to Corey than I had expected - prompting him to make a first use in the run of a regeneration potion in order to stay in melee. Once the skeletons had been dismembered, Sarevok was all on his own (it's not necessary to kill the skeleton warriors, but it always seems appropriate to me). After softening him up with missiles, Grond0 raged and said "leave him to me lads" - and they did.
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Edit: oh dear - I really should check whether there are more posts on another page ...
Previous posts: Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
And so we arrive to the Undercellar - the shadiest of places with even shadier dwellers, with Slythe the Slim Shady above them all. We had two options here - either use the Polymorph: Self jelly form (cast via scroll) for magic and piercing resistance and blast our way through with wands, scrolls and Firebreath potions or rely on our spell defences only to keep more offensive options more open (including our offensive spells, Remove Magic and MMMs). Driven mainly by our intention to set aside as many Firebreaths as possible for the final battle against Diarmid's green ProMagic scroll, we opted for the second option.
Daelat buffed with Stoneskin, MMMs, Spirit Armor (scroll), Shield, Resist Fear, Oil of Speed, ProEvil, MIs and II and summoned some cannon fodder via Wand of Monster Summoning. Once we revealed ourselves to Slythe the battle was on. Although tactically a questionable move, we gotta give it to Krystin that this was a rather impressive opener for a BG1 fight.
We threw our summons at Slythe, hoping to buy Daelat enough time to try and dispel his potion buffs. Success.
We spend the next six seconds throwing meteors at 5APR, considering our next move. Targeting Slythe with spells is tricky due to his frequent PoI quaffs, but using the Wand of Paralysis carried no risk of wasting our round (given that we could still use the time for another action in case he would manage to go invisible before us being able to fire the wand). Eventually, he quaffed his potion just shortly before he got hit by the projectile. Failing his saving throw, we now had invisible and stunned Slythe on our hands.
Krystin was still not to be seen, applying various buffs further back down the corridor. I instructed Daelat to do what I thought to be the most logical step at that stage - remove Slythe's invisibility with Glitterdust (scroll). He seemed to shrug at that, but carried out the command nevertheless.
Note to future self: Glitterdust offers save vs. spell not only against blindness, but also against the invisibility dispel.
Oh, nevermind. With our summons entertaining Krystin in a teleport field far out, we still had the time to get this done right. Daelat -> Detect Invisibility (scroll).
Note to future self: Never try to dispel invisibility against someone running Non-detection (via cloak or otherwise). And if you're silly enough to do so, at least try and remember the previous note above so that you only waste one round instead of two.
You can see that this was not going well. Our next though was something along the lines "If we can't detect him, then we'll just need to dispel him.". Daelat -> Remove Magic.
Nothing. Seeing that our summons were now down to a single hobgoblin archer, we resorted to the desperate tactics of blasting the place with Wand of Fire (fireball).
Despite managing to kill Slythe, the collateral damage of murdering the innocent bystanders was huge and our reputation dropped down to 2. So much for the Sword Coast heroics. While Daelat's career was in shatters after becoming accused of murders in Candlekeep, committing various legal offences in Beregost and now this incident, his nemesis Sarevork was about to get coronated in front of the city's elite. Let's hope they'll at least admit us to the ceremony so we can still get this right.
When checking the status our supplies ahead of the Ducal palace, we realized that we're short on Oils of Speed. We needed at least two more, particularly for the final battle in the Undercity in order to compensate for possible dispels from the Angelo-Semaj duo. And I'll tell you, shopping around with reputation 2 is not exactly Black Friday. For sake of one's own conscience, it was not an option to buy back our soul with church donations - we'd have to redeem ourselves though our deeds instead. And so Daelat ended up paying 20k+ for the two inconspicuous vials of the precious liquid at the Hall of Wonders. Being clergy of Gond and all that, I hope they'll at least use it for something beneficial, like supporting research grants for young fellows and such.
With that out of the way, we're ready to hit the palace. Surprisingly, despite being actively hunted by Flaming Fist enforcers all around the town, nobody seemed to take heed of us when presenting the invitations. Our arcane buffs comprised of Stoneskin, MMMs, Spirit Armor (scroll), Shield, Resist Fear, ProEvil, MIs and II. In addition, Daelat also quaffed Potion of Clarity and Potion of Regeneration, summoned couple of monsters (via Wand of Monster Summoning + Monster Summoning II scroll) and boosted everyone with Haste (scroll).
When the fight broke loose, we opened with Remove Magic, dispelling Blur/Haste from some of the doppelgangers.
Daelat followed up with his meteors, preparing his Chaos scroll. He, Liia and the doppelganger mage each started their respective incantations at the same time - theirs was an abjuration cast, indicating Remove Magic.
Just as the smoke cleared and the spells got resolved, we saw that our buffs held against the doppe mage's dispel, but Liia's not. In turn, Liia's Remove Magic dispelled the remaining doppes except the mage, which surprisingly became the only enemy to fail his save against Daelat's Chaos (going above MGoI and ignoring his MSD). What a mumble jumble!
With the mage threat out of the way, we were able to quickly finish the unbuffed melee grunts by using the joint power of the Flaming Fist guards, our hasted summons and Daelat' MMMs, .
Alone and confused, the doppelganger mage then became an easy target for our group.
Having defeated all the doppelgangers, Daelat summoned additional fodder via Wand of Monster Summoning to prevent Sarevok from chopping down our dukes during the short intermezzo until Wanev's arrival.
Once teleported to the Thieves' Guild, we use the green ProMagic scroll and PoI to safely rush through the maze into the Undercity, wherein we avoid the mercenaries and take a well deserved rest in front of the Temple of Bhaal. I'll report on the final battle in the next.
Regards,
B.
***
Spellbook (level 9):
L1 - Blindness, Shield, Magic Missile, ProEvil, Chromatic Orb
L2 - Invisibility, MIs, Resist Fear, MAA
L3 - Skull Trap, MMMs, Remove Magic
L4 - II, Stoneskin
Over the years as a child in Candlekeep, Gorion and the local priests have gradually tamed her inner wild. Although she frowns on the company of others and remains unpredictable, her spiritual connections to benevolent deities such as Tymora, Lathander or Ilmater have helped Bree find a sense of purpose in Faerun. She has now reluctantly accepted that the world is corrupt and refuses to embark into any organized attempt to restore order or any other greater good motive; she will however not hesitate to step out of her way in help of the defenseless and innocent.
Her stats at the beginning of her successful solo no-reload run of BG1EE (no mods) were 13/18/15/11/17/14 - a solid 88 roll. They are now improved by the tomes she read - all but the INT one, she did not dare enter that tower in Baldur's Gate city.
Bree is proficient in slings, maces, clubs and the (now mostly useless) single-weapon style.
For most of BG1 she has been wielding the Stupefier +1 or a sling +1, clad in Ankheg armor, equipped with small shield and helmet.
Her preferred spell picks at each level have so far been:
- Sanctuary, Command, CLW, Remove Fear
- Silence, Hold Person, Spiritual Hammer, Chant, DUHM, Find Traps
- Animate Dead, Strength of One, Dispel Magic, Protection from Fire
- Protection from Evil 10', Holy Power, Animal Summoning I, Defensive Harmony, Mental Domination
Siege of Drangonspear is another kettle of fish (done with zero meta knowledge). Smarter enemies in large groups. I am happy to take any advice from veterans as it seems Bree Applebrum's fate is hanging thin...
a) There are a ton of good cleric scrolls available from vendors - there's a lot of value in using those (especially the many chaotic command scrolls, so you can spend your level 5 slots on different things if needed).
b) Keep necklaces of missles on you, don't hesitate to spam them, and keep multiple ones/recharge them. Otherwise, you might be lacking AoE damage for certain encounters, though you can propably skip many with sanctuary/invisibility effects
c) Protection from undead scrolls are incredibly useful in the prologue and in the Repository of Undeath in chapter 1, if you have any left from BG1
If you don't know SoD at all, know that there are at least 2 points in the game with alternate losing conditions. At a place called Bridgefort, you can't let your opponents blow up a certain bridge. Using "The Victor" is one way to stop the wizard there from completing a spell that will make this task a lot more problematic. Also, don't use the necklace of missles near the explosive barrels there. At one point later, your Coalition Camp will be under siege. You have to stop the attackers in time (or it will be game over), and you will propably need many necklace of missles charges to do so (or other sources of strong AoE damage).
Blind SoD no-reload is incredibly tough. I tried it my first time around and failed almost immediately. However, once you get the hang of the encounters, it's actually relatively deterministic and one of the easier parts of the game to no-reload, unless you play legacy of bhaal solo or something equally ridiculous.
I'd go straight for the AoE damage instead of spending 3 rounds on trying to get rid of his invisibility, preferably by using the Wand of Fire scorcher or Potion of Firebreath on an item on the ground (as much as I dislike the idea) in order to better control any spillover damage to the neutral NPCs.
We didn't - we took the papers and ran like hell
a) have not yet really figured out which lvl5 spells to put to good use... but am concerned that Chaotic Commands will be needed in SoD! (as in, to protect against something greenstone amulet would not)
b) oh I am holding close my One Gift Lost, that's for sure; however I am not exactly swimming in gold to recharge at will...
c) I have I think two of those but have not used them yet, and in hindsight I should have...
Only once I ran halfway through SoD with a party and I threw a huge fireball right on the barrels at Boareskyr
I also remember a green dragon which was a tough kill, but its scales were useful to forge a very nice green shield which would look great on Bree, along with her (green) Ankheg armor ...
And then as she and her skeleton army stumbled upon a large group of enemies in the central room (the one just south of Korlasz quarters), someone or something stunned her - greenstone amulet, I wish your effect lasted an hour rather than a turn. She ran like a headless chicken through the compound, only very fast with the boots of cheetah... until she got cornered by a mob in the top-left small round room. As she was getting cut bit by bit, she suddenly regained her senses and reached her bag for an invisibility potion ! that was very close. She sneaked out the room, healed and blasted the mercenaries to oblivion.
After strange happenings in Baldur's Gate city, she reluctantly decided to march forward with the army against the crusade...
Lol. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I wasn't sure whether to share. It was a little bit off, but also like a ready made SNL skit. Glad you saw the humor
(Btw, I was in high school when that song came out. Since my high school was 80% Jewish I seriously thought it was Bonita Appelbaum, lol)
Talk about lack of groove @Alesia_BH ...
Another shameful moment was our encounter with the Dwarves of Dumathoin. These shorty Fighter/Clerics looked like a great bunch, buffing up in unison (it reminded me I really have to run a custom-made dwarf cleric party one day, "Brother Deepvein" what a cool name and voice acting)... we fought several undead groups side by side... until Bree somehow unleashed a bigger horde of undead and Umber Hulks and got stunned (again) as she was running towards the dwarves. She ended up my miracle isolated in one corner of the cavern and when she came to her senses and cautiously crawled back under sanctuary, the dwarves were all dead, lying in their blood
With the proper buffs and the help of skeletons Bree cleared out the first level and proceeded to the Repositary of Undeath. I thought this particular side quest, dungeon layout and atmosphere were all great. The One Gift Lost was put to use in every other room as we progressed, until she stumbled on a huge figure : the Bronze Sentry. We tried lvl5 spell Magic Resistance (to lower MR of the sentry) followed by wand of the heavens : no damage. Sanctuary -> Holy Power + DUHM + Spiritual Hammer... and Bree proceeded to melee the big metal guy, dual-wielding therefore with 2APR and -7 AC. He was brought down in around 1 turn but landed ~5 hard hits on the Halfling, who mitigated the damage with potions of extra healing. Not so groovy but still, it took quite some guts for our little hero to face such a big foe toe-to-toe.
We somehow cleaned the laboratory area, which involved more necklace of missile charges and a lot of kiting. We then tried to figure what were those 4 pillars spamming mephits every time we touched them, but could not make sense of it all. It was becoming obvious that deep down in that complex we would end up fighting a damn lich
Later on the bridge at Coastway Crossing, I thought Bree was toast when she got trapped in a small area against a group of 6 crusaders ! but Sanctuary saved the day and soon after Caelar Argent wanted to talk and called off her minions. Despite an inconclusive discussion, she somehow let go free a defenseless Bree, weird...
It was all very laborious, I feel I lack firepower (or efficient AoE spells) and am being dominated by the game. But somehow Bree is still alive and now sleeping at camp at Troll Claw Woods in Chapter 9...
Making a deal with the lich is also a possibility. He wants the amulets the dwarves had - if they're already dead, all you have to do is pick the trinkets up. And the dwarves aren't around to reward you for eliminating the lich, or to make that fight easier with a really nice anti-lich item.
As for the pillars, touching them in the right order will unlock an essential door, with no mephit spawns. What's the right order for this puzzle? Think back to some of the writing you found earlier...
Bree first ventured to the south-east of the map, charmed a bear and a panther (druid ring) and managed to defeat displacer beasts and a pack of orcs. She then encountered a group of ogres, including an ogre mage who saved vs silence and proceeded to haste the full gang
But that was just an appetizer.
Walking north Bree stumbled upon a very large group of trolls, like 6 of them... again
So... 9 Fist soldiers killed + an NPC + a key companion (maybe storyline breaking?). I am out of my depth here.
But the no-reload challenge continues... bets can be taken on when you think it will end !
That's right Gargantuan spiders. Then it was no save, I just somehow survived 2 rounds (or maybe only one, since it had to move to contact in melee) of sword spider attacks...
I later looked up about the lich and how you can make a deal with it. No regrets though, it felt like the right thing to do RP wise.
As for the pillars, I guess I did not pay enough attention to the various notes and journals I found down there. Will take a closer look next time.
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update VII
All right, we're back to the iron mine. First level - easy clear. Level 2: We move around Hareishan's room, an invisible Alesia gets rid of traps as we scout the area and decide on our approach. In the end, we take the trapped corridor. A single skeleton moves forward, with Alesia, Grim Face and Grond0 following. The mages throw down a wand of fire charge each, Grond0 adds the necklace of missles. We had originally planned to just clear out most of the guards and bandits here, but it turns out that Hareishan, despite having the required level, had no MGOI as part of her pre-buffs - so she got roasted as well:
https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Minor_Spell_Deflection
Recommended reading if you didn't know about this and plan to use this spell in a no-reload game at any point. I had never even heard whispers of this limitation.
Well, that certainly turned this battle into a free win. After clearing the remainder of the level and killing the guard downstairs, we move back to level 1 to rest (very weak interrupt spawns here) before going into Davaeorn's lair. Here, Alesia goes invisible again, we prepare our summons and buffs. Alesia disarms a few traps, and I decide to first send my summons near Davaeorn so they'll immediately be a threat. I haven't seen the wizard yet. However, as the summons walk in his direction, the battle horrors trigger, but Davaeorn himself doesn't open dialogue or cast anything, so he's propably still neutral. Interesting. We move our summons back. Now, we can simply take down these battle horrors by themselves with a few wand charges, magic missles, alicorn lances and melee hits:
There is no ordinary spell defense that works against Hold Monster. If you want to protect against it, you need to go after the effect side; either immunity to Hold or unbeatable saves.
I thought this was the most likely explanation as well, but the wiki article mentions that MSD works against Agannazar's Scorcher (even if you're not the original target), which arguably has more of an AoE function than hold spells, lightning bolt (only if you're the original target) and chain lightning (only if you're the original target). Seems strange that it would work against these semi-AoE spells and not against hold spells, which are somewhat similiar.
I watched in agony my brave little Halfing Cleric (level 9) get eaten alive by insects, after so many grand achievements.
I will remember her as one of my favorite BG characters. SoD was too much for me to handle !
Happy runs to all and especially you Avatars !
most SCS options installed; playing on hardcore
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194919/#Comment_1194919
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194948/#Comment_1194948
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194981/#Comment_1194981
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195006/#Comment_1195006
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195055/#Comment_1195055
In the next area, Corey's new bastard sword enjoyed feasting on shapechangers - the greater doppleganger there being dispelled first. Moving on, we strolled past Prat invisibly before sending in area damage. The initial impact of that killed his companions and disrupted Prat's first spell. A nymph confusion ensured he would get no second chance.
Moving into the ruins, Alesia did a de-trapping job initially before Corey led the others through, dealing with a Dead Knight on the way.
Grond0 - barbarian L8, 91 HPs , 832 kills
Corey - inquisitor L8, 92 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 595 kills, 1 death
Grim Face - cleric/illusionist L7/7, 44 HPs, 190 kills, 0 deaths
Alesia - mage/thief L7/8, 44 HPs, 243 kills, 1 death
Enuhal - totemic druid L10, 55 HPs, 256 kills, 1 death
Thank you for sharing your brave hearted halfling with us! She will be remembered!
I believe I can speak for our SoD players, Grond0 and Enuhal, when I say that Bree will be avenged. Those beetles will die horrible deaths, will they not, @Grond0 and @Enuhal ?
I know I speak for all of us when I wish you the best on the adventurers ahead. Great things are to come, I'm sure. It was a pleasure getting to know you and Bree. We hope to hear from you again!
Cheers,
A.
Btw, fellow Avatars runners, there is still the open matter of what we'll do if one of our characters gets chunked. We wanted reserves. Shall we invite characters who fall while we're running to join a reserve pool, where they may serve as NPC replacements, to be played by us in the event of a chunking?
Previous posts: Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Here comes the BG1 finale (and apologies for the long post).
Even though I don't recall ever losing a no-reload character at this particular stage of the game, I still had substantial doubts regarding Daelat's chances and tactics for the final battle. Our main concerns were his vulnerability when unbuffed and the fact that facing two arcane casters at once carried the risk of getting hit by Remove Magic in combination with a disabler (most notably Chaos) in the same round.
Therefore, the basic hypothesis of our strategy was to utilize our movement speed for positioning advantage and to manage our aura in a way that would allow us to apply appropriate counters as required (most notably our remaining Potion of Magic Shielding and PoIs). It looks good on paper, but more about execution later.
Our initial buffs were MMMs, Stoneskin, Spirit Armor (scroll), Shield, Resist Fear, MIs and Potion of Mind Focusing. We decided to hold back on using the more valuable potions until at least the first dispel.
During our preparations we also found out that the Bhaalspawn Vampiric Touch in my current install does not provide the HP bonus when cast on self (which I agree makes a lot of sense). Furthermore, when targetting other creatures, it only drains them up to their total HPs rather than the actual damage roll - thus our plan to leech the bats outside the temple for extra hitpoints didn't really work out as intended.
Following the brief small talk with Sarverok, the battle was on. Keeping our distance, we observe the log to assess the situation. Invisible Semaj opened with PfMW in addition to his contingencies, while Angelo, also invisible, fired off his protective buffs including MGoI and MSD. Meanwhile, Diarmid activated his ProMagic scroll and Tazok, ever being the irrelevant one, enraged himself.
The flow of events accelerated when Angelo brought in Slow, which Daelat countered with Potion of Stone Form.
You may ask why on earth I'm not running ProEvil and/or Improved Invisibility. And you'd be right - I was wrong to omit these buffs merely on the grounds of expecting an early dispel. Still, the potion quaff brought our save vs. spells down to -3, providing us with a guaranteed save in light of Slow's -4 save penalty. And yes, the whole situation could have entered the shifty realm of probability in case that Semaj'd hit us with Chaos and its -5 save penalty at the same time.
But Semaj kept it cool and broke his invisibility by removing our relative saving throw advantage with Malison instead. Nicely played.
In a display of well coordinated effort, Angelo followed with his own Chaos cast. With our aura clear, we had three options at that stage - take our chances at making the save with the effective saving throw of 6 (too risky), quaff Potion of Magic Shielding (too precious), Potion of Magic Blocking or Potion of Clarity. At that moment we also saw that Semaj was starting an abjuration incantation, which could only mean that Remove Magic was about to his us shortly after Angelo's Chaos. With that in mind, we opted for the confusion immunity granted via Potion of Clarity.
Daelat moved in a half circle to try and put as much time as possible in between our potion quaff and the dispel, while making sure that the Chaos projectile hits first.
Eventually, the odds were in our favour and our buffs held.
Sensing an opportunity window, we decided to strike back, targeting Diarmid with our Wand of Fire scorcher…
I'm pretty sure you can already see what I had not. Putting aside that Semaj just wasted his round trying to cast Chaos after failing to dispel our confusion immunity, we got caught by his Minor Spell Turning. Ouch!
Already smelling blood, Angelo pushed forward with another Remove Magic. This time it worked flawlessly and our only hope was to quaff an emergency PoI, while trying to hide behind one of the statues.
We try to catch our breath, mindful of not becoming encircled in the narrow space. But our enemies do not relent - Angelo, smart as ever, casts Oracle to dispel Daelat's invisibility and deprive him of the much needed respite.
With our aura almost clear, we retreat a bit further into the open space and quaff another PoI (and Semaj's fortunately unable to finish his spell).
Admitting that we just got us asses kicked, we finally find some cover to regroup our strengths and rebuff under invisibility. There'd be no mistakes this time around. Dealat goes for MMMs, Stoneskin, Shield, Resist Fear, Blur (scroll), ProEvil, MIs (scroll), II (scroll), Potion of Regeneration, Oil of Speed and Potion of Magic Shielding.
It’s payback time. Daelat fires off a Skull Trap, followed by Wand of Fire scorchers.
Despite his stellar performance up until now, Angelo loses it and Sunfires Semaj to ashes. That one's not going to look good on his résumé. One down, four left.
Daelat then uses ProUndead scroll to avoid the incoming skeletal minions, refreshes his MIs and pulls out his own Sunfire (scroll).
Tazok the Cameo is finished with MMMs. Two down, three left.
Angelo casting Magic Missiles (against our Shield) hinted that his spellbook was now depleted. That was a promising sign. Daelat targets him with Spell Thrust (scroll) in return.
In hindsight that seemed unnecessary given that we were about to start quaffing our Potions of Firebreath, with Diarmid being the main vessel for the scorcher. Angelo died from the second damage tick. Three down, two left.
Afterwards we tried to work our way through Diarmid's HP with our remaining fire potions (2x Firebreath and 2x Fiery Burning) and a fresh set of MMMs. Frustratingly, he managed to keep himself alive with health potions.
With no further means of getting through his ProMagic, we could either wait out its effects or try and finish him with weapons. Daelat felt like going for the second option, arguing that we should be able to get some hits on a shieldless opponent. We quaffed Potion of Mind Focusing, summoned some monster fodder via our wand and equipped Darts of Wounding. Daelat was right - four down, one left.
Assessing our resources, we counted 7 charges of Wand of Fire, 8 charges of Wand of Frost, 6 charges of Necklace of Missiles and the Wand of Lightning we had just picked up from one of the dead bodies. Using our speed advantage to outrun him, it was more than enough to beat Sarevok's regeneration rate.
It was messy, I was clumsy, we were lucky, but in the end we prevailed. The overall takeaway at this stage is that, despite being fun to play, I do struggle with arcane casters and I admit that I don't always know what I'm doing. This has probably to do with the difficulty of finding the right balance for picking priorities between offensive and defensive actions in an environment that only allows you one spell-equivalent action per round. At that's BG1 I'm talking about - I'm absolutely positive that this issue will become much more pronounced in SoA, where the margin for error is to become more and more limited. But let's see how it goes.
We're off to Amn.
Regards,
B.
***
Spellbook (level 9):
L1 - Blindness, Shield, Magic Missile, ProEvil, Chromatic Orb
L2 - Invisibility, MIs, Resist Fear, MAA
L3 - Skull Trap, MMMs, Remove Magic
L4 - II, Stoneskin
On to Amn!
Cheers,
A.
I normally play that a chunking in the party ends the run and will probably stick with that approach this time as well.
Despite some super-shaky play from super-rusty me, my Avatars have made solid progress, moving along the storyline with nary a mishap. Their long term future looks bleak, I’ll admit, given the quality of my play, but I have made my peace with that. I’m content to be where I am, to play as I am. Progress will come: I’ll find the beat- whatever the tune may be. Has this update turned into a lecture on the metaphysics of groove? Not yet.
Bandit camp is a tough nut that can be cracked in three ways: 1) stealth and avoid all conflict; 2) divide and conquer; 3) setup a kill zone and take on all comers. Seeking some action, but hoping to remain true to the roguish nature of my thief led crew, I went with option 2, divide and conquer. That went well.
We set off the alarm, drawing the principles out of the tent. We then vanished, buffed and planned our attack.
Venkt, Hakt, et al gathered just outside of the tent, in a tight formation and -crucially- without their black talon elite protectors. Perfect. Time for an assassination.
Corey, Serg and I buffed our fire resistance to 100% and then approached invisible while the rest of the crew waited in the wings. I opened with a backstab on Venkt. It connected, killing the mage instantly.
I felt so groovilicious that I was all:
Send in the demolition squad. Serg and Corey!
And that was that for Venkt et al. Only one principle remained: Taugosz. Serg, Corey and I vanished, with the intent of reconvening with our brethren and commencing the hunt.
Reunited again, we were ready to begin the search. But then, lo and behold! Look who walked by! Where is he going?
He was checking out the scene of the crime, accompanied by a pair of black talon elites. What to do?
A backstab was a no go, given that armor and Taugosz’s Potion of Fortitude enhanced HP. How about a bit of subterfuge? We had a spirit lion give him a sniff. It then raced behind the tent to our ready and waiting crew. Grim Face prepared his Wand of Paralyzation, Enuhal his Darts of Stunning. My friends, meet Sir Spam: Meat in a Can. Fire at will.
I got the kill, thanks to LCoS + Bolts of Lightning
From there it was just a matter a matter of cleanup. Take it away, boys! Hooray!
And that, my fellow adventurers, is how I got my groove back. Was this battle a grand achievement? No- not at all. It was a simple fight, won with simple tactics. The important thing is that I enjoyed myself, and that, I submit, is what groove is. It’s not attaining some arbitrary standard of proficiency. It’s going with the flow, feeling the beat: being in the moment and enjoying that moment- whoever you are, however you are, and wherever you are. And so, gentle friends, I’d like to officially change the theme song of this run from JYP’s Groove Back to Dee-Lite’s Groove is in the Heart. Because that’s where my groove is: In the heart.
The Cloakwood awaits.
Best,
A.
Makes sense!
Noted!
(To the other Avatar runners: Please do share your thoughts on reserves. We can discuss it over in the Lounge.)
most SCS options installed; playing on hardcore
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194919/#Comment_1194919
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194948/#Comment_1194948
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194981/#Comment_1194981
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195006/#Comment_1195006
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195055/#Comment_1195055
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195109/#Comment_1195109
When it came to it I decided not to continue with the TotSC content, but just push on to Sarevok. I'm reasonably confident I could have done everything, but with the party already almost at the XP cap there was little game benefit from continuing. In addition I'm well aware that my energy / enthusiasm is likely to sag as the run continues and cutting short BGEE may help forestall that to some extent.
So, the next step was to seek out Slythe and Krystin. Slythe was pulled away from Krystin and ran the gauntlet of a couple of nymphs, saving against their hold monster spells. However, a humble command proved his undoing.
At the palace I couldn't remember for sure which doppleganger was which, but decided anyway not to indulge in any funny business with charms. Summons and buffs were put in place before activating the fight - including a first general use of potions. The buffing proved a slight problem when Grim Face tried to cast malison just prior to chaos (from scroll) hitting from Alesia. I hadn't appreciated though that having chant active affected the speed of spell casting as well as of movement and the chaos was completed first. Alesia's immediate follow-up shot was a good one though - a dispelling arrow disrupting a first cast by the shaman. Then the chaos hit and hit hard - despite the lack of malison only the shaman saved against that (in the unmodded game the standard greater dopplegangers get no saving throw - I'm not sure if that was still the case here). That was pretty much that, with all the dopplegangers going down rapidly - without doing any damage to Liia and with Belt only slightly scratched.
Corey - inquisitor L8, 92 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 607 kills, 1 death
Grim Face - cleric/illusionist L7/7, 44 HPs, 195 kills, 0 deaths
Alesia - mage/thief L7/8, 44 HPs, 245 kills, 1 death
Enuhal - totemic druid L10, 55 HPs, 264 kills, 1 death