@Enuhal Excellent work, as always! I'm pretty sure Sarevok is in for it, lol.
I noticed that you and Grond0 both went with Malison -> Chaos in the Ducal Palace fight. Is that an established approach for party play in that encounter?
You know what I'm terrified of in Irenicus' dungeon? The trap damage on the first floor. I had some close calls here and still I seem to be completely unable to memorize which trap does what. Rather than doing something stupid, we decided to let Imoen tag along for now.
We prebuffed with Stoneskins, Shield (Daelat) and Strength + Armor (Imoen), killed the lightning mephit and let the summoned gibberlings run around in panic until they got out of sight. For the duegar group in the western corridor we used our first Skull Trap and finished with Magic Missile.
Imoen's MGoI helped us to dispatch the mineral mephit in the golem room. While trying to make the most of MGoI's duration, we also entered the laboratory where we took on the two mephits. The cost was Imoen's Stoneskin, which was now gone. Afterwards, Daelat's second Skull Trap managed to clear all the duegar guarding the passage to Rielev's room.
The narrow corridor leading to the sewage room is the perfect spot of Imoen's Lightning. We finish the remaining duegar with the Bhaalspawn Vampiric Touch and a backstab.
Before we could start taking down the otyugh we got chased by the smoke mephit coming in from the southern passage. Daelat's Chromatic Orb solved this problem for us.
The otyugh was taken care of by a combination of backstab (with Imoen using her quartstaff to keep safe distance) and Melf's.
Skull Trap No. 3 and 4, in tandem with our MMMs, allowed us to clear the duegar parties guarding Irenicus' room and the portal.
With both our spellbooks running dry, we decided not to linger on the first floor any longer - we collected the Klaw of Kazgaroth and Amulet of Metaspell Influence and proceeded to Ellesime's room. For some reason the alarm didn't go off and therefore we didn't have to bother with invisibility spells to avoid the security golems.
Daelat and Imoen each get a level-up and we now had Sunfire in our book.
On the other side of the portal we send Yoshimo on his way and decide to take a rest ahead of the mephit portal room. Our preparations included Imoen' Monster Summoning, Haste and MGoI, while Daelat was also running MMMs, MIs and II. Our plan was to split into two groups - Daelat would sabotage the two portals in the back and Imoen + summons would deal with the other two. Everything worked out fine except…
But our solid saves (with the Claw, II and ProEvil) and decent damage output pulled us through nevertheless.
Using the remaining MGoI time, Imoen rushes past the duelling assassin and mephit and tanks the salt mephit further down the hallway. Supported by the rest of our group, we're able to clear them easily.
The majority of the duegar group guarding the bridge make their saves against our opening Skull Trap and we have to retreat and finish them with Fireball (scroll).
Daelat then Sunfires the assassins blocking the exit.
With his protective buffs still running, we rush to the smithy to blast the two remaining duegar parties with Sunfire + Skull Trap + Fireball, finishing with our Bhaalspawn Vampiric Touch.
We released the doppelganger without fighting him and, seeing that our spellbooks were only semi-empty at that time, decided to return to the first floor to tackle Iliych. By using Monster Summoning, Web and Skull Traps, we managed to handle the main force in the library, while the mage was Webbed and shot down in the storage room.
Our remaining L1 spells were then used to blast the Cambion.
We returned the acorns and Imoen also collected the Sword of Chaos, traversing the Elemental Plane of Air back and forth under stealth. With that we’re finally done and ready to step into Athkatla.
There is one "morning star" that a mage/thief can use. And it's an absolutely fantastic backstabbing weapon. Why, I once theory-crafted a way to reliably one-shot Sarevok based on it. You need exactly the right mage/thief, and exactly the right party around them to cast the needed buffs, but it's doable.
Answer in spoilers - don't peek if you're still having fun guessing:
The key item in Sorcerous Sundries is the stack of 20 Polymorph Self scrolls. Cast the spell, either form a spell slot or a scroll. Turn into an ogre. Hide, and whack your target in the back. 4d6+1 base weapon damage, all multiplied by your backstab multiplier. And then +6 damage from strength on top of that at the end.
I noticed that you and Grond0 both went with Malison -> Chaos in the Ducal Palace fight. Is that an established approach for party play in that encounter?
@Alesia_BH I like chaos in the unmodded game as it's guaranteed to take effect. Against the upgraded dopplegangers it's not certain, but malison still gives it a good chance of working. My older experience with the SCS fight though is that it's substantially easier than in unmodded, so the 'right' tactic is probably less of an issue. Liia actually buffs up and doesn't go down in the first round as she often does in unmodded. The shaman / assassin / mage can each cause severe problems for solo characters, but I'd be surprised if any of the Avatar parties had trouble there.
I thought the end to my Avatar run was a bit unfair, so I decided to see whether I could out-cheese the Cowled Wizards in a re-run.
I've just completed BGEE in that attempt, with Sarevok once more on the wrong end of a 2-handed sword.
The only casualty in the run was Corey, who at least went with a smile on his face when he encountered Shoal (in the EE her kiss allows a saving throw, so I could potentially have buffed there to ensure Corey didn't die).
As this is more in the nature of a test run, I've abandoned many of the restrictions used in the original. Changes include:
- allowing Neera to join briefly (that seems to be the only way to get the gem bag in this installation).
- maximum HPs.
- not requiring full exploration.
- allowing use of potions to help spell learning.
- allowing the use of Algernon's Cloak (though in fact I only ever actually used it passively for the charisma bonus).
Of course though, I still couldn't sink to the depths of allowing healing potions or antidotes .
I was skipping a lot of encounters in order to get back into BG2EE quickly, so only transferred with 121k XP each. Experience gains in BG2EE come pretty quickly though, so hopefully it won't be too long before I feel ready to try my luck again with those interfering mages ...
@Enuhal Excellent work, as always! I'm pretty sure Sarevok is in for it, lol.
I noticed that you and Grond0 both went with Malison -> Chaos in the Ducal Palace fight. Is that an established approach for party play in that encounter?
It's a pretty typical approach nowadays - I do it all the time. It doesn't win the fight by itself unless you get lucky, but it has a decent shot of effectively neutralizing a few opponents for very little cost - though I think that the avatar party, with true sight and insect plague available, should have no trouble in the coronation battle either way.
@Grond0 Good luck getting your vengeance - if you succeed, I hope you continue that run
After Jon and Imoen are taken by the Cowled Wizards, we sell the accumulated loot and rest at the Den of the Seven Vales before entering the circus tent. At that stage we postponed any significant purchases until we can get the Ring of Human Influence (the exception being a single PoI from Ribald),
The orcs in the entrance hall are dealt with by a combination of Skull Trap + 2x Chromatic Orb.
For Kalah, we prepared with MMMs, Resist Fear (which I like to run out of habit, despite the fact that Kalah is an Illusionist and so we were not expecting any Horrors to fly around), ProEvil, MIs and II on top of our Stoneskin and Shield.
Sensing our presence, Kalah opened with a divination cast the moment we entered the room. Daelat decided to counter with Sunfire, hoping for a quick win. That didn't work out for a number of reasons - Kalah finished his detection spell first (dispelling our II), which in turn fired off his Fire Shield: Red (in addition to MIs and MGoI) before our Sunfire could struck. Last but not least he also made his save vs. spell that further mitigated the damage.
Daelat finishes the werewolf illusion with a single meteor and waits for Kalah's next action. He successfully hits us with Slow, which we counter with Oil of Speed.
We use the round to shoot down the remaining Shadow with MMMs and refresh our II.
With no further divination magic to dispel our invisibility, we wait couple of rounds for Kalah's MGoI to expire after which Daelat hits him with Skull Trap and meteors. Eventually, the might Kalah spells out his own doom by going big on Ice Storm.
We collect the Girdle of Piercing and other loot, accept a parting gift from Aerie in the form of her Traveller's Robe and report to the guard. Daelat also gets enough XP to level up - apart from providing a significant boost to our L2-L5 spells, level 11 also provides us with additional saving throw bonuses (with our unbuffed save vs. spell now sitting at 4, taking into account the bonuses granted by the Claw and RoP +1).
For the record, here's Daelat's inventory after a tiny bit of shopping in the Adventurer's Mart.
Speaking of backstabs, here's an oldie but goodie from my BioWare forum days.
2422 Is a hardcoded limit, it seems, although you can do better via the insane double damage modifier. In that case you can reach 4844. This is in a classic install, ofc.
@Alesia_BH I like chaos in the unmodded game as it's guaranteed to take effect. Against the upgraded dopplegangers it's not certain, but malison still gives it a good chance of working. My older experience with the SCS fight though is that it's substantially easier than in unmodded, so the 'right' tactic is probably less of an issue. Liia actually buffs up and doesn't go down in the first round as she often does in unmodded. The shaman / assassin / mage can each cause severe problems for solo characters, but I'd be surprised if any of the Avatar parties had trouble there.
It's a pretty typical approach nowadays - I do it all the time. It doesn't win the fight by itself unless you get lucky, but it has a decent shot of effectively neutralizing a few opponents for very little cost - though I think that the avatar party, with true sight and insect plague available, should have no trouble in the coronation battle either way.
Noted!
Thanks for sharing, @Grond0 and @Enuhal ! I appreciate it!
I thought the end to my Avatar run was a bit unfair, so I decided to see whether I could out-cheese the Cowled Wizards in a re-run.
I've just completed BGEE in that attempt, with Sarevok once more on the wrong end of a 2-handed sword.
The only casualty in the run was Corey, who at least went with a smile on his face when he encountered Shoal (in the EE her kiss allows a saving throw, so I could potentially have buffed there to ensure Corey didn't die).
I have discovered that if you cause Shoal to attack a cleric and time sanctuary correctly to come into effect at the same time as the kiss, you survive comfortably. I've only done it once so I don't know how reliable this tactic is.
Journal of Sprach the Half-orc Berserker and his cohort Magitho.
We investigaated the cave near Lathander's Temple.
We then killed Karlat before clearing the ankheg nest.
We then hunted sirines.
Taking on the flesh golems was tough.
At Beregost we killed Silke.
We then killed the wolves near the temple.
Killing Mutamin, the medusae and the basilisks was easy.
Recharging the necklace of missiles and wand of fire made us poor.
@Grond0 Great to have your Avatar crew back on track! Be seeing you around Athkatla.
Maybe, but there should be less chance now of bumping into a Cowled Wizard after I reduced their population .
I felt that Dracandros deserved seeing to, as being caught between him and the Cowled Wizards was partly responsible for our problems in the previous run. Alesia essentially did the work for his group, using a mixture of traps and backstabs. No buffing for the backstabs I'm afraid @Borco, but a nice clean one-shot for Dracandros.
For the Cowled Wizards it was over to Alesia again to remind those pesky mages to watch their step. Once she'd got 3 traps per day she laid full quotas of 7 traps in the NE corner of the Promenade (my normal spot for this type of exercise) before Corey used the Ring of Air Control to set a homing beacon for the Enforcers. The first group came - and went. The same thing happened to the second, third, fourth and fifth groups, leaving only the top men still standing.
For the final group I pre-cast both spike stones and spike growth and tried to time the arrival of an insect plague for the short interval between the mages turning hostile on arrival and their buffs firing. Unfortunately I was a fraction too early - you can see on the screenshot the insects spreading out just before a target presented itself.
The other members of the group all died from the traps and spike spells, but the latter didn't affect Zallanora and she survived the initial trap damage at near death - and didn't take any of the continuing poison damage. I expected that she would be immune to any other type of damage I could offer, so stayed out of her sight until her initial buffs expired (about an hour of game time). Another casting of spike stones was then used, with a beetle sent in to prevent Zallanora from fixing on the source of the spell. I think that would probably have affected her, but her stoneskins absorbed any damage and she moved quickly out of the area of effect.
After another hour waiting for more buffs to expire, Corey attempted to dispel her from out of sight range - but failed. No surprise there of course as I think she's a L30 necromancer in SCS . I definitely didn't want to get into close quarters and was concerned about the possibility of attempted area damage prompting a retaliatory chase. However, I did have a back-up plan as our casters were stuffed to the gills with summon spells. Zallanora had plenty of spells of her own to deal with those of course, but the beetles, monsters and animals kept coming until even her spell arsenal appeared to have been exhausted. I didn't trust that was actually the case though - it was quite possible she was keeping something nasty back for a juicier target. Hence I just let a pair of skeletons have the joy of striking a blow back against their necromancer would-be masters.
After paying a visit to Gaelan we find ourselves sipping dry cider in the Copper Coronet, contemplating our next move. Drinks before work, as it should be.
It's time to take a look around. Daelat doesn't take kindly to thuggish bouncers telling him where he can or cannot go.
There's more. We didn’t enjoy this gladiator stuff at all.
We wanted to talk to the manager. Running Stoneskin, Shield, Blur, MIs, II, Daelat covered the cells with a Teleport Field and approached the Beastmaster with our customer complaint. Since he did not listen, we had to file formal appeal in the form of a Skull Trap.
Backing up from the cells a bit, we shoot down the gibberlings with MMMs and shake off the stalking panther by casting Invisibility. Upon hitting the main group with another Skull Trap, Daelat finishes the Beastmaster with Meteors.
Finally the strangles are cleared with Sunfire.
It seems that Hendak had rather similar feelings regarding the quality of services here.
We take the Gloves of Pickpocketing, blast Llynis with our L1 and L2 spells and rest. Time to move on to the sewers - Fireball (scroll) flies off to dilute the hobgoblin band near the entrance. The surviving shaman is finished with Vampiric Touch, but we decide to leave the captain as is - he has good HP, but otherwise is harmless, so he can just tag along until he'd get caught in a crossfire elsewhere.
The poor kobolds are subjected to Skull Trap + Sunfire combo (note that the said hobgoblin captain is still alive).
Daelat then lures the otyugh away from the jellies upstairs and eventually brings him down upstairs.
Recasting II allows us to retrieve the hand undetected (and also get rid of the pesky hobgoblin captain). Walking around the traps Daelat then kills the carrion crawler MMMs and obtains Lilarcol, while a single Sunfire clears the second hobgoblin party in its entirety.
We take another nap under Invisibility and prepare for the slaver boat with our core protective buffs (Stoneskin, Shield, Resist Fear, Blur, ProEvil, MIs and II). We weight the pros and cons of running SI: D at the cost of losing one Sunfire cast and decide against it - we should be able to take out the priest before he can hope to dispel our illusions. His offensive spells would be countered by our II (e.g. Flame Strike or Hold Person*) or negative saving throws (e.g. Greater Command**) and we're not concerned about Unholy Blight either since we're neutral.
*Despite passing through MSD due to having a small AoE effect, as rightly pointed out by @jmerry , enemies still cannot target invisible creatures with it.
**Interestingly, SCS Spirit Trolls in my install seem to be unable to use their Greater Command against Improved Invisibility, even though enemy priests can.
Upon entering the boat, we hide into the corner and lay down a telefield. This is followed by an opening Skull Trap towards the priest's direction.
He's taken down before the round's end with our MMMs.
With Haegan staying outside the teleport, we try to hit him with Blindness. Success.
Daelat follows with MMA, Skull Trap and Sunfires, finally taking Haegan down.
One final Sunfire + Chromatic Orb to finish the remaining slavers.
For the trolls we set up another telefield, use the single charge Wand of Monster Summoning (from Irenicus' dungeon) and shoot them down with MMMs.
Too scared of the acid blob and Prismatic Spray traps, we decide not to push forward and simply report back to Hendak.
No buffing for the backstabs I'm afraid @Borco, but a nice clean one-shot for Dracandros.
Nice and clean indeed!
By the way, did you know that this feller rocks a whooping 22 STR score? I didn't.
No indeed - but I guess the stronger they are the harder they fall . I'm reminded of Zargal in BGEE who says something along the lines of "I'm the strongest one there is" before keeling over dead ...
With not much to buy in the Slums apart from the Glasses of Identification, we decide to visit the Government District to get the spellcasting license from the Cowled Wizards. We've heard terrible stories of how their enforcers deal with the slightest non-compliance, including of the recent massacre of a certain mage/thief in the Temple of Helm in the Bridge District. Seriously, in a temple?! The audacity of that! However, with enough problems on our plate as it is, we'll play by their rules. For now.
Our night stroll in the park here was interrupted by the second Shadow Thieves encounter and we got attacked by the two dominated rogues. Sunfire + Remove Magic + MAA was sufficient to deal with the threat.
On our way to the Bridge District we are ambushed by Suna Seni. Taking advantage of our invisibility, we move out of the party's range, quaff an Oil of Speed and set-up our defences including SI: A and a telefield.
Daelat then opens with Sunfire in the midst of the enemy - the cleric and the rouge fall immediately.
The two warriors are shot down with MMMs in the next round. Only Suna (now under the effect of her own Oil of Speed) and the invisible mage remain.
I suppose it must have been hard for Suna to find out that her trusty magical sword does not protect against the teleportation effect, which effectively eliminated her entire APR advantage. Still, the fight was not won yet and Daelat had to make a save against the mage's Slow.
Looking at the screenshots in retrospect, I immediately notice that we're not running ProEvil - I must have either cancelled the casting by accident or ignored it altogether (which I don't find very probable, but who knows). What an amateur move. This means that our effective save vs. spell at the time would be -1. Nevertheless, we managed to shoot Suna Seni down with our remaining Meteors just in time before the mage finished her Confusion cast.
Unless she's an enchanter we're guaranteed to make our save with 1, although at that point I realized that I had simply taken the assumption that she's not high enough level to be casting Chaos without checking, which I now see as quite reckless. From now on, we will be adding SI: E into our buff routine whenever appropriate and/or viable, unless and until we can get our saves into the Chaos safe zone (our plan is to pick up GoI down the road, as either 2nd or 3rd L6 pick, as a counter against Greater Malison).
We finished the mage with Sunfires, moved on to the Bridge District to solve the skinner murders (without confronting any of the enemies in the Rejiek's house) and then continued to the Graveyard Distric to return Mr Littleman. During the subsequent encounter with Renfeld we managed to at least partly rectify the mistakes from the previous ambush, in particular by incorporating ProEvil and SI:E into our defences.
These become largely irrelevant when the mage is killed by our opening Skull Trap.
Chromatic Orb for the fighter thug.
And Sunfires for the PoI-quaffing and hasted rouge.
We collected Renfeld and are on our way to the Docks.
We start off on Balduran's Island, talk to the locals, move north, summon some wolves and skeletons, equip magical arrows and bullets and clear the wilderness, going for a peaceful solution with the sirens. Corey is the first to enter the shipwreck (with the ring of freedom on due to vampire wolves), the others follow and start buffing up.
As we drink some healing potions (we have way too many and need to start getting rid of them) and go for more buffs (including heroism and stone giant strength potions for our fighters), we start moving upstairs, making full use of Corey's anti-shapeshifter bastard sword:
On the final floor, we quickly evade remove magic by moving downstairs for a quick second before our return. After that, we open with slow, malison and insect plague:
Daese is missing protections against spells, so we can just interrupt her with scorcher wand charges while we use the paralyzation wand to stun the greater wolfwere:
Easy enough to clean up from this point:
We return to the village, turn in quests and go for a peaceful resolution with Kaishas:
However, Mendas has to die. We open on him with a spell thrust to get his only spell protection, having to move out immediately after it finishes to avoid remove magic:
After that, it's easy to force him to transform - he has chosen armor instead of shield, so a few magic misses + hits do the job:
Now, we only need 4 wand of paralyzation charges in total to stun both loup garous:
Meanwhile, we pick up the chainmal +3 to import to BG2 if we make it through SoD and Enuhal has a new weapon in the form of the staff mace +2. We go to Durlag's, where we finally deal with the ghost - or rather, let summons do the job:
Downstairs, we summon a few allies to clear the first level, with an invisible Alesia disarming traps. We save most of our spells for the warders, with the 3 greater doppelgangers being our final foes here - since they've given me huge trouble before, I use malison + slow, static charge and hill + stone giant strength potions here (which will be useful for a while):
The party mostly stays far back as we activate the warders, leaving our skeletons at the front. We don't want to fight in the cloudkill area. We try an inquisitor dispel at love, which fails, as does an insect plague - so we start shooting all the other warders down first:
Love approaches again, having dealt with our skeletons, though its dire charm, directed at Grond0, is easily countered with rage. We equip melee weapons and finish the fight, quickly getting through any remaining protections:
At level 2, we activate the various doppelgangers and let them sit in their cloud spells until the durations are over. After that, we take them out one by one, move past the ghasts, and as we are almost at the exit, I, for some unexplicable reason, forget that opening a lock on a door will remove Alesia's invisibility. She is isolated in the bridge room with three Islanne doppelgangers and gets hit immediately by a 2*MAA sequencer:
The others storm in to rescue Alesia. Luckily, one of the Islanne's is in the process of transforming (honestly, I forgot which spell the other one was opening with, but it can't have been too devasting) - we throw Alesia an invisibility pot and she stabilizes. Corey is able to put off his first successful inquisitor dispel (at 1,5 times his level in my installation), which allows us to take down one of the Islannes, leaving the other one to renew buffs:
We take down the cleric doppelganger first - the remaining Islanne starts summoning elementals, one of which almost kills Alesia, who had re-engaged on accident - though she gets away again. Some very clumsy controls on my part here.
We kill the final doppelganger and finally rest for the first time in the tower in order to deal with the dwarven doom guards (where we get a new shield for Enuhal, who can make use of the 1 point of dexterity and is only using one-handed weapons at this point). Summons and buffs, a few wand charges, that's it:
We storm into level 3 towards the wyverns to make the most of our buffs. Belt of the antipode for the ice room, true sight for the air room, a fire protected Corey for the fire room. The ashirukurs are super annoying as usual, though we let Grim Face and Alesia stay invisible so no vulnerable targets are present. Finally, Grond0 uses a PfU scroll with the invisible Alesia disarming traps - together, they clear the middle path in order to pick up a few arrows of dispelling:
We rest, because we need fire protection spells for everyone. We also drink potions of absorption and buff up before using fire spells on the fission slime:
I usually use webs for the chessboard, but I didn't feel like changing my current (defensive) minor sequencer and opted for a fireblasting approach, which worked very well:
The result of 5 opening fireballs, a few melee hits on the fastest enemies, and 2 more fireballs on their back line.
On to level 4. We clear the spiders, answer a few riddles and drink potions of freedom on everyone for the southern part of the map, to avoid even the chance of any mishaps:
We now have a new sling for Grim Face, shield for Corey and a nice backstabbing weapon for Alesia, if I ever remember to use it. In any case, we have to rest for the third and final time to prepare for the demon knight, because fresh fire protection spells for everyone are in order - and immediately needed, as this fireball could've been quite deadly:
The battle is easy enough as usual - Grond0 moves in, protected by rage and assisted by summons, the others shoot at range. Grond0 retreats in the last few seconds of battle as his hitpoints start going down while the others finish the job:
Now, we go for a big potion shopping tour. Since we don't have optimized characters, agility, constitution and strength-improving potions of any kind are very valuable. We buy everything we can think off and move to the Beard, where we immediately drink 5 invisibility potions:
We move north, buff up and summon (I'm using a few potions here already - frost giant strength, heroism, agility, as these battles need high damage output) and return, use true sight to devastating effect and take down the cult enforcer in one concentrated attack:
Grim Face and Alesia stay invisible the entire time - I don't want to risk their lives in the presence of cult assassins. We move on westwards, quickly taking out more guards at the compound, trying to draw the remaining ones outside, though they only follow in small numbers. Our haste spell runs out, we get exhausted, but we have enough power left to finish the cult wizard as Alesia re-engages with a quick backstab:
The fighters and Enuhal move inside to take out the remaining assassins:
So, we rest up and prepare, sparing no expense. Storm giant strength, agility, defense/invulnerability, heroism, power, magic shielding. The usual double emotions, prayer + recitation + bless + pfe 10'radius + remove fear + haste. This is our buffed up version of Corey:
We immediately see the wizard casting an abjuration spell - that could be a run-ender in this fight, so we quickly move back upstairs (after a quick true sight). The wizard follows us, we move back down and get through her stoneskins, taking her down before having to return up once again for a cultist guard who hadn't followed us back down - two quick wand of the heavens charges and we're ready.
Now, it's just a matter of killing the cultists before magic shielding has a chance to run out. Not that difficult, honestly. Aec'Letec can barely hurt us. They manage to hit Alesia once, who drinks a big healing potion. In the end, the demon stands alone and is easily dealt with, as our magic shielding potions protect us from everything they could possibly throw at us:
We recharge a few key items - we don't have enough money for everything due to not picking up items to sell in Durlag's Tower (I was running into inventory trouble already, which will continue to get worse until we finally get to the Coastway Crossing). Wands of fire, necklaces of missles and wands of the heavens are a must, we can add one more wand of frost. Back to the Undercity.
Sarevok: We buff up with a ton of stuff (no magic shielding this time, we'r down to only one of thse, but we add fortitude). First move is for Grond0 to hit Sarevok with a dispelling arrow to remove his haste:
Corey moves in for true sight, which is super powerful here and exposes all of the enemies:
His main goal, though, is to draw out remove magic. He gets Semaj's pretty early on and immediately drinks a cloud giant strength potion (he's encumbered otherwise) and moves towards Angelo, in the hopes of drawing his as well (the potion makes him a decent target for the AI again). Meanwhile, Tazok, who has no protections, is our first target - the group shoots him down within seconds, with the spirit wolves + skeletons helping. Angelo indeed casts his remove magic, Corey is already separate from the group. Now he needs to use his second true sight, because our enemies keep renewing illusion-school defenses:
Semaj is busy trying to either renew illusion buffs or deal damage to Alesia, who simply drinks healing potions. Angelo casts slow, but Corey is able to once again draw the spell away from the others and even makes his saving throw (after moving some of his potions to other party members so he can move quickly wihout a strength potion). Angelo moves into melee combat, trying to go after Alesia, who retreats - he is surrounded and killed by the party and their summoned army:
On the left, Diarmid pops up and is immediately swarmed by the party (including Corey, who has re-buffed with oil of speed + cloud giant strength) as Semaj calls in a fire elemental, which we take down with wand of frost charges + arrows. At the same time, Grim Face, who has mostly been biding his time so far, makes his move against Semaj: He spell thrusts his only spell protection, which now allows Alesia with her magi katana to instantly interrupt any further spellcasting attempts with her Larloch's minor drains:
Diarmid dies rather quickly:
Alesia interrupts Semaj for a second time - thwarted by a super weak level 1 spell once again. Finally, the party, having dealt with Diarmid's skeleton, moves on towards the wizard and kills him:
Just for kicks, as Grim Face was biding his time, he had cast a greater malison towards the battlefield earlier on. This now comes into play in a rather funny way - the powerful bhaalspawn Sarevok gets paralyzed by our spirit wolves and is completely helpless as we take him down:
We start SoD with 245k experience, getting level ups for Enuhal, Grim Face (cleric) and Alesia (thief), thanks to playing all this in one mammoth session, leaving the game on alt+tab while cooking, eating etc. Not looking forward to sorting out my inventory in the big city.
Comments
Thanks! Glad you're enjoying the run
Lol. No textbooks, but there is a South Korean TV show.
I noticed that you and Grond0 both went with Malison -> Chaos in the Ducal Palace fight. Is that an established approach for party play in that encounter?
Previous posts (BG 1): Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Previous posts (SoA): Introduction
You know what I'm terrified of in Irenicus' dungeon? The trap damage on the first floor. I had some close calls here and still I seem to be completely unable to memorize which trap does what. Rather than doing something stupid, we decided to let Imoen tag along for now.
We prebuffed with Stoneskins, Shield (Daelat) and Strength + Armor (Imoen), killed the lightning mephit and let the summoned gibberlings run around in panic until they got out of sight. For the duegar group in the western corridor we used our first Skull Trap and finished with Magic Missile.
Imoen's MGoI helped us to dispatch the mineral mephit in the golem room. While trying to make the most of MGoI's duration, we also entered the laboratory where we took on the two mephits. The cost was Imoen's Stoneskin, which was now gone. Afterwards, Daelat's second Skull Trap managed to clear all the duegar guarding the passage to Rielev's room.
The narrow corridor leading to the sewage room is the perfect spot of Imoen's Lightning. We finish the remaining duegar with the Bhaalspawn Vampiric Touch and a backstab.
Before we could start taking down the otyugh we got chased by the smoke mephit coming in from the southern passage. Daelat's Chromatic Orb solved this problem for us.
The otyugh was taken care of by a combination of backstab (with Imoen using her quartstaff to keep safe distance) and Melf's.
Skull Trap No. 3 and 4, in tandem with our MMMs, allowed us to clear the duegar parties guarding Irenicus' room and the portal.
With both our spellbooks running dry, we decided not to linger on the first floor any longer - we collected the Klaw of Kazgaroth and Amulet of Metaspell Influence and proceeded to Ellesime's room. For some reason the alarm didn't go off and therefore we didn't have to bother with invisibility spells to avoid the security golems.
Daelat and Imoen each get a level-up and we now had Sunfire in our book.
On the other side of the portal we send Yoshimo on his way and decide to take a rest ahead of the mephit portal room. Our preparations included Imoen' Monster Summoning, Haste and MGoI, while Daelat was also running MMMs, MIs and II. Our plan was to split into two groups - Daelat would sabotage the two portals in the back and Imoen + summons would deal with the other two. Everything worked out fine except…
But our solid saves (with the Claw, II and ProEvil) and decent damage output pulled us through nevertheless.
Using the remaining MGoI time, Imoen rushes past the duelling assassin and mephit and tanks the salt mephit further down the hallway. Supported by the rest of our group, we're able to clear them easily.
The majority of the duegar group guarding the bridge make their saves against our opening Skull Trap and we have to retreat and finish them with Fireball (scroll).
Daelat then Sunfires the assassins blocking the exit.
With his protective buffs still running, we rush to the smithy to blast the two remaining duegar parties with Sunfire + Skull Trap + Fireball, finishing with our Bhaalspawn Vampiric Touch.
We released the doppelganger without fighting him and, seeing that our spellbooks were only semi-empty at that time, decided to return to the first floor to tackle Iliych. By using Monster Summoning, Web and Skull Traps, we managed to handle the main force in the library, while the mage was Webbed and shot down in the storage room.
Our remaining L1 spells were then used to blast the Cambion.
We returned the acorns and Imoen also collected the Sword of Chaos, traversing the Elemental Plane of Air back and forth under stealth. With that we’re finally done and ready to step into Athkatla.
Regards,
B.
***
Spellbook (level 10):
L1 - Blindness, Shield, Magic Missile, ProEvil, Chromatic Orb
L2 - Invisibility, MIs, Resist Fear, MAA
L3 - Skull Trap, MMMs, Remove Magic
L4 - II, Stoneskin
L5 - Sunfire
Answer in spoilers - don't peek if you're still having fun guessing:
I've just completed BGEE in that attempt, with Sarevok once more on the wrong end of a 2-handed sword.
As this is more in the nature of a test run, I've abandoned many of the restrictions used in the original. Changes include:
- allowing Neera to join briefly (that seems to be the only way to get the gem bag in this installation).
- maximum HPs.
- not requiring full exploration.
- allowing use of potions to help spell learning.
- allowing the use of Algernon's Cloak (though in fact I only ever actually used it passively for the charisma bonus).
Of course though, I still couldn't sink to the depths of allowing healing potions or antidotes
I was skipping a lot of encounters in order to get back into BG2EE quickly, so only transferred with 121k XP each. Experience gains in BG2EE come pretty quickly though, so hopefully it won't be too long before I feel ready to try my luck again with those interfering mages ...
It's a pretty typical approach nowadays - I do it all the time. It doesn't win the fight by itself unless you get lucky, but it has a decent shot of effectively neutralizing a few opponents for very little cost - though I think that the avatar party, with true sight and insect plague available, should have no trouble in the coronation battle either way.
@Grond0 Good luck getting your vengeance - if you succeed, I hope you continue that run
Previous posts (BG 1): Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Previous posts (SoA): Introduction, 8
Just a quick update from the Promenade:
After Jon and Imoen are taken by the Cowled Wizards, we sell the accumulated loot and rest at the Den of the Seven Vales before entering the circus tent. At that stage we postponed any significant purchases until we can get the Ring of Human Influence (the exception being a single PoI from Ribald),
The orcs in the entrance hall are dealt with by a combination of Skull Trap + 2x Chromatic Orb.
For Kalah, we prepared with MMMs, Resist Fear (which I like to run out of habit, despite the fact that Kalah is an Illusionist and so we were not expecting any Horrors to fly around), ProEvil, MIs and II on top of our Stoneskin and Shield.
Sensing our presence, Kalah opened with a divination cast the moment we entered the room. Daelat decided to counter with Sunfire, hoping for a quick win. That didn't work out for a number of reasons - Kalah finished his detection spell first (dispelling our II), which in turn fired off his Fire Shield: Red (in addition to MIs and MGoI) before our Sunfire could struck. Last but not least he also made his save vs. spell that further mitigated the damage.
Daelat finishes the werewolf illusion with a single meteor and waits for Kalah's next action. He successfully hits us with Slow, which we counter with Oil of Speed.
We use the round to shoot down the remaining Shadow with MMMs and refresh our II.
With no further divination magic to dispel our invisibility, we wait couple of rounds for Kalah's MGoI to expire after which Daelat hits him with Skull Trap and meteors. Eventually, the might Kalah spells out his own doom by going big on Ice Storm.
We collect the Girdle of Piercing and other loot, accept a parting gift from Aerie in the form of her Traveller's Robe and report to the guard. Daelat also gets enough XP to level up - apart from providing a significant boost to our L2-L5 spells, level 11 also provides us with additional saving throw bonuses (with our unbuffed save vs. spell now sitting at 4, taking into account the bonuses granted by the Claw and RoP +1).
For the record, here's Daelat's inventory after a tiny bit of shopping in the Adventurer's Mart.
We're off to the Slums.
Regards,
B.
***
Spellbook (level 11):
L1 - Blindness, Shield, Magic Missile, ProEvil, Chromatic Orb
L2 - Invisibility, MIs, Resist Fear, MAA, Blur
L3 - Skull Trap, MMMs, Remove Magic, Spell Thrust
L4 - II, Stoneskin, Teleport Field
L5 - Sunfire, Spell Immunity
Speaking of backstabs, here's an oldie but goodie from my BioWare forum days.
2422 Is a hardcoded limit, it seems, although you can do better via the insane double damage modifier. In that case you can reach 4844. This is in a classic install, ofc.
Cheers,
A.
The Cowleds are gangsters. The license fee is a racket. When they murdered me in a temple they went too far. Athkatla demands justice!
Best,
A.
Noted!
Thanks for sharing, @Grond0 and @Enuhal ! I appreciate it!
Cheers,
A.
Ouchy
I have discovered that if you cause Shoal to attack a cleric and time sanctuary correctly to come into effect at the same time as the kiss, you survive comfortably. I've only done it once so I don't know how reliable this tactic is.
Journal of Sprach the Half-orc Berserker and his cohort Magitho.
We investigaated the cave near Lathander's Temple.
We then killed Karlat before clearing the ankheg nest.
We then hunted sirines.
Taking on the flesh golems was tough.
At Beregost we killed Silke.
We then killed the wolves near the temple.
Killing Mutamin, the medusae and the basilisks was easy.
Recharging the necklace of missiles and wand of fire made us poor.
I felt that Dracandros deserved seeing to, as being caught between him and the Cowled Wizards was partly responsible for our problems in the previous run. Alesia essentially did the work for his group, using a mixture of traps and backstabs. No buffing for the backstabs I'm afraid @Borco, but a nice clean one-shot for Dracandros.
After another hour waiting for more buffs to expire, Corey attempted to dispel her from out of sight range - but failed. No surprise there of course as I think she's a L30 necromancer in SCS
I'd say justice is served
Previous posts (BG 1): Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Previous posts (SoA): Introduction, 8, 9
After paying a visit to Gaelan we find ourselves sipping dry cider in the Copper Coronet, contemplating our next move. Drinks before work, as it should be.
It's time to take a look around. Daelat doesn't take kindly to thuggish bouncers telling him where he can or cannot go.
There's more. We didn’t enjoy this gladiator stuff at all.
We wanted to talk to the manager. Running Stoneskin, Shield, Blur, MIs, II, Daelat covered the cells with a Teleport Field and approached the Beastmaster with our customer complaint. Since he did not listen, we had to file formal appeal in the form of a Skull Trap.
Backing up from the cells a bit, we shoot down the gibberlings with MMMs and shake off the stalking panther by casting Invisibility. Upon hitting the main group with another Skull Trap, Daelat finishes the Beastmaster with Meteors.
Finally the strangles are cleared with Sunfire.
It seems that Hendak had rather similar feelings regarding the quality of services here.
We take the Gloves of Pickpocketing, blast Llynis with our L1 and L2 spells and rest. Time to move on to the sewers - Fireball (scroll) flies off to dilute the hobgoblin band near the entrance. The surviving shaman is finished with Vampiric Touch, but we decide to leave the captain as is - he has good HP, but otherwise is harmless, so he can just tag along until he'd get caught in a crossfire elsewhere.
The poor kobolds are subjected to Skull Trap + Sunfire combo (note that the said hobgoblin captain is still alive).
Daelat then lures the otyugh away from the jellies upstairs and eventually brings him down upstairs.
Recasting II allows us to retrieve the hand undetected (and also get rid of the pesky hobgoblin captain). Walking around the traps Daelat then kills the carrion crawler MMMs and obtains Lilarcol, while a single Sunfire clears the second hobgoblin party in its entirety.
We take another nap under Invisibility and prepare for the slaver boat with our core protective buffs (Stoneskin, Shield, Resist Fear, Blur, ProEvil, MIs and II). We weight the pros and cons of running SI: D at the cost of losing one Sunfire cast and decide against it - we should be able to take out the priest before he can hope to dispel our illusions. His offensive spells would be countered by our II (e.g. Flame Strike or Hold Person*) or negative saving throws (e.g. Greater Command**) and we're not concerned about Unholy Blight either since we're neutral.
*Despite passing through MSD due to having a small AoE effect, as rightly pointed out by @jmerry , enemies still cannot target invisible creatures with it.
**Interestingly, SCS Spirit Trolls in my install seem to be unable to use their Greater Command against Improved Invisibility, even though enemy priests can.
Upon entering the boat, we hide into the corner and lay down a telefield. This is followed by an opening Skull Trap towards the priest's direction.
He's taken down before the round's end with our MMMs.
With Haegan staying outside the teleport, we try to hit him with Blindness. Success.
Daelat follows with MMA, Skull Trap and Sunfires, finally taking Haegan down.
One final Sunfire + Chromatic Orb to finish the remaining slavers.
For the trolls we set up another telefield, use the single charge Wand of Monster Summoning (from Irenicus' dungeon) and shoot them down with MMMs.
Too scared of the acid blob and Prismatic Spray traps, we decide not to push forward and simply report back to Hendak.
Regards,
B.
***
Spellbook (level 11):
L1 - Blindness, Shield, Magic Missile, ProEvil, Chromatic Orb
L2 - Invisibility, MIs, Resist Fear, MAA, Blur
L3 - Skull Trap, MMMs, Remove Magic, Spell Thrust
L4 - II, Stoneskin, Teleport Field
L5 - Sunfire, Spell Immunity
By the way, did you know that this feller rocks a whooping 22 STR score? I didn't.
No indeed - but I guess the stronger they are the harder they fall
Previous posts (BG 1): Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Previous posts (SoA): Introduction, 8, 9, 10
With not much to buy in the Slums apart from the Glasses of Identification, we decide to visit the Government District to get the spellcasting license from the Cowled Wizards. We've heard terrible stories of how their enforcers deal with the slightest non-compliance, including of the recent massacre of a certain mage/thief in the Temple of Helm in the Bridge District. Seriously, in a temple?! The audacity of that! However, with enough problems on our plate as it is, we'll play by their rules. For now.
Our night stroll in the park here was interrupted by the second Shadow Thieves encounter and we got attacked by the two dominated rogues. Sunfire + Remove Magic + MAA was sufficient to deal with the threat.
On our way to the Bridge District we are ambushed by Suna Seni. Taking advantage of our invisibility, we move out of the party's range, quaff an Oil of Speed and set-up our defences including SI: A and a telefield.
Daelat then opens with Sunfire in the midst of the enemy - the cleric and the rouge fall immediately.
The two warriors are shot down with MMMs in the next round. Only Suna (now under the effect of her own Oil of Speed) and the invisible mage remain.
I suppose it must have been hard for Suna to find out that her trusty magical sword does not protect against the teleportation effect, which effectively eliminated her entire APR advantage. Still, the fight was not won yet and Daelat had to make a save against the mage's Slow.
Looking at the screenshots in retrospect, I immediately notice that we're not running ProEvil - I must have either cancelled the casting by accident or ignored it altogether (which I don't find very probable, but who knows). What an amateur move. This means that our effective save vs. spell at the time would be -1. Nevertheless, we managed to shoot Suna Seni down with our remaining Meteors just in time before the mage finished her Confusion cast.
Unless she's an enchanter we're guaranteed to make our save with 1, although at that point I realized that I had simply taken the assumption that she's not high enough level to be casting Chaos without checking, which I now see as quite reckless. From now on, we will be adding SI: E into our buff routine whenever appropriate and/or viable, unless and until we can get our saves into the Chaos safe zone (our plan is to pick up GoI down the road, as either 2nd or 3rd L6 pick, as a counter against Greater Malison).
We finished the mage with Sunfires, moved on to the Bridge District to solve the skinner murders (without confronting any of the enemies in the Rejiek's house) and then continued to the Graveyard Distric to return Mr Littleman. During the subsequent encounter with Renfeld we managed to at least partly rectify the mistakes from the previous ambush, in particular by incorporating ProEvil and SI:E into our defences.
These become largely irrelevant when the mage is killed by our opening Skull Trap.
Chromatic Orb for the fighter thug.
And Sunfires for the PoI-quaffing and hasted rouge.
We collected Renfeld and are on our way to the Docks.
Regards,
B.
***
Spellbook (level 11):
L1 - Blindness, Shield, Magic Missile, ProEvil, Chromatic Orb
L2 - Invisibility, MIs, Resist Fear, MAA, Blur
L3 - Skull Trap, MMMs, Remove Magic, Spell Thrust
L4 - II, Stoneskin, Teleport Field
L5 - Sunfire, Spell Immunity
We headed towards the Gnoll Stronghold killing many evil people along the way.
After looting a cave at the stronghold we returned to the ankheg nest and wiped out many ankhegs, getting badly hurt ourselves in the processs.
When I reached level 7 I dual classed to a cleric.
I am now wandering the coast picking up easy experience wherever I can find it until I am able to cast at least some useful spells.
The problem is that most of the available experience also boosts reputation. Dorn would not be happy about that!
All right! Time for TotSC!
We start off on Balduran's Island, talk to the locals, move north, summon some wolves and skeletons, equip magical arrows and bullets and clear the wilderness, going for a peaceful solution with the sirens. Corey is the first to enter the shipwreck (with the ring of freedom on due to vampire wolves), the others follow and start buffing up.
On to level 4. We clear the spiders, answer a few riddles and drink potions of freedom on everyone for the southern part of the map, to avoid even the chance of any mishaps:
Sarevok: We buff up with a ton of stuff (no magic shielding this time, we'r down to only one of thse, but we add fortitude). First move is for Grond0 to hit Sarevok with a dispelling arrow to remove his haste:
Nice use of Laroch's in the Sarevok fight!