I've been suffering a bit with restartitis recently, with current runs on pause including a cleric/illusionist sitting in BG2EE and a priest of Talos in SoD. I've also got my second Avatars run in BG2EE that I could potentially continue after dealing with the Cowled Wizards, though that wasn't really intended as a full run. All of those runs involve quite a bit of spell casting though and I don't really fancy doing more of that at the moment. Instead I decided to have yet another go at a shaman. "Hang on" I hear the more awake of you saying, "I thought you didn't want to do any spell casting". Well indeed, so (at least in BGEE), I won't allow any use of shaman spells.
Things got off to a good start with a pair of snakes gobbling Shoal down to give me 18 HPs for a couple of levels.
I decided to reduce reputation to get evil Bhaal powers to start with - that was bad news for Algernon. After learning LMD in Nashkel I went back to Beregost and bought 10 +1 bullets. The second golem still had 2 HPs when those ran out, so I relied on the spirits to finish it off. One problem with using those is that there's a significant delay before they first start attacking - meaning the golem is extremely likely to kill them before they even attack it. As a result I did a little bit of running around and presented myself as a target in order to allow a fox to do its dirty work. That XP took me to L4 and the good start continued with another 10 HPs.
Following Korax round Mutamin and his basilisks gained me 1 more level, with 9 more HPs.
Without spell use my chances against Kirian seemed limited and I just shot Korax down myself rather than lose his XP to that party.
I wasn't far from another level and shooting an ogre for its belt collection, then returning a bowl to Tenya did the trick - and 10 more HPs continued the good luck so far.
Getting to level 6 provides a considerable upgrade in the quality of spirit summons and they worked their way through plenty of ankhegs reasonably quickly. The typical tactics were to summon a couple of spirits before turning off dancing (just after a check on whether dancing is taking place), moving into sight of an ankheg and moving back past the summons before turning dancing back on (before the next check in the following round). An alternative method was to start just below or to the right, out of sight of the ankheg, so that the spirit when it appeared would be in sight of it.
Once more I was close to a level. Therefore, while going to return a ring to Mad Arcand, I pulled away some of the ogre clan into waiting spirits - the excellent run continued with 10 more HPs.
While ankhegs are pretty easy for spirits, battle horrors are a real problem. Even the major animals need a 20 to hit, while the spirits go down quicker than they can normally be replaced - meaning most battles have to be reset many times to get a kill. I tried for a while against the first battle horror on the path, but eventually gave up and left.
At the Nashkel Mine I played safe with Mulahey and shot him down without allowing him to talk.
For the amazons, Telka was pulled away and shot, but Lamalha had come close behind her and I didn't have any spirits ready. LMD disrupted her first spell though and allowed me to retreat out of sight and start dancing.
Spirits dealt with the other 2 without any problem. I cleared the remainder of the area, including Narcillicus and his jellies.
Then it was back to Nashkel, where spirits absorbed most of Nimbul's magic missiles.
For something different, Tranzig died from a poison dart.
Before going on to the Bandit Camp I decided to get another level from the sirines at the Lighthouse. Getting spirits into position where they could see a sirine, but the sirines couldn't see me, allowed them to absorb charms and poison arrows. The disadvantage of that is losing out on valuable arrows, but I decided not to be a Scrooge this time.
The level was worth 7 more HPs - not bad, though a bit of a come down in the context of this run, which had featured all 9s and 10s up to then. The other sirines and the golems were duly munched up by spirits and I acquired the constitution tome to activate regeneration.
Thanks everyone for your kind words. Here's the prologue of SoD:
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XI
A taste of things to come in SoD - the first group we encounter immediately gets wiped out by 5 fireballs:
For SoD purposes, this is insane without extra damage, so we get the big spawns and powerful enemies. We can't take any half-hearted measures here. The party ventures downstairs and it's time for another Grond0 solo mission. PfU scroll, cloud giant strength, heroism, oil of speed. Take out the bonebats first, after the shadowed souls of course - they can see through invisibility, and once they're gone, Alesia can join in and disarm traps:
Once we get to the shadows, Grim Face sends in a skeleton warrior to draw out the invisible wraiths and greater shadows, so Grond0 can take them down as well and they won't ambush our party:
Alesia gets a bit too far ahead in her disarming quest and meets a bonebat beyond the next group of humanoids, so a few undead join the fight as the party comes together again to firebomb these guys:
After disarming all remaining traps, we buff up and summon for Korlasz. The fight is simple - throw down 5 fireballs for her allies, punch through her stoneskins before she can do anything dangerous:
Finally, we have one last big undead fight left without summons or PfU, the angry spirits/unsleeping guardian/greater shadow/wraith-group upstairs - we use slow to great effect and manage to avoid any level drains (though we had bought scrolls of restoration, raise dead and CC from the flaming fist healer earlier on just in case):
Back to the big city. We sort our inventory and thwart the drow robbery attempt using insect plague:
Downstairs, we sell all of the gems we had started saving up since late BG1 to compensate for losing all of our money:
We buy the bracers of AC5 for Grim Face, obtain a few scrolls and do all the minor sidequests in the city. With the permanent bless necklace in our bags, we finally leave and go for scroll learning session Nr. 3 after taking Viconia's circlet for Alesia and buying the flaming fist buckler for Enuhal. Now, our spellbooks are fairly versatile.
Trio 51 Update 6
Corecleric XX - halfling priest of lothander, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Swazi - half-elf mage (Grond0)
Betson - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
So Betson mentioned he was carrying a bear. So we headed to the graveyard and returned the bear. Corecleric also rested to beat up some grave robbers - that's our job! We also helped a little girl get a home here and failed to kill the zombie who took down the guy complaining about burying his uncle (Ned).
Then we headed to the Docks but got an ambush. Corecleric did RoAC improved invisibility and Betson got into the mage's face - Betson was rewarded for his aggression by taking a lightning bolt to the face - down he goes! (but not chunked)
So we resurrected Betson in the docks. While here we also tried to take on Prebek and Sansha. Grond0 was doing some buffs in a building (we don't yet have a magic license) and Betson couldn't wait and tried to go into the house with those mages. His stealth broke and he was seen! Swazi and Corecleric rush to Betson's defense. Swazi did a cloudkill which worked nicely.
We then did the Harper's quest. Using a knock scroll, we were able to get the charm helmet, not that anyone really needs it in this party. We looted the place and returned Xzar's "bird" to him. Corecleric attempted to command the assassin but the assassin was immune. Next we went into the local inn and took down Officer Dirth - Corecleric appreciates the armor upgrade.
Now Corecleric wanted the shield of harmony upgrade. So we attempted to go to Trademeet but got the Renfeld ambush. So we won that fight and returned the body. Finally we are on our way to Trademeet. Here, Swazi protected the party with PfP and also some skeletons were set into the genie's tent - easy victory the genies were destroyed. The Shield of Harmony was a welcome upgrade.
We really should deal with the slavers in the moored ship. Corecleric asked can we get in via the front door? Swazi reminded Corecleric we still don't have a magic license, so no can't use knock. Therefore, we went into the sewers and did the Lilacor quest. This went pretty smoothly with our skeleton distractions.
Everybody went invisible then entered the moored ship. We tried to take down the cleric as soon as possible. We did have one issue, Swazi and Betson got hurt so were keeping their distance. But for some reason they both didn't have any range weapons. But in any case this group of enemies was defeated. We carefully picked apart the next group of enemies, but Swazi got seen by the other slaver group, but fortunately a cloudkill was pretty vicious to this group. We reported to Hendak our success.
Corecleric was asking how do we kill trolls. Grond0 suggested MMM but he needs to learn it first. And Corecleric can also do flame blade. So we headed to Waukeen's Promenade to get the MMM scroll for Swazi.
We then headed to Trademeet once again and then got the quest. We then headed to the druid group. The party did well, Swazi showed good restraint, waiting for Corecleric and Betson to do most of the damage, then the MMM's would finish off the trolls, though the flame blade was also used. Silence for first two group of druids was highly effective. Cloudkill solved the mushroom problem. A single summon distraction was enough for the final group of druids to be defeated. Cernd then took down Faldhorn and we reported to the Mayor of Trademeet our success and got some statues of the party commissioned.
We then cleared out a tomb of undead. Corecleric used turn undead here for the first time to push the enemies against the wall while Swazi and Betson picked them off.
We had just enough time for the party to go to Adventurer's Mart and get the Hill Giant Belt for Corecleric. Some undead scrolls were also purchased while here and saved our session here.
Checking character records at the start of the session showed that we still needed a couple more reputation points to maximise that. The archaeological site offered the chance to get those. Firstly Gulpo raged against the doomsayer. With the AC benefit from that, added to wearing the slashing girdle, the doomsayer struggled to get a hit in.
Then we hitched a lift with Brage back to Nashkel to complete the upgrade.
A bit of shopping followed before we headed to Durlag's Tower to get the tome and some more quick XP. Byrd used a potion of mirrored eyes there before heading out onto the roof to confront the lesser basilisk. However, he still went out under stealth in order to get the THAC0 benefit of that - so made sure to let his companion know what he was doing, so he did not become the target. A couple of rounds later and Byrd led the way onto the upper roof. Once more he was under stealth, but this time he hadn't said that (and he was now wearing the Cloak of Displacement that makes it impossible to tell just from looking whether stealth is active or not). Gulpo duly followed and the basilisks immediately perked up its ears (and eyes) and gazed at him. On my screen the gaze projectile looked pretty close to Gulpo when I paused the game and I was unsure whether the emergency mirror potion thrown to him would take effect in time.
However, it appeared to do so as no save was shown as rolled.
Next up was the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey had virtually no chance there and managed to reduce his odds further by being convinced we'd come from Tazok after our initial attack. A second attack saw him low on HPs and panicking, so that he didn't even manage to call for help.
The amazons provided more trouble than expected. Byrd stealthed to the shooters before Gulpo raged and attacked the casters. That all appeared to be going to plan, until Lamalha surprisingly switched targets from Gulpo to Byrd and successfully held him. By that stage Telka was dead, but Maneira was still there attacking Byrd so Gulpo had to deal with her quickly before turning on the clerics.
In Nashkel Gulp hacked down Nimbul under rage before we travelled back to Beregost. Tranzig as usual talked a good fight, but failed to put his promises into action.
At the Bandit Camp the archers scored a few hits as we worked our way eastward across the area. Progress was temporarily halted though when Taurgosz joined the fight and did pretty well one-on-one against Gulpo. That meant he had to switch to throwing axes and run round for a while. Byrd was throwing stunning darts, but it took more than a dozen of those before he got a hit - though that hit proved decisive.
Inside Tazok's tent Byrd sneaked in and led an attack on Venkt - successfully killing him before he could use horror. However, the others were hitting him (in his studded leather armor) pretty easily and he briefly left the tent and hid before coming back to help Gulpo finish things off.
In the Cloakwood, Gulpo headed for Centeol's lair in search of an upgrade for his 2-handed sword. Rage was sufficient there to triumph in a frontal assault.
Moving on to the mine area, Gulpo again played target man against Drasus & co. Byrd managed to stun Kysus at the start of the combat and Rezdan died before he could complete an attacking spell - allowing us a relatively comfortable victory.
There were no problems working down through the mine and the battle horrors were pulled back individually and meleed. Byrd initially expected Gulpo to tackle Davaeorn, but was persuaded that his faster weapon speed would be more effective and - after using a magic blocking potion - that proved to be so.
In the City there was another dangerous moment when we went into the sewers to tackle the ogre mage. Gulpo decided not to rage, on the basis that Spider's Bane would provide sufficient protection against the carrion crawlers. While that was certainly true, it provided no protection against confusion and both of us were affected by that . Fortunately Byrd ran off into open space, empty of enemies, rather than finding more crawlers to play with.
We picked up the Helm of Balduran before the final bit of work in the session saw us working through Degrodel's guards to find the mage. By the time we got to him we were a bit tetchy and not inclined to put up with any nonsense from a mage with inflated ideas of his own importance .
At the Coast Way Crossing, we immediately travel to the bridge and blow up the opposing force with 5 fireballs - well, not quite, two of their fighters survive - though near death and quickly taken down. We take our time exploring the area. Teleria is our next target - a quick true sight for her improved invisibility and other illusion buffs, and a barrage of attacks to punch through her stoneskins are all that's needed:
We quickly make our way south to take advantage of our buffs. Whenever I meet gargantuan spiders, I watch the combat log like a hawk and swap around rings of freedom:
After dealing with the menhir subquest and finding some of the lost items for a nearby halfling, we make our way to the Coast Way Forest, where we firebomb the group of orcs to the south (though they are so spread out that I end up having to fight quite a few of them directly - no trouble, because it's daytime, which means that I can go all out on spells because we need to rest for the vampire to show up anyway). We have to return to camp for a rest due to constant interruptions, and we travel to the nightly forest in order to buff up and face the vampire. Grond0 uses his rage to engage directly, the others attack from range with potions of clarity ready in case of domination attempts, but the vampire only tries his luck with the immune Grond0 before falling to our attacks:
On the way back to the crossing, we encounter the troll cave ambush map, where we use some acid arrows to finish most of the foes. Using Grond0's infravision, we make our way down into the second cavern and employ greater malison + slow to gain a huge advantage, affecting every single enemy and turning this into an easy fight:
We're only missing the dwarves of Dumathoin sidequest, so we enter the cave network and firebomb a bunch of undead and umberhulks (using a spirit animal to absorb the initial confusion attacks) before entering the Repository of Undeath. It's another Grond0 (mostly) solo mission, once again with PfU (two scrolls needed due to the first one timing out), cloud giant strength/heroism/speed. The first time Grond0 needs help is when dealing with the decidedly non-undead bronze sentry. Two spirit lions approach to help out:
We will need that sword in the troll claw woods later on. Well, I decide to use the lions in the big room with the secret door in order to lure out any invisible opponents (greater shadows and wraiths). While I do that, for some unknown reason, the Coldhearth cutscene triggers, but the fighting doesn't stop. During that cutscene, the undead get unusually active. Grond0, propably due to his proximity to the spirit lions, gets hit by the aura of fear effect from the mummy. Not a good idea to send the lions in together with our barbarian. However, what I can't see is how a wraith (with level drain) and a shadowed soul (with its usual magic damage attack) were able to directly hit him despite his PfU. Maybe the cutscene messed with the enemy AI or the PfU? Well, after the cutscene ended, enemies started behaving as expected again:
Grond0 ran around panicked for a few rounds before returning to the party. Grim Face used a restoration scroll to end the level drain, and soon it was back to our regularily scheduled bonebat killing:
Whenever nearby bonebats were gone, it was time for an invisible Alesia to swoop in and disarm traps. Meanwhile, some undead started wandering a bit too far, towards the party. However, they were easy enough to take down as they trickled in slowly and mostly just tried to attack Corey (usually I protect my party with invisibility 10' radius in the Repository, but I didn't bother this time around because that would've needed an additional rest and there are tons of bonebats around on insane anyway):
As Grond0 cleared the way to Coldhearth, he renewed his buffs. When entering the northern room, as he took out the bonebats, Alesia once again started to follow, but I didn't realize that she was no longer invisble (having helped out with the wandering undead earlier on) - she got ambushed by an invisible greater shadow, but Grond0 was able to throw her an invisbility potion just in time, saving her life:
We still had all of our buffs ready for Coldhearth. I waited until his pre-buffs went up, used "The Secret Revealed" to dispel them all and he was taken down right away:
A hasted Corey speedily delivered the phylactery to the plane of fire, the party returned to the surface and travelled to the Troll Claw Woods.
I'm sorry everyone, but my Avatar run has ended. Rustiness did my team in at the Ducal Palace, as I feared it would.
I failed to cast Insect Plague due to a misclick. I wasn't terribly concerned because I thought the mage had been confused by our Malison + Chaos combo, but as it turned out he was executing his sideroom -> Chaos maneuver. I used to be well acquainted with that threat but I forgot about it over the years. Most of my characters had been protected but Grond0, whose Rage had expired, succumbed, turning Liia and Belt hostile. That, of course, is game over.
I regret that the adventure ended so soon, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. And I'm glad that I got to reacquaint myself with the game surrounded by friends. Thanks for partaking in the run, @Corey_Russell, @Enuhal , @Grond0 , @Serg_BlackStrider . And thanks to everyone who followed. It was a pleasure and an honor. I look forward to playing again someday relatively soon. In the interim, best wishes to all the challengers. I'll be following along.
Shortly after returning Renfeld to the Harpers we find ourselves facing Prebek and Sanasha. Making sure that we're running SI:A and SI:E*, along with our other protections, the battle was easily won with Sunfires and Meteors.
*We could incorporate SI:D as well, but we decided against it, assuming that both mages are necromances with no access to divination school spells (I did not check, though). In a perfect world, we'd love to run SI:A, SI:E, SI:D and SI:C at all times, however resource management requires us to only use 2 or 3 SIs max. Therefore, at this particular stage of the game, we're having slight preference for SI:E to counter Malison and Chaos casts (with SI:A being treated as a must-have against dispels). With GoI, we'd eventually drop it in favor of SI:D, while SI:C would typically find its way into our buffs later on when facing higher level casters capable of throwing around various Power Words.
After completing Xzar's quest we had a funny encounter the Mad Priest of Cyric, which almost seemed like a scripted event in its authenticity.
Daelat reported the unfortunate demise of the member of his security to Renal, whom however seemed more interested in our capabilities of infiltrating Mae Var's guild. We took the job but only proceeded as far as stealing the necklace from the Temple of Talos. at which point in time we earned sufficient XP to reach level 12 and, consequently, L6 spells.
After that we returned briefly to the Slums to deal with the remaining slavers on the boat. Dealat opened the fight with a telefield (to get more space and avoid melee penalties when throwing MMMs), followed by a Skull Trap that blasted the gnome wizard.
Meteors for the melee grunts + Sunfire to finish the second mage.
And clean-up with L1 spells and Bhaalspawn Vampiric Touch.
We then paid to Gaelan the discounted price of 15k in return for the RoP +2 (which brings us closer to pushing our saving throws into the negative safe zone) and the Amluet of Power. Apparently, the transaction immediately became public as we had to quaff a PoI to avoid a vampire ambush just a few steps from Gaelan's house. Even though I'm not using the Improved Vampires component, facing them on their terms at this time felt too risky. To make the matters even worse, our retreat was almost thwarted by Habib Khalid Achmed Allafif and his mighty scimitar. Just joking…
After meeting Aran, our next destination was Trademeet. Travelling invisible, we got ambushed by some bandits and Orogs. Once again, our L5 spells pushed us through.
Having finally arrived, we started dealing with Trademeet's many problems by first removing Khan Zahraa. Unfortunately for the djinnis, their alternation magic did not provide them with many avenues to break through our PfMW-based defenses nor to avoid our Sunfires.
A bit surprisingly, I don't appear to have taken any screenshots at the Bandit Camp. When I couldn't find any initially, I thought I must have deleted them accidentally - but there doesn't seem to be anything relevant in my recycle bin. However, the bandits outside the tent were largely dealt with using spirits. More spirits waited outside Tazok's tent for me to nip in and out to entice enemies to follow.
In the second Cloakwood area I carefully killed all but the last ettercap before dancing up some spirits. I intended just to sight the ettercap before leaving the fight to the spirits, but in trying to bypass them activated the web trap - thus having to use the potion of freedom I'd done all the previous work to save.
At the mine I used Algernon's Cloak to pull Genthore away to his doom. Kysus was charmed next and his fireball killed Rezdan. He then cast a spell on himself, going hostile as a result, and spirits gobbled him up. I wasn't sure they would be able to do the same to Drasus - but they did.
In the mine, Bhaal horror allowed me to evade the ambush on the second level easily.
At the bottom the charmed guard and spirits were not sufficient to deal with one of the battle horrors. As a result I activated the second one and used a potion of firebreath to kill one - the second then just needed a single magic missile to finish it off. I annoyed Davaeorn with an oil of fiery burning and then set it up so spirits could attack him without him seeing me (spirits will disappear if they are out of your sight range, but are able to attack an enemy outside that range).
That got me my 9th and final level in BGEE, with just the 4 HPs being a disappointing finish. Before flooding the mine I rested to get a second Bhaal horror.
A quick tour of the realms completing mini-quests pushed reputation up to 20. I also picked up the charisma tome, getting 20 from that as well to get the best prices. A bit of shopping followed before I went to Baldur's Gate. I didn't do most of the encounters there, but just concentrated on those that provided some form of upgrades. A hail of poison darts against Ramazith provided an improved ring of protection and the intelligence tome.
The poison quest saw Marek scared, then poisoned himself (what's sauce for the goose ... ) to get me the wisdom tome and a bow as another alternative to sling and darts.
Finding Euric got me a second necklace of missiles (adding to one recently purchased at the Carnival). I used a number of wand charges to thin out Degrodel's guards before spirits finished the job on the way to pick up the Cloak of Balduran. I also remembered to pick up the violet potion from the Carnival and nip over to Durlag's Tower to get the tome there. The action in the City ended with an assault on the Iron Throne. Spirits were set up to ambush enemies following me between floors.
At Candlekeep I used a PfM scroll for protection while looting the tombs with the violet potion. For Prat I used an absorption potion in case of a bouncing lightning bolt, but disrupted those attempted spells anyway - I was happy to tank a scorcher he did manage to finish just before he died.
Back in Baldur's Gate, Slythe was shot with a dispelling arrow and finished off by spirits.
Then it was on to the Palace for the risky fight there. My first Bhaal horror affected one doppleganger and the second 2 more. In principle you would expect that to win the fight, but even while scared dopplegangers can still attack and did so effectively. Fortunately 2 of the dopplegangers attacked me. If they'd all gone for the dukes they would probably have been unstoppable as the last of them directly attacking Belt went down with Liia dead and Belt down to 20 HPs.
I used fireballs on the Undercity party before going to confront Sarevok. I avoided most risks there by using a PfM scroll before shooting Sarevok with a dispelling arrow. Semaj got the same treatment, but managed to survive long enough to teleport back to the dais and bring Angelo and Tazok into the battle. When Angelo used an exploding arrow that hit Tazok, I quickly took an invisibility potion and stood back while Tazok took his revenge.
Running and shooting then took down Tazok & Semaj and weakened Sarevok to the point that he couldn't stand a couple of LMDs.
@Alesia_BH That's a bummer, really, especially given how smoothly the run went so far. Condolences and thank you for sharing, I'm sure that all the others have enjoyed it very much as I did. Looking forward for your next adventures, should you be inclined to play again in the near future.
@Alesia_BH : Now that's a grieving news, I'm so sorry... While I have not yet posted even a single actual update, two other Avatars are out already... That's quite disencouraging
But it was surely a pleasure to follow your run and always a pleasure to have you alongside. I'm looking forward to see you playing again, sooner or later - doesn't matter at all
@Alesia_BH That's a bummer, really, especially given how smoothly the run went so far. Condolences and thank you for sharing, I'm sure that all the others have enjoyed it very much as I did. Looking forward for your next adventures, should you be inclined to play again in the near future.
Thanks, Borco
Things had gone smoothly until the Ducal Palace fight, but my execution was kind of awful behind the scenes. I was making mis-click errors left and right. I was also wasting rounds by failing to issue commands. I wasn't efficient at all.
My inefficient play didn't hinder me early on because I was fighting uncomplicated battles with a large margin of error. Further, my poor execution hadn't been coupled with any major knowledge mistakes. In the Ducal Palace fight, though, I made a major knowledge mistake while also executing poorly, and that fight does have a noticeably smaller margin for error. I figured this would happen at some point and I'm not surprised that it was at the palace. That fight is simple enough when you're familiar with it, less so when you aren't- doubly less so when you're playing at a average to below average execution level, as I am presently.
Once again, thanks for following, everyone! And best of luck to all the active challengers!
@Alesia_BH Oh no Sorry to see the end of your run. I'm certain you'll be able to return with a fresh character and avenge the avatars, though!
@Ignatius Thanks. The place is certainly extremely threatening if one itends to just straight up fight the various mixed groups of undead there. The only ways I feel comfortable approaching them (unless I'd rest and re-buff for every single group, which would be incredibly tedious) are either with protection from undead scrolls or with mass fireballs (multiple webs + rings of free action/spider's bane would work as well, I guess), and since I haven't used any of my PfU scrolls in BG1, there is no reason not to use them here, which eliminiates most of the danger. There's only one more group of undead in the game, after all (in Kanaglym - and I still have a scroll left for those).
At the Druid Grove, Daelat uses Invisibility to pass through undetected until he reaches the bridge guarded by the Shambling Mounds where he sets up a telefield and clears the enemies with MMMs and basic damage spells.
Similar tactics are employed against the group of grizzly bears, this time with the help of our new efreeti.
We rested until morning and prepared for Dalok and his druids. Our key tools here were II (against Insect Plague and other targeted spells) and Teleport Fields (to reduce the overall incoming APR from the fighter, shapeshifted forms and/or potential summons) in terms of defense and Sunfire, Skull Trap and meteors (mindful of Dalok's Physical Mirror) for offense, with a nice finishing touch by Chromatic Orb.
Enjoying Improved Invisibility pre-casted by Daelat, Cernd's able to overwhelm Faldorn with Insect Plague->Fire Elemental->Call Woodland Being->Cure Disease (to cure blindness caused by Nature's Beauty)->Greater Werewolf.
With that, we return to Trademeet to report our success, complete the side quests involving the mantle and the skindancers and purchase the Belt of Inertial Barrier and the Cloak of Displacement.
Back in Athkatla, Daelat hits the Graveyard District to obtain two helpful items from Pai'Na at the cost of one green ProPoison scroll (cast before facing the first spider group in the tombs).
In order to progress the business with MaeVar, we pay a visit to Rayic Gethras at Edwin's behest. We manage to clear the ground floor with Skull Trap despite the lack of an MGoI scroll in our supplies (which I typically like to run against the pesky elemental attacks from the mephits).
For Rayic himself, we set up our SI:A and SI:D immunities and open with MMMs, keeping our aura clear for now.
With his spellcasting interrupted, we quickly follow with Sunfire.
Magic Missile comes next after our meteors eat away his MSD (and since Rayic forgot to run Shield).
Overall, he gave us an easy victory.
We finish the remaining chores for both Edwin and MaeVar and return with the incriminating documents to Renal. Daelat is rewarded with a level-up - here's the character sheet for the record.
The most important indicator, save vs. spell, sits at 5 - switching the Ring of Human Influence for RoP +2 gets us to 3 and with II and Blur we'd normally get down to -2 (and -4 if we take into account the ProEvil bonus). In terms of new spells, Death Spell was taken as our second L6 pick - far from being the "ideal" candidate, the spell has its uses and, most importantly, it has style.
With our eyes already set on Umar Hills, I completely forgot to return to MaeVar's guild to finish the quest. We'll need to catch up with that later. For now, we decided to travel out the city once again, only to end up getting ambushed in the city proper by a large group of bandits with two mages amongst them. Taking advantage of our invisibility, we have plenty of the time to work on our regular set of buffs, including our brand new Fireshield: Blue and 3x SI (abjuration, enchantment and divination).
Opening Death Spell takes care of the three fighter-type brutes.
While the mages work on the abjuration spells, we scorch the two invisible rogues with Sunfire.
Another Sunfire eliminates the first mage.
After a longer standstill and playing hide and seek, Daelat finishes with Spell Thrust + low-level damage spells.
Sorry to hear that @Alesia_BH - doubly so after commenting earlier that I wouldn't expect trouble for the Avatars in that battle . That's the sort of situation where it's handy to have a Corey champing at the bit with an excuse to fire dispelling arrows at his companions ...
Sorry to hear that @Alesia_BH - doubly so after commenting earlier that I wouldn't expect trouble for the Avatars in that battle .
No worries, Grond0. Your analysis of the fight was sensible. You were just underestimating how bad I am right now, lol. I have a lot of relearning to do.
SoD is stuffed with magical items, so I decided to continue the policy adopted in BGEE of not allowing any use of shaman spells. In the opening dungeon, PfU was useful to allow me to get through to Korlasz. I made good use on the way of one ability the shaman has that I don't normally use much (the thief detect illusion) against invisible would-be backstabbers. On facing Korlasz I was intending to use the Ring of Energy to bypass her protections, but found I appeared not to have collected that in BGEE. Instead, I buffed up and used a dispelling arrow to make her vulnerable to fire damage from the wand of heavens. I think she would have surrendered after a second blast of that, but before she could do so an acid arrow ate through her replacement stoneskins to kill her.
That meant the rest of her crew were still fighting, but fireballs soon finished them off.
In Baldur's Gate, killing some NPCs for their equipment topped up the valuables carried there in my bags - giving me plenty of cash to buy everything useful.
With plenty of cash and XP, there was nothing really to gain from doing optional content on arrival at the Coastway Crossing. Therefore, I just used invisibility to avoid any conflict at the bridge. I also went through Troll Claw Woods invisibly, but on the way to the Forest of Wyrms found a group of orcs and trolls squabbling. I left them to fight amongst themselves, but did sneak into the cave to go and pick up the Firefly sling.
At the Forest of Wyrms I sneaked into the temple and went to find Ziatar with the aim of killing him from out of sight - only to find I'd made yet another mistake and not recharged my necklaces of missiles. Without using my own spells, that meant I didn't have enough firepower to avoid being sighted - in fact that caused no problem though as a first stunning dart pretty much sealed my victory, even given the belated entrance of guards intent on punishing the intruder.
I buffed to get negative saving throws before running past the Neothelid and going to use firebreath and wand of heavens on Akanna to get the wardstone.
I of course also couldn't resist throwing a single dagger at Morentherene on the way out.
There was another encounter with a green dragon on the way to Boareskyr Bridge. After telling me the location of a treasure hoard, that one tried to flap away - but didn't quite make it!
On arrival at Boareskyr I found I'd forgotten to release Keherrem and had to go all the way back to do that. That was a waste of invisibility potions, but the potion seller on the roof of the fort sells 20 of those (and there are hordes of them elsewhere as well), so wasting a few is not a great problem (I also had to use magic shielding to protect against the Neothelid still hanging around there). Back at Boareskyr, without summons, I didn't take the risk of trying to kill Vichand before he could alert the camp - but just intimidated him into handing over the scroll.
Inside the fort I restored its defences before getting some dragonscale armor made (that's a considerable upgrade for a shaman) along with some +3 bullets of darkness. That just left the mage on the bridge, but without the ring of energy he can be a pretty dangerous opponent. Fortunately I got lucky again and my first dispelling arrow connected - allowing firebreath potions to finish him off quickly.
Arriving at the Coalition Camp, I used the Spectacles to summon Nazramu to do a bit more shopping, including recharging my necklaces. After picking up the Bwoosh and poison I went invisibly through Dead Mans Pass to Dragonspear to rescue Skie. Then it was on to the Underground River where a potion of clarity provided protection while getting some summons from a group of myconids. Soft Feet ensured there was no danger from the web tangle of a gargantuan spider and I kept it at range to avoid its stunning attack.
The cyclops was stunned by one dart and half a dozen poison darts followed that I was hoping would kill it. However, its saves vs poison were good and it didn't get poisoned at all before the rest of the guards arrived. That meant a running fight to kill most of those before I was able to get the cyclops on its own again and finish the job.
After picking up the Seal I went invisibly to the underground entrance. I didn't do any fighting there, other than one shot to persuade the ettin ghost to talk before placing the Bwoosh. High charisma let me blag my way into the Warrens and I used invisibility to place the poison before waiting around for a true sight to prompt a conversation and reopen the lift.
Another invisibility potion then let me wander out unmolested.
Back at the Coalition Camp again, an enemy invasion was expected. I thought that would be no problem as I was carrying 97 arrows of detonation - far more than needed here. Unfortunately, while well supplied with arrows, I found I didn't appear to have a bow . I've no idea how I managed to lose the Eagle Bow - I guess at some point something being added to the inventory bumped that out. Oh well, the orcs and trolls were treated to firebreath potions instead. The same happened to the mages - there was considerable collateral damage there on the wizard slayers, but they seemed to regard that as all in a days work. I lost my buffs during that, so drank more potions before breathing on the clerics. Finally, there were just the leaders to deal with. Grimgor's resistances helped him survive the others, but once he came out from his sanctuary he was soon shot down.
Arriving at Dragonspear I used a scroll of PfM just to be on the safe side, but it once again took just a single dart to decide the contest against Ashatiel.
Inside the castle I bought a short bow from Belegarm before following Caelar into hell. Exploding arrows are still reasonably effective against devils, despite their fire resistance, and those were used to shoot down the first group. The second group had some stunning darts mixed in to reduce the pressure of numbers. Even without proficiency my speedy dagger was still pretty effective against the hellcat - allowing me to get hits in during the short periods it was visible.
After resting, I buffed up and took the Hellevator. Myconids were summoned there to help out, though I didn't need them and finished off the last group myself.
After that, I quickly used 6 Champion's Strength scrolls to buff before the lift reached its destination. As usual I got Caelar to join, but gave her no orders. Greater restoration scrolls kept Caelar going, while my bullets took a considerable toll of Belhifet - meaning I only needed to use 3 of the 20 scrolls I had available before the big guy went down.
There were no more mistakes in the epilogue and I transferred to Amn with 796k - enough to immediately get to level 12. For the time being I'll continue the run with not using any shaman spells, though I will probably change that later in the game - I don't think there would be a realistic chance of ultimate success on that basis.
@Borco Great progress, very convincing and cool tactical choices - looking forward to seeing you in later parts of the game when the enemy wizards really get going!
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XIII
Okay, so here's a basic problem with SoD gameplay, especially on insane: 90% of the time you're facing huge groups of enemies, often with quite a few very annoying abilities that will make your life a living hell if you just fight them in direct combat with an unbuffed party. Sadly, there is pretty much a clear "best" approach (by best I mean safest and least time-consuming) for the vast majority of these encounters, and it mostly comes down to throwing tons of fireballs at these enemy hordes. This is what I call "firebombing" - for this party, 3 necklaces of missles (easily re-chargeable, though I never recharge them until I reach the coalition camp) and 2 wands of fire. It does make for repetitive gameplay and kind of uninteresting no-reload reports.
For reference, here are the only encounters in SoD that I have done so far that wouldn't have been optimally solved either by firebombing or by using a PfU scroll. Korlasz (though firebombing removes half of the difficulty by killing all of her allies), the drow wizard at Sorcerous Sundries (who is super easy, as he's meant to be fought solo), Teleria (who stands around neutral, so she can easily be dealt with with any amount of preparation), the bronze sentry (uuuh, you actually have to use physical damage?), Coldhearth (though the entire potential difficulty of this encounter is solved by "The Secret Revealed") and I guess the vampire, who dies within seconds. Not a very long list.
Because I'm the only Avatar runner who's doing SoD, I decided to show a few alternative tactics in chapter 9, just to have a little bit of fun (I feel comfortable experimenting in SoD, because I have a lot of experience with it and it doesn't really get affected by SCS). By no means would I recommend some of the things I'm doing here.
At the Troll Claw Woods, the only group I actually fireballed were the ogres - they can be a little bit tough to kill, and I had neither summons or buffs up when encountering them yet. After that, Enuhal called in his fire elementals for the first time, which are notable immune to normal and +1 weapons, but trolls, which are quite common here, can hit them just fine. Still, they are decent enough fighters. I used them as blockers while clearing the eastern part of the map, with my party mostly enjoying ranged combat (got to make use of it before it gets nerfed in SoA). Eventually, I decided to send the elementals to deal with the group of hobgoblins in the center part of the map by themselves while making my way to the west (the hobgoblins can't do anything to hurt the elementals). I set up in the positon west of the troll cave, where there's only a super narrow pathway to go up for the trolls, easily blocked by one character, forcing them to awkwardly separate - a good setup for ranged fighters:
Inside the cave, I threw insect plague at the shaman, malison at the entire group (the spirit trolls from the east were kind enough to approach just in time to get hit as well) and slow on everyone:
Grond0 is enjoying use of the anti-troll sword from the bronze sentry - soon, enemy numbers were utterly decimated:
We used infravision to access the secret stash after taking out more spirit trolls and moved on to the Forest of Wyrms. The greater wyverns can be potentially dangerous, so we're banking on Corey's great AC. He also uses a protection from poison green scroll just to be safe. We use their weak AI to kite them around for a bit if he takes some damage, as they rarely change targets unless they get very close to another party member. In the spider cave, Alesia goes invisible to disarm all traps. Sending a spirit lion to the various smaller caverns gathers up almost all of the spiders here, and we make sure that everyone has free action (Spider's Bane, 2 rings, 2 potions). This is still a bit risky (because we haven't given everyone poison immunity), and throwing fireballs would be way easier, but we want to mess with their saving throws a bit, using malison, chant, recitation, following up with slow and chaos. The battle pretty much grinds to a halt, phase spiders are poisoning sword spiders, we still need many, many rounds to hack through this huge horde of enemies:
On the other hand, the rhino beetle is rather quickly shot down with arrows and bullets:
Here we also get Severance, Corey's main weapon for the remainder of the run. Nice!
We clear the remainder of the map and rest (we don't really need to in terms of spells, but we need to get rid of the potions of freedom for our next battle). Now, we could use throwing daggers to cheese Morentheren, but I'm sure a dragon battle would be more fun. Since the Temple of Bhaal contains some of the toughest fights in SoD, we decide to go for some long-lasting potion buffs we can make use of later - cloud giant strength, heroism, invulnerability, speed, agility, fortitude, defense, strength... also, now we really DO need protection from poison scrolls for everyone for both Morentherene and Ziatar. Well, we add our usual spell-based buffs and go in. The fight is kind of disappointingly quick. The dragon doesn't get to put up any meaningful resistance, only able to use one wing buffet which only hits Corey because I decided to split up my party for this very purpose - after that she's already dead:
We take down all of the wyverns she summons in on insane, but they aren't a threat with our buffs:
We rush through the bugbear cave, with only one minor incident - Alesia wanders a bit too far when looking for a trap to disarm and triggers it, so she's affected with feeblemind. Luckily, our greater restoration scrolls are able to heal her (though the feeblemind icon stays on her portrait for now - it will only disappear later when I cast dispel magic on her at Bridgefort):
The cultists are easy enough to take out, though I do use fireballs for a second time here against the ones in the room south of Ziatar (the cultist mage survives, Corey throws inquisitor dispel at him, which does the job, so we can shoot him down). We renew our 1 hour potions (invulnerability and speed) before facing Ziatar, who can't hurt us with her breath weapon due to our poison immunity, taking out most of the difficulty here:
Since the uptime on our potions is precious (and we want to them for the really dangerous battles yet to come here) we rush to the Neothelid, get annoyed that it stays underground for way too long, magic missle down one of the magical swords (Corey had used a potion of clarity to absorb the initial domination, btw) and kill it right away when it finally surfaces:
We leave the priestess and shadow aspect for now and rush to Darkshelin's group. This encounter has given me some trouble even on core rules, and is one of the only ones where fireballs are not the answer to everything - though they're still good, as they will propably get rid of all but maybe 3 or 4 enemies (though Darkshelin and the wizard will survive, and in my case one fighter and one archer):
Crucially, I presented this group with a spirit lion as a sacrifice at the beginning, to draw out psionic blast and a few other dangerous abilities. Grond0's rage served as protection against Darkshelin's mind flayer abilities, the wizard was able to throw down a slow spell before his death, but Corey was able to divert it away from the party and made his saving throw. All in all, this went rather well, but no time to rest - we need to face the Shadow Aspect (though new strength potions - fire giant this time - and heroism are in order, as they ran out). The Shadow Aspect is propably the most dangerous enemy on insane SoD, due to his abuse of hasted mislead backstabbing (which he doesn't do on core) and the fact that he will renew his mislead regularily - unless you have true sight, which totally counters his abilities. Luckily, we have an inquisitor (though any single class divine spellcaster should have a spellslot for it at this point). This doesn't mean that he's completely harmless - he's still likely to get at least one backstab before getting dispelled, which is why we send in a summon first, which immediately gets one-shot, showing how deadly this enemy could be and why he decimated my party in seconds the first time I ever encountered him on this difficulty level:
Luckily, with all of our buffs, we have the damage to kill it before it can renew mislead - otherwise, there would be real danger of a couple of deadly backstabs until true sight would trigger again:
There is one more dangerous enemy here - the priestess, who isn't trouble by herself, but her 2 invisible aerial servants can hurt. Luckily, we have stoneskins on all vulnerable characters, and the others have lots of hitpoints + true sight, so they can't bother us all that much at this point:
We move on to Bridgefort. I revert back to a little bit of forebombing for the hobgoblins and goblins here because they have super low hitpoints, are very clustered up, can be annoying with their masses of archers - in short, the game really wants me to do this. After crafting a dragon scale shield for Enuhal (and a few other purchases) we move on to the crusader camp, where Alesia assassinates Vichand with a backstab, finally making use of her staff of striking:
After destroying the wraith and forging some void-tipped arrows, we return to the woods and go on to assault the crusaders together with the flaming fist. Without fireballs, I am well-advised to make use of the full power of our summons here, with 2 fire elementals and 3 spirit lions. They constitute an almost unbeatable front line (though the elementals sometimes get crowd controlled - one is confused by chaos for a short time, one is feared until I cast remove fear on it):
With our line of sight blocked by a darkness spell, we miss an approaching crusader wizard who throws a fireball at us, but the damage is quickly countered with healing potions:
The named wizards don't live up to the power level I'm used from them this time around. Oloneiros doesn't even make it until our insect plague arrives:
Now it's just about not letting the bridge get blown up, which we can handily avoid by not using any fireballs and interrupting the mage summoning the portal to the fire plane with "The Victor":
Because I'm close to the experience cap and I once again want to finish the game from that point onwards in one big session, I play a little bit further, doing the coalition camp sidequests (using a potion of persuasion on Enuhal here - crucial, because the game will only count the charisma of your bhaalspawn and some of these quests are very charisma-dependent), and we meet a certain shadowy figure (where firebombing is literally the only safe approach I know of other than just leaving the area because it's a no-magic zone, but item charges do work):
Entering Bloodbark Grove, we buy some clarity potions from the druid merchant just to drink them all for the vampire here (no use for any further gold, having summoned and sold to the genie merchant in the coalition camp):
The remaining area was easy enough to clear, we had to kite the shambling mound around for a while though and lost our haste buff when fighting the skeletons, but that wasn't nearly enough to stop us. Finall, we cleared around half of the Dead Man's Pass. We reverted back to firebombing for a few groups here (once again a pack of ogres, for example - also the orogs, because there are just that many of them) and made it to the eastern cellar before using our spectacles on the nearby tiefling. We're constantly using some kind of strength potion on our fighters now, because we have enough of them to last for the rest of the game. Grond0 has to go in deep to absorb level drain attacks while our wizards take down any momentum the enemy might have with malison + slow:
Grond0 gets drained down to strength 13, but we don't get level drained, so that's a plus. Shortly after that, we're too close to the experience cap for me to continue, so that's it for now.
Ok, everyone! I've decided to start another run. Meet Ayla, halfling thief!
Proficiencies: Quarterstaffs, Shortbows
Inventory at Level 2
Mods: SCS 34.3, Ascension, G3 Fixpack- FreeAction Protects Against Stun
Difficulty: Tactical
Gaming Notes: I chose Ayla with the intent of rebuilding my BG skill set, starting with the fundamentals. Ayala with have a concise but effective tactical toolkit. Her success will depend less on creativity and more on execution. That's exactly what rusty little me needs right now. I need to master the simple stuff again. If I do that the rest will follow- I'm sure of it. The Avatars were fun. They were a great way to reacquaint myself with the community. Ayla's job is to get my tactics back up to speed.
RP Notes: Ayla isn't a fully fleshed out character, atm, since she's basically a learning tool. If she sticks around I'll give her a backstory and such. I hope that happens. Wish her luck!
@Alesia_BH : I wish Ayla not to rely on Lady Luck (a rather whimsical and jealous person) but to do her job in getting your tactics back perfectly, honing her (and your) skills consistently and persistently!
I didn't use spirits at all in SoD, but they were back in force in Jon's dungeon - with the increased numbers and power given at level 12. Unlike in BGEE they cluster round the dancing shaman if no enemies are visible. That does make it a lot easier to move them around different groups of enemies, but can be rather annoying when they start bumping you around - potentially moving you into sight of enemies you're trying to keep away from. I shot at Ulvaryl from a bit too far away and, when she was taken to near death, I couldn't get to her to use the firebreath potion before she changed to bat form and switched targets to the mage assassin.
At the Promenade I donated at the temple to raise reputation to 15. Without using spells I was much more vulnerable so bought the Ring of Air Control - that still left me enough to get the Glasses of Identification after reporting in to Gaelan Bayle. Then it was on to the Copper Coronet. I warmed up there by taking on Amalas. He got a couple of licks in initially, but once spirits started to appear he was toast.
I used a corner to summon spirits in sight of one of the mage guards, while the other failed to save against horror - he still tried to cast spells, but failed.
More spirits then worked their way through the Beastmaster and his pets - providing me a decent short bow.
With my vulnerability to spells, I decided to leave the slaver ship for now. Instead I went to the Graveyard and used spirits to help clear the tombs. For the Crypt King I skipped in and out of his tomb to avoid his horror before setting spirits up using improved invisibility to summon one before being attacked. The spirits took him to near death before he managed to clear them and I finished him off myself rather than try to re-establish spirits.
With my inventory full, I headed for the Promenade to sell stuff - but realized that was a mistake too late when the Suna Seni ambush triggered - I had used the RoAC and was able to kill the enemies, but not carry their gear away. Back at the Graveyard I dived underground, where dealing with various spider-kin got me to level 13.
Pai'Na's equipment provided me with my first standard summons, for occasions when there wasn't time to start dancing - or at least it should have done (I was so busy making my notes that I forgot to pick up Kitthix ).
The Undead in the Southern Tombs were tricky and I got drained by the vampyre at one point. With a real threat of domination from him as well as level drain I decided to leave those for a while.
On my way to the City Gates I came across the Renfeld ambush. For once I didn't use spirits there, but Bhaal horror helped bring the mage out and bullets struck him before he could complete any spells.
After returning Renfeld, I hopped in and out of Prebek's house to waste his spells before summoning spirits to finish off him and Sanasha.
I then looted the Harper building, but had no way to take revenge on Lucette for the murder of Xzar.
After a quick detour to Watcher's Keep to get the potion case, I went on to Trademeet. Summoning spirits from just beyond the sight range of Taquee got me the efreeti bottle - which this time I made sure I actually picked up before noting that I'd done so!
Back in Athkatla, Taquee absorbed backstabs from the Rune Assassins as they were pulled upstairs - allowing me time to dance up some summons to finish things off.
Then it was back to Trademeet to work my way through the Grove. I started off doing that with spirits, but there's a relatively low chance of getting fire spirits that can kill trolls to start with and those that do arrive have a nasty habit of switching targets as soon as a troll goes unconscious - so most of the troll killing ended up being done by the efreeti. It also produced a nicely directed lightning bolt to deal with the final group of druids.
Reporting back in Trademeet got me to level 14.
Saving Raissa for Tiris improved reputation and clearing the tomb got a bit more to take that to 19.
Then it was back to Athkatla to deal with the circus to hit the target of 20.
Purchasing the nymph cloak allowed me to buy other things at optimum prices - acquisitions included the necklace of missiles, Azuredge, Sling of Everard, AC3 bracers, Ring of Energy and Vhailor's Helm. That should make further progress rather easier for a while.
Shaman 14, 93 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 85 kills (+366 in BGEE/SoD)
Ayla, Halfling Thief: Candlekeep to the Nashkel Mines
Ayla followed a standard early game route. She went straight to the FAI via the Lion's Way and Coast Way, pausing only to lift goodies from the NPCs. She stealthed by Tarnesh, gave Bentley a high-five and then chugged south to Beregost. She made a couple temple donations while her rep was still low, and then completed the fetch quests in and around Beregost. Early item priorities included the Wand of Sleep, the Shield Amulet and a defensive potion set, including potion of invisibility, oil of speed, potion of clarity, potion of freedom, potion of mirror eyes, antidotes and healing potions. As basic as basic gets.
All went well, except the anti-chickenator failed. I cried. Is there a sorrow more sorrowful than a failed anti-chickenator? I ask you, weeping.
Once Ayla reached Level 3, she picked up a Pro Pet scroll and headed to Lizardville. Korax dropped Mutamin and I love him for it.
We left Lizardville at L6. After getting our lockpicking skill to 40 and our find traps to 80, we loaded into set traps, followed by stealth.
At this stage of the game Ayla won her substantive fights with backstabs and traps. She approached her enemies in the shadows, set her traps, went in for a backstab, and then retreated to her traps. If an enemy survived the traps, she finished with her bow. All the early game usual subjects were felled in the same way.
Groups of weaker foes were neutralized with the Wand of Sleep.
When finances allowed, we upgraded our weaponry, Aule's and a short bow +1. Adding Darts of Stunning to the kit pre-Greywolf allowed us to save Prism.
After reaching level 7 we picked up the Cloak of Displacement and the Greenstone Amulet in preparation for the mines. We stealthed by all the kobolds, except for the ones just prior to Mulahey. These blokes had to go to facilitate buffing in peace.
Our buffs were Shield, Potion of Strength, and Greenstone. Buffing outside gave us time to set a trap near the entrance for the minions. We opened with a backstab on Mulahey and followed with a Necklace of Missiles charge. That left Mulahey at badly injured with a broken moral. Only two minions remained.
Mulahey's wandering allowed us to slip away and set another trap.
And that is that: super easy, super simple. So far Ayla is getting the job done. I'm starting to feel at home in the game world again. May that trend continue.
@Alesia_BH : I wish Ayla not to rely on Lady Luck (a rather whimsical and jealous person) but to do her job in getting your tactics back perfectly, honing her (and your) skills consistently and persistently!
And so we've reached Imensvale and have been enjoying the fresh countryside air while searching for clues regarding the town's recent troubles. Our steps first lead us to the mimic's cave, where Daelat removes the two umber hulks with Death Spell.
Note: On top our negative saves we were running SI: E to confirm our assumption that it blocks umber hulks' Confusion ability. Seeing that the log showed our save vs. spell roll rather than "unaffected", I concluded that this is not the case. Eventually, in the event that their Confusion ability is classified as "schoolless" and thus carries the undocumented -2 save penalty, and provided that the default -2 penalty of the Confusion spell is applied as well, then Daelat could still fail his save in case he'd have rolled 1 (with his effective save vs. spell before the penalties sitting at -2 at the time). We might have been lucky there.
Against the mimic, we summoned our efreeti and buffed with MIs and PfNW (scroll), while Teleport Field and MMMs were used to protect Jermien from his golem.
After that we proceeded to the Temple Ruins. Weighting the tools at our disposal against we were about to be facing inside, we eventually decided to take the easy way out and applied a ProUndead scroll. The intention had been to use it only for the temple and not against the Share Lord himself, which would feel a bit too unfair (this being emphasized by the fact that I don't have the Improved Share Lord SCS component installed). With Oil of Speed and Potion of Mind Focusing on top of that, we're all set for a smooth meteor throwing session.
Not that we could deal with everything we'd encountered - with three bone golems closing on us at once, invisibility seemed like the best option.
Once the way to the surface was open we rested and prepared for the Shade Lord battle (with no intention of challenging Thaxii). Our buffs were: Potion of Mind Focusing, MMMs, Stoneskin, Shield, ProFear, Oil of Speed, Spell Shield, Blur, ProEvil, MI, Fireshield: Blue, II, PfNW (scroll), SI:A, SI:D and SI:C. Furthermore, we're relying on our Amulet of Power to block his Level Drain ability, even though we would still have to cope with its short-term blindness effect.
Daelat opens with meteors, targeting Shadow Patrick (note his crit with -20 penalty bouncing of our PfNW).
Our Sunfire goes off shortly after we're hit with the Shade Lord's Spellstrike that takes down our Spell Shield.
With only one remaining L5 spell left, we're considering our options. Sunfire is by far our most potent offensive tool, while recasting our Spell Shield would mitigate the risk of having our SIs removed by a subsequent Spellstrike. Contrary to the basic tenets of no-reloading, we decide that offense is going to be our best defense and omit the Spell Shield renewal.
Blinded by the Level Drain, we do not hesitate and pull the trigger on that second Sunfire. Those 47 points of damage against the Shade Lord as well as killing Shadow Patrick was worth it!
In the next round, we establish a telefield to give ourselves more breathing space and manage to finish the altar with our dagger.
Another hit from the Level Drain - this time we use our round to cast Fireshield: Red.
We call in the efreeti for the extra punch (mindful of Shade Lord's Spell Deflection).
PfMW + two Fireshields take care of the rest.
By reporting to the mayor and completing the side quest with Madulf we reach level 14 and earn our first L7 spell. With so many good options, it's been a tough choice. Eventually, we opt for Spell Sequencer, mainly because it will allow us to make more effective use of a single round (thus partly mitigating our main weakness) and also because it effectively provides us with more spells per day. Some local bandits have been unfortunate enough to take part in an experiment designed to test the potential of our new tool with 3x Skull Trap.
To wrap up the update, I'll note that from Imnesvale we returned to Athkatla to check what we can do with our spare money. Not much, it seems, so we decided to pick up Everard and some higher level scrolls. Browsing the scroll selection at various vendors also had the positive side effect of reminding me to summon Mr Rabbit, our familiar, which had not been with us since Baldur's Gate.
For the record, here's our inventory before heading out to the de'Arnise Keep.
Back at the Southern Tombs spirits chased away the vampyre while I was protected from domination by the Spear of the Unicorn - they didn't manage to kill it though. For the remaining undead there I took matters into my own hands and ran around using Azuredge.
On my way to find the kidnappers, the final vampire ambush triggered - I just let them go rather than trying to fight there. Collecting the kidnappers reward cost me 2 reputation, so I went to the slaver ship to recover that. The wizards there were dragged out of their front door to a position where they couldn't see me, but summoned spirits could see them. After beating up more guards inside I had to hang around for quite a while until damage taken (mainly the poison damage from the trap) had regenerated sufficiently to allow me to tank the acid blob trap. A couple of trolls later and I was finished there and reporting back to Hendak restored my reputation. I did subsequently clear out the underground passages leading to the slavers - picking up the Circlet of Lost Souls while doing that.
Deciding it was about time to improve my defences, I went to the Temple sewers to open up the route to the lich there. The rakshasa died to spirits on the way to provide me with an alternative cloak, featuring much quicker regeneration. Once the lich was available I used a PfU scroll and treated myself to an oil of speed to beat it up. A PfP scroll allowed me safe access to the lich at the Bridge District and DUHM helped me batter down the door to the City Gates lich. That lasted long enough to kill that lich and get me to the Docks to break down Kangaxx's door as well. After shooting up his lich form, the demi-lich was quickly cut down to size by the Ring of Energy.
Restoring the level drain from Kangaxx's trapped door showed up that I was now able to take level 15. I then got a further power upgrade by paying Gaelan Bayle off and going to fetch a +2 ring and the AoP.
Next up was the de'Arnise Hold. I found again there that spirits were not good at killing trolls. However, with my improved AC and regeneration I was now able to tank them pretty easily myself. Glaicus was a rather stronger proposition, so I matched his oil of speed with one of my own and shot him down. The golems were whittled down by spirits before I took on the umber hulks. I was lucky against the last of those which had been scared by horror earlier and turned up in an unexpected position. I was confused, but managed to win a battle against it anyway. TorGal then lost out in a fight with the efreeti. Reporting to Nalia got me to level 16.
With a surfeit of ammunition from the de'Arnise Hold, I returned to Watcher's Keep in search of an ammo container. There were no vampiric wraiths there, so clearing the top level should have been easy enough. I used the jelly shape from the Cloak of the Sewers to avoid danger from the FoD trap. I rarely use that, but that's probably partly because I got conditioned to avoid it in vanilla (when it only gave 10% MR, rather than 100%). Then I set up to shoot the Guardian Golems while they struggled to get through a doorway. I know I had correctly equipped the Sling of Everard as my initial shot hurt the first golem, before I ran back through the doorway. Once the golem was in position I attacked it again, before turning away from the computer to plug my phone in to charge. That only took perhaps 10 seconds, but that proved to be long enough to be greeted with the dreaded death screen when I turned back.
On occasion I've died in that sort of situation where a target has lost morale and moved its position as a result, but there wasn't time for that and I don't think golems are subject to morale checks anyway. There is though a clue to what happened in the screenshot, which shows a weapon ineffective message. The only explanation I can think of for that is that as I was stretching away from my computer I somehow pressed F2 and switched weapons from sling to club. That seems unlikely as an explanation to me, but following the Sherlock Holmes principle of looking at what's left after you've ruled everything else out my guess is that's what happened ...
Comments
I've been suffering a bit with restartitis recently, with current runs on pause including a cleric/illusionist sitting in BG2EE and a priest of Talos in SoD. I've also got my second Avatars run in BG2EE that I could potentially continue after dealing with the Cowled Wizards, though that wasn't really intended as a full run. All of those runs involve quite a bit of spell casting though and I don't really fancy doing more of that at the moment. Instead I decided to have yet another go at a shaman. "Hang on" I hear the more awake of you saying, "I thought you didn't want to do any spell casting". Well indeed, so (at least in BGEE), I won't allow any use of shaman spells.
Things got off to a good start with a pair of snakes gobbling Shoal down to give me 18 HPs for a couple of levels.
I wasn't far from another level and shooting an ogre for its belt collection, then returning a bowl to Tenya did the trick - and 10 more HPs continued the good luck so far.
Once more I was close to a level. Therefore, while going to return a ring to Mad Arcand, I pulled away some of the ogre clan into waiting spirits - the excellent run continued with 10 more HPs.
At the Nashkel Mine I played safe with Mulahey and shot him down without allowing him to talk.
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XI
A taste of things to come in SoD - the first group we encounter immediately gets wiped out by 5 fireballs:
Back to the big city. We sort our inventory and thwart the drow robbery attempt using insect plague:
Corecleric XX - halfling priest of lothander, protagonist (Corey_Russell)
Swazi - half-elf mage (Grond0)
Betson - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
So Betson mentioned he was carrying a bear. So we headed to the graveyard and returned the bear. Corecleric also rested to beat up some grave robbers - that's our job! We also helped a little girl get a home here and failed to kill the zombie who took down the guy complaining about burying his uncle (Ned).
Then we headed to the Docks but got an ambush. Corecleric did RoAC improved invisibility and Betson got into the mage's face - Betson was rewarded for his aggression by taking a lightning bolt to the face - down he goes! (but not chunked)
So we resurrected Betson in the docks. While here we also tried to take on Prebek and Sansha. Grond0 was doing some buffs in a building (we don't yet have a magic license) and Betson couldn't wait and tried to go into the house with those mages. His stealth broke and he was seen! Swazi and Corecleric rush to Betson's defense. Swazi did a cloudkill which worked nicely.
We then did the Harper's quest. Using a knock scroll, we were able to get the charm helmet, not that anyone really needs it in this party. We looted the place and returned Xzar's "bird" to him. Corecleric attempted to command the assassin but the assassin was immune. Next we went into the local inn and took down Officer Dirth - Corecleric appreciates the armor upgrade.
Now Corecleric wanted the shield of harmony upgrade. So we attempted to go to Trademeet but got the Renfeld ambush. So we won that fight and returned the body. Finally we are on our way to Trademeet. Here, Swazi protected the party with PfP and also some skeletons were set into the genie's tent - easy victory the genies were destroyed. The Shield of Harmony was a welcome upgrade.
We really should deal with the slavers in the moored ship. Corecleric asked can we get in via the front door? Swazi reminded Corecleric we still don't have a magic license, so no can't use knock. Therefore, we went into the sewers and did the Lilacor quest. This went pretty smoothly with our skeleton distractions.
Everybody went invisible then entered the moored ship. We tried to take down the cleric as soon as possible. We did have one issue, Swazi and Betson got hurt so were keeping their distance. But for some reason they both didn't have any range weapons. But in any case this group of enemies was defeated. We carefully picked apart the next group of enemies, but Swazi got seen by the other slaver group, but fortunately a cloudkill was pretty vicious to this group. We reported to Hendak our success.
Corecleric was asking how do we kill trolls. Grond0 suggested MMM but he needs to learn it first. And Corecleric can also do flame blade. So we headed to Waukeen's Promenade to get the MMM scroll for Swazi.
We then headed to Trademeet once again and then got the quest. We then headed to the druid group. The party did well, Swazi showed good restraint, waiting for Corecleric and Betson to do most of the damage, then the MMM's would finish off the trolls, though the flame blade was also used. Silence for first two group of druids was highly effective. Cloudkill solved the mushroom problem. A single summon distraction was enough for the final group of druids to be defeated. Cernd then took down Faldhorn and we reported to the Mayor of Trademeet our success and got some statues of the party commissioned.
We then cleared out a tomb of undead. Corecleric used turn undead here for the first time to push the enemies against the wall while Swazi and Betson picked them off.
We had just enough time for the party to go to Adventurer's Mart and get the Hill Giant Belt for Corecleric. Some undead scrolls were also purchased while here and saved our session here.
Byrd (male half-elf beast master, Grond0); Gulpo (male dwarf berserker, Gate70)
Previous updates
A bit of shopping followed before we headed to Durlag's Tower to get the tome and some more quick XP. Byrd used a potion of mirrored eyes there before heading out onto the roof to confront the lesser basilisk. However, he still went out under stealth in order to get the THAC0 benefit of that - so made sure to let his companion know what he was doing, so he did not become the target. A couple of rounds later and Byrd led the way onto the upper roof. Once more he was under stealth, but this time he hadn't said that (and he was now wearing the Cloak of Displacement that makes it impossible to tell just from looking whether stealth is active or not). Gulpo duly followed and the basilisks immediately perked up its ears (and eyes) and gazed at him. On my screen the gaze projectile looked pretty close to Gulpo when I paused the game and I was unsure whether the emergency mirror potion thrown to him would take effect in time.
Next up was the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey had virtually no chance there and managed to reduce his odds further by being convinced we'd come from Tazok after our initial attack. A second attack saw him low on HPs and panicking, so that he didn't even manage to call for help.
Berserker 7, 92 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 171 kills, 2 deaths
My crew has completed the return to Candlekeep. We're now hoovering up EXP in preparation for the end game.
I'll post a full update when we're ready to save the Dukes.
Best wishes, everyone!
A.
Meanwhile, here's the next chapter of SoD.
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XII
At the Coast Way Crossing, we immediately travel to the bridge and blow up the opposing force with 5 fireballs - well, not quite, two of their fighters survive - though near death and quickly taken down. We take our time exploring the area. Teleria is our next target - a quick true sight for her improved invisibility and other illusion buffs, and a barrage of attacks to punch through her stoneskins are all that's needed:
I'm sorry everyone, but my Avatar run has ended. Rustiness did my team in at the Ducal Palace, as I feared it would.
I failed to cast Insect Plague due to a misclick. I wasn't terribly concerned because I thought the mage had been confused by our Malison + Chaos combo, but as it turned out he was executing his sideroom -> Chaos maneuver. I used to be well acquainted with that threat but I forgot about it over the years. Most of my characters had been protected but Grond0, whose Rage had expired, succumbed, turning Liia and Belt hostile. That, of course, is game over.
I regret that the adventure ended so soon, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. And I'm glad that I got to reacquaint myself with the game surrounded by friends. Thanks for partaking in the run, @Corey_Russell, @Enuhal , @Grond0 , @Serg_BlackStrider . And thanks to everyone who followed. It was a pleasure and an honor. I look forward to playing again someday relatively soon. In the interim, best wishes to all the challengers. I'll be following along.
Cheers,
A.
Previous posts (BG 1): Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Previous posts (SoA): Introduction, 8, 9, 10, 11
Shortly after returning Renfeld to the Harpers we find ourselves facing Prebek and Sanasha. Making sure that we're running SI:A and SI:E*, along with our other protections, the battle was easily won with Sunfires and Meteors.
*We could incorporate SI:D as well, but we decided against it, assuming that both mages are necromances with no access to divination school spells (I did not check, though). In a perfect world, we'd love to run SI:A, SI:E, SI:D and SI:C at all times, however resource management requires us to only use 2 or 3 SIs max. Therefore, at this particular stage of the game, we're having slight preference for SI:E to counter Malison and Chaos casts (with SI:A being treated as a must-have against dispels). With GoI, we'd eventually drop it in favor of SI:D, while SI:C would typically find its way into our buffs later on when facing higher level casters capable of throwing around various Power Words.
After completing Xzar's quest we had a funny encounter the Mad Priest of Cyric, which almost seemed like a scripted event in its authenticity.
Daelat reported the unfortunate demise of the member of his security to Renal, whom however seemed more interested in our capabilities of infiltrating Mae Var's guild. We took the job but only proceeded as far as stealing the necklace from the Temple of Talos. at which point in time we earned sufficient XP to reach level 12 and, consequently, L6 spells.
After that we returned briefly to the Slums to deal with the remaining slavers on the boat. Dealat opened the fight with a telefield (to get more space and avoid melee penalties when throwing MMMs), followed by a Skull Trap that blasted the gnome wizard.
Meteors for the melee grunts + Sunfire to finish the second mage.
And clean-up with L1 spells and Bhaalspawn Vampiric Touch.
We then paid to Gaelan the discounted price of 15k in return for the RoP +2 (which brings us closer to pushing our saving throws into the negative safe zone) and the Amluet of Power. Apparently, the transaction immediately became public as we had to quaff a PoI to avoid a vampire ambush just a few steps from Gaelan's house. Even though I'm not using the Improved Vampires component, facing them on their terms at this time felt too risky. To make the matters even worse, our retreat was almost thwarted by Habib Khalid Achmed Allafif and his mighty scimitar. Just joking…
After meeting Aran, our next destination was Trademeet. Travelling invisible, we got ambushed by some bandits and Orogs. Once again, our L5 spells pushed us through.
Having finally arrived, we started dealing with Trademeet's many problems by first removing Khan Zahraa. Unfortunately for the djinnis, their alternation magic did not provide them with many avenues to break through our PfMW-based defenses nor to avoid our Sunfires.
I'll report on the Druid Grove next.
Regards,
B.
***
Spellbook (level 12):
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
L6 - PfMW
Previous updates:
In the second Cloakwood area I carefully killed all but the last ettercap before dancing up some spirits. I intended just to sight the ettercap before leaving the fight to the spirits, but in trying to bypass them activated the web trap - thus having to use the potion of freedom I'd done all the previous work to save.
A quick tour of the realms completing mini-quests pushed reputation up to 20. I also picked up the charisma tome, getting 20 from that as well to get the best prices. A bit of shopping followed before I went to Baldur's Gate. I didn't do most of the encounters there, but just concentrated on those that provided some form of upgrades. A hail of poison darts against Ramazith provided an improved ring of protection and the intelligence tome.
But it was surely a pleasure to follow your run and always a pleasure to have you alongside. I'm looking forward to see you playing again, sooner or later - doesn't matter at all
Thanks, Borco
Things had gone smoothly until the Ducal Palace fight, but my execution was kind of awful behind the scenes. I was making mis-click errors left and right. I was also wasting rounds by failing to issue commands. I wasn't efficient at all.
My inefficient play didn't hinder me early on because I was fighting uncomplicated battles with a large margin of error. Further, my poor execution hadn't been coupled with any major knowledge mistakes. In the Ducal Palace fight, though, I made a major knowledge mistake while also executing poorly, and that fight does have a noticeably smaller margin for error. I figured this would happen at some point and I'm not surprised that it was at the palace. That fight is simple enough when you're familiar with it, less so when you aren't- doubly less so when you're playing at a average to below average execution level, as I am presently.
Once again, thanks for following, everyone! And best of luck to all the active challengers!
Best,
A.
It was fun nonetheless and I do look forward to relearning the game. Thanks for being a part of the journey.
Best,
A.
@Alesia_BH : sorry to hear that Duke fight went... chaotic.
@Ignatius Thanks. The place is certainly extremely threatening if one itends to just straight up fight the various mixed groups of undead there. The only ways I feel comfortable approaching them (unless I'd rest and re-buff for every single group, which would be incredibly tedious) are either with protection from undead scrolls or with mass fireballs (multiple webs + rings of free action/spider's bane would work as well, I guess), and since I haven't used any of my PfU scrolls in BG1, there is no reason not to use them here, which eliminiates most of the danger. There's only one more group of undead in the game, after all (in Kanaglym - and I still have a scroll left for those).
Previous posts (BG 1): Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Previous posts (SoA): Introduction, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
At the Druid Grove, Daelat uses Invisibility to pass through undetected until he reaches the bridge guarded by the Shambling Mounds where he sets up a telefield and clears the enemies with MMMs and basic damage spells.
Similar tactics are employed against the group of grizzly bears, this time with the help of our new efreeti.
We rested until morning and prepared for Dalok and his druids. Our key tools here were II (against Insect Plague and other targeted spells) and Teleport Fields (to reduce the overall incoming APR from the fighter, shapeshifted forms and/or potential summons) in terms of defense and Sunfire, Skull Trap and meteors (mindful of Dalok's Physical Mirror) for offense, with a nice finishing touch by Chromatic Orb.
Enjoying Improved Invisibility pre-casted by Daelat, Cernd's able to overwhelm Faldorn with Insect Plague->Fire Elemental->Call Woodland Being->Cure Disease (to cure blindness caused by Nature's Beauty)->Greater Werewolf.
With that, we return to Trademeet to report our success, complete the side quests involving the mantle and the skindancers and purchase the Belt of Inertial Barrier and the Cloak of Displacement.
Back in Athkatla, Daelat hits the Graveyard District to obtain two helpful items from Pai'Na at the cost of one green ProPoison scroll (cast before facing the first spider group in the tombs).
In order to progress the business with MaeVar, we pay a visit to Rayic Gethras at Edwin's behest. We manage to clear the ground floor with Skull Trap despite the lack of an MGoI scroll in our supplies (which I typically like to run against the pesky elemental attacks from the mephits).
For Rayic himself, we set up our SI:A and SI:D immunities and open with MMMs, keeping our aura clear for now.
With his spellcasting interrupted, we quickly follow with Sunfire.
Magic Missile comes next after our meteors eat away his MSD (and since Rayic forgot to run Shield).
Overall, he gave us an easy victory.
We finish the remaining chores for both Edwin and MaeVar and return with the incriminating documents to Renal. Daelat is rewarded with a level-up - here's the character sheet for the record.
The most important indicator, save vs. spell, sits at 5 - switching the Ring of Human Influence for RoP +2 gets us to 3 and with II and Blur we'd normally get down to -2 (and -4 if we take into account the ProEvil bonus). In terms of new spells, Death Spell was taken as our second L6 pick - far from being the "ideal" candidate, the spell has its uses and, most importantly, it has style.
With our eyes already set on Umar Hills, I completely forgot to return to MaeVar's guild to finish the quest. We'll need to catch up with that later. For now, we decided to travel out the city once again, only to end up getting ambushed in the city proper by a large group of bandits with two mages amongst them. Taking advantage of our invisibility, we have plenty of the time to work on our regular set of buffs, including our brand new Fireshield: Blue and 3x SI (abjuration, enchantment and divination).
Opening Death Spell takes care of the three fighter-type brutes.
While the mages work on the abjuration spells, we scorch the two invisible rogues with Sunfire.
Another Sunfire eliminates the first mage.
After a longer standstill and playing hide and seek, Daelat finishes with Spell Thrust + low-level damage spells.
Onward to Imnesvale!
Regards,
B.
***
Spellbook (level 13):
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, Fireshield: Blue
L5 - Sunfire, Spell Immunity, Spell Shield
L6 - PfMW, Death Spell
No worries, Grond0. Your analysis of the fight was sensible. You were just underestimating how bad I am right now, lol. I have a lot of relearning to do.
Best,
A.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195411/#Comment_1195411
In Baldur's Gate, killing some NPCs for their equipment topped up the valuables carried there in my bags - giving me plenty of cash to buy everything useful.
With plenty of cash and XP, there was nothing really to gain from doing optional content on arrival at the Coastway Crossing. Therefore, I just used invisibility to avoid any conflict at the bridge. I also went through Troll Claw Woods invisibly, but on the way to the Forest of Wyrms found a group of orcs and trolls squabbling. I left them to fight amongst themselves, but did sneak into the cave to go and pick up the Firefly sling.
Arriving at the Coalition Camp, I used the Spectacles to summon Nazramu to do a bit more shopping, including recharging my necklaces. After picking up the Bwoosh and poison I went invisibly through Dead Mans Pass to Dragonspear to rescue Skie. Then it was on to the Underground River where a potion of clarity provided protection while getting some summons from a group of myconids. Soft Feet ensured there was no danger from the web tangle of a gargantuan spider and I kept it at range to avoid its stunning attack.
Back at the Coalition Camp again, an enemy invasion was expected. I thought that would be no problem as I was carrying 97 arrows of detonation - far more than needed here. Unfortunately, while well supplied with arrows, I found I didn't appear to have a bow
Shaman 12, 84 HPs, 1 kill (+366 in BGEE/SoD)
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XIII
Okay, so here's a basic problem with SoD gameplay, especially on insane: 90% of the time you're facing huge groups of enemies, often with quite a few very annoying abilities that will make your life a living hell if you just fight them in direct combat with an unbuffed party. Sadly, there is pretty much a clear "best" approach (by best I mean safest and least time-consuming) for the vast majority of these encounters, and it mostly comes down to throwing tons of fireballs at these enemy hordes. This is what I call "firebombing" - for this party, 3 necklaces of missles (easily re-chargeable, though I never recharge them until I reach the coalition camp) and 2 wands of fire. It does make for repetitive gameplay and kind of uninteresting no-reload reports.
For reference, here are the only encounters in SoD that I have done so far that wouldn't have been optimally solved either by firebombing or by using a PfU scroll. Korlasz (though firebombing removes half of the difficulty by killing all of her allies), the drow wizard at Sorcerous Sundries (who is super easy, as he's meant to be fought solo), Teleria (who stands around neutral, so she can easily be dealt with with any amount of preparation), the bronze sentry (uuuh, you actually have to use physical damage?), Coldhearth (though the entire potential difficulty of this encounter is solved by "The Secret Revealed") and I guess the vampire, who dies within seconds. Not a very long list.
Because I'm the only Avatar runner who's doing SoD, I decided to show a few alternative tactics in chapter 9, just to have a little bit of fun (I feel comfortable experimenting in SoD, because I have a lot of experience with it and it doesn't really get affected by SCS). By no means would I recommend some of the things I'm doing here.
At the Troll Claw Woods, the only group I actually fireballed were the ogres - they can be a little bit tough to kill, and I had neither summons or buffs up when encountering them yet. After that, Enuhal called in his fire elementals for the first time, which are notable immune to normal and +1 weapons, but trolls, which are quite common here, can hit them just fine. Still, they are decent enough fighters. I used them as blockers while clearing the eastern part of the map, with my party mostly enjoying ranged combat (got to make use of it before it gets nerfed in SoA). Eventually, I decided to send the elementals to deal with the group of hobgoblins in the center part of the map by themselves while making my way to the west (the hobgoblins can't do anything to hurt the elementals). I set up in the positon west of the troll cave, where there's only a super narrow pathway to go up for the trolls, easily blocked by one character, forcing them to awkwardly separate - a good setup for ranged fighters:
We clear the remainder of the map and rest (we don't really need to in terms of spells, but we need to get rid of the potions of freedom for our next battle). Now, we could use throwing daggers to cheese Morentheren, but I'm sure a dragon battle would be more fun. Since the Temple of Bhaal contains some of the toughest fights in SoD, we decide to go for some long-lasting potion buffs we can make use of later - cloud giant strength, heroism, invulnerability, speed, agility, fortitude, defense, strength... also, now we really DO need protection from poison scrolls for everyone for both Morentherene and Ziatar. Well, we add our usual spell-based buffs and go in. The fight is kind of disappointingly quick. The dragon doesn't get to put up any meaningful resistance, only able to use one wing buffet which only hits Corey because I decided to split up my party for this very purpose - after that she's already dead:
Ok, everyone! I've decided to start another run. Meet Ayla, halfling thief!
Proficiencies: Quarterstaffs, Shortbows
Inventory at Level 2
Mods: SCS 34.3, Ascension, G3 Fixpack- FreeAction Protects Against Stun
Difficulty: Tactical
Gaming Notes: I chose Ayla with the intent of rebuilding my BG skill set, starting with the fundamentals. Ayala with have a concise but effective tactical toolkit. Her success will depend less on creativity and more on execution. That's exactly what rusty little me needs right now. I need to master the simple stuff again. If I do that the rest will follow- I'm sure of it. The Avatars were fun. They were a great way to reacquaint myself with the community. Ayla's job is to get my tactics back up to speed.
RP Notes: Ayla isn't a fully fleshed out character, atm, since she's basically a learning tool. If she sticks around I'll give her a backstory and such. I hope that happens. Wish her luck!
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195411/#Comment_1195411
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195447/#Comment_1195447
On my way to the City Gates I came across the Renfeld ambush. For once I didn't use spirits there, but Bhaal horror helped bring the mage out and bullets struck him before he could complete any spells.
After a quick detour to Watcher's Keep to get the potion case, I went on to Trademeet. Summoning spirits from just beyond the sight range of Taquee got me the efreeti bottle - which this time I made sure I actually picked up before noting that I'd done so!
Shaman 14, 93 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 85 kills (+366 in BGEE/SoD)
Ayla followed a standard early game route. She went straight to the FAI via the Lion's Way and Coast Way, pausing only to lift goodies from the NPCs. She stealthed by Tarnesh, gave Bentley a high-five and then chugged south to Beregost. She made a couple temple donations while her rep was still low, and then completed the fetch quests in and around Beregost. Early item priorities included the Wand of Sleep, the Shield Amulet and a defensive potion set, including potion of invisibility, oil of speed, potion of clarity, potion of freedom, potion of mirror eyes, antidotes and healing potions. As basic as basic gets.
All went well, except the anti-chickenator failed. I cried. Is there a sorrow more sorrowful than a failed anti-chickenator? I ask you, weeping.
Once Ayla reached Level 3, she picked up a Pro Pet scroll and headed to Lizardville. Korax dropped Mutamin and I love him for it.
We left Lizardville at L6. After getting our lockpicking skill to 40 and our find traps to 80, we loaded into set traps, followed by stealth.
At this stage of the game Ayla won her substantive fights with backstabs and traps. She approached her enemies in the shadows, set her traps, went in for a backstab, and then retreated to her traps. If an enemy survived the traps, she finished with her bow. All the early game usual subjects were felled in the same way.
Groups of weaker foes were neutralized with the Wand of Sleep.
When finances allowed, we upgraded our weaponry, Aule's and a short bow +1. Adding Darts of Stunning to the kit pre-Greywolf allowed us to save Prism.
After reaching level 7 we picked up the Cloak of Displacement and the Greenstone Amulet in preparation for the mines. We stealthed by all the kobolds, except for the ones just prior to Mulahey. These blokes had to go to facilitate buffing in peace.
Our buffs were Shield, Potion of Strength, and Greenstone. Buffing outside gave us time to set a trap near the entrance for the minions. We opened with a backstab on Mulahey and followed with a Necklace of Missiles charge. That left Mulahey at badly injured with a broken moral. Only two minions remained.
Mulahey's wandering allowed us to slip away and set another trap.
And that is that: super easy, super simple. So far Ayla is getting the job done. I'm starting to feel at home in the game world again. May that trend continue.
Best,
A.
Makes sense, Serg! Thanks for the well wishes
Previous posts (BG 1): Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Previous posts (SoA): Introduction, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
And so we've reached Imensvale and have been enjoying the fresh countryside air while searching for clues regarding the town's recent troubles. Our steps first lead us to the mimic's cave, where Daelat removes the two umber hulks with Death Spell.
Note: On top our negative saves we were running SI: E to confirm our assumption that it blocks umber hulks' Confusion ability. Seeing that the log showed our save vs. spell roll rather than "unaffected", I concluded that this is not the case. Eventually, in the event that their Confusion ability is classified as "schoolless" and thus carries the undocumented -2 save penalty, and provided that the default -2 penalty of the Confusion spell is applied as well, then Daelat could still fail his save in case he'd have rolled 1 (with his effective save vs. spell before the penalties sitting at -2 at the time). We might have been lucky there.
Against the mimic, we summoned our efreeti and buffed with MIs and PfNW (scroll), while Teleport Field and MMMs were used to protect Jermien from his golem.
After that we proceeded to the Temple Ruins. Weighting the tools at our disposal against we were about to be facing inside, we eventually decided to take the easy way out and applied a ProUndead scroll. The intention had been to use it only for the temple and not against the Share Lord himself, which would feel a bit too unfair (this being emphasized by the fact that I don't have the Improved Share Lord SCS component installed). With Oil of Speed and Potion of Mind Focusing on top of that, we're all set for a smooth meteor throwing session.
Not that we could deal with everything we'd encountered - with three bone golems closing on us at once, invisibility seemed like the best option.
Once the way to the surface was open we rested and prepared for the Shade Lord battle (with no intention of challenging Thaxii). Our buffs were: Potion of Mind Focusing, MMMs, Stoneskin, Shield, ProFear, Oil of Speed, Spell Shield, Blur, ProEvil, MI, Fireshield: Blue, II, PfNW (scroll), SI:A, SI:D and SI:C. Furthermore, we're relying on our Amulet of Power to block his Level Drain ability, even though we would still have to cope with its short-term blindness effect.
Daelat opens with meteors, targeting Shadow Patrick (note his crit with -20 penalty bouncing of our PfNW).
Our Sunfire goes off shortly after we're hit with the Shade Lord's Spellstrike that takes down our Spell Shield.
With only one remaining L5 spell left, we're considering our options. Sunfire is by far our most potent offensive tool, while recasting our Spell Shield would mitigate the risk of having our SIs removed by a subsequent Spellstrike. Contrary to the basic tenets of no-reloading, we decide that offense is going to be our best defense and omit the Spell Shield renewal.
Blinded by the Level Drain, we do not hesitate and pull the trigger on that second Sunfire. Those 47 points of damage against the Shade Lord as well as killing Shadow Patrick was worth it!
In the next round, we establish a telefield to give ourselves more breathing space and manage to finish the altar with our dagger.
Another hit from the Level Drain - this time we use our round to cast Fireshield: Red.
We call in the efreeti for the extra punch (mindful of Shade Lord's Spell Deflection).
PfMW + two Fireshields take care of the rest.
By reporting to the mayor and completing the side quest with Madulf we reach level 14 and earn our first L7 spell. With so many good options, it's been a tough choice. Eventually, we opt for Spell Sequencer, mainly because it will allow us to make more effective use of a single round (thus partly mitigating our main weakness) and also because it effectively provides us with more spells per day. Some local bandits have been unfortunate enough to take part in an experiment designed to test the potential of our new tool with 3x Skull Trap.
To wrap up the update, I'll note that from Imnesvale we returned to Athkatla to check what we can do with our spare money. Not much, it seems, so we decided to pick up Everard and some higher level scrolls. Browsing the scroll selection at various vendors also had the positive side effect of reminding me to summon Mr Rabbit, our familiar, which had not been with us since Baldur's Gate.
For the record, here's our inventory before heading out to the de'Arnise Keep.
Regards,
B.
***
Spellbook (level 14):
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, Fireshield: Blue
L5 - Sunfire, Spell Immunity, Spell Shield
L6 - PfMW, Death Spell
L7 - Spell Sequencer
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195411/#Comment_1195411
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195447/#Comment_1195447
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195475/#Comment_1195475
On my way to find the kidnappers, the final vampire ambush triggered - I just let them go rather than trying to fight there. Collecting the kidnappers reward cost me 2 reputation, so I went to the slaver ship to recover that. The wizards there were dragged out of their front door to a position where they couldn't see me, but summoned spirits could see them. After beating up more guards inside I had to hang around for quite a while until damage taken (mainly the poison damage from the trap) had regenerated sufficiently to allow me to tank the acid blob trap. A couple of trolls later and I was finished there and reporting back to Hendak restored my reputation. I did subsequently clear out the underground passages leading to the slavers - picking up the Circlet of Lost Souls while doing that.
Deciding it was about time to improve my defences, I went to the Temple sewers to open up the route to the lich there. The rakshasa died to spirits on the way to provide me with an alternative cloak, featuring much quicker regeneration. Once the lich was available I used a PfU scroll and treated myself to an oil of speed to beat it up. A PfP scroll allowed me safe access to the lich at the Bridge District and DUHM helped me batter down the door to the City Gates lich. That lasted long enough to kill that lich and get me to the Docks to break down Kangaxx's door as well. After shooting up his lich form, the demi-lich was quickly cut down to size by the Ring of Energy.
Restoring the level drain from Kangaxx's trapped door showed up that I was now able to take level 15. I then got a further power upgrade by paying Gaelan Bayle off and going to fetch a +2 ring and the AoP.
Next up was the de'Arnise Hold. I found again there that spirits were not good at killing trolls. However, with my improved AC and regeneration I was now able to tank them pretty easily myself. Glaicus was a rather stronger proposition, so I matched his oil of speed with one of my own and shot him down. The golems were whittled down by spirits before I took on the umber hulks. I was lucky against the last of those which had been scared by horror earlier and turned up in an unexpected position. I was confused, but managed to win a battle against it anyway. TorGal then lost out in a fight with the efreeti. Reporting to Nalia got me to level 16.
With a surfeit of ammunition from the de'Arnise Hold, I returned to Watcher's Keep in search of an ammo container. There were no vampiric wraiths there, so clearing the top level should have been easy enough. I used the jelly shape from the Cloak of the Sewers to avoid danger from the FoD trap. I rarely use that, but that's probably partly because I got conditioned to avoid it in vanilla (when it only gave 10% MR, rather than 100%). Then I set up to shoot the Guardian Golems while they struggled to get through a doorway. I know I had correctly equipped the Sling of Everard as my initial shot hurt the first golem, before I ran back through the doorway. Once the golem was in position I attacked it again, before turning away from the computer to plug my phone in to charge. That only took perhaps 10 seconds, but that proved to be long enough to be greeted with the dreaded death screen when I turned back.