There's nothing quite as unfulfilling as killing a field of basilisks because you cast the one spell that made them powerless.
Basilisks are low intelligence creatures. In PnP they have a low challenge rating. It should be possible to foil their petrification attacks with a single spell, or even a mirror.
The problem with basilisks in BG1 is that they are worth too much experience. They should be 700 and 1400, more or less, not 1400 and 7000. The original XP numbers come from PnP, but they are ill suited to the BG world, since basilisks effectively lose one of their greatest tactical assets: their ability to ambush attack enemies before they've deployed counter measures.
The basilisk waylays are the only basilisk encounters in BG that kind-a-sorta capture the PnP flavor.
These days I skip the basilisk hunt in Lizardville, as well as the basilisks atop Durlag's Tower and the ones below Candlekeep. The waylay basilisks are the only ones I feel comfortable killing.
Now, it may seem as though I'm missing your point. You were commenting on immunities, generally, not basilisks specifically. My counter point, though, is that the problem isn't the structure of the game so much as the way we sometimes play it. Rather than appreciating intent, and the limits of the engine, we often deliberately subvert intent and exploit the engine´s limits.
The basilisks weren't implemented well in BG because BG is a replayable video game, and the nature of the creatures requires them to surprise their enemies. Rather than exploiting that implementation challenge by slaughtering them for easy experience, or worse still charming them and making them petrify each other, we should understand the relevant limits and refrain from taking advantage. I don't exempt myself from this criticism. I used to kill the basilisks for XP, too, and in the NR challenge, at least, I was an early adopter of that strategy. By now, though, I've learned my lesson with respect to the basilisks, much as I've learned it with other features of the game. I'm glad to say that I'm still learning, and I'd enjoy having a discussion about establishing balanced and sensible playing norms.
@Alesia_BH Just wanted to drop by to say that I've managed to catch up with Astrid's run down at the Tavern. Being a huge fan of single class clerics myself (and especially the Talos kit), I'm really happy to see that you also found the class enjoyable and capable. I'm super curious to see how it goes for Astrid in ToB, seeing how both BG1 and SoA looked almost trivial. Anyway, thank you for sharing the run and for all the detailed write-ups.
@Alesia_BH Just wanted to drop by to say that I've managed to catch up with Astrid's run down at the Tavern. Being a huge fan of single class clerics myself (and especially the Talos kit), I'm really happy to see that you also found the class enjoyable and capable. I'm super curious to see how it goes for Astrid in ToB, seeing how both BG1 and SoA looked almost trivial. Anyway, thank you for sharing the run and for all the detailed write-ups.
Thanks, Borco! Glad you got a chance to check out Astrid's Tavern run.
Please do feel to cross post Sorsha´s BG2 run over there. She'd fit right in! It would be a pleasure to have you
We fight our way out of the dungeon and test our strength by going after Mencar right away - test successful, though all of our skeletons die during the battle:
With Narescha getting more and more levels, holy smite starts getting stronger and stronger, especially when dealing with ambushes. I start always having 1-2 of them memorized for now, as the lower level skeleton warriors don't do as much currently:
Note the harmonium halberd on our barbarian. I planned for this, giving him the strength tome in BG1, so he has 19 strength with the halberd, and with a little bit more gold our berserker soon joined him at 19 via the belt. Halfling strength disadvantage permanently eliminated. I'm also looking to get Belm + Scarlet Ninja-To on our swashbuckler, which will turn him into quite the damage dealer - however, without UAI, we first need to use Kashiko'z Wakizashi in our main hand for now (which is a first for me, same as the halberd - I usually never use those) - aided by Lirlarcor on our berserker, we quickly gain +3 weapons on everyone (except our cleric, who is our only spellcaster anyway). After dealing with all the non-stronghold sidequests, we move to the druid grove to acquire Belm. For the raskasha trio and the final druid group, we use our first round of oils of speed:
The next one on our list is De'Arnise keep. We now have 2 rages and 2 chaotic commands at the ready, so no reason to fear the yuan-ti mages' chaos spell anymore:
Until we get the FoA, we just use our archery abilities, really only acquired for BG1, to shoot fire/acid arrows for troll kills. Golems are among the few opponents where our fighters get a true challenge in a straight-up battle at this point, but aerial servants and a few additional buffs such as defensive harmony are enough to give us the edge:
No trouble with Tor'Gal. We immediately follow up with the temple ruins. This is mostly done via turn undead, we basically only have to fight the bone golems and the shade lord herself, who is very much lacking in defenses in the vanilla game:
Mae'Var's guild is next on the list:
Because we want the iMoD before continuing, Bodhi is quickly thrown in - turn undead is, at this point, powerful enough to deal with some of the weaker vampires, and we have summons and traps for their leader:
However, we are not high enough in level to get a lich spawn during the unseeing eye quest, and since this is vanilla, the Shield of Balduran deals with all gauths and beholders:
Onto Windspear Hills - these golems do get quite annoying, resulting in our closest battle in SoA so far:
Daystar (which we stole early on in the run) and turn undead help to clear out the place, and we use the Sling of Arvoreen for the adamantite golem. Traps and summons for Conster, and on to the planar prison. Since I generally clear this place out in one go, this is the perfect place for our second round of oils of speed (killing the warden quickly is important anyway):
The final stronghold is the planar sphere. For high levels wizards such as Tolgerias and Lavok, we now have our most powerful version of skeleton warriors available. We send in one in case they have death spell, and more after they use it - if they use it:
Chaotic commands and protection from fire help with the demons outside, and we get another round of harder battles against the golems at the core:
As it happens, we are at the level where our bounty hunter gets fire damage on her traps, so we take the opportunity to clear WKI+II and use these traps to kill the chromatic demon:
So far, so good. Only golems have been somewhat challenging, and I don't expect the remainder of SoA to be much different, since we now have not only level 15 skeletons, but also the spellslots to protect the entire party with CC+DW, and high level enough dispel magics will be rare to come by (mostly restricted to dragons in vanila). Let's see how things go.
By the way I rolled a human berserker. He will dual to thief at level 9. He's currently working his way through BG 1 with a fairly normal party other than Xan. Will keep at it. My BG 1 runs are usually by the numbers, except the Sarevok fight, which almost always has chaos for me. Will keep at it.
On to the Nashkel Mines! Since we're in the area, I veer a little off-course to pay Prism a visit. Greywolf hits REALLY hard at low levels, but we manage to bring him down with the help of Jaheira's Sunscorch.
Inside the mines, I pull i eated a lemon towards the back of the group and use Poppy to Sleep the enemies. Khalid gets killed by two arrows that hit within a fraction of a second. We desperately need some level ups so we have an HP buffer.
Khalid's death is a bit of a wake-up call. I'm hesitant to ditch Khalid and Jaheira when I've already invested some XP in them, but we really need better numbers to compete. I reluctantly make the switch to Kagain and Dorn, adding a solid tank and a glass cannon to the party.
After killing the spiders in the mine and a ghoul, boykisser finally hits level 2! She now has 32 HP, and while that's by no means indestructible, it's far, far more resilient than we had a second ago.
The kobold chieftain is a bit scary, but Sleep manages to disable some of the weaker enemies. Tiax sends forth a ghast, which gets quickly shot down, but it buys enough time for us to make progress on the enemies. Our spellcasters chip in from afar. Every little bit counts.
Kagain wanders a little too far north to chase down a kobold and triggers a trap, which proves fatal. Dorn nearly dies to an arrow from the chieftain, forcing us to burn one of our very few Potions of Healing. boykisser, though, stays strong, shrugging off poison and keeping the chieftain occupied long enough for us to bring it down.
We hike back to Nashkel, resurrect yet another NPC, and get ambushed by hobgoblins on the way back to the mines. Turns out level 1 protection doesn't seem to work even when I disable the "no bonus damage from difficulty setting."
i eated a lemon gets hit by a critical hit as well, and since I don't trust the hobgoblins not to kill our main character with another two-hit combo on the several-second trek to the side of the screen, I burn a Potion of Invisibility just to keep i eated a lemon safe.
I am again reminded of my first forays into BG1, losing characters in a fraction of a second at Firewine Ruins. I've never felt that BG1 has aged well, and seeing these sudden death scenarios, which my normal metagame route has spared me in recent runs, remind me why.
Mulahey proves an easy target despite the lack of Algernon's Cloak. Tiax carries the day, knocking Mulahey off his feet with Command and giving our ghast some free hits, paralyzing Mulahey before he even goes red and summons any enemies.
We emerge from the mines, and rather than proceed directly to Nimbul, I visit the nearby caves, pacifying the Revenant and using boykisser's rage to safely loot the other tombs. i eated a lemon hits level 3, and Poppy hits level 2!
Only then do we proceed to Nashkel, where Nimbul awaits us. To maximize our chances of a fast kill, I use stealth to guide Tiax's ghast right next to Nimbul, allowing it to strike without having to slowly walk over to him after initiating combat. The ghast paralyzes him on the second hit, ending the fight before it could begin.
Rasaad steals the kill, unfortunately, robbing us of a small morsel of XP that we're really hungry for this early in the game.
We bring out the ghast against Tranzig, who spots us first and attacks before we can navigate the ghast right next to him, but Tranzig is unable to do anything serious before the ghast overwhelms him simply due to its high APR.
I briefly considered avoiding High Hedge, reasoning that it's a little out of the way, but it really just doesn't feel safe to march straight to Davaeorn without buying at least a few supplies. The potion of Magic Blocking we could find at the bandit camp is not going to be enough; not when we won't have access to the Ring of Energy in this run. Plus, I want to get a couple of important potions for the bandit camp.
We pick up the Ring of Wizardry on the way to the Larswood. I normally sell it off, reasoning that 9000 gold is far more valuable than excess level 1 slots, but since that feels like a huge windfall at this point in the game, I decide to just put it on Poppy--more of a convenience, really, since few fights will last long enough for the extra slots to make a difference. We talk our way past the bandit group in the Peldvale to avoid a fight with Tazok, and then get ready for the bandit camp tent.
One of the things I want to do in this run is try to fight things head-on, like you would in a casual run. That way we get to experience some of the standard gameplay that my high-meta route normally skips. I really don't think we can handle the enemy on our own strength, since our fighters are level ONE right now and we have no second-level spells, so I deploy some potions I got from High Hedge.
We chuck two Potions of Explosions and an Oil of Fiery Burning at the enemy, burning down almost all of them in one fell swoop. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Venkt survives, however, as I positioned the bombs to avoid killing Ender Sai, and Venkt's Mirror Images are a lot to overcome when our THAC0 and APR are so poor. Poppy uses the Wand of Monster Summoning to help chew through his defenses, a move that proves very critical when Venkt lobs a couple of Sleep spells at us, against which we have no immunity.
We loot the place, head back to town, and trigger a 10-bandit ambush that kills Poppy instantly. We are still level 2, after all, and don't have access to Invisibility.
This is the second time Poppy has died due to an ambush. The only reason the bandits targeted Poppy instead of i eated a lemon is because the latter was wearing studded leather; our mage has no armor. If our mage was our main character, we would have already lost two runs simply because of random ambushes.
I think I would have given up on this type of run entirely if I was running a mage Charname. The only way to guarantee survival for a level 2 mage in a bandit ambush that I can think of is to burn a Potion of Invisibility every time it happens, and god knows those are an incredibly precious resource.
But in the Cloakwood, we run into a Dread Wolf I've never seen before, and the extra 650 XP finally gets Poppy to level 3! We now have two Invisibility spells per day, enough to cover both Poppy and i eated a lemon. We are somewhat less at the mercy of random chance now.
Normally I steer clear of the spider hive in the Cloakwood, but since we're trying to fight enemies head-on and the quest gets thrown in our face upon entering the area, I decide to try tackling the spiders. I take advantage of our new access to Invisibility, hiding the entire party except for boykisser, who drinks a Potion of Freedom and a Potion of Invulnerability to protect her from webs and poison.
The enemies all converge on her, but we are not asking her to solo this fight; we just want to buy the rest of the party a few brief seconds of safety to act. We knock out the lesser spiders with Sleep, bring out the ghast, and blind a few of the still-conscious enemies with Glitterdust.
boykisser's defenses hold up, we steadily grind down the enemy, and we claim Spider's Bane for Dorn.
I kind of want to recruit Coran, though I don't know who I'd kick out to make room for him, and since I don't like quest timers hovering over my head, I decide to go wyvern hunting before bringing him into the party. I'm pretty apprehensive, since wyverns have awesome saving throws, but because Kagain and Dorn are now at levels 3 and 2 thanks to our spider hunting, I feel like we can handle the danger.
Good luck comes our way, and we manage to blind the wyverns and avoid taking much of any damage!
I could sneak past Drasus with Invisibility, but sneaking back out of the Cloakwood mines is a big ask, since we need a safe rest to get enough spell slots to hide the entire party. That means we need to fight Drasus head-on, and fight fair.
i eated a lemon sneaks over to the enemies, guides a ghast near the mages, and we try to land a quick paralyzation hit on one of the mages. To my amazement, we get incredible luck, and our ghast manages to paralyze BOTH mages on the first hit!
I don't want to send my fighters in for the kill, knowing how brutal Drasus can be in melee, so instead I burn a charge from the Wand of Monster Summoning and send in the critters to do the work.
Drasus is not distracted by the spectacle, and so we send forth boykisser to keep him company, with a Potion of Absorption to protect her. Unfortunately, a single Potion of Absorption isn't enough to hold off Drasus, and we don't have a second one to ensure her safety.
boykisser tries to escape, only for Genthore to cut her down. We back away, luring Drasus to the east, where Tiax's trap lies waiting. The trap strikes twice due to a bug and finishes him off, obviating the need for a last-ditch Wand of Lightning charge.
The Boots of Speed are ours! Genthore falls soon after.
Now we have Davaeorn to deal with, and due to the "head-on" approach I'm taking in this run, we've got a bunch of other fights to win before we get the chance. For the first time in years, I'm going to be fighting through the Cloakwood Mines instead of sneaking through them.
@Alesia_BH: He's available in the same inn as Marl and Tranzig. I think it's an SCS component that moves some NPC's to more convenient locations so that late-game characters get some face time. It also moves Alora to Gullykin, I think.
Turns out level 1 protection doesn't seem to work even when I disable the "no bonus damage from difficulty setting."
That would be the other loophole in action. The protection only works if the attack deals more damage than your maximum hit points. If the damage is exactly equal to your maximum HP - 6 points of damage for a 6-HP mage in this case - it's a one-hit kill.
We make it through Brynnlaw to Spellhold - Narescha, after a few attempts, manages to get a turn undead kill on our first lich here:
Aerial servants once again deal very well with clay golems:
And even without haste effects, its easy to rush down Jon before he is finished with his opening clone spell:
Down into the Underdark, after quickly clearing the city of caverns. The balor can't get past our cleric protections:
The mind flayer city is easy enough - great AC is quite helpful here, and we've brought a bunch of potions of geniuses for the place. Plus, chaotic commands, obviously. Rushing down the elder orb in the beholder tunnels is always a bit of a risk, but we are fast enough and it doesn't get any successful anti-magic rays:
In Ust'Natha, we quickly follow the main questline, only deviating for Quile and later on for Deirex, who gets a taste of double sunray:
We leave the Underdark behind and start with the exploration of the forest regions. I always though that Kruin, the gith who wants the silver blade, only spawns in Athkatla - turns out I was wrong:
We are at HLA levels now, and we craft some stuff - The Wave and the Silver Sword are our new main weapons until we get powerful ToB +6 weapons. Bodhi suffers a quick death after triple sunrays:
So, time for some loose ends. When we kill the shadow dragon, we learn that The Wave has a serious downside. The chance to deal 15 frost damage, if lethal to our opponents, is enough to trigger the "frozen" effect which removes any non-critical loot - which is why the shadow dragon doesn't grant us its own scales:
That's not good - I was planning for my swashbuckler to wear that shadow dragon armor. Well, I decide to stick with The Wave anyway for now, as the chances of this kind of kill are quite low, and I'm also kind of curious to see how often it will occur. The other dragon, Firkraag, quickly gets vorpaled:
Liches are either trapped or sunray'd, the guarded compound party is lured downstairs:
Narescha takes out the iMoD and PfM to defeat Kangaxx, and we clear out some more mind flayers. The twisted rune remains: We use traps for the lich, while the party starts next to the beholder as our first actual target with GWWs. Meanwhile, our Deva starts dealing with Layene. The battle is soon over:
We enter the elven city, where the only challenge is yet another dragon:
A lot of spellcasters actually use improved mantle instead of PFMW, which means that our swashbuckler can remove it with the Staff of the Magi. We only have to wait out buffs a few times. Traps kill Jon at the tree, and we complete all hell trials the good way. The balors Jon brings with him die to another round of traps, and he himself doesn't have nearly enough defenses to stop us for long - as soon as he's vulnerable, he's finished:
With a sniper, I would have taken Greywolf on solo. Actually playing as a sniper. Shoot, hide behind the mountain, shoot again. You just have to ensure that he doesn't land any blows.
An alternative is to lead him to the mine where guards will join in on the action. Of course you might lose out on the experience doing that.
It's good to be in Athkalta (even though Sorsha might disagree on account of Jon's hospitality)!
As soon as we're out of the cell, we checked our spellbook (optimized shortly before landing the killing blow on Sarevok) to confirm that we had memorized 3x Magic Missile, 2x Mirror Image, 1x Strength, 2x Skull Trap and 1x Spirit Armor. Lost and confused, Sorsha was more than happy to let Imoen tag along for now.
Our start was sloppy - Sorsha's first Skull Trap was somewhat wasted on the duegar party due to my poor timing, killing only one of four.
This initial hiccup lead to a protracted melee kiting fight, with the panicked gibberlings eventually joining the fray. We also had to tap into Imoen's spellbook for a Lightning Bolt (which I normally like to keep for the narrow corridors) to increase our damage output.
The mineral mephit in the sewer golem room was taken down with the help of MGoI, DuHM and Magic Missiles.
Sorsha recovered her hood (her personal item introduced and described in the first post of the run), although to my disappointment she did not find the Staff Spear +2 among the "imported" loot - being proficient in axes, she got Bala's Axe instead. For the majority of BG1, Sorsha had been relying heavily on her staff's range and speed (0 speed factor with Aule's + two-handed weapon proficiency), and she was not ready to transition to standard melee fighting with axes. We'll ponder on the possible uses of Bala's on-hit Miscast Magic, however the activated Dispel Magic apparently casts at the wielder's divine caster level, thus making it completely irrelevant for Sorsha. For now, we needed another weapon and that meant fighting more pesky mephits in the jar room.
As a compensation for the sustained minor injuries, we're rewarded with quarterstaff +1 and a level-up for Sorsha at 220k XP (level 11).
Our second Skull Trap of the day turned out to be slightly more efficient, allowing us to clear the second duegar party with ease and reach Rielev and the golem activation stone.
For the duegar trio guarding the narrow corridor leading to the sewage room, Sorsha kited them with her staff while running MIs (by way of a reminder, her personal item grants her +1 luck which in turn causes the enemies to always hit the images instead of the real Sorsha).
The otyugh was taken down with Magic Missiles and Imoen's backstab with the +1 staff.
Saving Sorsha's second MI cast for the security golems, we did suffer slightly heavier damage while trying to clear the remaining duegar parties in the NE corridor and near the portal (especially since our Spirit Armor had already expired earlier).
We collected the Claw and the Amulet of Metaspell Influence and proceeded to Ellesime's room. As soon as the alarm went off, Imoen applied Haste and Sorsha fired up her MIs and equipped a chain mail. With that, both golems came down nice and easy.
Assessing our remaining spells and other resources, we still had Web and Stinking Cloud in Imoen's spellbook, Sorsha's Bhallspawn DuHM and Armor + Fireball scrolls. That should be just enough to take care of Ilyich and his entourage. With our Haste and MIs still running, we first take out the dust mephit at the library's entrance.
Sorsha then casts Armor (via scroll), Resist Fear (via her personal item) and DuHM, while Imoen covers the floor with her Web.
With the first wave dead, we escalate the pressure with Stinking Cloud. Lacking the corresponding weapon proficiencies, Sorsha and Imoen focus their crossbow fire on the defenseless foes, waiting for more duegar to appear.
Checking the log, we notice that the mage has entered the Stinking Cloud. Without hesitation, Sorsha pulls out her Fireball scroll…
The rest was mainly clean-up, although we did suffer some damage from Ilyich et al. once both the Web and the Stinking Cloud expired.
We took the acorns back to the dryads and, using HiS to avoid the mephits in the Elemental Plane, Imoen also returned the genie flask to procure the Sword of Chaos.
After that, we moved on to the 2nd floor, dismissed Yoshimo and rested. Sorsha's buffs for the portal room were Strength, Shield, MIs, Haste and MGoI, while Imoen pitched in with Monster Summoning. Don't you just love MGoI when fighting mephits?
Sorsha then takes the lead against the remaining mephits in the western corridor. Just like "None cross Greywolf and live!", "No one crosses the Shadow Thieves and lives!" is one of those inflated statements that regularly turn out to be untrue.
Oh and by the way, our Skull Trap targeting seems to be improving a bit.
In the hallway, Sorsha collected and identified the wands (Lightning, Fire, Monster Summoning and Cloudkill). In preparation for the assassins near the exit, we used MIs and Improved Invisibility on Sorsha and some freshly summoned ettercaps.
Imoen was forced to make her save against Dire Charm and Sorsha had to cure poison on one of our summons, but otherwise we had everything under control.
We didn't want to leave yet with semi-full spellbooks and so we decided to go and collect the Girdle of Bluntness from the forge, blasting the duegar parties with Skull Trap, Web and Fireball (via wand).
Having released Frennedan and collected all the loot from his room, I realized that we could still take out the cambion back at the 1st floor with our leftover L1 spells before surfacing.
Phew, we've made it! As I said in the beginning, it's good to be in Athkatla.
We quickly move past the first pocket plane challenge and through Saradush, doing the various sidequests and getting our hands on boots of speed for everyone. Our way to Gromnir was without incident, the staff of the magi was very helpful with the various yaga-shura mages we encountered. For Gromnir himself, we immediately rushed to his throne, managed to take down one wizard, leaving the other one alive while GWW'ing down Gromnir himself:
There's not too much a wizard like this can do during a timestop to actually hurt us with the rather lackluster vanilla scripts - we emerged without a scratch and ended the fight rather quickly, moving on to the temple - another opportunity to showcase our anti-undead prowess:
Onto the marching mountains. Now, this party is actually not incredibly great at dealing with fire giants. Our best shot is to activate hardiness on our barbarian combined with innate physical resistances and fire resistance via cleric spell - that's decent and allows us to get blunt damage immunity via Gromnir's helmet, but that only works against those fire giants that happen to deal blunt damage - but not those who slash. To kill these giants before they kill us, we actually do need multiple fighter HLAs per fight (unless we want to go really slow and kite them at range, which kind of clashes with our blunt force approach) - but still, only 2-3 rests are needed in total here:
Here, I accidentally discovered that one invisible character can block off this staircase:
Berenn is the last giant to fall:
We use The Wave for the fire elementals and move back, using traps for Nyalee. Yaga-Shura is challenged - first, we discover the lieutenant wizard, whose improved mantle falls to staff of the magi attacks:
The giant shows up and dies within one round to GWWs:
Note that we have cloud/storm giant strength potions, invulnerability/defense, heroism, and oils of speed at the ready for every remaining battle against The Five, so we will get a little bit of an extra boost.
A quick trip past the Oasis, and we enter Amkethran. We have some fun with Vongoethe, forgoing the usual traps in favor of a direct attack. Now, he actually can not be dispelled with our SotM, and we have to wait out his defenses. This does give him the opportunity to cast dragon's breath twice (turn undead doesn't seem strong enough for him), actually dealing some damage to us despite our attempts to spread out - still, in the end, he falls to our blades:
Next up, we decide to visit Sendai's Enclave - we get close - but not quite - to our first character death in the room with the officer with the key, as an enemy cleric is able to cast harm and hit Garam with it:
There's no followup, though, and we can counter with heal. Odamaron is actually low enough in levels to be turn-killed by Narescha at this point:
A conservative approach with some luring into traps and summons helps to quickly clear Diaytha's room after we had to use most of our fighter HLAs for the earth elemental prince:
And now, for our first really big mistake in this run: During the (generally laughably easy) duel against the captain, I make this massive mistake of using the efreeti bottle. In the unmodded game, the genie will pretty much immediately release a fireball here. I realized that a milisecond before it happened, but failed to pause in time to give him differing manual orders. Now, I have never actually done anything to damage the nearby drow during the duel in this room, so I had no idea what would happen. The result: The drow all get active and start to intervene. My party stays paralyzed and can't do anything. Narescha, who is not very good at killing quickly at all, now has to kill the drow before they kill our party, as some of them go after the helpless characters instead of our bhaalspawn:
This takes a while. Sadly, we don't have energy blades left, having used them against the elemental prince earlier. Our high hp fighters really need their huge healthpool now, and Narescha is forced to cast a heal spell twice. Luckily, she herself is immune to the ranged attackers here: Their +1 drow bolts can't hurt her due to one of the hell trial powers, so she eventually fights her way through all remaining foes:
This could've gone much worse. Well, I'll certainly make sure that no AoE spells are cast in this room ever again.
On the plus side, the mind flayers are readily dealt with, and Sendai uses improved mantle in both of her wizard forms, so we can SotM-hit, meaning all her statues die pretty much right after being activated. Her final form doesn't fare much better - she doesn't dispel us, and so he has almost no way to actually hurt us, and once PFMW drops, she's toast:
I decide to equip the Studded Leather of Thorns on my swashbuckler here, because the damage return effect seems helpful for a rogue that's currently played much like a fighter with the tactical options of being able to wield the SotM (and the usage of traps). Plus, I've pretty much never used it in previous runs, and the novelty of it might be fun. The alternative would be grandmaster armor with some resistance boots, but if we need resistances, we can buff via cleric spells, potions or green scrolls. I'm sure this decision will turn out to be great.
Because Draconis is arguably the most dangerous foe in the vanilla game, we first make our way to Watcher's Keep. Going in from no-magic zones into demon-infested areas can be scary, but our saving throws are so good at this point that we aren't really afraid of too much here:
Against the demon wraith, we stay back and disarm traps while he timestops and tries to damage us (without much success). Once his PFMW has run out, we get a nice vorpal hit:
While the Spectral Brand would be quite helpful, we are unable to win a single round of gambling. On to level 4 - mind flayers and githyanki aren't a threat at this point (The Wave causes us to lose out on another upgrade here: Angurvidal, which I planned on my swashbuckler to use, got destroyed due to the frozen effect), though Saladrex is able to withstand our usual vorpal attacks (for 2 rounds - after that, he dies anyway):
Garam is the one who gets to use our second PfM scroll for the nearby demi-lich. We activate the machine and move on - level 5 is easy enough, we take the safest route in the spirit warrior maze and start laying down traps for the seal guardians. The auramach rilmani is notably immune to spike traps, but normal traps do the job:
Azamantes suffers the same fate, and we make sure to trap the succubus when dealing with the last group while focusing our GWWs on the hive mother first:
Narescha reads Helm's scroll, we craft some items (notably, The Ravager +6 - which also means no more destroyed items via the frozen effect, though there's not much left to loot anyway) and move on.
For Draconis, a deva does most of the melee work, survives the time stop and we move at range to avoid getting stuck in his selection circle as he transforms:
We have our acid protection scrolls active. We have the gorgon's plate, the helm of the rock and the darksteel shield. Notably, we don't have the Shadow Dragon Armor. I'm able to spot Draconis' dispel magic in time to move the affected character away. He uses his breath weapon, but due to avoiding the dispel, everyone affected still has their green scrolls active, and most of the potentially devastating damage is avoided:
Nerix renews his green scroll. Draconis is able to knock us away and use another breath weapon:
However, with no second attempt at a dispel, our resistances hold out. We get our fighter HLAs going and finish our foe:
Very good. We move inside. This is where we encounter a group of ice salamanders, and I learn about the Studded Leather of Thorns interaction. Jorna's health drops incredibly fast. My reflexes aren't terrible, but I am unable to react and pause the game in time, and she's likely to have died if not for that fact that the offending salamander died right before the last few loops of damage reflection could go though:
That was close. This, and the Wave interactions, also make me wonder: How much frost damage is actually needed to get the "frozen" effect? 15 is definitely enough as I learned in this run, but 1 (from the flail of ages) certainly isn't, as we propably all know from experience. The wiki only says: "Cold damage that sufficiently overkills a target can snap-freeze it instead." Not very precise.
Well, we move through the lair and towards Abazigal. Finally, after acid and frost damage, we encounter a damage type we can fully block with cleric spells again. The dragon kicks us far away at first, but also wastes his dispel magic on our deva, which is pretty good for us. We are soon able to surround him and start dealing some damage:
Because of Abazigal's strong melee attacks, we have to rotate our fighters in and out, making sure hardiness never drops and we use quite a few healing potions. Narescha moves away towards a ranged position for safety. Eventually, our little dance succeeds and we are able to win:
I don't have a screenshot for Balthazar - he died in 2 rounds, not much to say here. We used spike traps to help with the Ravager:
This, and the Wave interactions, also make me wonder: How much frost damage is actually needed to get the "frozen" effect? 15 is definitely enough as I learned in this run, but 1 (from the flail of ages) certainly isn't, as we propably all know from experience. The wiki only says: "Cold damage that sufficiently overkills a target can snap-freeze it instead." Not very precise.
Checking a better reference (the IESDP):
If this effect reduces target to -20 (Allegiance: PC) or -9 (any other Allegiance value) hit points, it also applies opcode #13 of the specified type: ...
So, for enemies, the threshold is -9 HP. It takes at least 10 cold damage (reducing an enemy from 1 HP to -9) in a single packet to freeze an enemy and destroy their stuff.
Also, creatures with Death Ward or an equivalent protection may be immune to chunking/freezing/etc? Depends on when effects like that go away as the death is evaluated.
Against a party member, the death types associated with most damage types will remove that character from the party, making them impossible to resurrect. The exceptions: magic damage, missile damage, and poison damage. Those cause a "normal" death just like non-excessive damage.
Having read that archers are pretty powerful in BG1, I thought that I might give them a try.
I had come across an image of a Halfling Archer and based the character on that.
I would have had axes as the mêlée weapon, but since her other weapons are sword and dagger, I chose large swords.
In general uneducated people don't know whether my name is Bella Beau or Bella Bow. I choose not to elucidate since I am both beautiful and use a bow.
The problem with halflings is that they are not strong enough to break open locks on doors or chests. That is more of a problem in Candlekeep where potions of strength are not available. Whilst there I flirted a bit with Alec and was able to open a chest containing a pearl. I hid after taking it which meant that the kinky guard didn't see me.
No difficult choices to make this time!!
I helped Sir Trun's romance to go smoothly.
At High Hedge Melicamp was returned to his proper form and in Beregost I calmed Marl before taking a tome to Firebead.
On the way to Nashkel I returned Kessy's rabbit much to her delight. I also found an amulet near the road.
Once there I found some ankheg armour, but I am unable to use it. I chatted to Noober and turned down a reward from Oublek.
Near the mines I killed an attacker called Zargos Flintblade before killing Greywolf. They were challenging enemies!
Upon returning the Colquetle Amulet my reputation reached 18, so my desire to become a hero was fulfilled.
A letter was then delivered to Mirianne, and from thence I investigated a cave near Lathander's Temple. In there I found more excellent armour which I am unable to use and a tome that raised my charisma. I avoided conflict.
On the way to the FAI I killed an ogre and found a +1 ring of protection and met up with Bartleby Longwalker who wished me to deliver some letters, one to Firebead and one to Nessie. I still have more to deliver.
I helped a drunk near Beregost Temple and returned a ring to Joia. A bit to the north I killed Sonner, his allies and the undead husband of a widow before going to the southwest of Nashkel. I helped Albert before killing Vax and Zal.
Further to the west I killed Krumm and his cohort before returning 'Drienne's cat and killing Ingot.
From there I headed west where I found a ring of fire proyection, received a scroll from Hafiz and took Samuel to the FAI.
The guards helped me against Tarnesh and once he panicked the rest was easy.
Sadly Glayde and Faltis were killed by Silke when I tried to help them.
Karlat was killed next.
In transit I was ambushed by ten bandits. All perished.
In the basilisk area I dealt with a party of aggressive adventurers before killing several basilisks, medusae, and finally Mutamin.
At the point I rewached level 6.
Getting to this stage was harder than usual, but quite satisfying
It is now perhaps time to do some recruitment.
Some magic users and wearers of better armour would be helpful as would a thief.
Xzar and Montaron joined the party. Montaron did a lot of pickpocketting after which I left them at Ulgoth's Beard. It was there that Thorin joined me. He is a much better companion and his level is 7, Dwarven Defender. He is exactly what i need to face the ankhegs.
Trio 51 - FINAL Update!
Corecleric XX - halfling priest of lothander
Mirazi - human mage (Grond0)
Betson - human dark moon monk
The party made it through Yaga's temple - it was quite hard for us, but we managed it. Nyalee, on the other hand, was destroyed easily since the party made sure they could resist charm effects. Yaga Shura was almost a disaster, Corecleric was being attack and low health, so party ran, rested and returned - our 2nd attempt was much for successful and Yaga was slain!
Time for the pocket plane #2 challenge. There was a serious problem though - it has been a long time since the Trio had gotten here, and a long time even since Gate70 was in Throne Bhaal, and this cost us dearly. For one, Grond0's powerful minions like planetar and mordy swords didn't come to to challenge despite being summoned. Apparently Corecleric needed to tell Mirazi to send them in, wait, then Corecleric and his minions should go in. Whoops!
Well, Betson is a powerful melee, though, should be OK, right? Corey_Russell assumed everyone knew that the anit-here Corecleric needs to be killed first - he is very dangerous as well as tends to concentrate on the PC. But since it was a long time since Gate70 has even been to this challenge, he forgot about that, and Corey_Russell didn't think to remind his competent party members who they need to concentrate on. Corecleric's health dwindled rapidly and he was slain! RIP Corecleric.
Trio 52 - update 1 Stellar - half-elf druid (Grond0)
Corethief XXXVI - human berserker due to dual to thief in BG2EE (Corey_Russell)
Betsdown - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous run
With time left in the session we soon generated a new set of characters (or not entirely new as Betsdown continues Gate70's current fascination with dark moon monks ).
Betsdown blinded Shoal to give us an early XP boost.
A few tasks in Beregost were intended to include shooting Neera from range in order to pick up her gem bag. However, she dodged a bullet and convinced us to join her in tackling some Thayan mages - that proved no trouble.
A quick run down to Nashkel saw Stellar grab the ankheg armor, while Corethief purchased some plate mail to give himself better protection in melee. His new armor saw some use fighting basilisks, with the help of the green PfP scroll from the Carnival. The session ended with Mutamin's favorite monsters all dead. Mutamin himself is still in the fog of war, but will be the first target next time.
@Grond0 To get the plate armour, why not kill the Flaming Fist Guard on the road to Nashkel. It's free and it doesn't cost reputation! In my set-up there are three Flaming Fist. The battle then needs more care but you get three suits of armour. At 300 gp each, they are worth having at the start of the game.
Sorry about your loss.
Meanwhile Bella and Thorin visited the Gnoll Stronghold. This gave Thorin the Gauntlets of dexterity and a big boost to armour protection. Also boosted Bella's Charisma to 20.
She cannot wear the Charisma boosting armour, and with a starting Charisma of 18 we didn't get the ring (BG1 NPC Project)
The bracers make Thorin a formidable warrior and made killing ankheg quite easy particularly as I have bracers to improve my archery skills. The gold from the ankheg shells paid for a better bow for me and a better axe for Thorin.
We've had 3 sessions with this pair and they have just made it past Sarevok into Siege of Dragonspear.
Berry took my usual spell selection (protection from petrification) during rolling of this random pairing meaning we could turn the tables on an ambushing basilisk.
Rouse has made good use of writhing fog to catch unsuspecting enemies, here is Mutamin failing to react and Kirians gang were similar.
Durlags Tower was reached using blindness, and the basilisks outside were nullified by more protection from petrification.
Mulahey managed to cast entangle but we had cleared his minions and were able to focus on him.
The bandit camp was cleared outside and inside.
Drasus and co were removed from the entrance to Cloakwood mine.
Davaeorn was waiting for us at the base of the mine, and since Rouse had boots of speed he was volunteered into leading our attack. Another nice easy victory for us.
On to the city of Baldur's Gate. We completed various small tasks before entering the Iron Throne HQ in search of richesrevenge an explanation. At one point Rouse got confused, so Berry used his sole arrow of dispelling (loot from something much earlier) to dispel him. Success - and with that we finished off our attackers.
We dealt with looting Candlekeep, then returned to interfere with the interference of a coronation, and chased Sarevok down past Rahvin's luckless party. Sarevok put up a good fight but only Semaj came to help and he was cut down. Sarevok continued to put up a good fight, this being doomed and failing to save against web several times.
Berry had used a minor globe of invulnerability to drag Sarevok through the web and eventually realised the globe had gone so made sure he was out of the web. Rouse kept up spells and missiles while Berry added more missiles and it wasn't long before Sarevok keeled over.
We saved at the start of Siege, should be easy to remember what we were doing.
@Grond0 To get the plate armour, why not kill the Flaming Fist Guard on the road to Nashkel. It's free and it doesn't cost reputation! In my set-up there are three Flaming Fist. The battle then needs more care but you get three suits of armour. At 300 gp each, they are worth having at the start of the game.
Thanks @Wise_Grimwald. I tend not to bother with plate mail myself, but just jump straight to full plate once I get around to the Bandit Camp. However, I agree those guards are a tempting target to get an armor upgrade (and are available in the vanilla game).
@Grond0 To get the plate armour, why not kill the Flaming Fist Guard on the road to Nashkel. It's free and it doesn't cost reputation! In my set-up there are three Flaming Fist. The battle then needs more care but you get three suits of armour. At 300 gp each, they are worth having at the start of the game.
Thanks @Wise_Grimwald. I tend not to bother with plate mail myself, but just jump straight to full plate once I get around to the Bandit Camp. However, I agree those guards are a tempting target to get an armor upgrade (and are available in the vanilla game).
And if three flaming idiots on the main road is too tough a fight, there's always the one that's hassling Viconia. She'll even cast Command on him so you can get in some free hits. Peldvale is a fairly dangerous area in general, but it's not too bad if you go there from the Friendly Arm and hug the western edge of the map.
Well, in BG 1 at least there's lots of gold to be had - our Trios have finished runs with more than 100,000 gold in our bank! And our Trio rarely buys stuff anyways. Also we have no arcane this run, so we'll gets of money by selling spells and also not buying any spells.
Here's the WeiDU log for i eated a lemon's run! @Alesia_BH, I was mistaken; it is not an SCS component that moves Tiax. It's a component of the Tweaks mod.
That ghast is definitely a game-changer early in the game. In most of my runs, the ghast is overshadowed by higher character levels, but with the group at level 1, it's a major boon.
Comments
Basilisks are low intelligence creatures. In PnP they have a low challenge rating. It should be possible to foil their petrification attacks with a single spell, or even a mirror.
The problem with basilisks in BG1 is that they are worth too much experience. They should be 700 and 1400, more or less, not 1400 and 7000. The original XP numbers come from PnP, but they are ill suited to the BG world, since basilisks effectively lose one of their greatest tactical assets: their ability to ambush attack enemies before they've deployed counter measures.
The basilisk waylays are the only basilisk encounters in BG that kind-a-sorta capture the PnP flavor.
These days I skip the basilisk hunt in Lizardville, as well as the basilisks atop Durlag's Tower and the ones below Candlekeep. The waylay basilisks are the only ones I feel comfortable killing.
Now, it may seem as though I'm missing your point. You were commenting on immunities, generally, not basilisks specifically. My counter point, though, is that the problem isn't the structure of the game so much as the way we sometimes play it. Rather than appreciating intent, and the limits of the engine, we often deliberately subvert intent and exploit the engine´s limits.
The basilisks weren't implemented well in BG because BG is a replayable video game, and the nature of the creatures requires them to surprise their enemies. Rather than exploiting that implementation challenge by slaughtering them for easy experience, or worse still charming them and making them petrify each other, we should understand the relevant limits and refrain from taking advantage. I don't exempt myself from this criticism. I used to kill the basilisks for XP, too, and in the NR challenge, at least, I was an early adopter of that strategy. By now, though, I've learned my lesson with respect to the basilisks, much as I've learned it with other features of the game. I'm glad to say that I'm still learning, and I'd enjoy having a discussion about establishing balanced and sensible playing norms.
Best,
A.
Thanks, Borco! Glad you got a chance to check out Astrid's Tavern run.
Please do feel to cross post Sorsha´s BG2 run over there. She'd fit right in! It would be a pleasure to have you
Cheers,
A.
We fight our way out of the dungeon and test our strength by going after Mencar right away - test successful, though all of our skeletons die during the battle:
On to the Nashkel Mines! Since we're in the area, I veer a little off-course to pay Prism a visit. Greywolf hits REALLY hard at low levels, but we manage to bring him down with the help of Jaheira's Sunscorch.
Inside the mines, I pull i eated a lemon towards the back of the group and use Poppy to Sleep the enemies. Khalid gets killed by two arrows that hit within a fraction of a second. We desperately need some level ups so we have an HP buffer.
After killing the spiders in the mine and a ghoul, boykisser finally hits level 2! She now has 32 HP, and while that's by no means indestructible, it's far, far more resilient than we had a second ago. The kobold chieftain is a bit scary, but Sleep manages to disable some of the weaker enemies. Tiax sends forth a ghast, which gets quickly shot down, but it buys enough time for us to make progress on the enemies. Our spellcasters chip in from afar. Every little bit counts.
I am again reminded of my first forays into BG1, losing characters in a fraction of a second at Firewine Ruins. I've never felt that BG1 has aged well, and seeing these sudden death scenarios, which my normal metagame route has spared me in recent runs, remind me why.
Mulahey proves an easy target despite the lack of Algernon's Cloak. Tiax carries the day, knocking Mulahey off his feet with Command and giving our ghast some free hits, paralyzing Mulahey before he even goes red and summons any enemies.
We bring out the ghast against Tranzig, who spots us first and attacks before we can navigate the ghast right next to him, but Tranzig is unable to do anything serious before the ghast overwhelms him simply due to its high APR.
I briefly considered avoiding High Hedge, reasoning that it's a little out of the way, but it really just doesn't feel safe to march straight to Davaeorn without buying at least a few supplies. The potion of Magic Blocking we could find at the bandit camp is not going to be enough; not when we won't have access to the Ring of Energy in this run. Plus, I want to get a couple of important potions for the bandit camp.
We pick up the Ring of Wizardry on the way to the Larswood. I normally sell it off, reasoning that 9000 gold is far more valuable than excess level 1 slots, but since that feels like a huge windfall at this point in the game, I decide to just put it on Poppy--more of a convenience, really, since few fights will last long enough for the extra slots to make a difference. We talk our way past the bandit group in the Peldvale to avoid a fight with Tazok, and then get ready for the bandit camp tent.
One of the things I want to do in this run is try to fight things head-on, like you would in a casual run. That way we get to experience some of the standard gameplay that my high-meta route normally skips. I really don't think we can handle the enemy on our own strength, since our fighters are level ONE right now and we have no second-level spells, so I deploy some potions I got from High Hedge.
We chuck two Potions of Explosions and an Oil of Fiery Burning at the enemy, burning down almost all of them in one fell swoop. Necessity is the mother of invention.
This is the second time Poppy has died due to an ambush. The only reason the bandits targeted Poppy instead of i eated a lemon is because the latter was wearing studded leather; our mage has no armor. If our mage was our main character, we would have already lost two runs simply because of random ambushes.
I think I would have given up on this type of run entirely if I was running a mage Charname. The only way to guarantee survival for a level 2 mage in a bandit ambush that I can think of is to burn a Potion of Invisibility every time it happens, and god knows those are an incredibly precious resource.
But in the Cloakwood, we run into a Dread Wolf I've never seen before, and the extra 650 XP finally gets Poppy to level 3! We now have two Invisibility spells per day, enough to cover both Poppy and i eated a lemon. We are somewhat less at the mercy of random chance now.
Normally I steer clear of the spider hive in the Cloakwood, but since we're trying to fight enemies head-on and the quest gets thrown in our face upon entering the area, I decide to try tackling the spiders. I take advantage of our new access to Invisibility, hiding the entire party except for boykisser, who drinks a Potion of Freedom and a Potion of Invulnerability to protect her from webs and poison.
The enemies all converge on her, but we are not asking her to solo this fight; we just want to buy the rest of the party a few brief seconds of safety to act. We knock out the lesser spiders with Sleep, bring out the ghast, and blind a few of the still-conscious enemies with Glitterdust.
I kind of want to recruit Coran, though I don't know who I'd kick out to make room for him, and since I don't like quest timers hovering over my head, I decide to go wyvern hunting before bringing him into the party. I'm pretty apprehensive, since wyverns have awesome saving throws, but because Kagain and Dorn are now at levels 3 and 2 thanks to our spider hunting, I feel like we can handle the danger.
Good luck comes our way, and we manage to blind the wyverns and avoid taking much of any damage!
i eated a lemon sneaks over to the enemies, guides a ghast near the mages, and we try to land a quick paralyzation hit on one of the mages. To my amazement, we get incredible luck, and our ghast manages to paralyze BOTH mages on the first hit!
Drasus is not distracted by the spectacle, and so we send forth boykisser to keep him company, with a Potion of Absorption to protect her. Unfortunately, a single Potion of Absorption isn't enough to hold off Drasus, and we don't have a second one to ensure her safety.
Now we have Davaeorn to deal with, and due to the "head-on" approach I'm taking in this run, we've got a bunch of other fights to win before we get the chance. For the first time in years, I'm going to be fighting through the Cloakwood Mines instead of sneaking through them.
Tiax's ghast has figured prominently in the early game. How did you recruit Tiax so early in the adventure?
It is, of course, a substantive change, since summoning a level 4 ghast is semi-reasonably balanced in Chapter 5, but OP at level 1.
Can you post a Weidu log, or at least a mod list? It would make it easier to follow the action.
We make it through Brynnlaw to Spellhold - Narescha, after a few attempts, manages to get a turn undead kill on our first lich here:
I guess we'll find out what happened with the Studded Leather of Thorns soon, lol.
With a sniper, I would have taken Greywolf on solo. Actually playing as a sniper. Shoot, hide behind the mountain, shoot again. You just have to ensure that he doesn't land any blows.
An alternative is to lead him to the mine where guards will join in on the action. Of course you might lose out on the experience doing that.
Previous posts - BG1: Introduction, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Technical notes:
Game version: BG2EE 2.6.6.0
Difficulty: Hardcore
Mods: SCS (v34.3); BG Tweaks (cosmetic changes)
Modified SCS components: Giant Spiders (Tactical), Smarter Beholders (Tactical), Smarter Mind Flayers (Improved), Improved Fiends and Celestials (Basic)
Omitted SCS components: Improved Vampires, Improved Shade Lord, Improved Bodhi, Improved Beholder Hive, ToB tactical challenges (Watcher's Keep, Fire Giant Temple, Sendai's Enclave, Abazigal's Lair)
It's good to be in Athkalta (even though Sorsha might disagree on account of Jon's hospitality)!
As soon as we're out of the cell, we checked our spellbook (optimized shortly before landing the killing blow on Sarevok) to confirm that we had memorized 3x Magic Missile, 2x Mirror Image, 1x Strength, 2x Skull Trap and 1x Spirit Armor. Lost and confused, Sorsha was more than happy to let Imoen tag along for now.
Our start was sloppy - Sorsha's first Skull Trap was somewhat wasted on the duegar party due to my poor timing, killing only one of four.
This initial hiccup lead to a protracted melee kiting fight, with the panicked gibberlings eventually joining the fray. We also had to tap into Imoen's spellbook for a Lightning Bolt (which I normally like to keep for the narrow corridors) to increase our damage output.
The mineral mephit in the sewer golem room was taken down with the help of MGoI, DuHM and Magic Missiles.
Sorsha recovered her hood (her personal item introduced and described in the first post of the run), although to my disappointment she did not find the Staff Spear +2 among the "imported" loot - being proficient in axes, she got Bala's Axe instead. For the majority of BG1, Sorsha had been relying heavily on her staff's range and speed (0 speed factor with Aule's + two-handed weapon proficiency), and she was not ready to transition to standard melee fighting with axes. We'll ponder on the possible uses of Bala's on-hit Miscast Magic, however the activated Dispel Magic apparently casts at the wielder's divine caster level, thus making it completely irrelevant for Sorsha. For now, we needed another weapon and that meant fighting more pesky mephits in the jar room.
As a compensation for the sustained minor injuries, we're rewarded with quarterstaff +1 and a level-up for Sorsha at 220k XP (level 11).
Our second Skull Trap of the day turned out to be slightly more efficient, allowing us to clear the second duegar party with ease and reach Rielev and the golem activation stone.
For the duegar trio guarding the narrow corridor leading to the sewage room, Sorsha kited them with her staff while running MIs (by way of a reminder, her personal item grants her +1 luck which in turn causes the enemies to always hit the images instead of the real Sorsha).
The otyugh was taken down with Magic Missiles and Imoen's backstab with the +1 staff.
Saving Sorsha's second MI cast for the security golems, we did suffer slightly heavier damage while trying to clear the remaining duegar parties in the NE corridor and near the portal (especially since our Spirit Armor had already expired earlier).
We collected the Claw and the Amulet of Metaspell Influence and proceeded to Ellesime's room. As soon as the alarm went off, Imoen applied Haste and Sorsha fired up her MIs and equipped a chain mail. With that, both golems came down nice and easy.
Assessing our remaining spells and other resources, we still had Web and Stinking Cloud in Imoen's spellbook, Sorsha's Bhallspawn DuHM and Armor + Fireball scrolls. That should be just enough to take care of Ilyich and his entourage. With our Haste and MIs still running, we first take out the dust mephit at the library's entrance.
Sorsha then casts Armor (via scroll), Resist Fear (via her personal item) and DuHM, while Imoen covers the floor with her Web.
With the first wave dead, we escalate the pressure with Stinking Cloud. Lacking the corresponding weapon proficiencies, Sorsha and Imoen focus their crossbow fire on the defenseless foes, waiting for more duegar to appear.
Checking the log, we notice that the mage has entered the Stinking Cloud. Without hesitation, Sorsha pulls out her Fireball scroll…
The rest was mainly clean-up, although we did suffer some damage from Ilyich et al. once both the Web and the Stinking Cloud expired.
We took the acorns back to the dryads and, using HiS to avoid the mephits in the Elemental Plane, Imoen also returned the genie flask to procure the Sword of Chaos.
After that, we moved on to the 2nd floor, dismissed Yoshimo and rested. Sorsha's buffs for the portal room were Strength, Shield, MIs, Haste and MGoI, while Imoen pitched in with Monster Summoning. Don't you just love MGoI when fighting mephits?
Sorsha then takes the lead against the remaining mephits in the western corridor. Just like "None cross Greywolf and live!", "No one crosses the Shadow Thieves and lives!" is one of those inflated statements that regularly turn out to be untrue.
Oh and by the way, our Skull Trap targeting seems to be improving a bit.
In the hallway, Sorsha collected and identified the wands (Lightning, Fire, Monster Summoning and Cloudkill). In preparation for the assassins near the exit, we used MIs and Improved Invisibility on Sorsha and some freshly summoned ettercaps.
Imoen was forced to make her save against Dire Charm and Sorsha had to cure poison on one of our summons, but otherwise we had everything under control.
We didn't want to leave yet with semi-full spellbooks and so we decided to go and collect the Girdle of Bluntness from the forge, blasting the duegar parties with Skull Trap, Web and Fireball (via wand).
Having released Frennedan and collected all the loot from his room, I realized that we could still take out the cambion back at the 1st floor with our leftover L1 spells before surfacing.
Phew, we've made it! As I said in the beginning, it's good to be in Athkatla.
Regards,
B.
We quickly move past the first pocket plane challenge and through Saradush, doing the various sidequests and getting our hands on boots of speed for everyone. Our way to Gromnir was without incident, the staff of the magi was very helpful with the various yaga-shura mages we encountered. For Gromnir himself, we immediately rushed to his throne, managed to take down one wizard, leaving the other one alive while GWW'ing down Gromnir himself:
A quick trip past the Oasis, and we enter Amkethran. We have some fun with Vongoethe, forgoing the usual traps in favor of a direct attack. Now, he actually can not be dispelled with our SotM, and we have to wait out his defenses. This does give him the opportunity to cast dragon's breath twice (turn undead doesn't seem strong enough for him), actually dealing some damage to us despite our attempts to spread out - still, in the end, he falls to our blades:
On the plus side, the mind flayers are readily dealt with, and Sendai uses improved mantle in both of her wizard forms, so we can SotM-hit, meaning all her statues die pretty much right after being activated. Her final form doesn't fare much better - she doesn't dispel us, and so he has almost no way to actually hurt us, and once PFMW drops, she's toast:
@Enuhal Interesting times in Sendai's lair. Glad everyone made it out alive.
Because Draconis is arguably the most dangerous foe in the vanilla game, we first make our way to Watcher's Keep. Going in from no-magic zones into demon-infested areas can be scary, but our saving throws are so good at this point that we aren't really afraid of too much here:
For Draconis, a deva does most of the melee work, survives the time stop and we move at range to avoid getting stuck in his selection circle as he transforms:
Well, we move through the lair and towards Abazigal. Finally, after acid and frost damage, we encounter a damage type we can fully block with cleric spells again. The dragon kicks us far away at first, but also wastes his dispel magic on our deva, which is pretty good for us. We are soon able to surround him and start dealing some damage:
Checking a better reference (the IESDP): So, for enemies, the threshold is -9 HP. It takes at least 10 cold damage (reducing an enemy from 1 HP to -9) in a single packet to freeze an enemy and destroy their stuff.
Also, creatures with Death Ward or an equivalent protection may be immune to chunking/freezing/etc? Depends on when effects like that go away as the death is evaluated.
Against a party member, the death types associated with most damage types will remove that character from the party, making them impossible to resurrect. The exceptions: magic damage, missile damage, and poison damage. Those cause a "normal" death just like non-excessive damage.
I had come across an image of a Halfling Archer and based the character on that.
I would have had axes as the mêlée weapon, but since her other weapons are sword and dagger, I chose large swords.
In general uneducated people don't know whether my name is Bella Beau or Bella Bow. I choose not to elucidate since I am both beautiful and use a bow.
The problem with halflings is that they are not strong enough to break open locks on doors or chests. That is more of a problem in Candlekeep where potions of strength are not available. Whilst there I flirted a bit with Alec and was able to open a chest containing a pearl. I hid after taking it which meant that the kinky guard didn't see me.
No difficult choices to make this time!!
I helped Sir Trun's romance to go smoothly.
At High Hedge Melicamp was returned to his proper form and in Beregost I calmed Marl before taking a tome to Firebead.
On the way to Nashkel I returned Kessy's rabbit much to her delight. I also found an amulet near the road.
Once there I found some ankheg armour, but I am unable to use it. I chatted to Noober and turned down a reward from Oublek.
Near the mines I killed an attacker called Zargos Flintblade before killing Greywolf. They were challenging enemies!
Upon returning the Colquetle Amulet my reputation reached 18, so my desire to become a hero was fulfilled.
A letter was then delivered to Mirianne, and from thence I investigated a cave near Lathander's Temple. In there I found more excellent armour which I am unable to use and a tome that raised my charisma. I avoided conflict.
On the way to the FAI I killed an ogre and found a +1 ring of protection and met up with Bartleby Longwalker who wished me to deliver some letters, one to Firebead and one to Nessie. I still have more to deliver.
I helped a drunk near Beregost Temple and returned a ring to Joia. A bit to the north I killed Sonner, his allies and the undead husband of a widow before going to the southwest of Nashkel. I helped Albert before killing Vax and Zal.
Further to the west I killed Krumm and his cohort before returning 'Drienne's cat and killing Ingot.
From there I headed west where I found a ring of fire proyection, received a scroll from Hafiz and took Samuel to the FAI.
The guards helped me against Tarnesh and once he panicked the rest was easy.
Sadly Glayde and Faltis were killed by Silke when I tried to help them.
Karlat was killed next.
In transit I was ambushed by ten bandits. All perished.
In the basilisk area I dealt with a party of aggressive adventurers before killing several basilisks, medusae, and finally Mutamin.
At the point I rewached level 6.
Getting to this stage was harder than usual, but quite satisfying
It is now perhaps time to do some recruitment.
Some magic users and wearers of better armour would be helpful as would a thief.
Xzar and Montaron joined the party. Montaron did a lot of pickpocketting after which I left them at Ulgoth's Beard. It was there that Thorin joined me. He is a much better companion and his level is 7, Dwarven Defender. He is exactly what i need to face the ankhegs.
Corecleric XX - halfling priest of lothander
Mirazi - human mage (Grond0)
Betson - human dark moon monk
The party made it through Yaga's temple - it was quite hard for us, but we managed it. Nyalee, on the other hand, was destroyed easily since the party made sure they could resist charm effects. Yaga Shura was almost a disaster, Corecleric was being attack and low health, so party ran, rested and returned - our 2nd attempt was much for successful and Yaga was slain!
Time for the pocket plane #2 challenge. There was a serious problem though - it has been a long time since the Trio had gotten here, and a long time even since Gate70 was in Throne Bhaal, and this cost us dearly. For one, Grond0's powerful minions like planetar and mordy swords didn't come to to challenge despite being summoned. Apparently Corecleric needed to tell Mirazi to send them in, wait, then Corecleric and his minions should go in. Whoops!
Well, Betson is a powerful melee, though, should be OK, right? Corey_Russell assumed everyone knew that the anit-here Corecleric needs to be killed first - he is very dangerous as well as tends to concentrate on the PC. But since it was a long time since Gate70 has even been to this challenge, he forgot about that, and Corey_Russell didn't think to remind his competent party members who they need to concentrate on. Corecleric's health dwindled rapidly and he was slain! RIP Corecleric.
Stellar - half-elf druid (Grond0)
Corethief XXXVI - human berserker due to dual to thief in BG2EE (Corey_Russell)
Betsdown - human dark moon monk (Gate70)
Previous run
With time left in the session we soon generated a new set of characters (or not entirely new as Betsdown continues Gate70's current fascination with dark moon monks
Betsdown blinded Shoal to give us an early XP boost.
Druid 4, 33 HPs, 8 kills
Berserker 4, 45 HPs, 12 kills, 0 deaths
Dark moon monk 4, 38 HPs, 18 kills, 0 deaths
Sorry about your loss.
Meanwhile Bella and Thorin visited the Gnoll Stronghold. This gave Thorin the Gauntlets of dexterity and a big boost to armour protection. Also boosted Bella's Charisma to 20.
She cannot wear the Charisma boosting armour, and with a starting Charisma of 18 we didn't get the ring (BG1 NPC Project)
The bracers make Thorin a formidable warrior and made killing ankheg quite easy particularly as I have bracers to improve my archery skills. The gold from the ankheg shells paid for a better bow for me and a better axe for Thorin.
Berry (male elf fighter/mage, Gate70); Rouse (male half-orc, Grond0)
We've had 3 sessions with this pair and they have just made it past Sarevok into Siege of Dragonspear.
Berry took my usual spell selection (protection from petrification) during rolling of this random pairing meaning we could turn the tables on an ambushing basilisk.
On to the city of Baldur's Gate. We completed various small tasks before entering the Iron Throne HQ in search of riches revenge an explanation. At one point Rouse got confused, so Berry used his sole arrow of dispelling (loot from something much earlier) to dispel him. Success - and with that we finished off our attackers.
Berry had used a minor globe of invulnerability to drag Sarevok through the web and eventually realised the globe had gone so made sure he was out of the web. Rouse kept up spells and missiles while Berry added more missiles and it wasn't long before Sarevok keeled over.
Thanks @Wise_Grimwald. I tend not to bother with plate mail myself, but just jump straight to full plate once I get around to the Bandit Camp. However, I agree those guards are a tempting target to get an armor upgrade (and are available in the vanilla game).
I can understand that. Both methods have merit.
That ghast is definitely a game-changer early in the game. In most of my runs, the ghast is overshadowed by higher character levels, but with the group at level 1, it's a major boon.