The road ahead: The Underdark, main area and side tunnels.
Anti-Magic party:
There's some trouble brewing for this party as we enter the Underdark - our saving throws aren't good enough against the various stun effects. The only way to get there for our inquisitor and stalker are invulnerability potions (of which I bought all I could find, but it's not a lot). Our wizard slayer can't even use these. My idea for the first mind flayer group - to save invulnerability pots, because I will need them for the mind flayer city until we can get to the saltwater elixirs - to use one potion on Karon, make him take the first round of psionic attacks and move in with the others to kill the mind flayers before they can stun again. This fails when our killspeed turns out to be way too slow - Nita gets stunned and killed before we can take our foes out:
Luckily, we overcome the mind flayers before anything more troublesome can happen and fight our way through the drow hordes, free/kill some prisoners and move on towards the beholder lair in order to get the invaluable greenstone amulet. However, first we have to get past a horde of kuo-toans, who also use paralyzing bolts and have some crowd control spells. Still, should be easy enough, right? Well, it seems like the answer is no. We move forward, using inquisitor dispel on their backline to remove the buffs of their spellcasters. As we fight their frontline, a hold person spell suddenly hits both our wizard slayer and Karon. Karon is supposed to always save against these with his invulnerability potion going. Looking at my screenshots later on, it seems like the inquisitor dispel, despite carefully placing it as far away as possible, must have it Karon and dispelled his potion, making him vulnerable to hold person again.
At this point, I'm panicking and doing all of the wrong things. I move my bounty hunter backwards for special maze traps, but far too late - it takes time and the animation is too long. My memory isn't good enough to remember whether Nita was out of inquisitor dispels at this point or if I simply forgot to use them on Karon to dispel the hold effect - in any case, in a rather embarassing fashion, we lost the run to a bunch of kuo-toans and a second/third level spell:
Acid&Ice party:
This group is now our only remaining hope for a successful entry into the Hall of Heroes. Time to start taking our buffs a little bit more seriously. Things are so, so much easier if you have 6 chaotic commands, 6 death wards and remove fear at your disposal. We slaughter our way through the kuo-toans to get some revenge. This group is especially good at dealing with mind flayers as we have a bunch of potential frontliners with good intelligence scores and a bunch of potions of genius in our inventory. The balor, the final enemy we tackle in this area, is only able to silghtly hurt one of our spirit wolves before Koschmara takes him out with her frozen fists:
We make our way to the beholder tunnels and add PfP to our buffs - the elder orb is breached, and no one even gets hit with anti-magic ray before we clear the opening room:
We use the shield of balduran for most encounters here. However, we want to avoid the other elder orb because of his imprisonment spell, so we ambush him with a couple of summons - our spirit wolves actually are able to stun him, making him easy prey:
Lacking fire elementals, the battles against kuo-toans are a bit rough - we take a nice bit of damage taking on the prince and his army, though we have quite a few casts of mass heal or heal to recover, seeing as we're banned from using many other powerful level 5 and 6 spells such as insect plague or summon fire elemental:
The drow party guarding the underdark exit dies next, despite a horrid wilting hitting our party:
And we make sure to prepare some fire protections in addition to our usual buffs when facing the demon knight ambush:
We enter the illithid city. Our powerful buffs make this a relatively easy area to clear, shuffling our fighters in and out based on their current intelligence:
Corethief XXXV human berserker dualed to thief - FINAL Update
It's been a long time since we have heard from Corethief. I have been busy with college. Well he died in spellhold - it was necessary for him to be in the front lines with a lot of squishies in the party - but it seems it cost him as a beholder managed to petrify him. Yes, the human poor saves hurts again! back to the drawing board...
MP party controlled by single player run - update 1
Protagonist: Corethief XXXVI gnomish cleric/thief
traveling with:
MP characters: Sarah (fighter/thief), April (berserker), Gabrielle (Bard), Serena (totemic druid)
NPC: Khalid
Just a quick update. The party is about level 4. It's been a challenging run so far, as Khalid got petrified in the basilisks area because he got horrored and wandered too close to the last basilisk. Sarah got waylaid by a gnoll and killed. After resurrecting Sarah and getting potion of mirror eyes and green scroll of stone to flesh we came back and restored Khalid.
However our travails weren't over yet. We tried to charm Peter but failed. We tried to entangle and silence, but gnolls joined the fight which made it much harder. The enemy archer was just slaughtering the party. We eventually killed Kirian's party but not before Sarah and April died. The rest of the party had a heck of a time looting as they are pretty weak, but they did manage it, though encumbered. We resurrected and equipped our fallen comrades once again. We are going through our gold really fast having to pay the temple for all of these resurrections, good thing there's lot's in BG 1.
Sarah's weapons were breaking so we killed the hobgoblins in the Bassilus area for their +2 sword sword for her. We have claimed our reward for Bassilus and paused our run here. Will keep at it.
This party is under pressure to succeed now - with my initial goal being 2 out of 3 parties making it into the hall, I set 1 successful party as the bare minimum.
We enter the drow city and rescue Phaere via death spell:
After killing the beholder via Shield of Balduran, we have to deal with Qilue - a quick and decisive strike with a well-buffed and hasted party and a few breach spells do the job:
A quick visit to the combat pits where Firl gets to fight a few wizard duels (mostly helped by spirit wolves, which we had summoned into the pit during the second battle), and we move on to tasks 3+4. Next, we deal with the slime cultists and Deirex. Vanilla liches can't be breached, so we need to wait for a bit while hiding out of sight or under our buffs. Once his timestop and PFMW have run out, Xerane approaches, buffed with improved haste:
We're still well buffed up for house Jae'llat, turn in the blood and flee the city after swapping the eggs. Successfully back at the surface!
@Grond0@Enuhal - Thanks. In the end, the most balanced group stood the longest. Not too surprising, though emblematic for a development I've experienced as a player - starting many, many years ago, I thought: "Yeah, a balanced group is clearly the best, I need all options available to me to beat this game." After a few years of gathering lots of experience, I thought "Who cares about group composition? I can beat this game solo, I don't need any specific classes, every combination of characters will do." And now I'm back to "Yeah, a balanced group is clearly the best." It just has the highest percentage chance of success, especially with my playstyle.
TripleDouble Single Run for the Hall, Update 16
The road ahead: Loose ends.
Acid&Ice party:
We're starting our return to Athkatla off with a good old lich hunt. With the Helm of Brilliance available, we have double sunrays now, which can most of the time instantly kill vanilla liches, and our buffs protect against most possible dangers. A PfM scroll is used for Kangaxx, and we move on to the Twisted Rune. We add some additional buffs (mostly against spells and elemental damage types) and take out the lich before he can do anything while throwing an icestorm to the back to have a chance of interrupting Layene:
A quick assault on the beholder, and only our fighter/thief gets hit by anti-magic ray. So far, so good. We breach Layene and victory is ours:
Next up, we take on the mind flayers below the city. No trouble here, chaotic commands does the job. On to the guarded compound, where we quickly move upstairs and back down again to avoid having to deal with the various traps - the enemies follow and quickly get taken out:
Time to hunt some dragons. These are to be taken seriously, because they always open with remove magic, and if they hit the majority of the party (especially the bhaalspawn), things can easily turn out bad with dragon fear, breath weapons or other crowd control effects. Not keeping the party in one big group at the beginning helps a lot with that, and hasted characters that stay at range can try to lure the projectile away:
Well, in that case, the dragon failed to dispel anything:
Firkraag soon shared their fate.
Mass invisibility is very useful in order to quickly take down enemy late game mixed groups:
This is the first of my runs with a high level shaman in my party. In fact, I learned about the existence of unique shaman HLAs in this run for the very first time. This is why I'm relaxing my rule on damage types, allowing an exception for the shaman HLA "Ethereal Retribution" - I want to use the opportunity to test out these abilities I've never had access too before. Spirit Form and Favored of the Spirits sound useful, but if my experience with the defensive thief HLAs tells me anything, they propably won't get much use because my shaman is a very safe character, rarely getting threatened at all. Well, as we meet Bodhi again , you can see the effects of Ethereal Retribution here - not very powerful (especially for HLA levels), but a decent addition to our arsenal:
After seeing Enuhal's progress with various parties, I decided to pick up one of mine - this poverty run that I don't feel I've ever really done justice to . This time I won't go to the extreme of requiring them to avoid all damage, but the lack of raise dead options does still mean that carelessness can be punished severely. I've already had 2 quick restarts as a result of not paying sufficient attention when trying to knock commanded enemies unconscious before they recover. This time I'll try hard to see if I can put a decent run together.
The first aim of the run was to maximise Washout's trap setting skill - allowing him to make some high value kills. Following Korax round the basilisk area on the way to Mutamin provided the required couple of levels for him to do that.
Traps and blindness then accounted for Kirian's group.
Traps also did most of the damage against the golems at High Hedge.
After that, 4 of the group had the XP to level up. As usual for my groups though, they had to wait until everyone could level up at once. Some tasks around Beregost were not enough to promote Beggar. A few little jobs in Nashkel included silencing Zordral at the third attempt, but that was still not quite enough.
With travel off the main road still being too dangerous, they headed for the Friendly Arm Inn. Tarnesh was silenced, allowing them inside to hand a belt back to Unshey and return various goods to Landrin - gaining a level each at that point.
After retrieving Joia's ring a bit of backtracking located Elminster's first incarnation. 3 standard and 4 special traps was insufficient to kill him, but Washout was ready to throw in a further special one to finish him off.
Next on the trap list was Drizzt. He failed to survive the initial trap damage, allowing the Opera to gain another level each.
The sorcerers took invisibility, allowing the possibility of safe travel. It's worth noting that the last update to BGEE changed invisibility so that it no longer makes the caster visible. That makes it slightly more user-friendly in turning everyone invisible, as well as making rescue missions into melee combat much safer for the caster.
Invisibility allowed more quick XP to be gained at Durlag's Tower, with blockers used on battle horrors.
Hardup used his new Writhing Fog spell on the battle horror on the wall, while Pauper penned up the skeleton guards with turn undead.
I carefully worked through ghasts and basilisks and gained a bit of extra XP from trapping Kirinhale just as she thought she'd finally gained her freedom.
The ghost is subject to cold damage despite its ethereal nature and 3 Writhing Fogs meant a single hit from a spirit snake was enough to finish it off.
Pauper was still some way off another level. There was plenty of XP in the lower levels, but Washout's 65% trap detection skill needed boosting before attempting those. Instead, the Opera headed for the Cloakwood. I'm not requiring them to vacuum all areas, so they just did the major encounters there. The relatively meagre XP on offer there meant the next level up didn't come until they came back to the Nashkel Mine area.
Most of the mine was negotiated invisibly before Mulahey was blinded and beset by insects.
Outside the mine, I now had web available, but blindness and skeletons were all that was needed against the amazons. The rest of the area was cleared, with Narcillicus' jellies being taken down with magically created weapons after the mage was trapped.
Nimbul was silenced from out of sight before Tranzig was overcome by summons.
Having Punk as a companion was a matter of necessity rather than desire. As a cleric of Helm I am both lawful and Good so I need a companion who will be a little less fastidious than I am as occasionally it is necessary to perform tasks which I would prefer not to do. Punk is an illusionist/thief and together we make quite a good team.
Bassilus saved against all our spells (silence, command, sleep), we saved against rigid thinking, but we didn't save against his hold spell.
End of a very short run!!! This time our strategy was fine, but as has been said: "Luck runs out!"
Starting with same party in Candlekeep.
This time we intend to be a bit stronger before facing Bassilus.
Sleep did most of the hard work clearing the exterior of the Bandit Camp. Inside Tazok's tent the enemies were all blinded, making finishing them off simple.
Resting provided Beggar with Bhaal horror, just in case he wants to indulge in a bit of extra crowd control ability at some point.
Before carrying on to the Cloakwood on the main quest, the Opera set out to do the main encounters on other map areas. Summons did the heavy lifting in the ankheg area, but I made a mistake by not travelling invisibly when going further north - getting a bit lucky that no-one was killed by the ambushing bandits.
Pauper's Seeking Sword supplemented sleep and blindness to deal with the wolf pack at Beregost temple. The Red Wizards were webbed, while scouting ahead invisibly in their area allowed Washout to disarm traps to make the spiders easier - I did though still have to bring out a swift slow poison to save Aspire after a phase spider teleported to him and got in a poison attack before he was able to cast blind.
Travelling back to Beregost, I forgot that another incarnation of Elminster was available there and he was too quick to start a conversation to give me the chance to withdraw and set up some traps. There was no escape for the clone at the Friendly Arm Inn though.
That again left Pauper as the odd one out, preventing everyone else levelling up.
More encounters to finish the southern areas included blinding the Doomsayer for easy disposal. The deadly combination of webs with spirit lions (which have natural free action) made short work of sirines at the lighthouse area and traps and summons dealt with the golems in the pirate cave.
After gaining a nice little bonus for successfully reviving Melicamp, the Opera bypassed Shoal for now (in case they need to try and use her to raise a casualty later) and took on another group of sirines in the area.
That still left Pauper short of another level, but there were still a few southern areas left to explore. A couple of charmed bears accounted for an ogre clan terrorizing Sarhedra on the way to Firewine Bridge - summons and true sight accounted for Kahrk there.
Moving on to Gullykin, Molkar's group were blinded and picked off - Pauper gaining his level there as a result. I didn't fancy doing the whole of the Firewine ruins, but did nip into the back door at Gullykin to kill the ogre mage and Lendarn.
Ulcaster was the last of the southern areas to be visited and skeleton warriors (now with magical weapons) had no problems clearing the dungeon there.
The only significant thing done in Larswood and Peldvale was to reduce the competition Beggar faces for senior druid positions. Then it was on to the Cloakwood. That was cleared more systematically, with Beggar adding a number of additional druids to his trophy collection - mainly with the help of summons, though Amarande stepped on some traps.
In the 4th area I vaguely remember one of these runs getting into trouble in the wyvern cave - possibly as a result of summons breaking the wall of invisible blockers. This time I just relied on spell damage there and had no problems.
At the mine, Drasus' cronies were blinded before he was silenced and also blinded.
The mine itself was cleared without trouble. Beggar took advantage of his ability to summon spirits without breaking invisibility to spring the ambush on the second level. Downstairs, the battle horrors were drawn away and blinded before Davaeorn was silenced and killed by spell damage.
Arriving at the City, Washout laid some traps for Elminster - but he disappeared after being attacked, without going hostile. There were no early problems working through the more significant encounters. The fight with the Mountain Maulers saw a first use of a nymph and Gretek switching sides for a while. However, I got into trouble against Jardak. Initially I underestimated his HPs when expecting 5 traps to kill him. Pauper had been hit once in luring him downstairs into those and hit again after the transition. The sorcerers tried magic missiles to finish him off, but Aspire misdirected his and hit Pauper - leaving him severely ill and Jardak still standing. Fortunately, Jardak didn't follow Pauper back upstairs and the sorcerers got the chance to finish him off.
I was pretty much out of damaging spells when I got to Marek, but summons polished him off within a couple of seconds.
Rather than resting too much, I made use of shaman dancing quite a bit. The upgrade to spirits at level 6 means they can deal with even powerful enemies like doom guards in a reasonable timeframe - particularly when those are blinded .
I killed Degrodel, but my rules for the poverty run don't allow the use of any items, so I couldn't get the easy XP for reviving and destroying the statues.
The final bit of work in the City for now was the Iron Throne - webs and spirit lions did the bulk of the work there, though couldn't quite finish the enemies off.
The high XP requirements for clerics in middle levels means that Pauper is once again holding everyone up. Rather than look for another 40k or so of XP at this stage they reported for duty in Candlekeep. In the library the Iron Throne party were set on each other. Moving on to the catacombs, I gazed wistfully at the tomes available before concentrating on clearing all the enemies. Prat's group were all blinded, while summons did the work against spiders and basilisks - Pauper getting the XP to allow everyone to take their last BGEE level up during that.
The Opera are now back at Baldur's Gate, but will probably take a detour by returning to Durlag's Tower next, in search of more XP, before continuing with the main quest.
Back at Baldur's Gate, Washout very slowly went through the first underground level removing all the traps. Enemies were then picked off, mainly using invisible blockers. Then it was time to summon the warders. Fear died from trap damage with follow-up magic missiles. Love was beaten up by buffed skeleton warriors, before Avarice (already at near death from trap damage) died from a first casting of MMM. Pride didn't last much longer under a general attack.
On the second level I'd worked through most of the doors puzzle. When trying to kill the last of the doppleganger guards though I mistakenly believed that it was trapped by 3 blockers. Instead it nipped out and attacked Hardup who was about to dance up some summons. It was still hasted, so that seemed like a potentially dangerous situation, but invisibility came to the rescue with a bit of time to spare. The dwarven doom guards survived traps and skeletons easily enough, but were picked off from behind an invisible wall.
On the third level, Washout once more started disarming traps. Even with 100% though, sometimes a trap takes longer to detect than it should. That sort of effect had nearly caught me out once already when Washout detected a trap right next to him. Then he went one worse and detected one when already standing on it - and a succession of dart hits proved too much for him.
The remaining party headed for Shoal and Hardup presented himself as a sacrificial victim. In the last run I tried that he unfortunately saved against the kiss, but this time he went down. That allowed Beggar to bludgeon Shoal into submission and moments later Droth was dead. Rather than accept a meagre award from Shoal, she was disposed of as well.
Rather than return to Durlag's Tower I decided to go back to Baldur's Gate. After saving Duke Eltan and disposing of Cythandria, Slythe and Krystin died in moments. At the palace hasted summons and traps helped make short work of the dopplegangers.
Going through the maze, I was fully exploring it rather that taking the shortest route. That almost resulted in the end of the run when I thought I'd remembered that an invisible stalker was at the end of a corridor and sent in Pauper to flush it out with true sight. However, there was actually a lightning bolt trap and Pauper survived the bounces of that with a single HP left.
After clearing the Undercity, the others rested a while to allow Washout to place traps in the old temple. Those were sufficient to kill Angelo, but Semaj was untouched and teleported out. Skeletons were about to finish him off, but unfortunately he pre-empted that by committing suicide by lightning bolt. Tazok was at near death from traps and the remaining skeletons soon dealt with him. Invisibility stranded Sarevok while I sought out a few doom guards to blind in order to top up XP. He was then finished off with an insect plague and MMM.
With the help of some slices of luck, the Opera have at least got through to SoD this time. They transferred with 163k each, just above the standard level cap but still a long way away from the 220k needed by Pauper to allow everyone to get another level.
We enter the elven city, buff up and start clearing it in one quick go. Everyone has access to HLAs now, so vanilla SoA enemies, even the most powerful ones such as the nearby dragon, stand little chance:
Entering the tree after completing the ritual, we do not use traps on Jon for once. However, even by just attacking with our buffed party, we killed him before his buffs activated, so there wasn't much of a difference:
We enter hell. My plan is to do all the trials the good way. However, I end up accidentally clicking the wrong dialogue option during the first trial (pride) and we suddenly, being utterly unprepared for that, have to fight a dragon. A huge mistake. We activate remove fear, but we're low on physical defenses, and the dragon hits a remove magic, and I'm not properly spread out - being a little bit startled by this sudden encounter... Firl retreats to avoid danger, both Koschmara and our druid have to retreat after almost dying to the dragon's melee attacks as Xerane is finally able to GWW down the beast - this could've ended much worse:
We also lose out on the desired hell trial reward, only getting some rather useless experience points instead. Well, dialogue misclicks happen. I usually get at least one per run. Mostly, it just means missing out on a quest reward. This time, it could've been lethalk.
Well, we move on - the other trials are easy enough, with a planetar helping out with elder orbs:
A few normal traps are back to help with Jon's demons. We use our HLAs to quickly take them down - soon, our foe is isolated:
We just need to breach, and victory is ours:
Well - things are still somewhat exciting. If our preparations are on point, we dominate, but mistakes keep happening from time to time, keeping this run always one step from being over. Time for ToB.
At the start of the SoD dungeon I attempted to make Porios surrender, but was surprised when he refused - leaving Beggar very exposed a long way from his companions. He made a rare use of Bhaal horror and that successfully opened up enough of a hole to allow him to run back through the guards at the door. SoD enemies tend to be good archers, so things were still very dicey, but invisibility arrived just in time and the remaining combat was not too difficult. On the lower floor, archers and backstabbers continued to be a threat, but several more groups of enemies were dispatched. I was again surprised though when the guards on the door switch chose to attack - for some reason the appropriate conversation routes must be different for parties than the solo characters I normally play with. That pair were no real threat though and I then had the chance to prepare properly for Korlasz - he was webbed to provide a quick victory.
XP rewards for the quests in the City are pretty small, so the Opera ignored most of those and moved on out. At the Coast Way Forest I typically help the vampire to get the regeneration ioun stone. That was no good in this run, but I decided to do that anyway and insect plague ensured the mage would cause no trouble. Back at the Coast Way Crossing I explored for a while before remembering that I hadn't picked up Isabella's shield. Fortunately that had not yet evaporated and I was able to return Takos his prized heirlooms. I couldn't use the stone to flesh scrolls to restore Teleria's victims, but did kill the mage while exploring the rest of the area. Playing solo, I never bother with the dungeon there these days, but did take that on this time. There was quite a hard initial fight with the bronze sentry supported by skeleton archers and Beggar got scared by a bone bat aura later on, but fortunately kept out of trouble while running round. Otherwise things went well enough up to finding Coldhearth. I couldn't use the Secret Revealed on him and couldn't remember whether he had full lich powers. To test that out I sent some buffed summons into him - and after seeing his buffs fire and destroying the summons I concluded I needed to run. Unfortunately, Pauper had been close enough to him to get caught in a remove magic as part of his spell trigger and lost his haste. That allowed the hard-chasing lich to see just enough of him while running round a corner to use a PW: stun on him. At that point I regretted not having taken the time to set up a reserve stack of traps, but it was too late ...
Washout bravely tried to distract Coldhearth and get far enough away to use a special trap, but his HPs were not up to the PW: kill that followed ...
Not a lot of screenshots this time. This is mostly due to my party members quickly killing the enemies. It seems like most of my time is looting, de-trapping, and selling. Only once in a while do they need my spells. They don't even need heal spells as I have the option enabled for rest until healed.
But in any case, we made our way to the City of Baldur's Gate. Corethief got all the tomes. Major encounters and what happened are:
* necrmancers on the 2nd floor of sorcerous sundries killed as usual. While skeletons were put up, these enemies were never going to make an impression on cavailiers who are immune to fear.
* Cavaliers were worried against the ogre mage and his minions, but Corethief said have more faith in yourselves and sure enough the initial batch of enemies were cleanly defeated. However, after looting a 2nd group of carrion crawlers appeared and they managed to hold Drubb. Somehow the party managed to kill all the crawlers before they could kill Drubb.
* Deserta and Vayya killed as usual. The gauntlets were a welcome upgrade for Corethief as his STR is only 15 but the rest of the party is pretty strong. This STR also assisted in looting from here on.
* Basilisk defeated with a potion of mirror eyes on Corethief. It died very fast.
* We got poisoned but we hadn't got the quest for the boy getting into Umberlee's Temple so we got that quest first then destroyed the priests in Umberlee's temple for the gaes scroll for Lathander and the boy's body. We had a scary moment against Marek as he got his mirrors up and easily could have got his confusion off, which had the potential to make the cavailiers poisoned. But Drubb and Dayglow managed to kill Marek before he could his confusion off - close one!
* Boy's body returned to the priest of Tymora, and the shield went to Corethief, who never dual wields.
* Ragefast defeated as usual.
* Jardak and his butler defeated for their helm, helm went to Corethief
* Razamith's tower defeated. Corethief tried to take him out with stealth but the rest of party was impatient and attacked and they were almost chunked by a lightning bolt.
* Degrodel's minions defeated, a wand of heavens helped speed this up and also some fighter potions.
* Had a fight with the Mountain Mauler's, which got Corethief a level. However, Drubb tried to go up the stairs but instead died to a lightning bolt. That easily could have been a chunking close call - we resurrected him for the usual 800 gold. We have loads of gold, so no issue with that.
* Dopplegangers at Seven Suns defeated, as well as that mage nearby (Sunin) who has a nice ring. Also a mage at a thieve's guild was also defeated with skeletons.
* Some statues were de-petrified and killed and the cloak of balduran went to Dayglow.
* We had finished the BG quests, only thing left if the iron throne but we are out of time, saved here.
@Grond0 Yeah, challenging Coldhearth without "The Secret Revealed" is not advisable. He can certainly be beaten, but I'd never attempt to do so in a no-reload run. Still, you got very far for the rather punishing premise of the run!
TripleDouble Single Run for the Hall, Update 18
The road ahead: Saradush and the road to Marching Mountains.
Acid&Ice party:
Not much to report on Illasera or the first pocket plane challenge. Lowly Il-Khan soldiers are no match for our high-level cone of colds:
We do the nearby sidequests, clean out the prison with the help of the AoP and the sewers with a quick round of buffs. With access to all spellscrolls, we now finally have spell trigger, which means that we can use 3*CoC spell triggers. These were put to good effect for the first time against Gromnir - well, Karun the Black isn't so dangerous when he's frozen solid within a round of the battle starting, is he? Sadly, I was unable to hit the other mage, but Gromnir took some good damage as well:
The other mage is breached while our backline uses nature's beauty to permanently blind all of the other foes. A very quick and straightforward battle:
Leaving the city, we clear our way to the temple, where we use sunrays to our advantage:
The road ahead: Marching Mountains and Yaga-Shura.
Acid&Ice party:
There are many ways for us to deal with fire giants. Approaching a big group with mass invisibility is always helpful and gives us the opportunity to summon Mordenkainen's swords and cast nature's beauty:
A better execution of this strategy can be found here:
All we have to to is shoot them down at range now. Fire protection and remove fear spells make dealing with the side rooms relatively easy.
Some more summoned help is required to deal with Berenn and his allies:
These guys are a bit spread out, so to achieve blindness effects, we use a power word on Berenn and an additional nature's beauty for latecomers while Firl assists our damage with cone of cold spells:
We use The Wave to get rid of the prince of fire, return the hearts and move on to Yaga-Shura himself. As per usual in the vanilla version of this battle, he just doesn't have the staying power needed to stand up to a ToB-level party and dies in one round to GWWs:
Before we move on to Amkethran, we quickly complete the second pocket plane challenge:
Since the anti-magic party with their bounty hunter is gone, the reasons to allow traps are no longer relevant, and I decided not to use them any further to get, for example, full battles against the Ravager and Amelyssan, if I make it to them. This meant that, in Amekthran, Vongoethe actually got to do something. A rather dangerous situation ensued, as the lich was able to dispel a lot of our buffs, making us vulnerable to banshee whails (I made sure to immediately re-buff Firl with death ward for that reason) and dragon's breath, which the lich likes to use - he was unable to do before his death, though:
Still, that battle was a bit of a mess:
I should remember to use SI:A for that one even with a vanilla party. The other sidequests don't provide such challenges, and we move on.
We enter Sendai's realm, and another dispel situation occurs when a hive mother hits Firl with her anti-magic ray:
However, he's able to escape her range and survive. After dealing with the drow captain, we enter and start clearing the place. Odamaron, our first powerful foe in here, is dealt with by a deva summon:
A magical sword is used to tank Ogremoch:
And, after getting some help from a planetar and elemental prince, we enter Diaytha's room, not hindered much by her insect plague:
Firl is not good at dueling drow due to their magic resistance, but a few summons do the job. The mind flayers are far too low in numbers in the vanilla game to be challenging at this point, and we challenge Sendai. With the staff of the magi, true sight and breach spells at our disposal, we can deal with all types of Sendai clones relatively quickly, not letting the wizard ones cast their timestop. A planetar holds down the spawning drow:
Our shaman is silenced via power word, so he starts dancing. We add in an elemental prince as we get to the real Sendai, who is quickly breached and taken down:
We enter the teleporter maze, making sure to have the approriate protective items equipped following the no-magic zones and rebuffing after quick pocket plane visits. This place is much, much easier in vanilla compared to the full SCS version. The demon wraith is still dangerous, though - we go in with more protections than usual, including some spell protections (spell trap and SotA). We didn't suffer any adverse effects during the initial timestop and disarmed the traps, charging forward as soon as our foes PFMW ran out - his insane damage reduction caused me to go all out with HLAs to achieve a fast victory:
Now, here's our final ice damage weapon possibility - spectral brand. However, we lost every round of gambling against the cambion, so we aren't getting that one.
Level 4 - mind flayers are no challenge at this point, and neither are the githyanki. We prepare protection from fire for Saladrex and spread out to avoid a massive remove magic. He dispels our summons, so we can move in and activate HLAs - his melee hits still can get pretty rough:
Our second PfMW scroll was used for the demi-lich, and deal with Lum and his machine. We move on to level 5, where we have to fight another dragon battle. Protection from poison via green scrolls for the green dragon's breath, and we're able to only get our planetar hit by his dispel, turning this one into a cakewalk:
The orc army is easily endured with some PfL and PfF buffs, the riddles are solved and we take the safest route for the spirit warrior maze. This will be the first time in quite a while that I'm facing the seal guardians without the use of any traps, so we're making sure to go for the throat - the aurumach rilmani is instantly focused down with HLAs before he can unleash his own dangerous CoC spells:
Our Azamantes strategy is a bit different - we can't get through his initial buffs, so we just move away, out of range of the lich as he timestops, and take out the flaming skulls. Once his PFMW is done, we charge:
For the final group of guardians, we renew our buffs and add more stuff like spell trap and SI:A, SotA, multiple improved hastes and a bunch of summons. Our kill order is succubus => hive mother => rest. This battle goes really well. Our shaman is able to nature's beauty blind the fighters to the right, the hive mother doesn't deploy her anti-magic ray, the succubbus dies before casting her insect plague:
We use Helm's scroll and move back to Amkethran. Abazigal's lair awaits.
So the party finds itself at the base of the Iron Throne HQ. We make our way to the top and Dayglow used a potion of genius so he could put on protection from magic and some potions, then his friends assisted - success! Iron Thone party destroyed.
Time to head to Candlekeep. We intentionally did a bit more fighting than usual, but to good effect as this allowed Theen to level when we killed the basilisks. Some buffs made that dangerous doppleganger (who mirror images and hastes himself) a bit less dangerous.
For Prat and gang, some skeleton distractions, plus protection from magic on Grond0 and yes victory again. Theen passed his free action ring to Dayglow then Dayglow tried to take out the spiders, though a few were chasing Theen but spiders destroyed all the same. Interesting, we didn't have any potions of mirror eyes, but we still had two skeletons left and they were good distractions for the basilisks.
Slythe destroyed partly by traps, then a wand of heavens shot finished him. Krystin was defeated as well (why not). For Duchal Palace we had some summons plus haste buffs and sure enough the dopplegangers fell quickly to the cavaliers. The party breezed through the thieve's maze, with Theen using sanctuary and then de-trapping the traps by the skeleton warrior. This got both cavaliers their level cap level (8).
Once outside we sent some skeletons to Rhavin and Theen managed to get some silences in then then the party attacked. While the cavaliers were doing well Theen got hurt bad by the ogre berserker, but his party came and rescued Theen. Success!
Time for the main event. A few buffs, and also two snares and some skeletons where Semaj often ports to. This worked great and Semaj was defeated quickly before he could cause any mayhem. We had some trouble pulling Sarevok so Theen did it. Sarevok chases, some traps go off, and Sarevok falls prey to his own web! The cavaliers then made such short work of Sarevok I couldn't even get a screenshot.
Time for Irenicus dungeon. With a thief in the party and skeleton distractions, the whole area was cleared really without incident. Even the vampire was killed. We had just enough time to sell, and the circus will be our next target.
After 18 months I thought it was time for another go with the Wrecking Crew. That was the first of the parties of the same type of characters I created quite a few years ago. They've had to watch while a number of other varieties of characters have gone on to success, but have not achieved that themselves. The most common ending has been to have a character chunked, but that's partly because most of their attempts have been in an SCS installation. I've recently got a new computer and don't have any modded installations at the moment, but would probably have gone for an unmodded run anyway - that should give them more chance to make decent progress.
For some time they were largely focused on missile use and left Candlekeep weighted down with ammunition (to the extent that they have not yet had to resupply). Most enemies didn't survive long as they started ticking areas off as fully explored. I wasn't looking for high value targets, so they had made their way down to Nashkel and through the Cloakwood to the Gnoll Fortress before levelling up for the first time.
The next level was a bit quicker, with Ursa the Cave Bear tipping the balance at the xvart village.
A possible target for the next area could have involved the Doomsayer, but I didn't fancy him yet. Instead, the Crew went next door to call on Drizzt - he ran round in circles while the critical hits mounted up.
At Firewine Bridge the Crew picked up Meilum's bracers, but wimped out of the ruins and Kahrk for now. That didn't delay their next level for long though, thanks to having a greater weight of shot than Ioin and his men.
After clearing the road up to the FAI the Crew went to sort out Bassilus to get his hammer. That fight didn't take long, but I took a casualty while clearing the rest of the area when Baby Face took several hits from skeletons in rapid succession.
I was initially surprised by that, but then worked out the sad tale of what happened. A bit earlier I had decided to identify all my unidentified equipment, but managed to sell the shopkeeper several items instead of identifying them. One of those was Drizzt's armor and I'd sold the mundane armor that Baby Face had previously had and not replaced it .
A bit more work took them to the Lighthouse area, where shooting down sirines got the Crew to level 5.
Moving on to the Nashkel Mine there was a quick trip through that and Mulahey failed to summon any help before being shot down.
Resting provided Al with the first healing available to the party (he got LMD for his first Bhaal ability). There were no problems moving onto the Bandit Camp and clearing that - resting at one point to heal up damage from the bandit archers. I'd killed an innocent on the way to the Camp, so that Al would get horror as his next Bhaal ability.
Following Korax round in the basilisk area provided a quick XP injection before the Crew moved on to Durlag's Tower. Mobbing a couple of battle horrors there was enough for level 6.
A green PfP scroll was used against the basilisks on the roof and I even risked taking on the ghost - ambushing that on the stairs.
Filling in a gap, the Crew went to deal with the Doomsayer. With full plate and Twinkle boosting AC, it failed to register a hit.
The Cloakwood allowed Al to upgrade his 2-handed sword. Progress was pretty untroubled on the way to the mine where Al tried Bhaal horror for the first time and found that working extremely well.
Progress through the mine was easy enough, though Davaeorn put up more of a fight than expected - charming Mad Dog and holding a couple of others before being cut down.
The inhabitants of the ankheg area were brushed aside and the high strength of this party allowed them to carry an impressive 15 shells for sale in Beregost. They were then close to another level and picked that up killing a few zombies for the farmer to the north.
Time for Draconis. We equip the little acid resistance gear available, buff up with acid protection green scrolls, with more of them prepared in case of a dispel. We wait out the initial timestop and engange with some strong melee summons (Sunnis and magical swords) while taking Draconis down at range with the party spread out, which serves the dual purpose of avoiding the "stuck in selection circle" bug which is common upon his transformation and avoiding a potential remove magic hitting too many party members:
Our approach results in dispel magic only going after one separated party member, who happens to be Firl - great for us, because he's the only one with access to SI:A, so his buffs will stay safe. We prepare more summons, true sight + breach to make our foe vulnerable as our warriors start activating their HLAs:
Draconis goes for his first breath weapon, and we resist most of the devastating damage:
Now, we just have to GWW him down before he can heal up - which we do successfully:
Getting through the lair is mostly easy. The kuo-toans can't deal with chaotic commands, the eyestalks don't stand up to the Cloak of Mirrorring. We face Abazigal, preparing with protection from lightning via druid spells. First, we move around the area hasted and take down all salamanders to get a clear battlefield - this also serves the purpose of having Abazigal waste a few of his fighter HLAs. Once he transforms, we get knocked away:
Abazigal never actually dispels us (I don't remember if he targeted one of our summons, or if he didn't dispel at all), so this is mostly a case of breach and kill. He wastes his time attaking summons:
Back at Amkethran, we follow Seamon into the monestary and deal with the ambushers. It's our last hurray for our triple cone of cold spell trigger, which takes out most of the group (not captured in the screenshot, sadly):
The Ravager and Amelyssan are immune to cold damage, and Balthazar is highly magic resistance, so our theme won't do us much good in the last remaining battles. Vanilla Balthazar isn't much of a challenge for a full party, so we go for a quick all out assault:
There's little to say, as the battle lasted only seconds. We return to pocket plane to buff up for The Ravager. Since we're not using traps, he won't start out at near death via 7 spike traps. The battle isn't exactly complicated, but can be tough nevertheless - we need to avoid getting dispelled via his melee attacks as much as possible and deal as much damage as we're able to in very little time.
Our shaman HLA ethereal retribution does a good job here, as our foe can be dealt with via magical damage (though Firl isn't allowed to use the required spells, so it's up to our shaman):
To defeat Davaeorn sent some skeletons which resisted his spells. He summoned some monsters and the battle ended in a draw. All summons ended up dead. used my wand to summon monsters. Davaeorn dead. My rep now 20.
We buff with everything we can think of, including our remaining potions, and enter the throne. With Melissan's immunities, we change some of our weapons, as our rules allow us to refrain from acid&ice weapons if the enemy is immune. We have a triple mordy sword CC going, summon in an elemental prince and go for some light improved haste + GWW attacks, making sure not to use too many HLAs at this point:
Mel quickly retreats, we heal up and clear out the first pool. A deva is summoned for the second Melissan battle. This time, the priestess of Bhaal unleashes her remove magic spell, hitting our three fighters, while our spread-out spellcasters are luckily too far away to lose their buffs:
However, GWW will stlill do the job even without any other combat buffs, and we force our foe to flee again. We have tons of wondrous recall spells available on our two divine spellcasters, so we won't run out of chaotic commands and death wards to re-buff our party. We also have more potions to renew.
After clearing the pool, we prepare for battle #3, the most dangerous one in the vanilla game. Mel will teleport away and leave us with a bunch of slayer shadows. We already send our summons to the north before we start, add SI:A on Firl and make sure to pre-buff with hardiness on our fighters. We won't be stingy with our GWWs here - as soon as we reach Mel, our goal is to kill quickly. We breach, we let our shaman & druid use their time for full heal spells so we don't have to take any breaks dealing damage - and success is ours:
Our fighter/thief reads a few timestop scrolls to clear the final pool, and we prepare for Mel #4. GWWs are mostly gone, but we still have casts of improved haste ready. We try for a wish rest, but don't get anything too useful. We engage, and Mel quickly dispels most of our buffs - only Firl, who stayed at a safe distance, and our fighter/thief (going strong with 9 APR improved haste attacks) are unaffected. The shaman and totemic druid start renewing chaotic commands - luckily, Mel only summons mostly harmless bone fiends:
Despite no more GWWs, our fighters to a great job. We aren't even able to finish re-buffing chaotic commands before our foe is at near death, and the solar calls the battle:
And there we have it. One out of three groups made it into the hall. Not great, not terrible. The balanced party composition certainly helped a lot. The acid&ice theme was mostly noticable in the midgame - mid to late BG1 and early SoA, when icestorm and cone of cold are at their most powerful. The weapon choices didn't have the greatest impact on gameplay. The only relevant lategame option still useful later on was the triple cone of cold spell trigger, though it's hard to use (you really don't want to hit your party with that one) and only useful against certain groups of mostly humanoid enemies such as Gromnir's allies or the guardians of Balthazar's monestary. Still, it was an interesting run all in all - I even learned new things about shamans, that being their unique HLAs.
To make such a run more interesting, what would really be needed would be a player-available ability to reduce certain elemental resistances on immune foes - a few dragons have something like this in the game: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Lower_Fire_Resistance
Abazigal can do the same with electrical resistance, as far as I know. It would propably still not be amazing, since you'd need time to de-buff the enemy before actually dealing damage, but it would allow for more varied approaches.
Comments
The road ahead: The Underdark, main area and side tunnels.
Anti-Magic party:
There's some trouble brewing for this party as we enter the Underdark - our saving throws aren't good enough against the various stun effects. The only way to get there for our inquisitor and stalker are invulnerability potions (of which I bought all I could find, but it's not a lot). Our wizard slayer can't even use these. My idea for the first mind flayer group - to save invulnerability pots, because I will need them for the mind flayer city until we can get to the saltwater elixirs - to use one potion on Karon, make him take the first round of psionic attacks and move in with the others to kill the mind flayers before they can stun again. This fails when our killspeed turns out to be way too slow - Nita gets stunned and killed before we can take our foes out:
At this point, I'm panicking and doing all of the wrong things. I move my bounty hunter backwards for special maze traps, but far too late - it takes time and the animation is too long. My memory isn't good enough to remember whether Nita was out of inquisitor dispels at this point or if I simply forgot to use them on Karon to dispel the hold effect - in any case, in a rather embarassing fashion, we lost the run to a bunch of kuo-toans and a second/third level spell:
Acid&Ice party:
This group is now our only remaining hope for a successful entry into the Hall of Heroes. Time to start taking our buffs a little bit more seriously. Things are so, so much easier if you have 6 chaotic commands, 6 death wards and remove fear at your disposal. We slaughter our way through the kuo-toans to get some revenge. This group is especially good at dealing with mind flayers as we have a bunch of potential frontliners with good intelligence scores and a bunch of potions of genius in our inventory. The balor, the final enemy we tackle in this area, is only able to silghtly hurt one of our spirit wolves before Koschmara takes him out with her frozen fists:
On to Ust'Natha.
It's been a long time since we have heard from Corethief. I have been busy with college. Well he died in spellhold - it was necessary for him to be in the front lines with a lot of squishies in the party - but it seems it cost him as a beholder managed to petrify him. Yes, the human poor saves hurts again! back to the drawing board...
Protagonist: Corethief XXXVI gnomish cleric/thief
traveling with:
MP characters: Sarah (fighter/thief), April (berserker), Gabrielle (Bard), Serena (totemic druid)
NPC: Khalid
Just a quick update. The party is about level 4. It's been a challenging run so far, as Khalid got petrified in the basilisks area because he got horrored and wandered too close to the last basilisk. Sarah got waylaid by a gnoll and killed. After resurrecting Sarah and getting potion of mirror eyes and green scroll of stone to flesh we came back and restored Khalid.
However our travails weren't over yet. We tried to charm Peter but failed. We tried to entangle and silence, but gnolls joined the fight which made it much harder. The enemy archer was just slaughtering the party. We eventually killed Kirian's party but not before Sarah and April died. The rest of the party had a heck of a time looting as they are pretty weak, but they did manage it, though encumbered. We resurrected and equipped our fallen comrades once again. We are going through our gold really fast having to pay the temple for all of these resurrections, good thing there's lot's in BG 1.
Sarah's weapons were breaking so we killed the hobgoblins in the Bassilus area for their +2 sword sword for her. We have claimed our reward for Bassilus and paused our run here. Will keep at it.
The road ahead: Ust'Natha.
Acid&Ice party:
This party is under pressure to succeed now - with my initial goal being 2 out of 3 parties making it into the hall, I set 1 successful party as the bare minimum.
We enter the drow city and rescue Phaere via death spell:
Triple Double Single Run for the Hall, Update 16
The road ahead: Loose ends.
Acid&Ice party:
We're starting our return to Athkatla off with a good old lich hunt. With the Helm of Brilliance available, we have double sunrays now, which can most of the time instantly kill vanilla liches, and our buffs protect against most possible dangers. A PfM scroll is used for Kangaxx, and we move on to the Twisted Rune. We add some additional buffs (mostly against spells and elemental damage types) and take out the lich before he can do anything while throwing an icestorm to the back to have a chance of interrupting Layene:
Mass invisibility is very useful in order to quickly take down enemy late game mixed groups:
This is the first of my runs with a high level shaman in my party. In fact, I learned about the existence of unique shaman HLAs in this run for the very first time. This is why I'm relaxing my rule on damage types, allowing an exception for the shaman HLA "Ethereal Retribution" - I want to use the opportunity to test out these abilities I've never had access too before. Spirit Form and Favored of the Spirits sound useful, but if my experience with the defensive thief HLAs tells me anything, they propably won't get much use because my shaman is a very safe character, rarely getting threatened at all. Well, as we meet Bodhi again , you can see the effects of Ethereal Retribution here - not very powerful (especially for HLA levels), but a decent addition to our arsenal:
After seeing Enuhal's progress with various parties, I decided to pick up one of mine - this poverty run that I don't feel I've ever really done justice to
The first aim of the run was to maximise Washout's trap setting skill - allowing him to make some high value kills. Following Korax round the basilisk area on the way to Mutamin provided the required couple of levels for him to do that.
Traps also did most of the damage against the golems at High Hedge.
Invisibility allowed more quick XP to be gained at Durlag's Tower, with blockers used on battle horrors.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L6, 46 HPs, 31 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L6, 45 HPs, 17 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L5, 45 HPs, 14 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L6, 35 HPs, 20 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L5, 27 HPs, 17 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L5, 28 HPs, 19 kills, 0 deaths
Having Punk as a companion was a matter of necessity rather than desire. As a cleric of Helm I am both lawful and Good so I need a companion who will be a little less fastidious than I am as occasionally it is necessary to perform tasks which I would prefer not to do. Punk is an illusionist/thief and together we make quite a good team.
Bassilus saved against all our spells (silence, command, sleep), we saved against rigid thinking, but we didn't save against his hold spell.
End of a very short run!!! This time our strategy was fine, but as has been said: "Luck runs out!"
Starting with same party in Candlekeep.
This time we intend to be a bit stronger before facing Bassilus.
Previous updates
Before carrying on to the Cloakwood on the main quest, the Opera set out to do the main encounters on other map areas. Summons did the heavy lifting in the ankheg area, but I made a mistake by not travelling invisibly when going further north - getting a bit lucky that no-one was killed by the ambushing bandits.
More encounters to finish the southern areas included blinding the Doomsayer for easy disposal. The deadly combination of webs with spirit lions (which have natural free action) made short work of sirines at the lighthouse area and traps and summons dealt with the golems in the pirate cave.
That still left Pauper short of another level, but there were still a few southern areas left to explore. A couple of charmed bears accounted for an ogre clan terrorizing Sarhedra on the way to Firewine Bridge - summons and true sight accounted for Kahrk there.
The only significant thing done in Larswood and Peldvale was to reduce the competition Beggar faces for senior druid positions. Then it was on to the Cloakwood. That was cleared more systematically, with Beggar adding a number of additional druids to his trophy collection - mainly with the help of summons, though Amarande stepped on some traps.
The final bit of work in the City for now was the Iron Throne - webs and spirit lions did the bulk of the work there, though couldn't quite finish the enemies off.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L9, 69 HPs, 43 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L8, 63 HPs, 30 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L8, 66 HPs, 36 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L9, 55 HPs, 36 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L8, 40 HPs, 51 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L8, 42 HPs, 68 kills, 0 deaths
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1202655/#Comment_1202655
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L9, 69 HPs, 49 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L8, 63 HPs, 34 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L8, 66 HPs, 44 kills, 1 death
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L9, 55 HPs, 47 kills, 1 death
Aspire, Sorcerer - L8, 40 HPs, 72 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L8, 42 HPs, 87 kills, 0 deaths
The road ahead: Shadows of Amn endgame.
Acid&Ice party:
We enter the elven city, buff up and start clearing it in one quick go. Everyone has access to HLAs now, so vanilla SoA enemies, even the most powerful ones such as the nearby dragon, stand little chance:
Well, we move on - the other trials are easy enough, with a planetar helping out with elder orbs:
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1202655/#Comment_1202655
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1202671/#Comment_1202671
XP rewards for the quests in the City are pretty small, so the Opera ignored most of those and moved on out. At the Coast Way Forest I typically help the vampire to get the regeneration ioun stone. That was no good in this run, but I decided to do that anyway and insect plague ensured the mage would cause no trouble. Back at the Coast Way Crossing I explored for a while before remembering that I hadn't picked up Isabella's shield. Fortunately that had not yet evaporated and I was able to return Takos his prized heirlooms. I couldn't use the stone to flesh scrolls to restore Teleria's victims, but did kill the mage while exploring the rest of the area. Playing solo, I never bother with the dungeon there these days, but did take that on this time. There was quite a hard initial fight with the bronze sentry supported by skeleton archers and Beggar got scared by a bone bat aura later on, but fortunately kept out of trouble while running round. Otherwise things went well enough up to finding Coldhearth. I couldn't use the Secret Revealed on him and couldn't remember whether he had full lich powers. To test that out I sent some buffed summons into him - and after seeing his buffs fire and destroying the summons I concluded I needed to run. Unfortunately, Pauper had been close enough to him to get caught in a remove magic as part of his spell trigger and lost his haste. That allowed the hard-chasing lich to see just enough of him while running round a corner to use a PW: stun on him. At that point I regretted not having taken the time to set up a reserve stack of traps, but it was too late ...
Washout bravely tried to distract Coldhearth and get far enough away to use a special trap, but his HPs were not up to the PW: kill that followed ...
Corethief XXXV - gnomish cleric/thief (Corey_Russell)
Dayglow - cavailer (Grond0)
Drubb - cavalier (Gate70)
Not a lot of screenshots this time. This is mostly due to my party members quickly killing the enemies. It seems like most of my time is looting, de-trapping, and selling. Only once in a while do they need my spells. They don't even need heal spells as I have the option enabled for rest until healed.
But in any case, we made our way to the City of Baldur's Gate. Corethief got all the tomes. Major encounters and what happened are:
* necrmancers on the 2nd floor of sorcerous sundries killed as usual. While skeletons were put up, these enemies were never going to make an impression on cavailiers who are immune to fear.
* Cavaliers were worried against the ogre mage and his minions, but Corethief said have more faith in yourselves and sure enough the initial batch of enemies were cleanly defeated. However, after looting a 2nd group of carrion crawlers appeared and they managed to hold Drubb. Somehow the party managed to kill all the crawlers before they could kill Drubb.
* Deserta and Vayya killed as usual. The gauntlets were a welcome upgrade for Corethief as his STR is only 15 but the rest of the party is pretty strong. This STR also assisted in looting from here on.
* Basilisk defeated with a potion of mirror eyes on Corethief. It died very fast.
* We got poisoned but we hadn't got the quest for the boy getting into Umberlee's Temple so we got that quest first then destroyed the priests in Umberlee's temple for the gaes scroll for Lathander and the boy's body. We had a scary moment against Marek as he got his mirrors up and easily could have got his confusion off, which had the potential to make the cavailiers poisoned. But Drubb and Dayglow managed to kill Marek before he could his confusion off - close one!
* Boy's body returned to the priest of Tymora, and the shield went to Corethief, who never dual wields.
* Ragefast defeated as usual.
* Jardak and his butler defeated for their helm, helm went to Corethief
* Razamith's tower defeated. Corethief tried to take him out with stealth but the rest of party was impatient and attacked and they were almost chunked by a lightning bolt.
* Degrodel's minions defeated, a wand of heavens helped speed this up and also some fighter potions.
* Had a fight with the Mountain Mauler's, which got Corethief a level. However, Drubb tried to go up the stairs but instead died to a lightning bolt. That easily could have been a chunking close call - we resurrected him for the usual 800 gold. We have loads of gold, so no issue with that.
* Dopplegangers at Seven Suns defeated, as well as that mage nearby (Sunin) who has a nice ring. Also a mage at a thieve's guild was also defeated with skeletons.
* Some statues were de-petrified and killed and the cloak of balduran went to Dayglow.
* We had finished the BG quests, only thing left if the iron throne but we are out of time, saved here.
Triple Double Single Run for the Hall, Update 18
The road ahead: Saradush and the road to Marching Mountains.
Acid&Ice party:
Not much to report on Illasera or the first pocket plane challenge. Lowly Il-Khan soldiers are no match for our high-level cone of colds:
The road ahead: Marching Mountains and Yaga-Shura.
Acid&Ice party:
There are many ways for us to deal with fire giants. Approaching a big group with mass invisibility is always helpful and gives us the opportunity to summon Mordenkainen's swords and cast nature's beauty:
Some more summoned help is required to deal with Berenn and his allies:
I and my party have returneed to Beregost after killing Mulahey.
Our reputation is now 20. Our plan is to deal with Mutamin first before visiting the coast.
The road ahead: Amkethran and Sendai's Enclave.
Acid&Ice party:
Since the anti-magic party with their bounty hunter is gone, the reasons to allow traps are no longer relevant, and I decided not to use them any further to get, for example, full battles against the Ravager and Amelyssan, if I make it to them. This meant that, in Amekthran, Vongoethe actually got to do something. A rather dangerous situation ensued, as the lich was able to dispel a lot of our buffs, making us vulnerable to banshee whails (I made sure to immediately re-buff Firl with death ward for that reason) and dragon's breath, which the lich likes to use - he was unable to do before his death, though:
We enter Sendai's realm, and another dispel situation occurs when a hive mother hits Firl with her anti-magic ray:
The road ahead: Watcher's Keep levels 3-5.
Acid&Ice party:
We enter the teleporter maze, making sure to have the approriate protective items equipped following the no-magic zones and rebuffing after quick pocket plane visits. This place is much, much easier in vanilla compared to the full SCS version. The demon wraith is still dangerous, though - we go in with more protections than usual, including some spell protections (spell trap and SotA). We didn't suffer any adverse effects during the initial timestop and disarmed the traps, charging forward as soon as our foes PFMW ran out - his insane damage reduction caused me to go all out with HLAs to achieve a fast victory:
Level 4 - mind flayers are no challenge at this point, and neither are the githyanki. We prepare protection from fire for Saladrex and spread out to avoid a massive remove magic. He dispels our summons, so we can move in and activate HLAs - his melee hits still can get pretty rough:
Theen - gnomish cleric/thief (Corey_Russell)
Dayglow - cavailer (Grond0)
Drubb - cavalier (Gate70)
So the party finds itself at the base of the Iron Throne HQ. We make our way to the top and Dayglow used a potion of genius so he could put on protection from magic and some potions, then his friends assisted - success! Iron Thone party destroyed.
Time to head to Candlekeep. We intentionally did a bit more fighting than usual, but to good effect as this allowed Theen to level when we killed the basilisks. Some buffs made that dangerous doppleganger (who mirror images and hastes himself) a bit less dangerous.
For Prat and gang, some skeleton distractions, plus protection from magic on Grond0 and yes victory again. Theen passed his free action ring to Dayglow then Dayglow tried to take out the spiders, though a few were chasing Theen but spiders destroyed all the same. Interesting, we didn't have any potions of mirror eyes, but we still had two skeletons left and they were good distractions for the basilisks.
Slythe destroyed partly by traps, then a wand of heavens shot finished him. Krystin was defeated as well (why not). For Duchal Palace we had some summons plus haste buffs and sure enough the dopplegangers fell quickly to the cavaliers. The party breezed through the thieve's maze, with Theen using sanctuary and then de-trapping the traps by the skeleton warrior. This got both cavaliers their level cap level (8).
Once outside we sent some skeletons to Rhavin and Theen managed to get some silences in then then the party attacked. While the cavaliers were doing well Theen got hurt bad by the ogre berserker, but his party came and rescued Theen. Success!
Time for the main event. A few buffs, and also two snares and some skeletons where Semaj often ports to. This worked great and Semaj was defeated quickly before he could cause any mayhem. We had some trouble pulling Sarevok so Theen did it. Sarevok chases, some traps go off, and Sarevok falls prey to his own web! The cavaliers then made such short work of Sarevok I couldn't even get a screenshot.
Time for Irenicus dungeon. With a thief in the party and skeleton distractions, the whole area was cleared really without incident. Even the vampire was killed. We had just enough time to sell, and the circus will be our next target.
After 18 months I thought it was time for another go with the Wrecking Crew. That was the first of the parties of the same type of characters I created quite a few years ago. They've had to watch while a number of other varieties of characters have gone on to success, but have not achieved that themselves. The most common ending has been to have a character chunked, but that's partly because most of their attempts have been in an SCS installation. I've recently got a new computer and don't have any modded installations at the moment, but would probably have gone for an unmodded run anyway - that should give them more chance to make decent progress.
For some time they were largely focused on missile use and left Candlekeep weighted down with ammunition (to the extent that they have not yet had to resupply). Most enemies didn't survive long as they started ticking areas off as fully explored. I wasn't looking for high value targets, so they had made their way down to Nashkel and through the Cloakwood to the Gnoll Fortress before levelling up for the first time.
After clearing the road up to the FAI the Crew went to sort out Bassilus to get his hammer. That fight didn't take long, but I took a casualty while clearing the rest of the area when Baby Face took several hits from skeletons in rapid succession.
A bit more work took them to the Lighthouse area, where shooting down sirines got the Crew to level 5.
Following Korax round in the basilisk area provided a quick XP injection before the Crew moved on to Durlag's Tower. Mobbing a couple of battle horrors there was enough for level 6.
The Cloakwood allowed Al to upgrade his 2-handed sword. Progress was pretty untroubled on the way to the mine where Al tried Bhaal horror for the first time and found that working extremely well.
The inhabitants of the ankheg area were brushed aside and the high strength of this party allowed them to carry an impressive 15 shells for sale in Beregost. They were then close to another level and picked that up killing a few zombies for the farmer to the north.
Al (PC) - L7, 90 HPs, kills 307, *** 2-handed sword / *** longbow
Baby Face - L7, 75 HPs, kills 201, 1 death, *** long sword / *** crossbow
Mad Dog - L7, 89 HPs, kills 227, 0 deaths, **** axe / ** dual wielding
Carlo - L7, 95 HPs, kills 223, 0 deaths, *** flail / *** sling
Bugsy - L7, 80 HPs, kills 163, 0 deaths, *** hammer / *** shortbow
Vito - L7, 90 HPs, kills 225, 0 deaths, *** scimitar / *** darts
We made a big mistake in doing the mines before recruiting Montaron to do his usual pickpocketting.
It meant that we had to kill Dushai rather than pickpocket him for his ring.
At least nobody saw us kill him!
We will now have to go round looking for reputation boosting quests as we lost 9 reputation points.
We helped Samuel and dumped Dorn. Reputation now 12.
Met a basilisk on the way to help Tamah. Fortunately we had just bought some potions for just such an occurence.
Helping Tamah raised rep by 1.
Went to Carnival and rested.
Reunited Albert aand Rufie.
Killed Vax and Zal, some assassins near Nashkel and the Revenant.
We returned to the ankheg area meaning to return to the bandit camp after hunting a few ankheg.
EDIT
This we did, so we are now heading for Cloakwood
The road ahead: Abazigal's lair.
Acid&Ice party:
Time for Draconis. We equip the little acid resistance gear available, buff up with acid protection green scrolls, with more of them prepared in case of a dispel. We wait out the initial timestop and engange with some strong melee summons (Sunnis and magical swords) while taking Draconis down at range with the party spread out, which serves the dual purpose of avoiding the "stuck in selection circle" bug which is common upon his transformation and avoiding a potential remove magic hitting too many party members:
Getting through the lair is mostly easy. The kuo-toans can't deal with chaotic commands, the eyestalks don't stand up to the Cloak of Mirrorring. We face Abazigal, preparing with protection from lightning via druid spells. First, we move around the area hasted and take down all salamanders to get a clear battlefield - this also serves the purpose of having Abazigal waste a few of his fighter HLAs. Once he transforms, we get knocked away:
Balthazar yet remains.
The road ahead: Balthazar and The Ravager.
Acid&Ice party:
Back at Amkethran, we follow Seamon into the monestary and deal with the ambushers. It's our last hurray for our triple cone of cold spell trigger, which takes out most of the group (not captured in the screenshot, sadly):
Our shaman HLA ethereal retribution does a good job here, as our foe can be dealt with via magical damage (though Firl isn't allowed to use the required spells, so it's up to our shaman):
To defeat Davaeorn sent some skeletons which resisted his spells. He summoned some monsters and the battle ended in a draw. All summons ended up dead. used my wand to summon monsters. Davaeorn dead. My rep now 20.
Now in the Gate.
The road ahead: The Throne.
Acid&Ice party:
We buff with everything we can think of, including our remaining potions, and enter the throne. With Melissan's immunities, we change some of our weapons, as our rules allow us to refrain from acid&ice weapons if the enemy is immune. We have a triple mordy sword CC going, summon in an elemental prince and go for some light improved haste + GWW attacks, making sure not to use too many HLAs at this point:
After clearing the pool, we prepare for battle #3, the most dangerous one in the vanilla game. Mel will teleport away and leave us with a bunch of slayer shadows. We already send our summons to the north before we start, add SI:A on Firl and make sure to pre-buff with hardiness on our fighters. We won't be stingy with our GWWs here - as soon as we reach Mel, our goal is to kill quickly. We breach, we let our shaman & druid use their time for full heal spells so we don't have to take any breaks dealing damage - and success is ours:
To make such a run more interesting, what would really be needed would be a player-available ability to reduce certain elemental resistances on immune foes - a few dragons have something like this in the game: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Lower_Fire_Resistance
Abazigal can do the same with electrical resistance, as far as I know. It would propably still not be amazing, since you'd need time to de-buff the enemy before actually dealing damage, but it would allow for more varied approaches.