Cria the Bounty Hunter, a critical path only challenge, Update 6
At the temple, we use our helm of brilliance sunray again, and some Azuredge action for Cavria - only Talis gets level drained and is quickly restored:
Cavria cleared the group of skeletons and we moved on to the Marching Mountains. With the fire giants there mostly dealing slashing instead of crushing damage, we couldn't rely on Fara and her helm, instead using Mordenkainen's Swords to tank while the party attacked from range (first, we got in a good position with invisibility 10' radius):
Some fire resistance and remove fear spells helped in clearing out the side rooms, and we made our way upstairs, where we rested and re-buffed. Once again, for Berenn, magical swords were used to tank before the party attacked the main spellcaster:
Another sword lured out the prince of fire away from his traps, and we looted the remaining temple before returning with the hearts:
Yaga-Shura famously is very easy to kill in the vanilla game if you focus on him directly, which we did - even with zero HLAs, he died within a round to our improved-hasted fighter-types:
Our victory gave us access to our first HLAs - the paladins both went for summon deva, Fara and Talis took energy blades (a great way to boost physical dps, which we're often lacking a bit), Shirin started with summon planetar - Cria wasn't quite at her level up yet and got it shortly after, picking UAI. We buffed up for the second pocket plane challenge, with energy blades used to quickly kill Semaj and a planetar added into the mix:
Cria had to run away from her clone as fast as possible while the others dealt the damage - a bit of kiting, and we got there:
We use the instantly summoned planetar + spirit animal spells at the oasis to help out with the opening before we get some buffs ready - the Answerer is a long-awaited boost for the party, helping us with our thac0-problems (also, this means blackrazor can now go to Cria for the item-based immunities - her AC is also looking really nice with UAI in):
Lots of gold for us from looting the soldiers - in Amkethran, we quickly help out the smugglers and have no problem buying all 3 big items from them, plus a few potions. Because the monk versus priest encounter force-talks to us, we're fine doing that one as well, which allows us - after a quick visit to Sendai's Enclave, where we are resting now - to forge the druid ring, infinite +2 bullets and the Runehammer (the latter will be used by Fara once she gets another level up for a second point in war hammers). As far as I can remember, the only things we should be able to forge later on are Firetooth +5, Gram +6, and technically the blue dragon scale breastplate, so we will be able to spend our surplus money on useful scrolls.
Cria the Bounty Hunter, a critical path only challenge, Update 7
Outside of Sendai's Enclave, we face our first hive mother, though with the help of our buffs, a planetar, some breaches and energy blades we end up winning rather convincingly:
Fighting our way through the actual dungeon, we have to be a bit careful - with our low levels, we can't just storm in blindly into every fight - once again magical swords, and also our new HLA summons, help a lot as tanks, and we use a lot of healing potions (they drop in huge numbers down there anyway). With protection from poison scrolls for our fighters, we make our way through the spider tunnels:
Magical swords also help with the big drow groups on the next level, and we let a deva duke it out with Odamaron - in the vanilla game, the deva wins pretty much every time:
More Mordenkainen's sword tanking against the prince of earth:
And we send our own elemental prince + planetar against Diaytha after a quick rest - the party moves in to help after a while:
Cria wins her duel by shooting and kiting until the captain fails a saving throw against her kuo-toa bolts - she rushes into melee combat to finish the battle:
Another potion of genius for safety against the mind flayers, and we face Sendai. Inside her room, a planetar and simulacrum are summoned to help deal with the incoming drow, while we use true sight + breach to deal with the wizard clones:
The real Sendai spawns in, and once again we just have to breach and kill her:
After quickly finishing the third pocket plane challenge and buying all available useful potions and green scrolls, we have to face Draconis. Adding a few traps closer to the entrance for safety and using green protection from acid scrolls, we start by sending in fire elementals, our simulacrum and a deva while staying at range in order to avoid any selection circle trouble when he transforms:
However, as you can see I'm not really all that spread out, which is usually part of the strategy - to avoid a) a big remove magic hitting many party members and b) reduce the possible targets for an acid breath weapon. As Draconis transforms, I am distracted for a second and don't notice the remove magic flying towards us in time - Usually, I'm able to move a party member with boots of speed + a haste effect (which everyone has) away in time to prevent the remove magic from jumping to other party members, but as I didn't pay attention, everyone except for Cavria got dispelled. Luckily, Shirin had already called in a planetar to replace the deva (instantly with Robe of Vecna + AoP), and Draconis was distracted dealing with the celestial, which allowed us to gain some distance, while we re-applied remove fear and used the protection from acid wizard spell (this battle is the only reason Shirin even has selected that one):
Draconis used his first breath weapon against the planetar, which gaves us a little time - however, the planetar had no fear immunity (I should have used the self-buff, but forgot in the moment) and panicked, fleeing towards us - which brought Draconis to our traps:
However, the traps weren't enough to kill Draconis (and some of them hit invisible stalkers), and he used his heal spell to regain full hitpoints. I was able to apply acid protection to everyone but Fara (who is wearing the Gorgon Plate for a little bit of additional protection) and Iridias before Draconis re-engaged and forced us to fight. We were able to apply remove fear to the planetar and call in an elemental prince in the meantime - Draconis used his breath weapon again, and I was happy to see both Fara and Iridias making their saving throws:
Meanwhile, Shirin prepared improved alacrity, as I was planning to go for a timestop combo to finally kill the dragon (she had a lower resistance spell trigger prepared). However, as true sight revealed Draconis, the fighters and HLA summons were actually able to kill him - to my surprise - before the timestop even finished, with the help of a breach spell via scroll from Cria (sadly no wands of spell striking for us, as they are all in Watcher's Keep):
That could've gone much worse after my mistake with the remove magic.
As you could propably see, we have acquired some new HLAs while dealing with Sendai - the paladins got whirlwind attack, Cria a spike traps, Fara chose summon deva, Shirin acquired improved alacrity (and now has chain contingency available as well) and Talis, who got multiple level ups, now has (greater) elemental swarm and implosion as well. Also, Draconis' bracers are quite useful for Cria - we have lots of free item slots, in particular when it comes to cloaks, rings, gloves/bracers, and, to a certain extent, necklaces.
Cria the Bounty Hunter, a critical path only challenge, Update 8
The enemies in Abazigal's lair deal quite a big of damage to us - once again, we have to resort to magical sword tanking for hard hitters such as the prince of water:
However, with the help of a planetar we easily make it past the eye dungeon and directly to Abazigal. A quick rest, some safety traps, and we rest in order to prepare some lightning protection spells for everyone in the party. Abazigal gets to meet one of our magical swords while we take down the nearby salamanders:
Once we're done with that, we surround our foe and force him to transform:
Our deva actually manages to heal up and takes Abazigal's hits - more importantly, it tanks the remove magic, and since the party got kicked away, its the only creature affected:
We return to the dragon, breach him and use our whirlwind attack HLAs:
That went quite well. So does the fourth pocket plane challenge:
We upgrade Gram and forge the blue dragon plate before travelling to Amkethran, going invisible and preparing the 3* ADHW chain contingency for the monestary guardians:
Summons and buffs for Balthazar are prepared, and the monk doesn't survive for long:
All right! We buy any potentially useful spellscrolls and make our way back to the pocket plane - for the Ravager, we have a 3*pierce shield chain contingency (sadly, we didn't get to sorcerer level 21, which would have been ideal for a 3*pierce shield spell trigger instead, so the CC could've been ADHW) to lower magic resistance. We're also able to sneak Cria into the area to lay down her - by now - 3 spike traps. This doesn't always work - my theory, which is pure speculation, is that the game checks in very small intervalls whether the bhaalspawn has entered a specific entrance area at each challenge; However, with high enough movement speed (haste + boots of speed) and the right timing (which I have no idea how to check for, so for me it's just luck) it seems to be possible to cross before the game realizes the character is here, and once you're in the game doesn't seem to check anymore (you could spend as long in there as you'd want to). It has worked for me in some runs (and was crucial for my F/M/T solo run), but hasn't worked in others.
Well, in any case, we get a nice damage boost from that, but the Ravager is far from dead:
Shirin moves directly towards our foe so the pierce shield won't go after a random bone blade:
Her followup is a devastating 3*ADHW chain contingency, which grants us victory:
Now, only Amelyssan remains. A quick HLA, sorcerer spell pick and experience check:
We're at 3.849.191 XP - Something I propably have reached in SoA before in my regular runs.
Shirin's spell picks (not in order):
I Identify, Magic Missle, PfP, Shield, Sleep
II Blur, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Resist Fear, Web
III Haste, Invisibility 10' Radius, MMM, Skull Trap
IV Improved Invisibility, Minor Sequencer, Spirit Armor, Stoneskin
V Breach, Lower Resistance, Protection from Acid, Spell Immunity
VI Improved Haste, PFME, PFMW
VII Mass Invisibility, Mordenkainen's Sword, Spell Sequencer
VIII ADHW, Pierce Shield, Spell Trigger
IX CC, Time Stop, Wish
Cria the Bounty Hunter, a critical path only challenge, Final Update
We're as ready as we'll ever be. We have to be very careful with our resource management, especially the very limited fighter HLAs. A lot of our success will depend on whether or not Mel will dispel us, and if she does, the question is if it only happens once or actually multiple times. Storm giant strength, heroism, invulnerability, mind focusing and the like are added into the mix, and we go with double energy blades and our short-term improved haste effects for the first battle - the ADHW CC fails due to magic resistance - however, three fighters with improved haste and two more party members with energy blades plus all the buffs are easily enough damage to drive our foe away for the first time:
Shirin calls in a magical sword to tank the first pool guardians - mainly because I don't want anyone to get level drained by vampiric wraiths. Bracers of blinding strike improved haste gets replaced by a real cast. For round 2, we call in a deva and elemental prince, renew energy blades on Shirin and Talis, and, in the end, are about as strong as we were during the first battle, plus the summons - Initial damage is slow, but once the Answerer gets a few hits in, Mel quickly drops in hit points and retreats:
We activate potions and scrolls of frost protection for the second pool, send in another magical sword and clear the ice golem and his allies. Now, since Mel's third version is clearly the most dangerous one, this is where we will use our 3 spike traps plus 4 regular traps. In know that 4 spike traps are enough to kill each incarnation of Amelyssan, but I don't think 3 is always sufficient - my hope is that 4 extra normal traps should help with that (if she survives, this will have been for naught, as she heals to full life when teleporting to the north - for that case, I have oils of speed active on everyone and magical swords at the sides to engage the slayer shadows). However, the traps do their job. No screenshot here, as screenshots taken during cutscenes don't seem to really work.
Now, for the fallen solar - this one is always a super risky opponent because of the powerful on-hit effects (including full dispels) his arrows can cause, which I prefer to kill him under timestop. However, Shirin doesn't have the damage output for that (and shapechange doesn't do the job - the various forms either don't have enough APR or can't hit a fallen solar - mind flayer form doesn't have the required enchantment level - I opened up the old save file of my run with Firl, the acid&ice run, just to test out if I could kill the fallen solar with any shapechange form under timestop, and I couldn't), and Cria propably doesn't either - at least not in her regular form. However, you can use spellscrolls as the slayer, and the slayer gets to 8 APR with improved haste... And so, we cast PFME via scroll on Cria to protect her from slayer form damage, improved haste her, she gets close, transforms into the slayer (which is a first for me in no-reload gameplay, maybe with the exception of a previous wrath trial before I knew that you don't actually need to transform for that one), uses her first timestop scroll, attacks the fallen solar, uses a second timestop scroll after 2 rounds and kills the celestial before fleeing back to the party:
She returns to halfling form, and we use our magical swords + breach to take down the remaining demons:
We renew invulnerability potions, try to wish for a rest (but don't get one - the last level 9 spell slot I decide to save for summon planetar), call in a few summons (though they're going to get death spelled), use our last few improved haste casts (and 2 improved haste scrolls, with one left), energy blades for Talis again, simulacrum from the helm, bless, chant and DUHM for good luck, and we're ready to go. We still have our GWWs ready, and the Iridias-simulacrum starts the HLA usage - the Answerer does its job, we get in with more and more hits, and Mel has no chance:
Well, we didn't get dispelled even once - that makes the throne relatively easy, especially since we got to skip battle 3 thanks to our traps.
I'm very happy with the outcome and very fast pace of the run - it's often been very fun to play. Honestly, the ToB section was not too special (except for more HLA uses, you just don't gain THAT much from these late level ups, so the difference to a regular run wasn't enormous at this point), but the chapter end battles in BG1 were pretty much all super risky (especially chapters 2 and 3) and could've easily gone wrong. SoA was great fun, I really got to take advantage of the tactical options provided by my party composition (though having a totemic druid tends to make most of vanilla SoA relatively straightforward for me - not that I'm complaining, I love the kit). Having to be make big decisions about what to buy and what not to buy was also quite interesting, though that, too, got left behind in ToB where we had essentially infinite money despite basically starting with nothing (I think I imported about 2.5k gold from SoA to ToB). Sorry for being a terrible representative of the bounty hunter kit and not using the special snares all that often, but I wanted a single class thief for the party (due to the limited access to XP, I felt that a multiclass would maybe not get enough disarm trap points quickly enough in BG1, and I still don't know the BG1 traps well enough to play it confidently without a thief) and felt like this provided a good opportunity to get the last missing thief kit into the hall. I did plan for some maze trap shenanigans, but never got to actually implementing any of that - seems like an option that is most powerful in solo runs anyway.
After the usual brief pause to try and work out what we were doing, Wolfie remembered/deduced that the Iron Throne was next. Russell used a PfM scroll and some potion buffs and could have beaten up the opposition easily enough on his own - webs just made that a bit easier and quicker.
Some dopplegangers lasted only moments at the Seven Suns before we were off to Candlekeep again. It didn't take long to work through there, even with Russell taking a slight detour to demonstrate the power of Spider's Bane to various ghasts. A slight mis-communication meant that only Prat was caught by a first use of insect plague, but the others were disposed of without trouble to leave Prat helpless.
Wolfie and Ash got their final BGEE levels there, while Russell bemoaned the slow levelling of paladins.
Back in Baldur's Gate, we went in search of Slythe. Wolfie decided to talk to him before Russell weighed in with a dispelling arrow (and Slythe tried in vain to penetrate ironskins). That was in order to activate Krystin, so that Wolfie could inherit her dagger - providing him with a small upgrade to the off-hand dagger used while shapeshifted.
At the palace, potion buffs would have been quite nasty on their own. A group of nymphs would also have been nasty on their own. Throw those together, with some arcane spells and a few insects as well and the dopplegangers didn't know what hit them.
Russell got his final level while moving through the maze, but we still killed (on general principle) a few more skeleton warriors and Rahvin's party in the Undercity. In the old temple, Russell activated Sarevok by firing a dispelling arrow at him from distance. That missed but more of those meant Semaj lasted only moments when he teleported out in support. Wolfie threw in an insect plague and then relied on his ironskins to tank Sarevok - and those lasted long enough to bring the big man down.
There was time to make a start in BG2EE, with most of the starting dungeon completed. Ash had by now learnt protection from fire and took advantage of that to kill a number of weaker enemies with fireballs, without worrying about damaging his companions.
Of course, he didn't always remember to use that protection - and still didn't worry about damaging his companions .
Shapeshifter 10, 79 HPs , 22 kills (+254 in BGEE)
Dragon disciple 9, 59 HPs, 40 kills (+99 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Paladin 8, 95 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 22 kills (+194 in BGEE), 0 deaths
The dungeon was quickly completed, though we were unable to land a killing blow on Ulvaryl.
Some connection problems early on were a slight annoyance before we enjoyed a trip to the circus. Then we reported in to Gaelan Bayle before moving on to the Copper Coronet to get a slight armor upgrade for Russell.
With his relatively poor saving throws in mind, we went straight on into the sewers to find Lilarcor - picking up a couple of levels from the bonus XP there.
Wolfie was now able to conjure fire elementals and one of those helped against the slavers.
Ash was having to restrain himself from behaving badly in the City, so we went next to get him a magic license. Then, seeing Russell still taking a bit too much punishment in fights, we went to find Officer Dirth to get a further armor upgrade. While in that inn we took on the pirate enclave. The mage there is 100% magic resistant and laughed at the attempt to web him - but breach ignores MR and he was soon roasted by an elemental.
Looking to get some improved storage for potions, the next target was Watcher's Keep. The potential for vampiric wraiths there has cost us a few runs, but Wolfie decided to give it a go. There were indeed wraiths there and they managed to bypass the attempted fire elemental blockade and immediately drained a level from Wolfie. However, as he was about to exit the Keep, one of the wraiths was blasted into nothingness by Azuredge and Wolfie decided to stick around - allowing Azuredge to quickly complete its work.
Ash had by now learnt to cast MMMs and they helped make short work of a couple of guardian golems.
The first pair of statues was killed, but Wolfie found his companions resisting the idea of taking on the remaining statues and left them in peace for now.
Back in Athkatla we cleared out the Graveyard without trouble - other than Uncle Lester just surviving his escape attempt after killing his nephew.
Underneath there, Ash enjoyed playing with his latest toy - sunfire. The large number of spiders crisped by that almost allowed him to keep pace with Russell's kill numbers .
Shapeshifter 12, 83 HPs , 61 kills (+254 in BGEE)
Dragon disciple 11, 68 HPs (incl. 6 from ioun stone), 93 kills (+99 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Paladin 9, 106 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 94 kills (+194 in BGEE), 0 deaths
After clearing the Grave District last week, this week's session started by heading for the Bridge District with the intention of following up on the kidnappers. On arrival though we came across Hareishan attempting to feed on some unlucky thieves. She was killed, but not before hitting Russell a couple of times. Initially that didn't seem like a big deal, but the level drain proved deadly when he was caught in the cloudkill trap inside Skinner HQ.
The nearby temple was happy to resurrect Russell for a fat fee and he was soon leading the way to assault the Rune Assassins. However, his AC there was handicapped by using a small shield (which provides no protection against piercing weapons) and he was soon in trouble again. He tried to run, but the speedy assassins tracked him down and killed him again before Wolfie and Ash could finish them off.
Thus, having avoided any party deaths up to this point, we'd now had two deaths in a few minutes . The deaths were costly in another sense as well as Azuredge and Arbane disappeared into thin air when attempting to re-equip items from the dead bodies.
After finding the kidnap victim and releasing her (for the small fee of a pair of pantaloons), we came across Renfeld and rescued him from his attackers. That led to a conflict with Prebek and Sanasha. Ash killed the former with a sunfire, but was struck by confusion at the same time and left finishing off Sanasha to his companions. After looting the harper building Kitthix successfully webbed Lucette to ensure she would fail to make her escape after killing Xzar.
The lack of Azuredge made us even more vulnerable to vampires, so Wolfie decided to pay Gaelan Bayle in order to get the Amulet of Power for Russell as a means to prevent level drain. He immediately put that to use against Lassal - using Lilarcor to protect against domination there.
Russell wanted a larger shield, like the one on offer at Umar Hills. However, he was worried about taking on the mimic so wanted some protection against being held first. Thus we first took a trip to Trademeet to kill some efreetis and gain the Shield of Harmony.
Then it was on to Umar. We were still pretty low level, so only had to face skeleton warriors and shadow fiends spawning there. Thaxy could well have been a problem, but Wolfie resisted the temptation to take her on now. The Shade Lord was covered by insects to prevent it casting anything nasty.
We then returned to Trademeet for a delayed appointment at the Druid Grove. Ash killed a number of trolls there with death spells and his range of fire spells, but got caught short of spells in the Troll Mound. A giant troll thought he had him there, but a last moment potion of invisibility allowed him to escape. An insect plague dealt with the large group of druids in that area before Ash used web (for the first time in a while) to hold the last lot of druids. Wolfie used insect plague to disable Faldorn's spells and a couple of fire elementals then put the finishing touches to her.
Shapeshifter 13, 85 HPs , 96 kills (+254 in BGEE)
Dragon disciple 12, 69 HPs (incl. 6 from ioun stone), 142 kills (+99 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Paladin 10, 109 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 150 kills (+194 in BGEE), 2 deaths
It's been too long since I have played this run and forgot on whether I paid the license for magic or not - I risked casting a spell and sure enough the Cowled Wizards appeared and killed me. Back to the drawing board....
Edit: I found a starting save for a party of fighters, think will give them a go. His name is Corebrawl.
Corebrawl Update - being a full party we leveled slowly but wanted two-hand sword from Arghain for our Kensai but we got slaughtered by Ogre Berserkers in Arghain's area.
Corethief XXVIII Update
gnomish fighter/thief
To speed through BG 1 am solo in BG 1 but will have party in BG 2. I am at the level cap. Currently working on infilitrating Iron Throne HQ then will go to Candlekeep but will skip everything and get to the final fight with Sarevok. Here is a snapshot of my equipment which I intend to use till the end:
Corethief has defeated Sarevok using the hide behind pillar/backstab trick. Semaj was dispelled with dispelling arrows then just 3 acid arrows (hasted) made short work of him. Corethief was protected by PfM scroll. Corethief has also just made it out of the dungeon. Once Corethief's lock skill gets good enough will drop Yoshimo. For now though, party will be Minsc, Korgan, Jaheira, Yoshimo and Aerie.
The critical path only challenge I previously played had the side-effect of very limited gear availability for our party, due to skipping most of the content. That's why I heavily relied on merchants and the guaranteed gear that I knew I would aways be able to get. After completing that run, I thought about other ways to challenge myself and decided that I could try my hand at the opposite: A run where I would only get items from the environment, with no merchant use at all. In the end, I decided to entirely ban the merchant interface for this one (so no buying and no selling at all, not even for quest items) - In cases where items can be obtained via dialogue, we're allowed to do that (such as the ankheg armor, Cromwell and Cespenar).
For my choice of Bhaalspawn, I ended up deciding on the abjurer for a two reasons: a) It's missing from the hall of heroes, and this is of course another run within my mission to fill in the remaining kits. b) it's rarely played at all, so there's not much hope of anyone else getting one into the hall anytime soon. The reason why abjurer runs are very rare is of course that there's really no good reason to play one except for flavor, because you get pretty much nothing out of the kit - there are no abjuration spells that require a saving throw, and you're also forced to play a human and play with high wisdom. Plus, you're missing out on some of the most commonly used spells in the game: Stoneskin, the single most useful protection against physical damage; Haste and improved haste, the most powerful buffs available for your fighter-types; Some minor losses are slow (which is nice to have but not crucial) and timestop (which I don't use as much anymore, so I'm fine with not having that one). With no haste spells available and no access to merchants, oils of speed will become incredibly valuable for this party.
I'm playing on core rules, no mods, skipping TotSC (except for Durlag's upper tower levels) and SoD plus most of the EE content (some exceptions may apply in SoA). Having had good experiences with a party of 4 for this kind of run, I decided to create another custom one of these - I decided to ban myself from using a totemic druid this time though - don't want to become too reliant on the kit.
So, here's the party.
Abiros, our abjurer bhaalspawn:
Brosk, our berserker (starting out with bastard sword profiency, for Foebane later on but also with the early availabily of a +1 bastard sword in a chest in the Beregost smithy in mind):
Carax, our fighter/cleric (we start with maces because we can get the Stupefier early on, and go into flails and war hammers later - no slings because without merchants, there aren't many bullets to be found in BG1):
Tari, our fighter/thief (our only ranged weapon/longbow user early on, going with longswords for melee purposes):
As you can imagine, the start could be a bit rough for us - because without buying any gear from Winthrop, we all start without armor and only a few quarterstaves as weapons. To compensate for that, we make sure to only fight enemies that we can sleep (Abiros starts with sleep, shield and PfP) or command - we can hit those even without the correct weapons. We make sure to pick up whatever lowly leather armors and normal weapons we can find to get going, and Tarnesh is commanded down:
A note on learning spells: Without reliable access to potions of genius/mind focusing, Abiros will mostly try to learn spellscrolls right away. This might mean that we miss out on a few spells entirely or for a time at least (we will get enough of these potions for some scroll learning sessions later on), and there are also some spell scrolls in the game without any guaranteed drop (only available from merchants), so there might be quite a few spells which we won't even have a chance to obtain.
After getting the aforementioned weapons from Beregost, there are a decent amount of sidequests and encounters we can easily complete, mostly with the help of sleep spells or commands. We run into our first potential quest item trouble with Firebead Elvenhair and his book - luckily, the wiki tells me there's one of those available in a house in the southern part of Beregost:
Now, for our first big experience boost, we make it to the basilisk area (sadly, we can't free the petrified woman here due to a lack of a green scroll), where we use Corax and PfP to clear out the monsters (the adventuring party is left alone for now):
Introducing Abiros, the abjurer - no merchant runNow, for our first big experience boost, we make it to the basilisk area (sadly, we can't free the petrified woman here due to a lack of a green scroll), where we use Corax and PfP to clear out the monsters (the adventuring party is left alone for now):
Best of luck @Enuhal. Are you allowed to make use of the green scroll at the Carnival? I would tend to think of that as being obtained in dialogue rather than from a merchant.
While I see what you are going for @Grond0 in your argument, one could also argue that NPC is a merchant who happens to sell only one thing. Similar if you get any items from Borda, he's a merchant who will sell you some things too and you do the buying via dialogue rather than a standard merchant window. What do you think @Enuhal ?
I've had a lot of the early Jaheira encounters as she won't romance me (I'm a gnome). Unfortunately, the only character who would romance me (Aerie) got chunked by lightning (spell) by a generic bandit ambush. Now that I don't need Yoshimo as I am now a competent thief I replaced him with Nalia (this gives us more gold if she's in the party when her quest complete). I wanted a good cleric to replace Aerie so picked up Anomen.
@Grond0@Corey_Russell For questionable situations like this I decided to strictly go by use of the merchant interface (so I have a clean decision point and don't have to debate individual choices all the time), so I could have theoretically gotten that scroll - however, I simply forgot about its existence, because I never ever use that option in my normal runs (because just buying a scroll from the Nashkel temple is cheaper), so it didn't even cross my mind - and by now I'm past the point where it would matter. Great suggestion, though, that would certainly have been a good idea!
Abiros, the abjurer - no merchant run - Update 1
With the experience of the basilisk hunt, we are powerful enough to clear most wilderness areas. Notable additions include hold person:
And silence:
Abiros is able to learn a scroll of Melf's Acid Arrow for some early level 2 spell action:
We clear the western and southern half of the map (except for the sword coast areas), plus a few of the easier eastern parts, to get Abiros to level 5 - one of the few 3rd level spells he has successfully learned here is ghost armor, which is a good defensive option for us at this point. With that bit of protection I decide that I also want the extra hitpoints from find familiar, which means we have to kill Nimbul, which means we have to clear the Nashkel Mines:
With our sleep spells and the extra armor, there isn't too much danger - we don't learn find familiar and use it instead (no reason to risk a scribing failure here), and since we would like a bow upgrade for Tari (all of our other weapons are pretty good by this point) we also make our way to the bandit camp. Here, we make some use of our rare potions by giving our melee fighters giant strength and heroism, while helping them with sleep, hold person and ranged attacks:
By the way, I've failed learning both scrolls of magic missle I've found so far, and these are the only guaranteed drops, I think - so I might not get the spell until SoA. Well, we add chant, bless, rage and remove fear to help clear the big tent:
With our new bow, we enlist some skeletons for a siren hunt and use magical arrows to deal with the flesh golem cave:
Abiros has added fireball to his level 3 and web to his level 2 options, which is pretty nice. Time to clear out some of the more difficult wilderness areas to the west and east:
Silence is such a good spell in BG1.
Well, the final area we move into before entering Cloakwood is the outside/upstairs part of Durlag's Tower. Here, we have to use a lot of wand charges to deal damage to the various powerful enemies. The ghost is our most challenging foe so far - after a few rounds with not enough damage output, as I foolishly fail to dodge his chaos spell, he confuses Tari and Carax. Brock has his enrage, and Abiros, luckily, makes his saving throw. We're able to stop any more spellcasting with a few lucky hits and wand of frost charges, so we don't suffer any serious consequences:
We use a green protection from poison scroll in the second Cloakwood level and take down the shadow archdruid in the third (we switch in different types of magical arrows and sometimes use darts of wounding or darts of stunning for spellcaster battles):
Skeletons and silence spells help us deal with Drasus' party:
Darts of wounding and arrows of biting, fireballs from off-screen and some quick and decisive attacks help us to deal with the wizards inside of the iron mines:
We use the PfM scroll we got from the Samuel area to take down Davaeorn risk-free.
In the big city, we start clearing minor encounters, making use of the silence spell against mages:
Fireball helps against big groups of enemies:
But we can't get too cocky. Getting in the ogre mage bounty hunter battle, we should have just lured these guys outside. Instead, I tried to interrupt all of their spells, but one confusion spell got through. The spell hit us with devastating effect, with 3 party members confused (no berserker rage active on Brosk, which is especially bad) and only Carax still free.
Tari soon started attacking Abiros, and I got incredibly lucky that our bhaalspawn didn't get hit even once (which was statistically extremely unlikely): This could've honestly ended our run right there if Tari got a few hits and maybe a crit in, which could've very well happened. Instead, Carax commanded and killed the remaining ogre mages and we escaped mostly unscathed - an undeserved and somewhat lucky victory. To rebuild our confidence, we quickly took down Ramazith:
And since I found myself with some weaker giant strength potions that I wouldn't need for the late game, I gave those to my fighters to clear out Degrodel's home:
With everything else clear, we entered the Iron Throne, carefully luring our opponents here downstairs:
Back in Candlekeep, we explore the crypts and take on Prat. While throwing some fireballs into the cave (we have tons of wand charges still left) there was a scary moment when one of our foes was able to cast a lightning bolt - if that one had jumped back through our party a few times, we could've been in big trouble:
Having to rely on luck to survive two of the encounters is not exactly a good sign - some sloppy play on my party, though the sessions were long, so that tends to come with the approach. Next time, the BG1 endgame awaits.
Back in the city, we complete the various encounters before the ducal palace without any issues:
I want to save our oils of speed for the Sarevok battle, which makes the ducal palace a bit risky. We do have some giant strength and heroism potions which we can use, and spider spawn in addition to our skeletons (this is the best level 4 spell available to us - we really would have loved to get spirit armor at this point). With our priest buffs added into our mix, our summons are quite successful at distracting the enemy doppelgangers, causing a surprising double duke survival:
As we fight our way through the labyrinth, I use some fire protection potions for the upcoming undercity party - not enough green scrolls for everyone to get full immunity though. I propably should have rested here and used spells for full fire immunity or gone for a web-based approach. Instead, I almost got into big, big trouble, because, as it turns out, 50% fire resistance is not enough against detonation arrows:
My plan was to throw 6 fireballs (via various potions we found throughout the run) at this party, but a few enemies, including their detonation arrow archer, survived, so I had to throw more stuff into the mix to finally defeat that guy before retreating and taking down the others. Well, at least no one died - we rested and prepared for Sarevok. We kind of have exactly the potions we need for the encounter, except for the fact that we're not very well equipped against spells - only 1 potion of magic shielding and 2 of magic blocking (and 1 clarity), for example. We also can't really replace most lost buffs, so we really, really don't want to get dispelled. Luckily, we have 4 arrows of dispelling - if you're wondering how we got these without access to merchants or going down into Durlag's Tower: There's a store in the northeastern Baldur's Gate area were you first meet Marek & Lothander - there are containers & shelves around there with a few valuable items, most notably these 4 arrows, and nobody will notice if you just steal everything.
Well, with 2 cloud giant strength and 1 storm giant strength, 3 mind focusing, invulnerability, heroism, fire resistance and lightning immunity for some (using our remaining fire resistance/absorption potions) and most notably an oil of speed for everyone (plus, three phase spiders and two skeletons at our side), we are prepared. Tari has to make the most out of these 4 arrows - she lures Sarevok to us with the first one, successfully dispelling his haste - we switch to other arrows until Semaj appears - the wizard comes to us, immediately activating contingencies with magic missles and greater malison. Abiros casts detect illusion to get rid of invisibility and mirror images. Now that we're suffering from the malison effect, we really can't let Semaj finish some type of chaos spell:
No worries - with our remaining 3 arrows of dispelling and the party assisted by the summons (phase spiders are really good due to their really powerful poison, as I noticed, though their automatic teleporting can be a bit too agressive sometimes), we take him down before he's able to do anything else:
Notably, Sarevok didn't end up fully following us. Our phase spiders teleport directly to Angelo, so we follow them, take him down from a safe range and retreat from Tazok and Sarevok, who are now both very much active. However, they are easy to kite - I decide, just for fun, to kill Tazok first so we have the full cleanup (which I rarely do in the vanilla game):
We have to get into somewhat of a melee battle with Sarevok because this party only has one real ranged weapon user, but our buffs and summons are easily enough to triumph:
All right! The undercity party was very sketchy, but the final battle went well. For SoA, I once again have a plan to get access to some powerful early weapons even without merchant access... Let's see how it will go.
In Trademeet, we collected the reward from a grateful town for sorting out Faldorn in the previous session. While in town we helped out Tiris and cleared the local tomb of some troublesome undead.
Moving directly on to the de'Arnise Hold, we made short work of the trolls thanks to Stonefire and Ash's fire spells (and the occasional death one). Wolfie hadn't realised what a powerful influence paladins could exercise on some individuals and was thus surprised when Glaicus meekly submitted to our group. All of the umber hulks were caught in a death spell, which meant they couldn't eat their dog stew - oh well, more for Wolfie - yum, yum . The only other minor glitch in this area was the ring of earth control disappearing into a puff of dust as Wolfie tried to hand it over to Russell. Elementals were used for the first time to tackle TorGal, though they were a bit of overkill there.
By this time Russell was complaining about the body rotting in his backpack and even Wolfie agreed the spell was getting pretty bad, so we diverted to town to open up the Planar Sphere. Then it was back out on our travels to Windspear Hills. At the entrance to the dungeon Ash double-checked that he had a sunfire prepared for instant use on the ambush waiting inside - yep, he was ready even if his companions were less so .
Inside, we were conscious that a large group of vampires had ended one fairly recent run, so Russell made sure to take the lead while protected from level drain and charm. Ash put fire protection on the others here and then burned up the opposition.
A bit further on we got slightly caught out when the sounds of our struggle against an air elemental guarding its well attracted a group of golems as well. Russell took heavy damage there, but a bit of potion drinking allowed him to survive.
After that experience Russell suggested that he just use sanctuary to loot the container guarded by another set of golems nearby. Wolfie though was keen to get their XP and dragged the adamantite golem out to a nearby doorway (Russell commenting on the slight oddity that a previous update to the game meant the golem could pass through the doorway to its cave, but could still not get through the door a few steps further on). Unfortunately Ash was out of spells at the time and, after Azuredge poofed last time, Wolfie was the only one that could safely hit the golem using his Crimson Dart - his companions waited more or less patiently though while that was done.
Samia's group put up the toughest fight in the area. A couple of nymphs were less succesful at holding or confusing the enemies than I'd expected and it took a while to beat them down. The kensai, Akae, had used an oil of speed and took a fancy to attacking Wolfie - forcing him to run hard in order to break contact.
Firkraag could have been a tough fight, but we prepared much more diligently than our typical fashion for this fight. A couple of fire elementals waited in the background to provide a support or distraction, but were not actually needed after Firkraag was made vulnerable by a magic resistance spell from Wolfie and lower magic resistance from Ash. That didn't turn him hostile, but the follow-up doom did and that was immediately followed by malison. With saving throws now distinctly dodgy it was no surprise when a first attempt to blind him succeeded and he didn't last long against a series of insect spells and acid arrows.
We just had time to report back to Garren Windspear and collect his reward. That gave Russell a second level gained in the session. He'd started it by complaining how much XP he needed to level up, so it seemed a bit ironic that he gained two levels this time, while Ash got only one and poor old Wolfie got none at all after being stuck in the druid XP doldrums.
Shapeshifter 13, 85 HPs, 154 kills (+254 in BGEE)
Dragon disciple 13, 70 HPs (incl. 6 from ioun stone), 209 kills (+99 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Paladin 12, 115 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 207 kills (+194 in BGEE), 2 deaths
Ash picked up a few late kills by using death spell on the groups of hobgoblins and orcs attempting to block our exit and managed to overtake Russell in the kill count in this keenly contested race
The Crew have been sitting in the City of Caverns for the last 6 weeks or so, but have finally managed to complete that area this morning.
The last update saw them having just completed Windspear Hills and the key found there soon opened up a new area in the Temple sewers and they set about clearing the illithid there. Baby Face had the best saves thanks to wearing the Ring of Gaxx and acted as target without ever being incapacitated. He was intelligence drained only once, near the end of combat, but with an intelligence of 16 that was no problem.
After forging the Shadow Dragon Scale armor, they investigated the Guarded Compound. They dragged enemies downstairs one or two at a time, until only Ketta remained upstairs as easy pickings.
The Twisted Rune had the potential to go badly wrong, so Mad Dog made a rare use of the simmy there. That did a good job in persuading Shangalar to pretty much waste his time stop. Layene wasted her protections trying to kill the pit fiend she summoned herself.
After a final bit of potion shopping, the Crew reported back to Aran Linvail that they were ready to go to Spellhold. A vampire greeting at Brynnlaw Docks managed to charm Carlo, but that was insufficient to give them any chance. Perth was then just too late with his buffing to hold off the hail of missiles launched at him. His book immediately fell open at a True Seeing page and the Crew were happy to leave it there.
Moving into Spellhold, Al lost his Bhaal powers, making resting significantly less useful as a means of healing. However, they did answer the riddle stones to gain a ring of regeneration to help compensate for that. Along with Gaxx, Dragonslayer sword, ioun stone and Al's natural regeneration that means all but one of them now have the potential to regenerate without swapping items around. They were still just under 2m XP initially, so there was no lich waiting for them. It wasn't too long though before they did hit the 2m mark and gained another level. Before leaving, they picked up a second pair of Boots of Speed from Grophinet's machine.
A fusillade of shots was far more than sufficient to make Irenicus run away - though he didn't realise how badly he was injured until after Wanev's timestop. Back in Brynnlaw they took ship with Saemon, but were soon reduced to killing a few githyanki as the ship was sinking underneath them. In the City of Caverns they agreed to help the king, but only helped him to an early death along with the rest of the royal family. They picked up another level for doing that.
Al (PC) - L17, 134 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 183 kills (+305 in BGEE/SoD), **** 2-handed sword / *** longbow
Baby Face - L17, 135 HPs, 289 kills (+298 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths, **** long sword / *** crossbow
Bugsy - L17, 129 HPs, 187 kills (+260 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths, **** hammer / *** shortbow
Carlo - L17, 139 HPs, 221 kills (+283 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths, **** flail / *** sling
Mad Dog - L17, 149 HPs, 397 kills (+290 in BGEE/SoD), 3 deaths, ***** axe / ** dual wielding
Vito - L17, 132 HPs, 193 kills (+286 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death, **** scimitar / *** darts
Our plan to get quick weapons in SoA without access to merchant relied mainly on Wacher's Keep level 1. However, first things first: We already got to pick up Ahisdeena for Carax in the opening dungeon; After dealing with the circus tent and freeing Hendak (though not dealing with the slavers yet), we made our way to the city gates, in order to steal Daystar (so Tari has a good weapon). Now, we travelled to the keep. With a low level party, the main risk here is encountering vampiric wraiths. They are, from my experience (and according to the wiki) less likely to show up if you're at a lower level, but it can still happen. Luckily, we got mephits instead, making it relatively easy to clear the level up until the statues - this gave Abiros the crimson dart +3 and Carax a decent magical shield. The real prize, of course, would be Foebane and Usano's Blade, both of which would make great weapons for Brosk, our primary fighter. Facing the statues right out of the gate is quite risky, and I've never done it quite this early before - With all of our summons and possible buffs at the ready, we decided to burn one of our valuable oils of speed on Brosk - and, since the reduced number of statues on lower levels mean that we didn't have to face any spellcasters, we were able to pull it off, though not exactly unscathed:
A quick visit to the graveyard also gave Tari a good off-hand longsword:
So now, we're at a very good state in regards to weaponry. Time for minor city sidequests and encounters en masse:
Now, since we can't sell anything, access to gold is somewhat limited, but quests in early SoA give a decent amount of raw gold, which made it easy for us to afford a magic license and Gaelan's payment. This gave us access to Bodhi's lair, and we still had the money to upgrade the iMoD. We did that right away, before returning to the lair and using the mace to great effect:
A quick visit to the druid grove to get Brosk his Belm +2 (and Abiros a +3 quarterstaff) followed - we let Cernd kill Faldorn and did the minor quests around there as well. Trolls aren't too hard to deal with, we had enough fire arrows for these guys and Tari has a +3 longbow from Watcher's Keep.
Since we can't buy the Robe of Vecna (or the robe of the good archmagi) I decided to do a little bit of EE content - the only other decent available robe is the Robe of Invocation from the SoA portion of Neera's questline. I also decided to do Rasaad's quests due to the very good rewards (the 3*mirror image ring and the gem of true seeing), since we're already doing some EE stuff and these questlines are a bit intertwined due to Wilson. Since both quests have somewhat challenging finales (especially Neera's), I only did the first part of each one right now - starting with Rasaad:
I made some wrong dialogue choices and got into a fight at the end, which did end up being a bit rough:
Even worse: I forgot about the sun soul monk ambush upon leaving the area, and once again I apparently chose the wrong dialogue options (depiste being very nice to the monks) and, while exhausted and wounded, got into another battle. This one was a bit tricky, and here I accidentally fried a few of the monks when my efreeti bottle summon (using the vanilla AI) activated fireshield red and clashed with the sun soul monks with their "greater sun" ability, resulting in the dueling fireshields bug - the efreeti, being fully immune to fire, came out on top:
That was a bit rough, but we survived. We also helped Neera to her camp, cleared the wild forest and did the first few sidequests for the wild mages - most importantly, we got our hands on the Shield of Fyrus Khal and the AoP +2, which are super easy to get and quite powerful early on. We didn't have a silver necklace at this point (luckily, we kept two diamonds already for later crafting purposes - since we can't sell anything and I never remember what exactly I need for the cespenar crafts, we had a decent collection of high-value gems), so we couldn't do all the Neera quests, but now I was on the lookout for one.
Next time: Some stronghold quests.
So it is SoA time at last !
My BG2EE is a little modded :
- EEFixpack
- Ascension, Turnabout (in order to have some help for the final fight) and Crucible for ToB (I plan to switch difficulty from insane to core for ToB part)
- Reunion and Juniper quests mods for ToB part
- Dark Tidings, Call of the Lost Goddess, Back to Brynnlaw, Skie Cost of a Girl's soul and Bloodied Stings of Barovia quests mods for SoA part
- Two NPC mods : Khalid and Xzele the undead paladin of Evening Glory
- some banters packs and friendship mods
- De Arnise Romance and Nalia at Last to try Nalia as a romance
- Homeward Bound which allows to send an NPC to Athkatla from Brynnlaw in order to not abandon Imoen
- some tweaks, notably no XP from scribing scrolls or desarming traps, and XP from quests and kills reduced to 75%
Planned party :
- Khalid
- Nalia
- Anomen
- Aerie then Neera
- Minsc then Xzele
I have other friendship mods installed in case a permadeath happens and I need to recruit someone else.
I had a weird bug when importing my char from SoD, he kept his levels but his XP went back from 500,000 to 161,000. I decided to leave it this way, meaning the recruited NPC would be at lower levels.
Irenicus's dungeon was easy. My avenger used goodberry for cheap healing potions, then shapeshit to spider.
Air Plane was the most difficult part.
Khalid did found Jaheira.
After escaping, we went to the Copper Coronet to recruit Anomen and Nalia.
As always, my plan was to recruit my final party as soon as possible, but first I need some supplies.
We did the circus and recruit Aerie, then go to the sewers for Mendar's crew.
Bad idea, it was probably one of the most difficult fight in all SoA.
Even with web and silence, they managed to kill some of my members, and I had to go to the temple to raise dead during the fight.
The mage was enough high level to cast finger of death, luckily not on Wilkim.
And finally...
For some reasons, the Neera intro scene didn't want to start on the bridge, so I did instead the In love Undeath quests line in order to recruit Xzele. One of the boss surprised me and oneshot Aerie. So I made some preparations for the final fight, but a chromatic orb was enough to kill the bad guy.
After recruiting Xzele I could at last do Neera intro quest and recruited her too, then it was time for De Aernise keep. I shapeshifted in fire salamander and discovered than the EEfixpack gives it an infinite Breathe Fire ability, very useful to finish trolls.
Only difficult part was Torgal, because I didn't want to rest during the cleaning.
With De Arnise Romance mod installed, I could get the fighter stronghold for my avenger (and the druid one too of course).
After that we did some side quests like the slavers.
Chromatic Orb remained useful at this stage of the game :
Then it was time to do druid quest, all was fine until Neera had her first wild surge and launch a fireball on the party...
Insect plague and chromatic orb did short work of Faldorn.
And a second stronghold for Wilkim !
Next step was Umar Hills, we skipped the dragon for a later time.
After that we saved Skie at the cost of some max HP for Wilkim.
Planar Sphere was next. Tolgerias was silenced, but his apprentice managed to cast some spells.
After that I sailed to Dark Tidings, a great mod from Acifer adding a stronghold like quest in a new island area.
Since it was my first play, I was very prudent, with death ward always on Wilkim.
This mod is really gorgeous.
Final fight was hard but manageable.
Next step, Barovia thanks to Lava's Bloodied Stings mod.
Great mod too, with new areas. I was cautious too, but was caught off guard...
A ghost cast a Wail of the Banshee, and I didn't have deathward on Wilkim. I was saved by magic resistance. It could have been the end of the run.
Final fight was harder than Dark Tidings one.
Windspear Hills was next. I skipped Firkraag and all went fine.
Planar Prison followed. Khalid once again was killed by a finger of death.
Rest of the level was easy.
After that I thought my avenger needs a better armor, so it was time to do some shadow dragon hunting.
I used my usual tactic here : lower resistance, greater malison, doom, then feeblemind.
And at last I felt enough powerful to try Call of the lost Goddess mod from Acifer.
Time to go in the Abyss !
First, a little stairway to climb...
Anomen alone defeated a vampire ambush.
I couldn't avoid a fight with a new type of dragon and I retreated and send some summons first. It was a good idea as this dragon starts with an imprisonment spell !
Good thing was new scales for a new armor. :-)
I didn't take a screenshot but I was almost killed by a powerful elf mage later, which I couldn't interrupt (casting in the abyss is difficult, you need expansive items to not have bad surges, so I switch one item between Neera and Nalia but failed at one moment), he was able to launch a AHW and Wilkim was left with 2 HP !
Near the end, there is a very difficult fight and the bad guy kept trying to kill Wilkim.
This mod is more like a mini ToB than a stronghold quest. Very good, beautiful, challenging. In a no reload run, it definitely obliges you to be always on your guard. One mistake in a fight or a dialog, and it's over.
Back in Amn, I was enough high level to at last become Great Druid.
It was time to finish things before chapter 4.
First Firkraag, with same tactic than shadow dragon.
Then Kangaax, with protection from undead spells, and my new dragonscale armor with immunity to imprisonment.
Twisted Rune was surprising easy.
Bodhi in chapter 3 was so a push over I forgot to take a screenshot.
I also totally forgot when I did thief and cleric stronghold quests in this run.
I left for Brynnlaw, with only NPC quests, sewers and Illithids area to do in Amn in chapter 6.
I left Neera in Brynnlaw before entering Spellhold, to have room for Imoen.
Irenicus was defeated so fast I feared the cutscene would break, but all went fine.
I then send Imoen to Athkatla thanks to Homeward Bound mod, and recruit again a now underleveled Neera.
In Sahuagin City, Anomen walked on a trap and was petrified.
I sided with the king.
Underdark was smooth, the Demon Knights fell fast.
The mindflayers couldn't do much against chaotic commands.
Belholder Lair entrance is always a hard moment.
But rest of the lair was easy with Balduran's shield.
Back to the surface, Khalid received a new kit.
I discovered my fighter stronghold quests have bugged, and have to fix it with the console. So this quests line is not yet done.
I then did Back to Brynnlaw mod, and recovered the sacrificed stat point in chapter 4 dream sequence.
This time Bodhi was killed, and since she kidnapped Nalia, I recruited Imoen to help me there.
After a trip to Umar Hills, Nalia was back.
Now besides NPC quests, sewers and chapter 6 areas, only Suldanessalar remains.
Some thoughts on this run :
- Xzele as an undead is powerful with nice immunities, but she can't be raised if killed and can't use Carsomyr.
- Khalid is an interesting character, with access to his own Harpers quests.
- new quests mods are very good, particularly Barovia, Dark Tidings and Call of the Lost Goddess, they add challenge, but also some nice rewards for a no reload run, my character currently have permanent deathward and imprisonment immunity.
- thanks to the initial import bug, and the XP reduction, I am at 2,700,000 XP, so I will not have HLA before ToB, even with 5 quests mods installed.
SoA end is near, and ToB with Ascension awaits with many challenges ahead.
Looking good @Trouveur ! That's a lot of progress; I'm confident that you will make it to the throne, but the Ascension battle is always a tough one. I'm sure you're prepared for that as well, though.
We start at De'Arnise Keep to get Carax the Flail of Ages. I'm always a bit surprised how vulnerable spiders are to poison:
With the weapons from WKI, clearing the Keep wasn't much of a problem. We moved on to the thief stronghold, where we breached and killed Rayic Gethras before taking down Mae'Var:
The temple ruins didn't offer much of a challenge as we already had Daystar and the iMoD +2 in our posession. The shade lord spent his only round spellstriking Carax' Shield of Fyrus Khal-Effect:
4 out of 8 stronghold quests done, and I found a silver necklaces for Neera's questline, so I decided to try and finish Rasaad's and Neera's SoA quests at this point. This was propably way too early, as you will see. I should have until shortly before going to Brynnlaw. We started with Rasaad - the various challenges in the twofold temple weren't an issue - I was a bit worried about the invisible stalkers, but Abiros was able to call in sword spiders to deal with them:
The problem here was, of course, the final battle, which I've struggled with before. The enemies are at about our level, but double our numbers, they use the EE AI (which is somewhat similiar to SCS enemies, including pre-buffs), and, most importantly, they get access to haste, and we don't, which really puts us behind in terms of action economy. My attempts to aggressively go after the enemy wizard failed due to his ability to quickly renew any lost protections, and Tari, while trying to retreat, was shot down by one of the hostile archers:
Meanwhile, Rasaad, who was also involved in the attempt at killing the mage, fled to the south, where one of the soliders followed him, involving him in a duel. Rasaad is incredibly weak at this point, and all he could do was drink a concentrated healing potions each round and hope to get a hit in once in a while. My allies got overwhelmed, and I realised that the only way to turn this battle around would be to burn another oil of speed on Brosk to even out the playing field - the added mobilty and attack was absolutely needed. The use of statue summons bought us some time and gave Brosk the opportunity to hack through the wizards stoneskins. A lot of healing potions later, and we finally started clearing the battlefield:
That was a hard one victory. We're happy to get the gem of true seeing, though.
Now, seeing as how difficult that one was, I should have known to delay the finale of Neera's quest, which is generally even harder to handle. However, foolishly, I moved forward with that one. For once I was actually able to pick the correct dialogue options in an EE companion quest and avoided angering the shopkeeper while allying with the mercenaries:
We tried to stay back as much as possible, in order to drain the red wizards of their spells via summons and mercs. Still, a bunch of fireballs and lightning bolts flew around, killing Mironda (too bad) and dealing a bunch of damage to us - we used some healing spells & potions to recover our health. Ghallus and the guards joined us in the first battle against Lanneth, and we had our full roster of skeleton warriors active:
However, once again we're dealing with decently high level fighters and wizards, using haste, potions and an improved AI - the guards didn't have much of a chance, and despite us staying out of sight, some of the thayans came up to us and forced us to fight, while our skeletons fell:
I called in aerial servants and spiders to replace the skeletons, and the aerial servants did much better due to their immunities:
At this point most enemies except for Lennath and one wizard were dead, but I was very low and spells and had lost most of my buffs. This would have been a time to retreat, rest and return at full strength, but I stubbornly moved on. I had Tari set down a bunch of traps in hopes of luring Lennath into them - I had to show myself to her to do that, and to my surprise she hit Tari with a wand of paralzyation charge while on the retreat back to the traps - as a result, I called in my last remaining summons - the statues - to keep our foe occupied so she wouldn't come looking for us and find the paralyzed Tari:
Because Lennath is very aggressive with sunfire, she ended up getting into a fight with the other red wizard and ended up alone, but her spellbook seemed to be almost infinite (and she still had wand charges, presumably) - still, scouting told us that she was alone at this point:
This time, we finally managed to lure her to our traps - but stoneskins protected her from all the direct damage - however, the periodic poison damage of lvl 11-15 traps goes through those. We called in our very last summon, the flesh golem, and tried to get Brosk and Carax to occupy Lanneth, who seemed very persistent on finding and taking down Abiros:
Lennath used another wand of paralyzation charge on Abiros, but he made his saving throw. The second of three rounds of poison from the traps hit, and we finally were able to get through her mirror images and stoneskins - just as Abiros finished his breach spell to seal the deal, we were able to achieve victory:
Despite being super careful here, we still got into some trouble with lightning bolts bouncing around dangerously during the second big battle and getting a party member paralyzed during the final one. Still, here's our prize:
We make our way to the Windspear dungeon. As you can see, Abiros has just gained access to 7th level spells - and he can conjure Mordenkainen's swords, which is incredibly helpful when dealing with the golems:
The undead stand little chance, as we have the power of Daystar and the iMoD on our side:
Conster dies to our poison trap ticks before he can be breached:
And we're free to use all of our remaining spells and summons for Samia:
Onto the planar prison. Here, I usually like to haste the party and rush through the entire area super fast, but we can't do that with this group, so we have to go for a bit of a more methodical approach. Still, the opening ambush is quickly dealt with once we breach the enemy wizard:
We lure the next groups of opponents towards us and the vanilla AI decides to cast PW:Silence on specifically Abiros, the only one in the party with permanent vocalize:
Chaotic commands allows us to clear the way to the warden in relative safety, and despite our lack of haste effects, he's quickly taken down while still dealing with one of his thralls:
Next up, we have to venture into the old tunnels for the Unseeing Eye quest. We can't get the Shield of Balduran, don't have access to level 15 skeleton warriors - so beholders can be a bit tricky. However, the vanilla AI has some very strange behaviours when it comes to beholders vs summons. The do like using their death spell on any approaching first army of summons, but for some reason might not even make use of their eye blasts against a second group, just trying to engange in melee combat, where they are at quite a disadvantage. I don't know why that is, but it's very helpful for us, as this allows us to actually take down beholders with sword spiders (after they death spell our skeletons):
This turns out to be very consistent for this run: The first group of summons gets blasted, the second only engaged with in melee combat. With that (and a quick stroll through another undead area), we make our way to the Unseeing Eye and use the rift device for a quick victory:
Time for the final stronghold - our very own planar sphere. We use aerial servants, skeletons and spiders for the various halfling groups, luring some of the halfling spellcasters into traps:
Vanilla Lavok is terrible at dealing with any kind of skeleton warrior presence:
Our spider spawns are even able to take down the mage who's with Tolgerias, though the cowled wizard boss is more of a case for true sight + breach:
Chaotic commands help with the demons outside, and we call upon magical swords to tank any golems at the end of the questline:
Finally, we do the mage stronghold quests (with only safe choices), take one round of extra potions with us (including an oil of speed! Nice! - we could theoretically rest here for a very long time to get more and more potions, but that seems way too tedious with how long it could take. I have a better plan for that later on) and finally move to Brynnlaw.
You might not think of Daystar as a typical backstabbing weapon, but it does the job - right Perth?
Okay, so we start clearing the asylum - after buffing up and having no trouble with the first level, we run in to the big group of undead - should be no problem, right? Well, yeah, but we get hit by a full dispel thanks to the lich before retreating out of his sight, and without our defenses these guys aren't that easy to deal with:
I did send a few summons towards the lich (I hadn't rested in spellhold yet, so I was very low on spells) after his PFMW ran out, just to make sure he didn't have another one. When I was confident he was vulnerable (his timestop was already gone) I decided to make a very risky move and just send in Carax with the iMoD, mostly without buffs, instead of just resting. I did this purely because of so many experiences where unnamed liches would very periodically fail their saving throw against even the first iMoD hit. Well, this propably shouldn't have worked, but it did:
After that very unreasonable choice, things went a lot better after resting and taking a more careful approach that involved actually maintaining crucial buffs. A PFMW spell helped us to get through the Bodhi encounter unscathed and we made it to Jon. Even without haste, it was easy enough to get him to near death before he buffed up:
So, a quick visit to the City of Caverns with no notable incidents, and we made it to the underdark. We can't do the imprisoned mage quest, as we have no access to freedom scrolls under our ruleset, but taking down the balor was fairly simple:
Protection from fire spells, traps and summons plus true sight helped out with the demon knights:
And we used a triple flame arrow sequencer to speed up our takedown of the initial beholder ambush in their lair - no one even got hit by an anti-magic ray:
We just used the same summon trick that we had to employ against the unseeing eye beholders here as well. With the help of wondrous recall, we also went from 3 to 4 chaotic command spells in order to clean out the mind flayer city. Magical swords, once again, proved to be quite useful here:
Wait, how did this happen?
(Well, you propably know the answer)
Time to enter the drow city. Also, we have now gained access to our first HLAs. One of our more interesting picks is alchemy on Tari, something I usually never take. With that one, we can create oils of speed - and unlike with the planar sphere potion rewards, it doesn't take forever. However, to really take advantage of this I want to be at a place where I can freely rest without interruptions, so producing a bunch of potions will have to wait until we get back to the surface (I usually use the graveyard district for such purposes).
While doing the next parts of the mainquest (using traps for the beholder in the city) the aboleth talks to us and we have to take down Qilue. An aggressive approach with many breach spells is called for:
As we approach the final part of the questline, we also enter Deirex' tower. We're soon going to the surface, and since we can make oils of speed up there with alchemy, we're using our remaining ones to run past Deirex in order to dodge his timestop:
A deva does our job for us:
And we use Abiros' planetar summon for house Jae'llat:
Now, we can finally leave the underdark. We've already killed the guardians near the exit. Our travels bring us back to the graveyard, where we defeat Bodhi's ambush by equipping helms of charm protection/going invisible and having Carax kill the vampires with the iMoD. Now - time to rest so Tari's alchemy ability can get us a decent supply of oils of speed.
With our oils of speed at the ready, it's time to take down the various liches, dragons, mind flayers, guarded compounds and twisted rune councils we have left alive for now.
We start with the easiest one - the bridge district lich doesn't pre-buff in the vanilla game when you visit him for the second time:
Dragon time. I'm determined not to get my entire party dispelled this time around. We're making sure to stay spread out, and, indeed, Tari can easily make sure she's the only one affected here:
Though this turned out not to be needed - this remove magic wasn't high enough level to actually remove her (very few) buffs:
Firkraag, in turn, was made to spend his remove magic on a planetar before we moved in:
We're throwing WKII in here as well - because we're at the point where Tari has traps with extra fire damage and don't want to get past that level before taking on the chromatic demon. These traps + a wand of the heavens charge do the job after we use a bunch of resistance spells and buffs to make clearing the rooms a lot easier:
Time to visist the temple district, where we lure the guarded compound group downstairs before going up and taking out those who remain:
Down in the sewers, we take down another lich before cleaing out the mind flayer compound, which is easy enough at this point with a cc-protected planetar, oils of speed and some fighter-HLAs added into the mix. As you can imagine, without access to improved haste (aside from item activations) I am going into GWWs instead of critical strikes (also a few hardinesses) - To optimize things further I even put some later profiency points into one-handed style for my fighter-types, as they don't need their offhand speed-weapon while GWW is active and can swap that one out for the round (however, I'm mostly too lazy to make much use of tiny optimizations such as this). Well, we also kill the bridge district lich (another iMoD instant kill) and face down Kangaxx.
Since we don't have PfM or PfU scrolls available (the only PfU scroll in SoA not from a merchant is from a Hexxat quest, and I'm not prepared to suffer through that right now), we need to take down Kangaxx in another way. Of course, we can just trap-kill his lich form. I decide to go for a more risky demi-lich approach, going for a double sunray approach + the chance of an iMoD kill (which works quite reliably against kangaxx), aiming to kill him while he's still casting demilich howl. Might have been safer to keep the party far away and only use a raging Brosk who is immune to imprisonment, but then there's the chance he doesn't get the kill in time until the enrage ends. Well, in the end the iMoD did the job:
Since undead killing worked out so well until now, I quickly payed a visit to Bodhi. Carax is a really experienced vampire slayer at this point, and now he has GWW + iMoD - even the big vampire group in the center doesn't last long against that. Sadly, Drizzt takes the experience for killing Bodhi:
Finally, there's the twisted rune. We want to kill the lich with traps and take down the beholder before he can use anti-magic ray while distracting Layene with a summon - the plan works fairly convincingly:
Layene does get to timestop while we take down the fighter & vampire, she gates in a pit fiend, we kill it, breach her and get our hands on the staff of the magi:
Since we can't visist merchants, there are no final things to tend to before moving to the elven city, so we can start the endgame now. I am a bit worried about my gold: After forging the equalizer and crom faeyr, we're at around 70k. Asylerfund Elven Chain alone would cost 40k to craft, and it would be a (small) upgrade for Tari. We definitely want to upgrade the FoA and Foebane asap, and a decent amount of other items very soon after that. I'm not sure if we will be able to pay Cespenar for everything we'd want to craft (I definitely won't be able to afford some niche "just in case" items), as I can't remember much in terms of direct gold rewards in ToB (massive amounts of gold are available, but mostly by selling gear). Raw gold rewards have really slowed down once we were done with stronghold quests.
Comments
At the temple, we use our helm of brilliance sunray again, and some Azuredge action for Cavria - only Talis gets level drained and is quickly restored:
Edit: Nice, we've made it to 500 pages!
Outside of Sendai's Enclave, we face our first hive mother, though with the help of our buffs, a planetar, some breaches and energy blades we end up winning rather convincingly:
As you could propably see, we have acquired some new HLAs while dealing with Sendai - the paladins got whirlwind attack, Cria a spike traps, Fara chose summon deva, Shirin acquired improved alacrity (and now has chain contingency available as well) and Talis, who got multiple level ups, now has (greater) elemental swarm and implosion as well. Also, Draconis' bracers are quite useful for Cria - we have lots of free item slots, in particular when it comes to cloaks, rings, gloves/bracers, and, to a certain extent, necklaces.
The enemies in Abazigal's lair deal quite a big of damage to us - once again, we have to resort to magical sword tanking for hard hitters such as the prince of water:
Well, in any case, we get a nice damage boost from that, but the Ravager is far from dead:
We're at 3.849.191 XP - Something I propably have reached in SoA before in my regular runs.
Shirin's spell picks (not in order):
I Identify, Magic Missle, PfP, Shield, Sleep
II Blur, Invisibility, Mirror Image, Resist Fear, Web
III Haste, Invisibility 10' Radius, MMM, Skull Trap
IV Improved Invisibility, Minor Sequencer, Spirit Armor, Stoneskin
V Breach, Lower Resistance, Protection from Acid, Spell Immunity
VI Improved Haste, PFME, PFMW
VII Mass Invisibility, Mordenkainen's Sword, Spell Sequencer
VIII ADHW, Pierce Shield, Spell Trigger
IX CC, Time Stop, Wish
HLA picks:
Cria: UAI, 3*Spike Trap
Cavria: Summon Deva, 1*WW, 1*GWW
Iridias: Summon Deva, 1*WW, 1*GWW
Fara: Energy Blades, Summon Deva, 1*Hardiness, 1*WW
Talis: Energy Blades, Elemental Summoning, Greater Elemental Summoning, Implosion, Storm of Vengeance
Shirin: Summon Planetar, Improved Alacrity, Energy Blades
We're as ready as we'll ever be. We have to be very careful with our resource management, especially the very limited fighter HLAs. A lot of our success will depend on whether or not Mel will dispel us, and if she does, the question is if it only happens once or actually multiple times. Storm giant strength, heroism, invulnerability, mind focusing and the like are added into the mix, and we go with double energy blades and our short-term improved haste effects for the first battle - the ADHW CC fails due to magic resistance - however, three fighters with improved haste and two more party members with energy blades plus all the buffs are easily enough damage to drive our foe away for the first time:
Now, for the fallen solar - this one is always a super risky opponent because of the powerful on-hit effects (including full dispels) his arrows can cause, which I prefer to kill him under timestop. However, Shirin doesn't have the damage output for that (and shapechange doesn't do the job - the various forms either don't have enough APR or can't hit a fallen solar - mind flayer form doesn't have the required enchantment level - I opened up the old save file of my run with Firl, the acid&ice run, just to test out if I could kill the fallen solar with any shapechange form under timestop, and I couldn't), and Cria propably doesn't either - at least not in her regular form. However, you can use spellscrolls as the slayer, and the slayer gets to 8 APR with improved haste... And so, we cast PFME via scroll on Cria to protect her from slayer form damage, improved haste her, she gets close, transforms into the slayer (which is a first for me in no-reload gameplay, maybe with the exception of a previous wrath trial before I knew that you don't actually need to transform for that one), uses her first timestop scroll, attacks the fallen solar, uses a second timestop scroll after 2 rounds and kills the celestial before fleeing back to the party:
We renew invulnerability potions, try to wish for a rest (but don't get one - the last level 9 spell slot I decide to save for summon planetar), call in a few summons (though they're going to get death spelled), use our last few improved haste casts (and 2 improved haste scrolls, with one left), energy blades for Talis again, simulacrum from the helm, bless, chant and DUHM for good luck, and we're ready to go. We still have our GWWs ready, and the Iridias-simulacrum starts the HLA usage - the Answerer does its job, we get in with more and more hits, and Mel has no chance:
I'm very happy with the outcome and very fast pace of the run - it's often been very fun to play. Honestly, the ToB section was not too special (except for more HLA uses, you just don't gain THAT much from these late level ups, so the difference to a regular run wasn't enormous at this point), but the chapter end battles in BG1 were pretty much all super risky (especially chapters 2 and 3) and could've easily gone wrong. SoA was great fun, I really got to take advantage of the tactical options provided by my party composition (though having a totemic druid tends to make most of vanilla SoA relatively straightforward for me - not that I'm complaining, I love the kit). Having to be make big decisions about what to buy and what not to buy was also quite interesting, though that, too, got left behind in ToB where we had essentially infinite money despite basically starting with nothing (I think I imported about 2.5k gold from SoA to ToB). Sorry for being a terrible representative of the bounty hunter kit and not using the special snares all that often, but I wanted a single class thief for the party (due to the limited access to XP, I felt that a multiclass would maybe not get enough disarm trap points quickly enough in BG1, and I still don't know the BG1 traps well enough to play it confidently without a thief) and felt like this provided a good opportunity to get the last missing thief kit into the hall. I did plan for some maze trap shenanigans, but never got to actually implementing any of that - seems like an option that is most powerful in solo runs anyway.
Good luck to all the other runners!
Wolfie - half-elf shapeshifter (Grond0)
Ash - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
Russell XXXVI - human paladin (Corey_Russell)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208471/#Comment_1208471
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208625/#Comment_1208625
After the usual brief pause to try and work out what we were doing, Wolfie remembered/deduced that the Iron Throne was next. Russell used a PfM scroll and some potion buffs and could have beaten up the opposition easily enough on his own - webs just made that a bit easier and quicker.
Some dopplegangers lasted only moments at the Seven Suns before we were off to Candlekeep again. It didn't take long to work through there, even with Russell taking a slight detour to demonstrate the power of Spider's Bane to various ghasts. A slight mis-communication meant that only Prat was caught by a first use of insect plague, but the others were disposed of without trouble to leave Prat helpless.
Back in Baldur's Gate, we went in search of Slythe. Wolfie decided to talk to him before Russell weighed in with a dispelling arrow (and Slythe tried in vain to penetrate ironskins). That was in order to activate Krystin, so that Wolfie could inherit her dagger - providing him with a small upgrade to the off-hand dagger used while shapeshifted.
At the palace, potion buffs would have been quite nasty on their own. A group of nymphs would also have been nasty on their own. Throw those together, with some arcane spells and a few insects as well and the dopplegangers didn't know what hit them.
Russell got his final level while moving through the maze, but we still killed (on general principle) a few more skeleton warriors and Rahvin's party in the Undercity. In the old temple, Russell activated Sarevok by firing a dispelling arrow at him from distance. That missed but more of those meant Semaj lasted only moments when he teleported out in support. Wolfie threw in an insect plague and then relied on his ironskins to tank Sarevok - and those lasted long enough to bring the big man down.
There was time to make a start in BG2EE, with most of the starting dungeon completed. Ash had by now learnt protection from fire and took advantage of that to kill a number of weaker enemies with fireballs, without worrying about damaging his companions.
Shapeshifter 10, 79 HPs , 22 kills (+254 in BGEE)
Dragon disciple 9, 59 HPs, 40 kills (+99 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Paladin 8, 95 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 22 kills (+194 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Wolfie - half-elf shapeshifter (Grond0)
Ash - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
Russell XXXVI - human paladin (Corey_Russell)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208471/#Comment_1208471
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208625/#Comment_1208625
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208890/#Comment_1208890
The dungeon was quickly completed, though we were unable to land a killing blow on Ulvaryl.
Some connection problems early on were a slight annoyance before we enjoyed a trip to the circus. Then we reported in to Gaelan Bayle before moving on to the Copper Coronet to get a slight armor upgrade for Russell.
Ash was having to restrain himself from behaving badly in the City, so we went next to get him a magic license. Then, seeing Russell still taking a bit too much punishment in fights, we went to find Officer Dirth to get a further armor upgrade. While in that inn we took on the pirate enclave. The mage there is 100% magic resistant and laughed at the attempt to web him - but breach ignores MR and he was soon roasted by an elemental.
Looking to get some improved storage for potions, the next target was Watcher's Keep. The potential for vampiric wraiths there has cost us a few runs, but Wolfie decided to give it a go. There were indeed wraiths there and they managed to bypass the attempted fire elemental blockade and immediately drained a level from Wolfie. However, as he was about to exit the Keep, one of the wraiths was blasted into nothingness by Azuredge and Wolfie decided to stick around - allowing Azuredge to quickly complete its work.
Back in Athkatla we cleared out the Graveyard without trouble - other than Uncle Lester just surviving his escape attempt after killing his nephew.
Shapeshifter 12, 83 HPs , 61 kills (+254 in BGEE)
Dragon disciple 11, 68 HPs (incl. 6 from ioun stone), 93 kills (+99 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Paladin 9, 106 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 94 kills (+194 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Wolfie - half-elf shapeshifter (Grond0)
Ash - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
Russell XXXVI - human paladin (Corey_Russell)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208471/#Comment_1208471
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208625/#Comment_1208625
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208890/#Comment_1208890
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208991/#Comment_1208991
After clearing the Grave District last week, this week's session started by heading for the Bridge District with the intention of following up on the kidnappers. On arrival though we came across Hareishan attempting to feed on some unlucky thieves. She was killed, but not before hitting Russell a couple of times. Initially that didn't seem like a big deal, but the level drain proved deadly when he was caught in the cloudkill trap inside Skinner HQ.
After finding the kidnap victim and releasing her (for the small fee of a pair of pantaloons), we came across Renfeld and rescued him from his attackers. That led to a conflict with Prebek and Sanasha. Ash killed the former with a sunfire, but was struck by confusion at the same time and left finishing off Sanasha to his companions. After looting the harper building Kitthix successfully webbed Lucette to ensure she would fail to make her escape after killing Xzar.
The lack of Azuredge made us even more vulnerable to vampires, so Wolfie decided to pay Gaelan Bayle in order to get the Amulet of Power for Russell as a means to prevent level drain. He immediately put that to use against Lassal - using Lilarcor to protect against domination there.
Russell wanted a larger shield, like the one on offer at Umar Hills. However, he was worried about taking on the mimic so wanted some protection against being held first. Thus we first took a trip to Trademeet to kill some efreetis and gain the Shield of Harmony.
Then it was on to Umar. We were still pretty low level, so only had to face skeleton warriors and shadow fiends spawning there. Thaxy could well have been a problem, but Wolfie resisted the temptation to take her on now. The Shade Lord was covered by insects to prevent it casting anything nasty.
We then returned to Trademeet for a delayed appointment at the Druid Grove. Ash killed a number of trolls there with death spells and his range of fire spells, but got caught short of spells in the Troll Mound. A giant troll thought he had him there, but a last moment potion of invisibility allowed him to escape. An insect plague dealt with the large group of druids in that area before Ash used web (for the first time in a while) to hold the last lot of druids. Wolfie used insect plague to disable Faldorn's spells and a couple of fire elementals then put the finishing touches to her.
Shapeshifter 13, 85 HPs , 96 kills (+254 in BGEE)
Dragon disciple 12, 69 HPs (incl. 6 from ioun stone), 142 kills (+99 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Paladin 10, 109 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 150 kills (+194 in BGEE), 2 deaths
It's been too long since I have played this run and forgot on whether I paid the license for magic or not - I risked casting a spell and sure enough the Cowled Wizards appeared and killed me. Back to the drawing board....
Edit: I found a starting save for a party of fighters, think will give them a go. His name is Corebrawl.
Corethief XXVIII Update
gnomish fighter/thief
To speed through BG 1 am solo in BG 1 but will have party in BG 2. I am at the level cap. Currently working on infilitrating Iron Throne HQ then will go to Candlekeep but will skip everything and get to the final fight with Sarevok. Here is a snapshot of my equipment which I intend to use till the end:
gnomish fighter/thief
Corethief has defeated Sarevok using the hide behind pillar/backstab trick. Semaj was dispelled with dispelling arrows then just 3 acid arrows (hasted) made short work of him. Corethief was protected by PfM scroll. Corethief has also just made it out of the dungeon. Once Corethief's lock skill gets good enough will drop Yoshimo. For now though, party will be Minsc, Korgan, Jaheira, Yoshimo and Aerie.
The critical path only challenge I previously played had the side-effect of very limited gear availability for our party, due to skipping most of the content. That's why I heavily relied on merchants and the guaranteed gear that I knew I would aways be able to get. After completing that run, I thought about other ways to challenge myself and decided that I could try my hand at the opposite: A run where I would only get items from the environment, with no merchant use at all. In the end, I decided to entirely ban the merchant interface for this one (so no buying and no selling at all, not even for quest items) - In cases where items can be obtained via dialogue, we're allowed to do that (such as the ankheg armor, Cromwell and Cespenar).
For my choice of Bhaalspawn, I ended up deciding on the abjurer for a two reasons: a) It's missing from the hall of heroes, and this is of course another run within my mission to fill in the remaining kits. b) it's rarely played at all, so there's not much hope of anyone else getting one into the hall anytime soon. The reason why abjurer runs are very rare is of course that there's really no good reason to play one except for flavor, because you get pretty much nothing out of the kit - there are no abjuration spells that require a saving throw, and you're also forced to play a human and play with high wisdom. Plus, you're missing out on some of the most commonly used spells in the game: Stoneskin, the single most useful protection against physical damage; Haste and improved haste, the most powerful buffs available for your fighter-types; Some minor losses are slow (which is nice to have but not crucial) and timestop (which I don't use as much anymore, so I'm fine with not having that one). With no haste spells available and no access to merchants, oils of speed will become incredibly valuable for this party.
I'm playing on core rules, no mods, skipping TotSC (except for Durlag's upper tower levels) and SoD plus most of the EE content (some exceptions may apply in SoA). Having had good experiences with a party of 4 for this kind of run, I decided to create another custom one of these - I decided to ban myself from using a totemic druid this time though - don't want to become too reliant on the kit.
So, here's the party.
Abiros, our abjurer bhaalspawn:
As you can imagine, the start could be a bit rough for us - because without buying any gear from Winthrop, we all start without armor and only a few quarterstaves as weapons. To compensate for that, we make sure to only fight enemies that we can sleep (Abiros starts with sleep, shield and PfP) or command - we can hit those even without the correct weapons. We make sure to pick up whatever lowly leather armors and normal weapons we can find to get going, and Tarnesh is commanded down:
After getting the aforementioned weapons from Beregost, there are a decent amount of sidequests and encounters we can easily complete, mostly with the help of sleep spells or commands. We run into our first potential quest item trouble with Firebead Elvenhair and his book - luckily, the wiki tells me there's one of those available in a house in the southern part of Beregost:
Traveling with: Korgan, Mazzy, Jaheira, Nalia, Anomen
Permanently dead: Aerie (generic slaver ambush)
I've had a lot of the early Jaheira encounters as she won't romance me (I'm a gnome). Unfortunately, the only character who would romance me (Aerie) got chunked by lightning (spell) by a generic bandit ambush. Now that I don't need Yoshimo as I am now a competent thief I replaced him with Nalia (this gives us more gold if she's in the party when her quest complete). I wanted a good cleric to replace Aerie so picked up Anomen.
Will keep at it.
Abiros, the abjurer - no merchant run - Update 1
With the experience of the basilisk hunt, we are powerful enough to clear most wilderness areas. Notable additions include hold person:
Well, the final area we move into before entering Cloakwood is the outside/upstairs part of Durlag's Tower. Here, we have to use a lot of wand charges to deal damage to the various powerful enemies. The ghost is our most challenging foe so far - after a few rounds with not enough damage output, as I foolishly fail to dodge his chaos spell, he confuses Tari and Carax. Brock has his enrage, and Abiros, luckily, makes his saving throw. We're able to stop any more spellcasting with a few lucky hits and wand of frost charges, so we don't suffer any serious consequences:
Darts of wounding and arrows of biting, fireballs from off-screen and some quick and decisive attacks help us to deal with the wizards inside of the iron mines:
In the big city, we start clearing minor encounters, making use of the silence spell against mages:
Back in the city, we complete the various encounters before the ducal palace without any issues:
Well, with 2 cloud giant strength and 1 storm giant strength, 3 mind focusing, invulnerability, heroism, fire resistance and lightning immunity for some (using our remaining fire resistance/absorption potions) and most notably an oil of speed for everyone (plus, three phase spiders and two skeletons at our side), we are prepared. Tari has to make the most out of these 4 arrows - she lures Sarevok to us with the first one, successfully dispelling his haste - we switch to other arrows until Semaj appears - the wizard comes to us, immediately activating contingencies with magic missles and greater malison. Abiros casts detect illusion to get rid of invisibility and mirror images. Now that we're suffering from the malison effect, we really can't let Semaj finish some type of chaos spell:
Cheers,
A.
Trio 64 - update 7
Wolfie - half-elf shapeshifter (Grond0)
Ash - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
Russell XXXVI - human paladin (Corey_Russell)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208471/#Comment_1208471
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208625/#Comment_1208625
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208890/#Comment_1208890
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208991/#Comment_1208991
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1209094/#Comment_1209094
In Trademeet, we collected the reward from a grateful town for sorting out Faldorn in the previous session. While in town we helped out Tiris and cleared the local tomb of some troublesome undead.
Moving directly on to the de'Arnise Hold, we made short work of the trolls thanks to Stonefire and Ash's fire spells (and the occasional death one). Wolfie hadn't realised what a powerful influence paladins could exercise on some individuals and was thus surprised when Glaicus meekly submitted to our group. All of the umber hulks were caught in a death spell, which meant they couldn't eat their dog stew - oh well, more for Wolfie - yum, yum
By this time Russell was complaining about the body rotting in his backpack and even Wolfie agreed the spell was getting pretty bad, so we diverted to town to open up the Planar Sphere. Then it was back out on our travels to Windspear Hills. At the entrance to the dungeon Ash double-checked that he had a sunfire prepared for instant use on the ambush waiting inside - yep, he was ready even if his companions were less so
Shapeshifter 13, 85 HPs, 154 kills (+254 in BGEE)
Dragon disciple 13, 70 HPs (incl. 6 from ioun stone), 209 kills (+99 in BGEE), 0 deaths
Paladin 12, 115 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 207 kills (+194 in BGEE), 2 deaths
Ash picked up a few late kills by using death spell on the groups of hobgoblins and orcs attempting to block our exit and managed to overtake Russell in the kill count in this keenly contested race
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208151/#Comment_1208151
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https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208288/#Comment_1208288
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208297/#Comment_1208297
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208312/#Comment_1208312
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1208385/#Comment_1208385
The Crew have been sitting in the City of Caverns for the last 6 weeks or so, but have finally managed to complete that area this morning.
The last update saw them having just completed Windspear Hills and the key found there soon opened up a new area in the Temple sewers and they set about clearing the illithid there. Baby Face had the best saves thanks to wearing the Ring of Gaxx and acted as target without ever being incapacitated. He was intelligence drained only once, near the end of combat, but with an intelligence of 16 that was no problem.
After forging the Shadow Dragon Scale armor, they investigated the Guarded Compound. They dragged enemies downstairs one or two at a time, until only Ketta remained upstairs as easy pickings.
The Twisted Rune had the potential to go badly wrong, so Mad Dog made a rare use of the simmy there. That did a good job in persuading Shangalar to pretty much waste his time stop. Layene wasted her protections trying to kill the pit fiend she summoned herself.
After a final bit of potion shopping, the Crew reported back to Aran Linvail that they were ready to go to Spellhold. A vampire greeting at Brynnlaw Docks managed to charm Carlo, but that was insufficient to give them any chance. Perth was then just too late with his buffing to hold off the hail of missiles launched at him. His book immediately fell open at a True Seeing page and the Crew were happy to leave it there.
Moving into Spellhold, Al lost his Bhaal powers, making resting significantly less useful as a means of healing. However, they did answer the riddle stones to gain a ring of regeneration to help compensate for that. Along with Gaxx, Dragonslayer sword, ioun stone and Al's natural regeneration that means all but one of them now have the potential to regenerate without swapping items around. They were still just under 2m XP initially, so there was no lich waiting for them. It wasn't too long though before they did hit the 2m mark and gained another level. Before leaving, they picked up a second pair of Boots of Speed from Grophinet's machine.
A fusillade of shots was far more than sufficient to make Irenicus run away - though he didn't realise how badly he was injured until after Wanev's timestop. Back in Brynnlaw they took ship with Saemon, but were soon reduced to killing a few githyanki as the ship was sinking underneath them. In the City of Caverns they agreed to help the king, but only helped him to an early death along with the rest of the royal family. They picked up another level for doing that.
Al (PC) - L17, 134 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm), 183 kills (+305 in BGEE/SoD), **** 2-handed sword / *** longbow
Baby Face - L17, 135 HPs, 289 kills (+298 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths, **** long sword / *** crossbow
Bugsy - L17, 129 HPs, 187 kills (+260 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths, **** hammer / *** shortbow
Carlo - L17, 139 HPs, 221 kills (+283 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths, **** flail / *** sling
Mad Dog - L17, 149 HPs, 397 kills (+290 in BGEE/SoD), 3 deaths, ***** axe / ** dual wielding
Vito - L17, 132 HPs, 193 kills (+286 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death, **** scimitar / *** darts
Our plan to get quick weapons in SoA without access to merchant relied mainly on Wacher's Keep level 1. However, first things first: We already got to pick up Ahisdeena for Carax in the opening dungeon; After dealing with the circus tent and freeing Hendak (though not dealing with the slavers yet), we made our way to the city gates, in order to steal Daystar (so Tari has a good weapon). Now, we travelled to the keep. With a low level party, the main risk here is encountering vampiric wraiths. They are, from my experience (and according to the wiki) less likely to show up if you're at a lower level, but it can still happen. Luckily, we got mephits instead, making it relatively easy to clear the level up until the statues - this gave Abiros the crimson dart +3 and Carax a decent magical shield. The real prize, of course, would be Foebane and Usano's Blade, both of which would make great weapons for Brosk, our primary fighter. Facing the statues right out of the gate is quite risky, and I've never done it quite this early before - With all of our summons and possible buffs at the ready, we decided to burn one of our valuable oils of speed on Brosk - and, since the reduced number of statues on lower levels mean that we didn't have to face any spellcasters, we were able to pull it off, though not exactly unscathed:
Since we can't buy the Robe of Vecna (or the robe of the good archmagi) I decided to do a little bit of EE content - the only other decent available robe is the Robe of Invocation from the SoA portion of Neera's questline. I also decided to do Rasaad's quests due to the very good rewards (the 3*mirror image ring and the gem of true seeing), since we're already doing some EE stuff and these questlines are a bit intertwined due to Wilson. Since both quests have somewhat challenging finales (especially Neera's), I only did the first part of each one right now - starting with Rasaad:
Next time: Some stronghold quests.
Sorry for late update, real time and some BGEE new mods testing kept me busy.
So it is SoA time at last !
My BG2EE is a little modded :
- EEFixpack
- Ascension, Turnabout (in order to have some help for the final fight) and Crucible for ToB (I plan to switch difficulty from insane to core for ToB part)
- Reunion and Juniper quests mods for ToB part
- Dark Tidings, Call of the Lost Goddess, Back to Brynnlaw, Skie Cost of a Girl's soul and Bloodied Stings of Barovia quests mods for SoA part
- Two NPC mods : Khalid and Xzele the undead paladin of Evening Glory
- some banters packs and friendship mods
- De Arnise Romance and Nalia at Last to try Nalia as a romance
- Homeward Bound which allows to send an NPC to Athkatla from Brynnlaw in order to not abandon Imoen
- some tweaks, notably no XP from scribing scrolls or desarming traps, and XP from quests and kills reduced to 75%
Planned party :
- Khalid
- Nalia
- Anomen
- Aerie then Neera
- Minsc then Xzele
I have other friendship mods installed in case a permadeath happens and I need to recruit someone else.
I had a weird bug when importing my char from SoD, he kept his levels but his XP went back from 500,000 to 161,000. I decided to leave it this way, meaning the recruited NPC would be at lower levels.
Irenicus's dungeon was easy. My avenger used goodberry for cheap healing potions, then shapeshit to spider.
Air Plane was the most difficult part.
As always, my plan was to recruit my final party as soon as possible, but first I need some supplies.
We did the circus and recruit Aerie, then go to the sewers for Mendar's crew.
Bad idea, it was probably one of the most difficult fight in all SoA.
The mage was enough high level to cast finger of death, luckily not on Wilkim.
And finally...
After that we did some side quests like the slavers.
Next step was Umar Hills, we skipped the dragon for a later time.
This mod is really gorgeous.
Great mod too, with new areas. I was cautious too, but was caught off guard...
Final fight was harder than Dark Tidings one.
And at last I felt enough powerful to try Call of the lost Goddess mod from Acifer.
Time to go in the Abyss !
First, a little stairway to climb...
I didn't take a screenshot but I was almost killed by a powerful elf mage later, which I couldn't interrupt (casting in the abyss is difficult, you need expansive items to not have bad surges, so I switch one item between Neera and Nalia but failed at one moment), he was able to launch a AHW and Wilkim was left with 2 HP !
Near the end, there is a very difficult fight and the bad guy kept trying to kill Wilkim.
Back in Amn, I was enough high level to at last become Great Druid.
First Firkraag, with same tactic than shadow dragon.
Bodhi in chapter 3 was so a push over I forgot to take a screenshot.
I also totally forgot when I did thief and cleric stronghold quests in this run.
I left for Brynnlaw, with only NPC quests, sewers and Illithids area to do in Amn in chapter 6.
I left Neera in Brynnlaw before entering Spellhold, to have room for Imoen.
Irenicus was defeated so fast I feared the cutscene would break, but all went fine.
Underdark was smooth, the Demon Knights fell fast.
Back to the surface, Khalid received a new kit.
I discovered my fighter stronghold quests have bugged, and have to fix it with the console. So this quests line is not yet done.
I then did Back to Brynnlaw mod, and recovered the sacrificed stat point in chapter 4 dream sequence.
This time Bodhi was killed, and since she kidnapped Nalia, I recruited Imoen to help me there.
After a trip to Umar Hills, Nalia was back.
Now besides NPC quests, sewers and chapter 6 areas, only Suldanessalar remains.
Some thoughts on this run :
- Xzele as an undead is powerful with nice immunities, but she can't be raised if killed and can't use Carsomyr.
- Khalid is an interesting character, with access to his own Harpers quests.
- new quests mods are very good, particularly Barovia, Dark Tidings and Call of the Lost Goddess, they add challenge, but also some nice rewards for a no reload run, my character currently have permanent deathward and imprisonment immunity.
- thanks to the initial import bug, and the XP reduction, I am at 2,700,000 XP, so I will not have HLA before ToB, even with 5 quests mods installed.
SoA end is near, and ToB with Ascension awaits with many challenges ahead.
We start at De'Arnise Keep to get Carax the Flail of Ages. I'm always a bit surprised how vulnerable spiders are to poison:
Now, seeing as how difficult that one was, I should have known to delay the finale of Neera's quest, which is generally even harder to handle. However, foolishly, I moved forward with that one. For once I was actually able to pick the correct dialogue options in an EE companion quest and avoided angering the shopkeeper while allying with the mercenaries:
We make our way to the Windspear dungeon. As you can see, Abiros has just gained access to 7th level spells - and he can conjure Mordenkainen's swords, which is incredibly helpful when dealing with the golems:
You might not think of Daystar as a typical backstabbing weapon, but it does the job - right Perth?
Time to enter the drow city. Also, we have now gained access to our first HLAs. One of our more interesting picks is alchemy on Tari, something I usually never take. With that one, we can create oils of speed - and unlike with the planar sphere potion rewards, it doesn't take forever. However, to really take advantage of this I want to be at a place where I can freely rest without interruptions, so producing a bunch of potions will have to wait until we get back to the surface (I usually use the graveyard district for such purposes).
To rescue Phaere we make use of death spell:
With our oils of speed at the ready, it's time to take down the various liches, dragons, mind flayers, guarded compounds and twisted rune councils we have left alive for now.
We start with the easiest one - the bridge district lich doesn't pre-buff in the vanilla game when you visit him for the second time:
Since we don't have PfM or PfU scrolls available (the only PfU scroll in SoA not from a merchant is from a Hexxat quest, and I'm not prepared to suffer through that right now), we need to take down Kangaxx in another way. Of course, we can just trap-kill his lich form. I decide to go for a more risky demi-lich approach, going for a double sunray approach + the chance of an iMoD kill (which works quite reliably against kangaxx), aiming to kill him while he's still casting demilich howl. Might have been safer to keep the party far away and only use a raging Brosk who is immune to imprisonment, but then there's the chance he doesn't get the kill in time until the enrage ends. Well, in the end the iMoD did the job: