Dual classes aren't included in the list of missing classes/kits for the hall of heroes, because the possible list of combinations is nearly endess (a fighter 2/cleric 30 is a very different character compared to a fighter 13/cleric 18, so logically every possible dualling level option for every allowed dual class combo would have to be included, which is a bit unreasonable).
I would propably pick an elf over a half-elf, given the chance. A stalker would be great to see - I've tried my hand at that one and got very far, only to face a very unfortunate end in Watcher's Keep level 5 by getting very unlucky in the spirit warrior maze when fighting the ghost there (which is why, nowadays, I always skip the ghost battle).
Very good! Well, I’m playing on a tablet, core rules and no mods.
My wife did the driving to Busch Gardens so I rolled up an elf stalker on the drive here.
Got a 96(!!!) I’ve distributed this way: 18/66, 19, 17, 10, 14, 8. I went with Axes and Scmitar (++) in each to start with skeletons as my favored enemy. His name is Yogi and I’ll probably do a little playing later.
My general strategy will be to try to keep baddies at bay with throwing axes so I won’t be in danger of getting hit early on. I’ll eventually lose some reputation because Drizzt’s swords are too tempting for this character. Gonna get some nice backstabs with those curved swords!
Now though, I’m gonna get these teenagers on some roller coasters today and try to act like a kid myself too.
I finished the valley of the Tombs. Narcilius did not drop anything because I used the wand of frost, oops.
I had some issues hitting the Mustard Slimes until I found out the Lucius was wielding a non magical flail... everything just looks alike on a small screen.
Back in Nahkel I traded Garrick for Minsc and Edwin and I had West to the gnoll stronghold.
At this point I noticed that Lucius had 173 kills with pretty much only darts. Imoen comes close with 71 using arrows and 1 apr and 3-4 thac0 difference. I always liked darts in bgee.
The cloud peak mountains are cleared with little spectacularity. Now we are facing the gnoll stronghold and save the damsel in distress.
The gnoll are no more and Lucius became a little bit more charming. I let Edwin, Dynaheir and Minsc battle it out. Edwin struck down Dynaheir and Minsc struck down Edwin. I took Minsc back to Nashkel and rejoined with Garrick.
Next I went to Beregost to kill a random commoner in a house because I had 18 reputation which would cancel each new point and the evil party members I would have in the future. I got down to 9 but with the help of the reputation point from Firebead Elvenhair I got to 10 right away.
The parry goes to the High hedge where unfortunately Imoen and Xan are killed and Kivan is joined. After resurrection I clear the area completely and now I am prepared to go to the bandit camp where I can ditch Xan and Kivan again. Maybe I should actually first get Ajantis....
So, I kinda screwed up Yogi, and left points off the board. He had a lower CON than he should have LOL.
I rerolled and started Yogii the elven stalker. I didn’t get quite as good a roll, but that’s ok. At least he started with 13 HP.
So far, all Yogii has done is a few quests inside of Candlekeep, like fetching a scroll, killing some rats, and a few other FedEx quests, as well as breaking into a few chests for spare gear and hawking it over at Winthrops. He’s got a little bit of a bad boy streak in him, I suppose.
After witnessing his paternal figure murdered and running away, he also ran away from Imoen. From a mechanical standpoint, I did this so I can grab her and dual class her into mage immediately later on. It sure helps to recruit a mage who can cast Protection from Petrification and level up quick in this game.
Yogii has always been annoyed by Imoen, so running away from her and not allowing her to adventure with him is pretty normal for him.
Looking forward to getting in some play time tomorrow, but today was spent with about 7 hours behind the wheel of a car and I’m going to pass out shortly.
Yogii made his way to Candlekeep, after deciding he wasn’t really liking these two surly characters he’d met on the road, Monteron and Xzar. He even found a magic ring on the way, killed an ogre with his throwing axes, and killed a mage who was obviously sent to kill him!! After finally feeling safe, he fought off a few hobgoblins and returned a ring to a nice old lady named Joia. In the Candlekeep inn, one guy gave me some pants (weirdo), but I’m keeping them! Another guy named Landrin gave me a bunch of antidote potions to clear his house out of spiders. I’ll get to that eventually, but he didn’t seem to be in a rush and neither am I.
After reaching the town of Beregost, I was again bombarded with other people’s problems! Don’t I have enough of my own? An annoying half breed named Neera was ambushed by some nasty wizards. I helped her out, she gave me a sack and I asked her to leave.
Luckily for him, I was in a good mood and talked him down.
I decided to get out of town and travel south. I met some big monsters who had killed Mirianne’s husband, found some healing potions in a cave, and fought more hobgoblins that I had no beef with. Whats up with these guys?
Anyway, they fell to my throwing axes and backstabs. No big deal. I went back and spoke to a halfling who tried pick pocketing me. I gave him his boots back, but then I got pissed off and took those boots back. Poor halfling.
I then snuck into another inn, and there was another assassin trying to kick my butt! I ran out and hid. He came around the corner and got a wakizashi in the backside. Jerk face.
There was a halfling inside asking for his short sword too. How many people does this guy need to help out?
I headed out of town to visit a temple and bought a stone to flesh scroll.
After exploring a little more, I felt bad about running away from Imoen and went back for her.
After picking up Imoen, she came back with me to Beregost. We went on a little heist and opened a bunch of locks in town. After dark, we even went to the smiths and found a magic sword! It’s too heavy for me but I’ll sell it after it’s ID’d. When she opened one of the locks, I went to third level.
I’m going to head over further west to because I heard about some basilisks out there, and Imoen decided to become a wizard and learn protection from petrification to help me out. What a nice little sister.
Took a trip to go slay some basilisks, and boy do I feel stronger now!
I wanted to take them on alone, so I asked Imoen to wait for me after casting Protection from Petrification on me. After clearing out those nasties, and even getting poisoned (three times!!) by a very aggressive big one (thank Corellon for those potions from Landrin!), I decided to ask Imoen back for a little bit of fun against a party of four thugs in the center of the map. She started the fight with a stinking cloud scroll, and while I was chucking axes at them, she would unleash a lightning bolt from a wand she found in Beregost! We were a sight to see together!
Those guys had a lot of loot, and I made my way over to see a warrior who was intent on testing herself against a man. I liked my chances, despite her having bigger biceps than I do, and I took her down quick. Her name is Shar Teel. I just wanted her to help me lug all this awesome loot back to Beregost haha. I’m such a jerk sometimes.
Anyway, we got back to town without incident and I asked Imoen and Shart to hang out in town while I looked around.
I think I’m going to see what that fop named Garrick wants next, then I’ll go recruit a tank and a real spellchucker, then a healer. I hope I find a decent thief soon too.
Also, maybe I should go meet those people dad wanted me to before. I forgot all about them.
Still suffering from restartitis, I felt the need to begin from the beginning rather than progress further any of the several old runs that are stuck in various places. I've quite often done runs that aim to avoid any damage, but nearly all of those have been with solo characters - making the challenge far easier. For this one I'll see how far I can get with a party. Rather than roll up a new save, I'm using Beggar's Opera, which was created for a poverty run - but they can treat themselves to equipment for this challenge .
I've had 7 attempts at this already in the last week or so, all of which had decent starts but failed around the 10-20k XP mark. One of those illustrated the difficulty of the challenge when exploring the Nashkel Mine area. One character at the front was invisible in order to warn of encounters, but the others were visible to deal with the enemies spotted. The precaution of the invisible scout proved insufficient when a kobold obviously spawned after they had passed over an encounter spot, wandered into range behind me and hit with a shot before I knew it was there. In my last attempt I was once more close to the 20k mark for each character when taking on Bassilus. He was killed without trouble, but I didn't notice until just too late that one of his skeletons had escaped the scripted death and killed the spirit snake used to distract Bassilus. The party turned to run, but a bolt followed them out of the darkness ...
While experience to date suggests that this challenge won't be one of my more successful ones, I'd like to get deeper into the game and perhaps this time will do the trick .
The first potential danger was the area transition to High Hedge, but there was no ambush there and they slept some gnolls to get Perdue's sword before continuing on to Beregost. Karlat was confronted there by spirits and pelted with sling shots, Neera and Silke were blinded before being shot and some spiders suffered from narcolepsy. They also talked to Marl and Firebead and deliberately got caught stealing a couple of times in order to reduce reputation to 9. To the south they picked up some boots to help Washout sneak around and briefly returned those to Zhurlong, as well as delivering a late letter to Mirianne.
Then it was off to the basilisk area to follow Korax round for a while. Killing the southern group of basilisks gave everyone the XP to level up (one of my personal rules is that all party members have to level up at the same time). I forgot to level up immediately though and waited to do that until Mutamin and the rest of the basilisks were dead (which would have given another level) in order to avoid XP getting out of sync. Kirian's mob were quickly disposed of with blind and silence.
The party still needed about 24k total XP before the sorcerers could use invisibility and they headed for Durlag's Tower in search of more decent-sized chunks of that. While distracted by spirits, the battle horrors on the path were doomed and blinded before being hacked down by staff attacks from outside their sight range (not using more spells there to avoid the risk of resting). It's a bit fiddly to set everyone up like that, but gives the battle horror no realistic chance of recovering from blindness. The doom guard on the walls then went the same way. For the battle horror on the walls Pauper used sanctuary and turn undead to get the skeletons out of the way, before attacking the doom guard. It then followed to the end of the wall where it could be safely attacked (with spirits keeping an eye out to ensure skeletons did not follow).
Inside the upper tower, spirits were used to distract the ghasts while they were shot down. The last of those tipped the party over the 10k mark and everyone levelled up once more. With invisibility now available resting was no longer a concern and they did that before giving Kirinhale's toupee to Riggilo then blinding and shooting him. On the roof they took on the basilisks - relying on a spirit snake's immunity to petrification there.
After travelling invisibly back to Beregost temple they took on the wolf pack there. Sleep was cast from distance to deal with the worgs, while the dread and vampiric wolves were blinded. I kept one of the party invisible on the encounter spot near there to avoid the problems that could be caused by hobgoblin archers suddenly appearing. Washout killed the vampiric wolves with backstabs. It would have been easier to shoot them, but I was originally thinking to keep his magical arrows for the golems at High Hedge. In the event though I surrounded those with invisible characters so that Washout could use a staff to kill them. Once again, one of Bassilus' skeletons survived the scripted death, but this time it had no luck in shooting the spirit lion confronting Bassilus. Melicamp was then successfully restored to his natural form - leading the party to bungle another stealing attempt in Beregost to reduce reputation back to 9. They were lucky in High Hedge though when an invisible scout steered them away from one group of skeletons - but too far away and another group caught a brief sight of them. Hardup was attacked, but fortunately the skeleton missed.
An invisible trip to Gullykin saw them pick up another +1 sling, as well as using blindness to leave Molkar unprotected by his companions. Then they pressed on to Nashkel for the first time, allowing Beggar to put on the ankheg armor that might help if he ever comes under attack. Minor encounters there included silencing Zordral from behind the cover of a bookcase before dooming, blinding and commanding him.
At the Nashkel Mine they killed Greywolf for his sword, but didn't report back to Prism yet. To reduce the risk of wandering archers they stayed invisible most of the time when travelling through the Cloud Peak mountains to get the charisma tome. There were a few encounters though, with Beggar showing off Gorion's belt when tanking some winter wolves. A number of ogre berserkers helped push XP up and they tipped over the 20k mark when killing a dread wolf attempting to ambush them on the way to the Lighthouse area. That level made web available and that helped make short work of some sirines in the area - aided by Washout's special traps as he now had 100% with those. Washout did most of the hard work in the cave with traps and magical arrows taking down the golems.
At least this time I've got past that tricky stage and it should be possible to go much further with sufficient care and attention to detail. Whether those ingredients will be available is questionable of course ...
At the mine site it took half a dozen attempts to blind the Doomsayer and he then went the same way as the battle horrors. Moving on to the Lake area, Drizzt was unable to shrug off a full complement of Washout's traps. The main purpose of that was the XP, though Beggar is able to make use of Icingdeath if desired. While in the mood for trapping, they got a surprisingly healthy dollop of XP when an old man wandered into a series of traps set near a crossroads. That put reputation down to 4, though it did get a little bump back by returning Joia's ring. Even with that poor reputation, Beggar's dazzling charisma of 19 persuaded Landrin to hand over some potions in return for his goods.
To the north the ankheg nest awaited. Hardup danced up spirits there to make the ankhegs surface and allow them to be slept. A bit further north they helped a farmer out with a zombie problem before their reputation took yet another hit as a result of charming Dushai and pulling him away where he could be shot without upsetting any of the other townspeople.
Completing a few quests left previously got reputation back up to 9 on the way to the Nashkel Mine. They used webs there to prevent Mulahey from calling for help. Outside the mine the amazons were also webbed before there was another close shave when an invisible scout failed to spot some ankheg antennae and it must have been close to getting off a shot at Beggar before he retreated out of range. The Revenant was blinded and magic missiled before the party took on Narcillicus. His mustard jellies were lured away and Washout backstabbed them while they were concentrating on spirits. Narcillicus was then webbed, but surprisingly broke free at one point - Beggar's LMD did a good job there to disrupt him before he could complete a spell.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul was silenced and commanded. Tranzig was then webbed to provide access to the Bandit Camp. They had to be careful of wandering archers there. The basic tactic was to send in a summons ahead of them, with follow-up sleep disabling the attackers. Pauper contributed a skeleton for the first time to help with that and Taurgosz was blinded and charmed to do his own stint as target. They got another level during that clean-up operation. Webs were then used to deal with Raemon & co in Tazok's tent.
Aspire now had invisibility 10' radius available, so travelling around was made rather easier as they moved on to the Cloakwood. In the first area, a pair of spirit lions helped Aldeth deal with some intruding druids. In the second area, phase spiders now teleport so quickly that everyone had to be on their toes but they managed to clear the area before tackling Centeol's nest. Traps laid outside helped kill a couple of sword spiders before they could get to their attackers and dancing spirits were able to tank the remainder. In the third area, more traps did most of the damage against the druids and none of them managed to cast a spell. In the cave Peter was blinded before he could line up a shot and invisible blockers allowed Aspire the time to blind the wyverns as well.
In the 4th area though the inevitable finally happened when they came across a group of wolves. A pair of spirit snakes were in the lead and should have held the wolves while the party shot them down. The whole party was tasked to attack, with Aspire throwing a sleep spell in. That all appeared totally routine until I realised that there were 3 green circles up close to the wolves, not just the 2 snakes. Investigating more closely I saw that Aspire had somehow managed to get ahead of all the others - and had already been hit by a wolf before I had even noticed he was there .
I think they got far enough that time to satisfy honour, so I won't try again ...
I can’t keep updating as I have, but Yogii is chugging along just fine. He’s recruited Kagain, Branwen, and Baeloth into his party. He’s met others, but dropped them shortly after.
The Nashkell mines were a breeze, and Kagain just tanked the traps (with his Buckley’s Buckler-infused 21 CON, he just shrugs these off).
I’m going to rush the main story line to get Coran into the party as my thief and archer. After completing his quest, I’ll go back and finish a bunch of side quests to level up the rest of the party and include some screenshots. Thanks!
For my Priest of Talos run, I decided to create a party built around lightning damage - the idea is not to use any damage types other than lightning and physical damage, get as many sources of lightning damage as possible involved, fill at least half of each spellbook level with lightning damage spells provided one exists at that spell level - all in all, very similiar to my acid&ice run, which had a similiar idea behind it.
Aside from our Priest of Talos, we would need an avenger (access to call lightning, lightning bolt and chain lighnting - perfect!), an archer (to make use of bolts of lightning, and, later on, Gesen's bow), 2 warrior-types (one for war hammers - Ashideena and, later on, Crom Faeyr, and one for Usuno's Blade/Celestial Fury - with Storm Star reserved for the Bhaalspawn) and an arcane spellcaster. Last time I picked an invoker for the job, but I decided to go for a sorcerer this time around - the main reason being that both lightning bolt and chain lightning allow for a saving throw for half damage (glyph of warding even has a saving throw for 0 damage), and I wanted the option to cast greater malison to beat those saving throws. Since we're barred from traps (as they deal other types of elemental damage later on), I decided to make one of my fighters a dualclassed swashbuckler 6/fighter X (just for locks and traps), the other a berserker. Here's the party:
Iseri, halfling Priest of Talos:
Obram, dwarven berserker:
Selwine, human swashbuckler (later dualled to fighter):
Franmar, elven archer:
Alaniel, half-elven avenger:
Kamillio, elven sorcerer:
Our sorcerer starts with shocking grasp and shield (the latter being needed to be a bit safer when going close enough to deliver shocking grasp hits). Now, obviously shocking grasp is terrible, but I was determined to make use out of it, in the spirit of the run. See, once the enemy is commanded down, even sorcerers can easily hit an unarmed melee attack:
I did not, however, want to throw around random lightning bolts unless the party was properly protected (which would have to wait until we had some 4th level divine spells) - they were reserved for some pretty wide open outdoor areas. However, the damage is a bit too limited in the very early levels to be of much use:
We started with the simple quests around Beregost to get some starting experience and gold. With most of us at level 2, except for Kamillio, we encountered the dreaded bandit archer ambush. Level 1 protection seriously saved our sorcerer here:
With those early quests done, we ventured to the carnival, got our hands on the green PfP scroll and started clearing out the basilisk area:
And, while it might not be clever, we're still trying to make use of shocking grasp - Kamillio is going into melee combat against a gnoll elite here, and coming out on top:
As the party gains power, we're ready to get our hands on our first lighting damage weapon, Ashideena:
Avengers profit a lot from the druid level progression by getting very early access to multiple webs - very useful for us:
How far can we push our use of shocking grasp? Well, Greywolf gets to feel it next:
We made our way north to the ankheg areas and the zombie farm. Here, the first accidental casualty in the path of a lightning bolt perished - a poor cow:
Here, Iseri is trying out her newly acquired glyph of warding. It's great that it scales with our level, but a saving throw for zero damage is just a bit too much. I will still try to use it, but it's not all that great:
Shocking grasp scales a tiny bit with our level as well. Once we leave the wilderness and early game areas behind us, hitting with it, however, will become very troublesome - for now, we can still get some nice attacks in:
But the most damaging lightning damage spell remains druid's call lightning. Here, we take out Sendai's party with glyphs of warding, call lightning and lightning bolts:
The doomsayer, however, is entirely immune to lightning damage. Sad times for us.
With most wilderness areas outside of the more difficult eastern ones and the sword coast areas clear, we made our way into the Nashkel Mines. In Mulahey's cave, we threw some glyphs of warding at various points where we expected skeletons and kobolds to show up while taking down the evil priest:
Next time: Some more minor encounters, and the bandit camp.
It is, really, until you run into immunities - that was a common problem for my acid&ice run (I combined both elements, because there aren't a lot of spells/items for each indivual one) once we got into later parts of the game, especially ToB. I really wish that, like "lower resistance", there was a way to lower elemental resistances.
The other problem is that, at some point, these elemental damage spells (with the exception of fire and magical damage, which are the most powerful and very commonly used anyway) tend to fall of/become a bit slow, and a lot of enemies will just die to mostly physical damage before any good use can be made out of the elemental spells. Still, it will take a while to get there.
The Lightning Party, update 1
Out of the Nashkel mines, we ran into a spot of trouble when we got attacked from two sides - the amazons and a group of gnolls. Throwing down a web did not immediately stop the spellcasting of our eastern foes - that's not our glyph of warding!
See, our party doesn't make any of the saving throws here. That's how I wish my opponents would behave. Well, in any case, a second web locked down the amazons and with sleep applied on the gnolls, we were safe again:
As Selwine reached level 6, it was time to dual-class her:
We'll be without find traps for a while now, which is why I asked for some trap knowledge in the lounge a while back. Time to hunt down some bandits - this is me trying to use glyph of warding like a fireball:
Of course, these bandits have terrible saving throws - that won't work all the time. Aside from Larswood and Peldvale, I decided to clear some more eastern wilderness areas, only leaving Ulcaster and Durlag's (plus the Sword Coast areas) alone for now. The red wizards area provided me with a spider battle (a party member triggered all web traps under invisiblity first), which gave Alaniel a good opportunity to use call lightning:
Our avenger got some more time to show off, throwing webs at the red wizards and following up with more lightning spells:
Time to enter the bandit camp. Because the tent is both inside and a confined space (with an innocent in it as well), we used our arsenal of lightning damage mostly outside:
Chant bless, remove fear, and we enter the tent, where the named bandits don't stand a chance:
With the money gained from looting the tents (using storm shield for the lightning bolt trap after the other party members ran outside), I finally had enough to afford some bolts of lightning for our archer. Next time: Cloakwood and some more wilderness areas, plus the Iron Mines.
I made my way by mistake to the basilisks area. There I ran into a bug where the potion of mirror eyes expired in 1 round and the character got petrified. I tried a few times with the same results, which I think might be a one off bug since a little bit later the potion did last longer.
The scroll of protection from petrification worked more reliably and therefore I used Lucius with Korax to clear the whole area. I gave Lucius a long sword and heart of the golem and let him dual wield with a potion of frost giant strength for good measure.
The basilisks and gnoll in the area were not much of an issue. The adventuring party was aggoed and after a pull back to the party we tackled it easily using an oil of fiery burning with Xan, and a barrage of arrows and darts. The adventurers were stupid enough to cast entangled and lightning bolt which bounced without injury against the bones and back towards them.
Some summons from the wand of summoning and melee Kagain solved the encounter quite quickly.
I leave Shar-Teel for now, first I go to the bandit camp via Larswood such that I can get Kivan to attack Tazok and after that I will clear it and boot Xan and Kivan for Viconia and Shar-Teel.
I can remove Kagain later in cloakwood for someone else or maybe Ajantis. A bit slower progress now.
Biff {55} - melee sorcerer (update 1)
Previous run
After playing with a party for a while I was keen to revert to my more typical solo games and decided to give Biff another try. Recent runs with him have only allowed him to use his own melee abilities against opponents, i.e. no use of spells either cast directly on opponents or to create summons / charmed neutrals to fight for you and no active use of a familiar. Before I first tried that I expected it to be very challenging, but it's actually not that bad - at least once you've got a few levels under your belt. The last recorded attempt with him got well into BG2EE and there should be potential to go quite a bit further. A 52nd attempt lasted only a few minutes though when I got a bit careless fighting a gnoll at High Hedge. A 53rd failed when I forgot that Kirian cast horror and her acid arrows cut short Biff's attempt to flee in terror. The 54th also failed early when a hobgoblin's morale broke and it ran into 2 more of them and I failed to take avoiding action quickly enough.
Starting again and this time I made sure the gnolls would not be given any chance to attack - retreating before they could do so even if they got a good initiative roll. Talking to Marl, helping Firebead and running past Karlat to return Perdue's sword gave a bit of XP before Biff travelled to the south. The hobgoblins there are another enemy with slow weapon speed, so Biff was able to kill the one with Zhurlong's boots - beating him up after returning those was just enough for a first level and 6 additional HPs.
There were a few more hobgoblins at the FAI and returning Joia's ring there added a nice bonus. Biff then headed down to Nashkel to talk to Noober, rest to get Bhaal CLW and go and return a dagger to the Revenant. Escorting Brage back to Nashkel was then enough for another level and another 6 HPs.
At this stage last time Biff took PfP, but this time I decided to rely on Korax to kill the local basilisks (allowed on the basis his charm is scripted rather than cast). That soon took Biff to level 4 (+6 HPs) and then level 5 (yet another +6 HPs).
Korax also helped finish off Mutamin and the last of the basilisks. Biff pulled Kirian's companions away and used invisibility and ghoul touch to take them out before Kirian herself failed to save against an invisible ghoul touch.
Ghoul touch accounted for Meilum and his bracers significantly improved Biff's melee.
Greywolf met the same sort of fate before Samuel was delivered to the FAI. In the Cloud Peaks, tracking down Rufie was enough for another level (just the 4 HPs this time though).
Biff took advantage of his new haste spell with a few more encounters on the way to recovering the charisma tome at the Gnoll Stronghold. Charleston Nib and Bjornin pushed reputation to 20 and the use of friends could now get charisma to 20. Biff took advantage of the cheap prices to buy the Dagger of Venom (increasing APR when used off-hand while a magically created weapon was operating) and Aule's Staff. He took his first serious damage on the way to get the latter when he tried a ghoul touch on the ankheg attacking from invisibility. He missed the first attack and went invisible again, but after missing the second the ankheg attacked just before he could disappear again - and got a critical. Biff was able to get out of sight before another attack though and he got his revenge with his next attack.
Returning to the minesite he used his staff once more to deal with the Doomsayer - though he had to rest 7 or 8 times in the process. That was enough to get him to level 7 with 5 more HPs.
Biff will be off to the Nashkel Mine next.
Sorcerer L7, 39 HPs, 82 kills
With each update I'll post a brief summary of the spells chosen / proposed for each level. Level 1 spells Chill touch
Pretty good option to improve close-up melee early on (including disabling dual-wielding penalties), though becomes obsolete later. Friends
Improves shop prices and rewards, though that's really only cosmetic - particularly with the considerable restrictions on item use. Identify
Mainly just gives another (unneeded) boost to finances, though helps a bit with inventory management as well. Protection from evil
Decent improvement in defences against the many evil foes. Shield
Useful AC improvement in the early game as well as immunity to magic missiles.
We make our way through Cloakwood, using invisibility to trigger the traps in the part with all the spiders. Not much trouble here until we make it to the mines. Drasus awaits, but things go wrong as I prepare for combat: It turns out that shapeshifting back from an animal form (testing out the avenger forms a little bit) into human form cancels invisibility, so Alaniel showed herself way too early while I had barely prepared for combat:
Since we have neither webs or protection spells prepared, we use our wand of monster summoning to distract our foes and stabilize the situation. I don't expect to need it much otherwise during this run, so I didn't mind using 2-3 charges:
Well, with the boots of speed now in our posession, I decided to try and gather as much as experience as possible outside of the mines with the hopes of getting Selwine's swashbuckler levels back before entering. So, we make it to the sword coast, where Shoal, somehow, simply doesn't finish her resurrection spell:
This is kind of our first character death, though I don't really count deaths from the Shoal encounter as they are scripted. On our way back, we're showing off that we have now equipped all of our 3 sling users with bullets of electricity as well. Lightning damage everywhere:
Okay, after returning from a quick temple visit we use skeletons for the sirens and berserker rage + boots of speed to quickly trigger all the traps in the flesh golem cave:
By now, we have protection from lightning available, though not enough spellslots for the entire party. With that in mind, we travelled to Gullykin to take on Lendarn, who likes to open with a lightning bolt as well. Sadly, his invisibility cancelled our attempts at throwing our own lightning at him first, and he was able to use his spell - absolutely deadly in theory. Luckily, it really payed off that I protected Kamillio against lightning damage and activated storm shield on Iseri first - Lendarn still does a good amount of damage to us, but the bounces aren't as bad as they could've been, and no one dies. Meanwhile, Iseri manages to throw a glyph of warding in the corridor:
In the end, Kamillio just crits Lendarn with a bullet:
We also took down Molkar and his crew - this is another case for webs + lightning bolts:
I left the southern part of the Firewine Dungeon and the Ulcaster Ruins for later - too many traps for my taste without any thieving skills. Kahrk stays alive as well, for now - but we decide to at least clear the battle horrors and greater basilisks at Durlag's and get the wisdom tome (leaving the remainder of the upper levels for later). Luckily, call lightning does a good job here:
The chromatic orb trap in front of the exit towards the roof is a bit nasty because it doesn't go away once triggered, but I managed to get our berserker + archer through to the roof, use mirrored eyes potions and get our hands on the experience points:
Still, that's not enough to get our thieving abilities back, so we'll have to clear the iron mines and get the required XP in the city of Baldur's Gate. We start by going through the secret doors, avoiding all traps so far, to take down Hareishan:
Same for Natasha:
Well, we took out the ogre mage as well, but no screenshots here. Downstairs, Obram activates a PfM scroll, and he triggers the traps. The party helps out against the battle horrors, but our berserker takes on Davaeorn by himself:
Today's session started with a trip to Windspear Hills. Plath Rededge cast slay living in an attempt on Whurr there, but his saving throws would have shrugged that off even if he had been hit - which he wasn't. The XP was sufficient to get Whurr a level though.
Moving into the dungeon, several kobolds exploded which was quite painful for Ash - and the Ruhk was also hurt by his own weapon there. That meant Whurr was able to finish him off even before he got around to producing his normal cloudkill. Ash used sanctuary and turn undead on a large group of vampires and other undead - only a single vampire having the levels to resist instant destruction there. Samia's attempt to spring a trap failed when Ash threw in a fire storm to burn her party up - along with a few skeleton warriors acting as distractions. Dealing with the local golem populations took a bit longer. The first adamantite golem died slowly from Azuredge missile attacks (Ash just standing by there - he should perhaps invest in the dwarven throwing hammer for that sort of situation). For the second we both attacked in melee, but even when slowed by the FoA the golem got in some telling blows on Whurr and he made a rare use of a healing potion to ensure survival (the golem lasting rather longer than expected due to Whurr using an ineffective weapon). The third one was probably the most successful, with Whurr adopting rat form and nibbling the golems toes while the FoA attacked its knees. Conster was exposed by true sight and didn't last long. His master was rendered more vulnerable to spells by Ash casting magic resistance at it, but Ash missed with a follow-up harm attempt and Firkraag shrugged off a finger of death spell. However, with Whurr using Gaxx haste to attack with the dragon slayer sword the battle was pretty short anyway.
Back in Athkatla we headed for the temple sewers to see what the key found at Windspear would unlock. On arrival there we found that Tarnor was still blocking the way, but that didn't take long to sort out with the help of summons. Mekrath was also still untouched, but that state of affairs also quickly changed when Whurr attacked him. Ash offered to provide some fire resistance before Whurr confronted the yuan-ti mages there, but that offer was not taken up - so Ash threw his fire storm in anyway. Whurr took a fair amount of damage there, but still had 87 left and dived into the acid blob trap to get the portal gem. That left him pretty vulnerable, which could have been a problem when Ash didn't notice him coming back while kicking open a treasure chest with a lightning trap - fortunately that only hit Whurr once in its bounces.
The illithids found their distance attacks stymied by chaotic commands and were rarely able to close with Whurr to take advantage of his 6 intelligence. The ones from the second room were dragged away a few at a time and one of those mini-groups did at least manage to hit him once - and missed with at least one follow-up attack before he could get out of range. Alhoon died from an Azuredge strike and the illithid in that room caused no problems thanks to a skeleton warrior in the way - I think they managed very few attacks on it due to an umber hulk largely blocking them.
Next up was the Planar Prison. We buffed up quite a bit before entering that under sanctuary and the bounty hunter mage there failed to survive our opening attack. We progressed anti-clockwise on the way to find the Warden. He survived a while, thanks to Whurr mainly concentrating on the yuan-ti mages while summons occupied the warden, but ultimately went down without having caused any real concerns.
The final action in the session was doing the Unseeing Eye quest. Whurr bought Balduran's Shield in advance of that and could thus let them kill themselves. That allowed a nice little cameo after recreating a bridge across the chasm where he was able to stand there apparently doing nothing while attacking beholders killed themselves gradually and a horde of attacking undead evaporated much more quickly. Whurr's turn undead abilities were becoming pretty effective by this time - he even managed to destroy the lich in the underground area. Feeling his own abilities were being ignored, Ash could not resist providing a bit of unnecessary help against more groups of beholders - holy smite doing some decent damage against those, as well as against the blind priests. The Rift Device brought a swift end to the Unseeing Eye before being returned to its god. Whurr led the way to confront Gaal, but was caught out there by the MP problem of a client being stuck in dialogue for a long time while the action for others resumes. That could have been unfortunate given that Ash once more threw in a firestorm - but luckily he had for once put fire protection on Whurr in advance.
We're now back in the thieves guild ready to report in to Aran Linvail and take ship to Brynnlaw next time.
Priest of Lathander 22, 87 HPs, 279 kills
Undead hunter 19, 161 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm; 10 from bracers), 585 kills, 3 deaths
We clear the East of the map to the bandit camp. We let Even take us there from Larswood and Tazok and the bandits go hostile. After clearing the whole camp Xan dies in the grotto versus the gnolls. In the end we revive him and then tackle the main tent. No issues observed. Xan casts a few times remove fear while we use the wand of monster summoning once and just pummel the bandits with darts arrows and melee axes. The fight is done soon.
We clear Larswood and Peldvale and help Baeloth (I never meet him but this time was a first. We sent him to the Friendly Arm Inn). After that we remove Kivan from his almost revenge and we remove Xan since he now knows about the bandit camp for his superiors.
Viconia joins and Shar-Teel. It takes us to reputation 8, barely enough. But we continue further on the east and then we will cycle to Nashkel to hand in some scalps and then tackle Firewine I suspect.
Viconia will be let go after cloakwood since she should feel right at home there. I will there also remove Garrick for Eldoth. Still need to think about Imoen vs Safana. Oh and Faldorn, Coran, Yeslick, Rasaad, Baeloth... when to get them... I guess Faldorn through the mines and that is it. Coran only the hunt. Something like that.
Lucius
Kagain 1 death
Garrick 0 deaths
Imoen 0 deaths
Shar-Teel 0 deaths
Viconia 0 deaths
out of party
Montaron 3 deaths
Xzar 0 deaths
Branwen 2 deaths
Khalid 3 deaths
Jaheira 1 death
Xan 1 death
Kivan 0 deaths
Minsc 0 deaths
Edwin dead
Dynaheir dead
After passing invisibly through most of the Nashkel Mine, Biff buffed up for Mulahey - though stationing himself by the exit in case he needed to retreat. His new MSD was used for the first time and allowed him to negate rigid thinking and he managed to disrupt Mulahey's next spell. With his following attack he got a successful paralying attack and was then able to clear the field at the cost of taking a single hit himself.
Outside the mine, attacking and retreating split the Amazons up for easy disposal. Back in Nashkel, Nimbul survived a hit from his staff. Biff switched to ghoul touch and successfully paralysed him before immediately switching again to chill touch to get a killing blow in before Rasaad could steal his XP. The find familiar scroll was used to get a HP boost.
In Beregost, Biff beat up some spiders before going in search of Tranzig. MSD and shield protected him against numerous spells, but his own attacks made slow progress and he was lucky when a lightning bolt in confined quarters only hit him once. He used the stairs to avoid a couple more spells before eventually taking Tranzig down.
On the way to the Bandit Camp, Biff completed his belt collection by paralysing an ogre. After returning Landrin's goods and picking up some pantaloons, he moved on to the camp. He put on the Claw of Kazgaroth there, which with cloak, boots, belt and shield spell meant his missile AC was -20 and he worked his way through a number of bandits without trouble using just his staff. He switched to ghoul touch to deal with Taurgosz before moving on to Tazok's tent. He was prepared to retreat there to dodge Venkt's horror, but successfully paralysed the mage with an opening invisible attack. That allowed him to keep attacking and he'd soon disabled the remaining opponents.
After buying a Robe of the Archmagi, Biff whizzed through the Cloakwood without killing anything. At the mine he showed himself just to Drasus initially, before retreating and applying a successful ghoul touch. Genthore suffered a similar fate before Biff rested. He had to retreat once to dodge spells from Kysus and Rezdan, but successfully put them out of action on his next attack run. Inside the mine, Biff sneaked down to the bottom level and paralysed the guard before triggering all the traps invisibly. He showed himself to the battle horrors and dragged them away before returning for Davaeorn. MSD protected him from dire charm and he ran away from a hold person before outlasting Davaeorn in a battle of the staffs - victory took him to level 8 with 4 more HPs.
Biff didn't do that much in the City, but did take on a the greater basilisk there. That saved against his initial ghoul touch and he had to quickly gulp a potion of mirrored eyes before attacking again to finish the job. When doing the poison quest it took quite a while to paralyse Jalantha, but she had been rendered helpless anyway by Biff's new improved invisibility spell. Biff had more success against Lothander - stopping him in his tracks as he tried to run away. Marek was another to stand there gormlessly while being unsure what was attacking him and curing his poison got Biff his final BG1 level with just the 3 more HPs.
Picking up the remaining tomes in the City reminded Biff that he had not got the constitution tome. A quick trip to the seaside was done and he worked through some sirines there. He did have the Greenstone Amulet, but didn't actually use it and none of the sirines lasted long enough to try and attack him in melee. Stoneskin made dealing with the golems in the cave risk-free.
The dopplegangers at the Seven Suns were no real challenge and Biff moved on to the Iron Throne. The stairs were used there to split up opponents and Zhalimar soon found himself the last man standing.
Biff will be off to Candlekeep next before moving into the BGEE endgame.
Sorcerer L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar, 7 from ioun stone), 198 kills (+309 in BGEE / SoD)
Level 2 spells Blur
Both the AC bonus and the adjustment to saving throws are useful. Ghoul touch
Works in the same way as chill touch, but requires a save vs spell to prevent being paralyzed for 5 rounds. Invisibility
Allows both safe travel and a free hit on most opponents. Luck
Despite the short duration, I thought I would take this. A particular benefit is that any positive luck ensures attacks always target images and not the real mage - which could be a lifesaver against the sort of acid blob trap that killed Biff before in Athkatla. Mirror image
In addition to use against traps, this can make larger scale battles safer.
We do like to throw out a few semi-risky lightning bolts around sometimes, if the reward seems high - such as early on in the city, against the necromancers at Sorcerous Sundries:
In super close quarters, Iseri can also just go in for a solo mission with intended bounces via storm shield:
Since we didn't want to suffer the confusion effects from our previous run, we lured the ogre magi at the docks outside this time around:
After most of the city is cleared, we're relatively close to getting back our thieving abilities from the dual-classing. Degrodel's house promises some good experience, so we use giant strength + heroism potions for our fighters, lure our enemies outside and go for it with a bunch of buffs:
There we go!
Some more nice lightning bolt and shocking grasp applications:
And now, as we can disarm traps again, we return to the Firewine and Ulcaster Dungeons plus Durlag's upper levels. On the way to there, we take down Kahrk:
Chant, Bless, Haste, Remove Fear, PfE 10' radius - that's all it takes to win at this point. No screenshots for the dungeons, we are overleveled for these by now and only skipped them because I didn't want to deal with all the traps.
Now, back to BG, as we take on the Iron Throne HQ battle. By now, we finally have enough protection from lighting spells to cover the entire party. This gives us the opportunity to really take advantage of our lightning bolts - we go upstairs, and Iseri, Alaniel and Kamillio just cast two lightning bolts each at enemies within the room and watch the chaos - it's a fun and quick battle:
As you can see, two of our party members get confused near the end, but it's easy enough to get the party away from them.
Next time: Candlekeep and the return to Baldur's Gate (plus the Ice Island for some reason).
ouch, on the way south through the red wizard area Shar-Teel got hit by lightning right as we approach the wizards. She lies toasted on the ground and we send Kagain to agress the wizards.
They do a lot of damage and we throw an oil of fiery burning into the fray... except I forgot to buff Kagain and he drops to low health while we get two wizards down.
Sir Garrick goes in to cast spells but the ramp needs to be climbed, you cannot do it from a angle. He gets feared and without some extra help Kagain goes down.
Up goes Viconia who is magic resistant. I fire the last needed darts and arrows and we mop up. It takes some inventory juggling to pack everything we need. Then we go to the Temple to resurrect our party members. Next we go to Beregost to buy some gear and sell some gear. North East of Nahkel is next.
Lucius 0 deaths
Kagain 2 deaths
Shar-Teel 1 death
Garrick, Imoen, Viconia 0 deaths
out of party
Montaron, Khalid 3 deaths
Branwen 2 deaths
Jaheira, Xan 1 death
Kivan, Minsc, Xzar 0 deaths
Edwin and Dynaheir dead
Remember what I said about not wanting to do any more party play for a while. Yes? - well do you also remember what I said about restartitis …
I remember when @Enuhal did his acid & ice party some time ago thinking of doing something similar, but I never quite got around to it. This time, seeing the Lightning Party shock the world, I decided to have a bit of that. My basic rule is that only weapons and spells capable of causing elemental damage may be used. I will though count poison as an element for this purpose (that seems consistent with the general treatment of poison in BG). More specific rules include:
- elemental weapons can be used even if opponents are immune to the elemental damage from them.
- damage caused by spells can be indirect, so a polymorph self spell could be used (though only to take flind, spider or jelly form). However, any summons or shape changes have to be able to cause elemental damage with their natural attacks and not just with spells (so nymphs would not be allowed just because they can use call lightning).
- missile launchers that don't themselves do elemental damage will not be allowed, even when stocked with elemental damaging missiles.
- sequencers are allowed, but only when stocked with allowable spells.
- unlike spells (even those protecting against elements), innate abilities which affect the user can generally be used, but not those affecting others unless those do elemental damage. Thus thief traps are not available in BGEE, but could be used in the later stages of BG2EE where they do fire or poison damage (but spike traps are not allowed).
- consumables such as potions will be allowed to buff, as with innate abilities (but my universal rule against using healing items and antidotes remains in place). Consumable items won't though be allowed to affect others, even when those are inflicting elemental damage (Talos is a jealous god and proper worship reqires your own actions not relying on mechanical support).
The basic idea is that Flash wishes to worship Talos by inflicting elemental damage on enemies (and a few friends ) and has gathered a like-minded group around him to make his worship even more glorious.
Rime will make use of the Ashideena hammer in BGEE, while Sting will take the Dagger of Venom and Toxic the Varscona sword. That's all the eligible melee weapons I could think of initially. The others will have to make their contributions using spells and abilities (and possibly the odd costly throwing dart) until they get into SoD where there's a much wider range of potential weapons, including both a returning dart and a sling.
With no eligible weapons available initially, the assassins in Candlekeep were killed using chill touch, while the rats were lined up for a lightning bolt. After leaving there the Elementals were keen to get a couple of levels to provide rather more options. That meant a trip to the basilisk area, where Korax is always up for a good fight (and I decided that with his scripted joining he could be treated as acting on his own rather than being a member of the party). It didn't take long for everyone to get their first level and Korax went on to help them deal with Mutamin and the rest of the basilisks.
South of Beregost, they recovered Zhurlong's boots but I used the wrong character to speak with Zhurlong and he just pinched some money and tried to run for it. As a consolation prize though, the Elementals did manage to beat him unconscious before he could get away and that ensured Blast's Shocking Grasp spell would be fatal. Fists also pummelled Mirianne's ogrillons before Chill Touch finished them off.
Moving down to Nashkel they picked up the ankheg armor and talked to Noober before Toxic poisoned his fists to backstab Vitiare - turning him hostile to stop him running away. Having rested to get Bhaal CLW, they returned to Beregost and beat up Algernon. I won't allow active use of his Cloak, but the charisma bonus will allow shop prices to be minimised once reputation is boosted enough. A start on that was made by handing an amulet over to Mr Colquetle and another instalment for depetrifying Tamah allowed everyone to level up once more. That meant Flash and Lucid could now cast Flame Blade, while Lucid and Blast could make use of Chromatic Orb for a while and Blast could breathe fire.
That greater range of options was put to use to take down Bassilus and get a first proper weapon for the party. Immediately greedy for more, they went to find Greywolf and duly got his sword - though it took a chunk out of Flash first.
Working on reputation, they took Samuel to the FAI and helped find Joia's ring there. Then it was back to High Hedge to successfully restore Melicamp. The second of the golem guards there came close to causing a casualty, but Rime's rage had provided just enough of a buffer to allow him to lapse into unconsciousness and not death as his rage wore off. Ardrouine, Bjornin, Brage, Dryad of the Cloud Peaks and Drienne all gave routine reputation increases and Blast boosted his charisma further with the tome. Helping Charleston Nib gave everyone the XP for another level, but they delayed taking that slightly, as that would have meant they couldn't use chromatic orbs on the Doomsayer. Those, along with melee attacks / backstabs did the job at the cost of just a couple of hits on the Elementals.
With reputation up at 19, they hit the maximum by going to save Arabelle from some hungry xvarts. Sting then found himself the proud owner of the Dagger of Venom, meaning he should be able to make slightly more of a contribution in future. The first test of that was against Kirian's party, where Sting did successfully poison Kirian - though that didn't prevent her from completing a lightning bolt spell. Horror, hold and rigid thinking all took effect on party members as well before the last of Kirian's supporters went down - and Rime had to get busy dealing with some gnolls activated by terrified runners. Everyone was able to gather together safely again though once the spells wore off. They went to rest up at the FAI, where they bought Buckley's Buckler to allow the dwarves to regenerate rather than relying entirely on resting & Bhaal CLW.
At the ankheg nest, typical encounters saw Rime leading the charge at an ankheg while Toxic waited for it to come out of hiding to hit it with a backstab. None of the ankhegs lasted long enough to manage a hit - the last of them going down particularly hard thanks to a critical backstab. After returning Tenya's bowl they successfully stopped her getting away with her ill-gotten gains.
On the way to Durlag's Tower they were ambushed by a basilisk. They had no protection against its gaze attack, but they noticed it immediately moving forward to try and attack in melee and the Elementals decided to risk that it would stay like that long enough for them to kill it. A scorcher and a rare lightning bolt did significant damage and Rime finished it off with a critical before it could attack him. On arrival, Rime's rage lasted just about long enough to tank the battle horrors on the path. The final battle horror on the wall though nearly ended the run when bumping in the party pushed Flash into the scorcher Blast had used to clear the skeletons. After resting up, Riggilo lost out to a general attack after failing to look a gift horse in the mouth. In addition to the quest XP from Kirinhale, Toxic managed to land a backstab on her and she died before she could teleport away - allowing everyone to take another level.
@Grond0 Interesting twist on the idea. Not allowing pure physical attacks/elemental ammo is of course hard mode for the early game, but once you make it to SoD/SoA with a decent amount of elemental weapons available, the flexibility of using all elements could very much pay off.
@Enuhal I agree there should be plenty of options for weapons, but the party will probably still be a bit weak in the late game. The lower quality of summons and lack of spell protections for us and debuffers / save or else spells used on the opposition will make dealing with many enemies significantly more challenging than for a typical party. The reliance on physical weapons may also expose having only 2 fighter classes in the party, though hopefully energy blades will fill much of that gap ...
Ah, I didn't quite realise how tough your spell restrictions were while first going over your post. I thought protective spells were still allowed. Okay, that will make things quite difficult indeed.
Energy blades are a big part of my lategame plans as well. Also looking forward to getting sequencer and spell trigger for triple lighting bolts and triple chain lightnings.
After assembling our “final” team, and taking care of some wyverns to ensure Coran wouldn’t run away on me, we finished a bunch of side quests that I won’t bore you with details.
We finished the Cloakwood mines, but I forgot to pay to have the slaves leave. This dropped my rep to 7 and I was worried I’d have a fallen stalker at this point, which might’ve caused me to rage quit LOL. Fortunately, Yogii kept his ranger status, but I’ll be doing some good quests from here on out to ensure I don’t fall.
I’ve learned that I really like backstabbing. It’s fun. I even luckily got one off through some mirror images on Daveaorn and that was super cool.
The party looks like this:
Yogii: 98 HP 305 kills
Kagain: 112 HP 111 kills
Coran: 46 HP 96 kills
Baeloth: 42 HP 75 kills
Branwen: 62 HP 29 kills
Other things I’ve learned: while I like backstabbing, I think I’d have more fun with a FT, FMT, Shadowdancer or bounty hunter (because I love traps too). I usually use Viconia, not Branwen, and I miss her MR. I’m having fun but I’m not in love with the class. I’m not too worried about BG1, but I am worried about how far I’ll get in BG2.
Aside from the city of Baldur’s Gate, the only side quests I still want to complete are the top levels of Durlag’s Tower, Dorn’s quest and Rasaad’s quest.
Comments
I would propably pick an elf over a half-elf, given the chance. A stalker would be great to see - I've tried my hand at that one and got very far, only to face a very unfortunate end in Watcher's Keep level 5 by getting very unlucky in the spirit warrior maze when fighting the ghost there (which is why, nowadays, I always skip the ghost battle).
My wife did the driving to Busch Gardens so I rolled up an elf stalker on the drive here.
Got a 96(!!!) I’ve distributed this way: 18/66, 19, 17, 10, 14, 8. I went with Axes and Scmitar (++) in each to start with skeletons as my favored enemy. His name is Yogi and I’ll probably do a little playing later.
My general strategy will be to try to keep baddies at bay with throwing axes so I won’t be in danger of getting hit early on. I’ll eventually lose some reputation because Drizzt’s swords are too tempting for this character. Gonna get some nice backstabs with those curved swords!
Now though, I’m gonna get these teenagers on some roller coasters today and try to act like a kid myself too.
Cheers!
I really need to post an update, my avenger made great progress.
I had some issues hitting the Mustard Slimes until I found out the Lucius was wielding a non magical flail... everything just looks alike on a small screen.
Back in Nahkel I traded Garrick for Minsc and Edwin and I had West to the gnoll stronghold.
At this point I noticed that Lucius had 173 kills with pretty much only darts. Imoen comes close with 71 using arrows and 1 apr and 3-4 thac0 difference. I always liked darts in bgee.
The cloud peak mountains are cleared with little spectacularity. Now we are facing the gnoll stronghold and save the damsel in distress.
The gnoll are no more and Lucius became a little bit more charming. I let Edwin, Dynaheir and Minsc battle it out. Edwin struck down Dynaheir and Minsc struck down Edwin. I took Minsc back to Nashkel and rejoined with Garrick.
Next I went to Beregost to kill a random commoner in a house because I had 18 reputation which would cancel each new point and the evil party members I would have in the future. I got down to 9 but with the help of the reputation point from Firebead Elvenhair I got to 10 right away.
The parry goes to the High hedge where unfortunately Imoen and Xan are killed and Kivan is joined. After resurrection I clear the area completely and now I am prepared to go to the bandit camp where I can ditch Xan and Kivan again. Maybe I should actually first get Ajantis....
I rerolled and started Yogii the elven stalker. I didn’t get quite as good a roll, but that’s ok. At least he started with 13 HP.
So far, all Yogii has done is a few quests inside of Candlekeep, like fetching a scroll, killing some rats, and a few other FedEx quests, as well as breaking into a few chests for spare gear and hawking it over at Winthrops. He’s got a little bit of a bad boy streak in him, I suppose.
After witnessing his paternal figure murdered and running away, he also ran away from Imoen. From a mechanical standpoint, I did this so I can grab her and dual class her into mage immediately later on. It sure helps to recruit a mage who can cast Protection from Petrification and level up quick in this game.
Yogii has always been annoyed by Imoen, so running away from her and not allowing her to adventure with him is pretty normal for him.
Looking forward to getting in some play time tomorrow, but today was spent with about 7 hours behind the wheel of a car and I’m going to pass out shortly.
Yogii’s starting stats:
Yogii made his way to Candlekeep, after deciding he wasn’t really liking these two surly characters he’d met on the road, Monteron and Xzar. He even found a magic ring on the way, killed an ogre with his throwing axes, and killed a mage who was obviously sent to kill him!! After finally feeling safe, he fought off a few hobgoblins and returned a ring to a nice old lady named Joia. In the Candlekeep inn, one guy gave me some pants (weirdo), but I’m keeping them! Another guy named Landrin gave me a bunch of antidote potions to clear his house out of spiders. I’ll get to that eventually, but he didn’t seem to be in a rush and neither am I.
After reaching the town of Beregost, I was again bombarded with other people’s problems! Don’t I have enough of my own? An annoying half breed named Neera was ambushed by some nasty wizards. I helped her out, she gave me a sack and I asked her to leave.
Luckily for him, I was in a good mood and talked him down.
I decided to get out of town and travel south. I met some big monsters who had killed Mirianne’s husband, found some healing potions in a cave, and fought more hobgoblins that I had no beef with. Whats up with these guys?
Anyway, they fell to my throwing axes and backstabs. No big deal. I went back and spoke to a halfling who tried pick pocketing me. I gave him his boots back, but then I got pissed off and took those boots back. Poor halfling.
I then snuck into another inn, and there was another assassin trying to kick my butt! I ran out and hid. He came around the corner and got a wakizashi in the backside. Jerk face.
There was a halfling inside asking for his short sword too. How many people does this guy need to help out?
I headed out of town to visit a temple and bought a stone to flesh scroll.
After exploring a little more, I felt bad about running away from Imoen and went back for her.
I’m going to head over further west to because I heard about some basilisks out there, and Imoen decided to become a wizard and learn protection from petrification to help me out. What a nice little sister.
I wanted to take them on alone, so I asked Imoen to wait for me after casting Protection from Petrification on me. After clearing out those nasties, and even getting poisoned (three times!!) by a very aggressive big one (thank Corellon for those potions from Landrin!), I decided to ask Imoen back for a little bit of fun against a party of four thugs in the center of the map. She started the fight with a stinking cloud scroll, and while I was chucking axes at them, she would unleash a lightning bolt from a wand she found in Beregost! We were a sight to see together!
Those guys had a lot of loot, and I made my way over to see a warrior who was intent on testing herself against a man. I liked my chances, despite her having bigger biceps than I do, and I took her down quick. Her name is Shar Teel. I just wanted her to help me lug all this awesome loot back to Beregost haha. I’m such a jerk sometimes.
Anyway, we got back to town without incident and I asked Imoen and Shart to hang out in town while I looked around.
I think I’m going to see what that fop named Garrick wants next, then I’ll go recruit a tank and a real spellchucker, then a healer. I hope I find a decent thief soon too.
Also, maybe I should go meet those people dad wanted me to before. I forgot all about them.
Still suffering from restartitis, I felt the need to begin from the beginning rather than progress further any of the several old runs that are stuck in various places. I've quite often done runs that aim to avoid any damage, but nearly all of those have been with solo characters - making the challenge far easier. For this one I'll see how far I can get with a party. Rather than roll up a new save, I'm using Beggar's Opera, which was created for a poverty run - but they can treat themselves to equipment for this challenge
I've had 7 attempts at this already in the last week or so, all of which had decent starts but failed around the 10-20k XP mark. One of those illustrated the difficulty of the challenge when exploring the Nashkel Mine area. One character at the front was invisible in order to warn of encounters, but the others were visible to deal with the enemies spotted. The precaution of the invisible scout proved insufficient when a kobold obviously spawned after they had passed over an encounter spot, wandered into range behind me and hit with a shot before I knew it was there. In my last attempt I was once more close to the 20k mark for each character when taking on Bassilus. He was killed without trouble, but I didn't notice until just too late that one of his skeletons had escaped the scripted death and killed the spirit snake used to distract Bassilus. The party turned to run, but a bolt followed them out of the darkness ...
While experience to date suggests that this challenge won't be one of my more successful ones, I'd like to get deeper into the game and perhaps this time will do the trick
The first potential danger was the area transition to High Hedge, but there was no ambush there and they slept some gnolls to get Perdue's sword before continuing on to Beregost. Karlat was confronted there by spirits and pelted with sling shots, Neera and Silke were blinded before being shot and some spiders suffered from narcolepsy. They also talked to Marl and Firebead and deliberately got caught stealing a couple of times in order to reduce reputation to 9. To the south they picked up some boots to help Washout sneak around and briefly returned those to Zhurlong, as well as delivering a late letter to Mirianne.
Then it was off to the basilisk area to follow Korax round for a while. Killing the southern group of basilisks gave everyone the XP to level up (one of my personal rules is that all party members have to level up at the same time). I forgot to level up immediately though and waited to do that until Mutamin and the rest of the basilisks were dead (which would have given another level) in order to avoid XP getting out of sync. Kirian's mob were quickly disposed of with blind and silence.
The party still needed about 24k total XP before the sorcerers could use invisibility and they headed for Durlag's Tower in search of more decent-sized chunks of that. While distracted by spirits, the battle horrors on the path were doomed and blinded before being hacked down by staff attacks from outside their sight range (not using more spells there to avoid the risk of resting). It's a bit fiddly to set everyone up like that, but gives the battle horror no realistic chance of recovering from blindness. The doom guard on the walls then went the same way. For the battle horror on the walls Pauper used sanctuary and turn undead to get the skeletons out of the way, before attacking the doom guard. It then followed to the end of the wall where it could be safely attacked (with spirits keeping an eye out to ensure skeletons did not follow).
Inside the upper tower, spirits were used to distract the ghasts while they were shot down. The last of those tipped the party over the 10k mark and everyone levelled up once more. With invisibility now available resting was no longer a concern and they did that before giving Kirinhale's toupee to Riggilo then blinding and shooting him. On the roof they took on the basilisks - relying on a spirit snake's immunity to petrification there.
After travelling invisibly back to Beregost temple they took on the wolf pack there. Sleep was cast from distance to deal with the worgs, while the dread and vampiric wolves were blinded. I kept one of the party invisible on the encounter spot near there to avoid the problems that could be caused by hobgoblin archers suddenly appearing. Washout killed the vampiric wolves with backstabs. It would have been easier to shoot them, but I was originally thinking to keep his magical arrows for the golems at High Hedge. In the event though I surrounded those with invisible characters so that Washout could use a staff to kill them. Once again, one of Bassilus' skeletons survived the scripted death, but this time it had no luck in shooting the spirit lion confronting Bassilus. Melicamp was then successfully restored to his natural form - leading the party to bungle another stealing attempt in Beregost to reduce reputation back to 9. They were lucky in High Hedge though when an invisible scout steered them away from one group of skeletons - but too far away and another group caught a brief sight of them. Hardup was attacked, but fortunately the skeleton missed.
An invisible trip to Gullykin saw them pick up another +1 sling, as well as using blindness to leave Molkar unprotected by his companions. Then they pressed on to Nashkel for the first time, allowing Beggar to put on the ankheg armor that might help if he ever comes under attack. Minor encounters there included silencing Zordral from behind the cover of a bookcase before dooming, blinding and commanding him.
At the Nashkel Mine they killed Greywolf for his sword, but didn't report back to Prism yet. To reduce the risk of wandering archers they stayed invisible most of the time when travelling through the Cloud Peak mountains to get the charisma tome. There were a few encounters though, with Beggar showing off Gorion's belt when tanking some winter wolves. A number of ogre berserkers helped push XP up and they tipped over the 20k mark when killing a dread wolf attempting to ambush them on the way to the Lighthouse area. That level made web available and that helped make short work of some sirines in the area - aided by Washout's special traps as he now had 100% with those. Washout did most of the hard work in the cave with traps and magical arrows taking down the golems.
At least this time I've got past that tricky stage and it should be possible to go much further with sufficient care and attention to detail. Whether those ingredients will be available is questionable of course ...
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L6, 55 HPs, 21 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L5, 45 HPs, 21 kills
Hardup, Shaman - L5, 42 HPs, 31 kills
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L6, 42 HPs, 39 kills
Aspire, Sorcerer - L5, 25 HPs, 39 kills
Skint, Sorcerer - L5, 27 HPs, 27 kills
Previous updates
At the mine site it took half a dozen attempts to blind the Doomsayer and he then went the same way as the battle horrors. Moving on to the Lake area, Drizzt was unable to shrug off a full complement of Washout's traps. The main purpose of that was the XP, though Beggar is able to make use of Icingdeath if desired. While in the mood for trapping, they got a surprisingly healthy dollop of XP when an old man wandered into a series of traps set near a crossroads. That put reputation down to 4, though it did get a little bump back by returning Joia's ring. Even with that poor reputation, Beggar's dazzling charisma of 19 persuaded Landrin to hand over some potions in return for his goods.
To the north the ankheg nest awaited. Hardup danced up spirits there to make the ankhegs surface and allow them to be slept. A bit further north they helped a farmer out with a zombie problem before their reputation took yet another hit as a result of charming Dushai and pulling him away where he could be shot without upsetting any of the other townspeople.
Completing a few quests left previously got reputation back up to 9 on the way to the Nashkel Mine. They used webs there to prevent Mulahey from calling for help. Outside the mine the amazons were also webbed before there was another close shave when an invisible scout failed to spot some ankheg antennae and it must have been close to getting off a shot at Beggar before he retreated out of range. The Revenant was blinded and magic missiled before the party took on Narcillicus. His mustard jellies were lured away and Washout backstabbed them while they were concentrating on spirits. Narcillicus was then webbed, but surprisingly broke free at one point - Beggar's LMD did a good job there to disrupt him before he could complete a spell.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul was silenced and commanded. Tranzig was then webbed to provide access to the Bandit Camp. They had to be careful of wandering archers there. The basic tactic was to send in a summons ahead of them, with follow-up sleep disabling the attackers. Pauper contributed a skeleton for the first time to help with that and Taurgosz was blinded and charmed to do his own stint as target. They got another level during that clean-up operation. Webs were then used to deal with Raemon & co in Tazok's tent.
Aspire now had invisibility 10' radius available, so travelling around was made rather easier as they moved on to the Cloakwood. In the first area, a pair of spirit lions helped Aldeth deal with some intruding druids. In the second area, phase spiders now teleport so quickly that everyone had to be on their toes but they managed to clear the area before tackling Centeol's nest. Traps laid outside helped kill a couple of sword spiders before they could get to their attackers and dancing spirits were able to tank the remainder. In the third area, more traps did most of the damage against the druids and none of them managed to cast a spell. In the cave Peter was blinded before he could line up a shot and invisible blockers allowed Aspire the time to blind the wyverns as well.
In the 4th area though the inevitable finally happened when they came across a group of wolves. A pair of spirit snakes were in the lead and should have held the wolves while the party shot them down. The whole party was tasked to attack, with Aspire throwing a sleep spell in. That all appeared totally routine until I realised that there were 3 green circles up close to the wolves, not just the 2 snakes. Investigating more closely I saw that Aspire had somehow managed to get ahead of all the others - and had already been hit by a wolf before I had even noticed he was there
I think they got far enough that time to satisfy honour, so I won't try again ...
I can’t keep updating as I have, but Yogii is chugging along just fine. He’s recruited Kagain, Branwen, and Baeloth into his party. He’s met others, but dropped them shortly after.
The Nashkell mines were a breeze, and Kagain just tanked the traps (with his Buckley’s Buckler-infused 21 CON, he just shrugs these off).
I’m going to rush the main story line to get Coran into the party as my thief and archer. After completing his quest, I’ll go back and finish a bunch of side quests to level up the rest of the party and include some screenshots. Thanks!
For my Priest of Talos run, I decided to create a party built around lightning damage - the idea is not to use any damage types other than lightning and physical damage, get as many sources of lightning damage as possible involved, fill at least half of each spellbook level with lightning damage spells provided one exists at that spell level - all in all, very similiar to my acid&ice run, which had a similiar idea behind it.
Aside from our Priest of Talos, we would need an avenger (access to call lightning, lightning bolt and chain lighnting - perfect!), an archer (to make use of bolts of lightning, and, later on, Gesen's bow), 2 warrior-types (one for war hammers - Ashideena and, later on, Crom Faeyr, and one for Usuno's Blade/Celestial Fury - with Storm Star reserved for the Bhaalspawn) and an arcane spellcaster. Last time I picked an invoker for the job, but I decided to go for a sorcerer this time around - the main reason being that both lightning bolt and chain lightning allow for a saving throw for half damage (glyph of warding even has a saving throw for 0 damage), and I wanted the option to cast greater malison to beat those saving throws. Since we're barred from traps (as they deal other types of elemental damage later on), I decided to make one of my fighters a dualclassed swashbuckler 6/fighter X (just for locks and traps), the other a berserker. Here's the party:
Iseri, halfling Priest of Talos:
Our sorcerer starts with shocking grasp and shield (the latter being needed to be a bit safer when going close enough to deliver shocking grasp hits). Now, obviously shocking grasp is terrible, but I was determined to make use out of it, in the spirit of the run. See, once the enemy is commanded down, even sorcerers can easily hit an unarmed melee attack:
The other problem is that, at some point, these elemental damage spells (with the exception of fire and magical damage, which are the most powerful and very commonly used anyway) tend to fall of/become a bit slow, and a lot of enemies will just die to mostly physical damage before any good use can be made out of the elemental spells. Still, it will take a while to get there.
The Lightning Party, update 1
Out of the Nashkel mines, we ran into a spot of trouble when we got attacked from two sides - the amazons and a group of gnolls. Throwing down a web did not immediately stop the spellcasting of our eastern foes - that's not our glyph of warding!
The scroll of protection from petrification worked more reliably and therefore I used Lucius with Korax to clear the whole area. I gave Lucius a long sword and heart of the golem and let him dual wield with a potion of frost giant strength for good measure.
The basilisks and gnoll in the area were not much of an issue. The adventuring party was aggoed and after a pull back to the party we tackled it easily using an oil of fiery burning with Xan, and a barrage of arrows and darts. The adventurers were stupid enough to cast entangled and lightning bolt which bounced without injury against the bones and back towards them.
Some summons from the wand of summoning and melee Kagain solved the encounter quite quickly.
I leave Shar-Teel for now, first I go to the bandit camp via Larswood such that I can get Kivan to attack Tazok and after that I will clear it and boot Xan and Kivan for Viconia and Shar-Teel.
I can remove Kagain later in cloakwood for someone else or maybe Ajantis. A bit slower progress now.
Previous run
After playing with a party for a while I was keen to revert to my more typical solo games and decided to give Biff another try. Recent runs with him have only allowed him to use his own melee abilities against opponents, i.e. no use of spells either cast directly on opponents or to create summons / charmed neutrals to fight for you and no active use of a familiar. Before I first tried that I expected it to be very challenging, but it's actually not that bad - at least once you've got a few levels under your belt. The last recorded attempt with him got well into BG2EE and there should be potential to go quite a bit further. A 52nd attempt lasted only a few minutes though when I got a bit careless fighting a gnoll at High Hedge. A 53rd failed when I forgot that Kirian cast horror and her acid arrows cut short Biff's attempt to flee in terror. The 54th also failed early when a hobgoblin's morale broke and it ran into 2 more of them and I failed to take avoiding action quickly enough.
Starting again and this time I made sure the gnolls would not be given any chance to attack - retreating before they could do so even if they got a good initiative roll. Talking to Marl, helping Firebead and running past Karlat to return Perdue's sword gave a bit of XP before Biff travelled to the south. The hobgoblins there are another enemy with slow weapon speed, so Biff was able to kill the one with Zhurlong's boots - beating him up after returning those was just enough for a first level and 6 additional HPs.
There were a few more hobgoblins at the FAI and returning Joia's ring there added a nice bonus. Biff then headed down to Nashkel to talk to Noober, rest to get Bhaal CLW and go and return a dagger to the Revenant. Escorting Brage back to Nashkel was then enough for another level and another 6 HPs.
Ghoul touch accounted for Meilum and his bracers significantly improved Biff's melee.
Biff will be off to the Nashkel Mine next.
Sorcerer L7, 39 HPs, 82 kills
With each update I'll post a brief summary of the spells chosen / proposed for each level.
Level 1 spells
Chill touch
Pretty good option to improve close-up melee early on (including disabling dual-wielding penalties), though becomes obsolete later.
Friends
Improves shop prices and rewards, though that's really only cosmetic - particularly with the considerable restrictions on item use.
Identify
Mainly just gives another (unneeded) boost to finances, though helps a bit with inventory management as well.
Protection from evil
Decent improvement in defences against the many evil foes.
Shield
Useful AC improvement in the early game as well as immunity to magic missiles.
These bolts of lightning are pretty damn good:
Ash (male dwarf priest of Lathander, Grond0); Whurr (male human undead hunter, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1200529/#Comment_1200529
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1200827/#Comment_1200827
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1201160/#Comment_1201160
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1209435/#Comment_1209435
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1209592/#Comment_1209592
Today's session started with a trip to Windspear Hills. Plath Rededge cast slay living in an attempt on Whurr there, but his saving throws would have shrugged that off even if he had been hit - which he wasn't. The XP was sufficient to get Whurr a level though.
Moving into the dungeon, several kobolds exploded which was quite painful for Ash - and the Ruhk was also hurt by his own weapon there. That meant Whurr was able to finish him off even before he got around to producing his normal cloudkill. Ash used sanctuary and turn undead on a large group of vampires and other undead - only a single vampire having the levels to resist instant destruction there. Samia's attempt to spring a trap failed when Ash threw in a fire storm to burn her party up - along with a few skeleton warriors acting as distractions. Dealing with the local golem populations took a bit longer. The first adamantite golem died slowly from Azuredge missile attacks (Ash just standing by there - he should perhaps invest in the dwarven throwing hammer for that sort of situation). For the second we both attacked in melee, but even when slowed by the FoA the golem got in some telling blows on Whurr and he made a rare use of a healing potion to ensure survival (the golem lasting rather longer than expected due to Whurr using an ineffective weapon). The third one was probably the most successful, with Whurr adopting rat form and nibbling the golems toes while the FoA attacked its knees. Conster was exposed by true sight and didn't last long. His master was rendered more vulnerable to spells by Ash casting magic resistance at it, but Ash missed with a follow-up harm attempt and Firkraag shrugged off a finger of death spell. However, with Whurr using Gaxx haste to attack with the dragon slayer sword the battle was pretty short anyway.
Back in Athkatla we headed for the temple sewers to see what the key found at Windspear would unlock. On arrival there we found that Tarnor was still blocking the way, but that didn't take long to sort out with the help of summons. Mekrath was also still untouched, but that state of affairs also quickly changed when Whurr attacked him. Ash offered to provide some fire resistance before Whurr confronted the yuan-ti mages there, but that offer was not taken up - so Ash threw his fire storm in anyway. Whurr took a fair amount of damage there, but still had 87 left and dived into the acid blob trap to get the portal gem. That left him pretty vulnerable, which could have been a problem when Ash didn't notice him coming back while kicking open a treasure chest with a lightning trap - fortunately that only hit Whurr once in its bounces.
The illithids found their distance attacks stymied by chaotic commands and were rarely able to close with Whurr to take advantage of his 6 intelligence. The ones from the second room were dragged away a few at a time and one of those mini-groups did at least manage to hit him once - and missed with at least one follow-up attack before he could get out of range. Alhoon died from an Azuredge strike and the illithid in that room caused no problems thanks to a skeleton warrior in the way - I think they managed very few attacks on it due to an umber hulk largely blocking them.
Next up was the Planar Prison. We buffed up quite a bit before entering that under sanctuary and the bounty hunter mage there failed to survive our opening attack. We progressed anti-clockwise on the way to find the Warden. He survived a while, thanks to Whurr mainly concentrating on the yuan-ti mages while summons occupied the warden, but ultimately went down without having caused any real concerns.
The final action in the session was doing the Unseeing Eye quest. Whurr bought Balduran's Shield in advance of that and could thus let them kill themselves. That allowed a nice little cameo after recreating a bridge across the chasm where he was able to stand there apparently doing nothing while attacking beholders killed themselves gradually and a horde of attacking undead evaporated much more quickly. Whurr's turn undead abilities were becoming pretty effective by this time - he even managed to destroy the lich in the underground area. Feeling his own abilities were being ignored, Ash could not resist providing a bit of unnecessary help against more groups of beholders - holy smite doing some decent damage against those, as well as against the blind priests. The Rift Device brought a swift end to the Unseeing Eye before being returned to its god. Whurr led the way to confront Gaal, but was caught out there by the MP problem of a client being stuck in dialogue for a long time while the action for others resumes. That could have been unfortunate given that Ash once more threw in a firestorm - but luckily he had for once put fire protection on Whurr in advance.
We're now back in the thieves guild ready to report in to Aran Linvail and take ship to Brynnlaw next time.
Priest of Lathander 22, 87 HPs, 279 kills
Undead hunter 19, 161 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm; 10 from bracers), 585 kills, 3 deaths
We clear Larswood and Peldvale and help Baeloth (I never meet him but this time was a first. We sent him to the Friendly Arm Inn). After that we remove Kivan from his almost revenge and we remove Xan since he now knows about the bandit camp for his superiors.
Viconia joins and Shar-Teel. It takes us to reputation 8, barely enough. But we continue further on the east and then we will cycle to Nashkel to hand in some scalps and then tackle Firewine I suspect.
Viconia will be let go after cloakwood since she should feel right at home there. I will there also remove Garrick for Eldoth. Still need to think about Imoen vs Safana. Oh and Faldorn, Coran, Yeslick, Rasaad, Baeloth... when to get them... I guess Faldorn through the mines and that is it. Coran only the hunt. Something like that.
Lucius
Kagain 1 death
Garrick 0 deaths
Imoen 0 deaths
Shar-Teel 0 deaths
Viconia 0 deaths
out of party
Montaron 3 deaths
Xzar 0 deaths
Branwen 2 deaths
Khalid 3 deaths
Jaheira 1 death
Xan 1 death
Kivan 0 deaths
Minsc 0 deaths
Edwin dead
Dynaheir dead
Previous updates
After passing invisibly through most of the Nashkel Mine, Biff buffed up for Mulahey - though stationing himself by the exit in case he needed to retreat. His new MSD was used for the first time and allowed him to negate rigid thinking and he managed to disrupt Mulahey's next spell. With his following attack he got a successful paralying attack and was then able to clear the field at the cost of taking a single hit himself.
Outside the mine, attacking and retreating split the Amazons up for easy disposal. Back in Nashkel, Nimbul survived a hit from his staff. Biff switched to ghoul touch and successfully paralysed him before immediately switching again to chill touch to get a killing blow in before Rasaad could steal his XP. The find familiar scroll was used to get a HP boost.
In Beregost, Biff beat up some spiders before going in search of Tranzig. MSD and shield protected him against numerous spells, but his own attacks made slow progress and he was lucky when a lightning bolt in confined quarters only hit him once. He used the stairs to avoid a couple more spells before eventually taking Tranzig down.
On the way to the Bandit Camp, Biff completed his belt collection by paralysing an ogre. After returning Landrin's goods and picking up some pantaloons, he moved on to the camp. He put on the Claw of Kazgaroth there, which with cloak, boots, belt and shield spell meant his missile AC was -20 and he worked his way through a number of bandits without trouble using just his staff. He switched to ghoul touch to deal with Taurgosz before moving on to Tazok's tent. He was prepared to retreat there to dodge Venkt's horror, but successfully paralysed the mage with an opening invisible attack. That allowed him to keep attacking and he'd soon disabled the remaining opponents.
After buying a Robe of the Archmagi, Biff whizzed through the Cloakwood without killing anything. At the mine he showed himself just to Drasus initially, before retreating and applying a successful ghoul touch. Genthore suffered a similar fate before Biff rested. He had to retreat once to dodge spells from Kysus and Rezdan, but successfully put them out of action on his next attack run. Inside the mine, Biff sneaked down to the bottom level and paralysed the guard before triggering all the traps invisibly. He showed himself to the battle horrors and dragged them away before returning for Davaeorn. MSD protected him from dire charm and he ran away from a hold person before outlasting Davaeorn in a battle of the staffs - victory took him to level 8 with 4 more HPs.
Biff didn't do that much in the City, but did take on a the greater basilisk there. That saved against his initial ghoul touch and he had to quickly gulp a potion of mirrored eyes before attacking again to finish the job. When doing the poison quest it took quite a while to paralyse Jalantha, but she had been rendered helpless anyway by Biff's new improved invisibility spell. Biff had more success against Lothander - stopping him in his tracks as he tried to run away. Marek was another to stand there gormlessly while being unsure what was attacking him and curing his poison got Biff his final BG1 level with just the 3 more HPs.
Picking up the remaining tomes in the City reminded Biff that he had not got the constitution tome. A quick trip to the seaside was done and he worked through some sirines there. He did have the Greenstone Amulet, but didn't actually use it and none of the sirines lasted long enough to try and attack him in melee. Stoneskin made dealing with the golems in the cave risk-free.
The dopplegangers at the Seven Suns were no real challenge and Biff moved on to the Iron Throne. The stairs were used there to split up opponents and Zhalimar soon found himself the last man standing.
Biff will be off to Candlekeep next before moving into the BGEE endgame.
Sorcerer L9, 54 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar, 7 from ioun stone), 198 kills (+309 in BGEE / SoD)
Level 2 spells
Blur
Both the AC bonus and the adjustment to saving throws are useful.
Ghoul touch
Works in the same way as chill touch, but requires a save vs spell to prevent being paralyzed for 5 rounds.
Invisibility
Allows both safe travel and a free hit on most opponents.
Luck
Despite the short duration, I thought I would take this. A particular benefit is that any positive luck ensures attacks always target images and not the real mage - which could be a lifesaver against the sort of acid blob trap that killed Biff before in Athkatla.
Mirror image
In addition to use against traps, this can make larger scale battles safer.
We do like to throw out a few semi-risky lightning bolts around sometimes, if the reward seems high - such as early on in the city, against the necromancers at Sorcerous Sundries:
Now, back to BG, as we take on the Iron Throne HQ battle. By now, we finally have enough protection from lighting spells to cover the entire party. This gives us the opportunity to really take advantage of our lightning bolts - we go upstairs, and Iseri, Alaniel and Kamillio just cast two lightning bolts each at enemies within the room and watch the chaos - it's a fun and quick battle:
Next time: Candlekeep and the return to Baldur's Gate (plus the Ice Island for some reason).
They do a lot of damage and we throw an oil of fiery burning into the fray... except I forgot to buff Kagain and he drops to low health while we get two wizards down.
Sir Garrick goes in to cast spells but the ramp needs to be climbed, you cannot do it from a angle. He gets feared and without some extra help Kagain goes down.
Up goes Viconia who is magic resistant. I fire the last needed darts and arrows and we mop up. It takes some inventory juggling to pack everything we need. Then we go to the Temple to resurrect our party members. Next we go to Beregost to buy some gear and sell some gear. North East of Nahkel is next.
Lucius 0 deaths
Kagain 2 deaths
Shar-Teel 1 death
Garrick, Imoen, Viconia 0 deaths
out of party
Montaron, Khalid 3 deaths
Branwen 2 deaths
Jaheira, Xan 1 death
Kivan, Minsc, Xzar 0 deaths
Edwin and Dynaheir dead
Remember what I said about not wanting to do any more party play for a while. Yes? - well do you also remember what I said about restartitis …
I remember when @Enuhal did his acid & ice party some time ago thinking of doing something similar, but I never quite got around to it. This time, seeing the Lightning Party shock the world, I decided to have a bit of that. My basic rule is that only weapons and spells capable of causing elemental damage may be used. I will though count poison as an element for this purpose (that seems consistent with the general treatment of poison in BG). More specific rules include:
- elemental weapons can be used even if opponents are immune to the elemental damage from them.
- damage caused by spells can be indirect, so a polymorph self spell could be used (though only to take flind, spider or jelly form). However, any summons or shape changes have to be able to cause elemental damage with their natural attacks and not just with spells (so nymphs would not be allowed just because they can use call lightning).
- missile launchers that don't themselves do elemental damage will not be allowed, even when stocked with elemental damaging missiles.
- sequencers are allowed, but only when stocked with allowable spells.
- unlike spells (even those protecting against elements), innate abilities which affect the user can generally be used, but not those affecting others unless those do elemental damage. Thus thief traps are not available in BGEE, but could be used in the later stages of BG2EE where they do fire or poison damage (but spike traps are not allowed).
- consumables such as potions will be allowed to buff, as with innate abilities (but my universal rule against using healing items and antidotes remains in place). Consumable items won't though be allowed to affect others, even when those are inflicting elemental damage (Talos is a jealous god and proper worship reqires your own actions not relying on mechanical support).
Party consists of:
Flash - dwarf Priest of Talos (protagonist)
Rime - dwarf Berserker
Sting - elf Archer
Toxic - dwarf Assassin
Lucid - half-elf Avenger
Blast - elf Dragon Disciple
The basic idea is that Flash wishes to worship Talos by inflicting elemental damage on enemies (and a few friends
Rime will make use of the Ashideena hammer in BGEE, while Sting will take the Dagger of Venom and Toxic the Varscona sword. That's all the eligible melee weapons I could think of initially. The others will have to make their contributions using spells and abilities (and possibly the odd costly throwing dart) until they get into SoD where there's a much wider range of potential weapons, including both a returning dart and a sling.
With no eligible weapons available initially, the assassins in Candlekeep were killed using chill touch, while the rats were lined up for a lightning bolt. After leaving there the Elementals were keen to get a couple of levels to provide rather more options. That meant a trip to the basilisk area, where Korax is always up for a good fight (and I decided that with his scripted joining he could be treated as acting on his own rather than being a member of the party). It didn't take long for everyone to get their first level and Korax went on to help them deal with Mutamin and the rest of the basilisks.
South of Beregost, they recovered Zhurlong's boots but I used the wrong character to speak with Zhurlong and he just pinched some money and tried to run for it. As a consolation prize though, the Elementals did manage to beat him unconscious before he could get away and that ensured Blast's Shocking Grasp spell would be fatal. Fists also pummelled Mirianne's ogrillons before Chill Touch finished them off.
Moving down to Nashkel they picked up the ankheg armor and talked to Noober before Toxic poisoned his fists to backstab Vitiare - turning him hostile to stop him running away. Having rested to get Bhaal CLW, they returned to Beregost and beat up Algernon. I won't allow active use of his Cloak, but the charisma bonus will allow shop prices to be minimised once reputation is boosted enough. A start on that was made by handing an amulet over to Mr Colquetle and another instalment for depetrifying Tamah allowed everyone to level up once more. That meant Flash and Lucid could now cast Flame Blade, while Lucid and Blast could make use of Chromatic Orb for a while and Blast could breathe fire.
That greater range of options was put to use to take down Bassilus and get a first proper weapon for the party. Immediately greedy for more, they went to find Greywolf and duly got his sword - though it took a chunk out of Flash first.
Working on reputation, they took Samuel to the FAI and helped find Joia's ring there. Then it was back to High Hedge to successfully restore Melicamp. The second of the golem guards there came close to causing a casualty, but Rime's rage had provided just enough of a buffer to allow him to lapse into unconsciousness and not death as his rage wore off. Ardrouine, Bjornin, Brage, Dryad of the Cloud Peaks and Drienne all gave routine reputation increases and Blast boosted his charisma further with the tome. Helping Charleston Nib gave everyone the XP for another level, but they delayed taking that slightly, as that would have meant they couldn't use chromatic orbs on the Doomsayer. Those, along with melee attacks / backstabs did the job at the cost of just a couple of hits on the Elementals.
With reputation up at 19, they hit the maximum by going to save Arabelle from some hungry xvarts. Sting then found himself the proud owner of the Dagger of Venom, meaning he should be able to make slightly more of a contribution in future. The first test of that was against Kirian's party, where Sting did successfully poison Kirian - though that didn't prevent her from completing a lightning bolt spell. Horror, hold and rigid thinking all took effect on party members as well before the last of Kirian's supporters went down - and Rime had to get busy dealing with some gnolls activated by terrified runners. Everyone was able to gather together safely again though once the spells wore off. They went to rest up at the FAI, where they bought Buckley's Buckler to allow the dwarves to regenerate rather than relying entirely on resting & Bhaal CLW.
At the ankheg nest, typical encounters saw Rime leading the charge at an ankheg while Toxic waited for it to come out of hiding to hit it with a backstab. None of the ankhegs lasted long enough to manage a hit - the last of them going down particularly hard thanks to a critical backstab. After returning Tenya's bowl they successfully stopped her getting away with her ill-gotten gains.
On the way to Durlag's Tower they were ambushed by a basilisk. They had no protection against its gaze attack, but they noticed it immediately moving forward to try and attack in melee and the Elementals decided to risk that it would stay like that long enough for them to kill it. A scorcher and a rare lightning bolt did significant damage and Rime finished it off with a critical before it could attack him. On arrival, Rime's rage lasted just about long enough to tank the battle horrors on the path. The final battle horror on the wall though nearly ended the run when bumping in the party pushed Flash into the scorcher Blast had used to clear the skeletons. After resting up, Riggilo lost out to a general attack after failing to look a gift horse in the mouth. In addition to the quest XP from Kirinhale, Toxic managed to land a backstab on her and she died before she could teleport away - allowing everyone to take another level.
Berserker 5, 65 HPs, 125 kills, 0 deaths
Archer 5, 58 HPs, 14 kills, 0 deaths
Priest of Talos 5, 41 HPs, 9 kills
Assassin 6, 40 HPs, 33 kills, 0 deaths
Avenger 6, 48 HPs, 5 kills, 0 deaths
Dragon Disciple 5, 33 HPs, 37 kills, 0 deaths
Energy blades are a big part of my lategame plans as well. Also looking forward to getting sequencer and spell trigger for triple lighting bolts and triple chain lightnings.
We finished the Cloakwood mines, but I forgot to pay to have the slaves leave. This dropped my rep to 7 and I was worried I’d have a fallen stalker at this point, which might’ve caused me to rage quit LOL. Fortunately, Yogii kept his ranger status, but I’ll be doing some good quests from here on out to ensure I don’t fall.
I’ve learned that I really like backstabbing. It’s fun. I even luckily got one off through some mirror images on Daveaorn and that was super cool.
The party looks like this:
Yogii: 98 HP 305 kills
Kagain: 112 HP 111 kills
Coran: 46 HP 96 kills
Baeloth: 42 HP 75 kills
Branwen: 62 HP 29 kills
Other things I’ve learned: while I like backstabbing, I think I’d have more fun with a FT, FMT, Shadowdancer or bounty hunter (because I love traps too). I usually use Viconia, not Branwen, and I miss her MR. I’m having fun but I’m not in love with the class. I’m not too worried about BG1, but I am worried about how far I’ll get in BG2.
Aside from the city of Baldur’s Gate, the only side quests I still want to complete are the top levels of Durlag’s Tower, Dorn’s quest and Rasaad’s quest.