The session started with a boat trip to Brynnlaw. A trio of unsuspecting vampires tried to set an ambush there, but were (re)turned into their graves. Perth managed to make his speech, but not a lot else. He left behind a book of burning hands - as did Ash.
The encounters in Spellhold were all easy enough, with a lich being no more successful than the vampires at resisting turn undead. Ash solved numerous puzzles to get a ring of regeneration there.
Jon was then sent packing before we moved on to Fish City. The Prince there failed to come and find out what had happened to his king, so we sought him out and gave him the same treatment before climbing down a rope into the Underdark.
A group of drow there lasted a while under Whurr's attack and hit him with enough spells to get him to use a rare healing potion. Whurr then moved up to a giant soul gem and started releasing the inhabitants of that. The second of those was Raevilin Strathi and a combination of problems meant he proved to be our nemesis. Ash made the first mistake there as he was expecting a lich to arrive and his turn undead ability simply destroyed our own skeleton warrior that could have distracted the mage. Whurr then pressed his attack in melee for a bit too long, giving the mage the opportunity to cast imprisonment. It's possible that a scroll of magic protection could have dispelled that before the effect was final - but Ash had not got around to purchasing one of those and Whurr disappeared for good ...
Calculating Conjurer: A Random Run, Part 3
Part 2 found here
Part 4 found here
Fairly short update, so I'll just breeze through it (much as the party did with... almost all the encounters).
The Wolf of Ulcaster was swiftly dispatched, and I had the cleanest win I can recall against the Red Wizards, utilizing Skeleton Warriors and several Clouds of Pestilence (which goes straight through MGoI since it's a 4th level spell).
At Ice Island, Swashbuckler inadvertently showed himself to Andris, but we turned it around easily enough with some swift summoning. Andris teleports away, we beat up on his cronies, Andris teleports back, gets his defenses stripped and fails a save vs wand, the end.
We had some issues with Garan (line of sight is problematic here), but other than that the rest of the island went by without a hitch, and Conjurer scored a Stoneskin scroll.
Wolf Island (the other island) is really just about two fights: Karoug and later Mendas and his buddy.
SCS adds a Mage (who likes to go invisible) to Karoug's group, but as long as you focus her down quickly, there's not much challenge here: We were helped by Fighter having a single pip in Bastard Sword, though it's hardly mandatory.
There was a brief altercation in the warrens beneath the settlement, as Conjurer slipped a little too close to a Werewolf and got a cool 32 HP shaved off as a reward. Yeah, he hadn't scribed Stoneskin yet... will amend that presently.
Back in Ulgoth's Beard, Mendas got to loose a Chaos on Priest of Tempus who countered with a Potion of Magic Blocking, before the former's defenses failed and he reverted to Loup Garou form. One set of lovely Chain Mail +3 for importing, thank you very much.
Back to Candlekeep it is; we've got everything we need to finish the game, so let's hop to it.
The hopeless Ogre Mages outside didn't even warrant us popping Invisibility potions: A simple Remove Fear means they can't really do much.
We left the Iron Throne leaders alive (can't be bothered hauling their crap around), and descend into the catacombs.
The WIS tome of course goes to Cleric / Mage as planned, now at 20 WIS.
And the Darvin Award (I think it's his third or fourth) goes to Swashbuckler, not as planned. He never plans.
We managed to scrounge up four Potions of Absorption and covered the final difference with a Potion of Magic Shielding.
Fortunately we had a scroll of Knock kicking around so could retrieve the STR tome even in Swashbuckler's absence, and muttering in ever so slightly annoyed fashion, we started lugging the latter's charred remains towards the surface, ignoring much of the catacombs proper.
The STR tome, again after some debate, went to Fighter / Cleric, ensuring he can wear Full Plate unaided: It doesn't matter that much honestly, since we have no one that can make really good use of the tome.
We take out our frustrations on Prat et al on the way out, and make it safely back to Baldur's Gate.
Not much to report on preparing for the Grand Dukes fight, beyond Krystin being as annoying as ever with going visible/invisible seemingly at will.
With five fully buffed, including Haste, Skeleton Warriors, the coronation usually goes smoothly, and it mostly did here, except Swashbuckler was feelin' it and tried for yet another Darvin Award.
You know what? Go ahead and chunk him. It'd be an improvement.
Anyway, Assassin -> Shaman -> Mage all drop in short order. Liia is entirely unharmed, Belt barely took a scratch, and Sarevok takes off. We give pursuit, firebombing the Iron Throne mercenaries into oblivion, and telling Tamoko there's other fish in the sea.
Good! Final battle time.
The plan was the same as always: Two fully buffed warriors under PfM scrolls clearing everything on their own while everyone else just relaxes in the lounge.
Turns out there were two small issues with this plan.
One: Our two warriors really aren't that great at fighting. In particular, Fighter / Cleric still hasn't picked up a specialization, and it shows.
Two: Apparently Semaj's (maybe anyone's?) Remove Magic goes straight through PfM. Semaj gleefully dispelled our frontliners full buff complement, though mercifully they kept the PfM effect.
Without potion buffs, our frontline was a few rounds from dropping, so the entire party moved to engage.
The whole thing turned into a bit of a nightmare, compounded by Fighter simply being unable to tag Sarevok with an Arrow of Dispelling, so the latter absolutely tore through our paltry summons. Semaj joined in the fun by conjuring a nigh unstoppable Greater Air Elemental which sent a Tornado flying around the battlefield... it was all bad for a while.
Not depicted: Sarevok swinging three times at Conjurer when the latter got a bit too close without a Haste effect up.
I'm very glad I prepared Stoneskin...
Through destiny and might repeated firebombing, re-application of potion buffs on the fly, and a lot of meticolous running and summoning, we slowly gain the upper hand, mostly because Semaj eventually runs out of good summons.
Fighter even manages to dispel Sarevok's Haste. It only took some 10 Arrow of Dispelling.
With the situation under control, Sarevok is slowly worn down, and victory is ours. Huzzah!
That was actually a bit touch and go. Facing a Greater Elemental (and several Lesser versions) at these levels, especially while dealing with other enemies at the same time, is a little rough.
Still, we pulled it off. Yay us!
Everyone finishes with 161k xp, and Swashbuckler got his final level this session.
I'm debating if I should actually go for SoD or hop straight into SoA.
If we're aiming for difficulty, SoA at 161k xp and the meager arcane L5 options we currently have will be far more punishing than at 500k xp and a full L5 arcane collection, after all. Yeah... I'll probably go straight to SoA, but let's sleep on it.
Overall it's been fun! Though it strikes me that this random party really isn't that different from how I normally play.
Fighter is Minsc if Minsc wasn't terrible.
Fighter / Cleric is Jaheira if Jaheira wasn't terrible.
Priest of Tempus is Anomen if Anomen was physically unimposing.
Cleric / Mage is just straight-up Aerie with better WIS / CON but worse DEX.
Swashbuckler... yeah, there's no comparison, he's just a regular joke o' the gods. Oh the awfulness.
Still, a lot can happen in the many levels to come.
Will Fighter ever see Mastery? Will Fighter / Cleric waste another proficiency on Sword and Shield style?
Will we reach HLAs? Will Fighter / Cleric best his earlier attempts and roll War Cry four times in a row?
These tales shall also be told! But not tonight.
Level-up results at the end of the session: Swashbuckler, level 10 Swashbuckler
6 HP, Open Locks 50 / Find Traps 80 / Pick Pockets 55 / Move Silently 30 / Hide in Shadows 40 / Detect Illusion 25 / Set Traps 30
The plan was the same as always: Two fully buffed warriors under PfM scrolls clearing everything on their own while everyone else just relaxes in the lounge.
Turns out there were two small issues with this plan.
One: Our two warriors really aren't that great at fighting. In particular, Fighter / Cleric still hasn't picked up a specialization, and it shows.
Two: Apparently Semaj's (maybe anyone's?) Remove Magic goes straight through PfM. Semaj gleefully dispelled our frontliners full buff complement, though mercifully they kept the PfM effect.
Unless your PfM scrolls are changed by a mod, I think the culprit are the PfM scrolls themselves, not remove magic. They should - at least they work that way in my installation - remove all magical effects on the characters immediately, including all buffs (that's also stated in the wiki - all dispellable effects should be removed upon application of a PfM scroll - it is also mentioned in the description of the ingame item).
Though there is also this passage mentioned under "bugs":
As of BG2EE 2.6, The Protection from Magic Scroll is not removing all buffs before going into effect. This is identified for correction in the pending Enhanced Edition Fix Pack (EEFP). Ref: (scrl07.itm)
However, it has always been my experience that all buffs are removed, but I haven't tried to PfM a buffed character in a long while since this is always the kind of interaction I expected.
The plan was the same as always: Two fully buffed warriors under PfM scrolls clearing everything on their own while everyone else just relaxes in the lounge.
Turns out there were two small issues with this plan.
One: Our two warriors really aren't that great at fighting. In particular, Fighter / Cleric still hasn't picked up a specialization, and it shows.
Two: Apparently Semaj's (maybe anyone's?) Remove Magic goes straight through PfM. Semaj gleefully dispelled our frontliners full buff complement, though mercifully they kept the PfM effect.
Unless your PfM scrolls are changed by a mod, I think the culprit are the PfM scrolls themselves, not remove magic. They should - at least they work that way in my installation - remove all magical effects on the characters immediately, including all buffs (that's also stated in the wiki - all dispellable effects should be removed upon application of a PfM scroll - it is also mentioned in the description of the ingame item).
Though there is also this passage mentioned under "bugs":
As of BG2EE 2.6, The Protection from Magic Scroll is not removing all buffs before going into effect. This is identified for correction in the pending Enhanced Edition Fix Pack (EEFP). Ref: (scrl07.itm)
However, it has always been my experience that all buffs are removed, but I haven't tried to PfM a buffed character in a long while since this is always the kind of interaction I expected.
I suspect that @aldain meant that the potion buffs were applied after the PfM scroll. Unless you have mods that change things, it is correct that remove magic will bypass PfM and remove other buffs, though not PfM itself. You get the same sort of behavior with other spell protections as well, like (minor) globe.
Ah... I didn't even realize that you could still apply potion effects while under PfM, but yeah, you're right; I've just done some tests - can also confirm that both remove magic and dispel magic will go straight through PfM scrolls and work as per usual on all the underlying effects, as is the case for all spell protections (the effect is, for me, most often seen in Wachter's Keep level 3, when I enter no-magic zones where all other buffs are dispelled, but I still keep my shield of the archon or spell deflection/turning/trap).
Cloak wood is always a challenge with the traps. I either forget one or I trigger one by walking to the center of the trap to disarm it while being at an edge of it.
Luckily, I survive all of them. In the end I removed Shar-Teel from the party and joined Coran in the wyvern Hunt. Since it now requires you to run into the cave in cloak wood 4 I actually skipped cloak wood 3 where I have Faldorn and Eldoth to join.
After the wyvern head is sold I remove Coran from the party and take back Shar-Teel. Then I remove Garrick and Viconia from the party and go to cloak wood 3 to join Eldoth and Faldorn. I need to actually read up on the story since I want to exchange Faldorn ultimately for Yeslick but of course I would want to set Faldorn free outside the mines.
I now stand in front of the mine party.
Oh, for archive purposes, it is possible to join npcs again and get the kill history. I will do that when I get back from the mines.
Lucius 0 deaths
Kagain 3 deaths
Shar-Teel 1 death
Eldoth, Safana, Faldorn 0 deaths
out of party
Montaron, Khalid 3 deaths
Branwen 2 deaths
Jaheira, Xan 1 death
Kivan, Minsc, Xzar, Imoen, Garrick, Viconia, Coran 0 deaths
Edwin and Dynaheir dead
Indeed, I meant what @Grond0 said: Buffs were applied after the PfM scroll, then promptly dispelled by Semaj.
I think the reason for my confusion is that Semaj's initial Remove Magic is usually taken on by a buffed wall of summons; in addition to the first one hitting my frontliners this time, he had prepared (at least) two, so ended up dispelling them twice.
But really, I usually depend on having a good archer for this fight, which was sorely lacking now, so things got quite a bit more dangerous. Which is its own kind of fun
Most enemies down here, are, sadly, either heavily resistant to magic or, at least, to lightning damage - our wand of lightning does okay damage against these kuo-toans, but its effectiveness is heavily reduced:
A quick visit to the balor - we make sure to be death warded:
With the kuo-toans lightning resistance, one way to still get signifcant damage against them is to just use the triple lightning bolt sequencer - the three bolts fly in unison, and their caverns allow for some good bounces:
Since the vanilla demon knights dispel magic at level 1, there's no risk for our full array of buffs against all of their abilities:
We add PfP for the initial beholder battle in the southern caves:
After that, Obram gets to take out the Shield of Balduran on a solo mission:
In the mind flayer city, we make sure everyone has chaotic commands. Due to the illithid magic resistance, lightning bolts are hard to use but can still be added to quickly take down the umber hulks:
We add in a magical sword here and there as an additional tank:
And before resting after we exit the compound, we use the limited wish scroll from spellhold to gain some extra experience:
We've just gotten spell trigger access, so triple chain lightning will now be a thing. At this point, though, chain lightning is still weaker than lightning bolt, though it can be safely used in areas with innocent or neutral NPCs, which is nice. It should overtake lightning bolt in early ToB, not factoring in any bounces.
I've been toying for a few days with putting this run on hold and trying something else, but have at least managed to complete BGEE .
The Elementals clearance of wilderness areas included the odd one not done last time - like the Red Wizards of Thay. Their saving throws vs spells seemed surprisingly poor and Flash took advantage with several glyphs.
In the Nashkel Mine Mulahey went down while whining about how unfair life is.
It was dark when the Elementals arrived at the Bandit Camp and Toxic took advantage by backstabbing many of the bandits. Inside the tent, Venkt went the same way and the others didn't last long.
I didn't bother with so much work in the Cloakwood this time. Sting was poisoned by a wyvern in an ambush there and Flash had not yet learnt Bhaal slow poison, so the Elementals made a hasty dash for the exit. To compensate for that, more wyverns in the next area were pulled out of the cave to be attacked. Sting was once again poisoned, but Flash had now learnt the necessary remedy.
At the mine Rezdan was backstabbed and Kysus failed to deal with a stream of MMMs. Drasus & Genthore were then no match for a general attack. There was minimal fighting inside the mine on the way down to find Davaeorn. He tried one hold person attempt that bounced off Rime's rage, but didn't have enough time to complete an attempt to summon some helpers.
In Baldur's Gate, I again did a bit less work than last time. There's still a decent amount of quick XP on offer though and the Elementals were able to take another level after the death of a basilisk - a couple of glyphs to soften it up, together with a backstab and stealth attack avoided the need to use protection there. Their earlier successes had included a critical backstab on Lothander to make absolutely sure he wasn't getting away. The final action in the City for now was invading the Iron Throne. They followed downstairs in dribs and drabs and were easy prey for ambushes.
In Candlekeep Toxic looted the tombs without trouble and kept the strength tome to himself to help his backstabbing chances. I was surprised though by how quickly Prat managed to complete his lightning bolt cast and didn't manage to run away until it had hit the whole party - lucky that no-one was killed there. Rime did this time use protection against the basilisks, rather than muck about any more.
Back in Baldur's Gate the Elementals soon came across an invitation to the palace. Some of the guests there were rather disruptive, but the Elementals managed to restore order without anyone important coming to much harm.
Moving on to the old temple Sting used stealth to prompt Sarevok's conversation, meaning Semaj teleported out on his own. This time I allowed the use of darts against him and he died before completing anything too damaging. Flash threw 4 glyphs at the dais, but none had any effect on Sarevok, Angelo or Tazok. Rime then showed himself just to Tazok, encouraging him to come out on his own to find more darts. Angelo was the next to be pulled out. His arrows of explosion were quite painful to Rime, despite his ring of fire resistance, but Angelo didn't last long enough for that to become a major problem. Finally it was Sarevok's turn. In principle that should have been easy enough as he has no distance attack. However, his haste and switching targets between his attackers made him hard to avoid and his 50% missile resistance and effective immunity to acid damage from the darts meant he only took damage slowly. The problems were greatly exacerbated when one of the elementals got too close to the edge of the area and a battle horror joined the fray. A loss of concentration while I was wondering how to deal with that meant Sarevok was able to attack Sting and suddenly the Elementals were down to 5. Deciding enough was enough, Rime used an oil of speed and a potion of regeneration and quickly battered Sarevok to death.
The Flaming Fist healer at the start of the SoD dungeon automatically restores all characters to full health, so the Elementals are ready to press on.
We enter the drow city and rescue Phaere - our death spell via the stolen helm from the elemental portal quest comes a bit late - most enemies are already dead:
After doing some work for the aboleth and finishing most of the main questine for Phaere, we face the slime cultists - we're really trying to find some good use for our lightning spells here, but there's just so many immunities down here:
The avenger chain lightning, due to ignoring MR, is still okay, but it's just so slow at this point (not only the casting time, it also has significant travel time) - also, since we can't put it into a spell trigger, the damage is quite underhwelming.
Well, now we get to take on Deirex - we haste the party and run past him to evade timestop:
A summon draws out both dispel magic and death spell:
Our flesh golem draws out a second PFMW, and after that, it's go time:
Improved haste and a regeneration spell on Selwine help out greatly when clearing House Jae'llat:
I end up forgetting about freeing the slaves, but that's not a lot of experience lost. Still, it is a bit alarming that I've been forgetting multiple minor quests/events during this run, something that is not exactly typical of my play. Signs of getting older, I guess.
Well, we execute the egg swap and return to Amn, where I buy the last few available bolts of lightning from Ribald's special stock (once we're done with those, we will switch our archer weapon to Gesen's bow), obtain a few other items, forge The Wave and Gesen's. Next time, there are a few liches, dragons, guarded compounds, mind flayers and the like to take on.
@Trouveur That's actually a really clever use of the Staff of Domination, I'll steal that.
Recovering spells for a permanent HP decrease seems a no-brainer during the Throne battle, I can see that turning the tides if you're in a tight spot. Nice work overall.
Thank you, in BG1 I liked to counter charm with another charm spell. In BG2 I keep some helms of charm protection (mainly for vampires encouters) before using chaotic commands.
When I found this staff I noticed the no save and thought it could be useful to counter a charm late game.
Wilkim half elf avenger part 7 and final update
I entered the Mana Pool from Bhaal's palace with my usual buffs (protection from evil, chaotic commands, death ward).
Amelyssan summoned to help her Fallen Solar Irenicus, Slayer Imoen, and Irenicus summoned Bodhi.
I had Balthazar by my side.
First thing I did was using one of my few scrolls of protection from magic against Irenicus, and have the fighters focused on Bodhi, which failed very fast, but still had enough time to level drain Neera and cast her insect plague ability.
Fallen Solar managed to kill (but not with a vorpal hit luckily, I play with aTweak making deathward protects against vorpal hits) Neera, but couldn't survive focus hits very long.
Only a powerless Irenicus remained and... Wait, who just cast a time stop ? Then I discovered in horror than Irenicus didn't use mislead as an opening, but simulacrum ! And I can't say which one between him and his simulacrum was hit by the protection from magic scroll !
Luckily Balthazar is not affected by time stop and hit Irenicus repetitively during it.
When it ended, Irenicus is killed easily.
Next step is the pools. The demons are no match for Balthazar and my warriors, and since I also have the Turnabout mod, I can raise Dynaheir to help me. Next pool saw Anomen held and killed, but the rod of resurrection helped again, and this time I raised Xzar to the rescue. Third pool I choose Gorion.
Before clicking again on the third pool, I laid some skull traps to the right, summon three skeletons warriors in the center and a fallen planetar to the left.
When Amelyssan arrived and summoned the Five with Gorion and Sarevok, I saw Gromnir taking all the traps and becoming badly wounded.
Meanwhile After her speech I paused, and use one protection from magic scroll on Abazigal, Illasera and Sendai. I used a mind control circlet on Sarevok and he's now with me. We are 10 against only four !
Ignoring a now powerless Sendai, I then proceed to focus first on Gromnir to finish him while the fallen planetar and an elemental prince held Yaga Shura and after that it's a butchery :
Amelyssan came back then, and she's greeted with my last protection from magic scroll.
I then focused on Illasera and Sendai.
When Amelyssan is alone, she summoned some demons, Wilkim used one of the pool abilities to charm one of them, and Amelyssan without spells can't do much against GW from Xzele with Soul Reaver, while Khalid hit her with Answerer and Argunvadal.
And finally...
I took pictures from my phone since Windows capture again wouldn't let me take screenshots.
The Big Metal Unit also helped Xzele to have a great AC.
Definitely, without my 5 protection from magic scrolls and my mind control circlet, this fight would have been a different story.
I finished at almost 6 millions XP.
I choose mortality and had a nice ending thanks to Nalia romance.
Congratulations @Trouveur ! You were certainly well prepared for Ascension!
If you don't mind me asking, how did you get access to so many PfM scrolls in SoA? Usually there are only 2 available. Were they found in the additional mod content you installed, or are you playing with a setup where you can import items from BG1?
Also, could you give me the information for your run (mods, difficulty, starting and ending post etc.) in the following format, so that I can add it to the Hall of Heroes? Quoting one of my old runs as an example:
This also means that Avenger can finally be removed from the list of kits missing from the hall of heroes - meaning the list is now this:
Stalker
Priest of Helm, Priest of Talos
Conjurer, Diviner, Necromancer
Of those, a Stalker, Priest of Talos and Conjurer are currently being played, so there's currently no one on a Priest of Helm, Diviner or Necromancer in an actively updated run.
Congratulations @Trouveur ! You were certainly well prepared for Ascension!
If you don't mind me asking, how did you get access to so many PfM scrolls in SoA? Usually there are only 2 available. Were they found in the additional mod content you installed, or are you playing with a setup where you can import items from BG1?
Also, could you give me the information for your run (mods, difficulty, starting and ending post etc.) in the following format, so that I can add it to the Hall of Heroes? Quoting one of my old runs as an example:
I didn't import items from BG1, all were found in BG2. Beside the two from Ribald, that means 3 elsewhere. I don 't really remember where, but that could be only from mods. I have an habit since BG1, I stock up protection from undead, protection from poison, protection from acid, and protection from magic scrolls in a scroll case when found for late game.
Now in which mods ? In no reload I use few savegames so it's hard track them back. I will note where I found some when replaying some mods (Barovia, Juniper, Call of the Lost Goddess and Dark Tidings will probably be staples in my future runs) and I can post the location in the adventurers's lounge if it cam help fellow noreloaders.
As for starting posts, I will gladly do it, but I'm ashamed to say I don't know how to do it properly. Each times I tried, the link didn't lead to the right post.
Wilkim, the Avenger @Trouveur
Notable Mods: Ascension, EEFixpack, Turnabout, Back to Brynnlaw, Bloodied Stings of Barovia, Skie the cost of a girl's soul, Dark Tidings, Call of the Lost Goddess, In love undeath, Juniper and the Stoneleech, Khalid BG2, Reunion, Crucible, EET Tweaks for XP reduction (no XP from locks or scrolls, 75% from quests and kills)
Difficulty: Insane without extra damage for BG1, SoD, SoA and ToB, Core for Crucible and Ascension final fight
Start :
End :
Well done @Trouveur - looks like your avenger got a good amount of vengeance at the Throne .
Yes, indeed, Irenicus was beaten four times, Sarevok three times, Bodhi three times, and the Five two times.
Wilkim finished with 8% XP part for all BG2, not a very high direct contribution, but his deathward, chaotic commands, insect plagues / creeping dooms, elemental princes summonings really helped the party.
Chromatic orbs were also great in SoD and SoA.
Fighters took the lion share in this run, with spellcasters more on support / disabler role with chaos and slow. ADHW was nice but a very late addition.
Okay, I've tracked down your opening post and entered the run into the hall. I personally am not likely to install any future mods aside from SCS/Ascension (though I would like an EE-compatible version of the old "Hard Times" mod - I used to run Hard Times + Item Randomizer to toughen up the BG1 experience back in the day), so I don't neccessarily need the PfM info, but the locations might be interesting for others (and for your own future runs as you plan to use some of the mods again) - it's up to you if it isn't too much work
Thank you. :-)
It's not too much work, but it will take some time since I always start a run in Candlekeep and do SoD.
I have a BG1 run with a new multiclass cleric / ranger kit from Deities of Faerun, I will see if he can get to BG2.
The early stages of the SoD dungeon proved no problem. However, they took a lot of damage from the group just prior to Korlasz - who also killed the Flaming Fist healer so they couldn't use him to heal up. They tried to rest to get a bit more healing, but were ambushed by skeletons who immediately shot down Lucid. They did successfully rest after that and a group attack on Korlasz forced her to surrender. One side effect of that is that the Flaming Fist healer had been revived and he was kind enough to restore life to Lucid without even asking for payment.
After a bit of shopping in the City they hit the road and soon arrived at the Coast Way Forest. They helped the vampire there to get a source of regeneration. That also allowed them to hand items over to Takos. The main gain sought from that was the returning acid dart, providing the party with their first proper missile weapon. I was also expecting Takos to offer an additional reward, but it looks like that's dependent on his reaction to the party leader and not the person that speaks to him. I was tempted to kill him instead, but eventually decided to let him go.
At the Coast Way Crossing the Elementals were exploring the area, activating some menhirs, when attacked by a group of spiders. Things looked bad for Rime when he was webbed by a gargantuan spider, allowing a pair of phase spiders free attacks on him. Flash helped out there though by curing him when poisoned and then successfully blocking the gargantuan spider (which I think is scripted to try and attack disabled targets) until the others could deal with it. At the bridge Caelar took longer than I expected to call for a truce. That was unfortunate for her party as only Ivann was still alive when Caelar arrived and she died from a continuing call lightning strike during the cut scene.
The XP bonus for arriving in Troll Claw Woods permitted everyone to level up. However, they didn't immediately do so. Instead waiting until they'd cleared most of the area and Toxic had more than 160k XP - so could level immediately up to L10. Lucid was now also at L10, which meant she was again entitled to use chromatic orbs - that was a nice improvement, particularly as she has no eligible 5th level spells under my rules so didn't gain much else from her extra levels.
On the way to the Forest of Wyrms they came across an encounter area with orcs and trolls. Lucid's chromatic orbs claimed an immediate petrification there while Flash picked up Firefly as his first proper weapon.
At the Forest of Wyrms they hit an early problem in the spider & beetle cave. I was carefully checking there for web traps, but had forgotten the possibility of gargantuan spiders and Rime was again held by a web tangle from one of those. A petrified phase spider there helped the others save Rime.
Two more spider groups were disposed of easily enough before the final lot once more hit Rime with web tangle - but again his decent HPs and good saving throw against poison allowed him to survive and maintain his record as the only party member (other than the PC) not to have died yet. I made a mistake immediately after that though when Toxic explored too far in the cave and large numbers of beetles appeared. In close quarters and with bombardier beetles area acid attack, the chances were good that everyone would have died - but immediately everyone saw the beetles they went "gulp" and the invisibility potions allowed them to get out safely. Once they were rested up they came back and beat up the beetles - the Rhino Beetle shell will provide a shield upgrade for someone.
We start our tour at the guarded compound, since we can get another lightning damage weapon, Celestial Fury, here - disarming the traps at the entrance while using our chain lightning spell trigger and some lightning bolts:
Instead of looting the area, we use the fact that our buffs are still going to enter the illithid lair:
Next, we rested and took on the elemental lich - retreating to draw out his timestop + both physical protection spells via summons before going on the attack:
For the nearby Twisted Rune, the plan was to go for an immediate kill on the beholder to avoid any anti-magic rays:
As a result, however, we didn't put much pressure on the mages, who got to use their timestop. Layene, in her infinite wisdom, immediately killed her own gated in demon, though:
A meteor swarm did little to our fire immune party, and neither did the the symbol spells thrown at us by the lich - the takedown, in the end, was easy:
Against Bodhi, we finally made a little bit of use of Iseri's turn undead ability - note that Iseri is chaotic neutral (allowed for a Priest of Thalos in the EE), so we get the destroy instead of control ability:
Sadly, Eric steals our kill on Bodhi:
Next up, we explored the newly available wilderness areas:
My goal in dragon battles was to avoid remove magic entirely this time around - we ended up killing the shadow dragon while it was tanked by magical swords (we first drew out death spell while our foe was still neutral) from range, as I never saw the remove go off (I propably missed it):
However, Firkraag was more obvious about his spell usage:
And so, we could easily go into melee combat:
After that, we forged shadow dragon armor and Crom Faeyr. Time to enter WK level 2:
This is likely the first time I'm taking down the chromatic demon in its shambling mound form:
This was the last big moment for our bolts of lightning - we're switching to Gesen's now. We also just gained our first HLA levels. Soon, we can start using energy blades. The party bought a few potions and are now ready for the elven city. As mentioned in a previous post, since we accidentally turned the beholder cultists in the sewers hostile, we never got their key, so we don't have access to the shade lich, and, as a consequence, Kangaxx. Before leaving, we did steal a ring of regeneration from Ribald, though (since it wouldn't matter if we got the 1% failure chance at this point).
Calculating Conjurer: A Random Run, Part 4
Part 3 found here
Part 5 found here
In the end, I opted to import straight into SoA. Perhaps at my own peril, we'll see.
The first thing that went wrong is that Cleric / Mage died to the Ogre Mage that gets summoned if you give the "brave" answer to the Genie. She had MSD so my intent was to bait out as many spells as possible; unfortunately, the Ogre mage powered through the MSD, stunned her with a Chromatic Orb, and (being hasted) managed to kill her before the party could help.
So, we have to do Chateau Irenicus with one party member down, being that Priest of Tempus is still level 8.
This was actually quite rough. Cleric / Mage had a lot of our important spell picks, and the dungeon is fairly lengthy.
We have little melee power, even less ranged power, but somehow we muddle through, mostly through judicious application of Animate Dead.
Party (with still dead Cleric / Mage, who thankfully gets the quest XP despite being dead) at the time of our escape depicted below.
We're not in great shape, and we have a single spell, Spell Thrust, remaining.
Fortunately, that bout of XP was enough to get Priest of Tempus to level 9, and we promptly raise Cleric / Mage.
Even for a party as battered as ours, the Circus is no real obstacle, so we clear that as well before resting again.
Since there's no rush, given that Imoen is really just a stranger to us (oh we'll help her eventually, but for now we've places to be and people to see), we opt to do in Mencar immediately.
Sorcerous Amon lacks a Death Spell, but Mencar, Smaeluv and even Brennan are all quite capable of swiftly dismantling our Skeleton Warriors, so the whole thing quickly turns relatively bad. We do manage to kill Brennan pretty quickly (scoring his Ring of Invisibility), but then Mencar and Smaeluv start rampaging through us.
That's where we finally got some semblance of control. Sorcerous Amon is still in the lower room, since he doesn't dare (apparently) to cross the multiple Clouds of Pestilence in his way.
A lot of damage to us later, we prevail.
I just tend to fall back on the same tactics that work fine if you have a decent number (3-4) of physical damage dealers.
Do that when you have only 2 such, and it'll hurt... a lot.
Alright, well, Copper Coronet and the Slavers should be gentler. We start by buying the Scroll Case off Bernard (since he no longer has it once Hendak takes control), then go after the Beastmaster.
... This is going to be long and hard-fought, and I will have to memorize a lot more Cure Wounds of all levels.
Mercifully, Captain Haegan fails his save against Hold Person, and the plethora of guards that come running succumb to a Slow.
Whenever we have a chance to properly plan the encounter, it usually goes fine, but getting dumped in the middle of an enemy party is always bad for us. We clear the rest of the slavers (the enemy Mages do very little as here we have Skeleton Warriors at the fore), get beaten to within an inch of our lives by Cohrvale and Bregg on our way back, and rest yet again.
So, we have a small sum of gold.
First on the agenda: We purchase a magic license. Given how weak we are, there's no way we'd stand up to a Cowler Wizard Enforcer party, so best not risk it.
Here's us after defeating, by a margin most narrow, the Suna Seni ambush.
Alright, we need SOME wins. Let's do the easier mini-stuff around Athkatla.
We quite painstakingly clear the upper areas of the Graveyard, and descend into the Tombs.
Pai'Na is no real concern, strangely, but the (improved by SCS... substantially) Vampyre in the southern tombs is a real problem; I end up using a few scrolls of Flame Arrow to speed up his demise.
The bridge district murders is next; the Rune Assassins actually aren't that bad, since they spend the entire fight trying to get past our invisible party members to the rear line and thus ignoring the frontliners beating them to a pulp.
We also go after the kidnappers and pick up a, by now fairly defunct, pair of Boots of Missile Avoidance.
The Fallen Paladins are quite forgiving as well, being extremely vulnerable to any kind of crowd control.
We swing by Watcher's Keep to pick up the potion case; I pondered going inside for some easy loot, but I'm honestly concerned we'd get wiped out. Best not risk it right now.
Now, let's try something unorthodox. First: The bridge party.
This is Valeria and her goons, who are never explained, but simply sit, red, in a building, waiting for you.
OK: Let's try to disable them. Two simultaneous Chaos works against everyone but Dracandros, the Mage.
He mostly flounders about, without doing anything really effective, until suddenly calling in a Nabassu.
Dracandros drops shortly thereafter; while the Nabassu is quite dangerous owing to several powers and potent (blunt: Of course it's blunt, it's always blunt when SCS boosts something) melee attacks, it doesn't have much hitpoints, so we are able to overpower it before it slaughters half the party.
They have almost no treasure, though there are some scrolls in the chest.
Well, we're already in the Bridge district, let's say hi to Dennis.
It started well, and we were able to deal with the melee goons, but that damnable Mage...
He Petrified our summoned Hobgoblin Elite, used Power Word: Silence against Priest of Tempus, and tried to cast Control Undead (which got resisted) on a Skeleton Warrior! Not sure what level he is but as he also had Mantle, it's at least 14. Thankfully no Abi-Dalzim's came flying.
Eventually the Mage runs out of worthwhile spells and is cut down. Urgle.
We take a quick detour to the Docks and handle Officer Dirth; we now have a lot more Full Plate than we'll ever need.
Around here we got the Renfeld ambush. Sanasha dropped quickly, but Prebek got two Fireballs off at Conjurer.
No real danger though, as even if he'd roll max damage Conjurer would've come out on top.
The real irritant is that I was forced to blow our only Potion of Master Thievery: Swashbuckler still has subpar Open Locks, and I wanted to loot the Harper Hold since it gets closed off once you finish the Xzar questline if you don't have Jaheira in your party.
I could've just rested and returned with a bunch of Knock I suppose... I don't think the quest is time-sensitive?
We've done most of the small stuff in the city, just the Pirates in the docks left, which we can leave for later.
Let's do a proper quest: Umar Hills maybe? I want to pick up Valygar's body anyway.
En route we get the Orog ambush, but these guys are quite low-level, and fall to a single Cloudkill.
Of course not before inflicting severe damage on our long-suffering frontliners.
Incidentally, Cloudkill works against Umber Hulks too (if they fail their save).
We clear Umar Hills, rest up, and depart for the ruined temple.
Apparently, Shadows are unaffected by Web in SCS: I guess they're not tangible enough to get stuck.
We use Slow instead to clear the giant pack outside the temple. Into the depths.
Here we do alright initially, but then come to the room past the fire pit and its spawn.
2 Greater Mummies, 1 Skeleton Warrior (Melee), 2 Blade Golems, 2 Skeleton Warriors (ranged).
I just... why?
Alright, this will take some planning. Swashbuckler manages to set three traps despite very modest skill, but that won't do much.
We break out all the Animate Dead stops, apply mass Clerical buffs, Haste, then pull the undead to us; the bridge there is narrow and good to fight on.
We take a good bit of damage, and most party members can't contribute much, since we have so few magical weapons available (and Greater Mummies require +3 weaponry, of which we only have Lilarcor), but we do pull through absent major issues.
Then it turns out there's another group just like it past the fire pit.
We have a round of buffs left, but far fewer summons this time. Conjurer ends up using three scrolls of Fireball to soften the undead up (strangely, they don't react to being bombarded from range), but then we have to engage in earnest.
It might not look it, but that was really harsh: A good measure of how tough a fight was is if you had to resort to using Wands of Magic Missiles. And we did (to help with the Greater Mummies).
There are literally zero spells left, so we rest up before proceeding.
Alright: Time for the Shade Lord.
It's actually been a long time since I fought the Improved Shade Lord before going to the Underdark.
We leave nothing to chance: Full Clerical buffs, Haste, and charge. We also have several Protection from Negative Energy memorized to help counter the Darkling Aura, and most of the rest is a second set of buffs if the battle lasts a long time, Animate Dead, and arcane damage.
So I'll leave a note here on the fight, mostly for my own later perusal.
The Shade Lord has a Darkling Aura which periodically drains everyone in a fairly large radius of 1 level (not permanently, but long enough).
It applies, seemingly also periodically, Mirror Image + Spell Turning + Protection from Magical Weapons.
Its spell selection includes, at least for me, Black Blade of Disaster, Power Word: Blind, Finger of Death, Blade Barrier (the latter seems to get periodically renewed as well).
Also, everytime something dies here, a Shadow rises. This means summons are not necessarily a great idea.
All of the above was basically news to me. We end up in a long, protracted battle which seems to be tipping in our favor, until Fighter looses a staring contest with a Finger of Death, and Swashbuckler (who was using Captain Dennis' Boomerang dagger to decent effect) gets hit by Power Word: Blind. We already used our only Remove Disease!
Now things start to turn desperate. We don't have many options left for hurting the Shade Lord, and it keeps reapplying its defenses. To make matters worse, the damn thing actually regenerates too.
Fighter / Cleric somehow manages to land enough hits to finally lay the Shade Lord low. This was very close: We had no real spellworks left, and the PfNE on Fighter / Cleric had maybe two rounds to go. Had he dropped instead, we would've been in very, very dire straits. As you can see, we even had to send Priest of Tempus in to help.
Still, now that I have a good idea of what to expect, this should be much more doable in the future: At least the Shade Lord doesn't seem to dispel buffs.
We return to Umar Hills (after resting and raising poor Fighter), then it's back to Athlatla.
Yep... we're still weak.
Still, these silly ambushes must be abating soon.
... Not having Invisibility 10' Radius available is really coming back to bite us. Maybe skipping SoD wasn't such a great idea after all.
Conjurer ate a backstab (he had no Stoneskin up at the start), and came within a critical of dropping. Not good!
This seems like a good spot to call it quits for the moment, lest we commit a mistake we cannot recover from.
Still, after all this bumbling about, we remain alive. Can we stay that way? I doubt it. Why? Because of what we're doing next update.
I am gonna killBill Tolgerias.
Don't worry, though: I have a cunning plan!
We're close to max levels for everyone where fixed HP per level-up kicks in, so I'll stop giving details on that from next update.
Still, here's what happened this time around: Conjurer, level 11 Conjurer
+6 / +1 HP, total 66 HP including 9 from Familiar (yes, it's an Imp again) Fighter, level 10 Fighter
+9 / +3 HP, total 105 HP including 9 from Pale Green Ioun Stone
Two-Weapon Style * Fighter / Cleric, level 9 / 9 Fighter / Cleric
+2 / +5 / +4 / +5 HP, total 91 HP including 5 from Helm of Balduran
Quarterstaff * Priest of Tempus, level 10 Priest of Tempus
+7 / +2 HP, total 45 HP Swashbuckler, level 12 Swashbuckler
+2 / +2 HP, total 42 HP
Scimitar / Wakizashi / Ninjato * (so now has two pips in that)
Open Locks 65 / Find Traps 85 / Pick Pockets 60 / Move Silently 40 / Hide in Shadows 50 / Detect Illusion 25 / Set Traps 35 Cleric / Mage, level 9 / 10 Cleric / Mage
+3 / +4 / +2 / +5 / +1 HP, total 56 HP
Two-Handed Weapon Style *
Proficencies are still a mixed bag.
Fighter / Cleric picked up a pip in Quarterstaff so I swapped him to the Staff Spear +2 from Xzar, mainly since at least then he has a magical weapon.
Fighter... well, Two-Weapon Style is fine. If he gets another pip in it, or specialization in Bastard Sword or Warhammer, I'll swap him to dual-wielding, but for now it's Two-Handed Sword all the way.
Swashbuckler shouldn't be sent into melee, period, so his proficiencies largely don't matter.
@enuhal you say your party is the lightning party does that mean you have priests of talos in your party? You don't have a breakdown on what classes your party is in your last post.
We enter the elven city - a deva makes a decent addition to our forces:
And energy blades greatly increase the damage output of our three none-fighter characters:
For the dragon battle, we made sure to let both the remove magic and the insect plague hit a group of summons first before moving in:
I decided to let Irenicus activate his buffs at the tree this time around to give him a bit of a chance - actually, I ended up losing quite a bit HP on my melee fighters due to his fireshields before taking him down, though mostly because I got lazy with buffing:
The hell trials allowed Obram to equip the Shield of Balduran for one last battle:
As for Irenicus, I learned that Glabrezus can indeed be taken down via lightning damage:
Energy blade action and improved hastes on the others result in very impressive physical/lightning damage output at this point - Once breached, Jon didn't stand a chance:
We continued a bit into early ToB - using a 3*chain lightning chain contingency + lightning bolt sequencer to take down Illasera using only lightning damage:
We forged a few new items thanks to Cespenar and completed the first pocket plane challenge:
Also, some Saradush sidequests - taking down Kiser's mage with our spell trigger:
Next time, we plan on taking on Gromnir and Yaga-Shura.
Typically, I ignore Morentherene on the way into the old temple and kill her using a throwing dagger on the way out. As I couldn't use those in this run though the Elementals decided to tackle her immediately. Rime took a fair amount of damage from her poison breath, but the Elementals still won with a bit to spare. Her pair of greater wyverns only appeared well after the dragon was dead and hence caught the Elementals unprepared. Toxic was poisoned there and the fast-acting poison would have killed him before Flash could intervene - but he used a potion of power to give him enough HPs to survive the few extra seconds necessary.
After fighting through various bugbears and sets of guards, the Elementals found Ziatar. Flash blocked his doorway under sanctuary, while using Storm Shield to protect against the elemental damage Blast sent in. Ziatar has surprisingly poor saving throws and, when he did attempt to exit, he became another petrification victim for Lucid.
Rime initially entered the Neothelid's room alone, having used PfPoison and an invulnerability potion. Once the Neothelid surfaced, the others joined the attack and finished it off fairly quickly - but its dying breath nearly took Blast with it. After resting in the dragon's cave they returned and threw glyphs and ice storms in at Akanna until she had had enough. More of the same eventually dealt with the Shadow Aspect, though its high elemental resistance meant a rest was required to refresh spells during that. Distance attacks caused Darskhelin's crew to come out and be slaughtered. The illithid himself was hit by a poisonous backstab from Toxic and a poisonous front stab from Sting and didn't have much left for the follow-up missile assault.
Another green dragon bit the dust in an ambush area on the way to Boareskyr Bridge. Vichand was attacked there and already down to his last few HPs when he was petrified by a chromatic orb. The battle text said he saved there, so I'm not sure what went wrong. It could be one of those instances where a save is wrongly displayed when its applying to a cosmetic effect rather than the spell itself, or it might be a more fundamental problem with wrap-around scores causing a problem where the save is too good (though in theory all those types of issues should have been eliminated by now). Shields were made out of the dragon and beetle remnants and they also had some +3 bullets made. After surrendering the fort, the Elementals went to deal with the mage on the bridge. He's not easy to hit with missiles, but the whole party used oils of speed & potions of mind focusing and managed to get enough hits to disrupt his portal spell - and then finish him off in due course.
After dealing with some myconids in another ambush area, the Elementals arrived at the Coalition Camp. Shopping with Nazramu included the Dervish Crescent scimitar as a melee weapon for Lucid.
They cleared Dead Man's Pass, though they had a close shave in the Mimic cave. That was partly as a result of several of them getting held by the mimic glue there, but also due to the mimic firing acid through the walls despite being under melee attack - here Toxic just survives with 1 HP left.
They came across an ambush area with the Shadowy Figure on the way to Dragonspear. The anti-magic area suppressed their own spells and without the ability to use items they just ran away. At the castle they rescued Skie before moving on to the Underground River area. They released a couple of entangled druids there, meaning they got lots of helpers while fighting through guards at the cave entrance. Inside the caverns they killed Strunk - Blast can use the Elements Fury dagger to help him a bit when he rushes into melee after running out of MMMs. I got caught out again when trying to enter the Warrens turned everyone hostile - this must be another place where the reaction depends on the lead character and not the one doing the talking. Rime was able to tank for long enough to cut down the guards with missiles though.
In the Warrens I was intending to just use sanctuary to poison the food and water, but my inexperience with party play here caught me out again. Stealthed characters had blocked the door to the lift room while Flash was doing the poisoning, only to find that someone had apparently come up the lift behind them. They were still able to run away without much fighting though. They didn't use potions to hide or speed their exit, but a salvo of fireballs from Blast helped clear many of the crusaders from their path and Rime was once more able to absorb damage from the remainder.
Back at the Coalition Camp a series of invasions was about to happen. Rime used a PfM scroll there, while everyone took potions in the heaviest buffing session to date. The orcs and trolls caused no great problems for Rime while the others supported with missiles. Unsurprisingly, Rime lost his potion buffs against the mages, but everyone else hung on to theirs until all the enemies were dead. Unfortunately, as the Elementals were heading back to the firepit a couple of the wizard slayers decided to be 'helpful' and target them with dispel magic to remove the odd hostile spell effect - removing all their lovely potion buffs. Those were partially renewed before Blast threw in some fireballs against the clerics to speed them along. Dosia then renewed their spells ahead of the final invasion wave. They got badly infested by insects there, with Flash going down to 2 HPs and Blast having to use a potion of power to avoid dying - but otherwise they had little trouble in seeing off the opposition.
After resting up they headed on to Dragonspear. The 20k quest XP bonus for that took them within a whisker of another level and that was secured when Flash killed Ashatiel in single combat.
In hell, they just ran through the first area. They made short work of Thrix's summons and inherited the Echo of the Fiend staff. Flash can use that, meaning everyone had a melee weapon available for the final SoD action. They buffed up before taking the Hellevator and smacked down the 3 attacking groups on that without taking a hit in return. Flash is the only one allowed to use self-buffing other than by potions and added several Champion Strengths before the lift reached its destination, while Blast handed out Enchanted Weapons to those that needed them. With Flash's spell buffs, Rime's grand mastery of hammers and Sting's hatred of demons Belhifet was taking damage very quickly and died almost immediately after he first gated in some help.
The Elementals ran through the epilogue and have just arrived in Jon's dungeon.
Berserker 9, 116 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 0 kills (+488 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Archer 9, 86 HPs, 0 kills (+357 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Priest of Talos 9, 72 HPs, 0 kills (+85 in BGEE/SoD)
Assassin 11, 71 HPs, 0 kills (+178 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Avenger 11, 84 HPs, 0 kills (+66 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Dragon Disciple 10, 58 HPs, 0 kills (+244 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
I had finished a number of side quests in BG2, including paying the Shadow Thieves to go find Imoen. Yogii was 14th level.
I was about to rest in the graveyard district and noticed that Nalia had the limited wish spell memorized. I thought it would be a good idea to start the quest for that “adventure like no other” but I didn’t realize that it’s either random or based on wisdom (which Nalia’s is 9). When I saw it wasn’t available, I decided to wish to “be more experienced,” which I knew would result in a tough fight, but I thought I’d be able to handle it better.
Despite Yogii having the defender of easthaven equipped and casting armor of faith, he was absolutely pummeled by some huge golems and didn’t stand a chance.
Oh well. I’m not sure what I’ll play next, but I’ll probably roll up something tonight.
Commiserations @Klorox , I suppose I'll add to the epitaphs.
Calculating Conjurer: A Random Run, Part 5 (Final?)
Part 4 found here
Alright! Following lengthy preparations (mostly in the form of me running my ailing memory through to plan for every encounter ahead of time), the party enters the Planar Sphere.
Our mission: To seek the end of Tolgerias even though you don't actually have to kill him; more on that later.
With SCS restricting resting "in the wild", we may rest at most four times outside of an inn. It should be plenty of time...
We proceed with great care. The Clay Golem at the entrance is tanked by Conjurer using a single Stoneskin cast, and the resulting Cursed Wounds is removed by Cleric / Mage.
Dropping a Cloudkill via the wand from the starting dungeon upon the Sauhagin to the north rather comically leads to them running around in the area-of-effect until they literally all kill themselves on the Priestess' Circle of Bones.
Meh, I don't particularly care: They're worth a total of 2500 xp (seems very little considering how nasty they can be in a fight).
At least we got the Cloak of Protection +1.
Alright, first major fight. We clear the regular Halfling Warriors, set up some Skeleton Warriors, apply a round of buffs, and engage the main halfling party.
An alpha strike on Entu swiftly drops him (Fighter / Cleric is actually quite nasty under Haste / DUHM / Righteous Magic and wielding a sling). We pop dual Cloudkills, aimed both at weakening the remaining halflings and preventing them from trying to approach for a while, so that most of their buffs expire: This is a thing I've noticed with SCS, wherein enemies are very reluctant to even cross the area-of-effect of a Cloudkill.
In the meantime, we deal with the solitary Skeleton Warrior and Aerial Servant sent our way.
Once the dust settles a bit, Swashbuckler stealths and goes to investigate.
It seems Mogadish and Kayardi managed to get stuck in a corner trying to avoid our Cloudkills; Mogadish eventually got off a Zone of Sweet Air, but not before both Kayardi and Togan took a real beating.
Alright. We have three Skeleton Warriors left. We wait a while for the final enemy buffs to expire, then send them ahead first and do an all-out charge.
Kayardi falls for it, trying to get off a Death Spell.
Since he now lacks spell defenses Conjurer launches a 2x MAA Minor Sequencer at the halfling Mage, with everyone else descending on Mogadish. The result: Absolute slaughter.
Excellent. We've cleared a major hurdle (though far from the worst the Sphere has to offer), and we did it with even less resources than I thought we'd need.
Heading north, there's just a pack of Sword Spiders and Ettercaps in the Golem Room; we grind them down.
The second halfling encounter awaits.
Taibela and Necre are actually easier, because they don't have as much brute force backup as the first group.
We wear them down with the remaining Skeleton Warriors, a Cloudkill (again preventing them from charging in at us since they really don't want to stand in it) and a few Monster Summoning II (Cleric / Mage doesn't have many useful 4th level spells yet).
Necre's spell defenses are low-level and fall to a single Spell Thrust; Taibela's physical defenses are not impressive.
The Golems to the east are handled by simple buffing and some summons, though the Golem Slow is quite nasty, and we end up having to quaff an Oil of Speed to swiftly counter it.
The Fire Elementals in the furnace room hurt a bit, but they're nothing compared to the Golems.
We assemble the Guardian Golem and hang back while it deals with the Elder Orb for us.
Tremendous success, I must say: We've cleared the entire first level, and yet have spells remaining.
This overconfidence shall prove to be our downfall, as we decide to press onward towards Lavok: We have a full contingent of Skeleton Warriors available, after all, and as I recall he's not that great at dealing with them.
Alright, so how do we do this? The only way possible when a level 10 - 11 party challenges a level 18+ Mage: The cowardly way.
We hide near the entrance and send ultra-cheap Monster Summoning I fodder, one at a time, at Lavok.
You can nearly always get away with doing this once or twice, even under SCS: More than that, and the enemy Mage will start hunting for you.
As does Lavok: It turns out that he counts as undead while possessed, so Cloudkill has no effect (though strangely he still seems to try to avoid it).
Lavok spots us while moving about, so we send a Skeleton Warrior in and close the door.
The frick... I did not remember he could do that (and he most certainly can't in vanilla BG2EE).
But we should be alright. We've drawn out a lot of spells using summons, so I'm banking on him being out of killer moves: Let's just scatter and see what happens.
Turns out I am off by one in my assessment.
Oh... Lavok, you sore loser! Why!?
Since it's cast under Timestop, there's no way to cheese Fighter to safety by popping a Potion of Invisibility.
I can't recall if magic resistance checks are done at time of casting or when the effect hits, but it doesn't matter: We have no potions of Magic Protection, nor scrolls of Protection from Magic. Fighter is imprisoned.
But that was about it for Lavok. He has what seems like an illegal number of Chaos casts left, but almost no damage, so we wear the bastard down.
Alright. All need not be lost. If we can make it back to Athkatla, we can buy a scroll of Freedom. I think.
We clear the rooms to the north and west of Lavok, and retreat to the room of the Solamnic Knights, where you can rest safely.
Tolgerias awaits.
Now, our cunning plan, which is somewhat in shambles since we lost our main source of physical damage.
One reason Tolgerias is so dangerous is that he is stupidly high level; another reason is that you have no real room to maneuver.
The tiny walkway before entering the main room is just that, tiny, and Tolgerias will find you if you stay there. So, let's not.
Stealthed Swashbuckler and Sanctuaried Fighter / Cleric (who were supposed to be joined by Invisible Fighter, but yeah...) head north. Tolgerias and his Mage attendant cannot see into either the Ice or Fire room, so we're going to clear them first, giving us ample room to move around.
Fighter / Cleric pops a Scroll and Potion of Protection from Cold, buffs a bit, and enters the Ice room along with Swashbuckler.
It takes a little while, particularly downing the Snow Troll is laborious, but they prevail: Ice room cleared.
Alright, Fire room is next. Again a Scroll and Potion of Protection from Fire goes on Fighter / Cleric.
OK. I didn't quite recall, but apparently a single Fighter / Cleric isn't going to be able to tank the Fire room, at least not with our current levels and equipment.
The Ice room will have to do. We get the party set up, moving in under Sanctuary for Cleric / Mage + Priest of Tempus and an Invisibility for Conjurer. This will be a long fight, so we don't apply any buffs: Just call up a few Skeleton Warriors and a sacrificial Kitthix.
Priest of Tempus heads to speak with Tolgerias, swiftly retreats leaving Kitthix in her wake, and it's on.
Tolgerias leads with a Spell Trigger including 2x Summon Efreeti, so we definitely have to wait that out.
Again, a double Cloudkill at the entrance to the Ice room prohibits the enemy Mages from wandering toward us.
Instead, they summon some Demons, who amusingly start killing each other. Well, as long as it distracts them.
The Mage is quite a bit more aggressive than Tolgerias and keeps trying to wander north.
I've no problem with that, as she doesn't have much in the way of defenses.
Our primary objective is the destruction of Tolgerias, but we have many rests remaining: Killing the Mage this go around is a decent enough secondary objective.
By now, Tolgerias' ludicrously ample spell defenses and massive bout of summons have largely expired.
We send a summon at him, which he swiftly dispatches, and then he wanders north. We can do this: We can take him.
Conjurer swiftly launches a Vitriolic Sphere, and it connects beautifully: Tolgerias did not apply Protection from Acid.
Everybody, pile in!
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
Tolgerias is no more!
Well, even a mighty Mage is no match for our cunning plans, it seems!
We make a foray into the Engine room, hoping to clear it, but the Golems are too much when we only have Fighter / Cleric on the frontlines: We manage to clear the first group at great damage, but we'll need a specialized spell setup to finish off the room.
Time for another rest.
In contrast to our previous trials, the abyssal plane isn't so bad. The Tanar'ri deals a lot of damage, but we're mostly protected from its powers owing to great saving throws buffed by various Clerical spells.
Having recovered the Tanar'ri heart, we return to the Fire room. With Protection from Fire on everyone, and Protection from Cold on Fighter / Cleric (joined by cold-immune Skeleton Warriors), Ice Storm and Snilloc's Snowball Swarm can be freely unleashed, to the Noble Efreeti's detriment.
We can still rest twice, so we prepare a specialized spell setup for the Engine room: Lots of Melf's Minute Meteors on Conjurer, lots of defensive buffs, lots of Skeleton Warriors, and we power through.
And that's it: Planar Sphere cleared.
So... why the doom and gloom early in the post? This seems like a great success, albeit slightly marred by Fighter falling behind a bit in xp.
Well. It seems SCS has made some changes recently. It used to be the case there were Freedom scrolls available directly in Chapter 2, from Bernard and Lady Yuth. This appears no longer the case.
I check every spell store I can think of, but there are no bloody Freedom scrolls anywhere. Fighter is lost.
I can see only one option here. We would have to go to and through the Underdark.
This would be extremely laborious with only a single warrior-type, and Fighter would end up even farther behind in levels.
Even if we do this, I'm worried it'll turn out that the stronghold version of the Sphere isn't the same as the one where Fighter got imprisoned, i.e. casting Freedom in the current Sphere won't do anything.
Unless someone has an idea for aquiring a Freedom scroll swiftly, I will treat this as a chunking of Fighter, and retire the run: Together enter, together fall.
Sad to see two promising coming to an end. I don't really get the SCS removal of freedom scrolls from stores either, considering imprisonment is now such a common spell choice for high level arcane spellcasters.
The Lightning Party, update 15
It does get harder and harder to find good opportunities for our lightning spells, but lower level enemy wizards sometimes don't have adequate protections against triple chain lightning spell triggers:
Always happy to find a group of shadow creatures, though:
This lighting bolt sequencer was very risky - I realized, as soon as I fired it off, that I had a big chance to actually kill some of the innocent prisoners here (I kind of forgot about their existence), but luckily I didn't get any bad bounces:
You might see that our spell damage numbers are going down - enemies now generally make all their saving throws, so it's mostly just half damage, which is why, unless they are low hp wizards, they are not very likely to die even to triple spells. The real damage, at this point, is in the energy blades and improved hasted lightning damage weapon attacks, as Gromnir soon learns:
At the temple, we can make another use of Iseri's turn undead:
On to the Marching Mountains. With fire protection added to our buffs, we use Mordenkainen's swords to tank big groups of fire giants. Some chain lightnings add into our damage, but they somewhat pale in comparison to the 10 attacks every party member can dish out in a single round (well, the archers is usually "only" at 8) -
We deliver the hearts and make Yaga-Shura vulnerable:
As per usual, the unmodded Yaga-Shura isn't able to survive for long:
I don't like that the party loses their buffs for seemingly no reason after the defeat of the fire giant - I would prefer to keep them so we can use them again for the second pocket plane challenge. Sadly, we have to rest and rebuff before tackling that one:
The oasis provides us with another opportunity to use lightning spells:
In Amkethran, the sidequests are quickly completed. Vongoethe gets taken down before his protections go up:
It's unfortunate, but now that I know there are no Freedom scrolls until the Underdark, I can just adjust tactics: Avoid the most powerful Mages until post-Underdark, easy enough.
I've rolled up a Necromancer with party according to the rules I used for the Conjurer run, but I'll refrain from posting until they've made a few levels (there's always the risk of a dreaded Bandit ambush ending the run at this stage, after all).
Progress will be slower than with the Conjurer as work is piling up, but I'll keep at it: Got a real funky but funny party this time that should be viable.
Comments
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1209688/#Comment_1209688
The session started with a boat trip to Brynnlaw. A trio of unsuspecting vampires tried to set an ambush there, but were (re)turned into their graves. Perth managed to make his speech, but not a lot else. He left behind a book of burning hands - as did Ash.
The encounters in Spellhold were all easy enough, with a lich being no more successful than the vampires at resisting turn undead. Ash solved numerous puzzles to get a ring of regeneration there.
Jon was then sent packing before we moved on to Fish City. The Prince there failed to come and find out what had happened to his king, so we sought him out and gave him the same treatment before climbing down a rope into the Underdark.
A group of drow there lasted a while under Whurr's attack and hit him with enough spells to get him to use a rare healing potion. Whurr then moved up to a giant soul gem and started releasing the inhabitants of that. The second of those was Raevilin Strathi and a combination of problems meant he proved to be our nemesis. Ash made the first mistake there as he was expecting a lich to arrive and his turn undead ability simply destroyed our own skeleton warrior that could have distracted the mage. Whurr then pressed his attack in melee for a bit too long, giving the mage the opportunity to cast imprisonment. It's possible that a scroll of magic protection could have dispelled that before the effect was final - but Ash had not got around to purchasing one of those and Whurr disappeared for good ...
Part 2 found here
Part 4 found here
The Wolf of Ulcaster was swiftly dispatched, and I had the cleanest win I can recall against the Red Wizards, utilizing Skeleton Warriors and several Clouds of Pestilence (which goes straight through MGoI since it's a 4th level spell).
At Ice Island, Swashbuckler inadvertently showed himself to Andris, but we turned it around easily enough with some swift summoning. Andris teleports away, we beat up on his cronies, Andris teleports back, gets his defenses stripped and fails a save vs wand, the end.
We had some issues with Garan (line of sight is problematic here), but other than that the rest of the island went by without a hitch, and Conjurer scored a Stoneskin scroll.
Wolf Island (the other island) is really just about two fights: Karoug and later Mendas and his buddy.
SCS adds a Mage (who likes to go invisible) to Karoug's group, but as long as you focus her down quickly, there's not much challenge here: We were helped by Fighter having a single pip in Bastard Sword, though it's hardly mandatory.
There was a brief altercation in the warrens beneath the settlement, as Conjurer slipped a little too close to a Werewolf and got a cool 32 HP shaved off as a reward. Yeah, he hadn't scribed Stoneskin yet... will amend that presently.
Back in Ulgoth's Beard, Mendas got to loose a Chaos on Priest of Tempus who countered with a Potion of Magic Blocking, before the former's defenses failed and he reverted to Loup Garou form. One set of lovely Chain Mail +3 for importing, thank you very much.
Back to Candlekeep it is; we've got everything we need to finish the game, so let's hop to it.
The hopeless Ogre Mages outside didn't even warrant us popping Invisibility potions: A simple Remove Fear means they can't really do much.
We left the Iron Throne leaders alive (can't be bothered hauling their crap around), and descend into the catacombs.
The WIS tome of course goes to Cleric / Mage as planned, now at 20 WIS.
And the Darvin Award (I think it's his third or fourth) goes to Swashbuckler, not as planned. He never plans.
We managed to scrounge up four Potions of Absorption and covered the final difference with a Potion of Magic Shielding.
Fortunately we had a scroll of Knock kicking around so could retrieve the STR tome even in Swashbuckler's absence, and muttering in ever so slightly annoyed fashion, we started lugging the latter's charred remains towards the surface, ignoring much of the catacombs proper.
The STR tome, again after some debate, went to Fighter / Cleric, ensuring he can wear Full Plate unaided: It doesn't matter that much honestly, since we have no one that can make really good use of the tome.
We take out our frustrations on Prat et al on the way out, and make it safely back to Baldur's Gate.
Not much to report on preparing for the Grand Dukes fight, beyond Krystin being as annoying as ever with going visible/invisible seemingly at will.
With five fully buffed, including Haste, Skeleton Warriors, the coronation usually goes smoothly, and it mostly did here, except Swashbuckler was feelin' it and tried for yet another Darvin Award.
You know what? Go ahead and chunk him. It'd be an improvement.
Anyway, Assassin -> Shaman -> Mage all drop in short order. Liia is entirely unharmed, Belt barely took a scratch, and Sarevok takes off. We give pursuit, firebombing the Iron Throne mercenaries into oblivion, and telling Tamoko there's other fish in the sea.
Good! Final battle time.
The plan was the same as always: Two fully buffed warriors under PfM scrolls clearing everything on their own while everyone else just relaxes in the lounge.
Turns out there were two small issues with this plan.
One: Our two warriors really aren't that great at fighting. In particular, Fighter / Cleric still hasn't picked up a specialization, and it shows.
Two: Apparently Semaj's (maybe anyone's?) Remove Magic goes straight through PfM. Semaj gleefully dispelled our frontliners full buff complement, though mercifully they kept the PfM effect.
Without potion buffs, our frontline was a few rounds from dropping, so the entire party moved to engage.
The whole thing turned into a bit of a nightmare, compounded by Fighter simply being unable to tag Sarevok with an Arrow of Dispelling, so the latter absolutely tore through our paltry summons. Semaj joined in the fun by conjuring a nigh unstoppable Greater Air Elemental which sent a Tornado flying around the battlefield... it was all bad for a while.
Not depicted: Sarevok swinging three times at Conjurer when the latter got a bit too close without a Haste effect up.
I'm very glad I prepared Stoneskin...
Through destiny and might repeated firebombing, re-application of potion buffs on the fly, and a lot of meticolous running and summoning, we slowly gain the upper hand, mostly because Semaj eventually runs out of good summons.
Fighter even manages to dispel Sarevok's Haste. It only took some 10 Arrow of Dispelling.
With the situation under control, Sarevok is slowly worn down, and victory is ours. Huzzah!
That was actually a bit touch and go. Facing a Greater Elemental (and several Lesser versions) at these levels, especially while dealing with other enemies at the same time, is a little rough.
Still, we pulled it off. Yay us!
Everyone finishes with 161k xp, and Swashbuckler got his final level this session.
I'm debating if I should actually go for SoD or hop straight into SoA.
If we're aiming for difficulty, SoA at 161k xp and the meager arcane L5 options we currently have will be far more punishing than at 500k xp and a full L5 arcane collection, after all. Yeah... I'll probably go straight to SoA, but let's sleep on it.
Overall it's been fun! Though it strikes me that this random party really isn't that different from how I normally play.
Fighter is Minsc if Minsc wasn't terrible.
Fighter / Cleric is Jaheira if Jaheira wasn't terrible.
Priest of Tempus is Anomen if Anomen was physically unimposing.
Cleric / Mage is just straight-up Aerie with better WIS / CON but worse DEX.
Swashbuckler... yeah, there's no comparison, he's just a regular joke o' the gods. Oh the awfulness.
Still, a lot can happen in the many levels to come.
Will Fighter ever see Mastery? Will Fighter / Cleric waste another proficiency on Sword and Shield style?
Will we reach HLAs? Will Fighter / Cleric best his earlier attempts and roll War Cry four times in a row?
These tales shall also be told! But not tonight.
Level-up results at the end of the session:
Swashbuckler, level 10 Swashbuckler
6 HP, Open Locks 50 / Find Traps 80 / Pick Pockets 55 / Move Silently 30 / Hide in Shadows 40 / Detect Illusion 25 / Set Traps 30
Unless your PfM scrolls are changed by a mod, I think the culprit are the PfM scrolls themselves, not remove magic. They should - at least they work that way in my installation - remove all magical effects on the characters immediately, including all buffs (that's also stated in the wiki - all dispellable effects should be removed upon application of a PfM scroll - it is also mentioned in the description of the ingame item).
Though there is also this passage mentioned under "bugs":
However, it has always been my experience that all buffs are removed, but I haven't tried to PfM a buffed character in a long while since this is always the kind of interaction I expected.
I suspect that @aldain meant that the potion buffs were applied after the PfM scroll. Unless you have mods that change things, it is correct that remove magic will bypass PfM and remove other buffs, though not PfM itself. You get the same sort of behavior with other spell protections as well, like (minor) globe.
Luckily, I survive all of them. In the end I removed Shar-Teel from the party and joined Coran in the wyvern Hunt. Since it now requires you to run into the cave in cloak wood 4 I actually skipped cloak wood 3 where I have Faldorn and Eldoth to join.
After the wyvern head is sold I remove Coran from the party and take back Shar-Teel. Then I remove Garrick and Viconia from the party and go to cloak wood 3 to join Eldoth and Faldorn. I need to actually read up on the story since I want to exchange Faldorn ultimately for Yeslick but of course I would want to set Faldorn free outside the mines.
I now stand in front of the mine party.
Oh, for archive purposes, it is possible to join npcs again and get the kill history. I will do that when I get back from the mines.
Lucius 0 deaths
Kagain 3 deaths
Shar-Teel 1 death
Eldoth, Safana, Faldorn 0 deaths
out of party
Montaron, Khalid 3 deaths
Branwen 2 deaths
Jaheira, Xan 1 death
Kivan, Minsc, Xzar, Imoen, Garrick, Viconia, Coran 0 deaths
Edwin and Dynaheir dead
Pending recruitment
Alora, Quayle, Skie, Ajantis, Rasaad, Yeslick
I think the reason for my confusion is that Semaj's initial Remove Magic is usually taken on by a buffed wall of summons; in addition to the first one hitting my frontliners this time, he had prepared (at least) two, so ended up dispelling them twice.
But really, I usually depend on having a good archer for this fight, which was sorely lacking now, so things got quite a bit more dangerous. Which is its own kind of fun
Most enemies down here, are, sadly, either heavily resistant to magic or, at least, to lightning damage - our wand of lightning does okay damage against these kuo-toans, but its effectiveness is heavily reduced:
Previous updates
I've been toying for a few days with putting this run on hold and trying something else, but have at least managed to complete BGEE
The Elementals clearance of wilderness areas included the odd one not done last time - like the Red Wizards of Thay. Their saving throws vs spells seemed surprisingly poor and Flash took advantage with several glyphs.
In the Nashkel Mine Mulahey went down while whining about how unfair life is.
It was dark when the Elementals arrived at the Bandit Camp and Toxic took advantage by backstabbing many of the bandits. Inside the tent, Venkt went the same way and the others didn't last long.
I didn't bother with so much work in the Cloakwood this time. Sting was poisoned by a wyvern in an ambush there and Flash had not yet learnt Bhaal slow poison, so the Elementals made a hasty dash for the exit. To compensate for that, more wyverns in the next area were pulled out of the cave to be attacked. Sting was once again poisoned, but Flash had now learnt the necessary remedy.
At the mine Rezdan was backstabbed and Kysus failed to deal with a stream of MMMs. Drasus & Genthore were then no match for a general attack. There was minimal fighting inside the mine on the way down to find Davaeorn. He tried one hold person attempt that bounced off Rime's rage, but didn't have enough time to complete an attempt to summon some helpers.
In Baldur's Gate, I again did a bit less work than last time. There's still a decent amount of quick XP on offer though and the Elementals were able to take another level after the death of a basilisk - a couple of glyphs to soften it up, together with a backstab and stealth attack avoided the need to use protection there. Their earlier successes had included a critical backstab on Lothander to make absolutely sure he wasn't getting away. The final action in the City for now was invading the Iron Throne. They followed downstairs in dribs and drabs and were easy prey for ambushes.
In Candlekeep Toxic looted the tombs without trouble and kept the strength tome to himself to help his backstabbing chances. I was surprised though by how quickly Prat managed to complete his lightning bolt cast and didn't manage to run away until it had hit the whole party - lucky that no-one was killed there. Rime did this time use protection against the basilisks, rather than muck about any more.
Back in Baldur's Gate the Elementals soon came across an invitation to the palace. Some of the guests there were rather disruptive, but the Elementals managed to restore order without anyone important coming to much harm.
Moving on to the old temple Sting used stealth to prompt Sarevok's conversation, meaning Semaj teleported out on his own. This time I allowed the use of darts against him and he died before completing anything too damaging. Flash threw 4 glyphs at the dais, but none had any effect on Sarevok, Angelo or Tazok. Rime then showed himself just to Tazok, encouraging him to come out on his own to find more darts. Angelo was the next to be pulled out. His arrows of explosion were quite painful to Rime, despite his ring of fire resistance, but Angelo didn't last long enough for that to become a major problem. Finally it was Sarevok's turn. In principle that should have been easy enough as he has no distance attack. However, his haste and switching targets between his attackers made him hard to avoid and his 50% missile resistance and effective immunity to acid damage from the darts meant he only took damage slowly. The problems were greatly exacerbated when one of the elementals got too close to the edge of the area and a battle horror joined the fray. A loss of concentration while I was wondering how to deal with that meant Sarevok was able to attack Sting and suddenly the Elementals were down to 5. Deciding enough was enough, Rime used an oil of speed and a potion of regeneration and quickly battered Sarevok to death.
The Flaming Fist healer at the start of the SoD dungeon automatically restores all characters to full health, so the Elementals are ready to press on.
Berserker 7, 95 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 337 kills, 0 deaths
Archer 7, 68 HPs, 92 kills, 1 death
Priest of Talos 7, 57 HPs, 22 kills
Assassin 8, 54 HPs, 132 kills, 1 death
Avenger 8, 72 HPs, 19 kills, 1 death
Dragon Disciple 7, 41 HPs, 80 kills, 2 deaths
We enter the drow city and rescue Phaere - our death spell via the stolen helm from the elemental portal quest comes a bit late - most enemies are already dead:
Well, now we get to take on Deirex - we haste the party and run past him to evade timestop:
Well, we execute the egg swap and return to Amn, where I buy the last few available bolts of lightning from Ribald's special stock (once we're done with those, we will switch our archer weapon to Gesen's bow), obtain a few other items, forge The Wave and Gesen's. Next time, there are a few liches, dragons, guarded compounds, mind flayers and the like to take on.
When I found this staff I noticed the no save and thought it could be useful to counter a charm late game.
Wilkim half elf avenger part 7 and final update
I entered the Mana Pool from Bhaal's palace with my usual buffs (protection from evil, chaotic commands, death ward).
Amelyssan summoned to help her Fallen Solar Irenicus, Slayer Imoen, and Irenicus summoned Bodhi.
I had Balthazar by my side.
First thing I did was using one of my few scrolls of protection from magic against Irenicus, and have the fighters focused on Bodhi, which failed very fast, but still had enough time to level drain Neera and cast her insect plague ability.
Fallen Solar managed to kill (but not with a vorpal hit luckily, I play with aTweak making deathward protects against vorpal hits) Neera, but couldn't survive focus hits very long.
Only a powerless Irenicus remained and... Wait, who just cast a time stop ? Then I discovered in horror than Irenicus didn't use mislead as an opening, but simulacrum ! And I can't say which one between him and his simulacrum was hit by the protection from magic scroll !
Luckily Balthazar is not affected by time stop and hit Irenicus repetitively during it.
When it ended, Irenicus is killed easily.
Next step is the pools. The demons are no match for Balthazar and my warriors, and since I also have the Turnabout mod, I can raise Dynaheir to help me. Next pool saw Anomen held and killed, but the rod of resurrection helped again, and this time I raised Xzar to the rescue. Third pool I choose Gorion.
Before clicking again on the third pool, I laid some skull traps to the right, summon three skeletons warriors in the center and a fallen planetar to the left.
When Amelyssan arrived and summoned the Five with Gorion and Sarevok, I saw Gromnir taking all the traps and becoming badly wounded.
Meanwhile After her speech I paused, and use one protection from magic scroll on Abazigal, Illasera and Sendai. I used a mind control circlet on Sarevok and he's now with me. We are 10 against only four !
Ignoring a now powerless Sendai, I then proceed to focus first on Gromnir to finish him while the fallen planetar and an elemental prince held Yaga Shura and after that it's a butchery :
I then focused on Illasera and Sendai.
And finally...
The Big Metal Unit also helped Xzele to have a great AC.
Definitely, without my 5 protection from magic scrolls and my mind control circlet, this fight would have been a different story.
I finished at almost 6 millions XP.
I choose mortality and had a nice ending thanks to Nalia romance.
If you don't mind me asking, how did you get access to so many PfM scrolls in SoA? Usually there are only 2 available. Were they found in the additional mod content you installed, or are you playing with a setup where you can import items from BG1?
Also, could you give me the information for your run (mods, difficulty, starting and ending post etc.) in the following format, so that I can add it to the Hall of Heroes? Quoting one of my old runs as an example:
This also means that Avenger can finally be removed from the list of kits missing from the hall of heroes - meaning the list is now this:
Of those, a Stalker, Priest of Talos and Conjurer are currently being played, so there's currently no one on a Priest of Helm, Diviner or Necromancer in an actively updated run.
Now in which mods ? In no reload I use few savegames so it's hard track them back. I will note where I found some when replaying some mods (Barovia, Juniper, Call of the Lost Goddess and Dark Tidings will probably be staples in my future runs) and I can post the location in the adventurers's lounge if it cam help fellow noreloaders.
As for starting posts, I will gladly do it, but I'm ashamed to say I don't know how to do it properly. Each times I tried, the link didn't lead to the right post.
Yes, indeed, Irenicus was beaten four times, Sarevok three times, Bodhi three times, and the Five two times.
Wilkim finished with 8% XP part for all BG2, not a very high direct contribution, but his deathward, chaotic commands, insect plagues / creeping dooms, elemental princes summonings really helped the party.
Chromatic orbs were also great in SoD and SoA.
Fighters took the lion share in this run, with spellcasters more on support / disabler role with chaos and slow. ADHW was nice but a very late addition.
It's not too much work, but it will take some time since I always start a run in Candlekeep and do SoD.
I have a BG1 run with a new multiclass cleric / ranger kit from Deities of Faerun, I will see if he can get to BG2.
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1209938/#Comment_1209938
The early stages of the SoD dungeon proved no problem. However, they took a lot of damage from the group just prior to Korlasz - who also killed the Flaming Fist healer so they couldn't use him to heal up. They tried to rest to get a bit more healing, but were ambushed by skeletons who immediately shot down Lucid. They did successfully rest after that and a group attack on Korlasz forced her to surrender. One side effect of that is that the Flaming Fist healer had been revived and he was kind enough to restore life to Lucid without even asking for payment.
After a bit of shopping in the City they hit the road and soon arrived at the Coast Way Forest. They helped the vampire there to get a source of regeneration. That also allowed them to hand items over to Takos. The main gain sought from that was the returning acid dart, providing the party with their first proper missile weapon. I was also expecting Takos to offer an additional reward, but it looks like that's dependent on his reaction to the party leader and not the person that speaks to him. I was tempted to kill him instead, but eventually decided to let him go.
At the Coast Way Crossing the Elementals were exploring the area, activating some menhirs, when attacked by a group of spiders. Things looked bad for Rime when he was webbed by a gargantuan spider, allowing a pair of phase spiders free attacks on him. Flash helped out there though by curing him when poisoned and then successfully blocking the gargantuan spider (which I think is scripted to try and attack disabled targets) until the others could deal with it. At the bridge Caelar took longer than I expected to call for a truce. That was unfortunate for her party as only Ivann was still alive when Caelar arrived and she died from a continuing call lightning strike during the cut scene.
The XP bonus for arriving in Troll Claw Woods permitted everyone to level up. However, they didn't immediately do so. Instead waiting until they'd cleared most of the area and Toxic had more than 160k XP - so could level immediately up to L10. Lucid was now also at L10, which meant she was again entitled to use chromatic orbs - that was a nice improvement, particularly as she has no eligible 5th level spells under my rules so didn't gain much else from her extra levels.
On the way to the Forest of Wyrms they came across an encounter area with orcs and trolls. Lucid's chromatic orbs claimed an immediate petrification there while Flash picked up Firefly as his first proper weapon.
At the Forest of Wyrms they hit an early problem in the spider & beetle cave. I was carefully checking there for web traps, but had forgotten the possibility of gargantuan spiders and Rime was again held by a web tangle from one of those. A petrified phase spider there helped the others save Rime.
Two more spider groups were disposed of easily enough before the final lot once more hit Rime with web tangle - but again his decent HPs and good saving throw against poison allowed him to survive and maintain his record as the only party member (other than the PC) not to have died yet. I made a mistake immediately after that though when Toxic explored too far in the cave and large numbers of beetles appeared. In close quarters and with bombardier beetles area acid attack, the chances were good that everyone would have died - but immediately everyone saw the beetles they went "gulp" and the invisibility potions allowed them to get out safely. Once they were rested up they came back and beat up the beetles - the Rhino Beetle shell will provide a shield upgrade for someone.
Berserker 8, 106 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 389 kills, 0 deaths
Archer 8, 78 HPs, 154 kills, 1 death
Priest of Talos 8, 65 HPs, 42 kills
Assassin 10, 69 HPs, 151 kills, 1 death
Avenger 10, 82 HPs, 37 kills, 2 deaths
Dragon Disciple 8, 54 HPs, 142 kills, 2 deaths
We start our tour at the guarded compound, since we can get another lightning damage weapon, Celestial Fury, here - disarming the traps at the entrance while using our chain lightning spell trigger and some lightning bolts:
Part 3 found here
Part 5 found here
The first thing that went wrong is that Cleric / Mage died to the Ogre Mage that gets summoned if you give the "brave" answer to the Genie. She had MSD so my intent was to bait out as many spells as possible; unfortunately, the Ogre mage powered through the MSD, stunned her with a Chromatic Orb, and (being hasted) managed to kill her before the party could help.
So, we have to do Chateau Irenicus with one party member down, being that Priest of Tempus is still level 8.
This was actually quite rough. Cleric / Mage had a lot of our important spell picks, and the dungeon is fairly lengthy.
We have little melee power, even less ranged power, but somehow we muddle through, mostly through judicious application of Animate Dead.
Party (with still dead Cleric / Mage, who thankfully gets the quest XP despite being dead) at the time of our escape depicted below.
We're not in great shape, and we have a single spell, Spell Thrust, remaining.
Fortunately, that bout of XP was enough to get Priest of Tempus to level 9, and we promptly raise Cleric / Mage.
Even for a party as battered as ours, the Circus is no real obstacle, so we clear that as well before resting again.
Since there's no rush, given that Imoen is really just a stranger to us (oh we'll help her eventually, but for now we've places to be and people to see), we opt to do in Mencar immediately.
Sorcerous Amon lacks a Death Spell, but Mencar, Smaeluv and even Brennan are all quite capable of swiftly dismantling our Skeleton Warriors, so the whole thing quickly turns relatively bad. We do manage to kill Brennan pretty quickly (scoring his Ring of Invisibility), but then Mencar and Smaeluv start rampaging through us.
That's where we finally got some semblance of control. Sorcerous Amon is still in the lower room, since he doesn't dare (apparently) to cross the multiple Clouds of Pestilence in his way.
A lot of damage to us later, we prevail.
I just tend to fall back on the same tactics that work fine if you have a decent number (3-4) of physical damage dealers.
Do that when you have only 2 such, and it'll hurt... a lot.
Alright, well, Copper Coronet and the Slavers should be gentler. We start by buying the Scroll Case off Bernard (since he no longer has it once Hendak takes control), then go after the Beastmaster.
... This is going to be long and hard-fought, and I will have to memorize a lot more Cure Wounds of all levels.
Mercifully, Captain Haegan fails his save against Hold Person, and the plethora of guards that come running succumb to a Slow.
Whenever we have a chance to properly plan the encounter, it usually goes fine, but getting dumped in the middle of an enemy party is always bad for us. We clear the rest of the slavers (the enemy Mages do very little as here we have Skeleton Warriors at the fore), get beaten to within an inch of our lives by Cohrvale and Bregg on our way back, and rest yet again.
So, we have a small sum of gold.
First on the agenda: We purchase a magic license. Given how weak we are, there's no way we'd stand up to a Cowler Wizard Enforcer party, so best not risk it.
Here's us after defeating, by a margin most narrow, the Suna Seni ambush.
Alright, we need SOME wins. Let's do the easier mini-stuff around Athkatla.
We quite painstakingly clear the upper areas of the Graveyard, and descend into the Tombs.
Pai'Na is no real concern, strangely, but the (improved by SCS... substantially) Vampyre in the southern tombs is a real problem; I end up using a few scrolls of Flame Arrow to speed up his demise.
The bridge district murders is next; the Rune Assassins actually aren't that bad, since they spend the entire fight trying to get past our invisible party members to the rear line and thus ignoring the frontliners beating them to a pulp.
We also go after the kidnappers and pick up a, by now fairly defunct, pair of Boots of Missile Avoidance.
The Fallen Paladins are quite forgiving as well, being extremely vulnerable to any kind of crowd control.
We swing by Watcher's Keep to pick up the potion case; I pondered going inside for some easy loot, but I'm honestly concerned we'd get wiped out. Best not risk it right now.
Now, let's try something unorthodox. First: The bridge party.
This is Valeria and her goons, who are never explained, but simply sit, red, in a building, waiting for you.
OK: Let's try to disable them. Two simultaneous Chaos works against everyone but Dracandros, the Mage.
He mostly flounders about, without doing anything really effective, until suddenly calling in a Nabassu.
Dracandros drops shortly thereafter; while the Nabassu is quite dangerous owing to several powers and potent (blunt: Of course it's blunt, it's always blunt when SCS boosts something) melee attacks, it doesn't have much hitpoints, so we are able to overpower it before it slaughters half the party.
They have almost no treasure, though there are some scrolls in the chest.
Well, we're already in the Bridge district, let's say hi to Dennis.
It started well, and we were able to deal with the melee goons, but that damnable Mage...
He Petrified our summoned Hobgoblin Elite, used Power Word: Silence against Priest of Tempus, and tried to cast Control Undead (which got resisted) on a Skeleton Warrior! Not sure what level he is but as he also had Mantle, it's at least 14. Thankfully no Abi-Dalzim's came flying.
Eventually the Mage runs out of worthwhile spells and is cut down. Urgle.
We take a quick detour to the Docks and handle Officer Dirth; we now have a lot more Full Plate than we'll ever need.
Around here we got the Renfeld ambush. Sanasha dropped quickly, but Prebek got two Fireballs off at Conjurer.
No real danger though, as even if he'd roll max damage Conjurer would've come out on top.
The real irritant is that I was forced to blow our only Potion of Master Thievery: Swashbuckler still has subpar Open Locks, and I wanted to loot the Harper Hold since it gets closed off once you finish the Xzar questline if you don't have Jaheira in your party.
I could've just rested and returned with a bunch of Knock I suppose... I don't think the quest is time-sensitive?
We've done most of the small stuff in the city, just the Pirates in the docks left, which we can leave for later.
Let's do a proper quest: Umar Hills maybe? I want to pick up Valygar's body anyway.
En route we get the Orog ambush, but these guys are quite low-level, and fall to a single Cloudkill.
Of course not before inflicting severe damage on our long-suffering frontliners.
Incidentally, Cloudkill works against Umber Hulks too (if they fail their save).
We clear Umar Hills, rest up, and depart for the ruined temple.
Apparently, Shadows are unaffected by Web in SCS: I guess they're not tangible enough to get stuck.
We use Slow instead to clear the giant pack outside the temple. Into the depths.
Here we do alright initially, but then come to the room past the fire pit and its spawn.
2 Greater Mummies, 1 Skeleton Warrior (Melee), 2 Blade Golems, 2 Skeleton Warriors (ranged).
I just... why?
Alright, this will take some planning. Swashbuckler manages to set three traps despite very modest skill, but that won't do much.
We break out all the Animate Dead stops, apply mass Clerical buffs, Haste, then pull the undead to us; the bridge there is narrow and good to fight on.
We take a good bit of damage, and most party members can't contribute much, since we have so few magical weapons available (and Greater Mummies require +3 weaponry, of which we only have Lilarcor), but we do pull through absent major issues.
Then it turns out there's another group just like it past the fire pit.
We have a round of buffs left, but far fewer summons this time. Conjurer ends up using three scrolls of Fireball to soften the undead up (strangely, they don't react to being bombarded from range), but then we have to engage in earnest.
It might not look it, but that was really harsh: A good measure of how tough a fight was is if you had to resort to using Wands of Magic Missiles. And we did (to help with the Greater Mummies).
There are literally zero spells left, so we rest up before proceeding.
Alright: Time for the Shade Lord.
It's actually been a long time since I fought the Improved Shade Lord before going to the Underdark.
We leave nothing to chance: Full Clerical buffs, Haste, and charge. We also have several Protection from Negative Energy memorized to help counter the Darkling Aura, and most of the rest is a second set of buffs if the battle lasts a long time, Animate Dead, and arcane damage.
So I'll leave a note here on the fight, mostly for my own later perusal.
The Shade Lord has a Darkling Aura which periodically drains everyone in a fairly large radius of 1 level (not permanently, but long enough).
It applies, seemingly also periodically, Mirror Image + Spell Turning + Protection from Magical Weapons.
Its spell selection includes, at least for me, Black Blade of Disaster, Power Word: Blind, Finger of Death, Blade Barrier (the latter seems to get periodically renewed as well).
Also, everytime something dies here, a Shadow rises. This means summons are not necessarily a great idea.
All of the above was basically news to me. We end up in a long, protracted battle which seems to be tipping in our favor, until Fighter looses a staring contest with a Finger of Death, and Swashbuckler (who was using Captain Dennis' Boomerang dagger to decent effect) gets hit by Power Word: Blind. We already used our only Remove Disease!
Now things start to turn desperate. We don't have many options left for hurting the Shade Lord, and it keeps reapplying its defenses. To make matters worse, the damn thing actually regenerates too.
Fighter / Cleric somehow manages to land enough hits to finally lay the Shade Lord low. This was very close: We had no real spellworks left, and the PfNE on Fighter / Cleric had maybe two rounds to go. Had he dropped instead, we would've been in very, very dire straits. As you can see, we even had to send Priest of Tempus in to help.
Still, now that I have a good idea of what to expect, this should be much more doable in the future: At least the Shade Lord doesn't seem to dispel buffs.
We return to Umar Hills (after resting and raising poor Fighter), then it's back to Athlatla.
Yep... we're still weak.
Still, these silly ambushes must be abating soon.
... Not having Invisibility 10' Radius available is really coming back to bite us. Maybe skipping SoD wasn't such a great idea after all.
Conjurer ate a backstab (he had no Stoneskin up at the start), and came within a critical of dropping. Not good!
This seems like a good spot to call it quits for the moment, lest we commit a mistake we cannot recover from.
Still, after all this bumbling about, we remain alive. Can we stay that way? I doubt it. Why? Because of what we're doing next update.
I am gonna kill Bill Tolgerias.
Don't worry, though: I have a cunning plan!
We're close to max levels for everyone where fixed HP per level-up kicks in, so I'll stop giving details on that from next update.
Still, here's what happened this time around:
Conjurer, level 11 Conjurer
+6 / +1 HP, total 66 HP including 9 from Familiar (yes, it's an Imp again)
Fighter, level 10 Fighter
+9 / +3 HP, total 105 HP including 9 from Pale Green Ioun Stone
Two-Weapon Style *
Fighter / Cleric, level 9 / 9 Fighter / Cleric
+2 / +5 / +4 / +5 HP, total 91 HP including 5 from Helm of Balduran
Quarterstaff *
Priest of Tempus, level 10 Priest of Tempus
+7 / +2 HP, total 45 HP
Swashbuckler, level 12 Swashbuckler
+2 / +2 HP, total 42 HP
Scimitar / Wakizashi / Ninjato * (so now has two pips in that)
Open Locks 65 / Find Traps 85 / Pick Pockets 60 / Move Silently 40 / Hide in Shadows 50 / Detect Illusion 25 / Set Traps 35
Cleric / Mage, level 9 / 10 Cleric / Mage
+3 / +4 / +2 / +5 / +1 HP, total 56 HP
Two-Handed Weapon Style *
Proficencies are still a mixed bag.
Fighter / Cleric picked up a pip in Quarterstaff so I swapped him to the Staff Spear +2 from Xzar, mainly since at least then he has a magical weapon.
Fighter... well, Two-Weapon Style is fine. If he gets another pip in it, or specialization in Bastard Sword or Warhammer, I'll swap him to dual-wielding, but for now it's Two-Handed Sword all the way.
Swashbuckler shouldn't be sent into melee, period, so his proficiencies largely don't matter.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1209653/#Comment_1209653
We enter the elven city - a deva makes a decent addition to our forces:
We continued a bit into early ToB - using a 3*chain lightning chain contingency + lightning bolt sequencer to take down Illasera using only lightning damage:
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1209938/#Comment_1209938
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1209953/#Comment_1209953
Typically, I ignore Morentherene on the way into the old temple and kill her using a throwing dagger on the way out. As I couldn't use those in this run though the Elementals decided to tackle her immediately. Rime took a fair amount of damage from her poison breath, but the Elementals still won with a bit to spare. Her pair of greater wyverns only appeared well after the dragon was dead and hence caught the Elementals unprepared. Toxic was poisoned there and the fast-acting poison would have killed him before Flash could intervene - but he used a potion of power to give him enough HPs to survive the few extra seconds necessary.
After fighting through various bugbears and sets of guards, the Elementals found Ziatar. Flash blocked his doorway under sanctuary, while using Storm Shield to protect against the elemental damage Blast sent in. Ziatar has surprisingly poor saving throws and, when he did attempt to exit, he became another petrification victim for Lucid.
Rime initially entered the Neothelid's room alone, having used PfPoison and an invulnerability potion. Once the Neothelid surfaced, the others joined the attack and finished it off fairly quickly - but its dying breath nearly took Blast with it. After resting in the dragon's cave they returned and threw glyphs and ice storms in at Akanna until she had had enough. More of the same eventually dealt with the Shadow Aspect, though its high elemental resistance meant a rest was required to refresh spells during that. Distance attacks caused Darskhelin's crew to come out and be slaughtered. The illithid himself was hit by a poisonous backstab from Toxic and a poisonous front stab from Sting and didn't have much left for the follow-up missile assault.
Another green dragon bit the dust in an ambush area on the way to Boareskyr Bridge. Vichand was attacked there and already down to his last few HPs when he was petrified by a chromatic orb. The battle text said he saved there, so I'm not sure what went wrong. It could be one of those instances where a save is wrongly displayed when its applying to a cosmetic effect rather than the spell itself, or it might be a more fundamental problem with wrap-around scores causing a problem where the save is too good (though in theory all those types of issues should have been eliminated by now). Shields were made out of the dragon and beetle remnants and they also had some +3 bullets made. After surrendering the fort, the Elementals went to deal with the mage on the bridge. He's not easy to hit with missiles, but the whole party used oils of speed & potions of mind focusing and managed to get enough hits to disrupt his portal spell - and then finish him off in due course.
After dealing with some myconids in another ambush area, the Elementals arrived at the Coalition Camp. Shopping with Nazramu included the Dervish Crescent scimitar as a melee weapon for Lucid.
They cleared Dead Man's Pass, though they had a close shave in the Mimic cave. That was partly as a result of several of them getting held by the mimic glue there, but also due to the mimic firing acid through the walls despite being under melee attack - here Toxic just survives with 1 HP left.
They came across an ambush area with the Shadowy Figure on the way to Dragonspear. The anti-magic area suppressed their own spells and without the ability to use items they just ran away. At the castle they rescued Skie before moving on to the Underground River area. They released a couple of entangled druids there, meaning they got lots of helpers while fighting through guards at the cave entrance. Inside the caverns they killed Strunk - Blast can use the Elements Fury dagger to help him a bit when he rushes into melee after running out of MMMs. I got caught out again when trying to enter the Warrens turned everyone hostile - this must be another place where the reaction depends on the lead character and not the one doing the talking. Rime was able to tank for long enough to cut down the guards with missiles though.
In the Warrens I was intending to just use sanctuary to poison the food and water, but my inexperience with party play here caught me out again. Stealthed characters had blocked the door to the lift room while Flash was doing the poisoning, only to find that someone had apparently come up the lift behind them. They were still able to run away without much fighting though. They didn't use potions to hide or speed their exit, but a salvo of fireballs from Blast helped clear many of the crusaders from their path and Rime was once more able to absorb damage from the remainder.
Back at the Coalition Camp a series of invasions was about to happen. Rime used a PfM scroll there, while everyone took potions in the heaviest buffing session to date. The orcs and trolls caused no great problems for Rime while the others supported with missiles. Unsurprisingly, Rime lost his potion buffs against the mages, but everyone else hung on to theirs until all the enemies were dead. Unfortunately, as the Elementals were heading back to the firepit a couple of the wizard slayers decided to be 'helpful' and target them with dispel magic to remove the odd hostile spell effect - removing all their lovely potion buffs. Those were partially renewed before Blast threw in some fireballs against the clerics to speed them along. Dosia then renewed their spells ahead of the final invasion wave. They got badly infested by insects there, with Flash going down to 2 HPs and Blast having to use a potion of power to avoid dying - but otherwise they had little trouble in seeing off the opposition.
After resting up they headed on to Dragonspear. The 20k quest XP bonus for that took them within a whisker of another level and that was secured when Flash killed Ashatiel in single combat.
In hell, they just ran through the first area. They made short work of Thrix's summons and inherited the Echo of the Fiend staff. Flash can use that, meaning everyone had a melee weapon available for the final SoD action. They buffed up before taking the Hellevator and smacked down the 3 attacking groups on that without taking a hit in return. Flash is the only one allowed to use self-buffing other than by potions and added several Champion Strengths before the lift reached its destination, while Blast handed out Enchanted Weapons to those that needed them. With Flash's spell buffs, Rime's grand mastery of hammers and Sting's hatred of demons Belhifet was taking damage very quickly and died almost immediately after he first gated in some help.
The Elementals ran through the epilogue and have just arrived in Jon's dungeon.
Berserker 9, 116 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 0 kills (+488 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Archer 9, 86 HPs, 0 kills (+357 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Priest of Talos 9, 72 HPs, 0 kills (+85 in BGEE/SoD)
Assassin 11, 71 HPs, 0 kills (+178 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Avenger 11, 84 HPs, 0 kills (+66 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
Dragon Disciple 10, 58 HPs, 0 kills (+244 in BGEE/SoD), 2 deaths
I had finished a number of side quests in BG2, including paying the Shadow Thieves to go find Imoen. Yogii was 14th level.
I was about to rest in the graveyard district and noticed that Nalia had the limited wish spell memorized. I thought it would be a good idea to start the quest for that “adventure like no other” but I didn’t realize that it’s either random or based on wisdom (which Nalia’s is 9). When I saw it wasn’t available, I decided to wish to “be more experienced,” which I knew would result in a tough fight, but I thought I’d be able to handle it better.
Despite Yogii having the defender of easthaven equipped and casting armor of faith, he was absolutely pummeled by some huge golems and didn’t stand a chance.
Oh well. I’m not sure what I’ll play next, but I’ll probably roll up something tonight.
Calculating Conjurer: A Random Run, Part 5 (Final?)
Part 4 found here
Our mission: To seek the end of Tolgerias even though you don't actually have to kill him; more on that later.
With SCS restricting resting "in the wild", we may rest at most four times outside of an inn. It should be plenty of time...
We proceed with great care. The Clay Golem at the entrance is tanked by Conjurer using a single Stoneskin cast, and the resulting Cursed Wounds is removed by Cleric / Mage.
Dropping a Cloudkill via the wand from the starting dungeon upon the Sauhagin to the north rather comically leads to them running around in the area-of-effect until they literally all kill themselves on the Priestess' Circle of Bones.
Meh, I don't particularly care: They're worth a total of 2500 xp (seems very little considering how nasty they can be in a fight).
At least we got the Cloak of Protection +1.
Alright, first major fight. We clear the regular Halfling Warriors, set up some Skeleton Warriors, apply a round of buffs, and engage the main halfling party.
An alpha strike on Entu swiftly drops him (Fighter / Cleric is actually quite nasty under Haste / DUHM / Righteous Magic and wielding a sling). We pop dual Cloudkills, aimed both at weakening the remaining halflings and preventing them from trying to approach for a while, so that most of their buffs expire: This is a thing I've noticed with SCS, wherein enemies are very reluctant to even cross the area-of-effect of a Cloudkill.
In the meantime, we deal with the solitary Skeleton Warrior and Aerial Servant sent our way.
Once the dust settles a bit, Swashbuckler stealths and goes to investigate.
It seems Mogadish and Kayardi managed to get stuck in a corner trying to avoid our Cloudkills; Mogadish eventually got off a Zone of Sweet Air, but not before both Kayardi and Togan took a real beating.
Alright. We have three Skeleton Warriors left. We wait a while for the final enemy buffs to expire, then send them ahead first and do an all-out charge.
Kayardi falls for it, trying to get off a Death Spell.
Since he now lacks spell defenses Conjurer launches a 2x MAA Minor Sequencer at the halfling Mage, with everyone else descending on Mogadish. The result: Absolute slaughter.
Excellent. We've cleared a major hurdle (though far from the worst the Sphere has to offer), and we did it with even less resources than I thought we'd need.
Heading north, there's just a pack of Sword Spiders and Ettercaps in the Golem Room; we grind them down.
The second halfling encounter awaits.
Taibela and Necre are actually easier, because they don't have as much brute force backup as the first group.
We wear them down with the remaining Skeleton Warriors, a Cloudkill (again preventing them from charging in at us since they really don't want to stand in it) and a few Monster Summoning II (Cleric / Mage doesn't have many useful 4th level spells yet).
Necre's spell defenses are low-level and fall to a single Spell Thrust; Taibela's physical defenses are not impressive.
The Golems to the east are handled by simple buffing and some summons, though the Golem Slow is quite nasty, and we end up having to quaff an Oil of Speed to swiftly counter it.
The Fire Elementals in the furnace room hurt a bit, but they're nothing compared to the Golems.
We assemble the Guardian Golem and hang back while it deals with the Elder Orb for us.
Tremendous success, I must say: We've cleared the entire first level, and yet have spells remaining.
This overconfidence shall prove to be our downfall, as we decide to press onward towards Lavok: We have a full contingent of Skeleton Warriors available, after all, and as I recall he's not that great at dealing with them.
Alright, so how do we do this? The only way possible when a level 10 - 11 party challenges a level 18+ Mage: The cowardly way.
We hide near the entrance and send ultra-cheap Monster Summoning I fodder, one at a time, at Lavok.
You can nearly always get away with doing this once or twice, even under SCS: More than that, and the enemy Mage will start hunting for you.
As does Lavok: It turns out that he counts as undead while possessed, so Cloudkill has no effect (though strangely he still seems to try to avoid it).
Lavok spots us while moving about, so we send a Skeleton Warrior in and close the door.
The frick... I did not remember he could do that (and he most certainly can't in vanilla BG2EE).
But we should be alright. We've drawn out a lot of spells using summons, so I'm banking on him being out of killer moves: Let's just scatter and see what happens.
Turns out I am off by one in my assessment.
Oh... Lavok, you sore loser! Why!?
Since it's cast under Timestop, there's no way to cheese Fighter to safety by popping a Potion of Invisibility.
I can't recall if magic resistance checks are done at time of casting or when the effect hits, but it doesn't matter: We have no potions of Magic Protection, nor scrolls of Protection from Magic. Fighter is imprisoned.
But that was about it for Lavok. He has what seems like an illegal number of Chaos casts left, but almost no damage, so we wear the bastard down.
Alright. All need not be lost. If we can make it back to Athkatla, we can buy a scroll of Freedom. I think.
We clear the rooms to the north and west of Lavok, and retreat to the room of the Solamnic Knights, where you can rest safely.
Tolgerias awaits.
Now, our cunning plan, which is somewhat in shambles since we lost our main source of physical damage.
One reason Tolgerias is so dangerous is that he is stupidly high level; another reason is that you have no real room to maneuver.
The tiny walkway before entering the main room is just that, tiny, and Tolgerias will find you if you stay there. So, let's not.
Stealthed Swashbuckler and Sanctuaried Fighter / Cleric (who were supposed to be joined by Invisible Fighter, but yeah...) head north. Tolgerias and his Mage attendant cannot see into either the Ice or Fire room, so we're going to clear them first, giving us ample room to move around.
Fighter / Cleric pops a Scroll and Potion of Protection from Cold, buffs a bit, and enters the Ice room along with Swashbuckler.
It takes a little while, particularly downing the Snow Troll is laborious, but they prevail: Ice room cleared.
Alright, Fire room is next. Again a Scroll and Potion of Protection from Fire goes on Fighter / Cleric.
OK. I didn't quite recall, but apparently a single Fighter / Cleric isn't going to be able to tank the Fire room, at least not with our current levels and equipment.
The Ice room will have to do. We get the party set up, moving in under Sanctuary for Cleric / Mage + Priest of Tempus and an Invisibility for Conjurer. This will be a long fight, so we don't apply any buffs: Just call up a few Skeleton Warriors and a sacrificial Kitthix.
Priest of Tempus heads to speak with Tolgerias, swiftly retreats leaving Kitthix in her wake, and it's on.
Tolgerias leads with a Spell Trigger including 2x Summon Efreeti, so we definitely have to wait that out.
Again, a double Cloudkill at the entrance to the Ice room prohibits the enemy Mages from wandering toward us.
Instead, they summon some Demons, who amusingly start killing each other. Well, as long as it distracts them.
The Mage is quite a bit more aggressive than Tolgerias and keeps trying to wander north.
I've no problem with that, as she doesn't have much in the way of defenses.
Our primary objective is the destruction of Tolgerias, but we have many rests remaining: Killing the Mage this go around is a decent enough secondary objective.
By now, Tolgerias' ludicrously ample spell defenses and massive bout of summons have largely expired.
We send a summon at him, which he swiftly dispatches, and then he wanders north. We can do this: We can take him.
Conjurer swiftly launches a Vitriolic Sphere, and it connects beautifully: Tolgerias did not apply Protection from Acid.
Everybody, pile in!
Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!
Tolgerias is no more!
Well, even a mighty Mage is no match for our cunning plans, it seems!
We make a foray into the Engine room, hoping to clear it, but the Golems are too much when we only have Fighter / Cleric on the frontlines: We manage to clear the first group at great damage, but we'll need a specialized spell setup to finish off the room.
Time for another rest.
In contrast to our previous trials, the abyssal plane isn't so bad. The Tanar'ri deals a lot of damage, but we're mostly protected from its powers owing to great saving throws buffed by various Clerical spells.
Having recovered the Tanar'ri heart, we return to the Fire room. With Protection from Fire on everyone, and Protection from Cold on Fighter / Cleric (joined by cold-immune Skeleton Warriors), Ice Storm and Snilloc's Snowball Swarm can be freely unleashed, to the Noble Efreeti's detriment.
We can still rest twice, so we prepare a specialized spell setup for the Engine room: Lots of Melf's Minute Meteors on Conjurer, lots of defensive buffs, lots of Skeleton Warriors, and we power through.
And that's it: Planar Sphere cleared.
So... why the doom and gloom early in the post? This seems like a great success, albeit slightly marred by Fighter falling behind a bit in xp.
Well. It seems SCS has made some changes recently. It used to be the case there were Freedom scrolls available directly in Chapter 2, from Bernard and Lady Yuth. This appears no longer the case.
I check every spell store I can think of, but there are no bloody Freedom scrolls anywhere. Fighter is lost.
I can see only one option here. We would have to go to and through the Underdark.
This would be extremely laborious with only a single warrior-type, and Fighter would end up even farther behind in levels.
Even if we do this, I'm worried it'll turn out that the stronghold version of the Sphere isn't the same as the one where Fighter got imprisoned, i.e. casting Freedom in the current Sphere won't do anything.
Unless someone has an idea for aquiring a Freedom scroll swiftly, I will treat this as a chunking of Fighter, and retire the run: Together enter, together fall.
The Lightning Party, update 15
It does get harder and harder to find good opportunities for our lightning spells, but lower level enemy wizards sometimes don't have adequate protections against triple chain lightning spell triggers:
Next up: Sendai's Enclave.
I've rolled up a Necromancer with party according to the rules I used for the Conjurer run, but I'll refrain from posting until they've made a few levels (there's always the risk of a dreaded Bandit ambush ending the run at this stage, after all).
Progress will be slower than with the Conjurer as work is piling up, but I'll keep at it: Got a real funky but funny party this time that should be viable.
Fellow Travelers of the No-Reload,
And so with that this thread reaches ONE MILLION VIEWS.
Thank you all for sharing your passion, your attention, your stories all these years.
Though I myself have become more of a lurker than a poster of adventures, I never lost interest in it.
Here is to many more completions!