Al the fighter: @Grond0
Notable Mods: None
Difficulty: Core Rules
Special: Party only contains unkitted fighters. No use of item-based healing or resurrection. Start End
Now added. A well-deserved entry into the Hall. Looks like it's been almost 6 years already since your last entry - wow, that is a long time of relentless attempts. Great to see one of those heavily restricted runs finally getting to the finish line!
Corepally the cavalier Update 2:
Permanently dead: Yoshimo, April (undead hunter)
Traveling with: Gabrielle (undead hunter), Sarah (inquisitor), Serina (inquisitor)
Most of SoA chapter two quests done. We lost Yoshimo early on in the planar sphere (yikes -nothing for traps). We will probably work on main quest once planar sphere is complete. That fight with the powerful halfling mages is always a tough fight for my melee heavy parties. The inquisitor dispels though were invaluable to keep up the fight. Will keep at it.
The last run I lost in this challenge was a skald, when I relied on magic missiles to interrupt a sirine charm and it decided to be stubborn and ignore the damage. Rolling up a new random choice for another attempt I got a … skald . Deciding to take that as a sign that I should be more careful this time, I'll attempt this as a no damage run.
Hassling Firebead gave me an extra 300 gold and I went to the extreme of using that to buy some chain mail armor as well as a long bow. The latter was used to shoot down a couple of assassins in Candlekeep, as well as Imoen, Xzar and Montaron after leaving it. Xzar could have been a potential problem, as he will fight back with LMD if annoyed. However, using my bard song gives +2 to hit and damage for the rest of the round after stopping singing. That gives a better chance to hit and, together with the +1 damage from a long bow, means that any hit on Xzar will be fatal. The initial shot was successful, so I didn't need to make a fast exit from the map and gratefully learnt the LMD scroll he had.
There were no ambushes on the way to find Shoal and shooting her down was an easy way to jump from level 1 to level 4, picking up 20 HPs in the process. On the way back from there, I stopped off at High Hedge to shoot some gnolls and one of them was kind enough to leave behind a knock scroll for me to learn. Beregost offered some more safe XP by calming down Marl, finding a book for Firebead and using run and shoot on Karlat before returning Perdue's sword. Neera died from a LMD to get me a gem bag. To the south, some ogrillons were shot to get Mirianne's letter and a hobgoblin had some boots to give back (briefly) to Zhurlong. I nipped in and out quickly of a house full of spiders to drag them outside where they could be safely shot. That was enough to get me to level 5. The extra 7 HPs were nice, though of course I'm trying not to rely on them in this run ...
After purchasing some +1 arrows, I returned to High Hedge to shoot the golems before doing a bit of shopping with Thalantyr. I failed with several attempts to learn spells, but did manage to get the most important, invisibility. I also learnt blind, which was duly put to use on Silke. I didn't learn PfP, but that didn't prevent an assault on some nearby basilisks with the help of Korax. I normally lead him down to the south before letting him talk, to make the duration of his charm as effective as possible, and the group of basilisks there took me to level 6. The remaining basilisks and Mutamin then quickly gave me a further level.
I wasn't too hopeful of the chances of Korax against Kirian's mob, but thought I would give him a go. Baerin was blinded and Kirian paralysed in the opening assault, but then trouble appeared out of thin air when Peter cast rigid thinking at me despite never having been in my sight range. I only reacted to that when the projectile had almost reached me, but thought it might be possible to get out of sight range while Korax was still alive even if the spell took effect. As it happened though I saved against the spell anyway and used invisibility to rest. Skull traps, stinking cloud and blindness then rendered Kirian's group helpless to respond.
After travelling down to Nashkel, I used knock to do some looting as well as learning Bhaal CLW. An invisible trip to Firewine Bridge then let me blind Meilum to get his bracers. Moving on to Durlag's Tower, I used skull traps to kill some battle horrors on the path and walls. For a bit of variety, rather than resting to use skull traps on the doom guard, it was blinded and bludgeoned with my staff from outside its sight range. I'd failed to learn MSD earlier and currently had no way to get onto the roof without taking damage. However, skull traps, magic missiles and arrows were used on various ghasts and that took me up to level 8. Before leaving, Riggilo was presented with a hairpiece from Kirinhale, before being blinded and put out of his misery.
While I thought about it, I went to confront the Red Wizards in order to get the Ring of Energy, which is potentially useful in SoD. I learnt several new spells there, though once more failed with PfP. Then, on the way to the FAI, an ogre was blinded and shot down to get me my preferred belt. At the FAI, Tarnesh failed to survive a skull trap before friends ensured that Landrin would shower me with antidotes (to be sold as I'm pledged to never use them quite apart from the intention this run to avoid damage). Jaheira was charmed and pulled outside the inn for disposal to ensure that no-one would get annoyed by her death. On the way to get Joia her ring back I killed a few hobgoblins. One of those had a PfP scroll - which I once more failed to learn.
When taking on Bassilus, I did get affected by rigid thinking - but was able to safely wait out of sight until that expired. I collected and tried to restore Melicamp but I'm currently on a very bad run with him and he failed his system check for about the 6th time in a row.
Thinking about improving reputation, I killed a few worgs for Ardrouine before heading for the nearby minesite. After blinding and beating up the Doomsayer, I escorted Brage back to Nashkel. Some half-ogres were killed for Bjornin and while in Beregost Mr Colquetle was given a memento of his son. Prism failed to take advantage of being rescued from Greywolf, but Samuel did survive being invisibly carried all the way back to the FAI.
Helping out the Dryad of the Cloudpeaks was sufficient to get reputation to 20. Friends could already take charisma past that, but I was still planning to go on to the Gnoll Stronghold to pick up the charisma tome. However, before I got there I failed in the attempt to avoid damage. In the cave nearby the dryad there's a chance of encountering a dire wolf. None was there initially, but I rested invisibly there and one appeared. I tried sleeping it from out of sight, but that failed. I expected to be able to try something else and wasn't concentrating closely - and consequently was an instant too slow to react when the dire wolf appeared round the corner and attacked. Even though the battle text showed the pause taking effect first, the dire wolf's lunge still got an attack in before I had the chance to take any other action.
Corepally and team made it out of the planar sphere despite having no thief. I really thought it was going to be over - look at this pic - the entire party is stunned or mazed and to boot the party is badly wounded - was this going to be it?
But no it appears Tolgerias had used most of his good stuff, as soon as stuns/mazes wore off quickly we gulped a potion for each character and got to work - success! Whew.
Fortunately rest of sphere went smoothly and we can finally work on the main quest. We are currently trying to clear out Bodhi's lair.
You sure are hard on yourself, @Grond0 - not only try to beat the game solo but take no damage to boot! I mean really, you don't think no heal potions/antidotes is challenging enough?
@Corey_Russell it depends on the character class. For most of them no damage is not realistic, but arcane spell users offer good enough defences that it's possible if you play well enough - and what is the game if not an eternal search for perfection?
@Corey_Russell it depends on the character class. For most of them no damage is not realistic, but arcane spell users offer good enough defences that it's possible if you play well enough - and what is the game if not an eternal search for perfection?
Well to me, the run that seems like perfection to me was your solo wild mage beating Melissan. There were so many ways for you to die (and indeed you found 99 ways to do that, since it took 100 tries to get a success).
Trio 66 Update 5
Droon II - lvl 11 human bard, protagonist (corey_russell)
Dacre - lvl 9 dwarven berserker (Grond0)
Blub - lvl 8 human cavalier (Gate70)
So the party found themselves in Irencus' dungeon. With minor globe invulnerability and poison immunity for Blub made traps a little bit easier. As usual, we had little trouble in dealing with enemies. Dacre's enrage is often useful. But we had one problem that we seemed to encounter in that we never got experience notices whenever Blub killed any enemies. While we tried a number of things like re-loading restarting game etc. nothing was changing this. Eventually we discovered we were getting experience from Blub, we just aren't being told about it.
* Circus was taken care of. No problem here.
* Hendak was freed. A slow by Droon II made the beastmaster easy to deal with.
* Next task was to do the Lilacor quest. With Dacre's enrage, the enemies here were pretty simple. Droon II got confused by the mushrooms but he didn't attack anyone so we just waited it out. Party members noticed several times Droon II took the shortcut on the boards next to the trapped door but Droon knows how to avoid the trap.
* Time for slavers in moored ship. We entered via sewers. Droon got in a missile match with the slaver boss (Droon was using MMMs) but Droon was taking significant damage so Dacre lended some support. We won this fight but took lots of damage so rested up. Next fight was the slaver mages and their buddies, a web made them easier to deal with. Blub refused to buy Azuredge when we had the chance, so he had to sit and wait while the other party members used ranged attacks.
* Since Blub refused to buy anything, Droon paid off the shadow thieves.
* We did a quick stop by Watcher's Keep to get the potion bag - no ambushes!
* Next up was trying to get full plate from officer Dirth - easy crush.
* We picked up our goodies from Linvail and headed down to docks to help Mook. We got a vampire ambush on the way and Droon II bumbled and did a spell here (we hadn't yet got the magic license). We beat the vampire easily enough as well as Lassal.
* To insure no mistakes, we had just enough money for a magic license so we got that, and then Dacre commented aren't I glad we didn't spend money on Azuredge.
* We had just enough time to get D'Arnise Keep started, picking up a dagger for Dacre in a trapped chest. We saved our session here.
I finally finished my mobile phone game.
Baldur's Gate has been a success! It took me a while to get through the tight areas of Ice Island and and I had to carefully tread my way through Balduran's Shipwreck, but that finally went allright. No deaths luckily because I lured with Yeslick the wolves away from the staircase and then hauled up the party into it. But the progress was so gruwelingly slow that I decided to skip Durlag's Tower with its small hallways and just go for Sarevok.
I went through all the areas slowly, meeting Tamoko and the many NPCs who have something of note to say about the Iron Throne or Sarevok being a Duke, as well as Flaming Fists and Harpers making chatter about Scar, Eltan and such. It is always fun to relive the story every year (about my frequency of play). Since Lucius was able to dart so fast I put him on dual dagger for a bit. Dagger being Dagger of Venom and at some point Longtooth. That was no Flaming fist got hurt in the process. Command and Hold Person helped also here and there.
The Coronation was easy. I ran Yeslick the front. I used a wand of summoning, and Ajantis and Alora one by one hit the elite dopplegangers with arrows of dispelling. They were easily dispatched after that. Both Belt and Liia survived. I skipped most of the Maze. A scroll of protection from undead helped Alora disable the majority of traps. Then we left about half of the maze in fog of war.
Sarevok was bested with mostly a lot of potion buffing. Semaj got the treatment of arrows of dispelling. Tazok was handled by Shar-Teel. Yeslick tried to distract Sarevok while I got rid of the minions, and I got rid of Angelo well enough (killed by Shar-Teel as well). Unfortunately, there is only so much place to go without being hit by traps that Yeslick got in a tight corner (even with boots of speed) and Sarevok got two hits of ~50 damage on him. Even Yeslick's -9 AC did not help.
In the end it did not matter, Sarevok died due to consistent arrow and dart pressure from Ajantis, Alora and Lucius. Alora getting the killing blow while Shar-Teel managed to hold on, also with -9 AC due to her picking up some gear from Yeslick.
Final standings.
Party now
Lucius 0 deaths, 677 kills, level 7, 135643 XP: 19-20-18-14-16-13 (str-dex-con-int-wis-cha)
Yeslick dead by Sarevok, 32 kills, level 6/6, 38294 XP each
Shar-Teel 3 deaths, 332 kills, level 7, 124440 XP
Ajantis 0 deaths, 63 kills, level 7, 105406 XP
Quayle 1 death, 7 kills, level 6/6, 50327 XP each
Alora 0 deaths, 54 kills, level 8, 84674 XP
Some math gives a total of 1984 kills.
Out of all kills, 45% was done with melee, 54% with ranged and 1% with spells. I was mostly buffing and debuffing because I was far too afraid of friendly fire with a 5 inch screen.
Lucius got about 34% of total kills with darts being 70% more effective than bows, solely due to attacks per round.
At some point Shar-Teel was gaining kills rapidly due to dual-wielding and having a damage of 11-18 per weapon at 3 attacks per round (unbuffed with strength) vs 5-7 damage with darts at 4 attacks per round (level 7 + 2 proficiency). Even then, Lucius did more damage and got more kills still than the other 4 party members. Even if the melee fighters were getting buffed with strength, it seemed that darts were able to keep up just fine.
I am really happy I took the darter this far. I am considering going through SoD with him, although, I have no clue how to get the save file onto the pc (which got fixed again, yey).
This is an attempt at a non-completionist SCS run. I've installed the current SCS version, setting it to tactical, and the BG1 NPC project (though I'm not sure that I'll do anything with it). We'll be playing on core rules. The idea here is to try and do the sped up version of a full saga playthrough that I usually do for my unmodded runs nowadays but do it with SCS - so, no TotSC content (except for the outer/upper areas of Durlag's Tower), no SoD, no hiring NPCs in SoA/ToB just for their companion quests. I usually have done all these things for my SCS runs to maximize experience/item gains, but let's see if we can do it without them. I'm also playing with official companions, which I don't think I've successfully done for a full SCS run yet. While I think this might not be actually needed with the SCS customization options on, I'm first getting my stalker to 32k experience before recruiting a party so we don't all have to grind our way to higher levels.
Orima starts with 18/80 str, 19 dex, 17 con, 15 int, 14 wis and 8 cha, with two points in longbows and longswords each. After a round of Candlekeep sidequests we travel to Gorion's body, pick up the diamond, take items from Imoen, Montaron and Xzar before moving east. There, we take the RoP +1, kite the ogre for Elve's Bane, move south to Beregost and calm Marl, give the book to Firebead, identify and sell the Stupefier for some extra gold.
Further south Orima shoots down the ogrillons - getting her first level up:
She moves southeast and takes down one of the hobgoblin to acquire a pair of boots of stealth. Even further south she stealthes past the hobgoblin group at the campfire, picks up the family amulet and enters Nashkel, talks to Oublek, buys a stone to flesh scroll and moves to the carnival, where a green PfP scroll is acquired.
On the way to the temple, we get hit by the bandit archer ambush and switch to our large shield - with Elve's Bane and the shield, we escape without getting hit:
At the temple we stealth eastwards to the basilisk area and recruit Corax the Ghoul, taking down the northern basilisks first before going for Mutamin. The mad gnome starts out hasted (propably via oil of speed?) and casts MI, followed by lightning bolt on Corax (Orima has not shown herself yet) - the ghoul survives, but is badly wounded, so Orima has to step in to save her companion. Mutamin is moving around a lot between casts and due to his haste effect, Corax has a hard time getting in any hits - Orima gets hit by slow, followed by a chromatic orb, which ends up stunning her. 2 more magic missles hit her, but since she's already at level 4 thanks to the basilisk kills, she survives - as Corax is finally able to paralyze Mutamin just as the chromatic orb stun runs out:
That could have easily gone wrong, but it was a calculate risk: We're only about 30 minutes of real time into the run, and having to restart here wouldn't be too big of a problem. Now that Mutamin is gone we can easily take down the remaining basilisks both here and to the south. Extra proficiency points are being put into short swords for now. Once the basilisks are all gone and we turn in Mirianne's letter, we are at 30k experience, so we need just about 2k more:
To get that 2k experience we move to Bjornin's half-ogres, kite them until they're down and take Brage to Nashkel - perfect:
Now I thought that installing BG1 NPC project would move around companions, giving me access to Alora at Gullykin.
However, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore in the current version. In the past even SCS had a similiar option - but now, it seems like both mods don't have it anymore.
Well, guess we will have to pick pretty normal standard companions - we get Imoen (thankfully not at level 1, thanks to SCS), dual her to mage (I think the SCS companion customization is a bit bugged with dual classing - Imoen ends up with more experience than she should have afaik), pick up Branwen (she and all others end up starting with 28k experience instead of 32k - I'm not quite sure why its this exact number, and if SCS or the NPC project is responsible - propably SCS), travel to FAI and move north for Ajantis. Tarnesh has to die for us to complete the party with Khalid and Jaheira - a stalker backstab and magic missles do the job:
Since we can pick our own profiencies we're spreading them out a little bit, such as giving Ajantis points in crossbows and axes. We quickly get Joia her ring back after buying some basic gear (though lacking funds for armor pieces), move to Beregost and are now ready to begin the questing/wilderness explorations.
Not much of note happens here - our party is quite powerful for these encounters, being at levels 5-6 - getting to 32k solo experience before recruiting definitely pays off, as not even SCS-improved spellcasters provide the party with a noteworthy challenge at this point (with tactical difficulty, they aren't as oppressive anyway, especially not in the early game). Our targets are mostly enemies that provide us with useful equipment, such as Bassilus or Greywolf:
I will keep exploring but propably keep updates short unless we face a significant challenge, until we get back to the main questline.
Enjoying your run @Enuhal as I have never finished a stalker in BG (or BG2) but you are motivating me to give it another try.
In BG2 I enjoyed the stronghold and character immensely and the Jahiera romance fit the character well but he died before the Underdark. I remember losing interest in the character in BG but this was before the dual wield fix and the annoyance factor was high. I see a new charname forming...
That's good to read @Aerakar - Sadly I'm no stranger to losing stalker runs myself - I had an extremely promising one years ago that, frustratingly, died in the spirit warrior labyrinth in Watcher's Keep level 5 due to bad RNG against the ghost (because of that, I always skip the ghost fight nowadays), and at least 1-2 other ones who failed at some point early in BG1. Hopefully Orima can go the distance
Orima went on a huge wilderness area clearing spree, with little notable incidents until she got to the most dangerous regions - first, at the Sword Coast we ran into a spot of trouble with the first group of sirens - Branwen only had one animated skeleton left, which didn't have enough combat power to deal with three sirens by itself, so I carefully tried to snipe the sirens from maximum range one by one - though as soon as the sirens saw one of us, they aggressively moved forward to dire charm party members - they got Ajantis and Jaheira:
Luckily, Khalid and Orima, due to their elvish charm resistance, stayed on our team and were able to take down the final siren - the charm effect didn't stay active for too long, and no lasting damage occured:
We were much more careful with future groups of sirens, swapping out prayer for another skeleton. Droth is always potentially dangerous because one party member is inevitably quite vulnerable, but we shot him down with relative ease:
Another potentially troublesome encounter was Osmadi - while were able to get through his ironskins before he finished his first spell, the spell turned out to be uninterruptable, and since I could already guess from the spellschool and previous experiences that it was likely to be insect plague, I was able to isolate the target, Khalid, from the group - otherwise the result would've been absolutely devastating - the panic effect was removed by Branwen, and Jaheira was able to grill Osmadi with call lightning:
Finally, we were crazy enough to challenge the red wizards before even going to the Nashkel Mines. The reason I decided to attempt this is because Branwen had just hit level 7 when fighting the nearby spider group, and the level 7 skeleton summons are already pretty damn good against BG1 spellcasters. Orima stealthed forward to scout out the best approach - Denak's prebuffs included stoneskin and protection from normal missles, but these low level stoneskins only absorb a few hits - and we carry a little bit of magical ammunition on everyone, so we were able to shoot down the powerful wizard despite his protections:
Meanwhile, Branwen hit two of the other thayans with silence:
However, the third wizard was able to strike back with an unexpected confusion spell, which hit us pretty damn hard. Only Ajantis and Imoen remained in the clear:
Luckily, the red wizards had failed so far to deal any actual damage to us, so the party sometimes attacking each other wasn't too devastating for their hitpoints - meanwhile, with both skeletons still active, we were able to take down the remaining foes, with the wand of paralyzation stunning the one non-silenced red wizard:
Good job Imoen! Now most wilderness encounters are done, except for the dungeons (Ulcaster, Firewine Ruins), Durlag's upper levels, the doomsayer and Kahrk. Time to travel to the Naskel Mines.
Trio 66 Update 6
Droon II - lvl 12 human bard, protagonist (corey_russell)
Dacre - lvl 10 dwarven berserker (Grond0)
Blub - lvl 9 human cavalier (Gate70)
So the party found themselves in the middle of D'Arnise Keep. We went upstairs and with enrage Dacre wasn't going to have too much trouble with the Yaun-ti mage there. Then the party headed to the charmed head of the guard and Droon II handed a protection from electricity to Dacre so he can safely trip the trap on the door. Then only have to beat down the guard. Well we did win, but Dacre got badly wounded (this would happen a lot of Dacre this session), so the party rested. Then onto the golems and all golems except iron golem taken down. We needed more +3 options, so we made the Flail of Ages, and rested so Droon II would have MMM's. Yes iron golem defeated.
Time for the basement. The party tanked the enemies down here pretty well. We turned in the dog meat in the cell with the help of improved invisibility. The very carefully pulled Torgal, defeated him, Bulb pulled a single troll, defeated that one then the next success. Party had to rest for days though to heal up. Maybe we should get cloak of the sewers.
So the party headed to Waukeen's Promenade to sell, then Dacre lamented he is carrying around this teddy bear forecver. So we headed to the Graveyard and turned in the teddy bear to Wellen. While we were here we took on the undead. We took on a beating, then the Crypt King took down Dacre though didn't chunk him (it was close though as Dacre only had 6 HP). So we headed to a nearby temple but got hit with the Suna Seni ambush. Droon and Bulb did fine, though Dacre lamented he missed out on the experience. Nevertheless we got Dacre raised. Oddly, Dacre had 5 HP and we though he should be at 1 HP, though we weren't complaining.
So after all these beatings, party decided enough was enough let's head to Temple District and get the cloak of the sewers. Getting this item was no trouble. We also took down Mekrath for this Rod of Resurrection and took down some Yuan-ti in the area. Surprisingly the harp was actually useful for the party which Droon used a few times to good effect. While we were in the Temple District Droon II pickpocketed the amulet we needed for Maevar. Party gave him a hard time about it, even though pick-pocketing is what Bards do. We also obtained the fallen paladin quest while we were in the area.
We finally headed to docks to work on Maevar's quests starting by turning the amulet.
* Edwin wanted us to pick on a Cowled Wizard in the area. With improved invisibility, there wasn't much the mage could do against Dacre.
* Some documents obtained from Marcus.
* Embarl was allowed to live in return for his dagger, then we turned that dagger in.
* We obtained the evidence on Maevar, then had to defeat his cronies on the 1st level. Then we went down to Maevar with Dacre leading the way with an enrage. Droon threw in confusion from the harp and the party easily won the fight.
* We reported to Bloodscalp and got our reward. We sold some goodies then started to head out but Grond0 needed to cut short the session so we saved here.
Imoen doesn't have her thieving skills back yet, so we have to trigger a few traps on our way through the Nashkel Mines - however, the kobolds provide little trouble at this point, not even the shaman/chieftain group:
In Mulahey's Lair, we draw the skeletons and kobolds to the entrance, and Mulahey falls before Branwen can even complete her hold person spell:
After taking down Nimbul and Tranzig, we make our way to the various named bandit leaders, but get ambushed on the way - first by the amazons. Two of them start out stealthed, and we can see that they are going after Imoen - no surprise there. While we're taking down the two clerics with relative ease, one of them is able to cast a silence spell on our party before her demise - Imoen gets backstabbed once and has to make sure not to get hit by the second backstab right away:
Casting inivisibility on herself is no option due to silence, and since we have no way to detect invisibility, we're left with the choice of drinking either a potion of invisibility on her or one of concentrated healing - I decide that the invisibility potions are more valuable and go for healing instead, wich brings her back to 40 hp:
Eventually the second backstab lands, and it's a crit - Imoen survives with a measly 8 hp - good thing I didn't just go for a smaller healing potion:
Luckily those two rogues don't carry additional potions to go invisible again, so we can easily shoot them down once they reveal themselves.
Next up, we get Molkar's bounty hunter group. Switching to arrows of biting we're able to take down both spellcasters early on - though once again we get hit by a silence effect before the cleric falls. Oh well - these remaining fighters are rather easy to deal with compared to invisible rogues:
Now we clear out the bandit camp, approaching from the east. We have a few oils of fiery burning/potions of explosion, a wand of fire and necklace of missles at the ready, making use of all of these to thin out the bandit lines:
Taugosz is the first somewhat dangerous enemy to approach us, but he has already taken quite a lot of damage from fireball effects, so a wand of the heavens charge and melee hit is enough to take him down:
The tent guardians arrive as well, but any potential danger here is quickly removed when Imoen manages to land a wand of paralyzation charge on Venkt:
That went rather well - and in the middle of the battle, Imoen actually leveled up, getting back her thieving abilities! Nice! We make a quick trip around the map to open a few locks before tackling the few areas I had left for later due to trap density - Durlag's upper levels are now problem, as we have a scroll learning session behind us and can just cast PfP on everyone for the basilisks. We don't approach the ghost - no reason to challenge SCS spellcasters with access to 6th level spells if the reward isn't extremely high, which isn't the case here (same for Kahrk).
The Firewine Ruins are the next on the list - we fight our way to Lendarn and the ogre mage, and Lendarn disappears into a corner as we send our skeleton summons after him - the ogre mage gets stunned by the paralyzation wand:
Orima is able to find Lendarn again, waits out his mirror images and goes for a backstab:
Not quite enough damage. Lendarn is able to retaliate with a minor sequencer containing two ice knife spells, but Khalid swoops in to deliver the finishing blow:
The Ulcaster ruins remain, but first we have to fight Icharyd - the SCS version of this battle is always challenging, most notably due to the sudden timejump which removes all buffs from the party, so we don't bother prebuffing and cast our spells only after the timejump happens, under constant threat of Icharyd's lightning attacks - not an easy battle, and we have to drink a concentrated healing potion on Ajantis, but we get the victory:
The Wolf of Ulcaster is the other very difficult foe in here. His dispel magic removes all of our prebuffs (Ajantis is allowed to keep what little he has), but we follow up with recitation:
However, this is a crucial mistake - recitation is super powerful, but the very first thing I should have done is to re-buff remove fear - the result of this mistake: The wolf howls and everyone but Jaheira and Ajantis runs in panic:
This is very troublesome - however, the wolf is already badly wounded, and we still have our two skeletons as well. Jaheira and Ajantis start focusing only on the wolf before he calls in more allies or unleashes some other spell effect:
And while Orima triggers the nearby fireball trap, her ring of fire protection + helm of defense easily protect her. Despite our big mistake, we don't suffer any real consequences:
On a final note, we also kill the doomsayer before moving towards Cloakwood:
Cloakwood is noteworthy because the BG1 NPC project apparently adds a companion quest for Jaheira here - I have never fully played with this mod, so the quest is entirely new to me - doing new content blind is always risky, though I was quite confindent in my party at the time. After clearing out the spider area we made it to the shadow druids, where we were able to take down their archdruid as per usual (most notably we avoided getting hit by an insect plague):
I didn't find the NPCs Jaheira was supposedly looking for here. Due to Orima's elven charm resistance I decided to give her a chance to backstab the hamydryad in the next area - the damage wasn't quite enough, but our bhaalspawn got a follow up hit which did the job:
I randomly stumbled into the shadow druids for Jaheira's mod quest while exploring the next area. I did NOT expect a huge group of mid-level (access to 5th level spells) avenger druids (possibly with SCS scripts, though I'm not sure about that) - Luckily I was able to pause before a chaos spell hit my party, which might have immediately ended the run otherwise:
Chaos was already mid flight, there was no way I was going to be able to separate my party in time to avoid the spell. I looked for options in my bags and found the greenstone amulet, one potion of clarity and two potions of magic blocking. Khalid already looked like he would already be out of chaos range, being at the front lines, and Jaheira was mid spell - everyone else got the protection effects:
As you would expect, the 4 point save penalty was too much for Jaheira to handle, and she also got hit by a call lightning spell, which seemed to be quite high level because it kept repeating, though not on random targets but only on her. Luckily she happened to be the one wearing the boots of grounding, otherwise she might have very well died.
The protection effects all lasted almost to the end of combat, and since most druids didn't have ironskins, they were rather helpless now, and we were able to achieve victory:
That was very expensive for the party. Now only the greenstone amulet is left to protect us against similiar crowd control effects until we buy more potions. Back to the previous area, as the quest wasn't finished yet - we rested and once again encountered a group of mostly mid-level avengers, this time with the leader even having access to 6th level spells as he threw a chain lightning at us. However, instead of stumbling into these foes Orima was able to scout them out in stealth, so we were able to summon 2 skeletons, a forest being and get our full buffs going, and with the resulting boost in power we were able to quickly take down these foes before any more dangerous spells hit the party:
The reward for this quest (a +2 club with some lightning resistance and a call callightning charge/day) would usually be quite good, but Jaheira doesn't have points in clubs in this playthrough.
Now, we move to the mines, where Drasus awaits. Summons, buffs, and we carefully move closer inch by inch, shooting down opponents at range - except for a greater malison and a lance of disruption, we aren't hit by anything dangerous due to our methodical approach:
In the Iron Mines level 2, we move through the secret tunnel towards Yeslick, get noticed by a few enemies and make our stand near the cells - most enemies end up moving towards us, but Hareishan never shows up - in fact, she's gone as Orima scouts out the room:
We find her to the east - Orima equips the boots of speed to go for a quick backstab, which, as has been the trend, doesn't deal quite enough damage, but the party is able to follow up with wand of the heavens/of frost charges before the mage can do anything dangerous to us:
The party takes almost the same approach against Natasha at the next level:
And the ogre mage gets hit by the classic command spell:
For Davaeorn, Khalid uses our PfM scroll while the others wait near the entrance to deal with incoming guards - first, though, we lure the battle horrors towards the party (Davaeorn luckily doesn't seem to notice). After using a few wand charges, attacks and magic missles to take them down, Khalid moves to Davaeorn while the others take down the first wave of incoming guards:
Khalid does deal some damage to the master of the mine, and eventually he teleports to the front room, directly in range of our party - while we didn't quite expect that, it does allow for us to hit him with all kinds of wands and spells, and he has no significant physical protections left at this point, so he dies soon after that:
As a final note, because we end the session on our second big scroll learning session at Sorcerous Sundries (where we also refresh our defensive potion supply), we take on the necromancers upstairs to take the spider spawn scroll from them. With our summons taking the first two rounds of enemy spells, we move in and take down our foes with relative ease:
With all the new scrolls our full preparations now include:
2 Skeletons, 1 Forest Being, Remove Fear, Bless, Prayer, Recitation, PfE 10' Radius, Chaos of Battle, Emotion: Hope
For Branwen: Holy Power, DUHM
For Imoen: Shield, Blur, MI
Our more aggressive spells for Branwen include Command, Hold Person, and Silence
Imoen offers Magic Missle, Slow and Icelance (previously also Sleep)
Jaheira has Sunscroch, Alicorn Lance, Call Lightning and Summon Insects at the ready
And, of course, we have two Wands of the Heavens, a bunch of Wands of Magic Missles, and Imoen has Wands of Frost, Paralyzation, Fire and Monster Summoning. Everyone has +2 Melee weapons (except for Ajanatis) and at least a +1 ranged weapon, magical ammo at the ready if needed and our potion supply is looking strong again. We're ready to take on the big city.
Baldur's Gate sidequest time - This was over all quite successful. With our full array of buffs, spells and wands, we didn't face any major issues - we didn't get in trouble in any of the encounters, so I won't describe anything in detail - just to mention that I had to decline the telescope stealing quest because Ajantis' interjection, courtesy of the NPC project, sounded like he was going to leave the party if I accepted it, so for any future potentially illegal quest, I made sure to keep Ajantis out of the building entirely. I also couldn't deliver Nester's dagger, because I apparently forgot to pick it up and it despawned.
Here are some screenshots of various encounters in the city:
We left Degrodel's house for last and used some hill/stone giant potions here to boost our strength scores:
A minor inconvenience while invading the Iron Throne HQ: Due to a wrong dialogue choice, the merchants ended up hostile to the party, so I had to make sure to always leave the AI script turned off and couldn't afford to use any summons in case they'd attack the merchants. Still, it was easy enough to buff up and lure a few Iron Throne lackeys downstairs:
After those are dead, we move upstairs - there are two dangerous thieves here with a few invisibility potions, and I still haven't memorized any detect invisibility spells:
They focused their attention on Branwen, and she had to drink a concentrated healing potion to ensure her survival, but their potions didn't last too long and in the end we cleared out the area:
We foil the ogre mage ambush by drinking six invisibility potions:
A few steps further to the north, we summon in some help, buff up and return to take down the ogres (using the arrow of slaying to destroy one of them instantly). A bit of exploring in the main library, and the party enters the catacombs, taking down some ghasts, spiders and doppelgangers before facing Prat - we open up with a backstab as the party moves in, follow up with slow and make sure to prevent our enemies from completing any spells:
Back in the big city, we first infiltrate the flaming fist HQ - for the hold person spells of the various clerics we can swap around our two rings of freedom:
Back to the Iron Throne - here we got into some actual trouble due to the two stone golems - I underestimated their damage output, trying to let Khalid tank them with his great AC while shooting down Cythandria using magical ammo - disrupting her through stoneskins with elemental damage:
However, before we were able to deal with the wizard, the stone golems actually killed the slowed down Khalid - a concentrated healing potions wasn't enough:
I switched strategies, realizing that I first had to deal with the golems - Ajantis took over tanking duties and we quickly shot both of them down:
Luckily Cythandria didn't use that time to go on the offensive, instead moving around the corner to renew some of her defenses - that didn't work out for her:
After raising Khalid at the Temple of Helm, we rested and went to find the assassins - Slythe was immediately shot down:
I decided to move the party away from Krystin, letting our skeletons take a few spells from her until I could see through the combat log that her PFMW was gone - after that, it was easy to return and kill her:
Now for the ducal palace - we use quite a few of our potions here - cloud giant strength, heroism, agility potions, and Imoen opens with a chaos spell, which works out pretty well:
SCS-improved Liia is not so easy to kill anyway, but the doppelgangers die very quickly, and both dukes are safe:
With most of our potion buffs from the ducal palace still going, clearing the thieve's maze was quite easy (especially with a PfU scroll for Imoen, turning the traps in front of the skeleton warriors into a non-issue. In the Undercity, I gave everyone a scroll + potion of fire protection before unleashing detonation arrows and explosion potions on the hostile party:
Some more PfU scrolls for the skeleton warriors to the north, and Tamoko dies to a hasted assault plus Imoen's double magic missle minor sequencer:
Interestingly enough, we are pretty much exactly at the TotSC experience cap on Orima at this point - so all of this fits together pretty well for a non-SoD run.
As you can imagine, we go all out on buffing for Sarevok - heroism, invulnerability, storm giant strength, speed, agility, fortitude, power (though we only had 3 of these), defense, absorption, fire protection, mind focusing - you name it, we've got it. I also split up the potions of magic blocking, magic shielding and the PfM scrolls among the party. We make sure to dispel Sarevok's haste with one of our only 4 dispelling arrows and move back, spread out and make sure that Semaj's dispel magic only hits one person - Khalid is the target, and with double haste he can easily separate himself from the others:
The choices after the dispel: Either try to re-buff or go for all out magic immunity - I decide that re-buffing will take way to long and have Khalid use a PfM scroll as the party moves north, shooting down Diarmid while Sarevok is busy dealing with our summons:
Angelo und Tazok join the battle, and as you can imagine, Angelo has his own remove magic at the ready. Once again we pay very close attention, see that Ajantis is the target and move him far away while, again, activating a PfM scroll to protect him from further magical attacks now that he's losing his buffs anyway - at the same time, the party takes down Tazok and both skeleton warriors:
While we constantly pause and monitor our opponent's spell casting, we notice a chaos spell going after Orima - she moves away and drinks a potion of magic shielding as the party goes after Angelo:
Both Angelo and Semaj quickly die to our attacks - with only 2 party members having lost their buffs - and we move on to deal with their skeletons - Meanwhile, Sarevok still hasn't killed all of our summons, though he is close:
However, the unhasted Sarevok stands no chance against our entire party - Jaheira just kites him around as we shoot him until he's dead:
All right! That went fairly well. Now we're on to SoA. I've never entered SCS-SoA without any of the extra experience from expansion content and/or SoD, so we might be a bit weaker in the early game, especially considering that we're only using official companions, but being only on tactical instead of insane, I hope that we can still do very well for ourselves.
Wow... the SoA opening dungeon was TOUGH under my current settings. Due to NPC customization and this not being BGT, we have to level up all the characters from level 1 once again, which means that they don't start with any spells memorized - but we only get to rest a single time in the dungeon, and if we use that rest to memorize our spells, the one rest will be right at the beginning, and two entire levels of duergars and mephits will have to be done without ever resting once. In hindsight, the best choice here would have been not to rest right away and not to pick the fight against the ogre mage during the genie dialogue - but I didn't think of that, and to battle the SCS-improved ogre mage I decided that I 100% would need my spells.
The ogre mage not only starts with stoneskins (meaning backstabbing him won't work), minor spell protection (damn, there goes the plan of summoning insects on him) and mirror images (which would make hacking him down take quite long, giving him more than enough opportunity to destroy our party with spells), he also hastes himself - I decide to retreat after he takes down a forest being which was supposed to CC him with confusion, which works through MSD, but failed to hit. Imoen at least manages to counter his haste with a slow spell:
At this point I realized that I haven't really been thinking in SCS mode throughout BG1 - most enemy spellcasters just don't get that many pre-buffs in that part of the game and never pose quite the level of danger that they can in SoA, so I've been brute-forcing my way through almost every spellcaster battle. This won't always work in SoA. So... time to think of a more subtle plan. Orima goes into stealth, the others move far away as our stalker tracks the ogre mage. Minor spell deflection doesn't last forever, and neither does mirror image. For stonesksins, Imoen has a single breach spell. So we just make sure the ogre can't find us until his short-term defenses are gone - once they are, we open the door, breach and kill him with him only being able to use a single chromatic orb:
That's much better - but we've already used a substantial amount of our own spells now, and this was just the first battle. We have to be very careful with spell usage from now on. Jaheira often moves around as a wolf/bear, seing as her combat stats are mostly better in those animal forms at this point in the game due to lacking equipment (and SCS makes shapeshifting in that way a lot more comfortable). We fight our way through duergar hordes without using any magic - Orima goes into stealth for every single battle and always opens with a backstab against the enemy backline. Still not level 9 yet for that juicy x3 multiplier. The x2 one is rarely enough for an instant kill. Once we get to the first duergar mage, we notice he doesn't have shield, so Imoen hits him with her minor sequencer (2*magic missles), which also removes his mirror images:
As you can imagine, health is quickly getting to be a problem. We start drinking healing potions, first the smaller ones, as we make our way to the mephit area - luring them back a bit, we try to take as little damage as possible:
I was planning to join up with Yoshimo just for having another mostly full health bar in the party, but accidentally chose the wrong dialogue options and made him leave. Too bad... we lure the mephits outside their portal room at first as Orima goes in and starts taking down the spawn points - as we move in, Jaheira gets knocked out by color spray, but we're able to finish the portals in time to save her life:
Interestingly enough, we easily get the vampire kill further into the dungeon, in part thanks to Jaheira's moonblade spell:
The next duergar mage awaits - we keep drinking healing potions, even some concentrated ones, just to stay at a health level that won't let us get killed by 2-3 unlucky hits. Orima gets him with a good backstab + follow up attack that, luckily, goes through still-active mirror images:
We've now used every single small healing potion and maybe about 4-6 big ones - we need to pump up our health again before facing the shadow thieves near the exit due to their damage potential with backstab - their leader, however, doesn't get to do much:
As you would expect they go after Imoen, and after the first one backstabs her we have her drink another potion - after that, victory is ours. That wasn't easy - hopefully not a sign for things to come.
Outside, we rest at the nearest inn, making sure Jaheira has true sight memorized for the circus tent. We pick up Aerie - who, as it turns out, starts with no memorized spells as well, so she isn't much use for the quest - still, another target for our foes to go after. This immediately pays off as Khala targets her with a confusion spell, and everyone else gets to stay safe. The gnome dies to the two ranger's melee attacks as Jaheira tries to hit him with two summon insect spells:
Since Aerie is still confused we immediately remove her from the party in case she attacks a random civilian to avoid reputation loss. She doesn't, and we quickly pick her back up to take the gear we've given her for the time before leaving her behind again:
We travel to Copper Coronet and pick up Anomen + Nalia. It turns out that Nalia not only starts with no spells memorized, but even with 0 spells in her entire spellbook. Imoen at least had that going for her. Very strange and inconsistent - well, we have to live with the hand we're dealt, and so we buy 2 potions of genius and have her learn every scroll we have found so far (sadly no 5th level spells at all in that collection). We also quickly recruit Jan as our active thief, who does have spells in his spellbook (though not memorized), but only up to level 4. By the way, we don't plan to keep Minsc forever (I'm thinking about picking up Haer'Dalis for this run), but for now he's a useful party member, just because he's an additional source of damage, won't leave us due to reputation or personal quests and can use Lirlarcor and Azuredge (we trained him in axes instead of maces), both of which are quite powerful early on.
Orima takes the duel against Amalas, using her fire breathing potion to gain an edge:
We explore further into the Copper Coronet backrooms, use backstabs against the slaver wizards and forest beings + fireball to help with fighting the animals. Hendak is freed, and we move into the sewers. Getting our hands on Lirlarcor is easy enough, as we have a second fireball and two holy smite spells for the hobgoblin groups. We're resting as little as possible so we can do as many sidequests before Nalia forces us to travel to De'Arnise keep, so we've kept our buffs for the fight in the slaver's compound - prayer, recitation, bless, haste, defensive wizard/cleric buffs such as shield, blur, MI, armors of faith, DUHM - Orhima has reached level 9 by now, so we get to taste a 3x backstab against the enemy priest:
Much better! We only have 4 arrows of fire from the kobold commandos, but that's enough to kill the two trolls, and Jan casts invisibility 10' radius to get us into a good position against the other big slaver group with the two wizards. Our plan here is to go for insect plague, but both of them die to brute force before the spell is finished - I'll take it:
We turn in the quest and rest again. In the Copper Coronet Jan casts invisibility 10' radius again as we're expecting to get the Suna Seni ambush pretty soon - indeed, as we leave the Government district (after buying the cowled wizard license - we've also bought The Sleeper +2 and Azuredge earlier on), Suna Seni appears - only Orima turned visible due to the dialogue, but she wisely stealthed before leaving the area, and we move to the north where we can summon and buff in peace:
I decide to have Nalia cast two webs at the enemy group, and we start shooting at them at range:
We don't have free action to wade into the webs ourselves, so we have to wait until they're gone to get to some of the enemies that managed to stay further away, but at that point Orima can re-stealth and we have detect illusions already maxed out on Jan, who can greatly help us in dealing with the thief and wizard here. Things are looking a lot better after our sketchy performance in the opening dungeon.
We continue the Athlatka sidequests at the bridge district with the tanner - with true sight available, this one wasn't too difficult:
Orima buys the Blade of Roses +3 and the Sling of Seeking before we move towards the docks. There, we take care of Prebek - Orima sneaks in here early on to backstab/shoot the goblins (run in stealthed, kill one, run out), and after she's done with those we explore the rest of the district - meanwhile the pre-buffs of the two wizards (except for stoneskins) run out, so when we return, we can brute-force them down:
I kind of forgot about Jaheira's curse, but still decided to clear out the pirate lair, using insect plague for the wizard:
We also forge an ankheg plate at Cromwell's after paying the mages at the government district not to help Ployer and taking him down; As we make our way back to the docks, we run into the second ambush - not invisible this time, but that one's a lot easier, and Anomen's holy smite helps a great deal:
So, we start the harper questline and Jaheira immediately gets called back to the hold. This battle deserves a full array of buffs, as we take down one wizard with a backstab, dominate Galavery, insect plague the other spellcasters and use true sight to deal with any thieves - a successful approach:
However, before we can move on to the graveyard, Nalia starts telling us that we finally need to get to her keep, so we don't delay any further - an ambush on the way cannot stop us:
Once we're there, we rest and start taking out trolls. Spirit trolls are dangerous as always, and there is a particularily big troll group outside that is made a LOT easier to deal with by a super successfuly slow spell - good job, Jan:
Once we make it upstairs, Jaheira calls in her freshly gained fire elemental - we get lucky and it's a greater one. Thanks to the SCS changes to elementals, this has kind of a fire aura around it and can cast Shroud of Flame once. This combinations is absolutely devastating against big groups of trolls - I was really surprised how quickly the elemental took care of these guys:
A backstab + elemental attack also were enough to take down the yuan-ti mage:
With our elemental still alive after clearing out most of the level, we also use it against Glaicus, since he can't even deal damage to it:
And it still goes strong when dealing with the iron golem:
Great work, elemental - we forge the FoA and go outside to rest. Downstairs we take down the first group of trolls and move on to the umber hulks before preparing for Tor'Gal. We call in another elemental, beetles and a forest being - we make sure to time our last buffs, most notably recitation, for when Orima lures Tor'Gal towards the party:
Tor'Gal with SCS is quite tough and deals tons of damage, but with some light kiting, our full buffs and a ton of direct damage spells, we're able to take him down relatively quickly:
Now the yuan-ti mage remains as the final significant challenge - we notice that he's casting an abjuration spell centered on Minsc, so we immediately suspect remove magic and try to separate the ranger from the party - indeed, only Minsc gets hit - but also Jaheira, because she was in wolf form and I didn't even notice her at all (Jaheira still has no magical weapons so she uses her shapeshifting forms quite a bit - also for the speed boost):
We retreat for a bit, hoping that our beetles get the mage to waste some of his more powerful spells - he uses cone of cold, teleport field (we can hopefully wait that one out) and even his minor sequencer, a double combust:
After waiting for a bit, we summon our second forest being and cast invisibility 10' radius before returning to the room (the mage has since gone invisible, but that's no trouble for Jan's ability to detect illusions). I notice that the yuan-ti mage has no spell protections (he would go on to cast MGOI, but that didn't help) and have the forest being cast hold monster - he fails his saving throw, and there we have it, the keep is ours:
We travel back right into the graveyard district, where insect plague and a quick fireball help in clearing out the spider's nest:
Back in Athkatla, we start exploring the graveyard crypts. Minsc and the Vampyre hit each other with an Azuredge attack and Domination at the same time, resulting in a dead vampire and a dominated Minsc (I propably could've switched to Lirlarcor in time, to be fair):
Easy enough to survive one dominated party member, though. Our fire elemtal helps clearing out the rest of the level, and we do a few more small little sidequest - We get into the first of the "generic" ambushes, where insect plague rules the day:
Since we're doing some sidequesting around the area, we also buff and go invisible to take down the bridge district party - Nalia and Jan hit the wizard with spell thrust and secret word, making him vulnerable to their spells, and the rest is easy enough (also, our first foe where we have to play wizard chess to get anywhere):
We also haven't taken down Mencar yet, something I usually do quite early on, so it's about time - backstabs and the elemtal help out a lot in making sure the spellcasters don't get to cast - we only take some damage from a backstab and Mencar himself:
In the temple district, we start the various sidequests here and enter the sewers for a short trip, luring the Rakshasa out of the entangle:
Neb is revealed via true sight, making for a rather quick battle:
This forces us to rest because of the automatic restoration exhaustion effect, and we finish up clearing out the main sewer level - we also start the gong task via a limited wish scroll. Jaheira now has two fire elementals, which does grow our combat prowess by quite a bit. Once again backstab + a crit, from our regular invisibility 10' radius opener, take out the enemy wizard and with our buffs and summons, the cleanup is easy enough:
Now, all the non-stronghold quests in Athkatla are done. Before we start going after the three remaining easy strongholds (which would be Mae'Var's Guild, the Temple Ruins and the Druid Grove), we make a stop at Watcher's Keep, mainly to buy a potion case. I'm also thinking about clearing out the non-statue parts of the level before leaving the area first.
Trio 66 FINAL Update!
Droon II - lvl 13 human bard, protagonist (corey_russell)
Dacre - lvl 11 dwarven berserker (Grond0)
Blub - lvl 10 human cavalier (Gate70)
The Trio finally picked up Renfeld and also took down Xzar's buddies and robbed the Harpers. We cleared out the Druid Grove without too much trouble as well. Then we took down the undead for the nobles. Droon wanted to to turn in to the nobles but the party members had other ideas. This meant droon faced two mages alone. Some lightning bolts made short work of Droon. RIP Droon.
Trio 67 first and final update Begon - human abjurer, protagonist (Grond0)
Wyven - halfling assassin (Gate70)
Corethief XXXII - gnome fighter/thief (corey_russell)
Our new Trio didn't get much of a chance to show its paces. We did pick up a level each, thanks mainly to shooting down a blinded Shoal, and explored a bit around the FAI and Beregost. During that, Corey asked (somewhat presciently) what Begon intended to do in case of a bandit ambush. Begon's expressed intention was to avoid that possibility in the early stages of the run by only travelling the roads during the day. However, I don't suppose it came as too much of a shock when he decided for the first time not to stick to that rule while travelling down towards Nashkel. A large group of bandits immediately spotted their opportunity and, though Begon survived the initial round of arrows, the next lot came in before he could get away.
I decide to explore WKI (minus the statues) right away. The one battle of note here are the vampiric wraiths, which can be absolutely devastating enemies - not much to say about the battle, it's mostly hitting and trying to avoid getting hit as they turn invisible all the time. In the end we are able to take them down, though they level drain/deal a lot of damage to Minsc and Anomen:
Still, the resulting loot and experience from the remainder of the level is certainly worth it. As we return to the city, Nalia gets arrested, so we quickly deal with her companion quest, which is easy enough to do. As a followup, Jan's quest starts as well, so we tackle that one as well:
Great - time to go to the Umar Hills. After some sidequesting, we make it to the Temple Ruins and mostly use two greater fire elementals to deal with our foes, with Minsc throwing Azuredge in the background:
The bone golem is our only challenge on the way (we're not high level enough to get any additional tricky spawns here), but we take it down without too much trouble. We buff up for the shade lord and are able to immediately strip its defenses with secret word and breach:
However, our damage output is not quite what I imagined - we try to kite this enemy due to his level drain aura and the fact that he has Black Blade of Disaster going in melee range, but our ranged damage output is sub-par. He also gets an uninterruptable spell next, which turns out to be Finger of Death - I am not too worried about this, the Shade Lord is bound to go down soon and we can just resurrect whomever is hit as Orima has Death Ward active. Minsc is the target - he fails his saving throw (I could have handed him an invulnerability potion at least). However, what I didn't expect was that this FoD resulted in a permanent death, with a shadow spawning out of Minsc's body. Huh.
I guess this is one of the unique Shade Lord ablities given to him by SCS that I've just never seen before:
That is certainly unpleasant - Jaheira summons a Moonblade, we drink some healing potions, call in a flesh golem and finally shoot down our enemy:
Since we got level drained pretty heavily anyway (not enough distance for some characters) we might as well have gone for an all-out melee assault, or I should have prepared with protection from level drain spells - oh well. Minsc is gone, but he was going to be a temporary party member anyway - not the biggest worry, as it's rather easy to fit new characters in his stead due to the SCS NPC customization we have installed. First, though, Jaheira leaves for Harper Hold as we rest back in Imnesvale. With only 4 party members, we fight our way back to our druid:
And back outside, using spell thrust and breach on the enemy wizard:
Our choice on a replacement for Minsc falls on Mazzy, and we give her grandmastery in Axes. Still just a temporary party member - I want Haer'Dalis to fill that spot eventually, but I think going for the planar prison is still too risky right now. Since we had to travel to Trademeet anyway to recruit Mazzy, let's do the Druid Grove next.
Stick (human Beastmaster > Cleric and Pic (elf fighter / mage)
Episode 8 A good day to stay tucked up in bed
Ah the Underground River. We made our way inside, convinced a couple of sahaugin to flee, eventually deposited the barrel of bwoosh (after retrieving it and the divining necklace out of a container) and fought our way past the gate guard. We successfully poisoned the water and food and made good our escape
Back at camp we were sent to a parley, and on our return to camp were asked to guard it against attack
The first wave of attackers including trolls were successfully repelled thanks to archers and their flaming arrows. For the second wave we chose to have qizard slayers help against the wizards. Stick was not the patient sort here, trying to bash the mages with his club and finding his path blocked more often than not
It wasn't long before he paid the price, becoming dominated
Pic put up a good fight for the next few seconds, before being caught by Horror just as he used a potion of fire breath. His hapless running burnt many foes and friends but also retreated him to the campfire so our defence was lost. Worse, he was taking spell damage and if he died while Stick was still dominated... well he had quite a lot of hit points
But not enough. The fates held out their next ticket - MP242 up soon
Toaster: Human Dragon Disciple (Gate70)
Impi: Elf Beast Master (Grond0)
Coredruid XII: Totemic Druid (Corey_Russell) - avatar / Blackstrider portrait to appear next time
Having cleared my screenshot folder after posting the MP242 update above I had little to show for our earlier trio session (if I had screenshotted during the game - I often forget). Hence, a 1-off evidencing via screen capture which will remain available until this playthrough ends or Grond0 / Corey ask me to remove it
It might be interesting for those not familiar with multiplayer to see it expertly (cough) demonstrated. Our clear dialogue is factual and timely, never leaving things unsaid or making snide little jibes or digs to each other. So, on to the game
Toaster and his friends quickly eased their way out of Candlekeep. Impi making his usual attempt at stealing a potion from the clinic which often sees us being chased around until we leave.
Imoen tags along briefly before succumbing to unfriendly fire - Xzar and Montaron get a repeat dose a minute or two later. A wild dog ambush fails to stop us reaching Shoal the nereid, who is blinded and an easy target for our missiles. Our travel away from Shoal sees another bandit (arrow) ambush which ended the previous Trio, and Toaster's suggestion that a sacrificial victim (Impi today) throw themselves in front of the party leader is actualised. So a temple visit near the Friendly Arm Inn
While there we pick up Joia's ring, and taunt Coredruid about ankhegs (for some reason Corey_Russell doesn't like to visit them at low level, with starting equipment, and without protection from acid). On to High Hedge, then to Beregost where Neera is the next unfriendly fire fatality. To the south are a pair of ogrillions robbing letters - and one of them delivers another temple opportunity for Impi
With two temple raise dead's this attempt and four team deaths today we've done enough to sate Grond0's party deathometer in only 26 minutes and can draw our session to a close
Impi died twice - if you want to drill into why, the commentary at the 26 minute mark, and at the start, of the screen capture gives an excellent overview
Comments
Al the fighter: @Grond0
Notable Mods: None
Difficulty: Core Rules
Special: Party only contains unkitted fighters. No use of item-based healing or resurrection.
Start
End
Permanently dead: Yoshimo, April (undead hunter)
Traveling with: Gabrielle (undead hunter), Sarah (inquisitor), Serina (inquisitor)
Most of SoA chapter two quests done. We lost Yoshimo early on in the planar sphere (yikes -nothing for traps). We will probably work on main quest once planar sphere is complete. That fight with the powerful halfling mages is always a tough fight for my melee heavy parties. The inquisitor dispels though were invaluable to keep up the fight. Will keep at it.
The last run I lost in this challenge was a skald, when I relied on magic missiles to interrupt a sirine charm and it decided to be stubborn and ignore the damage. Rolling up a new random choice for another attempt I got a … skald
Hassling Firebead gave me an extra 300 gold and I went to the extreme of using that to buy some chain mail armor as well as a long bow. The latter was used to shoot down a couple of assassins in Candlekeep, as well as Imoen, Xzar and Montaron after leaving it. Xzar could have been a potential problem, as he will fight back with LMD if annoyed. However, using my bard song gives +2 to hit and damage for the rest of the round after stopping singing. That gives a better chance to hit and, together with the +1 damage from a long bow, means that any hit on Xzar will be fatal. The initial shot was successful, so I didn't need to make a fast exit from the map and gratefully learnt the LMD scroll he had.
There were no ambushes on the way to find Shoal and shooting her down was an easy way to jump from level 1 to level 4, picking up 20 HPs in the process. On the way back from there, I stopped off at High Hedge to shoot some gnolls and one of them was kind enough to leave behind a knock scroll for me to learn. Beregost offered some more safe XP by calming down Marl, finding a book for Firebead and using run and shoot on Karlat before returning Perdue's sword. Neera died from a LMD to get me a gem bag. To the south, some ogrillons were shot to get Mirianne's letter and a hobgoblin had some boots to give back (briefly) to Zhurlong. I nipped in and out quickly of a house full of spiders to drag them outside where they could be safely shot. That was enough to get me to level 5. The extra 7 HPs were nice, though of course I'm trying not to rely on them in this run ...
After purchasing some +1 arrows, I returned to High Hedge to shoot the golems before doing a bit of shopping with Thalantyr. I failed with several attempts to learn spells, but did manage to get the most important, invisibility. I also learnt blind, which was duly put to use on Silke. I didn't learn PfP, but that didn't prevent an assault on some nearby basilisks with the help of Korax. I normally lead him down to the south before letting him talk, to make the duration of his charm as effective as possible, and the group of basilisks there took me to level 6. The remaining basilisks and Mutamin then quickly gave me a further level.
I wasn't too hopeful of the chances of Korax against Kirian's mob, but thought I would give him a go. Baerin was blinded and Kirian paralysed in the opening assault, but then trouble appeared out of thin air when Peter cast rigid thinking at me despite never having been in my sight range. I only reacted to that when the projectile had almost reached me, but thought it might be possible to get out of sight range while Korax was still alive even if the spell took effect. As it happened though I saved against the spell anyway and used invisibility to rest. Skull traps, stinking cloud and blindness then rendered Kirian's group helpless to respond.
After travelling down to Nashkel, I used knock to do some looting as well as learning Bhaal CLW. An invisible trip to Firewine Bridge then let me blind Meilum to get his bracers. Moving on to Durlag's Tower, I used skull traps to kill some battle horrors on the path and walls. For a bit of variety, rather than resting to use skull traps on the doom guard, it was blinded and bludgeoned with my staff from outside its sight range. I'd failed to learn MSD earlier and currently had no way to get onto the roof without taking damage. However, skull traps, magic missiles and arrows were used on various ghasts and that took me up to level 8. Before leaving, Riggilo was presented with a hairpiece from Kirinhale, before being blinded and put out of his misery.
While I thought about it, I went to confront the Red Wizards in order to get the Ring of Energy, which is potentially useful in SoD. I learnt several new spells there, though once more failed with PfP. Then, on the way to the FAI, an ogre was blinded and shot down to get me my preferred belt. At the FAI, Tarnesh failed to survive a skull trap before friends ensured that Landrin would shower me with antidotes (to be sold as I'm pledged to never use them quite apart from the intention this run to avoid damage). Jaheira was charmed and pulled outside the inn for disposal to ensure that no-one would get annoyed by her death. On the way to get Joia her ring back I killed a few hobgoblins. One of those had a PfP scroll - which I once more failed to learn.
Skald L8, 51 HPs, 98 kills
Previous updates:
When taking on Bassilus, I did get affected by rigid thinking - but was able to safely wait out of sight until that expired. I collected and tried to restore Melicamp but I'm currently on a very bad run with him and he failed his system check for about the 6th time in a row.
Thinking about improving reputation, I killed a few worgs for Ardrouine before heading for the nearby minesite. After blinding and beating up the Doomsayer, I escorted Brage back to Nashkel. Some half-ogres were killed for Bjornin and while in Beregost Mr Colquetle was given a memento of his son. Prism failed to take advantage of being rescued from Greywolf, but Samuel did survive being invisibly carried all the way back to the FAI.
Helping out the Dryad of the Cloudpeaks was sufficient to get reputation to 20. Friends could already take charisma past that, but I was still planning to go on to the Gnoll Stronghold to pick up the charisma tome. However, before I got there I failed in the attempt to avoid damage. In the cave nearby the dryad there's a chance of encountering a dire wolf. None was there initially, but I rested invisibly there and one appeared. I tried sleeping it from out of sight, but that failed. I expected to be able to try something else and wasn't concentrating closely - and consequently was an instant too slow to react when the dire wolf appeared round the corner and attacked. Even though the battle text showed the pause taking effect first, the dire wolf's lunge still got an attack in before I had the chance to take any other action.
Corepally and team made it out of the planar sphere despite having no thief. I really thought it was going to be over - look at this pic - the entire party is stunned or mazed and to boot the party is badly wounded - was this going to be it?
But no it appears Tolgerias had used most of his good stuff, as soon as stuns/mazes wore off quickly we gulped a potion for each character and got to work - success! Whew.
Fortunately rest of sphere went smoothly and we can finally work on the main quest. We are currently trying to clear out Bodhi's lair.
Well to me, the run that seems like perfection to me was your solo wild mage beating Melissan. There were so many ways for you to die (and indeed you found 99 ways to do that, since it took 100 tries to get a success).
Droon II - lvl 11 human bard, protagonist (corey_russell)
Dacre - lvl 9 dwarven berserker (Grond0)
Blub - lvl 8 human cavalier (Gate70)
So the party found themselves in Irencus' dungeon. With minor globe invulnerability and poison immunity for Blub made traps a little bit easier. As usual, we had little trouble in dealing with enemies. Dacre's enrage is often useful. But we had one problem that we seemed to encounter in that we never got experience notices whenever Blub killed any enemies. While we tried a number of things like re-loading restarting game etc. nothing was changing this. Eventually we discovered we were getting experience from Blub, we just aren't being told about it.
* Circus was taken care of. No problem here.
* Hendak was freed. A slow by Droon II made the beastmaster easy to deal with.
* Next task was to do the Lilacor quest. With Dacre's enrage, the enemies here were pretty simple. Droon II got confused by the mushrooms but he didn't attack anyone so we just waited it out. Party members noticed several times Droon II took the shortcut on the boards next to the trapped door but Droon knows how to avoid the trap.
* Time for slavers in moored ship. We entered via sewers. Droon got in a missile match with the slaver boss (Droon was using MMMs) but Droon was taking significant damage so Dacre lended some support. We won this fight but took lots of damage so rested up. Next fight was the slaver mages and their buddies, a web made them easier to deal with. Blub refused to buy Azuredge when we had the chance, so he had to sit and wait while the other party members used ranged attacks.
* Since Blub refused to buy anything, Droon paid off the shadow thieves.
* We did a quick stop by Watcher's Keep to get the potion bag - no ambushes!
* Next up was trying to get full plate from officer Dirth - easy crush.
* We picked up our goodies from Linvail and headed down to docks to help Mook. We got a vampire ambush on the way and Droon II bumbled and did a spell here (we hadn't yet got the magic license). We beat the vampire easily enough as well as Lassal.
* To insure no mistakes, we had just enough money for a magic license so we got that, and then Dacre commented aren't I glad we didn't spend money on Azuredge.
* We had just enough time to get D'Arnise Keep started, picking up a dagger for Dacre in a trapped chest. We saved our session here.
Baldur's Gate has been a success! It took me a while to get through the tight areas of Ice Island and and I had to carefully tread my way through Balduran's Shipwreck, but that finally went allright. No deaths luckily because I lured with Yeslick the wolves away from the staircase and then hauled up the party into it. But the progress was so gruwelingly slow that I decided to skip Durlag's Tower with its small hallways and just go for Sarevok.
I went through all the areas slowly, meeting Tamoko and the many NPCs who have something of note to say about the Iron Throne or Sarevok being a Duke, as well as Flaming Fists and Harpers making chatter about Scar, Eltan and such. It is always fun to relive the story every year (about my frequency of play). Since Lucius was able to dart so fast I put him on dual dagger for a bit. Dagger being Dagger of Venom and at some point Longtooth. That was no Flaming fist got hurt in the process. Command and Hold Person helped also here and there.
The Coronation was easy. I ran Yeslick the front. I used a wand of summoning, and Ajantis and Alora one by one hit the elite dopplegangers with arrows of dispelling. They were easily dispatched after that. Both Belt and Liia survived. I skipped most of the Maze. A scroll of protection from undead helped Alora disable the majority of traps. Then we left about half of the maze in fog of war.
Sarevok was bested with mostly a lot of potion buffing. Semaj got the treatment of arrows of dispelling. Tazok was handled by Shar-Teel. Yeslick tried to distract Sarevok while I got rid of the minions, and I got rid of Angelo well enough (killed by Shar-Teel as well). Unfortunately, there is only so much place to go without being hit by traps that Yeslick got in a tight corner (even with boots of speed) and Sarevok got two hits of ~50 damage on him. Even Yeslick's -9 AC did not help.
In the end it did not matter, Sarevok died due to consistent arrow and dart pressure from Ajantis, Alora and Lucius. Alora getting the killing blow while Shar-Teel managed to hold on, also with -9 AC due to her picking up some gear from Yeslick.
Final standings.
Party now
Lucius 0 deaths, 677 kills, level 7, 135643 XP: 19-20-18-14-16-13 (str-dex-con-int-wis-cha)
Yeslick dead by Sarevok, 32 kills, level 6/6, 38294 XP each
Shar-Teel 3 deaths, 332 kills, level 7, 124440 XP
Ajantis 0 deaths, 63 kills, level 7, 105406 XP
Quayle 1 death, 7 kills, level 6/6, 50327 XP each
Alora 0 deaths, 54 kills, level 8, 84674 XP
Some math gives a total of 1984 kills.
Out of all kills, 45% was done with melee, 54% with ranged and 1% with spells. I was mostly buffing and debuffing because I was far too afraid of friendly fire with a 5 inch screen.
Lucius got about 34% of total kills with darts being 70% more effective than bows, solely due to attacks per round.
At some point Shar-Teel was gaining kills rapidly due to dual-wielding and having a damage of 11-18 per weapon at 3 attacks per round (unbuffed with strength) vs 5-7 damage with darts at 4 attacks per round (level 7 + 2 proficiency). Even then, Lucius did more damage and got more kills still than the other 4 party members. Even if the melee fighters were getting buffed with strength, it seemed that darts were able to keep up just fine.
I am really happy I took the darter this far. I am considering going through SoD with him, although, I have no clue how to get the save file onto the pc (which got fixed again, yey).
kills statistics
Kagain 4 deaths, 317 kills
Montaron 3 deaths, 39 kills
Khalid 3 deaths, 48 kills
Branwen 2 deaths, 4 kills
Tiax 1 death, 5 kills
Jaheira 1 death, 22 kills
Xan 1 death, 28 kills
Eldoth 0 deaths, 11 kills
Skie 0 deaths, 0 kills
Kivan 0 deaths, 61 kills
Minsc 0 deaths, 35 kills including Edwin
Xzar 0 deaths, 13 kills
Imoen 0 deaths, 133 kills
Garrick 0 deaths, 40 kills
Viconia 0 deaths, 19 kills
Coran 0 deaths, 9 kills
Safana 0 deaths, 26 kills
Faldorn 0 deaths, 1 kill
Edwin dead, 8 kills including Dynaheir
Dynaheir dead, 0 kills
Pending recruitment, none.
Skipped, Baeloth, Rasaad.
This is an attempt at a non-completionist SCS run. I've installed the current SCS version, setting it to tactical, and the BG1 NPC project (though I'm not sure that I'll do anything with it). We'll be playing on core rules. The idea here is to try and do the sped up version of a full saga playthrough that I usually do for my unmodded runs nowadays but do it with SCS - so, no TotSC content (except for the outer/upper areas of Durlag's Tower), no SoD, no hiring NPCs in SoA/ToB just for their companion quests. I usually have done all these things for my SCS runs to maximize experience/item gains, but let's see if we can do it without them. I'm also playing with official companions, which I don't think I've successfully done for a full SCS run yet. While I think this might not be actually needed with the SCS customization options on, I'm first getting my stalker to 32k experience before recruiting a party so we don't all have to grind our way to higher levels.
Orima starts with 18/80 str, 19 dex, 17 con, 15 int, 14 wis and 8 cha, with two points in longbows and longswords each. After a round of Candlekeep sidequests we travel to Gorion's body, pick up the diamond, take items from Imoen, Montaron and Xzar before moving east. There, we take the RoP +1, kite the ogre for Elve's Bane, move south to Beregost and calm Marl, give the book to Firebead, identify and sell the Stupefier for some extra gold.
Further south Orima shoots down the ogrillons - getting her first level up:
On the way to the temple, we get hit by the bandit archer ambush and switch to our large shield - with Elve's Bane and the shield, we escape without getting hit:
To get that 2k experience we move to Bjornin's half-ogres, kite them until they're down and take Brage to Nashkel - perfect:
However, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore in the current version. In the past even SCS had a similiar option - but now, it seems like both mods don't have it anymore.
Well, guess we will have to pick pretty normal standard companions - we get Imoen (thankfully not at level 1, thanks to SCS), dual her to mage (I think the SCS companion customization is a bit bugged with dual classing - Imoen ends up with more experience than she should have afaik), pick up Branwen (she and all others end up starting with 28k experience instead of 32k - I'm not quite sure why its this exact number, and if SCS or the NPC project is responsible - propably SCS), travel to FAI and move north for Ajantis. Tarnesh has to die for us to complete the party with Khalid and Jaheira - a stalker backstab and magic missles do the job:
Not much of note happens here - our party is quite powerful for these encounters, being at levels 5-6 - getting to 32k solo experience before recruiting definitely pays off, as not even SCS-improved spellcasters provide the party with a noteworthy challenge at this point (with tactical difficulty, they aren't as oppressive anyway, especially not in the early game). Our targets are mostly enemies that provide us with useful equipment, such as Bassilus or Greywolf:
In BG2 I enjoyed the stronghold and character immensely and the Jahiera romance fit the character well but he died before the Underdark. I remember losing interest in the character in BG but this was before the dual wield fix and the annoyance factor was high. I see a new charname forming...
Orima went on a huge wilderness area clearing spree, with little notable incidents until she got to the most dangerous regions - first, at the Sword Coast we ran into a spot of trouble with the first group of sirens - Branwen only had one animated skeleton left, which didn't have enough combat power to deal with three sirens by itself, so I carefully tried to snipe the sirens from maximum range one by one - though as soon as the sirens saw one of us, they aggressively moved forward to dire charm party members - they got Ajantis and Jaheira:
Droon II - lvl 12 human bard, protagonist (corey_russell)
Dacre - lvl 10 dwarven berserker (Grond0)
Blub - lvl 9 human cavalier (Gate70)
So the party found themselves in the middle of D'Arnise Keep. We went upstairs and with enrage Dacre wasn't going to have too much trouble with the Yaun-ti mage there. Then the party headed to the charmed head of the guard and Droon II handed a protection from electricity to Dacre so he can safely trip the trap on the door. Then only have to beat down the guard. Well we did win, but Dacre got badly wounded (this would happen a lot of Dacre this session), so the party rested. Then onto the golems and all golems except iron golem taken down. We needed more +3 options, so we made the Flail of Ages, and rested so Droon II would have MMM's. Yes iron golem defeated.
Time for the basement. The party tanked the enemies down here pretty well. We turned in the dog meat in the cell with the help of improved invisibility. The very carefully pulled Torgal, defeated him, Bulb pulled a single troll, defeated that one then the next success. Party had to rest for days though to heal up. Maybe we should get cloak of the sewers.
So the party headed to Waukeen's Promenade to sell, then Dacre lamented he is carrying around this teddy bear forecver. So we headed to the Graveyard and turned in the teddy bear to Wellen. While we were here we took on the undead. We took on a beating, then the Crypt King took down Dacre though didn't chunk him (it was close though as Dacre only had 6 HP). So we headed to a nearby temple but got hit with the Suna Seni ambush. Droon and Bulb did fine, though Dacre lamented he missed out on the experience. Nevertheless we got Dacre raised. Oddly, Dacre had 5 HP and we though he should be at 1 HP, though we weren't complaining.
So after all these beatings, party decided enough was enough let's head to Temple District and get the cloak of the sewers. Getting this item was no trouble. We also took down Mekrath for this Rod of Resurrection and took down some Yuan-ti in the area. Surprisingly the harp was actually useful for the party which Droon used a few times to good effect. While we were in the Temple District Droon II pickpocketed the amulet we needed for Maevar. Party gave him a hard time about it, even though pick-pocketing is what Bards do. We also obtained the fallen paladin quest while we were in the area.
We finally headed to docks to work on Maevar's quests starting by turning the amulet.
* Edwin wanted us to pick on a Cowled Wizard in the area. With improved invisibility, there wasn't much the mage could do against Dacre.
* Some documents obtained from Marcus.
* Embarl was allowed to live in return for his dagger, then we turned that dagger in.
* We obtained the evidence on Maevar, then had to defeat his cronies on the 1st level. Then we went down to Maevar with Dacre leading the way with an enrage. Droon threw in confusion from the harp and the party easily won the fight.
* We reported to Bloodscalp and got our reward. We sold some goodies then started to head out but Grond0 needed to cut short the session so we saved here.
Imoen doesn't have her thieving skills back yet, so we have to trigger a few traps on our way through the Nashkel Mines - however, the kobolds provide little trouble at this point, not even the shaman/chieftain group:
Next up, we get Molkar's bounty hunter group. Switching to arrows of biting we're able to take down both spellcasters early on - though once again we get hit by a silence effect before the cleric falls. Oh well - these remaining fighters are rather easy to deal with compared to invisible rogues:
The Firewine Ruins are the next on the list - we fight our way to Lendarn and the ogre mage, and Lendarn disappears into a corner as we send our skeleton summons after him - the ogre mage gets stunned by the paralyzation wand:
Cloakwood is noteworthy because the BG1 NPC project apparently adds a companion quest for Jaheira here - I have never fully played with this mod, so the quest is entirely new to me - doing new content blind is always risky, though I was quite confindent in my party at the time. After clearing out the spider area we made it to the shadow druids, where we were able to take down their archdruid as per usual (most notably we avoided getting hit by an insect plague):
The protection effects all lasted almost to the end of combat, and since most druids didn't have ironskins, they were rather helpless now, and we were able to achieve victory:
Now, we move to the mines, where Drasus awaits. Summons, buffs, and we carefully move closer inch by inch, shooting down opponents at range - except for a greater malison and a lance of disruption, we aren't hit by anything dangerous due to our methodical approach:
2 Skeletons, 1 Forest Being, Remove Fear, Bless, Prayer, Recitation, PfE 10' Radius, Chaos of Battle, Emotion: Hope
For Branwen: Holy Power, DUHM
For Imoen: Shield, Blur, MI
Our more aggressive spells for Branwen include Command, Hold Person, and Silence
Imoen offers Magic Missle, Slow and Icelance (previously also Sleep)
Jaheira has Sunscroch, Alicorn Lance, Call Lightning and Summon Insects at the ready
And, of course, we have two Wands of the Heavens, a bunch of Wands of Magic Missles, and Imoen has Wands of Frost, Paralyzation, Fire and Monster Summoning. Everyone has +2 Melee weapons (except for Ajanatis) and at least a +1 ranged weapon, magical ammo at the ready if needed and our potion supply is looking strong again. We're ready to take on the big city.
Baldur's Gate sidequest time - This was over all quite successful. With our full array of buffs, spells and wands, we didn't face any major issues - we didn't get in trouble in any of the encounters, so I won't describe anything in detail - just to mention that I had to decline the telescope stealing quest because Ajantis' interjection, courtesy of the NPC project, sounded like he was going to leave the party if I accepted it, so for any future potentially illegal quest, I made sure to keep Ajantis out of the building entirely. I also couldn't deliver Nester's dagger, because I apparently forgot to pick it up and it despawned.
Here are some screenshots of various encounters in the city:
We foil the ogre mage ambush by drinking six invisibility potions:
With most of our potion buffs from the ducal palace still going, clearing the thieve's maze was quite easy (especially with a PfU scroll for Imoen, turning the traps in front of the skeleton warriors into a non-issue. In the Undercity, I gave everyone a scroll + potion of fire protection before unleashing detonation arrows and explosion potions on the hostile party:
As you can imagine, we go all out on buffing for Sarevok - heroism, invulnerability, storm giant strength, speed, agility, fortitude, power (though we only had 3 of these), defense, absorption, fire protection, mind focusing - you name it, we've got it. I also split up the potions of magic blocking, magic shielding and the PfM scrolls among the party. We make sure to dispel Sarevok's haste with one of our only 4 dispelling arrows and move back, spread out and make sure that Semaj's dispel magic only hits one person - Khalid is the target, and with double haste he can easily separate himself from the others:
Wow... the SoA opening dungeon was TOUGH under my current settings. Due to NPC customization and this not being BGT, we have to level up all the characters from level 1 once again, which means that they don't start with any spells memorized - but we only get to rest a single time in the dungeon, and if we use that rest to memorize our spells, the one rest will be right at the beginning, and two entire levels of duergars and mephits will have to be done without ever resting once. In hindsight, the best choice here would have been not to rest right away and not to pick the fight against the ogre mage during the genie dialogue - but I didn't think of that, and to battle the SCS-improved ogre mage I decided that I 100% would need my spells.
The ogre mage not only starts with stoneskins (meaning backstabbing him won't work), minor spell protection (damn, there goes the plan of summoning insects on him) and mirror images (which would make hacking him down take quite long, giving him more than enough opportunity to destroy our party with spells), he also hastes himself - I decide to retreat after he takes down a forest being which was supposed to CC him with confusion, which works through MSD, but failed to hit. Imoen at least manages to counter his haste with a slow spell:
Outside, we rest at the nearest inn, making sure Jaheira has true sight memorized for the circus tent. We pick up Aerie - who, as it turns out, starts with no memorized spells as well, so she isn't much use for the quest - still, another target for our foes to go after. This immediately pays off as Khala targets her with a confusion spell, and everyone else gets to stay safe. The gnome dies to the two ranger's melee attacks as Jaheira tries to hit him with two summon insect spells:
Orima takes the duel against Amalas, using her fire breathing potion to gain an edge:
We continue the Athlatka sidequests at the bridge district with the tanner - with true sight available, this one wasn't too difficult:
We travel back right into the graveyard district, where insect plague and a quick fireball help in clearing out the spider's nest:
Back in Athkatla, we start exploring the graveyard crypts. Minsc and the Vampyre hit each other with an Azuredge attack and Domination at the same time, resulting in a dead vampire and a dominated Minsc (I propably could've switched to Lirlarcor in time, to be fair):
Droon II - lvl 13 human bard, protagonist (corey_russell)
Dacre - lvl 11 dwarven berserker (Grond0)
Blub - lvl 10 human cavalier (Gate70)
The Trio finally picked up Renfeld and also took down Xzar's buddies and robbed the Harpers. We cleared out the Druid Grove without too much trouble as well. Then we took down the undead for the nobles. Droon wanted to to turn in to the nobles but the party members had other ideas. This meant droon faced two mages alone. Some lightning bolts made short work of Droon. RIP Droon.
Begon - human abjurer, protagonist (Grond0)
Wyven - halfling assassin (Gate70)
Corethief XXXII - gnome fighter/thief (corey_russell)
Our new Trio didn't get much of a chance to show its paces. We did pick up a level each, thanks mainly to shooting down a blinded Shoal, and explored a bit around the FAI and Beregost. During that, Corey asked (somewhat presciently) what Begon intended to do in case of a bandit ambush. Begon's expressed intention was to avoid that possibility in the early stages of the run by only travelling the roads during the day. However, I don't suppose it came as too much of a shock when he decided for the first time not to stick to that rule while travelling down towards Nashkel. A large group of bandits immediately spotted their opportunity and, though Begon survived the initial round of arrows, the next lot came in before he could get away.
I decide to explore WKI (minus the statues) right away. The one battle of note here are the vampiric wraiths, which can be absolutely devastating enemies - not much to say about the battle, it's mostly hitting and trying to avoid getting hit as they turn invisible all the time. In the end we are able to take them down, though they level drain/deal a lot of damage to Minsc and Anomen:
I guess this is one of the unique Shade Lord ablities given to him by SCS that I've just never seen before:
Stick (human Beastmaster > Cleric and Pic (elf fighter / mage)
Episode 8 A good day to stay tucked up in bed
Ah the Underground River. We made our way inside, convinced a couple of sahaugin to flee, eventually deposited the barrel of bwoosh (after retrieving it and the divining necklace out of a container) and fought our way past the gate guard. We successfully poisoned the water and food and made good our escape
Back at camp we were sent to a parley, and on our return to camp were asked to guard it against attack
The first wave of attackers including trolls were successfully repelled thanks to archers and their flaming arrows. For the second wave we chose to have qizard slayers help against the wizards. Stick was not the patient sort here, trying to bash the mages with his club and finding his path blocked more often than not
It wasn't long before he paid the price, becoming dominated
Toaster: Human Dragon Disciple (Gate70)
Impi: Elf Beast Master (Grond0)
Coredruid XII: Totemic Druid (Corey_Russell) - avatar / Blackstrider portrait to appear next time
Having cleared my screenshot folder after posting the MP242 update above I had little to show for our earlier trio session (if I had screenshotted during the game - I often forget). Hence, a 1-off evidencing via screen capture which will remain available until this playthrough ends or Grond0 / Corey ask me to remove it
https://photos.app.goo.gl/uT326EtYL6WXj6hP9 - on a newish pc so need to balance the sound a bit in future
It might be interesting for those not familiar with multiplayer to see it expertly (cough) demonstrated. Our clear dialogue is factual and timely, never leaving things unsaid or making snide little jibes or digs to each other. So, on to the game
Toaster and his friends quickly eased their way out of Candlekeep. Impi making his usual attempt at stealing a potion from the clinic which often sees us being chased around until we leave.
Imoen tags along briefly before succumbing to unfriendly fire - Xzar and Montaron get a repeat dose a minute or two later. A wild dog ambush fails to stop us reaching Shoal the nereid, who is blinded and an easy target for our missiles. Our travel away from Shoal sees another bandit (arrow) ambush which ended the previous Trio, and Toaster's suggestion that a sacrificial victim (Impi today) throw themselves in front of the party leader is actualised. So a temple visit near the Friendly Arm Inn
While there we pick up Joia's ring, and taunt Coredruid about ankhegs (for some reason Corey_Russell doesn't like to visit them at low level, with starting equipment, and without protection from acid). On to High Hedge, then to Beregost where Neera is the next unfriendly fire fatality. To the south are a pair of ogrillions robbing letters - and one of them delivers another temple opportunity for Impi
With two temple raise dead's this attempt and four team deaths today we've done enough to sate Grond0's party deathometer in only 26 minutes and can draw our session to a close
Impi died twice - if you want to drill into why, the commentary at the 26 minute mark, and at the start, of the screen capture gives an excellent overview
Our characters at the end of the session