The untimely end of our previous run gave us the time to make some decent progress with the latest attempt. As usual character classes were determined randomly, but with arcane, divine and thieving abilities all covered the choices seem reasonably favourable.
We had a bit of discussion early on about the end of my Trio run yesterday at the hands of a bandit ambush and whether we should make an effort to avoid that - or at least wear some armor. However, we decided that the gods of chance should be given their shot - and today they were on our side, with no ambushes until we'd gained some levels and the later ones that did occur caused no real concern .
Shoal provided us with an early levelling opportunity before we did some bits and pieces around Beregost. Then it was down to Nashkel where we picked up the ankheg armor, but Brog decided he would stick to his shadowy leather rather than keep that to use on the odd occasion anyway. Moving on down we took on Greywolf and spent a while running him round before Brog's half-orc strength sent one too many bullets deep into Greywolf's body.
After picking up Samuel we headed for the FAI, though with a stop-off on the way to kill some spiders. They were a bit reluctant to be dragged outside, so Brog spent a while hiding and sneaking inside to pull off a leg or two in each of a number of visits. At the FAI Brog set himself to backstab Tarnesh, only to note that the mage had partly turned round as he brushed past him. On my screen Tarnesh didn't turn, so things looked a bit odd as Brog repositioned himself and demonstrated a successful backstab from the side.
Next we visited the basilisk area. Cria had looked at the prices at High Hedge earlier and decided not to indulge herself by buying anything except the potion case. Hence we expected to be reliant on Korax for protection there. While dragging him down to the bottom of the map though, an intruding gnoll dropped a PfP scroll, so it looked like we would move on to Plan B. Before we killed Korax though Cria flubbed her learning attempt and we reverted to Plan A. The basilisks were being nicely co-operative, with nearly all of them staying in gaze mode rather than switching to melee and it didn't take long to work round those and deal with Mutamin as well. That meant we could have used Korax to attack Kirian's party, but decided to rest instead so that we could use our own spells - with Cria by this time having learnt web from a random drop. Two webs and a successful silence of the casters later and things looked bad for Kirian's party. However, Baerin got lucky in saving against the webs and forced Cria to retreat after hitting her with several arrows. The extra time spent killing him meant that the web expired and Kirian got her voice back before we could kill her - with Lindin also still active. To stave off the potential danger from a lightning bolt, Cria picked up a potion of explosion from the ground and used that to kill Kirian. Lindin was then duly finished off as well to leave us triumphant if rather battered.
On the way to get Meilum's bracers we stopped off to try and save Arabelle from some xvarts. That was duly done with the help of web, but we got no reward there thanks to Hulrik eating too many of the local mushrooms and seeing hordes of imaginary xvarts still attacking his cow.
The session ended with a trip through the Cloud Peak Mountains to recover the charisma tome.
@Gate70 I know yesterday was not exactly a shining example of how to stay safe in MP, but I'm pretty sure that your run was the only one to emerge from the session still active.
We fight our way through the druid grove - De'Arnise keep has shown us how good slow is against big groups of trolls, so we repeat that experience at the troll mound:
Our fire elementals really help out a lot here, and we finish up the gong quest, overwhelm the various druids and take down the rakshasas:
In SCS, I have always taken the option of having Cernd take down Faldorn in a cutscene, but I decided to try my hand at having Jaheira challenge her directly - a bit scary because I didn't know how tough SCS Faldorn would actually be in a real battle. I prepared some spells for the fight and rested, but that triggered the Dermin attack from Jaheira's questline. Luckily we were able to take out two spellcasters beforey they got their pre-buffs going and the third one was easy to breach, so despite not being prepared at all, we did fairly well here:
Jaheira gets buffed up with everything have, including all types of potions. Once inside the pit, she summons a fire elemental while Faldorn calls in animals. The fire elemental activates Shroud of Flame:
Sadly Faldorn's next spell is an uniterruptable one, and it's insect plague - though the fear effect can't hit Jaheira due to her buffs. No more spellcasting, though. Jaheira turns into a wolf. As it turns out Faldorn's defenses aren't all that strong, and the fire elemental by itself basically takes her down:
I guess she doesn't get that many pre-buffs - if she did have protection from fire, this would've been a very different battle.
Well, we do the various follow-up Trademeet sidequests (and buy everything we need from the merchant here) and make our way back to the city for the thief stronghold - Rayic dies to our opening assault:
Mae'var follows quickly - we get hit by a few backstabs upstairs which we counter with healing potions, but once an enemy is out of stealth we can counter the follow up invisibility potions with detect illusions:
Delon arrives to call us back to Imnesvale for the second ranger quest:
Since my plan is to go for the Windspear Hills soon, I decide to pay Gaelan since I want the AoP and iMoD for the vampire groups in Firkraag's dungeon. The first two thief quests are easy enough as always, and we have Azuredge and the AoP to help out with vampire battles. Tanova uses PFMW early when we send a summon her way, we move away for a bit, and at the time she starts actually dealing damage to us, PFMW is gone and Azuredge kills her:
We go downstairs and Mazzy takes on Lassal:
Bodhi is a bit tough for us compared to the usual as we're lacking in direct damage a bit, so she gets to level drain a few of us before she has to retreat:
At this point I realize that we don't have the funds to actually craft the iMoD +2 yet, so I decide to look for what content we still can do to get some cash without committing to a dangerous quest. First on our list is freeing Haer'Dalis - Mekrath dies to our opening assault:
We also move a little bit into the old tunnels, only talking with Ghaal and moving towards the riddle bridge, but not crossing it (don't want to mess with beholders yet). With that, and by selling a rogue stone I was originally keeping for later, we have just enough to upgrade our mace. At Windspear Hills, our first task is to take on the Rukh Transmuter:
For golem groups our aerial servant and fire elemental are very helpful. The big vampire group faces now Azuredge on Mazzy, iMoD +2 on Anomen, a Jaheira protected by the AoP and our summons - both Anomen and Mazzy with improved haste:
The next big golem group is actually quite scary, and the cursed wounds don't make it any better - both Anomen and Mazzy get fairly close to death, but make it out alive in the end:
Now we're forced to memorize remove curse and rest for a bit before making it to even more golems to the west. This time things go much better, and we shoot down the adamantite golem from range:
Conster dies to some traps and our first wave of attacks:
Fire protection spells help out with the tomb guardians, and we turn in the quest before dealing with Umar at Imnesvale (strangely enough, we don't get called by Delon, but as we enter the area to rest at the inn (camping supply issues), we get told about Umar there, so we take her out on our own - luckily we still get the reward despite not actually having the quest in our quest log).
Next stop should propably be the planar prison, where we can finally recruit Haer'Dalis.
We buff up fully and enter the planar prison, taking out spellcasters and thieves before they can do any significant damage in the opening battle:
Quickly, the party moves eastwards. The wizard thrall here hits us with a remove magic, which removes some of our buffs, but she has no protection against breach:
We take down the master of thralls and its air elementals before taking a quick rest:
Once again, we activate our buffs, destroy the orb and move to take down the warden - he's just starting to fight the thralls, with no pre-buffs yet active, so the takedown is rather easy:
However, as we return to Athkatla, the game crashes (this is a somewhat common point for a crash for me). I had luckily quicksaved before taking on the warden, but I'll have to replay the warden battle. This time, strangely enough, the warden immediately activates all of his pre-buffs as we destroy the orb, making this battle a lot more difficult. However, he's using PFMW as a primary physical protection instead of some kind of mantle, so we can switch to our non-magical weapons and win take him down that way:
Now we recruit Haer'Dalis and do some scroll learning. This will weaken the party in the short term (Mazzy with grandmastery in axes was an absolute beast in terms of damage output) but once we regularily get to the point where the one thing that's most likely to kill us is remove magic, having Haer'Dalis will pay off (in fact, Orima is the only one unable to protect her buffs in this party, which is why I chose these specific NPCs).
On to the planar sphere. A summon gets these halflings to trigger their pre-buffs and even buff a bit more, so we can just wait out most of them:
We get dispelled pretty heavily in the process of finally taking them on and have to counter a few mantle-like spells with breaches:
The second group of halfling spellcasters relies on PFMW instead, so we're back to normal weapons for a quick takedown:
The golems to the east force us to rest due to cursed wounds, and we move to Tolgerias. He has a lot of hitpoints for a wizard, and usually a single backstab isn't enough to get him - but here we have both Jan and Orima, and the double backstab is just enough:
After clearing out the elemental rooms, once again we have to fight golems - using a fire elemental/aerial servant to help us out, plus Jaheira's ironskins. For Lavok, we still have our skeleton summons - he death spells the first one and calls in his own animated dead for the next round - but since he can't really hurt our skeletons, he instead decides to (to my surprise) dimension door right towards the party. He's invisible at this point, so Jan detects illusions, and his main physical protection, aside from stoneskins, luckily is PFMW, so we don't have to try to get through his spell protections - it's just normal weapons + quick attacks:
This could've gone very wrong, as I didn't have a lot of buffs active. If he had something like improved mantle instead and started slinging around ADHWs, we might've been in big trouble. Well, now we get to hunt down some demons - easy enough with some chaotic command spells to help out - and finish the quest.
Finally we move to the Unseeing Eye - because Anomen just gained level 15, we get the good skeleton warriors for the beholders:
No lich spawn at ghoul town, so our iMoD + Azuredge easily do the job, though we have to be careful with the greater mummy:
Once again skeletons help us to clear out the beholder hive, and the rift device does its job against the Unseeing Eye:
Ghaal doesn't stand much of a chance:
We buy the last few items we need - which put me at essentially zero gold (below 1k), but we were able to afford everything that would be useful despite the increased prices for Gaelan and the Magic License. This party is quite hungry for vendor items as it can make use of a lot of different things. On to Brynnlaw - we quickly deal with the vampire ambush and stop playing for now:
A tiny little update for today - I explored Brynnlaw, and Jan took down Perth with an impressive 190 damage backstab critical hit:
A quick sidequest for Ginia and we rescue Claire before entering Spellhold. There, all our equipment gets taken away thanks to SCS, and we at least get access to a few normal weapons from these minotaurs and orogs, courtesy of our summoned skeleton warriors:
Aside from our summons (mostly skeletons, an aerial servant and a fire elemental), we also make use of the enchant weapon spell (which only Nalia has access to), which allows us to hit more powerful enemies such as the greater wolfwere and pit fiend at the portal:
However, I didn't have the time to go further than level 1 of the Asylum, so we will continue our no-equipment challenge with the next update.
In the second asylum level, we deal with the tome by trapping the mind flayer and using skeletons for the beholder. Luckily, we don't get a lich spawn when dealing with the undead group and take down the greater mummy with spells at range:
Our summons help with tanking Dace as Jaheira goes for static charge while those with the enchant weapon spell attack:
Level 3 - a lot of of the area is cleared out by skeleton warriors, while the party helps out mostly with ranged weapons. Very sparingly, we used the fire arrows from the kobolds to take down trolls. We send two skeletons towards Bodhi to help out Orima so she doesn't get level drained too hard by the vampires, but in the end they don't even get any attacks in before the slayer transformation happens. Back to the room with the picture doors, and we use traps and skeletons for the ulitharid:
The true danger here are the clay golems. For those, we have an aerial servant, enchant weapon on Jaheira and Anomen and Jan's +3 staff. With all the buffs on our side we end up with a fairly convincing victory anyway:
Only Jan gets hit by cursed wounds, and we have exactly one remove curse ready, so that works out quite well. Now we go through the various trials, the +2 club for Jaheira is a helpful addition to our meager equipment, and we fully buff up before bribing lonk with 2k gp and taking down Jon - we have 6 improved haste spells, so everyone gets one, which gives us enough damage to take him down while he calls in the clones - we retreat, defeat our clones and take down the assassins:
Now we have to spend about as long as it took to clear the asylum to sort out our inventory again, as we get back our gear. We also drink some potions of genius to learn more spells and change up our spellbook, as we don't need enchant weapon or quite as many summons anymore. In the city of caverns, skeleton warriors help us clear out the place, we use sunray for the sea zombies and take down the king & prince for their gear:
Next time, we shall venture into the Underdark. We've barely made it to enough death wards and chaotic commands to safely explore the place, though I will have to check my saving throws to see if I can avoid some CCs in order to get the mind flayers down here to still use their classic crowd control spells instead of raw damge output.
We start our underdark journey by buffing chaotic commands and going mind flayer hunting:
The party activates buff protections and moves towards the drow party and the myconids - two wizards have mantles going which they renew once, but we just wait them out while taking care of other opponents in the meantime - they can remove some of Orima's buffs, but the others are well protected:
To the east we take down the other drow group and the kuo-toans before entering the kuo-toa lair, summoning skeletons to defeat the beholders and moving north. Here, Jaheira gets into a very awkward, potentially deadly situation that I didn't notice at first. I think I had the auto-attack AI script active and she must have followed a fleeing enemy north while the others still were busy fighting in the tunnel - she ended up by herself and with her ironskins crumbled, surrounded by enemies:
Trying to save Jaheira, Jan buffs everyone with haste and we move in as fast as possible. Jaheira has all of our best armor items stacked on her, so she actually takes very few hits, and one concentrated healing potion is enough to keep her alive until the cavalry arrives:
Now we go to the underdark exit, backstabbing two of the enemy spellcasters with Jan and Orima:
A slow spell from the golems does hinder us a bit, but in the end we emerge victorious:
The demon knights are left for later, I need to rest before taking them on. First, though, we return the lost spellbook and deal with the elemental portals:
We add protection from fire to our buffs to be able to deal with the improved fire elementals at the fire portal:
However, do you know who doesn't have protection from fire? The questgiver. He apparently gets hit by shroud of flame in the confusion and ends up dying - now we can't finish the quest. Too bad...
There are two important encounters left here, and they are the ones where we need our new array of full buffs - the full list is something like:
Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Remove Fear, Protection from Fire, Prayer, Recitation, Bless, Emotions Hope/Courage, Improved Haste, PfE 10' Radius for everyone. For the arcane spellcasters, Shield, Blur, Mirror Image, Stoneskin, sometimes Spirit Armor (though this often goes on Orima), Spell Immunity: Abjuration, Haer'Dalis gets 18 con from the fortitude belt as well, and those with below 18 dexterity get Cat's Grace. The divine spellcasters get Armor of Faith, Anomen and Jaheira of course get Entropy Shield, Jaheira adds Ironskins, Anomen DUHM and ISOM; Sometimes we start to add spell protections such as Minor Spell Deflection on Orima (who also uses MI from Ilbratha) and spell reflection on Nalia. Once we get access to more spellslots and scrolls, we will propably add Spell Shields, ISOM for Jaheira, PFME for everyone and possibly spell protections for everyone into the mix. I'm propably forgetting about some spells.
Well, the balor is our first victim: He unleashes all sorts of powerful fire spells such as firestorm and aura of flaming death - he would propably try to remove magic as well, but dies before he can do so. Only Orima could lose her buffs anyway, and I was ready to retreat with her if needed:
The other group we have to fully buff up for are the demon knights - here, Orima does get hit with the partial dispel, but only gets hit by a few fireballs as a consequence, and she has some item-based fire resistance:
We also make a quick move to the beholder lair to take down the opening ambush before resting up. Next time, we will explore the beholder lair and try our hands at the mind flayer city.
Okay, we're in the beholder hive - send in the skeletons!
We, of course, help out our undead with the drow and the mind flayers first before letting them roam free. However, moving to the south-east, we got into a very dangerous situation when, due do pathing, a beholder went all the way around to our back, where Nalia (who was just casting death spell on a magical sword) was exposed, together with Orima (who was safely in stealth, though):
I had the remaining party move in immediately as this beholder could easily kill Nalia - luckily, we were able to take it out before it dealt any real damage, with only Jaheira taking a cause wounds spell:
Back to the skeletons clearing the area for us:
Now for the mind flayers. My initial plan was to keep Jan without chaotic commands because I was able to get his saving throws low enough to be safe against stun/dominate spells with spirit armor (hoping this would entice the mind flayers to use less detonate/ballistic attack effects), but that plan quickly failed when I accidentally buffed Jan anyway, so I mostly had to deal with lots of damage on the group, trying to avoid huge bursts. This mostly meant drinking a lot of healing potions during and after combat:
At on point Orima got into pretty big trouble due to a dangerous ballistic attack, maybe the closest she's been to dying yet:
But in the end, we made it out of there with relative ease:
@Gate70 I know yesterday was not exactly a shining example of how to stay safe in MP, but I'm pretty sure that your run was the only one to emerge from the session still active.
Agreed, updated.
Trio 68 second and final session (link to first).
We managed about an hour and were making pretty good progress when we reached the roof of Durlag's Tower. The four basilisks there were dealt with and I levelled up as Corey_Russell braved the fireball trap to retrieve the +2 scimitar
He commented that the fireball had not triggered. I suggested that was probably due to me being in the levelling up screen. About a minute later I completed selecting spells and left the level-up screen at which point
a fireball erupted centred on him, and caused 21 damage to his character. He had by this time moved well away from the trapped container and was standing near to Grond0
who was outside range of the trapped container, but not the unexpected source of Corey_Russell's character. To boot, Grond0's character was wearing Gorion's belt which gave him a 100% penalty to fire damage
60 damage was easily enough to chunk him, so our run was over (could have called it a multiplayer bug and reloaded but we'd only got the autosave from area arrival and it felt like a game-ending situation to me. On to the next attempt
After our surprise death last run, we rolled a new set of lambs to the slaughter. Here's what I did:
* Candlekeep chores finished without issue
* Picked up a ring in a stone and tried to pick up the piercing belt but Impish let himself get killed. So we headed to FAI to resurrect him. Then a spirit animal distracted Tarnesh but a guard got the kill.
* While we were here we picked up Gaia's ring.
* Then we headed to Shoal and a spirit lion kept her busy.
* Then we headed south to pick up stealth boots and a necklace from a fallen citizen.
* When we got to Nashkel I let Impish keep the ankheg armor since Coreranger is using plate armor.
* We picked up a magical flail from a peasant in Ankheg Farm. We debated taking on ankhegs but decided against it.
* We then headed to basiliks area. We had killed about 1/2 the basilisks and ran out of time and saved here.
The party enters Ust'Natha after placing some traps for the underdark party, which mostly ends up dying to the secondary poison effect after a while. We use death spell to free Phaere and move back to the city, where we do the pit fights. The wizard duels are perhaps not the safest content to engage in considering that our wizards are comparatively low level and not well equipped for such things, but Nalia is able to run the first wizard out of spells with tons of summons and defensive spells, and she's the superior fighter in physical combat due to her equipment:
Jan is able to get a hit with a stunning bolt on the next wizard right as his first physical protection runs out, making for an easy win:
However, the third and final wizard is able to completely dispel Jan, though he's basically out of mantles himself now, so I have high hopes of hitting him with a stunning bolt - before Jan can do that, though, the enemy casts dominate and Jan fails to save:
Apparently, this means that Jan has lost, despite the fact that he doesn't die. Oh well - we're only missing out on a little experience here:
After resting, we have to deal with Quile. Full buffs and Hear'Dalis' remove magic (using his high levels as a bard) are the keys to a quick victory:
The next three drow city quests are easily completed. Things get much more interesting when we face Deirex, our first lich battle. This battle leads me to believe that there have been some pretty heavy changes made to the spellcaster scripts in this version of SCS compared to my previous experiences. First things first, obviously Orima, being the only one unable to protect her buffs, gets dispelled and runs away to the east. Deirex uses dimension door (which seems to be way more commonly used by our opponents now as well), Orima runs again, and we move to the west, managing to dodge Deirex' timestop:
Now in my experience, every high level spellcaster like this has access to death spell - but usually it's one death spell, sometimes two, so after sending a few skeletons in their directions they usually run out of tools to easily deal with them - this version of Deirex, though, had THREE death spells memorized - that's a lot. However, I still wasn't out of skeletons (given that not only Anomen, but also Nalia and Haer'Dalis can summon them), adding in some aerial servants as well. Soon the lich was out of PFMWs, so I decided to let Anomen cast his second Entropy Shield, get him improved haste and try and get the iMoD +2 kill - which worked out just as planned:
Now we have to fight House Jae'llat. Orima gets new buffs, and we move in. Remove Magic is once agains key to dispel the masses of lower level opponents:
We leave Ust'Natha under haste after betraying the matron mother and Phaere, fighting our way to the surface and resting, finally. Back in Athkatla, we meet the Githyanki, but we expected this battle, so we already had some long-duration buffs going - secret word, spell thrust and breach on Kruin, and the most dangerous foe is gone:
Since it's night time, we also deal with Bodhi's vampire ambush, Anomen gets knighted, and we use this round of buffs for the city gates lich battle. I decide that Orima doesn't move into the chamber with the other 5, because she's at high risk of death without the opportunity to flee and no way to protect against dispels. The lich timestops and unleashes spell trap and cloudkill (I wonder why spell trap wasn't among his pre-buffs, propably due to only playing on tactical difficulty). Obviously, his PFMW is gone as timestop runs out, and this is enough of a window for Anomen to land the iMoD +2 kill:
Cromwell forges a few items for us, we buy some stuff from Deidre and the helm from Ribald's special goods. Daystar is a welcome addition to Orima's weapon arsenal, she now has a lot of choices with the Equalizer also added in and the Shortsword of Mask being her previous primary weapon. Hopefully I remember switching them around depending on the types of enemies we fight.
We're still not at HLA levels quite yet but our next level ups will get us there. Usually I get access to HLAs during the Underdark, but that involves starting with more experience due to TotSC content + SoD and doing all companion sidequests including the bigger EE ones, or going with a party size smaller than 6.
I decide to clear out the forest areas first - ancient vampires are no threat to as at this point:
And Jan has a good time with his next big backstab against the wizard to the south:
Clearing up that group isn't all that difficult after that. On to the final area, where we help our Coran, clear his house and challenge some wyvern cultists. Since Jan's staff is almost out of charges (I forgot to recharge it), Orima goes for the backstab, but with the reduced stalker multiplier she just doesn't have the same power:
However, this mage is not running any spell protections, so all we have to do is to cast breach:
After clearing out the kuo-toa caves as well, we travel to the Temple Ruins to challenge the shadow dragon - we add level drain protection to our usual buffs and go in, dealing a ton of damage on our initial assault. The dragon defends with PFMW, and all we have to do is switch to normal weapons to get the victory:
Since this battle was rather quick and our buffs are still going strong, we also call in the hostile golem army via limited wish to gain some more experience:
For Firkraag, our fire protections aren't even needed - Orima equips the dragonslayer longsword (I forgot to use it for the shadow dragon) - though her damage isn't actually that significant; I wonder if it actually gets fully doubled, because it didn't seem like it. Still, Firkraag dies to our initial assault:
We have also gained access to our first few HLAs, but aside from Jan wearing a helmet now, we've not made much user of them yet.
Orima, Elven Stalker, Update 19Orima equips the dragonslayer longsword (I forgot to use it for the shadow dragon) - though her damage isn't actually that significant; I wonder if it actually gets fully doubled, because it didn't seem like it.
I vaguely remember looking at this years ago. I may well be wrong, but I think that only the base damage from the sword gets doubled. Without additions, like from strength and proficiency, that does mean that the damage from it is underwhelming and Daystar is arguably a better choice for that encounter.
@Grond0 It seems like you're right, according to the wiki:
"Although the item description claims that the sword deals "double damage against dragons", it actually deals an additional 1d8+2 damage to dragons instead. Bonuses to damage from sources such as Strength, Weapon Proficiency or buff spells will not be doubled."
The next enemy we sought out was the bridge district lich. This guy was able to pull off a double timestop during which he breached Orima, but his only really dangerous spell were two telekinetic storms (if you don't play with the new SCS spells, think a slightly different ADHW), both used during the second timestop. He heavily wounded several party members, but failed to kill anyone with these:
Seconds after, he dies to Azuredge hit, as his second PFMW has run out.
After that we rest up and make our way to the Guarded Compound. Here, a chain contingency with 2 ADHWs in it does a lot of work, taking out one of our foes but more importantly interrupting Sion, who was casting his quick version of true sight to counter our mass invisibility:
Jan disarms the traps and we move in, and interrupting Sion apparently results in his buffs not triggering in time to prevent his immediate death. With that, the battle is as good as ours.
With our buffs still going, we make our way to the sewers and go after the illithid hideout. Once again we drink a few potions and use mass cure to stay alive when dealing with ballistic/detonate attacks.
Our first HLA summons get called in (planetar + prince of fire) towards the alhoon. Luckily, the regular mind flayers teleport to my party in small groups, allowing us to quickly take them down:
The alhoon, to my surprise, actually gets killed by the intense fire damage aura of the elemental prince thanks to the SCS improvements to elementals:
Finally, we (minus Jaheira and Orima) use our second round of buff protections and challenge the shade lich. He, however, dies to an Azuredge hit before his buffs even activate, so the battle is rather short.
Orima, Elven Stalker, Update 19Orima equips the dragonslayer longsword (I forgot to use it for the shadow dragon) - though her damage isn't actually that significant; I wonder if it actually gets fully doubled, because it didn't seem like it.
I vaguely remember looking at this years ago. I may well be wrong, but I think that only the base damage from the sword gets doubled. Without additions, like from strength and proficiency, that does mean that the damage from it is underwhelming and Daystar is arguably a better choice for that encounter.
Though for solo characters the immunity to fear might be very helpful against dragons. I could see it be quite useful for a solo ranger.
So we were in the middle of clearing out basilisks in the basilisks' area. Once they were clear, spirit animal kept Mutamutin long enough that ranged fire finished him off before he could do anything to the party. After resting, we then tried web and blinds plus druid offensive spells plus dangerous ranged fire from Coreranger was far too much from Kirian's party. Now Coreranger has magical weapons for his dual-wielding.
Next up was dealing with Bassilus - with spirit animal distraction this was easy enough. Ranged fire was enough for the hobgoblins nearby. Coreranger wanted to do the Pirate's Cave area, but his party members didn't have any way to damage the golems, so he went to Temple to turn in Bassilus symbol to get some gold. Then we headed to Beregost to blind and kill Silke for her magical staff for Impish. Then Solstice bought some magical bullets , albeit reluctantly, as it was the best way for him to help with the golems in Pirate's Cave area. Then we headed to Pirate's Cave area. We dealt with the sirines with Coreranger using a clarity potion to be immune to charm. With the potion of absorption, Coreranger tanked the golems well.
We took a quick stop to take down some ogrillions so Bjornin could give a shield to Coreranger. Then we headed to Durlag's Tower to get a scimitar for Impish. Taking down the battle horrors on the surface and the basilisks went smoothly and this time scimitar was safely retrieved. Our last run died here to a delayed fireball trap which we believe happened because someone was leveling up while triggering the trap. We waited to level up this time and no problems this time.
With a shield and full plate, Coreranger was happy to tank the ankegs for his party, although wanting some more heal potions first. He did take some good amount of damage but no one was in serious trouble. Apparently a party member was hanging to the priestess' bowl but we finally turned the bowl in.
Coreranger wanted a magical bow but his party members didn't want him to buy the bow from Feldeposte's so he did his only other option, which is to work on the main quest to get the bow of markmanship from Tazok's Tent. So we headed into Nashkel Mine - the koblds were simple enough as usual. Poor Mulahey was webbbed and attacked by spirit lions. This same approach was also effective against the amazons.
Not a lot of time left, so headed south and got a dog for a boy. Web was a bit too tough for Zax and Val. In the next area, we ran into a problem when Solstice did firebreath on Caldo and Krumm but he killed the nymph and dropped our reputation to 9. So now the girl won't help us much if we return her cat. So headed to the charisma tome in the next area. We ran out of time and saved our session here.
I was able to squeeze in an hour to play today, so we continue on our SoA endgame tour - starting with Bodhi. Most of the area is done by Orima and Anomen, using Azuredge + AoP on our stalker and the iMoD on Anomen - both buffed with improved haste and running through the area:
The spellcaster guard is dealt with by sending a summon to wait out PFMW and a quick Azuredge kill:
Down in Bodhi's room, it turns out that a bunch of these vampires die to death spell? It was randomly part of Nalia's chain contingency with 2 ADHWs (she only has 2 level 8 slots currently and since some spellcasters chain contingency in a bunch of summon at the start I decided to fill the third slot with death spell). That was a surprise:
Well, we send our planetar towards Bodhi while we run around the room to remove the last remaining vampires. Bodhi hits us with cloud of bats, but that isn't as scary to us because Nalia, Haer'Dalis and Jan are all protected with SI:C because I knew she would do that:
Nalia casts timestop and uses the time to deal some more damage. We equip some magical ranged weapons on vulnerable party members and go to town, and soon, the battle is done:
With that done, we take down Bloodscap for his boots and move to the Bridge District, since we have time to face the Twisted Rune as well. I add 4 PFME spells to my buffs (not enough scrolls found yet for full coverage) and return protection from fire to the list, which we haven't always used recently to save time. Shangalar, the lich, has a very weird set of prebuffs which, uniquely, didn't include a spell protection to prevent breach, which resulted in his early death:
Vaxall had an improved mantle going, which we breached, but he immediately replaced it with PFMW. Meanwhile, Layene shot the expected remove at Orima, so she moved towards the entrance:
Nalia gets hit by anti-magic ray while Anomen takes down the vampire. We now have two vulnerable party members and a beholder directly in sight - not good:
Luckily, our next breach was about to finish, and Vaxall didn't get to hit us with any follow-up before he died:
Our prince of elemental air was keeping Layene busy, who followed up with timestop - the prince despawned and she wasted her spell:
So, with the timstop running out her physical protections, we just send in the planetar and it immediately gets the vorpal hit:
That's it for now. We still have Kangaxx and WKII left before we can go to the elven city.
As we prepare for Kangaxx, we use our first HLA trap to help out with his lich form - which does indeed die immediately, also getting hit by Sunnis once. The lich transforms and pre-buffs. Our plan to kill the demi-lich form with triple sunrays fails as he has an ADHW in his chain contingency, which disrupts Anomen's cast - though our enemy goes to near death, being hit by boath the one via helm of brilliance and the one via daystar:
We throw our sequencers at the lich to get rid of his buffs and hope to finish him with the ring of the ram, but while the ring damage does go through, it isn't enough for a kill. Kangaxx gets to cast timestop, which is exactly what we didn't want. Let's see what his current SCS script will do on tactical... sure to be something scary... - nope, he casts imprisonment on our deva two times and renews his stoneskin (everyone else here except for Orima is immune to imprisonment, and Orima is wisely positioned at range - still, a potentially dangerous situation, but afaik SCS scripts don't prioritize imprisoning the bhaalspawn):
As the timestop ends, we have to breach another PFMW and finally, we get in some hits - +4 weapons are needed here so not everyone can contribute, but in the end Haer'Dalis gets the kill with Daystar before Kangaxx can do anything else of note:
Also, I forgot to buff with PFME for this battle, so... if he had cast a single ADHW to add to his CC that would've been very bad.
Now to Watcher's Keep, for the statue battle. Our HLA summons help us out here, we have to wait out a timestop from one of the mages but after that we get in warding whip, secret word and breach:
On to level 2 - our first battle with fire giants:
We clear the libraries and rest before buffing lightning protection and clearing the air and slime rooms. Next, ranged weapons help with the dangerous ice golem:
After dealing with the fire room as well, Jan gets to kill the chromatic demon with his normal traps - because he happens to be in the level range where they deal extra fire damage, so we place 7 of them and wait until the demon is in his ice form:
All right! We travel around for a bit to get any useful scrolls and potions we might still want. During that time, we encounter a rakshasa ambush added by SCS - they want their Flail of Ages back. Well, that doesn't work out very well for them because Nalia has a chain contingency with 3*ADHW on sight active:
After buffing up, we start our journey in the elven city by calling in an elemental swarm to help us by tanking some golems:
Raamilat, the drow wizard, suffers an immediate death due to Jan's backstab:
When fighting the big rakshasa group to the north, most of it was done by a planetar, but the summon didn't last long enough to kill all of them - as the party moved in, the two remaining foes unleashed this unusual spell trigger that I haven't seen in SCS before: 3*Flesh to Stone. This could actually have ended the run right here - Orima had a save vs spell of 3 at this moment, I believe, so we only survived that due to random chance. Very scary... and I really don't want to have to add PfP to my regular buffs, so I hope this trigger stays very rare:
We face Nizidramanii'yt, and this might be the first time I've seen him actually use his breath weapon:
However, the dragon is lacking in defenses and dies quite quickly:
We use the 3 items to summon the Avatar of Rillifane and move to the tree, where Jon gets taken down by traps:
In hell, the challenges are completed in the good way, and for the final SoA battle, the party buffs with additional potions (heroism, invulnerability, giant strength) and we place our traps in good positions to hit the balors, which works out as intended. As combat starts, we first kill the two remaining demons before moving towards the slayer. After we throw our spell triggers/sequencers (with pierce magics and secret words) at this last foe, we can use breach and start dealing damage, and we're actually quick enough to disrupt the incoming timestop:
After that it's just a matter of seconds before we win:
As we enter ToB, we finally get Orima's save vs spell to 0 even without any buffs or potions. Good. Now, we place some traps for Illasera:
The first pocket plane challenge is a huge spike in difficulty for tactical SCS - Jon really doesn't hold back with HLAs here, and it doesn't help that by this point in the battle, crucial buffs might already be gone. If you miss the timing, like I did, you might not be re-buffed with important effects once Jon, Bodhi and Sarevok spawn in. The party first goes after Bodhi, but her cloud of bats does hurt (though Nalia and Jan stay out of range). Jon, with a ton of pre-buffs we simply couldn't get through quickly enough, stops time and casts improved alacrity. Not good. He starts by calling in a dark planetar:
He follows up with Dragon's Breath - we haven't buffed with full fire immunity due to laziness, but our item-based resistances are very good - still, we swap around and equip a few extra items to make sure no one will die:
The planetar chases down Nalia, who drinks an oil of speed to outrun it. Jon hits us with a comet, but still, no one dies as we have been drinking healing potions in the meantime. Bodhi is nearly dead, but not quite - still, as Orima has already gotten level drained, she moves back to safety. This serves her rather well as Jon shoots remove magic towards the party, which hits Haer'Dalis, Anomen and Jaheira, just as Bodhi dies (though not before level draining Haer'Dalis as well):
The party quickly takes down the Hakaeshars, while Jaheira rebuffs Death Ward on herself. Orima also still has the ward, so she can help Nalia and Jaheira take on the dark planetar while Anomen stays on Jon to at least force him to keep up physical protections. Meanwhile, Haer'dalis gets in true sight - but as Jaheira approaches the planetar, the globe of blades, which is something I tend to forget or underestimate, immediately kills her and also forces Orima to retreat:
Jaheira's elemental princes force the dark planetar to heal up twice, and when Orima has healed up enough, she goes in to finish the job. Meanwhile, Nalia and Jan start going after Jon's many, many buffs, and Anomen adds in a storm of vengeance - finally, the mage is on the defense, mostly busy renewing his own defenses and running from us:
As Anomen casts mass heal, we can finally breach Jon, who calls in some monsters, but they don't bother us too much - victory is soon ours after we breach one more improved mantle:
That was a TOUGH battle, and quite close at some points. Could've easily gone in Jon's favour. The main problem was, of course, our laziness in buffing (no protection from fire) and the fact that our SI:A/Entopry Shield spells had just run out before Jon spawned in, and I didn't notice & renew them. Poor execution, but we get through it. We resurrect Jaheira and talk to Cespenar - but we quickly run out of cash. We can't even do 3 of the already available upgrades due to our lack of funds, which doesn't bode well for our planned spellscroll buying spree in Saradush.... That might have to wait quite a while. I am not sure why this party is constantly struggling with money, it's a bit unusual to be sure. Maybe it's the three arcane spellcasters and I've bought more scrolls for them in SoA then I realized (and also sold less scrolls, so less cash in total), or the fact that we have two characters with UAI and, as a consequence, bought a lot of extra gear that would otherwise be unusable. Not sure.
In any case, it might be a few days before I really start with ToB, as there's a new AoE2 expansion coming out today, and I want to play that one first.
The first significant target of the session was Durlag's Tower, where Cria attempted to blind a pair of battle horrors on the path. That was done successfully to the first, allowing Brog to beat it up with his staff from outside sight range. The second one saved though and we spent some time running it round before ending up inside the tower. Brog was able to hide there and Cria occupied the battle horror for long enough to allow back stabs to finish it. The third battle horror on the wall was no trouble - Brog hiding below before going up to back stab it. However, we met severe trouble on the way across to find the doom guard - when a chance-met doppleganger nearly ended the run. First, Brog attempted to kill it in melee, but found his tactics rebounding on him. Cria ran it round a bit before trying unsuccessfully to hold it in a web under the walls. Cria ran up the wall as the doppleganger approached then, after waiting a bit, went back down. However, while the web wasn't visible from on top of the wall it was still there and Cria was held. Already badly injured the odds of her survival seemed extremely slim, but she managed to break free of the web just in time and duly finished the doppleganger off with a bit more running and shooting.
After resting up, the inside of the tower saw Riggilo blinded, a tome purloined and a few basilisks on the roof distracted by skeletons while being shot down.
On the way to find the constitution tome the doom sayer became another blinded victim. At the coast, skeletons fronted up to make some sirines simple. Skeletons didn't last very long against some golems, but did help in killing the first two of those. Brog then did surprisingly well to stay in the shadows long enough to act as a block while Cria shot the last of them.
Checking backpacks and clearing up a few outstanding quests included dealing with Bassilus and unsuccessfully attempting to restore Melicamp. Reputation hit its maximum of 20 with the return of Joia's ring. Moving on to the ankheg area, Brog did most of the work to clear the nest by using skeletons to set up ankhegs for backstabs. Cria didn't bother improving her charisma of 19 before doing a bit of shopping at Ulgoth's Beard - that provided Brog with an improved staff before we headed for the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey survived a backstab there and managed to summon some supporters and confuse Brog just before he died. That meant Cria was surrounded by attackers and I thought she might have to resort to an invisibility potion there. However, her armor proved effective enough and she was able to keep fighting until Brog recovered and could help finish things off.
Outside the mine the amazons were webbed for easy disposal. Nimbul was silenced before being backstabbed, but Brog didn't bother with any preliminaries for Tranzig - a single backstab there was sufficient anyway. At the bandit camp we rested to recover HPs after finishing off the archers - at that point Brog remembered that his clerical heritate entitled him to wear helmets and picked one of those up from a dead hobgoblin. Cria had indulged herself by buying a few new spells on the way and used a web and skull trap combination inside the tent to kill Raemon.
Cria had failed to read the letters at the Bandit Camp in enough detail to discover any new routes, so had to return there before heading into the Cloakwood. She did now know invisibility so could have sneaked past the enemies in the second area, but chose to take on the ettercaps anyway. That allowed Brog to pick up his best backstab to date, along with an extra level for himself.
Brog performed in the fight against Drasus with silence helping against the mages before a first successful use of hold person against Drasus himself. Inside the mine there were no alarms on the way down to find Davaeorn. Brog had been fairly regularly attempting to make use of his minimal trap setting skill and, after disabling traps, Gate70 said something like "go on then, 6 damage do you reckon" and proved himself to be something of a prophet as Brog did indeed do 6 damage to himself. Davaeorn was then another to be silenced and, though that did not disable his dimension door ability, he was duly tracked down and beaten up before he recovered his speech.
There was just time for us to arrive in Baldur's Gate, where silence once more ruled against the mages at Sorcerous Sundries who dislike visitors talking .
We enter Saradush and start doing sidequests. In Kiser's basement, Orima goes to take on the wizard in the back while the others take down the fighters/thieves - since one backstab isn't enough for the kill, our stalker retreats into the tunnels while the wizard stops time:
With the timestop done, the party can more confidentally take on the dangerous spellcaster, and since the physical protection has run out, the battle doesn't last for long. We meet more spellcasters down in the sewers, and Jan picks up his staff of striking for some backstabs here since Orima isn't really dealing the required damage for the on hit kill:
From the sewers, we move to Gromnir's palace, though we don't take on the half-orc just yet, just the group before - Luckily we have fire protection buffed already so the incendiary cloud, part of the opening of the hostile mage here, doesn't do too much. Also, Haer'Dalis is able to get the kill on the wizard, who is heavily wounded by the party before his buffs finally go up, with the ring of the ram:
We go back downstairs to finish clearing up the basement. Jan's 130 damage backstab somehow isn't enough for this mage:
However, after dodging a timestop we send a planetar after her, and things soon turn to our favor. Even further back, we make our way to the prison, where Anomen uses his iMoD to clear out the vampires.
Finally it's time to meet Gromnir, after a quick rest and a bunch of buffs. Nalia's 3*ADHW CC fires towards the stairs, which takes out the fighters and thieves. Karun the Black and the other wizard activate their buffs, and we notice that they're using PFMW as a primary defense, so we switch to normal weapons, which allows us to take down Karun before he does anything else:
However, since we have to punch through stoneskins to get hits in with our normal weapons, which takes a little while, the other wizard is able to stop time. He casts spell trap, sphere of chaos and warding whip (on Jaheira), but after timestop ends his PFMW is gone and he dies:
Now we can all focus on Gromnir, which is easy enough:
At the temple, we use our sunrays to deal with the master wraith and his minions:
The skeleton mage inside dies to turn undead:
Now we make our way to the fire giant temple at the marching mountains, making sure to keep my fire protection up. For the second big fire giant group, Jaheira uses Nature's Beauty:
To get the various wardstones, we sometimes make use of The Wave to one-hit fire elementals/salamanders, and we wait out the buffs of the fire lich, sending a summon to draw out a second PFMW before Anomen gets in with the iMoD:
Upstairs, we face a tough fight against the red dragon Brimstone and more fire giants:
Luckily we only need to worry about physical damage here, as Brimstone doesn't unleash much in terms of magic and Berenn only joins the battle when it's basically over.
An attempt to kill the Prince of Fire by Haer'dalis fails as he just takes too much damage and keeps missing, so Orima steps in to do the job:
Back at the temple, we have already prepared traps to deal with Nyalee:
Now I get into a weird situation, thanks to the new SCS version. We move to the army camp and return to the pocket plane to rest and buff up. However, it turns out we're out of camping supplies, and we have to restore them at an inn. But at this point in the game, there is no inn available! Saradush is destroyed, we can't go to Amkethran yet, there are no inns in the areas we can go to, and we can't even harvest supplies in the wilderness because that requires initiating a rest, which we can't do with 0 supplies. So... we're basically out of spells with some party members even being exhausted, and we will only get to rest again once we're at Amkethran. This means we have to kill Yaga-Shura and do the oasis battle with very, very limited tools.
Luckily we're on tactical and don't have ascension installed, so Yaga-Shura doesn't get his high damage resistance that only gradually gets lower - he's fairly easy to kill with lots of physical damage. Since we lack chaotic commands, we use Haer'Dalis' enhanced bard song, and we still had enough fire protection spells to deal with that threat. The fighters focus on the fire giant leader and we are able to take him down quickly before the lieutenant mage is able to stop time:
Our last few spells are used for the oasis, such as some weaker summons or rarely-used HLAs - a few healing potions are required, but luckily these foes are mostly low level:
And now, we can finally rest again. Whew, that was a scary period of time.
In any case, we do the Amkethran sidequests and prepare some traps for Vongoethe:
We buy some more spellscrolls but are still low on funds. After travelling to Sendai's Enclave, we visit the pocket plane, buff up and deal with the second challenge:
Using those buffs we clear out the various drow ambushes, and luckily the hive mother doesn't hit anyone with anti-magic ray (also, everyone except for Orima has a spell shield effect):
The other drow ambushes are easy enough to defeat, and we move into the enclave, still using our earlier buffs, which are slowly fading. The way through the spider tunnels is easy enough:
But going for the SCS-improved group in front of Odamaron's lair with basically no buffs left was certainly a mistake. Those guys forced us to constantly retreat and drink healing potions, and we used our lesser HLA spells such as elemental swarm as distractions:
However, we were eventually able to get enough damage in to get the victory:
Now we're currently resting in the pocket plane and will continue with the enclave next time.
We enter Odamaron's lair, and our enemy stops time while Jan disarms the traps leading to him. Among other things he calls in a fallen planetar, and, predicablty, dispells Orima, the only one with vulnerable buffs - the fighters take down the celestial while the other lich, added by SCS, stops time as well:
However, there aren't many avenues of attack for these liches, as the party is well protected (even Orima has all-negative saves and is wearing the Cloak of Mirroring by now). While Anomen takes down the vampire apprentice with the iMoD, Jan and Nalia dispel the spell protections of both liches using warding whip:
Now we can follow-up with double breach and both liches get taken down:
Ogremoch is actually a bit troublesome for us. We deal some damage to him with traps, but we don't place the full amount, wanting to save some for the inhabitants of the other rooms. In his current version Ogremoch seems to instantly and infinitely renew his stoneskins (I think he had infinite ones before that, but he would renew them on a strict round timer, not right away), making it very difficult to actually deal physical damage to him, so that was a bit of a struggle considering that he dispels on hit:
Still, a planetar + elemental prince plus our remaining traps do a great job of clearing out Diaytha's room, though Nalia and Jan get hit by anti-magic ray:
Orima easily wins his duel, and we sure up our saves with invulnerability potions for the mind flayer ambush - here, the two added wizards are the main danger, but we can dispel and breach them without too much trouble:
We rest up at the pocket plane and buff for Sendai. The initial wizard clone has incendiary cloud and two magical swords as a CC, so that's why those are around - still, she is lacking a spell protection, so she's breachable immediately and can't stop time before we take her down:
We make sure to take down the drow that teleport in, which happens very quickly in SCS, so we don't get overwhelmed. The webs here are a mistake, I forgot that Nalia still had them as her minor sequencer (I was intending to help Jan shoot down the magical swords with more magic missles) - luckily our saves are strong enough to avoid getting webbed:
The next Sendai wizard clone is an important target. She protects herself with PFMW, so we attack with normal weapons - we can also breach her as she also lacks a spell protection. She immediately renews PFMW, but that still doesn't help against the normal weapon assault:
When the real Sendai shows up, her pre-buffs are quite delayed - in fact even though we don't switch to her immediately, we still take her down before any of them fire up:
We quickly complete the third pocket plane challenge, buy more spellscrolls (we're STILL not done after that, once again getting low on funds, though we're close - it's only the ninth level spells for Jan that are now missing, and he doesn't have access to those yet anyway) and prepare for Watcher's Keep - the randomized teleport maze is one of the more dangerous parts of a run like this, as we're mostly going to be without buffs, since they can be instantly dispelled as soon as we randomly teleport to a no-magic zone - though having the enhanced bard song potentially helps a lot here.
As I kind of always expect, once we enter the randomized teleporter maze in WKIII we immediately stumble into a no-magic zone. The balor here gets taken down at range so we don't face the threat of its vorpal hits:
For the next room, the portal takes us to the SCS-improved summoning glabrezus, one of the most dangerous rooms in the entirety of SCS. Luckily, we can tell that we're here before combat starts due to the obelisk in the middle that is visible from the edge, so we can teleport back to the pocket plane to buff up. Now it's all about breaching all of the glabrezus to get rid of their PFMWs so we can take them down as quickly as possible:
After that we have the pit fiend no-magic zone, where the enhanced bard song is super helpful, and next we encounter the demon knights - Haer'Dalis keeps on singing, keeping us safe from stun and fear effects. The next teleporter takes us back to the entrance, so I try to go in the other direction, encountering the tieflings - they take a while to get their buffs ready, and we rush down their wizard before she can do anything:
After that we encounter the quasits and the succubi, where items with charm protection keep us safe. We've now seen most rooms except for the ones that actually move us along in the quest and grant us some scepter gems. After some stumbling around (I always create a hand-drawn map for the randomized maze so at least we don't try the same way multiple times), we find a portal from the tiefling room that leads us to Kara'shur. Luckily we are able to use the pocket plane ability before the room turns hostile, so we can return with full buffs, turning this fight from a potentially deadly encounter into a relatively easy victory. Now we're searching for Tahazzar, and eventually we find a working portal in the very first room we entered into. The same thing applies here: We are able to pause just in time and teleport to the pocket plane, and we return with full buffs. Since Tahazzar is a balor, we have to keep Orima away from him as soon as she loses her death ward to the inevitable dispell:
We're now looking for the demon wraith and the exit. Turns out the demon wraith is reachable from the purifier room as well - however, there is no chance of going to the pocket plane here as he is immediately hostile, and even travelling back doesn't help us much since we're coming from a no-magic zone where we can't buff anyway (unless there would be another way to this room, but I was too lazy to test out every single portal, though they weren't many options left either way), so we have to start this fight without any protections. Haer'dalis starts singing, Jan starts detecting traps, the others have to wait until the no-magic debuff runs out. Nalia's ADHW CC takes out one of the spirits, and as we're finally allowed to cast spells again we call in our HLA summons, while Jan disarms the nearby traps. Meanwhile, the demon wraith is improving on his buffs with some additional spell protections:
The demon wraith approaches as, casting black blade of disaster. Meanwhile, Nalia and Jan throw their pierce magic and secret word spell triggers/sequencers at our foe:
The battle soon ends rather unceremoniously after that - the demon wraith uses a spell trigger to renew his protections, we dispel them, and our planetar gets a lucky vorpal hit to immediately kill this dangerous opponent:
Now we just have to find Aesgareth, which takes us a while - eventually we find a portal in the demon knight ambush room that leads us to the cambion. We gamble for the Spectral Brand, which would be a great upgrade for Jaheira, but lose the first game - I rarely win even one of the items here, so I fully expected to leave empty-handed, but for the second round, we actually draw the better card:
Very nice! Now we can move on to level 4, after taking a quick rest at Amkethran to refill camping supplies and crafting some items via Cespenar - we quickly clear the main area and next time, we will take on the githaynki and the illithids.
We buff up for the githyanki quarter, which is easy enough to clear out. A fallen deva isn't nearly enough to stop us at this point. Next, we face the red dragon Saladrex. We make sure our fire protections are still active (Jan's is somehow gone, so we renew it) and challenge the dragon. The battle is easy enough, he's lacking in physical protections:
Now for the demi-lich. We make sure our SI:A's and Entropy Shields are fresh, we also have spell shields and ISOMs going, plus actual spell protections - Orima doesn't get to enter, she's at risk of getting imprisoned, so we are down to 5. The demi-lich's list of prebuffs lacks a spell protection, and since I can hear him cast timestop (well, most likely), Nalia breaches him wia Wand of Spell Striking (which is faster since we don't have the Robe of Vecna yet) so we can get the opportunity for an interrupt - which we achieve:
Our foe throws up a spell trigger which involves both spell deflection and PFMW, so Jan unleashes his own spell trigger with triple pierce magic, and Nalia breaches again. The rest of the battle mainly consists of the lich casting PFMW and Nalia breaching him, 3 times more:
The only offensive spell the demi-lich is able to cast is a ruby ray, I think on Haer'Dalis. That doesn't achieve much, obviously, and eventually we get our win:
Now we move to the illithid quarter. The mindflayers actually use surprisingly little detonates and ballistic attacks here, which is good for us:
With a planetar on our side and a quick dragon's breath for the biggest group, we clear out the place and get the hammer from Rock & Garrock. Level 4 done - we rest up again, still at full camping supplies as we rest outside and gather more provisions. Level 5 awaits.
The Trio got a lot done this session. The party is starting to get pretty powerful - Coreranger is dangerous in both melee and ranged, Impish has a dizzying amount of spells and his spirit summons and Solstice has powerful spells himself, the most powerful in your run so far probably being web. Things done:
* We found ourselves in the charisma tome cave. We ran to the edge of the zone and had meant to go to the cave bear encounter in the area just above the gnoll fortress but Corey_Russell mis-clicked. As a result we entered that area from the top and did a few more battles than usual. It could have been dicey when fighting the two ogre berserkers and hobgoblin archers on the bridge as Coreranger got stuck in a web just as an Ogre Berserker was on his heels. However, the ogre berserker also failed his save and was quickly cut down. After killing the cave bear we belatedly realized no one had the charisma needed to get the cold boots, but we would after identifying the charisma so went to Nashkel for that.
* In Nashkel we run into Nimbul from the top, which isn't our usual approach. However, with Rasaad helping and spirit snake, Nimbul wasn't going to last long (and indeed he didn't). Coreranger decided to pull out Neira while the snake was available and Neira didn't last long either once she was pulled outside.
* Soltice mentioned we hadn't encountered Melium yet so we did that. A rather vicious web made short work of him. Since Gullykin was nearby also treated Molkar and his gang to web, call lightning and ranged fire and victory was won in short order.
* Party went to Tranzig and Coreranger called for a charm person on Algernon to get Algernon's cloak. This puts Impish CHA to 18 very nice, as Tranzig was happy to kill Algernon for us.
* Worked on the surface area of the Bandit Camp. This went pretty smooth. For Tazok's Tent, Coreranger tried to kill Venkt with firebreath potion but that didn't work, though it did do a lot of damage to his buddies. With some help from his friends, such as Magic missiles from Solstice, victory was still won, though Coreranger took a fair amount of arrow damage as he forgot he was wearing his leather armor instead of his usual full plate.
* We didn't need anything in the Cloakwood Forest so went straight to Drassus. Area 2 was a bit tricky as we had no thief, however with spirit summon distractions it was still smooth going.
* Drassus battle didn't go as planned as Impish got seen far sooner than planned. Coreranger quickly ran away and an enemy mage cast chaos at the party. Solstice couldn't run away so wisely decided to try to finish casting his web. This was a good choice as now Coreranger was now able to put in vicious ranged fire into the enemies. Coreranger has the bow of markmanship and acid arrows, a powerful combination.
* As usual, we skipped as many encounters as we could on our way to Daveorn. Area two was negotiated by having Coreranger use stealth to open door and zone out with his party in nearby room and thus the party wasn't spotted by Heirashan.
Coreranger then took on Davaeorn protected by a potion of magic blocking. His friends assisted almost immediately and success.
* Necromancers on second floor of Sorcerous Sundries once more picked on - with web and summons against them they had no chance.
* Basilisk distracted by a spirit summon - Coreranger entered the room just in time to get the kill shot. Vaya and Deserta had some problems with a web.
* Jardak's butler was negated with a potion of magic blocking, then his master was negated with group haste, though Impish took a fair amount damage all the same from Jardak, though the helm was a welcome reward.
* Wisdom tome obtained, Umberlee temple devastated as usual and a dead boy returned. One of the thieves that threatened us was held in a grease and killed for his haste boots. Larze was just talked down as Coreranger's party was tired and hurt pretty badly still. A few summons saw Marek off, though a nymph was confused so the party killed that nymph quickly before she had a chance to make Coreranger fallen.
* Sunin the dangerous mage was provoked by Impish but picked off by Coreranger. Seven Suns as easily cleared.
We're at the final level of Watcher's Keep and buff up for the orc onslaught. We get breached here a couple of times, but still, we have enough spells left - and green scrolls of poison protection - to take on the dragon without having to rest:
After the imp riddles, we do the color orb "puzzle" and enter the spirit warrior maze after taking down the golems, using protection from ice to help with the cone of cold from the frost golems. The spirit warrior maze is where my last stalker run found an untimely end, but since then I haven't lost a character there, as I have stopped fighting the ghost or opening the poisoned drawer:
So, we prepare for the three groups of seal guardians. We improve upon our usual buffs with full frost protection and protection from magical damage for the entire party, which takes a while to buff, but is an important precaution for these encounters. However, my primary plan is to skip most of the danger by trapping the most dangerous enemies. The aurumach rilmani is notably immune to magical damage, so spike traps won't kill it - however, Jan's regular traps can do the job:
Now the remainder of the group is easy to clear out, and we prepare our spike traps in position for the arrival of Azamantes:
Finally Nalia gets a new robe - she's been using a traveler's robe the entire time. Also, with our protective buffs we can kill all of these flaming skulls without taking a single point of damage. Now another round of spike traps, focused on the succubus of the final group - they also take down Y'tossi, though I placed 3 traps towards the succubus and 4 towards the hive mother. I think the hive mother might spawn in a fraction of a second later, so she doesn't get hit by the traps even though they are definitely closest to her:
The hive mother has improved mantle going, so we breach it:
While she does dispel Orima's buffs, I am happy with the state of her saving throws and we continue until the hive mother is dead:
The clearup for the other foes is easy enough after that:
Now we only have to read the scroll of helm. Fittingly, this gets us enough experience to unlock two important things: Jaheira's druid level 15, so she gets a TON of new spellslots, and Jan's 9th level wizard spells, also giving him access to arcane HLAs. I pick up greater deathblow for Jaheira just for the tyrant golems in Abazigal's Lair, where we will be going next. First, a quick stop in Amkethran - we FINALLY have enough cash to buy the last few remaining spellscrolls for Jan.
We prepare for Draconis by adding protection from acid to our usual buffs. An elemental prince and planetar help in our assault on the dragon. After we bait out his timestop and run away, we go on the offensive, making sure to stay at range due the selction circle bug:
Meanwhile, Orima did get partly dispelled during phase 1, so we use a green scroll to make sure her acid resistance is still good - turns out her protection from acid spell actually survived the remove magic, but going over 100 doesn't hurt. Draconis transforms, we hit with Jan's secret word sequencer followed by Nalia's breach, and he dies very, very quickly, before even using his breath weapon:
Very good - now we can enter the lair, and through the first pool, we encounter the big lizardmen ambush with the two shamans. I forgot about parts of this encounter, but Nalia did get to cast SI:C in time to protect against creeping doom at least. The shamans tend to open with timestop, but we were somehow able to interrupt both of them - one was attacked with normal weapons by the fighters (since they used PFMW as their primary defense), and they made it through the stoneskin in time. Meanwhile, Jan, Nalia and Haer'Dalis were able to breach and interrupt the other one as well:
We take down both shamans with relative ease after that:
Feeling very safe now, we nearly suddenly have Orima die in melee combat against the remaining lizardmen - I slipped up there for a second, something we really can't afford at this point:
Now we get to fight the yellow dragon (easy enough, once again we use a secret word sequencer + breach) for the breathing potion and make our way through the kuo-toans and water elementals:
Thanks to SCS, we need to travel to Amkethran for a bit of rope - on our way out, we prepare spike traps for the incoming quadruple dragon ambush. As we return, the first black dragon dies and we move to the pocket plane to buff up. We return and take down the second black dragon:
The green dragon appears, and since we didn't have any protection from poison scrolls in our pre-buffs the breath weapon does hit our backline pretty hard - though a few potions, and things are looking good again, as the dragon dies very quickly. The red dragon, Carnifex, is the last one, but we're fully protected from fire, so this one poses little threat:
Now Jaheira gets to use the greater deathblow she had learned just for the eye grotto to take out these tyrant golems - I was at risk of getting 1-2 party members petrified here for a second (though Jaheira and Orima are both safe with their saving throws):
We get the eyestalk and the scroll and move to Abazigal before going to the pocket plane for a quick rest. Protection against electricity is added in, some magical swords and we're ready to go. Much like the other dragons, Abazigal, once he transforms, starts with spell deflection and PFMW, so secret word + breach is enough to make him vulnerable:
Without Ascension installed and on tactical, this battle really isn't all that different from the vanilla one, so our victory is a quick one:
With our buffs still going we also do the next pocket plane battle:
The colossus golem tome is our last Cespenar upgrade (and Hindo's Doom, I guess, just in case) - the available money should barely be enough to buy a few useful scrolls for the final battle in Amkethran.
Next time, we shall deal with Balthazar and The Ravager.
Comments
Cria (female half-elf bard, Grond0); Brog (male half-orc cleric/thief, Gate70)
Previous run
The untimely end of our previous run gave us the time to make some decent progress with the latest attempt. As usual character classes were determined randomly, but with arcane, divine and thieving abilities all covered the choices seem reasonably favourable.
We had a bit of discussion early on about the end of my Trio run yesterday at the hands of a bandit ambush and whether we should make an effort to avoid that - or at least wear some armor. However, we decided that the gods of chance should be given their shot - and today they were on our side, with no ambushes until we'd gained some levels and the later ones that did occur caused no real concern
Shoal provided us with an early levelling opportunity before we did some bits and pieces around Beregost. Then it was down to Nashkel where we picked up the ankheg armor, but Brog decided he would stick to his shadowy leather rather than keep that to use on the odd occasion anyway. Moving on down we took on Greywolf and spent a while running him round before Brog's half-orc strength sent one too many bullets deep into Greywolf's body.
After picking up Samuel we headed for the FAI, though with a stop-off on the way to kill some spiders. They were a bit reluctant to be dragged outside, so Brog spent a while hiding and sneaking inside to pull off a leg or two in each of a number of visits. At the FAI Brog set himself to backstab Tarnesh, only to note that the mage had partly turned round as he brushed past him. On my screen Tarnesh didn't turn, so things looked a bit odd as Brog repositioned himself and demonstrated a successful backstab from the side.
Next we visited the basilisk area. Cria had looked at the prices at High Hedge earlier and decided not to indulge herself by buying anything except the potion case. Hence we expected to be reliant on Korax for protection there. While dragging him down to the bottom of the map though, an intruding gnoll dropped a PfP scroll, so it looked like we would move on to Plan B. Before we killed Korax though Cria flubbed her learning attempt and we reverted to Plan A. The basilisks were being nicely co-operative, with nearly all of them staying in gaze mode rather than switching to melee and it didn't take long to work round those and deal with Mutamin as well. That meant we could have used Korax to attack Kirian's party, but decided to rest instead so that we could use our own spells - with Cria by this time having learnt web from a random drop. Two webs and a successful silence of the casters later and things looked bad for Kirian's party. However, Baerin got lucky in saving against the webs and forced Cria to retreat after hitting her with several arrows. The extra time spent killing him meant that the web expired and Kirian got her voice back before we could kill her - with Lindin also still active. To stave off the potential danger from a lightning bolt, Cria picked up a potion of explosion from the ground and used that to kill Kirian. Lindin was then duly finished off as well to leave us triumphant if rather battered.
On the way to get Meilum's bracers we stopped off to try and save Arabelle from some xvarts. That was duly done with the help of web, but we got no reward there thanks to Hulrik eating too many of the local mushrooms and seeing hordes of imaginary xvarts still attacking his cow.
The session ended with a trip through the Cloud Peak Mountains to recover the charisma tome.
Bard 6, 45 HPs, 40 kills
Cleric 4 / thief 5, 33 HPs, 49 kills, 0 deaths
We fight our way through the druid grove - De'Arnise keep has shown us how good slow is against big groups of trolls, so we repeat that experience at the troll mound:
Well, we do the various follow-up Trademeet sidequests (and buy everything we need from the merchant here) and make our way back to the city for the thief stronghold - Rayic dies to our opening assault:
Next stop should propably be the planar prison, where we can finally recruit Haer'Dalis.
We buff up fully and enter the planar prison, taking out spellcasters and thieves before they can do any significant damage in the opening battle:
On to the planar sphere. A summon gets these halflings to trigger their pre-buffs and even buff a bit more, so we can just wait out most of them:
Finally we move to the Unseeing Eye - because Anomen just gained level 15, we get the good skeleton warriors for the beholders:
A tiny little update for today - I explored Brynnlaw, and Jan took down Perth with an impressive 190 damage backstab critical hit:
In the second asylum level, we deal with the tome by trapping the mind flayer and using skeletons for the beholder. Luckily, we don't get a lich spawn when dealing with the undead group and take down the greater mummy with spells at range:
We start our underdark journey by buffing chaotic commands and going mind flayer hunting:
Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, Remove Fear, Protection from Fire, Prayer, Recitation, Bless, Emotions Hope/Courage, Improved Haste, PfE 10' Radius for everyone. For the arcane spellcasters, Shield, Blur, Mirror Image, Stoneskin, sometimes Spirit Armor (though this often goes on Orima), Spell Immunity: Abjuration, Haer'Dalis gets 18 con from the fortitude belt as well, and those with below 18 dexterity get Cat's Grace. The divine spellcasters get Armor of Faith, Anomen and Jaheira of course get Entropy Shield, Jaheira adds Ironskins, Anomen DUHM and ISOM; Sometimes we start to add spell protections such as Minor Spell Deflection on Orima (who also uses MI from Ilbratha) and spell reflection on Nalia. Once we get access to more spellslots and scrolls, we will propably add Spell Shields, ISOM for Jaheira, PFME for everyone and possibly spell protections for everyone into the mix. I'm propably forgetting about some spells.
Well, the balor is our first victim: He unleashes all sorts of powerful fire spells such as firestorm and aura of flaming death - he would propably try to remove magic as well, but dies before he can do so. Only Orima could lose her buffs anyway, and I was ready to retreat with her if needed:
Okay, we're in the beholder hive - send in the skeletons!
Agreed, updated.
Trio 68 second and final session (link to first).
We managed about an hour and were making pretty good progress when we reached the roof of Durlag's Tower. The four basilisks there were dealt with and I levelled up as Corey_Russell braved the fireball trap to retrieve the +2 scimitar
He commented that the fireball had not triggered. I suggested that was probably due to me being in the levelling up screen. About a minute later I completed selecting spells and left the level-up screen at which point
a fireball erupted centred on him, and caused 21 damage to his character. He had by this time moved well away from the trapped container and was standing near to Grond0
who was outside range of the trapped container, but not the unexpected source of Corey_Russell's character. To boot, Grond0's character was wearing Gorion's belt which gave him a 100% penalty to fire damage
60 damage was easily enough to chunk him, so our run was over (could have called it a multiplayer bug and reloaded but we'd only got the autosave from area arrival and it felt like a game-ending situation to me. On to the next attempt
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Soltice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
After our surprise death last run, we rolled a new set of lambs to the slaughter. Here's what I did:
* Candlekeep chores finished without issue
* Picked up a ring in a stone and tried to pick up the piercing belt but Impish let himself get killed. So we headed to FAI to resurrect him. Then a spirit animal distracted Tarnesh but a guard got the kill.
* While we were here we picked up Gaia's ring.
* Then we headed to Shoal and a spirit lion kept her busy.
* Then we headed south to pick up stealth boots and a necklace from a fallen citizen.
* When we got to Nashkel I let Impish keep the ankheg armor since Coreranger is using plate armor.
* We picked up a magical flail from a peasant in Ankheg Farm. We debated taking on ankhegs but decided against it.
* We then headed to basiliks area. We had killed about 1/2 the basilisks and ran out of time and saved here.
The party enters Ust'Natha after placing some traps for the underdark party, which mostly ends up dying to the secondary poison effect after a while. We use death spell to free Phaere and move back to the city, where we do the pit fights. The wizard duels are perhaps not the safest content to engage in considering that our wizards are comparatively low level and not well equipped for such things, but Nalia is able to run the first wizard out of spells with tons of summons and defensive spells, and she's the superior fighter in physical combat due to her equipment:
We're still not at HLA levels quite yet but our next level ups will get us there. Usually I get access to HLAs during the Underdark, but that involves starting with more experience due to TotSC content + SoD and doing all companion sidequests including the bigger EE ones, or going with a party size smaller than 6.
I decide to clear out the forest areas first - ancient vampires are no threat to as at this point:
We have also gained access to our first few HLAs, but aside from Jan wearing a helmet now, we've not made much user of them yet.
"Although the item description claims that the sword deals "double damage against dragons", it actually deals an additional 1d8+2 damage to dragons instead. Bonuses to damage from sources such as Strength, Weapon Proficiency or buff spells will not be doubled."
The next enemy we sought out was the bridge district lich. This guy was able to pull off a double timestop during which he breached Orima, but his only really dangerous spell were two telekinetic storms (if you don't play with the new SCS spells, think a slightly different ADHW), both used during the second timestop. He heavily wounded several party members, but failed to kill anyone with these:
With our buffs still going, we make our way to the sewers and go after the illithid hideout. Once again we drink a few potions and use mass cure to stay alive when dealing with ballistic/detonate attacks.
Our first HLA summons get called in (planetar + prince of fire) towards the alhoon. Luckily, the regular mind flayers teleport to my party in small groups, allowing us to quickly take them down:
Though for solo characters the immunity to fear might be very helpful against dragons. I could see it be quite useful for a solo ranger.
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Solstice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
So we were in the middle of clearing out basilisks in the basilisks' area. Once they were clear, spirit animal kept Mutamutin long enough that ranged fire finished him off before he could do anything to the party. After resting, we then tried web and blinds plus druid offensive spells plus dangerous ranged fire from Coreranger was far too much from Kirian's party. Now Coreranger has magical weapons for his dual-wielding.
Next up was dealing with Bassilus - with spirit animal distraction this was easy enough. Ranged fire was enough for the hobgoblins nearby. Coreranger wanted to do the Pirate's Cave area, but his party members didn't have any way to damage the golems, so he went to Temple to turn in Bassilus symbol to get some gold. Then we headed to Beregost to blind and kill Silke for her magical staff for Impish. Then Solstice bought some magical bullets , albeit reluctantly, as it was the best way for him to help with the golems in Pirate's Cave area. Then we headed to Pirate's Cave area. We dealt with the sirines with Coreranger using a clarity potion to be immune to charm. With the potion of absorption, Coreranger tanked the golems well.
We took a quick stop to take down some ogrillions so Bjornin could give a shield to Coreranger. Then we headed to Durlag's Tower to get a scimitar for Impish. Taking down the battle horrors on the surface and the basilisks went smoothly and this time scimitar was safely retrieved. Our last run died here to a delayed fireball trap which we believe happened because someone was leveling up while triggering the trap. We waited to level up this time and no problems this time.
With a shield and full plate, Coreranger was happy to tank the ankegs for his party, although wanting some more heal potions first. He did take some good amount of damage but no one was in serious trouble. Apparently a party member was hanging to the priestess' bowl but we finally turned the bowl in.
Coreranger wanted a magical bow but his party members didn't want him to buy the bow from Feldeposte's so he did his only other option, which is to work on the main quest to get the bow of markmanship from Tazok's Tent. So we headed into Nashkel Mine - the koblds were simple enough as usual. Poor Mulahey was webbbed and attacked by spirit lions. This same approach was also effective against the amazons.
Not a lot of time left, so headed south and got a dog for a boy. Web was a bit too tough for Zax and Val. In the next area, we ran into a problem when Solstice did firebreath on Caldo and Krumm but he killed the nymph and dropped our reputation to 9. So now the girl won't help us much if we return her cat. So headed to the charisma tome in the next area. We ran out of time and saved our session here.
I was able to squeeze in an hour to play today, so we continue on our SoA endgame tour - starting with Bodhi. Most of the area is done by Orima and Anomen, using Azuredge + AoP on our stalker and the iMoD on Anomen - both buffed with improved haste and running through the area:
As we prepare for Kangaxx, we use our first HLA trap to help out with his lich form - which does indeed die immediately, also getting hit by Sunnis once. The lich transforms and pre-buffs. Our plan to kill the demi-lich form with triple sunrays fails as he has an ADHW in his chain contingency, which disrupts Anomen's cast - though our enemy goes to near death, being hit by boath the one via helm of brilliance and the one via daystar:
Now to Watcher's Keep, for the statue battle. Our HLA summons help us out here, we have to wait out a timestop from one of the mages but after that we get in warding whip, secret word and breach:
After buffing up, we start our journey in the elven city by calling in an elemental swarm to help us by tanking some golems:
As we enter ToB, we finally get Orima's save vs spell to 0 even without any buffs or potions. Good. Now, we place some traps for Illasera:
In any case, it might be a few days before I really start with ToB, as there's a new AoE2 expansion coming out today, and I want to play that one first.
Cria (female half-elf bard, Grond0); Brog (male half-orc cleric/thief, Gate70)
Previous updates
The first significant target of the session was Durlag's Tower, where Cria attempted to blind a pair of battle horrors on the path. That was done successfully to the first, allowing Brog to beat it up with his staff from outside sight range. The second one saved though and we spent some time running it round before ending up inside the tower. Brog was able to hide there and Cria occupied the battle horror for long enough to allow back stabs to finish it. The third battle horror on the wall was no trouble - Brog hiding below before going up to back stab it. However, we met severe trouble on the way across to find the doom guard - when a chance-met doppleganger nearly ended the run. First, Brog attempted to kill it in melee, but found his tactics rebounding on him. Cria ran it round a bit before trying unsuccessfully to hold it in a web under the walls. Cria ran up the wall as the doppleganger approached then, after waiting a bit, went back down. However, while the web wasn't visible from on top of the wall it was still there and Cria was held. Already badly injured the odds of her survival seemed extremely slim, but she managed to break free of the web just in time and duly finished the doppleganger off with a bit more running and shooting.
After resting up, the inside of the tower saw Riggilo blinded, a tome purloined and a few basilisks on the roof distracted by skeletons while being shot down.
On the way to find the constitution tome the doom sayer became another blinded victim. At the coast, skeletons fronted up to make some sirines simple. Skeletons didn't last very long against some golems, but did help in killing the first two of those. Brog then did surprisingly well to stay in the shadows long enough to act as a block while Cria shot the last of them.
Checking backpacks and clearing up a few outstanding quests included dealing with Bassilus and unsuccessfully attempting to restore Melicamp. Reputation hit its maximum of 20 with the return of Joia's ring. Moving on to the ankheg area, Brog did most of the work to clear the nest by using skeletons to set up ankhegs for backstabs. Cria didn't bother improving her charisma of 19 before doing a bit of shopping at Ulgoth's Beard - that provided Brog with an improved staff before we headed for the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey survived a backstab there and managed to summon some supporters and confuse Brog just before he died. That meant Cria was surrounded by attackers and I thought she might have to resort to an invisibility potion there. However, her armor proved effective enough and she was able to keep fighting until Brog recovered and could help finish things off.
Outside the mine the amazons were webbed for easy disposal. Nimbul was silenced before being backstabbed, but Brog didn't bother with any preliminaries for Tranzig - a single backstab there was sufficient anyway. At the bandit camp we rested to recover HPs after finishing off the archers - at that point Brog remembered that his clerical heritate entitled him to wear helmets and picked one of those up from a dead hobgoblin. Cria had indulged herself by buying a few new spells on the way and used a web and skull trap combination inside the tent to kill Raemon.
Cria had failed to read the letters at the Bandit Camp in enough detail to discover any new routes, so had to return there before heading into the Cloakwood. She did now know invisibility so could have sneaked past the enemies in the second area, but chose to take on the ettercaps anyway. That allowed Brog to pick up his best backstab to date, along with an extra level for himself.
Brog performed in the fight against Drasus with silence helping against the mages before a first successful use of hold person against Drasus himself. Inside the mine there were no alarms on the way down to find Davaeorn. Brog had been fairly regularly attempting to make use of his minimal trap setting skill and, after disabling traps, Gate70 said something like "go on then, 6 damage do you reckon" and proved himself to be something of a prophet as Brog did indeed do 6 damage to himself. Davaeorn was then another to be silenced and, though that did not disable his dimension door ability, he was duly tracked down and beaten up before he recovered his speech.
There was just time for us to arrive in Baldur's Gate, where silence once more ruled against the mages at Sorcerous Sundries who dislike visitors talking
Bard 8, 65 HPs, 113 kills
Cleric 6 / thief 7, 46 HPs, 170 kills, 1 death
We enter Saradush and start doing sidequests. In Kiser's basement, Orima goes to take on the wizard in the back while the others take down the fighters/thieves - since one backstab isn't enough for the kill, our stalker retreats into the tunnels while the wizard stops time:
Finally it's time to meet Gromnir, after a quick rest and a bunch of buffs. Nalia's 3*ADHW CC fires towards the stairs, which takes out the fighters and thieves. Karun the Black and the other wizard activate their buffs, and we notice that they're using PFMW as a primary defense, so we switch to normal weapons, which allows us to take down Karun before he does anything else:
At the temple, we use our sunrays to deal with the master wraith and his minions:
An attempt to kill the Prince of Fire by Haer'dalis fails as he just takes too much damage and keeps missing, so Orima steps in to do the job:
Luckily we're on tactical and don't have ascension installed, so Yaga-Shura doesn't get his high damage resistance that only gradually gets lower - he's fairly easy to kill with lots of physical damage. Since we lack chaotic commands, we use Haer'Dalis' enhanced bard song, and we still had enough fire protection spells to deal with that threat. The fighters focus on the fire giant leader and we are able to take him down quickly before the lieutenant mage is able to stop time:
In any case, we do the Amkethran sidequests and prepare some traps for Vongoethe:
We enter Odamaron's lair, and our enemy stops time while Jan disarms the traps leading to him. Among other things he calls in a fallen planetar, and, predicablty, dispells Orima, the only one with vulnerable buffs - the fighters take down the celestial while the other lich, added by SCS, stops time as well:
As I kind of always expect, once we enter the randomized teleporter maze in WKIII we immediately stumble into a no-magic zone. The balor here gets taken down at range so we don't face the threat of its vorpal hits:
We buff up for the githyanki quarter, which is easy enough to clear out. A fallen deva isn't nearly enough to stop us at this point. Next, we face the red dragon Saladrex. We make sure our fire protections are still active (Jan's is somehow gone, so we renew it) and challenge the dragon. The battle is easy enough, he's lacking in physical protections:
Now we move to the illithid quarter. The mindflayers actually use surprisingly little detonates and ballistic attacks here, which is good for us:
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Solstice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
The Trio got a lot done this session. The party is starting to get pretty powerful - Coreranger is dangerous in both melee and ranged, Impish has a dizzying amount of spells and his spirit summons and Solstice has powerful spells himself, the most powerful in your run so far probably being web. Things done:
* We found ourselves in the charisma tome cave. We ran to the edge of the zone and had meant to go to the cave bear encounter in the area just above the gnoll fortress but Corey_Russell mis-clicked. As a result we entered that area from the top and did a few more battles than usual. It could have been dicey when fighting the two ogre berserkers and hobgoblin archers on the bridge as Coreranger got stuck in a web just as an Ogre Berserker was on his heels. However, the ogre berserker also failed his save and was quickly cut down. After killing the cave bear we belatedly realized no one had the charisma needed to get the cold boots, but we would after identifying the charisma so went to Nashkel for that.
* In Nashkel we run into Nimbul from the top, which isn't our usual approach. However, with Rasaad helping and spirit snake, Nimbul wasn't going to last long (and indeed he didn't). Coreranger decided to pull out Neira while the snake was available and Neira didn't last long either once she was pulled outside.
* Soltice mentioned we hadn't encountered Melium yet so we did that. A rather vicious web made short work of him. Since Gullykin was nearby also treated Molkar and his gang to web, call lightning and ranged fire and victory was won in short order.
* Party went to Tranzig and Coreranger called for a charm person on Algernon to get Algernon's cloak. This puts Impish CHA to 18 very nice, as Tranzig was happy to kill Algernon for us.
* Worked on the surface area of the Bandit Camp. This went pretty smooth. For Tazok's Tent, Coreranger tried to kill Venkt with firebreath potion but that didn't work, though it did do a lot of damage to his buddies. With some help from his friends, such as Magic missiles from Solstice, victory was still won, though Coreranger took a fair amount of arrow damage as he forgot he was wearing his leather armor instead of his usual full plate.
* We didn't need anything in the Cloakwood Forest so went straight to Drassus. Area 2 was a bit tricky as we had no thief, however with spirit summon distractions it was still smooth going.
* Drassus battle didn't go as planned as Impish got seen far sooner than planned. Coreranger quickly ran away and an enemy mage cast chaos at the party. Solstice couldn't run away so wisely decided to try to finish casting his web. This was a good choice as now Coreranger was now able to put in vicious ranged fire into the enemies. Coreranger has the bow of markmanship and acid arrows, a powerful combination.
* As usual, we skipped as many encounters as we could on our way to Daveorn. Area two was negotiated by having Coreranger use stealth to open door and zone out with his party in nearby room and thus the party wasn't spotted by Heirashan.
Coreranger then took on Davaeorn protected by a potion of magic blocking. His friends assisted almost immediately and success.
* Necromancers on second floor of Sorcerous Sundries once more picked on - with web and summons against them they had no chance.
* Basilisk distracted by a spirit summon - Coreranger entered the room just in time to get the kill shot. Vaya and Deserta had some problems with a web.
* Jardak's butler was negated with a potion of magic blocking, then his master was negated with group haste, though Impish took a fair amount damage all the same from Jardak, though the helm was a welcome reward.
* Wisdom tome obtained, Umberlee temple devastated as usual and a dead boy returned. One of the thieves that threatened us was held in a grease and killed for his haste boots. Larze was just talked down as Coreranger's party was tired and hurt pretty badly still. A few summons saw Marek off, though a nymph was confused so the party killed that nymph quickly before she had a chance to make Coreranger fallen.
* Sunin the dangerous mage was provoked by Impish but picked off by Coreranger. Seven Suns as easily cleared.
* Party will enter Iron Throne next session.
We're at the final level of Watcher's Keep and buff up for the orc onslaught. We get breached here a couple of times, but still, we have enough spells left - and green scrolls of poison protection - to take on the dragon without having to rest:
We prepare for Draconis by adding protection from acid to our usual buffs. An elemental prince and planetar help in our assault on the dragon. After we bait out his timestop and run away, we go on the offensive, making sure to stay at range due the selction circle bug:
Next time, we shall deal with Balthazar and The Ravager.