@aldain Yeah, both of those spells have propably saved Madalena's life at least once by now (one possible example to be found in this upcoming update). Now that we're doing better against spellcasters, though, it seems that golems are a lot of trouble (full preparations, with, for example, Leda tanking with full physical defensive buffs, would certainly make those a lot easier, but I don't exactly want to rest before every golem encounter - I wish I could find a Mordenkainen's Sword spellscroll).
Stronghold 1, The Druid Grove:
This one went very well. Trolls are easy to take down, fire damage is involved in Firetooth anyway, we just have to make sure not to get destroyed by flamestrikes or greater commands (unholy blight, the third spirit troll spell, is not that big of a threat due to our very mixed alignments). For safety, Madalena herself has chaotic commands and protection from fire. Once we make our way to the druids, we're mostly trying to avoid any insect plagues and are quite successful at that. The one spell we're unable to stop is a call lightning on Madalena - a spell that already killed one of us in SoD. However, Madalena wisely had MSD going (so I am a bit surprised she was even the target), but in the case of the multi-round nature of call lightning, MSD doesn't stop the entire spell - only the first 3 hits. But that gave me enough time to drink a potion of absorption (those are a bit rare in SoA, but I just bought one from the trademeet genies because their inventory is going to disappear soon):
We fight our way towards the final group of druids - suffering one or two confusion effects from time to time thanks to the myconids. Our summons (skeletons and aerial servants) help us win the battle, and while we are unable to stop one of the insect plagues, Leda separates from the entire group as the target, so this is not all that devastating:
Cernd gets to win the Faldorn battle for us (notably, he also didn't cast any charm spells on our summons this time around), and we return to the rakshasa trio where we use our remaining buffs:
Stronghold 2, De'Arnise Keep
Since we haven't had too much trouble with the trolls, I decide to visit De'Arnise keep next. Another ambush, another double chaos:
We almost did get intro trouble here with the most dangerous group of spirit trolls in the center - we're rarely hit by greater command, but this time multiple party members went to sleep, so things got a bit close:
Soon we're facing our first yuan-ti mage. After checking his prebuffs, we see PFMW but no protection from normal missles, which is the perfect opportunity for a little something I've prepared with Ninisina, our wizard slayer - we've kept the Army Scythe despite having Firetooth now, and we're shooting masterwork bolts at the yuan-ti mage to stack up spell failure rate super quickly - essentially, after a few hits (which are applied extremely quickly) the yuan-ti is locked out of spellcasting:
We call in our most powerful summons to deal with the golem room and rest before fighting our way to Tor'Gal. The big guy is running out in front of the other enemies as we pull them back towards us, which grants us the opportunity to focus all our damage on him right away and get a quick kill:
However, the fight is far from over - the two yuan-ti mages are a huge danger, but it turns out the real trouble is that they hasted the entire huge party of trolls and umber hulks. Nechtan, our kensai, is totally caught off guard (thanks to his terrible AC) by the sheer amount of speed and physical damage on the side of the enemy and goes down:
Luckily, the yuan-ti mages have stayed back and not really engaged yet, and the other party members are able to take down the trolls. We have prepared a few traps near the exit to the basement, which helps to take down one of the wizards. Most importantly, their PFMWs are gone by now, and we're able to get past their physical defenses rather quickly:
Stronghold 3, Mae'Var's Guild
Well, this one's easy given our access to true sight. Rayic Gethras is the only real obstacle, but he doesn't go hostile quickly enough as we excuse ourselves for just barging in - enough time for our two thieves to set down enough traps to get him with the poison damage:
Mae'Var himself is no real threat, even with SCS:
Stronghold 4, Firkraag's Dungeon
This one didn't go too well... We take down the first group of golems relatively easily and Nechtan goes on a solo mission with Azuredge and a protection from undead scroll (plus some potion buffs) to hunt down the various vampires. However, as we run into the second golem group, not exactly very well prepared, they quickly punch their way through our summons and hunt us down. We're partly slowed, ill-prepared and as I make plans to get out of this situation by drinking potions of invisibility, Madhava goes down before being able to drink his potion:
The others go invisible. However, this is no option for Ninisima, who, as a wizard slayer, can't use any of the sources of instant invisibility that we have available - initially, she gets lucky - the golems end up blocking themselves and she gets away:
However, this is a bit of a problem - it also means our party can't leave. The golems are blocking our only exit. I thought that the golems would stay locked in position, and my plan was to see if Ninisina could shoot down some stone golems stuck in the backline. However, they quickly were able to resolve their pathing issues and went after our wizard slayer, who had no way to escape at this point:
The others are revealed here, in part because they were picking up the gear from our fallen. The only reasonable objective was now to get Ninisina's stuff as well, go invisible again (we have enough potions for that, thanks to SCS granting a bunch of them to random enemy thieves) and flee the dungeon - this does end up working - barely:
We resurrect Madhava at the Trademeet temple, he resurrects Ninisina. That was terrible. Poorly played and a big wakeup call - we really need to take any future golem encounters (I'm thinking about the Planar Sphere here) very seriously. The party returns to the dungeon with full physical buffs and gets their revenge:
Carefully, we deal with the third golem group before killing Conster with traps and resting. Semia's maze is our final goal here, summons take down the guardians, and traps + full buffs help with the final group of foes:
Stronghold 5, The Unseeing Eye
Madhava has just reached level 15, so we have the most powerful version of skeleton warriors available - just what we need to trivialize beholder encounters. So, our only big challenge here should be ghoul town, especially the unnamed lich. This one went surprisingly well, but not in the way I intended: As I entered the main building down there, I accidentally moved too far forward before adding in my summons and buffs and triggered the big central group, which, thanks to better calls for help, alerted all remaining undead in the back as well. I saw the lich's buffs in the combat log and heard him casting an alteration spell, and I immediately left the building, expecting it to be timestop - I was able to run just in time and moved towards the exit, with tons of undead, such as two bone golems and two greater mummies, following me. However, the lich stayed put. Otherwise, this could've gone very, very poorly, since we can't exit the area that way. We were able to get in some buffs and summons, with our kensai wielding Azuredge to great effect:
3-4 undead, aside from the lich, had stayed inside. The battle had taken a while, so I expected short-duration buffs from the undead spellcaster to be gone - usually they have multiple instances of PFMW and will immediately activate another one upon seeing a party member, so I was quite surprised that, when Nechtan went in to test the waters and threw Azuredge at the lich, he didn't cast PFMW and just died:
Okay, very well. Now our skeletons get to do their thing. The rift device allow us to kill the Unseeing Eye:
We use our final buffs to charge at Ghaal, getting his (for this party) extremely powerful belt. Finally, Delia can reach the combat stats of a self-created frontliner without arcane buffs:
Interlude: Bodhi's Lair
Nechtan gets to have more fun. We have improved haste now (we bought those scrolls plus emotion: courage and went for our first scroll learning session), which helps with his performance as an axe-thrower:
Bodhi flees after getting hit by traps and fully buffed attacks:
Stronghold 6, The Temple Ruins
Most of this area is mostly done by Nechtan and a few summons. Aside from the Shade Lord, the two liches are the only enemies that matter around here. Luckily, they tend to be pretty stationary. Our strategy for this one is very simple: Send in skeleton summons one after one (after waiting for a short time inbetween) to get them to waste their PFMWs so Nechtan can angle for an Azuredge kill. In the meantime, their undead allies are lured towards the waiting party (staying far back so we can flee if the lich suddenly decides to move) - now that's a nice pile of destroyed undead:
And there's the Azuredge hit, after 3 PFMWs:
The second lich really likes summoning demons (some of them getting into battles with his own undead allies) - none of them track down the party, though. Unlike the first one, who had spell trap, we could theoretically try to play wizard chess with this one:
But the risks seem way too great. We just send in our skeletons (interestingly enough, both of these liches didn't cast death spell, which doesn't track with my previous experiences with them), once again it seems like there are 3 PFMWs to get through. Nechtan goes in and gets the kill once they all have run their course:
Finally, we have the Shade Lord. The Darkling Aura is a bit concerning, but I know that this guys always pre-buffs with PFMW and Spell Turning, so we just need secret word + breach to get through his defenses:
Only one tick of the dangerous aura, so no trouble all in all.
Now, the Planar Prison and Planar Sphere remain. Both are rather scary, but we'll try and tackle them as well before going to Spellhold. We're also fully caught up with the run again.
Another break from the Trio allowed us to continue this MP run. The session got off to a pretty sticky start thanks to making a poor fist of dealing with ambush areas while attempting to return to the temple visited last time. The first of the areas was populated by orcs and trolls. They were guarding the Firefly sling, which Brog wanted. We could have just grabbed it and run, but Cria chose to fight. That caused a problem for Brog who was not hasted and was struggling to stay out of the reach of the speedy trolls. He eventually ran out of HPs just before Cria could finish off the trolls.
After a trip to Mizhaena to raise Brog we hit another ambush area - this time with a bunch of goblins jealously guarding a hole in the ground. Most of those were stuck in a web and things seemed pretty much under control - before an unnoticed witchdoctor produced a Call Lightning spell to take down Brog once more.
Cria then managed to get stuck in her own web while seeking revenge of the goblins, but broke free quickly enough to survive.
After another trip to our friendly priestess, it proved 3rd time lucky to get back to the temple. Our luck seemed to have changed there with Ziatar immediately stunned by the first dart thrown at her.
The Neothelid proved almost as easy. Taking several stone form potions each allowed us to resist its spells and it made the mistake of surfacing early on to be hacked down.
Darskhelin and its party were next. Skeletons lasted long enough to take down the illithid and stinking cloud and stunning darts provided some disabling opportunities to make the fight fairly easy.
We could have avoided fighting Akanna, but chose to take her on as well. Her aerial servants got a couple of juicy blows in on Brog, but after running and shooting to deal with them Akanna didn't last long.
We finally made it to Boareskyr Bridge and immediately targeted Vichand there. Brog laid a couple of traps before backstabbing the mage. I expected that to be fatal, but threw in a magic missile from Cria just in case - and in fact that proved to be needed.
We took the easy way out by surrendering the fort, but still had to negotiate the fight on the bridge. Hasted skeletons got lucky there by landing a blow through the mage's mirrors - disrupting his initial attempt to establish a portal to the elemental plain. Continued attacks duly finished him off and though the guards put up a creditable resistance we prevailed once more.
We didn't do anything much in the Coalition Camp beyond a bit of shopping, but just headed off to Dragonspear Castle to free Skie and then saved the run there.
Stronghold 7, Planar Prison
A new addition to our arsenal, firestorm, was used by Madhava for one of the cramped rooms in Mekrath's lair - very useful as it goes through everything except for fire immunity:
One of the surviving yuan-ti mages did manage to dispel some of us, so we moved downstairs - the mage followed, but by now his PFMW was gone and we just surrounded and killed him:
For Mekrath himself, Delia gets him with a backstab:
Now we rest, buff up and enter the prison. Sometimes I do this in one go, but I decided to take a rest this time around to get more value out of short duration buffs. Our initial invisible assault, with a surround and a backstab, got rid of the spellcasters at the entrance:
Some more enemies started coming from the east, and I deployed another firestorm here to disperse and damage our foes over there:
In the meantime, we got some summons ready for any incoming foes. Firestorm seems to have really messed up the pathing of the enemies here, as they all came at different times, making them easy pickings for us:
A second round of buffs against the master of thralls, and we rested up before preparing for the warden. We made sure to get our SI:A spells and Entropy Shield at the ready, only getting close to our foe with summons and the three party members capable of protecting their buffs (Leda, Madalena, Madhava) - these are the prebuffs the warden had going:
This list might look long, but we really only need to get rid of spell shield and minor spell turning before we can breach him. That's easy work for our two wizards with secret words and spell thrusts:
Breach, and everyone moves in for the kill:
That all went very well. The warden was strangely mostly busy attacking our skeletons with his sword.... I am noticing a distinct lack of death spells in the spellbooks of my enemies in the SoA portion of this run so far. Very strange.
Stronghold 8, Planar Sphere
I was a bit afraid of this one due to the potential golem encounters and high level wizards, plus the limited resting with the provision system. We start by thinning out the halfling numbers:
After that, we're essentially flooding in skeleton warriors towards the halfling spellcasters until they have no PFMWs and we can go in. The cleric somehow doesn't get involved into all of these battles, but Nechtan takes them out by himself:
We send our skeletons towards the second group with two halfling spellcasters, preparing a few traps in the hall - the traps end up doing our work for us as the halflings follow our retreating party. Nice!
And here we get to a pretty weird event. Some spawns in the game don't always show up, such as the many randomized spawns in BG1, but I have never seen this group of golems in the room next to the furnaces not be there upon entering - I even blindly threw a firestorm towards them because I was sure they would be there:
However, no golems (I checked the edges of the room as well). Since I didn't want them to appear later and ambush me at some point, I did check the room again from time to time, but eventually moved to Tolgerias. That's an impressive list of pre-buffs:
Notably, we can't get rid of spell trap yet, so there's no way to breach him. Notice the 1 on an attack roll on the top of the combat log? That's Delia's critical failure on a backstab attempt, aided by a rare storm giant strength potion. After failing that one, we immediately retreated from the area, hoping to return when some of these buffs maybe had expired. Instead, Delia tried her luck with Lavok - I wasn't even sure if we could get the backstab because it's not possible to get perfectly behind him in his starting position, but it worked out:
That was easy. We move on outside and take down the various demons:
After another one of my regular checkups on the golem room, these seemingly lost enemies finally turned up! I made sure to get in my aerial servants for the clay golems and prepared as fully as possible, and this time, the golem encounter went very well for us:
Okay, by now Tolgerias should have lost quite a few of his buffs. We specifically want PFNM to be gone, so we can use our masterwork crossbow bolts - he initially had improved mantle, but SCS enemies rarely have multiple of those, often returning to PFMW as their second protection. This was the case here, and Ninisina blocked his spellcasting with her wizard slayer powers, giving us the time for a breach:
Now, since the noble efreeti in the fire room has firestorm and greater fire elementals are very powerful with the new SCS versions, we made sure to learn a bunch of protection from fire spells, because we're going to need a rest anyway to face the golems near the core. With the party being fully immune to fire damage, the room was made a lot easier:
All right. We made sure Madalena and Leda had more physical buffs as they usually do for the golems, and with the help of our aerial servants and some careful positioning we cleared out the core:
After that, we completed the mage stronghold quests, with the finale at the city gates:
Now we're on our way to Brynnlaw (just killed the vampires as well, because the game doesn't let me save before taking them down). Soon, we will have to prepare the party for losing all of their equipment in Spellhold, so we will need to remember to heavily change up our spellbooks with stuff like enchant weapon and even more summons.
In Brynnlaw, Delia tries to backstab Perth but rolls another 1 - so she immediately runs out again. Surprisingly, Perth doesn't follow us, so we just leave him alone, and we return after meeting with Golin, once most of his pre-buffs were gone:
We prepare our spellbook for the Asylum (the limited camping supplies together with the losing all of our gear require for us to be well prepared), and while we send in our skeletons to deal with most of the first level (with two aerial servants for the clay golem), we use our first enchant weapon spell so we can take down the Ruhk:
However, things go horribly wrong once I clicked on the portal, expecting the werewolf to show up, but I hadn't correctly memorized which gem would summon which foe, and the pit fiend appeared instead. Now, Madalena had her fire protection, but with the skeletons being unable to damage the fiend, we needed Nechtan with his enchant weapon spell (and throwing axes) to actually deal damage to it. However, SCS pit fiends are quite dangerous, being able to teleport at will - of course, they also have dispels and dangerous fire damage spells (even meteor swarm, but we were able to dodge that one), and a deadly fireball after a teleportation towards our party nearly killed several characters:
Notably, the pit fiend dispelled enchant weapon, and I only had one other cast left. Re-Applying the spell on Nechtan while spreading out with the party to avoid any more AoE fire damage spells catching multiple people, we really had to hope that we would be able to kill the fiend before another fireball or another dispel. Nechtan was able to do the job, much to my relief - this easily could've gone much worse:
At this point we were forced to rest. Had I prepared for the pit fiend with full buffs and protections against remove magic, I could have delayed resting by quite a bit. Anyway, on to level 2. We make sure to set traps for the mind flayer at the book and use skeletons for the beholder and most other things until we encounter the lich. Aside from skeletons, I also sent in a Hakeashar, something NPC wizards aren't very good at dealing with - and once again, no death spell by the lich:
Similiar to the liches in the temple ruins, it was relatively easy to lure the various undead guarding this one towards us without the lich actually moving. Despite our small amounts of gear, we already had some +2 ranged ammunition, enough to kill the bone golems at range, and after that Nechtan, with enchanted weapons, and Madhava, with turn undead, took care of everything else:
After that was done, another group of skeletons moved towards the lich. They were able to finish the job (after 3 PFMWs) without the party actually barging in to help:
Now, a buffed-up Nechtan took care of the vampire:
Since we had buffed with spell reflection earlier on, on the next level, we used that one to help in killing a gauth:
Our small stock of fire arrows, taken from the kobold commandos, was just enough with careful use to take out the trolls on this third level, and we used our last few summons for the yuan-ti mages in the room with the painted doors:
After taking out most of the monsters, I decided to take my second rest, because I wanted to have access to my aerial servants for the clay golems, allowing for an easy victory hear without any of us getting hit by cursed wounds:
We didn't need another rest, so with still two sets of camping supplies left, we completed the trials, bribed Lonk and took down Jon:
Since Jon only starts to activate defensive buffs after summoning the clones, he really stood no chance and retreated right away. After that, we finally got back our gear and sorted out our inventory, rested in Brynnlaw to get a more reasonable spellbook for future battles and fought our way through the city of caverns, with no notable events. Now we're in the underdark, and there are a lot of scary things down here.
With careful use of spirit armor, emotion spells, pfe and recitation, we can get our saving throws temporarily in the safe range against mind flayers even without using invulnerability potions (as has been mentioned in this thread before, SCS mind flayers tend to spam their powerful ballistic attacks/detonate if they detect chaotic commands, which could be devastating with our low constitution scores - meanwhile, their attempts to dominate or stun us are pretty much harmless). Nechtan takes down the first group of these foes by himself:
As we send our skeletons towards the first drow ambush party, it seems like they are damaging each other? I don't even know how, as I didn't get too close to look:
Eventually, the outside area is cleared up - no trouble here so far:
First, we get the spellbook for the imprisoned wizard. This one is dangerous with current SCS versions because of the extra abilities the elementals get, especially the earth elementals - earthquake has a ridiculous saving throw penalty and has been very devastating in my last SCS run. Even here, with me knowing about it, it was pretty dangerous, though I was able to avoid any deaths despite two knockouts:
The other gates are a lot easier, and we pickpocket a bunch of scrolls from the mage and go for a spell scribing scribing session, mostly to gain ADHW and time stop, which might be available soon.
Now for the kuo-toa caverns. Skeletons do most of the work until we go for the demon knights. The three spellcasters make sure to protect their buffs, we also place down some traps. The ones without SI:A/Entropy Shield hang around in the back initially, but end up joining the battle once it seems like no dispel is going to happen:
We use the same round of buffs for the guardians at the exit. This time, we do get hit with a dispel, which means Ninisina, Delia and Nechtan are a bit vulnerable, but luckily, they are not in an exposed position:
After taking down the prince, we get 6*fire resistance in our spellbook, rest, buff up fully again and take on the balor:
That went well. Sadly Delia had to stay out of combat due to her lack of death ward.
Next up, the beholder cave:
We mostly let our skeleton warriors handle things, helping out against the drow and the mind flayers. Those were a bit tricky, as they kept teleporting around, going invisible etc., and they ended up killing most of our skeletons, forcing us to rest and return:
On our return, the skeletons cleared out most of the cave, though one elder orb was able to take them down with some summoned help eventually. However, during this battle Madalena reached HLA levels and gained the ability to call in a planetar (doesn't require a rest with the SCS modification making them special abilities), who promptly finished the job:
Now for the illithid city, the scariest part until we meet Deirex. Invulnerability potions, spirit armor, emotion buffs and PfE get our saving throws mostly into safe range, Ninisina gets chaotic commands due to her inability to drink potions. From time to time we add in prayer/recitation, because somehow I am not sure if there are any saving throw penalties involved here (I really should have looked this up before going in there. I was kind of banking on the max penalties being -2, but it turns out that ulitharid psi blasts get to -4). Since we don't have too many potions or spirit armor casts, we also drink oils of speed and keep improved haste on Ninisina, so we mostly rush through the area, and things work out fairly well:
When we face the elder brain, though, Delia does get hit with a stun effect, propably due to a saving throw penalty is wasn't familiar with (it can't really have been the ego whip, as that ones has a save vs. death and she's even better at those):
However, the others are able to deal enough damage and distract the brain golems and mind flayers to save Delia, or so it seems:
Victory is ours, though the battle wasn't easy. However, soon after that, a mind flayer I had controlled with the circlet and that got hit with psionic maze (which made me control another one to open the door towards the master brain) apparently both returned from the maze and turned hostile, teleporting right to Delia and int draining her:
Well, that's annoying, though not really a notable setback, as by now we have lots of options to resurrect her.
All right, next time we're facing Ust'Natha. Shouldn't be too troublesome, except for Deirex, who I am now very afraid of after seeing how he made use of dimension door in aldain's previous run. I wonder if I should drink two potions of genius just to learn the ruby ray scroll I've just bought at the Ust'Natha entrance in case he has a spell trap prepared, as waiting out or just sending summons towards a lich that will just teleport directly next to us is not really an option. Also, I just checked his level - in the vanilla game, Madhava could have hit him with turn undead, but SCS improved his level to 28, so that's not going to happen. Well, we shall see.
@Enuhal The Drow damaging each other is almost certainly Circle of Bones at work (1D6 Crushing+1D6 Slashing to nearby creatures, and those Drow start very close to each other).
Deirex will go swimmingly! My mistake was trying to scrimp on buffs and exploit bad AI, which has worked before but is now a bit iffy in SCS; I recall with some trepidation also the end of Conjurer's run when Lavok Dimension Door'ed into our midst and unleashed Imprisonment.
Adding Ruby Ray sounds like a good idea, it's a bit risky trying to wait out all of his PfMW if you're in visual range, but maybe you can tank most of his spell book...
I decided to learn ruby ray, just in case, and moved on to free Phaere - traps helped me in getting rid of the underdark party, and the mind flayers & umber hulks are easy enough to defeat, despite me not using death spell, which I usually do for this encounter:
After that, we go for the tavern battles and duels. The mage duels here can be pretty difficult with SCS, so we make sure to send in Madhava before we only can pick mages and make him summon a bunch of allies that will help out Madalena:
While she doesn't have the spellslots to remove the buffs of three wizards in a row, Madalena's defenses stood fairly strong, especially her spell turning (which is mostly what I use due to the lack of other powerful lvl 7 spells in my spellbook), making some of our foes rely on their own summons, where the death spell that I was supposed to use against the Phaere ambush (but forgot about) came in:
For the final two foes, we call in a planetar as the deva gets unsummoned, and the final one is vorpaled as soon as their physical protection runs out:
After all that, we rest up, deal with the beholder and Quile's home - this is where remove magic is starting to become really powerful for Madalena, being a high level single class wizard; big groups of lower level spellcasters that generally don't use SI:A:
We progress through the main questline until we get to the ritual components. The slime worshippers are dealt with, and we rest up for Deirex.
The Deirex battle
I prepared a chain contingency with ruby ray in it for this one. Deirex' prebuffs included two magical swords (also mass invisibility, which delayed all of my spells because I had to wait for a very late true sight tick), so I moved Madalena as close to Deirex as possible, in the hopes that the CC would still hit the lich, not one of the summons. No spell trap, btw, so other debuffing spells would've done the same job. Meanwhile, I'm spreading out the characters that don't have SI:A/Entropy Shield so not all of them can get hit by one remove magic. Leda starts her own secret word (which does work on SCS liches despite being lvl 4, I looked that one up beforehand - spell thrust doesn't work though), Madalena uses her sequencer (which includes secret word as well) - this should get rid of spell shield and spell turning even if the CC doesn't hit. Deirex starts his time stop, and right after, the CC activates, with the right target:
Deirex casts one of the new high level nukes towards the party members at the entrance (I simply can not remember which one it was, despite playing this part yesterday evening) - the only one taking damage is Leda, but she's immediately near death. He also call ins a dark planetar and places a remove magic to the north before his timestop ends. Very, very dangerous at this point - My spread of party members wasn't ideal, so there are still two viable targets for the remove. Delia and Nechtan now have to try to avoid this planetar for fear of vorpal hits. Deirex uses a spell trigger to renew physical protections before we can hit him, while Madalena goes for breach - the spell protections are, indeed, gone by now:
We try to focus down the dark planetar - with two of our most powerful fighters dispelled, it's mostly up to Ninisina, who activates her GWW for the purpose. Deirex, meanwhile, throws a triple lightning bolt sequencer at Leda, whose MSD isn't enough to protect her (propably getting removed by the initial spells, and hit by a bounce afterwards) - she doesn't have notable electricy resistance and dies, luckily no one else shares the same fate:
Looking back at the screenshots, I'm not 100% sure what happened to Madalena's earlier breach spell here. I don't think there's a way she could've been interrupted, so I would guess that Deirex dodged it by going invisible, being revealed again by Madhava's running true sight. Luckily, Ninisina was able to take down the dark planetar, the biggest direct threat:
The lich is now trying to get close to Nechtan, so I'm fearing that he might want to cast imprisonment. However, Madalena is finally able to breach him (though it seems strange that the fireshields are still visible in this screenshot):
Deirex stops going after Nechtan (who is still speedy thanks to his boots), moving towards Madalena instead. Meanwhile, we start our physical attacks, and Nechtan gets the kill with the Azuredge ability:
Not a very smooth battle, but we fought our first HLA-capable foe in direct combat and survived, despite Leda's death. Well, she is resurrected and we rest before moving on to House Jae'llat. We call in our planetar for that one and once again get tons of value out of remove magic:
After executing the egg swap, we flee the Underdark and return to Athkatla.
All right - time for the various liches, dragons, the illithid hideout and guarded compound, Bodhi, and the WKI statues/WK2, plus the new forest areas.
I won't go into detail for all of those encounters - most of them are heavily buffed by SCS, especially on insane, so I had to take every one of them seriously. Here's my general buff list:
Very long duration, immediately after resting: Stoneskins, Strength/Cat's Grace for those below 18, ISOM, Belt of Fortitude.
Long duration (active almost always if we anticipate some form of combat):
Chaotic Commands, Death Ward (usually missing Ninisina, I just don't have enough level 4 cleric spells for everything I want), PFE, Protection From Fire (by now usually for everyone), Madalena herself sometimes gets Protection From Ice and PFME as well (no room in my spellbooks for Lightning/Acid Protection for now except for very specific encounters where those are crucial, though they might be added at some point for Madalena), Spirit Armor (at this point usually only for Nechtan, though I would want two more, one for Madalena and one for Leda, ideally), Emotion: Courage/Hope, Remove Fear. For specific encounters such as mind flayers we add invulnerability potions.
Mid and short duration (buffed before notable encounters): Spell Turning/MSD, SI:A/Entropy Shield, Spell Shield, Shield/Blur/MI, Improved Haste (always on Nechtan, others depend on who seems to most valuable), AoF/DUHM, Bless/Prayer/Recitation. Sometimes Madhava adds Shield of the Archons, though the long duration means that we can't rebuff him with some single target stuff such as improved haste, so I sometimes leave it out. Leda often adds vocalize just in case. Hardiness and other potions are options as well.
We usually have 2*MM Minor Sequencers, Contingencies at 50% with stoneskin, and Madalena has a Sequencer that has stuff like Secret Word/Remove Magic in it, a Spell Trigger that also involves Pierce Magic (sometimes Death Spell) and prepares Chain Contingencies as needed - for example 3*ADHW or some with Ruby Ray (Pierce Shield will become part of those once we scribe that one). If Delia, Nechtan and/or Ninisina get dispelled, I sometimes counter that with protective potions or new buffs, or I don't, depending on the situation.
Plans for high level spellcasters depend on their pre-buffs. We have the spellslots now (and many of them are in enclosed spaces, so it wouldn't work anyway) not to rely on sending in waves of summons. Instead, Madalena and Leda just try to get rid of their spell protections as quickly as possible and breach them, sometimes repeatedly, while true sight is running, and the fighters kill them as soon as a breach goes through (in the meantime, they often have summons or other foes to take on). There are many variations depending on pre-buffs and approaches by our foes.
All right, let's start with the city gates lich. He is neutral for a second, and in that time Ninisina actually hits him with firetooth. We dispel (but not breach) him before his timestop. Timestop goes off, wizard slayer spell failure from that one free hit prevents whatever he's attempting. He gates in demons, dispels our fighters, timestop ends and he gets breached and killed:
We move on to Cromwell and forge The Wave and The Equalizer (no need for the other stuff, also we won't forge Crom Faeyr because that would be a net loss on strength improving items, and we need as many as we can, plus, none of our fighters is trained in war hammers, and it would be a waste just for Madhava). The Githyanki are taken down on the way there:
Because getting all these buffs going takes a ton of time, we take down the shade lich and elemental lich with traps instead. After that, it's time for the guarded compound. I don't want to walk into the traps so the party holds position for a second while our thieves get busy. While we're waiting we call in a planetar and attack at ranged if possible, though we do get hit by a pretty dangerous ADHW just before the traps are gone:
We start dispelling Sion, who luckily doesn't have a strong follow-up, while the fighters take down the other foes:
Soon after the mage is breached and killed, though I have no screenshot of that.
On to the illithid hideout, we're back to our underdark tactics of buffing our saving throws as much as possible. We use traps in the room before the alhoon and lure the final group of illithids inside (most of them eventually teleport to us, though not in a big group as I would have expected):
We send some summons towards this foe (as there is enough room to do so here, and unlike most high level mages, this one is also deadly in melee combat, and we don't have PFMWs memorized), though he gets rid of them very quickly. As he finally finds us, we start getting rid of his buffs and are able to breach him while he's still chasing us around. Did you know the alhoon is undead? Our deva was happy to find out:
A quick visit to the graveyard just to get rid of the ambush (so we can rest here, which I like to do sometimes because it's quicker than going to an inn, as you can travel here and immediately click the button) - vampires, even with SCS, are fairly low level, so Madhava just turns them:
Travelling to the shadow dragon, we get into our first bit of trouble upon our return: The rakshasa ambush going after the Flail of Ages (an SCS addition) means that we have to fight multiple mid level spellcasters/fighters without any buffs on our side going in. We try to get some very basic defensive buffs going, but Madalena is very threatened, with one rakshasa completely locked in on her (and hasted). She is able to shake him for a bit with an invisibility potion but is soon revealed, though another potion gets her to safety:
Still, I didn't feel good about this encounter. Some kind of aggressive sequencer could've easily killed her at this point. Well, on to the shadow dragon. Leda and Delia are able to lay down one spike trap each at exactly the same time before he goes hostile. Despite the massive HP boost for dragons, the battle is short, as they are generally not that hard to dispel:
Surprisingly, Firkraag, unlike the shadow dragon (and, I believe, unlike ToB dragons like Saladrex) does let us set up traps without doing anything about it. Strange:
Still, we don't take full advantage of this, stopping after four traps total. Despite a succesful dispel on Nechtan (who has a ring of fire resistance just in case), he's not long for this world:
We forge dragonscale armor (notably, the red dragon plate is light enough that Ninisina can use it even without the strength buff, which is what we're looking for in case of a dispel, since armor can't be changed in combat, so she can finally get rid of her ankheg plate). Now we go for the new forest areas. Delia, after a long pause, finally has the opportunity to go for more backstabs here:
Next, we move to Bodhi. This is the Nechtan + Madhava show - mostly Madhava, to be honest, as he can turn any undead here except for Bodhi herself, while Nechtan is up to his old tricks with Azuredge:
We rest and prepare cold protection for everyone due to Bodhi's SCS abilities. Downstairs, it turns out that Madhava can even turn the two named spellcasting vampires in Bodhi's room added in by SCS:
We mostly stay away from Bodhi with anyone vulnerable to level drain, and we have strong ranged options at the ready in any case. Our allies go into melee combat with her, which is fine. Bodhi, after being near death, returns to 100% (part of her SCS script), but since we're protected from cold damage her most damaging abilities never come into play (Madhava turning the vampires means that there's no fear of dispels here). Fittingly, Madhava ends up getting the kill:
On to the second round of statues in WKI. Here we have two high level spellcasters, both capable of stopping time. As per usual, the fighters take on everything else while the wizards start getting rid of spell protections. As has been the norm, Delia and Nechtan get dispelled (Madhava, fighting mostly at range, often is missed by the remove magic). The first enemy stops time - that's a nice spell trigger to renew some of their lost buffs:
However, these foes are simply lacking in ways to actually deal damage to us (I think both of them have no access to HLAs yet). We do get hit by a second timestop, but a lot of attention is focused on our planetar (who still survives all that), and we end up hunting both of these mages down without suffering any notable damage:
And we didn't even have to lure the statues towards the spike traps I had set up in a separate room as an insurance policy
Level 2 is is much easier than the statue battle. We rest once to get lightning protections ready for the northern room, otherwise one cold protection spell is enough for the ice golem, and the other rooms are easy to clear with our standard buffs. While luring the fire elementals to the cold room, we test out the state of our thief traps - Leda still has poison extra damage, but Delia is on fire damage traps, so she plants those down for the chromatic demon, and they kill it in its ice form:
On to the Twisted Rune. We prepare traps for Shangalar and a 3*ADHW CC that might help with the others, depending on their buffs. The traps do their expected job:
Vaxall has a bunch of pre-buffs, is well protected against physical damage, but he has no PFME - the ADHW CC ends up taking him (and the fighter) down, and the others go on attacking the vampire while the wizards start with the dispelling:
I was able to mostly dodge Layene's remove magic, as I saw it coming early enough. Nechtan, the target, in theory, didn't even lose most of his buffs. Layene is supposed to be level 25, so I was a bit surprised by that:
Well, we take down the efreeti and the vampire, and directly after losing her spell protections Layene stops time:
She actually unleashes some pretty threatening stuff: A fallen planetar is followed up by improved alacrity, after which she casts improved malison, dragon's breath and meteor. We change our focus towards the planetar - luckily Nechtan still has death ward:
However, our kesai did lose protection from fire (as the only party member), so we trade him the ring of fire control to get him to 90% fire resistance - dragon's breath and meteor are no threat now:
After that, her IA is over, and we breach and kill Layene:
Our final foe is Kangaxx. Traps will kill his first form, so we can focus on the demi-lich. Helm of Brilliance has a very quick Sunray cast that manages to hit before his pre-buffs go up:
Kangaxx dispels our three fighters (seems like I didn't put Madhava far enough in the back). We respond with two PfU scrolls (meaning the lich needs to dispel again in order to target directly, or so I hope) and invulnerability on Nechtan (he has good enough saving throws that this should mean that "trap the soul" can't maze him in its SCS version). However, looking at the demi-lichs prebuffs, it seems like he has no PFME.... so why not sunray again, this time with Madhava's regular cast from his spellbook?
Notably, from what I found out, the bonus damage to undead inflicted by sunray ignores magic resistance (the initial 3d6 and blindness effect are blocked by it, which is why you see "magic resistance" in the combat log), and the SCS version of Kangaxx only has out-right immunity against level 1-5 spells, just as normal liches do (exceptions like breach and secret word propably apply here as well). So, that's why sunray is actually quite good against him if he doesn't have PFME.
Well, now that he's near death, why not use a third sunray? Yes, we have one from Daystar as well, it just takes some time to activate as Ninisina's aura was clouded from the PfU scroll, and it has a long cast time unlike the helm. Meanwhile, Kangaxx uses, of all things, a double (why not triple?) chaos spell trigger? I've never seen something like this on a spellcaster of such a high level - granted, it worked, but it only affected Delia, who isn't very important to this battle at all:
Well, here's our third sunray, granting us victory:
We were working on the dispel + breach solution while all that was going on just in case, but the sunrays worked out quite well. After that, I travelled around for a bit to buy any useful scrolls and potions I might need in ToB, bringing me down to below 60k gold, which is very low (and will mean that we won't be able to afford all Cespenar upgrades right away, plus a lot of scroll scribing will propably have to wait until Amkethran). While travelling, I encountered something weird I haven't seen before. There is a SECOND rakshasa ambush for the Flail of Ages? Are there an infinite number of those? Has anyone else ever seen this?
Ninisina has a special trick for two of those rakshasa that don't immediately cast PFMW - Greater Deathblow:
This time, I had Madalena open with the SOTM spell trap and follow up with stoneskin, so she was a lot safer. Anyway, we ended up winning relatively easily, but I was very surprised by this encounter.
@Enuhal I have a vague recollection of getting that ambush in an earlier version of SCS, yes.
I do not recall getting more than two, though, but this might be because by that point you tend to leave for the end-game quite rapidly.
No-mercy Necromancer: A Random Run, part 2
Part 1 found here
The Iron Throne party proved no obstacle. As always, the two Thieves start off hostile (unlike the rest), and so are easily dragged into the southern room to be quietly disposed of.
We sent a number of Beetles north after that, they got a nice stun effect off on a few casters, and by that point we felt confident enough to just charge in with barely any buffs.
Cleric/Ranger deflected what Confusion effects there were using the Greenstone Amulet, and while Zhalimar dealt a good bit of damage, so did our ranged cadre. Victory!
Before departing for Candlekeep, everyone gets to scribe spells for the first time in a long time: We have enough potions remaining that Necromancer and one more arcanist can get another session in before the end, if we find anything interesting enough.
Necromancer quaffs a Potion of Invisibility and runs off while the rest of the party under Remove Fear dismantles the Ogre Magi; they're quite low-level, after all.
One Ogre Magi drops 4 (!) Remove Magic scrolls... the SCS component that yields extra random scrolls does go wonky sometimes.
We breeze through the crypts: Cleric/Illusionist gets the WIS tome, and Cleric/Ranger the STR tome, so she can now equip Full Plate unaided.
For some reason, Arcanis and... I forget the poor Halfling's name, but anyway! They both follow us into Prat's area, so I decide to be devious and Charm them both using the Nymph's Cloak with 40 charges we picked up in Baldur's Gate.
Arcanis and what's-his-face sadly last not long at all against Prat (and they had nothing interesting that dropped either, just standard non-magical gear), so we avenge them promptly and exit.
I seem to be the only one that gets this bug: Even after doing a complete wipe of local files and re-downloading, Krystin (and Semaj later on) turn invisible every once in a while without casting a spell or quaffing a potion.
Joke's on Krystin, though: She zones back in next to our Beetles, and get her comeuppance.
Alright, palace fight: Skeleton Warriors, buffs, MSD and Stoneskin on Necromancer, and we're golden.
Its spell defenses torn down, the Doppleganger Mage fails a save against Chromatic Orb, removing the only real threat here.
Off after Sarevok. This time I remember that Shaldrissa might have Death Spell, so we keep our distance, instead following up an initial firebombing (that cleared out the grunts) with some Beetles, that yet again prove their mettle in removing the main threat.
I'll say that the amount of inventory clutter by the time you reach the end of BG1 is indicative of your party's power: We literally have over a hundred good potions just sitting around, and about as many scrolls of various shapes, sizes and colors.
So, every fighter (we have four of them, after all) gets a PfM scroll, topped off with serious potion buffs.
Necromancer just spends the fight hiding in a corner under Invisibility and PfLightning, coming out only once victory is certain; Fighter/Druid had her buffs dispelled once but just reapplied them.
In the end, it's the fastest, most hassle-free Sarevok fight I've ever had; I don't even think it took two turns before S dropped.
On to BG2! The import refrains from screwing up the max HP of anyone, and we're off.
We have an enormous amount of spell slots already, so most of the dungeon goes well: However, since we're actually able to kill off Ulvaryl this time, the Shadow Thief Mage turns her not-so-tender mercies on us instead, unleashing a Lightning Bolt.
I think she was only L5 so theoretically that shouldn't have been able to kill Necromancer in one hit.. but a bad bounce might've.
Brrr. We swiftly depart the place.
I don't even have a screenshot of the Circus. We did have some problems since only Fighter/Mage/Thief has a magical weapon at the moment (we imported The Burning Earth), but scrape by with magical damage and Spiritual Hammer/Moonblade.
Next, the Copper Coronet and Slaver Ship are both uneventful: Again, we've so many options for completely shutting down the opposition they barely get to shake a blade/arrow at us.
We swing by the Government district, splurge on a license, and clear out the local Fanatics, also an easy victory.
And now for something completely stupid.
My intent was to go after Mae'Var first: This is a fairly easy stronghold quest, with a huge gold reward at the end, and we do need gold to bribe our reputation up before buying anything.
We get the quest started, but it's not night-time so we can't go grab the amulet from the Temple of Talos.
I don't want to let all our spells go to waste, so decide we'll just take out the Pirates at the Sea's Bounty.
I forgot that the Mage here has, for no apparent reason, a pretty grotesque Magic Resistance. Is it 100%? It is at the least high enough to completely stymie my intended tactic, which was to throw two Cloudkills in his general direction to completely shut down his spellcasting. I was so confident in success I didn't bother with most short-duration buffs, and we didn't initially spread out (that would've entailed walking into our own Cloudkills).
This Mage turned out to be an Enchanter. I'll spare you the gory details as I'm sure you can fill them in: Suffice to say, a low-level party just isn't gonna be that great at making saves against Chaos with a -6 modifier (-2 from the Enchanter bonus).
Beyond humiliating.
I'll roll up another Necromancer, but if time is a factor, it might be that the onus of the last Mage kit falls squarely upon @Enuhal's shoulders.
@aldain That's rough. I had someone die to that pirate gang as well, courtesy of the mage, thanks to Beltyn's Burning Blood. Luckily he didn't hit us with a huge chaos. I had no idea he has a high magic resistance with SCS, I never noticed that. It's 70% according to the wiki. That is very strange indeed and maybe some kind of mistake, at least I don't see a good justification for it. The pirates will have to be taken a lot more seriously in future runs.
I seem to be the only one that gets this bug: Even after doing a complete wipe of local files and re-downloading, Krystin (and Semaj later on) turn invisible every once in a while without casting a spell or quaffing a potion.
Actually, I did have that happen as well during my current run, at least with Krystin (I don't remember it with Semaj). I didn't mention it because it didn't really impact the battle, especially because I had access to true sight (and I figured she might have been turned into some sort of shadowdancer/wizard dual-class and used hide in plain sight). Now that I am looking into it, Krystin has an undroppable Sandthief's Ring equipped, which propably has multiple charges, so my guess is that she's just using one of these very single round - might not actually fully be a bug. Semaj has a similiar item: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/MAGE01.ITM
Though they propably shouldn't spam those, it makes for very awkward gameplay. They were originally propably just meant to allow them to start combat invisibly.
That MAGE01 ring is not actually a Sandthief's Ring - it just has that name because they made the item by cloning. The only effect of that item is to grant initial invisibility to the creature. But, well, invisibility with "equipped" timing ... if that gets re-evaluated for some reason, it re-establishes that invisibility.
Note that this effect is not illusionary, so you need a Detect Invisibility effect to reveal that creature before they reveal themself. (Detect Invisibility, Invisibility Purge, Oracle, True Seeing/True Sight).
On to the SoA endgame, starting at the elven city. The initial golems converge into a double group, which is a bit tough to take down, even with the help of a planetar - some potions, some shuffling around, and we get the job done, although some injuries are unavoidable:
Incendiary cloud is a really good spell against this group of rakshasa in front of the temple:
This was a pretty terrible backstab, but still enough to take down the drow wizard:
A second group of rakshasa - Madalena uses timestop to grant her the time for 3 ADHWs, which is enough to take down these foes:
We even move further towards the palance to take kill the balor there:
Now, we take on the black dragon, buffing up with acid protection first. This battle was a strange one, because the dragon did very little, despite living for a reasonably long time with its hp boost. No remove magic, no insect plague, no entangle, no breath weapon - he used his wing buffet once, buffed with stoneskin once, but that was about it:
All right! We charge into the temple, take down the guys in there, start the ritual and move to the tree. The elementals there aren't the greater version (though that would be appropriate, since this is the endgame), so they don't get many of the new SCS abilities and are easy enough to kill. Jon at the tree goes down to traps:
In hell, we do the trials the good way. Incendiary cloud and an ADHW CC help out the planetar and skeletons against the various types of beholders, the only significant battle here:
We prepare for the final SoA battle, with some traps near what I hope is the balor spawning position and a few summons. Our goal is to take down the demons first:
Irenicus stops time, calls in a dark planetar and activates improved alacrity. The planetar's globe of blades deals damage despite time being stopped, which nearly kills Delia and Nechtan - both use big healing potions and retreat. Meanwhile, our wizards try dispelling Jon with spell thrust (for spell shield) and spellstrike (for everything else):
The fighters make their escape and we take down the fallen planetar:
Now we can breach Jon and start taking him down:
So... Jon is near death, turns to his human form - and nothing happens. His last line of dialogue doesn't come, the cinematic doesn't start, no matter what I do - I can deal thousands of points of damage to him, I can run around and do nothing, I can just wait, nothing - he also does nothing, doesn't move, doesn't cast, he just stands around:
This is a fairly common bug (and not the first time I've encountered it). Since I got no results after trying a few things, the only choice remaining seemed to be a reload to re-do the battle, which was a bit of a risk, but on the second try things went just fine as well. It was, in the end, more of the same - We take down the demons, Jon stops time, does some stuff which we eventually counter (this time a dragon's breath - he's better at dispelling us this time around, so two the three dispellable party members have to move away (or, in Necthan's case, swap around a ring to get to 90% resistance)), we get rid of his protections, breach him and start dealing damage:
This time the bug didn't occur, so we can move on to ToB.
So for the next level of Yaga-Shura's temple, we had mordy swords and planetars lead the way with the party assisting as they could. Coreranger took a good amount of damage but he always was able to run away and heal then come back to the fight. Impish took huge damage in getting the first heart, apparently his fire resistance wore off. We didn't have any trouble in getting the 2nd heart. We left for Nylee's glade. As usual a few summons made the fight pretty simple. After a rest, we then headed for Yaga's camp.
This went surprisingly well. Impish has been using energy blades to very good effect and with GWW from Coreranger, Yaga didn't last long.
Next up was Senda's enclave. We did usually two strategies, either let mordy sword take most of the attention with party assisting or firestorm or going invisible and skipping enemies. For the Captain Coreranger did a duel to take him down.
Time for the main fight with Sendai. This was a long and involved fight and Impish got careless and got himself killed. However a planetar raised him and healed him then he got back into the fight. The party was careful to not get hit with harm by Sendai's cleric forms. The fight was long and drawn out but eventually she dies.
We then do the two pocket plane challenges. Both went fairly straightforward. Then we tried to deal with Draconis. Coreranger used the shadow armor to be protected from acid - firestorm eventually killed Draconis - problem? Coreranger intended to go to pocket plane, rest then come back and save our session but game crashed and we will have to fight Draconis next time again.
Just a headsup: I've rolled up a Necromancer with a pretty powerful party, and am making progress.
It's good fun and I'll keep going with the run even if someone else fancies a stab at the class, will post once I've gotten farther (probably next weekend).
Starting with ToB, I had planned to lay down a few traps for the black reavers with the intention of taking down Ilasera by myself, but it seems like she turns hostile before her allies do - a lot of traps hit her immediately, even if there were many closer enemies, and she died right away:
The first pocket plane challenge is a serious hurdle with SCS, at least once Irenicus, Bodhi and Sarevok appear. Since it also takes a while, we go for a fresh round of buffs and only weave short-duration buffs in while combat is already ongoing, making especially sure to be a bit later with our SI:A/Entropy Shield spells so they have enough duration left when the real fight begins. The three appear, and while the party was taking down Sarevok, the wizards starti their dispels against Joneleth:
We retreated a bit in anticipation of Jon's timestop, almost killing Bodhi in the meantime - as seems to be the norm, our foe called in a dark planetar:
Timestop ends with Jon casting improved alcratiy - luckily out of our range so he had to waste some time walking up to us - and Bodhi dies:
Jon uses his alacrity to dispel our non-spellcasters and follows up with dragon's breath and meteor - I spread the dispelled party members apart and equipped Nechtan, the primary target, with 90% fire resistance while calling in our own planetar to counter Jon's:
We focus the dark planetar with ranged weapons and take it down - meanwhile, Jon switches to frost damage, which is quite a bit more dangerous as there are far fewer ways to resist it. At the same time, we finally get rid of most of his buffs:
And now, the tables turn and the wizard dies within seconds:
Okay, on to Saradush. First, we do sidequests and get our final pairs of boots of speed. Kiser's mage gets dispelled and killed:
For the first mage in the sewers, we flex our high level and just cast remove magic, the next one gets backstabbed:
Next, our cleric + kensai combo clears out the prison, and we meet another wizard in the dungeon - this one pre-buffs even though we don't show ourselves (just being nearby while invisible is enough) - but since she doesn't cast divination spells we just stay away for a while and clear the remainder of the area, so a lot of her buffs are already gone once we fight, making this a quick battle. We use mass invisibility for a final backstab against the mage below Gromnir's throne room:
Now we rest and buff up again. We go in under mass invisibility and split our party (fully improved hasted) against both wizards - the unnamed one dies before being able to activate his pre-buffs, and our ADHW CC takes down Gromnir:
Karun the Black is still at large, and as per usual, our fighters take down the remaining foes while Leda and Madalena dispel and breach him - All of that works without any trouble, we don't even suffer a remove magic:
A bit of a shorter update, as progress in ToB is always a bit slower for me, because we need full buffs for almost everything and I also don't enjoy the gameplay as much, so I play in shorter sessions. This is just the temple and the Marching Mountains:
Starting with the master wraith and its allies - we use turn undead, sunray and breach on the main enemy:
There is very limited info on the skeletons inside the temple on the wiki, so I don't know their levels and if turn undead will be effective - turns out it depends heavily on the type of enemy: The wizard, the most threatening skeleton, is immediately killed. The cleric and two warriors are untouched:
However, with the only real threat already destroyed, we have more than enough anti-undead tools for the remaining foes in there:
On to the Marching Mountains. We buff up and start clearing the area, using invisibility to move past the giants. Sending a magical sword in there is not quite as effective as in the vanilla game, since the giants are smarter with SCS and will switch targets, but it was still a decent distraction and allowed me to split the initial group, using a planetar and some HLAs to help out the fighters. Making sure to take down the fel cats as soon as possible (as they can get really dangerous with SCS), we started clearing the side areas. The one with the fire lich is the only dangerous one - the lich wouldn't move out of there, though, so we were able to go back to some of our old summoning tricks. Meanwhile, Delia dealt with two noble efreeti:
After the fire lich had used its third PFMW, we went in for the kill:
At this point some of us were hit by dispels and buff durations were getting low, though as our final battle before resting, we used some invisible blocking against the giants at the level 2 entrance (I usually don't use invisible blockers a lot, but the area is just so convenient for that approach):
We go for a rest and buff up again. The red dragon Brimstone reinforces the fire giants here, and we use remove magic against him before activating HLAs to deal the required damage:
A few potions and high-power healing spells (mass heal and heal) had to be used here, and some rotating in and out of the front lines, but in the end Berenn, being a cleric, just wasn't too much a threat, so I wasn't punished by focusing my attentions on the dragon first and took out the fire giant leader right after that:
Nechtan used The Wave to take down the prince of fire in one hit, and we returned to the pocket plane, going to Saradush after that to re-fill our camping supplies (something I had forgotten during my last SCS run at this point).
I have decided to go to Watcher's Keep now, for a very specific reason (though I usually wait until either after Sendai's Enclave or even until just before the Throne): Due to the camping supply system, I want the ability to leave Watcher's Keep entirely via the pocket plane in case I run out of camping supplies in the randomized teleporter maze - unlikely to happen, but possible. If we do this part before going to meet Yaga Shura, the options to teleport directly to Saradush or to the area east of the city are still available, while later on the pocket plane always would return me to the WK zone that I had just left. Maybe this is a bad idea, because a bad sequence of rooms (with a no-magic zone leading directly into a dangerous fight) is propably the most likely thing to end the run at this point, but the camping supply situation shouldn't be entirely underestimated.
Comments
Madalena the Conjurer, Update 18
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
Stronghold 1, The Druid Grove:
This one went very well. Trolls are easy to take down, fire damage is involved in Firetooth anyway, we just have to make sure not to get destroyed by flamestrikes or greater commands (unholy blight, the third spirit troll spell, is not that big of a threat due to our very mixed alignments). For safety, Madalena herself has chaotic commands and protection from fire. Once we make our way to the druids, we're mostly trying to avoid any insect plagues and are quite successful at that. The one spell we're unable to stop is a call lightning on Madalena - a spell that already killed one of us in SoD. However, Madalena wisely had MSD going (so I am a bit surprised she was even the target), but in the case of the multi-round nature of call lightning, MSD doesn't stop the entire spell - only the first 3 hits. But that gave me enough time to drink a potion of absorption (those are a bit rare in SoA, but I just bought one from the trademeet genies because their inventory is going to disappear soon):
Stronghold 2, De'Arnise Keep
Since we haven't had too much trouble with the trolls, I decide to visit De'Arnise keep next. Another ambush, another double chaos:
Stronghold 3, Mae'Var's Guild
Well, this one's easy given our access to true sight. Rayic Gethras is the only real obstacle, but he doesn't go hostile quickly enough as we excuse ourselves for just barging in - enough time for our two thieves to set down enough traps to get him with the poison damage:
Stronghold 4, Firkraag's Dungeon
This one didn't go too well... We take down the first group of golems relatively easily and Nechtan goes on a solo mission with Azuredge and a protection from undead scroll (plus some potion buffs) to hunt down the various vampires. However, as we run into the second golem group, not exactly very well prepared, they quickly punch their way through our summons and hunt us down. We're partly slowed, ill-prepared and as I make plans to get out of this situation by drinking potions of invisibility, Madhava goes down before being able to drink his potion:
Stronghold 5, The Unseeing Eye
Madhava has just reached level 15, so we have the most powerful version of skeleton warriors available - just what we need to trivialize beholder encounters. So, our only big challenge here should be ghoul town, especially the unnamed lich. This one went surprisingly well, but not in the way I intended: As I entered the main building down there, I accidentally moved too far forward before adding in my summons and buffs and triggered the big central group, which, thanks to better calls for help, alerted all remaining undead in the back as well. I saw the lich's buffs in the combat log and heard him casting an alteration spell, and I immediately left the building, expecting it to be timestop - I was able to run just in time and moved towards the exit, with tons of undead, such as two bone golems and two greater mummies, following me. However, the lich stayed put. Otherwise, this could've gone very, very poorly, since we can't exit the area that way. We were able to get in some buffs and summons, with our kensai wielding Azuredge to great effect:
Interlude: Bodhi's Lair
Nechtan gets to have more fun. We have improved haste now (we bought those scrolls plus emotion: courage and went for our first scroll learning session), which helps with his performance as an axe-thrower:
Stronghold 6, The Temple Ruins
Most of this area is mostly done by Nechtan and a few summons. Aside from the Shade Lord, the two liches are the only enemies that matter around here. Luckily, they tend to be pretty stationary. Our strategy for this one is very simple: Send in skeleton summons one after one (after waiting for a short time inbetween) to get them to waste their PFMWs so Nechtan can angle for an Azuredge kill. In the meantime, their undead allies are lured towards the waiting party (staying far back so we can flee if the lich suddenly decides to move) - now that's a nice pile of destroyed undead:
Now, the Planar Prison and Planar Sphere remain. Both are rather scary, but we'll try and tackle them as well before going to Spellhold. We're also fully caught up with the run again.
Cria (female half-elf bard, Grond0); Brog (male half-orc cleric/thief, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1212127/#Comment_1212127
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1213450/#Comment_1213450
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214706/#Comment_1214706
Another break from the Trio allowed us to continue this MP run. The session got off to a pretty sticky start thanks to making a poor fist of dealing with ambush areas while attempting to return to the temple visited last time. The first of the areas was populated by orcs and trolls. They were guarding the Firefly sling, which Brog wanted. We could have just grabbed it and run, but Cria chose to fight. That caused a problem for Brog who was not hasted and was struggling to stay out of the reach of the speedy trolls. He eventually ran out of HPs just before Cria could finish off the trolls.
After another trip to our friendly priestess, it proved 3rd time lucky to get back to the temple. Our luck seemed to have changed there with Ziatar immediately stunned by the first dart thrown at her.
Bard 11, 80 HPs, 279 kills
Cleric 8 / thief 9, 66 HPs, 268 kills, 6 deaths
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
Stronghold 7, Planar Prison
A new addition to our arsenal, firestorm, was used by Madhava for one of the cramped rooms in Mekrath's lair - very useful as it goes through everything except for fire immunity:
Stronghold 8, Planar Sphere
I was a bit afraid of this one due to the potential golem encounters and high level wizards, plus the limited resting with the provision system. We start by thinning out the halfling numbers:
Now we're on our way to Brynnlaw (just killed the vampires as well, because the game doesn't let me save before taking them down). Soon, we will have to prepare the party for losing all of their equipment in Spellhold, so we will need to remember to heavily change up our spellbooks with stuff like enchant weapon and even more summons.
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
In Brynnlaw, Delia tries to backstab Perth but rolls another 1 - so she immediately runs out again. Surprisingly, Perth doesn't follow us, so we just leave him alone, and we return after meeting with Golin, once most of his pre-buffs were gone:
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
With careful use of spirit armor, emotion spells, pfe and recitation, we can get our saving throws temporarily in the safe range against mind flayers even without using invulnerability potions (as has been mentioned in this thread before, SCS mind flayers tend to spam their powerful ballistic attacks/detonate if they detect chaotic commands, which could be devastating with our low constitution scores - meanwhile, their attempts to dominate or stun us are pretty much harmless). Nechtan takes down the first group of these foes by himself:
Now for the kuo-toa caverns. Skeletons do most of the work until we go for the demon knights. The three spellcasters make sure to protect their buffs, we also place down some traps. The ones without SI:A/Entropy Shield hang around in the back initially, but end up joining the battle once it seems like no dispel is going to happen:
Next up, the beholder cave:
All right, next time we're facing Ust'Natha. Shouldn't be too troublesome, except for Deirex, who I am now very afraid of after seeing how he made use of dimension door in aldain's previous run. I wonder if I should drink two potions of genius just to learn the ruby ray scroll I've just bought at the Ust'Natha entrance in case he has a spell trap prepared, as waiting out or just sending summons towards a lich that will just teleport directly next to us is not really an option. Also, I just checked his level - in the vanilla game, Madhava could have hit him with turn undead, but SCS improved his level to 28, so that's not going to happen. Well, we shall see.
Deirex will go swimmingly! My mistake was trying to scrimp on buffs and exploit bad AI, which has worked before but is now a bit iffy in SCS; I recall with some trepidation also the end of Conjurer's run when Lavok Dimension Door'ed into our midst and unleashed Imprisonment.
Adding Ruby Ray sounds like a good idea, it's a bit risky trying to wait out all of his PfMW if you're in visual range, but maybe you can tank most of his spell book...
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
I decided to learn ruby ray, just in case, and moved on to free Phaere - traps helped me in getting rid of the underdark party, and the mind flayers & umber hulks are easy enough to defeat, despite me not using death spell, which I usually do for this encounter:
After all that, we rest up, deal with the beholder and Quile's home - this is where remove magic is starting to become really powerful for Madalena, being a high level single class wizard; big groups of lower level spellcasters that generally don't use SI:A:
The Deirex battle
I prepared a chain contingency with ruby ray in it for this one. Deirex' prebuffs included two magical swords (also mass invisibility, which delayed all of my spells because I had to wait for a very late true sight tick), so I moved Madalena as close to Deirex as possible, in the hopes that the CC would still hit the lich, not one of the summons. No spell trap, btw, so other debuffing spells would've done the same job. Meanwhile, I'm spreading out the characters that don't have SI:A/Entropy Shield so not all of them can get hit by one remove magic. Leda starts her own secret word (which does work on SCS liches despite being lvl 4, I looked that one up beforehand - spell thrust doesn't work though), Madalena uses her sequencer (which includes secret word as well) - this should get rid of spell shield and spell turning even if the CC doesn't hit. Deirex starts his time stop, and right after, the CC activates, with the right target:
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
All right - time for the various liches, dragons, the illithid hideout and guarded compound, Bodhi, and the WKI statues/WK2, plus the new forest areas.
I won't go into detail for all of those encounters - most of them are heavily buffed by SCS, especially on insane, so I had to take every one of them seriously. Here's my general buff list:
Very long duration, immediately after resting: Stoneskins, Strength/Cat's Grace for those below 18, ISOM, Belt of Fortitude.
Long duration (active almost always if we anticipate some form of combat):
Chaotic Commands, Death Ward (usually missing Ninisina, I just don't have enough level 4 cleric spells for everything I want), PFE, Protection From Fire (by now usually for everyone), Madalena herself sometimes gets Protection From Ice and PFME as well (no room in my spellbooks for Lightning/Acid Protection for now except for very specific encounters where those are crucial, though they might be added at some point for Madalena), Spirit Armor (at this point usually only for Nechtan, though I would want two more, one for Madalena and one for Leda, ideally), Emotion: Courage/Hope, Remove Fear. For specific encounters such as mind flayers we add invulnerability potions.
Mid and short duration (buffed before notable encounters): Spell Turning/MSD, SI:A/Entropy Shield, Spell Shield, Shield/Blur/MI, Improved Haste (always on Nechtan, others depend on who seems to most valuable), AoF/DUHM, Bless/Prayer/Recitation. Sometimes Madhava adds Shield of the Archons, though the long duration means that we can't rebuff him with some single target stuff such as improved haste, so I sometimes leave it out. Leda often adds vocalize just in case. Hardiness and other potions are options as well.
We usually have 2*MM Minor Sequencers, Contingencies at 50% with stoneskin, and Madalena has a Sequencer that has stuff like Secret Word/Remove Magic in it, a Spell Trigger that also involves Pierce Magic (sometimes Death Spell) and prepares Chain Contingencies as needed - for example 3*ADHW or some with Ruby Ray (Pierce Shield will become part of those once we scribe that one). If Delia, Nechtan and/or Ninisina get dispelled, I sometimes counter that with protective potions or new buffs, or I don't, depending on the situation.
Plans for high level spellcasters depend on their pre-buffs. We have the spellslots now (and many of them are in enclosed spaces, so it wouldn't work anyway) not to rely on sending in waves of summons. Instead, Madalena and Leda just try to get rid of their spell protections as quickly as possible and breach them, sometimes repeatedly, while true sight is running, and the fighters kill them as soon as a breach goes through (in the meantime, they often have summons or other foes to take on). There are many variations depending on pre-buffs and approaches by our foes.
All right, let's start with the city gates lich. He is neutral for a second, and in that time Ninisina actually hits him with firetooth. We dispel (but not breach) him before his timestop. Timestop goes off, wizard slayer spell failure from that one free hit prevents whatever he's attempting. He gates in demons, dispels our fighters, timestop ends and he gets breached and killed:
On to the illithid hideout, we're back to our underdark tactics of buffing our saving throws as much as possible. We use traps in the room before the alhoon and lure the final group of illithids inside (most of them eventually teleport to us, though not in a big group as I would have expected):
Travelling to the shadow dragon, we get into our first bit of trouble upon our return: The rakshasa ambush going after the Flail of Ages (an SCS addition) means that we have to fight multiple mid level spellcasters/fighters without any buffs on our side going in. We try to get some very basic defensive buffs going, but Madalena is very threatened, with one rakshasa completely locked in on her (and hasted). She is able to shake him for a bit with an invisibility potion but is soon revealed, though another potion gets her to safety:
On to the second round of statues in WKI. Here we have two high level spellcasters, both capable of stopping time. As per usual, the fighters take on everything else while the wizards start getting rid of spell protections. As has been the norm, Delia and Nechtan get dispelled (Madhava, fighting mostly at range, often is missed by the remove magic). The first enemy stops time - that's a nice spell trigger to renew some of their lost buffs:
Level 2 is is much easier than the statue battle. We rest once to get lightning protections ready for the northern room, otherwise one cold protection spell is enough for the ice golem, and the other rooms are easy to clear with our standard buffs. While luring the fire elementals to the cold room, we test out the state of our thief traps - Leda still has poison extra damage, but Delia is on fire damage traps, so she plants those down for the chromatic demon, and they kill it in its ice form:
On to the Twisted Rune. We prepare traps for Shangalar and a 3*ADHW CC that might help with the others, depending on their buffs. The traps do their expected job:
Well, now that he's near death, why not use a third sunray? Yes, we have one from Daystar as well, it just takes some time to activate as Ninisina's aura was clouded from the PfU scroll, and it has a long cast time unlike the helm. Meanwhile, Kangaxx uses, of all things, a double (why not triple?) chaos spell trigger? I've never seen something like this on a spellcaster of such a high level - granted, it worked, but it only affected Delia, who isn't very important to this battle at all:
Next time, we shall enter the elven city.
I do not recall getting more than two, though, but this might be because by that point you tend to leave for the end-game quite rapidly.
No-mercy Necromancer: A Random Run, part 2
Part 1 found here
We sent a number of Beetles north after that, they got a nice stun effect off on a few casters, and by that point we felt confident enough to just charge in with barely any buffs.
Cleric/Ranger deflected what Confusion effects there were using the Greenstone Amulet, and while Zhalimar dealt a good bit of damage, so did our ranged cadre. Victory!
Before departing for Candlekeep, everyone gets to scribe spells for the first time in a long time: We have enough potions remaining that Necromancer and one more arcanist can get another session in before the end, if we find anything interesting enough.
Necromancer quaffs a Potion of Invisibility and runs off while the rest of the party under Remove Fear dismantles the Ogre Magi; they're quite low-level, after all.
One Ogre Magi drops 4 (!) Remove Magic scrolls... the SCS component that yields extra random scrolls does go wonky sometimes.
We breeze through the crypts: Cleric/Illusionist gets the WIS tome, and Cleric/Ranger the STR tome, so she can now equip Full Plate unaided.
For some reason, Arcanis and... I forget the poor Halfling's name, but anyway! They both follow us into Prat's area, so I decide to be devious and Charm them both using the Nymph's Cloak with 40 charges we picked up in Baldur's Gate.
Arcanis and what's-his-face sadly last not long at all against Prat (and they had nothing interesting that dropped either, just standard non-magical gear), so we avenge them promptly and exit.
I seem to be the only one that gets this bug: Even after doing a complete wipe of local files and re-downloading, Krystin (and Semaj later on) turn invisible every once in a while without casting a spell or quaffing a potion.
Joke's on Krystin, though: She zones back in next to our Beetles, and get her comeuppance.
Alright, palace fight: Skeleton Warriors, buffs, MSD and Stoneskin on Necromancer, and we're golden.
Its spell defenses torn down, the Doppleganger Mage fails a save against Chromatic Orb, removing the only real threat here.
Off after Sarevok. This time I remember that Shaldrissa might have Death Spell, so we keep our distance, instead following up an initial firebombing (that cleared out the grunts) with some Beetles, that yet again prove their mettle in removing the main threat.
I'll say that the amount of inventory clutter by the time you reach the end of BG1 is indicative of your party's power: We literally have over a hundred good potions just sitting around, and about as many scrolls of various shapes, sizes and colors.
So, every fighter (we have four of them, after all) gets a PfM scroll, topped off with serious potion buffs.
Necromancer just spends the fight hiding in a corner under Invisibility and PfLightning, coming out only once victory is certain; Fighter/Druid had her buffs dispelled once but just reapplied them.
In the end, it's the fastest, most hassle-free Sarevok fight I've ever had; I don't even think it took two turns before S dropped.
On to BG2! The import refrains from screwing up the max HP of anyone, and we're off.
We have an enormous amount of spell slots already, so most of the dungeon goes well: However, since we're actually able to kill off Ulvaryl this time, the Shadow Thief Mage turns her not-so-tender mercies on us instead, unleashing a Lightning Bolt.
I think she was only L5 so theoretically that shouldn't have been able to kill Necromancer in one hit.. but a bad bounce might've.
Brrr. We swiftly depart the place.
I don't even have a screenshot of the Circus. We did have some problems since only Fighter/Mage/Thief has a magical weapon at the moment (we imported The Burning Earth), but scrape by with magical damage and Spiritual Hammer/Moonblade.
Next, the Copper Coronet and Slaver Ship are both uneventful: Again, we've so many options for completely shutting down the opposition they barely get to shake a blade/arrow at us.
We swing by the Government district, splurge on a license, and clear out the local Fanatics, also an easy victory.
And now for something completely stupid.
My intent was to go after Mae'Var first: This is a fairly easy stronghold quest, with a huge gold reward at the end, and we do need gold to bribe our reputation up before buying anything.
We get the quest started, but it's not night-time so we can't go grab the amulet from the Temple of Talos.
I don't want to let all our spells go to waste, so decide we'll just take out the Pirates at the Sea's Bounty.
I forgot that the Mage here has, for no apparent reason, a pretty grotesque Magic Resistance. Is it 100%? It is at the least high enough to completely stymie my intended tactic, which was to throw two Cloudkills in his general direction to completely shut down his spellcasting. I was so confident in success I didn't bother with most short-duration buffs, and we didn't initially spread out (that would've entailed walking into our own Cloudkills).
This Mage turned out to be an Enchanter. I'll spare you the gory details as I'm sure you can fill them in: Suffice to say, a low-level party just isn't gonna be that great at making saves against Chaos with a -6 modifier (-2 from the Enchanter bonus).
Beyond humiliating.
I'll roll up another Necromancer, but if time is a factor, it might be that the onus of the last Mage kit falls squarely upon @Enuhal's shoulders.
Actually, I did have that happen as well during my current run, at least with Krystin (I don't remember it with Semaj). I didn't mention it because it didn't really impact the battle, especially because I had access to true sight (and I figured she might have been turned into some sort of shadowdancer/wizard dual-class and used hide in plain sight). Now that I am looking into it, Krystin has an undroppable Sandthief's Ring equipped, which propably has multiple charges, so my guess is that she's just using one of these very single round - might not actually fully be a bug. Semaj has a similiar item: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/MAGE01.ITM
Though they propably shouldn't spam those, it makes for very awkward gameplay. They were originally propably just meant to allow them to start combat invisibly.
Note that this effect is not illusionary, so you need a Detect Invisibility effect to reveal that creature before they reveal themself. (Detect Invisibility, Invisibility Purge, Oracle, True Seeing/True Sight).
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
On to the SoA endgame, starting at the elven city. The initial golems converge into a double group, which is a bit tough to take down, even with the help of a planetar - some potions, some shuffling around, and we get the job done, although some injuries are unavoidable:
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger - FALLEN (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Solstice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
So for the next level of Yaga-Shura's temple, we had mordy swords and planetars lead the way with the party assisting as they could. Coreranger took a good amount of damage but he always was able to run away and heal then come back to the fight. Impish took huge damage in getting the first heart, apparently his fire resistance wore off. We didn't have any trouble in getting the 2nd heart. We left for Nylee's glade. As usual a few summons made the fight pretty simple. After a rest, we then headed for Yaga's camp.
This went surprisingly well. Impish has been using energy blades to very good effect and with GWW from Coreranger, Yaga didn't last long.
Next up was Senda's enclave. We did usually two strategies, either let mordy sword take most of the attention with party assisting or firestorm or going invisible and skipping enemies. For the Captain Coreranger did a duel to take him down.
Time for the main fight with Sendai. This was a long and involved fight and Impish got careless and got himself killed. However a planetar raised him and healed him then he got back into the fight. The party was careful to not get hit with harm by Sendai's cleric forms. The fight was long and drawn out but eventually she dies.
We then do the two pocket plane challenges. Both went fairly straightforward. Then we tried to deal with Draconis. Coreranger used the shadow armor to be protected from acid - firestorm eventually killed Draconis - problem? Coreranger intended to go to pocket plane, rest then come back and save our session but game crashed and we will have to fight Draconis next time again.
It's good fun and I'll keep going with the run even if someone else fancies a stab at the class, will post once I've gotten farther (probably next weekend).
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
Starting with ToB, I had planned to lay down a few traps for the black reavers with the intention of taking down Ilasera by myself, but it seems like she turns hostile before her allies do - a lot of traps hit her immediately, even if there were many closer enemies, and she died right away:
Okay, on to Saradush. First, we do sidequests and get our final pairs of boots of speed. Kiser's mage gets dispelled and killed:
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
A bit of a shorter update, as progress in ToB is always a bit slower for me, because we need full buffs for almost everything and I also don't enjoy the gameplay as much, so I play in shorter sessions. This is just the temple and the Marching Mountains:
Starting with the master wraith and its allies - we use turn undead, sunray and breach on the main enemy:
On to the Marching Mountains. We buff up and start clearing the area, using invisibility to move past the giants. Sending a magical sword in there is not quite as effective as in the vanilla game, since the giants are smarter with SCS and will switch targets, but it was still a decent distraction and allowed me to split the initial group, using a planetar and some HLAs to help out the fighters. Making sure to take down the fel cats as soon as possible (as they can get really dangerous with SCS), we started clearing the side areas. The one with the fire lich is the only dangerous one - the lich wouldn't move out of there, though, so we were able to go back to some of our old summoning tricks. Meanwhile, Delia dealt with two noble efreeti:
I have decided to go to Watcher's Keep now, for a very specific reason (though I usually wait until either after Sendai's Enclave or even until just before the Throne): Due to the camping supply system, I want the ability to leave Watcher's Keep entirely via the pocket plane in case I run out of camping supplies in the randomized teleporter maze - unlikely to happen, but possible. If we do this part before going to meet Yaga Shura, the options to teleport directly to Saradush or to the area east of the city are still available, while later on the pocket plane always would return me to the WK zone that I had just left. Maybe this is a bad idea, because a bad sequence of rooms (with a no-magic zone leading directly into a dangerous fight) is propably the most likely thing to end the run at this point, but the camping supply situation shouldn't be entirely underestimated.