Due to some bizarre bug, we permanently lose the Breath Potion and get trapped in the same room. I am not sure why.
I console us out. We get in trouble with some demons when Viora, who no longer wears the Ring of Gaxx due to not needing the save bonuses and therefore is no longer immune to poison, gets poisoned.
She nearly dies. We elect to escape the area rather than fight the demons.
We talk to a monk after fighting through some Water Elementals and Kuo-toa, but the monk no longer has the rope due to Ascension. We have to fetch the rope from Amkethran. But a hard fight awaits us when we get back.
Thanks to Ascension, we have to fight two dragons at the same time when we return to Abazigal's lair. Both are black dragons with acid breath. After that, you have to deal with a green dragon with poison breath and then a red dragon with fire breath, with no reprieve in between. It's a massive battle that is extremely taxing on your resources and can easily go very badly if you fall behind. I nearly died in my last no-reload run here. To make sure I'm ready, I make sure everybody in the party is covered with Protection from Acid (except for Zulfer, who has Sanchuudoku for acid immunity), courtesy of Azelos and her Project Image clone, on top of all of their normal buffs. And as luck would have it, we also get both Hardiness and Improved Haste for the entire party thanks to Wish. Ruva has already seeded the area with traps. We approach the entrance and the dragons appear.
We use our Project Image clones to occupy the dragons' attention so our actual party members can attack with more safety. But Zulfer gets badly hurt when I switch to the Answerer in an attempt to weaken the dragons.
Zulfer didn't get a Protection from Acid buff because he was supposed to be using Sanchuudoku.
Zirimanat'ryl doesn't last long. It's surprising how quickly he goes down.
Unfortunately, Olinissimus has debuffed our mages. He follows up with his breath weapon, dispelling our clones and severely injuring both Yorun Zovai and Azelos. It takes time, but eventually they manage to restore their immunity to acid, and Olinissimus goes down as well.
Ithy'nassendra, the green dragon, is next out. I create a clone of Zulfer and send him out, even though it would be better used on the next dragon, as this one is immune to Zulfer's poison.
I try to restore some buffs on Ruva with a Spell Trigger, but any spell in a sequencer, trigger, or contingency can fail if the spell's range isn't sufficient. Sequencers can be cast anywhere on the map, but if the spells inside them can't normally reach that far, they won't show up at all.
Ithy'nassendra recovers and strikes back. But it's not enough.
It's nothing we can't recover from. Zulfer activates Greater Whirlwind Attack, but gets blown away.
We restore our party, crush the dragon, and get a perfect buff for the next one.
Carnifex, the last red dragon of the game, appears. He sends Yorun Zovai's clone running, then blasts it away by hitting the original sorceress with his breath weapon. Ruva gets singed.
While our Bounty Hunter, Ruva, our Assassin/Fighter, Zulfer, and our Archer, Laosha, attack the dragon directly, Viora hangs back and our mages lower Carnifex's magic resistance and blast him under the effects of Improved Alacrity. Laosha takes the kill.
The reason I had to use potions of Magic Blocking, and not, for example, a scroll of Protection from Magic, was that this scroll is better used in the Davaeorn's fight.
Viconia, Dorn and summons are ready to protect the gate, Hades is ready for a rendezvous with Davaeorn, while Safana, Edwin and Baeloth are in a (probably) safer place, ready to support Viconia and Dorn.
After Hades went to Davaeorn, he teleported, and 2 Battle Horrors, instead of chasing Hades (who was also protected against Fire), attacked the entrance group. It was interesting that BlackTalons didn't appear - yet.
At that time, I could let Hades to attack Davaeorn without a lot of control (basically, he just chased constantly teleporting Davaeorn and tried to take all Davaeorn's stoneskins off). The BlackTalons finally appeared, and it was time for Dorn to activate his Poison. Thanks to monsters summoned by a wand, the entrance group already killed one Battle Horror.
Soon, the first wave of the Black Talons and second Battle Horror were defeated.
As soon as the second wave of the BlackTalons appeared, the game reminded of the Insane diffuculty - Dorn was killed in two successive simultaneous critical hits from the bandits. Really, not maximum HPs on party NPCs make them rather squishy in this difficulty setting, but it adds to the difficulty, and I like that.
Viconia was severely damaged by the BlackTalons, so I had to move her, Safana and both mages, further down the tunnel, so that Edwin and Baeloth could use their AoE spells and wands.
This is when the last Davaeorn's stoneskins were taken off, and Hades, thanks to his 23 STR (after going under the Protection from Magic effect, a character still can gulp potions), ended the mage's life in one hit.
Again, using the "I have to report about this fight, let's not hurry and go step by step, reacting to any change during the battle" approach helped greatly here. To me, it was a revelation. I had played too much solo before, but for a party play, it looks to be essential to constantly monitor what is going on, which is possible if you imagine like semiticgod would have played this or that fight.
@bengoshi, what is your auto-pause setup? Your approach is functioning very well! I thnk it's impressive that you managed to keep five out six alive there. I might try Insane myself sometime, just to see the difference it makes to gameplay. I assume it makes a huge difference in the early game, and later on to any character that isn't (part) mage.
Heh, it makes a huge difference. In the MP run, for example, we play on Core rules, and can reliably let our fighters, even when they have less than 50 HPs, melee groups of enemies, or suffer several castings of enemy spells. I imagine the difference will be actually more than less in BG2, with all enemy spells that make lvl-based damage, or hard critters with high STR and high APR.
I'm inspired by Grond0 from the bioware forums, in trying the Insane - if it was possible for him, then it's possible for others, right?
As for the auto-pause, I'm tempted to enable all options, actually, although I personally think they're helping you immensly, especially the end of the round and spell casted options. But so far (I mean current the Hades's progress), the game has not turned into a chess fight, as it is in SoA and ToB, so I'm playing without the auto-pause. I just pause myself every second or so in any major fight.
Hm if you look at the Bioware Forums' Hall of Heroes, you can see Grond0 played all his successful trilogy runs on core difficulty, not insane. That's not to say it's impossible for him or for you to complete the saga on insane difficulty of course. In fact there haven't been any successful insane difficulty SCS/Ascension trilogy successes documented at the Bioware Forums yet (although Alesia came very close with her Sorceress last year).
As regards your expectation that the difference between core and insane will be more palpable in BG2 than in BG1, I'd say that would depend a lot on character class and party composition. Swashbucklers for example, one of my favorite kits, will have a much harder time in ToB where a couple of criticals is likely deadly for them since their means of boosting pysical resistance are limited. Arcane casters on the other hand are the one class that doesn't need any external resources to be able to completely avoid physical, magic and elemental damage. They can fully rely on their spells, so for them the difference between core and insane shouldn't be too significant. Of course there are a lot of potions, items, green scrolls, and innates that allow warriors and thieves to obtain temporary or even permanent resistances and immunities, but I doubt there'll be enough for a party containing say Keldorn, Valygar and a Charname Fighter. I'd definitely opt for a caster-heavy party.
Abazigal's lair is almost complete. One major problem awaits us: a pack of Death Tyrants and Tyrant Golems, the latter of which are basically Beholders with immunity to magic and elemental damage, and 90% resistance to physical damage, on top of a Beholder's normal immunities to all disablers. I don't like these guys. They make no sense; demilich-style resistances don't belong on ordinary critters.
It's a long and unsatisfying slog that just amounts to hitting them over and over. Enemies with comprehensive immunities are never fun or interesting to play.
@Blackraven: Are there any incompatibilities between SCS and BP? I've considered installing more of the latter, but stopped at Ascension because it seemed like they would conflict.
I haven't run into compatibility issues between SCS and BP, but I've only installed a few BP components and I haven't seen all of them yet. What did strike me was the behavior of the Gnome Fighter/Illusionist in the Docks. His offensive magic and general recklessness didn't strike me as very SCS, even though I installed SCS over BP. Also, I mentioned in my penultimate update that the Rune Assassins weren't doing what they're supposed to. That may be just to a glitch, or it may be due to BP-SCS incompatibility. After all I installed BP's Tanner quest component.
Stratagems, Big Picture and Quest Pack are fondamentally incompatible because they overwrite each other, sometimes explicitely. Sometimes you just pick a few components of those mods and everything works fine but their general principle is to modify the same generic AIs and/or extend their own scripts to large sections of the game. In fact you are lucky when one of them is able to completely overwrite the other. But what would we get from the installation of the former under such conditions? Things may also go wrong in more or less subtle ways: e.g. one creature inheriting the spell or item modifications from one mod and the scripts from another mod.
I cannot comment on the rune assassins but let's see what's wrong with the gnome. 1. inter-mod (in)compatibility issues ? 2. mod compatibility issues with EE ? 3. bug in the original version ?
IIRC, the gnome had plenty of 3 and a bit of 2. Of course I cannot certify that 1 is out of the picture but I know for sure that Stratagems does not modify the gnome. With your setup, there is no way to play a SCS-like opponent. To be 100% accurate Stratagems may modify a bit the creature such as allocating potions to the gnome whereas he has no scs script to use them. That's not always true. For instance it's why Blucher's Maevar from the orginal Tactics mod had no chance to be operational with Stratagems.
I rescue Bondari the Reloader and get the Bronze Pantalettes, which we use to forge the Big Metal Unit. I haven't imported anything from BG1, so I have no Golden Pantaloons, and I've never held Lady Elgea hostage, so I don't have the Silver Pantaloons, either, but I can console them in. The Big Metal Unit itself is of little interest to me--the Iron Golem animation is extremely inconvenient--but the other items are very important.
Alongside the BMU, you also get the Scorcher Ammunition, which deals 2d12 nonmagical fire damage with a save for half and strikes twice due to using the Agannazar's Scorcher projectile, the Frag Grenades, which deal 1d12 nonmagical fire damage without save and use the Skull Trap projectile, and the Pulse Ammunition, which deal 1d4+1 nonmagical magic damage and use the Magic Missile projectile. All of them strike as magical +0 weapons, grant +10 to THAC0, and set APR to 5. The first two are the most effective means of apply on-hit effects like Poison Weapon as area effects.
I made Laosha into an Archer at the cost of over 2 million XP because I wanted to combine those weapons with Called Shot. They would allow him to hit groups of enemies with Called Shot effects, including save vs. spell drain and STR drain, at 10 APR with Improved Haste. And the Scorcher Ammunition, since it strikes twice, will let him apply the effects of Called Shot twice per hit. Against the drakes at the beginning of the fight with Abazigal, I hand the Scorcher Ammunition to Zulfer and the Frag Grenades to Laosha.
It turns out that these things are even more powerful than I had thought. Laosha's Archer damage bonuses, and the damage bonus from Firetooth, both apply to the Frag Grenades and Scorcher Ammunition.
And because the Scorcher Ammunition strikes twice, it can remove over 10 Stoneskins in a single round, bypassing PFMW, and disrupt any spell of any characters, provided Laosha has a friendly target that can get on the other side of our real target.
The problem is that this damage also applies to our own party. We don't just need immunity to fire damage; we need immunity to missile or piercing damage. Laosha nearly kills Zulfer as well as Viora and himself.
But as luck would have it, we have somebody who is immune to missile and piercing damage. Ruva has 50% resistance from the Earth Elemental Token and 50% resistance from the Yellow Dragon Scale. She is the perfect target for the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades. Against enemies with immunity to +0 magical weapons (in a word, anyone who is immune to any level of magical weapons), Laosha can attack Ruva and strike nearby enemies as an area effect. Soon, Abazigal hits Near Death and switches to his dragon form.
With PFMW active, Laosha can't hit Abazigal with the Scorcher Ammunition unless he attacks Ruva, who must be on the other side of Abazigal.
Before I can do so, Yorun Zovai's clone finishes casting Time Stop. The moment it appears, I realize I made a mistake.
Abazigal is immune to Time Stop. He has free attacks for three rounds.
@Musigny, yeah I think that Bardin's run is going to be the only one in my current setup. I've just run into an new issue, Bardin got his first HLAs, picked UAI first and Deva next. The Deva didn't appear as an innate ability (even though that's how I modded my game with SCS) nor as a level 7 spell. Tried resting but that didn't make a difference. Tried with other Cleric quest spells but in vain. Forgot to try with thief traps. Interestingly, enemy casters did have innate quest spells. I'm now reinstalling the relevant SCS component (and everything that comes after it) to see if I can get it to work. If not I'll have to use EEKeeper to manually assign the HLAs Or I may continue with Bardin in my BGT install to see how things work there. Either way, this bug inaddition to issues with the Rune Assassins and the Fallen Paladins, really seems to call for a simpler EE setup.
With no one to stop him, Abazigal targets Laosha. It's a wise option; no other characters poses such a large threat to Abazigal's safety.
But Laosha makes his save--and it seems that his Death Ward spell only got dispelled after Finger of Death hit.
Unfortunately, Zulfer made the mistake of wandering into the scorcher projectile, taking out half of his HP in a second. I move him out of the way and send Ruva to the other side of Abazigal so Laosha can hit him, even though Abazigal's PFMW should have worn off by now anyway. We start breaking down his Stoneskins.
Notice that 1 point of damage on Ruva? Her immunity to fire got dispelled. She downs a Potion of Fire Resistance, though it would have made more sense to give her a ring instead.
Abazigal blasts us. Viora buffed everyone with Protection from Lightning, but for the first time since I think SoA, Remove Magic managed to take down her buffs, although only on Laosha.
Also, Tamah has arrived, the purple dragon whose breath weapon deals crushing damage. She's not bad for solo characters, who can protect themselves with Stoneskin or Roranach's Horn, but not everyone in our party can resist it so easily. She could give us lots of problems.
Meanwhile, in the eastern corner, Azelos tries to improve our situation with Wish spells.
Azelos blinds Ruva so she can set a trap and Maze Abazigal and Tamah to give us some breathing room.
But Abazigal's spell failure effect apparently applies even to innate abilities like traps.
Tamah blasts Ruva with her breath weapon. Rather than have Ruva drink a potion and cloud her aura, I have another character heal her with a Rod of Resurrection.
The spell failure effect wears off. Ruva Mazes both dragons at once.
We take a moment to prepare for their return. Zulfer dons the Big Metal Unit for an extra -11 to his AC, and Ruva lays traps.
Tamah gets hit hard when she returns. Apparently Spike Traps do nonmagical magic damage instead of physical damage. Tamah retaliates with her breath weapon, but Ruva has Roranach's Horn equipped this time.
Laosha slays the dragon in seconds.
Abazigal reappears. Laosha fries him.
The damage from the Scorcher Ammunition is obscene. Laosha has +4 to damage from Firetooth and +5 from his Archer levels, which means he does 10*(1d12+9)*2=310 damage per round, 130 of which is fire damage and 180 of which is missile damage, with an extra 130 if the enemy fails its saves vs. breath. A Kensai would have trouble keeping up with that, and Laosha isn't even at epic levels yet. And he has only one pip in crossbows.
Outside Sendai's Enclave, we get attacked by drow. We use basically the same tactics we have in the past. Zulfer finally puts Poison Weapon to good use again. No round-by-round posting here; it's nothing new.
Laosha does most of the work inside of Abazigal's Enclave. Both the fire damage and the missile damage from the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades bypass the drow's magic resistance, and the area effect is a big deal considering the enemies here come in big groups.
Next up is Odamaron and his Apprentices. We have to fight three liches at once. And unlike the last times, we don't have Wizard Slayer levels, which could have completely broken this encounter.
Things go bad on round one. Ruva inexplicably misses her first trap.
There's a distinct problem with this area. The fastest way to reach Odamaron is over the first staircase, but that staircase is trapped, and it would take time to disarm the traps, which I believe dispel your buffs on being triggered. You have to walk around the next staircase over to reach him, which takes time we need to disrupt Odamaron's spells. Since I want Ruva out of the way to make sure she can lay her next trap, I put Zulfer into place as Laosha's target. We break through the lich's PFMW spell.
Yorun Zovai's clone gets a Time Stop off the ground. We use it to blast the enemy with Horrid Wilting spells. Both sides trade Wishes. The enemy chooses a fairly weak option. We get two excellent ones... although only one of them works.
I thought Miscast Magic would be an excellent way to turn the tide further in our favor, as we are less dependent on spellcasting than the enemy. But the Miscast Magic spell from Wish strikes as a level 3 spell, does not bypass magic resistance, and offers a save vs. spell at -6 to negate the effect. The liches are immune.
Yorun Zovai's efforts largely go to waste, as the enemies are also immune to magic damage from Horrid Wilting (only Odamaron's illusory clone got killed; not the lich himself). We have trouble dispelling the enemy's invisibility--there are delays associated with using Detect Illusions--but we can tell where they are by the visuals of their defenses. We can hit them by having Zulfer and Ruva follow the visuals while Laosha keeps firing at them.
Azelos has managed to cast Project Image despite having 80% spell failure, which lets her clone debuff one of the Apprentices, allowing Zulfer to stun him with Celestial Fury.
Zulfer chunks him shortly. Meanwhile, Odamaron and his remaining apprentice can't get a single spell off the ground thanks to Laosha and Ruva. Their defenses are useless.
The apprentice is apparently a vampire, and tries to kill Ruva with CON drain, but its defenses run out before it can do much harm.
There's only one left, so we switch the narrower but more powerful Scorcher Ammunition. Odamaron expires.
On the way out, Ruva gets stuck behind the other party members. Laosha runs ahead without her, right into a bad situation he can't handle.
I pull him back and blind Ruva.
She Mazes the first attackers and runs ahead to engage the others. Her blindness gets dispelled due to an Anti-Magic Ray, but in SCS, this blocks all spells, including hostile ones, which means she is safe for the time being.
Laosha destroys the entire group with Frag Grenades.
Lashar'ra is next. She deals over 70 damage with her poison attack, and her Vortex Spiders can slow the party and inflict large combat penalties. But her defenses don't hold up long enough for her to pose a threat.
Next is Ogremoch, who chain-casts Stoneskin. He is very sturdy and hard to damage.
But with Called Shot, Laosha can kill him with STR drain. Both Ogremoch and Ruva have 25 STR, so they die simultaneously.
For Diaytha, we send in a blinded Ruva to trap the group, but another Anti-Magic Ray restores her sight.
Seconds later, the enemy is broken. Laosha's Frag Grenades broke through all of their defenses.
Laosha has taken almost every kill in this entire dungeon. Zulfer used to have 75% of the party's kills. With Laosha just now joining us, Zulfer only has 65% of the kills so far.
Two fights left. First is Egeissag. He disrupts Viora's first spell, but when Viora hides, he has no way to deal with her. He tries attacking Yorun Zovai, who is temporarily invincible, instead.
Viora wears him down with Implosion and Energy Blades.
Finally, the Mind Flayer section. Laosha does most of the work; Zulfer just tanks the enemy and lures them into a more open area.
Sendai will not be so easy. We're going to have lots of magic-resistant epic-level enemies all around us, and there is little place for us to run.
Sendai, unlike most ToB bosses, cannot see through invisibility. Accordingly, I enter the fight invisible, and move Ruva to one of the Sendai clones.
I seldom use Mass Invisibility, even though it's actually one of Yorun Zovai's spell picks because @Gotural had mentioned its massive save bonuses and the penalties to enemy attack rolls. The reason was that I was afraid that Viora might be unable to re-cast Death Ward or Chaotic Commands if Zulfer, for example, got debuffed, since invisibility prevents you from targeting your own party members.
Somehow I failed to realize that Mass Invisibility from a level 23 mage would get dispelled long before Chaotic Commands from a level 31 cleric, which would have made it extremely valuable for us to use Mass Invisibility. Too late now.
Ruva botches the backstab attempt on the Sendai clone. Laosha breaks his invisibility to bail her out. The clone nearly dies in a single round.
But the clone clings to life. The rest of the party flees from the Storm of Vengeance, and expose themselves to a Remove Magic spell that wipes away Viora's haste from an Oil of Speed, her magic immunity from a Potion of Magic Protection, and Zulfer's save bonuses from a Potion of Invulnerability and Improved Haste from Yorun Zovai.
It's only a slight setback, but I decide to play it safe. I bring our visible party members back into the shadows with Potions of Invisibility.
What about that Sendai clone I was about to kill? Those scorcher projectiles are still on-screen, and there are enough of them to finish her off. But that's not enough for me. I also move Laosha south to capture more enemies in the path of the scorcher projectile. Two Sendai clones die in a flash.
And just because he can, he moves west, and slays one of the drow as well.
The scorcher runs thin. We're invisible, but a new pair of drow has entered the room and one of them is casting a divination spell. We're about to be revealed. To keep the enemy's pressure away from our more vulnerable characters, I have Ruva break her invisibility on Sendai's mage clone.
Then I realize that Ruva is too far to draw one of the drow over to her, and the other drow is still going to finish that divination spell. Sendai brings out a demon, which is fortunate--I thought that conjuration spell was going to be a Fallen Planetar.
Notice that Laosha is using the Frag Grenades. Ruva can't get around the mage clone, since I failed to consider having her equip the Fire Elemental Token to shrink her circle and let her squeeze through, which means Laosha can only hit the invisible Sendai with Frag Grenades. And now, another Sendai clone, a fighter dual-wielding axes, is going to go straight for Laosha.
To keep the rest of the group safely invisible, Zulfer stuns the drow spellcaster to the west with Celestial Fury.
Laosha runs away from the fighter clone, healing himself as he goes, and turns around to roast her with the Scorcher Ammunition.
Zulfer is having trouble, as more drow are spawning in and he doesn't have Hardiness active.
I have to do three things to fix this. First, I send Ruva over to occupy the drow. Second, I draw Zulfer away. Third, when one of the drow pursues Zulfer, I move Laosha so the scorcher projectile fries Zulfer's attacker.
This means the southeastern mage clone is left to her own devices. I elect not to attack her. Instead, I turn Laosha's attention to another clone that has just appeared to the north. Since I want Zulfer attacking that clone, and Zulfer can't handle Laosha's area-effect projectiles, Laosha attacks with the Pulse Ammunition instead. But he can't hit his target directly--the clone is immune.
The clone vanishes. Meanwhile, Ruva has cleared up most of the western enemies, and the southeastern mage clone's Glabrezu is attacking her instead of us.
Since Ruva is no longer needed to the west, I bring her over to the southeastern mage clone, who is still invisible. I want Ruva as a target to strike that clone before it casts a spell. But since we've already got a Glabrezu right next to the invisible clone, Laosha attacks the demon with Frag Grenades... only to discover the Glabrezu is immune. The clone gets her spell off the ground.
We put too little pressure on that mage. I should have done something with Azelos and Yorun Zovai; I let them wait too long for an opportunity to strike. Now we have a Fallen Planetar on our hands.
Excellent stuff, @semiticgod . I had to think a lot how to kill Ogremoch and Odamaron with a solo druid, fun to read about your progress. I like that you use the druid, and enjoy it. You're close!
For the Iron Throne fight, we had a lot more buffs in our arsenal. Baeloth reached the next level, and I took Invisibility, Radius, for him for the 3rd level. Viconia now could Holy Power and Protection from Evil, Radius. Hades reached the 3rd arcane spell level, taking Minor Spell Deflection. Edwin got the 4th arcane spell level.
These are our usual buffs and preparation (so that they're still active while we enter the major fight).
1. Viconia - Summon Skeletons x 2, Protection from Evil, Radius. Edwin - Strengh on Safana - with 18/50, she's a beast as a backstabber (although not a major beast like Hades).
2. Hades, Edwin and Baeloth - Shield, Mirror Image. Viconia - Aid on herself + Aid on Dorn (to increase their low HPs, at least to make them around 40).
3. Viconia - Chant. Edwin - Protection from Fear.
4. Edwin - Haste. Viconia - Holy Power - DUHM - Armour of Faith.
5. Baeloth - Invisibility, Radius. Hades - Minor Spell Deflection.
6. Locate Hades and Safana behind an enemy mage - he must be killed as quickly as possible. Locate Viconia and Dorn in front of the mage. Locate Skeletons near enemy archers. Edwin and Baeloth stay relatively away. Dorn activates Poison.
7. Viconia starts speaking.
The Iron Throne fight, though, had one lag - Viconia went visible but nobody didn't want to talk to her. Instead, I saw a message "Shennara - attacks Viconia" - an enemy thief, already invisible, wanted to backstab her.
We didn't have other choice than to attack the mage. As soon as we did, the dialogue happened, but the enemy mage, Naaman, was already poisoned.
Another arcane caster (although not as high-level, as Naaman), Alai, was the next target. Meanwhile, Edwin was in the process of casting Greater Malison. As for Baeloth, he has a lot of spells, but almost all of them are either one-target ones, or buffs. This is why he uses the wand of paralysys on an enemy cleric, who's to the west. The cleric fails his save.
As soon as Edwin stops casting Greater Malison, he follows with Teleport Field. A truly amazing spell, thanks once more, @semiticgod . Now Baeloth uses the wand of fire as Agannazar's Scorcher on the paralysed cleric.
Meanwhile, the Stupifier in Viconia's hands works - Alai is stunned for 1d4 rounds - an easy target for lots of APRs from Hades.
One of enemy thieves backstabs Safana, dealing exactly 30 damage - her whole life. Dorn is hit by Gardush - a critter here. Dorn gulps a healing potion.
Hades tries to Spook on the thief who killed Safana - the thief saves against it. Gardush goes enrage.
Teleport Field comes into effect, the thief who killed Safana is immediately teleportated from the mix, closer to Baeloth. It's not dangerous, the drow is Mirror Imaged, and the thief has no further invisibility. Also, Teleport Field saves Dorn from the berserk.
Alai is stunned again by Viconia - this is what Holy Power creates - a fighter's THAC0 and Haste helps.
Now two skeletons are busy with the berzerk, and Dorn can switch to crossbows - to poison the thief who is attacking Baeloth. The drow uses another Agannazar's Scorcher on the paralysed cleric, thus killing a doppelganger in the process. Viconia and Hades are still trying to go through all the stoneskins of Alai.
Hades's Mirror Image ends, so he, to minimize risks, gulps an Invis potion, to follow with new Mirror Image. Edwin is starting to cast Confusion. He still can't access Chaos, so Confusion is a smaller brother.
Alai is finally killed by Viconia. Dorn is still attacking with his crossbow, the cleric Baeloth paralysed is nearly dead, so the drow will finish him with Magic Missile. Edwin managed to confuse one enemy, now he's switching to casting Slow.
Viconia stuns the second thief, Dorn recharges his Poison, while Baeloth tries to paralyse the first thief (both thieves in this fight strangely called "Shennara", although one of them is a boy, and another is a girl).
Shennara the girl is paralysed, Shennara the boy is (while stunned) being under the attack from Hades and Viconia. Gardush - an enemy berserker - is poisoned by Dorn by his crossbow. Both our mages can finish Shennara the girl with Magic Missiles.
One enemy is left - the berzerker. He can't deal with the whole party, though.
After his death, it looks like another enemy is left - the one who was confused by Edwin previously and then went invisible. We quickly finish him.
The Fallen Planetar turns invisible on its first round. I wait for it to strike.
The Planetar appears. Zulfer activates Greater Whirlwind Attack and strikes back with Celestial Fury, hoping for a stun effect that will let us bring down the Planetar before it can heal itself.
Zulfer gets debuffed. But his strong save vs. death will keep him from getting chunked.
Meanwhile, Ruva finally reveals the mage who summoned that Planetar.
Laosha, who has been attacking the clone to the north during the past few seconds, moves south and east to strike the Planetar with the scorcher projectile. The Planetar is immune to the fire, but not to the missile damage. It greatly weakens the Planetar, allowing Zulfer to kill it even without a successful stun.
I had to be careful not to bring it too far east, or else Laosha would kill Zulfer.
To the north, Zulfer is getting grinded down by Energy Blades from the other spellcaster clone. To the south, a new clone arrives. This one is a thief--not really a problem. Azelos knocks out the thief clone with a Comet spell, while Laosha clears up the western half of the map.
We need to get rid of that mage clone. Zulfer bypasses its PFMW with nonmagical darts, but his aura isn't clear to use Poison Weapon yet.
Ruva finally removes the Glabrezu. A Comet comes our way and strikes half the party, but all three are immune to fire.
Finally, Zulfer's aura is clear. Now we can finally slay that mage.
Laosha attacks the thief clone, the only clone with no defense against the Scorcher Ammunition. Ruva chunks a drow that was pestering her.
I finally put Yorun Zovai into action. The mage loses its weapon immunities.
Zulfer poisons it. Laosha finishes off the thief clone, the mage clone dies of poison damage, and then all that's left is the spellcaster to the north.
Zulfer takes some damage from the remaining clone's Energy Blades. He and Ruva try to reveal the clone, but it keeps vanishing.
Finally it loses its invisibility. Zulfer poisons it, Azelos wastes a Spellstrike, and then the whole party gathers around to crush it, with Laosha switching to the Pulse Ammunition so as not to hurt our group. The last clone falls.
I bring out a clone of Yorun Zovai, who immediately casts PFMW, which I normally prefer to Stoneskin in ToB.
Sendai arrives, with a Chain Contingency that's actually illegal in my install.
As Summon Fallen Deva is an innate spell in my install, it shouldn't be possible for Sendai to have it in a contingency. Apparently my install doesn't change this behavior.
It's not a big deal. Especially since Zulfer crushes the thing easily.
Sendai has lots of defenses, but we came prepared. Azelos still has one Spellstrike left. But first, we need to remove any Spell Shields Sendai might have. Ruva uses the Wand of Spell Striking.
That death message for Viora indicates that the invisible critter that SCS uses to cast Pierce Magic and similar spells actually killed itself on Sendai's Aura of Flaming Death, which it triggered by casting Pierce Magic on her.
Azelos hits Sendai with Spellstrike. All of Sendai's spell protections go down.
Ruva hits Sendai with Breach from the Wand of Spell Striking. All of Sendai's combat protections go down.
Laosha tries to stun Sendai with Power Attack. It doesn't work out.
I notice he's still using normal bolts. I switch him over to the Pulse Ammunition.
Azelos blinds Ruva, allowing her to nail Sendai with a Spike Trap.
Sendai teleports away, trying to escape. We're not far behind.
All that's left of ToB before Melissan are the Pocket Plane trials and Balthazar. I choose all of the evil-sounding responses when speaking with the Solar, as I understand that that's what gives you the evil Bhaal powers from Ascension.
The Slayer is next. Laosha kills it. That's all.
Then the Chosen of Cyric. Ruva traps most of them to death.
The others don't last much longer.
Now we have to deal with Balthazar. To my surprise, he actually joins us.
I don't know the specifics of how exactly you get Balthazar on your side, but I remember which dialog options failed to win him over in the past. He normally doesn't side with evil Charnames, but Viora has 20 reputation, 20 Wisdom, and 16 Charisma, which apparently is sufficient. Balthazar will fight alongside us at the Throne of Bhaal.
Only one fight remains before Melissan.
I keep Ruva close to the Ravager, with Laosha on the opposite side so he can hit her with the Scorcher Ammunition. Azelos and Yorun Zovai cast PFMW and Project Image. Zulfer and Viora stay out of the way, but Zulfer gets too close early on, and the Ravager attacks him from afar. Zulfer is in poor shape.
Before I can protect him with the Shield of Reflection and stop the Ravager's darts, he crumples.
He wasn't a big part of our plan anyway. Laosha is.
The Bone Blades give Laosha trouble, and he can't spend all of his time running from them. He re-positions himself to fry one of them, and Viora gives him regeneration so he won't have to worry so much about his health.
Our mages flood the area with Horrid Wilting spells, but they have little impact. Laosha does almost all of the work, but Ruva makes the final blow.
Viora gets the last Ascension Bhaalspawn power, a 25% boost to physical damage resistance.
There is nothing left to do. Melissan awaits. I go over our spellbooks many times. Yorun Zovai doesn't have Contingency, so she uses a scroll. But it turns out Contingency scrolls can only have level 4 spells or lower in them, as they are cast at level 10 like all scrolls. Yorun Zovai won't be able to have a PFMW contingency.
We drink a bunch of potions. Potions of Fire Giant Strength and Invulnerability for our front line, Oils of Speed for our spellcasters (since they won't be hasted otherwise), and a Potion of Magic Protection for Viora, to get her magic resistance up to 100.
We are ready.
This is what we're working with now. First, we have Ruva, formerly our anti-mage weapon as a Wizard Slayer/Thief and currently our blind trapper and nearly-invincible tank as a Bounty Hunter.
Notice she's wearing the Big Metal Unit. That gets her AC very low, but the Earth Elemental Token switches her to the Earth Elemental animation, which is much smaller and much less likely to get stuck.
Second, we have Zulfer, who was once our best damage dealer and our best tank. Now Laosha and Ruva have taken those crowns.
Notice he's still carrying around Fire Seeds, which we can't use because Laosha is now an Archer. Notice also the Brine Potions, which got duplicated somewhere along the line.
Third, we have Laosha, formerly our primary summoner as a Totemic Druid but currently best damage dealer and our lowest level character as an Archer. He only has two HLAs.
Basically the only thing that matters in his inventory are the Frag Grenades and Scorcher Ammunition. Zulfer could use them almost as well, but he's better off engaging in melee as a secondary tank; there are going to be lots of enemies around here. Laosha needs that ammunition more.
Fourth, we have Viora, our protagonist and now our only healer. She is the most active before battle and the least active during. She has 16 spells to cast before every fight to buff the party with nearly-undispellable immunities to almost all disablers and instant death effects. But once the fighting begins, she stands around invisible most of the time, waiting to see if there's something she needs to do that requires her to put herself in danger.
Notice the duplicate of the Ring of Gaxx. I never did bother to delete our duplicate items, or replace the items that got erroneously deleted. The benefits were not worth the costs, in my opinion, but the bug wasn't disruptive enough for me to bother correcting for it.
Fifth, we have Yorun Zovai, our primary Wish caster and our most frequently chunked character.
She has the Robe of Vecna partly because she casts Wish the most often, but mostly because I gave it to her a while ago and never thought much about giving it to Azelos instead.
Finally, we have Azelos, formerly our second-best damage dealer as an Archer and currently our utility mage as a Conjurer.
She has filled in for everything that Yorun Zovai cannot do.
Based on Zulfer's current XP as the only person besides Viora who hasn't gotten chunked or replaced, it seems that all of our chunkings and replacements have taken about 666,000 XP from every character, or about 4 million total. We've lost some of the best items in the game due to a bug, and we duplicated some of the best items in the game due to a bug. I made lots of sacrifices to re-shape this party as the demands of the game have changed. Azelos has gone from Archer to Conjurer. Laosha has gone from Totemic Druid to Archer. And Ruva has gone from Wizard Slayer/Thief to Bounty Hunter, using an item that even a thief shouldn't be able to use--just because I didn't feel like turning Zulfer instead of Laosha into an Archer. Which was likely a mistake, in retrospect; Laosha was the more useful character once Zulfer's role as primary damage dealer had been made mostly unnecessary by the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades.
This has been a rather bizarre but surprisingly successful run. Despite the setbacks, we've done some ridiculous things with Fire Seeds, Holy Word, Hide in Plain Sight, blind traps, and other strange nonsense. Mostly it was poisonous and anti-magic Fire Seeds that paved the way for the most difficult encounters we have faced. More recently, we have found that the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades can bypass basically all defenses and deal more damage than almost any other weapon.
But Melissan is another fight entirely. There are several fights with breaks in between them. The fights are extremely high-level and high-pressure. I honestly don't know if we'll survive. Lots of stuff could go wrong.
There are 167 screenshots of our fight at the Throne of Bhaal. Let the slaughter begin.
The first phase begins with an attack by Bodhi, Irenicus, Imoen as the Slayer, and two Fallen Solars.
The Solars can dispel magic on hit and strike with +5 arrows. Our mages protect themselves.
Irenicus' pre-buffs fire. He is very well-protected.
Zulfer attacks the Fallen Solar on the left; Ruva attacks the one on the right. If we force them to engage in melee combat, we won't get our buffs dispelled. Four Mariliths, a Succubus, and two Alu-Fiends join the fight.
Laosha busies himself with Bodhi. Bodhi's level drain is an unacceptable danger to us. Imoen attacks Viora. I have to get Viora away.
Time is stopped. It wasn't ours; this was Irenicus.
But we are not all helpless. Balthazar is immune to Time Stop. He crushes Bodhi.
Time Stop ends. Bodhi is dead. The Mariliths flood the area with Cloudkills; one of them actually disrupts another's spell. Viora runs to the east, the place with the fewest enemies. I cannot find the second Fallen Solar, so Laosha turns his attention to the nearby demons. He uses the Frag Grenades to get an even spread. Over to the west, a Remove Magic is coming Zulfer's way.
Only Zulfer's save bonuses and 22 STR are dispelled; his other buffs remain. But we're in trouble. Both of our mages are dealing with Insect Plague. It will be a while before we get their spellcasting back.
We make progress on the enemy, and the Fallen Solar to the east reappears, but both Azelos and Yorun Zovai lose their defenses. Azelos loses a spell trying to recover.
They still have Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, and Remove Fear thanks to Viora's high level, so they're immune to disablers. But the Fallen Solars have strong damage spells as well, and Yorun Zovai is in danger.
Viora is helping take out the newly visible Fallen Solar. Soon, both Fallen Solars and many of the demons are at Badly Injured. But Yorun Zovai is nearly dead.
Notice that she has Project Image active, a result of a Chain Contingency, as well SI: Divination or SI: Abjuration and a PFMW spell. This means she cannot drink the potion she needs to live.
Suddenly, Teleport Field enters the battle, scattering the enemies on the left. Yorun Zovai loses her clone, but keeps her life.
How? That Insect Plague damaged her, canceling the Project Image spell and letting her drink the potion.
Zulfer joins the fight to the east, where the enemies are gathering. Laosha switches to the Scorcher Ammunition to avoid slaying Zulfer and Balthazar. Zulfer is still under severe pressure, and Laosha has been poisoned by an unknown source.
We trade damage with the enemy. Zulfer and Yorun Zovai aren't doing too well. But Laosha is starting to cut down the enemies.
Laosha has the eastern battle under control. Zulfer heads west to deal with the other Fallen Solar, who has been at Near Death for many seconds now. We finally bring it down, but Zulfer is within an inch of his life.
Azelos is hiding there, invisible thanks to the Staff of the Magi, watching out for action by Irenicus. Notice that Laosha is poisoned again. Now I know it's from the Mariliths. He downs our last Elixir of Health. The Fallen Solar to the east has also fallen.
Zulfer manages to cling to life long enough to drink a potion. Irenicus is right there, but he is not taking action.
Back to the east, Laosha is finishing off the demons.
Notice that Balthazar and the Marilith are both just north of the scorcher projectile. In order to hurt that Marilith without wounding Balthazar, I send Laosha a little to the east and send Ruva a few steps north, which places the second Marilith in the path of the scorcher without endangering Balthazar.
Far to the north, Zulfer is in trouble. He's quickly approaching death; Irenicus has been applying pressure on him. Yorun Zovai heals him with the Rod of Resurrection.
Notice that Insect Plague has worn off. Our spellcasting is back, but I'm slow to realize it. Also notice Viora has switched to +4 bullets and is attacking the Marilith that's hidden behind the central pillar of the Throne of Bhaal. It brings up PFMW, which Ruva takes down with the Wand of Spell Striking.
Balthazar is hurt. I noticed earlier that I could control him, so I have him drink a potion.
Our party is hit by a Remove Magic, but it has no effect. I fail to realize it has come not from Irenicus, who lingers in the northwest, maintaining his invisibility, but from the south. I have realized, however, that our spellcasting is back. I hide Azelos, who has since handed over the Staff of the Magi to Yorun Zovai.
Irenicus finally takes an action I can see. He lobs a high-level disabler at Azelos.
She makes her save. It's a good thing, too. I didn't notice at the time, but Azelos, unlike Yorun Zovai, actually lost her Chaotic Commands buff from Viora, as well as Death Ward if not Remove Fear.
One of Irenicus' clones to the south is casting spells. We put a stop to it.
Finally, Irenicus himself becomes visible. He has no PFMW spell active. Laosha nails him with the Pulse Ammunition. Further to the south, Zulfer spots an Alu-Fiend who was teleported onto a nearby platform, out of reach. He switches to the throwing spear, Bloodbane, to take it down.
Irenicus and the Alu-Fiend don't last long. The first battle comes to an end. Now we must activate the next pool of energy, and fend off the demons that gate in.
The first time you activate each pool, a group of demons appear to defend it. Once you've defeated them and activate the pool again, you get a new innate ability and the whole party is rested. Ascension is much higher-intensity, but it won't force you to Wish-rest or ration your spells just to get by. One of the important abilities that you get right before fighting Melissan is Focus, which grants immunity to Time Stop for 30 seconds, and can be cast every 60 seconds. Melissan has a habit of casting Time Stop, using Teleport Without Error to reach Charname, and using Greater Whirlwind Attack to kill Charname before you can save them. Focus is your counter to that, and it takes careful aura management to make sure you're immune to Time Stop when you need to be.
After Yorun Zovai and Azelos restore their Stoneskins, we activate the first pool.
We've got a Balor to deal with, and I've seen them use slay effects on hit, so I give Ruva a short-lived immunity.
That was actually more intended for Planetars, and Ruva already has Death Ward active, but since we get rested right after this fight, we don't have to ration that resource.
Laosha starts burning down a Cambion. Zulfer stuns a Glabrezu. Ruva tanks the rest.
After a moment, I realize that Laosha can hit both Cambions at once. He sidesteps to their north, catching the second Cambion in the scorcher. A Glabrezu leaves Ruva to attack Zulfer, the Succubus approaches Viora, and one of the Cambions continues to fire bolts at Viora.
We haste Laosha; we want the extra damage power. Viora begins casting Implosion. Zulfer keeps the first Glabrezu stun-locked. Ruva drinks a potion; we have far more than we could ever drink.
The Cambion's bolts keep coming, and stop Viora's Implosion spell. The rest of the group holds steady.
Zulfer chunks a Glabrezu; Balthazar chunks a Succubus. A Marilith appears to the south; I hadn't noticed it. Meanwhile, Azelos and Yorun Zovai begin casting Energy Blades in anticipation of the next battle.
Zulfer stuns the other Glabrezu. Laosha destroys the Cambions in a stream of fire.
The second Glabrezu falls. I pull Balthazar back for his own safety and have Laosha switch to Frag Grenades to hit more enemies at once. Then I discover that Ruva has lost her Protection from Fire spell--and because I gave the Yellow Dragon Scale to Zulfer so Ruva could wear the Big Metal Unit, she also takes missile damage as well.
I pull her away and send in Laosha with the Scorcher Ammunition instead, targeting the enemy Cambion that conveniently happened to be on the other side of the Balor and Marilith, which walk right into a wall of fire.
We can spare some time before we activate the next portal. I have Zulfer trade out the Yellow Dragon Scale in favor of nonmagical Full Plate Mail, so Ruva can wear the former and set aside the Big Metal Unit. She needs resistance to missile and piercing damage a lot more than she needs an extra -5 to AC. We also restore her immunity to fire.
What the Secret Word for? I have to take down Azelos' and Yorun Zovai's SI: Abjuration if I want to restore the Remove Fear spell that has since worn off. It doesn't work, so I try something bigger.
No such luck. I try casting Remove Fear anyway, but SI: Abjuration blocks it.
I decide to wait it out. In the meantime, I pick up some equipment the enemies left behind. I find something interesting.
I go ahead and put it on Azelos. I've rolled with every other non-game-ending bug so far; I may as well roll with this one. Once SI: Abjuration has worn off, I bring out a Planetar.
I activate the previous portal to rest the party, and move on to the next fight.
The last pool conjures up much the same demons as we've seen before. Traps do a lot of damage at the start.
Ruva rushes to the front to hold off the enemies near the pool, while the rest of the party puts down the demons on the main platform.
The demons don't last for very long.
A Marilith survives the first assault. It still has PFMW active.
It runs away, but Viora holds it still with Implosion. Ruva and Zulfer finish it off.
Before we activate the last portal a second time and begin the fight with the Five, Yorun Zovai chain-casts Wish with a clone. We buff up the party as best as we can. We discover that the Hardiness spell from Wish apparently stacks with itself, though it wears off very quickly.
I cancel the Project Image spell early in lieu of waiting it out by hitting Yorun Zovai with a harmless Agannazar's Scorcher spell.
We drink more potions, set up our spell protections, and round out the last of our buffs, even the shortest ones.
We are ready as we will ever be. The Five await us.
This is easily the toughest fight in Ascension. Five of the strongest enemies in the game, all at once, plus Sarevok, and Melissan is not far behind them.
I pause as soon as I can. To my dismay, Ruva's Special Snares only send away one enemy, Sarevok.
But when I pause again a moment later, I find that Yaga-Shura is also gone.
A half-second later, everyone is gone.
The beautiful part of Maze traps is not simply that they send enemies away. It is that the enemies come back at different times, allowing you to concentrate your pressure on a single enemy and bring it down by the time the others arrive. But it's random and unpredictable. You don't know when exactly that next enemy is going to arrive.
Ruva gets to work.
Abazigal appears. Sendai is soon after. They have lots of pre-buffs.
A couple of Protection from Magic scrolls would have been very helpful here. But we can do without. Abazigal calls in a Fallen Planetar. Laosha hits Ruva with the Scorcher Ammunition. We can do a tremendous amount of damage if we catch Abazigal and his Planetar in the middle.
But then both of them vanish. We're alone.
It seems one of them wandered too far north and triggered a Maze trap I had forgotten about. Abazigal should be back soon; the Planetar may take time.
We rush over to the west to deal with Sendai. Laosha completely destroys her, despite all of her defenses and immunities.
Called Shot was totally unnecessary. The Scorcher Ammunition is dangerous enough without it. We tilt the angle of the flame and burn down Sendai's Fallen Deva as well.
Abazigal has returned already. And now that one of the Five has been slain, Melissan enters the battle.
It's not clear where this will go. It really depends on when the Five return.
Ruva gets on one side of Melissan. Laosha gets on the other. Melissan's defenses mean nothing to us.
Our Planetar is keeping Abazigal busy. Zulfer and our Skeleton Warriors move in to help out with Melissan.
Our Planetar is struggling.
Abazigal is simply too strong. We have to pull the Planetar back. And we need to weaken Abazigal.
While our Planetar is running away, getting ready to cast Heal once more, Yorun Zovai takes down Abazigal's Spell Shield with a Secret Word.
Azelos follows up with a Spell Trigger designed for this exact situation. All of Abazigal's spell protections collapse.
Zulfer attacks him prematurely, while a Breach spell from a Wand of Spell Striking is still on the way. I should have used Ruva to cast the spell; that would have been faster.
A fraction of a second later, the spell hits, and our Planetar heals itself.
Abazigal is defenseless, and it took less than two rounds. But we have a new problem already. Sarevok has returned and is right on top of Laosha.
We deal with Abazigal head-on, and both sides take heavy damage. But Sarevok is a simpler matter, as he is in a perfect position for Laosha to fry him. Laosha pulls back and draws the flame across Sarevok.
The damage is extreme. Abazigal and Sarevok are both in bad shape already.
Zulfer is taking too much damage, however. I send him north and have him attack with Bloodbane from afar. Abazigal turns his attention to a Skeleton Warrior. Zulfer is safe, for now. Bloodbane does its work.
Laosha pulls back further and hits Sarevok directly. Sarevok has no defenses to speak of. He goes down, and Melissan suffers from his departure.
Ruva has taken lots of damage, but now Melissan is on the floor, trying to recover. This gives Ruva time to heal herself.
Abazigal is almost gone. The poison damage from Bloodbane is building up. With Sarevok gone, Laosha resumes his old position and keeps up the pressure on Melissan. Viora is waiting at a safe distance, just in case I ever need her to cast Focus, while Balthazar is milling around nearby, as Melissan is out of his field of vision (he sticks close to Charname). While Melissan is disabled, our mages get ready to lower her magic resistance. We need to make the most of this temporary reprieve.
Our Planetar casts its final Heal spell. Abazigal is barely clinging to life. A few steps to the east, Illasera has rejoined the fray. Her presence pulls Balthazar out of hiding.
Melissan gets up again. Abazigal succumbs, and Melissan gets hit with another 100 damage.
Illasera is a huge problem. Her arrows dispel magic and inflict spell failure; she could seriously weaken us in a very short period of time. We need to take her down. If we don't, our advantage could disappear in a single round.
Illasera's first target is Ruva. Ruva loses all of her buffs at once, including her immunity to fire. She needs that immunity.
Our mages' Pierce Shield spells have hit and Melissan is weakened, but Illasera is our top priority. Laosha rushes it to hit her with the Pulse Ammunition, Zulfer continues attacking with Bloodbane in the hopes of stunning her, and Balthazar activates Stunning Blow.
Then Melissan begins casting an alteration spell. Time Stop.
Illasera is no longer our top priority. Melissan is. I bring Laosha to the west to hit Melissan with the stream of fire once more. It costs Melissan her spell. We are safe for the time being.
Laosha turns his attention back to Illasera. Our mages hurry over to restore Ruva's buffs.
We crush Illasera. Melissan falls to the ground.
We gather around Melissan. Laosha goes back to using the Scorcher Ammunition; Zulfer keeps using Bloodbane. Melissan is immune to poison, but she is not immune to stun.
Viora pitches in with +4 bullets. Yorun Zovai and Azelos work on their defenses.
Finally, Gromnir returns. He appears right in the middle of the stream of fire.
Azelos's Project Image spell has rendered her helpless, triggering the Chain Contingency that should keep her safe while it's active.
Gromnir runs over to Azelos to attack her, but he's wasting his time. Both copies are already immune to magical weapons. Meanwhile, Yorun Zovai brings out her own Project Image spell, though she has no Chain Contingency for it. I used Project Image to buff before entering the Throne of Bhaal, which would have triggered any Chain Contingency set to fire on helpless.
Laosha activates Called Shot. I don't know if I want to kill Melissan with STR drain, but the save penalty, the THAC0 penalty, and the extra 2 piercing damage might help out.
We lower Melissan's resistance further.
It should be close to zero now. Horrid Wilting spells could make a big difference here.
Then Abazigal's Fallen Planetar finally escapes Ruva's Maze.
Zulfer activates Greater Whirlwind Attack, hoping to stun the Planetar with Bloodbane.
Then, as soon as it came, the Fallen Planetar vanishes. Zulfer and Laosha attack Gromnir instead. Gromnir crumples.
Melissan is at Near Death. She's been there for a while. I don't understand why she's still hanging on. Maybe Zulfer has her stun-locked. Whatever the case, I see no reason to stop attacking her.
Comments
I console us out. We get in trouble with some demons when Viora, who no longer wears the Ring of Gaxx due to not needing the save bonuses and therefore is no longer immune to poison, gets poisoned.
She nearly dies. We elect to escape the area rather than fight the demons.
We talk to a monk after fighting through some Water Elementals and Kuo-toa, but the monk no longer has the rope due to Ascension. We have to fetch the rope from Amkethran. But a hard fight awaits us when we get back.
We use our Project Image clones to occupy the dragons' attention so our actual party members can attack with more safety. But Zulfer gets badly hurt when I switch to the Answerer in an attempt to weaken the dragons.
Zulfer didn't get a Protection from Acid buff because he was supposed to be using Sanchuudoku.
Zirimanat'ryl doesn't last long. It's surprising how quickly he goes down.
Unfortunately, Olinissimus has debuffed our mages. He follows up with his breath weapon, dispelling our clones and severely injuring both Yorun Zovai and Azelos. It takes time, but eventually they manage to restore their immunity to acid, and Olinissimus goes down as well.
Ithy'nassendra, the green dragon, is next out. I create a clone of Zulfer and send him out, even though it would be better used on the next dragon, as this one is immune to Zulfer's poison.
I try to restore some buffs on Ruva with a Spell Trigger, but any spell in a sequencer, trigger, or contingency can fail if the spell's range isn't sufficient. Sequencers can be cast anywhere on the map, but if the spells inside them can't normally reach that far, they won't show up at all.
Ithy'nassendra recovers and strikes back. But it's not enough.
It's nothing we can't recover from. Zulfer activates Greater Whirlwind Attack, but gets blown away.
We restore our party, crush the dragon, and get a perfect buff for the next one.
Carnifex, the last red dragon of the game, appears. He sends Yorun Zovai's clone running, then blasts it away by hitting the original sorceress with his breath weapon. Ruva gets singed.
While our Bounty Hunter, Ruva, our Assassin/Fighter, Zulfer, and our Archer, Laosha, attack the dragon directly, Viora hangs back and our mages lower Carnifex's magic resistance and blast him under the effects of Improved Alacrity. Laosha takes the kill.
Viconia, Dorn and summons are ready to protect the gate, Hades is ready for a rendezvous with Davaeorn, while Safana, Edwin and Baeloth are in a (probably) safer place, ready to support Viconia and Dorn.
After Hades went to Davaeorn, he teleported, and 2 Battle Horrors, instead of chasing Hades (who was also protected against Fire), attacked the entrance group. It was interesting that BlackTalons didn't appear - yet.
At that time, I could let Hades to attack Davaeorn without a lot of control (basically, he just chased constantly teleporting Davaeorn and tried to take all Davaeorn's stoneskins off). The BlackTalons finally appeared, and it was time for Dorn to activate his Poison. Thanks to monsters summoned by a wand, the entrance group already killed one Battle Horror.
Soon, the first wave of the Black Talons and second Battle Horror were defeated.
As soon as the second wave of the BlackTalons appeared, the game reminded of the Insane diffuculty - Dorn was killed in two successive simultaneous critical hits from the bandits. Really, not maximum HPs on party NPCs make them rather squishy in this difficulty setting, but it adds to the difficulty, and I like that.
Viconia was severely damaged by the BlackTalons, so I had to move her, Safana and both mages, further down the tunnel, so that Edwin and Baeloth could use their AoE spells and wands.
This is when the last Davaeorn's stoneskins were taken off, and Hades, thanks to his 23 STR (after going under the Protection from Magic effect, a character still can gulp potions), ended the mage's life in one hit.
Again, using the "I have to report about this fight, let's not hurry and go step by step, reacting to any change during the battle" approach helped greatly here. To me, it was a revelation. I had played too much solo before, but for a party play, it looks to be essential to constantly monitor what is going on, which is possible if you imagine like semiticgod would have played this or that fight.
I might try Insane myself sometime, just to see the difference it makes to gameplay. I assume it makes a huge difference in the early game, and later on to any character that isn't (part) mage.
I'm inspired by Grond0 from the bioware forums, in trying the Insane - if it was possible for him, then it's possible for others, right?
As for the auto-pause, I'm tempted to enable all options, actually, although I personally think they're helping you immensly, especially the end of the round and spell casted options. But so far (I mean current the Hades's progress), the game has not turned into a chess fight, as it is in SoA and ToB, so I'm playing without the auto-pause. I just pause myself every second or so in any major fight.
In fact there haven't been any successful insane difficulty SCS/Ascension trilogy successes documented at the Bioware Forums yet (although Alesia came very close with her Sorceress last year).
As regards your expectation that the difference between core and insane will be more palpable in BG2 than in BG1, I'd say that would depend a lot on character class and party composition. Swashbucklers for example, one of my favorite kits, will have a much harder time in ToB where a couple of criticals is likely deadly for them since their means of boosting pysical resistance are limited. Arcane casters on the other hand are the one class that doesn't need any external resources to be able to completely avoid physical, magic and elemental damage. They can fully rely on their spells, so for them the difference between core and insane shouldn't be too significant. Of course there are a lot of potions, items, green scrolls, and innates that allow warriors and thieves to obtain temporary or even permanent resistances and immunities, but I doubt there'll be enough for a party containing say Keldorn, Valygar and a Charname Fighter. I'd definitely opt for a caster-heavy party.
It's a long and unsatisfying slog that just amounts to hitting them over and over. Enemies with comprehensive immunities are never fun or interesting to play.
Things may also go wrong in more or less subtle ways: e.g. one creature inheriting the spell or item modifications from one mod and the scripts from another mod.
I cannot comment on the rune assassins but let's see what's wrong with the gnome.
1. inter-mod (in)compatibility issues ?
2. mod compatibility issues with EE ?
3. bug in the original version ?
IIRC, the gnome had plenty of 3 and a bit of 2.
Of course I cannot certify that 1 is out of the picture but I know for sure that Stratagems does not modify the gnome. With your setup, there is no way to play a SCS-like opponent. To be 100% accurate Stratagems may modify a bit the creature such as allocating potions to the gnome whereas he has no scs script to use them. That's not always true. For instance it's why Blucher's Maevar from the orginal Tactics mod had no chance to be operational with Stratagems.
Alongside the BMU, you also get the Scorcher Ammunition, which deals 2d12 nonmagical fire damage with a save for half and strikes twice due to using the Agannazar's Scorcher projectile, the Frag Grenades, which deal 1d12 nonmagical fire damage without save and use the Skull Trap projectile, and the Pulse Ammunition, which deal 1d4+1 nonmagical magic damage and use the Magic Missile projectile. All of them strike as magical +0 weapons, grant +10 to THAC0, and set APR to 5. The first two are the most effective means of apply on-hit effects like Poison Weapon as area effects.
I made Laosha into an Archer at the cost of over 2 million XP because I wanted to combine those weapons with Called Shot. They would allow him to hit groups of enemies with Called Shot effects, including save vs. spell drain and STR drain, at 10 APR with Improved Haste. And the Scorcher Ammunition, since it strikes twice, will let him apply the effects of Called Shot twice per hit. Against the drakes at the beginning of the fight with Abazigal, I hand the Scorcher Ammunition to Zulfer and the Frag Grenades to Laosha.
It turns out that these things are even more powerful than I had thought. Laosha's Archer damage bonuses, and the damage bonus from Firetooth, both apply to the Frag Grenades and Scorcher Ammunition.
And because the Scorcher Ammunition strikes twice, it can remove over 10 Stoneskins in a single round, bypassing PFMW, and disrupt any spell of any characters, provided Laosha has a friendly target that can get on the other side of our real target.
The problem is that this damage also applies to our own party. We don't just need immunity to fire damage; we need immunity to missile or piercing damage. Laosha nearly kills Zulfer as well as Viora and himself.
But as luck would have it, we have somebody who is immune to missile and piercing damage. Ruva has 50% resistance from the Earth Elemental Token and 50% resistance from the Yellow Dragon Scale. She is the perfect target for the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades. Against enemies with immunity to +0 magical weapons (in a word, anyone who is immune to any level of magical weapons), Laosha can attack Ruva and strike nearby enemies as an area effect. Soon, Abazigal hits Near Death and switches to his dragon form.
With PFMW active, Laosha can't hit Abazigal with the Scorcher Ammunition unless he attacks Ruva, who must be on the other side of Abazigal.
Before I can do so, Yorun Zovai's clone finishes casting Time Stop. The moment it appears, I realize I made a mistake.
Abazigal is immune to Time Stop. He has free attacks for three rounds.
I'm now reinstalling the relevant SCS component (and everything that comes after it) to see if I can get it to work. If not I'll have to use EEKeeper to manually assign the HLAs
But Laosha makes his save--and it seems that his Death Ward spell only got dispelled after Finger of Death hit.
Unfortunately, Zulfer made the mistake of wandering into the scorcher projectile, taking out half of his HP in a second. I move him out of the way and send Ruva to the other side of Abazigal so Laosha can hit him, even though Abazigal's PFMW should have worn off by now anyway. We start breaking down his Stoneskins.
Notice that 1 point of damage on Ruva? Her immunity to fire got dispelled. She downs a Potion of Fire Resistance, though it would have made more sense to give her a ring instead.
Abazigal blasts us. Viora buffed everyone with Protection from Lightning, but for the first time since I think SoA, Remove Magic managed to take down her buffs, although only on Laosha.
Also, Tamah has arrived, the purple dragon whose breath weapon deals crushing damage. She's not bad for solo characters, who can protect themselves with Stoneskin or Roranach's Horn, but not everyone in our party can resist it so easily. She could give us lots of problems.
Meanwhile, in the eastern corner, Azelos tries to improve our situation with Wish spells.
Azelos blinds Ruva so she can set a trap and Maze Abazigal and Tamah to give us some breathing room.
But Abazigal's spell failure effect apparently applies even to innate abilities like traps.
Tamah blasts Ruva with her breath weapon. Rather than have Ruva drink a potion and cloud her aura, I have another character heal her with a Rod of Resurrection.
The spell failure effect wears off. Ruva Mazes both dragons at once.
We take a moment to prepare for their return. Zulfer dons the Big Metal Unit for an extra -11 to his AC, and Ruva lays traps.
Tamah gets hit hard when she returns. Apparently Spike Traps do nonmagical magic damage instead of physical damage. Tamah retaliates with her breath weapon, but Ruva has Roranach's Horn equipped this time.
Laosha slays the dragon in seconds.
Abazigal reappears. Laosha fries him.
The damage from the Scorcher Ammunition is obscene. Laosha has +4 to damage from Firetooth and +5 from his Archer levels, which means he does 10*(1d12+9)*2=310 damage per round, 130 of which is fire damage and 180 of which is missile damage, with an extra 130 if the enemy fails its saves vs. breath. A Kensai would have trouble keeping up with that, and Laosha isn't even at epic levels yet. And he has only one pip in crossbows.
Laosha does most of the work inside of Abazigal's Enclave. Both the fire damage and the missile damage from the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades bypass the drow's magic resistance, and the area effect is a big deal considering the enemies here come in big groups.
Next up is Odamaron and his Apprentices. We have to fight three liches at once. And unlike the last times, we don't have Wizard Slayer levels, which could have completely broken this encounter.
There's a distinct problem with this area. The fastest way to reach Odamaron is over the first staircase, but that staircase is trapped, and it would take time to disarm the traps, which I believe dispel your buffs on being triggered. You have to walk around the next staircase over to reach him, which takes time we need to disrupt Odamaron's spells. Since I want Ruva out of the way to make sure she can lay her next trap, I put Zulfer into place as Laosha's target. We break through the lich's PFMW spell.
Yorun Zovai's clone gets a Time Stop off the ground. We use it to blast the enemy with Horrid Wilting spells. Both sides trade Wishes. The enemy chooses a fairly weak option. We get two excellent ones... although only one of them works.
I thought Miscast Magic would be an excellent way to turn the tide further in our favor, as we are less dependent on spellcasting than the enemy. But the Miscast Magic spell from Wish strikes as a level 3 spell, does not bypass magic resistance, and offers a save vs. spell at -6 to negate the effect. The liches are immune.
Yorun Zovai's efforts largely go to waste, as the enemies are also immune to magic damage from Horrid Wilting (only Odamaron's illusory clone got killed; not the lich himself). We have trouble dispelling the enemy's invisibility--there are delays associated with using Detect Illusions--but we can tell where they are by the visuals of their defenses. We can hit them by having Zulfer and Ruva follow the visuals while Laosha keeps firing at them.
Azelos has managed to cast Project Image despite having 80% spell failure, which lets her clone debuff one of the Apprentices, allowing Zulfer to stun him with Celestial Fury.
Zulfer chunks him shortly. Meanwhile, Odamaron and his remaining apprentice can't get a single spell off the ground thanks to Laosha and Ruva. Their defenses are useless.
The apprentice is apparently a vampire, and tries to kill Ruva with CON drain, but its defenses run out before it can do much harm.
There's only one left, so we switch the narrower but more powerful Scorcher Ammunition. Odamaron expires.
I am having lots of fun with Laosha.
I pull him back and blind Ruva.
She Mazes the first attackers and runs ahead to engage the others. Her blindness gets dispelled due to an Anti-Magic Ray, but in SCS, this blocks all spells, including hostile ones, which means she is safe for the time being.
Laosha destroys the entire group with Frag Grenades.
Lashar'ra is next. She deals over 70 damage with her poison attack, and her Vortex Spiders can slow the party and inflict large combat penalties. But her defenses don't hold up long enough for her to pose a threat.
Next is Ogremoch, who chain-casts Stoneskin. He is very sturdy and hard to damage.
But with Called Shot, Laosha can kill him with STR drain. Both Ogremoch and Ruva have 25 STR, so they die simultaneously.
For Diaytha, we send in a blinded Ruva to trap the group, but another Anti-Magic Ray restores her sight.
Seconds later, the enemy is broken. Laosha's Frag Grenades broke through all of their defenses.
Laosha has taken almost every kill in this entire dungeon. Zulfer used to have 75% of the party's kills. With Laosha just now joining us, Zulfer only has 65% of the kills so far.
Viora wears him down with Implosion and Energy Blades.
Finally, the Mind Flayer section. Laosha does most of the work; Zulfer just tanks the enemy and lures them into a more open area.
Sendai will not be so easy. We're going to have lots of magic-resistant epic-level enemies all around us, and there is little place for us to run.
I seldom use Mass Invisibility, even though it's actually one of Yorun Zovai's spell picks because @Gotural had mentioned its massive save bonuses and the penalties to enemy attack rolls. The reason was that I was afraid that Viora might be unable to re-cast Death Ward or Chaotic Commands if Zulfer, for example, got debuffed, since invisibility prevents you from targeting your own party members.
Somehow I failed to realize that Mass Invisibility from a level 23 mage would get dispelled long before Chaotic Commands from a level 31 cleric, which would have made it extremely valuable for us to use Mass Invisibility. Too late now.
Ruva botches the backstab attempt on the Sendai clone. Laosha breaks his invisibility to bail her out. The clone nearly dies in a single round.
But the clone clings to life. The rest of the party flees from the Storm of Vengeance, and expose themselves to a Remove Magic spell that wipes away Viora's haste from an Oil of Speed, her magic immunity from a Potion of Magic Protection, and Zulfer's save bonuses from a Potion of Invulnerability and Improved Haste from Yorun Zovai.
It's only a slight setback, but I decide to play it safe. I bring our visible party members back into the shadows with Potions of Invisibility.
What about that Sendai clone I was about to kill? Those scorcher projectiles are still on-screen, and there are enough of them to finish her off. But that's not enough for me. I also move Laosha south to capture more enemies in the path of the scorcher projectile. Two Sendai clones die in a flash.
And just because he can, he moves west, and slays one of the drow as well.
The scorcher runs thin. We're invisible, but a new pair of drow has entered the room and one of them is casting a divination spell. We're about to be revealed. To keep the enemy's pressure away from our more vulnerable characters, I have Ruva break her invisibility on Sendai's mage clone.
Then I realize that Ruva is too far to draw one of the drow over to her, and the other drow is still going to finish that divination spell. Sendai brings out a demon, which is fortunate--I thought that conjuration spell was going to be a Fallen Planetar.
Notice that Laosha is using the Frag Grenades. Ruva can't get around the mage clone, since I failed to consider having her equip the Fire Elemental Token to shrink her circle and let her squeeze through, which means Laosha can only hit the invisible Sendai with Frag Grenades. And now, another Sendai clone, a fighter dual-wielding axes, is going to go straight for Laosha.
To keep the rest of the group safely invisible, Zulfer stuns the drow spellcaster to the west with Celestial Fury.
Laosha runs away from the fighter clone, healing himself as he goes, and turns around to roast her with the Scorcher Ammunition.
Zulfer is having trouble, as more drow are spawning in and he doesn't have Hardiness active.
I have to do three things to fix this. First, I send Ruva over to occupy the drow. Second, I draw Zulfer away. Third, when one of the drow pursues Zulfer, I move Laosha so the scorcher projectile fries Zulfer's attacker.
This means the southeastern mage clone is left to her own devices. I elect not to attack her. Instead, I turn Laosha's attention to another clone that has just appeared to the north. Since I want Zulfer attacking that clone, and Zulfer can't handle Laosha's area-effect projectiles, Laosha attacks with the Pulse Ammunition instead. But he can't hit his target directly--the clone is immune.
The clone vanishes. Meanwhile, Ruva has cleared up most of the western enemies, and the southeastern mage clone's Glabrezu is attacking her instead of us.
Since Ruva is no longer needed to the west, I bring her over to the southeastern mage clone, who is still invisible. I want Ruva as a target to strike that clone before it casts a spell. But since we've already got a Glabrezu right next to the invisible clone, Laosha attacks the demon with Frag Grenades... only to discover the Glabrezu is immune. The clone gets her spell off the ground.
We put too little pressure on that mage. I should have done something with Azelos and Yorun Zovai; I let them wait too long for an opportunity to strike. Now we have a Fallen Planetar on our hands.
For the Iron Throne fight, we had a lot more buffs in our arsenal. Baeloth reached the next level, and I took Invisibility, Radius, for him for the 3rd level. Viconia now could Holy Power and Protection from Evil, Radius. Hades reached the 3rd arcane spell level, taking Minor Spell Deflection. Edwin got the 4th arcane spell level.
These are our usual buffs and preparation (so that they're still active while we enter the major fight).
1. Viconia - Summon Skeletons x 2, Protection from Evil, Radius. Edwin - Strengh on Safana - with 18/50, she's a beast as a backstabber (although not a major beast like Hades).
2. Hades, Edwin and Baeloth - Shield, Mirror Image. Viconia - Aid on herself + Aid on Dorn (to increase their low HPs, at least to make them around 40).
3. Viconia - Chant. Edwin - Protection from Fear.
4. Edwin - Haste. Viconia - Holy Power - DUHM - Armour of Faith.
5. Baeloth - Invisibility, Radius. Hades - Minor Spell Deflection.
6. Locate Hades and Safana behind an enemy mage - he must be killed as quickly as possible. Locate Viconia and Dorn in front of the mage. Locate Skeletons near enemy archers. Edwin and Baeloth stay relatively away. Dorn activates Poison.
7. Viconia starts speaking.
The Iron Throne fight, though, had one lag - Viconia went visible but nobody didn't want to talk to her. Instead, I saw a message "Shennara - attacks Viconia" - an enemy thief, already invisible, wanted to backstab her.
We didn't have other choice than to attack the mage. As soon as we did, the dialogue happened, but the enemy mage, Naaman, was already poisoned.
Another arcane caster (although not as high-level, as Naaman), Alai, was the next target. Meanwhile, Edwin was in the process of casting Greater Malison. As for Baeloth, he has a lot of spells, but almost all of them are either one-target ones, or buffs. This is why he uses the wand of paralysys on an enemy cleric, who's to the west. The cleric fails his save.
As soon as Edwin stops casting Greater Malison, he follows with Teleport Field. A truly amazing spell, thanks once more, @semiticgod . Now Baeloth uses the wand of fire as Agannazar's Scorcher on the paralysed cleric.
Meanwhile, the Stupifier in Viconia's hands works - Alai is stunned for 1d4 rounds - an easy target for lots of APRs from Hades.
One of enemy thieves backstabs Safana, dealing exactly 30 damage - her whole life. Dorn is hit by Gardush - a critter here. Dorn gulps a healing potion.
Hades tries to Spook on the thief who killed Safana - the thief saves against it. Gardush goes enrage.
Teleport Field comes into effect, the thief who killed Safana is immediately teleportated from the mix, closer to Baeloth. It's not dangerous, the drow is Mirror Imaged, and the thief has no further invisibility. Also, Teleport Field saves Dorn from the berserk.
Alai is stunned again by Viconia - this is what Holy Power creates - a fighter's THAC0 and Haste helps.
Now two skeletons are busy with the berzerk, and Dorn can switch to crossbows - to poison the thief who is attacking Baeloth. The drow uses another Agannazar's Scorcher on the paralysed cleric, thus killing a doppelganger in the process. Viconia and Hades are still trying to go through all the stoneskins of Alai.
Hades's Mirror Image ends, so he, to minimize risks, gulps an Invis potion, to follow with new Mirror Image. Edwin is starting to cast Confusion. He still can't access Chaos, so Confusion is a smaller brother.
Alai is finally killed by Viconia. Dorn is still attacking with his crossbow, the cleric Baeloth paralysed is nearly dead, so the drow will finish him with Magic Missile. Edwin managed to confuse one enemy, now he's switching to casting Slow.
Viconia stuns the second thief, Dorn recharges his Poison, while Baeloth tries to paralyse the first thief (both thieves in this fight strangely called "Shennara", although one of them is a boy, and another is a girl).
Shennara the girl is paralysed, Shennara the boy is (while stunned) being under the attack from Hades and Viconia. Gardush - an enemy berserker - is poisoned by Dorn by his crossbow. Both our mages can finish Shennara the girl with Magic Missiles.
One enemy is left - the berzerker. He can't deal with the whole party, though.
After his death, it looks like another enemy is left - the one who was confused by Edwin previously and then went invisible. We quickly finish him.
The battle in the Iron Throne building is won.
The Planetar appears. Zulfer activates Greater Whirlwind Attack and strikes back with Celestial Fury, hoping for a stun effect that will let us bring down the Planetar before it can heal itself.
Zulfer gets debuffed. But his strong save vs. death will keep him from getting chunked.
Meanwhile, Ruva finally reveals the mage who summoned that Planetar.
Laosha, who has been attacking the clone to the north during the past few seconds, moves south and east to strike the Planetar with the scorcher projectile. The Planetar is immune to the fire, but not to the missile damage. It greatly weakens the Planetar, allowing Zulfer to kill it even without a successful stun.
I had to be careful not to bring it too far east, or else Laosha would kill Zulfer.
To the north, Zulfer is getting grinded down by Energy Blades from the other spellcaster clone. To the south, a new clone arrives. This one is a thief--not really a problem. Azelos knocks out the thief clone with a Comet spell, while Laosha clears up the western half of the map.
We need to get rid of that mage clone. Zulfer bypasses its PFMW with nonmagical darts, but his aura isn't clear to use Poison Weapon yet.
Ruva finally removes the Glabrezu. A Comet comes our way and strikes half the party, but all three are immune to fire.
Finally, Zulfer's aura is clear. Now we can finally slay that mage.
Laosha attacks the thief clone, the only clone with no defense against the Scorcher Ammunition. Ruva chunks a drow that was pestering her.
I finally put Yorun Zovai into action. The mage loses its weapon immunities.
Zulfer poisons it. Laosha finishes off the thief clone, the mage clone dies of poison damage, and then all that's left is the spellcaster to the north.
Zulfer takes some damage from the remaining clone's Energy Blades. He and Ruva try to reveal the clone, but it keeps vanishing.
Finally it loses its invisibility. Zulfer poisons it, Azelos wastes a Spellstrike, and then the whole party gathers around to crush it, with Laosha switching to the Pulse Ammunition so as not to hurt our group. The last clone falls.
Now we must face Sendai herself.
Sendai arrives, with a Chain Contingency that's actually illegal in my install.
As Summon Fallen Deva is an innate spell in my install, it shouldn't be possible for Sendai to have it in a contingency. Apparently my install doesn't change this behavior.
It's not a big deal. Especially since Zulfer crushes the thing easily.
Sendai has lots of defenses, but we came prepared. Azelos still has one Spellstrike left. But first, we need to remove any Spell Shields Sendai might have. Ruva uses the Wand of Spell Striking.
That death message for Viora indicates that the invisible critter that SCS uses to cast Pierce Magic and similar spells actually killed itself on Sendai's Aura of Flaming Death, which it triggered by casting Pierce Magic on her.
Azelos hits Sendai with Spellstrike. All of Sendai's spell protections go down.
Ruva hits Sendai with Breach from the Wand of Spell Striking. All of Sendai's combat protections go down.
Laosha tries to stun Sendai with Power Attack. It doesn't work out.
I notice he's still using normal bolts. I switch him over to the Pulse Ammunition.
Azelos blinds Ruva, allowing her to nail Sendai with a Spike Trap.
Sendai teleports away, trying to escape. We're not far behind.
Soon the drow falls.
The Slayer is next. Laosha kills it. That's all.
Then the Chosen of Cyric. Ruva traps most of them to death.
The others don't last much longer.
Now we have to deal with Balthazar. To my surprise, he actually joins us.
I don't know the specifics of how exactly you get Balthazar on your side, but I remember which dialog options failed to win him over in the past. He normally doesn't side with evil Charnames, but Viora has 20 reputation, 20 Wisdom, and 16 Charisma, which apparently is sufficient. Balthazar will fight alongside us at the Throne of Bhaal.
Only one fight remains before Melissan.
I keep Ruva close to the Ravager, with Laosha on the opposite side so he can hit her with the Scorcher Ammunition. Azelos and Yorun Zovai cast PFMW and Project Image. Zulfer and Viora stay out of the way, but Zulfer gets too close early on, and the Ravager attacks him from afar. Zulfer is in poor shape.
Before I can protect him with the Shield of Reflection and stop the Ravager's darts, he crumples.
He wasn't a big part of our plan anyway. Laosha is.
The Bone Blades give Laosha trouble, and he can't spend all of his time running from them. He re-positions himself to fry one of them, and Viora gives him regeneration so he won't have to worry so much about his health.
Our mages flood the area with Horrid Wilting spells, but they have little impact. Laosha does almost all of the work, but Ruva makes the final blow.
Viora gets the last Ascension Bhaalspawn power, a 25% boost to physical damage resistance.
There is nothing left to do. Melissan awaits. I go over our spellbooks many times. Yorun Zovai doesn't have Contingency, so she uses a scroll. But it turns out Contingency scrolls can only have level 4 spells or lower in them, as they are cast at level 10 like all scrolls. Yorun Zovai won't be able to have a PFMW contingency.
We drink a bunch of potions. Potions of Fire Giant Strength and Invulnerability for our front line, Oils of Speed for our spellcasters (since they won't be hasted otherwise), and a Potion of Magic Protection for Viora, to get her magic resistance up to 100.
We are ready.
This is what we're working with now. First, we have Ruva, formerly our anti-mage weapon as a Wizard Slayer/Thief and currently our blind trapper and nearly-invincible tank as a Bounty Hunter.
Notice she's wearing the Big Metal Unit. That gets her AC very low, but the Earth Elemental Token switches her to the Earth Elemental animation, which is much smaller and much less likely to get stuck.
Second, we have Zulfer, who was once our best damage dealer and our best tank. Now Laosha and Ruva have taken those crowns.
Notice he's still carrying around Fire Seeds, which we can't use because Laosha is now an Archer. Notice also the Brine Potions, which got duplicated somewhere along the line.
Third, we have Laosha, formerly our primary summoner as a Totemic Druid but currently best damage dealer and our lowest level character as an Archer. He only has two HLAs.
Basically the only thing that matters in his inventory are the Frag Grenades and Scorcher Ammunition. Zulfer could use them almost as well, but he's better off engaging in melee as a secondary tank; there are going to be lots of enemies around here. Laosha needs that ammunition more.
Fourth, we have Viora, our protagonist and now our only healer. She is the most active before battle and the least active during. She has 16 spells to cast before every fight to buff the party with nearly-undispellable immunities to almost all disablers and instant death effects. But once the fighting begins, she stands around invisible most of the time, waiting to see if there's something she needs to do that requires her to put herself in danger.
Notice the duplicate of the Ring of Gaxx. I never did bother to delete our duplicate items, or replace the items that got erroneously deleted. The benefits were not worth the costs, in my opinion, but the bug wasn't disruptive enough for me to bother correcting for it.
Fifth, we have Yorun Zovai, our primary Wish caster and our most frequently chunked character.
She has the Robe of Vecna partly because she casts Wish the most often, but mostly because I gave it to her a while ago and never thought much about giving it to Azelos instead.
Finally, we have Azelos, formerly our second-best damage dealer as an Archer and currently our utility mage as a Conjurer.
She has filled in for everything that Yorun Zovai cannot do.
Based on Zulfer's current XP as the only person besides Viora who hasn't gotten chunked or replaced, it seems that all of our chunkings and replacements have taken about 666,000 XP from every character, or about 4 million total. We've lost some of the best items in the game due to a bug, and we duplicated some of the best items in the game due to a bug. I made lots of sacrifices to re-shape this party as the demands of the game have changed. Azelos has gone from Archer to Conjurer. Laosha has gone from Totemic Druid to Archer. And Ruva has gone from Wizard Slayer/Thief to Bounty Hunter, using an item that even a thief shouldn't be able to use--just because I didn't feel like turning Zulfer instead of Laosha into an Archer. Which was likely a mistake, in retrospect; Laosha was the more useful character once Zulfer's role as primary damage dealer had been made mostly unnecessary by the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades.
This has been a rather bizarre but surprisingly successful run. Despite the setbacks, we've done some ridiculous things with Fire Seeds, Holy Word, Hide in Plain Sight, blind traps, and other strange nonsense. Mostly it was poisonous and anti-magic Fire Seeds that paved the way for the most difficult encounters we have faced. More recently, we have found that the Scorcher Ammunition and Frag Grenades can bypass basically all defenses and deal more damage than almost any other weapon.
But Melissan is another fight entirely. There are several fights with breaks in between them. The fights are extremely high-level and high-pressure. I honestly don't know if we'll survive. Lots of stuff could go wrong.
There are 167 screenshots of our fight at the Throne of Bhaal. Let the slaughter begin.
The Solars can dispel magic on hit and strike with +5 arrows. Our mages protect themselves.
Irenicus' pre-buffs fire. He is very well-protected.
Zulfer attacks the Fallen Solar on the left; Ruva attacks the one on the right. If we force them to engage in melee combat, we won't get our buffs dispelled. Four Mariliths, a Succubus, and two Alu-Fiends join the fight.
Laosha busies himself with Bodhi. Bodhi's level drain is an unacceptable danger to us. Imoen attacks Viora. I have to get Viora away.
Time is stopped. It wasn't ours; this was Irenicus.
But we are not all helpless. Balthazar is immune to Time Stop. He crushes Bodhi.
Time Stop ends. Bodhi is dead. The Mariliths flood the area with Cloudkills; one of them actually disrupts another's spell. Viora runs to the east, the place with the fewest enemies. I cannot find the second Fallen Solar, so Laosha turns his attention to the nearby demons. He uses the Frag Grenades to get an even spread. Over to the west, a Remove Magic is coming Zulfer's way.
Only Zulfer's save bonuses and 22 STR are dispelled; his other buffs remain. But we're in trouble. Both of our mages are dealing with Insect Plague. It will be a while before we get their spellcasting back.
We make progress on the enemy, and the Fallen Solar to the east reappears, but both Azelos and Yorun Zovai lose their defenses. Azelos loses a spell trying to recover.
They still have Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, and Remove Fear thanks to Viora's high level, so they're immune to disablers. But the Fallen Solars have strong damage spells as well, and Yorun Zovai is in danger.
Viora is helping take out the newly visible Fallen Solar. Soon, both Fallen Solars and many of the demons are at Badly Injured. But Yorun Zovai is nearly dead.
Notice that she has Project Image active, a result of a Chain Contingency, as well SI: Divination or SI: Abjuration and a PFMW spell. This means she cannot drink the potion she needs to live.
Suddenly, Teleport Field enters the battle, scattering the enemies on the left. Yorun Zovai loses her clone, but keeps her life.
How? That Insect Plague damaged her, canceling the Project Image spell and letting her drink the potion.
Zulfer joins the fight to the east, where the enemies are gathering. Laosha switches to the Scorcher Ammunition to avoid slaying Zulfer and Balthazar. Zulfer is still under severe pressure, and Laosha has been poisoned by an unknown source.
We trade damage with the enemy. Zulfer and Yorun Zovai aren't doing too well. But Laosha is starting to cut down the enemies.
Laosha has the eastern battle under control. Zulfer heads west to deal with the other Fallen Solar, who has been at Near Death for many seconds now. We finally bring it down, but Zulfer is within an inch of his life.
Azelos is hiding there, invisible thanks to the Staff of the Magi, watching out for action by Irenicus. Notice that Laosha is poisoned again. Now I know it's from the Mariliths. He downs our last Elixir of Health. The Fallen Solar to the east has also fallen.
Zulfer manages to cling to life long enough to drink a potion. Irenicus is right there, but he is not taking action.
Back to the east, Laosha is finishing off the demons.
Notice that Balthazar and the Marilith are both just north of the scorcher projectile. In order to hurt that Marilith without wounding Balthazar, I send Laosha a little to the east and send Ruva a few steps north, which places the second Marilith in the path of the scorcher without endangering Balthazar.
Far to the north, Zulfer is in trouble. He's quickly approaching death; Irenicus has been applying pressure on him. Yorun Zovai heals him with the Rod of Resurrection.
Notice that Insect Plague has worn off. Our spellcasting is back, but I'm slow to realize it. Also notice Viora has switched to +4 bullets and is attacking the Marilith that's hidden behind the central pillar of the Throne of Bhaal. It brings up PFMW, which Ruva takes down with the Wand of Spell Striking.
Balthazar is hurt. I noticed earlier that I could control him, so I have him drink a potion.
Our party is hit by a Remove Magic, but it has no effect. I fail to realize it has come not from Irenicus, who lingers in the northwest, maintaining his invisibility, but from the south. I have realized, however, that our spellcasting is back. I hide Azelos, who has since handed over the Staff of the Magi to Yorun Zovai.
Irenicus finally takes an action I can see. He lobs a high-level disabler at Azelos.
She makes her save. It's a good thing, too. I didn't notice at the time, but Azelos, unlike Yorun Zovai, actually lost her Chaotic Commands buff from Viora, as well as Death Ward if not Remove Fear.
One of Irenicus' clones to the south is casting spells. We put a stop to it.
Finally, Irenicus himself becomes visible. He has no PFMW spell active. Laosha nails him with the Pulse Ammunition. Further to the south, Zulfer spots an Alu-Fiend who was teleported onto a nearby platform, out of reach. He switches to the throwing spear, Bloodbane, to take it down.
Irenicus and the Alu-Fiend don't last long. The first battle comes to an end. Now we must activate the next pool of energy, and fend off the demons that gate in.
After Yorun Zovai and Azelos restore their Stoneskins, we activate the first pool.
We've got a Balor to deal with, and I've seen them use slay effects on hit, so I give Ruva a short-lived immunity.
That was actually more intended for Planetars, and Ruva already has Death Ward active, but since we get rested right after this fight, we don't have to ration that resource.
Laosha starts burning down a Cambion. Zulfer stuns a Glabrezu. Ruva tanks the rest.
After a moment, I realize that Laosha can hit both Cambions at once. He sidesteps to their north, catching the second Cambion in the scorcher. A Glabrezu leaves Ruva to attack Zulfer, the Succubus approaches Viora, and one of the Cambions continues to fire bolts at Viora.
We haste Laosha; we want the extra damage power. Viora begins casting Implosion. Zulfer keeps the first Glabrezu stun-locked. Ruva drinks a potion; we have far more than we could ever drink.
The Cambion's bolts keep coming, and stop Viora's Implosion spell. The rest of the group holds steady.
Zulfer chunks a Glabrezu; Balthazar chunks a Succubus. A Marilith appears to the south; I hadn't noticed it. Meanwhile, Azelos and Yorun Zovai begin casting Energy Blades in anticipation of the next battle.
Zulfer stuns the other Glabrezu. Laosha destroys the Cambions in a stream of fire.
The second Glabrezu falls. I pull Balthazar back for his own safety and have Laosha switch to Frag Grenades to hit more enemies at once. Then I discover that Ruva has lost her Protection from Fire spell--and because I gave the Yellow Dragon Scale to Zulfer so Ruva could wear the Big Metal Unit, she also takes missile damage as well.
I pull her away and send in Laosha with the Scorcher Ammunition instead, targeting the enemy Cambion that conveniently happened to be on the other side of the Balor and Marilith, which walk right into a wall of fire.
We can spare some time before we activate the next portal. I have Zulfer trade out the Yellow Dragon Scale in favor of nonmagical Full Plate Mail, so Ruva can wear the former and set aside the Big Metal Unit. She needs resistance to missile and piercing damage a lot more than she needs an extra -5 to AC. We also restore her immunity to fire.
What the Secret Word for? I have to take down Azelos' and Yorun Zovai's SI: Abjuration if I want to restore the Remove Fear spell that has since worn off. It doesn't work, so I try something bigger.
No such luck. I try casting Remove Fear anyway, but SI: Abjuration blocks it.
I decide to wait it out. In the meantime, I pick up some equipment the enemies left behind. I find something interesting.
I go ahead and put it on Azelos. I've rolled with every other non-game-ending bug so far; I may as well roll with this one. Once SI: Abjuration has worn off, I bring out a Planetar.
I activate the previous portal to rest the party, and move on to the next fight.
Viora hurries away from the demons, to safety. For a moment I misread a line and think I have to fight a Pit Fiend.
I read Planetar and Alu-Fiend as the same phrase.
Ruva hurries forward and uses the Wand of Spell Striking on the Marilith. Laosha obliterates it.
The rest of the fight is fairly ordinary. Our three front liners attack with their normal weapons; our three spellcasters use Energy Blades.
When the enemies are gone, Viora drinks another potion to restore her immunity to magic, and we replenish our Energy Blades.
Just one more fight before we face Yaga-Shura, Sendai, Gromnir, Illasera, and Abazigal, all at once. And then Melissan will join the party.
Ruva rushes to the front to hold off the enemies near the pool, while the rest of the party puts down the demons on the main platform.
The demons don't last for very long.
A Marilith survives the first assault. It still has PFMW active.
It runs away, but Viora holds it still with Implosion. Ruva and Zulfer finish it off.
Before we activate the last portal a second time and begin the fight with the Five, Yorun Zovai chain-casts Wish with a clone. We buff up the party as best as we can. We discover that the Hardiness spell from Wish apparently stacks with itself, though it wears off very quickly.
I cancel the Project Image spell early in lieu of waiting it out by hitting Yorun Zovai with a harmless Agannazar's Scorcher spell.
We drink more potions, set up our spell protections, and round out the last of our buffs, even the shortest ones.
We are ready as we will ever be. The Five await us.
I pause as soon as I can. To my dismay, Ruva's Special Snares only send away one enemy, Sarevok.
But when I pause again a moment later, I find that Yaga-Shura is also gone.
A half-second later, everyone is gone.
The beautiful part of Maze traps is not simply that they send enemies away. It is that the enemies come back at different times, allowing you to concentrate your pressure on a single enemy and bring it down by the time the others arrive. But it's random and unpredictable. You don't know when exactly that next enemy is going to arrive.
Ruva gets to work.
Abazigal appears. Sendai is soon after. They have lots of pre-buffs.
A couple of Protection from Magic scrolls would have been very helpful here. But we can do without. Abazigal calls in a Fallen Planetar. Laosha hits Ruva with the Scorcher Ammunition. We can do a tremendous amount of damage if we catch Abazigal and his Planetar in the middle.
But then both of them vanish. We're alone.
It seems one of them wandered too far north and triggered a Maze trap I had forgotten about. Abazigal should be back soon; the Planetar may take time.
We rush over to the west to deal with Sendai. Laosha completely destroys her, despite all of her defenses and immunities.
Called Shot was totally unnecessary. The Scorcher Ammunition is dangerous enough without it. We tilt the angle of the flame and burn down Sendai's Fallen Deva as well.
Abazigal has returned already. And now that one of the Five has been slain, Melissan enters the battle.
It's not clear where this will go. It really depends on when the Five return.
Ruva gets on one side of Melissan. Laosha gets on the other. Melissan's defenses mean nothing to us.
Our Planetar is keeping Abazigal busy. Zulfer and our Skeleton Warriors move in to help out with Melissan.
Our Planetar is struggling.
Abazigal is simply too strong. We have to pull the Planetar back. And we need to weaken Abazigal.
While our Planetar is running away, getting ready to cast Heal once more, Yorun Zovai takes down Abazigal's Spell Shield with a Secret Word.
Azelos follows up with a Spell Trigger designed for this exact situation. All of Abazigal's spell protections collapse.
Zulfer attacks him prematurely, while a Breach spell from a Wand of Spell Striking is still on the way. I should have used Ruva to cast the spell; that would have been faster.
A fraction of a second later, the spell hits, and our Planetar heals itself.
Abazigal is defenseless, and it took less than two rounds. But we have a new problem already. Sarevok has returned and is right on top of Laosha.
We deal with Abazigal head-on, and both sides take heavy damage. But Sarevok is a simpler matter, as he is in a perfect position for Laosha to fry him. Laosha pulls back and draws the flame across Sarevok.
The damage is extreme. Abazigal and Sarevok are both in bad shape already.
Zulfer is taking too much damage, however. I send him north and have him attack with Bloodbane from afar. Abazigal turns his attention to a Skeleton Warrior. Zulfer is safe, for now. Bloodbane does its work.
Laosha pulls back further and hits Sarevok directly. Sarevok has no defenses to speak of. He goes down, and Melissan suffers from his departure.
Ruva has taken lots of damage, but now Melissan is on the floor, trying to recover. This gives Ruva time to heal herself.
Abazigal is almost gone. The poison damage from Bloodbane is building up. With Sarevok gone, Laosha resumes his old position and keeps up the pressure on Melissan. Viora is waiting at a safe distance, just in case I ever need her to cast Focus, while Balthazar is milling around nearby, as Melissan is out of his field of vision (he sticks close to Charname). While Melissan is disabled, our mages get ready to lower her magic resistance. We need to make the most of this temporary reprieve.
Our Planetar casts its final Heal spell. Abazigal is barely clinging to life. A few steps to the east, Illasera has rejoined the fray. Her presence pulls Balthazar out of hiding.
Melissan gets up again. Abazigal succumbs, and Melissan gets hit with another 100 damage.
Illasera is a huge problem. Her arrows dispel magic and inflict spell failure; she could seriously weaken us in a very short period of time. We need to take her down. If we don't, our advantage could disappear in a single round.
Our mages' Pierce Shield spells have hit and Melissan is weakened, but Illasera is our top priority. Laosha rushes it to hit her with the Pulse Ammunition, Zulfer continues attacking with Bloodbane in the hopes of stunning her, and Balthazar activates Stunning Blow.
Then Melissan begins casting an alteration spell. Time Stop.
Illasera is no longer our top priority. Melissan is. I bring Laosha to the west to hit Melissan with the stream of fire once more. It costs Melissan her spell. We are safe for the time being.
Laosha turns his attention back to Illasera. Our mages hurry over to restore Ruva's buffs.
We crush Illasera. Melissan falls to the ground.
We gather around Melissan. Laosha goes back to using the Scorcher Ammunition; Zulfer keeps using Bloodbane. Melissan is immune to poison, but she is not immune to stun.
Viora pitches in with +4 bullets. Yorun Zovai and Azelos work on their defenses.
Finally, Gromnir returns. He appears right in the middle of the stream of fire.
Azelos's Project Image spell has rendered her helpless, triggering the Chain Contingency that should keep her safe while it's active.
Gromnir runs over to Azelos to attack her, but he's wasting his time. Both copies are already immune to magical weapons. Meanwhile, Yorun Zovai brings out her own Project Image spell, though she has no Chain Contingency for it. I used Project Image to buff before entering the Throne of Bhaal, which would have triggered any Chain Contingency set to fire on helpless.
Laosha activates Called Shot. I don't know if I want to kill Melissan with STR drain, but the save penalty, the THAC0 penalty, and the extra 2 piercing damage might help out.
We lower Melissan's resistance further.
It should be close to zero now. Horrid Wilting spells could make a big difference here.
Then Abazigal's Fallen Planetar finally escapes Ruva's Maze.
Zulfer activates Greater Whirlwind Attack, hoping to stun the Planetar with Bloodbane.
Then, as soon as it came, the Fallen Planetar vanishes. Zulfer and Laosha attack Gromnir instead. Gromnir crumples.
Melissan is at Near Death. She's been there for a while. I don't understand why she's still hanging on. Maybe Zulfer has her stun-locked. Whatever the case, I see no reason to stop attacking her.