Raven, Half-Orc Dark Moon Monk (SCS, LoB) Update 3
After quite easily dealing Ashatiel we cleared the Avernus Bridge to Trix with Skelis. Trix immediatelly asked the riddle so we didn't need to fight the last enemies.
Raven v Belhifet.
Enchanted Weapon is the only way to get 3,5 apr (fist/weapon) for Monk v Belhifet. Belhifet is doable LoB solo with 2,5apr Monk, but it's very close call. You don't want to even use Detect Illusion as Belhifet will disappear casting Improved Invisibility again taking hitting time away.
We started buffing with 3xPfF, 3xPfE, 3xPfC, 3xPfA, 8xMind Focus, PfP, 5 Skelis, Emotions Hope and Courage, Clarity, Defense and started the lift. Immediate surprise as I forgot that Skelis didn't follow through. Another 5 Skelis, and as they were dealing with the enemies we continued buffing. 30xHeroism and at that point I had to turn Skelis on each other as there was only Green Abishai left. Continuing with Power, 2x Invulnerability, Clarity, Enchanted Weapon, Emotion Hope and Courage, 9xChampion's Strength, killed the last Abishai, 2xChampion's Strength, Violet, Fortitude and Blur.
We arrived Belhifet with -19 AC v Slashing and 3,5apr -31/-29 Thac0 Fist/Icindeath. Escaped Belhifets Dispel, Mystara hit him with Strength spell to lower his Thac0 from -11 to -9 and started slinging him with 2apr Bullets +3. In few rounds Bel was alredy in injured state with no need to even drink from the Goblet. I calculated around 14 rounds of average fight time, and it was probably around that. In the end it wasn't even close, and only needed 2 refreshes from the Goblet. Mystara even got 4 Criticals I think.
Shadows of Amn
For BG2 we additionally installed SoD items from Unofficial Item Pack, as I find Monk gear lacking there. One of the most disappointing design choices is that the Monk gear in ToB isn't even accessible by solo Monk. Not that it matters with us. Mystara will also get couple goodies.
weidu.log
/ Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~EEUITWEAKS/EEUITWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1070 // Faydark's Abilities Auto-Roller/GrimLefourbe's BG2 UI: 4.0.7
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #0 // Rewritten Final Chapter of Throne of Bhaal: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #10 // Balthazar can be redeemed: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #20 // Improved Sarevok-Player Interactions: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #30 // Improved Imoen-Player Interactions in Throne of Bhaal: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #40 // Restored Bhaalspawn Powers: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #50 // Improved Slayer Transformation: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Tougher Abazigal: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1100 // Tougher Balthazar: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1200 // Tougher Demogorgon: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1300 // Tougher Gromnir: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1400 // Tougher Illasera: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1500 // Tougher Yaga-Shura: 2.1.0
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2140 // Expanded Dual-Class Options: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2360 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Single-Classes: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2380 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Kits: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2371 // Alter Dual-Class Restrictions -> Allow non-humans to dual-class: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2350 // Alter Multi-Class Restrictions -> Allow humans to multi-class: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2390 // Alter Paladin Spell Progression Table -> Paladins Use Icewind Dale-Heart of Winter Spell Tables [grogerson]: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2400 // Alter Ranger Spell Progression Table -> Rangers Use Icewind Dale-Heart of Winter Spell Tables [grogerson]: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Make Bags of Holding Bottomless: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3080 // Increase Ammo Stack Size -> Unlimited ammo stacking: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3100 // Increase Potion Stacking -> Unlimited potion stacking: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3110 // Increase Scroll Stacking -> Unlimited scroll stacking: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3491 // Better Shadows of Amn Start [dark0dave] -> Start at 500k XP, select items below: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3497 // Better Shadows of Amn Start: Add Balduran's Cloak: v17
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1500 // Include arcane spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1510 // Include divine spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1520 // Include bard songs from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // Core Stratagems spell-system changes (installed by default by any AI component): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2500 // Add 9 new arcane spells: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2510 // Add 6 new divine spells (some borrowed from Divine Remix): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // More Appropriate-Speed Bears: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4240 // Treat mages' and priests' High-Level Abilities as innate abilities rather than memorisable spells (each may be taken only once): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6100 // Potions for NPCs: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6500 // Improved golems: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6510 // Improved fiends and celestials: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6520 // Smarter genies: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6540 // Smarter dragons: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6550 // Smarter beholders: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6560 // Smarter mind flayers: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6570 // Smarter githyanki: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6580 // Improved Vampires: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6590 // Smarter Throne of Bhaal final villain: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6800 // Smarter Illasera: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6810 // Smarter Gromnir: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6820 // Smarter Yaga-Shura: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6830 // Smarter Abazigal: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6840 // Ascension versions of Irenicus and Sendai use SCS abilities and AI: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6850 // Ascension demons use SCS abilities and AI: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8000 // Make the starting dungeon slightly harder: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8010 // Improved Shade Lord: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8020 // Spellcasting Demiliches: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8040 // Tie difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings to the difficulty slider: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8050 // Improved Random Encounters: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8060 // Improved de'Arnise Keep ("Tactics Remix"): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8070 // Improved Unseeing Eye: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8080 // Improved Bodhi: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8085 // Ascension version of Bodhi uses Improved-Bodhi abilities: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8100 // Improved battle with Irenicus in Spellhold: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8110 // Improved Sahuagin: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8120 // Improved Beholder hive: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8130 // Rebalanced troll regeneration: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8140 // Improved Drow: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8150 // Improved Watcher's Keep: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8160 // Improved Fire Giant temple: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8170 // Improved Sendai's Enclave: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8180 // Improved Abazigal's Lair: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8190 // Improved Minor Encounters: 35.21
~SUBRACE/SUBRACE.TP2~ #1 #200 // Subrace mod for Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition (BG1, BG:SoD, BG2, EET) -> No change subrace colors (Hair and Skin): 0.3.1
~ZDBAE/ZDBAE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Baeloth BG2: v0.13
~ROMANCE_EXPANDED/SETUP-ROMANCE_EXPANDED.TP2~ #0 #0 // Viconia Romance Expanded: v1.0.7
~TOMEANDBLOOD/TOMEANDBLOOD.TP2~ #0 #31 // Sorcerer: Favored Soul: 1.4
~UNOFFICIAL ITEM PACK/SETUP-UNOFFICIAL ITEM PACK.TP2~ #1 #5 // SoD items
Irenicus Dungeon was pretty trivial with Skelis and coming to Athkatla we had 630k xp and 13k gold, and we improved our rep to 14. After escaping couple waylays we started Maevar quest line. But before getting Rayic we needed casting rights. So we went to the Government District and Mystara summoned Cowled Wizards casting Invisibility. And the neutral soldiers neutralized every one of them. After Zallanora was dead, we could cast spells freely. Nothing really interesting loot most notably Laear's Tear Necklace, Incendiary and Spell Trap scrolls. After that we could lure Rayic's Mephits outside to be slaughtered by Skelies. PfF and Rayic was killed by the repeating Fireball trap. Raven lv11 with Poison Immunity. Maevar was pre Charmed, and Skelies easily wiped them out. Mystara lv12 Mislead and Harm.
Skellies, skellies, skellies. Prebek and Shanasha got Mislead Skellied as did Tanner's gang rep 15. Easy fetch quest for Amulet +2 in Neera's Hideout. Easy Graveyard quests, Raven lv12. Graveyard was then cleaned by Mislead Skellies. Pai'na killed by Skelis for headgear we both could use. Copper Coronet and Sewers Skellied, only interesting thing was needing to kill Trolls with Aganna's Scorcher scrolls, rep 17. Neb got Mislead Skellied too rep 18. Reti Skellied for Missile Boots. We Charmed Welther and he was killed by attacking Bregg and Cohrvale. This way we got Silver Pantaloons without rep penalty. 73k gold we bought Biter +2 for Mystara to finish Trolls and Cloak of Gargoyle to protect Raven from Criticals.
Next we went Troll hunting with Skelis, Raven lv13 and Mystara lv13 Greater Malison, PfA, Death Fog. Mystara died (7) when we were accidentally revealed fighting the Shadow Druids, Skelis still handled them. Bought RoR to keep resurrecting her. I mistakinly took the Cernd option were he challenged Faldorn straight away, but he absolutely demolished Faldorn in Werewolf form. We bought Wand of Cloudkill and after softening the Rakhashas with WoMS, Mystara started gassing them from Mislead. Only Ithafeer survived as he was immune to poison. Killing him was very problematic as Skelies weren't touching him and Raven only hit with 20's, which was the point I realized that Monk's don't actually benefit from Single Weapon style using Fists, which is disappointing. And taking him 1v1 wasn't going to work. But luckily we managed to position the Skelies in front so that Monk reached the Rakhasha, but he didn't reach us. This took a long time with 3x Stoneskins and hitting only 20's, but eventually he died. We only did this for Poison Immunity Amulet for Mystara, and it better be worth the trouble. Dao's were Mislead gassed, Rep 20 and with 83k gold we bought some stuff. Headband of Focus (to actually get 19 crit), Crown of Lies, Wizard Hat, Robe of Arcane Aptitude (free Spell Sequencer) and Robe of Vecna for 33k gold.
Easy quests in Winspear Hilld and Umar Hills, and then went to loot De'Arnise. Yuan-ti Mage got Teleport field on which teleported some of my Skelies to Glaicus, but he was strong enough for them, and we dispelled him with Charm cloak first try. Raven lv14 with 42MR. We used Skeli Sequencer first time for the Ghoul Lord, and the second time against Mekrath's Mephits. Mekrath was gassed together with 5 Skelies, Raven blocking the door with Invisibility. Repelling Haer'delis invasion Mystara lv14 with Mass Invisibility and Unholy Word. In Shadow Ruins we baited Lich spells behind the corner, as some of them are cast by nearness, not by sight. After managing to lure his party away, we destroyed first the Skeletals, and then Raven punched the Greater Mummies. This took couple rests. Once the Lich was alone, we softened it with WoMS, and Skelies then finished the fight. Mystara did die once (8) as the other Lich mob found us on the other side of the board. After dealing them we left. Mencar's gang Mislead gassed and after accepting Shadow Thieves deal we are ready to start Chapter 3.
Brintje, half-elven skald (custom party/tactics remix/item randomizer) - Bonus Episode 1: Ice Island and Balduran's Island
We start our TOTSC explorations with the Ice Island. Clearing out the place is fairly easy with a PfM scroll, which is the usual way I would do it both in vanilla and in SCS (though from my experience with tactics spellcasters, it would’t be too hard without it by now, aside from the potential of getting hit by lightning spells in close quarters).
Actually, this seems a bit easier than the SCS versions because the tactics AI is worse at renewing defenses in a useful fashion and using invisibility in annoying ways. We had to bring in the party to help out our PFM’ed Fargrom twice, once for an earth elemental (needs +2 weapons to hit it, which Fargrom doesn’t have) and later on for an air elemental.
The duration of one PfM scroll was enough for the entire dungeon, whereas in SCS, I generally need two. We also found the large shield +2 here, which is nice.
Now we're going to Balduran’s Island. The northern half of the island, minus the shipwreck, was easy enough to clear out – enemies are kiteable here in general, but we could just stand and tank them without any problems at all. Yes, the werewolves now deal some bleeding damage, but it's not too impactful at this point.
Into the shipwreck – the most dangerous thing here are the improved vampire wolves, so we make sure our saving throws are good enough to deal with domination effects and have outright immunities via potions ready (though we didn’t find the greenstone amulet yet). No one gets dominated, so we're fine - the combat challenges are easy enough to deal with. We find the Sandthief Ring here. After we’re done with vampire wolves, things are fairly simple – Karoug is paralyzed via wand charge, and it turns out he (and the loup garou later on) can be hurt by regular +2 weapons in tactics – no silver or gold needed.
Overall, Balduran’s Island, as a result, is actually easier than the SCS version, making these two parts of TOTSC Nr. 5-6 on that list.
Before going into Durlag's dungeon, we still have Kahrk and the ghost at Durlag’s upper levels to deal with - I almost forgot about those two. Kahrk, as it turns out, starts with SI:Divination and Mislead – and also Mantle.
Some powerful prebuffs here. He also opens combat with a Teleport Field – we leave him alone with our 5 skeletons, until we feel like his Mantle is gone (and his Mislead is killed) – some skeletons are still alive, we lure him out of the Teleport Field and attack – he is mostly attacking instead of casting spells, and in the end, the battle is actually fairly easy for our fully buffed party, though this is certainly not a battle to take early on. Kahrk drops a katana +2 that has +5% crit chance and casts a curse on the target on a crit. Nice, but we can’t make use of it.
The ghost turns out to be a bit of a disappointment – we just buffed up, ran in and killed him immediately with our attacks – he did not prebuff at all.
I decided to load an auto save for testing purposes to give him a bit more of a chance by running in without buffs. Yet again, he died before doing anything (though there’s also a pre-prepared invisible stalker to fight next to him).
On a third test, I just left him alone for a bit to see what he would do – indeed, after slowly casting dimension door and teleporting in the main room of the level, he does finally activate his prebuffs, though they’re a fairly common combination of stuff, nothing super high level, unlike Krystin or Kahrk.
He did open with confusion, which is semi-dangerous, but nothing that other mages haven’t done as well. Even with that, no direct counterplay against confusion on our part and a doom guard and invisible stalker among his companions, we were able to win this hypothetical test battle with no buffs.
So, here we have example 7 of the SCS version of a fight being harder.
Now, onto Durlag’s Tower proper - the lower levels. This should be a challenge. To quote the tactics readme: “Durlag's Tower, to me, feels like a quintessential DnD dungeon within BGEE. My focus is to crank the difficulty up to 11 to really challenge the player.” Let's see if this matches our experience.
Durlag’s Tower level 1:
This turned out to be fairly similar to the SCS version. There are some of the tactics skeleton warriors here, but since we’re scouting with our stealthed archer to avoid any surprises, we didn't just run into them randomly, and we were able to make sure that Fargrom was leading the way and mostly dealing with them solo, either enraged or with an invulnerability potion to resist their crowd control spells. Aside from that, none of the enemies are too special – we make it to the dwarven warders, not quite sure what to expect, so we summon our skeletons and buff up.
In the end, the fight is not too surprising – a cloudkill drops, Love has a few pre-buffs (but nothing like a full tactics pre-buff list) and tries casting dire charm, but foolishly targets a skeleton warrior. Meanwhile, Avarice tries to backstab us, being more of a threat, while we shoot down Fear:
With Brintje now having access to stoneskins due to the scroll on the Ice Island, backstab isn't nearly as dangerous as it used to be, and the tactics AI is picking other targets. Well, true sight solves this problem, and we take down both Avarice and Pride in quick succession. Once we get to attacking Love, we notice (with a slight delay, resulting in some significant damage taken) that there’s a physical mirror effect going on:
However, melee attacks, at this point, easily suffice – so far, no sign of this being significantly more difficult than what we would’ve expected.
Durlag’s Tower level 2:
We rest before moving downstairs. The first change we notice is that the named doppelgangers, those that put on the faces of Durlag and his family, change their forms much quicker and each time they do so, all attacks on them stop and have to be manually ordered again, which is a bit strange and annoying. I'm expecting that their shapechanging works in a way similiar to the SCS version of shapeshifting for druids, as it is instant and without any seeming cooldown or clouding of the aura. They will do things like turning into a cleric to heal up when on low hitpoints, but in the end, they just aren't that much of a threat in general, even when using their different forms a lot more. Things go very well, we have remove fear and free action available for the ghasts to the west and fight our way to the south.
One of the doppelgangers at the bridge room, for some reason, gets a large list of arcane prebuffs:
However, he ends up doing very little with this power. While these changed-up doppelgangers are annoying to deal with, none of them end up doing anything dangerous to us, as their offense seems much weaker than their defensive capabilities. They also tend to switch out of the potentially dangerous Islanne form way too quickly, I don't think I got to see them complete any non-defensive spells during the entire battle.
The dwarven doom guards, our final challenge on this level, ended up being pretty much the same as usual - we get our full buffs ready and use a few wand of the heavens charges to speed things up:
Starting in level 3, we fight our way through the greater wyverns without any issue. Soon, we learn that another classic tower enemy type, the ghoul lords, use greater malison and confusion now, making them quite a threat – once again, Fargrom has to use rage, followed by another invulnerability potion, to gain some safety here, with the others following him around carefully.
Luckily, the Ashikuru seem unchanged, and we use PfU (our second to last scroll, as they are removed from stores by the item randomizer) for the middle pathway.
Now, to clear the elemental rooms – buffing up with full frost protection for the party for the arctic room, because I’m not sure if the bear will have intelligent targeting. It doesn't seem to, staying on Fargrom the entire time (though it's hard to tell, because everyone would've been immune to its attacks):
On to the chess board – I made the mistake here of not resting again, which I should have done to go in with full buffs. Instead, I just hoped that mass fireballs would do the job (even though if you do this with SCS, you really have to combine them with double web minor sequencers to buy enough time). I did get full lightning immunity with absorption potions, though, to allow myself to walk around freely if needed. Well, fireballs did some work:
But not a lot. It seems like tactics is giving every opponent here a decent amount of fire resistance. As the enemies approached me, we threw down a second round of fireballs, but that was still far from enough – some enemies ran to the other side of the chessboard and turned into queens, all getting full tactics prebuffs. With dangerous spells like flame strike and hold person starting to fly around, and my party taking real damage from physical attacks as well, I decided to see if killing the king would still end the fight and give me the win – the king had charged to the front as well, and was not exactly well protected.
I was able to kill him with regular physical attacks, just as I got hit by hold person and remove magic – the chess pieces started disappearing (not all at once, but in a few waves of disappearances), I had to still deal with some summons, but in the end, we came out victorious despite being only relatively poorly buffed. The king seems to be the way to go.
We rested, and moved on to level 4. No trouble with the spiders. The helmed horrors to the north hit hard (very good thac0, seems better than in the unmodded game, though I can’t be sure), but in the end they were relatively easy to kill as well. We use our final PfU scroll (plus oils of speed) for the ghoul lords to the south. One observation I made: Despite having no reason to have that knowledge, the ghouls, once attacked by the PFU’d party member, would walk straight towards the party (parked far, far away) instead of trying to flee in random directions or something else that would make some logical sense. Fargrom joins in for Grael with rage, just so we get her dialogue (I was worried that if we didn't trigger it, some type of bug could occur).
And we move on to the demon knight. We buff up fully for this one, including a bunch of potions and scrolls (importantly, full fire immunity). The demon starts with a lot of prebuffs as we send in our skeletons and Fargrom, protected by rage. Our berserker baits out the dispel, as I expected, though he gets to keep a few buffs, including his fire immunity. We can’t move in yet, because among the demon knight's buffs is a form of mantle. Fargrom stays at the front to check when it runs out:
Once the mantle is gone (about the time the demon, who deals strong physical damage with improved haste, has killed our skeletons), we move in and simply shoot him down.
True sight was a big help once again here. So far, so good. All in all, the gameplay in the tower has been similar to SCS, but in fairness, the changes to ghoul lords, skeleton warriors and ghasts do clearly make it tougher, and stuff like the lesser mantle do force a slight delay in aggression. Still, the only time I was actually in trouble was at the chessboard, the one time I deliberately went into a huge battle without full buffs. Next up: The return to Ulogth's Beard and Aec'Letec.
@Enuhal thanks very much for the playthrough and provided feedback! It looks like you may be a couple versions behind current, so I'd love to get your feedback if you give it another attempt with v4.0. You should also notice improvements if you run EEex and IWD spells. I will be looking at your posts as points you made stick out and do require my attention to see how I have it and where I can improve. Thank you!
EDIT: I have updated the generic mage casting to now include the Armor series of mage spells and Horror was updated as it was missing checks for kits and abilities that block fear effects.
@morpheus562 Hey, thanks for your comment and the work you're doing on the mod. I did start the run with the newest version on the website at that time, but I generally don't like to update mods during a run, because I'm not sure if this could possibly break things (and sometimes, new versions of mods can introduce new bugs that first need hotfixing - not ideal for no-reload gameplay if such a bug turns out to be gamebreaking or deadly).
Now, let’s return to Ulgoth’s Beard – travelling from the big city, generic invisibility spells (though not potions) last long enough to conceal the affected party members for the ambush. We have three of those, the other three in the party will have to use potions of invisibility to avoid the initial battle. This works in vanilla and in SCS, let’s see if it works here as well. Turns out, it mostly does – we drink the potions and move north, though we are a bit a delayed because, for some reason, Brintje’s aura is clouded - maybe because she had just finished casting an invisibility spell in the previous area. Luckily, the two cult assassins are unable to get to her before she goes invisible as well - here you can see us moving north, and also a list of the cult enforcer's prebuffs:
However, as we run away, we get hit by a “detect illusion” (the thief ability, not any spell) from an assassin – they just catch the last one of the party, Perigosch, with their ability, but apparently he’s basically out of their sight already at this point, so the enemy group doesn’t fully follow us - I would guess that, if Brintje didn't have to wait a second for her potion, we wouldn't have been caught at all, but it's good to know that there's some counterplay here to going invisible. With a slight delay, only one archer and one doomguard approach – in the meantime, we drink oils of speed and fire giant strength potions. Eventually, the two asssins come in, but we have true sight going by now, so it’s easy to deal with them. Eventually, we buff up a little bit more (though not fully) and take down the wizard, the two fighters and another archer:
On to the cult compound. I learn here that the cult guards apparently aren’t evil – holy smite doesn’t deal damage to them:
Still, a rather easy battle as these guys are decent fighters, but with no special abilities and no real chance to get past our berserker. Now we try to lure out the assassins. They don’t follow us on the first try, but we do get the wizard – true sight and our buffed up attacks are enough to take him down shortly before he’s able to cast his first potentially dangerous spell (most likely slow).
Second try, the assassins come in, and they manage to get a double backstab on Perigosch just between two ticks of true sight, dealing serious damage to him, so he retreats for a bit. I do wonder why he seems to be the primary target for backstabbers now, because he has neither the lowest HP nor the worst AC (in fact, his AC is the second-best in the party).
We take down one of the assassins immediately, the other one is able to drink an invisibility potion and backstab Iridine as well, but after that, we take him down as well.
The second cult enforcer is tough to kill, but not very dangerous. This guy had 3 extra stoneskin spells ready, but he generally only attacked with his sword instead of casting aggressive spells.
Okay, we rest up and prepare for Aec’Letec. Notable extra inclusions to our buffs include cloud giant strength, heroism, and, most importantly, six of our seven potions of magic shielding (I made sure not to use anything I ended up using for Sarevok, and luckily I didn’t need any of those for that battle). Going downstairs, the cult leader came with a pre-buffed stoneskins (already being active, basically a pre-prebuff, probably to avoid death before the actual prebuffs). As in SCS, she’s a full fledged wizard – seeing her open with an abjuration spell, I had had Fargrom, who seemed to be the target (confirmed by her turning towards him once he moved) attack some cultists on the other side of the room to avoid dispel on the full party. It turns out to be a lesser dispel and does indeed get rid of Fargrom's buffs:
The cult leader starts casting a second abjuration spell, but by now true sight has ticked and we’re through the stoneskins, and we get the interrupt – very important, a dispel on the rest of the party could’ve been very dangerous, if that was indeed what she was casting.
I also noticed at this point that Aec’Letec moves very fast, so kiting the demon is not possible, but should not be needed in any case. Tracea Carol, how helpless, dies, and we turn towards the cultists. Fargrom, in the meantime drinks up another oil of speed and a mirrored eyes potion for gaze protection (not sure if this is needed in this version). There’s also a helmed horror here, but we’re able to take down all cultists and the summon, and only Aec is left.
So far, the demon has done little of consequence (some attempt at silence and the like, and of course physical attacks). Killing her is simple enough now, aside from the extra speed I barely notice any potential changes here, though that could always be because we have the magic shielding potions going. Aec dies after a few uneventful rounds:
Among the loot there’s now a two-handed axe +2 with the chance of diseasing the target.
And that was TOTSC – after the statement in the readme, I honestly expected Durlag’s Tower to be even tougher – it ended up being slightly more challenging than the SCS version (mostly due to the improved undead), but it seems like the knowledge we’ve gained in the base game on how tactics likes to do things made this one fairly straightforward for us, trouble at the chess event notwithstanding - I might have gotten a bit lucky there with the kingsnipe, though it might also be interesting if the king held back a bit and didn't expose himself so easily to being taken down.
To give some final thoughts on Tactics Remix vs SCS: SCS is obviously a bigger mod, with more customization and more options in general, but it also is less focused on changing enemy stats (though it does a decent amount of that as well, especially in BG1, but generally in more subtle ways). While I generally go for full installations, the most important part are clearly the AI changes (mostly targeting, calls for help and spellcaster improvements). Tactics Remix improves those things as well - you can clearly tell a difference with how the spellcasters behave though. Aside from the different set of prebuffs, I do feel like SCS spellcasters are, at this point, a bit better at picking the best spells for the situation - aside from the cases where they opened with lightning bolt or confusion, I was often fine with tactics spellcasters getting to cast a spell or two. Tactics Remix, in contrast, seems to be more heavy handed with changing enemy stats and giving your foes additional abilties (and if I didn't skip the option for a blanket increase on enemy hitpoints, this would've been even more notable). As a result, a lot of the difficulty now comes from certain generic foes (such as enemy archers in the early game, and in general some of the more powerful improved undead), and there are less encounters that one could qualify as easy pickings.
On the question of which mod is harder, I would say that, for most of what I've seen, it's generally tactics, but I did note 6-7 exceptions throughout the run (I can't remember all of them on the top of my head, but you can find them in the various updates - they certainly include Icharyd (who I think is actually too strong in SCS at this point in the game), the lack of bounty hunter ambushes, the bandit camp and the hamadryad). Part of this could also be me being new to the mod - certain areas that gave me a lot of trouble, such as the Candlekeep Crypts, would be easier to deal with, now that I know about the tomb ambushes. So, when it comes to recommendations (talking about BG1 only), it depends a bit on what you're looking for. If your interest is mostly in AI improvements and lots of customization, SCS is imo the way to go. If you want general improvements to almost all enemy units in addition to that, and are fine with fewer customization options along the way, Tactics Remix is definitely worth a try - from what I've seen, aside from the one underworld ambush in Beregost, it seems to be mostly free of bugs (and that bug didn't affect gameplay), and it's getting a lot of updates, which is also generally a positive. I had fun switching it up for this run. Also, if you're fan of they type of changes the LoB difficulty mode makes (not my cup of tea, personally), the interaction between a full Tactics Remix install and LoB could make things REALLY challenging early on.
Now, we've got expansions for some of my favorite RTS games, Age of Mythology: Retold and Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, coming up, so no further BG gameplay for a decent while, but as always, I will be back. I have no idea what type of run or mod setup I might play when I return to the game, but with no Hall of Heroes to fret about, it's certainly not going to be just a generic vanilla run without a theme or something new to challenge myself with. Good luck to everyone in the meantime!
@Enuhal Excellent work! Whether it's tougher than SCS or not, Tactics looks VERY wicked. Kudos for crushing it!
@histamiini Another excellent display of your precision and consistency. Congratulations on another string of victories on the max difficulty!
@Grond0 Every time I see your gameplay, I am in awe of how much you know about even the most obscure fights and subtle optimizations in BG1. You are a real master.
The week long rest next to the de'Arnise palisade ended, so we made our way to Umar Hills and the merchants there. Two items of note were the arcane merchant was hit by lightning and ran inside from the weather, and Omen felt the village children were of age to play with swords and beer. We left before events caught up with us
At the temple ruins we cleared the outside of undead, and ventured inside. Omen took quite a lot of damage, happy to live on the edge. Coreheal and Tar provided what support they could and we made our way safely to a shadow dragon. We decided to lay seven snares and rest before attacking it. Omen declined to use the potions Tar passed to him, while the dragon survived the snares. Tar threw in two further special snares before the follow-up poison from the initial traps killed the dragon
The shade lord outside took several rounds for Omen to kill, while Tar failed to destroy the shade altar with his first two bullets. The third bullet did the job and the remaining shadows were easy marks
Back at Umar Hills we collected our reward, Coreheal making use of the armour reward. We also picked up Valygar, and used his body to open the Planar Sphere for another time. We then returned to the Bridge district, eliminating the rune assassins. While resting at the Graveyard we realised much of it had not been explored so dealt with all the surface crypts. Uncle Lester managed to kill his nephew but failed to make good his escape
We then descended below and removed various spiders and ettercaps. Pai Na failed to survive a face full of Omen, and a summoned genie thought it could fireball all her spiders - but Tar had made her way to an unobserved area of the circular room and threw in a special snare to massage her kill count instead
The bronze pantaloons fell into our possession after a double kidnap, then we found Cromwell the dwarf and asked him to forge the shadow dragon armour - Coreheal taking much interest in that and more delight as Tar bought a girdle of hill giant strength for him
The quests for Sir Sarles were next, before retrieving the mace of disruption and asking Cromwell to improve it. Then back to the vampires and clearing out their nest - leaving Bodhi with no choice but to flee. We make no mention of Omen being dominated at the start of this combat (nor of Coreheal considering whether to flamestrike him), since Tar summoned Kitthix and this allowed Coreheal and Tar to hide around a corner. Omen stood dominated with two vampires and a grimwarder, while a grimward archer ignored the charm and continued to shoot at Omen. Once Omen came to his senses he attacked the enemies while Coreheal cast chaotic commands on him
Tar had been planning to get the ogre gauntlets from the Planar Prison but Coreheal asked about the druid grove. Tar realised this would allow us to close off the skindancer quest so we went to the grove. Omen took more damage there, and our time drew to a close after clearing the troll mound. Next time we'll introduce ourselves to the druids and trolls, hoping they have worn each other out in the two weeks before we re-convene
Tar has 105 kills. Omen 340, and Coreheal 47 (the latter showing how easy pickings from bounty hunter snares add up) . Gear:
Bolithaw the Sniper: BG1, part 3 (the actual part 3)
We're still struggling to make our early level ups. Some of us are level 2, but Iffle, our Force Wizard tank, and Aura, our Artificer/Thief, are still at level 1. While prowling through some modded areas, we run into another new sight: an orc shaman!
I'm pretty sure a Hold Person spell is coming our way, and we currently have no real defenses against that. We immediately open with a charge from the Wand of Fire.
It disrupts a spell, but the orc's health bar indicates that it is much higher level than I expected.
We just barely manage to kill it before it gets a spell off the ground, earning us a minor windfall of 420 XP. That kind of payoff is exactly what we're looking for, although losing a wand charge is a heavy cost when we're not recharging them. We have a long way to go before we can visit Sorcerous Sundries.
I explore a little further, only to find THREE more orc shamans waiting to the north, along with three orc fighters... and some hobgoblins beyond them, and even more enemies when I keep sneaking around.
And stumble into a whole cave of them when I try to look elsewhere.
Time to boogie. We are levels 1 and 2; even kobolds are scary right now. One priest follows us out, and we manage to kill it as we escape with some lucky rolls, looting from its body a magic cloak none of us can equip.
We find an Amber Flower for a mod-introduced quest, get another whopping 750 XP, and Dardaseen hits level 3! Primordial Witch Doctors like her don't have super powerful spells, but every new spell slot makes a difference.
Iffle, however, still is stuck at level 1, as she hasn't been getting quite as much XP. The reason is because stuff like this keeps happening:
I thought I could take advantage of gnolls' slow speed factor, taking a leaf out of @Grond0's book, but that requires precision and skill that I don't have, and Iffle goes down. Party members don't get XP while they're dead, so every time our main tank gets murked, she misses out on important sources of XP.
We stop by the Gnoll Fortress and grab the Gauntlets of Dexterity, but end up drinking a rare and precious Potion of Clarity to ensure a surprise kobold shaman's Horror spell doesn't get Bolithaw killed. We keep wandering around the world map, fight a random gnoll by chance, and Iffle finally hits level 2.
This is a big deal. Force Wizards gets 1d8 HP per level, and now Iffle has 20 max HP, or 25 if Dardaseen casts Feast. That extra layer is huge, and better yet, Iffle can now finally cast Shield! Force Wizards have one less spell slot than normal, so they can't cast spells at all until level 2.
Finally, we're ready for the Nashkel mines.
Iffle is still fragile. She nearly dies in one kobold fight due to lucky rolls from the enemy, forcing us to use the Wand of Fire to torch the kobolds before they can finish her off. Even then, we still need to leave the mines to go shopping for basic healing potions.
It makes such a big difference to not have a warrior with real armor and a helmet. Critical hits are so much nastier at these low levels.
We use Sleep to get past most of the kobolds without incident, but the kobold shaman and captain before Mulahey are not such pushovers. We use yet another precious Wand of Fire charge to clear the field, with Aura's special grenades (purchasable via her own store, much like my Alchemist kit mod) to apply one-round Feeblemind, buying us time.
The enemy's arrows nearly kill Vosper, our Sky Dancer, who is our key to finishing the fight without burning another wand charge. Her mini-lightning bolts are bouncy and risky even at just 1d4 base damage, but using hit and fade strategies is our only way of competing with superior enemy THAC0. We fry the surviving kobolds and make it to Mulahey.
With no Algernon's Cloak and no charm, we have to fight Mulahey head-on. Aura sets a trap for the enemy spawns, Dardaseen summons a tiny raptor to soak up a hit or two, and we take our positions between Mulahey and the chest before beginning the fight. The traps kill some kobolds, scuff up a few sturdy skeletons, and Mulahey saves against Blindness.
Despite all our attacks, we fail to disrupt Mulahey's opening Hold Person spell, and Vosper gets pinned. Vosper is our best spell disrupter, so I sense the tide of battle turning against us and deploy the Wand of Fire. It's costly, but this is exactly when we need to burn resources.
Nothing like a no-reload run to force you to stop hoarding wands and potions. Planning for the future requires you to survive today.
We micromanage our movements, trying not to get any friendlies torched, and Iffle suffers a non-fatal burn. The second hit of the scorching ray takes down Mulahey. Once again, we just barely scrape by.
We find a pair of bracers that give +2 to hit and damage, better than Legacy of the Masters, but I'm hesitant to use it. It's only usable by priests and monks, and while our Sky Dancer would be great for it, I'm wondering if it's supposed to be usable by monks, or if the mod creator only meant it for clerics. I've noticed Dardaseen being able to equip several mod items that a Wizard Slayer or Witch Doctor ostensibly shouldn't be able to, which makes me wonder if Vosper should be able to use the bracers.
I keep them on hand, but decide not to equip them for now. We actually have found a lot of modded items that we're not using, either because of usability concerns or simply because they seem too strong for the difficulty I'm trying to achieve in this run.
Outside, we kill a single Giant Snake for 650 XP, put the Revenant to rest for 900 XP, and Bolithaw hits level 3 as a Sniper! She gets her 3rd pip in crossbows, which means this one level up improved her ranged THAC0 by 3 points.
Better still, Dardaseen hits Witch Doctor level 4 when we report to Berrun Ghastkill. We now have level 2 Witch Doctor spells! Now we can summon a monkey!
Sure, it's just a recolored gibberling. But it's a monkey!
Nimbul puts up a fight. I don't mind when he knocks out Iffle with Sleep, but when he charms Vosper with a sequencer, it slows down our plans a lot.
I expect Vosper to be our main tool against wizards, since her triple attacks should help her chew through Mirror Image and Stoneskin. But she's not quite as helpful when she's fighting for the wrong team.
Mercifully, Nimbul does not have Protection from Normal Missiles, and so Bolithaw can help shoot him down. Rasaad, in classic fashion, steals the killing blow and a decent lump of XP.
Nimbul drops a special cloak for Dardaseen, an item I created for the Primordial Witch Doctor kit. The Toxodon Cloak is modest, simply giving -1 to AC vs. piercing and missiles, but every little optimization counts in this run.
This party has been struggling to operate without access to normal spells. Iffle's got almost no spell slots and Dardaseen's spells aren't as broken as certain vanilla spells. I finally return to Beregost and pick up Finch Bloomwhiffler, a gnomish cleric of Deneir I loved since the old days of BGTutu. Finally, we'll be able to cast Command and Remove Fear!
I've made some overpowered kits in the past, but the Primordial Witch Doctor kit mod needs some buffs. I've never missed vanilla spells as much as I have in this run.
Jeanluc III the dwarven fighter/cleric: Update 3
Traveling with: Tcos (dwarven berserker), Jaheira, Minsc, Imoen, Wewa (human wild mage)
Just a quick update. The party has defeated Sarevok and is currently working their way through Irenicus' dungeon. They had no trouble in BG 1. I eventually am planning on swapping Minsc for Mazzy, and will use Yoshimo until I get Imoen in Spellhold. Will keep at it.
I was reasonably patient clearing out the maze, though Lee did walk through one fireball trap. In the Undercity, webs left Rahvin's party helpless. Finally, it was time to take on Sarevok. A skeleton brought the enemies together and a series of skull traps then killed Angelo and Semaj. Tazok followed the same way before Ways indulged in a missile duel with Diarmid (though the latter ran out of ammunition and saw his PfM scroll end during that). On his own, Sarevok did well to get a couple of chops in before he ran out of HPs.
I was intending this update would cover the initial stages of SoD as well. I've been busy with other things for a few days though and, now that I've got time, feel like I'd like to try something else for a while. I think Ways will continue, but he'll be parked in the SoD opening dungeon for the time being.
It's not long since I tried this character, but I wanted to do some solo play and felt this would be the most interesting option at the moment. Biff will again be prohibited from using any spells or effects that target others (though they can be affected by melee attacks, such as ghoul touch) and won't be allowed any summons or active use of a familiar. That makes gameplay very different from a typical arcane character, but it's still perfectly possible to make good progress.
After a couple of fairly early deaths in ambushes, Biff is hoping for 3rd time lucky this time ...
In the early stages he only picked fights with enemies like gnolls, whose slow weapon speed gave them no chance of getting an attack in before Biff had struck and retreated. Quest XP in Beregost from Zhurlong, Marl and Firebead got Biff close to a level and dodging Karlat in order to return Perdue's sword gave him that - with a welcome additional 6 HPs.
A trip to the FAI allowed Biff to discover a couple of buried rings, as well as kill a few more hobgoblins and return Joia's ring. A bit further north, returning a bowl to Tenya got Biff close to another level. Making his way down to Nashkel allowed him to get the bit of XP still required from Noober and gain 6 more HPs. He also rested at the Carnival to learn Bhaal CLW.
The previous run had seen Biff shot down by a skeleton ambush when attempting to get a magic dagger from Hentold. He was only at level 2 then though and decided to have another go this run. That was successful this time, with some dogs trying an ambush, but failing to get an attack in.
Brage was escorted back to Nashkel and Rufie reunited with his master, but there wasn't a lot of reasonably safe XP left out there. In previous runs I had used Korax against the basilisks on the grounds that he was being charmed by script rather than effect. This time I decided that was against the spirit of the run, but the basilisks still seemed like the best option to get another level. Normally I don't patronize Thalantyr's shop until after killing his golem guards, but Biff did so this time to get an arcane (cheap) PfP scroll. A couple of lesser basilisks later and Biff was able to take his next level. His good run of HPs continued with 6 more, but the ability to cast invisibility was a greater benefit. While the scroll was still active Biff successfully killed the other basilisks in the southern group to get most of the XP required for another level.
Rescuing Samuel was now no problem with invisibility and that also helped him retrieve the charisma tome with minimal fighting. Dealing with some half-ogres for Bjornin pushed Biff on to level 5. In addition to yet another 6 HPs he gained ghoul touch to make encounters with single enemies much easier. Invisibility and ghoul touch were put to good use in Beregost to deal with Neera, some spiders, Karlat and Silke. Back at the FAI, Tarnesh proved no more resistant and Biff returned Landrin's goods. It required an invisible rest, but Meilum eventually went the same way, providing Biff with a significant upgrade to his attacks.
Back at the basilisk area, another PfP scroll allowed Biff to finish off the remaining basilisks - getting to level 6 with once again 6 more HPs (prompting me to double-check that I hadn't somehow toggled the max HP on level up option or difficulty level). Mutamin saved against all attempts to paralyse him, but invisible rests allowed Biff to keep up the attack until he finally succumbed. Biff then picked off Kirian's companions one by one before successfully paralysing her at the first attempt.
Greywolf has just failed to make a whimper pass his paralysed lips and Biff will be heading into the Nashkel Mine next.
Regrettably, Biff failed to make any significant further progress. In the Nashkel Mine he attacked the huge spiders while still hasted after killing the nearby ghoul using invisible attacks. The first spider was quickly paralysed, but when he went to attack the second he was immediately hit and poisoned. Huge spider poison is pretty weak, with expected damage of 3 per round for 5 rounds. However, one bad effect of haste is to increase poison damage over time. I was thinking that the damage would be doubled, so Biff could expect to take 30 damage over time. As he only had 30 HPs left after the initial damage from the spider and I had no green scroll to cure it, that was a potential problem . He'd just avoided the kobolds on the way in so had very little area available to move around in and couldn't realistically evade the spider by running. He tried to cast invisibility twice in order to have a chance of resting, but both attempts were interrupted by the poison. I thought at the time that HPs seemed to be reducing by more than 6 per round, but that can be difficult to assess accurately while in the throes of combat. Thus, when Biff managed to successfully cast Bhaal healing when he only had 1 HP left I felt hopeful that the poison would stop any moment.The poison kept ticking away though and Biff collapsed to provide a meal for the hungry spider . Checking afterwards confirmed that, for this spider, the effect of haste is to triple, not double, the rate of damage (that's because the EE changed the original behavior of haste doubling the rate of damage to a variable ratio that increases the impact of haste for slower acting poisons). Biff's only chance therefore would have been for invisibility to be quickly successful and then for a rest to not be interrupted - which was a piss-poor chance. I'm all for taking the odd risk, but if I'd realised initially how deadly the poison would be when hasted I wouldn't have attacked in such a cavalier fashion - oh well, that's a lesson for next time ...
Condolences, @Grond0. I'm impressed at how you're able to do so well even with such harsh strategies and limitations. I've always thought Ghoul Touch was a cool spell, but always wrote it off as impractical due to the THAC0 problem.
Do you happen to know the mechanics behind the altered poison tick rate? As in, what determines the exact multiplier? I'm very surprised EE increased the rate anywhere, given that I had always assumed the doubling effect from haste was a glitch from vanilla BG.
Haste was weird in vanilla, pre-EE Icewind Dale too, I remember. It didn't give just one extra attack; it actually cut the duration of the hasted character's round in half. In the original IWD, being hasted doubled your attacks, made bard songs trigger twice as often (and they stacked back then!), and even allowed you to cast more than one spell per 6 seconds.
I know you don't often play with kit mods, and a melee sorcerer is a very specific challenge, but the Force Wizard kit happens to be a melee-oriented mage that primarily fights unarmed. The downside of the kit is that it has 1 less spell slot per spell level compared to a generalist mage.
Condolences, @Grond0. I'm impressed at how you're able to do so well even with such harsh strategies and limitations. I've always thought Ghoul Touch was a cool spell, but always wrote it off as impractical due to the THAC0 problem.
Do you happen to know the mechanics behind the altered poison tick rate? As in, what determines the exact multiplier? I'm very surprised EE increased the rate anywhere, given that I had always assumed the doubling effect from haste was a glitch from vanilla BG.
Haste was weird in vanilla, pre-EE Icewind Dale too, I remember. It didn't give just one extra attack; it actually cut the duration of the hasted character's round in half. In the original IWD, being hasted doubled your attacks, made bard songs trigger twice as often (and they stacked back then!), and even allowed you to cast more than one spell per 6 seconds.
I know you don't often play with kit mods, and a melee sorcerer is a very specific challenge, but the Force Wizard kit happens to be a melee-oriented mage that primarily fights unarmed. The downside of the kit is that it has 1 less spell slot per spell level compared to a generalist mage.
Thanks @semiticgoddess. I haven't found THAC0 to be that limiting in practice. That will partly be because I would often be attacking from invisibility. In addition ghoul touch disables dual wielding penalties, so if I am standing and fighting a weapon in the off-hand allows a respectable 3 APR in BGEE using haste. If you allow unrestricted spell use then the combination of web and polymorphed spider form is deadly and slow and blind both make hitting easier so that meleeing even things like battle horrors in natural form is perfectly possible (even before you take account of the possibility of attacking with a staff from outside sight range of a blind victim).
The EE was based on the BG2 engine, so I was thinking that haste would mirror that behavior. I do vaguely recall now that there had been a change, but it's one of those things where I'm not really sure why they bothered. The new behavior is described here. Huge spider poison ticks once every 2 seconds, so the effect of haste is to triple that - and that is consistent with what I experienced at the time.
I hadn't made up my mind if I would try Biff again tomorrow, so perhaps I'll take up your suggestion and give the Force Wizard kit a look .
My initial impressions from reading the kit description was that it seems a bit overpowered for a solo run (in a party the loss of spells would be more serious and the kit's melee abilities less valuable though). All normal mage abilities, other than the enchantment school spells, are available and some new spells provide significant additional abilities as well. I'll do a quick run through though to test out how it does in practice.
After leaving Candlekeep Clinch went straight to the coast in search of Shoal. Although the kit is strong in melee, the possibility of taking 19 strength means ranged weapons are also more vicious than would be expected in the early stages. Shoal's death gave Clinch 2 levels, though the 11 HPs gained were very poor for the d8 die given to the kit.
A trip to Nashkel allowed him to learn CLW. Even at 3rd level, Clinch can only cast a single spell a day, but that was sufficient to blind Meilum and allow Clinch to further improve his martial prowess. He then returned to High Hedge to shoot a pair of golems, getting to 4th level in the process and gaining 9 more HPs.
After completing a few more chores around Beregost, Clinch set off for the FAI. A couple of attempts to blind an ogre on the way failed, but that made no difference when a critical sling shot hit home. Wearing the Ring of Wizardry gave Clinch 6 1st level spells - only 3 of those were needed to blind Tarnesh. A 5th level came soon after that while beating up Bjornin's half-ogres.
Blind accounted for Greywolf and a number of encounters while progressing through the Cloud Peaks - such as the one with Sendai. I noted in beating up Krumm in melee that a second attack occurred quicker than expected and checking the character record showed APR had gone up to 3/2 for unarmed attacks. There doesn't seem to be anything in the class description suggesting that should happen, so not sure if it's intentional or not.
Escorting Brage back to Nashkel pushed reputation to 20 and Clinch went to buy friends in order to get the best shop prices - only to realise he wasn't allowed to use any enchantment spells. I would have generated the character differently if I'd paid attention to that at the time, but too late now . Clinch blew most of his available cash on a Robe of the Archmagi. By this time his natural AC was down to 5 anyway, so he only gets the saving throw and MR benefits making it a bit of a luxury purchase but never mind.
Clinch had also bought a number of spells, including invisibility and PfP. The latter should have got an immediate outing at the basilisk area, but I was too busy thinking about the best melee spells for attacking the basilisks and forgot to cast it. I realised as Clinch ran out from behind a rock to confront a basilisk and fortunately it was a bit slow to use its gaze - allowing Clinch to clear his aura and gulp a mirror eyes potion as the projectile was mid-air. After resting Clinch attacked again and soon picked up a level by killing a greater basilisk. Note in the screenshot both cold and electrical damage being applied - the result of both greater chill touch and greater shocking grasp co-existing with standard attack damage (though those spells only have a 5 round duration). For a bit of fun, rather than kill Mutamin with skull traps (which Clinch could now cast) he attacked using greater flaming fists to add fire damage to cold and electricity. With APR of 5/2 from using an off-hand weapon that combination quickly disposed of Mutamin's mirrors - and his life. When using his magic fists option, dual-wielding penalties are disapplied and that's typically been how Clinch has attacked. However, a standard fist attack without dual-wielding has considerably better THAC0 (currently, at level 8, that's 5 compared to 12 with the magic fist option) and will be attractive against really well armored opponents.
Clinch blinded Kirian's companions. Kirian herself saved against the first 2 attempts before succumbing to the 3rd - though she had the satisfaction of doing a bit of damage with a lightning bolt in return. Clinch got another level during the clean-up operation. Moving on to Durlag's Tower, he beat up some blinded battle horrors in melee with the aid of a first use of greater barkskin - that lasts a turn and allows improvement of 4 to AC as well as a significant amount of regeneration. Beating up more basilisks then took Clinch to level 8 allowing him to use greater stoneskin as a level 4 spell (provides a bonus of 2 to AC for the whole spell duration, even after stoneskins have been used up). Combining those 2 spells gives Clinch an AC of -7 at the moment, even before allowing for the possibility of other defenses like PfE, blur and mirror image.
With the loot from that expedition, Clinch bought the dagger of venom to add yet another form of damage potential to his armory. A bit more action saw Bassilus blinded, Melicamp fail his transformation and the Doomsayer beaten up in melee. Clinch will turn his attention to the Nashkel Mine next.
Raven, Half-Orc Dark Moon Monk (SCS, LoB) Final Update
Everything was going pretty smoothly and we were just about to sail away. But deciding to tackle Watcher's Keep first turned to be a deadly disaster. Not going to bother writing everything but couple interesting notions.
First one was that Raven couldn't use Scarlet Ninjato +3, as it has double restriction of human on top of monk. Never noticed that. Not that it matters that much, as Fists truly are the best weapons for Monk in BG2.
Shadow Altar can be neutered by casting Death Fog on it, which will kill the summons as they appear.
Tor'gal was super easy to kill with 6xDeath Fogs and couple Cloudkills and just kiting in the fog. Also he doesn't follow through the door.
We tackled Watchers Keep once we got Planetar, which first Vorpalled the Vampiric Wraiths and then soloed the 6 non mage statues. Not even four Time Stops or Fallen Planetar could stop that. In level 3 I did the usual tactics being evil. Start->DM Balor->Tahazzar->DM Balor->Start. Tahazzar granted audience us being evil, and we casually Stoned him with the Wand of Wonder, which still turned deadly for Mystara as we couldn't get the killing blow fast enough. Once Tahazzar was dead we resurrected her, but she was immediatelly Stunned. But luckily party members follow through portals even being Stunned. There isn't distance restriction either. In DM Balor room we waited anxiously if the Balor's would notice us before Mystara snapped out of it. This was because she had too much stuff I couldn't carry if I needed to escape. But luckily she was cured and we managed to escape to Start level. Also why does Dead Magic room remove buffs, but not Stun, hmmm? Also thinking it back I could've just continued going through the next portal... Now what I should've done was to take this as a sign not to continue, as Ka'rashur was the first opponent I wasn't certain about.
Even though Mystara had Harm by our kit, and we could get quaranteed hit through Time Stop, it wasn't going to work with SCS's IWDtification component installed. This makes Extraplanar creatures immune for it. So our plan was to gas bomb Ka'rashur. Start->WM Quasit->Succubus room. Here Planetar and Skelies cleared the level, and we could buff freely before Ka'rashur. After ascending to the next level, Mystara ran to Ka'rashur hitting with 3xIncendiary Cloud contingency, and wasting his Dispel. She cast Time Stop from Limited Wish scroll, so it wouldn't be interrupted. But this was the first mistake because it was very slow and Mystara found herself boxed in by enemies. This meant that her fate was sealed. Improved Alacrity, 3xPierce Magic trigger, 7xSkull Traps, 3xSkull Trap sequencer, 5xIncendiary Clouds, 5xDeath Fogs, 4xMagic Missiles, Planetar and Greater Malison. When the Time Stop ended Skull Trap damage killed Mystara. And even though I had one redudancy tactic with Planetar who should've handled Ka'rashur in the super gas, it was feared almost immediatelly, as our second mistake was to forget casting pre Remove Fear on it. At this point I thought Raven was still strong enough to punch Ka'rashur death in the fog, which was true. But something Dispelled us and our PfF, and first round passing our 88 MR we were reduced to 3 hp, and being boxed in that was it. I don't remember if Ka'rashur actually wasted his Dispel on Mystara, or if someone else in there could Dispel, so maybe that was the third mistake we did here.
I really liked the slightly modified Favored Soul Sorcerer kit, so I'm probably trying some other modded kit again, and maybe even tweaking it a little. Maybe there's something in @semiticgoddess Kit collection...
@Grond0: The attacks per round bonus you noticed was intentional, but I accidentally removed that from the class description while I was revising the kit. I'll upload a fixed version to mention the intended feature, which is the Force Wizard getting an extra half attack per round every 5 levels when using fists, much like a monk does every 3 levels.
The fact that the Force Wizard gets better THAC0 without Mystic Fist was something I tried to fix, but I couldn't figure out how. I planned on leaving that behavior in, with an explanation in the kit description, since I realized it created some interesting gameplay choices.
I'm amazed and delighted that you've been so resourceful and creative with the kit. I do agree the kit has some strengths, and you're really good at making the most of them.
Condolences, @histamiini. A rough end to an impressive run. There's nothing quite as alarming as seeing a Dispel Magic hit or see a character get boxed in.
I am terrified of Watcher's Keep in no-reload runs; I think it's been years since I dared to try to reach the bottom level.
With Nimbul gone, we proceed to Tranzig. Vosper, our Sky Dancer, is an excellent mage killer due to her extra attacks per round. She knocks around Tranzig and chews through Silke's Mirror Images. Things could have gotten nasty due to Tranzig's opening Slow spell, but I lured the projectile away and only Bolithaw got slowed.
After defeating Caldo and Krumm, both Vosper and Finch, our cleric, gain a level. Here's our party now, with a weird smattering of minor equipment. Note that I've slapped those special bracers on Vosper, since I'm really aching to make sure Vosper's many attacks land (I remove them later in the run).
We're still not ready for the bandit camp. I'd like to fight it out of there, which is a hard sell given our fragile party members--and currently we don't even have the levels to avoid the fight; we ain't even got Invisibility yet.
So we go wandering. I have a bunch of quest mods installed and I have no idea where all the new content is, so I've been periodically just wandering aimlessly through the wilderness. We run into some ogre berserkers, get flanked by hobgoblin elites, and run into even more ogre berserkers and we have to burn wands charges and micromanage and kite our way to just barely scraping by. We help a pregnant wolf, we kill Ursa the Cave Bear, and we even kill a spooky boss with the will o' wisp sprite that I was terrified was going to zap the whole party at any second.
It all gets us another round of level ups, and Iffle finally gets a single level 2 spell slot at level 4. Aura is close to getting level 2 spells as well, and I have been sorely missing my Invisibility spells in this run. I love those things.
We make a stop to pick up the Wand of Monster Summoning east of Nashkel, using Finch to nab it with Sanctuary. I've been trying to solve problems and gather resources through violence in this run, since my normal instinct is to avoid all dangers, and I've been hoping not to rely on the Wand of Monster Summoning for raw firepower, but... if I do end up needing to use it, I want to have it as a backup option.
Lamalha finds us. I'd been expecting this, but not preparing for it--I wanted this fight to feel like a real ambush.
Dardaseen is our hero in the first round. One failed save against Light Slumber knocks out Lamalha for 5 rounds as long as we don't hurt her, and a deadly source of Hold Person is neutralized.
Better still, Bolithaw's first attack succeeds, disrupting an enemy spell. Iffle gets backstabbed, but her sturdier Force Wizard Hit Points keep her afloat.
Maneira and Telka are serious threats in my mind, but after the initial backstab, the enemies can't quite knock any of us out before we start dropping them. By the time Lamalha wakes from her slumber, her friends are all gone, and we beat her to death bare-handed.
Feeling encouraged by our successes, I decide to tackle Sendai. I seldom try, since I don't find the loot meaningful, but it's time I started really *playing* the game. We blind Alexander and Finch keeps Sendai on the ground with Command, and she cannot survive the assault in the little time she has to live.
She drops the Theropod Claw, a belt which gives +5 max HP. We are steadily collecting the Primordial Witch Doctor items, but this one does not go to Dardaseen--Aura really needs that extra buffer.
Here is where we pick up at that one post I did out of order. I'm duplicating it here just so we have the posts in chronological order.
I've been noticing that Bolithaw's attacks are surprisingly unreliable, despite her ranged attack bonuses. Being able to backstab from range isn't so meaningful if you keep missing your attacks and leaving the rest of the party to handle the enemy pressure. We nab the Bracers of Archery to help out and try our hand at some more mod-introduced maps.
To my delight, I see werebadgers, a sprite you normally only see in IWD2! They're immune to normal weapons, however, and in my install, +1 ammunition is downgraded to being nonmagical. But our Sky Dancer Vosper's lightning bolts strike as magical weapons.
Then I realize that one of Aura's special abilities is a party-wide buff to attacks, toggleable based on damage type. We can actually make all of our ranged attacks strike as +1 enchantment higher! Bolithaw helps pin down the werebadgers, with Blindness from Aura to help our front line stay healthy.
I don't believe Aura's ability will let us bypass Protection from Normal Missiles, however, since that spell works by granting immunity to specific projectiles, rather than checking an incoming weapon's enchantment level. So we'll still have some trouble dealing with certain mages.
We still need more XP before we tackle bigger quests, so we take an early detour to the Cloakwood, which my install lets me visit before the bandit camp. I decide to take a risk and invade the spider hive rather than using Sanctuary or doing my normal "enter while invisible and then right-click over the container to loot Chelak's body and Spider's Bane from the inventory screen without breaking invisibility" trick.
We have not stolen Dushai's Ring of Free Action, so Web Tangle spells from the spiders could prove fatal. Iffle, our Force Wizard and primary tank, fails her save and is doomed to die to a spider swarm, but Finch is quick enough to down a Potion of Freedom before Web Tangle hits her.
We burn down some spiders with a Wand of the Heavens from Vosper and a Wand of Fire from Aura. But the spiders don't go down easy, and another Web Tangle comes our way. This time, we are not prepared.
Bolithaw gets hit. She's disabled for several rounds, and we have to scramble to take the pressure off. Worse yet, Vosper gets webbed, too. Our front line is falling apart.
I've kept Bolithaw a short distance away, and our Primordial Witch Doctor Dardaseen puts a spider to sleep for 5 rounds with Light Slumber, but the safest option is to deploy the Wand of Monster Summoning. I've been trying not to use it, because I'm not recharging wands in this run and we might REALLY need those free summons for the Cloakwood Mines.
But now is the time to spend resources. Aura makes a saving throw vs. yet another Web Tangle and summons a wall of monsters around Bolithaw before the spiders can reach her.
Notice that it's summoning more than 5 critters at once--I removed the summoning cap so I could spam our Witch Doctor's unique summoning spells more, and the side effect is that the Wand of Monster Summoning is stronger than normal.
Finch tries to bail out Vosper with Cure Moderate Wounds, but our poor Sky Dancer just doesn't have the HP to survive the spider horde's automatic hits. Vosper crumples just before our summoned monsters deal the last blow to the last spider.
We have to hike back to town for two Raise Dead spells, taking down some ambushing ettercaps on the way and getting Finch another level. With Spider's Bane in hand, we don't have to worry about Bolithaw getting webbed or paralyzed (as long as we're quick to react when those spells inevitably come).
Around the Sword Coast in my install are a handful of portals you can access with a special ring. I visit one of them, poking inside unbuffed and unprepared, and see something rather ominous.
A brand new area I've never seen before, in which apparently we cannot cast spells or even use items. Even traps aren't allowed! We have to face whatever enemies are here without any magic. This time, it's ankhegs, and we manage to bring them down. I normally run magic-heavy parties, but this group has some decent combat abilities even without spells. Bolithaw hits level 6, getting her 3rd pip in crossbows, the maximum that Snipers can achieve.
I initially thought that our Force Wizard was our top damage dealer, but looking at our statistics, a third of our kills belong to Bolithaw, and another quarter belong to Aura! Wands and ranged attacks are our main asset. Classic BG1.
We return to the Cloakwood, still searching for better sources of XP, and run into a Hamadryad. She charms Vosper and has excellent AC and can teleport, but we manage to grind it out. Vosper, thankfully, has very weak damage output.
Then we run into 4 Black Talon archers, a much more dangerous encounter. They shoot down Iffle in seconds.
Iffle gets a d8 per level instead of a mage's d4, but she is still fragile. We escape the fight with no other deaths, but it makes the wyverns of the Cloakwood seem a lot less approachable than I thought.
Back down south, we bring Ursa's hide, a new mod item, to Taerom in Beregost to turn it into hide armor. It's a pitiful 8 AC, but it also gives a bonus to Constitution, giving Aura a whole +2 to max HP.
Which is a lot, considering hers is otherwise 19. Iffle is fragile, but Aura is always an inch from death.
While we're at the temple of Lathander to raise Iffle, we check out the selection and find a roster of really, really good items for sale. A ring that grants immunity to petrification, a helm that gives immunity to confusion and fear, a +3 flail, +3 armor with immunity to poison, and more.
We're trying not to rely on overpowered items, so we'll probably not use any of them, or even a few other mod items we've been finding as loot. We also opt not to patronize another modded shopkeeper that sells 40 Potions of Magic Blocking, 10 Potions of Magic Shielding, and an unlimited number of Potions of Extra Healing and scrolls of Greater Restoration... the kind of game-changing resources whose power is normally limited by a narrow supply.
Instead, we burn our money on two perfectly-balanced vanilla items, the famously modest Army Scythe and Dagger of Venom!
Bolithaw's non-stealth attack power is much higher, and Vosper now has a serious game-changer. She gets 3 attacks per round due to the Sky Dancer kit, and each strike from the dagger can deal 15 poison damage if given enough time and a failed save. Vosper is in business.
We make our way towards the bandit camp and Vosper uses her new poison against the Black Talons. It works great, but enemies continue to surprise me in this run: more archers ambush us from the east just as I think we're done with the fight.
Dardaseen buys us time with a Light Slumber spell and we scrape out with our lives, but it's a reminder of my own unfamiliarity with this install and this metagame. I am so accustomed to relying on Invisibility to dodge fights that, now that I'm committing to fighting things out whenever I can, I'm finding a lot more danger than I used to.
We still talk our way past Tazok, but I want to tackle the inside of the bandit tent conventionally, despite the fact that we can easily sidestep the fight with Invisibility and Sanctuary. We still approach under Invisibility, however, for the sake of slightly better positioning.
Vosper aims for the mage Venkt's throat with the Dagger of Venom, but he makes his saves vs. death and activates his prebuffs safely, allowing him to fire off his first spell: Sleep.
Which Iffle isn't high enough level to get immunity to. Our main tank hits the floor at the beginning of the fight, and will not awaken if damaged. She's out of the fight.
Not a single enemy fails its save against Aura's Horror spell. Bolithaw shoots down Raemon, but Finch's Hold Person only paralyzes one archer, Vosper struggles to cut through Venkt's defenses to shut down his spellcasting, and Venkt's Slow spell hits Bolithaw, Aura, AND Finch.
Dardaseen loses a spell to an arrow, and Aura bails out a dangerously-wounded Finch by successfully blinding Britik, the gnoll, whom I've found can deal surprisingly strong burst damage. Aura switches to the Wand of Fire to clean up, but Venkt manages to summon some monsters on top of us.
Note the Protection from Normal Missiles on Venkt. He is impervious to our arrows and bolts. But Vosper and Dardaseen finally get through his defenses and modest HP pool, and the mage goes down!
As the fight grinds to an end, Britik lands a hit on Aura, who survives only thanks to a special item only she can use: once per day, she gets to cheat death.
It's not reliable enough to make a strategy out of it, but at least it saves us the trouble of picking up her gear after death.
But Iffle still gets herself killed. Despite avoiding all enemy attention during her long sleep, she still dies to the Lightning Bolt trap on the chest.
Not because I ordered her to open it, but because Vosper opened it. Vosper was nearly immune to electricity, but it bounced off the wall and nailed Iffle in one hit.
Despite the loss of our tank and our second wand user, I decide to try fighting our way out of the camp. We use the Wand of Monster Summoning to protect ourselves, the Wand of Fire to clean house, and even one of Aura's craftable items to mass-Feeblemind the bandits, albeit for only one round. It's a simple but messy strategy.
Dardaseen still croaks in the process. Due to her Wizard Slayer-style item restrictions, and her inability to wear armor beyond studded leather, her AC is total garbage, and she gets shot down in short order.
We keep bombing and using ranged attacks and manage to clear the exterior of the camp. We head back to town to bring back our two fallen comrades... and trade in the scalps of 48 fallen bandits.
@Grond0 I uploaded a new update for the Force Wizard. One of the bugs now fixed was also preventing the Force Wizard from getting the correct bonus from Greater Strength.
Clinch passed through the Nashkel mine mainly invisible, though he did take the opportunity to revenge Biff by taunting one of the spiders with their inability to penetrate his stoneskins. By this stage Clinch's attack and defense in melee was very strong and Mulahey's support troops were no threat. After being blinded, neither was he, but it only took 2 blows to kill him anyway.
Outside the mine a skull trap took most of the fight out of the amazons. Nimbul was one-shotted by a standard fist attack (though with added elemental damage). His death allowed Clinch to summon a familiar for a few more HPs. Tranzig survived one hit, but died to a second after his plea to surrender was dismissed.
Decent AC + stoneskins allowed Clinch to melee his way through the Bandit Camp. He did though take the precaution of blinding Venkt before clearing the tent, earning his last BGEE level in the process.
At the Cloakwood Mine, skull traps killed the mages and Genthore before Clinch closed for the kill on Drasus. Attacking with a single fist, Clinch hit him with a roll of 3 - and chill touch slowed him. Two further hits then finished the job. Inside the mine Clinch made his way down to find Davaeorn. Spell damage killed the battle horrors there before I decided to give Davaeorn a chance by attacking in melee. He hopped around a bit before fully re-establishing his mirrors - but those did him no good as a critical hit found the real target. Making use of one of the kit spells, greater strength, should have boosted strength by 3 but that failed to work (I think it did earlier in the run, so I'm not quite sure why it's changed). Clinch did though learn the knock spell in Davaeorn's treasure chest and used that to loot - though with only 2 2nd level spells, one of which was used for invisibility, that was a bit cumbersome.
Clinch was already at the XP cap on arrival in Baldur's Gate, but still did plenty of the available content there. I forgot to speak to the priest about a dead child before killing Jalantha, so missed out on the opportunity to help resurrect the child. Otherwise things went well enough. This kit offers many different options for dealing with situations, which means some of them are underused. The "grapple" feature that gives a chance to prevent movement of a target for a couple of rounds is one of those and I was glad to be able to make a good use of that to prevent, an already greased, Lothander from making his getaway. For Marek I made use of the greater vampiric touch spell for the first time. Like greater chill touch etc that adds bonus damage for a period of time (in this case 10 rounds) without affecting the base attack. That meant that the basic fist attack on Marek was loaded with fire, cold, electricity, magic damage and poison . As with most other mages I gave him a chance by not directly preventing him from casting, but he died before he could complete a spell anyway.
Against Degrodel's guards I initially let Clinch just stand and fight with them (one at a time). He wasn't able to manage all of them that though and had to resort to run and hit tactics to complete the lot without resting. That left him without so many options against Degrodel himself and I decided to let him use the Greenstone Amulet to reduce the risks - in the event Degrodel's horror spell was interrupted anyway. He didn't use protection against Sunin and that could have been costly when his first 2 attacks were critical misses. Fortunately he saved against the subsequent horror and was able to complete the job at the expense of being tagged with an acid arrow. After that, I was more cautious at the Iron Throne - using the stairs to avoid spells and making a first use of stunning darts on some of the opponents. Zhalimar had been blinded at the start and had still not recovered by the time the others were all dead and Clinch moved in to give him a taste of fists.
Back in Candlekeep, Clinch didn't bother fighting the real Iron Throne leaders. After looting the tombs he did though decide to teach Prat a lesson. Bor and Tam were blinded up front to protect against missile attacks. Improved invisibility was then used for the first time to protect against being targeted with spells. Clinch was unable though to prevent Prat disappearing and just finished the others off while waiting for his invisibility to end. He dodged a couple of lightning bolts from Prat before completing the job.
Before heading back to Candlekeep Clinch had a few remaining appointments in the wilderness. He couldn't be bothered to do anything creative with the Red Wizards, so just killed them with a couple of skull traps. At the lighthouse he bypassed the sirines on the way to killing some golems and picking up the constitution tome. I thought about doing the ankhegs as well, but gave them a miss this time.
After seeking out Slythe Clinch was intending to make an unprovoked attack on him. However, he got caught out when casting greater vampiric touch made him visible (I had assumed it would work like the other "greater" damaging touch spells - but the difference may be because the spell is derived from the original vampiric touch, which is counted as an immediately hostile action as it targets an enemy directly). As a result Slythe did managed to knock down Clinch's overnight set of stoneskins before falling. Krystin managed to cast a cloudkill, but didn't last long enough for that to make much difference.
At the palace Clinch used some potion buffs for the first time. I'd decided to rule out any use of summons in the run and Clinch was unable to use my preferred arcane tactic of chaos, so the potion buffs were not pure overkill. Clinch had memorised improved invisibility to use on Duke Belt to break up an attack on him. However, in the event several of the dopplegangers attacked Clinch and he didn't need to help Belt.
There were no problems in the maze and Clinch bypassed Rahvin's gang on the way to find Sarevok. In the old temple he abused the lightning bolt trap to kill Sarevok's companions. He then primed his fists and closed with Sarevok to administer the coup de grace.
Even though there was a fair amount of BGEE content I normally do that I didn't bother with this time, everything done since reaching Baldur's Gate was in a single session - so Clinch still transferred to SoD with over 400k XP and was able to immediately go to the maximum level 11 he can attain there.
Force Wizard L11, 81 HPs, 369 kills
A bit more feedback for @semiticgoddess:
- I still think it's a pretty strong kit for BGEE, but somewhat less so than my initial impression. That's because I'd underestimated the impact of the reduction in spells. As a standard mage initially only gets one spell from the top level available, the reduction of 1 spell from each level means they end up with none. So a 3rd level mage would normally get one second level spell, but has to wait until his 4th level before being able to use second level spells.
- The "greater" versions of spells combine to give pretty vicious attacks - though only for quite limited periods. In general the greater versions seem slightly more powerful than the originals, but that's not obviously so for ghoul touch. Both versions have the same duration of 5 rounds. The original paralyzes for 5 rounds if a save vs spells is failed and the greater version paralyses for 2 rounds if a save vs death is failed. Against a mage the latter might be preferable, but generally the original would be more effective. That would be particularly the case when fighting multiple opponents due to the longer duration of the effect - was there a particular reason for reducing this?
- The ring of wizardry seems to over-ride the class reduction in spells. Thus without the ring Clinch would have 3 L1 spells, but when wearing it he has 8.
@semiticgoddess Thanks. Btw I started Kuo-Toa Disciple run and noticed that it's missing on * weapon style proficiencies that Bard class has. Is that an oversight as there is no mention of it? I assume the elemental weaknesses are handled under the hood as they are not seen in the stat window? Also are scrolls still cast in their original level and duration?
EDIT: seems that casting Invisibility from spell book doesn't work, although scroll works
@Grond0 I agree that the reduction of spells is really noticeable in the cut off points, for example Bard has to wait Invisibility spell to lv6. I also noticed the Ring of Wizardy effect playing Favored Soul kit from Tome and Blood, so it's probably hardcoded thing?
Jeanluc III the dwarven fighter/cleric: Update 4
Traveling with: Tcos (dwarven berserker), Jaheira, Mazzy, Yoshimo, Wewa (human wild mage)
Just a quick update. No wild surges of any note, other than getting slowed a few times via surge but it was never relevant. Much of Chapter 3 done, will probably work on Unseeing Eye next. We have been careful to spend our gold as soon as we have enough for items we want, but even so no "disappearing gold" surges just yet. I ran into one strange thing though - we got hit with a standard bandit ambush with a single lightning bolt doing huge damage to the party - then while in an ambush got AMBUSHED again with Dermin finding Jaheira - how did he do that? But no fight so OK whew.
In the SoD dungeon Clinch just used invisibility to make his way through to find Korlasz. The elemental damage from fists made her surrender quickly, but she wasn't quite able to make her exit before fists caught up with her again. In Baldur's Gate Clinch killed a few NPCs, to supplement the fortune carried in bags from BGEE, and did some shopping. I also looted the treasure room in the palace. I don't often bother with that and partly did so to remind myself of the mechanism - the door to the treasure room locks itself when you're inside, so you need an extra knock as a mage to get out again (the lack of that cost me a no-reload run before).
With XP already so high Clinch skipped most content. In the Coast Way Crossing that meant using invisibility to avoid any fight at the bridge. After passing invisibly through the Troll Claw Woods, Clinch found an ambush area with trolls and orcs. A couple of sunfire spells supplemented the flaming fists to quickly deal with those.
At the Forest of Wyrms, Clinch sneaked through into the old temple to find Ziatar. After some buffs he attacked in melee - but when Ziatar disappeared into sanctuary he felt justified in killing him with wand scorchers. The Neothelid has multiple disabling attacks and Clinch used a potion of magic shielding to protect against those. Once the monster chose to stay above ground, fists made short work of it. Ghoul touch paralysed Akanna before she could disappear. Most of the time Clinch has been using non-magical fists, but he switched to magical ones in order to hit the aerial servants. On the way out he tried to melee Morentherene. I thought his chances were decent, but he didn't have much luck with rolls (not helped by me leaving him dual-wielding) and was forced to retreat. A regeneration potion and a bit more buffing later and he came back to finish the job. Incidentally, that was the first time I'd made use of greater ironskins - that provides immunity to poison in addition to a bit of physical and acid resistance.
At Boareskyr Bridge Clinch chose to attack Vichand. He will alert the camp if you don't kill him quickly, but I thought Clinch should be able to do that. An initial strike that both slowed and paralysed the mage made the kill safe. After surrendering the fort there was just the mage on the bridge to deal with. Normally I would use the Ring of Energy to disrupt his spells, but Clinch was keen to stick to melee. Unfortunately he found the mage was immune to normal weapons and he was able to complete his construction of a fire portal. The big danger from that are the fire mephitis, which can use fire jets on the barrels even when paralysed. Fortunately only 2 groups of mephitis appeared, with the rest being fire elementals which were no problem for Clinch. The barrels were probably in bad shape by the end of the fight, but all of them survived.
After a bit of shopping at the Coalition Camp, Clinch ignored all the enemies in Dead Mans Pass and went to rescue Skie. Then it was on to the Underground River. A clarity potion allowed him to melee some myconids safely and a ring of free action stymied web tangles from a gargantuan spider until that was stunned. A bit of buffing later and the cyclops discovered that 3 strikes and he was out. Clinch took the Seal of Caelar and went invisible before heading underground. Rather than boost his charisma to get into the inner levels he placed a firebreath potion in the firepit to cause a distraction (that also gets a nice 6k XP reward). He didn't do any fighting there though, but just poisoned the food and water.
Back at the Coalition Camp an invasion was imminent. With so many individual enemies Clinch didn't use melee much. The ogres and trolls were cut down with firebreath potions. Three pre-cast skull traps cut the mages down to size. More skull traps and a sunfire left only a couple of clerics to finish off. It was back to firebreath potions to do most of the damage to the final group before closing in on Grimgor. Those potions are not much use in the end game, so Clinch used up his remaining stock in single combat against Ashatiel.
Inside the castle Clinch used PfM to open up the chests. I had been thinking there was an enchant weapon spell in those that would allow him to hit Belhifet with his natural fist. However, there wasn't so Clinch will have to use magic fists (which got to +3 at level 10). He slightly laboriously worked through the devils near Thrix, then rested and buffed up before taking the Hellevator. At the top I persuaded Caelar to fight Belhifet, but didn't attempt to keep her alive. Without enchanted weapon that was probably a mistake as it was hard to hit Belhifet with magic fists and I gave up on that after a while. I wore him down a bit with a number of MMMs and then switched to +3 bullets of darkness. Those needed 17 to hit, which gave enough strikes to outpace Belhifet's regeneration, though attacking became progressively harder as the number of enemies gated in increased. He still kept plugging away though and a critical finally burst Belhifet's heart just after Clinch had used his last stoneskin scroll and when he only had 6 bullets remaining.
The epilogue was safely completed and Clinch transferred to BG2EE with 902k XP. That allowed him to get to level 12 immediately.
Progress through SoD was again a bit more difficult than I originally expected. That partly reflected sometimes trying to play within the spirit of the kit rather than use tried and tested tactics. However, there was a particular problem with enemies who were both immune to normal weapons and too well armored to easily hit with magic fists. Enchanted weapon is a spell I normally never bother with, but could be pretty helpful in BG2EE ...
Force Wizard L12, 80 HPs (incl. 12 from familiar), 0 kills (+574 in BGEE/SoD)
@Grond0 Nice work getting it done in one session, I don't think I've ever had that much xp in BG2. Weird about the Enchanted Weapon scroll, it should be in one of the book cases in the Dragonspear Castle. There's second one in the Troll Cave where the Cleric Amulet is.
@Grond0 Nice work getting it done in one session, I don't think I've ever had that much xp in BG2. Weird about the Enchanted Weapon scroll, it should be in one of the book cases in the Dragonspear Castle. There's second one in the Troll Cave where the Cleric Amulet is.
Thanks @histamiini. If there's one in the book case that's probably why I had the castle in mind from my vague memory - I didn't look elsewhere though after failing to find one in the treasure chests ...
The Ring of Wizardry quirk is a fluke of the game engine. It doubles your base spell slots, based on the vanilla mage spell table, and *then* subtracts slots based on the kit. The Force Wizard still counts as a specialist, so while a normal mage would have 4 level 1 spell slots at level 5, a Force Wizard at the same level with the ring would have 4 base slots, +1 slot because it's a specialist for 5 total, doubled to 10 slots from the ring, and then lose 2 slots from the kit, for 8 total. The same thing happens with the Alchemist kit and the Ring of Wizardry.
An item that only gives a flat bonus to spell slots, rather than doubling them, would behave more intuitively. The BG2 version of the Ring of Wizardry, for example, would give the expected number of slots.
The Ghoul Touch change is a mistake on my part. I nerfed it to keep it balanced, but the original is indeed better. I'll need to tweak the spell to make it more interesting than the vanilla option. I'm thinking the Force Wizard should have 10 rounds instead of 5 to land the paralysis, and have the paralysis itself last 3-5 rounds.
I don't know what happened to that specific Enchanted Weapon scroll, but Force Wizards can't cast the spell regardless. I gave the Force Wizard the same spell restrictions as an invoker, figuring that was the closest to the kit's theme, and I thought that losing Enchantment spells would make for an impactful nerf.
I could nerf several things to balance the class, APR or THAC0 or damage or the new spells, but I'm not sure which would be best yet. Are there any aspects of the kit that especially stand out as worthy of nerfs in your opinion?
@histamiini: I uploaded a new version of the mod to the Expanded Classes thread to fix those issues. Kuo-toa Disciples should now be able to put 1 pip in each weapon style; the elemental resistances and weaknesses are fixed and should show up on the character menu now; and Invisibility should work properly now, lasting for 18 hours due to the 25% duration penalty.
I'm afraid that reinstalling the mod will only impact new characters or future level ups; it won't retroactively change an existing Kuo-Toa Disciple in a saved game. If you don't want to create a new character, you could EEKeeper your current one to give it the right resistances for its level, then alter the "modify duration" effect in the Effects tab to change the "-25" to "75". After that, the character's kit should behave properly.
The Invisibility scroll quirk you noticed reveals something I didn't know about: apparently, casting from scrolls ignores duration penalties or bonuses like that of the Kuo-toa Disciple, Green Soul, or Red Soul kits.
Thanks for the fix @semiticgoddess I tested it quickly and everything works now. Going to start new game as I wasn't that far off. I think the scroll difference is good, as it might create situations where it's better to cast from scrolls.
Jeanluc III the dwarven fighter/cleric: Update 5
Traveling with: Tcos (dwarven berserker), Jaheira, Mazzy, Yoshimo, Wewa (human wild mage)
The party is working their way through Firkraag's Lair. We had just killed a Clay Golem (my character was not in melee range) and I was in the inventory screen when I got the "death bug" (not sure what else to call it). You can know it's the bug because of all the black portraits. When is Beamdog going to get this bug fixed?
Comments
After quite easily dealing Ashatiel we cleared the Avernus Bridge to Trix with Skelis. Trix immediatelly asked the riddle so we didn't need to fight the last enemies.
Raven v Belhifet.
Enchanted Weapon is the only way to get 3,5 apr (fist/weapon) for Monk v Belhifet. Belhifet is doable LoB solo with 2,5apr Monk, but it's very close call. You don't want to even use Detect Illusion as Belhifet will disappear casting Improved Invisibility again taking hitting time away.
We started buffing with 3xPfF, 3xPfE, 3xPfC, 3xPfA, 8xMind Focus, PfP, 5 Skelis, Emotions Hope and Courage, Clarity, Defense and started the lift. Immediate surprise as I forgot that Skelis didn't follow through. Another 5 Skelis, and as they were dealing with the enemies we continued buffing. 30xHeroism and at that point I had to turn Skelis on each other as there was only Green Abishai left. Continuing with Power, 2x Invulnerability, Clarity, Enchanted Weapon, Emotion Hope and Courage, 9xChampion's Strength, killed the last Abishai, 2xChampion's Strength, Violet, Fortitude and Blur.
We arrived Belhifet with -19 AC v Slashing and 3,5apr -31/-29 Thac0 Fist/Icindeath. Escaped Belhifets Dispel, Mystara hit him with Strength spell to lower his Thac0 from -11 to -9 and started slinging him with 2apr Bullets +3. In few rounds Bel was alredy in injured state with no need to even drink from the Goblet. I calculated around 14 rounds of average fight time, and it was probably around that. In the end it wasn't even close, and only needed 2 refreshes from the Goblet. Mystara even got 4 Criticals I think.
Shadows of Amn
For BG2 we additionally installed SoD items from Unofficial Item Pack, as I find Monk gear lacking there. One of the most disappointing design choices is that the Monk gear in ToB isn't even accessible by solo Monk. Not that it matters with us. Mystara will also get couple goodies.
weidu.log
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~EEUITWEAKS/EEUITWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1070 // Faydark's Abilities Auto-Roller/GrimLefourbe's BG2 UI: 4.0.7
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #0 // Rewritten Final Chapter of Throne of Bhaal: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #10 // Balthazar can be redeemed: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #20 // Improved Sarevok-Player Interactions: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #30 // Improved Imoen-Player Interactions in Throne of Bhaal: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #40 // Restored Bhaalspawn Powers: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #50 // Improved Slayer Transformation: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1000 // Tougher Abazigal: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1100 // Tougher Balthazar: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1200 // Tougher Demogorgon: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1300 // Tougher Gromnir: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1400 // Tougher Illasera: 2.1.0
~ASCENSION/ASCENSION.TP2~ #0 #1500 // Tougher Yaga-Shura: 2.1.0
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2140 // Expanded Dual-Class Options: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2360 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Single-Classes: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2380 // Remove Racial Restrictions for Kits: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2371 // Alter Dual-Class Restrictions -> Allow non-humans to dual-class: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2350 // Alter Multi-Class Restrictions -> Allow humans to multi-class: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2390 // Alter Paladin Spell Progression Table -> Paladins Use Icewind Dale-Heart of Winter Spell Tables [grogerson]: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #2400 // Alter Ranger Spell Progression Table -> Rangers Use Icewind Dale-Heart of Winter Spell Tables [grogerson]: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Make Bags of Holding Bottomless: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3080 // Increase Ammo Stack Size -> Unlimited ammo stacking: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3100 // Increase Potion Stacking -> Unlimited potion stacking: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3110 // Increase Scroll Stacking -> Unlimited scroll stacking: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3491 // Better Shadows of Amn Start [dark0dave] -> Start at 500k XP, select items below: v17
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3497 // Better Shadows of Amn Start: Add Balduran's Cloak: v17
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1500 // Include arcane spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1510 // Include divine spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1520 // Include bard songs from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2010 // Core Stratagems spell-system changes (installed by default by any AI component): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2500 // Add 9 new arcane spells: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #2510 // Add 6 new divine spells (some borrowed from Divine Remix): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // More Appropriate-Speed Bears: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4240 // Treat mages' and priests' High-Level Abilities as innate abilities rather than memorisable spells (each may be taken only once): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6100 // Potions for NPCs: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6500 // Improved golems: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6510 // Improved fiends and celestials: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6520 // Smarter genies: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6540 // Smarter dragons: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6550 // Smarter beholders: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6560 // Smarter mind flayers: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6570 // Smarter githyanki: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6580 // Improved Vampires: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6590 // Smarter Throne of Bhaal final villain: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6800 // Smarter Illasera: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6810 // Smarter Gromnir: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6820 // Smarter Yaga-Shura: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6830 // Smarter Abazigal: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6840 // Ascension versions of Irenicus and Sendai use SCS abilities and AI: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6850 // Ascension demons use SCS abilities and AI: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8000 // Make the starting dungeon slightly harder: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8010 // Improved Shade Lord: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8020 // Spellcasting Demiliches: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8040 // Tie difficulty of level-dependent monster groupings to the difficulty slider: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8050 // Improved Random Encounters: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8060 // Improved de'Arnise Keep ("Tactics Remix"): 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8070 // Improved Unseeing Eye: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8080 // Improved Bodhi: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8085 // Ascension version of Bodhi uses Improved-Bodhi abilities: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8100 // Improved battle with Irenicus in Spellhold: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8110 // Improved Sahuagin: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8120 // Improved Beholder hive: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8130 // Rebalanced troll regeneration: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8140 // Improved Drow: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8150 // Improved Watcher's Keep: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8160 // Improved Fire Giant temple: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8170 // Improved Sendai's Enclave: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8180 // Improved Abazigal's Lair: 35.21
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #8190 // Improved Minor Encounters: 35.21
~SUBRACE/SUBRACE.TP2~ #1 #200 // Subrace mod for Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition (BG1, BG:SoD, BG2, EET) -> No change subrace colors (Hair and Skin): 0.3.1
~ZDBAE/ZDBAE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Baeloth BG2: v0.13
~ROMANCE_EXPANDED/SETUP-ROMANCE_EXPANDED.TP2~ #0 #0 // Viconia Romance Expanded: v1.0.7
~TOMEANDBLOOD/TOMEANDBLOOD.TP2~ #0 #31 // Sorcerer: Favored Soul: 1.4
~UNOFFICIAL ITEM PACK/SETUP-UNOFFICIAL ITEM PACK.TP2~ #1 #5 // SoD items
Irenicus Dungeon was pretty trivial with Skelis and coming to Athkatla we had 630k xp and 13k gold, and we improved our rep to 14. After escaping couple waylays we started Maevar quest line. But before getting Rayic we needed casting rights. So we went to the Government District and Mystara summoned Cowled Wizards casting Invisibility. And the neutral soldiers neutralized every one of them. After Zallanora was dead, we could cast spells freely. Nothing really interesting loot most notably Laear's Tear Necklace, Incendiary and Spell Trap scrolls. After that we could lure Rayic's Mephits outside to be slaughtered by Skelies. PfF and Rayic was killed by the repeating Fireball trap. Raven lv11 with Poison Immunity. Maevar was pre Charmed, and Skelies easily wiped them out. Mystara lv12 Mislead and Harm.
Skellies, skellies, skellies. Prebek and Shanasha got Mislead Skellied as did Tanner's gang rep 15. Easy fetch quest for Amulet +2 in Neera's Hideout. Easy Graveyard quests, Raven lv12. Graveyard was then cleaned by Mislead Skellies. Pai'na killed by Skelis for headgear we both could use. Copper Coronet and Sewers Skellied, only interesting thing was needing to kill Trolls with Aganna's Scorcher scrolls, rep 17. Neb got Mislead Skellied too rep 18. Reti Skellied for Missile Boots. We Charmed Welther and he was killed by attacking Bregg and Cohrvale. This way we got Silver Pantaloons without rep penalty. 73k gold we bought Biter +2 for Mystara to finish Trolls and Cloak of Gargoyle to protect Raven from Criticals.
Next we went Troll hunting with Skelis, Raven lv13 and Mystara lv13 Greater Malison, PfA, Death Fog. Mystara died (7) when we were accidentally revealed fighting the Shadow Druids, Skelis still handled them. Bought RoR to keep resurrecting her. I mistakinly took the Cernd option were he challenged Faldorn straight away, but he absolutely demolished Faldorn in Werewolf form. We bought Wand of Cloudkill and after softening the Rakhashas with WoMS, Mystara started gassing them from Mislead. Only Ithafeer survived as he was immune to poison. Killing him was very problematic as Skelies weren't touching him and Raven only hit with 20's, which was the point I realized that Monk's don't actually benefit from Single Weapon style using Fists, which is disappointing. And taking him 1v1 wasn't going to work. But luckily we managed to position the Skelies in front so that Monk reached the Rakhasha, but he didn't reach us. This took a long time with 3x Stoneskins and hitting only 20's, but eventually he died. We only did this for Poison Immunity Amulet for Mystara, and it better be worth the trouble. Dao's were Mislead gassed, Rep 20 and with 83k gold we bought some stuff. Headband of Focus (to actually get 19 crit), Crown of Lies, Wizard Hat, Robe of Arcane Aptitude (free Spell Sequencer) and Robe of Vecna for 33k gold.
Easy quests in Winspear Hilld and Umar Hills, and then went to loot De'Arnise. Yuan-ti Mage got Teleport field on which teleported some of my Skelies to Glaicus, but he was strong enough for them, and we dispelled him with Charm cloak first try. Raven lv14 with 42MR. We used Skeli Sequencer first time for the Ghoul Lord, and the second time against Mekrath's Mephits. Mekrath was gassed together with 5 Skelies, Raven blocking the door with Invisibility. Repelling Haer'delis invasion Mystara lv14 with Mass Invisibility and Unholy Word. In Shadow Ruins we baited Lich spells behind the corner, as some of them are cast by nearness, not by sight. After managing to lure his party away, we destroyed first the Skeletals, and then Raven punched the Greater Mummies. This took couple rests. Once the Lich was alone, we softened it with WoMS, and Skelies then finished the fight. Mystara did die once (8) as the other Lich mob found us on the other side of the board. After dealing them we left. Mencar's gang Mislead gassed and after accepting Shadow Thieves deal we are ready to start Chapter 3.
Brintje, half-elven skald (custom party/tactics remix/item randomizer) - Bonus Episode 1: Ice Island and Balduran's Island
We start our TOTSC explorations with the Ice Island. Clearing out the place is fairly easy with a PfM scroll, which is the usual way I would do it both in vanilla and in SCS (though from my experience with tactics spellcasters, it would’t be too hard without it by now, aside from the potential of getting hit by lightning spells in close quarters).
Now we're going to Balduran’s Island. The northern half of the island, minus the shipwreck, was easy enough to clear out – enemies are kiteable here in general, but we could just stand and tank them without any problems at all. Yes, the werewolves now deal some bleeding damage, but it's not too impactful at this point.
Into the shipwreck – the most dangerous thing here are the improved vampire wolves, so we make sure our saving throws are good enough to deal with domination effects and have outright immunities via potions ready (though we didn’t find the greenstone amulet yet). No one gets dominated, so we're fine - the combat challenges are easy enough to deal with. We find the Sandthief Ring here. After we’re done with vampire wolves, things are fairly simple – Karoug is paralyzed via wand charge, and it turns out he (and the loup garou later on) can be hurt by regular +2 weapons in tactics – no silver or gold needed.
Before going into Durlag's dungeon, we still have Kahrk and the ghost at Durlag’s upper levels to deal with - I almost forgot about those two. Kahrk, as it turns out, starts with SI:Divination and Mislead – and also Mantle.
Now, onto Durlag’s Tower proper - the lower levels. This should be a challenge. To quote the tactics readme: “Durlag's Tower, to me, feels like a quintessential DnD dungeon within BGEE. My focus is to crank the difficulty up to 11 to really challenge the player.” Let's see if this matches our experience.
Durlag’s Tower level 1:
This turned out to be fairly similar to the SCS version. There are some of the tactics skeleton warriors here, but since we’re scouting with our stealthed archer to avoid any surprises, we didn't just run into them randomly, and we were able to make sure that Fargrom was leading the way and mostly dealing with them solo, either enraged or with an invulnerability potion to resist their crowd control spells. Aside from that, none of the enemies are too special – we make it to the dwarven warders, not quite sure what to expect, so we summon our skeletons and buff up.
In the end, the fight is not too surprising – a cloudkill drops, Love has a few pre-buffs (but nothing like a full tactics pre-buff list) and tries casting dire charm, but foolishly targets a skeleton warrior. Meanwhile, Avarice tries to backstab us, being more of a threat, while we shoot down Fear:
Durlag’s Tower level 2:
We rest before moving downstairs. The first change we notice is that the named doppelgangers, those that put on the faces of Durlag and his family, change their forms much quicker and each time they do so, all attacks on them stop and have to be manually ordered again, which is a bit strange and annoying. I'm expecting that their shapechanging works in a way similiar to the SCS version of shapeshifting for druids, as it is instant and without any seeming cooldown or clouding of the aura. They will do things like turning into a cleric to heal up when on low hitpoints, but in the end, they just aren't that much of a threat in general, even when using their different forms a lot more. Things go very well, we have remove fear and free action available for the ghasts to the west and fight our way to the south.
One of the doppelgangers at the bridge room, for some reason, gets a large list of arcane prebuffs:
The dwarven doom guards, our final challenge on this level, ended up being pretty much the same as usual - we get our full buffs ready and use a few wand of the heavens charges to speed things up:
Starting in level 3, we fight our way through the greater wyverns without any issue. Soon, we learn that another classic tower enemy type, the ghoul lords, use greater malison and confusion now, making them quite a threat – once again, Fargrom has to use rage, followed by another invulnerability potion, to gain some safety here, with the others following him around carefully.
We rested, and moved on to level 4. No trouble with the spiders. The helmed horrors to the north hit hard (very good thac0, seems better than in the unmodded game, though I can’t be sure), but in the end they were relatively easy to kill as well. We use our final PfU scroll (plus oils of speed) for the ghoul lords to the south. One observation I made: Despite having no reason to have that knowledge, the ghouls, once attacked by the PFU’d party member, would walk straight towards the party (parked far, far away) instead of trying to flee in random directions or something else that would make some logical sense. Fargrom joins in for Grael with rage, just so we get her dialogue (I was worried that if we didn't trigger it, some type of bug could occur).
EDIT: I have updated the generic mage casting to now include the Armor series of mage spells and Horror was updated as it was missing checks for kits and abilities that block fear effects.
Brintje, half-elven skald (custom party/tactics remix/item randomizer) - Bonus Episode 4: Return to Ulgoth's Beard (Final Update)
Now, let’s return to Ulgoth’s Beard – travelling from the big city, generic invisibility spells (though not potions) last long enough to conceal the affected party members for the ambush. We have three of those, the other three in the party will have to use potions of invisibility to avoid the initial battle. This works in vanilla and in SCS, let’s see if it works here as well. Turns out, it mostly does – we drink the potions and move north, though we are a bit a delayed because, for some reason, Brintje’s aura is clouded - maybe because she had just finished casting an invisibility spell in the previous area. Luckily, the two cult assassins are unable to get to her before she goes invisible as well - here you can see us moving north, and also a list of the cult enforcer's prebuffs:
Okay, we rest up and prepare for Aec’Letec. Notable extra inclusions to our buffs include cloud giant strength, heroism, and, most importantly, six of our seven potions of magic shielding (I made sure not to use anything I ended up using for Sarevok, and luckily I didn’t need any of those for that battle). Going downstairs, the cult leader came with a pre-buffed stoneskins (already being active, basically a pre-prebuff, probably to avoid death before the actual prebuffs). As in SCS, she’s a full fledged wizard – seeing her open with an abjuration spell, I had had Fargrom, who seemed to be the target (confirmed by her turning towards him once he moved) attack some cultists on the other side of the room to avoid dispel on the full party. It turns out to be a lesser dispel and does indeed get rid of Fargrom's buffs:
And that was TOTSC – after the statement in the readme, I honestly expected Durlag’s Tower to be even tougher – it ended up being slightly more challenging than the SCS version (mostly due to the improved undead), but it seems like the knowledge we’ve gained in the base game on how tactics likes to do things made this one fairly straightforward for us, trouble at the chess event notwithstanding - I might have gotten a bit lucky there with the kingsnipe, though it might also be interesting if the king held back a bit and didn't expose himself so easily to being taken down.
To give some final thoughts on Tactics Remix vs SCS: SCS is obviously a bigger mod, with more customization and more options in general, but it also is less focused on changing enemy stats (though it does a decent amount of that as well, especially in BG1, but generally in more subtle ways). While I generally go for full installations, the most important part are clearly the AI changes (mostly targeting, calls for help and spellcaster improvements). Tactics Remix improves those things as well - you can clearly tell a difference with how the spellcasters behave though. Aside from the different set of prebuffs, I do feel like SCS spellcasters are, at this point, a bit better at picking the best spells for the situation - aside from the cases where they opened with lightning bolt or confusion, I was often fine with tactics spellcasters getting to cast a spell or two. Tactics Remix, in contrast, seems to be more heavy handed with changing enemy stats and giving your foes additional abilties (and if I didn't skip the option for a blanket increase on enemy hitpoints, this would've been even more notable). As a result, a lot of the difficulty now comes from certain generic foes (such as enemy archers in the early game, and in general some of the more powerful improved undead), and there are less encounters that one could qualify as easy pickings.
On the question of which mod is harder, I would say that, for most of what I've seen, it's generally tactics, but I did note 6-7 exceptions throughout the run (I can't remember all of them on the top of my head, but you can find them in the various updates - they certainly include Icharyd (who I think is actually too strong in SCS at this point in the game), the lack of bounty hunter ambushes, the bandit camp and the hamadryad). Part of this could also be me being new to the mod - certain areas that gave me a lot of trouble, such as the Candlekeep Crypts, would be easier to deal with, now that I know about the tomb ambushes. So, when it comes to recommendations (talking about BG1 only), it depends a bit on what you're looking for. If your interest is mostly in AI improvements and lots of customization, SCS is imo the way to go. If you want general improvements to almost all enemy units in addition to that, and are fine with fewer customization options along the way, Tactics Remix is definitely worth a try - from what I've seen, aside from the one underworld ambush in Beregost, it seems to be mostly free of bugs (and that bug didn't affect gameplay), and it's getting a lot of updates, which is also generally a positive. I had fun switching it up for this run. Also, if you're fan of they type of changes the LoB difficulty mode makes (not my cup of tea, personally), the interaction between a full Tactics Remix install and LoB could make things REALLY challenging early on.
Now, we've got expansions for some of my favorite RTS games, Age of Mythology: Retold and Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition, coming up, so no further BG gameplay for a decent while, but as always, I will be back. I have no idea what type of run or mod setup I might play when I return to the game, but with no Hall of Heroes to fret about, it's certainly not going to be just a generic vanilla run without a theme or something new to challenge myself with. Good luck to everyone in the meantime!
@histamiini Another excellent display of your precision and consistency. Congratulations on another string of victories on the max difficulty!
@Grond0 Every time I see your gameplay, I am in awe of how much you know about even the most obscure fights and subtle optimizations in BG1. You are a real master.
Tar, dwaven bounty hunter 15 (Gate70)
Omen, dwarven defender 12 (Grond0)
Coreheal VII, gnome cleric 10 thief 12 (Corey_Russell)
The week long rest next to the de'Arnise palisade ended, so we made our way to Umar Hills and the merchants there. Two items of note were the arcane merchant was hit by lightning and ran inside from the weather, and Omen felt the village children were of age to play with swords and beer. We left before events caught up with us
At the temple ruins we cleared the outside of undead, and ventured inside. Omen took quite a lot of damage, happy to live on the edge. Coreheal and Tar provided what support they could and we made our way safely to a shadow dragon. We decided to lay seven snares and rest before attacking it. Omen declined to use the potions Tar passed to him, while the dragon survived the snares. Tar threw in two further special snares before the follow-up poison from the initial traps killed the dragon
The shade lord outside took several rounds for Omen to kill, while Tar failed to destroy the shade altar with his first two bullets. The third bullet did the job and the remaining shadows were easy marks
Back at Umar Hills we collected our reward, Coreheal making use of the armour reward. We also picked up Valygar, and used his body to open the Planar Sphere for another time. We then returned to the Bridge district, eliminating the rune assassins. While resting at the Graveyard we realised much of it had not been explored so dealt with all the surface crypts. Uncle Lester managed to kill his nephew but failed to make good his escape
We then descended below and removed various spiders and ettercaps. Pai Na failed to survive a face full of Omen, and a summoned genie thought it could fireball all her spiders - but Tar had made her way to an unobserved area of the circular room and threw in a special snare to massage her kill count instead
The bronze pantaloons fell into our possession after a double kidnap, then we found Cromwell the dwarf and asked him to forge the shadow dragon armour - Coreheal taking much interest in that and more delight as Tar bought a girdle of hill giant strength for him
The quests for Sir Sarles were next, before retrieving the mace of disruption and asking Cromwell to improve it. Then back to the vampires and clearing out their nest - leaving Bodhi with no choice but to flee. We make no mention of Omen being dominated at the start of this combat (nor of Coreheal considering whether to flamestrike him), since Tar summoned Kitthix and this allowed Coreheal and Tar to hide around a corner. Omen stood dominated with two vampires and a grimwarder, while a grimward archer ignored the charm and continued to shoot at Omen. Once Omen came to his senses he attacked the enemies while Coreheal cast chaotic commands on him
Tar had been planning to get the ogre gauntlets from the Planar Prison but Coreheal asked about the druid grove. Tar realised this would allow us to close off the skindancer quest so we went to the grove. Omen took more damage there, and our time drew to a close after clearing the troll mound. Next time we'll introduce ourselves to the druids and trolls, hoping they have worn each other out in the two weeks before we re-convene
Tar has 105 kills. Omen 340, and Coreheal 47 (the latter showing how easy pickings from bounty hunter snares add up) . Gear:
We're still struggling to make our early level ups. Some of us are level 2, but Iffle, our Force Wizard tank, and Aura, our Artificer/Thief, are still at level 1. While prowling through some modded areas, we run into another new sight: an orc shaman!
I'm pretty sure a Hold Person spell is coming our way, and we currently have no real defenses against that. We immediately open with a charge from the Wand of Fire.
It disrupts a spell, but the orc's health bar indicates that it is much higher level than I expected.
I explore a little further, only to find THREE more orc shamans waiting to the north, along with three orc fighters... and some hobgoblins beyond them, and even more enemies when I keep sneaking around.
And stumble into a whole cave of them when I try to look elsewhere.
We find an Amber Flower for a mod-introduced quest, get another whopping 750 XP, and Dardaseen hits level 3! Primordial Witch Doctors like her don't have super powerful spells, but every new spell slot makes a difference.
Iffle, however, still is stuck at level 1, as she hasn't been getting quite as much XP. The reason is because stuff like this keeps happening:
We stop by the Gnoll Fortress and grab the Gauntlets of Dexterity, but end up drinking a rare and precious Potion of Clarity to ensure a surprise kobold shaman's Horror spell doesn't get Bolithaw killed. We keep wandering around the world map, fight a random gnoll by chance, and Iffle finally hits level 2.
This is a big deal. Force Wizards gets 1d8 HP per level, and now Iffle has 20 max HP, or 25 if Dardaseen casts Feast. That extra layer is huge, and better yet, Iffle can now finally cast Shield! Force Wizards have one less spell slot than normal, so they can't cast spells at all until level 2.
Finally, we're ready for the Nashkel mines.
Iffle is still fragile. She nearly dies in one kobold fight due to lucky rolls from the enemy, forcing us to use the Wand of Fire to torch the kobolds before they can finish her off. Even then, we still need to leave the mines to go shopping for basic healing potions.
It makes such a big difference to not have a warrior with real armor and a helmet. Critical hits are so much nastier at these low levels.
We use Sleep to get past most of the kobolds without incident, but the kobold shaman and captain before Mulahey are not such pushovers. We use yet another precious Wand of Fire charge to clear the field, with Aura's special grenades (purchasable via her own store, much like my Alchemist kit mod) to apply one-round Feeblemind, buying us time.
With no Algernon's Cloak and no charm, we have to fight Mulahey head-on. Aura sets a trap for the enemy spawns, Dardaseen summons a tiny raptor to soak up a hit or two, and we take our positions between Mulahey and the chest before beginning the fight. The traps kill some kobolds, scuff up a few sturdy skeletons, and Mulahey saves against Blindness.
We micromanage our movements, trying not to get any friendlies torched, and Iffle suffers a non-fatal burn. The second hit of the scorching ray takes down Mulahey. Once again, we just barely scrape by.
I keep them on hand, but decide not to equip them for now. We actually have found a lot of modded items that we're not using, either because of usability concerns or simply because they seem too strong for the difficulty I'm trying to achieve in this run.
Outside, we kill a single Giant Snake for 650 XP, put the Revenant to rest for 900 XP, and Bolithaw hits level 3 as a Sniper! She gets her 3rd pip in crossbows, which means this one level up improved her ranged THAC0 by 3 points.
Better still, Dardaseen hits Witch Doctor level 4 when we report to Berrun Ghastkill. We now have level 2 Witch Doctor spells! Now we can summon a monkey!
Nimbul puts up a fight. I don't mind when he knocks out Iffle with Sleep, but when he charms Vosper with a sequencer, it slows down our plans a lot.
Mercifully, Nimbul does not have Protection from Normal Missiles, and so Bolithaw can help shoot him down. Rasaad, in classic fashion, steals the killing blow and a decent lump of XP.
Nimbul drops a special cloak for Dardaseen, an item I created for the Primordial Witch Doctor kit. The Toxodon Cloak is modest, simply giving -1 to AC vs. piercing and missiles, but every little optimization counts in this run.
This party has been struggling to operate without access to normal spells. Iffle's got almost no spell slots and Dardaseen's spells aren't as broken as certain vanilla spells. I finally return to Beregost and pick up Finch Bloomwhiffler, a gnomish cleric of Deneir I loved since the old days of BGTutu. Finally, we'll be able to cast Command and Remove Fear!
I've made some overpowered kits in the past, but the Primordial Witch Doctor kit mod needs some buffs. I've never missed vanilla spells as much as I have in this run.
Traveling with: Tcos (dwarven berserker), Jaheira, Minsc, Imoen, Wewa (human wild mage)
Just a quick update. The party has defeated Sarevok and is currently working their way through Irenicus' dungeon. They had no trouble in BG 1. I eventually am planning on swapping Minsc for Mazzy, and will use Yoshimo until I get Imoen in Spellhold. Will keep at it.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219242/#Comment_1219242
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219303/#Comment_1219303
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219375/#Comment_1219375
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219478/#Comment_1219478
I was reasonably patient clearing out the maze, though Lee did walk through one fireball trap. In the Undercity, webs left Rahvin's party helpless. Finally, it was time to take on Sarevok. A skeleton brought the enemies together and a series of skull traps then killed Angelo and Semaj. Tazok followed the same way before Ways indulged in a missile duel with Diarmid (though the latter ran out of ammunition and saw his PfM scroll end during that). On his own, Sarevok did well to get a couple of chops in before he ran out of HPs.
I was intending this update would cover the initial stages of SoD as well. I've been busy with other things for a few days though and, now that I've got time, feel like I'd like to try something else for a while. I think Ways will continue, but he'll be parked in the SoD opening dungeon for the time being.
Ways, fighter/cleric L7/7, 81 HPs, 436 kills
Pate, totemic druid L10, 73 HPs, 180 kills, 0 deaths
Kel, archer L8, 71 HPs, 568 kills, 1 death
Alison, sorcerer L9, 46 HPs, 99 kills, 1 death
Greer, dragon disciple L9, 62 HPs, 244 kills, 0 deaths
Lee, fighter/thief L7/8, 81 HPs, 425 kills, 2 deaths
Previous recorded run
It's not long since I tried this character, but I wanted to do some solo play and felt this would be the most interesting option at the moment. Biff will again be prohibited from using any spells or effects that target others (though they can be affected by melee attacks, such as ghoul touch) and won't be allowed any summons or active use of a familiar. That makes gameplay very different from a typical arcane character, but it's still perfectly possible to make good progress.
After a couple of fairly early deaths in ambushes, Biff is hoping for 3rd time lucky this time ...
In the early stages he only picked fights with enemies like gnolls, whose slow weapon speed gave them no chance of getting an attack in before Biff had struck and retreated. Quest XP in Beregost from Zhurlong, Marl and Firebead got Biff close to a level and dodging Karlat in order to return Perdue's sword gave him that - with a welcome additional 6 HPs.
A trip to the FAI allowed Biff to discover a couple of buried rings, as well as kill a few more hobgoblins and return Joia's ring. A bit further north, returning a bowl to Tenya got Biff close to another level. Making his way down to Nashkel allowed him to get the bit of XP still required from Noober and gain 6 more HPs. He also rested at the Carnival to learn Bhaal CLW.
The previous run had seen Biff shot down by a skeleton ambush when attempting to get a magic dagger from Hentold. He was only at level 2 then though and decided to have another go this run. That was successful this time, with some dogs trying an ambush, but failing to get an attack in.
Brage was escorted back to Nashkel and Rufie reunited with his master, but there wasn't a lot of reasonably safe XP left out there. In previous runs I had used Korax against the basilisks on the grounds that he was being charmed by script rather than effect. This time I decided that was against the spirit of the run, but the basilisks still seemed like the best option to get another level. Normally I don't patronize Thalantyr's shop until after killing his golem guards, but Biff did so this time to get an arcane (cheap) PfP scroll. A couple of lesser basilisks later and Biff was able to take his next level. His good run of HPs continued with 6 more, but the ability to cast invisibility was a greater benefit. While the scroll was still active Biff successfully killed the other basilisks in the southern group to get most of the XP required for another level.
Rescuing Samuel was now no problem with invisibility and that also helped him retrieve the charisma tome with minimal fighting. Dealing with some half-ogres for Bjornin pushed Biff on to level 5. In addition to yet another 6 HPs he gained ghoul touch to make encounters with single enemies much easier. Invisibility and ghoul touch were put to good use in Beregost to deal with Neera, some spiders, Karlat and Silke. Back at the FAI, Tarnesh proved no more resistant and Biff returned Landrin's goods. It required an invisible rest, but Meilum eventually went the same way, providing Biff with a significant upgrade to his attacks.
Back at the basilisk area, another PfP scroll allowed Biff to finish off the remaining basilisks - getting to level 6 with once again 6 more HPs (prompting me to double-check that I hadn't somehow toggled the max HP on level up option or difficulty level). Mutamin saved against all attempts to paralyse him, but invisible rests allowed Biff to keep up the attack until he finally succumbed. Biff then picked off Kirian's companions one by one before successfully paralysing her at the first attempt.
Greywolf has just failed to make a whimper pass his paralysed lips and Biff will be heading into the Nashkel Mine next.
Sorcerer L6, 36 HPs, 77 kills
Previous updates:
Regrettably, Biff failed to make any significant further progress. In the Nashkel Mine he attacked the huge spiders while still hasted after killing the nearby ghoul using invisible attacks. The first spider was quickly paralysed, but when he went to attack the second he was immediately hit and poisoned. Huge spider poison is pretty weak, with expected damage of 3 per round for 5 rounds. However, one bad effect of haste is to increase poison damage over time. I was thinking that the damage would be doubled, so Biff could expect to take 30 damage over time. As he only had 30 HPs left after the initial damage from the spider and I had no green scroll to cure it, that was a potential problem
Do you happen to know the mechanics behind the altered poison tick rate? As in, what determines the exact multiplier? I'm very surprised EE increased the rate anywhere, given that I had always assumed the doubling effect from haste was a glitch from vanilla BG.
Haste was weird in vanilla, pre-EE Icewind Dale too, I remember. It didn't give just one extra attack; it actually cut the duration of the hasted character's round in half. In the original IWD, being hasted doubled your attacks, made bard songs trigger twice as often (and they stacked back then!), and even allowed you to cast more than one spell per 6 seconds.
I know you don't often play with kit mods, and a melee sorcerer is a very specific challenge, but the Force Wizard kit happens to be a melee-oriented mage that primarily fights unarmed. The downside of the kit is that it has 1 less spell slot per spell level compared to a generalist mage.
Thanks @semiticgoddess. I haven't found THAC0 to be that limiting in practice. That will partly be because I would often be attacking from invisibility. In addition ghoul touch disables dual wielding penalties, so if I am standing and fighting a weapon in the off-hand allows a respectable 3 APR in BGEE using haste. If you allow unrestricted spell use then the combination of web and polymorphed spider form is deadly and slow and blind both make hitting easier so that meleeing even things like battle horrors in natural form is perfectly possible (even before you take account of the possibility of attacking with a staff from outside sight range of a blind victim).
The EE was based on the BG2 engine, so I was thinking that haste would mirror that behavior. I do vaguely recall now that there had been a change, but it's one of those things where I'm not really sure why they bothered. The new behavior is described here. Huge spider poison ticks once every 2 seconds, so the effect of haste is to triple that - and that is consistent with what I experienced at the time.
I hadn't made up my mind if I would try Biff again tomorrow, so perhaps I'll take up your suggestion and give the Force Wizard kit a look
My initial impressions from reading the kit description was that it seems a bit overpowered for a solo run (in a party the loss of spells would be more serious and the kit's melee abilities less valuable though). All normal mage abilities, other than the enchantment school spells, are available and some new spells provide significant additional abilities as well. I'll do a quick run through though to test out how it does in practice.
After leaving Candlekeep Clinch went straight to the coast in search of Shoal. Although the kit is strong in melee, the possibility of taking 19 strength means ranged weapons are also more vicious than would be expected in the early stages. Shoal's death gave Clinch 2 levels, though the 11 HPs gained were very poor for the d8 die given to the kit.
A trip to Nashkel allowed him to learn CLW. Even at 3rd level, Clinch can only cast a single spell a day, but that was sufficient to blind Meilum and allow Clinch to further improve his martial prowess. He then returned to High Hedge to shoot a pair of golems, getting to 4th level in the process and gaining 9 more HPs.
After completing a few more chores around Beregost, Clinch set off for the FAI. A couple of attempts to blind an ogre on the way failed, but that made no difference when a critical sling shot hit home. Wearing the Ring of Wizardry gave Clinch 6 1st level spells - only 3 of those were needed to blind Tarnesh. A 5th level came soon after that while beating up Bjornin's half-ogres.
Blind accounted for Greywolf and a number of encounters while progressing through the Cloud Peaks - such as the one with Sendai. I noted in beating up Krumm in melee that a second attack occurred quicker than expected and checking the character record showed APR had gone up to 3/2 for unarmed attacks. There doesn't seem to be anything in the class description suggesting that should happen, so not sure if it's intentional or not.
Escorting Brage back to Nashkel pushed reputation to 20 and Clinch went to buy friends in order to get the best shop prices - only to realise he wasn't allowed to use any enchantment spells. I would have generated the character differently if I'd paid attention to that at the time, but too late now
Clinch had also bought a number of spells, including invisibility and PfP. The latter should have got an immediate outing at the basilisk area, but I was too busy thinking about the best melee spells for attacking the basilisks and forgot to cast it. I realised as Clinch ran out from behind a rock to confront a basilisk and fortunately it was a bit slow to use its gaze - allowing Clinch to clear his aura and gulp a mirror eyes potion as the projectile was mid-air. After resting Clinch attacked again and soon picked up a level by killing a greater basilisk. Note in the screenshot both cold and electrical damage being applied - the result of both greater chill touch and greater shocking grasp co-existing with standard attack damage (though those spells only have a 5 round duration). For a bit of fun, rather than kill Mutamin with skull traps (which Clinch could now cast) he attacked using greater flaming fists to add fire damage to cold and electricity. With APR of 5/2 from using an off-hand weapon that combination quickly disposed of Mutamin's mirrors - and his life. When using his magic fists option, dual-wielding penalties are disapplied and that's typically been how Clinch has attacked. However, a standard fist attack without dual-wielding has considerably better THAC0 (currently, at level 8, that's 5 compared to 12 with the magic fist option) and will be attractive against really well armored opponents.
With the loot from that expedition, Clinch bought the dagger of venom to add yet another form of damage potential to his armory. A bit more action saw Bassilus blinded, Melicamp fail his transformation and the Doomsayer beaten up in melee. Clinch will turn his attention to the Nashkel Mine next.
Force Wizard L8, 59 HPs, 152 kills
Everything was going pretty smoothly and we were just about to sail away. But deciding to tackle Watcher's Keep first turned to be a deadly disaster. Not going to bother writing everything but couple interesting notions.
First one was that Raven couldn't use Scarlet Ninjato +3, as it has double restriction of human on top of monk. Never noticed that. Not that it matters that much, as Fists truly are the best weapons for Monk in BG2.
Shadow Altar can be neutered by casting Death Fog on it, which will kill the summons as they appear.
Tor'gal was super easy to kill with 6xDeath Fogs and couple Cloudkills and just kiting in the fog. Also he doesn't follow through the door.
We tackled Watchers Keep once we got Planetar, which first Vorpalled the Vampiric Wraiths and then soloed the 6 non mage statues. Not even four Time Stops or Fallen Planetar could stop that. In level 3 I did the usual tactics being evil. Start->DM Balor->Tahazzar->DM Balor->Start. Tahazzar granted audience us being evil, and we casually Stoned him with the Wand of Wonder, which still turned deadly for Mystara as we couldn't get the killing blow fast enough. Once Tahazzar was dead we resurrected her, but she was immediatelly Stunned. But luckily party members follow through portals even being Stunned. There isn't distance restriction either. In DM Balor room we waited anxiously if the Balor's would notice us before Mystara snapped out of it. This was because she had too much stuff I couldn't carry if I needed to escape. But luckily she was cured and we managed to escape to Start level. Also why does Dead Magic room remove buffs, but not Stun, hmmm? Also thinking it back I could've just continued going through the next portal... Now what I should've done was to take this as a sign not to continue, as Ka'rashur was the first opponent I wasn't certain about.
Even though Mystara had Harm by our kit, and we could get quaranteed hit through Time Stop, it wasn't going to work with SCS's IWDtification component installed. This makes Extraplanar creatures immune for it. So our plan was to gas bomb Ka'rashur. Start->WM Quasit->Succubus room. Here Planetar and Skelies cleared the level, and we could buff freely before Ka'rashur. After ascending to the next level, Mystara ran to Ka'rashur hitting with 3xIncendiary Cloud contingency, and wasting his Dispel. She cast Time Stop from Limited Wish scroll, so it wouldn't be interrupted. But this was the first mistake because it was very slow and Mystara found herself boxed in by enemies. This meant that her fate was sealed. Improved Alacrity, 3xPierce Magic trigger, 7xSkull Traps, 3xSkull Trap sequencer, 5xIncendiary Clouds, 5xDeath Fogs, 4xMagic Missiles, Planetar and Greater Malison. When the Time Stop ended Skull Trap damage killed Mystara. And even though I had one redudancy tactic with Planetar who should've handled Ka'rashur in the super gas, it was feared almost immediatelly, as our second mistake was to forget casting pre Remove Fear on it. At this point I thought Raven was still strong enough to punch Ka'rashur death in the fog, which was true. But something Dispelled us and our PfF, and first round passing our 88 MR we were reduced to 3 hp, and being boxed in that was it. I don't remember if Ka'rashur actually wasted his Dispel on Mystara, or if someone else in there could Dispel, so maybe that was the third mistake we did here.
I really liked the slightly modified Favored Soul Sorcerer kit, so I'm probably trying some other modded kit again, and maybe even tweaking it a little. Maybe there's something in @semiticgoddess Kit collection...
The fact that the Force Wizard gets better THAC0 without Mystic Fist was something I tried to fix, but I couldn't figure out how. I planned on leaving that behavior in, with an explanation in the kit description, since I realized it created some interesting gameplay choices.
I'm amazed and delighted that you've been so resourceful and creative with the kit.
Condolences, @histamiini. A rough end to an impressive run. There's nothing quite as alarming as seeing a Dispel Magic hit or see a character get boxed in.
I am terrified of Watcher's Keep in no-reload runs; I think it's been years since I dared to try to reach the bottom level.
With Nimbul gone, we proceed to Tranzig. Vosper, our Sky Dancer, is an excellent mage killer due to her extra attacks per round. She knocks around Tranzig and chews through Silke's Mirror Images. Things could have gotten nasty due to Tranzig's opening Slow spell, but I lured the projectile away and only Bolithaw got slowed.
So we go wandering. I have a bunch of quest mods installed and I have no idea where all the new content is, so I've been periodically just wandering aimlessly through the wilderness. We run into some ogre berserkers, get flanked by hobgoblin elites, and run into even more ogre berserkers and we have to burn wands charges and micromanage and kite our way to just barely scraping by. We help a pregnant wolf, we kill Ursa the Cave Bear, and we even kill a spooky boss with the will o' wisp sprite that I was terrified was going to zap the whole party at any second.
It all gets us another round of level ups, and Iffle finally gets a single level 2 spell slot at level 4. Aura is close to getting level 2 spells as well, and I have been sorely missing my Invisibility spells in this run. I love those things.
We make a stop to pick up the Wand of Monster Summoning east of Nashkel, using Finch to nab it with Sanctuary. I've been trying to solve problems and gather resources through violence in this run, since my normal instinct is to avoid all dangers, and I've been hoping not to rely on the Wand of Monster Summoning for raw firepower, but... if I do end up needing to use it, I want to have it as a backup option.
Lamalha finds us. I'd been expecting this, but not preparing for it--I wanted this fight to feel like a real ambush.
Dardaseen is our hero in the first round. One failed save against Light Slumber knocks out Lamalha for 5 rounds as long as we don't hurt her, and a deadly source of Hold Person is neutralized.
Here is where we pick up at that one post I did out of order. I'm duplicating it here just so we have the posts in chronological order.
To my delight, I see werebadgers, a sprite you normally only see in IWD2! They're immune to normal weapons, however, and in my install, +1 ammunition is downgraded to being nonmagical. But our Sky Dancer Vosper's lightning bolts strike as magical weapons.
I don't believe Aura's ability will let us bypass Protection from Normal Missiles, however, since that spell works by granting immunity to specific projectiles, rather than checking an incoming weapon's enchantment level. So we'll still have some trouble dealing with certain mages.
We still need more XP before we tackle bigger quests, so we take an early detour to the Cloakwood, which my install lets me visit before the bandit camp. I decide to take a risk and invade the spider hive rather than using Sanctuary or doing my normal "enter while invisible and then right-click over the container to loot Chelak's body and Spider's Bane from the inventory screen without breaking invisibility" trick.
We have not stolen Dushai's Ring of Free Action, so Web Tangle spells from the spiders could prove fatal. Iffle, our Force Wizard and primary tank, fails her save and is doomed to die to a spider swarm, but Finch is quick enough to down a Potion of Freedom before Web Tangle hits her.
Bolithaw gets hit. She's disabled for several rounds, and we have to scramble to take the pressure off. Worse yet, Vosper gets webbed, too. Our front line is falling apart.
I've kept Bolithaw a short distance away, and our Primordial Witch Doctor Dardaseen puts a spider to sleep for 5 rounds with Light Slumber, but the safest option is to deploy the Wand of Monster Summoning. I've been trying not to use it, because I'm not recharging wands in this run and we might REALLY need those free summons for the Cloakwood Mines.
But now is the time to spend resources. Aura makes a saving throw vs. yet another Web Tangle and summons a wall of monsters around Bolithaw before the spiders can reach her.
Finch tries to bail out Vosper with Cure Moderate Wounds, but our poor Sky Dancer just doesn't have the HP to survive the spider horde's automatic hits. Vosper crumples just before our summoned monsters deal the last blow to the last spider.
Around the Sword Coast in my install are a handful of portals you can access with a special ring. I visit one of them, poking inside unbuffed and unprepared, and see something rather ominous.
I initially thought that our Force Wizard was our top damage dealer, but looking at our statistics, a third of our kills belong to Bolithaw, and another quarter belong to Aura! Wands and ranged attacks are our main asset. Classic BG1.
We return to the Cloakwood, still searching for better sources of XP, and run into a Hamadryad. She charms Vosper and has excellent AC and can teleport, but we manage to grind it out. Vosper, thankfully, has very weak damage output.
Then we run into 4 Black Talon archers, a much more dangerous encounter. They shoot down Iffle in seconds.
Back down south, we bring Ursa's hide, a new mod item, to Taerom in Beregost to turn it into hide armor. It's a pitiful 8 AC, but it also gives a bonus to Constitution, giving Aura a whole +2 to max HP.
Which is a lot, considering hers is otherwise 19. Iffle is fragile, but Aura is always an inch from death.
While we're at the temple of Lathander to raise Iffle, we check out the selection and find a roster of really, really good items for sale. A ring that grants immunity to petrification, a helm that gives immunity to confusion and fear, a +3 flail, +3 armor with immunity to poison, and more.
We're trying not to rely on overpowered items, so we'll probably not use any of them, or even a few other mod items we've been finding as loot. We also opt not to patronize another modded shopkeeper that sells 40 Potions of Magic Blocking, 10 Potions of Magic Shielding, and an unlimited number of Potions of Extra Healing and scrolls of Greater Restoration... the kind of game-changing resources whose power is normally limited by a narrow supply.
Instead, we burn our money on two perfectly-balanced vanilla items, the famously modest Army Scythe and Dagger of Venom!
Bolithaw's non-stealth attack power is much higher, and Vosper now has a serious game-changer. She gets 3 attacks per round due to the Sky Dancer kit, and each strike from the dagger can deal 15 poison damage if given enough time and a failed save. Vosper is in business.
We make our way towards the bandit camp and Vosper uses her new poison against the Black Talons. It works great, but enemies continue to surprise me in this run: more archers ambush us from the east just as I think we're done with the fight.
We still talk our way past Tazok, but I want to tackle the inside of the bandit tent conventionally, despite the fact that we can easily sidestep the fight with Invisibility and Sanctuary. We still approach under Invisibility, however, for the sake of slightly better positioning.
Vosper aims for the mage Venkt's throat with the Dagger of Venom, but he makes his saves vs. death and activates his prebuffs safely, allowing him to fire off his first spell: Sleep.
Which Iffle isn't high enough level to get immunity to. Our main tank hits the floor at the beginning of the fight, and will not awaken if damaged. She's out of the fight.
As the fight grinds to an end, Britik lands a hit on Aura, who survives only thanks to a special item only she can use: once per day, she gets to cheat death.
But Iffle still gets herself killed. Despite avoiding all enemy attention during her long sleep, she still dies to the Lightning Bolt trap on the chest.
Not because I ordered her to open it, but because Vosper opened it. Vosper was nearly immune to electricity, but it bounced off the wall and nailed Iffle in one hit.
Despite the loss of our tank and our second wand user, I decide to try fighting our way out of the camp. We use the Wand of Monster Summoning to protect ourselves, the Wand of Fire to clean house, and even one of Aura's craftable items to mass-Feeblemind the bandits, albeit for only one round. It's a simple but messy strategy.
We keep bombing and using ranged attacks and manage to clear the exterior of the camp. We head back to town to bring back our two fallen comrades... and trade in the scalps of 48 fallen bandits.
Previous updates:
Clinch passed through the Nashkel mine mainly invisible, though he did take the opportunity to revenge Biff by taunting one of the spiders with their inability to penetrate his stoneskins. By this stage Clinch's attack and defense in melee was very strong and Mulahey's support troops were no threat. After being blinded, neither was he, but it only took 2 blows to kill him anyway.
Outside the mine a skull trap took most of the fight out of the amazons. Nimbul was one-shotted by a standard fist attack (though with added elemental damage). His death allowed Clinch to summon a familiar for a few more HPs. Tranzig survived one hit, but died to a second after his plea to surrender was dismissed.
Decent AC + stoneskins allowed Clinch to melee his way through the Bandit Camp. He did though take the precaution of blinding Venkt before clearing the tent, earning his last BGEE level in the process.
At the Cloakwood Mine, skull traps killed the mages and Genthore before Clinch closed for the kill on Drasus. Attacking with a single fist, Clinch hit him with a roll of 3 - and chill touch slowed him. Two further hits then finished the job. Inside the mine Clinch made his way down to find Davaeorn. Spell damage killed the battle horrors there before I decided to give Davaeorn a chance by attacking in melee. He hopped around a bit before fully re-establishing his mirrors - but those did him no good as a critical hit found the real target. Making use of one of the kit spells, greater strength, should have boosted strength by 3 but that failed to work (I think it did earlier in the run, so I'm not quite sure why it's changed). Clinch did though learn the knock spell in Davaeorn's treasure chest and used that to loot - though with only 2 2nd level spells, one of which was used for invisibility, that was a bit cumbersome.
Clinch was already at the XP cap on arrival in Baldur's Gate, but still did plenty of the available content there. I forgot to speak to the priest about a dead child before killing Jalantha, so missed out on the opportunity to help resurrect the child. Otherwise things went well enough. This kit offers many different options for dealing with situations, which means some of them are underused. The "grapple" feature that gives a chance to prevent movement of a target for a couple of rounds is one of those and I was glad to be able to make a good use of that to prevent, an already greased, Lothander from making his getaway. For Marek I made use of the greater vampiric touch spell for the first time. Like greater chill touch etc that adds bonus damage for a period of time (in this case 10 rounds) without affecting the base attack. That meant that the basic fist attack on Marek was loaded with fire, cold, electricity, magic damage and poison
Against Degrodel's guards I initially let Clinch just stand and fight with them (one at a time). He wasn't able to manage all of them that though and had to resort to run and hit tactics to complete the lot without resting. That left him without so many options against Degrodel himself and I decided to let him use the Greenstone Amulet to reduce the risks - in the event Degrodel's horror spell was interrupted anyway. He didn't use protection against Sunin and that could have been costly when his first 2 attacks were critical misses. Fortunately he saved against the subsequent horror and was able to complete the job at the expense of being tagged with an acid arrow. After that, I was more cautious at the Iron Throne - using the stairs to avoid spells and making a first use of stunning darts on some of the opponents. Zhalimar had been blinded at the start and had still not recovered by the time the others were all dead and Clinch moved in to give him a taste of fists.
Back in Candlekeep, Clinch didn't bother fighting the real Iron Throne leaders. After looting the tombs he did though decide to teach Prat a lesson. Bor and Tam were blinded up front to protect against missile attacks. Improved invisibility was then used for the first time to protect against being targeted with spells. Clinch was unable though to prevent Prat disappearing and just finished the others off while waiting for his invisibility to end. He dodged a couple of lightning bolts from Prat before completing the job.
Before heading back to Candlekeep Clinch had a few remaining appointments in the wilderness. He couldn't be bothered to do anything creative with the Red Wizards, so just killed them with a couple of skull traps. At the lighthouse he bypassed the sirines on the way to killing some golems and picking up the constitution tome. I thought about doing the ankhegs as well, but gave them a miss this time.
After seeking out Slythe Clinch was intending to make an unprovoked attack on him. However, he got caught out when casting greater vampiric touch made him visible (I had assumed it would work like the other "greater" damaging touch spells - but the difference may be because the spell is derived from the original vampiric touch, which is counted as an immediately hostile action as it targets an enemy directly). As a result Slythe did managed to knock down Clinch's overnight set of stoneskins before falling. Krystin managed to cast a cloudkill, but didn't last long enough for that to make much difference.
At the palace Clinch used some potion buffs for the first time. I'd decided to rule out any use of summons in the run and Clinch was unable to use my preferred arcane tactic of chaos, so the potion buffs were not pure overkill. Clinch had memorised improved invisibility to use on Duke Belt to break up an attack on him. However, in the event several of the dopplegangers attacked Clinch and he didn't need to help Belt.
There were no problems in the maze and Clinch bypassed Rahvin's gang on the way to find Sarevok. In the old temple he abused the lightning bolt trap to kill Sarevok's companions. He then primed his fists and closed with Sarevok to administer the coup de grace.
Even though there was a fair amount of BGEE content I normally do that I didn't bother with this time, everything done since reaching Baldur's Gate was in a single session - so Clinch still transferred to SoD with over 400k XP and was able to immediately go to the maximum level 11 he can attain there.
Force Wizard L11, 81 HPs, 369 kills
A bit more feedback for @semiticgoddess:
- I still think it's a pretty strong kit for BGEE, but somewhat less so than my initial impression. That's because I'd underestimated the impact of the reduction in spells. As a standard mage initially only gets one spell from the top level available, the reduction of 1 spell from each level means they end up with none. So a 3rd level mage would normally get one second level spell, but has to wait until his 4th level before being able to use second level spells.
- The "greater" versions of spells combine to give pretty vicious attacks - though only for quite limited periods. In general the greater versions seem slightly more powerful than the originals, but that's not obviously so for ghoul touch. Both versions have the same duration of 5 rounds. The original paralyzes for 5 rounds if a save vs spells is failed and the greater version paralyses for 2 rounds if a save vs death is failed. Against a mage the latter might be preferable, but generally the original would be more effective. That would be particularly the case when fighting multiple opponents due to the longer duration of the effect - was there a particular reason for reducing this?
- The ring of wizardry seems to over-ride the class reduction in spells. Thus without the ring Clinch would have 3 L1 spells, but when wearing it he has 8.
EDIT: seems that casting Invisibility from spell book doesn't work, although scroll works
@Grond0 I agree that the reduction of spells is really noticeable in the cut off points, for example Bard has to wait Invisibility spell to lv6. I also noticed the Ring of Wizardy effect playing Favored Soul kit from Tome and Blood, so it's probably hardcoded thing?
Traveling with: Tcos (dwarven berserker), Jaheira, Mazzy, Yoshimo, Wewa (human wild mage)
Just a quick update. No wild surges of any note, other than getting slowed a few times via surge but it was never relevant. Much of Chapter 3 done, will probably work on Unseeing Eye next. We have been careful to spend our gold as soon as we have enough for items we want, but even so no "disappearing gold" surges just yet. I ran into one strange thing though - we got hit with a standard bandit ambush with a single lightning bolt doing huge damage to the party - then while in an ambush got AMBUSHED again with Dermin finding Jaheira - how did he do that? But no fight so OK whew.
The run continues...
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1219739/#Comment_1219739
In the SoD dungeon Clinch just used invisibility to make his way through to find Korlasz. The elemental damage from fists made her surrender quickly, but she wasn't quite able to make her exit before fists caught up with her again. In Baldur's Gate Clinch killed a few NPCs, to supplement the fortune carried in bags from BGEE, and did some shopping. I also looted the treasure room in the palace. I don't often bother with that and partly did so to remind myself of the mechanism - the door to the treasure room locks itself when you're inside, so you need an extra knock as a mage to get out again (the lack of that cost me a no-reload run before).
With XP already so high Clinch skipped most content. In the Coast Way Crossing that meant using invisibility to avoid any fight at the bridge. After passing invisibly through the Troll Claw Woods, Clinch found an ambush area with trolls and orcs. A couple of sunfire spells supplemented the flaming fists to quickly deal with those.
At the Forest of Wyrms, Clinch sneaked through into the old temple to find Ziatar. After some buffs he attacked in melee - but when Ziatar disappeared into sanctuary he felt justified in killing him with wand scorchers. The Neothelid has multiple disabling attacks and Clinch used a potion of magic shielding to protect against those. Once the monster chose to stay above ground, fists made short work of it. Ghoul touch paralysed Akanna before she could disappear. Most of the time Clinch has been using non-magical fists, but he switched to magical ones in order to hit the aerial servants. On the way out he tried to melee Morentherene. I thought his chances were decent, but he didn't have much luck with rolls (not helped by me leaving him dual-wielding) and was forced to retreat. A regeneration potion and a bit more buffing later and he came back to finish the job. Incidentally, that was the first time I'd made use of greater ironskins - that provides immunity to poison in addition to a bit of physical and acid resistance.
At Boareskyr Bridge Clinch chose to attack Vichand. He will alert the camp if you don't kill him quickly, but I thought Clinch should be able to do that. An initial strike that both slowed and paralysed the mage made the kill safe. After surrendering the fort there was just the mage on the bridge to deal with. Normally I would use the Ring of Energy to disrupt his spells, but Clinch was keen to stick to melee. Unfortunately he found the mage was immune to normal weapons and he was able to complete his construction of a fire portal. The big danger from that are the fire mephitis, which can use fire jets on the barrels even when paralysed. Fortunately only 2 groups of mephitis appeared, with the rest being fire elementals which were no problem for Clinch. The barrels were probably in bad shape by the end of the fight, but all of them survived.
After a bit of shopping at the Coalition Camp, Clinch ignored all the enemies in Dead Mans Pass and went to rescue Skie. Then it was on to the Underground River. A clarity potion allowed him to melee some myconids safely and a ring of free action stymied web tangles from a gargantuan spider until that was stunned. A bit of buffing later and the cyclops discovered that 3 strikes and he was out. Clinch took the Seal of Caelar and went invisible before heading underground. Rather than boost his charisma to get into the inner levels he placed a firebreath potion in the firepit to cause a distraction (that also gets a nice 6k XP reward). He didn't do any fighting there though, but just poisoned the food and water.
Back at the Coalition Camp an invasion was imminent. With so many individual enemies Clinch didn't use melee much. The ogres and trolls were cut down with firebreath potions. Three pre-cast skull traps cut the mages down to size. More skull traps and a sunfire left only a couple of clerics to finish off. It was back to firebreath potions to do most of the damage to the final group before closing in on Grimgor. Those potions are not much use in the end game, so Clinch used up his remaining stock in single combat against Ashatiel.
The epilogue was safely completed and Clinch transferred to BG2EE with 902k XP. That allowed him to get to level 12 immediately.
Progress through SoD was again a bit more difficult than I originally expected. That partly reflected sometimes trying to play within the spirit of the kit rather than use tried and tested tactics. However, there was a particular problem with enemies who were both immune to normal weapons and too well armored to easily hit with magic fists. Enchanted weapon is a spell I normally never bother with, but could be pretty helpful in BG2EE ...
Force Wizard L12, 80 HPs (incl. 12 from familiar), 0 kills (+574 in BGEE/SoD)
Thanks @histamiini. If there's one in the book case that's probably why I had the castle in mind from my vague memory - I didn't look elsewhere though after failing to find one in the treasure chests ...
The Ring of Wizardry quirk is a fluke of the game engine. It doubles your base spell slots, based on the vanilla mage spell table, and *then* subtracts slots based on the kit. The Force Wizard still counts as a specialist, so while a normal mage would have 4 level 1 spell slots at level 5, a Force Wizard at the same level with the ring would have 4 base slots, +1 slot because it's a specialist for 5 total, doubled to 10 slots from the ring, and then lose 2 slots from the kit, for 8 total. The same thing happens with the Alchemist kit and the Ring of Wizardry.
An item that only gives a flat bonus to spell slots, rather than doubling them, would behave more intuitively. The BG2 version of the Ring of Wizardry, for example, would give the expected number of slots.
The Ghoul Touch change is a mistake on my part. I nerfed it to keep it balanced, but the original is indeed better. I'll need to tweak the spell to make it more interesting than the vanilla option. I'm thinking the Force Wizard should have 10 rounds instead of 5 to land the paralysis, and have the paralysis itself last 3-5 rounds.
I don't know what happened to that specific Enchanted Weapon scroll, but Force Wizards can't cast the spell regardless. I gave the Force Wizard the same spell restrictions as an invoker, figuring that was the closest to the kit's theme, and I thought that losing Enchantment spells would make for an impactful nerf.
I could nerf several things to balance the class, APR or THAC0 or damage or the new spells, but I'm not sure which would be best yet. Are there any aspects of the kit that especially stand out as worthy of nerfs in your opinion?
@histamiini: I uploaded a new version of the mod to the Expanded Classes thread to fix those issues. Kuo-toa Disciples should now be able to put 1 pip in each weapon style; the elemental resistances and weaknesses are fixed and should show up on the character menu now; and Invisibility should work properly now, lasting for 18 hours due to the 25% duration penalty.
I'm afraid that reinstalling the mod will only impact new characters or future level ups; it won't retroactively change an existing Kuo-Toa Disciple in a saved game. If you don't want to create a new character, you could EEKeeper your current one to give it the right resistances for its level, then alter the "modify duration" effect in the Effects tab to change the "-25" to "75". After that, the character's kit should behave properly.
The Invisibility scroll quirk you noticed reveals something I didn't know about: apparently, casting from scrolls ignores duration penalties or bonuses like that of the Kuo-toa Disciple, Green Soul, or Red Soul kits.
Traveling with: Tcos (dwarven berserker), Jaheira, Mazzy, Yoshimo, Wewa (human wild mage)
The party is working their way through Firkraag's Lair. We had just killed a Clay Golem (my character was not in melee range) and I was in the inventory screen when I got the "death bug" (not sure what else to call it). You can know it's the bug because of all the black portraits. When is Beamdog going to get this bug fixed?