I have started a new run with a half-orc Inquisitor. My thinking was that if the game could have a half-orc Blackguard, then using EE-Keeper to make a half-orc paladin must be OK. Here is my starting character.
I am about to go to the Bandit Camp having picked up Tenya, Ishlilka, Safana, and Dynaheir.
The reason for using these NPCs is that all of them can be found in SoD.
All characters are level 6 or 7 and Reputation is 20.
In this game I have realised that Jenna and Morik, NPCs introduced by EE can be pickpocketted or killed. They have some excellent equipment.
If they are visible by Jaheira when they go hostile, she will also go hostile. However, if you recruit her, and take her outside the inn, first, they can be safely attacked.
(You can also use Ctrl Q to recruit them. There's no dialogue, so you might not want to do that. I haven't played them, just tested them.)
We could talk about our great victory over the Fallen Paladins, or we can talk about Tardis' kidnappers being stopped, or our brilliant victory over Tarnor the Hatchetman's party, or our brave rescue of Haer'Dalis.
But what mattered is when we tried to rescue Haer'Dalis troupe we were unable to all go invisible (this was an issue that plagued us the whole run as Sludge never could go invisible) and this meant the mage immediately put up protection from magic weapons. Sludge and Simmy noticed this and attacked other enemies but Basher tried to kill the mage uselessly - meanwhile the mage gleefully cast finger of death at Basher and of course Basher's half-orc saves weren't up to the task and he died - RIP Basher.
After the fingering incident, we still had half the session available to make a start with a new party. As usual I generated a random class, but the gods were generous by providing a sturdy berserker as the protagonist. With plenty of clerical back-up and the ability to navigate traps safely, that should in theory allow easy enough progress to be made.
So far the run has mainly followed some pretty well-worn tracks with the first real action seeing Shoal reduced to shouts of incoherent rage after failing to sneak in for a kiss. There was though something of a departure next when Crusher inisted on taking on, rather than avoiding, a couple of flesh golems moonlighting as shop security guards. Crusher pulled the first of those outside with a view to Brinholder shooting it down with a few +1 bullets bought for the occasion. However, Crusher got a bit too far ahead of the intended prey and the golem switched targets to Brinholder - a single blow proving too much for him (his 14 HPs at the time were one too many to allow level 1 HP protection to kick in). Behemoth had stated that he was allergic to magical bullets and didn't initially want to participate in the action. However, he proved willing to step up to the plate in order to avenge his fallen companion and his half-orc strength meant the 10 bullets purchased were still enough to finish off the golems.
After raising Brinholder, the team did a few minor chores around Beregost before going down to Nashkel to pick up the ankheg armor and allow Crusher to get the first of his vivid dreams. A green scroll purchased there also made a date with basilisks look attractive next. Those monsters allowed party levels to shoot up quickly before Crusher raged to protect himself against Mutamin. That just left Kirian as a target on the map and, after resting, her unfortunate party found themselves all silenced then all held for the most comfortable of victories.
Moving up to the FAI, Tarnesh was another to go silently to the grave before Crusher moved on in search of a bunch of ankhegs. His choice to dual-wield rather than use a shield left him slightly vulnerable to acid damage, but the odd clerical heal kept him in good enough shape to chew through the monsters without resting.
Hullo, glad to see that you've all been keeping at it. I recently picked up a BG2 run with the Half-Orc Conjurer Vlarn, who was mostly accompanied by Anomen (a Champion of Helm), Viconia (dualed to mage), Gavin the Priest of Lathander, Imoen (as a thief), and Fylavara (a stout warrior). There have been many interesting mods devised for the game in recent years so I took on a lot of new content, such as Acifer's Throne of the Mad God and Call of the Lost Goddess. It was quite refreshing not to be taking on many of the usual stronghold quests but in the end Vlarn first had a rather dubious bug when an opponent who it was necessary to kill disappeared, and then a few poor dialogue choices resulted in him being tortured in the Abyss for all eternity. A not unexpected result of no-reloading new content, especially when a fair amount of intrigue is involved. I still have another run to pick up in BG2 sometime- the randomised antics of Fall the Hexblade, so I shall probably pop in again whenever I can face up to the necessary reinstall. One thing of note was that using Eeex (for the first time) with the spell menu mod made playing a mage somewhat less painful .
For a while I couldn't get on to this site for some reason.
Kurtig killed Sarevok and entered SoD. Ishlilik however disappeared at the start of SoD. I was however able to transfer her equipment before she did so. I am hoping to find her somewhere in Baldur's Gate but have no idea where to look.
Hullo, glad to see that you've all been keeping at it. I recently picked up a BG2 run with the Half-Orc Conjurer Vlarn, who was mostly accompanied by Anomen (a Champion of Helm), Viconia (dualed to mage), Gavin the Priest of Lathander, Imoen (as a thief), and Fylavara (a stout warrior). There have been many interesting mods devised for the game in recent years so I took on a lot of new content, such as Acifer's Throne of the Mad God and Call of the Lost Goddess. It was quite refreshing not to be taking on many of the usual stronghold quests but in the end Vlarn first had a rather dubious bug when an opponent who it was necessary to kill disappeared, and then a few poor dialogue choices resulted in him being tortured in the Abyss for all eternity. A not unexpected result of no-reloading new content, especially when a fair amount of intrigue is involved. I still have another run to pick up in BG2 sometime- the randomised antics of Fall the Hexblade, so I shall probably pop in again whenever I can face up to the necessary reinstall. One thing of note was that using Eeex (for the first time) with the spell menu mod made playing a mage somewhat less painful .
Jiddy and Chanceless dust off the cobwebs and look around. Jiddy had rather more cobwebs than Chanceless and after sneaking into the Bridgefort crusader encampment stole a feather instead of a scroll. More on that in a bit
We then headed to the northeast where worgs and goblins were despatched, entered a cave and killed more goblins. The wardstone obtained four months ago was still powered up and allowed us to enter the fort. Khalid greeted us inside and just as we were about to distract the defenders Chanceless asked if we had a scroll. Jiddy realised his mistake so we exited the fort and he used his common sense to send the boot-sped Chanceless to retrieve the scroll. Thus we were well prepared to deal with the problems inside the fort
The negative plane mess left inside looked grim so we decided to spoil the food and hand the fort over to the crusaders. Once that was done we struggled to prevent a crusader mage from summoning elementals to destroy the bridge. It was close, but our summons and chanceless just managed to do the job so we could head to an encampment ahead
From there we checked out an area with a druid, a sick basilisk, and a shambling mound - jiddy finally getting his head into the game and encouraging Chanceless to wear a ring of free action for that last encounter. This was followed by a shadowy ambush, where we turned back and left rather than risk a pointless and dangerous combat. Then on to rescue Safana from four attackers
We reached the underground river entrance and cleared the entire map (barring druids) with ease. Unless you count Chanceless losing a missile contest with one of the defenders stood over the corpse of a cyclops. Jiddy could have continued combat but decided it was best to get his companion raised before our XP diverged too far
With Chanceless breathing once more we finished off these final defenders and unless his memory fails that's where we left it
At the start of the session Behemoth noted that even his great strength was insufficient to stuff another ankheg shell in his backpack - and that prompted a trip to Beregost to dispose of the others. Then it was on to the Cloudpeaks to pick up a bit more reputation along with the charisma tome. A couple more quick quests and reputation hit 20, allowing a few items to be acquired relatively cheaply at Ulgoth's Beard.
In search of some quick XP, Crusher led the way to the coast to find some sirines and golems to pick on, There was a bit of discussion about whether silence was useful against sirines - on the plus side that stops them going invisible, but on the minus side they then fire off magical arrows reducing the amount of loot available.
Up to this point cleric spells had been used sparingly in the session, but Greywolf suffered the indignity of being doomed, commanded and then held. After a stroll through the mine, silence stole Mulahey's tongue (and his ability to defend himself ). Outside the mine skeletons made an appearance, though with the amazons all silenced they were not really needed. Behemoth ensured there was no need for spells against Nimbul by demonstrating the efficacy of his backstabs with the help of his new +3 staff.
Brinholder commented that we hadn't yet paid a visit to Meilum to get his bracers, so a quick trip remedied that. Then it was on to Durlag's Tower where Brinholder made use of the Wand of Heavens from Ulgoth's Beard to ensure there was no fair fight with the Battle Horrors. Crusher used a couple of potions of mirror eyes as a simple way to deal with the basilisks on the roof, though Brinholder could have used sanctuary and skeletons as a cheaper solution.
After Tranzig was slaughtered, the Bandit Camp offered little challenge. The two clerics sneaked into Tazok's tent and used silence and skeletons to make that combat a foregone conclusion.
After clearing inventories of loot the final action of the session was to make our way through the Cloakwood. Crusher was the only character that could potentially benefit from Spider's Bane and decided not to bother with that. However, he did decide to take on the wyvern cave which we often don't bother with. That was partly because Brinholder had been commenting that the Cloak of Displacement took his poison save down to 1 - meaning automatic saves against many enemies. Brinholder was nearly caught out though by discovering the hard way that the wyvern poison has a -4 save penalty - he withdrew just in time and used a healing potion to cure the poison and get a few HPs back.
At the mine area Behemoth intended to scout out the enemies but was spotted earlier than intended by Drasus. He and Genthore chased us, but the mages failed to arrive in support, making them easy enough victims. The mages paid for the passivity by being silenced and slaughtered.
Being a follower of Helm, I recruited Tenya, another little maid, due to her being a child: this despite her chaotic neutral alignment. Perhaps given time we will persuade her to become more lawful. We are now headed for Nashkel.
From a photo that I took in Nepal, I added a background. (Finding the right photo took some time). The shield was then edited using images found by searching for Tempus
The result is this Cleric of Tempus.
What I like about the portrait is that I can't tell where the original image starts and ends. My best photo-editing to date I think.
The start saw us lurking outside the Cloakwood Mine and it didn't take long to descend through that to find Davaeorn's hideout. Behemoth cleared all the traps before attempting a backstab that left Davaeorn near death. A few teleportations later, Behemoth caught up with him again. Davaeorn managed to complete a successful charm spell, but Behemoth's fatal attack had already been launched - so this was a 'friendly fire' casualty.
Moving on to Baldur's Gate we made short work of various tasks there. It tends to be Gate70 that specializes in roasting chickens in one of the inns, but this time Corey used his boots of speed to get there first and claim lots of victims with a glyph spell.
Ramazith was stranded outside his tower and failed to survive a joint attack despite successfully resisting attempts to silence him.
Crusher was keen to take on the Mountain Maulers to get a second magical axe. His rage allowed him to be the focus of enemy attacks while clerical spells hastened victory - though Gorpel Hind did annoyingly pinch the XP for two of the victims there.
Another mage to shrug off attempts to silence him was Degrodel, but he failed to survive a backstab.
Vay-ya did survive one of those and attempt to confuse Behemoth, but his half-orc saves proved good enough on that occasion.
Skeletons helped box Lothander in so that he could be killed and provide Crusher with some speedy boots.
For Marek, Crusher was still downstairs looting when the others attacked. That gave Marek the opportunity to complete a lightning bolt spell, though that only served to highlight the dangers of using that spell as the mage killed himself along with a couple of onlookers.
Crusher had, unusually, acquired all 3 of the necklaces of missiles available in the City. The aim of that was to try and burn out the Iron Throne party rather than just using out martial prowess. Two rounds of fireballs though proved less effective than expected and the arcane casters both survived - and their response was to successfully confuse Crusher. With Zhalimar pouring in missile fire that was a potentially dangerous situation, but Brinholder thought he had it covered by sending in another fireball that successfully killed Naaman - though it did also hit Crusher who had taken it into his head to attack at that point . Behemoth attacked Zhalimar though and kept him occupied for long enough for Crusher to recover his senses and help finish off the remaining enemies.
Next up was a return trip to Candlekeep, though the first attempt at that was abortive when I clicked too quickly on the guardian at the gate and he decided to take the Book of Ancient Knowledge and then claim that he'd never seen it. Loading the autosave allowed us entrance and we quickly looted the tombs in the crypts. Prat was silenced and looked on impassively as his companions were slaughtered.
There was just time for one last dangerous moment when Crusher managed to trip a web trap and get held just as a phase spider teleported in to attack. He shrugged off the attempts to poison him though and the others quickly arrived to deal with the spider.
It's been a long time since I looked at any BG details and you're probably fine with what you subsequently did, but I suspect you want to increase the value rather than decrease it
(the script probably checks "now" is less than the timer, and if not the dialogue takes place. It ought to have something in the dialogue path to increase the timer if that dialogue is meant to happen every so often, or a separate variable to indicate the conversation took place and should not be repeated again - maybe that is what RESETCONVO is meant to do)
Bug has reappeared, so I changed the value of RESETCONVO again.
By the end of this run I MAY understand how it works.
The bridge is down so I got redirected to the Forest of Wyrms where the dragon did NOT get killed with a skillfully thrown dagger. The result was a fiercely fought battle that cost us several potions in order to survive.
I picked up my game with Fall, the wandering CN Hexblade who makes plenty of random dialogue options, and successfully dealt with Sarevok and his minions with the aid of Yeslick (F/C), Indira (Arcane Archer), Imoen, Garrick (Gallant), Xan (Psionicist) and Grey the wolfhound. This run I rather enjoyed some of the newer mods, such as Shades of the Sword Coast, Angel's difficulty increasing mod, and Framed- which lets you revisit Candlekeep at any time. Fall was generally a nice guy, but has a real problem with authority figures like the Flaming Fists (Drake left after he killed one too many) and nature spirits of all kinds (He even chose to let the nymph be turned into potions of human control.) Looking forward to trying some of the newer content in BG2 in the near future.
On a lighter note my habit of using SCS has clearly been shielding me from the true terror of BG1, early wolves. They've been running away from me for years... and everyone who plays without SCS seems to regard them as the ultimate adversaries!
Hullo all, after about five years it nagged at me that I had never completed Fall's random Hexblade run, so I've recently picked it up. In the spirit of the BG1 run the install contains lots of quest mods and some difficulty increasing mods - such as Quest Pack, Angel's Made in Heaven mod- but not SCS on this occasion. Fall's movements and priorities are generally determined by dice rolls, which has thus far led to him finishing the DeArnise Keep (he has a thing for Nalia), and making an ill advised assault on the adventuring party in the sewers... several civilians in the Temple District have now gone hostile to him as a result...
His party is presently Dusk Aldant (Wizard Slayer), Keldorn (Torm Paladin), Imoen (Thief), Nalia (Fighter/ Mage), and Dvaradime (F/M/T) but the personnel will change whenever he runs into Xan, Yeslick, Garrick, or any other likely seeming NPCs.
I have just used AI (co-pilot) to draw an image of myself aged about 30 as a mage, and am quite impressed with the result. I used it to produce my portraits, but the image also represents him relieved for arriving to the safety of the Friendly Arms Inn
I think that the images are self-explanatory, but am disappointed that I didn't get one showing Imoen when a wolf reduced her to 1HP! A potion revived her.
We then took Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn, killed Sonner and his cohorts and went to Tenya who then joined the party.
We killed a lot of ankheg and after returning the body of Farmer Brun's son we gave him 100gp. This raised our rep to 20.
Morwen reached level 6.
We killed Tarnesh and after speaking with Dorn in Candlekeep, we met him again south of Nashkel where he joined us. We killed Kryll after which we bade him farewell, as apart from us both wanting to kill the same bad guys, we had little in common.
Huff, it's been awhile.
I've been intermittently playing a standard full party run (leaving the entirely random parties behind for the moment), and finally made enough progress such that it feels meaningful to post.
Starting: In BG1EE.
Difficulty: Insane with no level-dependent damage increase.
Mods: Full SCS V35.21.
Protagonist: Aldain, Human Conjurer.
Good roll; STR is very useful even for a pure arcanist, given how much of a boost you get to your sling damage once you pop the STR tome (and you'll spend the absolute majority of your time slingin' away, so it really does add up).
Aldain will be using the canon party as much as possible.
This means Imoen/Khalid/Jaheira/Minsc/Dynaheir for BG1 (no cleric), Khalid/Jaheira/Minsc/Dynaheir/Glint for SoD (once they become available, we'll use other NPCs until then), and Imoen/Jaheira/Minsc for BG2 (exact party pending).
No particular rules this time around, though I'll refrain from attacking enemy casters until their pre-buffs fire, possibly with an exception for Spellhold Irenicus, since this fight is just potentially ludicrous on Insane; I still don't know of a way to (consistently) beat it fairly unless you clear most major areas beforehand for the experience.
I have about 432 screenshots, no joke, so I'll compress the BG1/SoD parts of the report a bit for brevity (in particular just posting screenshots for the major fights or when something unexpected occurred).
Anyway, let's get a-rollin'.
Aldain, Human Conjurer: Update 1
Next update found here
With the aid of his trusty familiar, Aldain clears Candlekeep and departs.
Xzar and Montaron are recruited, robbed, and ditched; Aldain and Imoen head for the Friendly Arm Inn.
We then go east and rescue Viconia, her two Commands making it easy to clobber the Flaming Fist assailing her.
A rest at the FAI (outside) later, Viconia consistently Commands Tarnesh, and we gain entrance to the inn; Khalid and Jaheira are recruited.
Once the local Hobgoblins are dealt with, the party heads north: Sanctuaried Viconia steals the Ankheg hoard, including the crucial Wand of Fire.
Normally I'd head north for Tanya and the Zombie Farm here, but we need our party assembled, so turn back south.
Neera for once doesn't try to kill us all with a Color Spray while fending off her attackers, which is good; doesn't stop us from recruiting and subsequently robbing her though.
Notably, Neera starts with a stupidly strong spellbook for her level (the "old" NPCs typically get 2 1st level spells, but Neera sports... 8 I think?), including Identify, so we rest a few times and let her identify stuff for us for free.
Down to Nashkel while avoiding every encounter on the way, we deal with Neira to access the inn, then once rested recruit Minsc (leaving Viconia at the inn), and head into the western wilderness.
The Gnoll Fortress is a little tricky with everyone except Jaheira being L1 (potentially a single Halberd hit can kill Khalid/Minsc), but we make it through without anyone dropping and pick up Dynaheir, with Neera running off to the FAI as she is wont to do.
Party now assembled, we return to Nashkel and head back north, clearing the minor stuff on the way; Aldain of course went with Blindness/Find Familiar/Sleep for starting spells, so there's little issue here.
Tenya does come close to taking out Jaheira: Usually, I let a Neutral character talk to Tenya, as she usually leads with Unholy Blight (which deals no damage to non-Good characters).
This time, Tenya went with Cause Disease... which sapped Jaheira's STR down to 2.
We risked resting, which thankfully cleared it up; once we retrieved Tenya's bowl, we headed north, dealing with the local Ankheg via Sleep and just shooting down the Zombies at the Farm.
Around here, everyone except Dynaheir got a level-up, which put us squarely in reasonably safe territory, frontliner HP-wise.
There'll be no fancy-schmancy weapon selections: Khalid goes Longsword, Minsc goes Greatsword (though he'll be using the Stupefier +1 until we find a magical Greatsword... which won't be until Cloakwood since I'm using the Replace most +1 weapons with Fine versions component), and Jaheira goes for Quarterstaff.
Yep, we'll have no dedicated archer, but I find three melee brutes works fine even in BG1.
That said, until they get geared up, Minsc and Jaheira will frequently use ranged weapons.
We didn't swing by Ulgoth's Beard yet; I'll save the magical ammo we come across rather than waste early gold on +2 arrows to take out the Flesh Golems at High Hedge.
The Wolf Pack is still fair game though. We found a Grease scroll at some point (which Aldain could scribe with 100% success rate, since it's Conjuration); together with Entangle and Dynaheir popping the Wand of Lightning, the hunt goes smoothly.
We clear all the little stuff around Beregost too, then decide on a bit of a risky venture: Going after Bassilus at party level 2/3.
This can turn nasty if you're unlucky (at this point all it takes is a bad Hold Person or Rigid Thinking and you're done), but liberal wand use lets us come out ahead, with only Imoen taking a few ranged licks from Bassilus' attendant Skeletons.
The gold lets us bribe our reputation to 18.
I should've probably just booted Imoen for Viconia temporarily so we could shoot straight up to 20, but couldn't be bothered; we're all but guaranteed to get two more points from quests anyway (which we've been hoarding), even with the greatly reduced reputation gain.
Time for a bit of Nashkel: We clear the mine exterior including Greywolf (dealing with Dorn's ambush on the way), and descend.
My hatred of the Kobold Shaman is certainly the stuff of legend, so this time it gets several wand Fireballs from out of sight range until it drops like a smoldering sack of something self-censored.
We clear the way up until Mulahey then head back out; I won't trigger the next chapter until Dynaheir has Detect Invisibility, to avoid a potential chunking due to critically hitting stealthed enemy Thieves.
Imoen successfully pickpockets Algernon's cloak, and we deem it a good time to deal with Ankhegs: Khalid quickly hits L4 and can now survive two hits, which is good enough.
We deal with the small stuff in the area south of Bassilus, and now have enough Arrows of Fire to feel comfortable taking on the Flesh Golems, which goes smoothly: Minsc takes them down at range with Khalid acting as decoy, and we have High Hedge access.
Except... we only got a single reputation point even though we've handed in something like 8 quests.
It's not like an extra 5% discount will matter that much, but rules are rules, so we abstain from spell shopping for the moment, until we hit 20 reputation.
But what to do then? We can't risk advancing the plot since we can't detect invisible enemies.
Well... Durlag's Tower? We've got two mages after all, so Magic Missile is available.
Turns out parts of Durlag's is entirely doable at party level 4.
We did find a Protection from Petrification scroll, and Aldain managed to scribe it, so we can even handle the rooftop Basilisks.
It takes some finagling, including stealthed Minsc sneaking potshots at the plentiful Ghasts on the upper floors, but amazingly we clear nearly all above-ground areas (the Ghost and Kirinhale are left alone for now).
But that's not all: We delve into the basement as well.
There are two Identify scrolls down here, and Dynaheir manages to scribe on the second try, so now we don't even really need to shop for spells until we want to advance the plot.
The Skeleton Warriors down here actually do not require magical weaponry to hit, and they don't have stellar ranged damage resistance either, so there's really no danger.
Well, OK, there is slight danger if you get bad respawns that come running in response to calls for help, but we handle it.
We even take out the three Greater Dopplegangers, allowing us to loot the library.
The plentiful experience means we're now around L5-L6, but of course, there's no reputation to be had down here, so ultimately we depart (I'm not confident we can brave the lower levels with nothing but L1 arcane spells...).
We now start clearing up some simple stuff we've left unresolved: Silke, Zordral, then the southwestern areas.
With levels this high, there's no danger, but we still cannot seem to get the final reputation point!
Even the Doomsayer and Brage nets us nothing, but finally, finally turning in Samuel maxes us out. Phew.
Some shopping later, we significantly expand our spellbooks.
Flush with a sense of accomplishment, we for reasons unknown at this juncture decide to tackle the Ghost fairly, i.e., no summon spam (we have none beyond a wand) to weaken him beforehand.
Let's not do that again. I'm a little amazed the party was able to soak up all that spell damage...
In contrast, Kirinhale goes smoothly, and that's everything in Durlag's up to the Warders cleared out.
Still not comfortable with descending, we turn around and head for Mutamin's garden.
Korax dutifully paralyses the garden's namesake, and the Basilisks (along with the adventuring party) stand little chance on their own.
The Revenant, Narcillicus and a bunch of tombs are next: Narcillicus is low level so only gets a handful of skins from Stoneskin, which means he's relatively easy to beat down.
We also swing by Firewine Bridge, where a charmed Bentan leads a brave but futile solo charge against some Skeletons (netting us his scroll of Protection from Magic), and Meilum unwillingly surrenders his bracers.
Alright, enough's enough already: We're good and ready, time to advance the plot.
Even though we are somehow able to kill Mulahey's guards and reinforcements without him joining in, he does a fair job of fighting back (though without any real potential for taking anyone out... his damage is too low).
Nimbul is just mobbed, literally: We got a random drop of a scroll of Monster Summoning I earlier which does the trick.
Tranzig frightens some summoned Hobgoblins but accomplishes little else of note.
On the trail of bandits, Osmadi and Corsone are both interrupted before they do anything dangerous... but in the next area, things get a little dicey when we first get a maxed Black Talon Elite spawn, then wander into another one while chasing down the first.
That took a fair bit of shuffling and potion quaffing: I was standing by to pop a wand charge, but we pushed through without it.
Surely that's the end of the unpredictableness for now.
Ugh, first really close call this run. Bears in SCS move fast and hit hard (my concentration was on the Flinds to the north so I didn't even notice it approach), a bad combination when we've yet to pick up Stoneskin.
Aldain scurries out of the way before a follow-up blow can land.
We arrive at the bandit camp, and set up camp in the southeastern corner, as per usual.
Wanting to preserve some important Wand of Fire charges, I send Dynaheir to initiate combat with the Wand of Lightning... which works surprisingly well.
The lightning bolts bounce completely unpredictably so end up injuring/killing a good number of bandits before they can even approach us, making it easy to finish the job with a few Fireballs.
As always, the only real threat here is Venkt (he has a fondness for disablers/debuffs), and once he falls, it's game over for the bandits.
On our way back to the FAI, we finally get an ambush: It's Molkar and his band of merry murderers.
Halacan is shot down (the worst he seems to be able to do is cast Sleep, but we're too high level for it to have an effect), Drakar catches himself in his Silence 15' Radius, and that's all she wrote.
Off to Cloakwood. Khalid takes a beating in Centeol's lair owing to several rapid Sword Spider criticals, but we do end up with a Greatsword for Minsc.
On transitioning, we get the Amazon ambush, but we're prepared: Dynaheir reveals the two initially stealthed Thieves, and the Clerics can't really do much on their own.
The Druids in the next area are overcome, including the Shadow Archdruid: He can't use Call Lightning indoors and apparently didn't memorize Insect Plague, but went with an initial (pointless) Defensive Harmony... he never got to cast a second spell.
We also clear out a Wyvern den, and now it's major fight time: Drasus.
Here I like charming Kysus and having him waste his spells: He often comes with at least one Summon Lesser Elemental, which is fun to use as a buffer against Drasus.
Kysus makes his save this time though, and I decide not to keep trying (supplies keep us from resting indefinitely), but rather just attack.
It turns into an absolute mess, as always: An initial firebombing from potions knocks out Rezdan, but Drasus has time to quaff a Potion of Magic Shielding, and then starts going to town, aided by Kysus.
The downside of no dedicated archer is that we've no good means of swiftly dismantling Drasus, and his second potion quaff is usually Frost Giant Strength... combined with his boots and blunt weaponry, that makes him difficult to counter.
Jaheira was actually in danger of being chunked there...
Anyway, we rest up and head into the mines.
Cook is charmed and sent against Hareishan, performing about as well as expected.
We then just lob two Skull Traps at the now densely concentrated pack of guards, which kills nearly all of them except for Hareishan, who never manages to get a spell off.
Below, Natasha gets a Spell Thrust followed by Chromatic Orb, stunning and ending her.
The Ogre Mage is just beaten down (he's quite low level), and we take out Davaeorn's guard before retreating and resting up once more before initiating the final confrontation.
Stealthed Imoen sneaks into Davaeorn's sight range; this triggers his five waves of four guards, as well as the two Battle Horrors. We tackle them all at the entrance, then invisibly sneak south of Davaeorn.
I tried to charm Stephan Re'Cap to use as fodder, but he turned hostile so we beat him down for a measly 120 XP; Davaeorn just gets some summons until he's out of big spells, at which point Khalid filets him. Hooray!
Here we could head for the city, but decide to clear the western seaboard first.
On the coast, Shoal is saved from Droth, but other local Sirines are put to the sword.
An Ogre Clan is Skull Trapped, and the Surgeon does not realize we've already dealt with his brother.
Further south, it's more Sirines (I pop a few charges on Khalid using the amulet from Ulgoth's Beard), and the Flesh Golems are just shot down.
There's really not much left beyond the city and the TotSC content, but we do still have the Red Wizards to deal with.
After having Skull Trapped the local spider infestation, we charm Brendan and let him waste his spells, then do standard buff and summon tactics until the enemies just crumple: We take a little bit of spell damage but it's spread out so no worries.
I'd really like to pick up Stoneskin, since we'll do another bout of potion-aided scribing in the city, so we depart for Ice Island next.
Marcellus is charmed, though we needn't have bothered as he's quite low level.
Andris teleports out when singed by a Potion of Fire Breath; once he teleports back in, he 100% of the time goes for the protagonist.
A quick Spell Thrust later, a bunch of wand charges spells Andris' end.
Minsc charms the Polar Bear here, and we have it lead the charge against Garan: The bear is surprisingly nasty, and usually chews through Garan's Stoneskin quickly, as it too does here.
Cuchol is just beaten down, and Tellan has trouble against the recurring Acidic Vapors of Bombardier Beetles (Summon Insects from Jaheira), ultimately loosing the contest.
Dezkiel is Spell Thrusted, Confused, and all-around hopeless: Victory is ours. Hooray!
Alright, now it's time for the city. At these levels (7ish all around), it's not so very difficult.
We just do a counter-clockwise circuit of the whole thing, including gibbing Lothander for his boots.
How can he possibly not afford 50 gold for the Seer? His gear alone is worth thousands, and he even carries a gem worth something like 100 gold...
Anyway, by now we have so many spell options, and such good THAC0, that none of the encounters here really pose a problem: We can always handle it by just buffing/summoning/tearing down spell protections/wanding.
There's a bit of an issue as, upon ascending Ramazith's tower, Dynaheir is hit by some Ghasts and Aldain has to cast Invisibility on her to keep her alive, but other than that we are never even seriously threatened.
Soon, nothing but the Iron Throne remains.
Here, I make use of a underhanded tactic which utilizes the fact that the SCS-added Thieves start out hostile.
We charm members of Zhalimar's party: The Thieves hone in on them, and we draw them into a side room.
Alai is easily disposed of, but I hit a snag when trying to get rid of Gardush.
I wanted to take out one of the Thieves so had Gardush Rage: He duly did his job, but when the Rage ended, he took 15 damage... which counted as me attacking him?
He went red, along with the rest of the party, but I was able to charm Aasim and have them take him out for me.
Note for next time, don't let Gardush Rage.
Anyway, we just apply some buffs and charge in; the outcome is never in doubt.
So, it's just the endgame and TotSC content left; let's clear some Werewolves. Wolfweres? Whatever, doggies gotta go.
I choose a bad option by accident when speaking to Dradeel and have to fight him, but thankfully Imoen survived the initial blast; we've already got severe inventory congestion so I'm glad we didn't have to carry her gear around as well.
The Mage accompanying Karoug is Spell Thrusted and disposed of, and then there's nothing the big dumb brute can do.
On our return, Mendas and his cronie fare no better, and we get the Chain Mail +3 for later importing. Hooray!
OK... we've been putting it off, but let's polish off Durlag's while at it.
The Warders don't dispel, so a few potion buffs are sufficient to deal with them (Detect Invisibility to prevent Avarice chunking Imoen/Dynaheir with a backstab).
Below, we wait until the Dopplegangers aren't Islanne, then just charge in and have at them.
Dwarven Doomguards and later Greater Wyverns are similarly just chopped down (using charmed Heroes against the latter), and the Skeletons are Fireballed from out of sight range in order to grab their Arrows of Dispelling, which they otherwise tend to fire at you.
The Chessboard is handled via 6x Potion of Explosion, which is almost always enough to kill all but 2-3 of the enemies; we also have everyone with 100% resistance to Lightning, of course, to allow for free movement.
Finally, Grael's level is quite easy: We've saved some Potions of Freedom, but by now we have permanent Free Action available for all three frontliners (two rings, one Spider's Bane), so we just push through.
And that's that: I can't be bothered with the Demon Knight, so we just teleport out.
Alright, let's start wrapping it up. We return to Candlekeep: Aldain quaffs a Potion of Invisibility while the rest of the party deals with the fairly hopeless Ogre Mages.
We swiftly make our way through the catacombs, and just buff up and charge Prat and his fellows.
Back in the city Cythandria deals a little bit of spell damage but soon surrenders; Slythe is easily done in and Krystin is stunned by a Bombardier Beetle.
For the coronation, we charm Ithyl in the Three Old Kegs and have her accompany us over area borders by force-attacking a character: Ithyl has 6th level arcane spells, but unfortunately went with Globe of Invulnerability which is rather pointless.
Still, she's got Stoneskin/Mirror Image so can soak up some hits for us.
Jaheira summons some Beetles, we buff up and engage: Aldain leads with a Chaos, which along with Dynaheir handling Spell Thrusting the Doppleganger Mage swiftly spells our victory.
Before proceeding, I ransacked the palace out of curiosity: There are 10 Arrows of Dispelling as well as sundry minor treasure in the chest in the basement, but you get accosted by Flaming Fist if you try to get near it.
I just charmed them and moved them out of the way.
Upstairs, there's a Potion of Cloud Giant Strength and a bunch of reasonably useful 3rd level arcane scrolls: Maybe this was meant as a last-ditch effort to boost your party's power if they were a little too weak for the final fight?
Interesting at any rate.
Rahvin and his fellow mercenaries get a taste of Acidic Vapors, and we talk Tamoko out of fighting us.
Now for the final fight.
Khalid, Minsc (using a Potion of Genius) and Jaheira all get a Protection from Magic scroll, then apply a bunch of potion buffs, and we're off; the rest of the party sits invisibly in a corner.
Sarevok is tagged early with an Arrow of Dispelling which strips his Haste.
What follows is rather anti-climactic, as we proceed to, with brutal efficiency, dismantle his acolytes and their subsequent Skeleton Warrior incarnations one by one.
Ultimately, Sarevok stands alone, and, well, he simply cannot stand alone, but falls.
Nice, fairly clean run.
We had a bad encounter with a Bear, and Drasus was a real pain as always, but beyond that, I think it went very smoothly.
Aldain of course ends at the cap of 161k experience.
Next stop: Siege of Dragonspear.
Aldain, Human Conjurer: Update 2
Previous update found here
I import my namesake into Siege of Dragonspear as a character file; this ensures I get the standard party during the dungeon, with standard gear, rather than the enormous amount of top-tier stuff you end up with in BG1.
Aldain is also stripped of his gear, aside from items for importing (Helm of Balduran, Chain Mail +3, Krotan's Skullcrusher +2).
I also reset his gold to 0, which means the game gifts you 30k; I won't be allowed to use any of that with the Flaming Fist Healer, but can of course use gold found inside Korlasz's Tomb.
I may also use the gear, including consumables, of the NPCs to get through the dungeon, but may not steal their gear for selling later on.
Thus our adventure begins.
A small advantage of being a Mage is that you can create the Moss Amon wants straight off the bat, which means we have a Wand of Summoning with 5 charges available for the dungeon: Quite handy.
We'll try to clear the whole thing in one go, since resting here is perilous.
Dynaheir comes with a Wand of Fear with 10 charges, so we cycle it through Jaheira/Dynaheir/Aldain for the first two groups: Triple Horror disables almost all Crusaders, and we descend.
The first undead group here is quite dangerous, since there's a real problem with line of sight: The solution is double Fireball followed by mop-up.
The second undead group is treated to Web and a meatshield (Monster Summoning III), which works wonders: All NPCs start with a fair amount of magical ammo so we can just shoot everything down.
We pick up the Wand of Fire and use it to scorch the Wraiths in the next group.
The undead that spawn when you steal the items in the hidden room also get a double Fireball.
Unfortunately, a single Bone Bat survives the inferno, tags Khalid, and that's it for him.
Not to worry though, as the Flaming Fist Healer revives him free of charge. Although he had to gulp quite a few potions to get back into fighting condition.
Next: The Flaming Fist Healer charges into battle, with predictable results.
Great. We push on, lob a few wand charges at Korlasz, and loot the place.
For the angry spirits upstairs, we block the door with some Lizardmen, and shoot the undead down.
The entire contingent of Flaming Fist have meanwhile resurrected themselves (?) and await our return at the entrance; we pick up what we can afford from the Healer, some potions, and depart.
Safana is temporarily recruited, and with a potion hits 21 CHA, letting us shop at a reasonable discount even given our mediocre reputation.
We purchase vital items (containers and +1 THAC0 bracers basically), and are now almost tapped out. Onward!
Glint replaces Safana, and we also pick up Corwin plus Baeloth, then set out.
Time for another near miss then, from some of the most dangerous enemies in the expansion: Spiders.
Not sure why I didn't just bomb them from afar, but I make this mistake from time to time: Good thing the Sword Spider failed its save against Horror or that might well have been it for us.
Anyway, we rapidly clear the first level of the repository; triple Fireball and Web completely wrecks all enemies here.
Same goes for the second level, though Dynaheir came close to a sizzling end as she accidentally walked into two Fireballs in flight.
Coldhearth gets a shot of The Secret Revealed and has his phylactery destroyed, and we head west.
We side against Tsolak, take him down, and on our way back to camp get the Troll Cave ambush.
Of course, nothing here can withstand the good ol' triple Fireball, so we just cruise through.
Same goes for the bridge: The enemy party is annihilated in less than a round, literally.
Caelar chit-chats with us a bit, and then we're off for Bridgefort (picking up Mosela's Cudgel +2 on the way, as Jaheira will soon be joining).
Right, I did indulge in reputation manipulation too: There's a staggering three characters here that each drop reputation by 2 (Baeloth, M'Khiin, Viconia), so it becomes dirt cheap to get your reputation to 20.
Jaheira replaces Baeloth, and we commence clearing wilderness crap. The Irregulars stayed hostile after the duel ended so got beaten down but otherwise not much to report.
We get the magical cave ambush (Goblins, then Myconids); Khalid had a few charges on the Greenstone Amulet so leads the charge against the latter.
Swing by Bridgefort, clear out the handful of encounters, then off to the old Temple of Bhaal.
En route, let's clear the spiders out.
Seriously, they're really nasty critters.
Everyone needs Free Action, but you also either need protection from Sleep, or simply have to take down the Gargantuans before they reach melee range: Minsc survives by the skin of his now invisible teeth.
We brought some Throwing Daggers for Morentherene, and follow up by descending deeper into the complex.
Up until Ziatar it's just relatively hopeless goons: Bombardier Beetles do great against the few Mages you have to fight here.
Ziatar herself gets five Skeleton Warriors and a double Cloudkill, which settles things nicely.
All Skeleton Warriors are still kicking, so are brought to bear against the Neothelid, which does not long survive.
We bomb and Magic Missile Akanna's Aerial Servants, then deal with the priestess herself.
Apply Invisibility 10' Radius and rest: Two encounters remain.
Darskhelin can't do much against a Chaotic Commanded Khalid, and his backup is allergic to massive fire damage.
The Shadow Aspect makes a real nuisance of itself by Blinding everyone sent in to fight it, but our THAC0 is good enough such that it barely matters, and that's the temple cleared.
We quest in and around Bridgefort (getting to keep the Boots of Speed this time around, good).
Time for another problematic fight then. We assemble our final team, with Khalid replacing Corwin, and sally forth.
Nearly all the Bridgefortians are wiped out, as they insist on charging into area-of-effect spells, but we push through and deal with the enemy camp.
Then it's time for the Mage... who casts the portal spell very quickly indeed.
Not sure what happened there, but we had real problems hitting: Should've probably saved a bunch of buffs.
Anyway, the portal opens, and it's bad. Our frontliners are fatigued from repeated applications of Haste, and they start taking severe fire damage: So severe I have them quaff Potions of Fire Resistance to stay alive.
Enormous amounts (I think 30+ monsters in total) of enemies gate in, including several Efreeti.
The squishier half of the party has no choice but to stay invisible, as they'll get fried instantly if they show themselves.
We would've lost here if we hadn't started quaffing potions I think, especially since the Fire Mephits kept attacking the barrel with their Flame Fans. But still, what seems a very long time later, the last enemy falls.
I think that would've been appropriately difficult if we had been adequately prepared, but still, we made it.
We proceed to the next camp, do some initial questing, then get the Shadowy Figure ambush.
I dislike leaving perfectly good loot behind, so we drop 6x firebombs: The Shadowy Figure survives, but I saw where he was headed even though he was invisible (speech above his head...), so Jaheira took him out with Sunfire from the shield. Heh.
We keep clearing crap: The party is very powerful, as we've got summons, arcane artillery, buffs, and melee power in spades.
The Crusaders outside the Underground River never went so smoothly, as Aldain summoned four Lesser Fire Elementals (accompanied by a regular one courtesy of Jaheira): They literally tore through the crusaders in a few rounds.
Below, Ferrusk fails to fight back against Bombardier Beetles, various local fauna and wildlife are introduced to Skull Trap, and Kherriun's Ghost Jar shatters owing to massive firebombing.
Zhadroth gets a taste of the Secret Revealed, and we now have Spell Sequencer available.
Moving west, I opt to fight the Drow party here: This was not such a brilliant move, as unlike the crusaders they're fighting they're really quite potent, especially when you yourself start out unbuffed.
We wound up doing a fighting retreat, which allowed us to wait out most of their buffs; Glint has a number of scrolls of Raise Dead so Minsc is soon brought back.
Here we took a quick break to finish questing in Dragonspear's courtyard, though we didn't really get anything we need.
Alright, eavesdrop on Hephernaan, then escape after having looted his room: Not an issue.
We also clear out all crusaders on the levels below: Cloudkill works well here, as they gleefully wander into it in their pursuit of us.
Enormous amounts of crap drop, including ludicrous amounts of potions, which we struggle to carry with us.
Coming up on the endgame now; time to defend the camp.
Troll wave: I settle for a few Wand of Fire Scorcher and plain old melee power.
Mage wave: Just charge in. Jaheira gets Confused, but most of the enemies here don't even have Stoneskin for some reason, so easy targets.
Cleric wave: Spell damage.
Grimgor: Double Spell Sequencer, 3x Fireball (Dynaheir) and 3x Skull Trap (Aldain). There is a single Half-Orc survivor, and he only survived because he ran towards us and made it out of the area of effect.
Alright, assaulting the courtyard. We clear the plentiful enemies with Potions of Explosion (might as well, they're useless later on).
Ashatiel challenges Aldain: I have him quaff a Potion of Magic Shielding, then start summoning Lesser Fire Elementals.
Ashatiel puts on a good show, but can only take down two of them before dropping herself.
Let's finish by clearing the conspiciously named party to the north.
I think this is the third death we've had total in SoD, so I can't really complain.
We trample the enemies, and Glint is revived by Jaheira.
Alright, as the saying goes: If you're going through hell, keep going.
We muddle through Avernus without issue (Potion of Clarity + Freedom of Action on everyone), and arrive at Belhifet's tower.
Since you can rest indefinitely here (and for some reason my SCS install doesn't enforce provisions during SoD), Aldain and Dynaheir both prepare a 3x Vitriolic Sphere sequencer.
All three frontliners have a +3 weapon, so no need for Enchanted Weapon.
Buff obscenely: There's only a single Dispel Magic during the fight, and we will bait it out so it hits Aldain under SI: Abjuration.
You need protection from Fire, Lightning, possibly Poison (I forget) as well as potions of Clarity, then as much THAC0-boosting stuff as you have available.
I also forget if the enemies here use Hold-type spells, but err on the side of caution by ensuring everyone has Free Action, so we won't get to use Haste: Possibly we could've just boosted saving throws enough with buffs, but eh, this is safer.
We start the Hellevator.
A round after we kill off the third and final wave, Aldain pops SI: Abjuration.
We arrive at the top floor, where I skip the cutscene using escape: I'm not sure if spell timers continue to run during them or not, but best be safe since SI only lasts one round per caster level.
As always, Belhifet drops his Dispel Magic on the protagonist, and Aldain has separated from the rest of the party: Everyone's buffs are safe.
First: Clear out all the garbage here, while Glint spams Greater Restoration (he's wearing the Battle Tankard to protect against fatigue) on Caelar.
Second: Beat on Belhifet until he activates Infernal Conveyance.
Then dispel his invisibility, lower his magical resistance, and insta-gib him with the two sequencers.
Hooray! We've survived the final battle.
There's a slight snag as I play through the epilogue: Aldain has the items for importing (from BG1 and SoD both) in his inventory, but most of them do not show up on the table in the prison.
I've no idea what the issue is, but a theory is that you are only allowed to bring a full inventory's worth, so what you're wearing plus 16 items: Since you automatically get all containers your party has, I'm guessing they overwrite some of the items you're carrying?
This script seems a bit wonky as well, as occasionally (as now) it'll even remove your Familiar from inventory... and you can't pick it back up.
I ended up solving it by reloading, which I find justified since this is clearly a bug and there was no combat involved during the epilogue (beyond me running away from Skie until Irenicus offed her himself), and just leaving the items on other party members. When you leave Baldur's Gate you have about a round to pause the game and re-organize inventory before the cutscene plays, so hopefully this'll work import-wise as I just shifted everything to Aldain then.
And that's that, SoD finished.
Aldain of course comes out with 500k experience and a fairly well-stocked spellbook, at least for levels 5 and below.
Next stop: SoA. We're now almost caught up with current progress, so it'll be a while before the next update.
Comments
I am about to go to the Bandit Camp having picked up Tenya, Ishlilka, Safana, and Dynaheir.
The reason for using these NPCs is that all of them can be found in SoD.
All characters are level 6 or 7 and Reputation is 20.
If they are visible by Jaheira when they go hostile, she will also go hostile. However, if you recruit her, and take her outside the inn, first, they can be safely attacked.
(You can also use Ctrl Q to recruit them. There's no dialogue, so you might not want to do that. I haven't played them, just tested them.)
Basher - protagonist, half-orc berserker (Corey_Russell)
Sludge - dwarven berserker (Gate70)
Simmy - human monk (Grond0)
We could talk about our great victory over the Fallen Paladins, or we can talk about Tardis' kidnappers being stopped, or our brilliant victory over Tarnor the Hatchetman's party, or our brave rescue of Haer'Dalis.
But what mattered is when we tried to rescue Haer'Dalis troupe we were unable to all go invisible (this was an issue that plagued us the whole run as Sludge never could go invisible) and this meant the mage immediately put up protection from magic weapons. Sludge and Simmy noticed this and attacked other enemies but Basher tried to kill the mage uselessly - meanwhile the mage gleefully cast finger of death at Basher and of course Basher's half-orc saves weren't up to the task and he died - RIP Basher.
Crusher - dwarf berserker (Grond0)
Brinholder - dwarf fighter/cleric (Corey_Russell)
Behemoth - half-orc cleric/thief (Gate70)
Previous run
After the fingering incident, we still had half the session available to make a start with a new party. As usual I generated a random class, but the gods were generous by providing a sturdy berserker as the protagonist. With plenty of clerical back-up and the ability to navigate traps safely, that should in theory allow easy enough progress to be made.
So far the run has mainly followed some pretty well-worn tracks with the first real action seeing Shoal reduced to shouts of incoherent rage after failing to sneak in for a kiss. There was though something of a departure next when Crusher inisted on taking on, rather than avoiding, a couple of flesh golems moonlighting as shop security guards. Crusher pulled the first of those outside with a view to Brinholder shooting it down with a few +1 bullets bought for the occasion. However, Crusher got a bit too far ahead of the intended prey and the golem switched targets to Brinholder - a single blow proving too much for him (his 14 HPs at the time were one too many to allow level 1 HP protection to kick in). Behemoth had stated that he was allergic to magical bullets and didn't initially want to participate in the action. However, he proved willing to step up to the plate in order to avenge his fallen companion and his half-orc strength meant the 10 bullets purchased were still enough to finish off the golems.
After raising Brinholder, the team did a few minor chores around Beregost before going down to Nashkel to pick up the ankheg armor and allow Crusher to get the first of his vivid dreams. A green scroll purchased there also made a date with basilisks look attractive next. Those monsters allowed party levels to shoot up quickly before Crusher raged to protect himself against Mutamin. That just left Kirian as a target on the map and, after resting, her unfortunate party found themselves all silenced then all held for the most comfortable of victories.
Moving up to the FAI, Tarnesh was another to go silently to the grave before Crusher moved on in search of a bunch of ankhegs. His choice to dual-wield rather than use a shield left him slightly vulnerable to acid damage, but the odd clerical heal kept him in good enough shape to chew through the monsters without resting.
Berserker 5, 64 HPs, 31 kills
Figher 4 / cleric 4, 47 HPs, 13 kills, 1 death
Cleric 4 / thief 4, 28 HPs, 24 kills, 0 deaths
Kurtig killed Sarevok and entered SoD. Ishlilik however disappeared at the start of SoD. I was however able to transfer her equipment before she did so. I am hoping to find her somewhere in Baldur's Gate but have no idea where to look.
Suggestions welcome
Interesting!!
Enjoying following your run too Grond0 .
Jiddy (male gnome Fighter/Illusionist, Gate70); Chanceless (male gnome Fighter/Thief, Grond0)
21 June... with a week to forget any detail
Jiddy and Chanceless dust off the cobwebs and look around. Jiddy had rather more cobwebs than Chanceless and after sneaking into the Bridgefort crusader encampment stole a feather instead of a scroll. More on that in a bit
We then headed to the northeast where worgs and goblins were despatched, entered a cave and killed more goblins. The wardstone obtained four months ago was still powered up and allowed us to enter the fort. Khalid greeted us inside and just as we were about to distract the defenders Chanceless asked if we had a scroll. Jiddy realised his mistake so we exited the fort and he used his common sense to send the boot-sped Chanceless to retrieve the scroll. Thus we were well prepared to deal with the problems inside the fort
The negative plane mess left inside looked grim so we decided to spoil the food and hand the fort over to the crusaders. Once that was done we struggled to prevent a crusader mage from summoning elementals to destroy the bridge. It was close, but our summons and chanceless just managed to do the job so we could head to an encampment ahead
From there we checked out an area with a druid, a sick basilisk, and a shambling mound - jiddy finally getting his head into the game and encouraging Chanceless to wear a ring of free action for that last encounter. This was followed by a shadowy ambush, where we turned back and left rather than risk a pointless and dangerous combat. Then on to rescue Safana from four attackers
We reached the underground river entrance and cleared the entire map (barring druids) with ease. Unless you count Chanceless losing a missile contest with one of the defenders stood over the corpse of a cyclops. Jiddy could have continued combat but decided it was best to get his companion raised before our XP diverged too far
With Chanceless breathing once more we finished off these final defenders and unless his memory fails that's where we left it
Thanks Wise - good to see you found your way back on to the site
Crusher - dwarf berserker (Grond0)
Brinholder - dwarf fighter/cleric (Corey_Russell)
Behemoth - half-orc cleric/thief (Gate70)
Previous updates:
At the start of the session Behemoth noted that even his great strength was insufficient to stuff another ankheg shell in his backpack - and that prompted a trip to Beregost to dispose of the others. Then it was on to the Cloudpeaks to pick up a bit more reputation along with the charisma tome. A couple more quick quests and reputation hit 20, allowing a few items to be acquired relatively cheaply at Ulgoth's Beard.
In search of some quick XP, Crusher led the way to the coast to find some sirines and golems to pick on, There was a bit of discussion about whether silence was useful against sirines - on the plus side that stops them going invisible, but on the minus side they then fire off magical arrows reducing the amount of loot available.
Up to this point cleric spells had been used sparingly in the session, but Greywolf suffered the indignity of being doomed, commanded and then held. After a stroll through the mine, silence stole Mulahey's tongue (and his ability to defend himself
Brinholder commented that we hadn't yet paid a visit to Meilum to get his bracers, so a quick trip remedied that. Then it was on to Durlag's Tower where Brinholder made use of the Wand of Heavens from Ulgoth's Beard to ensure there was no fair fight with the Battle Horrors. Crusher used a couple of potions of mirror eyes as a simple way to deal with the basilisks on the roof, though Brinholder could have used sanctuary and skeletons as a cheaper solution.
After clearing inventories of loot the final action of the session was to make our way through the Cloakwood. Crusher was the only character that could potentially benefit from Spider's Bane and decided not to bother with that. However, he did decide to take on the wyvern cave which we often don't bother with. That was partly because Brinholder had been commenting that the Cloak of Displacement took his poison save down to 1 - meaning automatic saves against many enemies. Brinholder was nearly caught out though by discovering the hard way that the wyvern poison has a -4 save penalty - he withdrew just in time and used a healing potion to cure the poison and get a few HPs back.
At the mine area Behemoth intended to scout out the enemies but was spotted earlier than intended by Drasus. He and Genthore chased us, but the mages failed to arrive in support, making them easy enough victims. The mages paid for the passivity by being silenced and slaughtered.
Berserker 7, 90 HPs, 175 kills
Figher 5 / cleric 6, 64 HPs, 73 kills, 1 death
Cleric 6 / thief 6, 40 HPs, 80 kills, 0 deaths
Sad to hear of your demise
I have to change my password every time! A bit of a pain! [Sorted it now!]
Being a follower of Helm, I recruited Tenya, another little maid, due to her being a child: this despite her chaotic neutral alignment. Perhaps given time we will persuade her to become more lawful. We are now headed for Nashkel.
https://www.worldanvil.com/hero/929b4169-3fd7-4e9a-8a58-182ddada6176
From a photo that I took in Nepal, I added a background. (Finding the right photo took some time). The shield was then edited using images found by searching for Tempus
The result is this Cleric of Tempus.
What I like about the portrait is that I can't tell where the original image starts and ends. My best photo-editing to date I think.
Crusher - dwarf berserker (Grond0)
Brinholder - dwarf fighter/cleric (Corey_Russell)
Behemoth - half-orc cleric/thief (Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1224377/#Comment_1224377
The start saw us lurking outside the Cloakwood Mine and it didn't take long to descend through that to find Davaeorn's hideout. Behemoth cleared all the traps before attempting a backstab that left Davaeorn near death. A few teleportations later, Behemoth caught up with him again. Davaeorn managed to complete a successful charm spell, but Behemoth's fatal attack had already been launched - so this was a 'friendly fire' casualty.
Moving on to Baldur's Gate we made short work of various tasks there. It tends to be Gate70 that specializes in roasting chickens in one of the inns, but this time Corey used his boots of speed to get there first and claim lots of victims with a glyph spell.
Skeletons helped box Lothander in so that he could be killed and provide Crusher with some speedy boots.
Crusher had, unusually, acquired all 3 of the necklaces of missiles available in the City. The aim of that was to try and burn out the Iron Throne party rather than just using out martial prowess. Two rounds of fireballs though proved less effective than expected and the arcane casters both survived - and their response was to successfully confuse Crusher. With Zhalimar pouring in missile fire that was a potentially dangerous situation, but Brinholder thought he had it covered by sending in another fireball that successfully killed Naaman - though it did also hit Crusher who had taken it into his head to attack at that point
Next up was a return trip to Candlekeep, though the first attempt at that was abortive when I clicked too quickly on the guardian at the gate and he decided to take the Book of Ancient Knowledge and then claim that he'd never seen it. Loading the autosave allowed us entrance and we quickly looted the tombs in the crypts. Prat was silenced and looked on impassively as his companions were slaughtered.
Berserker 8, 105 HPs, 246 kills
Figher 7 / cleric 7, 88 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 117 kills, 1 death
Cleric 7 / thief 7, 48 HPs, 124 kills, 0 deaths
Looking Promising
Kurtig meanwhile has come across a bug with Ishlilka. I've got a conversation loop.
So far I can't find a way out of it, other than ejecting her from the party.
Ishlilka the Wizard Slayer Full Version 1.4
fixed a bug that allowed the possibility for looping dialogues in SOD if you were too slow in completing the quest.
The problem is that I can't find version 1.4 anywhere.
EDIT
I think that I've found it though it doesn't say the version.
So I have come across the infinite dialogue looping bug in the Ishlilka mod.
I'm wondering if this can be fixed in EE Keeper for the game I am currently playing .
Reducing the time on the timer doesn't work
However, changing the value in RESETCONVO does. We'll see.
Coldhearth was defeated
(the script probably checks "now" is less than the timer, and if not the dialogue takes place. It ought to have something in the dialogue path to increase the timer if that dialogue is meant to happen every so often, or a separate variable to indicate the conversation took place and should not be repeated again - maybe that is what RESETCONVO is meant to do)
By the end of this run I MAY understand how it works.
The bridge is down so I got redirected to the Forest of Wyrms where the dragon did NOT get killed with a skillfully thrown dagger. The result was a fiercely fought battle that cost us several potions in order to survive.
The battle against the Neothelid was also fierce.
We are now in Bridgefort
Hullo all, after about five years it nagged at me that I had never completed Fall's random Hexblade run, so I've recently picked it up. In the spirit of the BG1 run the install contains lots of quest mods and some difficulty increasing mods - such as Quest Pack, Angel's Made in Heaven mod- but not SCS on this occasion. Fall's movements and priorities are generally determined by dice rolls, which has thus far led to him finishing the DeArnise Keep (he has a thing for Nalia), and making an ill advised assault on the adventuring party in the sewers... several civilians in the Temple District have now gone hostile to him as a result...
His party is presently Dusk Aldant (Wizard Slayer), Keldorn (Torm Paladin), Imoen (Thief), Nalia (Fighter/ Mage), and Dvaradime (F/M/T) but the personnel will change whenever he runs into Xan, Yeslick, Garrick, or any other likely seeming NPCs.
I think that the images are self-explanatory, but am disappointed that I didn't get one showing Imoen when a wolf reduced her to 1HP! A potion revived her.
We then took Samuel to the Friendly Arms Inn, killed Sonner and his cohorts and went to Tenya who then joined the party.
At this stage my reputation is 19.
Morwen reached level 6.
We killed Tarnesh and after speaking with Dorn in Candlekeep, we met him again south of Nashkel where he joined us. We killed Kryll after which we bade him farewell, as apart from us both wanting to kill the same bad guys, we had little in common.
I've been intermittently playing a standard full party run (leaving the entirely random parties behind for the moment), and finally made enough progress such that it feels meaningful to post.
Starting: In BG1EE.
Difficulty: Insane with no level-dependent damage increase.
Mods: Full SCS V35.21.
Protagonist: Aldain, Human Conjurer.
Good roll; STR is very useful even for a pure arcanist, given how much of a boost you get to your sling damage once you pop the STR tome (and you'll spend the absolute majority of your time slingin' away, so it really does add up).
Aldain will be using the canon party as much as possible.
This means Imoen/Khalid/Jaheira/Minsc/Dynaheir for BG1 (no cleric), Khalid/Jaheira/Minsc/Dynaheir/Glint for SoD (once they become available, we'll use other NPCs until then), and Imoen/Jaheira/Minsc for BG2 (exact party pending).
No particular rules this time around, though I'll refrain from attacking enemy casters until their pre-buffs fire, possibly with an exception for Spellhold Irenicus, since this fight is just potentially ludicrous on Insane; I still don't know of a way to (consistently) beat it fairly unless you clear most major areas beforehand for the experience.
I have about 432 screenshots, no joke, so I'll compress the BG1/SoD parts of the report a bit for brevity (in particular just posting screenshots for the major fights or when something unexpected occurred).
Anyway, let's get a-rollin'.
Aldain, Human Conjurer: Update 1
Next update found here
Xzar and Montaron are recruited, robbed, and ditched; Aldain and Imoen head for the Friendly Arm Inn.
We then go east and rescue Viconia, her two Commands making it easy to clobber the Flaming Fist assailing her.
A rest at the FAI (outside) later, Viconia consistently Commands Tarnesh, and we gain entrance to the inn; Khalid and Jaheira are recruited.
Once the local Hobgoblins are dealt with, the party heads north: Sanctuaried Viconia steals the Ankheg hoard, including the crucial Wand of Fire.
Normally I'd head north for Tanya and the Zombie Farm here, but we need our party assembled, so turn back south.
Neera for once doesn't try to kill us all with a Color Spray while fending off her attackers, which is good; doesn't stop us from recruiting and subsequently robbing her though.
Notably, Neera starts with a stupidly strong spellbook for her level (the "old" NPCs typically get 2 1st level spells, but Neera sports... 8 I think?), including Identify, so we rest a few times and let her identify stuff for us for free.
Down to Nashkel while avoiding every encounter on the way, we deal with Neira to access the inn, then once rested recruit Minsc (leaving Viconia at the inn), and head into the western wilderness.
The Gnoll Fortress is a little tricky with everyone except Jaheira being L1 (potentially a single Halberd hit can kill Khalid/Minsc), but we make it through without anyone dropping and pick up Dynaheir, with Neera running off to the FAI as she is wont to do.
Party now assembled, we return to Nashkel and head back north, clearing the minor stuff on the way; Aldain of course went with Blindness/Find Familiar/Sleep for starting spells, so there's little issue here.
Tenya does come close to taking out Jaheira: Usually, I let a Neutral character talk to Tenya, as she usually leads with Unholy Blight (which deals no damage to non-Good characters).
This time, Tenya went with Cause Disease... which sapped Jaheira's STR down to 2.
We risked resting, which thankfully cleared it up; once we retrieved Tenya's bowl, we headed north, dealing with the local Ankheg via Sleep and just shooting down the Zombies at the Farm.
Around here, everyone except Dynaheir got a level-up, which put us squarely in reasonably safe territory, frontliner HP-wise.
There'll be no fancy-schmancy weapon selections: Khalid goes Longsword, Minsc goes Greatsword (though he'll be using the Stupefier +1 until we find a magical Greatsword... which won't be until Cloakwood since I'm using the Replace most +1 weapons with Fine versions component), and Jaheira goes for Quarterstaff.
Yep, we'll have no dedicated archer, but I find three melee brutes works fine even in BG1.
That said, until they get geared up, Minsc and Jaheira will frequently use ranged weapons.
We didn't swing by Ulgoth's Beard yet; I'll save the magical ammo we come across rather than waste early gold on +2 arrows to take out the Flesh Golems at High Hedge.
The Wolf Pack is still fair game though. We found a Grease scroll at some point (which Aldain could scribe with 100% success rate, since it's Conjuration); together with Entangle and Dynaheir popping the Wand of Lightning, the hunt goes smoothly.
We clear all the little stuff around Beregost too, then decide on a bit of a risky venture: Going after Bassilus at party level 2/3.
This can turn nasty if you're unlucky (at this point all it takes is a bad Hold Person or Rigid Thinking and you're done), but liberal wand use lets us come out ahead, with only Imoen taking a few ranged licks from Bassilus' attendant Skeletons.
The gold lets us bribe our reputation to 18.
I should've probably just booted Imoen for Viconia temporarily so we could shoot straight up to 20, but couldn't be bothered; we're all but guaranteed to get two more points from quests anyway (which we've been hoarding), even with the greatly reduced reputation gain.
Time for a bit of Nashkel: We clear the mine exterior including Greywolf (dealing with Dorn's ambush on the way), and descend.
My hatred of the Kobold Shaman is certainly the stuff of legend, so this time it gets several wand Fireballs from out of sight range until it drops like a smoldering sack of something self-censored.
We clear the way up until Mulahey then head back out; I won't trigger the next chapter until Dynaheir has Detect Invisibility, to avoid a potential chunking due to critically hitting stealthed enemy Thieves.
Imoen successfully pickpockets Algernon's cloak, and we deem it a good time to deal with Ankhegs: Khalid quickly hits L4 and can now survive two hits, which is good enough.
We deal with the small stuff in the area south of Bassilus, and now have enough Arrows of Fire to feel comfortable taking on the Flesh Golems, which goes smoothly: Minsc takes them down at range with Khalid acting as decoy, and we have High Hedge access.
Except... we only got a single reputation point even though we've handed in something like 8 quests.
It's not like an extra 5% discount will matter that much, but rules are rules, so we abstain from spell shopping for the moment, until we hit 20 reputation.
But what to do then? We can't risk advancing the plot since we can't detect invisible enemies.
Well... Durlag's Tower? We've got two mages after all, so Magic Missile is available.
Turns out parts of Durlag's is entirely doable at party level 4.
We did find a Protection from Petrification scroll, and Aldain managed to scribe it, so we can even handle the rooftop Basilisks.
It takes some finagling, including stealthed Minsc sneaking potshots at the plentiful Ghasts on the upper floors, but amazingly we clear nearly all above-ground areas (the Ghost and Kirinhale are left alone for now).
But that's not all: We delve into the basement as well.
There are two Identify scrolls down here, and Dynaheir manages to scribe on the second try, so now we don't even really need to shop for spells until we want to advance the plot.
The Skeleton Warriors down here actually do not require magical weaponry to hit, and they don't have stellar ranged damage resistance either, so there's really no danger.
Well, OK, there is slight danger if you get bad respawns that come running in response to calls for help, but we handle it.
We even take out the three Greater Dopplegangers, allowing us to loot the library.
The plentiful experience means we're now around L5-L6, but of course, there's no reputation to be had down here, so ultimately we depart (I'm not confident we can brave the lower levels with nothing but L1 arcane spells...).
We now start clearing up some simple stuff we've left unresolved: Silke, Zordral, then the southwestern areas.
With levels this high, there's no danger, but we still cannot seem to get the final reputation point!
Even the Doomsayer and Brage nets us nothing, but finally, finally turning in Samuel maxes us out. Phew.
Some shopping later, we significantly expand our spellbooks.
Flush with a sense of accomplishment, we for reasons unknown at this juncture decide to tackle the Ghost fairly, i.e., no summon spam (we have none beyond a wand) to weaken him beforehand.
Let's not do that again. I'm a little amazed the party was able to soak up all that spell damage...
In contrast, Kirinhale goes smoothly, and that's everything in Durlag's up to the Warders cleared out.
Still not comfortable with descending, we turn around and head for Mutamin's garden.
Korax dutifully paralyses the garden's namesake, and the Basilisks (along with the adventuring party) stand little chance on their own.
The Revenant, Narcillicus and a bunch of tombs are next: Narcillicus is low level so only gets a handful of skins from Stoneskin, which means he's relatively easy to beat down.
We also swing by Firewine Bridge, where a charmed Bentan leads a brave but futile solo charge against some Skeletons (netting us his scroll of Protection from Magic), and Meilum unwillingly surrenders his bracers.
Alright, enough's enough already: We're good and ready, time to advance the plot.
Even though we are somehow able to kill Mulahey's guards and reinforcements without him joining in, he does a fair job of fighting back (though without any real potential for taking anyone out... his damage is too low).
Nimbul is just mobbed, literally: We got a random drop of a scroll of Monster Summoning I earlier which does the trick.
Tranzig frightens some summoned Hobgoblins but accomplishes little else of note.
On the trail of bandits, Osmadi and Corsone are both interrupted before they do anything dangerous... but in the next area, things get a little dicey when we first get a maxed Black Talon Elite spawn, then wander into another one while chasing down the first.
That took a fair bit of shuffling and potion quaffing: I was standing by to pop a wand charge, but we pushed through without it.
Surely that's the end of the unpredictableness for now.
Ugh, first really close call this run. Bears in SCS move fast and hit hard (my concentration was on the Flinds to the north so I didn't even notice it approach), a bad combination when we've yet to pick up Stoneskin.
Aldain scurries out of the way before a follow-up blow can land.
We arrive at the bandit camp, and set up camp in the southeastern corner, as per usual.
Wanting to preserve some important Wand of Fire charges, I send Dynaheir to initiate combat with the Wand of Lightning... which works surprisingly well.
The lightning bolts bounce completely unpredictably so end up injuring/killing a good number of bandits before they can even approach us, making it easy to finish the job with a few Fireballs.
As always, the only real threat here is Venkt (he has a fondness for disablers/debuffs), and once he falls, it's game over for the bandits.
On our way back to the FAI, we finally get an ambush: It's Molkar and his band of merry murderers.
Halacan is shot down (the worst he seems to be able to do is cast Sleep, but we're too high level for it to have an effect), Drakar catches himself in his Silence 15' Radius, and that's all she wrote.
Off to Cloakwood. Khalid takes a beating in Centeol's lair owing to several rapid Sword Spider criticals, but we do end up with a Greatsword for Minsc.
On transitioning, we get the Amazon ambush, but we're prepared: Dynaheir reveals the two initially stealthed Thieves, and the Clerics can't really do much on their own.
The Druids in the next area are overcome, including the Shadow Archdruid: He can't use Call Lightning indoors and apparently didn't memorize Insect Plague, but went with an initial (pointless) Defensive Harmony... he never got to cast a second spell.
We also clear out a Wyvern den, and now it's major fight time: Drasus.
Here I like charming Kysus and having him waste his spells: He often comes with at least one Summon Lesser Elemental, which is fun to use as a buffer against Drasus.
Kysus makes his save this time though, and I decide not to keep trying (supplies keep us from resting indefinitely), but rather just attack.
It turns into an absolute mess, as always: An initial firebombing from potions knocks out Rezdan, but Drasus has time to quaff a Potion of Magic Shielding, and then starts going to town, aided by Kysus.
The downside of no dedicated archer is that we've no good means of swiftly dismantling Drasus, and his second potion quaff is usually Frost Giant Strength... combined with his boots and blunt weaponry, that makes him difficult to counter.
Jaheira was actually in danger of being chunked there...
Anyway, we rest up and head into the mines.
Cook is charmed and sent against Hareishan, performing about as well as expected.
We then just lob two Skull Traps at the now densely concentrated pack of guards, which kills nearly all of them except for Hareishan, who never manages to get a spell off.
Below, Natasha gets a Spell Thrust followed by Chromatic Orb, stunning and ending her.
The Ogre Mage is just beaten down (he's quite low level), and we take out Davaeorn's guard before retreating and resting up once more before initiating the final confrontation.
Stealthed Imoen sneaks into Davaeorn's sight range; this triggers his five waves of four guards, as well as the two Battle Horrors. We tackle them all at the entrance, then invisibly sneak south of Davaeorn.
I tried to charm Stephan Re'Cap to use as fodder, but he turned hostile so we beat him down for a measly 120 XP; Davaeorn just gets some summons until he's out of big spells, at which point Khalid filets him. Hooray!
Here we could head for the city, but decide to clear the western seaboard first.
On the coast, Shoal is saved from Droth, but other local Sirines are put to the sword.
An Ogre Clan is Skull Trapped, and the Surgeon does not realize we've already dealt with his brother.
Further south, it's more Sirines (I pop a few charges on Khalid using the amulet from Ulgoth's Beard), and the Flesh Golems are just shot down.
There's really not much left beyond the city and the TotSC content, but we do still have the Red Wizards to deal with.
After having Skull Trapped the local spider infestation, we charm Brendan and let him waste his spells, then do standard buff and summon tactics until the enemies just crumple: We take a little bit of spell damage but it's spread out so no worries.
I'd really like to pick up Stoneskin, since we'll do another bout of potion-aided scribing in the city, so we depart for Ice Island next.
Marcellus is charmed, though we needn't have bothered as he's quite low level.
Andris teleports out when singed by a Potion of Fire Breath; once he teleports back in, he 100% of the time goes for the protagonist.
A quick Spell Thrust later, a bunch of wand charges spells Andris' end.
Minsc charms the Polar Bear here, and we have it lead the charge against Garan: The bear is surprisingly nasty, and usually chews through Garan's Stoneskin quickly, as it too does here.
Cuchol is just beaten down, and Tellan has trouble against the recurring Acidic Vapors of Bombardier Beetles (Summon Insects from Jaheira), ultimately loosing the contest.
Dezkiel is Spell Thrusted, Confused, and all-around hopeless: Victory is ours. Hooray!
Alright, now it's time for the city. At these levels (7ish all around), it's not so very difficult.
We just do a counter-clockwise circuit of the whole thing, including gibbing Lothander for his boots.
How can he possibly not afford 50 gold for the Seer? His gear alone is worth thousands, and he even carries a gem worth something like 100 gold...
Anyway, by now we have so many spell options, and such good THAC0, that none of the encounters here really pose a problem: We can always handle it by just buffing/summoning/tearing down spell protections/wanding.
There's a bit of an issue as, upon ascending Ramazith's tower, Dynaheir is hit by some Ghasts and Aldain has to cast Invisibility on her to keep her alive, but other than that we are never even seriously threatened.
Soon, nothing but the Iron Throne remains.
Here, I make use of a underhanded tactic which utilizes the fact that the SCS-added Thieves start out hostile.
We charm members of Zhalimar's party: The Thieves hone in on them, and we draw them into a side room.
Alai is easily disposed of, but I hit a snag when trying to get rid of Gardush.
I wanted to take out one of the Thieves so had Gardush Rage: He duly did his job, but when the Rage ended, he took 15 damage... which counted as me attacking him?
He went red, along with the rest of the party, but I was able to charm Aasim and have them take him out for me.
Note for next time, don't let Gardush Rage.
Anyway, we just apply some buffs and charge in; the outcome is never in doubt.
So, it's just the endgame and TotSC content left; let's clear some Werewolves. Wolfweres? Whatever, doggies gotta go.
I choose a bad option by accident when speaking to Dradeel and have to fight him, but thankfully Imoen survived the initial blast; we've already got severe inventory congestion so I'm glad we didn't have to carry her gear around as well.
The Mage accompanying Karoug is Spell Thrusted and disposed of, and then there's nothing the big dumb brute can do.
On our return, Mendas and his cronie fare no better, and we get the Chain Mail +3 for later importing. Hooray!
OK... we've been putting it off, but let's polish off Durlag's while at it.
The Warders don't dispel, so a few potion buffs are sufficient to deal with them (Detect Invisibility to prevent Avarice chunking Imoen/Dynaheir with a backstab).
Below, we wait until the Dopplegangers aren't Islanne, then just charge in and have at them.
Dwarven Doomguards and later Greater Wyverns are similarly just chopped down (using charmed Heroes against the latter), and the Skeletons are Fireballed from out of sight range in order to grab their Arrows of Dispelling, which they otherwise tend to fire at you.
The Chessboard is handled via 6x Potion of Explosion, which is almost always enough to kill all but 2-3 of the enemies; we also have everyone with 100% resistance to Lightning, of course, to allow for free movement.
Finally, Grael's level is quite easy: We've saved some Potions of Freedom, but by now we have permanent Free Action available for all three frontliners (two rings, one Spider's Bane), so we just push through.
And that's that: I can't be bothered with the Demon Knight, so we just teleport out.
Alright, let's start wrapping it up. We return to Candlekeep: Aldain quaffs a Potion of Invisibility while the rest of the party deals with the fairly hopeless Ogre Mages.
We swiftly make our way through the catacombs, and just buff up and charge Prat and his fellows.
Back in the city Cythandria deals a little bit of spell damage but soon surrenders; Slythe is easily done in and Krystin is stunned by a Bombardier Beetle.
For the coronation, we charm Ithyl in the Three Old Kegs and have her accompany us over area borders by force-attacking a character: Ithyl has 6th level arcane spells, but unfortunately went with Globe of Invulnerability which is rather pointless.
Still, she's got Stoneskin/Mirror Image so can soak up some hits for us.
Jaheira summons some Beetles, we buff up and engage: Aldain leads with a Chaos, which along with Dynaheir handling Spell Thrusting the Doppleganger Mage swiftly spells our victory.
Before proceeding, I ransacked the palace out of curiosity: There are 10 Arrows of Dispelling as well as sundry minor treasure in the chest in the basement, but you get accosted by Flaming Fist if you try to get near it.
I just charmed them and moved them out of the way.
Upstairs, there's a Potion of Cloud Giant Strength and a bunch of reasonably useful 3rd level arcane scrolls: Maybe this was meant as a last-ditch effort to boost your party's power if they were a little too weak for the final fight?
Interesting at any rate.
Rahvin and his fellow mercenaries get a taste of Acidic Vapors, and we talk Tamoko out of fighting us.
Now for the final fight.
Khalid, Minsc (using a Potion of Genius) and Jaheira all get a Protection from Magic scroll, then apply a bunch of potion buffs, and we're off; the rest of the party sits invisibly in a corner.
Sarevok is tagged early with an Arrow of Dispelling which strips his Haste.
What follows is rather anti-climactic, as we proceed to, with brutal efficiency, dismantle his acolytes and their subsequent Skeleton Warrior incarnations one by one.
Ultimately, Sarevok stands alone, and, well, he simply cannot stand alone, but falls.
Nice, fairly clean run.
We had a bad encounter with a Bear, and Drasus was a real pain as always, but beyond that, I think it went very smoothly.
Aldain of course ends at the cap of 161k experience.
Next stop: Siege of Dragonspear.
Previous update found here
Aldain is also stripped of his gear, aside from items for importing (Helm of Balduran, Chain Mail +3, Krotan's Skullcrusher +2).
I also reset his gold to 0, which means the game gifts you 30k; I won't be allowed to use any of that with the Flaming Fist Healer, but can of course use gold found inside Korlasz's Tomb.
I may also use the gear, including consumables, of the NPCs to get through the dungeon, but may not steal their gear for selling later on.
Thus our adventure begins.
A small advantage of being a Mage is that you can create the Moss Amon wants straight off the bat, which means we have a Wand of Summoning with 5 charges available for the dungeon: Quite handy.
We'll try to clear the whole thing in one go, since resting here is perilous.
Dynaheir comes with a Wand of Fear with 10 charges, so we cycle it through Jaheira/Dynaheir/Aldain for the first two groups: Triple Horror disables almost all Crusaders, and we descend.
The first undead group here is quite dangerous, since there's a real problem with line of sight: The solution is double Fireball followed by mop-up.
The second undead group is treated to Web and a meatshield (Monster Summoning III), which works wonders: All NPCs start with a fair amount of magical ammo so we can just shoot everything down.
We pick up the Wand of Fire and use it to scorch the Wraiths in the next group.
The undead that spawn when you steal the items in the hidden room also get a double Fireball.
Unfortunately, a single Bone Bat survives the inferno, tags Khalid, and that's it for him.
Not to worry though, as the Flaming Fist Healer revives him free of charge. Although he had to gulp quite a few potions to get back into fighting condition.
Next: The Flaming Fist Healer charges into battle, with predictable results.
Great. We push on, lob a few wand charges at Korlasz, and loot the place.
For the angry spirits upstairs, we block the door with some Lizardmen, and shoot the undead down.
The entire contingent of Flaming Fist have meanwhile resurrected themselves (?) and await our return at the entrance; we pick up what we can afford from the Healer, some potions, and depart.
Safana is temporarily recruited, and with a potion hits 21 CHA, letting us shop at a reasonable discount even given our mediocre reputation.
We purchase vital items (containers and +1 THAC0 bracers basically), and are now almost tapped out. Onward!
Glint replaces Safana, and we also pick up Corwin plus Baeloth, then set out.
Time for another near miss then, from some of the most dangerous enemies in the expansion: Spiders.
Not sure why I didn't just bomb them from afar, but I make this mistake from time to time: Good thing the Sword Spider failed its save against Horror or that might well have been it for us.
Anyway, we rapidly clear the first level of the repository; triple Fireball and Web completely wrecks all enemies here.
Same goes for the second level, though Dynaheir came close to a sizzling end as she accidentally walked into two Fireballs in flight.
Coldhearth gets a shot of The Secret Revealed and has his phylactery destroyed, and we head west.
We side against Tsolak, take him down, and on our way back to camp get the Troll Cave ambush.
Of course, nothing here can withstand the good ol' triple Fireball, so we just cruise through.
Same goes for the bridge: The enemy party is annihilated in less than a round, literally.
Caelar chit-chats with us a bit, and then we're off for Bridgefort (picking up Mosela's Cudgel +2 on the way, as Jaheira will soon be joining).
Right, I did indulge in reputation manipulation too: There's a staggering three characters here that each drop reputation by 2 (Baeloth, M'Khiin, Viconia), so it becomes dirt cheap to get your reputation to 20.
Jaheira replaces Baeloth, and we commence clearing wilderness crap. The Irregulars stayed hostile after the duel ended so got beaten down but otherwise not much to report.
We get the magical cave ambush (Goblins, then Myconids); Khalid had a few charges on the Greenstone Amulet so leads the charge against the latter.
Swing by Bridgefort, clear out the handful of encounters, then off to the old Temple of Bhaal.
En route, let's clear the spiders out.
Seriously, they're really nasty critters.
Everyone needs Free Action, but you also either need protection from Sleep, or simply have to take down the Gargantuans before they reach melee range: Minsc survives by the skin of his now invisible teeth.
We brought some Throwing Daggers for Morentherene, and follow up by descending deeper into the complex.
Up until Ziatar it's just relatively hopeless goons: Bombardier Beetles do great against the few Mages you have to fight here.
Ziatar herself gets five Skeleton Warriors and a double Cloudkill, which settles things nicely.
All Skeleton Warriors are still kicking, so are brought to bear against the Neothelid, which does not long survive.
We bomb and Magic Missile Akanna's Aerial Servants, then deal with the priestess herself.
Apply Invisibility 10' Radius and rest: Two encounters remain.
Darskhelin can't do much against a Chaotic Commanded Khalid, and his backup is allergic to massive fire damage.
The Shadow Aspect makes a real nuisance of itself by Blinding everyone sent in to fight it, but our THAC0 is good enough such that it barely matters, and that's the temple cleared.
We quest in and around Bridgefort (getting to keep the Boots of Speed this time around, good).
Time for another problematic fight then. We assemble our final team, with Khalid replacing Corwin, and sally forth.
Nearly all the Bridgefortians are wiped out, as they insist on charging into area-of-effect spells, but we push through and deal with the enemy camp.
Then it's time for the Mage... who casts the portal spell very quickly indeed.
Not sure what happened there, but we had real problems hitting: Should've probably saved a bunch of buffs.
Anyway, the portal opens, and it's bad. Our frontliners are fatigued from repeated applications of Haste, and they start taking severe fire damage: So severe I have them quaff Potions of Fire Resistance to stay alive.
Enormous amounts (I think 30+ monsters in total) of enemies gate in, including several Efreeti.
The squishier half of the party has no choice but to stay invisible, as they'll get fried instantly if they show themselves.
We would've lost here if we hadn't started quaffing potions I think, especially since the Fire Mephits kept attacking the barrel with their Flame Fans. But still, what seems a very long time later, the last enemy falls.
I think that would've been appropriately difficult if we had been adequately prepared, but still, we made it.
We proceed to the next camp, do some initial questing, then get the Shadowy Figure ambush.
I dislike leaving perfectly good loot behind, so we drop 6x firebombs: The Shadowy Figure survives, but I saw where he was headed even though he was invisible (speech above his head...), so Jaheira took him out with Sunfire from the shield. Heh.
We keep clearing crap: The party is very powerful, as we've got summons, arcane artillery, buffs, and melee power in spades.
The Crusaders outside the Underground River never went so smoothly, as Aldain summoned four Lesser Fire Elementals (accompanied by a regular one courtesy of Jaheira): They literally tore through the crusaders in a few rounds.
Below, Ferrusk fails to fight back against Bombardier Beetles, various local fauna and wildlife are introduced to Skull Trap, and Kherriun's Ghost Jar shatters owing to massive firebombing.
Zhadroth gets a taste of the Secret Revealed, and we now have Spell Sequencer available.
Moving west, I opt to fight the Drow party here: This was not such a brilliant move, as unlike the crusaders they're fighting they're really quite potent, especially when you yourself start out unbuffed.
We wound up doing a fighting retreat, which allowed us to wait out most of their buffs; Glint has a number of scrolls of Raise Dead so Minsc is soon brought back.
Here we took a quick break to finish questing in Dragonspear's courtyard, though we didn't really get anything we need.
Alright, eavesdrop on Hephernaan, then escape after having looted his room: Not an issue.
We also clear out all crusaders on the levels below: Cloudkill works well here, as they gleefully wander into it in their pursuit of us.
Enormous amounts of crap drop, including ludicrous amounts of potions, which we struggle to carry with us.
Coming up on the endgame now; time to defend the camp.
Troll wave: I settle for a few Wand of Fire Scorcher and plain old melee power.
Mage wave: Just charge in. Jaheira gets Confused, but most of the enemies here don't even have Stoneskin for some reason, so easy targets.
Cleric wave: Spell damage.
Grimgor: Double Spell Sequencer, 3x Fireball (Dynaheir) and 3x Skull Trap (Aldain). There is a single Half-Orc survivor, and he only survived because he ran towards us and made it out of the area of effect.
Alright, assaulting the courtyard. We clear the plentiful enemies with Potions of Explosion (might as well, they're useless later on).
Ashatiel challenges Aldain: I have him quaff a Potion of Magic Shielding, then start summoning Lesser Fire Elementals.
Ashatiel puts on a good show, but can only take down two of them before dropping herself.
Let's finish by clearing the conspiciously named party to the north.
I think this is the third death we've had total in SoD, so I can't really complain.
We trample the enemies, and Glint is revived by Jaheira.
Alright, as the saying goes: If you're going through hell, keep going.
We muddle through Avernus without issue (Potion of Clarity + Freedom of Action on everyone), and arrive at Belhifet's tower.
Since you can rest indefinitely here (and for some reason my SCS install doesn't enforce provisions during SoD), Aldain and Dynaheir both prepare a 3x Vitriolic Sphere sequencer.
All three frontliners have a +3 weapon, so no need for Enchanted Weapon.
Buff obscenely: There's only a single Dispel Magic during the fight, and we will bait it out so it hits Aldain under SI: Abjuration.
You need protection from Fire, Lightning, possibly Poison (I forget) as well as potions of Clarity, then as much THAC0-boosting stuff as you have available.
I also forget if the enemies here use Hold-type spells, but err on the side of caution by ensuring everyone has Free Action, so we won't get to use Haste: Possibly we could've just boosted saving throws enough with buffs, but eh, this is safer.
We start the Hellevator.
A round after we kill off the third and final wave, Aldain pops SI: Abjuration.
We arrive at the top floor, where I skip the cutscene using escape: I'm not sure if spell timers continue to run during them or not, but best be safe since SI only lasts one round per caster level.
As always, Belhifet drops his Dispel Magic on the protagonist, and Aldain has separated from the rest of the party: Everyone's buffs are safe.
First: Clear out all the garbage here, while Glint spams Greater Restoration (he's wearing the Battle Tankard to protect against fatigue) on Caelar.
Second: Beat on Belhifet until he activates Infernal Conveyance.
Then dispel his invisibility, lower his magical resistance, and insta-gib him with the two sequencers.
Hooray! We've survived the final battle.
There's a slight snag as I play through the epilogue: Aldain has the items for importing (from BG1 and SoD both) in his inventory, but most of them do not show up on the table in the prison.
I've no idea what the issue is, but a theory is that you are only allowed to bring a full inventory's worth, so what you're wearing plus 16 items: Since you automatically get all containers your party has, I'm guessing they overwrite some of the items you're carrying?
This script seems a bit wonky as well, as occasionally (as now) it'll even remove your Familiar from inventory... and you can't pick it back up.
I ended up solving it by reloading, which I find justified since this is clearly a bug and there was no combat involved during the epilogue (beyond me running away from Skie until Irenicus offed her himself), and just leaving the items on other party members. When you leave Baldur's Gate you have about a round to pause the game and re-organize inventory before the cutscene plays, so hopefully this'll work import-wise as I just shifted everything to Aldain then.
And that's that, SoD finished.
Aldain of course comes out with 500k experience and a fairly well-stocked spellbook, at least for levels 5 and below.
Next stop: SoA. We're now almost caught up with current progress, so it'll be a while before the next update.