The party returned to the area north of the Gnoll Fortress to help Laurel, kill some ogres and defeat Neville's bandits. Further up north, in the next area, Goibniu assisted Charleston and took care of Ba'ruk.
At this point, I was mostly looking for extra experience for Luna, because I wanted her to be able to cast level 3 spells before entering the bandit camp.
In Beregost, Tranzig was killed, and his wand of magic missles will be very useful when it comes to disrupting spells. I also finally bought new spellscrolls for Owain plus some potions of genius, so he'll be less of a one trick pony now.
With Luna being close to level 5, the party travelled to Larswood. Teven's bandits were defeated by Owain's sleep spells:
And with the death of Corsone and Osmadi, Luna finally learned how to summon skeletons!
The last stop before the bandit camp was Peldvale. The animanted dead are a gigantic help for this party - I don't have any good tanks (Goibniu is the best, but moving him to the frontlines puts the run at risk, since he's the Bhaalspawn), so this will mean less kiting is neccessary, and fewer character deaths will occur during otherwise easy encounters (or at least I hope so).
Raiken was the first named enemy to fall to the new skeleton army and the party's ranged assistance:
Now, for the bandit camp: With skeletons in front, the party slowly moved forward, shooting any bandits, hobgoblins and gnolls in their sight. Finally, the big bandit group near the main tent managed to kill all of the skeletons except one, but the party, while taking some hits, returned the favor. Taugosz himself didn't save against Luna's second hold person spell and died:
For the main tent, the party prepared with chant, bless, strength of one, remove fear and some of Goibniu's protection from evil spells. Goibniu also used a potion of fortitude.
The fight went really well: Most of the party attacked the mage, with the new wand of magic missles disrupting his spellcasting, while Luna held the bandit and Donar chased the hobgoblin, preventing him from using his bow:
With Venkt's death, the battle was basically already won. The new bow will be quite useful for Goibniu.
I converted the worlds worst bounty hunter into a somewhat useful fighter … mostly because that gave me the two handed sword, then we sold everything except the cloudkill wand to pay for a magic licence.
The two plot choices so far are thieves or wizards which plays to my class strengths but we needed the licence so yes, wizards first... The mission looks to keep me out of town for a while anyway.
Jan should be more useful than a fighter so I let him tag along for now and poor Jaheira got herself killed saving Viconia from justice... Well mob justice but the irony still applies as far as I'm concerned. I'm currently in a hamlet called Umber hills which brings us up to date.
Goibniu quickly travelled to the first Cloakwood area to retrieve Gurke's cloak before returning back to Beregost. At High Hedge, Owain bought himself the robe of the neutral archmagi; The party then decided to fight some Ankhegs. With the help of skeletons, a protection from acid scroll for Goibniu and the sleep spell, they were an easy source of experience.
After retrieving Brun's son and helping Tenya with the fishermen, the group also killed some zombies for Wenric and comissioned an ankheg armor for Luna.
Next, it was time to hunt vampire wolves near the temple: The party prepared with skeletons, bless and chant plus magical arrows and bullets, and the pack was quickly slain:
After leveling up, Goibniu decided to head for the Sword Coast areas - first the northern sword coast, where Helios was kissed by Shoal and Droth was killed with the help of some magic missles. Mad Arcand got his ring back, and to the south-west, the party encountered their first group of sirens, who foolishly tried to charm some quickly summoned skeletons:
At the southern Sword Coast area, Goibniu helped Ardrouine and went to hunt some more sirens - again, skeletons did most of the work, with the party providing ranged assistance; After encountering some carrion crawlers, the final siren group was defeated:
After resting, the party was ready to enter the flesh golem cave.
Inside, skeletons were summoned once again, everyone equipped magical ammunition, and Goibiu prepared with a potion of absorption, in case of the skeleton's destruction. For the first two golems, the skeletons were able to tank, but the final one dealt with the last undead, so Goibniu had to step up - luckily, he didn't get hit before the golem was defeated:
The constitution tome was used by the Paladin himself, thus giving him at least a one point hp bonus per level.
My Scythia run is so buggy that I am going to re-install the SoA part and start it again. I had only just left the dungeon when the conversations became unintelligable.
Long story short, the whole Baldur’s Gate & Candle Keep parts went well and easier than anticipated. However I got killed by a lightning trap in the maze 5 minutes from the last battle. I kind of detected it just as I was stepping on it and bzzt! A stupid way to fail a no-reload but I still finished my game. I died a couple of times at the last battle, so I would have failed anyway. I’m continuing on to SoD which I will do more as a minimal reload challenge as I only played it once before. When I get to BG2 I will do another no reload.
I renamed my old installation and re-installed BG2 EE thinking that would give me a clean installation. It didn't. Jasper St. Clair from Dungeon be gone is still there though all his speech is "invalid". Obviously some of the game has been left behind. What else needs to be done. I am using Windows 10 so some parts of the game are in "documents." Presumably something there needed to be deleted also?
EDIT For the benefit of those who don't know, the override folder also needs to be cleared to get a clean install. That could have been the reason why my last install didn't work.
I renamed my old installation and re-installed BG2 EE thinking that would give me a clean installation. It didn't. Jasper St. Clair from Dungeon be gone is still there though all his speech is "invalid". Obviously some of the game has been left behind. What else needs to be done. I am using Windows 10 so some parts of the game are in "documents." Presumably something there needed to be deleted also?
EDIT For the benefit of those who don't know, the override folder also needs to be cleared to get a clean install. That could have been the reason why my last install didn't work.
@Wise_Grimwald - I wouldn't think renaming the folder would work for a program like EE. That only works with vanilla BG 2 because it's an old game. EE puts stuff in many places, and as such the only real way to get it clean is to uninstall the game, delete the folder if it still exists, then re-install.
Sorry to see the end of your run @Francois. Good luck in SoD and SoA!
Goibniu, human paladin, update 6
Time to explore the eastern part of the map. The paty travelled to the area east of Durlag's Tower. The amazon party was defeated by a combination of skeletons, bless, chant and ranged attacks:
The various tombs were cleared by Anapa with the help of a protection from undead scroll. Narcillicus fell thanks to magic missle spells and ranged attacks, while his slimes were killed with the party's magical melee weapons:
Next, Goibniu decided to head for the Firewine Bridge, where Meilum was kited and killed. The party also challenged Kahrk, preparing with skeletons, remove fear, bless and chant. The ogre mage was taking some good hits, and when he started casting spells on Donar, I had the fighter/thief use a potion of magic blocking. Soon enough, Kahrk's mirror images were gone, and any further spellcasting was disrupted:
Seconds later, Kahrk was defeated.
Ulcaster School proved to be easy experience for the randomized party, with their melee abilites now greatly improved by better equipment and levels. Still, without the help of skeletons, most fights would be really tough, and Owain's numerous magic missle spells are really useful to increase the otherwise weak damage output.
After Ulcaster, Gullykin was visited next - first, the bounty hunter party: Helios went invisible this time, giving the skeleton the opportunity to surround the mage. This proved to be needless, however, as Helios' backstab dealt 42 damage:
The battle was quickly won.
After everything went fine in the east so far, it was time for some setbacks: The Firewine Ruins are often troublesome for me, and this time was no exception. Goibniu entered via Jenkal's house, expecting to quickly kill the ogre mage - however, despite many hits, his first spell, confusion, was uninterruptable - I should have retreated upon realizing this, but I didn't - so everyone except Owain and Donar got confused:
As you can see, Lendarn already started getting involved in the battle at this point, and Owain didn't manage to disrupt his improved invisibilty spell in time - I knew what that meant: Multiple lightning bolt spells incoming. Thanks to II, Owain couldn't magic missle the enemy mage, and both Owain and Donar aren't exactly great at disrupting someone with physical damage. I had to hope and pray. The first lightning bolt killed the confused Anapa, but, luckily, didn't bounce on any other party members; Meanwhile, Owain and Donar dealt with Lendarn's monsters:
The second lightning bolt came soon. Owain, standing in the corner, died despite his mirror images - I had no potions of absorption with me. Helios was heavily wounded, but survived. At this point, the confusion spell finally wore off, and the party started attacking Lendarn:
The mage fell before casting another spell. Still, two dead - and I was lucky to survive getting most of the party confused at all. Goibniu returned to Nashkell to resurrect his dead companions. The party travelled to the area east of Larswood next. Skeletons and ranged weapons dealt with the red wizards, and the big spider group was killed as well:
Finally, Goibniu went basilisk hunting. Anapa was protected from petrification by Owain, with skeletons helping him to clear most of the area. The adventuring party was defeated with the help of some buffs and backstabs, and Mutamin was shot before being able to use his spells. Now, every wilderness area is cleared, and it's time to travel to Cloakwood.
Core difficulty. Using EE. Notable mods: SCS, aTweaks, Item Randomizer, BG1 NPC project, a few little extra quests, and some ease of use tweaks.
I'm using a random number generator to pick what kind of character I am running, and then attempting to roleplay how that character would behave in the game world... (within reason, anyway).
Character #1: Paucendeo. Half Elf FMC. Lawful Good.
After barely escaping the ambush that killed Gorion, Paucendeo fled home to Candlekeep. Shockingly, the captain of the guard, a man who had known him for a decade, turned him away at the gate. Rejection. Abandoned to the wolves. Not understanding why Ulraunt gave the order to bar his way, he turned into the forest and headed for Beregost, to seek shelter with Firebead Elvenhair.
Just lost an IWD2 no-reload run. I was going to use two characters, then had to switch to 3 when challenge rating crippled our power, but still found that Tactics made the Shaengarne bridge battle too difficult. I thought I had it figured out, with high AC all around and plenty of Fireballs thanks to some highly intensive level squatting, but in trying to sneak up on Xuki, we failed some stealth checks and my best fighter got paralyzed. We had to flee, and due to tremendous enemy pressure, we couldn't launch any more Fireballs to thin the herd.
I was going to salvage the quest after slaying Xuki by having our last remaining character pick up everybody's loot and smuggle it away with Xuki's Bag of Holding, but a collision bug prevented me from recovering any lost equipment. Then the enemy called in a massive horde of new critters to deal with. My paladin finally failed a critical will save and died in seconds.
Diary of Æthel There were four of us that were brought up together in Candlekeep, Æthel, Wilfred, William and Imoen.
Three of us were strongly influenced by a visiting cleric of Helm and thus we became followers of Helm. Imoen being of chaotic nature felt a little left out, but we remained friends as she is a good-hearted soul. I and Wilfred became paladins, but William didn’t have the charisma and so became a cleric. I am a Moonblade wielder and have proficiency in long swords and sword and shield, Wilfred specialises in two handed swords and two handed weapons, whilst William specialises in spiked weapons and sword and shield style.
We were attacked by assassins in Candlekeep, but because they were not working together, we defeated them easily despite their good equipment. One of them had had the gall to steal my Moonblade which I was so glad to recover.
These attacks precipitated our leaving of Candlekeep which saddened me somewhat as I had just begun to enjoy the earthier pleasures of life with a guard and also Hull.
To the east we were attacked by more assassins who killed Gorion. We headed for the FAI and on the way found some useful rings. Outside the FAI we were attacked by another assassin, a mage this time who didn’t manage to cast a single spell before his demise.
Inside I continued my carnal education with another adventurer and I was also asked to deal with a spider infestation in Beregost.
Outside I cleared the area of hobgoblins and in transit killed a lot of bandits. William was badly hurt, and our potions came in useful.
To the north we helped a widow and a priestess called Tenya and we killed an ankheg as well before heading to Beregost to deal with those spiders.
Goibniu entered the first Cloakwood area and helped Aldeth against the druids. In the next area, skeletons were summoned to tank spiders, while Helios disarmed traps and the party assisted with ranged weapons. However, things didn't go perfectly in the spider's nest: Everyone threw a fireball at the spiders, via potions, amulets or wands, killing most of them. However, not all of the spiders died, and Luna was killed by two quick sword spider hits:
The other spiders were killed by the party, and Luna was resurrected at the FAI. Not much happened at the next Cloakwood area, the party killed Peter and moved on. The hamadryad was killed by skeletons, and Goibniu made his way to the wyvern cave.
I misremembered some details about the area and my party was positioned poorly when entering the cave, with Goibniu being in potential trouble, so I decided to move back out. However, after leaving, the two wyverns spawned next to Donar, who was killed instantly, while the rest of the party managed to run away:
At least I still had my skeletons waiting outside, and the party was already buffed with bless and chant, so with the skeletons tanking, the wyverns were killed. Back to the FAI again. Cloakwood is not working according to plan so far.
On to the next area - The party prepared for Drasus&co with skeletons, remove fear, bless and chant, invisible positioning and a variety of offensive spells. The skeletons proved to be extremely effective, instantly taking out one of the mages, while Owain's magic missles and some ranged weapons defeated the second one right away:
After resting once more, Goibniu entered the iron mines. Haresian has given me trouble in the past, but I was prepared with some potions of absorption in case somehing should go wrong (she likes to throw lightning bolts at the party). I decided to finally have a little bit of fun with Luna's special Priest of Talos abilites: Stormshield protects not only from lightning, but also from normal missles, which makes it hard for enemies around Hareishan to hurt her. The close quarters make lightning bolts even more devastating - after throwing a fireball potion to get the enemies attention, a stormshield-protected Luna retreated and used her first lightning bolt:
It bounced back and forth, killing the first couple of enemies. Hareishan then used her own lightning bolt on some summoned skeletons, mostly just killing some of her own men. Donar snuck into the room to check what had happened:
The halfling finished off the mage with some hit and run shots with his sling. The party returned to level 1 to rest and journeyed further down the mines. Natasha, who uses lightning bolts as well, was dealt with by Luna and her skeletons alone:
I had the remaining skeletons attack the ogre mage, who managed to confuse Helios:
However, the thief was invisble, and didn't do anything bad while affected by the spell. The party killed the ogre after he wasted his most dangerous spells on the skeletons, rested again at level one and moved down to the final level.
Helios disarmed Davaeorn's traps. The mage's vanilla script is terrible at dealing with skeletons, so I didn't even prepare the party for the battle and just had the animated dead attack him:
He didn't managed to kill a single skeleton before dying.
Time to enter Baldur's Gate! As you can see, the party is really dependent on the animate dead spell right now, but this will hopefully change in Baldur's Gate, with new mage spells (haste!), more potions and lots of experience available. Still, there's no reason not to use the skeletons - at least they're not as overpowered as they were in vanilla BG1.
I arranged an ogre guard for the town and fetched some blood for a mage in exchange for a nice little sword then headed north into darkness.
A stealth approach allowed me to shine the light without taking damage and Puk triggered the bridge trap for an easy crossing... In fact this bridge became my ambush site for the level with Sarah pumping out spirits and the safe resting just outside under the lights.
Viconia stepped out to make room for Mazzy which was a mistake... Should have kicked Jan because no level 9 cleric means no repulse undead and shade lord is hard enough without letting him have mates.
Puk used the special gold ammo to dispatch the alter in one shot then we whooped Patrick as Katarina kited ... Sarah was forced to heal (another reason I should not have kicked Viconia) so we did it without adds but the special ammo whittled away at the lord for a glorious victory and well earned level ups.
P.s, now that we don't need repulse undead, Puk can cast it... Always the way.
OK, my friends, with the help of my other friend (who is far more skilled with internet technologies/stuff - building/maintaining sites, programming etc.) we've managed to make an archives of both Bioware BG1/BG2 no-reload threads and The Adventurer's Lounge. We made "lite" and "full" versions of no-reload threads. "Lite" are "html only" and occupy 213Mb/198Mb respectively. "Full" are far more fat but have most pictures/screenshots stored locally as well as CSS and JS files (~5.6/5.7Gb respectively). At the moment I've uploaded "lite" versions on my site and they are available online via this links:
Please check if those links work for you and let me know if something is wrong.
If, for whatever reasons, those links became broken once Bioware forums will be closed I'll replace the "lite" versions with "full" ones and post the new links here.
I'll update all archives with most recent versions once Bioware forums will turn "read only" and also try to edit the Hall of Heroes appropriately so it shows the proper links.
In Baldur's Gate, the first thing I did was go for the Helm of Glory for some additional charisma before purchasing various potions and scrolls:
Owain learned some new spells, haste being the most important one. I should also mention that Luna can cast level 4 spells now - she'll mostly be using protection from evil 10' radius and defensive harmony for now. I decided to go for an unusual build with Anapa - I'm investing in single-weapon style, because his ac is really, really terrible and as a Kensai, he can't even use shields. It's paying off so far.
Anyway, Luna had some skeleton take care of the four mages at Sorcerous Sundries:
And I started completing all of the various sidequests in Baldur's Gate. I won't mention most of them, since they are generally easy.
I have some screenshots - first, showing off my new general group buffs for tougher battles, with the ogre mage in the sewers:
Remove fear, bless, chant, haste, defensive harmony, protection from evil 10' radius. A powerful combination. Owain is usually also using some individual defensive buffs like MI and blur.
Here is the Helm&Cloak fight:
Animated dead are even more powerful with the aforementioned buffs.
At Ramazith's tower, I used a protection from undead scroll for this otherwise potentially dangerous level:
The intelligence tome is going to Anapa (to get him to 11 intelligence against mind flayers), the dexterity tome to Owain (another point of armor class), the wisdom tome, of course, to Luna.
Fighting Wiven gave me some trouble with a previous randomized party, so I used the full array of buffs:
While helping Aldeth, Owain used his first forth level spell (emotion) against some doppelgangers, though only some were affected:
This battle was actually rather tough, and I had to use a few healing potions - all due to the fact that I pulled all of the doppelgangers at once in order to hit as many as possible with the emotion spell. When the emotion spell failed to affect most of the opponents, my lack of good tanks once again proved to be troublesome, though everyone survived.
Against the ogre mages at the docks, I used the arrow of slaying and the usual buffs, while magic missle and some wand charges helped to stop all of the dangerous spells:
Aside from against Jardak, the 4 mages at Sorcerous Sundries and the Helm&Cloak party, I only used skeletons once while doing all of these quests and fighting all of these battles in Baldur's Gate: Against Desreta and Vay-ya at the Low Lantern, to avoid getting hit by another confusion spell (I don't want to kill innocents and lose reputation/paladin status):
Luna is currently using the Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Now, the only sidequest/battle still remaining in the city is Degrodel's house - before I deal with that, Goibniu will travel around, buy some items, start some of the easier TotSC content and gain some more experience.
I have restarted my IWD2 run, this time with better plans and several mods installed, including Tactics for IWD2. Tactics enemies in IWD2 are vicious, flanking the party without mercy, healing themselves with potions, and using much deadlier spells than vanilla.
We only have three characters in this run. That's a huge handicap, because XP from enemy kills in IWD2 decreases as the party's average level increases. This means small parties of high-level characters get a lot less XP than normal parties of 6. Balancing out these weaknesses are my other mods, which tweak IWD2 classes, especially the druid, and bring a few Heart of Fury items into normal mode (normal mode items are pretty boring).
Our first character is... Frisk!
Yes, this is an Undertale-themed run. Frisk is a small, gender-ambiguous child who fell into the Underground because they are a clumsy doofus.
Frisk's personality is complex. Beneath an impassive exterior trembles a strange spirit full of passion and pathos--among other dramatic words. They conquered the world by flirting with skeletons, hugging fuzzy goat monsters, warping the time-space continuum, and dance-fighting with a killer robot TV star. That's basically Undertale in a nutshell.
Frisk's time-traveling shenanigans have landed them in Icewind Dale. But they are not alone. Our second character is... Goat Bro!
Asriel is a goat monster Frisk befriended after attempting to kill Frisk one million times. Despite living for a short eternity as the most miserable and evil monster in existence, Asriel has recovered and is now the sweet, loving fuzzball he once was.
If you're an Undertale fan and want to know what the hell happened, this is based on a fanfiction I wrote about Asriel's life after the events of Undertale: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11783596/1/Flowey-Blooms Anyway, Asriel is back.
So who's our third character?
No, it's not Sans. Sorry.
Our third character is... Chara!
Chara is a troubled child (also gender ambiguous, like Frisk) who fell into the Underground attempting to commit suicide. Asriel and Frisk have done everything they can to lift Chara up since then.
Very little is truly understood about Chara and who they really are.
Frisk is more of a bard than a sorcerer for various reasons, but bards aren't as strong in a small party like ours. Asriel is a paladin who will dual to cleric. It doesn't fit him perfectly, but then, there is no D&D class for adorable sweetie pie. Chara is a druid, partly because my mods strengthen druids, but mostly because Chara was fond of gardening. Chara's affection for plants, besides providing valuable fuel for a Chara/Flowey ship, fits the druid class.
Frisk, Asriel, and Chara sail into Targos, and find the town curiously quiet. The smell of ash and fresh blood fills the air.
@ussnorway: I actually considered cranking Chara's Charisma up to 18 and making them our sorcerer instead of Frisk. It was only when I re-read a theory article that pointed out Chara's interest in gardening that I made them our druid.
I mostly chose their stats based on powergaming priorities. I would have gone further, but dropping their INT below 8 seemed like too much.
I'm not sure where Chara's CHA would be. Based on the True Lab backstory, Chara is probably very charismatic, or at least persuasive enough to get Asriel to follow along. The buttercup plan was Chara's idea, after all.
But the Chara-as-narrator theory, which I feel is the most accurate assessment of who Chara is, suggests something very different:
Chara is always inside Frisk; not just in the No Mercy route. Confused at the failure of their plan to free the monsters, Chara is not sure what to believe in anymore and decides to follow Frisk's lead. Frisk's choices mold Chara. When Frisk is friendly, Chara as the narrator is optimistic and playful. But when Frisk starts hurting people, this convinces Chara that it really is "kill or be killed."
If this is true, then Asriel follows Chara, and Chara follows Frisk, which suggests that Chara's CHA should be higher than Asriel's but lower than Frisk's.
Except Asriel should have a very high CHA score, since he was universally loved when he was alive, much like Asgore. Which would mean all three of them would have very high CHA scores.
Trio no reload (Gate70, Grond0, Corey_Russell attempt 3, session 6)
Chateau Irenicus The previous session had seen the four mephit portals shut down, and the trio quickly ran through the remaining opposition in about 10 minutes of play. Irenicus made an appearance outside but the Cowled Wizards took him and Imoen into custody.
Kalah's 15 minutes of fame at the circus Nothing much to speak of here, other than Unyo getting his strength down to 4. Pins had almost finished off the troublesome shadow but Coretank killed Kalah first.
Slavery in the Slums Gaelan Bayle set the scene before the trio headed into the Copper Coronet. After 10 minutes or so they had handed over the keys to Hendak. He asked if the trio could clear a slaver compound that could be reached via the sewers. No trouble. Well, other than Pins being Held by hobgoblins. She survived.
A group of kobolds were nearby, and they decided to Hold Pins again. Unyo was nearby but had been slowed while Coretank was bravely charging ahead in search of more victims. Unyo tried to use an Insect Plague but Pins croaked before casting ended. Coretank arrived in time to mop up the remnants and the trio returned to the surface for a 1500gp resurrection. Rod of Resurrection added to shopping list but not yet obtained.
Captain Haegan and his slavers lasted about 10 minutes, his reserve group another 5 or so thanks to a well-placed acid blob trap that Coretank was guided over while Corey_Russell was briefly called away... Unyo used Iron Skins to foil a repeating poison trap on some stairs, and slowed the poison for Pins and Coretank as they followed.
Decisions Decisions The next step was a toss-up between desperately seeking Suna Seni and relieving Officer Dirth of his troublesome armour, with the party split over which to do first. The ambush failed to appear so Coretank 'inherited' the Full Plate after running a Cleric through on the way. There's only one way to celebrate free armour, by clearing a pirate hideout naturally.
Suna Seni failed to show up on trips to Watchers Keep (potion case and gem bag bought), the City Gates (obtain Trademeet quest) or Government District (purchase magic licence, agree to hunt down Valygar for Tolgerias and add Umar to the map). She turned up on the way to the Bridge District and soon wished she hadn't bothered.
Corey_Russell lost his game cursor while looting the bodies so dropped to rejoin. This isn't possible in an ambush area so he waited patiently as the party ran into Renfeld and his attackers. Once they were charmed and harmed, he eventually rejoined on arrival at the Bridge District.
Decisions Decisions On arrival, a mugger tried to speak to Pins and Unyo. They both declined, more through fear of the wrong dialogue choice than any physical danger. Coretank stepped in and refused to cough up. Once they were dealt with he went on the trip of a lifetime (Mazed while grabbing the Berserker Horn) leaving Pins and Unyo to solve the Skinner murders in his absence.
Unyo shook his head, having protected Pins against Fire and Lightning there was little danger from the traps inside the Tanner's building or so he thought. Coretank had other plans though, successfully finding the repeating lightning trap. Unyo briefly considered protecting the Undead Hunter against lightning in case he went back for another dose.
The Rune Assassins can be tricky so Unyo decided to use True Sight before arriving. His plan was to cast an insect plague and shapeshift to help his companions. By the time he shifted though, the battle was over.
Gaelan Bayle was duly paid off, meaning the party can consider visiting Aran Linvail next time.
Goibniu travelled to High Hedge, Ulgoth's Beard and Durlag's Tower to buy some more potions. He also made a quick stop in the southwestern part of the map to kill the Doomsayer:
As more and more fights require melee combat, I'm starting to have Owain cast strength on Goibniu - the buff lasts for a very long time and hugely increases the paladin's melee damage output.
Against the battle horrors at Durlag's the party also used the wand of the heavens, some wands of magic missles and Owain's magic missle spell - they are still quite hard to hit otherwise:
I decided to go for the upper levels of the tower in order to get some experience and the wisdom tome for Luna. I should mention that I previously stole the ring of free action while in Ulgoth's Beard, making the various ghasts much more easy to deal with:
Anapa was protected from petrification, allowing him to slay the basilisks outside:
Finally, I had Luna summon her skeletons to help with the ghost:
I dealt peacefully with Kirinhale and left the tower for now.
The next part of TotSC the party decided to go for was the Ice Island. I usually deal with this place mostly with the help of a protection from magic scroll, and this time was no exception, as Anapa killed the first couple of mages:
However, for the ankhegs, additional help was required, so the party used skeletons, buffs and sleep spells to assist the half-orc kensai:
Anapa cleared the rest of the place, and Goibniu returned to Baldur's Gate, where Degrodel's house still remained. The party felt ready to give it a try.
I prepared with the usual buffs, this time adding strength of one, since the party will have to use melee weapons. The battle was long and tough - I had to use many wand charges and healing potions, get many party members to safety, and in the end, almost all of my buffs were gone, but Goibniu was victorious:
After resting, the party prepared for the second battle. Skeletons in the northeastern part of Degrodel's room to hold off the enemies, the party surrounding the mage to kill him - no reason to lose the Helm of Balduran:
This battle was relatively easy, and soon, the last enemy was defeated:
Finally, for their last quest in the city, the party started investigating the Iron Throne. The final battle of the chapter was made much easier by Donar luring the enemies downstairs, where skeletons and the rest of the heavily buffed party were waiting - with all of the buffs, the party had enough ranged weapon power to take out the enemy party before anyone of them really had the chance to do something harmful:
I swapped Jan for Valygar, told the town they are safe now and headed off to see this keep everyone talks about.
The top floor had only methods, shadows, the odd golem and some spiders guarding valuable loot... I indulged on a +4 crossbow for myself then we rang the bell for some easy but powerful weapons.
The statues are not immune to 'cloudkill' gas however my peons are!
OK, my friends, with the help of my other friend (who is far more skilled with internet technologies/stuff - building/maintaining sites, programming etc.) we've managed to make an archives of both Bioware BG1/BG2 no-reload threads and The Adventurer's Lounge. We made "lite" and "full" versions of no-reload threads. "Lite" are "html only" and occupy 213Mb/198Mb respectively. "Full" are far more fat but have most pictures/screenshots stored locally as well as CSS and JS files (~5.6/5.7Gb respectively). At the moment I've uploaded "lite" versions on my site and they are available online via this links: .....
Duo Update 5 (Attempt #1) - (Corey_Russell, Gate70)
It took a while to get started this session, as we had Skype issues (Skype is what we use to communicate during the run). Eventually they did get sorted out the duo proceeded to the Tree of Life.
There wasn't a lot of prep for Irenicus, mostly just protection from magic scroll on Axer. Axer did most of the damage as Vommar had difficulty targeting Irenicus. But Irenicus couldn't do much and fell.
Since any evil path would cause Vommar to be fallen, this meant all good choices in Hell were made. We tried to use the free action ring so Vommar wouldn't get held in the 3rd tear, but perhaps fixpack prevents that trick from working. Sarevok was easily defeated and it was time for the main event!
Corey_Russell turned on auto-pause on target gone - this is helpful when GWW the demons. GWW the Foebane was just devastating - the demons fell extremely fast. Not a ton prep, but invulnerability potion on Vommar and potion of magic protection on Axer. The duo continued to press their attacks on Irenicus and once again he couldn't do much before being finished off.
Axer was mean against Illsaera and used the Reflection Shield - victory was easily achieved.
For pocket plane challenge #1, it should have been pretty easy for this team. However, Vommar save vs. spells is only about 4 - thus he got held by a drow mage! Axer used a dispelling arrow to fix Vommar and get him back in business.
Saradush enemies were cleared pretty easily. However, we did not do everything here. We mainly wanted to do the main quest and get bags of holding and potions for Vommar and did so.
Jail is child's play when a Cavalier chunks most enemies here with his turn undead ability. The lower levels of Gromnier's castle were negotiated safely, with Deva distracting the high level mage down here.
Time to deal with the enemies on the level below Gromnir. Vommar's saves once again did him in and he was held! Axer used dispelling arrow again and then RoR - since Vommar was low health and we didn't want him chunked, he used a superior healing potion - he survives and the enemies are defeated.
The duo had a great strategy for Gromnir and his goons. By this point, the Foebane was now the +5 version. So plan was for Axer to use GWW of Foebane on Gromnir, while Vommar used a Deva to distact the mages. This worked great and another victory for the duo.
The duo had just enough time in the session to get to the Wilderness and sell their junk to the merchant here. It finally dawned on the duo they really need to improve Vommar's saves. Axer found a full plate and the +2 ring of protection and gave to Vommar. Axer asked what helm was Vommar using and Vommar was just using a basic one to improve saves vs. death! Axer mentioned he had a Helm of Defense in his bag of holding let's use that - this got Vommar's save vs. spells to 1, much better than his previous save of 4.
The first big fight in IWD2, which Tactics makes even more dangerous, comes after a long series of low-risk quests. We need to extract as much XP and gold as possible, lest we enter that fight unprepared. There are various things you can do to gather quest XP.
We break into the warehouse to look for healing potions, and find that Asriel's low Strength is sufficient. Ordinary goblins have -4 luck in IWD2's prologue, so we can tackle them with little risk.
Frisk starts a friendly conversation with the locals. They're not very chatty.
Targos, unlike basically everywhere else in IWD2, has a lot of opportunities for characters with the right race, class, or stats to grab a little more XP. Itty bitty Frisk makes some itty bitty gains.
Knowing we'll need lots of gold for the big fight, we scour the area for loot. Asriel sees something surprising...
...and has a good long cry. Asriel's tears fill us with determination.
We rest up to get Asriel's Sunscorch back (as an aasimar, he gets one casting per day) and descend into the tunnels. Turns out Tactics removed the Targos goblins' -4 luck penalty.
In IWD2, luck modifies critical hit chances, which means a luck penalty prevents critical hits. But these goblins don't have one. With only 10 Constitution, Asriel could die in a single hit from any one of these goblins.
Also, helmets don't block critical hits in IWD2. And some weapons deal triple damage instead of double damage on critical hits. However, critical hits don't do critical damage unless a second roll is enough to hit the target normally: after rolling a 20, you have to roll again, and if the roll is high enough, it deals double or triple damage. Attack rolls are important at every stage of this game.
We break out our best spells against Rukwurm and his goblin buddies, but Sunscorch barely singes Rukwurm, and Entangle--a devastating spell at this stage of the game, since Chara has Spell Focus: Transmutation--fails completely.
Entangle actually works in many places in IWD2, including underground. But these tunnels are an exception.
Frisk knocks out most of the goblins with Sleep (they have Spell Focus: Enchantment for just this purpose), but Rukwurm resists, and nearly slices poor Asriel in half.
It's difficult to overemphasize just how deadly bad luck can be in this game. Even Stoneskin can't block attacks outright; it only stops the first 10 damage, and only if the weapon is below +5 (late-game, Stoneskin will do very little) and only for a certain amount of HP.
Asriel downs a Potion of Healing, which recovers all 9 HP. But another hit could slay him instantly, even at full health. Asriel runs away from Rukwurm while Frisk and Chara attack with crossbows. Chara, as a druid, has no proficiency in crossbows, but we manage to kill Rukwurm eventually.
Kiting won't save us in the future, though. Tactics apparently tweaks enemy AI so that enemies will often change targets and ignore your high-AC tank, hassling your archers to force them to switch to melee weapons.
We knock out the remaining goblins with Sleep. Unlike the EE games (the most recent updates, anyway), sleeping critters in IWD2 wake up on hit, and we can slay goblins in a single hit. To make sure we kill each goblin before they have a chance to wake up, I pull Frisk and Chara back and have them fire simultaneously. One of them can fire a bolt while the other bolt is in midair, making both attack automatic hits.
It's not reliable, since we only have 1 attack per round and speed factors don't let us strike simultaneously, but we finish off the last of the goblins and find a very nice reward after the fight.
That's an Oil of Fiery Burning, which does 5d6 damage. It's all too easy to kill your own party members with one of these, but if you target it right, it can break pre-Shaengarne battles.
It won't be reliable against mages, though. Mirror Image in IWD2 blocks area-effect damage.
With the goblins dead, we're safe for a while. To celebrate, Frisk convinces Chara--who has 18 Constitution--to start a drinking contest with the hairiest man in Targos.
Braehg, the drink in question, is non-alcoholic: it's a mix of milk and boar's blood. Doesn't get much less kosher than that.
Chara drinks Guthewulfe under the table. We lose some gold and Chara is mighty sick, but we get a silver wolf charm out of the ordeal. It can summon a wolf and has three charges. It just might save our lives.
We go around town filching random items out of barrels. Asriel finds a very special mod-introduced item.
It's unique but not overpowered, granting a +1 luck bonus. Asriel wears it, as it matches his fur.
All the side quests in Targos require a lot of backtracking, but CTRL-J makes it bearable. A sick man asks Frisk to deliver a letter to his girlfriend, but Frisk really should not be trusted with love letters.
When the sick man realizes Frisk broke their promise, he turns into a big gray naked guy and attacks! Chara almost turns the whole place hostile with an Ice Dagger.
Ice Dagger, a mage spell which my mods give to druids as well, does 1 cold damage to everyone next to the target. If that halfling had been a little closer, Ice Dagger would have hit him and turned everyone in the camp hostile.
The most backtracking-intensive quest in Targos is Veira's, which requires a chat with 5 different people multiple times. On the plus side, we do get a very pretty bottle.
You can trade it to Elytharra the mage for either 500 gold or a weak magical dagger. The 500 gold will buy us a new Oil of Fiery Burning from Oswald, which we just might need.
There is one dangerous fight before the big one at the end of the prologue. We have to defeat Phaen of the Rags, a low-level mage who summons a handful of goblins. Tactics makes him awfully nasty, so we have to pick our spells carefully. Asriel, who has recently taken his first level as a cleric, memorizes some Command spells. Similar to BG1, Command in IWD2 offers no save against targets below level 6. We knock out Phaen despite successful saving throws.
We sneak in a little damage, but he manages to cast Mirror Image right after waking up. Asriel knocks him out again.
Hitting his Mirror Images won't wake him up, so we get a little extra out of that Command spell. Chara follows up with Ice Dagger--and then I remember that Phaen's robe grants cold resistance.
IWD2 uses the 3rd edition ruleset, which means that damage resistances work by negating a set amount of damage rather than reducing it by a percent. So a cold resistance of 5 would block 5 cold damage whether it's from a 6 damage Ice Dagger or a 15 damage Ice Lance. This has a huge impact on gameplay, as it's much harder to resist strong damage spells.
Phaen responds with his own damage spells, to much greater effect.
Asriel recovers with one of our few Potions of Healing, and Phaen brings out his goblin goons. Frisk knocks out all but one of them, the strongest one.
We struggle to land hits on Phaen without Command to help us. Phaen resorts to melee combat. Turns out he's incredibly good at it.
Even at full health, Asriel could never have survived a blow like that. How did a low-level mage do such terrible damage?
Well, in my install, various items in normal mode get replaced with their stronger Heart of Fury mode versions. This means Phaen is using a magical staff that has +3 to damage and +5 to hit.
It also means Phaen is wearing a super-powerful robe that improves his AC by 4 instead of 2. We keep fighting him, but it's almost impossible to land a hit.
Finally, we get desperate, and bring out a Flaming Oil. Flaming Oil potions are tiny Fireballs that deal 2d8 damage and have the area of effect of a Fire Seed. Phaen is a melee juggernaut, but Flaming Oil potions don't require an attack roll.
We escape the battle with two powerful new items and spend 200 gold to resurrect Asriel. We give him Phaen's staff; he needs the bonuses to be competitive in combat.
We're out of potions. Our only healing items left are Iron Rations.
Tastes like nails and rust.
We spend several hundred gold buying new Potions of Healing. I hate to spend so much money so early on, but we're at one of the four most dangerous fights of the game.
Not all of the Heart of Fury items need to be purchased with Asriel's life. Some are just lying around, like this shield.
It makes the user practically immune to missile weapons, and there are a lot of missile weapons coming up. Unfortunately, our best weapon is a staff, and we can't use both at the same time. Chara takes the shield in hand, since Frisk can't tolerate the arcane spell failure penalty.
Moments later, we get another shield in exchange for teaching the Targos soldiers how to stab a barrel.
One of my mods adds some forgotten items into the game. This one is just a powerful buckler, with no secondary effects, but every bit of AC could be life-saving.
All that's left are some tiny, non-violent talking quests.
Once Frisk pressures the Iron Collar gang into doing their jobs, we rest one last time and report to Shawford Crale. One of the toughest fights in the game awaits.
The first phase of the attack on Targos begins. Chara casts Entangle and green sprouts shoot up from the snow. Asriel has had his memory wiped (long story), but Frisk has a history with deadly vines. We stay out of the way and attack from afar.
But Vghotan is totally immune. We can't snare him. And his stats are stupendous.
Asriel would need 28 AC to reliably avoid Vghotan's attacks. He doesn't have 28 AC. But Asriel has Phaen's Ironshod Staff, which grants him a monstrous +3 to damage and +5 to hit. Asriel hits back twice as hard.
With Vghotan dead, the first phase is broken. We finish off the remaining goblins with missile weapons and collect Vghotan's Band--the Heart of Fury version.
[spoiler]
The Strength bonus is irrelevant, as Bull's Strength will override it, the immunity to fear is redundant with Remove Fear, and I'll probably forget to use the Beast Claw ability, but the Freedom of Movement effect is a huge game-changer. Not because it will block Chara's Entangle, but because it will keep Asriel safe from the Hold Person spells that Orc Shamans spam so mercilessly in the coming areas, allowing him to use Remove Paralysis on Frisk and Chara if they fail their saves. Having Asriel fail a save against Hold Person is one of the highly probable game-ending events if we should survive this fight.
The next phase begins. We hide before proceeding; anybody can use stealth in IWD2, though heavy armor will penalize it.
This lets us control who appears first, and therefore whom the enemy first attacks. Asriel appears first, and then Frisk and Chara strike from afar. Another stroke of luck!
Tactics enemies like Ghotrag use potions, but with that critical hit and Asriel's +8 total attack bonus, we don't give Ghotrag enough time to recover.
We kill the remaining goblins with little fuss. We still have our best resources on hand, and we're going to need them.
The last big fight is Caballus, a mage with level 3 spells. He can wipe out our entire party with a single spell if we're not careful. With only one attack per round for each party member, we can't hope to get past Caballus' Mirror Images before he destroys us. This means we need to play very, very defensively.
Frisk approaches while invisible and knocks out some of the goblins with Sleep, easing the pressure on Black Geoffrey. Frisk hurries away before Caballus can nail her with an evocation spell.
Frisk cannot save Geoffrey. Caballus obliterates him with one blow--and he doesn't even have to expend a spell.
Caballus has a +3 weapon, giving him the same +8 attack bonus as Vghotan. Even without his spells, he's a titan compared to us. We retreat, hoping Olap and the other Targos defenders can take a whack at Caballus, but Chara doesn't run fast enough, and Caballus catches them while they're still visible. They keep running, surviving Acid Arrow with potions.
Caballus gives chase and spots Olap Tamewater, who charges in to face him. Caballus draws back his staff.
Olap sinks to his knees and collapses, spilling what's left of his head onto fresh snow. Caballus steps over Olap's body and trudges after us, chuckling just loud enough for us to hear. We keep running.
We lose him, but we need to monitor the situation so we'll know where he's going. Otherwise he might sneak up on us. Frisk, Chara, and Asriel start an old scouting pattern of mine: they hide, retreat, and sneak back until they can see the enemy before falling back. It lets us track Caballus' movements without getting in range.
But it only works as long as each character remains hidden, and stealth is difficult when our skill points are invested in Concentration and Spellcraft. But Frisk has lots of practice dodging magic attacks, and Chromatic Orb does nothing on a successful Reflex save.
We have no allies left to help us against Caballus, and we don't have the potions to survive his magic. We need something else to absorb his spells.
Thanks to Chara's drinking ability, we have an answer: the wolf charm from Guthewulfe. We send out a wolf and Caballus loses a spell.
It won't be enough. Asriel summons some goblins of his own to wear down the enemy, and we pin down Caballus' goblin archer buddies while the mage is distracted.
When we lose our goblin summons, Asriel brings out new ones. Caballus renews his defenses, bracing for the fight.
That's good. We want Caballus to run out of Mirror Image spells before we engage him. But there's even more good news:
We're running out of summons, but Caballus is losing his deadliest spells.
Frisk fails another stealth check and Caballus gives chase. Frisk dodges a second Chromatic Orb and Chara summons more vines, snaring Caballus. We close in and strike with ranged weapons, though Caballus' resistances block some of the damage.
IWD2 Entangle doesn't just stop the target from moving; it also imposes a -2 DEX penalty (which stacks with multiple Entangle spells) and forces the target to make a concentration check to cast spells while entangled. We're not completely safe from his spells, but we do get a better chance at hitting him.
It doesn't last. Caballus wriggles free, just out of the Entangle spell's radius, and can now cast spells with little chance of disruption. Chara soaks up a Magic Missile.
Caballus has no Mirror Images left and appears to be low on spells. Asriel marches in for the kill. With his high attack bonus from Phaen's staff, he should be able to land a strong hit on Caballus.
But Caballus hits hard, too, and luck is on the goblin's side. He kills Asriel in seconds.
Caballus turns to Chara, but Asriel's presence was the only thing holding back an Oil of Fiery Burning. Without Asriel in the way, we can safely torch Caballus and the remaining goblins. Caballus survives the blast, but he took a direct hit.
We need to finish him off. Chara equips Tabard's Shield and runs away from Caballus. When Frisk is in range, Chara pauses so Frisk can hit the goblin with a Flaming Oil potion. Chara gets burnt, but Caballus suffers more.
I start leading Chara around a catapult, hoping to hit Caballus with some of Frisk's bolts while he's trying to catch up, but Chara gets too close to their own Entangle spell, and Caballus lands a fourth critical hit.
Caballus' luck is absurd. Chara only survives thanks to their 18 Constitution. They recover with a potion and Frisk hurls another Flaming Oil.
It's just enough to take him down.
We resurrect Asriel, gather treasure from the battlefield, and report our success. Asriel now has a +3 club, Caballus' Whispering Staff, that gives bonuses to stealth and can cast Invisibility 10' Radius once per day--and which he can use with a shield, compensating for Asriel's low Constitution and level gap.
We're not out of the clear just yet. Another fight, also one of the hardest in the game, is coming right up, and I'm not sure if we'll get the levels we need to survive it. Before we move on, we rest at the inn to memorize new spells.
Snuggling up with Asriel's warm fur fills us with determination.
We leave Targos for Shaengarne Ford. The next few fights, against bands of orcs, can be very intense. The road to Shaengarne Bridge is seeded with Kegs of Blasting, which Orc Firestarters can detonate with a single Arrow of Flame +1, producing a fireball strong enough to kill basically anything at this stage of the game. Even if you stay out of range, it kills enemy orcs and costs you a lot of XP.
We use Command to knock out the Firestarters--not because we want to keep the Kegs of Blasting from detonating, necessarily, but because their Arrows of Flame +1 are extremely valuable. Selling them will be very profitable, so it's in our best interest to keep the orcs from firing any. Asriel uses Sunscorch to detonate the kegs instead.
The other major threat in this run is Hold Person from Orc Shamans. The save DC isn't too bad--enemy spellcasters aren't so min-maxed and don't come with lots of Spell Focus feat--but IWD2 has critical failures on saves, which means it's always possible to fail a save, no matter how weak the spell or how sturdy the target. Vghotan's Band blocks Hold Person outright, however, and therefore goes to Asriel, since he can cast Remove Paralysis on the others.
Asriel isn't high enough level to cast it just yet, since he's an aasimar with 1 paladin level and a -1 level adjustment, and also missed out on the XP from defeating Caballus. But with the Orc Firestarter dead, the enemies are stuck behind the keg, so Chara and Frisk remain safe while they're held.
We defeat the orcs and rescue a hot druid lady from their clutches. Frisk tries to make a move on her, even though she's a married woman.
Frisk has a history of looking for love in all the wrong places.
With Command to take down Orc Firestarters, Vghotan's Band to ward off shamans, and Sleep to knock out orc archers and grunts, we have an answer for everything the enemy throws at us.
Chara hits level 5, gaining early access to Call Lightning. My mods boost the save DC for Call Lightning and Static Charge, making druids even more deadly. Chara's 18 WIS and double Spell Focus in Transmutation mean enemies have to roll a 25 to make their save (10 base +4 from CHA +4 from Spell Focus +3 from spell level +4 from mods). That doesn't happen very often.
The next area has a troublesome fight, with a small horde of melee grunts and three Orc Archers flanking us. Frisk knocks out the archers, who have a habit of slaying party spellcasters in the first couple rounds.
Chara's Entangle holds off the hatchetmen long enough for us to pick them off with ranged weapons. Entangle has a DC of 19, enough to snare almost anything at Shaengarne Ford.
Dealing with Torak, the grousy head honcho of Broken Tusk clan, requires some stealth if we want to save the villagers from getting incinerated by a Keg of Blasting. Since I'm not sure our party members have strong enough stealth skills, I use Caballus' Whispering Staff to cast Invisibility Sphere.
Now we have to fight our way to the villagers. Chara is instrumental in this, but not because of their powerful Call Lightning or Entangle spells.
My mods tweak druid shapeshifting and give them some stronger abilities, making shapeshifting more worthwhile. In fact, the level 5 wild shape is now a Verbeeg, which gets 3 attacks per round (!) at 25 Strength (!) and 7- resistance to physical damage (!) at the cost of 8 Dexterity (!) and the cancellation of all AC bonuses (!) from both armor and Chara's own spells.
The net result? Chara will basically never make a Reflex save in Verbeeg form and is incredibly easy to hit, but they are very resistant to damage and can kill orcs in a single blow without landing a critical hit.
These orcs weren't really a threat to us anyway--not with Frisk's 19 DC Sleep spell--but it's cool that Chara can handle them on their own. Torak is stronger than his fellow orcs and could hurt Chara, but he doesn't have the Dexterity to handle Frisk's new Chromatic Orb spell, which stuns for 3 rounds with a DC of 17 (Frisk still lacks the second rank in Spell Focus: Enchantment.
Another cool thing about the Verbeeg form is that its spear has a triple critical hit multiplier, which means Chara especially benefits from the Rabbit's Foot amulet.
Chara is so strong their Spear of Justice can overwhelm enemy damage resistances. Curiously, Slime Zombies can bypass Chara's own resistances, which shouldn't be possible. Maybe they're dealing nonlethal damage; I don't know.
Unlike BG2, where attacks per round is more important than damage per hit due to mages' Stoneskin, it's more important in IWD2 to hit hard than to hit often. Lots of enemies have troublesome damage resistances; these critters are just the first.
Isn't this going to trivialize the fight at Shaengarne Bridge? Actually, no. Even the Verbeeg form isn't going to be enough to handle that fight. Not with Tactics installed, and all the deadly nonsense that comes with it. Shaengarne Bridge is still going to be horrific.
Further inside, we find an item that compensates for the Verbeeg's lousy Dexterity.
Chara won't gain any armor bonuses from this, but they will get stealth bonuses, making them excellent scouts despite being the size of an elephant. They sneak up on Vrek Vileclaw, the normal weapon-resistant troll in charge of the cave, and absorb a Hold Person spell.
Funny thing about getting disabled: when enemies get automatic attacks on helpless characters, they can't land critical hits, which means some of them would have an even harder time damaging Chara if Chara was disabled.
Hold Person is still a threat to our own damage output, so I switch Vghotan's Band over to Asriel and give Chara the Rabbit's Foot. Frisk takes out the shaman before it can try another Hold Person spell.
Even with nearly guaranteed attacks, the enemy can't do much against Chara. Chara gets a wicked blow on Vrek Vileclaw, whose supposed immunity to normal weapons only blocks 10% of the strike.
Asriel torches the dying troll with Sunscorch, and the battle is won.
Frisk asks if they can touch Chara's blood-soaked Spear of Justice. Chara says no.
We pawn off all the Arrows of Fire +1 we collected, which yield a ludicrous 22,000 gold from only 101 arrows.
We're almost at 40,000 gold now. But we still can't buy the items we really want, because Heart of Fury items often cost over 100,000. The item upgrade from HoF to normal mode is great, but it comes at a massive cost.
As deadly as Chara is, her defenses aren't so strong against heavy-hitting enemies. When we face off with the wererats and werebadgers in the next area, Gaernat Sharptooth smashes right through Chara's resistances.
IWD2 critical hit only deal double damage if they make a normal attack roll, but normal attack rolls are almost guaranteed hits when Chara is in Verbeeg form. And even without a critical hit, Chara can still take scratch damage from tough critters like Gaernat Sharptooth, which builds up over time. Frisk tries to stun Gary, but his Reflex save is spectacular.
Chara is also completely vulnerable to elemental damage, which easily strikes the Verbeeg form's wide circle. Chara toughs it out and keeps fighting. The Spear of Justice cuts right through Gary's thick hide.
Frisk hits Gary with Chromatic Orb on the second casting, only to find that Gary is immune to stun. Stranger still, he doesn't give the "Unaffected by the effects of whatever" message that normally plays when a critter is immune.
Gary and Chara keep trading hits. Shapeshifting disables quick items, but you can still right-click potions to drink them from the inventory screen. It's an important ability considering druids can't heal themselves without returning to natural form.
I don't know why we have those Fortitude saves whenever we drink potions. It doesn't do anything if we fail them.
Chara finally puts down Gary Pointyface, just as another round of Call Lightning comes around to zap the opposition. Putting aside the power of the Call Lightning spell, it just plain looks cool.
I make a point of looking out for weak points in strong tactics, so I can anticipate the next fatal attack. I find something new: the Verbeeg form's pitiful 9 AC also renders it vulnerable to on-hit effects.
I have found that growing too reliant on certain tactics tends to create blind spots that prove fatal in the long run. Look for holes in your strategy, and patch them.
Chara continues to dominate the scene with their Spear of Justice, taking down basically every enemy with little help from Asriel or Frisk.
Another fun fact: the Verbeeg form is innately immune to Hold Person!
Not the effect, but the spell. In IWD2, various spells have effects that automatically grant immunity to certain critter types. This is quite unlike BG2, where immunities are applied to critters via passive effects and unmovable items. This means that large targets like the Verbeeg form are naturally immune to stuff like Hold Person, simply because of the size of their circle.
There's one thing on this map that Chara's resistances won't be able to handle. I think the Malarite High Priest here can cast Call Lightning, which could mean instant death for Chara or anyone else in range. I preempt the spell by sneaking Chara over and shapeshifting right in front of the priest, allowing Chara plenty of time to disrupt his first spell.
There's only one thing left to do before the fight on Shaengarne Bridge.
We all hit level 6. Normally a party of six would be at level 5 at this point (with Tactics installed, at least), and a party of three wouldn't be much different, but I've been level squatting to make sure we're at the highest level possible before this fight.
Level squatting is the masochistic practice of delaying level ups until right before certain key events of the game. It only works in IWD2. When your party is lower level, it gains more XP from kills, which means you can jump up an extra level or more depending on how long you delay a level up. Unfortunately, the level jump at the end means you get less XP right afterward, so in the long run, level squatting doesn't actually make you any stronger. There are precious few times when it's actually worth doing.
But this is one of them. Definitely. This is Shaengarne Bridge, the second-hardest fight in the entire game.
Frisk touches Chara's Spear of Justice when they're not looking. It fills us with determination.
I have reinstalled EE along with far fewer mods. These appear to be working OK so far, but I am missing some that I used to have in SoA. Tweaks is one that I have not installed. I intend to try that after testing my current installation which shouldn't have conflicts as there is no overlap between the mods.
Weidu log below.
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods // The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod // ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version] ~SETUP-DUNGEONBEGONE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Dungeon Be Gone V1.6 ~SAERILETH/SETUP-SAERILETH.TP2~ #0 #0 // Saerileth Romance Mod (BG2:SoA & TOB NPC) created by nethrin and Sillara: v18_charsets ~SETUP-BGEEAR.TP2~ #0 #0 // TeamBG's Armors for BG:EE, BGT and TuTu Version 1.05 ~SETUP-BGEEW.TP2~ #0 #0 // TeamBG's Weapons Pack for BG:EE, BGT and TuTu Version 1.04 ~SETUP-AMBER.TP2~ #0 #0 // Amber the NPC MOD for BGII:SoA: v4 ~SETUP-AMBER.TP2~ #0 #1 // Multiplayer-friendly flirting for Amber: v4 ~SETUP-WMART.TP2~ #0 #0 // Deidre and Joluv in BG:EE ~WWW.URSTUFF2ATHKATLA/WWW.URSTUFF2ATHKATLA.TP2~ #0 #0 // (Exploit) Don't nuke BG1 items at the start of BG2: v1.0 ~TOD/SETUP-TOD.TP2~ #0 #0 // Tower Of Deception Mod (Requires Throne Of Bhaal) ~TOD/SETUP-TOD.TP2~ #0 #1 // Improved Astral Shard Guardian ~TOD/SETUP-TOD.TP2~ #0 #2 // Encounter with Ustrain ~SETUP-RECOLOREDBUTTONS.TP2~ #0 #2 // Recolored character's toolbar buttons (BG2:EE): v4.1 ~DEARNISE/SETUP-DEARNISE.TP2~ #0 #0 // de'Arnise Romance for Baldur's Gate II: v5 ~WANDCASE/WANDCASE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Wand Case: v1.3
Diary of Scythia
When I awoke in the dungeon I found that all my equipment and gold had gone. Imoen was with me and had learnt some magic. She was now a thief/conjurer and as such she was a big help. When we met an Otyugh she killed it with a lightning bolt. This hurt her too, but I was quickly able to heal her.
We helped Rielev on his way to the afterlife, killed numerous monsters, duerger, and other bad guys, and eventually made our way to the surface along with Jaheira. At that point Imoen was abducted and I suggested that Jaheira leave me. She has gone to the harper stronghold.
I helped in the circus before heading to the slum area where I killed Amalas before clearing out the slavers.
I visited the first floor of Watcher’s Keep, but decided that was sufficient for the present.
I took the bear to Wellyn and killed two of those involved in burying people alive. Unfortunately one escaped. I teamed up with someone who I thought was Hexxat but gained little. I could team up with her killer, (the genuine Hexxat) but have no desire to have someone like that in my party.
I took a poisoned man to the harper stronghold and have agreed to help Nalia.
EDIT
At the D'Arnise stronghold, I got weakened to the point that I couldn't move or use my sword (By spectral troll or spirit troll). The result of this was that I had to use 16 potions of extra healing to survive. Eventually I got my strength back and was the victor, but at such a cost.
The rest of the stronghold was straightforward. Dispell magic was enough to help Glacius. Just the final battle to go.
The only problem is that I don't know whether EE has changed it. In my last game Tor Gal was not susceptible to Cloudkill. Whether he is or not, I have yet to discover.
EDIT 2
The battle against Tor Gal was straightforward and afterwards Scythia reached level 13.
By level squatting and getting Chara to level 6, we allow Chara to get an extra feat, which my mods have improved. Chara needed to be level 5 before they could choose this feat, and therefore could not choose it earlier, but you only get feats every 3 levels unless you're a rogue, fighter, or mage. Only at level 6 could they choose it.
This feat is Wild Shape: Will o' Wisp.
Why this one? Will o' Wisps in IWD2 are awfully difficult to kill, and this form is no exception.
That spell resistance won't block everything, since various spells in IWD2 are coded to bypass magic resistance, but it will make Chara an excellent tank. Its high generic AC bonus and DEX will also make it hard to hit, though it has no damage resistance at all. Critical hits can still tear it apart, but overall it's much tougher than the Verbeeg form.
Will o' Wisp form won't break the battle at Shaengarne on its own, but it's an important part of our strategy. Before we enter the next area, Frisk drinks a Potion of Freedom to give us party-wide Freedom of Movement and Asriel drinks a Potion of Heroism (a very expensive purchase) for just a little extra boost. When faced with monstrous challenges like Shaengarne, it's better to spend than to save. Finally, we use Caballus' Whispering Staff to turn the whole party invisible.
This will let us sneak up on Xuki. We'll get backed into a corner in the process, but it means that we don't get flanked--Tactics will summon enemies behind you when you engage Xuki.
Guthma orders his ogres to destroy the bridge, knowing that we are coming to seize it. The Support Beams holding up the bridge have 200 HP and damage resistance, but they won't last forever, and if they fall, we lose a lot of experience.
Xuki tries to stall for time. We fell for it in the last run for roleplaying reasons, but this time Frisk knows better.
Chara breaks invisibility by shapeshifting. Even many on-self spells in IWD2 break invisibility, unlike in BG.
The battle begins.
Chara holds off the enemies to the west while Frisk gets to work on the ogres and Asriel focuses on Xuki, whose Mirror Image and Improved Invisibility spells will make her extremely difficult to kill. Frisk can stun the ogres with Chromatic Orb. It's a fantastic anti-fighter spell, since fighters have such terrible Reflex saves.
Unholy Blight somehow gets past Chara's spell resistance, though it doesn't hit very hard. It's our first clue that Will o' Wisp form is imperfect. Moments later, Asriel rolls a 1 on a Will save, and Xuki takes control.
Immunities are hard to come by in IWD2. There's no such thing as a Potion of Clarity in this game, and Chaotic Commands is a long way away.
The enemy lands some critical hits on Chara, but their high AC reduces the chance of critical damage.
Chara could use shapeshifting to heal themself, but it's safer to drink potions by right-clicking on the inventory screen, bypassing IWD2 shapeshifting's disabling of quick item slots.
Call Lightning and Static Charge both bypass spell resistance every time, but they can't get past Chara's Will o' Wisp damage resistances.
Xuki launches a Fireball, but there's no good place for her to fire it. The enemy suffers more than we do.
The west end of the bridge is flooded with disablers, holding off the rest of the enemies and leaving Xuki on her own. She turns her attention to Frisk, summoning a skeleton and trying to disable Frisk with Chromatic Orb. Frisk dodges it easily, as they often do.
Even if they failed their save, it wouldn't matter. Their Potion of Freedom would shield them anyway.
With Asriel still charmed and Chara and Frisk occupied, Xuki remains untouched and free to attack us. Chara starts to thin the herd to the west.
Even if Chara wasn't there, though, we've got a strong blockade against the enemy. Entangle, Web, and Stinking Cloud are marvelous anti-access/area denial tools, but all the enemy did by casting them is lock themselves out of the battlefield. While the enemy struggles to even approach, Frisk disables and kills the second ogre, saving the bridge.
Knowing Xuki has Minor Globe of Invulnerability active, Frisk turns their attention to the enemies to the west. We may as well take them down while they're vulnerable, to make sure we don't get caught off-guard when Entangle, Web, and Stinking Cloud dissipate.
I actually think Lance of Disruption is cooler, but Fireball is more useful at this stage of the game, when few enemies are resistant to fire.
Xuki's MGOI has just worn off, but I don't notice. Frisk keeps up the attack on the western enemies rather than trying to stun Xuki with a Chromatic Orb.
Normally those enemies come in so fast and so strong that they force the party east. Instead, Chara is forcing them back west.
It's a telling sign of the tide of the battle. Better still, Asriel recovers from Charm Person, and Xuki fails a save against Chromatic Orb.
Three rounds of stun gives us plenty of time to remove Xuki's Mirror Images. She doesn't survive the attack.
Why is Frisk using a staff instead of a bow, since IWD2 has no class weapon restrictions? Bows in IWD2 don't give an extra attack per round like they do in BG, though you can get an extra attack per round with the Rapid Shot feat at the cost of -2 to hit. Frisk doesn't even have a bow, because it would require an extra feat to buy proficiency in bows, and Frisk needs those feats for Spell Focus.
With the enemy spellcasters dead, Chara no longer needs Will o' Wisp form. They break out the Spear of Justice and we hunt down the remaining grunts.
Various quests in IWD2 require killing all of the enemies; not just a single big one. Not that we'd spare them anyway; we need the XP to avoid a reload.
Then we get a chilling message.
Snakes would be big trouble; Verbeeg form won't protect Chara from poison.
The enemy calls for help.
...
But nobody came.
Chara returns to Will o' Wisp form one last time to collect our treasure, including, finally, a Bag of Holding. Why Will o' Wisp form? Well, Call Lightning can go off even after the caster dies, and we've got at least one Malarite High Priest's body lying on the bridge.
The battle at Shaengarne is won. Another huge fight is coming up, but for now, we are safe.
Will o' Wisp form was powerful, but now that I think about it, layering some Entangle spells on the western bridge could have held off the enemy for a full 10 rounds as well as scramble the Malarite Priests' spells, especially if Chara took on the ogres so Frisk could Fireball the west early. But there are still plenty of dangerous mages and priests left in IWD2, and Will o' Wisp will be one of our best answers to hostile magic when Entangle will no longer be enough.
Frisk builds a snowman and stores it in the Bag of Holding so we can take it all over the world. We are filled with determination.
Paucendo bit the dust in Black Alaric's cave (I had forgotten that there's a dire charm trap in there). Second random character was a chaotic evil pure elven thief. I got a bit too aggressive with the chaotic evil RP in Candlekeep, and didn't make it out.... Oh well, working out some kinks.
Next up is a female half-orc neutral-good shadowdancer. If I remember correctly, this run is going to have a lot of kiting and micromanagement. But half-orcs hit hard, so maybe I can cut some of the struggles short. Will introduce her soon...
Comments
The party returned to the area north of the Gnoll Fortress to help Laurel, kill some ogres and defeat Neville's bandits. Further up north, in the next area, Goibniu assisted Charleston and took care of Ba'ruk.
At this point, I was mostly looking for extra experience for Luna, because I wanted her to be able to cast level 3 spells before entering the bandit camp.
In Beregost, Tranzig was killed, and his wand of magic missles will be very useful when it comes to disrupting spells. I also finally bought new spellscrolls for Owain plus some potions of genius, so he'll be less of a one trick pony now.
With Luna being close to level 5, the party travelled to Larswood. Teven's bandits were defeated by Owain's sleep spells:
And with the death of Corsone and Osmadi, Luna finally learned how to summon skeletons!
The last stop before the bandit camp was Peldvale. The animanted dead are a gigantic help for this party - I don't have any good tanks (Goibniu is the best, but moving him to the frontlines puts the run at risk, since he's the Bhaalspawn), so this will mean less kiting is neccessary, and fewer character deaths will occur during otherwise easy encounters (or at least I hope so).
Raiken was the first named enemy to fall to the new skeleton army and the party's ranged assistance:
Now, for the bandit camp: With skeletons in front, the party slowly moved forward, shooting any bandits, hobgoblins and gnolls in their sight. Finally, the big bandit group near the main tent managed to kill all of the skeletons except one, but the party, while taking some hits, returned the favor. Taugosz himself didn't save against Luna's second hold person spell and died:
For the main tent, the party prepared with chant, bless, strength of one, remove fear and some of Goibniu's protection from evil spells. Goibniu also used a potion of fortitude.
The fight went really well: Most of the party attacked the mage, with the new wand of magic missles disrupting his spellcasting, while Luna held the bandit and Donar chased the hobgoblin, preventing him from using his bow:
With Venkt's death, the battle was basically already won. The new bow will be quite useful for Goibniu.
That's it for now,
Enuhal
Dear dairy;
Hear text as mp3,
I converted the worlds worst bounty hunter into a somewhat useful fighter … mostly because that gave me the two handed sword, then we sold everything except the cloudkill wand to pay for a magic licence.
The two plot choices so far are thieves or wizards which plays to my class strengths but we needed the licence so yes, wizards first... The mission looks to keep me out of town for a while anyway.
Jan should be more useful than a fighter so I let him tag along for now and poor Jaheira got herself killed saving Viconia from justice... Well mob justice but the irony still applies as far as I'm concerned. I'm currently in a hamlet called Umber hills which brings us up to date.
Goibniu quickly travelled to the first Cloakwood area to retrieve Gurke's cloak before returning back to Beregost. At High Hedge, Owain bought himself the robe of the neutral archmagi; The party then decided to fight some Ankhegs. With the help of skeletons, a protection from acid scroll for Goibniu and the sleep spell, they were an easy source of experience.
After retrieving Brun's son and helping Tenya with the fishermen, the group also killed some zombies for Wenric and comissioned an ankheg armor for Luna.
Next, it was time to hunt vampire wolves near the temple: The party prepared with skeletons, bless and chant plus magical arrows and bullets, and the pack was quickly slain:
After leveling up, Goibniu decided to head for the Sword Coast areas - first the northern sword coast, where Helios was kissed by Shoal and Droth was killed with the help of some magic missles. Mad Arcand got his ring back, and to the south-west, the party encountered their first group of sirens, who foolishly tried to charm some quickly summoned skeletons:
At the southern Sword Coast area, Goibniu helped Ardrouine and went to hunt some more sirens - again, skeletons did most of the work, with the party providing ranged assistance; After encountering some carrion crawlers, the final siren group was defeated:
After resting, the party was ready to enter the flesh golem cave.
Inside, skeletons were summoned once again, everyone equipped magical ammunition, and Goibiu prepared with a potion of absorption, in case of the skeleton's destruction. For the first two golems, the skeletons were able to tank, but the final one dealt with the last undead, so Goibniu had to step up - luckily, he didn't get hit before the golem was defeated:
The constitution tome was used by the Paladin himself, thus giving him at least a one point hp bonus per level.
Enuhal
Long story short, the whole Baldur’s Gate & Candle Keep parts went well and easier than anticipated. However I got killed by a lightning trap in the maze 5 minutes from the last battle. I kind of detected it just as I was stepping on it and bzzt! A stupid way to fail a no-reload but I still finished my game. I died a couple of times at the last battle, so I would have failed anyway. I’m continuing on to SoD which I will do more as a minimal reload challenge as I only played it once before. When I get to BG2 I will do another no reload.
EDIT
For the benefit of those who don't know, the override folder also needs to be cleared to get a clean install. That could have been the reason why my last install didn't work.
Goibniu, human paladin, update 6
Time to explore the eastern part of the map. The paty travelled to the area east of Durlag's Tower. The amazon party was defeated by a combination of skeletons, bless, chant and ranged attacks:
The various tombs were cleared by Anapa with the help of a protection from undead scroll. Narcillicus fell thanks to magic missle spells and ranged attacks, while his slimes were killed with the party's magical melee weapons:
Next, Goibniu decided to head for the Firewine Bridge, where Meilum was kited and killed. The party also challenged Kahrk, preparing with skeletons, remove fear, bless and chant. The ogre mage was taking some good hits, and when he started casting spells on Donar, I had the fighter/thief use a potion of magic blocking. Soon enough, Kahrk's mirror images were gone, and any further spellcasting was disrupted:
Seconds later, Kahrk was defeated.
Ulcaster School proved to be easy experience for the randomized party, with their melee abilites now greatly improved by better equipment and levels. Still, without the help of skeletons, most fights would be really tough, and Owain's numerous magic missle spells are really useful to increase the otherwise weak damage output.
After Ulcaster, Gullykin was visited next - first, the bounty hunter party: Helios went invisible this time, giving the skeleton the opportunity to surround the mage. This proved to be needless, however, as Helios' backstab dealt 42 damage:
The battle was quickly won.
After everything went fine in the east so far, it was time for some setbacks: The Firewine Ruins are often troublesome for me, and this time was no exception. Goibniu entered via Jenkal's house, expecting to quickly kill the ogre mage - however, despite many hits, his first spell, confusion, was uninterruptable - I should have retreated upon realizing this, but I didn't - so everyone except Owain and Donar got confused:
As you can see, Lendarn already started getting involved in the battle at this point, and Owain didn't manage to disrupt his improved invisibilty spell in time - I knew what that meant: Multiple lightning bolt spells incoming. Thanks to II, Owain couldn't magic missle the enemy mage, and both Owain and Donar aren't exactly great at disrupting someone with physical damage. I had to hope and pray. The first lightning bolt killed the confused Anapa, but, luckily, didn't bounce on any other party members; Meanwhile, Owain and Donar dealt with Lendarn's monsters:
The second lightning bolt came soon. Owain, standing in the corner, died despite his mirror images - I had no potions of absorption with me. Helios was heavily wounded, but survived. At this point, the confusion spell finally wore off, and the party started attacking Lendarn:
The mage fell before casting another spell. Still, two dead - and I was lucky to survive getting most of the party confused at all. Goibniu returned to Nashkell to resurrect his dead companions. The party travelled to the area east of Larswood next. Skeletons and ranged weapons dealt with the red wizards, and the big spider group was killed as well:
Finally, Goibniu went basilisk hunting. Anapa was protected from petrification by Owain, with skeletons helping him to clear most of the area. The adventuring party was defeated with the help of some buffs and backstabs, and Mutamin was shot before being able to use his spells. Now, every wilderness area is cleared, and it's time to travel to Cloakwood.
Enuhal
Core difficulty. Using EE. Notable mods: SCS, aTweaks, Item Randomizer, BG1 NPC project, a few little extra quests, and some ease of use tweaks.
I'm using a random number generator to pick what kind of character I am running, and then attempting to roleplay how that character would behave in the game world... (within reason, anyway).
Character #1: Paucendeo. Half Elf FMC. Lawful Good.
After barely escaping the ambush that killed Gorion, Paucendeo fled home to Candlekeep. Shockingly, the captain of the guard, a man who had known him for a decade, turned him away at the gate. Rejection. Abandoned to the wolves. Not understanding why Ulraunt gave the order to bar his way, he turned into the forest and headed for Beregost, to seek shelter with Firebead Elvenhair.
I was going to salvage the quest after slaying Xuki by having our last remaining character pick up everybody's loot and smuggle it away with Xuki's Bag of Holding, but a collision bug prevented me from recovering any lost equipment. Then the enemy called in a massive horde of new critters to deal with. My paladin finally failed a critical will save and died in seconds.
There were four of us that were brought up together in Candlekeep, Æthel, Wilfred, William and Imoen.
Three of us were strongly influenced by a visiting cleric of Helm and thus we became followers of Helm. Imoen being of chaotic nature felt a little left out, but we remained friends as she is a good-hearted soul. I and Wilfred became paladins, but William didn’t have the charisma and so became a cleric. I am a Moonblade wielder and have proficiency in long swords and sword and shield, Wilfred specialises in two handed swords and two handed weapons, whilst William specialises in spiked weapons and sword and shield style.
We were attacked by assassins in Candlekeep, but because they were not working together, we defeated them easily despite their good equipment. One of them had had the gall to steal my Moonblade which I was so glad to recover.
These attacks precipitated our leaving of Candlekeep which saddened me somewhat as I had just begun to enjoy the earthier pleasures of life with a guard and also Hull.
To the east we were attacked by more assassins who killed Gorion. We headed for the FAI and on the way found some useful rings. Outside the FAI we were attacked by another assassin, a mage this time who didn’t manage to cast a single spell before his demise.
Inside I continued my carnal education with another adventurer and I was also asked to deal with a spider infestation in Beregost.
Outside I cleared the area of hobgoblins and in transit killed a lot of bandits. William was badly hurt, and our potions came in useful.
To the north we helped a widow and a priestess called Tenya and we killed an ankheg as well before heading to Beregost to deal with those spiders.
Goibniu, human paladin, update 7
Goibniu entered the first Cloakwood area and helped Aldeth against the druids. In the next area, skeletons were summoned to tank spiders, while Helios disarmed traps and the party assisted with ranged weapons. However, things didn't go perfectly in the spider's nest: Everyone threw a fireball at the spiders, via potions, amulets or wands, killing most of them. However, not all of the spiders died, and Luna was killed by two quick sword spider hits:
The other spiders were killed by the party, and Luna was resurrected at the FAI. Not much happened at the next Cloakwood area, the party killed Peter and moved on. The hamadryad was killed by skeletons, and Goibniu made his way to the wyvern cave.
I misremembered some details about the area and my party was positioned poorly when entering the cave, with Goibniu being in potential trouble, so I decided to move back out. However, after leaving, the two wyverns spawned next to Donar, who was killed instantly, while the rest of the party managed to run away:
At least I still had my skeletons waiting outside, and the party was already buffed with bless and chant, so with the skeletons tanking, the wyverns were killed. Back to the FAI again. Cloakwood is not working according to plan so far.
On to the next area - The party prepared for Drasus&co with skeletons, remove fear, bless and chant, invisible positioning and a variety of offensive spells. The skeletons proved to be extremely effective, instantly taking out one of the mages, while Owain's magic missles and some ranged weapons defeated the second one right away:
After resting once more, Goibniu entered the iron mines. Haresian has given me trouble in the past, but I was prepared with some potions of absorption in case somehing should go wrong (she likes to throw lightning bolts at the party). I decided to finally have a little bit of fun with Luna's special Priest of Talos abilites: Stormshield protects not only from lightning, but also from normal missles, which makes it hard for enemies around Hareishan to hurt her. The close quarters make lightning bolts even more devastating - after throwing a fireball potion to get the enemies attention, a stormshield-protected Luna retreated and used her first lightning bolt:
It bounced back and forth, killing the first couple of enemies. Hareishan then used her own lightning bolt on some summoned skeletons, mostly just killing some of her own men. Donar snuck into the room to check what had happened:
The halfling finished off the mage with some hit and run shots with his sling. The party returned to level 1 to rest and journeyed further down the mines. Natasha, who uses lightning bolts as well, was dealt with by Luna and her skeletons alone:
I had the remaining skeletons attack the ogre mage, who managed to confuse Helios:
However, the thief was invisble, and didn't do anything bad while affected by the spell. The party killed the ogre after he wasted his most dangerous spells on the skeletons, rested again at level one and moved down to the final level.
Helios disarmed Davaeorn's traps. The mage's vanilla script is terrible at dealing with skeletons, so I didn't even prepare the party for the battle and just had the animated dead attack him:
He didn't managed to kill a single skeleton before dying.
Time to enter Baldur's Gate! As you can see, the party is really dependent on the animate dead spell right now, but this will hopefully change in Baldur's Gate, with new mage spells (haste!), more potions and lots of experience available. Still, there's no reason not to use the skeletons - at least they're not as overpowered as they were in vanilla BG1.
Enuhal
Shady lords;
Hear text as mp3,
I arranged an ogre guard for the town and fetched some blood for a mage in exchange for a nice little sword then headed north into darkness.
A stealth approach allowed me to shine the light without taking damage and Puk triggered the bridge trap for an easy crossing... In fact this bridge became my ambush site for the level with Sarah pumping out spirits and the safe resting just outside under the lights.
Viconia stepped out to make room for Mazzy which was a mistake... Should have kicked Jan because no level 9 cleric means no repulse undead and shade lord is hard enough without letting him have mates.
Puk used the special gold ammo to dispatch the alter in one shot then we whooped Patrick as Katarina kited ... Sarah was forced to heal (another reason I should not have kicked Viconia) so we did it without adds but the special ammo whittled away at the lord for a glorious victory and well earned level ups.
P.s, now that we don't need repulse undead, Puk can cast it... Always the way.
Baldur's Gate 1 No-Reload Challenge Arhiv
Baldur's Gate 2 No-Reload Challenge Arhiv
The Adventurer's Lounge: Guidance and Support for No Reload Challengers- Newbie or Veteran Arhiv
Please check if those links work for you and let me know if something is wrong.
If, for whatever reasons, those links became broken once Bioware forums will be closed I'll replace the "lite" versions with "full" ones and post the new links here.
I'll update all archives with most recent versions once Bioware forums will turn "read only" and also try to edit the Hall of Heroes appropriately so it shows the proper links.
Goibniu, human paladin, update 8
In Baldur's Gate, the first thing I did was go for the Helm of Glory for some additional charisma before purchasing various potions and scrolls:
Owain learned some new spells, haste being the most important one. I should also mention that Luna can cast level 4 spells now - she'll mostly be using protection from evil 10' radius and defensive harmony for now. I decided to go for an unusual build with Anapa - I'm investing in single-weapon style, because his ac is really, really terrible and as a Kensai, he can't even use shields. It's paying off so far.
Anyway, Luna had some skeleton take care of the four mages at Sorcerous Sundries:
And I started completing all of the various sidequests in Baldur's Gate. I won't mention most of them, since they are generally easy.
I have some screenshots - first, showing off my new general group buffs for tougher battles, with the ogre mage in the sewers:
Remove fear, bless, chant, haste, defensive harmony, protection from evil 10' radius. A powerful combination. Owain is usually also using some individual defensive buffs like MI and blur.
Here is the Helm&Cloak fight:
Animated dead are even more powerful with the aforementioned buffs.
At Ramazith's tower, I used a protection from undead scroll for this otherwise potentially dangerous level:
The intelligence tome is going to Anapa (to get him to 11 intelligence against mind flayers), the dexterity tome to Owain (another point of armor class), the wisdom tome, of course, to Luna.
Fighting Wiven gave me some trouble with a previous randomized party, so I used the full array of buffs:
While helping Aldeth, Owain used his first forth level spell (emotion) against some doppelgangers, though only some were affected:
This battle was actually rather tough, and I had to use a few healing potions - all due to the fact that I pulled all of the doppelgangers at once in order to hit as many as possible with the emotion spell. When the emotion spell failed to affect most of the opponents, my lack of good tanks once again proved to be troublesome, though everyone survived.
Against the ogre mages at the docks, I used the arrow of slaying and the usual buffs, while magic missle and some wand charges helped to stop all of the dangerous spells:
Aside from against Jardak, the 4 mages at Sorcerous Sundries and the Helm&Cloak party, I only used skeletons once while doing all of these quests and fighting all of these battles in Baldur's Gate: Against Desreta and Vay-ya at the Low Lantern, to avoid getting hit by another confusion spell (I don't want to kill innocents and lose reputation/paladin status):
Luna is currently using the Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Now, the only sidequest/battle still remaining in the city is Degrodel's house - before I deal with that, Goibniu will travel around, buy some items, start some of the easier TotSC content and gain some more experience.
Enuhal
We only have three characters in this run. That's a huge handicap, because XP from enemy kills in IWD2 decreases as the party's average level increases. This means small parties of high-level characters get a lot less XP than normal parties of 6. Balancing out these weaknesses are my other mods, which tweak IWD2 classes, especially the druid, and bring a few Heart of Fury items into normal mode (normal mode items are pretty boring).
Our first character is... Frisk!
Yes, this is an Undertale-themed run. Frisk is a small, gender-ambiguous child who fell into the Underground because they are a clumsy doofus.
Frisk's personality is complex. Beneath an impassive exterior trembles a strange spirit full of passion and pathos--among other dramatic words. They conquered the world by flirting with skeletons, hugging fuzzy goat monsters, warping the time-space continuum, and dance-fighting with a killer robot TV star. That's basically Undertale in a nutshell.
Frisk's time-traveling shenanigans have landed them in Icewind Dale. But they are not alone. Our second character is... Goat Bro!
Asriel is a goat monster Frisk befriended after attempting to kill Frisk one million times. Despite living for a short eternity as the most miserable and evil monster in existence, Asriel has recovered and is now the sweet, loving fuzzball he once was.
If you're an Undertale fan and want to know what the hell happened, this is based on a fanfiction I wrote about Asriel's life after the events of Undertale:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11783596/1/Flowey-Blooms
Anyway, Asriel is back.
So who's our third character?
No, it's not Sans. Sorry.
Our third character is... Chara!
Chara is a troubled child (also gender ambiguous, like Frisk) who fell into the Underground attempting to commit suicide. Asriel and Frisk have done everything they can to lift Chara up since then.
Very little is truly understood about Chara and who they really are.
Frisk is more of a bard than a sorcerer for various reasons, but bards aren't as strong in a small party like ours. Asriel is a paladin who will dual to cleric. It doesn't fit him perfectly, but then, there is no D&D class for adorable sweetie pie. Chara is a druid, partly because my mods strengthen druids, but mostly because Chara was fond of gardening. Chara's affection for plants, besides providing valuable fuel for a Chara/Flowey ship, fits the druid class.
Frisk, Asriel, and Chara sail into Targos, and find the town curiously quiet. The smell of ash and fresh blood fills the air.
It fills us with determination.
I mostly chose their stats based on powergaming priorities. I would have gone further, but dropping their INT below 8 seemed like too much.
I'm not sure where Chara's CHA would be. Based on the True Lab backstory, Chara is probably very charismatic, or at least persuasive enough to get Asriel to follow along. The buttercup plan was Chara's idea, after all.
But the Chara-as-narrator theory, which I feel is the most accurate assessment of who Chara is, suggests something very different:
Chara is always inside Frisk; not just in the No Mercy route. Confused at the failure of their plan to free the monsters, Chara is not sure what to believe in anymore and decides to follow Frisk's lead. Frisk's choices mold Chara. When Frisk is friendly, Chara as the narrator is optimistic and playful. But when Frisk starts hurting people, this convinces Chara that it really is "kill or be killed."
If this is true, then Asriel follows Chara, and Chara follows Frisk, which suggests that Chara's CHA should be higher than Asriel's but lower than Frisk's.
Except Asriel should have a very high CHA score, since he was universally loved when he was alive, much like Asgore. Which would mean all three of them would have very high CHA scores.
Chateau Irenicus
The previous session had seen the four mephit portals shut down, and the trio quickly ran through the remaining opposition in about 10 minutes of play. Irenicus made an appearance outside but the Cowled Wizards took him and Imoen into custody.
Kalah's 15 minutes of fame at the circus
Nothing much to speak of here, other than Unyo getting his strength down to 4. Pins had almost finished off the troublesome shadow but Coretank killed Kalah first.
Slavery in the Slums
Gaelan Bayle set the scene before the trio headed into the Copper Coronet. After 10 minutes or so they had handed over the keys to Hendak. He asked if the trio could clear a slaver compound that could be reached via the sewers. No trouble. Well, other than Pins being Held by hobgoblins. She survived.
A group of kobolds were nearby, and they decided to Hold Pins again. Unyo was nearby but had been slowed while Coretank was bravely charging ahead in search of more victims. Unyo tried to use an Insect Plague but Pins croaked before casting ended. Coretank arrived in time to mop up the remnants and the trio returned to the surface for a 1500gp resurrection. Rod of Resurrection added to shopping list but not yet obtained.
Captain Haegan and his slavers lasted about 10 minutes, his reserve group another 5 or so thanks to a well-placed acid blob trap that Coretank was guided over while Corey_Russell was briefly called away... Unyo used Iron Skins to foil a repeating poison trap on some stairs, and slowed the poison for Pins and Coretank as they followed.
Decisions Decisions
The next step was a toss-up between desperately seeking Suna Seni and relieving Officer Dirth of his troublesome armour, with the party split over which to do first. The ambush failed to appear so Coretank 'inherited' the Full Plate after running a Cleric through on the way. There's only one way to celebrate free armour, by clearing a pirate hideout naturally.
Suna Seni failed to show up on trips to Watchers Keep (potion case and gem bag bought), the City Gates (obtain Trademeet quest) or Government District (purchase magic licence, agree to hunt down Valygar for Tolgerias and add Umar to the map). She turned up on the way to the Bridge District and soon wished she hadn't bothered.
Corey_Russell lost his game cursor while looting the bodies so dropped to rejoin. This isn't possible in an ambush area so he waited patiently as the party ran into Renfeld and his attackers. Once they were charmed and harmed, he eventually rejoined on arrival at the Bridge District.
Decisions Decisions
On arrival, a mugger tried to speak to Pins and Unyo. They both declined, more through fear of the wrong dialogue choice than any physical danger. Coretank stepped in and refused to cough up. Once they were dealt with he went on the trip of a lifetime (Mazed while grabbing the Berserker Horn) leaving Pins and Unyo to solve the Skinner murders in his absence.
Unyo shook his head, having protected Pins against Fire and Lightning there was little danger from the traps inside the Tanner's building or so he thought. Coretank had other plans though, successfully finding the repeating lightning trap. Unyo briefly considered protecting the Undead Hunter against lightning in case he went back for another dose.
The Rune Assassins can be tricky so Unyo decided to use True Sight before arriving. His plan was to cast an insect plague and shapeshift to help his companions. By the time he shifted though, the battle was over.
Gaelan Bayle was duly paid off, meaning the party can consider visiting Aran Linvail next time.
Unyo (Gate70), protagonist. Shapeshifter. 168 kills (+17)
Pins (Grond0). Blade. Tome: 146 kills (+34)
Coretank (Corey_Russell). Undead Hunter. 328 kills (+69)
Goibniu travelled to High Hedge, Ulgoth's Beard and Durlag's Tower to buy some more potions. He also made a quick stop in the southwestern part of the map to kill the Doomsayer:
As more and more fights require melee combat, I'm starting to have Owain cast strength on Goibniu - the buff lasts for a very long time and hugely increases the paladin's melee damage output.
Against the battle horrors at Durlag's the party also used the wand of the heavens, some wands of magic missles and Owain's magic missle spell - they are still quite hard to hit otherwise:
I decided to go for the upper levels of the tower in order to get some experience and the wisdom tome for Luna. I should mention that I previously stole the ring of free action while in Ulgoth's Beard, making the various ghasts much more easy to deal with:
Anapa was protected from petrification, allowing him to slay the basilisks outside:
Finally, I had Luna summon her skeletons to help with the ghost:
I dealt peacefully with Kirinhale and left the tower for now.
The next part of TotSC the party decided to go for was the Ice Island. I usually deal with this place mostly with the help of a protection from magic scroll, and this time was no exception, as Anapa killed the first couple of mages:
However, for the ankhegs, additional help was required, so the party used skeletons, buffs and sleep spells to assist the half-orc kensai:
Anapa cleared the rest of the place, and Goibniu returned to Baldur's Gate, where Degrodel's house still remained. The party felt ready to give it a try.
I prepared with the usual buffs, this time adding strength of one, since the party will have to use melee weapons. The battle was long and tough - I had to use many wand charges and healing potions, get many party members to safety, and in the end, almost all of my buffs were gone, but Goibniu was victorious:
After resting, the party prepared for the second battle. Skeletons in the northeastern part of Degrodel's room to hold off the enemies, the party surrounding the mage to kill him - no reason to lose the Helm of Balduran:
This battle was relatively easy, and soon, the last enemy was defeated:
Finally, for their last quest in the city, the party started investigating the Iron Throne. The final battle of the chapter was made much easier by Donar luring the enemies downstairs, where skeletons and the rest of the heavily buffed party were waiting - with all of the buffs, the party had enough ranged weapon power to take out the enemy party before anyone of them really had the chance to do something harmful:
And now, we're on our way to Candlekeep!
Enuhal
Armoury raid;
Hear text as mp3,
I swapped Jan for Valygar, told the town they are safe now and headed off to see this keep everyone talks about.
The top floor had only methods, shadows, the odd golem and some spiders guarding valuable loot... I indulged on a +4 crossbow for myself then we rang the bell for some easy but powerful weapons.
The statues are not immune to 'cloudkill' gas however my peons are!
Thanks a lot for this, @Serg_BlackStrider
It took a while to get started this session, as we had Skype issues (Skype is what we use to communicate during the run). Eventually they did get sorted out the duo proceeded to the Tree of Life.
There wasn't a lot of prep for Irenicus, mostly just protection from magic scroll on Axer. Axer did most of the damage as Vommar had difficulty targeting Irenicus. But Irenicus couldn't do much and fell.
Since any evil path would cause Vommar to be fallen, this meant all good choices in Hell were made. We tried to use the free action ring so Vommar wouldn't get held in the 3rd tear, but perhaps fixpack prevents that trick from working. Sarevok was easily defeated and it was time for the main event!
Corey_Russell turned on auto-pause on target gone - this is helpful when GWW the demons. GWW the Foebane was just devastating - the demons fell extremely fast. Not a ton prep, but invulnerability potion on Vommar and potion of magic protection on Axer. The duo continued to press their attacks on Irenicus and once again he couldn't do much before being finished off.
Axer was mean against Illsaera and used the Reflection Shield - victory was easily achieved.
For pocket plane challenge #1, it should have been pretty easy for this team. However, Vommar save vs. spells is only about 4 - thus he got held by a drow mage! Axer used a dispelling arrow to fix Vommar and get him back in business.
Saradush enemies were cleared pretty easily. However, we did not do everything here. We mainly wanted to do the main quest and get bags of holding and potions for Vommar and did so.
Jail is child's play when a Cavalier chunks most enemies here with his turn undead ability. The lower levels of Gromnier's castle were negotiated safely, with Deva distracting the high level mage down here.
Time to deal with the enemies on the level below Gromnir. Vommar's saves once again did him in and he was held! Axer used dispelling arrow again and then RoR - since Vommar was low health and we didn't want him chunked, he used a superior healing potion - he survives and the enemies are defeated.
The duo had a great strategy for Gromnir and his goons. By this point, the Foebane was now the +5 version. So plan was for Axer to use GWW of Foebane on Gromnir, while Vommar used a Deva to distact the mages. This worked great and another victory for the duo.
The duo had just enough time in the session to get to the Wilderness and sell their junk to the merchant here. It finally dawned on the duo they really need to improve Vommar's saves. Axer found a full plate and the +2 ring of protection and gave to Vommar. Axer asked what helm was Vommar using and Vommar was just using a basic one to improve saves vs. death! Axer mentioned he had a Helm of Defense in his bag of holding let's use that - this got Vommar's save vs. spells to 1, much better than his previous save of 4.
Out of time so saved our session here.
Screenshots from the adventure:
Party Stats (for session 08/14/2016):
Axer (Corey_Russell) - level 28 half-orc fighter, 168 HP, 834 kills, Bodhi
Vommar (Gate70) - level 24 human cavalier, 164 HP, 778 kills, Firkraag
The first big fight in IWD2, which Tactics makes even more dangerous, comes after a long series of low-risk quests. We need to extract as much XP and gold as possible, lest we enter that fight unprepared. There are various things you can do to gather quest XP.
We break into the warehouse to look for healing potions, and find that Asriel's low Strength is sufficient. Ordinary goblins have -4 luck in IWD2's prologue, so we can tackle them with little risk.
Frisk starts a friendly conversation with the locals. They're not very chatty.
Targos, unlike basically everywhere else in IWD2, has a lot of opportunities for characters with the right race, class, or stats to grab a little more XP. Itty bitty Frisk makes some itty bitty gains.
Knowing we'll need lots of gold for the big fight, we scour the area for loot. Asriel sees something surprising...
...and has a good long cry. Asriel's tears fill us with determination.
We rest up to get Asriel's Sunscorch back (as an aasimar, he gets one casting per day) and descend into the tunnels. Turns out Tactics removed the Targos goblins' -4 luck penalty.
In IWD2, luck modifies critical hit chances, which means a luck penalty prevents critical hits. But these goblins don't have one. With only 10 Constitution, Asriel could die in a single hit from any one of these goblins.
Also, helmets don't block critical hits in IWD2. And some weapons deal triple damage instead of double damage on critical hits. However, critical hits don't do critical damage unless a second roll is enough to hit the target normally: after rolling a 20, you have to roll again, and if the roll is high enough, it deals double or triple damage. Attack rolls are important at every stage of this game.
We break out our best spells against Rukwurm and his goblin buddies, but Sunscorch barely singes Rukwurm, and Entangle--a devastating spell at this stage of the game, since Chara has Spell Focus: Transmutation--fails completely.
Entangle actually works in many places in IWD2, including underground. But these tunnels are an exception.
Frisk knocks out most of the goblins with Sleep (they have Spell Focus: Enchantment for just this purpose), but Rukwurm resists, and nearly slices poor Asriel in half.
It's difficult to overemphasize just how deadly bad luck can be in this game. Even Stoneskin can't block attacks outright; it only stops the first 10 damage, and only if the weapon is below +5 (late-game, Stoneskin will do very little) and only for a certain amount of HP.
Asriel downs a Potion of Healing, which recovers all 9 HP. But another hit could slay him instantly, even at full health. Asriel runs away from Rukwurm while Frisk and Chara attack with crossbows. Chara, as a druid, has no proficiency in crossbows, but we manage to kill Rukwurm eventually.
Kiting won't save us in the future, though. Tactics apparently tweaks enemy AI so that enemies will often change targets and ignore your high-AC tank, hassling your archers to force them to switch to melee weapons.
We knock out the remaining goblins with Sleep. Unlike the EE games (the most recent updates, anyway), sleeping critters in IWD2 wake up on hit, and we can slay goblins in a single hit. To make sure we kill each goblin before they have a chance to wake up, I pull Frisk and Chara back and have them fire simultaneously. One of them can fire a bolt while the other bolt is in midair, making both attack automatic hits.
It's not reliable, since we only have 1 attack per round and speed factors don't let us strike simultaneously, but we finish off the last of the goblins and find a very nice reward after the fight.
That's an Oil of Fiery Burning, which does 5d6 damage. It's all too easy to kill your own party members with one of these, but if you target it right, it can break pre-Shaengarne battles.
It won't be reliable against mages, though. Mirror Image in IWD2 blocks area-effect damage.
With the goblins dead, we're safe for a while. To celebrate, Frisk convinces Chara--who has 18 Constitution--to start a drinking contest with the hairiest man in Targos.
Braehg, the drink in question, is non-alcoholic: it's a mix of milk and boar's blood. Doesn't get much less kosher than that.
Chara drinks Guthewulfe under the table. We lose some gold and Chara is mighty sick, but we get a silver wolf charm out of the ordeal. It can summon a wolf and has three charges. It just might save our lives.
We go around town filching random items out of barrels. Asriel finds a very special mod-introduced item.
It's unique but not overpowered, granting a +1 luck bonus. Asriel wears it, as it matches his fur.
All the side quests in Targos require a lot of backtracking, but CTRL-J makes it bearable. A sick man asks Frisk to deliver a letter to his girlfriend, but Frisk really should not be trusted with love letters.
When the sick man realizes Frisk broke their promise, he turns into a big gray naked guy and attacks! Chara almost turns the whole place hostile with an Ice Dagger.
Ice Dagger, a mage spell which my mods give to druids as well, does 1 cold damage to everyone next to the target. If that halfling had been a little closer, Ice Dagger would have hit him and turned everyone in the camp hostile.
The most backtracking-intensive quest in Targos is Veira's, which requires a chat with 5 different people multiple times. On the plus side, we do get a very pretty bottle.
You can trade it to Elytharra the mage for either 500 gold or a weak magical dagger. The 500 gold will buy us a new Oil of Fiery Burning from Oswald, which we just might need.
There is one dangerous fight before the big one at the end of the prologue. We have to defeat Phaen of the Rags, a low-level mage who summons a handful of goblins. Tactics makes him awfully nasty, so we have to pick our spells carefully. Asriel, who has recently taken his first level as a cleric, memorizes some Command spells. Similar to BG1, Command in IWD2 offers no save against targets below level 6. We knock out Phaen despite successful saving throws.
We sneak in a little damage, but he manages to cast Mirror Image right after waking up. Asriel knocks him out again.
Hitting his Mirror Images won't wake him up, so we get a little extra out of that Command spell. Chara follows up with Ice Dagger--and then I remember that Phaen's robe grants cold resistance.
IWD2 uses the 3rd edition ruleset, which means that damage resistances work by negating a set amount of damage rather than reducing it by a percent. So a cold resistance of 5 would block 5 cold damage whether it's from a 6 damage Ice Dagger or a 15 damage Ice Lance. This has a huge impact on gameplay, as it's much harder to resist strong damage spells.
Phaen responds with his own damage spells, to much greater effect.
Asriel recovers with one of our few Potions of Healing, and Phaen brings out his goblin goons. Frisk knocks out all but one of them, the strongest one.
We struggle to land hits on Phaen without Command to help us. Phaen resorts to melee combat. Turns out he's incredibly good at it.
Even at full health, Asriel could never have survived a blow like that. How did a low-level mage do such terrible damage?
Well, in my install, various items in normal mode get replaced with their stronger Heart of Fury mode versions. This means Phaen is using a magical staff that has +3 to damage and +5 to hit.
It also means Phaen is wearing a super-powerful robe that improves his AC by 4 instead of 2. We keep fighting him, but it's almost impossible to land a hit.
Finally, we get desperate, and bring out a Flaming Oil. Flaming Oil potions are tiny Fireballs that deal 2d8 damage and have the area of effect of a Fire Seed. Phaen is a melee juggernaut, but Flaming Oil potions don't require an attack roll.
We escape the battle with two powerful new items and spend 200 gold to resurrect Asriel. We give him Phaen's staff; he needs the bonuses to be competitive in combat.
We're out of potions. Our only healing items left are Iron Rations.
Tastes like nails and rust.
We spend several hundred gold buying new Potions of Healing. I hate to spend so much money so early on, but we're at one of the four most dangerous fights of the game.
Not all of the Heart of Fury items need to be purchased with Asriel's life. Some are just lying around, like this shield.
It makes the user practically immune to missile weapons, and there are a lot of missile weapons coming up. Unfortunately, our best weapon is a staff, and we can't use both at the same time. Chara takes the shield in hand, since Frisk can't tolerate the arcane spell failure penalty.
Moments later, we get another shield in exchange for teaching the Targos soldiers how to stab a barrel.
One of my mods adds some forgotten items into the game. This one is just a powerful buckler, with no secondary effects, but every bit of AC could be life-saving.
All that's left are some tiny, non-violent talking quests.
Once Frisk pressures the Iron Collar gang into doing their jobs, we rest one last time and report to Shawford Crale. One of the toughest fights in the game awaits.
The first phase of the attack on Targos begins. Chara casts Entangle and green sprouts shoot up from the snow. Asriel has had his memory wiped (long story), but Frisk has a history with deadly vines. We stay out of the way and attack from afar.
But Vghotan is totally immune. We can't snare him. And his stats are stupendous.
Asriel would need 28 AC to reliably avoid Vghotan's attacks. He doesn't have 28 AC. But Asriel has Phaen's Ironshod Staff, which grants him a monstrous +3 to damage and +5 to hit. Asriel hits back twice as hard.
With Vghotan dead, the first phase is broken. We finish off the remaining goblins with missile weapons and collect Vghotan's Band--the Heart of Fury version.
[spoiler]
The Strength bonus is irrelevant, as Bull's Strength will override it, the immunity to fear is redundant with Remove Fear, and I'll probably forget to use the Beast Claw ability, but the Freedom of Movement effect is a huge game-changer. Not because it will block Chara's Entangle, but because it will keep Asriel safe from the Hold Person spells that Orc Shamans spam so mercilessly in the coming areas, allowing him to use Remove Paralysis on Frisk and Chara if they fail their saves. Having Asriel fail a save against Hold Person is one of the highly probable game-ending events if we should survive this fight.
The next phase begins. We hide before proceeding; anybody can use stealth in IWD2, though heavy armor will penalize it.
This lets us control who appears first, and therefore whom the enemy first attacks. Asriel appears first, and then Frisk and Chara strike from afar. Another stroke of luck!
Tactics enemies like Ghotrag use potions, but with that critical hit and Asriel's +8 total attack bonus, we don't give Ghotrag enough time to recover.
We kill the remaining goblins with little fuss. We still have our best resources on hand, and we're going to need them.
The last big fight is Caballus, a mage with level 3 spells. He can wipe out our entire party with a single spell if we're not careful. With only one attack per round for each party member, we can't hope to get past Caballus' Mirror Images before he destroys us. This means we need to play very, very defensively.
Frisk approaches while invisible and knocks out some of the goblins with Sleep, easing the pressure on Black Geoffrey. Frisk hurries away before Caballus can nail her with an evocation spell.
Frisk cannot save Geoffrey. Caballus obliterates him with one blow--and he doesn't even have to expend a spell.
Caballus has a +3 weapon, giving him the same +8 attack bonus as Vghotan. Even without his spells, he's a titan compared to us. We retreat, hoping Olap and the other Targos defenders can take a whack at Caballus, but Chara doesn't run fast enough, and Caballus catches them while they're still visible. They keep running, surviving Acid Arrow with potions.
Caballus gives chase and spots Olap Tamewater, who charges in to face him. Caballus draws back his staff.
Olap sinks to his knees and collapses, spilling what's left of his head onto fresh snow. Caballus steps over Olap's body and trudges after us, chuckling just loud enough for us to hear. We keep running.
We lose him, but we need to monitor the situation so we'll know where he's going. Otherwise he might sneak up on us. Frisk, Chara, and Asriel start an old scouting pattern of mine: they hide, retreat, and sneak back until they can see the enemy before falling back. It lets us track Caballus' movements without getting in range.
But it only works as long as each character remains hidden, and stealth is difficult when our skill points are invested in Concentration and Spellcraft. But Frisk has lots of practice dodging magic attacks, and Chromatic Orb does nothing on a successful Reflex save.
We have no allies left to help us against Caballus, and we don't have the potions to survive his magic. We need something else to absorb his spells.
Thanks to Chara's drinking ability, we have an answer: the wolf charm from Guthewulfe. We send out a wolf and Caballus loses a spell.
It won't be enough. Asriel summons some goblins of his own to wear down the enemy, and we pin down Caballus' goblin archer buddies while the mage is distracted.
When we lose our goblin summons, Asriel brings out new ones. Caballus renews his defenses, bracing for the fight.
That's good. We want Caballus to run out of Mirror Image spells before we engage him. But there's even more good news:
We're running out of summons, but Caballus is losing his deadliest spells.
Frisk fails another stealth check and Caballus gives chase. Frisk dodges a second Chromatic Orb and Chara summons more vines, snaring Caballus. We close in and strike with ranged weapons, though Caballus' resistances block some of the damage.
IWD2 Entangle doesn't just stop the target from moving; it also imposes a -2 DEX penalty (which stacks with multiple Entangle spells) and forces the target to make a concentration check to cast spells while entangled. We're not completely safe from his spells, but we do get a better chance at hitting him.
It doesn't last. Caballus wriggles free, just out of the Entangle spell's radius, and can now cast spells with little chance of disruption. Chara soaks up a Magic Missile.
Caballus has no Mirror Images left and appears to be low on spells. Asriel marches in for the kill. With his high attack bonus from Phaen's staff, he should be able to land a strong hit on Caballus.
But Caballus hits hard, too, and luck is on the goblin's side. He kills Asriel in seconds.
Caballus turns to Chara, but Asriel's presence was the only thing holding back an Oil of Fiery Burning. Without Asriel in the way, we can safely torch Caballus and the remaining goblins. Caballus survives the blast, but he took a direct hit.
We need to finish him off. Chara equips Tabard's Shield and runs away from Caballus. When Frisk is in range, Chara pauses so Frisk can hit the goblin with a Flaming Oil potion. Chara gets burnt, but Caballus suffers more.
I start leading Chara around a catapult, hoping to hit Caballus with some of Frisk's bolts while he's trying to catch up, but Chara gets too close to their own Entangle spell, and Caballus lands a fourth critical hit.
Caballus' luck is absurd. Chara only survives thanks to their 18 Constitution. They recover with a potion and Frisk hurls another Flaming Oil.
It's just enough to take him down.
We resurrect Asriel, gather treasure from the battlefield, and report our success. Asriel now has a +3 club, Caballus' Whispering Staff, that gives bonuses to stealth and can cast Invisibility 10' Radius once per day--and which he can use with a shield, compensating for Asriel's low Constitution and level gap.
We're not out of the clear just yet. Another fight, also one of the hardest in the game, is coming right up, and I'm not sure if we'll get the levels we need to survive it. Before we move on, we rest at the inn to memorize new spells.
Snuggling up with Asriel's warm fur fills us with determination.
We leave Targos for Shaengarne Ford. The next few fights, against bands of orcs, can be very intense. The road to Shaengarne Bridge is seeded with Kegs of Blasting, which Orc Firestarters can detonate with a single Arrow of Flame +1, producing a fireball strong enough to kill basically anything at this stage of the game. Even if you stay out of range, it kills enemy orcs and costs you a lot of XP.
We use Command to knock out the Firestarters--not because we want to keep the Kegs of Blasting from detonating, necessarily, but because their Arrows of Flame +1 are extremely valuable. Selling them will be very profitable, so it's in our best interest to keep the orcs from firing any. Asriel uses Sunscorch to detonate the kegs instead.
The other major threat in this run is Hold Person from Orc Shamans. The save DC isn't too bad--enemy spellcasters aren't so min-maxed and don't come with lots of Spell Focus feat--but IWD2 has critical failures on saves, which means it's always possible to fail a save, no matter how weak the spell or how sturdy the target. Vghotan's Band blocks Hold Person outright, however, and therefore goes to Asriel, since he can cast Remove Paralysis on the others.
Asriel isn't high enough level to cast it just yet, since he's an aasimar with 1 paladin level and a -1 level adjustment, and also missed out on the XP from defeating Caballus. But with the Orc Firestarter dead, the enemies are stuck behind the keg, so Chara and Frisk remain safe while they're held.
We defeat the orcs and rescue a hot druid lady from their clutches. Frisk tries to make a move on her, even though she's a married woman.
Frisk has a history of looking for love in all the wrong places.
With Command to take down Orc Firestarters, Vghotan's Band to ward off shamans, and Sleep to knock out orc archers and grunts, we have an answer for everything the enemy throws at us.
Chara hits level 5, gaining early access to Call Lightning. My mods boost the save DC for Call Lightning and Static Charge, making druids even more deadly. Chara's 18 WIS and double Spell Focus in Transmutation mean enemies have to roll a 25 to make their save (10 base +4 from CHA +4 from Spell Focus +3 from spell level +4 from mods). That doesn't happen very often.
The next area has a troublesome fight, with a small horde of melee grunts and three Orc Archers flanking us. Frisk knocks out the archers, who have a habit of slaying party spellcasters in the first couple rounds.
Chara's Entangle holds off the hatchetmen long enough for us to pick them off with ranged weapons. Entangle has a DC of 19, enough to snare almost anything at Shaengarne Ford.
Dealing with Torak, the grousy head honcho of Broken Tusk clan, requires some stealth if we want to save the villagers from getting incinerated by a Keg of Blasting. Since I'm not sure our party members have strong enough stealth skills, I use Caballus' Whispering Staff to cast Invisibility Sphere.
Now we have to fight our way to the villagers. Chara is instrumental in this, but not because of their powerful Call Lightning or Entangle spells.
My mods tweak druid shapeshifting and give them some stronger abilities, making shapeshifting more worthwhile. In fact, the level 5 wild shape is now a Verbeeg, which gets 3 attacks per round (!) at 25 Strength (!) and 7- resistance to physical damage (!) at the cost of 8 Dexterity (!) and the cancellation of all AC bonuses (!) from both armor and Chara's own spells.
The net result? Chara will basically never make a Reflex save in Verbeeg form and is incredibly easy to hit, but they are very resistant to damage and can kill orcs in a single blow without landing a critical hit.
These orcs weren't really a threat to us anyway--not with Frisk's 19 DC Sleep spell--but it's cool that Chara can handle them on their own. Torak is stronger than his fellow orcs and could hurt Chara, but he doesn't have the Dexterity to handle Frisk's new Chromatic Orb spell, which stuns for 3 rounds with a DC of 17 (Frisk still lacks the second rank in Spell Focus: Enchantment.
Another cool thing about the Verbeeg form is that its spear has a triple critical hit multiplier, which means Chara especially benefits from the Rabbit's Foot amulet.
Chara is so strong their Spear of Justice can overwhelm enemy damage resistances. Curiously, Slime Zombies can bypass Chara's own resistances, which shouldn't be possible. Maybe they're dealing nonlethal damage; I don't know.
Unlike BG2, where attacks per round is more important than damage per hit due to mages' Stoneskin, it's more important in IWD2 to hit hard than to hit often. Lots of enemies have troublesome damage resistances; these critters are just the first.
Isn't this going to trivialize the fight at Shaengarne Bridge? Actually, no. Even the Verbeeg form isn't going to be enough to handle that fight. Not with Tactics installed, and all the deadly nonsense that comes with it. Shaengarne Bridge is still going to be horrific.
Further inside, we find an item that compensates for the Verbeeg's lousy Dexterity.
Chara won't gain any armor bonuses from this, but they will get stealth bonuses, making them excellent scouts despite being the size of an elephant. They sneak up on Vrek Vileclaw, the normal weapon-resistant troll in charge of the cave, and absorb a Hold Person spell.
Funny thing about getting disabled: when enemies get automatic attacks on helpless characters, they can't land critical hits, which means some of them would have an even harder time damaging Chara if Chara was disabled.
Hold Person is still a threat to our own damage output, so I switch Vghotan's Band over to Asriel and give Chara the Rabbit's Foot. Frisk takes out the shaman before it can try another Hold Person spell.
Even with nearly guaranteed attacks, the enemy can't do much against Chara. Chara gets a wicked blow on Vrek Vileclaw, whose supposed immunity to normal weapons only blocks 10% of the strike.
Asriel torches the dying troll with Sunscorch, and the battle is won.
Frisk asks if they can touch Chara's blood-soaked Spear of Justice. Chara says no.
We pawn off all the Arrows of Fire +1 we collected, which yield a ludicrous 22,000 gold from only 101 arrows.
We're almost at 40,000 gold now. But we still can't buy the items we really want, because Heart of Fury items often cost over 100,000. The item upgrade from HoF to normal mode is great, but it comes at a massive cost.
As deadly as Chara is, her defenses aren't so strong against heavy-hitting enemies. When we face off with the wererats and werebadgers in the next area, Gaernat Sharptooth smashes right through Chara's resistances.
IWD2 critical hit only deal double damage if they make a normal attack roll, but normal attack rolls are almost guaranteed hits when Chara is in Verbeeg form. And even without a critical hit, Chara can still take scratch damage from tough critters like Gaernat Sharptooth, which builds up over time. Frisk tries to stun Gary, but his Reflex save is spectacular.
Chara is also completely vulnerable to elemental damage, which easily strikes the Verbeeg form's wide circle. Chara toughs it out and keeps fighting. The Spear of Justice cuts right through Gary's thick hide.
Frisk hits Gary with Chromatic Orb on the second casting, only to find that Gary is immune to stun. Stranger still, he doesn't give the "Unaffected by the effects of whatever" message that normally plays when a critter is immune.
Gary and Chara keep trading hits. Shapeshifting disables quick items, but you can still right-click potions to drink them from the inventory screen. It's an important ability considering druids can't heal themselves without returning to natural form.
I don't know why we have those Fortitude saves whenever we drink potions. It doesn't do anything if we fail them.
Chara finally puts down Gary Pointyface, just as another round of Call Lightning comes around to zap the opposition.
Putting aside the power of the Call Lightning spell, it just plain looks cool.
I make a point of looking out for weak points in strong tactics, so I can anticipate the next fatal attack. I find something new: the Verbeeg form's pitiful 9 AC also renders it vulnerable to on-hit effects.
I have found that growing too reliant on certain tactics tends to create blind spots that prove fatal in the long run. Look for holes in your strategy, and patch them.
Chara continues to dominate the scene with their Spear of Justice, taking down basically every enemy with little help from Asriel or Frisk.
Another fun fact: the Verbeeg form is innately immune to Hold Person!
Not the effect, but the spell. In IWD2, various spells have effects that automatically grant immunity to certain critter types. This is quite unlike BG2, where immunities are applied to critters via passive effects and unmovable items. This means that large targets like the Verbeeg form are naturally immune to stuff like Hold Person, simply because of the size of their circle.
There's one thing on this map that Chara's resistances won't be able to handle. I think the Malarite High Priest here can cast Call Lightning, which could mean instant death for Chara or anyone else in range. I preempt the spell by sneaking Chara over and shapeshifting right in front of the priest, allowing Chara plenty of time to disrupt his first spell.
There's only one thing left to do before the fight on Shaengarne Bridge.
We all hit level 6. Normally a party of six would be at level 5 at this point (with Tactics installed, at least), and a party of three wouldn't be much different, but I've been level squatting to make sure we're at the highest level possible before this fight.
Level squatting is the masochistic practice of delaying level ups until right before certain key events of the game. It only works in IWD2. When your party is lower level, it gains more XP from kills, which means you can jump up an extra level or more depending on how long you delay a level up. Unfortunately, the level jump at the end means you get less XP right afterward, so in the long run, level squatting doesn't actually make you any stronger. There are precious few times when it's actually worth doing.
But this is one of them. Definitely. This is Shaengarne Bridge, the second-hardest fight in the entire game.
Frisk touches Chara's Spear of Justice when they're not looking. It fills us with determination.
Weidu log below.
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~SETUP-DUNGEONBEGONE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Dungeon Be Gone V1.6
~SAERILETH/SETUP-SAERILETH.TP2~ #0 #0 // Saerileth Romance Mod (BG2:SoA & TOB NPC) created by nethrin and Sillara: v18_charsets
~SETUP-BGEEAR.TP2~ #0 #0 // TeamBG's Armors for BG:EE, BGT and TuTu Version 1.05
~SETUP-BGEEW.TP2~ #0 #0 // TeamBG's Weapons Pack for BG:EE, BGT and TuTu Version 1.04
~SETUP-AMBER.TP2~ #0 #0 // Amber the NPC MOD for BGII:SoA: v4
~SETUP-AMBER.TP2~ #0 #1 // Multiplayer-friendly flirting for Amber: v4
~SETUP-WMART.TP2~ #0 #0 // Deidre and Joluv in BG:EE
~WWW.URSTUFF2ATHKATLA/WWW.URSTUFF2ATHKATLA.TP2~ #0 #0 // (Exploit) Don't nuke BG1 items at the start of BG2: v1.0
~TOD/SETUP-TOD.TP2~ #0 #0 // Tower Of Deception Mod (Requires Throne Of Bhaal)
~TOD/SETUP-TOD.TP2~ #0 #1 // Improved Astral Shard Guardian
~TOD/SETUP-TOD.TP2~ #0 #2 // Encounter with Ustrain
~SETUP-RECOLOREDBUTTONS.TP2~ #0 #2 // Recolored character's toolbar buttons (BG2:EE): v4.1
~DEARNISE/SETUP-DEARNISE.TP2~ #0 #0 // de'Arnise Romance for Baldur's Gate II: v5
~WANDCASE/WANDCASE.TP2~ #0 #0 // Wand Case: v1.3
Diary of Scythia
When I awoke in the dungeon I found that all my equipment and gold had gone. Imoen was with me and had learnt some magic. She was now a thief/conjurer and as such she was a big help. When we met an Otyugh she killed it with a lightning bolt. This hurt her too, but I was quickly able to heal her.
We helped Rielev on his way to the afterlife, killed numerous monsters, duerger, and other bad guys, and eventually made our way to the surface along with Jaheira. At that point Imoen was abducted and I suggested that Jaheira leave me. She has gone to the harper stronghold.
I helped in the circus before heading to the slum area where I killed Amalas before clearing out the slavers.
I visited the first floor of Watcher’s Keep, but decided that was sufficient for the present.
I took the bear to Wellyn and killed two of those involved in burying people alive. Unfortunately one escaped. I teamed up with someone who I thought was Hexxat but gained little. I could team up with her killer, (the genuine Hexxat) but have no desire to have someone like that in my party.
I took a poisoned man to the harper stronghold and have agreed to help Nalia.
EDIT
At the D'Arnise stronghold, I got weakened to the point that I couldn't move or use my sword (By spectral troll or spirit troll). The result of this was that I had to use 16 potions of extra healing to survive. Eventually I got my strength back and was the victor, but at such a cost.
The rest of the stronghold was straightforward. Dispell magic was enough to help Glacius. Just the final battle to go.
The only problem is that I don't know whether EE has changed it. In my last game Tor Gal was not susceptible to Cloudkill. Whether he is or not, I have yet to discover.
EDIT 2
The battle against Tor Gal was straightforward and afterwards Scythia reached level 13.
By level squatting and getting Chara to level 6, we allow Chara to get an extra feat, which my mods have improved. Chara needed to be level 5 before they could choose this feat, and therefore could not choose it earlier, but you only get feats every 3 levels unless you're a rogue, fighter, or mage. Only at level 6 could they choose it.
This feat is Wild Shape: Will o' Wisp.
Why this one? Will o' Wisps in IWD2 are awfully difficult to kill, and this form is no exception.
That spell resistance won't block everything, since various spells in IWD2 are coded to bypass magic resistance, but it will make Chara an excellent tank. Its high generic AC bonus and DEX will also make it hard to hit, though it has no damage resistance at all. Critical hits can still tear it apart, but overall it's much tougher than the Verbeeg form.
Will o' Wisp form won't break the battle at Shaengarne on its own, but it's an important part of our strategy. Before we enter the next area, Frisk drinks a Potion of Freedom to give us party-wide Freedom of Movement and Asriel drinks a Potion of Heroism (a very expensive purchase) for just a little extra boost. When faced with monstrous challenges like Shaengarne, it's better to spend than to save. Finally, we use Caballus' Whispering Staff to turn the whole party invisible.
This will let us sneak up on Xuki. We'll get backed into a corner in the process, but it means that we don't get flanked--Tactics will summon enemies behind you when you engage Xuki.
Guthma orders his ogres to destroy the bridge, knowing that we are coming to seize it. The Support Beams holding up the bridge have 200 HP and damage resistance, but they won't last forever, and if they fall, we lose a lot of experience.
Xuki tries to stall for time. We fell for it in the last run for roleplaying reasons, but this time Frisk knows better.
Chara breaks invisibility by shapeshifting. Even many on-self spells in IWD2 break invisibility, unlike in BG.
The battle begins.
Chara holds off the enemies to the west while Frisk gets to work on the ogres and Asriel focuses on Xuki, whose Mirror Image and Improved Invisibility spells will make her extremely difficult to kill. Frisk can stun the ogres with Chromatic Orb. It's a fantastic anti-fighter spell, since fighters have such terrible Reflex saves.
Unholy Blight somehow gets past Chara's spell resistance, though it doesn't hit very hard. It's our first clue that Will o' Wisp form is imperfect. Moments later, Asriel rolls a 1 on a Will save, and Xuki takes control.
Immunities are hard to come by in IWD2. There's no such thing as a Potion of Clarity in this game, and Chaotic Commands is a long way away.
The enemy lands some critical hits on Chara, but their high AC reduces the chance of critical damage.
Chara could use shapeshifting to heal themself, but it's safer to drink potions by right-clicking on the inventory screen, bypassing IWD2 shapeshifting's disabling of quick item slots.
Call Lightning and Static Charge both bypass spell resistance every time, but they can't get past Chara's Will o' Wisp damage resistances.
Xuki launches a Fireball, but there's no good place for her to fire it. The enemy suffers more than we do.
The west end of the bridge is flooded with disablers, holding off the rest of the enemies and leaving Xuki on her own. She turns her attention to Frisk, summoning a skeleton and trying to disable Frisk with Chromatic Orb. Frisk dodges it easily, as they often do.
Even if they failed their save, it wouldn't matter. Their Potion of Freedom would shield them anyway.
With Asriel still charmed and Chara and Frisk occupied, Xuki remains untouched and free to attack us. Chara starts to thin the herd to the west.
Even if Chara wasn't there, though, we've got a strong blockade against the enemy. Entangle, Web, and Stinking Cloud are marvelous anti-access/area denial tools, but all the enemy did by casting them is lock themselves out of the battlefield. While the enemy struggles to even approach, Frisk disables and kills the second ogre, saving the bridge.
Knowing Xuki has Minor Globe of Invulnerability active, Frisk turns their attention to the enemies to the west. We may as well take them down while they're vulnerable, to make sure we don't get caught off-guard when Entangle, Web, and Stinking Cloud dissipate.
I actually think Lance of Disruption is cooler, but Fireball is more useful at this stage of the game, when few enemies are resistant to fire.
Xuki's MGOI has just worn off, but I don't notice. Frisk keeps up the attack on the western enemies rather than trying to stun Xuki with a Chromatic Orb.
Normally those enemies come in so fast and so strong that they force the party east. Instead, Chara is forcing them back west.
It's a telling sign of the tide of the battle. Better still, Asriel recovers from Charm Person, and Xuki fails a save against Chromatic Orb.
Three rounds of stun gives us plenty of time to remove Xuki's Mirror Images. She doesn't survive the attack.
Why is Frisk using a staff instead of a bow, since IWD2 has no class weapon restrictions? Bows in IWD2 don't give an extra attack per round like they do in BG, though you can get an extra attack per round with the Rapid Shot feat at the cost of -2 to hit. Frisk doesn't even have a bow, because it would require an extra feat to buy proficiency in bows, and Frisk needs those feats for Spell Focus.
With the enemy spellcasters dead, Chara no longer needs Will o' Wisp form. They break out the Spear of Justice and we hunt down the remaining grunts.
Various quests in IWD2 require killing all of the enemies; not just a single big one. Not that we'd spare them anyway; we need the XP to avoid a reload.
Then we get a chilling message.
Snakes would be big trouble; Verbeeg form won't protect Chara from poison.
The enemy calls for help.
...
But nobody came.
Chara returns to Will o' Wisp form one last time to collect our treasure, including, finally, a Bag of Holding. Why Will o' Wisp form? Well, Call Lightning can go off even after the caster dies, and we've got at least one Malarite High Priest's body lying on the bridge.
The battle at Shaengarne is won. Another huge fight is coming up, but for now, we are safe.
Will o' Wisp form was powerful, but now that I think about it, layering some Entangle spells on the western bridge could have held off the enemy for a full 10 rounds as well as scramble the Malarite Priests' spells, especially if Chara took on the ogres so Frisk could Fireball the west early. But there are still plenty of dangerous mages and priests left in IWD2, and Will o' Wisp will be one of our best answers to hostile magic when Entangle will no longer be enough.
Frisk builds a snowman and stores it in the Bag of Holding so we can take it all over the world. We are filled with determination.
Next up is a female half-orc neutral-good shadowdancer. If I remember correctly, this run is going to have a lot of kiting and micromanagement. But half-orcs hit hard, so maybe I can cut some of the struggles short. Will introduce her soon...
Good luck to all who have currently active runs!