Codolences Grond0. Nice run; I'm surprised by the ending however...
A short update on Ergus Sum - the city, dull as always, but not w/o trouble this time. Upon crossing the bridge, we kill some creatures for Dorn. They looked more menacing than they really were.
Due to killing off several friendly clerics, my reputation dropped to 3. We still weren't attacked on sight. However, there is this guy called Entils Fulstom, some mage-looking punk who's dialogue I skip. I pressed "2" on my keyboard and he goes into attack mode. I was totally unprepared, luckily my PC got webbed and he turned to Dorn, killing of innocent bystanders and the like.
Worse yet - when we killed him, my reputation dropped even lower!
Now we had to do some junk quests to fix our rep, I want at least 5 or above. So we killed the sewer Ogre magi - Jaheira struck him with Icelance, new spell in SR. It's a level 3 spell so it doesn't bypass MGoI, target takes some damage but the real kicker is that it holds the target upon a failed death save, making it very valid vs mages. It can also (unlike Hold Person) hold more types of creatures.
Iron Throne - Dorn soloed them with Detonation arrows + some poison + poison arrows.
Finally, we return to Candlekeep, Edwin dies vs Pratt (awfully played alltogether, bad buffs, dispelled asap, protagonist taking much damage in melee, Jaheira drawing the attention of few spiders), but we raised him and are en route to BG again.
@Corey_Russell I expect that you will know this already, but perhaps some won't: Remember that items will never be destroyed if they are vital to the plot.
Slythe & Krystin proved unable to damage Dorn too much before he kills Slythe. Dorn took 2 stabs, other than that no problem with the thief.
Krystin summoned much. I'm very happy with this Edwin's Skull Trap - perfect targeting, no friendly damage, no innocents damaged.
Krystin herself died to Dorn's arrows.
Final two serious battles were awful, each in it's own right. First, dopes. All started just fine, and we killed most of them (not the mage) before they harmed anyone.
However, he decides it's a good idea to cast Confusion. Belt gets affected as well. This is a very likely end of No Reload.
I pause, Viconia has Break Enchantment. Quickly, before he attacks us, she removes the ill effect from him.
I kill the mage, Belt is blue. Fingers crossed....
Sarevok kills Liia, he gives his farewell, Belt says his lines, I don't get teleported (wrong dialogue option?!), and Belt is again red-circled. FFFS....
I run out. Still no Game over screen....
Ah well. I fight my way through the maze, skip the Iron Throne party, and get into Sarevok's lair. Dorn applies a Pro Magic scroll and soloes much of the battle alone - few shots of Detonation arrows, Invis.potion, rinse, repeat.
Angelo is always the curious one, eats a paralysis wand (2 attempts) and dies.
With him gone, all strangness explodes. Detonation arrows can't hurt Semaj anymore for some reason. Also, Semaj goes under a permanent Invisibility effect. I've never seen this; as if he had Staff of the Magi equipped - the moment he casts a spell, he goes invisible again. I can't even detect him, nothing - as if he vanishes completely. He died as Jaheira targeted him with Flamestrike Wand.
Diramid died just few moments before him to summons. Now I tought, way is clear, since Tazok & Sarevok can be easilly swarmed with summons and picked off at range. Tazok dies quickly, but Sarevok doesn't.
He wouldn't die. Ever. Whatever I did, whatever damage I tried, nothing. His script doesn't recognize that he should be dead and MINhp item he has prevents him from dying. In desperation, I try CTRL-Y.
No, he just wouldn't die.
Bleh. I reload, edit his script, he still won't die. Even my PCs recongnized he should be dead and wouldn't autoattack anymore, but no, he wouldn't die. I edit him, remove the minhp from him, CTRL-Y everyone but him, and kill him.
Great. There was still an issue of Belt being hostile. However, a cutscene starts, and bam! - we're in a dungeon.
So now, SoD. I've never played it before, I have no idea what to expect. Any suggestions/tips? Is it hard? I've still got my items & my party (just reached level 8 on everyone), we're fairly well equipped with potions/items/expendables. I'll probably keep my PC shooting arrows from the back while Dorn and eventually Jaheira do the tanking. Also, are there any deadly (disitegrate and similar) traps?
@Aasim Congrats on defeating Sarevok. Having thought about it, I think your issue with Sarevok could be due to your issue with Belt. The following are SPOILERS not images that I am hiding
The first part of SoD isn't too hard. Just take note of what you are told and do it.
There are places when it tells you where to go and what to do where the instructions are not very clear and the walkthroughs are little help as they don't show the positions on the maps.
If somebody gives you a task to do, remember where they are located. There are so many things to do that it is easy to forget and the journal is not much help in that respect. I would write your own memoranda if I were you, as memorising such things is important.
I would also say: Don't be too bloodthirsty. You might need some of those "enemies" later on.
A dragonskin makes a very good shield. However killing the dragon is not plot critical.
Ensure that you have containers. Actually that was more important in BG1 EE as you can take equipment with you from BG1, but little gold.
@Wise_Grimwald Thanks. I'll keep notes then. @ussnorway - I'm running an EET install, SCS is kinda mandatory so that ship has sailed. I'm not worried about fireball and similar, I'm worred for instagib traps if there are any.
Is there a particulary hard battle that must be fought?
Hax has made big progress since the last update. Some party changes as well.
Hax decided he and Aerie can handle Mencar's gang - the rest the party just relaxed. Basically massive area effects (web, stinking cloud, fireballs, cloudkills, great malison, emotion) were laid on the enemies - they never even got a chance to fight back.
Similar tactics were also used to destroy Tarnor's party:
Hax decides it's high time he got a magic license - just in the nick of time, as he got a 3 vamp/4 mugger ambush - but he was low spells, so was a rough battle, a lot of micro-managing was mandatory.
By this point Keldorn was in the party. Originally the idea was to do his quest then boot him out. Problem though was we didn't have enough money for shield of balduran. So he was with us while we worked on the planar sphere. One battle in particular was tough, had to fight some Yuan-tis, thralls, and Githyanki all at the same time. Keldorn died, and Mazzy was put unconscious. The party struggled to defeat the guys on top then descended to try to help Mazzy. Fortunately the clerics' hold person spells turned the tide.
We were low spells by the Warden, and couldn't target him nor did we have any way to dispel him (because Keldorn was silenced). So out of desperation, Aerie and Hax fired off lightning bolts off their wands - this worked, but Aerie very nearly died.
We finally had enough for the Shield of Balduran - we got that and worked on the Unseeing Eye quest. This was really smooth, except for one point. Our plan was to do a bunch of silences on the blind priests - this usually works, but I didn't micro-manage enough and some people went around (in particular Aerie). Once this happened some gauths joined in and then all hell broke loose.
Minsc and Aerie both died during the battle. Hax himself got held (normally this couldn't happen, but because of the dead/disabled party members he was dual-wielding clubs to try to speed up the kills). And a gauth was targeting Hax!!! I kept it paused for a while - we just weren't killing the gauth fast enough. I decided Keldorn's dispel magic was Hax's only chance (actually Viconia could have tried remove paralysis, but she was in melee and could have been disrupted). This worked, but also freed 4 blind priests, so the battle was desperate for a while.
But the party did prevail. Has been the bloodiest battle to date.
Rest of the quest went without incident.
Because Keldorn saved my bacon, decided he would be useful in the haul than Minsc. But can't get rid of Minsc just yet, he's our pack-rat. So after getting our reward for completing the Unseeing Eye quest and selling, we had enough gold to get the Belt of Hill Giant Strength. Mazzy equipped that. Then we removed anything critical from Minsc and then kicked him out.
We used massive potions on the Unseeing Eye quest (undead took quite a bit in addition to the blind priests battle), so at end of session bought all of Watcher's Keep extra healing potions.
Before heading for the Nashkel Mines, Rondo and co. make a short detour around the countryside clearing the Ankhegs dungeon and the Sirines in the lighthouse map, and travel to the Firewine Ruins to retrieve the Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise from Melium: Grant has them currently.
I don't have the Dark Side option installed for the kobolds this time, so the mines are trounced rather quickly. Mulahey is engaged immediately upon sight, with Grant punching his way through the reinforcements while the other four with a Spirit Animal deal with Mulahey: no spell was successful from him.
We clear the tombs, killing the Revenant and obtaining the Wand of Monster Summoning. Narcillus is swarmed by 4 skeletons and a Spirit Snake, and falls without anything more irritating than a Glitterdust temporarily blinding Quinn. We go south one more time to get to Samuel, and back up to the FAI, then back to Beregost to return Joseph's ring and Mulahey's symbol. Nimbul's illusion spells are countered by a True Seeing from Truth, and his Stoneskin isn't nearly enough to save him from the onslaught that follows. He did finish one Chromatic Orb that stuns Quinn, and I get to test whether Remove Paralysis fixes Stun. (It does.)
Tranzig fails to do anything important, and I want to clear the two ambushes before heading to the Bandit Camp. Amazons first: Quinn is killed almost instantaneously by the two invisible ones as well as the Unholy Blight that manages to complete. A Spirit Animal is conjured, though, and Truth and Grant are now on top of their clerics. Maple helps disrupts spells with her darts, and the battle is quickly over after Quinn's death.
Ambush 2: This was a mess. The second ambush happened at the same time as a random 3-ghast ambush. The fight ended up sectioned off, with Truth holding two at the north, Grant fighting a Ghast to the south, Quinn trying (and failing) to hold off the east, while Rondo and Maple headed Southeast to relative safety. A Spirit Animal helped with another Ghast in the west. Quinn is forced to retreat to the left as the Potion of Heroism'd fighter is too much for him to handle, and Truth stops her fight to Remove Paralysis Grant, who had been hit and stunned by a Ghast. Maple gets off the first of two Call Lightnings, ending the only spellcaster's life in this ambush. The Ghasts are slowly dying off as well, and Seeking Sword from Truth is used to finish off the last of the ambush.
Stats: Rondo, 7 Skald, 49 HP (6 from Familiar), 0 kills Truth, 6 Priest(ess) of Helm, 42 HP, 115 kills, 1 death Grant, 6 Monk, 37 HP, 183 kills, 2 deaths Quinn, 6 Swashbuckler, 30 HP, 134 kills, 1 death Maple, 7 Totemic Druid, 48 HP, 83 kills, 0 deaths
Still taking my time, we killed a cleric by commanding the bugger to lie down while we sword rape him and that paid for a new frost wand to take out the other battle horror... We also had enough to grab some cheap scrolls but with no familiar to tank I'm leaving the basilisk for later.
Returning a summoning bowl gave her the third level so Imoen has agreed to dual to mage and take up the art of wand tapping... Sarah can cheer us on but l need a full time caster. Imoen will still have to complete an apprenticeship to be considered a mage officially under the law but for the time being that can wait until we finish dodging assassins.
@Wise_Grimwald Thanks. I'll keep notes then. @ussnorway - I'm running an EET install, SCS is kinda mandatory so that ship has sailed. I'm not worried about fireball and similar, I'm worred for instagib traps if there are any.
Is there a particulary hard battle that must be fought?
the final battle = morale and fire... I would skip the dragon but thats up to you.
traps; well there are no "you are dead" traps I can remember but there are two areas where traps make you very likly to die because they take away your control of the character... I'd watch for new monster types casting different spell combos as well.
I've yet to see scs and sod play nice but best of luck and be sure to visit the sorcerers shop before you leave town... on that note, any time the plot tells you that you can't come back to this area is a poke to finish any quests you want before moving on.
@Aasim The dragon fight doesn't have to be completed in one go. You can go into the cave and after his/her assault, flee from the cave, get healed and return. That is what I did and it worked. It wasn't planned. I just realised that if the party didn't get healed, it was game over. The party was hasted at the time, which may or may not be significant concerning whether or not the dragon follows you out.
Doing an early-morning run I let the familiar out of my backpack a few times while still at low levels - on the grounds that having enemies with no distance attacks chase him reduced the time required for run and shoot tactics. Given how vulnerable familiars are in BG1 trying that probably doesn't make sense, but I successfully avoided any damage to it.
Later on I reduced the amount of overkill of enemies a bit, but still hit the level cap before first arriving at Baldur's Gate. Everything went well until the palace where I again watched invisibly as Belt tried to take on the dopplegangers. This time though he performed really poorly - only killing 2 and making another run before a 3rd critical hit on him took him down to only 19 HPs remaining. Attempting to intervene I used a wand scorcher to kill the doppleganger attacking Belt and badly injure both the other active enemies. One of those attacked me, which appeared to give me a great chance of success. However, the other one hit Belt for 12 HPs (leaving him only 7 left). Then, an instant before my second scorcher would kill the last 2 dopplegangers, the doppleganger attacking Belt got a final critical attack in - for 8 HPs. Grrrr
Selûna and party tried to rescue Glacius rather than kill him. It didn't work. As a result of using that tactic rather than web/cloudkill, the party got hurt and were then attacked by a troll that appeared out of nowhere.
The party survived, slept and went to open the gate. They then cleared the ground floor for a second time before taking on the golems. The iron golem was impervious to the party's ranged weapons so was not killed.
The Umber Hunks were a little more difficult to deal with than usual, but were killed.
The final three trolls were killed by divide and conquer. Tor Gal isn't as susceptible to Cloudkill as he was in Tutu. He did succumb to the party's attacks eventually however.
Upon returning to Amn, Selûna bought the Sheild of Balduran, (She now has his shield, sword and Helm). She went to the Graveyard District and returned Wellyn's Bear. She then agreed to help find the person involved in the Skinner Murdererd, This caused her to level up to 12th level.
Proficiences now: ** in Long Sword; ** in axes, ** in flails and ** in sword and shield style.
good luck with those two in the same party... I did enjoy seeing the eye get poked, keep it up!
Actually I have made it all the way to Melissan with those two in the party before. But it doesn't matter in any case - if they come to blows, Viconia dies and then Anomen will be our lucky replacement. : )
@Grond0 - I think Melissan throws darts that dispel. This is when you use Reflection Shield if you are character who can use it and solo. But since you can't use, instead you need lots and lots of PfMW (e.g. buy all scrolls in the game).
I have just discovered that contrary to what another contributer to these forums thinks, there is a potion case in Amn. He has clearly not looked underneath the surface of things.
I have just discovered that contrary to what another contributer to these forums thinks, there is a potion case in Amn. He has clearly not looked underneath the surface of things.
Technically @Wise_Grimwald that potion case is part of a ToB component. Without ToB, there are no potion cases in vanilla Shadows of Amn. But with ToB, you can access Watcher's Keep early and thus get the potion bag.
I have just discovered that contrary to what another contributer to these forums thinks, there is a potion case in Amn. He has clearly not looked underneath the surface of things.
Technically @Wise_Grimwald that potion case is part of a ToB component. Without ToB, there are no potion cases in vanilla Shadows of Amn. But with ToB, you can access Watcher's Keep early and thus get the potion bag.
The potion that I was referring to in Amn is sold by a black-marketeer in the sewers under the temple area. Perhaps it comes from this: ~BG2_TWEAKS/SETUP-BG2_TWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1080 // Add Bags of Holding: v16
EDIT
It did. Quote from the read-me that I didn't read well enough:- Add Bags of Holding In the Shadows of Amn portion of the game, this component adds potion cases to the stores of Roger the Fence and Mrs. Cragmoon and ammo belts to the stores of the Trademeet blacksmith and Perter. Bags will also be added to the Baldur's Gate portion of Tutu and BGT games. This component will add a gem bag to the Friendly Arm Inn store, a scroll case at the High Hedge, an ammo belt to Thunderhammer Smithy, a potion case to the Nashkel General Store, and a bag of holding at the Sorcerous Sundries in Baldur's Gate. Selûna and party have solved the Tirdir quest.
A much better connection today provided the opportunity to make significant progress in Amn. That started by reporting in to Gaelan Bayle before sorting out the Copper Coronet.
Setting off for Watcher's Keep we were ambushed by Suna Seni, but chaos made the fight a simple one.
There were no vampiric wraiths at the Keep, so clearing the top level (apart from the statues was easy enough) - although Toriac did complain about being tasked with opening a container with a FoD trap when his spell saving throw was 4.
Back in Athkatla Officer Dirth provided Toriac with an armour upgrade. After being sent in search of a necklace by Mae'Var we saved Renfeld on the way to the Temple. We also took the opportunity to get a second-hand cloak from the rakshasa in the sewers and opened up access to the lich.
Back at the Docks we looted the harpers before turning to the rest of Mae'Var's tasks. Faced with an attack by an improved invisible Toriac, Rayic attempted to cast true sight, but was interrupted - and failed to get another spell off.
An assault on the guild house soon followed, which various confused assassins were unable to do much about.
With plenty of funds we decided to pay Gaelan Bayle before heading to the Bridge. The Rune Assassins there waited in vain for a bone golem to make an appearance and made little impression themselves on Toriac.
The big paladin gave the lie in that house to his earlier complaint about being forced to trigger traps - punishing himself severely there before Ozzy arrived after being mazed while collecting the berserker horn.
In the mood for a party we went to invite some liches to join in. However, for some reason they were ignoring us and such rudeness had to be punished. Coming back to the Bridge District we were delayed by Neera's cut-scene, so compensated by using potions of speed before powering on through to Kangaxx - his door was kicked in as Ozzy is still too mean to give any hard-earned funds to the Cowled Wizards.
The final action of the session was taking advantage of the remaining time on the Scroll of PfU to clear the Graveyard tombs.
Ozzy, fighter 9 / mage 11, 80 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 124 kills (232 in BG1) Toriac, undead hunter 10, 136 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm, 10 from bracers), 107 kills (172 in BG1), 0 deaths (1 in BG1)
The Underdark awaits - and Luna is prepared - she has enough chaotic command spells to buff thte entire group. This did serve the party quite well in their initial encounter with a group of mind flayers:
In BG1, I gave the intelligence tome to Anapa so he would survive two mind flayer hits - this is paying off now, as he's the only party member without a ranged weapon (though I could've given him throwing daggers). It's back to BG1 tactics: Anapa runs around, evading the enemies, the others try to shoot them.
Now, Luna added remove fear and a death ward for Goibniu plus five skeleton warriors before attacking the first drow party. The undead attacked, while the party simply provided a little bit of ranged assistance:
The party made their way to the svirfneblin village, where full party buffs were used against the balor. By now, this includes bless, remove fear, chant, death ward, defensive harmony, protection from evil 10' radius, chaotic commands, haste and several individual buffs (like DUHM for Luna, strength for Goibniu (sometimes for Helios and Owain as well), MI, blur and stoneskin for Owain and sometimes protection spells against elemental damage or various item buffs, like Ilbratha's MI). Mass invisibilty will hopefully be added to this list later on. The demon was quickly slain:
With the help of some traps, Goibniu freed all prisoners from the spherical prison in the middle of the map. He also quickly completed Vithal's quest (and Helios stole all of the mage's items).
The second drow group was defeated in the same ways as the first one:
The skeleton warriors moved on to kill the kuo-toa, thus clearing the main underdark map of enemies.
The start of another day saw the start of another run ...
For this run I further cut down the amount of encounters done ub BG1 and also saved time by not always taking the safest travel routes - resulting in a near death early on in a hobgoblin ambush. Things were pretty straight-forward after that though on the way to the palace. This time Belt took no critical hits and it looked like he was going to win on his own comfortably when he still had 43 HPs when moving on to the last doppleganger. However, with sufficiently bad luck that number of HPs could disappear in less than a couple of seconds, so to make sure I attacked the doppleganger myself - persuading it to attack me while Belt quickly cut it down from behind.
After going invisibly to the temple I rested to repair a few lost HPs - and was lucky in acquiring a second DUHM that I had forgotten about . Inside the temple Sarevok was attacked as usual from distance before I retreated and waited for Semaj to teleport out. He was eventually paralysed by wand and shot down, but had saved numerous times first and had dimension-doored uncomfortably close to the dais. That indeed proved to be uncomfortable when I went looking for Sarevok and Tazok announced his presence with an attack. Angelo appeared as well and used arrows of detonation to make short work of some summons. Already wounded by Tazok I had to use a potion of invisibility to dodge Angelo's arrows
- leaving Angelo to the tender mercies of Tazok who had been annoyed by the blasts.
Tazok was then swamped by summons before Sarevok came out to make a final stand on top of the pile of bodies.
SoD was going quite fine, until I woke in a room to find all my party is scattered around. Bleh...Dorn had best equipment on him, and I had no idea where to find him. Anyhow, played on (my game should be named "where is Dorn?" not SoD) in hope of aquiring him. Ergus did the tanking, I took that archeress for a while, but she died to spiders, Edwin had a few epic lines to say ("don't be the hammer, be the hand that holds it" - finally someone realises that Edwin has 18 INT and is; contrary to his BG2 character, a genius); and in the end - a dragon burped and Ergus was no more. Few things went horribly wrong - the one character that shouldn't fail her save vs Dragon Fear (Viconia, the one with Remove Fear memorized) failed it, it couldn't exit area, I had no idea what type of damage dragon's breath did (now I do ), and the end is here.
I'm gonna go on a new run, with a Cavalier this time.
Hard luck Aasim. At least the end of your run wasn't due to stupidity. Selûna's was. Selûna and party had done very well in defeating the stone statues that awaken when you put the bell, book and candle on the altar in Watcher's Keep. They did it by divide and conquer. Even so Starlight was killed and Selûna was badly injured. It could have ended there but didn't. There was a trap on a bookcase that Nalia couldn't remove. An intelligent person would have let Nalia open it as she could be raised by Starlight. Stupidly Selûna did it because she thought that with her HP she would survive and Starlight could heal her. She didn't survive. If she had been better buffed she might have survived. Looks like a very dangerous time in Faerûn.
Ouch... @Wise_Grimwald@Aasim sorry to see the end of your runs... impressive progress all the same! Blind no-reload is a step up from the typical challenge...
Comments
A short update on Ergus Sum - the city, dull as always, but not w/o trouble this time.
Upon crossing the bridge, we kill some creatures for Dorn. They looked more menacing than they really were.
Due to killing off several friendly clerics, my reputation dropped to 3. We still weren't attacked on sight. However, there is this guy called Entils Fulstom, some mage-looking punk who's dialogue I skip. I pressed "2" on my keyboard and he goes into attack mode. I was totally unprepared, luckily my PC got webbed and he turned to Dorn, killing of innocent bystanders and the like.
Worse yet - when we killed him, my reputation dropped even lower!
Now we had to do some junk quests to fix our rep, I want at least 5 or above.
So we killed the sewer Ogre magi - Jaheira struck him with Icelance, new spell in SR. It's a level 3 spell so it doesn't bypass MGoI, target takes some damage but the real kicker is that it holds the target upon a failed death save, making it very valid vs mages. It can also (unlike Hold Person) hold more types of creatures.
Iron Throne - Dorn soloed them with Detonation arrows + some poison + poison arrows.
Finally, we return to Candlekeep, Edwin dies vs Pratt (awfully played alltogether, bad buffs, dispelled asap, protagonist taking much damage in melee, Jaheira drawing the attention of few spiders), but we raised him and are en route to BG again.
Slythe & Krystin proved unable to damage Dorn too much before he kills Slythe. Dorn took 2 stabs, other than that no problem with the thief.
Krystin summoned much. I'm very happy with this Edwin's Skull Trap - perfect targeting, no friendly damage, no innocents damaged.
Krystin herself died to Dorn's arrows.
Final two serious battles were awful, each in it's own right. First, dopes. All started just fine, and we killed most of them (not the mage) before they harmed anyone.
However, he decides it's a good idea to cast Confusion. Belt gets affected as well. This is a very likely end of No Reload.
I pause, Viconia has Break Enchantment. Quickly, before he attacks us, she removes the ill effect from him.
I kill the mage, Belt is blue. Fingers crossed....
Sarevok kills Liia, he gives his farewell, Belt says his lines, I don't get teleported (wrong dialogue option?!), and Belt is again red-circled. FFFS....
I run out. Still no Game over screen....
Ah well. I fight my way through the maze, skip the Iron Throne party, and get into Sarevok's lair.
Dorn applies a Pro Magic scroll and soloes much of the battle alone - few shots of Detonation arrows, Invis.potion, rinse, repeat.
Angelo is always the curious one, eats a paralysis wand (2 attempts) and dies.
With him gone, all strangness explodes. Detonation arrows can't hurt Semaj anymore for some reason. Also, Semaj goes under a permanent Invisibility effect. I've never seen this; as if he had Staff of the Magi equipped - the moment he casts a spell, he goes invisible again. I can't even detect him, nothing - as if he vanishes completely.
He died as Jaheira targeted him with Flamestrike Wand.
Diramid died just few moments before him to summons. Now I tought, way is clear, since Tazok & Sarevok can be easilly swarmed with summons and picked off at range.
Tazok dies quickly, but Sarevok doesn't.
He wouldn't die. Ever. Whatever I did, whatever damage I tried, nothing. His script doesn't recognize that he should be dead and MINhp item he has prevents him from dying. In desperation, I try CTRL-Y.
No, he just wouldn't die.
Bleh. I reload, edit his script, he still won't die. Even my PCs recongnized he should be dead and wouldn't autoattack anymore, but no, he wouldn't die.
I edit him, remove the minhp from him, CTRL-Y everyone but him, and kill him.
Great. There was still an issue of Belt being hostile. However, a cutscene starts, and bam! - we're in a dungeon.
So now, SoD. I've never played it before, I have no idea what to expect. Any suggestions/tips? Is it hard? I've still got my items & my party (just reached level 8 on everyone), we're fairly well equipped with potions/items/expendables. I'll probably keep my PC shooting arrows from the back while Dorn and eventually Jaheira do the tanking.
Also, are there any deadly (disitegrate and similar) traps?
There are places when it tells you where to go and what to do where the instructions are not very clear and the walkthroughs are little help as they don't show the positions on the maps.
If somebody gives you a task to do, remember where they are located. There are so many things to do that it is easy to forget and the journal is not much help in that respect. I would write your own memoranda if I were you, as memorising such things is important.
I would also say: Don't be too bloodthirsty. You might need some of those "enemies" later on.
A dragonskin makes a very good shield. However killing the dragon is not plot critical.
Ensure that you have containers. Actually that was more important in BG1 EE as you can take equipment with you from BG1, but little gold.
@ussnorway - I'm running an EET install, SCS is kinda mandatory so that ship has sailed. I'm not worried about fireball and similar, I'm worred for instagib traps if there are any.
Is there a particulary hard battle that must be fought?
Traveling with: Keldorn, Mazzy, Aerie, Viconia
Hax has made big progress since the last update. Some party changes as well.
Hax decided he and Aerie can handle Mencar's gang - the rest the party just relaxed. Basically massive area effects (web, stinking cloud, fireballs, cloudkills, great malison, emotion) were laid on the enemies - they never even got a chance to fight back.
Similar tactics were also used to destroy Tarnor's party:
Hax decides it's high time he got a magic license - just in the nick of time, as he got a 3 vamp/4 mugger ambush - but he was low spells, so was a rough battle, a lot of micro-managing was mandatory.
By this point Keldorn was in the party. Originally the idea was to do his quest then boot him out. Problem though was we didn't have enough money for shield of balduran. So he was with us while we worked on the planar sphere. One battle in particular was tough, had to fight some Yuan-tis, thralls, and Githyanki all at the same time. Keldorn died, and Mazzy was put unconscious. The party struggled to defeat the guys on top then descended to try to help Mazzy. Fortunately the clerics' hold person spells turned the tide.
We were low spells by the Warden, and couldn't target him nor did we have any way to dispel him (because Keldorn was silenced). So out of desperation, Aerie and Hax fired off lightning bolts off their wands - this worked, but Aerie very nearly died.
We finally had enough for the Shield of Balduran - we got that and worked on the Unseeing Eye quest. This was really smooth, except for one point. Our plan was to do a bunch of silences on the blind priests - this usually works, but I didn't micro-manage enough and some people went around (in particular Aerie). Once this happened some gauths joined in and then all hell broke loose.
Minsc and Aerie both died during the battle. Hax himself got held (normally this couldn't happen, but because of the dead/disabled party members he was dual-wielding clubs to try to speed up the kills). And a gauth was targeting Hax!!! I kept it paused for a while - we just weren't killing the gauth fast enough. I decided Keldorn's dispel magic was Hax's only chance (actually Viconia could have tried remove paralysis, but she was in melee and could have been disrupted). This worked, but also freed 4 blind priests, so the battle was desperate for a while.
But the party did prevail. Has been the bloodiest battle to date.
Rest of the quest went without incident.
Because Keldorn saved my bacon, decided he would be useful in the haul than Minsc. But can't get rid of Minsc just yet, he's our pack-rat. So after getting our reward for completing the Unseeing Eye quest and selling, we had enough gold to get the Belt of Hill Giant Strength. Mazzy equipped that. Then we removed anything critical from Minsc and then kicked him out.
We used massive potions on the Unseeing Eye quest (undead took quite a bit in addition to the blind priests battle), so at end of session bought all of Watcher's Keep extra healing potions.
The quest continues...
I don't have the Dark Side option installed for the kobolds this time, so the mines are trounced rather quickly. Mulahey is engaged immediately upon sight, with Grant punching his way through the reinforcements while the other four with a Spirit Animal deal with Mulahey: no spell was successful from him.
We clear the tombs, killing the Revenant and obtaining the Wand of Monster Summoning. Narcillus is swarmed by 4 skeletons and a Spirit Snake, and falls without anything more irritating than a Glitterdust temporarily blinding Quinn. We go south one more time to get to Samuel, and back up to the FAI, then back to Beregost to return Joseph's ring and Mulahey's symbol. Nimbul's illusion spells are countered by a True Seeing from Truth, and his Stoneskin isn't nearly enough to save him from the onslaught that follows. He did finish one Chromatic Orb that stuns Quinn, and I get to test whether Remove Paralysis fixes Stun. (It does.)
Tranzig fails to do anything important, and I want to clear the two ambushes before heading to the Bandit Camp. Amazons first: Quinn is killed almost instantaneously by the two invisible ones as well as the Unholy Blight that manages to complete. A Spirit Animal is conjured, though, and Truth and Grant are now on top of their clerics. Maple helps disrupts spells with her darts, and the battle is quickly over after Quinn's death.
Ambush 2: This was a mess. The second ambush happened at the same time as a random 3-ghast ambush. The fight ended up sectioned off, with Truth holding two at the north, Grant fighting a Ghast to the south, Quinn trying (and failing) to hold off the east, while Rondo and Maple headed Southeast to relative safety. A Spirit Animal helped with another Ghast in the west. Quinn is forced to retreat to the left as the Potion of Heroism'd fighter is too much for him to handle, and Truth stops her fight to Remove Paralysis Grant, who had been hit and stunned by a Ghast. Maple gets off the first of two Call Lightnings, ending the only spellcaster's life in this ambush. The Ghasts are slowly dying off as well, and Seeking Sword from Truth is used to finish off the last of the ambush.
Stats:
Rondo, 7 Skald, 49 HP (6 from Familiar), 0 kills
Truth, 6 Priest(ess) of Helm, 42 HP, 115 kills, 1 death
Grant, 6 Monk, 37 HP, 183 kills, 2 deaths
Quinn, 6 Swashbuckler, 30 HP, 134 kills, 1 death
Maple, 7 Totemic Druid, 48 HP, 83 kills, 0 deaths
Career advice,
Hear text as mp3,
Still taking my time, we killed a cleric by commanding the bugger to lie down while we sword rape him and that paid for a new frost wand to take out the other battle horror... We also had enough to grab some cheap scrolls but with no familiar to tank I'm leaving the basilisk for later.
Returning a summoning bowl gave her the third level so Imoen has agreed to dual to mage and take up the art of wand tapping... Sarah can cheer us on but l need a full time caster. Imoen will still have to complete an apprenticeship to be considered a mage officially under the law but for the time being that can wait until we finish dodging assassins.
traps; well there are no "you are dead" traps I can remember but there are two areas where traps make you very likly to die because they take away your control of the character... I'd watch for new monster types casting different spell combos as well.
I've yet to see scs and sod play nice but best of luck and be sure to visit the sorcerers shop before you leave town... on that note, any time the plot tells you that you can't come back to this area is a poke to finish any quests you want before moving on.
Thanks! Exactly what I needed. I'll probably die quickly but your post gives me hope!
Doing an early-morning run I let the familiar out of my backpack a few times while still at low levels - on the grounds that having enemies with no distance attacks chase him reduced the time required for run and shoot tactics. Given how vulnerable familiars are in BG1 trying that probably doesn't make sense, but I successfully avoided any damage to it.
Later on I reduced the amount of overkill of enemies a bit, but still hit the level cap before first arriving at Baldur's Gate. Everything went well until the palace where I again watched invisibly as Belt tried to take on the dopplegangers. This time though he performed really poorly - only killing 2 and making another run before a 3rd critical hit on him took him down to only 19 HPs remaining. Attempting to intervene I used a wand scorcher to kill the doppleganger attacking Belt and badly injure both the other active enemies. One of those attacked me, which appeared to give me a great chance of success. However, the other one hit Belt for 12 HPs (leaving him only 7 left). Then, an instant before my second scorcher would kill the last 2 dopplegangers, the doppleganger attacking Belt got a final critical attack in - for 8 HPs. Grrrr
Selûna and party tried to rescue Glacius rather than kill him. It didn't work.
The party survived, slept and went to open the gate. They then cleared the ground floor for a second time before taking on the golems. The iron golem was impervious to the party's ranged weapons so was not killed.
The Umber Hunks were a little more difficult to deal with than usual, but were killed.
The final three trolls were killed by divide and conquer. Tor Gal isn't as susceptible to Cloudkill as he was in Tutu. He did succumb to the party's attacks eventually however.
Upon returning to Amn, Selûna bought the Sheild of Balduran, (She now has his shield, sword and Helm).
She went to the Graveyard District and returned Wellyn's Bear. She then agreed to help find the person involved in the Skinner Murdererd, This caused her to level up to 12th level.
Proficiences now: ** in Long Sword; ** in axes, ** in flails and ** in sword and shield style.
Perhaps it comes from this:
~BG2_TWEAKS/SETUP-BG2_TWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1080 // Add Bags of Holding: v16
EDIT
It did. Quote from the read-me that I didn't read well enough:-Add Bags of Holding
In the Shadows of Amn portion of the game, this component adds potion cases to the stores of Roger the Fence and Mrs. Cragmoon and ammo belts to the stores of the Trademeet blacksmith and Perter.
Bags will also be added to the Baldur's Gate portion of Tutu and BGT games. This component will add a gem bag to the Friendly Arm Inn store, a scroll case at the High Hedge, an ammo belt to Thunderhammer Smithy, a potion case to the Nashkel General Store, and a bag of holding at the Sorcerous Sundries in Baldur's Gate.
Selûna and party have solved the Tirdir quest.
Ozzy, elf fighter/mage (Grond0) & Toriac, human undead hunter (Gate70)
A much better connection today provided the opportunity to make significant progress in Amn. That started by reporting in to Gaelan Bayle before sorting out the Copper Coronet.
Setting off for Watcher's Keep we were ambushed by Suna Seni, but chaos made the fight a simple one.
There were no vampiric wraiths at the Keep, so clearing the top level (apart from the statues was easy enough) - although Toriac did complain about being tasked with opening a container with a FoD trap when his spell saving throw was 4.
Back in Athkatla Officer Dirth provided Toriac with an armour upgrade. After being sent in search of a necklace by Mae'Var we saved Renfeld on the way to the Temple. We also took the opportunity to get a second-hand cloak from the rakshasa in the sewers and opened up access to the lich.
Back at the Docks we looted the harpers before turning to the rest of Mae'Var's tasks. Faced with an attack by an improved invisible Toriac, Rayic attempted to cast true sight, but was interrupted - and failed to get another spell off.
An assault on the guild house soon followed, which various confused assassins were unable to do much about.
With plenty of funds we decided to pay Gaelan Bayle before heading to the Bridge. The Rune Assassins there waited in vain for a bone golem to make an appearance and made little impression themselves on Toriac.
The big paladin gave the lie in that house to his earlier complaint about being forced to trigger traps - punishing himself severely there before Ozzy arrived after being mazed while collecting the berserker horn.
In the mood for a party we went to invite some liches to join in. However, for some reason they were ignoring us and such rudeness had to be punished. Coming back to the Bridge District we were delayed by Neera's cut-scene, so compensated by using potions of speed before powering on through to Kangaxx - his door was kicked in as Ozzy is still too mean to give any hard-earned funds to the Cowled Wizards.
The final action of the session was taking advantage of the remaining time on the Scroll of PfU to clear the Graveyard tombs.
Ozzy, fighter 9 / mage 11, 80 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 124 kills (232 in BG1)
Toriac, undead hunter 10, 136 HPs (incl. 5 from Helm, 10 from bracers), 107 kills (172 in BG1), 0 deaths (1 in BG1)
The Underdark awaits - and Luna is prepared - she has enough chaotic command spells to buff thte entire group. This did serve the party quite well in their initial encounter with a group of mind flayers:
In BG1, I gave the intelligence tome to Anapa so he would survive two mind flayer hits - this is paying off now, as he's the only party member without a ranged weapon (though I could've given him throwing daggers). It's back to BG1 tactics: Anapa runs around, evading the enemies, the others try to shoot them.
Now, Luna added remove fear and a death ward for Goibniu plus five skeleton warriors before attacking the first drow party. The undead attacked, while the party simply provided a little bit of ranged assistance:
The party made their way to the svirfneblin village, where full party buffs were used against the balor. By now, this includes bless, remove fear, chant, death ward, defensive harmony, protection from evil 10' radius, chaotic commands, haste and several individual buffs (like DUHM for Luna, strength for Goibniu (sometimes for Helios and Owain as well), MI, blur and stoneskin for Owain and sometimes protection spells against elemental damage or various item buffs, like Ilbratha's MI). Mass invisibilty will hopefully be added to this list later on. The demon was quickly slain:
With the help of some traps, Goibniu freed all prisoners from the spherical prison in the middle of the map. He also quickly completed Vithal's quest (and Helios stole all of the mage's items).
The second drow group was defeated in the same ways as the first one:
The skeleton warriors moved on to kill the kuo-toa, thus clearing the main underdark map of enemies.
Enuhal
The start of another day saw the start of another run ...
For this run I further cut down the amount of encounters done ub BG1 and also saved time by not always taking the safest travel routes - resulting in a near death early on in a hobgoblin ambush. Things were pretty straight-forward after that though on the way to the palace. This time Belt took no critical hits and it looked like he was going to win on his own comfortably when he still had 43 HPs when moving on to the last doppleganger. However, with sufficiently bad luck that number of HPs could disappear in less than a couple of seconds, so to make sure I attacked the doppleganger myself - persuading it to attack me while Belt quickly cut it down from behind.
After going invisibly to the temple I rested to repair a few lost HPs - and was lucky in acquiring a second DUHM that I had forgotten about
SoD was going quite fine, until I woke in a room to find all my party is scattered around. Bleh...Dorn had best equipment on him, and I had no idea where to find him. Anyhow, played on (my game should be named "where is Dorn?" not SoD) in hope of aquiring him. Ergus did the tanking, I took that archeress for a while, but she died to spiders, Edwin had a few epic lines to say ("don't be the hammer, be the hand that holds it" - finally someone realises that Edwin has 18 INT and is; contrary to his BG2 character, a genius); and in the end - a dragon burped and Ergus was no more. Few things went horribly wrong - the one character that shouldn't fail her save vs Dragon Fear (Viconia, the one with Remove Fear memorized) failed it, it couldn't exit area, I had no idea what type of damage dragon's breath did (now I do
I'm gonna go on a new run, with a Cavalier this time.
Selûna's was.
Selûna and party had done very well in defeating the stone statues that awaken when you put the bell, book and candle on the altar in Watcher's Keep. They did it by divide and conquer. Even so Starlight was killed and Selûna was badly injured. It could have ended there but didn't.
There was a trap on a bookcase that Nalia couldn't remove. An intelligent person would have let Nalia open it as she could be raised by Starlight. Stupidly Selûna did it because she thought that with her HP she would survive and Starlight could heal her.
She didn't survive.
If she had been better buffed she might have survived.
Looks like a very dangerous time in Faerûn.