@semiticgod Incredible fight ! Somehow it looked like the Matrix to me. The Cowled Wizards were the Agents Smith and they knew they needed to make you stay here to prevent you to save Renfeld from the matrix, so they were summoning big baddies and force a lot of pressure on your computer. I don't know why but this is what it reminds me of. So many creatures and spell animations. Those are some amazing screenshots and a very very interesting story. It was a bit like a race against the clock except this time the clock was your computer overheating Also, thanks for the laugh !
It's the Sphere of Chaos spells, which can even disable the computer itself
Thanks @Arnaeus for your sympathies. Nice to see you here. I noticed your run. Will read later today @semiticgod, I agree traps are horrible. Very dangerous for me whenever I play a non-rogue solo. I generally know where the traps are, but am not very well aware of their effects. @Ygramul, I want to roll another Cleric/Illusionist. I think they're awesome. He or she would start in Candlekeep. How is your adventure going?
@Demivrgvs: Mazzy's Sword offers no save on its penalties, contrary to the description. Also, why remove the extra attack from the Shadow Thief Dagger? It's not like it's an overpowered item, considering the lack of STR bonuses.
After turning in Renfeld to Rylock, we sped through the Harper quests and paid a visit to Renal Bloodscalp and Mae'var. Poppy nearly died on the way to the Temple of Talos to fetch an amulet for Mae'var. We got caught in an ambush, and Poppy was backstabbed by a thief.
She has a slight weakness to piercing damage, on top of her low HP. But once she drank a potion, she was in good shape, and the thief lost interest in her after she started running away.
We also nabbed the Cloak of the Sewers on the way, though nobody in the party can identify it. I decide to have it identified later.
Rayic Gethras, as usual, is an issue. He shields himself with PFMW, and we don't really carry nonmagical weapons in this group (somehow I've forgotten to buy darts for Poppy, who has four pips in darts). Nor can we do much against his Improved Invisibility+SI: Divination Spell Trigger. The nymphs also fail to disable him with Sphere of Chaos (Ray-Ray has a save vs. spell of 1). But with our cleric buffs, we were able to wait out the duration of his PFMW spell, and he collapsed a few seconds after it wore off.
I did finish the Mae'var questline. I've died there once before, boxed in by an army of backstabbing thieves, and I am not interested in facing them again, despite the considerable XP and gold reward Renal gives you when Mae'var is dead. There is a potion in IR that prevents you from backstabbing--the Potion of Perception--and in IR, all potions are usable by Wizard Slayers like Poppy, but I don't think it would be enough. Even without a backstab multiplier, the thieves could still quite readily kill Poppy, and frankly I don't trust her to stay invisible, even if she drinks a potion.
Instead, I abandon the quest and side with Bodhi, and perform the first two quests, including sparing the life of the rich guy in the "unseemly task." Beyond that, I'm not interested in fussing with the Shadow Thieves just yet. I have to take down the Shade Lord first. There's a special cloak I need for Poppy.
I finally get the Cloak of the Sewers identified in Imnesvale. Snowy Tae can achieve immunity to damage with it, which I put to use only once in the Temple Ruins.
I don't know why I didn't try to make use of that cloak earlier. Maybe it's the same reason I forgot about Fobie's immunity to nonmagical weapons: I've just been too focused on Poppy and the harem.
I ponder many different possibilities for taking on the Shade Lord. Item Revisions gives a crippling nerf to Protection from Undead scrolls: instead of making the user invisible to undead, he or she merely gets some bonuses when fighting them. This time, I will not be able to take down the Shade Lord just by hiding behind a scroll. The scroll does, however, give immunity to level drain, but Spell Revisions makes that largely irrelevant for our group, since SR's Negative Plane Protection spell lasts 10 times as long as in the vanilla version: 50 rounds per casting.
But level drain is only one of many dangers of the SCS2 Shade Lord fight. The Shade Lord is a cleric/mage with access to the Black Blade of Disaster, which has gained a remarkable buff thanks to SR: instead of a 15% chance of disintegrating the target, it uses the SR disintegration method, which deals dozens of dice of damage on a failed save vs. spell, with a -2 penalty. And no, Death Ward does not protect against the IR/SR disintegration effect on the BBoD; it only gives immunity to the mage spell and the vanilla effect (opcode 238).
After poring over our spellbooks for a long while, I pick out a selection that seems to offer enough flexibility to survive a couple of Remove Magic spells. I don't have much defense against Black Blade of Disaster, but hopefully I won't have to deal with that.
I enter the area fully buffed and with everyone invisible. I need the extra time to seek out an advantageous position, at the south end of the map. This will force the Shade Lord to approach me.
Fobie brings out an Earth Elemental. I've chosen this summons because it has the highest STR of Fobie's options, and therefore will be the least likely to die from the enemy Shadows' STR drain. Poppy calls in a few members of the harem, mostly just to form a wall. I'm fairly certain the Shade Lord and all of the enemies are completely immune to every disabler the nymphs have. But putting a few more bodies in between us and the enemy will at least buy us some time.
Shadow Patrick is close enough to spot our summons, and the Shade Lord comes over soon after. I had hoped the Shade Lord would take longer to arrive, but that is no longer an option. As always, the Shade Lord brings out a PFMW spell, as well as a Spell Deflection spell... but no Dispelling Screen! The Shade Lord therefore only has 50 MR, and is vulnerable to our damage spells.
Pai'Na disables Shadow Patrick and the Shadow Altar with Web. We're off to a strong start.
Pai'Na successfully casts Insect Plague. Normally Fobie would cast this spell due to his superior casting time, but I decided he needed an extra Stoneskin instead, since we want him out in front, despite his terrible AC, to protect Pai'Na, who has no Stoneskin despite being a druid.
The enemies fail their save! Most importantly of all, the Shade Lord's spellcasting is disabled. Azama breaks down his Spell Deflection with a Secret Word spell (a pre-cast True Seeing spell, courtesy of Azama's Inquisitor kit, also removes the Shade Lord's illusions), while Fobie tries out some Fire Seeds on the enemy.
Fire Seeds do area-effect fire damage in SR as in vanilla, but in SR, the caster can fire off five seeds in one round, although the number of seeds is still quite limited. Fobie, at level 12, can only conjure six.
Why Fire Seeds? Well, the fire damage they do is nonmagical, meaning it bypasses the Shade Lord's MR, and since it is an area-effect weapon, it also bypasses the Shade Lord's PFMW spell. Fobie lands a hit on the Shadow Altar, but it doesn't quite reach the Shade Lord. The area-effect isn't quite big enough. Instead, Fobie targets one of the nymphs, since he has poor THAC0 and he can't reliably hit Pai'Na with them, and he'll get automatic hits on any disabled critter. This time, he manages to damage the Shade Lord.
So why is Pai'Na right next to the Shade Lord, if I don't want her spells getting disrupted? Well, now that the Shade Lord is already up in our face, and the Shadow Altar is failing to send a bunch of shadows our way, Fobie's access to Stoneskin isn't quite so meaningful, as we don't need him to absorb any physical attacks. Instead, we need to keep the Shade Lord from hitting the party with his Darkling Aura. To do that, we need Pai'Na, protected by SR's extra-long Negative Plane Protection spell, to hold the Shade Lord's attention.
While the Shade Lord is occupied, and the Shadow Altar and Shadow Patrick are webbed, the rest of the party acts to deal some spell damage. Fobie uses Call Lightning on the Shadow Altar, while Azama casts Flame Arrow at Shadow Patrick. Snowy Tae, for her part, attacks the Shadow Altar from afar using Spell Revision's Spiritual Hammer, which strikes from a distance as in IWD2, but unfortunately does not benefit from her 23 base STR. Poppy has relatively little to do, as her nymphs aren't much help, so she just summons a spirit animal (immune to level drain, notably) and stays out the way.
Shadow Patrick dies. Fobie gets too close to the Shade Lord, and loses a level. I underestimated the range of Darkling Aura. But the Shade Lord is in poor shape, and Pai'Na has just erected a Blade Barrier--which in SR bypasses magic resistance, and strikes twice per round.
In between the Insect Plague, Pai'Na's Blade Barrier, and Pai'Na's spider attacks, bolstered by Holy Power and Righteous Magic, which in SR tacks on 1d6 nonmagical magic damage to each melee strike, the Shade Lord is well beyond any hope of casting a spell. Even if he had made his save against Insect Plague, we would have a fairly strong chance of interrupting his spells. Pai'Na has Chromatic Orb, Fobie has Sunscorch, and Azama has Flame Arrow, which together have a pretty strong chance of overcoming the Shade Lord's base 50 MR.
But these spells were not necessary to bring the Shade Lord down. One of Pai'Na's insects gets the final blow.
The Shadow Altar soon breaks down. The battle is won! I find the cloak I want on the Shade Lord's body and hurry back to Imnesvale to identify it.
Turns out IR doesn't have a Cloak of Stars. Instead, it has a cloak that fires off a lightning bolt against melee attackers 20% of the time. It's a pretty nice item, but it's really not what I was looking for. I was expecting Poppy to start using a bunch of +5 darts, breaking through SCS2 mage's Improved Mantles and such. Those darts are no longer available, and the other magical darts have gotten badly nerfed. Darts of Wounding only do a fraction of their vanilla damage, and Darts of Stunning now only stun for 1 round, instead of 7.
I don't want to drag a gimped Archer all the way through Shadows of Amn. I take Poppy's proficiencies in darts and switch them to short bows. As a halfling, Poppy is able to use Mazzy's short bow, which has taken on all of Mazzy's vanilla sword's immunities, plus a few more. Poppy will have free action, including immunity to stun, so long as she carries the Bow of Arvoreen. And it's exactly those kinds of immunities that Poppy needs, since her friends can't target her with any buffing spells.
Anselm third update : Investigating the iron crisis.
After they bought some new and shiny equipments, Anselm decided that they were going to look for who was sending these mercenaries against them. And so their researches began in the Nashkel Mines. Soon after they entered, they scooted a group of Dwarves, ready to ambush them. Vynd put some traps, Kagain rushed in while Dorn and Anselm were pelting them from afar with their ranged, poisoned weapons.
This fight reinforced Anselm's conviction. The iron crisis was linked somehow to him. They continued their exploration and fought many Kobolds and finally they reached Mulahey which proven to be nothing more than a puppet. After they eliminated him, the party exited the mines and explored the area around them.
They found some crypts and looted some treasure, gave back his dagger to a revenant and met Narcillicus Harwilliger, a Mage who was experimenting his new spells to create and dominate Mustard Jellys. The squad attacked him and his creatures for the tokens he could have and put him down with poisoned weapons.
Afterward they came back to Nashkel to claim the reward for solving the crisis. The mayor told them to talk to the blacksmith in Beregost about the contaminated ore to get more infos.
Back in the town, a little girl approached the evil party and escorted them to meet the officer Vai, she wanted to talk with Anselm. But as soon as they entered the inn, they were attacked by a huge group of Flaming Fist Enforcers and a powerful Morningmaster under a permanent Improved Alacrity effect (like many Dark Horizons spellcasters).
The battle raged and many spells were fired.
At first it seemed like the forces of the law had the advantage, until Edwin threw a Horror spell which turned the tides.
After dispatching most of them, they took down the Morningmaster and finished the remaining guards. Anselm wanted to make an example to inspire fear in the population, so he orderer Edwin to cast some Fireball spells in the inn, killing everyone around.
And finally, injured during the slaughter, Anselm drained the life of the last commoner alive to recover.
Beregost wasn't destroyed, but the Flaming Fist will now think about it twice before attacking them ...
I take it that normally Officer Vai doesn't attack you there but the on entrance spawning of the flaming fist due to reputation caused her to side with them due to faction scripting?
@Demivrgvs: Mazzy's Sword offers no save on its penalties, contrary to the description. Also, why remove the extra attack from the Shadow Thief Dagger? It's not like it's an overpowered item, considering the lack of STR bonuses.
- I'll fix Mazzy's sword. - I didn't even knew I touched the Shadow Thief Dagger. If that apr was there it was not documented and surely not intentional. Also, no idea why that dagger should not get STR bonus.
Few more things:
- Darts are far from nerfed imo. Wounding does less damage yes, but it no longer allows a save (that's a big deal imo), Stunning doesn't have vanilla's insane duration (3 apr and stunned for 7 rounds? yeah, sounds balanced) but it's a magical dart now which can be used against more creatures and with that apr you can still stun-lock targets with it. Asp's Nest got a +1 enchantment and Crimson now deals fire dmg. I would have done more, but the intention surely wasn't to nerf the weapon type.
- quite a few SR players asked me to reduce the extremely long duration of certain long-terms buffs. Should I assume you agree stuff like Negative Plane Protection should not last so long? Vanilla's few rounds duration was useless imo, but I was going to suggest something like 5 turns (it goes up to 20 turns at lvl 20 now).
- otoh, Protection from Undead scroll was simply ridiculous and exploitable. IR's version is still useful imo but no longer allows cheesy tactics. I hope we agree on this despite your power-playing love.
- I really don't know if Death Ward should block BBoD's disintegrating effect...
I take it that normally Officer Vai doesn't attack you there but the on entrance spawning of the flaming fist due to reputation caused her to side with them due to faction scripting?
As soon as she saw me she said "Impudence of the highest order! Do you think you could sneak past without me noticing? Your face is well-known among the Flaming Fist, and you crimes will be punished." then she became hostile aswell as her minions and only a split second after, the Flaming Fist Enforcers spawned. I think it's because my reputation was at 1 when she spoke to me.
The Buff Question: It's a really hard question about the duration of buffs. The balance is radically different depending on whether you pre-buff or not. If you don't, and only cast buffs after the fight has begun, then duration isn't relevant unless it's really tiny, and the weaker buffs will be ignored in favor of the big ones. This will also make bonus spell slots much less useful, since you'll be using much fewer spells per rest period.
If you do pre-buff, then long-duration buffs allow you to tack on lots and lots of little buffs, and the effect is pretty extreme. The improved duration of Aid, Luck, and Bless mean my whole party has +2 to saving throws and THAC0, and +1 to damage and luck, on top of some skill bonuses. Without those long durations, I'll basically never use those spells in the first place, unless I've got a single-classed cleric who has nothing better to do. It certainly broadens the pool of useful spells, and lets the player avoid fussing over which buffs to cast first, but it also incentivizes investing more time in casting pre-buffs, which is generally a chore.
The Dart Balance Thingy: Darts of Stunning in vanilla really are quite overpowered... more because of the APR than anything else. Even with only 1 round of stun on hit, they're better at disabling their target than Celestial Fury, since the effect of both is nonmagical and level 0. It's just that it's a bigger fuss with a shorter duration, since you don't have as much time to capitalize on the disabled opponent. The equation might change if we have enemy clerics and so forth casting Chaotic Commands, or an unstun spell.
Now that I think about it... an even bigger issue is the supply of the darts. I love darts, but I usually end up hoarding Darts of Stunning and Darts of Wounding (same goes for Kuo-toa Bolts), and so I barely ever use them in the first place, for fear that I won't have them when I really need them.
And Speaking of Ammunition: One of the things I've long wanted to implement is a streamlined system for ammunition. Buying and stacking ammo is a pain, even with a high stacking cap. Plus, the limited supply of certain forms of ammunition incentivizes hoarding. So why not fix up all forms of ammunition so that they never run out, as in Firetooth, or the Quiver of Plenty? This would eliminate all of the hassle over when and where to use the items.
To balance it out, we could decrease the power of the ammo (and also tweak the cost, since each would have a stack of one). Reduce the chance of stunning to a certain percent, say. This way, a dart user could more comfortably switch between Darts of Stunning and the Crimson Dart, without worrying too much about using too many of the former. The rationalization for the change would be that each item represents a certain stack of them, and you would collect anything you've fired or thrown after the battle, hence the non-finite supply. Who says the magic of a Dart of Stunning is lost when it hits, when Celestial Fury never loses its charges?
Death Ward: It's not clear if Death Ward should block the BBoD instant death effect. If it does, then I would add on some other ability to BBoD so it's more than just a super-big sword against foes with Death Ward. It seems a bit silly for a 7th-level priest to be able to block a 9th-level spell, but then, they already can! Because DW blocks PW: Kill. I guess the question is whether we want to let DW block BBoD disintegration, because otherwise BBoD is crazily overpowered, or whether we want BBoD disintegration to bypass DW, in order to keep BBoD scary and dangerous, as a 9th-level spell should be.
One More Thing: Thanks for the Bag Holding in the Adventurer's Mart.
The Druid Grove exterior is simple. I just corral the summons, buff the hell out of everybody, and keep Poppy well out of the way. The Spirit Trolls have Greater Command, Flame Strike, and Unholy Blight thanks to Tactics, but the first two are useless with Chaotic Commands and Protection from Fire. Kyland Lind gives us little trouble--he seems to always fail his saves against Web--and though Dalok hit us with Insect Plague, we did the same to him.
Then came Faldorn. Faldorn is bad news.
I usually have Cernd deal with her, since he has a guaranteed win if he's fighting Faldorn outside of the party, but I notice the dialogue options let me send Fobie or Pai'Na ahead instead.
Pai'Na promptly dies. Funny thing is, she loses her spider shapeshift item on being transferred to the tiny little arena with Faldorn.
See that little fist of hers, next to the Shadow Thief Dagger? Pai'Na comes with an unremovable spider shapeshift token. It's impossible to take it away, but the fight with Faldorn tries its best to do so. It's actually still in Pai'Na's inventory, but it's not visible on the in-game screen. Which means Pai'Na has a weapon slot that's permanently unusable.
So. Not only does Faldorn arrive fully buffed, and shapeshifted, with three Dread Wolves as her allies, and not only does Pai'Na arrive unbuffed, in natural form, with no allies... but Pai'Na also permanently loses a weapon slot.
The imbalance is unrealistic. I try again with Fobie, only to realize that I can actually arrive with buffs. So you have to fight without items, but you can still pre-buff.
Then I find that not all pre-buffs work.
See the little Harm icon in Pai'Na's weapon slot? That's a non-functional copy, it seems.
ALL items are removed on entering the arena. Including magical weapons. But since SCS2 uses item-based shapeshifting... this means Faldorn can arrive with an item--her shapeshifting token--but Pai'Na can't arrive with her own token, even if it serves the same purpose.
And creating a shapeshift token costs one round. So even if you do want to shapeshift, Faldorn gets one extra round of free action, since she doesn't spend her first round creating a shapeshift token. Another unfair advantage, alongside the three Dread Wolves.
Pai'Na apparently cannot attack with the Harm spell. Faldorn chunks her.
And yet... despite the battle clearly being over, with Pai'Na permanently dead... Faldorn does not reappear.
Faldorn is stuck in the arena. I can't even reach her with Dimension Door using Azama. Faldorn is simply gone. She broke the entire questline!
So we have four things going wrong, aside from chunking Pai'Na: (1) an understandable one, in which Pai'Na's unmovable item was moved, (2) Harm being disabled despite other pre-buffs working fine, (3) Faldorn getting an extra round, plus three allies, and (4) Faldorn breaking the quest if she chunks her enemy.
This is not acceptable. One weird quirk that cripples Pai'Na, a quasi-bug that weakens her further, an uneven fighting ground in which the whole point of the encounter is to have a fair fight (it's a one-on-one challenge with no items because it's a contest of power, independent of one's possessions and allies), and on top of that, a quest-breaking bug.
Out of curiosity, I try again. I want to see how the battle goes if Pai'Na's shapeshift token and Harm spell weren't removed. I give her a custom item with aura cleansing and casting speed bonus to cast her buffs at the start of the fight, including a Harm spell to use on Faldorn and a Fire Elemental summons to match Faldorn's Dread Wolves. I hit her with the Harm spell, which in SR deals 90 damage (Faldorn has 96 at most) but cannot reduce the target below 1 HP. Since Pai'Na has 0 THAC0 when she's using Harm, she easily lands a hit on Pai'Na. This is what happens.
See that little "1" right there? No, the Harm spell didn't do 1 damage instead of 90. Harm did absolutely nothing. That 1 damage is from Righteous Magic, which in SR adds 1d6 magic damage to every melee hit. Looking at Faldorn's files, I have no idea why she's immune to Harm. The only version of Faldorn that should be immune is the pre-challenge version, in which she's supposed to be invincible. Otherwise she's supposed to be vulnerable. Maybe it's a bug. So that's five things going wrong.
I keep fighting anyway, disabling her repeatedly with Web. Somehow, Pai'Na gets webbed, too.
The spider shapeshift token is supposed to grant immunity to Web spells, but it only protects against mage versions. It offers no protection against the Avenger version, which Pai'Na uses.
But Pai'Na is supposed to be immune anyway, since her shapeshift token isn't the standard SCS2 one. Her token gives immunity to Web's opcodes, and therefore protects against all forms of Web. She can conjure the standard one, since she's an Avenger, but I can't give her her own unique version, with its full immunity to webs, because her version is unmovable. After she fails her save four rounds in a row, and then a fifth time shortly after, I finally decide to give her a Ring of Free Action to mimic the effects of her own token, to which she's supposed to have access.
She still loses the fight (the Web spell eventually went away), but only just barely. If she had had her own shapeshift token, the way Faldorn does, and if she had her buffs up and allies ready, the way Faldorn does, she should have killed Faldorn two times over: first, with Harm, and a second time while Faldorn was webbed and Pai'Na got automatic hits in. But a fair fight between Faldorn and Pai'Na isn't possible without cheating in the right items. I decide to let Cernd have the kill. He fights outside the party, and survives despite taking hundreds of damage because of an item that prevents him from dropping below 1 HP.
I've actually seen him fail this fight before, due to some other bug in which he wasn't rendered unkillable, but this time he succeeded. Now the quest can be completed.
Losing Pai'Na is one thing. I can always add on some other random NPC (I already have one idea of who to pick). But losing her because of an error in the scripting (SCS2 naturally doesn't account for non-joinable NPCs like Pai'Na joining the party) and an engine limitation (Harm being removed when it's not supposed to be an item conceptually) and a conceptual problem with Faldorn's token and summons (the purpose of the challenge is to have a fair fight, and Faldorn gets her token and her allies without having to spend rounds conjuring them) and an immunity of unknown source (it's not clear where Faldorn got any immunity to the Harm effect, which just uses the normal damage opcode)... and then having a quest-breaking bug happen on top of that, ruining the entire questline... is another thing entirely.
I think I'll drop Pai'Na from the party anyway, despite all the nonsense that led to her permanent death. But I'm not willing to tolerate Faldorn breaking the questline. I'll permit myself a reload in order to complete the quest.
I was too quick to finish the quest. It could have gone so much better.
Why didn't I just call in the harem and seduce Faldorn? She has 3 million XP according to her .cre file. I could have gotten a new druid.
I suppose it's just as well. An epic-level druid would be kind of game-breaking.
Anyway, after watching Cernd maul Faldorn, we talked it over with Pai'Na and agreed we should take separate paths. As much as we enjoyed her company, she just wasn't satisfied with the harem she had. Nobody in our party can cast Spider Spawn. She let us keep Kitty as a farewell gift, and in exchange we gave her a couple dozen nymphs to keep her company.
We now have lost a valuable source of divine buffs. Without Pai'Na, we only have 5th-level Protection from Fire spells; the 3rd-level version is now out of reach. Worse yet, I just realize Fobie is supposed to have a -3 penalty to his 5th-level spell slots! He's not supposed to be casting Stoneskin or Insect Plague until epic levels. I empty his spell slots, but he has plenty more.
This means Fobie will no longer be able to function as a tank. No Stoneskin, low HP, mediocre resistances, and bad AC all make Fobie a fantastically squishy character. Snowy Tae isn't much better, as her AC isn't too great--she's especially vulnerable to crushing damage, against which she has a -5 AC penalty--but she at least can turn into a rat with the Cloak of Sewers.
We attack the djinn, who fail some very important saves in the first round.
The fight is a breeze, and we net an Efreeti Bottle and Rashad's Talon (which has a 20% chance of adding 1 APR per hit) for our trouble. The Efreeti Bottle, notably, has no weight, and therefore our pretty boy waif Fobie will be able to carry it around. Unbuffed, his STR is 2, which means he can only carry a couple potions and a pair of bracers. Normally his inventory is filled with scrolls and gems; he can't carry anything heavier.
We report our success to Lord Logan Coinpurse and Guildmistress Busybody and get another big cash money wad for being awesome heroes and stuff. We also clear out the Trademeet crypt thingy, and Fobie almost dies when he gets smacked by a Skeleton Warrior.
Snowy Tae hits level 11, finally, but her spell picks aren't too swell. Heal is an excellent spell, and in SR only has a casting time of 6, but since everybody in our party has such low HP (potions restore about half our HP on average), and Poppy can summon nymphs at will to cast Mass Cure, Heal won't add that much to our healing power. Blade Barrier is another strong choice, but Snowy Tae won't be able to cast it reliably in the middle of battle, since she has high AC and a casting speed penalty. Our best bet is Physical Mirror, which in SR lasts 2 turns and gives enemies a 50% miss chance against the caster. It's the best we can do to keep Snowy Tae's spells from being interrupting, unless we use finite resources. Item Revisions tweaks the Potion of Stone Form to give 5 Stoneskins instead of giving AC and saving throw bonuses, so that's another strong way to ensure successful spellcasting. But there are only so many such potions, and it's not clear when I should use them.
I returned the dryad's acorns to Vaelasa and briefly brought the nymph queen into the group. Unfortunately, it wasn't very interesting. Vaelasa was little more than a level 10 unkitted druid with a couple castings of Improved Invisibility and Dire Charm. She just seemed boring compared to Pai'Na. I removed her from the party soon afterwards. I have another couple of ideas for who to bring into the party, anyway.
The reason why I came to Firkraag's dungeon now is because I was hoping to avoid the vampire spawns, since Protection from Undead scrolls in IR only give combat bonuses against undead, and no longer any invisibility. Visiting the dungeon at a lower level (or tweaking my install, which I normally don't bother doing) will ensure the random spawns aren't too strong.
But I ended up not triggering the encounter at all. If you use CTRL-4 in the hallway right before the vampire room, you can see where the trigger is, and you can walk around it by hugging the right side of the hallway. I've tried this multiple times and it seems to always work, though I normally step on the trigger anyway to fight the vampires. If you have SR, you can also use Dimension Door (a 1st-level spell, depending on your install) to hop over the trigger. I probably would have encountered some ghouls and mummies, but avoiding the trigger is worth it, just in case there were vampires there.
As usual, I decided to let Samia ambush me early rather than trudging through the maze and have her appear with her goons behind me. If you pick the right dialogue options, she and her buddies will spawn right on top of you.
I brought out a bunch of nymphs in the first round, who quickly began to wreck the enemy party. Even Kaol ended up disabled; the harem's Confusion spells go right through his MGOI. The harem charmed Samia a couple of times while the rest of the party worked on slaying Chak, Legdoril, Akae, Ferric Ironblade, and eventually Kaol.
The battle ended in a decisive victory. Samia recovered from the nymphs' spells to find her party already defeated. She surrendered her arms, and after some divination magic, we discovered she was not actually evil... she's Chaotic Neutral. We are in desperate need of a good frontliner, and asked Samia if she was willing to join the group. She agreed! Although more out of a sense of profit than an interest in the harem. Without Pai'Na we're still lacking a proper dominatrix. But Samia isn't a good fit for the job anyway... we don't know yet if we can trust this woman.
Still, Samia is well-suited to the group. She's a 13th-level fighter with grandmastery in scimitars, and with her ludicrous ability scores--her stat total is a whopping 94--she can dual-class to thief, rendering her zero starting XP a non-issue. Once we take a tour around the maze, she levels up enough to start detecting and disarming some traps.
Now that we have a thief, we can finally stop worrying about traps and locks. It'll take another 880,000 XP before she regains her fighter levels, but with the De'Arnise Hold, Planar Sphere, Planar Prison, and Unseeing Eye quests still wide open, it is by no means too late to dual-class one of our party members.
Firkraag's dungeon has another nasty sticking point besides the vampires and Samia's ambush: in the hallway right after completing the Mask of King Strohm quest, there are three Greater Wolfwere spawns, with outrageous regeneration and MR that caster-heavy parties like ours have trouble overcoming. The harem ends up solving the problem: By throwing out several Hold Monster spells at once, the nymphs can successfully disable the monsters, and therefore get automatic hits with their Cause Critical Wounds spell. Two hits spell the victim's demise.
Cause Critical Wounds is a monster in Spell Revisions. The damage is crazy and the weapon lasts a whole turn, giving the caster much more freedom in determining when to strike. The one drawback the nymphs have is their awful base THAC0. But they don't need an attack roll if the target is paralyzed.
After trashing Firkraag's dungeon, the dragon orders one last goon to try and kill us. He barely puts up a fight.
He wakes up a round later, but by then, his Stoneskins are gone and he has a massive spell failure penalty thanks to being hit by a bunch of darts from a Wizard Slayer. He crumples seconds later, and the quest is one.
As usual, I leave Firkraag well alone. I have no need of Carsomyr, at least not this early in the game.
By the way... @Demivrgvs, the Potion of Regeneration stacks with itself as well as the Regeneration spell. The POTN42 spell gives no immunity to the cleric or druid regeneration spells, and vice versa.
Thanks to Samia's 12 INT, she is able to use some if not all of IR's wands, which are tweaked to be usable by thieves if they have high enough INT. The Wand of Lightning is tweaked to only fire 3 lightning bolts instead of 6 (how did you do that, @Demivrgvs?), but the Wand of Lightning trick still works, and I might have Samia drink triple-strength regeneration potions for the tougher battles.
On the way back from Firkraag's dungeon, we are greeted by a familiar face: Kuroisan, the Acid Kensai. He asks us to hand over Malakar, and he will leave us alone.
For those of you who aren't aware, Kuroisan is a Kensai(13)/Mage(14) from the Tactics mod, who attacks you if you don't hand over Malakar or Celestial Fury (I think other katanas he doesn't care about). He is notable for casting PFMW via scrolls, having end-game equipment (Robe of Vecna, Amulet of Power, Cloak of Mirroring), and for wielding the infamous Sanchuudoku, a +4 katana that fires off a tiny acid arrow spell at anyone who harms the wielder, whether the attack is from a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, or a spell. And Sanchuudoku also lowers acid resistance on hit, so boosting your acid resistance is not a permanent fix. He's a ludicrously powerful character with tons of immunities and a LOT of attack power.
I decide to go ahead and fight him. Not because I particularly cared about Malakar, but because I was kind of afraid I might not get to see him again, and might therefore lose the opportunity to get Sanchuudoku.
Problem is, I'm honestly not sure how to kill this guy. So right after the dialogue ends, I have everybody flee. Mr. Cookies wastes some PFMW scrolls while nobody is attacking him, then starts to chase Poppy, who calls in the harem. Poppy hides while her nymphs slow down the kensai.
Cookies expends his Acid Arrow and Magic Missile spells on the nymphs, then switches to his katana. He deals about 40 damage per hit, not counting the 2d4 acid damage on hit, so that's basically an instant kill on Poppy.
I check Cookies' files--I'm not really familiar with this guy--and find that he has a -20 bonus to all his saves, as if he had drunk a Potion of Magic Shielding. So my nymphs are never, ever going to disable him. But wait! Item Revisions tweaks the Cloak of Mirroring on his back--it doesn't deflect spell damage anymore. It just gives physical attacks against the wearer a 50% miss chance. I rally the nymphs to cast Call Lightning. I wasn't expecting much, but it still goes much worse than I expected.
Apparently Cookies has a spell reflection effect active, which I overlooked earlier. All those lightning bolts bounced right back at the nymphs. Even after I burn through this defense, though, he refuses to get hurt. I can tell from his files that he doesn't have 100 MR, but the nymphs never do any damage to him.
I give up on the nymphs' spells and decide to just have them attack Cookies directly. He chunks them one after another.
Then he curses at me and vanishes, saying he's not done with me. Apparently he got tired of slashing up the nymphs and decided to come back to kill me later. Not a good sign. I don't know where he might show up again. If it's Athkatla, I can always just turn invisible--Cookies can't see through invisibility, nor can he dispel it--or run away and block him in with the harem, but if it's in a dungeon, god forbid, then I might not have enough room to make my escape.
I go through my spells and items and find little that can help me against Cookies. This is a long section explaining why I can't beat him:
I can think of two possibilities. First, the Shield of Reflection, if I buy it, bounces the green arrow projectile that his "Acidic Backlash" uses, but when I cheat the shield and Sanchuudoku in for testing, Acidic Backlash goes right through the shield, and the wielder of Sanchuudoku is unharmed... perhaps because, as I later discovered, Sanchuudoku makes the wielder immune to that projectile, and therefore it cannot be reflected.
The other possibility is a weird trick involving Fire Shield. Those who have used Sanchuudoku might have noticed that if one critter with Sanchuudoku and another critter with a Fire Shield hit one another, then the Fire Shield and Acidic Backlash will trigger each other infinitely, dealing tons of damage to both critters... usually killing one or both of them within a few seconds.
Nobody can cast Fire Shield in my party, since the only arcane caster is Azama, who can't use scrolls due to her 2 INT, but Azama does have the Salamander shapeshift due to her Avenger kit, and gets a constant effect Fire Shield as a result. When I give Sanchuudoku to Samia, she kills herself on Azama's Fire Shield, though Azama takes heavy damage as well.
Azama has a little under 50 base acid resistance, but she can't get to 100 and therefore make herself immune to Acidic Backlash, at least not without Snowy Tae's aid (and we want Snowy Tae to stay invisible during any fight with Cookies). Why not? Well, we do have scrolls of Protection from Acid, but she needs 9 INT to cast those. Snowy Tae can use them, but in IR, they can only target the caster.
I can still have Azama use them with the potion swap glitch, however. I spawn in Cookies to test it out.
Basically, the plan is to have everyone drink Potions of Invisibility when Cookies appears. Then Azama boosts her acid resistance over 127 (capped) with the potion swap glitch and a green scroll. She also casts Stoneskin. After waiting a few seconds to refresh her aura, she attacks Cookies, invariably missing. Eventually Cookies attacks her back, and hits her, dropping her acid resistance down to 120. Azama drinks a Potion of Invisibility right as this happens. The net result? Azama gets hit by infinite Acidic Backlashes, but is immune to acid. Meanwhile, Cookies gets hit by infinite Fire Shield damage, as well as some electrical damage thanks to Nature's Vengeance, the IR version of the Cloak of the Stars, which has a 20% chance of zapping any attacker every hit (unlike the IWD inspiration, this cloak is usable by non-druids).
But during testing, Azama dies. Cookie doesn't even get hurt.
Some poking around reveals that Azama died because Cookies had two invisible Fire Shields out, and hence killed Azama with cold damage. So why did Cookies survive?
He has a sword alongside Sanchuudoku that lets him toggle immunity to fire, electricity, and cold damage. So, he's immune to all Fire Shields, plus Nature's Vengeance.
But this doesn't mean these things are worthless. I can still lock him with the repeated damage. I repeat the test, this time with Azama immune to all of the elements, and have Cookies get hit by an invisible foe many times per second. Success!
I let Poppy out of invisibility to chip at him with her bow, but he manages to chase after her, eventually escaping Azama's damage lock. Poppy goes invisible and Azama re-establishes the damage lock to try again, but then Cookies casts Shadow Door, casting time 0.
Shadow Door has a maze effect on nearby enemies in SR. Since Azama has a base INT of 2, that's identical to an SR Imprisonment spell: 7200 rounds of Maze.
So I'm not really sure how we're going to deal with Cookies. The solution might just be running away from him every time he appears, until we reach some crazy new abilities that might actually hurt him.
Because right now, he has an all but guaranteed kill on Poppy, and Poppy appears to be his default first target.
And there is a trail of nymph chunks that Cookies left on the map, plus a huge pile where Poppy banished them in the front of the Adventurer's Mart. Here's the trail superimposed on the map.
With the Cookie Monster having fled the scene, we returned to the De'Arnise Keep, where we had been steadily clearing out the Trolls for the past several days. We only returned to Athkatla to get prices for our loot from Ribald, since Garlena appears to be buying our stuff for much less (120 gold for a suit of Plate Mail, to Ribald's 150).
We open the gate and fight some minor skirmishes on the way to the "cellars." Hordes of summons pave the way through the first pack of Spirit Trolls, and since we emerge from the fight in good shape, we continue on to the Umber Hulks without resting. Now all that's left is Torgal.
Torgal in Tactics is a Spirit Troll, with the irritating invisibility effect, but without the irritating spells. He's an absolute monster, but the AI in this battle is stunted somehow: if you approach Torgal while invisible, he will sniff you out and chase you, but his allies will not follow along. This allows us to tackle Torgal without worrying about the other critters.
Torgal crumples under a pile of summons. Fobie brings in three Fire Elementals, Snowy Tae brings in two Aerial Servants and four Greater Skeletons (basically, just tougher versions of the vanilla Skeletons), Poppy brings in a couple spirit animals, and Samia, using the Wand of Lightning trick, contributes three copies of Kitty.
Since we slay Torgal without much fuss, we decide to take on his buddies as well, without resting first. The last time I fought Torgal, I had to flee his friends, as they were too tough for me. But this time, I think we're strong enough to take them on.
Torgal's buddies include two or three Yuan-ti Mages, several Spirit Trolls, and an Elder Umber Hulk. It's a pretty diverse mix, and makes a coordinated strategy fairly difficult. It's hard to break down two enemy mages, for one thing, and the Spirit Trolls are all immune to single-target spells by virtue of their ability to turn invisible at will. Flame Arrow won't be much use on them, nor will Azama be able to freely use Fireball, given our reliance on summons. She sticks with Slow instead.
As usual, we struggle to kill the Spirit Trolls. Their invisibility at will is a nightmare, consistently screwing up normal targeting and causing both party members and summons to waste several seconds every round, severely reducing our melee power. It's the one reason I don't recommend using the Tactics mod with the De'Arnise Hold. It's deeply frustrating to notice your party members have been spreading their damage across multiple Spirit Trolls when all you want to do is focus on one.
The Yuan-ti Mages make a habit of dispelling our buffs, but Snowy Tae, our lone Inquisitor cleric, isn't able to keep their buffs down. I'm still not sure if an Inquisitor's Dispel Magic in SR or SCS2 actually takes down MGOI.
Without our buffs, we are quite vulnerable to disablers. Snowy Tae has a spectacular save vs. spell, and Azama has 33 base MR thanks to IR's Robe of the Weave, but for the most part, our saves are pretty weak, and SR spells have hefty save penalties. Since we've been fighting Trolls for quite some time--who are immune to hold and many other disablers--I fail to consider summoning the harem to hassle the Yuan-ti Mages. Thus, the Coiled Cabal is free to mess with our functioning.
It doesn't help matters that our Efreet do not seem to understand the concept of friendly fire. For the second time, one of them blasts the party with a loose Fireball.
Poppy is under the effects of Chaos, and therefore cannot heal herself--nor can Snowy Tae target her--but thankfully she's stuck in the previous room, and therefore is distanced from the enemy.
Azama breaks down some of the mages' defenses, but we don't quite manage to kill them, leaving two fully functional mages still in action, protected by a Teleport Field that frustrates the only weapons we have. Our two ranged attackers, Poppy and Samia, who might be able to harm the Coiled Cabal despite the Teleport Field, are both disabled: confused and unconscious, respectively.
Then Azama herself loses consciousness. Snowy Tae brings her back with Break Enchantment, hoping that Azama could use Dispel Magic (Snowy Tae already cast all of her own), but then I realize I was wrong about Azama's kit. She has the Cleric of Helm kit, not the Inquisitor kit, and therefore has True Sight, but not Dispel Magic.
Then Azama fails a save against Chaos. She's still the most valuable of our disabled characters, so Snowy Tae casts her last Break Enchantment spell. It's lucky Snowy Tae spent the first few rounds of combat hanging back and attacking with Spiritual Hammer from a distance, or else her buffs, including Chaotic Commands, might have been dispelled, too.
Our summons are confused, and we have no means of bringing them back. We've been struggling to kill a Yuan-ti Mage limping along at Near Death for the past three rounds or so, but finally, Samia wakes up, and finishes the job with the Crimson Dart.
Fobie, too, gets confused, and starts a fight with an Efreeti. At 40 HP. With no Stoneskin. The Efreeti drops him down to a quarter of his HP with one swing of its blade.
Then it swings again.
Fobie, our favorite goofball and the favorite of the harem, has popped like a balloon. He is gone.
The Efreeti is no more trouble, however. The battle has been won. The last Yuan-ti Mage is gutted at the feet of Lord De'Arnise, and the last Spirit Troll is beaten into a corner. Samia recovers from a Domination spell, we pick up Fobie's things, and report the news to Nalia.
Fobie was inches away from level 14, and the horribly dangerous Earthquake spell I so wanted to use. Now he is dead, and the party is back down to four members.
The tactics mod looks horribly cheesy ... I might need to try it sooner or later, do you know if it is somehow compatible with the EEs @semiticgod ? Do you have a new plan to deal with Kuroisan if he comes back ? And are they other fights like this one with some nearly invincible opponent ? Great progress so far !
@Blackraven The trap in the Neb's house makes massive acid damage (50-75 in the Core settings) and holds the person disarming it.
This has reminded me your own advice from the Druid thread: "Hmm broader pictures are no doubt very interesting, but yours is a no-reload run remember? Please be careful, think about Charname s fans. They don't want to see him dying on them..."
@bengoshi, you're right I really want to try again with a Cleric/Illusionist, but I'm afraid that if I don't mess up with some battle, a trap will mean game over. I don't know very well what the effects of most traps are... (and I find it a bit immersion-breaking to buff with Stoneskins, MI, MSD etc each time I'm facing a trap). How do you do it with Yahiko? Do you do 'trap research' on each area before you take Yahiko there?
Prior to getting the Shield of Archons I checked (basing on my memory) which traps are on a location and where. Death Ward, Ironskins and Chaotic Commands were constantly on Yahiko and helped against 90% of dangers. Only petrification was a problem but I know only one petrification trap in the Copper's Coronet dungeon and that can be avoided by a bridge to the south.
But as soon as Yahiko got that spell, he didn't need any "meta-knowledge" of traps any more. The spell lasts long enough and when it's over Yahiko prefers to rest.
I imagine that Yahiko wants to survive in the first place, so he tries to be always protected from the majority of nasty effects. I don't find it immersion-breaking. Instead, I find it natural. My character is opposed by a whole world and he should at least use all his immunities to survive.
I imagine that Yahiko wants to survive in the first place, so he tries to be always protected from the majority of nasty effects. I don't find it immersion-breaking. Instead, I find it natural. My character is opposed by a whole world and he should at least use all his immunities to survive.
I struggle a bit with buffing because the player (not the character) knows that a trap is near. However having your character doing everything he can to survive makes a lot of sense. I think I'll have my next Cleric/Illusionist use the Priest spell Find Traps a lot, i.e. always in dungeons or areas where hostilities are to be expected.
I imagine that Yahiko wants to survive in the first place, so he tries to be always protected from the majority of nasty effects. I don't find it immersion-breaking. Instead, I find it natural. My character is opposed by a whole world and he should at least use all his immunities to survive.
I struggle a bit with buffing because the player (not the character) knows that a trap is near.
The thing is, my character is always under the effect of the Shield of Archons, so it's not connected to reaching the certain place/container/encounter and so on - it lasts long enough (Death Ward and Chaotic Commands last even longer, Ironskins is active for 12 hours).
The thing is, my character is always under the effect of the Shield of Archons,
Ok that's a very good solution. Though it must have meant an awful lot of resting at the lower levels (when it didn't last long and when you didn't have many lvl 7 slots). Anyway I have the same in mind for my Cleric/Illusionist, or at least always having Find Traps active once she has a couple of casts of that spell. (Especially in BG2, where traps are just terrible).
After the battle, Anselm remembered why they were back in Beregost. On Mulahey's body, he found a few letters which indicated that a Mage named Tranzig was resting in the Feldpost inn. The Blackguard always read the letters alone as he didn't want the others members of the group to know too much about his plans. Sometimes he would seek Edwin's advice as his sheer intelligence matched his own he thought. But this time it wasn't the case. He led the party to the inn and encountered the spellcaster.
Surrounded by six evil looking and well equipped individuals, Tranzig betrayed his master and told the party what they wanted to know. But as soon as they turned their back to him, he tried to use his magic to harm them.
Hopefully Dorn was faster, and chunked him instantly with his greatsword before the incantation was over.
The party was impressed. "Well done, my servant." told Anselm. He wanted to mock him, to gauge his behavior. Dorn looked angry, as expected, but remained silent.
Afterward, the party travelled to the east, they heard some rumors about powerful beasts waiting to be killed. These beasts were Basilisks, and Edwin made sure to prepare some Protection from Petrification spells in advance.
During the trip, they were assaulted by a group of mercenaries. But the combined assault of Vynd, Dorn and Anselm ranged poisoned weaponry fell them extremely fast.
Once they arrived to the Basilisks lair, Anselm prefered to hunt them alone. He asked Edwin and Viconia to use some of their magic on him, prepared his poisoned Arrows of Detonation and blasted the creatures away. He also encountered some adventurers and a mad gnome named Mutamin and proceeded to kill them all for their magical equipments.
The area cleared, they continue their trip to the north, in a forest infested with Giant Spiders and their Web traps. They also met a group of Red Wizards of Thay and dispatched them by breaching through their Stoneskin spells with their poisoned weapons, interrupting all their spellcasting. (Normally you can't fight them with Edwin in your party, that's why I kicked him out of the party, initiated the fight then took him back since I wanted the XP and the loot).
At some point Anselm wandered a bit too far alone and got caught in a Web trap while a few Spiders were heading his way. Kagain and Viconia rushed to help him in the Web, counting on their good saves or magic resistance. Viconia also got webbed but Kagain didn't and manage to tank the Spiders effectively except one Sword Spider which tried to evicerate Anselm but Dorn, Vynd and Edwin eliminated it before it was over.
The death squad then travelled south. Dorn told them he wanted to take his revenge against Kryll, a necromancer who betrayed him before he joined the party and according to his informations, she was somewhere east of Nashkel.
Another group tried in vain to stop them during their trip. This time around even Edwin provoked them before the slaughter.
Eventually they found her. Dorn, hidden by an Invisibility spell, sneaked upon her and chunked her instantly, exactly like Tranzig.
On her body, Dorn discovered some documents which could help him for his vendetta. Anselm allowed him to keep them since it was his quest.
Finally, the group came back to the Friendly Arm Inn before heading to the Bandit Camp.
Thinking of joining this party with a character idea I've been wanting to try out for some time. Human Mage (2) / Wizard Slayer. Studied magic under Gorion but hated it and now has a vicious prejudice against mages. He cannot cast any spells nor scribe into his spellbook (which is empty in any case). However he can use scrolls (use the tools of the enemy against them).
Haven't played a Wizard Slayer in years so will need to refresh knowledge. Might use the rebalancing mod for slightly better MR (1% per level seems pathetic). Main concern is not being able to use potions...I'm completely reliant on Invulnerability / Freedom to survive against mages and Invisibility to heal in the middle of fights or to get out of tough spots. I suppose the latter could be compensated by just buying every Invisibility scroll I come across but how do you improve your saving throws / avoid PW stun without the other potions? Serious planning needed...
Comments
The Cowled Wizards were the Agents Smith and they knew they needed to make you stay here to prevent you to save Renfeld from the matrix, so they were summoning big baddies and force a lot of pressure on your computer. I don't know why but this is what it reminds me of.
So many creatures and spell animations. Those are some amazing screenshots and a very very interesting story.
It was a bit like a race against the clock except this time the clock was your computer overheating
Also, thanks for the laugh !
(The trap on the painting in Neb's house, which I knew was there, proved quite deadly, which is something I didn't know.)
She had come far.
Will you go back to BG1 or roll from BG2?
@semiticgod, I agree traps are horrible. Very dangerous for me whenever I play a non-rogue solo. I generally know where the traps are, but am not very well aware of their effects.
@Ygramul, I want to roll another Cleric/Illusionist. I think they're awesome. He or she would start in Candlekeep. How is your adventure going?
She has a slight weakness to piercing damage, on top of her low HP. But once she drank a potion, she was in good shape, and the thief lost interest in her after she started running away.
We also nabbed the Cloak of the Sewers on the way, though nobody in the party can identify it. I decide to have it identified later.
Rayic Gethras, as usual, is an issue. He shields himself with PFMW, and we don't really carry nonmagical weapons in this group (somehow I've forgotten to buy darts for Poppy, who has four pips in darts). Nor can we do much against his Improved Invisibility+SI: Divination Spell Trigger. The nymphs also fail to disable him with Sphere of Chaos (Ray-Ray has a save vs. spell of 1). But with our cleric buffs, we were able to wait out the duration of his PFMW spell, and he collapsed a few seconds after it wore off.
I did finish the Mae'var questline. I've died there once before, boxed in by an army of backstabbing thieves, and I am not interested in facing them again, despite the considerable XP and gold reward Renal gives you when Mae'var is dead. There is a potion in IR that prevents you from backstabbing--the Potion of Perception--and in IR, all potions are usable by Wizard Slayers like Poppy, but I don't think it would be enough. Even without a backstab multiplier, the thieves could still quite readily kill Poppy, and frankly I don't trust her to stay invisible, even if she drinks a potion.
Instead, I abandon the quest and side with Bodhi, and perform the first two quests, including sparing the life of the rich guy in the "unseemly task." Beyond that, I'm not interested in fussing with the Shadow Thieves just yet. I have to take down the Shade Lord first. There's a special cloak I need for Poppy.
I finally get the Cloak of the Sewers identified in Imnesvale. Snowy Tae can achieve immunity to damage with it, which I put to use only once in the Temple Ruins.
I don't know why I didn't try to make use of that cloak earlier. Maybe it's the same reason I forgot about Fobie's immunity to nonmagical weapons: I've just been too focused on Poppy and the harem.
I ponder many different possibilities for taking on the Shade Lord. Item Revisions gives a crippling nerf to Protection from Undead scrolls: instead of making the user invisible to undead, he or she merely gets some bonuses when fighting them. This time, I will not be able to take down the Shade Lord just by hiding behind a scroll. The scroll does, however, give immunity to level drain, but Spell Revisions makes that largely irrelevant for our group, since SR's Negative Plane Protection spell lasts 10 times as long as in the vanilla version: 50 rounds per casting.
But level drain is only one of many dangers of the SCS2 Shade Lord fight. The Shade Lord is a cleric/mage with access to the Black Blade of Disaster, which has gained a remarkable buff thanks to SR: instead of a 15% chance of disintegrating the target, it uses the SR disintegration method, which deals dozens of dice of damage on a failed save vs. spell, with a -2 penalty. And no, Death Ward does not protect against the IR/SR disintegration effect on the BBoD; it only gives immunity to the mage spell and the vanilla effect (opcode 238).
After poring over our spellbooks for a long while, I pick out a selection that seems to offer enough flexibility to survive a couple of Remove Magic spells. I don't have much defense against Black Blade of Disaster, but hopefully I won't have to deal with that.
I enter the area fully buffed and with everyone invisible. I need the extra time to seek out an advantageous position, at the south end of the map. This will force the Shade Lord to approach me.
Fobie brings out an Earth Elemental. I've chosen this summons because it has the highest STR of Fobie's options, and therefore will be the least likely to die from the enemy Shadows' STR drain. Poppy calls in a few members of the harem, mostly just to form a wall. I'm fairly certain the Shade Lord and all of the enemies are completely immune to every disabler the nymphs have. But putting a few more bodies in between us and the enemy will at least buy us some time.
Shadow Patrick is close enough to spot our summons, and the Shade Lord comes over soon after. I had hoped the Shade Lord would take longer to arrive, but that is no longer an option. As always, the Shade Lord brings out a PFMW spell, as well as a Spell Deflection spell... but no Dispelling Screen! The Shade Lord therefore only has 50 MR, and is vulnerable to our damage spells.
Pai'Na disables Shadow Patrick and the Shadow Altar with Web. We're off to a strong start.
Pai'Na successfully casts Insect Plague. Normally Fobie would cast this spell due to his superior casting time, but I decided he needed an extra Stoneskin instead, since we want him out in front, despite his terrible AC, to protect Pai'Na, who has no Stoneskin despite being a druid.
The enemies fail their save! Most importantly of all, the Shade Lord's spellcasting is disabled. Azama breaks down his Spell Deflection with a Secret Word spell (a pre-cast True Seeing spell, courtesy of Azama's Inquisitor kit, also removes the Shade Lord's illusions), while Fobie tries out some Fire Seeds on the enemy.
Fire Seeds do area-effect fire damage in SR as in vanilla, but in SR, the caster can fire off five seeds in one round, although the number of seeds is still quite limited. Fobie, at level 12, can only conjure six.
Why Fire Seeds? Well, the fire damage they do is nonmagical, meaning it bypasses the Shade Lord's MR, and since it is an area-effect weapon, it also bypasses the Shade Lord's PFMW spell. Fobie lands a hit on the Shadow Altar, but it doesn't quite reach the Shade Lord. The area-effect isn't quite big enough. Instead, Fobie targets one of the nymphs, since he has poor THAC0 and he can't reliably hit Pai'Na with them, and he'll get automatic hits on any disabled critter. This time, he manages to damage the Shade Lord.
So why is Pai'Na right next to the Shade Lord, if I don't want her spells getting disrupted? Well, now that the Shade Lord is already up in our face, and the Shadow Altar is failing to send a bunch of shadows our way, Fobie's access to Stoneskin isn't quite so meaningful, as we don't need him to absorb any physical attacks. Instead, we need to keep the Shade Lord from hitting the party with his Darkling Aura. To do that, we need Pai'Na, protected by SR's extra-long Negative Plane Protection spell, to hold the Shade Lord's attention.
While the Shade Lord is occupied, and the Shadow Altar and Shadow Patrick are webbed, the rest of the party acts to deal some spell damage. Fobie uses Call Lightning on the Shadow Altar, while Azama casts Flame Arrow at Shadow Patrick. Snowy Tae, for her part, attacks the Shadow Altar from afar using Spell Revision's Spiritual Hammer, which strikes from a distance as in IWD2, but unfortunately does not benefit from her 23 base STR. Poppy has relatively little to do, as her nymphs aren't much help, so she just summons a spirit animal (immune to level drain, notably) and stays out the way.
Shadow Patrick dies. Fobie gets too close to the Shade Lord, and loses a level. I underestimated the range of Darkling Aura. But the Shade Lord is in poor shape, and Pai'Na has just erected a Blade Barrier--which in SR bypasses magic resistance, and strikes twice per round.
In between the Insect Plague, Pai'Na's Blade Barrier, and Pai'Na's spider attacks, bolstered by Holy Power and Righteous Magic, which in SR tacks on 1d6 nonmagical magic damage to each melee strike, the Shade Lord is well beyond any hope of casting a spell. Even if he had made his save against Insect Plague, we would have a fairly strong chance of interrupting his spells. Pai'Na has Chromatic Orb, Fobie has Sunscorch, and Azama has Flame Arrow, which together have a pretty strong chance of overcoming the Shade Lord's base 50 MR.
But these spells were not necessary to bring the Shade Lord down. One of Pai'Na's insects gets the final blow.
The Shadow Altar soon breaks down. The battle is won! I find the cloak I want on the Shade Lord's body and hurry back to Imnesvale to identify it.
Turns out IR doesn't have a Cloak of Stars. Instead, it has a cloak that fires off a lightning bolt against melee attackers 20% of the time. It's a pretty nice item, but it's really not what I was looking for. I was expecting Poppy to start using a bunch of +5 darts, breaking through SCS2 mage's Improved Mantles and such. Those darts are no longer available, and the other magical darts have gotten badly nerfed. Darts of Wounding only do a fraction of their vanilla damage, and Darts of Stunning now only stun for 1 round, instead of 7.
I don't want to drag a gimped Archer all the way through Shadows of Amn. I take Poppy's proficiencies in darts and switch them to short bows. As a halfling, Poppy is able to use Mazzy's short bow, which has taken on all of Mazzy's vanilla sword's immunities, plus a few more. Poppy will have free action, including immunity to stun, so long as she carries the Bow of Arvoreen. And it's exactly those kinds of immunities that Poppy needs, since her friends can't target her with any buffing spells.
After they bought some new and shiny equipments, Anselm decided that they were going to look for who was sending these mercenaries against them.
And so their researches began in the Nashkel Mines.
Soon after they entered, they scooted a group of Dwarves, ready to ambush them. Vynd put some traps, Kagain rushed in while Dorn and Anselm were pelting them from afar with their ranged, poisoned weapons.
This fight reinforced Anselm's conviction. The iron crisis was linked somehow to him.
They continued their exploration and fought many Kobolds and finally they reached Mulahey which proven to be nothing more than a puppet. After they eliminated him, the party exited the mines and explored the area around them.
They found some crypts and looted some treasure, gave back his dagger to a revenant and met Narcillicus Harwilliger, a Mage who was experimenting his new spells to create and dominate Mustard Jellys. The squad attacked him and his creatures for the tokens he could have and put him down with poisoned weapons.
Afterward they came back to Nashkel to claim the reward for solving the crisis. The mayor told them to talk to the blacksmith in Beregost about the contaminated ore to get more infos.
Back in the town, a little girl approached the evil party and escorted them to meet the officer Vai, she wanted to talk with Anselm.
But as soon as they entered the inn, they were attacked by a huge group of Flaming Fist Enforcers and a powerful Morningmaster under a permanent Improved Alacrity effect (like many Dark Horizons spellcasters).
The battle raged and many spells were fired.
At first it seemed like the forces of the law had the advantage, until Edwin threw a Horror spell which turned the tides.
After dispatching most of them, they took down the Morningmaster and finished the remaining guards.
Anselm wanted to make an example to inspire fear in the population, so he orderer Edwin to cast some Fireball spells in the inn, killing everyone around.
And finally, injured during the slaughter, Anselm drained the life of the last commoner alive to recover.
Beregost wasn't destroyed, but the Flaming Fist will now think about it twice before attacking them ...
I take it that normally Officer Vai doesn't attack you there but the on entrance spawning of the flaming fist due to reputation caused her to side with them due to faction scripting?
- I didn't even knew I touched the Shadow Thief Dagger. If that apr was there it was not documented and surely not intentional. Also, no idea why that dagger should not get STR bonus.
Few more things:
- Darts are far from nerfed imo. Wounding does less damage yes, but it no longer allows a save (that's a big deal imo), Stunning doesn't have vanilla's insane duration (3 apr and stunned for 7 rounds? yeah, sounds balanced) but it's a magical dart now which can be used against more creatures and with that apr you can still stun-lock targets with it. Asp's Nest got a +1 enchantment and Crimson now deals fire dmg. I would have done more, but the intention surely wasn't to nerf the weapon type.
- quite a few SR players asked me to reduce the extremely long duration of certain long-terms buffs. Should I assume you agree stuff like Negative Plane Protection should not last so long? Vanilla's few rounds duration was useless imo, but I was going to suggest something like 5 turns (it goes up to 20 turns at lvl 20 now).
- otoh, Protection from Undead scroll was simply ridiculous and exploitable. IR's version is still useful imo but no longer allows cheesy tactics. I hope we agree on this despite your power-playing love.
- I really don't know if Death Ward should block BBoD's disintegrating effect...
The Buff Question:
It's a really hard question about the duration of buffs. The balance is radically different depending on whether you pre-buff or not. If you don't, and only cast buffs after the fight has begun, then duration isn't relevant unless it's really tiny, and the weaker buffs will be ignored in favor of the big ones. This will also make bonus spell slots much less useful, since you'll be using much fewer spells per rest period.
If you do pre-buff, then long-duration buffs allow you to tack on lots and lots of little buffs, and the effect is pretty extreme. The improved duration of Aid, Luck, and Bless mean my whole party has +2 to saving throws and THAC0, and +1 to damage and luck, on top of some skill bonuses. Without those long durations, I'll basically never use those spells in the first place, unless I've got a single-classed cleric who has nothing better to do. It certainly broadens the pool of useful spells, and lets the player avoid fussing over which buffs to cast first, but it also incentivizes investing more time in casting pre-buffs, which is generally a chore.
The Dart Balance Thingy:
Darts of Stunning in vanilla really are quite overpowered... more because of the APR than anything else. Even with only 1 round of stun on hit, they're better at disabling their target than Celestial Fury, since the effect of both is nonmagical and level 0. It's just that it's a bigger fuss with a shorter duration, since you don't have as much time to capitalize on the disabled opponent. The equation might change if we have enemy clerics and so forth casting Chaotic Commands, or an unstun spell.
Now that I think about it... an even bigger issue is the supply of the darts. I love darts, but I usually end up hoarding Darts of Stunning and Darts of Wounding (same goes for Kuo-toa Bolts), and so I barely ever use them in the first place, for fear that I won't have them when I really need them.
And Speaking of Ammunition:
One of the things I've long wanted to implement is a streamlined system for ammunition. Buying and stacking ammo is a pain, even with a high stacking cap. Plus, the limited supply of certain forms of ammunition incentivizes hoarding. So why not fix up all forms of ammunition so that they never run out, as in Firetooth, or the Quiver of Plenty? This would eliminate all of the hassle over when and where to use the items.
To balance it out, we could decrease the power of the ammo (and also tweak the cost, since each would have a stack of one). Reduce the chance of stunning to a certain percent, say. This way, a dart user could more comfortably switch between Darts of Stunning and the Crimson Dart, without worrying too much about using too many of the former. The rationalization for the change would be that each item represents a certain stack of them, and you would collect anything you've fired or thrown after the battle, hence the non-finite supply. Who says the magic of a Dart of Stunning is lost when it hits, when Celestial Fury never loses its charges?
Death Ward:
It's not clear if Death Ward should block the BBoD instant death effect. If it does, then I would add on some other ability to BBoD so it's more than just a super-big sword against foes with Death Ward. It seems a bit silly for a 7th-level priest to be able to block a 9th-level spell, but then, they already can! Because DW blocks PW: Kill. I guess the question is whether we want to let DW block BBoD disintegration, because otherwise BBoD is crazily overpowered, or whether we want BBoD disintegration to bypass DW, in order to keep BBoD scary and dangerous, as a 9th-level spell should be.
One More Thing:
Thanks for the Bag Holding in the Adventurer's Mart.
Then came Faldorn. Faldorn is bad news.
I usually have Cernd deal with her, since he has a guaranteed win if he's fighting Faldorn outside of the party, but I notice the dialogue options let me send Fobie or Pai'Na ahead instead.
Pai'Na promptly dies. Funny thing is, she loses her spider shapeshift item on being transferred to the tiny little arena with Faldorn.
See that little fist of hers, next to the Shadow Thief Dagger? Pai'Na comes with an unremovable spider shapeshift token. It's impossible to take it away, but the fight with Faldorn tries its best to do so. It's actually still in Pai'Na's inventory, but it's not visible on the in-game screen. Which means Pai'Na has a weapon slot that's permanently unusable.
So. Not only does Faldorn arrive fully buffed, and shapeshifted, with three Dread Wolves as her allies, and not only does Pai'Na arrive unbuffed, in natural form, with no allies... but Pai'Na also permanently loses a weapon slot.
The imbalance is unrealistic. I try again with Fobie, only to realize that I can actually arrive with buffs. So you have to fight without items, but you can still pre-buff.
Then I find that not all pre-buffs work.
See the little Harm icon in Pai'Na's weapon slot? That's a non-functional copy, it seems.
ALL items are removed on entering the arena. Including magical weapons. But since SCS2 uses item-based shapeshifting... this means Faldorn can arrive with an item--her shapeshifting token--but Pai'Na can't arrive with her own token, even if it serves the same purpose.
And creating a shapeshift token costs one round. So even if you do want to shapeshift, Faldorn gets one extra round of free action, since she doesn't spend her first round creating a shapeshift token. Another unfair advantage, alongside the three Dread Wolves.
Pai'Na apparently cannot attack with the Harm spell. Faldorn chunks her.
And yet... despite the battle clearly being over, with Pai'Na permanently dead... Faldorn does not reappear.
Faldorn is stuck in the arena. I can't even reach her with Dimension Door using Azama. Faldorn is simply gone. She broke the entire questline!
So we have four things going wrong, aside from chunking Pai'Na: (1) an understandable one, in which Pai'Na's unmovable item was moved, (2) Harm being disabled despite other pre-buffs working fine, (3) Faldorn getting an extra round, plus three allies, and (4) Faldorn breaking the quest if she chunks her enemy.
This is not acceptable. One weird quirk that cripples Pai'Na, a quasi-bug that weakens her further, an uneven fighting ground in which the whole point of the encounter is to have a fair fight (it's a one-on-one challenge with no items because it's a contest of power, independent of one's possessions and allies), and on top of that, a quest-breaking bug.
Out of curiosity, I try again. I want to see how the battle goes if Pai'Na's shapeshift token and Harm spell weren't removed. I give her a custom item with aura cleansing and casting speed bonus to cast her buffs at the start of the fight, including a Harm spell to use on Faldorn and a Fire Elemental summons to match Faldorn's Dread Wolves. I hit her with the Harm spell, which in SR deals 90 damage (Faldorn has 96 at most) but cannot reduce the target below 1 HP. Since Pai'Na has 0 THAC0 when she's using Harm, she easily lands a hit on Pai'Na. This is what happens.
See that little "1" right there? No, the Harm spell didn't do 1 damage instead of 90. Harm did absolutely nothing. That 1 damage is from Righteous Magic, which in SR adds 1d6 magic damage to every melee hit. Looking at Faldorn's files, I have no idea why she's immune to Harm. The only version of Faldorn that should be immune is the pre-challenge version, in which she's supposed to be invincible. Otherwise she's supposed to be vulnerable. Maybe it's a bug. So that's five things going wrong.
I keep fighting anyway, disabling her repeatedly with Web. Somehow, Pai'Na gets webbed, too.
The spider shapeshift token is supposed to grant immunity to Web spells, but it only protects against mage versions. It offers no protection against the Avenger version, which Pai'Na uses.
But Pai'Na is supposed to be immune anyway, since her shapeshift token isn't the standard SCS2 one. Her token gives immunity to Web's opcodes, and therefore protects against all forms of Web. She can conjure the standard one, since she's an Avenger, but I can't give her her own unique version, with its full immunity to webs, because her version is unmovable. After she fails her save four rounds in a row, and then a fifth time shortly after, I finally decide to give her a Ring of Free Action to mimic the effects of her own token, to which she's supposed to have access.
She still loses the fight (the Web spell eventually went away), but only just barely. If she had had her own shapeshift token, the way Faldorn does, and if she had her buffs up and allies ready, the way Faldorn does, she should have killed Faldorn two times over: first, with Harm, and a second time while Faldorn was webbed and Pai'Na got automatic hits in. But a fair fight between Faldorn and Pai'Na isn't possible without cheating in the right items. I decide to let Cernd have the kill. He fights outside the party, and survives despite taking hundreds of damage because of an item that prevents him from dropping below 1 HP.
I've actually seen him fail this fight before, due to some other bug in which he wasn't rendered unkillable, but this time he succeeded. Now the quest can be completed.
Losing Pai'Na is one thing. I can always add on some other random NPC (I already have one idea of who to pick). But losing her because of an error in the scripting (SCS2 naturally doesn't account for non-joinable NPCs like Pai'Na joining the party) and an engine limitation (Harm being removed when it's not supposed to be an item conceptually) and a conceptual problem with Faldorn's token and summons (the purpose of the challenge is to have a fair fight, and Faldorn gets her token and her allies without having to spend rounds conjuring them) and an immunity of unknown source (it's not clear where Faldorn got any immunity to the Harm effect, which just uses the normal damage opcode)... and then having a quest-breaking bug happen on top of that, ruining the entire questline... is another thing entirely.
I think I'll drop Pai'Na from the party anyway, despite all the nonsense that led to her permanent death. But I'm not willing to tolerate Faldorn breaking the questline. I'll permit myself a reload in order to complete the quest.
Why didn't I just call in the harem and seduce Faldorn? She has 3 million XP according to her .cre file. I could have gotten a new druid.
I suppose it's just as well. An epic-level druid would be kind of game-breaking.
Anyway, after watching Cernd maul Faldorn, we talked it over with Pai'Na and agreed we should take separate paths. As much as we enjoyed her company, she just wasn't satisfied with the harem she had. Nobody in our party can cast Spider Spawn. She let us keep Kitty as a farewell gift, and in exchange we gave her a couple dozen nymphs to keep her company.
We now have lost a valuable source of divine buffs. Without Pai'Na, we only have 5th-level Protection from Fire spells; the 3rd-level version is now out of reach. Worse yet, I just realize Fobie is supposed to have a -3 penalty to his 5th-level spell slots! He's not supposed to be casting Stoneskin or Insect Plague until epic levels. I empty his spell slots, but he has plenty more.
This means Fobie will no longer be able to function as a tank. No Stoneskin, low HP, mediocre resistances, and bad AC all make Fobie a fantastically squishy character. Snowy Tae isn't much better, as her AC isn't too great--she's especially vulnerable to crushing damage, against which she has a -5 AC penalty--but she at least can turn into a rat with the Cloak of Sewers.
We attack the djinn, who fail some very important saves in the first round.
The fight is a breeze, and we net an Efreeti Bottle and Rashad's Talon (which has a 20% chance of adding 1 APR per hit) for our trouble. The Efreeti Bottle, notably, has no weight, and therefore our pretty boy waif Fobie will be able to carry it around. Unbuffed, his STR is 2, which means he can only carry a couple potions and a pair of bracers. Normally his inventory is filled with scrolls and gems; he can't carry anything heavier.
We report our success to Lord Logan Coinpurse and Guildmistress Busybody and get another big cash money wad for being awesome heroes and stuff. We also clear out the Trademeet crypt thingy, and Fobie almost dies when he gets smacked by a Skeleton Warrior.
Snowy Tae hits level 11, finally, but her spell picks aren't too swell. Heal is an excellent spell, and in SR only has a casting time of 6, but since everybody in our party has such low HP (potions restore about half our HP on average), and Poppy can summon nymphs at will to cast Mass Cure, Heal won't add that much to our healing power. Blade Barrier is another strong choice, but Snowy Tae won't be able to cast it reliably in the middle of battle, since she has high AC and a casting speed penalty. Our best bet is Physical Mirror, which in SR lasts 2 turns and gives enemies a 50% miss chance against the caster. It's the best we can do to keep Snowy Tae's spells from being interrupting, unless we use finite resources. Item Revisions tweaks the Potion of Stone Form to give 5 Stoneskins instead of giving AC and saving throw bonuses, so that's another strong way to ensure successful spellcasting. But there are only so many such potions, and it's not clear when I should use them.
I returned the dryad's acorns to Vaelasa and briefly brought the nymph queen into the group. Unfortunately, it wasn't very interesting. Vaelasa was little more than a level 10 unkitted druid with a couple castings of Improved Invisibility and Dire Charm. She just seemed boring compared to Pai'Na. I removed her from the party soon afterwards. I have another couple of ideas for who to bring into the party, anyway.
The reason why I came to Firkraag's dungeon now is because I was hoping to avoid the vampire spawns, since Protection from Undead scrolls in IR only give combat bonuses against undead, and no longer any invisibility. Visiting the dungeon at a lower level (or tweaking my install, which I normally don't bother doing) will ensure the random spawns aren't too strong.
But I ended up not triggering the encounter at all. If you use CTRL-4 in the hallway right before the vampire room, you can see where the trigger is, and you can walk around it by hugging the right side of the hallway. I've tried this multiple times and it seems to always work, though I normally step on the trigger anyway to fight the vampires. If you have SR, you can also use Dimension Door (a 1st-level spell, depending on your install) to hop over the trigger. I probably would have encountered some ghouls and mummies, but avoiding the trigger is worth it, just in case there were vampires there.
As usual, I decided to let Samia ambush me early rather than trudging through the maze and have her appear with her goons behind me. If you pick the right dialogue options, she and her buddies will spawn right on top of you.
I brought out a bunch of nymphs in the first round, who quickly began to wreck the enemy party. Even Kaol ended up disabled; the harem's Confusion spells go right through his MGOI. The harem charmed Samia a couple of times while the rest of the party worked on slaying Chak, Legdoril, Akae, Ferric Ironblade, and eventually Kaol.
The battle ended in a decisive victory. Samia recovered from the nymphs' spells to find her party already defeated. She surrendered her arms, and after some divination magic, we discovered she was not actually evil... she's Chaotic Neutral. We are in desperate need of a good frontliner, and asked Samia if she was willing to join the group. She agreed! Although more out of a sense of profit than an interest in the harem. Without Pai'Na we're still lacking a proper dominatrix. But Samia isn't a good fit for the job anyway... we don't know yet if we can trust this woman.
Still, Samia is well-suited to the group. She's a 13th-level fighter with grandmastery in scimitars, and with her ludicrous ability scores--her stat total is a whopping 94--she can dual-class to thief, rendering her zero starting XP a non-issue. Once we take a tour around the maze, she levels up enough to start detecting and disarming some traps.
Now that we have a thief, we can finally stop worrying about traps and locks. It'll take another 880,000 XP before she regains her fighter levels, but with the De'Arnise Hold, Planar Sphere, Planar Prison, and Unseeing Eye quests still wide open, it is by no means too late to dual-class one of our party members.
Firkraag's dungeon has another nasty sticking point besides the vampires and Samia's ambush: in the hallway right after completing the Mask of King Strohm quest, there are three Greater Wolfwere spawns, with outrageous regeneration and MR that caster-heavy parties like ours have trouble overcoming. The harem ends up solving the problem: By throwing out several Hold Monster spells at once, the nymphs can successfully disable the monsters, and therefore get automatic hits with their Cause Critical Wounds spell. Two hits spell the victim's demise.
Cause Critical Wounds is a monster in Spell Revisions. The damage is crazy and the weapon lasts a whole turn, giving the caster much more freedom in determining when to strike. The one drawback the nymphs have is their awful base THAC0. But they don't need an attack roll if the target is paralyzed.
After trashing Firkraag's dungeon, the dragon orders one last goon to try and kill us. He barely puts up a fight.
He wakes up a round later, but by then, his Stoneskins are gone and he has a massive spell failure penalty thanks to being hit by a bunch of darts from a Wizard Slayer. He crumples seconds later, and the quest is one.
As usual, I leave Firkraag well alone. I have no need of Carsomyr, at least not this early in the game.
By the way... @Demivrgvs, the Potion of Regeneration stacks with itself as well as the Regeneration spell. The POTN42 spell gives no immunity to the cleric or druid regeneration spells, and vice versa.
Thanks to Samia's 12 INT, she is able to use some if not all of IR's wands, which are tweaked to be usable by thieves if they have high enough INT. The Wand of Lightning is tweaked to only fire 3 lightning bolts instead of 6 (how did you do that, @Demivrgvs?), but the Wand of Lightning trick still works, and I might have Samia drink triple-strength regeneration potions for the tougher battles.
On the way back from Firkraag's dungeon, we are greeted by a familiar face: Kuroisan, the Acid Kensai. He asks us to hand over Malakar, and he will leave us alone.
For those of you who aren't aware, Kuroisan is a Kensai(13)/Mage(14) from the Tactics mod, who attacks you if you don't hand over Malakar or Celestial Fury (I think other katanas he doesn't care about). He is notable for casting PFMW via scrolls, having end-game equipment (Robe of Vecna, Amulet of Power, Cloak of Mirroring), and for wielding the infamous Sanchuudoku, a +4 katana that fires off a tiny acid arrow spell at anyone who harms the wielder, whether the attack is from a melee weapon, a ranged weapon, or a spell. And Sanchuudoku also lowers acid resistance on hit, so boosting your acid resistance is not a permanent fix. He's a ludicrously powerful character with tons of immunities and a LOT of attack power.
I decide to go ahead and fight him. Not because I particularly cared about Malakar, but because I was kind of afraid I might not get to see him again, and might therefore lose the opportunity to get Sanchuudoku.
Problem is, I'm honestly not sure how to kill this guy. So right after the dialogue ends, I have everybody flee. Mr. Cookies wastes some PFMW scrolls while nobody is attacking him, then starts to chase Poppy, who calls in the harem. Poppy hides while her nymphs slow down the kensai.
Cookies expends his Acid Arrow and Magic Missile spells on the nymphs, then switches to his katana. He deals about 40 damage per hit, not counting the 2d4 acid damage on hit, so that's basically an instant kill on Poppy.
I check Cookies' files--I'm not really familiar with this guy--and find that he has a -20 bonus to all his saves, as if he had drunk a Potion of Magic Shielding. So my nymphs are never, ever going to disable him. But wait! Item Revisions tweaks the Cloak of Mirroring on his back--it doesn't deflect spell damage anymore. It just gives physical attacks against the wearer a 50% miss chance. I rally the nymphs to cast Call Lightning. I wasn't expecting much, but it still goes much worse than I expected.
Apparently Cookies has a spell reflection effect active, which I overlooked earlier. All those lightning bolts bounced right back at the nymphs. Even after I burn through this defense, though, he refuses to get hurt. I can tell from his files that he doesn't have 100 MR, but the nymphs never do any damage to him.
I give up on the nymphs' spells and decide to just have them attack Cookies directly. He chunks them one after another.
Then he curses at me and vanishes, saying he's not done with me. Apparently he got tired of slashing up the nymphs and decided to come back to kill me later. Not a good sign. I don't know where he might show up again. If it's Athkatla, I can always just turn invisible--Cookies can't see through invisibility, nor can he dispel it--or run away and block him in with the harem, but if it's in a dungeon, god forbid, then I might not have enough room to make my escape.
I go through my spells and items and find little that can help me against Cookies. This is a long section explaining why I can't beat him:
I can think of two possibilities. First, the Shield of Reflection, if I buy it, bounces the green arrow projectile that his "Acidic Backlash" uses, but when I cheat the shield and Sanchuudoku in for testing, Acidic Backlash goes right through the shield, and the wielder of Sanchuudoku is unharmed... perhaps because, as I later discovered, Sanchuudoku makes the wielder immune to that projectile, and therefore it cannot be reflected.
The other possibility is a weird trick involving Fire Shield. Those who have used Sanchuudoku might have noticed that if one critter with Sanchuudoku and another critter with a Fire Shield hit one another, then the Fire Shield and Acidic Backlash will trigger each other infinitely, dealing tons of damage to both critters... usually killing one or both of them within a few seconds.
Nobody can cast Fire Shield in my party, since the only arcane caster is Azama, who can't use scrolls due to her 2 INT, but Azama does have the Salamander shapeshift due to her Avenger kit, and gets a constant effect Fire Shield as a result. When I give Sanchuudoku to Samia, she kills herself on Azama's Fire Shield, though Azama takes heavy damage as well.
Azama has a little under 50 base acid resistance, but she can't get to 100 and therefore make herself immune to Acidic Backlash, at least not without Snowy Tae's aid (and we want Snowy Tae to stay invisible during any fight with Cookies). Why not? Well, we do have scrolls of Protection from Acid, but she needs 9 INT to cast those. Snowy Tae can use them, but in IR, they can only target the caster.
I can still have Azama use them with the potion swap glitch, however. I spawn in Cookies to test it out.
Basically, the plan is to have everyone drink Potions of Invisibility when Cookies appears. Then Azama boosts her acid resistance over 127 (capped) with the potion swap glitch and a green scroll. She also casts Stoneskin. After waiting a few seconds to refresh her aura, she attacks Cookies, invariably missing. Eventually Cookies attacks her back, and hits her, dropping her acid resistance down to 120. Azama drinks a Potion of Invisibility right as this happens. The net result? Azama gets hit by infinite Acidic Backlashes, but is immune to acid. Meanwhile, Cookies gets hit by infinite Fire Shield damage, as well as some electrical damage thanks to Nature's Vengeance, the IR version of the Cloak of the Stars, which has a 20% chance of zapping any attacker every hit (unlike the IWD inspiration, this cloak is usable by non-druids).
But during testing, Azama dies. Cookie doesn't even get hurt.
Some poking around reveals that Azama died because Cookies had two invisible Fire Shields out, and hence killed Azama with cold damage. So why did Cookies survive?
He has a sword alongside Sanchuudoku that lets him toggle immunity to fire, electricity, and cold damage. So, he's immune to all Fire Shields, plus Nature's Vengeance.
But this doesn't mean these things are worthless. I can still lock him with the repeated damage. I repeat the test, this time with Azama immune to all of the elements, and have Cookies get hit by an invisible foe many times per second. Success!
I let Poppy out of invisibility to chip at him with her bow, but he manages to chase after her, eventually escaping Azama's damage lock. Poppy goes invisible and Azama re-establishes the damage lock to try again, but then Cookies casts Shadow Door, casting time 0.
Shadow Door has a maze effect on nearby enemies in SR. Since Azama has a base INT of 2, that's identical to an SR Imprisonment spell: 7200 rounds of Maze.
So I'm not really sure how we're going to deal with Cookies. The solution might just be running away from him every time he appears, until we reach some crazy new abilities that might actually hurt him.
Because right now, he has an all but guaranteed kill on Poppy, and Poppy appears to be his default first target.
That's the Cookie Monster for you.
We open the gate and fight some minor skirmishes on the way to the "cellars." Hordes of summons pave the way through the first pack of Spirit Trolls, and since we emerge from the fight in good shape, we continue on to the Umber Hulks without resting. Now all that's left is Torgal.
Torgal in Tactics is a Spirit Troll, with the irritating invisibility effect, but without the irritating spells. He's an absolute monster, but the AI in this battle is stunted somehow: if you approach Torgal while invisible, he will sniff you out and chase you, but his allies will not follow along. This allows us to tackle Torgal without worrying about the other critters.
Torgal crumples under a pile of summons. Fobie brings in three Fire Elementals, Snowy Tae brings in two Aerial Servants and four Greater Skeletons (basically, just tougher versions of the vanilla Skeletons), Poppy brings in a couple spirit animals, and Samia, using the Wand of Lightning trick, contributes three copies of Kitty.
Since we slay Torgal without much fuss, we decide to take on his buddies as well, without resting first. The last time I fought Torgal, I had to flee his friends, as they were too tough for me. But this time, I think we're strong enough to take them on.
Torgal's buddies include two or three Yuan-ti Mages, several Spirit Trolls, and an Elder Umber Hulk. It's a pretty diverse mix, and makes a coordinated strategy fairly difficult. It's hard to break down two enemy mages, for one thing, and the Spirit Trolls are all immune to single-target spells by virtue of their ability to turn invisible at will. Flame Arrow won't be much use on them, nor will Azama be able to freely use Fireball, given our reliance on summons. She sticks with Slow instead.
As usual, we struggle to kill the Spirit Trolls. Their invisibility at will is a nightmare, consistently screwing up normal targeting and causing both party members and summons to waste several seconds every round, severely reducing our melee power. It's the one reason I don't recommend using the Tactics mod with the De'Arnise Hold. It's deeply frustrating to notice your party members have been spreading their damage across multiple Spirit Trolls when all you want to do is focus on one.
The Yuan-ti Mages make a habit of dispelling our buffs, but Snowy Tae, our lone Inquisitor cleric, isn't able to keep their buffs down. I'm still not sure if an Inquisitor's Dispel Magic in SR or SCS2 actually takes down MGOI.
Without our buffs, we are quite vulnerable to disablers. Snowy Tae has a spectacular save vs. spell, and Azama has 33 base MR thanks to IR's Robe of the Weave, but for the most part, our saves are pretty weak, and SR spells have hefty save penalties. Since we've been fighting Trolls for quite some time--who are immune to hold and many other disablers--I fail to consider summoning the harem to hassle the Yuan-ti Mages. Thus, the Coiled Cabal is free to mess with our functioning.
It doesn't help matters that our Efreet do not seem to understand the concept of friendly fire. For the second time, one of them blasts the party with a loose Fireball.
Poppy is under the effects of Chaos, and therefore cannot heal herself--nor can Snowy Tae target her--but thankfully she's stuck in the previous room, and therefore is distanced from the enemy.
Azama breaks down some of the mages' defenses, but we don't quite manage to kill them, leaving two fully functional mages still in action, protected by a Teleport Field that frustrates the only weapons we have. Our two ranged attackers, Poppy and Samia, who might be able to harm the Coiled Cabal despite the Teleport Field, are both disabled: confused and unconscious, respectively.
Then Azama herself loses consciousness. Snowy Tae brings her back with Break Enchantment, hoping that Azama could use Dispel Magic (Snowy Tae already cast all of her own), but then I realize I was wrong about Azama's kit. She has the Cleric of Helm kit, not the Inquisitor kit, and therefore has True Sight, but not Dispel Magic.
Then Azama fails a save against Chaos. She's still the most valuable of our disabled characters, so Snowy Tae casts her last Break Enchantment spell. It's lucky Snowy Tae spent the first few rounds of combat hanging back and attacking with Spiritual Hammer from a distance, or else her buffs, including Chaotic Commands, might have been dispelled, too.
Our summons are confused, and we have no means of bringing them back. We've been struggling to kill a Yuan-ti Mage limping along at Near Death for the past three rounds or so, but finally, Samia wakes up, and finishes the job with the Crimson Dart.
Fobie, too, gets confused, and starts a fight with an Efreeti. At 40 HP. With no Stoneskin. The Efreeti drops him down to a quarter of his HP with one swing of its blade.
Then it swings again.
Fobie, our favorite goofball and the favorite of the harem, has popped like a balloon. He is gone.
The Efreeti is no more trouble, however. The battle has been won. The last Yuan-ti Mage is gutted at the feet of Lord De'Arnise, and the last Spirit Troll is beaten into a corner. Samia recovers from a Domination spell, we pick up Fobie's things, and report the news to Nalia.
Fobie was inches away from level 14, and the horribly dangerous Earthquake spell I so wanted to use. Now he is dead, and the party is back down to four members.
And are they other fights like this one with some nearly invincible opponent ?
Great progress so far !
This has reminded me your own advice from the Druid thread: "Hmm broader pictures are no doubt very interesting, but yours is a no-reload run remember? Please be careful, think about Charname
s fans. They don't want to see him dying on them..."
How do you do it with Yahiko? Do you do 'trap research' on each area before you take Yahiko there?
But as soon as Yahiko got that spell, he didn't need any "meta-knowledge" of traps any more. The spell lasts long enough and when it's over Yahiko prefers to rest.
I imagine that Yahiko wants to survive in the first place, so he tries to be always protected from the majority of nasty effects. I don't find it immersion-breaking. Instead, I find it natural. My character is opposed by a whole world and he should at least use all his immunities to survive.
Anyway I have the same in mind for my Cleric/Illusionist, or at least always having Find Traps active once she has a couple of casts of that spell. (Especially in BG2, where traps are just terrible).
After the battle, Anselm remembered why they were back in Beregost. On Mulahey's body, he found a few letters which indicated that a Mage named Tranzig was resting in the Feldpost inn. The Blackguard always read the letters alone as he didn't want the others members of the group to know too much about his plans.
Sometimes he would seek Edwin's advice as his sheer intelligence matched his own he thought. But this time it wasn't the case.
He led the party to the inn and encountered the spellcaster.
Surrounded by six evil looking and well equipped individuals, Tranzig betrayed his master and told the party what they wanted to know. But as soon as they turned their back to him, he tried to use his magic to harm them.
Hopefully Dorn was faster, and chunked him instantly with his greatsword before the incantation was over.
The party was impressed. "Well done, my servant." told Anselm. He wanted to mock him, to gauge his behavior. Dorn looked angry, as expected, but remained silent.
Afterward, the party travelled to the east, they heard some rumors about powerful beasts waiting to be killed. These beasts were Basilisks, and Edwin made sure to prepare some Protection from Petrification spells in advance.
During the trip, they were assaulted by a group of mercenaries. But the combined assault of Vynd, Dorn and Anselm ranged poisoned weaponry fell them extremely fast.
Once they arrived to the Basilisks lair, Anselm prefered to hunt them alone. He asked Edwin and Viconia to use some of their magic on him, prepared his poisoned Arrows of Detonation and blasted the creatures away. He also encountered some adventurers and a mad gnome named Mutamin and proceeded to kill them all for their magical equipments.
The area cleared, they continue their trip to the north, in a forest infested with Giant Spiders and their Web traps. They also met a group of Red Wizards of Thay and dispatched them by breaching through their Stoneskin spells with their poisoned weapons, interrupting all their spellcasting. (Normally you can't fight them with Edwin in your party, that's why I kicked him out of the party, initiated the fight then took him back since I wanted the XP and the loot).
At some point Anselm wandered a bit too far alone and got caught in a Web trap while a few Spiders were heading his way. Kagain and Viconia rushed to help him in the Web, counting on their good saves or magic resistance. Viconia also got webbed but Kagain didn't and manage to tank the Spiders effectively except one Sword Spider which tried to evicerate Anselm but Dorn, Vynd and Edwin eliminated it before it was over.
The death squad then travelled south. Dorn told them he wanted to take his revenge against Kryll, a necromancer who betrayed him before he joined the party and according to his informations, she was somewhere east of Nashkel.
Another group tried in vain to stop them during their trip. This time around even Edwin provoked them before the slaughter.
Eventually they found her. Dorn, hidden by an Invisibility spell, sneaked upon her and chunked her instantly, exactly like Tranzig.
On her body, Dorn discovered some documents which could help him for his vendetta. Anselm allowed him to keep them since it was his quest.
Finally, the group came back to the Friendly Arm Inn before heading to the Bandit Camp.
Haven't played a Wizard Slayer in years so will need to refresh knowledge. Might use the rebalancing mod for slightly better MR (1% per level seems pathetic). Main concern is not being able to use potions...I'm completely reliant on Invulnerability / Freedom to survive against mages and Invisibility to heal in the middle of fights or to get out of tough spots. I suppose the latter could be compensated by just buying every Invisibility scroll I come across but how do you improve your saving throws / avoid PW stun without the other potions? Serious planning needed...