I finally started a new run. I'm not sure how long it will go on, since I've got a weird new kit I want to try out, but I thought I'd post on their progress anyway. I'm using a party composed entirely of divine spellcasters. Our Charname, Viro, is an unkitted druid, as are two of her friends. The other three party members are all unkitted clerics. No fighter levels, no thief levels, no mage spells, and not kits. Just the basics for divine spellcasters.
I've always found druids and clerics to be fairly underpowered. Most of their spell slots are dominated by fairly weak spells with limited functions compared to arcane magic, and with 1 base APR, their attack power is terribly limited. So I thought an interesting change would be to start a run where I'd have to rely entirely on divine spellcasting power for every encounter.
Our three druids, all half-elves:
And our three clerics, all dwarves:
Notice they don't have DEX penalties. This is because I gave them their stats and races with SK (I don't like rolling, so I just assume a 90 stat roll) but forgot to give them the dwarf's -1 penalty to maximum DEX. I'll fix it later. The portraits are all derived from a thread by @LadyRhian that I'm still digging through on and off: (http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/11758/ladyrhians-too-many-pictures-for-any-thread/). I strongly recommend visiting the thread if you're looking for portraits. All the artist names are posted, and you can find almost all of them on deviantart. I've found dozens of excellent portraits this way, and I'm only 10% through the thread.
In Chateau Irenicus, we level up all the druids to level 9 right after freeing Minsc and Jaheira. To make the most of our one permitted rest in SCS2's starting dungeon, we tear through the first groups of enemies using bear form.
SCS2 lets you shapeshift by equipping weapons you can summon via an innate ability, which means you don't have to spend your aura on shapeshifted.
We also take down the Otyugh with a staff and a spear, attacking from the safety of the hallway. But for Ilyich and the Mephit Portal room, we really need our spells. So we rest right after we kill the Duergar next to the portal.
Our summons pave the way through the library. Ilyich's Duergar buddies prove to have very, very poor luck against our Hold Person spell.
That basically spelled the end of that encounter.
I didn't bother with the Air Elemental Plane, or the Cambion. The Mephits in the Air Elemental Plane have lots of fire damage spells, and one of them can stun for 6 seconds, every 6 seconds. Those Mephits are a massive source of damage that only short-term resistances can mitigate, and I neglected to memorize Sanctuary spells to sneak past them. The Cambion, meanwhile, is too strong to justify the HP loss.
I got caught off-guard by a trap in the Portal Key room. Viro almost died.
For the Mephit Portal room, we used summons to absorb the Color Spray spells. Note that those Color Sprays have a -3 penalty to their save vs. spell, so there's really no way to gain invulnerability to them at the start of the game without Chaotic Commands, rage immunities, or MGOI. We used brute force to get past the rest of the dungeon, only avoiding the Hareishan room.
To make sure we arrived at the Assassin encounter at our strongest, we approached them early, with an excess of buffs. Ironskins would keep backstabs off of Viro and our other druids, True Seeing would frustrate the Assassins' backstabbing, summons would crowd up the area, and we had Nymphs backing us up to throw out Confusion spells. A successful missile attack ensured our success against the mage.
He failed a save against Command a few seconds later, giving us enough time to swarm him.
Since we only have druid and cleric spells, we don't have any reliable fast-acting spell interrupters. Our damage spells either are too slow (Insect Plague) or offer a save (Dolorous Decay). And with our poor THAC0, our best bet for interrupting spells are darts--all of which can be blocked by Stoneskin. Darts of Wounding also cannot poison through Stoneskin, at least in SCS2, and Darts of Stunning are blocked by any SCS2 weapon immunity spell. We also have no access to Breach, Minute Meteors, a safe dispelling option like Remove Magic, any magic attack spells, or the Wand of Spell Striking, and our Insect Plague spells can be easily blocked by any form of Fire Shield. So, we won't be disrupting many spells in this run. We'll just have to tough them out.
After dealing with Kalah, we head to the Slums and grab Lilarcor, if only for the XP (there are so many excellent weapons none of us can use). I decide we're ready for the slaver compound, but to my surprise, the Priest of Cyric launches a Greater Command spell on the first round.
Three party members are down for the next 10 rounds. Only Viro, Coral, and Nina, one druid and two clerics, remain conscious. And since I mistook the Doom icon for a Sleep icon, I thought Nina was unconscious, and therefore gave her no orders (I only just now realized she was actually awake). I have a Potion of Invisibility on Viro, which she could use to smuggle everybody's equipment out of the area if the party should die, but since she still has Ironskins active, I decide it'll be safe for her to keep fighting for a bit longer.
We bring out some summons, who manage to slay the Priest of Cyric, but Coral is under heavy pressure from the enemy fighters.
To my surprise, the enemy ignores our disabled characters, even though they'd get automatic hits and their targets would be unable to heal themselves with potions. I always make it a priority to kill disabled enemies before they recover--maybe because I use lots of casters, and hitting opponents is difficult if they're not disabled.
With all the enemy's pressure concentrated on our three remaining characters, Viro's Ironskins cannot stand. She has another, but that's all she has left.
We keep the enemy occupied a bit longer, and finally the other half of our party wakes up. The enemy crumples once we're at full strength.
The next section is a problem, however. We can't disable the Prismatic Spray trap, nor can we get immunity to petrification. We can get block Disintegrate with Death Ward, Feeblemind can be blocked with Chaotic Commands or removed with Cure Disease, and Prismatic Spray's raw damage can simply be weathered, but we can't make anybody immune to petrification. But we can get a save vs. spell down to 5, which is pretty close. We cast Chant, Aid, Bless, Chaotic Commands, and Death Ward on Gymora, our frontline cleric, and give her the Ring of Protection +1 and the Helm of Balduran. I didn't consider that I was putting the Helm of Balduran as well as Gymora at risk in this way, but she didn't get petrified in any case.
She lured the enemy over to the rest of the party, which I normally keep hidden in the hallway behind the trap. But she got hit by Remove Magic in the process. She could still come back over the trap, and outrun the Prismatic Spray itself, but once she came back, she couldn't go out again, not without putting herself at risk. This is one of the few traps in BG2 that will trigger every time you pass over it until it's disarmed; it doesn't go away after it's triggered once. We resigned ourselves to staying behind the trap, and simply fought the enemy from the hall. Insect Plague is just too cruel at this level, when enemies don't have Fire Shield.
Then I realized we could outrun the Prismatic Spray trap with haste, which the SCS2 wolf shapeshift has automatically. I have Mirinaas, our only male character (I can never find male portraits I like, which means I always have very few female soundsets to spread across my characters) shapeshift into a wolf and dash past the Prismatic Spray trap.
He outruns the spell. With his boosted movement rate, the spell is too slow to catch up to him. I have him lead our remaining summons over to finish off the other guards hiding out in the building, and send Haloo, another druid, over the trap in wolf form to help him loot the place. We slew the Trolls with Flame Blade spells and returned to the Copper Coronet.
The Copper Coronet guards weren't too much trouble. They failed multiple saves against Command, allowing us to pick them off one by one. The Beastmaster and his animal critters weren't much trouble, either; Nymph summons allowed us to disable many at once.
After freeing Hendak and selling off a bunch of equipment, we buffed up the party and traveled around Athkatla until we triggered the Suna Seni ambush. Greater Command knocked out the entire group.
We bought Mauler's Arm for Coral to compensate for her low STR and outfitted all the clerics with Plate Mail. Next up, the Druid Grove.
Mercifully, we met no Spirit Trolls in the first Troll encounter in the Druid Grove, nor did we find any monsters outside of the Troll Mound. We only found one Spirit Troll in the Troll Mound itself, but managed to disable it. Apparently Trolls are immune to all disablers except Horror.
The Spirit Troll panics, but the others stay. They collapse in two rounds with a flurry of Holy Smite spells, and the Fire Elementals finish them off.
The Spirit Troll remains, however, and once the other Trolls go down, it recovers from its panic attack. We bring it down to Injured before it decides to hide. It goes invisible most every round, and runs out the Flame Blade spells that were our two frontline clerics' only magical weapons. We've got a combined 7 APR, not counting our Fire Elementals, and our THAC0 is too poor to do much. The Spirit Troll is back to full health quite soon.
It takes a while to bring him down. Spirit Trolls are no fun. They take forever and require intense micromanagement of the most boring kind.
Kyland Lind falls unconscious on the first round. Disablers have been really wicked on all sides in this run.
We swarm him and remove the most dangerous enemy from the fight. We pick off the remaining critters one by one. Dalok suffers the same fate, knocked out by a Greater Command spell at the start of the fight.
To my surprise, we're unable to get Cernd to take on Faldorn. Viro being a druid robs us of that dialog option.
Normally, you can have Cernd finish the fight on his own, which is a guaranteed success, though we get no XP for the kill. I don't think we can take down Faldorn ourselves, but we may as well give it a shot. I send in Haloo and hope for a failed save on Faldorn's part. The spell doesn't even touch her.
It's the weirdest thing about SCS2. Sometimes its components persist even when I uninstall them. The setup .exe says I don't have mages rigged to pre-buff, but they do anyway. I uninstalled the Improved Faldorn component, but here she is, with all of her ridiculous advantages, from summons to shapeshifting to stoneskins to spell protections.
She chunks Haloo.
I can always just create a new copy of Haloo, though this costs me a bunch of XP. But since Faldorn breaks the entire questline by chunking her opponent, I have an excuse to reload. This time, I walk away. We probably won't face her until level 14 or 15, when we have Nature's Beauty or HLAs. And next time, I'll disable the "gore" option, which prevents chunking entirely.
Instead, we just take on Khan Zahraa. We have no defense against Flesh to Stone, so Viro remains invisible with Pixie Dust. It doesn't matter in any case; Khan Zahraa falls to brute force.
Since Taquee vanishes when we go outside, however, I have to reload. I've seen that happen before, and it also breaks the questline irreversibly. We don't become the heroes of Trademeet, but we do get the Shield of Harmony and some extra treasure, and Trademeet's shops are now open to us.
So far, the party has done fairly well, though it's not particularly strong or versatile. The clerics have a weak but party-friendly damage spell in the form of Holy Smite, and an excellent if unreliable disabler in the form of Greater Command, but otherwise their strength is all defensive, and at low levels that defensive power only applies to enemy spells: they may be immune to disablers by virtue of Chaotic Commands, but Armor of Faith is not going to keep them safe. Draw Upon Holy Might gives them monstrous damage and THAC0 bonuses, but they only have 1 attack per round--we can't cast Haste.
The druids are much more effective overall at this stage of the game. Their spellcasting is ensured by Ironskins, they have more spell slots (and will continue to do so until 1.5 million XP), they have a reliable disabler in the form of Insect Plague, and their summons are game-breaking. The Fire Elementals are immune to normal weapons and deal damage through Stoneskin (though we've seen few Stoneskin spells so far), and the Nymphs have a broad assortment of excellent spells, including Hold Monster, Mental Domination, Mass Cure, and Confusion, all of which can completely wreck the early game. The druids also have better damage output thanks to their 2 APR as bears, though they lack a good offensive damage spell. Call Lightning only works outdoors and is terribly slow to cast.
@semiticgod A nice team and an informative playthrough. One comment though : where is the phase spider druid ? Btw do you need help to finish the mod ?
To my surprise, the enemy ignores our disabled characters, even though they'd get automatic hits and their targets would be unable to heal themselves with potions.
AI scripts often stop to cast spells (or more restrictively disabling spells) on helpless characters and they may prefer to continue to cast spells on other team members instead of dealing melee or ranged damages. That behaviour may seem more surprising when it comes from enemies already in physical attack mode. However an intelligent target selection is something difficult and long to implement in those AI scripts. There are many conditions that may explain this behaviour : their priority may go to spellcasters, bad AC, distance, target locked for a few seconds/rounds etc... all of that ignoring the helpless state.
@Blackraven@Alesia_BH I re-edited the balthazar message. I think it is correct now. Noticeably the requirements pertaining to an evil character. The spoiler section contains the score modifications.
@Musigny: I do need help. I've run into the same problem I've had before: I can't add the next section, for the bard kit. I'll try and make this as clear as possible, since I really can't figure out what's causing the problem.
Basically, I've got all the basics working, except the kit won't show up in the right place. Right now I'm trying to add the bard kit in, now that the fighter and druid kits are working fine. So, I copy the druid section and replace some things: I've got the bard's usability flags, the alignment restrictions, the available weapons, and I've replaced the spider druid CLAB (CLABPHDR) with the spider bard one (CLABPHBA).
I run the setup. It asks if I want to install the bard kit. I install the bard kit, the setup completes without reporting any problems, and the bard kit is installed, no error reports. I then load up BG2 and start a new game in ToB (since SoA has an opening cutscene I'd have to wait through).
I create a new character and make it a bard. The "Phase Spider Bard" kit does not appear. All I see is Bard, Blade, Skald, and Jester. If I create a druid, however, then I see "Phase Spider Bard" with the other druid kits.
Incidentally, if I create a druid with the Phase Spider Bard kit, then the kit won't have any effect--I'll just have an unkitted druid. So, I can create the bard kit... but on character creation, it only shows up when creating a druid character.
I've gone through the TP2 file and I'm not sure why the game thinks the Phase Spider Bard kit is actually a druid kit. I need that bard kit to show up in the list of bard kits, instead of the list of druid kits.
Attached is the TP2 file, based on the last TP2 you posted. It contains a separate BEGIN section for the fighter, druid, and bard components. I need to find out why the bard kit shows up on the druid menu.
Dagny, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist (2nd & final SoA update)
Lack of familiarity with the Tactics components ended Dagny's run. Therefore I'm not pissed off or disappointed with myself (as I sometimes am). Besides there were many apparent bugs or glitches: a dialogue loop with Jaheira which made me decide to ditch her, half the Athkatlan community looked dark brown as if Barkskinned, I couldn't use Raise Dead scrolls to raise Anomen (had to use the Rod of Resurrection), and most annoyingly there was about zero intra-party banter. I also dislike the Tactics random abushes. They happened way too often for my liking, so often that any sane Charname would say "F*ck it, I'm going back to Baldur's Gate and raise the money for Imoen there." Their repetitiveness is also off-putting.
Anyway Dagny's crew did rather well in yesterday's session and a short session this morning. They had to give their all on the roof of the Copper Coronet when one of the Tactics ambushes occurred. Maybe it were two ambushes even, because at the end the party counted 12 corpses: four casters, the others fighters and assassins. We had Irenicus' wands, which made a huge difference: Monster Summoning, Fire, Heavens were all used. Several Spooks were also effective crowd controllers. This was important because the party was still quite low level, so their buffs were few and brief.
The advantage is that these ambushes yield a lot of XP and valuable loot, but as I said, they happen too often. I'm not going to play with the respective component again.
Nalia's Hold was successfully negotiated in two instances. Fighting a few Trolls at a time was doable for Anomen, even the Spirit variants. The others could do little against them, except Aerie who as a Bard was the only one that could use the Tuigan Bow (Nalia's dual wasn't completed yet.) Aerie would finish the Trolls with acid arrows, even though she wasn't proficient in bows. The Yuan-Ti Mage fled to the roof when Dagny dropped a Cloudkill in the library, so they didn't have to fight it. Glaicus had the upper hand against Anomen but Jan, who was using the Light Crossbow of Speed, stunned him with his Bruisers.
The Flail of Ages +3 was forged, and then I thought Anomen could try and best the Golems. Failing to separate three of them, we saw Anomen fall.
This was where I discovered the Raise Dead scrolls couldn't be used. We raised Anomen in Athkatla. The second time, invisible companions were used to enable Anomen to take on the Golems one at a time, using the Sling of Everard. Cloudkill finished the Umber Hulks, and TorGal was lured out of the ballroom by invisible Nalia. Only two Giant Trolls followed. PfFear Anomen and the others felled TorGal and the Giant Trolls, and later an Elder Umber Hulk and two Yuan-Ti Mages.
The second Yuan-Ti Mage didn't fail to confuse Aerie, prompting the Elf to kill Nalia with her returning Frost Dart +1.
The Skinner murder mystery was solved. Anomen swigged a potion of freedom because of the Ghasts and, dualwielding FoA and DoE, he defeated the Bone Golem and the Rune Assassins.
The Thief Guild quests were done this morning. Anomen had more problems with Rayic Gethras' Mephits than with the Golems. Jan set three traps and summoned 3x3 Hobgoblin archers for Rayic Gethras himself to waste his spells on. One of those spells was a Fireball with which he killed himself.
During one of their errands for Edwin or MaeVar they saved Sansuki by having invisible Jan, Aerie, Nalia and Dagny cheesily surround Del so that Anomen could kill the other Vampires first.
The dust-up must have caught the attention of one of Tactics' copious ambushers. They took the fight into the Sea's Bounty. Anomen's attempt at casting Chaotic Commands was thwarted by one of the enemies. Their priest summoned an Aerial Servant (very difficult to deal with, at least the aTweaks version: they hit hard, entangle and go invisible at will), and Mage PW:Stunned Anomen. He fell soon after, and I realized that it was a shame that the only character that could dish out good physical damage, was also one of the most vulnerable characters. He fell soon after.
The presence of the Aerial Servant made the others hesitant to reveal themselves. In the end they didn't have to, as Officer Dirth killed the ruffians for them.
With Renal Bloodscalp's permission the party then proceeded to assault MaeVar's Guild. Anomen did most of the work upstairs, helped with a few Chaoses from Dagny and Jan. The arcane casters buffed extensively: Stoneskins already in place, Chaotic Commands (Dagny), Shield, Blur, Mirror Image, MSD, Improved Invisibility, and Spell Immunity, although the casting of the latter spell was messed up as I had the game paused and had various characters cast it, causing the school selection option to be lost. Anomen buffed with Chaotic Commands, and the holy triad of HP, DUHM and RM. Downstairs, Jan dropped a Teleport Field, and Dagny a Cloudkill.
The arcane casters occupied themselves with MaeVar by the stairs, Anomen fought the Priest of Cyric on the other side. They had a fairly easy time staying alive even though some of the Assassins switched to ranged attacks and peeled off Jan's Stoneskinsand evn though Aerie got Held at one point, an effect that Dagny canceled with a Remove Paralysis. MaeVar's buffs couldn't be dispelled with Dispel/Remove Magic because he had a MGoI up, and the companions saw a number of their castings sizzle out due to MaeVar's quaffing of invisibility potions. Jan's Detect Illusions and a Breach by Dagny evenually exposed him.
The companions then attacked with spells and weapons, with Dagny getting the kill through a Holy Smite.
After a rest and after having received their reward from Renal Bloodscalp, the crew set out to report Anomen's sister's death to the authorities when the umpteenth Tactic ambush occurred. The party was invisible, so I considered simply leaving (as I had done before with these ambushes). But I decided to test the skills of my team. With the same buffs as in the MaeVar battle, except that Spell Immunity was properly cast this time, we had little difficulty with the enemy even though a priest's Cloak of Fear scared Anomen.
When the enemy priest and fighters were down pursued their Mage. She was panicked due to some Magic Missile damage we had inflicted, and she entered a nearby building. Little did we know that that building was also the abode of Tactics' Lich in the Docks.
We wanted to leave the building, but it was sealed. The (female) Lich nearly killed Jan and Nalia with triggered Skull Traps.
Dagny cast one of her green scrolls of PfUndead on herself. An instant later I heard several death cries; apparently they included Dagny's.
In the screenshot you can see that all companions were felled. I suspect a Wail of the Banshee or a Meteor Swarm. (If I have the creature file right, the Lich didn't have ADHWs.)
@Blackraven: Very nice to see Jan's flashers coming in handy. They're not reliable disablers without spider form, but they can make a huge difference against almost any enemy. Jan's gizmos are too little appreciated.
Sad to hear about the loss, however. Tactics is cruel. It's not designed for no-reload runs.
For future reference, the Tactics ambushes can be avoided by sleeping through the night. They only appear after dark, so if you come outside and see that it's dark, you can rest once or twice to reach the next day.
@Blackraven I suggest removing tactics2/gbrand/aiscripts/bodhitrp.baf prior to installing the mod. You already dislike it. Later on the same groups are replaced by a stronger version in which the mage likes to cast a (sequencer) triple flame arrows at one of your character. When I was young( ) I was so upset because of it and I used to skip the whole component. However the primary culprit is the script I mentioned. I cannot tell you to remove it from the override folder of an installed game because it is likely to be also modified by other mods. Side note: I see nothing in Tactics that can generate the weird graphics on the sprites. Moreover, with the exception of The Ritual and Improved Irenicus that I haven't managed to convert yet, the only place where Jaheira (and more generally NPCs) gets her dialog files modified, is Improved Ilyich and I can confirm this is properly implemented by the creator of Weidu . Last point: not sure about how well o you know the vampiric lich mod but I would not suggest fighting her early game. I like this one very much. She has a powerful spell sequence, she is modified to cast a specific spell granted to the Tactics2 liches (and Kangaxx demilich) helping them to fight against "hidden" enemies (such as the prot from undead) and in a final phase she has a very nice use of the blade of disaster
Kudos to @Musigny for all of the help! I fixed the problem you explained. The Phase Spider kit is now fully functional, and can be applied to almost every class. You can make a Phase Spider paladin, ranger, fighter, cleric, druid, thief, or bard. The weirdest BG2 kit ever made is almost ready for uploading.
Attached is a .zip file containing the setup file and the folder with all of the relevant spell files and stuff. It should install correctly now; I've tested each one.
Before I post this on G3 or wherever, there are a few things I'd like to add. If we can find some way to add a mage kit to the game, ideally without replacing any of the others, it would be nice to create a Phase Spider Mage kit. Otherwise, the only way to do it would be to create another class and Keeper it to a mage.
Also, I'd like to add a short section to the TP2 file, asking to replace Infravision and the cleric/druid version of Detect Evil with a self-refreshing Dimension Door spell, so the player can teleport via a hotkey.
I think I have a way to get around the monk problem.
We might not be able to create a Phase Spider Monk kit without turning all monks into spiders, but we could imitate the monk kit with another class. Long story short, I'd just create a new ranger kit and tweak it so it would have monk abilities. That way, we'd have a fighter type critter that could also hide in shadows, just like a monk. I can do that on my own.
Thanks @semiticgod and @Musigny, I did a new install because of all the apparent bugs/glitches. It doesn't contain any of the Tactics components (even though the Lich, Improved Crypt King, and Gnome Fighter/Illusionist are cool I think). Congrats on the creation of the Spider kit btw!
I fixed a typo in the fighter kit, rearranged the component numbers and tra string numbers to make room for additional strings (basically fighter starts at 11, druid at 12 etc... and the corresponding kit strings at 110/111 then 120/121 etc.) Not difficult to roll back if you think that's bad. I removed the language example. I created a core component to install all the common files and also ToBEx. I am no ToBEx specialist but if you want to enable unusual kit/race pairs and if you want to be able to switch a kit once the game starts (probably what will have to be done with the mage kit) you require it. I think it is important for all kit mods on the non EE version because it allows to scroll the list of kits beyond ten entries. Even if you don't add 10 kits of your own under the same class, they may stack with other mods and the vanilla kits and thus reach that limit. This is the version v26, advices are welcome if any reader thinks it's better to use an older version. A negative point is that it makes the mod restricted to windows (or supposedly Wine or the like) and the usual C++ MS lib is required. That's very easy to remove if this is a showstopper for you but you have to make a decision about the features you want. There is no perfect solution. On EE all of that is not required. I also offer the option to extend the race list for the druids and bards, this is just an example. I am a bit slow but I have difficulty in understanding what you want to do with the infravision/detectevil/dimension door spell and why you don't create a separate spell but I simply added a question conditionning the spell replacement. I hope this is what you want. I will have a look at the mage kit switch next week.
@Musigny: Thank you for all of the work. Your version works perfectly; I just tested each part. I'll make sure to call attention to your contribution when we release the mod. You've earned some recognition for all this!
To answer your question, we have to overwrite Infravision and Detect Evil for hotkeys because custom spells and innate abilities can't be mapped to hotkeys. If you install the mod and go to the hotkey section in the BG2 configuration file, you can't map the Phase Spider's Dimension Door spell to any key. The spell won't show up. You can, however, map Infravision to a hotkey. So, if you take a custom Dimension Door spell, rename it as "SPWI111" (the file name for Infravision), and go to the configuration settings to set "D" to cast Infravision, then you can cast Dimension Door by pressing "D." I learned that when I first tried out the Phase Spider kit myself. The configuration settings map "SPWI111," but not "PHASE013," to a hotkey, so we can only map Dimension Door to a hotkey by replacing a vanilla spell. I chose Infravision and Detect Evil because I figured they'd be the spells the player would be least likely to miss.
If you can figure out some way to create a mage kit, that would be spectacular. In the meantime, I'll cook up a Phase Spider ranger kit that'll imitate the monk kit.
I just created the monk kit. I'm kind of proud of how I implemented it; I even got the saving throw growth rates fixed up. As usual, details in spoilers to avoid cluttering the thread.
Monks have the unique trait of being able to hide and detect traps, but not use any other thief skills. I considered creating a thief class and disabling the thieving ability, but the player could still see the grayed-out icon, and you could still add points in any thieving skills I might disable. Instead, I picked the ranger class, which would allow the player to hide like a monk and also cast the Dimension Door spell replacing Detect Evil. The ranger monk kit can't detect traps, but that ability in monks is seldom used and little valued anyway.
There were several problems I had to address. First, monks and rangers gain levels at different rates. I could edit the XPLEVEL.2da table to make them equivalent, but then all rangers would grow as fast as monks. Instead, I put the XP values for each level into Excel and calculated the ratio of XP needed to reach each level in ranger and each level in monk. Turns out, after level 9, the ranger always requires exactly 33% more XP than the monk. So I just gave the ranger monk kit a +33% boost to XP. The only downside is that it'll still have the ranger level cap.
Second, monks and rangers use different saving throw tables. To make sure our ranger monk got the monk saving throw values, I created 10 separate spell files, each of which would adjust the ranger monk's saving throws at levels 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, and 15. Sometimes I had to add 1 to all saves, sometimes I had to subtract 2 from several saves, but leave other saves alone.
Third, rangers get druid spells. I could have disabled that icon, but then, I'd prevent the player from using the Detect Evil Dimension Door replacement spell, and so the Phase Spider Monk couldn't teleport via hotkey. Instead, I just added a spell that removed all of the ranger monk's druid spells, except for Detect Evil.
Also, I had to implement the monk's item restrictions, and there are a lot of them. Modders know that the engine can't support unique item restrictions: you can restrict a kit from using metal armor by giving them the Archer usability flags, or restricting them from edged weapons by using cleric usability flags, but you can't restrict them from axes while permitting flails and daggers. Not unless you edit a whole bunch of item files.
A tutorial (admittedly an old one) on WeiDU modding by CamDawg said you could only implement certain item restriction using a kit. The engine doesn't let you add extra usability flags to give more complex or unique item restrictions. But there's a cute way to get around that engine limitation.
There are two opcodes you can use to circumvent this rule: 143, which creates an item in a specific slot, and 180, which prohibits the character from using a specific item file. With opcode 143, I can create a non-removable dummy item in a Phase Spider's ring slot, preventing them from ever wearing rings on the grounds that they have no fingers. I do the same for their boots slot. No boots either, since spiders don't have humanoid feet.
But what if I want thieves and bards with Use Any Item to be able to sew a magical ring into a spider's cloak, and gain the benefit that way? Well, we can fix that, too. We instead have TWO dummy items: one to occupy the ring slots, and one to occupy the boots slot. Then, at level 24, when a thief or bard is almost invariably going to choose Use Any Item as their first HLA, you give them a special ability that instantly removes the first dummy item. Now, both ring slots are free, while the boots slot is still full, so the thief can wear rings with UAI, but still can't use boots.
What about opcode 180? This allows us to prevent a character from ever using one specific item. Even Use Any Item can't overcome this restriction. If I want the spider to never wear helmets, even with Use Any Item, but I still want them to be able to use ioun stones, then I can create a bunch of separate effects using opcode 180, each of which restricts a different helmet: one forbids the use of the Helm of Infravision, another forbids the Helm of Balduran, and so forth. The helmet slot isn't filled, however, so the spider can still use ioun stones, since they don't require a humanoid head. This also allows us to ban gauntlets and gloves without banning bracers. Bracers you can put on the spider's leg, but gauntlets and gloves require hands and fingers to fit correctly. Opcode 180 lets us implement that.
And for monks? I just create a dummy item in the armor slot, preventing all armor from being worn. Likewise, I put a dummy shield item in the shield slot, which prevents the monk from using shields as well as bows, spears, or any two-handed weapons (I understand monks in EE can use staffs, but in vanilla they can't). I still permit bracers, though, since I don't think the monk restriction on bracers makes sense--they don't really encumber you at all, or restrict your movement in any significant way.
There are still a few inconsistencies left--the ranger monk can't use the Scarlet Ninja-to; it gets the ranger stronghold; it can use Montolio's Cloak--but they're not very significant.
I've fixed up the TP2 file and the ranger monk kit installs correctly, but I won't bother uploading it, as I anticipate making some smaller edits later on.
One last thing I might try is tweaking the Phase Spider's HLA tables. For one thing, it would allow me to keep Phase Spider Thieves from gaining access to the same traps as normal thieves--I already restricted them to their own unique snares; having unique HLA traps would also make sense. For another, it would let me add in some unique spider-themed HLAs.
Most importantly, though, it would prevent fighter types from stacking HLAs. My old Phase Spider Fighter/Mage/Thief, Blueberry, could combine Greater Whirlwind Attack with Critical Strike and Assassination in one round. With TorGal's Claw, she could do over 1000 damage in 6 seconds, with no preparation. Admittedly, that would require 3 HLAs that otherwise could have been spread out over other rounds, but it's still a little less balanced than I'd like it to be. I could implement a 6-second cooldown for fighter HLAs, but I can't do that without overwriting the vanilla spell files and therefore compromising mod compatibility. However, I could make copies of the fighter HLAs and add cooldown times for all of them, and then give the Phase Spider kits a unique set of HLAs with those cooldown periods in them. That would prevent HLA stacking without overwriting the vanilla files.
I like Dagny, so I started another run with her a few days ago. I've got a new install, essesntially my standard install with Ascension, SCS I and II v21, aTweaks, the mods for Rogues (Rebalancing, Song & Silence, Expanded Thief Stronghold), the UBs, Wheels of Prohepcy, Alternatives and Oversight, Level1NPCs for NPC customization, and a couple of smaller quest and item mods (BGQE, Sirine's Call, Grey Clan, Quest Pack, Item Upgrades), tweaks (BGTTweaks, BG2Tweaks), banter mods. Also the BG1NPCSoA mod that should make Yeslick, Garrick, Branwen, Skie, Kagain, Faldorn, Xzar, Monty, Quayle & Tiax available as joinable NPCs in SoA with banter and all. I'm quite curious about the latter mod.
A bit unwilling to rush her through BG1 again as a solo character, I decided to have Dagny seek company this time. Dagny is a carefree, non-commital little lass at heart, and gets along best with similar folk. But I also wanted to do an arcane-heavy run, so she'll have to compromise a bit on party composition for my sake.
Here's a screenshot of her character record at level 1 (for those who didn't meet her before):
She had a bit more XP than normal when she left Candlekeep because I imported her character file that already came with some XP.
She took comfort in Imoen's company shortly after Gorion's tragic death. The two girls first traveled to the FAI, which had been Gorion's specific instruction. Ever keen-eyed, Dagny found a Ring of Wizardry by the gate. As a Charming Rogue, Imoen gets a casting of Charm Person at level 1. She used it effectively to make Tarnesh empty his spellbook in the air and on himself before she finished the panicked wizard with a critical in melee range.
As a pair of female Forgotten Realms Robin Hoods, the girls helped many a commoner in Beregost, but robbed the affluent Travenhursts of some of their valuables. The gals also met two guys in the center of town, Tiax and Garrick. Tiax wouldn't stay with the party, as the girls considered him insane, but his Ghast helped Garrick out of the employment of his evil mistress Silke and into the party.
West of Beregost the trio destroyed a Skeleton (with Shielded Dagny doing the tanking). Thalantyr used its skull as a component for a spell that would supposedly restore Melicamp the rooster to human form, but unfortunately something went wrong in the casting of that spell.
Garrick (plain Bard as modified by RR; RR Skald again not working properly) got along soon and well with Dagny and Imoen. To me his personality, banter and voiceset more than make up for his alleged lack of usefulness. The friends traveled to the South Coast (via Red Canyons and Lighthouse Area), where they protected Charleston Nib before they lifted to Nashkel with Brage. The Nashkel inn was not visited, as Dagny wanted to have lvl 2 priest spells (Hold Person) first. Oublek, BGQE babysitting, and Bjornin's Half-Ogres west of Nashkel boosted the party's reputation. Karlat was blinded and slain before the trio took a trip to the farmland north of the FAI. There, Dagny cast Sanctuary to purloin an Ankheg treasure hoard, reunited farmer Brun with (the corpse of) his son, and accepted a commission for three fishermen to slay the evil priestess Tenya. After receiving a light beating from the party Tenya told them that the fishermen were the real criminals. So Dagny & Co ended up retrieving a bowl for the girl to make amends.
Way down south at the Nashkel Carnival Quayle, a Gnome with the same profession as Dagny, joined the party, and a retired scholar named Archibald gave Garrick a tome he had always wanted to own.
The book referenced a Bard named Myr'Cutio who was said to have dwelled in the Ulcaster area. Garrick asked the others whether they were interested in going there, and was answered in the affirmative. However they had other business to attend to first, such as eliminating Greywolf,
and Bassilus,
and Zargal and his Hobgoblin lackeys.
These dealings provided enchanted weaponry for Garrick, Dagny and Imoen respectively. (Quayle already had an enchanted Flail, from Sonner. I didn't change his stats, but he has 13 STR in my setup, which allows him to wield Flails.)
In the eastern Cloudpeaks Dagny's and Quayle's Hold Persons and Blindnesses made the party prevail with ease over Sendai and her cronies, and over Vax and Zal.
(The oil of speed that Vax was about to quaff was actually secured as well.) Further west Krumm and Caldo were also Held and slain. Three Winter Wolves fell as well, and Ludrug lost a duel against Garrick (of all people). Near the Gnoll Stronghold, Gnarl and Hairtooth fell to Imoen's arrows. The Gnolls themselves were butchered, with some difficulty as Dagny and Quayle, each with 18 DEX (Quayle thanks to the Gauntlets) and Shield spells were passable tanks at best, and they didn't have enough Sleep spells to knock out all the Gnolls.
Dynaheir was returned to Minsc and left in his care.
Neira (Hold Person) and Zordral (Blindness, disrupting Magic Missiles, and Hold Person) were the party's next victims.
Imoen and Korax, inspired by Garrick, were the heroes in Mutamin's garden.
Dagny did a spell-scribing session after that, with her INT boosted by Gellana's potions. Unfortunately there are few of those potions for a party full of casters of barely above average INT. (Quayle's 17 INT isn't bad but he gets a penalty for copying spells from other schools than Illusionism.) I've grudgingly accepted that several scrolls will be lost this game. In BG2 it's different because the temples sell 13 mind focusing and 13 genius potions each.
Preparations were made for an ambush on Kirian & Co, with a Cloudkill rendering them unconscious, and with Lindin Blinded and Peter Held, but a wrong click in the dialogue with Kirian made her walk off before she could be released of her Golden Girdle.
The party left the others and traveled to the nearby Ulcaster ruins. There they had to defeat an overwhelming number of Hobgoblins and Skeletons (Dagny used her Turn Undead ability to make the enemy more manageable), before they could seek out Myr'Cutio, and when they did meet the latter, or at least his spectre, they learned that he was hostile and that they weren't ready for him.
The companions decided to see if they could become more experienced in Black Alaric's cave. They didn't have enough enchanted ranged ammo, so Dagny tried to take advantage of the fact that the Flesh Golems didn't attack all the time. Her invisible companions could protect her when necessary. This went quite well, until the sixth and last Golem she would slay in order for Quayle and Dagny to reach Cleric levl 5 (and thus get Animate Dead), showed her she shouldn't be messing with Golems.
Back at the Ulcaster Ruins, the area was still infested with Skeletons and Zombies. They were so many that Garrick decided to use the Wand of Fire Dagny had found in the Ankheg hoard. Due to bad targeting he not only dispatched the undead but also nearly himself.
I wonder if it was his leadership position and 20 CHA or his song that kept the Bard from panicking there.
When more undead and Hobgoblins were dispatched the party tried their hand at a tentative, second assault on Myr'Cutio. Summoned Skeletons were sent in to occupy the spectre, and Quayle cast Silence at the enemy from a distance, a brave act that Myr'Cutio retalliated against with a faster cast, highly damaging Skull Trap.
The Silence did 'connect', but Myr'Cutio came after the party with a MGoI up. He proved to have MR when exposed to the Wand of Fire, had good AC and was immune to normal weapons or missiles, so the companions had no way to finish him before the Silence expired. A rare moment of clarity on my part made Dagny protect her friends and herself from Fear, which may have been a lifesaver.
After a lot of running around, and occasional hits by Dagny, Skeletons (do their weapons hit as +1? I didn't think so) and Imoen, Myr'Cutio was no more.
Garrick took the spectre's stylish Bardic Chainmail:
And he told Dagny of his brother Marek, which made me wonder if this is the same Marek as the one we should meet in Baldurs Gate.
Thalantyr produced the Improved Shield amulet (AC4, +1 saves, no Shield effect though). The party then went Ankheg hunting, relying on Sleeps and Skeletons.
The Nashkel Mines were next. At the second level, a level I normally sneak through, Imoen got busted by a couple of Kobolds when failing to hide, but Dagny hadn't changed her memorized level 1 spells since the Ankheg hunt, so she had plenty of Sleeps to help deal with the vermin.
The same spell worked wonders on the bridge on the third level as well, as did the Wand of Fire. (I've become less parsimonious with expendable items. The Wand of Fire wasn't strictly necessary here, but I just couldn't be bothered with taking on dozens of Kobolds one at a time.) The Kobold Shaman and the Chieftain, backed by a number of Elites, were managed with a Stinking Cloud and a Scorcher-charge of the Wand of Fire. The Shaman lasted quite long actually, and survived the Scorcher, but his only potentially dangerous spell was a Horror. When he targeted Imoen with it, she went Invisible (and saved anyway). Having had enough of the Kobolds, Dagny Silenced Mulahey while he was still blue-circled so that he couldn't summon his minions. He was then Held and finished off.
Xan, Fighter/Enchanter, became the party's fifth member.
Outside, the Narcillicus fight was a bit messy after the wizard saved against the Wand of Paralyzation; several healing potions were lost in order for everyone to stay alive. But I got a second chance after a crash to desktop, and had a much cleaner result with Skeletons doing most of the work.
Unlike the first time, Dagny got Blinded by her foe. While she had to wait to regain her sight, Xan used a scroll of PfUndead to deal with the Ghasts and the Revenant.
Nimbul was a bit sketchy after the party failed to retreat on time to leave him for the guards take care of. They fled to the garrison, with a Slowed Garrick sauntering behind the others. The party expected Nimbul to follow them inside, so they summoned two Skellies. However Nimbul never dared enter the garrison, so more Skeletons were summoned outside. They soaked up several of the assassin's spells, before Imoen finished him off with a Magic Missile.
In Beregost the party summoned Skeletons to deal with Tranzig, though he summoned his own Monsters. He also escaped from a Stinking Cloud's AoE but a Spook made him easy pickings after all.
On the North Coast the Skeletons were a bit too effective: they killed Shoal's Water Weird, which was pretty cool, but they also killed Shoal before she could tell the party she didn't want to fight any longer. So no Droth and no Helmet of Defense for Xan.
The Ogres they left alone after about twelve Wolves came after the companions.
Wand of Fire scorchers, one of which managed to injure Garrick, finished the Battle Horrors guarding the entrance to Durlag's tower, while inside the tower Imoen took out the Ghasts with ranged attacks and the protection of invisible party members. Skeletons killed the Basilisks, and Xan - after a long game of hide and seek - slew Kirinhale. Looting the upper levels and the cellars yielded the companions sufficient gold to purchase the Robe of the Neutral Archmagi and the Claw of Kazgaroth. They also bought a Wand of Fire from Erdane, sold it again after it turned out that it had no scorcher charges, only fireballs, and bought it again, fully recharged with 50 charges of each ability.
After a night at Feldepost's the crew got ambushed by Lamalha and her friends. Dagny stunned Lamalha with her Wand of Paralyzation, leaving her in Xan's care. Quayle Held Zeela (the other Cleric) and invisible Telka. Garrick dispelled that invisibility and together with Imoen he attacked the two amazons, later joined by Xan after the Elf was done with Lamalha. Dagny Blinded and then Held Maneira; she was eventually slain by Xan.
In the Wood of Sharp Teeth Druids and Bandits died. (This included Teven and his band and Raiken & Co., even though I think Raiken is kind of likeable, for a bandit.) What was most peculiar to me was that there were no Black Talons. Instead the companions ran into a Wraith Spider, and while they were resting they got attacked by a Giant Spider that Webbed Garrick before the others killed it. On her way to the Bandit Camp, Dagny survived this:
This forest had a very Cloakwoody feel to it.
Buffed with a potion of defense, two potions of fire protection, and an oil of speed, Dagny put the Wand of Fire to good use in the Bandit Camp:
The party spoke with Ender Sai about the Iron Throne and their Cloakwood base, returned to the FAI to relax and to trade with Bentley and Gellana, and started preparations for their foray into Cloakwood.
I've already accomplished all I really came here to do. I only started this run to test out and balance the Phase Spider kit, and that process mostly ended with the fight with the Statues in Watcher's Keep. Every major fight after that was resolved with HLAs--once you hit epic levels, HLAs are basically how the game is played; the other abilities of your class seldom ever matter, unless you're a Bounty Hunter or something.
But I want to have some sort of ending for Blueberry, so here it is.
Before opening the door to Irenicus, Blueberry casts Stoneskin, PFMW, SI: Necromancy, and prepares a triple Power Word: Chain Contingency Spell Sequencer. After laying several Exploding Traps in the center of the map, she activates Hardiness to make sure nobody breaks through her Stoneskin spells until the first turn is over. Finally, she lays the last Tear of Bhaal on the door, and after several painful knock-knock jokes and much dilly-dallying, Jon-bon finally emerges from his hidey-hole.
Irenicus: "So, we are to battle one last time. No more hiding for either of us. I will enjoy destroying you, Blueberry. To die in this place is to cease to exist!"
Blueberry: "Are you sure you wouldn't rather just give me my soul back? It'd be really nice of you."
Irenicus: "Your soul was never truly yours, Bhaal child! You should let me put it to better use!"
Blueberry: "What if I give you a cookie? It's a little old, but I've already taken a bite, so I know it's good."
Irenicus: "You will not be so calm when I doom you to non-existence!"
Irenicus casts Breach, removing Blueberry's spell protections, and summons a Fallen Planetar via a Contingency spell. Blueberry responds with Power Word: Silence, preventing Irenicus from negotiating his Wish spell with the Fallen Planetar. Instead, the Fallen Planetar goes toe-to-toe with Kitty, and Irenicus resorts to Energy Blades, trying to break through Blueberry's Hardiness spell, but her magic resistance blocks the electricity damage, and she makes her save against most of the physical damage. While weathering Irenicus' assault, Blueberry struggles to cast spells under pressure. She gets a Blur spell off the ground, but her Spirit Armor spell is blocked by her own SI: Necromancy spell, which was removed moments earlier by Irenicus' Breach.
Shorn of his Energy Blades, Jon-bon casts Tenser's Transformation and closes in for melee combat, showing off lots of kickass kung-fu moves, but Blueberry activates her Expertise Feat and counters his pitiful two arms with her many spider legs. She fails on a Disarm check, so she switches back to her magic, activating her Spell Sequencer to cast three Chain Contingency spells at once--a classic move for BG2 veterans. She chooses a defensive lineup: Reflected Image, Mantle, Mirror Image, Barkskins, Minor Spell Trap, Protection from Magical Missiles, Protection from Undead, a pre-cast Call Woodland Fiends, and a Minor Globe of Invincibility+Spell Turning+Protection from Prettyfication Spell Trigger to ward off her Nymph's upcoming Nature's Beauty spell.
Meanwhile, Kitty has nailed the Fallen Planetar with a maximized Web Tangle spell (Kitty gets metamagic feats if you give her a few levels in Geomantic Sorcerer), suffering only minor cuts in the process. This is a perfect setup for Blueberry's Nymph, who casts Nature's Booty on the first round she comes out, using a Staff of Striking as a focus for the spell. Inspired by the Nymph's pole-dancing, and still tightly bound by Kitty's silky ropes, the Fallen Planetar fails its save against Kitty's seduction roll, and the Fallen Planetar is successfully neutralized. Kitty starts a grapple, aided by the Nymph, and between the two of them, they manage to organize an impromptu S&M scene. Fallen Planetars make excellent subs--their one weakness relative to normal Planetars.
With the Fallen Planetar occupied and her defenses raised, Blueberry regains the advantage, only for Irenicus to cast a Warding Whip on her. Not all of her specific protections get lowered, but Blueberry has a history with whips dating back to an old foray into the crypts beneath the Graveyard District, and she can't help herself: she has to get involved in the threesome nearby. While the scene unfolds, Irenicus waits until all of Blueberry's buffs have worn off except for PFMW, though he is too spellbound to take offensive action.
When the scene is over and the Fallen Planetar is unsummoned, Irenicus takes control of the nymph--he has his own history with them, and his own share of tricks--and keeps Kitty occupied with the charmed Nymph, though Blueberry regains her senses and returns to the fight.
Irenicus begins casting Time Stop, but Blueberry interrupts it with another Power Word: Silence spell. Irenicus makes use of his Monk levels, but this time, Blueberry's Disarm is successful, and Irenicus' hands fall to the floor. She stuffs one of the hands into her "Bag of Holding," but Irenicus manages to pick up the other hand.
Sensing his disadvantage, Irenicus tries to run, but Blueberry phases after him, dogging after him like the spider she is. Finally Irenicus realizes his mistake, and casts Polymorph Self, turning into a Sword Spider to even the odds. I'll spare the reader the details (some people are squeamish about spiderotica for some reason) but when the spell wears off, both are sluggish and weary, having expended most of their spells. Kitty, too, is beat, in more ways than one, and even the Nymph can only last so long.
They spend a moment catching their breath. Irenicus has returned to normal form and is left with only one hand--he already expended all of his Mage Hand spells, and Blueberry is still in tight control of the hand she disarmed, among several other Mage Hands that Irenicus lost in various dark and wonderful places. They spend a moment reminiscing about Chateau Irenicus, and after sharing the abovementioned cookie Blueberry had been saving for a special occasion, they recover enough to fight again.
Irenicus activates his Spell Trigger, summoning a group of Lesser Hobgoblins, shielding himself with an Armor spell, and disabling Blueberry with a Power Word: Stun spell. Helpless, dazed, and surrounded by Hobgoblin thugs, Blueberry has painful flashbacks to her attempts to fit in with the Chill at the bandit camp by the Beregost copper mines. Kitty and the Nymph lurch forward, still exhausted, to defend Blueberry from the gang, and for a moment, they are successful. But Irenicus realizes he has a better option: he banishes the whole group with a Death Spell and takes the opportunity to recover his hand from Blueberry's Bag of Holding. He also filches Vhailor's Helm from the real Bag of Holding, and promptly summons a Simulacrum.
Blueberry suddenly recovers from the stun effect, and she manages to Dominate the simulacrum before it can take action. Irenicus casts Chaos, confusing his clone, but Blueberry is unharmed, still protected by the Shield of Harmony strapped to her back. Blueberry fires her own Chaos spell, from a scroll, and Irenicus fails his save, but not before trapping Blueberry in a Resilient Sphere spell. For the next 10 rounds, Blueberry can do nothing but sit down and watch Irenicus wrestle with his clone.
After a full turn of homoerotic clone play, Irenicus regains his senses, and is faced with the same set of eight legs that stymied his efforts many rounds before. To regain the upper hand, he turns into the Slayer, sprouting extra arms in the hope of pinning down Blueberry and her many crazy legs. But Blueberry has the same power, and enjoys an even greater benefit from the Slayer form: as a Spider Slayer, Blueberry gains 48 separate limbs, and wrestles Jon-bon to the ground, though she still fails 48 Disarm checks in a row (just bad luck, really), and Irenicus holds on to his hands.
But as a mage with nearly 18 Intelligence, Irenicus has a backup plan. He activates a triple Spider Spawn Minor Sequencer, and the resulting Sword Spiders tackle Blueberry--Blueberry hasn't had this much attention since her date with Rose Bouquet at the tanner house. If you've ever seen a nice pair of legs, just imagine 78 sexy legs in one tangled mass--the spectacle is overwhelming.
As if that wasn't enough, Blueberry casts Mirror Image from a scroll, trying to confuse the Sword Spiders and get a handle on Irenicus. Over 300 Slayer legs in one big pile, even if many of them were illusory. Wow. I'd attach a screenshot, but I'm not sure it's wise... I always have a bucket of ice water around to cool myself down (thank goodness for that), but I'm sure some of you don't take these sorts of precautions for when you're roleplaying as spiders. I'd hate for you guys to get heat stroke... and there's always the chance somebody might see what's on your monitor, and start coming on to you, thinking they've found a fellow arachnophile. My friend is an arachnologist and she gets hundreds of love letters whenever she publishes any of her research. She tried saying she was a black widow to try and scare them off, but it just seemed to encourage them (turns out that's a very popular fantasy).
Where was I? Oh, yes, the details. Blueberry, sensing the battle was not going her way, teleports out of the spider pile and hides in the corner until the beefy Sword Spiders despawn and her heart rate returns to normal. Irenicus and Blueberry both return to their natural forms--she still has the numerical advantage in legs.
Irenicus grows desperate. He casts Maze and Power Word: Spell, but Blueberry makes both her saves, courtesy of a Potion of Clarity. Blueberry also drank a Potion of Freedom for immunity to stun, thinking Irenicus might try a Symbol: Stun spell, but I belatedly realize that as a Diviner, Irenicus can't cast Conjuration spells. Instead, he tries his hand at some Enchantment magic, throwing out Glitterdust and Power Word: Blind spells to try and put Blueberry to sleep. After weathering three such spells, Blueberry makes a Spellcraft check and realizes the next one might well succeed--her Potion of Clarity has worn off, and with it, her save vs. spell is at a pathetic -3. She phases into a faraway corner and drinks a Potion of Invisibility for safety's sake, and sure enough, she fails her save, falling asleep for several rounds while Irenicus tries to find her. Luckily for her, Dragon Disciples can't cast True Seeing--Irenicus has to search for her without the aid of magic.
By the time Blueberry awakens, Irenicus' Globe of Invulnerability has worn off--and Blueberry can sense it. Her opportunity has come. She finally makes use of her thieving abilities, hiding in shadows, creeping out of her own little hidey-hole, and sneaking up on her adversary.
Now that Irenicus' MGOI is down and he is vulnerable to level 6 spells, he can be taken down with a single HLA. But his Mantle is still active, and so we need a nonmagical weapon. But Blueberry's natural weapon strikes as a +3 weapon now, and there is only one nonmagical weapon on the map: Irenicus' hands.
But her Disarm checks have been failing consistently--she needs to disable Irenicus first. So she switches to the Pixie Prick, casts Greater Malison, hits Irenicus with the Answerer to lower his saves even further, and finally backstabs him with the Pixie Prick +3. Miraculously, Irenicus fails his save and is rendered helpless, snoozing peacefully on the grounds of Hell.
Blueberry's Disarm check automatically succeeds. She steals Irenicus' hands, activates Greater Deathblow, and slays the level 13 Illusionist with a double damage backstab, killing Irenicus with his own hands.
Blueberry recovers her soul from the fallen mage, and awakens from the Five Hells in a soft bed in Shuldashashaller, where Princess Ellesime greets her with breakfast in bed, including a plate of warm cookies and cold milk. Ellesime thanks Blueberry for saving Shabashasher and rewards her with a sizable harem of hot spiders they had captured from the invading drow armies. Relieved of her duties and restored of her soul, Blueberry is free to spend a long, hard-won vacation in the city of Shubbasher, getting backrubs from hot elven dudes, giving rides to, and/or feasting upon, the local children, and rolling in the hay with her newfound harem of sexy Sword Spiders.
That may be one of the funniest things I've read on these forums. Props. *applauds*
Dagny, Gnome Cleric/Illusionist (take 3), 2nd & final BG1 report
Dagny and friends had barely left behind the Wood of Sharp Teeth when they headed out to another vast forest: the Cloakwood. They protected Aldeth Sashenstar against four vindictive Druids by Silencing and then slaying the latter, and they took a Cloak of Non-Detection for Imoen from a Tasloi they killed. Imoen removed numerous traps in Spiderland, and Dagny extinguished the monsters with her Wand of Fire. The party brought Chelak's body to Tiber, and kept Spiders' Bane (to sell it later). The only battle the crew fought in Druidland was against Peter of the North and his Baby Wyverns. Deeper in the woods the companions slew more Wyverns with fire and ranged weapons.
They cleared the area surrounding the Cloakwood Mine, and then Dagny summoned a number of Skeletons, applied an oil of speed, and lured Drasus away from his friends. She injured him with her Wand of Fire, and battled him with her Skellies but went invisible when Kysus and Rezdan arrived. The warrior and the wizards slew one Skeleton after the other, but the last Skeleton managed to kill Drasus before it fell.
With Dagny invisible, and the Skellies down, Kysus and Rezdan with Genthore in their wake didn't take long in finding a new target: Quayle. (One of the wizards Dimension Doored, I guess Kysus.) The Gnome saved against a Chaos, and used his Wand of Monster Summoning to distract the enemy. Dagny picked up Drasus's gear, including the Boots of Speed, and fried Kysus as soon as (most of) his protections expired.
Rezdan died somewhat embarrassingly, for him, at the hands (or rather: teeth) of Quayle's summoned Dire Wolves, and Genthore fell to a ranged assault after Dagny managed to Blind him.
The five opted for a stealthy approach in the mines, with only Imoen showing herself at opportune moments to organize the liberation of the miners. It was also Imoen who disarmed Davaeorn's traps before Dagny stepped forward to confront the wizard. She protected herself from fire through potions and had a MSD up to absorb any Lightning Bolts coming her way (which indeed indeed they would). She finished the wizard's Battle Horrors with her Wand of Frost,
and would have soloed Davaeorn himself as well, if it weren't for his powers of detection that revealed Dagny's up till then invisible companions. Skeletons were summoned to rapidly eat away Davaeorn's Stoneskins. Imoen (Shortbow +1, Bracers of Archery, Deep Red Ioun Stone for +1 DEX) had proven herself a skilled archer, and she contributed here as well with acid arrows thwarting the wizard's spell casting attempts. A skeleton got the killing blow.
This easy victory was followed by a sorrowful moment when a conversation triggered between Garrick, who had become Dagny's second best friend after BFF Imoen, and Dagny just as I clicked to move the party toward Davaeorn's treasure chests. This was the result:
The party flooded the mines, and made it safely to the High Hedge, where Thalantyr combined six mage robes into the Mage Robe of Practical Protection (+2 AC, +1 saves, +20 fire/cold/electricity resistance), and from there, to Baldur's Gate.
As the party was still rather far removed from the XP cap, they did more quests than I usually do, including Desreta (with Wand of Paralyzation, gauntlets for Xan) & Vay-Ya (melee with Skeletons, after suffering a Sunfire), and Yago (melee with critical 46 dmg by Xan). Reporting to Brielbara resulted in Dagny reaching lvl 6 as a Mage. Xan slew the Greater Basilisk in the Docks after being PfP by Dagny. Marek (Wand of Paralyzation), and Lathander were slain and saved respectively, for the XP and for the Eagle Bow. Sunin was somewhat cheesily deprived of some of his most potent spells by leaving and entering his home while he was in the middle of casting. A poisonous critical with the Dagger of Venom by Xan, who was dual wielding at that point, did him in. Quayle equipped the Ring of Wizardry which combined with the Ring of Holiness gave him almost as many spells as Dagny. The Helm of Glory was secured by force (Wand of Paralyzation on Drelik, physical fury against Jardak), while guile yielded the Helm and Cloak of Balduran, and Arkion's and Nephre's necklace and ring.
Other more 'standard' quests and encounters included Larze, Ragefast (spared) & Ramazith (slain after successful paralyzation), the Thieves' Guild quests, Brevlik's telescope, and the Ogre Mage in the sewers, who Confused Imoen just before Dagny finished him with her Wand of Magic Missiles.
The companions showed themselves to Sarevok's acolytes on the Iron Throne's top floor, hoping that four simultaneous fireballs would instantly thin their ranks, but alas, that was not to be (not even the mages Alai and Naaman).
The friends retreated, fearful to fight all the acolytes at the same time. Aasim and Naaman followed them downstairs where they made Quayle their principal target: Wand of the Heavens plus Emotion. The Gnome managed to paralyze Aasim before he went to sleep.
Xan and Dagny finished the priest soon after. Naaman Horrored and Blinded Garrick, but Imoen with her acid arrows, and Dagny with her Ashideena stripped the wizard of his Stoneskins, allowing Xan to dispatch him.
Diyab (ranged assault to thwart spell casting), and Gardush (Spooked and Blinded, finished off with ranged attacks) followed. Alai injured Imoen with Magic Missiles before Xan took the wizard's life. (Again softened up first with elemental attacks.) The others, including Thaldorn, found no mercy either.
The party received a book from Duke Eltan that would offer them access to Candlekeep, but before making it there, they met Eldoth in the area where Gorion had fallen, and they traveled with him back to Baldur's Gate. They had to defend themselves in an inn from Phandalyn, a fight which ended with Phandalyn's death and a steep reputation drop. The party's reputation suffered further when Imoen got caught stealing at the Silvershield estate, where Eldoth was left behind with his girlfriend Skie. That night Dagny had a dark dream that culminated in her waking the next day with a Divine Wrath Bhaalpower. (Tiresome? Maybe, but I just can't bring myself to kill random commoners for reputation management purposes, especially with a neutralish party like Dagny's clique.)
Most companions' XP was in the 100k range. As I wanted to dualclass Imoen at lvl 9 (110k XP), the party made a side trip to the Firewine Ruins. First of all to slay Meilum for his gauntlets (which went to Dagny), and to fry Lendarn and an Ogre Mage (the former with difficulty, he sensed the companions' presence and forced them to use up all their potions of Absorption after a first damaging Lightning Bolt was followed by a second one).
And secondly, to recruit Alora to assume thieving duties and to consolidate the majority of the positive thinkers (Garrick, Imoen, Dagny) over the cynics (Xan, Quayle) in the party. Alora is a Burglar in my setup: +10% in HiS, MS, OL and FT, -20% in Pickpockets and Set Traps, possibility to specialize in Daggers, Darts and Slings, trap usage at half the rate of a regular Thief.
The party of six reached Candlekeep invisibly, postponing their encounter with five Ogre Mages. Alora released the library of all scrolls and valuables she could find, and did most of the work with the Iron Throne management:
Rieltar wasted most of his spells on Dagny's Skeletons before she toasted him with her Wand of Fire.
I must say them wands are superhandy, as they enable Dagny to focus on defense in her spellbook. Besides, as a multiclass caster with barely above average INT in a party of casters, she didn't have a lot of firepower in her repertoire of learnt spells anyway.
All the enemies in the catacombs were slain (Phase Spiders, Ghasts, Skeletons, Doppelgangers), which resulted in many level-ups: Garrick (9), Imoen (9) Dagny (7 Cleric) and Quayle (7 Cleric). Imoen dualed here as planned. An extensive spell scribing session that saw most INT-raising potions consumed served to donate Imoen two new Mage levels. Rest-spamming Phase Spiders at the cave entrance was good for another level for Imoen as well as for Dagny's and Quayle's final Mage level-ups. Alora cleared all traps in the cave, and Dagny slew Spiders and Basilisks with her ineluctable Wand of Fire. Sadly, one Phase Spider teleported away from Dagny straight to Xan, and killed the Elf with its poison before Quayle could heal him, the first casualty in this adventure. He would be raised at teh FAI. Four of five Fireballs finished Sakul and two Lesser Air Elementals, but the others survived. Prat even disappeared. Tam was paralyzed and taken down with range attacks and Bor fell to a Wand scorcher. Prat was nowhere to be found, but he did find the companions, and forced them to leave the cave to heal after he proved too strong in melee combat. He followed them back into the catacombs, where he would Blind Alora and injure Quayle, and after a while Dagny, who was the only one with Stoneskin. With the help of Skeletons, Prat was eventually bested.
Back on the surface, Dagny's skill with the Wand of Fire started to show as she slew three of the Ogre Mages with a single scorcher charge.
The others too, were scorchered.
In Baldur's Gate, lacklustre pathfinding saw the friends arrested by a Flaming Fist Enforcer, which meant that after their escape with Neb, all Flaming Fists would be hostile. One of them in the eastern quadrant followed the party inside the Sorcerous Sundries when he saw Alora fail to HiS. The party managed to speak with Halbazzar once, to buy a number of potions and scrolls. But a second talk, to buy arrows of dispelling proved impossible. The wizard turned hostile; the companions fled.
Cythandria was thankful to be spared, her Golems were done in by Xan for 8000 XP a piece (Storm Giant Strength, Blur, Haste, PfE, Regen).
It helped Imoen to her fifth Mage level. Alora injured Greater Doppelganger Rashad with backstabs until he panicked, at which point she switched to her returning throwing dagger +1 to finish him. She then hid Eltan in the party's Bag of Holding (a souvenir from Mulahey), snuck past Fist Enforcers, and left the Duke in the harbor master's care. In the Undercellars, Alora was Hasted by an oil of speed and invigorated by a potion of strength (for better Thac0) in order to soften up Slythe. But she did a bit more than that. This was the consequence of two backstabs:
Krystin was left to her own devices.
At the Ducal Palace the strategy was to not place Hasted Skeletons or buffed Dagny, Xan and Alora near the Dukes, waiting instead for the Greater Doppelgangers to reveal their true nature so that Garrick could dispel their Haste first. However the Bard was immediately Horrored by one of the Doppelgangers, as was Alora (an oversight on my part not to have Dagny cast Remove Fear before battle, and an indication that I'm not really good at buffing, am simply too forgetful). It didn't matter in the end as Xan (Storm Giant Strength, Defense, Invulnerability, Heroism, Speed, Magic Shielding, PfE), Dagny (Violet potion, Agility, Fortitude, Defense, Speed, Magic Shielding, PfE), and five Hasted Skeletons were more than enough to take care of the Doppelgangers.
Dagny removed Alora's fear after the battle, but Garrick was still panicked when Belt sent the party to the Thieves Guild. This caused a strange bug: Garrick stayed behind in the Ducal Palace even though he was still officially in the party. It was impossible to return to the palace as the party had to be gathered before venturing forth. I solved this with Clua Console area switches (though I guess I could have dismissed Garrick and return to the palace and re-recruit him).
Dagny, Xan and Alora were still heavily buffed, which allowed them to handle the Slimes, Doom Guards and Skeleton Warriors with ease. Much harder to deal with was Rahvin's party. I always skip them, but still wanting XP, most of all for Imoen, decided to fight them. I had completely forgotten about the arrows of detonation (never use them myself, and am unused to seeing enemies use them). It cost Quayle his life. A couple of Fireballs and overwhelming melee force sufficed to get rid of the different enemies,
with the exception of Rahvin and Shaldrissa the mage. She went invisible and with a Sunfire nearly killed Imoen and Alora (who by my mistake attacked with the Dagger of Venom rather than her throwing dagger).
Imoen went invisible, and Alora retreated to heal. The Halfling had 35 arrows of dispelling (25 from Black Lily, 10 stolen at the Ducal Palace) and five phials of poison (also from Black Lily). They were meant for the final showdown, but Alora decided to make an exception for Shaldrissa. Alora was not proficient in bows but with 25 DEX thanks to Deep Red Ioun Stone plus 2x Mind Focusing, she had no difficulty removing Shaldrissa's protections, exposing the wizard to Dagny's hammer.
The Halfling did Rahvin herself.
There was no sign of Tamoko in front of the entrance to Sarevok's temple. Apparently she doesn't spawn if you don't meet with her in the city. (The party never had the opportunity due to Halbazzar Drin wanting their hides and following them outside the Sorcerous Sundries.)
Dagny taunted Sarevok, prompting him to follow her back to the entrance, where Alora dispelled his Haste. Diarmid, Semaj, and Tazok appeared there as well. For some reason Semaj didn't cast any detection spells, so the four enemies just stayed there, waiting for something to happen.
Something did indeed happen, not far from them. Alora and Dagny, who had found a good mutual understanding soon after they'd met, made short work of Angelo. Dagny engaged the Fighter/Mage in melee while Alora kept dispelling his buffs and protections. The Halfling had to swig a potion of magic shielding when a Chaos came her way, but otherwise there were no issues.
Semaj, was the duo's next target. He went invisible after the first dispel, but Garrick revealed the wizard's presence with a Detect Invisibility. A series of ranged attacks later, Semaj was down.
The only remaining problem was Diarmid, whose well-placed arrows forced Alora to disengage and heal even after his Haste was dispelled. Xan then came to the girls' aid. Hasted, Blurred, PfE (I have him use that lvl 1 spell a lot), and strong as a Storm Giant, he downed Diarmid in no time.
Imoen reached Mage lvl 6 here. Dagny occupied Sarevok and two Skeleton Warriors so that Xan and Alora could finish Tazok and a third Skeleton Warrior (that hit Alora several times with its bow). The three then dealt with the Skeleton Warriors together, and defeated Sarevok with range attacks.
End of BG1 stats and screenshots: Dagny:
259 kills (Battle Horror - doesn't Sarevok count?), XP value of kills = 141,800 Imoen:
0 deaths, 342 kills (Greater Basilisk), XP value of kills = 99,056 Garrick:
0 deaths, 62 kills (Doppelganger), XP value of kills = 2,665 Quayle:
No inventory screen because he was still dead when screenshot was taken.
1 death, 42 kills (Phase Spider), XP value of kills = 12,580 Xan:
1 death, 202 kills (Kirinhale), XP value of kills = 176,107 Alora:
0 deaths, 33 kills (Angelo), XP value of kills = 49,315
In the screenshot you can see that all companions were felled. I suspect a Wail of the Banshee or a Meteor Swarm. (If I have the creature file right, the Lich didn't have ADHWs.)
If 1- the lich already attempted to create her simulacrum/image (apparently you already reached that stage as the previous picture probably shows the damage of a single skull trap). 2- and unless you turned the undeads against her then I think you experienced her Wail of the Banshee. She won't automatically cast it but statistically she is likely to cast it at some point (and imprisonment, maze, symbol fear, stun etc.) The only good point of a lasting fight with her is that the AI tends to deplete her PfMWs.
Dagny is in Athkatla, at the Five Flagons to be precise. She's alive and well, even though she's already had her share of drama during her first days in Amn.
She had no Thief to deal with locks and traps in Irenicus' dungeon level 1 as Imoen still had to complete her dualing process in spite of reaching mage lvl 9 upon joining with Dagny (possibly a mod feature). But the two ladies, with all their lvl 2 slots filled with Invisibilities, had a plan. Jaheira and Minsc didn't initially figure in it. The girls went Invisible and visited Rielev's room. There Imoen temporarily left Invisibility to pick up the activation stone. Dagny momentarily left Invisibility to give said stone to the guardian golem in a nearby room. No foes were fought although a couple of Duergar had to be invited into the Otyugh room so as to clear the path to the gardens and to the Mistress's Room where Dagny's MGoI and Stoneskins allowed her to secure the portal key without suffering any harm.
The ladies traveled to the 2nd level and welcomed Yoshimo into the party. Dagny summoned five Skeletons and protected them as well as her companions and herself from Evil. They cleared the Mephit room without difficulty.
With the Skellies by their side, the trio ventured confidently forth, killing an Escaped Clone, Duergar, Mephits and Assassins that stood in their way. Other Duergar fell to the many traps in the large room with the throne. All was not well because Yoshimo got ire Charmed twice in a row by a Duergar Mage, but the Duergar didn't attack the thief and Yoshimo himself was too far removed from Dagny and Imoen to seek trouble with the girls. With backstabs he finished the few Duergar that had shunned or survived the traps, and Frennedan as well. Dagny's Skeletons helped Yoshimo with the assassins near the exit. The rogue needed a couple of healing potions to stay healthy. The level was duly looted before the companions returned to the portal, where they rested.
Then they returned to the 1st level, invisibly. Dagny had to leave Invisibility and cast a decoy summons to once more clear the corridor towar the Otyugh room. This didn't work out as planned, as Yoshimo made it to the other side whereas Dagny and Imoen remained stuck in the Master's room.
Thankfully Yoshimo knew what he had to do. He finished the Otyugh with backstabs and he recruited Minsc. (Jaheira wouldn't leave her cell unless encouraged to by Dagny.) Minsc endured and destroyed the Clay Golems,
and the Duergar that had been such an obstacle. Jaheira joined and the five cleared the 1st level and the plane of air without much difficulty. They moved on to the second level, where Imoen killed Ulvaryl with a Cloudkill, and from there, to the surface.
Minsc, Jaheira and Yoshimo were tanked for their help, and Dagny continued alone (although the idea was not to be alone for long). Dagny rested, identified items and sold what she had no use for. As in her previous incarnation, Dagny foolishly cast a spell (Stoneskin) under the open sky of Athkatla, and received her first warning from the cowled ones. She entered the Circus Tent, slew two faux commoners, and released Aerie from her spell. She invited the Elf (whom I turned into a Sorcerer) to accompany her and look for their mutual friend Quayle and for evil Kalah. This led them here:
Pretty scary, I never expected this. Turned out to be a part of the BG1 NPCs in SoA mod. Visually an appealing place, but it was ful of red circled creatures: Frost Ogres, Ice and Frost Trolls, a Basilisk, Frost Salamanders, Ettins, and Ice Giants as well as weaker foes like Goblins and Ice Mephits. Some of these creatures I must say, seemed to first appear only after a few rests.
There was no way back. A Pleasure Slave required Dagny and Aerie to find three keys in order to proceed and meet Kalah.
The only good thing was, that resting was easy (no interruptions). Dagny's Skeletons, Aerie's Skull Traps, and MMMs took out some of the foes, but as I said after a number of rests there seemed to be more foes. One of those foes, an Ice Giant, found Dagny and Aerie coming its way after messing with a named enemy, a lvl 13 Conjurer Orc with True Sight amongst its spells, named Goozclown (which Blackraven took as a sign that it might own one of the keys). A single attack by the Ice Giant dealt 39 dmg, leaving Aerie with a single HP.
Both Dagny and Aerie returned to where they had been fighting the Orc mage, and Aerie managed to go (improved) invisible just as she got affected by a Chaos.
Since Dagny had also gone invisible, and there was no one in sight for Aerie, all seemed well. But the Ice Giant must have smelled the Elf, as he blindly dropped another ice storm on Aerie, dealing 42 dmg and killing her permanently. (Dagny barely escaped it AoE).
Dagny felt horrible. It was the first time since Gorion that someone died permanently in her company.
She slew the Orc mage after she managed to Silence it,
and indeed found the first of the three keys she needed. Het next target was a Death Rabbit with 21 STR, 100+ HPs, Saving Throws of 1 (except save vs breath of 2), 127 Cold/Fire/Magic Resistance and 50 Magic Fire, Magic Cold and Acid and Elctricity Resistance. With a base AC of 4 and no physical resistances, brute force seemed to be the way to go. Her Skeletons, MMMs, and Holy Power proved her right.
After spending a loooong time looking for the third and last key carrier, she found it, on a Slime called 'The Thing', on the left area border on a plateau she (or at least I) had thought inaccessible. Again MMMs and Skeletons did the job.
With the three keys, Dagny returned to the Pleasure Slave and was allowed to go and meet Kalah.
While we appreciate the modder's effort in creating extra quests and battles, Dagny and I reserve the right to ctrl-y enemies added by the mod in battles we're not interested in. (I can't be bothered with the alternative: uninstalling the mod and risking irregularities in my setup and having to do a new install.) I installed the BG1 NPCs in SoA mod purely for the NPCs, but so far I've achieved the opposite of what I had in mind. I permanently lost an NPC that I had wanted on Dagny's team, and after Kalah was Spooked and Melfed, Quayle whom I expected to be willing to join, had no more to say than this:
Anyway a doleful Dagny had a rendezvous with Gaelan Bayle, and visited the Gov District to speak with Madeen and Tolgerias, and to donate most of her gold to the corrupt cowls for a spell casting license. She also dealt with the slavers in the Copper Coronet.
This time one of the guards called two mages (and two archers) to back him, but Dagny was pretty well-buffed, Stoneskin, MI, MGoI, Ghost Armor, MSD, and HP. Hasted with a summoned Dire Wolf she finished the wizards.
She then visited the Bridge District to catch the Skinner Murderer. At the Tanner's she had to fight a Doppelganger (seemingly related to Xzar's quest), which she did with her Skeletons.
One of the Rune Assassins followed Dagny upstairs. She tried to fight him for a while, but got bored and left him for later. Muggers and Dominated Shadow Thieves plied their trade on the wrong Gnome, and Dagny reported back to Lt Aegisfield. She's currently lvl 9/10 with circa 515k XP, 4000 GP and no special items other than Sarevok's Ring, the Helm of Balduran and the Claw of Kazgaroth she had found in Chateau Irenicus.
While I'm kind of adjusting to solo mode again, inadvertently as the above proves, I intend to stick to the original plan: to form a caster-heavy crew. Jan, Nalia and Haer'Dalis are currently on the shortlist. I don't like Edwin, so he's less likely to join. Dagny met Xan in the Gov District, but his voice had completely changed and much as she had always disliked Xan's moaning voice, she realized she wouldn't have him any other way.
@semiticgod, new is nice, but scary... thanks for your commiserations. As for new areas, you might want to look into mods by @LavaDelVortel: http://lavas-scriptorium.weebly.com/quests.html. @kulyok has a mod called Sellswords, which is set in Menzoberranzan. (She has other mods as well, such as Assassinations and Back to Brynnlaw but I don't know if they offer new areas.)
A Fighter/Druid of mine just died to the Vampiric Wraiths of Watcher's Keep, after doing so well shortly before. Her NPP ran out and she wasn't able to bring the second wraith from Near Death to death. Then she panicked and got killed by magic damage. I initially thought of it as a minimal-reload, but for some reason it didn't feel right to reload.
I keep starting no-reload runs and then dying early on. I count 11 for which I have screenshots, and I know there are a few more. Maybe I should stop doing no-reload runs with untested characters and strategies... basically everything I've done since starting out Sil and the party of spiders has been experimental.
@semiticgod, same here: Dagny recruited Jan. The two did Wellyn and Tirdir, Umar Hills, Slaver Stockade, Sarles, Borinall, and most of the Thieves Guild. A backstab by MaeVar killed her though. Battle had been dragging on, and most buffs had expired. But the main problem was me playing when really it was time to go to work. This was why I went for offense (Maevar was at near death status) with MMMs when he quaffed an invisibility potion and landed a successful backstab. Bleh...
After Dagny's fall, I reckoned the time had come for a break, but then @Alesia_BH reminded me of Glorydd, my Dwarven Fighter/Thief who died when I unwittingly unpaused and left my computer in the middle of the Spellhold battle with Irenicus. She deserves another shot.
Glorydd (take 2), TN Dwarven Fighter/Thief
Here's the selfie:
@Musigny, this may be the low CHA dwarf that you remembered I justified it at the time by making her very outspoken little lady, to the point of being brusque. (Btw 9 CHA, with the tome, is actually average for Dwarves. Their CHA range is between 2 and 16.)
I did something I'd never accomplished before: I had Glorydd reach her BG1 level caps, i.e. 140k XP, before even doing the Nashkel Mines. I still don't really understand how I pulled that off. Of course, Mutamin's Garden including Kirian (27k XP), Durlag's Tower's outside areas and top levels including Kirinhale (35k XP), Tenya/Brun/Ankhegs (25k XP), Lighthouse area (20k XP) helped Glorydd well on her way. But that still leaves circa 30k XP she apparently accumulated elswhere: Charleston Nib, Brage, Greywolf, Meilum, the easy FAI-Beregost-Nashkel quests, Bassilus, and what else? I wonder. Shoal for one is still alive.
Hereinafter I'll focus on sketchy moments and on the plot quests.
After Dagny (who'll get another chance, or several, in the future), Glorydd felt powerful and vulnerable at the same time. Powerful because she kills faster than Dagny, for now at least, and more vulnerable because of mages and their debuffs. She got an early taste of that from Mutamin. The devious Gnome cast Remove Magic at her, with two of his pets still around, eager to add Glorydd to their sculpture garden:
Mind you she was hasted (oil of speed), so she could make off before the magical energy of the spell would reach her. Her PfP was not removed by the spell,
which prompted the Dwarf to finish her work in the area. A Greenstone Amulet charge protected her from mind-affecting spells (and possible Hold Persons, not sure if Mutamin casts those though). When she was done her oil of speed was still active and she was still Greenstone-protected, so she backstabbed Kirian and co. Bassilus was also neutralized with the Greenstone Amulet.
The Battle Horrors at Durlag's Tower fell to backstabs; the Basilisks were tackled with potions of mirroring eyes (of which she owned five and used up three). A real scare she had inside Durlag's Tower when she missed a trap, and found it to be magical in nature.
I had no idea what kind of effect the trap would have, so a potion of magic blocking was expended. My memory of which trap does what is rather poor, due to my traditional predilection for playing Thieves.
Glorydd entered the Nashkel Mines as a lvl 7/8 Fighter/Thief, as mentioned before. She owned pretty much every available item she had any use for at that point: Helm of Charm Protection, Shadow Armor, Claw of Kazgaroth (that unlike her PfP did get dispelled by Mutamin), Boots of Stealth, Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise, two dual-wielded Short Swords +2 (one bought from Raoul, a Song & Silence addition, one taken from Zargal's chunked body), a composite shortbow +2 (Rogue Rebalancing item for sale in Ulgoth's Beard), Sandthief Ring, Greenstone Amulet, Girdles of Piercing/Bluntness/Slashing, Necklace of Missiles, numerous potions, and a nice collection of enchanted arrows. Only Kobolds that stood in Glorydd's way would briefly know of her presence, right before she Fireballed them into oblivion with her Necklace of Missiles. Mulahey she fought with the protection of a charge of her Greenstone Amulet, although her 3 APR kept him from casting his Hold Persons anyway.
One Fireball and some skirmishing in close combat did the minions in.
Nimbul succumbed to a single backstab, Tranzig required two. When she left Feldepost's Glorydd got another taste of trouble. Leaving the shadows she had been hidden in, she spotted Molkar waiting to waylay her. She moved to a tree to hide again and to quaff potions of freedom and clarity. (I reckoned Greenstone's duration might be too short.) Molkar followed her, did his little talk, and before she knew it she was surrounded by the tree and two of Molkar's friends that appeared out of thin air. She was stuck. A third foe, Drakar stood a bit further away. He summoned a Skeleton that didn't hesitate in joing Molkar and the other two, aggravating Glorydd's predicament. She managed to slay Molkar, but that didn't offer her any means of escape as the Skeleton immediately took Molkar's place. She got badly injured, and decided to use a charge of her Sandthief Ring.
In the screenshot you can see that right when Glorydd went invisible she made a potentially crucial save: against a Rigid Thinking cast at her by Drakar. Or does potion of clarity protect against that spell? It mentions feeblemind, but I'm not sure whether the game classifies rigid thinking as a form of feeblemind. Either way, Glorydd healed and waited for Halacan's MIs to disappear. She then slew the Gnome, and after that she felled Morvin and Drakar with backstabs (both followed her into Firebead's neighbor's home.)
Glorydd befriended a bunch of bandits in Larswood and had them show her the way to the Bandit Camp. She looted that place with a thievery potion (as she was low on gold), buffed in front of Tazok's tent with a potion of defense and went in, hoping to kill Venkt with arrows of biting. But the wizard proved sturdier than expected as he survived two hits. Hakt came to the wizard's defense; he poisoned Glorydd. The Dwarf went invisible, drank an elixir of health, applied an oil of speed, and grudgingly Greenstone-protected herself. She then finished Venkt just as the wizard failed to Dispel her buffs,
and she perforated the others with her two short blades. (She didn't want to use fire, because of Ender Sai.)
When she stepped outside, she found not only Taugosz but also Lamalha and her friends waiting for her.
Still buffed by her potion of defense and her oil of speed, she decided to try and take on her enemies. This turned out to be a good decision. Normally a swarm of resilient, potion-quaffing bandits comes to Taugosz's aid, but this time only Taugosz and the amazons followed suit. Maybe Lamalha's script that causes her companions to appear, overruled Taugosz's script, I don't know. Glorydd Greenstone-protected herself again, and finished her foes without suffering a scratch. Note that Taugosz fell to backstabs; he would have injured her otherwise.
Glorydd's currently supplying herself at Thalantyr's, in preparation of her excursion to the Cloakwood.
@Musigny, nice that you're making good progress. Hope you can keep it up, so that we can see you in no-reload action soon! @kcwise, thanks amigo. Tymora's blessings would surely help
The Cloakwood had little treasure that Glorydd coveted. She limited herself to securing the Cloak of Non-Detection, slaying Aldeth for his valuables Seniyad, killing a couple of Spiders in order to procure Spiders' Bane and travel the woods more safely, and receiving a potion of invulnerability from Laskal.
You know you're playing too much Baldur's Gate when you know exactly which Tasloi to slay for the Cloak of Non-Detection.
Glorydd was ruthless with the Cloakwood Mine assassins. The Dwarf buffed with invulnerability, absorption (for Drasus' morningstar), cloud giant strength and speed. Both Kysus and Rezdan were insta-gibbed. (Immediate swigging of a potion of invisibility after Kysus was down kept Rezdan unbuffed and blue-circled, and thus very backstabbable.)
Drasus and Genthore she butchered in melee combat.
Glorydd put on the Boots of Speed and hasted invisibly through the mines (barely stopping to arrange the slaves' liberation), to Davaeorn. She slew his guard, protected herself with two potions of magic protection, and attacked. She quaffed potions of fire resistance in the process. I don't love leaving places to escape spell effects, but SCS mages' invariable Remove Magics can be a bit annoying, especially considering the fact that a rogue like Glorydd can't really do anything against that spell yet. (Dagny could have cast a MGoI.) Glorydd quickly left the premises when the spell was cast at her, and returned right after that. She finished the Battle Horrors with backstabs, Davaeorn with acid arrows and arrows of biting,
and a Mustard Jelly with Spiders' Bane as her short swords were useless against the slime.
Having reached the XP cap already, Glorydd did few quests in Baldur's Gate. She focused on procuring items: stat tomes (the WIS tome was pickpocketed), Rogue Rebalancing's Sparkburst shortbow, arrows of dispelling and other enchanted arrows, Helm of Balduran, and potions. The only extra quests she did were the Ogre Mage in the sewers for the gold, and the thieves guild quests as part of the roleplaying exerience. With the Expanded Thieves Stronghold mod installed for BG2, Glorydd hopes to meet Narlen Darkwalk and Black Lily again, further down the road. Glorydd fought the Ogre Mage with a cheap potion of stone form as her anti-magic defense, but saw herself forced to drink a potion of magic shielding when her enemy cast a Confusion at her before she could finish him.
A misclick made Ragefast angry,
so Glorydd left the dangerous wizard (he has a wand of paralyzation), to tell Ramazith what she had gotten herself into. Ramazith was not amused, but an arrow of dispelling and a few strikes later, that didn't matter anymore.
The rogue snuck past Iron Throne acolytes to deal directly with Thaldorn. He pointed her to Candlekeep, and that's where she went with a tome from Duke Eltan to get in. (Note that after some deliberation on my part Glorydd availed herself of bardic reputation management to lower her rep to 9, and get the Divine Wrath Bhaalpowers that I've become quite fond of, instead of Duhms.) Not a drop of blood was spilt in or below Candlekeep, at least not by Glorydd. The Dwarf did pick up all the nice loot in the chests in the catacombs though.
Back in the city, she tracked down two assassins that had murdered one of the Dukes and that were intent on killing the other Dukes as well. Before engaging the assassins, Glorydd buffed with cloud giant strength, heroism, speed, and magic shielding. She managed to lure hasted Slythe toward the exit to the sewers where the two came to blows. Damage was inevitable, especially with Slythe's backstabs, but Glorydd never got into trouble as she kept healing herself. (Her 50 Detect Illusions skill wasn't doing much to reveal Slythe whenever he went invisible.) She killed her foe just when Krystin arrived to cast, guess what, Remove Magic
Glorydd left the Undercellars for the sewers and returned to finish the woman with acid arrows.
The Dwarf rushed to the Ducal Palace, where at the curious hour of 4 AM, Sarevok's inauguration was about to begin. Rather than quaffing the violet potion from the Nashkel Carnival, Glorydd refreshed her speed, strength and AC buffs, drank two potions of magic protection, and added potions of mind focusing mainly to improve her marksmanship and to raise her barely developed Set Traps skill to 80. It sufficed to successfully place two snares behind the unsuspecting audience. Hasted, Glorydd enjoyed 4 APR with her shortbow. Within a round and a half she would slow down all the hasted Greater Doppelgangers with her arrows of dispelling, which she had poisoned for good measure (using one of five Rogue Rebalancing phials of poison). Victory was soon secured, with both of the Dukes surviving the dust-up.
In a rare bout of honorability, Glorydd decided to play 'fair' at Sarevok's hall, i.e. engaging Sarevok (and thus provoking the others) from the beginning with an arrow of dispelling, and no green scroll of PfMagic. This meant seeing her potion buffs removed first by Angelo, later by Semaj, and after that once or twice by a Skeleton Warrior with arrows of dispelling. Disabers were never a threat thanks to invisibility and magic shielding potions, but Glorydd did suffer quite a bit of magical damage (triggered magic missiles, lightning bolts etc) in addition to Diarmid's missile damage. She chose to drink several of her extra healing potions to keep herself in good health.
The first few rounds were clearly for Sarevok and co. But when she was rebuffed after Angelo's and Semaj's debuffs, it was Glorydd's turn to deliver. She poisoned her dispelling arrows with another of her phials and was soon done with both wizards.
Diarmid (ranged) and Tazok (melee), who was a bit slow in showing himself, also fell to poisons.
(Are these poison phials overpowered? Maybe, but they only become available in BG city, and in this fight they only expedited the inevitable. It's not like they saved Glorydd's life. I've no idea whether not using poisons would have resulted in a different outcome at the Ducal Palace.)
Glorydd slew three remaining Skeleton Warriors as they were injuring her, and also to see how a melee duel with Sarevok would pan out. Given the fact that unlike Sarevok, Glorydd was buffed and had healing potions, Sarevok was clearly the better fighter. But as it was, Glorydd prevailed.
She reported back to Amn, accepted a commission for Belt to travel to Athkatla, and has just been woken by Imoen in a weird dungeon.
@Blackraven: Good to see Glorydd back in action, and now apparently in BG2. Good luck!
I recently started a new no-reload run and it looks like it'll actually get someplace. It's an Archer-based party, but only two party members are Archers, unlike one of my older runs. I have some evil schemes for Called Shot that I want to try out. I've been focusing too much on the STR drain and overlooking the save vs. spell penalty, which can exceed -20 with two Archers. This solves one of the main problems of no-reload runs: the constant threat of bad luck, which normally renders disablers very ineffective when you need them.
That doesn't apply, however, if I can guarantee a failed save.
Our frontliner is an Inquisitor, Varen, named after a character from a previous run. I almost never play Inquisitors, since I love casters and an Inquisitor's Dispel Magic requires extra maintenance to make sure it doesn't destroy my party. In fact, this is the first time I've ever created my own, and the only time I've selected an Inquisitor specifically for its kit (I've played Keldorn before, but only because I like his voice). In my install, Inquisitors' Dispel Magic only casts at 1.5 times their normal level, rather than double.
Very min-maxy stats, as always. Note the unusual 7 DEX, and the 18 CHA in red. The DEX is there because I planned on having Varen remain in Troll form for the immunity to sleep, but I've found that Dispel Magic still removes the Troll weapon that grants the immunity. I'll grab the Gauntlet's of Dexterity pretty soon to mitigate that, but I still have Rat form for physical damage tanking. The 18 CHA is there thanks to the Ring of Human Influence.
Why does a paladin need the Ring of Human Influence? Well, she needs 18 CHA to wear Keldorn's armor, but I only gave her 17. Funny thing about Keldorn's armor: the immunities are tagged as Dispel/Bypass Resistance, which means they can be taken down by Dispel Magic. Can you believe Keldorn dispels his own immunities? I'm not sure if this is a vanilla quirk, but unless I do something to fix it, I'll have to re-equip the armor every time I dispel anything on her.
Oh, and she's missing her Inquisitor immunities to Charm and Hold. I have no idea why. This means she has to wear the Helm of Charm Protection, unless I fix that, too.
Our first Archer is an old face: Studley Do-right, also known as Horun Fallows.
And yes, he's totally checking you out. Maeruo isn't in this run, so Horun isn't tied down. I decreased his normally stellar CHA so his INT would be above 11. Otherwise his stats are nothing surprising (the 20 CON comes from a BG1 tome). He's a half-elf for the resistances--for once, I've applied powergaming principles to race, instead of just everything else.
Horun uses darts. Everybody loves darts. I won't be duplicating Darts +5 in this run, however--I'll only get 18 per rest cycle.
Our second Archer is a new face, Milly Coppers. I don't know where that name came from, or her curious headgear.
She specializes in shortbows and crossbows, since both are incompatible with a shield.
Our Bhaalspawn is a sorcerer, Eliza.
Isn't she cute? I love this portrait. She's Chaotic Neutral for the cat familiar, because I want to be able to smuggle the Rift Device out of the sewers (just for kicks, but maybe I'll use it to kill something, too) but I don't want the ferret familiar because you have to be Lawful Neutral to get it.
Our other sorcerer is Evess. She's a bit of a makeup enthusiast.
She's also Chaotic Neutral because I didn't feel like deciding on anything different.
Our sorcerers have a few notable spells. First, Blindness and Spook are on the list, not because they're useful in general (though they are), but because I can guarantee failed saves with the right preparation. Blindness is crippling; Spook isn't as bad, but it won't require as much save buffering. We also have Feeblemind, for use against dragons. Both sorcerers have Ray of Enfeeblement, since it should be a guaranteed kill when combined with 12th-level Called Shot: Called Shot will ensure a failed save and also decrease the target's STR a bit, and that failed save will drop the target's STR down to 5... which the STR will automatically drop to 0. Instant death. Spell protections, magic resistance, weapon immunities, and spell level immunities may still get in the way.
Plus, we have a scroll of Hold Monster on hand, for use against the Ravager.
Finally, our Bounty Hunter, Zao:
Asian-sounding names aren't just for Asian-looking portraits. I've never thrown a Maze trap before, and seeing Alesia_BH's solo no-reload SCS2+Ascension Bounty Hunter trilogy run a while ago really made me want to try it out. I've used the kit before, but I've never reached level 21 with it. The kit isn't supposed to work with the Archers or sorcerers or Inquisitor in any way--I just wanted to try it out.
The group is almost at the end of Chapter 2. The next post tells how they got there.
Since I expected the party to die early on, like most of my no-reload runs, I didn't take as many pictures this time around. So the account here isn't going to be as in-depth as it normally is. I'll make a point of doing more precise documentation in the future.
Chateau Irenicus posed a few unique hurdles. The Mephit in the Sewage Golem room is a bit of a wild card, especially when it's a Radiant Mephit, but we struggled past it. With careful HP management, we got through half of the first level before needing to rest.
And rest we did.
I wonder what they found to eat down there. The Duergar? Whatever.
Since this isn't a solo run, I decide to take on Ilyich. Turns out a pair of Archers has a near-guaranteed kill strategy on the Duergar Mage: they sneak up and shoot him in the face.
A ranger's stealth ability has some nice uses that you normally don't see if you just make your rangers wear metal armor all the time.
Instead of locking the Mephit Portal room Mephits behind the door, I just rush them with Haste. With two sorcerers on hand and lots of extra APR from our Archers, we're actually able to get through the whole dungeon. Only Hareishan escapes our notice.
Isn't there supposed to be a Wand of Paralyzation in Chateau Irenicus? I'm sure I remember finding it at some point, but I don't remember the last time I've had such a wand in BG2.
We get out of the dungeon. Kill Kalah. Buy a Protection from Undead scroll. Chat with Gelly Belly, also known as Gaelan Bayle. And just for fun, I send Eliza to murder Amalas, because I thought you could only fight him with Charname (in restrospect, I think anybody can do it). The results are curious.
I teleported him right out of the ring. The rest of the party mobbed him. He just crumpled. And nobody accused us of breaking the rules. Teleport Field is awesome!
With an Inquisitor and two Archers, we can take down spellcasters unusually quickly. We plow through the slaver compound, gather a bunch of money, buy Azuredge, and head off to the Umar Hills. The Killer Mimic paralyzes everybody in the party, but I keep Eliza out of range, and our frontliner, Varen, manages to survive five rounds of continuous acid damage while she's paralyzed.
We have trouble in the Temple Ruins, because we have very few magical weapons. We persevere and tough it out--it's less trouble than returning later with magic weapons.
Hm? Oh, Azuredge? No, that doesn't kill undead. I tested it. Varen hit everything inside the Temple Ruins with it. All it did was 3d6 damage. No instant death effect or disruption, nothing. Yes, I checked the files. Yes, the enemies were classified as undead. Yes, Azuredge was tagged to instantly kill any undead target on a failed save vs. death at -4. Yes, the probability was listed as 100, not 0. And yes, I was disappointed. The overpowered axe known for slaying liches in a single hit is incapable of taking down a Shadow.
For the Shade Lord, I yield to temptation and rely on a Protection from Undead scroll. I turn everybody but Varen invisible, Varen uses the scroll, and we head through to the Shade Lord lair.
Varen kills the thing in one hit. That's the only thing in the entire dungeon that was vulnerable to Azuredge: the single critter that I was the least worried about being able to defeat.
It doesn't matter. We got the Cloak of Stars, and so Horun has some magical darts to use. Now we can go to the Windspear Hills.
We mostly just muscle our way through the dungeon. Archers don't require much maintenance to be effective--very unlike Sil's group. I did do two things to minimize the danger. First, I walked around the trigger for the undead room to avoid any vampires (some ghouls and mummies still spawned). I really don't know why I don't just uninstall the SCS2 vampires thing.
Second, I pre-buffed with SI: Abjuration and True Seeing and flooded the undead room with traps in anticipation of fighting Samia. The moment Samia et al appeared, Varen cast Dispel Magic. The enemy was dead in seconds. It's just not fair.
I ignored Firkraag. Our THAC0 isn't strong enough to guarantee successful Called Shot save penalties, and we still have no Lower Resistance, so Feeblemind isn't reliable. Plus, I don't want Varen to use Carsomyr--it seemed too conventional to have our Inquisitor use Carsomyr, so she's never put any pips in two-handed swords. Instead, we just fought Conster.
I laid one Special Snare. One.
Boo.
On the way back to Athkatla, we got ambushed by Suna Seni. I've grown very attentive to the timing of this fight, since I've grown to appreciate the immunities granted by Arbane's Sword.
We solved it the same way we did Samia: SI: Abjuration and Dispel Magic. It brought the enemy down to nothing, and paved the way for a flurry of missile weapons. Darts from Horun, arrows from Milly, bolts from Zao, and Minute Meteors from Eliza and Evess.
We did some minor quests around Athkatla, few of which were particularly hard. One of the hard ones was Rayic Gethras: he disabled everybody but Zao, our Bounty Hunter, and Evess, our second sorcerer, with a Symbol: Fear spell. Evess hassled Ray-Ray with a couple Sunfire spells, while Zao waited out his PFMW spell. Had I thought to give Varen a Potion of Clarity, she could have dispelled the fear on our Archers (both mages were buffed by SI: Abjuration and couldn't have been cured), but in the end, Ray-Ray paid too little attention to his own health, and our two Sunfire spells paved the way for his early death to Minute Meteors. Zao and Evess had to wait several rounds before their friends got their heads together. The whole party could have died if it weren't for those Sunfire spells.
We side with Bodhi to avoid fighting vampires, and meet an unpleasant surprise when fetching the Box from the Docks.
That's not a typo. Wear your helmets, people! Helmets save lives!
There were two reasons this was surprising. First, it was surprising because Arkanis Gath just dealt us a 150-damage backstab, which I've matched maybe once or twice before, ever.
But what was especially surprising was that this chunking occurred when I thought "Gore" was set to off. I've heard a few times that disabling Gore prevents anybody from getting chunked. And sure enough, I'd not seen a single critter get chunked throughout this playthrough.
So I checked the Options screen. And Gore was off. Somehow Zao got chunked when nothing in the game ever got chunked. Permanently died in a game where nothing permanently died. Does anybody know how this could have happened?
I reloaded and was pleased to find that this time, Zao didn't permanently die.
Much better.
Aside from Zao's inexplicable chunkless chunking, the battles in Athkatla went smoothly. We thoroughly fustigated Draug Fea and the other sewer rats with a Dispel Magic, three Special Snares, and a double Web Minor Sequencer.
I'm starting to think Inquisitors might be overpowered.
That last bit of damage is from a trap, not from Zao's darts. I like to set lines of traps leading away from the main battle area, so that I can lure enemies across them if I need to flee.
We also kill the gang at the Den of Seven Vales... I usually deal with them after Draug Fea, as an afterthought. Sorcerous Amon of the Purple Brotherhood dies to a backstab, Puky succumbs to missile fire, Benny dies to traps, Smelly Porkslicer collapses under missile fire as well, and Mencar Pennypincher dies to missiles and spell damage.
At some point, we also went to the De'Arnise Hold, and also Trademeet... nothing special happened there, honestly. I made a point of going there after getting the Cloak of the Sewers, so Varen would be immune to unconsciousness and could dispel Greater Command, but it seems that the Spirit Trolls in my install have finally, finally stopped casting Greater Command. The other two threats besides Spirit Trolls, Kyland Lind and Dalok, got disabled by traps and Webs.
Quickly running out of quests to do, we went to the Planar Prison. Dispel Magic did awful, awful things to the Coiled Cabal. Apparently Dispel Magic can remove PFMW... I honestly didn't know it could do that; I just checked the files and PFMW is flagged as Dispel/Bypass resistance, just like Keldorn's armor immunities. But I'd never relied very much on Dispel Magic, or made much use of the Inquisitor's super-powered Dispel Magic, so I'd gotten the impression that only Breach and time could bring down weapon immunity spells.
We got spooked by an early appearance of the Warden, who apparently ventured away from his chamber far enough to cast Finger of Death on our Efreeti--he was just out of our range of sight. He didn't pursue us, though, even though he must have been just a few steps away from the Master of Thralls we were fighting.
We came back later to fight him after resting for a couple days... parties get really lazy when they don't have healers. They don't rest; they take vacations. Evess tanks a Finger of Death and Horrid Wilting spell with SI: Necromancy before the Warden puts her down with a PW: Kill spell. Still, it robs the Warden of his nastiest spells. Horun rushes the Warden with a Vhailor's Helm clone and an Efreeti.
As usual, I've given myself hundreds of darts, arrows, bolts, and bullets, simply so I don't have to buy any. The 339 darts in that picture are Darts +5. I still limit myself to throwing 18 in one day, but having a monstrous stack of them minimizes inventory management.
We return to the main quest and lay siege to Alan Anvil's lair. Eliza almost dies to a Lightning Bolt trap in a narrow hallway.
That is so BG1.
Also, we killed Alan with Dispel Magic.
With little else to do before Spellhold, we headed to Watcher's Keep.
We won the first few fights of Watcher's Keep with brute force. At level 11 or 12 on average, we can handle the basic critters here.
For some reason, the mage and cleric Statues that normally appear on this level... are not here. I enter and exit the place, and run around the map to make sure I've stepped on all necessary triggers, but the only Statues here are the fighters and the thief. The fight is much simpler this way.
The Teleport Fields there are to keep the thief at bay. He backstabbed Zao to death, and I wanted to keep him from doing the same to anybody else.
I'm not sure why the mage statues didn't appear.
The SCS2 installer says I've got Slightly Improved Watcher's Keep already installed, as it has been for many games now. My install of Smarter Mages is a little wonky--the installer says that component isn't installed and can't be installed because of some error, but all of the enemy mages have been prebuffing and acting as if they had the normal SCS2 scripting. So I'm not sure what happened to them. The only change in my install was removing Tactics to get rid of those stupid Spirit Trolls.
I'd do a fresh install of the game, but I'm missing one of the disks. Last time I tried doing that without all of the disks, I couldn't play BG2 again until I bought the game again for the eighth time.
On the second level, we struggled to kill the Guardian of Air, who has an 80% resistance to missile damage, but not any other forms of damage. Doesn't seem fair to Archers, honestly. We killed it with traps instead... traps which deal missile damage.
I decided to have Horun set up the fan on his own, and tough out the crazy electricity damage that the air room throws out every few seconds. It's a credit to the inflexibility of sorcerers that my party has no means of reducing electricity damage without using potions or scrolls. To my dismay, Horun runs into a gang of Kuo-toa in the next room. I don't think I've ever seen Kuo-toa spawn there before. It was always golems, before.
Why are Kuo-toa a problem? Because Kuo-toa Bolts. Stun on a failed save vs. spell. Bypasses magic resistance.
He tried to sneak past them, but Kuo-toa see all. He's doomed, and his equipment lies at their feet. We can't retrieve it without drawing their attention.
We do, however, have some ways of getting around the Kuo-toa and their miserable bolts. We have the Shield of Reflection on Zao, a PFMW spell on Eliza, and Keldorn's armor on Varen. Plus, we have three spare scrolls of Death Spell. I've been stocking up on high-level spells for just this sort of occasion. We need to get rid of those crossbows.
Did you know that Keldorn's armor doesn't stop stun?
I thought it had all the same immunities as Arbane's Sword. Now Varen is doomed, too. But we're still prepared.
Eliza, pre-buffed with PFMW, marches out to cast Death Spell via a scroll. Zao, protected by the Shield of Reflection, stays out in front as a further buffer against the stunning bolts. Milly and Evess, armed with the Tuigan Bow and Minute Meteors, but without any defense against stun, mow down the closest Kuo-toa. Eliza slays two of the Kuo-toa with Death Spell; Milly and Evess clear out another two closer to the party. Varen, of course, is dead.
Missile fire brings down the priest, leaving only the captain and the mage. The captain's attacks are wasted on Zao. The mage's defenses break down under missile pressure, and the captain is alone. We put him down and raise our fallen.
We stroll through the rest of the level without any problem. The last remaining threat is the Chromatic Demon.
The Chromatic Demon has immunity to physical damage and constantly shifting elemental immunities, though he's always vulnerable to poison damage. He also regenerates, just because. It's the worst kind of gimmick enemy: it's immune to one thing, so you hit it with another. It's like strategy, but instead of thinking about stuff, you have rock paper scissors, and instead of guessing what the other player is going to use, you just wait until he shows his hand.
But I don't like rock paper scissors, so instead I just shoot him in the face. With Greater Malison and Called Shot, I have a near-guaranteed failed save on Blindness, despite the Chromatic Demon's base 2 save vs. spell. Note that despite his crazy immunities, the Chromatic Demon has no magic resistance to block GM or Blindness.
Immediately afterward, he fails a save against Feeblemind. His time is done.
Unfortunately, he's stuck in Jolly Green Giant form. He's immune to acid, cold, and fire damage, but vulnerable to electricity damage.
It's another testament to the inflexibility of sorcerers is that my two sorcerers don't have electricity spells. Why is this? This is because there are only two electricity spells that mages can use: Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. I don't have Lightning Bolt because it's too risky in a no-reload run, and I don't have any divine spellcasters who can cast Protection from Lightning. And I don't have Chain Lightning because I need other spells more.
I do have Usuno's Blade +4, which has the amazing benefit of dealing 0.55 points of electricity damage on average. That's not a typo; it has a 10% chance of 1d10 zappy damage, or less than a single point. Unfortunately, dealing 1 damage per round isn't quite enough for a regenerating Watcher's Keep boss.
For some reason, despite the fact that demons are supposed to be immune to poison, the Chromatic Demon is vulnerable to poison damage, and therefore Cloudkill. Evess uses all but one of our Wand of Cloudkill's six charges, while Eliza casts Slow to slow down the demon's regeneration.
It's not enough, unfortunately. He gets down to Badly Injured and then the clouds dissipate. We leave the area, have Garlena recharge the wand, and then spend nine charges on him. Finally he goes down. But since we never learned Resist Fear and the demons on the next level of Watcher's Keep just ooze fear effects (kind of literally, actually), we decline to go any further than rummaging through Yakman's personal belongings.
Comments
I've always found druids and clerics to be fairly underpowered. Most of their spell slots are dominated by fairly weak spells with limited functions compared to arcane magic, and with 1 base APR, their attack power is terribly limited. So I thought an interesting change would be to start a run where I'd have to rely entirely on divine spellcasting power for every encounter.
Our three druids, all half-elves:
And our three clerics, all dwarves:
Notice they don't have DEX penalties. This is because I gave them their stats and races with SK (I don't like rolling, so I just assume a 90 stat roll) but forgot to give them the dwarf's -1 penalty to maximum DEX. I'll fix it later. The portraits are all derived from a thread by @LadyRhian that I'm still digging through on and off: (http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/11758/ladyrhians-too-many-pictures-for-any-thread/). I strongly recommend visiting the thread if you're looking for portraits. All the artist names are posted, and you can find almost all of them on deviantart. I've found dozens of excellent portraits this way, and I'm only 10% through the thread.
In Chateau Irenicus, we level up all the druids to level 9 right after freeing Minsc and Jaheira. To make the most of our one permitted rest in SCS2's starting dungeon, we tear through the first groups of enemies using bear form.
SCS2 lets you shapeshift by equipping weapons you can summon via an innate ability, which means you don't have to spend your aura on shapeshifted.
We also take down the Otyugh with a staff and a spear, attacking from the safety of the hallway. But for Ilyich and the Mephit Portal room, we really need our spells. So we rest right after we kill the Duergar next to the portal.
Our summons pave the way through the library. Ilyich's Duergar buddies prove to have very, very poor luck against our Hold Person spell.
That basically spelled the end of that encounter.
I didn't bother with the Air Elemental Plane, or the Cambion. The Mephits in the Air Elemental Plane have lots of fire damage spells, and one of them can stun for 6 seconds, every 6 seconds. Those Mephits are a massive source of damage that only short-term resistances can mitigate, and I neglected to memorize Sanctuary spells to sneak past them. The Cambion, meanwhile, is too strong to justify the HP loss.
I got caught off-guard by a trap in the Portal Key room. Viro almost died.
For the Mephit Portal room, we used summons to absorb the Color Spray spells. Note that those Color Sprays have a -3 penalty to their save vs. spell, so there's really no way to gain invulnerability to them at the start of the game without Chaotic Commands, rage immunities, or MGOI. We used brute force to get past the rest of the dungeon, only avoiding the Hareishan room.
To make sure we arrived at the Assassin encounter at our strongest, we approached them early, with an excess of buffs. Ironskins would keep backstabs off of Viro and our other druids, True Seeing would frustrate the Assassins' backstabbing, summons would crowd up the area, and we had Nymphs backing us up to throw out Confusion spells. A successful missile attack ensured our success against the mage.
He failed a save against Command a few seconds later, giving us enough time to swarm him.
Since we only have druid and cleric spells, we don't have any reliable fast-acting spell interrupters. Our damage spells either are too slow (Insect Plague) or offer a save (Dolorous Decay). And with our poor THAC0, our best bet for interrupting spells are darts--all of which can be blocked by Stoneskin. Darts of Wounding also cannot poison through Stoneskin, at least in SCS2, and Darts of Stunning are blocked by any SCS2 weapon immunity spell. We also have no access to Breach, Minute Meteors, a safe dispelling option like Remove Magic, any magic attack spells, or the Wand of Spell Striking, and our Insect Plague spells can be easily blocked by any form of Fire Shield. So, we won't be disrupting many spells in this run. We'll just have to tough them out.
After dealing with Kalah, we head to the Slums and grab Lilarcor, if only for the XP (there are so many excellent weapons none of us can use). I decide we're ready for the slaver compound, but to my surprise, the Priest of Cyric launches a Greater Command spell on the first round.
Three party members are down for the next 10 rounds. Only Viro, Coral, and Nina, one druid and two clerics, remain conscious. And since I mistook the Doom icon for a Sleep icon, I thought Nina was unconscious, and therefore gave her no orders (I only just now realized she was actually awake). I have a Potion of Invisibility on Viro, which she could use to smuggle everybody's equipment out of the area if the party should die, but since she still has Ironskins active, I decide it'll be safe for her to keep fighting for a bit longer.
We bring out some summons, who manage to slay the Priest of Cyric, but Coral is under heavy pressure from the enemy fighters.
To my surprise, the enemy ignores our disabled characters, even though they'd get automatic hits and their targets would be unable to heal themselves with potions. I always make it a priority to kill disabled enemies before they recover--maybe because I use lots of casters, and hitting opponents is difficult if they're not disabled.
With all the enemy's pressure concentrated on our three remaining characters, Viro's Ironskins cannot stand. She has another, but that's all she has left.
We keep the enemy occupied a bit longer, and finally the other half of our party wakes up. The enemy crumples once we're at full strength.
The next section is a problem, however. We can't disable the Prismatic Spray trap, nor can we get immunity to petrification. We can get block Disintegrate with Death Ward, Feeblemind can be blocked with Chaotic Commands or removed with Cure Disease, and Prismatic Spray's raw damage can simply be weathered, but we can't make anybody immune to petrification. But we can get a save vs. spell down to 5, which is pretty close. We cast Chant, Aid, Bless, Chaotic Commands, and Death Ward on Gymora, our frontline cleric, and give her the Ring of Protection +1 and the Helm of Balduran. I didn't consider that I was putting the Helm of Balduran as well as Gymora at risk in this way, but she didn't get petrified in any case.
She lured the enemy over to the rest of the party, which I normally keep hidden in the hallway behind the trap. But she got hit by Remove Magic in the process. She could still come back over the trap, and outrun the Prismatic Spray itself, but once she came back, she couldn't go out again, not without putting herself at risk. This is one of the few traps in BG2 that will trigger every time you pass over it until it's disarmed; it doesn't go away after it's triggered once. We resigned ourselves to staying behind the trap, and simply fought the enemy from the hall. Insect Plague is just too cruel at this level, when enemies don't have Fire Shield.
Then I realized we could outrun the Prismatic Spray trap with haste, which the SCS2 wolf shapeshift has automatically. I have Mirinaas, our only male character (I can never find male portraits I like, which means I always have very few female soundsets to spread across my characters) shapeshift into a wolf and dash past the Prismatic Spray trap.
He outruns the spell. With his boosted movement rate, the spell is too slow to catch up to him. I have him lead our remaining summons over to finish off the other guards hiding out in the building, and send Haloo, another druid, over the trap in wolf form to help him loot the place. We slew the Trolls with Flame Blade spells and returned to the Copper Coronet.
The Copper Coronet guards weren't too much trouble. They failed multiple saves against Command, allowing us to pick them off one by one. The Beastmaster and his animal critters weren't much trouble, either; Nymph summons allowed us to disable many at once.
After freeing Hendak and selling off a bunch of equipment, we buffed up the party and traveled around Athkatla until we triggered the Suna Seni ambush. Greater Command knocked out the entire group.
We bought Mauler's Arm for Coral to compensate for her low STR and outfitted all the clerics with Plate Mail. Next up, the Druid Grove.
The Spirit Troll panics, but the others stay. They collapse in two rounds with a flurry of Holy Smite spells, and the Fire Elementals finish them off.
The Spirit Troll remains, however, and once the other Trolls go down, it recovers from its panic attack. We bring it down to Injured before it decides to hide. It goes invisible most every round, and runs out the Flame Blade spells that were our two frontline clerics' only magical weapons. We've got a combined 7 APR, not counting our Fire Elementals, and our THAC0 is too poor to do much. The Spirit Troll is back to full health quite soon.
It takes a while to bring him down. Spirit Trolls are no fun. They take forever and require intense micromanagement of the most boring kind.
Kyland Lind falls unconscious on the first round. Disablers have been really wicked on all sides in this run.
We swarm him and remove the most dangerous enemy from the fight. We pick off the remaining critters one by one. Dalok suffers the same fate, knocked out by a Greater Command spell at the start of the fight.
To my surprise, we're unable to get Cernd to take on Faldorn. Viro being a druid robs us of that dialog option.
Normally, you can have Cernd finish the fight on his own, which is a guaranteed success, though we get no XP for the kill. I don't think we can take down Faldorn ourselves, but we may as well give it a shot. I send in Haloo and hope for a failed save on Faldorn's part. The spell doesn't even touch her.
It's the weirdest thing about SCS2. Sometimes its components persist even when I uninstall them. The setup .exe says I don't have mages rigged to pre-buff, but they do anyway. I uninstalled the Improved Faldorn component, but here she is, with all of her ridiculous advantages, from summons to shapeshifting to stoneskins to spell protections.
She chunks Haloo.
I can always just create a new copy of Haloo, though this costs me a bunch of XP. But since Faldorn breaks the entire questline by chunking her opponent, I have an excuse to reload. This time, I walk away. We probably won't face her until level 14 or 15, when we have Nature's Beauty or HLAs. And next time, I'll disable the "gore" option, which prevents chunking entirely.
Instead, we just take on Khan Zahraa. We have no defense against Flesh to Stone, so Viro remains invisible with Pixie Dust. It doesn't matter in any case; Khan Zahraa falls to brute force.
Since Taquee vanishes when we go outside, however, I have to reload. I've seen that happen before, and it also breaks the questline irreversibly. We don't become the heroes of Trademeet, but we do get the Shield of Harmony and some extra treasure, and Trademeet's shops are now open to us.
So far, the party has done fairly well, though it's not particularly strong or versatile. The clerics have a weak but party-friendly damage spell in the form of Holy Smite, and an excellent if unreliable disabler in the form of Greater Command, but otherwise their strength is all defensive, and at low levels that defensive power only applies to enemy spells: they may be immune to disablers by virtue of Chaotic Commands, but Armor of Faith is not going to keep them safe. Draw Upon Holy Might gives them monstrous damage and THAC0 bonuses, but they only have 1 attack per round--we can't cast Haste.
The druids are much more effective overall at this stage of the game. Their spellcasting is ensured by Ironskins, they have more spell slots (and will continue to do so until 1.5 million XP), they have a reliable disabler in the form of Insect Plague, and their summons are game-breaking. The Fire Elementals are immune to normal weapons and deal damage through Stoneskin (though we've seen few Stoneskin spells so far), and the Nymphs have a broad assortment of excellent spells, including Hold Monster, Mental Domination, Mass Cure, and Confusion, all of which can completely wreck the early game. The druids also have better damage output thanks to their 2 APR as bears, though they lack a good offensive damage spell. Call Lightning only works outdoors and is terribly slow to cast.
A nice team and an informative playthrough. One comment though : where is the phase spider druid
@Blackraven @Alesia_BH
I re-edited the balthazar message. I think it is correct now. Noticeably the requirements pertaining to an evil character. The spoiler section contains the score modifications.
Basically, I've got all the basics working, except the kit won't show up in the right place. Right now I'm trying to add the bard kit in, now that the fighter and druid kits are working fine. So, I copy the druid section and replace some things: I've got the bard's usability flags, the alignment restrictions, the available weapons, and I've replaced the spider druid CLAB (CLABPHDR) with the spider bard one (CLABPHBA).
I run the setup. It asks if I want to install the bard kit. I install the bard kit, the setup completes without reporting any problems, and the bard kit is installed, no error reports. I then load up BG2 and start a new game in ToB (since SoA has an opening cutscene I'd have to wait through).
I create a new character and make it a bard. The "Phase Spider Bard" kit does not appear. All I see is Bard, Blade, Skald, and Jester. If I create a druid, however, then I see "Phase Spider Bard" with the other druid kits.
Incidentally, if I create a druid with the Phase Spider Bard kit, then the kit won't have any effect--I'll just have an unkitted druid. So, I can create the bard kit... but on character creation, it only shows up when creating a druid character.
I've gone through the TP2 file and I'm not sure why the game thinks the Phase Spider Bard kit is actually a druid kit. I need that bard kit to show up in the list of bard kits, instead of the list of druid kits.
Attached is the TP2 file, based on the last TP2 you posted. It contains a separate BEGIN section for the fighter, druid, and bard components. I need to find out why the bard kit shows up on the druid menu.
Lack of familiarity with the Tactics components ended Dagny's run. Therefore I'm not pissed off or disappointed with myself (as I sometimes am). Besides there were many apparent bugs or glitches: a dialogue loop with Jaheira which made me decide to ditch her, half the Athkatlan community looked dark brown as if Barkskinned, I couldn't use Raise Dead scrolls to raise Anomen (had to use the Rod of Resurrection), and most annoyingly there was about zero intra-party banter.
I also dislike the Tactics random abushes. They happened way too often for my liking, so often that any sane Charname would say "F*ck it, I'm going back to Baldur's Gate and raise the money for Imoen there." Their repetitiveness is also off-putting.
Anyway Dagny's crew did rather well in yesterday's session and a short session this morning. They had to give their all on the roof of the Copper Coronet when one of the Tactics ambushes occurred. Maybe it were two ambushes even, because at the end the party counted 12 corpses: four casters, the others fighters and assassins. We had Irenicus' wands, which made a huge difference: Monster Summoning, Fire, Heavens were all used. Several Spooks were also effective crowd controllers. This was important because the party was still quite low level, so their buffs were few and brief.
Nalia's Hold was successfully negotiated in two instances. Fighting a few Trolls at a time was doable for Anomen, even the Spirit variants. The others could do little against them, except Aerie who as a Bard was the only one that could use the Tuigan Bow (Nalia's dual wasn't completed yet.) Aerie would finish the Trolls with acid arrows, even though she wasn't proficient in bows.
The Yuan-Ti Mage fled to the roof when Dagny dropped a Cloudkill in the library, so they didn't have to fight it. Glaicus had the upper hand against Anomen but Jan, who was using the Light Crossbow of Speed, stunned him with his Bruisers.
The Skinner murder mystery was solved. Anomen swigged a potion of freedom because of the Ghasts and, dualwielding FoA and DoE, he defeated the Bone Golem and the Rune Assassins.
The Thief Guild quests were done this morning. Anomen had more problems with Rayic Gethras' Mephits than with the Golems. Jan set three traps and summoned 3x3 Hobgoblin archers for Rayic Gethras himself to waste his spells on. One of those spells was a Fireball with which he killed himself.
Anomen's attempt at casting Chaotic Commands was thwarted by one of the enemies. Their priest summoned an Aerial Servant (very difficult to deal with, at least the aTweaks version: they hit hard, entangle and go invisible at will), and Mage PW:Stunned Anomen. He fell soon after, and I realized that it was a shame that the only character that could dish out good physical damage, was also one of the most vulnerable characters. He fell soon after.
With Renal Bloodscalp's permission the party then proceeded to assault MaeVar's Guild. Anomen did most of the work upstairs, helped with a few Chaoses from Dagny and Jan. The arcane casters buffed extensively: Stoneskins already in place, Chaotic Commands (Dagny), Shield, Blur, Mirror Image, MSD, Improved Invisibility, and Spell Immunity, although the casting of the latter spell was messed up as I had the game paused and had various characters cast it, causing the school selection option to be lost. Anomen buffed with Chaotic Commands, and the holy triad of HP, DUHM and RM. Downstairs, Jan dropped a Teleport Field, and Dagny a Cloudkill.
MaeVar's buffs couldn't be dispelled with Dispel/Remove Magic because he had a MGoI up, and the companions saw a number of their castings sizzle out due to MaeVar's quaffing of invisibility potions. Jan's Detect Illusions and a Breach by Dagny evenually exposed him.
After a rest and after having received their reward from Renal Bloodscalp, the crew set out to report Anomen's sister's death to the authorities when the umpteenth Tactic ambush occurred. The party was invisible, so I considered simply leaving (as I had done before with these ambushes). But I decided to test the skills of my team. With the same buffs as in the MaeVar battle, except that Spell Immunity was properly cast this time, we had little difficulty with the enemy even though a priest's Cloak of Fear scared Anomen.
Sad to hear about the loss, however. Tactics is cruel. It's not designed for no-reload runs.
For future reference, the Tactics ambushes can be avoided by sleeping through the night. They only appear after dark, so if you come outside and see that it's dark, you can rest once or twice to reach the next day.
I suggest removing tactics2/gbrand/aiscripts/bodhitrp.baf prior to installing the mod.
You already dislike it. Later on the same groups are replaced by a stronger version in which the mage likes to cast a (sequencer) triple flame arrows at one of your character. When I was young(
I cannot tell you to remove it from the override folder of an installed game because it is likely to be also modified by other mods.
Side note: I see nothing in Tactics that can generate the weird graphics on the sprites. Moreover, with the exception of The Ritual and Improved Irenicus that I haven't managed to convert yet, the only place where Jaheira (and more generally NPCs) gets her dialog files modified, is Improved Ilyich and I can confirm this is properly implemented by the creator of Weidu
Last point: not sure about how well o you know the vampiric lich mod but I would not suggest fighting her early game. I like this one very much. She has a powerful spell sequence, she is modified to cast a specific spell granted to the Tactics2 liches (and Kangaxx demilich) helping them to fight against "hidden" enemies (such as the prot from undead) and in a final phase she has a very nice use of the blade of disaster
@semiticgod
Looking at your files now ...
As regards the Bards and Thieves kit features you may want to have a look at the new modifications enabled in EE, see the fl#add _kit_ee documentation and http://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/34119/how-to-making-kit-mods-for-the-ee initial post.
Attached is a .zip file containing the setup file and the folder with all of the relevant spell files and stuff. It should install correctly now; I've tested each one.
Before I post this on G3 or wherever, there are a few things I'd like to add. If we can find some way to add a mage kit to the game, ideally without replacing any of the others, it would be nice to create a Phase Spider Mage kit. Otherwise, the only way to do it would be to create another class and Keeper it to a mage.
Also, I'd like to add a short section to the TP2 file, asking to replace Infravision and the cleric/druid version of Detect Evil with a self-refreshing Dimension Door spell, so the player can teleport via a hotkey.
I think I have a way to get around the monk problem.
We might not be able to create a Phase Spider Monk kit without turning all monks into spiders, but we could imitate the monk kit with another class. Long story short, I'd just create a new ranger kit and tweak it so it would have monk abilities. That way, we'd have a fighter type critter that could also hide in shadows, just like a monk. I can do that on my own.
Congrats on the creation of the Spider kit btw!
An intermediate package.
I fixed a typo in the fighter kit, rearranged the component numbers and tra string numbers to make room for additional strings (basically fighter starts at 11, druid at 12 etc... and the corresponding kit strings at 110/111 then 120/121 etc.) Not difficult to roll back if you think that's bad. I removed the language example.
I created a core component to install all the common files and also ToBEx. I am no ToBEx specialist but if you want to enable unusual kit/race pairs and if you want to be able to switch a kit once the game starts (probably what will have to be done with the mage kit) you require it. I think it is important for all kit mods on the non EE version because it allows to scroll the list of kits beyond ten entries. Even if you don't add 10 kits of your own under the same class, they may stack with other mods and the vanilla kits and thus reach that limit. This is the version v26, advices are welcome if any reader thinks it's better to use an older version. A negative point is that it makes the mod restricted to windows (or supposedly Wine or the like) and the usual C++ MS lib is required. That's very easy to remove if this is a showstopper for you but you have to make a decision about the features you want. There is no perfect solution. On EE all of that is not required.
I also offer the option to extend the race list for the druids and bards, this is just an example.
I am a bit slow but I have difficulty in understanding what you want to do with the infravision/detectevil/dimension door spell and why you don't create a separate spell but I simply added a question conditionning the spell replacement. I hope this is what you want.
I will have a look at the mage kit switch next week.
To answer your question, we have to overwrite Infravision and Detect Evil for hotkeys because custom spells and innate abilities can't be mapped to hotkeys. If you install the mod and go to the hotkey section in the BG2 configuration file, you can't map the Phase Spider's Dimension Door spell to any key. The spell won't show up. You can, however, map Infravision to a hotkey. So, if you take a custom Dimension Door spell, rename it as "SPWI111" (the file name for Infravision), and go to the configuration settings to set "D" to cast Infravision, then you can cast Dimension Door by pressing "D." I learned that when I first tried out the Phase Spider kit myself. The configuration settings map "SPWI111," but not "PHASE013," to a hotkey, so we can only map Dimension Door to a hotkey by replacing a vanilla spell. I chose Infravision and Detect Evil because I figured they'd be the spells the player would be least likely to miss.
If you can figure out some way to create a mage kit, that would be spectacular. In the meantime, I'll cook up a Phase Spider ranger kit that'll imitate the monk kit.
Monks have the unique trait of being able to hide and detect traps, but not use any other thief skills. I considered creating a thief class and disabling the thieving ability, but the player could still see the grayed-out icon, and you could still add points in any thieving skills I might disable. Instead, I picked the ranger class, which would allow the player to hide like a monk and also cast the Dimension Door spell replacing Detect Evil. The ranger monk kit can't detect traps, but that ability in monks is seldom used and little valued anyway.
There were several problems I had to address. First, monks and rangers gain levels at different rates. I could edit the XPLEVEL.2da table to make them equivalent, but then all rangers would grow as fast as monks. Instead, I put the XP values for each level into Excel and calculated the ratio of XP needed to reach each level in ranger and each level in monk. Turns out, after level 9, the ranger always requires exactly 33% more XP than the monk. So I just gave the ranger monk kit a +33% boost to XP. The only downside is that it'll still have the ranger level cap.
Second, monks and rangers use different saving throw tables. To make sure our ranger monk got the monk saving throw values, I created 10 separate spell files, each of which would adjust the ranger monk's saving throws at levels 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, and 15. Sometimes I had to add 1 to all saves, sometimes I had to subtract 2 from several saves, but leave other saves alone.
Third, rangers get druid spells. I could have disabled that icon, but then, I'd prevent the player from using the Detect Evil Dimension Door replacement spell, and so the Phase Spider Monk couldn't teleport via hotkey. Instead, I just added a spell that removed all of the ranger monk's druid spells, except for Detect Evil.
Also, I had to implement the monk's item restrictions, and there are a lot of them. Modders know that the engine can't support unique item restrictions: you can restrict a kit from using metal armor by giving them the Archer usability flags, or restricting them from edged weapons by using cleric usability flags, but you can't restrict them from axes while permitting flails and daggers. Not unless you edit a whole bunch of item files.
A tutorial (admittedly an old one) on WeiDU modding by CamDawg said you could only implement certain item restriction using a kit. The engine doesn't let you add extra usability flags to give more complex or unique item restrictions. But there's a cute way to get around that engine limitation.
There are two opcodes you can use to circumvent this rule: 143, which creates an item in a specific slot, and 180, which prohibits the character from using a specific item file. With opcode 143, I can create a non-removable dummy item in a Phase Spider's ring slot, preventing them from ever wearing rings on the grounds that they have no fingers. I do the same for their boots slot. No boots either, since spiders don't have humanoid feet.
But what if I want thieves and bards with Use Any Item to be able to sew a magical ring into a spider's cloak, and gain the benefit that way? Well, we can fix that, too. We instead have TWO dummy items: one to occupy the ring slots, and one to occupy the boots slot. Then, at level 24, when a thief or bard is almost invariably going to choose Use Any Item as their first HLA, you give them a special ability that instantly removes the first dummy item. Now, both ring slots are free, while the boots slot is still full, so the thief can wear rings with UAI, but still can't use boots.
What about opcode 180? This allows us to prevent a character from ever using one specific item. Even Use Any Item can't overcome this restriction. If I want the spider to never wear helmets, even with Use Any Item, but I still want them to be able to use ioun stones, then I can create a bunch of separate effects using opcode 180, each of which restricts a different helmet: one forbids the use of the Helm of Infravision, another forbids the Helm of Balduran, and so forth. The helmet slot isn't filled, however, so the spider can still use ioun stones, since they don't require a humanoid head. This also allows us to ban gauntlets and gloves without banning bracers. Bracers you can put on the spider's leg, but gauntlets and gloves require hands and fingers to fit correctly. Opcode 180 lets us implement that.
And for monks? I just create a dummy item in the armor slot, preventing all armor from being worn. Likewise, I put a dummy shield item in the shield slot, which prevents the monk from using shields as well as bows, spears, or any two-handed weapons (I understand monks in EE can use staffs, but in vanilla they can't). I still permit bracers, though, since I don't think the monk restriction on bracers makes sense--they don't really encumber you at all, or restrict your movement in any significant way.
There are still a few inconsistencies left--the ranger monk can't use the Scarlet Ninja-to; it gets the ranger stronghold; it can use Montolio's Cloak--but they're not very significant.
I've fixed up the TP2 file and the ranger monk kit installs correctly, but I won't bother uploading it, as I anticipate making some smaller edits later on.
One last thing I might try is tweaking the Phase Spider's HLA tables. For one thing, it would allow me to keep Phase Spider Thieves from gaining access to the same traps as normal thieves--I already restricted them to their own unique snares; having unique HLA traps would also make sense. For another, it would let me add in some unique spider-themed HLAs.
Most importantly, though, it would prevent fighter types from stacking HLAs. My old Phase Spider Fighter/Mage/Thief, Blueberry, could combine Greater Whirlwind Attack with Critical Strike and Assassination in one round. With TorGal's Claw, she could do over 1000 damage in 6 seconds, with no preparation. Admittedly, that would require 3 HLAs that otherwise could have been spread out over other rounds, but it's still a little less balanced than I'd like it to be. I could implement a 6-second cooldown for fighter HLAs, but I can't do that without overwriting the vanilla spell files and therefore compromising mod compatibility. However, I could make copies of the fighter HLAs and add cooldown times for all of them, and then give the Phase Spider kits a unique set of HLAs with those cooldown periods in them. That would prevent HLA stacking without overwriting the vanilla files.
I like Dagny, so I started another run with her a few days ago. I've got a new install, essesntially my standard install with Ascension, SCS I and II v21, aTweaks, the mods for Rogues (Rebalancing, Song & Silence, Expanded Thief Stronghold), the UBs, Wheels of Prohepcy, Alternatives and Oversight, Level1NPCs for NPC customization, and a couple of smaller quest and item mods (BGQE, Sirine's Call, Grey Clan, Quest Pack, Item Upgrades), tweaks (BGTTweaks, BG2Tweaks), banter mods. Also the BG1NPCSoA mod that should make Yeslick, Garrick, Branwen, Skie, Kagain, Faldorn, Xzar, Monty, Quayle & Tiax available as joinable NPCs in SoA with banter and all. I'm quite curious about the latter mod.
A bit unwilling to rush her through BG1 again as a solo character, I decided to have Dagny seek company this time. Dagny is a carefree, non-commital little lass at heart, and gets along best with similar folk. But I also wanted to do an arcane-heavy run, so she'll have to compromise a bit on party composition for my sake.
Here's a screenshot of her character record at level 1 (for those who didn't meet her before):
She took comfort in Imoen's company shortly after Gorion's tragic death. The two girls first traveled to the FAI, which had been Gorion's specific instruction. Ever keen-eyed, Dagny found a Ring of Wizardry by the gate. As a Charming Rogue, Imoen gets a casting of Charm Person at level 1. She used it effectively to make Tarnesh empty his spellbook in the air and on himself before she finished the panicked wizard with a critical in melee range.
Garrick (plain Bard as modified by RR; RR Skald again not working properly) got along soon and well with Dagny and Imoen. To me his personality, banter and voiceset more than make up for his alleged lack of usefulness. The friends traveled to the South Coast (via Red Canyons and Lighthouse Area), where they protected Charleston Nib before they lifted to Nashkel with Brage. The Nashkel inn was not visited, as Dagny wanted to have lvl 2 priest spells (Hold Person) first. Oublek, BGQE babysitting, and Bjornin's Half-Ogres west of Nashkel boosted the party's reputation.
Karlat was blinded and slain before the trio took a trip to the farmland north of the FAI. There, Dagny cast Sanctuary to purloin an Ankheg treasure hoard, reunited farmer Brun with (the corpse of) his son, and accepted a commission for three fishermen to slay the evil priestess Tenya. After receiving a light beating from the party Tenya told them that the fishermen were the real criminals. So Dagny & Co ended up retrieving a bowl for the girl to make amends.
Way down south at the Nashkel Carnival Quayle, a Gnome with the same profession as Dagny, joined the party, and a retired scholar named Archibald gave Garrick a tome he had always wanted to own.
In the eastern Cloudpeaks Dagny's and Quayle's Hold Persons and Blindnesses made the party prevail with ease over Sendai and her cronies, and over Vax and Zal.
Further west Krumm and Caldo were also Held and slain. Three Winter Wolves fell as well, and Ludrug lost a duel against Garrick (of all people). Near the Gnoll Stronghold, Gnarl and Hairtooth fell to Imoen's arrows. The Gnolls themselves were butchered, with some difficulty as Dagny and Quayle, each with 18 DEX (Quayle thanks to the Gauntlets) and Shield spells were passable tanks at best, and they didn't have enough Sleep spells to knock out all the Gnolls.
Neira (Hold Person) and Zordral (Blindness, disrupting Magic Missiles, and Hold Person) were the party's next victims.
Preparations were made for an ambush on Kirian & Co, with a Cloudkill rendering them unconscious, and with Lindin Blinded and Peter Held, but a wrong click in the dialogue with Kirian made her walk off before she could be released of her Golden Girdle.
When more undead and Hobgoblins were dispatched the party tried their hand at a tentative, second assault on Myr'Cutio. Summoned Skeletons were sent in to occupy the spectre, and Quayle cast Silence at the enemy from a distance, a brave act that Myr'Cutio retalliated against with a faster cast, highly damaging Skull Trap.
Thalantyr produced the Improved Shield amulet (AC4, +1 saves, no Shield effect though). The party then went Ankheg hunting, relying on Sleeps and Skeletons.
The Nashkel Mines were next. At the second level, a level I normally sneak through, Imoen got busted by a couple of Kobolds when failing to hide, but Dagny hadn't changed her memorized level 1 spells since the Ankheg hunt, so she had plenty of Sleeps to help deal with the vermin.
The Kobold Shaman and the Chieftain, backed by a number of Elites, were managed with a Stinking Cloud and a Scorcher-charge of the Wand of Fire. The Shaman lasted quite long actually, and survived the Scorcher, but his only potentially dangerous spell was a Horror. When he targeted Imoen with it, she went Invisible (and saved anyway).
Having had enough of the Kobolds, Dagny Silenced Mulahey while he was still blue-circled so that he couldn't summon his minions. He was then Held and finished off.
Outside, the Narcillicus fight was a bit messy after the wizard saved against the Wand of Paralyzation; several healing potions were lost in order for everyone to stay alive. But I got a second chance after a crash to desktop, and had a much cleaner result with Skeletons doing most of the work.
Nimbul was a bit sketchy after the party failed to retreat on time to leave him for the guards take care of. They fled to the garrison, with a Slowed Garrick sauntering behind the others. The party expected Nimbul to follow them inside, so they summoned two Skellies. However Nimbul never dared enter the garrison, so more Skeletons were summoned outside. They soaked up several of the assassin's spells, before Imoen finished him off with a Magic Missile.
Wand of Fire scorchers, one of which managed to injure Garrick, finished the Battle Horrors guarding the entrance to Durlag's tower, while inside the tower Imoen took out the Ghasts with ranged attacks and the protection of invisible party members. Skeletons killed the Basilisks, and Xan - after a long game of hide and seek - slew Kirinhale. Looting the upper levels and the cellars yielded the companions sufficient gold to purchase the Robe of the Neutral Archmagi and the Claw of Kazgaroth. They also bought a Wand of Fire from Erdane, sold it again after it turned out that it had no scorcher charges, only fireballs, and bought it again, fully recharged with 50 charges of each ability.
After a night at Feldepost's the crew got ambushed by Lamalha and her friends. Dagny stunned Lamalha with her Wand of Paralyzation, leaving her in Xan's care. Quayle Held Zeela (the other Cleric) and invisible Telka. Garrick dispelled that invisibility and together with Imoen he attacked the two amazons, later joined by Xan after the Elf was done with Lamalha. Dagny Blinded and then Held Maneira; she was eventually slain by Xan.
What was most peculiar to me was that there were no Black Talons. Instead the companions ran into a Wraith Spider, and while they were resting they got attacked by a Giant Spider that Webbed Garrick before the others killed it. On her way to the Bandit Camp, Dagny survived this:
Buffed with a potion of defense, two potions of fire protection, and an oil of speed, Dagny put the Wand of Fire to good use in the Bandit Camp:
Dagny and friends had barely left behind the Wood of Sharp Teeth when they headed out to another vast forest: the Cloakwood. They protected Aldeth Sashenstar against four vindictive Druids by Silencing and then slaying the latter, and they took a Cloak of Non-Detection for Imoen from a Tasloi they killed.
Imoen removed numerous traps in Spiderland, and Dagny extinguished the monsters with her Wand of Fire. The party brought Chelak's body to Tiber, and kept Spiders' Bane (to sell it later).
The only battle the crew fought in Druidland was against Peter of the North and his Baby Wyverns. Deeper in the woods the companions slew more Wyverns with fire and ranged weapons.
They cleared the area surrounding the Cloakwood Mine, and then Dagny summoned a number of Skeletons, applied an oil of speed, and lured Drasus away from his friends. She injured him with her Wand of Fire, and battled him with her Skellies but went invisible when Kysus and Rezdan arrived. The warrior and the wizards slew one Skeleton after the other, but the last Skeleton managed to kill Drasus before it fell.
The five opted for a stealthy approach in the mines, with only Imoen showing herself at opportune moments to organize the liberation of the miners. It was also Imoen who disarmed Davaeorn's traps before Dagny stepped forward to confront the wizard. She protected herself from fire through potions and had a MSD up to absorb any Lightning Bolts coming her way (which indeed indeed they would). She finished the wizard's Battle Horrors with her Wand of Frost,
As the party was still rather far removed from the XP cap, they did more quests than I usually do, including Desreta (with Wand of Paralyzation, gauntlets for Xan) & Vay-Ya (melee with Skeletons, after suffering a Sunfire), and Yago (melee with critical 46 dmg by Xan). Reporting to Brielbara resulted in Dagny reaching lvl 6 as a Mage. Xan slew the Greater Basilisk in the Docks after being PfP by Dagny.
Marek (Wand of Paralyzation), and Lathander were slain and saved respectively, for the XP and for the Eagle Bow. Sunin was somewhat cheesily deprived of some of his most potent spells by leaving and entering his home while he was in the middle of casting. A poisonous critical with the Dagger of Venom by Xan, who was dual wielding at that point, did him in. Quayle equipped the Ring of Wizardry which combined with the Ring of Holiness gave him almost as many spells as Dagny. The Helm of Glory was secured by force (Wand of Paralyzation on Drelik, physical fury against Jardak), while guile yielded the Helm and Cloak of Balduran, and Arkion's and Nephre's necklace and ring.
Other more 'standard' quests and encounters included Larze, Ragefast (spared) & Ramazith (slain after successful paralyzation), the Thieves' Guild quests, Brevlik's telescope, and the Ogre Mage in the sewers, who Confused Imoen just before Dagny finished him with her Wand of Magic Missiles.
The companions showed themselves to Sarevok's acolytes on the Iron Throne's top floor, hoping that four simultaneous fireballs would instantly thin their ranks, but alas, that was not to be (not even the mages Alai and Naaman).
The party received a book from Duke Eltan that would offer them access to Candlekeep, but before making it there, they met Eldoth in the area where Gorion had fallen, and they traveled with him back to Baldur's Gate. They had to defend themselves in an inn from Phandalyn, a fight which ended with Phandalyn's death and a steep reputation drop. The party's reputation suffered further when Imoen got caught stealing at the Silvershield estate, where Eldoth was left behind with his girlfriend Skie. That night Dagny had a dark dream that culminated in her waking the next day with a Divine Wrath Bhaalpower. (Tiresome? Maybe, but I just can't bring myself to kill random commoners for reputation management purposes, especially with a neutralish party like Dagny's clique.)
Most companions' XP was in the 100k range. As I wanted to dualclass Imoen at lvl 9 (110k XP), the party made a side trip to the Firewine Ruins. First of all to slay Meilum for his gauntlets (which went to Dagny), and to fry Lendarn and an Ogre Mage (the former with difficulty, he sensed the companions' presence and forced them to use up all their potions of Absorption after a first damaging Lightning Bolt was followed by a second one).
The party of six reached Candlekeep invisibly, postponing their encounter with five Ogre Mages. Alora released the library of all scrolls and valuables she could find, and did most of the work with the Iron Throne management:
I must say them wands are superhandy, as they enable Dagny to focus on defense in her spellbook. Besides, as a multiclass caster with barely above average INT in a party of casters, she didn't have a lot of firepower in her repertoire of learnt spells anyway.
All the enemies in the catacombs were slain (Phase Spiders, Ghasts, Skeletons, Doppelgangers), which resulted in many level-ups: Garrick (9), Imoen (9) Dagny (7 Cleric) and Quayle (7 Cleric). Imoen dualed here as planned. An extensive spell scribing session that saw most INT-raising potions consumed served to donate Imoen two new Mage levels. Rest-spamming Phase Spiders at the cave entrance was good for another level for Imoen as well as for Dagny's and Quayle's final Mage level-ups.
Alora cleared all traps in the cave, and Dagny slew Spiders and Basilisks with her ineluctable Wand of Fire. Sadly, one Phase Spider teleported away from Dagny straight to Xan, and killed the Elf with its poison before Quayle could heal him, the first casualty in this adventure. He would be raised at teh FAI.
Four of five Fireballs finished Sakul and two Lesser Air Elementals, but the others survived. Prat even disappeared. Tam was paralyzed and taken down with range attacks and Bor fell to a Wand scorcher. Prat was nowhere to be found, but he did find the companions, and forced them to leave the cave to heal after he proved too strong in melee combat. He followed them back into the catacombs, where he would Blind Alora and injure Quayle, and after a while Dagny, who was the only one with Stoneskin. With the help of Skeletons, Prat was eventually bested.
Back on the surface, Dagny's skill with the Wand of Fire started to show as she slew three of the Ogre Mages with a single scorcher charge.
In Baldur's Gate, lacklustre pathfinding saw the friends arrested by a Flaming Fist Enforcer, which meant that after their escape with Neb, all Flaming Fists would be hostile. One of them in the eastern quadrant followed the party inside the Sorcerous Sundries when he saw Alora fail to HiS. The party managed to speak with Halbazzar once, to buy a number of potions and scrolls. But a second talk, to buy arrows of dispelling proved impossible. The wizard turned hostile; the companions fled.
Cythandria was thankful to be spared, her Golems were done in by Xan for 8000 XP a piece (Storm Giant Strength, Blur, Haste, PfE, Regen).
Alora injured Greater Doppelganger Rashad with backstabs until he panicked, at which point she switched to her returning throwing dagger +1 to finish him. She then hid Eltan in the party's Bag of Holding (a souvenir from Mulahey), snuck past Fist Enforcers, and left the Duke in the harbor master's care.
In the Undercellars, Alora was Hasted by an oil of speed and invigorated by a potion of strength (for better Thac0) in order to soften up Slythe. But she did a bit more than that. This was the consequence of two backstabs:
At the Ducal Palace the strategy was to not place Hasted Skeletons or buffed Dagny, Xan and Alora near the Dukes, waiting instead for the Greater Doppelgangers to reveal their true nature so that Garrick could dispel their Haste first. However the Bard was immediately Horrored by one of the Doppelgangers, as was Alora (an oversight on my part not to have Dagny cast Remove Fear before battle, and an indication that I'm not really good at buffing, am simply too forgetful).
It didn't matter in the end as Xan (Storm Giant Strength, Defense, Invulnerability, Heroism, Speed, Magic Shielding, PfE), Dagny (Violet potion, Agility, Fortitude, Defense, Speed, Magic Shielding, PfE), and five Hasted Skeletons were more than enough to take care of the Doppelgangers.
Dagny removed Alora's fear after the battle, but Garrick was still panicked when Belt sent the party to the Thieves Guild. This caused a strange bug: Garrick stayed behind in the Ducal Palace even though he was still officially in the party. It was impossible to return to the palace as the party had to be gathered before venturing forth. I solved this with Clua Console area switches (though I guess I could have dismissed Garrick and return to the palace and re-recruit him).
Dagny, Xan and Alora were still heavily buffed, which allowed them to handle the Slimes, Doom Guards and Skeleton Warriors with ease. Much harder to deal with was Rahvin's party. I always skip them, but still wanting XP, most of all for Imoen, decided to fight them. I had completely forgotten about the arrows of detonation (never use them myself, and am unused to seeing enemies use them). It cost Quayle his life.
A couple of Fireballs and overwhelming melee force sufficed to get rid of the different enemies,
There was no sign of Tamoko in front of the entrance to Sarevok's temple. Apparently she doesn't spawn if you don't meet with her in the city. (The party never had the opportunity due to Halbazzar Drin wanting their hides and following them outside the Sorcerous Sundries.)
Dagny taunted Sarevok, prompting him to follow her back to the entrance, where Alora dispelled his Haste. Diarmid, Semaj, and Tazok appeared there as well. For some reason Semaj didn't cast any detection spells, so the four enemies just stayed there, waiting for something to happen.
Dagny occupied Sarevok and two Skeleton Warriors so that Xan and Alora could finish Tazok and a third Skeleton Warrior (that hit Alora several times with its bow). The three then dealt with the Skeleton Warriors together, and defeated Sarevok with range attacks.
End of BG1 stats and screenshots:
Dagny:
Imoen:
Garrick:
Quayle:
Xan:
Alora:
1- the lich already attempted to create her simulacrum/image (apparently you already reached that stage as the previous picture probably shows the damage of a single skull trap).
2- and unless you turned the undeads against her
then I think you experienced her Wail of the Banshee.
She won't automatically cast it but statistically she is likely to cast it at some point (and imprisonment, maze, symbol fear, stun etc.)
The only good point of a lasting fight with her is that the AI tends to deplete her PfMWs.
Dagny is in Athkatla, at the Five Flagons to be precise. She's alive and well, even though she's already had her share of drama during her first days in Amn.
She had no Thief to deal with locks and traps in Irenicus' dungeon level 1 as Imoen still had to complete her dualing process in spite of reaching mage lvl 9 upon joining with Dagny (possibly a mod feature). But the two ladies, with all their lvl 2 slots filled with Invisibilities, had a plan. Jaheira and Minsc didn't initially figure in it.
The girls went Invisible and visited Rielev's room. There Imoen temporarily left Invisibility to pick up the activation stone. Dagny momentarily left Invisibility to give said stone to the guardian golem in a nearby room. No foes were fought although a couple of Duergar had to be invited into the Otyugh room so as to clear the path to the gardens and to the Mistress's Room where Dagny's MGoI and Stoneskins allowed her to secure the portal key without suffering any harm.
The ladies traveled to the 2nd level and welcomed Yoshimo into the party. Dagny summoned five Skeletons and protected them as well as her companions and herself from Evil. They cleared the Mephit room without difficulty.
Then they returned to the 1st level, invisibly. Dagny had to leave Invisibility and cast a decoy summons to once more clear the corridor towar the Otyugh room. This didn't work out as planned, as Yoshimo made it to the other side whereas Dagny and Imoen remained stuck in the Master's room.
They moved on to the second level, where Imoen killed Ulvaryl with a Cloudkill, and from there, to the surface.
Minsc, Jaheira and Yoshimo were tanked for their help, and Dagny continued alone (although the idea was not to be alone for long). Dagny rested, identified items and sold what she had no use for. As in her previous incarnation, Dagny foolishly cast a spell (Stoneskin) under the open sky of Athkatla, and received her first warning from the cowled ones.
She entered the Circus Tent, slew two faux commoners, and released Aerie from her spell. She invited the Elf (whom I turned into a Sorcerer) to accompany her and look for their mutual friend Quayle and for evil Kalah. This led them here:
There was no way back. A Pleasure Slave required Dagny and Aerie to find three keys in order to proceed and meet Kalah.
The only good thing was, that resting was easy (no interruptions). Dagny's Skeletons, Aerie's Skull Traps, and MMMs took out some of the foes, but as I said after a number of rests there seemed to be more foes. One of those foes, an Ice Giant, found Dagny and Aerie coming its way after messing with a named enemy, a lvl 13 Conjurer Orc with True Sight amongst its spells, named Goozclown (which Blackraven took as a sign that it might own one of the keys). A single attack by the Ice Giant dealt 39 dmg, leaving Aerie with a single HP.
Dagny felt horrible. It was the first time since Gorion that someone died permanently in her company.
She slew the Orc mage after she managed to Silence it,
Het next target was a Death Rabbit with 21 STR, 100+ HPs, Saving Throws of 1 (except save vs breath of 2), 127 Cold/Fire/Magic Resistance and 50 Magic Fire, Magic Cold and Acid and Elctricity Resistance. With a base AC of 4 and no physical resistances, brute force seemed to be the way to go. Her Skeletons, MMMs, and Holy Power proved her right.
While we appreciate the modder's effort in creating extra quests and battles, Dagny and I reserve the right to ctrl-y enemies added by the mod in battles we're not interested in. (I can't be bothered with the alternative: uninstalling the mod and risking irregularities in my setup and having to do a new install.)
I installed the BG1 NPCs in SoA mod purely for the NPCs, but so far I've achieved the opposite of what I had in mind. I permanently lost an NPC that I had wanted on Dagny's team, and after Kalah was Spooked and Melfed, Quayle whom I expected to be willing to join, had no more to say than this:
Anyway a doleful Dagny had a rendezvous with Gaelan Bayle, and visited the Gov District to speak with Madeen and Tolgerias, and to donate most of her gold to the corrupt cowls for a spell casting license. She also dealt with the slavers in the Copper Coronet.
She then visited the Bridge District to catch the Skinner Murderer. At the Tanner's she had to fight a Doppelganger (seemingly related to Xzar's quest), which she did with her Skeletons.
Muggers and Dominated Shadow Thieves plied their trade on the wrong Gnome, and Dagny reported back to Lt Aegisfield. She's currently lvl 9/10 with circa 515k XP, 4000 GP and no special items other than Sarevok's Ring, the Helm of Balduran and the Claw of Kazgaroth she had found in Chateau Irenicus.
While I'm kind of adjusting to solo mode again, inadvertently as the above proves, I intend to stick to the original plan: to form a caster-heavy crew. Jan, Nalia and Haer'Dalis are currently on the shortlist. I don't like Edwin, so he's less likely to join. Dagny met Xan in the Gov District, but his voice had completely changed and much as she had always disliked Xan's moaning voice, she realized she wouldn't have him any other way.
Do you know of any other mods that introduce new areas? I've had trouble finding good ones.
As for new areas, you might want to look into mods by @LavaDelVortel: http://lavas-scriptorium.weebly.com/quests.html. @kulyok has a mod called Sellswords, which is set in Menzoberranzan. (She has other mods as well, such as Assassinations and Back to Brynnlaw but I don't know if they offer new areas.)
I keep starting no-reload runs and then dying early on. I count 11 for which I have screenshots, and I know there are a few more. Maybe I should stop doing no-reload runs with untested characters and strategies... basically everything I've done since starting out Sil and the party of spiders has been experimental.
Glorydd (take 2), TN Dwarven Fighter/Thief
Here's the selfie:
I did something I'd never accomplished before: I had Glorydd reach her BG1 level caps, i.e. 140k XP, before even doing the Nashkel Mines. I still don't really understand how I pulled that off. Of course, Mutamin's Garden including Kirian (27k XP), Durlag's Tower's outside areas and top levels including Kirinhale (35k XP), Tenya/Brun/Ankhegs (25k XP), Lighthouse area (20k XP) helped Glorydd well on her way. But that still leaves circa 30k XP she apparently accumulated elswhere: Charleston Nib, Brage, Greywolf, Meilum, the easy FAI-Beregost-Nashkel quests, Bassilus, and what else? I wonder. Shoal for one is still alive.
Hereinafter I'll focus on sketchy moments and on the plot quests.
After Dagny (who'll get another chance, or several, in the future), Glorydd felt powerful and vulnerable at the same time. Powerful because she kills faster than Dagny, for now at least, and more vulnerable because of mages and their debuffs. She got an early taste of that from Mutamin. The devious Gnome cast Remove Magic at her, with two of his pets still around, eager to add Glorydd to their sculpture garden:
When she was done her oil of speed was still active and she was still Greenstone-protected, so she backstabbed Kirian and co. Bassilus was also neutralized with the Greenstone Amulet.
The Battle Horrors at Durlag's Tower fell to backstabs; the Basilisks were tackled with potions of mirroring eyes (of which she owned five and used up three). A real scare she had inside Durlag's Tower when she missed a trap, and found it to be magical in nature.
Glorydd entered the Nashkel Mines as a lvl 7/8 Fighter/Thief, as mentioned before. She owned pretty much every available item she had any use for at that point: Helm of Charm Protection, Shadow Armor, Claw of Kazgaroth (that unlike her PfP did get dispelled by Mutamin), Boots of Stealth, Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise, two dual-wielded Short Swords +2 (one bought from Raoul, a Song & Silence addition, one taken from Zargal's chunked body), a composite shortbow +2 (Rogue Rebalancing item for sale in Ulgoth's Beard), Sandthief Ring, Greenstone Amulet, Girdles of Piercing/Bluntness/Slashing, Necklace of Missiles, numerous potions, and a nice collection of enchanted arrows.
Only Kobolds that stood in Glorydd's way would briefly know of her presence, right before she Fireballed them into oblivion with her Necklace of Missiles. Mulahey she fought with the protection of a charge of her Greenstone Amulet, although her 3 APR kept him from casting his Hold Persons anyway.
Nimbul succumbed to a single backstab, Tranzig required two. When she left Feldepost's Glorydd got another taste of trouble. Leaving the shadows she had been hidden in, she spotted Molkar waiting to waylay her. She moved to a tree to hide again and to quaff potions of freedom and clarity. (I reckoned Greenstone's duration might be too short.) Molkar followed her, did his little talk, and before she knew it she was surrounded by the tree and two of Molkar's friends that appeared out of thin air. She was stuck. A third foe, Drakar stood a bit further away. He summoned a Skeleton that didn't hesitate in joing Molkar and the other two, aggravating Glorydd's predicament. She managed to slay Molkar, but that didn't offer her any means of escape as the Skeleton immediately took Molkar's place. She got badly injured, and decided to use a charge of her Sandthief Ring.
Either way, Glorydd healed and waited for Halacan's MIs to disappear. She then slew the Gnome, and after that she felled Morvin and Drakar with backstabs (both followed her into Firebead's neighbor's home.)
Glorydd befriended a bunch of bandits in Larswood and had them show her the way to the Bandit Camp. She looted that place with a thievery potion (as she was low on gold), buffed in front of Tazok's tent with a potion of defense and went in, hoping to kill Venkt with arrows of biting. But the wizard proved sturdier than expected as he survived two hits. Hakt came to the wizard's defense; he poisoned Glorydd. The Dwarf went invisible, drank an elixir of health, applied an oil of speed, and grudgingly Greenstone-protected herself. She then finished Venkt just as the wizard failed to Dispel her buffs,
When she stepped outside, she found not only Taugosz but also Lamalha and her friends waiting for her.
Normally a swarm of resilient, potion-quaffing bandits comes to Taugosz's aid, but this time only Taugosz and the amazons followed suit. Maybe Lamalha's script that causes her companions to appear, overruled Taugosz's script, I don't know.
Glorydd Greenstone-protected herself again, and finished her foes without suffering a scratch. Note that Taugosz fell to backstabs; he would have injured her otherwise.
Glorydd's currently supplying herself at Thalantyr's, in preparation of her excursion to the Cloakwood.
I cannot join the no-reload thread yet but Tactics2 for EE is progressing well.
@kcwise, thanks amigo. Tymora's blessings would surely help
Glorydd (take 2), TN Dwarven Fighter/Thief, 2nd & final BG1 update
The Cloakwood had little treasure that Glorydd coveted. She limited herself to securing the Cloak of Non-Detection, slaying Aldeth for his valuables Seniyad, killing a couple of Spiders in order to procure Spiders' Bane and travel the woods more safely, and receiving a potion of invulnerability from Laskal.
You know you're playing too much Baldur's Gate when you know exactly which Tasloi to slay for the Cloak of Non-Detection.
Glorydd was ruthless with the Cloakwood Mine assassins. The Dwarf buffed with invulnerability, absorption (for Drasus' morningstar), cloud giant strength and speed. Both Kysus and Rezdan were insta-gibbed. (Immediate swigging of a potion of invisibility after Kysus was down kept Rezdan unbuffed and blue-circled, and thus very backstabbable.)
She slew his guard, protected herself with two potions of magic protection, and attacked. She quaffed potions of fire resistance in the process. I don't love leaving places to escape spell effects, but SCS mages' invariable Remove Magics can be a bit annoying, especially considering the fact that a rogue like Glorydd can't really do anything against that spell yet. (Dagny could have cast a MGoI.)
Glorydd quickly left the premises when the spell was cast at her, and returned right after that. She finished the Battle Horrors with backstabs, Davaeorn with acid arrows and arrows of biting,
Having reached the XP cap already, Glorydd did few quests in Baldur's Gate. She focused on procuring items: stat tomes (the WIS tome was pickpocketed), Rogue Rebalancing's Sparkburst shortbow, arrows of dispelling and other enchanted arrows, Helm of Balduran, and potions. The only extra quests she did were the Ogre Mage in the sewers for the gold, and the thieves guild quests as part of the roleplaying exerience. With the Expanded Thieves Stronghold mod installed for BG2, Glorydd hopes to meet Narlen Darkwalk and Black Lily again, further down the road.
Glorydd fought the Ogre Mage with a cheap potion of stone form as her anti-magic defense, but saw herself forced to drink a potion of magic shielding when her enemy cast a Confusion at her before she could finish him.
The rogue snuck past Iron Throne acolytes to deal directly with Thaldorn. He pointed her to Candlekeep, and that's where she went with a tome from Duke Eltan to get in. (Note that after some deliberation on my part Glorydd availed herself of bardic reputation management to lower her rep to 9, and get the Divine Wrath Bhaalpowers that I've become quite fond of, instead of Duhms.) Not a drop of blood was spilt in or below Candlekeep, at least not by Glorydd. The Dwarf did pick up all the nice loot in the chests in the catacombs though.
Back in the city, she tracked down two assassins that had murdered one of the Dukes and that were intent on killing the other Dukes as well. Before engaging the assassins, Glorydd buffed with cloud giant strength, heroism, speed, and magic shielding. She managed to lure hasted Slythe toward the exit to the sewers where the two came to blows. Damage was inevitable, especially with Slythe's backstabs, but Glorydd never got into trouble as she kept healing herself. (Her 50 Detect Illusions skill wasn't doing much to reveal Slythe whenever he went invisible.) She killed her foe just when Krystin arrived to cast, guess what, Remove Magic
The Dwarf rushed to the Ducal Palace, where at the curious hour of 4 AM, Sarevok's inauguration was about to begin. Rather than quaffing the violet potion from the Nashkel Carnival, Glorydd refreshed her speed, strength and AC buffs, drank two potions of magic protection, and added potions of mind focusing mainly to improve her marksmanship and to raise her barely developed Set Traps skill to 80. It sufficed to successfully place two snares behind the unsuspecting audience. Hasted, Glorydd enjoyed 4 APR with her shortbow. Within a round and a half she would slow down all the hasted Greater Doppelgangers with her arrows of dispelling, which she had poisoned for good measure (using one of five Rogue Rebalancing phials of poison). Victory was soon secured, with both of the Dukes surviving the dust-up.
In a rare bout of honorability, Glorydd decided to play 'fair' at Sarevok's hall, i.e. engaging Sarevok (and thus provoking the others) from the beginning with an arrow of dispelling, and no green scroll of PfMagic. This meant seeing her potion buffs removed first by Angelo, later by Semaj, and after that once or twice by a Skeleton Warrior with arrows of dispelling. Disabers were never a threat thanks to invisibility and magic shielding potions, but Glorydd did suffer quite a bit of magical damage (triggered magic missiles, lightning bolts etc) in addition to Diarmid's missile damage. She chose to drink several of her extra healing potions to keep herself in good health.
She poisoned her dispelling arrows with another of her phials and was soon done with both wizards.
Glorydd slew three remaining Skeleton Warriors as they were injuring her, and also to see how a melee duel with Sarevok would pan out. Given the fact that unlike Sarevok, Glorydd was buffed and had healing potions, Sarevok was clearly the better fighter. But as it was, Glorydd prevailed.
I recently started a new no-reload run and it looks like it'll actually get someplace. It's an Archer-based party, but only two party members are Archers, unlike one of my older runs. I have some evil schemes for Called Shot that I want to try out. I've been focusing too much on the STR drain and overlooking the save vs. spell penalty, which can exceed -20 with two Archers. This solves one of the main problems of no-reload runs: the constant threat of bad luck, which normally renders disablers very ineffective when you need them.
That doesn't apply, however, if I can guarantee a failed save.
Our frontliner is an Inquisitor, Varen, named after a character from a previous run. I almost never play Inquisitors, since I love casters and an Inquisitor's Dispel Magic requires extra maintenance to make sure it doesn't destroy my party. In fact, this is the first time I've ever created my own, and the only time I've selected an Inquisitor specifically for its kit (I've played Keldorn before, but only because I like his voice). In my install, Inquisitors' Dispel Magic only casts at 1.5 times their normal level, rather than double.
Very min-maxy stats, as always. Note the unusual 7 DEX, and the 18 CHA in red. The DEX is there because I planned on having Varen remain in Troll form for the immunity to sleep, but I've found that Dispel Magic still removes the Troll weapon that grants the immunity. I'll grab the Gauntlet's of Dexterity pretty soon to mitigate that, but I still have Rat form for physical damage tanking. The 18 CHA is there thanks to the Ring of Human Influence.
Why does a paladin need the Ring of Human Influence? Well, she needs 18 CHA to wear Keldorn's armor, but I only gave her 17. Funny thing about Keldorn's armor: the immunities are tagged as Dispel/Bypass Resistance, which means they can be taken down by Dispel Magic. Can you believe Keldorn dispels his own immunities? I'm not sure if this is a vanilla quirk, but unless I do something to fix it, I'll have to re-equip the armor every time I dispel anything on her.
Oh, and she's missing her Inquisitor immunities to Charm and Hold. I have no idea why. This means she has to wear the Helm of Charm Protection, unless I fix that, too.
Our first Archer is an old face: Studley Do-right, also known as Horun Fallows.
And yes, he's totally checking you out. Maeruo isn't in this run, so Horun isn't tied down. I decreased his normally stellar CHA so his INT would be above 11. Otherwise his stats are nothing surprising (the 20 CON comes from a BG1 tome). He's a half-elf for the resistances--for once, I've applied powergaming principles to race, instead of just everything else.
Horun uses darts. Everybody loves darts. I won't be duplicating Darts +5 in this run, however--I'll only get 18 per rest cycle.
Our second Archer is a new face, Milly Coppers. I don't know where that name came from, or her curious headgear.
She specializes in shortbows and crossbows, since both are incompatible with a shield.
Our Bhaalspawn is a sorcerer, Eliza.
Isn't she cute? I love this portrait. She's Chaotic Neutral for the cat familiar, because I want to be able to smuggle the Rift Device out of the sewers (just for kicks, but maybe I'll use it to kill something, too) but I don't want the ferret familiar because you have to be Lawful Neutral to get it.
Our other sorcerer is Evess. She's a bit of a makeup enthusiast.
She's also Chaotic Neutral because I didn't feel like deciding on anything different.
Our sorcerers have a few notable spells. First, Blindness and Spook are on the list, not because they're useful in general (though they are), but because I can guarantee failed saves with the right preparation. Blindness is crippling; Spook isn't as bad, but it won't require as much save buffering. We also have Feeblemind, for use against dragons. Both sorcerers have Ray of Enfeeblement, since it should be a guaranteed kill when combined with 12th-level Called Shot: Called Shot will ensure a failed save and also decrease the target's STR a bit, and that failed save will drop the target's STR down to 5... which the STR will automatically drop to 0. Instant death. Spell protections, magic resistance, weapon immunities, and spell level immunities may still get in the way.
Plus, we have a scroll of Hold Monster on hand, for use against the Ravager.
Finally, our Bounty Hunter, Zao:
Asian-sounding names aren't just for Asian-looking portraits. I've never thrown a Maze trap before, and seeing Alesia_BH's solo no-reload SCS2+Ascension Bounty Hunter trilogy run a while ago really made me want to try it out. I've used the kit before, but I've never reached level 21 with it. The kit isn't supposed to work with the Archers or sorcerers or Inquisitor in any way--I just wanted to try it out.
The group is almost at the end of Chapter 2. The next post tells how they got there.
http://forum.bioware.com/topic/124277-baldurs-gate-2-no-reload-challenge/?p=19437763
I like your new party, your failed saves approach looks promising. Looking forward to reading aboout your progress.
Chateau Irenicus posed a few unique hurdles. The Mephit in the Sewage Golem room is a bit of a wild card, especially when it's a Radiant Mephit, but we struggled past it. With careful HP management, we got through half of the first level before needing to rest.
And rest we did.
I wonder what they found to eat down there. The Duergar? Whatever.
Since this isn't a solo run, I decide to take on Ilyich. Turns out a pair of Archers has a near-guaranteed kill strategy on the Duergar Mage: they sneak up and shoot him in the face.
A ranger's stealth ability has some nice uses that you normally don't see if you just make your rangers wear metal armor all the time.
Instead of locking the Mephit Portal room Mephits behind the door, I just rush them with Haste. With two sorcerers on hand and lots of extra APR from our Archers, we're actually able to get through the whole dungeon. Only Hareishan escapes our notice.
Isn't there supposed to be a Wand of Paralyzation in Chateau Irenicus? I'm sure I remember finding it at some point, but I don't remember the last time I've had such a wand in BG2.
We get out of the dungeon. Kill Kalah. Buy a Protection from Undead scroll. Chat with Gelly Belly, also known as Gaelan Bayle. And just for fun, I send Eliza to murder Amalas, because I thought you could only fight him with Charname (in restrospect, I think anybody can do it). The results are curious.
I teleported him right out of the ring. The rest of the party mobbed him. He just crumpled. And nobody accused us of breaking the rules. Teleport Field is awesome!
With an Inquisitor and two Archers, we can take down spellcasters unusually quickly. We plow through the slaver compound, gather a bunch of money, buy Azuredge, and head off to the Umar Hills. The Killer Mimic paralyzes everybody in the party, but I keep Eliza out of range, and our frontliner, Varen, manages to survive five rounds of continuous acid damage while she's paralyzed.
We have trouble in the Temple Ruins, because we have very few magical weapons. We persevere and tough it out--it's less trouble than returning later with magic weapons.
Hm? Oh, Azuredge? No, that doesn't kill undead. I tested it. Varen hit everything inside the Temple Ruins with it. All it did was 3d6 damage. No instant death effect or disruption, nothing. Yes, I checked the files. Yes, the enemies were classified as undead. Yes, Azuredge was tagged to instantly kill any undead target on a failed save vs. death at -4. Yes, the probability was listed as 100, not 0. And yes, I was disappointed. The overpowered axe known for slaying liches in a single hit is incapable of taking down a Shadow.
For the Shade Lord, I yield to temptation and rely on a Protection from Undead scroll. I turn everybody but Varen invisible, Varen uses the scroll, and we head through to the Shade Lord lair.
Varen kills the thing in one hit. That's the only thing in the entire dungeon that was vulnerable to Azuredge: the single critter that I was the least worried about being able to defeat.
It doesn't matter. We got the Cloak of Stars, and so Horun has some magical darts to use. Now we can go to the Windspear Hills.
We mostly just muscle our way through the dungeon. Archers don't require much maintenance to be effective--very unlike Sil's group. I did do two things to minimize the danger. First, I walked around the trigger for the undead room to avoid any vampires (some ghouls and mummies still spawned). I really don't know why I don't just uninstall the SCS2 vampires thing.
Second, I pre-buffed with SI: Abjuration and True Seeing and flooded the undead room with traps in anticipation of fighting Samia. The moment Samia et al appeared, Varen cast Dispel Magic. The enemy was dead in seconds. It's just not fair.
I ignored Firkraag. Our THAC0 isn't strong enough to guarantee successful Called Shot save penalties, and we still have no Lower Resistance, so Feeblemind isn't reliable. Plus, I don't want Varen to use Carsomyr--it seemed too conventional to have our Inquisitor use Carsomyr, so she's never put any pips in two-handed swords. Instead, we just fought Conster.
I laid one Special Snare. One.
Boo.
On the way back to Athkatla, we got ambushed by Suna Seni. I've grown very attentive to the timing of this fight, since I've grown to appreciate the immunities granted by Arbane's Sword.
We solved it the same way we did Samia: SI: Abjuration and Dispel Magic. It brought the enemy down to nothing, and paved the way for a flurry of missile weapons. Darts from Horun, arrows from Milly, bolts from Zao, and Minute Meteors from Eliza and Evess.
We did some minor quests around Athkatla, few of which were particularly hard. One of the hard ones was Rayic Gethras: he disabled everybody but Zao, our Bounty Hunter, and Evess, our second sorcerer, with a Symbol: Fear spell. Evess hassled Ray-Ray with a couple Sunfire spells, while Zao waited out his PFMW spell. Had I thought to give Varen a Potion of Clarity, she could have dispelled the fear on our Archers (both mages were buffed by SI: Abjuration and couldn't have been cured), but in the end, Ray-Ray paid too little attention to his own health, and our two Sunfire spells paved the way for his early death to Minute Meteors. Zao and Evess had to wait several rounds before their friends got their heads together. The whole party could have died if it weren't for those Sunfire spells.
We side with Bodhi to avoid fighting vampires, and meet an unpleasant surprise when fetching the Box from the Docks.
That's not a typo. Wear your helmets, people! Helmets save lives!
There were two reasons this was surprising. First, it was surprising because Arkanis Gath just dealt us a 150-damage backstab, which I've matched maybe once or twice before, ever.
But what was especially surprising was that this chunking occurred when I thought "Gore" was set to off. I've heard a few times that disabling Gore prevents anybody from getting chunked. And sure enough, I'd not seen a single critter get chunked throughout this playthrough.
So I checked the Options screen. And Gore was off. Somehow Zao got chunked when nothing in the game ever got chunked. Permanently died in a game where nothing permanently died. Does anybody know how this could have happened?
I reloaded and was pleased to find that this time, Zao didn't permanently die.
Much better.
Aside from Zao's inexplicable chunkless chunking, the battles in Athkatla went smoothly. We thoroughly fustigated Draug Fea and the other sewer rats with a Dispel Magic, three Special Snares, and a double Web Minor Sequencer.
I'm starting to think Inquisitors might be overpowered.
That last bit of damage is from a trap, not from Zao's darts. I like to set lines of traps leading away from the main battle area, so that I can lure enemies across them if I need to flee.
We also kill the gang at the Den of Seven Vales... I usually deal with them after Draug Fea, as an afterthought. Sorcerous Amon of the Purple Brotherhood dies to a backstab, Puky succumbs to missile fire, Benny dies to traps, Smelly Porkslicer collapses under missile fire as well, and Mencar Pennypincher dies to missiles and spell damage.
At some point, we also went to the De'Arnise Hold, and also Trademeet... nothing special happened there, honestly. I made a point of going there after getting the Cloak of the Sewers, so Varen would be immune to unconsciousness and could dispel Greater Command, but it seems that the Spirit Trolls in my install have finally, finally stopped casting Greater Command. The other two threats besides Spirit Trolls, Kyland Lind and Dalok, got disabled by traps and Webs.
Quickly running out of quests to do, we went to the Planar Prison. Dispel Magic did awful, awful things to the Coiled Cabal. Apparently Dispel Magic can remove PFMW... I honestly didn't know it could do that; I just checked the files and PFMW is flagged as Dispel/Bypass resistance, just like Keldorn's armor immunities. But I'd never relied very much on Dispel Magic, or made much use of the Inquisitor's super-powered Dispel Magic, so I'd gotten the impression that only Breach and time could bring down weapon immunity spells.
We got spooked by an early appearance of the Warden, who apparently ventured away from his chamber far enough to cast Finger of Death on our Efreeti--he was just out of our range of sight. He didn't pursue us, though, even though he must have been just a few steps away from the Master of Thralls we were fighting.
We came back later to fight him after resting for a couple days... parties get really lazy when they don't have healers. They don't rest; they take vacations. Evess tanks a Finger of Death and Horrid Wilting spell with SI: Necromancy before the Warden puts her down with a PW: Kill spell. Still, it robs the Warden of his nastiest spells. Horun rushes the Warden with a Vhailor's Helm clone and an Efreeti.
As usual, I've given myself hundreds of darts, arrows, bolts, and bullets, simply so I don't have to buy any. The 339 darts in that picture are Darts +5. I still limit myself to throwing 18 in one day, but having a monstrous stack of them minimizes inventory management.
We return to the main quest and lay siege to Alan Anvil's lair. Eliza almost dies to a Lightning Bolt trap in a narrow hallway.
That is so BG1.
Also, we killed Alan with Dispel Magic.
With little else to do before Spellhold, we headed to Watcher's Keep.
For some reason, the mage and cleric Statues that normally appear on this level... are not here. I enter and exit the place, and run around the map to make sure I've stepped on all necessary triggers, but the only Statues here are the fighters and the thief. The fight is much simpler this way.
The Teleport Fields there are to keep the thief at bay. He backstabbed Zao to death, and I wanted to keep him from doing the same to anybody else.
I'm not sure why the mage statues didn't appear.
I'd do a fresh install of the game, but I'm missing one of the disks. Last time I tried doing that without all of the disks, I couldn't play BG2 again until I bought the game again for the eighth time.
On the second level, we struggled to kill the Guardian of Air, who has an 80% resistance to missile damage, but not any other forms of damage. Doesn't seem fair to Archers, honestly. We killed it with traps instead... traps which deal missile damage.
I decided to have Horun set up the fan on his own, and tough out the crazy electricity damage that the air room throws out every few seconds. It's a credit to the inflexibility of sorcerers that my party has no means of reducing electricity damage without using potions or scrolls. To my dismay, Horun runs into a gang of Kuo-toa in the next room. I don't think I've ever seen Kuo-toa spawn there before. It was always golems, before.
Why are Kuo-toa a problem? Because Kuo-toa Bolts. Stun on a failed save vs. spell. Bypasses magic resistance.
He tried to sneak past them, but Kuo-toa see all. He's doomed, and his equipment lies at their feet. We can't retrieve it without drawing their attention.
We do, however, have some ways of getting around the Kuo-toa and their miserable bolts. We have the Shield of Reflection on Zao, a PFMW spell on Eliza, and Keldorn's armor on Varen. Plus, we have three spare scrolls of Death Spell. I've been stocking up on high-level spells for just this sort of occasion. We need to get rid of those crossbows.
Did you know that Keldorn's armor doesn't stop stun?
I thought it had all the same immunities as Arbane's Sword. Now Varen is doomed, too. But we're still prepared.
Eliza, pre-buffed with PFMW, marches out to cast Death Spell via a scroll. Zao, protected by the Shield of Reflection, stays out in front as a further buffer against the stunning bolts. Milly and Evess, armed with the Tuigan Bow and Minute Meteors, but without any defense against stun, mow down the closest Kuo-toa. Eliza slays two of the Kuo-toa with Death Spell; Milly and Evess clear out another two closer to the party. Varen, of course, is dead.
Missile fire brings down the priest, leaving only the captain and the mage. The captain's attacks are wasted on Zao. The mage's defenses break down under missile pressure, and the captain is alone. We put him down and raise our fallen.
We stroll through the rest of the level without any problem. The last remaining threat is the Chromatic Demon.
The Chromatic Demon has immunity to physical damage and constantly shifting elemental immunities, though he's always vulnerable to poison damage. He also regenerates, just because. It's the worst kind of gimmick enemy: it's immune to one thing, so you hit it with another. It's like strategy, but instead of thinking about stuff, you have rock paper scissors, and instead of guessing what the other player is going to use, you just wait until he shows his hand.
But I don't like rock paper scissors, so instead I just shoot him in the face. With Greater Malison and Called Shot, I have a near-guaranteed failed save on Blindness, despite the Chromatic Demon's base 2 save vs. spell. Note that despite his crazy immunities, the Chromatic Demon has no magic resistance to block GM or Blindness.
Immediately afterward, he fails a save against Feeblemind. His time is done.
Unfortunately, he's stuck in Jolly Green Giant form. He's immune to acid, cold, and fire damage, but vulnerable to electricity damage.
It's another testament to the inflexibility of sorcerers is that my two sorcerers don't have electricity spells. Why is this? This is because there are only two electricity spells that mages can use: Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning. I don't have Lightning Bolt because it's too risky in a no-reload run, and I don't have any divine spellcasters who can cast Protection from Lightning. And I don't have Chain Lightning because I need other spells more.
I do have Usuno's Blade +4, which has the amazing benefit of dealing 0.55 points of electricity damage on average. That's not a typo; it has a 10% chance of 1d10 zappy damage, or less than a single point. Unfortunately, dealing 1 damage per round isn't quite enough for a regenerating Watcher's Keep boss.
For some reason, despite the fact that demons are supposed to be immune to poison, the Chromatic Demon is vulnerable to poison damage, and therefore Cloudkill. Evess uses all but one of our Wand of Cloudkill's six charges, while Eliza casts Slow to slow down the demon's regeneration.
It's not enough, unfortunately. He gets down to Badly Injured and then the clouds dissipate. We leave the area, have Garlena recharge the wand, and then spend nine charges on him. Finally he goes down. But since we never learned Resist Fear and the demons on the next level of Watcher's Keep just ooze fear effects (kind of literally, actually), we decline to go any further than rummaging through Yakman's personal belongings.