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"Maybe this time" [NO-RELOAD THREAD]: "The Tale of TEN THOUSAND Trials"

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  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    @Bubb raise dead costs at temples depend on the level of your character. You'll find it won't be quite so cheap if you are unfortunate enough to suffer further casualties a bit later in your run :D.
    BubbCrevsDaaklolien
  • Wise_GrimwaldWise_Grimwald Member Posts: 3,837
    edited July 2018
    Bubb said:



    I was expecting the raise dead price so be in the thousands like Baldur's Gate II, but apparently the prices are adjusted for the early game. I managed to get the 400 gold I needed by selling some gems and raised my party members in the Nashkel temple. The run is back on track, and I'll make sure to be more careful moving forward...

    The price for raising dead increases with level, so don't expect it to remain so cheap!!

    @StummvonBordwehr Thanks for the congratulations. :)
    StummvonBordwehrRVNSBubblolien
  • RVNSRVNS Member Posts: 285
    @Bubb Another cheap source of safe gold is the ring in the tree by the entrance of the FAI. I believe you can sell it for upwards of roughly 2000 gold which should cover your expenses I would think.
    semiticgoddessCrevsDaakBubblolien
  • Corey_RussellCorey_Russell Member Posts: 995
    I sell the ring that RVNS is talking about all the time, unless my own character is a mage, or maybe if I have a mage in the party early, which usually I don't.
    RVNS
  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    In vanilla bg, that ring was not canon, right?
  • Corey_RussellCorey_Russell Member Posts: 995
    If your party has a high charisma character (or a mage who can use friends and you actually use the friends spell to get 20 CHA) and high reputation, it's not hard in BG 1 to get high gold by the end of the game. I have lots of games that by chapter 7 I have 100,000 gold, and that's without looting the TotSC areas. It's my evil parties I have big issues with gold. For example, my good parties can get the robe of the good arch magic for about 18,000 gold - my evil parties, about 30,000!
    StummvonBordwehrRVNSCrevsDaak
  • RaduzielRaduziel Member Posts: 4,714
    @Wise_Grimwald never heard of this rotten talk. Are you sure this is not from a mod?
    RVNS
  • RVNSRVNS Member Posts: 285
    @semiticgod I have not really played morrowind more than an hour or so at a friends house long ago. Looks like a blast though.
  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    Enuhal said:

    @Iroumen The Ring of Wizardry next to the FAI was in fact part of vanilla BG1, but it was much harder to get - the reason being that the option to highlight lootable objects via tab didn't exist yet, so items such as these were hidden - if you didn't know the exact pixel you had to click (you could find the info about the exact position online and get there via the x and y axes of the map), it was very hard to actually pick them up, and if you never had heard of these treasures, there was almost no way you would ever find them.

    Actually in the unpatched version the ring is simply not there. Maybe it was introduced in TotSC but of that I am unsure.
    CrevsDaakRVNSEnuhalsemiticgoddess
  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    I mostly ignore the random items on the road. The diamond, the ring of Princes, the ring of wizardry, the wand of frost. Somehow it loses the challenge.

    /musing
    CrevsDaak
  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    Nice!!!
  • Wise_GrimwaldWise_Grimwald Member Posts: 3,837
    Raduziel said:

    @Wise_Grimwald never heard of this rotten talk. Are you sure this is not from a mod?

    It could well be. It might have been in Tutu.
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903

    Frost: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul

    Part 1

    With Morrowind complete, we now proceed to Oblivion! This is not a standard Oblivion install, however--I have installed Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, a massive mega-mod to enhance gameplay and make things more difficult, more intense, and more complex. Skills improve slower, but combat is faster and more deadly.

    Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, also known as OOO, completely removes the leveling problem. In the unmodded game, the strength of all enemies was almost entirely dependent on the player's level. The level scaling was so extreme that you could easily beat the entire game at level 2--in fact, that was the easiest way to play the game, because enemies gained more from your leveling than you did! A level 2 character will never have to deal with anything stronger than a Dremora Caitiff; a level 25 character will have to fight gigantic hulking Xivilai with Daedric Warhammers around every corner.

    In OOO, enemies are mostly unleveled. A low-level character might be able to do some early-game quests, but late-game quests will be far too dangerous without high levels.

    OOO also gives enemies some interesting new tactics, some of which are downright mean. Lots of critters have potions, enemy vampires will use invisibility spells, and some unique enemies will even use Light spells and low-magnitude Chameleon spells just to screw with the player's vision--which is actually pretty unfair, but very clever and cool.

    Finally, OOO removes a fair number of exploits. Custom Drain Health spells can no longer be made, for one thing, and lots of numbers, from prices to spell cost to skill progression, have been rebalanced.

    Much of the basic system is very similar to Morrowind: everything revolves around skills. Train skills like Blade and you gain levels; gain levels and you increase your attributes like Strength. As always, the best classes are custom classes.


    Luck is the hardest attribute to increase because no skills are attached to it. During a level-up, you can increase any 3 of your attributes from +1 to +5 depending on skill progression, but Luck can only get a +1 bonus. Choosing Luck as a class attribute, however, gives us +5 at level 1, which amounts to a +2 bonus to almost every skill (Luck invisibly modifies all skill levels). Endurance is our other class attribute; having high Endurance at lower levels means you get more Health over the course of the game, compared to starting with low Endurance and increasing it over time.

    This is a fairly unusual class. Using Heavy Armor means we move slower, which synergizes better with a melee skill like Blade or Blunt instead of Marksman, which governs our skill with bows.

    But this is going to be a very unusual run. I'm going to use a special exploit of my own devising that will do crazy things to gameplay. All I need is Alchemy, Restoration, and Marksman; the other skills are just for support.

    Our birthsign is the Atronach, a classic powergaming option that I believe is actually rather subpar--even in OOO, where the thing is stronger than in vanilla.


    Not being able to regenerate magicka is a huge handicap, both in terms of power and convenience. But it's a perfect fit for my special trick (and no, it's not Telekinesis and Spell Absorption).

    Frost is a Breton, just like in Morrowind. But Bretons are much, much better in Oblivion than in Morrowind. In Oblivion, their 50% Resist Magicka blocks half of all spells, even elemental damage spells and paralysis. A single spell can change the entire course of a battle, so 50% Resist Magicka is a huge buffer against a fatal shift in the tide. The Atronach birthsign also absorbs half of all spells, but it's not a 50% absorption of each spell--it's a 50% chance of absorbing all of a single spell, which isn't nearly as reliable.

    Bretons also get some nice bonuses to magic skills, an extra 50 Magicka, and Dragon Skin, a greater power that can be used once per day to grant +50 Shield for 60 seconds.

    Shield works differently in Oblivion. In Morrowind, it worked on thresholds, so you needed your armor to be fairly high for it to make a difference at all against heavy hitters. In Oblivion, it's a flat percentage damage reduction capped at 85%, which means every point of Shield is more valuable than the one before it; the benefit of higher Shield values is exponential. Having 50% for 60 seconds will let us survive pressure that would otherwise obliterate a low-Health character like Frost.

    Aside from a brief scare in the starting dungeon where an assassin almost kills us, nothing in the prologue is very exciting. It's just fighting rats and goblins.

    First order of business is leveling up our Alchemy. We don't need it to be really high, and we won't be relying heavily on Alchemy in general in this run, but it will help set up our exploit. Once we buy a very important first spell...


    ...we get to work on collecting ingredients. Every single character I've ever created in Oblivion has had Alchemy as a class skill, so I have lots of experience in grinding Alchemy quickly.

    But I also am rather tired of doing the inventory game, so we're going to use the scroll duplication glitch. The glitch is hideously overpowered for all kinds of reasons, but for this run, we're only going to use it on ingredients to speed up our early game ingredient gathering and Alchemy grinding. All you need is two scrolls of the same type. I use two pairs of scroll stacks to multiply each other, then use the bigger scroll stack to duplicate a bunch of blackberries.


    Unfortunately, the blackberries quickly roll away...


    ...so I choose something easier to see and less likely to run away.

    Gentlemen, behold... CORN!


    After making a lot of corn-and-blackberry-juice potions (yum?), I duplicate a whole bunch of onions to keep fueling our Alchemy grinding. The process earns us lots of gold and a whole new level just from the Alchemy skill gains.




    Notice that we get +5 Intelligence on this level. Intelligence doesn't make for stronger potions in Oblivion, so "super potions" are no longer possible, but it does give us extra Magicka, which is important for an Atronach character who can't regenerate Magicka on her own.

    Now that we have some resources built up, it's time to visit Frostcrag Spire out in the mountains, a DLC-introduced area for mages (though most of the features must be bought at very high prices). OOO removes fast-traveling for areas you haven't visited, even for major towns, but Frostcrag Spire is still available for fast-travel. On the way up to the tower, I admire Oblivion's beautiful textures.


    Apparently the quality of the game's textures got set pretty low for my computer, but whatever. Once I visit the place, I fast-travel back to the Imperial City to buy some furnishings for Frost's new home.

    Unfortunately, OOO has increased the price of all the furnishings. The Magetallow Candles, which I need to make custom spells (unless I'm willing to complete the many, many "recommendation" quests in the Mages Guild to get access to spellmaking altars), cost over 3,000 gold, where they only cost 1,000 in vanilla.

    The solution? I duplicate cheese and onions and make potions until we can afford the candles.



    There's only one thing left we need to duplicate--or at least, one thing that we can duplicate to avoid having to collect them normally: wisp mushrooms, Morning Glory root pulp, and some Restore Health ingredients. We need Damage Willpower potions.


    No, not poisons. Potions. We need to damage Frost's Willpower. Willpower increases magicka regeneration, but since Frost is an Atronach character and can't regenerate magicka no matter how high her Willpower is, Willpower is of little use to us. Frost drinks the potions until her Willpower is at zero.

    With the Magetallow Candles in hand, it's time to head out to Frostcrag Spire and set up our own personal spellmaking altar. On the way, however, I run into a Scamp.


    For a moment, I'm confused. What is a Scamp doing way out here? Daedric critters shouldn't be showing up in the wilderness before we've even started the main quest.

    Then a Conjurer appears out of nowhere--the Scamp is his summons! Completely unprepared for a fight, I summon a skeleton and hack away at the Conjurer, but with Frost's low Fatigue thanks to her zero Willpower, she's quickly exhausted, and every hit does practically no damage.


    We manage to bring down the Conjurer with enough pressure, but it was an alarming episode. I didn't realize there was any chance of being attacked in this area.

    Now we need to visit some of the major towns of Cyrodiil. We need to join the Mages Guild and learn some new spells if we are going to deal with any more unpleasant surprises. But since we can't fast-travel to towns we haven't visited in OOO, we have to hoof it the whole way.

    But hoofing it is dangerous. The roads are plagued by bandits and wild animals. I get chased by a wolf for quite some time, struggling to kill it with long-range Flare spells as I run away. Wolves are fast, but their attack animations have huge windup and lag, which means you can just dodge all of their attacks if you know the timing.


    But the combat music is still playing, which tells me there's still a monster around. I scan my surroundings and find another wolf... but the second wolf is already dead.


    Slain by a troll, the big, furry green gorilla already chasing after me.

    Trolls are incredibly fast, and they are extremely dangerous in melee combat. I can't possibly duke it out with a troll as a level 3 character with barely any gear, nor can I outrun the thing. I have to hurry backward, firing as many Flare spells as I can get off the ground before it finally closes the distance. Trolls are vulnerable to fire, and the Flare spell is buffed in OOO, so we just barely burn down the troll before it catches up and tears us apart.


    Another disturbing sign of the dangers of OOO. The wilderness is not a safe place, and the further you get from civilization, the more dangerous the enemies are.

    We brew some Restore Magicka potions to make sure we're ready for the next fight. We don't have to travel long before we get accosted by bandits on the way from Bravil to Leyawiin. We have two archers to deal with, and archers are much scarier in OOO, as their arrows deal more damage and move much faster. In vanilla, you could dodge arrows based on an audio cue, but in OOO, the reaction window is tiny. We summon a skeleton to buy some time.


    Our magicka is low and it's hard to aim Flare spells when the archers keep sidestepping. It takes five arrows and most our magicka as well as a potion just to outlast the enemy.



    It's not much longer before we run into yet another enemy: a Will o' Wisp.


    But Will o' Wisps are highly evasive, highly dangerous critters that I'm not even sure I have the tools to harm. I bolt rather than risk a confrontation with a high-end mythic creature.

    Why are we going to Leyawiin first of all places? Well, there's one very special item from one very special quest that we're going to be using for the rest of the game:

    The Staff of the Everscamp. Currently it belongs to a Leyawiin native who has been looking for someone to take the cursed staff off her hands.


    It's possible for us to get rid of the staff by taking it to a special cave, but we don't want to do that. We want to keep it.

    The Staff of the Everscamp has two properties. First, it reduces your Speed attribute by 20, slowing down your movement rate by a considerable amount. Second, it creates four infinitely re-spawning Everscamps around you. They are very weak, don't fight for you unless you charm them, and constantly get in the way in tight spaces--not to mention the fact that they're not very pleasant-looking or sounding critters. But we want to use them for our special exploit.

    They're actually useful even in a normal run. You can train combat skills by attacking them, and while they'll fight back at first, they die quickly and the re-spawned scamps aren't hostile.



    One of the best things about the Everscamps is that it gives you four nearby targets at all times. By creating a custom spell, we can get a very powerful and very cheap healing spell by sucking up all four scamps' Health at once. All we have to do is give the spell a slight area effect.


    I still need to get my hands on a Command Creature spell before I can create a custom one to make the scamps into temporary allies, which means that, in the meantime, I have to rely entirely on my summoned skeleton to deal with enemies. OOO Imps are very worrisome, as they have much stronger spells than in vanilla as well as much more Health.


    I lose 10 arrows before the imp goes down.

    Only when I reach Chorrol can I find a Command Creature spell, as Athragar and Alberic Little both have some really excellent spells for sale. Finally, I get the spell I need to turn the Everscamps into allies.


    But that's not our special exploit.

    Our special exploit is much, much more dramatic.
    Grond0StummvonBordwehrCrevsDaakAerakar
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305

    I tried the Kings Bounty games but it doesn't really work because there are too many situations where you can't tell the enemy army size until you've already engaged and then its too late.

    But one of the secrets to no reload is to find out that sort of information and try again :p. That can take a long while of course - I've had 273 attempts so far at a no-reload challenge with Kings Bounty: the Legend. Admittedly I'm using very severe rules (only allowing the use of undead creatures and not allowing any losses from my army in combat). I've never completed that game in any form and have only made it about 2/3 of the way through with this challenge, so I'm sure there's still plenty more to learn in the coming years!
    Jabberwock
  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    If I were to go noreload on other games I would for sure go with the Alice series. American Mcgee's Alice and Alice: Madness Returns are both very enjoyable and doable in one go.

    Overlord is also quite possible with the correct minion mixes.

    For the rest, most old games did not age well.
    Grond0RVNS
  • RVNSRVNS Member Posts: 285
    I managed to get a little done yesterday. Saved Branwen and made my rounds in the carnival.
    Went to the gnoll stronghold for the easy magic items hoping to get something that I needed. Found some studded leather +1 and a club +1. I did however pull the large shield +1 which was surely a boon.

    I had to run back to town to get more sling bullets to finish off the last little bit of the gnoll stronghold and that was where I called it for the night.
    StummvonBordwehrCrevsDaakEnuhalMantis37
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