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

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  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @BelgarathMTH: Don't pay a second thought to fighting enemies group-by-group. IWD was balanced assuming you didn't fight all the enemies of a given area at once. It's how the game was meant to be played.

    Not that I'd even care if it wasn't.
    BelgarathMTHJuliusBorisovdok0zhivagololien
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    This is how I feel now. Part I'm referring to specifically starts at 2:13.
    GoturalJuliusBorisovBlackravenlolien
  • JuliusBorisovJuliusBorisov Member, Administrator, Moderator, Developer Posts: 22,714
    @BelgarathMTH I've just asked Cameron Tofer on twitch if he thinks Minsc is more a ranger or a berzerker. He said Minsc is a ranger, and he has an animal companion. So you chose right :)
    BelgarathMTHlolien
  • PteranPteran Member Posts: 388
    Been a bit busy with work and wedding plans, but I'm planning to continue my IWD adventures tonight.

    Also nice work finding that bug! It would seem none of the beta testers like Neera lol.
    BelgarathMTHBlackravenlolien
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    @Pteran, I just found another bug where I cannot scroll down in my kit descriptions, meaning I cannot access the information past the first few lines. This is not looking good, and is kind of "killing my buzz". Sigh. I guess I'll just need to be patient. The skeleton of this upgrade is amazing; I just need to give Beamdog time to flesh it out and polish it. I am holding to faith that we will eventually have a great product here.
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @BelgarathMTH: This sounds like an excellent excuse to get cracking on your awesome IWD run!
    PteranBelgarathMTHJuliusBorisovlolien
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    edited March 2016
    @semiticgod , LOL. Maybe in a while. I'm not done pressing forward in BG:EE 2.0. If I encounter more game breaking bugs, or more just plain irritating bugs, (such as not being able to access full kit information), I may decide to come back to my IWD run and wait for some patches. :)

    EDIT: Then again, maybe I should finish IWD before Beamdog forces an "upgrade" to the buggy 2.0.62 in IWD! I sure hope they get 2.0.* debugged before they mess up the almost perfectly running IWD:EE 1.3 with a forced patch!
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    @Pteran , That's a great report. I like your writing style. What difficulty setting are you using? (I didn't find that info in your starting post.) Is Rogue Rebalancing the only mod?
    JuliusBorisovGoturallolien
  • YgramulYgramul Member Posts: 1,059
    Welcome back, @Blackraven

    Good to hear RL permitted a promising return yet. (Mine binds far to heavily to make much progress these days.)

    Looking forward to Eirian's adventtures.

    (... and something tells me we will see many travel to Dragonspear soon.)
    BlackravenJuliusBorisovlolien
  • PteranPteran Member Posts: 388
    @Blackraven your party sounds like a lot of fun to play! I especially enjoyed reading your views on specialist mages. While it may not always be the most functional option, I agree that specialists should focus mainly on their own school of magic. I'd wager that most of us end up playing them as regular mages with an extra spell slot. I'm excited to read more about your adventures!
    BlackravenJuliusBorisovGozeta
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    edited April 2016
    Okay, my first run of 2.0 is actually going quite well now, so I've decided to reopen it as a no-reload, because I think this thread needs a BG:EE 2.0 no-reload run or two in it.

    This is going to be a tainted no-reload, due to the Charname death against Neera's encounter.

    Here's what I've figured out about that Neera encounter that I've decided to ignore for no-reload status purposes:

    -She doesn't actually go hostile, it's just that her default foot color circle is red, making it easily confused with a hostile foot circle. However, her script has been changed, likely in response to complaints about that Color Spray spell that used to be her opening spell, and now is not.

    -Her new script appears to make her behave completely randomly, either casting a spell, or else running away or wandering about aimlessly as though under a Confusion spell. I doubt that this is intended. But, if her script is bugged, it is probably at the bottom of the devs' priority list at the moment.

    -The red wizard's new Flame Arrow spell may be intended to put Neera's encounter on par with Garrick's and Silke's, as Silke is also 7th level and has a 3rd level Lightning Bolt. If intended, I think this is a huge mistake on the devs' part. Silke's encounter can be avoided easily by simply not talking to Garrick, or by turning his request down. The player must click on Garrick to start the encounter. Neera's encounter, on the other hand, cannot be avoided unless the player knows about it and avoids walking on the north side of Beregost. Also, the red wizard's current script appears to target the Flame Arrow spell at random, meaning that Neera or Charname are likely targets, and instantly killed. That will make few new players and no-reloaders ever use Neera. In fact, on my next no-reload, I intend to tell the red wizards to go ahead and take Neera, please, and good riddance!

    -Further making this encounter enraging for no-reloaders, the cut-scene involved forces the player's carefully positioned party out of position, dragging the entire party into a scatter formation around the wizard and his guards. Since the wizard is now scripted to cast a Flame Arrow randomly at any party member, or Neera, this is the height of unfair stupidity on the part of the devs as far as I'm concerned. Grrr. I call shenanigans on the DM!

    So, now that I've got that bad taste out of my mouth and have ruled that the ending of my no-reload was completely unfair, I am having fun with 2.0 again.

    One nice new feature is that you can use screen shots of the journal in these run threads to give a quick summary of everything you've accomplished, no typing required.




    So, having completed the Nashkel Mines, killed Tranzig, and gotten the information we need to search for Tazok and the bandit camp, we decided to finish helping the peoples of Beregost and Nashkel, as well as clearing Liandrin's spider house, before heading back north to search for the camp.

    We visited the carnival briefly. The encounter with the mage in the carnival tent has been changed. He no longer uses his Power Word: Kill to kill the hostage if you give him reasonable answers. So, you can no longer get the hostage's mage robe unless you are Evil McEvil and deliberately kill her. I applaud that change in scripting.

    Here is our party pose for today. The hit points distributions are coming out quite interestingly for random hit point rolls. Jaheira and Khalid have been lucky. Minsc and I, not so much. Also, Khalid is an awesome fighter for our party. I think all the Khalid-haters are just prejudiced against shy, introverted people who admit when they're scared. ;)



    I am doing the purest possible roleplaying for this no-reload, in that, I don't go wandering off into the wilderness unless I have a quest-given reason to. So, large swaths of wilderness will remain unexplored in this run. I do not enter houses without being invited, I certainly keep Imoen on a short leash and do not permit her to break into locked houses, or rob inn guests. I do nothing that sounds incredibly stupid to do with no good reason, and I do nothing that even smells like Evil. It will be interesting to see what level that puts me at for SoD.

    Next up: Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother's House We Go. What big teeth she has! And oh yes, bandits!
    ElrandirGoturalJuliusBorisovlolien
  • BelgarathMTHBelgarathMTH Member Posts: 5,653
    Brief update on First 2.0 run:

    We've finished the bandit camp. Good ol' Web and Hold Person spells are really useful here.



    So, we are off to the Cloakwood. I forgot to buy potions of Free Action before coming here, so I'll need to try to get Imoen to "disarm" all the spider webs. Here's the Chapter 4 quest log. It didn't see when we sided with the druids against Sashenstar, so it's not perfectly polished yet, but I really like the feature.

    YgramulGoturalJuliusBorisovlolien
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    edited April 2016
    Eirian & Company, first BG1 update

    The party was at the Nashkel Carnival last time I reported on them. From there they traveled to the Nashkel Mines area, where patient and careful kiting saw Archer Gwendolen rewarded with Varscona. To the east the party found a Ring of Fire Resistance, received a scroll of PfMagic, and met Samuel the Deserter whom they brought to Gellana at the FAI. I made sure to travel north from one area to the next (instead of going straight for the FAI), so that Eirian would be protected by a pre-cast Armor spell in case of any ambushes.
    At the FAI entrance I had Feywarden Ifor deal with Tarnesh on his own. Ifor had buffed with Remove Fear to counter Horror and SI:Evocation to neutralize Magic Missiles. (Spell Immunity is the special ability of Divine Remix Feywarden of Corellon priests.) However my habit of not challenging Tarnesh at low levels had made me forget that the wizard casts Sleep as well. Luckily Ifor saved, and stunned his foe with the Stupefier.
    A bit further north Shapeshifter Bleddyn wasn't as fortunate when the Ankheg with Nester's dagger one-shotted him before Eirian put the creature to Sleep.
    Helping Tenya and farmer Brun (corpse picked up by Sanctuaried Ifor) saw Eirian and Gwendolen make their first level-ups.
    The companions headed south again, to the Red Canyons, where they slew a wolf to svae Melicamp. They did not make haste with visiting Thalantyr though. Instead they slew six berserk diggers at an excavation site, after Eirian had put them to Sleep, and they escorted Brage back to Nashkel to redeem himself. At the Carnival the companions bought a suit of Caster's Chain for Dirgesinger Canaid and a scroll of PfPetrification for Gwendolen. A bandit ambush confirmed that Eirian's strategy of traveling with Armor up was a wise one.
    The Basilisks east of Beregost were easy pickings for Gwendolen, and Mutamin posed no threat after Korx held him and Gwendolen poisoned her with an arrow of biting. In nine Sirines, the Archer made more victims in the coastal regions. Swashbuckler Alys de-trapped Alaric's cave, and Ifor looted it under Sanctuary.
    Thalanthyr killed Melicamp and sold the party several spells for Eirian and Canaid to scribe with the help of INT boosters. The Enchantress tested one of her new spells, Enfeeblement, on Karlat, but the Dwarf proved uninhibited by incumbrance in spite of being connected by the spell, because he quaffed a hill giant strength potion. Ifor Held the bounty hunter, so he fell easily after all.
    Bleddyn sacrificed himself a second time, for Shoal. Eirian used a wand to paralyze Droth and gave her Shapeshifter companion the Ogre's Helmet of Defense. This was followed by some shopping (Greenstone Amulet, Cloak) and stealing (Ring of Free Action, courtesy of Canaid) in Ulgoth's Beard.
    In their hunger for more experience and more wealth the company traveled to DUrlag's Tower, where two Battle Horrors were defeated with wands of fire/frost. They also engaged a Doom Guard on one of the terraces. I had a short break here, but long enough for me to do something really stupid: I had Eirian and Canaid mistake Ifor for the Doom Guard. Due to his colors, Ifor has a red circle around him, and his Flaming Fist helmet and plate armor made him look a bit Doom Guardy at first sight. This was the result:
    (@BelgarathMTH, you're not the only one haha.) In the consternation that followed Canaid managed to finish the real Doom Guard but then walked straight into Eirian persistent wand scorcher:
    All this only took me about a minute of gaming...
    As the party were pretty much broke, they had no way to get Ifor and Canaid raised, so they returned to the Red Canyons, where Eirian expended several charges of her wand of fire on Bassilus, disrupting the priest's casting and eventually killing him. The party claimed the bounty on their victim's head and had Keldath raise Ifor and Canaid.
    Back at Durlag's Tower, Gwendolen dealt with three Greater Basilisks and one Lesser, while safe from their gazes thanks to PfPetrifications that Eirian would cast on the Ranger. On the floor inhabited by the Ghost, the party suffered another casualty. Alys had just explored and looted the entire floor except for the corridor that led to the dangerous Ghost, when suddenly a group of Ghasts appeared from a recently explored hallway. This was very unexpected. This wasn't an ambush; the party hadn't rested. Either way one of the Ghast Held Alys, on the stairs just before she could retreat. The others came to her aid but couldn't stop the undead from laying the Swashbuckler down.
    Alys was raised, and the remainder of the upper levels looted. Kirinhale was eschewed. The tome of wisdom went to Ifor as I reckon he will be casting more as a cleric than Bleddyn as a Shapeshifter Druid.
    Dismayed with their lack of resources and progress, the party had Canaid sell and steal back some gear at the Nashkel Carnival, allowing the purchase of Shadow Armor, a Robe of the Neutral Archmagi, the Claw of Kazgaroth (for 18 CON Eirian), some ioun stones, and a Helmet of Charm Protection.
    The companions than cleared the Cloudpeaks without incident and picked up the CHA tome at the Gnoll Stronghold (but did not enter the fortress itself). This brought in a lot more gold, most of which they've just exchanged for the Martial Staff, several scrolls, a Wand of the Heavens, and a magical harp in Ulgoth's Beard.

    The Druid and the rogues are level 6; Eirian, Gwen and Ifor level 5. Progress feels slow, and Eirian hasn't been able to do much yet with her Charms. Canaid's song, with its Curse effect, has so far been useful more for the Thac0 penalty cursed enemies suffer than for its saves penalty. I hope things will pick up for this party at higher levels, when Eirian and Canaid get to cast more spells, and Greater Malison comes into play.

    EDIT:
    PS @Pteran, thanks for your kind words, and congrats on your impending wedding :smiley:
    BTW I wonder how you're going to experience the RR Bounty Hunter. I never use RR for Thieves, only for Bards.
    BelgarathMTHGoturalJuliusBorisovlolien
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