Monk
I've been struggling with restartitis a bit lately. That resulted in me deciding to start a monk run, even though I've got cleric/mage and priest of Talos runs active. The change failed to help me take care though. At the lighthouse I attacked the first group of sirines, using a PfM scroll to fend off their opening charm attacks. After being poisoned by an arrow of biting I withdrew and rested before attacking again. Two of the three sirines were duly killed, but when I found the last one it appeared it hadn't used all its charms previously - and I had no other defenses available against that ...
A second attempt a few days later had a similar sort of ending. I attacked Bentan to try and get his PfM scroll and didn't protect myself or run away when he cast charm person at me ...
Cleric/mage
The cleric/mage run referred to above didn't last much longer. It got to the Underdark, but was lost there as a result of me overwriting my save game - the run was reported on the no-reload thread.
Fighter
As an experiment, I decided to do runs with 7 different characters at once - swapping between them at various points during the games. The intention was to reduce the extent to which I got bored with a particular character and started taking more and more risks. The experiment was pretty successful, with 5 of the 7 being successful. The fighter was the first of the 5 to climb the Throne and meant I finally got a success with the first attempt at a particular character. The runs were reported in detail up to the end of SoD, with summary progress after that.
Afterthoughts
Fighters are one of the easier classes to complete the challenge with, at least as long as you're playing a shorty character (for other races you need to be much more careful to boost saving throws or use equipment granting immunities). With the Cloak of Mirroring it's easy to outlast mage buffs before finishing them off, while good HPs and defences see off melee threats. In this run Kangaxx's transformation bugged and I didn't have the Ring of Gaxx. As I don't allow healing potions (or other item-based healing) that was a significant drawback, but even without that ring my dwarven saving throws and slower regeneration allowed a relatively comfortable run.
Fighter/druid
Another of the 7 different characters chosen referred to above was a fighter/druid. This was one of the 2 unsuccessful attempts, when I failed to finish off the druids at the Grove quickly enough and was dominated by a summoned nymph.
Fighter dualling to cleric
Another new character of those 7 was a fighter dualling to cleric. I chose a berserker for the starting character, which made things significantly easier and this one was successful.
Afterthoughts
As clerics need low XP to progress at higher levels, it doesn't make sense to go for an early dual. I went for level 13, which provided some extra APR and higher HPs, in addition to better THAC0 for much of the game. The lack of APR was still an issue, but clerical buffs and the availability of rage largely offset that. Starting with a different fighter would be slightly more of a challenge, but if you're careful clerical buffs can cover nearly all threats and the relatively high levels available for a solo character make it more difficult for opponents to dispel those.
Thief dualling to mage
A random selection produced another new character. I decided to start it off as a shadowdancer, with the intention of dualling at level 13 (to get the maximum backstab multiple). That will probably mean dualling at the end of Jon's dungeon, allowing me to jump a few mage levels immediately there from the bonus experience.
I started cautiously, attempting to avoid any damage for as long as possible. That worked up until the Bandit Camp, where I got caught out when a defending bandit shot down a bandit I had charmed and then shot at me, despite being out of my sight range.
I didn't worry about the odd bit of damage after that, but had a pretty smooth run through BGEE. I was a bit concerned about the palace fight, so charmed the Flaming Fist guards to fight directly for me - as it happened though I managed to stun two dopplegangers with my darts at the start of the fight and won pretty easily. Sarevok got stuck in his own web trap and didn't survive the experience.
As usual, I skipped most of the content in SoD and completed that pretty quickly. I was trying to finish Belhifet off using exploding arrows (which can't hurt him directly, but he does take a bit of blast damage when someone else is targeted), but Caelar got the final hit in.
SoA was also done reasonably quickly with Jon finding it was third time unlucky in his attempts to stop my progress.
I managed to hold things together sufficiently well to complete ToB as well to gain another success at the first attempt with a character.
Afterthoughts
Basic thief abilities with locks and traps made things a bit more convenient, but those are somewhat wasted given that mages can handle those issues well enough by themselves. Starting as a shadowdancer allowed me to repeatedly disappear while in combat and I felt it was appropriate to use that ability a lot for much of the game - so there was a lot of backstabbling going on. However, even dualling relatively late, my stealth skill was not as reliable as would be expcted from a thief so there was a need for care while doing that. In ToB the ability of many opponents to see through invisibility meant I operated much more like a pure mage, with the thief abilities being much less used. I didn't use simulacrum until nearly the end of the game, but the slightly lower level of the mage class due to dualling (level 28 rather than 31) made that spell noticeably less attractive. Overall I think this particular dual makes things harder to complete the game than using a pure class (though, as both thieves and mages are strong classes, progress was still easy enough).
I'd only completed SoA at the time you commented, but have now successfully finished the run. One of the advantages of playing solo is that it is possible to make very quick progress .
Fighter dualling to mage
Starting a new run immediately, a random choice produced another new class. Having just been playing a thief dualled to a mage, I didn't want to dual early and have another mage dominated run. Instead, I decided I should aim to dual at level 21 - the maximum possible if you want to regain fighter abilities. I started off with a kensai, as that seems to be a good fit in principle with a mage. However, the run ended disappointingly early at the Bandit Camp. I had decided to use a potion of fire breath on Venkt there. That's not a standard tactic for me, but I've done it a few times and expected that to kill him. It did kill the other 3 enemies in the tent, but I was concentrating on moving to get those in the fire stream and was slow to realise that Venkt was still going. When I did notice that, I tried to run out of the tent to avoid his horror spell, but was fractionally too far away to make it out. I duly started running around in terror, while Venkt unloaded his spell book on me. I'm not sure if he was out of those or had one LMD left when the last of my 67 HPs ran out ...
Jester
I haven't played a lot over the last few months, but the attempts I have made have been pretty poor. To try and change that, I decided to try a multiple attempt again - where I run a number of characters in parallel. Last time I did this with 7 characters and it felt like rather hard work keeping track of that - but with 5 of the 7 being successful the overall outcome was pretty good. This time I'm trying with 5 characters, to be a bit more manageable. The randomly chosen characters were undead hunter, druid, jester, shaman and priest of tempus. Disappointingly, the first casualty has occurred without even getting through BGEE. The jester was almost at the XP cap when I visited the lighthouse to get the constitution tome. A couple of webs, followed by a couple of skull traps, failed to kill any of the sirines - but all were almost dead when one of them saved and moved out of the web in my direction. I was keen to kill that one quickly, to get the others while they were still stuck. I initially went invisible. However, seeing it only had 6 HPs, I assumed that a wand scorcher would finish it off. However, the combination of low basic damage rolled, its natural 50% resistance and a successful saving throw resulted in only 5 damage to leave it with still 1 HP. I was slow to recognise it was still alive and only targeted it after it had started casting a dire charm. Unfortunately my initiative roll was not great and its charm was already on the way when I dispatched a killing arrow - and neither saving throw, nor half-elven resistance, could prevent a mutual death.
Priest of Tempus
A bit of carelessness on the way to Sarevok cost me the undead hunter. The disappointment of losing 2 characters led to throwing away the druid as well during the fight with Sarevok. A marginal recovery saw the shaman through BGEE before I finished off with this character, to at least keep the concept of a multiple run going for a bit longer.
It's taken over 3 months, but I have finally got around to continuing this run. It didn't take too long to get through SoD and Belhifet duly got his comeuppance.
Restartitis meant another long gap with a further 7 months to complete SoA (I am currently though trying to clear the decks and finish off all my existing runs). Once I did buckle down to this run it didn't actually take very long to see the back of Jon.
Continuing straight on and it only took a further day to deal with Melissan. There was just one near thing during ToB when I got stuck behind one of Sendai's statues while her berserker statue was attacking a drow mage was using true sight to stop me hiding and regenerating HPs. I managed to convert to rat form from the sewer cloak just in time there and the 90% physical resistance slowed down damage enough to allow regeneration to deal with the attacks.
Afterthoughts
I think that's the first time I've ever completed the game with a pure class cleric. Even though I was always confident that could be done, it's nice to get the confirmation. The save or else spells and powerful summons available to clerics mean it's a powerful class for much of the game. However, the relatively poor HLAs, the susceptibility to spell disruption and inability to protect against remove magic make the cleric much weaker in ToB. Passive defences available remain strong though and that eventually proved sufficient.
Invoker
With only the Priest of Tempus still standing from the previous 5, I decided to put that on hold and begin a new multiple run of 5 characters. A cleric/ranger was the first to complete BGEE before an invoker became the latest new class to join the fray. That was nearly very short-lived when I was lucky to survive a skeleton archer ambush on the first area transition, but I have now managed to go past Sarevok with this one as well. As an invoker it seemed appropriate to make heavy use of chromatic orb for most of the run to date. That's so much less effective than magic missile against Sarevok though that I went for the latter to deal with him.
It's 7 months since this run started and I'm finally starting to work through all my current games. Two of the games in this challenge have been successfully completed so far, so this one would potentially be 3 in a row. Progress through SoD was no problem, except that the game hung in the cut scene where Skie dies and I had to refight the combat with Belhifet. That was duly done, with Caelar doing most of the damage, though I got the killing shot.
A few days have sufficed to see the back of SoA as well. I'd realised quickly that I forgot to take the pantaloons out of my bag of holding in SoD, so they had not transferred. With a different character that could be a major problem, but it shouldn't be much of an issue for this one. The only nasty moment in the run was when I was PW:stunned in the Guarded Compound. However, by that stage all the mage's friends were dead and he didn't seem to have any nasty spells left.
A day later and the Throne of Bhaal was conquered. During ToB I was again stunned - this time by a demon knight accompanying the hive mother in Sendai's enclave. That was the only enemy that could see me though and I'd summoned a planetar just before being stunned which managed to kill the demon. There were a couple of glitches in the fight with Mel which meant the infinite spells routine I was doing with spell trap didn't always work and I only just had enough resources in the form of the odd spare scroll to finish her off.
Afterthoughts
The loss of enchantment spells for the invoker isn't really much of a loss, so the benefit of the extra spell per level means it's probably slightly easier to make progress with that than a true class mage. The restriction to human does mean saving throws are never very good, so either a lot of care or a lot of buffing is needed to stay safe. That's not something I'm great at, but I just about managed it. Concentration was helped by the incentive of completing 3 in a row in this challenge and I'll be seeing if I can make it 4 with a multi-class cleric/ranger next.
Shaman (continued from here)
The cleric/ranger and invoker had already safely got through BGEE and things seemed to be going well with the shaman up to entering the Cloakwood Mine. Hareishan spotted me on the way down and, after killing a few guards that chased me as I retreated, I went back to check out where she was. I saw her hiding behind a door frame and drew back immediately. It wasn't clear if she'd noticed me or not and, as she was hidden I couldn't tell if she was casting (I never have the sound on when playing). I had in mind that she might cast horror or confusion and was prepared to use a potion of magic blocking if necessary. Unfortunately she used a lightning bolt and the narrow corridor meant the bouncing bolt proved fatal before my next pause took effect .
Three months later I used an odd moment to start a 63rd run. I wasn't really concentrating though and, at the Red Wizard area, ran into a web trap while in the sight of a giant spider ...
Starting again, at least I've managed to get past Sarevok this time. I was aiming to have nymphs deal with him and, after managing to doom him at the 3rd attempt, one of them gained success with a hold person.
Luck (or intelligence) ran out in SoD though. At Boareskyr Bridge I'd killed the mage, which should have ended any danger there. There were still 4 or 5 guards to finish off, though all but one of those had been held by nymphs. To do that quickly I sent in a Spirit Fire and, though that had been targeted a long way from the barrels, it appears to have still been too close ...
Another 4 months and it was time for a 65th run. I've been relatively careful in that so far and made it through BGEE. I was trying to hold Sarevok with some nymphs, but that seemed unlikely with only 2 of those left and out of hold monster spells. However, as one nymph died, the other successfully dominated him, allowing me the time to cast doom on him - and a nymph took the opportunity to get a successful hold person.
It didn't take long to get through SoD and there were no particular difficulties with that this time. I did make things rather harder against Belhifet by forgetting to forge bullets of darkness, but Champion's Strength scrolls still allowed me to do plenty of damage with a non-proficient +3 staff - though Caelar got the glory of the kill this time.
I made reasonably quick progress through SoA, completing that in about 3 days. Generally that was pretty safe, though there was at least one occasion when I forgot to protect against domination when first facing vampires - fortunately the 15% chance of saving throw failure there didn't kick in.
A depressing finish to the run saw me fail against the Ravager in the last combat before heading for the Throne. That should have been a straightforward battle, running round using missiles against the Ravager. However, I got stuck relatively early on against some impassable terrain and was surrounded by bone blades before I could escape. The sewer cloak rat form allowed me to survive quite a while and I killed two of the bone blades during that, but was unable to make enough of a hole to escape. Once transformed back into human shape the combination of bone blade and Ravager attacks was quickly too much for me.
Archer
I decided to try another one-day challenge with one of the relatively few classes not yet used. The archer was getting on reasonably well having completed most of the chapter 2 & 3 encounters in SoA in less than 10 hours. However, a bit of carelessness saw me switch from dagger to crossbow when facing vampires in the Windspear Hills dungeon and I was duly dominated. The run was being described on the no-reload thread.
Skald
I've got a couple of runs outstanding in Amn, but fancied starting something from the beginning and a random selection threw up a skald. I had a starting save for that already and my spreadsheet record showed I had had one attempt with that 7 months ago. However, it appears I didn't do a summary write-up of that and I've no idea how that run ended ...
A second attempt is underway and has just completed BGEE. It wasn't a particularly clean run, but I don't think I was ever in real danger. Malison helped get Sarevok stuck in a web in the final battle to allow him to be finished off a bit quicker than he would have been otherwise.
Well that run came to an inglorious end. In the SoD version of Baldur's Gate I was preparing to set out to find some real action when I decided to steal the treasure in the palace basement - which is something I don't normally do. I used a knock spell to open the door to the treasure room and another to open the chest - only to discover that the door had relocked behind me. Only just before that I had sold 'unneeded' spells - including a knock scroll - and had no other way to exit the room (and resting of course was not allowed).
A 3rd attempt was part of another random group of 5, with wizard slayer, cleric/mage, swashbuckler and cavalier. The skald unfortunately was the first to fall when he relied on a magic missile to interrupt a sirine charm. Normally, damage to them is pretty reliable about interrupting spells - but not this time .
That loss of the skald was a bit disappointing and, rather than continue with the other 4 runs started, I chose to restart the skald. That made pretty slow progress through BGEE, but has now just finished off Sarevok.
Comments
I've been struggling with restartitis a bit lately. That resulted in me deciding to start a monk run, even though I've got cleric/mage and priest of Talos runs active. The change failed to help me take care though. At the lighthouse I attacked the first group of sirines, using a PfM scroll to fend off their opening charm attacks. After being poisoned by an arrow of biting I withdrew and rested before attacking again. Two of the three sirines were duly killed, but when I found the last one it appeared it hadn't used all its charms previously - and I had no other defenses available against that ...
A second attempt a few days later had a similar sort of ending. I attacked Bentan to try and get his PfM scroll and didn't protect myself or run away when he cast charm person at me ...
The cleric/mage run referred to above didn't last much longer. It got to the Underdark, but was lost there as a result of me overwriting my save game - the run was reported on the no-reload thread.
As an experiment, I decided to do runs with 7 different characters at once - swapping between them at various points during the games. The intention was to reduce the extent to which I got bored with a particular character and started taking more and more risks. The experiment was pretty successful, with 5 of the 7 being successful. The fighter was the first of the 5 to climb the Throne and meant I finally got a success with the first attempt at a particular character. The runs were reported in detail up to the end of SoD, with summary progress after that.
Afterthoughts
Fighters are one of the easier classes to complete the challenge with, at least as long as you're playing a shorty character (for other races you need to be much more careful to boost saving throws or use equipment granting immunities). With the Cloak of Mirroring it's easy to outlast mage buffs before finishing them off, while good HPs and defences see off melee threats. In this run Kangaxx's transformation bugged and I didn't have the Ring of Gaxx. As I don't allow healing potions (or other item-based healing) that was a significant drawback, but even without that ring my dwarven saving throws and slower regeneration allowed a relatively comfortable run.
Another of the 7 different characters chosen referred to above was a fighter/druid. This was one of the 2 unsuccessful attempts, when I failed to finish off the druids at the Grove quickly enough and was dominated by a summoned nymph.
Another new character of those 7 was a fighter dualling to cleric. I chose a berserker for the starting character, which made things significantly easier and this one was successful.
Afterthoughts
As clerics need low XP to progress at higher levels, it doesn't make sense to go for an early dual. I went for level 13, which provided some extra APR and higher HPs, in addition to better THAC0 for much of the game. The lack of APR was still an issue, but clerical buffs and the availability of rage largely offset that. Starting with a different fighter would be slightly more of a challenge, but if you're careful clerical buffs can cover nearly all threats and the relatively high levels available for a solo character make it more difficult for opponents to dispel those.
A random selection produced another new character. I decided to start it off as a shadowdancer, with the intention of dualling at level 13 (to get the maximum backstab multiple). That will probably mean dualling at the end of Jon's dungeon, allowing me to jump a few mage levels immediately there from the bonus experience.
I started cautiously, attempting to avoid any damage for as long as possible. That worked up until the Bandit Camp, where I got caught out when a defending bandit shot down a bandit I had charmed and then shot at me, despite being out of my sight range.
Basic thief abilities with locks and traps made things a bit more convenient, but those are somewhat wasted given that mages can handle those issues well enough by themselves. Starting as a shadowdancer allowed me to repeatedly disappear while in combat and I felt it was appropriate to use that ability a lot for much of the game - so there was a lot of backstabbling going on. However, even dualling relatively late, my stealth skill was not as reliable as would be expcted from a thief so there was a need for care while doing that. In ToB the ability of many opponents to see through invisibility meant I operated much more like a pure mage, with the thief abilities being much less used. I didn't use simulacrum until nearly the end of the game, but the slightly lower level of the mage class due to dualling (level 28 rather than 31) made that spell noticeably less attractive. Overall I think this particular dual makes things harder to complete the game than using a pure class (though, as both thieves and mages are strong classes, progress was still easy enough).
Starting a new run immediately, a random choice produced another new class. Having just been playing a thief dualled to a mage, I didn't want to dual early and have another mage dominated run. Instead, I decided I should aim to dual at level 21 - the maximum possible if you want to regain fighter abilities. I started off with a kensai, as that seems to be a good fit in principle with a mage. However, the run ended disappointingly early at the Bandit Camp. I had decided to use a potion of fire breath on Venkt there. That's not a standard tactic for me, but I've done it a few times and expected that to kill him. It did kill the other 3 enemies in the tent, but I was concentrating on moving to get those in the fire stream and was slow to realise that Venkt was still going. When I did notice that, I tried to run out of the tent to avoid his horror spell, but was fractionally too far away to make it out. I duly started running around in terror, while Venkt unloaded his spell book on me. I'm not sure if he was out of those or had one LMD left when the last of my 67 HPs ran out ...
I haven't played a lot over the last few months, but the attempts I have made have been pretty poor. To try and change that, I decided to try a multiple attempt again - where I run a number of characters in parallel. Last time I did this with 7 characters and it felt like rather hard work keeping track of that - but with 5 of the 7 being successful the overall outcome was pretty good. This time I'm trying with 5 characters, to be a bit more manageable. The randomly chosen characters were undead hunter, druid, jester, shaman and priest of tempus. Disappointingly, the first casualty has occurred without even getting through BGEE. The jester was almost at the XP cap when I visited the lighthouse to get the constitution tome. A couple of webs, followed by a couple of skull traps, failed to kill any of the sirines - but all were almost dead when one of them saved and moved out of the web in my direction. I was keen to kill that one quickly, to get the others while they were still stuck. I initially went invisible. However, seeing it only had 6 HPs, I assumed that a wand scorcher would finish it off. However, the combination of low basic damage rolled, its natural 50% resistance and a successful saving throw resulted in only 5 damage to leave it with still 1 HP. I was slow to recognise it was still alive and only targeted it after it had started casting a dire charm. Unfortunately my initiative roll was not great and its charm was already on the way when I dispatched a killing arrow - and neither saving throw, nor half-elven resistance, could prevent a mutual death.
A bit of carelessness on the way to Sarevok cost me the undead hunter. The disappointment of losing 2 characters led to throwing away the druid as well during the fight with Sarevok. A marginal recovery saw the shaman through BGEE before I finished off with this character, to at least keep the concept of a multiple run going for a bit longer.
I think that's the first time I've ever completed the game with a pure class cleric. Even though I was always confident that could be done, it's nice to get the confirmation. The save or else spells and powerful summons available to clerics mean it's a powerful class for much of the game. However, the relatively poor HLAs, the susceptibility to spell disruption and inability to protect against remove magic make the cleric much weaker in ToB. Passive defences available remain strong though and that eventually proved sufficient.
With only the Priest of Tempus still standing from the previous 5, I decided to put that on hold and begin a new multiple run of 5 characters. A cleric/ranger was the first to complete BGEE before an invoker became the latest new class to join the fray. That was nearly very short-lived when I was lucky to survive a skeleton archer ambush on the first area transition, but I have now managed to go past Sarevok with this one as well. As an invoker it seemed appropriate to make heavy use of chromatic orb for most of the run to date. That's so much less effective than magic missile against Sarevok though that I went for the latter to deal with him.
The loss of enchantment spells for the invoker isn't really much of a loss, so the benefit of the extra spell per level means it's probably slightly easier to make progress with that than a true class mage. The restriction to human does mean saving throws are never very good, so either a lot of care or a lot of buffing is needed to stay safe. That's not something I'm great at, but I just about managed it. Concentration was helped by the incentive of completing 3 in a row in this challenge and I'll be seeing if I can make it 4 with a multi-class cleric/ranger next.
The cleric/ranger and invoker had already safely got through BGEE and things seemed to be going well with the shaman up to entering the Cloakwood Mine. Hareishan spotted me on the way down and, after killing a few guards that chased me as I retreated, I went back to check out where she was. I saw her hiding behind a door frame and drew back immediately. It wasn't clear if she'd noticed me or not and, as she was hidden I couldn't tell if she was casting (I never have the sound on when playing). I had in mind that she might cast horror or confusion and was prepared to use a potion of magic blocking if necessary. Unfortunately she used a lightning bolt and the narrow corridor meant the bouncing bolt proved fatal before my next pause took effect
Three months later I used an odd moment to start a 63rd run. I wasn't really concentrating though and, at the Red Wizard area, ran into a web trap while in the sight of a giant spider ...
Starting again, at least I've managed to get past Sarevok this time. I was aiming to have nymphs deal with him and, after managing to doom him at the 3rd attempt, one of them gained success with a hold person.
Another 4 months and it was time for a 65th run. I've been relatively careful in that so far and made it through BGEE. I was trying to hold Sarevok with some nymphs, but that seemed unlikely with only 2 of those left and out of hold monster spells. However, as one nymph died, the other successfully dominated him, allowing me the time to cast doom on him - and a nymph took the opportunity to get a successful hold person.
I decided to try another one-day challenge with one of the relatively few classes not yet used. The archer was getting on reasonably well having completed most of the chapter 2 & 3 encounters in SoA in less than 10 hours. However, a bit of carelessness saw me switch from dagger to crossbow when facing vampires in the Windspear Hills dungeon and I was duly dominated. The run was being described on the no-reload thread.
I've got a couple of runs outstanding in Amn, but fancied starting something from the beginning and a random selection threw up a skald. I had a starting save for that already and my spreadsheet record showed I had had one attempt with that 7 months ago. However, it appears I didn't do a summary write-up of that and I've no idea how that run ended ...
A second attempt is underway and has just completed BGEE. It wasn't a particularly clean run, but I don't think I was ever in real danger. Malison helped get Sarevok stuck in a web in the final battle to allow him to be finished off a bit quicker than he would have been otherwise.
A 3rd attempt was part of another random group of 5, with wizard slayer, cleric/mage, swashbuckler and cavalier. The skald unfortunately was the first to fall when he relied on a magic missile to interrupt a sirine charm. Normally, damage to them is pretty reliable about interrupting spells - but not this time
That loss of the skald was a bit disappointing and, rather than continue with the other 4 runs started, I chose to restart the skald. That made pretty slow progress through BGEE, but has now just finished off Sarevok.