GM greater malison, MMM Melf's minute meteors, that used on webbed characters are automatic hits, the enemy's AC is ignored.
You possibly did not get my idea, that is to create an "island" of staked webs and GM and have all your party moving around that island while the enemy try to reach you using the shorter way, that passes trough the island. So you never get a check for the web and they constantly, at each round, get 2-3 checks, depending on the number of webs, with the GM -4. You move north of the webs, than as the enemy approaches you turn around the webs and go south, he will constantly remain in the webs, never reaching you. Each time he fails a save you pelt him with MMM or other ranged attacks, with a little practice you can keep 2-3 enemies always in the webs. All you need to do is to be aware who is targeted by each enemy and move him accordingly. When the thieves are invisible run in circles around the webs to avoid to be hit and as soon as they reveal themselves failing a backstab (not for your AC, but because you are too fast and get out of range) plan a route that bring him in the web. If well done is a 99% sure tactic, but is not like bombing from the fog of war. You have to create the "web island", lure the enemy into it, move your whole party dynamically to keep him into the webs without entering them yourself, predict and estimate the movements of the enemy in the moments he is invisible. There is tactical challenge that way, and tactical planning, you set conditions where the enemy try to react, but can not, just because you are too fast in a battlefield whose characteristics was created by yourself.
Is not the only possible tactic, but it work well with anything is not immune to web, even with good saves they will fail if constantly inside the webs, trying to reach you.
I will give this a try. It sounds like it would work for the encounter in Durlog's tower. This thief is really fast though and I have already killed him using the brute force method from the fog of war.
this stratagy probably won't work for the Ugalath's Beard ambush and inside the cult building. These areas are small and large parties of enemies accompany the thieves who come at you from two differant directions. Any other options I might have when dealing with those particular battles on this LOB madness?
Ok so I didn't have to go as all-out as you suggested but I loaded up an older save and tried the durlog theif again.
I cast two web spells and watched at the info bar until he failed his save and got webbed. I then cast greater malison and proceeded to shoot him up with arrows from everyone. My party was hasted and I used invisibility purge. to bring him out once he came at me. The wand of paralyzation worked once greater malison took hold and it was over. Arrows of detonation can also be used when he is webbed.
These guys are pretty bad. I am not looking forward to that Ugalath's Beard ambush because two of them come at you from above and below while a party of archers and mages come at you. That one is going to take a bunch of reloads to figure out.
Does Grease spell work? If a battle gets too hard for me, I'll just use my summons to wear them out, then charge when they have no spells potions left, or I'll just change area, sometimes not all enemies change area with you. Another cheese for LOB SCS: some party members get double HP when you left them, save, load, recuit, repeat, and you get infinite HP, tested on my Baeloth, Dorn, Viconia, Coran, Kagain, and you can always use EEkeeper's "Recalculate Stats" to revert their HP to normal value after that.
GM works as AoE instant spell, affects all the enemies that are in the AoE at the moment the spell hits. Every enemy affected by GM has a -4 penalty on all saving throws, that lasts 2 rounds/level of the caster. So An enemy affected by GM has a penalty saving from Grease, Glitterdust and every spell that has a saving throw check.
Another cheese for LOB SCS: some party members get double HP when you left them, save, load, recuit, repeat, and you get infinite HP,
I am not sure if this is cheese or plain cheating. The definition of cheese is something very subjective. But is something that I would not do, like I would not use cheap tactics like bombing from the fog of war. If for me is not possible to beat the game in a fair way, maybe using clever and not conventional combination of spells, items and tactics, and I can win only using tricks that remove the challenge, giving to the NPCs much more HP than the one they are supposed to have, I would instead lower the difficulty and try in a more fair way. That way I can learn more, have more fun, use more creativity. But obviously is just a personal opinion and choice.
islandking, this thread might as well be a place to discuss where you are and give any tips you may have. I think this mode is a bit of a niche so we might as well have as much conversation as possible.
Greater Malison does give a -4 penalty but getting it to affect an enemy is almost impossible sometimes and even with the -4 penalty, magic resistance and being super high level will make some enemies pretty much immune to everything.
I have beaten SCS full install with ascension on insane difficulty many times and I do it by simply starting the fight and out casting and out fighting the enemy because I know all of the faults of the enemy and I know where to get all of the best stuff and where it is best to start each fight and at what level to do it at. It has become easy over the years. LOB makes old tactics pretty much not work and it changes the way the game was intended to be played. Things I would consider cheesy, like falling back to a choke point and riddling the enemy with arrows is now pretty much necessary. Using wands is something I rarely did before SCS and even then I never overused them because I considered it cheesy. This level of difficulty is not natural and requires that you use everything to the max. I will cast 6 fireballs a round over and over and not blink an eye in this mode. I will give arrows of detonation to every bow user in my group and haste them for the most deadly attacks I can push out.
Gorgonzola, I appreciate the feed back and I mean no personal offense but I don't see how your strategy above is any less cheesy than bombing from the fog of war. It is exploiting the dumb AI that will endlessly run in multiple web spells that it lets you cast on it without retaliation. Your strategy is creative but it requires that the enemy fail it's saving throws multiple times which the enemy just won't do in LOB mode. Have you actually played LOB with SCS full install? Running in circles around a web spell hoping for an enemy to fail it's saving throw is just another form of kite and you will see that killing a single thief with one person will take so long that your web spells will run out and the infinite haste will allow the thief to bust you to pieces with even the tiniest of pauses. Also this method can't be used on any of the encounters with high level SCS thieves other than the one in Durlog's tower and it requires that you kill all of the other guardians first or lure the thief away from the battle in an area that is large enough to pull this off. I could argue that all of that is cheezy and not the way the original game was intended to be played.
One spell that I would recommend to anyone playing this mode is the spell "slow" many spells are no longer useful but this one still does the trick and it will slow an entire army of ghouls. I am just about to take on the chess board in Durlog's tower. I am thinking about using potions and spells of invisibility on my entire party to sneak up to the king and focus all damage on him in hopes that I can take him out before any of my characters die. Here is to hoping.
Another thing that has worked for me. The spell "hold person" seems to work on the invisible stalkers. If you are worried about being targeted you can have a thief go invisible and stand in the area of the invisible stalker so that you can see what is going on and then lead some summons into the area to bring it out of hiding. You could have Jahiera summon a woodland creature which can cast the hold spell for you without exposing anyone from your group. Once held, you can bring your team in to perform the beat down.
I also gave Minsc the boots of speed and had him lead the skeletons out of their room and into the fireball pit on the second to last level of Durlogs tower. You won't get XP for this but you will get the warm fuzzy feeling of clearing out the area of all enemies and you will gain 100 fire arrows, 80 acid arrows, 5 arrows of dispelling and a couple hundred gold worth of bows and halberds.
I smashed the chess board and didn't lose any of my party members. Everyone on my team is now max level. I have uncovered the fog of war on all maps and defeated everything including the doomsayer and the wolf of ulcaster. I went back and killed the giants in the treasure cave and have nothing left other than the cultist battles and the warewolf island. Then I can finally continue on to SOD.
So far everything is still possible to overcome that I have encountered as long as you hold off on some fights until later on and you use the environment intelligently. raising a triple class in a six person party made up of cannon game characters without any cheating or raising the XP cap is still doable.
BTW islandking, I have never had the double hitpoint bug that you speak of.
@the_sextein Before seeing your posts, I paid little attention to enemy thieves, mainly because I haven't encountered them much, I remember battling them after I cleared Nashkel Mines in a travel random encounter (I didn't know SCS changed bounty hunters to random encounters, no wonder I never found that group waiting me outside the Mine exit, which is a pleasant surprise really :-D), but I lost to them, and never encountered them again after reloading, still exploring the vast wild land right now, leaving Cloakwood Mine intact. I haven’t played BG for a long time, and never played SOD yet, so I’m missing lots of details and have a long way to catch up.
I double checked the double HP bug, in my case, before reforming the party: http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/islandking2000/Baldr002.jpg Tell Viconia to leave, save, load, and I got this: http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/islandking2000/Baldr003.jpg Save, load, this: http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/islandking2000/Baldr004.jpg I EEkeepered a book to give her 1 ectra Wisdom, I have exp cap remover, and only-one-quick-save mod installed, I also play EEkeepered Kensai/M/T multi, not sure which factors above causes this bug, the bug doesn’t seem to affect every party member, Imoen, whom I used at the very beginning for example, still has her normal HP, seems to affect only those who traveled with you for a long time, not sure though. A side-note for EEkeepered multi users, you’ll notice when you give your multi a kit, it won’t update its class bonus etc properly (eg, Assassin/F won’t get +1 THAC0 and +1 Damage), to fix this, export your character, start a new game, import, everything is now synchronized.
One cheesy method I used often is to use Staff summons as distraction, then backstab using my k/m/t, keep fighting till enemies begin to target her, run away, hide, backstab again, for this very reason, I’d just give Boots of Speed to her which would be a great fit.
@the_sextein Have you killed the mage in Nashkel yet :-)
It looks like your character went from a level 7 cleric to a level 19 cleric so you certainly have a problem that is being caused by EE keeper or one of the mods. Be careful what you change with EE keeper. The game won't allow higher than level 10 as a thief but you mentioned you have an XP cap remover so that might explain it. You are correct that the hitpoints are way high even for a level 20 character. I have never had that happen but SCS is the only mod I am using in BGEE. I have SCS and ascension on BG2EE. I have not used EE Keeper on this run or modified any of my character portraits this time around. My XP cap is still in place. My six person team has just hit the XP cap and I only have a little bit left before beating the game. Removing the cap wouldn't do me any good since I have used a full party almost the entire game so I didn't have much of a reason to remove it on this time around.
I cleared the fog of war as completely as I can by walking all over the map. Some areas do have spots you can't reach so I guess I have not completely uncovered all of the maps technically speaking.
One nasty thief is in the iron throne mega fight at the top but it's not high enough level to just walk through web spells and make saves against all wands and spells. The one in Durlog's tower is super nasty and the four in Ugalth's Beard are a pain. Other than that I can't think of any thieves other than the bounty hunter teams that come at you and they are not as amped up though they are still pretty challenging. At least the bounty hunters can be paralyzed after you use an invisibility purge. They can also be distracted by summons so I feel like they are more manageable. I am glad that rogues are rare because they are borderline game breaking in LOB mode. They were pretty tough on insane to begin with.
I agree about the werewolf finale, that is a tough fight on insane so I can imagine it will be pretty bad now.
I am not sure what mage you are talking about in Nashkel but I have beaten the mines and dealt with Mulahay. I have taken out the assassin characters that appear when you first enter Nashkel and when you return from fixing the mine problem. SCS makes all of those encounters tough. The dark side of the sword coast Kobolds are really challenging when you get those huge spawns of commando's and you are really low level. I had a few spawns that were so outrageous that I had to run away and come back later when I was higher level.
The mage in one of the tents at the Nashkel fair was also really challenging at lower level. I had detect illusions going on and I moved my characters around the tent so they couldn't all be hit at the same time by enemy spells. I think I put minsc into berserk mode. I can't remember what all I did but I do remember having to reload a few times and I didn't end up taking on this encounter until I was around level 3 or 4. If you have agonizer's scorcher you can interrupt his spell casting if you time it correctly. Elemental arrows work well in this battle as well. A free wand of frost can be found at the top left side of the Nashkel mines map, near the entrance to the mines. It can be used to interrupt spell casters as well.
@the_sextein There's one question I'd like to ask you (damn I can't edit anymore...), do I need to apply the slayer fix to prevent my character from killing herself? I'm running v.2.3 with v.30 SCS and ALIEN's Ascension verion.
I don't know, sorry. Maybe someone else can help you with that. I have ascension installed at the moment but I have not played it on the latest version of the game. I intend get there eventually on this run but the last time I played ascension was a long time ago before this current beta version for EE had been released. I didn't even know about it until a few months ago when someone on these boards told me about it. I am glad a working version of it is available with the EE versions but I don't have any experience with the bugs that it may have. Hopefully it's stable enough because it would be a big downer to run into a game breaker that late in the series.
This guy: http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Da'er_Ragh So far I found archers most challenging and I haven't cleared bandit's camp yet(went in there peaceful way to finish the story battle then haste & flee!)
oh yeah, the easter egg mage. Nah I haven't tried that fight yet. I may give it a shot before heading to the ducal palace for the finale. I actually forgot about that one. It's been a while since I have taken on that battle in a play through which is odd for me because I am usually pretty thorough.
Gorgonzola, I appreciate the feed back and I mean no personal offense but I don't see how your strategy above is any less cheesy than bombing from the fog of war. It is exploiting the dumb AI that will endlessly run in multiple web spells that it lets you cast on it without retaliation. Your strategy is creative but it requires that the enemy fail it's saving throws multiple times which the enemy just won't do in LOB mode. Have you actually played LOB with SCS full install?
Is less cheesy because you use only a first strike without retaliation, and having more than one mage able to cast the webs and a thief able to spot not detected the enemy is just tactical supremacy, not a cheap tactic. Reconnaissance, first strike and tactical use of the battle field and resources, that is the base of the art of war, in RL as in BG. And the enemy has still a chance to react. Continue to bomb from the fog is completely different and the enemy can not react.
Is not possible to beat the game with this settings without exploiting the dumb AI , other way how can you beat enemies that have more than 3xHP and that bonuses in thac0 and ST? The problem is how you exploit, in a way that leave to the enemy a chance or in a way that give you 100% success at the cost of recharging a wand, with no challenge at all.
Even not LoB planetars and end game enemies fail against stacked webs, I assume that LoB BG1 thieves can have similar good ST. Not every round, but it happens, keeping your party alive in the rounds when it don't happen is the challenge, once webbed they are automatically hit.
But I have no experience with LoB at all, and very little with ScS and BG1, I mainly play BG2 with other mods. So no personal offense taken, what I say can be wrong. If someone knows the ST value against web of the LoB BG1 thieves it will be easy to calculate the chance of failing the check, given a number of webs stacked, and the chance of GM to stick.
If someone knows the ST value against web of the LoB BG1 thieves
See how my lv7 cleric jumped to lv19 if left alone, same thing can be happening to enemies thieves, who may have their lv double, or tripled, not sure about their initial levels or ST though.
Gorgonzola, I appreciate the feed back and I mean no personal offense but I don't see how your strategy above is any less cheesy than bombing from the fog of war. It is exploiting the dumb AI that will endlessly run in multiple web spells that it lets you cast on it without retaliation. Your strategy is creative but it requires that the enemy fail it's saving throws multiple times which the enemy just won't do in LOB mode. Have you actually played LOB with SCS full install?
Is less cheesy because you use only a first strike without retaliation, and having more than one mage able to cast the webs and a thief able to spot not detected the enemy is just tactical supremacy, not a cheap tactic. Reconnaissance, first strike and tactical use of the battle field and resources, that is the base of the art of war, in RL as in BG. And the enemy has still a chance to react. Continue to bomb from the fog is completely different and the enemy can not react.
Is not possible to beat the game with this settings without exploiting the dumb AI , other way how can you beat enemies that have more than 3xHP and that bonuses in thac0 and ST? The problem is how you exploit, in a way that leave to the enemy a chance or in a way that give you 100% success at the cost of recharging a wand, with no challenge at all.
Even not LoB planetars and end game enemies fail against stacked webs, I assume that LoB BG1 thieves can have similar good ST. Not every round, but it happens, keeping your party alive in the rounds when it don't happen is the challenge, once webbed they are automatically hit.
But I have no experience with LoB at all, and very little with ScS and BG1, I mainly play BG2 with other mods. So no personal offense taken, what I say can be wrong. If someone knows the ST value against web of the LoB BG1 thieves it will be easy to calculate the chance of failing the check, given a number of webs stacked, and the chance of GM to stick.
No problem, I wasn't trying to attack your method of playing the game, I was simply trying to point out that the original way the game was meant to be played has changed a bit and what you think is ok could be considered cheesy or out of the original game design as well. If islandking wants to do things that you or I consider a cheat and he is enjoying himself then I say leave him to it. Having fun is what is most important. Personally I think running for cover and falling back are realistic real world tactics but I used to feel it was cheesy because the game AI wasn't meant to handle that type of play. The brute force methods of difficulty that LOB pushes onto the player forces you to let go of those notions and play the game more realistically.
The Thief in Durlog's tower is boarderline game breaking and that is why I was complaining about it. There are not many thieves in this game and most of them are manageable but that one encounter was ridiculous. I think both SCS and LOB gave that group a boost of level or something. I came on here asking for help because I don't like to cheese the game and I was hoping to learn something from someone who has beaten it before because I have learned many things from this community in the past.
I get what you are saying about abusing the AI since it won't react. I have taken a cheep shot or two at the enemy over the course of my play through this time and I don't feel bad about it at all but that one encounter was at the end of an extremely tough fight and the character is wayyy OP. If I have to retry over and over again until my dice rolls are lucky or I have to cheese the game on a single encounter because SCS was not balanced for LOB difficulty then I can live with that.
I got pissed off and rage quit LOB mode one time and I started over on insane with SCS. The game felt so easy I ended up quitting and starting over a new game of LOB. I find it hard to go back to the original game after getting used to the challenge and overall strain of playing on such a high level of difficulty. You do have to use wands and push the brute force approach to the max on a few fights but those fights also require that you use basic strategies that you would use on insane mode as well. LOB pretty much requires that you know how to beat insane and also pushes the economy and item and wand use to new levels.
I have been playing this game every day for a month and a half and I still have not beat it. This is the longest play through I have had since I played the game for the first time back in 99. I can't say I would recommend it because it's probably one of the hardest games on the planet but it does spice the game up for people who know the game inside out and have the patience to relearn each fight after 15 years of playing it.
I have my suspicions that Beamdog probably didn't balance this mode as well as they should have when it comes to BGEE. The rats in Candlekeep for one and the fact that it didn't even work correctly when the game shipped. Even then it's not Beamdog's responsibility to make sure this mode works well with third party mods. I figure it wasn't meant to be played with SCS but more of an alternative to it. Still I love a good challenge and it seems like so far the game is still doable with both difficulty mods enabled at the same time.
If islandking wants to do things that you or I consider a cheat and he is enjoying himself then I say leave him to it. Having fun is what is most important. Personally I think running for cover and falling back are realistic real world tactics but I used to feel it was cheesy because the game AI wasn't meant to handle that type of play. The brute force methods of difficulty that LOB pushes onto the player forces you to let go of those notions and play the game more realistically.
I agree. fun is what is important, and a so hard environment force you to be less "politically correct" and use yourself cheese, tricks, power tactics that elsewhere you would not allow yourself and exploits. But still if an exploit removes all the challange it removes all the fun. There are tricks and tactics that make you more powerful, but things that are an equivalent of using CTRL-Y (bombing who can not see you and react) or pumping your party' HP with EEkeeper (dropping and recruiting NPCs) imo is different. Why boost so much the enemy if you have to boost yourself the same or use only tactics that remove completely a challege? Still, for that particular encounter, that the combination of ScS and LoB boost so much, I can understand a CTRL-Y equivalent, if it is the price you have to pay to enjoy the rest of the run, then there is a clear logic in self allowing that tactic there.
I have my suspicions that Beamdog probably didn't balance this mode as well as they should have when it comes to BGEE. The rats in Candlekeep for one and the fact that it didn't even work correctly when the game shipped. Even then it's not Beamdog's responsibility to make sure this mode works well with third party mods. I figure it wasn't meant to be played with SCS but more of an alternative to it. Still I love a good challenge and it seems like so far the game is still doable with both difficulty mods enabled at the same time.
LoB is probably an alternative and they work somehow in opposite directions. And I understand how you now find too easy the ScS alone. Maybe also I will give a try, even if my tastes are different, I am reverting to core rules after 15 years of insane only, but is years that I don't use max HP on level up or super stats for charnames. The reason why I don't like the way LoB changes the game is that I like the global balance of vanilla, and I can find about the same balance in my beloved Tactics mod or in ScS. LoB seems to force you to kiting, to don't use damaging spells and spells with ST, is challenging but reduces your freedom of having your playstile. This is just my opinion, the reason why probably I will try it, Just to see as far I can go, but I will focus instead on no reload or other ways to rise the challenge in the future.
As an advanced user, you owe it to yourself to give LOB a try someday. I was turned off by it the first few times I tried it but I have learned to appreciate some of the new and creative ways the game can be played. The hardest part for me was letting go of my previous judgements on cheese. The game feels so much more epic and requires a much greater struggle to beat. In some ways it makes the overall experience feel more realistic.
As for that thief, when I went back I had a better result than the first 40 times I tried to kill him. I think, given some more time and more people play it, a legit path will probably be found for handling him.
As I said before, I just posted the HP bug, made it known to someone who might need it, I myself didn't actually use it, my EEkeepered k/m/t also suffer the most than f/m/t in lower levels, which are the hardest parts in the whole LOB+SCS combined mode anyway, k/m/t only begins to shine in BG2 where you've lots of other overpowered options to choose from.
The idea of LOBSCS is to challenge yourself, progress more carefully, eventually conqueror it, the fulfilled feeling of finishing the somewhat mission impossible, for those who have experienced vanilla core settings many times before, it's a brand new experience, it's not a personal liking or something, as it’s always fun to try something new, even though I myself like core settings more.
@the_sextein Have you tried to charm thieves yet, did it work?
I haven't had much luck. Most spells and wands require multiple uses to get them to work because of the high saving throws. All they need is 1 or 2 attacks and you are dead. My FMT has 95 hitpoints and a -9 armor class. I have been insta killed in one shot many times.
I beat the cult quests in Ugalath's Beard. The first fight I used oil of speed on everyone as soon as I showed up and after the wizard jumped me and stole the soul dagger I ran north around the Ugalath inn. I then cast stoneskin on my mage and summoned some monsters at the same time using a wand. The hasted assassins rounded the inn and attacked my summons so I cast multiple web spells to hold them in place and laid down a constant flow of summoned monsters while my team took down the mage's defense and peppered him with magical arrows.. I couldn't target the assassins with a bow for some reason. my characters would walk toward them like they were blinded. Even if the assassins are visable and webbed I still couldn't target them with spells or bows.
I got backstabbed by one and lucky for me it didn't kill my character. I had Imoen use detect illusion and surrounded them with hasted warriors. I managed to paralyze the other one so I won but it took quite a few tries. The rest of the archers and knights just needed standard tactics. A combination of melee and magic.
The second battle I have not mastered. I can't seem to keep the dual assassins off me on the second fight. I had to run out of the building and web the area once they followed. I wasn't very happy with this fight and I even lost a party member. I decided to get them raised rather than play it again because I am ready to move on to the end of the game and these assassins are just annoying. This is the first time I have had someone raised but I am just not happy with these assassin encounters. You know it's bad when your character does a quadruple damage backstab on a mage and his status is barely injured. These guys can take 20 fireballs before going down.
The final battle with the Tannari wasn't too bad. I won the battle on the first try by constantly using a wand of monster summoning to keep the demon busy while I had the other five members launch an endless stream of fireballs all over the room unit everyone was gone. The ghoul that appears out of nowhere and perma kills one of your party members for no good reason, ruined my victory so I had to play this fight a few more times before finally finishing it without any party member deaths.
I am finally done with SCS assassins and I have moved on to the warewolf island quest. Almost finished. I will probably have this game finished by next weekend depending on how much free time I have. I have only played SOD once so I am looking forward to giving it a second go.
Since my low level k/m/t low in deference, it somehow forces me to go for a more stealthy approach, as many veterans have already discovered, backstab then quickly vanish into a corner, the victim will just remain there, doing nothing, so you can't help but to backstab him again, and again...works great with boots of speed
On insane difficulty I never really developed a deep strategy in BG1 for thieves because there is only a handful of them in the game and they could be beaten by simply casting invisibility purge and using a wand of paralyzation. Even if two of them came at you, they didn't have much HP so if the thief failed to kill your character with his first backstab then your party could quickly beat them down. Now they don't miss because of the high thaco and the wands don't work because of the high saving throws. Even if they did miss, they have so many HP that you can't beat them down until they have performed 3 backstabs.
Soooo, I played around with them today and this is what I have come up with.
-As gorgonzola pointed out, greater malison will give a -4 penalty to saving throws and there is no save against it. -Invisibility purge will reveal all hidden characters regardless of their method used and it also has no save against it. -Unlike a mage casting a spell, a wand of paralyzation will continue to target and attack an opponent that goes invisible as long as you select the target for it to attack while it is visible.
So this is what I do. I have one mage cast invisibility purge and the other one cast greater malison around my party. Both assassins will run at the party and get hit with greater malison while being exposed so that they cannot backstab. In the small pocket of time that you have while the assassins are exposed you should try to move your characters as far away from the assassins as possible and then que up your next attack by having both mages use wands of paralyzation before the assassins drink a potion of invisibility. Now you just have to hope that the thief will get hit by the wand before it can backstab you. Sometimes it helps to have Jahiera or someone like her start to cast an animal summon at the start of the battle to try and throw off or distract the thieves in hopes of buying you some time to further the distance between them and you.
This method will take out two thieves in two rounds and it works about 80% of the time.
The reason I thought greater malison was not working is because the thief in Durlog's tower is not like any of the other thieves and even with greater malison that particular thief has such a high magic resistance that he does not even roll a saving throw against wands. Wands just say magic resistance and have no effect. Other than that one thief I think I got it under control. With the Durlog thief you should cast web and greater malison and then follow it up with invisibility purge and a slow spell. This will put him to sleep. I usually talk to the guardian to start the battle and then retreat into one of the side hallways. The thief will cast cloud kill and retreat to the back of the main room while the warrior will stand around and wait. The mage and the regenerating doppelganger will attack you at the same time and then you can pick off the warrior and the thief one by one and at your leisure.
I am no pro but I used this method on all of my theif encounter saves and it got me through each battle. The problem is that both bounty hunter teams and both cult battles are ambushes and you have no ability to sneak up on them. You can atleast cast web on the bounty hunter battles but that will ultimately cost you if they don't get webbed. Most of the time they will get webbed if you have cast greater malison though.
I know for me, my FMT is not high enough level to cast greater malison and Dynaheir cannot learn spells from that school of magic so I have to rely on scrolls during BG1. The main magic shop in BG has 20 scrolls in stock though, so no problems there.
-Unlike a mage casting a spell, a wand of paralyzation will continue to target and attack an opponent that goes invisible as long as you select the target for it to attack while it is visible.
Afaik is not completely true. each spell, from scroll, wand or casting, continue to target even if the enemy goes invisible. But the casting, using spellbook or a scroll, must be ended before he goes invisible. The wands have immediate activation, no casting time, that is the only difference, he has no chance to go invisible while you are casting. But in BG2, with the robe of Vecna, that lowers the casting time, making it immediate for some spells the behavior is the same of the one with wands. In the context from where I quoted is only a technicality, there is not a real difference, but if you want to use yourself the going invisible to waste enemy mages spells or even full spellbooks, the thing is very relevant. And even when you cast can be relevant, when you use spells with low casting time, timing very well you can complete the casting before he goes invisible, fractions of a second can be the difference between a successful spell or a wasted one.
For ambushes if you have ways to make the party invisible, or to send an explorer that can go invisible, to trigger them, you can then decide yourself the tactical outcome. Some ambushes, but I am not specific about ScS, there maybe it don't happens, trigger even if an invisible character reach the point of the area that trigger them. An hidden thief there is perfect, the enemies come from nowhere and find no one to attack. Tactical superiority, being yourself that decide when, where and how to engage in combat, can really make things easier and solve impossible situations.
If a spell is already cast on a party member and on its projectile way to him, but before it actually reaches him, he drink a poion of invisibility, what will happen?
From SCS readme, it seems they moved Vecna robe to TOB :-(
Comments
You possibly did not get my idea, that is to create an "island" of staked webs and GM and have all your party moving around that island while the enemy try to reach you using the shorter way, that passes trough the island. So you never get a check for the web and they constantly, at each round, get 2-3 checks, depending on the number of webs, with the GM -4. You move north of the webs, than as the enemy approaches you turn around the webs and go south, he will constantly remain in the webs, never reaching you. Each time he fails a save you pelt him with MMM or other ranged attacks, with a little practice you can keep 2-3 enemies always in the webs. All you need to do is to be aware who is targeted by each enemy and move him accordingly. When the thieves are invisible run in circles around the webs to avoid to be hit and as soon as they reveal themselves failing a backstab (not for your AC, but because you are too fast and get out of range) plan a route that bring him in the web.
If well done is a 99% sure tactic, but is not like bombing from the fog of war. You have to create the "web island", lure the enemy into it, move your whole party dynamically to keep him into the webs without entering them yourself, predict and estimate the movements of the enemy in the moments he is invisible.
There is tactical challenge that way, and tactical planning, you set conditions where the enemy try to react, but can not, just because you are too fast in a battlefield whose characteristics was created by yourself.
Is not the only possible tactic, but it work well with anything is not immune to web, even with good saves they will fail if constantly inside the webs, trying to reach you.
this stratagy probably won't work for the Ugalath's Beard ambush and inside the cult building. These areas are small and large parties of enemies accompany the thieves who come at you from two differant directions. Any other options I might have when dealing with those particular battles on this LOB madness?
I cast two web spells and watched at the info bar until he failed his save and got webbed. I then cast greater malison and proceeded to shoot him up with arrows from everyone. My party was hasted and I used invisibility purge. to bring him out once he came at me. The wand of paralyzation worked once greater malison took hold and it was over. Arrows of detonation can also be used when he is webbed.
These guys are pretty bad. I am not looking forward to that Ugalath's Beard ambush because two of them come at you from above and below while a party of archers and mages come at you. That one is going to take a bunch of reloads to figure out.
If a battle gets too hard for me, I'll just use my summons to wear them out, then charge when they have no spells potions left, or I'll just change area, sometimes not all enemies change area with you.
Another cheese for LOB SCS: some party members get double HP when you left them, save, load, recuit, repeat, and you get infinite HP, tested on my Baeloth, Dorn, Viconia, Coran, Kagain, and you can always use EEkeeper's "Recalculate Stats" to revert their HP to normal value after that.
So An enemy affected by GM has a penalty saving from Grease, Glitterdust and every spell that has a saving throw check. I am not sure if this is cheese or plain cheating. The definition of cheese is something very subjective.
But is something that I would not do, like I would not use cheap tactics like bombing from the fog of war.
If for me is not possible to beat the game in a fair way, maybe using clever and not conventional combination of spells, items and tactics, and I can win only using tricks that remove the challenge, giving to the NPCs much more HP than the one they are supposed to have, I would instead lower the difficulty and try in a more fair way. That way I can learn more, have more fun, use more creativity.
But obviously is just a personal opinion and choice.
Greater Malison does give a -4 penalty but getting it to affect an enemy is almost impossible sometimes and even with the -4 penalty, magic resistance and being super high level will make some enemies pretty much immune to everything.
I have beaten SCS full install with ascension on insane difficulty many times and I do it by simply starting the fight and out casting and out fighting the enemy because I know all of the faults of the enemy and I know where to get all of the best stuff and where it is best to start each fight and at what level to do it at. It has become easy over the years. LOB makes old tactics pretty much not work and it changes the way the game was intended to be played. Things I would consider cheesy, like falling back to a choke point and riddling the enemy with arrows is now pretty much necessary. Using wands is something I rarely did before SCS and even then I never overused them because I considered it cheesy. This level of difficulty is not natural and requires that you use everything to the max. I will cast 6 fireballs a round over and over and not blink an eye in this mode. I will give arrows of detonation to every bow user in my group and haste them for the most deadly attacks I can push out.
Gorgonzola, I appreciate the feed back and I mean no personal offense but I don't see how your strategy above is any less cheesy than bombing from the fog of war. It is exploiting the dumb AI that will endlessly run in multiple web spells that it lets you cast on it without retaliation. Your strategy is creative but it requires that the enemy fail it's saving throws multiple times which the enemy just won't do in LOB mode. Have you actually played LOB with SCS full install? Running in circles around a web spell hoping for an enemy to fail it's saving throw is just another form of kite and you will see that killing a single thief with one person will take so long that your web spells will run out and the infinite haste will allow the thief to bust you to pieces with even the tiniest of pauses. Also this method can't be used on any of the encounters with high level SCS thieves other than the one in Durlog's tower and it requires that you kill all of the other guardians first or lure the thief away from the battle in an area that is large enough to pull this off. I could argue that all of that is cheezy and not the way the original game was intended to be played.
One spell that I would recommend to anyone playing this mode is the spell "slow" many spells are no longer useful but this one still does the trick and it will slow an entire army of ghouls. I am just about to take on the chess board in Durlog's tower. I am thinking about using potions and spells of invisibility on my entire party to sneak up to the king and focus all damage on him in hopes that I can take him out before any of my characters die. Here is to hoping.
I also gave Minsc the boots of speed and had him lead the skeletons out of their room and into the fireball pit on the second to last level of Durlogs tower. You won't get XP for this but you will get the warm fuzzy feeling of clearing out the area of all enemies and you will gain 100 fire arrows, 80 acid arrows, 5 arrows of dispelling and a couple hundred gold worth of bows and halberds.
So far everything is still possible to overcome that I have encountered as long as you hold off on some fights until later on and you use the environment intelligently. raising a triple class in a six person party made up of cannon game characters without any cheating or raising the XP cap is still doable.
BTW islandking, I have never had the double hitpoint bug that you speak of.
I double checked the double HP bug, in my case, before reforming the party: http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/islandking2000/Baldr002.jpg
Tell Viconia to leave, save, load, and I got this: http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/islandking2000/Baldr003.jpg
Save, load, this: http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n45/islandking2000/Baldr004.jpg
I EEkeepered a book to give her 1 ectra Wisdom, I have exp cap remover, and only-one-quick-save mod installed, I also play EEkeepered Kensai/M/T multi, not sure which factors above causes this bug, the bug doesn’t seem to affect every party member, Imoen, whom I used at the very beginning for example, still has her normal HP, seems to affect only those who traveled with you for a long time, not sure though.
A side-note for EEkeepered multi users, you’ll notice when you give your multi a kit, it won’t update its class bonus etc properly (eg, Assassin/F won’t get +1 THAC0 and +1 Damage), to fix this, export your character, start a new game, import, everything is now synchronized.
One cheesy method I used often is to use Staff summons as distraction, then backstab using my k/m/t, keep fighting till enemies begin to target her, run away, hide, backstab again, for this very reason, I’d just give Boots of Speed to her which would be a great fit.
@the_sextein Have you killed the mage in Nashkel yet :-)
I cleared the fog of war as completely as I can by walking all over the map. Some areas do have spots you can't reach so I guess I have not completely uncovered all of the maps technically speaking.
One nasty thief is in the iron throne mega fight at the top but it's not high enough level to just walk through web spells and make saves against all wands and spells. The one in Durlog's tower is super nasty and the four in Ugalth's Beard are a pain. Other than that I can't think of any thieves other than the bounty hunter teams that come at you and they are not as amped up though they are still pretty challenging. At least the bounty hunters can be paralyzed after you use an invisibility purge. They can also be distracted by summons so I feel like they are more manageable. I am glad that rogues are rare because they are borderline game breaking in LOB mode. They were pretty tough on insane to begin with.
I agree about the werewolf finale, that is a tough fight on insane so I can imagine it will be pretty bad now.
I am not sure what mage you are talking about in Nashkel but I have beaten the mines and dealt with Mulahay. I have taken out the assassin characters that appear when you first enter Nashkel and when you return from fixing the mine problem. SCS makes all of those encounters tough. The dark side of the sword coast Kobolds are really challenging when you get those huge spawns of commando's and you are really low level. I had a few spawns that were so outrageous that I had to run away and come back later when I was higher level.
The mage in one of the tents at the Nashkel fair was also really challenging at lower level. I had detect illusions going on and I moved my characters around the tent so they couldn't all be hit at the same time by enemy spells. I think I put minsc into berserk mode. I can't remember what all I did but I do remember having to reload a few times and I didn't end up taking on this encounter until I was around level 3 or 4. If you have agonizer's scorcher you can interrupt his spell casting if you time it correctly. Elemental arrows work well in this battle as well. A free wand of frost can be found at the top left side of the Nashkel mines map, near the entrance to the mines. It can be used to interrupt spell casters as well.
So far I found archers most challenging and I haven't cleared bandit's camp yet(went in there peaceful way to finish the story battle then haste & flee!)
Continue to bomb from the fog is completely different and the enemy can not react.
Is not possible to beat the game with this settings without exploiting the dumb AI , other way how can you beat enemies that have more than 3xHP and that bonuses in thac0 and ST? The problem is how you exploit, in a way that leave to the enemy a chance or in a way that give you 100% success at the cost of recharging a wand, with no challenge at all.
Even not LoB planetars and end game enemies fail against stacked webs, I assume that LoB BG1 thieves can have similar good ST. Not every round, but it happens, keeping your party alive in the rounds when it don't happen is the challenge, once webbed they are automatically hit.
But I have no experience with LoB at all, and very little with ScS and BG1, I mainly play BG2 with other mods.
So no personal offense taken, what I say can be wrong.
If someone knows the ST value against web of the LoB BG1 thieves it will be easy to calculate the chance of failing the check, given a number of webs stacked, and the chance of GM to stick.
The Thief in Durlog's tower is boarderline game breaking and that is why I was complaining about it. There are not many thieves in this game and most of them are manageable but that one encounter was ridiculous. I think both SCS and LOB gave that group a boost of level or something. I came on here asking for help because I don't like to cheese the game and I was hoping to learn something from someone who has beaten it before because I have learned many things from this community in the past.
I get what you are saying about abusing the AI since it won't react. I have taken a cheep shot or two at the enemy over the course of my play through this time and I don't feel bad about it at all but that one encounter was at the end of an extremely tough fight and the character is wayyy OP. If I have to retry over and over again until my dice rolls are lucky or I have to cheese the game on a single encounter because SCS was not balanced for LOB difficulty then I can live with that.
I got pissed off and rage quit LOB mode one time and I started over on insane with SCS. The game felt so easy I ended up quitting and starting over a new game of LOB. I find it hard to go back to the original game after getting used to the challenge and overall strain of playing on such a high level of difficulty. You do have to use wands and push the brute force approach to the max on a few fights but those fights also require that you use basic strategies that you would use on insane mode as well. LOB pretty much requires that you know how to beat insane and also pushes the economy and item and wand use to new levels.
I have been playing this game every day for a month and a half and I still have not beat it. This is the longest play through I have had since I played the game for the first time back in 99. I can't say I would recommend it because it's probably one of the hardest games on the planet but it does spice the game up for people who know the game inside out and have the patience to relearn each fight after 15 years of playing it.
I have my suspicions that Beamdog probably didn't balance this mode as well as they should have when it comes to BGEE. The rats in Candlekeep for one and the fact that it didn't even work correctly when the game shipped. Even then it's not Beamdog's responsibility to make sure this mode works well with third party mods. I figure it wasn't meant to be played with SCS but more of an alternative to it. Still I love a good challenge and it seems like so far the game is still doable with both difficulty mods enabled at the same time.
But still if an exploit removes all the challange it removes all the fun. There are tricks and tactics that make you more powerful, but things that are an equivalent of using CTRL-Y (bombing who can not see you and react) or pumping your party' HP with EEkeeper (dropping and recruiting NPCs) imo is different.
Why boost so much the enemy if you have to boost yourself the same or use only tactics that remove completely a challege?
Still, for that particular encounter, that the combination of ScS and LoB boost so much, I can understand a CTRL-Y equivalent, if it is the price you have to pay to enjoy the rest of the run, then there is a clear logic in self allowing that tactic there. LoB is probably an alternative and they work somehow in opposite directions.
And I understand how you now find too easy the ScS alone.
Maybe also I will give a try, even if my tastes are different, I am reverting to core rules after 15 years of insane only, but is years that I don't use max HP on level up or super stats for charnames. The reason why I don't like the way LoB changes the game is that I like the global balance of vanilla, and I can find about the same balance in my beloved Tactics mod or in ScS. LoB seems to force you to kiting, to don't use damaging spells and spells with ST, is challenging but reduces your freedom of having your playstile.
This is just my opinion, the reason why probably I will try it, Just to see as far I can go, but I will focus instead on no reload or other ways to rise the challenge in the future.
As for that thief, when I went back I had a better result than the first 40 times I tried to kill him. I think, given some more time and more people play it, a legit path will probably be found for handling him.
The idea of LOBSCS is to challenge yourself, progress more carefully, eventually conqueror it, the fulfilled feeling of finishing the somewhat mission impossible, for those who have experienced vanilla core settings many times before, it's a brand new experience, it's not a personal liking or something, as it’s always fun to try something new, even though I myself like core settings more.
@the_sextein Have you tried to charm thieves yet, did it work?
I beat the cult quests in Ugalath's Beard. The first fight I used oil of speed on everyone as soon as I showed up and after the wizard jumped me and stole the soul dagger I ran north around the Ugalath inn. I then cast stoneskin on my mage and summoned some monsters at the same time using a wand. The hasted assassins rounded the inn and attacked my summons so I cast multiple web spells to hold them in place and laid down a constant flow of summoned monsters while my team took down the mage's defense and peppered him with magical arrows.. I couldn't target the assassins with a bow for some reason. my characters would walk toward them like they were blinded. Even if the assassins are visable and webbed I still couldn't target them with spells or bows.
I got backstabbed by one and lucky for me it didn't kill my character. I had Imoen use detect illusion and surrounded them with hasted warriors. I managed to paralyze the other one so I won but it took quite a few tries. The rest of the archers and knights just needed standard tactics. A combination of melee and magic.
The second battle I have not mastered. I can't seem to keep the dual assassins off me on the second fight. I had to run out of the building and web the area once they followed. I wasn't very happy with this fight and I even lost a party member. I decided to get them raised rather than play it again because I am ready to move on to the end of the game and these assassins are just annoying. This is the first time I have had someone raised but I am just not happy with these assassin encounters. You know it's bad when your character does a quadruple damage backstab on a mage and his status is barely injured. These guys can take 20 fireballs before going down.
The final battle with the Tannari wasn't too bad. I won the battle on the first try by constantly using a wand of monster summoning to keep the demon busy while I had the other five members launch an endless stream of fireballs all over the room unit everyone was gone. The ghoul that appears out of nowhere and perma kills one of your party members for no good reason, ruined my victory so I had to play this fight a few more times before finally finishing it without any party member deaths.
I am finally done with SCS assassins and I have moved on to the warewolf island quest. Almost finished. I will probably have this game finished by next weekend depending on how much free time I have. I have only played SOD once so I am looking forward to giving it a second go.
On insane difficulty I never really developed a deep strategy in BG1 for thieves because there is only a handful of them in the game and they could be beaten by simply casting invisibility purge and using a wand of paralyzation. Even if two of them came at you, they didn't have much HP so if the thief failed to kill your character with his first backstab then your party could quickly beat them down. Now they don't miss because of the high thaco and the wands don't work because of the high saving throws. Even if they did miss, they have so many HP that you can't beat them down until they have performed 3 backstabs.
Soooo, I played around with them today and this is what I have come up with.
-As gorgonzola pointed out, greater malison will give a -4 penalty to saving throws and there is no save against it.
-Invisibility purge will reveal all hidden characters regardless of their method used and it also has no save against it.
-Unlike a mage casting a spell, a wand of paralyzation will continue to target and attack an opponent that goes invisible as long as you select the target for it to attack while it is visible.
So this is what I do. I have one mage cast invisibility purge and the other one cast greater malison around my party. Both assassins will run at the party and get hit with greater malison while being exposed so that they cannot backstab. In the small pocket of time that you have while the assassins are exposed you should try to move your characters as far away from the assassins as possible and then que up your next attack by having both mages use wands of paralyzation before the assassins drink a potion of invisibility. Now you just have to hope that the thief will get hit by the wand before it can backstab you. Sometimes it helps to have Jahiera or someone like her start to cast an animal summon at the start of the battle to try and throw off or distract the thieves in hopes of buying you some time to further the distance between them and you.
This method will take out two thieves in two rounds and it works about 80% of the time.
The reason I thought greater malison was not working is because the thief in Durlog's tower is not like any of the other thieves and even with greater malison that particular thief has such a high magic resistance that he does not even roll a saving throw against wands. Wands just say magic resistance and have no effect. Other than that one thief I think I got it under control. With the Durlog thief you should cast web and greater malison and then follow it up with invisibility purge and a slow spell. This will put him to sleep. I usually talk to the guardian to start the battle and then retreat into one of the side hallways. The thief will cast cloud kill and retreat to the back of the main room while the warrior will stand around and wait. The mage and the regenerating doppelganger will attack you at the same time and then you can pick off the warrior and the thief one by one and at your leisure.
I am no pro but I used this method on all of my theif encounter saves and it got me through each battle. The problem is that both bounty hunter teams and both cult battles are ambushes and you have no ability to sneak up on them. You can atleast cast web on the bounty hunter battles but that will ultimately cost you if they don't get webbed. Most of the time they will get webbed if you have cast greater malison though.
I know for me, my FMT is not high enough level to cast greater malison and Dynaheir cannot learn spells from that school of magic so I have to rely on scrolls during BG1. The main magic shop in BG has 20 scrolls in stock though, so no problems there.
each spell, from scroll, wand or casting, continue to target even if the enemy goes invisible. But the casting, using spellbook or a scroll, must be ended before he goes invisible. The wands have immediate activation, no casting time, that is the only difference, he has no chance to go invisible while you are casting. But in BG2, with the robe of Vecna, that lowers the casting time, making it immediate for some spells the behavior is the same of the one with wands.
In the context from where I quoted is only a technicality, there is not a real difference, but if you want to use yourself the going invisible to waste enemy mages spells or even full spellbooks, the thing is very relevant. And even when you cast can be relevant, when you use spells with low casting time, timing very well you can complete the casting before he goes invisible, fractions of a second can be the difference between a successful spell or a wasted one.
For ambushes if you have ways to make the party invisible, or to send an explorer that can go invisible, to trigger them, you can then decide yourself the tactical outcome. Some ambushes, but I am not specific about ScS, there maybe it don't happens, trigger even if an invisible character reach the point of the area that trigger them. An hidden thief there is perfect, the enemies come from nowhere and find no one to attack. Tactical superiority, being yourself that decide when, where and how to engage in combat, can really make things easier and solve impossible situations.
From SCS readme, it seems they moved Vecna robe to TOB :-(