Solo Sorcerer Combat Tactics
solo4fun
Member Posts: 15
I'm trying for the first time to solo SoA with a sorcerer. I've successfully soloed the game with a F/M/T in the past and found that very doable, but the sorcerer is proving to be extremely frustrating.
I know spell selection is VERY important, but I've perused most of the popular threads I could find and feel like I have the gist of what is essential. The problem is that I find fighting groups of "easy" enemies to to take forever and that they exhaust my spells so I have to rest all the time. Summoning up a bunch of skeletons and hasting them is not my idea of what a sorcerer should be about. I want to keep cheese, running away and summons to a minimum.
There are a bunch of threads on spell selection but hardly any on combat tactics (that I've found). Which is why I'm wondering; how do you take on a gang of githyanki or a bunch of drow? How do you kill the various types of golems you come across. And how do you do those things without running out of spells so you have to rest between every single encounter?
I know spell selection is VERY important, but I've perused most of the popular threads I could find and feel like I have the gist of what is essential. The problem is that I find fighting groups of "easy" enemies to to take forever and that they exhaust my spells so I have to rest all the time. Summoning up a bunch of skeletons and hasting them is not my idea of what a sorcerer should be about. I want to keep cheese, running away and summons to a minimum.
There are a bunch of threads on spell selection but hardly any on combat tactics (that I've found). Which is why I'm wondering; how do you take on a gang of githyanki or a bunch of drow? How do you kill the various types of golems you come across. And how do you do those things without running out of spells so you have to rest between every single encounter?
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enchantment school for crowd control.
If you are do not have at least 3M XP before finding any Drow, you need to consider starting to do those Athkatla quests early on, since it's around the point where it gets really hard unless you have level 9 spells and strong fighting spells in general.
Gith have no MR thus you can blast them with Incendiary Cloud/Cloudkill and Skull Traps. To break the strategy down, I'd recommend using a bunch of Webs (drop them in a sequencer after Greater Malison), and use Sword Spider summons (IMHO skellies suck), turn invisible/Magic Missile/Melf/Chromatic Orb people while the Spiders die, and then blast them with Incendiary Cloud/Cloudkill and then drop the Skull Traps or in reverse order if you prefer.
Drow, well, they're a bit harder but what you can do is 1) same tactic, it takes longer but it works out sometimes 2) Sunfire spam 3) Dragon's Breath (you might need to cast two; use a Project Image) and rest afterwards.
Golems... Just use Stoneskin/Mirror Image/Prot. from Whatever Weapons with some Melf's Minute Meteors and maybe a Tenser's Transformation (and remember to equip the correct weapon type that can damage them in case they're Clay Golems or whatever) and they're dead (in like 10 minutes but don't worry, they can't hit you).
Magic Golems, uuuh, IMO the best way to kill them is using the Ogre form of the level 4 spell, but since nobody picks that spell you can just use normal bullets on a magical Sling and equip one of the STR enhancing belts.
To avoid running out of spells at all you have to abuse of Project Images or Wish. Or just rest. Resting is cheesy but it does exactly what you need: bring all your spells back. Spell Trap sometimes helps as well with getting spells back.
If you're playing with SCS the strategies to kill the Gith/Drow I've posted won't work. Solo'ing as a Sorcheeser with SCS is actually hard, otherwise it just requires knowledege.
I realize also that GOI will protect you from your own web and skull trap, which is potentially helpful.
I'm undecided on the cheesiness of Project Image. If you use it as intended it roots your PC in place and with fog of war you're really limited in navigating.
I find wish rest to be incredibly unreliable. I only get the rest option about 10% of the time so I don't find it that useful. I don't think resting is inherently cheesy. But it gets silly if you have to rest 10 times in one dungeon.
Good tip on the Magic Golems. Ademantite will still be a pain I see.
Spider Spawn is a lv.4 spell, and there are so many other things to pick that level I find it hard to defend taking it. Skellies only get good after lv.15. But again, I don't want to use summons as more then a distraction.
You've already mentioned the virtues of skull trap for crowd control. If you're going to use that regularly, and don't want to rest too much, you might want to invest in the 6th level protection from magic energy spell. Similarly to reduce resting you could go for limited wish at 7th level - that can reliably restore your skull traps
If you're bothered about the fog of war then why not go for Farsight? As an alternative to your own spell I often try and get that from the Book of Infinite Spells.
My most used spells by far were: Invisibility (don't get into a fight you can't win), Fireshield, Stoneskin, Mirror Image and Haste.
EDIT: Just realised the weapon profs advice isn't relevant for a Sorcerer - but the spell advice still stands!
How reliable is the limited wish spell restoration? I've never used it.
I didn't know you could get farsight from the book of infinite spells. I usually go with True Sight. Might try to switch that this time.
Protection from Magic Energy dosen't protect 100% while GOI does (against scull trap that is). And GOI protects against a whole bunch of other stuff that might be thrown your way. Duration is a lot shorter of course.
Critters can be worth A LOT of XP sometimes. A shame to sneak past them. At the moment I'm enjoying Stoneskin + Fireshield, running into the middle and setting off a sunfire er two. This works reasonably well but I feel like I need at least one more basic tactic to deal with "easy" critters so I don't run out of spells too fast.
ANYWAY, what about early SoA tactics? Previously I've been largely ignoring potions, but I think there might be quite a few useful effects that can really help out early. For instance, there are a lot of potions of fire resistance. Can you combine that with fireshield to get 100% resistance? If so, a wand of fireball would be a lot more useful.
Secondly, in early SoA once you've got the spell Knock you can easily do the Thieves' Guild quest. You won't be able to disarm the traps but with all your buffs up they are easily survivable and you still get the loot and the XP (just make sure that a trap hasn't level-drained you before saving and moving on).
Generally speaking, use Haste in conjunction with Invisibility to make sneak attacks with AoE spells - i.e. cast Haste then Invisibility and make your attack, then (still hasted) run back out of sight, cast Invisibility again and make another attack (this worked well for me in the Guarded Compound).
Also, this:
http://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Protection_from_Magic_Energy
I can also confirm that Potion of Fire Resistance + Fireshield Red does indeed give you 100% fire resistance. Unfortunately wand of fire with it's 6d6 fireball is really anaemic, and the regular fireball isn't that much better. What is weird is that even with this 100% fire resistance you still get a chance for spell failure in an incendiary cloud and have to save vs spell even though you take no damage from it.
Also, Shield + Stoneskin + Mirror image (+ Fireshield) will get torn down in about 3 rounds against competent fighters. Which is not long enough at all. If you add improved invisibility this time goes up significantly.
If using the wand of fire then scorchers normally do far more damage than fireballs - just activate it and then run round in order to get the scorcher to damage all the opposition. If you're losing your buffs quickly that probably means you're not moving enough yourself - you'll normally do very little damage in melee, so when you're not actually casting you should be moving to avoid enemies being able to attack you. If you do like the idea of melee as a sorcerer then have a look at the polymorph self spell. Using a spider shape in multiple webs can be fun ...
I can't believe I just now discovered the scorcher on the wand of fire. I've always just dismissed that wand as an inconvenient fireball. I might use it more as my go to weapon instead of spells now.
I don't expect to do much mêlée as a sorcerer. My theory was that if I could become immune to whatever AoE spell I was using I could just use my PC as bait while enemies took damage. This has so far not turned out to be a great strategy unfortunately.
Incendiary cloud does 1d4/level fire damage and immunity is obtainable with batalistas passport and fireshield.
Unfortunately, even while immune, you still act as if you're taking damage and have to save to avoid spell failure. This feels like a bug.
In testing I've found teleport field + slow to be a pretty impressive combo for disabling enemies.
I definitely agree that 6 skull traps to the face is impressive. But that's kinda all the skulltraps you have for the day, and then you have to rest again. And spell trigger is a level 8 spell, and you probably want ADHW first, so you're generally not gonna get this until level 17. So how would you generally deal impressive damage until then?
Spell sequencer is only level 7 and does nicely thank you for skull traps. Limited wish is also level 7 and allows you to regenerate those skull traps! Then of course remember that skull traps have an unlimited life - you can pile up as many as you want before leading creatures into them (or if you're feeling really mean pre-cast them where you know an enemy will appear to 'ambush' you
This is not only a Sorcerer's issue, a F->M using CC, spell trap and a couple of clones can have for free a caster and a fighter clone at each fight. The Limited wish is more a Wild Mage thing, but a Sorcerer, better in a magic heavy party, can make good use of it. Every PI, if it last the battle and has spells of the level, can recharge the first 4 levels of the spellbooks, in the end of the day it can be like 16-20 free spells for everybody.
Web+web+gm+spyders+MMM, Projected Image, in a party with 3-4 arcane casters a Sorcerer with the Limited Wish trade a single lev 7 spell (PI, not the wish) for a lot of 1-4 lev spells, for a soloer probably is not the best pick, but used with the leftover spells of the PIs can still give a noticeable bonus in the low level spells.
In my limited testing, limited wish only restored a single casting of skulltrap for me. I'm not sure, but I feel like it restored one casting of 1st level spells, one casting of 2nd level spells and one casting of 3rd level spells. That's not particularly impressive.
But here is an actual bug for you. The wand of cloudkill or the spell cloudkill, which clearly states in their description that they will deal 1d10 POISON damage per round is NOT blocked by the Periapt of Proof Against Poison, even though it clearly states in it's item description that the equipped ability is "Immunity to poison". Disappointing.
The Periapt is not actually bugged, but I agree that its description is misleading. It protects against your character being poisoned, which is not the same effect as taking poison damage. Therefore the Periapt would stop you being affected by continuing poison damage from, e.g. an arrow of biting, but won't help you if you sit in a cloudkill. For the latter try the Ring of Gaxx (or a green scroll)!
Also, Emotion + cloudkill (from wand) is really good. This goes a long way towards disposing of all the early "easy" encounters.
I'm now looking for a good way to dispose of undead at low levels. Some of them, like the bone golem, just shrugs off fireballs, cloudkill and skulltraps.
Choosing spell trigger first is fine but there are reasons to choose ADHW first.