Krell stormed through the Temple of Bhaal and solved the trouble around Bridgefort...
Once Krell avoided Detect Invisibility from the Bugbear Shamans and soaked up the trap with Iron Skin he started hunting bosses:
Ziatar: Three Wolves for some stunning plus two Greater Fire Elementals (resist fear most of the time) were called in. After some talking Krell closed the nearby door to cut down support and moved to the room nearby with a mad but but neutral monk to avoid her fear aura. With Far Sight he got clear vision and used one wolf to lure Ziatar away from her mages to start the beating. Even though she managed to use Sanctuary the Half-Dragon-Lady went down pretty fast without killing any summon. Nice!
Neothelid: Protected with Chaotic Commands Krell played a bit with the door to see what the beast had planned. As it wasnt calling Mordi Swords Krell send in his Lions and Fire Elementals only to watch that they absolutely destroyed the Neothelid getting in one 68 damage crit. Ouch!
Akanna: With one tank bear, two lions and two fire elementals Krell decided to put down the aerieal servants first. He sacrificed the bear who tanked for quite some time before going down. The other four went straight for the high priestress afterwards he could not get out a single spell - poor one.
In Bridgefort Krell surrendered to the Crusaders and let his spirit summons take down the Fire Elemental.
Coalition Camp is calling and the Crusader Attacks are not far away anymore. This should get interesting. Finally!
I died at the Coalition Camp. One of the clerics got confused and wandered south, triggering the bosses. Garrus ceased to be immortal, and no amount of Arrows of Detonation could stem the tide. I don't think it's actually possible to win the fight if you let somebody get too close to the barrels. The sheer number of enemies is too extreme for any character or any set of summons to hold back.
I don't like this. Reloading doesn't feel right anymore, but the no-reload aspect is ruining the fun for me. I keep losing the run to simple mistakes that don't actually impart any valuable lessons. Instead of yielding some deep insight into the mechanics of the game, the lesson is just "cast Slow instead of Chaos in this one fight."
It looks like you can run ahead of all the fighting at Dragonspear Castle and go straight to Ashatiel. It only takes two or three Arrows of Dispelling to ruin her defenses, and she's not very tough without them. All you have to do is avoid going invisible; that seems to be what sets her off. This would obviate the need for a long and expensive fight at Dragonspear and save a lot of Arrows of Detonation.
Testing has found that there's no way to avoid the invasion on the Coalition Camp. Even if you go to Dragonspear Castle yourself and start cracking skulls, it's not possible to actually win the siege on your own, even theoretically: while Algernon's Cloak or Caelar's Seal can get you past the guards at the front gate and a Dimension Door spell can skip you over a northern wall and get you to the inner sanctum, allowing you to go into the basement, the door to Avernus is locked and can only be unlocked via the typical post-siege cutscene. You can't start the siege until after defending the Coalition Camp, unlike the fight at Bridgefort, where you can start the battle on your own.
Also, all of the enemies who appear during the siege are generated via script. Even if you wipe out everyone around the castle before the Coalition Camp invasion, you should be facing the exact same number of enemies during the actual siege as if you had killed no one at all.
I'm afraid it's not possible to use Chromatic Orb to build a wall of petrified summons to hold off the paladins and clerics at the Coalition Camp invasion. The summons will disappear after their normal duration, which means the only summons that would work are lesser elementals and (for cleric/mages) Aerial Servants, but more importantly, petrified summons count against the summoning cap, so it's better just to use summons the normal way. You might be able build a wall of petrified elementals around one of the barrels if you had the scroll scribing mod, but it wouldn't prevent the enemy from shooting arrows at the barrels, and the barrels only have 110 HP in LoB mode.
There's no way to keep the enemy from attacking the barrels once Andrus is dead. Even if you turn the barrels invisible via Invisibility 10' Radius, the enemy can still attack them. They're untargetable, so there's no way of healing them or buffing them in any meaningful way (so no petrified wall plus Protection from Normal Missiles to make them invincible).
@Harpagornis floated the idea of pre-casting Web for the paladins, and it checks out. The cavaliers and warpriests have base saves vs. spell of 11, the clerics have saves vs. spell of 12, and the elites, the dwarves, have saves vs. spell of 8. That amounts to saves of 6, 7, and 3 in LoB mode, and therefore a 35%/40%/20% chance of getting webbed. Add in Greater Malison on the first round, and the odds go up to 45%/50%/30%. With 5 Web spells stacked on top of each other, the odds of each individual critter getting webbed every round are 95%/98%/83%. You're virtually guaranteed to web everyone but the dwarves.
Your summons will be completely dysfunctional in the webs, but you'll get automatic attacks as long as the webs persist. With 6 scrolls from Belegarm and 4 spell slots, you could keep the enemy disabled for maybe 15 rounds. 5 Arrows of Detonation and 10 Fireballs would wipe out everyone.
The Coldhearth summons work marvelously against the trolls and ogres. The skeletons have higher APR and HP than the dwarves and while they take half damage from the trolls, they take no extra damage from the ogres compared to the dwarves (their crushing damage resistance is 0%, not negative). They also resist Arrows of Detonation very well.
I've been looking for an infinite gold exploit for BG1, but I have yet to find it. I don't need any more gold than I do in my normal route; I just don't want to have to spend so much time collecting it.
If you do have the scroll scribing mod, it only takes 2100 gold to create 14 scrolls of Skull Trap, which will be enough to kill all of the paladins and clerics. As long as you don't get within Andrus' field of vision (which triggers Andrus' dialogue and therefore the timer for the next wave), it should be possible to set all of the Skull Traps right after the fight with the mages.
If you don't have the scroll scribing mod, buying 6 Skull Trap scrolls will still let you deal about 105 damage to the enemy assuming they make all of their saving throws. Having 8 mage levels and the Crown of Lies will give you 5 level 3 spell slots, so you might cast them before or after the first wave.
Or, if you have several suits of plate mail in your inventory and can't move, you can speak with Dosia at a distance, which should allow you to restore your spell slots without Andrus speaking to you. You could set up to 21 Skull Traps over the course of the invasion for a total of 367.5 damage, divided between the first and third waves.
I've been looking for an infinite gold exploit for BG1, but I have yet to find it. I don't need any more gold than I do in my normal route; I just don't want to have to spend so much time collecting it.
@Grond0: No. It's possible in my install because I have v2.3, but that was by accident; I meant to install SCS on v2.5. I decided to quit my other solo LoB run with all the glitches because v2.5 eliminated them and I didn't want to showcase a bunch of tricks that readers wouldn't have access to. I'm also avoiding the Wand of Lightning trick in my run.
@semiticgod That's just about how I dealed the Crusader attacks in current run, you can find at least 17 Skull trap scrolls in the game which I used against the Troll attack, Web's and Silence's against mages, and Web's, Silence and Cloudkills against fighters. Robe of Aptitude and it's Spell Sequencing ability helps a lot.
I've been mapping the Maze level of Watchers Keep, I really like the SCS random generated Maze, where pen and paper helps a lot. And I've now paths to Tahazzar, Ka'rashur and to the end. But I don't think I'll risk against them, I remember needing tens of reloads against Tahazzar's mob with my Cavalier, so I'll wait until Underdark so I can get at least Chain Contingency and Time Stop. And I've already 40k gold which should be enough to buy something if needed.
Speaking of leaving, want to use the Deck of Many things first with these:
@histamiini I know it doesn't matter for a run with reloads, but have you actually tested that spell immunity will protect against the effects of the Deck of Many Things? The reason I ask is that it definitely won't protect against you casting spells on yourself and it seemed possible that the Deck would use that as a vehicle rather than counting as an external attack.
Oh lordy lord, decided to go to the Temple Sewers to execute this gamble of the ages, so if Death Shade appears, I can leave it there and never come back. But as soon as I started casting immunities, the freaking Flayers started teleporting on to me, and had to make a quick escape. I've a feeling that isn't the last time Six is going to meet them.
So the perfect place, one of the Graveyard tombs, fitting yes? First Draw, got GEM so nothing. Second draw, and I was in for a surprise, KNIGHT, and four Demon Knights actually started attacking me. Apparently I didn't test enough of the effects and summons still get through. Again quick escape, and wrote a note on the door, "needs cleaning". Another tomb and the last draw, and of course, it was the SKULL, a Death Shade. Well another tomb you shouldn't wander to.
I tested it thoroughly and you can't block summons, and STAR, but every other effect yes. And you can see the spell coming at you from close distance so you aren't casting yourself. @Grond0
So here's the final version which immunities you should take for
Btw, why can you cast Spell Immunity without casting time like with Improved Alacrity? So basically you can become immune, as quick as your pause thumb is, to every spell like with PfM, but you can still cast spells yourself? Seems rather op...
EDIT: because casting time with Robe of Vecna and Amulet of Power is 0, but you can do them all in the same round, which seems weird...
EDIT: well damn, the possibilities. With one round you can, become immune to every spell, even dispel, cast AoF contingency, Hardiness, and with DoEH have 85 DR, and become a juggernaut of doom for a turn.
Mages are only OP in this challenge in BG1 and most of SoD, strictly because of the Wand of Monster Summoning. Once you hit SoA, the low damage output will get increasingly crushing (the wand won't be able to hit much of anything), until the game becomes nearly impossible for mages to win in ToB without multiple Wish-rests and extremely long battles.
The only reason I chose an Archer/Mage is because STR drain can land early kills in the very late game. At level 16, it can drain 16 STR with one Called Shot or 26 STR with two castings; with Improved Alacrity it can drain 33 STR with two castings; and the Scorcher Ammunition doubles everything. It's probably one of the best 3 builds, the others being a Dwarven Defender and the Totemic Druid/Fighter.
I think @histamiini shows us that the opposite is true @semiticgod. He is playing around with nearly all kinds of enemies as if they are puppets and sometimes i got the feeling he isnt taking the challenge serious anymore.
You rate Dwarven Defender as top tier class for no-reloads? Thats interesting! I played them for some time but it never felt somewhere close to the Totemic Druid/Fighter. And the longer i play the poverty run with Krell it feels even more that Totemic Druid is one of the most powerful classes around - even better than Sorcerers in this specific case.
P.S. I would really like to see someone trying the Sorcerer in a poverty run - with reloads maybe!
@Harpagornis: I was referring to single-classed and dual-classed mages primarily. Things would be very different, I think, if @histamiini was working with a cleric/mage. Mages in BG2 are defensive powerhouses, but without fighter levels to boost their damage output, the enemy will simply outlast their defenses and their summons. Being invincible for 20 rounds doesn't mean much if you can't make much progress during those rounds.
Single-classed mages would be highly dependent on Fire Shield, Mordenkainen's Sword, Animate Dead, and Summon Planetar to deal damage. But Fire Shield doesn't scale with levels, and even mage summons won't have the THAC0 or enchantment levels to handle enemies like Yaga-Shura, the Ravager, and Ascension Melissan. Fighter levels are priceless in those fights.
I think the Dwarven Defender would struggle in BG1 and SoD, relatively speaking (its damage resistance would max out at 63% until Avernus when you can gamble with Thrix for that helmet), but its ability to achieve long-duration 93% or (after the Ravager) 100% damage resistance would be crucial in BG2 and ToB.
You rate Dwarven Defender as top tier class for no-reloads? Thats interesting... I played them for some time but it never felt somewhere close to the Totemic Druid/Fighter. And the longer i play the poverty run with Krell it feels even more that Totemic Druid is one of the most powerful classes around. Mages dont count...
It depends a lot on how you're playing. The totemic summons make it much easier to progress through the early game in a 'normal' fashion. However, if you're using exploits to bypass much of that and considering instead which character has the best chance in late game encounters then I can absolutely understand how the Dwarven Defender could be preferable. The far better saving throws will largely compensate for the spell defenses available to the druid, while the ability to push non-dispellable physical resistances over 100 (in a non-poverty run) would make many encounters pretty easy for the Dwarven Defender at a time when the druid summons are starting to lose their edge over opponents.
The Druid summons dont lose their edge - at least not up to the point i played Eklun. Against Amelyssan: Maybe! But the combination of Deva + Elemental Prince + Spirt Summons so far crushed everything into the ground. Not to forget: Harm! This spell alone brought so much destruction upon enemies that it wasnt fun anymore. And: As Eklun also got a lot of Fighter levels he can still use GWW and all the other fun. I agree that the Dwarven Defender can be a real powerhouse later on but i refuse to put him somewhere near Totemic Druid/Fighter. At least not for no-reload!
Nothing interesting in Brynnlaw for Six, killed Perth the Adept by Cloudkill-trigger. Asylum, lost 1 point of intelligence but gained Bag of Holding, best trade ever. Yuanti-mages really are the pain of my existence, ridiculously powerfull, they massacred all the summons I could muster, 9 Skelis, 3 Efreetis, Deva. Except when my summons were dead, I turned tables with Cloudkill triggers and they could do nothing, but wander aimlessly in the smoke and die, die, die. The whole Irenicus dungeon was pretty straight forward, summons pretty much did everything else, I dealt Yuantis.
Sim PfM'd Irenicus, I Gww'd my evil double, waited and watched the mayhem a little from Sanctuary and then summoned hasted Deva. And when I did that one of the "friends" enfeebled me, what the hell? Lucky thing I had the Deva there who dispelled me, and I quickly put Sanctuary again on. Deva then killed the Efreeti and then beat Irenicus himself who was pretty useless. Then I parked the Deva on the door where he then killed all the Murderers. Damn that was impressive Deva, killed everything and saved my ass, why can't they all be like that?
Okay, I have a near-perfect strategy for the Drasus party. You know those first two hostile guards before the Drasus fight? Don't kill them. Instead, charm Kysus and then Rezdan and send both mages off to die against the two hostile guards. They won't fight back; they won't go hostile; they'll just die.
Then charm Genthore and have him kill the twin guards. Finally, have Genthore attack Drasus when Drasus is out of your field of vision (I think both will go hostile if you trigger Drasus' dialogue). Genthore should lose to Drasus, but Drasus will be severely wounded and alone.
Of simply kill the guards, charm Drasus and let his goons kill him for you. If you can charm Rezdan and Kysus, you have access to invis anyway, so just let them kill Drasus and go in the mines unnoticed. Hurray, free boots of speed !!
Edit : If you do wish to kill all the group, your tactic is much better though, I must admit.
If I have access to stealth or invisibility I tend to charm all of Drasus' party sequentially and feed them all to the guards you mention. Even without your own invisibility you can use Kysus to do that, though I find that becomes a bit tedious if you get lots of ambushes and saves against charm.
I wasn't sure about charming Drasus because if he makes his save and I don't escape fast enough, he might start the dialogue that turns all four of them hostile, and once they're hostile, it's no longer safe to approach any of them with Algernon's Cloak, invisibility or no. For the other three, as long as they're neutral, they won't bother you at all; you don't even have to run away from them if the charm fails.
Kysus has no Invisibility spell in my install, nor does Rezdan. Same goes for Thalantyr for some reason. We're also missing Teleport Field scrolls from Sorcerous Sundries. I don't know why. One of my mods has made a lot of modifications to stores.
Unfortunately, Near Infinity has confirmed that no store in BG:EE has the buy and sell markups necessary to perform the infinite gold exploit that's possible with Nazramu. In my install, the exploit is also possible with the Temple of Sekolah in BG2 (though the profit per exchange is only like 2% at 20 CHA and 20 reputation, compared to 10% for Nazramu), but I assume one of the EE updates removed it.
I wasn't sure about charming Drasus because if he makes his save and I don't escape fast enough, he might start the dialogue that turns all four of them hostile, and once they're hostile, it's no longer safe to approach any of them with Algernon's Cloak, invisibility or no. For the other three, as long as they're neutral, they won't bother you at all; you don't even have to run away from them if the charm fails.
Hence the need for some form of invisibility. With that you can charm the others without Drasus ever having an opportunity to see you (you can see Genthore and Kysus anyway without invisibility, but not Rezdan). Drasus himself as the final target might be able to react fast enough to go hostile, but if you're starting invisible he won't react fast enough to chase after you.
If Drasus fails his save and if you're hasted, you'll be able to outrun him. Even better : he'll be the only one to be able to follow you. You can then park him near the entrance point, where you can try to charm him by going in and out of the map to refresh the Algernon's cloak. It took me a few tries, but that's how I dealt with him in my Dwarven Defender run. It's also a pretty safe strat and it's a bit less tedious than charming the whole lot.
Krell has finished SoD but the end was no fun anymore...
The Crusader Attacks were surprisingly easy with Fire Elementals + Spirit Summons as many enemies cannot touch them. Nymphs also proved to be super powerwful against Ogre/Trolls and Cavaliers combining Hold Monsters plus Call Lightning. Once they sacrificed themselves Spirit Lions joined in and cleaned the house. Insect Swarm completly cut down the Mages and Clerics - just an awesome spell. Lesson to be learned: The Totemic Druid is in a really good spot when fighting the Crusaders - even without items.
Ashatiel was a joke once the Spirit Wolves joined in and Insect Swarm hindered spellcasting - no challenge.
Avernus was suprisingly tricky - at least the Elevator - cause the Bone Fiend managed to fear Krell several times and even though his summons cleaned the house he was unable to precast Barkskin. Even more funny: Fear continued after talking with Big B! However: After more than a dozen reloads his three Spirit Lions managed to beat the last wave down fast enough while Krell saved against fear.
Big B himself was even more painful. Sometimes no Greater Fire Elemenal appeared, sometimes even with Barkskin stacking Krell failed his initial save against fear, sometimes Big B went invisible before Magic Resistance was finished, sometimes Harm did not land and sometime the Fire Elemental and Caelar went down too soon. I aborted counting the number of reloads but it must of been 250+. You can imagine that at the end this was no real fun anymore - just the wrath of getting this hellthing down.
The final SoD fights were exhausting and even though it is clear that SoA will be a walk in the park i am not sure if i should continue this poverty run. Except for some useful items this run was not really much different from no-reload with Eklun and i am rather sure that Krell would be able to beat SoA. Yeah, ToB would be a different story but the limitations of poverty turned this whole run into a pure summons vs everything. Thats a bit boring in the long run. Therefore i will park Krell in the Irenicus dungeon for now and try formulate a new approach. Maybe i will catch up the idea of @semiticgod to start a no-reload-run with one of the True Classes. But first: Time for some relaxing!
Comments
Once Krell avoided Detect Invisibility from the Bugbear Shamans and soaked up the trap with Iron Skin he started hunting bosses:
Ziatar: Three Wolves for some stunning plus two Greater Fire Elementals (resist fear most of the time) were called in. After some talking Krell closed the nearby door to cut down support and moved to the room nearby with a mad but but neutral monk to avoid her fear aura. With Far Sight he got clear vision and used one wolf to lure Ziatar away from her mages to start the beating. Even though she managed to use Sanctuary the Half-Dragon-Lady went down pretty fast without killing any summon. Nice!
Neothelid: Protected with Chaotic Commands Krell played a bit with the door to see what the beast had planned. As it wasnt calling Mordi Swords Krell send in his Lions and Fire Elementals only to watch that they absolutely destroyed the Neothelid getting in one 68 damage crit. Ouch!
Akanna: With one tank bear, two lions and two fire elementals Krell decided to put down the aerieal servants first. He sacrificed the bear who tanked for quite some time before going down. The other four went straight for the high priestress afterwards he could not get out a single spell - poor one.
In Bridgefort Krell surrendered to the Crusaders and let his spirit summons take down the Fire Elemental.
Coalition Camp is calling and the Crusader Attacks are not far away anymore. This should get interesting. Finally!
I don't like this. Reloading doesn't feel right anymore, but the no-reload aspect is ruining the fun for me. I keep losing the run to simple mistakes that don't actually impart any valuable lessons. Instead of yielding some deep insight into the mechanics of the game, the lesson is just "cast Slow instead of Chaos in this one fight."
Testing has found that there's no way to avoid the invasion on the Coalition Camp. Even if you go to Dragonspear Castle yourself and start cracking skulls, it's not possible to actually win the siege on your own, even theoretically: while Algernon's Cloak or Caelar's Seal can get you past the guards at the front gate and a Dimension Door spell can skip you over a northern wall and get you to the inner sanctum, allowing you to go into the basement, the door to Avernus is locked and can only be unlocked via the typical post-siege cutscene. You can't start the siege until after defending the Coalition Camp, unlike the fight at Bridgefort, where you can start the battle on your own.
Also, all of the enemies who appear during the siege are generated via script. Even if you wipe out everyone around the castle before the Coalition Camp invasion, you should be facing the exact same number of enemies during the actual siege as if you had killed no one at all.
I'm afraid it's not possible to use Chromatic Orb to build a wall of petrified summons to hold off the paladins and clerics at the Coalition Camp invasion. The summons will disappear after their normal duration, which means the only summons that would work are lesser elementals and (for cleric/mages) Aerial Servants, but more importantly, petrified summons count against the summoning cap, so it's better just to use summons the normal way. You might be able build a wall of petrified elementals around one of the barrels if you had the scroll scribing mod, but it wouldn't prevent the enemy from shooting arrows at the barrels, and the barrels only have 110 HP in LoB mode.
There's no way to keep the enemy from attacking the barrels once Andrus is dead. Even if you turn the barrels invisible via Invisibility 10' Radius, the enemy can still attack them. They're untargetable, so there's no way of healing them or buffing them in any meaningful way (so no petrified wall plus Protection from Normal Missiles to make them invincible).
@Harpagornis floated the idea of pre-casting Web for the paladins, and it checks out. The cavaliers and warpriests have base saves vs. spell of 11, the clerics have saves vs. spell of 12, and the elites, the dwarves, have saves vs. spell of 8. That amounts to saves of 6, 7, and 3 in LoB mode, and therefore a 35%/40%/20% chance of getting webbed. Add in Greater Malison on the first round, and the odds go up to 45%/50%/30%. With 5 Web spells stacked on top of each other, the odds of each individual critter getting webbed every round are 95%/98%/83%. You're virtually guaranteed to web everyone but the dwarves.
Your summons will be completely dysfunctional in the webs, but you'll get automatic attacks as long as the webs persist. With 6 scrolls from Belegarm and 4 spell slots, you could keep the enemy disabled for maybe 15 rounds. 5 Arrows of Detonation and 10 Fireballs would wipe out everyone.
The Coldhearth summons work marvelously against the trolls and ogres. The skeletons have higher APR and HP than the dwarves and while they take half damage from the trolls, they take no extra damage from the ogres compared to the dwarves (their crushing damage resistance is 0%, not negative). They also resist Arrows of Detonation very well.
I've been looking for an infinite gold exploit for BG1, but I have yet to find it. I don't need any more gold than I do in my normal route; I just don't want to have to spend so much time collecting it.
If you don't have the scroll scribing mod, buying 6 Skull Trap scrolls will still let you deal about 105 damage to the enemy assuming they make all of their saving throws. Having 8 mage levels and the Crown of Lies will give you 5 level 3 spell slots, so you might cast them before or after the first wave.
Or, if you have several suits of plate mail in your inventory and can't move, you can speak with Dosia at a distance, which should allow you to restore your spell slots without Andrus speaking to you. You could set up to 21 Skull Traps over the course of the invasion for a total of 367.5 damage, divided between the first and third waves.
Speaking of leaving, want to use the Deck of Many things first with these:
1st Draw, SI:Abjuration, SI:Evocation, SI:Conjuration
2nd Draw, SI:Alteration, SI:Enchantment, SI:Conjuration
3rd Draw, SI:Conjuration
Chance of getting
1st Draw 0
2nd Draw KEY 1/18, STAR 1/18, SUN 1/6, VIZIER 1/6, or any of them 8/18.
3rd Draw COMET 1/6, MOON 1/6, ERINYES 1/6, or any of them 1/2.
Death Shade is also 1/6 for the third, yes I decided to live a little dangerously and take a chance at 10 hp.
Oh lordy lord, decided to go to the Temple Sewers to execute this gamble of the ages, so if Death Shade appears, I can leave it there and never come back. But as soon as I started casting immunities, the freaking Flayers started teleporting on to me, and had to make a quick escape. I've a feeling that isn't the last time Six is going to meet them.
So the perfect place, one of the Graveyard tombs, fitting yes? First Draw, got GEM so nothing. Second draw, and I was in for a surprise, KNIGHT, and four Demon Knights actually started attacking me. Apparently I didn't test enough of the effects and summons still get through. Again quick escape, and wrote a note on the door, "needs cleaning". Another tomb and the last draw, and of course, it was the SKULL, a Death Shade. Well another tomb you shouldn't wander to.
Well that was a whole lot of bust, but very fun.
So here's the final version which immunities you should take for
Deck of Many Things:
1st Draw, SI:Abjuration, SI:Evocation
2nd Draw, SI:Alteration, SI:Enchantment
3rd Draw, SI:Conjuration
Chances of positive effects happening:
1st Draw 0
2nd Draw KEY 1/18, STAR 1/18, SUN 1/6, VIZIER 1/6, or any of them 8/18
3rd Draw COMET 1/6, MOON 1/6, ERINYES 1/6, or any of them 1/2
Chances of negative effects happening:
1st Draw FLAMES 1/6 (summon)
2nd Draw KNIGHT 1/9 (summon)
3rd Draw SKULL 1/6 (summon), FOOL 1/6 (remove curse cures)
1st Draw
Bad
- DONJON Abjuration
- RUIN Evocation
Good
- EURYALE Evocation
- FLAMES None
- GEM Evocation
- JESTER Evocation
2nd Draw (1st Bad)
Bad
- VOID Alteration
Good
- KEY Evocation
- STAR None
- ROGUE Enchantment
- SUN Evocation
- VIZIER Abjuration
2nd Draw (1st Good)
Bad
- VOID Alteration
- MAGICIAN Alteration
Good
- KNIGHT None
- ROGUE Enchantment
- SUN Evocation
- VIZIER Abjuration
3rd Draw (if any Bad)
- SKULL None
- THRONE Evocation
- MOON Necromancy
- FOOL Necromancy
- COMET Evocation
- ERINYES Evocation
3rd Draw (if all Good)
- SKULL None
- MOON Necromancy
- TALONS Conjuration
- FOOL Necromancy
- COMET Evocation
- ERINYES Evocation
EDIT: because casting time with Robe of Vecna and Amulet of Power is 0, but you can do them all in the same round, which seems weird...
EDIT: well damn, the possibilities. With one round you can, become immune to every spell, even dispel, cast AoF contingency, Hardiness, and with DoEH have 85 DR, and become a juggernaut of doom for a turn.
But then @Grond0 ruined all...
The only reason I chose an Archer/Mage is because STR drain can land early kills in the very late game. At level 16, it can drain 16 STR with one Called Shot or 26 STR with two castings; with Improved Alacrity it can drain 33 STR with two castings; and the Scorcher Ammunition doubles everything. It's probably one of the best 3 builds, the others being a Dwarven Defender and the Totemic Druid/Fighter.
You rate Dwarven Defender as top tier class for no-reloads? Thats interesting! I played them for some time but it never felt somewhere close to the Totemic Druid/Fighter. And the longer i play the poverty run with Krell it feels even more that Totemic Druid is one of the most powerful classes around - even better than Sorcerers in this specific case.
P.S. I would really like to see someone trying the Sorcerer in a poverty run - with reloads maybe!
Single-classed mages would be highly dependent on Fire Shield, Mordenkainen's Sword, Animate Dead, and Summon Planetar to deal damage. But Fire Shield doesn't scale with levels, and even mage summons won't have the THAC0 or enchantment levels to handle enemies like Yaga-Shura, the Ravager, and Ascension Melissan. Fighter levels are priceless in those fights.
I think the Dwarven Defender would struggle in BG1 and SoD, relatively speaking (its damage resistance would max out at 63% until Avernus when you can gamble with Thrix for that helmet), but its ability to achieve long-duration 93% or (after the Ravager) 100% damage resistance would be crucial in BG2 and ToB.
That means: 4 Druid HLA´s + 7 Fighter HLA´s. More than enough!
With other words: You are a lucky guy @Grond0!
Sim PfM'd Irenicus, I Gww'd my evil double, waited and watched the mayhem a little from Sanctuary and then summoned hasted Deva. And when I did that one of the "friends" enfeebled me, what the hell? Lucky thing I had the Deva there who dispelled me, and I quickly put Sanctuary again on. Deva then killed the Efreeti and then beat Irenicus himself who was pretty useless. Then I parked the Deva on the door where he then killed all the Murderers. Damn that was impressive Deva, killed everything and saved my ass, why can't they all be like that?
Then charm Genthore and have him kill the twin guards. Finally, have Genthore attack Drasus when Drasus is out of your field of vision (I think both will go hostile if you trigger Drasus' dialogue). Genthore should lose to Drasus, but Drasus will be severely wounded and alone.
Edit : If you do wish to kill all the group, your tactic is much better though, I must admit.
Kysus has no Invisibility spell in my install, nor does Rezdan. Same goes for Thalantyr for some reason. We're also missing Teleport Field scrolls from Sorcerous Sundries. I don't know why. One of my mods has made a lot of modifications to stores.
Unfortunately, Near Infinity has confirmed that no store in BG:EE has the buy and sell markups necessary to perform the infinite gold exploit that's possible with Nazramu. In my install, the exploit is also possible with the Temple of Sekolah in BG2 (though the profit per exchange is only like 2% at 20 CHA and 20 reputation, compared to 10% for Nazramu), but I assume one of the EE updates removed it.
The Crusader Attacks were surprisingly easy with Fire Elementals + Spirit Summons as many enemies cannot touch them. Nymphs also proved to be super powerwful against Ogre/Trolls and Cavaliers combining Hold Monsters plus Call Lightning. Once they sacrificed themselves Spirit Lions joined in and cleaned the house. Insect Swarm completly cut down the Mages and Clerics - just an awesome spell. Lesson to be learned: The Totemic Druid is in a really good spot when fighting the Crusaders - even without items.
Ashatiel was a joke once the Spirit Wolves joined in and Insect Swarm hindered spellcasting - no challenge.
Avernus was suprisingly tricky - at least the Elevator - cause the Bone Fiend managed to fear Krell several times and even though his summons cleaned the house he was unable to precast Barkskin. Even more funny: Fear continued after talking with Big B! However: After more than a dozen reloads his three Spirit Lions managed to beat the last wave down fast enough while Krell saved against fear.
Big B himself was even more painful. Sometimes no Greater Fire Elemenal appeared, sometimes even with Barkskin stacking Krell failed his initial save against fear, sometimes Big B went invisible before Magic Resistance was finished, sometimes Harm did not land and sometime the Fire Elemental and Caelar went down too soon. I aborted counting the number of reloads but it must of been 250+. You can imagine that at the end this was no real fun anymore - just the wrath of getting this hellthing down.
The final SoD fights were exhausting and even though it is clear that SoA will be a walk in the park i am not sure if i should continue this poverty run. Except for some useful items this run was not really much different from no-reload with Eklun and i am rather sure that Krell would be able to beat SoA. Yeah, ToB would be a different story but the limitations of poverty turned this whole run into a pure summons vs everything. Thats a bit boring in the long run. Therefore i will park Krell in the Irenicus dungeon for now and try formulate a new approach. Maybe i will catch up the idea of @semiticgod to start a no-reload-run with one of the True Classes. But first: Time for some relaxing!