... aaand it's done. It was surprisingly easy (or I was very lucky). Took just 10 tries of lower resistance, greater malison, detect invisibility/glitterdust and wand of polymorphing spamming to kill the big B. Web also helped as it sometimes prevented him from recasting invisibility and also kept those other devils in check (corner hugging also limited the amount of devils that could hit me). Time for Cojina (name of the blade) to move on to SoA .
... aaand it's done. It was surprisingly easy (or I was very lucky). Took just 10 tries of lower resistance, greater malison, detect invisibility/glitterdust and wand of polymorphing spamming to kill the big B. Web also helped as it sometimes prevented him from recasting invisibility and also kept those other devils in check (corner hugging also limited the amount of devils that could hit me). Time for Cojina (name of the blade) to move on to SoA .
Do you mean it took 10 reloads or just 10 charges of the wand first try? Because if the latter is true it was very lucky indeed, either way good job!
I'llstart a mage/cleric later on, time to finally try the cheesiest class of all! Btw in case I did not post this here before, in 2.5 elves and half elves finally have their sleep and charm resistances implemented properly. This is not as gamechanging as shorty saves, since even the elf can still fall to the 10% chance of getting charmed/sleepered so on no reload one will still need greenstone or alternatives, but it's good to know some of the old inconsistencies finally got changed.
Do you mean it took 10 reloads or just 10 charges of the wand first try? Because if the latter is true it was very lucky indeed, either way good job!
I'llstart a mage/cleric later on, time to finally try the cheesiest class of all! Btw in case I did not post this here before, in 2.5 elves and half elves finally have their sleep and charm resistances implemented properly. This is not as gamechanging as shorty saves, since even the elf can still fall to the 10% chance of getting charmed/sleepered so on no reload one will still need greenstone or alternatives, but it's good to know some of the old inconsistencies finally got changed.
10 reloads, around 10 charges each try when I managed to get Malison through (instant reload when that was resisted as I only had one memorized and no scrolls).
Good luck with the mage/cleric and may the cheese be with you.
A level 1 Cleric/Mage can do whatever they want. While any cleric is already quite flexible because of Sanctuary, the C/M also gets 30 HP at level 1 because of familiar. I haven't tested the familiar that much yet, but it should also get -11 AC from loB now, so it might even be able to hold aggro from the wolf and maybe a Skeleton. My Reaction is -6 tho (5 CH) so I need to be very lucky for Melicamp to not die. So far I found Brun's son, talked to Marl and gave Firebead his book. I got Evermemory, which I might end up selling if I need the cash, next stop will be Lighthouse for Con tome, Brage and the Ankheg armor in Nashkel. Most likely will rush the mines and Mulahey, grab the wand of cheese summoning and Revenant quest on the way out, grab all the minor quests around the area and move on to Bandit Camp.
Dorn officially is not invincible anymore. This time the ambush had the usual amount of enemies (Senjak, Dorothea + 2 bandits), maybe I was to highlevel last time which spawned all those Hobgoblins? Either way Dorn dies in seconds, so all I could do was pick up his stuff and even got lucky with 2 Invis potions of the bandits died in the cutscene. (I have the SCS component for less potions dropped set to 50% get destroyed, last time I got 0 potions out of the ambush) The mines almost spelled disaster tho, as the first set of traps reduced my hp from 35 to 4! Drinking a few healing potions was needed to survive the last set of traps, since there was no place to rest (I tried several times with Sanctuary up, but it always spawned enemies). Mulahey immediately got charmed and from here on it was easy. The C/M is at level 3/2 now and with the wand of monster summoning almost invincible. I really need to get greenstone now and most fights will just succumb to the wand, not that I need to fight a lot, rushing BG city is one of the main goals because of the amount of powerful items there.
What Dorn lacks in invincibility got inherited by Neera now, at least if you initiate dialogue with her. My plan to stand next to her in Sanctuary failed because of that and since she does not really fight back I had to break Sanctuary and draw the Red Wizard and his friends after me to a corner I will never visit, leave Bereghost only to immediately return to neeras location and grab her Gem bag. The familiar cannot tank a wolf indefinitely, so I charmed a skeleton and with combined efforts the wolf went down. Tanking a skeleton was easy for the familiar and even though I had -6 reaction Melicamp got turned back into human. The familiar is still quite tanky because of the added AC and after a single use of Monster wand to get rid of Spooder summon it tanked Nimbul till near death, then the familiar was also close to death, so I ran around with it till it was back to badly wounded, at this point Nimbul was also chased by four guards, then the familiar reengaged and Nimbul died shortly after.
I also did quite a few of the smaller quests, am at 15k xp now, soon the small quests will be finished and I will go Basilisk hunting (no loop), after that it should be time for Band(it) camp and finally cloakwood.
Silence is actually quite ridicolous. It doesn't turn neutral characters hostile and if it suceeds (it does have a -5 penalty so it is quite potent even on LoB) it not only prevents casters from casting, but initiating dialogue. Tested it on Tranzig and he doesn't even fight back if attacked as long as the silence is active. I don't know what would happen to a group of "neutral" enemies like the Drasus party, but I'm almost certain it would work there too and ofc will test it. In the least you can use this to have an easier time charming Drasus (I personally just don't always react quickly enough to a failed save) but ofc if it actually prevents a group from acting at all one could do quite some damage or at least disable a few targets with blind or the like. Ofc at low levels the duration is not that long but being 2 rounds/level it scales really well.
edit: nvm leaving an area after attacking and reentering it turns the enemy hostile, so the possibilities are a little lower. Trying to charm should still work tho, since it's not hostile.
I am so stuck modding a completly new Shifter that i do not get any time playing... lol.
With the new AC buff it might be impossible to beat Sarevok with my poverty Totemic Druid. As @Vynn has still failed to beat Mel it looks like that a complete no-reload-solo-poverty-run is out of reach now. Time to search for new ways. If there is time!
I am so stuck modding a completly new Shifter that i do not get any time playing... lol.
With the new AC buff it might be impossible to beat Sarevok with my poverty Totemic Druid. As @Vynn has still failed to beat Mel it looks like that a complete no-reload-solo-poverty-run is out of reach now. Time to search for new ways. If there is time!
I've been tired of deadfire for quite a while, I simply played it too much when it first came out and needed a break.
One thing I kept forgetting to post here: Since 2.5 you can now see AoEs as coloured circle in game. Just open the baldur.lua in documents where your saves are ctrl + f type aoe, there's a 0 behind aoe change it into a 1.
Silence against groups of "neutral" enemies does not prevent them from turning hostile if they are attacked. (Like it did with Tranzig) It is still super devastating, testet it on the group of Kirian on Mutamin's map, had a charmed lesser basilisk and Khorax with me, cast silence from out of sight and then used Sanctuary. Attacked Kirian with Khorax did not click the basilkisk since attacking with it sometimes triggers the melee attack instead of petrify. It still didn't attack while Khorax got kinda slaughtered, so I moved it like a milimeter still without clicking attack and it finally went into action. after petrifying the entire group within seconds the basilisk was still at half hp, the group did not cast a single spell for some reason not even precast seems to trigger while silenced. (Maybe in this specific case because of the suppressed dialogue?)
Kirinhale in Durlag's tower is at least partially "immune" to silence, or rather her abilities are not affected by it, she can still teleport around and Energy drain while silenced. I was to impatient to test whether she turns hostile if attacked while silenced and still neutral tho, since I have 4 skeleton warriors I got cocky and attacked her after she magic resisted 4 silences in a row, only to find out skeleton warriors can't hurt her if cleric level is below 7 (I was 6 ) Then when I rested and recast silence from out of sight, she all of a sudden stepped into sight and cast charm, but luckily the 30% half elf resistance came in clutch and I was unaffected.
Silence was really good against Bassilus to keep him from casting Aerial servant. The 2 Battle Horrors outside Durlags got dispatched the cheese way, invisible dust mephit = 100% fire immune blocking the bridge, fire wand away till death. Basilisks on the roof died to skeletons.
Am level 6/6 now, 7/7 is max for BG1 cap, sitting at 80k xp.
I lucked out a total of 3 times against a chromatic from Tranzig (note to self don't fight him till level 6), the mentioned charm from Kirinhale and another charm or sleep I forgot where.
There is still a couple of minor quests spooders, half ogres, dig site, also haven't killed any sirines or fleshies. I can probably easily kill Davaeorn with silence + skellies (he should not be able to summon guards if silenced) but maybe I'll either do the remaining small quests (I'm only at 19 rep and wouldn't mind another point, but I only get rep 25% of the times because of my scs install) or I could go the easy way and farm ankhegs till level 7/7.
Silence against groups of "neutral" enemies does not prevent them from turning hostile if they are attacked.
It depends on what scripts they have. Enemies who are scripted to only turn hostile after talking to you can generally be attacked freely, but not others. So, for instance, Drasus won't respond to being attacked while silenced, but his friends will.
You were lucky (or I was unlucky). In a very fresh LoB party run, I activated the gnolls while remaining out of Drizzt's sight. He would alternate between fighting the gnolls and standing still doing nothing, but it was still enough for him to prevail.
@Blackraven I agree it's not as simple as just being out of his sight. I have fully explored the map around him without activating him, but on a number of occasions I've seen him activate after too many gnolls attack. If I were trying to kill him I would only activate the 4 or 5 to the East / North-east of him.
I didn't get this, why would you want to leave the area and reset his HPs if you want to kill him?
As @Victor_Creed_SFV suggested, it's unlikely that a low-level character is going to be able to kill a number of gnolls before they kill Drizzt. Leaving the area provides the opportunity to restart the combat and more chance for gnolls to break their weapon.
But at the end of the day it wasn't enough, stun never wore off.
The sirines cause a feeblemind effect - which doesn't allow for automatic hits. While it would be possible to survive that, it's quite long-lasting so the chances are not good even if they need criticals.
Tanking a skeleton was easy for the familiar and even though I had -6 reaction Melicamp got turned back into human.
Melicamp is just a straight 50/50 chance - reputation and charisma don't affect it.
That is very interesting, since I almost always suceeded when I played no reload, but except for this time with bad reaction, the other times I had good reaction. Interestingly enough when I was playing with reloads it happened to me quite often that I reloaded 10+ times until I finally suceeded. But that's classic rng I guess.
Silence against groups of "neutral" enemies does not prevent them from turning hostile if they are attacked.
It depends on what scripts they have. Enemies who are scripted to only turn hostile after talking to you can generally be attacked freely, but not others. So, for instance, Drasus won't respond to being attacked while silenced, but his friends will.
Oh interesting, I have to admit Kirian was out of my sight when I activated Korax and I did not pay that much attention to the combat log, since even without spells it moved quite rapidly, so she might have stayed neutral for quite a while, then again she must have turned hostile at some point, since she got petrified.
Maybe line of sight plays a big role here since leaving the upstairs area against Tranzig turned him hostile.
Having killed sirines and emptied both Ankheg cave + outside I got back to doing reputation quests. After the zombie quest cleric part reached level 7 and finally the good skeletons with +1 weapons so i went back to flesh golems and also did the lighthouse quest whoile i was there. Mage reaching level 7 is 3k away now and I could just rest on lighthouse to spawn sirines but out of at least 5 reputation quests I did not get a single point because of SCS, still sitting at 19 rep, so I will do the remaining rep quests half ogres and dig(ck) site. There is also some harder fights untouched like Ulcaster for example, but I don't really see the need to do those yet and would rather finally make it through Cloakwood.
Skellies are pretty insane tanks 50% phys reductions (60% missile), 45% MR (100 cold, lightning and poison), tons of immunities to statuses, -7 AC, 10 Thac0, 2.5 apr, 17 str, sadly no regen
The last reputation quests were done and still no reputation point, due to SCS, then I remembered that Greywolf still lives. Skeletons destroyed him, easy as pie, still no reputation point. There is actually 2 interesting 2.5 changes: Prism's jewels do not drop on his body anymore but are literally looted from the eyes of his statue. Oubek asks a female character whether she is Greywolf now. (Even here SCS denied my reputation point It really bites me now that before I bought reputation till 16 I actually got a rep point from a quest, next time I will avoid any reputation quests before buying rep and maybe even pay the 5k for 17 rep.
After Greywolf I finally decided to go to Cloakwood. I might have missed one or two rep quests but my mage leveled to 7 so my level is at cap now even tho xp is not quite capped yet.
On the way to the mines I snacked a wyvern in the cave and took his head, 5k gold will come in handy. If you click to exit the cave while invis/sanctuary but stop at the last possible moment the character will run far enough to leave th wyverns line of sight, from here I summoned my 4 skellies which brought a wyvern down to near death, then I looted the pile with sanctuary and threw a skull trap at the near death wyvern, sucess!
Now it was time for silence vs drasus party. Whenever I charm him these days I ran behind the two mages instead of the direction you enter the area, for silencing this is also a perfect spot since the mages do not start a dialogue only Drasus can do this ofc. After the silence I walked in sight and cast charm, it worked first try but it would not have turned them hostile anyway! Now I summoned 4 Skellies and went invis, Drasus and skellies immediately destroyed one of the silenced mages, the other ran away and managed to cast vocalize, but skellies snacked him anyway while Drasus destroyed the ranged guy. Interestingly enough after killing his friend Drasus turned hostile immediately (I had this bug several times this playthrough, intended behaviour?) and the skellies immediately attacked him and killed him with no effort at all.
Sadly my inventory is full now and I must sell stuff before I can actually come back and play with Davaeorn
Interestingly enough after killing his friend Drasus turned hostile immediately (I had this bug several times this playthrough, intended behaviour?)
I think it is yes. Death is a separate trigger for certain things to just attacking - think of negative reputation for instance which only gets allocated for a kill, not an attack.
Moving on to the basilisk area Cherub followed Korax round as he attacked basilisks (staying out of sight range until the basilisks were paralyzed). He'd drawn Korax down to the south to avoid wasting time in movement and used dual-wielding to finish off paralyzed basilisks quickly. That allowed enough time before charm wore off to kill all the basilisks except the 2 next to Mutamin. Cherub had no defenses against those and just ran away - having picked up level 5 and just short of level 6.
A running fight with the Beregost spiders got that level, but Cherub wanted one more before dualling. He now had High Mastery of his scimitars - bringing weapon speed down to 1 and making attacking without retaliation easier. That helped him do a number of reputation quests. While doing those he noted that attackers using piercing weapons were hitting him too easily and decided to go and tackle the belt ogre. The usual run and fight tactics were wearing him down before I made a minor, but fatal mistake. Weapon speeds were sufficiently close that the ogre had a small possibility of getting an attack in first and on one such occasion he scored a hit. I knew my attack would take place almost immediately, so waited the split-second for that before running back - only to find the ogre was able to get another attack in before I was out of range (the extra APR from LoB squeezes attacks in and I've been caught out several times before by that sort of bunched attack).
Davaeorn is relatively hard to silence, it took 5 tries even though the save has a penalty of -5. Sadly enough he casted vocalize immediaely when he saw a skeleton and called his guars + activated his trigger going invis and leaving a teleport field.
The only hope was charming either Dava, which I tried but it was made impossible by him constantly disappearing when I came back from resting in the mines. Or charming the guard in front to get rid of the battle horrors, to then get rid of the guards surrounding Dava by wand of fire. After doing so 4 skellies were summoned and made short work of Dava.
Leaving the mines we pulled the plug and voila finally the rng gods were with us and the final rep point to 20 was achieved! In BG city the first priorities were to get the cloak and helm of balduran, since I have abundance of invis and sanctuary I talked too Degrodel (charming and killing Quenash would be counterinituitive this time, since we worked so hard for rep 20) but ofc we never finished the quest keeping both helm and cloak. Next stop was Ramazith against whom silence was a very obvious choice, since we don't want him to teleport away. He proved very resistant and saved 5 times, the 6th time was a sucess. He did cast vocalize but being surrounded by 4 skeletons and having to wait for aura cleanse he only got off a globe (precast) and after that got interrupted to death. With the int tome I thought it was time to memorize Imp invis, Stoneskin and whatever else spells are still missing, so I quickly went to Shandalar's island, protection from lightning + shield + ring of fire resist (didn't know where the fire trap is or I would have cast fire prot from the cleric spells) + invis to get to Dezkiel. Silence wasn't needed here (and maybe impossible since he has some kind of globe surrounding him even while neutral), so I cast skellies from out of sight went sanctuary and let the skellies molliwop him.
After that I went back to Halbazzars and drank a genius pot, but the chance to learn spells at Int 23 is only 99%! Being quite concerned since idk where another Imp Invis is and I don't want to do neeras quest for another stoneskin I bought another genius pot and 25 Int all of a sudden raises the learn chance to 150%.
Itemwise we look pretty good evil mage robe from Dava and still at -4 base ac. Spellsaves could look better as a gnome, without gnome it's at 5, but at least immunity to raw chromatic is achieved. Greenstone takes care of almost everything and in case of malison there is still improved invis. (In Bg1 globe is probably almost more effective.)
Either rushing to Candlekeep for 21 Wis and a fifth skellie, or going to Durlag for the Goblet would be very beneficial at this point. I decided to go to Durlags, protections from lightning and fire from the cleric book + fire res ring, skellies for Love, sounds easy enough, right? (even have Wand of cheese summoning for backup). Only somehow I forgot to cast prot from lightning, the chest in the north west room that is super narrow bounced the lightning like crazy, survived one hit but no way to avoid a 2nd hit, reload screen, sweet oblivion.
I really wonder if I should reload my guy and keep playing without reload restriction just to get more used to SoD, which I only once completed with a sorcerer on insane, never on LoB. I know I can do BG1 without reload if I don't mess up big time like I just did, but I also know there is no way I can live thru SOD without reloads if I haven't ever beat it at all on LoB.
Cherub managed to get to level 7 and dual to mage. He was then about to get to mage level 3 with the death of the last Beregost spider. That was half-dead and being attacked from just outside sight range by Cherub's familiar. There had been no problems doing that with an earlier spider and this one had been attacked for at least a couple of minutes before I left the game to update my notes - and came back to find the spider had poisoned the familiar (it's death then killing Cherub).
Trying Shagrat the naked shaman again, I'd worked hard to get him to the threshold of level 6. The vast majority of kills had been using spirit summons and the next level would have made such kills much quicker and easier due to the uplift in quality and quantity of spirits. However, for some reason I decided to try using charm person on Caldo & Krumm. The former was charmed just before he reached Shagrat and duly beaten up by Krumm. However, Krumm himself got there a fraction faster and attacked just before Shagrat completed the spell - and I hadn't anticipated quite such a devastating blow ...
Yep. I haven't used spell effects much in v2.5 so far, but I had thought I'd been surprisingly lucky in charming Dushai so quickly on several occasions .
I should tell @Vynn about this bug maybe he will try another poverty run - after hundreds of fails...
But first we would have to test the Sarevok fight with the improved AC. I fear that the summons will be too weak or at least the chance to win this one is even smaller than before. Not to mention Big B. Or Sendai. Or Abazigal. Or Mel. Holy cow... looks like we will never ever finish a complete no-reload poverty run. On the other hand we like to suffer so - maybe - we should give this one a try in the "near future".
Comments
Because if the latter is true it was very lucky indeed, either way good job!
I'llstart a mage/cleric later on, time to finally try the cheesiest class of all!
Btw in case I did not post this here before, in 2.5 elves and half elves finally have their sleep and charm resistances implemented properly. This is not as gamechanging as shorty saves, since even the elf can still fall to the 10% chance of getting charmed/sleepered so on no reload one will still need greenstone or alternatives, but it's good to know some of the old inconsistencies finally got changed.
Good luck with the mage/cleric and may the cheese be with you.
While any cleric is already quite flexible because of Sanctuary, the C/M also gets 30 HP at level 1 because of familiar.
I haven't tested the familiar that much yet, but it should also get -11 AC from loB now, so it might even be able to hold aggro from the wolf and maybe a Skeleton.
My Reaction is -6 tho (5 CH) so I need to be very lucky for Melicamp to not die.
So far I found Brun's son, talked to Marl and gave Firebead his book.
I got Evermemory, which I might end up selling if I need the cash, next stop will be Lighthouse for Con tome, Brage and the Ankheg armor in Nashkel.
Most likely will rush the mines and Mulahey, grab the wand of cheese summoning and Revenant quest on the way out, grab all the minor quests around the area and move on to Bandit Camp.
This time the ambush had the usual amount of enemies (Senjak, Dorothea + 2 bandits), maybe I was to highlevel last time which spawned all those Hobgoblins? Either way Dorn dies in seconds, so all I could do was pick up his stuff and even got lucky with 2 Invis potions of the bandits died in the cutscene. (I have the SCS component for less potions dropped set to 50% get destroyed, last time I got 0 potions out of the ambush)
The mines almost spelled disaster tho, as the first set of traps reduced my hp from 35 to 4!
Drinking a few healing potions was needed to survive the last set of traps, since there was no place to rest (I tried several times with Sanctuary up, but it always spawned enemies).
Mulahey immediately got charmed and from here on it was easy.
The C/M is at level 3/2 now and with the wand of monster summoning almost invincible.
I really need to get greenstone now and most fights will just succumb to the wand, not that I need to fight a lot, rushing BG city is one of the main goals because of the amount of powerful items there.
My plan to stand next to her in Sanctuary failed because of that and since she does not really fight back I had to break Sanctuary and draw the Red Wizard and his friends after me to a corner I will never visit, leave Bereghost only to immediately return to neeras location and grab her Gem bag.
The familiar cannot tank a wolf indefinitely, so I charmed a skeleton and with combined efforts the wolf went down.
Tanking a skeleton was easy for the familiar and even though I had -6 reaction Melicamp got turned back into human.
The familiar is still quite tanky because of the added AC and after a single use of Monster wand to get rid of Spooder summon it tanked Nimbul till near death, then the familiar was also close to death, so I ran around with it till it was back to badly wounded, at this point Nimbul was also chased by four guards, then the familiar reengaged and Nimbul died shortly after.
I also did quite a few of the smaller quests, am at 15k xp now, soon the small quests will be finished and I will go Basilisk hunting (no loop), after that it should be time for Band(it) camp and finally cloakwood.
It doesn't turn neutral characters hostile and if it suceeds (it does have a -5 penalty so it is quite potent even on LoB) it not only prevents casters from casting, but initiating dialogue.
Tested it on Tranzig and he doesn't even fight back if attacked as long as the silence is active.
I don't know what would happen to a group of "neutral" enemies like the Drasus party, but I'm almost certain it would work there too and ofc will test it.
In the least you can use this to have an easier time charming Drasus (I personally just don't always react quickly enough to a failed save) but ofc if it actually prevents a group from acting at all one could do quite some damage or at least disable a few targets with blind or the like.
Ofc at low levels the duration is not that long but being 2 rounds/level it scales really well.
edit: nvm leaving an area after attacking and reentering it turns the enemy hostile, so the possibilities are a little lower.
Trying to charm should still work tho, since it's not hostile.
I am so stuck modding a completly new Shifter that i do not get any time playing... lol.
With the new AC buff it might be impossible to beat Sarevok with my poverty Totemic Druid. As @Vynn has still failed to beat Mel it looks like that a complete no-reload-solo-poverty-run is out of reach now. Time to search for new ways. If there is time!
Since 2.5 you can now see AoEs as coloured circle in game.
Just open the baldur.lua in documents where your saves are ctrl + f type aoe,
there's a 0 behind aoe change it into a 1.
(Like it did with Tranzig)
It is still super devastating, testet it on the group of Kirian on Mutamin's map, had a charmed lesser basilisk and Khorax with me, cast silence from out of sight and then used Sanctuary. Attacked Kirian with Khorax did not click the basilkisk since attacking with it sometimes triggers the melee attack instead of petrify.
It still didn't attack while Khorax got kinda slaughtered, so I moved it like a milimeter still without clicking attack and it finally went into action. after petrifying the entire group within seconds the basilisk was still at half hp, the group did not cast a single spell for some reason not even precast seems to trigger while silenced.
(Maybe in this specific case because of the suppressed dialogue?)
I was to impatient to test whether she turns hostile if attacked while silenced and still neutral tho, since I have 4 skeleton warriors I got cocky and attacked her after she magic resisted 4 silences in a row, only to find out skeleton warriors can't hurt her if cleric level is below 7 (I was 6
Then when I rested and recast silence from out of sight, she all of a sudden stepped into sight and cast charm, but luckily the 30% half elf resistance came in clutch and I was unaffected.
Silence was really good against Bassilus to keep him from casting Aerial servant.
The 2 Battle Horrors outside Durlags got dispatched the cheese way, invisible dust mephit = 100% fire immune blocking the bridge, fire wand away till death.
Basilisks on the roof died to skeletons.
Am level 6/6 now, 7/7 is max for BG1 cap, sitting at 80k xp.
I lucked out a total of 3 times against a chromatic from Tranzig (note to self don't fight him till level 6), the mentioned charm from Kirinhale and another charm or sleep I forgot where.
There is still a couple of minor quests spooders, half ogres, dig site, also haven't killed any sirines or fleshies.
I can probably easily kill Davaeorn with silence + skellies (he should not be able to summon guards if silenced) but maybe I'll either do the remaining small quests (I'm only at 19 rep and wouldn't mind another point, but I only get rep 25% of the times because of my scs install) or I could go the easy way and farm ankhegs till level 7/7.
As @Victor_Creed_SFV suggested, it's unlikely that a low-level character is going to be able to kill a number of gnolls before they kill Drizzt. Leaving the area provides the opportunity to restart the combat and more chance for gnolls to break their weapon.
But that's classic rng I guess.
Maybe line of sight plays a big role here since leaving the upstairs area against Tranzig turned him hostile.
After the zombie quest cleric part reached level 7 and finally the good skeletons with +1 weapons so i went back to flesh golems and also did the lighthouse quest whoile i was there.
Mage reaching level 7 is 3k away now and I could just rest on lighthouse to spawn sirines but out of at least 5 reputation quests I did not get a single point because of SCS, still sitting at 19 rep, so I will do the remaining rep quests half ogres and dig(ck) site.
There is also some harder fights untouched like Ulcaster for example, but I don't really see the need to do those yet and would rather finally make it through Cloakwood.
Skellies are pretty insane tanks 50% phys reductions (60% missile), 45% MR (100 cold, lightning and poison), tons of immunities to statuses, -7 AC, 10 Thac0, 2.5 apr, 17 str, sadly no regen
Skeletons destroyed him, easy as pie, still no reputation point.
There is actually 2 interesting 2.5 changes:
Prism's jewels do not drop on his body anymore but are literally looted from the eyes of his statue.
Oubek asks a female character whether she is Greywolf now.
(Even here SCS denied my reputation point
It really bites me now that before I bought reputation till 16 I actually got a rep point from a quest, next time I will avoid any reputation quests before buying rep and maybe even pay the 5k for 17 rep.
After Greywolf I finally decided to go to Cloakwood. I might have missed one or two rep quests but my mage leveled to 7 so my level is at cap now even tho xp is not quite capped yet.
On the way to the mines I snacked a wyvern in the cave and took his head, 5k gold will come in handy.
If you click to exit the cave while invis/sanctuary but stop at the last possible moment the character will run far enough to leave th wyverns line of sight, from here I summoned my 4 skellies which brought a wyvern down to near death, then I looted the pile with sanctuary and threw a skull trap at the near death wyvern, sucess!
Now it was time for silence vs drasus party.
Whenever I charm him these days I ran behind the two mages instead of the direction you enter the area, for silencing this is also a perfect spot since the mages do not start a dialogue only Drasus can do this ofc.
After the silence I walked in sight and cast charm, it worked first try but it would not have turned them hostile anyway!
Now I summoned 4 Skellies and went invis, Drasus and skellies immediately destroyed one of the silenced mages, the other ran away and managed to cast vocalize, but skellies snacked him anyway while Drasus destroyed the ranged guy.
Interestingly enough after killing his friend Drasus turned hostile immediately (I had this bug several times this playthrough, intended behaviour?) and the skellies immediately attacked him and killed him with no effort at all.
Sadly my inventory is full now and I must sell stuff before I can actually come back and play with Davaeorn
A running fight with the Beregost spiders got that level, but Cherub wanted one more before dualling. He now had High Mastery of his scimitars - bringing weapon speed down to 1 and making attacking without retaliation easier. That helped him do a number of reputation quests. While doing those he noted that attackers using piercing weapons were hitting him too easily and decided to go and tackle the belt ogre. The usual run and fight tactics were wearing him down before I made a minor, but fatal mistake. Weapon speeds were sufficiently close that the ogre had a small possibility of getting an attack in first and on one such occasion he scored a hit. I knew my attack would take place almost immediately, so waited the split-second for that before running back - only to find the ogre was able to get another attack in before I was out of range (the extra APR from LoB squeezes attacks in and I've been caught out several times before by that sort of bunched attack).
Sadly enough he casted vocalize immediaely when he saw a skeleton and called his guars + activated his trigger going invis and leaving a teleport field.
The only hope was charming either Dava, which I tried but it was made impossible by him constantly disappearing when I came back from resting in the mines.
Or charming the guard in front to get rid of the battle horrors, to then get rid of the guards surrounding Dava by wand of fire.
After doing so 4 skellies were summoned and made short work of Dava.
In BG city the first priorities were to get the cloak and helm of balduran, since I have abundance of invis and sanctuary I talked too Degrodel (charming and killing Quenash would be counterinituitive this time, since we worked so hard for rep 20) but ofc we never finished the quest keeping both helm and cloak.
Next stop was Ramazith against whom silence was a very obvious choice, since we don't want him to teleport away.
He proved very resistant and saved 5 times, the 6th time was a sucess. He did cast vocalize but being surrounded by 4 skeletons and having to wait for aura cleanse he only got off a globe (precast) and after that got interrupted to death.
With the int tome I thought it was time to memorize Imp invis, Stoneskin and whatever else spells are still missing, so I quickly went to Shandalar's island, protection from lightning + shield + ring of fire resist (didn't know where the fire trap is or I would have cast fire prot from the cleric spells) + invis to get to Dezkiel.
Silence wasn't needed here (and maybe impossible since he has some kind of globe surrounding him even while neutral), so I cast skellies from out of sight went sanctuary and let the skellies molliwop him.
After that I went back to Halbazzars and drank a genius pot, but the chance to learn spells at Int 23 is only 99%!
Being quite concerned since idk where another Imp Invis is and I don't want to do neeras quest for another stoneskin I bought another genius pot and 25 Int all of a sudden raises the learn chance to 150%.
Itemwise we look pretty good evil mage robe from Dava and still at -4 base ac.
Spellsaves could look better as a gnome, without gnome it's at 5, but at least immunity to raw chromatic is achieved.
Greenstone takes care of almost everything and in case of malison there is still improved invis.
(In Bg1 globe is probably almost more effective.)
I decided to go to Durlags, protections from lightning and fire from the cleric book + fire res ring, skellies for Love, sounds easy enough, right? (even have Wand of cheese summoning for backup).
Only somehow I forgot to cast prot from lightning, the chest in the north west room that is super narrow bounced the lightning like crazy, survived one hit but no way to avoid a 2nd hit, reload screen, sweet oblivion.
I really wonder if I should reload my guy and keep playing without reload restriction just to get more used to SoD, which I only once completed with a sorcerer on insane, never on LoB.
I know I can do BG1 without reload if I don't mess up big time like I just did, but I also know there is no way I can live thru SOD without reloads if I haven't ever beat it at all on LoB.
But first we would have to test the Sarevok fight with the improved AC. I fear that the summons will be too weak or at least the chance to win this one is even smaller than before. Not to mention Big B. Or Sendai. Or Abazigal. Or Mel. Holy cow... looks like we will never ever finish a complete no-reload poverty run. On the other hand we like to suffer so - maybe - we should give this one a try in the "near future".