I have a vague memory that Beamdog made her unkillable in that encounter as a result of complaints about the difficulty of keeping her alive. However, she should be killable if you don't activate the encounter in the first place, i.e. never get within speaking range. With SCS installed you can't do that with a single shot as a result of the mechanism that allows you to level her up once you've recruited her, but if you keep shooting she should go down (unless you've got some other mod installed that affects that).
I suspected this was the reason why she seemed strangely invulnerable. However, I've just tested it and I'm pretty sure I can't kill her without activating the encounter.
Guess I'll have to abuse her indestructibility after all!
That seems odd. If that's the only test you did, it may be because you've stunned her - preventing the relevant script from firing to take away her level 0 protection. If you attack her from extreme range without talking, she will always try and run away rather than run towards you. There's thus no danger of her coming close enough to trigger her conversation, which is possible even when she's hostile, unless you actually try and do that.
That seems odd. If that's the only test you did, it may be because you've stunned her - preventing the relevant script from firing to take away her level 0 protection. If you attack her from extreme range without talking, she will always try and run away rather than run towards you. There's thus no danger of her coming close enough to trigger her conversation, which is possible even when she's hostile, unless you actually try and do that.
I tried the test several times - when I first encountered her, I shot her repeatedly without stunning her, but that didn't seem to work, so I proceeded as I described in my playthrough and didn't take any screenshots. Last night, I tried two more tests: the first one, as your post shows, where I stunned her then shot her multiple times. I initially thought that would be proof enough, but I later decided that the screenshot may not show her taking enough damage to kill her. I started my second test with the intention of doing the first test 'again, but more' before realising that it might be easier to just Ctrl+Y her, which is what I showed.
I've tried the test again, this time without stunning her, and Ctrl+Y still can't kill her before her script fires...
There's nothing special about Ctrl+Y either. I tried shooting her a few times more after, to no avail.
In fact, as one test showed, Ctrl+Y can't even kill her if you refuse her offer to join you.
In any case, I'm not concerned. The encounter's 480 XP (350 XP from the wizard and two guards for 65 XP each) wasn't crucial for Angelo's advancement and if I can get the gem bag by recruiting her and then dismissing her, I'd say this is still in the spirit of the challenge. It's a curiosity more than anything.
Executive Summary: Angelo obtains (but does not use) the best item in the game and illustrates a neat solution to Ice Isle.
"You know," Angelo said to himself as he sauntered into Beregost, "Pick Pockets is one of the few truly unique things a thief can do. It's high time I made more of it."
Pick Pockets Party Pack
As any veteran of this thread will know, Baldur's Gate is not the only game in town (or should that be town in the game?) when it comes to Pick Pockets. However, one obvious exception aside, it is definitely the main one. Once again asking his familiar Alexa Felicity to access https://pihwiki.bgforge.net/Baldur's_Gate:_Ultimate_Pickpocket_Reference, Angelo drew up his subjective list of 'outside BG' highlights:
Algernon's Cloak - Beregost (Algernon... no one left behind in my posts!)
3 Potions of Defence - Beregost (Faltis, Glayde and Tessilan - Silke's 'thugs')
Staff-Spear +2 - Durlag's Tower L4 (Kirinhale)
Ring of Free Action - Ulgoth's Beard (Dushai)
2 Potions of Heroism and Scrolls of Remove Curse, Feeblemind, Emotion: Hopelessness, Greater Malison & Otiluke's Resilient Sphere - Ulgoth's Beard (Shandalar) [in this case, the website is inaccurate... you cannot pickpocket Shandalar's Robe of the Neutral Archmagi]
Protection from Magic scroll - Firewine Bridge (Bentan)
In the words of James Bond to M in Skyfall, "...not exactly Christmas, is it?!"
Still, having recently relieved Diarmud of his Protection from Magic scroll, Angelo felt more confident in practising his skills on a certain Beregost merchant.
Technically, I suppose I should add Pheirkas' quest to steal Algernon's cloak to the list of Thief Quests in North West Baldur's Gate. Unfortunately, the quest is worth a paltry 300 XP and 200 GP (at best), so it's not really worth it. Worse, you'll have to kill her to get it back (you can't Pick Pocket it)... you would get 420 XP, but that would disqualify the quest from being 'stealth-but-no-combat'.
Practical Pick Pocket (No Potions Edition)
Since its effect is of trivial duration, about the only thing the Luck spell is good for is to ever-so-slightly enhance your thief skills before making an important roll (the effects aren't cumulative, so Angelo didn't bother memorising more than one). Combined with the use of Angelo's new Draw on Holy Might special ability, this just pushed Angelo's PP% to 50%, the minimum required to have a chance of pickpocketing Algernon's cloak.
Casting Luck will also boost a familiar's thief skills. If you have items that boost your Dexterity (e.g. Kiel's Buckler), now would be a good time to employ them. If you're not min-maxing your character - welcome to the thread, you must be new here! - the SCS spell Cat's Grace can be of some use, but is redundant if you are since it can't take your Dext past 20, which is even obtainable by dwarven thieves with max 17 initial Dex (Tome + Kiel + DoHM)... who can't cast Cat's Grace anyway.
Even with his magical enhancements, Angelo failed his first Pick Pocket roll. However, the same short delay between the attempt failing and the target turning hostile that Angelo previously exploited can also be used as a window for further attempts. Angelo could fit in about 2 more PP checks (possibly 3 if he was quick) before Algernon's circle turned red, stopping further attempts. One of these was a success and Angelo was quick to leave before relations degenerated further.
The same tricks could have been used on the 'thugs' Silke wants disposed of (their scripts also flip, as per the last post, so it's even safer), but Angelo didn't bother. After returning Gurke's cloak (Angelo was grateful for his ingratitude: not only could he keep the cloak, but he also got 300 XP), it was time to go on an arctic adventure.
Practical Pick Pocket (Potions Edition)
There are several ways of tackling Ice Isle without charming, with varying degrees of elegance:
Fight through to Dezkiel, killing everyone (not recommended in SCS for reasons to be discussed)
Sneak through to Dezkiel, then kill him.
Sneak through to Dezkiel, then steal the cloak (and Stoneskin scroll) from him.
Sneak through to Dezkiel and lure him to Tellan, who kills him for you without charming (kudos to @Victor_Creed_SFV for finding this, although when I tried it, I couldn't get it to work).
While Angelo was not about to say that the Pick Pockets option on its own was the best option, what he was going to claim was that his take on it went a little bit extra. First, Angelo sneaked invisibly around the maze fully disarming any traps he encountered. Then, he rested, making sure to memorise as many Invisibility spells as he could (3, in this case). Finally, he drank 2 potions of master thievery to make his Pick Pockets skill > 100%.
The previous Pick Pockets Party Pack summarises the highlights listed on https://pihwiki.bgforge.net/Baldur's_Gate:_Ultimate_Pickpocket_Reference, but there are some pilferable items that it doesn't include (since all targets turn hostile upon sight, it presumably thought that no one could steal them). While Angelo did not intend to discover all such instances, there are several on Ice Isle alone:
Marcellus: scroll of Vampiric Touch
Andris: Andris' Journal (useless), scrolls of Grease, Protection from Evil and Remove Magic, potion of invisibility (SCS only)
Beyn: wand of fear, potion of invisibility (SCS only)
Garan: potion of defence and scrolls of Fireball, Protection from Normal Missiles and Know Alignment
Cuchol: wand of paralyzation
Tellan: dagger + 1, potion of invisibility (SCS only), 10(!) potions of healing (SCS only); he also has a Robe of the Evil Archmagi, but it can't be stolen; if you choose options 2, 2 when talking to him, he will not turn hostile even if you fail your Pick Pokcet attempts... although is he sees you after you've killed Dezkiel (even if you haven't picked up the cloak), he'll attack you.
Dezkiel: Dezkiel's scroll (useless), Shandalar's cloak, scroll of Stoneskin, potion of extra healing (SCS only)
Quite the Monty Haul for those prepared to run up to their targets invisibly, Pick Pocket as often as time allows, flee and disappear again. Angelo started off invisible and had 3 casts, so he chose the juiciest targets and let them have it. Given that he could Pick Pocket Tellan and he needed no Invisibility to escape Dezkiel (dashing up the stairs with the cloak would be enough to trigger the teleportation off the island), this allowed Angelo to hoover up most of the available loot, whereas most playthroughs simply tackle Dezkiel alone.
This rose-tinted description hides some deadly thorns. Although the possibility of getting lots of loot is nice, it actually hinders your chances of stealing the good stuff as you only have so many PP attempts after the first (where you become visible) before the target initiates dialogue and turns hostile. If you can only get in 2 thefts on Dezkiel, say, and the game gives you his useless scroll and potion of extra healing, you're in trouble! What's more, the first 3 targets appear together, so you can only really steal from one before they all turn hostile. Angelo happened to get quite lucky, but don't bank on it.
However, Angelo knew that the really nice thing about this technique was yet to come. For when the teleportation was complete, he ended up back in Ulgoth's Beard still with a good duration left on his thievery skills buff. More than enough time to rob Dushai of her ring of free action and Shandalar of his multiple scrolls. Angelo had previously mentioned that he had plans for these two... and now these plans had been executed.
Since Shandalar teleports away after completing this quest, it is possible to steal a decent portion of his stuff before he goes using last post's trick... but this one is preferable since, as above, you can only fit in a few attempts after a failed roll before you must talk to stop him from turning hostile, and he has so many items that it's unlikely that you'll get them all before he vanishes.
Figuring this was a pretty good use of some potions of master thievery (especially as his Knock spell basically rendered its other use obsolete), Angelo left Ulgoth's Beard. It was time to go back to Durlag's Tower and tackle the wardens he'd left behind long ago.
Postscript: Some Random Musings on Ice Isle
It was mentioned above that crusading through Ice Isle wasn't recommended. Even before SCS arrived, this was not a good choice since LoB mages are painful to fight. Now, however, Andris (who appears in the entrance hall, so is unavoidable without sneaking) has a nasty Contingency that makes him initially unkillable.
This Contingency causes him to teleport to the end of the dungeon, reappearing with Dezkiel, where he still won't die...
It's only once some more precast spells activate that he finally kicks the bucket.
I'd pick sneaking past him over killing him 3 times any day.
P.P.S. You can cheat to teleport to AR1010, an unused intermediate exit area. It's exactly the same layout as the Candlekeep Caves, but with only winter wolves and Dezkiel in the basilisk area. It's a cute, but not especially interesting, little Easter egg.
Executive Summary: Angelo wonders why he didn't kill the Battle Horrors earlier and explains why he didn't kill the Wardens earlier.
Earlier on in the game, Angelo had 'denuded' the first floor of Durlag's Labyrinth, removing all of its traps but leaving all of its denizens alive. That was about to change...
Battle Horror Buffet
It was only when Angelo was approaching Durlag's Tower along the narrow outcrop that the thought came to him. "Felicity, I've been an idiot," he muttered as he released the familiar. "Why was I about to cast Invisibility on myself?"
Instead, he cast Invisibility on Felicity (or, since she hadn't cast Polymorph Self, was it actually 'Imp'-roved Invisibility?), and attracted one of the Battle Horror's attentions. Drawing it back to the bridge, Felicity moved in front of him, blocking off the bridge. Still the Battle Horror came forwards, determined to reach Angelo and slice him to ribbons, unaware of its inability to do so.
Its uncomprehending eyes didn't see Angelo drawing the serpentine orange wand, nor the thin lick of flame setting its body ablaze. Angelo wasn't even sure it felt the pain: despite its health bar slowly vanish, it advanced regardless, oblivious of its impending doom. "If it's so eager for death", Angelo said to Felicity, whose natural imp form was immune to the scorching rays, "would be a shame to deny it."
The second horror was disposed of in the same way. As the smoke billowed around him, Angelo mused that most of his other wand of fire exploits had been for conjuring Fireballs, so this use of Azgannar's Scorcher was an economical way of maximising its potential. Silently, he chastised himself for sneaking past the Battle Horrors each time and not thinking of this tactic earlier: as long as Invisibility and a wand (a frost variation would also suffice, but missile weapons would not) was available, he could have finished them off at level 3.
The wand of fire that Erdane sells has 20 Fireball changes, but only 1 Azgannar's Scorcher. This is unfortunate for this battle, but excellent overall because the area-of-effect is of much greater utility elsewhere.
All Is Fair in Love and War
The wardens had evidently been on walkabout since Angelo had last visited Durlag's Labyrinth. Although Pride and Fear were parked nicely in the central chamber, Avarice was nowhere to be seen (unsurprising, since this was his default behaviour) and Love had also flown the coup. While Angelo was not ungrateful - his first move would have been to split them up and isolate Love anyway - he would have liked to be able to control from the onset where the showdown would have commenced. As it stood, he'd have to look for Love on Tindr throughout the level. But, as his grandmother always said, he could find Love anywhere.
That's the last 'Love' joke, I promise.
In this case, Angelo found her in the corridor near to the gears room. Fortunately, he was invisible, so he shut the door, else he attracted the unwelcome attention of the helmed horrors Felicity had previously lured there while he looted the glittering treasure piles. Having disposed of the possibility of interruption, Angelo then tried out his tried-and-tested favourite technique...
Backstab!
Love was not the easiest creature in the world to hit and even with his hefty +4 bonus, Angelo's scimitar missed the mark. Love turned to cast Dire Charm but Angelo was quicker, ducking out of sight behind a corner just far enough away that Love didn't attempt to follow. She had at least mastery level proficiency in her bastard sword, so Angelo wasn't letting her anywhere near him.
Once he'd decided on these tactics, the battle became surprisingly straightforward. The key was that although Love had infinite spells, she only ever cast Dire Charm and Slow, which Angelo could have countered with the greenstone amulet or the ring of free action. As it happened, she never kept sight of Angelo long enough to complete her spell, and never bothered to look for him. Occasionally, she tried to confuse Angelo with Mirror Images, but Detect Illusion soon dealt with them. As with so many of his battles, it was the fact that Angelo had engineered unlimited Stealth attempts that eventually won the day.
No Love Lost for Angelo
Angelo almost felt sorry for the poor warden, cursed to forever wander the dusty halls in search of wine. She was even having a whine as she died, alternating between thanking Angelo for providing sweet release and cursing him for using such foul methods.
"You ask for fairness?" Angelo had to laugh. "Let me tell you something about fairness, sweet dwarf. You and your warden friends held every advantage in this battle. Upon sight, you erect a Minor Globe of Invulnerability, which blocks every single one of my spells and wands. Even if I wait for your shields to fall and sneak up on you, my chance of landing anything magical on you is virtually zero. You have a permanent Physical Mirror spell that reflects all my missile attacks, so I cannot shoot you from afar. You're immune to normal weapons, so I cannot count on most of my summons harming you..."
"Point taken..." the warden gurgled.
"Shut up," Angelo snapped, "I'm not finished. You do not stand still once you are damaged, so I cannot kill you with fireballs from outside the fog of war. You are a vicious melee fighter, so I cannot hope to win in straight hand-to-hand combat. Your little friend Avarice even casts Cloudkill every turn, so I need to be at least level 6 to avoid its instant death effect. It's lucky he didn't come in halfway through, else I'd have to abandon ship and start again from scratch...
"So you see, sweet dwarf," Angelo cooed, his voice dripping with poisoned honey, "what I did wasn't unfair. It's one of the only ways to win. You can't blame a man for doing what he must." With that, he plunged his scimitar deeper into Love's heart, putting her out of her misery and earning himself 3,000 XP.
"Tim Burton's Catwoman said it best," Angelo quipped, misremembering her quote. "Love's a bitch, now so am I."
I lied.
Angelo gulped down the last of the wine as he pocketed Love's wardstone. He'd done the hard work... now it was time to relax, have a few drinks and reap the rewards.
Executive Summary: Angelo abuses a homebrew version of the 'petrification XP loop'.
His thirst still not quenched by the taste of blood and wine, Angelo abandoned the remaining wardens and invisibly skipped to the next floor. When he'd claimed that he'd done all of the hard work already, he had not lied: the contents of Durlag's goblet would offer further satiation, he knew, and he had no intention of risking life or limb to get it.
There seems to be nothing new under the Sun these days. For instance, just after I'd typed out the previous post, I discovered that the trick of wiping out the Battle Horrors had already been implemented in this thread in several different incarnations. This is what comes, I suppose, with being late to the party. So when I say I don't think this set of tactics and tictacs has been used before... take it with a pinch of salt!
Angelo Feels Like a Dummy
"What are all of these books doing on the floor?" Angelo asked himself as he came down the stairs into the main hall. Once he realised that they were all fairly useless, he ignored them as they just filled up time. He also didn't have much time for the puzzling/obtuse room setup that opened the floor and chose to resolve it as simply as possible. To this end, he attacked the silver dummy once in the left sparring room, took the green wardstone from the right bedside desk in Islanne's room and that was it. No touching other wardstones or dummies, otherwise things just became complicated.
Upon entering the throne room, Angelo's spider sense tingled and he noticed a secret door leading to the left. Following the hidden corridor, he found himself in a heavily trapped torture chamber with only a goblet for company. Nabbing the goblet, Angelo proceeded to enter a runed room with another wardstone sitting atop an altar. Angelo took the wardstone and stood for a second or two, rubbing his chin. "Interesting, very interesting..."
The Death of Durlag the Doppelganger
As soon as Angelo picked up Kiel's helmet from the throne room, he heard a rumbling of stone. This was never a good sign, so he made for the torture chamber as fast as possible. He bumped into Fuernebol on the way, but he was neutral, so Angelo let him pass. From his vantage point, he also saw Islanne and Durlag appear from the opposite side... a position which allowed him to avoid their Cloudkill-Stinking Cloud combo when they revealed themselves as greater doppelgangers. As the former Fuernebol and Islanne choked on their own fumes, the third doppelganger cast Mirror Image and advanced on Angelo, who fell back towards the altar.
Suddenly, Angelo was no longer in front of the altar, but behind the opposite altar at the other end of the room. Just as quickly, the arrow from his loaded bow flew from altar to altar, burying itself straight into the doppelganger's maw. The creature sneered as one of its images vanished and it readied its Haste spell.
"I wouldn't bother with that," Angelo said as he walked towards the second alter. "It won't do you any good if you can't hit me." With that, his Detect Illusion ability kicked in, the doppelganger's images all vanished and Angelo shot another arrow whizzing past the beast's head.
Unperturbed, the doppelganger suddenly morphed into Islanne, evidently a form with greater sorcerous prowess as she fired off a double acid arrow sequencer. This was a nasty shock to Angelo, who also changed tactics and retreated behind the columns out of sight to ride out the acid's lingering pain. As no enemies were around, he was free to enter Stealth and head through the teleporter, attacking the mage with one quick backstab before teleporting back to the other side before another spell could be cast.
Angelo could sense the mage was the most dangerous of the doppelganger's forms. He was glad when it gew tired of the game and reverted to a third form, Durlag again... primarily because Durlag was a basic melee fighter and so reverted to its simple AI of standing in front of the teleporter hoping to whisk itself over to the other side. Of course, since it didn't have the wardstone, that would never happen, and Angelo was free to revert back to peppering it with arrows, always sure to stay in visual range this time so it didn't wander off. Occasionally, he'd mix it up with the odd backstab, just to keep things interesting, a move which eventually yielded results.
Funnily enough, when Angelo killed the doppelganger in Durlag form, it dropped a suit of full plate armour. Normally, greater doppelgangers dropped useless trash, so this was quite the treat.
Angelo Goes Up and Down a Level
Using this method, Angelo disposed of the other two doppelgangers. At some point, he also found that a pair of dwarven doomguards had spawned in, but they were also suckered into standing uselessly by the teleportation altar. Since they were immune to missile weapons, Angelo couldn't shoot them down in quite the same way, so he reverted to casting Blind on them (he could invisibly rest by the alternate altar, so there was no real chance of failure) and killing them by playing backstab-and-run through the teleporter.
If backstab had not been available, the whole process would have taken longer, but the principle would still have been bulletproof. Although dwarven defenders take half damage to fire and cold, spells and wands could also have easily finished them off from a distance.
Angelo then disarmed the trapped statue that held the correct level 2 exit wardstone. "This is a nasty trap," he murmured, as he could see that it would have launched 10 auto-hitting arrows of detonation at him had he not disarmed it. Despite having fire immunity upon command, he wasn't sure he would have been able to tank it. The only way he could think of some classes surviving would be to use Mirror Image and Stoneskin to soak up some of the arrows. Fortunately, this was not necessary.
After casting Invisibility, Angelo proceeded down the bottom corridor to see some ghasts breaking out from inside the walls. Angelo noticed that the first couple of ghasts followed him tightly despite his invisibility, and upon seeing others bursting out in front of him, he was not convinced that he could sneak through reliably without being surrounded. Instead, Angelo doubled back and led the ghasts back to the second teleporter... and teleported to the initial side by the torture this time. The undead monsters obligingly piled up, unable to reach Angelo while Angelo's arrows were able to reach them.
"I never said I'd marry you," Angelo shrugged, explaining why he'd jilted them at the altar.
These kills afforded Angelo enough XP to go up a level. "Lovely," he said as he walked back down the bottom corridor, disarming the repeating Fireball trap and the false stairs for further XP. Looking behind the secret door showed him the stairs to the next floor, and he had the correct wardstone to descend them.
Breaking the Cycle of Abuse
As he went down the stairs, Angleo realised that he had not been nearly as abusive as he could have been. There was a greater doppelganger hidden in both of the curved tunnels connected to the sparring room and Islanne's room (opened by attacking the bronze dummy once and taking a red wardstone respectively). In addition, there were 3 greater doppelgangers in the bridge room which he didn't explore. All 5 of these creatures could have been taken down with next to no risk using this method (just avoid any spells that the bridge room doppelgangers hurl at you in their intermediate forms).
Better yet, if that 20,000 XP wasn't enough, Angelo's rest on this level could always be interrupted by greater doppelgangers. So by bringing enough ammunition, sleeping enough times and abusing the teleporter, Angelo could earn as much XP as he desired...
Okay, so it's not as slick as the basilisk XP loop, you have to deal with loads of traps, do a lot of sneaking and still kill Love to make it work. But there are only 131 scrolls of Stone to Flesh in the game... so there!
"No," Angelo decided, for once remaining firm in the face of temptation. "That's too cheesy even for me."
Next on Angelo's hitlist was the third floor of Durlag's Labyrinth, where he'd meet the closest thing to a dragon that BG:EE had to offer.
Executive Summary: Angelo wipes out most of the third floor using its own design features.
As he entered the third floor, Angelo put on his ring of fire resistance, donned the helm of defence and readied Icingdeath. It was getting warm and Angelo felt that immunity to fire would be essential to survive the forthcoming.
Only pure class wizards (who cannot use either Icingdeath or the helm of defence alongside two rings of fire resistance) cannot obtain 100% persistent fire resistance. For them, there are potions and protection scrolls of fire resistance, as well as a handy spell. Sadly, wizard slayers have none of these options... but they arguably have bigger problems!
Killing (Kieling?) the Dwarven Doppelgangers
From inside his backpack, Felicity piped up. "Why didn't you take Kiel's stuff on the last floor?"
"It's not that good and the dwarven doomguards protecting it are immune to missile weapons," Angelo replied. "So I'd have to go to the bother of blinding and backstabbing them through the teleporter..." He trailed off as he opened the furnace door and saw a Fireball hurtle into the centre. As he noticed the adventurers' bodies strewn around, a second sphere of flame exploded, filling the room with falling cinders.
"...Or maybe I wouldn't," he finished.
Back up the stairs he went, raiding Kiel's chest and stuffing the buckler and morningstar into his pack. The four dwarven doomguards creaked to life, but they were unable to stop Angelo from leaving the room, pulling them towards the exit. Unthinkingly following, they were lured down the stairs and into the blast chamber. Their 50% fire resistance meant they didn't interpret the ripples of heat as warning signs, but ploughed on regardless.
They still didn't realise their fate when Angelo darted back out the furnace and slammed the door, trapping them to a death by eternal fire. And yet although taking half damage meant they took longer to die, die they did. Angelo didn't get any XP from their deaths, but he was unconcerned with that. He wasn't planning on getting much XP from this floor anyway.
Wiping Out the Wyverns
This technique of luring the monsters to the furnace and letting the endless Fireballs do the trick was to be Angelo's modus operandi for the rest of the floor. Each different monster required a small variation of the method, but the idea remained the same. For instance, even although the greater wyverns were too big to fit into the furnace, as long as Angelo remained within their line of sight, they kept trying to squash through the doors, oblivious to the pain from their burning flesh and scales.
The greater ghouls in the bottom corridor required another adjustment. Although Angelo had initially intended to trap them in the furnace, he got a bit of a shock when the greater ghouls opened the closed doors. Thinking quickly, he put on his ring of free action and started walking around in the furnace itself. Despite being hasted, the ghouls weren't quite quick enough to catch him if he kept his attention on circling around the central furnace ring... but Angelo didn't want to take any chances (their debilitating disease can always be slept off).
This won't be an option for characters relying on two rings of fire resistance and the helm of defence for their fire immunity, but free action (or, for that matter, fire resistance) can be obtained from spells and potions, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Angelo also took the opportunity to raid the statues in the rightmost gardens and obtain Bala's Axe. He took out the greater ghouls using the aforementioned method, but balked at the invisible stalkers and ashirukuru. Similarly, the bow-wielding skeletons were also deemed too much effort for the rewards they offered. It was time for Angelo to channel earth, wind and fire... or, rather, earth, wind and ice.
Elementary, My Dear Angelo
First up was Kaldran the bear. Disappointingly, it seemed unwilling to leave its icy chamber, but Angelo had the counter to that. Putting on Gorion's belt, Angelo was totally immune to both Kaldran's and its winter wolf guardians' ranged and melee attacks. Loading up on arrows before having a cup of tea, Angelo waited until Kaldran bit the dust before sportingly leaving the winter wolves alive.
Next was the fission slime. Despite being a ranged monster that was slow to move, it was also slow to attack and so could be torturously lured to the furnace. Angelo found it best to work in straight lines here, first getting it in line with the furnace corridor before pulling it in towards the chamber.
Angelo lines the fission slime up with the furnace corridor.
Like the wyvern, the fission slime was slightly too big to fit into the furnace, but it was much more fiddly to manoeuvre it into a position where the Fireballs still hit it. Fortunately, although the slime could still hit Angelo, its damage was healed by the furnace's frequent blasts (he had 110% fire resistance, and the additional 10% immunity meant he healed upon taking damage). Furthermore, the slime's poison could be cured (by Angelo's special ability) inbetween Fireballs; its slow and disease were harmless in this context and could be slept off later.
Despite the fact that the fission slime had dtaken nothing but fire damage, Angelo was taken aback to see that it still split when reduced to 0 HP. Evidently, its death script only kicks in if Angelo himself dealt some fire damage. Luckily, Angelo only needed to deal 1 HP of fire damage himself throughout the fight, so he shot it once with an Agannazar's Scorcher and let the furnace do its job.
Finally, there was the air aspect. Fighting this in a straight contest would have been horrendous, but it was practically a done deal. After tempting it into the furnace, Angelo first shut off its means of escape, then hid in the entrance hall behind the closed door. A minute later, it was all over.
Angelo momentarily felt a slight twinge of guilt. After all, he'd only killed one enemy (Kaldran) on this floor by himself. Was this not a bit cheap? Yes, Angelo conceded, it was cheap. More than a bit, for that matter. But it was also effective.
The last task was the Challenge of Fire, which Angelo would not be able to complete by this method (phoenix guards were immune to fire). But Angelo had a plan for this challenge too. Everything was falling into place, like a perfect game of chess...
Executive Summary: Angelo wipes out most of the chess board using its own design features.
It was ironic, Angelo thought, that the only time in the 3rd floor when he wasn't too concerned about fire immunity was for completing the Challenge of Fire. To Felicity, his familiar, this seemed crazy. Didn't the challenge's phoenix guards erupt in a Fireball when they died? But while this was true, Felicity was making the mistaken assumption that Angelo would be taking them out by himself.
Turning the Phoenix Guards to Ashes
When Angelo informed Felicity that he didn't intend on killing the phoenix guards, the imp quivered perceptibly. "You know that I'm not immune to fire in my mustard jelly form?"
"Yes," Angelo replied and Felicity breathed a sigh of relief. "Don't worry, there'll be no invisible blocking either, although Invisibility will be involved." The familiar's eyes showed confusion, so Angelo extrapolated. "Watch," he gestured as he entered Stealth and sneaked into the room.
Initially, Angelo cast Blind on the female archer, then the male swordsman. Since their saving throws were absolute rubbish, he succeeded first time, but he could always have fled the scene and invisibly rested as many times as required. Once they were safely blinded, Angelo took out the archer himself using his bow. Her fiery demise exploded out of harm's way, and she didn't return afterwards like some other phoenix guards Angelo had read about.
With the swordsman still wandering around helplessly, Angelo took out the wand of monster summoning he'd found on the labyrinth's first floor. Felicity was still non-plussed. "It's helpless," she said, "why not kill it yourself?"
Angelo shook his head as his summons appeared. "I want to start the next floor invisible." As his monsters proceeded to swarm onto the phoenix guard, he cast Haste on them for good measure - just to ensure that they killed it while the summons lasted - and then cast Invisibility. Sure enough, after the killing blow was landed...
The Rules of Chess Get an Update
...the room swirled around him and suddenly he'd appeared on a chess board. Angelo could sense that had he been visible, the pieces on the opposite end would have immediately begun rushing him. Angelo had no intention of being rushed, and didn't feel like doing much rushing himself either.
"What are you doing?" Felicity asked as Angelo uncorked a potion of grounding.
"Just a hunch," he shrugged, glugging its contents and watching his resistance to electricity shoot to 100%. Still invisible, he began madly dashing across the chessboard, riding the bolts of lightning that cascaded around him. "This used to work, back in the day," Angelo murmured to no one in particular.
Apparently, those days had come and gone, as the pieces now seemed immune to Angelo's electrical assault. To be fair, Angelo had read about this newfound resistance in the SCS readme, but he was still a little disappointed that it had come to pass. Curiously, the 'Ethereal Voice' did not inherit the same immunity: Angelo wondered whether if he zapped the announcer enough times, it'd die. He suspected it'd do what Elminster did when attacked in vanilla BG and cast the best spell in the game - crash the computer! Angelo decided not to risk it.
"Gladiators, Ready!" the Ethereal Voice boomed.
Instead, he hopped down to the fourth floor and cast Knock on the doorway leading to a lava-spanning bridge. "This ought to be useful," Angelo said as he became visible and Durlag's ghost pontificated at length.
Angelo Gets P(a)wned
The pieces came at him in a mad dash as soon as he showed his face on the chessboard again. Quick as a flash, Angelo was back down the stairs, with all the chess army bar the king, who never left the comfort of his chessboard, in hot pursuit. Diving behind the door, Angelo slammed it shut and clicked repeatedly on the Stealth button. "Death by a thousand cuts," he whispered as he slunk into the shadows.
If Angelo had hoped that hit-and-fade tactics would work, he was badly mistaken. As soon as he opened the door, the pieces swarmed through to reach him. They may not be able to see him, but they seemed to sense his position, just like the greater ghouls on the second floor. Not only did this mean that he couldn't use hit-and-fade, but this also meant that Angelo could simply gather them in a corner, cast Invisibility and dump them to deal with the lone king. He'd have to kill them all, which was not an inviting prospect.
"That's a bummer," Felicity said as Angelo skulked sulkily through the chamber. "Can't you just reload and skip them? It's not like you need the two-handed sword +3 anyway."
"Don't be stupid, Felicity," Angelo replied testily, "we just need to adapt our strategy a bit." She was right: he could have easily passed on through without incident. And he probably should have, as his plan would drain him of precious resources for little real gain. But this was a matter of pride to Angelo - @Mr_Salty had asked about it - and besides, he hadn't seen anyone use these tactics before and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to get any credit.
Chess Is a Tactical Game
Before doing anything else, Angelo neded to carve a hole in the hordes blocking the door. This was straightforward: open the door, run away as they funnelled in, cast Invisibility and move back through the nascent gash. As he did this, Angelo experienced firsthand the speed and ferocity of the rooks' archery. They were nasty pieces of work and Angelo decided to avoid them as much as possible in future.
Around the corner, Angelo extricated a scroll of Protection from Magic. These were rare commodities and Angelo did not use one lightly. But desperate situations called for desperate measures and the scrolls were a bit more common in BG than in BG2. If the game later become impossible, so be it... one way or another, Angelo would have contributed to the communal pool of wisdom.
Reading the scroll instantly dispelled his invisibility, but this suited Angelo's next move. Attracting attention by firing a wayward arrow, he pulled the majority of the pieces into following him. Ideally, he would have attracted the lot of them, but they only followed in dribs and drabs. "Whatever," said Angelo, "these scrolls last for a while."
With some encouragement, Angelo lured the pieces into the carpet room. Trying to stay out of the rooks' firing line, he slammed the door shut, trapping them in and stopping them from escaping prematurely. Angelo then downed a potion of invisibility: although the Protection from Magic scroll stopped all spells from taking effect, it did not block self-targeted potions, and this would give Angelo freedom to move without constantly fending off arrows. Finally, Angelo ignored all of the weird runes and zig-zagged his way across the carpet's surface.
The resulting pandemonium was cacophonous. Bolts of lightning hurtled this way and that, Fireballs continually crashed towards Angelo and Cloudkill drenched the room in noxious fumes. Of the three hazards, Angelo was most concerned about avoiding the latter - this was the primary reason for using the Protection from Magic scroll, along with avoiding any hostile spells from the Queen or Bishop - as his items could protect him from most of the other damage. As for the pieces, being immune to both lightning and Cloudkill, it was the Fireballs that harmed them, and Angelo tried to maximise this by positioning himself to cause as much damage as possible.
There were a few minor refinements. The rooks in particular had a habit of moving out of harm's way in the corners of the room, so Angelo had to make himself visible again to draw them back to the centre before vanishing using another potion. And he ended up having to use a second Protection from Magic scroll to finish the job, which didn't impress him. But at the end of the day, a royal flush was all-but-assured.
One or two pawns had escaped Angelo's notice, but on their own, they were no match for Angelo's hit-and-fade techniques.
Having disposed of the king's defences, it was time to finish the game.
Checkmate
Technically being a dual-classed fighter/enchanter was not the only breach of BG:EE rules the King was committing. He also had the Evocation spells Chromatic Orb and Cone of Cold memorised, which wasn't especially fair. At least Angelo could take solace in the fact that he hadn't filled all of his 20 level 4 spell slots (also illegitimate, for the record) with Stoneskin!
Testing shows that the King isn't living up to his potential.
That said, at the end of the day, it wouldn't have mattered how many Stoneskin spells the King had. He could not stop Angelo from sneaking into the chessboard, backstabbing him and then running away to the 4th floor to re-Stealth. As long as Angelo never let him leave the vicinity of the doorway (else he might have had enough time to fire off a spell while Angelo was escaping), his defences merely prolonged the inevitable.
"Now I see why they call you Jaime Lannister," Felicity snickered from inside his pack.
Technical Footnote
In reality, it perhaps would have mattered if the King had 20 Stoneskins due to an unfair engine quirk. If an NPC caster goes for longer than 8 (in-game) hours after being 'activated', then they automatically regain all their spells as if they have rested, even if the PC has not. The King's AC is -13, and is still not easy to hit even with a backstab, and it's feasible that 20 Stoneskins would take longer than 8 hours to chip away (especially if Detect Illusion couldn't be used to remove any Mirror Images)... after which the whole cycle would start again.
This spell regeneration occurs regardless of whether the NPC is being watched or not (e.g. you can stand next to them invisibly for 8 hours and they will still regain their spells). Worse, you can even 'check in' on them every so often before disappearing again and they will still regain their spells (otherwise it might be argued that while the PC did not rest uninterrupted during the 8 hour period, the NPC did). This is a tiresome feature that can make draining a mage's spells a real nuisance, as you can't guarantee longer than 8 hours' high Constitution regeneration time. During some tests, I also noticed the bishops casting Flame Strike, despite them only having 1 Draw Upon Holy Might and 4 Hold Person spells memorised.
This 'kamehameha' moment occurred during another test.
This is not the first time NPCs have cast spells they shouldn't be able to - I've mentioned already that casters somehow cast Detect Invisibility, despite not having any readied during testing. I suppose the fact that an enchanter casts a few restricted spells pales in comparison.
"Game over," Angelo said as he pushed the king's body to the floor, a traditional sign of chess surrender. It had not been an easy victory and Angelo sheathed his new two-handed sword +3 with trepidation, hoping that it was worth the consumables he'd used in its acquisition.
Executive Summary: Angelo wipes out most of the fourth floor using - you guessed it - its own design features.
"What's nice about Durlag's Tower," Angelo remarked to Felicity as he left the chessboard, "is that despite its fearsome reputation, if you use the right tactics, it becomes almost a formality. Apart from the wardens, the rest of the enemies have basically been either sitting ducks or slain by their own traps."
Felicity had never borne witness to these sorts of off-hand comments before. "I sense an, 'Until now!' moment coming," she returned suspiciously. "You're not about to actually work for your kills, are you?"
Angelo laughed, "Felicity, you're such a joker. Surely you know me better than that?"
Golems Have the Gift of the Gab
Eager to explore the corridor he'd come across earlier, Angelo went invisible and crossed the lava-filled moat. A room full of ettercaps and spiders greeted him on the other side, a welcoming committee Angelo was non-too-keen to meet. Disarming the Web traps, he ignored them and had a quick natter with the stone statue, who enjoyed his company so much that it whisked him away to meet his fellow golems. Angelo's Charisma was 15, so his chat was decent, but Angelo figured that he must have been the statue's first visitor in quite a while, which must have helped.
In any case, Angelo was swiftly deposited back on the 4th floor after answering some meandering questions about Durlag's history. Next, he raided the forge, being sure to close the door behind him and shut the helmed horrors in their makeshift tomb. Although he could easily have used the switch he found there to turn off the runed carpet, Angelo didn't bother and just walked around the side. "A pity the chess pieces never tried that," he said to himself as he lined his pockets with some of the best loot that the dungeon had to offer.
Angelo's ears pricked up as he heard a chitinous gnashing of teeth: somehow the astal phase spider had detected him and teleported into the store. Angelo tried to hide under the bed-like structure, but instead got teleported back to the golems room again. "You're sure more talkative than those flesh golems I killed in High Hedge," Angelo muttered as he answered their quandaries once more.
While exploring other rooms, Angelo had seen little portions of green-tinted chambers poking through his fog-of-war and was curious as to where they were from. After discovering the secret door leading to the glowing caverns, he began to understand how the whole level was connected. Turning invisible again, he scouted out the rest of the level, looting - amongst other things - an amulet of missiles from an unwatched early pool; a flame tongue long sword and a staff of striking from a hidden store room; and wands of monster summoning, fire and lightning from other guarded pools, stranding their denizens by vanishing before they could react.
Most players may as well stop exploring Durlag's Tower at this point, as the hassle:reward ratio increases considerably from hereon in. Doubly so, in fact, since the hassle becomes significant and the rewards effectively vanish.
Angelo Discovers the Holy Grael
It became apparent after some scouting that Angelo would have to kill Grael for his compass wardstone in order to proceed. Sadly, Grael started hostile, so picking his pocket was not an option and he was sufficiently fast that Angelo didn't fancy evading him with a cheeky Invisibility spell. So he'd have to die. Before that, however, Angelo would have to take out his surrounding minions, and he knew just how he'd do it.
Exploiting the fact that the passage leading up to Grael was free from enemies, so that he could run away, vanish and rest as often as required, Angelo cast Blind on each of the crypt crawlers outside Grael's chamber. Their saving throws weren't great, so this thankfully wasn't too onerous a task. Donning his ring of free action to avoid paralysis from any accidental hits, Angelo then placed himself inside each crypt crawler's limited field of vision, inciting it to follow him and leading it carefully into the acid baths. Once it had fully immersed itself, Angelo quickly removed his ring of free action and used the boots of speed to sprint out of its line of sight again.
Crypt crawlers were dumb beasts. Once it lost sight of its target, it lost interest and stood around aimlessly, regardless of whether it was taking damage or otherwise. Its health took a while for the acid to nibble away, but little by little the crypt crawlers died inside until, eventually, it all became too much.
Much to Angelo's delight, he could activate all of Grael's greater ghouls without alerting Grael itself. One by one, they were lured, blinded and dispatched in exactly the same manner.
Sadly, Grael did not stay still when blinded and went walkabout (or, given its increased speed, runabout). Angelo wasn't keen on alerting the whole level to his presence, but unfortunately there was no corner where he could trap Grael in the acid with an invisible, polymorphed Felicity. However, he did notice that if blind Grael was wandering around, then Angelo could momentarily pop into its view before disappearing again and this would stop Grael's perambulation until it took damage, after which it would resume. This led to Angelo flicking in and out of sight to prohibit Grael from leaving its chamber inbetween backstabs. With the ring of free action, the combat required intermittent attention, but was effectively 100% safe.
Angelo updated Felicity with some pop cultural references as he took the compass wardstone from Grael's body. "That's what you call a graveyard smash!"
After Angelo fielded yet more questions from the golem hotline, Durlag finally declared him worthy of fighting the evil in the tower. Given his alignment, Angelo would have declared that the greatest evil in the tower was himself (or at least the most handsome one at any rate), but he didn't want to split hairs. In any case, his next battle would unleash an ancient demon unto the world... and kill it a few rounds later.
Executive Summary: Angelo wipes out the final floor… without using its design features!
As the secret door in Islanne's chamber rumbled open, Felicity's words ran rings in Angelo's mind. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he should get a few honest kills every now and then without relying on lakes of acid, magic carpets or blast furnaces to do the job. What with the big boss coming up, Angelo could think of no target more worthy of his attention.
Clarifying Clair's Concerns
Angelo was surprised to hear a female voice shout from within Islanne's chamber. "Don't go in there," it begged him, "it's too powerful to defeat on your own." Angelo wanted to ask how she'd gotten in there: the statue in the spider room must have had some recent conversation after all... and yet, if this was true, why did Grael still have his wardstone? Another one for the Baldur's Gate diviner, he decided.
Clair's desperate tones tore him from his deliberation. "Use the mirror to create a clone of the demon knight," she continued, "it'll do all the hard work for you. I know how much you hate hard work..."
Angelo was affronted. This woman had only just met him and she could already sense his laziness? "Never, my lady," Angelo promised as he pocketed the Cloak of the Shield. "I will defeat this cretin without using its mirror, for I know its only weakness."
Clair scoffed loudly. "Hoping to use hit-and-fade through the doorway? Sorry, chum, you're outta luck. SCS upgraded its script, it can now see through Stealth and Invisibility like the demons in BG2. It's also got got 3 stars in Two-Handed Weapon Style - don't ask me how or what that does - and 5 stars in Two-Handed Swords, so its speed factor is 2 and it hits real fast. You'll just end up missing loads and it'll kill you before you can retreat. It'll follow you in and out the chamber too, so you may as well just forget it."
Angelo tests the Demon Knight - and it cheats!
Angelo's face briefly scrunched. "SCS actually makes the Demon Knight easier than before. Now, it can only cast its spells a limited number of times; in the past, it could endlessly cast Power Word Stun and Fireball to soften you up before finishing with Power Word Kill."
Clair shrugged. "So what? It attacks 5 times a round with a Thac0 of -10, doing 17-26 damage each time. It's got an AC of -15, 530 HP and a magic resistance of 85%. Even if you can somehow avoid its spells and kite it around the chamber, you'll run out of arrows before you can kill it. Forgive me if I don't fancy your chances."
Angelo smiled, "If I were in your position, my lady, I wouldn't fancy my chances either, for you don't know my secret weapon."
Clair rolled her eyes. "And what, pray tell, is that? A sword of demon slaying plus one million? A miniature nuclear device? No, don't tell me... a keyboard with Ctrl+Y on it!"
Clair's face betrayed her confusion. "It has 85% magic resistance," she repeated slowly, as if Angelo was a child.
"Yes, but it relies on it," Angelo explained. "If you get through this resistance, its saving throws are surprisingly poor. As you can see from the test screenshot, they're not nearly as good as they should be for a boss of this calibre."
Clair's confusion turned to disbelief. "Its magic will tear you apart before you can use your wand."
Angelo had his response to that planned. "Already used two Protection from Magic scrolls needlessly in this forsaken dungeon, may as well use a third."
"Why not use Blindness or some other CC spell?"
"Not strong enough," Angelo replied as he read his protection scroll and applied an oil of speed (which, as a self-applied potion, ignored the immunity's globe). "The Demon Knight would still be too hard to hit, even if I blinded it. Besides, you can't cast spells out from inside the globe except for scrolls. Believe me, wands are the way forward if you're not using the mirror."
Despite being nominally immune to magic, Angelo was dismayed to find the Demon Knight's Remove Magic cut through his defences and wipe off his buff from the oil of speed. But he'd also exploited loopholes in the scroll's effects, so he couldn't complain. Nor could he complain about his tactics' efficiency, as the wand connected first time.
Although the Demon Knight's HP were high, without its magic, it could only give chase to Angelo, trying futilely to attack in melee. After 2 successful stuns, costing 8 charges from the wand of paralyzation to achieve, Angelo hacked his opponent into bits (after another application of an oil of speed and a use of Draw Upon Holy Might, which also ignored his globe as a self-applied special ability).
A Helm of Opposite Alignment (hello, Twinkle!), a poxy Soultaker dagger (spectacularly unuseful) and a random scroll of Glitterdust (seriously, like, what?!) seemed paltry reward for defeating this ancient evil, but Angelo knew he should be grateful. After all, he'd get sweet nothing for defeating Aec'Letec, so it was all gravy.
"That was remarkably uncharacteristic of you," Felicity said as Angelo appeared at the entrace of Durlag's Tower. "Will you use this new work ethic to give Soultaker back to Hurgan Stoneblade? Or how about finishing the TotSC content and completing Balduran's Isle?"
Now it was Angelo's turn to roll his eyes. "Felicity, you do make me laugh. I may be proud, but even I'm not that stupid. Neither of those adventures yield enough loot to make them remotely worth pursuing." The imp looked crestfallen, so Angelo added, "Fine, I'll go back and take out the remaining wardens. If that's not virtuous enough for you, I don't know what is."
Executive Summary: In this optional part, Angelo kills two of the remaining wardens and theorycrafts how to dispatch the third.
Figuring he may as well go all in with wasting time and resources, Angelo reignited his conflict with the wardens. "Do it properly or not at all," he murmured in explanation, a poor mantra in LoB at the best of times and especially now he'd hit the XP cap.
Angelo Hides His Avarice...
When he'd last visited, Pride and Fear were huddled in their starting positions around the stairs to the 2nd floor while Avarice was nowhere to be seen. Angelo wanted to take the other wardens down without Avarice being a pest, so he first attracted its attention and lured him down to the now empty 2nd floor. After turning invisible again, Angelo waited until he was certain that the invisble Avarice had wandered into the dummy room. A quick click on a statue later and Avarice was trapped harmlessly, able to meddle in Angelo's affairs no longer.
...Faces His Fear...
Angelo went after Fear next. The lynchpin of this strategy revolved around the fact that Fear seemed unwilling to descend to the 2nd floor and that his starting position allowed him to be attacked without alerting Pride. This opened up the possibility of hit-and-fade tactics, backstabbing him wearing a ring of free action (negates his stunning gaze) before retreating to re-Stealth on the 2nd floor. Its regeneration was fierce - after running some tests, Angelo reckoned it averaged 2.6 HP/second - so he needed several criticals in a row cause appreciable damage.
Now that's what I call appreciable damage!
He also used Shadow Armour and Boots of Stealth to boost his Stealth so that he didn't have to wait too long between successful Stealth checks, which was essential to prevent Fear from healing properly. It still required some effort, but these tactics guaranteed Fear's demise.
Full disclosure: I did do some save and reloading here, but in a way that I think might be acceptable even in No Reload challenges. After Angelo had gotten a particularly busty critical, I quicksaved it when I'd reached the 2nd floor and then reloaded it again if my next backstab missed. This is fundamentally different to save-scumming, which aims to avoid harmful in-game effects: this risk-free method is guaranteed to work given enough patience, and all I was doing was avoiding the out-of-game effect of wasting time (like using Ctrl + T to save manually waiting for buffs to expire or Ctrl + J to jump over unoccupied space). Life's too short for that sort of thing... and if this offends you, life's too short to take out Fear. Angelo gained nothing from the encounter. Pretend it never happened.
...And Swallows His Pride...
Angelo had initially planned on taking out Pride the same way, but he hadn't banked on Pride's increased speed allowing it to follow him down the stairs. But that was okay. Pride's willingness to descend to the 2nd floor was effectively its death sentence, as it could now be lured to the teleportation altar and killed in the same fashion as the greater doppelgangers.
One important subtlety: although Pride does not appreciably regenerate, it is easy to be fooled into believing that it does. Normally when PCs rest, monsters gain 100 HP, so it's only worth resting to get back spells if you can deal more than 100 HP worth of damage with them. However, Pride auto-casts Draw Upon Holy Might which takes its Constitution into the region where it gains 1 HP/turn or so. Because the bonuses from DUHM are carried over throughout a rest/travel period (see https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1128631#Comment_1128631), Pride will recover much more than 100 HP if you initiate the rest while its DUHM is still active. So if you're relying on summons to gradually wear Pride down (it'll slaughter a hasted army of skeleton warriors in no time, so there's no way you'll be able to kill it all in one go), make sure to wait until Pride's buffs wear off after going invisible before you rest.
...Greed Overcomes Him...
After sneaking up on Avarice, detecting illusion to remove his invisibility and backstabbing, Angelo then drew him back to the teleportation altar. Despite Avarice's impulses to wander away, as long as he knew where Angelo was, he'd try to sneak behind Angelo. So by standing on the other side of the altar with 100% Detect Illusions skill activated, Angelo was confident that Avarice would consistently get jammed in the opposite altar, unable to reach him but still within DI range.
Ideally, Angelo would have used Wand of Paralysation to stun Avarice and gone to town, but this never seemed effective (Angelo read on the BG:EE Wiki that Avarice's race was now iron golem, so he wondered if this was responsible). Hitting with ranged weapons was a chore, so Angelo went with wands instead (although if Avarice's race truly was iron golem, this shouldn't have worked either).
Since the effects from the wand of frost (and the Agannazar's Scorcher effect from the wand of fire) last for 2 rounds, they were especially good at revealing Avarice's script - even if he vanished, the ray stayed visible on him as he ran away. Doing this shows that Avarice could go quite far before returning for another backstab... and he ran far enough, he was prone to 'forgetting' about coming back and returned to roaming around.
The other annoying thing that triggered Avarice's roaming was his tendency to cast Cloudkill. This forced Angelo to move back to avoid its effects, out of sight of Avarice, at which point the sneaky beggar frequently 'beggared' off elsewhere.
In both cases, Angelo had to 'fetch' Avarice when this happened and tempt him back to the altar.
...Before He Overcomes His Greed
Dear readers, I must confess that Angelo grew tired of these tactics. Though he had no doubt that this would ultimately offer a risk free way of killing Avarice, the tedium was simply too much to bear. Besides, Angelo did not want to find himself one charge short of killing Sarevok because he'd blown them all on a petty vanity project. Angelo reloaded back to when Avarice was still stuck in the dummy room and made his escape. If life was too short to take out Fear, it was too short to take out Avarice as well.
I said it earlier, but it's worth repeating. Leave Durlag's Tower after raiding the runed carpet storeroom and the treasure stores on the 4th floor. It is not worth killing Grael, the Demon Knight and the remaining wardens, especially if you're not using the mirror. Angelo knew this before he started and did it anyway to show how he'd do it. Don't be like him.
"The end is nigh, Felicity," Angelo said as he left Durlag's Tower for good. "It's time to gather our resources and prepare for the final push."
Executive Summary: Angelo abuses the Web spell and wand of monster summoning to gain more Web spells and wands of monster summoning.
Having cleared out Durlag's Tower to his satisfaction, Angelo returned to Nashkel for a well-earned rest and a pint at the tavern. To his discredit, he had entirely ignored the 'drinking rumours' system in the original game: while he had no intention of breaking this habit now, it would allow him to take stock of the situation and decide his next move.
Collecting the Web Strands
It would be wrong to say that Felicity was unperturbed when she saw Angelo sitting at the inn table reading a book and making annotations in the margin. "Normally, you just barrel on through Baldur's Gate," she said. "What's stopping you this time?"
"Siege of Dragonspear is an unknown quantity," Angelo replied. "I've deliberately not tried to spoil it for myself, but I know that the two main bottlenecks are waves of crusader attacks and a demon called Big B. I think the B stands for 'bellend'..."
Felicity nodded, "As an area-of-effect CC spell with a saving throw penalty, Web would seem like an obvious way to deal with the crusades. How many Web scrolls have you read are in the game?"
"Ten," Angelo remarked Angelo, off-hand, with a sip of his beer. "I used one up to memorise the spell, but that will still leave 9 scrolls for me to use."
Xvart Village (Borda)
Valley of the Tombs (Narcillus)
Ulgoth's Beard (Dushai)
Nashkel Mines
Bandit Camp (chest in a tent)
Sorcerous Sundries x 2 (Halbazzer Drin)
Oberon's Estate (shelves on floor 2)
Candlekeep x 2 (shelves on floors 1 and 4)
"You've already acquired the last 8 on the list," gasped Felicity excitedly, "so you only have 2 more to get. They're both quite close to here."
Angelo finished his ale and the empty tankard hit the table with a bang. "Exactly."
Nailing Narcissistic Narcillus
To satisfy his craving for jelly, Angelo first went to the Valley of the Tombs and scouted around invisibly. Although Angelo was happy to abuse a mustard jelly's 100% resistance to magic and normal weapons when Felicity polymorphed into them, these immunities meant that they were not his favourite thing to fight. Angelo knew that Narcillus seeing him would grant the opportunity to summon some mustard jellies (or at least their weaker green slime cousins). So Angelo resolved to take Narcillus out without being seen... or, failing that, to take him out without allowing him the opportunity to react. Ironically, this meant Angelo was going to abuse the very spell he was after...
Having found Narcillus, Angelo retreated to just outside his field of vision. He then cast Web as many times as he was able - as a level 6 mage with an amulet of metaspell influence, that was thrice - before putting on his ring of free action and waiting. As soon as he saw Narcillus was held on his UI, he waded in with twin scimitars and Draw Upon Holy Might special ability active. As he was able to cast 1 Web per round, he'd have 7 rounds with 3 Webs active, 6 with Draw Upon Holy Might active, where he was basically free to slash away - the chance of Narcillus saving against all 3 Web spells was slim indeed, as were his chances of surviving the encounter.
Especially with the LoB saving throw bonuses active, this trick is not an 100% guaranteed kill, but it is a neat method when you can get it and will likely at least considerably weaken the foe it is executed on. Since you can wait until your target is held before acting - and can repeat until you do, as this does not activate enemies or turn any neutrals hostile - you'll have at least 1 guaranteed round of action.
He used the same method to loot the potion of power from Lamalha, Telka, Maneira and Zeela, spicing it up with some Blind spells (they were all fighters or clerics, so their saves were pretty poor) and making sure to take out the clerics first (Lamalha and Zeela), lest they prematurely negate the Blind with Cure Disease. He also took the opportunity to steal the wand of monster summoning from the tomb with the ghasts and the potion of invisibility from the revenant's tomb, using the ring of free action and an Invisibility spell to ensure a clean getaway.
Boring a Hole in Borda
Unlike Narcillus, Borda had 100% magic resistance, which meant death-by-Web-abuse was out of the question. SCS also meant that he no longer wasted all his spells on Felicity polymorphed into a mustard jelly... and with a short sword + 1, he was quite capable of beating her up (not that she was especially able to hit him anyway). Angelo didn't much fancy kiting him all over the map and looked around for a solution.
He didn't have to look very far into his bag of tricks for the answer. Using the wand he'd acquired only last area, Angelo summoned a bunch of hobgoblins, dire wolves and ogres to do his bidding for 2 turns. "Why is this is so much better than any of the Monster Summoning spells?" Angelo wondered as he cast Haste, bid them to attack Borda, turned invisible and waited.
Surprisingly, Borda repelled the first wave of summons, but Angelo was not to be deterred. A second quick blast from the wand conjured another bunch of monsters, causing Borda to cross the 'borda' between the living and the dead.
Obtaining all the Web scrolls was only the first stage of Angelo's endgame preparations. Although he was only allowing himself to import the stuff he could hold in his inventory (jncluding potion cases, etc., because he wasn't a total idiot), he wanted to give himself the most options when the choice to narrow his inventory came, as well as the self-satisfaction that he'd done a reasonably thorough job. Now that he'd maxed out his levels, hopefully this process wouldn't be too painful...
Part 24: Angelo Goes on a Nashkel-ing Spree (Edited For Accuracy)
Executive Summary: Angelo shows some 'Southern hospitality' to the priority targets of Nashkel and beyond.
Having hit the XP cap, Angelo was in no mood to kill high-value monsters (e.g. basilisks) merely for the sake of it. Anything that he went after now was strictly for the items they carried, either to use himself or to sell.
Although I have not played much Siege of Dragonspear when I was completing this section of BG:EE, I did know that your gold is stolen after the SoD prologue. For this reason, I'm deliberately utilising straightforward opportunities to gain gold, with the intention of spending it all on consumables before the final battle of BG:EE.
Nimbul Isn't So Nimble
When Angelo had first encountered Nimbul back in Chapter 3, he had left the assassin in Nashkel stores to rot. Unfortunately, Baldur's Gate did not implement any rules regarding starvation, so Angelo would have to deal with Nimbul personally if he wanted those Boots of Avoidance. Which he did. Kind of.
Back in the days before SCS, Nimbul cast Horror, then Magic Missile, then gave up and started throwing axes. Post-SCS Nimbul now had some new tricks, including 2 Chromatic Orbs, Lance of Disruption (ignores Magic Resistance... nasty!) and Dire Charm. However, Chromatic Orb offered a +6 bonus, Angelo's save vs spell of 5 was now enough to ignore its instant-death effect, which would take a lot of the sting out of Nimbul's attack. Furthermore, the greenstone amulet would take care of the Dire Charm, the Magic Missile assault would be thwarted by a simple Shield spell and Angelo now had enough HP to tank the Lance of Disruption. Despite this, there was an even simpler way...
When Nimbul saw Angelo re-enter the Nashkel store, his defences went up in anticipation of a showdown, but he was surprised to see Angelo move out of the shop as quickly as he'd entered. Following suit, Nimbul left the store and began readying his next spell. To his surprise, Angelo didn't fight back, but turned invisible. "What trickery is this?" Nimbul wondered aloud as he cast an illegal Detect Invisibility.
Angelo popped back into view, but promptly disappeared again before Nimbul could take further action. "Stop that!" he exclaimed, putting on his cloak of non-detection to protect against this kind of nonsense.
"Two can play at that game," Nimbul said as he cast Invisibility and scrabbled for a Non-Detection spell of his own. It would have done him no good, since Angelo's Detect Illusion was a skill, not a divination spell, and it dispelled both his invisibility and his mirror images in one fell swoop. "Are you just going to sit there all day?" asked the frustrated assassin.
"Why not?" Angelo asked. "The Nashkel guard are incompetent, certainly - you've not even noticed they're attacking you yet, they're so bad - but they will eventually break down your Stoneskins, your Globe of Invulnerability will wear off and I can cancel any Mirror Image spells you erect using Detect Illusion. As long as they kill you within 8 hours, it's all good - I don't need the XP anymore - and if it looks like they're going to fail, I'll step in at the end and finish you off."
Fortunately for Angelo (and unfortunately for Nimbul), it never came to that.
All the Fun of the Fayre
Visiting the Carnival, Angelo bought both the red and violet potions from a wandering merchant. Although they could be sold for 200 gold net profit apiece, imbibing them offered far greater utility:
The red potion effectively offers automatic scribing while only takes up one slot in the potion bag (this won't matter for generalist mages with 19 intelligence - the manual's descriptions undercut the scribing chances by 1%, so 23 Int, nominally 99% learn spells, is actually 100% - but it will affect specialists, who suffer 15% penalty to learning spells outside the school of specialisation). The 50% resistance to magical damage (not the same as 50% magic resistance) is a nice cherry on top, but the strength and wisdom penalties are a high price to pay.
The violet potion is useful in extended set pieces (like, for instance, the final battle in SoD) as long as its downsides are negated with potions of agility and fortitude (using the bracers of dexterity is not recommended as this disables the use of more useful gauntlets). It also offers priests a method of bashing open the container holding the tome of strength in Candlekeep's tombs.
Angelo raided the potion of invisibility from the chest behind the merchant, kited Vitiare for his potion of master thievery and taunted Zordral into sparing Bentha. Now that Angelo was high level and had good saving throws, he was immune to Sleep and Chromatic Orb's instant death effect; since it offered a +3 bonus, Charm Person was also of negligible danger (Zordral was a mage, not a specialist, so didn't inflict any penalties) and Magic Missile could be neutered using Shield. Nevertheless, Angelo drained Zordral's spells by hopping in and out the tent. This could have allowed Angelo the opportunity to use hit-and-fade backstabs, but Zordral was surprisingly keen to show off his lack of quarterstaff skills. Delighted to find an opponent that he could take out in a straight fight, Angelo obliged in sparring with the mage, forgetting to mention that it was a duel to the death.
"All of that for a single potion of heroism from Bentha?" Angelo asked himself as he proceeded to his next destination.
All the Fun of the Bear
Even before BG:EE added the belt of the antipode to Gorion's corpse, Bear River was always a non-event. Apart from Kaldran the bear in Durlag's Tower (and perhaps winter wolf XP loops, if you were into that sort of thing), Angelo struggled to think of any non-SCS instance of cold damage (there are occasions where mages cast Snilloc's Snowball Swarm in SCS, but these can usually be tanked). So the boots of the north were strictly optional, but Angelo had just thought of another easy way of gaining XP and figured that he may as well show it off.
In fact, the method was even easier than Angelo had hoped, for Felicity did not even need to polymorph into a wide mustard jelly. Her normal imp form was enough to block the bridge and so casting Invisibility on her was enough to make a barrier impenetrable to the polar bear. Like Kaldran before him, Angelo leisurely shot him down... even getting struck by lightning wasn't enough to deter him.
"Is this method abusable?" Angelo wondered. "If I had waited long enough, could my battles with Drizzt or Borda have been made easier by stormy weather? Or would this effect be somehow flagged as an instance of Call Lightning and blocked by their magic resistance?" Like several other vexing questions, he decided to let other people ponder them and continued with his questing.
Greywolf
Before SCS, Greywolf was on the same 'early kill' list as Meilum, being a melee fighter offering high XP and good loot in a reasonably accessible location. However, SCS makes Greywolf use an oil of speed, effectively removing the option of running around the quarry firing either arrows or Blind spells until they connect (he closes so quickly that even firing off Invisibility and waiting out the buffs is dicey). Now that Angelo had the boots of speed and Haste at his disposal, kiting was back on the menu, and even Greywolf's LoB save bonus could not resist 8 Blind spells in a row (not that there was anything stopping Angelo from retreating and trying again if they did).
The blinded bounty hunter ran around the map, which was a nuisance, but Angelo could afford to invisibly follow him around until the oil of speed expired. Unable to escape, Greywolf yielded his lovely long sword and Prism gave Angelo a pair of emeralds (and a reputation boost). Combined with telling the truth to Oublek in Nashkel, this brought Angelo's reputation to 20 and selling the gems and Varscona gave Angelo a bit more gold. He planned to spend it all in Sorcerous Sundries before advancing to SoD, so was consciously gathering as much easy cash and reputation as possible.
The "Fastest Dart Thrower" Isn't Fast Enough
Although the gauntlets of weapon expertise were generally the better choice, there were occasions where Angelo was more concerned in whether he hit with his missile weapon than whether he did high damage (e.g. using arrows of dispelling, which are relatively limited in quantity, although the same principle applies to any ammunition doing elemental damage when attacking a Mage with Stone Skin). For these occasions, the bracers of archery offered a +1 bonus to Thac0 compared to the Legacy of the Masters, and so they appeared on Angelo's potential imports list.
Wandering invisibly around Fire Leaf Forest until he found Vax and Zal, Angelo positioned himself just outside their fields of vision and released his trio of Web spells. Both were primarily fighters and were quickly ensnared by the magical tendrils. Cutting uselessly at the stringy fibres with their blades, they could hardly react as Angelo appeared, brandishing twin scimitars and a ring of free action. He didn't even bother to finish off Vax after slashing down Zal, but scooped up the bracers and made his escape.
"It is time for us to leave the South," Angelo told Felicity as he began the trek northwards. "Many tasks still await us around Beregost, and I would not have them delayed any longer."
The red potion is a convenient way of offering automatic scribing success for characters with 19 intelligence which only takes up one slot in the potion bag (otherwise, at least 2 potions of either genius or mind focussing are required to reach 100% success with 24 Intelligence).
Actually, for an unkitted character like your multiclass FMT, the "99%" chance at 23 Int is certain success. One potion of genius suffices starting from 19. This is because there's an off-by-one bug, and all scribing chances are 1% higher than listed.
Characters with a kit take the 15% off-school specialist penalty; they have to go to 24 Int for certain success.
The red potion is a convenient way of offering automatic scribing success for characters with 19 intelligence which only takes up one slot in the potion bag (otherwise, at least 2 potions of either genius or mind focussing are required to reach 100% success with 24 Intelligence).
Actually, for an unkitted character like your multiclass FMT, the "99%" chance at 23 Int is certain success. One potion of genius suffices starting from 19. This is because there's an off-by-one bug, and all scribing chances are 1% higher than listed.
Characters with a kit take the 15% off-school specialist penalty; they have to go to 24 Int for certain success.
Thanks for pointing that out, that's very useful to know. I'll update my post to reflect that.
Executive Summary: Angelo kills time and high-priority targets around the middle of the map.
As he roamed from Nashkel to Beregost, Angelo complained to Felicity, "It was quite difficult to think of a name for today's segment."
"It showed," the imp shrugged without missing a beat.
Angelo let the jibe pass pass. "Although it may not lend itself to the most exciting titles, hoovering up outstanding items that we might import into SoD is still an important business. Once we've left BG:EE, the opportunity to loot them will be lost to us. This is not BG:EET we're playing here!"
Silke Smooth
Although Silke was hardly a high priority target, she did make the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Normally, Angelo would have talked to Garrick and have Silke summon her 'thugs' Glayde, Faltis and Tesselan before he disposed of her - that way, he could have extracted several potions of defence from them using Pick Pocket and started a conversation should he have failed a check, as this flipped their variables and made them disappear regardless of if they were about to turn hostile - but as a warrior, he could use potions of invulnerability should he ever need to set his AC to 0. Although he could have sold the potions, this would have required 15 seconds that Angelo was not willing to spend.
In any case, if Angelo had summoned Glayde et al, Silke would have started hostile, which would have made matters marginally more complicated. As it stood, Angelo could simply lay down several Web spells on an initially neutral Silke without her batting an eyelid. Even as the fibrous tentacles snaked around her waist, she didn't suspect that her death was at hand and her circle remained defiantly blue. It was only when Angelo closed on her, twin blades flashing, that she tried to defend herself, but by this time it was too late.
As with the demon knight, Silke was one of the opponents that SCS actually made easier. In vanilla, Silke led with Improved Invisibility before hurling Lightning Bolt and Magic Missile with abandon; in SCS, aside from a single Confusion spell, Silke had nothing, absolutely nothing, that could threaten a high level PC with enough hit dice to shrug off Sleep (as they'd likely have good enough saving throws to resist Charm Person, with its +3 bonus). Not that Angelo would know, of course, since the bard (perhaps that was why she was useless!) never got a spell off.
Anti-Chickenating Bassilus
While he was in the mood for killing spellcasters, Angelo went to the Red Canyons to ply his trade. Although Bassilus had a whole array of nasty magic - including Cause Disease, Animate Dead and Harm - in his repertoire, Angelo was pleased when he saw that Cure Disease was not among them, which meant that as a cleric with shoddy saving throws versus spells, Bassilus was very vulnerable to being blinded. Being sure to engage from a direction where he could easily run to another area and come back later should it prove necessary, Angelo persuaded Bassilus to disband his undead before loosing as many Blind spells as he considered safe. Sure enough, as soon as he lost his sight, Bassilus refused to part with the deadlier spells in his collection (thankfully not summoning skeletons, a tactic employed by the bitches of Umberlee that Angelo considered rather unsporting) and obligingly stood around as target practice. Armour of Faith and Sanctuary could only stave off death for so long, as Bassilus discovered to his misfortune.
Sadly, despite the fact that SCS made the wolf 'guarding' Melicamp neutal and of no threat to anybody, the chicken did not hop into Angelo's pack until after he'd blinded it and chopped it into bits. Worse, despite spending an inordinate amount of time finding and slashing a skeleton by High Hedge for its skull (somehow, Angelo had remembered that they previously had an annoying habit of interrupting him on his way to High Hedge, and he was glad that they had, for whatever reason, thinned out a bit), Melicamp did not survive the Anti-Chickenator process. But as he needed neither the reputation nor the XP, he didn't lose any sleep over it.
Girdle's Incompleteness Theorem
First up was Elves' Bane, aka the Girdle of Piercing. Angelo was initially worried when he coudn't find the ogre in its usual spot on the Coast Way. Thinking he may have accidentally activated it during a runthrough to discover Larswood, Angelo did a bit of digging and found it lurking by some trees. A standard Blind spell and some arrows was all it took to persuade the ogre to unwillingly donate its brace of girdles to Angelo. Would he be returning them to Unshey? Hells, no!
Next up were Caldo and Krumm in the Dryad Falls. Despite the fact that they arrived as a pair, Angelo found that neither stepped in if the other's vision was to mysteriously disappear. Better yet, the dryad's tree didn't seem a priority of theirs, as they stood neutral until they were talked to, and Blind didn't alter this state of affairs. Like the ogre before them, Angelo was free to cast Blind and retreat as often as he liked until his spells connected... which, given their low level credentials, wasn't too long. While he was at it, he took a halberd from a cave, looking to make up the gold he'd lost from not exploiting Silke's Dilemma to its fullest.
Finally, Angelo perused Mutamin's Garden in search of Lindin (along with her motley crew of Kirian, Baerin and Peter)... or, more accurately, the golden girdle that she carried. Making sure that he had protection from petrification active to ensure he was safe from any stray basilisk gazes, Angelo invisibly scouted their locations before firing multiple Web spells just out of sight. As soon as he saw Lindin was ensnared, he went in for the kill, snatching the belt and fleeing before the others could find their bearings. He freed Tamah using a Stone to Flesh scroll, but her offer for him to raid her sunken house on the South Beregost Road was not overly tempting. Instead, he left her in the basilisk-ridden wasteland to enjoy her newfound freedom.
The Ulcaster Ultimatum
As much out of curiosity as necessity, Angelo investigated the Ulcaster ruins. Ulcaster was one of these dungeons that Angelo always either forgot about or overestimated, but its wand of fire was quite accessible as long as two fireball traps could be tanked or disarmed. In fact, as Angelo discovered, the History of the Darkness required by Ulcaster (now upgraded so that only this copy, and not one nabbed from Gullykin or otherwise, will suffice) could be safely retrieved using Invisibility. Even though looting the treasure pile forced Angelo to become visible, the SCS-improved Wolf of Ulcaster started too far away from the hoard to stop him from turning invisible again after filling his inventory. The rest of the loot was pretty uninspiring, further evidencing the dungeon's low level credentials.
Visiting The Surgeon Wearing Golden Pantaloons
Wandering around Shipwreck's Coast, Angelo came across the enigmatic character of 'The Surgeon'. Angelo had half a mind to cut him down when he revealed himself to be Davaeorn's brother, but laziness stayed his hand, along with the promise of a potion of magic protection. Although not particular auspicious on their own, a pair of them constitutes the best of the 'anti-magic' potions since they last for 2 hours and protect against all hostile magic (as opposed to resistance to magic damage and < 5th level spells offered by their respective brethren potions of magic shielding and blocking; although the former offers the bonus perk of automatically successful saving throws, the latter dispels all effects when its protection takes hold, which - along with its pitiful duration - makes it quite awkward to use).
To further his gathering of miscellaneous items, Angelo took the golden pantaloons from the Friendly Arm Inn's top floor for pressing. By the time the nobleman could gather enough enthusiasm to query the whereabouts of his freshly pressed trouser, Angelo would be long gone.
Leaving the Friendly Arm Inn, it occurred to Angelo that these latest collections were, in a way, acting as a warmup for the next events he had planned. Killing Silke would be good practice for dealing with a pack of Red Wizards while Ulcaster would give a dry run for clearing out the Firewine Ruins. Only after Angelo had picked these opportunities clean would he consider going back to Baldur's Gate proper.
Executive Summary: Angelo takes down Lendarn and his family of ogres after discharging a lightning rod.
Ever since she learned that SCS had boarded up the convenient entrance through Jenkal's house in Gullykin, Felicity had questioned the wisdom of tackling the Firewine Ruins. But Angelo was insistent that it be done: Lendarn had a potion of power and a scroll of Cloudkill, rare BG:EE resources that Angelo thought might be useful later.
Kobold Shock Tactics
Unfortunately, Firewine was never the easiest dungeon to sneak through, and SCS had compounded this fact. The kobolds now not only respawned, they were also tougher and more numerous than before. Angelo refused to waste buffing potions on such critters, but without assistance, they surrounded him and wore him down with their poisoned jabs and arrows. The kobold guards even had stars in single weapon style fighting, which Angelo considered 'a bit much'. That said, the corridors of Firewine Bridge were short and narrow, and this afforded Angelo the opportunity to try out a rarely used tactic.
Entering through the secret door in Gullykin's temple, Angelo ignored the lower left half of the map with the ghost knights and invisibly sneaked as far as he could along the upper passage towards Jenkal's exit. As soon as he found the way completely blocked by kobolds, he retreated just out of sight to release Felicity. After she'd cast Polymorph Self, Angelo cast Invisibility on her and she shifted into a mustard jelly, conveniently barring the passage from further interference. After casting Invisibility on himself, Angelo lined up the barricading mob with the opposite walls, downed a potion of insulation and loosed several bolts from his wand of lightning.
In vanilla Baldur's Gate, Angelo would have considered himself an expert (self-proclaimed, naturally) at getting Lightning Bolts to rebound properly. This tactic didn't seem nearly so deadly these days - the bolt sometimes disappeared prematurely and other times bounced at unexpected angles - but Angelo compensated by firing a few more charges. Together with his worn boots of grounding, the potion of insulation meant that Angelo was immune to the electrical damage, a protection the kobolds found wanting.
Cutting down any dying kobolds that remained, Angelo waited until the furore from behind Felicity had abated before polymorphing her back to her normal form. "Nice to see some kobold current affairs," he laughed as he bid her to follow him.
A (Len)Darn Nuisance
Resting in the Firewine Ruins had always been a dicey business, but Angelo proceeded with it for two reasons. He needed to reset the behaviour of the critters behind Felicity, lest they wander far and wide in their search for the source of the commotion and stumble across him at an inopportune moment. He also needed to recharge Felicity's Polymporph Self, which awkwardly required her to remain outside his pack when he rested. Luckily, Angelo had one more cast of Invisibility left for himself and Felicity hadn't broken her cover yet, so even though the likelihood of interrupting was high, they could try several times. The dungeon's long passages were fairly accommodating in that respect, and the ground that Angelo had covered allowed multiple 'rolls of the dice', one of which was bound to be a success.
Lendarn had always seemed like an angry fellow, and he didn't disappoint. So blinding was his rage, so eager was he to attack Angelo, that he was willing to be lured out of range of his followers' assistance. As an invoker, he eschewed CC in lieu of magic and cold damage, unfortunate choices since Angelo could cast Shield and wielded Gorion's belt of the antipode (which also sabotaged the Silloc's Snowball Swarm duo in his Minor Sequencer). Furthermore, his twin Burning Hands spells could be avoided by switching to fire resistance gear and the ring of free action nullified his Slow spell. Tanking the sole Lance of Disruption, Angelo's skill with Detect Illusion sliced through Lendarn's Mirror Image while his skill with scimitars sliced through Lendarn's stone skins and skull.
The Firewine Hang-Ogre
Finding a spot that his familiar could safely block off while invisible was not easy - some of the seemingly obvious locations turned out not to be fit for purpose - but Angelo eventually found a suitable cranney. After parking a suitably polymorphed Felicity in a side corridor, Angelo alerted the remaining ogre mage and his ogrillon cousins to his presence.
Falling back, Felicity slid into place and the trap was set.
In its offensive repertoire, the ogre mage had Magic Missile (useless c.f. Angelo's Shield spell), Sleep (useless c.f. Angelo's level), Glitterdust (useless c.f. no enemies could reach Angelo) and Hold Person (useless c.f. Angelo's ring of free action). In theory, as long as Angelo alerted no kobolds bowmen and took out the ogre variants promptly using archery, his victory was guaranteed; in practice, it was anyway, as his shooting skills far exceeded the kobolds', who could not penetrate his low missile AC.
One surprise to Angelo was that this ogre mage had decent random loot. On his playthough, he found 3 Lance of Disruption scrolls on its body (an SCS spell otherwise unobtainable outside of Sorcerous Sundries), but one test found it had scrolls of Detect Illusion and Protection from Fire (the former is only found on Hallacan, previously a Gullykin assassin which SCS moves to attack you during a Cloakwood transition, a one-time event that Angelo fled; the latter mage spell isn't available until the opening dungeon of SoD) and another yielded a scroll of Invisibility 10' Radius (again, a spell usually confined to SoD's prologue). In some cases, Angelo found no scroll, but the chances appear quite high.
The Firewine Hangover
Leaving the Firewine Ruins through Jenkal's exit, Angelo had no intention of fighting with the small folk and fled as soon as possible. He did briefly return to the above ground Firewine Bridge, however, as he wanted to pickpocket Bentan for his magic immunity protection scroll. Since there was only one item of interest and the delay between an attempt failing and turning hostile allowed several bites of the cherry, Angelo did not bother with a potion of mastery thievery, content to buff up with Draw Upon Holy Might and Kiel's Buckler. The priest was right next to an area transition as well, so Angelo could run away to avoid Bentan's solitary Hold Person disabler even if his ring of free action hadn't made him immune.
Had he not been playing LoB, Angelo would have stopped to kill off Kahrk. Normally, the uber ogre mage had the words 'Arrow of Slaying' tattooed across its forehead, and it was a 3,500 XP sitting duck. In LoB, however, it had an AC vs missiles of -24(!), so Angelo would have to wait for its minor globe invulnerability to expire and then paralyze it to have any chance of success outside of a critical hit. This was beyond the scope of Angelo's ambitions, so he let the ancient evil live. He wasn't going after Aec'Letec either, so he figured that Kahrk could give the demon company.
"That's us done gallivanting with the ghost knights," Angelo said to Felicity as he made his way northwards. "It's time to frolic with the druids and get busy with the wizards."
Executive Summary: Angelo wears down Denak, Diane, Lasala and Brendan after killing Osmadi and Corsonne for starters.
Ordinarily, Angelo would have skipped Spider Wood entirely, as the ring of energy didn't seem suitable recompense for the hassle of dealing with the bunch of Red Wizard rejects. Still, BG:EE had now plonked a scroll of Remove Magic into Denak's inventory, and the fact that the ring's blast was treated as a level 0 effect meant that it circumvented several spell protections. Combined, these facts made enough of a case for Angelo to make a detour into the arachnids' forest.
Disembowling the Druids
If this thread has proven anything, it's that druids are more viable than they often get credit for. As soon as they get level 4 spells, they can call on woodland beings, summon giant insects and create static charges... and it only gets better from there! They may not be able to stop time, imprison things in the bowels of the earth or trick genies into doing their bidding, but it's safe to say that a well-prepared high-level druid can more than hold their own.
Unfortunately for Osmadi and Corsonne, they weren't that high level and weren't especially prepared either. Low-level druids had always been some of Angelo's favourite punching bags: their spells were ineffective (in vanilla BG, they often cast Hold Person, but SCS has dispensed with that behaviour), their ACs were high (leather armour was almost as good as no armour) and their saving throws were garbage. LoB and SCS did surprisingly little to change this: although their ACs and saves got considerably better, their positions on the edge of a map meant that they were pretty vulnerable to Blind, with the opion of fleeing if it didn't work. Their decent spells simply took too long to cast and despite having a Cure Disease apiece, they succumbed to Angelo's blinding archery.
"Why did you bother killing them?" Felicity asked. "You don't need Osmadi's Backbiter spear - who would?! - and you're at the XP cap anyway."
"Force of habit," Angelo shrugged as he left the stone circle.
Soaking Up the Spells
The Red Wizards were a different story. The combination of LoB and SCS buffed them up considerably and they could do some serious damage. Although Angelo didn't want to spend any more anti-magic resources taking them down - D their methods of attack were varied and deadly. Lasala was clearly the weakest, followed by Brendan, then Diana (although she had a horrible Polymorph Other spell that Angelo was very keen to avoid) and finally Denak himself. Along with various incarnations of direct damage (largely magic and acid based), there were summons, CC disablers and several layers of magical defence. The works.
Angelo started by summoning some critters of his own to absorb their spells, but it quickly became apparent that the wizards were not going to waste their best arsenal on this lowly fodder. "Fine," Angelo muttered as he cast Shield on himself and gulped down a potion of invulnerability or two. "I'll do it myself."
With his potion support, his saving throws were sufficiently low that just about any spell they had that could be resisted was successfully saved against (Angelo expended a charge from his Greenstone amulet when he saw Denak casting Chaos, though, just in case). He'd considered using the scrolls of protection against acid, but he didn't fancy tempting Denak or Diana into casting their Remove Magic spells, so resolved to sop up the damage with potions of healing and carefully timed uses of his Cure Light Wounds special ability. He was also prepared to tank three Lances of Disruption and two Chromatic Orbs, but his Shield spell warded off Magic Missile and Gorion's belt of the antipode dealt with the solitary Icelance handily. Some of these spells would be used up on his summons, Angelo knew, but there was no harm in preparing for the worst.
Protection from Acid scrolls are not so common, but I would definitely recommend using two here, along with using two to neutralise Rezdan at the Cloakwood Mines.
Inbetween salvos, the mages loved to throw spookily accurate Melf's Minute Meteors, so Angelo waited out the assault behind his large shield+1, +4 vs missiles, wearing his girdle of piercing and brandishing his fire immunity items for additional protection (once forgetting to take off the belt of the antipode... he wouldn't make that mistake again!).
Kiting and Smiting
Once the mages realised that their damaging magic wasn't having much of an effect, they resorted to summoning goons to do their dirty work. Apart from the usual slew of short-lived Monster Summoning drek, Diana also spawned a sword spider and Denak conjured a lesser air elemental (which, unfortunately, shared the same skin as a myconoid, given that air elementals were not in the original BG and some confusion seems to have arisen during the model assignation).
These were all much tougher than Angelo's own summons, so Angelo tried to evade them using Invisibility.
Despite the fact that all four of the wizards were conjurers - and so should be unable to cast divinations - Denak cast an illegal Detect Invisibility and, caught short without his cloak of non-detection, Angelo appeared. Having only a single Invisibility available and unwilling to drink a potion to achieve the same, Angelo sighed and resolved to the old-fashioned method of running around with his boots of speed taking potshots.
Unfortunately, what with constantly being on the move, Angelo's Detect Illusion skill wasn't able to tear down the mages' Mirror Image spells. Combined with the omnipresent Stone Skins and Denak's unnaturally good AC, the mages' defences took a long time to smash through. Still, there was relatively little danger involved here, so Angelo didn't want to waste any arrows of dispelling on the job. It took a lot of running around firing arrows (Angelo used up all his normal arrows, so started on his reserves of arrows + 1), but the wizards' protections eventually fell away. Even alerting some of the local tasloi did not distract Angelo from his campaign and, one by one, the conjurers bit the dust.
Ignoring the peripheral tasloi, Angelo looted the ring of energy, along with assorted robes and scrolls, from the bodies before quickly leaving the scene. Fahrington could find his own cursed scroll!
"The hour is upon us, Felicity," Angelo said as he made his way towards Baldur's Gate. "It's time to finish the game."
Executive Summary: Abusing wands and the Web spell allows Angelo to kill Slythe and the doppelgangers.
Angelo was always amazed by how hard people made it for themselves when they returned to Baldur's Gate in Chapter 7. He did not visit Cythandria, he did not rescue Duke Eltan... the game pretended these were important, but they were really window dressing... and went straight to the Undercellars beneath the Blushing Mermaid.
Time to Slytherin with Slythe
Refusing to pay the toll at the door, Angelo released Felicity as he moved up the passage towards the central lounge. Obediently, the imp polymorphed into a mustard jelly, but Angelo did not turn her invisible, for he had another plan afoot. Stopping just short of the lounge area, Angelo hurled several Web spells into the room and watched the UI for the latest updates.
As soon as Slythe registered as ensnared, Angelo went for the kill. Buffed by Draw Upon Holy Might and brandishing a pair of blades, Angelo skipped over the webbed area using his ring of free action and started hacking and slashing. Felicity complemented his manoeuvres, hurling amorphous globs of her body at Slythe in an attempt to kill him as soon as possible. Fortunately, this Fighter/Thief preferred to use potions of invisibility, rather than his natural Stealth ability, so Angelo could theoretically disable his ability to backstab by moving around a bit with Detect Illusion active, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that.
Krystin seemed strangely reluctant to appear this time around, which was fortunate since her automatic minor globe of invulnerability would render her immune to the Web spell. Angelo was prepared to use his Greenstone amulet should he see her appearing: she was an enchanter, so most of her magic was CC... although she'd now acquired a Death Spell, which Angelo considered grossly unfair since it had no saving throw, so he should have drunk two potions of magic shielding to be completely safe. Had Slythe managed to wriggle free, Angelo would have paralysed him using a wand - not only did he want this combat over quickly, he didn't want the assassin to start eyeing up Felicity as backstab material.
This was all academic, though, as Slythe was eviscerated in fairly short order.
Scooping up the loot, Angelo left the Undercellar. Despite not showing her face during the combat, Angelo was surprised that Krystin followed him out of the Blushing Mermaid and into the city's northeastern streets. However, she could not track across an area transition and Angelo abandoned her, Slythe-less, making his way to the Duchal Palace.
Plundering the Palace
The first thing Angelo did upon entering the Duchal Palace was to drink two potions of master thievery - his Open Locks skill was so low that he needed two to max it out - and sneaked around the upstairs chambers, helping himself to the contents of the locked chests and cupboards therein. He did wonder why the dukes kept two cursed scrolls of protection, but figured it was probably to dissuade thieves like him. Apart from this, he gathered a decent haul of potions, scrolls, gems and the occasional wand.
Sneaking back down to ground, Angelo enacted the second stage of his plan. He knew that the six noblemen would turn into greater doppelgangers of various stripes, and that having all six active at once was a recipe for disaster. Much to his disgust, despite the fact that casting Blind would turn them individually hostile without triggering their transformation and ensuring their death by the Flaming Fist guards, having even one of the noblemen disabled in this fashion would mean that the entire transformation would not trigger properly and Angelo would be unable to advance through the game. So that was out.
However, like Emissary Tar, the disguised doppelgangers inherited their alternate form's saving throws, so they would barely resist any spell cast on them. This meant that Angelo could cast Web from the rightmost entrance to ensnare the back row near enough automatically. As the webbed noblemen would not transform until they were free and their saving throws were so poor that as long as the Web was in effect, they would be held, this effectively halved the number of doppelgangers in the initial wave. Better yet, it delayed the transformation of the dangerous doppelganger mage (in the blue outfit) and shaman (in the green).
Angelo switched to the leftmost entrance and used his wand of monster summoning to surround the dukes with several bodyguards of his own. Casting Haste to give them the extra edge, Angelo then entered the room and triggered the cutscene. There was a fine balance to be struck here: too long pre-buffing and the Web spell would wear off, not enough and the summons would fall too quickly (the Flaming Fist were also ensnared by the Web and could not offer themselves as meat shields until after it had worn off). In an ideal world, Angelo would have turned invisible and pickpocketed Belt and Liia Janneth while his potions of master thievery were still active - both had a 1 charge ring of invisibility, which could be recharged by selling and buying back at extortionate rates so as to be actually useful - but he would wait until the battle was raging before performing the pilfery.
The Doppelganger Derby
The first wave consisted of two greater doppelgangers and a doppelganger assassin. As soon as the battle started, Angelo cast Stoneskin to protect himself from the assassin's painful backstabs and then slunk away back to the rightmost chamber again. The doppelgangers proceeded to attack his summons, which was just what Angelo had hoped for. He cast another Web spell on the remaining noblemen, to make sure they didn't spoil the party early, and then waited for a few rounds.
Without their spellcaster support, the first greater doppelgangers wave was being predictably taken apart. His summons were being shredded, but that was exactly their purpose, and Angelo wasn't too hesitant to conjure another batch should the previous one be near to falling. Bitter experience had taught him that he shouldn't be too thrifty with his charges if he wanted to reliably get through this encounter. He'd been cautious with his previous wand uses, so he pushed the boat out and used a second charge here.
When Angelo estimated that the Web spell was about to wear off in a few rounds' time, he proceeded to use his wand of paralysation on the blue-coated nobleman, as he wanted to delay the appearance of the doppelganger mage yet further. The nobleman seemed unaffected by Hold Person and other weaker magics, but the wand, with its vicious -4 save penalty, did the job nicely.
Once activated, the shaman tried to cast Flame Strike on Angelo - not a great idea given his fire immunity. The shaman also tried Silence, which would have been a good idea had it disabled wand use. Sadly, it didn't and the shaman ended up paying the price. And when the doppelganger mage finally appeared, it found itself without allies facing the might of Angelo, his summoned army and two dukes of Baldur's Gate. Surely its demise was inevitable?
If You Want Something Done Right...
The dukes' AI in this encounter was, not to put too fine a point on it, complete shite. Liia Janneth, bless her, had such powerful magic as Incindeary Cloud, Otiluke's Freezing Sphere and Malavon's Rage available to her. Did she use any of these options to blast her opponents into smithereens? Nope. Perhaps out of fear of hurting the hapless Flaming Fist guards surrounding her, the extent of this 28th level invoker's contribution consisted of Teleport Field (never a good idea), a few Magic Missiles and a Mirror Image or two so that she could stand around doing nothing without getting hurt. It was all Angelo could do not to smirk with satisfaction as the doppelgangers cut her down.
Not that Belt was much better. The level 31 fighter was a force to be reckoned with, no denying that... when he turned up! However, between breaking his weapon (Angelo ended up disabling the SCS option that magical weapons were replaced by fine equivalents because it simply wasn't fair that Angelo's best warrior by a country mile ended up punching his foes most of the time) and getting stuck in a cabinet looking for Narnia, unconcerned by his wife getting murdered in the next room, his behaviour was erratic at best. So it fell mostly upon Angelo's shoulders to tank the mage's duo of acid arrows sequencer, run around shooting its elemental/myconoid summons and avenge Janneth's death all by himself.
Finally it went down and Sarevok's evil plan was revealed. Never known for his calmness, the Bhaalspawn turned on Angelo spouting vituperations, but Angelo backed off. Recovering from his bout of indifference, Belt tried to step in, but this was a bad idea. Already wounded from earlier battles, Belt would have not stood much chance against an enraged Sarevok, and Angelo knew that the duke's death would force a reload. Expending another wand of monster summoning charge, Angelo let Sarevok's rage play out on some hired lackeys instead. After a short time, Winski Perorate teleported in to whisk Sarevok away and Belt divined their location at the end of the thieves' maze. Although he had to drink another potion to do so, Angelo managed to filch the rings of invisibility and some potions from Liia's and Belt's pockets before
the fighter sent him off in hot pursuit.
"The Duchal Palace battle is one of BG:EE's hardest battles," Angelo explained to Felicity as the thieves' guild began to swirl around him. "Another one is coming right up next..."
Executive Summary: Abusing all of his wands, Angelo blasts his namesake into first off-screen, then on-screen oblivion.
"Do you think you'll be able to finish you finishing the game in one post?" Felicity asked as Angelo cast his Invisibility spell.
Angelo shrugged, "let's find out!"
Taking Stock of the Situation
Before Angelo entered the thieves' maze, he sneaked into Sorcerous Sundries and bought every available spell he hadn't already memorised. He planned on keeping them until SoD began, then immediately scribing them for a massive XP bump. He also made a point of purchasing scrolls of any other spells he thought he'd reasonably need, including Greater Malison, Fireball, Skull Trap and Invisibility. Potions of invisibility, invulnerability, heroism, regeneration, explosions and magical protection (of all types) came next, along with oils of speed and fiery burning. After stocking up on magical arrows and scrolls of protection from magic and undead, Angelo was ready to rumble.
He deliberately did not recharge his wands (apart from the wand of polymorphing - this would, ultimately, be unnecessary, but he didn't risk it), for he wanted as much as possible to avoid the buyback-recharge trick: it was a cheap (although, given the prices, not that cheap!) trick and although he disguised it well, Angelo did have standards. Sometimes.
From there, he reapplied his Invisibility to sneak past Tamoko (full plate and a ring of protection +2 was better than her full plate +1, so tackling her was the definition of optional) and through the thieves' maze (whenever he saw a red mark on the wall, he stopped and looked for traps). He considered tackling the associates of Rahvin, Haseo, Wudei, Carston, Shaldrissa and Gorf, but 2 arrows of detonation seemed paltry reward for the considerable effort it would take to dispatch them. Leaving the new 'Magma Bulwark' Platemail +1 by the abandoned leftmost pulpit (a little late in the game, all things considered), Angelo steeled himself, rested and entered the Temple of Bhaal.
Sarevok Receives a Blast From His Past
The first thing that Angelo noticed was that once you'd entered the SCS Temple of Bhaal, there was no going back. This was in contrast to BG:EE, where he could have lured Sarevok's lackeys to their doom one by one and only when he'd alerted Sarevok to his presence did his escape route become barred. Angelo also noticed that all the former traps had been removed: while it was nice that no battle horrors would appear at the sides, this denied the possibility of using protection from magic and dashing over the central mosaic, triggering the skill traps to kill his enemies while avoiding the arrow traps himself (not that Angelo had ever gotten that tactic to work reliably anyway).
When Angelo cast Invisibility, he made sure that it was from the extra spell granted by the Amulet of Metaspell Influence; he was about to take the amulet off, so this extra spell would have otherwise been lost to him. Creeping up to Sarevok while invisible, Angelo was initially alarmed to see the dialogue trigger, but the fighter thankfully seemed otherwise oblivious to his presence. He watched to see which side Diarmid teleported in (the 'Reads a Scroll' floating banner helped) - sometimes Diarmid appeared on the left, sometimes on the right - and moved into Diarmid's old position when Diarmid went into the centre. This put him on the opposite side of Angelo the F/M (henceforth, the F/M), out of sight of Sarevok and his teammates. Angelo positioned himself beneath the highest grim reaper statue on the relevant side, allowing him to see the nearest corner of the carpet, and waited for the two hours for Diarmid's protection from magic scroll to wear off.
Testing shows Semaj and Tazok invisibly clustered around Sarevok with Angelo hiding in a flank.
Aiming his wand of fire at the centre of the top step, Angelo fired a Fireball blast, hitting Diarmid and Sarevok, along with the hidden Semaj and Tazok. Ideally, he would have liked to hit the F/M too, but experience had shown that going for all five provoked them into chasing him, whereas going for four allowed him to remain out of sight. They had a tendency to shuffle around after the initial blasts, so he retreated a little to let them manoeuvre a bit, but they settled down after the first few charges. Once he'd found his 'safe spot', Angelo liked to drop something he didn't urgently need to act as a beacon.
Angelo lays down a marker!
After 20 charges or so blasts from his wand of fire, it was usually Semaj who was the first to fall. It was ironic, Angelo thought, that both Sarevok and his stooges were immune to fire in vanilla BG, so this tactic wouldn't have worked (then again, the original Sarevok had 100% magic resistance, but no haste - even as a straight mage, Angelo would have taken that trade!).
The Charred of Bhaal Has Awoken
Angelo noticed that the F/M must have moved onto the central carpet to fill Semaj's spot after the conjurer's death, since he suddenly started taking damage from Angelo's subsequent blasts. Angelo also saw that the skeleton warrior rising from Semaj's corpse ignored the fog of war and came straight for him... but initial dismay turned to delight when he realised that this could be used to isolate the skeletons individually. However, he only had a few casts of Invisibility and didn't want to use any potions unnecessarily, so he started running in a triangle shape, downwards initially before across and back at the bottom of the map. This put as much space between himself and the skeleton as possible when he returned back to his placed marker to fire another blast before beginning the dance once more.
Testing shows that Angelo moves to fill in for any deceased followers.
Since Angelo only had a limited number of inventory spaces and did not do any refilling, his wand of fire ran out during the proceedings (i.e. got to 1 Fireball charge, at which point it was retired for potential recharge later). Although the necklace of missiles didn't do as much average damage per charge (since all their 1's were not counted as 2's), they were useful in that they could be stacked in the gem bag for a single inventory slot. Angelo had used up his amulet of metaspell influence bonus first precisely so that he could switch to the necklace of missiles without losing a spell (he went for these first, rather than potions of explosions or oils of fiery burning - which also could be stacked in a single inventory slot using the potion bag - to retain the option of recharging the necklace of missiles later, whereas consumables would be gone for good). Every run of the triangle allowed him to fire off one charge, after which he'd complete another circuit before trying again.
After 21 wand of fire charges, 17 necklace of missile blasts, 2 potions of explosion, 4 oils of fiery burning and 8 Fireball spells (Angelo had to use up all 6 of his precious Fireball scrolls for this; he used the potion of explosion first because although it did an extra d6 damage, its save v spell was more likely to be resisted than the oil's save v breath weapon), Sarevok's minions finally perished.
This is the F/M's, not our protagonist's, death screen!
"Goodbye, my twin," Angelo muttered as he lined up the final skeletons in the bottom corner of the map and cast Invisibility to dump them there. "Now to kill my half-brother as well!"
Death in the Family
Despite being present throughout the blasting, Sarevok's unilaterally symbiotic protection meant that he was only barely wounded. The good news was that now his chums had been dispatched, he was fully vulnerable to further damage. The bad news was that he still had roughly 800 HP and was mad as hell about it.
Using a charge from his wand of monster summoning, Angelo conjured a small horde of beasties outside Sarevok's range. Sending them into the fray as a disposable meat shield, Angelo next tried to fire off a Dispel Magic scroll to remove Sarevok's Haste. Despite hearing reports that you only needed power 3 to dispel this effect (second paragraph of 'Original Baldur's Gate' in https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Sarevok_Anchev ), Angelo was sceptical since he'd also heard that BG:EE scrolls were cast at level 6 (https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/72104/caster-level-when-casting-from-scrolls). He was right to be sceptical as Sarevok appeared unaffected by the spell and with his archery ThAC0 of 7, Angelo could only hope to hit Sarevok's AC of -18 on a critical hit. There was no way Angelo was going to risk losing that many arrows of dispelling just so Sarevok would chop through his summons in 10 seconds rather than 5... he needed another plan.
Remembering his fight with the demon knight, along with the fact that Sarevok no longer had 100% MR, Angelo knew the answer. Whipping out his wand of paralysation, Angelo went to town, occasionally stopping to summon more critters should Sarevok look like he was about to break through. Angelo had prepared some Greater Malison scrolls should they be necessary, but the green ray of goodness stopped Sarevok in his tracks on the third attempt and Angelo (and his assorted monsters) went in for the kill. Snatching the now redundant scimitar marker into his off-hand, Angelo cast Draw Upon Holy Might and began lashing for all he was worth. Every few rounds of slicing and dicing, Angelo fired off another paralysing ray, wanting to guarantee the stunlock while also optimise the value he gained from each charge. Never one to pass up free damage, Angelo also cast Magic Missile inbetween attacks to ensure that the big guy went down in a timely fashion.
Which, eventually, he did.
"That's cool," Felicity piped up as the ending cinematic began to play and Sarevok's statue crumbled to dust in Bhaal's inner sanctum. "I guess that's the last we'll be seeing of him."
Executive Summary: Angelo reflects on his journey through BG1 and plans for the trials ahead.
As his half-brother collapsed to his knees, Angelo took the opportunity to whip out a mirror he had in his robes to check his hair. Sarevok was bleeding profusely and Angelo didn’t want any blood or sweat to mess up his careful coiffure. Staring at his attractive (15 Charisma, baby, yeah!) visage brought into focus several thoughts that has crossed his mind over the course of his adventures so far…
Random Musings on How Angelo Could Improve
I have always ranked a F/M/T highly - given that they can eventually obtain 100% in all thief skills, I am unsure why any powergamer would choose to play a F/T over them; a few extra ThAC0 points and shorty saves are good, but they're not worth 17 mage levels! However, although Angelo was nominally a F/M/T, I've mainly been playing him as a M/T so far. I have no doubt that the extra fighter levels will come in handy once SoA and ToB arrive, but without buffing using potions (some of which are only usable by warriors, to be fair), Angelo is still hard pressed to win in a straight fight against an opponent worth more than about 65 XP. The Firewine Ruins proved that Angelo's progress can still be stymied by a few kobolds with poisoned daggers, and this is a little embarrassing for a level 7 Fighter.
Upon reflection, I would have perhaps made Angelo an elf, rather than a half-elf. My reasoning for this was that boosting an elf's maximum Dexterity from 19 to 20 only grants thief skill points (which you can max out anyway as above), whereas going from 18 to 19 gives missile adjustment and initiative bonus; on the other hand, a half-elf would eventually gain regeneration in BG2 (18 max Con + tome + machine of Lum the Mad) without having to take the evil path in Hell, whereas an elf would not. However, with Draw Upon Holy Might providing bonuses through area transitions and resting, the value of regeneration diminishes considerably, and an elf's 90% charm/sleep resistance (and their +1 bonus with swords and bows) would probably have been more useful. We'll see...
This leads me to a conclusion that I've been ruminating over for a while. It was Arthur C Clarke who stated, among other things, that, 'When a distinguished but elderly scientist... says something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.' Being neither elderly nor an especially distinguished BG player, sticking my neck out is probably even more unwise, but I'm going to do it anyway: I don't think this challenge would be possible to do as a Wizard Slayer. Not because they can't use many magical items per se - I'm already thinking about how my next character would tackle the 'Bane of the Wizard Slayer' challenge - it's because they have no options to help them get around that weakness. For instance, most classes have some options for sneakiness available to them, but Wizard Slayer can utilise neither stealth nor spells, and cannot access potions or rings of invisibility to bridge the gap. As a fighter kit, a Wizard Slayer without items can only fight straightforwardly... and in LoB, if you fight straightforwardly, you lose.
Given this undeniable fact - and that BG is a low-level campaign (with a correspondingly limited scope for employable tactics) - Angelo's tricks have fallen into one of the following categories:
Find a way to engineer unlimited backstab opportunities, then hit-and-fade to death.
Find a way to engineer unlimited Blind opportunities, then shoot to death from afar.
Block using an invisible follower, then shoot to death from afar.
Blast to death using off-screen AoE.
Ensnare using multiple Web spells, then kill using free action.
Kill using their environment, sometimes combining with other CC techniques.
Not hating on any of those tactics, for the record (and there are several old favourites that I have not used), but I get the feeling that a few other classes may be better suited to this challenge in the long run. I’ll wait until I’m deeper into the challenge before qualifying this comment further, but as effective as the F/M/T is, I reckon it’s possible to do better.
In other non-optimisation news, Angelo has heard somewhere on the grapevine that some mod (Ascension, perhaps?) has added succubi to the final encounter which charm you with a -10 penalty if you’re male (no penalty if you’re female, though, even if you’re romancing Hexxat). If this is true, that’s one more reason why he’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread.
It’s Time We Talked About Weapon Proficiencies
Still, it’s a waste of time for a soldier in the middle of battle to bemoan the fact that they should have spent longer sharpening their weapon. And (in a segue that any Pulitzer prize winner would be proud of) on the subject of weapons and optimisation, I am unsure of whether Angelo’s specialisation in scimitars was a wise choice. Initially, I had hoped to dual-wield in BG2, in which case Angelo would have used Belm in the off-hand. However, to get the most out of Use Any Item, I had also initially thought to use two-handed weapons and abuse Carsomyr for 100% Magic Resistance. Given the Ravager +6’s vorpal capabilities, I ended up abandoning the dual-wielding idea… time will tell if this plan will bear fruit.
So, to clarify, by the end of BG1, Angelo has 2 stars in scimitars, 2 stars in shortbow, 1 star in single weapon fighting (need that extra critical chance for Belly F at the end of SoD) and 1 star in two-handed weapon fighting. He’ll get 4 more weapon proficiencies at fighter levels 9, 12, 15 and 18, and he expects to spend them specialising in two-handed swords and halberds. Had I gotten my thinking cap on earlier, I would have jettisoned scimitars altogether and specialised in quarterstaffs for several reasons:
The Staff of Striking is the best weapon for backstabbing in BG (although to be fair, my unwillingness to utilise the sell-buyback recharge trick would likely limit its utility).
The Staff of the Ram is the best weapon for backstabbing in BG2 (is it just me who thinks it inappropriate that the best backstabbing weapon in both BG and BG2 is a quarterstaff? I know C/T have to catch a break, but…)
The Staff of the Magi is well known to be overpowered (if SCS thinks I’m going to install an item-balancing component, they can think again).
However, that ship has sailed and I’m not using a character editor to bring it back. Spectral Brand’s armour-piercing strike may ensure that backstabs consistently connect, which may be useful in BG2… but scimitars are still a weak choice for BG2 if I’m not dual-wielding, given the competition.
Don't Doze Off... We've Yet to Discuss Angelo’s Inventory
Looking ahead now, Angelo is wearing the following items:
Robe of the Evil Archmagi
Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialisation
Helm of Balduran
Cloak of Balduran
Amulet of Missiles
Ring of Protection +2
Ring of Wizardry
Golden Girdle
Boots of Speed
Icingdeath (main hand)
Scimitar + 2 (off-hand)
Eagle Bow
Arrows of Detonation
Arrows of Dispelling
Wand of Polymorphing
Wand of Paralysation
Wand of Fire
He has the following items in his inventory:
Felicity the imp familiar
Scroll Case
Gem Bag
Potion Case
Amulet of Metaspell Influence
Large Shield +1/+4 vs Missiles
Algernon’s Cloak
Nymph’s Cloak
Girdle of Piercing
Girdle of Bluntness
Wand of Monster Summoning
Wand of Lightning
Full Plate Armour
Kiel’s Helmet
Golden Pantaloons
MYSTERY ITEM
I’m not saying what the MYSTERY ITEM is yet because I intend on using it to defeat Belly F and no one, as far as I know, has mentioned it before. If you’re curious as to what it is, never fear, all will be revealed… and if you think you know already, don’t ruin the surprise (who am I kidding?!).
And are you telling me that after all that earlier guff about Twinkle, the Helm of Opposite Alignment and the Girdle of Sex Change, you didn’t end up abusing them and changing Angelo’s alignment? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you, because I want the imp familiar when I summon it again at the start of BG2/LoB. Felicity is an important narrative device and a pseudodragon replacement just wouldn’t do her justice!
Oh, and of course my gem bag, scroll case and potion case are full of rings/amulets, scrolls and potions respectively. I'm not going to list them all individually, but they contain all of what you'd expect them to contain given my previously described preparations. Only when inventory space is comparatively limited have I explained fully what I have carried over. I have tried to cover all bases, given I'm going into SoD reasonably blind: some of these choices will turn out not be optimal (for instance, upon reflection, I perhaps should have dumped the Girdle of Bluntness to free up a slot and let potions of insulation achieve the same effect), but it's the journey that matters, right?
That’s more than enough excruciating detail to be getting on with. And with that, let’s get on! Siege of Dragonspear awaits us...
In other non-optimisation news, Angelo has heard somewhere on the grapevine that some mod (Ascension, perhaps?) has added succubi to the final encounter which charm you with a -10 penalty if you’re male (no penalty if you’re female, though, even if you’re romancing Hexxat). If this is true, that’s one more reason why he’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread.
There's a succubus even in the unmodded BG2 final encounter - and it does have a differential penalty for charm. In BG2EE though that sex-based difference has been eliminated, so there's no advantage to being female there - but there are loads of items that protect against charm, so it's not much of an issue if you know the danger.
There's a succubus even in the unmodded BG2 final encounter - and it does have a differential penalty for charm. In BG2EE though that sex-based difference has been eliminated, so there's no advantage to being female there - but there are loads of items that protect against charm, so it's not much of an issue if you know the danger.
Bleurgh. Did I mention right at the start that I'd never really played ToB before? I did? Well, if you didn't believe me before, you'd better believe me now.
Great news on the non-differential save penalty, though. It won't make a practical difference - Angelo would have to have made himself immune to charm whether there was a penalty or not - but while I'm all for slight differences in gameplay experience for various characters/races/classes and so on, as it keeps the game fresh, they should be fairly minor... and a -10 penalty (the equivalent of 2.5 Greater Malisons!), I would argue, is not especially minor. An extra -2 modifier might have been more balanced, although I would have accepted up to -4.
Guys how do get over waves (especially the last one) in SoD's Coallition camp with somebody like Barbarian? I break my teeth on it. And how to beat Belhifet subsequently? Looking at his stats I do not believe I am able to take him down especially with my poor weapon choices.
Btw I am impressed this thread is still alive. It was hell lot of inspiration for me on my various challanging runs in past. This is the first time I am really stucked.
Guys how do get over waves (especially the last one) in SoD's Coallition camp with somebody like Barbarian? I break my teeth on it. And how to beat Belhifet subsequently? Looking at his stats I do not believe I am able to take him down especially with my poor weapon choices.
Btw I am impressed this thread is still alive. It was hell lot of inspiration for me on my various challanging runs in past. This is the first time I am really stucked.
Easiest way is to pepper them with Arrows of Detonation's. The last wave you need to kill all the named ones, which will end the battle. I think your only bet against Bel is to buff up as much Thac0 (Gear/Violet Potion/Power) and hp from Heroism potions, and keep yourself alive with Durlag's Goblet.
Thac0
11 Base
9 Power Potion
2 Violet Potion
-1 Scimitars +3
-2 Specialized
-3 Legacy of the Masters
-4 Helmet of Balduran
-6 Medal of Valor
-7 Ring of Purity (Chant)
-8 Cloverleaf (Luck)
If you're only missing Durlag's Goblet, you can also use restoration scrolls to restore HPs. Those cause fatigue, but you can stop that with the tankard helmet (I think there's another item as well that does that, though I can't immediately remember which one).
That's neat trick with the Tankard helm and Restorations. Certainly doable. But the question is, can I get some Arrows of Detonation in SoD for that camp battle? I don't remember any and wiki also doesn't mention any in SoD. It just mentions five arrows in Sorcerous Sundries.
Started new solo nR Blade playthrough. Mostly because I found out that mage classes weren't the only classes that can achieve lv1 1hp damage immunity. So my goal is to get to chapter 10 in level one without the damage immunity, where I can get the Martyr's Morningstar and reduce my hp to 1 and casually beat Bel. Blade could beat Bel naturally I think with Martyr's, but this is somewhat a testing run. I'm still debating if I should use the Familiar, with it I could get 30 hp, but it would take away the 1 hit immunity, which is great for traps. Anyway here's Jin, I used auto-roller to get perfect roll I think.
* Shortbows
* Single Weapon Style
weidu.log
// Log of Currently Installed WeiDU Mods
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1500 // Include arcane spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1510 // Include divine spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3505 // Wider selection of random scrolls: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3551 // Increase the power of Cure Wounds and Cause Wounds spells to the level found in 3rd Edition D&D -> Spells heal or inflict the maximum amount of damage in this range: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4115 // Thieves assign skill points in multiples of five: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4250 // Make spell sequencers and contingencies into innate abilities: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6100 // Potions for NPCs: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly smarter carrion crawlers: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Improved kobolds: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity assassins: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v33.3
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Make Bags of Holding Bottomless: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3080 // Increase Ammo Stack Size -> Unlimited Ammo Stacking: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3100 // Increase Potion Stacking -> Unlimited Potion Stacking: v9
~EEUITWEAKS/EEUITWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1070 // Faydark's Abilities Auto-Roller/GrimLefourbe's BG2 UI: 3.5
~LOB_SAVE_FIX/LOB_SAVE_FIX.TP2~ #0 #0 // improve saving throws of all non-joinable creatures
Killed Imoen, Xzar and Montaron for potions, Neera for Gem Bag and Algernon for his Charm cloak. Algernon took no less than 220 arrows. Listened Drizzt getting killed, and got the best armor for Blade, and my AC was already -6 with Twinkle, Single Weapon Style and Chainmail +4. Ranged Vitiare with about 800 arrows and got Master Thievery potion. Warg and Ghast waylays escaped without damage. Picked the first Invisibility potion from Revenant cave, which will be handy against the Bandit waylay at level 1. We bought 3 Invisibility scrolls from High Hedge. Sonner ranged for Tenya's Bowl, but after Charming Tenya she didn't accept it anymore. I needed her to distract the Ankheg which would kill me first hit. In Ulgoth's Beard we picked the Greenstone Amulet, then Shield Amulet from Carnival. In Friendly Arm Inn we Charmed couple guards who killed Tarnesh for us. Jaheira was Charmed and she got killed by couple Hobbos, got us second Invisibility potion. Same for Dorn, his Rancor netted 450 gold.
Jin used Invisibility scroll to reach Mulahey. We were hit four times with Arrow Trap, but they couldn't one shot me, so we drank Health potion after every hit. Charmed Mulahey, used second Invisibility scroll, and Mulahey was killed by Kobbos. Right click looted and left. Jin took the first risk really, taking the Wand of Monster Summoning with same Invisibility, but the Ghasts were pretty easily avoided. Nimbul was killed by Charmed Minsc and we got the Familiar scroll. Next was the bandit waylay, and I didn't want to risk it, but spent the other Invisibility potion. Tranzig got killed by WoMS. Dushai too was lured away and killed by WoMS. We bought our reputation to 12 and did the reputation run. Picked up the Piercing and Missile Girdle by charming the Ogre. Bassilus didn't survive double WoMS and now I finally had enough money to buy Sandthief Ring. Raiken then escorted us to the Bandit camp. There we Charmed Taurgosz and he was killed by Skelis. We escaped Molkar waylay with Invisibility. We entered to Bandit camp tent invisible, drank potion of Absorption, looted and quickly used Sandthief ring to escape.
We used our last WoMS charge to kill the Tasloi with Non-Detection cloak. Spider woods was passed with single Sandthief charge, right click picking up the two swords. Lamalha waylay passed with a Sandthief charge. Didn't bother with Drasus as I can get Boots of Speed from Lothander risk free. We went to the mines, talked to Slaves twice using Sandthief charges, and it now needed recharge. So we left and recharged it. Back to the mines and straight to Davaeorn, where we sucked MM Traps with Shield Amulet, and the Skull Trap Trap with our lv1 under 14 hp protection. Jin Charmed the guard who lured the two Battle Horrors away, and I then lured them further away and drank my last Invisibility potion. Guard then casually hacked Davaeorn. And then Jin absorbed the two Glyph of Warding traps, again drinking Potion of Healing after both.
Comments
That seems odd. If that's the only test you did, it may be because you've stunned her - preventing the relevant script from firing to take away her level 0 protection. If you attack her from extreme range without talking, she will always try and run away rather than run towards you. There's thus no danger of her coming close enough to trigger her conversation, which is possible even when she's hostile, unless you actually try and do that.
I tried the test several times - when I first encountered her, I shot her repeatedly without stunning her, but that didn't seem to work, so I proceeded as I described in my playthrough and didn't take any screenshots. Last night, I tried two more tests: the first one, as your post shows, where I stunned her then shot her multiple times. I initially thought that would be proof enough, but I later decided that the screenshot may not show her taking enough damage to kill her. I started my second test with the intention of doing the first test 'again, but more' before realising that it might be easier to just Ctrl+Y her, which is what I showed.
I've tried the test again, this time without stunning her, and Ctrl+Y still can't kill her before her script fires...
In any case, I'm not concerned. The encounter's 480 XP (350 XP from the wizard and two guards for 65 XP each) wasn't crucial for Angelo's advancement and if I can get the gem bag by recruiting her and then dismissing her, I'd say this is still in the spirit of the challenge. It's a curiosity more than anything.
In another installation I use to play non-LoB SCS she takes a couple of hits - the first to reset her level 0 protection and another to kill her.
Those installations are 32.4 though, rather than the most up to date SCS release, so perhaps something has changed slightly in that ...
Executive Summary: Angelo obtains (but does not use) the best item in the game and illustrates a neat solution to Ice Isle.
"You know," Angelo said to himself as he sauntered into Beregost, "Pick Pockets is one of the few truly unique things a thief can do. It's high time I made more of it."
Still, having recently relieved Diarmud of his Protection from Magic scroll, Angelo felt more confident in practising his skills on a certain Beregost merchant.
Technically, I suppose I should add Pheirkas' quest to steal Algernon's cloak to the list of Thief Quests in North West Baldur's Gate. Unfortunately, the quest is worth a paltry 300 XP and 200 GP (at best), so it's not really worth it. Worse, you'll have to kill her to get it back (you can't Pick Pocket it)... you would get 420 XP, but that would disqualify the quest from being 'stealth-but-no-combat'.
Casting Luck will also boost a familiar's thief skills. If you have items that boost your Dexterity (e.g. Kiel's Buckler), now would be a good time to employ them. If you're not min-maxing your character - welcome to the thread, you must be new here! - the SCS spell Cat's Grace can be of some use, but is redundant if you are since it can't take your Dext past 20, which is even obtainable by dwarven thieves with max 17 initial Dex (Tome + Kiel + DoHM)... who can't cast Cat's Grace anyway.
Even with his magical enhancements, Angelo failed his first Pick Pocket roll. However, the same short delay between the attempt failing and the target turning hostile that Angelo previously exploited can also be used as a window for further attempts. Angelo could fit in about 2 more PP checks (possibly 3 if he was quick) before Algernon's circle turned red, stopping further attempts. One of these was a success and Angelo was quick to leave before relations degenerated further.
The same tricks could have been used on the 'thugs' Silke wants disposed of (their scripts also flip, as per the last post, so it's even safer), but Angelo didn't bother. After returning Gurke's cloak (Angelo was grateful for his ingratitude: not only could he keep the cloak, but he also got 300 XP), it was time to go on an arctic adventure.
The previous Pick Pockets Party Pack summarises the highlights listed on https://pihwiki.bgforge.net/Baldur's_Gate:_Ultimate_Pickpocket_Reference, but there are some pilferable items that it doesn't include (since all targets turn hostile upon sight, it presumably thought that no one could steal them). While Angelo did not intend to discover all such instances, there are several on Ice Isle alone:
This rose-tinted description hides some deadly thorns. Although the possibility of getting lots of loot is nice, it actually hinders your chances of stealing the good stuff as you only have so many PP attempts after the first (where you become visible) before the target initiates dialogue and turns hostile. If you can only get in 2 thefts on Dezkiel, say, and the game gives you his useless scroll and potion of extra healing, you're in trouble! What's more, the first 3 targets appear together, so you can only really steal from one before they all turn hostile. Angelo happened to get quite lucky, but don't bank on it.
However, Angelo knew that the really nice thing about this technique was yet to come. For when the teleportation was complete, he ended up back in Ulgoth's Beard still with a good duration left on his thievery skills buff. More than enough time to rob Dushai of her ring of free action and Shandalar of his multiple scrolls. Angelo had previously mentioned that he had plans for these two... and now these plans had been executed.
Since Shandalar teleports away after completing this quest, it is possible to steal a decent portion of his stuff before he goes using last post's trick... but this one is preferable since, as above, you can only fit in a few attempts after a failed roll before you must talk to stop him from turning hostile, and he has so many items that it's unlikely that you'll get them all before he vanishes.
Figuring this was a pretty good use of some potions of master thievery (especially as his Knock spell basically rendered its other use obsolete), Angelo left Ulgoth's Beard. It was time to go back to Durlag's Tower and tackle the wardens he'd left behind long ago.
Postscript: Some Random Musings on Ice Isle
P.P.S. You can cheat to teleport to AR1010, an unused intermediate exit area. It's exactly the same layout as the Candlekeep Caves, but with only winter wolves and Dezkiel in the basilisk area. It's a cute, but not especially interesting, little Easter egg.
Executive Summary: Angelo wonders why he didn't kill the Battle Horrors earlier and explains why he didn't kill the Wardens earlier.
Earlier on in the game, Angelo had 'denuded' the first floor of Durlag's Labyrinth, removing all of its traps but leaving all of its denizens alive. That was about to change...
Instead, he cast Invisibility on Felicity (or, since she hadn't cast Polymorph Self, was it actually 'Imp'-roved Invisibility?), and attracted one of the Battle Horror's attentions. Drawing it back to the bridge, Felicity moved in front of him, blocking off the bridge. Still the Battle Horror came forwards, determined to reach Angelo and slice him to ribbons, unaware of its inability to do so.
Its uncomprehending eyes didn't see Angelo drawing the serpentine orange wand, nor the thin lick of flame setting its body ablaze. Angelo wasn't even sure it felt the pain: despite its health bar slowly vanish, it advanced regardless, oblivious of its impending doom. "If it's so eager for death", Angelo said to Felicity, whose natural imp form was immune to the scorching rays, "would be a shame to deny it."
The second horror was disposed of in the same way. As the smoke billowed around him, Angelo mused that most of his other wand of fire exploits had been for conjuring Fireballs, so this use of Azgannar's Scorcher was an economical way of maximising its potential. Silently, he chastised himself for sneaking past the Battle Horrors each time and not thinking of this tactic earlier: as long as Invisibility and a wand (a frost variation would also suffice, but missile weapons would not) was available, he could have finished them off at level 3.
The wand of fire that Erdane sells has 20 Fireball changes, but only 1 Azgannar's Scorcher. This is unfortunate for this battle, but excellent overall because the area-of-effect is of much greater utility elsewhere.
That's the last 'Love' joke, I promise.
In this case, Angelo found her in the corridor near to the gears room. Fortunately, he was invisible, so he shut the door, else he attracted the unwelcome attention of the helmed horrors Felicity had previously lured there while he looted the glittering treasure piles. Having disposed of the possibility of interruption, Angelo then tried out his tried-and-tested favourite technique...
Backstab!
Love was not the easiest creature in the world to hit and even with his hefty +4 bonus, Angelo's scimitar missed the mark. Love turned to cast Dire Charm but Angelo was quicker, ducking out of sight behind a corner just far enough away that Love didn't attempt to follow. She had at least mastery level proficiency in her bastard sword, so Angelo wasn't letting her anywhere near him.
Once he'd decided on these tactics, the battle became surprisingly straightforward. The key was that although Love had infinite spells, she only ever cast Dire Charm and Slow, which Angelo could have countered with the greenstone amulet or the ring of free action. As it happened, she never kept sight of Angelo long enough to complete her spell, and never bothered to look for him. Occasionally, she tried to confuse Angelo with Mirror Images, but Detect Illusion soon dealt with them. As with so many of his battles, it was the fact that Angelo had engineered unlimited Stealth attempts that eventually won the day.
"You ask for fairness?" Angelo had to laugh. "Let me tell you something about fairness, sweet dwarf. You and your warden friends held every advantage in this battle. Upon sight, you erect a Minor Globe of Invulnerability, which blocks every single one of my spells and wands. Even if I wait for your shields to fall and sneak up on you, my chance of landing anything magical on you is virtually zero. You have a permanent Physical Mirror spell that reflects all my missile attacks, so I cannot shoot you from afar. You're immune to normal weapons, so I cannot count on most of my summons harming you..."
"Point taken..." the warden gurgled.
"Shut up," Angelo snapped, "I'm not finished. You do not stand still once you are damaged, so I cannot kill you with fireballs from outside the fog of war. You are a vicious melee fighter, so I cannot hope to win in straight hand-to-hand combat. Your little friend Avarice even casts Cloudkill every turn, so I need to be at least level 6 to avoid its instant death effect. It's lucky he didn't come in halfway through, else I'd have to abandon ship and start again from scratch...
"So you see, sweet dwarf," Angelo cooed, his voice dripping with poisoned honey, "what I did wasn't unfair. It's one of the only ways to win. You can't blame a man for doing what he must." With that, he plunged his scimitar deeper into Love's heart, putting her out of her misery and earning himself 3,000 XP.
"Tim Burton's Catwoman said it best," Angelo quipped, misremembering her quote. "Love's a bitch, now so am I."
I lied.
Angelo gulped down the last of the wine as he pocketed Love's wardstone. He'd done the hard work... now it was time to relax, have a few drinks and reap the rewards.
Executive Summary: Angelo abuses a homebrew version of the 'petrification XP loop'.
His thirst still not quenched by the taste of blood and wine, Angelo abandoned the remaining wardens and invisibly skipped to the next floor. When he'd claimed that he'd done all of the hard work already, he had not lied: the contents of Durlag's goblet would offer further satiation, he knew, and he had no intention of risking life or limb to get it.
There seems to be nothing new under the Sun these days. For instance, just after I'd typed out the previous post, I discovered that the trick of wiping out the Battle Horrors had already been implemented in this thread in several different incarnations. This is what comes, I suppose, with being late to the party. So when I say I don't think this set of tactics and tictacs has been used before... take it with a pinch of salt!
Upon entering the throne room, Angelo's spider sense tingled and he noticed a secret door leading to the left. Following the hidden corridor, he found himself in a heavily trapped torture chamber with only a goblet for company. Nabbing the goblet, Angelo proceeded to enter a runed room with another wardstone sitting atop an altar. Angelo took the wardstone and stood for a second or two, rubbing his chin. "Interesting, very interesting..."
Suddenly, Angelo was no longer in front of the altar, but behind the opposite altar at the other end of the room. Just as quickly, the arrow from his loaded bow flew from altar to altar, burying itself straight into the doppelganger's maw. The creature sneered as one of its images vanished and it readied its Haste spell.
"I wouldn't bother with that," Angelo said as he walked towards the second alter. "It won't do you any good if you can't hit me." With that, his Detect Illusion ability kicked in, the doppelganger's images all vanished and Angelo shot another arrow whizzing past the beast's head.
Unperturbed, the doppelganger suddenly morphed into Islanne, evidently a form with greater sorcerous prowess as she fired off a double acid arrow sequencer. This was a nasty shock to Angelo, who also changed tactics and retreated behind the columns out of sight to ride out the acid's lingering pain. As no enemies were around, he was free to enter Stealth and head through the teleporter, attacking the mage with one quick backstab before teleporting back to the other side before another spell could be cast.
Angelo could sense the mage was the most dangerous of the doppelganger's forms. He was glad when it gew tired of the game and reverted to a third form, Durlag again... primarily because Durlag was a basic melee fighter and so reverted to its simple AI of standing in front of the teleporter hoping to whisk itself over to the other side. Of course, since it didn't have the wardstone, that would never happen, and Angelo was free to revert back to peppering it with arrows, always sure to stay in visual range this time so it didn't wander off. Occasionally, he'd mix it up with the odd backstab, just to keep things interesting, a move which eventually yielded results.
Funnily enough, when Angelo killed the doppelganger in Durlag form, it dropped a suit of full plate armour. Normally, greater doppelgangers dropped useless trash, so this was quite the treat.
If backstab had not been available, the whole process would have taken longer, but the principle would still have been bulletproof. Although dwarven defenders take half damage to fire and cold, spells and wands could also have easily finished them off from a distance.
Angelo then disarmed the trapped statue that held the correct level 2 exit wardstone. "This is a nasty trap," he murmured, as he could see that it would have launched 10 auto-hitting arrows of detonation at him had he not disarmed it. Despite having fire immunity upon command, he wasn't sure he would have been able to tank it. The only way he could think of some classes surviving would be to use Mirror Image and Stoneskin to soak up some of the arrows. Fortunately, this was not necessary.
After casting Invisibility, Angelo proceeded down the bottom corridor to see some ghasts breaking out from inside the walls. Angelo noticed that the first couple of ghasts followed him tightly despite his invisibility, and upon seeing others bursting out in front of him, he was not convinced that he could sneak through reliably without being surrounded. Instead, Angelo doubled back and led the ghasts back to the second teleporter... and teleported to the initial side by the torture this time. The undead monsters obligingly piled up, unable to reach Angelo while Angelo's arrows were able to reach them.
"I never said I'd marry you," Angelo shrugged, explaining why he'd jilted them at the altar.
These kills afforded Angelo enough XP to go up a level. "Lovely," he said as he walked back down the bottom corridor, disarming the repeating Fireball trap and the false stairs for further XP. Looking behind the secret door showed him the stairs to the next floor, and he had the correct wardstone to descend them.
Better yet, if that 20,000 XP wasn't enough, Angelo's rest on this level could always be interrupted by greater doppelgangers. So by bringing enough ammunition, sleeping enough times and abusing the teleporter, Angelo could earn as much XP as he desired...
Okay, so it's not as slick as the basilisk XP loop, you have to deal with loads of traps, do a lot of sneaking and still kill Love to make it work. But there are only 131 scrolls of Stone to Flesh in the game... so there!
"No," Angelo decided, for once remaining firm in the face of temptation. "That's too cheesy even for me."
Next on Angelo's hitlist was the third floor of Durlag's Labyrinth, where he'd meet the closest thing to a dragon that BG:EE had to offer.
Executive Summary: Angelo wipes out most of the third floor using its own design features.
As he entered the third floor, Angelo put on his ring of fire resistance, donned the helm of defence and readied Icingdeath. It was getting warm and Angelo felt that immunity to fire would be essential to survive the forthcoming.
Only pure class wizards (who cannot use either Icingdeath or the helm of defence alongside two rings of fire resistance) cannot obtain 100% persistent fire resistance. For them, there are potions and protection scrolls of fire resistance, as well as a handy spell. Sadly, wizard slayers have none of these options... but they arguably have bigger problems!
"It's not that good and the dwarven doomguards protecting it are immune to missile weapons," Angelo replied. "So I'd have to go to the bother of blinding and backstabbing them through the teleporter..." He trailed off as he opened the furnace door and saw a Fireball hurtle into the centre. As he noticed the adventurers' bodies strewn around, a second sphere of flame exploded, filling the room with falling cinders.
"...Or maybe I wouldn't," he finished.
Back up the stairs he went, raiding Kiel's chest and stuffing the buckler and morningstar into his pack. The four dwarven doomguards creaked to life, but they were unable to stop Angelo from leaving the room, pulling them towards the exit. Unthinkingly following, they were lured down the stairs and into the blast chamber. Their 50% fire resistance meant they didn't interpret the ripples of heat as warning signs, but ploughed on regardless.
They still didn't realise their fate when Angelo darted back out the furnace and slammed the door, trapping them to a death by eternal fire. And yet although taking half damage meant they took longer to die, die they did. Angelo didn't get any XP from their deaths, but he was unconcerned with that. He wasn't planning on getting much XP from this floor anyway.
The greater ghouls in the bottom corridor required another adjustment. Although Angelo had initially intended to trap them in the furnace, he got a bit of a shock when the greater ghouls opened the closed doors. Thinking quickly, he put on his ring of free action and started walking around in the furnace itself. Despite being hasted, the ghouls weren't quite quick enough to catch him if he kept his attention on circling around the central furnace ring... but Angelo didn't want to take any chances (their debilitating disease can always be slept off).
This won't be an option for characters relying on two rings of fire resistance and the helm of defence for their fire immunity, but free action (or, for that matter, fire resistance) can be obtained from spells and potions, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Angelo also took the opportunity to raid the statues in the rightmost gardens and obtain Bala's Axe. He took out the greater ghouls using the aforementioned method, but balked at the invisible stalkers and ashirukuru. Similarly, the bow-wielding skeletons were also deemed too much effort for the rewards they offered. It was time for Angelo to channel earth, wind and fire... or, rather, earth, wind and ice.
Next was the fission slime. Despite being a ranged monster that was slow to move, it was also slow to attack and so could be torturously lured to the furnace. Angelo found it best to work in straight lines here, first getting it in line with the furnace corridor before pulling it in towards the chamber.
Angelo lines the fission slime up with the furnace corridor.
Like the wyvern, the fission slime was slightly too big to fit into the furnace, but it was much more fiddly to manoeuvre it into a position where the Fireballs still hit it. Fortunately, although the slime could still hit Angelo, its damage was healed by the furnace's frequent blasts (he had 110% fire resistance, and the additional 10% immunity meant he healed upon taking damage). Furthermore, the slime's poison could be cured (by Angelo's special ability) inbetween Fireballs; its slow and disease were harmless in this context and could be slept off later.
Despite the fact that the fission slime had dtaken nothing but fire damage, Angelo was taken aback to see that it still split when reduced to 0 HP. Evidently, its death script only kicks in if Angelo himself dealt some fire damage. Luckily, Angelo only needed to deal 1 HP of fire damage himself throughout the fight, so he shot it once with an Agannazar's Scorcher and let the furnace do its job.
Finally, there was the air aspect. Fighting this in a straight contest would have been horrendous, but it was practically a done deal. After tempting it into the furnace, Angelo first shut off its means of escape, then hid in the entrance hall behind the closed door. A minute later, it was all over.
Angelo momentarily felt a slight twinge of guilt. After all, he'd only killed one enemy (Kaldran) on this floor by himself. Was this not a bit cheap? Yes, Angelo conceded, it was cheap. More than a bit, for that matter. But it was also effective.
The last task was the Challenge of Fire, which Angelo would not be able to complete by this method (phoenix guards were immune to fire). But Angelo had a plan for this challenge too. Everything was falling into place, like a perfect game of chess...
Executive Summary: Angelo wipes out most of the chess board using its own design features.
It was ironic, Angelo thought, that the only time in the 3rd floor when he wasn't too concerned about fire immunity was for completing the Challenge of Fire. To Felicity, his familiar, this seemed crazy. Didn't the challenge's phoenix guards erupt in a Fireball when they died? But while this was true, Felicity was making the mistaken assumption that Angelo would be taking them out by himself.
"Yes," Angelo replied and Felicity breathed a sigh of relief. "Don't worry, there'll be no invisible blocking either, although Invisibility will be involved." The familiar's eyes showed confusion, so Angelo extrapolated. "Watch," he gestured as he entered Stealth and sneaked into the room.
Initially, Angelo cast Blind on the female archer, then the male swordsman. Since their saving throws were absolute rubbish, he succeeded first time, but he could always have fled the scene and invisibly rested as many times as required. Once they were safely blinded, Angelo took out the archer himself using his bow. Her fiery demise exploded out of harm's way, and she didn't return afterwards like some other phoenix guards Angelo had read about.
With the swordsman still wandering around helplessly, Angelo took out the wand of monster summoning he'd found on the labyrinth's first floor. Felicity was still non-plussed. "It's helpless," she said, "why not kill it yourself?"
Angelo shook his head as his summons appeared. "I want to start the next floor invisible." As his monsters proceeded to swarm onto the phoenix guard, he cast Haste on them for good measure - just to ensure that they killed it while the summons lasted - and then cast Invisibility. Sure enough, after the killing blow was landed...
"What are you doing?" Felicity asked as Angelo uncorked a potion of grounding.
"Just a hunch," he shrugged, glugging its contents and watching his resistance to electricity shoot to 100%. Still invisible, he began madly dashing across the chessboard, riding the bolts of lightning that cascaded around him. "This used to work, back in the day," Angelo murmured to no one in particular.
Apparently, those days had come and gone, as the pieces now seemed immune to Angelo's electrical assault. To be fair, Angelo had read about this newfound resistance in the SCS readme, but he was still a little disappointed that it had come to pass. Curiously, the 'Ethereal Voice' did not inherit the same immunity: Angelo wondered whether if he zapped the announcer enough times, it'd die. He suspected it'd do what Elminster did when attacked in vanilla BG and cast the best spell in the game - crash the computer! Angelo decided not to risk it.
"Gladiators, Ready!" the Ethereal Voice boomed.
Instead, he hopped down to the fourth floor and cast Knock on the doorway leading to a lava-spanning bridge. "This ought to be useful," Angelo said as he became visible and Durlag's ghost pontificated at length.
If Angelo had hoped that hit-and-fade tactics would work, he was badly mistaken. As soon as he opened the door, the pieces swarmed through to reach him. They may not be able to see him, but they seemed to sense his position, just like the greater ghouls on the second floor. Not only did this mean that he couldn't use hit-and-fade, but this also meant that Angelo could simply gather them in a corner, cast Invisibility and dump them to deal with the lone king. He'd have to kill them all, which was not an inviting prospect.
"That's a bummer," Felicity said as Angelo skulked sulkily through the chamber. "Can't you just reload and skip them? It's not like you need the two-handed sword +3 anyway."
"Don't be stupid, Felicity," Angelo replied testily, "we just need to adapt our strategy a bit." She was right: he could have easily passed on through without incident. And he probably should have, as his plan would drain him of precious resources for little real gain. But this was a matter of pride to Angelo - @Mr_Salty had asked about it - and besides, he hadn't seen anyone use these tactics before and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to get any credit.
Around the corner, Angelo extricated a scroll of Protection from Magic. These were rare commodities and Angelo did not use one lightly. But desperate situations called for desperate measures and the scrolls were a bit more common in BG than in BG2. If the game later become impossible, so be it... one way or another, Angelo would have contributed to the communal pool of wisdom.
Reading the scroll instantly dispelled his invisibility, but this suited Angelo's next move. Attracting attention by firing a wayward arrow, he pulled the majority of the pieces into following him. Ideally, he would have attracted the lot of them, but they only followed in dribs and drabs. "Whatever," said Angelo, "these scrolls last for a while."
With some encouragement, Angelo lured the pieces into the carpet room. Trying to stay out of the rooks' firing line, he slammed the door shut, trapping them in and stopping them from escaping prematurely. Angelo then downed a potion of invisibility: although the Protection from Magic scroll stopped all spells from taking effect, it did not block self-targeted potions, and this would give Angelo freedom to move without constantly fending off arrows. Finally, Angelo ignored all of the weird runes and zig-zagged his way across the carpet's surface.
The resulting pandemonium was cacophonous. Bolts of lightning hurtled this way and that, Fireballs continually crashed towards Angelo and Cloudkill drenched the room in noxious fumes. Of the three hazards, Angelo was most concerned about avoiding the latter - this was the primary reason for using the Protection from Magic scroll, along with avoiding any hostile spells from the Queen or Bishop - as his items could protect him from most of the other damage. As for the pieces, being immune to both lightning and Cloudkill, it was the Fireballs that harmed them, and Angelo tried to maximise this by positioning himself to cause as much damage as possible.
There were a few minor refinements. The rooks in particular had a habit of moving out of harm's way in the corners of the room, so Angelo had to make himself visible again to draw them back to the centre before vanishing using another potion. And he ended up having to use a second Protection from Magic scroll to finish the job, which didn't impress him. But at the end of the day, a royal flush was all-but-assured.
One or two pawns had escaped Angelo's notice, but on their own, they were no match for Angelo's hit-and-fade techniques.
Having disposed of the king's defences, it was time to finish the game.
Testing shows that the King isn't living up to his potential.
That said, at the end of the day, it wouldn't have mattered how many Stoneskin spells the King had. He could not stop Angelo from sneaking into the chessboard, backstabbing him and then running away to the 4th floor to re-Stealth. As long as Angelo never let him leave the vicinity of the doorway (else he might have had enough time to fire off a spell while Angelo was escaping), his defences merely prolonged the inevitable.
"Now I see why they call you Jaime Lannister," Felicity snickered from inside his pack.
This spell regeneration occurs regardless of whether the NPC is being watched or not (e.g. you can stand next to them invisibly for 8 hours and they will still regain their spells). Worse, you can even 'check in' on them every so often before disappearing again and they will still regain their spells (otherwise it might be argued that while the PC did not rest uninterrupted during the 8 hour period, the NPC did). This is a tiresome feature that can make draining a mage's spells a real nuisance, as you can't guarantee longer than 8 hours' high Constitution regeneration time. During some tests, I also noticed the bishops casting Flame Strike, despite them only having 1 Draw Upon Holy Might and 4 Hold Person spells memorised.
This 'kamehameha' moment occurred during another test.
This is not the first time NPCs have cast spells they shouldn't be able to - I've mentioned already that casters somehow cast Detect Invisibility, despite not having any readied during testing. I suppose the fact that an enchanter casts a few restricted spells pales in comparison.
"Game over," Angelo said as he pushed the king's body to the floor, a traditional sign of chess surrender. It had not been an easy victory and Angelo sheathed his new two-handed sword +3 with trepidation, hoping that it was worth the consumables he'd used in its acquisition.
Executive Summary: Angelo wipes out most of the fourth floor using - you guessed it - its own design features.
"What's nice about Durlag's Tower," Angelo remarked to Felicity as he left the chessboard, "is that despite its fearsome reputation, if you use the right tactics, it becomes almost a formality. Apart from the wardens, the rest of the enemies have basically been either sitting ducks or slain by their own traps."
Felicity had never borne witness to these sorts of off-hand comments before. "I sense an, 'Until now!' moment coming," she returned suspiciously. "You're not about to actually work for your kills, are you?"
Angelo laughed, "Felicity, you're such a joker. Surely you know me better than that?"
In any case, Angelo was swiftly deposited back on the 4th floor after answering some meandering questions about Durlag's history. Next, he raided the forge, being sure to close the door behind him and shut the helmed horrors in their makeshift tomb. Although he could easily have used the switch he found there to turn off the runed carpet, Angelo didn't bother and just walked around the side. "A pity the chess pieces never tried that," he said to himself as he lined his pockets with some of the best loot that the dungeon had to offer.
Angelo's ears pricked up as he heard a chitinous gnashing of teeth: somehow the astal phase spider had detected him and teleported into the store. Angelo tried to hide under the bed-like structure, but instead got teleported back to the golems room again. "You're sure more talkative than those flesh golems I killed in High Hedge," Angelo muttered as he answered their quandaries once more.
While exploring other rooms, Angelo had seen little portions of green-tinted chambers poking through his fog-of-war and was curious as to where they were from. After discovering the secret door leading to the glowing caverns, he began to understand how the whole level was connected. Turning invisible again, he scouted out the rest of the level, looting - amongst other things - an amulet of missiles from an unwatched early pool; a flame tongue long sword and a staff of striking from a hidden store room; and wands of monster summoning, fire and lightning from other guarded pools, stranding their denizens by vanishing before they could react.
Most players may as well stop exploring Durlag's Tower at this point, as the hassle:reward ratio increases considerably from hereon in. Doubly so, in fact, since the hassle becomes significant and the rewards effectively vanish.
Exploiting the fact that the passage leading up to Grael was free from enemies, so that he could run away, vanish and rest as often as required, Angelo cast Blind on each of the crypt crawlers outside Grael's chamber. Their saving throws weren't great, so this thankfully wasn't too onerous a task. Donning his ring of free action to avoid paralysis from any accidental hits, Angelo then placed himself inside each crypt crawler's limited field of vision, inciting it to follow him and leading it carefully into the acid baths. Once it had fully immersed itself, Angelo quickly removed his ring of free action and used the boots of speed to sprint out of its line of sight again.
Crypt crawlers were dumb beasts. Once it lost sight of its target, it lost interest and stood around aimlessly, regardless of whether it was taking damage or otherwise. Its health took a while for the acid to nibble away, but little by little the crypt crawlers died inside until, eventually, it all became too much.
Much to Angelo's delight, he could activate all of Grael's greater ghouls without alerting Grael itself. One by one, they were lured, blinded and dispatched in exactly the same manner.
Sadly, Grael did not stay still when blinded and went walkabout (or, given its increased speed, runabout). Angelo wasn't keen on alerting the whole level to his presence, but unfortunately there was no corner where he could trap Grael in the acid with an invisible, polymorphed Felicity. However, he did notice that if blind Grael was wandering around, then Angelo could momentarily pop into its view before disappearing again and this would stop Grael's perambulation until it took damage, after which it would resume. This led to Angelo flicking in and out of sight to prohibit Grael from leaving its chamber inbetween backstabs. With the ring of free action, the combat required intermittent attention, but was effectively 100% safe.
Angelo updated Felicity with some pop cultural references as he took the compass wardstone from Grael's body. "That's what you call a graveyard smash!"
After Angelo fielded yet more questions from the golem hotline, Durlag finally declared him worthy of fighting the evil in the tower. Given his alignment, Angelo would have declared that the greatest evil in the tower was himself (or at least the most handsome one at any rate), but he didn't want to split hairs. In any case, his next battle would unleash an ancient demon unto the world... and kill it a few rounds later.
Executive Summary: Angelo wipes out the final floor… without using its design features!
As the secret door in Islanne's chamber rumbled open, Felicity's words ran rings in Angelo's mind. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he should get a few honest kills every now and then without relying on lakes of acid, magic carpets or blast furnaces to do the job. What with the big boss coming up, Angelo could think of no target more worthy of his attention.
Clair's desperate tones tore him from his deliberation. "Use the mirror to create a clone of the demon knight," she continued, "it'll do all the hard work for you. I know how much you hate hard work..."
Angelo was affronted. This woman had only just met him and she could already sense his laziness? "Never, my lady," Angelo promised as he pocketed the Cloak of the Shield. "I will defeat this cretin without using its mirror, for I know its only weakness."
Clair scoffed loudly. "Hoping to use hit-and-fade through the doorway? Sorry, chum, you're outta luck. SCS upgraded its script, it can now see through Stealth and Invisibility like the demons in BG2. It's also got got 3 stars in Two-Handed Weapon Style - don't ask me how or what that does - and 5 stars in Two-Handed Swords, so its speed factor is 2 and it hits real fast. You'll just end up missing loads and it'll kill you before you can retreat. It'll follow you in and out the chamber too, so you may as well just forget it."
Angelo tests the Demon Knight - and it cheats!
Angelo's face briefly scrunched. "SCS actually makes the Demon Knight easier than before. Now, it can only cast its spells a limited number of times; in the past, it could endlessly cast Power Word Stun and Fireball to soften you up before finishing with Power Word Kill."
Clair shrugged. "So what? It attacks 5 times a round with a Thac0 of -10, doing 17-26 damage each time. It's got an AC of -15, 530 HP and a magic resistance of 85%. Even if you can somehow avoid its spells and kite it around the chamber, you'll run out of arrows before you can kill it. Forgive me if I don't fancy your chances."
Angelo smiled, "If I were in your position, my lady, I wouldn't fancy my chances either, for you don't know my secret weapon."
Clair rolled her eyes. "And what, pray tell, is that? A sword of demon slaying plus one million? A miniature nuclear device? No, don't tell me... a keyboard with Ctrl+Y on it!"
Angelo's smirk broadened imperceptibly. "Not quite..."
Clair's face betrayed her confusion. "It has 85% magic resistance," she repeated slowly, as if Angelo was a child.
"Yes, but it relies on it," Angelo explained. "If you get through this resistance, its saving throws are surprisingly poor. As you can see from the test screenshot, they're not nearly as good as they should be for a boss of this calibre."
Clair's confusion turned to disbelief. "Its magic will tear you apart before you can use your wand."
Angelo had his response to that planned. "Already used two Protection from Magic scrolls needlessly in this forsaken dungeon, may as well use a third."
"Why not use Blindness or some other CC spell?"
"Not strong enough," Angelo replied as he read his protection scroll and applied an oil of speed (which, as a self-applied potion, ignored the immunity's globe). "The Demon Knight would still be too hard to hit, even if I blinded it. Besides, you can't cast spells out from inside the globe except for scrolls. Believe me, wands are the way forward if you're not using the mirror."
Despite being nominally immune to magic, Angelo was dismayed to find the Demon Knight's Remove Magic cut through his defences and wipe off his buff from the oil of speed. But he'd also exploited loopholes in the scroll's effects, so he couldn't complain. Nor could he complain about his tactics' efficiency, as the wand connected first time.
Although the Demon Knight's HP were high, without its magic, it could only give chase to Angelo, trying futilely to attack in melee. After 2 successful stuns, costing 8 charges from the wand of paralyzation to achieve, Angelo hacked his opponent into bits (after another application of an oil of speed and a use of Draw Upon Holy Might, which also ignored his globe as a self-applied special ability).
A Helm of Opposite Alignment (hello, Twinkle!), a poxy Soultaker dagger (spectacularly unuseful) and a random scroll of Glitterdust (seriously, like, what?!) seemed paltry reward for defeating this ancient evil, but Angelo knew he should be grateful. After all, he'd get sweet nothing for defeating Aec'Letec, so it was all gravy.
"That was remarkably uncharacteristic of you," Felicity said as Angelo appeared at the entrace of Durlag's Tower. "Will you use this new work ethic to give Soultaker back to Hurgan Stoneblade? Or how about finishing the TotSC content and completing Balduran's Isle?"
Now it was Angelo's turn to roll his eyes. "Felicity, you do make me laugh. I may be proud, but even I'm not that stupid. Neither of those adventures yield enough loot to make them remotely worth pursuing." The imp looked crestfallen, so Angelo added, "Fine, I'll go back and take out the remaining wardens. If that's not virtuous enough for you, I don't know what is."
Executive Summary: In this optional part, Angelo kills two of the remaining wardens and theorycrafts how to dispatch the third.
Figuring he may as well go all in with wasting time and resources, Angelo reignited his conflict with the wardens. "Do it properly or not at all," he murmured in explanation, a poor mantra in LoB at the best of times and especially now he'd hit the XP cap.
Now that's what I call appreciable damage!
He also used Shadow Armour and Boots of Stealth to boost his Stealth so that he didn't have to wait too long between successful Stealth checks, which was essential to prevent Fear from healing properly. It still required some effort, but these tactics guaranteed Fear's demise.
Full disclosure: I did do some save and reloading here, but in a way that I think might be acceptable even in No Reload challenges. After Angelo had gotten a particularly busty critical, I quicksaved it when I'd reached the 2nd floor and then reloaded it again if my next backstab missed. This is fundamentally different to save-scumming, which aims to avoid harmful in-game effects: this risk-free method is guaranteed to work given enough patience, and all I was doing was avoiding the out-of-game effect of wasting time (like using Ctrl + T to save manually waiting for buffs to expire or Ctrl + J to jump over unoccupied space). Life's too short for that sort of thing... and if this offends you, life's too short to take out Fear. Angelo gained nothing from the encounter. Pretend it never happened.
One important subtlety: although Pride does not appreciably regenerate, it is easy to be fooled into believing that it does. Normally when PCs rest, monsters gain 100 HP, so it's only worth resting to get back spells if you can deal more than 100 HP worth of damage with them. However, Pride auto-casts Draw Upon Holy Might which takes its Constitution into the region where it gains 1 HP/turn or so. Because the bonuses from DUHM are carried over throughout a rest/travel period (see https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1128631#Comment_1128631), Pride will recover much more than 100 HP if you initiate the rest while its DUHM is still active. So if you're relying on summons to gradually wear Pride down (it'll slaughter a hasted army of skeleton warriors in no time, so there's no way you'll be able to kill it all in one go), make sure to wait until Pride's buffs wear off after going invisible before you rest.
Ideally, Angelo would have used Wand of Paralysation to stun Avarice and gone to town, but this never seemed effective (Angelo read on the BG:EE Wiki that Avarice's race was now iron golem, so he wondered if this was responsible). Hitting with ranged weapons was a chore, so Angelo went with wands instead (although if Avarice's race truly was iron golem, this shouldn't have worked either).
Since the effects from the wand of frost (and the Agannazar's Scorcher effect from the wand of fire) last for 2 rounds, they were especially good at revealing Avarice's script - even if he vanished, the ray stayed visible on him as he ran away. Doing this shows that Avarice could go quite far before returning for another backstab... and he ran far enough, he was prone to 'forgetting' about coming back and returned to roaming around.
The other annoying thing that triggered Avarice's roaming was his tendency to cast Cloudkill. This forced Angelo to move back to avoid its effects, out of sight of Avarice, at which point the sneaky beggar frequently 'beggared' off elsewhere.
In both cases, Angelo had to 'fetch' Avarice when this happened and tempt him back to the altar.
I said it earlier, but it's worth repeating. Leave Durlag's Tower after raiding the runed carpet storeroom and the treasure stores on the 4th floor. It is not worth killing Grael, the Demon Knight and the remaining wardens, especially if you're not using the mirror. Angelo knew this before he started and did it anyway to show how he'd do it. Don't be like him.
"The end is nigh, Felicity," Angelo said as he left Durlag's Tower for good. "It's time to gather our resources and prepare for the final push."
Executive Summary: Angelo abuses the Web spell and wand of monster summoning to gain more Web spells and wands of monster summoning.
Having cleared out Durlag's Tower to his satisfaction, Angelo returned to Nashkel for a well-earned rest and a pint at the tavern. To his discredit, he had entirely ignored the 'drinking rumours' system in the original game: while he had no intention of breaking this habit now, it would allow him to take stock of the situation and decide his next move.
"Siege of Dragonspear is an unknown quantity," Angelo replied. "I've deliberately not tried to spoil it for myself, but I know that the two main bottlenecks are waves of crusader attacks and a demon called Big B. I think the B stands for 'bellend'..."
Felicity nodded, "As an area-of-effect CC spell with a saving throw penalty, Web would seem like an obvious way to deal with the crusades. How many Web scrolls have you read are in the game?"
"Ten," Angelo remarked Angelo, off-hand, with a sip of his beer. "I used one up to memorise the spell, but that will still leave 9 scrolls for me to use."
"You've already acquired the last 8 on the list," gasped Felicity excitedly, "so you only have 2 more to get. They're both quite close to here."
Angelo finished his ale and the empty tankard hit the table with a bang. "Exactly."
Having found Narcillus, Angelo retreated to just outside his field of vision. He then cast Web as many times as he was able - as a level 6 mage with an amulet of metaspell influence, that was thrice - before putting on his ring of free action and waiting. As soon as he saw Narcillus was held on his UI, he waded in with twin scimitars and Draw Upon Holy Might special ability active. As he was able to cast 1 Web per round, he'd have 7 rounds with 3 Webs active, 6 with Draw Upon Holy Might active, where he was basically free to slash away - the chance of Narcillus saving against all 3 Web spells was slim indeed, as were his chances of surviving the encounter.
Especially with the LoB saving throw bonuses active, this trick is not an 100% guaranteed kill, but it is a neat method when you can get it and will likely at least considerably weaken the foe it is executed on. Since you can wait until your target is held before acting - and can repeat until you do, as this does not activate enemies or turn any neutrals hostile - you'll have at least 1 guaranteed round of action.
He used the same method to loot the potion of power from Lamalha, Telka, Maneira and Zeela, spicing it up with some Blind spells (they were all fighters or clerics, so their saves were pretty poor) and making sure to take out the clerics first (Lamalha and Zeela), lest they prematurely negate the Blind with Cure Disease. He also took the opportunity to steal the wand of monster summoning from the tomb with the ghasts and the potion of invisibility from the revenant's tomb, using the ring of free action and an Invisibility spell to ensure a clean getaway.
He didn't have to look very far into his bag of tricks for the answer. Using the wand he'd acquired only last area, Angelo summoned a bunch of hobgoblins, dire wolves and ogres to do his bidding for 2 turns. "Why is this is so much better than any of the Monster Summoning spells?" Angelo wondered as he cast Haste, bid them to attack Borda, turned invisible and waited.
Surprisingly, Borda repelled the first wave of summons, but Angelo was not to be deterred. A second quick blast from the wand conjured another bunch of monsters, causing Borda to cross the 'borda' between the living and the dead.
Obtaining all the Web scrolls was only the first stage of Angelo's endgame preparations. Although he was only allowing himself to import the stuff he could hold in his inventory (jncluding potion cases, etc., because he wasn't a total idiot), he wanted to give himself the most options when the choice to narrow his inventory came, as well as the self-satisfaction that he'd done a reasonably thorough job. Now that he'd maxed out his levels, hopefully this process wouldn't be too painful...
Executive Summary: Angelo shows some 'Southern hospitality' to the priority targets of Nashkel and beyond.
Having hit the XP cap, Angelo was in no mood to kill high-value monsters (e.g. basilisks) merely for the sake of it. Anything that he went after now was strictly for the items they carried, either to use himself or to sell.
Although I have not played much Siege of Dragonspear when I was completing this section of BG:EE, I did know that your gold is stolen after the SoD prologue. For this reason, I'm deliberately utilising straightforward opportunities to gain gold, with the intention of spending it all on consumables before the final battle of BG:EE.
Back in the days before SCS, Nimbul cast Horror, then Magic Missile, then gave up and started throwing axes. Post-SCS Nimbul now had some new tricks, including 2 Chromatic Orbs, Lance of Disruption (ignores Magic Resistance... nasty!) and Dire Charm. However, Chromatic Orb offered a +6 bonus, Angelo's save vs spell of 5 was now enough to ignore its instant-death effect, which would take a lot of the sting out of Nimbul's attack. Furthermore, the greenstone amulet would take care of the Dire Charm, the Magic Missile assault would be thwarted by a simple Shield spell and Angelo now had enough HP to tank the Lance of Disruption. Despite this, there was an even simpler way...
When Nimbul saw Angelo re-enter the Nashkel store, his defences went up in anticipation of a showdown, but he was surprised to see Angelo move out of the shop as quickly as he'd entered. Following suit, Nimbul left the store and began readying his next spell. To his surprise, Angelo didn't fight back, but turned invisible. "What trickery is this?" Nimbul wondered aloud as he cast an illegal Detect Invisibility.
Angelo popped back into view, but promptly disappeared again before Nimbul could take further action. "Stop that!" he exclaimed, putting on his cloak of non-detection to protect against this kind of nonsense.
"Two can play at that game," Nimbul said as he cast Invisibility and scrabbled for a Non-Detection spell of his own. It would have done him no good, since Angelo's Detect Illusion was a skill, not a divination spell, and it dispelled both his invisibility and his mirror images in one fell swoop. "Are you just going to sit there all day?" asked the frustrated assassin.
"Why not?" Angelo asked. "The Nashkel guard are incompetent, certainly - you've not even noticed they're attacking you yet, they're so bad - but they will eventually break down your Stoneskins, your Globe of Invulnerability will wear off and I can cancel any Mirror Image spells you erect using Detect Illusion. As long as they kill you within 8 hours, it's all good - I don't need the XP anymore - and if it looks like they're going to fail, I'll step in at the end and finish you off."
Fortunately for Angelo (and unfortunately for Nimbul), it never came to that.
"All of that for a single potion of heroism from Bentha?" Angelo asked himself as he proceeded to his next destination.
In fact, the method was even easier than Angelo had hoped, for Felicity did not even need to polymorph into a wide mustard jelly. Her normal imp form was enough to block the bridge and so casting Invisibility on her was enough to make a barrier impenetrable to the polar bear. Like Kaldran before him, Angelo leisurely shot him down... even getting struck by lightning wasn't enough to deter him.
"Is this method abusable?" Angelo wondered. "If I had waited long enough, could my battles with Drizzt or Borda have been made easier by stormy weather? Or would this effect be somehow flagged as an instance of Call Lightning and blocked by their magic resistance?" Like several other vexing questions, he decided to let other people ponder them and continued with his questing.
The blinded bounty hunter ran around the map, which was a nuisance, but Angelo could afford to invisibly follow him around until the oil of speed expired. Unable to escape, Greywolf yielded his lovely long sword and Prism gave Angelo a pair of emeralds (and a reputation boost). Combined with telling the truth to Oublek in Nashkel, this brought Angelo's reputation to 20 and selling the gems and Varscona gave Angelo a bit more gold. He planned to spend it all in Sorcerous Sundries before advancing to SoD, so was consciously gathering as much easy cash and reputation as possible.
Wandering invisibly around Fire Leaf Forest until he found Vax and Zal, Angelo positioned himself just outside their fields of vision and released his trio of Web spells. Both were primarily fighters and were quickly ensnared by the magical tendrils. Cutting uselessly at the stringy fibres with their blades, they could hardly react as Angelo appeared, brandishing twin scimitars and a ring of free action. He didn't even bother to finish off Vax after slashing down Zal, but scooped up the bracers and made his escape.
"It is time for us to leave the South," Angelo told Felicity as he began the trek northwards. "Many tasks still await us around Beregost, and I would not have them delayed any longer."
Characters with a kit take the 15% off-school specialist penalty; they have to go to 24 Int for certain success.
Thanks for pointing that out, that's very useful to know. I'll update my post to reflect that.
Executive Summary: Angelo kills time and high-priority targets around the middle of the map.
As he roamed from Nashkel to Beregost, Angelo complained to Felicity, "It was quite difficult to think of a name for today's segment."
"It showed," the imp shrugged without missing a beat.
Angelo let the jibe pass pass. "Although it may not lend itself to the most exciting titles, hoovering up outstanding items that we might import into SoD is still an important business. Once we've left BG:EE, the opportunity to loot them will be lost to us. This is not BG:EET we're playing here!"
In any case, if Angelo had summoned Glayde et al, Silke would have started hostile, which would have made matters marginally more complicated. As it stood, Angelo could simply lay down several Web spells on an initially neutral Silke without her batting an eyelid. Even as the fibrous tentacles snaked around her waist, she didn't suspect that her death was at hand and her circle remained defiantly blue. It was only when Angelo closed on her, twin blades flashing, that she tried to defend herself, but by this time it was too late.
As with the demon knight, Silke was one of the opponents that SCS actually made easier. In vanilla, Silke led with Improved Invisibility before hurling Lightning Bolt and Magic Missile with abandon; in SCS, aside from a single Confusion spell, Silke had nothing, absolutely nothing, that could threaten a high level PC with enough hit dice to shrug off Sleep (as they'd likely have good enough saving throws to resist Charm Person, with its +3 bonus). Not that Angelo would know, of course, since the bard (perhaps that was why she was useless!) never got a spell off.
Sadly, despite the fact that SCS made the wolf 'guarding' Melicamp neutal and of no threat to anybody, the chicken did not hop into Angelo's pack until after he'd blinded it and chopped it into bits. Worse, despite spending an inordinate amount of time finding and slashing a skeleton by High Hedge for its skull (somehow, Angelo had remembered that they previously had an annoying habit of interrupting him on his way to High Hedge, and he was glad that they had, for whatever reason, thinned out a bit), Melicamp did not survive the Anti-Chickenator process. But as he needed neither the reputation nor the XP, he didn't lose any sleep over it.
Next up were Caldo and Krumm in the Dryad Falls. Despite the fact that they arrived as a pair, Angelo found that neither stepped in if the other's vision was to mysteriously disappear. Better yet, the dryad's tree didn't seem a priority of theirs, as they stood neutral until they were talked to, and Blind didn't alter this state of affairs. Like the ogre before them, Angelo was free to cast Blind and retreat as often as he liked until his spells connected... which, given their low level credentials, wasn't too long. While he was at it, he took a halberd from a cave, looking to make up the gold he'd lost from not exploiting Silke's Dilemma to its fullest.
Finally, Angelo perused Mutamin's Garden in search of Lindin (along with her motley crew of Kirian, Baerin and Peter)... or, more accurately, the golden girdle that she carried. Making sure that he had protection from petrification active to ensure he was safe from any stray basilisk gazes, Angelo invisibly scouted their locations before firing multiple Web spells just out of sight. As soon as he saw Lindin was ensnared, he went in for the kill, snatching the belt and fleeing before the others could find their bearings. He freed Tamah using a Stone to Flesh scroll, but her offer for him to raid her sunken house on the South Beregost Road was not overly tempting. Instead, he left her in the basilisk-ridden wasteland to enjoy her newfound freedom.
To further his gathering of miscellaneous items, Angelo took the golden pantaloons from the Friendly Arm Inn's top floor for pressing. By the time the nobleman could gather enough enthusiasm to query the whereabouts of his freshly pressed trouser, Angelo would be long gone.
Leaving the Friendly Arm Inn, it occurred to Angelo that these latest collections were, in a way, acting as a warmup for the next events he had planned. Killing Silke would be good practice for dealing with a pack of Red Wizards while Ulcaster would give a dry run for clearing out the Firewine Ruins. Only after Angelo had picked these opportunities clean would he consider going back to Baldur's Gate proper.
Executive Summary: Angelo takes down Lendarn and his family of ogres after discharging a lightning rod.
Ever since she learned that SCS had boarded up the convenient entrance through Jenkal's house in Gullykin, Felicity had questioned the wisdom of tackling the Firewine Ruins. But Angelo was insistent that it be done: Lendarn had a potion of power and a scroll of Cloudkill, rare BG:EE resources that Angelo thought might be useful later.
Entering through the secret door in Gullykin's temple, Angelo ignored the lower left half of the map with the ghost knights and invisibly sneaked as far as he could along the upper passage towards Jenkal's exit. As soon as he found the way completely blocked by kobolds, he retreated just out of sight to release Felicity. After she'd cast Polymorph Self, Angelo cast Invisibility on her and she shifted into a mustard jelly, conveniently barring the passage from further interference. After casting Invisibility on himself, Angelo lined up the barricading mob with the opposite walls, downed a potion of insulation and loosed several bolts from his wand of lightning.
In vanilla Baldur's Gate, Angelo would have considered himself an expert (self-proclaimed, naturally) at getting Lightning Bolts to rebound properly. This tactic didn't seem nearly so deadly these days - the bolt sometimes disappeared prematurely and other times bounced at unexpected angles - but Angelo compensated by firing a few more charges. Together with his worn boots of grounding, the potion of insulation meant that Angelo was immune to the electrical damage, a protection the kobolds found wanting.
Cutting down any dying kobolds that remained, Angelo waited until the furore from behind Felicity had abated before polymorphing her back to her normal form. "Nice to see some kobold current affairs," he laughed as he bid her to follow him.
Lendarn had always seemed like an angry fellow, and he didn't disappoint. So blinding was his rage, so eager was he to attack Angelo, that he was willing to be lured out of range of his followers' assistance. As an invoker, he eschewed CC in lieu of magic and cold damage, unfortunate choices since Angelo could cast Shield and wielded Gorion's belt of the antipode (which also sabotaged the Silloc's Snowball Swarm duo in his Minor Sequencer). Furthermore, his twin Burning Hands spells could be avoided by switching to fire resistance gear and the ring of free action nullified his Slow spell. Tanking the sole Lance of Disruption, Angelo's skill with Detect Illusion sliced through Lendarn's Mirror Image while his skill with scimitars sliced through Lendarn's stone skins and skull.
One surprise to Angelo was that this ogre mage had decent random loot. On his playthough, he found 3 Lance of Disruption scrolls on its body (an SCS spell otherwise unobtainable outside of Sorcerous Sundries), but one test found it had scrolls of Detect Illusion and Protection from Fire (the former is only found on Hallacan, previously a Gullykin assassin which SCS moves to attack you during a Cloakwood transition, a one-time event that Angelo fled; the latter mage spell isn't available until the opening dungeon of SoD) and another yielded a scroll of Invisibility 10' Radius (again, a spell usually confined to SoD's prologue). In some cases, Angelo found no scroll, but the chances appear quite high.
Had he not been playing LoB, Angelo would have stopped to kill off Kahrk. Normally, the uber ogre mage had the words 'Arrow of Slaying' tattooed across its forehead, and it was a 3,500 XP sitting duck. In LoB, however, it had an AC vs missiles of -24(!), so Angelo would have to wait for its minor globe invulnerability to expire and then paralyze it to have any chance of success outside of a critical hit. This was beyond the scope of Angelo's ambitions, so he let the ancient evil live. He wasn't going after Aec'Letec either, so he figured that Kahrk could give the demon company.
"That's us done gallivanting with the ghost knights," Angelo said to Felicity as he made his way northwards. "It's time to frolic with the druids and get busy with the wizards."
Executive Summary: Angelo wears down Denak, Diane, Lasala and Brendan after killing Osmadi and Corsonne for starters.
Ordinarily, Angelo would have skipped Spider Wood entirely, as the ring of energy didn't seem suitable recompense for the hassle of dealing with the bunch of Red Wizard rejects. Still, BG:EE had now plonked a scroll of Remove Magic into Denak's inventory, and the fact that the ring's blast was treated as a level 0 effect meant that it circumvented several spell protections. Combined, these facts made enough of a case for Angelo to make a detour into the arachnids' forest.
Unfortunately for Osmadi and Corsonne, they weren't that high level and weren't especially prepared either. Low-level druids had always been some of Angelo's favourite punching bags: their spells were ineffective (in vanilla BG, they often cast Hold Person, but SCS has dispensed with that behaviour), their ACs were high (leather armour was almost as good as no armour) and their saving throws were garbage. LoB and SCS did surprisingly little to change this: although their ACs and saves got considerably better, their positions on the edge of a map meant that they were pretty vulnerable to Blind, with the opion of fleeing if it didn't work. Their decent spells simply took too long to cast and despite having a Cure Disease apiece, they succumbed to Angelo's blinding archery.
"Why did you bother killing them?" Felicity asked. "You don't need Osmadi's Backbiter spear - who would?! - and you're at the XP cap anyway."
"Force of habit," Angelo shrugged as he left the stone circle.
Angelo started by summoning some critters of his own to absorb their spells, but it quickly became apparent that the wizards were not going to waste their best arsenal on this lowly fodder. "Fine," Angelo muttered as he cast Shield on himself and gulped down a potion of invulnerability or two. "I'll do it myself."
With his potion support, his saving throws were sufficiently low that just about any spell they had that could be resisted was successfully saved against (Angelo expended a charge from his Greenstone amulet when he saw Denak casting Chaos, though, just in case). He'd considered using the scrolls of protection against acid, but he didn't fancy tempting Denak or Diana into casting their Remove Magic spells, so resolved to sop up the damage with potions of healing and carefully timed uses of his Cure Light Wounds special ability. He was also prepared to tank three Lances of Disruption and two Chromatic Orbs, but his Shield spell warded off Magic Missile and Gorion's belt of the antipode dealt with the solitary Icelance handily. Some of these spells would be used up on his summons, Angelo knew, but there was no harm in preparing for the worst.
Protection from Acid scrolls are not so common, but I would definitely recommend using two here, along with using two to neutralise Rezdan at the Cloakwood Mines.
Inbetween salvos, the mages loved to throw spookily accurate Melf's Minute Meteors, so Angelo waited out the assault behind his large shield+1, +4 vs missiles, wearing his girdle of piercing and brandishing his fire immunity items for additional protection (once forgetting to take off the belt of the antipode... he wouldn't make that mistake again!).
These were all much tougher than Angelo's own summons, so Angelo tried to evade them using Invisibility.
Despite the fact that all four of the wizards were conjurers - and so should be unable to cast divinations - Denak cast an illegal Detect Invisibility and, caught short without his cloak of non-detection, Angelo appeared. Having only a single Invisibility available and unwilling to drink a potion to achieve the same, Angelo sighed and resolved to the old-fashioned method of running around with his boots of speed taking potshots.
Unfortunately, what with constantly being on the move, Angelo's Detect Illusion skill wasn't able to tear down the mages' Mirror Image spells. Combined with the omnipresent Stone Skins and Denak's unnaturally good AC, the mages' defences took a long time to smash through. Still, there was relatively little danger involved here, so Angelo didn't want to waste any arrows of dispelling on the job. It took a lot of running around firing arrows (Angelo used up all his normal arrows, so started on his reserves of arrows + 1), but the wizards' protections eventually fell away. Even alerting some of the local tasloi did not distract Angelo from his campaign and, one by one, the conjurers bit the dust.
Ignoring the peripheral tasloi, Angelo looted the ring of energy, along with assorted robes and scrolls, from the bodies before quickly leaving the scene. Fahrington could find his own cursed scroll!
"The hour is upon us, Felicity," Angelo said as he made his way towards Baldur's Gate. "It's time to finish the game."
Executive Summary: Abusing wands and the Web spell allows Angelo to kill Slythe and the doppelgangers.
Angelo was always amazed by how hard people made it for themselves when they returned to Baldur's Gate in Chapter 7. He did not visit Cythandria, he did not rescue Duke Eltan... the game pretended these were important, but they were really window dressing... and went straight to the Undercellars beneath the Blushing Mermaid.
As soon as Slythe registered as ensnared, Angelo went for the kill. Buffed by Draw Upon Holy Might and brandishing a pair of blades, Angelo skipped over the webbed area using his ring of free action and started hacking and slashing. Felicity complemented his manoeuvres, hurling amorphous globs of her body at Slythe in an attempt to kill him as soon as possible. Fortunately, this Fighter/Thief preferred to use potions of invisibility, rather than his natural Stealth ability, so Angelo could theoretically disable his ability to backstab by moving around a bit with Detect Illusion active, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that.
Krystin seemed strangely reluctant to appear this time around, which was fortunate since her automatic minor globe of invulnerability would render her immune to the Web spell. Angelo was prepared to use his Greenstone amulet should he see her appearing: she was an enchanter, so most of her magic was CC... although she'd now acquired a Death Spell, which Angelo considered grossly unfair since it had no saving throw, so he should have drunk two potions of magic shielding to be completely safe. Had Slythe managed to wriggle free, Angelo would have paralysed him using a wand - not only did he want this combat over quickly, he didn't want the assassin to start eyeing up Felicity as backstab material.
This was all academic, though, as Slythe was eviscerated in fairly short order.
Scooping up the loot, Angelo left the Undercellar. Despite not showing her face during the combat, Angelo was surprised that Krystin followed him out of the Blushing Mermaid and into the city's northeastern streets. However, she could not track across an area transition and Angelo abandoned her, Slythe-less, making his way to the Duchal Palace.
Sneaking back down to ground, Angelo enacted the second stage of his plan. He knew that the six noblemen would turn into greater doppelgangers of various stripes, and that having all six active at once was a recipe for disaster. Much to his disgust, despite the fact that casting Blind would turn them individually hostile without triggering their transformation and ensuring their death by the Flaming Fist guards, having even one of the noblemen disabled in this fashion would mean that the entire transformation would not trigger properly and Angelo would be unable to advance through the game. So that was out.
However, like Emissary Tar, the disguised doppelgangers inherited their alternate form's saving throws, so they would barely resist any spell cast on them. This meant that Angelo could cast Web from the rightmost entrance to ensnare the back row near enough automatically. As the webbed noblemen would not transform until they were free and their saving throws were so poor that as long as the Web was in effect, they would be held, this effectively halved the number of doppelgangers in the initial wave. Better yet, it delayed the transformation of the dangerous doppelganger mage (in the blue outfit) and shaman (in the green).
Angelo switched to the leftmost entrance and used his wand of monster summoning to surround the dukes with several bodyguards of his own. Casting Haste to give them the extra edge, Angelo then entered the room and triggered the cutscene. There was a fine balance to be struck here: too long pre-buffing and the Web spell would wear off, not enough and the summons would fall too quickly (the Flaming Fist were also ensnared by the Web and could not offer themselves as meat shields until after it had worn off). In an ideal world, Angelo would have turned invisible and pickpocketed Belt and Liia Janneth while his potions of master thievery were still active - both had a 1 charge ring of invisibility, which could be recharged by selling and buying back at extortionate rates so as to be actually useful - but he would wait until the battle was raging before performing the pilfery.
Without their spellcaster support, the first greater doppelgangers wave was being predictably taken apart. His summons were being shredded, but that was exactly their purpose, and Angelo wasn't too hesitant to conjure another batch should the previous one be near to falling. Bitter experience had taught him that he shouldn't be too thrifty with his charges if he wanted to reliably get through this encounter. He'd been cautious with his previous wand uses, so he pushed the boat out and used a second charge here.
When Angelo estimated that the Web spell was about to wear off in a few rounds' time, he proceeded to use his wand of paralysation on the blue-coated nobleman, as he wanted to delay the appearance of the doppelganger mage yet further. The nobleman seemed unaffected by Hold Person and other weaker magics, but the wand, with its vicious -4 save penalty, did the job nicely.
Once activated, the shaman tried to cast Flame Strike on Angelo - not a great idea given his fire immunity. The shaman also tried Silence, which would have been a good idea had it disabled wand use. Sadly, it didn't and the shaman ended up paying the price. And when the doppelganger mage finally appeared, it found itself without allies facing the might of Angelo, his summoned army and two dukes of Baldur's Gate. Surely its demise was inevitable?
Not that Belt was much better. The level 31 fighter was a force to be reckoned with, no denying that... when he turned up! However, between breaking his weapon (Angelo ended up disabling the SCS option that magical weapons were replaced by fine equivalents because it simply wasn't fair that Angelo's best warrior by a country mile ended up punching his foes most of the time) and getting stuck in a cabinet looking for Narnia, unconcerned by his wife getting murdered in the next room, his behaviour was erratic at best. So it fell mostly upon Angelo's shoulders to tank the mage's duo of acid arrows sequencer, run around shooting its elemental/myconoid summons and avenge Janneth's death all by himself.
Finally it went down and Sarevok's evil plan was revealed. Never known for his calmness, the Bhaalspawn turned on Angelo spouting vituperations, but Angelo backed off. Recovering from his bout of indifference, Belt tried to step in, but this was a bad idea. Already wounded from earlier battles, Belt would have not stood much chance against an enraged Sarevok, and Angelo knew that the duke's death would force a reload. Expending another wand of monster summoning charge, Angelo let Sarevok's rage play out on some hired lackeys instead. After a short time, Winski Perorate teleported in to whisk Sarevok away and Belt divined their location at the end of the thieves' maze. Although he had to drink another potion to do so, Angelo managed to filch the rings of invisibility and some potions from Liia's and Belt's pockets before
the fighter sent him off in hot pursuit.
"The Duchal Palace battle is one of BG:EE's hardest battles," Angelo explained to Felicity as the thieves' guild began to swirl around him. "Another one is coming right up next..."
Executive Summary: Abusing all of his wands, Angelo blasts his namesake into first off-screen, then on-screen oblivion.
"Do you think you'll be able to finish you finishing the game in one post?" Felicity asked as Angelo cast his Invisibility spell.
Angelo shrugged, "let's find out!"
He deliberately did not recharge his wands (apart from the wand of polymorphing - this would, ultimately, be unnecessary, but he didn't risk it), for he wanted as much as possible to avoid the buyback-recharge trick: it was a cheap (although, given the prices, not that cheap!) trick and although he disguised it well, Angelo did have standards. Sometimes.
From there, he reapplied his Invisibility to sneak past Tamoko (full plate and a ring of protection +2 was better than her full plate +1, so tackling her was the definition of optional) and through the thieves' maze (whenever he saw a red mark on the wall, he stopped and looked for traps). He considered tackling the associates of Rahvin, Haseo, Wudei, Carston, Shaldrissa and Gorf, but 2 arrows of detonation seemed paltry reward for the considerable effort it would take to dispatch them. Leaving the new 'Magma Bulwark' Platemail +1 by the abandoned leftmost pulpit (a little late in the game, all things considered), Angelo steeled himself, rested and entered the Temple of Bhaal.
When Angelo cast Invisibility, he made sure that it was from the extra spell granted by the Amulet of Metaspell Influence; he was about to take the amulet off, so this extra spell would have otherwise been lost to him. Creeping up to Sarevok while invisible, Angelo was initially alarmed to see the dialogue trigger, but the fighter thankfully seemed otherwise oblivious to his presence. He watched to see which side Diarmid teleported in (the 'Reads a Scroll' floating banner helped) - sometimes Diarmid appeared on the left, sometimes on the right - and moved into Diarmid's old position when Diarmid went into the centre. This put him on the opposite side of Angelo the F/M (henceforth, the F/M), out of sight of Sarevok and his teammates. Angelo positioned himself beneath the highest grim reaper statue on the relevant side, allowing him to see the nearest corner of the carpet, and waited for the two hours for Diarmid's protection from magic scroll to wear off.
Testing shows Semaj and Tazok invisibly clustered around Sarevok with Angelo hiding in a flank.
Aiming his wand of fire at the centre of the top step, Angelo fired a Fireball blast, hitting Diarmid and Sarevok, along with the hidden Semaj and Tazok. Ideally, he would have liked to hit the F/M too, but experience had shown that going for all five provoked them into chasing him, whereas going for four allowed him to remain out of sight. They had a tendency to shuffle around after the initial blasts, so he retreated a little to let them manoeuvre a bit, but they settled down after the first few charges. Once he'd found his 'safe spot', Angelo liked to drop something he didn't urgently need to act as a beacon.
Angelo lays down a marker!
After 20 charges or so blasts from his wand of fire, it was usually Semaj who was the first to fall. It was ironic, Angelo thought, that both Sarevok and his stooges were immune to fire in vanilla BG, so this tactic wouldn't have worked (then again, the original Sarevok had 100% magic resistance, but no haste - even as a straight mage, Angelo would have taken that trade!).
Testing shows that Angelo moves to fill in for any deceased followers.
Since Angelo only had a limited number of inventory spaces and did not do any refilling, his wand of fire ran out during the proceedings (i.e. got to 1 Fireball charge, at which point it was retired for potential recharge later). Although the necklace of missiles didn't do as much average damage per charge (since all their 1's were not counted as 2's), they were useful in that they could be stacked in the gem bag for a single inventory slot. Angelo had used up his amulet of metaspell influence bonus first precisely so that he could switch to the necklace of missiles without losing a spell (he went for these first, rather than potions of explosions or oils of fiery burning - which also could be stacked in a single inventory slot using the potion bag - to retain the option of recharging the necklace of missiles later, whereas consumables would be gone for good). Every run of the triangle allowed him to fire off one charge, after which he'd complete another circuit before trying again.
After 21 wand of fire charges, 17 necklace of missile blasts, 2 potions of explosion, 4 oils of fiery burning and 8 Fireball spells (Angelo had to use up all 6 of his precious Fireball scrolls for this; he used the potion of explosion first because although it did an extra d6 damage, its save v spell was more likely to be resisted than the oil's save v breath weapon), Sarevok's minions finally perished.
This is the F/M's, not our protagonist's, death screen!
"Goodbye, my twin," Angelo muttered as he lined up the final skeletons in the bottom corner of the map and cast Invisibility to dump them there. "Now to kill my half-brother as well!"
Using a charge from his wand of monster summoning, Angelo conjured a small horde of beasties outside Sarevok's range. Sending them into the fray as a disposable meat shield, Angelo next tried to fire off a Dispel Magic scroll to remove Sarevok's Haste. Despite hearing reports that you only needed power 3 to dispel this effect (second paragraph of 'Original Baldur's Gate' in https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Sarevok_Anchev ), Angelo was sceptical since he'd also heard that BG:EE scrolls were cast at level 6 (https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/72104/caster-level-when-casting-from-scrolls). He was right to be sceptical as Sarevok appeared unaffected by the spell and with his archery ThAC0 of 7, Angelo could only hope to hit Sarevok's AC of -18 on a critical hit. There was no way Angelo was going to risk losing that many arrows of dispelling just so Sarevok would chop through his summons in 10 seconds rather than 5... he needed another plan.
Remembering his fight with the demon knight, along with the fact that Sarevok no longer had 100% MR, Angelo knew the answer. Whipping out his wand of paralysation, Angelo went to town, occasionally stopping to summon more critters should Sarevok look like he was about to break through. Angelo had prepared some Greater Malison scrolls should they be necessary, but the green ray of goodness stopped Sarevok in his tracks on the third attempt and Angelo (and his assorted monsters) went in for the kill. Snatching the now redundant scimitar marker into his off-hand, Angelo cast Draw Upon Holy Might and began lashing for all he was worth. Every few rounds of slicing and dicing, Angelo fired off another paralysing ray, wanting to guarantee the stunlock while also optimise the value he gained from each charge. Never one to pass up free damage, Angelo also cast Magic Missile inbetween attacks to ensure that the big guy went down in a timely fashion.
Which, eventually, he did.
"That's cool," Felicity piped up as the ending cinematic began to play and Sarevok's statue crumbled to dust in Bhaal's inner sanctum. "I guess that's the last we'll be seeing of him."
"I wouldn't bet on that..." Angelo replied.
Executive Summary: Angelo reflects on his journey through BG1 and plans for the trials ahead.
As his half-brother collapsed to his knees, Angelo took the opportunity to whip out a mirror he had in his robes to check his hair. Sarevok was bleeding profusely and Angelo didn’t want any blood or sweat to mess up his careful coiffure. Staring at his attractive (15 Charisma, baby, yeah!) visage brought into focus several thoughts that has crossed his mind over the course of his adventures so far…
Upon reflection, I would have perhaps made Angelo an elf, rather than a half-elf. My reasoning for this was that boosting an elf's maximum Dexterity from 19 to 20 only grants thief skill points (which you can max out anyway as above), whereas going from 18 to 19 gives missile adjustment and initiative bonus; on the other hand, a half-elf would eventually gain regeneration in BG2 (18 max Con + tome + machine of Lum the Mad) without having to take the evil path in Hell, whereas an elf would not. However, with Draw Upon Holy Might providing bonuses through area transitions and resting, the value of regeneration diminishes considerably, and an elf's 90% charm/sleep resistance (and their +1 bonus with swords and bows) would probably have been more useful. We'll see...
This leads me to a conclusion that I've been ruminating over for a while. It was Arthur C Clarke who stated, among other things, that, 'When a distinguished but elderly scientist... says something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.' Being neither elderly nor an especially distinguished BG player, sticking my neck out is probably even more unwise, but I'm going to do it anyway: I don't think this challenge would be possible to do as a Wizard Slayer. Not because they can't use many magical items per se - I'm already thinking about how my next character would tackle the 'Bane of the Wizard Slayer' challenge - it's because they have no options to help them get around that weakness. For instance, most classes have some options for sneakiness available to them, but Wizard Slayer can utilise neither stealth nor spells, and cannot access potions or rings of invisibility to bridge the gap. As a fighter kit, a Wizard Slayer without items can only fight straightforwardly... and in LoB, if you fight straightforwardly, you lose.
Given this undeniable fact - and that BG is a low-level campaign (with a correspondingly limited scope for employable tactics) - Angelo's tricks have fallen into one of the following categories:
In other non-optimisation news, Angelo has heard somewhere on the grapevine that some mod (Ascension, perhaps?) has added succubi to the final encounter which charm you with a -10 penalty if you’re male (no penalty if you’re female, though, even if you’re romancing Hexxat). If this is true, that’s one more reason why he’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread.
So, to clarify, by the end of BG1, Angelo has 2 stars in scimitars, 2 stars in shortbow, 1 star in single weapon fighting (need that extra critical chance for Belly F at the end of SoD) and 1 star in two-handed weapon fighting. He’ll get 4 more weapon proficiencies at fighter levels 9, 12, 15 and 18, and he expects to spend them specialising in two-handed swords and halberds. Had I gotten my thinking cap on earlier, I would have jettisoned scimitars altogether and specialised in quarterstaffs for several reasons:
And are you telling me that after all that earlier guff about Twinkle, the Helm of Opposite Alignment and the Girdle of Sex Change, you didn’t end up abusing them and changing Angelo’s alignment? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you, because I want the imp familiar when I summon it again at the start of BG2/LoB. Felicity is an important narrative device and a pseudodragon replacement just wouldn’t do her justice!
Oh, and of course my gem bag, scroll case and potion case are full of rings/amulets, scrolls and potions respectively. I'm not going to list them all individually, but they contain all of what you'd expect them to contain given my previously described preparations. Only when inventory space is comparatively limited have I explained fully what I have carried over. I have tried to cover all bases, given I'm going into SoD reasonably blind: some of these choices will turn out not be optimal (for instance, upon reflection, I perhaps should have dumped the Girdle of Bluntness to free up a slot and let potions of insulation achieve the same effect), but it's the journey that matters, right?
That’s more than enough excruciating detail to be getting on with. And with that, let’s get on! Siege of Dragonspear awaits us...
There's a succubus even in the unmodded BG2 final encounter - and it does have a differential penalty for charm. In BG2EE though that sex-based difference has been eliminated, so there's no advantage to being female there - but there are loads of items that protect against charm, so it's not much of an issue if you know the danger.
Bleurgh. Did I mention right at the start that I'd never really played ToB before? I did? Well, if you didn't believe me before, you'd better believe me now.
Great news on the non-differential save penalty, though. It won't make a practical difference - Angelo would have to have made himself immune to charm whether there was a penalty or not - but while I'm all for slight differences in gameplay experience for various characters/races/classes and so on, as it keeps the game fresh, they should be fairly minor... and a -10 penalty (the equivalent of 2.5 Greater Malisons!), I would argue, is not especially minor. An extra -2 modifier might have been more balanced, although I would have accepted up to -4.
Btw I am impressed this thread is still alive. It was hell lot of inspiration for me on my various challanging runs in past. This is the first time I am really stucked.
11 Base
9 Power Potion
2 Violet Potion
-1 Scimitars +3
-2 Specialized
-3 Legacy of the Masters
-4 Helmet of Balduran
-6 Medal of Valor
-7 Ring of Purity (Chant)
-8 Cloverleaf (Luck)
Belhifet AC is -16 with Improved Invisibility
60 Sorcerous Sundries BG1
25 Sorcerous Sundries SoD
5 Waizahb
3 Dragonspear Basement (needs knock)
2 Rahvin
2 Durlag's Tower Warder Level
* Shortbows
* Single Weapon Style
weidu.log
// The top of the file is the 'oldest' mod
// ~TP2_File~ #language_number #component_number // [Subcomponent Name -> ] Component Name [ : Version]
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1500 // Include arcane spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #1510 // Include divine spells from Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3505 // Wider selection of random scrolls: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #3551 // Increase the power of Cure Wounds and Cause Wounds spells to the level found in 3rd Edition D&D -> Spells heal or inflict the maximum amount of damage in this range: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4000 // Faster Bears: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4020 // More realistic wolves and wild dogs: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4030 // Improved shapeshifting: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4115 // Thieves assign skill points in multiples of five: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #4250 // Make spell sequencers and contingencies into innate abilities: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #5900 // Initialise AI components (required for all tactical and AI components): v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6000 // Smarter general AI: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6010 // Better calls for help: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6030 // Smarter Mages: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6040 // Smarter Priests: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6100 // Potions for NPCs: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6200 // Improved Spiders: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6300 // Smarter sirines and dryads: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6310 // Slightly smarter carrion crawlers: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #6320 // Smarter basilisks: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7000 // Improved doppelgangers: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7010 // Tougher Black Talons and Iron Throne guards: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7020 // Improved deployment for parties of assassins: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7030 // Improved kobolds: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7040 // Relocated bounty hunters: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7050 // Improved Ulcaster: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7060 // Improved Balduran's Isle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7070 // Improved Durlag's Tower: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7080 // Improved Demon Cultists: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7090 // Improved Cloakwood Druids: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7100 // Improved Bassilus: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7110 // Improved Drasus party: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7130 // Improved Red Wizards: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7140 // Improved Undercity assassins: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7200 // Tougher chapter-two end battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7210 // Tougher chapter-three end battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7220 // Tougher chapter-four end battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7230 // Tougher chapter-five end battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7250 // Improved final battle: v33.3
~STRATAGEMS/SETUP-STRATAGEMS.TP2~ #0 #7900 // Improved minor encounters: v33.3
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3040 // Make Bags of Holding Bottomless: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3080 // Increase Ammo Stack Size -> Unlimited Ammo Stacking: v9
~CDTWEAKS/SETUP-CDTWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #3100 // Increase Potion Stacking -> Unlimited Potion Stacking: v9
~EEUITWEAKS/EEUITWEAKS.TP2~ #0 #1070 // Faydark's Abilities Auto-Roller/GrimLefourbe's BG2 UI: 3.5
~LOB_SAVE_FIX/LOB_SAVE_FIX.TP2~ #0 #0 // improve saving throws of all non-joinable creatures
Killed Imoen, Xzar and Montaron for potions, Neera for Gem Bag and Algernon for his Charm cloak. Algernon took no less than 220 arrows. Listened Drizzt getting killed, and got the best armor for Blade, and my AC was already -6 with Twinkle, Single Weapon Style and Chainmail +4. Ranged Vitiare with about 800 arrows and got Master Thievery potion. Warg and Ghast waylays escaped without damage. Picked the first Invisibility potion from Revenant cave, which will be handy against the Bandit waylay at level 1. We bought 3 Invisibility scrolls from High Hedge. Sonner ranged for Tenya's Bowl, but after Charming Tenya she didn't accept it anymore. I needed her to distract the Ankheg which would kill me first hit. In Ulgoth's Beard we picked the Greenstone Amulet, then Shield Amulet from Carnival. In Friendly Arm Inn we Charmed couple guards who killed Tarnesh for us. Jaheira was Charmed and she got killed by couple Hobbos, got us second Invisibility potion. Same for Dorn, his Rancor netted 450 gold.
Jin used Invisibility scroll to reach Mulahey. We were hit four times with Arrow Trap, but they couldn't one shot me, so we drank Health potion after every hit. Charmed Mulahey, used second Invisibility scroll, and Mulahey was killed by Kobbos. Right click looted and left. Jin took the first risk really, taking the Wand of Monster Summoning with same Invisibility, but the Ghasts were pretty easily avoided. Nimbul was killed by Charmed Minsc and we got the Familiar scroll. Next was the bandit waylay, and I didn't want to risk it, but spent the other Invisibility potion. Tranzig got killed by WoMS. Dushai too was lured away and killed by WoMS. We bought our reputation to 12 and did the reputation run. Picked up the Piercing and Missile Girdle by charming the Ogre. Bassilus didn't survive double WoMS and now I finally had enough money to buy Sandthief Ring. Raiken then escorted us to the Bandit camp. There we Charmed Taurgosz and he was killed by Skelis. We escaped Molkar waylay with Invisibility. We entered to Bandit camp tent invisible, drank potion of Absorption, looted and quickly used Sandthief ring to escape.
We used our last WoMS charge to kill the Tasloi with Non-Detection cloak. Spider woods was passed with single Sandthief charge, right click picking up the two swords. Lamalha waylay passed with a Sandthief charge. Didn't bother with Drasus as I can get Boots of Speed from Lothander risk free. We went to the mines, talked to Slaves twice using Sandthief charges, and it now needed recharge. So we left and recharged it. Back to the mines and straight to Davaeorn, where we sucked MM Traps with Shield Amulet, and the Skull Trap Trap with our lv1 under 14 hp protection. Jin Charmed the guard who lured the two Battle Horrors away, and I then lured them further away and drank my last Invisibility potion. Guard then casually hacked Davaeorn. And then Jin absorbed the two Glyph of Warding traps, again drinking Potion of Healing after both.
In Baldur's Gate without no problems really.