Also, does anyone know what level the Dispel Magic from Bala's Axe is cast at? BG Wiki says it's at the caster's priest level, which effectively means that only shamans (along with rangers and paladins, to a lesser extent) can use it properly. I had hoped that my WS archer could use it to avoid the long kiting session with Sarevok, but testing seems to show it's as good as useless
Yes, Bala's axe casts priest dispel magic using the wielder's priest caster level. For a ranger at the BG1 cap, that's level 1. It's virtually useless.
Now, if you can hit him with a dispelling arrow, that's a guaranteed dispel with no level check at all.
Yes, Bala's axe casts priest dispel magic using the wielder's priest caster level. For a ranger at the BG1 cap, that's level 1. It's virtually useless.
Now, if you can hit him with a dispelling arrow, that's a guaranteed dispel with no level check at all.
Yeah this is correct, I thought it ignored level, and testing it on Glaicus it Dispels him every hit. But doesn't seem to work against enemy mages like that.
The charm (not exactly, but close enough) effect on Glaicus has caster level 1. For a paladin or ranger, that's a virtually certain dispel. For a pure fighter, it might or might not work.
Sarevok:
1. Dominated Wudei with Nymph and let her summon a Skeleton Warrior in the temple
2. Sacrificed Wudei against Sarevok and lured them to the SE-corner going invisible
3. Used the Skeleton Warrior to kill Angelo as his weapon could not touch the Undead
4. Waited for buffs to expire before casting 6x Spike Growth on the rest killing Semaj
5. Then 6x Necklace of Missiles to kill Tazok and Diarmid
6. Salamandre Form to outrun Sarevok and burning him down with 85x Wand of Heavens
If you're patient enough, another way of taking out Sarevok with an avenger (which is WS friendly) is to use the salamander's fire shield. In his final form, Sarevok has 40% fire resistance. hitting a user with fireshield: red deals 1d8 + 2 damage, or 6.5 on average, so Sarevok takes roughly 3.9 damage on average every time he hits you. He has 830 HP, so he'd have to hit you 213 (212.82... rounded up) times on average to kill himself this way... although there might well be some intermediate rounding errors going on.
How much punishment do you have to survive for this? Sarevok normally hits for 16-25 damage and assuming you've enabled double damage (you're an LoB solo player... why wouldn't you?!), that's 32 - 50, or 41 average, damage per hit. If he has to hit you 213 times, that's 8,733 HP on average that you have to heal via healing potions and the like. Is this possible? Let's take a look at the health potions that are available from stores in the game:
Temple in Candlekeep Prologue:
Potion of Healing x 20
Elixir of Health x 4
Temple in Friendly Arm Inn
Potion of Healing x 20
Elixir of Health x 20
Potion of Extra Healing x 4
Temple in Beregost
Potion of Healing x 20
Elixir of Health x 4
Potion of Extra Healing x 5
High Hedge
Potion of Healing x 3
Elixit of Health x 3
Temple in Nashkel
Potion of Healing x 20
Elixir of Health x 20
Sorcerous Sundries
Potion of Healing x 3
Elixir of Health x 3
Temple of Helm in central Baldur's Gate
Potion of Healing x 20
Elixir of Health x 15
Lady's Hall in Western Baldur's Gate
Potion of Healing x 20
Elixir of Health x 20
Potion of Extra Healing x 5
Black Lily (Thieves' Guild)
Potion of Healing x 20
Generic Potions Store in South West Baldur's Gate
Potion of Healing x 15
Elixir of Health x 4
Candlekeep in Chapter 6
Potion of Healing x 20
Elixir of Health x 4
Erdane in Durlag's Tower
Potion of Healing x 20
Ulgoth's Beard
Potion of Healing x 35
Temple in Gullykin
Potion of Healing x 20
Elixir of Health x 20
Unfortunately, wizards slayers can't use potions of regeneration, but there are 3 of them in High Hedge and Sorcerous Sundries, plus an extra 4 in the generic potion store (they would heal 2 HP/round for 3 turns, so 60 HP in total). You might have thought, if you were uber-keen, that you could have used the Constitution tome and Buckey's Buckler to get 20 Constitution and regenerate torturously slowly... but, alas, the avenger's -2 Constitution penalty puts paid to that.
This gives a grand total of:
Potion of Healing x 201
Elixir of Health x 114
Potion of Extra Healing x 14
Since each potion of healing heals 9 HP, each elixir of health heals 10 HP and each potion of extra healing heals 27 HP, this gives:
(201 x 9) + (114 x 10) + (14 x 27) = 1,809 + 1,140 + 378 = 3,327 HP.
To make matters worse, you definitely won't be able to buy all of the healing available in the prologue. Still, you'll have Durlag's Goblet, your own cure spells and any health potions you find on your travels to make up the difference. To get the most out of Durlag's goblet, use healing potions to get just above 50 HP and then use the goblet after Sarevok's smacked you.
This looks horrendous - 3,327 HP is barely 38% of the 8,733 HP required - so there'll still be some inevitable gap-closing to be done. A level 10 avenger with 20 Wisdom (the chest with the third tome in Candlekeep is impossible for a WS avenger to bash open) will have 7 level 1 spells and 6 level 4 spells - Static Charge can do decent damage even with a guaranteed save and 40% electrical resistance, and Chromatic Orb's damage adds up. Toss in extra damage from Wudei's summons (particularly that Aerial Servant, who punches like a boss!) and some lucky bullet shots and you're well on the way.
With the Demon Knight's dagger in her pack, Abigail contemplated returning it, but decided to pay a return visit to Baldur's Gate first. She went via some wilderness areas to try out a new power granted she reasoned, by one of the less savory members of the Morndinsamman, perhaps one of the duergar patrons. She only knew her gray kin from books, but there was something about Laduguer and Deep Duerra that resonated with her more than many of the others.
Channeling tainted-divine energy she was able to crate a cloud of pestilent energy that sickened anyone living caught inside, clouding their eyes and weakening them. Here undead minions were conveniently immune, as was she. Everywhere she trod, plague followed. Entering Baldur's Gate with an air of pestilence and undeath surrounding her, she tracked down a final set of assassins in the undercellar. They were as nothing before her rotten miasma and undead servants. In moments of introspection she wondered how a young dwarf from candlekeep ended up mistress of plague and the risen dead - and daughter of the god of murder to boot.
Seeking to wrap up some last loose ends, before what she felt was to be a final show-down with her supposed half-brother she returned to ulgoth's beard. As she suspected, there was more to the story than she was initially told, the soultaker dagger was stolen from her by cultists seeking to raise a Tanar'ri. She tracked the cultists to a nearby building where, with some rather sneaky upstairs-downstairs action she first killed some of the cultists downstairs, spawned the demon, lured him upstairs, returned downstairs to kill Tracea, went back upstairs and lured the upstairs cultist crew downstairs into her skeleton-plague trap, then after a rather strange mid-fight nap in the local inn, she and her skeletons brought some plague-y wrath on the demon onthe upstairs floor, who, oddly, teleported around the upstairs room a fair bit, until he was struck blind that is. Due to his big size, Abigail could hammer away at will on his blinded material form while he concentrated on the closer skeletons. In the end it was rather anti-climatctic she thought. The Demon Knight was a more dangerous enemy.
Claiming her reward, the "kneekapper" hammer, perfect for killing "giant humanoids," she vowed to Moradin that she would finally end it between her and Sarevok.
SCS/LoB, end of BG1 with all challenging fights dealt with.
Aec'Latec
Recharged WoP and WoMS before cultists and Aec'Latec.
Waited the cult enforcer buffs out, then WoMS + GM + WoP/Nymph cloak/WoPoly for the kills. Durlag's goblet makes mistakes much less risky. Web + Spider also worked pretty well but wasn't as good as GM + WoPoly.
Pretty funny to see squirrels drinking potions hoping to survive and backstabbing you from invisibility. To my disapointment, it seems that SCS force the guards to drink their potion of heroism, which means that i didn't get any...
Dragged the cultist inside the house outside for the same WoPoly/WoP treatment, used 3 goblet charge in total.
Charmed Delsvirftanyon and dragged him to Aec'Lactec lair to kill Tracea Carol without her spawning Aec'Latec, then WoF Scorcher + Boots of speed the cult guards and finished them with WoF fireball once gathered together.
Aec'Latec without SCS usually ignore your summons and focus on you at all time (at least it did for me), however this doesn't happen with SCS, making the encounted much easier IMO, i also never got the ranged vampiric touch. GM on the first try, then WoP him while he attacked my held summons which worked after only 2 tries. With oil of speed + DHUM, he barely lasted 10 seconds.
Poor Delsvirftanyon had a noble death, much nobler than his life as a trader. Didn't lose a single HP thanks to stoneskin.
Khark
Killed Khark was extremely easy as this point. WoMS to attract his attention, Spell Trust got rid of all his spell protection, GM + WoP for the win. Got hit with acid arrow and had to tank with 2x Durlag Goblet.
Recharged my first WoF before heading to Balduran Isle. Still had 76k gold and Durlag's Tower to completely loot if needed.
Karoug
Obtained the sea chart by going up the Merchant League Counting, WoP the captain and killed him before fleeing.
Once on the island, wolfwere ambush got turned into squirelwere, gave back the doll then proceeded to Karoug.
For Karoug, i died the first time failing to charm the mage (death 13). Second try, i cleared the deck just below to attempt to split the wolfwere.
Dragged the mage downstairs while occupying the wolfwere with WoMS. He just stood there not doing anything... He transformed and i managed to WoP to finish him.
Rested outside and tried luring more Wolfwere to that deck, which worked for all of them except a single wolfwere. Managed to change Karoug (Greater Wolfwere) into a squirrel, as he was the only one who got affected by GM. Killed the two other wolfwere with WoP, cleared the top deck as my +2 weapons were not affecting him then destroyed him with a crit using the sword of Balduran.
Even as a squirrel his regen was ridiculous. I think that some classes won't be able to kill him at all due to that.
Finished the missing son quest and left the island after turning the loup garou into a squirrel.
Against Mendas and Baresh, dragged Mendas outside right away then WoMS + GM + WoPoly. Did the same with Baresh inside. Went to recharge WoPoly after that as i was running very low.
Did a bit of shopping. Got protection scrolls, potions, detonating arrows, dispelling arrows and sold everything i could. I will do a final recharge of everything and a last scroll scribing session after having dealt with the undercity gang and Tamoko.
Sarevok
For the Undercity party, i charmed Gorf from out of range of all the others an made him kill Rahvin, then charm/killed all the rest. After seeing his damage, i made a separate save so try different charm tactics against Sarevok after being done with the BG1 part, possibly to see how efficient the complete party would be.
WoP Tamoko then had to WoPoly her as she became immune to damage for a reason, then recharged everything before the final fight and went to get a second evermemory from Sunin (squirrel) for more SoD gold.
Sarevok failed attempt and testing:
As i really didn't want to waste a ton of FB charge for this fight (guess what, i actually did!), i decided to try to lure the greater basilisk from the south BG warehouse into the Bhaal temple to see if he could polymorph everybody for an easy win, assisted by WoMS of course.
I know that i can move charmed creature through the sewers, so i attempted it. The basilisk would stay stuck in doors inside the thieves guild but would still follow me if ordered to attack me before changing zone.
Basilisk would then get stuck on the maze creatures so i polymorphed it and recharmed. Maze was slow but wasn't that bad at all. Managed to lure him to the throne, however he would only use his melee attack, making him useless... not only that but his claws seem to have changed to squirrel damage. A good hour lost there. Reloaded and figured out that i had to play ''fair'' again...
Tried 2 time with WoMS and got totally destroyed (2 deaths for 15)... after this tried another time with wand of fireball (1st time got discovered and died right away, 1 death for 16) and figured out that detect illusion would help me a lot as i didn't know the enemy placement and what was going on, so i did a little test run with CTRL+T to advance the time and saw that i needed to wait 2 hours in game to "dispel" Diarmid's PfM and that they wouldn't follow when hit by fireball. Managed to kill all of them with 40 WoF fireball and managed to easily WoP Sarevok after. I had to use invisibility potions to lure the skeletons away.
Now that i had it right, i did it the legit way. Wanted to try to abuse traps but they got removed with SCS!
Sarevok successful attempt:
Well not so successful at first, as i tried to use a charmed bat to lure them together, then used detect invisibility but i got discovered by oracle... and death 17.
2nd time worked very well. Shot an arrow at Diarmid so they would all discover me and drank an invisibility potion on the lower left side of the arena to bunch them all up together. Had to wait 5 minutes for the buffs to end, especially Diarmid PFM (60 fps yeah! 2x faster) Almost got discovered by oracle but managed to not get seen and went back invisible. Was fine for the whole fight after this.
5 minutes later once all the buffs ended, shot WoF offscreen in the FoW making sure to hit all 4 of the gank squad. Angelo was the first one to fall after 23 fb, Semaj 1 fb after (24) , Diarmid 8 more (32) and at last Tazok 3 more (35)
Charmed a bat to lure the skeleton warriors away to the top right corner to have Sarevok alone. 1 GM and 3 WoP later, Sarevok was paralysed and helpless. He got to near death and regained movement but 2 WoP later he was paralysed again, and the battle was won! Took the time to loot the full plate armor before the finish.
Not sure if SCS changed that the loot appear in SoD inside Korlaz tomb, but that's pretty cool.
Final inventory before SoD
Bonus Drizzt
Goal of this character was also to not exploit Drizzt AI as letting him get killed by gnolls is getting patched in 2.6, i also didn't want the rep drop and didn't want to use scimitar at all for this run. Still, this character has the necessary tools to deal with him, just not right away like all characters have in 2.5. Simple: simply cast mirror image + Fireshield, then Otiluke. Run away, rest and repeat until Drizzt kills himself.
17 Total deaths
So that's it for BG1 for my first SCS run ever, which wasn't so bad except for the throne ambush and undestanding the final fight... and those backstabs. Next time, i'm dragging the Basilisk to the palace ambush instead. SOD will be much less detailed than BG1 as i really liked to explore everything on this run and rediscover the game at the same time. For SoD i'll just aim at killing Coldhearth then rush to Belhifet. Might take a small break before doing it. This was incredibly fun and Fighter/Illusionist was an extremely efficient class for any situations that i faced so far.
I've had a few deaths recently while away from the game, so I thought I'd try a character where there's less incentive to leave the game chugging unattended and picked up this one I rolled some time ago. A wizard slayer is not a likely candidate to get very far, but that's not really one of my major criteria ...
Summary progress was looking pretty good - until it wasn't:
- Candlekeep
- stole to reduce reputation and went to get LMD at Nashkel
- temple donations to rep 14. Oublek 15, Brage 16 (L2 - +14 HPs), Mr Colquetle 17, Firebead 18, Drienne 19, Joia 20
- returned Tenya's bowl (level 3 - +12 HPs)
- bought +3 staff, full plate
- followed Korax round the basilisks, getting lucky with not meeting any wandering monsters and successfully killing all the basilisks and Mutamin (level 4 - +11 HPs, level 5 - +14 HPs, level 6 - +11 HPs)
- went to kill the gnolls at High Hedge, but was hit by natural lightning during that and ran off the map before there were any further strikes. That prompted me to go to FAI and buy Buckley's Buckler (a guard killing Tarnesh)
- killed the gnolls, then did the golems at High Hedge. Golems have a good weapon speed, so that requires waiting until they commence an attack, withdrawing a step before they can actually attack and then quickly stepping back in to get a staff attack in before the golems can start a second attack for the round. That's still a ticklish process, but Lorn got it done
- more staff work to help out Zhurlong and Mirianne
- bought a +1 large shield just before acquiring a medium version by helping Bjornin.
- back in the Cloud Peaks, found Rufie and staffed Vax before trying out the difficult Zal. In normal play he's simple, but in LoB his darts hurt and he can hit with those even in melee range. That meant hovering at the edge of his range trying to get him to switch regularly from darts to spear to maximise the number of attacks Lorn could get in without response. Lorn had to run away a couple of times, but 3rd time proved just lucky enough
- a ghast tried an ambush as Lorn travelled to the next area. Just as a change from staff work, he shot the ghast down with his sling. He's not proficient with that, but given he needed a 19 to hit with specialized darts, the sling was clearly the better option. Note that took several hours of game time, so he was running round in the south of the ambush area to keep out of sight of any new arrivals
- it was back to staff work in the next area to deal with enemies, including Caldo & Krum
- on to the gnoll stronghold to try and get the charisma tome. I didn't fancy working through the hordes of xvarts there, so tried to pull them away from the cave. I got a bit caught out though as I didn't realise that one of the xvarts had initially remained inside. That slowed Lorn down when he re-entered and he was a bit lucky to find a way back out through the arriving crowd.
- I had a few goes with staff at the polar bear scaring the merchant to the north, but it was just too quick on the draw and it took another lengthy slinging session to bring it down.
- Greywolf pulled an oil of speed out of his pack, but Lorn was able to make it to the edge of the map. At normal speed though, Lorn was able to use his staff on Greywolf and successfully did that at the 3rd attempt
- there were no ambushes while taking Samuel back to the FAI
- freed Tamah from her stony prison
- staffed some spiders. Picked up pantaloons while completing Landrin's quest
- with nothing really left to purchase for now, went to Firewine Bridge and beat up Bentan for his PfM scroll ... and as I wrote that Tyr's curse triggered and Lorn slumped to the floor.
Ha, ha, ha @AvidGamerFan... thats funny... but on the other hand too much number crunching for me!
In my installation Wudei does no longer has Aerial Servant memorized... what a pity!
But we could add a very important ingredient for the WS challenge: Bombardier Beetles! Even though one stun will not be enough to take Sarevok down it will hurt him quite a lot.
Combining the Fire Shield with summon punching should be good enough for the kill - worked at least in my poverty runs as long as Dispel Magic was able to get rid of his Haste!
Abigail Kinslayer the Neutral Evil Dwarf Fighter/Cleric
Returning to Baldur's Gate, Abigail discovered that her so called brother Sarevok was to be invested as a Grand Duke that very night. Very irritated she barged into the investment, ready to smash him with her hammer. Unfortunately, a doppleganger ambush seemed to be in her way. She sent her skeleton minions to attack the doppleganger mage and cast her cloud of pestilence over the mage and shaman, leaving her skeletons to occupy them, while concentrating on the assassin and the others attacking the grand dukes. The whole group were gradually taken down with some potion buffs and three gulps of blood while the skeletons massed attacks were enough to get though the mages defenses rather quickly. She snagged some loot from Grand Duke Belt's corpse while no one was watching and chased Sarevok down into the undercity.
Her skeletons made short work of Tamoko - and inside the Temple of Bhaal, Abigail declared that she was the true inheritor of Bhaal's legacy, not Sarevok, which kind of annoyed him. Luring them into the corner she used exactly 45 of her remaining 100 fireballs to kill his party, while 5 skeletons and her own hammers destroyed 3 of the 4 skeleton warriors, with the use of hasted-regeneration potions and some strength buffs. Aggroing Sarevok she got ready to fill him with beams from the ring of energy, only then realizing it only had its original 19 charges which would not be enough. Never one to let adversity get in the way, she instead kited him around for 82 shots from her wand of the heavens, drinking 2 additional potions of speed during the >2 hour battle against her brother.
When he was dead, she grabbed what she could carry, giving Sarevok's corpse a final kick, she wandered back to the surface to enjoy the spoils of her victory, and offer some prayers to the Morndinsamman.
CATACLYSM challenges completed by Abigail:
Bhaal - Kahrk, Demon Knight, Aec´Letec
Ao - weapons only, if interpreted as able to sell additional weapons found as loot if never used
Cyric
(Gond)
Helm
Sune
Tyr
Waukeen
Deaths: 10 (1 during dukes plus 2 other reloads as things went sour while I tested some stuff, for 3 total)
Not sure if this was known already but its something I discovered by mistake last time I played SoD and have been able to replicate again.
If you kill Imoen with an AoE like OGL after the assassins poison her and knock her unconscious, before corwin appears, she will drop a stack of 80 (80!) oils of speed + some minor loot. These can be picked up, and so long as you don't try and split them will stay as 1 megastack in your inventory, giving you 80 hours of sonic-style action which should be more than enough for SoD. Or else 14,000 Gold if sold at SS at 10cha/20rep - more with higher cha obviously.
Killing her does not seem to break anything, except your heart; and the game assumes she is alive.
Imoen's stack of 80 + other loot shortly after fireballing her:
Or else 14,000 Gold if sold at SS at 10cha/20rep - more with higher cha obviously.
The prices you get for selling things don't depend on reputation and charisma. They only depend on the store's properties and how many of that item are in stock. BGEE standardizes all normal stores to buy your stuff at the same base prices - in the case of oils of speed, 250 each.
If you want full value, sell to a store that doesn't already have some of the item in stock - i.e. not Sorcerous Sundries. Or buy out their stock first before selling the whole stack.
(I was going to check how many items it would take to depreciate that 250 value to 175, but apparently BGEE decided to stop having depreciation work at all when I went to test it. Oops.)
Or else 14,000 Gold if sold at SS at 10cha/20rep - more with higher cha obviously.
The prices you get for selling things don't depend on reputation and charisma. They only depend on the store's properties and how many of that item are in stock.
I'msure I've got better prices for items whit higher rep... but it seems I have been living in make believe land again!
We made it to Irenicus Dungeon with 599640xp and made a level immediately shutting the Lightning machine. So there actually is a benefit of killing more monsters than necessary in SoD, if all the xp still moves to SoA?
The start of SoA is now a lot harder with Selune banning sleeping in uncleared dungeons. Nevertheless we have done this before, so we knew the tactic. Killed Lightning Mephit with PfE and Duhm, used Cure Light Wounds, Lay on Hands after and the three Health potions. Refused to answer Aatagah. We used our single Sanctuary to sneak past the first Duegar party and picked up the Activation Stone and 2 Extra's, before backing to Sewage Golem room. Which we looted for three Extra's and one Healing potion, Bala's Axe, and double Scimitars for 3apr. We then ran past the Duegars to the Smoke Mephit, healing ourselves in the process. Ran past Smoke Mephit and through the door that Golem had just opened for Otyugh room. Picked up the Oil of Speed from the chest and drank it immediatelly. Then looted the rest of the chests for Health potions, and lured the three Duergars away from blocking the corridor. Kited awhile the horde of following enemies, and then ran through and picked the Portal key. Cavaliers poison immunity comes handy in here, as Poison is bad hasted and slows you down. Then ran back and picked up Helm of Balduran and escaped the level. We healed ourselves, and lured the Mephits away from the portal room shutting the door behind. Hacked the portals, picked up Ring +1 and escaped the place with winds of speed. It's kind funny how the place is almost impossible now, but there's just enough resources with Health potions and single Oil of Speed to make it happen. Cavalier has a crucial single Sanctuary, poison immunity, and PfE for -2 AC.
15250xp Kamir
Suna Seni waylay (Sanctuary, LMD)
21150xp Wellyn
23250xp Rejiek
49500xp Looting the Temple for thieves guild
20840xp For Rayic we first lured the Mephits out to thieves guild, we went inside from front door and came ouside from the back door, losing the Mephits in the process. Yet two Fire Mephits were still blocking the way, so we used double Potions of Fire Resistance and hacked them down. Sanctuary to pass the Golems and repeated the Fire trap killing Rayic.
10000xp Documents
18750xp Embarl's Dagger
48250xp Documents, and we let Maevar to be now as Sune has banned Charm tactics.
Renfeld waylay (Sanctuary, LMD)
14450xp Renfel's body
Bandit waylay (Sanctuary, LMD)
2000xp Bridge in Wild Forest, and we helped Neera to get to Hidden Refuge. Amulet +2 picking up the hairband for Mereth, and Paladin Brace's from Watchers Keep.
29750xp De'Arnise gate, lv11 with lv2 spell. Looted De'Arnise with double Sanctuaries. This took many runs back and forth to Watcher's Keep with curse of Ilmater, and even more so because I needed to get Sanctuary on arriving to De'Arnise map, and about 5/6 tries the trolls always interrupted me.
22550xp Glaicus dispelled with Bala's Axe
22350xp FoA +3, also had 26k gold
7750xp Tirdir, killed Reti, got the Missile AC boots
-2rep We ransomed Lady Elgea because again no Charming Welther and got the Silver Pantaloons which we are hauling the rest of the game. Interestingly Welther is marked as innocent, yeah right. Bought our rep to 14.
Bandit waylay (Sanctuary, LMD)
45000xp +1rep Reporting the Bridge Murders
Orog waylay (LMD)
Belm +2 for 4apr with double Sanctuaries, resting close to house because Selune
2000xp Beastmaster can be hacked without agroing the animals with hitting him before dialogue
5690xp Animals
12500xp Releasing Hendak and childs
48750xp Hendak
18000xp Riddle, we used the Cloudkill trap to kill Hobgobling and the Carrion Crawler with our poison immunity. Then we lured the slavers and Captain Hagen for the trap.
2800xp Trolls
8500xp +1rep Freed the childs
38000xp +1rep Hendak
2000xp Idle Hands
27500xp Madulf
22500xp Mazzy's note, lv12, *Axe lv2 spell
3000xp Killer Mimic with Chant and Aid
48500xp Jermien
9500xp Valygar, 50k gold and Mirror Image sword
45000xp Chapter 3 and got Ring +2 and Amulet of Power which Paladin's can use
28500xp Lassal escaped with Sanctuary
Bandit waylay (LMD)
13500xp +1rep Neb
2800xp Caelan and Jaelos
29900xp Contact
41750xp Sir Sarles, gave him the real illithium because we are going for Azuredge instead of MoD. Got Charm Helm for 20 Charm.
16250xp Dawn Ring
8420xp Steam Mephit and Clay Golem
10000xp Cohrvale and Bregg, had to burn 5 Extra's because Bregg was hitting so much
4000xp Treya, lured her away with Azuredge and killed for Thac0 cloak, 5 Extra's. Then companied Rasaad to City Gates getting the map update.
5000xp Prebek and Sanasha, Invulnerability
14500xp Rylock, lv13 with 0.5apr, -2 saves and first Skeli
20000xp Harper Bird
35500xp Xzar
750xp Mad Cleric, level skipping his spells, bought Vhailor's Helm
18000xp Mencar and Tarnor can both be Silenced and casually hacked without agroing their parties, got Full Plate
10000xp Undead in the Cult area, Clone and Azuredge +3
42250xp Bridge riddle, left after this because I didn't want to haul half the rod with me
2000xp 5 Mephits
14000xp Mekrath Silenced and casually killed for RoR. Looted the place travelling multiple times to Roger the Fence.
26250xp Raelis
27000xp Windspear Paladin's, Sanctuary, Skeli, Clone
6000xp Windspear Bandit, top room, Skeli, Clone
21100xp Watcher's Keep trolls, Clone, Skeli and couple rests outside
71630xp +1rep Circus. For Kalah we had Clone, Invulnerability, Speed, Mirror Image and 4 Extra's. Lv14.
3000xp Geld Quickblade Silenced and casually killed
2000xp Dalton Silenced and casually killed, 3x Mirror Image ring
88750xp Bodhi's lair. With single PfU, Fire strength, Speed, Duhm and Azuredge. Waited Bodhi out.
50000xp completing the task for Thieves, but no leaving yet
58000xp Seven Guardian's in Firgraag dungeon, which was freaking annying as I needed to rest for every single one, outside. Nevertheless we killed them with Clone and Skeli getting them half injured before talking.
24450xp Mask
9000xp Samia Silenced and casually hacked
18780xp Wolfwere's
6000xp Tazok's Orc's first lured away and hacked, then Tazok was easily killed. Got the Sewer Key among other loot
6000xp Conster Silenced and casually killed
69250xp Garren's Child. Lv15, *Axe, -1 Saves, lv4 spell
I was planning using my SoA curse swap for Waukeen and do some Firkraag looping, but then something dawned on me. I wouldn't be able to get 25 STR from Hell Trials with Ilmater blocking the Tear trick, so now I'm thinking switching to boon of Ilmater just before using the Tears. And thus I think Malar was the correct choice at the end of SoD.
I restarted with Ivy the Elven Swashbuckler this time avoiding the Nymphitis of her last incarnation and again reaching Level 8 thanks to... cough... charming.... charming and... sure... some more charming using for instance one Basilisk to clear Mutamins Garden and the ones on Durlags Tower super fast. Pushed Pick Pocket to grab the Ring of Free Action and also managed to kill Drizzt after the Gnolls took him down 13 HP investing 2x Oil of Speed and 106 Arrows to clean the house. Ivy pushed reputation and with her new Longsword +2 (saving Icing Death +3 for off-hand use and some Fire Resi) she is now ready to roll the main quest line...
Yeah, this looked like a lot of fun @histamiini... surviving in a hostile environment with only a handful of supllies. The rest of SoA will be quite boring now...
@Harpagornis You're right, some of the most enjoyable things have been planning tactics like for Irenicus Dungeon, or plotting the map for Watcher's Keep Maze level and Spirit Warrior, optimizing Sorcerer's spell book etc. Given that there's an eventual solution of course.
Stealth is probably now the number one ability for the Dungeon, because I don't know if any class can clear the dungeon without resting.
Abigail Kinslayer the Neutral Evil Dwarf Fighter/Cleric
Abigail finished rooting out her half-brother's followers in the tomb of Korlasz, using a combination of sanctuary and PfU - she blinded korlasz and her followers with cloud of pestilence then occupied her with her own undead - few shots from the Victor and she surrendered. Sensing that there was more to learn here, Abigail killed some optional spectral undead and some fire beetles with her minions.
Accidentally killing imoen after the assassination attempt, she stole her 80 oils of speed, confident that Liia and the Flaming Fist healers would resurrect her. She did some menial tasks in Baldur's Gate and picked up the spectacles of spectacle before setting off to destroy Caelar's Crusade.
She completed the optional quests at coast way crossing - using Brevin's Quarterstaff, her new second weapon, to boost her charisma with the friends spell for the menhir quest. She purchased a stone golem from a deranged transmuter, then set her undead on the seller for her stone ally summoning statuette. She traveled west and killed a vampire, then using the power of her undead she saved the dwarfs and over the course of twenty days, she besieged first the mines, then the Undead Tomb, grinding up to the "SoD XP cap", whatever that was.
The LoB + SoD Experience:
It was slow progress, with the initial weak zombies and ghouls replaced with steadily tougher and tougher undead, until she breached the final chamber and had to contend with two hulking Skeleton Warriors and three Bladed Undead, along with many other, still deadly beasts. That alone took almost five days of battle to hack them down, gradually - at last, all that was left was the Lich.
The last beast falls to Abigail's Might, and the Lich, with the help of the dwarfs was easily put down and his phylactery cast into the fires. No single foe can stand against Abigail's command of the Undead.
Meta-commentary:
oh. my. god.
that was a colossal pain - but yes, the fighter cleric can get a full clear in the repository of undeath without PfU scrolls. Most of it was just slow progress grindign through with the skellies + buffs but the final two rooms (the throne room and particularly the room before the lich) were hell - I think it took about 10 rests to take down the last room. Key was to take out the shadowed souls first, then the "lower" health trash like the bonebats, then the super high hitting stuff, then the high health lower damage stuff like the drowned in bloods with your 5 skeletons. - Buffed with everything I had - bless, chant, conviction, prayer, righteous wrath of the faithful, hanging around the choke points, and going into combat with Abigail herself with DuHM was enough to just about take down 1 Skeleton Warrior before her skeletons were bonedust - then sanctuary - back to camp rest, and repeat.
I wanted to see if it was doable, plus, it allowed very easy leveling to 9/9 by the earliest point possible, which gives me the extra thac0, 2nd pip in flails for Martyr's Morningstar on Bel, save decrease, and two level 5 spell slots for Rightious Wrath of the Faithfuls +1 attack to NE allies (thanks @Blackraven !) Only problem is it only lasts 1/round per level, causes fatigue afterwards, and is centered on the caster rather than at range so its a pain if Abi is in combat for more than 9 rounds - afaik skeleton minions are immune to fatigue so its a win-win there. Also it does not stack with oil of speed.
Also, IWDification of spells adds unfailing endurance as a level 4 spell so it is possible to purge fatigue - that might be useful in the elevator up to Bel.
Overall its a testament to the strength of the Fighter/Cleric - it may not have the stuff the F/M has but being able to make 5 skeletons into killing machines by cycling through castings of: Chant, Recitation, Bless, Curse, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, plus a single Prayer and Defensive Harmony and an initial Prot from Evil is something like +7 to hit and damage, -2AC (-4 with defensive harmony) luck bonus from chant and -4 or 5 to hit and damage for enemies.
it allowed very easy leveling to 9/9 by the earliest point possible, which gives me the extra thac0, 2nd pip in flails for Martyr's Morningstar on Bel
Have you got a mod which makes this effective on him? Normally it's only of use now to classes with arcane ability who can enchant it to +3.
Oh dear, or course I can't cast enchant weapon can I, and its only +2, not +3. Hopefully its possible to do with *checks wiki* sundermaul and blazing glory + potions and champions strength and durlag's. idk, my lack of knowledge of SoD is showing.
it allowed very easy leveling to 9/9 by the earliest point possible, which gives me the extra thac0, 2nd pip in flails for Martyr's Morningstar on Bel
Have you got a mod which makes this effective on him? Normally it's only of use now to classes with arcane ability who can enchant it to +3.
Oh dear, or course I can't cast enchant weapon can I, and its only +2, not +3. Hopefully its possible to do with *checks wiki* sundermaul and blazing glory + potions and champions strength and durlag's. idk, my lack of knowledge of SoD is showing.
I really hate to rain on your parade again, but I'm pretty sure that the chest with Sundermaul can't be opened even with strength 25. The good news though is that you do still have a choice of weapons (I quite often make use of the Root of the Problem club) and Champion's Strength does allow you to hit Belhifet where it hurts .
Stealth is probably now the number one ability for the Dungeon, because I don't know if any class can clear the dungeon without resting.
Shaman ...
Well I know nothing about Shaman's, as it's the only class with Druid's I've never tried.
@alice_ashpool Also do note if you plan to get Blazing Glory +3, you can't wait in the Dragonspear Castle attacks for potions, as the lady (whos name I've forgotten) will get killed eventually.
Surrendered the followers then went straight to Korlasz invisible, leveled to 7/8.
Made Korlasz surrender with 6x WoF charge, using invisibility every 2 charges and returning invisible in between until the enemies reset, always protected by stoneskin.
I like how you get all xp from all the undeads of the crypt that let themselves die after this. Leveled up to 8/8 after talking to Imoen.
Looted Korlasz chamber, did the torch puzzle for the hidden room that i looted last, returned the staff pieces, got shield of Egons, Sword of Ruin and helm of unwaving purpose, got the WoF for selling and left the crypt.
Preparation in Baldur's Gate:
Web cleared the palace easily. While Korlaz has a lot of protections, nothing stopped a single charge of WoP and i 1 vs 1 the doppleganger easily.
Got 62k gold from selling jewellery, loot from Korlaz tomb and the full plate of the Sarevok fight. Got max discount using potion of persuasiveness before buying some necessary items:
Arrow of detonations, potion of heroism, 2x of each protection scrolls, potion of regeneration just in case and arrows of dispelling. Still had 44k left.
Got the spectacles of spectacle, did the three old keg quests for some xp, got Lon's amulet and left for the chapter 8.
Chapter 8:
Leveled up to 8f/9i. Learned 10 scrolls, got the mirror of identification and did the barricade right away staying invisible.
Did Menhir quest, went to the cavern and saved Semahl using GM+WoPoly, all got 1 shotted and none saved. Looted the menhir ghost grave and went for Coldhearth.
Had 5 PfU instead of 0 this time... it was so much better! GM+WoPoly the bronze sentry, got all the scepters, got all the liquids, had to refresh PfU at Coldhearth, did the scepter vision for XP, knocked the door to the phylactery and evaded the remove magic, destroyed phylactery, WoP coldhearth and pwned him with Phantom Blade. This took about 2 hours less than last time.
Did Teleria quest for the stone ally, she got GM + WoPoly. As everything was going so well, did the halfling treasure quest and WoPoly the vampire in 1 shot. WoF scorcher the dire wolf who all got blinded by Isabella, then finished the quest and kept the mirror. It was well worth it for the xp. Waylaid on the way back, troll vs hobgoblins. Got firefly +2 and a Laeral Tear necklace.
Advanced to troll wood.
Morentherene
As i needed a bit of XP and the sooner the better, i dragger the northern trolls to the flaming fist camp and i dealt the final blows with acid arrows then got enchanted weapon with invisibility and a WoMS distraction.
Went to forest of wyrm and got waylaid. Used greenstone amulet to be safe from Myconids and looted the cave, especially for the lower resistance scroll. A small WoMS diversion worked very well near the entrance.
Did a quick loot run inside the spider cave and managed to snatch Severance and the Goblin hide armor. It was way too risky so i left it alone after that. Went to buy throwing daggers and got the green dragon waylaid on the way back and decided to help it.
Morentherene daggered after 75 throwing daggers... that RNG.
Zialtar and Neothelid
Zialtar squirreled + acid arrow for the kill, not sure what my odds here were for a 1 shot but i reloaded a few times to test it and it seemed to work about 50% of the time. Wanted to deal with the 2 mages, so i used WoMS and closed the door, waited their buffs and summons out then GM closed the door, then WoPoly still closing the door between casts. Easy kills.
For Neothelid, baited it with WoMS and waited invisible, prebuffed with protection from poison just in case. Rebaited it with a second WoMS, then spammed WoPoly. Took 5 casts but it worked. Didn't manage to GM first due to MR.
Akanna got baited a bit by running around and turning invisible, then GM + charm and she got killed by her aerial servants.
Used the door trick again against the mindflayer party to separate them and GM + WoPoly them all. Darkskelin was resisting all the time, so i used WoMS and killed him with arrows. Jhans seemed immune to WoP and poly, so that's also how i killed him.
The shadow aspect of eternal torment :
Found the best possible way to kill the shadow aspect without true sight, so i did, but reloaded after as it costed too much. I'm pretty sure that i could have succeded later on during the crusader attack still, but i didn't want to take any chance. Tactic is pretty simple: PFU then summon WoMS, Aspect will kill them all, then shoot detonating arrow at the mislead until dead. The fireball AOE will also deal the normal bow and arrow damage (6-11 for me) each shot for a pretty quick kill, which would be incredibly fast on an archer.
I can reduce the number of detonators needed, which is around 28, by wasting WoF scorcher charges but it's very slow at 1-2 fire damage per cast. This fight is a reason why i dislike some aspect of SoD... Make an unhittable enemy immune to everything but 1 thing with totally unfair advantages, narrowing possibilities. Very disappointed that The Victor and Glitterdust doesn't work at all, this would have felt rewarding. The mislead is a scripted one that is constantly up, not like an ordinary spell so only true sight can do anything against it.
After a good night of sleep, i decided that nothing would stand undefeated by Sirus. Gold wasn't a problem at all, so i wasted the rest of my Sarevok/Korlasz WoF and the one that i had fully charged to damage it as much as possible, also casted as many spells as i could inside the room for a bit of extra damage (Fb, Ice storm, cone of cold and scorcher).
Tried to get as much extra damage using mustard jelly form and 2x fireshields as i was immune to piercing damage, but an instant kill that i can't explain occurs after a few hits for my 2 first deaths of SoD (seriously though... how unfair and unbalanced this fight is).
First try PfU ran out and i got 1 shotted, death 3 of SoD for 20 total. After depleting the rest of my Sarevok WoF (7 FB + 49 scorcher), i would switch to detonators. Used a GM scroll so he would save less often for a bit more damage and equipped Lon's amulet after the spell casts. Managed to lower the arrow cost to only 12 detonators, so i accepted that win, still had a full 50/50 WoF and 77 detonators for the camp fight at the moment.
Surrendering the fort.
Finished the Irregular quest by finding the jug of ale, GM+squirreled Junia and all her undead then surrendered Bridgefort after buying the potions of heroism, got 29 so far.
WoMS + 2x stone ally + 16 charges from the Victor to distrupt the mage and kill him worked very well at the bridge. Had to drag a few crusaders to the camp but i had no issue at all during this segment.
Final prep at the camp:
15k xp from level cap. At the camp we used a proportionnal use of force against a sick refugee who turned agressive due to the sickness, than proceeded to get Martyr's Morningstar. Healed the sick and trained the recruit for more xp, then bought cloverleaf and ring of purity after using spectacles. Also bought 5 more det arrows, so i'm now at 84 which is very safe for the attack. Exposed Maiden Col and reached max level 9/10 for single weapon style against Belhifet.
Got the Myconic Bloom Sac (didn't use it in the end). Myconids can be WoPoly, but won't polymorph into a squirrel while still being at 10 hp.
Got to the passage invisible, got wand of water elemental and went to get the ankheg amulet by charming Ferrusk. Cured the slime sickness for a Caelar Seal and went to deal with the lich Zhadroth (secret reveal+WoP) for the sequencer cloak. You can use Secret Reveal before activating the lich, making it very easy. WoPoly the endless watcher for fun after.
Did a quick trip to Dragonspear for the ring of the crusade, then finished the river after buying potion of heroism (10 for 39) still have 50k gold.
Placed the Barrel of Bwoosh, grabbed 3 more dets from the top chest rushed to the chest to spell immunity and left for the crusader attack, very simple with potion of magic protection (maze trap) and oil of speed.
Not enough tools to keep a sick, injured aggressive man under control
Crusader Attack:
SoD had been pretty simple so far as almost everything is avoidable and the key fights are pretty simple until then, let's see how well the crusader attack goes...
2x protection from magic and stoneskin before the fight and web+web+GM sequencer for the waves.
1 death (21) vs trolls as i tried to do web from casts first, 2nd try worked very well with the sequencer, no damage recieved 11 dets.
Finding an oil of speed remembered me to take one as i completely forgot...
Resequenced another web+web+malison before the second round (ended up doing at all waves, resting using the priest), it went just as well with the same tactic, 14 dets.
Had to use goblet once for the crusaders, 14 dets and had to wait sanctuary for a WoMS + WoP.
At 39 potion of heroism from loot and buying, i really though that i had more than enough for Belhifet so i didn't farm the infinite wave, still had 46 dets.
For infinite wave, first try was direct from the bottom as it was going so well and i got killed (death 22)
2nd try, rushed invisible the top of the camp, waited for the crusaders to pass then used sequencer, finished everybody with 29 dets, used 2 goblets. They stood nicely jammed between the barricades.
Very fun and overall easy camp attack. I'm still surprised how well detonators+web clear the waves on LoB.
Avernus and Belhifet:
WoMS + The victor nicely killed Ashatiel, which really couldn't do much.
Did a last scribing session for 12 scrolls, recharged everything grabbed Daeros full plate and went for Avernus. Still had 52k left and nothing to spend it on.
Sprinted right for Thrix and talked to him twice to open the gates, exited the area then went straight inside and began buffing:
2x each elemental protection scroll, violet potion, agility+fortitude+mind focussing, 3 absorption, Clarity, Speed, 2x invulnerability and Drank all heroism letting 1 monster in the lift.
Used regen potions to heal on the lift, got 596 HP!! Even more than my last run.
Immunity Abjuration, enchanted weapon, mirror image+imp. Invis+stoneskin sequencer and went for the fight, starting with a strength+strength sequencer on Bel.
Belhifet got to injured in barely 10 seconds due to lucky crits, then i got a bit unlucky and require 10 goblet total to finish him. Then 2 more goblet for Caelar, who got exploded.
BGSOD completed with 5 deaths total thanks to the shadow aspect, 22 total.
BGSOD completed with 5 deaths total thanks to the shadow aspect, 22 total. Managed again to deal with all the challenging fights, now i have to install SCS for BG2, can't wait to see what awaits me!
Very fun so far, i have less experience with BG2 so I'll see how well it goes. Doing SCS on insane settings with Ascension for the first time on LoB difficulty will probably keep me occupied for a while. I'll probably have to stop the death counter for that part. I'm still going to try my best!
For the entirety of BG1EE, i must say that nothing can stand in the path of the mighty Fighter/Illusionist! Well actually they can, but you have all the tools to not let them. Not necessarily the best but you have something for everything.
Shadow aspect easy mode over here with fighter-cleric.
Buff with PfU, storm giant, heroism, speed and power. Then (with 2 level 5 slots with wis 21) you have 2 turns of true sight (level 5 spell for clerics, sorry mages) to hack it down. The only issue is that as soon as true sight ticks the first time it seems to summon its allies, so you also have to take down the shadowed souls in those 2 turns. I had a squad of skeletons too but they got merked quite quickly by backstabs between mislead casts and true sight ticking.
With thac0 of -3/0 it was enough just to hammer away with Ashideena and Kneecapper with about 20 seconds to spare of true sight.
You could even increase true sight casts to 3 with wis 22, wielding the glimmer of hope mace.
The cleric's revenge for everyone else being able to throw daggers at Morentherene
Executive Summary: HLAs and the mace of disruption prove too much for Athkatla's community of liches.
The imp was in a quizzical mood as they left the mindflayers' lair. "According to my scrying," she began, "you have two encounters that are commonly regarded as the hardest in the game: Kangaxx and the Twisted Rune. Which one do you think will be tougher?"
"I consider the SCS Eastern Tunnels to be the hardest part of BG2," Angelo replied. "Compared to that, I'm sure that they will be fine."
A New Day(star) Has Come
Before engaging with that problem, however, there was another that Angelo wanted to sort out while his Protection from Undead scroll was still active. Dashing to the city gates, he ignored Hanj bullying a nearby merchant and entered the Crooked Crane. The nobleman Rilmi approached to spin some inconsequential yarn about Aulava and Tiiro breaking up, but clammed up as soon as Angelo pressed for juicy gossip. Like Hanj before him, this seemed like an outtake that got left on the cutting room floor, what with there being no real reward for pursuing either encounter, so Angelo didn't.
Instead, he searched the back wall for traps, uncovering a secret door that was promptly unlocked, then opened. Angelo entered to find a lich... which, as a result of his ongoing protection from undead, didn't react and remained neutral. Pickpocketing a ring of invisibility, a rod of smiting and a variety of wands, Angelo then unlocked the chest and took Daystar +2 without retaliation. However, despite being oblivious to his presence, the lich had still erected a wall of force blocking the exit. "This must be an SCS trick to stop players from grabbing the blade and fleeing," Angelo grumbled, figuring that killing the lich would grant him passage.
He first thought to use Daystar's special ability to kill it, but Sunray only affected hostile undead, so that was out. Still, the lich's neutrality allowed Angelo to set a time trap right and cast Improved Haste to set his ApR to 8 (6 with his mace of disruption) - as the room was off the Cowled Wizards' radar, they didn't intervene. Although Angelo's first attempt to smack the lich missed, the time trap activated before its defences could shoot up and its demon summoning sequencer could fire. This allowed Angelo several leisurely attempts at disrupting it, one of which was bound to succeed.
I vaguely remember this lich being like Deirex in vanilla BG2 and unable to see through Invisibility. Regardless, it will now see through stealth attempts as normal and only Protection from Undead will prevent its initial triggering.
After this little jaunt, Angelo returned to Waukeen's Promenade and asked to see the Chapter 6-exclusive 'special wares' for 50 GP. Most of these goods were not worth the price of admission, but there were some choicy spell scrolls (Time Stop and Shapechange in particular) and he might have considered War Blade +4 for its 1d12 damage die had he been unable to wield Carsomyr. Angelo's main draw, however, was the Helm of Brilliance - its 40% fire resistance was useful and its Sunray ability mimicked Daystar's and would be a handy insurance policy in the trials to come.
Entering a Golden Age
After visiting Cromwell to forge Crom Faeyr, Angelo grew curious about the last house on the left of his thieves' guild. That it was guarded by both lock and level drain trap only furthered Angelo's inquisitiveness, so after dealing with these, he poked his head inside to find 3 angry minotaurs. As this still counted as Cowled Wizard jurisdiction, Angelo used his new ring of invisibility to vanish from sight and explore further. The wicker basket held only minor treasures (a potion of regeneration), so disappearing with the help of another ring of invisibility, Angelo ducked downstairs.
The basement was not what he'd expected. Searching the central tomb released a golden skull who promised to rain death upon him when Angelo refused to help. Although this was not a recommended strategy for recruiting assistance, Angelo was feeling in a forgiving mood and subsequently agreed to find the golden arm, leg and torso. Since releasing the skull hadn't broken his illusion, he left the crypt in search of the missing body parts without further ado, only stopping to cast Wraithform (the basement being beyond the reach of the Cowled Wizards' reach). Immunised to the minotaurs' normal weapons, Angelo sharpened his silver sword on their necks... although its edge seemed pretty keen already.
The arm and leg were easy enough to find. Angelo had already clocked the strange sarcophagus next to Sassar within the Temple District sewers at the time, but had consciously decided to wait until later before opening it. Despite his trepidation, unease still accompanied the thought of opening the coffin, so Angelo set 7 spike traps around the central T. Sure enough, when he opened it, a shade lich appeared... but no sooner had it finished its expository speech than it collapsed dead.
As for the other crypt, Angelo recalled seeing a trapped door while confronting Am-Si, the man in red responsible for burying Tirdir. Disarming said petrification trap, Angelo looted the containers for identical loot as Kangaxx's cupboards before descending to find a replica tomb. Hoping that this would run in the same fashion as the previous encounter, Angelo duly set his septet of spike traps, unleashed the elemental lich... and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of surprises!
"Kangaxx promised to rain death upon us once he'd regained his shell," the familiar reminded Angelo as he stuffed the torso into his pack. "Let's hope that dealing with him will be as straightforward!"
"I Have But the Body of a Weak and Feeble Lich..."
The skull seemed mightily impressed when Angelo returned with both its appendages and its sternum, but grew tetchy when Angelo's conversation turned towards payment. "Surely you can spare some gold from those there limbs?"
The question was rhetorical and Angelo was unsurprised to see Kangaxx's reassembled skeleton shake its head in refusal. "I forgot to give you the last component," he added, "here's a golden shower to bathe you in the glory you deserve!"
"You mocketh me," Kangaxx spat, "you will not be so insolent when I violate your body and tear you limb from... ARGH!!!"
The lich's gloating was interrupted by seven spike traps unloading into its face. And yet it was Angelo's expression that was the sourer when Kangaxx laughed, casting off its body to reveal its true form.
"Amazing what that golden shower does for the skin," Felicity quipped, "it truly does take years off."
Angelo's assessment was blunter. "Kangaxx is taking the p..."
"...But I Have the Heart and Stomach of a Demilich!"
A piercing howl erupted from the demilich, silencing Angelo's protestations as a sequencer summoned an efreeti pair. This demilich's howl acted as a periodic Wail of the Banshee and he'd made his saving throw, Angelo nevertheless took the hint and ran away towards the exit. However, he stopped short of climbing the stairs, as he noticed that Kangaxx was just out of his sight in this position... and in that instant, Angelo's strategy fell into place.
Casting Invisibility, he stepped back into Kangaxx's view for an instant, long enough for the demilich to begin casting a spell. Then he ducked back into his corner, his illusion preventing the efreeti from following (although he could have waited until they'd expired before attempting this if required). Once they had expired, Angelo repeated the same trick, relying on Kangaxx's reluctance to move to continue the loop.
There was little the demilich could do to stop this trickery. Time Stop and Improved Alacrity were useless as there was no visible target to pelt with spells. As a conjurer, Kangaxx had an impressive array of demonic summoning spells, but they all appeared beside their summoner and would not give chase unless they'd initially caught sight of their target... something Angelo had no intention of giving them. Out of boredom, they began attacking each other, allowing Angelo to watch the running commentary on his UI with amusement.
One potential complication arose when Kangaxx cast Teleport Field followed by a demonic summons, for if the demon was inadvertently teleported into Angelo's sight, then it would attack. In this instance, Angelo elected to hop up the stairs and wait until the Teleport Field had safely expired before descending again. However, he had not anticipated that Kangaxx would follow, appearing right on top of him and preventing him from either moving or targeting the demilich.
This was a desperate situation. Unable to cast any clerical spells to repulse undead, Angelo also could not Smite himself to remove Kangaxx, casting his own Teleport Field would not dislodge the sticky demilich and even if Angelo had set an exploding trap, the demilich would not be knocked off its feet. But there was one chance. Rummaging in his bag of holding, Angelo retrieved the horn of blasting, whose knockback effect had no save or MR to resist it.
Freed from the lich's baleful influence, Angelo fled to the other side of the room and set a time trap while out of sight. He knew he could not leave this area, else the demilich appear on him again, so he drew Daystar and invoked its Sunray ability. Even in LoB mode, Kangaxx only had 236 HP, so direct offence might work.
So much for that. Killing it this way would require considerably more divine power than Angelo had available. Instead, he drew it back into the time trap, where he hoped to smash it with the mace of disruption. Unfortunately, he'd not taken its Protection from Magical Weapons into account and his attacks bounced off harmlessly.
"Enough!" Angelo snapped. This had gone on long enough. Before Kangaxx has time to summon a fallen planetar or yet more demons, he whipped out his trump card - Smite! Kangaxx was not immune to stunning and as long as its Protection from Magic Weapons wasn't active, this gave Angelo enough time to lay the smackdown.
Despite its myconid appearance, the summoned air elemental was just as vulnerable to the staff of air as its regular counterparts. Slipping the ring of Gaxx onto his finger - noting that it could be worn alongside other protective items - Angelo left the demilich to rot in its unmarked grave.
Full disclosure: my SCS settings do not allow Imprisonment (or, in the case of demiliches, Trap the Soul) to be cast on protagonists, effectively making solo players immune to it. This is because, with high level spellcasters being much more common, I don't think it's fair for them to have an attack that some classes have extremely limited methods of blocking. Of course, Angelo could have just used Spell Immunity: Abjuration, so this isn't particularly relevant.
"That battle was suitably epic for a big bad end boss!" Felicity exclaimed. "Let's see how the Twisted Rune plays out!"
Full disclosure: my SCS settings do not allow Imprisonment (or, in the case of demiliches, Trap the Soul) to be cast on protagonists, effectively making solo players immune to it. This is because, with high level spellcasters being much more common, I don't think it's fair for them to have an attack that some classes have extremely limited methods of blocking. Of course, Angelo could have just used Spell Immunity: Abjuration, so this isn't particularly relevant.
Also, spellcasting demiliches don't use Trap the Soul at all. Well, Kangaxx can use it on random bystanders if you let him reach the surface, but he won't ever use it on party members - it's just not there in the modified AI. Imprisonment is still a possibility, but only the standard mage version that he has to spend spell slots on.
Comments
Yes, Bala's axe casts priest dispel magic using the wielder's priest caster level. For a ranger at the BG1 cap, that's level 1. It's virtually useless.
Now, if you can hit him with a dispelling arrow, that's a guaranteed dispel with no level check at all.
If you're patient enough, another way of taking out Sarevok with an avenger (which is WS friendly) is to use the salamander's fire shield. In his final form, Sarevok has 40% fire resistance. hitting a user with fireshield: red deals 1d8 + 2 damage, or 6.5 on average, so Sarevok takes roughly 3.9 damage on average every time he hits you. He has 830 HP, so he'd have to hit you 213 (212.82... rounded up) times on average to kill himself this way... although there might well be some intermediate rounding errors going on.
How much punishment do you have to survive for this? Sarevok normally hits for 16-25 damage and assuming you've enabled double damage (you're an LoB solo player... why wouldn't you?!), that's 32 - 50, or 41 average, damage per hit. If he has to hit you 213 times, that's 8,733 HP on average that you have to heal via healing potions and the like. Is this possible? Let's take a look at the health potions that are available from stores in the game:
- Temple in Candlekeep Prologue:
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Elixir of Health x 4
- Temple in Friendly Arm Inn
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Elixir of Health x 20
- Potion of Extra Healing x 4
- Temple in Beregost
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Elixir of Health x 4
- Potion of Extra Healing x 5
- High Hedge
- Potion of Healing x 3
- Elixit of Health x 3
- Temple in Nashkel
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Elixir of Health x 20
- Sorcerous Sundries
- Potion of Healing x 3
- Elixir of Health x 3
- Temple of Helm in central Baldur's Gate
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Elixir of Health x 15
- Lady's Hall in Western Baldur's Gate
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Elixir of Health x 20
- Potion of Extra Healing x 5
- Black Lily (Thieves' Guild)
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Generic Potions Store in South West Baldur's Gate
- Potion of Healing x 15
- Elixir of Health x 4
- Candlekeep in Chapter 6
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Elixir of Health x 4
- Erdane in Durlag's Tower
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Ulgoth's Beard
- Potion of Healing x 35
- Temple in Gullykin
- Potion of Healing x 20
- Elixir of Health x 20
Unfortunately, wizards slayers can't use potions of regeneration, but there are 3 of them in High Hedge and Sorcerous Sundries, plus an extra 4 in the generic potion store (they would heal 2 HP/round for 3 turns, so 60 HP in total). You might have thought, if you were uber-keen, that you could have used the Constitution tome and Buckey's Buckler to get 20 Constitution and regenerate torturously slowly... but, alas, the avenger's -2 Constitution penalty puts paid to that.This gives a grand total of:
- Potion of Healing x 201
- Elixir of Health x 114
- Potion of Extra Healing x 14
Since each potion of healing heals 9 HP, each elixir of health heals 10 HP and each potion of extra healing heals 27 HP, this gives:(201 x 9) + (114 x 10) + (14 x 27) = 1,809 + 1,140 + 378 = 3,327 HP.
To make matters worse, you definitely won't be able to buy all of the healing available in the prologue. Still, you'll have Durlag's Goblet, your own cure spells and any health potions you find on your travels to make up the difference. To get the most out of Durlag's goblet, use healing potions to get just above 50 HP and then use the goblet after Sarevok's smacked you.
This looks horrendous - 3,327 HP is barely 38% of the 8,733 HP required - so there'll still be some inevitable gap-closing to be done. A level 10 avenger with 20 Wisdom (the chest with the third tome in Candlekeep is impossible for a WS avenger to bash open) will have 7 level 1 spells and 6 level 4 spells - Static Charge can do decent damage even with a guaranteed save and 40% electrical resistance, and Chromatic Orb's damage adds up. Toss in extra damage from Wudei's summons (particularly that Aerial Servant, who punches like a boss!) and some lucky bullet shots and you're well on the way.
With the Demon Knight's dagger in her pack, Abigail contemplated returning it, but decided to pay a return visit to Baldur's Gate first. She went via some wilderness areas to try out a new power granted she reasoned, by one of the less savory members of the Morndinsamman, perhaps one of the duergar patrons. She only knew her gray kin from books, but there was something about Laduguer and Deep Duerra that resonated with her more than many of the others.
Channeling tainted-divine energy she was able to crate a cloud of pestilent energy that sickened anyone living caught inside, clouding their eyes and weakening them. Here undead minions were conveniently immune, as was she. Everywhere she trod, plague followed. Entering Baldur's Gate with an air of pestilence and undeath surrounding her, she tracked down a final set of assassins in the undercellar. They were as nothing before her rotten miasma and undead servants. In moments of introspection she wondered how a young dwarf from candlekeep ended up mistress of plague and the risen dead - and daughter of the god of murder to boot.
Seeking to wrap up some last loose ends, before what she felt was to be a final show-down with her supposed half-brother she returned to ulgoth's beard. As she suspected, there was more to the story than she was initially told, the soultaker dagger was stolen from her by cultists seeking to raise a Tanar'ri. She tracked the cultists to a nearby building where, with some rather sneaky upstairs-downstairs action she first killed some of the cultists downstairs, spawned the demon, lured him upstairs, returned downstairs to kill Tracea, went back upstairs and lured the upstairs cultist crew downstairs into her skeleton-plague trap, then after a rather strange mid-fight nap in the local inn, she and her skeletons brought some plague-y wrath on the demon onthe upstairs floor, who, oddly, teleported around the upstairs room a fair bit, until he was struck blind that is. Due to his big size, Abigail could hammer away at will on his blinded material form while he concentrated on the closer skeletons. In the end it was rather anti-climatctic she thought. The Demon Knight was a more dangerous enemy.
Claiming her reward, the "kneekapper" hammer, perfect for killing "giant humanoids," she vowed to Moradin that she would finally end it between her and Sarevok.
Deaths: 7 (with a bunch of messing around too)
SCS/LoB, end of BG1 with all challenging fights dealt with.
Aec'Latec
Waited the cult enforcer buffs out, then WoMS + GM + WoP/Nymph cloak/WoPoly for the kills. Durlag's goblet makes mistakes much less risky. Web + Spider also worked pretty well but wasn't as good as GM + WoPoly.
Pretty funny to see squirrels drinking potions hoping to survive and backstabbing you from invisibility. To my disapointment, it seems that SCS force the guards to drink their potion of heroism, which means that i didn't get any...
Dragged the cultist inside the house outside for the same WoPoly/WoP treatment, used 3 goblet charge in total.
Charmed Delsvirftanyon and dragged him to Aec'Lactec lair to kill Tracea Carol without her spawning Aec'Latec, then WoF Scorcher + Boots of speed the cult guards and finished them with WoF fireball once gathered together.
Aec'Latec without SCS usually ignore your summons and focus on you at all time (at least it did for me), however this doesn't happen with SCS, making the encounted much easier IMO, i also never got the ranged vampiric touch. GM on the first try, then WoP him while he attacked my held summons which worked after only 2 tries. With oil of speed + DHUM, he barely lasted 10 seconds.
Poor Delsvirftanyon had a noble death, much nobler than his life as a trader. Didn't lose a single HP thanks to stoneskin.
Khark
Recharged my first WoF before heading to Balduran Isle. Still had 76k gold and Durlag's Tower to completely loot if needed.
Karoug
Once on the island, wolfwere ambush got turned into squirelwere, gave back the doll then proceeded to Karoug.
For Karoug, i died the first time failing to charm the mage (death 13). Second try, i cleared the deck just below to attempt to split the wolfwere.
Dragged the mage downstairs while occupying the wolfwere with WoMS. He just stood there not doing anything... He transformed and i managed to WoP to finish him.
Rested outside and tried luring more Wolfwere to that deck, which worked for all of them except a single wolfwere. Managed to change Karoug (Greater Wolfwere) into a squirrel, as he was the only one who got affected by GM. Killed the two other wolfwere with WoP, cleared the top deck as my +2 weapons were not affecting him then destroyed him with a crit using the sword of Balduran.
Even as a squirrel his regen was ridiculous. I think that some classes won't be able to kill him at all due to that.
Finished the missing son quest and left the island after turning the loup garou into a squirrel.
Against Mendas and Baresh, dragged Mendas outside right away then WoMS + GM + WoPoly. Did the same with Baresh inside. Went to recharge WoPoly after that as i was running very low.
Did a bit of shopping. Got protection scrolls, potions, detonating arrows, dispelling arrows and sold everything i could. I will do a final recharge of everything and a last scroll scribing session after having dealt with the undercity gang and Tamoko.
Sarevok
WoP Tamoko then had to WoPoly her as she became immune to damage for a reason, then recharged everything before the final fight and went to get a second evermemory from Sunin (squirrel) for more SoD gold.
Sarevok failed attempt and testing:
I know that i can move charmed creature through the sewers, so i attempted it. The basilisk would stay stuck in doors inside the thieves guild but would still follow me if ordered to attack me before changing zone.
Basilisk would then get stuck on the maze creatures so i polymorphed it and recharmed. Maze was slow but wasn't that bad at all. Managed to lure him to the throne, however he would only use his melee attack, making him useless... not only that but his claws seem to have changed to squirrel damage. A good hour lost there. Reloaded and figured out that i had to play ''fair'' again...
Tried 2 time with WoMS and got totally destroyed (2 deaths for 15)... after this tried another time with wand of fireball (1st time got discovered and died right away, 1 death for 16) and figured out that detect illusion would help me a lot as i didn't know the enemy placement and what was going on, so i did a little test run with CTRL+T to advance the time and saw that i needed to wait 2 hours in game to "dispel" Diarmid's PfM and that they wouldn't follow when hit by fireball. Managed to kill all of them with 40 WoF fireball and managed to easily WoP Sarevok after. I had to use invisibility potions to lure the skeletons away.
Now that i had it right, i did it the legit way. Wanted to try to abuse traps but they got removed with SCS!
Sarevok successful attempt:
2nd time worked very well. Shot an arrow at Diarmid so they would all discover me and drank an invisibility potion on the lower left side of the arena to bunch them all up together. Had to wait 5 minutes for the buffs to end, especially Diarmid PFM (60 fps yeah! 2x faster) Almost got discovered by oracle but managed to not get seen and went back invisible. Was fine for the whole fight after this.
5 minutes later once all the buffs ended, shot WoF offscreen in the FoW making sure to hit all 4 of the gank squad. Angelo was the first one to fall after 23 fb, Semaj 1 fb after (24) , Diarmid 8 more (32) and at last Tazok 3 more (35)
Charmed a bat to lure the skeleton warriors away to the top right corner to have Sarevok alone. 1 GM and 3 WoP later, Sarevok was paralysed and helpless. He got to near death and regained movement but 2 WoP later he was paralysed again, and the battle was won! Took the time to loot the full plate armor before the finish.
Not sure if SCS changed that the loot appear in SoD inside Korlaz tomb, but that's pretty cool.
Final inventory before SoD
Bonus Drizzt
17 Total deaths
So that's it for BG1 for my first SCS run ever, which wasn't so bad except for the throne ambush and undestanding the final fight... and those backstabs. Next time, i'm dragging the Basilisk to the palace ambush instead. SOD will be much less detailed than BG1 as i really liked to explore everything on this run and rediscover the game at the same time. For SoD i'll just aim at killing Coldhearth then rush to Belhifet. Might take a small break before doing it. This was incredibly fun and Fighter/Illusionist was an extremely efficient class for any situations that i faced so far.
I've had a few deaths recently while away from the game, so I thought I'd try a character where there's less incentive to leave the game chugging unattended and picked up this one I rolled some time ago. A wizard slayer is not a likely candidate to get very far, but that's not really one of my major criteria ...
Summary progress was looking pretty good - until it wasn't:
- Candlekeep
- stole to reduce reputation and went to get LMD at Nashkel
- temple donations to rep 14. Oublek 15, Brage 16 (L2 - +14 HPs), Mr Colquetle 17, Firebead 18, Drienne 19, Joia 20
- returned Tenya's bowl (level 3 - +12 HPs)
- bought +3 staff, full plate
- followed Korax round the basilisks, getting lucky with not meeting any wandering monsters and successfully killing all the basilisks and Mutamin (level 4 - +11 HPs, level 5 - +14 HPs, level 6 - +11 HPs)
- went to kill the gnolls at High Hedge, but was hit by natural lightning during that and ran off the map before there were any further strikes. That prompted me to go to FAI and buy Buckley's Buckler (a guard killing Tarnesh)
- killed the gnolls, then did the golems at High Hedge. Golems have a good weapon speed, so that requires waiting until they commence an attack, withdrawing a step before they can actually attack and then quickly stepping back in to get a staff attack in before the golems can start a second attack for the round. That's still a ticklish process, but Lorn got it done
- more staff work to help out Zhurlong and Mirianne
- bought a +1 large shield just before acquiring a medium version by helping Bjornin.
- back in the Cloud Peaks, found Rufie and staffed Vax before trying out the difficult Zal. In normal play he's simple, but in LoB his darts hurt and he can hit with those even in melee range. That meant hovering at the edge of his range trying to get him to switch regularly from darts to spear to maximise the number of attacks Lorn could get in without response. Lorn had to run away a couple of times, but 3rd time proved just lucky enough
- a ghast tried an ambush as Lorn travelled to the next area. Just as a change from staff work, he shot the ghast down with his sling. He's not proficient with that, but given he needed a 19 to hit with specialized darts, the sling was clearly the better option. Note that took several hours of game time, so he was running round in the south of the ambush area to keep out of sight of any new arrivals
- it was back to staff work in the next area to deal with enemies, including Caldo & Krum
- on to the gnoll stronghold to try and get the charisma tome. I didn't fancy working through the hordes of xvarts there, so tried to pull them away from the cave. I got a bit caught out though as I didn't realise that one of the xvarts had initially remained inside. That slowed Lorn down when he re-entered and he was a bit lucky to find a way back out through the arriving crowd.
- I had a few goes with staff at the polar bear scaring the merchant to the north, but it was just too quick on the draw and it took another lengthy slinging session to bring it down.
- Greywolf pulled an oil of speed out of his pack, but Lorn was able to make it to the edge of the map. At normal speed though, Lorn was able to use his staff on Greywolf and successfully did that at the 3rd attempt
- there were no ambushes while taking Samuel back to the FAI
- freed Tamah from her stony prison
- staffed some spiders. Picked up pantaloons while completing Landrin's quest
- with nothing really left to purchase for now, went to Firewine Bridge and beat up Bentan for his PfM scroll ... and as I wrote that Tyr's curse triggered and Lorn slumped to the floor.
In my installation Wudei does no longer has Aerial Servant memorized... what a pity!
But we could add a very important ingredient for the WS challenge: Bombardier Beetles! Even though one stun will not be enough to take Sarevok down it will hurt him quite a lot.
Combining the Fire Shield with summon punching should be good enough for the kill - worked at least in my poverty runs as long as Dispel Magic was able to get rid of his Haste!
Still a lot of runs on the run - keep going! ;o)
Returning to Baldur's Gate, Abigail discovered that her so called brother Sarevok was to be invested as a Grand Duke that very night. Very irritated she barged into the investment, ready to smash him with her hammer. Unfortunately, a doppleganger ambush seemed to be in her way. She sent her skeleton minions to attack the doppleganger mage and cast her cloud of pestilence over the mage and shaman, leaving her skeletons to occupy them, while concentrating on the assassin and the others attacking the grand dukes. The whole group were gradually taken down with some potion buffs and three gulps of blood while the skeletons massed attacks were enough to get though the mages defenses rather quickly. She snagged some loot from Grand Duke Belt's corpse while no one was watching and chased Sarevok down into the undercity.
Her skeletons made short work of Tamoko - and inside the Temple of Bhaal, Abigail declared that she was the true inheritor of Bhaal's legacy, not Sarevok, which kind of annoyed him. Luring them into the corner she used exactly 45 of her remaining 100 fireballs to kill his party, while 5 skeletons and her own hammers destroyed 3 of the 4 skeleton warriors, with the use of hasted-regeneration potions and some strength buffs. Aggroing Sarevok she got ready to fill him with beams from the ring of energy, only then realizing it only had its original 19 charges which would not be enough. Never one to let adversity get in the way, she instead kited him around for 82 shots from her wand of the heavens, drinking 2 additional potions of speed during the >2 hour battle against her brother.
When he was dead, she grabbed what she could carry, giving Sarevok's corpse a final kick, she wandered back to the surface to enjoy the spoils of her victory, and offer some prayers to the Morndinsamman.
CATACLYSM challenges completed by Abigail:
Bhaal - Kahrk, Demon Knight, Aec´Letec
Ao - weapons only, if interpreted as able to sell additional weapons found as loot if never used
Cyric
(Gond)
Helm
Sune
Tyr
Waukeen
Deaths: 10 (1 during dukes plus 2 other reloads as things went sour while I tested some stuff, for 3 total)
If you kill Imoen with an AoE like OGL after the assassins poison her and knock her unconscious, before corwin appears, she will drop a stack of 80 (80!) oils of speed + some minor loot. These can be picked up, and so long as you don't try and split them will stay as 1 megastack in your inventory, giving you 80 hours of sonic-style action which should be more than enough for SoD. Or else 14,000 Gold if sold at SS at 10cha/20rep - more with higher cha obviously.
Killing her does not seem to break anything, except your heart; and the game assumes she is alive.
Imoen's stack of 80 + other loot shortly after fireballing her:
If you want full value, sell to a store that doesn't already have some of the item in stock - i.e. not Sorcerous Sundries. Or buy out their stock first before selling the whole stack.
(I was going to check how many items it would take to depreciate that 250 value to 175, but apparently BGEE decided to stop having depreciation work at all when I went to test it. Oops.)
I'msure I've got better prices for items whit higher rep... but it seems I have been living in make believe land again!
We made it to Irenicus Dungeon with 599640xp and made a level immediately shutting the Lightning machine. So there actually is a benefit of killing more monsters than necessary in SoD, if all the xp still moves to SoA?
The start of SoA is now a lot harder with Selune banning sleeping in uncleared dungeons. Nevertheless we have done this before, so we knew the tactic. Killed Lightning Mephit with PfE and Duhm, used Cure Light Wounds, Lay on Hands after and the three Health potions. Refused to answer Aatagah. We used our single Sanctuary to sneak past the first Duegar party and picked up the Activation Stone and 2 Extra's, before backing to Sewage Golem room. Which we looted for three Extra's and one Healing potion, Bala's Axe, and double Scimitars for 3apr. We then ran past the Duegars to the Smoke Mephit, healing ourselves in the process. Ran past Smoke Mephit and through the door that Golem had just opened for Otyugh room. Picked up the Oil of Speed from the chest and drank it immediatelly. Then looted the rest of the chests for Health potions, and lured the three Duergars away from blocking the corridor. Kited awhile the horde of following enemies, and then ran through and picked the Portal key. Cavaliers poison immunity comes handy in here, as Poison is bad hasted and slows you down. Then ran back and picked up Helm of Balduran and escaped the level. We healed ourselves, and lured the Mephits away from the portal room shutting the door behind. Hacked the portals, picked up Ring +1 and escaped the place with winds of speed. It's kind funny how the place is almost impossible now, but there's just enough resources with Health potions and single Oil of Speed to make it happen. Cavalier has a crucial single Sanctuary, poison immunity, and PfE for -2 AC.
Suna Seni waylay (Sanctuary, LMD)
21150xp Wellyn
23250xp Rejiek
49500xp Looting the Temple for thieves guild
20840xp For Rayic we first lured the Mephits out to thieves guild, we went inside from front door and came ouside from the back door, losing the Mephits in the process. Yet two Fire Mephits were still blocking the way, so we used double Potions of Fire Resistance and hacked them down. Sanctuary to pass the Golems and repeated the Fire trap killing Rayic.
10000xp Documents
18750xp Embarl's Dagger
48250xp Documents, and we let Maevar to be now as Sune has banned Charm tactics.
Renfeld waylay (Sanctuary, LMD)
14450xp Renfel's body
Bandit waylay (Sanctuary, LMD)
2000xp Bridge in Wild Forest, and we helped Neera to get to Hidden Refuge. Amulet +2 picking up the hairband for Mereth, and Paladin Brace's from Watchers Keep.
29750xp De'Arnise gate, lv11 with lv2 spell. Looted De'Arnise with double Sanctuaries. This took many runs back and forth to Watcher's Keep with curse of Ilmater, and even more so because I needed to get Sanctuary on arriving to De'Arnise map, and about 5/6 tries the trolls always interrupted me.
22550xp Glaicus dispelled with Bala's Axe
22350xp FoA +3, also had 26k gold
7750xp Tirdir, killed Reti, got the Missile AC boots
-2rep We ransomed Lady Elgea because again no Charming Welther and got the Silver Pantaloons which we are hauling the rest of the game.
Bandit waylay (Sanctuary, LMD)
45000xp +1rep Reporting the Bridge Murders
Orog waylay (LMD)
Belm +2 for 4apr with double Sanctuaries, resting close to house because Selune
2000xp Beastmaster can be hacked without agroing the animals with hitting him before dialogue
5690xp Animals
12500xp Releasing Hendak and childs
48750xp Hendak
18000xp Riddle, we used the Cloudkill trap to kill Hobgobling and the Carrion Crawler with our poison immunity. Then we lured the slavers and Captain Hagen for the trap.
2800xp Trolls
8500xp +1rep Freed the childs
38000xp +1rep Hendak
2000xp Idle Hands
27500xp Madulf
22500xp Mazzy's note, lv12, *Axe lv2 spell
3000xp Killer Mimic with Chant and Aid
48500xp Jermien
9500xp Valygar, 50k gold and Mirror Image sword
45000xp Chapter 3 and got Ring +2 and Amulet of Power which Paladin's can use
28500xp Lassal escaped with Sanctuary
Bandit waylay (LMD)
13500xp +1rep Neb
2800xp Caelan and Jaelos
29900xp Contact
41750xp Sir Sarles, gave him the real illithium because we are going for Azuredge instead of MoD. Got Charm Helm for 20 Charm.
16250xp Dawn Ring
8420xp Steam Mephit and Clay Golem
10000xp Cohrvale and Bregg, had to burn 5 Extra's because Bregg was hitting so much
4000xp Treya, lured her away with Azuredge and killed for Thac0 cloak, 5 Extra's. Then companied Rasaad to City Gates getting the map update.
5000xp Prebek and Sanasha, Invulnerability
14500xp Rylock, lv13 with 0.5apr, -2 saves and first Skeli
20000xp Harper Bird
35500xp Xzar
750xp Mad Cleric, level skipping his spells, bought Vhailor's Helm
18000xp Mencar and Tarnor can both be Silenced and casually hacked without agroing their parties, got Full Plate
10000xp Undead in the Cult area, Clone and Azuredge +3
42250xp Bridge riddle, left after this because I didn't want to haul half the rod with me
2000xp 5 Mephits
14000xp Mekrath Silenced and casually killed for RoR. Looted the place travelling multiple times to Roger the Fence.
26250xp Raelis
27000xp Windspear Paladin's, Sanctuary, Skeli, Clone
6000xp Windspear Bandit, top room, Skeli, Clone
21100xp Watcher's Keep trolls, Clone, Skeli and couple rests outside
71630xp +1rep Circus. For Kalah we had Clone, Invulnerability, Speed, Mirror Image and 4 Extra's. Lv14.
3000xp Geld Quickblade Silenced and casually killed
2000xp Dalton Silenced and casually killed, 3x Mirror Image ring
88750xp Bodhi's lair. With single PfU, Fire strength, Speed, Duhm and Azuredge. Waited Bodhi out.
50000xp completing the task for Thieves, but no leaving yet
58000xp Seven Guardian's in Firgraag dungeon, which was freaking annying as I needed to rest for every single one, outside. Nevertheless we killed them with Clone and Skeli getting them half injured before talking.
24450xp Mask
9000xp Samia Silenced and casually hacked
18780xp Wolfwere's
6000xp Tazok's Orc's first lured away and hacked, then Tazok was easily killed. Got the Sewer Key among other loot
6000xp Conster Silenced and casually killed
69250xp Garren's Child. Lv15, *Axe, -1 Saves, lv4 spell
I was planning using my SoA curse swap for Waukeen and do some Firkraag looping, but then something dawned on me. I wouldn't be able to get 25 STR from Hell Trials with Ilmater blocking the Tear trick, so now I'm thinking switching to boon of Ilmater just before using the Tears. And thus I think Malar was the correct choice at the end of SoD.
Yeah, this looked like a lot of fun @histamiini... surviving in a hostile environment with only a handful of supllies. The rest of SoA will be quite boring now...
Stealth is probably now the number one ability for the Dungeon, because I don't know if any class can clear the dungeon without resting.
Abigail finished rooting out her half-brother's followers in the tomb of Korlasz, using a combination of sanctuary and PfU - she blinded korlasz and her followers with cloud of pestilence then occupied her with her own undead - few shots from the Victor and she surrendered. Sensing that there was more to learn here, Abigail killed some optional spectral undead and some fire beetles with her minions.
Accidentally killing imoen after the assassination attempt, she stole her 80 oils of speed, confident that Liia and the Flaming Fist healers would resurrect her. She did some menial tasks in Baldur's Gate and picked up the spectacles of spectacle before setting off to destroy Caelar's Crusade.
She completed the optional quests at coast way crossing - using Brevin's Quarterstaff, her new second weapon, to boost her charisma with the friends spell for the menhir quest. She purchased a stone golem from a deranged transmuter, then set her undead on the seller for her stone ally summoning statuette. She traveled west and killed a vampire, then using the power of her undead she saved the dwarfs and over the course of twenty days, she besieged first the mines, then the Undead Tomb, grinding up to the "SoD XP cap", whatever that was.
The LoB + SoD Experience:
It was slow progress, with the initial weak zombies and ghouls replaced with steadily tougher and tougher undead, until she breached the final chamber and had to contend with two hulking Skeleton Warriors and three Bladed Undead, along with many other, still deadly beasts. That alone took almost five days of battle to hack them down, gradually - at last, all that was left was the Lich.
The last beast falls to Abigail's Might, and the Lich, with the help of the dwarfs was easily put down and his phylactery cast into the fires. No single foe can stand against Abigail's command of the Undead.
Meta-commentary:
that was a colossal pain - but yes, the fighter cleric can get a full clear in the repository of undeath without PfU scrolls. Most of it was just slow progress grindign through with the skellies + buffs but the final two rooms (the throne room and particularly the room before the lich) were hell - I think it took about 10 rests to take down the last room. Key was to take out the shadowed souls first, then the "lower" health trash like the bonebats, then the super high hitting stuff, then the high health lower damage stuff like the drowned in bloods with your 5 skeletons. - Buffed with everything I had - bless, chant, conviction, prayer, righteous wrath of the faithful, hanging around the choke points, and going into combat with Abigail herself with DuHM was enough to just about take down 1 Skeleton Warrior before her skeletons were bonedust - then sanctuary - back to camp rest, and repeat.
I wanted to see if it was doable, plus, it allowed very easy leveling to 9/9 by the earliest point possible, which gives me the extra thac0, 2nd pip in flails for Martyr's Morningstar on Bel, save decrease, and two level 5 spell slots for Rightious Wrath of the Faithfuls +1 attack to NE allies (thanks @Blackraven !) Only problem is it only lasts 1/round per level, causes fatigue afterwards, and is centered on the caster rather than at range so its a pain if Abi is in combat for more than 9 rounds - afaik skeleton minions are immune to fatigue so its a win-win there. Also it does not stack with oil of speed.
Also, IWDification of spells adds unfailing endurance as a level 4 spell so it is possible to purge fatigue - that might be useful in the elevator up to Bel.
Overall its a testament to the strength of the Fighter/Cleric - it may not have the stuff the F/M has but being able to make 5 skeletons into killing machines by cycling through castings of: Chant, Recitation, Bless, Curse, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, plus a single Prayer and Defensive Harmony and an initial Prot from Evil is something like +7 to hit and damage, -2AC (-4 with defensive harmony) luck bonus from chant and -4 or 5 to hit and damage for enemies.
Shaman ...
Have you got a mod which makes this effective on him? Normally it's only of use now to classes with arcane ability who can enchant it to +3.
I really hate to rain on your parade again, but I'm pretty sure that the chest with Sundermaul can't be opened even with strength 25. The good news though is that you do still have a choice of weapons (I quite often make use of the Root of the Problem club) and Champion's Strength does allow you to hit Belhifet where it hurts
@alice_ashpool Also do note if you plan to get Blazing Glory +3, you can't wait in the Dragonspear Castle attacks for potions, as the lady (whos name I've forgotten) will get killed eventually.
For Druids the Irenicus Dungeon will be a walk in the park @histamiini thanks to Fire Elementals.
will that work? because I have that, and its +4 vs giant humanoids... does that include bel? because if so, cool.
SCS/LoB
Siege of Dragonspear
Korlasz:
Made Korlasz surrender with 6x WoF charge, using invisibility every 2 charges and returning invisible in between until the enemies reset, always protected by stoneskin.
I like how you get all xp from all the undeads of the crypt that let themselves die after this. Leveled up to 8/8 after talking to Imoen.
Looted Korlasz chamber, did the torch puzzle for the hidden room that i looted last, returned the staff pieces, got shield of Egons, Sword of Ruin and helm of unwaving purpose, got the WoF for selling and left the crypt.
Preparation in Baldur's Gate:
Got 62k gold from selling jewellery, loot from Korlaz tomb and the full plate of the Sarevok fight. Got max discount using potion of persuasiveness before buying some necessary items:
Arrow of detonations, potion of heroism, 2x of each protection scrolls, potion of regeneration just in case and arrows of dispelling. Still had 44k left.
Got the spectacles of spectacle, did the three old keg quests for some xp, got Lon's amulet and left for the chapter 8.
Chapter 8:
Did Menhir quest, went to the cavern and saved Semahl using GM+WoPoly, all got 1 shotted and none saved. Looted the menhir ghost grave and went for Coldhearth.
Had 5 PfU instead of 0 this time... it was so much better! GM+WoPoly the bronze sentry, got all the scepters, got all the liquids, had to refresh PfU at Coldhearth, did the scepter vision for XP, knocked the door to the phylactery and evaded the remove magic, destroyed phylactery, WoP coldhearth and pwned him with Phantom Blade. This took about 2 hours less than last time.
Did Teleria quest for the stone ally, she got GM + WoPoly. As everything was going so well, did the halfling treasure quest and WoPoly the vampire in 1 shot. WoF scorcher the dire wolf who all got blinded by Isabella, then finished the quest and kept the mirror. It was well worth it for the xp. Waylaid on the way back, troll vs hobgoblins. Got firefly +2 and a Laeral Tear necklace.
Advanced to troll wood.
Morentherene
Went to forest of wyrm and got waylaid. Used greenstone amulet to be safe from Myconids and looted the cave, especially for the lower resistance scroll. A small WoMS diversion worked very well near the entrance.
Did a quick loot run inside the spider cave and managed to snatch Severance and the Goblin hide armor. It was way too risky so i left it alone after that. Went to buy throwing daggers and got the green dragon waylaid on the way back and decided to help it.
Morentherene daggered after 75 throwing daggers... that RNG.
Zialtar and Neothelid
For Neothelid, baited it with WoMS and waited invisible, prebuffed with protection from poison just in case. Rebaited it with a second WoMS, then spammed WoPoly. Took 5 casts but it worked. Didn't manage to GM first due to MR.
Akanna got baited a bit by running around and turning invisible, then GM + charm and she got killed by her aerial servants.
Used the door trick again against the mindflayer party to separate them and GM + WoPoly them all. Darkskelin was resisting all the time, so i used WoMS and killed him with arrows. Jhans seemed immune to WoP and poly, so that's also how i killed him.
I can reduce the number of detonators needed, which is around 28, by wasting WoF scorcher charges but it's very slow at 1-2 fire damage per cast. This fight is a reason why i dislike some aspect of SoD... Make an unhittable enemy immune to everything but 1 thing with totally unfair advantages, narrowing possibilities. Very disappointed that The Victor and Glitterdust doesn't work at all, this would have felt rewarding. The mislead is a scripted one that is constantly up, not like an ordinary spell so only true sight can do anything against it.
After a good night of sleep, i decided that nothing would stand undefeated by Sirus. Gold wasn't a problem at all, so i wasted the rest of my Sarevok/Korlasz WoF and the one that i had fully charged to damage it as much as possible, also casted as many spells as i could inside the room for a bit of extra damage (Fb, Ice storm, cone of cold and scorcher).
Tried to get as much extra damage using mustard jelly form and 2x fireshields as i was immune to piercing damage, but an instant kill that i can't explain occurs after a few hits for my 2 first deaths of SoD (seriously though... how unfair and unbalanced this fight is).
First try PfU ran out and i got 1 shotted, death 3 of SoD for 20 total. After depleting the rest of my Sarevok WoF (7 FB + 49 scorcher), i would switch to detonators. Used a GM scroll so he would save less often for a bit more damage and equipped Lon's amulet after the spell casts. Managed to lower the arrow cost to only 12 detonators, so i accepted that win, still had a full 50/50 WoF and 77 detonators for the camp fight at the moment.
Surrendering the fort.
WoMS + 2x stone ally + 16 charges from the Victor to distrupt the mage and kill him worked very well at the bridge. Had to drag a few crusaders to the camp but i had no issue at all during this segment.
Final prep at the camp:
Got the Myconic Bloom Sac (didn't use it in the end). Myconids can be WoPoly, but won't polymorph into a squirrel while still being at 10 hp.
Got to the passage invisible, got wand of water elemental and went to get the ankheg amulet by charming Ferrusk. Cured the slime sickness for a Caelar Seal and went to deal with the lich Zhadroth (secret reveal+WoP) for the sequencer cloak. You can use Secret Reveal before activating the lich, making it very easy. WoPoly the endless watcher for fun after.
Did a quick trip to Dragonspear for the ring of the crusade, then finished the river after buying potion of heroism (10 for 39) still have 50k gold.
Placed the Barrel of Bwoosh, grabbed 3 more dets from the top chest rushed to the chest to spell immunity and left for the crusader attack, very simple with potion of magic protection (maze trap) and oil of speed.
Not enough tools to keep a sick, injured aggressive man under control
Crusader Attack:
2x protection from magic and stoneskin before the fight and web+web+GM sequencer for the waves.
1 death (21) vs trolls as i tried to do web from casts first, 2nd try worked very well with the sequencer, no damage recieved 11 dets.
Finding an oil of speed remembered me to take one as i completely forgot...
Resequenced another web+web+malison before the second round (ended up doing at all waves, resting using the priest), it went just as well with the same tactic, 14 dets.
Had to use goblet once for the crusaders, 14 dets and had to wait sanctuary for a WoMS + WoP.
At 39 potion of heroism from loot and buying, i really though that i had more than enough for Belhifet so i didn't farm the infinite wave, still had 46 dets.
For infinite wave, first try was direct from the bottom as it was going so well and i got killed (death 22)
2nd try, rushed invisible the top of the camp, waited for the crusaders to pass then used sequencer, finished everybody with 29 dets, used 2 goblets. They stood nicely jammed between the barricades.
Very fun and overall easy camp attack. I'm still surprised how well detonators+web clear the waves on LoB.
Avernus and Belhifet:
Did a last scribing session for 12 scrolls, recharged everything grabbed Daeros full plate and went for Avernus. Still had 52k left and nothing to spend it on.
Sprinted right for Thrix and talked to him twice to open the gates, exited the area then went straight inside and began buffing:
2x each elemental protection scroll, violet potion, agility+fortitude+mind focussing, 3 absorption, Clarity, Speed, 2x invulnerability and Drank all heroism letting 1 monster in the lift.
Used regen potions to heal on the lift, got 596 HP!! Even more than my last run.
Immunity Abjuration, enchanted weapon, mirror image+imp. Invis+stoneskin sequencer and went for the fight, starting with a strength+strength sequencer on Bel.
Belhifet got to injured in barely 10 seconds due to lucky crits, then i got a bit unlucky and require 10 goblet total to finish him. Then 2 more goblet for Caelar, who got exploded.
BGSOD completed with 5 deaths total thanks to the shadow aspect, 22 total.
BGSOD completed with 5 deaths total thanks to the shadow aspect, 22 total. Managed again to deal with all the challenging fights, now i have to install SCS for BG2, can't wait to see what awaits me!
Very fun so far, i have less experience with BG2 so I'll see how well it goes. Doing SCS on insane settings with Ascension for the first time on LoB difficulty will probably keep me occupied for a while. I'll probably have to stop the death counter for that part. I'm still going to try my best!
For the entirety of BG1EE, i must say that nothing can stand in the path of the mighty Fighter/Illusionist! Well actually they can, but you have all the tools to not let them. Not necessarily the best but you have something for everything.
Buff with PfU, storm giant, heroism, speed and power. Then (with 2 level 5 slots with wis 21) you have 2 turns of true sight (level 5 spell for clerics, sorry mages) to hack it down. The only issue is that as soon as true sight ticks the first time it seems to summon its allies, so you also have to take down the shadowed souls in those 2 turns. I had a squad of skeletons too but they got merked quite quickly by backstabs between mislead casts and true sight ticking.
With thac0 of -3/0 it was enough just to hammer away with Ashideena and Kneecapper with about 20 seconds to spare of true sight.
You could even increase true sight casts to 3 with wis 22, wielding the glimmer of hope mace.
The cleric's revenge for everyone else being able to throw daggers at Morentherene
Executive Summary: HLAs and the mace of disruption prove too much for Athkatla's community of liches.
The imp was in a quizzical mood as they left the mindflayers' lair. "According to my scrying," she began, "you have two encounters that are commonly regarded as the hardest in the game: Kangaxx and the Twisted Rune. Which one do you think will be tougher?"
"I consider the SCS Eastern Tunnels to be the hardest part of BG2," Angelo replied. "Compared to that, I'm sure that they will be fine."
Instead, he searched the back wall for traps, uncovering a secret door that was promptly unlocked, then opened. Angelo entered to find a lich... which, as a result of his ongoing protection from undead, didn't react and remained neutral. Pickpocketing a ring of invisibility, a rod of smiting and a variety of wands, Angelo then unlocked the chest and took Daystar +2 without retaliation. However, despite being oblivious to his presence, the lich had still erected a wall of force blocking the exit. "This must be an SCS trick to stop players from grabbing the blade and fleeing," Angelo grumbled, figuring that killing the lich would grant him passage.
He first thought to use Daystar's special ability to kill it, but Sunray only affected hostile undead, so that was out. Still, the lich's neutrality allowed Angelo to set a time trap right and cast Improved Haste to set his ApR to 8 (6 with his mace of disruption) - as the room was off the Cowled Wizards' radar, they didn't intervene. Although Angelo's first attempt to smack the lich missed, the time trap activated before its defences could shoot up and its demon summoning sequencer could fire. This allowed Angelo several leisurely attempts at disrupting it, one of which was bound to succeed.
I vaguely remember this lich being like Deirex in vanilla BG2 and unable to see through Invisibility. Regardless, it will now see through stealth attempts as normal and only Protection from Undead will prevent its initial triggering.
After this little jaunt, Angelo returned to Waukeen's Promenade and asked to see the Chapter 6-exclusive 'special wares' for 50 GP. Most of these goods were not worth the price of admission, but there were some choicy spell scrolls (Time Stop and Shapechange in particular) and he might have considered War Blade +4 for its 1d12 damage die had he been unable to wield Carsomyr. Angelo's main draw, however, was the Helm of Brilliance - its 40% fire resistance was useful and its Sunray ability mimicked Daystar's and would be a handy insurance policy in the trials to come.
The basement was not what he'd expected. Searching the central tomb released a golden skull who promised to rain death upon him when Angelo refused to help. Although this was not a recommended strategy for recruiting assistance, Angelo was feeling in a forgiving mood and subsequently agreed to find the golden arm, leg and torso. Since releasing the skull hadn't broken his illusion, he left the crypt in search of the missing body parts without further ado, only stopping to cast Wraithform (the basement being beyond the reach of the Cowled Wizards' reach). Immunised to the minotaurs' normal weapons, Angelo sharpened his silver sword on their necks... although its edge seemed pretty keen already.
The arm and leg were easy enough to find. Angelo had already clocked the strange sarcophagus next to Sassar within the Temple District sewers at the time, but had consciously decided to wait until later before opening it. Despite his trepidation, unease still accompanied the thought of opening the coffin, so Angelo set 7 spike traps around the central T. Sure enough, when he opened it, a shade lich appeared... but no sooner had it finished its expository speech than it collapsed dead.
As for the other crypt, Angelo recalled seeing a trapped door while confronting Am-Si, the man in red responsible for burying Tirdir. Disarming said petrification trap, Angelo looted the containers for identical loot as Kangaxx's cupboards before descending to find a replica tomb. Hoping that this would run in the same fashion as the previous encounter, Angelo duly set his septet of spike traps, unleashed the elemental lich... and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of surprises!
"Kangaxx promised to rain death upon us once he'd regained his shell," the familiar reminded Angelo as he stuffed the torso into his pack. "Let's hope that dealing with him will be as straightforward!"
The question was rhetorical and Angelo was unsurprised to see Kangaxx's reassembled skeleton shake its head in refusal. "I forgot to give you the last component," he added, "here's a golden shower to bathe you in the glory you deserve!"
"You mocketh me," Kangaxx spat, "you will not be so insolent when I violate your body and tear you limb from... ARGH!!!"
The lich's gloating was interrupted by seven spike traps unloading into its face. And yet it was Angelo's expression that was the sourer when Kangaxx laughed, casting off its body to reveal its true form.
"Amazing what that golden shower does for the skin," Felicity quipped, "it truly does take years off."
Angelo's assessment was blunter. "Kangaxx is taking the p..."
Casting Invisibility, he stepped back into Kangaxx's view for an instant, long enough for the demilich to begin casting a spell. Then he ducked back into his corner, his illusion preventing the efreeti from following (although he could have waited until they'd expired before attempting this if required). Once they had expired, Angelo repeated the same trick, relying on Kangaxx's reluctance to move to continue the loop.
There was little the demilich could do to stop this trickery. Time Stop and Improved Alacrity were useless as there was no visible target to pelt with spells. As a conjurer, Kangaxx had an impressive array of demonic summoning spells, but they all appeared beside their summoner and would not give chase unless they'd initially caught sight of their target... something Angelo had no intention of giving them. Out of boredom, they began attacking each other, allowing Angelo to watch the running commentary on his UI with amusement.
One potential complication arose when Kangaxx cast Teleport Field followed by a demonic summons, for if the demon was inadvertently teleported into Angelo's sight, then it would attack. In this instance, Angelo elected to hop up the stairs and wait until the Teleport Field had safely expired before descending again. However, he had not anticipated that Kangaxx would follow, appearing right on top of him and preventing him from either moving or targeting the demilich.
This was a desperate situation. Unable to cast any clerical spells to repulse undead, Angelo also could not Smite himself to remove Kangaxx, casting his own Teleport Field would not dislodge the sticky demilich and even if Angelo had set an exploding trap, the demilich would not be knocked off its feet. But there was one chance. Rummaging in his bag of holding, Angelo retrieved the horn of blasting, whose knockback effect had no save or MR to resist it.
Freed from the lich's baleful influence, Angelo fled to the other side of the room and set a time trap while out of sight. He knew he could not leave this area, else the demilich appear on him again, so he drew Daystar and invoked its Sunray ability. Even in LoB mode, Kangaxx only had 236 HP, so direct offence might work.
So much for that. Killing it this way would require considerably more divine power than Angelo had available. Instead, he drew it back into the time trap, where he hoped to smash it with the mace of disruption. Unfortunately, he'd not taken its Protection from Magical Weapons into account and his attacks bounced off harmlessly.
"Enough!" Angelo snapped. This had gone on long enough. Before Kangaxx has time to summon a fallen planetar or yet more demons, he whipped out his trump card - Smite! Kangaxx was not immune to stunning and as long as its Protection from Magic Weapons wasn't active, this gave Angelo enough time to lay the smackdown.
Despite its myconid appearance, the summoned air elemental was just as vulnerable to the staff of air as its regular counterparts. Slipping the ring of Gaxx onto his finger - noting that it could be worn alongside other protective items - Angelo left the demilich to rot in its unmarked grave.
Full disclosure: my SCS settings do not allow Imprisonment (or, in the case of demiliches, Trap the Soul) to be cast on protagonists, effectively making solo players immune to it. This is because, with high level spellcasters being much more common, I don't think it's fair for them to have an attack that some classes have extremely limited methods of blocking. Of course, Angelo could have just used Spell Immunity: Abjuration, so this isn't particularly relevant.
"That battle was suitably epic for a big bad end boss!" Felicity exclaimed. "Let's see how the Twisted Rune plays out!"
Also, spellcasting demiliches don't use Trap the Soul at all. Well, Kangaxx can use it on random bystanders if you let him reach the surface, but he won't ever use it on party members - it's just not there in the modified AI. Imprisonment is still a possibility, but only the standard mage version that he has to spend spell slots on.