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The LoB + SCS Solo Challenge vs Bhaal´s Cataclysm

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  • alice_ashpoolalice_ashpool Member Posts: 261
    edited October 2021
    Still the best way that i've found to get past the non-bugged Ducal Palace fight with absolute ease was to charm and drag the warehouse Basilisk to the throne room using the sewers, ideally invisible as it bugged a few times on my level 1 sorc run, some guards would follow indefinitely and get insta-killed dropping my reputation by an insane amount (could have probably charmed them too with the nymph cloak). No need to even drag the shaman and mage doppleganger into another room, the basilisk ended the fight in a few seconds every time i tried so far except one, where it got affected by chaos (i think) and it started killing allies.

    Question: how does SoD deal with BG1 reputation?

    Reason: PfF from a Green Scroll on Belt then 20 or so Arrows of Detonation using the arrow dupe might be even easier for anything with some Thief. My very first pass of Dukes was the Apocalypse Method (OGL not Arrows obviously) since I wanted a no Algernon's method for a Monk.

    Also I'm still mad about the rod of resurrection "fix"... shameful.

  • alice_ashpoolalice_ashpool Member Posts: 261
    edited October 2021
    Also had a fresh run end to the damn basilisks - Those greater ones only fail on a 1 or something with the 2.6s saving throw fix - ended up taking just >2 hours to clear the zone and the last one paralysed me before I realised. RIP Alice the fighter/mage :D
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    @alice_ashpool do you think it is still possible to beat BG2 with a solo fighter after the rod of resurrection fix?
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,882
    Question: how does SoD deal with BG1 reputation?

    Reason: PfF from a Green Scroll on Belt then 20 or so Arrows of Detonation using the arrow dupe might be even easier for anything with some Thief. My very first pass of Dukes was the Apocalypse Method (OGL not Arrows obviously) since I wanted a no Algernon's method for a Monk.

    Don't know about the reputation issue - though if it's anything like the SoA/ToB transition, it should carry over - but I don't think detonation arrows would be a good idea there. You see, arrows of detonation in BGEE also deal physical damage. And I'm pretty sure dealing him damage counts as attacking him, which is game over.

    BG2EE detonation arrows have zero base physical damage, so you might be able to get away with it on a trilogy install...
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    Made a Cleric/Mage Lady Rose, lawful good.
    Str 10 Dex 18 Con 15 Int 17 Wis 18 Cha 11

    With my experience of my former failed FMC, I think I can do it this time. Hopefully :|

    This time I avoided economy run before chapter 5, which is annoying as I don't have boots of speed and haste spell yet.

    Rose's journey starts (or mine starts again :) ):

    Rushed to Nashkel and picked up treasures along the way. Then slept until I got the first innate ability - heal.
    Bought invisible scroll and potion case (it's cheaper to buy them now before killing Algernon and Dushai).

    Grabbed Algernon's Cloak.
    Went to basilisks garden, charmed a basilisk and protection from petrification on it. Cleared the whole map.

    Learned invisible and went to Durlag's Tower to grab the book of wisdom and the WoMS from the warder level (from a small container near the warders).

    Went to kill Dushai with WoMS for ring of free action. Also grabbed a WoF in Ankheg's Nest along the way.
    Helped Firebead in Beregost for +1 rep and scroll case.
    Bought rep back to 12.

    Went to Nashkel mine, got the WoFrost, invisible all the way then charmed Mulahey. Fed him to kobolds. Also Grabbed WoMS the way out. Turned in quest for +1 rep. Also told the fat guy I was not greywolf +1 rep.

    Killed Tranzig with WoMS.
    Invisible to steal the documents from Bandit's camp. Turned in quest to officer Vai for +1 rep.
    Invisible all the way to cloakwood mines. Charmed the boots of speed guy and used him to kill all his team members then fed him to the guards. Grabbed the boots from the (now dead) mouthy one.

    Bought OGL and got the WoF from Ulcaster Dungeon.

    Now I had OGL 10 charges, a WoMS with 8 charges, another WoMS with 1 charges, a WoFrost with 10 charges, a WoF with 8 charges and another WoF with 12 charges. All for free :) More than enough to do cloakwood mines.

    Invis to Davaeorn, waited for his guards to come. Blasted them to pieces with around 17 to 20 charges of WoF/OGL. Waited for Davaeorn protection gone, then a few charges of WoMS killed him. + 2 rep followed. Now I had 17 rep.

    Went to the Baldur's gate and bought haste scroll. And so the economy run with hasted minions and boots of speed began B) ... then I checked my purse and I found I already had 60k gold, just by picking up treasures along the way :D All I needed to do now was pump up my rep and charisma.

    But first... I killed the crazy who carried the Gauntlets of Ogre Power and yet another WoF with 22 charges, sweet. Finally I could carry some weight.
    Did the poison quest for the book of wisdom. Also did the quest for Shield of the Falling Stars.

    Returned necklace to Mr. Colquetle + 1 rep. Saved Brage + 1 rep. Killed light house wolfs +1 rep. Now I had 20 rep.

    Grabbed the book of constitution and WoPara, killed siriens for xp.
    Got the book of charismas too, so 12 base + the poor Algernon's Cloak + friend spell I have 20. I could recharge my WoMS and OGL and did shopping too.
  • XDarkStrikerXXDarkStrikerX Member Posts: 102
    Very well done so far Zaknas! Glad to see someone attempting the challenge again. Very well done with your previous sorcerer too. Finally getting to level that character in BG2 feels really good as the sorcerer class is such a low cost about everything thanks to not having to learn scrolls.

    I really liked your approach of charming the crusader camp, never tried it myself.

    Also not sure if they fixed the Power Potion glitch in 2.6 as i completely stopped using them in 2.5 after seeing how devastating it was but i wouldn't feel too bad for not getting the absolute maximum amount, like missing one or two as their is a ''safe'' amount of them to use. Best with the glitch is to try to predict when their effect will stop to end the fight before it starts doing so.

    The glitch is that when a potion effect ends, you're going to lose a big chunk of HP, like literally dropping from 300 hp to about 100 while losing only about 25 maximum health. This also happens with potions of Heroism but since their duration is 2 hours instead of 4 rounds, it ends up being much more manageable.

    @alice_ashpool I never did a low rep run during SoD so really don't know about that. If the only thing that changes is buying prices, it won't matter too much for a thief in the end but it could hurt a lot for other classes. Not sure if it got fixed, but playing on lower setting than LoB (insane on version 2.5 or maybe 2.3 with a solo Thief it's been a while) i do remember making the wand of sleep work against them as their level got bugged when transforming, this was before using SCS too though.
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    edited October 2021
    Thanks XDarkStrikerX

    Finally I beat the camp battle. This is a battle that I will never forget as it was so epic but at the same time can't remember the details well as everything happened so fast.

    Wave 1. Pre-cast 11 skull trap scrolls and 5 skull trap spells. Archer + skeles constant hasted with scrolls. OGL the enemies liked there was no tomorrow. Skeles started dying and WoMS spam for tanking. Kept OGL them until victory. It was tense but no real threat at all.

    Wave 2. I don't know how I beat this one. I mean I used wizard slayers + skeles constantly hasted and WoF scorcher + GM + slow + silence. I tried 5 times and got it at last, however the first 4 times the wizards totally owned my army, and the last time the situation is reversed that skeles totally owned the wizards' asses. I don't know what happened and don't remember it was that hard for my FMC.

    Wave 3. Pre cast 7 skull trap scrolls and 3 skull trap spells. Wizards as allies + skeles hasted for tanking. Sequencer GM + web + silence and slow scroll at the start and 7 cloudkill scrolls and the battle ended very quickly. I can't believe it could be that easy. This wave was hell for my FMC. I am glad I finally know how to beat this one effectively.

    Wave 4. Rogues and dwarfs as allies + skeles, hasted them all. Sequencer GM + Silence + web and then lesser sequencer silence + web and more webs and slow. I used a few WoF scorcher too. To my surprise the rogue allies and my skeles did not get webbed much and they killed the orog boss so quickly that I didn't even realize. May be the dwarfs cast some spells to help my army to avoid getting webbed? I have no idea. I didn't even need to use ankheg summons, the 5 skeles survived the whole fight.
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    edited October 2021
    I made it! I killed Bel! ... although barely. but still made it :)

    weapons: martyr's morning star main hand, the hydra +2 off hand, with 2 weapon style.
    gear: full plate mail, helm and cloak of balduran, Lon's amulet, legacy of the masters, cloverleaf, boots of speed
    rings: ring of purity, ring of the crusade

    buffs before the lift:

    2x (PfF, PfC, PfE, PfA, PfP)
    10x Mind Focusing (8 should be fine, just to be safe)

    Then did lift. Skeles, WoPoly and WoL took care of everything. Very easy actually.

    Short lived buffs after wave 3 (I used the quicksave and reload exploit so I could drink potion and cast spell super fast):

    2x Potion of Magic Resistance
    Protection from Evil '10 scroll
    Oil of Speed
    Potion of Clarity
    12x potion of power (somehow I still got 12 even I didn't get the one form Barghest)
    Enchanted Weapon

    then very short lived buffs:

    11X champion's strength (str to 18/00)
    Violet Potion (must come after champion's strength buff to set str to 25, con down to 3, dex penalty offset by mind focusing potions)
    Potion of Fortitude (con to 18)
    Blur + improved invis + Stoneskin sequencer
    blue fire shield

    My main hand thac0 was -30, and off hand was around -25. Didn't need that much, but it was very hard to do the timing, so I could only keep buffing champion's strength while time was passing and hoped the lift would reach bel faster.

    Let caelar joined, she took the remove magic and then died 2 seconds later. Then I started smashing Bel. Switched the helm to Kiel's helmet and drank from goblet when I needed healing and back to balduran after.

    Bel killed me about 7 times..., the buffs never lasted that long (I think the cutscene wasted a few rounds, which is huge). Got him to badly injured mostly. Then the last time I got lucky on critical hits and finally got him, but even that time all the champion's str buffs were gone and I had to relied on crits. The feeling was just like playing a 1 hp mage, hoping for lucky crits... except now my character could die.

    Should have put a point in single weapon style instead of a sling so I could use martyr's morning star alone after champion's str wore off, would have been much better. Even a little bit would help when everything was so damn tight.

    screen shoot
    tbwnud7imcd0.jpg

    Then something bad happened. A demon refused to disappear and tried to kill me while all my buffs were gone. I panic for awhile, didn't want to die there just because of a stupid bug :s . But then senses come to me again and WoMS, WoPoly and WoL killed it alright.

    Hell yeah finally can play BG2EE. Which will be a blind LOB SCS ascension playthrough.
    Post edited by zaknas on
  • XDarkStrikerXXDarkStrikerX Member Posts: 102
    @zaknas Great job finishing Bel! You're killing it so far. Good luck for BG2. Not sure if you did, but you can skip the cutscene before the fight by pressing escape a few times to save some precious buff time. Pretty much the only way to make the spell immunity last long enough if you want to fight Bel without taking Caelar with you as a mage.
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    @zaknas Great job finishing Bel! You're killing it so far. Good luck for BG2. Not sure if you did, but you can skip the cutscene before the fight by pressing escape a few times to save some precious buff time. Pretty much the only way to make the spell immunity last long enough if you want to fight Bel without taking Caelar with you as a mage.

    :o you can skip the cutscene?!?! omg that's good to know. The fight would have been much easier if I had known that trick. Thanks.

    Actually I found a way to dodge the remove spell without Caelar. Wait for Bel starts casting, then immediately run out of sight and Bel will lose his spell. Not very reliable though as the time window is very tight.
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    edited October 2021
    BG2EE, Rose the Cleric/Mage has completed all pre spellhold quests. But I don't not much to say, as a C/M, I have tons of summons available. Skeles, aerial servants (these ones are very powerful), and later Deva/Planetar and with both mage and cleric buffs/debuffs, it was so easy that I didn't even feel like I was playing on LOB + SCS difficulty.

    The general tactics is to just use brute force... when facing powerful mages, send skeleton to them one by one, wasting their spells and then use powerful summons to kill them.

    But a few battles did give me headache.

    Shade lord. Waste spells tactics failed, as it seemed he could cast spell infinitely. This guy used blade of disaster which killed deva in one hit. And cast quite a numbers of death spells too. But in the end my overwhelming force of summons + enchanted weapon got him. Just had to make sure not to let him attack deva and keep summoning skeles to tank him.

    Staff of the magi battle. Made the lich appear but did not talk to him. Then cast 4 death fog and 3 Incendiary Cloud out of sight and he was killed. Then the reinforcements came and deva went to tank the beholder. The fog and cloud still lasted long enough to get them all. I hid in Otiluke's Sphere while waiting for them to die and their summons to disappear. Only the mage left and another deva got her.

    Sewer mind flayer den. Deva + summons and I ran around like crazy, the mind flayers couldn't always keep up and got separated. Then deva killed the lone flayer. But this battle was a mess.

    Kangaxx. The normal liches are no match for deva, as she is using the mace of disruption + 2. Kangaxx himself I tried so many things on him but couldn't beat him. I didn't have proper gear at the time though but I stilled wanted to beat him before spellhold, so I checked the post here and saw XDarkStrikerX used WoW on him then I did the same. Kangaxx was cheating though as even I had PfU on me he still knew I was there and he cast remove spell on me. Had to escaped his spell by running upstairs.

    The 2 Dragons. WoW petrification got them.
    Post edited by zaknas on
  • XDarkStrikerXXDarkStrikerX Member Posts: 102
    @zaknas Good job again! For PFU, as Histamiini told me about how it works with SCS, it actually reduces the sight range of the liches like Kangaxx so you can actually use ranged attacks if you're far enough like a ranged weapon, fogs or even The Victor if they didn't use protection from magical energy. If you want the Lich/Demi lich to stay completely immobile and not retaliate, you will have to use the spell directly on it. Will not work for the first form of Kangaxx as he has to talk to you to transform (you would have to wait the duration out) but it does work on his demi-lich form.

    First time i managed to kill it by my own means (took a ridiculous amount of tries before i came up with this) i had to buy a Conjure Fire Elemental scroll and used them to finish him. It was pretty tricky as i needed to be able to summon the HD16 or ideally 24 to get a good enough THAC0 with them to beat his regen. Needless to say, the WoW+Efreeti bottle strategy is way less trouble.
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    @XDarkStrikerX what's the efreeti bottle? I didn't have it and I just used WoW. Also I don't think PfU just reduces the sight range of Kangaxx because after I escaped his attempt to dispel my PfU, I could actually melee him and he did not react (he did try to run away sometimes though). But maybe my installation is broken, have seen a lot of bugged npcs' behavior already. BG1 + SCS works a lot better.
  • XDarkStrikerXXDarkStrikerX Member Posts: 102
    @zaknas The efreeti bottle is an item that you can get by killing the Trademeet Genies. WoW will only turn Kangaxx the demilich into stone but you still have to break it. As i usually kill him before having a +4 weapon myself so i use it as the Efreeti uses a +4 enchanted weapon, same for the Fire Elemental summon.

    I guess that it also depends if you have the spellcasting demilich enable from SCS. First time that i did it, even using PFU on myself Kangaxx wouldn't care at all as i was too close, would summon planetars, comets and a bunch of other summons, HLAs/L9 spells which turned the area into complete chaos. It would also be infinite and scripted so i couldn't just waste his spells. He would also cast through protection from magic. It really was... a total nightmare. Nothing compared to Demogorgon though who made me question if it was at all possible for my Fighter/Illusionist without the Rift Device cheese (not sure if it still work in 2.6) :wink: . Didn't help that i didn't find anybody who attempted it and survived with the current SCS version so i had not clue what to do, as the fight is way too risky for NR which was what other players were going for when the thread was more alive.

    I would definitely give it a shot once you get there. Might not be so bad if you didn't nerf your Harm spell with the SCS revision however, which i am personally not a fan of as i just want it to be a tactical challenge (same for the added scrolls). Would still require some surgically precise spellcasting, would be far from a cakewalk or maybe... some super buffed Ravager form.
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    edited October 2021
    I see, I didn't notice the bottle when I killed the Genies. Thanks for the info guys.

    Here Rose the C/M's struggle continues. Now she is in hell... I mean in nine hell :) again deva and planetar pretty much did all the job for me. I found that Deva can kill dark planetar easily as they can stun them, and that makes deva much better than planetar in many battles against mages/liches. Other than that I really have nothing worthwhile to say, but anyway...

    Underdark Balrog (can't remember the name, the demon that the gnomes dug out). Planetar/deva alone couldn't kill him. So I tried Improved Alacrity + 4 x lower resistance + GM + finger of death + chromatic orb and that didn't kill him. But he died anyway while planetar was swinging her sword, probably vorpal effect killed him when his ST was lowered. Don't know what exactly happened as the log didn't show the reason.

    Bodhi. I had Drizzt on my side, and Bodhi ate him, I couldn't even find his bones :*. Planetar/deva killed the vampires one by one and only Bodhi left. Then rest and another round of planetars got her. Trivial.

    Dragon in the elf city. Time stop + level drain then exited to elf city map. Tried to rest but got ambushed so immediately got back to the dragon map and rest there then time stop and level drain again. Rinse and repeat until dragon was level 1 then planetar prepared dragon meat dinner for me :D. No risk and no reload required, just tedious...

    Irenicus the tree sucker fight. Hid in a corner, waited a while, Deva easily stunned and killed his dark planetar and then later, Irenicus himself. Even easier than Bodhi fight. Wouldn't be this easy if I could only summon planetars.

    Irenicus the slayer awaits me in nine hell, wish me luck.
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    edited October 2021
    @jmerry

    After reading your post I used ctrl+Q on the dark planetar and found that her ST was bugged as 20, 20, 20, 20, 20. That's why my deva could stun her, this is probably a SCS bug.

    Edit: I checked a few more npcs to see their ST. Hell Savarok were 20 0 20 -2 1, it was only partially bugged. While some npcs were not bugged at all. :s
    Post edited by zaknas on
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    Oh so it's 2.6 bugs... thought they had fixed it.

    and yeah, it's must be randomly affecting the ST.

    But I got different ctrl+Q results. ctrl+Q my own planetar gave me the correct ST, ctrl+Q enemy's dark planetar gave me all 20. But even the 20s couldn't be the real ST for a dark planetar in my game, as my planetar never landed a vorpal killed on a dark planetar, while my deva easily stuned them. So yeah... it's random.
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    edited October 2021
    Beat Yaga-Shura and Abazigal, wow... it was very tough. SCS changed so many things too many dragons too many dark planetars and it changed the spell systems too. Had to reinstall just to get back the original harm spell.

    Yaga-Shura. I went invis and avoided as many battles as I could in Yaga-Shura's Lair, just picked up the hearts and left. Then went to his mother, Incendiary Cloud and deva killed the undead. His mother summoned lots of help but they couldn't see through invis while she alone could, so I lured her away and killed her. Tried so many times killing Yaga-Shura, his immunity to fire damage which forced me to abandoned my spell spam tactic. Tried pierce shield + GM + flesh to stone + finger of death + disintegrate nothing worked. Suddenly I recalled I had harm spell. Used time stop and harm... well... 42 damage and 102 resisted. Then I remembered XDarkStrikerX said SCS nerfed it so I reinstalled and turned off this particular modification. Time stop and harm again, bang! and Yaga was dead.

    Draconis. He always gave me nightmare on insane difficulty. On LOB+SCS he is like a demi-god. And it didn't help that I only had two level 9 mage spell slots. Luckily I could abuse the exit map trick (pocket plane didn't always work). Tried a couple of times and finally found a way. Project image summoned deva for tanking then time stop + Improved Alacrity + 4 x pierce shield spam to make him vulnerable to harm spell. Then I cast time stop + harm and beat his human form. Exit map rest and repeat for his dragon form.

    Abazigal's Lair. okay this was nuts... Rooms of beholders and lizardmen shaman that could cast high level mage and cleric spells and saw through invis and no space to hide. Planetar tanking, Contingency and Incendiary Cloud + all kind of sequencers for whatever damaging spells available got most of them. Totally a mess. Imprisoned the two lizard shamans. Killed the dragon just like the way I did Draconis.

    4 SCS dragons. Okay great harm spell and exit map abuse worked like a charm. The last 2 dragons claimed they were the greater ones of their species and the former 2 were just "lizards". But since harm spell worked on them all the same, I will never know what's the different between a "lizard" and a greater dragon :D. I am still wondering how fighter classes can beat this thing.

    Abazigal. Okay tried many many times with different tactics. This thing was way too smart. One failed attempt was to spam skull traps then pierce shield and lured him into the traps as his dragon form always chased me till the end of the world. But after getting hit by pierce shield, suddenly he didn't want to chase me at all. He just stood still and waited for me to come to him... :/.
    Another failed attempt is of course the harm spell. But since time stop couldn't affect him and so I had trouble to touch his little belly :|
    I also found that the game will stop running when you kill his human form and try to trigger conversion with his dragon form. You can't even close the game by alt+F4. Must use ctrl+alt+del.
    Glad that I finally figured out how to beat this. Planetar + farsight killed all his minions. Then I rushed in trigged the conversation and time stop + harm tactic killed the other dragon (or did I? I didn't see her death message, anyway she disappeared). Human form Abazigal couldn't see through invis and wouldn't chase so I could hide and rest. Then spam pierce shield + GM + feeblemind and finally I could touch his belly... not, his AC was still insanely low. Okay no problem project image damage spell spam put him to near death and dispelled the feeblemind and let him scream the scripted death speech and I had his belly >:) .
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    I don't understand how I beat demo, the spell description doesn't say pierce shield or whip can remove PfMW and stoneskin. May be the planetar dispelled demo's stoneskin when she hit him? Or may be my crom faeyr +5 did some electrical damage to him? But I remember demo also has very high electricity resist. This is really puzzling :|
  • zaknaszaknas Member Posts: 43
    edited November 2021
    "Once their hit points drop below 30, you get the "THIS CANNOT BE!" cutscene and they die"

    ah that explains how I killed him, so harm was enough, I don't even have to worry about the stoneskin too. And next time I know I will need breach spell too.
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