It is almost ALWAYS better to be a Beserker / Druid rather than a Pure Druid ^_^
A Beserker 7 / Druid 8 is possible with BGEE cap. Beserker 7 / Druid 11 is possible with SoD cap. Beserker 9 / Druid 10 is possible with SoD cap.
Let yourself have bows and helmets and Heavy Armor and Shields when facing down the hordes of He'll ^_^
You are right @billbisco - i was thinking into the same direction! Berserker/Druid also fits well into the "Wild Shapeshifter" theme - i really like this combo a lot!
After some calculation and the testing i would say that getting to level 12 in SoD is very welcome as it gives you another level 6 Fire Elemental - this will help a lot vs the attacking Crusader Waves.
To make it short: Berserker 7 / Druid 12 should be a very solid route. Berserker 9 / Druid 11 could be an alternative but it would make the waves much harder. Not to forget: Leveling the Druid in SoD could be a very painful job. At the end i tend to the first option. Or Berserker 3 / Druid 12 for the lazy ones - like me.
WAVE IV - COMMANDER This one is easy thanks to the immortal named ally bosses. Support them and watch how the enemy is suffering.
Hm, I feel kinda bad here. They weren't supposed to be immortal during the last wave. On the other hand, I see a small issue with reinforcements - the number of soldiers was to be capped at 10 at the same time, but the cap counter would include all the previous waves as well, so the game thinks it's running really low on enemy support there. Unlike immortality, this is easy to guess why happened, though - nobody thought to test it solo on LoB during development cycle
Ah, this is good to know @chimaera - maybe i should go for the Lich too if my Druid gets there.
Yeah, the Demon Hordes will be very interesting. At the moment i cannot see how Fafnir will be able to beat Belhifet and his Troops - but i said the same with regard to the Druid and Coalition Camp.
Have you already shapen up some sort of battleplan? How will you protect against fear? How to deal with their magic resistances & saves? Will Lower Magic Resistance plus Greater Malison last long enough? Have you enough potions, scrolls & wands? Will the Stoneskins and Mirror Images be enough to survive the constant incoming physical attacks? Will Feeblemind work? So many questions...
To make it short: I am very curious!!!
P.S. I rolled over and over and over again - to finally get 18/78 - 18 - 18 - 5 - 18 - 17. Not a bad start! To get around the Missile Limitation i will most probably go for Throwing Daggers as they also recieve Strength Bonus damage like Slings.
Level 7 all the way. It's not that hard to get 64k for level 7 fighter and 60k for level 7 Druid is it?
Remember, you should get Beserker 7 then Dual Druid to 3. Then wait until you have 60k total xp and do levela 4-8 all at once. This way you can allocate the level 4 Druid proficiency as you wish.
As far as proficiencies. I suggest Scimitar and longbow and sword and shield style to start. Drizzt is easy to kill (bugged) and you can beat Behlifet with Icingdeath. You can use and find the Eagle Bow with relative ease.
As you gain Beserker Levels you put your pips into Scimitar. When you Dual to Druid, put 1 in Dart and 1 in Staff. When you get to Druid 8 after gaining levels 4-8 all at once more, put your last pip in Scimitar (you will need to Shadowkeeper to correct the bug).
A couple of people have mentioned fighter-dualed-Druids using bows. Did I miss something with an update? Because as far as I'm aware fighter/Druids are restricted to Druid weapons, just as ranger>clerics can't use bladed weapons, even if they spent proficiency points on them as rangers...
Regardless, I'd recommend berserker 7 then dual class for the extra hp, thac0 and half APR.
Durlag's Tower is going good. I cleared the second underground floor, albeit with some difficulty : the greater doppelgangers that could take the forms of Islanne, Durlag, and co. were kinda hard to deal with, because the different forms had to be dealt with different strategies. They were nonetheless taken care of by a mixture of arrows of dispelling and kiting with normal arrows. Islanne absolutely had to be interrupted, because her Skull traps could one-shot me at full health.
On the third floor, some good positioning helped me killed pretty much all the greater ghouls.
Then, of all the elemental rooms, the air one was actually a pain. Not because it was hard, but because those beasts had a really high resistance to piercing. And, since my fireball necklace was empty, I had to kite them with elemental arrows for a LONG time... Urgh... But they died anyway...
Finally, the chess room was kinda easier than expected. With good potion prebuffing (electricity and fire resistance; MR; mind shield from Greenstone Amulet mostly) and some explosion arrows, the place was taken care of.
Caligula is now on the fourth floor. From there, I don't see much trouble before the big guy himself.
A couple of people have mentioned fighter-dualed-Druids using bows. Did I miss something with an update? Because as far as I'm aware fighter/Druids are restricted to Druid weapons, just as ranger>clerics can't use bladed weapons, even if they spent proficiency points on them as rangers...
Regardless, I'd recommend berserker 7 then dual class for the extra hp, thac0 and half APR.
Good luck with this new run!
Yeah, Druids cannot use Bows - but maybe they are picking it for easier kiting? Throwing Daggers are doing a pretty good job so far - same APR like Bows but with strength bonus damage. What a pity that there are no enchanted ones. Scimitar is a no-brainer as you otherwise would have to go with Quarterstaffs - which decreases the tanking potential even more.
The Greater Doppleganger Shapeshifter are indeed tough. I usually trick those by luring them into the room with the fire traps where they get burned down quite fast. Same for the Elemental Rooms - lure the air one into the Fireball room and watch it suffer. Maybe thats cheesy but why not using the surrounding to your advantage? Anyway: Good luck with the rest of the Tower. Should be no big deal for Caligula.
Maybe thats cheesy but why not using the surrounding to your advantage?
We're soloing LOB with SCS and Ascension. The concept of "cheese" barely applies to us. If you're not outright cheating, it's ok (how much "cheese" can I use as a pure fighter anyway?).
Nice going @chimaera. I'm a bit surprised that tactic worked though - my experience of SCS has been that if enemies know they can't hit you they don't try. It may be the SR components are fooling them into not realising their attacks are ineffective?
@chimaera You're using Revised SCS for SR, don't you ? Enemy behaviour will be different if you do. If you are, then I'm not sure that this combo will actually work in BG2, as @Grond0 said.
Don't forget that SCS doesn't change much in SOD's enemy behaviour, if I'm not mistaken. As far as I know, nothing was written specifically for that expansion yet. This type of victory might not be possible, SR or not, in BG2 with SCS. In that case, if you like SR (which I personally absolutely love), you can keep it, because I think it's safe to say that you won't steamroll the game with this combo. It should be tested to make sure, but I don't think the SR team would have let this one fly under their radar.
Holy cow - that spell combo from SR seems to be completly broken - that even did not sound like a challenging fight at all. But to be honest: I am not familiar with SR and its modifications. So one question still remains for me: How would you beat Big B without SR?
Would be very cool if you could try it without SR @chimaera. I tried it a few times some while ago and it felt harder than in theory. But - okay - i am no Mage Player and are not really confident with that class. Anyway: I hope Fafnir will have some great fun in SoA. Will there be anything ahead that could really challenge him?
I should have chosen the level 3 Berserker for my good old Krell - but no: I walk the painful path of endless farming. After preparing nearly all available easy-to-do-quests once Krell has dual classed to Druid he is farming Ankhegs after level 5. I am still surprised how well the Throwing Daggers are working so far as they hit hard thanks to strenght bonus and are most of the time landing on their target thanks to Fighter THAC0 - and Gauntlets of Weapon Expertise. So - if he keeps going like this - level 7 should be reached in some "hours".
Good find @chimaera . Is the behaviour the same with PFMW ? Because, if so, against bosses and tougher enemies, it IS gonna make a difference. I played with SR before, but never tried to solo it, so I'm not that keen on those types of details.
If this behaviour is only related to PFNW, it is not such a big issue, because it won't break the difficulty against the harder fights in SoA. It's a nice way to easily get rid of rakshasas though...
@Grond0 Since you don't have SR installed, could you test whether enemies will attack a mage running the prot. from normal weapons/fireshield combo?
@chimaera I did a quick test in Jon's dungeon. Enemies were happily attacking PfNW, Wraithform and PfMW. As you say they wouldn't go for Otilukes, but that spell is pretty useless in basic EE anyway as it requires a saving throw to be failed (even when cast on yourself).
Seeing all this discussion on SoD I think it's about time I had a look at that . Frey the sorcerer has failed several more times in BG1, but this run I'm making it easier for him by not restricting purchases or use of items (other than healing and antidotes as with all my characters). In addition I'm doing a less completionist run in order to reduce the chance for mistakes. Frey's just reached level 8 and should be heading for the Nashkel Mines shortly.
@chimaera Anyway, PFMW only last 4 rounds. If you manage to kill a big boss with this and one of the shields, it's fair game, because it requires plenty of micromanagement. Don't see that as cheese, just regular mage strategy...
I'm not sure if I read every post right, if I misunderstood anything please forgive me it's kinda late here. SCS never prevented enemies to melee you even if it was ineffective (or range) but only prevents enemies from wasting spells. If you do SCS Kangaxx with a mage class and "invulnerability" to all damage types he happily chucks his energy blades at you before summoning like crazy and after everything fails he attacks in melee.
I'm not sure if I read every post right, if I misunderstood anything please forgive me it's kinda late here. SCS never prevented enemies to melee you even if it was ineffective (or range) but only prevents enemies from wasting spells.
Yeah, I was probably generalising too much. Playing solo I've quite often been in the situation where a mage won't attack in melee, but I think that's because their script prioritises the use of spells heavily - if they have spells left, but none of them can currently hurt you, they will tend to go invisible and do nothing ...
Frey made his way through the Bandit Camp. In keeping with the less completionist nature of this run he just killed the occupants of the main tent (along with Taugosz who was charmed and enticed into the tent in order to get his equipment). After flitting through the Cloakwood Kysus was also charmed and caused some havoc before wand damage finished Drasus and Genthore. After sneaking down to Davaeorn Frey used a potion of magic blocking to survive his sequencer then waited for all the guards to arrive before a long succession of skull traps (with a couple of rests in between) killed the lot. Baldur's Gate awaits ...
Frey didn't do too much in Baldur's Gate before departing for Candlekeep. There was a near death experience there when he cast invisibility on arriving there by teleport, only for the cut-scene with the ogre magi arriving to immediately trigger after that - one of them cast invisibility purge and Frey had to save against a chromatic orb from another while also being affected by an acid arrow which would quickly kill him if left untreated. With further spells incoming I tried using a potion of magic blocking without really expecting that to work - as it had only been a couple of seconds since he cast invisibility. Fortunately the cut-scene triggering appeared to have reset his aura and the potion saved him.
Regrettably Frey fell at the final BG1 hurdle. The intention was to park the others in a corner while dealing with Angelo, but I made the mistake of summoning some monsters first - forgetting their script in the EE causes them to follow the PC if out of visual range. That resulted in everyone becoming active and Frey's invisibility and buffs were soon dispelled by remove magic - a couple of shots from Diarmid then finished him off.
Comments
After some calculation and the testing i would say that getting to level 12 in SoD is very welcome as it gives you another level 6 Fire Elemental - this will help a lot vs the attacking Crusader Waves.
To make it short: Berserker 7 / Druid 12 should be a very solid route. Berserker 9 / Druid 11 could be an alternative but it would make the waves much harder. Not to forget: Leveling the Druid in SoD could be a very painful job. At the end i tend to the first option. Or Berserker 3 / Druid 12 for the lazy ones - like me.
On the other hand, I see a small issue with reinforcements - the number of soldiers was to be capped at 10 at the same time, but the cap counter would include all the previous waves as well, so the game thinks it's running really low on enemy support there. Unlike immortality, this is easy to guess why happened, though - nobody thought to test it solo on LoB during development cycle
Without immortality the last wave could be so much pain - at least for solo LoB.
So plz dont fix this - or at least not before my Druid has gone through!
Yeah, the Demon Hordes will be very interesting. At the moment i cannot see how Fafnir will be able to beat Belhifet and his Troops - but i said the same with regard to the Druid and Coalition Camp.
Have you already shapen up some sort of battleplan? How will you protect against fear? How to deal with their magic resistances & saves? Will Lower Magic Resistance plus Greater Malison last long enough? Have you enough potions, scrolls & wands? Will the Stoneskins and Mirror Images be enough to survive the constant incoming physical attacks? Will Feeblemind work? So many questions...
To make it short: I am very curious!!!
P.S. I rolled over and over and over again - to finally get 18/78 - 18 - 18 - 5 - 18 - 17. Not a bad start! To get around the Missile Limitation i will most probably go for Throwing Daggers as they also recieve Strength Bonus damage like Slings.
Big question is: Level 3 or 7 for the Berserker?!
Remember, you should get Beserker 7 then Dual Druid to 3. Then wait until you have 60k total xp and do levela 4-8 all at once. This way you can allocate the level 4 Druid proficiency as you wish.
As far as proficiencies. I suggest Scimitar and longbow and sword and shield style to start. Drizzt is easy to kill (bugged) and you can beat Behlifet with Icingdeath. You can use and find the Eagle Bow with relative ease.
As you gain Beserker Levels you put your pips into Scimitar. When you Dual to Druid, put 1 in Dart and 1 in Staff. When you get to Druid 8 after gaining levels 4-8 all at once more, put your last pip in Scimitar (you will need to Shadowkeeper to correct the bug).
Regardless, I'd recommend berserker 7 then dual class for the extra hp, thac0 and half APR.
Good luck with this new run!
On the third floor, some good positioning helped me killed pretty much all the greater ghouls.
Then, of all the elemental rooms, the air one was actually a pain. Not because it was hard, but because those beasts had a really high resistance to piercing. And, since my fireball necklace was empty, I had to kite them with elemental arrows for a LONG time... Urgh... But they died anyway...
Finally, the chess room was kinda easier than expected. With good potion prebuffing (electricity and fire resistance; MR; mind shield from Greenstone Amulet mostly) and some explosion arrows, the place was taken care of.
Caligula is now on the fourth floor. From there, I don't see much trouble before the big guy himself.
The Greater Doppleganger Shapeshifter are indeed tough. I usually trick those by luring them into the room with the fire traps where they get burned down quite fast. Same for the Elemental Rooms - lure the air one into the Fireball room and watch it suffer. Maybe thats cheesy but why not using the surrounding to your advantage? Anyway: Good luck with the rest of the Tower. Should be no big deal for Caligula.
So, using the fire room ? Fair game !!
Don't forget that SCS doesn't change much in SOD's enemy behaviour, if I'm not mistaken. As far as I know, nothing was written specifically for that expansion yet. This type of victory might not be possible, SR or not, in BG2 with SCS. In that case, if you like SR (which I personally absolutely love), you can keep it, because I think it's safe to say that you won't steamroll the game with this combo. It should be tested to make sure, but I don't think the SR team would have let this one fly under their radar.
If this behaviour is only related to PFNW, it is not such a big issue, because it won't break the difficulty against the harder fights in SoA. It's a nice way to easily get rid of rakshasas though...
SCS never prevented enemies to melee you even if it was ineffective (or range) but only prevents enemies from wasting spells.
If you do SCS Kangaxx with a mage class and "invulnerability" to all damage types he happily chucks his energy blades at you before summoning like crazy and after everything fails he attacks in melee.
Good luck @Grond0 - would be great if you can join the SoD train!
Also curious about @chimaera in SoA and which spell combos you will pull out next!
Krell has dual classed to Druid after reaching Berserker level 7 - time to cash in all the open quests!