Mencar and his party gave Korgath a good fight. To get the Sandthief Ring from the slippery Brennan Riestling Korgath placed six normal poison traps and one special trap to root him in place. Buffed up with Oil of Speed and Holy Might Korgath started the show with a good 72 damage backstab at Brennan Riestling. He immediately moved around the corner to restealth while happily watching that the traps not only paralyzed Brennan but also hurted Sourcerous Amon quite badly. After several quick backstabs not only Brennan went down but also Amon died to the last tick of poison. So far everything worked perfectly.
Korgath now lured Mencar himself downstairs where the tough dwarf was backstabbed again and again. Too easy Korgath thought and picked his next victim: Pooky the Familiar. He managed to avoid any CC and weared down the Stoneskin slowly but surely. At the end Pooky fell down to the ground without too much resistance. This left over only Smaeluv Orcslicer who should have been an easy kill - normally. But for some strange reason he was moving fast like lighting (i always thought he has no Oil of Speed potion) and got a lucky crit that hit for 85 (!) damage which took Korgaths HP down to 1. Only with careful - and fast - moving he was able to avoid another hit and finally smashed the Berserker to the ground. With a lot of loot - not to forget the Cloak of Non Detection - Korgath will move on to the Shadow Thieves soon!
Anyway: That was a close and a bit strange one at the end. I dont know if my Invalid Line problem is also effecting the AI but from time to time the enemies are reacting different and kinda crazy. The hasted and raged up Smaeluv reminded me of Rigah in SoD. When this Fighter was raged up and also got a Haste Buff he destroyed my Warriors in no time. Maybe you should try a plain 1vs1 melee fight against this guy once you meet him @Arctodus!
Before visiting the circus Korgath sold some of his stuff and pushed his reputation to 16. Oh, not to forget: He also used the steal option to get the Glasses of Identification and several potions. Only now he felt ready to explore the strange circus tent. After solving the Genie riddle he trapped the Orcs down and freed Aerie without any problems. As he knew that something big would come he hasted himself up and stealthed right to Kalah where he opened with a backstab. He then lured the Shadows away and used his Sandthief Ring and the Ring of Air Control for another two free backstabs. Already nearly dead Korgath needed only two more hits to break the illusionary magic - job done! With the Ring of Human Influence - who will be very handy for the next missions - Korgath will take another rest before meeting Renal Bloodscalp! Maybe this time i should side with the Shadow Thieves later on - we will see!
Yeah, its quite nice to see that things are going on pretty smoothly so far. But unlike Krell Korgath has to work a bit more for it even though traps and backstabbing are also very powerful. Korgath started infilitrating Maevars guild - an update will follow soon. Hopefully!
P.S. Lol @chimaera! The game is always good for suprises - even after several playthroughs. No?
On one of his trips Korgath got ambushed by Suna Seni and her party. Thanks to his caution he was already in stealth at the beginning of the fight so he could easily retreat and think about his next move.
First he set up three normal plus two special traps. Buffed up with Oil of Speed + Holy Might he then threw his last special trap right into the middle of the pack paralazying nearly all of them - except for Suna Seni and Eldarin who started to search for the attacker. As Suna Seni was the faster one Korgath lured her into the trap field for some good damage but - as always - she was not paralyzed (she must have godlike saving throws). With Eldarin also moving in Korgath decided to use his newly stolen Nymph Cloak and charm Eldarin - which works pretty well as its still a save vs Breath. With his new friend - and the rest still paralyzed out of vision - Korgath started to attack Suna Seni. While Eldarin was tanking Korgath used his Sandthief Ring and the Ring of Air Control to get some heavy hitting backstabs that finally took down the fearsome Assassin. After grabbing Arbanes Sword Korgath could have escaped but he waited in stealth until Eldarin was killed by his old friends cause: More loot is always welcome - no? With nearly all his consumables down Korgath decided to retreat as the backstabing thieves would have one-hit-killed him easily... as they did several times before!
Korgath finally infiltrated Mae'Vars guild – but it was a long way.
The first mission was just a warm up as Korgath easily picked the lock of the chest in Weathermistriss Ada's chamber and took the Necklace of Talos.
The second mission on the other hand was by far the toughest: Killing Rayic Gethras the Cowled Wizard. First Korgath lured the Mephits and the two Golems into his trap fields to hurt them quite badly. But as this was still not enough he abused the door and stairs to play his good old backstab game. One enemy after another went down until the way was free to face Rayic himself.
Korgath placed three poison traps before the Mage went hostile and the battle started. Hah - it was so nice to see how the poison ticked through all his protections leading to one spell failure after another. Already down to injured Korgath waited until Mirror Image and Fire Shield expired before he started to wear the Stoneskin down. After all layers were gone he only needed three more backstabs - and fast retreats - before the Cowled Mage was history.
The next two missions were easy again: Korgath convinced a merchant named Marcus to hand over some documents while he spared the life of Embarl the traitor in the next mission. After speaking to Edwin again his old companion betrayed Mae'Var and gave Korgath the key for Mae'Var's strongbox.
But before handing over Maevars Letter to Renal Bloodscalp Korgath disarmed all Assassins around Maevar buy stealing three invisibility potions from each of them and two more from Mae'Var himself. After setting up six more traps in the middle of the pack Korgath was satisfied with his preparations and met Renal Bloodscalp who asked Korgath to return to Mae'Var and kill him.
Time for the final showdown! Well – at the end it wasnt even a real fight cause Korgath sneaked up to Mae'Var and charmed him on his very first try with the Nymph Cloak. He went invisible again and watched how Mae'Var got attacked by his own guards – too funny. Once the traitor was down to nearly dead Korgath moved him near to the stairs so he could easily grab his loot and retreat fast.
But – for some strange reason – his old friends did not follow. Time to change plans Korgath thought and let Mae'Var cast a Magic Missile on himself while Korgath backstabbed him at the same moment. One second later it was over: Mae'Var fell to the ground. The old leader was dead but at the same moment a new one was born: Korgath, the Dwarfen Bounty Hunter. Hurray!!!
Sorry for the late reply: Yes at least on my install (BWS + SCS on the latest BGEE patch) having any of the touch spells in a sequencer (you can't cast while polymorphed) or using a scroll will dispel your polymorph form completely, you don't just lose the weapons but the appearance and all benefits of the polymorph.
That sounds like SCS (or possibly SR? I forgot) changing the shapeshift mechanics to store all the effects, including paperdoll, on the form's natural weapon as "while equipped" - which gets overwritten by touch spell's magic slot weapon. The intent was either to fix some bad bug in vanilla shapeshifting mechanic or something else equally reasonable.
After a warm welcome in the Copper Coronet Korgath spoke to Lehtinan who allowed him to enter the back rooms of the inn. A strange feeling followed him that something is going wrong here! A short exploration proved him right when he met Hendak and other slaves. Korgath avoided any open fight as he charmed the guard who would call reinforcements. In the southeast corner of the inn Korgath finally found the Beasmaster but instead of fighting him and the innocent animals he again used the Nymph Cloak and moved the Beastmaster into the room before where he was taken down by one of his own wolves – hah! With the key from his body Korgath freed Hendak and helped him to clean the inn from Lehtinan and his troops which proved to be no big deal.
Hendak asked to free more slaves and Korgath agreed happily to help him. With his new Longword of the Rose +3 Korgath sneaked through the sewers – while solving the riddle around Lilarcor en passant – until he he entered the Slavers Stockade. There he charmed Captain Haegan with his Nymph Cloak and waited until his own troops took him down. Korgath grabbed the key, went invisible again and freed all three children without any problems. The Sandthief Ring and the Ring of Air Control again proved to be very useful. Korgath returned to Hendak who gave him some nice reward. Oh, not to forget: Level 15 reached!
Korgath has made some progress: He hunted down Rejek in the Bridge District, met the Harpers as well as Xzar and solved the trouble around Trademeet. At the moment Korgath is mostly playing like on a minimal-kill-run as he tries to avoid most battles - or uses Nymph Cloak. He´s not doing this cause the monsters are too tough but its quite funny to watch how enemies are killing each other - and the quests are solved much, much faster without fighting all foes. Forbearance is not acquittance! No?
For instance: In Trademeet he trapped the area around Khan Zahraa and charmed his genie compagnion. After the traps triggered invisible Korgath just had to watch how Khan was taken down by his own kind. Oh, not to forget: Before entering the Dao Korgath had stolen the Efreeti Bottle from the genie outside.
To help Trademeet with the animal trouble Korgath sneaked through all Trolls, Spiders and Shadow Druids - grabbed the Belm Scimitar in between - and finally faced Faldorn. With Cernd buffed up - while being invisible to prevent prebuff-trigger - the Druid challenged Faldorn in a 1vs1. Thanks to Harm the fight was over soon so Korgath headed back to Trademeet where a big celebration took place.
Korgath has enough xp to jump up to level 16 but he decided to wait until level 21. The reason is simple: Unlike the Otlike´s Resilient Sphere Traps the Hold Traps are pretty good as they allow super-easy backstabbing. At level 21 the Resilient Sphere traps are replaced by Maze traps which will be very useful again. With the Belt of Inertial Barrier and the Cloak of Displacement in his backpack its now time for some rest before heading into the next adventures!
Sounds good @Blackraven. I've been giving Frey the sorcerer another stab in the last couple of days. He's currently in Baldur's Gate, so shouldn't be too long before he's facing his trial at the palace ...
@Grond0, please consider casting Invisibility at Liia Jannath to trigger the palace battle, and keeping an eye on her after that. In my experience she doesn't do much (if anything), and if she does reveal herself or gets detected by one of the caster Doppelgangers you can cast Invisibility on her again. You could use scrolls if necessary. It would be really nice to see Frey in SoD.
Keep on going @Grond0 - would be very cool to see Frey hunting through SoD!
Yeah, indeed very cool @Blackraven - Norgath, Korgath. Hehe. Reloads needed? Not really. So far things are working pretty smoothly. But this may change soon - we will see!
Frey survived the palace - if only by the skin of his balls . His buffs were removed at one point and, while running away from the fight, a doppleganger swiped him with a critical. Added to a couple of MMMs that took him down to a whole 1 HP, but he managed to get out of sight before any further attacks could be launched and put himself back together again with a potion of regeneration. Liia was invisible for most of the fight, though that did need to be renewed at one point. I didn't bother buffing Belt, so he didn't last too long and several chaos scrolls didn't make much impact - even when confused the dopplegangers are too hard to hit and have too many HPs to take much damage. Frey also went through 70 darts of stunning during the fight - quite a few while malison was active - without ever managing to stun a target .
For the final battle Frey didn't try to conserve resources this time: - first he lured Sarevok into a corner and went invisible. All the others followed except Angelo. - that allowed Frey to set himself up as a target to get Angelo to show himself, before going invisible again. He waited out initial buffs before drawing Angelo as far away from the others as possible and sending in waves of summons that eventually finished off both Angelo and the skeleton warrior that replaced him. - half a dozen skull traps and 20 or so fireballs later and Semaj was the next to go. - 20 more fireballs and Tazok had had enough, by which time the skeleton warrior replacing Semaj had been irritated enough to come out to its doom. - a couple more fireballs were enough for Diarmid, leaving Sarevok now vulnerable to damage. - the remainder of his 3 fireball necklaces were used up on Sarevok, but those only brought him to injured status (just the 503 HPs left at that stage). Rather than switch to his wand of fire Frey decided it would be much cheaper in resources to return to summons and it only took about another 8 or 9 groups of those to see Sarevok off.
Congratulations @Grondo! I'm looking forward to SoD action.
My Cleric/Illusionist was very unexpectedly Dominated by the Neolithid while it was invsible/underground. It meant my first reload.
Btw yesterday I discovered that a bug with the Imp Familiar had given him many more HPs than he was supposed to get, namely 66. My previous experience with LoB was in a buggy EET install I'm no longer using, where Familiars simply got 6 HPs as on lower difficulty settings. Therefore I didn't immediately realize this was a bug (even if it felt like an overgenerous HP boost that made the early game much less terrifying). However I compared the Familiars today. In my install LoB Pseudo Dragons, Dust Mephits, and Quasits give their masters 34 HPs, Fairy Dragons 30 HPs, Ferrets and Rabbits 28 HPs, and Cats 22 HPs.
Because of the HP bug and the reload I won't bother with posting about my Cleric/Illusionist. But I want to try a new Cleric/Illusionist instead and share my experiences with him or her in this thread.
Thanks all, but regrettably I don't think Frey will be continuing. He snuffed it in the opening dungeon and the manner in which he did so suggests that making progress would be pretty difficult and I don't think he'll be trying again.
He defeated the first groups of enemies, but they were far from easy with both a higher quantity and quality than I expected. I've been through the dungeon several times before, but I think with nothing more than level 8 - Frey started at level 9, which probably explains the difference. However, summons + invisibility + resting did whittle things away and he eventually got through to Porios who was persuaded to surrender - getting Frey to level 10. I thought that the availability of skeleton warriors would make things easier after that, but no such luck. Almost immediately after going down to the next level Frey bumped into a large group of undead, including bone bats, shadowed souls and a skeletal mage. With no space to work with and bone bats ignoring invisibility, there was no real chance to bypass the enemies. Frey's summons were so badly out-classed that multiple charges from his wand failed to kill a single opponent. Leaving the area and re-entering gained nothing and would quickly have proved fatal as Frey was being pushed back to the exit point and enemies would soon have blocked that.
In desperation he rested to reset the locations of enemies and used summons and skull traps to damage a few of them while they were advancing. He then retreated to the previous area and buffed up before coming back down. He used his only teleport field scroll to add to multiple buffs, e.g. stoneskins, blur, mirror images, PfE, II and expected that would reduce incoming hits to pretty low levels. He also had MGoI, which was intended to allow him to fireball the area with the hope of killing enough opponents before that ended to allow him room to run around.
Unfortunately, as shown here the wand fireball hurt him as well as his opponents. I'm pretty sure that the wand of fire used to be classed as a level 3 spell (as opposed to the necklace of missiles which I think was level 5), but presumably that was regarded as a mistake and has been changed in EE (though I would have thought it would have made more sense to downgrade the necklace rather than upgrade the wand). Frey had loads of fire protection he could have used, but I reckoned time would already be tight for his original strategy and didn't want to spend the time to buff up and try more wand blasts. Instead, Frey used the gaps created by the teleport field to make his way past the enemies into a room with a bit of space to move. A couple of wand scorchers killed one of the bone bats chasing and with the other at near death it was starting to look like Frey would actually be able to see off this group of enemies. With the rest of the group arriving Frey took a potion of invisibility with the aim of dodging his way back to the exit point where he could easily have finished off the remaining bone bat. Even though the others all have a follow-me script against invisibility that results in slower chasing than if they could actually see through invisibility and there would therefore have been a chance to use invisibility to launch enough unopposed attacks to win the fight - but at that moment this happened.
That was pretty disappointing after all the hard work to get to that point. The attack came quite a long time after Frey had gone invisible, so it seemed a distinctly cheesy way to die (the shadowed souls can't see through invisibility). It's possible though that the shadowed soul had started casting it's spell before Frey went invisible and, if that has an area effect rather than being single target, that would explain why it was able to complete it.
I had thought that summons would be a viable strategy in SoD despite the follow-me scripts, but that was based on the opposition seen in previous runs. Against what Frey was facing I don't think use of summons is a good response. That doesn't mean that a sorcerer can't make progress - for instance in the situation Frey faced he could: - rest and buff up before going down and sitting on the exit point and hurling magic damage. It would then be a race to see if he could kill anything before having to retreat - and I suspect he could. - sit on the exit point and use invisibility, stone skins, mirror images, free action and cold protection to avoid damage from attacking bone bats while adding in a fire shield to get them to kill themselves. Each bone bat would be able to soak up around 26 hits worth of fire shield damage, so they wouldn't be easy to kill, but I think it would just be possible. - he could also have used PfU, but I rather suspect that those scrolls would be needed later on where even sterner tests await.
I'm not fond of buffing at the best of times though and progress in SoD would clearly need even more intensive work than BGEE (and that's bad enough for a sorcerer). I dare say I'll come back to it at some point, but just for now I've had enough I think .
Edit: I was just doing the washing up, which obviously stimulates the brain as I realised I was being dozy. My previous experience with SoD was on core - so no surprise that the opponents were more challenging this time (as I now see @Arctodus has kindly pointed out ).
Sorry @Grond0 ... Yep, that first dungeon is very brutal on LoB. Sitting on the exit point is pretty much the only way to go for a sorcerer I can think of. With my fighter, I only got through because I had spare Scrolls of Protection from Undead lying in my backpack. Otherwise, it would have been a reset. And using those scrolls is not such a good option for a sorcerer, because you would need to rest to have your spells back, thus removing the protection from the scroll...
My Cleric/Illusionist had at least six PfU scrolls from BG1 and used two in the dungeon. I still don't know all of SoD, so I'm not sure what sterner undead opposition you were referring to, other than the optional Dwarves of Dumathoin (that I skipped).
Maybe I'm just a coward, but I think fighting these hordes of undead is just too risky. Stoneskins will get stripped and Fireshields expire. The only place to fight them is probably at the area exit, so that you can be sure you can retreat, and rest on the first level. You could also try to use summons not to fight enemies but to bait them away from your invisible Charname, who can then seek out Korlasz unmolested. Once Korlasz has been killed, something I found accomplishable with five hasted Skeleton Warriors, the other undead will disappear.
I've actually found no-reload SoD doable so far, but that's avoiding battle with difficult foes like the Dwarf Lich, Morentherene, Neolithid etc. I have never played the crusader battle nor the final battle, not even on core, so that will probably be tough for me too.
What a pity @Grond0 - going down after such hard work. But as the others said: Without PfU the first dungeon is such a pain. With it nearly everything gets trivial: Sneak to Korlasz and bring her down to injured so that everyone resigns or disappears - which gives a whole bunch of xp! PfU is only helpful in the optional Dwarven Mine so one can burn them right at the start without any troubles.
As @Blackraven said: SoD should be quite doable in a no-reload-scenario as many enemies or fights can be skipped easily. If you play like this you can get to Coalition Camp - and the final chapters - pretty fast. The Attacks on Coalition Camp can be good for several reloads for sure - especially without any metagame knowledge. And Belhifet? Going in blind will give you some good beating. But with proper planning it should be doable too even though i still think that pure Mages will have a very hard time against him.
I'm always reluctant to avoid encounters I don't fully know about entirely, but it does seem as though perhaps PfU is the way to go in that dungeon. Apart from the usual fatigue building up over a run, I got into trouble because of the mismatch between what I found and my expectations. That shouldn't have happened as I do now remember reading somewhere that the difficulty setting significantly changes the opponents faced in LoB (unlike in the original EE games), but I've never been quick on the uptake! Oh well, maybe next time .
Finally found the time to play some... Quick update, though. Warning : heavy cheese smell in the next post !
Caligula took on the Boareskyr Bridge with a little help from the Nymph Cloak. 'Twas not a hard fight.
Then, after fiddling around the coalition camp, he moved to the next area and cleaned it up. He found himself in the Underground passage map, and cleaned it up of pretty much everything.
Archers were somewhat a pain in the neck, because there were so many, meaning that they actually were rolling crits often (which they needed to hit me). They were nothing good ol' kiting couldn't take care of, though...
Caligula is now into the underground passage. He just killed a mage with three water elementals and an ettin ghost after having told a lil' story to two sahuagins. The Stone Dowser is going berserk in here (don't know why, 'cause blind playthrough), and he just accepted to help some drows to find two adolescents. This is where Caligula is for now.
Good progress @Arctodus! But why fighting all Crusaders? No Badge to decieve them? Seems you like to walk the painful path!
Well, I'm playing SoD completely blind (not looking at any walkthrough). That's the kind of mistakes I'm bound to make. Well, to be honest, almost blind ; I do use the knowledge I got from your runs...
Still not much time for Korgath - damn! But at least he did some quests for the temples, on the graveyard and he joined the Shadow Thieves with only the last mission left. Oh, and he managed to kill nearly all members of the tough group around Koshi in the Guarded Compound which needed a big pack of potions. Backstabbing them down took some especially as Korgath missed quite often. Not to forget: Charming them with Nymph Cloak did not work - even not after 50+ tries! Anyway: Korgath moved out with a lot of loot - and enough xp for level 18. But - as i told earlier - he still refuses to levelup. Thats all for it now - i hope there will be more time soon.
@Harpagornis , what are you backstabbing with in SoA? Quarterstaffs/THS, or still going with long swords/SWS (I noticed you earlier snagged the Blade of Roses in the Copper Coronet)?
That +4 staff at Ribald's is decent, and since a higher + than the Blade of Roses, this together with the bonuses for crushing damage versus armored opponents may help THACO further and reduce missing, at least somewhat for certain types of opponents. With a thief, every little bit of THACO helps
Yeah, Korgath uses mostly the Quarterstaff +4 for backstabbing but its still good enough for several misses against heavy armored foes. Dual Wielding with Belm is mostly used for paralyzed enemies when i am getting too lazy for the retreat + backstab stuff. Dual Wielding will shine later once Assassination and Improved Haste (and Time Stop Trap) are available!
EDIT: Cool to see you back in action @Victor_Creed_SFV! The end of part 28 was quite... well... striking!
Comments
Korgath now lured Mencar himself downstairs where the tough dwarf was backstabbed again and again. Too easy Korgath thought and picked his next victim: Pooky the Familiar. He managed to avoid any CC and weared down the Stoneskin slowly but surely. At the end Pooky fell down to the ground without too much resistance. This left over only Smaeluv Orcslicer who should have been an easy kill - normally. But for some strange reason he was moving fast like lighting (i always thought he has no Oil of Speed potion) and got a lucky crit that hit for 85 (!) damage which took Korgaths HP down to 1. Only with careful - and fast - moving he was able to avoid another hit and finally smashed the Berserker to the ground. With a lot of loot - not to forget the Cloak of Non Detection - Korgath will move on to the Shadow Thieves soon!
Anyway: That was a close and a bit strange one at the end. I dont know if my Invalid Line problem is also effecting the AI but from time to time the enemies are reacting different and kinda crazy. The hasted and raged up Smaeluv reminded me of Rigah in SoD. When this Fighter was raged up and also got a Haste Buff he destroyed my Warriors in no time. Maybe you should try a plain 1vs1 melee fight against this guy once you meet him @Arctodus!
P.S. Lol @chimaera! The game is always good for suprises - even after several playthroughs. No?
First he set up three normal plus two special traps. Buffed up with Oil of Speed + Holy Might he then threw his last special trap right into the middle of the pack paralazying nearly all of them - except for Suna Seni and Eldarin who started to search for the attacker. As Suna Seni was the faster one Korgath lured her into the trap field for some good damage but - as always - she was not paralyzed (she must have godlike saving throws). With Eldarin also moving in Korgath decided to use his newly stolen Nymph Cloak and charm Eldarin - which works pretty well as its still a save vs Breath. With his new friend - and the rest still paralyzed out of vision - Korgath started to attack Suna Seni. While Eldarin was tanking Korgath used his Sandthief Ring and the Ring of Air Control to get some heavy hitting backstabs that finally took down the fearsome Assassin. After grabbing Arbanes Sword Korgath could have escaped but he waited in stealth until Eldarin was killed by his old friends cause: More loot is always welcome - no? With nearly all his consumables down Korgath decided to retreat as the backstabing thieves would have one-hit-killed him easily... as they did several times before!
The first mission was just a warm up as Korgath easily picked the lock of the chest in Weathermistriss Ada's chamber and took the Necklace of Talos.
The second mission on the other hand was by far the toughest: Killing Rayic Gethras the Cowled Wizard. First Korgath lured the Mephits and the two Golems into his trap fields to hurt them quite badly. But as this was still not enough he abused the door and stairs to play his good old backstab game. One enemy after another went down until the way was free to face Rayic himself.
Korgath placed three poison traps before the Mage went hostile and the battle started. Hah - it was so nice to see how the poison ticked through all his protections leading to one spell failure after another. Already down to injured Korgath waited until Mirror Image and Fire Shield expired before he started to wear the Stoneskin down. After all layers were gone he only needed three more backstabs - and fast retreats - before the Cowled Mage was history.
The next two missions were easy again: Korgath convinced a merchant named Marcus to hand over some documents while he spared the life of Embarl the traitor in the next mission. After speaking to Edwin again his old companion betrayed Mae'Var and gave Korgath the key for Mae'Var's strongbox.
But before handing over Maevars Letter to Renal Bloodscalp Korgath disarmed all Assassins around Maevar buy stealing three invisibility potions from each of them and two more from Mae'Var himself. After setting up six more traps in the middle of the pack Korgath was satisfied with his preparations and met Renal Bloodscalp who asked Korgath to return to Mae'Var and kill him.
Time for the final showdown! Well – at the end it wasnt even a real fight cause Korgath sneaked up to Mae'Var and charmed him on his very first try with the Nymph Cloak. He went invisible again and watched how Mae'Var got attacked by his own guards – too funny. Once the traitor was down to nearly dead Korgath moved him near to the stairs so he could easily grab his loot and retreat fast.
But – for some strange reason – his old friends did not follow. Time to change plans Korgath thought and let Mae'Var cast a Magic Missile on himself while Korgath backstabbed him at the same moment. One second later it was over: Mae'Var fell to the ground. The old leader was dead but at the same moment a new one was born: Korgath, the Dwarfen Bounty Hunter. Hurray!!!
Hendak asked to free more slaves and Korgath agreed happily to help him. With his new Longword of the Rose +3 Korgath sneaked through the sewers – while solving the riddle around Lilarcor en passant – until he he entered the Slavers Stockade. There he charmed Captain Haegan with his Nymph Cloak and waited until his own troops took him down. Korgath grabbed the key, went invisible again and freed all three children without any problems. The Sandthief Ring and the Ring of Air Control again proved to be very useful. Korgath returned to Hendak who gave him some nice reward. Oh, not to forget: Level 15 reached!
For instance: In Trademeet he trapped the area around Khan Zahraa and charmed his genie compagnion. After the traps triggered invisible Korgath just had to watch how Khan was taken down by his own kind. Oh, not to forget: Before entering the Dao Korgath had stolen the Efreeti Bottle from the genie outside.
To help Trademeet with the animal trouble Korgath sneaked through all Trolls, Spiders and Shadow Druids - grabbed the Belm Scimitar in between - and finally faced Faldorn. With Cernd buffed up - while being invisible to prevent prebuff-trigger - the Druid challenged Faldorn in a 1vs1. Thanks to Harm the fight was over soon so Korgath headed back to Trademeet where a big celebration took place.
Korgath has enough xp to jump up to level 16 but he decided to wait until level 21. The reason is simple: Unlike the Otlike´s Resilient Sphere Traps the Hold Traps are pretty good as they allow super-easy backstabbing. At level 21 the Resilient Sphere traps are replaced by Maze traps which will be very useful again. With the Belt of Inertial Barrier and the Cloak of Displacement in his backpack its now time for some rest before heading into the next adventures!
Looking forward to reading about epic level Korgath.
Have you had to reload much so far?
I hope to join the challenge again soon with another (no-reload) Cleric-Illusionist.
Yeah, indeed very cool @Blackraven - Norgath, Korgath. Hehe. Reloads needed? Not really. So far things are working pretty smoothly. But this may change soon - we will see!
- first he lured Sarevok into a corner and went invisible. All the others followed except Angelo.
- that allowed Frey to set himself up as a target to get Angelo to show himself, before going invisible again. He waited out initial buffs before drawing Angelo as far away from the others as possible and sending in waves of summons that eventually finished off both Angelo and the skeleton warrior that replaced him.
- half a dozen skull traps and 20 or so fireballs later and Semaj was the next to go.
- 20 more fireballs and Tazok had had enough, by which time the skeleton warrior replacing Semaj had been irritated enough to come out to its doom.
- a couple more fireballs were enough for Diarmid, leaving Sarevok now vulnerable to damage.
- the remainder of his 3 fireball necklaces were used up on Sarevok, but those only brought him to injured status (just the 503 HPs left at that stage). Rather than switch to his wand of fire Frey decided it would be much cheaper in resources to return to summons and it only took about another 8 or 9 groups of those to see Sarevok off.
My Cleric/Illusionist was very unexpectedly Dominated by the Neolithid while it was invsible/underground. It meant my first reload.
Btw yesterday I discovered that a bug with the Imp Familiar had given him many more HPs than he was supposed to get, namely 66. My previous experience with LoB was in a buggy EET install I'm no longer using, where Familiars simply got 6 HPs as on lower difficulty settings. Therefore I didn't immediately realize this was a bug (even if it felt like an overgenerous HP boost that made the early game much less terrifying). However I compared the Familiars today. In my install LoB Pseudo Dragons, Dust Mephits, and Quasits give their masters 34 HPs, Fairy Dragons 30 HPs, Ferrets and Rabbits 28 HPs, and Cats 22 HPs.
Because of the HP bug and the reload I won't bother with posting about my Cleric/Illusionist. But I want to try a new Cleric/Illusionist instead and share my experiences with him or her in this thread.
He defeated the first groups of enemies, but they were far from easy with both a higher quantity and quality than I expected. I've been through the dungeon several times before, but I think with nothing more than level 8 - Frey started at level 9, which probably explains the difference. However, summons + invisibility + resting did whittle things away and he eventually got through to Porios who was persuaded to surrender - getting Frey to level 10. I thought that the availability of skeleton warriors would make things easier after that, but no such luck. Almost immediately after going down to the next level Frey bumped into a large group of undead, including bone bats, shadowed souls and a skeletal mage. With no space to work with and bone bats ignoring invisibility, there was no real chance to bypass the enemies. Frey's summons were so badly out-classed that multiple charges from his wand failed to kill a single opponent. Leaving the area and re-entering gained nothing and would quickly have proved fatal as Frey was being pushed back to the exit point and enemies would soon have blocked that.
In desperation he rested to reset the locations of enemies and used summons and skull traps to damage a few of them while they were advancing. He then retreated to the previous area and buffed up before coming back down. He used his only teleport field scroll to add to multiple buffs, e.g. stoneskins, blur, mirror images, PfE, II and expected that would reduce incoming hits to pretty low levels. He also had MGoI, which was intended to allow him to fireball the area with the hope of killing enough opponents before that ended to allow him room to run around.
Unfortunately, as shown here the wand fireball hurt him as well as his opponents.
That was pretty disappointing after all the hard work to get to that point. The attack came quite a long time after Frey had gone invisible, so it seemed a distinctly cheesy way to die (the shadowed souls can't see through invisibility). It's possible though that the shadowed soul had started casting it's spell before Frey went invisible and, if that has an area effect rather than being single target, that would explain why it was able to complete it.
I had thought that summons would be a viable strategy in SoD despite the follow-me scripts, but that was based on the opposition seen in previous runs. Against what Frey was facing I don't think use of summons is a good response. That doesn't mean that a sorcerer can't make progress - for instance in the situation Frey faced he could:
- rest and buff up before going down and sitting on the exit point and hurling magic damage. It would then be a race to see if he could kill anything before having to retreat - and I suspect he could.
- sit on the exit point and use invisibility, stone skins, mirror images, free action and cold protection to avoid damage from attacking bone bats while adding in a fire shield to get them to kill themselves. Each bone bat would be able to soak up around 26 hits worth of fire shield damage, so they wouldn't be easy to kill, but I think it would just be possible.
- he could also have used PfU, but I rather suspect that those scrolls would be needed later on where even sterner tests await.
I'm not fond of buffing at the best of times though and progress in SoD would clearly need even more intensive work than BGEE (and that's bad enough for a sorcerer). I dare say I'll come back to it at some point, but just for now I've had enough I think
Edit: I was just doing the washing up, which obviously stimulates the brain as I realised I was being dozy. My previous experience with SoD was on core - so no surprise that the opponents were more challenging this time (as I now see @Arctodus has kindly pointed out
My Cleric/Illusionist had at least six PfU scrolls from BG1 and used two in the dungeon. I still don't know all of SoD, so I'm not sure what sterner undead opposition you were referring to, other than the optional Dwarves of Dumathoin (that I skipped).
Maybe I'm just a coward, but I think fighting these hordes of undead is just too risky. Stoneskins will get stripped and Fireshields expire. The only place to fight them is probably at the area exit, so that you can be sure you can retreat, and rest on the first level.
You could also try to use summons not to fight enemies but to bait them away from your invisible Charname, who can then seek out Korlasz unmolested. Once Korlasz has been killed, something I found accomplishable with five hasted Skeleton Warriors, the other undead will disappear.
I've actually found no-reload SoD doable so far, but that's avoiding battle with difficult foes like the Dwarf Lich, Morentherene, Neolithid etc. I have never played the crusader battle nor the final battle, not even on core, so that will probably be tough for me too.
As @Blackraven said: SoD should be quite doable in a no-reload-scenario as many enemies or fights can be skipped easily. If you play like this you can get to Coalition Camp - and the final chapters - pretty fast. The Attacks on Coalition Camp can be good for several reloads for sure - especially without any metagame knowledge. And Belhifet? Going in blind will give you some good beating. But with proper planning it should be doable too even though i still think that pure Mages will have a very hard time against him.
Caligula took on the Boareskyr Bridge with a little help from the Nymph Cloak. 'Twas not a hard fight.
Then, after fiddling around the coalition camp, he moved to the next area and cleaned it up. He found himself in the Underground passage map, and cleaned it up of pretty much everything.
Archers were somewhat a pain in the neck, because there were so many, meaning that they actually were rolling crits often (which they needed to hit me). They were nothing good ol' kiting couldn't take care of, though...
Caligula is now into the underground passage. He just killed a mage with three water elementals and an ettin ghost after having told a lil' story to two sahuagins. The Stone Dowser is going berserk in here (don't know why, 'cause blind playthrough), and he just accepted to help some drows to find two adolescents. This is where Caligula is for now.
Stay tune for more to come...
Oh, have you fought buffed up Rigah in a fair 1vs1? Anyway: There are some really big battles ahead. This should be interesting!
Hope you will rejoin our party soon again @Grond0 - just take your time! Should be interesting too which class you will choose!
No progress from Korgath as i dont have any time for playing. Maybe next week!
That +4 staff at Ribald's is decent, and since a higher + than the Blade of Roses, this together with the bonuses for crushing damage versus armored opponents may help THACO further and reduce missing, at least somewhat for certain types of opponents. With a thief, every little bit of THACO helps
EDIT: Cool to see you back in action @Victor_Creed_SFV! The end of part 28 was quite... well... striking!