It's not that useful if you're soloing anyway. As I said, the summons won't fight back because their AI only seems to function if they can see their summoner, so it's more useful in a party where your other party members can make use of them as walls. In solo they just... die. Kind of slowly.
I'm pretty sure it would be extremely useful in BG1. There are many occasions where summons would be able to kill or seriously injure opponents if several of them are already established, but where it's difficult to get them established in the first place - and sanctuary would allow that to happen. I agree the advantage would be much less in SoD when enemies will follow a sanctuaried character even if not attacking, but it would still make things easier against one or two opponents following.
Braxx II. is getting more and more comfortable and rushed through Baldurs Gate and Candlekeep
- With Potions Braxx pushed Pick Pocket to 135 so he could safely grab the Cloak of Balduran from Quenash.
- Shortly after he also got the Helm of Balduran from its secret cache (Fire Resistance!).
- Failed to convince Ragefast and killed him with some door-cheese. Aquired the Nymph Cloak.
- Got the Shield of the Fallen Stars after some walking and talking.
- Stole the Telescop from the Hall of Wonders and stealthed out unseen.
- Robbed Oberan's house for the Thieves Guild and killed Resar the Mage using door-cheese.
- Cleared the Seven Suns backstabbing the Dopplegangers.
- Killed the Ogre Mage with an Arrow of Slaying (first time ever!).
- Sneaked through the Iron Throne picked up the documents and moved out unseen.
- Back to Candlekeep Braxx immediately gulped a Potion of Invisibility to trick the Ogre Mages. Down in the secret Library he protected himself against Fire, Electricity, Magic Missiles and Web. Thanks to Potion of Mastery he picked all locks and grabbed the Tomes without problems. He sneaked unseen through the enemy lines and stopped only to kill two Greater Basilisks (Potion of Mirroring!). With level 7/7 reached its time to get back to Baldurs Gate.
The Ducal Palace isnt far anymore – time to get prepared!
I also have some little progress, grabbed Kiels Helmet and Durlags Goblet and also cleared the way to the next level. I only "need" the goblet and Helmet but it would be nice to get the staff of cheese and the sling +3. The infinite fireball trap near the ghasts is pretty funny to lure enemies onto and repeatedly trigger while being fire resistant and invis/sanctuaried. Also I was able to confirm that the 5 attacks of the spider form actually works with a sling, which is pretty neat.
Yeah that's the blessing and curse of soloing, you get max level super early in almost any way you damn please, but in exchange for me at least any further xp you get feels wasted.
Phew !! I finally found some time to write my progress. Here goes :
Caligula made it through De'Arnise castle. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I was invisible most of the time, but, for the few trolls I decided to deal with, they didn't pose much of a problem. They didn't have the thac0 to hit me reliably. I also decided to tackle the Otyugh, because, I had to have revenge for the one in Chateau Irenicus and under the Copper Coronet. Even Spirit trolls were not too bad, because being evil with the Harmony shield meant they couldn't do much against me. Their Flame Strike was hitting like a truck though. The few Yuan-ti mages I fought were done by the going-up-and-down-the-stairs cheese. My summons started to make a big difference.
Just to make sure that I was able to forge the FotA, I fought Glacius. Getting here was a tad complicated, as I didn't want to fight the trolls just before him. I had to go invisible, break the door open with strength, open the door, go back invisible with a potion, enter the room and close the door before me. Then, I fought Glacius (I had no way to charm him). My summons and kiting with a sling did him in. For the Umber Hulks before Tor'Gal, the choke point strat with the Harmony shield were enough.
Tor'Gal himself was... actually quite easy !! I lured him away from his goons with invisibility, had my Efreeti burn all his spells on him and finally kited him with a Storm Giant Strength potion, a Potion of Invulnerability (to shrug off the fear effect he has with negative saving throws) and an Oil of Speed. Finished him with an Acid arrow. Simple, effective.
After that I took the stuff beside Nalia's father corpse and the one in the golem room with haste and got out. I'm the Lord of De'Arnise castle now !!
I was inches away from level 16, so I decided to finish Mae'Var. His goons on the first level were a joke : they just couldn't hit with anything else but a crit. I made short work of them. Mae'var and his assassins were something else, though. I went down, saw his assassins gulp invis potions, I got upstairs and went to sleep at the Sea's Bounty. I did that a few time to burn through their potions. Once they didn't have any left, the group was much more manageable. I had to take a few charges of the Rod of Resurection, though.
Caligula is now working on the first level of the Watcher's Keep, sitting strong at almost level 17. Stay tune for more to come !!
I'm thinking of going on a LoB run, but I definitely wouldn't solo it since all the kiting required would be too taxing on my nerves.
How about just choosing a class where kiting is less important? A thief could go for back-stabbing or trap-stacking for instance, a mage/sorcerer can do an awful lot with blind and web and a cleric can visit the basilisks early and then buff up a bunch of skeletons to cause havoc. If you want something a bit more esoteric you could see which is better - shaman spirit summons or totemic druid ones ...
In BG1 you don't really need to kite, but in SoD it's a different story. I personally never endure kiting for long, that's why I haven't gotten far into SoD and really hope I can get thru without it.
Once you have played SoD several times you will realize that you can skip most enemies - which will reduce the kiting & fighting significantly. So if you dont wanna kite that much: Stealth or invisibility are your best friends! Nymph Cloak is another story!
No progess from Braxx II. who is still resting in the FAI - planning his next moves!
Grrr. Shagrat just had another attempt. He had worked laboriously up to 131k XP, to be within touching distance of his 9th and final BG1 level. He'd previously visited Durlag's, but left the battle horror on the battlements then and decided to go back for that to get the last bit of XP needed. He went up and down the stairs, but was surprised to see that 3 skeletons had come back down with him and blocked the mini-stairs down from the little dais. I thought I would be able to draw them along it a bit and be able to run round them, but Shagrat was unable to get past when 2 of them were standing together and he got blocked in. In the process of trying that he also got hit 3 times - 2 of them maximums - and suddenly the danger was all too real. Too late I realised I should have used the invisibility ring right at the start and a final slice of a skeleton halberd ensured there was no escape.
A few points to note about the shaman: - someone referred to using spirit summons outside sight range. I guess that's from an earlier version of the EE as the summons now will normally not go outside your sight range and, if they do, they will never attack. - lack of invisibility is a real pain for this class (though pixie dust would be available in SoD). The few potions and ring charges available are useful in emergencies, but there are not enough to use them routinely to avoid combats or rest safely. That makes for instance the Nashkel Mine difficult as the only real option to make progress against enemy forces right inside the entrance to Mulahey's cave is Algernon's Cloak - and resting to keep trying that means retreating up onto at least the second level to avoid the hordes of kobold commandos that spawn on rest (and don't disappear after resting). - I took animal summoning at 4th level, which is very useful to draw enemies back into range of spirit summons. Annoyingly though, your own summons count against the limit for spirit summons. Thus it's possible to have 5 animals as normal, but any animals you do have reduce the number of spirits available. From 6th-11th level you can have up to 3 spirit summons, so you could have 1 animal and 2 spirits, 2 animals and 1 spirit or 3-5 animals on their own. I suspect this is a bug rather than intended behavior unless anyone can think of a rationale for this restriction?
@Grond0 It is really finnicky to have the right positioning for your summons to aggro while out of sight. The summons always spawn northeast of your char, so the enemy must be NE of you, too. Then you have to run towards the enemy and have autopause on sight activated, immediately run barely out of sight again, then activate your summon. This isn't always practical, since the dps of the summons is pretty low, but you can combine it with precast Fog, which in BG1 doesn't aggro the enemy if you cast it completely out of sight AND the enemy doesn't wander into your sight range.
You are right about invisibility and the animal summoning, the same goes for summoned nymphs and I don't get why you wouldn't be able to have two summons and your sprits.
@Victor_Creed_SFV I've given the summons a good workout . I agree that a standard tactic is to set the shaman marginally out of sight so that the summons will be able to see them when they appear (rocks, pillars etc can be used as well as just distance for this). The summons will never attack if they go outside sight range distance, but I agree that on rare occasions they will attack if they are in sight, even though the enemy is not (they will also attack if they are within sight range distance, even if not actually in sight - due to an obstacle in the way). In my installation though this is very rare, not the norm at all. The standard summons behavior is to start running backwards and forwards when they start getting close to the edge of sight (thus they usually refuse to attack enemies even when they are visible, but at extreme range) - this behavior will often drag enemies towards you and thus allow them to attack properly. There are many hazards with using summons though - you can't just switch off and leave them to it even when the enemy is clearly weaker. For instance: - you may get unlucky and fail to create more summons for many rounds in a row. - multiple enemies will crowd round the edge of summons and eventually target you. - enemies will normally prioritise you over summons and only attack the latter if they get very close to them, which won't always be the case for enemies responding to calls for help. Ranged enemies that can see both you and summons will also target you. - deaths of either summons or enemies will reconfigure placements and may result in attacks on you. - confusion or fear effects from summons can also change positions with nasty results. That doesn't mean that the spirit summons are not a good tactic - they are, but there is quite a lot of micro-management required to make use of them even though you can't control them directly.
It sounds like there are also some differences between our installations, e.g. - positioning of summons. The first spirit summoned for me appears just to the west of north, then straight north, then fractionally east of north. - use of Fog will cause enemies to react. Sometimes they will attack immediately, although normally they don't realise where the attack is coming from. However, the Fog will always cause them to move around and that means they tend to find you very quickly. If you've got the latest update it may be that the differences are because I'm playing with SoD rather than BGEE - although similar there are differences between the games.
@Grond0 Oh, I believe you that there are many instances where the strategy wouldn't work I haven't thoroughly tested the shaman, I started BG1 and SoD to generally test out some of my ideas, but because i didn't like the shaman in SoD at all I didn't play very far into BG1. One of the points you mentioned really aggravated me, the time it sometimes takes for summons to reappear is very random and it sometimes just takes way too long.
My summons appear northwest, too. Why I wrote northeast ... Only Helm knows. Yes, fog makes enemies wander for me, too that's why I wrote they will not aggro unless they wander into sight, but what I often experienced, by then my first summon engaged them long enough for them to not prioritise me over the summon anymore.
After nearly reaching the XP cap Braxx felt invincible thanks to his stealth and backstab cheese. To get even stronger he grabbed the Charisma & Constitution Tomes without problems so it was time to face the Iron Throne again.
The fight against Cythandria started easy. He lured the two Golems downstairs and restealthed. Now it was only a „fair“ 1vs1 – which should have been an easy job after Braxx dispelled her protections. But thanks to overconfidence Braxx did not buff up to the maximum and went straight into a melee fight where he took a hit combined with a Magic Missile that put away half of his life. He immediately retreated and put on the Shield Amulet – healed up again – and hacked the poor Mage apart.
For Slythe he charmed five Guards and build up a barrier so that the assassin would not be able to reach and one-hit-kill him. He lured Slythe to the entrance and – like intended – he wasted all of his invisibility backstabs on the guards while he dispelled his buffs and fired one arrow after another. The fight looked like an easy victory until Kristin casted a Chaos out of the dark that confused all of the Guards – while Braxx saved easily. In all of this chaos (how fitting!) Braxx desperately tried to finish off Slythe – but failed. Kristin in the meanwhile destroyed one guard after another so Slythe finally went for Braxx chopping away his HP in no time. Only a fast invisibility potion and some hit & restealth made sure that Braxx killed Slythe in the same moment the last guard went down – phew! He grabbed the documents, restealthed and got out as fast as he can...
Maybe i shouldnt take this challenge too easy...
P.S. Cant say anything about the Shaman as i never played it - but it sounds interesting!
Seems like your abundant knowledge of the game by now called for a no reload @Harpagornis .
Another thing which makes the shaman too weak in my eyes is the fact while it has druid spells it has priest spell progression, so you don't get Harm in SoD, which is such a gamechanger vs Big B.
If it at least had both priest and druid spells, stuff like Sanctuary to make up for it, but no only the dancing, fog and magic fireballs kinda set him apart, but I feel like one spirit animal from totemic Druid is stronger in BG 1 than all 3 from the shaman but it doesn't hinder your actions at all and Totemic even could dual if you wnated to, but most importantly it has fast spell progression and you can even buff up your pet if you please.
Yesterday late night I tested out the Totemic Druid. The level 1 animal is not very strong, you can compare it to most regular familiars (except the stronger Imp). At level 3 it gets stronger, i tested the Wolf, which gets some kind of slow effect addded to it's attack, the enemy can save vs death against it, but the effect is so strong the enemy is almost paralyzed it attacks once every 2 rounds or something like that. After leveling to 4 I got lazy because it got late, so I used SK to level to 5, 7 and finally 10.
The level 10 familiar blew my mind as it is immune to fire, electricity, cold, pretty much all status effects including polymorph, level drain fear and so on, and last but not least NORMAL WEAPONS!
You also get 2 familiars at level 7 and they can stunlock almost any enemy with their slow effect, since it is almost impossible even in LoB to constantly save against it, since their APR at 7 is not to shabby either and ofc 2 wolves attack twice as often. Unlike the shaman you can combine your animals with other summons. Getting to level 10 in BG1 is easy as we all know and ofc the druid has also other nasty spells like Insect swarm and ironskins.
When I thought the shaman was pretty good i didn't believe the totemic is this much stronger.
edit: Further testing shows the animal gets immunities to cold and electricity at level 1 already, I was wrong about it being fire resistant at all.
At level 3 you get the immunities to status effects including petrification, dogee and Korak can cause a lot of "harm" together even tho dogee alone can not solo a basilisk at level 3 it can bring it to badly wounded.
The immunities were the reason why i wanted to start with a Totemic Druid but after switching to no-reload and realizing that the power of his summons will drop significantly later on i abandoned him. However: For "normal" LoB + SCS Runs the Totemic Druid should be abe to reach Melissan - somehow! Good luck!
If I'd play him I would probably dual into fighter in SoA at level 15, since the level progression is shit for druids from level 14 on (but 15 gives you poison immunity). I always see Big B as the greatest threat to my personal playstyle and Harm would take care of that.
Idk if I'd ever no reload BG, since I haven't gotten the ultimate achievement in PoE yet and that is no reload, too and I'd much rather get that first.
But the way I play no reload in PoE would probably save me any restarts in BG1 even tho it takes slightly more time, but I basically have 2 characters one is a reload and one is ironman and I test out my strategy on the reload one first.
Is there an ironman feature in BG implemented or do you need mods for that?
Ironman Mode in PoE - as you know - can easily be tricked so its - like in BG - up to the player if he wants to play fair or not. Feel free to go for the Ultimate first - if you like!
On another note: Is it possible to change profincies via SK in this challenge? I realised that due to my previously bugged Polymorph which now works again quarterstaff ould be preferred for my char instead of maces, but I already put my 2 points into maces.
@Victor_Creed_SFV the stats for totemic summons are in the Adventurer's Guide (as well as nearly all other summons). The L10 wolf for instance has THAC0 of 9, 3 APR and paralyses for 7 seconds on a failed save vs death at +1. That's pretty good against most enemies, though the tougher characters with the LoB save bonus are likely to have automatic saves even if doomed. All the L10 summons are immune to petrification, but immunities vary across summons and at different levels - for instance none are immune at L1 and only the snake and wolf at L3.
I agree that if you compare them directly the shaman's summons are only a shadow of the totemic, but they do have the massive advantage of infinite numbers . While I'd certainly prefer the totemic in most situations, if resting is a problem or you're restricting meta-gaming the shaman starts looking good ...
The horrors of Durlags Tower proved to be a walk in the park for Braxx - well mostly. Thanks to Find Traps 95 (75 + 20 from Potion of Perception) he was able to disarm all traps while sneaking unseen through the enemy lines grabbing one quest item after another. It was just a matter of time before he aquired the last item - the bottle of whine for Love - and the final encounter started.
Buffed up and protected by Greenstone Amulet he lured Fear far away and parked him near the strange machine while Pride was parked safely in front of the machine room. Now Braxx prepared to take down Love - but was surprisingly ambushed by Avarice who hit him for 90 damage. Ouch!!! Braxx immediately ran away and restealthed near the forge room. Normally Avarice does not attack so soon but maybe he got angered that i tricked his old friends so badly.
However: After healing up again - and hearing invisible Avarice stopping somewhere next to him the path was clear again. Love himself had no chance against a relentless attacking Braxx who was untouchable by any of his CC´s. The only trick was to get a fast hit & run to trick Love going for another spell cast instead of attacking in close combat - which can hurt quite badly in the long run. After around two minutes Love went down and Braxx grabbed his Wardstone.
The Dopplegangers on the next level proved to be no challenge thanks to backstabbing while all of the traps got disarmed with ease. After a lot of hit & run Braxx finally took Kiels Helmet along with Durlags Goblet - maybe he will need it soon!
Important Note: With regard to the Palace Ambush it looks like i have discovered a neat trick to make this battle much easier - especially for Warriors. We have already discussed that charming the Nobles seems to be no option as the talking with the Dukes will only trigger if all six Dopplegangers have died. As the Charm prevents the transformation it looks like you are stuck here.
But thats not true!! I have tested it again using a Charm on one Noble and after killing the other five i used CTRL + T to advance the game timer until the charm spell ended. What happened now was that the Noble will still transform and can be killed quite easily. Once he is dead the talking with the Dukes will trigger as usual. This means: You can keep the damn Mage completly out of the battle making everything much easier! As you normally have to wait twelve hours its smart to rest in between once so the charm should end not too long ago once the other Dopplegangers have died.
Yeah, if you are in a good position to use your 3 summons the shamans are definitely a force, tho in BG1 they just don't do any damage, while 2 wolves just shred stuff. The problem with the shaman is, their last tier of summons comes with level 18 and even then it's random which tier you actually get, while the druid unlocks tier 5 with level 10, which is in BG1. But ofc if you just want your sommons to tank forever then the unlimited factor is awesome.
I managed to get some further progress with my F/M/C in today, doing the elemental challenges in Durlag's basement l3 and the chess board, now I'm in the last level.
The elemental challenges required some reloads for me, mainly because I didn't remember what made them tick, since I last played all of the game years ago, when EE came out.
The bear got defeated by combination of my skeletons, me being immune to frost and normal weapons due to Wraithform and Belt of Antipode. (Even tho neither bear nor wolves aggro you if you cast the summons from out of sight, which only works if the bear is on the other side of the screen, since it wanders)
The Air Aspect was hardest for me, since it hits guaranteed if I have -9 AC and getting 11 AC requires me to change my spellbook and use potions, which is not worth it, since it still would hit me. It also instantly destroys skeleton Summons, so my strategy was to lure it out of it's room and reload cheese till wand of paralyze worked, which doesn't require too many reloads even tho it seems to have some slight MR, it's saves don't seem to high.
The phoenix guard is slightly easier, I didn't need to lure it out and when skeletons cast out of sight aggro it the female guard doesn't aggro on the skeletons. The guard pretty swiftly kills the summons, but it was enough time to doom and paralyze wand, which hit 1st try.
The fission slime was pretty easy once I understood it can only be harmed by missile and elemental damage and has nonexistent MR or saves. Sent n the skeletons which can't damage it, but use the distraction to doom and then blind it (1st try works) then I just kept using my sling till it was dead.
The chess board is super easy all you have to do is fireball out of sight till the king dies.
Sorry if I spam this forum, but I just followed up on @Grond0 's Advice about the Adventurer's Guide and I seriously didn't know I have this amazing piece of knowledge on my computer. That is going straigt to my phone, so much better than surfing for stuff on the web.
As to the spirit animals, holy shit I did not expect some of the stuff they do. Besides paralyzing the wolf also has a chance to level drain??? And for all the animals their weapons count as +6. oO Seriously tempted to roll that druid now.
To have a little fun while I'm continuing my challenge thru BG1 I have created a Totemic Druid for SoA LoB ScS. In the whole Irenicus Dungeon there is no creature that can hit HD 10 Spirit Animals with their weapons, not even the Cambion even tho it drops a +2 Weapon. Only magic missiles can harm them, but no mage has enough to kill them.
I also had a look at further druid spells. The fire summon cannot even be hit by +1 weapons (You can have 3 animals + 2 fire elements) Nature's Beauty is the mos op spell in the game, the permanent blind it delivers cannot be saved against and only magic resistance can save against it. (Blind also lowers further saving throws by -4 just in case the enemies already being pretty much dead isn't enough)
Put in Harm and the Totemic Druid looks good enough to kill (nearly) anything. The Berserker/Druid i played up to SoA was a terrifying monster that i couldnt handle anymore - lol. Dual Classing the the other way round also looks like an option even though it might be a bit painful if you go for level 15. There is a guy on this forum who used to play Shapeshifter/Fighter and he had a lot fun with it.
Yes, it seems like Druids actually works very well with Duaing the other way, since recovering your druid levels takes less xp than it took you to get there (at least if you go in for Druid lvl 15, like I do). You also get the HlA to help you over the time with no druid levels, I'm thinking either Deva or Fire Elemental Transformation, the Deva is stronger, but the transformation lasts longar and has the advantage of making yourself invul to +1 and less.
I got to almost 1 mil xp yesterday night doing pretty much every quest I damn pleased and even ambushe are no problem if you prestealth via pixie Dust, cast summons out of sight and watch the carnage.
I found one ambush a low level druid can not handle in SoA, but I'm quite sure it's an Ascension component as i never encountered this before ever. You get wailaid by "Travelers" who then turn into charname lookalikes with a green circle around them. They do not attack until attacked but have unlimited spells and don't seem to be effected by any spells.
Comments
- With Potions Braxx pushed Pick Pocket to 135 so he could safely grab the Cloak of Balduran from Quenash.
- Shortly after he also got the Helm of Balduran from its secret cache (Fire Resistance!).
- Failed to convince Ragefast and killed him with some door-cheese. Aquired the Nymph Cloak.
- Got the Shield of the Fallen Stars after some walking and talking.
- Stole the Telescop from the Hall of Wonders and stealthed out unseen.
- Robbed Oberan's house for the Thieves Guild and killed Resar the Mage using door-cheese.
- Cleared the Seven Suns backstabbing the Dopplegangers.
- Killed the Ogre Mage with an Arrow of Slaying (first time ever!).
- Sneaked through the Iron Throne picked up the documents and moved out unseen.
- Back to Candlekeep Braxx immediately gulped a Potion of Invisibility to trick the Ogre Mages. Down in the secret Library he protected himself against Fire, Electricity, Magic Missiles and Web. Thanks to Potion of Mastery he picked all locks and grabbed the Tomes without problems. He sneaked unseen through the enemy lines and stopped only to kill two Greater Basilisks (Potion of Mirroring!). With level 7/7 reached its time to get back to Baldurs Gate.
The Ducal Palace isnt far anymore – time to get prepared!
I only "need" the goblet and Helmet but it would be nice to get the staff of cheese and the sling +3.
The infinite fireball trap near the ghasts is pretty funny to lure enemies onto and repeatedly trigger while being fire resistant and invis/sanctuaried.
Also I was able to confirm that the 5 attacks of the spider form actually works with a sling, which is pretty neat.
Caligula made it through De'Arnise castle. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I was invisible most of the time, but, for the few trolls I decided to deal with, they didn't pose much of a problem. They didn't have the thac0 to hit me reliably. I also decided to tackle the Otyugh, because, I had to have revenge for the one in Chateau Irenicus and under the Copper Coronet. Even Spirit trolls were not too bad, because being evil with the Harmony shield meant they couldn't do much against me. Their Flame Strike was hitting like a truck though. The few Yuan-ti mages I fought were done by the going-up-and-down-the-stairs cheese. My summons started to make a big difference.
Just to make sure that I was able to forge the FotA, I fought Glacius. Getting here was a tad complicated, as I didn't want to fight the trolls just before him. I had to go invisible, break the door open with strength, open the door, go back invisible with a potion, enter the room and close the door before me. Then, I fought Glacius (I had no way to charm him). My summons and kiting with a sling did him in. For the Umber Hulks before Tor'Gal, the choke point strat with the Harmony shield were enough.
Tor'Gal himself was... actually quite easy !! I lured him away from his goons with invisibility, had my Efreeti burn all his spells on him and finally kited him with a Storm Giant Strength potion, a Potion of Invulnerability (to shrug off the fear effect he has with negative saving throws) and an Oil of Speed. Finished him with an Acid arrow. Simple, effective.
After that I took the stuff beside Nalia's father corpse and the one in the golem room with haste and got out. I'm the Lord of De'Arnise castle now !!
I was inches away from level 16, so I decided to finish Mae'Var. His goons on the first level were a joke : they just couldn't hit with anything else but a crit. I made short work of them. Mae'var and his assassins were something else, though. I went down, saw his assassins gulp invis potions, I got upstairs and went to sleep at the Sea's Bounty. I did that a few time to burn through their potions. Once they didn't have any left, the group was much more manageable. I had to take a few charges of the Rod of Resurection, though.
Caligula is now working on the first level of the Watcher's Keep, sitting strong at almost level 17. Stay tune for more to come !!
See ya !!
I personally never endure kiting for long, that's why I haven't gotten far into SoD and really hope I can get thru without it.
No progess from Braxx II. who is still resting in the FAI - planning his next moves!
A few points to note about the shaman:
- someone referred to using spirit summons outside sight range. I guess that's from an earlier version of the EE as the summons now will normally not go outside your sight range and, if they do, they will never attack.
- lack of invisibility is a real pain for this class (though pixie dust would be available in SoD). The few potions and ring charges available are useful in emergencies, but there are not enough to use them routinely to avoid combats or rest safely. That makes for instance the Nashkel Mine difficult as the only real option to make progress against enemy forces right inside the entrance to Mulahey's cave is Algernon's Cloak - and resting to keep trying that means retreating up onto at least the second level to avoid the hordes of kobold commandos that spawn on rest (and don't disappear after resting).
- I took animal summoning at 4th level, which is very useful to draw enemies back into range of spirit summons. Annoyingly though, your own summons count against the limit for spirit summons. Thus it's possible to have 5 animals as normal, but any animals you do have reduce the number of spirits available. From 6th-11th level you can have up to 3 spirit summons, so you could have 1 animal and 2 spirits, 2 animals and 1 spirit or 3-5 animals on their own. I suspect this is a bug rather than intended behavior unless anyone can think of a rationale for this restriction?
It is really finnicky to have the right positioning for your summons to aggro while out of sight.
The summons always spawn northeast of your char, so the enemy must be NE of you, too.
Then you have to run towards the enemy and have autopause on sight activated, immediately run barely out of sight again, then activate your summon.
This isn't always practical, since the dps of the summons is pretty low, but you can combine it with precast Fog, which in BG1 doesn't aggro the enemy if you cast it completely out of sight AND the enemy doesn't wander into your sight range.
You are right about invisibility and the animal summoning, the same goes for summoned nymphs and I don't get why you wouldn't be able to have two summons and your sprits.
- you may get unlucky and fail to create more summons for many rounds in a row.
- multiple enemies will crowd round the edge of summons and eventually target you.
- enemies will normally prioritise you over summons and only attack the latter if they get very close to them, which won't always be the case for enemies responding to calls for help. Ranged enemies that can see both you and summons will also target you.
- deaths of either summons or enemies will reconfigure placements and may result in attacks on you.
- confusion or fear effects from summons can also change positions with nasty results.
That doesn't mean that the spirit summons are not a good tactic - they are, but there is quite a lot of micro-management required to make use of them even though you can't control them directly.
It sounds like there are also some differences between our installations, e.g.
- positioning of summons. The first spirit summoned for me appears just to the west of north, then straight north, then fractionally east of north.
- use of Fog will cause enemies to react. Sometimes they will attack immediately, although normally they don't realise where the attack is coming from. However, the Fog will always cause them to move around and that means they tend to find you very quickly.
If you've got the latest update it may be that the differences are because I'm playing with SoD rather than BGEE - although similar there are differences between the games.
Oh, I believe you that there are many instances where the strategy wouldn't work I haven't thoroughly tested the shaman, I started BG1 and SoD to generally test out some of my ideas, but because i didn't like the shaman in SoD at all I didn't play very far into BG1.
One of the points you mentioned really aggravated me, the time it sometimes takes for summons to reappear is very random and it sometimes just takes way too long.
My summons appear northwest, too. Why I wrote northeast ... Only Helm knows.
Yes, fog makes enemies wander for me, too that's why I wrote they will not aggro unless they wander into sight, but what I often experienced, by then my first summon engaged them long enough for them to not prioritise me over the summon anymore.
After nearly reaching the XP cap Braxx felt invincible thanks to his stealth and backstab cheese. To get even stronger he grabbed the Charisma & Constitution Tomes without problems so it was time to face the Iron Throne again.
The fight against Cythandria started easy. He lured the two Golems downstairs and restealthed. Now it was only a „fair“ 1vs1 – which should have been an easy job after Braxx dispelled her protections. But thanks to overconfidence Braxx did not buff up to the maximum and went straight into a melee fight where he took a hit combined with a Magic Missile that put away half of his life. He immediately retreated and put on the Shield Amulet – healed up again – and hacked the poor Mage apart.
For Slythe he charmed five Guards and build up a barrier so that the assassin would not be able to reach and one-hit-kill him. He lured Slythe to the entrance and – like intended – he wasted all of his invisibility backstabs on the guards while he dispelled his buffs and fired one arrow after another. The fight looked like an easy victory until Kristin casted a Chaos out of the dark that confused all of the Guards – while Braxx saved easily. In all of this chaos (how fitting!) Braxx desperately tried to finish off Slythe – but failed. Kristin in the meanwhile destroyed one guard after another so Slythe finally went for Braxx chopping away his HP in no time. Only a fast invisibility potion and some hit & restealth made sure that Braxx killed Slythe in the same moment the last guard went down – phew! He grabbed the documents, restealthed and got out as fast as he can...
Maybe i shouldnt take this challenge too easy...
P.S. Cant say anything about the Shaman as i never played it - but it sounds interesting!
Another thing which makes the shaman too weak in my eyes is the fact while it has druid spells it has priest spell progression, so you don't get Harm in SoD, which is such a gamechanger vs Big B.
If it at least had both priest and druid spells, stuff like Sanctuary to make up for it, but no only the dancing, fog and magic fireballs kinda set him apart, but I feel like one spirit animal from totemic Druid is stronger in BG 1 than all 3 from the shaman but it doesn't hinder your actions at all and Totemic even could dual if you wnated to, but most importantly it has fast spell progression and you can even buff up your pet if you please.
The level 1 animal is not very strong, you can compare it to most regular familiars (except the stronger Imp).
At level 3 it gets stronger, i tested the Wolf, which gets some kind of slow effect addded to it's attack, the enemy can save vs death against it, but the effect is so strong the enemy is almost paralyzed it attacks once every 2 rounds or something like that.
After leveling to 4 I got lazy because it got late, so I used SK to level to 5, 7 and finally 10.
The level 10 familiar blew my mind as it is immune to fire, electricity, cold, pretty much all status effects including polymorph, level drain fear and so on, and last but not least NORMAL WEAPONS!
You also get 2 familiars at level 7 and they can stunlock almost any enemy with their slow effect, since it is almost impossible even in LoB to constantly save against it, since their APR at 7 is not to shabby either and ofc 2 wolves attack twice as often.
Unlike the shaman you can combine your animals with other summons.
Getting to level 10 in BG1 is easy as we all know and ofc the druid has also other nasty spells like Insect swarm and ironskins.
When I thought the shaman was pretty good i didn't believe the totemic is this much stronger.
edit: Further testing shows the animal gets immunities to cold and electricity at level 1 already, I was wrong about it being fire resistant at all.
At level 3 you get the immunities to status effects including petrification, dogee and Korak can cause a lot of "harm" together even tho dogee alone can not solo a basilisk at level 3 it can bring it to badly wounded.
I always see Big B as the greatest threat to my personal playstyle and Harm would take care of that.
Idk if I'd ever no reload BG, since I haven't gotten the ultimate achievement in PoE yet and that is no reload, too and I'd much rather get that first.
But the way I play no reload in PoE would probably save me any restarts in BG1 even tho it takes slightly more time, but I basically have 2 characters one is a reload and one is ironman and I test out my strategy on the reload one first.
Is there an ironman feature in BG implemented or do you need mods for that?
Is it possible to change profincies via SK in this challenge?
I realised that due to my previously bugged Polymorph which now works again quarterstaff ould be preferred for my char instead of maces, but I already put my 2 points into maces.
I agree that if you compare them directly the shaman's summons are only a shadow of the totemic, but they do have the massive advantage of infinite numbers
The horrors of Durlags Tower proved to be a walk in the park for Braxx - well mostly. Thanks to Find Traps 95 (75 + 20 from Potion of Perception) he was able to disarm all traps while sneaking unseen through the enemy lines grabbing one quest item after another. It was just a matter of time before he aquired the last item - the bottle of whine for Love - and the final encounter started.
Buffed up and protected by Greenstone Amulet he lured Fear far away and parked him near the strange machine while Pride was parked safely in front of the machine room. Now Braxx prepared to take down Love - but was surprisingly ambushed by Avarice who hit him for 90 damage. Ouch!!! Braxx immediately ran away and restealthed near the forge room. Normally Avarice does not attack so soon but maybe he got angered that i tricked his old friends so badly.
However: After healing up again - and hearing invisible Avarice stopping somewhere next to him the path was clear again. Love himself had no chance against a relentless attacking Braxx who was untouchable by any of his CC´s. The only trick was to get a fast hit & run to trick Love going for another spell cast instead of attacking in close combat - which can hurt quite badly in the long run. After around two minutes Love went down and Braxx grabbed his Wardstone.
The Dopplegangers on the next level proved to be no challenge thanks to backstabbing while all of the traps got disarmed with ease. After a lot of hit & run Braxx finally took Kiels Helmet along with Durlags Goblet - maybe he will need it soon!
Important Note: With regard to the Palace Ambush it looks like i have discovered a neat trick to make this battle much easier - especially for Warriors. We have already discussed that charming the Nobles seems to be no option as the talking with the Dukes will only trigger if all six Dopplegangers have died. As the Charm prevents the transformation it looks like you are stuck here.
But thats not true!! I have tested it again using a Charm on one Noble and after killing the other five i used CTRL + T to advance the game timer until the charm spell ended. What happened now was that the Noble will still transform and can be killed quite easily. Once he is dead the talking with the Dukes will trigger as usual. This means: You can keep the damn Mage completly out of the battle making everything much easier! As you normally have to wait twelve hours its smart to rest in between once so the charm should end not too long ago once the other Dopplegangers have died.
The problem with the shaman is, their last tier of summons comes with level 18 and even then it's random which tier you actually get, while the druid unlocks tier 5 with level 10, which is in BG1.
But ofc if you just want your sommons to tank forever then the unlimited factor is awesome.
I managed to get some further progress with my F/M/C in today, doing the elemental challenges in Durlag's basement l3 and the chess board, now I'm in the last level.
The elemental challenges required some reloads for me, mainly because I didn't remember what made them tick, since I last played all of the game years ago, when EE came out.
The bear got defeated by combination of my skeletons, me being immune to frost and normal weapons due to Wraithform and Belt of Antipode. (Even tho neither bear nor wolves aggro you if you cast the summons from out of sight, which only works if the bear is on the other side of the screen, since it wanders)
The Air Aspect was hardest for me, since it hits guaranteed if I have -9 AC and getting 11 AC requires me to change my spellbook and use potions, which is not worth it, since it still would hit me.
It also instantly destroys skeleton Summons, so my strategy was to lure it out of it's room and reload cheese till wand of paralyze worked, which doesn't require too many reloads even tho it seems to have some slight MR, it's saves don't seem to high.
The phoenix guard is slightly easier, I didn't need to lure it out and when skeletons cast out of sight aggro it the female guard doesn't aggro on the skeletons. The guard pretty swiftly kills the summons, but it was enough time to doom and paralyze wand, which hit 1st try.
The fission slime was pretty easy once I understood it can only be harmed by missile and elemental damage and has nonexistent MR or saves. Sent n the skeletons which can't damage it, but use the distraction to doom and then blind it (1st try works) then I just kept using my sling till it was dead.
The chess board is super easy all you have to do is fireball out of sight till the king dies.
That is going straigt to my phone, so much better than surfing for stuff on the web.
As to the spirit animals, holy shit I did not expect some of the stuff they do.
Besides paralyzing the wolf also has a chance to level drain???
And for all the animals their weapons count as +6. oO
Seriously tempted to roll that druid now.
In the whole Irenicus Dungeon there is no creature that can hit HD 10 Spirit Animals with their weapons, not even the Cambion even tho it drops a +2 Weapon.
Only magic missiles can harm them, but no mage has enough to kill them.
I also had a look at further druid spells.
The fire summon cannot even be hit by +1 weapons (You can have 3 animals + 2 fire elements)
Nature's Beauty is the mos op spell in the game, the permanent blind it delivers cannot be saved against and only magic resistance can save against it. (Blind also lowers further saving throws by -4 just in case the enemies already being pretty much dead isn't enough)
You also get the HlA to help you over the time with no druid levels, I'm thinking either Deva or Fire Elemental Transformation, the Deva is stronger, but the transformation lasts longar and has the advantage of making yourself invul to +1 and less.
I got to almost 1 mil xp yesterday night doing pretty much every quest I damn pleased and even ambushe are no problem if you prestealth via pixie Dust, cast summons out of sight and watch the carnage.
You get wailaid by "Travelers" who then turn into charname lookalikes with a green circle around them.
They do not attack until attacked but have unlimited spells and don't seem to be effected by any spells.