Yeah, all the best @Grond0! Today and in the coming days - especially with Freda! I know you had a good run ealier with this combo so pushing hard into SoD should be possible! Keep on going @billy_pilgrim! Its nice to see someone using different apporaches as we - for instance - tend to charm Mulahey and let the Kobolds do the dirty work. Hope i will get time to move on with Mi soon!
P.S. No, bow skills are lost when dualing to Cleric but as i intend to use Slings mainly (Strength Bonus!) it doesnt matter.
Thanks Harpagornis, but Freda has just cashed in her chips. Her last target in the wilderness areas was the Valley of the Tombs, where she had her longest battle of her run with Narcillicus' mustard jellies. They were being consistently annoying by hitting her with criticals before she could grind through their HPs. Eventually, however, after running off the map at least 10 times she was able to finish them off.
In theory Narcillicus himself should have been far more straight-forward to deal with by charming, but I guess I must have relaxed too much after the jelly fights. On just the second attempt at charming him I thought I'd retreated as normal after failing with the attempt, but I guess the click didn't register as Narcillicus spotted Freda and immediately released an emotion. She was slightly too far from the map edge to run away and her clouded aura meant she needed to rely on a lucky save - but her luck was out. Occasionally in that situation, where a target has moved well out of sight of a spell-caster, you get lucky when they choose to buff up rather than follow-up their spell - but Narcillicus didn't make that mistake .
P.S. No, bow skills are lost when dualing to Cleric
This reminded me of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" (the most enjoyable book on punctuation you're likely to find). When I saw your post my immediate reaction was "that's not right", before noticing you'd sneaked in a comma .
Thanks all. Time for bed now, but I've squeezed in some action with Shagrat the shaman. He's been slowly ticking off encounters and is almost up to level 8 - once he's got nymphs available progress should become much quicker.
In an early morning session, Shagrat reached level 8 and went in search of revenge from Narcillicus. Nymph confusions allowed him to safely spot the mage for follow-up call lightnings - a round of those proved enough.
Nymphs and spirit summons also enabled him to pass through the Nashkel Mine, though without using invisibility that was still pretty hard work. Eventually though Shagrat made his way through to charm Mulahey and let the kobolds finish him off.
Nimbul became another confusion / lightning victim before Tranzig used all his spells on nymphs and was eaten by spirit summons.
Teven provided a lift to the Bandit Camp where Taurgosz was charmed and had a fatal encounter with a bear. Rather than spend the time to deal with the whole camp, Shagrat burned a couple of invisibility potions to just loot the chest. You might have thought that was playing it safe, but regrettably that wasn't the case.
My philosophy is that there should be a small amount of danger from traps during a run - otherwise that feature of the game becomes a bit pointless - so the occasional death from traps is acceptable. In order to die there Shagrat needed to be hit by the lightning twice, fail his save both times and receive damage on the high side from the strikes. I thought that combination would have a pretty low chance, but loaded the autosave 10 times to see if I had significantly misjudged the extent of the danger. I concluded I hadn't - Shagrat survived every time and was only near death once. However, perhaps next time he'll cast Armor of Faith to improve the odds a bit more - that would have saved him there .
@Harpagornis Thanks! Well, I havent played BGI too much, so I actually was just oblivious to the possibility of charming Mulahey
I know I could've sanctuary walked through the bandit camp and looted the chest, but I wanted to kill the guy with the full plate, I was still using the Ankheg shell and fullplate is a little better. So I cheesed it a bit using Glyph of warding, stacked about 100 (maybe more ) and kited him over them, he died, I looted and then used sanctuary to walk through the camp and grab the documents.
Went through cloakwood pretty simple, and of course I've learnt my lesson now, I simply charmed Davaeorn and let his battle horrors kill him.
Now I'm wondering around Baldur's Gate, I will get the helmet and the cloak.
I reached XP cap and I'm not sure if I'm going to do Durlags, the only thing in it for me is the large shield +2 and there is the +1/+4 to missile one I can buy in town instead. Can't really think of anything else I may need from Durlags (I will get the wis tome though ~ skip the labyrinth).
Durlags Tower can be quite funny even though i skip most parts nowadays! And big bad @Grond0 still likes to suffer. Or putting this challenge to new levels. At the end its all about perspective - no?
Mi charmed Drasus even though it took eight times before the charm landed. I generally have the feeling that charming works not that good anymore. Korlasz is another example. I was used that charms "nearly always" worked on first try but today she resists it even after dozens of tries - mostly without any reaction in the log. However: Drasus was taken down by the Guards and with her new Boots of Speed Mi stealthed through to Davaeorn. He soaked the traps using a Potion of Magic Blocking (again the charm did not work against the Guard) and parked the Battle Horrors in the side room. After some waiting and burning with Necklace of Missiles she buffed herself up to negate Davaeorns magic while slinging at him nonstop. Even with his Stoneskins she needed only 40 bullet stones before the evil Mage went down.
100% Lightning protection from one druid spell too ez for @Grond0 ?
I wouldn't want to take that spell as one of the shaman's choices. Admittedly there is a scroll in Ulgoth's Beard that could be used, but if you want to go the protection route the cheapest option would be to use a potion of insulation to top up Mulahey's boots.
I saw in the news that the Tolkien estate is publishing a new version of the tale of Beren and Luthien. That pushed me into thinking it was time I had a go with a fighter/thief in this challenge. As he's called Beren he should of course be human, but some sacrifices are just too great . At least I could imagine from his portrait that this dwarf has been hanging around elves for a while ...
Aaah! Dwarven Fighter/Thief!! The strongest combo around the Sword Coast! No? However: May the shadows be with you @Grond0!
Mi in the meanwhile has farmed a lot of gold and stuff in Baldurs Gate and just finished her trip to Candlekeep. No danger at all as she used Invisibility Potion against the Ogre Mages and buffed up with potions for the traps. The rest was sneaking through the shadows. Slythe and Cythandria are nearing. This could be interesting again. Hopefully!
EDIT: Slythe and Cythandria are no more! Five Guards absorbed all damage while Mi was shooting Dispelling Arrows and Bullets +2. Even though Kristin joined the fun she could not save her Assassin who went down with another stone on his head. For Cythandria Mi cleared first the backstabbers charming people in the Iron Throne and using the as distraction while shooting bullet stones. Once the Golems were lured downstairs she buffed up against magic and dispelled all protections and slinging her down quite fast. Time to take some rest before moving on to the Palace!
EDIT 2: The Palace is safe again! After charming the Mage Doppleganger and parking him in a side room (with one rest!) she charmed more people in- and outside to distract the other Dopplegangers. Fully buffed she went in stealth until the Assassin appeared again and dispelled everyone. With their powers heavily reduced Mi switched to slinging while aiming mainly at all Dopplegangers who attacked the Dukes. Both survived (injured only!) so Mi waited until the Mage transformed. Buffed by Magic Protection she soaked most of his spell while dispelling his protections and slinging him over and over again. This worked pretty well as the Reg Potion was more than enough to keep HP high. Too bad that Sarevok managed to rage down Liia before porting away. Time to hunt down the evil brother once and for all.
EDIT 3: Mi grabbed Durlags Goblet and Kiels Helmet after having big troubles with the Wardens. As Fear did not want to leave Love she had to run back and forth - luring Avarice away in between - until Love finally charged Mi and after running around many corners she managed to seperate the two. As slinging did not work here she had to melee Love - which proved to be difficult. Hide & Run did not work good as Love tends to move around the whole dungeon searching for her. Only with quick back and forth - rebuffing in between - she managed to take down the Ghost while burning through several healing potions. Not a good fight from my side thanks to many missteps...
Beren the fighter/thief picked up equipment early on including Drizzt's gear. The fact that stealth is possible while wearing the AC1 armor is attractive, so he hung on to that while pushing up to level 5/5. With a higher multiplier, improved stealth and a decent weapon Beren had started to transition to back-stabs rather than shooting as his major form of attack.
His downfall came while travelling to the basilisk area. A kobold ambush spawned and my immediate reaction was to run, rather than pause the game. That proved a mistake as Beren's AC of -6 was not really good enough against LoB kobold commandos and one of them hit him in addition to a critical from a standard kobold - taking him down to 10 HPs at the point I belatedly paused.
Even worse, the delay in pausing had allowed another kobold commando to launch a heat-seeking missile that looked highly likely to be fatal (so a potion of invisibility was no longer a good option). Beren tried to give himself a better chance by taking a potion of heroism to bump his HPs up to 15 and this time he did save against the fire damage from the arrow - but the 18 HPs base damage was still too much.
Actually, looking at the screenshot, I see that Beren was still wearing Gorion's belt. I typically do that to increase inventory space until a character has got the girdle of piercing. Normally that's done pretty early on (partly to help with that sort of ambush), but I hadn't got around to it this run. If he had been wearing the girdle of piercing I don't think he would have been hit by the kobold commandos anyway - and even if he had been the reduced fire damage he would have taken might have allowed him to survive ...
Forgetting about equipment! This happened to me sometimes when using Durlags Goblet without thinking only remembering that i have forgotten something when seeing the char running around in panick! Bad end of Beren´s story @Grond0!
Mi succesfully destroyed Sarevok using the usual tactics. After dispelling his Haste he was slinged down with 23-26 damage (3 APR) shots quite fast. One of the easiest takedowns ever!
Being on the run she also faced Korlasz! Charming one Assassin both sneaked through enemy lines. Mi buffed herself up and positioned her new friend right in the back. Combining Arrows of Dispelling and two Sling Shots (22 damage each) were enough to bring Korlasz down to injured so the surrender talk triggered in the same moment her Assassin died. After some looting she will move on to Badlurs Gate once more!
@Harpagornis Nice work on Sarevok! Can I ask, what is the usual tactic you use? I've only killed him once with a Berserker/Thief but that was on Core and took me quite a while to figure out I had to kill the ads first
Unfortunately my game stalled out a bit, I tied up the typical BG city quests, grabbing the helm and cloak. However, when I got to the Iron throne part for the first time, my game corrupted, both the auto-save when entering the building and the quicksave just before the fight, so I had to re-do the game from the chapter 5 auto save. I think I corrupted it by pulling some of the mobs downstairs, and then deciding to leave the building to rest and re-enter. Anyway, now I'm there again but I have this weird glitch with 2 rogues both named Shennara (they both drop different items though) they are hostile to me even when the rest of the party waiting for me are silenced (so they are still blue).
Anyway, I decided to kill these two first, by walking to the back out of sight summon my 5x skeletons now (with mulaheys ring and +1 wis form tome), let them kill the rogues. Then tackle the remaining guys by silencing the cloudspear guy (the one which initiates dialogue). Charm the priest on the right hand side, he has 3x animate dead memorized and his are lvl 15+. Then I simply aggro the party and cast sanctuary on myself and watch the carnage.
1. Lure Sarevok into the SE (or SW) corner of the building and go invisible. As everyone except for Angelo will follow him you have them parked safely there - for now! 2. Once you are visible again its all about running around a bit until Angelo will show himself (dont use PfM-scroll as he will not show until it expires!). Once he starts his casting i usually buff Magic Resistance to counter his spells while constantly dispelling his protections. Without them he is an easy target. Mi for instance just slinghotted him down (Summons like Skeletons also work great!). 3. Once Angelo is down i switch to Necklace of Missiles (you need at least two of them) and wait until Diarmids PfM and Tazoks PfF expires (two hours). Once they are without protection i just shoot one Fireball after another while staying out of vision. After 35-45 charges Semaj, Tazok and Diarmid will be dead. 4. Even though everyone of them turns into Skeleton Warriors after death i usually ignore the Undead as their targeting is quite strange so they do not hunt you all the time. I focus mainly on Sarevok himself after buffing up. If you can dispel Sarevoks Haste its really easy to kite him down with Bow or Sling as you can outrun him all day long (Wand of Heavens also works great against him hitting for ~20 damage). But even when dispelling does not work you are still faster thanks to Boots of Speed and Oil of Speed. Kite and win - its just a matter of patience!
Anyway, now I'm there again but I have this weird glitch with 2 rogues both named Shennara (they both drop different items though) they are hostile to me even when the rest of the party waiting for me are silenced (so they are still blue).
Anyway, I decided to kill these two first, by walking to the back out of sight summon my 5x skeletons now (with mulaheys ring and +1 wis form tome), let them kill the rogues. Then tackle the remaining guys by silencing the cloudspear guy (the one which initiates dialogue). Charm the priest on the right hand side, he has 3x animate dead memorized and his are lvl 15+. Then I simply aggro the party and cast sanctuary on myself and watch the carnage.
Sounds like you're making good progress @billy_pilgrim. Just to reassure you that the Shennaras you came across are normal for that encounter (mod added).
I've given Beren another go and he's just finished cleaning up the wilderness areas having recently hit the level cap. The most dangerous moment was in almost his last encounter to date, when I once more was not quite precise enough against Narcillicus and he released a charm person minor sequencer - this time though luck was on my side. Beren will be stealthing through the Nashkel mine tomorrow.
Keep on going @Grond0! Mi in the meanwhile did some quests in BG and bought supplies (mainly potions, Detonation Arrows & Dispelling Arrows) for her journey to Dragonspear. With some more questing in the Coastway Crossing she will reach level 9 soon - getting another +1 damage for her Sling! But first: Some rest!
Beren stealthed through the Nashkel Mine and charmed Mulahey before feeding him to the kobolds.
For a change I charmed Nimbul rather than the Amnian soldiers. For some reason that resulted in the soldiers fighting among themselves rather than attacking Nimbul and Minsc was called on to get the final blow.
Back in Beregost a charmed Marl successfully drained Tranzig's spells.
Teven provided a lift to the Bandit Camp, where Taurgosz tried and failed to usurp Tazok's position. Inside the main tent Beren was suiting up with his shock-proof boots before realising that his thieving skills were actually sufficient to disarm the trap . He still had to resort to a potion of invisibility to escape after investigating the chest though.
Wearing his new plate armor, Beren was able to beat up 1 ambushing phase spider in the Cloakwood, though he had to run from a second which poisoned him. Pushing on to the mine he charmed Drasus and his friends one by one - Drasus wasn't keen, but eventually went under the influence and challenged some guards to a duel.
Inside the mine Beren sneaked down to Davaeorn's level and charmed the guard. He failed to keep him alive though in fighting the battle horrors and that resulted in Davaeorn being activated. While waiting for the guards to arrive the battle horrors played (and lost) a game of 'hunt the backstabber'. Beren hadn't bought the Necklace yet, so started whittling the guards away by charming them, using stealth shots on the Black Talons and pulling the standard guards away to melee. After a while doing that though he went upstairs to rest at one point and forgot to hide before coming back down. Rather unfairly, in that situation the guards don't all remain clustered where they were round Davaeorn, but go back to the entrance - and were thus waiting when Beren appeared. It's possible he would have had time to use a potion of invisibility, but didn't attempt to do so and his mithral armor was not sufficient protection against the hail of missiles.
After Beren's death I onsidered my options and realised it was a while since I'd played a wild mage, so decided to give that a go. Playing on Core / vanilla BG a solo wild mage has a realistic chance of doing a no-reload. In this challenge I suspect that's not the case though!
In Candlekeep Fizzle summoned a pseudo-dragon familiar and with it's help cleared all the challenges.
Shoal was easy pickings for the familiar before Fizzle went to Beregost to pick up Algernon's Cloak. Travelling by side roads she went on to the FAI, kiting the ogre on the way to get his belt. She killed the hobgoblin with a stolen ring, while opening up the ankheg map, but crucially didn't take the time to kill the others.
On the ankheg map she killed some fishermen for Tenya on the way, but then reversed direction to go back to the FAI. The reason for that was to identify Algernon's Cloak, as she had failed to learn the identify scroll available in Candlekeep. However, I'd overlooked that the 2 hobgoblins left on that map earlier had the follow-me script and, once activated, were able to track Fizzle down anywhere on the map. I set Fizzle moving on the map screen to the main gate and wrote up some notes while she was moving. I then came back to the game just a second or two too late - seeing the hand of death appearing ahead of the game over screen.
Starting again, Fizzle this time successfully learnt identify in Candlekeep, but died in a skeleton ambush on the first area transition.
Three more failed attempts to learn identify led to quickly abandoned games before she struck lucky again. This time Fizzle went on to successfully deal with Shoal, Algernon and Dushai (along with vindictively killing all the hobgoblins at the FAI).
As Fizzle won't travel invisibly, she devised a route to minimise the chances of dangerous ambushes while taking on some reputation quests. That didn't all go smoothly - Melicamp failed to survive and Ardrouine got confused by one of the worgs dying while charmed and refused to offer a reward. As a result of that, Fizzle made a couple of donations at the temple before going to find Brage to get a lift down to Nashkel where she would have learnt Bhaal CLW. On the way to him she wanted to bypass Laryssa (in order to be able to come back and kill her later if desired), but activated a couple of tasloi while skirting her. I was aware of the possibility that their presence would make Brage go berserk, but thought Fizzle would be able to stay far enough ahead to avoid that happening. Fizzle got to the edge of the map with Brage still showing as in control of himself and he talked to hercut her down with a single merciless swipe. For a change I was paying full attention during that and his icon never turned yellow, so it must really have been a last-instant loss of control there ...
Fizzle once more entered the breach. She learnt identify and successfully restored Melicamp this time, but I mis-counted HPs and once more the death of a worg while charmed resulted in the cold shoulder from Ardrouine. However, this time when some tasloi appeared on the way to Brage the familiar led them well away to avoid any more accidents.
Greywolf was charmed and Samuel taken back to the FAI. Fizzle cast her first spell since Candlekeep there (friends - ensuring that Landrin would hand over some antidotes).
Some quests around Beregost took her to level 5 before she journeyed down towards the Cloud Peaks (where sleep from an ambushing ogre mage is a possibility). On the way she picked up Drizzt's gear, though that doesn't have quite the same attraction to a mage as a fighter/thief.
It had been a pretty trouble-free run to that point, but death is only ever an instant away (at least for me). Fizzle tried to charm Marl, but failed and attempted to rest to try again. When a gnoll appeared I decided to fight it rather than run and rest. It was at badly wounded status with the familiar doing a mixture of tanking and kiting when I decided to let the familiar use blur and try and finish it off in melee. Gnolls can do quite high damage, so that's not the sort of fight where you should let your attention wander - but I was eating an ice lolly at the time and spotted a small drip falling on my desk. I only took my eyes off the screen for a couple of seconds to wipe it up, but that was enough - the final screen only showed the fatal attack, but the previous attack must have been a high-damage critical.
Absolutely right @Arctodus! The runs of @Grond0 are always flashy and giving some deep insights into game mechanics - even if the result is an unpredictable death! With other words: Keep going!!!
Mi´s run on the other hand is really uneventful as she destroyed any opposition at Coastway Crossing without problems. I could write down the steps but its the same as every run: Hiding, Shooting and some PfU in the Dwarven Mines. With other words: It cant get more boring than this.
The Fallen Temple will be next - maybe there the heat will turn on again. We will see!
Mi upgraded her ranged power after finding the Firefly +2 Sling! I remember @Grond0 had problems getting this one in the Waylay Zone - Troll Cave, The trick in the cave is: You need a character with Infravision to detect the tunnel in the murky water (a Potion of Infravision will do the job). Mi got through the hidden tunnel and grabbed the Sling using the Quickloot option - which doesnt break stealth. She moved out unseen ready to crack some more skulls with her new weapon of choice:
The Temple of Bhaal has been cleared: With buffs and her new Sling +2 Ziatar was helpless and even the Neothelid went down pretty quickly. Akanna - without her Aerial Servants - even did not get the chance to finish Sanctuary before dropping to the ground.
EDIT: Mi rushed hard through Dragonspear Castle and the Underground meeting Hephernaan while grabbing only items - gold and preparation for Big B. Slinging enemies down with Firefly and Sunstone Bullets is really easy. The Crusader Attacks are next!
I've started Fizzle again, although I feel she doesn't have too many runs left in her. To make best use of what's remaining I had a rethink about appropriate tactics. On core difficulty casting spells with any regularity greatly increases the risks for a wild mage in BG1 as there are more than enough items available to deal with all enemies. Although casting is more dangerous on LoB (as things like a fireball surge have more chance of killing you), the amount of resources required to kill enemies is increased even more. The vulnerability of a mage to damage also means mistakes can quickly prove fatal. So in this run Fizzle will both aim to: - do fewer encounters in order to reduce the possibility of mistakes. - cast the odd spell (particularly invisibility) where that reduces game play risks.
Following that methodology she attempted to learn invisibility at High Hedge. The first 2 attempts failed, but fortunately she succeeded with the last scroll. That was put to use in the ankheg area to loot the nest there.
After getting Dushai's ring Fizzle looked for some high value, low risk, XP. The first source of that came from charming the sirines in the Beregost temple - resting between charm attempts is pretty risk-free in that area as ambushers have no distance attacks. One of the sirines was killed by a final critical from the war dog being used to wear it down, but the others worked fine. The sirines in the temple regenerate slowly over time if killed and on this occasion one reappeared before the others were all killed, so Fizzle still got the XP for 4 of them - which was enough to push her up to level 5.
After picking up Drizzt's equipment Fizzle went to see if she could get Meilum's bracers. She used invisibility there once and was fortunate to charm Meilum on only her second attempt.
Moving on to the basilisk area Fizzle had the green scroll of PfP, but decided not to use that there and just rely on melee attacks from her familiar. Most of the time the basilisks stay in ranged mode against familiars, allowing them to make use of the bonus +4 to hit and damage. Korax was recruited to deal with Mutamin and his pets, before Fizzle charmed Kirian's companions without the need for any spells. For Kirian herself Fizzle cast web to just catch her in the edge. When she was held by that Fizzle threw some darts of stunning and got one of those to stick and attacks by the familiar and a charmed gnoll were then enough to prevent Kirian from recovering.
Having not used any resources to date, Fizzle decided she could afford to burn up the wand of cold from Nashkel Mine against a couple of battle horrors at Durlag's Tower. She had to supplement that with 4 charges from her wand of fire - hoping the battle horror didn't take it into his head to run around while a scorcher was active and endanger the invisible blocking familiar.
Mi faced the craziest Crusader Attacks of all time. Why? Cause she failed against the first Wave after a nearly dead Ogre slipped through the lines triggering the rest of the Waves. All Mi could do now was: Burn through all summons (Mephits, Myconids, Ankhegs) while firing nonstop Detonation Arrows. Combined with Dispelling Arrows (and PfM-Scroll) she was able to kill the Mages right before the Cleric and Cavaliers joined in. She got lucky and managed to use the bottleneck between the wagons to minimize the damage on her Myvonids while trying to target enemies in the backrank only to minimize damage on her allies. But it was still not enough. The Cavaliers broke through and Mi was forced to play hit & run. With only few Clerics left the last Wave with the Commanders appeared which forced Mi back to the Barrels. More allies including the named ones like Mordaeus and Garrus joined the party to build up a tank line. They stopped the enemy advancement for some time so Mi could shoot a lot more Detonation Arrows. But again: It was not enough. Too bad that kiting was no more option as they were getting close to the barrels. Everything seemed lost until a Skeleton Mage and his Warrior friend rushed in from behind - buillding up the last defense! And - oh wonder - thanks to their resistances Mi burned through the last of her Detonation Arrows taking out Grimgor and finally Kegleg. With their last leader dead the Crusaders dropped back and the one and only defender - the "badly injured" Skeleton Mage laughed out loud. Mi was nearly running out of resources: Summon charges were gone, Detonation Arrows were down to 3 and Durlags Goblet also had only five charges left. If one of the backstabbers would have timed his attack perfectly Mi would have been blown to pieces. But she still stands - and the Camp is safe once again. But it was close. Nearly too close!
At Durlag's Tower, Fizzle didn't bother killing lots of ghasts. However, she did look on invisibly while her familiar claimed some more basilisk victims. As always though I was looking to avoid any risks and didn't open the trapped container on the roof .
Melicamp died on the way to the Lighthouse, but this time I managed to get the reputation increase from Ardrouine. The group of sirines there were persuaded to use all their arrows on a charmed tasloi, which should have made them vulnerable. However, I didn't use invisibility, but instead attempted to use the familiar to drag one of them well away to where Fizzle could either charm or kite it. One sirine was indeed pulled away to one edge of the map and Fizzle and the familiar ran to the other side to wait for its improved invisibility to wear off. Unfortunately it appeared that another sirine had wandered much further from its starting position than I expected and had used scripted invisibility to disappear. Fizzle was caught away from the edge of the map and too close to the sirine to run out of range before its charm was cast. She could have used a potion of invisibility or magic shielding, but chose to rely on the supposed 90% resistance to charm that elves have - which proved to be a fatal mistake.
No, no, no... i will never ever use Martyr´s Morningstar vs Big B again...
The final battle started perfectly: With Caelar and constant Myconid summoning Mi got enough time shooting Void Arrows +3 at Big B so once her allies died the Demon was already down to 805 HP. It cant get better no? But what followed was a one hour nightmare as Mi failed to crit Big B over and over again. But not only that: Thanks to the low weapon speed Big B almost always got the chance to strike back - which hurted a lot (Morningstar 5, Acid Longsword: 2!!). On top of that the Erinyes was rolling 20´s all day long so Mi was running out of Durlags charges. Superb! With Reg Potion and Extra Healing Potions she managed to stay alive for quite some time but even though she rolled some crits Big B was still around 380 HP while Mi was slowly running out of potions. She rolled several 18´s but no more crits until the combined damage of the Erinyes and Big B proved to be too much. Maybe she should have used the Longsword +3 here but no she wanted to try Martyr´s Morningstar - and failed. I am really getting tired of this challenge. Damn it!!!
Condolences, @Harpagornis... I feel kind of responsible for this, because I was the one who suggested the Martyr's Morningstar would be a good option. But it seems it is very reliant on chance, and luck is always against you in a no-reload run.
The morningstar should only take just under 100 attack rolls to slay Belhifet... but that's just the average. The true number of attacks to win would be represented by a bell curve, and if a character can only make 115 attacks on Belhifet before dying, the odds of failure would be in the high double digits.
Maybe the Martyr's Morningstar is better suited to high-APR builds like a cleric/illusionist or FMC using the spider gnome trick (5 APR when hasted), or maybe a dual-classed Kensai/Cleric or Kensai/Mage who has the attack speed bonuses to compensate for the morningstar's high speed factor.
Comments
P.S. No, bow skills are lost when dualing to Cleric but as i intend to use Slings mainly (Strength Bonus!) it doesnt matter.
In theory Narcillicus himself should have been far more straight-forward to deal with by charming, but I guess I must have relaxed too much after the jelly fights. On just the second attempt at charming him I thought I'd retreated as normal after failing with the attempt, but I guess the click didn't register as Narcillicus spotted Freda and immediately released an emotion. She was slightly too far from the map edge to run away and her clouded aura meant she needed to rely on a lucky save - but her luck was out. Occasionally in that situation, where a target has moved well out of sight of a spell-caster, you get lucky when they choose to buff up rather than follow-up their spell - but Narcillicus didn't make that mistake
Nymphs and spirit summons also enabled him to pass through the Nashkel Mine, though without using invisibility that was still pretty hard work. Eventually though Shagrat made his way through to charm Mulahey and let the kobolds finish him off.
Nimbul became another confusion / lightning victim before Tranzig used all his spells on nymphs and was eaten by spirit summons.
Teven provided a lift to the Bandit Camp where Taurgosz was charmed and had a fatal encounter with a bear. Rather than spend the time to deal with the whole camp, Shagrat burned a couple of invisibility potions to just loot the chest. You might have thought that was playing it safe, but regrettably that wasn't the case.
My philosophy is that there should be a small amount of danger from traps during a run - otherwise that feature of the game becomes a bit pointless - so the occasional death from traps is acceptable. In order to die there Shagrat needed to be hit by the lightning twice, fail his save both times and receive damage on the high side from the strikes. I thought that combination would have a pretty low chance, but loaded the autosave 10 times to see if I had significantly misjudged the extent of the danger. I concluded I hadn't - Shagrat survived every time and was only near death once. However, perhaps next time he'll cast Armor of Faith to improve the odds a bit more - that would have saved him there
I know I could've sanctuary walked through the bandit camp and looted the chest, but I wanted to kill the guy with the full plate, I was still using the Ankheg shell and fullplate is a little better. So I cheesed it a bit using Glyph of warding, stacked about 100 (maybe more
Went through cloakwood pretty simple, and of course I've learnt my lesson now, I simply charmed Davaeorn and let his battle horrors kill him.
Now I'm wondering around Baldur's Gate, I will get the helmet and the cloak.
I reached XP cap and I'm not sure if I'm going to do Durlags, the only thing in it for me is the large shield +2 and there is the +1/+4 to missile one I can buy in town instead. Can't really think of anything else I may need from Durlags (I will get the wis tome though ~ skip the labyrinth).
Mi charmed Drasus even though it took eight times before the charm landed. I generally have the feeling that charming works not that good anymore. Korlasz is another example. I was used that charms "nearly always" worked on first try but today she resists it even after dozens of tries - mostly without any reaction in the log. However: Drasus was taken down by the Guards and with her new Boots of Speed Mi stealthed through to Davaeorn. He soaked the traps using a Potion of Magic Blocking (again the charm did not work against the Guard) and parked the Battle Horrors in the side room. After some waiting and burning with Necklace of Missiles she buffed herself up to negate Davaeorns magic while slinging at him nonstop. Even with his Stoneskins she needed only 40 bullet stones before the evil Mage went down.
Time to visit Baldurs Gate once more!
I saw in the news that the Tolkien estate is publishing a new version of the tale of Beren and Luthien. That pushed me into thinking it was time I had a go with a fighter/thief in this challenge. As he's called Beren he should of course be human, but some sacrifices are just too great
Mi in the meanwhile has farmed a lot of gold and stuff in Baldurs Gate and just finished her trip to Candlekeep. No danger at all as she used Invisibility Potion against the Ogre Mages and buffed up with potions for the traps. The rest was sneaking through the shadows. Slythe and Cythandria are nearing. This could be interesting again. Hopefully!
EDIT: Slythe and Cythandria are no more! Five Guards absorbed all damage while Mi was shooting Dispelling Arrows and Bullets +2. Even though Kristin joined the fun she could not save her Assassin who went down with another stone on his head. For Cythandria Mi cleared first the backstabbers charming people in the Iron Throne and using the as distraction while shooting bullet stones. Once the Golems were lured downstairs she buffed up against magic and dispelled all protections and slinging her down quite fast. Time to take some rest before moving on to the Palace!
EDIT 2: The Palace is safe again! After charming the Mage Doppleganger and parking him in a side room (with one rest!) she charmed more people in- and outside to distract the other Dopplegangers. Fully buffed she went in stealth until the Assassin appeared again and dispelled everyone. With their powers heavily reduced Mi switched to slinging while aiming mainly at all Dopplegangers who attacked the Dukes. Both survived (injured only!) so Mi waited until the Mage transformed. Buffed by Magic Protection she soaked most of his spell while dispelling his protections and slinging him over and over again. This worked pretty well as the Reg Potion was more than enough to keep HP high. Too bad that Sarevok managed to rage down Liia before porting away. Time to hunt down the evil brother once and for all.
EDIT 3: Mi grabbed Durlags Goblet and Kiels Helmet after having big troubles with the Wardens. As Fear did not want to leave Love she had to run back and forth - luring Avarice away in between - until Love finally charged Mi and after running around many corners she managed to seperate the two. As slinging did not work here she had to melee Love - which proved to be difficult. Hide & Run did not work good as Love tends to move around the whole dungeon searching for her. Only with quick back and forth - rebuffing in between - she managed to take down the Ghost while burning through several healing potions. Not a good fight from my side thanks to many missteps...
His downfall came while travelling to the basilisk area. A kobold ambush spawned and my immediate reaction was to run, rather than pause the game. That proved a mistake as Beren's AC of -6 was not really good enough against LoB kobold commandos and one of them hit him in addition to a critical from a standard kobold - taking him down to 10 HPs at the point I belatedly paused.
Actually, looking at the screenshot, I see that Beren was still wearing Gorion's belt. I typically do that to increase inventory space until a character has got the girdle of piercing. Normally that's done pretty early on (partly to help with that sort of ambush), but I hadn't got around to it this run. If he had been wearing the girdle of piercing I don't think he would have been hit by the kobold commandos anyway - and even if he had been the reduced fire damage he would have taken might have allowed him to survive ...
Mi succesfully destroyed Sarevok using the usual tactics. After dispelling his Haste he was slinged down with 23-26 damage (3 APR) shots quite fast. One of the easiest takedowns ever!
Being on the run she also faced Korlasz! Charming one Assassin both sneaked through enemy lines. Mi buffed herself up and positioned her new friend right in the back. Combining Arrows of Dispelling and two Sling Shots (22 damage each) were enough to bring Korlasz down to injured so the surrender talk triggered in the same moment her Assassin died. After some looting she will move on to Badlurs Gate once more!
Unfortunately my game stalled out a bit, I tied up the typical BG city quests, grabbing the helm and cloak. However, when I got to the Iron throne part for the first time, my game corrupted, both the auto-save when entering the building and the quicksave just before the fight, so I had to re-do the game from the chapter 5 auto save. I think I corrupted it by pulling some of the mobs downstairs, and then deciding to leave the building to rest and re-enter. Anyway, now I'm there again but I have this weird glitch with 2 rogues both named Shennara (they both drop different items though) they are hostile to me even when the rest of the party waiting for me are silenced (so they are still blue).
Anyway, I decided to kill these two first, by walking to the back out of sight summon my 5x skeletons now (with mulaheys ring and +1 wis form tome), let them kill the rogues. Then tackle the remaining guys by silencing the cloudspear guy (the one which initiates dialogue). Charm the priest on the right hand side, he has 3x animate dead memorized and his are lvl 15+. Then I simply aggro the party and cast sanctuary on myself and watch the carnage.
1. Lure Sarevok into the SE (or SW) corner of the building and go invisible. As everyone except for Angelo will follow him you have them parked safely there - for now!
2. Once you are visible again its all about running around a bit until Angelo will show himself (dont use PfM-scroll as he will not show until it expires!). Once he starts his casting i usually buff Magic Resistance to counter his spells while constantly dispelling his protections. Without them he is an easy target. Mi for instance just slinghotted him down (Summons like Skeletons also work great!).
3. Once Angelo is down i switch to Necklace of Missiles (you need at least two of them) and wait until Diarmids PfM and Tazoks PfF expires (two hours). Once they are without protection i just shoot one Fireball after another while staying out of vision. After 35-45 charges Semaj, Tazok and Diarmid will be dead.
4. Even though everyone of them turns into Skeleton Warriors after death i usually ignore the Undead as their targeting is quite strange so they do not hunt you all the time. I focus mainly on Sarevok himself after buffing up. If you can dispel Sarevoks Haste its really easy to kite him down with Bow or Sling as you can outrun him all day long (Wand of Heavens also works great against him hitting for ~20 damage). But even when dispelling does not work you are still faster thanks to Boots of Speed and Oil of Speed. Kite and win - its just a matter of patience!
For a change I charmed Nimbul rather than the Amnian soldiers. For some reason that resulted in the soldiers fighting among themselves rather than attacking Nimbul and Minsc was called on to get the final blow.
Back in Beregost a charmed Marl successfully drained Tranzig's spells.
Teven provided a lift to the Bandit Camp, where Taurgosz tried and failed to usurp Tazok's position. Inside the main tent Beren was suiting up with his shock-proof boots before realising that his thieving skills were actually sufficient to disarm the trap
Wearing his new plate armor, Beren was able to beat up 1 ambushing phase spider in the Cloakwood, though he had to run from a second which poisoned him. Pushing on to the mine he charmed Drasus and his friends one by one - Drasus wasn't keen, but eventually went under the influence and challenged some guards to a duel.
Inside the mine Beren sneaked down to Davaeorn's level and charmed the guard. He failed to keep him alive though in fighting the battle horrors and that resulted in Davaeorn being activated. While waiting for the guards to arrive the battle horrors played (and lost) a game of 'hunt the backstabber'. Beren hadn't bought the Necklace yet, so started whittling the guards away by charming them, using stealth shots on the Black Talons and pulling the standard guards away to melee. After a while doing that though he went upstairs to rest at one point and forgot to hide before coming back down. Rather unfairly, in that situation the guards don't all remain clustered where they were round Davaeorn, but go back to the entrance - and were thus waiting when Beren appeared. It's possible he would have had time to use a potion of invisibility, but didn't attempt to do so and his mithral armor was not sufficient protection against the hail of missiles.
In Candlekeep Fizzle summoned a pseudo-dragon familiar and with it's help cleared all the challenges.
Shoal was easy pickings for the familiar before Fizzle went to Beregost to pick up Algernon's Cloak. Travelling by side roads she went on to the FAI, kiting the ogre on the way to get his belt. She killed the hobgoblin with a stolen ring, while opening up the ankheg map, but crucially didn't take the time to kill the others.
On the ankheg map she killed some fishermen for Tenya on the way, but then reversed direction to go back to the FAI. The reason for that was to identify Algernon's Cloak, as she had failed to learn the identify scroll available in Candlekeep. However, I'd overlooked that the 2 hobgoblins left on that map earlier had the follow-me script and, once activated, were able to track Fizzle down anywhere on the map. I set Fizzle moving on the map screen to the main gate and wrote up some notes while she was moving. I then came back to the game just a second or two too late - seeing the hand of death appearing ahead of the game over screen.
Three more failed attempts to learn identify led to quickly abandoned games before she struck lucky again. This time Fizzle went on to successfully deal with Shoal, Algernon and Dushai (along with vindictively killing all the hobgoblins at the FAI).
As Fizzle won't travel invisibly, she devised a route to minimise the chances of dangerous ambushes while taking on some reputation quests. That didn't all go smoothly - Melicamp failed to survive and Ardrouine got confused by one of the worgs dying while charmed and refused to offer a reward. As a result of that, Fizzle made a couple of donations at the temple before going to find Brage to get a lift down to Nashkel where she would have learnt Bhaal CLW. On the way to him she wanted to bypass Laryssa (in order to be able to come back and kill her later if desired), but activated a couple of tasloi while skirting her. I was aware of the possibility that their presence would make Brage go berserk, but thought Fizzle would be able to stay far enough ahead to avoid that happening. Fizzle got to the edge of the map with Brage still showing as in control of himself and he
talked to hercut her down with a single merciless swipe. For a change I was paying full attention during that and his icon never turned yellow, so it must really have been a last-instant loss of control there ...Greywolf was charmed and Samuel taken back to the FAI. Fizzle cast her first spell since Candlekeep there (friends - ensuring that Landrin would hand over some antidotes).
Some quests around Beregost took her to level 5 before she journeyed down towards the Cloud Peaks (where sleep from an ambushing ogre mage is a possibility). On the way she picked up Drizzt's gear, though that doesn't have quite the same attraction to a mage as a fighter/thief.
It had been a pretty trouble-free run to that point, but death is only ever an instant away (at least for me). Fizzle tried to charm Marl, but failed and attempted to rest to try again. When a gnoll appeared I decided to fight it rather than run and rest. It was at badly wounded status with the familiar doing a mixture of tanking and kiting when I decided to let the familiar use blur and try and finish it off in melee. Gnolls can do quite high damage, so that's not the sort of fight where you should let your attention wander - but I was eating an ice lolly at the time and spotted a small drip falling on my desk. I only took my eyes off the screen for a couple of seconds to wipe it up, but that was enough - the final screen only showed the fatal attack, but the previous attack must have been a high-damage critical.
Mi´s run on the other hand is really uneventful as she destroyed any opposition at Coastway Crossing without problems. I could write down the steps but its the same as every run: Hiding, Shooting and some PfU in the Dwarven Mines. With other words: It cant get more boring than this.
The Fallen Temple will be next - maybe there the heat will turn on again. We will see!
The Temple of Bhaal has been cleared: With buffs and her new Sling +2 Ziatar was helpless and even the Neothelid went down pretty quickly. Akanna - without her Aerial Servants - even did not get the chance to finish Sanctuary before dropping to the ground.
EDIT: Mi rushed hard through Dragonspear Castle and the Underground meeting Hephernaan while grabbing only items - gold and preparation for Big B. Slinging enemies down with Firefly and Sunstone Bullets is really easy. The Crusader Attacks are next!
- do fewer encounters in order to reduce the possibility of mistakes.
- cast the odd spell (particularly invisibility) where that reduces game play risks.
Following that methodology she attempted to learn invisibility at High Hedge. The first 2 attempts failed, but fortunately she succeeded with the last scroll. That was put to use in the ankheg area to loot the nest there.
After getting Dushai's ring Fizzle looked for some high value, low risk, XP. The first source of that came from charming the sirines in the Beregost temple - resting between charm attempts is pretty risk-free in that area as ambushers have no distance attacks. One of the sirines was killed by a final critical from the war dog being used to wear it down, but the others worked fine. The sirines in the temple regenerate slowly over time if killed and on this occasion one reappeared before the others were all killed, so Fizzle still got the XP for 4 of them - which was enough to push her up to level 5.
After picking up Drizzt's equipment Fizzle went to see if she could get Meilum's bracers. She used invisibility there once and was fortunate to charm Meilum on only her second attempt.
Moving on to the basilisk area Fizzle had the green scroll of PfP, but decided not to use that there and just rely on melee attacks from her familiar. Most of the time the basilisks stay in ranged mode against familiars, allowing them to make use of the bonus +4 to hit and damage. Korax was recruited to deal with Mutamin and his pets, before Fizzle charmed Kirian's companions without the need for any spells. For Kirian herself Fizzle cast web to just catch her in the edge. When she was held by that Fizzle threw some darts of stunning and got one of those to stick and attacks by the familiar and a charmed gnoll were then enough to prevent Kirian from recovering.
Having not used any resources to date, Fizzle decided she could afford to burn up the wand of cold from Nashkel Mine against a couple of battle horrors at Durlag's Tower. She had to supplement that with 4 charges from her wand of fire - hoping the battle horror didn't take it into his head to run around while a scorcher was active and endanger the invisible blocking familiar.
Melicamp died on the way to the Lighthouse, but this time I managed to get the reputation increase from Ardrouine. The group of sirines there were persuaded to use all their arrows on a charmed tasloi, which should have made them vulnerable. However, I didn't use invisibility, but instead attempted to use the familiar to drag one of them well away to where Fizzle could either charm or kite it. One sirine was indeed pulled away to one edge of the map and Fizzle and the familiar ran to the other side to wait for its improved invisibility to wear off. Unfortunately it appeared that another sirine had wandered much further from its starting position than I expected and had used scripted invisibility to disappear. Fizzle was caught away from the edge of the map and too close to the sirine to run out of range before its charm was cast. She could have used a potion of invisibility or magic shielding, but chose to rely on the supposed 90% resistance to charm that elves have - which proved to be a fatal mistake.
The final battle started perfectly: With Caelar and constant Myconid summoning Mi got enough time shooting Void Arrows +3 at Big B so once her allies died the Demon was already down to 805 HP. It cant get better no? But what followed was a one hour nightmare as Mi failed to crit Big B over and over again. But not only that: Thanks to the low weapon speed Big B almost always got the chance to strike back - which hurted a lot (Morningstar 5, Acid Longsword: 2!!). On top of that the Erinyes was rolling 20´s all day long so Mi was running out of Durlags charges. Superb! With Reg Potion and Extra Healing Potions she managed to stay alive for quite some time but even though she rolled some crits Big B was still around 380 HP while Mi was slowly running out of potions. She rolled several 18´s but no more crits until the combined damage of the Erinyes and Big B proved to be too much. Maybe she should have used the Longsword +3 here but no she wanted to try Martyr´s Morningstar - and failed. I am really getting tired of this challenge. Damn it!!!
The morningstar should only take just under 100 attack rolls to slay Belhifet... but that's just the average. The true number of attacks to win would be represented by a bell curve, and if a character can only make 115 attacks on Belhifet before dying, the odds of failure would be in the high double digits.
Maybe the Martyr's Morningstar is better suited to high-APR builds like a cleric/illusionist or FMC using the spider gnome trick (5 APR when hasted), or maybe a dual-classed Kensai/Cleric or Kensai/Mage who has the attack speed bonuses to compensate for the morningstar's high speed factor.