The necklace that blocks wing buffet is Anadramatis' Amulet.
Pocket Plane cannot be cast during combat. How do you escape the Abazigal fight using the Pocket Plane? Distract him with summons, run away, and wait until the combat music ends?
For anyone interested I'll be uploading more tonight for my themed mage/cleric polymorpher run. Just hit level 14 cleric fun ensues with Max level cleric spells. Thanks to the two subscribers I actually have now. It's nice to know there's some people out there who actually enjoy BG content
Yeah, the distract-retreat works for Abazigal and Sendai pretty well @semiticgod . What i am more concerned of is: Will i be able to survive Abazigal without PfM thanks to his Remove Magics? Maybe i will have to use the simulacrum for this job sparing the precious scroll for Melissan. But first its all about surviving Illasera, Gromnir & Yaga Shura.
Not to forget: Keep up the work @comebackhome! Will take a look at the videos later!
@Harpagornis Have you considerd level 14 for dual class? You will have more HLA's but lose out on greater elementals though... I think getting back 18 dual class levels as vanilla fighter could be quite tough, unless you have the first 250k xp lined up for yourself (quests already finished but not turned in yet)
I've been having trouble with my EET install, but I finally managed to sort it out. I tried another run, this time as a vanilla monk ~ it was going alright, got to chapter 6; but then I realized I would probably not be able to do SoD with it. After reading one of your earlier posts on monks, no aoe for SoD will make it tough, and its not like you can facetank as a lvl 10ish monk with LoB.
So, I decided to try something a bit different, the old school powerhouse kensai-thief. I think the AC won;'t be to big of a problem (might be in SoD) because the early game you use a charmed enemy or whatnot to tank for you, avoiding most combat. And once you get Paws you hit and run most of the time anyway as a thief char that is.
One reason to get at least up to Druid level 15 is that you get a huge boost of available spells. After that the Druid levels so fast that reaching level 18 is quite easy. I think @Grond0 was right to go all the way up as the Deva and Elemental Prince are really powerful while even the Spirit Summons remain useful in most battles. Getting the Fighter up and the Druid back is supereasy if you allow yourself to use the Gauth XP loop in the Unseeing Eye Quest. With Baldurans Shield and Everards Sling (plus Simulacrum) you can always spawn up to eight Gauths (if you are fast and lucky). Once they realize the Shield they will stop attacking and you can kill them one after another. Its just time consuming: Drink some cup of tea, take a fresh piece of air - whatever you want!
Balthazar: Yes, its possible for evil characters to convince him joining – i posted the requirements and the dialogue route earlier (its hiding somewhere!).
Illasera was treated like always: Use invisibility to lure her away from the guards and call in summons. End of story? Nope! Cause she absolutely destroyed the Spirit Bears in seconds and even the Deva and Elemental Prince had a hard time staying alive. Eklun therefore switched to "Harm" landing it on first try. Now, that was the end of the story. Finally!
The first challenge in the Pocket Plane worked quite good. Let the commons surround Eklun (they cannot hit him thanks to immunity to normal and +1 weapons) so they block the Knights while the ring of these two blocked Ellesime and friends - as well as the Deva and Air Elemental. Once the summons were gone Eklun called in his Spirit Lions who took down Ellesime, Duke Eltan and - with the help of True Seeing - Aran Linvail. The rest was an easy cleanup as - for whatever reason - the enemies refusd to attack the summons.
Taking on the first level of Watchers keep - encountered some real nasties with HLA's combined with SCS/LoB difficulty. Not typically what you would do as soon as you've left Irenicus dungeon however this is not your standard bread and butter playthrough.
1. I tried to be smart and used the console to jump right to the ancient statues in ToB. Everything worked fine until Gromnir got killed but then: Nothing! Melissan does not appear and so no porting to the Pocket Plane. Eklun is stuck.
2. Now i tried the regular manual import with all containers lost. Everything else looked fine but: No Druid HLA´s anymore. No Deva, no Elemental Prince - what the Hell is going on here? Fighter HLA´s are there - like they should be. Is there any logic behind this?
As the game always crashes after Irenicus dies there is no automatic transport into ToB. So - what can i do to get past these bugs? This is very frustrating. On one of the many tests to trick the game Eklun died in the first Pocket Plane challenge - is the challenge over even though he already had killed Gromnir before? Will i have to reinstall the whole game?
Not sure I understand what bug exactly are you experiencing. I played with SCS (and the Tactics encounter for the final battle) and didn't get a crash after the end of SoA.
ad1) can be fixed, but with few ugly workarounds - it seems some variables are wrongly set so you're probably still in SoA, not ToB as far as game is concerned
@Harpagornis Maybe you should take a little break if your motivation is drained. Getting where you are is no easy task, so it would be a pity to make a mistake for that reason.
I never had your bug, so I can't help you. Maybe create a new character directly in ToB and fix it through EEKeeper ?
Another thing : SoA seems to have drained much of your motivation. On another playthrough, maybe we should respect the level cap ? SoA was not meant to be played with HLAs. I'm pretty sure you would have add more fun through it if no HLAs were involved (more work to do that way). Just a suggestion.
Sorry to hear about your problems Harpagornis. I agree with @Arctodus that recreating the character in ToB would seem to be the safest approach if your transition is bugged.
No-reload is hard - even when it's easy . I won't go into my personal rules about what is and what's not allowed, but in terms of maintaining motivation you might want to consider putting a daily limit on your play. If you're restricted to an hour a day, say, you would probably find that aggravating at first as unreasonably restricting progress - but it's possible it might help prevent you 'hitting the wall' later in the run.
Thanks for your input! Yeah, the recreation of Eklun seems to be the safest choice here - restarting ToB with a fresh mind. Oh, you are right @Grond0 - looks like i "overplayed" the game a bit. I know that your personal rules wouldnt allow you the XP loop and some other "cheese" and at the end SoA really felt "too easy" - especially with all the HLA´s. Maybe i will have to put in some restrictions too. We will see...
The new plan: Pause the game for a day (or more), then recreate Eklun in ToB and restart with newly aquired motivation. Then see when and where we will finally die. Sounds like a decent plan - no?
When exactly does the game crash? It's a bit difficult to remotely debug a modded game, but if the crash occurs before Ellesime's speech, I think a script edit to skip over the cutscene and jump straight into ToB instead should be enough to bypass the issue.
The game crashes after the Ellesime talk once she has spoken her last word @Ardanis . Then the screen freezes and even when waiting several minutes nothing happens. I never had this problem before so it might be related to the modding. However: I will take a small break from the challenge only getting back with fresh motivation! Now its up to @Grond0, @Arctodus and maybe @Blackraven to continue the action in the meanwhile!
Just hit level 14/14 mage/cleric and hit HLA's; Any suggestions? I've been testing a few offline - Aura of flaming death works just before polymorphing/as does globe of blades both amazing spells. Also the bonus 6th level spell is a fantastic addition but you don't get both spell slots for mage AND cleric just mage. I'm trying to avoid cheese such as Deva or Planetar cause that will make the game much easier.
@Harpagornis Having bugs in the game can be very frustrating. I decided on a quick re-install and it turned into 3 days of figuring out what was wrong with my mods, apparently there was a problem with the new weidu version and EET.
On that note do you guys even use EET? I quite like it but everytime I discover some things have changed which makes the challenge ven harder, for example summon woodland beings nerfed, and just now I realized the nymph cloak is also nerfed, to one use per day? Which has pretty much dashed my hopes of doing a stalker/cleric dual class play though (how to tackle ducal palace with no summons and only 2 charms, 4 if you rest once I guess..?).
I got my kensai thief past the ducal palace fight with trap stacking, it wwas fairly tedious (like most things LoB related) having to rest in the inn and walk over, set 2 traps and walk back. Anyhow that worked out but my kensai/thief just lacked oomph for Sarevok, and I kinda lost faith in it. I really need to stick with a character
So my new plan was stalker to cleric dual class at lvl 13. Do you guys think this is the correct level? I think the stalker spells only become active at lvl 12, and then its only 1 more lvl to get that 1/2 attack. That was my reasoning. As far weapons go I'd go quarterstaves for backstabbing and porbably dual wield hammers or flails.
@billy_pilgrim I don't currently use EET, although I always used to play BGT prior to using the EE games. I agree that switching between installations is a problem - I regularly get caught out by differences in the games I'm playing (which is one reason why I rarely play BGT now, although there are things I prefer in that to the EE).
Ranger spells should kick in at level 8. However, if you're dualling to cleric then that's going to be the main source of spells for you. Waiting until level 13 would therefore I think be more to do with trying to make sure you've got a good THAC0 as well as the APR. I'm not sure that would be worth it for a cleric though as they will ultimately get to a better THAC0 anyway, but that's probably down to personal taste.
Once realizing how powerful Druid -> Fighter is my question would be: Why not also play it the other way around @billy_pilgrim and dual the Cleric into Ranger? But which Cleric level would be the sweetpoint here? 22 to get at least the Deva? Or also get Globe of Blades and Aura of Flaming Death? And which Cleric Kit would be the best here? Lathander? As i lack profound experience with Clerics maybe @Grond0 can help us here?
Cleric to ranger doesn't look as attractive as druid to fighter. If you were going for a high level dual I agree that there is some sense to going to level 22 to get access to the Deva, but that would mean only 8 fighter HLAs (and I think you were concerned about that shortage for the ToB battles Harpagornis). After the Deva I don't think the cleric HLAs are good enough to make up for the missing fighter ones in the way the druid ones can. However, a lot of the drawback is associated with the delay in getting abilities back and if you short-cut XP to do that then it might be worthwhile.
I wasn't intending to play any more LoB at the moment, but Harpagornis' heartfelt plea above touched me . Having just completed SoD for the first time (in a MP game with a berserker), I should have a slightly better chance of making progress in SP. I already had a starting save for a berserker, so have fired that one up to see if the earlier success with that can rub off. So far Caesar has grabbed Algernon's Cloak, Dushai's ring and Drizzt's scimitars - which should set him up nicely for the future. He has though just had his first near-death experience when killing the gnolls that attacked Drizzt (sadly too late to save the ranger ...). After killing several of them in individual fights with no problems I was not paying full attention as another gnoll seemed about to die. However, Caesar missed with his next attack, while the gnoll scored with 3 successive criticals before I slapped the pause key - which would have been too late if the 3rd critical had done decent damage.
Well, I thought the stalker backstab to be cute, as well as the spells. I think the 3 or 4 mage spells Stalkers get, become active at lvl 12 with access to level 3 spells. Being able to haste the cleric summons would be pretty strong as well as a good melee boost, not having to rely on oils is nice, although there are plenty of them when soloing. From a purely power perspective totemic druid -> fighter is probably one of the best classes for LoB. If I were to go cleric first I'd go lothander kit for sure, I was actually doing a lothander -> thief play through, got to mid SoD, when I decided to mess with my install because something was wrong with my summons. RIP. Anyway, I'll carry on a for a bit with my stalker and see how it'll go.
I don't have much time to play these days, because I'm moving next week, but Ellethil is doing good. He's ready to go into Cloakwood mines. He's level 4/5 for now.
Did the usual quests : fed Mulahey to his kobolds and sneaked into bandit camp, killing no one. Looted Durlag's Tower to have enough money to buy myself the Robe of the Good Archimagy. Got my revenge against Bassilus : I talked to him, went invisible and backstabbed him for good damage. I tried to lure him into my traps, but random skellies triggered them off screen. No biggie : I hid in shadows behind the stones around him and threw charges of the Wand of Paralyzation at him : only two were needed. Sliced him up after.
So far so good : I don't forsee any trouble before Baldur's Gate, because invis>BG1. Really. I'm always invis, then set traps, rest away from the traps, set some more, open with a backstab, lure into traps, go invisible again and then either cast something or kite. Oh, and I forgot how stupidly OP blind can be. Best level 1 arcane spell in this run. Can't wait to have summons of my own though !
Sounds like you don't need them, but you could always pick up the wand from the Valley of the Tombs. The ghasts there can be lured out of the tomb, but if you don't want to bother doing that you can just overlap the container with your icon and use the inventory screen to take the wand.
Sigh - a single failed movement click ended the run of Caesar the berserker. He was clearing out the upper part of Durlag's Tower, where he would have got his final BG1 level and was fighting the Doom Guard on the wall there after killing all his skeleton guards. A first rage badly wounded the enemy, but did the same to Caesar and, as it ended, took him down to 33 HPs - where a single hit could kill him. He immediately retreated and ran round until he could rage again. The position he was in at that point though would have meant a possibility of a doppleganger appearing if he had needed to retreat once more from the Doom Guard - so I started to circle back to the entrance to the Tower. A movement click failed at the worst possible moment and though I reacted quickly the Doom Guard must have been in the middle of a combat round and got an instant attack - for 34 damage .
Due to my incredible success in this challenge I thought I needed to try something a bit tougher . What do you think of the prospects of success with this character?
My mage/thief is doing real well for now. He just took care of Davaeorn the usual way : park the battle horrors in a corner, wait for all his goons to crowd him up and burn 'em all with a fireball wands. The fight was a bit more complicated than on paper though : parking the battle horrors required my only potion of invisibility, because I forgot that you can't cast the invisibility spell when you're under a PfM scroll. Also, after I took care of all his goons, Davey decided to go invisible for a long time. Since I didn't know where he was, I eventually went where the battle horrors were, activating them again. I had to kill them with acid arrows and a few scorcher charges from the fireball wands. After a long time, Davey decided to finally break his invisibility and I could take him down with acid arrows. I was a bit nervous because I feared my PfM scroll would expire. Davey died juuust before it happened.
Ellethil is now in Baldur's Gate. I did a few easy quest (the dead child in Umberlee Temple, the Greater Basilisk in the warehouse, ...) and I'm almost at the level cap. Here's the dude :
So far, things are going incredibly smoothly : I don't think I add a close call yet. A bit surprised really, because I thought that, because I don't have much hp, that things would turn sour fast when luck would ran out. Hadn't happened yet at least. After shopping at Sorcerous Sundries, I learned a crapton of spells after gulping a potion of genius and a potion of mind focusing. I really have a lot of tactical choices now. Since I'm not a specialist mage, I don't have that much spells, but it hadn't proved to be a problem yet. I have my own summons now : a beautiful spider !! It's good, but still not as good as the wand of Monster Summoning. That thing wreck face in BG1.
I'll probably go to the Ice Island to get the Stoneskin scroll I really want to have. I'll go invisible until I fall on the last dude of the maze. My plan is to distract him with summons and try to stun him with the wand of paralyzation (which I haven't used much until now). So, that's pretty much it...
Wimp's first life was cruelly cut short when fighting a blinded Karlat in Beregost. One of the problems with my machine is that games suddenly minimise every now and then for no obvious reason (they're not getting the priority over other background operations they should do). That's always dangerous when that happens in BG as the game continues processing in the background. However, switching quickly back to the game normally saves the day and I expected the delay of less than 2 seconds to not be crucial against Karlat. Unfortunately he had obviously run directly into Wimp after the game minimised and when I had control back and paused he was next to her. I still thought Wimp would probably be OK, but Karlat's axe licked out before she could get out of range.
Following my normal 'never say die' attitude (could a saying possibly be less applicable ) Wimp restarted her adventures and has made decent progress this time so far: - summoned a faithful pseudo-dragon to fight on her behalf. - did a few tasks in Candlekeep before leaving. With a carrying capacity of a whole 5 lbs the bodies of Imoen, Xzar and Montaron were not looted as thoroughly as usual before she did very well to survive a skeleton ambush on the first area transition. She also had to run away from some kobolds on the way to the coast (just the one archer in those though) where she watched as the familiar made short work of Shoal. That provided a boost of 2 levels (and a maximum die roll gave her 4 additional HPs). - in Beregost most of her weight allowance went on Algernon's Cloak and that was put to use on the sirines in the temple to get her up to level 4. Also in Beregost, Neera was blinded to prevent her starting a conversation while being darted. - resisting the temptation to do more work in Beregost for the moment, Wimp travelled on the back roads to the FAI, picking up the ogre belt on the way (using the quick loot bar to move it to the map edge). - next she pushed on to Ulgoth's Beard, returning a bowl to Tenya on the way. The familiar made short work of a charmed Dushai there. - back at the FAI she helped out Joia and made some donations at the temple before using a couple of charmed guards to clear Tarnesh out of the way. She also charmed Jaheira for disposal to get her potion of invisibility. - there was another skeleton archer ambush on the way back to Beregost, but Wimp again survived (without resorting to invisibility). - south of Beregost she charmed an ogrillon and with its help sorted out quests for Zhurlong and Mirianne (again using quickloot to move the boots). Almost up to her next level she then sought out Karlat - but this time charmed him rather than fighting him directly and he was killed after being worn down by spider poison. Taking her level Wimp found this time her luck was out, with a grand total of an additional 0 HPs . A die roll on level up of less than 1 HP is not supposed to be possible, so I guess there's a bug associated with treatment of very low constitution scores. - Wimp had a close shave when I forgot that the Beregost spiders had a follow-me script and the familiar was poisoned twice when they appeared unexpectedly in an inn. Silke was recruited to deal with them and killed one before dying of poison (last minute attacks from the familiar and Wimp failing to hit in the attempt to get Silke's XP). The remaining spiders were blinded and eventually finished off (Wimp has used blind a reasonable amount so far, but has been lucky not to have a wild surge yet). - there was some more good luck with the successful restoration of Melicamp and Wimp will be looking to push reputation up further next. Once prices are a bit more reasonable she will invest in some potions to help her learn a selection of spells.
Comments
Pocket Plane cannot be cast during combat. How do you escape the Abazigal fight using the Pocket Plane? Distract him with summons, run away, and wait until the combat music ends?
Not to forget: Keep up the work @comebackhome! Will take a look at the videos later!
I've been having trouble with my EET install, but I finally managed to sort it out. I tried another run, this time as a vanilla monk ~ it was going alright, got to chapter 6; but then I realized I would probably not be able to do SoD with it. After reading one of your earlier posts on monks, no aoe for SoD will make it tough, and its not like you can facetank as a lvl 10ish monk with LoB.
So, I decided to try something a bit different, the old school powerhouse kensai-thief. I think the AC won;'t be to big of a problem (might be in SoD) because the early game you use a charmed enemy or whatnot to tank for you, avoiding most combat. And once you get Paws you hit and run most of the time anyway as a thief char that is.
One reason to get at least up to Druid level 15 is that you get a huge boost of available spells. After that the Druid levels so fast that reaching level 18 is quite easy. I think @Grond0 was right to go all the way up as the Deva and Elemental Prince are really powerful while even the Spirit Summons remain useful in most battles. Getting the Fighter up and the Druid back is supereasy if you allow yourself to use the Gauth XP loop in the Unseeing Eye Quest. With Baldurans Shield and Everards Sling (plus Simulacrum) you can always spawn up to eight Gauths (if you are fast and lucky). Once they realize the Shield they will stop attacking and you can kill them one after another. Its just time consuming: Drink some cup of tea, take a fresh piece of air - whatever you want!
To better understand how it works, check this post by @Musigny - https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/653262/#Comment_653262
Illasera was treated like always: Use invisibility to lure her away from the guards and call in summons. End of story? Nope! Cause she absolutely destroyed the Spirit Bears in seconds and even the Deva and Elemental Prince had a hard time staying alive. Eklun therefore switched to "Harm" landing it on first try. Now, that was the end of the story. Finally!
The first challenge in the Pocket Plane worked quite good. Let the commons surround Eklun (they cannot hit him thanks to immunity to normal and +1 weapons) so they block the Knights while the ring of these two blocked Ellesime and friends - as well as the Deva and Air Elemental. Once the summons were gone Eklun called in his Spirit Lions who took down Ellesime, Duke Eltan and - with the help of True Seeing - Aran Linvail. The rest was an easy cleanup as - for whatever reason - the enemies refusd to attack the summons.
Gromnir will be next!!!
P.S. Thanks @JuliusBorisov for digging out the posts!
For anyone who's interested;
1. I tried to be smart and used the console to jump right to the ancient statues in ToB. Everything worked fine until Gromnir got killed but then: Nothing! Melissan does not appear and so no porting to the Pocket Plane. Eklun is stuck.
2. Now i tried the regular manual import with all containers lost. Everything else looked fine but: No Druid HLA´s anymore. No Deva, no Elemental Prince - what the Hell is going on here? Fighter HLA´s are there - like they should be. Is there any logic behind this?
As the game always crashes after Irenicus dies there is no automatic transport into ToB. So - what can i do to get past these bugs? This is very frustrating. On one of the many tests to trick the game Eklun died in the first Pocket Plane challenge - is the challenge over even though he already had killed Gromnir before? Will i have to reinstall the whole game?
My motivation is nearing zero at the moment...
ad1) can be fixed, but with few ugly workarounds - it seems some variables are wrongly set so you're probably still in SoA, not ToB as far as game is concerned
ad2) uuuugh....
I never had your bug, so I can't help you. Maybe create a new character directly in ToB and fix it through EEKeeper ?
Another thing : SoA seems to have drained much of your motivation. On another playthrough, maybe we should respect the level cap ? SoA was not meant to be played with HLAs. I'm pretty sure you would have add more fun through it if no HLAs were involved (more work to do that way). Just a suggestion.
No-reload is hard - even when it's easy
The new plan: Pause the game for a day (or more), then recreate Eklun in ToB and restart with newly aquired motivation. Then see when and where we will finally die. Sounds like a decent plan - no?
On that note do you guys even use EET? I quite like it but everytime I discover some things have changed which makes the challenge ven harder, for example summon woodland beings nerfed, and just now I realized the nymph cloak is also nerfed, to one use per day? Which has pretty much dashed my hopes of doing a stalker/cleric dual class play though (how to tackle ducal palace with no summons and only 2 charms, 4 if you rest once I guess..?).
I got my kensai thief past the ducal palace fight with trap stacking, it wwas fairly tedious (like most things LoB related) having to rest in the inn and walk over, set 2 traps and walk back. Anyhow that worked out but my kensai/thief just lacked oomph for Sarevok, and I kinda lost faith in it. I really need to stick with a character
So my new plan was stalker to cleric dual class at lvl 13. Do you guys think this is the correct level? I think the stalker spells only become active at lvl 12, and then its only 1 more lvl to get that 1/2 attack. That was my reasoning. As far weapons go I'd go quarterstaves for backstabbing and porbably dual wield hammers or flails.
Ranger spells should kick in at level 8. However, if you're dualling to cleric then that's going to be the main source of spells for you. Waiting until level 13 would therefore I think be more to do with trying to make sure you've got a good THAC0 as well as the APR. I'm not sure that would be worth it for a cleric though as they will ultimately get to a better THAC0 anyway, but that's probably down to personal taste.
I wasn't intending to play any more LoB at the moment, but Harpagornis' heartfelt plea above touched me
Well, I thought the stalker backstab to be cute, as well as the spells. I think the 3 or 4 mage spells Stalkers get, become active at lvl 12 with access to level 3 spells. Being able to haste the cleric summons would be pretty strong as well as a good melee boost, not having to rely on oils is nice, although there are plenty of them when soloing. From a purely power perspective totemic druid -> fighter is probably one of the best classes for LoB. If I were to go cleric first I'd go lothander kit for sure, I was actually doing a lothander -> thief play through, got to mid SoD, when I decided to mess with my install because something was wrong with my summons. RIP. Anyway, I'll carry on a for a bit with my stalker and see how it'll go.
Did the usual quests : fed Mulahey to his kobolds and sneaked into bandit camp, killing no one. Looted Durlag's Tower to have enough money to buy myself the Robe of the Good Archimagy. Got my revenge against Bassilus : I talked to him, went invisible and backstabbed him for good damage. I tried to lure him into my traps, but random skellies triggered them off screen. No biggie : I hid in shadows behind the stones around him and threw charges of the Wand of Paralyzation at him : only two were needed. Sliced him up after.
So far so good : I don't forsee any trouble before Baldur's Gate, because invis>BG1. Really. I'm always invis, then set traps, rest away from the traps, set some more, open with a backstab, lure into traps, go invisible again and then either cast something or kite. Oh, and I forgot how stupidly OP blind can be. Best level 1 arcane spell in this run. Can't wait to have summons of my own though !
That's it for now. See ya !!
Watchers keep level 2 you're up next..
In the meanwhile i am enjoying the free time not bothering about BG.
With other words: It may take some time before returning with Eklun!
Ellethil is now in Baldur's Gate. I did a few easy quest (the dead child in Umberlee Temple, the Greater Basilisk in the warehouse, ...) and I'm almost at the level cap. Here's the dude :
So far, things are going incredibly smoothly : I don't think I add a close call yet. A bit surprised really, because I thought that, because I don't have much hp, that things would turn sour fast when luck would ran out. Hadn't happened yet at least. After shopping at Sorcerous Sundries, I learned a crapton of spells after gulping a potion of genius and a potion of mind focusing. I really have a lot of tactical choices now. Since I'm not a specialist mage, I don't have that much spells, but it hadn't proved to be a problem yet. I have my own summons now : a beautiful spider !! It's good, but still not as good as the wand of Monster Summoning. That thing wreck face in BG1.
I'll probably go to the Ice Island to get the Stoneskin scroll I really want to have. I'll go invisible until I fall on the last dude of the maze. My plan is to distract him with summons and try to stun him with the wand of paralyzation (which I haven't used much until now). So, that's pretty much it...
See ya !!
Following my normal 'never say die' attitude (could a saying possibly be less applicable
- summoned a faithful pseudo-dragon to fight on her behalf.
- did a few tasks in Candlekeep before leaving. With a carrying capacity of a whole 5 lbs the bodies of Imoen, Xzar and Montaron were not looted as thoroughly as usual before she did very well to survive a skeleton ambush on the first area transition. She also had to run away from some kobolds on the way to the coast (just the one archer in those though) where she watched as the familiar made short work of Shoal. That provided a boost of 2 levels (and a maximum die roll gave her 4 additional HPs).
- in Beregost most of her weight allowance went on Algernon's Cloak and that was put to use on the sirines in the temple to get her up to level 4. Also in Beregost, Neera was blinded to prevent her starting a conversation while being darted.
- resisting the temptation to do more work in Beregost for the moment, Wimp travelled on the back roads to the FAI, picking up the ogre belt on the way (using the quick loot bar to move it to the map edge).
- next she pushed on to Ulgoth's Beard, returning a bowl to Tenya on the way. The familiar made short work of a charmed Dushai there.
- back at the FAI she helped out Joia and made some donations at the temple before using a couple of charmed guards to clear Tarnesh out of the way. She also charmed Jaheira for disposal to get her potion of invisibility.
- there was another skeleton archer ambush on the way back to Beregost, but Wimp again survived (without resorting to invisibility).
- south of Beregost she charmed an ogrillon and with its help sorted out quests for Zhurlong and Mirianne (again using quickloot to move the boots). Almost up to her next level she then sought out Karlat - but this time charmed him rather than fighting him directly and he was killed after being worn down by spider poison. Taking her level Wimp found this time her luck was out, with a grand total of an additional 0 HPs
- Wimp had a close shave when I forgot that the Beregost spiders had a follow-me script and the familiar was poisoned twice when they appeared unexpectedly in an inn. Silke was recruited to deal with them and killed one before dying of poison (last minute attacks from the familiar and Wimp failing to hit in the attempt to get Silke's XP). The remaining spiders were blinded and eventually finished off (Wimp has used blind a reasonable amount so far, but has been lucky not to have a wild surge yet).
- there was some more good luck with the successful restoration of Melicamp and Wimp will be looking to push reputation up further next. Once prices are a bit more reasonable she will invest in some potions to help her learn a selection of spells.