I'm back on my SD(7)/Mage and came across something funny idk if it's been posted here before. If you fight Dezkiel for Stoneskin and have not triggered the conversation with Tellan but manage to lure Dezkiel to Tellan, Tellan will attack Dezkiel and take him down single handedly since Dezkiel will not fight back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PmspxYrwJI
I've been spending a bit of time recently having another go with Shagrat, my half-orc shaman. I invested a while to re-roll the character and push stats up marginally compared with his first incarnation. Progress with him is hampered by not having invisibility, but he's done pretty well so far and is about to enter the Cloakwood Mine having recently hit the XP cap. Main tactics used include: - at early levels just slinging enemies is often the quickest alternative. Doom + charm person offers a good alternative. - after hitting level 6 the increased number and strength of spirit summons mean they can take on most enemies, though care is needed as the AI will normally target the PC in preference to summons. The hordes of kobold commandos are particularly problematic due to that and Shagrat took a long time to get through the Nashkel Mine as a result (I've used virtually no resources thus far and didn't want to use invisibility there, though Shagrat is carrying well over 100k in loot). - single powerful enemies could be charmed and then sent into writhing fog after summons were already in position. - once nymphs were available they made using spirit summons much easier by leading things into them. They are also pretty capable in their own right - damage in melee is not bad (particularly against held enemies) and lightning blasts from 3 or 4 nymphs at once are vicious even for LoB HPs. Confusion from out of sight can also be used to avoid getting into a general fight with several opponents at once. - in general I haven't used Algernon's Cloak that much as I wanted to concentrate on shaman specific tactics, but I did make an exception for the Bandit Camp where other tactics didn't look promising. Shagrat got invited in there and charmed all the external enemies one by one before pulling things out of Tazok's tent for disposal by nymphs pre-positioned outside.
I shouldn't have bothered posting! Having felt I'd had a good run I obviously relaxed slightly on entry to the mine and left Shagrat a bit too close to some nymphs who were aiming to make inroads into all the guards. As a result he was caught by an emotion cast at a nymph and that was that ...
Damn, that's too bad. I'm super impressed by your shaman tactics I tried shaman myself and never thought about sending charmed enemies into fog and animals or using nymphs to lure.
My SD/Mage finally made it into SoD, that's the 3rd char now to beat BG1 with LoB and ScS, after the Druid and F/MC . The battle with Sarevok was kind of the ordinary strategy but at the end I ran out of arrows, so I had to Monster wand chain backstab him with Hips only used off cd thanks again to @billy_pilgrim for mentioning that trick here and the other fine folks who discovered it in the first place, @JuliusBorisov and @semiticgod if I recall correctly.
Since i almost had no Monster summoning charges left and my summons got slaughtered too quickly vs Korlasz, here I had to use the same trick, hide bs, rehide which is really annoying to do in SoD, since the enemies run around like madmen. I'm glad bs works even while enemies run.
@Victor_Creed_SFV: Actually, @Grum discovered that trick. He was the one who found that activating Detect Traps could start the stealth timer early and let a Shadowdancer go invisible immediately after breaking invisibility.
Ok, thx a lot @Grum then I'm pretty sure the SD is the best suited class for me actually suceeding a no reload because of that. I'm just to forgetful to suceed without cheese.
Wouldn't it be possible to use scrolls of Greater Restoration to keep Caelar alive for long periods in LoB mode? My install is heavily modded, but I found many of those scrolls available from vendors in SoD.
Hey guys! I'm back ~ for a while anyway. @semiticgod how would greater restoration keep caelar alive longer? In my experience B dispels and then 2 shots her. All I could do was get her to cast the bolt for about 20-40dmg and then she'd be dead.
@billy_pilgrim: Based on her .cre files, it seems like she should have just over 100 HP. In LoB mode, that should amount to about 400, or at least 250 if she only receives the bonuses of a summoned critter.
Based on Belhifet's .cre files, he should deal 1d10+10+3 damage per hit at 4 APR in LoB mode. His base weapon damage is 1d10, his weapon grants 3 pips in the longsword proficiency, and his STR is 22. Not counting the poison damage, he should be dealing 74 damage on average every round.
What does CTRL-M show on Caelar in SoD in LoB mode?
Dialogue options determine whether she joins you or not. Potential NPCs don't benefit from LoB HPs at all, so I guess she will stick with her standard HPs (something like 135).
Crap. Well, scrolls of Greater Restoration would still be about as useful as that goblet from Durlag's Tower, except they could be used on summoned critters.
I see it's been really quiet here. I've been busy playing other games but a couple of days ago had the urge to test out some stuff with EE-Keeper. After testing both shapeshifter and Avenger dual classed into fighter at level 7 druid, at least with SCS improved shifting I gotta say it is a pretty vicious combo, especially the Avenger. SCS shapeshifting tokens count as daggers in proficiency, so a fighter with 4 pips in dagger can get 5 apr single wielding spider token and because of the massive attack speed the poison hits really often even with LoB saves. Getting web into the otherwise super useless 2nd spellslot of the druid is also awesome and ofc the spider is immune to it. (spider + boots of speed is also insanely fast movespeed).
I started a regular playthrough with a shapeshifter who is not far from level 7 (not having visited the baslisks at all yet, also no flesh golems or sirins), but I might start an avenger instead.
It's just a shame that you have to dual into fighter for real good Thac0 with this, the druid doesn't really need to be good in melee, but my preferred playstyle is high weapon damage and with the dual it's insane for bg1 standards, but ofc in bg2 this would just be a glorified fighter. (Having Imp Invis is nice, tho).
I think a normal shapeshifter (no dual before bg2/level 15) should be able to beat SoD in the same manner a totemic druid would, with the upside of not needing the ST tome(normal werewolf has 19 st) and being able to use the 25 st potion for Big B.
Then ofc in BG2 you can cheese with greater token + Earth Elemental. :P
Thanks for the testing @Victor_Creed_SFV! Personally i dont like the SCS Shapeshifting Mod that much but thats just a matter of taste. As i am still playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 while looking for ways to make the game more challenging i fear that Eklun and Korgath will have to wait for quite some time. Maybe @Grond0 can give the challenge a new push - maybe someone else. However: Until then - have fun!
Haha, I haven't played DoS2 for over a week now, my solo Necro is in Act 4 and ever since getting two big skills the game has not been a challenge anymore.
The shapeshifting mod is mainly good because of the dagger proficiency for the tokens, ofc dualingt tokens can also be cheesy for certain purposes (+40% MR with dual regular werewolf tokens, also you can get 6 APR with dual spiders , and ofc the classic Greater Were + Earth Elemental) but in BG1/SoD the main upside seems to be if you dual into a fighter and put ihnto daggers you go from 14 Thaco to 7 which is quite a significant increase. On the downside there is no +3 dagger, so you can't even use your 4 invested pips for Big B and because you dualed early your druid part stops at level 4 spells.
Thanks for the testing @Victor_Creed_SFV! Personally i dont like the SCS Shapeshifting Mod that much but thats just a matter of taste. As i am still playing Divinity: Original Sin 2 while looking for ways to make the game more challenging i fear that Eklun and Korgath will have to wait for quite some time. Maybe @Grond0 can give the challenge a new push - maybe someone else. However: Until then - have fun!
Nice to hear from you, @Harpagornis ! Been a while ! While I personally made the switch to post in the no-reload thread, I always come by to check in this section regularly to see if you picked up your druid-->fighter again. Can't wait to see how far he goes ! No-reloading a solo tetralogy with SCS on LoB would be an immense achievement, but take all the time you need, buddy !
I happened to watch a video where a 6 man party really struggled with Big B on Insane. One interesting thing tho, was once they killed all of the demons Big B only gated in Cornugons, I did not see any Erinyes after the initial ones died. Wonder if it would make a big difference killing/charming (they have 7 save vs breath on LoB) the Erinyes since only they can see thru invis sides B.
Big B just needs some hit & run training to be beaten quite regularly by (nearly) all Fighter classes. I never cared about the other demons. Killing the Erinyes would be the best choice but they are so slippery that i tend to skip them too. Anti-Missile-Equip usually works great here.
I agree that beating the whole series with our specific rules would be really awesome @Arctodus. But its still a long way to go. Even more cause i havent played BG for several months now so i am lacking the needed routine. As long as D:OS2 is still fun i will try to break the game apart more and more. At the moment i am playing around with naked solo runs or other heavy restrictions as the battles are otherwise too trivial in the long run. Experimenting with all kinds of builds is more interesting than finishing the game.
The guy who showcased it uses it for speedruns (on core), that's where I saw it first and he did finish the game multiple times with it. But yeah, I kinda felt like it would not be in the spirit of this challenge so i rather asked before doing it myself.
I randomly wanted to look up bards today and realized that songs got buffed and last one round now. That makes the skald really interesting, since it's damage with song (+3) is equal to mastery for a fighter, while the base Thac0 is 3 points lower in BG1 and 5 in SoD but still quite alright due to skald song also giving +2(3 with the base +1 for skald). Now the fighter doesn't have any spells so it has to dual to still get at least high mastery (the grand mastery options don't work very well even if you dual in SoD). I personally always get put off dualing in BG1/SoD since you lose A LOT in BG2. Very interesting about the bards is they can use ALL weapons except comp bows, wand of monster summoning cheese and throwing axe makes BG 1 a walk in the park coupled with mage spells. The true test as always is SoD but with the Thac0 close to a fighter the Big B fight shouldn't be harder than with any class.
I played my shapeshifter the other day and killed some basilisks to get to level 7, I charmed a lesser first try, but forgot to bring scrolls for reviving so instead of loop cheesing xp I just slaughtered the whole map with it.
Hm, the fact that single wielding werewolf token actually gives 3 apr makes early dual into fighter kinda unnecessary. Did the flesh golems and Sirins with level 7 shapeshifter and leveled to 8 pretty shortly after. The golems just melted, never was I less worried against them, out of 3 golems 2 hit me each once (had potion and belt, -19 ac vs crush) due to the insane speed they died.
Ofc the fighter dual and dwing would be much more awesome but losing Iron Skins is just too much already, let's not even talk about what you'd lose in BG2...
My shapeshifter is almost max level now (5k more xp) and has just killed Tranzig. 5 nymphs + lighthning seems more op than the 2 nymphs and doggies I used with my Totemic, ofc they are much weaker inside, while hold monster with the -2 to saves is very potent (didn't work vs Tranzig tho, but with Greenstone and shield amulet he stood no chance and once the nymphs stopped trying to cast he just got constantly interrupted. The nymphs seem to have insane Thaco, when I was a bit lower level, 3 nymphs just destroyed Bassilus, he never got to cast a spell and while his single target damage is quite high, due to his low apr he never even killed one nymph (They did cast their heal once).
Comments
If you fight Dezkiel for Stoneskin and have not triggered the conversation with Tellan but manage to lure Dezkiel to Tellan, Tellan will attack Dezkiel and take him down single handedly since Dezkiel will not fight back.
- at early levels just slinging enemies is often the quickest alternative. Doom + charm person offers a good alternative.
- after hitting level 6 the increased number and strength of spirit summons mean they can take on most enemies, though care is needed as the AI will normally target the PC in preference to summons. The hordes of kobold commandos are particularly problematic due to that and Shagrat took a long time to get through the Nashkel Mine as a result (I've used virtually no resources thus far and didn't want to use invisibility there, though Shagrat is carrying well over 100k in loot).
- single powerful enemies could be charmed and then sent into writhing fog after summons were already in position.
- once nymphs were available they made using spirit summons much easier by leading things into them. They are also pretty capable in their own right - damage in melee is not bad (particularly against held enemies) and lightning blasts from 3 or 4 nymphs at once are vicious even for LoB HPs. Confusion from out of sight can also be used to avoid getting into a general fight with several opponents at once.
- in general I haven't used Algernon's Cloak that much as I wanted to concentrate on shaman specific tactics, but I did make an exception for the Bandit Camp where other tactics didn't look promising. Shagrat got invited in there and charmed all the external enemies one by one before pulling things out of Tazok's tent for disposal by nymphs pre-positioned outside.
I'm super impressed by your shaman tactics I tried shaman myself and never thought about sending charmed enemies into fog and animals or using nymphs to lure.
The battle with Sarevok was kind of the ordinary strategy but at the end I ran out of arrows, so I had to Monster wand chain backstab him with Hips only used off cd thanks again to @billy_pilgrim for mentioning that trick here and the other fine folks who discovered it in the first place, @JuliusBorisov and @semiticgod if I recall correctly.
Since i almost had no Monster summoning charges left and my summons got slaughtered too quickly vs Korlasz, here I had to use the same trick, hide bs, rehide which is really annoying to do in SoD, since the enemies run around like madmen.
I'm glad bs works even while enemies run.
I'm just to forgetful to suceed without cheese.
Based on Belhifet's .cre files, he should deal 1d10+10+3 damage per hit at 4 APR in LoB mode. His base weapon damage is 1d10, his weapon grants 3 pips in the longsword proficiency, and his STR is 22. Not counting the poison damage, he should be dealing 74 damage on average every round.
What does CTRL-M show on Caelar in SoD in LoB mode?
I’m a level 3 dwarf barbarian.
Closest call was the fight against the dwarf in the inn (where you give that halfling his short sword).
Turns out the assassin broke his axe, but I was no match for him. He kept knocking me out because it was non lethal damage.
I was equipped with the dagger of venom, so I could usually get one or two swings in when I’d wake up.
After poisoning the assassin a couple of times, I was eventually victorious.
I quickly rested after that. Thank goodness for Buckley’s buckler and a 20 CON because of it.
I've been busy playing other games but a couple of days ago had the urge to test out some stuff with EE-Keeper.
After testing both shapeshifter and Avenger dual classed into fighter at level 7 druid, at least with SCS improved shifting I gotta say it is a pretty vicious combo, especially the Avenger.
SCS shapeshifting tokens count as daggers in proficiency, so a fighter with 4 pips in dagger can get 5 apr single wielding spider token and because of the massive attack speed the poison hits really often even with LoB saves.
Getting web into the otherwise super useless 2nd spellslot of the druid is also awesome and ofc the spider is immune to it.
(spider + boots of speed is also insanely fast movespeed).
I started a regular playthrough with a shapeshifter who is not far from level 7 (not having visited the baslisks at all yet, also no flesh golems or sirins), but I might start an avenger instead.
It's just a shame that you have to dual into fighter for real good Thac0 with this, the druid doesn't really need to be good in melee, but my preferred playstyle is high weapon damage and with the dual it's insane for bg1 standards, but ofc in bg2 this would just be a glorified fighter. (Having Imp Invis is nice, tho).
I think a normal shapeshifter (no dual before bg2/level 15) should be able to beat SoD in the same manner a totemic druid would, with the upside of not needing the ST tome(normal werewolf has 19 st) and being able to use the 25 st potion for Big B.
Then ofc in BG2 you can cheese with greater token + Earth Elemental. :P
The shapeshifting mod is mainly good because of the dagger proficiency for the tokens, ofc dualingt tokens can also be cheesy for certain purposes (+40% MR with dual regular werewolf tokens, also you can get 6 APR with dual spiders
On the downside there is no +3 dagger, so you can't even use your 4 invested pips for Big B and because you dualed early your druid part stops at level 4 spells.
One interesting thing tho, was once they killed all of the demons Big B only gated in Cornugons, I did not see any Erinyes after the initial ones died.
Wonder if it would make a big difference killing/charming (they have 7 save vs breath on LoB) the Erinyes since only they can see thru invis sides B.
I agree that beating the whole series with our specific rules would be really awesome @Arctodus. But its still a long way to go. Even more cause i havent played BG for several months now so i am lacking the needed routine. As long as D:OS2 is still fun i will try to break the game apart more and more. At the moment i am playing around with naked solo runs or other heavy restrictions as the battles are otherwise too trivial in the long run. Experimenting with all kinds of builds is more interesting than finishing the game.
But yeah, I kinda felt like it would not be in the spirit of this challenge so i rather asked before doing it myself.
That makes the skald really interesting, since it's damage with song (+3) is equal to mastery for a fighter, while the base Thac0 is 3 points lower in BG1 and 5 in SoD but still quite alright due to skald song also giving +2(3 with the base +1 for skald).
Now the fighter doesn't have any spells so it has to dual to still get at least high mastery (the grand mastery options don't work very well even if you dual in SoD).
I personally always get put off dualing in BG1/SoD since you lose A LOT in BG2.
Very interesting about the bards is they can use ALL weapons except comp bows, wand of monster summoning cheese and throwing axe makes BG 1 a walk in the park coupled with mage spells.
The true test as always is SoD but with the Thac0 close to a fighter the Big B fight shouldn't be harder than with any class.
I played my shapeshifter the other day and killed some basilisks to get to level 7, I charmed a lesser first try, but forgot to bring scrolls for reviving so instead of loop cheesing xp I just slaughtered the whole map with it.
Did the flesh golems and Sirins with level 7 shapeshifter and leveled to 8 pretty shortly after.
The golems just melted, never was I less worried against them, out of 3 golems 2 hit me each once (had potion and belt, -19 ac vs crush) due to the insane speed they died.
Ofc the fighter dual and dwing would be much more awesome but losing Iron Skins is just too much already, let's not even talk about what you'd lose in BG2...
5 nymphs + lighthning seems more op than the 2 nymphs and doggies I used with my Totemic, ofc they are much weaker inside, while hold monster with the -2 to saves is very potent (didn't work vs Tranzig tho, but with Greenstone and shield amulet he stood no chance and once the nymphs stopped trying to cast he just got constantly interrupted.
The nymphs seem to have insane Thaco, when I was a bit lower level, 3 nymphs just destroyed Bassilus, he never got to cast a spell and while his single target damage is quite high, due to his low apr he never even killed one nymph (They did cast their heal once).