@dunbar: Nope. If you deal enough damage to Imoen in the starting dungeon, she will panic, leave the party, and escape the area, only reappearing in the cutscene with Irenicus and the Cowled Wizards.
It should work if you paralyse or hold her but the belt may give immunity to those effects, and once she goes below 1 hp her script will trigger and she leaves.
The heal works against vampires turned into bats, though they leave fast. Trolls that are downed but they get up at some point. Statues in several dungeons, which is really nice of you have multiple warriors.
The Sword of Chaos and similar weapons will heal the wielder when battling inanimate unkillable neutral objects. For instance, if you have Minsc wield it and hit the jailer golems in the starting dungeon you get him back to full health while the golem stays neutral.
Slow but steady.
Neat trick, although I usually just pass Ribald's Ring of Regeneration around for free healing.
swap the wand of lightning with a summon animal (or figurine) and all 5 summons (the limit) will appear next to enemies. use the 'guard' command on all of your fighters and your fighters will attack things through walls and fog of war until the enemies are dead. if you only have 2 fighters then summon 5 animals but only summon 2 that are visible to enemies. if the enemies kill those 2 summons, then send in 2 more and have your fighters guard them as well. this will duplicate figurines a lot. when the time is up for the figurine to return, you will have 5 figurines return. the cleric spell farsight can help a lot with visiblity. this trick is very effective for watcher's keep. all rooms can be cleared of enemies before ever setting foot. you can then add yet another glitch of weighing down people with excess items to get your ranged characters to stand still while guarding. this will allow them to guard things far away without moving in too close. this also works with other tricks like mazing your entire party except the caster for adalon's quest. this will prevent her from changing anyone to drow except the caster.
standing in doorways prevent them from closing. standing in the harper stronghold doorway will prevent it from closing and an additional body to be found. it can also prevent watcher's keep from closing any of its exits. simply have 1 charcter stand in the way (right click) and use the scroll. it will say 'all exits sealed' but the exits will remain. this will grant 100k xp or so. simply enter the 5th level again. no enemy can resist spike trap. as a result, laying 6 will kill demogorgon granting another 80k per person.
cast protection from magic on liches. this prevents them from casting and makes them harmless. casting strength works on giants to lower their damage.
tabbing out buffers all commands in multiplayer. if you have a very difficult fight, the host can simply tab to another window. all monster AI will stop. as a result, the client can attack all enemies with impunity but have no effect. when the host tabs back in, however, all commands from the client will occur immediately. the 200 rounds of attacks will all suddenly occur at once, usually killing things easily.
A little trick (not even an exploit) which is quite old but I have found myself using more recently: bouncing helpful or harmless spells off mages protected by spell deflection/turning.
The spells in question are minor spell deflection (level 3), minor spell turning (5), spell deflection (6) and spell turning (7). These spells deflect or reflect up to 4 spell levels (minor) or 10/12 spell levels (Spell Deflection/Turning).
Many enemy mages use these (e.g. yuan-ti mages). So if you find yourself up against them, you can either try to debuff the opponent, use AoE spells, or just ignore spells and use weapons instead.
If you happen to find yourself needing to debuff the opponent but you don’t have the right spell to hand, one option is to consume the defence by casting spells at them. But rather than have your Flame Arrow reflected back at you, you can either waste “useless” spells from scrolls/items to get rid of deflection or cast some helpful spells that you want to buff yourself with at mages protected by turning.
Some items such as Ring of Earth Control have a fairly useless spell attached to them (in this case, Stone to Flesh 1/day). You will hardly ever need to cast this spell, but you can use it to get rid of Minor Spell Deflection or to waste 60% of Spell Deflection.
Spell Turning is even better. Imagine you want to cast Improved Invisibility on yourself. Cast it on the opponent instead to get rid of Minor Spell Turning and to make yourself Improved Invisible. Improved Haste is another goodie to use against Spell Turning (reflected back to you and wastes 50% of the turning). You can also do it with various Armour spells (such as Spirit Armour) and with tons of cleric buff spells (Chaotic Commands, Death Ward et al).
It’s a niche but fun way at getting one-up on all those SCS mages that love their spell defences
Smelly cheese for SCS. Some opponents do not use their full plethora of abilities if confronted by summons rather than the PC/party. The Warden of the Planar Prison is a good example. He is a fearsome opponent if you try to take him on in a fair fight. But if you stay well clear and send summons in instead, he just stands around taking a beating. You can combine with Farsight or Wizard Eye for full effect or just get close, instruct summons to attack, and retreat your PC. The yuan-ti near him do react though so you may have to get rid of them first or send in multiple summons.
Speaking of yuan-ti, in my current install the yuan-ti mages seem to have specialised in Summoning. One spell they love casting near the start of a fight: Cacofiend . I let them cast, run well away, and wait patiently for the Nabassu to tear said yuan-ti apart. Nearly every group self-destructs in the same way. In my current playthrough just last night in the Planar Prison, the Nabassu even killed the Warden for me! Not my intention and I had plenty of summons to send but I didn’t even have to bother. Guess the “mages have deals with demons” component isn’t quite working
In hell trials you can get black razor and good tear (+2 to all saves) by letting genie have the sword and killing him after the dialog before he disappears. He will drop the sword and you will get good tear.
Under improved haste party it's fairly easy to do. Tested in 2.3 and 2.5.
#2 Unlimited arrows of dispelling via Simulacrum in BG2
Not really exploit or trick but while most of SCS components remove ability for PI and Simulacrum to use scrolls and items, they don't remove ability to change equipped weapons and ammo.
You can provide your character (archer or something else) with Vhalior's helmet pretty early in the BG2EE and buy/steal 40 arrows of dispelling from waukeen promenade and have your simulacrum dispel everything without losing any arrows.
Remark: Not totally OP as PFMW does protect against them but it's amazing way for 10 APR archer beast to dispel multiple enemies during single round. Fantastic stuff in group fights against multiple mages/clerics. Especially in LOB where dispel/remove magic are almost useless unless used by very level high bard.
Protection from Undead scrolls: everyone knows how crazy overpowered they are in the vanilla game, when anything undead is basically free XP from Bodhi to Kangaxx. SCS tries to reduce the exploit by making some undead react in some way and some pure immune.
The Shade Lord is one opponent that does not react at all if you use the scroll. But you can also use Protection from Undead scrolls quite effectively against liches...as long as you have Spell Immunity.
(Btw, I’m not going to delve into using the scrolls ON the liches as that is a different vintage of cheese).
If you try to take on a lich with just the scroll for protection, the lich will just cast Remove Magic and then hand you your butt. But if you use the scroll and cast SI Abjuration, the lich has no way of dispelling it. Remove Magic is countered by the SI and the lich cannot see you to target spell debuffs at you.
What it can still do is the following:
1) Remove Magic as mentioned 2) Chain Contingency *could* still fire (it’s unpredictable, sometimes does and sometimes not) which may include ADHW 3) Summons 4) Cast AoE damage spells at its summons in the hope of hitting you 5) Go invisible itself so you can no longer attack
So you will need to do a bit more work: Protection from Magic Energy, Oracle or True Sight and some way to deal with powerful summons are needed. If you allowed high level casters to have HLAs, you might even see a Fallen Planetar...
But other than that, it’s actually quite minimal effort to take out very powerful opponents. If you are quick, one scroll can be enough to deal with the 3 Athkatlan liches (Crooked Crane, Bridge & Temple Sewers).
Not sure it is a tactic or what, but the mask of King Strohm is usable by any character preEE and would protect against critical hits. Something similar I remember for the Svirfneblin chief helmet.
Can anyone verify whether this is still the case in EEv2.5? I am not at liberty to check right now.
if you have jaheira in your group in bg2 you can get multiple items of protection +2 twice
what you need is: high pick pockets ( for convenience ) and need to be fast ( boots of speed or oil of speed or both or haste )
what happens the first time is eventually dermin will come by and have some banter with jaheira ( i want to say on his second visit ) then the next time you rest jaheira will disappear and a character named Terminsel will appear
what you need to do is get your speedy pick pocketer in front of Terminsel's walk path ( because as soon as he talks to your closest party member he walks away and disappears to the nearest exit )
while getting in his way, with fast pause/pick pocket actions you can pick pocket: bracers of AC 6, ring of protection +2, cloak of protection +2 and an amulet or protection +1
and you can do this AGAIN when jaheira's harper quest finishes, when Terminsel comes back, but you will have to be quick on the draw because he will transform into elminster
Regarding the Slayer Change trick, you mention the need to use an area transition auto-save. Is that really necessary, when you have quick save to rely on instead? Especially with the Wand of Lightning trick, it seems like you'd have plenty of time to drink however many Potions of Power were necessary in the given 7 rounds.
@Abi_Dalzim: Depending on the EE update (namely, the more recent ones), being in Slayer form disables saving, including quick saves. The saves are definitely necessary; there's no way you could drink enough Potions of Power to survive the 1500 non-resistable, difficulty-independent magic damage at the end. With the Wand of Lightning trick, you could only drink maybe 42 Potions of Power before running out of time. Maybe if you had extremely high base HP, you could manage it, but otherwise no.
@Abi_Dalzim: Depending on the EE update (namely, the more recent ones), being in Slayer form disables saving, including quick saves. The saves are definitely necessary; there's no way you could drink enough Potions of Power to survive the 1500 non-resistable, difficulty-independent magic damage at the end. With the Wand of Lightning trick, you could only drink maybe 42 Potions of Power before running out of time. Maybe if you had extremely high base HP, you could manage it, but otherwise no.
Ah, I kind of assumed you could still save while Slayer, but checking, apparently not. Doesn't matter for me, since I don't really like going Slayer anyways. I only really use it these days when I have no other counter for Kangaxx's imprisonment.
The spells in question are minor spell deflection (level 3), minor spell turning (5), spell deflection (6) and spell turning (7). These spells deflect or reflect up to 4 spell levels (minor) or 10/12 spell levels (Spell Deflection/Turning).
Many enemy mages use these (e.g. yuan-ti mages). So if you find yourself up against them, you can either try to debuff the opponent, use AoE spells, or just ignore spells and use weapons instead.
If you happen to find yourself needing to debuff the opponent but you don’t have the right spell to hand, one option is to consume the defence by casting spells at them. But rather than have your Flame Arrow reflected back at you, you can either waste “useless” spells from scrolls/items to get rid of deflection or cast some helpful spells that you want to buff yourself with at mages protected by turning.
of you have a fm you can equip him with the shield of reflection and let him cast flame arrow against the enemy protected by spell turning, the magic arrow is reflected by the shield so you consume his spell turning and in the end the bad guy is the one that takes the damage.
just tested, but never used in real battle. use the wand of lighting trick swapping with an other wand, like the cloudkill one, then pass the 2 wands to an other mage (or bard or thief with uai) and repeat, then to an other, it depends on how much people you have able to use wands. with 3 mages i was able to stack 6 * 3 = 18 cloudkill in about 1 second. or can be fireballs or whatever...
Since reloading in EE is almost instantenous, it's much faster to reload the game on a failed Hide in Shadows rather than waiting full round for the icon to reset.
(It seems that loading resets ALL round timers in general which is probably very abuseable if I only knew how)
It also resets character movement, stopping wandering NPCs.
neera or a wild mage can make good use of one of the spells that other way i find so inferior to the alternatives you have at the same level: energy drain. and she can do it using a PI. at level cap she has 6 lev 1 spells ( i assume that every respectable high level wild mage has only dweomers memorized there) and 5 lev 9 ones. and with RoV and AoP casting energy drain is almost immediate. so the PI, that can go invisible or protect herself with PfMW and SI to approach the enemy safely, can drain 12 levels, no special memorization needed, using the dweomers or, having 1 IA and 4 energy drain memorized, 20 levels. this so fast that the enemy can not even react, the only problem is to bring the PI alive near him. as she can cast more than 1 PI she can bring almost every strong enemy not immune to level draining to lev 1 if she wishes. with the power version, using IA and the lev9 spells, she has more than enough time to cast IA, make herself immune to physical attack and protected with the 2 SI that make her not dispellable, haste herself, apply the combination and kill herself with some flame arrows or other damaging spells to allow the real neera to cast the second PI. and more spells can be added to the combo if needed as IA lasts 2 rounds and less than that is needed to make the PI invulnerable, approach the enemy, drain his levels and suicide.
to bring the ToB level bosses to the level you was when you started BG1 is quite nasty and effective.
Alas, the casting spells in armor with hotkeys trick doesn't work anymore, it will surely change how I'm going to approach my next playthrough.
I also found out a similar trick to the Nahal's Reckless Dweomer hotkey trick a very long time ago (maybe in 1.3 or even earlier) but I never reported it because I didn't wanted the exploit to be fixed. You could achieve the same result in BG:EE only, by putting two Nahal's Reckless Dweomer in a Minor Sequencer spell (now you cannot select Nahal's Reckless Dweomer in your sequencers / contingencies), when you fired the sequencer you had unlimited spell casting with infinite aura cleansing. I didn't know about the hotkey trick though, it was even better!
@Gotural: A variant of the latter trick is still possible with certain mods. The Spellbender kit can benefit from the Minor Sequencer trick. And I think the Wand of Lightning trick can have the same effect, even with Nahal's Reckless Dweomer.
And I think the Wand of Lightning trick can have the same effect, even with Nahal's Reckless Dweomer.
i don't know how to merge the WoL trick with spells cast from spellbook. afaik you have to activate the wand while in pause and then put an other item in the slot, but there are not Dwehomer's scrolls. activating the wand and then casting the dwehomer while in pause make the second command override the first so you get only 1 dwehomer and the wand looses no charge.
but I never reported it because I didn't wanted the exploit to be fixed.
i really dislike the way developers are so careful to nerf possible exploits even when them are so intentional and can not affect players that don't want to use them. it spoils the fun of those who like to do it for no reason, and there are plenty of lame tactics to beat the game even without nerfing exploits. it does not go as far as improved anvil mod, that the creator made in a way that allows to win only in the way that in his opinion the game HAS to be played. and he was so quick to upgrade the mod as soon as he knew that someone found an alternative (exploiting or not exploiting) way. it goes not so far, but it makes me play the original game way more than the EE, lately i play EE only for some very relaxed vanilla runs or to try some interesting mod that is new so not original compatible. and i refuse to upgrade EE from the version i bought it cause i DON'T WANT new nerfs introduced. this is also why i don't report here, as @Gotural, my best tricks...
@gorgonzola: The WoL trick works with on-self spells and innate abilities; not just quick slot items. The spell just has to be on-self by default. Thus, it works with Sunfire but not Fireball. Scrolls are only necessary for spells that can also be cast on other targets, such as Flame Arrow, Protection from Fire, and Chaos.
@semiticgod i am able to use the trick with sunfire, you are correct about it, but in my testing and with my game version, as i told i don't update it, not with dwehomers. does not matter if i unpause right after casting the dwehomer, without chosing which spell to use or after chosing, the dwehomer always overrides the wand and i get a single one. so i would say that @Gotural's trick can not be used with the wand instead of a sequencer. until someone test better than me and find a way to make it work...
has three uses per day of Silence, 15' Radius except that this verion is party friendly. This is hude against a lot of dangerous enemies in BG2. Toss in greater malison and enemies will have to make save with -9 penalty. It can also be used by any class who can wield a long sword.
#2 The Visage
helmet (from Dorn quest) has one use per day of Brethe Acid which is 30' Radius posion damage (rarely resisted) and -4 save vs death or fall unconscious for two rounds. What is great about this are four things. 1. Mages have poor save vs death, 2. Posion damage interupts spell casting, 3. It is instant cast and 4. If not cast directly at protected enemy will it hit all enemies in its range through all spell protections.
Both #1 and #2 are very effective even on LOB. I tend to get a lot of success with both even with mod which reduces enemy saves by additional 5 points.
has three uses per day of Silence, 15' Radius except that this verion is party friendly. This is hude against a lot of dangerous enemies in BG2. Toss in greater malison and enemies will have to make save with -9 penalty. It can also be used by any class who can wield a long sword.
Both #1 and #2 are very effective even on LOB. I tend to get a lot of success with both even with mod which reduces enemy saves by additional 5 points.
Does casting Silence on self not only make the Save penalty moot but also overcomes MR? But a party-friendly Silence is great.
Awesome thread which speaks volumes about how much love there is for the BG series.
useful summons:
cast your favorite summon
cast otiluke's resilient sphere until it works (not saved)
cast protection from magic (via scroll)
what should happen is the pfm will override the hold effect, allowing otiluke's to grant the full physical immunity but not the hold effect. as a bonus, the summon will be protected from magic and physical for a long time. invisible stalker is a great candidate. it has the longest duration, able to make a lot of use out of physical immunity. it's also not susceptible to undead paralyze attacks or basilisk paralyze.
there's an argument for ORS to not have a save against friendly targets. i completely agree - and luckily, in vanilla there is a copy of ORS called spin853 which is ORS with no save. of course it's possible to use the no save version against enemies but i find it more useful as a buff for a near permanent summon. i think the no save ORS is permanent. as a summon buff it kind of makes sense. as a party member buff, it's kind of silly. the party member would essentially gain 100% immunity forever, which is a bit cheesy.
it's possible to do this anyway with party member. use the sewer cloak to transform into rat. this gives you 90% resistance to all. dispel the animal weapon and equip the defender of easthaven, which gives 20% to crushing slashing piercing.
as a party member buff, it's kind of silly. the party member would essentially gain 100% immunity forever, which is a bit cheesy.
very cheasy, and not the kind of cheese i like to taste, even if i LOVE cheese (see my nickname ).
that and using over and over the pfm scroll trough having it equipped in simulacrum/PI quick slot would mean to have the "perfect tank" at will, protected from both physical and magic damage almost constantly.
the rest of the combo seems to me quite tasty, even if without using the scroll trough a clone also quite costly as those scrolls are very rare and valuable.
an alternative can be to cast improved invisibility to the ORS protected summon, so it can not be targeted by spells. it will still be vulnerable to the AOE ones and destroyed by death spell and this imo makes your combo even better as it preserves the taste of the cheese but does require some care and proper tactics.
i believe that powerful not standard tactics can bring a lot of fun in the gameplay, but only if some challenge is preserved.
a variation of your combo is to protect that way a wizard's eye, making it basically invulnerable gives a new dimension to what a PI can do if sent alone against the enemy. cause using farsight the clone can see only in a limited area and using a regular wizard's eye is basically blinded as the eye is killed. with a protected wizard's eye the PI is able to explore, to cover a large area and allows tactics that other way are impossible in situations where the enemies are not all packed in a limited area.
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The heal works against vampires turned into bats, though they leave fast. Trolls that are downed but they get up at some point. Statues in several dungeons, which is really nice of you have multiple warriors.
swap the wand of lightning with a summon animal (or figurine) and all 5 summons (the limit) will appear next to enemies. use the 'guard' command on all of your fighters and your fighters will attack things through walls and fog of war until the enemies are dead. if you only have 2 fighters then summon 5 animals but only summon 2 that are visible to enemies. if the enemies kill those 2 summons, then send in 2 more and have your fighters guard them as well.
this will duplicate figurines a lot. when the time is up for the figurine to return, you will have 5 figurines return.
the cleric spell farsight can help a lot with visiblity.
this trick is very effective for watcher's keep. all rooms can be cleared of enemies before ever setting foot.
you can then add yet another glitch of weighing down people with excess items to get your ranged characters to stand still while guarding. this will allow them to guard things far away without moving in too close.
this also works with other tricks like mazing your entire party except the caster for adalon's quest. this will prevent her from changing anyone to drow except the caster.
standing in doorways prevent them from closing. standing in the harper stronghold doorway will prevent it from closing and an additional body to be found. it can also prevent watcher's keep from closing any of its exits. simply have 1 charcter stand in the way (right click) and use the scroll. it will say 'all exits sealed' but the exits will remain. this will grant 100k xp or so. simply enter the 5th level again. no enemy can resist spike trap. as a result, laying 6 will kill demogorgon granting another 80k per person.
cast protection from magic on liches. this prevents them from casting and makes them harmless. casting strength works on giants to lower their damage.
tabbing out buffers all commands in multiplayer. if you have a very difficult fight, the host can simply tab to another window. all monster AI will stop. as a result, the client can attack all enemies with impunity but have no effect. when the host tabs back in, however, all commands from the client will occur immediately. the 200 rounds of attacks will all suddenly occur at once, usually killing things easily.
The spells in question are minor spell deflection (level 3), minor spell turning (5), spell deflection (6) and spell turning (7). These spells deflect or reflect up to 4 spell levels (minor) or 10/12 spell levels (Spell Deflection/Turning).
Many enemy mages use these (e.g. yuan-ti mages). So if you find yourself up against them, you can either try to debuff the opponent, use AoE spells, or just ignore spells and use weapons instead.
If you happen to find yourself needing to debuff the opponent but you don’t have the right spell to hand, one option is to consume the defence by casting spells at them. But rather than have your Flame Arrow reflected back at you, you can either waste “useless” spells from scrolls/items to get rid of deflection or cast some helpful spells that you want to buff yourself with at mages protected by turning.
Some items such as Ring of Earth Control have a fairly useless spell attached to them (in this case, Stone to Flesh 1/day). You will hardly ever need to cast this spell, but you can use it to get rid of Minor Spell Deflection or to waste 60% of Spell Deflection.
Spell Turning is even better. Imagine you want to cast Improved Invisibility on yourself. Cast it on the opponent instead to get rid of Minor Spell Turning and to make yourself Improved Invisible. Improved Haste is another goodie to use against Spell Turning (reflected back to you and wastes 50% of the turning). You can also do it with various Armour spells (such as Spirit Armour) and with tons of cleric buff spells (Chaotic Commands, Death Ward et al).
It’s a niche but fun way at getting one-up on all those SCS mages that love their spell defences
Speaking of yuan-ti, in my current install the yuan-ti mages seem to have specialised in Summoning. One spell they love casting near the start of a fight: Cacofiend
In hell trials you can get black razor and good tear (+2 to all saves) by letting genie have the sword and killing him after the dialog before he disappears. He will drop the sword and you will get good tear.
Under improved haste party it's fairly easy to do. Tested in 2.3 and 2.5.
#2 Unlimited arrows of dispelling via Simulacrum in BG2
Not really exploit or trick but while most of SCS components remove ability for PI and Simulacrum to use scrolls and items, they don't remove ability to change equipped weapons and ammo.
You can provide your character (archer or something else) with Vhalior's helmet pretty early in the BG2EE and buy/steal 40 arrows of dispelling from waukeen promenade and have your simulacrum dispel everything without losing any arrows.
Remark: Not totally OP as PFMW does protect against them but it's amazing way for 10 APR archer beast to dispel multiple enemies during single round. Fantastic stuff in group fights against multiple mages/clerics. Especially in LOB where dispel/remove magic are almost useless unless used by very level high bard.
The Shade Lord is one opponent that does not react at all if you use the scroll. But you can also use Protection from Undead scrolls quite effectively against liches...as long as you have Spell Immunity.
(Btw, I’m not going to delve into using the scrolls ON the liches as that is a different vintage of cheese).
If you try to take on a lich with just the scroll for protection, the lich will just cast Remove Magic and then hand you your butt. But if you use the scroll and cast SI Abjuration, the lich has no way of dispelling it. Remove Magic is countered by the SI and the lich cannot see you to target spell debuffs at you.
What it can still do is the following:
1) Remove Magic as mentioned
2) Chain Contingency *could* still fire (it’s unpredictable, sometimes does and sometimes not) which may include ADHW
3) Summons
4) Cast AoE damage spells at its summons in the hope of hitting you
5) Go invisible itself so you can no longer attack
So you will need to do a bit more work: Protection from Magic Energy, Oracle or True Sight and some way to deal with powerful summons are needed. If you allowed high level casters to have HLAs, you might even see a Fallen Planetar...
But other than that, it’s actually quite minimal effort to take out very powerful opponents. If you are quick, one scroll can be enough to deal with the 3 Athkatlan liches (Crooked Crane, Bridge & Temple Sewers).
Something similar I remember for the Svirfneblin chief helmet.
Can anyone verify whether this is still the case in EEv2.5? I am not at liberty to check right now.
what you need is: high pick pockets ( for convenience ) and need to be fast ( boots of speed or oil of speed or both or haste )
what happens the first time is eventually dermin will come by and have some banter with jaheira ( i want to say on his second visit ) then the next time you rest jaheira will disappear and a character named Terminsel will appear
what you need to do is get your speedy pick pocketer in front of Terminsel's walk path ( because as soon as he talks to your closest party member he walks away and disappears to the nearest exit )
while getting in his way, with fast pause/pick pocket actions you can pick pocket: bracers of AC 6, ring of protection +2, cloak of protection +2 and an amulet or protection +1
and you can do this AGAIN when jaheira's harper quest finishes, when Terminsel comes back, but you will have to be quick on the draw because he will transform into elminster
use the wand of lighting trick swapping with an other wand, like the cloudkill one, then pass the 2 wands to an other mage (or bard or thief with uai) and repeat, then to an other, it depends on how much people you have able to use wands.
with 3 mages i was able to stack 6 * 3 = 18 cloudkill in about 1 second. or can be fireballs or whatever...
(It seems that loading resets ALL round timers in general which is probably very abuseable if I only knew how)
It also resets character movement, stopping wandering NPCs.
at level cap she has 6 lev 1 spells ( i assume that every respectable high level wild mage has only dweomers memorized there) and 5 lev 9 ones. and with RoV and AoP casting energy drain is almost immediate. so the PI, that can go invisible or protect herself with PfMW and SI to approach the enemy safely, can drain 12 levels, no special memorization needed, using the dweomers or, having 1 IA and 4 energy drain memorized, 20 levels. this so fast that the enemy can not even react, the only problem is to bring the PI alive near him. as she can cast more than 1 PI she can bring almost every strong enemy not immune to level draining to lev 1 if she wishes. with the power version, using IA and the lev9 spells, she has more than enough time to cast IA, make herself immune to physical attack and protected with the 2 SI that make her not dispellable, haste herself, apply the combination and kill herself with some flame arrows or other damaging spells to allow the real neera to cast the second PI. and more spells can be added to the combo if needed as IA lasts 2 rounds and less than that is needed to make the PI invulnerable, approach the enemy, drain his levels and suicide.
to bring the ToB level bosses to the level you was when you started BG1 is quite nasty and effective.
I also found out a similar trick to the Nahal's Reckless Dweomer hotkey trick a very long time ago (maybe in 1.3 or even earlier) but I never reported it because I didn't wanted the exploit to be fixed.
You could achieve the same result in BG:EE only, by putting two Nahal's Reckless Dweomer in a Minor Sequencer spell (now you cannot select Nahal's Reckless Dweomer in your sequencers / contingencies), when you fired the sequencer you had unlimited spell casting with infinite aura cleansing. I didn't know about the hotkey trick though, it was even better!
Good times ...
activating the wand and then casting the dwehomer while in pause make the second command override the first so you get only 1 dwehomer and the wand looses no charge.
i really dislike the way developers are so careful to nerf possible exploits even when them are so intentional and can not affect players that don't want to use them. it spoils the fun of those who like to do it for no reason, and there are plenty of lame tactics to beat the game even without nerfing exploits.
it does not go as far as improved anvil mod, that the creator made in a way that allows to win only in the way that in his opinion the game HAS to be played. and he was so quick to upgrade the mod as soon as he knew that someone found an alternative (exploiting or not exploiting) way.
it goes not so far, but it makes me play the original game way more than the EE, lately i play EE only for some very relaxed vanilla runs or to try some interesting mod that is new so not original compatible.
and i refuse to upgrade EE from the version i bought it cause i DON'T WANT new nerfs introduced.
this is also why i don't report here, as @Gotural, my best tricks...
i am able to use the trick with sunfire, you are correct about it, but in my testing and with my game version, as i told i don't update it, not with dwehomers. does not matter if i unpause right after casting the dwehomer, without chosing which spell to use or after chosing, the dwehomer always overrides the wand and i get a single one. so i would say that @Gotural's trick can not be used with the wand instead of a sequencer.
until someone test better than me and find a way to make it work...
#1 Namarra +2
has three uses per day of Silence, 15' Radius except that this verion is party friendly. This is hude against a lot of dangerous enemies in BG2. Toss in greater malison and enemies will have to make save with -9 penalty. It can also be used by any class who can wield a long sword.#2 The Visage
helmet (from Dorn quest) has one use per day of Brethe Acid which is 30' Radius posion damage (rarely resisted) and -4 save vs death or fall unconscious for two rounds. What is great about this are four things. 1. Mages have poor save vs death, 2. Posion damage interupts spell casting, 3. It is instant cast and 4. If not cast directly at protected enemy will it hit all enemies in its range through all spell protections.Both #1 and #2 are very effective even on LOB. I tend to get a lot of success with both even with mod which reduces enemy saves by additional 5 points.
Awesome thread which speaks volumes about how much love there is for the BG series.
cast your favorite summon
cast otiluke's resilient sphere until it works (not saved)
cast protection from magic (via scroll)
what should happen is the pfm will override the hold effect, allowing otiluke's to grant the full physical immunity but not the hold effect. as a bonus, the summon will be protected from magic and physical for a long time. invisible stalker is a great candidate. it has the longest duration, able to make a lot of use out of physical immunity. it's also not susceptible to undead paralyze attacks or basilisk paralyze.
there's an argument for ORS to not have a save against friendly targets. i completely agree - and luckily, in vanilla there is a copy of ORS called spin853 which is ORS with no save. of course it's possible to use the no save version against enemies but i find it more useful as a buff for a near permanent summon. i think the no save ORS is permanent. as a summon buff it kind of makes sense. as a party member buff, it's kind of silly. the party member would essentially gain 100% immunity forever, which is a bit cheesy.
it's possible to do this anyway with party member. use the sewer cloak to transform into rat. this gives you 90% resistance to all. dispel the animal weapon and equip the defender of easthaven, which gives 20% to crushing slashing piercing.
that and using over and over the pfm scroll trough having it equipped in simulacrum/PI quick slot would mean to have the "perfect tank" at will, protected from both physical and magic damage almost constantly.
the rest of the combo seems to me quite tasty, even if without using the scroll trough a clone also quite costly as those scrolls are very rare and valuable.
an alternative can be to cast improved invisibility to the ORS protected summon, so it can not be targeted by spells. it will still be vulnerable to the AOE ones and destroyed by death spell and this imo makes your combo even better as it preserves the taste of the cheese but does require some care and proper tactics.
i believe that powerful not standard tactics can bring a lot of fun in the gameplay, but only if some challenge is preserved.
a variation of your combo is to protect that way a wizard's eye, making it basically invulnerable gives a new dimension to what a PI can do if sent alone against the enemy. cause using farsight the clone can see only in a limited area and using a regular wizard's eye is basically blinded as the eye is killed. with a protected wizard's eye the PI is able to explore, to cover a large area and allows tactics that other way are impossible in situations where the enemies are not all packed in a limited area.