Did more testing with the damage immunity. You can also level drain your character to level 1 and then use the Martyr's Morningstar to get 1 hp and damage immunity. There's two -2 level drain chests in SoD (Hephernaan room and vampire hideout) and the Fledling Vampire also drains -2 levels. So one could play the game normally to Chapter 10, and then level drain back to 1. This requires odd levels because even levels can't be reduced to level 1. There's also weird mechanic, where you can't load the game without dying, if your CON modifier is below 0, drained at level 1. So 7 or above CON is also requirement.
I have just added the Durlag's Tower Fireball trap trick by @AvidGamerFan to the list on page 2. Apparently you can just lure the Wardens in Durlag's Tower over to the repeating Fireball trap next the anvil and then repeatedly trigger it while invisibly to bomb the Wardens. Even SCS Love can be taken down in this way, by waiting under invisibility until its GOI wears off.
For casting Insect Plague and Creeping Doom, I often prefer to target it on one of my own party members. That way the casting will not be disrupted by an enemy suddenly going invisible or similar tactics. Since the spell will even hit invisible hostiles in the area, just put your tank in the middle of the action and target the spell to them. This also helps with large creatures like dragons since the spell has to take extra time arcing up to the creature's head. Since the secondary projectiles move faster than the primary one, it may take effect faster targeting a smaller, closer creature than the really big, far away target you REALLY want to hit.
You can also cast it from afar by targeting a speedy runner (with haste or boots of speed etc.) and have them run into the fight. The projectile is relatively slow moving so it gives them plenty of time to lead the bugs into the heat of combat where they will divide and hit all nearby enemies. If you time it right you, can even cast the spell before battle and run up to aggro whatever you are going to fight so you can start combat with a swarm of bugs on your side.
Amazing how many tricks you can come up with for a fairly straightforward spell, hmm?
For casting Insect Plague and Creeping Doom, I often prefer to target it on one of my own party members. That way the casting will not be disrupted by an enemy suddenly going invisible or similar tactics. Since the spell will even hit invisible hostiles in the area, just put your tank in the middle of the action and target the spell to them. This also helps with large creatures like dragons since the spell has to take extra time arcing up to the creature's head. Since the secondary projectiles move faster than the primary one, it may take effect faster targeting a smaller, closer creature than the really big, far away target you REALLY want to hit.
You can also cast it from afar by targeting a speedy runner (with haste or boots of speed etc.) and have them run into the fight. The projectile is relatively slow moving so it gives them plenty of time to lead the bugs into the heat of combat where they will divide and hit all nearby enemies. If you time it right you, can even cast the spell before battle and run up to aggro whatever you are going to fight so you can start combat with a swarm of bugs on your side.
Amazing how many tricks you can come up with for a fairly straightforward spell, hmm?
It's certainly a nice spell . While you may want enemies to see the spell target running in (to group them together so they all get affected), you may not want to provoke them into action. As I normally play solo, the spell target would usually be a summons - say an elemental - which could be the subject of a death spell if leading insects into mages. If the summons disappears before the projectile reaches it, the insects never appear, which can make timing difficult. There is a way round that though. Cast the insect spell at your summons and immediately begin casting pixie dust. The summons runs round in a circle, in order to arrive back close to you as the pixie dust spell completes. While it's not possible to cast insects at an invisible target, the projectile will continue to follow one that becomes invisible. That allows the elemental to lead the insects into enemies - even if they cast true sight, that will come too late to stop the attack.
My favorite way of abusing Insect spells but also other AoE status effect spells is as follows. Have an invisible character move to a point close to the enemies, where casting the spell at that character would see all desired enemies or at least the most important ones covered by the AoE, without the caster being visible to the enemies. Have the invisible character drop an item from their inventory on the ground and have the caster safely cast the spell out of sight of the enemy on the item.
It even works with tiny AoE spells such as Hold Person:
This works with solo play as well of course. You just have to put the item there first, and then move away and cast.
This works with solo play as well of course. You just have to put the item there first, and then move away and cast.
For some spells. Others, like Hold Person, require a creature to target. Those aren't going to work with invisible targets, either.
Hmm not in my install. The picture I uploaded in my previous post has Charname cast Hold Person at a bunch of darts that Baeloth had dropped on the ground.
Here's a new one. Live in 2.5, quite likely fixed in 2.6.
Permanent Polymorphs
It's possible - nay, easy - to near-permanently gain the full shapeshifting abilities of Polymorph Self or Shapechange. Any non-protagonist character capable of using scrolls can permanently gain the benefits of Shapechange with items purchased in Waukeen's Promenade. Unlike the trick documented earlier in this thread, this method allows the use of all forms associated with the chosen spell.
What you need (for the Shapechange version):
- One scroll of Limited Wish (available from Lady Yuth). Cost 4800 before charisma/rep discount.
- One rod of resurrection (available from Ribald). Cost 13200 before charisma/rep discount.
- If your shifty character's wisdom is below 6, one Potion of Insight (available at the Temple of Ilmater).
How to do it:
- Have the shifty character cast the scroll of Limited Wish.
- Choose the one-time wish "to be Anything I Desire". This requires at least 6 wisdom.
- Kill the shifty character. This is why it can't be the protagonist.
- Use a charge of the rod of resurrection to raise them.
The abilities will now stick around with no expiration. Your shifty character can change forms as often as they want, indefinitely.
Using any form of resurrection spell on that character will remove the abilities. Only the rod of resurrection is safe for bringing them back when they die. This includes the priest HLA Mass Raise Dead even when the character is alive, and also the cutscenes on entering and leaving hell at the end of SoA (which cast Resurrection on everybody). But by then, you should have proper access to Shapechange, so you can just reapply the trick for ToB without the Limited Wish step.
The same effect applies to Polymorph Self. Cast the spell, kill and raise with the rod. You can even give the same character both sets of forms this way.
Why this works:
Polymorph Self and Shapechange grant their shapeshifting abilities permanently, with a secondary delayed effect that forces you to turn back to normal and removes those abilities at the end of the spell's duration. Dying removes that secondary effect, leaving the abilities with no expiration time.
All of the raise dead/resurrection spells remove the shapeshifting abilities as part of their effect ... with the exception of the rod. And those abilities persist past dying and coming back unless explicitly removed. So if you kill a character and bring them back with the rod, they're a permanent shape changer.
This is a close relative of the broken sequencer bug; creature-targeted sequencer activation abilities also get removed by resurrection spells, while the effect that tells which spells are in the sequencer only gets removed by death.
And if you'd rather play without the bugs that make this possible, I have a hotfix here. It changes all resurrection effects to only remove the sequencer and shapeshift abilities when the target is actually dead, and also corrects the excessive healing from Mass Raise Dead.
Ravager form isn't that useful because of the giant circle. But if you turn to Ravager after Adalon has turned you to a Drow, you maintain the Drow circle. And after you escape the Magic Damage with single Magic Shielding you can beat the Underdark being a Drow Ravager. Not only that, but you can also escape Underdark, beating the proximity trap in the Underdark Exit area with GWW speed, and beat the rest of the game as a Drow Ravager. You'll be forced to change to human after you've beaten the Slayer, although you'll get the Drow circle again in ToB when you change back to Ravager. Also beating the proximity trap is a gamble, working about half the time.
This one isn't actually particularly useful due to the difficulty of setting it up, but it's still wonderfully ridiculous.
Step 1: Acquire a scroll of Black Blade of Disaster.
Step 2: Create a character capable of casting the spell and dual-classing. Either a human mage or a human thief with Use Any Item.
Step 3. Cast the spell, whether from a spell slot or a scroll.
Step 4. Dual-class while the spell is active, to any class you want. Cleric not recommended unless you have UAI.
Step 5. Wait for the spell to wear off.
The result? This character now has permanent grand mastery in long swords. Both before and after the dual completes. Enjoy.
In practice ... well, you can't get that scroll until chapter 6 in BG2. It's in Ribald's special store, and not anywhere earlier. This means that any character using the trick is going to have a rather high level.
It is easier to pull off in the Black Pits 2 adventure, as the "Book Merchant" there has all of his scrolls from the beginning. For the cost of about 85% of your starting gold (assuming an 18 Cha party leader), you can do this with a mage before your first fight.
I believe that BBoD is the only spell in the standard game that grants a proficiency. If there were others, they could be used this way as well.
The principle problem I see with that is that you're dualling out of the casting class, which is generally considered unwise - the Black Pits version gets a free Grandmastery at the cost of their spellcasting progression. Thief with UAI might cost more EXP but would likely create a more powerful character in the end.
And I'm back with a widely applicable utility trick. Tested in BGEE 2.6, should work beyond that. Probably EE only, though.
Sneaking Advantage
You can only try to hide once per round, right? Not exactly; with the right settings, you can do it twice in a round, consistently. If either attempt succeeds, you're hidden. Effectively, you gain advantage on your stealth checks - very useful when you're trying to hide in broad daylight or your skills are poor. Any character with natural stealth ability (monk, ranger, thief) can take advantage of this.
To do this, first assign an AI to the character so that they hide automatically at every opportunity. Either "Advanced AI" or "Thief Controlled" with stealth mode set works. Next, while the character is visible after either coming out of stealth or failing a check, issue a move command. Once the hide button becomes available again, hit it manually. Your character will stop moving and attempt to hide. And then, if they fail, they'll try to hide again immediately. If both attempts fail, you'll have to wait a round for the button to become available again.
How this works: all stealth attempts have that one-round timer if they fail ... but they aren't all the same timer. "Advanced AI" uses BD_HIDE. "Thief Controlled" uses RR_HIDE. And I don't know what that manual attempt uses, other than neither of those two. Failing a hide check disables the button for a round, but there's just enough of a delay for the AI attempt to slip through.
While still technically possible without the move command, it's not recommended. If you get the timing wrong, your manual attempt will come after the AI attempt and be counterproductive; either the button is already disabled and you don't hide, or you're already hidden and pressing the button makes you immediately visible. The AI scripts won't interrupt a move command, so that lets you get the manual attempt in first.
This will not work with a Shadowdancer's "Hide in Plain Sight". The AI auto-hide scripts won't attempt hiding if enemies are in sight, so you only get the manual attempt in that case.
I just stumbled on to something - an existing trick that just got supercharged by 2.6.
Dueling Fireshields
The idea is simple. When up against a mage with a fireshield active, a melee character with the right abilities such as a fighter/mage or a Sun Soul Monk can cast their own fireshield and attack. Even if the attack won't do anything due to protections such as PfMW, the fireshield will still retaliate. And the attacker's fireshield will strike back.
Back in 2.5, it stopped there. One fireshield shot in each direction. That was still useful for disrupting casting, as any amount of elemental damage could do so reliably.
In 2.6, it keeps going back and forth, until one party is dead or out of fireshield range. At an extremely high speed. Now it's a tool for outright killing enemies, if you can get the resistance advantage.
A demonstration:
The start. The first character is a monk with 90% fire resistance (ring of fire resistance, Greater Sun), armed with Belm. The second is a dragon disciple with 127% fire resistance (innate 100%, Fireshield Red) protected by Mirror Image, Stoneskin, and Mantle.
Attack. Once, maybe twice. The log is so full of events in less than one round that it's 100% fireshield hits and reactions by the time I hit the "badly wounded" autopause. Also, the over-resistance fully healed the sorceress.
I was able to retreat the monk and survive. The chain isn't instant, so high resistances do allow time to react.
The spells in question had a mechanical update in 2.6. The key effect is a contingency; when hit, strike the attacker with the secondary spell to deal damage. In 2.5, that was one of the effects of the primary spell. In 2.6, it has been externalized to an EFF.
This change was made so that you could cast a fireshield while you had a previous instance active without causing an error message. And it caused this as a side effect.
Nothing to do with the EFF.
It has to do with the damage no longer being truly "instant", as it now uses an AoE projectile (which regardless of flags, sadly cannot be truly instant).
You can eliminate any back and forth by applying a 1-tick, original caster immunity in the subspell, after the damage.
As alternatives to blocking the fireshield subspells, you could instead block the explosion projectile (you would have to add one first), that way all such subspells would only need a single, identical immunity effect, rather than one for each fireshield.
Another option would be to use a false sequencer, which would result in the damage being credited to the attacker, as if they were damaging themselves by reaching into the fireshield.
There is an engine bug with cone projectiles in v2.6, though unrelated and uninvolved with the Fireshield mechanics. If you target yourself with a Cone-based spell (Color Spray, Cone of Cold), it will function differently depending on which direction you are currently facing:
East, West, WestNorthWest, and EastSouthEast fire in the opposite direction.
All other directions fire the cone in 360 degrees (ignoring it's normal arc size).
Of course, the only way to target yourself with these spells (as opposed to a location) is to cast them through a Contingency or Sequencer.
The fire shield trick brings back old memories of fighting that kensai from Tactics wielding, ugh, the acid katana? Even though technically it's not the same.
I have one that no one has ever mentioned before.
If you want to open any chest in the game and not be caught by the guards. All you have to do is unlock/disarm the chest like normal. After you rob the chest. Immediately pause the game. Quick save then reload your game. It will be as if the guards were never called and you can walk right out and repeat the process with any other chest in the game.
I recently had the realization that just like you can use Strength or Magic Resistance spells on enemies to lower their strength or MR in cases where they'd normally have higher stats than the spells provide, you might be able to use the Free Action spell to deny an enemy haste. So I tested it out on a Clay Golem in Spellhold, and not only was it unable to haste itself, but I think I broke its AI. Because its haste never took effect, it kept on trying to haste over and over again and was never able to start attacking me. I'm gonna try this out on Firkraag later to see what happens, but I think this might ruin any enemy that you can cast it on if they're programmed to try hasting themselves and can do so infinitely.
Probably just the golems; they're the only creatures out there with an infinitely usable haste ability. Red dragons like Firkraag get a one-time "prebuff" of haste, with a force-casting of the wizard spell when they go hostile. If you hit him with Free Action, he won't get hasted but he also won't lose any time. And you won't be able to slow him, which is one of the few disabling effects that works on dragons.
Also, correction: You can't slow dragons. I spoke without checking; that's one of the clauses on the standard dragon immunity item. The best effects I know for disabling dragons are fear and feeblemind.
Insect Plague on dragons does an amazing job of reducing their spellcasting due to the constant interrupts while also having a high chance of causing fear.
I mean, I had Nature's Beauty for Firkraag, so it's not like I needed Free Action, I just wanted to see what happened. Not much, as it turns out, but it works.
Here's a rare one (inspired by the Cleave mechanic):
Characters can reach 11-13 APR by animation canceling your attack with Advanced AI turned on. This works on all characters and all classes, giving you more APR than Whirlwind at all times. Mages be buckling in fear from being hit 13 times a round by Carsomyr
How do you do it?
Adv AI needs to be turned on (or any script that uses AttackOneRound). Be Hasted or Improve Hasted (I don't think the animations are any faster between the two), 0 Speed Factor (from weapons, proficiencies, class specials) and optionally +2 Luck to remove the Speed Factor initiative penalties (makes the attacks more consistent).
When you land or would land an attack, animation cancel by double-clicking their weapon quickslot (or give the group stop command). The AI script will reset their round and begin to attack again. Repeat. You need to be good at timing this to reach high APR.
Comments
For casting Insect Plague and Creeping Doom, I often prefer to target it on one of my own party members. That way the casting will not be disrupted by an enemy suddenly going invisible or similar tactics. Since the spell will even hit invisible hostiles in the area, just put your tank in the middle of the action and target the spell to them. This also helps with large creatures like dragons since the spell has to take extra time arcing up to the creature's head. Since the secondary projectiles move faster than the primary one, it may take effect faster targeting a smaller, closer creature than the really big, far away target you REALLY want to hit.
You can also cast it from afar by targeting a speedy runner (with haste or boots of speed etc.) and have them run into the fight. The projectile is relatively slow moving so it gives them plenty of time to lead the bugs into the heat of combat where they will divide and hit all nearby enemies. If you time it right you, can even cast the spell before battle and run up to aggro whatever you are going to fight so you can start combat with a swarm of bugs on your side.
Amazing how many tricks you can come up with for a fairly straightforward spell, hmm?
It's certainly a nice spell
It even works with tiny AoE spells such as Hold Person:
This works with solo play as well of course. You just have to put the item there first, and then move away and cast.
Hmm not in my install. The picture I uploaded in my previous post has Charname cast Hold Person at a bunch of darts that Baeloth had dropped on the ground.
I stopped using that exploit for the sake of realism.
What you need (for the Shapechange version):
- One scroll of Limited Wish (available from Lady Yuth). Cost 4800 before charisma/rep discount.
- One rod of resurrection (available from Ribald). Cost 13200 before charisma/rep discount.
- If your shifty character's wisdom is below 6, one Potion of Insight (available at the Temple of Ilmater).
How to do it:
- Have the shifty character cast the scroll of Limited Wish.
- Choose the one-time wish "to be Anything I Desire". This requires at least 6 wisdom.
- Kill the shifty character. This is why it can't be the protagonist.
- Use a charge of the rod of resurrection to raise them.
The abilities will now stick around with no expiration. Your shifty character can change forms as often as they want, indefinitely.
Using any form of resurrection spell on that character will remove the abilities. Only the rod of resurrection is safe for bringing them back when they die. This includes the priest HLA Mass Raise Dead even when the character is alive, and also the cutscenes on entering and leaving hell at the end of SoA (which cast Resurrection on everybody). But by then, you should have proper access to Shapechange, so you can just reapply the trick for ToB without the Limited Wish step.
The same effect applies to Polymorph Self. Cast the spell, kill and raise with the rod. You can even give the same character both sets of forms this way.
Why this works:
Polymorph Self and Shapechange grant their shapeshifting abilities permanently, with a secondary delayed effect that forces you to turn back to normal and removes those abilities at the end of the spell's duration. Dying removes that secondary effect, leaving the abilities with no expiration time.
All of the raise dead/resurrection spells remove the shapeshifting abilities as part of their effect ... with the exception of the rod. And those abilities persist past dying and coming back unless explicitly removed. So if you kill a character and bring them back with the rod, they're a permanent shape changer.
This is a close relative of the broken sequencer bug; creature-targeted sequencer activation abilities also get removed by resurrection spells, while the effect that tells which spells are in the sequencer only gets removed by death.
And if you'd rather play without the bugs that make this possible, I have a hotfix here. It changes all resurrection effects to only remove the sequencer and shapeshift abilities when the target is actually dead, and also corrects the excessive healing from Mass Raise Dead.
This one isn't actually particularly useful due to the difficulty of setting it up, but it's still wonderfully ridiculous.
Step 1: Acquire a scroll of Black Blade of Disaster.
Step 2: Create a character capable of casting the spell and dual-classing. Either a human mage or a human thief with Use Any Item.
Step 3. Cast the spell, whether from a spell slot or a scroll.
Step 4. Dual-class while the spell is active, to any class you want. Cleric not recommended unless you have UAI.
Step 5. Wait for the spell to wear off.
The result? This character now has permanent grand mastery in long swords. Both before and after the dual completes. Enjoy.
In practice ... well, you can't get that scroll until chapter 6 in BG2. It's in Ribald's special store, and not anywhere earlier. This means that any character using the trick is going to have a rather high level.
It is easier to pull off in the Black Pits 2 adventure, as the "Book Merchant" there has all of his scrolls from the beginning. For the cost of about 85% of your starting gold (assuming an 18 Cha party leader), you can do this with a mage before your first fight.
I believe that BBoD is the only spell in the standard game that grants a proficiency. If there were others, they could be used this way as well.
Verified functional in BG2EE version 2.6.
You can only try to hide once per round, right? Not exactly; with the right settings, you can do it twice in a round, consistently. If either attempt succeeds, you're hidden. Effectively, you gain advantage on your stealth checks - very useful when you're trying to hide in broad daylight or your skills are poor. Any character with natural stealth ability (monk, ranger, thief) can take advantage of this.
To do this, first assign an AI to the character so that they hide automatically at every opportunity. Either "Advanced AI" or "Thief Controlled" with stealth mode set works. Next, while the character is visible after either coming out of stealth or failing a check, issue a move command. Once the hide button becomes available again, hit it manually. Your character will stop moving and attempt to hide. And then, if they fail, they'll try to hide again immediately. If both attempts fail, you'll have to wait a round for the button to become available again.
How this works: all stealth attempts have that one-round timer if they fail ... but they aren't all the same timer. "Advanced AI" uses BD_HIDE. "Thief Controlled" uses RR_HIDE. And I don't know what that manual attempt uses, other than neither of those two. Failing a hide check disables the button for a round, but there's just enough of a delay for the AI attempt to slip through.
While still technically possible without the move command, it's not recommended. If you get the timing wrong, your manual attempt will come after the AI attempt and be counterproductive; either the button is already disabled and you don't hide, or you're already hidden and pressing the button makes you immediately visible. The AI scripts won't interrupt a move command, so that lets you get the manual attempt in first.
This will not work with a Shadowdancer's "Hide in Plain Sight". The AI auto-hide scripts won't attempt hiding if enemies are in sight, so you only get the manual attempt in that case.
The idea is simple. When up against a mage with a fireshield active, a melee character with the right abilities such as a fighter/mage or a Sun Soul Monk can cast their own fireshield and attack. Even if the attack won't do anything due to protections such as PfMW, the fireshield will still retaliate. And the attacker's fireshield will strike back.
Back in 2.5, it stopped there. One fireshield shot in each direction. That was still useful for disrupting casting, as any amount of elemental damage could do so reliably.
In 2.6, it keeps going back and forth, until one party is dead or out of fireshield range. At an extremely high speed. Now it's a tool for outright killing enemies, if you can get the resistance advantage.
A demonstration:
The start. The first character is a monk with 90% fire resistance (ring of fire resistance, Greater Sun), armed with Belm. The second is a dragon disciple with 127% fire resistance (innate 100%, Fireshield Red) protected by Mirror Image, Stoneskin, and Mantle.
Attack. Once, maybe twice. The log is so full of events in less than one round that it's 100% fireshield hits and reactions by the time I hit the "badly wounded" autopause. Also, the over-resistance fully healed the sorceress.
I was able to retreat the monk and survive. The chain isn't instant, so high resistances do allow time to react.
The spells in question had a mechanical update in 2.6. The key effect is a contingency; when hit, strike the attacker with the secondary spell to deal damage. In 2.5, that was one of the effects of the primary spell. In 2.6, it has been externalized to an EFF.
This change was made so that you could cast a fireshield while you had a previous instance active without causing an error message. And it caused this as a side effect.
It has to do with the damage no longer being truly "instant", as it now uses an AoE projectile (which regardless of flags, sadly cannot be truly instant).
You can eliminate any back and forth by applying a 1-tick, original caster immunity in the subspell, after the damage.
In your proposal, that would be 1-tick immunity to what? All fireshield subspells? The projectile(s) they use?
Another option would be to use a false sequencer, which would result in the damage being credited to the attacker, as if they were damaging themselves by reaching into the fireshield.
There is an engine bug with cone projectiles in v2.6, though unrelated and uninvolved with the Fireshield mechanics. If you target yourself with a Cone-based spell (Color Spray, Cone of Cold), it will function differently depending on which direction you are currently facing:
- East, West, WestNorthWest, and EastSouthEast fire in the opposite direction.
- All other directions fire the cone in 360 degrees (ignoring it's normal arc size).
Of course, the only way to target yourself with these spells (as opposed to a location) is to cast them through a Contingency or Sequencer.If you want to open any chest in the game and not be caught by the guards. All you have to do is unlock/disarm the chest like normal. After you rob the chest. Immediately pause the game. Quick save then reload your game. It will be as if the guards were never called and you can walk right out and repeat the process with any other chest in the game.
Characters can reach 11-13 APR by animation canceling your attack with Advanced AI turned on. This works on all characters and all classes, giving you more APR than Whirlwind at all times. Mages be buckling in fear from being hit 13 times a round by Carsomyr
How do you do it?
Adv AI needs to be turned on (or any script that uses AttackOneRound). Be Hasted or Improve Hasted (I don't think the animations are any faster between the two), 0 Speed Factor (from weapons, proficiencies, class specials) and optionally +2 Luck to remove the Speed Factor initiative penalties (makes the attacks more consistent).
When you land or would land an attack, animation cancel by double-clicking their weapon quickslot (or give the group stop command). The AI script will reset their round and begin to attack again. Repeat. You need to be good at timing this to reach high APR.