SCS Irenicus in Hell cannot see through invisibility. If you see him casting Time Stop, a round of Potions of Invisibility should be enough to keep the whole party safe.
@Enuhal@Harpagornis: You two have a lot of experience with SoD. Can you give any advice on how to bring down Korlasz in a solo poverty run?
Currently I'm running a poverty run with a full party, but I'm reasonably certain that everyone from Baeloth to Tiax will leave the party upon entering the starting dungeon of SoD, leaving me with a single sorcerer with no weapons.
How would I bring down Korlasz quickly without having to deal with all those Arrows of Biting and so forth? Is it possible to bring any character into the starting dungeon of SoD besides player-created party members?
@semiticgod The official NPCs shouldn't leave your party at all at this point. This only happens AFTER the prologue dungeon (right after killing Korlasz, to be exact - each of them will also get a line of dialogue, saying goodbye and telling you what they plan to do next) - so you should have your full party available for the Korlasz battle.
@Enuhal: Brilliant! What about Baeloth and Jaheira? Will they vanish after the first dungeon and reappear in their normal spots in SoD, in the first area and then before Bridgefort?
If your MC is a Totemic Druid @semiticgod Korlasz will be no problem even solo as your Spirit Summons should bring her down to "injured" fast enough. You might also throw in Nymphs for Hold Monsters as she tends to fail her save quite regularly. Just cast it on a Spirit Summons next to Korlasz before triggering the talking to time the impact right when she goes hostile - worked great in the past even on LoB difficulty (but you will have to wait until the spell expires before the surrender talking triggers). Iron Skin should keep you save long enough - or Pixie Dust.
P.S. Insect Swarm is even better and nearly like an instant win-button!!
@Semiticgod Every official NPC will vanish after the first dungeon - those not available in SoD will be gone forever, the other ones (like Jaheira and Baloth) will reappear at their usual spots, indeed.
@Semiticgod Every official NPC will vanish after the first dungeon - those not available in SoD will be gone forever, the other ones (like Jaheira and Baloth) will reappear at their usual spots, indeed.
It sounds like a lot of modding needs doing so that there can be a reunion in Amn at least if not SoD.
@Semiticgod Every official NPC will vanish after the first dungeon - those not available in SoD will be gone forever, the other ones (like Jaheira and Baloth) will reappear at their usual spots, indeed.
And they make off with all the equipment you gave them! At least everyone who returns for SoD keeps the items they have equipped when you exit the intro dungeon.
A quick test in preparation for the Ducal Palace has confirmed that Spell Revisions' Fire Traps, despite their crummy range of 10, can indeed make a huge difference in the fight with the doppelgangers if you really abuse them. You have to be in Sarevok's line of sight for the cutscene to begin; being in Belt and Liia Jannath's line of sight is perfectly safe. After spamming numerous Fire Traps, I found that they actually wiped out everyone but the Doppelganger Shaman and the Greater Doppelganger. The former might have gotten lucky, but the latter might have survived because not enough of the Fire Traps were close to it; it was too far to the west. So I mapped out good positions to set some additional Fire Traps, plus a good position for Yeslick's Dispel Magic. See that yellow square near the doppelgangers, and the blue circle just south of it, in the doorway? That blue circle is roughly where Faldorn can stand to cast Fire Trap on the yellow square, close enough to get a Fire Trap right next to the hardest-to-reach Greater Doppelganger, but not so close that Faldorn might trigger the cutscene early.
See the red circle on the carpet, and the two green circles, one under Yeslick to the west and the other next to the blue circle for Faldorn? That red circle, the stem of the floral pattern on the carpet, is where Yeslick can cast Dispel Magic so that it hits all of the doppelgangers but is just barely shy of hitting Liia Jannath. That's not the only place where Dispel Magic is worth casting; that's just the rough limit, beyond which Dispel Magic runs the risk of revealing Liia Jannath. The green circles are the points at which Yeslick can most safely hit that red circle without getting too close to Sarevok.
In SR, Invisibility Sphere only lasts 10 rounds and isn't as good for this fight, but Invisibility 10' Radius, the vanilla spell, should actually be a stronger option for this fight than Invisibility. Normally, casting Invisibility on Liia Jannath exposes your mage to Sarevok, starting the fight while your mage's aura is still partly clouded. Invisibility 10' Radius, however, does not expose you, and also makes Belt vanish at the same time. Plus, it lasts for 24 hours, so you can cast it and then rest before starting the fight.
This buys your mage maybe 3 extra seconds at the start of combat and also can keep Belt temporarily invisible. The Invisibility 10' Radius scroll is a random drop as I understand it, but a sorcerer or a lucky mage can slightly optimize this fight by using Invisibility 10' Radius instead of Invisibility on Liia Jannath.
Okay, I've got a solid plan for Ascension Melissan in Spell Revisions.
First of all, Imprisonment in SR uses the Maze opcode; it just makes the effect permanent. This is done for player-friendly reasons, but it should be possible to permanently Maze the Five without Melissan casting Freedom, because it looks like Melissan only bothers casting it if the Five are imprisoned and not simply Mazed. Can anyone confirm this? Will Melissan cast Freedom in response to Maze as well as imprisonment.
If it's true, this means you can just hit everyone but one of the Five with Imprisonment and then kill the last one. When Melissan appears, completely alone, you can stun-lock her with the following steps:
1. Once you've tanked her first Time Stop, use Ruby Ray of Reversal/Spellstrike to remove Melissan's Spell Trap. 2. Paralyze her with Implosion. 3. Use a Lower Resistance+Lower Resistance+Breach Spell Trigger. 4. With her MR at zero, start casting PW: Stun, which stuns for one round without a saving throw.
With Project Image and PW: Stun, you can stun-lock her as long as you have level 7 spell slots and as long as you keep her MR at zero.
If Melissan will cast Freedom even as a response to Maze and not just imprisonment, then we'd need to use a Ruby Ray of Reversal/Pierce Shield+Lower Resistance+Lower Resistance on Nearest Enemy Chain Contingency, triggered on helpless via a Project Image spell and followed by a PW: Stun right off the bat, which would stun Melissan with an effective casting time of 2. But I'd rather not rely on a Chain Contingency like that.
Did some brief testing. Looks like Melissan will cast Time Stop before Freedom, though I had trouble triggering her arrival when I imprisoned everyone but Yaga-Shura and then killed him. Doesn't matter, I think; I'll need to kill Abazigal instead anyway because otherwise Melissan will be immune to +4 weapons, which means we couldn't hit her in Earth Elemental form. I used some consoled-in PW: Stun scrolls to stun-lock her, and while she occasionally broke out of it for a half-second or so, I think that's because of time delays due to scroll casting.
Looks like a maxed-out Wilson and Jaheira in Earth Elemental form, properly buffed, would need only 9 rounds of automatic hits to kill Melissan, not counting any Whirlwind Attacks. The only problem remaining is how to handle the immense pressure of the Five. If both sorcerers had Imprisonment, we'd need the first round for PFMW; the second could take down Illasera and Yaga-Shura; the third for Sarevok and Gromnir; the following arounds for PFMW and then debuffing Sendai and Abazigal; another Imprisonment for Sendai, and finally death for Abazigal, with PFMW at least 6 seconds before we deal the final blow.
I don't know about planetar vorpal strikes. Dispelling Screen will block the dispel effect, so Death Ward should be safe, but a single Remove Magic could render us vulnerable. Thankfully, planetars are only level 18 in SR, so a caster level 23 Death Ward should persist.
Wilson will have 250+ HP and 40% DR, while Jaheira will have maybe 150 HP and 80% DR against slashing/piercing/missile damage and 40% DR against crushing damage (so Gromnir and Yaga-Shura could be very dangerous).
EDIT: Physical Mirror will block missile attacks like Illasera's, and lasts 2 turns instead of 9 rounds. Protection from Missiles will as well, though it only lasts 10 rounds in SR.
Physical Mirror should give a cleric pretty decent survivability in the late game. With 1 mirror image per round and a 50% chance of replacing the mirror image when hit, it should cut all physical damage in half on average. But it's subject to chance, and isn't remotely as reliable as standard damage resistance or mage buffs.
I've given up on the poverty run after dying to Morentherene due to not buffing with Resist Fear. I really underestimated the importance of having a cleric in the party. Once again I've lost a run due to focusing too much on party's ability to kill stuff instead of its ability to not die.
Here are some things I've learned as a result of the poverty run:
1. Recruiting Tiax, who appears in Beregost if you have SCS installed, lets you summon a ghast that can take down all of the basilisks on its own, with no need for Korax. Combining the ghast with Korax gives you a much better chance of taking down SCS Mutamin. The ghast is also a fabulous tank against ankhegs. If you don't want Tiax soaking up XP during these valuable periods, simply kick him out. His ghast will still be under your control.
2. You can collect tens of thousands of free XP simply by recruiting NPCs at higher levels. The thresholds, at least in my install, are at 16,000 and 32,000 XP; those are the optimal times to recruit new party members. Player-created characters can be left in houses when necessary to control XP gathering. Concentrating XP in Charname in the early game to recruit higher-level NPCs can obviate the need for XP gathering for the entire rest of the run, depending on your install and party composition and so forth.
3. Baeloth will spawn by the tower in the Larswood if Charname is at 10,000 XP. Baeloth starts at level 6 and has 50% MR and access to Fireball, Web, and several other important mage spells. You can get him immediately after taking Charname to Mutamin's Garden, and he can take down the Nashkel mines more or less singlehandedly.
4. It is possible to safely grab the documents in the bandit camp without using Sanctuary, relying on Invisibility instead, by simply kicking someone out of the party right after they grab the documents. However, it seems that the chapter transition won't trigger properly unless someone in the party is alive and visible to the enemies. A disposable NPC, anyone you don't care about resurrecting, should be able to serve this purpose. Still, it's better just to get a cleric to use Sanctuary.
5. The Phase Spiders in the Cloakwood have a high chance of teleporting to the party a second or two after you enter the area. If they don't appear after several seconds, they probably will not appear at all. However, once you engage other enemies, like the weaker spiders directly to the west, any Phase Spiders currently on the map are likely to teleport on top of the party. Two traps and a mid-level Magic Missile spell, or two Magic Missile spells and a single trap, have a decent chance of taking down a single teleporting Phase Spider before it has a chance to make a single attack roll (they have 44 HP).
If it doesn't work, you can flee the area, as the ettercap area ambushes are risk-free if you micromanage your party members' movement to get your people away from the nearest ettercaps and then flee directly north (the Web trap is about two character circles to the west; you don't have much room). The previous area has potentially dangerous rest ambushes, though, including a single Huge/Giant Spider and a dozen tasloi.
Once the Phase Spiders are gone, you can safely trigger the Web traps using Invisibility and escape to the northeast edge of the map; the northwest exit is not mandatory.
6. In certain installs, Yeslick's Dispel Magic is rigged to always work. If it does, he can neutralize virtually any mage in BG1 and SoD.
7. Davaeorn is innately immune to Web; he has an undroppable Ring of Free Action equipped. Web, however, is great for holding him in place, because it can still disable the guards who crowd around him and block him in.
8. You can only enter Davaeorn's lair from the northeast, but you can exit from both the northeast and southwest. The latter involves a lot of backtracking, but it can be much safer than the northeast exit, and if you fail to rest on the way, Davaeorn should be without buffs and surrounded by guards when you get back.
9. SCS Angelo, at least in some installs, will teleport on top of the party if you do not give him a summoned critter to attack. You should keep a spare summons at a distance, since Angelo's Sunfire spell can wipe out a whole group of summons at once.
Also, if you use the corner strategy to isolate everyone but Angelo in a southern corner of the map, you need to keep all of your party members and summoned critters very far out of the way to make sure the enemies don't spot you on the way to Sarevok's corner.
10. SR's Enchanted Weapon radically changes the game balance in favor of fighter types, especially for ranged attackers, since you can combine +3 launchers with +3 ammunition. The slings and bullets do NOT benefit from STR bonuses, and the bows do NOT grant +1 APR. Corwin is extremely effective in SoD when armed with Enchanted Weapon (the longbow gives +2 to hit and +5 to damage), and you should be able to take down Belhifet with Corwin even if you don't use a glitch to get infinite permanent ammunition.
I can't stress enough how much of a difference Enchanted Weapon makes. The fundamental problem of a poverty run is limited access to damage options, but Enchanted Weapon changes that by giving you access to a weapon of any type (except for darts, which unfortunately are not available yet). The spell will have less impact, however, if you stick with a party of spellcasters, which is otherwise optimal for a non-SR run.
11. Summons are widely available in Spell Revisions, as both druids and mages have a summoning spell for each spell level, even level 1. The summons are very weak, but they do a fantastic job at soaking up damage, making ankhegs far less dangerous than they otherwise would be. Just bear in mind that the high numbers of summons (a high-level Animal Summoning I spell will give you 5 bats) can be a problem with the summoning cap in place (you don't want to summon 5 lesser critters right before you begin casting a more powerful summoning spell).
12. Obscuring Mist from SR reduces the field of vision of everyone inside the 6-round cloud. It's very effective for keeping enemies focused on your tanks, as it can prevent the enemy from even noticing more distant characters.
13. Expeditious Retreat in SR triples movement rate at the cost of imposing 100% spell failure and 0 APR for 3 rounds. Despite the hefty penalties, it's a VERY effective escape option and can let you outrun spell projectiles like Dispel Magic or Hold Person. Bear in mind that the spell is party-wide no matter where your party members are on the map. This can help you, since a distant caster can bail out anyone, but it also means that no amount of positioning will preserve the party's spellcasting ability. Note that the 100% spell failure does not apply to innate abilities.
14. Temporarily kicking a character out of the party will make them invisible to enemies and immune to any party-friendly spells like Slow or Chaos coming from the enemy, since enemies and party-friendly spells ignore neutral targets. This has numerous uses, including evacuating characters from dangerous places; exempting characters from the effects of Expeditious Retreat; neutralizing Chaos spells and most disabling spells (almost all of them besides Stinking Cloud and Web) before they hit; and sneaking past enemies when you don't have enough Invisibility spells for the whole party.
15. Kicking characters out of the party will restore their kit abilities, but not other innate abilities. The most impactful options in BG1 and SoD are Bounty Hunter traps and Totemic Druid summons, which can crush most of the game. This, however, requires your Charname to be right next to the character in question, and sometimes they do not walk to Charname to ask if you're kicking them out, forcing you to talk to them, which breaks Charname's invisibility. You could permanently lose a player-created character by pressing 2 instead of 1, but I've never had a problem with that. Just keep your finger off of the "2" when you're using the trick.
16. Invisibility Sphere in SR only lasts 10 rounds, but it has a casting time of 1, which means you can near-instant invisibility for the whole party. Like with Invisibility 10' Radius, you can combine it with auto-pause to cast offensive and summoning spells at the enemy right before the party goes invisible. If chain-cast, it amounts to an unbreakable invisibility spell for the whole party.
Bear in mind that the range is limited, however, and if you have the standard 2x3 party formation, the best way to make sure the spell will cover the whole party is to keep the caster in the middle--that is, the 3rd or 4th party slot. Otherwise, the spell will often fail to cover the party member in the opposite corner of the 2x3 formation (a caster in slot 6 will fail to hide the character in slot 1).
17. Without SR's Enchanted Weapon to give +3 arrows to Corwin, the only truly reliable way to take down Belhifet in a poverty run is to either set the difficulty to Normal and have Caelar fight Belhifet (she can pretty much solo him) or:
a. Use a character with Detect Illusions to remove Belhifet's Improved Invisibility. b. After Belhifet has expended his aura and you know he's not going to vanish right away, have two sorcerers hit him with Lower Resistance (ideally, 5 times to get his MR from 100 to 0). c. Use all of the sorcerers' level 2 spell slots to hit Belhifet with Melf's Acid Arrow. d. Finish him off with Magic Missiles.
Unless you're very underleveled, every arrow will deal 20 damage on average over 4 rounds and each Magic Missile will deal 17.5 damage, so two sorcerers will be more than enough to kill Belhifet, while a single sorcerer will not (especially because of Lower Resistance running out).
18. Traps work great on the Ogre Magi outside Candlekeep, but if you can't make it happen, you can always flee the area and return. The area transition is only 4 hours, so even SR Stoneskin and Invisibility will last the whole trip (though Glitterdust will reveal the party once anyone breaks invisibility). The safest strategy is to cast Horror on the Ogre Magi on the first round and fleeing the area if it doesn't affect at least two of them. That will give you enough time to prepare for the others.
19. MELEE COMBAT IS NOT SAFE. Enemies gets +4 to hit and +4 to damage against characters who do not have a melee weapon equipped. This means low-HP characters are especially easy to one-shot in poverty runs. A character with 48 HP can be instantly killed on a critical hit by any critter that can roll a 10 or higher on a normal damage roll. Backstabs are even worse: a nonmagical shortsword in the hands of a level 9 thief can deal 80 damage on a critical hit to an unarmed character. A higher-end thief like Aran Linvail can deal 120 damage on a critical backstab. This is not even accounting for the party's generally poor AC due to lack of armor and other items; it's entirely possible to lose a party member to a single round of melee combat, even if the enemy gets bad rolls.
Most of my notes and most of my calculations for the IE games are localized in a single Excel file, and I've had it so long that the file has become rather large.
Most of the calculations are uncommented and aren't very readable, but I thought people might get a little larf out of looking at all the numbers. Attached.
@semiticgod I went through your file quickly and it's a beautiful mess, like personal notes usually are. However, it's clear that there is gold into those files. When I'll go through them more thoroughly, I'm pretty sure I'll find very useful info for no reload. Thanks !!
I thought I'd leave some tips for no-reload play in a long post for prospective no-reloaders. First, I have some general thoughts on the nature of no-reload runs, then a list of specific tips about BG2.
There's one equation that can sum the entire strategy of no-reload gameplay:
c^n=s
where c is the chance of surviving a single fight, n is the number of fights in total, and s is the chance of success. For instance, if you fight 100 fights with a 99% chance of survival and a 1% chance of death, the odds of surviving all of those fights is equal to 0.99^100=0.366, or a 36.6% chance of victory. In practice, most fights will have a 100% chance of success, while major fights will have much lower than a 99% chance of success. At root, completing a no-reload run (or coming close, which is more realistic) is about reducing the chance of death to 0. Since luck varies wildly, you kind of have to assume that everything is going to go wrong--because sooner or later, something will go wrong.
It's always a good idea to keep escape options on hand, spells or items that will bail out your party in case something goes wrong. This can be a Potion of Invisibility to hide a vulnerable character, an Invisibility 10' Radius spell to hide the entire party, a Potion of Magic Shielding to guarantee a successful save against Finger of Death, or a spare casting of Teleport Field to scatter a crowd of enemies that have boxed in Charname and prevented them from running away.
It's important to pay attention to the general course of combat and make sure that things are working out as planned and that your party is functioning properly. If too many things go wrong, you need to know when to flee the fight, rest, and return to try again. There are many fights that you can run away from at no cost, and escaping bad situations WILL save your life--probably many times.
Charname (the main character) should have excellent defenses and should not be engaged in dangerous situations. All other party members are expendable; Charname is not. It's generally a good idea to (1) keep Charname away from combat, (2) keep Charname well-buffed whenever enemies are anywhere near them, and (3) avoid using up Charname's aura if possible so they can immediately drink a potion or cast a spell to ensure their survival. In fact, it's often best if Charname does not participate at all in a given fight.
Save-or-else spells like Chaos are not reliable for no-reload runs. They're useful, but there is always the chance that they fail completely, so you can't gamble your survival on the enemy making a single save. Spells that require multiple saves, however, like Web, are less likely to fail outright. The odds of an unlucky roll 10 times in a row are pretty small; you can count on Web to disable the enemy at least for one round. For the same reasons, Harm is not reliable, because it relies on a single dice roll. Anything that serves as a buffer against horribly bad luck is good for your party's survival.
Sometimes, one or more of your party members will be out of commission. It might be because they failed a save against Chaos; it might be because they're in danger and are forced to drink a potion, cast a spell, or run away in order to survive. Whenever this happens, your party is missing part of its functionality. This is why it's very useful to have multiple characters with redundant roles. It might seem suboptimal to have two characters who do the exact same thing, but if you have multiple characters who can all perform the same function, you can perform that function even if some of them are out of commission. If you have three characters who can cast Invisibility 10' Radius, for instance, it's very unlikely that you'll find yourself unable to cast the spell on any round you might need it.
Micromanage your characters during major fights. In a tough fight where the difference between success and failure might depend on a single point of HP or a single dice roll, it's a good idea to make the most out of every second of combat. Casting an Aid spell or drinking a potion on round 3 might save your life on round 10.
Above all, the best way to increase the chance of survival is to figure out all the numerous ways your character might die and then patch the holes in their defenses. A good way to do this is to look at other people's runs and see how they died. Don't just learn from your own mistakes; learn from everyone's.
In addition to the main no-reload thread, you might look at some of my other runs, those that weren't posted in that thread: the Archer/Thief run, the analysis of the Siege of Ust Natha, and most importantly, the Party of Spiders run, which goes into the most detail about BG2 fights and threats. The most important notes are in the "retrospective" post on page 9.
Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, and Remove Fear will block essentially any game-ending effect, and they all have extremely long durations. Note that druids cannot cast Remove Fear until they hit epic levels and can summon a Deva to cast it for them. The only disablers that will get past these three spells are Slow and Web, which you can block with a shorter-duration Free Action spell. The only instant death effects that will bypass Death Ward are petrification, level drain, stat drain, and Imprisonment. Protection from Petrification lasts for 50 rounds, but Negative Plane Protection only lasts for 5 rounds. Imprisonment can only be blocked by Spell Deflection/Turning/Trap, Shield of the Archons, and Spell Immunity: Abjuration. Stat drain cannot be blocked by any except for weapon immunities. SCS Improved Mantle, Absolute Immunity, or PFMW can block an SCS vampire's CON drain, while (SCS) Mantle may be sufficient to keep away both Spirit Troll and Shadow STR drain.
Potions are drunk instantly the moment your aura is clear. Using other items, whether it's a scroll or the Ring of the Ram or the Efreeti Bottle, will take 1-2 seconds once your aura is clear. That slight delay could prove fatal if you're trying to protect a character from an incoming spell; a Potion of Insulation might save you from a Lightning Bolt where a green scroll of Protection from Electricity will not.
You can check enemy HP by using CTRL-M on them, assuming you have the cheat console enabled. It also reveals some other information about them, but HP is the most useful.
A solo character in BG1 will get six times as much XP as a full party. However, a solo character in BG2 will get more like three times as much XP, because so much XP in BG2 is quest XP.
Trademeet can be completed with zero fighting. You can walk right past all the enemies of the Druid Grove and then let Cernd fight Faldorn (assuming he's not in your party).
A Protection from Undead scroll can keep you safe from everything in the Temple Ruins as well as the Shade Lord (you'll still need the wardstone to keep the dragon off your back). A Sunstone Bullet will instantly destroy the Shadow Altar, while SI: Necromancy can block the Shade Lord's level draining Darkling Aura. The SCS Shade Lord casts Finger of Death, Chromatic Orb, Black Blade of Disaster, and Blade Barrier, so Stoneskin and Death Ward are important.
SCS beholders will steal the Shield of Balduran from you after a few rounds of combat (you can pick it up from their bodies after you beat them), but they won't try that tactic against a simulacrum clone with the shield. Same goes for the Cloak of Mirroring.
A beholder's Death Ray instantly kills the target on a failed save vs. death at -4. Unlike other beholder rays, it bypasses both magic resistance and spell protections; only good saving throws or Death Ward will keep you safe.
You can force enemy archers to switch to melee weapons by engaging them in melee.
Anyone who does not have a melee weapon equipped (i.e., has fists equipped or a missile weapon) will suffer -4 to hit and damage to enemy melee weapons, so even characters who don't plan on attacking anyone should have a melee weapon equipped.
Many high-level SCS mages have a single Horrid Wilting spell in their introductory Chain Contingency spell. Unless you have 100% magic resistance or very high magic damage resistance, you should always maintain a safe distance from high-level mages in SCS for the first few seconds until their Chain Contingency fires.
In Chateau Irenicus, the Radiant Mephits' Color Spray has a save penalty and knocks the target unconscious for several rounds with no ability to wake up when hit, so it's extremely unsafe. If you're fast (Oil of Speed works), you can sequester the mephits in the previous room and lock the door behind them.
Also in Chateau Irenicus, the Salt Mephit right after the Mephit Portal room can stun you without a saving throw (50% chance). It uses this ability every round; getting hit even once could easily prove fatal.
Sahuagin use stunning bolts as well as poisonous bolts. Chaotic Commands or another form of immunity to stun, Physical Mirror, immunity to +1 weapons, subzero saves vs. spell, or the Shield of Reflection is necessary to avoid getting stun-locked in the City of Caverns.
The Planar Prison is very dangerous in SCS. The Yuan-ti have spectacular defenses and will spam Remove Magic and Chaos as well as Spell Thrust. A mage with Globe of Invulnerability (the level 6 version) and SI: Abjuration will ward off their magic attacks, but anyone could easily lose their defenses and get hit by Chaos. There are also very few places to hide. The Warden is a high-level Fighter/Mage who can see through invisibility and will attack during Time Stop with high APR.
Despite the fact that Hold Person requires a visible target, it's an area-effect projectile and therefore goes right through spell deflection/turning/trap spells.
Fatigue imposes luck penalties that go up to more than -90. Having negative luck means you take additional damage from incoming spells. A sufficiently fatigued character will take maximum damage from Fireballs and Horrid Wilting. Intoxication also imposes luck penalties, though it maxes out at -12 luck (which is how much the Wish intoxication option imposes on everyone on the map).
Pai'Na's spiders, the little ones, have only 1 APR and 20 THAC0, but their poison deals 5 damage per second and can prove fatal very quickly on the off chance they roll a 20 and you fail a save vs. death.
Before the v2.5 update, several versions of EE allowed poison to go through Stoneskin. In the original game and v2.5, Stoneskin will block poison.
Protection from Poison scrolls grant immunity to the poison opcode, but not poison damage. The scroll will still leave you vulnerable to stuff like Cloudkill and Morentherene's poison breath.
Physical Mirror will reflect the player's traps. Be careful about setting traps around the SCS Statues in Watcher's Keep and Hephernaan, both of which have Physical Mirror as pre-buffs.
Level 11 normal traps deal 2d6 poison damage per round for 3 rounds and are extremely good at disrupting mage spells.
100% magic resistance does not grant complete protection from enemy spells. Aside from SCS mages sometimes using triple Lower Resistance Spell Triggers, many enemy innate spells, from psionics to Demon Fear and Death Gaze, bypass magic resistance outright. A few select mage and cleric spells also bypass magic resistance: Firestorm, Fire Shield: Blue and Red, Imprisonment, Energy Drain, Blade Barrier, Globe of Blades, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, Sunfire (pre-EE only), Sphere of Chaos's disintegrate effect (might be patched out in an EE update), Insect Plague (depending on your install) and, in IWD only, Cone of Cold and Snilloc's Snowball Swarm. All magic attacks like Breach and Spell Thrust bypass magic resistance, as does Lower Resistance.
Dragon Fear has a -4 save penalty. Same goes for an Ulitharid's Psionic Blast and Psionic Maze (the normal version of Psionic Blast has no penalty).
Melissan's spear does piercing damage in vanilla but slashing damage in Ascension.
The Scorcher Ammunition uses the Agannazar's Scorcher projectile and therefore strikes twice, which essentially means it doubles your APR. With Improved Haste, you've basically got 20 APR.
Kitthix's Web Tangle can go through MGOI, though it does offer a save to resist.
Plath Rededge in the Windspear Hills questline, who ambushes you after resting in Garren's cabin, may use Slay Living and/or Symbol, Death. Casting Death Ward on Charname on the first round is a good idea.
Spirit Trolls drain STR and the drain lasts for 50 rounds. If you try to stave off death using DUHM, you'll need 5+ castings, because otherwise you'll die when they run out. Strength of One and potions of giant strength will help if your base STR is low, but they will not reset the effects of STR drain. The trolls also cast Greater Command depending on your install as well as Flame Strike and Unholy Blight.
All trolls except for TorGal will die instantly to the Death Spell.
You can get a scroll of Minor Sequencer from the merchant outside the Derelict House in the Bridge District. He only shows up at certain times of night.
You can get a scroll of Minor Spell Turning from the merchant in the far east edge of the Promenade. He only shows up at night.
There is a petrification trap in the northeast library on level 1 of Watcher's Keep.
There is a petrification trap on the bridge door (the bridge made of a door) in the Copper Coronet sewers.
There is a Prismatic Spray trap in the slaver compound just past the doors to the children's cages.
There is a Prismatic Spray trap before the northwesternmost door of the fire giant lair.
There is a Finger of Death trap in a narrow hallway in the Planar Sphere, just east of the ettercaps.
There is a petrification trap on the door to the Bridge District lich.
There is a petrification trap on the second level of Mae'Var's lair.
There is a petrification trap on the altar in Mekrath's lair.
The entrance to the mind flayer city is easy to confuse with the entrance to the beholder hive in the Underdark. The mind flayer city is to the right; the beholder hive is to the left. You cannot leave the mind flayer city until the Elder Brain is dead; the door locks behind you the moment you enter.
The Death Knights in the Underdark cast Remove Magic at level 20, drain levels with no save on hit, and have all undead immunities.
Solo fighters and thieves have limited access to summons. In BG2, the Efreeti Bottle, Iron Horn of Valhalla, Black Spider Figurine, and Ras are all good options for fighters and thieves who need summons.
You can escape Athkatla with no chance of running into ambushes if you follow this path: Waukeen's Promenade->Slums->Government District->City Gates->Umar Hills. This allows you to speak with Nalia, Lord Jierdan, Delon, and Flydian to unlock all the wilderness areas of Chapter 2 BG2.
There is a Maze trap on, or shortly before, the Bridge district chest with the Horn of Valhalla.
The Rune Assassins in the skinner questline can see through invisibility.
Shangalar of the Twisted Rune cannot see through invisibility, unlike other liches.
The Slayer in Hell cannot see through invisibility, unlike other demons.
The enemies in the Sendai fight do not have many ways to deal with invisibility. You can escape pressure using basic invisibility options.
Using a Protection from Undead scroll on a lich will disable its spellcasting. If you don't want to do this, bear in mind that using the scroll on yourself is not safe in SCS: liches will try to hit you with area-effect spells and Remove Magic and will also summon demons and planetars on you. The scroll also works on vampire spellcasters like Tanova, Hazarmaveth and Manasseh from the Tactics mod, and the vampire Apprentice of Odamaron in ToB.
A planetar's vorpal strike has a 25% chance of triggering and offers a save vs. death at -2 to resist. They have the same chance of dispelling magic on hit, so a Potion of Invulnerability or Magic Shielding will NOT keep you safe from the vorpal strike (though a sufficiently high-level Death Ward spell might).
Demons, liches, dragon, and planetars and devas can all see through invisibility by default with very few exceptions. Depending on your install, mind flayers can also see through invisibility. Beholders cannot.
Mind flayers drain 5 INT per hit, and the drain lasts 5 rounds. They have poor THAC0 but 4 APR. Drinking Potions of Genius or Mind Focusing can keep your INT above zero. Depending on your install, you may run into a Remove Magic spell in the mind flayer city in the Underdark, the Alhoon lair, and the mind flayer lair in Watcher's Keep, the last of which may also have a mind flayer using the Wand of Spell Striking on you, so you might lose both your Chaotic Commands and your PFMW.
Opening containers and picking locks will break invisibility, but disarming traps will not. Sanctuary cannot be broken by any of these things. Invisibility and Sanctuary will not be broken by single target spells if you target yourself with them, but area-effect spells cast on self, like Haste, or a healing spell cast on an ally, will both break invisibility.
SCS vampires drain 2-5 CON per hit against characters with Negative Plan Protection depending on the vampire's level. With every hit, they also gain 10-25 HP that goes above their maximum and lasts over 50 rounds, so throwing summons at the vampires could end up pushing their HP into the hundreds.
Hazarmaveth and Manasseh of the Tactics mod will disappear when Bodhi dies.
The first level of Watcher's Keep has thousands of gold in free, safe loot just in the southeastern areas; you don't have to fight the Vampiric Wraiths in the main chamber to get the Paladin's Bracers and Golem Manual.
SCS Improved Mantle will block everything but +5 weapons and higher. However, the +5 darts from the Cloak of Stars will go right through it, and their high APR makes it easy to take down a high-level mage's Stoneskins. Give a few darts to your party's fighters and you'll have a chance of breaking through even a high-level mage's defenses. Nonmagical darts can do the same against PFMW; darts in general are great at removing Stoneskins.
SCS Kangaxx the Demi-Lich has +4 to casting time and spams PFMW. He also has 100% magic resistance, so Potions of Firebreath might not work in your install.
A solo character will instantly die to charm and maze.
The Improved Haste from the Ring of Gaxx only lasts 10 seconds. It's good for damage but the duration may disappoint you if you try to combine it with Called Shot or Power Attack. The Improved Haste effect from the Bracers of Blinding Strike lasts for 20 seconds; the Amulet of Cheetah Speed and Improved Cloak of Protection +2 cast the spell normally.
You can repeatedly trigger the Fireball trap in Rayic Gethras' home (click the container multiple times) to instantly kill him, though you'll need fire immunity to survive the process.
The rat form from the Cloak of the Sewers lasts 20 rounds and offers 90% physical damage resistance. You'll deal almost no melee damage and can't cast spells, and on-hit effects will destroy you due to your sky-high AC (don't use it against spiders and so forth), but you'll be an excellent tank while it lasts.
Potions of Absorption give +10 AC vs. crushing damage, which bypasses the AC cap. They also stack. The potions can make it almost impossible for golems (like the BG1 Flesh Golems), fire giants, and even most demons, including the unmodded Slayer in Hell, to hit you.
If you don't want to fight Shadow Thief spellcasters after siding with Bodhi, pick the "unseemly task" and then spare the target's life. You won't have to fight the mages in the Shadow Thief hideout's upper level.
Sphere of Chaos has a 10% chance of instantly killing you via the disintegrate opcode on a failed save, which bypasses magic resistance depending on your install. It's always a good idea to get your Charname out of its area of effect unless his or her saves are negative.
Many demons have "Human" as their racial enemy, which means they'll get +4 to hit and damage against human characters.
The Staff of Striking's extremely high base damage (1d6+9) makes it excellent for backstabbing. A level 13 thief with no additional bonuses will deal 50-75 damage on a backstab.
ATweaks Greater Mummies will impose mummy rot on hit. Mummy rot offers no saving throw and will kill you after 24 hours unless you cast Cure Disease or use any other item or spell that cures disease.
You can select offscreen critters by pressing "0" (or "=" for pre-EE BG2) and then de-selecting onscreen characters. You can then order the offscreen characters to move to a visible area.
A solo character can hide from Irenicus in Spellhold by hiding in a corner. Irenicus will survive the attacks of the other inmates, but they'll do a lot to wear him down.
The priest in the far north end of the City of Caverns offers the best prices in the entire saga. It's a good idea to save up high-priced magical items you don't want so you can sell them to the priest.
There are no critical failures for saving throws in the IE games except for IWD2. A save vs. spell of -1 will guarantee successful saves against spells like Web and Confusion. Likewise, if you push an enemy's save vs. spell to 18 with Called Shot, Feeblemind is guaranteed to work.
Ascension Melissan can score a guaranteed kill on any character by casting Time Stop (with a casting time of only 3!), followed by Teleport Without Error to wherever Charname is on the map, followed by Greater Whirlwind Attack. Only characters with extremely high slashing damage resistance and high HP, or with PFMW or SCS Absolute Immunity active, will survive if they're caught during Time Stop. Ascension also gives you the innate ability Focus right before that battle, which grants immunity to Time Stop for 30 seconds on Charname, but can only be used every 60 seconds. This means you have to be very careful about Charname's aura and make sure that you're ready to bail them out if Melissan starts casting Time Stop (your cue will be the incantation "praeses," or, if you have Jimfix installed, a notification in the dialogue box about Melissan casting an alteration spell). Melissan is immune to spell failure: Wizard Slayers cannot disrupt the spell, nor will a Protection from Magic scroll interfere with her spellcasting.
Finally, it's a good idea to download Near Infinity so you can look things up. Knowing an enemy's AC or immunities can let you know if a given strategy if likely to work on them or not.
Intending to do a co-op run on BG2:EE with SCS, is there any other component than just SCS you need to make it work? And I assume you must have the exact same components installed to get it to work?
Since no one has mentioned it: Stealth cannot let you escape area transition ambushes. This is because stealth operates using a 3- or 4-round invisibility effect, and the duration will run out when you arrive at the ambush. The stealth timer is unaffected by travel times, however, so even a Shadowdancer would be caught visible on the first round if he or she attempted to hide right before leaving an area.
Aura is also unaffected by travel times. It's best not to make any area transitions that might entail ambushes unless your aura is clear. When I cast pre-ambush buffs, I usually wait several seconds before leaving the area.
Time Stop works the same way: stealth expires during Time Stop, while no one's aura is cleared by Time Stop. Stealth won't necessarily keep you safe from an enemy mage even when combined with Non-Detection, and using Shadowstep will not give your party members any extra time to drink a potion before a fatal spell hits them.
Speaking of aura, your aura doesn't clear during Project Image. When your Project Image wears off or is disrupted, the caster will have a clouded aura at the end no matter how much time has passed.
And as I've mentioned elsewhere, the "pause" effect of Agannazar's Scorcher, Color Spray, and Burning Hands also delays the clearing of your aura.
@Wise_Grimwald: I'm not sure I understand what your situation is. Mod items should only be possible if you've run ModMerge, which means all items would be the same between BG1 and SoD. If you haven't run ModMerge, then yes, you'll need to copy the items somewhere to get them into SoD, but I don't know where the SoD override folder would be.
You might try this:
1. Take notes on the items, spell picks, and XP you had at the end of BG1. 2. Create a new install with Modmerge and then install the mods you had on BG1. 3. Load up your previous save. If it works, you're done; you can just continue to SoD with no interruptions. 4. If your old save doesn't work, create a new game in SoD and use EEKeeper to give yourself the XP, spells, and items you noted in step 1.
This probably won't give you the right NPCs (SoD gives you a preset list of companions), but summoning them via the console would work, and you could use EEKeeper on them. But BG1-exclusive NPCs like Yeslick and Faldorn would not persist beyond the first dungeon, and some BG1 NPCs will leave the party after the first dungeon and reappear later in the game (like Jaheira).
@Wise_Grimwald: I'm not sure I understand what your situation is. Mod items should only be possible if you've run ModMerge, which means all items would be the same between BG1 and SoD. If you haven't run ModMerge, then yes, you'll need to copy the items somewhere to get them into SoD, but I don't know where the SoD override folder would be.
You might try this:
1. Take notes on the items, spell picks, and XP you had at the end of BG1. 2. Create a new install with Modmerge and then install the mods you had on BG1. 3. Load up your previous save. If it works, you're done; you can just continue to SoD with no interruptions. 4. If your old save doesn't work, create a new game in SoD and use EEKeeper to give yourself the XP, spells, and items you noted in step 1.
This probably won't give you the right NPCs (SoD gives you a preset list of companions), but summoning them via the console would work, and you could use EEKeeper on them. But BG1-exclusive NPCs like Yeslick and Faldorn would not persist beyond the first dungeon, and some BG1 NPCs will leave the party after the first dungeon and reappear later in the game (like Jaheira).
Thanks for the quick reply. I haven't arrived in SoD yet, but have had problems in the past despite running Modmerge. I have a fresh installation this time, so I'll wait and see what happens. Hope that there aren't any bugs this time.
Fatigue penalties scale indefinitely, so a restless tetralogy run would normally not be possible. However, it's possible to remove fatigue for the whole party:
1. For NPCs, you can clear their fatigue just by temporarily booting them from the party. When they rejoin, they'll be at zero fatigue. 2. For Charname, you'll need to wear the Battle Tankard, an SoD item you get from Irina in the Elfsong Tavern after the first dungeon. I think the only way to bring it into BG2 is to use EET and smuggle it somewhere so you can collect it in SoA.
It may be possible to beat the game without 1 or 2, but doing without either the reform party trick or the Battle Tankard would make a tetralogy run a bad idea. I don't think you can realistically take down Melissan with -50 luck for Charname and -20 luck for everyone else.
Too long since I played BG1 so can’t remember dynamics and if there are any free rests.
But in BG2, don’t forget you always get one free rest in SoA (journey to Spellhold). If you are roleplaying you can also get free rests in Windspear Hills (go to Garren’s house, you are not choosing to rest) and by giving in to Phaere (similarly not a choice and staying on character).
After that, it’s all about Wish.
So BG2 and ToB are doable without ever choosing to rest. Whether you can get through BG1 and SoD I leave to others to figure out
Horror of horrors. None of the characters that I am supposed to meet after my return to Baldur's Gate are there.
No smuggler near the bridge. No harper to give hints as to what to do next etc.
Will I be able to finish the game?
It is as if the game hasn't registered the fact that I have finished Candlekeep. Though it has given me the extra Bhaal powers for doing so.
At least I have plenty to do at present: Werewolf Island; Durlag's Tower; The Drizzt Saga. Having thought about it, it looks as if I need to change a Global Variable. Which it is, I have no idea. If anyone knows which global variable it is, I would be exceedingly grateful to know.
@Wise_Grimwald Most likely you'll need to attach your save in the modding section (describing what mods you have installed) and ask the folks there to look at your save.
Comments
The "Schoolless" bug is now fixed and you can already try it in the open beta of 2.5.
https://support.baldursgate.com/issues/31342
School "None - 0" no longer receive specialist Saving Throw augmentations!
Currently I'm running a poverty run with a full party, but I'm reasonably certain that everyone from Baeloth to Tiax will leave the party upon entering the starting dungeon of SoD, leaving me with a single sorcerer with no weapons.
How would I bring down Korlasz quickly without having to deal with all those Arrows of Biting and so forth? Is it possible to bring any character into the starting dungeon of SoD besides player-created party members?
P.S. Insect Swarm is even better and nearly like an instant win-button!!
See that yellow square near the doppelgangers, and the blue circle just south of it, in the doorway? That blue circle is roughly where Faldorn can stand to cast Fire Trap on the yellow square, close enough to get a Fire Trap right next to the hardest-to-reach Greater Doppelganger, but not so close that Faldorn might trigger the cutscene early.
See the red circle on the carpet, and the two green circles, one under Yeslick to the west and the other next to the blue circle for Faldorn? That red circle, the stem of the floral pattern on the carpet, is where Yeslick can cast Dispel Magic so that it hits all of the doppelgangers but is just barely shy of hitting Liia Jannath. That's not the only place where Dispel Magic is worth casting; that's just the rough limit, beyond which Dispel Magic runs the risk of revealing Liia Jannath. The green circles are the points at which Yeslick can most safely hit that red circle without getting too close to Sarevok.
In SR, Invisibility Sphere only lasts 10 rounds and isn't as good for this fight, but Invisibility 10' Radius, the vanilla spell, should actually be a stronger option for this fight than Invisibility. Normally, casting Invisibility on Liia Jannath exposes your mage to Sarevok, starting the fight while your mage's aura is still partly clouded. Invisibility 10' Radius, however, does not expose you, and also makes Belt vanish at the same time. Plus, it lasts for 24 hours, so you can cast it and then rest before starting the fight.
This buys your mage maybe 3 extra seconds at the start of combat and also can keep Belt temporarily invisible. The Invisibility 10' Radius scroll is a random drop as I understand it, but a sorcerer or a lucky mage can slightly optimize this fight by using Invisibility 10' Radius instead of Invisibility on Liia Jannath.
First of all, Imprisonment in SR uses the Maze opcode; it just makes the effect permanent. This is done for player-friendly reasons, but it should be possible to permanently Maze the Five without Melissan casting Freedom, because it looks like Melissan only bothers casting it if the Five are imprisoned and not simply Mazed. Can anyone confirm this? Will Melissan cast Freedom in response to Maze as well as imprisonment.
If it's true, this means you can just hit everyone but one of the Five with Imprisonment and then kill the last one. When Melissan appears, completely alone, you can stun-lock her with the following steps:
1. Once you've tanked her first Time Stop, use Ruby Ray of Reversal/Spellstrike to remove Melissan's Spell Trap.
2. Paralyze her with Implosion.
3. Use a Lower Resistance+Lower Resistance+Breach Spell Trigger.
4. With her MR at zero, start casting PW: Stun, which stuns for one round without a saving throw.
With Project Image and PW: Stun, you can stun-lock her as long as you have level 7 spell slots and as long as you keep her MR at zero.
If Melissan will cast Freedom even as a response to Maze and not just imprisonment, then we'd need to use a Ruby Ray of Reversal/Pierce Shield+Lower Resistance+Lower Resistance on Nearest Enemy Chain Contingency, triggered on helpless via a Project Image spell and followed by a PW: Stun right off the bat, which would stun Melissan with an effective casting time of 2. But I'd rather not rely on a Chain Contingency like that.
Looks like a maxed-out Wilson and Jaheira in Earth Elemental form, properly buffed, would need only 9 rounds of automatic hits to kill Melissan, not counting any Whirlwind Attacks. The only problem remaining is how to handle the immense pressure of the Five. If both sorcerers had Imprisonment, we'd need the first round for PFMW; the second could take down Illasera and Yaga-Shura; the third for Sarevok and Gromnir; the following arounds for PFMW and then debuffing Sendai and Abazigal; another Imprisonment for Sendai, and finally death for Abazigal, with PFMW at least 6 seconds before we deal the final blow.
I don't know about planetar vorpal strikes. Dispelling Screen will block the dispel effect, so Death Ward should be safe, but a single Remove Magic could render us vulnerable. Thankfully, planetars are only level 18 in SR, so a caster level 23 Death Ward should persist.
Wilson will have 250+ HP and 40% DR, while Jaheira will have maybe 150 HP and 80% DR against slashing/piercing/missile damage and 40% DR against crushing damage (so Gromnir and Yaga-Shura could be very dangerous).
EDIT: Physical Mirror will block missile attacks like Illasera's, and lasts 2 turns instead of 9 rounds. Protection from Missiles will as well, though it only lasts 10 rounds in SR.
Here are some things I've learned as a result of the poverty run:
1. Recruiting Tiax, who appears in Beregost if you have SCS installed, lets you summon a ghast that can take down all of the basilisks on its own, with no need for Korax. Combining the ghast with Korax gives you a much better chance of taking down SCS Mutamin. The ghast is also a fabulous tank against ankhegs. If you don't want Tiax soaking up XP during these valuable periods, simply kick him out. His ghast will still be under your control.
2. You can collect tens of thousands of free XP simply by recruiting NPCs at higher levels. The thresholds, at least in my install, are at 16,000 and 32,000 XP; those are the optimal times to recruit new party members. Player-created characters can be left in houses when necessary to control XP gathering. Concentrating XP in Charname in the early game to recruit higher-level NPCs can obviate the need for XP gathering for the entire rest of the run, depending on your install and party composition and so forth.
3. Baeloth will spawn by the tower in the Larswood if Charname is at 10,000 XP. Baeloth starts at level 6 and has 50% MR and access to Fireball, Web, and several other important mage spells. You can get him immediately after taking Charname to Mutamin's Garden, and he can take down the Nashkel mines more or less singlehandedly.
4. It is possible to safely grab the documents in the bandit camp without using Sanctuary, relying on Invisibility instead, by simply kicking someone out of the party right after they grab the documents. However, it seems that the chapter transition won't trigger properly unless someone in the party is alive and visible to the enemies. A disposable NPC, anyone you don't care about resurrecting, should be able to serve this purpose. Still, it's better just to get a cleric to use Sanctuary.
5. The Phase Spiders in the Cloakwood have a high chance of teleporting to the party a second or two after you enter the area. If they don't appear after several seconds, they probably will not appear at all. However, once you engage other enemies, like the weaker spiders directly to the west, any Phase Spiders currently on the map are likely to teleport on top of the party. Two traps and a mid-level Magic Missile spell, or two Magic Missile spells and a single trap, have a decent chance of taking down a single teleporting Phase Spider before it has a chance to make a single attack roll (they have 44 HP).
If it doesn't work, you can flee the area, as the ettercap area ambushes are risk-free if you micromanage your party members' movement to get your people away from the nearest ettercaps and then flee directly north (the Web trap is about two character circles to the west; you don't have much room). The previous area has potentially dangerous rest ambushes, though, including a single Huge/Giant Spider and a dozen tasloi.
Once the Phase Spiders are gone, you can safely trigger the Web traps using Invisibility and escape to the northeast edge of the map; the northwest exit is not mandatory.
6. In certain installs, Yeslick's Dispel Magic is rigged to always work. If it does, he can neutralize virtually any mage in BG1 and SoD.
7. Davaeorn is innately immune to Web; he has an undroppable Ring of Free Action equipped. Web, however, is great for holding him in place, because it can still disable the guards who crowd around him and block him in.
8. You can only enter Davaeorn's lair from the northeast, but you can exit from both the northeast and southwest. The latter involves a lot of backtracking, but it can be much safer than the northeast exit, and if you fail to rest on the way, Davaeorn should be without buffs and surrounded by guards when you get back.
9. SCS Angelo, at least in some installs, will teleport on top of the party if you do not give him a summoned critter to attack. You should keep a spare summons at a distance, since Angelo's Sunfire spell can wipe out a whole group of summons at once.
Also, if you use the corner strategy to isolate everyone but Angelo in a southern corner of the map, you need to keep all of your party members and summoned critters very far out of the way to make sure the enemies don't spot you on the way to Sarevok's corner.
10. SR's Enchanted Weapon radically changes the game balance in favor of fighter types, especially for ranged attackers, since you can combine +3 launchers with +3 ammunition. The slings and bullets do NOT benefit from STR bonuses, and the bows do NOT grant +1 APR. Corwin is extremely effective in SoD when armed with Enchanted Weapon (the longbow gives +2 to hit and +5 to damage), and you should be able to take down Belhifet with Corwin even if you don't use a glitch to get infinite permanent ammunition.
I can't stress enough how much of a difference Enchanted Weapon makes. The fundamental problem of a poverty run is limited access to damage options, but Enchanted Weapon changes that by giving you access to a weapon of any type (except for darts, which unfortunately are not available yet). The spell will have less impact, however, if you stick with a party of spellcasters, which is otherwise optimal for a non-SR run.
11. Summons are widely available in Spell Revisions, as both druids and mages have a summoning spell for each spell level, even level 1. The summons are very weak, but they do a fantastic job at soaking up damage, making ankhegs far less dangerous than they otherwise would be. Just bear in mind that the high numbers of summons (a high-level Animal Summoning I spell will give you 5 bats) can be a problem with the summoning cap in place (you don't want to summon 5 lesser critters right before you begin casting a more powerful summoning spell).
12. Obscuring Mist from SR reduces the field of vision of everyone inside the 6-round cloud. It's very effective for keeping enemies focused on your tanks, as it can prevent the enemy from even noticing more distant characters.
13. Expeditious Retreat in SR triples movement rate at the cost of imposing 100% spell failure and 0 APR for 3 rounds. Despite the hefty penalties, it's a VERY effective escape option and can let you outrun spell projectiles like Dispel Magic or Hold Person. Bear in mind that the spell is party-wide no matter where your party members are on the map. This can help you, since a distant caster can bail out anyone, but it also means that no amount of positioning will preserve the party's spellcasting ability. Note that the 100% spell failure does not apply to innate abilities.
14. Temporarily kicking a character out of the party will make them invisible to enemies and immune to any party-friendly spells like Slow or Chaos coming from the enemy, since enemies and party-friendly spells ignore neutral targets. This has numerous uses, including evacuating characters from dangerous places; exempting characters from the effects of Expeditious Retreat; neutralizing Chaos spells and most disabling spells (almost all of them besides Stinking Cloud and Web) before they hit; and sneaking past enemies when you don't have enough Invisibility spells for the whole party.
15. Kicking characters out of the party will restore their kit abilities, but not other innate abilities. The most impactful options in BG1 and SoD are Bounty Hunter traps and Totemic Druid summons, which can crush most of the game. This, however, requires your Charname to be right next to the character in question, and sometimes they do not walk to Charname to ask if you're kicking them out, forcing you to talk to them, which breaks Charname's invisibility. You could permanently lose a player-created character by pressing 2 instead of 1, but I've never had a problem with that. Just keep your finger off of the "2" when you're using the trick.
16. Invisibility Sphere in SR only lasts 10 rounds, but it has a casting time of 1, which means you can near-instant invisibility for the whole party. Like with Invisibility 10' Radius, you can combine it with auto-pause to cast offensive and summoning spells at the enemy right before the party goes invisible. If chain-cast, it amounts to an unbreakable invisibility spell for the whole party.
Bear in mind that the range is limited, however, and if you have the standard 2x3 party formation, the best way to make sure the spell will cover the whole party is to keep the caster in the middle--that is, the 3rd or 4th party slot. Otherwise, the spell will often fail to cover the party member in the opposite corner of the 2x3 formation (a caster in slot 6 will fail to hide the character in slot 1).
17. Without SR's Enchanted Weapon to give +3 arrows to Corwin, the only truly reliable way to take down Belhifet in a poverty run is to either set the difficulty to Normal and have Caelar fight Belhifet (she can pretty much solo him) or:
a. Use a character with Detect Illusions to remove Belhifet's Improved Invisibility.
b. After Belhifet has expended his aura and you know he's not going to vanish right away, have two sorcerers hit him with Lower Resistance (ideally, 5 times to get his MR from 100 to 0).
c. Use all of the sorcerers' level 2 spell slots to hit Belhifet with Melf's Acid Arrow.
d. Finish him off with Magic Missiles.
Unless you're very underleveled, every arrow will deal 20 damage on average over 4 rounds and each Magic Missile will deal 17.5 damage, so two sorcerers will be more than enough to kill Belhifet, while a single sorcerer will not (especially because of Lower Resistance running out).
18. Traps work great on the Ogre Magi outside Candlekeep, but if you can't make it happen, you can always flee the area and return. The area transition is only 4 hours, so even SR Stoneskin and Invisibility will last the whole trip (though Glitterdust will reveal the party once anyone breaks invisibility). The safest strategy is to cast Horror on the Ogre Magi on the first round and fleeing the area if it doesn't affect at least two of them. That will give you enough time to prepare for the others.
19. MELEE COMBAT IS NOT SAFE. Enemies gets +4 to hit and +4 to damage against characters who do not have a melee weapon equipped. This means low-HP characters are especially easy to one-shot in poverty runs. A character with 48 HP can be instantly killed on a critical hit by any critter that can roll a 10 or higher on a normal damage roll. Backstabs are even worse: a nonmagical shortsword in the hands of a level 9 thief can deal 80 damage on a critical hit to an unarmed character. A higher-end thief like Aran Linvail can deal 120 damage on a critical backstab. This is not even accounting for the party's generally poor AC due to lack of armor and other items; it's entirely possible to lose a party member to a single round of melee combat, even if the enemy gets bad rolls.
Most of the calculations are uncommented and aren't very readable, but I thought people might get a little larf out of looking at all the numbers. Attached.
There's one equation that can sum the entire strategy of no-reload gameplay:
c^n=s
where c is the chance of surviving a single fight, n is the number of fights in total, and s is the chance of success. For instance, if you fight 100 fights with a 99% chance of survival and a 1% chance of death, the odds of surviving all of those fights is equal to 0.99^100=0.366, or a 36.6% chance of victory. In practice, most fights will have a 100% chance of success, while major fights will have much lower than a 99% chance of success. At root, completing a no-reload run (or coming close, which is more realistic) is about reducing the chance of death to 0. Since luck varies wildly, you kind of have to assume that everything is going to go wrong--because sooner or later, something will go wrong.
It's always a good idea to keep escape options on hand, spells or items that will bail out your party in case something goes wrong. This can be a Potion of Invisibility to hide a vulnerable character, an Invisibility 10' Radius spell to hide the entire party, a Potion of Magic Shielding to guarantee a successful save against Finger of Death, or a spare casting of Teleport Field to scatter a crowd of enemies that have boxed in Charname and prevented them from running away.
It's important to pay attention to the general course of combat and make sure that things are working out as planned and that your party is functioning properly. If too many things go wrong, you need to know when to flee the fight, rest, and return to try again. There are many fights that you can run away from at no cost, and escaping bad situations WILL save your life--probably many times.
Charname (the main character) should have excellent defenses and should not be engaged in dangerous situations. All other party members are expendable; Charname is not. It's generally a good idea to (1) keep Charname away from combat, (2) keep Charname well-buffed whenever enemies are anywhere near them, and (3) avoid using up Charname's aura if possible so they can immediately drink a potion or cast a spell to ensure their survival. In fact, it's often best if Charname does not participate at all in a given fight.
Save-or-else spells like Chaos are not reliable for no-reload runs. They're useful, but there is always the chance that they fail completely, so you can't gamble your survival on the enemy making a single save. Spells that require multiple saves, however, like Web, are less likely to fail outright. The odds of an unlucky roll 10 times in a row are pretty small; you can count on Web to disable the enemy at least for one round. For the same reasons, Harm is not reliable, because it relies on a single dice roll. Anything that serves as a buffer against horribly bad luck is good for your party's survival.
Sometimes, one or more of your party members will be out of commission. It might be because they failed a save against Chaos; it might be because they're in danger and are forced to drink a potion, cast a spell, or run away in order to survive. Whenever this happens, your party is missing part of its functionality. This is why it's very useful to have multiple characters with redundant roles. It might seem suboptimal to have two characters who do the exact same thing, but if you have multiple characters who can all perform the same function, you can perform that function even if some of them are out of commission. If you have three characters who can cast Invisibility 10' Radius, for instance, it's very unlikely that you'll find yourself unable to cast the spell on any round you might need it.
Micromanage your characters during major fights. In a tough fight where the difference between success and failure might depend on a single point of HP or a single dice roll, it's a good idea to make the most out of every second of combat. Casting an Aid spell or drinking a potion on round 3 might save your life on round 10.
Above all, the best way to increase the chance of survival is to figure out all the numerous ways your character might die and then patch the holes in their defenses. A good way to do this is to look at other people's runs and see how they died. Don't just learn from your own mistakes; learn from everyone's.
In addition to the main no-reload thread, you might look at some of my other runs, those that weren't posted in that thread: the Archer/Thief run, the analysis of the Siege of Ust Natha, and most importantly, the Party of Spiders run, which goes into the most detail about BG2 fights and threats. The most important notes are in the "retrospective" post on page 9.
Chaotic Commands, Death Ward, and Remove Fear will block essentially any game-ending effect, and they all have extremely long durations. Note that druids cannot cast Remove Fear until they hit epic levels and can summon a Deva to cast it for them. The only disablers that will get past these three spells are Slow and Web, which you can block with a shorter-duration Free Action spell. The only instant death effects that will bypass Death Ward are petrification, level drain, stat drain, and Imprisonment. Protection from Petrification lasts for 50 rounds, but Negative Plane Protection only lasts for 5 rounds. Imprisonment can only be blocked by Spell Deflection/Turning/Trap, Shield of the Archons, and Spell Immunity: Abjuration. Stat drain cannot be blocked by any except for weapon immunities. SCS Improved Mantle, Absolute Immunity, or PFMW can block an SCS vampire's CON drain, while (SCS) Mantle may be sufficient to keep away both Spirit Troll and Shadow STR drain.
Potions are drunk instantly the moment your aura is clear. Using other items, whether it's a scroll or the Ring of the Ram or the Efreeti Bottle, will take 1-2 seconds once your aura is clear. That slight delay could prove fatal if you're trying to protect a character from an incoming spell; a Potion of Insulation might save you from a Lightning Bolt where a green scroll of Protection from Electricity will not.
You can check enemy HP by using CTRL-M on them, assuming you have the cheat console enabled. It also reveals some other information about them, but HP is the most useful.
A solo character in BG1 will get six times as much XP as a full party. However, a solo character in BG2 will get more like three times as much XP, because so much XP in BG2 is quest XP.
Trademeet can be completed with zero fighting. You can walk right past all the enemies of the Druid Grove and then let Cernd fight Faldorn (assuming he's not in your party).
A Protection from Undead scroll can keep you safe from everything in the Temple Ruins as well as the Shade Lord (you'll still need the wardstone to keep the dragon off your back). A Sunstone Bullet will instantly destroy the Shadow Altar, while SI: Necromancy can block the Shade Lord's level draining Darkling Aura. The SCS Shade Lord casts Finger of Death, Chromatic Orb, Black Blade of Disaster, and Blade Barrier, so Stoneskin and Death Ward are important.
SCS beholders will steal the Shield of Balduran from you after a few rounds of combat (you can pick it up from their bodies after you beat them), but they won't try that tactic against a simulacrum clone with the shield. Same goes for the Cloak of Mirroring.
A beholder's Death Ray instantly kills the target on a failed save vs. death at -4. Unlike other beholder rays, it bypasses both magic resistance and spell protections; only good saving throws or Death Ward will keep you safe.
You can force enemy archers to switch to melee weapons by engaging them in melee.
Anyone who does not have a melee weapon equipped (i.e., has fists equipped or a missile weapon) will suffer -4 to hit and damage to enemy melee weapons, so even characters who don't plan on attacking anyone should have a melee weapon equipped.
Many high-level SCS mages have a single Horrid Wilting spell in their introductory Chain Contingency spell. Unless you have 100% magic resistance or very high magic damage resistance, you should always maintain a safe distance from high-level mages in SCS for the first few seconds until their Chain Contingency fires.
In Chateau Irenicus, the Radiant Mephits' Color Spray has a save penalty and knocks the target unconscious for several rounds with no ability to wake up when hit, so it's extremely unsafe. If you're fast (Oil of Speed works), you can sequester the mephits in the previous room and lock the door behind them.
Also in Chateau Irenicus, the Salt Mephit right after the Mephit Portal room can stun you without a saving throw (50% chance). It uses this ability every round; getting hit even once could easily prove fatal.
Sahuagin use stunning bolts as well as poisonous bolts. Chaotic Commands or another form of immunity to stun, Physical Mirror, immunity to +1 weapons, subzero saves vs. spell, or the Shield of Reflection is necessary to avoid getting stun-locked in the City of Caverns.
The Planar Prison is very dangerous in SCS. The Yuan-ti have spectacular defenses and will spam Remove Magic and Chaos as well as Spell Thrust. A mage with Globe of Invulnerability (the level 6 version) and SI: Abjuration will ward off their magic attacks, but anyone could easily lose their defenses and get hit by Chaos. There are also very few places to hide. The Warden is a high-level Fighter/Mage who can see through invisibility and will attack during Time Stop with high APR.
Despite the fact that Hold Person requires a visible target, it's an area-effect projectile and therefore goes right through spell deflection/turning/trap spells.
Fatigue imposes luck penalties that go up to more than -90. Having negative luck means you take additional damage from incoming spells. A sufficiently fatigued character will take maximum damage from Fireballs and Horrid Wilting. Intoxication also imposes luck penalties, though it maxes out at -12 luck (which is how much the Wish intoxication option imposes on everyone on the map).
Pai'Na's spiders, the little ones, have only 1 APR and 20 THAC0, but their poison deals 5 damage per second and can prove fatal very quickly on the off chance they roll a 20 and you fail a save vs. death.
Before the v2.5 update, several versions of EE allowed poison to go through Stoneskin. In the original game and v2.5, Stoneskin will block poison.
Protection from Poison scrolls grant immunity to the poison opcode, but not poison damage. The scroll will still leave you vulnerable to stuff like Cloudkill and Morentherene's poison breath.
Physical Mirror will reflect the player's traps. Be careful about setting traps around the SCS Statues in Watcher's Keep and Hephernaan, both of which have Physical Mirror as pre-buffs.
Level 11 normal traps deal 2d6 poison damage per round for 3 rounds and are extremely good at disrupting mage spells.
100% magic resistance does not grant complete protection from enemy spells. Aside from SCS mages sometimes using triple Lower Resistance Spell Triggers, many enemy innate spells, from psionics to Demon Fear and Death Gaze, bypass magic resistance outright. A few select mage and cleric spells also bypass magic resistance: Firestorm, Fire Shield: Blue and Red, Imprisonment, Energy Drain, Blade Barrier, Globe of Blades, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, Sunfire (pre-EE only), Sphere of Chaos's disintegrate effect (might be patched out in an EE update), Insect Plague (depending on your install) and, in IWD only, Cone of Cold and Snilloc's Snowball Swarm. All magic attacks like Breach and Spell Thrust bypass magic resistance, as does Lower Resistance.
Dragon Fear has a -4 save penalty. Same goes for an Ulitharid's Psionic Blast and Psionic Maze (the normal version of Psionic Blast has no penalty).
Melissan's spear does piercing damage in vanilla but slashing damage in Ascension.
The Scorcher Ammunition uses the Agannazar's Scorcher projectile and therefore strikes twice, which essentially means it doubles your APR. With Improved Haste, you've basically got 20 APR.
Kitthix's Web Tangle can go through MGOI, though it does offer a save to resist.
Plath Rededge in the Windspear Hills questline, who ambushes you after resting in Garren's cabin, may use Slay Living and/or Symbol, Death. Casting Death Ward on Charname on the first round is a good idea.
Spirit Trolls drain STR and the drain lasts for 50 rounds. If you try to stave off death using DUHM, you'll need 5+ castings, because otherwise you'll die when they run out. Strength of One and potions of giant strength will help if your base STR is low, but they will not reset the effects of STR drain. The trolls also cast Greater Command depending on your install as well as Flame Strike and Unholy Blight.
All trolls except for TorGal will die instantly to the Death Spell.
You can get a scroll of Minor Sequencer from the merchant outside the Derelict House in the Bridge District. He only shows up at certain times of night.
You can get a scroll of Minor Spell Turning from the merchant in the far east edge of the Promenade. He only shows up at night.
There is a petrification trap in the northeast library on level 1 of Watcher's Keep.
There is a petrification trap on the bridge door (the bridge made of a door) in the Copper Coronet sewers.
There is a Prismatic Spray trap in the slaver compound just past the doors to the children's cages.
There is a Prismatic Spray trap before the northwesternmost door of the fire giant lair.
There is a Finger of Death trap in a narrow hallway in the Planar Sphere, just east of the ettercaps.
There is a petrification trap on the door to the Bridge District lich.
There is a petrification trap on the second level of Mae'Var's lair.
There is a petrification trap on the altar in Mekrath's lair.
The entrance to the mind flayer city is easy to confuse with the entrance to the beholder hive in the Underdark. The mind flayer city is to the right; the beholder hive is to the left. You cannot leave the mind flayer city until the Elder Brain is dead; the door locks behind you the moment you enter.
The Death Knights in the Underdark cast Remove Magic at level 20, drain levels with no save on hit, and have all undead immunities.
Solo fighters and thieves have limited access to summons. In BG2, the Efreeti Bottle, Iron Horn of Valhalla, Black Spider Figurine, and Ras are all good options for fighters and thieves who need summons.
You can escape Athkatla with no chance of running into ambushes if you follow this path: Waukeen's Promenade->Slums->Government District->City Gates->Umar Hills. This allows you to speak with Nalia, Lord Jierdan, Delon, and Flydian to unlock all the wilderness areas of Chapter 2 BG2.
There is a Maze trap on, or shortly before, the Bridge district chest with the Horn of Valhalla.
The Rune Assassins in the skinner questline can see through invisibility.
Shangalar of the Twisted Rune cannot see through invisibility, unlike other liches.
The Slayer in Hell cannot see through invisibility, unlike other demons.
The enemies in the Sendai fight do not have many ways to deal with invisibility. You can escape pressure using basic invisibility options.
Using a Protection from Undead scroll on a lich will disable its spellcasting. If you don't want to do this, bear in mind that using the scroll on yourself is not safe in SCS: liches will try to hit you with area-effect spells and Remove Magic and will also summon demons and planetars on you. The scroll also works on vampire spellcasters like Tanova, Hazarmaveth and Manasseh from the Tactics mod, and the vampire Apprentice of Odamaron in ToB.
A planetar's vorpal strike has a 25% chance of triggering and offers a save vs. death at -2 to resist. They have the same chance of dispelling magic on hit, so a Potion of Invulnerability or Magic Shielding will NOT keep you safe from the vorpal strike (though a sufficiently high-level Death Ward spell might).
Demons, liches, dragon, and planetars and devas can all see through invisibility by default with very few exceptions. Depending on your install, mind flayers can also see through invisibility. Beholders cannot.
Mind flayers drain 5 INT per hit, and the drain lasts 5 rounds. They have poor THAC0 but 4 APR. Drinking Potions of Genius or Mind Focusing can keep your INT above zero. Depending on your install, you may run into a Remove Magic spell in the mind flayer city in the Underdark, the Alhoon lair, and the mind flayer lair in Watcher's Keep, the last of which may also have a mind flayer using the Wand of Spell Striking on you, so you might lose both your Chaotic Commands and your PFMW.
Opening containers and picking locks will break invisibility, but disarming traps will not. Sanctuary cannot be broken by any of these things. Invisibility and Sanctuary will not be broken by single target spells if you target yourself with them, but area-effect spells cast on self, like Haste, or a healing spell cast on an ally, will both break invisibility.
SCS vampires drain 2-5 CON per hit against characters with Negative Plan Protection depending on the vampire's level. With every hit, they also gain 10-25 HP that goes above their maximum and lasts over 50 rounds, so throwing summons at the vampires could end up pushing their HP into the hundreds.
Hazarmaveth and Manasseh of the Tactics mod will disappear when Bodhi dies.
The first level of Watcher's Keep has thousands of gold in free, safe loot just in the southeastern areas; you don't have to fight the Vampiric Wraiths in the main chamber to get the Paladin's Bracers and Golem Manual.
SCS Improved Mantle will block everything but +5 weapons and higher. However, the +5 darts from the Cloak of Stars will go right through it, and their high APR makes it easy to take down a high-level mage's Stoneskins. Give a few darts to your party's fighters and you'll have a chance of breaking through even a high-level mage's defenses. Nonmagical darts can do the same against PFMW; darts in general are great at removing Stoneskins.
SCS Kangaxx the Demi-Lich has +4 to casting time and spams PFMW. He also has 100% magic resistance, so Potions of Firebreath might not work in your install.
A solo character will instantly die to charm and maze.
The Improved Haste from the Ring of Gaxx only lasts 10 seconds. It's good for damage but the duration may disappoint you if you try to combine it with Called Shot or Power Attack. The Improved Haste effect from the Bracers of Blinding Strike lasts for 20 seconds; the Amulet of Cheetah Speed and Improved Cloak of Protection +2 cast the spell normally.
You can repeatedly trigger the Fireball trap in Rayic Gethras' home (click the container multiple times) to instantly kill him, though you'll need fire immunity to survive the process.
The rat form from the Cloak of the Sewers lasts 20 rounds and offers 90% physical damage resistance. You'll deal almost no melee damage and can't cast spells, and on-hit effects will destroy you due to your sky-high AC (don't use it against spiders and so forth), but you'll be an excellent tank while it lasts.
Potions of Absorption give +10 AC vs. crushing damage, which bypasses the AC cap. They also stack. The potions can make it almost impossible for golems (like the BG1 Flesh Golems), fire giants, and even most demons, including the unmodded Slayer in Hell, to hit you.
If you don't want to fight Shadow Thief spellcasters after siding with Bodhi, pick the "unseemly task" and then spare the target's life. You won't have to fight the mages in the Shadow Thief hideout's upper level.
Sphere of Chaos has a 10% chance of instantly killing you via the disintegrate opcode on a failed save, which bypasses magic resistance depending on your install. It's always a good idea to get your Charname out of its area of effect unless his or her saves are negative.
Many demons have "Human" as their racial enemy, which means they'll get +4 to hit and damage against human characters.
The Staff of Striking's extremely high base damage (1d6+9) makes it excellent for backstabbing. A level 13 thief with no additional bonuses will deal 50-75 damage on a backstab.
ATweaks Greater Mummies will impose mummy rot on hit. Mummy rot offers no saving throw and will kill you after 24 hours unless you cast Cure Disease or use any other item or spell that cures disease.
You can select offscreen critters by pressing "0" (or "=" for pre-EE BG2) and then de-selecting onscreen characters. You can then order the offscreen characters to move to a visible area.
A solo character can hide from Irenicus in Spellhold by hiding in a corner. Irenicus will survive the attacks of the other inmates, but they'll do a lot to wear him down.
The priest in the far north end of the City of Caverns offers the best prices in the entire saga. It's a good idea to save up high-priced magical items you don't want so you can sell them to the priest.
There are no critical failures for saving throws in the IE games except for IWD2. A save vs. spell of -1 will guarantee successful saves against spells like Web and Confusion. Likewise, if you push an enemy's save vs. spell to 18 with Called Shot, Feeblemind is guaranteed to work.
Ascension Melissan can score a guaranteed kill on any character by casting Time Stop (with a casting time of only 3!), followed by Teleport Without Error to wherever Charname is on the map, followed by Greater Whirlwind Attack. Only characters with extremely high slashing damage resistance and high HP, or with PFMW or SCS Absolute Immunity active, will survive if they're caught during Time Stop. Ascension also gives you the innate ability Focus right before that battle, which grants immunity to Time Stop for 30 seconds on Charname, but can only be used every 60 seconds. This means you have to be very careful about Charname's aura and make sure that you're ready to bail them out if Melissan starts casting Time Stop (your cue will be the incantation "praeses," or, if you have Jimfix installed, a notification in the dialogue box about Melissan casting an alteration spell). Melissan is immune to spell failure: Wizard Slayers cannot disrupt the spell, nor will a Protection from Magic scroll interfere with her spellcasting.
Finally, it's a good idea to download Near Infinity so you can look things up. Knowing an enemy's AC or immunities can let you know if a given strategy if likely to work on them or not.
The game may still work if you have slightly different installations, but my advice would be to make them identical.
Best of luck
Aura is also unaffected by travel times. It's best not to make any area transitions that might entail ambushes unless your aura is clear. When I cast pre-ambush buffs, I usually wait several seconds before leaving the area.
Time Stop works the same way: stealth expires during Time Stop, while no one's aura is cleared by Time Stop. Stealth won't necessarily keep you safe from an enemy mage even when combined with Non-Detection, and using Shadowstep will not give your party members any extra time to drink a potion before a fatal spell hits them.
Speaking of aura, your aura doesn't clear during Project Image. When your Project Image wears off or is disrupted, the caster will have a clouded aura at the end no matter how much time has passed.
And as I've mentioned elsewhere, the "pause" effect of Agannazar's Scorcher, Color Spray, and Burning Hands also delays the clearing of your aura.
In previous games, upon getting to Dragonspear the items are in a slot but it is impossible to see what they are.
Is there a way of accessing them after defeating Sarevok in Baldur's Gate? Copying files over and the like?
I fully expect that descriptions etc. will be wrong but I can live with that.
You might try this:
1. Take notes on the items, spell picks, and XP you had at the end of BG1.
2. Create a new install with Modmerge and then install the mods you had on BG1.
3. Load up your previous save. If it works, you're done; you can just continue to SoD with no interruptions.
4. If your old save doesn't work, create a new game in SoD and use EEKeeper to give yourself the XP, spells, and items you noted in step 1.
This probably won't give you the right NPCs (SoD gives you a preset list of companions), but summoning them via the console would work, and you could use EEKeeper on them. But BG1-exclusive NPCs like Yeslick and Faldorn would not persist beyond the first dungeon, and some BG1 NPCs will leave the party after the first dungeon and reappear later in the game (like Jaheira).
1. For NPCs, you can clear their fatigue just by temporarily booting them from the party. When they rejoin, they'll be at zero fatigue.
2. For Charname, you'll need to wear the Battle Tankard, an SoD item you get from Irina in the Elfsong Tavern after the first dungeon. I think the only way to bring it into BG2 is to use EET and smuggle it somewhere so you can collect it in SoA.
It may be possible to beat the game without 1 or 2, but doing without either the reform party trick or the Battle Tankard would make a tetralogy run a bad idea. I don't think you can realistically take down Melissan with -50 luck for Charname and -20 luck for everyone else.
But in BG2, don’t forget you always get one free rest in SoA (journey to Spellhold). If you are roleplaying you can also get free rests in Windspear Hills (go to Garren’s house, you are not choosing to rest) and by giving in to Phaere (similarly not a choice and staying on character).
After that, it’s all about Wish.
So BG2 and ToB are doable without ever choosing to rest. Whether you can get through BG1 and SoD I leave to others to figure out
No smuggler near the bridge.
No harper to give hints as to what to do next etc.
Will I be able to finish the game?
It is as if the game hasn't registered the fact that I have finished Candlekeep. Though it has given me the extra Bhaal powers for doing so.
At least I have plenty to do at present: Werewolf Island; Durlag's Tower; The Drizzt Saga. Having thought about it, it looks as if I need to change a Global Variable. Which it is, I have no idea. If anyone knows which global variable it is, I would be exceedingly grateful to know.