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The Adventurer's Lounge: Guidance and Support for No Reload Challengers- Newbie or Veteran

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  • velehalvelehal Member Posts: 299
    I wan to finally beat no reload SCS/Ascension trilogy on insane difficulty (without double damage). Which non-custom party do you think has the highest chance to accomplish it (albeit the probabilty that I would succed is still very low). Charname will be berserker 9/mage.
    Group in BG 1 for berserker is almost irrelevat because berserker can solo everything (still I will be using group of 6, probably Khalid, Jaheira, Imoen, Coran and Quayle).
    In SoD one mage (Dynaheira is better than other alternatives because of her kit) who can cast web/fireball + Corwin can get dualed class berserker to the end, where he regains his abilities.
    But in BG2 I must start to assemble the group with regard to Ascension. So fighters over other classes, then someone who can cast cleric spells and disarm traps.
    For cleric I will pick Aerie. I don´t like her but with the introduction of spells from Icewind Dale she becomes the second best companion (after Edwin). Spell Sequencer with Chant, Prayer and Recitation makes
    many battles trivial.
    Then fighters. Mazzy (I like her and can get grandmastery in flails and then dual-wielding FoA/DoE), Keldorn (Carsomyr, Dispel, True Sight, Ravager) and Jaheira. Korgan would be better but unfortunately he is incompatible with Aerie and Jaheira and her druid spells are great in SoA.
    The most difficult is choice of thief. The natural choice is Imoen. I like her, it makes sence from roleplaying perspective but she great is liability in Ascension.
    The alternative is Jan. Imoen is better mage but Jan can set traps and his kit gives him decent amount of spells but blocks two importatn spell: Horrid Wilting and Spirit Armor.
    I really want to take Imoen, I find it almost impossible to not take her back in Spellhold. She is my (half) sister, I like her personality but the fact that I will be facing Irenicus, Bodhi and Fallen Solars + Imoen in slayer form makes me incline to pick Jan.
    semiticgoddessGrond0
  • velehalvelehal Member Posts: 299
    I also don´t like Keldorn too much, but other alternatives are worse. Minsc as pure ranger is weak, Valygar is boring character. He can be very useful but requires lot of micromanagment. Only Sarevok is option but he comes late. But if I had him and changed his aligment, it would weaken Melissan´s side.
    Another possibility is to choose Anomen over Aerie and Korgan over Keldorn and give him Foebane to compensate lack of DoE. Or switch Mazzy to Foebane (she can dual-wield it with Kundane) and give Koragn both flails. Anomen would have to rely on Shields of Lathander. This group would be even more oriented on physical damage and charname would be forced to fulfil more the role of mage rather than the fighter. But even with Shields of Lathander I find pure clerics (Anomen is almost pure cleric) highly vulnerable. Aerie would never have to worry about backstab. She can protect herself against everything and then stand in the middle of fight and cast Recitation or anti mage spells (as Secret Word etc).
  • Wise_GrimwaldWise_Grimwald Member Posts: 3,848
    Neera has Adoy's belt but wants a flute. When does one become available for her?
  • Wise_GrimwaldWise_Grimwald Member Posts: 3,848
    In Siege of Dragonspear prologue I had two rings of wizardry. When I lost Xan and Neera from the party one of them disappeared. Is this a bug?
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    In Siege of Dragonspear prologue I had two rings of wizardry. When I lost Xan and Neera from the party one of them disappeared. Is this a bug?

    Did you unequip both rings? Any items that NPCs are equipped with will be gone for the remainder of SoD unless and until you meet those companions again in that campaign. Items that you unequip and leave in NPCs' packs should transfer to your storebox in the Ducal Palace that travels with you on your journey to Dragonspear.

    If you didn't unequip Neera's ring of wizardry, as a returning companion, she should have the ring on her once you meet her again and recruit her.
    StummvonBordwehrAerakar
  • Wise_GrimwaldWise_Grimwald Member Posts: 3,848
    @Blackraven Thanks for the information.
    StummvonBordwehrBlackraven
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,822
    ... and if it does come down to burning scrolls, there's always the unlimited supply of Freedom scrolls Ribald sells in chapter 6. At full discount, that's about 24 XP per gold spent. Only shoplifting is more efficient. I've had a run in which I bought enough of those to raise the whole party to the cap in chapter 6, though I didn't actually go through with it fully.
    Wise_Grimwaldsemiticgoddess
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    I didn't realize they were infinite in Chapter 6. Before then, he's limited to 5.
  • BlackravenBlackraven Member Posts: 3,486
    Looking good @semiticgoddess! Glad you got Spell Turning, that's a serious boon. Have you considered taking on the Twisted Rune for the Staff of the Magi? Its 1x/day special Spell Trap ability should provide further protection. Twisted Rune is not without risk of course, though there are ways to deal with them.

    Planetar vorpals are indeed a very serious threat. One way of dealing with those is having your arcane companions, cast Imprisonment on them. There's also a cloak that protects against vorpals (and other death effects), available through Neera's ToB quest, the Cloak of the Lich. That might be worth looking into. It won't help you in SoA but it's better to have undispellable death ward late than never.
    Grond0StummvonBordwehrWise_Grimwaldsemiticgoddess
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @Blackraven I've never done Neera's ToB quest before; only her SoA one. I've steered clear of Neera because I tend to view wild magic as an unacceptable risk. It's not just the risk of a wild surge killing someone; it's just that there always a chance that a spell won't happen, and even a well-buffed wild mage has maybe a 2-3% chance of spell failure in general. But keeping her invisible and letting the other characters win fights should be doable.

    I've wanted to do the EE quests blind, but that may not be wise if there are any nasty surprises for the ToB one.
  • EnuhalEnuhal Member Posts: 920
    @semiticgoddess I've done Neera's ToB quest quite a few times by now. Let me know if you want spoilers and some information on the potential dangers.
    Wise_Grimwald
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    @Enuhal Maybe if there's anything really weird. I'm expecting the same sort of dangers you'd find in normal ToB fights, plus maybe another wild surge area. Scrolls are subject to wild magic in EE, right? Are sequencers? If so I may just use the polymorph trick to keep jelly form on hand, with a bunch of potions if I need to go invisible or something. By then I'll probably have Mazzy and Keldorn, who can do the heavy lifting if our spellcasting gets all gronked up.
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    The first one could be sticky, but we'll have Potions of Invisibility. Hopefully that will help. The second one sounds ugly. The third won't matter unless you're area-locked by the time you get the Cloak of the Lich; I was thinking I'd ditch Neera as soon as I got the cloak. Still, we'll be really high-level by that point, I'm sure. I think we'll be okay overall. I got through SoD and the SoA EE quests blind, after all.

    I've heard bad stuff about a planetar enemy of some sort, but I assumed that was Dorn's quest.
    Wise_Grimwald
  • jmerryjmerry Member Posts: 3,822
    Hmm...

    My last time through, with a no-spellcasting party, I had an AI flaw make the battle weirdly easy. Since casting spells wasn't an option, I kept Neera out of the fight; she never even went into the courtyard.

    The boss wasn't content to leave it at that. Rather than casting her scripted "wild" surges, she tried to chase down Neera. Neera stayed ahead of her, the rest of the party dealt with the guards, and then we went after her. It's easy to fight a mage when they never cast anything.

    The second boss ... well, you're in control of the battlefield. Set appropriate traps and contingencies, and it's an easy win. If you don't, it can get pretty scary. Scripted wishes are involved.
    I've heard bad stuff about a planetar enemy of some sort, but I assumed that was Dorn's quest.

    Yes, that's Dorn's ToB quest. The key thing to watch for is that the initial ambush includes a planetar with an immortality item. Focus on it, and you won't get anywhere. Kill everything else, and it leaves.

    That's not the only celestial in the quest. But compared to the dark planetars that enemy mages summon, they're not that impressive - they don't get the SCS upgrades like instant casting. And aside from that first one, they're all killable.
    semiticgoddessWise_GrimwaldStummvonBordwehr
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    edited December 2020
    One thing that will be nice is hitting mage level 16, which will let Aerie put three Champion's Strength spells in a Spell Trigger for +18 THAC0 to any party member for over 40 rounds (and Keldorn can easily dispel the effect on Aerie and let her cast spells again), which would let Jan hit a 95% hit rate on almost anything even when dual-wielding.

    Interesting - I hadn't realized that was dispellable. It would be rare for me to be playing with a party that could take advantage of that, but it's a nice trick to remember.
    StummvonBordwehrWise_Grimwaldsemiticgoddess
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    It takes 4.5 million XP for a multi-classed cleric/mage to be able to do it via Spell Trigger, so it's more useful for dual-classed cleric/mages, who don't need nearly as much XP for the trick (early epic levels depending on the level you dual). You can do it without Spell Trigger, of course, but that requires more spell slots (Wondrous Recall can buy them) and multiple dispels if you want to stack them. Champion's Strength would probably be most impactful for thieves, bards, and druids, who can use speed weapons and therefore attain high APR but have subpar THAC0.
    Grond0Wise_Grimwald
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    Now that we've hit 4.5 million XP, I'm not sure if a triple Champion's Strength Spell Trigger is all that meaningful at this point. The party is already stupidly overpowered and we've been stomping everything since we got out of the Underdark.

    We just killed Kangaxx with almost no resistance, aside from an immortality bug I used a reload to fix (there's no way to get around it besides a reload). We removed his Spell Trap+SI: Abj pre-buff with Ruby Ray and Secret Word, then Keldorn landed a successful Dispel Magic and we took down his PFMW. RIP his first form.

    Second form, we had Keldorn, Edwin, and Aerie summon Simulacrum clones, passing the Ring of the Ram between them so each clone would have the ring. Each clone used the ring on Kangaxx for 5d6 damage apiece, disrupting his opening spell, and if we hadn't already damaged him enough to kill him outright thanks to another successful Dispel Magic that took down his PFMW, Aerie's clone's Ring of the Ram had the right angle to knock the poor demi-lich into a set of Spike Traps from Jan, which should have killed him several times over. And that wasn't even the end of the tools we had on hand.

    This tends to happen to my BG2 runs. BG1 and SoD can still be challenging for me under the right circumstances, but SoA has always been my strong suit.

    I'm too impatient to fuss with Neera's quests (I suspect I need to complete her SoA quests to access her ToB ones), so I'm just going to use the Tear of Bhaal trick to get subzero saving throws to safeguard against vorpal strikes.

    Oh, and I think I solved the Wish issue. Today I remembered that Black Blade of Disaster's disintegrate effect strikes as a level 9 spell and can therefore recharge Spell Trap effects, which means Edwin could just spam Wish spells in between re-casting Stoneskin while another mage (Aerie or Jan after 6 million XP, or just Imoen or Nalia) whacks him with BBoD. With Improved Haste and a speed weapon in the off hand, Jan/Imoen/Nalia could recharge 4 level 9 spell slots per round assuming every hit landed. Unlike using Project Image to recharge Spell Traps, it doesn't leave anyone vulnerable.

    We should hit 6 million XP by mid-ToB given where we are now, so theoretically we could have Edwin chain-casting Wish spells under Improved Alacrity for the duration of any fight as long as I do the required micromanagement and keep Jan on top of him. But I might not even bother until Melissan; Wish spells shouldn't be necessary before then.

    Maybe we ain't need Maze after all.
    Adam_en_tiumAerakarStummvonBordwehrEnuhal
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