oh, i also forgot to mention, that inn in blacklake where you do the pit fighting, you actually aren't killing them, its more of a "friendly battle to the death aka -knock out" more realistically
plus the last guy who owns the inn, is a cheater and not really that much of a good guy, so i dont think it would really go against a paladin's ethos
plus in the moonstone mask, if you go upstairs, to the top floor, one of the girls you can chat with, is actually having problems with a frequent customer of hers, and if you ask her about it, she asks if you can make him go away but she doesnt want you to kill him, just make him beat, another quest i dont think paladins would be too much against
@sarevok57 , A chaotic good character might justify doing that, or anyone of neutral alignment. A paladin might accept to help the girl if he knew what was going on, but he wouldn't even reach her I think. I don't know how the setting is, because I didn't go there, but even my lowborn Arvia of Tyr with her Beggar's Nest family background wouldn't associate with or work for Ophala, so she wouldn't even get upstairs to meet that girl. She wouldn't be as judgemental as maybe some of her fellow paladins, because she knows that poverty or lack of opportunity (not everybody gets rescued and educated by a Cleric of Tyr) can drive people into all kinds of business, but she wouldn't approve.
I just felt it necessary to write this reply, because I couldn't click "like" on your post, disagreeing with it from a personal and roleplaying point of view, but I didn't want to give you the feeling that I'm deliberately ignoring your comment.
You seem to have a more powergaming approach to your games, and that's absolutely fine. I have other motivations and goals in my game.
Although, maybe one day I might try to do a powergamey non-roleplayed fighter run, just to see if it really makes such a big difference if you take every loot and XP and fight with those ugly scythes and all that. But I would probably get bored quickly, playing that way. And even then, I wouldn't kill priests and guards
@BelgarathMTH , yes, I would consider that enough justification to search the house. In this context, you might even interpret their behavior as an attempt to conceal something (which is true, of course) and have all the more reason to stay and check into it.
The picture at the docks is beautiful. Are those skyboxes from a mod, or am I just not tilting the camera often enough? I usually keep it at birds' perspective for better overview, unless I want to take a screenshot, and that's usually indoors, so I rarely see the sky.
If it's a mod, do you remember which one?
Also, if it's possible to edit at thread title, you might want to put a spoiler warning there. You avoided spoilers, also because you know that it's my first run and I'm reading all of this, but I don't know if I will always remember not to mention anything important outside of spoiler tags. Most people know that run reports contain spoilers by default, but newbies like me might read here, too.
************************************************,
Our search for the ingredients is over, the cure for the Wailing Death has been created. However, events took a shocking turn, Lady Aribeth is desperate and we have to follow a traitor.
After reuniting with Tomi at the temple, I had a conversation with him about the difference between courage and recklessness. Our enemies are getting stronger, and so am I, but his (very appreciated) abilities don't compensate for his fragility. I will only continue with him if he agrees to stay behind in certain battes, lets me go ahead and check the situation, and only join the fight when called, no matter what he hears or sees. I should have made this clear earlier, but until very recently I had been the one following orders. I have never been responsible for companions before, and my inexperience in leadership has put our health and lives in danger and wasted our financial and material resources.
We went back to the Silver Sails Trading Company, and I always entered the next room or corridor alone to secure the territory.
I seem to be able to sense most traps myself, so I can scout and then call Tomi to disarm it if the area is free of enemies.
Evidently I'm not able to discover all traps, but the risk of me getting seriously hurt in a trap is much smaller than Tomi getting killed by monsters while scouting. My Endure Elements damage resistance protects me from acid and sonic damage as well, it seems, not only fire and cold. I had been talking to a more experienced paladin when I was resting at the Temple of Tyr the other day, and he had given me a few useful advices about the best protections, including the permanent use of Endure Elements unless the situation required something else or an item fulfilled the same purpose. He had also told me what kinds of potions or scrolls I should always carry with me in case of emergency. I was glad to have met another paladin to talk to and learn from, but our conversation was brief, because we both had to continue doing our duty.
My decision to leave Tomi in another room behind a corner when opening a door turned out to be very good. A sword spider! I managed to drink a Potion of Barkskin before it reached me.
(this was to check how much more AC the potion gives me. 28 instead of 26.
They don't seem to be as dangerous as bloated dire spiders. It didn't land a single hit on me until I killed it.
Speaking of bloated dire spiders...
I didn't want to risk getting tangled in its webs and drew it out into the corridor. Tomi was safely hidden behind the corner in the next room. Of course, my Potion of Barkskin chose this exact moment to wear off, before the spider even started to attack me. I took the risk and drank another one, altthough the spider was already very close, because I knew what those monsters were capable of. It hit me only three times, and only the second hit poisoned and strength drained me. I used one Potion of Lesser Restoration and one healing kit. That went much better than the last one together with Tomi. He's a scout and a rogue, not a fighter, and shouldn't be used as one. Lesson learned.
We found the entrance to the sewers aqueducts, fought some more vermin there, and I was very glad again to have Endure Elements.
I will have to thank the paladin Todangelus if I see him again. I did thank him, of course, but I had no idea then how useful it would really be to learn from his experience.
We also found the next tomb for Oleff. I had to take Tomi inside with me, but the undead there panicked at my Turn Undead and were easy (rotten) meat for us. Oleff will get his next artifact when we have found the cockatrice.
When we had secured the area in the sewers, I decided to regain our strength for a moment and rest, because judging from the fights behind us, I would need all my abilities to face Callik.
Not evil. Go figure. I had used Potions of Bless and Barkskin before closing in on them.
Callik was very, very tough, and they all had sneak attacks. When I got Callik down to "Badly Wounded" (and that needed many, many hits), I had already used three healing kits+3 and only one left. I didn't dare to use the last one yet, or to drink a potion with the three of them surrounding me, so I called in Tomi to try to keep at least one of the other bloodsailors off my back while I focused on Callik.
But his sneak attacks made him vulnerable to the three of them, and he was gone before I could heal him.
I felt really bad about this, but the few sneak attacks that he landed on them have probably saved my life. I had to use Lay on Hands before I could finish the fight, and without Tomi's extra damage I wouldn't have survived here, not with our few healing supplies.
It was time to confront Vegaul.
I'm sure the story how he "found" the bird is a lie. He's vain, and he's irresponsible. But I believe him that he didn't want to keep the cockatrice, only to drive up the price, the old fool.
(Level 6! I kept thinking and thinking what to choose, Toughness for the HP, Spring Attack to be safe from Attack of Opportunity when moving in battle and to get access to Whirlwind Attack later, or Power Attack to get Divine Might and Divine Shield later. After thinking back and forth, I chose Spring Attack. Unfortunately I found out that Whirlwind Attack requires INT 13, which I don't have, but Spring Attack is still not a complete waste, because now I can change my target in combat, or draw an attacker to another position, without provoking an Attack of Opportunity. And I only rolled a 6 for my HP this time. Sigh.)
I went to pick up Tomi, gave the feather to Aribeth and the artifact from the tomb to Oleff, and bought more healing kits, but only as much as strictly necessary. I want to save money, if possible, for those incredibly useful Boots of Hardiness that Nyatar offers.
(Real life just intervened, I will continue the story with Meldanen etc later)
Level: 6
Reloads: 0
Personal respawns: 5
Tomi Respawns: 8
oh, i also forgot to mention, that inn in blacklake where you do the pit fighting, you actually aren't killing them, its more of a "friendly battle to the death aka -knock out" more realistically
plus the last guy who owns the inn, is a cheater and not really that much of a good guy, so i dont think it would really go against a paladin's ethos
plus in the moonstone mask, if you go upstairs, to the top floor, one of the girls you can chat with, is actually having problems with a frequent customer of hers, and if you ask her about it, she asks if you can make him go away but she doesnt want you to kill him, just make him beat, another quest i dont think paladins would be too much against
@sarevok57 , A chaotic good character might justify doing that, or anyone of neutral alignment. A paladin might accept to help the girl if he knew what was going on, but he wouldn't even reach her I think. I don't know how the setting is, because I didn't go there, but even my lowborn Arvia of Tyr with her Beggar's Nest family background wouldn't associate with or work for Ophala, so she wouldn't even get upstairs to meet that girl. She wouldn't be as judgemental as maybe some of her fellow paladins, because she knows that poverty or lack of opportunity (not everybody gets rescued and educated by a Cleric of Tyr) can drive people into all kinds of business, but she wouldn't approve.
I just felt it necessary to write this reply, because I couldn't click "like" on your post, disagreeing with it from a personal and roleplaying point of view, but I didn't want to give you the feeling that I'm deliberately ignoring your comment.
You seem to have a more powergaming approach to your games, and that's absolutely fine. I have other motivations and goals in my game.
Although, maybe one day I might try to do a powergamey non-roleplayed fighter run, just to see if it really makes such a big difference if you take every loot and XP and fight with those ugly scythes and all that. But I would probably get bored quickly, playing that way. And even then, I wouldn't kill priests and guards
there is no right way or wrong way to play RPG games, as long as you are having fun playing them, then you are playing them the best way
plus my character is a half-orc fighter/rogue/barbarian and chaotic evil...... so from an RPG stand point what he is doing makes sense to his character archtype
@Arvia , the mod with the enhanced skyboxes is "Real Skies Lite". There's an HD version of it that @Savant1974 was using at first, but the HD version was causing crash issues for some users, and I was one of the users who couldn't use it, so Savant changed his mod series to be able to use the "Lite" version of the skyboxes, which I still think look really beautiful.
Thanks for the shout-outs to my advice in your report. That gave me a smile. Now, you've taught me something. I didn't know that intelligence 13 and the Expertise feat were prerequisites for Whirlwind Attack. I feel like I gave you bad advice there, and I'm sorry. As you said, the Spring Attack will still be useful, but you might have gotten more benefit from Toughness, or something like Blind Fight. Blind Fight lets you fight effectively against invisible, concealed, or stealthed enemies, or while under a Blind spell. There will be more and more enemies and fights where it can save your life to have it.
At higher levels, we can get Improved Critical, Longsword, and that's one I plan to take as soon as I can get it. It increases the critical threat range of our longswords to 17-20 instead of just 19-20.
Expertise is an interesting feat, which we don't qualify for unless we spend an attribute point on intelligence, which is probably not worth it. It's a mode you can activate that gives you a big increase to AC, but with a corresponding decrease in attack bonus, making it very hard to hit anything. It's mostly for casters who want the extra protection while casting in combat, giving them a better chance to complete their spells without interruption. A warrior would only take it if they've invested in the intelligence and dexterity, and plan to take Whirlwind Attack.
I love your exciting combat photos and summaries. I cheered out loud when you defeated the bloated dire spider, and Calik. Yay!
Reading your report has put me in a happy mood as I go in to teach lessons this afternoon, and has me looking forward to a short play session of my own when I get back home this evening.
@BelgarathMTH , that's nice to hear. I hope your happy mood lasted for a bit and your students didn't torture you with Special Attack: Wailing Violin ( 5d10 sonic damage)
While it's true that I probably wouldn't have considered choosing Spring Attack without your remark about Whirlwind Attack, and would have gone for Toughness, I should have checked the details and requirements of the next feats *before* and not after leveling up. Besides, I think that it's very realistic in any kind of training, real life or game character, to make choices sometimes and start learning a new skill, and notice after a time that it's not as good or useful for you as you thought, and then to stop following that line and choose to focus on some other specialization instead.
I can still take Toughness at level 9 and will gain the additional HPs retroactively.
***************************************
Our goal is very near, we have just given the cockatrice feather to Aribeth and now we only have to find the dryad for the last ingredient. All evidence was leading to Meldanen Estate, but we would have to be very, very careful. On our way to the Blacklae District we were ambushed by assassins again and found an even more alarming note on them than last time. We returned immediately to the temple to give it to Fenthick.
Hmm. Those replies were not very satisfying, and Fenthick seemed to trust Desther. This was getting more and more complicated. Anyway, we had done what we could. Our primary goal was the cure, we had to find the dryad. And the missing guard that Thurin had told us about.
Milly had allowed us to use the secret passage in her house to enter the estate. At first, we encountered only vermin (that's odd for a rich man's house, or does he use them as guards?), but also found a key in a desk, took it with us and cleared the area of those bugs.
We still didn't have proof of Meldanen's crime, but we were on an official mission and constantly under attack, so I decided to take all potions and healing kits that we found on our way. We did not take gold, gemstones, weapons or other items.
Then I had to find a way to avoid a needless fight again without lying. (Hey, that's Thog! I should have brought a puppy)
(I had already used answer 3 and 4. They all just led back to this choice). Telling him that I'm an intruder will make me have to kill him, and he doesn't deserve to die just for being simple-minded, and getting a job in the wrong house. So, I chose the evasive question. I *am* supposed to be here, after all, just authorized by someone else.
Then we found a prison tract with only one inhabitant, the guard Samuel.
(Oh. Seeing this screenshot reminds me that I forgot to go back to Thurin. Too late now)
And again, leaving Tomi in a safe place *before* opening a door is a very healthy habit.
The mephit died quickly, but there was an apprentice mage in there and, judging from the noise, more of those winged critters. I drank Potions of Bless and Barkskin before proceeding.
Gah! Slowed and level drained! *And* he had one of those summoned dire boars. Tomi, Stay where you are!
But casting this close to me made him vulnerable, too.
Hah! Even slowed and level drained (to level 2! That's tough!), he was not fast enough. Only the boar had dealt me some damage.
And imps, too! Those fiendish little creatures from the Nine Hells! The mage must have been evil to associate with them. And the master will be worse than the apprentice... We took the magic belt that he had dropped. In the chest right next to him was a magic armor and a magic bag. They seemed to have belonged to the evil apprentice, so I considered it justified to take them as retribution. (those were the only valuable items that I took from a container, apart from potions and healing kits. I resisted the temptation to find an excuse to take a greatsword +1 and a large shield +1 from the storerooms. We took what fallen enemies dropped, though )
I had no way to get rid of the level drain here, so we teleported to the temple, asked Aribeth to heal me, identified and sold the three magic items that we had taken from the evil apprentice and paid the portal to take us back.
There were two traps that Tomi couldn't disarm. We walked around one and he accidentally stepped on the other but took no damage. Then we encountered more mephits and imps and finally another apprentice.
I didn't know they could do that. Fortunately it didn't affect more than my +1 AC bonus. I drank a Potion of Lesser Restoration and one of Cure Medium Wounds after killing the imp. Good decision, because the next encounter was the other apprentice.
The trap Slowed me, but I still hit him fast enough to keep him from casting any spell.
Then I found the dryad and tried to free her, but she shouted that Meldanen was right behind me! I quickly drank a Potion of Barkskin. Endure Elements was spent already.
Uh-oh... Stoneskin! it took some hits to bash them. I had to renew Bless in the middle of the fight, to be a bit safer from his spells.
I still believe that he is guilty of a crime and probably evil, but I won't kill someone begging for his life. Besides, I am not an executioner. My task is to find the Waterdhevian creatures for the cure, not to punish those who took them.
I'm glad that I didn't kill him. His motives were certainly not pure, but he hadn't done anything more evil than Vengaul. The dryad had given her lock of hair willingly.
But before we could return to Aribeth with it, there was one more thing to do. I had promised to help Judge Oleff and find all the artifacts. There must be a tomb somewhere in this district, too.
(OOC: The following part is written for roleplaying's sake only. The idea to solve the quest this way was not my own idea. I knew the swords would hack me to death in seconds, but as a Paladin of Tyr I really wanted to keep my promise to Oleff, and I still needed more money and wanted to collect more XP to compensate for the respawn penalties. So, I searched if others had found a solution, and applied it.)
This sounded really dangerous and I didn't know if there was a way to keep Tomi safe after entering, So I asked him to wait for me here.
My friend, eventually you will learn that I keep my word. I entered and found myself in the sewers, with only some minor undead to fight.
I will *not* open a trapped chest with scorch marks on the floor,
This was the right place. I didn't sense evil here, but Tyr seemed to approve of my intentions and gave me a warning, a brief image of four magic swords, fast and deadly. I looked at my inventory. My only Potion of Speed, to run in and grab whatever was in there, and run out again? Very risky, with 4 opponents. Besides, if it was something heavy, I wouldn't be able to run. But I had two Potions of Invisibility! I decided to take one and enter, to scout and decide then.
I made it to the sarcophagus with with sweating palms and a racing heart, expecting the swords to attack me when I opened it. But I took the artifact, and also the greataxe, and crept back unnoticed.
I took Tomi and we went to see Judge Oleff. He was delighted to have discovered all the artifacts and the actual tomb of Halueth Never. The Greataxe +1 didn't belong to the old artifacts and must have been placed there later. Oleff didn't want it (OOC: He didn't say that, but I had taken both items from the sarcophagus, just in case. He never even mentioned it, so I took that as permission to keep the greataxe) and rewarded my efforts with this amulet.
Better Will saving throws are very useful against all kinds of spells, but I preferred to keep my amulet of natural armor.
(I hadn't gone to Aribeth first because I guessed that events would develop quickly after giving her the final ingredient, and there was something I needed to do first)
Tyr has truly blessed me. The amulet gives me exactly the missing amount of money that I need for the Boots of Hardiness and some healing supplies. I hope Judge Oleff wouldn't think me ungrateful for selling the amulet. It's not for profit after all, it's to exchange a useful item that protects the mind for one that will protect my body even more and keep me safe and healthy to do my duty as Tyr wills.
(I'm soooooooo glad!)
I put on my new boots and we hurried to see Aribeth and give her the dryad's hair.
We followed her to watch the ritual. The atmosphere seemed to forbid such a thing, but Aribeth encouraged us to talk to the others.
I felt like taking a punch to the stomach. Consider Aribeth blinded by her worries, hand the key of Castle Never over to Desther without anyone knowing? "for the good of us all"? All you gods have mercy on us!
I must try to warn Lord Nasher!
Oh you gods, this can't be happening. Tyr give us the strength to bring justice and stop this madman from taking our only hope to end this plague!
Poor Lady Aribeth, I hope she is right and it's a spell, or his will to see the good in everyone has blinded him. I can't imagine that everything had been a lie from the beginning...
We must follow them!
Level: 6
Reloads: 0
Personal respawns: 5
Tomi respawns: 8
Edited: Those screenshots again... is there any way to upload more of them in a row without upsetting their order? Or is one by one the only possibility?)
@Arvia , another wonderful report! I would never in a million years have thought of dismissing Tomi and using a Potion of Invisibility to get past those swords. I'm so glad for you that the item/money you were rewarded gave you enough to purchase those boots!
LOL, I made my save against all violin student "sonic attacks" today. Also, I loved your OotS reference to Thog.
Thank you for giving us so many masterfully taken screen shots to help us share in your experience. I know how much hard work and effort it is to organize those pictures into a post, especially when you have a lot of them.
Sometimes, I prefer this way of "streaming" or recording a game run. I guess I prefer reading and enjoying summaries and highlights with pictures, rather than watching every last detail of a run, minute by minute, for hours. Very few streamers or "Let's Play" videographers can keep me watching for long. One notable one who has recorded NWN in a way that did make me want to watch every last minute of it is "MyNameIsNotLily" on YouTube.
*****************************
We have fought our way through trolls caves that I thought would never end, trying to find our way to the lost crypts that the archaeologists were trying to find. What long lost secrets will we find here? I am almost certain that the Cult of the Eye is somehow tied into what these archaeologists were trying to uncover when most of them were killed by trolls and ogres.
*****************************
This is a *huge* dungeon.
One of the first potentially lethal "mini-boss" battles is with these two troll shamans. They try to cast many spells on you, and none of them hurt me, possibly because I had Protection from Evil activated. Once they run out of spells and go to melee, they hit very hard. I drank a Potion of Barkskin to get a bit of an advantage.
Down in the crypts, there are minogons, gargoyles, and battle horrors. The minogons have a wail that can stun you for several rounds, so I prioritize killing the minogon first if it's part of a mob.
The first "horror" was a "helmed horror". These animated armor creatures have tiers, and this one isn't the top one, although I didn't remember that and fought as though it was. I was surprised when it went down without much trouble.
Oh, yes, the top tier is a "battle horror". These are very, very deadly.
While I was killing the minogon before it could stun me at a crucial moment, the battle horror got a critical hit! I was almost dead. I desperately went for a healing kit, and if it had landed a blow again while I was using it, I would have been dead. Through sheer luck and high Heal skill, I survived this, barely. I used Lay on Hands also before I started fighting again. Beating this encounter got me to level nine.
We are only on the first floor of several in these deep crypts. I decided to use the portal stone and go back to the temple to sell off our heavy magic armor and weapons that were starting to weigh us down, even with a Bag of Holding and Bull's Strength to help, and to process the level there.
I took Improved Critical: Longsword for my new feat.
I considered taking Power Attack so I could take Cleave, Divine Might, and Divine Shield. I think Cleave is only marginally useful at higher levels, because it only activates on a kill, and it only gets you one free attack, at a random nearby enemy. I think Great Cleave is even worse, because it only chains its extra attacks for as long as you single-hit kill enemies.
As far as Divine Might and Divine Shield, I am not personally a fan of buffs that only last a matter of rounds. I often avoid casting them anyway, thinking "What if this isn't the fight where they would have made the difference?" For that reason, I consider them the same as potions, and I think feats are too valuable in their potential to be used on what amounts to more potion-like abilities. Also, they are charisma-dependent, and I think strength is more useful for a melee fighter.
I prefer to take feats that provide reliable, steady, passive (no need to remember to activate), permanent, defense and attack in every single fight. That way I can relax during easier fights and just enjoy watching the show on my screen, what I call "the Dance of Death" that NWN is so good at animating, only needing to keep an eye on my hit points bar and occasionally healing when some enemy gets a critical hit or lands a bad spell on me.
I remembered that the temple sells a magic item that I need to prioritize saving up for and buying. I almost forgot about the importance of it, because I am so used to playing clerics with access to the Death Ward spell. It is a belt that makes you immune to death magic. This belt is absolutely critical to a paladin's survival starting in late Chapter Two. There are creatures called bodaks that have a one-shot kill death screech that they will spam at you, and there are more and more enemies who will use spells like Slay and Disintegrate.
Trust me, you really don't want to go into late Chapter Two and beyond without this belt.
It costs over 20,000 gold. The treasure I got from the crypts so far barely got me half way there. If I don't get enough to buy it soon, I will have to consider selling my Helm's Ring of Elemental Protection to get it. Elemental damage is bad, but death magic is so very much worse!
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Act One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
Oh, I meant to say about detecting traps in NWN, that's a Search check. Search is governed by intelligence. Every character automatically makes a Search check at the beginning of each round, and can make them more often by activating the search mode. Tomi's Search skill is naturally completely maxed, plus, only rogues can see traps with DC 35 or greater.
Because we both took intelligence 12, the +1 bonus gives a point in Search, with a chance to find traps at only the +1 bonus. (All traps have a DC. The weaker ones would be DC 12-15 or so. We could detect those with a Search roll of 13-20.)
The Thayvian Circlet I'm wearing gives me an extra point to my Search skill (I forgot about Search when I put it on.) So, while I'm wearing it, I could detect a trap with DC 15 with a roll of 13. If the trap's DC were 17, I'd only be able to detect it on a roll of 15, etc. If the trap's DC were 22 or higher, I'd only be able to detect it with a critical success roll of 20, and if its DC were 35 or higher, the "rogues only" rule would kick in, and I'd never be able to see it even if I stood in front of it forever and rolled 20's over and over.
@Arvia , on the edited comment I just saw from your last post, I don't know exactly how to help you with the screen shot order - I can only share what I do.
After I log off from the game, I go to whatever folder the pictures I've taken are in, and I drag them all out onto my desktop and arrange them into rows. Then, I look at them to remember why I took them, and I right-click and rename each one into a file name that will help me remember what it is.
I give them names like "Battle Horror 1A", "Battle Horror 1B", or "Level 9 1A" , or "Calik Fight 1", "Calik Fight 2", "Calik Dead".
The numbers are not only to help me keep them in the order that will tell the story ("a picture is worth 1,000 words"), but I name them keeping in mind that I could in the future post some other run of this game or another here, and I know that if I, say, two years from now, try to upload a screen shot to this forum with exactly the same name as one I previously uploaded, the forum will not accept the screen shot. If that ever happens to me, I know I can just change the file name in any way - a spelling, a space, a number, a letter - and then I will be able to upload it.
When I go to the forum "Attach Image" button, I have it set to take me to my desktop, and there I can see an alphabetical listing of images I just named such that I would know exactly what they were, in addition to the other things currently on my desktop.
I don't know if that helps you any, but that's how I do it.
@BelgarathMTH , congratulations on reaching level 9! You were lucky to avoid being stunned, but that was close with the critical hit! The battle horror looks ridiculous, like a hovering little robot. Good to know that it's not to be underestimated. The minogon looks much more dangerous.
Thank you for including so much vital information again, about the monsters, items, feats, and that information to start saving money in advance!
What I meant about the screenshots was that I selected and uploaded several pictures at once, but later noticed that they were not uploaded in chronological order, the way they had been organized in the folder. And then it took me a long time to edit them. You have probably read the post with the disorganized screenshots while I was editing them. I apologize. I have only now noticed that there is a "preview" function for posts, and will use that in the future.
I absolutely agree with you about feats that need to be activated vs feats that are automatically and permanently used. Power Attack was among the "recommended" at character creation, but you can only use it once, and it has such a huge penalty on the attack role. Then Cleave, which doesn't sound convincing either, so you have to waste two feats until you get Divine Might or Divine Shield. Which, as you have pointed out, need to be activated and have a short duration. That means I would either forget to use them or always wonder if this was really the occasion where I should use them, or if a more dangerous enemy might wait around the next corner. I already have this problem with potions. I bought so many potions in BG:EE and never used most of them, because I always thought I might regret it in the next fight.
I might still pick Toughness next, I will see how my HP develop until then.
The tomb of Halueth Never? I wouldn't have thought of that solution either, but I really wanted to finish that quest. With Arvia being a Paladin of Tyr, her in-game background story and her strong connection to this particular temple, I thought that she would have considered it very important to help Judge Oleff (she probably had met him in her past, anyway. Todangelus follows Torm and has no personal connection to this temple, so he wouldn't have felt as compelled as Arvia to solve this ). I would have tried to fight the swords and wanted to search if somebody had managed to survive them, and how. That's how I found the advice to go under Invisibility without Tomi. Otherwise I would have stormed in and been slaughtered.
Oh, and I wanted to ask you what you think about my decisions regarding the Meldanen Estate and the Greatsword +1 from Never's tomb.
I was so nervous in the tomb, I just grabbed whatever was in the sarcophagus and stumbled back to the door, and there I was suddenly with that valuable magic greataxe, taken from a tomb. It probably wasn't Never's, if his armor was rusted and everything, so I roleplayed that it was okay to keep it since Oleff didn't claim it when I gave him the armor. But I don't know if that was okay, or just an excuse because I wanted those boots so badly.
The same goes for Meldanen. I was dangerously low on potions and healing kits and probably heading into a fight with one or more dangerous mages, so I thought it would be logical for a warrior to take the consumable supplies that might aid me in this, and I checked every chest and crate and took only potions and healing kits. The exceptions were the magic bag and chainshirt+1 from the chest next to the apprentice with the imps. I would have left those if I hadn't been so low on gold, of course I took them with the Boots of Hardiness in mind, but seeing that the apprentice was associating with those little winged devils and attacking me with evil energy draining magic, I thought it might be okay to declare them the personal belongings of an evil opponent and take them like the things dropped after his death. I did not take the valuable magic items from other chests in the estate, and no scrolls or gold or gemstones.
But I also realize that my need to explain and justify those decisions to myself and others tells me that I'm not convinced.
On the other hand, I wasn't motivated by greed to buy a fancy necklace or gain power or something, I wanted a very important item that would make me more able to do my duty. Still, I'm in doubt.
Oh and I always delete the screenshots a day after finishing the report. That gives me time to proofread and edit, but I don't like to keep tons of them on my PC, because I doubt that I will use them again.
i chapter 2, i believe its the wizard storekeep person sells a helmet that makes you immune to mind influencing attacks ( including stun, very useful ) i think its around 30 000 gold
@Arvia , I think your decisions were fine, and you exhibited exemplary behavior. I've sometimes been tempted to "confiscate" Meldanen's belongings because of the demon summoning going on in the estate. You mostly took healing supplies and nothing else, because the demons and the apprentices as well as several guard dogs and henchmen were trying their very best to kill you on sight, and talking about it or asking for their surrender was not on the table.
I imagine police officers and military soldiers in real life have to deal with these kinds of life-or-death ethical decisions every single day in their jobs. I have great respect for them for that.
I wouldn't beat myself up over the weapon from the tomb. It's easy to develop a reflex to "open container, take the stuff in the container, repeat." While I was in Meldanen's estate, I opened things to look for documents or evidence, and sometimes, I reflexively took a gem or something, said "Oops, I didn't mean to do that here, that's not mine," and put it back.
If it still feels wrong to you, I think the usual paladin atonement thing would be to donate back the money to a temple as soon as you have the means to do so. NWN doesn't really have a mechanic to do that, though. You could roleplay "donation" by dropping an item of equal value on the ground near a priest, I guess. I think you said you did that with cursed items in Baldur's Gate, rather than selling them to a merchant for the money.
EDIT: Oh, by the way, even with my careful attempts at organization, I've occasionally gotten my screenshots posted out of order, too, and had to go back and try to repair it in an edit. So I understand how that happens. It's usually not that hard to figure out what order the poster intended, though. Mistakes happen. It's not easy to create these reports.
EDIT #2: Power Attack is a mode that can be turned on, and it stays on until you deactivate it. So it is useful for fights with much weaker creatures. It makes those fights get finished faster. It's also good for speeding up bashing chests without a rogue to open them. A lot of warrior characters insist on having it as a basic ability of the warrior classes. So, even though I don't much care for it, I don't mean to talk it down too much. You can keep it activated permanently if you can afford the BAB loss.
@sarevok57 , Thanks for the tip about the helmet at the wizard merchant. I haven't wanted to even try to look at what she has, because she takes a crafting reagent at random every time you look at her wares (I think it's random - I don't remember being given a choice which reagent from my pack to give to her), and I'm holding on to a piece of adamantite from Chapter One that I don't want her to take, in case the crafting guys in Luskan or in Chapter Three can make me something good out of it.)
Okay, thank you for your opinion. It's so difficult to find a balance in those decisions. If I still have doubts about it the next time I play (going to work until tomorrow morning again *sigh*), I will find a solution, like dropping an item in a temple or something. (Yes, I do that with cursed or evil items in BG) But I think Halueth Never wouldn't have insisted on keeping it in his empty grave, if I used the money to buy equipment that helps me to save his city
Edit: I've just read your edit. Forgot that Power Attack is a combat mode. But in one of my first attempts that all ended in the Peninsula District I could never hit anyone at level 3 with the penalty to attack rolls.
@Arvia , I think your decisions were fine, and you exhibited exemplary behavior. I've sometimes been tempted to "confiscate" Meldanen's belongings because of the demon summoning going on in the estate. You mostly took healing supplies and nothing else, because the demons and the apprentices as well as several guard dogs and henchmen were trying their very best to kill you on sight, and talking about it or asking for their surrender was not on the table.
I imagine police officers and military soldiers in real life have to deal with these kinds of life-or-death ethical decisions every single day in their jobs. I have great respect for them for that.
I wouldn't beat myself up over the weapon from the tomb. It's easy to develop a reflex to "open container, take the stuff in the container, repeat." While I was in Meldanen's estate, I opened things to look for documents or evidence, and sometimes, I reflexively took a gem or something, said "Oops, I didn't mean to do that here, that's not mine," and put it back.
If it still feels wrong to you, I think the usual paladin atonement thing would be to donate back the money to a temple as soon as you have the means to do so. NWN doesn't really have a mechanic to do that, though. You could roleplay "donation" by dropping an item of equal value on the ground near a priest, I guess. I think you said you did that with cursed items in Baldur's Gate, rather than selling them to a merchant for the money.
EDIT: Oh, by the way, even with my careful attempts at organization, I've occasionally gotten my screenshots posted out of order, too, and had to go back and try to repair it in an edit. So I understand how that happens. It's usually not that hard to figure out what order the poster intended, though. Mistakes happen. It's not easy to create these reports.
EDIT #2: Power Attack is a mode that can be turned on, and it stays on until you deactivate it. So it is useful for fights with much weaker creatures. It makes those fights get finished faster. It's also good for speeding up bashing chests without a rogue to open them. A lot of warrior characters insist on having it as a basic ability of the warrior classes. So, even though I don't much care for it, I don't mean to talk it down too much. You can keep it activated permanently if you can afford the BAB loss.
@sarevok57 , Thanks for the tip about the helmet at the wizard merchant. I haven't wanted to even try to look at what she has, because she takes a crafting reagent at random every time you look at her wares (I think it's random - I don't remember being given a choice which reagent from my pack to give to her), and I'm holding on to a piece of adamantite from Chapter One that I don't want her to take, in case the crafting guys in Luskan or in Chapter Three can make me something good out of it.)
you get to decide what to give her, and i dont even think adamantine is even an option, from what i remember you can give her:
quartz
fenberry
fairy dust
monster parts like; bodak tooth, salamander tongue, fire beetle belly, rakshasa eye ect
so usually i will just give her a quartz or fenberry since those things are literally EVERYWHERE in this chapter
and unfortunately no one in luskan will craft ya sweet stuff ( as far as i know ) since there was no option for them to say so/place said items on
i just finished luskan this morning and im right at the beginning of the host tower
The final fight of the dungeon I'm in was very interesting. I'm not going to talk about story much, because I really don't want to reveal any plot spoilers from here on out.
The fight began with three (!) lizardman sorcerers. Within rounds, I had been Fireballed and nearly Magic Missiled to death. I desperately went for a healing pack, and if they got off another volley of spells before I could use it, I would be dead. The first one healed me to half health just as the second spell volley went off. I used a second one, then a third one, before I was healed to full health and felt safe enough to start swinging again. I may have taken a couple of dire boar hits in there, too. Boy, these guys really love their Fireballs! If I didn't have my Helm's Ring of Elemental Resistance, I don't think I would have survived.
Here's the boss lizardman, hiding back in the next chamber. He opened with Mage Armor. One of his minions had Dispelled my Protection from Evil, so I may be in trouble if he starts using mind-affecting spells.
He wants to surrender, and he casts one final spell so I can understand his language. Of course I honorably accept the surrender, and he tells me much information about where his people came from and about what is happening here. (None of that information is in this picture.)
Treachery!
Sigh. More Fireballs. I've never met lizard people so fond of fire.
Yet another Fireball. It would be the last spell he ever tried to cast. He didn't get to finish this one, poor chap.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Act One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
Boy, I really disagree with the writers on this scenario. In Chapter Two, you can take a series of bounties on escaped criminals in Aribeth's barracks. You are required to bring back one of their ears as proof that they are dead.
In the Neverwinter Wood, this elven ranger who is one of the escapees attacks you and tries to kill you. After he surrenders (I forgot to click "Stand Your Ground" on Tomi, and Tomi almost finished him! Careful!), he tells you his story, and my judgement was that I would let him go immediately, no need for him to mutilate himself. The stupid writers do not give you any such option. He says he wants them to think he is dead so he can disappear into the wilderness, and he offers you his ear.
Again, I would not do that. I had to be the one to cut it off with an arrow tip that he himself provided. I had to imagine that he knew a plant nearby with heavy anesthetic properties before I could imagine doing it.
The only other option given was to say "No, you die," and kill him.
Since letting him go, which was what I really wanted to do, was not given as an option, I thought about just hitting "escape" at that point to shut down the conversation and hope he would just stay there with a "blue circle". I decided to trust the writers (mistake) and figured that maybe he really wanted his ear turned in so they would stop sending bounty hunters after him.
The game drifted my alignment ten points toward evil!
Wow, that really stung. I thought about taking a reload, but I thought doing that would violate the spirit of this challenge. I had my "good" score to 100, and the hit took it down to 90. It would have to go all the way down to 69 through a continuous series of evil acts before my alignment would change to Lawful Neutral and I would fall.
Here's the dialogue with the elf:
So, that left kind of a bad taste in my mouth. I won't judge the whole game on one badly written encounter though, since I know these kinds of things are few and far between.
@Arvia, would you have made the same decision, or would you have killed him, or would you have tried to escape from the conversation (kind of cheating, but I almost did it, because I had a feeling it was going to end badly, and it was making me choose between two evils with no good choice.) And, if you would have made the same choice, would you have accepted the 10 point hit to your goodness, or would you have reloaded?
@BelgarathMTH , that was a very, very badly written encounter!
I feel bad for you.
It's horribly unfair to give you an "evil" shift for this choice. I would have understood a shift on the lawful-chaotic axis, but evil?!
So, killing him would have been "good"?
It's difficult to say for certain what I would have done, because I know the outcome now.
I know for certain that I wouldn't have killed him after hearing his sad story. So, the game only leaves you the option to take his ear, and it shifts you 10 points to evil to spare his life, while helping all those people in the past only gave you 3 points towards good all the time, and your counter would be at around 120 if it went beyond 100.
You must be very frustrated with the game taking charge of your character this way and then punishing you.
I don't know if I would have reloaded. If you remember my BG run, I had taken 3 reloads there because of bad scripting/bugs making me kill people I didn't want to kill. Tenya, and that mage with the NPC Project demon. In the end, I had to accept the loss of 10 reputation, which was severe.
In this case with the ranger, I would probably have asked your opinion. Knowing what I know now, I will probably avoid this encounter.
In the end, 90 good points is still more than what you started with at the academy. If I imagine this situation in real life, I would definitely choose mercy over justice, take his ear (also because I know very well how to numb pain and stop bleeding ?), let him go and accept the consequences, i.e. being judged badly for not killing him.
What was the evil act here? Mutilating him, or helping an escaped criminal? I would be angry and frustrated at the result, but I might have accepted the outcome, I'm not sure. I'm watching from the outside now, so it's different. I might have shouted "Unfair! Badly written!" and reloaded in the same situation. That's more likely. But I would have asked myself if I shouldn't have.
But if I had reloaded, I would have decided to avoid him completely, not to go and kill him.
Whatever you decide, choose what makes you feel better, and not what "violates the spirit of the challenge". Your challenge, your rules. Minimal/no-reload with a lawful good conscience in roleplaying and real life is complicated, and whoever wrote that dialogue has strange ideas about alignment. If at all, it should have affected the lawful points, not the good vs evil.
I'm sorry I can't give you a clearer answer. Do what feels right.
@Arvia , Thank you, that helps me feel better. (I already got 3 "good" points back for sparing another life.)
If you're in the habit of exploring maps thoroughly, I'm not sure the encounter is avoidable unless you know right where it is. I've done runs where I refused to even talk to the bounty master, and I still had to deal with the scenarios when I ran into the escapees during exploration and other quests.
Anyway, thank you very much for your thoughtful reply.
In the Neverwinter Woods, I got attacked by four (!) dire boars. Those things are very tough and dangerous in numbers, even to a level nine character. They kept rolling incredibly lucky rolls (17, 18, 19, 20) as a group. This unplanned encounter wound up being the most healing-supply costly encounter I've had so far in Chapter Two. We sadly had to kill some crazed deer along with the boars. I said a prayer of respect to Silvanus for the poor, crazed animals' spirits, and took an entire day to butcher and skin them for food and leather, of which we will keep enough to supply ourselves with food in these woods for another few days, and turn in the rest to the druid camp.
The fight with the dreaded queen spider. These horrible creatures of the dark must have been created by Llolth herself. At maturity, they are covered with a tough Stoneskin that makes them nearly invulnerable to all weapons.
(I think I'll take a cue from @Arvia and put most of the comments about this fight into one big spoiler tag, so that I don't have to keep typing the spoiler commands over and over.)
I did not know this: Getting webbed completely removes your dexterity bonus, even though you can still fight, although you can't move. I had drank a Potion of Barkskin, but I still only had AC 29 until that Web went away, because of the dexterity loss. It would be even more damaging for a dexterity-based character of any kind.
The way the game notifies you of Stoneskin is bogus. You absolutely *can* damage with your currently equipped weapon. Just watch the "Damage reduction X, Y damage remaining message."
Oh dear. Deadly poisoning number one. I read a Neutralize Poison scroll I had been saving for just this kind of encounter. Neutralize Poison cures the poison *and* removes the ability score damage in a single cast. They are worth almost 500 gold each, though. An expensive resource use!
I decided to drink a precious Potion of Speed. It turned out it only lasted three rounds. That's an awfully short duration for such an expensive potion.
Her Stoneskin is finally down, but she's barely injured.
Injured.
Nine Hells!
Thank Torm!
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Act One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
while in chapter 2, if you guys have the cash to spare, the temple of tyr sells potions of heal for just under 2 000 gold each ( if you have a a favorable reaction ) and the temple of tyr also has an amulet of health which makes you immune to poison/disease/ and most importantly; level drain/ability drain, this amulet i believe costs around 28 000 with a favorable reaction
my suggestion would be buying that amulet ( not the lesser one since it doesnt give the level drain/ability drain immunity ) because eventually you will be fighting shadow fiends, and even for my OP kicking ass and taking names character, shadows fiends would be a serious problem if it wasn't for that necklace
so just a heads up for ya guys so you dont have any unnecessary respawns
I was thinking about buying that amulet next. I know I will be fighting vampire lords in my not too distant future. As for Potions of Heal, I don't like them until near max level, because that cost is exorbitant for a leveling character with high Heal skill. I have one right now that dropped somewhere, but I almost never buy the things. Judicious use of Healing Kits together with maxed Heal skill is much more economical, and there are no attacks of opportunity while using one. (That's kind of bogus, I know, but that's the game.)
******************************
While continuing to explore the woods, we stumbled across a cave littered with the bodies of dead men. In the distance, I saw the most gigantic dire bear I've ever seen. I knew we should probably leave, as I really didn't want to kill that magnificent beast. It was surely blessed of Silvanus, a god I respect deeply alongside my patron God, Torm.
If it was hunting and killing people, as it appeared, we would have no choice but to eventually hunt it down. But, what if all these dead men had been trying to kill an innocent beast of the forest for trophy, sport, and fur? I decided to try to sneak in a bit further to find clues on the dead men about how they had died. That was foolish of me. The bear saw me and attacked.
I might have killed it in self-defense, but I decided to run out of the cave, or try to, hoping it wouldn't follow. However, Tomi got stuck in the transition, and I went into a kind of panic, worrying about how such a beast could likely kill him in two or three strikes, if not a single bite. There was no way I could get Tomi away from the bear's jaws of death without either killing the bear, (and then, I was low enough on healing supplies that I wasn't even remotely confident that I could defeat the ancient dire bear myself, especially if I spent my last healing supplies in a futile attempt to save Tomi), or being killed myself. I hit the Stone of Recall.
We will not come back to this cave unless we are told by people that this specific venerable dire bear is hunting people.
I finally had gathered enough treasure as spoils of war to trade for the Belt of Guiding Light that I knew would save us against the Death Magic we would surely eventually face while fighting the Cult of the Eye.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Act One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
We found the notorious "Stirge the Baby Killer". After defeating him, we found a Whitecloak of Protection from Evil +5. It is a hard choice whether to replace my blue Nymph Cloak +5 with this one.
The blue cloak gives me large bonuses to my Lay on Hands and Turn Undead. The white cloak, which will not show up as additional protection in our character screen, will raise our AC from the 30 that appears in the character screen to AC 33 against any evil creature. Since I rarely use my paladin abilities based on charisma, I have decided to wear the white cloak for now. I don't want to sell that blue cloak just yet, though. I think I will fold it and hang on to it.
Another beautiful sunset in Faerun.
@Arvia , If you want me to stop posting truly spoilerish spoilers like that dialogue with Stirge the Baby-Killer, please tell me.
I have to eat some supper and get to bed!
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Chapter One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
while in chapter 2, if you guys have the cash to spare, the temple of tyr sells potions of heal for just under 2 000 gold each ( if you have a a favorable reaction ) and the temple of tyr also has an amulet of health which makes you immune to poison/disease/ and most importantly; level drain/ability drain, this amulet i believe costs around 28 000 with a favorable reaction
my suggestion would be buying that amulet ( not the lesser one since it doesnt give the level drain/ability drain immunity ) because eventually you will be fighting shadow fiends, and even for my OP kicking ass and taking names character, shadows fiends would be a serious problem if it wasn't for that necklace
so just a heads up for ya guys so you dont have any unnecessary respawns
@sarevok57 , thanks for all the good advices about useful items. The prices make me swallow, I hope gold will be easier to earn in chapter two, even without being a genocidal barbarian ?
@BelgarathMTH , I'm glad you're feeling better about the situation with Wyvern. I'm usually a completionist when it comes to maps, so I suppose I will have to accept the loss of "good" points, too. I understand the urge to try to escape the conversation, but we're roleplaying, so it makes no sense to suddenly run off during a conversation.
I see your paladin still remembers being a druid in his last life
Please don't misunderstand this as judgemental or critical, but I would like to understand how you make those decisions. You fought spiders and dire boars without trouble, felt sorry for having to fight the crazed deer, and avoided killing the dire bear. Where's the difference between those? Apart from our disgust/fear of spiders, is there any in-game lore that suggests they are unnatural? I know they are kind of sacred to drow, but they're still natural predators, no more evil or dangerous than the bear, or the dire boars. They can't go against their nature, so I wonder what makes you choose which kind of animal you respect and consider worthy of protection, and which kind doesn't make you regret killing.
I really hope you don't misunderstand me and feel offended by this question, it's purely philosophical, I'm not judging. I share your disgust of spiders, especially the ones the size of a horse, and I like big furry creatures like bears much more, but I find it interesting to reflect on the decision to spare the dire bear. If it had been a lizard, or a snake, or a giant bug, would you have killed it or also thought "maybe it only killed those men in self-defense, I'm going to escape"?
I've had this discussion with people who were disgusted and shocked at the idea of eating horse meat, or who judged other cultures who eat dog meat, but a cow or a pig didn't seem to deserve the same "cute friend" label for them. I find it interesting how this is influenced by culture and personal experience.
I didn't consider the dialogue with Stirge a spoiler, please continue posting whatever you like. As long as you don't mention spoilers like telling me that a person I will regularly talk to will turn out to be the evil endgame boss (like a certain person in ToB), I'm okay with story details. It's more interesting to read those reports if they contain story elements and information along with the battles.
On a phone screen (I'm still at work) without zooming in, in the last screenshot with the beautiful sunset, Todangelus looks a bit like Batman
I will install those skyboxes too, when (or if) I have the chance to continue playing this weekend, although I probably won't see the daylight during the finale of chapter 1.
@Arvia , Those are interesting questions about the animals. There was no choice with the dire boars and the crazed deer, because we were outside, and they weren't going to stop attacking us. There was no way to get away from them. I see that situation as similar to having to kill an animal with rabies.
I don't like to kill bears when it can be avoided. I would have fought the bear if it was a man-eater, or in self-defense, once it attacked us. I just don't deliberately hunt them down. They always attack if you get too close, because that's their nature. Once I've been spotted by a bear and attacked, though, I'm not going to just stand there and not defend myself.
But in this case, it went after Tomi, who had little chance to survive. I needed to get Tomi out of there.
When wild predators begin to prey on people, the people have no choice but to kill them. If a village elder or druid somewhere in the woods told me a giant bear was attacking and eating people and children, I would hunt down the bear. There would be no choice.
But very rarely do natural predators attack people for food. That usually means the animal is sick, can't find other food, is trying to defend its young or its territory, is acting in self-defense, or in the world of D&D, has been corrupted by some kind of magic.
I don't consider spiders the size of horses to be in any way natural creatures. Natural spiders are tiny arachnids who prey on equally small insects, can be beneficial to the ecosystem, and rarely come into conflict with people. D&D giant spiders, wherever they're found, are always surrounded by web cocoons containing the remains of people they've eaten. Every once in a while, you can cut open one and rescue a survivor, who was being held alive in storage to be eaten soon. Any "animal" that preys on people, especially so horribly, has to be killed.
The queen spider I just killed was covered in a magical Stoneskin, with heavy rocks magically spinning around her in circles. Being a "queen" spider implies that she was giving birth to more giant spiders to kill more people. I had just killed at least two dozen of her "children", found the remains of their victims, and rescued one victim alive. These are monsters, not natural creatures.
@BelgarathMTH , okay, I see. I'm glad you didn't get me wrong. I was just curious. I had understood that you had been sent after a man-eating bear. My mistake. Of course it would attack you if you got close.
And the explanation about spiders makes sense, too. The size might not be an excuse, but Stoneskins don't sound natural, even in Faerun.
I have finished chapter one (with two more personal respawns ) and have to digest the rather ugly end of it before I post my report.
(Contains huge spoilers for chapter one finale)
Had I known before that Fenthick would be hanged, I would have killed him myself and told the others that he died regretting his blindness and trying to stop Desther. But I know the game doesn't give you the option to redeem or defend him somehow.
And even Desther could have died in the fight, or be beheaded, if a public execution was necessary, instead of being burned at the stake. That was cruel. I know he was a traitor and mass murderer, and death penalty would be normal in medieval-like fantasy settings, but it's still a horrible way to die.
@Arvia , About the thought "its size might not be an excuse", I think the point is that they prey on people. In nature, prey fights back against predator any way it can - teeth, claws, horns, and hooves. Wildebeasts and elephants will stomp to death any litters of baby lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas, or wild dogs they find. As you yourself have pointed out before, nature is not always gentle or beautiful, it is also very harsh and violent. "Nature red in tooth and claw."
We've been asked to question the witch Setara in regards to the disappearance of several local druids, and about what might be wrong in the Neverwinter Woods. She is both a person of interest, and a suspect. I take none of her belongings while I'm here.
When we entered her home, we were attacked by powerful guards, some neutral elementals and golems, but also many evil imps and invisible stalkers.
When I saw the flesh golem, I knew how dangerous it could be. I had just finished off an air elemental, and I was being attacked at the same time by an invisible stalker. I attacked the golem as the bigger threat. It got me with a critical hit, and I tried to go for a healing pack, knowing the next blow would be fatal. It got a second critical hit while I was trying to heal. Goodbye, cruel world.
Oh, hello, Mr. Priest of Tyr.
I had switched to my blue cloak of charisma +5 to get a better Lay on Hands, thinking I was fighting mostly neutral creatures. I'm not sure if the flesh golem counts as evil, such that my cloak of Protection from Evil +5 might have given me an additional 3 AC against it. I think all golems are neutral.
It wouldn't have helped if I'd tried to drink my Potion of Heal instead of using a healing kit, because the fatal blow would still have landed before the potion effect.
I may be right back in a few minutes to update this post with more respawns if the dice go against me again with this flesh golem. Maybe I'll try drinking some more potions this time, at least Barkskin and Aid.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 (final boss of Act One, Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 3
Well, that was weird. When I went back, the flesh golem was gone. I did notice a note on the screen with the priest that said "Todangelus has killed something". I know the golem wasn't any more than injured when it killed me, though.
Here's part of the initial conversation with the witch. I won't spoil things by revealing too much of it. There's evidence she may have been doing something pretty evil, but since she was cooperating, I didn't try to kill her for it, and she promised she wouldn't do it again. I'll be curious to see if any other players make a different decision, and why.
She told us we could take a book from her library to the southeast of where we were standing that would help us in our quest, but when we went in there, there was an uninjured flesh golem that attacked. I don't know if it's the same one as before or a different one. I think it might have been a scripting problem in the game rather than that the witch was trying to trick us to our deaths (maybe she was), but luckily I had already set free the prisoner she was holding. (If I hadn't, I would have had no choice but to fight the golem.)
As it was, I didn't need that book, as I had found the same information elsewhere, and I was in no mood to fight that golem again, plus it was going for Tomi, so I hit the portal stone.
I dread the final boss fight of this area that is coming up. If it kills me, I may need a reload, because I'm not sure if I can respawn from where this is going to be.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 (final boss of Act One, Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 3
Comments
@sarevok57 , A chaotic good character might justify doing that, or anyone of neutral alignment. A paladin might accept to help the girl if he knew what was going on, but he wouldn't even reach her I think. I don't know how the setting is, because I didn't go there, but even my lowborn Arvia of Tyr with her Beggar's Nest family background wouldn't associate with or work for Ophala, so she wouldn't even get upstairs to meet that girl. She wouldn't be as judgemental as maybe some of her fellow paladins, because she knows that poverty or lack of opportunity (not everybody gets rescued and educated by a Cleric of Tyr) can drive people into all kinds of business, but she wouldn't approve.
I just felt it necessary to write this reply, because I couldn't click "like" on your post, disagreeing with it from a personal and roleplaying point of view, but I didn't want to give you the feeling that I'm deliberately ignoring your comment.
You seem to have a more powergaming approach to your games, and that's absolutely fine. I have other motivations and goals in my game.
Although, maybe one day I might try to do a powergamey non-roleplayed fighter run, just to see if it really makes such a big difference if you take every loot and XP and fight with those ugly scythes and all that. But I would probably get bored quickly, playing that way. And even then, I wouldn't kill priests and guards
The picture at the docks is beautiful. Are those skyboxes from a mod, or am I just not tilting the camera often enough? I usually keep it at birds' perspective for better overview, unless I want to take a screenshot, and that's usually indoors, so I rarely see the sky.
If it's a mod, do you remember which one?
Also, if it's possible to edit at thread title, you might want to put a spoiler warning there. You avoided spoilers, also because you know that it's my first run and I'm reading all of this, but I don't know if I will always remember not to mention anything important outside of spoiler tags. Most people know that run reports contain spoilers by default, but newbies like me might read here, too.
************************************************,
Our search for the ingredients is over, the cure for the Wailing Death has been created. However, events took a shocking turn, Lady Aribeth is desperate and we have to follow a traitor.
After reuniting with Tomi at the temple, I had a conversation with him about the difference between courage and recklessness. Our enemies are getting stronger, and so am I, but his (very appreciated) abilities don't compensate for his fragility. I will only continue with him if he agrees to stay behind in certain battes, lets me go ahead and check the situation, and only join the fight when called, no matter what he hears or sees. I should have made this clear earlier, but until very recently I had been the one following orders. I have never been responsible for companions before, and my inexperience in leadership has put our health and lives in danger and wasted our financial and material resources.
We went back to the Silver Sails Trading Company, and I always entered the next room or corridor alone to secure the territory.
I seem to be able to sense most traps myself, so I can scout and then call Tomi to disarm it if the area is free of enemies.
Evidently I'm not able to discover all traps, but the risk of me getting seriously hurt in a trap is much smaller than Tomi getting killed by monsters while scouting. My Endure Elements damage resistance protects me from acid and sonic damage as well, it seems, not only fire and cold. I had been talking to a more experienced paladin when I was resting at the Temple of Tyr the other day, and he had given me a few useful advices about the best protections, including the permanent use of Endure Elements unless the situation required something else or an item fulfilled the same purpose. He had also told me what kinds of potions or scrolls I should always carry with me in case of emergency. I was glad to have met another paladin to talk to and learn from, but our conversation was brief, because we both had to continue doing our duty.
My decision to leave Tomi in another room behind a corner when opening a door turned out to be very good. A sword spider! I managed to drink a Potion of Barkskin before it reached me.
(this was to check how much more AC the potion gives me. 28 instead of 26.
They don't seem to be as dangerous as bloated dire spiders. It didn't land a single hit on me until I killed it.
Speaking of bloated dire spiders...
I didn't want to risk getting tangled in its webs and drew it out into the corridor. Tomi was safely hidden behind the corner in the next room. Of course, my Potion of Barkskin chose this exact moment to wear off, before the spider even started to attack me. I took the risk and drank another one, altthough the spider was already very close, because I knew what those monsters were capable of. It hit me only three times, and only the second hit poisoned and strength drained me. I used one Potion of Lesser Restoration and one healing kit. That went much better than the last one together with Tomi. He's a scout and a rogue, not a fighter, and shouldn't be used as one. Lesson learned.
We found the entrance to the sewers aqueducts, fought some more vermin there, and I was very glad again to have Endure Elements.
I will have to thank the paladin Todangelus if I see him again. I did thank him, of course, but I had no idea then how useful it would really be to learn from his experience.
We also found the next tomb for Oleff. I had to take Tomi inside with me, but the undead there panicked at my Turn Undead and were easy (rotten) meat for us. Oleff will get his next artifact when we have found the cockatrice.
When we had secured the area in the sewers, I decided to regain our strength for a moment and rest, because judging from the fights behind us, I would need all my abilities to face Callik.
Not evil. Go figure. I had used Potions of Bless and Barkskin before closing in on them.
Callik was very, very tough, and they all had sneak attacks. When I got Callik down to "Badly Wounded" (and that needed many, many hits), I had already used three healing kits+3 and only one left. I didn't dare to use the last one yet, or to drink a potion with the three of them surrounding me, so I called in Tomi to try to keep at least one of the other bloodsailors off my back while I focused on Callik.
But his sneak attacks made him vulnerable to the three of them, and he was gone before I could heal him.
I felt really bad about this, but the few sneak attacks that he landed on them have probably saved my life. I had to use Lay on Hands before I could finish the fight, and without Tomi's extra damage I wouldn't have survived here, not with our few healing supplies.
It was time to confront Vegaul.
I'm sure the story how he "found" the bird is a lie. He's vain, and he's irresponsible. But I believe him that he didn't want to keep the cockatrice, only to drive up the price, the old fool.
(Level 6! I kept thinking and thinking what to choose, Toughness for the HP, Spring Attack to be safe from Attack of Opportunity when moving in battle and to get access to Whirlwind Attack later, or Power Attack to get Divine Might and Divine Shield later. After thinking back and forth, I chose Spring Attack. Unfortunately I found out that Whirlwind Attack requires INT 13, which I don't have, but Spring Attack is still not a complete waste, because now I can change my target in combat, or draw an attacker to another position, without provoking an Attack of Opportunity. And I only rolled a 6 for my HP this time. Sigh.)
I went to pick up Tomi, gave the feather to Aribeth and the artifact from the tomb to Oleff, and bought more healing kits, but only as much as strictly necessary. I want to save money, if possible, for those incredibly useful Boots of Hardiness that Nyatar offers.
(Real life just intervened, I will continue the story with Meldanen etc later)
Level: 6
Reloads: 0
Personal respawns: 5
Tomi Respawns: 8
there is no right way or wrong way to play RPG games, as long as you are having fun playing them, then you are playing them the best way
plus my character is a half-orc fighter/rogue/barbarian and chaotic evil...... so from an RPG stand point what he is doing makes sense to his character archtype
Thanks for the shout-outs to my advice in your report. That gave me a smile. Now, you've taught me something. I didn't know that intelligence 13 and the Expertise feat were prerequisites for Whirlwind Attack. I feel like I gave you bad advice there, and I'm sorry. As you said, the Spring Attack will still be useful, but you might have gotten more benefit from Toughness, or something like Blind Fight. Blind Fight lets you fight effectively against invisible, concealed, or stealthed enemies, or while under a Blind spell. There will be more and more enemies and fights where it can save your life to have it.
At higher levels, we can get Improved Critical, Longsword, and that's one I plan to take as soon as I can get it. It increases the critical threat range of our longswords to 17-20 instead of just 19-20.
Expertise is an interesting feat, which we don't qualify for unless we spend an attribute point on intelligence, which is probably not worth it. It's a mode you can activate that gives you a big increase to AC, but with a corresponding decrease in attack bonus, making it very hard to hit anything. It's mostly for casters who want the extra protection while casting in combat, giving them a better chance to complete their spells without interruption. A warrior would only take it if they've invested in the intelligence and dexterity, and plan to take Whirlwind Attack.
I love your exciting combat photos and summaries. I cheered out loud when you defeated the bloated dire spider, and Calik. Yay!
Reading your report has put me in a happy mood as I go in to teach lessons this afternoon, and has me looking forward to a short play session of my own when I get back home this evening.
While it's true that I probably wouldn't have considered choosing Spring Attack without your remark about Whirlwind Attack, and would have gone for Toughness, I should have checked the details and requirements of the next feats *before* and not after leveling up. Besides, I think that it's very realistic in any kind of training, real life or game character, to make choices sometimes and start learning a new skill, and notice after a time that it's not as good or useful for you as you thought, and then to stop following that line and choose to focus on some other specialization instead.
I can still take Toughness at level 9 and will gain the additional HPs retroactively.
***************************************
Our goal is very near, we have just given the cockatrice feather to Aribeth and now we only have to find the dryad for the last ingredient. All evidence was leading to Meldanen Estate, but we would have to be very, very careful. On our way to the Blacklae District we were ambushed by assassins again and found an even more alarming note on them than last time. We returned immediately to the temple to give it to Fenthick.
Hmm. Those replies were not very satisfying, and Fenthick seemed to trust Desther. This was getting more and more complicated. Anyway, we had done what we could. Our primary goal was the cure, we had to find the dryad. And the missing guard that Thurin had told us about.
Milly had allowed us to use the secret passage in her house to enter the estate. At first, we encountered only vermin (that's odd for a rich man's house, or does he use them as guards?), but also found a key in a desk, took it with us and cleared the area of those bugs.
We still didn't have proof of Meldanen's crime, but we were on an official mission and constantly under attack, so I decided to take all potions and healing kits that we found on our way. We did not take gold, gemstones, weapons or other items.
Then I had to find a way to avoid a needless fight again without lying. (Hey, that's Thog! I should have brought a puppy)
(I had already used answer 3 and 4. They all just led back to this choice). Telling him that I'm an intruder will make me have to kill him, and he doesn't deserve to die just for being simple-minded, and getting a job in the wrong house. So, I chose the evasive question. I *am* supposed to be here, after all, just authorized by someone else.
Then we found a prison tract with only one inhabitant, the guard Samuel.
(Oh. Seeing this screenshot reminds me that I forgot to go back to Thurin. Too late now)
And again, leaving Tomi in a safe place *before* opening a door is a very healthy habit.
The mephit died quickly, but there was an apprentice mage in there and, judging from the noise, more of those winged critters. I drank Potions of Bless and Barkskin before proceeding.
Gah! Slowed and level drained! *And* he had one of those summoned dire boars. Tomi, Stay where you are!
But casting this close to me made him vulnerable, too.
Hah! Even slowed and level drained (to level 2! That's tough!), he was not fast enough. Only the boar had dealt me some damage.
And imps, too! Those fiendish little creatures from the Nine Hells! The mage must have been evil to associate with them. And the master will be worse than the apprentice... We took the magic belt that he had dropped. In the chest right next to him was a magic armor and a magic bag. They seemed to have belonged to the evil apprentice, so I considered it justified to take them as retribution. (those were the only valuable items that I took from a container, apart from potions and healing kits. I resisted the temptation to find an excuse to take a greatsword +1 and a large shield +1 from the storerooms. We took what fallen enemies dropped, though )
I had no way to get rid of the level drain here, so we teleported to the temple, asked Aribeth to heal me, identified and sold the three magic items that we had taken from the evil apprentice and paid the portal to take us back.
There were two traps that Tomi couldn't disarm. We walked around one and he accidentally stepped on the other but took no damage. Then we encountered more mephits and imps and finally another apprentice.
I didn't know they could do that. Fortunately it didn't affect more than my +1 AC bonus. I drank a Potion of Lesser Restoration and one of Cure Medium Wounds after killing the imp. Good decision, because the next encounter was the other apprentice.
The trap Slowed me, but I still hit him fast enough to keep him from casting any spell.
Then I found the dryad and tried to free her, but she shouted that Meldanen was right behind me! I quickly drank a Potion of Barkskin. Endure Elements was spent already.
Uh-oh... Stoneskin! it took some hits to bash them. I had to renew Bless in the middle of the fight, to be a bit safer from his spells.
I still believe that he is guilty of a crime and probably evil, but I won't kill someone begging for his life. Besides, I am not an executioner. My task is to find the Waterdhevian creatures for the cure, not to punish those who took them.
I'm glad that I didn't kill him. His motives were certainly not pure, but he hadn't done anything more evil than Vengaul. The dryad had given her lock of hair willingly.
But before we could return to Aribeth with it, there was one more thing to do. I had promised to help Judge Oleff and find all the artifacts. There must be a tomb somewhere in this district, too.
(OOC: The following part is written for roleplaying's sake only. The idea to solve the quest this way was not my own idea. I knew the swords would hack me to death in seconds, but as a Paladin of Tyr I really wanted to keep my promise to Oleff, and I still needed more money and wanted to collect more XP to compensate for the respawn penalties. So, I searched if others had found a solution, and applied it.)
This sounded really dangerous and I didn't know if there was a way to keep Tomi safe after entering, So I asked him to wait for me here.
My friend, eventually you will learn that I keep my word. I entered and found myself in the sewers, with only some minor undead to fight.
I will *not* open a trapped chest with scorch marks on the floor,
This was the right place. I didn't sense evil here, but Tyr seemed to approve of my intentions and gave me a warning, a brief image of four magic swords, fast and deadly. I looked at my inventory. My only Potion of Speed, to run in and grab whatever was in there, and run out again? Very risky, with 4 opponents. Besides, if it was something heavy, I wouldn't be able to run. But I had two Potions of Invisibility! I decided to take one and enter, to scout and decide then.
I made it to the sarcophagus with with sweating palms and a racing heart, expecting the swords to attack me when I opened it. But I took the artifact, and also the greataxe, and crept back unnoticed.
I took Tomi and we went to see Judge Oleff. He was delighted to have discovered all the artifacts and the actual tomb of Halueth Never. The Greataxe +1 didn't belong to the old artifacts and must have been placed there later. Oleff didn't want it (OOC: He didn't say that, but I had taken both items from the sarcophagus, just in case. He never even mentioned it, so I took that as permission to keep the greataxe) and rewarded my efforts with this amulet.
Better Will saving throws are very useful against all kinds of spells, but I preferred to keep my amulet of natural armor.
(I hadn't gone to Aribeth first because I guessed that events would develop quickly after giving her the final ingredient, and there was something I needed to do first)
Tyr has truly blessed me. The amulet gives me exactly the missing amount of money that I need for the Boots of Hardiness and some healing supplies. I hope Judge Oleff wouldn't think me ungrateful for selling the amulet. It's not for profit after all, it's to exchange a useful item that protects the mind for one that will protect my body even more and keep me safe and healthy to do my duty as Tyr wills.
(I'm soooooooo glad!)
I put on my new boots and we hurried to see Aribeth and give her the dryad's hair.
We followed her to watch the ritual. The atmosphere seemed to forbid such a thing, but Aribeth encouraged us to talk to the others.
I felt like taking a punch to the stomach. Consider Aribeth blinded by her worries, hand the key of Castle Never over to Desther without anyone knowing? "for the good of us all"? All you gods have mercy on us!
I must try to warn Lord Nasher!
Oh you gods, this can't be happening. Tyr give us the strength to bring justice and stop this madman from taking our only hope to end this plague!
Poor Lady Aribeth, I hope she is right and it's a spell, or his will to see the good in everyone has blinded him. I can't imagine that everything had been a lie from the beginning...
We must follow them!
Level: 6
Reloads: 0
Personal respawns: 5
Tomi respawns: 8
Edited: Those screenshots again... is there any way to upload more of them in a row without upsetting their order? Or is one by one the only possibility?)
LOL, I made my save against all violin student "sonic attacks" today. Also, I loved your OotS reference to Thog.
Thank you for giving us so many masterfully taken screen shots to help us share in your experience. I know how much hard work and effort it is to organize those pictures into a post, especially when you have a lot of them.
Sometimes, I prefer this way of "streaming" or recording a game run. I guess I prefer reading and enjoying summaries and highlights with pictures, rather than watching every last detail of a run, minute by minute, for hours. Very few streamers or "Let's Play" videographers can keep me watching for long. One notable one who has recorded NWN in a way that did make me want to watch every last minute of it is "MyNameIsNotLily" on YouTube.
*****************************
We have fought our way through trolls caves that I thought would never end, trying to find our way to the lost crypts that the archaeologists were trying to find. What long lost secrets will we find here? I am almost certain that the Cult of the Eye is somehow tied into what these archaeologists were trying to uncover when most of them were killed by trolls and ogres.
*****************************
This is a *huge* dungeon.
One of the first potentially lethal "mini-boss" battles is with these two troll shamans. They try to cast many spells on you, and none of them hurt me, possibly because I had Protection from Evil activated. Once they run out of spells and go to melee, they hit very hard. I drank a Potion of Barkskin to get a bit of an advantage.
Down in the crypts, there are minogons, gargoyles, and battle horrors. The minogons have a wail that can stun you for several rounds, so I prioritize killing the minogon first if it's part of a mob.
The first "horror" was a "helmed horror". These animated armor creatures have tiers, and this one isn't the top one, although I didn't remember that and fought as though it was. I was surprised when it went down without much trouble.
Oh, yes, the top tier is a "battle horror". These are very, very deadly.
While I was killing the minogon before it could stun me at a crucial moment, the battle horror got a critical hit! I was almost dead. I desperately went for a healing kit, and if it had landed a blow again while I was using it, I would have been dead. Through sheer luck and high Heal skill, I survived this, barely. I used Lay on Hands also before I started fighting again. Beating this encounter got me to level nine.
We are only on the first floor of several in these deep crypts. I decided to use the portal stone and go back to the temple to sell off our heavy magic armor and weapons that were starting to weigh us down, even with a Bag of Holding and Bull's Strength to help, and to process the level there.
I took Improved Critical: Longsword for my new feat.
I considered taking Power Attack so I could take Cleave, Divine Might, and Divine Shield. I think Cleave is only marginally useful at higher levels, because it only activates on a kill, and it only gets you one free attack, at a random nearby enemy. I think Great Cleave is even worse, because it only chains its extra attacks for as long as you single-hit kill enemies.
As far as Divine Might and Divine Shield, I am not personally a fan of buffs that only last a matter of rounds. I often avoid casting them anyway, thinking "What if this isn't the fight where they would have made the difference?" For that reason, I consider them the same as potions, and I think feats are too valuable in their potential to be used on what amounts to more potion-like abilities. Also, they are charisma-dependent, and I think strength is more useful for a melee fighter.
I prefer to take feats that provide reliable, steady, passive (no need to remember to activate), permanent, defense and attack in every single fight. That way I can relax during easier fights and just enjoy watching the show on my screen, what I call "the Dance of Death" that NWN is so good at animating, only needing to keep an eye on my hit points bar and occasionally healing when some enemy gets a critical hit or lands a bad spell on me.
I remembered that the temple sells a magic item that I need to prioritize saving up for and buying. I almost forgot about the importance of it, because I am so used to playing clerics with access to the Death Ward spell. It is a belt that makes you immune to death magic. This belt is absolutely critical to a paladin's survival starting in late Chapter Two. There are creatures called bodaks that have a one-shot kill death screech that they will spam at you, and there are more and more enemies who will use spells like Slay and Disintegrate.
Trust me, you really don't want to go into late Chapter Two and beyond without this belt.
It costs over 20,000 gold. The treasure I got from the crypts so far barely got me half way there. If I don't get enough to buy it soon, I will have to consider selling my Helm's Ring of Elemental Protection to get it. Elemental damage is bad, but death magic is so very much worse!
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Act One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
Because we both took intelligence 12, the +1 bonus gives a point in Search, with a chance to find traps at only the +1 bonus. (All traps have a DC. The weaker ones would be DC 12-15 or so. We could detect those with a Search roll of 13-20.)
The Thayvian Circlet I'm wearing gives me an extra point to my Search skill (I forgot about Search when I put it on.) So, while I'm wearing it, I could detect a trap with DC 15 with a roll of 13. If the trap's DC were 17, I'd only be able to detect it on a roll of 15, etc. If the trap's DC were 22 or higher, I'd only be able to detect it with a critical success roll of 20, and if its DC were 35 or higher, the "rogues only" rule would kick in, and I'd never be able to see it even if I stood in front of it forever and rolled 20's over and over.
After I log off from the game, I go to whatever folder the pictures I've taken are in, and I drag them all out onto my desktop and arrange them into rows. Then, I look at them to remember why I took them, and I right-click and rename each one into a file name that will help me remember what it is.
I give them names like "Battle Horror 1A", "Battle Horror 1B", or "Level 9 1A" , or "Calik Fight 1", "Calik Fight 2", "Calik Dead".
The numbers are not only to help me keep them in the order that will tell the story ("a picture is worth 1,000 words"), but I name them keeping in mind that I could in the future post some other run of this game or another here, and I know that if I, say, two years from now, try to upload a screen shot to this forum with exactly the same name as one I previously uploaded, the forum will not accept the screen shot. If that ever happens to me, I know I can just change the file name in any way - a spelling, a space, a number, a letter - and then I will be able to upload it.
When I go to the forum "Attach Image" button, I have it set to take me to my desktop, and there I can see an alphabetical listing of images I just named such that I would know exactly what they were, in addition to the other things currently on my desktop.
I don't know if that helps you any, but that's how I do it.
Thank you for including so much vital information again, about the monsters, items, feats, and that information to start saving money in advance!
What I meant about the screenshots was that I selected and uploaded several pictures at once, but later noticed that they were not uploaded in chronological order, the way they had been organized in the folder. And then it took me a long time to edit them. You have probably read the post with the disorganized screenshots while I was editing them. I apologize. I have only now noticed that there is a "preview" function for posts, and will use that in the future.
I absolutely agree with you about feats that need to be activated vs feats that are automatically and permanently used. Power Attack was among the "recommended" at character creation, but you can only use it once, and it has such a huge penalty on the attack role. Then Cleave, which doesn't sound convincing either, so you have to waste two feats until you get Divine Might or Divine Shield. Which, as you have pointed out, need to be activated and have a short duration. That means I would either forget to use them or always wonder if this was really the occasion where I should use them, or if a more dangerous enemy might wait around the next corner. I already have this problem with potions. I bought so many potions in BG:EE and never used most of them, because I always thought I might regret it in the next fight.
I might still pick Toughness next, I will see how my HP develop until then.
The tomb of Halueth Never? I wouldn't have thought of that solution either, but I really wanted to finish that quest. With Arvia being a Paladin of Tyr, her in-game background story and her strong connection to this particular temple, I thought that she would have considered it very important to help Judge Oleff (she probably had met him in her past, anyway. Todangelus follows Torm and has no personal connection to this temple, so he wouldn't have felt as compelled as Arvia to solve this ). I would have tried to fight the swords and wanted to search if somebody had managed to survive them, and how. That's how I found the advice to go under Invisibility without Tomi. Otherwise I would have stormed in and been slaughtered.
Oh, and I wanted to ask you what you think about my decisions regarding the Meldanen Estate and the Greatsword +1 from Never's tomb.
I was so nervous in the tomb, I just grabbed whatever was in the sarcophagus and stumbled back to the door, and there I was suddenly with that valuable magic greataxe, taken from a tomb. It probably wasn't Never's, if his armor was rusted and everything, so I roleplayed that it was okay to keep it since Oleff didn't claim it when I gave him the armor. But I don't know if that was okay, or just an excuse because I wanted those boots so badly.
The same goes for Meldanen. I was dangerously low on potions and healing kits and probably heading into a fight with one or more dangerous mages, so I thought it would be logical for a warrior to take the consumable supplies that might aid me in this, and I checked every chest and crate and took only potions and healing kits. The exceptions were the magic bag and chainshirt+1 from the chest next to the apprentice with the imps. I would have left those if I hadn't been so low on gold, of course I took them with the Boots of Hardiness in mind, but seeing that the apprentice was associating with those little winged devils and attacking me with evil energy draining magic, I thought it might be okay to declare them the personal belongings of an evil opponent and take them like the things dropped after his death. I did not take the valuable magic items from other chests in the estate, and no scrolls or gold or gemstones.
But I also realize that my need to explain and justify those decisions to myself and others tells me that I'm not convinced.
On the other hand, I wasn't motivated by greed to buy a fancy necklace or gain power or something, I wanted a very important item that would make me more able to do my duty. Still, I'm in doubt.
I would like to hear your opinion.
I imagine police officers and military soldiers in real life have to deal with these kinds of life-or-death ethical decisions every single day in their jobs. I have great respect for them for that.
I wouldn't beat myself up over the weapon from the tomb. It's easy to develop a reflex to "open container, take the stuff in the container, repeat." While I was in Meldanen's estate, I opened things to look for documents or evidence, and sometimes, I reflexively took a gem or something, said "Oops, I didn't mean to do that here, that's not mine," and put it back.
If it still feels wrong to you, I think the usual paladin atonement thing would be to donate back the money to a temple as soon as you have the means to do so. NWN doesn't really have a mechanic to do that, though. You could roleplay "donation" by dropping an item of equal value on the ground near a priest, I guess. I think you said you did that with cursed items in Baldur's Gate, rather than selling them to a merchant for the money.
EDIT: Oh, by the way, even with my careful attempts at organization, I've occasionally gotten my screenshots posted out of order, too, and had to go back and try to repair it in an edit. So I understand how that happens. It's usually not that hard to figure out what order the poster intended, though. Mistakes happen. It's not easy to create these reports.
EDIT #2: Power Attack is a mode that can be turned on, and it stays on until you deactivate it. So it is useful for fights with much weaker creatures. It makes those fights get finished faster. It's also good for speeding up bashing chests without a rogue to open them. A lot of warrior characters insist on having it as a basic ability of the warrior classes. So, even though I don't much care for it, I don't mean to talk it down too much. You can keep it activated permanently if you can afford the BAB loss.
@sarevok57 , Thanks for the tip about the helmet at the wizard merchant. I haven't wanted to even try to look at what she has, because she takes a crafting reagent at random every time you look at her wares (I think it's random - I don't remember being given a choice which reagent from my pack to give to her), and I'm holding on to a piece of adamantite from Chapter One that I don't want her to take, in case the crafting guys in Luskan or in Chapter Three can make me something good out of it.)
Edit: I've just read your edit. Forgot that Power Attack is a combat mode. But in one of my first attempts that all ended in the Peninsula District I could never hit anyone at level 3 with the penalty to attack rolls.
you get to decide what to give her, and i dont even think adamantine is even an option, from what i remember you can give her:
quartz
fenberry
fairy dust
monster parts like; bodak tooth, salamander tongue, fire beetle belly, rakshasa eye ect
so usually i will just give her a quartz or fenberry since those things are literally EVERYWHERE in this chapter
and unfortunately no one in luskan will craft ya sweet stuff ( as far as i know ) since there was no option for them to say so/place said items on
i just finished luskan this morning and im right at the beginning of the host tower
The fight began with three (!) lizardman sorcerers. Within rounds, I had been Fireballed and nearly Magic Missiled to death. I desperately went for a healing pack, and if they got off another volley of spells before I could use it, I would be dead. The first one healed me to half health just as the second spell volley went off. I used a second one, then a third one, before I was healed to full health and felt safe enough to start swinging again. I may have taken a couple of dire boar hits in there, too. Boy, these guys really love their Fireballs! If I didn't have my Helm's Ring of Elemental Resistance, I don't think I would have survived.
Here's the boss lizardman, hiding back in the next chamber. He opened with Mage Armor. One of his minions had Dispelled my Protection from Evil, so I may be in trouble if he starts using mind-affecting spells.
He wants to surrender, and he casts one final spell so I can understand his language. Of course I honorably accept the surrender, and he tells me much information about where his people came from and about what is happening here. (None of that information is in this picture.)
Treachery!
Sigh. More Fireballs. I've never met lizard people so fond of fire.
Yet another Fireball. It would be the last spell he ever tried to cast. He didn't get to finish this one, poor chap.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Act One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
In the Neverwinter Wood, this elven ranger who is one of the escapees attacks you and tries to kill you. After he surrenders (I forgot to click "Stand Your Ground" on Tomi, and Tomi almost finished him! Careful!), he tells you his story, and my judgement was that I would let him go immediately, no need for him to mutilate himself. The stupid writers do not give you any such option. He says he wants them to think he is dead so he can disappear into the wilderness, and he offers you his ear.
Again, I would not do that. I had to be the one to cut it off with an arrow tip that he himself provided. I had to imagine that he knew a plant nearby with heavy anesthetic properties before I could imagine doing it.
The only other option given was to say "No, you die," and kill him.
Since letting him go, which was what I really wanted to do, was not given as an option, I thought about just hitting "escape" at that point to shut down the conversation and hope he would just stay there with a "blue circle". I decided to trust the writers (mistake) and figured that maybe he really wanted his ear turned in so they would stop sending bounty hunters after him.
The game drifted my alignment ten points toward evil!
Wow, that really stung. I thought about taking a reload, but I thought doing that would violate the spirit of this challenge. I had my "good" score to 100, and the hit took it down to 90. It would have to go all the way down to 69 through a continuous series of evil acts before my alignment would change to Lawful Neutral and I would fall.
Here's the dialogue with the elf:
So, that left kind of a bad taste in my mouth. I won't judge the whole game on one badly written encounter though, since I know these kinds of things are few and far between.
@Arvia, would you have made the same decision, or would you have killed him, or would you have tried to escape from the conversation (kind of cheating, but I almost did it, because I had a feeling it was going to end badly, and it was making me choose between two evils with no good choice.) And, if you would have made the same choice, would you have accepted the 10 point hit to your goodness, or would you have reloaded?
I feel bad for you.
It's horribly unfair to give you an "evil" shift for this choice. I would have understood a shift on the lawful-chaotic axis, but evil?!
So, killing him would have been "good"?
It's difficult to say for certain what I would have done, because I know the outcome now.
I know for certain that I wouldn't have killed him after hearing his sad story. So, the game only leaves you the option to take his ear, and it shifts you 10 points to evil to spare his life, while helping all those people in the past only gave you 3 points towards good all the time, and your counter would be at around 120 if it went beyond 100.
You must be very frustrated with the game taking charge of your character this way and then punishing you.
I don't know if I would have reloaded. If you remember my BG run, I had taken 3 reloads there because of bad scripting/bugs making me kill people I didn't want to kill. Tenya, and that mage with the NPC Project demon. In the end, I had to accept the loss of 10 reputation, which was severe.
In this case with the ranger, I would probably have asked your opinion. Knowing what I know now, I will probably avoid this encounter.
In the end, 90 good points is still more than what you started with at the academy. If I imagine this situation in real life, I would definitely choose mercy over justice, take his ear (also because I know very well how to numb pain and stop bleeding ?), let him go and accept the consequences, i.e. being judged badly for not killing him.
What was the evil act here? Mutilating him, or helping an escaped criminal? I would be angry and frustrated at the result, but I might have accepted the outcome, I'm not sure. I'm watching from the outside now, so it's different. I might have shouted "Unfair! Badly written!" and reloaded in the same situation. That's more likely. But I would have asked myself if I shouldn't have.
But if I had reloaded, I would have decided to avoid him completely, not to go and kill him.
Whatever you decide, choose what makes you feel better, and not what "violates the spirit of the challenge". Your challenge, your rules. Minimal/no-reload with a lawful good conscience in roleplaying and real life is complicated, and whoever wrote that dialogue has strange ideas about alignment. If at all, it should have affected the lawful points, not the good vs evil.
I'm sorry I can't give you a clearer answer. Do what feels right.
If you're in the habit of exploring maps thoroughly, I'm not sure the encounter is avoidable unless you know right where it is. I've done runs where I refused to even talk to the bounty master, and I still had to deal with the scenarios when I ran into the escapees during exploration and other quests.
Anyway, thank you very much for your thoughtful reply.
The fight with the dreaded queen spider. These horrible creatures of the dark must have been created by Llolth herself. At maturity, they are covered with a tough Stoneskin that makes them nearly invulnerable to all weapons.
(I think I'll take a cue from @Arvia and put most of the comments about this fight into one big spoiler tag, so that I don't have to keep typing the spoiler commands over and over.)
I did not know this: Getting webbed completely removes your dexterity bonus, even though you can still fight, although you can't move. I had drank a Potion of Barkskin, but I still only had AC 29 until that Web went away, because of the dexterity loss. It would be even more damaging for a dexterity-based character of any kind.
The way the game notifies you of Stoneskin is bogus. You absolutely *can* damage with your currently equipped weapon. Just watch the "Damage reduction X, Y damage remaining message."
Oh dear. Deadly poisoning number one. I read a Neutralize Poison scroll I had been saving for just this kind of encounter. Neutralize Poison cures the poison *and* removes the ability score damage in a single cast. They are worth almost 500 gold each, though. An expensive resource use!
I decided to drink a precious Potion of Speed. It turned out it only lasted three rounds. That's an awfully short duration for such an expensive potion.
Her Stoneskin is finally down, but she's barely injured.
Injured.
Nine Hells!
Thank Torm!
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Act One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
my suggestion would be buying that amulet ( not the lesser one since it doesnt give the level drain/ability drain immunity ) because eventually you will be fighting shadow fiends, and even for my OP kicking ass and taking names character, shadows fiends would be a serious problem if it wasn't for that necklace
so just a heads up for ya guys so you dont have any unnecessary respawns
I was thinking about buying that amulet next. I know I will be fighting vampire lords in my not too distant future. As for Potions of Heal, I don't like them until near max level, because that cost is exorbitant for a leveling character with high Heal skill. I have one right now that dropped somewhere, but I almost never buy the things. Judicious use of Healing Kits together with maxed Heal skill is much more economical, and there are no attacks of opportunity while using one. (That's kind of bogus, I know, but that's the game.)
******************************
While continuing to explore the woods, we stumbled across a cave littered with the bodies of dead men. In the distance, I saw the most gigantic dire bear I've ever seen. I knew we should probably leave, as I really didn't want to kill that magnificent beast. It was surely blessed of Silvanus, a god I respect deeply alongside my patron God, Torm.
If it was hunting and killing people, as it appeared, we would have no choice but to eventually hunt it down. But, what if all these dead men had been trying to kill an innocent beast of the forest for trophy, sport, and fur? I decided to try to sneak in a bit further to find clues on the dead men about how they had died. That was foolish of me. The bear saw me and attacked.
I might have killed it in self-defense, but I decided to run out of the cave, or try to, hoping it wouldn't follow. However, Tomi got stuck in the transition, and I went into a kind of panic, worrying about how such a beast could likely kill him in two or three strikes, if not a single bite. There was no way I could get Tomi away from the bear's jaws of death without either killing the bear, (and then, I was low enough on healing supplies that I wasn't even remotely confident that I could defeat the ancient dire bear myself, especially if I spent my last healing supplies in a futile attempt to save Tomi), or being killed myself. I hit the Stone of Recall.
We will not come back to this cave unless we are told by people that this specific venerable dire bear is hunting people.
I finally had gathered enough treasure as spoils of war to trade for the Belt of Guiding Light that I knew would save us against the Death Magic we would surely eventually face while fighting the Cult of the Eye.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Act One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
The blue cloak gives me large bonuses to my Lay on Hands and Turn Undead. The white cloak, which will not show up as additional protection in our character screen, will raise our AC from the 30 that appears in the character screen to AC 33 against any evil creature. Since I rarely use my paladin abilities based on charisma, I have decided to wear the white cloak for now. I don't want to sell that blue cloak just yet, though. I think I will fold it and hang on to it.
Another beautiful sunset in Faerun.
@Arvia , If you want me to stop posting truly spoilerish spoilers like that dialogue with Stirge the Baby-Killer, please tell me.
I have to eat some supper and get to bed!
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 1 (final boss of Chapter One)
Tomi Respawns: 3
@sarevok57 , thanks for all the good advices about useful items. The prices make me swallow, I hope gold will be easier to earn in chapter two, even without being a genocidal barbarian ?
I see your paladin still remembers being a druid in his last life
Please don't misunderstand this as judgemental or critical, but I would like to understand how you make those decisions. You fought spiders and dire boars without trouble, felt sorry for having to fight the crazed deer, and avoided killing the dire bear. Where's the difference between those? Apart from our disgust/fear of spiders, is there any in-game lore that suggests they are unnatural? I know they are kind of sacred to drow, but they're still natural predators, no more evil or dangerous than the bear, or the dire boars. They can't go against their nature, so I wonder what makes you choose which kind of animal you respect and consider worthy of protection, and which kind doesn't make you regret killing.
I really hope you don't misunderstand me and feel offended by this question, it's purely philosophical, I'm not judging. I share your disgust of spiders, especially the ones the size of a horse, and I like big furry creatures like bears much more, but I find it interesting to reflect on the decision to spare the dire bear. If it had been a lizard, or a snake, or a giant bug, would you have killed it or also thought "maybe it only killed those men in self-defense, I'm going to escape"?
I've had this discussion with people who were disgusted and shocked at the idea of eating horse meat, or who judged other cultures who eat dog meat, but a cow or a pig didn't seem to deserve the same "cute friend" label for them. I find it interesting how this is influenced by culture and personal experience.
I didn't consider the dialogue with Stirge a spoiler, please continue posting whatever you like. As long as you don't mention spoilers like telling me that a person I will regularly talk to will turn out to be the evil endgame boss (like a certain person in ToB), I'm okay with story details. It's more interesting to read those reports if they contain story elements and information along with the battles.
On a phone screen (I'm still at work) without zooming in, in the last screenshot with the beautiful sunset, Todangelus looks a bit like Batman
I will install those skyboxes too, when (or if) I have the chance to continue playing this weekend, although I probably won't see the daylight during the finale of chapter 1.
I don't like to kill bears when it can be avoided. I would have fought the bear if it was a man-eater, or in self-defense, once it attacked us. I just don't deliberately hunt them down. They always attack if you get too close, because that's their nature. Once I've been spotted by a bear and attacked, though, I'm not going to just stand there and not defend myself.
But in this case, it went after Tomi, who had little chance to survive. I needed to get Tomi out of there.
When wild predators begin to prey on people, the people have no choice but to kill them. If a village elder or druid somewhere in the woods told me a giant bear was attacking and eating people and children, I would hunt down the bear. There would be no choice.
But very rarely do natural predators attack people for food. That usually means the animal is sick, can't find other food, is trying to defend its young or its territory, is acting in self-defense, or in the world of D&D, has been corrupted by some kind of magic.
I don't consider spiders the size of horses to be in any way natural creatures. Natural spiders are tiny arachnids who prey on equally small insects, can be beneficial to the ecosystem, and rarely come into conflict with people. D&D giant spiders, wherever they're found, are always surrounded by web cocoons containing the remains of people they've eaten. Every once in a while, you can cut open one and rescue a survivor, who was being held alive in storage to be eaten soon. Any "animal" that preys on people, especially so horribly, has to be killed.
The queen spider I just killed was covered in a magical Stoneskin, with heavy rocks magically spinning around her in circles. Being a "queen" spider implies that she was giving birth to more giant spiders to kill more people. I had just killed at least two dozen of her "children", found the remains of their victims, and rescued one victim alive. These are monsters, not natural creatures.
And the explanation about spiders makes sense, too. The size might not be an excuse, but Stoneskins don't sound natural, even in Faerun.
I have finished chapter one (with two more personal respawns
(Contains huge spoilers for chapter one finale)
And even Desther could have died in the fight, or be beheaded, if a public execution was necessary, instead of being burned at the stake. That was cruel. I know he was a traitor and mass murderer, and death penalty would be normal in medieval-like fantasy settings, but it's still a horrible way to die.
We've been asked to question the witch Setara in regards to the disappearance of several local druids, and about what might be wrong in the Neverwinter Woods. She is both a person of interest, and a suspect. I take none of her belongings while I'm here.
When we entered her home, we were attacked by powerful guards, some neutral elementals and golems, but also many evil imps and invisible stalkers.
When I saw the flesh golem, I knew how dangerous it could be. I had just finished off an air elemental, and I was being attacked at the same time by an invisible stalker. I attacked the golem as the bigger threat. It got me with a critical hit, and I tried to go for a healing pack, knowing the next blow would be fatal. It got a second critical hit while I was trying to heal. Goodbye, cruel world.
Oh, hello, Mr. Priest of Tyr.
I had switched to my blue cloak of charisma +5 to get a better Lay on Hands, thinking I was fighting mostly neutral creatures. I'm not sure if the flesh golem counts as evil, such that my cloak of Protection from Evil +5 might have given me an additional 3 AC against it. I think all golems are neutral.
It wouldn't have helped if I'd tried to drink my Potion of Heal instead of using a healing kit, because the fatal blow would still have landed before the potion effect.
I may be right back in a few minutes to update this post with more respawns if the dice go against me again with this flesh golem. Maybe I'll try drinking some more potions this time, at least Barkskin and Aid.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 (final boss of Act One, Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 3
Here's part of the initial conversation with the witch. I won't spoil things by revealing too much of it. There's evidence she may have been doing something pretty evil, but since she was cooperating, I didn't try to kill her for it, and she promised she wouldn't do it again. I'll be curious to see if any other players make a different decision, and why.
She told us we could take a book from her library to the southeast of where we were standing that would help us in our quest, but when we went in there, there was an uninjured flesh golem that attacked. I don't know if it's the same one as before or a different one. I think it might have been a scripting problem in the game rather than that the witch was trying to trick us to our deaths (maybe she was), but luckily I had already set free the prisoner she was holding. (If I hadn't, I would have had no choice but to fight the golem.)
As it was, I didn't need that book, as I had found the same information elsewhere, and I was in no mood to fight that golem again, plus it was going for Tomi, so I hit the portal stone.
I dread the final boss fight of this area that is coming up. If it kills me, I may need a reload, because I'm not sure if I can respawn from where this is going to be.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 (final boss of Act One, Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 3