more good items if needed in chapter 2: the armor/weapon shop.... forget the name, sells belts that give 20 damage reduction against the 3 damage types, they are fairly expensive, ( around 25 000 - 30 000 ) but sometimes buying the brawlers belt is a must vs some of those hard hitting enemies that use crushing damage
although, at higher levels you will sometimes find them as treasure, but for no reloads getting them sooner than later might help
@Arvia at the end of chapter 2 i finished at level 15 with 400 -500k in money with nothing to buy, and that is after buying over 40 heal potions
We have cured the Spirit of Neverwinter Wood, and have discovered much valuable information about the Cult of the Eye and their plans.
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This fight is really, really hard, and has mechanical complications that can be very frustrating.
It kept summoning shadow fiends. I kept turning them. It looked like either my Turn Undead was able to destroy one on a high roll, or else the Spirit would unsummon a turned one and re-summon a new one. I think it was able to do that at least three times. The third, or maybe it was the fourth time I turned it, it ran away and the Spirit didn't summon another one, so I could focus on the Spirit.
Unfortunately, the turned shadow fiend ran back to where I had Tomi waiting, and pulled him into the fight. Before I realized that he had gone into attack mode from the rear because of the shadow fiend, he had run past the shadow fiend and up to the Spirit to "help" me. Of course, the Spirit immediately switched targets and began to pommel Tomi to death. I used many healing kits on Tomi, and was worried about our supply, but I couldn't keep up with the massive damage being done to poor Tomi. I think the thing only needed to roll about a "2" to hit him, and it has at least four attacks per round.
It also hits enemies with Magic Missile, Strength Drain, and Cause Wounds. It tried something with negative energy damage that I made a Will save against - I shudder to think what it was trying to do with that spell. I've also seen it cast Ice Storm, but it didn't this time.
Despite all those magic attacks, it is most deadly in its Melee.
Back to Tomi - I was worried about more than his dying, and I *really* wished he hadn't gotten pulled up into the fight. You have to find a cure for the Spirit's madness. I had the cure, but you can't even start talking to it about taking the cure until you have it down to X hit points. When it gets to "Near Death", it is *still* nowhere near the X hit points. The thing has dragon-level hit points. You won't know until it stops fighting and a message pops up that says "The Spirit Looks Confused".
If Tomi hits it at that exact moment, or sometimes even your own avatar in mid-attack, before you can stop the attack, Tomi or you will kill it. If you kill this Spirit, if I recall correctly, you get a *lot* of evil points. I think it's a fairly badly designed encounter mechanically, because there's too much that can go wrong with the scripting, and against player intentions or control.
I'm showing the beginning of the dialogue with the Spirit, but not most of it, because it reveals a lot of information about the main story once it's been cured.
One of the ways you can make atonement for something as a paladin (or any other character) is to turn down a reward. I told Aawil the archdruid, upon reporting to him that the Spirit of the Wood was cured, to give the 500 gold he was going to give me to the poor instead. That gave me 7 good points, and got me back up to 100 points good.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 (Final boss of Act One, Setara's golem)
Tomi Respawns: 4
@sarevok57 , Thanks for the tips again, but there is no way a character roleplaying lawful good ethics is going to get anywhere near that much money. There are entire areas of the chapter we probably won't do. I won't go into Wanev's cottage or his mage tower, because the troll at the tower gate is friendly, and I have no legitimate reason to ever go in there or into his closed and locked cottage.
I don't take a single thing from the house of Setara the witch, including the book that Eltoora the wizard merchant wants me to steal from her. Sometimes I turn down cash rewards if my goodness has fallen below 100 points for any reason.
We will not be able to complete the quest to steal 3 gems for the elf in the tavern. Setara gave me hers freely, but I know Wanev has one, and I'm not even going to meet Wanev, because he never comes out of his tower. Even if I did, I wouldn't steal the gem from him, and I certainly wouldn't kill him for it.
We will not be able to complete the quests to get the books for Eltoora the wizard merchant, because some of them have to be stolen. We might get one or two of them from evil creatures.
I'm worried about ever having enough money just to get the necklace that protects from level drain and the Boots of Hardiness +2. I'm having my doubts I will ever have enough money to get those items during this run. And not having them leads to more healing supply and potion use, and those have to be bought.
Also, I have to wonder if you might be saving lots of gold by reloading, and thereby restoring whatever consumable resources you had used leading up to the reload.
Luke: "Is the dark side stronger?"
Yoda: "No. Easier. More seductive. But once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny! Consume you, it will. As it did Obi-Wan's apprentice."
Luke: "Vader!"
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The cult is sending assassins after me now. This guy is really dangerous and tough. I drank Potions of Barkskin and Aid, and had a Bull's Strength spell cast. He caught me by surprise. I knew he was coming, but I started thinking about something else while running across the map, and oops, I ran right into him unbuffed. He can do sneak attacks while you use any consumable while in melee with him. I wound up using seven healing kits to get through this one fight. Ouch, my coin purse!
I got a Golden Circlet off of him, so I'm glad I didn't wind up buying one before.
Bran the werewolf. I had to kill a lot of normal wolves and some dire wolves to get back here. I thought about turning back, because I did *not* feel good about killing those wolves. It felt like I was invading their natural habitat. On the other hand, I knew it was night, and that werewolves often hang out with regular wolves, which they can dominate as though they were the alpha of the pack. My victory still felt hollow. I said a prayer of sorrow to Silvanus for all the beasts I had killed in order to save one lost human soul. I may need to turn down another reward to be given to the poor before I will feel better about this.
The restored Bran ran off and left a bunch of valuables sitting around. I decided he must have meant me to have his belongings as a reward for curing him, so I took them.
Sigh, this chapter is very trying for druids and any character who cares about animals. On the way to Charwood, I met Farmer Pete, ("Peter and the Wolf" joke), who wants me to slaughter a pack of dire wolves who have taken to preying on his cattle. I told him okay, but mostly because the only other response was flippant and rude. In a live tabletop game with a dungeon master, I would have asked him a lot more questions, and tried to ask why these wolves had taken to killing human livestock.
This same problem actually comes up frequently in real life, in states like Colorado, where ranchers and farmers often come into conflict with conservationists over coyotes and wolves who kill their livestock. I would actually feel better killing wolves in conflict with farmers if the wolves had started killing people and not just livestock. Maybe the farmers took their habitat and killed off all their natural prey. That's what often happens in real life.
I have so much bear and wolf blood on my hands now. Silvanus forgive me. I don't think I have the stomach to become known as "Todangelus Wolfslayer" or "Todangelus Wolfbane". I have such a bad feeling about this. I think I shall turn around and leave this quest undone. If it were a live roleplaying session, I'd want to go back and talk to the druids of Neverwinter Wood about this, and see if they can use Speak with Animals and negotiate a peaceful resolution between human and wolf.
I know that a ranger or a druid gets an opportunity to have the pack leader surrender and talk - She is angry because a ranger used her as an animal companion, ordered her into battle, and then ran, leaving her for dead. She survived, and founded her own pack. But you still have to kill many, many wolves to get to her and get the dialogue, and then you have to pass a Persuade check or you still have to kill her. A druid invested in Animal Empathy and other skills might not have enough Persuade ranks to make that check, and you can still always roll a one.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 (Final boss of Act One, Setara's Golem)
Tomi Respawns: 4
After killing another group of cult assassins at the standing stones outside Charwood, we made level 10.
I got a new second level spell slot and filled it with Aid.
(I sure do wish Endurance were a paladin spell. Clerics get it, why not paladins? I guess the developers thought clerics needed the spell to use it to compensate for being d8 instead of d10 for hit points. I don't agree with that, because that's just one of the dozens of reasons clerics are a strong class and paladins are a weak class. As I've said before, lawful good clerics make way better paladins, mechanically, than actual paladins.)
I did an experiment and discovered that Bless and Aid stack with each other for attack bonuses. So, I decided to try having two Bless, a Bull's Strength, and an Aid in my spellbook for now.
Bull's Strength lasts "one hour/level", and both Aid and Bless last "one turn/level". In practice, one of those things is twice the other. So, two of Aid or Bless will last as long as one Bull's Strength. When Bless or Aid wear off, I know that I have half of Bull's Strength's duration left. Casting another Bless or Aid would fill out the rest of the duration of Bull's Strength if calling for a rest were inconvenient or impossible.
Tomi got a gear upgrade when I made Level 10. Now he has a blue suit of Leather Armor +2 instead of just Leather Armor +1. His weapon also got upgraded to +2.
You know, there's something I haven't tried. If you talk to Tomi and select "I want to change your tactics", he can be switched to using a bow. He can also be switched to following at a greater distance. Sneak attacks work with bows. I think I might try it to see if the poor little guy can start fighting at least a little without getting pulled into combat and killed. The trouble is, I don't think his AI is smart enough to do it effectively, and when he stands there attacking in melee with a bow, he takes attacks of opportunity for every shot, and fights at a -4 penalty. I'll try it a little and report back on how that goes, although I bet his respawn counter will be going up to 5 soon. I'll let everyone know how it goes.
you actually dont need to kill wanev to get his gem, he does go hostile when he sees you, but then he does the good ol' surrenderoo on ya and asks if you can take care of his devilish servant he will give you the gem
and its funny, i barely if ever use consumables, even though my inventory 6 slot if full of 'em, realistically the last time i had to do a reload was somewhere in chapter 1 when i was around level 5 or 6
after that point the only time i reloaded after a fight was with the swords in the haleuth tomb, because of path finding issues my guy did a derp a derp
and the second reload was when i tried taking on the balor in the charwood castle, unfortunately his DR was too high and i wasn't using a two handed weapon, so i couldn't take him out, i have before, but only when im doing a dragon disciple using a scythe
other than that, my guy is so cool for school that not only do i not have to reload fights i barely if ever use consumables, perhaps a potion of heal here, or there maybe
its strange actually, the only time i even "buffed up" for a fight was the attempt against charwood balor, even in chapter one fighting the big bad end boss, i didnt use any buff potions or nothing and i won with relative ease and this is still on the hardest difficulty
i think what really helps with the gold pieces is that the higher level you are, the better your random treasures are, and once you hit around level 12 or 13 it really starts to scale up fast
one problem with DnD is, leveling up is incredibly strong, especially when you start mixing classes/getting prestige classes going your power scales up quick
this is one of the main reasons why you can only multi class into 3 classes in NWN, and probably why a lot of servers cap or nerf multi classing, because it is a hugely broken system, NWN 2 shines with this brokeness by allowing you to do 4 classes holy moly, but even in this run with the fighter/rogue/barbarian which isn't all that amazing when it comes to multiclassing power housing, its still enough to wreck some serious shop
@sarevok57 , Okay, thanks for all the insights. I'm still wondering if it would be the same story if you were playing Lawful Good instead of Chaotic Evil, and if you were roleplaying in the first place instead of powergaming your build and playing NWN as though it were Diablo. I'm open to further discussion about it, as a Lawful Good player trying to understand a Chaotic Evil player, and why our perspectives on gear and gold are so different.
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Well, well, the plot thickens. While further exploring the farmer map, I found another farmer family with a son, and he is distraught over a brooch that he gave to Pete's daughter Constance, trying to woo her. All I had to do was give her 1,000 gold pieces for the brooch, and she was ecstatic, saying her father will now be able to buy more cattle than the wolves will ever be able to eat.
I know from past plays that it is possible to convince the young man and the young woman that they are actually in love with each other, but that's more of a Chaotic Good-Chaotic Neutral "Romance is beautiful, romance is everything" sort of thing to do, and I have a much more practical mindset than that. Since I've now made Farmer Pete and his family wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, I think they will be less likely to want to destroy all the wolves. I think they were exaggerating the threat of the wolves, based on their poverty, and I just solved their poverty problem.
Apparently the boy and his father are quite wealthy. The boy offered to compensate me 650 gold for the returned brooch. I wanted to say no, keep it, but the game didn't give me that option this time. I think these people have a hard enough life because of the realities of needing money and resources, and I want my 1,000 gold to enrich their economy enough that they don't feel like they have to cause wolves to go extinct to protect their livelihood, if I can.
I feel pretty good about this resolution of this map, although, of course, my way gave me the least experience and gold I could have possibly wound up with.
At last, the Amulet of Health is mine! (immunity to negative energy level and stat drain). Wearing it is not without cost. I had to give up my Amulet of Natural Armor +2, reducing my armor before buffs to a dismal 28. In hard fights, I can make up for that by staying stocked on Potions of Barkskins from the druids, though. Sigh, yet more expense against our meager income.
My Turn Undead is getting surprisingly good. (I have sold the white Cloak of Protection from Evil +5 in favor of always wearing my blue Nymph Cloak +5). In this picture, I have destroyed two skeletons, a skeleton mage, and a skeleton priest with a single cast of Turn Undead. I always love making those undead abominations explode in the Light! That's why I still want to at some point run a cleric through this game with maximum Turn Undead skills. I want to see just how high up the undead hierarchy such a cleric can destroy powerful undead instantly, just by pulling out his holy symbol and shouting "Turn Undead!"
In this evil crypt, Tomi saved my life with his Shortbow +2. Or at least, he killed the undead boss Mummy Lord where I couldn't even damage it, without our having to use the portal stone out of there. I don't know if this was a slashing damage immunity thing, but I think it's more likely it was a "need +2 weapon to damage" thing. If there's anywhere at this point in the chapter I could have obtained a +2 weapon, I don't know about it.
This was a very satisfying synergy between Tomi and me. The Mummy Lord could not get past me, and as a paladin, I was immune to its Fear aura. It also couldn't hit AC 28 very well...I only took two or three hits during the entire fight, and its melee damage wasn't very high. Tomi "nickel and dimed" the thing to death with his +2 arrows, while I was locked in a stalemate with the evil monster. I couldn't have done a thing other than hold it off, but Tomi was able to kill it with his +2 shortbow, without getting anywhere near it and taking any damage or succumbing to Fear. Well done, my halfling friend!
Level: 10
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 ("D", Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 4
@BelgarathMTH , condolences on your respawn because of that golem, but big congratulations on reaching level 10 and getting even better equipment! Also, it's cool that Tomi gets better, too. I didn't think of using him with ranged weapons (I had seen the option), because it would be even more difficult to keep an eye on him (I've kept him out of most fights now, too), but maybe a few situations would allow it.
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This report contains major spoilers about the finale of chapter 1. I will try to keep most of the comments together with the pictures in spoiler tags, so anyone who has not played NWN yet shouldn't open them. I know few people read those kinds of reports, but you never know.
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Aribeth kept the portal open and we went in, arriving somewhere in the countryside. A man told us where we were and where the person we were searching for had gone, so we walked straight ahead to the front gate. A "Strange Visage" with a rather harsh manner appeared out of thin air and gave us a cryptic speech. We didn't learn much, but the man we are following seems to be just a minor pawn in a huge plot, and out of favor with his superiors, too. Wonderful perspective...
The courtyard was swarmed with undead, several of them invisible. Yay.
At least I seem to be able to hit them. Oh no, where is Tomi?
Targeted by magic missiles or something. I'd better get closer to him. I only see two cursed monks (the invisible guys) when I highlight with tab, but there might have been more.
I was caught in the web spell on my way to Tomi. Fortunately it's not as bad as in BG. I can't move, and it takes away all dexterity based AC bonus (which is not much in my case), but I can hit.
Tomi was down to "Badly Wounded" when I finally reached him, fighting invisible guys, and I used a healing kit on him. 28 HP healed was very good, but the problem is that I have to choose a target to attack again after healing, and I couldn't do that with invisible enemies. I hoped that the AI would kick in again after they hit me. But they didn't hit me, and I just stood there in agony, watching helplessly how Tomi fought them. And even when they hit me, my AI didn't make me hit back. I know I had been fighting them before, so it was not only the invisibility.
At long last, I started to hit back. Thank Tyr.
Maybe I'm going to pick Blind Fight after all. There were going to be more invisible undead, but most of them didn't stay invisible all the time, only concealed or something, and I could usually attack them.
There was a side entrance to the building, but I chose the front door.
There was an altar inside, with four things called Guardian Armor standing around in the corners. When we opened the door from the entrance hall to the corridor, they turned hostile and attacked us.
They were very, very hard to hit, and they hit very hard, dual-wielding with many attacks per round and dealing heavy damage. Keeping Tomi healthy and me at least at half my HP was difficult. Two healing kits and Lay on Hands used, only two healing kits left, and only two out of four Guardian Armors were Barely Injured, the other two Uninjured. We ran for the door to the hallway and slammed it shut behind us.
Okay, two had managed to follow us, but that's better than 4. I had to use potions to keep us alive, I didn't want to lose my last two healing kits yet.
With the two of them destroyed, I ordered Tomi to wait a few steps away until I called him. Then I took a deep breath and opened the door. (I could have left them there, but I didn't know if we needed an escape route in the future and didn't want to run into them then).
Uuuuh. Very strong and tough, and I hope I didn't anger Helm by destroying them. I didn't do anything than opening the door, so maybe they were just programmed by magic, not by Helm himself, and the False Helmites were using them. Anyway, nothing I can do about this now.
Notice that they gave different amounts of XP, 317 vs 215, so some of them were more difficult than the others. We went outside into the already secured courtyard, found a quiet corner and rested for a bit. it seemed risky, but proceeding without restoring our health, or using our last healing supplies, seemed much more dangerous. Then we decided to explore the side entrance. It was a storage area where we found some minor loot and some undead, especially in the small rooms. I decided to keep to the trick of opening a door, drawing one out and shutting it again. Skeletons weren't smart enough to open doors, not even their clerics or mages. But there were exceptions.
Wraiths are smart! They don't just drift through doors, they thoughtfully open them for their allies to follow!
I saved against its ugly Negative Energy, so it was only a minor nuisance.
Speaking of minor nuisances, I sensed a great disturbance in the Force when I met this one, who called himself "a minor evil". I disagree.
Never will I release him. But he's right, someone else might. What could I do, fight him?
Probably a very bad idea. And who knows, maybe he can't be killed in that containment field, or maybe trying to might set him free. I will leave him there for the moment, but I will have to find a solution, and soon.
I was certainly not going to use this book (I didn't understand at first that it can also be used to banish him again. I thought the banishing referred to the containment that was already on him, and was afraid to destroy that and set the demon free if I tried to use the altar), but I took it with me so that others couldn't find and use it, and maybe I would find a solution later.
Continuing to explore the corriders led me to two bigger halls filled with all kinds of undead (I kept Tomi always a room behind me). Zombie Lords, Zombie Warriors, Ghoul Lords, Skeleton Mages, usual zombies...
It was very useful to let them run (okay, in some cases lurch) close enough while fighting one or two of them and then Turn Undead. They were too strong to explode with my small charisma bonus, but several of them were always affected by it, wandering away in fear, so I could keep them off my back this way and focus on killing the stronger, unaffected ones first.
Only, some of them have ugly abilities to drain whatever it was they drained, I forgot to look. Probably lowered my attack bonus or saving throws or whatever. I find it very difficult to remember all the status effect icons. Anyway, it didn't affect me very much, whatever it was.
Beating those undead made me reach level 7. I rolled 9 HP, plus the constitution bonus from the boots, so that I have 72 HP now. I'm not sure if Toughness will still be worth it once I can pick another feat, or if I go for Blind Fight or that Improved Critical: Longsword. Anyway, I'm glad I have reached level 7 before the final fight of chapter 1.
I didn't know if the status effects would eventually wear off, but they didn't seem to affect me much, so I proceeded.
This one was a bit annoying, he was concealed or something and I had to target him several times before I could hit him, but I saved against his spells.
He was protecting that trapped bookcase, it seems. I called Tomi to disarm it and found another book, to restore the Guardian of this place once the evil presence was banished. That gave me the courage to go back to the altar and use that black grimoire, and afterwards the book that I had found here.
Very nice. And Helm's avatar didn't lose a single word about the Guardian Armors that I had destroyed, so I guess they hadn't been his in the first place. Now, I was wearing a Ring of Protection +1 together with a Ring of Cyan for light. I would have to walk around in the dark to use this wonderful ring. But not for long.
Perfect. Charisma 15 didn't help me anyway, so I changed the purple Nymph Cloak for the green Cloak of Protection +1 and could wear the Ring of Elemental Resistance and the ring that gave light.
Now that we had cleared the first floor, I decided to go to the basement because I knew there was someone I would like to meet.
Oh little boy. I wish I could take you to a safe place, but I'm going to make this a safe place again, I promise. Ilmater protect you, little Johnny.
I sold him the stuff that I didn't need anymore and stocked up on potions and healing kits. I couldn't afford the Bag of Holding yet. Then I went to explore the prison cells behind the corner and killed all the undead lurking there (some Zombie Warriors and one Zombie Lord), so that the boy wouldn't have to be frightened. I talked to Dumal, who told us about the Cult of the Eye and their worshipping of the "Old Ones", whoever those might be. It didn't sound good.
There was also a half-orc called Yari the Knife, who had participated in the slaughter here and seemed to be proud of it. I had the chance to lock this cell forever, but he seemed so mad and evil that I decided it was too risky if he ever got out, and there was still the little boy in the next room. I opened the cell and killed him before he could run away.
Then I did something really, really stupid. I thought "How bad could it possibly be, with 15 Elemental Resistance and 72 HP?"
I just lost 350 XP for respawning, because I tried to open a chest with scorch marks on the floor. I had been warned and had left those chests alone several times. Death by overconfidence. Typical. Thank you, Tyr, for teaching me a lesson in humility.
The chest contained a Sash of Shimmering, like the one I was wearing. That was *not* worth dying for. Nothing material ever is.
Now, time to go upstairs. This was a sad encounter:
Poor Fenthick, poor Aribeth. He had meant well and been fooled and blinded. He is not a traitor in my eyes, he is a man who always tried to see the goodness in others, and Desther had taken advantage of that. I feel very, very sorry for him and wish I could speak up for him somehow. But he blames himself and won't say a single word to defend himself when he has to face judgement, I'm convinced of this.
Time to face the real traitor, although I have learned already that he's not the mastermind behind this whole scheme, either.
@BelgarathMTH , I really, really should have re-read your report about this fight before going in. I was so nervous that I forgot almost everything important that you had mentioned.
I opened the door to the great hall, saw Desther surrounded by guardian creatures forming a kind of energy pentagram around him, and several undead. I slammed the door shut again and used every buffing possibility that I had.
I think I used Bless as a spell and not from a potion, and then I took Potion of Barkskin, Endurance, Aid, Bull's Strength, Speed and Clarity (I had remembered about the Hold spells, at least).
Mistake number one was using all those things now. Mistake number two, (due to my nervousness) I forgot that it was better to draw them out. Instead, I rushed in and ran to destroy the creatures that were protecting Desther with those energy beams or whatever between them. I had also forgotten that only casters need to worry about those.
Someone had dispelled all my precious protections *and* cursed me (and yes, I had been warned about that. I have no idea why my brain decided to shut down and make me run in without thinking). The first thing I did was to renew the Potion of Clarity, afraid of Hold spells.
I did remember that the Summoned Skeleton Chieftain was extremely dangerous, but my AC was lowered because of the web, all my stats were lowered because of the curse, and when I had to heal myself I had an unlucky roll and only healed 17 HP, and then he landed another hit on me and it was over.
That's a total of 700XP lost in Helm's Hold because of those two respawns. And at least one of them was completely unnecessary. Bad, very bad.
I was glad to have spares of several potions. I took Barkskin, Bless, Speed and Clarity again, possibly Aid, too (I can't tell from the status effect icons). I had kept Tomi out of the battle before, but now, after my respawn, he would get teleported right into the middle of it.
He got caught in Desther's Hold spell. I managed to keep several of the minor undead (who still could have killed him easily) away with Turn Undead, so that I could focus on fighting Desther and occasionally jump back to keep Tomi healed in his little prison. Spring Attack helped me there, it's great that I don't provoke attacks of opportunity any more when I have to run around during a fight.
After the fight, with my prisoner safely secured, I wanted to go back to Johnny to give him the things that I had collected up here and get that Bag of Holding, but the door was blocked by some magic energy, probably to keep my prisoner from escaping. So, I took him back directly to face judgement.
Judgement came, for both of them, and it was horrible. I can only imagine how Aribeth must feel.
We will follow her to Port Llast to keep investigating the origin of the plague. I hope I will be able to talk to her.
Level: 7
Reloads: 0
Personal respawns: 7
Tomi respawns: 8
@BelgarathMTH i think with mummies, they have damage reduction and then after that they will take half damage once you beat that damage reduction, so it looks like that mummy in particular needed at least +2 weapons to beat its damage reduction? i noticed that crushing weapons work really well against mummies or at least undead in general, if you can i would keep a crushing weapon on hand just for undead baddies
so i finally beat the OC with my OP nitz guy, and after the final battle and killing all the baddies i could, i was just a mere 500 or so XP away from level 19, so with that, im going to say its impossible to hit level 20 in the OC unless you do some SERIOUSLY agonizing grind ( in the couple of spots where "infinite" enemies actually exist, and even with that i grinded enough skellies just to reach the next level and that was almost unbearable ) so with that, here are the screen shots of my dude i used ( i believe these were taken right before the last battle )
so with that, i started playing my other file ( i was playing 2 games at once ) and amazingly enough, this was a non genocide type game where i was playing a paladin/monk/champion of torm of all things in SoU
couple things i noticed about SoU is that this game is brutally difficult when you start at level 1, and you never get "strong" in this game, or it could just be because of my class set up and especially with the fact i had to start with 14 STR which really hurt thanks to being a paladin requiring so many stats,
although, with that said this game really likes paladins because it gives you all that fancy paladin gear in the elven crypt and you can get the holy avenger in the interlude which was really cool ( never used that weapon before)
but also another thing is that SoU does not like giving you the OP/cool items that the OC does, if it wasn't for my neato class set up my saves would be utter garbage because the only thing contributing basically is a ring of resistance +1,
and also, im a lot lower level than i anticipated in being, this is the furthest i have ever got in this game starting at level 1 and im about to head up to the second last area ( after depositing the 3 wind thingies ) and im only level 13, and im thinking at best the time i go to fight the last boss im going to be 14 at best ( i believe im about 9000 - 10000 XP away from next level ) so i wasnt aware this was such a low level game ( because i usually just import my OC character into this game and wreck havoc )
and money wise, dont have 100s of 1000s of gold this time, i bought as many potions of heal and healing kits +10 that i could before going to the second last area and i only have about 15 potions of heal/kits +10, so hopefully that will be enough
but yeah, SoU, damn hard game, but interesting, much shorter than the OC, with only a couple of unique items so far, i will finish the game.... later today i guess haha, and see if i can get some better items, i know whats coming up ahead based on a level 19/20/21 character, but not level 13 so this will be interesting for sure
@sarevok57 , I like how you keep your inventory so neat. Your character portrait reminds me of Darth Vader. Fitting, I guess, considering the alignment you were playing.
I know what you mean about early SoU being much harder than the OC. Actually, I think it's pretty hard all the way through, especially the fight with J'Nah and, if you fight him, Tymofarrar. (I usually manage to talk him down and get what I need - the mask and Deekin's doll - without fighting him.)
@Arvia , First, excellent report! Very exciting to read. You made my morning.
Thank you for taking the time to write such detailed descriptions of your battles. It's like watching you live stream your play session, because you write so well. And it's not even your native language, to boot. Your mastery of English language is amazing.
I've never had to fight those armors by the front doors before, and I'm not sure why. It's got to be that I never come in that way; I always take the back door in through the basement. They must be programmed to "attack whoever comes in the front door", and coming in from the inside door doesn't trigger their attack instructions. Congratulations on making it through that fight. Those things looked really hard!
Condolences on the two respawns. I think it's impressive that you still got through the final fight with only one respawn. Now, ahem, :wags finger: I *told* you not to open reinforced chests with scorch marks in front of them.
Great job, and congratulations on finishing Act One!
@Arvia , condolences on the unlucky drop. I've had two of those recently, from fights I knew could drop items I could really use, and instead I got useless items that weren't even for my class. I guess the random nature of some drops makes it all the more exciting when you get a good one.
You know, it was actually a good thing that I had to fight those Guardian Armors. With my respawn losses, I wouldn't have reached level 7 before the final fight otherwise.
Stupid random drops. I wanted that cloak. And I didn't get the large shield +3 from Derigab, either I really needed the weight reduction.
Edited: Yes, you *told* me about those chests, and I had always avoided them. To try to open that one was not a rational decision. It was just total lack of impulse control, nothing else. Like tanking the ogre south of the Friendly Arm Inn at level 1.
I know what you mean about early SoU being much harder than the OC. Actually, I think it's pretty hard all the way through, especially the fight with J'Nah and, if you fight him, Tymofarrar. (I usually manage to talk him down and get what I need - the mask and Deekin's doll - without fighting him.)
yup i 100% agree, the only time the game felt like it got a little easier was when i got the holy avenger, but then when chapter 2 started, holy poop, that chapter brings the hammer down,
the battle with the wind that has you go through the story books, sweet jeebus was that unreal ( and for some reason he had insane DR against the holy avenger lol...? )
and even just GETTING into the room with the books wowzers, 3 dust elementals and a bagillion ancient dust mephit thingies all using TOUCH attacks ( i despise touch attacks because that means no save ) that slow and stun you, ugh that was brutal
To the south of Port Llast, in the Charwood, we discovered an ancient castle that had been frozen in time by Lathander, awaiting someone who could judge a 200 year old crime involving one of Lathander's priests, one Quinn Jaerlat. Lathander himself did not feel he could judge impartially, as one of the suspects was his own beloved priest.
A solar had been left there to act as the Guardian. She judged me worthy to become "the Judge" of the crime, and I agreed. This crime involved two brothers, Quinn, and his brother Karlat. The castle was divided into two sections, one for each brother.
Quinn's half was overrun with undead. I did not feel guilty to take valuable things I found there, because everyone there had been dead for over 200 years. I'm not sure the valuables there were even real, but the healing supplies and other potions seemed to work well enough.
Karlat's half was overrun with demons. There was truly great evil here.
After collecting all the evidence and interviewing both brothers, as well as a balor demon lord named Belial, Lord of Fire, I judged Karlat to be guilty of the crime, and his brother Quinn to be innocent. The Guardian thanked me, the castle disappeared, the town outside disappeared, and I was rewarded with gold, gems, and a magic shield from a chest that was just suddenly sitting there at my feet. Sadly the shield I already had was better, but I was still grateful. Lathander is a god I respect very much, and he is allied with the Trinity, of which my Torm is a member.
**********************
I've been dreading seeing a bodak, and here it is. I've fought in this scenario before where there were more than one, but I was happy it was only one this time. That's because Tomi was defenseless against the death stare. Of course it ignored me at first and went straight for Tomi. I knew the dreaded death stare was coming, but hoped we'd kill it in time. We got it to half health, and I had to use several healer's kits on Tomi just to desperately try to keep him alive from the massive melee damage. Then came the anticipated death stare, and Tomi was gone.
If I hadn't made sure to have the Belt of Guiding Light before this point in the game, I would have been next.
I made the save on the next one, not that that would have made me feel any better if I'd just had to respawn and come back to this monstrosity.
And it's dead.
I went ahead without Tomi and interviewed Quinn before teleporting back to the temple to pick up Tomi, in case there were any more bodaks nearby. There would have been no point to go get him and pay the temple fee, and then have to just do it all over again almost immediately. I knew we had most of this level explored, so I finished it first.
The demon Belial must be summoned (careful to have Protection from Evil first) and interviewed for Lathander's court. Don't Balors look cool in NWN? "You shall not pass!"
This huge fire elemental is probably the toughest enemy on this map, (unless you decide to summon Belial without Protection from Evil and try to fight him for some reason). He has enormous hit points, and hits like a truck. I've gotten respawns from it before. I noticed I was barely doing any damage, but Tomi was doing a *lot* of damage.
I think I've figured out what's happening. There are three physical damage types. Swords do slashing, arrows do piercing, and blunt weapons do crushing. This elemental was resistant to slashing, so I could barely hurt it, but vulnerable to piercing, so Tomi was owning it.
Tomi can get both sneak attacks and 3X critical hits with that shortbow, so he's been doing way better than expected when I let him fight with it. He still sometimes gets too close to combat and gets attacked, which is a problem, but most of the time I can keep him at a good distance using "Follow Me" and "Guard Me", and making sure he's set to "Keep a long distance away from me." Don't forget to reset that if he respawns, because I think he goes back to default following distance after a respawn.
Also, @sarevok57 was right, before. I need to find or invest in and start carrying around both a blunt weapon and a piercing weapon.
The beginning of the interview with Karlat. He was trying to be a lich. That alone isn't enough to condemn him - there's more to this, but I don't want to spoil it. I'm only including the picture here so you can see what a lich looks like in NWN. Under any normal circumstances, you should fear these just as much as in BG2.
At last, I made enough gold to buy the Boots of Hardiness +2. The extra constitution point won't do anything, but it's the extra Dodge bonus to AC I really wanted. My AC now while wearing my Natural Armor +2 amulet is 31, which I desperately needed, because enemies are starting to hit AC 30 far too easily for my liking. I started wearing my Natural Armor amulet most of the time, because I was feeling the loss of AC from wearing my Necklace of Health, although I'm keeping my Necklace of Health for any time I start facing vampires or shadow fiends. (Or bloated dire spiders, or any other similar enemy that spams poison.)
Level: 10
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 ("D", Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 5
well that was interesting...
up until that point of SoU this game was crazy hard, and then at the end, did the devlopers just up? first off, went to the area where there were the medusas and helmed horror dudes, and was forced to do a reload because as far as i know there is no way to be immune to petrification and eventually you are just bound to roll a 1 on a save ( i can't stress that enough how much i hate 1s being automatic fails, but it goes both ways i suppose )
so other than that, not too shabby, luckily the chests that were around dropped some pretty neat gear, and one of them being the chainmail of speed, of man did i EVER need this
and then i go up one more level where you need to pull the 4 switches and..... what a disappointment, the enemies were just pitiful, didnt really find any new gear and i was just blown away how weak the battles were here, oh well, here are the final screenshots right before i go and fight the final boss:
im actually amazed i was able to hit over 40 AC at level 13, and by the looks of it, that is as high as level as im going to get, and man them is some good saves for level 13 to eh?
so i go and fight the FINAL BATTLE..... and it was pitiful lewlz? i only had to drink one potion of heal because of the good ol' ROLLING A NATURAL 1 ON A SAVE BS *sigh* from a buddy buddy's tentacles spell ( holy jeebus i hate that spell - evrard's black tentacles? no idea-) but other than that, it was a complete let down, didnt use a single prep potion or spell to buff up, just went in there hair straight back, and battle over lol
so yeah, that was an interesting experience, game pulls your pants down does you in dry the whole way through, and then at the end, it pulls your pants up, says sorry and walks away like nothing happened, most bizarre indeed
@sarevok57 , "medusas", plural? I only remember the one. And yes, the final battle of SoU is always easy if you pay attention. Strong character build + destroy the stones = easy win. I think it's the getting there that's the challenge.
So, will you take your Luke Skywalker or your Darth Vader into HotU now?
Also, how the heck are you getting so many Bags of Holding? You're not cheating, are you?
medusas: yup, there be plural, there are 3 groups that have 4 each plus a helmed horror in each group, not particularly tough per se, just annoying based on the amount of saves you need to make
and will i take my too cool for school darth vader looking dude to HotU, nah, because you will see in a moment what i am going to do
as for the bags of holding, the first 2 rows ( +1 on the right side on the bottom ) of those bags are -60% weight while the 2 bags on the bottom left are -80% weight
and how i got so many was the mage dude in high forest, apparently by the looks of it, he has infinite bags of -60% weight, since my character's STR was so garbage, i bought every 80% i could find ( which was only 2 ) and i made sure to buy a shwack load of 60% bags, and too be honest, that wasn't really necessary, so that was a high cost, but i didn't know what to expect so i made sure to have enough
now, as for HotU, this is going to wait because i have someone ELSE who will be going there
reading your's and Arvia's play throughs of your characters going hard on the RP and such, has really given me some motivation to get it a shot of my own, it seems like a fun play through and quite challenging by going hard on the RP standards, and staying tight to them, makes the runs more interesting, so without further adue, i will be doing the same, but with a twist:
This is going to be the story about the Paladin known as: Darsa the GoldHearted
but it is not going to be told as if I was her myself, but more of an outsider or perhaps an extremely advanced bard whose knowledge is that of legend, that has heard of her exploits, and is telling the tales as if he was there himself!
backstory ( i was going to write this in the little biography thingy, but i think its going to be too small/hard to read )
When you would look at Darsa, first things you may notice; Kindness, generosity, loves to help people when she can, more soft spoken and very compassionate, but there is more to her than meets the eye, and that is; she has a bloodline of dragons coarsing through her veins, and if that wasn't impressive enough, there is one Dragon in particular whose blood flows through; Bahamut
Decades ago, Bahamut heard rumors of the prophecy of the Time of Troubles and not knowing if he himself was going to survive the chaos, he shifted into human form, and also walked the earth, to keep more of a "lower profile" but also wanting to pass his seed along to one give rise to a champion to help save the planes from the chaos that was about to insue
So Bahamut finds a human suitor to be the one who breeds his champion, but unfortunately as soon as Bahamut started he was escorted back up to Celestia to help defend the heavens from evil that might try and break through during the time of troubles
Bahamut had no choice but to do so, since he was only a lesser diety and higher powers gave him the order to come back, but he knew that one day a champion of his would rise
Decades pass as Bahamut was busy up in Celestia guarding the gates, and forgetting to realize that humans have short life spans, especially compared to his immortal self and now the time of troubles was upon them, and when he quickly came down to the material plane he realized that the only survivor of his mortal lineage was his great grand daughter Darsa and she was just a babe, way too young to be taking part in the time of troubles
so he escorted her and her foster parents to a small town named Lelion where she could train at the temple there, and Bahamut give her his blessing so that when she was ready, she could become the champion that he always wanted, and every once in awhile coming to her in her dreams, helping shape and mold her path into the champion that she will be one day
time passed on, and the time of troubles was finally over, and luckily Lelion was not affected much by it, giving Darsa all the time to train and worship without interference, and as Darsa grew older, she started taking on the traits of her great grand father more; by being kind and generous, and doing what she can to help others, but she also inherited another unfamiliar trait that is unusual for paladins; she was a bit of a kleptomaniac, although never in a harsh sense, but she has always been addicted to gold, gems and special objects, although she has never been forceful of possessions, she always fines a way to procure items that don't seem to be her, and it puzzles her, since she can feel it in her veins and this is something that a Paladin shouldn't do
One night Bahamut came to Darsa in her dreams, as he often did, telling her why she had a desire for material possessions, and he said that it was from the dragon lineage she had in her blood that made her desire it, and it would almost be impossible to resist it, so instead of condemning her for the act, he said; as long as you don't take from the poor or anyone of a good heart, then there is no wrong, all others will be able to recover from their loss, as long as you lead a good life doing what you can do spread good as best you can, and give no mercy to evil and stay strict to my ethos, then you will always be my champion
and with that, it was finally time for her to start her journey, her quest, to be the Champion of Bahamut, and her quest starts in Neverwinter and doing what she can to help the city get through this Plague crisis:
the game play rules will be as follows:
no reloads ( oi that is going to hurt )
no stealing from the good or poor
never committing an evil act
@sarevok57 , I love it, and I applaud your storywriting. I hope that this new idea will hold your interest long enough for us to hear the rest of Darsa's story.
One thing, are you playing on EE, and if so, could you please scale up your interface? I have a really hard time reading text in your screenshots, because your interface is so small.
I will look forward to reading about your interpretations of roleplayed "good", especially given that you have usually in the past, as I've known you or read your posts, mostly played "powergame" characters who might as well be chaotic evil in practice if not in name.
ah, i just scaled it up now, wowzers what a difference ( although i didn't scale it up until this run was done, so my bad )
anyway as the adventure goes...
Darsa just finished her training and its off to go see Aribeth
and then when she just meets up with Lady Aribeth they get attacked by assassins
after the assassin situation Darsa goes and sees if there are any survivors in the Academy and she runs into some baddies
unfortunately no one survived the onslaught, but Darsa finished off the goblin hordes to make sure they could no longer harm another innocent again, once she was finished it was time to go through the big doors
luckily on the other side Pavel was alive, unlike his brother, so she joined up with Pavel to take out the rest of the bad guy scum
after the battle with the mysterious wizard the same troupe made it to a barn type area and finished off the rest of the goblins, and talked about what to do next, said our fair wells to Pavel and off to go help Neverwinter
Darsa meets up with Fenthick tells him she is ready to help serve Neverwinter, then Darsa meets up with Lady Aribeth to get more details of the mission and off Darsa goes, to fulfill her quest and to give pride for Bahamut for helping to save Neverwinter the city
so based on what Lady Aribeth said and the lady just outside the temple, Darsa felt the need to go to the peninsula district first, but before she went, she found some help along the way, by a girl named Sharwyn
after Sharwyn came to Darsa's side, it was off to see what was going on in the Peninsula district, and what she found was that the prison broke loose, and there were violent inmates everywhere causing destruction, breaking into homes, and slaughtering the innocent, something that Darsa could not stand for, so she brought swift justice to the inmates and saved who she could
the next battle was against a very powerful gang member, and Darsa and Sharwyn fought as valiantly as possible
but unfortunately Darsa did not survive the battle and Bahamut had to resurrect her, and after the resurrection, she was able to finish the leader off
afterwards the troupe found a house with a key under the mat ( who would have thought? ) and they came upon some stink bugs, thinking nothing of it, the trouple didn't give it their all, but unfortunately for them, being naive lost one of the companions and now Sharwyn fell in battle
after they found that the warden was murdered in her basement, the troupe went over to the sewer area to see if any convicts were left, and indeed they were and this was the result
unfortunately Darsa was powerless against a barrage of critical hits and just could not heal fast enough
so once again being revived by Bahamut, she came back to finish the convicts off
so once the outside was clean of convicts it was time to go inside and bring justice to all the hostile convicts that were left
but alas, even though the troupe fought with all their might, there were just too many convicts at once that would gang up on them, and their leader proved to be too much for the troupe
so once again Bahamut raises his champion and it now getting worried if Darsa is even up to what it takes at this point, but Darsa insists that she can do it, showing no fear of death, despite the fact that it takes a bit of her soul away each time doing so
so back into the fray with her murderer and she will make sure that this convict will never murder anyone again
and just when she thought things were finally getting back on track, she gets ambushed by a bunch of convicts and this happens
now Bahamut is very worried, Darsa is perishing in battle so often and it is really taken a toll on her spirit, even though she is willing to continue on, her spirit is struggling, Bahamut says that this is her last chance, if she perishes one more time, her spirit will not be able to come back, so without fear Darsa continues on
so onwards Darsa cleans out the convicts and eventually gains another level
and now she finally gains her first level 1 spell, with the choice of endure elements taking that choice with the sorcerers coming up
thanks to her new found power she was able to defeat the convict sorcerers thanks to her new spell granted to her by her great grand father Bahamut
and alas it was time to fight against one of the main prison wardens and this is how that played out
unfortunately her new powers were not enough to take on the multitude of critical hits this halforc could dish out, and she perished for the final time, with her spirit now completely broken, she will not be revived and so ends Darsa's journey, shorter than expected, but not all heroes make it to the end, hence the reason why heroes go down in history, their feats and tribulations far surpass that of the average person
so thoughts on the play through:
kind of frustrating to be honest, i have NEVER in my life seen such bizarre out comes ever, and i was just getting angry at the constant BS that was pouring down on me
the first death i knew, it was going to be difficult, and i could have made it out, but the gang leader critical hitted me before i could get some healing off, in fact, every death was like that, if i wasn't surrounded it was just bad luck, critical hits dealing constantly 20+ damage always landing and with the hafl orc guy dealing 44 damage, i just couldnt heal fast enough, i've never had more badluck in a run in my entire life, hell, even with i was playing the half-orc fighter/rogue/barbarian and screwing around not even trying to live and just playing wreckless, i died no where NEAR as many times through out the whole game, nevermind one district, holy crap, what a crap shoot
it was unfortunate really, i wanted to make it so that Darsa would multi class into a dragon disciple paladin to show that her dragon blood was coming through and having the blood of bahamut was the reason why she had some dragon disciple in her
but i guess the RNG gods were against me and didn't want to see such an abomination i suppose,
perhaps secretly Tiamat knew that Darsa was the last one of Bahamut's offspring and she did whatever it took to make sure Darsa would perish forever and it would seem that Tiamat succeeded on her scheme, fearing that one day, if Darsa grew powerful even, that even Darsa would challenge Tiamat one day, but now Tiamat has nothing to fear because Darsa has forever been laid to rest
so now, im going to do the play through again, just not going to take it RP serious this time or really record what i am going to be doing, because apparently its just too much for a Paladin of Bahamut to handle
@BelgarathMTH , those look like tough enemies! And the balor looks really impressive.
Mental note: Avoid Charwood until I can afford that Belt of Guiding Light.
And: Get a mace. And the Necklace of Health?
But I will have to buy a Ring of Protection +2, too, and/or try to get a better shield. I only have AC 28 (or was it 29?), with the Whitebone Armor, Amulet of Natural Armor+2, Tower Shield +1 and Cloak of Protection +1. That's not enough. Sigh. Vow of poverty indeed...
If you see a good shield in some shop, let me know, okay?
@sarevok57 , welcome to the roleplaying challenge ?.
I like your character background story, also because Bahamut is cool. Darsa looks like Imoen, that's fitting for someone who has a hard time to stop stealing ?. I hope to read more of Darsa's journey soon.
@sarevok57 , I wrote my last post before I saw your last report. I'm sorry to hear that you've been frustrated already. I don't know if it was just bad luck, what were your stats during your "powergaming" playthroughs? It's more difficult for a paladin, because you need to balance so many of them.
@sarevok57 , Aww, condolences, man, I hate to see you get frustrated by so many unlucky dice rolls. Those gang leaders early on and that half-orc are absolutely brutal to low level characters. I enjoyed reading your roleplayed report, and I'm sorry it didn't work out better. You seem to have put a lot of thought into the character and started getting invested in her before the fights started going badly.
The important thing is to have fun with it, and it sounds like, with all those unlucky rolls, that wound up not being any fun for you.
Thanks for sharing your run with us. I'd still enjoy reading about any kind of progress you'd enjoy sharing with us in any format you like, if you're still going to play NWN for a while.
yeah, it was just bad luck of the draw, the amount of critical hits coming in was obtuse, i even made sure to take the toughness feat for more HP, but it wasnt enough
Arvia you are right, the spread on stats for paladins really makes them hard to play, because the only stat you can "dump" is INT and even then thats not really a good choice if you want skills and the such
so i deleted that play through and started a new one, same set up, but with a male this time, and not really RPing at all, and i had 3 reloads, and best part was, all 3 reloads were on dinky little enemies, not even bosses haha, couldn't believe it, my paladins just arent having a good tenday this weekend thats for sure, but since its a reload play through, its much less stressful and no harm, no foul, because when my guy dies i just use the mystical reload and he's back in action
although, im still doing this play through differently than i normally though, since i still am a paladin i can't massacre everyone, and even for NPCs that i could get away with killing, im still wont, the only NPCs i will bring to justice are the ones that did start a fight, then surrender, and then after they surrender i will turn those chaps into chop suey
and i think i've learned something, because why did my half-orc far so well, while my paladins are getting smooshed into to much paste? and i think the answer is to fold; strength and rogue/monk levels
first strength:
see with my half-orc char i started the game with 20 STR which kind of hurts stat wise because my CON/DEX was only 12, INT/WIS was only 10 and CHA was 6, but it was enough stats to get by, but because my STR was 20 and with weapon focus at level 1, that is a whopper of +7 to hit at level 1, while my paladin at level 4 only had +6, plus with that huge STR, just in general dealing more damage, and for extra icing on the cake, since the STR is so high my attack bonus was naturally higher, i could actually use power attack efficiently and with great effect, the faster you kill enemies, the less time they have to kill you it seems
second rogue/monk:
these are great classes to dip into when you grow to level 2/7/12/17, not only for evasion which is a huge bonus, but also, you max out those tumble ranks, for every 5 ranks you have in tumble you get a +1 to AC and at low levels, all the AC you can muster makes a mammoth difference, so on average my half-orc had 1 more AC than my paladins and that seems to have also made a huge difference on survivability as well
because something had to be up, because with my half-orc guy i was taking names and i dont recall reloading from deaths, often if ever at all, but here my paladins are being turned into pudding
so i commend both @BelgarathMTH and @Arvia for having your paladins live as much as they have with your minimum amount of reloads, because i can't seem to hit level 4 without dying at least 4 times
Poor Tomi. I just started my play session for today, and well, let's just say it was a rough start. I decided to come here and write about it so I could calm down and regroup a bit.
So, the next thing is we need to go along the north road to Luskan. We'll pass by the Green Gryphon Inn, and have another map or two to explore before entering Luskan. On the way, we were ambushed by three powerful assassins led by Darktongue Breakbone. His guards could hit AC 31 on a 15, and he probably had even better attack, plus I think he had four attacks per round. He also had sneak attack, which means he had rogue levels mixed with fighter levels, and maybe a monk level or two. It's got to have been some kind of crazy min-max power-build, the way he was fighting.
Tomi didn't stand a chance. We were stuck at the edge of the map where we couldn't position properly, and I went pretty quickly into panic mode, because I saw we were in big trouble. Looking back on it, I wish I'd tried to run back through the map transition to see if that helped, but I think they would have followed and we wouldn't have been able to outrun them.
Once I lost Tomi, they were all on me. They had caught me with no buffs, and I didn't dare try to start casting. I had gotten my Bull's Strength up, but even doing that one casting may have been a mistake, because it gave them time to land many attacks. I think maybe I should have immediately used the portal stone, then cast my buffs in town before going back out onto the map.
I could do little but stand there healing over and over. I used TWENTY healing packs, and I didn't even have Darktongue down to half his health. I thought it was going to be respawn number three for me, but in a last desperate Hail Mary, I hit the portal stone and prayed it would work before they killed me. I made it back to the temple in one piece. Whew!
I had started out with 25 healer's kits and thought that should last a long time. Now I had five. I had spent most of my money on those Boots of Hardiness +2. I spent my last few hundred gold to get five more healer's kits. Now I was flat broke. No more healing kits for me anywhere in the near future.
I thought about not bringing Tomi back into it, but I wasn't sure at all I could beat them without him. So, I picked him up, cast Bull's Strength, Bless, and Aid, drank Potions of Barkskin, Endurance, and Speed, and headed back north with a sense of doom in my heart.
This time, Blacktongue had apparently tried to follow us almost all the way back to town, but his two guards were nowhere to be seen. He was much easier to beat by himself, though still no pushover.
Oh, that's where the two guards were. They were still waiting for us at the same ambush point, at the entrance to the map. They went straight for Tomi and cut him down in seconds. I feel really bad about that. I shouldn't have brought him along again until I had the road clear of assassins.
Now, I know there's a big undead dungeon up ahead before we get to Luskan with a lich in it that we really should kill. I'm worried about facing it with my healing supplies so low. I guess we'll see how it goes.
Level: 10
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 ("D", Setara's Flesh Golem)
Tomi Respawns: 7
@BelgarathMTH , that was really a rough start! 20 healing kits and two Tomi respawns!
And I was already angry at using about 10 healing kits to get through the troll caves...
Don't worry too much, you're going to be fine. Remember your paladin's name and bringt the Light to those undead abominations in Torm's name!
And thank you for writing down all your difficult encounters, it helps me to be prepared (if I remember).
I'm going to write my own short summary before I go to sleep.
Edited after looking at the clock: Going to write that tomorrow. Good luck to you.
Lon, the lawful evil wizard, made it out Drogan's door only to be skewered on a kobold's dagger because his not so faithful hellhound was busy sniffing a tree.
The end.
Edit: Renny, the neutral evil sorcerer, made it to the town gates where he encountered an annoying peasant claiming to be a prophet, and promptly destroyed him with Negative Energy Ray. Everyone else just left, muttering.
Outside the gates, Renny met a red wizard who asked for help getting permission. Renny went to find the mayor, who was drunk. The mayor's assistant complained about the 'prophet' that Renny already killed, yet was unhappy he did so. She also wouldn't agree to red wizard's request, even after Renny threatened the mayor's life.
True to his word, Renny killed the worthless, drunk mayor. The guards outside all instantly knew what occurred and teleported into the city hall and promptly cut Renny down.
@ElysianEchoes , ROFL. You may now have the record for the shortest ever minimal reload run.
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I have defeated the evil lich, Brother Toras. Such undead horrors must not be allowed to continue in their existence. If Torm didn't strengthen me against fear, and if Aribeth had not given me the precious portal stone, I would not have survived this.
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Before the lich, we found Sir Karathis the werewolf in a nearby cave, and saved him. I had to kill more wolves to get to him. I guess stopping werewolves is the greater good against the evil of killing the innocent wolves the werewolves were dominating.
Sigh, Tomi got himself killed yet again, when he insisted on running ahead to disarm a trap, and got himself surrounded. This game desperately needs better companion AI if not full companion control, to make it more like Baldur's Gate, although apparently @TrentOster considers multiplayer D&D to have always been the priority for his game, and will not be devoting his company resources to improving the single player companion AI and control problem, or am I wrong about that, @JuliusBorisov ?
At this point in the game, I just can't justify bringing Tomi into such high levels of danger, given his fragility and his inability to keep himself out of trouble. I am going to go solo, and he will have to stay behind at the temple. I will have to tank the traps on the floors and the chests, (*not* the ones with scorch marks in front), and bash open the locks. I am tempted to take Power Attack to make that easier, and also to open up the two related paladin abilities, since the developers seemed to design the paladin class to use those abilities. But I'm also really needing Blind Fight. Decisions, decisions.
If I start taking levels of Champion of Torm, I could get some bonus feats, and better saves, but I really, really want my paladin spell book opened up all the way to fourth level spells.
I made level 11 just before facing Brother Toras, thank Torm! Sadly, there were no new feats or spells at this level, but, I now have three attacks per round, so I got that going for me, which was nice.
Okay, we don't try to open these, right, @Arvia ? The sepulchre next to it was locked, so I didn't bother it, either.
Brother Toras. I really needed to pull out all these strong undead physical guards first.
Wow, that was a *really* strong Lightning Bolt!
Sigh, there go all my buffs and potions.
That was yet another *really* strong Lightning Bolt.
Oh, no. The dreaded Evard's Black Tentacles. I'm doomed now if I don't do something, and I have three choices - try to heal (that is *not* going to work while standing in these tentacles), try to run out of their AoE while Toras casts another spell (highly unlikely to work - the tentacles will likely kill me before I can take two steps), or say a prayer to Torm and hit the portal stone. I took option three, and barely escaped with my life.
I didn't want to use the temple portal to teleport right back into the middle of those tentacles, so I walked all the way back up to the graveyard.
When I made my way back, Toras was still waiting for me. I took a picture that I thought looked like it would make a good superhero comic book cover. Lightbringer vs. his archenemy, The Lich.
Look at the black splotches on the floor. Another Evard's Black Tentacles is incoming. They do their first volley of damage as soon as the spell is cast, which was enough to get me to Near Death. But this time, I ran out of the AoE as soon as I saw them coming, and started healing myself.
I don't know *what* Doom Gaze is. I saved against it, but it still debuffed me. I suspect this would have been an instant kill effect if I weren't wearing the Belt of Guiding Light.
At the end, he tried a mind-affecting spell that I'm sure would have been lethal if I'd failed the will save and hadn't been wearing the Golden Circlet. Then, it was over. Thank you, Helm.
Level: 11
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 ("D", Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 8
those strong lightning bolts im pretty sure are actually chain lightnings, they can deal up to 20d6 at level 20, plus if im not mistaken, the black tentacles spell deals physical damage, so if you have any DR items, they can help mitigate a little bit of it i believe.....
and when it comes to companion AI and the ability to control them, holy poop, is that direly needed, im doing my new paladin run ( just hit level 5 with about 40 reloads haha and unfortunately thats no joke ) but sharwyn is doing a derp a derp so often, i really hate the fact that i told her to use range weapons, and when an enemy comes up to her in melee, she just keeps using her ranged weapons until she dies from attacks of oppurtunity, she doesnt attempt to get out of melee combat or switch over to melee for that *sigh* if only making companion scripts was as easy to do like it is in NI i could make it so my companion wasn't just extra baggage ( hence usually why i do solo runs )
so it might start getting time to put tomi in ranged combat because when you start fighting giants, they aren't going to miss him, and they will turn him into halfling goo in no time flat
those strong lightning bolts im pretty sure are actually chain lightnings, they can deal up to 20d6 at level 20, plus if im not mistaken, the black tentacles spell deals physical damage, so if you have any DR items, they can help mitigate a little bit of it i believe.....
and when it comes to companion AI and the ability to control them, holy poop, is that direly needed, im doing my new paladin run ( just hit level 5 with about 40 reloads haha and unfortunately thats no joke ) but sharwyn is doing a derp a derp so often, i really hate the fact that i told her to use range weapons, and when an enemy comes up to her in melee, she just keeps using her ranged weapons until she dies from attacks of oppurtunity, she doesnt attempt to get out of melee combat or switch over to melee for that *sigh* if only making companion scripts was as easy to do like it is in NI i could make it so my companion wasn't just extra baggage ( hence usually why i do solo runs )
so it might start getting time to put tomi in ranged combat because when you start fighting giants, they aren't going to miss him, and they will turn him into halfling goo in no time flat
Comments
although, at higher levels you will sometimes find them as treasure, but for no reloads getting them sooner than later might help
@Arvia at the end of chapter 2 i finished at level 15 with 400 -500k in money with nothing to buy, and that is after buying over 40 heal potions
so i want to say you should at least hit 100 000
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This fight is really, really hard, and has mechanical complications that can be very frustrating.
It kept summoning shadow fiends. I kept turning them. It looked like either my Turn Undead was able to destroy one on a high roll, or else the Spirit would unsummon a turned one and re-summon a new one. I think it was able to do that at least three times. The third, or maybe it was the fourth time I turned it, it ran away and the Spirit didn't summon another one, so I could focus on the Spirit.
Unfortunately, the turned shadow fiend ran back to where I had Tomi waiting, and pulled him into the fight. Before I realized that he had gone into attack mode from the rear because of the shadow fiend, he had run past the shadow fiend and up to the Spirit to "help" me. Of course, the Spirit immediately switched targets and began to pommel Tomi to death. I used many healing kits on Tomi, and was worried about our supply, but I couldn't keep up with the massive damage being done to poor Tomi. I think the thing only needed to roll about a "2" to hit him, and it has at least four attacks per round.
It also hits enemies with Magic Missile, Strength Drain, and Cause Wounds. It tried something with negative energy damage that I made a Will save against - I shudder to think what it was trying to do with that spell. I've also seen it cast Ice Storm, but it didn't this time.
Despite all those magic attacks, it is most deadly in its Melee.
Back to Tomi - I was worried about more than his dying, and I *really* wished he hadn't gotten pulled up into the fight. You have to find a cure for the Spirit's madness. I had the cure, but you can't even start talking to it about taking the cure until you have it down to X hit points. When it gets to "Near Death", it is *still* nowhere near the X hit points. The thing has dragon-level hit points. You won't know until it stops fighting and a message pops up that says "The Spirit Looks Confused".
If Tomi hits it at that exact moment, or sometimes even your own avatar in mid-attack, before you can stop the attack, Tomi or you will kill it. If you kill this Spirit, if I recall correctly, you get a *lot* of evil points. I think it's a fairly badly designed encounter mechanically, because there's too much that can go wrong with the scripting, and against player intentions or control.
I'm showing the beginning of the dialogue with the Spirit, but not most of it, because it reveals a lot of information about the main story once it's been cured.
One of the ways you can make atonement for something as a paladin (or any other character) is to turn down a reward. I told Aawil the archdruid, upon reporting to him that the Spirit of the Wood was cured, to give the 500 gold he was going to give me to the poor instead. That gave me 7 good points, and got me back up to 100 points good.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 (Final boss of Act One, Setara's golem)
Tomi Respawns: 4
I don't take a single thing from the house of Setara the witch, including the book that Eltoora the wizard merchant wants me to steal from her. Sometimes I turn down cash rewards if my goodness has fallen below 100 points for any reason.
We will not be able to complete the quest to steal 3 gems for the elf in the tavern. Setara gave me hers freely, but I know Wanev has one, and I'm not even going to meet Wanev, because he never comes out of his tower. Even if I did, I wouldn't steal the gem from him, and I certainly wouldn't kill him for it.
We will not be able to complete the quests to get the books for Eltoora the wizard merchant, because some of them have to be stolen. We might get one or two of them from evil creatures.
I'm worried about ever having enough money just to get the necklace that protects from level drain and the Boots of Hardiness +2. I'm having my doubts I will ever have enough money to get those items during this run. And not having them leads to more healing supply and potion use, and those have to be bought.
Also, I have to wonder if you might be saving lots of gold by reloading, and thereby restoring whatever consumable resources you had used leading up to the reload.
Luke: "Is the dark side stronger?"
Yoda: "No. Easier. More seductive. But once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny! Consume you, it will. As it did Obi-Wan's apprentice."
Luke: "Vader!"
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The cult is sending assassins after me now. This guy is really dangerous and tough. I drank Potions of Barkskin and Aid, and had a Bull's Strength spell cast. He caught me by surprise. I knew he was coming, but I started thinking about something else while running across the map, and oops, I ran right into him unbuffed. He can do sneak attacks while you use any consumable while in melee with him. I wound up using seven healing kits to get through this one fight. Ouch, my coin purse!
I got a Golden Circlet off of him, so I'm glad I didn't wind up buying one before.
Bran the werewolf. I had to kill a lot of normal wolves and some dire wolves to get back here. I thought about turning back, because I did *not* feel good about killing those wolves. It felt like I was invading their natural habitat. On the other hand, I knew it was night, and that werewolves often hang out with regular wolves, which they can dominate as though they were the alpha of the pack. My victory still felt hollow. I said a prayer of sorrow to Silvanus for all the beasts I had killed in order to save one lost human soul. I may need to turn down another reward to be given to the poor before I will feel better about this.
The restored Bran ran off and left a bunch of valuables sitting around. I decided he must have meant me to have his belongings as a reward for curing him, so I took them.
Sigh, this chapter is very trying for druids and any character who cares about animals. On the way to Charwood, I met Farmer Pete, ("Peter and the Wolf" joke), who wants me to slaughter a pack of dire wolves who have taken to preying on his cattle. I told him okay, but mostly because the only other response was flippant and rude. In a live tabletop game with a dungeon master, I would have asked him a lot more questions, and tried to ask why these wolves had taken to killing human livestock.
This same problem actually comes up frequently in real life, in states like Colorado, where ranchers and farmers often come into conflict with conservationists over coyotes and wolves who kill their livestock. I would actually feel better killing wolves in conflict with farmers if the wolves had started killing people and not just livestock. Maybe the farmers took their habitat and killed off all their natural prey. That's what often happens in real life.
I have so much bear and wolf blood on my hands now. Silvanus forgive me. I don't think I have the stomach to become known as "Todangelus Wolfslayer" or "Todangelus Wolfbane". I have such a bad feeling about this. I think I shall turn around and leave this quest undone. If it were a live roleplaying session, I'd want to go back and talk to the druids of Neverwinter Wood about this, and see if they can use Speak with Animals and negotiate a peaceful resolution between human and wolf.
I know that a ranger or a druid gets an opportunity to have the pack leader surrender and talk - She is angry because a ranger used her as an animal companion, ordered her into battle, and then ran, leaving her for dead. She survived, and founded her own pack. But you still have to kill many, many wolves to get to her and get the dialogue, and then you have to pass a Persuade check or you still have to kill her. A druid invested in Animal Empathy and other skills might not have enough Persuade ranks to make that check, and you can still always roll a one.
Level: 9
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 (Final boss of Act One, Setara's Golem)
Tomi Respawns: 4
I got a new second level spell slot and filled it with Aid.
(I sure do wish Endurance were a paladin spell. Clerics get it, why not paladins? I guess the developers thought clerics needed the spell to use it to compensate for being d8 instead of d10 for hit points. I don't agree with that, because that's just one of the dozens of reasons clerics are a strong class and paladins are a weak class. As I've said before, lawful good clerics make way better paladins, mechanically, than actual paladins.)
I did an experiment and discovered that Bless and Aid stack with each other for attack bonuses. So, I decided to try having two Bless, a Bull's Strength, and an Aid in my spellbook for now.
Bull's Strength lasts "one hour/level", and both Aid and Bless last "one turn/level". In practice, one of those things is twice the other. So, two of Aid or Bless will last as long as one Bull's Strength. When Bless or Aid wear off, I know that I have half of Bull's Strength's duration left. Casting another Bless or Aid would fill out the rest of the duration of Bull's Strength if calling for a rest were inconvenient or impossible.
Tomi got a gear upgrade when I made Level 10. Now he has a blue suit of Leather Armor +2 instead of just Leather Armor +1. His weapon also got upgraded to +2.
You know, there's something I haven't tried. If you talk to Tomi and select "I want to change your tactics", he can be switched to using a bow. He can also be switched to following at a greater distance. Sneak attacks work with bows. I think I might try it to see if the poor little guy can start fighting at least a little without getting pulled into combat and killed. The trouble is, I don't think his AI is smart enough to do it effectively, and when he stands there attacking in melee with a bow, he takes attacks of opportunity for every shot, and fights at a -4 penalty. I'll try it a little and report back on how that goes, although I bet his respawn counter will be going up to 5 soon. I'll let everyone know how it goes.
you actually dont need to kill wanev to get his gem, he does go hostile when he sees you, but then he does the good ol' surrenderoo on ya and asks if you can take care of his devilish servant he will give you the gem
and its funny, i barely if ever use consumables, even though my inventory 6 slot if full of 'em, realistically the last time i had to do a reload was somewhere in chapter 1 when i was around level 5 or 6
after that point the only time i reloaded after a fight was with the swords in the haleuth tomb, because of path finding issues my guy did a derp a derp
and the second reload was when i tried taking on the balor in the charwood castle, unfortunately his DR was too high and i wasn't using a two handed weapon, so i couldn't take him out, i have before, but only when im doing a dragon disciple using a scythe
other than that, my guy is so cool for school that not only do i not have to reload fights i barely if ever use consumables, perhaps a potion of heal here, or there maybe
its strange actually, the only time i even "buffed up" for a fight was the attempt against charwood balor, even in chapter one fighting the big bad end boss, i didnt use any buff potions or nothing and i won with relative ease and this is still on the hardest difficulty
i think what really helps with the gold pieces is that the higher level you are, the better your random treasures are, and once you hit around level 12 or 13 it really starts to scale up fast
one problem with DnD is, leveling up is incredibly strong, especially when you start mixing classes/getting prestige classes going your power scales up quick
this is one of the main reasons why you can only multi class into 3 classes in NWN, and probably why a lot of servers cap or nerf multi classing, because it is a hugely broken system, NWN 2 shines with this brokeness by allowing you to do 4 classes holy moly, but even in this run with the fighter/rogue/barbarian which isn't all that amazing when it comes to multiclassing power housing, its still enough to wreck some serious shop
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Well, well, the plot thickens. While further exploring the farmer map, I found another farmer family with a son, and he is distraught over a brooch that he gave to Pete's daughter Constance, trying to woo her. All I had to do was give her 1,000 gold pieces for the brooch, and she was ecstatic, saying her father will now be able to buy more cattle than the wolves will ever be able to eat.
I know from past plays that it is possible to convince the young man and the young woman that they are actually in love with each other, but that's more of a Chaotic Good-Chaotic Neutral "Romance is beautiful, romance is everything" sort of thing to do, and I have a much more practical mindset than that. Since I've now made Farmer Pete and his family wealthy beyond their wildest dreams, I think they will be less likely to want to destroy all the wolves. I think they were exaggerating the threat of the wolves, based on their poverty, and I just solved their poverty problem.
Apparently the boy and his father are quite wealthy. The boy offered to compensate me 650 gold for the returned brooch. I wanted to say no, keep it, but the game didn't give me that option this time. I think these people have a hard enough life because of the realities of needing money and resources, and I want my 1,000 gold to enrich their economy enough that they don't feel like they have to cause wolves to go extinct to protect their livelihood, if I can.
I feel pretty good about this resolution of this map, although, of course, my way gave me the least experience and gold I could have possibly wound up with.
My Turn Undead is getting surprisingly good. (I have sold the white Cloak of Protection from Evil +5 in favor of always wearing my blue Nymph Cloak +5). In this picture, I have destroyed two skeletons, a skeleton mage, and a skeleton priest with a single cast of Turn Undead. I always love making those undead abominations explode in the Light! That's why I still want to at some point run a cleric through this game with maximum Turn Undead skills. I want to see just how high up the undead hierarchy such a cleric can destroy powerful undead instantly, just by pulling out his holy symbol and shouting "Turn Undead!"
In this evil crypt, Tomi saved my life with his Shortbow +2. Or at least, he killed the undead boss Mummy Lord where I couldn't even damage it, without our having to use the portal stone out of there. I don't know if this was a slashing damage immunity thing, but I think it's more likely it was a "need +2 weapon to damage" thing. If there's anywhere at this point in the chapter I could have obtained a +2 weapon, I don't know about it.
This was a very satisfying synergy between Tomi and me. The Mummy Lord could not get past me, and as a paladin, I was immune to its Fear aura. It also couldn't hit AC 28 very well...I only took two or three hits during the entire fight, and its melee damage wasn't very high. Tomi "nickel and dimed" the thing to death with his +2 arrows, while I was locked in a stalemate with the evil monster. I couldn't have done a thing other than hold it off, but Tomi was able to kill it with his +2 shortbow, without getting anywhere near it and taking any damage or succumbing to Fear. Well done, my halfling friend!
Level: 10
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 ("D", Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 4
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This report contains major spoilers about the finale of chapter 1. I will try to keep most of the comments together with the pictures in spoiler tags, so anyone who has not played NWN yet shouldn't open them. I know few people read those kinds of reports, but you never know.
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Aribeth kept the portal open and we went in, arriving somewhere in the countryside. A man told us where we were and where the person we were searching for had gone, so we walked straight ahead to the front gate. A "Strange Visage" with a rather harsh manner appeared out of thin air and gave us a cryptic speech. We didn't learn much, but the man we are following seems to be just a minor pawn in a huge plot, and out of favor with his superiors, too. Wonderful perspective...
The courtyard was swarmed with undead, several of them invisible. Yay.
At least I seem to be able to hit them. Oh no, where is Tomi?
Targeted by magic missiles or something. I'd better get closer to him. I only see two cursed monks (the invisible guys) when I highlight with tab, but there might have been more.
I was caught in the web spell on my way to Tomi. Fortunately it's not as bad as in BG. I can't move, and it takes away all dexterity based AC bonus (which is not much in my case), but I can hit.
Tomi was down to "Badly Wounded" when I finally reached him, fighting invisible guys, and I used a healing kit on him. 28 HP healed was very good, but the problem is that I have to choose a target to attack again after healing, and I couldn't do that with invisible enemies. I hoped that the AI would kick in again after they hit me. But they didn't hit me, and I just stood there in agony, watching helplessly how Tomi fought them. And even when they hit me, my AI didn't make me hit back. I know I had been fighting them before, so it was not only the invisibility.
At long last, I started to hit back. Thank Tyr.
Maybe I'm going to pick Blind Fight after all. There were going to be more invisible undead, but most of them didn't stay invisible all the time, only concealed or something, and I could usually attack them.
There was a side entrance to the building, but I chose the front door.
There was an altar inside, with four things called Guardian Armor standing around in the corners. When we opened the door from the entrance hall to the corridor, they turned hostile and attacked us.
They were very, very hard to hit, and they hit very hard, dual-wielding with many attacks per round and dealing heavy damage. Keeping Tomi healthy and me at least at half my HP was difficult. Two healing kits and Lay on Hands used, only two healing kits left, and only two out of four Guardian Armors were Barely Injured, the other two Uninjured. We ran for the door to the hallway and slammed it shut behind us.
Okay, two had managed to follow us, but that's better than 4. I had to use potions to keep us alive, I didn't want to lose my last two healing kits yet.
With the two of them destroyed, I ordered Tomi to wait a few steps away until I called him. Then I took a deep breath and opened the door. (I could have left them there, but I didn't know if we needed an escape route in the future and didn't want to run into them then).
Uuuuh. Very strong and tough, and I hope I didn't anger Helm by destroying them. I didn't do anything than opening the door, so maybe they were just programmed by magic, not by Helm himself, and the False Helmites were using them. Anyway, nothing I can do about this now.
Notice that they gave different amounts of XP, 317 vs 215, so some of them were more difficult than the others. We went outside into the already secured courtyard, found a quiet corner and rested for a bit. it seemed risky, but proceeding without restoring our health, or using our last healing supplies, seemed much more dangerous. Then we decided to explore the side entrance. It was a storage area where we found some minor loot and some undead, especially in the small rooms. I decided to keep to the trick of opening a door, drawing one out and shutting it again. Skeletons weren't smart enough to open doors, not even their clerics or mages. But there were exceptions.
Wraiths are smart! They don't just drift through doors, they thoughtfully open them for their allies to follow!
I saved against its ugly Negative Energy, so it was only a minor nuisance.
Speaking of minor nuisances, I sensed a great disturbance in the Force when I met this one, who called himself "a minor evil". I disagree.
Never will I release him. But he's right, someone else might. What could I do, fight him?
Probably a very bad idea. And who knows, maybe he can't be killed in that containment field, or maybe trying to might set him free. I will leave him there for the moment, but I will have to find a solution, and soon.
I was certainly not going to use this book (I didn't understand at first that it can also be used to banish him again. I thought the banishing referred to the containment that was already on him, and was afraid to destroy that and set the demon free if I tried to use the altar), but I took it with me so that others couldn't find and use it, and maybe I would find a solution later.
Continuing to explore the corriders led me to two bigger halls filled with all kinds of undead (I kept Tomi always a room behind me). Zombie Lords, Zombie Warriors, Ghoul Lords, Skeleton Mages, usual zombies...
It was very useful to let them run (okay, in some cases lurch) close enough while fighting one or two of them and then Turn Undead. They were too strong to explode with my small charisma bonus, but several of them were always affected by it, wandering away in fear, so I could keep them off my back this way and focus on killing the stronger, unaffected ones first.
Only, some of them have ugly abilities to drain whatever it was they drained, I forgot to look. Probably lowered my attack bonus or saving throws or whatever. I find it very difficult to remember all the status effect icons. Anyway, it didn't affect me very much, whatever it was.
Beating those undead made me reach level 7. I rolled 9 HP, plus the constitution bonus from the boots, so that I have 72 HP now. I'm not sure if Toughness will still be worth it once I can pick another feat, or if I go for Blind Fight or that Improved Critical: Longsword. Anyway, I'm glad I have reached level 7 before the final fight of chapter 1.
I didn't know if the status effects would eventually wear off, but they didn't seem to affect me much, so I proceeded.
This one was a bit annoying, he was concealed or something and I had to target him several times before I could hit him, but I saved against his spells.
He was protecting that trapped bookcase, it seems. I called Tomi to disarm it and found another book, to restore the Guardian of this place once the evil presence was banished. That gave me the courage to go back to the altar and use that black grimoire, and afterwards the book that I had found here.
Very nice. And Helm's avatar didn't lose a single word about the Guardian Armors that I had destroyed, so I guess they hadn't been his in the first place. Now, I was wearing a Ring of Protection +1 together with a Ring of Cyan for light. I would have to walk around in the dark to use this wonderful ring. But not for long.
Perfect. Charisma 15 didn't help me anyway, so I changed the purple Nymph Cloak for the green Cloak of Protection +1 and could wear the Ring of Elemental Resistance and the ring that gave light.
Now that we had cleared the first floor, I decided to go to the basement because I knew there was someone I would like to meet.
Oh little boy. I wish I could take you to a safe place, but I'm going to make this a safe place again, I promise. Ilmater protect you, little Johnny.
I sold him the stuff that I didn't need anymore and stocked up on potions and healing kits. I couldn't afford the Bag of Holding yet. Then I went to explore the prison cells behind the corner and killed all the undead lurking there (some Zombie Warriors and one Zombie Lord), so that the boy wouldn't have to be frightened. I talked to Dumal, who told us about the Cult of the Eye and their worshipping of the "Old Ones", whoever those might be. It didn't sound good.
There was also a half-orc called Yari the Knife, who had participated in the slaughter here and seemed to be proud of it. I had the chance to lock this cell forever, but he seemed so mad and evil that I decided it was too risky if he ever got out, and there was still the little boy in the next room. I opened the cell and killed him before he could run away.
Then I did something really, really stupid. I thought "How bad could it possibly be, with 15 Elemental Resistance and 72 HP?"
I just lost 350 XP for respawning, because I tried to open a chest with scorch marks on the floor. I had been warned and had left those chests alone several times. Death by overconfidence. Typical. Thank you, Tyr, for teaching me a lesson in humility.
The chest contained a Sash of Shimmering, like the one I was wearing. That was *not* worth dying for. Nothing material ever is.
Now, time to go upstairs. This was a sad encounter:
Poor Fenthick, poor Aribeth. He had meant well and been fooled and blinded. He is not a traitor in my eyes, he is a man who always tried to see the goodness in others, and Desther had taken advantage of that. I feel very, very sorry for him and wish I could speak up for him somehow. But he blames himself and won't say a single word to defend himself when he has to face judgement, I'm convinced of this.
Time to face the real traitor, although I have learned already that he's not the mastermind behind this whole scheme, either.
@BelgarathMTH , I really, really should have re-read your report about this fight before going in. I was so nervous that I forgot almost everything important that you had mentioned.
I think I used Bless as a spell and not from a potion, and then I took Potion of Barkskin, Endurance, Aid, Bull's Strength, Speed and Clarity (I had remembered about the Hold spells, at least).
Mistake number one was using all those things now. Mistake number two, (due to my nervousness) I forgot that it was better to draw them out. Instead, I rushed in and ran to destroy the creatures that were protecting Desther with those energy beams or whatever between them. I had also forgotten that only casters need to worry about those.
Someone had dispelled all my precious protections *and* cursed me (and yes, I had been warned about that. I have no idea why my brain decided to shut down and make me run in without thinking). The first thing I did was to renew the Potion of Clarity, afraid of Hold spells.
I did remember that the Summoned Skeleton Chieftain was extremely dangerous, but my AC was lowered because of the web, all my stats were lowered because of the curse, and when I had to heal myself I had an unlucky roll and only healed 17 HP, and then he landed another hit on me and it was over.
That's a total of 700XP lost in Helm's Hold because of those two respawns. And at least one of them was completely unnecessary. Bad, very bad.
I was glad to have spares of several potions. I took Barkskin, Bless, Speed and Clarity again, possibly Aid, too (I can't tell from the status effect icons). I had kept Tomi out of the battle before, but now, after my respawn, he would get teleported right into the middle of it.
He got caught in Desther's Hold spell. I managed to keep several of the minor undead (who still could have killed him easily) away with Turn Undead, so that I could focus on fighting Desther and occasionally jump back to keep Tomi healed in his little prison. Spring Attack helped me there, it's great that I don't provoke attacks of opportunity any more when I have to run around during a fight.
After the fight, with my prisoner safely secured, I wanted to go back to Johnny to give him the things that I had collected up here and get that Bag of Holding, but the door was blocked by some magic energy, probably to keep my prisoner from escaping. So, I took him back directly to face judgement.
Judgement came, for both of them, and it was horrible. I can only imagine how Aribeth must feel.
We will follow her to Port Llast to keep investigating the origin of the plague. I hope I will be able to talk to her.
Level: 7
Reloads: 0
Personal respawns: 7
Tomi respawns: 8
so i finally beat the OC with my OP nitz guy, and after the final battle and killing all the baddies i could, i was just a mere 500 or so XP away from level 19, so with that, im going to say its impossible to hit level 20 in the OC unless you do some SERIOUSLY agonizing grind ( in the couple of spots where "infinite" enemies actually exist, and even with that i grinded enough skellies just to reach the next level and that was almost unbearable ) so with that, here are the screen shots of my dude i used ( i believe these were taken right before the last battle )
so with that, i started playing my other file ( i was playing 2 games at once ) and amazingly enough, this was a non genocide type game where i was playing a paladin/monk/champion of torm of all things in SoU
couple things i noticed about SoU is that this game is brutally difficult when you start at level 1, and you never get "strong" in this game, or it could just be because of my class set up and especially with the fact i had to start with 14 STR which really hurt thanks to being a paladin requiring so many stats,
although, with that said this game really likes paladins because it gives you all that fancy paladin gear in the elven crypt and you can get the holy avenger in the interlude which was really cool ( never used that weapon before)
but also another thing is that SoU does not like giving you the OP/cool items that the OC does, if it wasn't for my neato class set up my saves would be utter garbage because the only thing contributing basically is a ring of resistance +1,
and also, im a lot lower level than i anticipated in being, this is the furthest i have ever got in this game starting at level 1 and im about to head up to the second last area ( after depositing the 3 wind thingies ) and im only level 13, and im thinking at best the time i go to fight the last boss im going to be 14 at best ( i believe im about 9000 - 10000 XP away from next level ) so i wasnt aware this was such a low level game ( because i usually just import my OC character into this game and wreck havoc )
and money wise, dont have 100s of 1000s of gold this time, i bought as many potions of heal and healing kits +10 that i could before going to the second last area and i only have about 15 potions of heal/kits +10, so hopefully that will be enough
but yeah, SoU, damn hard game, but interesting, much shorter than the OC, with only a couple of unique items so far, i will finish the game.... later today i guess haha, and see if i can get some better items, i know whats coming up ahead based on a level 19/20/21 character, but not level 13 so this will be interesting for sure
I know what you mean about early SoU being much harder than the OC. Actually, I think it's pretty hard all the way through, especially the fight with J'Nah and, if you fight him, Tymofarrar. (I usually manage to talk him down and get what I need - the mask and Deekin's doll - without fighting him.)
@Arvia , First, excellent report! Very exciting to read. You made my morning.
Thank you for taking the time to write such detailed descriptions of your battles. It's like watching you live stream your play session, because you write so well. And it's not even your native language, to boot. Your mastery of English language is amazing.
I've never had to fight those armors by the front doors before, and I'm not sure why. It's got to be that I never come in that way; I always take the back door in through the basement. They must be programmed to "attack whoever comes in the front door", and coming in from the inside door doesn't trigger their attack instructions. Congratulations on making it through that fight. Those things looked really hard!
Condolences on the two respawns. I think it's impressive that you still got through the final fight with only one respawn. Now, ahem, :wags finger: I *told* you not to open reinforced chests with scorch marks in front of them.
Great job, and congratulations on finishing Act One!
You know, it was actually a good thing that I had to fight those Guardian Armors. With my respawn losses, I wouldn't have reached level 7 before the final fight otherwise.
Stupid random drops. I wanted that cloak. And I didn't get the large shield +3 from Derigab, either
Edited: Yes, you *told* me about those chests, and I had always avoided them. To try to open that one was not a rational decision. It was just total lack of impulse control, nothing else. Like tanking the ogre south of the Friendly Arm Inn at level 1.
yup i 100% agree, the only time the game felt like it got a little easier was when i got the holy avenger, but then when chapter 2 started, holy poop, that chapter brings the hammer down,
the battle with the wind that has you go through the story books, sweet jeebus was that unreal ( and for some reason he had insane DR against the holy avenger lol...? )
and even just GETTING into the room with the books wowzers, 3 dust elementals and a bagillion ancient dust mephit thingies all using TOUCH attacks ( i despise touch attacks because that means no save ) that slow and stun you, ugh that was brutal
A solar had been left there to act as the Guardian. She judged me worthy to become "the Judge" of the crime, and I agreed. This crime involved two brothers, Quinn, and his brother Karlat. The castle was divided into two sections, one for each brother.
Quinn's half was overrun with undead. I did not feel guilty to take valuable things I found there, because everyone there had been dead for over 200 years. I'm not sure the valuables there were even real, but the healing supplies and other potions seemed to work well enough.
Karlat's half was overrun with demons. There was truly great evil here.
After collecting all the evidence and interviewing both brothers, as well as a balor demon lord named Belial, Lord of Fire, I judged Karlat to be guilty of the crime, and his brother Quinn to be innocent. The Guardian thanked me, the castle disappeared, the town outside disappeared, and I was rewarded with gold, gems, and a magic shield from a chest that was just suddenly sitting there at my feet. Sadly the shield I already had was better, but I was still grateful. Lathander is a god I respect very much, and he is allied with the Trinity, of which my Torm is a member.
**********************
I've been dreading seeing a bodak, and here it is. I've fought in this scenario before where there were more than one, but I was happy it was only one this time. That's because Tomi was defenseless against the death stare. Of course it ignored me at first and went straight for Tomi. I knew the dreaded death stare was coming, but hoped we'd kill it in time. We got it to half health, and I had to use several healer's kits on Tomi just to desperately try to keep him alive from the massive melee damage. Then came the anticipated death stare, and Tomi was gone.
If I hadn't made sure to have the Belt of Guiding Light before this point in the game, I would have been next.
I made the save on the next one, not that that would have made me feel any better if I'd just had to respawn and come back to this monstrosity.
And it's dead.
I went ahead without Tomi and interviewed Quinn before teleporting back to the temple to pick up Tomi, in case there were any more bodaks nearby. There would have been no point to go get him and pay the temple fee, and then have to just do it all over again almost immediately. I knew we had most of this level explored, so I finished it first.
The demon Belial must be summoned (careful to have Protection from Evil first) and interviewed for Lathander's court. Don't Balors look cool in NWN? "You shall not pass!"
This huge fire elemental is probably the toughest enemy on this map, (unless you decide to summon Belial without Protection from Evil and try to fight him for some reason). He has enormous hit points, and hits like a truck. I've gotten respawns from it before. I noticed I was barely doing any damage, but Tomi was doing a *lot* of damage.
I think I've figured out what's happening. There are three physical damage types. Swords do slashing, arrows do piercing, and blunt weapons do crushing. This elemental was resistant to slashing, so I could barely hurt it, but vulnerable to piercing, so Tomi was owning it.
Tomi can get both sneak attacks and 3X critical hits with that shortbow, so he's been doing way better than expected when I let him fight with it. He still sometimes gets too close to combat and gets attacked, which is a problem, but most of the time I can keep him at a good distance using "Follow Me" and "Guard Me", and making sure he's set to "Keep a long distance away from me." Don't forget to reset that if he respawns, because I think he goes back to default following distance after a respawn.
Also, @sarevok57 was right, before. I need to find or invest in and start carrying around both a blunt weapon and a piercing weapon.
The beginning of the interview with Karlat. He was trying to be a lich. That alone isn't enough to condemn him - there's more to this, but I don't want to spoil it. I'm only including the picture here so you can see what a lich looks like in NWN. Under any normal circumstances, you should fear these just as much as in BG2.
At last, I made enough gold to buy the Boots of Hardiness +2. The extra constitution point won't do anything, but it's the extra Dodge bonus to AC I really wanted. My AC now while wearing my Natural Armor +2 amulet is 31, which I desperately needed, because enemies are starting to hit AC 30 far too easily for my liking. I started wearing my Natural Armor amulet most of the time, because I was feeling the loss of AC from wearing my Necklace of Health, although I'm keeping my Necklace of Health for any time I start facing vampires or shadow fiends. (Or bloated dire spiders, or any other similar enemy that spams poison.)
Level: 10
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 ("D", Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 5
up until that point of SoU this game was crazy hard, and then at the end, did the devlopers just up? first off, went to the area where there were the medusas and helmed horror dudes, and was forced to do a reload because as far as i know there is no way to be immune to petrification and eventually you are just bound to roll a 1 on a save ( i can't stress that enough how much i hate 1s being automatic fails, but it goes both ways i suppose )
so other than that, not too shabby, luckily the chests that were around dropped some pretty neat gear, and one of them being the chainmail of speed, of man did i EVER need this
and then i go up one more level where you need to pull the 4 switches and..... what a disappointment, the enemies were just pitiful, didnt really find any new gear and i was just blown away how weak the battles were here, oh well, here are the final screenshots right before i go and fight the final boss:
so i go and fight the FINAL BATTLE..... and it was pitiful lewlz? i only had to drink one potion of heal because of the good ol' ROLLING A NATURAL 1 ON A SAVE BS *sigh* from a buddy buddy's tentacles spell ( holy jeebus i hate that spell - evrard's black tentacles? no idea-) but other than that, it was a complete let down, didnt use a single prep potion or spell to buff up, just went in there hair straight back, and battle over lol
so yeah, that was an interesting experience, game pulls your pants down does you in dry the whole way through, and then at the end, it pulls your pants up, says sorry and walks away like nothing happened, most bizarre indeed
So, will you take your Luke Skywalker or your Darth Vader into HotU now?
Also, how the heck are you getting so many Bags of Holding? You're not cheating, are you?
medusas: yup, there be plural, there are 3 groups that have 4 each plus a helmed horror in each group, not particularly tough per se, just annoying based on the amount of saves you need to make
and will i take my too cool for school darth vader looking dude to HotU, nah, because you will see in a moment what i am going to do
as for the bags of holding, the first 2 rows ( +1 on the right side on the bottom ) of those bags are -60% weight while the 2 bags on the bottom left are -80% weight
and how i got so many was the mage dude in high forest, apparently by the looks of it, he has infinite bags of -60% weight, since my character's STR was so garbage, i bought every 80% i could find ( which was only 2 ) and i made sure to buy a shwack load of 60% bags, and too be honest, that wasn't really necessary, so that was a high cost, but i didn't know what to expect so i made sure to have enough
now, as for HotU, this is going to wait because i have someone ELSE who will be going there
reading your's and Arvia's play throughs of your characters going hard on the RP and such, has really given me some motivation to get it a shot of my own, it seems like a fun play through and quite challenging by going hard on the RP standards, and staying tight to them, makes the runs more interesting, so without further adue, i will be doing the same, but with a twist:
This is going to be the story about the Paladin known as: Darsa the GoldHearted
but it is not going to be told as if I was her myself, but more of an outsider or perhaps an extremely advanced bard whose knowledge is that of legend, that has heard of her exploits, and is telling the tales as if he was there himself!
backstory ( i was going to write this in the little biography thingy, but i think its going to be too small/hard to read )
When you would look at Darsa, first things you may notice; Kindness, generosity, loves to help people when she can, more soft spoken and very compassionate, but there is more to her than meets the eye, and that is; she has a bloodline of dragons coarsing through her veins, and if that wasn't impressive enough, there is one Dragon in particular whose blood flows through; Bahamut
Decades ago, Bahamut heard rumors of the prophecy of the Time of Troubles and not knowing if he himself was going to survive the chaos, he shifted into human form, and also walked the earth, to keep more of a "lower profile" but also wanting to pass his seed along to one give rise to a champion to help save the planes from the chaos that was about to insue
So Bahamut finds a human suitor to be the one who breeds his champion, but unfortunately as soon as Bahamut started he was escorted back up to Celestia to help defend the heavens from evil that might try and break through during the time of troubles
Bahamut had no choice but to do so, since he was only a lesser diety and higher powers gave him the order to come back, but he knew that one day a champion of his would rise
Decades pass as Bahamut was busy up in Celestia guarding the gates, and forgetting to realize that humans have short life spans, especially compared to his immortal self and now the time of troubles was upon them, and when he quickly came down to the material plane he realized that the only survivor of his mortal lineage was his great grand daughter Darsa and she was just a babe, way too young to be taking part in the time of troubles
so he escorted her and her foster parents to a small town named Lelion where she could train at the temple there, and Bahamut give her his blessing so that when she was ready, she could become the champion that he always wanted, and every once in awhile coming to her in her dreams, helping shape and mold her path into the champion that she will be one day
time passed on, and the time of troubles was finally over, and luckily Lelion was not affected much by it, giving Darsa all the time to train and worship without interference, and as Darsa grew older, she started taking on the traits of her great grand father more; by being kind and generous, and doing what she can to help others, but she also inherited another unfamiliar trait that is unusual for paladins; she was a bit of a kleptomaniac, although never in a harsh sense, but she has always been addicted to gold, gems and special objects, although she has never been forceful of possessions, she always fines a way to procure items that don't seem to be her, and it puzzles her, since she can feel it in her veins and this is something that a Paladin shouldn't do
One night Bahamut came to Darsa in her dreams, as he often did, telling her why she had a desire for material possessions, and he said that it was from the dragon lineage she had in her blood that made her desire it, and it would almost be impossible to resist it, so instead of condemning her for the act, he said; as long as you don't take from the poor or anyone of a good heart, then there is no wrong, all others will be able to recover from their loss, as long as you lead a good life doing what you can do spread good as best you can, and give no mercy to evil and stay strict to my ethos, then you will always be my champion
and with that, it was finally time for her to start her journey, her quest, to be the Champion of Bahamut, and her quest starts in Neverwinter and doing what she can to help the city get through this Plague crisis:
the game play rules will be as follows:
no reloads ( oi that is going to hurt )
no stealing from the good or poor
never committing an evil act
so lets see how this goes...
One thing, are you playing on EE, and if so, could you please scale up your interface? I have a really hard time reading text in your screenshots, because your interface is so small.
I will look forward to reading about your interpretations of roleplayed "good", especially given that you have usually in the past, as I've known you or read your posts, mostly played "powergame" characters who might as well be chaotic evil in practice if not in name.
ah, i just scaled it up now, wowzers what a difference ( although i didn't scale it up until this run was done, so my bad )
anyway as the adventure goes...
Darsa just finished her training and its off to go see Aribeth
and then when she just meets up with Lady Aribeth they get attacked by assassins
after the assassin situation Darsa goes and sees if there are any survivors in the Academy and she runs into some baddies
unfortunately no one survived the onslaught, but Darsa finished off the goblin hordes to make sure they could no longer harm another innocent again, once she was finished it was time to go through the big doors
luckily on the other side Pavel was alive, unlike his brother, so she joined up with Pavel to take out the rest of the bad guy scum
after the battle with the mysterious wizard the same troupe made it to a barn type area and finished off the rest of the goblins, and talked about what to do next, said our fair wells to Pavel and off to go help Neverwinter
Darsa meets up with Fenthick tells him she is ready to help serve Neverwinter, then Darsa meets up with Lady Aribeth to get more details of the mission and off Darsa goes, to fulfill her quest and to give pride for Bahamut for helping to save Neverwinter the city
so based on what Lady Aribeth said and the lady just outside the temple, Darsa felt the need to go to the peninsula district first, but before she went, she found some help along the way, by a girl named Sharwyn
after Sharwyn came to Darsa's side, it was off to see what was going on in the Peninsula district, and what she found was that the prison broke loose, and there were violent inmates everywhere causing destruction, breaking into homes, and slaughtering the innocent, something that Darsa could not stand for, so she brought swift justice to the inmates and saved who she could
the next battle was against a very powerful gang member, and Darsa and Sharwyn fought as valiantly as possible
but unfortunately Darsa did not survive the battle and Bahamut had to resurrect her, and after the resurrection, she was able to finish the leader off
afterwards the troupe found a house with a key under the mat ( who would have thought? ) and they came upon some stink bugs, thinking nothing of it, the trouple didn't give it their all, but unfortunately for them, being naive lost one of the companions and now Sharwyn fell in battle
after they found that the warden was murdered in her basement, the troupe went over to the sewer area to see if any convicts were left, and indeed they were and this was the result
so once again being revived by Bahamut, she came back to finish the convicts off
so once the outside was clean of convicts it was time to go inside and bring justice to all the hostile convicts that were left
but alas, even though the troupe fought with all their might, there were just too many convicts at once that would gang up on them, and their leader proved to be too much for the troupe
so once again Bahamut raises his champion and it now getting worried if Darsa is even up to what it takes at this point, but Darsa insists that she can do it, showing no fear of death, despite the fact that it takes a bit of her soul away each time doing so
so back into the fray with her murderer and she will make sure that this convict will never murder anyone again
and just when she thought things were finally getting back on track, she gets ambushed by a bunch of convicts and this happens
now Bahamut is very worried, Darsa is perishing in battle so often and it is really taken a toll on her spirit, even though she is willing to continue on, her spirit is struggling, Bahamut says that this is her last chance, if she perishes one more time, her spirit will not be able to come back, so without fear Darsa continues on
so onwards Darsa cleans out the convicts and eventually gains another level
thanks to her new found power she was able to defeat the convict sorcerers thanks to her new spell granted to her by her great grand father Bahamut
and alas it was time to fight against one of the main prison wardens and this is how that played out
so thoughts on the play through:
kind of frustrating to be honest, i have NEVER in my life seen such bizarre out comes ever, and i was just getting angry at the constant BS that was pouring down on me
the first death i knew, it was going to be difficult, and i could have made it out, but the gang leader critical hitted me before i could get some healing off, in fact, every death was like that, if i wasn't surrounded it was just bad luck, critical hits dealing constantly 20+ damage always landing and with the hafl orc guy dealing 44 damage, i just couldnt heal fast enough, i've never had more badluck in a run in my entire life, hell, even with i was playing the half-orc fighter/rogue/barbarian and screwing around not even trying to live and just playing wreckless, i died no where NEAR as many times through out the whole game, nevermind one district, holy crap, what a crap shoot
it was unfortunate really, i wanted to make it so that Darsa would multi class into a dragon disciple paladin to show that her dragon blood was coming through and having the blood of bahamut was the reason why she had some dragon disciple in her
but i guess the RNG gods were against me and didn't want to see such an abomination i suppose,
perhaps secretly Tiamat knew that Darsa was the last one of Bahamut's offspring and she did whatever it took to make sure Darsa would perish forever and it would seem that Tiamat succeeded on her scheme, fearing that one day, if Darsa grew powerful even, that even Darsa would challenge Tiamat one day, but now Tiamat has nothing to fear because Darsa has forever been laid to rest
so now, im going to do the play through again, just not going to take it RP serious this time or really record what i am going to be doing, because apparently its just too much for a Paladin of Bahamut to handle
Mental note: Avoid Charwood until I can afford that Belt of Guiding Light.
And: Get a mace. And the Necklace of Health?
But I will have to buy a Ring of Protection +2, too, and/or try to get a better shield. I only have AC 28 (or was it 29?), with the Whitebone Armor, Amulet of Natural Armor+2, Tower Shield +1 and Cloak of Protection +1. That's not enough. Sigh. Vow of poverty indeed...
If you see a good shield in some shop, let me know, okay?
@sarevok57 , welcome to the roleplaying challenge ?.
I like your character background story, also because Bahamut is cool. Darsa looks like Imoen, that's fitting for someone who has a hard time to stop stealing ?. I hope to read more of Darsa's journey soon.
The important thing is to have fun with it, and it sounds like, with all those unlucky rolls, that wound up not being any fun for you.
Thanks for sharing your run with us. I'd still enjoy reading about any kind of progress you'd enjoy sharing with us in any format you like, if you're still going to play NWN for a while.
Arvia you are right, the spread on stats for paladins really makes them hard to play, because the only stat you can "dump" is INT and even then thats not really a good choice if you want skills and the such
so i deleted that play through and started a new one, same set up, but with a male this time, and not really RPing at all, and i had 3 reloads, and best part was, all 3 reloads were on dinky little enemies, not even bosses haha, couldn't believe it, my paladins just arent having a good tenday this weekend thats for sure, but since its a reload play through, its much less stressful and no harm, no foul, because when my guy dies i just use the mystical reload and he's back in action
although, im still doing this play through differently than i normally though, since i still am a paladin i can't massacre everyone, and even for NPCs that i could get away with killing, im still wont, the only NPCs i will bring to justice are the ones that did start a fight, then surrender, and then after they surrender i will turn those chaps into chop suey
and i think i've learned something, because why did my half-orc far so well, while my paladins are getting smooshed into to much paste? and i think the answer is to fold; strength and rogue/monk levels
first strength:
see with my half-orc char i started the game with 20 STR which kind of hurts stat wise because my CON/DEX was only 12, INT/WIS was only 10 and CHA was 6, but it was enough stats to get by, but because my STR was 20 and with weapon focus at level 1, that is a whopper of +7 to hit at level 1, while my paladin at level 4 only had +6, plus with that huge STR, just in general dealing more damage, and for extra icing on the cake, since the STR is so high my attack bonus was naturally higher, i could actually use power attack efficiently and with great effect, the faster you kill enemies, the less time they have to kill you it seems
second rogue/monk:
these are great classes to dip into when you grow to level 2/7/12/17, not only for evasion which is a huge bonus, but also, you max out those tumble ranks, for every 5 ranks you have in tumble you get a +1 to AC and at low levels, all the AC you can muster makes a mammoth difference, so on average my half-orc had 1 more AC than my paladins and that seems to have also made a huge difference on survivability as well
because something had to be up, because with my half-orc guy i was taking names and i dont recall reloading from deaths, often if ever at all, but here my paladins are being turned into pudding
so i commend both @BelgarathMTH and @Arvia for having your paladins live as much as they have with your minimum amount of reloads, because i can't seem to hit level 4 without dying at least 4 times
So, the next thing is we need to go along the north road to Luskan. We'll pass by the Green Gryphon Inn, and have another map or two to explore before entering Luskan. On the way, we were ambushed by three powerful assassins led by Darktongue Breakbone. His guards could hit AC 31 on a 15, and he probably had even better attack, plus I think he had four attacks per round. He also had sneak attack, which means he had rogue levels mixed with fighter levels, and maybe a monk level or two. It's got to have been some kind of crazy min-max power-build, the way he was fighting.
Tomi didn't stand a chance. We were stuck at the edge of the map where we couldn't position properly, and I went pretty quickly into panic mode, because I saw we were in big trouble. Looking back on it, I wish I'd tried to run back through the map transition to see if that helped, but I think they would have followed and we wouldn't have been able to outrun them.
Once I lost Tomi, they were all on me. They had caught me with no buffs, and I didn't dare try to start casting. I had gotten my Bull's Strength up, but even doing that one casting may have been a mistake, because it gave them time to land many attacks. I think maybe I should have immediately used the portal stone, then cast my buffs in town before going back out onto the map.
I could do little but stand there healing over and over. I used TWENTY healing packs, and I didn't even have Darktongue down to half his health. I thought it was going to be respawn number three for me, but in a last desperate Hail Mary, I hit the portal stone and prayed it would work before they killed me. I made it back to the temple in one piece. Whew!
I had started out with 25 healer's kits and thought that should last a long time. Now I had five. I had spent most of my money on those Boots of Hardiness +2. I spent my last few hundred gold to get five more healer's kits. Now I was flat broke. No more healing kits for me anywhere in the near future.
I thought about not bringing Tomi back into it, but I wasn't sure at all I could beat them without him. So, I picked him up, cast Bull's Strength, Bless, and Aid, drank Potions of Barkskin, Endurance, and Speed, and headed back north with a sense of doom in my heart.
This time, Blacktongue had apparently tried to follow us almost all the way back to town, but his two guards were nowhere to be seen. He was much easier to beat by himself, though still no pushover.
Oh, that's where the two guards were. They were still waiting for us at the same ambush point, at the entrance to the map. They went straight for Tomi and cut him down in seconds. I feel really bad about that. I shouldn't have brought him along again until I had the road clear of assassins.
Now, I know there's a big undead dungeon up ahead before we get to Luskan with a lich in it that we really should kill. I'm worried about facing it with my healing supplies so low. I guess we'll see how it goes.
Level: 10
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 ("D", Setara's Flesh Golem)
Tomi Respawns: 7
And I was already angry at using about 10 healing kits to get through the troll caves...
Don't worry too much, you're going to be fine. Remember your paladin's name and bringt the Light to those undead abominations in Torm's name!
And thank you for writing down all your difficult encounters, it helps me to be prepared (if I remember).
I'm going to write my own short summary before I go to sleep.
Edited after looking at the clock: Going to write that tomorrow. Good luck to you.
The end.
Edit: Renny, the neutral evil sorcerer, made it to the town gates where he encountered an annoying peasant claiming to be a prophet, and promptly destroyed him with Negative Energy Ray. Everyone else just left, muttering.
Outside the gates, Renny met a red wizard who asked for help getting permission. Renny went to find the mayor, who was drunk. The mayor's assistant complained about the 'prophet' that Renny already killed, yet was unhappy he did so. She also wouldn't agree to red wizard's request, even after Renny threatened the mayor's life.
True to his word, Renny killed the worthless, drunk mayor. The guards outside all instantly knew what occurred and teleported into the city hall and promptly cut Renny down.
The end.
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I have defeated the evil lich, Brother Toras. Such undead horrors must not be allowed to continue in their existence. If Torm didn't strengthen me against fear, and if Aribeth had not given me the precious portal stone, I would not have survived this.
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Before the lich, we found Sir Karathis the werewolf in a nearby cave, and saved him. I had to kill more wolves to get to him. I guess stopping werewolves is the greater good against the evil of killing the innocent wolves the werewolves were dominating.
Sigh, Tomi got himself killed yet again, when he insisted on running ahead to disarm a trap, and got himself surrounded. This game desperately needs better companion AI if not full companion control, to make it more like Baldur's Gate, although apparently @TrentOster considers multiplayer D&D to have always been the priority for his game, and will not be devoting his company resources to improving the single player companion AI and control problem, or am I wrong about that, @JuliusBorisov ?
At this point in the game, I just can't justify bringing Tomi into such high levels of danger, given his fragility and his inability to keep himself out of trouble. I am going to go solo, and he will have to stay behind at the temple. I will have to tank the traps on the floors and the chests, (*not* the ones with scorch marks in front), and bash open the locks. I am tempted to take Power Attack to make that easier, and also to open up the two related paladin abilities, since the developers seemed to design the paladin class to use those abilities. But I'm also really needing Blind Fight. Decisions, decisions.
If I start taking levels of Champion of Torm, I could get some bonus feats, and better saves, but I really, really want my paladin spell book opened up all the way to fourth level spells.
I made level 11 just before facing Brother Toras, thank Torm! Sadly, there were no new feats or spells at this level, but, I now have three attacks per round, so I got that going for me, which was nice.
Okay, we don't try to open these, right, @Arvia ? The sepulchre next to it was locked, so I didn't bother it, either.
Brother Toras. I really needed to pull out all these strong undead physical guards first.
Wow, that was a *really* strong Lightning Bolt!
Sigh, there go all my buffs and potions.
That was yet another *really* strong Lightning Bolt.
Oh, no. The dreaded Evard's Black Tentacles. I'm doomed now if I don't do something, and I have three choices - try to heal (that is *not* going to work while standing in these tentacles), try to run out of their AoE while Toras casts another spell (highly unlikely to work - the tentacles will likely kill me before I can take two steps), or say a prayer to Torm and hit the portal stone. I took option three, and barely escaped with my life.
I didn't want to use the temple portal to teleport right back into the middle of those tentacles, so I walked all the way back up to the graveyard.
When I made my way back, Toras was still waiting for me. I took a picture that I thought looked like it would make a good superhero comic book cover. Lightbringer vs. his archenemy, The Lich.
Look at the black splotches on the floor. Another Evard's Black Tentacles is incoming. They do their first volley of damage as soon as the spell is cast, which was enough to get me to Near Death. But this time, I ran out of the AoE as soon as I saw them coming, and started healing myself.
I don't know *what* Doom Gaze is. I saved against it, but it still debuffed me. I suspect this would have been an instant kill effect if I weren't wearing the Belt of Guiding Light.
At the end, he tried a mind-affecting spell that I'm sure would have been lethal if I'd failed the will save and hadn't been wearing the Golden Circlet. Then, it was over. Thank you, Helm.
Level: 11
Reloads: 0
Personal Respawns: 2 ("D", Setara's flesh golem)
Tomi Respawns: 8
those strong lightning bolts im pretty sure are actually chain lightnings, they can deal up to 20d6 at level 20, plus if im not mistaken, the black tentacles spell deals physical damage, so if you have any DR items, they can help mitigate a little bit of it i believe.....
and when it comes to companion AI and the ability to control them, holy poop, is that direly needed, im doing my new paladin run ( just hit level 5 with about 40 reloads haha and unfortunately thats no joke ) but sharwyn is doing a derp a derp so often, i really hate the fact that i told her to use range weapons, and when an enemy comes up to her in melee, she just keeps using her ranged weapons until she dies from attacks of oppurtunity, she doesnt attempt to get out of melee combat or switch over to melee for that *sigh* if only making companion scripts was as easy to do like it is in NI i could make it so my companion wasn't just extra baggage ( hence usually why i do solo runs )
so it might start getting time to put tomi in ranged combat because when you start fighting giants, they aren't going to miss him, and they will turn him into halfling goo in no time flat
"Me will crush you! Crush you to goo!"