We've been hitting all kinds of power spikes recently. Let's go onto another big XP location - the shadow temple.
The main enemy that we are worried about is the shadow jailor. We cannot leave until it is dead. It attacks with a save-less slow, and it has two skeleton lords as backup.
If we summon skeletons, they will just be turned against us, so we buff up and go in alone.
The Jailor's spell are easily interruptible, and we deal heavy damage to it. It goes down in about three rounds.
Next up are the skeleton lords. They hit hard and hit often, but they have no effect on hit. They have 50% resistance to piercing and slashing damage, but no resistance to crushing, so we can talk them with mirror image/stoneskin without having to worry about on-hit effects. If things do start to look dodgy, then we can run away - the stairs up will be active again now, and we move faster than they do.
Reciting the rituals of Amaunator is worth a whopping 45.5k XP.
From there, we can hand over Amuana's bones without running into anything non-vanilla. We can't progress any further in this map without dealing with skeleton grandlords, however, and those require +4 weapons (preferably crushing).
In the last part, we found ourselves blocked by lack of +4 weapons. Let's instead go somewhere that doesn't have this blocker.
The ruhk conjurer has a relatively simple AI, though it is quite effective:
Every three rounds, summon a batch of kamikaze kobolds
If on less than 100% health, cast absolute immunity (up to twice)
If a summoned creature is visible, cast death spell (up to four times)
If there is a kamikaze kobold nearby and a party member who is immune to fire or has mirror images up, cast remove magic (up to six times, never two rounds in a row)
If there is a target for flame arrow that is not immune to fire, cast flame arrow (up to six times)
If a party member has not been seen for eighteen minutes, refresh all spells
We start by using the horn of valhalla and buffing with ProFire and Haste.
We keep the warrior between us and the Ruhk. We can also (inconsistently) trigger the kamikaze kobolds by magic missiling one of them, the rest will go off in sequence.
When we hear the Ruhk casting a necromancy spell, we run forwards through the door behind. We will not be followed.
In this room, the orcs are unimproved. We take them down without much trouble.
We can rest in this room, and we can rest in the windspear hills exterior. Although they both have hostile rest spawns, the spawns are not notable (the exterior is slightly safer, however).
We have five 2nd level spell slots, which we will fill with mirror image. We also have 5 3rd level spell slots, which we will fill with 3 haste and 2 ProFire.
Our plan is to run between the exterior and the maze level repeatedly under haste and mirror image. The mirror image is enough of a trigger to make the Ruhk cast remove magic on us.
We are slightly slower than the remove magic projectile. Ideally we want to get to the other exit to completely fizzle it, but if that doesn't work then we will at least be safe from the enemies. This is why we prepared backup hastes and mirror images. (and we can supplement with oils of speed and spell sequencer if we want)
The Ruhk tends to outrun the kobolds, in which case it will not cast remove magic until the kobolds catch up. We can try to use this to land a hit. As soon as its health is below 100% it will cast absolute immunity, and since it has no regeneration this one hit is enough to make it eventually use up both castings.
The kobolds may start to clog up the map. The can be make to suicide consistently by using the horn of Valhalla. Alternatively, ProFire may be cast for immunity to their explosions (which is why we prepared two of them).
When the Ruhk fires a flame arrow, we know that it is out of dispels.
Although each individual run between exits isn't guaranteed to fizzle a remove magic, I consider this strategy as a whole to be reload-safe - Each individual run is damage safe (especially if ProFire is used as a buff while running), and we can safely rest between attempts, so as a whole the strategy is reload safe.
We buff up. Under ProFire and PFMW, we are immune to the Ruhk and kobolds. We do kinda have to worry about the kobolds getting in under the PFMW, but stoneskins, spirit armour and the remaining mirror images should keep us safe.
In the last part, we took out the Ruhk Conjurer, and in doing so opened up a major map, with a lot of juicy XP in it. This is going to be a productive part.
Note that we will be resting up a lot in the dungeon. Noreloaders will want to be mega safe by going all the way to the exterior to rest up, where the nighttime encounters are weakest.
Before we go any further, we want to make sure we have one of these handy. When we cleared out the mists we should have picked up one of these, but if it's been lost or sold there are a few shops in Athkatla which sell them. Using this and Spirit Armour, we can get our save vs spell down to -3 without illusions, meaning we can save at a -4 penalty reliably. Note that we can swap amulets at instant speed in combat, so if we are worried about losing the casting time bonus of the amulet of power, we can equip one amulet, cast a spell (potentially instacast), and the swap the amulets back.
Carrying on into the maze, we find ourselves up against an IA golem group. It consists of two gem golems, two coin golems, and a greater bone golem.
The greater bone golem is 65% resistant to crushing damage, and 90% resistant to slashing and piercing damage. It needs +3 or better weapons to hit. It has an ability (hideous laughter) that can panic or stun us unless we can make a save vs spell at -4. Its weapon dispels some protections on hit, including illusions (I'm not sure of the full list).
The gem golem is 75% resistant to crushing damage, 90% resistant to slashing damage, and immune to piercing damage. The coin golem is 75% resistant to piercing damage, 90% resistant to crushing damage, and immune to slashing damage. Both of them require +3 or better weapons to hit, and both of them dispel illusions on hit.
We have a big advantage here - the golems do not follow us outside the starting room.
Our plan is to draw the golems into the doorway and bottleneck them. Coin and gem golems have 3 APR and the greater bone golem has 4 APR, compared to the 6 layers our stoneskin gives us (as we are mage level 13). We can also use PFMW as protection if we are unable to bottleneck them in the doorway.
We will attempt to focus them down one by one. If things don't go to plan, we can retreat and rest up, in which case the golems will reset their position and health. As long as we leave before the Spirit Armour expires we are reload safe. We can use DUHM as a warning for this - Spirit Armour lasts for 15 rounds and DUHM for 10, so as long as we buff in the order IH, Spirit Armour, DUHM we know we have a few rounds of safely between DUHM running out and spirit armour running out.
Coin golems are easier to take down than gem golems - they have 120 health to the gem golem's 150. We are dealing 5 damage per hit, and hitting on pretty much every roll (THAC0 -2 vs AC -4), and the golems do not have regeneration, so we will take out a coin golem in around 24 hits, which with our 7 APR is doable withint a single PFMW if we use enchanted weapon on shortsword.
When we return, the golems have reset to their initial position and health, except for the one we killed. I prefer taking down the greater bone golem before taking down the gem golem for greater peace of mind concerning having to make a save against hideous laughter. It is a bit harder to take down, with better AC and regeneration, but at least there's only one of them.
For the Gem and Greater Bone golems, I find DPS is best with the FOA main hand and enchanted weapon mace offhand (despite the lack of proficiency points). Once the GBG is down, we can go back to using Ghost Armour and the Amulet of Power, freeing up a 4th level slot for more stoneskins.
The coin, gem and greater bone golems are worth 22k, 24k and 30k respectively, for a total XP of 122k for the whole group. The greater bone golem takes our spot as most powerful vanquished.
The next room contains some undead, including an eminent vampire. We have to be on the watchout for domination effects, so either improved invisibility or the shield of harmony will be necessary. Reload safety will demand a full rest and rebuff before this fight.
We get ready to face King Strohm's guardians. They each protect themselves with illusions, Stoneskin and Fireshield. They will attack us in melee as well as casting fireball. Rather annoyingly, they have infinite stoneskins and mirror images, though they will limit themselves to one stoneskin every four rounds and one mirror image every two rounds.
Fortunately, although they start with SI:Div, they do not refresh it. They are 16th level casters, which means that their SI lasts for 16 rounds, the same as our regular haste (as we are a 13th level caster). Therefore, if we cast haste as the prebuffs go off, as soon as it runs out we can start casting our divination spells. For additional safety, we can equip the SOH during the initial phase of the fight as our damage output doesn't really matter, so we might as well get a bit of AC - Ghost Armour, SOH, and Blur means that they miss on an 19.
We will put IH and TS in our sixth level spell slots, casting them both when the SI is down. We can rely on Mirror Image, ProFire and Stoneskins to protect us until then.
It's a long fight, but it's extremely safe. We can also speed it up by breaching the stoneskins once the TS is down.
We also want to make sure we disarm all the traps here for a bit more XP.
The six guardians are worth 12k apiece, and assembling the mask is worth 24550, an unusual number. The final guardian goes down in a few rounds of us under IH and ProFIre, but we save the Samia fight for later.
We will want to buff up before entering this area, as there is an improved spider group waiting on the other side of the door. We will also leave the well along, it has a fight that we're not ready for yet.
Gerg is worth 35XP, the troll 1400, and the captain 1800. We will try to kill them in descending order of XP.
The adamantine golem needs +3 or better weapons to hit. It doesn't matter much which weapon, it's 90% resistant to all damage types. We can at least slow if if we keep hitting it with the FOA (this incidental slow is one of the reasons the FOA is our main weapon).
The werewolf den is easy, it doesn't matter much which option we choose.
Just to the north of the well is another golem group. We follow the same strategy, just with a much longer retreat distance. Having a regular haste prepared as well and the IH will guarantee that the golems don't catch up to us when IH runs out.
The hallway just before this door is a good place to apply our buffs, just before the fight.
This second group of golems is enough for us to hit thief level 16. Not much going on here.
Just past the golems is a small group of vampires and mists. IH and PFMW make short work of them, though watch out for domination again.
We've got one last fight in this area - Tazok. We rest and rebuff before going in.
As well as a bunch of potions, Tazok also has access to one whirlwind. The best time to fire our PFMW is right after he fires his whirlwind.
He likes to whirlwind as his second action, which means that from round three onward our action is free to magic missile for a bit more damage. He tends to go down around when our PFMW expires.
Tazok drops the cloak of Balduran. It's basically a slightly more swag version of a cloak of protection + 1, though it can be used for a unique item upgrade for Cernd. We may end up forging it if we have extra ingredients, as it is the only +4 protection cloak in the game.
This has been a very long part - , we will end it here.
This was a super long part with all kinds of juicy XP - we gained approximately 624k XP in this.
I ran into two IA golem groups, and more will be encountered in the future. Most of the time our tactics will remain pretty fixed, so for repeated enemy groups like that I will probably only describe the tactics the first time we encounter them, and gloss over them in the future (unless our tactics change).
In the last part, we got ourselves a massive chunk of XP. We just need 143k more, at which point we hit level 14 in fighter and mage, and unlock 7th level spells.
We'll be tackling the keep viper. As we can see, we will be wanting to attack with the FOA and enchanted weapon longsword. Each hit will be doing around 4-5 damage, and it regenerates 2 hitpoints per second, so we will be able to grind it down.
We buff up as normal. It can poison us if we fail a save vs death at -4, so we will want to include blur or use the amulet of protection to guarantee passing it.
At our current rate of damage output, it goes down easily, usually around a dozen rounds. We can keep our action for refreshing stoneskin/mirror image/PFMW, and run downstairs if things start to look bad. We will want to refresh DUHM when it's at low health, saving the PFMW for then so we can guarantee no interruptions is probably best.
With that dead, we have nothing left to do in the keep except the Tor'Gal fight. That one may have to wait until after we have spell immunity.
Part 044: Sewers Horrid Rakshasa:
Just like last part, we're clearing up a small encounter that we were unable to do earlier, but can do now.
In the center of the sewers is a group of kobolds and a horrid Rakshasa. We start be decluttering by picking off the kobolds without triggering the rakshasa.
This is the Horrid Rakshasa. It is an enemy that we will be seeing a lot of in the late game.
It has a single absolute immunity, which it fires when it's under 75% health. It has a single remove magic (that I can't fully determine the conditions for firing, I'm not good with scripting states). It also has an unlimited amount of ADHW, which it fires no more than once every five rounds. If we disappear from sight too long, it refreshes the absolute immunity but not the remove magic.
We will now buff up, grab the Rakshasa's attention, and wait for it to run away.
It should open with ADHW or remove magic, in which case we can run to the sewers exit to negate the spell and come back. We will want to start running the instant we see a necromancy spell being cast, don't wait for it to finish.
We can then draw him to fight near the exit, at which point we will find it much easier to escape from the ADHW.
We have no way of getting around his absolute immunity, so we will have to just wait it out. Once it's down, it will die in a few rounds of combat. Fortunately, none of our standard buffs make him want to dispel - I think the dispel logic is based around protections against ADHW.
For a less cheesy but not quite reload-safe strategy, we can run in and start hitting him off the bat to disrupt the ADHW. This is not reload safe, as we will have 2-3 attacks, where we need at least a 7 to hit. His first round will be casting ADHW and his second will be casting absolute immunity if we deal enough damage to him (which shouldn't be a major issue). His absolute immunity should be running out as he starts casting the second ADHW, where we can interrupt him again.
It's not that bad if the ADHW hits us, it terms to do 80-100 damage on insane, which we can tank. Although a potion of magic shielding might protect us, that also makes the Rakshasa dispel us, which gets rid off the buffs that we need.
Killing it earns us 21k XP and the cloak of the sewers. Normally the cloak isn't that interesting loot, but it actually has a use in IA, though not a major one.
Part 045: Lilarcor:
Last part was a bit of XP, but not much. Our major reason for doing that fight was the loot.
We will now be fighting Lilarcor's second guardian, the shadow lover.
Looking at the shadow lover, it might look a bit squishy, but it has a nasty trick. When it hits, it stuns the target with no save.
Tresset gave a list of ways we can gain stun immunity, which I have added my comments to in square brackets:
Full list of player usable stuff (not including summoned creatures) that grants stun immunity:
Spells and abilities:
Berserker (kit) rage [Not available to us]
Barbarian rage [Not available to us]
Wilson rage [Not available to us]
Level 20 skald song [Not available to us]
Enhanced Bard song [Not available to us]
Minsc berserk [Not available to us]
Chaotic Commands [Not available to us]
Items and characters:
Greenstone Amulet [Underdark]
Chateau Irenicus Imoen [Not available to us]
Sword of Arvoreen [Need UAI]
Cloak of the Sewer/Shapeshift spell troll form [We just got this]
Slayer form [Spellhold]
That is it!
Therefore, in order to safely tank the shadow lover, our only option is to buff up and beat it while transformed into a troll.
We buff up and transform. Unfortunately, it turns out that the cloak is either bugged or nerfed. We do not transform properly, and do not gain the immunities we want. We will have to do it the old fashioned way.
The shadow lover prioritizes attacking the closest target, so by careful positioning we can save our PFMW for when the skeletons are down, buying us more rounds of safety. A noreloader will also want to keep PFMW up (possibly scrollcasting for the extra protection), and be ready to run away.
Next up is Quallo's friend. It needs +3 weapons to hit, and when it hits us we get paralyzed unless we make a save vs death at -4. Casting blur or using the amulet of protection guarantees that we will make this save.
It has some hefty regeneration, but we can easily outdamage it.
It tends to take five or six rounds to take out.
Turning in the blood leads us to the next guardians - four virulent rats.
These are much easier. They are completely weak to crushing damage, and on hit they poison us unless we pass a save with no penalties (easy for us at this point in the game).
The final pipe has no guardians, just giving us the sword and some XP.
We're about to get 7th level mage spells, so let's talk a bit about mage fights.
There are three ways that IA mages tend to defend themselves:
Improved invisibility and SI:Div
SI:Ab and spell protections
Lich immunities and SI:Nec
Improved invisibility and SI:Div means that we cannot target the mage with spells like breach, and we cannot use divination to make them targetable. We will either have to cast dispel/remove magic at a higher level than the enemy mage (unlikely to happen) to dispel protections, or go through the defenses physically (Hitting through stoneskins, protection vs fireshield, normal weapons vs PFMW).
SI:Ab also gives protection from dispel and breach-like spells. There is only one spell that can get rid of it, and that is Ruby Ray of Reversal (commonly abbreviated to RR). RR gets rid of the highest level spell from this list:
Spell Trap (9)
Spell Turning (7)
GOI (6)
Spell Deflection (6)
Minor Spell Turning (5)
Spell Immunity (5)
Spell Shield (5)
MGOI (4)
Minor Spell Deflection (3)
SI:Ab is typically paired with several of these level 6+ spell protections. This means that we will need to peel back several layers of protections with several ruby rays before we can start breaching. Depending on the test of the mage's protections and the rest of the people in the fight, we may choose to instead fight through the protections with weapons instead of magic.
Lichs are immune to spells of level 1-5, except dispel and remove magic. They also tend to be rather high level, 25+, making it very difficult to dispel them. They are also immune to normal weapons and like to cast PFMW. They tend to run SI:Nec to protect from a couple IA added spells (such as disrupt undead). They do have one glaring weakness, however - slow movement speed. We will therefore have a couple strategies that we can employ:
Get good enough saves to ignore their disabling spells and drink potions to heal past their damaging spells (running away to get multiple round of potion drinking if necessary)
Stand outside of direct view and use summons (such as skeletons) to consume the lich's spells and wait out the lich's buffs
We are very close to fighter and mage level 14. Let's get that level up and also another power spike.
We head to the graveyard district, buff up, and head into Pai'Na's lair.
Pai'na's initial summons are a bunch of sword spiders. She does have additional summons that we want to exhaust her of, however.
To fully exhaust all her summons will require twelve rounds of waiting.
We buff up and head in. We also make sure to equip the shield of harmony (for protection against improved web) and the girdle of piercing (the spiders all do piercing damage).
Pai'na's initial support is a large number of sword spiders. They can only hit us on a natural 20, but there are a lot of them and they have decent APR. We will want to move as close to her as possible and spend our first action breaching her. We will want to interrupt her spells, and her magic resistance means we want to do it by hitting her with weapons.
We can spend our action refreshing defences, casting sunfire to take out the sword spiders, or casting magic missile to take out the killer and spirit spiders. Two sunfires will take out most if not all of the sword spiders.
Pai'na typically tries to cast only three spells - True Sight, Creeping Doom, and Insect Plague. Once all of those are interrupted, she will just attack in melee, which is not very threatening. Once the improved web wears out, we can temporarily swap to dual wielding for additional damage output, but we will want to be quick to swap back if she tries another improved web.
Even if she does manage to get off one of the spells, our save vs breath weapons is -3 under blur (-7 with II as well), which is more than enough to reliably save.
When we see a spawn after DUHM wears off, that should be the last spawn and we will be clear to finish off Pai'Na. She may start casting necromancy spells, but these will all be healing, which we don't massively care about.
When we beat her, it is critically important that we don't loot the body. We will want to make sure we are standing on top of the container in the middle of the room, pause the game, and open up the quick loot menu.
To check that we are standing in the right place, we want to open the inventory screen and see that the "ground" is the contents of the container.
Once we have verified this, we want to use the quick loot menu in the main game screen to loot Pai'Na's body, the drop the spider figurine onto the "ground" without unpausing. The rest of the loot can be held onto.
If we left it lying on the ground it would despawn. Putting it in the container means it will not go away, and since we never had it in our inventory when the game was unpaused the IA script that checks if we pick it up should not fire. We can verify that we have done this correctly by going to watcher's keep and seeing if the spider queen appears (though if she does then that is definitely a reload).
This is enough for us to hit level 14 in fighter and mage. We gain our first level seven spell slot.
I've already talked about RROR, which will be our main seventh level spell, but there are three more of interest - Limited Wish (available from Lady Yuth in the Adventurer's Mart), Spell Turning and Spell Sequencer (both available from Bernard in the Copper Coronet).
The last thing to do in this part is the one-time limited wish options:
I wish to see all as it really is (Glasses of Identification)
I wish for a powerful magical item (Full Plate +2)
I wish for an adventure (Gong quest)
I wish to be rich (Money and gems)
I wish to be more experienced (Golem fight worth 32.1k XP)
After a lot of delay, I've finally decided to take on Pai'Na for the spell immunity scroll. There are four major reasons for this.
The first is that lack of spell immunity is proving to be a big blocker. There are a lot of fights from here that we cannot do due to lacking spell immunity.
The second is that we can't progress any further in Watcher's Keep without killing the candle and bell guardians. In order to beat these we will need several critical strike HLAs. We're currently on 5 million total XP, and we would need to get to 8 or 9 million total before we'd be able to beat the guardians. At that point we might as well try to fight the spider queen.
The third is that the spider queen fight is ultimately optional. We can always give up the black spider figurine instead of fighting the spider queen.
The fourth reason, however, is the biggest by far. The spider queen spawning is not controlled by Pai'Na being dead, it is controlled by the black spider figuring. When we pick it up a variable is set, and that variable is checked in watcher's keep. Therefore, if we never unpause with the black spider figurine in our inventory, this variable will never be set and we can delay the spider queen fight as much as we want.
Our next level is almost half a million XP away, but now that we have access to spell immunity, we can claim ourselves another stronghold.
Our main target for this part is TorGal. He is a level 25 cleric, which means he has a nasty dispel magic (which in his case is uninterruptible), but against SI:Ab he can't do anything.
We buff up and head downstairs. The buffing is there to prevent the neo-otyugh from getting a surprise nasty hit on us. Once we head down we cannot leave until the TorGal fight is cleared, but we will be able to rest up to restore our buffs.
We equip the shield of harmony to protect against confusion, and drop off the dog stew before killing any umber hulks. If we kill the hulks first, we don't get the XP reward for the dog stew.
We set up our minor sequencer with Blur and Mirror Image. We set up our major sequencer with Stoneskin, II and Fireshield Red. We set up enchanted weapon mace, and make sure we have the girdle of bluntness equipped. We equip the amulet of protection, but get ready to swap it for the AOP before casting any defensive spells.
We buff up, excluding mirror images, as we won't be able to get full value. TorGal is backed up by four noble trolls and a gem golem. We get their attention and then run to the doorway.
Using the doorway, we can bottleneck them and take them out one by one. There are two giant trolls in the mix, but they are vanilla and so fighting two enemies at once doesn't matter so much if one of them is a giant troll.
TorGal can cast storm of vengeance, but it is not a major threat to us (we can chug potions if our life gets too low, or use an oil of resurgence). We can augment our DPS with magic missiles against the noble trolls. TorGal casts a few disabling spells, but as long as we have a save vs spell of -1 we will pass, and we can always tactically use the SOH if our blur gets dispelled.
For the gem golem, we want to us FOA main hand and the enchanted weapon mace offhand. Our improved haste may run out before we kill all the enemies - we will want to just use regular haste (for only 1/2 extra APR, but better than nothing). Similarly, our DUHM will need to be refreshed (and possibly followed up with giant strength potions). Once TorGal and the golem are down, we can use mirror images to protect ourselves instead of PFMW and stoneskins. The PFMW is best used when being attacked by multiple enemies at the same time, or when the golem is in range (as it hits harder and more accurately than the noble trolls).
As long as we fight them one-on-one, they go down easily. If ever we get into trouble, we can retreat to the next doorway, or cast PFMW and use the horn of valhalla to distract (the AI will prefer a non-PFMW target over a PFMW target). One thing to watch out for is that if our health goes below 50% it can trigger our safety contingency, so we will want to plan around that.
TorGal drops a lot of loot, most notably a scroll of permanency (our second), the blackblood club and the barbarian half of judgement day essence.
We find a scroll of Ray of Fragmentation, a new IA spell that is meant to combat the golems, but it's just worse than hitting with out weapon. We won't be casting this.
We'll end this part here, and get the quest reward and to the first keep quests in the next part.
In the last part, we had a grindy fight, probably the most grindy one since we got improved haste. This time, we've got some easy XP, without any fighting.
We accept the keep for 45.5k XP.
Incidentally, this is the script that controls the weekly gold we get from the bard and fighter stronnholds. As we can see, the fighter stronghold only triggers 20 times and the bard stronghold only triggers 15 times.
Since the amount of gold we get is finite, we will want to maximize first the XP, then the gold. We can raise taxes to get more gold, but each time increases KPREVOLT by 1, and once it hits 10 the peasants will revolt and we will lose the keep. Our plan of action is therefore:
Raise special taxes to get KPREVOLT to 9
Do each of the keep quests in the most XP-efficient way, which tends to lower KPREVOLT
As KPREVOLT lowers, keep raising more taxes to keep it at 9
Once we have finished all the quests and waited out the 20 weeks, raise the final taxes and get kicked out by the peasants.
We have to wait a week before each of the keep events:
We pay the merchant 1000 gold and pay 500 to get rid of the merchant. This gives us 15k gold an lowers revolt by 1.
We pay Lastin 500 gold for the medecine and forgive him. This gives us 15.5K XP and lowers revolt by 1.
We let the priest stay for 15.5k XP and lowering revolt by 1.
We tell Roenall that we are keeping the keep for no effect.
We let Chanelle marry Jessup and give a 500 gold dowry. We get 15.5k XP and lower revolt by 1.
We will have to leave the rest of the Keep quests for later. If we do the next quest (the moneylenders), the flood will be a timed quest that we have to do in a certain amount of time, and after that the Roenall invasion we will have to do in a certain amount of time. The Roenall invasion is a pretty difficult fight, we will want to save it for when we are ready.
The last part wasn't very exciting - no challenges, but a bit of free XP. I've done the maths, and we will get our first HLA at 6.9 million XP, which is when we hit fighter level 16. We are currently at 5.465 million, so we have another million and a half to go.
Conster is a 21st level mage. He protects himself with SI:Ab and Spell Turning, which means that he will need two ruby rays to get through his protections. We can cast one naturally, and can scrollcast the other (one sold by Bernard)
He likes to cast true sight if we have illusion protections, followed by ruby rays, spellstrikes and breaches (he has a few scrolls). Defensively, he protects himself from melee attacks with absolute immunity, and from the elements of fire, cold, electricity, magic and poison. He has left a weakness - acid. From the druid grove we got the "Root of the Problem" club which deals one point of acid on hit, which is enough to disrupt his casting. Fully buffed, he has an AC of 5 compared to our THAC0 of 4, so we will hit on anything other than a 1.
We buff up (including ProCold, II and SI:Ab) and head downstairs. We have the Root of the Problem and the SOH equipped.
Once we head down, he starts casting a divination spell. We will reliably have three swings at him, at 95% accuracy. Although that's techinically not reload safe, it feels pretty reload safe.
With us under II and his TS disrupted, he does nothing. Three rounds of skeleton lords also appear. Unlike most IA fight summons, these will continue spawning after Conster is dead, but they are more threatening than he is right now, so we will want to take them out and ignore Conster. We can swap to the FOA for taking them out.
We stand far enough back that he won't be tempted to use his scrolls of AI. Near the entrance we have eight skeleton lords that will spawn in, (four groups of two, two rounds apart). We can swap to the FOA for taking them out, and we will want to fire both our ruby rays at Conster while doing this. He may also try another divination spell, in which case we want to run in with the club and disrupt him again.
We breach him, but we don't immediately go in to attack him. We want to get him to spend his action on something else so he doesn't cast AI.
Using the horn of Valhalla makes him spend his action casting Death Spell. We can then use this to go in and start hitting him.
He may get off a couple AIs, but that's why we prepare three breaches, and can always scrollcast more.
In addition to dropping some nice scrolls, he also drops our first manual of elaboration.
Freeing Taar is worth 23.75k XP in the maze, and another 44.5k when we return to Garren.
Part 050: Paladin Stronghold:
In the last part, we gained access to the paladin stronghold. Let's do it now, stronghold tasks tend to be easy XP.
Our first task is to go to the umar hills.
The enemies here are all vanilla. We just load up on offensive buffs and try to make sure we get all the kills on the ettins and ogre magi. Killing them all is worth 11.5k XP
Returning to the MNORH, we get another 10k XP and are sent back to the umar hills.
While we're here, we also finish up the second half of the "Idle hands in Imnesvale" quest and the second half of the Madulf quest.
We buff up, including II and SI:Ab. As we enter, Sorcerous Amin starts to cast TS. We can either talk to him to interrupt him, or if we're feeling less cheesy, talk to Lanka to make everyone go hostile, then hit Amin with a weapon to interrupt him. We will need to be quick with the pause, but if we are slow we can always leave the building and try again.
With his TS interrupted and us under SI:Ab, Amin will use a sequencer before engaging us in melee. We want to seperate him out from the rest of the enemies, so as soon as the fight begins, we will leave the building, before Amin uses his sequencer.
We want to separate out as many of the non-Amin enemies as possible from the building. Ideally we would get all three of them, but it's not a disaster if we do not. They are easy to take out, and once we have done this we will want to rest twice (so Amin's stoneskin expires) and prepare to take on Amin.
Amin has four scrolls of PFMW, and we will want to take him out with him using as few of them as possible. He also has a chain contingency of triple ADHW when he is under 75% health, so we will need to protect with PFME.
Heading in, we Amin has had his spells refreshed and repeats his AI. He starts with TS as we are invisible, and we can kill him in a round.
Some may feel that this is an overly cheesy method to go outside and rest. We can take a somewhat less cheesy strategy of just hitting Amin with normal weapons in the first encounter. It's pretty consistent either way, the only real difference is how many PFMW scrolls we can get from Amin.
Returning to the MNORH, we get 25.5k quest XP, and are given our third quest. We will want to prepare a know alignment (2nd level spell, or scroll) for this.
The fight here is vanilla.
We want to use detect alignment to determine if this Hurgis is Evil or Good. This is randomly decided, so someone who is willing to reload can reload to before the assassin fight to reroll it. It is better if we get the evil Hurgis, as then we get to kill him for a bit more XP before the good Hurgis turns up.
We get given 25k XP and our final task, which we will not be doing for a while.
Throughout this part we were able to hit Thief 17. Most notably, this comes with a better save vs spell.
The best place to buff is in Bodhi's lair, in the western corner. If we exit there, we will come out just by the crypt royalty entrance.
Initially, we only see the crypt king.
We save our PFMW for when the queen comes and attacks us.
The crypt king goes down about halfway through the PFMW, and we focus on the crypt queen. Once the PFMW is down, we can protect ourselves with mirror image and stoneskin.
In this tomb we find a scroll of minor disruption. Normally we wouldn't want to cast this, but right now it is our best way of damaging skeleton grandlords. If we stick three of them in a spell sequencer, that'll do 18-72 damage, which is a decent chunk of their 200 hitpoints. Without that, our only way of hurting skeleton grandlords is using the Flame Tongue sword, which deals 3-4 damage per hit.
Part 052: Mencar Pebblecrusher:
In the last part we had a low XP encounter that gave us an important spell scroll. This helps us take out skeleton grandlords, but it is not quite enough.
We buff up, including ProFire, SI:Ab and II. As we head in the mages start casting some not very notable spells, but they are immune until their prebuffs fire, at which point they get fully healed, so we will start by getting the drop on Brennan and Smaeluv. We can at least delay Amon getting into the fight by interrupting his ProFire with magic missiles.
When we see Amon start to cast a divination spell, we can interrupt him with cone of cold.
Mencar has Hardiness, we can respond with breach.
Amon protects himself with scrolls of improved mantle. We don't really care about preserving those scrolls, pretty much every IA enemy attacks with +4 or +5 weapons.
We want to keep interrupting any divination spells with cone of cold, otherwise we could be caught be surprise by Amon's ADHW. The notable loot from this fight is the cursed sword of berserking, Borok's fist and three more scrolls of RROR.
We are 1 million XP short of HLAs, where things will open out a lot. I'm running out of places that we can get XP, it looks like we may have to take the plunge into the planar sphere.
We stop by the smith any pick up all three scrolls of PFME. We already know it, but there is at least one fight in the planar sphere where we will need to scrollcast it.
We head to Valygar's cabin and take him out.
We do a big sell-off. Anything that's not a scroll gets sold to the book merchant in the promenade to bring us to just over 200k gold. We make sure to hold onto one rogue stone and all our Laeral's tear necklaces.
We do some crafting. We turn some rings of protection +1 into a third +2, then combine two of the +2s into a +3. We similarly combine some cloaks of protection +1 into a +2 version. Finally, we forge the paws of the furious cat, anticipating that we will hit the XP threshold while in the sphere.
In IA, we can have any number of protection items that are +2 or lower, and at most one that is over +2. We meet that condition now, but it means we will eventually be upgrading our +3 ring into a +4 instead of making two +3 rings.
I have a big debate of if we want to similarly forge the treefolk's arm. It looks like we will be unable to has the permanency scrolls to forge phosphorus for a while, so with UAI we can use it as a crushing weapon good enough to beat skeleton grandlords. I ultimately decide to keep it because it does guaranteed acid damage on hit, which is good for disrupting mages.
The enemies in the initial part of the sphere are vanilla.
The sahuagins are not very threatening and go down with mild buffs.
We kill these two vanilla halflings and rest up before carrying on.
We buff up (including ProFire, II and SI:Ab) and head in.
There are four named halflings:
Togan, bow-wielding fighter
Entu, flail-wielding fighter
Kayardia, mage
Mogadish, cleric
Togan teleports around a lot. If we run past him without stopping, he will be left in the corner of the area and stay there while we engage the rest of the halflings.
We start fighting the cleric and interrupt the TS. When Entu arrives we cast our PFMW for protection.
Kayardi also has a divination spell,but if we use the ROTP we can interrupt it. Technically this isn't reload-safe, but we have multiple attacks at 95% hit rate, so I feel safe with it.
After Mogadish goes down, we focus on Entu. Kayardi may start scrollcasting improved mantle, but we don't care about preserving those scrolls.
We rest up, summon the minions and head to face Togan.
Togan can teleport around up to six times, but doing so takes his action. If we keep up PFMW when he attacks us we can wear him down.
This room has an improved spider group. As long as we go in with fresh buffs, we will be reload safe.
This is enough for us to hit fighter level 15. We put it into flails (starting the long grind to grand mastery). We also get an improvement in our save vs death. If we equip the amulet of protection, then our save vs death goes down to -6 (and our save vs spell goes down to -3).
The next room contains Taibela and Necre, both mages. We buff with ProFire, II and SI:Ab. Only Taibela has divination spells, and we can ensure her being interruped with magic missile. Taibela likes to cast PFMW, so we can use mundane weapons to take her out.
We can also stick coal in the furnaces. This spawns vanilla fire elementals, which we can take out from a drop more XP.
The next room is tricky. It contains a group of IA-improved golems, which we have beaten before. However, when we have beaten them in the past, it has always been with an area transition that we can use to rest up and rebuff between golems. We don't have that right now. We will instead have to try to tank as much as possible all at once. To that effect, we have:
One casting of PFMW
Four castings of stoneskin
One pre-rest casting of stoneskin
One stoneskin in contingency
One stoneskin in a sequencer (along with haste and spirit armour)
One stoneskin that can be restored with limited wish (repeatable wish for spells to be restored)
If we manage the golems so we are not fighting more than one at a time, we will be able to tank for more than 20 rounds, by which time our offensive buffs such as improved haste will have faded.
We use the doorways to ensure that we are not fighting more than one at a time. We keep the amulet of protection equipped unless we are casting a defensive spell, at which point we swap into the amulet of power.
If we are fighting a gem or bone golem, we main hand the FOA and offhand the ROTP. If fighting a coin golem, we use the short sword of backstabbing plus then enchanted weapon short sword.
After one golem falls, we will likely need to retreat to the next doorway to carry on bottlenecking them. Make sure to use quick loot to pick up the goodies before running away.
Turning on auto-pause:Hit here may be useful.
The best time to PFMW is when the DUHM wears out, after ten rounds. Once we PFMW, we will want to then cast DUHM and then maybe limited wish.
I find that we can take out the gem and coin golems with our offensive buffs quite consistently, but have a hard time beating the regeneration of the bone golem without improved haste.
If things get hairy, we can summon a distraction by using the horn of valhalla, then run away. This is easiest if the bone golem is the only golem remaining (which tends to happen anyway).
We activate the guardian golem. It wait for us at each milestone, so we follow in our own time. We make sure to disarm all the traps.
We touch the runes in the correct order (top right, bottom left, bottom right, top left) for a bit more experience and to open up a passage. This earns a bit of XP, but unfortunately we cannot use that passage just yet.
The guardian golem will not attack the elder orb until we get close. The orb will only attack the golem and pay us no notice. This means that we can fire up our offensive buffs and try to steal the kill from the golem.
We will continue the planar sphere in the next part.
This is a big moment. I have exhausted all the sources of XP I can, and we are not going to be getting any more power spikes until we reach HLAs, a million XP away at the time that we went into the sphere. The major sources of XP remaining to us are:
Planar sphere, where we will have to fight Lavok. This fight will not be possible without a lot of scrollcasting.
Shadow temple where we have to beat several grandlords. The only weapon we have that can hurt grandlords is Flame Tongue, and when fully prepped we are just short of being able to bear one grandlord. UAI for the gloves would probably push us over the edge, but a +4 crushing weapon would be better.
Planar prison, where we might be able to do the secondary fights but my probes into this shows the warned fight looking bleak
Watcher's keep, where we need to fight the bell and candle guardians. We might be able to beat the bell guardian with UAI, but the candle guardian will probably need a lot of critical strikes.
Spellhold. We will be trying to delay this as long as possible.
It's time to get ready for probably the hardest part of the planar sphere - Lavok.
Lavok is a level 24 mage. He has 96 hitpoints and we want to get him to below that to finish the fight. Unfortunately, he also as a chain contingency on triple ADHW that is checked before the fight ending is checked, so we will need to have PFME up to negate this.
Once his prebuffs fire, he has some pretty nasty defences:
100% magic resistance
Immunity to fire
Immunity to cold
75% resistant to electricity
60% resistant to physical damage
100% resistant to missile damage
100% resistant to magical damage
100% resistance to poison damage
Immunity to normal weapons, with five scrolls of PFMW
Immunity to abjuration, which is shielded by GoI and Spell Turning.
In addition to this, he comes with some nasty summons - two gem golems and five skeleton lords. The skeleton lords have to be killed for the fight to end.
He is the nastiest fight in the planar sphere by a fair bit. The good news is that if we beat him, we can do the rest of the sphere and be in HLA territory.
Our plan will be to protect ourselves from him by using II and SI:Ab. We will disrupt his TS using the ROTP club, as he will still take acid damage. Using Improved Haste, we will take out the skeletons and golems while in combat while peeling away his protections with Ruby Rays. We will protect ourselves in combat and prevent the golem's on-hit illusion dispelling from removing our II using PFMW.
The downside is that this is extremely taxing on our sixth level spell slots - we will need at least three PFMW (probably four), plus IH and PFME, which means that we will need to scrollcast.
We can reduce the need for scrollcasting by using limited wish. If we select the one-time option "I wish to be prepared for anything", we can construct a chain contingency where we cast IH, PFMW and II on ourselves when we are hit by an enemy.
We buff up (including ProFire, ProCold, II, SI:Ab, PFMW (from scroll) and regular haste. We have both our 6th level spell slots on PFMW, and are wielding the ROTP.
We make sure not to attack him until he starts casting TS - if we do, he will be on less than 100% health and will cast PFMW insead, making us unable to interrupt him. His fireshields will trigger our contingency, fiting our PFMW and Improved Haste, so we can swap to dual wielding the FOA main hand and ROTP offhand to take out the golems (and when they arrive, the skeleton lords as well).
We will want to cast ruby rays on Lavok while we take out the minions. We should watch out, as he can refresh his GOI or SI:Ab, which means we will additional ruby rays to make him breachable.
We will also want to by very careful about when our PFMW runs out. It actually lasts slightly shorter than four rounds, so we will probably want to scrollcast it after seven half-rounds (autopause on round end is helpful here).
We have ten rounds before he starts casting TS again, and he will probably be under PFMW when that happens, so we will want to make sure we get him in a breachable state as soon as possble. We can safely get in three spells on the first PFMW (from chain contingency), two more on the second PFMW, and we want to be breaching him on the third PFMW (the first cast from scroll).
For the first round or so we can hit the gem golems, but once the skeletons arrive we should focus on them.
The skeletons should go down near the end of the second natural PFMW, at approximately the same time that Lavok becomes breachable. We need to start worrying about another TS from him during the third PFMW (our first scrollcast one)
Lavok has five total PFMW scrolls, and he should use up three of them before we start breaching him. As long as we time our PFMW scrolls correctly, he should go down safely in a couple rounds of combat.
Lavok will go down when he has taken enough damage. The gem golems will disappear soon afterwards.
The Lizard Man room may be improved depending on the protagonist, as it features in The Four mod (more information on that will be given below). We do not meet the requirements for the fight to appear, so for us it only contains selling fodder.
The other room off here contains a Neo-Otyugh and two spore colonies. We protect ourselves from the Otyugh's disease with PFMW, and drain the spore colonies of all their summons before killing them (using the shield of harmony for safety).
We also gain access to the spell scroll of a new IA spell - Giant Strength. This provides an undispellable strength buff for two turns. We will probably not be using it - it requires a precious 6th level spell slot. Our DUHM always going to be better than this, and by the time we lose DUHM we will hopefully have access to Phosphorus and be able to have a static 24 strength anyway.
We have also reached mage level 15. Level 4 and level 5 spell slots give us extra castings of stoneskin and brach respectively, but it's not the gold dust that is a 6th level spell slot.
It is awkward that we miss out on killing two gem golems, as that is 48k XP we will never see again. It was the only way I found to be reload safe. Taking out the golems as well would have cost us another two PFMW scrolls (at least), would have but us at risk of our buffs running out, and would have made the fight much less reload safe since Lavok could have snuck in a TS or otherwise caused us a problem.
I made reference to "The Four" mod. This was a mod developed by Sikret to go on top of IA (the only such mod that I am aware of) back in v4 or v5. It was included in IAv6, and its contents can still been seen in the documentation for v6.4 (The Four). These items were powerful even by IA standards, and their guardians, although powerful, were not on par with other IA fights for less powerful items. The guardians are still in version 6.5, but the items that they guard are not, and they are just some additional fights for us in this version (though we will only be able to see one of them, the former guardian of the ring).
In the last part, we finished of Lavok, now it's time for some easy experience. At least, easy compared to Lavok.
We circle around the edge of the map first. This Tanar'Ri can paralyze, so we can either use II or Arbane's sword for safety. We also #cast ProFire as there are a few fire using enemies.
The second one in the lower central portion of the map is the same. The third is a lot trickier, however.
This is the third one. Lea'liyl can see invisibility, has access to greater silence, can cast three remove magics, and tries to paralyze us.
We also have to deal with minions - three Maureshi and three skeleton warlords.
This is technically not the hardest version of the fight - if we were to come back after spellhold then we would face three grandlords instead of the three warlords, so in theory we are missing out on 9.75k experience, but that isn't worth delaying the planar sphere for.
There is something we can abuse - the exit is disabled when the fight starts, and is re-enabled four rounds afterwards where we are no longer in combat.
We buff up and get their attention. We don't engage, however, and instead head towards the entrance to the sphere (which will likely get disabled).
Lea'liyl cannot reach us at this part of the map, due to large size, while the skeletons can. If we use the FOA main and ROPT offhand, we can beat the skeleton warlords in about two rounds each.
When we rest up and return, Leya'liyl will reset its position, but start tracking towards us. It will greater malison and try to disable us with paralyse, but using the protector neckalce will make our saves consistent, and we can also use SOH or Arbane's sword as an alternative protection.
This is as far as Lea'liyl can pursue us. We can hide round the corner to wait off any debuffs, buff up and go in.
Our buffs include SI:Ab for protection against remove magic.
Each of its hits has a 15% chance to dispel our protections (including remove magic), and it has 4 APR and -6 THAC0. If we use the shield of harmony, we get an AC of -18, meaning it needs a 12 of better to hit us and trigger the 15% chance.
If it does happen, then we can be reload safe by just running back to the door, waiting for the combat counter to expire, then heading in and resting up again.
We get a scroll of Disrupt Undead, a 7th level spell we are unlikely to ever cast.
We also pick up the Hilt of The Truth. The other half of it is held by the chromatic demon. I'm not sure if we will ever forge it - the only rare ingredient is uses is a manual of elaboration (which we probably don't care very much about), but it does need 100k gold and it has no major benefits beyond being a +5 longsword.
Don't forget to clean up the remaining minor enemies in the map such as the Maurezhi.
This allow us to hit Thief level 18, the last of the pre-HLA levels.
Part 056: Tolgerias:
Our next level is our first HLA level. I've been looking forward to this for a while.
Our next obstacle is Tolgerias. We buff up, including ProCold, II and SI:Ab.
Tolgerias starts casting TS as we go in, and the unnamed mage does nothing.
Once we interrupt him, both of their prebuffs fire. Tolgeria's buffs include summoning a dark planetar and PFMW, but he is weak to normal weapons. The other mage only has stoneskin defensively.
We first take out the Planetar (which takes about a round), as that is right now the biggest threat. Once that's down, we hit Tolgerias with unenchanted longswords. Both Tolgerias and the mage do nothing but cast summoning spells that we don't really care about. Out ProCold protects us from Tolgerias's fireshield, which allows us to chop him to bits without worry.
Tolgerias takes a few rounds to go down, as he has stoneskin and isn't afraid to refresh it, but ultimately we are not in any danger. We can swap to our magical weapons and go for the mage after.
The most notable lot from this fight is four scrolls of PFMW.
Part 057: Planar Sphere Finale
Tolgerias wasn't worth a lot of XP, but he was the last thinky fight before we finish the planar sphere.
The fire room just beyond Tolgerias contains a greater fire elemental and an efreet as well as some minor enemies. The efreet is a bit dangerous, as it can cast Lower Fire Resistance. It can only do it once, and it lowers fire resistance by 50 percentage points, so casting ProFire plus using a potion of resist fire will ensure we keep our immunity.
The fire room loot includes the Sheild of the Falling Stars, the Staff of Fire and a scroll of GOI.
The cold room guardians are much easier. As long as we have ProCold plus offensive buffs, we'll be fine.
It contains the mage robe of cold resistance.
The three elemental robes of resistance are rare items in IA, and can be combined into a useful robe. We got the robe of electrical resistance from the slaver wizard, and I'm not sure where the robe of fire resistance is.
Passing through the ice room, we get to the left hand side of the power room. We have two gem golems and two coin golems. They shouldn't be a threat for us at this point, but we can always play it safe and retreat to the fire and ice room.
Further along the left hand side of the power room is an improved golem group. Once again, we should be able to beat this, retreating if things start to look dodgy. Using the Protector amulet will be necessary to guarantee we pass the saves for Hideous Laughter.
We now finish off the sphere. Handing over a demon heart is worth 45.5k XP. Returning to Lavok is worth another 45.5k XP.
He drops a bunch of loot, including:
Ring of Acuity
Ring of Protection + 2
Corthala Family Scabbard (used for Valygar's unique weapon)
Scroll of memory boosting
Amulet of Charon (Necromancer only amulet, can be combined with AOP when we have a scroll of vocalize)
Doing this means that we have hit fighter level 16 and finally have our first HLA.
UAI is our first HLA pick, and with it we can finally wield the paws of the furious cheetah.
Part 058: Planar Sphere Missions (Vanilla):
We have gained our first HLA. Our second is likely to be an extra 6th level spell slot, and after that point we will probably start picking up as many critical strikes as possible, as it is the biggest remaining method in the game for increasing our damage output.
Returning the knights to their home plane by giving Ribald the money is worth 45.5 XP and the golden girdle, the third of the three girdles of AC.
We gain a big XP payout if all three apprentices survive. Unfortunately, we cannot do that - we need to get the robe of the apprenti, which requires that one of the apprentices dies in the last round of crafting. Therefore, we will take the least risky option each round.
Normally the change of the items being forged is completely random. In IA, the chance is not random and is determined near the start of the game, with 100% chance if the player has maximum intelligence and wisdom.
It's a bit annoying that we don't get the good graduation ceremony, that one is always a lot more charming that this one, which is a bit depressing.
This container in the navigator's room spawns scrolls every few days, without limit. They are not ones that we will want to scrollcast often, but we can sell them for a bit of money. This means that the mage stronghold is an unlimited source of money in IA.
Two days after the graduation ceremony, we get the final vanilla mission.
Apart from the druid, this fight is nonthreatening. The druid can be breached before being attacked for safety.
The Ketlaar Argrim fight us also uninteresting. There isn't much XP here, but it's better than nothing.
Now that we have UAI, we have access to 9APR under improved haste. Let's done something that we previously couldn't.
At first glance, skeleton grandloards don't look that scary, but they have one major defence - they are immune to weapons that are +3 or lower enchantment. We have no weapons that are inherently above +3, and only a handful of weapons that are conditionally +4. We only have a single weapon that can hurt the things - the sword of flame, and since it is a slashing weapon it does very little damage. The grandlords have regeneration, but fortunately it is pretty slow regeneration.
Heading into this room, the random spawn is a shade lich, two skeleton lords, a skeleton warlord and a skeleton grandlord. Our prebuffs at this point are pretty minimal - ProFire for the lava room and regular haste for the movement speed.
Heading to the stairs, the skeletons will follow us faster than the the shade lich. We can spend the time while they are pursuring us to buff with Improved Haste and DUHM (using PFMW when we are surrounded). We can take out the Lords and Warlord with the FOA and the ROTP.
We wait for the lich to catch up and start casting a spell before heading upstairs. If we set up mirror image while under PFMW, the lich will cast TS, which has a decently long casting time.
As long as the lich is casting a spell when we change areas, it will not be considered pursuing us and will stay downstairs.
Once the other enemies are down, we equip the sword of flame and start attacking. Each hit does 3-4 damage. The sword is +1 normally, with +1 fire damage and +4 against undead, which the game interprets as doing 1d8+1 slashing, +1 fire, +3 slashing. This works out well for us, as the extra +3 damage is rounded down to 1, so we get a bit more damage output than if it was combined into a single damage.
We can cast Blur, use the Golden Girlde and equip the SOH for an effective -21 AC. The grandlord has a THAC0 of -17, so it will still hit us often, but there is no point dual wielding, so we might as well get a few extra misses.
It's a long grindy fight, but we can use mirror image and stoneskin for protection. Using autopause on hit can be useful to ensure efficient defence refreshing. One hit does about 60 damage, so getting hit once is not instant death.
We run faster than the skeleton, so if things look hairy, we can just run a short distance to the east and leave the map.
If we rest up and come back, the grandlord will fully heal and be standing next to the stairs down. It will be fully healed. This fight is pretty grindy, so it will need a lot of stoneskins and mirror images to get through. The spell sequencer may be necessary for an additional stoneskin, though keeping the contingency behind for safety is best for noreloaders.
The shade lich is immune to spells of level 5 and lower, which crucially includes Breach. It is also immune to normal weapons and like to protect itself with PFMW. It includes a PFMW in its prebuffs and has three more as backup, plus a contingency with a final fifth one in it.
Since we have no other use of our fifth level spell slots, we can spent all of them on SI:Ab. We have five such spell slots, and the lich has four ruby rays. ProElectricity also needs a fifth level spell slot, but since we are now mage level 15 we can set it up in a contingency on enemy sighted (or just use a scroll).
We want our prebuffs to include ProFire (for the fireshield and lava floor), ProElectricity (as the lich has a spell trigger with triple chain lightning), MGOI (for damaging spells), and ProEnergy (as the lich has a triple ADHW chain contingency).
The lich can't do a huge amount to us. It can summon a dark planetar and a mordy sword, which we can take out with weapons. While taking out the summons we continue standing next to the lich (so it uses its PFMWs). The planetar is important to take out quickly before it casts a spell we don't want it to, so casting a DUHM at the start of the fight may be useful.
The lich can cast some save or else spells such as Finger of Death and Emotion, but we should easily make the save. It can greater malison us, but if we equip the amulet of protection we will be guaranteed to make the saves even through greater malison.
If the we see the lich casting an alteration spell (green symbol like vocalize), we want to prepare ourselves for a RROR. We will want to keep our action free for casting SI:Ab.
MGOI only lasts fifteen rounds, so we will likely want to refresh it partway through the fight, after ten rounds or so, so we will want to prepare it at least twice.
The lich may cast time stop, but this tends to be a good thing for us. It will spend the extra time casting spells we don't care about while its PFMW ticks down.
Our Improved Haste may start running out, but we can fire up a regular haste to get up to 5 APR. Our protection spells will last a lot longer, however, and we can beat the shade lich in regular combat. It has no stoneskins, and so should go down in three rounds or so of attacking once the PFMWs end.
Once its initial true sight has expired, we can fire up another Mirror Image to make it start casting another TS, which is easily interruptible, but that doesn't stop it trying.
It drops a scroll of spellstrike, which doesn't have much use beyond selling.
Heading towards the letter maze, we run into an identical group of undead that we will deal with in an identical manner (that I won't bother repeating the details of).
The most notable loot here is an extra scroll of PFMW.
Part 060: Thaxll'ssillyia
We're almost at our second HLA. Time to get it, by using some extreme cheese.
This is a Dungeons and Dragons came. We've jsut made our way through a Dungeon, now we have a Dragon.
The shadow dragon is implemented behind the scenes as a 23rd level mage (mostly to have a high caster level) with attack buffs that make it effectively a high level fighter as well.
It has an AC of -13 (-21 against missile weapons). It has 3 APR, -10 THAC0 and damage per swing of 22-37 (not counting the insane difficulty damage boost).
Heading back to trademeet, we want to go to this fancy-looking merchant.
For 15k gold, he sells the dwarvern thrower. This is an important weapon for the following reasons:
It is a returning weapon, which means that it effectively an infinite ammo ranged weapon (the only one availaible to us other than the Firetooth crossbow)
As it is a thrown weapon, it get strength bonus to damage and THAC0.
Although it has a shorter range than most ranged weapons, it has a range longer than Melee
We don't prebuff, other than prerest stoneskin (and we make sure we are restedup, fatigue will be a thing). We equip the SOH, the dwarvern thrower, and the Amulet of Power (for protection against level drain).
We will want to run to this part of the arena. The Dragon will start by launching a triple finger of death at us. We can make the saves easily, and the damage will not threaten to kill us, but we will likely want to use an oil of resurgence or potion of healing anyway (in case we get the positioning wrong).
Specifically, this is the precise area we want to be standing in. Since the range from here to where the dragon is is greater than 11 behind the scenes, the dragon will not be able to harm us beyond casting a single emotion at us (which we can guarantee saving if we temporarily equip the amulet of protection), or we can just tank it (going unconscious fore a while shouldn't actually cause any problems).
Once we are in the safety zone, we have a very long but very safe fight. We will need an 18 to hit, but we will eventually get through all the layers of protection.
I recommend turning off auto-pause, turning down the game sounds, and putting on a podcast. I recommend "From Rewatch with Love". We will occasionally get greater silenced, which will require us to re-input the attack command.
Eventually, the dragon will run out of PFMW and stoneskins (at least, prepared ones - it has a contingency stoneskin on 50% hitpoints remaining). We will know when this happens when we are able to deal it damage and it does not do anything for its action. This is a good point to use improved haste and DUHM (or a strength potion).
Under DUHM, we will only need a 13 to hit it instead of an 18, and with improved haste we will get 6 APR, allowing us to comfortably outpace its regeneration.
At 50% health, not only will it have a contingency on stoneskin fire, but it will also cast heal. Fortunately, it only does this twice.
We will want to prepare both of our 6th level spell slots for improved haste. If those are not enough, then we will want to use an oil of speed instead of casting the 3rd level spell haste as oils of speed do not cause us fatigue issues. Our two DUHMs will last for twenty rounds, potions of storm giant strength last for two in-game hours.
A regular oil of speed plus a potion of storm giant strength is enough to outpace the dragon's regeneration. Buy extra potions from Athkatla sewers to be reload safe.
After a very long and grindy fight, the dragon goes down.
It is worth 57.5k XP, and unseats TorGal as our most powerful vanquished (and it will probably keep that title for a while).
We get quite a bit of loot. The unique items are:
Crom Faeyr Scroll
Shadow Dragon's Tooth (used for a utility halberd)
Permanency Scroll (our total is now 2)
Shadow Dragon Scales
Blade of Roses (useful as a +3 slashing weapon, the location of this is randomized)
Azuredge
This allows us to hit thief level 19. It's a pretty uninteresting level in terms of core abilities, but it gives us our second HLA. This will probably end up being an extra 6th level spell slot, but I want to do some probing to figure out if taht is best, and if I decide otherwise I will confirm at the start of the next part.
A can confirm that we did take the extra 6th level spell slot at the last level up. We will have to leave the rest of the shadow temple for later.
The bell and the candle have their own guardians. We can take the bell guardian now, but probably not the candle guardian.
It dispels illusions on hit, so we have to rely on stoneskins and PFMW for defences. We have half a round of free attacks on it while it gates in.
Since it is weakest to piercing damage, we dual wield the enchanted weapon shortsword plus the shortsword of backstabbing. We need +3 or better weapons.
There isn't much to say about this fight. The guardian has some hefty regeneration, so we need the DPS of the paws of the furious cat. If things go wonky, we can leave the level and come back later.
The candle guardian is trickier. It has 90% resistance to all physical damage, which coupled with the massive regeneration it has makes it very difficult to take out.
We can outpace the regeneration, but it is not as east with the candle guardian. The maximum damage output for us is to main hand the FOA and offhand the blade of roses.
We can get the spirit to around 60/200 health before our IH runs out. We will need to come back later with some critical strikes available.
Part 062: Kangaxx Guardians
Our next level will be Mage 16, which gives us access to 8th level spells. Protection from Energy is the most exciting one we have access to - scrolls of spell trigger are very rare in IA and we won't have access to them for a while.
This house contains an elemental lich. Our approach is similar to the shade lich. It has effectively the same spell list and AI, and we treat it exactly the same way. It's a bit easier, as it does not have the summons that the shade lich does.
Using the extra 6th level spell slot for another improved haste is probably best, as it means we don't have to worry about it running out near the end of the fight.
The guardian under the sewers is a shade lich, which has a script identical to the ones used in the shadow temple.
We've done a lot of starting an encounter set, but very little finishing it. This part we're going to finally not leave any loose ends.
Our buffs include ProFire, regular invisibility, and SI:Ab. There are six enemies:
Tarnor: Level 23 fighter
Gallchobhair: Level 19 fighter
Draug Fea: Level 18 fighter
Zorl: Level 16 fighter
Rengaard: Level 16/16 fighter/cleric
Gaius: Level 20/18 fighter/mage
We go in under II, which causes Gaius to start casting TS. We can interrupt this, as it is cast before prebuffs kick in.
Zorl's prebuffs include TS, so he will be our first target. He has very little damage resistance, so he goes down quickly, and we can cast II once he is down. For reload safely, have the II in a spell sequencer so it gets cast even faster.
With Zorl down and our II up, Gaius is ignorable. We take down the other party members, taking out Rengaard first and leacing Tarnor and Gaius for last.
Gaius may cast Improved Mantle from scroll. We don't care, as preserving these scrolls is not important.
Tarnor likes to use hardiness at around half health, so we want to save our action to cast breach in response. He has more than one, so watch out.
Gaius will recast TS after about ten rounds, then start casting some nasty spells. The good news is that he moves slowly, so we can run to the bottom corner of the map and rest up. Make sure to loot the area with the quick loot menu first. Once we have rested up, we can rebuff (starting with improved invisibility).
Since Gaius will likely still have stoneskin up, we will want to interrupt him with magic missile this time round.
He only has four scrolls of improved mantle, so his protection should run out the second time around the time that he starts to cast TS again. We can use the ROTP to interrup him through stoneskin at that point. For reload safery, we can run away and rest up a second time.
We need experience to get our critical strikes. It's time to take on some spiders.
Ghost spiders have five rounds of summons that spawn. Waiting them all out will take 24 rounds. Although we could kill a ghost spider if we go straight for it, it is better to wait these 24 rounds.
We can either count five rounds of reinforcements, or we can use our spell durations to measure. For example, we are a 15th level mage, so our regular haste lasts 18 rounds.
When we did the unseeing eye quest, we left the ashideena warhammer behind.
The ghost spider appears with the message "Trap Sprung". Despite the message, this is not a trap - it cannot be detected or disarmed, and it is handled by the area script.
We want to keep the SOH equipped, as the ghost spider fire improved webs, which require a save vs spell at -6 to negate. We will also equip the girdle of piercing plus the amulet of protection to protect us.
We don't engage with any of the spiders. We instead start kiting each of the spiders.
Once the haste runs out, we start to fight. PFMW gives us time to fire up improved haste and DUHM. We start taking out the more minor spiders first.
Sometime before the second PFMW, the ghost spider will summon its last reinforcements and we will be able to start taking it out.
We can also go to Mekrath's lair and take out the ghost spider in there. This one is easier, as we can run around all of the temple sewers, and we will be able to take the sewer exits to rest up.
The ghost spider itself is worth 17.5k XP. Its initial summons are worth 28k XP, and the subsequent rounds are either worth 10.5k or 12k XP. We therefore have a total XP of 87.5k to 93.5k.
We are very close to the our next set of levels. I want to get some critical strikes and get to the second level of watcher's keep before doing the planar sphere.
We buff with ProFire, ProCold, PFME, II and SI:Ab. There are four enemies that we want to take out:
Shadow Patrick, a high level ranger that isn't very threatening
The Shade Lord, a high level fighter/mage
The Shadow Altar, which regularly spawns minor shadows (these are worth XP and can be used for infinite XP)
Two skeleton grandlords that are spawned by the shade lord
The shadow temple will be cleared when the first three of these are dead and we are not in combat.
On this pass, we will just take out shadow patrick and maybe some of the regular shadows. PFMW will stall the grandlords, and the shade lord will have to spend a few rounds casting TS/RR/Breach, giving us plenty of time to take out Patrick.
With Patrick dead, we pick up his items (using the quickloot menu) and run away. The stairs back into the temple have been disabled, but we still have an edge of map transition that we can use.
We now want to follow a fairly specific set of actions:
Travel from the edge of the map to the Umar Hills
Rest up at the Umar Hills
Travel to the Shadow Temple
Buff up outside the Shadow Temple entrace
Head downstairs and hand around near the stairs
One or two rounds later, the shade lord will appear near us, having also taken the stairs down
The shade lord's prebufs will not fire, so we can easily interrupt its TS and breach its PFMW.
Resting up, we get ready to take out the grandlords. Crucially, we want to run two PFMW and Improved Haste as our 6th level spells. We will also likely want to turn on auto-pause when we get hit.
Two PFMWs (plus mirror image and stoneskin refreshing) should be enough to take out one of the two grandlords. Take out enough shadows to run away and run away. For reload safely, using a PFMW scroll will ensure that we can take out one of the grandlords, and we can also make sure that we are standing on the edge of the map with an escape route before we let ourselves get surrounded. The shadows will only hit us on a 20, so they should not be a threat to us offensively.
Repeating the run away, reset up and come back combination means that we only have to deal with one skeleton grandlord, which is much easier.
With the grandlords dead, we take out the shadows and then the alter. Although it looks like all these shadows are farming a huge amount of XP, each shadow is worth 420 XP, so it takes 47 of them to have the same XP yield as a grandlord.
Clearing the shadow temple is worth 44.25k XP. Merella drops a manual of elaboration plus several items of monetary value.
Returning to Minister Lloyd, we gain no additional XP but we do gain a point of reputation.
Similar to the mage stronghold, the ranger stronghold has an infinite source of scrolls that can be sold for money.
We have hit mage level 16. Our wand and spell saving throws improve by 1, meaning that we can pass saving throws without penalty under greater malison without buffs. We also get additional level 6, 7 and 8 spell slots, which is pretty big.
Our HLA goes on Power Attack, which isn't that exciting, but it allows us to take critical strike on subsequent levels.
We will be getting one level soon (and with it one critical strike), but it's a while before we will bet getting our second or third.
Our first mission is the Tombelthen mission.
Killing Tombelthen and his lackets is worth 8925 XP. Returning the medallion and not asking for any reward is worth 10k XP, so we do things the nice way. We get another 21.5k XP additional reward.
Four days later we get the second mission. I make sure to buff up before talking to Lloyd.
We clear out the orogs, plus a couple Metrich footmen we missed earlier. We get 21.75k XP from Madulf, and an additional 25k from Lloyd.
This puts us over the edge of fighter level 17. The Death saving throw improvement is nice.
We get our first critical strike HLA. We can take this up to 10 times, and we will probably be taking it at least 10 times before we take anything else.
Also importantly, this allows us to hit 25 strength under DUHM.
Part 067: Watcher's Keep Altar Level Finale:
Our next thief level is at 2.7 million XP, but the one after is at 2.97 million. This means that we will have a bit power spike as our total XP gets to 9 million.
Our goal for this part will be to take out the candle guardian. We have 25 strength when at full power, plus improved haste. Hopefully that combined with our critical stroke will be enough.
Our strategy here is pretty uninteresting - activate offenseive buffs, defend with PFMW and stoneskins.
The fanatic spirits are immune to critical hits. Critical strike is effectively just a THAC0 boost.
Being able to hit 25 STR plus the additional THAC0 from being such a high level fighter has paid off, though - we are finally able to assemble enough DPS to take out the candle guardian.
This is a fairly safe fight - we can always run away to the entrance and safely rest up if things look dodgy.
The ritual is easy - Bell, Bell, Candle, Book, Bell. That's an easy 25k XP.
The statues don't need any fancy prep, a pretty standard buffing routine is good enough to be safe.
We've finally cleared out the first level of Watcher's Keep. We can do most of the next level now, which should be worth a large amount of XP.
The first thing we do is open the side door for this level.
This is how the map loooks in Near Infinity. Note that each of the two rooms has a spawn point in it.
Since we are soloing, we will have spawn points 5, 6, 7,8 instead of 1, 2, 3, 4. These correspond to:
Elite Fire Fiant in top left
Golem group on top right
Spider group bottom right
Golem group in bottom left
The fire library has another permanency scroll.
The fan room right is easy as long as we have ProElectricity up.
The elite fire giant is big and chunky. He has offensive HLAs, but no defensive HLAs. He also has a lot of potions of healing. He also has a knockback when he hits us that we will want to use PFMW to protect against.
Returning from the air room to the fire library spawns the elite fire giant.
If things go wonky in any of these fights, we can just run to the exit. The fire giant has seven potions of superior healing, so it will likely require us to drain his potions, then leave and rest up before engaging him again to kill him.
Heading into the air lab, we see an elemental golem. These are massive XP farms that we love to see.
Elemental golems are pretty terrifying enemies in combat. They do elemental damage on hit so they can only be partially blocked by stoneskins, plus they regenerate.
The thing that makes them such a massive XP pot is every six rounds, they randomly spawn a coin golem or a gem golem, up to a total of six.
Our reload-safe strategy is to draw the elemental golem in circles around the central room until it spawns a lesser golem. We then take out the lesser golem under a couple PFMW, run outside, rest up, head inside and repeat. Someone who doens't mind reloading may want to reload for gem golems, as they are worth more XP.
With the lesser golems taken care of, we engage the elemental golem. On hit it deals 1d4 acid, lightning, fire and cold damage, so we can cast protection against those elements to be able to tank with stoneskin.
It has 300 health and slowly regenerates. IA golems are weak to critical strikes, so we can use those to get a bit more DPS.
Our offensive buffs are likely to run out before our defensive buffs. We will want to maximize our Improved Haste and DUHM time. As with the lesser golems, we can always run away if it gets too dangerous.
This elemental golem is slightly different to the ones we will face later - this one is considered a treasure location for randomized IA treasure. We get the Boots of Avoidance and the Ring of Air Control.
The elemental golem is worth 60k XP, which dethrones the shadow dragon as our most powerful vanquished (and this time it should stay the most powerful for a while). Counting the lesser golems, it is worth 192k-204k XP.
The runaround we did in the central room means that the golems have now spawned in the air library. Taking care of them should be pretty routine.
The air library has a manual of elaboration.
Before we enter the slime lab, we head into the slime library to take out some spiders.
Opening from this side allows us to engage the enemies in the slime lab and take them out without getting caught in the cloud. We make sure to finish off the slimes with lightning damage.
We close the northeast door of the slime lab, open the southwest door, open the northeast door, kill the ice denizens, then close the northeast door of the slime lab again to trap the poison cloud in the slime lab.
We don't want to enter the fire lab, as it contains a steam elemental prince, which needs +4 weapons to hit. We instead draw the fire elementals to the ice lab by going through the central area.
With the elementals frozen, the fire giant is easy to take out.
We will level up and end this part here. We gained almost 700k experience in this part, which means we have hit Thief level 20, and we have picked up another critical strike.
The last part was a nice chunk of XP. We are fast approaching our next set of levels, and we're gonna have three more critical strikes come in soon.
We found ourselves unable to fully complete the level because we needed +4 weapons to hit the steam elemental prince. Fortunately, we have a bunch of crafting ingredients (including three scrolls of permanency) so we will be able to forge a +4 weapon.
We sell our excess scrolls to Enge for about 100k gold, then but the Mauler's Arm from Bernard.
Phosphorus is a +4 morning star that sets the wielder's strength to 24. It is the best weapon for us to forge for the following reasons:
Morning starts and flails share a proficiency, and we have invested in this proficiency
It will give us a way to boost strength after we lose DUHM or if we want to boost it for longer than two DUHM allows
It does crushing damage, which makes grandlords much easier to take out
It does not consume any items we would be hesistant to consume (the ROTP club is consumed in forging the treefolk's arm, which means we lose our acid damage on hit option for disrupting mages)
Heading into the last library, we run into a random golem group between us and the steam elemental prince. We draw them intothe central room and fight them there so we don't have to deal with both them and the steam elemental prince at the same time.
Once the golems are dealt with, we buff up (including ProFire and ProElectricity) and move in to engage.
It has very little damage resistance, and so goes down in a round or two. ProFire protects us from its fireshield, and ProElectricity protects us from the Chain Lightnings that it likes to cast. It can cast lower fire resistance on us, but we can counter that with Protection from Energy.
Make sure to use critical strike to take it out before it can lower our fire resistance too much and cause us trouble. It dies to give us 43.5k XP and 5k gold, which is quite a lot for how challenging it us.
In this library, we find a scroll of memory boosting, our second.
We head back to the planar sphere and talk to Marvella. She is part of the expanded mage stronghold - she gives a series of challenges which involve fighting difficult enemies. Her first challenge is to fight a steam elemental prince.
This steam elemental prince goes down just like the other. Going at it with critical strikes from the start means it goes down in a round and a half, before it can lower our fire resistance.
This allows us to hit fighter level 18. We gain our fourth proficiency point in flails, hitting high mastery. The fourth proficiency point is probably the most worthless, offering only +1 damage and -1 speed factor over three pips, but we need to go through it to get to grand mastery. The third critical strike is nice, though.
Part 070: Theshal:
We're close to a mage and a thief level up. We'll be getting them this part.
There are three areas in the undead village. There is this landing area with only minor undead, there is Theshal to the top right, and there is an undead group identical to the shadow temple undead groups in the top left. We make sure to engage this group of enemies near the bridge - we do not want to head too far into the middle of this arena or it will spawn the other enemies before we are ready.
We cannot leave this area until Theshal is killed, but fortunately we can rest up in this area.
We buff up, including ProFire, ProAcid, ProElectricity and SI:Ab. We inch forward along this edge of the platform to trigger Theshal without triggering the other undead spawn.
Theshal spawns a skeleton grandlord at the start of the fight, which at this point will go down in a round or two. Theshal also gates in a bone devil every three rounds, to a total of three (though those bone devils may gate in other bone devils). The bone devils have a saveless hold, so we will want to make sure we are under PFMW of the SOH when engaging them.
Thesheal dispels specific protections (including our elemental protections) on hit, but once the bone devils have been stopped he is an extremely minor threat.
The notable loot from Theshal is the girdle of fortitude and a manual of elaboration.
We buff up and engage the undead group. If it has trouble spawning, heading from Theshal's platform to that platform seems to do the trick.
Our prebuffs include ProFire, PFME, MGOI, and SI:Ab. We go in with another MGOI and another four spell immunities prepared. Our contingency is ProElectricity on enemy seen.
We will stand next to the shade lord (so it uses its PFMW), protect ourselves from the skeletons with PFMW, and engage them in melee. We will want to critical strike down the planetar when it gets summoned.
Two PFMWs should be enough to take out all the IA skeletons, and the non IA improved undead should go down easily. If things start to look hairy, or if we want to be reload safe, we can retreat out this area to split up the enemies.
This area contains the Gauntlets of Dexterity, and no other significant loot.
This fight is enough for us to hit Mage 17 and Thief 21. We get level 7 and 8 spell slots, plus two new critical strikes.
One of the downsides of having so many levels in close proximity is that now we have a while to wait before our next one. Let's fight a new enemy.
We accept the mission to retrieve the dawn ring.
At first glace, amber golems look like they are a similar counterpart to coin and gem golems, but this time weak to slashing damage. It is more dangerous that that, however, and especially dangerous to soloers.
As well as having a slow healing ability (Frictional Recharge), whenever we hit one of these golems it will trigger electrical discardge on us. This deals 3d6 electrical damage (and another 3d6 if we fails a save vs wand at -4), then lowers our electricity resistance by 25% for two rounds. This is is cumulative, and can make our electricity resistance go negative (in which case we take bonus damage).
We want to maximize our electricity resistance. We will cast ProElectricity and ProEnergy, and equip the robe of lightning resistance and the helm of the rock for 220% electricity resistance. This is to give us as much of a buffer on the electrical discharge as possible.
We also use the Blade of Roses for the golem, as it is a +3 slashing weapon.
Borinall's starting summons vary based on if we get zapped by Talos or not. The best XP (though not by much) is obtained by getting zapped.
Most of Borinall's initial summons are ignorable. We tend to start with the mage, just in case he throws any curveballs.
The amber golem gates in with an animation that takes a couple seconds to complete, which gives us a bit of an initiative.
Every four rounds, Borinall summons two rune assassin, to a toal of six assassins in three rounds of summoning.
Our strategy is to hit the golem a couple times, then back off once we start taking damage from the discharge. Although the golem will in theory heal with frictional recharge, the rate of healing is pretty negligible. We can maximize our damage output if we hit him with critical strikes.
The rune assassins are straightforward as long as we don't let our stoneskins drop. As soon as our stoneskins drop, they will chug a potion of invisibility and try to backstab us.
We may also want to use an oil of resurgence or potions of healing to extend the time we can hit the golem by a bit.
The amber golem tends to go down at approximately the time that Borniall summons his last assassins. Borinall has a +2 weapon and the rune assassins have +1, so this is one of the few IA improved fights where we can use improved mantle.
Borinall has several hardinesses, so when we finally take him on we will want to save our action to counter-breach him when he uses his action.
We get a bunch of sellable loot, plus a chunk of amber (from the golem). The chunk of amber has no use except in one specific IA recipe that we probably don't want.
The remaining encounters that we have available pre-spellhold (hopefully I haven't missed any):
Guarded Compound
Twisted Rune
Crooked Crane Lich
Merella's Second Task
Sea's Bounty Pirates
Planar Prison
Cowled Enforcers
Roenall Fight
Umar Fight
Master of Air
Samia Party
Firkraag
Chaos
Founder of Trademeet
Chromatic Demon
Note that some of these have additional encounters that we unlock after we beat them.
I am a bit surprised on how fast you kill all the improved golems and skeletons. What was the turning point to be able to do so?
Was it the thac0 from the fighter levels, some buffs or gear, or do you still take multiple rounds per creature and use many defensive buffs (pfmw, stoneskin, mirror image, etc)?
I feel that even in a 6 party game early golems and skeletons still take multiple rounds of focused attacks to kill them off.
The skeletons are very much glass cannons in IA as long as you are using crushign weapons. A skeleton lord has 135HP -4 AC and no damage resistance. A skeleton warlord has 168 HP, -6AC and 20% damage resistance. Although they regenerate, it's only 1 hp every round, which is negligible.
For comparison, Anarg has AC1, 40% damage resistance, 1 AC and potions of extra healing. Defensively, a solo skeleton lord is on par with enemies that we took out in part 3. Grandlords are mostly difficuly because of the need for +4 weapons, which forces us into using a slashing weapon for a long time.
Offensively, they are very strong, stronger than golems. A skeleton lord has 6 APR, which means that they can chew through stoneskins faster than we can restore them until we hit level 12 (at which point we gain access to PFMW).
It's a bit hard to say when the turning point of being able to beat them is. Improved skeletons and golems never appear alone, they always appear alongside other enemies. We could probably beat a skeleton lord in the mage level 9-11 range if we were to fully buff and prepare and we didn't face any other enemies, but there are no such skeleton lords in IA.
Golems are trickier for two reasons - they dispel illusions on hit, which means that we have to tank using stoneskins, and even when we use the best damage type we have to deal with 75% damage resistance. At mage level 11 we have access to four stoneskins (one pre-rest and three castable) for a total of 20 layers of protection. The golems have 3 APR, which means that we can tank them for just under 7 rounds using stoneskin. During that time unders standard buffs we had 4 APR and did 4.5 damage on hit, which means that in theory we could beat them in if we were to land every hit. Using only normal buffs we hit on a 4, so we could probably beat a coin golem at mage level 11 if we used some additional buffs.
For facing the groups, I try to use the environment to bottleneck them so I am only fighting one at a time to maximize stoneskins. PFMW is also super valuable in a solo party, as as long as it is up it all the melee enemies can do nothing.
At the current level, we can take out a coin/gem golem in about two rounds if we critical strike for both of them, and in about four rounds if we do not (as we are hitting on a 2). Skeleton lords go down in under a round, and grandlords in about two rounds (since we can't effectively dual wield against grandlords, our APR is only 7 (1 base, 1 from gloves, 1 from fighter levels, 0.5 from proficiency, doubled with IH).
If someone is taking this as a guide, then being careful with the black spider figurine means that we can safely pick up the SI scroll, which will make the rukh conjurer possible at mage level 10/11, and that will mean that we can try to take out the improved golems at that point for the big XP drops.
So far, the areas of this run that I feel my strategies could be improved the most are:
Slaver ship - this is the only part of the run where saving throws on either end have been relevant. I would like to find a strategy that doesn't rely on saving throws, or find a strategy that takes out the slaver wizard first (when large fights are the most consistent).
Lavok - We were able to beat him, but it was at the cost of several valuable scrolls, and we missed out on the XP of two gem golems. Ideally we would be get the gem golems killed as well, or save on the scrolls that we used.
WK fanatic spirits - I wasn't able to find a better strategy than "Wait until DUHM gets me to 25 strength, then IH gives just enough DPS to beat their regeneration". It's a safe and reliable strategy, but it takes so long to be able to do these. If it were possible to take them out earlier, then we could grab loads of early experience and forge Phosphorus much earlier.
I've been keeping saves for each of the uploaded parts, so if anybody has suggestions for how earlier parts could be improved (or wants me to upload the saves so they can try), feel free to post and I can give things a go.
In the last part, we faced our first enemy that lowers elemental resistance. There aren't many of those, but they are pain when they come up.
There is only one stronghold left, let's pick it up in this part by doing the planar prison.
The elite bounty huntress is a level 15/15/16 fighter/mage/cleric. She is quite notable - she is the first IA-improved mage that we outlevel, which is quite significant.
In the vanilla game, dispel and remove magic have a base 50% change of success, which increases by 5% or decreases by 10% for each level over/under the other spellcaster you are. In IA, it still starts at 50% and increases by 5%, but it drops to 0% if you are under the other caster level, no matter how much under you are. This means that since we are a level 17 mage, we cannot be dispelled by the elite bounty huntress.
She summons a planar hound every four rounds, with no limit. Planar hounds are dangerous because the inflict saveless confusion on hit, which means that we will want to make sure we have either the SOH or PFMW up whenever one of them is around. Since the versions she summons are worth XP, we can in theory farm XP off her. The planar hound is also considered to use a +3 weapon, so we can use improved mantle if we want.
We have conflicting interests here - every four rounds that we can delay killing her, we get an extra 10k XP. However, she defends herself with scrolls of PFMW which we want to preserve if possible (she starts with four of them). I will prioritize the XP, but if things go poorly I may retcon this (and leave it as a note to anyone using this as a guide) by giving myself the PFMW scrolls that she uses and penalizing myself 10k XP for each.
We buff up (including ProFire, II and SI:Div) and head in. The bounty huntress starts casting TS, which we don't care about. We instead talk to Aawill and take out the enemies other than the bounty huntress.
The rest of the enemies go down in about three rounds, leaving just us and the elite bounty huntress. She's immune to normal weapons as well, so the PFMW protects her completely.
She only summons the planar hounds when we are not in melee range, so we make sure to start running around so the dogs are summoned.
We can spend the time we spend kiting to ruby ray her - we have three memorized, and plenty of rounds to cast them in. Once her buffs start to wear off (most noticeably the MGOI) we can breach her and go in for the kill.
Just to the east is a vanilla group of thralls. Normally in the planar prison you can get sucked down to lower mini levels, but in IA this has been disabled.
Further to the east, we run into a spider group, including a ghost spider. We have four 6th level spell slots, which effectively gives us 12 rounds of PFMW. We run in circles until the ghost spider has summoned its fourth round of spiders (counting the initial wave as the first), then turn on PFMW and our offensive buffs to take out the spiders.
We may get surrounded, in which case we will want to stop and fight a bit early to clear out the non-glost spiders. Our IH lasts for 20 rounds, so as long as we cast it at least six rounds after the fight starts it should last long enough to take out the ghost. Generally, the whispers are the best to target here.
With the SOH and the girdle of piercing, we should have good AC and can tank a while with stoneskins. The ghost spider will get a bit of damage in through the stoneskins when it hits, but not a huge amount.
The next group is pretty unexciting. Similarly, the Master of Thralls is straightforward.
Just to the west is another ghost spider group. We have more room to kite, so this one is a bit less awkward (though we still keep our distance from the warden).
We have a bit of a choice here:
If we destroy the orb, we will get 24750 XP and create two planar hounds (plus three more that get created by the area script and are worht no XP/loot), whether or not the warden fight has happened
The thralls in the Warden's area are worth 11.2k XP
If we fight the warden before destroying the orb, we fight an extra 16 planar hounds summoned by the warden plus an extra six created by the area script
The warden always creates two hounds when the fight first starts
Every three rounds, if we our range is between 13 and 30 the warden will use Magic Lasso, which draws us twoards him, puts us asleep for half a round and summons two more hounds.
As we can see, the optimal XP outcome is to fight him without destroying the orb first, though it requires killing a ludicrous number of planar hounds.
Approaching from the south side, we can draw out two of the thralls.
Approaching from the east side, we can draw out two more.
The warden himself is a level 22/22 fighter/mage. He protects himself with scrolls of PFMS (5 of them) and is immune to normal weapons. He can see through invisibility, and can take down our defences with scrolls of RRoR (5 of them).
There is a bit of cheese that we can perform here with the horn of valhalla. The process is:
Use the horn to summon a warrior out of sight of the warden and haste him up
Walk the warrior towards the warden until the Warden's prebuffs fire and we hear the warden casting a necromancy spell (Death Spell), making sure to go just far enough to trigger the warden and none of the remaining thralls
As soon as we hear the death spell finish being cast, we run the warrior away to a new location (I like to choose the top right corner of the map)
The warden will track to where the warrior was when he died, away from the rest of the thralls and stay there until we approach later on
If we rest twice (to get rid of all the warden's buffs including stoneskin), the warden will not refresh the buffs when we next encounter him
After doing this, we can circle round and engage the remaining of the Warden's thralls. This includes a couple mages that we will want to prepare ProCold for.
We do a bit more cheese:
Rest at least once so the Warden's buffs wear off
Summon the warrior and haste him up
Send him towards the warden until we hear the start of an abjuration spell being cast (SI:Ab)
Run the warrior away as fast as possible, preferably before the SI finishes being cast
Rest up and repeat this process so so the warden uses up stoneskin
Rest up twice more so the stoneskin runs out
We do our standard buffs (including SI:Ab), summon the warrior and move towards the warden, making sure the warrior is ahead of us and wll be seen by the warden first.
As soon as we hear the warden casting a necromancy spell (death spell), we cast PFMW and run in to start hitting with melee weapons. We deliberately do it then so our action frees up right when the warden's does.
The warden summons a bunch of dogs, but the PFMW cast will protect us. It tends to go down in a round, but sometimes he gets a PFMW scroll off, in which case we will breach him in response and take him down in the second round. The remaining dogs go down quite quickly to critical strikes, we just have to be careful to keep the SOH equipped or refresh PFMW once the first one ends.
Since we hit the warden on a 2, we should only need to breach if we get a critical miss or two. We can make this mega safe by casting PFMW before the warden casts death spell, then running in and taking the warden out in half a round under critical strike.
The dogs are straightforward, but there are a lot of them. They need us to spend all our PFMWs and Improved Mantles to outlast them, and that's with using all our critical strikes. In theory I could have farmed a few more dogs from the warden but I don't want to for two reasons - firstly, I wanted to take out the warden as quickly as possible as he could throw spanners into the works, and secondly we were already running out of protection. We got a big XP payout from not destroying the orb anyway.
Notable loot from this fight includes:
Permanency scroll
Improved Haste scroll (valuable crafting item even though we know the spell)
Adjatha the drinker
5 scrolls of PFMW
5 scrolls of RRoR
4 scrolls of Breach
Lots of money or things that can be sold (the planar hounds drop one star sapphire each on death, we got 27 of them)
We rest up and buff up before destroying the orb. This is a much easier fight, but we buff up for reload safety. This fight also fire an improved web at us, so using the SOH is necessary even if we have PFMW up. We also make sure to talk to Tagget in the starting portion of the map for an extra 5k XP.
Unfortunately, we run into a bit of a bug - within the prison we only have Haer'Dalis and no Raelis, so the dialogue is broken. We have to use the console to spawn Raelis in.
All this is enough for us to hit Fighter level 19 and Thief level 22. I decide to spend the HLAs on a sixth critical strike and an extra 7th level spell.
This is the first fight where we lean on II and SI:Div. This is where the triple class continues to hurt - if we were just a F/M multi, we would be mage level 20 right now instead of 17. We won't be able to use this for all fights, however - as we progress through the game, a lot of enemies (typically non-caster ones like the top end golems) have access to an ability called "purge magic", which completely dispels without regards to level or SI.
In the last part, we got the final stronghold, the bard stronghold. Let's put on a play. In IA it is no longer an infinite source of money, but it is at least a good source of XP and some nice loot.
Our goal will be to first maximize XP, then to maximize money. There are three sources of XP:
The decisions we make as the play is developing
Our performance on opening night
The overall play quality (controlled by the variable PlayQuality, I will refer to it as PQ)
Fortunately, there is a strong correlation between these.
We have a series of decisions to make. If we choose to maximize XP then:
Put Jenna in the lead (no XP now but it helps in decision 3) for a starting PQ of 3
Put in some money for no XP or PQ difference, but setting PlayInvestment for later
Insist that Iltheia plays the smaller part for 15750 XP and increase PQ by 1
Allow Zaren to make changes for 15750 XP and increase PQ by 2
Wear the ring of human influence to get over 17 charisma to get 11500 XP and improve PQ by 1. Alternatively, pay 500 gold for the same outcome
Pay the priest 1000 gold to gain 11500 XP and increase the PQ by 1
Let Marcus play and we write the score (as we have over 18 INT) for 15500XP and improving PQ by 2
This gives us a play quality of 10. We could increase it by 1 if we hire Balmitance for another 500 gold, or increase by 2 if we give Iltheia the lead and miss out on a bit of XP, but 10 is all we need to get the rest result.
The money that we get at the end is determined in a nasty script. What effectively happens is that the play quality is divided into bands of 5, and out money depends on what band and what the value of PlayInvestment is. Since we will be in the 10-14 band, the possible weekly incomes we can get (in descending order) are 1500, 1400, 1300, 1200, 1100, 1000.
In IA, we only get the money from the bard stronghold 15 times. The amount of money that we get decreases by 100 each week, to a minimum of 500. Therefore, the total return of these (again in descending order) is 13000, 12000, 11100, 10300, 9600, 9000. It turns out that we get more total XP if we sell Higgold the playhouse at the end of the quest chain than if we keep it, so I will not be putting a penny in during the initial setup.
There is one thing we need to do among all the handing over money and resting up - we need to clear out the Turmish invaders.
We buff up (including ProCold, ProLightning, PFME, II and SI:Ab) and head in. The two battlepriests and the mage all cast TS once we walk into range, but if we, stand here we can interrupt one of the priests with magic missile before the fight properly begins. The battlepriests also start by blocking the stairs to the mage, but if we fire the magic missile now and then retreat a bit, all the Turmish will start moving towards us, opening a path to the mage.
We cast a PFMW to protect ourselves from the leader while we run towards the mage. The mage has a complex script, but the relevant parts of it are (in order of priority):
If under 75% HP and a target is in range, fire a CC of triple ADHW
If under 50% HP and a target is in range, fire a ST of triple CHain Lightning
If no layers of stoneskin are active, cast stoneskin (up to 4 times) (giving 10 layers of stoneskin)
If under 100% hitpoints and not under absolute immunity, use a scroll of AI
Cast some other spells like ruby ray
We therefore have a plan - we equip weapons without elemental damage (such as Phosphorus and the short sword of backstabbing) and hit her exactly nine times (so she has one stoneskin layer left). This should be easy to manage, as we have 9 APR and will make a noise from the fireshield every time we hit her. Since she also likes to cast mirror image, this will require a lot of zooming in to know when a mirror image is hit instead of a stoneskin
Once we have got her down to one stoneskin, we will wait for her to start casting a spell, then activate critical strike and take her out. She has 50% physical damage resistance, but only 64 HP. The good news is that she goes down in about three damaging hits once critical strike is active, so if we're not sure we can attack her in the first half of the round and as long as we don't hear the audio cue of stoneskin expiring on our last hit, we can wait a bit longer before attacking. She likes to cast breach into our SI:Ab, but I like to keen an extra SI prepared just in case.
After the mage goes down, the next squishiest target is the thief, who is also vulnerable to critical strikes. The priests will go after and the leader last, and neither the priests nor the leader are vulnerable to critical strikes.
The good news is that with the mage down, we can use improved mantle as extra PFMW on the remaining weapons (the mage had a black blade cast which could have gotten over improved mantle).
The leader does not have any hardinesses, but does have innate 65% damage resistance and likes to quaff potions.
Notable loot here is a manual of elaboration, and a few scrolls including absolute immunity. In previous versions of IA it was possible to get boots of speed off the leader, but it looks like in the latest version they were undroppable. That's kinda annoying, boots of speed are a very nice quality of life item.
Finally, it's opening night. The easiest way to remember the order of lines is that it alternates between 2 and 1, starting with 2, except for the third line (the second time we would say 2) where it is 1.
This is enough for us to hit mage level 18, and unlock the final tier of spells, 9th level.
We spend our HLA picking up a new spell to go in that spell slot - Improved Alacrity. This is going to be important for certain mage battles where we want to fire as many ruby rays as possible in as short a time as possible.
It's a bit annoying that th Turmish Leader didn't drop the boots of speed. Looking in Near Infinity, it looks like the only ones that can be obtained from enemies are from Ilasera and Belcheresk (part of the Demogorgon fight). Although in theory we only need two boots in total, we will want to gain access to them before TOB (and I'm not sure the Demogorgon fight is even possible for us), so it looks like we will have to forge two pairs. In order to forge the boots, we will need to use a specific kind of mundane boots that can only be found in the following locations:
Spelhold maze puzzles (can be grabbed after finishing the puzzle)
Pirate captain in the Sea's Bounty
Rock (minotaur from Watcher's Keep machine level)
Samia
The most likely course of action from here is that I take out the pirate captain, forge utility boots, but wait on forging the other pair of boots of speed until the green wyrm is dealt with.
You can get another pair of Boots of Speed in Spellhold at the Token Machine. But the machine is guarded by a Mithril Golem.
Ah, I missed that. It looks like I'll be able to get away with forging one pair of boots, grabbing a second from the machine, and then using those and boots of the woodland as all my footwear from the run. I recall the mithril golem as a tricky fight, I may try to run into the machine and out with minimal fighting if I can't find a safe strategy for it.
Although I did pick up some footwear (shoes that grant cold resistance), I am not using them, as any scenario that involves cold damage I will be preparing for with ProCold.
In the last part we hit mage level 18. Not only does this mean we have access to Alacrity, it meas that our contingency can also store 6th level spells, which effectively gives us an extra 6th level spell slot. Contingency for Improved Haste on enemy seen is going to be pretty common.
We head to the dueling families. It doesn't matter which one we originally talk to.
The inside of the crypt is a dead magic zone. We will have a very brief window to cast one spell, but it will have to be a very short casting time one (not enough for us to cast IH). Innate spells are still allowd, and this includes contingencies and sequencers.
We set up a contingency to haste us up when we get hit - on enemy seen is slight riskier, as there is a brief window when the enemy is first seen but before we get dispeled that we don't want to contingency to fire in. For additional reload safety, we can also set up a sequences that includes stoneskin.
The founder is a high level fighter/cleric. Like most skeletons, it is weakest to crushing damage. We get dispeled after the conversation ends, so wait until then before fiting PFMW as our one spell. Going in with a stoneskin up is useful, as it will give us a good indication of when the dispel hits.
Even though PFMW is protecting us from the weapons of the undead, the contingency still triggers. The non-founder undead are negligible, and the founder just tries to cast spells that we easily save against. Using Phosphorus also gives us 24 strength through the dispel, which is nice.
Giving the mantle to Logan Coprith earns us the most experience, and gives us our 20th point of reputation.
We're at the point where there are a bunch of fights that we can beat, but we cannot extract full value from them, such as Roenall or Umar. I'm spending a lot of time doing probing of these fights, but without much success. We're going to delay those until we can extract full value, and in the meantime do some other quests.
We head to Marvella to get her second task - in this case, we are given the task to find a beggar.
The beggar we want to talk to is back in Trademeet, near the yellow tent. We are told to go to a major tavern in Athkatla and give the box to a lady with a name like a bird.
We head to the upper level of the Five Flagons and run into Sir Ferdinand Albatross. We are told that the box contains a demon, and if we hand the box over to its destination the demon will be freed. We can give him the box for 30k XP and a point of reputation.
If we tell him no, we run into Lady Mollyhawk. We confirms that she is indeed a demon, and we have to fight a Noble Marilith (22k XP) and two Abyssal Escorts (15k XP each). The stairs back down are disabled until we kill the Noble Marilith (though the Abyssal Escorts can still be alive).
The marilith starts with a PFMW, and has an additional four. The escords also start with one and have an additional three. The escorts cast no spells other than the three PFMW and a contingency stoneskin, whereas the marilith has a bunch of other nasty spells.
We buff up (including ProLightning, PFME, II, SI:Ab and a contingent IHaste on enemy seen) and head up. We make sure to stand here so the marilith starts to spawn in one corner, in case we need to run away.
We want to breach each round, but will have to take off a couple rounds for PFMW, which gives the marilith a couple rounds for other spells. It tends to follow the order:
TS
Lower Electrical Resistance
Triple chain lightning
Greater Malison
We will have to tank the damage from the triple chain lightning, but with 50% electrical resistance (after ProElectricity and the Marilith's Lower Electrical Resistance) we should be fine. It also has an ADHW, but no way to take out our PFME, and so we are safe on that front.
The marilith goes down sometime during our third PFMW. We will likely need to spend a scroll of breach. It its loot is worth quite a bit of money.
With the marilith dead, we can head downstairs and the escorts will not pursue. this gives us enough time to rest up and rebuff. We only need the combat buffs for the escorts.
We will not need to spend any spell scrolls on the escorts. We can take out one then head downstairs to rebuff again before taking out the other.
Marvella does not comment on which course of action we took.
Comments
We've been hitting all kinds of power spikes recently. Let's go onto another big XP location - the shadow temple.
The main enemy that we are worried about is the shadow jailor. We cannot leave until it is dead. It attacks with a save-less slow, and it has two skeleton lords as backup.
If we summon skeletons, they will just be turned against us, so we buff up and go in alone.
The Jailor's spell are easily interruptible, and we deal heavy damage to it. It goes down in about three rounds.
Next up are the skeleton lords. They hit hard and hit often, but they have no effect on hit. They have 50% resistance to piercing and slashing damage, but no resistance to crushing, so we can talk them with mirror image/stoneskin without having to worry about on-hit effects. If things do start to look dodgy, then we can run away - the stairs up will be active again now, and we move faster than they do.
Reciting the rituals of Amaunator is worth a whopping 45.5k XP.
From there, we can hand over Amuana's bones without running into anything non-vanilla. We can't progress any further in this map without dealing with skeleton grandlords, however, and those require +4 weapons (preferably crushing).
In the last part, we found ourselves blocked by lack of +4 weapons. Let's instead go somewhere that doesn't have this blocker.
The ruhk conjurer has a relatively simple AI, though it is quite effective:
We start by using the horn of valhalla and buffing with ProFire and Haste.
We keep the warrior between us and the Ruhk. We can also (inconsistently) trigger the kamikaze kobolds by magic missiling one of them, the rest will go off in sequence.
When we hear the Ruhk casting a necromancy spell, we run forwards through the door behind. We will not be followed.
In this room, the orcs are unimproved. We take them down without much trouble.
We can rest in this room, and we can rest in the windspear hills exterior. Although they both have hostile rest spawns, the spawns are not notable (the exterior is slightly safer, however).
We have five 2nd level spell slots, which we will fill with mirror image. We also have 5 3rd level spell slots, which we will fill with 3 haste and 2 ProFire.
Our plan is to run between the exterior and the maze level repeatedly under haste and mirror image. The mirror image is enough of a trigger to make the Ruhk cast remove magic on us.
We are slightly slower than the remove magic projectile. Ideally we want to get to the other exit to completely fizzle it, but if that doesn't work then we will at least be safe from the enemies. This is why we prepared backup hastes and mirror images. (and we can supplement with oils of speed and spell sequencer if we want)
The Ruhk tends to outrun the kobolds, in which case it will not cast remove magic until the kobolds catch up. We can try to use this to land a hit. As soon as its health is below 100% it will cast absolute immunity, and since it has no regeneration this one hit is enough to make it eventually use up both castings.
The kobolds may start to clog up the map. The can be make to suicide consistently by using the horn of Valhalla. Alternatively, ProFire may be cast for immunity to their explosions (which is why we prepared two of them).
When the Ruhk fires a flame arrow, we know that it is out of dispels.
Although each individual run between exits isn't guaranteed to fizzle a remove magic, I consider this strategy as a whole to be reload-safe - Each individual run is damage safe (especially if ProFire is used as a buff while running), and we can safely rest between attempts, so as a whole the strategy is reload safe.
We buff up. Under ProFire and PFMW, we are immune to the Ruhk and kobolds. We do kinda have to worry about the kobolds getting in under the PFMW, but stoneskins, spirit armour and the remaining mirror images should keep us safe.
In the last part, we took out the Ruhk Conjurer, and in doing so opened up a major map, with a lot of juicy XP in it. This is going to be a productive part.
Note that we will be resting up a lot in the dungeon. Noreloaders will want to be mega safe by going all the way to the exterior to rest up, where the nighttime encounters are weakest.
Before we go any further, we want to make sure we have one of these handy. When we cleared out the mists we should have picked up one of these, but if it's been lost or sold there are a few shops in Athkatla which sell them. Using this and Spirit Armour, we can get our save vs spell down to -3 without illusions, meaning we can save at a -4 penalty reliably. Note that we can swap amulets at instant speed in combat, so if we are worried about losing the casting time bonus of the amulet of power, we can equip one amulet, cast a spell (potentially instacast), and the swap the amulets back.
Carrying on into the maze, we find ourselves up against an IA golem group. It consists of two gem golems, two coin golems, and a greater bone golem.
The greater bone golem is 65% resistant to crushing damage, and 90% resistant to slashing and piercing damage. It needs +3 or better weapons to hit. It has an ability (hideous laughter) that can panic or stun us unless we can make a save vs spell at -4. Its weapon dispels some protections on hit, including illusions (I'm not sure of the full list).
The gem golem is 75% resistant to crushing damage, 90% resistant to slashing damage, and immune to piercing damage. The coin golem is 75% resistant to piercing damage, 90% resistant to crushing damage, and immune to slashing damage. Both of them require +3 or better weapons to hit, and both of them dispel illusions on hit.
We have a big advantage here - the golems do not follow us outside the starting room.
Our plan is to draw the golems into the doorway and bottleneck them. Coin and gem golems have 3 APR and the greater bone golem has 4 APR, compared to the 6 layers our stoneskin gives us (as we are mage level 13). We can also use PFMW as protection if we are unable to bottleneck them in the doorway.
We will attempt to focus them down one by one. If things don't go to plan, we can retreat and rest up, in which case the golems will reset their position and health. As long as we leave before the Spirit Armour expires we are reload safe. We can use DUHM as a warning for this - Spirit Armour lasts for 15 rounds and DUHM for 10, so as long as we buff in the order IH, Spirit Armour, DUHM we know we have a few rounds of safely between DUHM running out and spirit armour running out.
Coin golems are easier to take down than gem golems - they have 120 health to the gem golem's 150. We are dealing 5 damage per hit, and hitting on pretty much every roll (THAC0 -2 vs AC -4), and the golems do not have regeneration, so we will take out a coin golem in around 24 hits, which with our 7 APR is doable withint a single PFMW if we use enchanted weapon on shortsword.
When we return, the golems have reset to their initial position and health, except for the one we killed. I prefer taking down the greater bone golem before taking down the gem golem for greater peace of mind concerning having to make a save against hideous laughter. It is a bit harder to take down, with better AC and regeneration, but at least there's only one of them.
For the Gem and Greater Bone golems, I find DPS is best with the FOA main hand and enchanted weapon mace offhand (despite the lack of proficiency points). Once the GBG is down, we can go back to using Ghost Armour and the Amulet of Power, freeing up a 4th level slot for more stoneskins.
The coin, gem and greater bone golems are worth 22k, 24k and 30k respectively, for a total XP of 122k for the whole group. The greater bone golem takes our spot as most powerful vanquished.
The next room contains some undead, including an eminent vampire. We have to be on the watchout for domination effects, so either improved invisibility or the shield of harmony will be necessary. Reload safety will demand a full rest and rebuff before this fight.
We get ready to face King Strohm's guardians. They each protect themselves with illusions, Stoneskin and Fireshield. They will attack us in melee as well as casting fireball. Rather annoyingly, they have infinite stoneskins and mirror images, though they will limit themselves to one stoneskin every four rounds and one mirror image every two rounds.
Fortunately, although they start with SI:Div, they do not refresh it. They are 16th level casters, which means that their SI lasts for 16 rounds, the same as our regular haste (as we are a 13th level caster). Therefore, if we cast haste as the prebuffs go off, as soon as it runs out we can start casting our divination spells. For additional safety, we can equip the SOH during the initial phase of the fight as our damage output doesn't really matter, so we might as well get a bit of AC - Ghost Armour, SOH, and Blur means that they miss on an 19.
We will put IH and TS in our sixth level spell slots, casting them both when the SI is down. We can rely on Mirror Image, ProFire and Stoneskins to protect us until then.
It's a long fight, but it's extremely safe. We can also speed it up by breaching the stoneskins once the TS is down.
We also want to make sure we disarm all the traps here for a bit more XP.
The six guardians are worth 12k apiece, and assembling the mask is worth 24550, an unusual number. The final guardian goes down in a few rounds of us under IH and ProFIre, but we save the Samia fight for later.
We will want to buff up before entering this area, as there is an improved spider group waiting on the other side of the door. We will also leave the well along, it has a fight that we're not ready for yet.
Gerg is worth 35XP, the troll 1400, and the captain 1800. We will try to kill them in descending order of XP.
The adamantine golem needs +3 or better weapons to hit. It doesn't matter much which weapon, it's 90% resistant to all damage types. We can at least slow if if we keep hitting it with the FOA (this incidental slow is one of the reasons the FOA is our main weapon).
The werewolf den is easy, it doesn't matter much which option we choose.
Just to the north of the well is another golem group. We follow the same strategy, just with a much longer retreat distance. Having a regular haste prepared as well and the IH will guarantee that the golems don't catch up to us when IH runs out.
The hallway just before this door is a good place to apply our buffs, just before the fight.
This second group of golems is enough for us to hit thief level 16. Not much going on here.
Just past the golems is a small group of vampires and mists. IH and PFMW make short work of them, though watch out for domination again.
We've got one last fight in this area - Tazok. We rest and rebuff before going in.
As well as a bunch of potions, Tazok also has access to one whirlwind. The best time to fire our PFMW is right after he fires his whirlwind.
He likes to whirlwind as his second action, which means that from round three onward our action is free to magic missile for a bit more damage. He tends to go down around when our PFMW expires.
Tazok drops the cloak of Balduran. It's basically a slightly more swag version of a cloak of protection + 1, though it can be used for a unique item upgrade for Cernd. We may end up forging it if we have extra ingredients, as it is the only +4 protection cloak in the game.
This has been a very long part - , we will end it here.
This was a super long part with all kinds of juicy XP - we gained approximately 624k XP in this.
I ran into two IA golem groups, and more will be encountered in the future. Most of the time our tactics will remain pretty fixed, so for repeated enemy groups like that I will probably only describe the tactics the first time we encounter them, and gloss over them in the future (unless our tactics change).
In the last part, we got ourselves a massive chunk of XP. We just need 143k more, at which point we hit level 14 in fighter and mage, and unlock 7th level spells.
We'll be tackling the keep viper. As we can see, we will be wanting to attack with the FOA and enchanted weapon longsword. Each hit will be doing around 4-5 damage, and it regenerates 2 hitpoints per second, so we will be able to grind it down.
We buff up as normal. It can poison us if we fail a save vs death at -4, so we will want to include blur or use the amulet of protection to guarantee passing it.
At our current rate of damage output, it goes down easily, usually around a dozen rounds. We can keep our action for refreshing stoneskin/mirror image/PFMW, and run downstairs if things start to look bad. We will want to refresh DUHM when it's at low health, saving the PFMW for then so we can guarantee no interruptions is probably best.
With that dead, we have nothing left to do in the keep except the Tor'Gal fight. That one may have to wait until after we have spell immunity.
Part 044: Sewers Horrid Rakshasa:
Just like last part, we're clearing up a small encounter that we were unable to do earlier, but can do now.
In the center of the sewers is a group of kobolds and a horrid Rakshasa. We start be decluttering by picking off the kobolds without triggering the rakshasa.
This is the Horrid Rakshasa. It is an enemy that we will be seeing a lot of in the late game.
It has a single absolute immunity, which it fires when it's under 75% health. It has a single remove magic (that I can't fully determine the conditions for firing, I'm not good with scripting states). It also has an unlimited amount of ADHW, which it fires no more than once every five rounds. If we disappear from sight too long, it refreshes the absolute immunity but not the remove magic.
We will now buff up, grab the Rakshasa's attention, and wait for it to run away.
It should open with ADHW or remove magic, in which case we can run to the sewers exit to negate the spell and come back. We will want to start running the instant we see a necromancy spell being cast, don't wait for it to finish.
We can then draw him to fight near the exit, at which point we will find it much easier to escape from the ADHW.
We have no way of getting around his absolute immunity, so we will have to just wait it out. Once it's down, it will die in a few rounds of combat. Fortunately, none of our standard buffs make him want to dispel - I think the dispel logic is based around protections against ADHW.
For a less cheesy but not quite reload-safe strategy, we can run in and start hitting him off the bat to disrupt the ADHW. This is not reload safe, as we will have 2-3 attacks, where we need at least a 7 to hit. His first round will be casting ADHW and his second will be casting absolute immunity if we deal enough damage to him (which shouldn't be a major issue). His absolute immunity should be running out as he starts casting the second ADHW, where we can interrupt him again.
It's not that bad if the ADHW hits us, it terms to do 80-100 damage on insane, which we can tank. Although a potion of magic shielding might protect us, that also makes the Rakshasa dispel us, which gets rid off the buffs that we need.
Killing it earns us 21k XP and the cloak of the sewers. Normally the cloak isn't that interesting loot, but it actually has a use in IA, though not a major one.
Part 045: Lilarcor:
Last part was a bit of XP, but not much. Our major reason for doing that fight was the loot.
We will now be fighting Lilarcor's second guardian, the shadow lover.
Looking at the shadow lover, it might look a bit squishy, but it has a nasty trick. When it hits, it stuns the target with no save.
Tresset gave a list of ways we can gain stun immunity, which I have added my comments to in square brackets: Therefore, in order to safely tank the shadow lover, our only option is to buff up and beat it while transformed into a troll.
We buff up and transform. Unfortunately, it turns out that the cloak is either bugged or nerfed. We do not transform properly, and do not gain the immunities we want. We will have to do it the old fashioned way.
The shadow lover prioritizes attacking the closest target, so by careful positioning we can save our PFMW for when the skeletons are down, buying us more rounds of safety. A noreloader will also want to keep PFMW up (possibly scrollcasting for the extra protection), and be ready to run away.
Next up is Quallo's friend. It needs +3 weapons to hit, and when it hits us we get paralyzed unless we make a save vs death at -4. Casting blur or using the amulet of protection guarantees that we will make this save.
It has some hefty regeneration, but we can easily outdamage it.
It tends to take five or six rounds to take out.
Turning in the blood leads us to the next guardians - four virulent rats.
These are much easier. They are completely weak to crushing damage, and on hit they poison us unless we pass a save with no penalties (easy for us at this point in the game).
The final pipe has no guardians, just giving us the sword and some XP.
We're about to get 7th level mage spells, so let's talk a bit about mage fights.
There are three ways that IA mages tend to defend themselves:
Improved invisibility and SI:Div means that we cannot target the mage with spells like breach, and we cannot use divination to make them targetable. We will either have to cast dispel/remove magic at a higher level than the enemy mage (unlikely to happen) to dispel protections, or go through the defenses physically (Hitting through stoneskins, protection vs fireshield, normal weapons vs PFMW).
SI:Ab also gives protection from dispel and breach-like spells. There is only one spell that can get rid of it, and that is Ruby Ray of Reversal (commonly abbreviated to RR). RR gets rid of the highest level spell from this list:
- Spell Trap (9)
- Spell Turning (7)
- GOI (6)
- Spell Deflection (6)
- Minor Spell Turning (5)
- Spell Immunity (5)
- Spell Shield (5)
- MGOI (4)
- Minor Spell Deflection (3)
SI:Ab is typically paired with several of these level 6+ spell protections. This means that we will need to peel back several layers of protections with several ruby rays before we can start breaching. Depending on the test of the mage's protections and the rest of the people in the fight, we may choose to instead fight through the protections with weapons instead of magic.Lichs are immune to spells of level 1-5, except dispel and remove magic. They also tend to be rather high level, 25+, making it very difficult to dispel them. They are also immune to normal weapons and like to cast PFMW. They tend to run SI:Nec to protect from a couple IA added spells (such as disrupt undead). They do have one glaring weakness, however - slow movement speed. We will therefore have a couple strategies that we can employ:
We are very close to fighter and mage level 14. Let's get that level up and also another power spike.
We head to the graveyard district, buff up, and head into Pai'Na's lair.
Pai'na's initial summons are a bunch of sword spiders. She does have additional summons that we want to exhaust her of, however.
To fully exhaust all her summons will require twelve rounds of waiting.
We buff up and head in. We also make sure to equip the shield of harmony (for protection against improved web) and the girdle of piercing (the spiders all do piercing damage).
Pai'na's initial support is a large number of sword spiders. They can only hit us on a natural 20, but there are a lot of them and they have decent APR. We will want to move as close to her as possible and spend our first action breaching her. We will want to interrupt her spells, and her magic resistance means we want to do it by hitting her with weapons.
We can spend our action refreshing defences, casting sunfire to take out the sword spiders, or casting magic missile to take out the killer and spirit spiders. Two sunfires will take out most if not all of the sword spiders.
Pai'na typically tries to cast only three spells - True Sight, Creeping Doom, and Insect Plague. Once all of those are interrupted, she will just attack in melee, which is not very threatening. Once the improved web wears out, we can temporarily swap to dual wielding for additional damage output, but we will want to be quick to swap back if she tries another improved web.
Even if she does manage to get off one of the spells, our save vs breath weapons is -3 under blur (-7 with II as well), which is more than enough to reliably save.
When we see a spawn after DUHM wears off, that should be the last spawn and we will be clear to finish off Pai'Na. She may start casting necromancy spells, but these will all be healing, which we don't massively care about.
When we beat her, it is critically important that we don't loot the body. We will want to make sure we are standing on top of the container in the middle of the room, pause the game, and open up the quick loot menu.
To check that we are standing in the right place, we want to open the inventory screen and see that the "ground" is the contents of the container.
Once we have verified this, we want to use the quick loot menu in the main game screen to loot Pai'Na's body, the drop the spider figurine onto the "ground" without unpausing. The rest of the loot can be held onto.
If we left it lying on the ground it would despawn. Putting it in the container means it will not go away, and since we never had it in our inventory when the game was unpaused the IA script that checks if we pick it up should not fire. We can verify that we have done this correctly by going to watcher's keep and seeing if the spider queen appears (though if she does then that is definitely a reload).
This is enough for us to hit level 14 in fighter and mage. We gain our first level seven spell slot.
I've already talked about RROR, which will be our main seventh level spell, but there are three more of interest - Limited Wish (available from Lady Yuth in the Adventurer's Mart), Spell Turning and Spell Sequencer (both available from Bernard in the Copper Coronet).
The last thing to do in this part is the one-time limited wish options:
The first is that lack of spell immunity is proving to be a big blocker. There are a lot of fights from here that we cannot do due to lacking spell immunity.
The second is that we can't progress any further in Watcher's Keep without killing the candle and bell guardians. In order to beat these we will need several critical strike HLAs. We're currently on 5 million total XP, and we would need to get to 8 or 9 million total before we'd be able to beat the guardians. At that point we might as well try to fight the spider queen.
The third is that the spider queen fight is ultimately optional. We can always give up the black spider figurine instead of fighting the spider queen.
The fourth reason, however, is the biggest by far. The spider queen spawning is not controlled by Pai'Na being dead, it is controlled by the black spider figuring. When we pick it up a variable is set, and that variable is checked in watcher's keep. Therefore, if we never unpause with the black spider figurine in our inventory, this variable will never be set and we can delay the spider queen fight as much as we want.
Our next level is almost half a million XP away, but now that we have access to spell immunity, we can claim ourselves another stronghold.
Our main target for this part is TorGal. He is a level 25 cleric, which means he has a nasty dispel magic (which in his case is uninterruptible), but against SI:Ab he can't do anything.
We buff up and head downstairs. The buffing is there to prevent the neo-otyugh from getting a surprise nasty hit on us. Once we head down we cannot leave until the TorGal fight is cleared, but we will be able to rest up to restore our buffs.
We equip the shield of harmony to protect against confusion, and drop off the dog stew before killing any umber hulks. If we kill the hulks first, we don't get the XP reward for the dog stew.
We set up our minor sequencer with Blur and Mirror Image. We set up our major sequencer with Stoneskin, II and Fireshield Red. We set up enchanted weapon mace, and make sure we have the girdle of bluntness equipped. We equip the amulet of protection, but get ready to swap it for the AOP before casting any defensive spells.
We buff up, excluding mirror images, as we won't be able to get full value. TorGal is backed up by four noble trolls and a gem golem. We get their attention and then run to the doorway.
Using the doorway, we can bottleneck them and take them out one by one. There are two giant trolls in the mix, but they are vanilla and so fighting two enemies at once doesn't matter so much if one of them is a giant troll.
TorGal can cast storm of vengeance, but it is not a major threat to us (we can chug potions if our life gets too low, or use an oil of resurgence). We can augment our DPS with magic missiles against the noble trolls. TorGal casts a few disabling spells, but as long as we have a save vs spell of -1 we will pass, and we can always tactically use the SOH if our blur gets dispelled.
For the gem golem, we want to us FOA main hand and the enchanted weapon mace offhand. Our improved haste may run out before we kill all the enemies - we will want to just use regular haste (for only 1/2 extra APR, but better than nothing). Similarly, our DUHM will need to be refreshed (and possibly followed up with giant strength potions). Once TorGal and the golem are down, we can use mirror images to protect ourselves instead of PFMW and stoneskins. The PFMW is best used when being attacked by multiple enemies at the same time, or when the golem is in range (as it hits harder and more accurately than the noble trolls).
As long as we fight them one-on-one, they go down easily. If ever we get into trouble, we can retreat to the next doorway, or cast PFMW and use the horn of valhalla to distract (the AI will prefer a non-PFMW target over a PFMW target). One thing to watch out for is that if our health goes below 50% it can trigger our safety contingency, so we will want to plan around that.
TorGal drops a lot of loot, most notably a scroll of permanency (our second), the blackblood club and the barbarian half of judgement day essence.
We find a scroll of Ray of Fragmentation, a new IA spell that is meant to combat the golems, but it's just worse than hitting with out weapon. We won't be casting this.
We'll end this part here, and get the quest reward and to the first keep quests in the next part.
In the last part, we had a grindy fight, probably the most grindy one since we got improved haste. This time, we've got some easy XP, without any fighting.
We accept the keep for 45.5k XP.
Incidentally, this is the script that controls the weekly gold we get from the bard and fighter stronnholds. As we can see, the fighter stronghold only triggers 20 times and the bard stronghold only triggers 15 times.
Since the amount of gold we get is finite, we will want to maximize first the XP, then the gold. We can raise taxes to get more gold, but each time increases KPREVOLT by 1, and once it hits 10 the peasants will revolt and we will lose the keep. Our plan of action is therefore:
We have to wait a week before each of the keep events:
We will have to leave the rest of the Keep quests for later. If we do the next quest (the moneylenders), the flood will be a timed quest that we have to do in a certain amount of time, and after that the Roenall invasion we will have to do in a certain amount of time. The Roenall invasion is a pretty difficult fight, we will want to save it for when we are ready.
The last part wasn't very exciting - no challenges, but a bit of free XP. I've done the maths, and we will get our first HLA at 6.9 million XP, which is when we hit fighter level 16. We are currently at 5.465 million, so we have another million and a half to go.
Conster is a 21st level mage. He protects himself with SI:Ab and Spell Turning, which means that he will need two ruby rays to get through his protections. We can cast one naturally, and can scrollcast the other (one sold by Bernard)
He likes to cast true sight if we have illusion protections, followed by ruby rays, spellstrikes and breaches (he has a few scrolls). Defensively, he protects himself from melee attacks with absolute immunity, and from the elements of fire, cold, electricity, magic and poison. He has left a weakness - acid. From the druid grove we got the "Root of the Problem" club which deals one point of acid on hit, which is enough to disrupt his casting. Fully buffed, he has an AC of 5 compared to our THAC0 of 4, so we will hit on anything other than a 1.
We buff up (including ProCold, II and SI:Ab) and head downstairs. We have the Root of the Problem and the SOH equipped.
Once we head down, he starts casting a divination spell. We will reliably have three swings at him, at 95% accuracy. Although that's techinically not reload safe, it feels pretty reload safe.
With us under II and his TS disrupted, he does nothing. Three rounds of skeleton lords also appear. Unlike most IA fight summons, these will continue spawning after Conster is dead, but they are more threatening than he is right now, so we will want to take them out and ignore Conster. We can swap to the FOA for taking them out.
We stand far enough back that he won't be tempted to use his scrolls of AI. Near the entrance we have eight skeleton lords that will spawn in, (four groups of two, two rounds apart). We can swap to the FOA for taking them out, and we will want to fire both our ruby rays at Conster while doing this. He may also try another divination spell, in which case we want to run in with the club and disrupt him again.
We breach him, but we don't immediately go in to attack him. We want to get him to spend his action on something else so he doesn't cast AI.
Using the horn of Valhalla makes him spend his action casting Death Spell. We can then use this to go in and start hitting him.
He may get off a couple AIs, but that's why we prepare three breaches, and can always scrollcast more.
In addition to dropping some nice scrolls, he also drops our first manual of elaboration.
Freeing Taar is worth 23.75k XP in the maze, and another 44.5k when we return to Garren.
Part 050: Paladin Stronghold:
In the last part, we gained access to the paladin stronghold. Let's do it now, stronghold tasks tend to be easy XP.
Our first task is to go to the umar hills.
The enemies here are all vanilla. We just load up on offensive buffs and try to make sure we get all the kills on the ettins and ogre magi. Killing them all is worth 11.5k XP
Returning to the MNORH, we get another 10k XP and are sent back to the umar hills.
While we're here, we also finish up the second half of the "Idle hands in Imnesvale" quest and the second half of the Madulf quest.
We buff up, including II and SI:Ab. As we enter, Sorcerous Amin starts to cast TS. We can either talk to him to interrupt him, or if we're feeling less cheesy, talk to Lanka to make everyone go hostile, then hit Amin with a weapon to interrupt him. We will need to be quick with the pause, but if we are slow we can always leave the building and try again.
With his TS interrupted and us under SI:Ab, Amin will use a sequencer before engaging us in melee. We want to seperate him out from the rest of the enemies, so as soon as the fight begins, we will leave the building, before Amin uses his sequencer.
We want to separate out as many of the non-Amin enemies as possible from the building. Ideally we would get all three of them, but it's not a disaster if we do not. They are easy to take out, and once we have done this we will want to rest twice (so Amin's stoneskin expires) and prepare to take on Amin.
Amin has four scrolls of PFMW, and we will want to take him out with him using as few of them as possible. He also has a chain contingency of triple ADHW when he is under 75% health, so we will need to protect with PFME.
Heading in, we Amin has had his spells refreshed and repeats his AI. He starts with TS as we are invisible, and we can kill him in a round.
Some may feel that this is an overly cheesy method to go outside and rest. We can take a somewhat less cheesy strategy of just hitting Amin with normal weapons in the first encounter. It's pretty consistent either way, the only real difference is how many PFMW scrolls we can get from Amin.
Returning to the MNORH, we get 25.5k quest XP, and are given our third quest. We will want to prepare a know alignment (2nd level spell, or scroll) for this.
The fight here is vanilla.
We want to use detect alignment to determine if this Hurgis is Evil or Good. This is randomly decided, so someone who is willing to reload can reload to before the assassin fight to reroll it. It is better if we get the evil Hurgis, as then we get to kill him for a bit more XP before the good Hurgis turns up.
We get given 25k XP and our final task, which we will not be doing for a while.
Throughout this part we were able to hit Thief 17. Most notably, this comes with a better save vs spell.
We are at 5.8 million. On our way to 6.9.
The best place to buff is in Bodhi's lair, in the western corner. If we exit there, we will come out just by the crypt royalty entrance.
Initially, we only see the crypt king.
We save our PFMW for when the queen comes and attacks us.
The crypt king goes down about halfway through the PFMW, and we focus on the crypt queen. Once the PFMW is down, we can protect ourselves with mirror image and stoneskin.
In this tomb we find a scroll of minor disruption. Normally we wouldn't want to cast this, but right now it is our best way of damaging skeleton grandlords. If we stick three of them in a spell sequencer, that'll do 18-72 damage, which is a decent chunk of their 200 hitpoints. Without that, our only way of hurting skeleton grandlords is using the Flame Tongue sword, which deals 3-4 damage per hit.
Part 052: Mencar Pebblecrusher:
In the last part we had a low XP encounter that gave us an important spell scroll. This helps us take out skeleton grandlords, but it is not quite enough.
We buff up, including ProFire, SI:Ab and II. As we head in the mages start casting some not very notable spells, but they are immune until their prebuffs fire, at which point they get fully healed, so we will start by getting the drop on Brennan and Smaeluv. We can at least delay Amon getting into the fight by interrupting his ProFire with magic missiles.
When we see Amon start to cast a divination spell, we can interrupt him with cone of cold.
Mencar has Hardiness, we can respond with breach.
Amon protects himself with scrolls of improved mantle. We don't really care about preserving those scrolls, pretty much every IA enemy attacks with +4 or +5 weapons.
We want to keep interrupting any divination spells with cone of cold, otherwise we could be caught be surprise by Amon's ADHW. The notable loot from this fight is the cursed sword of berserking, Borok's fist and three more scrolls of RROR.
We are 1 million XP short of HLAs, where things will open out a lot. I'm running out of places that we can get XP, it looks like we may have to take the plunge into the planar sphere.
We stop by the smith any pick up all three scrolls of PFME. We already know it, but there is at least one fight in the planar sphere where we will need to scrollcast it.
We head to Valygar's cabin and take him out.
We do a big sell-off. Anything that's not a scroll gets sold to the book merchant in the promenade to bring us to just over 200k gold. We make sure to hold onto one rogue stone and all our Laeral's tear necklaces.
We do some crafting. We turn some rings of protection +1 into a third +2, then combine two of the +2s into a +3. We similarly combine some cloaks of protection +1 into a +2 version. Finally, we forge the paws of the furious cat, anticipating that we will hit the XP threshold while in the sphere.
In IA, we can have any number of protection items that are +2 or lower, and at most one that is over +2. We meet that condition now, but it means we will eventually be upgrading our +3 ring into a +4 instead of making two +3 rings.
I have a big debate of if we want to similarly forge the treefolk's arm. It looks like we will be unable to has the permanency scrolls to forge phosphorus for a while, so with UAI we can use it as a crushing weapon good enough to beat skeleton grandlords. I ultimately decide to keep it because it does guaranteed acid damage on hit, which is good for disrupting mages.
The enemies in the initial part of the sphere are vanilla.
The sahuagins are not very threatening and go down with mild buffs.
We kill these two vanilla halflings and rest up before carrying on.
We buff up (including ProFire, II and SI:Ab) and head in.
There are four named halflings:
- Togan, bow-wielding fighter
- Entu, flail-wielding fighter
- Kayardia, mage
- Mogadish, cleric
Togan teleports around a lot. If we run past him without stopping, he will be left in the corner of the area and stay there while we engage the rest of the halflings.We start fighting the cleric and interrupt the TS. When Entu arrives we cast our PFMW for protection.
Kayardi also has a divination spell,but if we use the ROTP we can interrupt it. Technically this isn't reload-safe, but we have multiple attacks at 95% hit rate, so I feel safe with it.
After Mogadish goes down, we focus on Entu. Kayardi may start scrollcasting improved mantle, but we don't care about preserving those scrolls.
We rest up, summon the minions and head to face Togan.
Togan can teleport around up to six times, but doing so takes his action. If we keep up PFMW when he attacks us we can wear him down.
This room has an improved spider group. As long as we go in with fresh buffs, we will be reload safe.
This is enough for us to hit fighter level 15. We put it into flails (starting the long grind to grand mastery). We also get an improvement in our save vs death. If we equip the amulet of protection, then our save vs death goes down to -6 (and our save vs spell goes down to -3).
The next room contains Taibela and Necre, both mages. We buff with ProFire, II and SI:Ab. Only Taibela has divination spells, and we can ensure her being interruped with magic missile. Taibela likes to cast PFMW, so we can use mundane weapons to take her out.
We can also stick coal in the furnaces. This spawns vanilla fire elementals, which we can take out from a drop more XP.
The next room is tricky. It contains a group of IA-improved golems, which we have beaten before. However, when we have beaten them in the past, it has always been with an area transition that we can use to rest up and rebuff between golems. We don't have that right now. We will instead have to try to tank as much as possible all at once. To that effect, we have:
If we manage the golems so we are not fighting more than one at a time, we will be able to tank for more than 20 rounds, by which time our offensive buffs such as improved haste will have faded.
We use the doorways to ensure that we are not fighting more than one at a time. We keep the amulet of protection equipped unless we are casting a defensive spell, at which point we swap into the amulet of power.
If we are fighting a gem or bone golem, we main hand the FOA and offhand the ROTP. If fighting a coin golem, we use the short sword of backstabbing plus then enchanted weapon short sword.
After one golem falls, we will likely need to retreat to the next doorway to carry on bottlenecking them. Make sure to use quick loot to pick up the goodies before running away.
Turning on auto-pause:Hit here may be useful.
The best time to PFMW is when the DUHM wears out, after ten rounds. Once we PFMW, we will want to then cast DUHM and then maybe limited wish.
I find that we can take out the gem and coin golems with our offensive buffs quite consistently, but have a hard time beating the regeneration of the bone golem without improved haste.
If things get hairy, we can summon a distraction by using the horn of valhalla, then run away. This is easiest if the bone golem is the only golem remaining (which tends to happen anyway).
We activate the guardian golem. It wait for us at each milestone, so we follow in our own time. We make sure to disarm all the traps.
We touch the runes in the correct order (top right, bottom left, bottom right, top left) for a bit more experience and to open up a passage. This earns a bit of XP, but unfortunately we cannot use that passage just yet.
The guardian golem will not attack the elder orb until we get close. The orb will only attack the golem and pay us no notice. This means that we can fire up our offensive buffs and try to steal the kill from the golem.
We will continue the planar sphere in the next part.
This is a big moment. I have exhausted all the sources of XP I can, and we are not going to be getting any more power spikes until we reach HLAs, a million XP away at the time that we went into the sphere. The major sources of XP remaining to us are:
It's time to get ready for probably the hardest part of the planar sphere - Lavok.
Lavok is a level 24 mage. He has 96 hitpoints and we want to get him to below that to finish the fight. Unfortunately, he also as a chain contingency on triple ADHW that is checked before the fight ending is checked, so we will need to have PFME up to negate this.
Once his prebuffs fire, he has some pretty nasty defences:
In addition to this, he comes with some nasty summons - two gem golems and five skeleton lords. The skeleton lords have to be killed for the fight to end.
He is the nastiest fight in the planar sphere by a fair bit. The good news is that if we beat him, we can do the rest of the sphere and be in HLA territory.
Our plan will be to protect ourselves from him by using II and SI:Ab. We will disrupt his TS using the ROTP club, as he will still take acid damage. Using Improved Haste, we will take out the skeletons and golems while in combat while peeling away his protections with Ruby Rays. We will protect ourselves in combat and prevent the golem's on-hit illusion dispelling from removing our II using PFMW.
The downside is that this is extremely taxing on our sixth level spell slots - we will need at least three PFMW (probably four), plus IH and PFME, which means that we will need to scrollcast.
We can reduce the need for scrollcasting by using limited wish. If we select the one-time option "I wish to be prepared for anything", we can construct a chain contingency where we cast IH, PFMW and II on ourselves when we are hit by an enemy.
We buff up (including ProFire, ProCold, II, SI:Ab, PFMW (from scroll) and regular haste. We have both our 6th level spell slots on PFMW, and are wielding the ROTP.
We make sure not to attack him until he starts casting TS - if we do, he will be on less than 100% health and will cast PFMW insead, making us unable to interrupt him. His fireshields will trigger our contingency, fiting our PFMW and Improved Haste, so we can swap to dual wielding the FOA main hand and ROTP offhand to take out the golems (and when they arrive, the skeleton lords as well).
We will want to cast ruby rays on Lavok while we take out the minions. We should watch out, as he can refresh his GOI or SI:Ab, which means we will additional ruby rays to make him breachable.
We will also want to by very careful about when our PFMW runs out. It actually lasts slightly shorter than four rounds, so we will probably want to scrollcast it after seven half-rounds (autopause on round end is helpful here).
We have ten rounds before he starts casting TS again, and he will probably be under PFMW when that happens, so we will want to make sure we get him in a breachable state as soon as possble. We can safely get in three spells on the first PFMW (from chain contingency), two more on the second PFMW, and we want to be breaching him on the third PFMW (the first cast from scroll).
For the first round or so we can hit the gem golems, but once the skeletons arrive we should focus on them.
The skeletons should go down near the end of the second natural PFMW, at approximately the same time that Lavok becomes breachable. We need to start worrying about another TS from him during the third PFMW (our first scrollcast one)
Lavok has five total PFMW scrolls, and he should use up three of them before we start breaching him. As long as we time our PFMW scrolls correctly, he should go down safely in a couple rounds of combat.
Lavok will go down when he has taken enough damage. The gem golems will disappear soon afterwards.
The Lizard Man room may be improved depending on the protagonist, as it features in The Four mod (more information on that will be given below). We do not meet the requirements for the fight to appear, so for us it only contains selling fodder.
The other room off here contains a Neo-Otyugh and two spore colonies. We protect ourselves from the Otyugh's disease with PFMW, and drain the spore colonies of all their summons before killing them (using the shield of harmony for safety).
We also gain access to the spell scroll of a new IA spell - Giant Strength. This provides an undispellable strength buff for two turns. We will probably not be using it - it requires a precious 6th level spell slot. Our DUHM always going to be better than this, and by the time we lose DUHM we will hopefully have access to Phosphorus and be able to have a static 24 strength anyway.
We have also reached mage level 15. Level 4 and level 5 spell slots give us extra castings of stoneskin and brach respectively, but it's not the gold dust that is a 6th level spell slot.
It is awkward that we miss out on killing two gem golems, as that is 48k XP we will never see again. It was the only way I found to be reload safe. Taking out the golems as well would have cost us another two PFMW scrolls (at least), would have but us at risk of our buffs running out, and would have made the fight much less reload safe since Lavok could have snuck in a TS or otherwise caused us a problem.
I made reference to "The Four" mod. This was a mod developed by Sikret to go on top of IA (the only such mod that I am aware of) back in v4 or v5. It was included in IAv6, and its contents can still been seen in the documentation for v6.4 (The Four). These items were powerful even by IA standards, and their guardians, although powerful, were not on par with other IA fights for less powerful items. The guardians are still in version 6.5, but the items that they guard are not, and they are just some additional fights for us in this version (though we will only be able to see one of them, the former guardian of the ring).
In the last part, we finished of Lavok, now it's time for some easy experience. At least, easy compared to Lavok.
We circle around the edge of the map first. This Tanar'Ri can paralyze, so we can either use II or Arbane's sword for safety. We also #cast ProFire as there are a few fire using enemies.
The second one in the lower central portion of the map is the same. The third is a lot trickier, however.
This is the third one. Lea'liyl can see invisibility, has access to greater silence, can cast three remove magics, and tries to paralyze us.
We also have to deal with minions - three Maureshi and three skeleton warlords.
This is technically not the hardest version of the fight - if we were to come back after spellhold then we would face three grandlords instead of the three warlords, so in theory we are missing out on 9.75k experience, but that isn't worth delaying the planar sphere for.
There is something we can abuse - the exit is disabled when the fight starts, and is re-enabled four rounds afterwards where we are no longer in combat.
We buff up and get their attention. We don't engage, however, and instead head towards the entrance to the sphere (which will likely get disabled).
Lea'liyl cannot reach us at this part of the map, due to large size, while the skeletons can. If we use the FOA main and ROPT offhand, we can beat the skeleton warlords in about two rounds each.
When we rest up and return, Leya'liyl will reset its position, but start tracking towards us. It will greater malison and try to disable us with paralyse, but using the protector neckalce will make our saves consistent, and we can also use SOH or Arbane's sword as an alternative protection.
This is as far as Lea'liyl can pursue us. We can hide round the corner to wait off any debuffs, buff up and go in.
Our buffs include SI:Ab for protection against remove magic.
Each of its hits has a 15% chance to dispel our protections (including remove magic), and it has 4 APR and -6 THAC0. If we use the shield of harmony, we get an AC of -18, meaning it needs a 12 of better to hit us and trigger the 15% chance.
If it does happen, then we can be reload safe by just running back to the door, waiting for the combat counter to expire, then heading in and resting up again.
We get a scroll of Disrupt Undead, a 7th level spell we are unlikely to ever cast.
We also pick up the Hilt of The Truth. The other half of it is held by the chromatic demon. I'm not sure if we will ever forge it - the only rare ingredient is uses is a manual of elaboration (which we probably don't care very much about), but it does need 100k gold and it has no major benefits beyond being a +5 longsword.
Don't forget to clean up the remaining minor enemies in the map such as the Maurezhi.
This allow us to hit Thief level 18, the last of the pre-HLA levels.
Part 056: Tolgerias:
Our next level is our first HLA level. I've been looking forward to this for a while.
Our next obstacle is Tolgerias. We buff up, including ProCold, II and SI:Ab.
Tolgerias starts casting TS as we go in, and the unnamed mage does nothing.
Once we interrupt him, both of their prebuffs fire. Tolgeria's buffs include summoning a dark planetar and PFMW, but he is weak to normal weapons. The other mage only has stoneskin defensively.
We first take out the Planetar (which takes about a round), as that is right now the biggest threat. Once that's down, we hit Tolgerias with unenchanted longswords. Both Tolgerias and the mage do nothing but cast summoning spells that we don't really care about. Out ProCold protects us from Tolgerias's fireshield, which allows us to chop him to bits without worry.
Tolgerias takes a few rounds to go down, as he has stoneskin and isn't afraid to refresh it, but ultimately we are not in any danger. We can swap to our magical weapons and go for the mage after.
The most notable lot from this fight is four scrolls of PFMW.
Part 057: Planar Sphere Finale
Tolgerias wasn't worth a lot of XP, but he was the last thinky fight before we finish the planar sphere.
The fire room just beyond Tolgerias contains a greater fire elemental and an efreet as well as some minor enemies. The efreet is a bit dangerous, as it can cast Lower Fire Resistance. It can only do it once, and it lowers fire resistance by 50 percentage points, so casting ProFire plus using a potion of resist fire will ensure we keep our immunity.
The fire room loot includes the Sheild of the Falling Stars, the Staff of Fire and a scroll of GOI.
The cold room guardians are much easier. As long as we have ProCold plus offensive buffs, we'll be fine.
It contains the mage robe of cold resistance.
The three elemental robes of resistance are rare items in IA, and can be combined into a useful robe. We got the robe of electrical resistance from the slaver wizard, and I'm not sure where the robe of fire resistance is.
Passing through the ice room, we get to the left hand side of the power room. We have two gem golems and two coin golems. They shouldn't be a threat for us at this point, but we can always play it safe and retreat to the fire and ice room.
Further along the left hand side of the power room is an improved golem group. Once again, we should be able to beat this, retreating if things start to look dodgy. Using the Protector amulet will be necessary to guarantee we pass the saves for Hideous Laughter.
We now finish off the sphere. Handing over a demon heart is worth 45.5k XP. Returning to Lavok is worth another 45.5k XP.
He drops a bunch of loot, including:
Doing this means that we have hit fighter level 16 and finally have our first HLA.
UAI is our first HLA pick, and with it we can finally wield the paws of the furious cheetah.
Part 058: Planar Sphere Missions (Vanilla):
We have gained our first HLA. Our second is likely to be an extra 6th level spell slot, and after that point we will probably start picking up as many critical strikes as possible, as it is the biggest remaining method in the game for increasing our damage output.
Returning the knights to their home plane by giving Ribald the money is worth 45.5 XP and the golden girdle, the third of the three girdles of AC.
We gain a big XP payout if all three apprentices survive. Unfortunately, we cannot do that - we need to get the robe of the apprenti, which requires that one of the apprentices dies in the last round of crafting. Therefore, we will take the least risky option each round.
Normally the change of the items being forged is completely random. In IA, the chance is not random and is determined near the start of the game, with 100% chance if the player has maximum intelligence and wisdom.
It's a bit annoying that we don't get the good graduation ceremony, that one is always a lot more charming that this one, which is a bit depressing.
This container in the navigator's room spawns scrolls every few days, without limit. They are not ones that we will want to scrollcast often, but we can sell them for a bit of money. This means that the mage stronghold is an unlimited source of money in IA.
Two days after the graduation ceremony, we get the final vanilla mission.
Apart from the druid, this fight is nonthreatening. The druid can be breached before being attacked for safety.
The Ketlaar Argrim fight us also uninteresting. There isn't much XP here, but it's better than nothing.
Now that we have UAI, we have access to 9APR under improved haste. Let's done something that we previously couldn't.
At first glance, skeleton grandloards don't look that scary, but they have one major defence - they are immune to weapons that are +3 or lower enchantment. We have no weapons that are inherently above +3, and only a handful of weapons that are conditionally +4. We only have a single weapon that can hurt the things - the sword of flame, and since it is a slashing weapon it does very little damage. The grandlords have regeneration, but fortunately it is pretty slow regeneration.
Heading into this room, the random spawn is a shade lich, two skeleton lords, a skeleton warlord and a skeleton grandlord. Our prebuffs at this point are pretty minimal - ProFire for the lava room and regular haste for the movement speed.
Heading to the stairs, the skeletons will follow us faster than the the shade lich. We can spend the time while they are pursuring us to buff with Improved Haste and DUHM (using PFMW when we are surrounded). We can take out the Lords and Warlord with the FOA and the ROTP.
We wait for the lich to catch up and start casting a spell before heading upstairs. If we set up mirror image while under PFMW, the lich will cast TS, which has a decently long casting time.
As long as the lich is casting a spell when we change areas, it will not be considered pursuing us and will stay downstairs.
Once the other enemies are down, we equip the sword of flame and start attacking. Each hit does 3-4 damage. The sword is +1 normally, with +1 fire damage and +4 against undead, which the game interprets as doing 1d8+1 slashing, +1 fire, +3 slashing. This works out well for us, as the extra +3 damage is rounded down to 1, so we get a bit more damage output than if it was combined into a single damage.
We can cast Blur, use the Golden Girlde and equip the SOH for an effective -21 AC. The grandlord has a THAC0 of -17, so it will still hit us often, but there is no point dual wielding, so we might as well get a few extra misses.
It's a long grindy fight, but we can use mirror image and stoneskin for protection. Using autopause on hit can be useful to ensure efficient defence refreshing. One hit does about 60 damage, so getting hit once is not instant death.
We run faster than the skeleton, so if things look hairy, we can just run a short distance to the east and leave the map.
If we rest up and come back, the grandlord will fully heal and be standing next to the stairs down. It will be fully healed. This fight is pretty grindy, so it will need a lot of stoneskins and mirror images to get through. The spell sequencer may be necessary for an additional stoneskin, though keeping the contingency behind for safety is best for noreloaders.
The shade lich is immune to spells of level 5 and lower, which crucially includes Breach. It is also immune to normal weapons and like to protect itself with PFMW. It includes a PFMW in its prebuffs and has three more as backup, plus a contingency with a final fifth one in it.
Since we have no other use of our fifth level spell slots, we can spent all of them on SI:Ab. We have five such spell slots, and the lich has four ruby rays. ProElectricity also needs a fifth level spell slot, but since we are now mage level 15 we can set it up in a contingency on enemy sighted (or just use a scroll).
We want our prebuffs to include ProFire (for the fireshield and lava floor), ProElectricity (as the lich has a spell trigger with triple chain lightning), MGOI (for damaging spells), and ProEnergy (as the lich has a triple ADHW chain contingency).
The lich can't do a huge amount to us. It can summon a dark planetar and a mordy sword, which we can take out with weapons. While taking out the summons we continue standing next to the lich (so it uses its PFMWs). The planetar is important to take out quickly before it casts a spell we don't want it to, so casting a DUHM at the start of the fight may be useful.
The lich can cast some save or else spells such as Finger of Death and Emotion, but we should easily make the save. It can greater malison us, but if we equip the amulet of protection we will be guaranteed to make the saves even through greater malison.
If the we see the lich casting an alteration spell (green symbol like vocalize), we want to prepare ourselves for a RROR. We will want to keep our action free for casting SI:Ab.
MGOI only lasts fifteen rounds, so we will likely want to refresh it partway through the fight, after ten rounds or so, so we will want to prepare it at least twice.
The lich may cast time stop, but this tends to be a good thing for us. It will spend the extra time casting spells we don't care about while its PFMW ticks down.
Our Improved Haste may start running out, but we can fire up a regular haste to get up to 5 APR. Our protection spells will last a lot longer, however, and we can beat the shade lich in regular combat. It has no stoneskins, and so should go down in three rounds or so of attacking once the PFMWs end.
Once its initial true sight has expired, we can fire up another Mirror Image to make it start casting another TS, which is easily interruptible, but that doesn't stop it trying.
It drops a scroll of spellstrike, which doesn't have much use beyond selling.
Heading towards the letter maze, we run into an identical group of undead that we will deal with in an identical manner (that I won't bother repeating the details of).
The most notable loot here is an extra scroll of PFMW.
Part 060: Thaxll'ssillyia
We're almost at our second HLA. Time to get it, by using some extreme cheese.
This is a Dungeons and Dragons came. We've jsut made our way through a Dungeon, now we have a Dragon.
The shadow dragon is implemented behind the scenes as a 23rd level mage (mostly to have a high caster level) with attack buffs that make it effectively a high level fighter as well.
It has an AC of -13 (-21 against missile weapons). It has 3 APR, -10 THAC0 and damage per swing of 22-37 (not counting the insane difficulty damage boost).
Heading back to trademeet, we want to go to this fancy-looking merchant.
For 15k gold, he sells the dwarvern thrower. This is an important weapon for the following reasons:
We don't prebuff, other than prerest stoneskin (and we make sure we are restedup, fatigue will be a thing). We equip the SOH, the dwarvern thrower, and the Amulet of Power (for protection against level drain).
We will want to run to this part of the arena. The Dragon will start by launching a triple finger of death at us. We can make the saves easily, and the damage will not threaten to kill us, but we will likely want to use an oil of resurgence or potion of healing anyway (in case we get the positioning wrong).
Specifically, this is the precise area we want to be standing in. Since the range from here to where the dragon is is greater than 11 behind the scenes, the dragon will not be able to harm us beyond casting a single emotion at us (which we can guarantee saving if we temporarily equip the amulet of protection), or we can just tank it (going unconscious fore a while shouldn't actually cause any problems).
Once we are in the safety zone, we have a very long but very safe fight. We will need an 18 to hit, but we will eventually get through all the layers of protection.
I recommend turning off auto-pause, turning down the game sounds, and putting on a podcast. I recommend "From Rewatch with Love". We will occasionally get greater silenced, which will require us to re-input the attack command.
Eventually, the dragon will run out of PFMW and stoneskins (at least, prepared ones - it has a contingency stoneskin on 50% hitpoints remaining). We will know when this happens when we are able to deal it damage and it does not do anything for its action. This is a good point to use improved haste and DUHM (or a strength potion).
Under DUHM, we will only need a 13 to hit it instead of an 18, and with improved haste we will get 6 APR, allowing us to comfortably outpace its regeneration.
At 50% health, not only will it have a contingency on stoneskin fire, but it will also cast heal. Fortunately, it only does this twice.
We will want to prepare both of our 6th level spell slots for improved haste. If those are not enough, then we will want to use an oil of speed instead of casting the 3rd level spell haste as oils of speed do not cause us fatigue issues. Our two DUHMs will last for twenty rounds, potions of storm giant strength last for two in-game hours.
A regular oil of speed plus a potion of storm giant strength is enough to outpace the dragon's regeneration. Buy extra potions from Athkatla sewers to be reload safe.
After a very long and grindy fight, the dragon goes down.
It is worth 57.5k XP, and unseats TorGal as our most powerful vanquished (and it will probably keep that title for a while).
We get quite a bit of loot. The unique items are:
This allows us to hit thief level 19. It's a pretty uninteresting level in terms of core abilities, but it gives us our second HLA. This will probably end up being an extra 6th level spell slot, but I want to do some probing to figure out if taht is best, and if I decide otherwise I will confirm at the start of the next part.
A can confirm that we did take the extra 6th level spell slot at the last level up. We will have to leave the rest of the shadow temple for later.
The bell and the candle have their own guardians. We can take the bell guardian now, but probably not the candle guardian.
It dispels illusions on hit, so we have to rely on stoneskins and PFMW for defences. We have half a round of free attacks on it while it gates in.
Since it is weakest to piercing damage, we dual wield the enchanted weapon shortsword plus the shortsword of backstabbing. We need +3 or better weapons.
There isn't much to say about this fight. The guardian has some hefty regeneration, so we need the DPS of the paws of the furious cat. If things go wonky, we can leave the level and come back later.
The candle guardian is trickier. It has 90% resistance to all physical damage, which coupled with the massive regeneration it has makes it very difficult to take out.
We can outpace the regeneration, but it is not as east with the candle guardian. The maximum damage output for us is to main hand the FOA and offhand the blade of roses.
We can get the spirit to around 60/200 health before our IH runs out. We will need to come back later with some critical strikes available.
Part 062: Kangaxx Guardians
Our next level will be Mage 16, which gives us access to 8th level spells. Protection from Energy is the most exciting one we have access to - scrolls of spell trigger are very rare in IA and we won't have access to them for a while.
This house contains an elemental lich. Our approach is similar to the shade lich. It has effectively the same spell list and AI, and we treat it exactly the same way. It's a bit easier, as it does not have the summons that the shade lich does.
Using the extra 6th level spell slot for another improved haste is probably best, as it means we don't have to worry about it running out near the end of the fight.
The guardian under the sewers is a shade lich, which has a script identical to the ones used in the shadow temple.
We've done a lot of starting an encounter set, but very little finishing it. This part we're going to finally not leave any loose ends.
Our buffs include ProFire, regular invisibility, and SI:Ab. There are six enemies:
We go in under II, which causes Gaius to start casting TS. We can interrupt this, as it is cast before prebuffs kick in.
Zorl's prebuffs include TS, so he will be our first target. He has very little damage resistance, so he goes down quickly, and we can cast II once he is down. For reload safely, have the II in a spell sequencer so it gets cast even faster.
With Zorl down and our II up, Gaius is ignorable. We take down the other party members, taking out Rengaard first and leacing Tarnor and Gaius for last.
Gaius may cast Improved Mantle from scroll. We don't care, as preserving these scrolls is not important.
Tarnor likes to use hardiness at around half health, so we want to save our action to cast breach in response. He has more than one, so watch out.
Gaius will recast TS after about ten rounds, then start casting some nasty spells. The good news is that he moves slowly, so we can run to the bottom corner of the map and rest up. Make sure to loot the area with the quick loot menu first. Once we have rested up, we can rebuff (starting with improved invisibility).
Since Gaius will likely still have stoneskin up, we will want to interrupt him with magic missile this time round.
He only has four scrolls of improved mantle, so his protection should run out the second time around the time that he starts to cast TS again. We can use the ROTP to interrup him through stoneskin at that point. For reload safery, we can run away and rest up a second time.
We need experience to get our critical strikes. It's time to take on some spiders.
Ghost spiders have five rounds of summons that spawn. Waiting them all out will take 24 rounds. Although we could kill a ghost spider if we go straight for it, it is better to wait these 24 rounds.
We can either count five rounds of reinforcements, or we can use our spell durations to measure. For example, we are a 15th level mage, so our regular haste lasts 18 rounds.
When we did the unseeing eye quest, we left the ashideena warhammer behind.
The ghost spider appears with the message "Trap Sprung". Despite the message, this is not a trap - it cannot be detected or disarmed, and it is handled by the area script.
We want to keep the SOH equipped, as the ghost spider fire improved webs, which require a save vs spell at -6 to negate. We will also equip the girdle of piercing plus the amulet of protection to protect us.
We don't engage with any of the spiders. We instead start kiting each of the spiders.
Once the haste runs out, we start to fight. PFMW gives us time to fire up improved haste and DUHM. We start taking out the more minor spiders first.
Sometime before the second PFMW, the ghost spider will summon its last reinforcements and we will be able to start taking it out.
We can also go to Mekrath's lair and take out the ghost spider in there. This one is easier, as we can run around all of the temple sewers, and we will be able to take the sewer exits to rest up.
The ghost spider itself is worth 17.5k XP. Its initial summons are worth 28k XP, and the subsequent rounds are either worth 10.5k or 12k XP. We therefore have a total XP of 87.5k to 93.5k.
We are very close to the our next set of levels. I want to get some critical strikes and get to the second level of watcher's keep before doing the planar sphere.
We buff with ProFire, ProCold, PFME, II and SI:Ab. There are four enemies that we want to take out:
- Shadow Patrick, a high level ranger that isn't very threatening
- The Shade Lord, a high level fighter/mage
- The Shadow Altar, which regularly spawns minor shadows (these are worth XP and can be used for infinite XP)
- Two skeleton grandlords that are spawned by the shade lord
The shadow temple will be cleared when the first three of these are dead and we are not in combat.On this pass, we will just take out shadow patrick and maybe some of the regular shadows. PFMW will stall the grandlords, and the shade lord will have to spend a few rounds casting TS/RR/Breach, giving us plenty of time to take out Patrick.
With Patrick dead, we pick up his items (using the quickloot menu) and run away. The stairs back into the temple have been disabled, but we still have an edge of map transition that we can use.
We now want to follow a fairly specific set of actions:
The shade lord's prebufs will not fire, so we can easily interrupt its TS and breach its PFMW.
Resting up, we get ready to take out the grandlords. Crucially, we want to run two PFMW and Improved Haste as our 6th level spells. We will also likely want to turn on auto-pause when we get hit.
Two PFMWs (plus mirror image and stoneskin refreshing) should be enough to take out one of the two grandlords. Take out enough shadows to run away and run away. For reload safely, using a PFMW scroll will ensure that we can take out one of the grandlords, and we can also make sure that we are standing on the edge of the map with an escape route before we let ourselves get surrounded. The shadows will only hit us on a 20, so they should not be a threat to us offensively.
Repeating the run away, reset up and come back combination means that we only have to deal with one skeleton grandlord, which is much easier.
With the grandlords dead, we take out the shadows and then the alter. Although it looks like all these shadows are farming a huge amount of XP, each shadow is worth 420 XP, so it takes 47 of them to have the same XP yield as a grandlord.
Clearing the shadow temple is worth 44.25k XP. Merella drops a manual of elaboration plus several items of monetary value.
Returning to Minister Lloyd, we gain no additional XP but we do gain a point of reputation.
Similar to the mage stronghold, the ranger stronghold has an infinite source of scrolls that can be sold for money.
We have hit mage level 16. Our wand and spell saving throws improve by 1, meaning that we can pass saving throws without penalty under greater malison without buffs. We also get additional level 6, 7 and 8 spell slots, which is pretty big.
Our HLA goes on Power Attack, which isn't that exciting, but it allows us to take critical strike on subsequent levels.
We will be getting one level soon (and with it one critical strike), but it's a while before we will bet getting our second or third.
Our first mission is the Tombelthen mission.
Killing Tombelthen and his lackets is worth 8925 XP. Returning the medallion and not asking for any reward is worth 10k XP, so we do things the nice way. We get another 21.5k XP additional reward.
Four days later we get the second mission. I make sure to buff up before talking to Lloyd.
We clear out the orogs, plus a couple Metrich footmen we missed earlier. We get 21.75k XP from Madulf, and an additional 25k from Lloyd.
This puts us over the edge of fighter level 17. The Death saving throw improvement is nice.
We get our first critical strike HLA. We can take this up to 10 times, and we will probably be taking it at least 10 times before we take anything else.
Also importantly, this allows us to hit 25 strength under DUHM.
Part 067: Watcher's Keep Altar Level Finale:
Our next thief level is at 2.7 million XP, but the one after is at 2.97 million. This means that we will have a bit power spike as our total XP gets to 9 million.
Our goal for this part will be to take out the candle guardian. We have 25 strength when at full power, plus improved haste. Hopefully that combined with our critical stroke will be enough.
Our strategy here is pretty uninteresting - activate offenseive buffs, defend with PFMW and stoneskins.
The fanatic spirits are immune to critical hits. Critical strike is effectively just a THAC0 boost.
Being able to hit 25 STR plus the additional THAC0 from being such a high level fighter has paid off, though - we are finally able to assemble enough DPS to take out the candle guardian.
This is a fairly safe fight - we can always run away to the entrance and safely rest up if things look dodgy.
The ritual is easy - Bell, Bell, Candle, Book, Bell. That's an easy 25k XP.
The statues don't need any fancy prep, a pretty standard buffing routine is good enough to be safe.
We've finally cleared out the first level of Watcher's Keep. We can do most of the next level now, which should be worth a large amount of XP.
The first thing we do is open the side door for this level.
This is how the map loooks in Near Infinity. Note that each of the two rooms has a spawn point in it.
Since we are soloing, we will have spawn points 5, 6, 7,8 instead of 1, 2, 3, 4. These correspond to:
The fire library has another permanency scroll.
The fan room right is easy as long as we have ProElectricity up.
The elite fire giant is big and chunky. He has offensive HLAs, but no defensive HLAs. He also has a lot of potions of healing. He also has a knockback when he hits us that we will want to use PFMW to protect against.
Returning from the air room to the fire library spawns the elite fire giant.
If things go wonky in any of these fights, we can just run to the exit. The fire giant has seven potions of superior healing, so it will likely require us to drain his potions, then leave and rest up before engaging him again to kill him.
Heading into the air lab, we see an elemental golem. These are massive XP farms that we love to see.
Elemental golems are pretty terrifying enemies in combat. They do elemental damage on hit so they can only be partially blocked by stoneskins, plus they regenerate.
The thing that makes them such a massive XP pot is every six rounds, they randomly spawn a coin golem or a gem golem, up to a total of six.
Our reload-safe strategy is to draw the elemental golem in circles around the central room until it spawns a lesser golem. We then take out the lesser golem under a couple PFMW, run outside, rest up, head inside and repeat. Someone who doens't mind reloading may want to reload for gem golems, as they are worth more XP.
With the lesser golems taken care of, we engage the elemental golem. On hit it deals 1d4 acid, lightning, fire and cold damage, so we can cast protection against those elements to be able to tank with stoneskin.
It has 300 health and slowly regenerates. IA golems are weak to critical strikes, so we can use those to get a bit more DPS.
Our offensive buffs are likely to run out before our defensive buffs. We will want to maximize our Improved Haste and DUHM time. As with the lesser golems, we can always run away if it gets too dangerous.
This elemental golem is slightly different to the ones we will face later - this one is considered a treasure location for randomized IA treasure. We get the Boots of Avoidance and the Ring of Air Control.
The elemental golem is worth 60k XP, which dethrones the shadow dragon as our most powerful vanquished (and this time it should stay the most powerful for a while). Counting the lesser golems, it is worth 192k-204k XP.
The runaround we did in the central room means that the golems have now spawned in the air library. Taking care of them should be pretty routine.
The air library has a manual of elaboration.
Before we enter the slime lab, we head into the slime library to take out some spiders.
Opening from this side allows us to engage the enemies in the slime lab and take them out without getting caught in the cloud. We make sure to finish off the slimes with lightning damage.
We close the northeast door of the slime lab, open the southwest door, open the northeast door, kill the ice denizens, then close the northeast door of the slime lab again to trap the poison cloud in the slime lab.
We don't want to enter the fire lab, as it contains a steam elemental prince, which needs +4 weapons to hit. We instead draw the fire elementals to the ice lab by going through the central area.
With the elementals frozen, the fire giant is easy to take out.
We will level up and end this part here. We gained almost 700k experience in this part, which means we have hit Thief level 20, and we have picked up another critical strike.
The last part was a nice chunk of XP. We are fast approaching our next set of levels, and we're gonna have three more critical strikes come in soon.
We found ourselves unable to fully complete the level because we needed +4 weapons to hit the steam elemental prince. Fortunately, we have a bunch of crafting ingredients (including three scrolls of permanency) so we will be able to forge a +4 weapon.
We sell our excess scrolls to Enge for about 100k gold, then but the Mauler's Arm from Bernard.
Phosphorus is a +4 morning star that sets the wielder's strength to 24. It is the best weapon for us to forge for the following reasons:
Heading into the last library, we run into a random golem group between us and the steam elemental prince. We draw them intothe central room and fight them there so we don't have to deal with both them and the steam elemental prince at the same time.
Once the golems are dealt with, we buff up (including ProFire and ProElectricity) and move in to engage.
It has very little damage resistance, and so goes down in a round or two. ProFire protects us from its fireshield, and ProElectricity protects us from the Chain Lightnings that it likes to cast. It can cast lower fire resistance on us, but we can counter that with Protection from Energy.
Make sure to use critical strike to take it out before it can lower our fire resistance too much and cause us trouble. It dies to give us 43.5k XP and 5k gold, which is quite a lot for how challenging it us.
In this library, we find a scroll of memory boosting, our second.
We head back to the planar sphere and talk to Marvella. She is part of the expanded mage stronghold - she gives a series of challenges which involve fighting difficult enemies. Her first challenge is to fight a steam elemental prince.
This steam elemental prince goes down just like the other. Going at it with critical strikes from the start means it goes down in a round and a half, before it can lower our fire resistance.
This allows us to hit fighter level 18. We gain our fourth proficiency point in flails, hitting high mastery. The fourth proficiency point is probably the most worthless, offering only +1 damage and -1 speed factor over three pips, but we need to go through it to get to grand mastery. The third critical strike is nice, though.
Part 070: Theshal:
We're close to a mage and a thief level up. We'll be getting them this part.
There are three areas in the undead village. There is this landing area with only minor undead, there is Theshal to the top right, and there is an undead group identical to the shadow temple undead groups in the top left. We make sure to engage this group of enemies near the bridge - we do not want to head too far into the middle of this arena or it will spawn the other enemies before we are ready.
We cannot leave this area until Theshal is killed, but fortunately we can rest up in this area.
We buff up, including ProFire, ProAcid, ProElectricity and SI:Ab. We inch forward along this edge of the platform to trigger Theshal without triggering the other undead spawn.
Theshal spawns a skeleton grandlord at the start of the fight, which at this point will go down in a round or two. Theshal also gates in a bone devil every three rounds, to a total of three (though those bone devils may gate in other bone devils). The bone devils have a saveless hold, so we will want to make sure we are under PFMW of the SOH when engaging them.
Thesheal dispels specific protections (including our elemental protections) on hit, but once the bone devils have been stopped he is an extremely minor threat.
The notable loot from Theshal is the girdle of fortitude and a manual of elaboration.
We buff up and engage the undead group. If it has trouble spawning, heading from Theshal's platform to that platform seems to do the trick.
Our prebuffs include ProFire, PFME, MGOI, and SI:Ab. We go in with another MGOI and another four spell immunities prepared. Our contingency is ProElectricity on enemy seen.
We will stand next to the shade lord (so it uses its PFMW), protect ourselves from the skeletons with PFMW, and engage them in melee. We will want to critical strike down the planetar when it gets summoned.
Two PFMWs should be enough to take out all the IA skeletons, and the non IA improved undead should go down easily. If things start to look hairy, or if we want to be reload safe, we can retreat out this area to split up the enemies.
This area contains the Gauntlets of Dexterity, and no other significant loot.
This fight is enough for us to hit Mage 17 and Thief 21. We get level 7 and 8 spell slots, plus two new critical strikes.
One of the downsides of having so many levels in close proximity is that now we have a while to wait before our next one. Let's fight a new enemy.
We accept the mission to retrieve the dawn ring.
At first glace, amber golems look like they are a similar counterpart to coin and gem golems, but this time weak to slashing damage. It is more dangerous that that, however, and especially dangerous to soloers.
As well as having a slow healing ability (Frictional Recharge), whenever we hit one of these golems it will trigger electrical discardge on us. This deals 3d6 electrical damage (and another 3d6 if we fails a save vs wand at -4), then lowers our electricity resistance by 25% for two rounds. This is is cumulative, and can make our electricity resistance go negative (in which case we take bonus damage).
We want to maximize our electricity resistance. We will cast ProElectricity and ProEnergy, and equip the robe of lightning resistance and the helm of the rock for 220% electricity resistance. This is to give us as much of a buffer on the electrical discharge as possible.
We also use the Blade of Roses for the golem, as it is a +3 slashing weapon.
Borinall's starting summons vary based on if we get zapped by Talos or not. The best XP (though not by much) is obtained by getting zapped.
Most of Borinall's initial summons are ignorable. We tend to start with the mage, just in case he throws any curveballs.
The amber golem gates in with an animation that takes a couple seconds to complete, which gives us a bit of an initiative.
Every four rounds, Borinall summons two rune assassin, to a toal of six assassins in three rounds of summoning.
Our strategy is to hit the golem a couple times, then back off once we start taking damage from the discharge. Although the golem will in theory heal with frictional recharge, the rate of healing is pretty negligible. We can maximize our damage output if we hit him with critical strikes.
The rune assassins are straightforward as long as we don't let our stoneskins drop. As soon as our stoneskins drop, they will chug a potion of invisibility and try to backstab us.
We may also want to use an oil of resurgence or potions of healing to extend the time we can hit the golem by a bit.
The amber golem tends to go down at approximately the time that Borniall summons his last assassins. Borinall has a +2 weapon and the rune assassins have +1, so this is one of the few IA improved fights where we can use improved mantle.
Borinall has several hardinesses, so when we finally take him on we will want to save our action to counter-breach him when he uses his action.
We get a bunch of sellable loot, plus a chunk of amber (from the golem). The chunk of amber has no use except in one specific IA recipe that we probably don't want.
The remaining encounters that we have available pre-spellhold (hopefully I haven't missed any):
Note that some of these have additional encounters that we unlock after we beat them.
Was it the thac0 from the fighter levels, some buffs or gear, or do you still take multiple rounds per creature and use many defensive buffs (pfmw, stoneskin, mirror image, etc)?
I feel that even in a 6 party game early golems and skeletons still take multiple rounds of focused attacks to kill them off.
For comparison, Anarg has AC1, 40% damage resistance, 1 AC and potions of extra healing. Defensively, a solo skeleton lord is on par with enemies that we took out in part 3. Grandlords are mostly difficuly because of the need for +4 weapons, which forces us into using a slashing weapon for a long time.
Offensively, they are very strong, stronger than golems. A skeleton lord has 6 APR, which means that they can chew through stoneskins faster than we can restore them until we hit level 12 (at which point we gain access to PFMW).
It's a bit hard to say when the turning point of being able to beat them is. Improved skeletons and golems never appear alone, they always appear alongside other enemies. We could probably beat a skeleton lord in the mage level 9-11 range if we were to fully buff and prepare and we didn't face any other enemies, but there are no such skeleton lords in IA.
Golems are trickier for two reasons - they dispel illusions on hit, which means that we have to tank using stoneskins, and even when we use the best damage type we have to deal with 75% damage resistance. At mage level 11 we have access to four stoneskins (one pre-rest and three castable) for a total of 20 layers of protection. The golems have 3 APR, which means that we can tank them for just under 7 rounds using stoneskin. During that time unders standard buffs we had 4 APR and did 4.5 damage on hit, which means that in theory we could beat them in if we were to land every hit. Using only normal buffs we hit on a 4, so we could probably beat a coin golem at mage level 11 if we used some additional buffs.
For facing the groups, I try to use the environment to bottleneck them so I am only fighting one at a time to maximize stoneskins. PFMW is also super valuable in a solo party, as as long as it is up it all the melee enemies can do nothing.
If someone is taking this as a guide, then being careful with the black spider figurine means that we can safely pick up the SI scroll, which will make the rukh conjurer possible at mage level 10/11, and that will mean that we can try to take out the improved golems at that point for the big XP drops.
So far, the areas of this run that I feel my strategies could be improved the most are:
I've been keeping saves for each of the uploaded parts, so if anybody has suggestions for how earlier parts could be improved (or wants me to upload the saves so they can try), feel free to post and I can give things a go.
In the last part, we faced our first enemy that lowers elemental resistance. There aren't many of those, but they are pain when they come up.
There is only one stronghold left, let's pick it up in this part by doing the planar prison.
The elite bounty huntress is a level 15/15/16 fighter/mage/cleric. She is quite notable - she is the first IA-improved mage that we outlevel, which is quite significant.
In the vanilla game, dispel and remove magic have a base 50% change of success, which increases by 5% or decreases by 10% for each level over/under the other spellcaster you are. In IA, it still starts at 50% and increases by 5%, but it drops to 0% if you are under the other caster level, no matter how much under you are. This means that since we are a level 17 mage, we cannot be dispelled by the elite bounty huntress.
She summons a planar hound every four rounds, with no limit. Planar hounds are dangerous because the inflict saveless confusion on hit, which means that we will want to make sure we have either the SOH or PFMW up whenever one of them is around. Since the versions she summons are worth XP, we can in theory farm XP off her. The planar hound is also considered to use a +3 weapon, so we can use improved mantle if we want.
We have conflicting interests here - every four rounds that we can delay killing her, we get an extra 10k XP. However, she defends herself with scrolls of PFMW which we want to preserve if possible (she starts with four of them). I will prioritize the XP, but if things go poorly I may retcon this (and leave it as a note to anyone using this as a guide) by giving myself the PFMW scrolls that she uses and penalizing myself 10k XP for each.
We buff up (including ProFire, II and SI:Div) and head in. The bounty huntress starts casting TS, which we don't care about. We instead talk to Aawill and take out the enemies other than the bounty huntress.
The rest of the enemies go down in about three rounds, leaving just us and the elite bounty huntress. She's immune to normal weapons as well, so the PFMW protects her completely.
She only summons the planar hounds when we are not in melee range, so we make sure to start running around so the dogs are summoned.
We can spend the time we spend kiting to ruby ray her - we have three memorized, and plenty of rounds to cast them in. Once her buffs start to wear off (most noticeably the MGOI) we can breach her and go in for the kill.
Just to the east is a vanilla group of thralls. Normally in the planar prison you can get sucked down to lower mini levels, but in IA this has been disabled.
Further to the east, we run into a spider group, including a ghost spider. We have four 6th level spell slots, which effectively gives us 12 rounds of PFMW. We run in circles until the ghost spider has summoned its fourth round of spiders (counting the initial wave as the first), then turn on PFMW and our offensive buffs to take out the spiders.
We may get surrounded, in which case we will want to stop and fight a bit early to clear out the non-glost spiders. Our IH lasts for 20 rounds, so as long as we cast it at least six rounds after the fight starts it should last long enough to take out the ghost. Generally, the whispers are the best to target here.
With the SOH and the girdle of piercing, we should have good AC and can tank a while with stoneskins. The ghost spider will get a bit of damage in through the stoneskins when it hits, but not a huge amount.
The next group is pretty unexciting. Similarly, the Master of Thralls is straightforward.
Just to the west is another ghost spider group. We have more room to kite, so this one is a bit less awkward (though we still keep our distance from the warden).
We have a bit of a choice here:
As we can see, the optimal XP outcome is to fight him without destroying the orb first, though it requires killing a ludicrous number of planar hounds.
Approaching from the south side, we can draw out two of the thralls.
Approaching from the east side, we can draw out two more.
The warden himself is a level 22/22 fighter/mage. He protects himself with scrolls of PFMS (5 of them) and is immune to normal weapons. He can see through invisibility, and can take down our defences with scrolls of RRoR (5 of them).
There is a bit of cheese that we can perform here with the horn of valhalla. The process is:
After doing this, we can circle round and engage the remaining of the Warden's thralls. This includes a couple mages that we will want to prepare ProCold for.
We do a bit more cheese:
We do our standard buffs (including SI:Ab), summon the warrior and move towards the warden, making sure the warrior is ahead of us and wll be seen by the warden first.
As soon as we hear the warden casting a necromancy spell (death spell), we cast PFMW and run in to start hitting with melee weapons. We deliberately do it then so our action frees up right when the warden's does.
The warden summons a bunch of dogs, but the PFMW cast will protect us. It tends to go down in a round, but sometimes he gets a PFMW scroll off, in which case we will breach him in response and take him down in the second round. The remaining dogs go down quite quickly to critical strikes, we just have to be careful to keep the SOH equipped or refresh PFMW once the first one ends.
Since we hit the warden on a 2, we should only need to breach if we get a critical miss or two. We can make this mega safe by casting PFMW before the warden casts death spell, then running in and taking the warden out in half a round under critical strike.
The dogs are straightforward, but there are a lot of them. They need us to spend all our PFMWs and Improved Mantles to outlast them, and that's with using all our critical strikes. In theory I could have farmed a few more dogs from the warden but I don't want to for two reasons - firstly, I wanted to take out the warden as quickly as possible as he could throw spanners into the works, and secondly we were already running out of protection. We got a big XP payout from not destroying the orb anyway.
Notable loot from this fight includes:
We rest up and buff up before destroying the orb. This is a much easier fight, but we buff up for reload safety. This fight also fire an improved web at us, so using the SOH is necessary even if we have PFMW up. We also make sure to talk to Tagget in the starting portion of the map for an extra 5k XP.
Unfortunately, we run into a bit of a bug - within the prison we only have Haer'Dalis and no Raelis, so the dialogue is broken. We have to use the console to spawn Raelis in.
All this is enough for us to hit Fighter level 19 and Thief level 22. I decide to spend the HLAs on a sixth critical strike and an extra 7th level spell.
This is the first fight where we lean on II and SI:Div. This is where the triple class continues to hurt - if we were just a F/M multi, we would be mage level 20 right now instead of 17. We won't be able to use this for all fights, however - as we progress through the game, a lot of enemies (typically non-caster ones like the top end golems) have access to an ability called "purge magic", which completely dispels without regards to level or SI.
In the last part, we got the final stronghold, the bard stronghold. Let's put on a play. In IA it is no longer an infinite source of money, but it is at least a good source of XP and some nice loot.
Our goal will be to first maximize XP, then to maximize money. There are three sources of XP:
Fortunately, there is a strong correlation between these.
We have a series of decisions to make. If we choose to maximize XP then:
- Put Jenna in the lead (no XP now but it helps in decision 3) for a starting PQ of 3
- Put in some money for no XP or PQ difference, but setting PlayInvestment for later
- Insist that Iltheia plays the smaller part for 15750 XP and increase PQ by 1
- Allow Zaren to make changes for 15750 XP and increase PQ by 2
- Wear the ring of human influence to get over 17 charisma to get 11500 XP and improve PQ by 1. Alternatively, pay 500 gold for the same outcome
- Pay the priest 1000 gold to gain 11500 XP and increase the PQ by 1
- Let Marcus play and we write the score (as we have over 18 INT) for 15500XP and improving PQ by 2
This gives us a play quality of 10. We could increase it by 1 if we hire Balmitance for another 500 gold, or increase by 2 if we give Iltheia the lead and miss out on a bit of XP, but 10 is all we need to get the rest result.The money that we get at the end is determined in a nasty script. What effectively happens is that the play quality is divided into bands of 5, and out money depends on what band and what the value of PlayInvestment is. Since we will be in the 10-14 band, the possible weekly incomes we can get (in descending order) are 1500, 1400, 1300, 1200, 1100, 1000.
In IA, we only get the money from the bard stronghold 15 times. The amount of money that we get decreases by 100 each week, to a minimum of 500. Therefore, the total return of these (again in descending order) is 13000, 12000, 11100, 10300, 9600, 9000. It turns out that we get more total XP if we sell Higgold the playhouse at the end of the quest chain than if we keep it, so I will not be putting a penny in during the initial setup.
There is one thing we need to do among all the handing over money and resting up - we need to clear out the Turmish invaders.
This is an IA-improved fight, consisting of:
We buff up (including ProCold, ProLightning, PFME, II and SI:Ab) and head in. The two battlepriests and the mage all cast TS once we walk into range, but if we, stand here we can interrupt one of the priests with magic missile before the fight properly begins. The battlepriests also start by blocking the stairs to the mage, but if we fire the magic missile now and then retreat a bit, all the Turmish will start moving towards us, opening a path to the mage.
We cast a PFMW to protect ourselves from the leader while we run towards the mage. The mage has a complex script, but the relevant parts of it are (in order of priority):
We therefore have a plan - we equip weapons without elemental damage (such as Phosphorus and the short sword of backstabbing) and hit her exactly nine times (so she has one stoneskin layer left). This should be easy to manage, as we have 9 APR and will make a noise from the fireshield every time we hit her. Since she also likes to cast mirror image, this will require a lot of zooming in to know when a mirror image is hit instead of a stoneskin
Once we have got her down to one stoneskin, we will wait for her to start casting a spell, then activate critical strike and take her out. She has 50% physical damage resistance, but only 64 HP. The good news is that she goes down in about three damaging hits once critical strike is active, so if we're not sure we can attack her in the first half of the round and as long as we don't hear the audio cue of stoneskin expiring on our last hit, we can wait a bit longer before attacking. She likes to cast breach into our SI:Ab, but I like to keen an extra SI prepared just in case.
After the mage goes down, the next squishiest target is the thief, who is also vulnerable to critical strikes. The priests will go after and the leader last, and neither the priests nor the leader are vulnerable to critical strikes.
The good news is that with the mage down, we can use improved mantle as extra PFMW on the remaining weapons (the mage had a black blade cast which could have gotten over improved mantle).
The leader does not have any hardinesses, but does have innate 65% damage resistance and likes to quaff potions.
Notable loot here is a manual of elaboration, and a few scrolls including absolute immunity. In previous versions of IA it was possible to get boots of speed off the leader, but it looks like in the latest version they were undroppable. That's kinda annoying, boots of speed are a very nice quality of life item.
Finally, it's opening night. The easiest way to remember the order of lines is that it alternates between 2 and 1, starting with 2, except for the third line (the second time we would say 2) where it is 1.
This is enough for us to hit mage level 18, and unlock the final tier of spells, 9th level.
We spend our HLA picking up a new spell to go in that spell slot - Improved Alacrity. This is going to be important for certain mage battles where we want to fire as many ruby rays as possible in as short a time as possible.
It's a bit annoying that th Turmish Leader didn't drop the boots of speed. Looking in Near Infinity, it looks like the only ones that can be obtained from enemies are from Ilasera and Belcheresk (part of the Demogorgon fight). Although in theory we only need two boots in total, we will want to gain access to them before TOB (and I'm not sure the Demogorgon fight is even possible for us), so it looks like we will have to forge two pairs. In order to forge the boots, we will need to use a specific kind of mundane boots that can only be found in the following locations:
The most likely course of action from here is that I take out the pirate captain, forge utility boots, but wait on forging the other pair of boots of speed until the green wyrm is dealt with.
Ah, I missed that. It looks like I'll be able to get away with forging one pair of boots, grabbing a second from the machine, and then using those and boots of the woodland as all my footwear from the run. I recall the mithril golem as a tricky fight, I may try to run into the machine and out with minimal fighting if I can't find a safe strategy for it.
Although I did pick up some footwear (shoes that grant cold resistance), I am not using them, as any scenario that involves cold damage I will be preparing for with ProCold.
In the last part we hit mage level 18. Not only does this mean we have access to Alacrity, it meas that our contingency can also store 6th level spells, which effectively gives us an extra 6th level spell slot. Contingency for Improved Haste on enemy seen is going to be pretty common.
We head to the dueling families. It doesn't matter which one we originally talk to.
The inside of the crypt is a dead magic zone. We will have a very brief window to cast one spell, but it will have to be a very short casting time one (not enough for us to cast IH). Innate spells are still allowd, and this includes contingencies and sequencers.
We set up a contingency to haste us up when we get hit - on enemy seen is slight riskier, as there is a brief window when the enemy is first seen but before we get dispeled that we don't want to contingency to fire in. For additional reload safety, we can also set up a sequences that includes stoneskin.
The founder is a high level fighter/cleric. Like most skeletons, it is weakest to crushing damage. We get dispeled after the conversation ends, so wait until then before fiting PFMW as our one spell. Going in with a stoneskin up is useful, as it will give us a good indication of when the dispel hits.
Even though PFMW is protecting us from the weapons of the undead, the contingency still triggers. The non-founder undead are negligible, and the founder just tries to cast spells that we easily save against. Using Phosphorus also gives us 24 strength through the dispel, which is nice.
Giving the mantle to Logan Coprith earns us the most experience, and gives us our 20th point of reputation.
We're at the point where there are a bunch of fights that we can beat, but we cannot extract full value from them, such as Roenall or Umar. I'm spending a lot of time doing probing of these fights, but without much success. We're going to delay those until we can extract full value, and in the meantime do some other quests.
We head to Marvella to get her second task - in this case, we are given the task to find a beggar.
The beggar we want to talk to is back in Trademeet, near the yellow tent. We are told to go to a major tavern in Athkatla and give the box to a lady with a name like a bird.
We head to the upper level of the Five Flagons and run into Sir Ferdinand Albatross. We are told that the box contains a demon, and if we hand the box over to its destination the demon will be freed. We can give him the box for 30k XP and a point of reputation.
If we tell him no, we run into Lady Mollyhawk. We confirms that she is indeed a demon, and we have to fight a Noble Marilith (22k XP) and two Abyssal Escorts (15k XP each). The stairs back down are disabled until we kill the Noble Marilith (though the Abyssal Escorts can still be alive).
The marilith starts with a PFMW, and has an additional four. The escords also start with one and have an additional three. The escorts cast no spells other than the three PFMW and a contingency stoneskin, whereas the marilith has a bunch of other nasty spells.
We buff up (including ProLightning, PFME, II, SI:Ab and a contingent IHaste on enemy seen) and head up. We make sure to stand here so the marilith starts to spawn in one corner, in case we need to run away.
We want to breach each round, but will have to take off a couple rounds for PFMW, which gives the marilith a couple rounds for other spells. It tends to follow the order:
We will have to tank the damage from the triple chain lightning, but with 50% electrical resistance (after ProElectricity and the Marilith's Lower Electrical Resistance) we should be fine. It also has an ADHW, but no way to take out our PFME, and so we are safe on that front.
The marilith goes down sometime during our third PFMW. We will likely need to spend a scroll of breach. It its loot is worth quite a bit of money.
With the marilith dead, we can head downstairs and the escorts will not pursue. this gives us enough time to rest up and rebuff. We only need the combat buffs for the escorts.
We will not need to spend any spell scrolls on the escorts. We can take out one then head downstairs to rebuff again before taking out the other.
Marvella does not comment on which course of action we took.