At the Copper Coronet, we looked around for whoever Hexxat might have been looking for, but could not find him. After 200 years or so of waiting, whoever it was might have lost patience. Or died.
We bartered a little more junk for a Larloch's Minor Drain Scroll. Then it was time to move on to our next lead for gaining fame, fortune, and glory.
Day 3, Hour 18 - Arrived at the Bridge District
The first person to talk to us was Aegisfield to warn us about a spree of killings. Once again, the city guard is incapable of solving crimes due to interference with citizen rights and they need adventurers to quietly do the dirty work for them.
We let Hexxy do a little bit of B and E on a house that richly deserved it. It was full of traps. As a prize, we claimed the Horn of Valhalla. We forgot to use it today, but so far, it only gives us a L5 Berserker.
Questioning a couple of key witnesses gave us two leads to the same place and a couple of false trails. Rose Boquet caught a whiff of Eldeberries on the culprit and Rampah said he was carrying too much inventory and had to drop this elephant hide. We talked to the last kid who found the last body, but we did not find his lead.
She closed shop for the night and we were talking to a shadow thief fence, instead. We got rid of some of the magic items we were not using, like dagger +2, longbow +1, quarterstaff +1, and obtained some scrolls. The most interesting scrolls were the Minor Sequencers. We should set up another study party soon.
Our kidnapper friend was easy to spot, dressed up in bright red. We started talking to him and when he realized we were on to him, he called to his friends inside the house to let him in. This was very convenient, because it saves us the trouble of bashing the door ourselves We killed him outside and went inside. Only the dwarf wanted to fight us. The other one fled outside. We bumped into this guy on the way back out. He must have thought we were done already and was heading back in. Or maybe he forgot his cell phone. These bad guys are not too bright.
Case Solved: Kidnappers
Hidesman was next. He said his shop was closed, but we were on to him. We got you. We have a witness. A courtesan said she smelled eldeberries as you walked by after one of the killings. What else smells like eldeberries? Oak Bark. What is that used for? Tannin. Then there was this beggar. He said he picked up this hide where you left it.
Eldeberries? Of course she smelled eldeberries. What does that mean?
Elephant hide? That could be anybody. Anybody could have an elephant hide.
Mind if we look around your place? Of course I mind. I have 4th amendment rights.
We're not the city guard. Therefore we're not subject to 4th amendment rights.
So the basement had much more convincing evidence. However, our target got teleported to safety. They left us with a couple of Ghasts and a couple of Rune Assassins as a parting gift.
Potion of Invisibility. Backstab Quadruple. Low save versus spells. Very low Thaco. Who smells cheese? One way to deal with it is to grin and take it. We would just be spending a few hundred gp healing up at a nearby temple.
Finally, we sent Nalia in solo to deal with these fiends. After the battle started, she popped into Mustard Jelly form. We are not 100% certain she was immune to the Ghast Paralyze, but they seem to have a lot of magic resistance. She was 100% immune to the piercing damage.
The online reviews I read indicate Polymorph Self has very limited uses. I think the issue is we have a Mage that can't cast spells while polymorphed and that is their entire purpose. I will check that review again. In Nalia's case, we do not have many M4 spells to choose from and this seemed to be a good place to use it to tank a lot of damage.
We used this spot as a safe spot to unload all our Identify spells. Most likely, this was way too early, because we did not need any of the items we identified.
We encountered Neera. She tends to call at most inconvenient times. In this case we were being mugged.
Hang on. My cell phone's ringing. Hello?
Hiii! It's Neera! Long time, no talk!
Can't talk now. Somebody has a blade and wants all my phat lewts. Can I call back later?
Sorry about that.
It was kind of funny how the battle with that mugger got interrupted by a Neera cutscene and we all just stood around watching it. After the scene, we finished the battle.
We reported our findings and then returned to the Copper Coronet and killed L and stole his teddy bear. Hopefully, this was not the same L Hexxy was supposed to find.
It was also sadly time to part ways with Aerie for a while. We were picking up Korgan for a while. Our next stop was the Graveyard. It was nighttime.
Our party - Graverobbers Anonymous
667524 Sam with 70 kills worth 138240
437649 Jaheira with 25 kills worth 31709
397953 Aerie with 4 kills worth 6597 - Most likely underusing her huge arsenal of spells
787318 Anomen with 19 kills worth 30517
787292 Nalia with 34 kills worth 36392 - She benefitted by being the designated trollkiller.
778044 Hexxat with 3 kills worth 4080
750000 Korgan who is new
They had a mix of reactions to Bodhi. Anomen thought is was a proverbial deal with a devil. He is almost neutral on this one. He does not favor making a deal with the Shadow Thieves, either. Maybe he can get the Radiant Heart to do something. Jaheira does not trust.... Vampires. Hexxy is a Vampire. I do not remember Nalia's comment. Korgan is actually neutral. He favors the idea of saving gold - but the same deal is available with the Shadow Thieves. He favors whichever path leads to more blood.
She did not give us unlimited time to consider her offer - so we refused and made an enemy. For some reason, she fled down her crypt. We could not follow, because it was barred. The next tomb had a Tomb King waiting for us. We will find another way in. Fortunately Korgan knew a way and it was on the way to his quest as well.
Lots of spiders. Lots of traps. We decided the way to deal with that was to lead the way with a skelly. We actually needed a second one to tank for us. Eventually we found the Spider Lair.
It was not as bad as imagined. They were all small spiders. Most likely the danger was everybody getting surrounded and poisoned. Nalia took care of one side with a Fireball. If we really needed to, then we could have also blown up our party with another Fireball. However, the other side had Korgan. He seemed to be having no trouble with the poison.
Finally, we got to Korgan's quest. We cleared out the tomb, but apparently it was already looted. We are not sure how that was managed. Did a thief go in there invisible and grabbed the loot and then snuck out, leaving us with all the active guards?
According to Hexxy, the night was still young. So we made a quick stop at the Docks to visit Prebak's house to disarm the traps Nalia could not detect. There were a couple of Shadow Thief defectors to deal with on the way.
We also started on the quest to reassemble Kangaxx the Demilich. The front door is locked and trapped. So we already know there is something good inside. Three minotaurs were waiting for us inside and there was a very nice crypt in the basement.
Here is our party so far:
697407 Sam with 86 kills worth 170835
779881 Korgan with 17 kills worth 25505
807879 Hexxy with 9 kills worth 10120
817125 Nalia with 50 kills worth 41122
817117 Anomen with 22 kills worth 136167
452549 Jaheira with 34 kills worth 42214
Anomen is kind of funny. He righteously started a fight with some grave robbers and condemned how despicable it was. Yet there he was in our party while we were doing the exact same thing.
Korgan seems good at killing things - as soon as we solve his dexterity.
Oddly, we are balanced on the Good / Evil axis right now. We have 2 Good, 2 Neutral, and 2 Evil in the party. We have a bias towards Chaos with 1 Lawful, 2 Neutral, 3 Chaotic. This is throwing the evil-free rp out the window. We plan to continue working with Korgan until his quest is done. I do not remember if this destroys our reputation or if it is just a bloody finish. Hexxy's bag of goodies is a prize - and we will probably work with her until we hit Reputation 18 or we simply need room to pick up characters.
It was a busy day! We woke up late, at 11am. We solved Jaheira's problem with Baron Ployer. We picked up Hexxat, then we went to the Bridge District and solved the Kidnapping mystery and the Human Skinner. Then we picked up Korgan and started on his adventure.
Tomorrow, we will finish Korgan's quest. Then we can work with the Shadow Thieves and Mae'Var guild and pick up Edwin and work with his quest line.
Some time, we should be making another exit of town - most likely to Trademeet. I have not decided exactly when that will be.
It was not as bad as imagined. They were all small spiders. Most likely the danger was everybody getting surrounded and poisoned.
Exactly. Those little spiders (SPSPIDER) have some very unbalanced stats:
Level 2, 2 HP, 10 XP for killing them, saves equivalent to a level 2 fighter.
AC 2, THAC0 10, 1 attack per round
1d6 piercing damage, save vs death at +1 or be poisoned for 5 damage per second. The poison lasts 30 seconds, more than enough to kill just about anyone who doesn't get it cured.
It's really an absurdly dangerous poison. But at the same time, any sort of area damage will just sweep the board and kill all twenty of them. And as for Korgan ... at 750K XP, his base death save is already down to 2. He can't possibly fail that save, which means all he has to worry about is the relatively low physical damage.
After the battle started, she popped into Mustard Jelly form. We are not 100% certain she was immune to the Ghast Paralyze, but they seem to have a lot of magic resistance. She was 100% immune to the piercing damage.
Well played. Shapeshifting is just fundamentally cool, and it's always nice if you can find somewhere that it's actually good.
The mustard jelly form is 100% immune to piercing damage, magic, and nonmagical weapons, which gives it a lot of use cases. And ghast paralyzation is affected by magic resistance, so you had full immunity there.
As for dealing damage ... your attack as a jelly is ranged and has 1 base APR. As a mage/thief with melee enemies, that's not going to be useful despite the decently high damage. Best to just blast the enemies with wands. Or send in someone else to help with that part.
On the other hand, if you had visited at over 1 million protagonist XP ... that spawns in a bone golem. Which deals slashing damage, and its weapon is magical (+3 enchantment). A mustard jelly can't stand up to that.
We made a quick stop back at the Temple of Oghma and bought a Potion of Genius for Nalia. Hindsight says we could have picked this up before hitting Kangaxx's house, but I suppose we lose about 30 minutes of game time. We entered Prebak's house again and started another study party for Nalia.
Our result this time at 21 Intelligence was 21/24 or 87.5%, so it balances a bit with her last study session. She has:
19 Level 1 spells, 13 Level 2, 13 Level 3, 10 Level 4, 8 Level 5, and 8 Level 6 spells. We lost 1 out of 2 Minor Sequencers, Spider Spawn, and Detect Invisibility.
It is not that big a deal. We can always pick up another Minor Sequencer for the next Mage we happen to pick up. Detect Invisibility is a faster and lower level variation of Invisibility Purge. So far, I have not been a fan, because of M2 competition and it only works one time. This might be a case of Scrolls being equal to Potions. Similarly, Spider Spawn has competition to cope with and maybe the preference is scrolls. The application I can see is when we are dumping summoned creatures on top of a web cast - and in our BG1 game, we loved Web so much we were Spiderman!
Nalia suffers from a low Wisdom score, so we fed her a Potion of Insight to see what goodies we could identify. We had a supply of five, anyway. We identified:
Pale Green Ioun Stone, +1 Thaco, +10%hp - This went to Hexxy. The alternative is Nalia, who is very useful with that bow, but also useful for casting spells. With a Hexxy backstab, it is one more chance that she hits and in the case of a Backstab, that extra chance translates into a lot of points of damage.
2xBolt+2 - I will not count this in the value, because we are really accumulating bolts and having Hexxy dispense them.
3xWand of Magic Missiles
Wand of Frost
Battle Axe +2
So we identified 6 items and I will say we got 600gp of value out of that Potion of Insight. With that, we got a room for the night.
Day 4, Hour 10 - Rested
One day, one bright sunny day, we will remember to apply sunscreen before going outside so Hexxy doesn't burn. This is the name I am giving the cloak. Sunscreen.
Once again, we are waylaid by Bandits on the way to the Temple District. Once again, they got right next to us before attacking us. Once again, it looked like a very ugly fight at the start. Once again, it was over very quickly. Did Jaheira remember to Call Lightning and waste one of them? Of course not.
We arrived at the Temple District and were treated to the beginning of a new cult the Cult of the Unseeing Eye. Who do we think started this cult? Of course. There was that blind Priestess of Bhaal we released from the prison when we raided Cyric's Cult of Death by 1000 Cuts and a Backstab. Hoodieman Jon Irenicus correctly warned us about this. He said we were weak.
We do not have the correct party makeup to meet up with Keldorn. We would need to get rid of Korgan and Hexxy both, and we're not quite ready to do that. We could also use a couple of cheesy items. However, we will add this to our list of quest leads.
Our primary mission in the Temple District was Korgan's errand. We were not supposed to go sleep so early and the delay meant his former comrades had already spilled his client's guts. So he suggested we catch them hungover on the roof of the Copper Coronet before they skip town. A CD b**tard this Korgan may be, he has a practical sense and it is pretty amusing to see it in action.
Our first target was the Mage and we hit him with all the poison ammunition we had. Then we made sure he was dead. The others got a few hits in, but we were right next to the Temple and it cost us 200gp to heal up.
Korgan had one more score to settle - and apparently we were efficient enough with the last one to be given this hit job. This one was in Waukeen's Promenade. We had a horn to upgrade there, anyway. For 2kg and a Diamond, we upgraded our Silver Horn to a Bronze Horn. With Korgan explaining who was waiting for us in the Den of Seven Vales, we were able to cheese the encounter very nicely.
Jaheira - Conjure Animals, Bless
Anomen - Aerial Servant, Free Motion on Sam
Hexxy - Go Stealth and find that Mage
Did we forget stuff? Of course.
Sam could have gone DUHM. Hexxy could have taken off her Sunscreen.
With everybody in position, we walked Sam over to start the encounter and Nalia in a position behind with sight into the doorway. Right away, Korgan is starting the fight!
The Invisible Aerial Servant struck Pooky first, for 41 points and he did not have time to get up a Stoneskin or any protections. Most likely it would have done him not much good. Meanwhile, Hexxy scored herself a 100-point Critical Quintuple Backstab. (Roll natural 20, d6+2+4 = 4+2+4) We will check, but I believe we took single hand proficiency and crit on 19 or 20, but we will check. We might have been exceptionally stupid and took the point in Crossbows simply to use up ammo. It looks like the best Critical we can get is that situation is..... 136? ((6+2+4)x5+8)x2 and a 1 in 60 probability.
Meanwhile, Orcslicer got view of Sam and got ready to charge in, but it was too late. Nalia got a good look on the inside of the room and cast a Web. I saw a couple of saves made, but then it looked like everybody got webbed. I do not understand the game mechanics well, but my guess is they had to make two saves against the Web spell. One save was required when the Web AoE reached the target, and another at the start of the next round, which seemed to be less than a second later.
Based on the result, we might have been particularly lucky in that fight. We had the Mage and Familiar go down very quickly and Brennan, Pebblecrusher, and Orcslicer all missed Web saves. I have traumatic memories of trying to win this fight by brute force and the help of one of the original Strategy Guides which most likely gives suboptimal advice. I still have a copy of that Guide somewhere in some box in my basement. I think they advocated having summoned beasties soak up all the damage and keeping Brennan busy - and we also have the advantage of starting with 340k extra experience from the start and a bunch of knowledge of the encounter. It looked like we wasted some high level spells on this encounter, but I will chalk it up to good luck at the start.
We got some nice prizes.
Full Plate for Sam so he can be a B9 Berserker at night. Or Full Plate for whoever is designated heavy metal tank.
Whispers of Silence for Hexxy when she is in stealth mode and not getting a sunburn.
Wand (of lightning)
Ring (of invisibility)
Here is our party:
721505 Sam with 92 kills worth 182775
803979 Korgi with 19 kills worth 28105
831956 Hexxy with 10 kills worth 16120
841199 Nalia with 51 kills worth 41242
841181 Anomen with 24 kills worth 40332
464581 Jaheira with 35 kills worth 42864
It is Day 4, Hour 12. We have been awake for two hours and been across town to the Temple Distract, back to the Slums for a big fight, then to Waukeen's Promenade for an even bigger fight. Most likely, we will head back to the Docks and visit the Shadow Thieves Guild and pick up the quest line there. We do not have an official quest lead. However, we can make one up easily enough.
We are not trading Hexxy in for Yoshimo. There is no point. Hexxy seems to have too many advantages right now. She is also not complaining about our Reputation level of 15, which is very surprising. We are more likely to trade Korgi in for Edwin. We are finished with the Killer Korgi quest and can proceed with the Edwina quest line. (which I have never seen firsthand)
We can do a little bit of shopping while in Waukeens, with about 6kg worth of junk to unload. We are low on Bullets +1 and Bullets +2, so we can replenish those a little bit. A Flail +2 offhand for Sam might also be nice - However I am not sure how much value there is in it, considering we will be investing nearly 4kg. If we are doing the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, then we would do well to pick up the Shield of Cheese for nearly 18kg - maybe less if we sing a song and cast a Friends spell.
The Invisible Aerial Servant struck Pooky first, for 41 points and he did not have time to get up a Stoneskin or any protections. Most likely it would have done him not much good. Meanwhile, Hexxy scored herself a 100-point Critical Quintuple Backstab. (Roll natural 20, d6+2+4 = 4+2+4) We will check, but I believe we took single hand proficiency and crit on 19 or 20, but we will check. We might have been exceptionally stupid and took the point in Crossbows simply to use up ammo. It looks like the best Critical we can get is that situation is..... 136? ((6+2+4)x5+8)x2 and a 1 in 60 probability.
Critical backstabs are always fun, aren't they?
I think my favorite is from my evil run, during Bodhi's side of the chapter 3 main quests. She wants us to kill some guy and advocate the Shadow Thieves, so she gives us a weapon, the "Shadow Thief Dagger" and asks us to plant it at the scene.
The weapon in question is terrible - 1d4 damage, and it doesn't even get a strength bonus. But the target is an unarmed nobleman with 15 hit points. So naturally, I chose to use the Shadow Thief Dagger as the murder weapon.
Hexxat snuck up on him, avoiding the guards' attention, and planted the knife in his back. Critical. Maximum damage. 80 points. With what amounts to the worst melee weapon a player can possibly equip. It's almost a shame to leave the bloody dagger behind after that.
On the other hand, if you had visited at over 1 million protagonist XP ... that spawns in a bone golem. Which deals slashing damage, and its weapon is magical (+3 enchantment). A mustard jelly can't stand up to that.
I did not see this helpful information earlier. In a way, it is nice to know that some of the hard encounters get buffed with player experience to partially compensate for the 340k experience advantage.
Session 63 - An Errand for the Shadow Thieves
At Waukeens, we traded all the junk from our bags and a few gems for another 40xBullet+1. Then we headed to the Docks, where we met up with Bloodscalp, the master of the Shadow Thieves. Between him and Gaelen and that guy we worked with back in Baldur's Gate, they sure know a lot about our exploits. He tasked us with infiltrating an associate guild of Maevar.
At Maevar's we traded more junk, 5 Shortsword+1 and some more gems for another 40xBullet+2 and a Potion of Master Thievery. Upon meeting with Maevar, we found him to be a much more evil figure than Bloodscalp. The Shadow Thieves have already offered to help our situation. These guys like to beat information out of their victims.
Our first mission is to steal a necklace from the High Stormmistress of Talos. Nalia did not like this job one bit.
Firstly, we are not really working for this guy. We are only doing enough to get close enough to gain evidence on him and then we are taking him out. Aren't we glad we are taking him out eventually? Secondly, we have time to come up with a plan. They are expecting us to go over there and case the place and do the deed at night. Thirdly, it is not really stealing if we intend to bring it back after we are done with it. Now let's go check out this place and see what we are up against. We have all day.
How often is it we get to RP Chaotic? It is surprising Anomen did not express his opinion. Looking at the rest of the party:
Kagain doesn't care, as long as he gets to bury an axe in a skull.
Hexxy doesn't care. She already knows she's doing the dirty work.
Jaheira probably doesn't care. She is about the balance, anyway.
Anomen should care the most. He is a candidate for induction into the Order of the Radiant Heart!
Checking out what goods and services offered at the Temple of Talos, we invested 1860gp and bought the Girdle of Bluntness. The more we improve our AC, the better it gets. Another funny thing about Helmets and Belts is we seem to be able to freely change them in combat. So if we are sharp, we can make a quick changeup for some AC. I think our current configuration gets us to -6. (1, Dexterity-4, Helm-1, Ring-1, Cloak-1) The belt gets us to -9. Later we picked up a shield to get to -12. A potion of absorption gets us to -22. I will have to check.
Meanwhile, Hexxy loaded up on a couple of Potions of Master Thievery and grabbed the necklace while nobody was looking and Sam was shopping. Nobody seems to be the wiser. Hopefully we can finish up with this Maevar guy before too long. Maybe the Stormbringer will have a quest to bring it back!
As soon as we stepped outside the temple, a storm started brewing. I suppose Talos figured out very quickly what we were up to. Maybe the storm coincides with the exact moment the High Stormmistress intended to put on her necklace, only to find out it was missing. We made a quick stop at the Temple of Helm and picked up another quest to... balance the anger these gods might have against us. They want to
Korgi had another grudge to settle and another hatchet to bury - in somebody's skull. The guarded compound was our next stop. Right away, he got belligerent.
There was a battle with summoned monsters and a couple of demons that could have made for a messy battle, but seemed to be over pretty quickly. I read up something about the NIshruu and attacking the nearest spellcaster and draining spells and charges. So I had Sam dump every item he had that carried charges. Besides, if we need it, we can quickloot and equip.
In preparation for this battle, we identified the Black Spider Figurine, the Sand Thief's Ring, and the Namarra +2. There was also a Morningstar +2, so Sam can bash more things. We had Sam and Anomen cast DUHM and Jaheira on Bless.
This was intended as the first attempt to see how the traps worked upstairs and how the battle worked in general - and this is how it went:
Sam used the Namarra to send a Silence at the center of the group. It looks like we got Scion with Silence and that was their Mage. Time will tell if he has Vocalize. Anomen cast a Holy Smite and that blinded Stalman - and I believe that was their other caster. Just in case, Jaheira had an insect swarm coming after him.
The gross error we made was not going in there berserk. Their Kensai came in and got a stun in on Korgi and he was helpless for much of the fight. Koshi was also the first to fall.
Hexxy took a nasty backstab, but survived and that is all we need. She went down to 13hp, so I guess she survived because we cheat and had the option on for maximum hit points per level. We also remembered to take off the sunscreen while indoors. We had her walk around in a wide circle in the hopes of leading their Rogue around, but that did not work.
The spider Korgi spawned before getting stunned did not survive very long. I did not know how to pop off the web right away and she was a target. It was enough we could lead Koshi's backup melee away from the battle for a while. We had Nalia pop the Wand of Monster Summoning and we got 4 beasties to keep Ketta the Rogue busy.
Maferan was next to fall. Sam was able to get the slow effect on both the melee fighters and we had time to work on bringing them down during the majority of the time we could not see Ketta. She packed a lot of Invisibility Potions, but no Greater Healing. She should be able to heal up to full while invisible, no? She did not have such potions and she turned out to be third to fall.
With this, most of the danger is over. Anomen got caught in a trap for 50hp and a very short hold. The Hold seemed to only last a single round. Korgi got back into the battle.
By this time, it was almost over. We had one slowed melee left in Olaf and he went down a quick fourth. That left a Mage who still appeared to be Silenced and a Cleric that was both Blind and Infested with Insects.
Korgi got to bury an axe in Sion the Mage and Sam finished the fight.
Our party looks pretty healthy for a big fight.
Jaheira was off by 2hp.
Nalia was off by 13hp, from having a Magic Missile reflected back at her.
Korgi was missing 32hp, probably from that Kensai.
Sam was missing 20hp.
Anomen who sprung the trap got hit for 50hp.
Hexxy was already healed, since we took so long to search the compound.
We got lots of amazing prizes from that fight! We might almost say we have some gear! Here is our party so far:
736293 Sam with 97 kills worth 214275
818767 Korgi with 22 kills worth 34105
846725 Hexy with 11 kills worth 16120 - and yes a backstab on the Kensai did help
855968 Anomen with 25 kills worth 46332
471965 Jaheira with 36 kills worth 42864
We will do the Sir Sarles quest next, most likely, then turn the Necklace in to Maevar. We will be running errands for Edwin before long.
We have to check what resources we have left after that fight - and what else we can do while in town. I do not believe we prepped properly for the Twisted Rune. We already took out a couple of tough groups this day.
Hexxy took a nasty backstab, but survived and that is all we need. She went down to 13hp, so I guess she survived because we cheat and had the option on for maximum hit points per level.
Not really, because she comes at level 8 with most of her hit dice already rolled. Only the two levels she takes after that are affected by the option. 40 HP at level 8, 12 more for max HP at level 9 and 10, a fixed 2 each at levels 11 through 13, and then 5 more from her ioun stone gets her to 63 total.
If you had rolled those levels, and gotten spectacularly unlucky with snake eyes at level 9 and 10 (probability 1/1296 since hit points are rolled with advantage), that would put you at (40+1+1+2+2+2)+10% = 48+10% = 52 HP. Which still has Hexxat survive at 2 HP after that maximum-damage stab.
If Hexxat falls in combat (by dropping to 1 HP), she drops her stuff, turns to mist, and retreats to her coffin in the bag. One hour later, she returns at full health. Unlike other party members, you can't use a Raise Dead/Resurrection effect to bring her back immediately. Hexxat doesn't earn her share of party experience while she's down, so in most cases it's best to just wait once you deal with the immediate combat situation even if the rest of the party could fight on.
Cleaning up from the mess at the Guarded Slaver Compound, the resulting hospital bill was 650gp. I understand there is supposed to be some hint to get from here to the twisted rune, but it does not matter. I did not find a Rogue Stone here, anyway. There might have been a couple of gaps to get from the Slaver Compound to the Guarded Compound to the Twisted Rune. Making up our own quests seems to be easy enough. We have Korgi with his many grudges to settle.
Government District - We talked to Sir Sarles and his price is high. He wants Illithium ore to work with. When we admitted how stupid we were, he told us who we could talk to to get it.
Waukeen's Promenade - We bribed the Ore Merchant 1kg to reveal the source of the Ore.
Copper Coronet - The Druegar was surprisingly much more agreeable to talk to than we imagined. He figured we paid the Ore Merchant more than enough to claim a share of the bribe. Then he said we wasted our money, because his ore was stolen. We were able to talk him into revealing this person.
Bridge District, Derelict House - We tracked down Neb.
He likes to go invisible and hide behind the breakfast bar and let the Child Spirits do the dirty work. We were carrying 0 anti-invis spells, but we decided on a cheesy way to handle this one. We walked in with Protection from Negative Energy on Sam and Korgi on Berserk. Hexxy was next to another Spirit and we did not have to worry about Level Drain. We decided to kill the Spirits. The guide says they are only worth 1k more each, so we gave up 4k experience.
Meanwhile, Neb was hiding behind the bar, so we sent Nalia in with Stoneskin and he took the bait. Then he was dead. We thought he was chugging X Healing Potions while invisible, but maybe it was whiskey.
Outside, we traded with the Fence and obtained 40xArrow+2 in exchange for Neb's Dagger, another Dagger, and some gems. Our low point for gold appears to be 20619 and now we are at 21138. We have a good number of magic items we are unlikely to use.
We returned to the Government District to claim our reward for the head of Neb. It looks like Korgi got the kill on it, which means it got chopped off instead of Sam Ashed and unrecognizable. Then we gave the ore to the artist so he could do his work.
The Temple of Helm was pleased at the news and gave us 1000gp, which was exactly equal to the bribe we gave and we are almost none the poorer for this deed. We also acquired the Helm of the Noble and that makes us a bit richer. When I remember, we can start saving money with this thing with 19/20 Charisma.
Day 4, Hour 18 - Back at the Docks and MaeVar's Lair.
Nalia is puzzled now. When did we grab the necklace? Painless, wasn't it? Hang tight. It only gets worse working for this guy. Maybe she was right with her warning, that we were going to sink very low working for this guy. He has us working for Edwin, so of course it is getting worse.
Sam got to M12 with this turnin and it was time to claim another point of weapon mastery. I chose......
a third point in 2W Style. We improve from -4OH penalty to -2. I was thinking.......
If our OH is a Flail, then we gained 2 points to hit. So we gain.
If our OH is a Dagger, then we gain 2 points to hit. So we gain.
If our OH is any other melee weapon, we gain 2 points to hit and we gain.
If we chose a different weapon like Katanas, then we gain 2 points only using Katanas and we are even. We only lose if we are putting more points into Katanas.
If we put the point into a missile weapon like Slings or Longbows, then we eliminate the 2-point penalty.
Meanwhile, in the MaeVar Guild, we found our Rogue Stone. So some time, we might be trying to figure out the Twisted Rune. I have not decided when that will be. Some more minor gems traded and we identified Celestial Fury. We figured we might need it in one of the upcoming encounters.
Edwin sent us on a hit job on a Cowled Wizard. Well, we don't really like the Cowled Wizards, anyway. They have Imoen. They offered some information if we were willing to do a hit job for them and we refused. His house was open and he had a bunch of Mephits waiting for us inside on the ground floor. The second floor had a couple of Stoned Golems. The big fight was on the third floor and it always helps if we are properly prepared.
Fortunately, there was Halfling Rogue outside wanting to sell his stuff. He complained he did not have very impressive inventory, but what he had was exactly what we needed. We accidentally sold off all of our non magical weapons. So we bought a couple of morningstars, axes, quarterstaves, and a longsword. We gave him a few gems to get his business started.
Anomen put up a Death Ward on Sam just in case it goes badly, but it did not. The Guide says he is opening up with some pretty good spells and it would be a good idea to buff up, but this is all we really needed.
He opened with a Contigency that gave him....
Protection from Normal Missiles. Protection from Magical Weapons.
What is missing? Yes! Normal Weapons! Something a L12 Party should never have!
It looks like he absorbed 2 hits from Sam with something, but his off-hand connected and started doing damage. Then Korgi hit with his offhand axe and caused a casting failure of whatever he was casting. The fight was over in the next round.
The other way I know of to cheese the fight is to run downstairs when he is casting his next spell. Waste 4 rounds, then hit him. The drawback is he might use that to put up more defenses. I understand that is how Mage battles are supposed to work. Build defenses. Take down defenses. The mage that is naked first dies.
We accumulated another hospital bill of 350gp, but we were able to finish the errands for Edwin and he sent us back to Maevar for more dirty work. This time it was another hit in the Sea Bounty next door. He begged for his life and we let him fake his death and give us he dagger.
Ani is funny. Sometimes he calls you out if we're on the wrong side of the law. Then he suggested buying the fake ore to trick Sir Sarles would be a great idea. This time, he called us out for letting our target go.
Mae probably knew of our treachery already, because he had no reward for us and he dismissed us to Edwin already. Edwin certainly knew of our treachery and decided to be on the winning side of the upcoming encounter. So he gave us a key to find the evidence we are looking for and we took that to Bloodscalp.
Nalia was also funny. She called us out for sinking so low as to steal a holy symbol from a Priest of Talos. Then she called Edwin out for turning on his boss. What's up? This is how Good triumphs over Evil! We see it in action as Korgi buries his Axe into Skulls, Good or Evil, doesn't matter. Now we see it in action as Eddie turns against Mae, simply because he wants to be on the winning side.
Of course, we were back for a final hit job on Mae. On the way in, we had our Fairy Dragon Familiar cast Invisibility on all of us so we could get the jump on this guy.
The Priest of Cyric was amazingly able to get spells off through the damage. He got a Bless off. It looks like he got a Miscast Magic off against Sam. That made no sense. Full metal armor, not casting spells. Maybe he thought he was a Berserker Cleric. Then he got Defensive Harmony, but that was doing zero good. I thought he was getting a Hold Person off which might have helped a little, but not enough to bother with Rage.
So this saga with the warring Thieves Guild is over - for a little bit. Now it is this other guild war remaining and causing problems. However, it is looking more and more like we have thrown in our lot with the Shadow Thieves once again.
Day 4, Hour 22 - Back in the Slums for one more order of business.
We paid 400gp to find out where the Ring was hidden, then back to the roof of the Copper Coronet.
How is it we left the Book of Kaza lying around for so long?
Borinall was an easy kill. It looks like Nalia one-shot him with a Flaming Arrow. So the rest of the fight was easy.
Here is our party:
832538 Sam with 110 kills worth 271235
915012 Korgi with 29 kills worth 51525
942927 Hexxy with 11 kills worth 16120
952170 Nalia with 54 kills worth 42842
952137 Anomen with 29 kills worth 48952
520059 Jaheira with 38 kills worth 50284
Anomen has a conflict with the Vampire and we have to look it up to decide how long he is willing to put up with it. We are looking at picking up Edwin to start his quests. So we might have some decisions to make.
Most likely, we are losing Korgi, but that might also depend on how big the conflict is between Anomen and Hexxat. With Edwin, we get quite a bit of mage firepower.
For the next day, if we are doing the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, then we have to get rid of Hexxy and replace her with either Yoshi or Jan. Then we can pick up Kel.
We seem to be moving through content quickly in terms of game time and we are not getting many triggers for companion quests. Ani and Nalia come to mind. If we give these people "breaks," do the timers continue for their companion quests?
Gold. We are gaining. We are at 36k and quite a few magic items in our bag of goodies. Reputation is at 16 and surprisingly nobody is complaining. So far I have only heard Ani complain. Charisma is at 19. We can get good prices for the best gear.
Session 65 - Eddie's Study Party in the Lower Tombs
This session took longer in real time than in game time. We were doing some planning and mostly shopping and a little bit of experience and amazingly enough, about 300k in experience for the party.
We decided to part ways with Anomen for the time being in order to make room for Edwin. We are losing a lot of clerical power by doing this. He is disappointed that we are leaving him. Most likely, he will join Minsc for some drinks at the Copper Coronet. He gets to keep a Mace +2 and a Sling +2. Maybe when we pick him up again, his companion quest will be ready. Hopefully it is not on a time with main character timer.
The issue is we have a conflict between Anomen and that Vampire, Hexxat while with her, we effectively have access to a Bag of Holding which is proving to be amazingly valuable. For thief skills, we will likely develop Detect Illusion to see how well it works. We probably have enough in Stealth, Find Traps and Open Locks. We might have done well to even hold off on those items, because Potions are so easy to get.
We picked up Edwin and off the the Graveyard we went. Eddie's looking for a Nether Scroll and it was hiding right under us when we took Korgi on a graverobbing trip. Even better, there were more Spiders and Undead beasties waiting for us, even after being absent for only one day. Finally we found the Lich we were looking for and started a pleasant conversation with him, until Eddie cut it off.
Back at the Copper Coronet, we started shopping for some spells to fill Eddie's book. We also obtained the Army Scythe for Hexxy, to make her Crossbow option better. She is usually using Daggers while in high strength mode and the Crossbow while in low strength or needs some magical ammo. We also obtained the Azuredge, because we never know when that might come in handy. Sam does not have any skill in Axes right now, but all we have to do is score a hit.
At the Docks, we intervened in another fight to save a Shadow Thief from a group of Vampires.
And why not? We don't really kill the Vampires. We just inconvenience them for a few hours or so. The Shadow Thief figured they chose well investing in new allies.
At the Temple of Ogma, we bought a few Potions of Genius and started our Study Party. With Eddie at 25 Intelligence and 18 Wisdom, we were able to identify every item we were carrying, including the Pommel of the Equalizer, the G-String Bow Shaft, and a few Cursed Scrolls trying to pass as Protection. The Potion of Insight allowed us to identify 4 items, so maybe it was worth it, probably not quite. The only other use for the Insight will be when we start casting Wish spells.
With the study party just started, we made our way to the Bridge District to see what scrolls we could obtain from there. We were intercepted by Bandits who never seem to learn who to leave alone. We might also do well to learn not to stand in a line.
Their Mage had a mentality of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a Lightning Bolt for a Lightning Bolt. We walked around town for a while missing a bunch of hp, but eventually Jaheira cast Summon Woodland Beings to fix most of the damage and the bill to fix up Sam was another 150gp. It was not that big a deal.
Since we were walking around town, we made our way to the Temple District and returned the Ring to the Temple of Lathander. We did not get around to returning the Holy Symbol to Talos. Go figure.
Our party:
888197 Sam with 116 kills worth 285595
970671 Korgi with 38 kills worth 71200
998555 Hexy with 14 kills worth 34520
1007797 Nalia with 57 kills worth 43512
574854 Jaheira with 40 kills worth 51934
1055591 Eddy
We picked up a lot of spells. If there are critical lower level spells that we seem to be obviously missing, this is a good time to know, because we still have an hour or so left on our potions.
For M6 spells, Sam chose Protection from Magic Weapons. For M5, we picked up Spell Immunity. The idea we have in mind is we cast Spell Immunity - Abjuration in combination with Improved Haste and Protection from Magic Weapons and make it a long 4 rounds for somebody. Protection from Magic Scroll might also be a good combination as well.
Day 5, Hour 2 - We finally call it a night. Meanwhile we had another philosophical discussion with Hoddieman Jon Irenicus.
This is logical enough. It should not be contested. Does anybody know the name of this logical fallacy? That if it is logical, then it must be true?
Day 5, Hour 10 - Rested
Day 5, Hour 18 - D'Arnise Hold - It turns out there is nothing going on there yet. We are going to get events there once per week? Maybe we can slip a quick trip to the Underdark between Weeks 2 and 3? Are we going to be most of the way through ToB with a L30 party when Roenall comes to claim our castle?
Day 6, Hour 2- Rested again
Day 6, Hour 14 - Arrived at Trademeet - As promised, we made our way to see the mayor and find out what is going on. He left a druid named Cernd in the basement. With him joining, we left Korgan on reasonable terms. He got to keep the Frostreaver +3 and Full Plate +1 and the Helm of Charm Protection.
Day 6, Hour 23 - Druid Grove
With a good stealther and a vampire on top of it, we are better off scouting at night. The big drawback is it is very hard to see which way to go.
The Troll Mound was very much manageable, because we were able to pick them off a few at a time. At the end, we made the mistake of dropping a double fireball on the last group of 3 and that meant Eddie had to run around for a while. Our big prize from this was the Dale Protector. This will go to Nalia. She seems to be our only ranged when not casting, which is usually.
The Shadow Druids were on the warpath. Normally I do not like the idea of fighting a large group of casters, because who knows what they might be casting. Five of them with prepped iron skins casting Call Lightning might make for an interesting fight. Wrong fight. That was later. Oddly enough, the Call Lightning hit their other Fighter for some reason.
We found the Rakaasha the Dao were looking for. It was a much easier fight than the guide made it out to be, albeit a bit hard to path to the other two. Basic information such as knowing we need +2 weapons to hit is very helpful. In the picture, we killed one before the other two zoned in.
There was magic mushroom colony on the way and another group of druids guarding the path. Eventually we made our way to Faldorn. Cernd did not have any decent spells because we just dragged him out of prison, so we designated Jaheira for the Challenge.
She prebuffed with a Potion of Hill Giant Strength. She should have also prebuffed with Iron Skins, but it no longer matters.
Jaheira - Insect Swarm on Faldorn
Faldorn - Not sure, tried to cast something
Jaheira - Cast Conjure Animals near Faldorn
Faldorn - Grab a Quarterstaff and whack
Jaheira - Change form to Brown Bear
Three bears versus 1 druid. Jaheira must have been the mama bear and conjured the papa bear and the baby bear. Faldorn was just right.
We backtracked a bit and picked up Belm +2. This will do well for an offhand, because the extra APR means another swing from the FoA. So 3.5 swings with FoA and 1 with Belm and whether we have skill or not does not matter. We might grab a different offhand in case we want to use an ability. Or - We can leave that to the rest of our crew. Nalia comes to mind.
Day 7, Hour 12 - RISE AND SHINE!
This was a reloaded encounter, because I did not want Jaheira disappearing immediately after the encounter with all of our potions. I also did not know we would be needing none of them and it would have made some logistics easier down the road. The first run, we popped a Fear Wand and made one guy run clear across the map.
In the reload, we had a lot of characters force-attack the Cleric.
Day 7, Hour 20 - We arrived back at Trademeet and were hailed as heroes. We even had statues erected. The true hero was not around and graciously left that honor with Cernd.
Cernd is very likely to find out what it is like to be hailed as a hero one week and driven out of town the next week. Most likely he understands very well why we wander so much. Our party is looking very much like Hallowe'en. We have:
A stereotypical Knight.
A stereotypical Wizard.
A Witch.
A Vampire.
A Werewolf.
In the mean time, Trademeet sees us as heroes. After solving a couple more of their problems, Edwin and Hexxat had enough and walked out. Surprisingly, we still have the Bag of Holding with Hexxy's Coffin. How could she have forgotten it with us?
Shopping trip. We got up to nearly 54kg and it was time to start buying some interesting stuff.
Robe of the Good Archmagi for Nalia. This gives her some AC and frees up the Bracer slot for those archery bracers. For now, Sam can inherit the Bracers to the Death, but is usually using armor.
Some spells that are conspicuously missing from Nalia's book.
Tansheron's Bow +3 and we will never run out of ammo. In most situations, we are better off with the other bow with 3 shots per round and the main use of this bow is if we encounter a beastie that can only be hit with +3. In that case, we have a phantom +3 arrow that only hits for d6.
The One Gift Lost with 2 charges. Maybe it was a decent price for a couple of fireballs. It is probably not nearly as gamebreaking in this stage of the game as BG1.
Day 8, Hour 6 - We got Jaheira back and we are heading back.
Here is our party:
963606 Sam with 143 kills worth 353925 - slightly more because we picked up experience from the turnin that broke Hexy and Eddie.
1075188 Cernd with 3 kills worth 7420
1073926 Hexxy with 20 kills worth 38795
1130952 Eddie with 4 kills worth 6115
1083169 Nalia with 74 kills worth 76337
1206585 Rasaad who is new with us - He showed up when I was really struggling with where to put items with a couple of members about to depart.
559636 Jaheira with 51 kills worth 83474
Welp, the idea of getting through the Edwina quest chain is out. The same applies for Hexxy's quests. If we really want to do them, then an option might be to pick up Vicky.
Experience - It looks like we are about 222k away from the 1.25M cap for characters. We should be able to quickly do Cernd's quest. Maybe there are some things we can do to pick up a little bit of experience. There is also the Harper quest we are coming back for.
We should have decided some time ago what the core of our party is going to look like. Then we can get them experience at about the same time. We won't. It has been too interesting picking up characters and their questlines.
Rasaad - I have to decide how to develop him, even if for a short time. After Cernd and after the Harpers, we will likely do his quest chain next and maybe pick up Neera.
So, about those rakshasa ... it kind of depends on how you build the party. They have very good AC (-4 or -5 base, 18 or 19 Dex), and they're immune to spells from level 1 to 7. If you don't have much warrior power, they can be very hard to hurt. And certain mods ... SCS gives them single-weapon style for even better AC, and a full mage defense routine. Ouch.
Oh, and the fun thing with those Trademeet statues? As you may have noticed with Cernd, they capture your character's animation at the time the statues were created. From one of my dead playthroughs:
The run in question was abandoned due to repeated crashes; the bug that caused those crashes was fixed in 2.6, but I haven't picked up the idea again.
And a couple of item notes ...
- Tansheron's Bow: When used with real ammo, it adds the phantom arrow damage for an effective +1d6 damage. That's the second-highest damage bonus for any bow in the game, better than any longbow. It's either the second or third best bow in the game; only the Gesen bow is definitively better with its +1d8+2 damage. And all of the top three bows are the short kind.
- Necklace of Missiles: You can sell and re-buy it to recharge to full (25 charges). But yes, it's much less valuable than it was in BG1, because fireballs just aren't worth that much anymore. Back in 2.5, its fireballs hit as level 9 effects so they could do things like interrupt liches, but that's no longer true; it's now level 3 like you'd expect from a fireball.
^^On the bow, that is something I would never have known from reading the description. I will read it again. However, what you said appears accurate, given that I have seen Nalia deliver 12-point shots with normal arrows.
Session 67 - Who's your Daddy?
Day 9, Hour 2 - Arrived at Waukeen's Promenade
Interestingly enough, Cernd was able to recognize one of his former neighbors walking about at 2am. After catching up with some shocking news, he had us go to his former house to visit his squatters. Then we went to visit his former maid - at 3am. Could none of this wait until morning?
Day 9, Hour 11 - Rested
For some reason, taking out Deril was pretty easy. We were able to get shots on him before he could get his defenses up. He promised his guest some entertainment, but apparently did not go as planned.
I saw a Tattoo of Power - Spell Immunity, but we did not cast any spells. I saw a Spell Deflection and I saw a Stoneskin, but only saw a few hits stopped.
Our next stop was Harper Hold. This was a few reloads getting right. The first one, I ran an experiment with Celestial Fury and the Lightning Bolt blasted everybody. I did not remember if it was an actual lightning bolt or a strike on a single character. I will keep this in mind in the future - to have whoever is wielding CF immune to Electricity, because a 10d6 Lighting Bolt is nothing to sneeze at, especially when cornered. Other times we were deciding how much to prebuff going in, because it was just four of us left in the party. Creeping Doom turned out to be a game winner.
Study Parties are a very expensive habit for us. We ran one for Nalia to fill in the spells that are obviously missing - and to get Sam up to 1.25M. Here is where I learned that the party members we left behind are stuck at the experience level we left them - at least in Ani's case. The quest chains seem to pick up where they left off, but so does the experience. I did not test this with Minsc.
Instead we picked up Jan. He is an interesting character. It is also interesting the old guidebook I had gives him a terrible rating, but the guy I listen to on YouTube gives him an S-Tier rating. I do not remember exactly why that is. I dumped nearly all his points into Detect Illusion and maybe some in Set Traps. With 100 or 105 in Open Locks and Find Traps, that should be adequate and if it is not, then we have potions. I have not experimented with setting traps yet.
He also gets to use the Army Scythe and all those Crossbow Bolts we had left over from when Hexxy walked out on us.
Day 9, Hour 21 - Abandoned Ampitheater
A rogue named Geld Quickblade wanted 5kg from us to pass through the woods safely. That seemed way too much. That reminds me of a time, way back......
.....we came to a bridge on the way to Gnollhold and a couple of Ogrillions demanded a toll much smaller than that - and we refused to pay.
Day 10, Hour 7 - Rested
This area seemed to be a hotspot for wild animals. Who would have thought a campfire would draw so many? We ended up moving away from the campfire and encountered one pack of wolves and summoned a Skeleton to help guard for us while we slept.
Day 11, Hour 0 - Ambushed by Harpers
We got out of it peacefully.
Day 11, Hour 6 - We arrived at the Lost Temple
We never imagined it would take so much game time to arrive. I am thinking the Harper Ambush advanced the time to midnight. From an RP point of view, we will consider ourselves fully rested at daybreak.
We found the caged animals and freed the Grizzly Bear and made the animal keeper very angry at us, so we killed him. Then we tracked down Wilson the Grizzly Bear and he joined with us. He is considered...... mostly a companion for fun purposes - to say we have a bear in our party.
It makes me think of my World of Warcraft days. One of my characters was a Hunter with a pet Bear. That was the mark of a noob. Hunter with bear pet. Know what a Rogue has in common with a Noob?
They both pick locks.
We found some bound monks and eventually used the ropes to make a grand entry into the Lost Temple. Inside, Sam ran the Trials while Jan robbed the place blind. After the initiation, it turned out we were under attack. So out we went to confront our attackers.
This was also worth several reloads, because I was having trouble for some reason getting all the casts to work. We did a light prebuff, with the Gem of True Seeing and a Bless. Outside, we took out the Assassins first, then dropped Call Lightning, Malison, Chaos, and Creeping Doom. Most likely, I was accidentally ending casts early when targeting Assassins with missile weapons and just have to get better with micro. (Currently running with AI off, because the AI seems to be making terrible decisions for us - and I might also do well to study the AI options in more detail.)
A UI that provides a scrolltip describing the character's current action along with the name and hit points and status would be very interesting. Similarly, a scrolltip that gives the enemy status would be interesting, so we do not have to go through the combat log to see what status he has. Seconds to end of round would also be good. Most of this is information that can be grabbed from the combat log. Going back to the analogy of WoW, you can look up the status effects on all your allies and enemies - and they built interfaces to make this information much easier to access.
We also had to get the conversation after the battle right to get the effect we intended. We were releasing Rasaad to run his Monastery. We will move on to find Wilson a new home.
It looks like our next stop will be the Wild Forest.
Here is our party:
1061290 Sam with 191 kills worth 397110
607811 Jaheira with 59 kills worth 105514
1180844 Nalia with 79 kills worth 102877
131267 Rasaad with 6 kills worth 10590 - now retired and running a monastery
654192 Jan with 2 kills worth 6000
1273136 Wilson with 3 kills worth 13000
From what I understand about Wilson the Bear - He can't equip much gear and therefore he can't tank. He can't cast any spells. He can't equip key weapons. All he does is fill a companion slot and bash things and eats a lot of food and maybe healing potions.
Our party planning has been anything but ideal. Maybe I will have this better thought out later, when we have a better concept of how much experience (and reputation) it takes to get from one point of the storyline to another. One place it shows up is the kg we spent getting Edwin a bunch of spells, only for him to walk out due to our bad planning. (If we were planning to work with some Evil companions, then the time to do it would have been much earlier in the reputation window.) In this run, our primary objective is to finish - and also to map out our lessons and prepare for mod runs.
We crossed the 1.25M threshold, so new party members will start there. Right now, they will be about 61k behind the leader. Since we have been working in so many sidequests and companion quests, it is probably inevitable that some companions will be behind in experience count.
A. Mage Slot
This is currently occupied by Nalia.
Neera will be an option. We should be meeting her soon and maybe even before Nalia hits 1.25M.
Imoen is also an option, but she shows up very late. If we decide to work Imoen into our final party, then she might do better in a backup position, because she will be very far behind in experience.
B. Cleric Slot
A couple of Sessions ago, this slot was occupied by Anomen. Unfortunately, we dumped him before running off with Edwin. The consequence is he will be at least 300k behind in experience.
Vicky is another option, but conflicts might make her harder to work in.
Cernd can cast Druid stuff.
C. Tank Slot
We are currently doing most of this. On Youtube, I hear great things about Jaheira.
D. Rogue Slot
We now put JJ there.
Imoen might be able to fill that slot with the help of potions. The same applies to Nalia.
E. Special Weapon Slot
We have the Flail of Ages
F. Special Weapon Slot
If we recruit Valygar, we might use him with the Celestial Fury
G. Special Weapon Slot
If we recruit Keldorn, we can acquire the Holy Avenger
Keldorn is most likely getting a brief appearance in SoA and a gracious out to spend time with his family and might return for ToB.
The spell immunity Deril uses is to evocation, by the way. That one comes up in a few other places as well - if you see that "tattoo of power", that's usually what it is.
As for that stoneskin only blocking a few hits ... insect swarms eat through that stuff quickly. As do the darts you were throwing. You had that fight won before his defenses even went up, even though it took a bit longer to actually kill him.
I pretty much never use the Celestial Fury lightning strike ability. Looking it up - it's a lightning bolt. Not exactly the wizard spell, but the same projectile. Use at your own risk, or immunize the party, because lightning bolt bounces can get nasty.
One possible reason for losing spell casts in that big fight - if your target goes invisible or dies before the spell finishes, the casting is canceled and the spell is lost. I often cast Insect Swarm targeting my own front-liners for that reason. Spells that target a point on the ground don't suffer from this.
Comments
At the Copper Coronet, we looked around for whoever Hexxat might have been looking for, but could not find him. After 200 years or so of waiting, whoever it was might have lost patience. Or died.
We bartered a little more junk for a Larloch's Minor Drain Scroll. Then it was time to move on to our next lead for gaining fame, fortune, and glory.
Day 3, Hour 18 - Arrived at the Bridge District
The first person to talk to us was Aegisfield to warn us about a spree of killings. Once again, the city guard is incapable of solving crimes due to interference with citizen rights and they need adventurers to quietly do the dirty work for them.
We let Hexxy do a little bit of B and E on a house that richly deserved it. It was full of traps. As a prize, we claimed the Horn of Valhalla. We forgot to use it today, but so far, it only gives us a L5 Berserker.
Questioning a couple of key witnesses gave us two leads to the same place and a couple of false trails. Rose Boquet caught a whiff of Eldeberries on the culprit and Rampah said he was carrying too much inventory and had to drop this elephant hide. We talked to the last kid who found the last body, but we did not find his lead.
She closed shop for the night and we were talking to a shadow thief fence, instead. We got rid of some of the magic items we were not using, like dagger +2, longbow +1, quarterstaff +1, and obtained some scrolls. The most interesting scrolls were the Minor Sequencers. We should set up another study party soon.
Our kidnapper friend was easy to spot, dressed up in bright red. We started talking to him and when he realized we were on to him, he called to his friends inside the house to let him in. This was very convenient, because it saves us the trouble of bashing the door ourselves We killed him outside and went inside. Only the dwarf wanted to fight us. The other one fled outside. We bumped into this guy on the way back out. He must have thought we were done already and was heading back in. Or maybe he forgot his cell phone. These bad guys are not too bright.
Case Solved: Kidnappers
Hidesman was next. He said his shop was closed, but we were on to him. We got you. We have a witness. A courtesan said she smelled eldeberries as you walked by after one of the killings. What else smells like eldeberries? Oak Bark. What is that used for? Tannin. Then there was this beggar. He said he picked up this hide where you left it.
Eldeberries? Of course she smelled eldeberries. What does that mean?
Elephant hide? That could be anybody. Anybody could have an elephant hide.
Mind if we look around your place? Of course I mind. I have 4th amendment rights.
We're not the city guard. Therefore we're not subject to 4th amendment rights.
So the basement had much more convincing evidence. However, our target got teleported to safety. They left us with a couple of Ghasts and a couple of Rune Assassins as a parting gift.
Potion of Invisibility. Backstab Quadruple. Low save versus spells. Very low Thaco. Who smells cheese? One way to deal with it is to grin and take it. We would just be spending a few hundred gp healing up at a nearby temple.
Finally, we sent Nalia in solo to deal with these fiends. After the battle started, she popped into Mustard Jelly form. We are not 100% certain she was immune to the Ghast Paralyze, but they seem to have a lot of magic resistance. She was 100% immune to the piercing damage.
The online reviews I read indicate Polymorph Self has very limited uses. I think the issue is we have a Mage that can't cast spells while polymorphed and that is their entire purpose. I will check that review again. In Nalia's case, we do not have many M4 spells to choose from and this seemed to be a good place to use it to tank a lot of damage.
We used this spot as a safe spot to unload all our Identify spells. Most likely, this was way too early, because we did not need any of the items we identified.
We encountered Neera. She tends to call at most inconvenient times. In this case we were being mugged.
Hang on. My cell phone's ringing. Hello?
Hiii! It's Neera! Long time, no talk!
Can't talk now. Somebody has a blade and wants all my phat lewts. Can I call back later?
Sorry about that.
It was kind of funny how the battle with that mugger got interrupted by a Neera cutscene and we all just stood around watching it. After the scene, we finished the battle.
We reported our findings and then returned to the Copper Coronet and killed L and stole his teddy bear. Hopefully, this was not the same L Hexxy was supposed to find.
It was also sadly time to part ways with Aerie for a while. We were picking up Korgan for a while. Our next stop was the Graveyard. It was nighttime.
Our party - Graverobbers Anonymous
667524 Sam with 70 kills worth 138240
437649 Jaheira with 25 kills worth 31709
397953 Aerie with 4 kills worth 6597 - Most likely underusing her huge arsenal of spells
787318 Anomen with 19 kills worth 30517
787292 Nalia with 34 kills worth 36392 - She benefitted by being the designated trollkiller.
778044 Hexxat with 3 kills worth 4080
750000 Korgan who is new
They had a mix of reactions to Bodhi. Anomen thought is was a proverbial deal with a devil. He is almost neutral on this one. He does not favor making a deal with the Shadow Thieves, either. Maybe he can get the Radiant Heart to do something. Jaheira does not trust.... Vampires. Hexxy is a Vampire. I do not remember Nalia's comment. Korgan is actually neutral. He favors the idea of saving gold - but the same deal is available with the Shadow Thieves. He favors whichever path leads to more blood.
She did not give us unlimited time to consider her offer - so we refused and made an enemy. For some reason, she fled down her crypt. We could not follow, because it was barred. The next tomb had a Tomb King waiting for us. We will find another way in. Fortunately Korgan knew a way and it was on the way to his quest as well.
Lots of spiders. Lots of traps. We decided the way to deal with that was to lead the way with a skelly. We actually needed a second one to tank for us. Eventually we found the Spider Lair.
It was not as bad as imagined. They were all small spiders. Most likely the danger was everybody getting surrounded and poisoned. Nalia took care of one side with a Fireball. If we really needed to, then we could have also blown up our party with another Fireball. However, the other side had Korgan. He seemed to be having no trouble with the poison.
Finally, we got to Korgan's quest. We cleared out the tomb, but apparently it was already looted. We are not sure how that was managed. Did a thief go in there invisible and grabbed the loot and then snuck out, leaving us with all the active guards?
According to Hexxy, the night was still young. So we made a quick stop at the Docks to visit Prebak's house to disarm the traps Nalia could not detect. There were a couple of Shadow Thief defectors to deal with on the way.
We also started on the quest to reassemble Kangaxx the Demilich. The front door is locked and trapped. So we already know there is something good inside. Three minotaurs were waiting for us inside and there was a very nice crypt in the basement.
Here is our party so far:
697407 Sam with 86 kills worth 170835
779881 Korgan with 17 kills worth 25505
807879 Hexxy with 9 kills worth 10120
817125 Nalia with 50 kills worth 41122
817117 Anomen with 22 kills worth 136167
452549 Jaheira with 34 kills worth 42214
Anomen is kind of funny. He righteously started a fight with some grave robbers and condemned how despicable it was. Yet there he was in our party while we were doing the exact same thing.
Korgan seems good at killing things - as soon as we solve his dexterity.
Oddly, we are balanced on the Good / Evil axis right now. We have 2 Good, 2 Neutral, and 2 Evil in the party. We have a bias towards Chaos with 1 Lawful, 2 Neutral, 3 Chaotic. This is throwing the evil-free rp out the window. We plan to continue working with Korgan until his quest is done. I do not remember if this destroys our reputation or if it is just a bloody finish. Hexxy's bag of goodies is a prize - and we will probably work with her until we hit Reputation 18 or we simply need room to pick up characters.
It was a busy day! We woke up late, at 11am. We solved Jaheira's problem with Baron Ployer. We picked up Hexxat, then we went to the Bridge District and solved the Kidnapping mystery and the Human Skinner. Then we picked up Korgan and started on his adventure.
Tomorrow, we will finish Korgan's quest. Then we can work with the Shadow Thieves and Mae'Var guild and pick up Edwin and work with his quest line.
Some time, we should be making another exit of town - most likely to Trademeet. I have not decided exactly when that will be.
Level 2, 2 HP, 10 XP for killing them, saves equivalent to a level 2 fighter.
AC 2, THAC0 10, 1 attack per round
1d6 piercing damage, save vs death at +1 or be poisoned for 5 damage per second. The poison lasts 30 seconds, more than enough to kill just about anyone who doesn't get it cured.
It's really an absurdly dangerous poison. But at the same time, any sort of area damage will just sweep the board and kill all twenty of them. And as for Korgan ... at 750K XP, his base death save is already down to 2. He can't possibly fail that save, which means all he has to worry about is the relatively low physical damage.
Well played. Shapeshifting is just fundamentally cool, and it's always nice if you can find somewhere that it's actually good.
The mustard jelly form is 100% immune to piercing damage, magic, and nonmagical weapons, which gives it a lot of use cases. And ghast paralyzation is affected by magic resistance, so you had full immunity there.
As for dealing damage ... your attack as a jelly is ranged and has 1 base APR. As a mage/thief with melee enemies, that's not going to be useful despite the decently high damage. Best to just blast the enemies with wands. Or send in someone else to help with that part.
On the other hand, if you had visited at over 1 million protagonist XP ... that spawns in a bone golem. Which deals slashing damage, and its weapon is magical (+3 enchantment). A mustard jelly can't stand up to that.
We made a quick stop back at the Temple of Oghma and bought a Potion of Genius for Nalia. Hindsight says we could have picked this up before hitting Kangaxx's house, but I suppose we lose about 30 minutes of game time. We entered Prebak's house again and started another study party for Nalia.
Our result this time at 21 Intelligence was 21/24 or 87.5%, so it balances a bit with her last study session. She has:
19 Level 1 spells, 13 Level 2, 13 Level 3, 10 Level 4, 8 Level 5, and 8 Level 6 spells. We lost 1 out of 2 Minor Sequencers, Spider Spawn, and Detect Invisibility.
It is not that big a deal. We can always pick up another Minor Sequencer for the next Mage we happen to pick up. Detect Invisibility is a faster and lower level variation of Invisibility Purge. So far, I have not been a fan, because of M2 competition and it only works one time. This might be a case of Scrolls being equal to Potions. Similarly, Spider Spawn has competition to cope with and maybe the preference is scrolls. The application I can see is when we are dumping summoned creatures on top of a web cast - and in our BG1 game, we loved Web so much we were Spiderman!
Nalia suffers from a low Wisdom score, so we fed her a Potion of Insight to see what goodies we could identify. We had a supply of five, anyway. We identified:
Pale Green Ioun Stone, +1 Thaco, +10%hp - This went to Hexxy. The alternative is Nalia, who is very useful with that bow, but also useful for casting spells. With a Hexxy backstab, it is one more chance that she hits and in the case of a Backstab, that extra chance translates into a lot of points of damage.
2xBolt+2 - I will not count this in the value, because we are really accumulating bolts and having Hexxy dispense them.
3xWand of Magic Missiles
Wand of Frost
Battle Axe +2
So we identified 6 items and I will say we got 600gp of value out of that Potion of Insight. With that, we got a room for the night.
Day 4, Hour 10 - Rested
One day, one bright sunny day, we will remember to apply sunscreen before going outside so Hexxy doesn't burn. This is the name I am giving the cloak. Sunscreen.
Once again, we are waylaid by Bandits on the way to the Temple District. Once again, they got right next to us before attacking us. Once again, it looked like a very ugly fight at the start. Once again, it was over very quickly. Did Jaheira remember to Call Lightning and waste one of them? Of course not.
We arrived at the Temple District and were treated to the beginning of a new cult the Cult of the Unseeing Eye. Who do we think started this cult? Of course. There was that blind Priestess of Bhaal we released from the prison when we raided Cyric's Cult of Death by 1000 Cuts and a Backstab. Hoodieman Jon Irenicus correctly warned us about this. He said we were weak.
We do not have the correct party makeup to meet up with Keldorn. We would need to get rid of Korgan and Hexxy both, and we're not quite ready to do that. We could also use a couple of cheesy items. However, we will add this to our list of quest leads.
Our primary mission in the Temple District was Korgan's errand. We were not supposed to go sleep so early and the delay meant his former comrades had already spilled his client's guts. So he suggested we catch them hungover on the roof of the Copper Coronet before they skip town. A CD b**tard this Korgan may be, he has a practical sense and it is pretty amusing to see it in action.
Our first target was the Mage and we hit him with all the poison ammunition we had. Then we made sure he was dead. The others got a few hits in, but we were right next to the Temple and it cost us 200gp to heal up.
Korgan had one more score to settle - and apparently we were efficient enough with the last one to be given this hit job. This one was in Waukeen's Promenade. We had a horn to upgrade there, anyway. For 2kg and a Diamond, we upgraded our Silver Horn to a Bronze Horn. With Korgan explaining who was waiting for us in the Den of Seven Vales, we were able to cheese the encounter very nicely.
Jaheira - Conjure Animals, Bless
Anomen - Aerial Servant, Free Motion on Sam
Hexxy - Go Stealth and find that Mage
Did we forget stuff? Of course.
Sam could have gone DUHM. Hexxy could have taken off her Sunscreen.
With everybody in position, we walked Sam over to start the encounter and Nalia in a position behind with sight into the doorway. Right away, Korgan is starting the fight!
The Invisible Aerial Servant struck Pooky first, for 41 points and he did not have time to get up a Stoneskin or any protections. Most likely it would have done him not much good. Meanwhile, Hexxy scored herself a 100-point Critical Quintuple Backstab. (Roll natural 20, d6+2+4 = 4+2+4) We will check, but I believe we took single hand proficiency and crit on 19 or 20, but we will check. We might have been exceptionally stupid and took the point in Crossbows simply to use up ammo. It looks like the best Critical we can get is that situation is..... 136? ((6+2+4)x5+8)x2 and a 1 in 60 probability.
Meanwhile, Orcslicer got view of Sam and got ready to charge in, but it was too late. Nalia got a good look on the inside of the room and cast a Web. I saw a couple of saves made, but then it looked like everybody got webbed. I do not understand the game mechanics well, but my guess is they had to make two saves against the Web spell. One save was required when the Web AoE reached the target, and another at the start of the next round, which seemed to be less than a second later.
Based on the result, we might have been particularly lucky in that fight. We had the Mage and Familiar go down very quickly and Brennan, Pebblecrusher, and Orcslicer all missed Web saves. I have traumatic memories of trying to win this fight by brute force and the help of one of the original Strategy Guides which most likely gives suboptimal advice. I still have a copy of that Guide somewhere in some box in my basement. I think they advocated having summoned beasties soak up all the damage and keeping Brennan busy - and we also have the advantage of starting with 340k extra experience from the start and a bunch of knowledge of the encounter. It looked like we wasted some high level spells on this encounter, but I will chalk it up to good luck at the start.
We got some nice prizes.
Full Plate for Sam so he can be a B9 Berserker at night. Or Full Plate for whoever is designated heavy metal tank.
Whispers of Silence for Hexxy when she is in stealth mode and not getting a sunburn.
Wand (of lightning)
Ring (of invisibility)
Here is our party:
721505 Sam with 92 kills worth 182775
803979 Korgi with 19 kills worth 28105
831956 Hexxy with 10 kills worth 16120
841199 Nalia with 51 kills worth 41242
841181 Anomen with 24 kills worth 40332
464581 Jaheira with 35 kills worth 42864
It is Day 4, Hour 12. We have been awake for two hours and been across town to the Temple Distract, back to the Slums for a big fight, then to Waukeen's Promenade for an even bigger fight. Most likely, we will head back to the Docks and visit the Shadow Thieves Guild and pick up the quest line there. We do not have an official quest lead. However, we can make one up easily enough.
We are not trading Hexxy in for Yoshimo. There is no point. Hexxy seems to have too many advantages right now. She is also not complaining about our Reputation level of 15, which is very surprising. We are more likely to trade Korgi in for Edwin. We are finished with the Killer Korgi quest and can proceed with the Edwina quest line. (which I have never seen firsthand)
We can do a little bit of shopping while in Waukeens, with about 6kg worth of junk to unload. We are low on Bullets +1 and Bullets +2, so we can replenish those a little bit. A Flail +2 offhand for Sam might also be nice - However I am not sure how much value there is in it, considering we will be investing nearly 4kg. If we are doing the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, then we would do well to pick up the Shield of Cheese for nearly 18kg - maybe less if we sing a song and cast a Friends spell.
Critical backstabs are always fun, aren't they?
I think my favorite is from my evil run, during Bodhi's side of the chapter 3 main quests. She wants us to kill some guy and advocate the Shadow Thieves, so she gives us a weapon, the "Shadow Thief Dagger" and asks us to plant it at the scene.
The weapon in question is terrible - 1d4 damage, and it doesn't even get a strength bonus. But the target is an unarmed nobleman with 15 hit points. So naturally, I chose to use the Shadow Thief Dagger as the murder weapon.
Hexxat snuck up on him, avoiding the guards' attention, and planted the knife in his back. Critical. Maximum damage. 80 points. With what amounts to the worst melee weapon a player can possibly equip. It's almost a shame to leave the bloody dagger behind after that.
I did not see this helpful information earlier. In a way, it is nice to know that some of the hard encounters get buffed with player experience to partially compensate for the 340k experience advantage.
Session 63 - An Errand for the Shadow Thieves
At Waukeens, we traded all the junk from our bags and a few gems for another 40xBullet+1. Then we headed to the Docks, where we met up with Bloodscalp, the master of the Shadow Thieves. Between him and Gaelen and that guy we worked with back in Baldur's Gate, they sure know a lot about our exploits. He tasked us with infiltrating an associate guild of Maevar.
At Maevar's we traded more junk, 5 Shortsword+1 and some more gems for another 40xBullet+2 and a Potion of Master Thievery. Upon meeting with Maevar, we found him to be a much more evil figure than Bloodscalp. The Shadow Thieves have already offered to help our situation. These guys like to beat information out of their victims.
Our first mission is to steal a necklace from the High Stormmistress of Talos. Nalia did not like this job one bit.
Firstly, we are not really working for this guy. We are only doing enough to get close enough to gain evidence on him and then we are taking him out. Aren't we glad we are taking him out eventually? Secondly, we have time to come up with a plan. They are expecting us to go over there and case the place and do the deed at night. Thirdly, it is not really stealing if we intend to bring it back after we are done with it. Now let's go check out this place and see what we are up against. We have all day.
How often is it we get to RP Chaotic? It is surprising Anomen did not express his opinion. Looking at the rest of the party:
Kagain doesn't care, as long as he gets to bury an axe in a skull.
Hexxy doesn't care. She already knows she's doing the dirty work.
Jaheira probably doesn't care. She is about the balance, anyway.
Anomen should care the most. He is a candidate for induction into the Order of the Radiant Heart!
Checking out what goods and services offered at the Temple of Talos, we invested 1860gp and bought the Girdle of Bluntness. The more we improve our AC, the better it gets. Another funny thing about Helmets and Belts is we seem to be able to freely change them in combat. So if we are sharp, we can make a quick changeup for some AC. I think our current configuration gets us to -6. (1, Dexterity-4, Helm-1, Ring-1, Cloak-1) The belt gets us to -9. Later we picked up a shield to get to -12. A potion of absorption gets us to -22. I will have to check.
Meanwhile, Hexxy loaded up on a couple of Potions of Master Thievery and grabbed the necklace while nobody was looking and Sam was shopping. Nobody seems to be the wiser. Hopefully we can finish up with this Maevar guy before too long. Maybe the Stormbringer will have a quest to bring it back!
As soon as we stepped outside the temple, a storm started brewing. I suppose Talos figured out very quickly what we were up to. Maybe the storm coincides with the exact moment the High Stormmistress intended to put on her necklace, only to find out it was missing. We made a quick stop at the Temple of Helm and picked up another quest to... balance the anger these gods might have against us. They want to
Korgi had another grudge to settle and another hatchet to bury - in somebody's skull. The guarded compound was our next stop. Right away, he got belligerent.
There was a battle with summoned monsters and a couple of demons that could have made for a messy battle, but seemed to be over pretty quickly. I read up something about the NIshruu and attacking the nearest spellcaster and draining spells and charges. So I had Sam dump every item he had that carried charges. Besides, if we need it, we can quickloot and equip.
In preparation for this battle, we identified the Black Spider Figurine, the Sand Thief's Ring, and the Namarra +2. There was also a Morningstar +2, so Sam can bash more things. We had Sam and Anomen cast DUHM and Jaheira on Bless.
This was intended as the first attempt to see how the traps worked upstairs and how the battle worked in general - and this is how it went:
Sam used the Namarra to send a Silence at the center of the group. It looks like we got Scion with Silence and that was their Mage. Time will tell if he has Vocalize. Anomen cast a Holy Smite and that blinded Stalman - and I believe that was their other caster. Just in case, Jaheira had an insect swarm coming after him.
The gross error we made was not going in there berserk. Their Kensai came in and got a stun in on Korgi and he was helpless for much of the fight. Koshi was also the first to fall.
Hexxy took a nasty backstab, but survived and that is all we need. She went down to 13hp, so I guess she survived because we cheat and had the option on for maximum hit points per level. We also remembered to take off the sunscreen while indoors. We had her walk around in a wide circle in the hopes of leading their Rogue around, but that did not work.
The spider Korgi spawned before getting stunned did not survive very long. I did not know how to pop off the web right away and she was a target. It was enough we could lead Koshi's backup melee away from the battle for a while. We had Nalia pop the Wand of Monster Summoning and we got 4 beasties to keep Ketta the Rogue busy.
Maferan was next to fall. Sam was able to get the slow effect on both the melee fighters and we had time to work on bringing them down during the majority of the time we could not see Ketta. She packed a lot of Invisibility Potions, but no Greater Healing. She should be able to heal up to full while invisible, no? She did not have such potions and she turned out to be third to fall.
With this, most of the danger is over. Anomen got caught in a trap for 50hp and a very short hold. The Hold seemed to only last a single round. Korgi got back into the battle.
By this time, it was almost over. We had one slowed melee left in Olaf and he went down a quick fourth. That left a Mage who still appeared to be Silenced and a Cleric that was both Blind and Infested with Insects.
Korgi got to bury an axe in Sion the Mage and Sam finished the fight.
Our party looks pretty healthy for a big fight.
Jaheira was off by 2hp.
Nalia was off by 13hp, from having a Magic Missile reflected back at her.
Korgi was missing 32hp, probably from that Kensai.
Sam was missing 20hp.
Anomen who sprung the trap got hit for 50hp.
Hexxy was already healed, since we took so long to search the compound.
We got lots of amazing prizes from that fight! We might almost say we have some gear! Here is our party so far:
736293 Sam with 97 kills worth 214275
818767 Korgi with 22 kills worth 34105
846725 Hexy with 11 kills worth 16120 - and yes a backstab on the Kensai did help
855968 Anomen with 25 kills worth 46332
471965 Jaheira with 36 kills worth 42864
We will do the Sir Sarles quest next, most likely, then turn the Necklace in to Maevar. We will be running errands for Edwin before long.
We have to check what resources we have left after that fight - and what else we can do while in town. I do not believe we prepped properly for the Twisted Rune. We already took out a couple of tough groups this day.
Not really, because she comes at level 8 with most of her hit dice already rolled. Only the two levels she takes after that are affected by the option. 40 HP at level 8, 12 more for max HP at level 9 and 10, a fixed 2 each at levels 11 through 13, and then 5 more from her ioun stone gets her to 63 total.
If you had rolled those levels, and gotten spectacularly unlucky with snake eyes at level 9 and 10 (probability 1/1296 since hit points are rolled with advantage), that would put you at (40+1+1+2+2+2)+10% = 48+10% = 52 HP. Which still has Hexxat survive at 2 HP after that maximum-damage stab.
If Hexxat falls in combat (by dropping to 1 HP), she drops her stuff, turns to mist, and retreats to her coffin in the bag. One hour later, she returns at full health. Unlike other party members, you can't use a Raise Dead/Resurrection effect to bring her back immediately. Hexxat doesn't earn her share of party experience while she's down, so in most cases it's best to just wait once you deal with the immediate combat situation even if the rest of the party could fight on.
Cleaning up from the mess at the Guarded Slaver Compound, the resulting hospital bill was 650gp. I understand there is supposed to be some hint to get from here to the twisted rune, but it does not matter. I did not find a Rogue Stone here, anyway. There might have been a couple of gaps to get from the Slaver Compound to the Guarded Compound to the Twisted Rune. Making up our own quests seems to be easy enough. We have Korgi with his many grudges to settle.
Government District - We talked to Sir Sarles and his price is high. He wants Illithium ore to work with. When we admitted how stupid we were, he told us who we could talk to to get it.
Waukeen's Promenade - We bribed the Ore Merchant 1kg to reveal the source of the Ore.
Copper Coronet - The Druegar was surprisingly much more agreeable to talk to than we imagined. He figured we paid the Ore Merchant more than enough to claim a share of the bribe. Then he said we wasted our money, because his ore was stolen. We were able to talk him into revealing this person.
Bridge District, Derelict House - We tracked down Neb.
He likes to go invisible and hide behind the breakfast bar and let the Child Spirits do the dirty work. We were carrying 0 anti-invis spells, but we decided on a cheesy way to handle this one. We walked in with Protection from Negative Energy on Sam and Korgi on Berserk. Hexxy was next to another Spirit and we did not have to worry about Level Drain. We decided to kill the Spirits. The guide says they are only worth 1k more each, so we gave up 4k experience.
Meanwhile, Neb was hiding behind the bar, so we sent Nalia in with Stoneskin and he took the bait. Then he was dead. We thought he was chugging X Healing Potions while invisible, but maybe it was whiskey.
Outside, we traded with the Fence and obtained 40xArrow+2 in exchange for Neb's Dagger, another Dagger, and some gems. Our low point for gold appears to be 20619 and now we are at 21138. We have a good number of magic items we are unlikely to use.
We returned to the Government District to claim our reward for the head of Neb. It looks like Korgi got the kill on it, which means it got chopped off instead of Sam Ashed and unrecognizable. Then we gave the ore to the artist so he could do his work.
The Temple of Helm was pleased at the news and gave us 1000gp, which was exactly equal to the bribe we gave and we are almost none the poorer for this deed. We also acquired the Helm of the Noble and that makes us a bit richer. When I remember, we can start saving money with this thing with 19/20 Charisma.
Day 4, Hour 18 - Back at the Docks and MaeVar's Lair.
Nalia is puzzled now. When did we grab the necklace? Painless, wasn't it? Hang tight. It only gets worse working for this guy. Maybe she was right with her warning, that we were going to sink very low working for this guy. He has us working for Edwin, so of course it is getting worse.
Sam got to M12 with this turnin and it was time to claim another point of weapon mastery. I chose......
a third point in 2W Style. We improve from -4OH penalty to -2. I was thinking.......
If our OH is a Flail, then we gained 2 points to hit. So we gain.
If our OH is a Dagger, then we gain 2 points to hit. So we gain.
If our OH is any other melee weapon, we gain 2 points to hit and we gain.
If we chose a different weapon like Katanas, then we gain 2 points only using Katanas and we are even. We only lose if we are putting more points into Katanas.
If we put the point into a missile weapon like Slings or Longbows, then we eliminate the 2-point penalty.
Meanwhile, in the MaeVar Guild, we found our Rogue Stone. So some time, we might be trying to figure out the Twisted Rune. I have not decided when that will be. Some more minor gems traded and we identified Celestial Fury. We figured we might need it in one of the upcoming encounters.
Edwin sent us on a hit job on a Cowled Wizard. Well, we don't really like the Cowled Wizards, anyway. They have Imoen. They offered some information if we were willing to do a hit job for them and we refused. His house was open and he had a bunch of Mephits waiting for us inside on the ground floor. The second floor had a couple of Stoned Golems. The big fight was on the third floor and it always helps if we are properly prepared.
Fortunately, there was Halfling Rogue outside wanting to sell his stuff. He complained he did not have very impressive inventory, but what he had was exactly what we needed. We accidentally sold off all of our non magical weapons. So we bought a couple of morningstars, axes, quarterstaves, and a longsword. We gave him a few gems to get his business started.
Anomen put up a Death Ward on Sam just in case it goes badly, but it did not. The Guide says he is opening up with some pretty good spells and it would be a good idea to buff up, but this is all we really needed.
He opened with a Contigency that gave him....
Protection from Normal Missiles. Protection from Magical Weapons.
What is missing? Yes! Normal Weapons! Something a L12 Party should never have!
It looks like he absorbed 2 hits from Sam with something, but his off-hand connected and started doing damage. Then Korgi hit with his offhand axe and caused a casting failure of whatever he was casting. The fight was over in the next round.
The other way I know of to cheese the fight is to run downstairs when he is casting his next spell. Waste 4 rounds, then hit him. The drawback is he might use that to put up more defenses. I understand that is how Mage battles are supposed to work. Build defenses. Take down defenses. The mage that is naked first dies.
We accumulated another hospital bill of 350gp, but we were able to finish the errands for Edwin and he sent us back to Maevar for more dirty work. This time it was another hit in the Sea Bounty next door. He begged for his life and we let him fake his death and give us he dagger.
Ani is funny. Sometimes he calls you out if we're on the wrong side of the law. Then he suggested buying the fake ore to trick Sir Sarles would be a great idea. This time, he called us out for letting our target go.
Mae probably knew of our treachery already, because he had no reward for us and he dismissed us to Edwin already. Edwin certainly knew of our treachery and decided to be on the winning side of the upcoming encounter. So he gave us a key to find the evidence we are looking for and we took that to Bloodscalp.
Nalia was also funny. She called us out for sinking so low as to steal a holy symbol from a Priest of Talos. Then she called Edwin out for turning on his boss. What's up? This is how Good triumphs over Evil! We see it in action as Korgi buries his Axe into Skulls, Good or Evil, doesn't matter. Now we see it in action as Eddie turns against Mae, simply because he wants to be on the winning side.
Of course, we were back for a final hit job on Mae. On the way in, we had our Fairy Dragon Familiar cast Invisibility on all of us so we could get the jump on this guy.
The Priest of Cyric was amazingly able to get spells off through the damage. He got a Bless off. It looks like he got a Miscast Magic off against Sam. That made no sense. Full metal armor, not casting spells. Maybe he thought he was a Berserker Cleric. Then he got Defensive Harmony, but that was doing zero good. I thought he was getting a Hold Person off which might have helped a little, but not enough to bother with Rage.
So this saga with the warring Thieves Guild is over - for a little bit. Now it is this other guild war remaining and causing problems. However, it is looking more and more like we have thrown in our lot with the Shadow Thieves once again.
Day 4, Hour 22 - Back in the Slums for one more order of business.
We paid 400gp to find out where the Ring was hidden, then back to the roof of the Copper Coronet.
How is it we left the Book of Kaza lying around for so long?
Borinall was an easy kill. It looks like Nalia one-shot him with a Flaming Arrow. So the rest of the fight was easy.
Here is our party:
832538 Sam with 110 kills worth 271235
915012 Korgi with 29 kills worth 51525
942927 Hexxy with 11 kills worth 16120
952170 Nalia with 54 kills worth 42842
952137 Anomen with 29 kills worth 48952
520059 Jaheira with 38 kills worth 50284
Anomen has a conflict with the Vampire and we have to look it up to decide how long he is willing to put up with it. We are looking at picking up Edwin to start his quests. So we might have some decisions to make.
Most likely, we are losing Korgi, but that might also depend on how big the conflict is between Anomen and Hexxat. With Edwin, we get quite a bit of mage firepower.
For the next day, if we are doing the Cult of the Unseeing Eye, then we have to get rid of Hexxy and replace her with either Yoshi or Jan. Then we can pick up Kel.
We seem to be moving through content quickly in terms of game time and we are not getting many triggers for companion quests. Ani and Nalia come to mind. If we give these people "breaks," do the timers continue for their companion quests?
Gold. We are gaining. We are at 36k and quite a few magic items in our bag of goodies. Reputation is at 16 and surprisingly nobody is complaining. So far I have only heard Ani complain. Charisma is at 19. We can get good prices for the best gear.
This session took longer in real time than in game time. We were doing some planning and mostly shopping and a little bit of experience and amazingly enough, about 300k in experience for the party.
We decided to part ways with Anomen for the time being in order to make room for Edwin. We are losing a lot of clerical power by doing this. He is disappointed that we are leaving him. Most likely, he will join Minsc for some drinks at the Copper Coronet. He gets to keep a Mace +2 and a Sling +2. Maybe when we pick him up again, his companion quest will be ready. Hopefully it is not on a time with main character timer.
The issue is we have a conflict between Anomen and that Vampire, Hexxat while with her, we effectively have access to a Bag of Holding which is proving to be amazingly valuable. For thief skills, we will likely develop Detect Illusion to see how well it works. We probably have enough in Stealth, Find Traps and Open Locks. We might have done well to even hold off on those items, because Potions are so easy to get.
We picked up Edwin and off the the Graveyard we went. Eddie's looking for a Nether Scroll and it was hiding right under us when we took Korgi on a graverobbing trip. Even better, there were more Spiders and Undead beasties waiting for us, even after being absent for only one day. Finally we found the Lich we were looking for and started a pleasant conversation with him, until Eddie cut it off.
Back at the Copper Coronet, we started shopping for some spells to fill Eddie's book. We also obtained the Army Scythe for Hexxy, to make her Crossbow option better. She is usually using Daggers while in high strength mode and the Crossbow while in low strength or needs some magical ammo. We also obtained the Azuredge, because we never know when that might come in handy. Sam does not have any skill in Axes right now, but all we have to do is score a hit.
At the Docks, we intervened in another fight to save a Shadow Thief from a group of Vampires.
And why not? We don't really kill the Vampires. We just inconvenience them for a few hours or so. The Shadow Thief figured they chose well investing in new allies.
At the Temple of Ogma, we bought a few Potions of Genius and started our Study Party. With Eddie at 25 Intelligence and 18 Wisdom, we were able to identify every item we were carrying, including the Pommel of the Equalizer, the G-String Bow Shaft, and a few Cursed Scrolls trying to pass as Protection. The Potion of Insight allowed us to identify 4 items, so maybe it was worth it, probably not quite. The only other use for the Insight will be when we start casting Wish spells.
With the study party just started, we made our way to the Bridge District to see what scrolls we could obtain from there. We were intercepted by Bandits who never seem to learn who to leave alone. We might also do well to learn not to stand in a line.
Their Mage had a mentality of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a Lightning Bolt for a Lightning Bolt. We walked around town for a while missing a bunch of hp, but eventually Jaheira cast Summon Woodland Beings to fix most of the damage and the bill to fix up Sam was another 150gp. It was not that big a deal.
Since we were walking around town, we made our way to the Temple District and returned the Ring to the Temple of Lathander. We did not get around to returning the Holy Symbol to Talos. Go figure.
Our party:
888197 Sam with 116 kills worth 285595
970671 Korgi with 38 kills worth 71200
998555 Hexy with 14 kills worth 34520
1007797 Nalia with 57 kills worth 43512
574854 Jaheira with 40 kills worth 51934
1055591 Eddy
We picked up a lot of spells. If there are critical lower level spells that we seem to be obviously missing, this is a good time to know, because we still have an hour or so left on our potions.
For M6 spells, Sam chose Protection from Magic Weapons. For M5, we picked up Spell Immunity. The idea we have in mind is we cast Spell Immunity - Abjuration in combination with Improved Haste and Protection from Magic Weapons and make it a long 4 rounds for somebody. Protection from Magic Scroll might also be a good combination as well.
Day 5, Hour 2 - We finally call it a night. Meanwhile we had another philosophical discussion with Hoddieman Jon Irenicus.
This is logical enough. It should not be contested. Does anybody know the name of this logical fallacy? That if it is logical, then it must be true?
Day 5, Hour 10 - Rested
Day 5, Hour 18 - D'Arnise Hold - It turns out there is nothing going on there yet. We are going to get events there once per week? Maybe we can slip a quick trip to the Underdark between Weeks 2 and 3? Are we going to be most of the way through ToB with a L30 party when Roenall comes to claim our castle?
Day 6, Hour 2- Rested again
Day 6, Hour 14 - Arrived at Trademeet - As promised, we made our way to see the mayor and find out what is going on. He left a druid named Cernd in the basement. With him joining, we left Korgan on reasonable terms. He got to keep the Frostreaver +3 and Full Plate +1 and the Helm of Charm Protection.
Day 6, Hour 23 - Druid Grove
With a good stealther and a vampire on top of it, we are better off scouting at night. The big drawback is it is very hard to see which way to go.
The Troll Mound was very much manageable, because we were able to pick them off a few at a time. At the end, we made the mistake of dropping a double fireball on the last group of 3 and that meant Eddie had to run around for a while. Our big prize from this was the Dale Protector. This will go to Nalia. She seems to be our only ranged when not casting, which is usually.
The Shadow Druids were on the warpath. Normally I do not like the idea of fighting a large group of casters, because who knows what they might be casting. Five of them with prepped iron skins casting Call Lightning might make for an interesting fight. Wrong fight. That was later. Oddly enough, the Call Lightning hit their other Fighter for some reason.
We found the Rakaasha the Dao were looking for. It was a much easier fight than the guide made it out to be, albeit a bit hard to path to the other two. Basic information such as knowing we need +2 weapons to hit is very helpful. In the picture, we killed one before the other two zoned in.
There was magic mushroom colony on the way and another group of druids guarding the path. Eventually we made our way to Faldorn. Cernd did not have any decent spells because we just dragged him out of prison, so we designated Jaheira for the Challenge.
She prebuffed with a Potion of Hill Giant Strength. She should have also prebuffed with Iron Skins, but it no longer matters.
Jaheira - Insect Swarm on Faldorn
Faldorn - Not sure, tried to cast something
Jaheira - Cast Conjure Animals near Faldorn
Faldorn - Grab a Quarterstaff and whack
Jaheira - Change form to Brown Bear
Three bears versus 1 druid. Jaheira must have been the mama bear and conjured the papa bear and the baby bear. Faldorn was just right.
We backtracked a bit and picked up Belm +2. This will do well for an offhand, because the extra APR means another swing from the FoA. So 3.5 swings with FoA and 1 with Belm and whether we have skill or not does not matter. We might grab a different offhand in case we want to use an ability. Or - We can leave that to the rest of our crew. Nalia comes to mind.
Day 7, Hour 12 - RISE AND SHINE!
This was a reloaded encounter, because I did not want Jaheira disappearing immediately after the encounter with all of our potions. I also did not know we would be needing none of them and it would have made some logistics easier down the road. The first run, we popped a Fear Wand and made one guy run clear across the map.
In the reload, we had a lot of characters force-attack the Cleric.
Day 7, Hour 20 - We arrived back at Trademeet and were hailed as heroes. We even had statues erected. The true hero was not around and graciously left that honor with Cernd.
Cernd is very likely to find out what it is like to be hailed as a hero one week and driven out of town the next week. Most likely he understands very well why we wander so much. Our party is looking very much like Hallowe'en. We have:
A stereotypical Knight.
A stereotypical Wizard.
A Witch.
A Vampire.
A Werewolf.
In the mean time, Trademeet sees us as heroes. After solving a couple more of their problems, Edwin and Hexxat had enough and walked out. Surprisingly, we still have the Bag of Holding with Hexxy's Coffin. How could she have forgotten it with us?
Shopping trip. We got up to nearly 54kg and it was time to start buying some interesting stuff.
Robe of the Good Archmagi for Nalia. This gives her some AC and frees up the Bracer slot for those archery bracers. For now, Sam can inherit the Bracers to the Death, but is usually using armor.
Some spells that are conspicuously missing from Nalia's book.
Tansheron's Bow +3 and we will never run out of ammo. In most situations, we are better off with the other bow with 3 shots per round and the main use of this bow is if we encounter a beastie that can only be hit with +3. In that case, we have a phantom +3 arrow that only hits for d6.
The One Gift Lost with 2 charges. Maybe it was a decent price for a couple of fireballs. It is probably not nearly as gamebreaking in this stage of the game as BG1.
Day 8, Hour 6 - We got Jaheira back and we are heading back.
Here is our party:
963606 Sam with 143 kills worth 353925 - slightly more because we picked up experience from the turnin that broke Hexy and Eddie.
1075188 Cernd with 3 kills worth 7420
1073926 Hexxy with 20 kills worth 38795
1130952 Eddie with 4 kills worth 6115
1083169 Nalia with 74 kills worth 76337
1206585 Rasaad who is new with us - He showed up when I was really struggling with where to put items with a couple of members about to depart.
559636 Jaheira with 51 kills worth 83474
Welp, the idea of getting through the Edwina quest chain is out. The same applies for Hexxy's quests. If we really want to do them, then an option might be to pick up Vicky.
Experience - It looks like we are about 222k away from the 1.25M cap for characters. We should be able to quickly do Cernd's quest. Maybe there are some things we can do to pick up a little bit of experience. There is also the Harper quest we are coming back for.
We should have decided some time ago what the core of our party is going to look like. Then we can get them experience at about the same time. We won't. It has been too interesting picking up characters and their questlines.
Rasaad - I have to decide how to develop him, even if for a short time. After Cernd and after the Harpers, we will likely do his quest chain next and maybe pick up Neera.
Oh, and the fun thing with those Trademeet statues? As you may have noticed with Cernd, they capture your character's animation at the time the statues were created. From one of my dead playthroughs:
And a couple of item notes ...
- Tansheron's Bow: When used with real ammo, it adds the phantom arrow damage for an effective +1d6 damage. That's the second-highest damage bonus for any bow in the game, better than any longbow. It's either the second or third best bow in the game; only the Gesen bow is definitively better with its +1d8+2 damage. And all of the top three bows are the short kind.
- Necklace of Missiles: You can sell and re-buy it to recharge to full (25 charges). But yes, it's much less valuable than it was in BG1, because fireballs just aren't worth that much anymore. Back in 2.5, its fireballs hit as level 9 effects so they could do things like interrupt liches, but that's no longer true; it's now level 3 like you'd expect from a fireball.
Session 67 - Who's your Daddy?
Day 9, Hour 2 - Arrived at Waukeen's Promenade
Interestingly enough, Cernd was able to recognize one of his former neighbors walking about at 2am. After catching up with some shocking news, he had us go to his former house to visit his squatters. Then we went to visit his former maid - at 3am. Could none of this wait until morning?
Day 9, Hour 11 - Rested
For some reason, taking out Deril was pretty easy. We were able to get shots on him before he could get his defenses up. He promised his guest some entertainment, but apparently did not go as planned.
I saw a Tattoo of Power - Spell Immunity, but we did not cast any spells. I saw a Spell Deflection and I saw a Stoneskin, but only saw a few hits stopped.
Our next stop was Harper Hold. This was a few reloads getting right. The first one, I ran an experiment with Celestial Fury and the Lightning Bolt blasted everybody. I did not remember if it was an actual lightning bolt or a strike on a single character. I will keep this in mind in the future - to have whoever is wielding CF immune to Electricity, because a 10d6 Lighting Bolt is nothing to sneeze at, especially when cornered. Other times we were deciding how much to prebuff going in, because it was just four of us left in the party. Creeping Doom turned out to be a game winner.
Study Parties are a very expensive habit for us. We ran one for Nalia to fill in the spells that are obviously missing - and to get Sam up to 1.25M. Here is where I learned that the party members we left behind are stuck at the experience level we left them - at least in Ani's case. The quest chains seem to pick up where they left off, but so does the experience. I did not test this with Minsc.
Instead we picked up Jan. He is an interesting character. It is also interesting the old guidebook I had gives him a terrible rating, but the guy I listen to on YouTube gives him an S-Tier rating. I do not remember exactly why that is. I dumped nearly all his points into Detect Illusion and maybe some in Set Traps. With 100 or 105 in Open Locks and Find Traps, that should be adequate and if it is not, then we have potions. I have not experimented with setting traps yet.
He also gets to use the Army Scythe and all those Crossbow Bolts we had left over from when Hexxy walked out on us.
Day 9, Hour 21 - Abandoned Ampitheater
A rogue named Geld Quickblade wanted 5kg from us to pass through the woods safely. That seemed way too much. That reminds me of a time, way back......
.....we came to a bridge on the way to Gnollhold and a couple of Ogrillions demanded a toll much smaller than that - and we refused to pay.
Day 10, Hour 7 - Rested
This area seemed to be a hotspot for wild animals. Who would have thought a campfire would draw so many? We ended up moving away from the campfire and encountered one pack of wolves and summoned a Skeleton to help guard for us while we slept.
Day 11, Hour 0 - Ambushed by Harpers
We got out of it peacefully.
Day 11, Hour 6 - We arrived at the Lost Temple
We never imagined it would take so much game time to arrive. I am thinking the Harper Ambush advanced the time to midnight. From an RP point of view, we will consider ourselves fully rested at daybreak.
We found the caged animals and freed the Grizzly Bear and made the animal keeper very angry at us, so we killed him. Then we tracked down Wilson the Grizzly Bear and he joined with us. He is considered...... mostly a companion for fun purposes - to say we have a bear in our party.
It makes me think of my World of Warcraft days. One of my characters was a Hunter with a pet Bear. That was the mark of a noob. Hunter with bear pet. Know what a Rogue has in common with a Noob?
They both pick locks.
We found some bound monks and eventually used the ropes to make a grand entry into the Lost Temple. Inside, Sam ran the Trials while Jan robbed the place blind. After the initiation, it turned out we were under attack. So out we went to confront our attackers.
This was also worth several reloads, because I was having trouble for some reason getting all the casts to work. We did a light prebuff, with the Gem of True Seeing and a Bless. Outside, we took out the Assassins first, then dropped Call Lightning, Malison, Chaos, and Creeping Doom. Most likely, I was accidentally ending casts early when targeting Assassins with missile weapons and just have to get better with micro. (Currently running with AI off, because the AI seems to be making terrible decisions for us - and I might also do well to study the AI options in more detail.)
A UI that provides a scrolltip describing the character's current action along with the name and hit points and status would be very interesting. Similarly, a scrolltip that gives the enemy status would be interesting, so we do not have to go through the combat log to see what status he has. Seconds to end of round would also be good.
We also had to get the conversation after the battle right to get the effect we intended. We were releasing Rasaad to run his Monastery. We will move on to find Wilson a new home.
It looks like our next stop will be the Wild Forest.
Here is our party:
1061290 Sam with 191 kills worth 397110
607811 Jaheira with 59 kills worth 105514
1180844 Nalia with 79 kills worth 102877
131267 Rasaad with 6 kills worth 10590 - now retired and running a monastery
654192 Jan with 2 kills worth 6000
1273136 Wilson with 3 kills worth 13000
From what I understand about Wilson the Bear - He can't equip much gear and therefore he can't tank. He can't cast any spells. He can't equip key weapons. All he does is fill a companion slot and bash things and eats a lot of food and maybe healing potions.
Our party planning has been anything but ideal. Maybe I will have this better thought out later, when we have a better concept of how much experience (and reputation) it takes to get from one point of the storyline to another. One place it shows up is the kg we spent getting Edwin a bunch of spells, only for him to walk out due to our bad planning. (If we were planning to work with some Evil companions, then the time to do it would have been much earlier in the reputation window.) In this run, our primary objective is to finish - and also to map out our lessons and prepare for mod runs.
We crossed the 1.25M threshold, so new party members will start there. Right now, they will be about 61k behind the leader. Since we have been working in so many sidequests and companion quests, it is probably inevitable that some companions will be behind in experience count.
A. Mage Slot
This is currently occupied by Nalia.
Neera will be an option. We should be meeting her soon and maybe even before Nalia hits 1.25M.
Imoen is also an option, but she shows up very late. If we decide to work Imoen into our final party, then she might do better in a backup position, because she will be very far behind in experience.
B. Cleric Slot
A couple of Sessions ago, this slot was occupied by Anomen. Unfortunately, we dumped him before running off with Edwin. The consequence is he will be at least 300k behind in experience.
Vicky is another option, but conflicts might make her harder to work in.
Cernd can cast Druid stuff.
C. Tank Slot
We are currently doing most of this. On Youtube, I hear great things about Jaheira.
D. Rogue Slot
We now put JJ there.
Imoen might be able to fill that slot with the help of potions. The same applies to Nalia.
E. Special Weapon Slot
We have the Flail of Ages
F. Special Weapon Slot
If we recruit Valygar, we might use him with the Celestial Fury
G. Special Weapon Slot
If we recruit Keldorn, we can acquire the Holy Avenger
Keldorn is most likely getting a brief appearance in SoA and a gracious out to spend time with his family and might return for ToB.
As for that stoneskin only blocking a few hits ... insect swarms eat through that stuff quickly. As do the darts you were throwing. You had that fight won before his defenses even went up, even though it took a bit longer to actually kill him.
I pretty much never use the Celestial Fury lightning strike ability. Looking it up - it's a lightning bolt. Not exactly the wizard spell, but the same projectile. Use at your own risk, or immunize the party, because lightning bolt bounces can get nasty.
One possible reason for losing spell casts in that big fight - if your target goes invisible or dies before the spell finishes, the casting is canceled and the spell is lost. I often cast Insect Swarm targeting my own front-liners for that reason. Spells that target a point on the ground don't suffer from this.