Soloing Planar Prison Early

Dale_Cooper

Hello

I’m planning a solo run of the saga as a Thief/Mage. One thing I’m interested in is grabbing the speed boots and Pixie Prick as early as possible in BG2. Boots of speed are obviously a huge power boost, and I love the Pixie Prick but it is not super powerful by the time you acquire it late in the game.

Is there any possibility to solo the Planar Prison early in Chapter 2? I know it’s a very hard area but wondering if there is any cheese or items I could employ to rush it fairly close to the start of the game. I have seen one strategy of popping in and out of the portals to backstab, but not sure how viable that actually is solo at low level.

BardsSuck_

I cheesed the hell out of that part with my multi thief/cleric, my gnome subhuman incel, (check my avatar) i popped invis, summon skellies from far away, rest scum, i cleaned whole map.
I think the initial encounter was hardest, maybe start invisible, and run to right, i used summons and sling.

The skeletons cleaned everything from map, in the north part i dodge holes, if you walk closely to edges you dont fall, but stay middle of bridge ,i managed to summon skellies to kill cambion, they actually did quite well.

Maybe you can adapt some of what i did.

chibisensei

Early in chapter 2 - means you are maybe level 6/7 or so (mage/thief)

As the previous post said "summons" - using summons (from the wand of monster summoning) as canon fodder works pretty well; invisibility potion/spells/ring or Hide in Plain Sight (Shadow dancer) to use up all the spell casters spells and there are a lot of them in the prison - assuming you also want to kill everyone in the prison - make sure you have enough ways to go invisible - the ring is the fastest way and cannot be interrupted.

Make sure to have some kind of protection from charm, domination, psionics and level 8th spells or again use invisibility items to make it possible to survive at low levels without a team. Remember if you are charmed - it is game over. If you want cheese to over come the lack of protection power from cleric/druids - remember that green scrolls and potions are there and can more or less substitute to some extent all these cleric/druid protections - assuming you have the gold/picket pocket skill to steal them.

Oh and don't forget to pick up

the "cloak of non-detection" (assuming you know where to pick it up) otherwise using invisibility from any item/spell will basically kill this cheese tactic. And the "cloak of the sewers" will help as well - pick it up if you can.

In general, the polymorph-self spell is better than the cloak for mustard jelly but the rat form is great and can be cheesed - no pun intended).

If you have traps (at 50%+) - they can only help if you survive the initial fight

If you do not mind adding mods - you can get the original BG1 monster summoning spells (before BG2 and EE nerfed it) - which allows you to surpass the artifical monster summoning limit of 5-6 in BG2EE - there is nothing like 8-10 monsters from monster summoning to make you feel like a summoner. lol - And by chapter two - you should Monster Summoning I-III - you can actually create your own army if you really wanted to. And if you do decide to install BG1 monster summoning you might as well do it for BG1 animate skeletons - which gives you 1 skeleton for each level (although they dont really get much more powerful) but a small skeleton army works wonders against mages --- on a quick side note - I faced off against a Naga-mage and it used animate skeletons and it created at least 12 skeletons so be warned enemy mages will have access to these modified spells as well - seeing 12+ enemy skeletons on the screen will make you scream and run away... lol

Useful spells you will need - breach, secret word, spell thrust and some kind of spell deflection and /or minor globe -- all of them if you can and protection from evil. - If you are not high enough level to cast them (you should be able to cast everything or lack the spell slots - cast them using scrolls). And wizard eye - you can do some fun things with that spell that is very cheesy.

And of course the ultimate cheese item and totally legal no mods required and no crazy amount of gold either

The Staff of the Magi - can be picked up in chapter 2 but you just need to be brave enough to get it

BardsSuck_

Man thats overkill advice, no way hes going to get lv 7 spells by chapter 2, or even staff of magi LOL

Like i said i did it with hide in shadows and skeletons. If he manages his micro well, he can do it, the first battle is harder, but he can start invis and run right.

gorgonzola

BardsSuck_ wrote: »

Man thats overkill advice, no way hes going to get lv 7 spells by chapter 2, or even staff of magi LOL

I got the staff with insane difficulty soloing and quite early SoA with a sorcerer, that at low levels is not the OP toon that becomes later, tactics mod installed so the enemy mage actually uses the staff herself to cast and disappear on regular basis and overall the enemies are buffed and there are YT videos of people winning the vanilla battle right out of Chateau Irenicus.
I would say that a MT can beat the vanilla Twisted rune early SoA, but the same battle can be very challenging for a full party mid chap2, it all depends on the player's skill and knowledge of the game.
Having the staff makes very easy to beat the Planar Sphere for the same toon and possibly the sphere without the staff is harder then the rune, so it seems to me a very useful advice as if a player can not get the staff probably will also fail in conquering the sphere.
Edit : i intended the planar prison, not the planar sphere that is a completely different quest.