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"Maybe this time" [NO-RELOAD THREAD]: "The Tale of TEN THOUSAND Trials"

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  • ArthasArthas Member Posts: 1,091

    About Melissan's stun attack: it only has a save penalty of -2 (or maybe even just zero), but her attack also penalizes saving throws by -1 per hit, and I believe that lasts 3 rounds, which means that she can impose very heavy penalties to saving throws if she lands many hits. The save penalties are dispellable but otherwise can't be blocked without PFMW or SCS Absolute Immunity.

    The succubus charm is indeed -10 against males and 0 against females.

    is this even in non-Ascension playthroughs?
  • ArthasArthas Member Posts: 1,091
    Grond0 said:

    Arthas said:

    About Melissan's stun attack: it only has a save penalty of -2 (or maybe even just zero), but her attack also penalizes saving throws by -1 per hit, and I believe that lasts 3 rounds, which means that she can impose very heavy penalties to saving throws if she lands many hits. The save penalties are dispellable but otherwise can't be blocked without PFMW or SCS Absolute Immunity.

    The succubus charm is indeed -10 against males and 0 against females.

    is this even in non-Ascension playthroughs?
    Yes - the succubus is part of the group you face after you've defeated Mel's 3rd incarnation.
    What about the cheesy melissan I hit you therefore I penalize your save?

    Oh, and btw, is there a guide anywhere of suggested weapons to be worn in ToB to correctly sinergyze with each other when dual wielding? Not referring to off hand cheeses and so on.
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    Arthas said:

    What about the cheesy melissan I hit you therefore I penalize your save?

    Oh, and btw, is there a guide anywhere of suggested weapons to be worn in ToB to correctly sinergyze with each other when dual wielding? Not referring to off hand cheeses and so on.

    You can just avoid getting hit in melee, or use potions to lower saves, or equip something to provide immunity to stun.

    For weapons it depends on what you're trying to achieve. Other than APR bonuses common choices would be:
    - weapons conferring immunities, e.g. to stun or level drain or charm.
    - DoE to boost physical resistance.
    - Crom Faeyr to boost strength.
    You may also find though that using a shield is the best option - for instance that would help reduce the number of hits Mel makes on you.
    StummvonBordwehrsemiticgoddessWise_GrimwaldCrevsDaak
  • lroumenlroumen Member Posts: 2,508
    I thought only mazzy fentans short sword protected against stun.
    lolien
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    lroumen said:

    I thought only mazzy fentans short sword protected against stun.

    That's right - so it's only an option for certain characters.
    Corey_RussellWise_GrimwaldCrevsDaaklolien
  • Corey_RussellCorey_Russell Member Posts: 995
    Going to get to my Thrasher run (human cleric) tonight. Will work on him after bowling tonight. Think we are in the Cloakwood. With any luck at the very least he can be out of BG 1 before the week-end's up.
    Wise_Grimwald
  • Corey_RussellCorey_Russell Member Posts: 995
    In vanilla, Melissan throws darts that dispel - reflection shield is an excellent choice for a player character that can use it to protect your buffs.
    StummvonBordwehrWise_GrimwaldCrevsDaak
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903

    Frost: No-Reload Skyrim Run

    Part 5

    Before we go back to Sky Haven Temple and finish clearing out the Forsworn inside, we use Detect Life to grind Alteration to afford one or two new perks, then buy a few more Alteration spells from Tolfdir. Our new armor spell, Ebonyflesh, will give us 350 points of armor provided we're only wearing robes and no actual armor. For reference, that amounts to 42% damage reduction, a major boost to our survivability, though we have to remember to cast it before major fights.

    We also get the Paralyze spell, which is all but impossible for most creatures to resist and lasts for 27 seconds thanks to Vancian Magic and Alteration Mastery... or over 60 seconds if we dual-cast it, virtually an instant kill.


    Aside from some spiders, fire traps, and some easy puzzles, Sky Haven Temple is no trouble. All we need to do to access Alduin's Wall and figure out the prophecy whatever is spill a bit of our blood onto a seal.


    I will never understanding why people in TV and movies and video games cut their hand when they need to spill blood for some ritual. It hurts a lot more than cutting your arm or your leg and inflicts a much worse injury that can cripple the use of a hand for days at the very least.

    The wall says that the ancient humans defeated Alduin using a Shout, and while Frost, as the Dragonborn, is very good at yelling, we don't know the words of that Shout. The Greybeards don't know it, either, so our only hope of learning it is to find an Elder Scroll.

    An Elder Scroll is a scroll that has existed since the beginning of time or thereabouts and contains all knowledge of the universe, but is so confusing and inscrutable (the text on the scroll constantly moves, and the statements inside are contradictory and not always "true") that most people can barely understand any of it, and prolonged reading induces blindness. Mortals are too stupid to grasp the information fully, and the things are incredibly rare.

    But, as it happens, an orc at the Winterhold college library knows a guy who used to write about them, a crazy hermit who's been camping out on an ice floe for many years. We head out to the hermit, who directs us to the location of the nearest Elder Scroll: locked up in a special device at the bottom of a dwarven ruin beneath the caves of Blackreach.

    It's not far. We fast-travel to the ruins of Saarthal, then head north, where a Frostbite Spider is hanging around. I've dealt with these critters before and had no trouble, so I just Fireball the thing.

    But Fireball doesn't kill the spider; this is a Giant Frostbite Spider, which is considerably tougher. It deals some minor poison damage with its ranged attack, then jumps on us just as we're charging our next Fireball spell.

    Suddenly, Frost dies.

    I have no idea what just happened. Frost was at nearly full Health; she would have been at 300 when the spider pounced. She might have been unarmored, but there's no way a Frostbite Spider could have dealt 300 damage in one hit. Even a dragon's bite doesn't do that much damage, at least in the unmodded game.

    For a moment, I'm sure it's a bug. Then I check the numbers for the Smilodon mod and realizes that Smilodon applies some additional damage multipliers, and when I look up the Giant Frostbite Spider, it does 65 base damage. It seems like those multipliers were responsible for the death.

    Then I actually apply the multipliers in Excel. Even with all relevant multipliers, the Giant Frostbite Spider shouldn't have been able to deal anywhere close to 300 damage. Even if it was a power attack and the power attack dealt more damage than it was supposed to, and the spider got extra bonuses from a combat skill of some sort, it still shouldn't have done 300 damage. Over 200 damage, maybe, as crazy as that sounds, but not 300.

    But I'm not sure there isn't some other inexplicable factor, and while I've struggled to find a cause that's not just a bug, I don't have enough knowledge of the underlying game system (I've beaten the game like twice) or my mods (this is the first time I've played any of them) to know for certain that it had to be a bug.

    Rather than persist in a run that might have ended legitimately, I decide to start over.

    This time, though, I'm going to do things a little bit differently.
    StummvonBordwehrGrond0CrevsDaaklolien
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903

    Zovai: No-Reload Skyrim Run

    Part 10

    Time to delve deep into Blackreach and snatch that Elder Scroll. I don't know all the different pathways into Blackreach, but the one I took runs through a Dwemer ruins that's crawling with Dwemer robots that are highly resistant to magic.

    I can probably overpower them with a Potent Sparks spell or even a Slasher spell. But I have a more important spell to try out: Enhance Weapon Speed.

    I've had this for a long time--for multiple runs, actually--but I've never made much use of it because I've been relying on spells to deal damage instead of weapons. But Enhance Weapon Speed is actually incredibly powerful... especially now that we have the high-damage Dragonbane katana.

    Normally, Zovai can swing a sword a little faster than once per second. But for the very short duration in which Enhanced Weapon Speed is active, she can swing a sword--or any weapon, really; even a slow-moving warhammer--as fast as I can click the mouse button, many times per second. It drains our Stamina really fast, but it deals lots of nonmagical damage and we quickly gain levels in the One-Handed skill.




    I travel with Dragonhide always active, but apparently it has no impact on trap damage, just like armor in Oblivion. I nearly die to a spinning blade trap when I accidentally fail to hop over a pressure plate on a slight incline.


    It's a worrisome reminder that we're still reliant on high Health for surviving certain threats.

    Lower down in the dungeon, Falmer--elf mutants who have lived so long underground that they lost their vision, their compassion for other creatures, and even their souls--wait in silence, listening for our approach. The Muffle spell makes us almost undetectable if we're careful, since they're so dependent on their sense of hearing, but it's not strictly necessary to sneak past them. I can always just blow them up instead.


    They used to be Snow Elves, but they've long since lost that status. They're incredibly vicious and evil creatures; I find torture devices and desecrated corpses lying around their homes. I make a point of releasing the shackles from a bloody half-skeleton and a still-warm elf. It seemed wrong to leave them shackled even in death.



    I use teleportation to return to our bed to restore our spell slots and make sure we always have plenty on hand for an emergency. On the way back, I run into the spinning blade trap again. This time, I don't take any risks--I use the Become Ethereal Shout to become intangible and immune to damage for a few brief seconds while I climb the incline.



    There's a long cooldown for this Shout, so you can't stay invincible for long, but it's a lovely rescue option.

    Finally, we arrive in Blackreach, the massive subterranean cavern filled with bioluminescent fungi. It's a very haunting and beautiful place.


    I notice a Dwemer Centurion--a huge robot with crazy stats and resistances--and discover that I can dispatch it just by using a Weakness to Shock spell before blasting it with Chain Lightning.



    I take some time to admire the scenery. Blackreach is one of the cooler places in Skyrim.



    I fiddle with some puzzles and grab the Elder Scroll...



    ...but I've found some excellent loot around here and I want to keep poking around. I find something I don't think I've ever seen before: a humanoid servant to the Falmer.


    To my surprise, the servants are loyal to their masters and attack Zovai on sight. But they are not much of a threat; they're just ordinary folks with some basic weaponry.

    Once I've cleared out an entire settlement of Falmer and their humanoid goons, I decide to teleport back up to the surface. Yet again, the College of Winterhold is besieged by a dragon.


    I drink a few fire resistance and healing potions to survive its breath, then bring it down with a Weakness to Shock spell and some lightning spells.



    We're almost ready for the endgame. With the souls I've gathered in Blackreach, I enchant a new set of equipment to cover our weaknesses and make Zovai a little bit sturdier overall.





    With the Elder Scroll in hand, I fast-travel to Paarthunax, the dragon who leads the Greybeards and lives at the Throat of the World. We use the scroll to look back into the past, the day Alduin was defeated, and learn the Shout that the ancient Nords use to bring down Alduin so many ages ago.


    Just as the vision ends and we return to the present, Alduin appears to kill us, but Paarthunax is on our side.


    Anxious about Alduin's breath weapons--he can breathe both frost and fire--I cast fire resistance and cold resistance spells under Slow Time while backing away.


    Unfortunately, I mistake Paarthunax for Alduin (dragons looks so much alike!) and end up blasting both of them with dual-casted Ice Storm spells.



    With Vancian Magic doubling our damage output, and our perks and skills increasing it further, Alduin's innate weakness to frost damage let us bring him down very quickly. But we can't quite kill him--not in the material plane, at least.


    We'll have to figure out how to reach him later. In the meantime, I head back to the college... where yet another dragon foolishly attempts to slay us. We hit him with Weakness to Fire and blast him with Fireballs.




    We're almost done.
    StummvonBordwehrCrevsDaaklolien
  • Grond0Grond0 Member Posts: 7,305
    edited August 2018
    King's Bounty undead run

    From the age of some computer files I have I think I started playing King's Bounty: the Legend about 6 years ago. The basic adventuring set-up is similar to Might & Magic, but like Heroes of Might & Magic combat is resolved on a separate hex-based screen. There are lots of different unit types you can place in your hero's army, but fairly early on I decided to do a run using only undead units. As I got better at the game I then made those rules harder, so that now I'm playing on the following basis:
    - no-reload (of course) on impossible difficulty
    - must never lose or run away from a fight (in KB losing a fight is not generally the end of the game, though it is in some cases)
    - must never have any creatures other than undead in an army when fighting (they can be carried on the adventure screen, to complete quests)
    - must never have fewer of any type of troop at the end of combat than the start

    To make those rules a bit easier I used a game editor to check lots of starting positions to assess how easy they would be (there's a lot of randomness about whether particular equipment and spells is available in the game). I eventually settled on a starting position that I thought gave me some sort of chance to make progress and this run will be my 275th attempt at this same starting position ;).

    I've generally seen improvements over time and have had my most successful attempt relatively recently, getting perhaps 2/3 of the way through the game. I've deliberately never looked at any walkthrough though, so there's still plenty of the game I've not seen and it may well be the case that it's impossible to complete the game using my rules - though that would be a bit of an anti-climax :p.

    At the start of the game you are offered some trials to allow you to assess the type of class you want to be. In fact there's no option about that - you always end up as a treasure hunter - but normally you would want to do the trials to pick up various spells and treasure. However, you can't avoid fighting in those and there are no undead troops available here, so I'm forced to accept the job without doing the trials.

    Leaving the trial area took me to an audience with the king. That provided an opportunity to get rid of my starting army there.

    One of the objects in Greenwort, the area you start in, is a 'strange stone'. Activating this with the help of the local Mages Guild will randomly give you either a small bit of experience, a boost to defense or a boost to mana. The defense and mana boosts are real gains, but the experience is essentially meaningless in a long game, so for quite a while now I've been going to the Strange Stone immediately on starting the game and quitting the run if experience is offered (accounting for probably about 30-40 of my many attempts). In this case the Strange Stone turns into an altar offering an improvement to defense, so all is well to continue.
    ArctodussemiticgoddessWise_GrimwaldCrevsDaak
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903

    semi: No-Reload Dragon Warrior Monsters Run

    Part 1

    I've started a new no-reload game of one of my old favorites: Dragon Warrior Monsters. DWM is a Pokemon-style game based on the enemies from the old Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest games, but the gameplay is much more dynamic, complex, and subject to random chance than Pokemon games. Instead of being based on grinding and rock-paper-scissors matchups, DWM is based on breeding monsters to get new types of monsters.

    Breeding monsters is the basis of DWM gameplay. Take the example of a Unicorn. Unicorns are awesome monsters that can heal your allies and even raise them from death. Problem is... you can't find one in the wild.

    You can, however, breed certain monsters together to produce a baby Unicorn you can raise from birth. For instance, if you breed a Tonguella (imagine a fat biped with a big tongue) with any member of the Slime family, or any member of the Beast family with a Fangslime (a blob of slime with a mohawk), you'll get a Unicorn egg.

    But catching most monsters is very difficult in DWM, and highly dependent on luck, so you can never quite be sure which monsters you're going to have, or what gender they are. Only a few select critters are guaranteed to join you, and to get the best critters in your party, you have to adapt to whatever the game throws at you.

    This run will have a special restriction: I can't grind for experience. This means I can only enter a single "gate" (a wilderness area) once in the entire game, and once I explore all screens of a certain map, I have to go straight to the next area. I can't wander around aimlessly to get more experience.

    More importantly, this severely limits what monsters I can catch. If I don't get a Gremlin in a certain gate, I can never get a Gremlin unless I breed for one--and the monsters at my disposal are 100% finite.

    The game was designed assuming the player entered the "gates" multiple times in a single run to grind monsters and get new resources. In this run, I'll only have a fraction of the resources that I normally would have in DWM, and since this is a no-reload run, I have to roll with the punches in this highly luck-dependent game.

    We start the game at home at midnight. Here's the main character, canonically named Terry, and his snoozing sister Milayou. Since screenshots are very small for this run, they won't be hidden in spoiler tags.

    Our problems begin when a weird little critter named Warubou hops out of a drawer to kidnap our sister.

    Shortly after, another weird little critter named Watabou hops out of the same drawer.

    Watabou promises to help us find our sister and hops back in the drawer. We climb in after him and are transported to a strange new world, where an old geezer has been expecting us.

    We find ourselves in GreatTree, a colossal tree that the locals have made into a small city. Up at the top, we meet the king, who wants us to raise monsters and win the Starry Night Tournament, an upcoming tournament for "monster masters," the DWM equivalent of Pokemon trainers. The king is surprised to hear that we have other goals in mind.

    But the victor of the Starry Night Tournament gets to make a wish, so if we win, we get to find our sister Milayou. It's quite convenient for the king who kidnapped us and is trying to force us into servitude.

    Notice that the game's textbox is rather tiny. A lot of sentences can't show up in a single screen.

    We go to the farm to get some monsters, but there's only a single one left: Slib, the favorite monster of the former king.

    This is the first member of the Slime family, known simply as a Slime. Slime monsters have high HP and speed (AGL is agility, which determines which monster strikes first in each round of combat) as well as some decent resistances to spells. However, their other stats are pretty lousy, and this one gains levels very slowly.

    That's a pretty big handicap in our run, since we're only going to get so many opportunities to earn XP. We're going to have to get fast-growing monsters as soon as we can, or else we'll hit a major block shortly into the game.

    The king is furious that the head of the farm, little Pulio, let all of his other monsters run away. Pulio is about to be thrown into the dungeon when we step forward and offer to catch Hale, another Slime monster who ran away, if Pulio is freed.

    Before we go, we grab an Herb from a nearby chest. Herbs heal a little over 30 HP, which isn't much in the long run, but is actually a 100% heal option for early game critters. We then head off to the Traveler's Gate, a swirly portal thingy.

    These portals, or gates, lead to randomized wilderness areas. This one, for example, has 4 different maps, and you reach the next map by finding a big hole and hopping through it. The maps aren't too flashy.

    But the music is quite enchanting. It isn't long before we run into our first enemy--a Dracky!

    Our only monster, Slib the Slime, manages to bring it down in a few rounds, but unfortunately, the Dracky doesn't join us after it's been defeated. We should get a Dracky before the end of this gate, though, since the odds of catching monsters in the first area is unusually high. Normally, you need to give meat treats to monsters to lower their "Wild" score and make them more tame and willing to join you, but early-game critters have very low Wild and aren't too shy about joining the party.

    We heal Slib with an Herb and keep searching the map for new Herbs and new monsters. We run into an Anteater!

    Slib gains a level by defeating this critter (Slib has a powerful advantage due to his unusually high starting HP) and the Anteater joins us. It's a pretty lousy monster, but right now, it's a valuable addition to the party.

    Our new monster, Ares the Anteater, belongs to the Beast family. Beasts have high HP and attack (ATK) values, which makes them great damage dealers, but otherwise their stats are mediocre.

    Finally, we win over a Dracky, and fill our final party slot (we can only travel with three monsters at a time). Dirk the Dracky doesn't have great stats...

    ...but he'll grow very quickly and continue to be strong for a little while into the future. Once he learns the Sleep skill at a higher level, he'll be able to temporarily disable important enemies.

    We win a few more fights with our trio of monsters and proceed to the boss, Hale, who must be beaten up before he'll agree to come back to the farmer. Hale is a Healer, one of the few monsters who inherently know the Heal spell.

    He lasts a long time, but his offensive powers aren't too scary. Once he goes down, Hale joins the party and immediately becomes our top monster.

    Watabou appears and warps us back to the king's chamber. Due to the rules of the run, we can never re-enter that gate to train our monsters, so we have to proceed to the next challenge.

    In order to unlock new gates, we need to win fights at the arena. The receptionist is cute.

    The enemies are always the same for each run, but they can be pretty tough. We have to win three fights in a row, each one against a new batch of monsters, and we can't heal in between them. Fortunately, the first two fights are against some low-offense enemies who can't deal much damage.


    The last fight is against a group of zombies: two Spookies and a Hork. All of them can use Lushlicks, a one-round disabler. Apparently licking monsters induces a helpless shivering state.

    They have some decent attack power, too, but Hale is a sturdy character and has lots of MP to spam Heal spells.

    We have now unlocked two new areas: the Gates of Villager and Talisman. All the gates in this game have weird and mysterious names--maybe because of translation issues from the original Japanese.

    These next two gates are going to be very important. We can't breed monsters yet because only older monsters--those who are at least level 10--can breed. Until then, we have to try to get as many useful monsters as we can.

    Without the ability to grind, we need to be very efficient about breeding our monsters, and luck can play a huge role in the type of critters we can get.
    ArctodusStummvonBordwehrAerakarlolien
  • Wise_GrimwaldWise_Grimwald Member Posts: 3,837

    Thrasher the human cleric - FINAL BG 1 Update!
    Traveling with: Minsc, (Kagain), Ajantis, Kivan, Imoen, Dynaheir


    I made some great progress with Thrasher. The party is a very solid team. I made a mistake and got my reputation too high and lost Kagain, so recruited Ajantis to replace him. I searched high and low for a magical bastard sword, but couldn't find one. Sashanstar refused to give us our reward even though all the dopplegangers were dead, but didn't want to lose rep killing him. I tried charming him to have his captain kill him for no rep loss, but that didn't work he has really high magic resistance.

    You don't lose reputation for killing him. ???
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