The Dwarven Helmites went to larswood and killed the druids there. They are trying to get experience before returning to the Lighthouse area. Watcher did level up as a cleric as a bear was killed just after the second druid.
We killed the spiders in Landrin's home and after getting the reward, just had enough gold to upgrade the girdle of piercing. Just 30 gp left.
EDIT
We killed a mixed party of wolves to the east of Lathander's Temple and went from there to kill basilisks. However, we first dealt with Peter's Party. Once they were dead I took a potion of oil of speed and read a scroll to protect myself from petrification. I then scoured the area killing every basilisk and medusa that I could find, finishing with Mutamin. He started by trying unsuccessfully to charm me, my helmet protecting me from the spell. I used ranged weapons until he cast a blindness spell after which I moved to melee range. He was a bit unwise. If after casting blindness he had moved away for ranged attacks he might have been more successful. Who am I to complain? I killed him and then went in search of my allies.
I restarted my restless run with a new party, only to die in Durlag's Tower to a Lightning Bolt trap shortly before the Wisdom tome. I didn't realize any of the upper-level traps were area-effect, so I thought a high-HP character could take the hit.
All the extra clicks are hard on my hands, so I'm downgrading the restless run to a solo restless run with a simple dwarven Fighter/Thief. It's not quite as exciting and flashy as a party run where the Reform Party trick lets us blast enemies with Special Snares or summon hordes of Spirit Lions or stack Dark Moon Monk Blur bonuses or WoL-boosted Boon of Lathander APR bonuses to, you know, explode everything to death, but all that stuff takes a lot of mouse clicks, and a solo run is easier on my hands.
Although... now that I think about it, a restless solo run with a Fighter/Thief is actually not that much more impressive than a regular solo run with a Fighter/Thief, since a Fighter/Thief doesn't use that many per-day abilities to begin with. I mean, traps and HLAs and Algernon's Cloak and Vhailor's Helm and so forth are going to be more limited, but when I think about the run as a whole, it actually looks almost identical to a normal solo Fighter/Thief run. The "restless" part is barely even relevant. As long as you quick save and quick load after every long-term area transition, you don't have to worry about fatigue and that's the one big drawback for a class that doesn't rely on spells.
Restless runs can be fun if you're using stuff like the Reform Party trick to slip around the limitations of the run, but that really only works if you're playing with a full party. It's just not that interesting for a solo run.
Maybe I should just move on to some other new gimmick.
Upon arrival at the Ice Island we were attcked by mages. We killed two of them without5 too much difficulty, but there was also an invisible one who cast powerful summons spells. I believe what killed me was a Hakashar. (I might have spelled that incorrectly) However, there were goblins and hobgoblins as well.
It was a matter of who died first. I thought we were going to win, but clearly a critical hit finished the run.
Another Trio of dwarves, this time the Champion is a Hammer of Moradin instead of an Everwatch knight, a True Class Cleric of Celemvor instead of a fighter/cleric watcher of Helm whilst the illusionist/thief is identical.
It will be interesting to see how the true class cleric compares with a fighter/cleric.
I haven't played the kits before so it is all new.
Tarnesh did not prove to be a problem.
Well that game didn't last long. The werewolf near high hedge killed Haakon.
We cleared out the Small Teeth Pass area, on which nothing of note was slain except for a bunch of aTweaks Nereids that managed to kill Cernd because I forgot they had their Drowning Kiss ability and did not have Cernd cast Death Ward onto himself. But before that had happened I had Cernd summon a bunch of Elementals. They did the job, and not only that, but they also cleared out the surrounding area of subterranean rodents:
I noticed too late, otherwise I could've provided an image of the event itself, but I suppose raising Cernd was the our priority.
Other than that, we sold a bunch of stuff, lost some gold because of Mazzy's fighter stronghold, got some from Jan's stronghold. Once we were out of the Thieves' Guild, Valen spawned. We dismissed her and told Brus we were on our way to meet Gaelan Bayle. We paid him 90k and we're now on our way to see the man himself Aran Linvail.
I've been making good progress in SoA, with a surprising lack of trouble so far. No character got close to dying, the only time I lost control of a character I was able to counter immediately with exaltation. This is certainly in part due to the tactical difficulty setting, which is easier compared to my previous installation (the number of prebuffs for most mages is relatively low - lower level mages won't even have spell protections, and higher level ones will usually only have one, so secret word + breach + true sight is generally enough to destroy every potentially dangerous spellcaster, though often I'm simply able to take down mages before their prebuffs even fire up). Entropy shield and impervious sanctity of mind offer a whole new level of defensive safety for Constantia herself. In fact, 4 out of 6 party members can protect their buffs (making my cleric buffs much more valuable), and Graun has enrage, which is undispellable.
Aside from these defensive buffs, I haven't added many new IWD spells to my arsenal for now, though this is in part due to me not buying a lot of new scrolls. I am using static charge a bit more compared to BG1, though. Otherwise, I mostly go for the usual defensive and offensive buffs - for difficult encounters:
Arcane spellcasters: Shield, blur, MI, spell shield, Stoneskin, SI:A, MMM
Divine spellcasters: Entropy shield, Impervious sanctity of mind, armor of faith, ironskin, Storm Shell, Defensive Harmony, DUHM, sometimes protection from fire
Everyone: The emotion buffs, bless, prayer, recitation, death ward, defensive harmony, chaotic commands, PfE 10' radius, remove fear, haste
Add in true sight, enrage, traps/backstabs, sometimes item abilities such as MI or Breathe Acid (from The Visage) or sequencers (often involving greater malison and a type of crowd control such as slow), a few aggressive spells (insect plague, static charge, sunscorch, alicorn lance, nature's beauty, sunray, power words: silence/blind) and direct counters such as death spell or spell protection removal + breach with some added summons (mostly skeleton warriors, aerial servants, fire elementals - statue summons and spirit animals are usually saved for emergencies) and a careful approach, staying at range if needed. I've yet to find a scroll of improved haste, which will really improve Graun's already incredible damage output. For most encounters, though, I don't need many buffs at all - the skald song and a few summons are often enough, with strategic defensive spells used to counter specific abilities (though Constantia always has at least CC and death ward going).
I don't have anything too exciting to report in terms of activities. After completing the easier Athkatla quests, I started doing stronghold quests (no lich spawns on tactical difficulty, it seems - that could've been interesting). First up was the Druid Grove, an easy task for Alexandra, her spirit animals, defensive buffs and static charge:
As it turns out, spirit trolls do get their greater command + flamestrike abilities on tactical difficulty, but good saves, CC, exaltation and protection from fire were available to counter this. Next up: Temple ruins. With no liches, fire elementals basically cleared the entire area by themselves. The shade lord was only engaged in melee by an enraged Graun, and I had to use secret word + breach to get past his PFMW:
It's so refreshing to play with this SCS version when fighting trolls - no longer do I have to wait until they fall down as they're already near death for several seconds - they just die right away if a certain amount of fire/acid damage has been dealt to them at any point. This was very helpful when clearing De'Arnise keep (MMM: Very useful for this purpose!), as I wasn't able to find a death spell scroll at this point. Tor'Gal was surprisingly easy and only had one Yuan'Ti mage aside from his usual troll bodyguards. Seems like tactical dificulty might have nerfed this encounter:
Next one on the list: Mae'Var. No trouble here, with multiple true sight spells available:
The Windspear hills were also easier than expected, mostly because of the vampire encounter: Only 2 elder vampires and a bunch of normal ones - no ancient vampires at all. Enter turn undead for the normal ones and sunray + some fast, buffed-up attacking for the elder ones. Traps helped deal with Samia and Conster:
The Unseeing Eye (once again without the lich encounter) was in big trouble because at this point I had cleric level 15 for Constantia. Skeleton warriors took down the entire beholder hive. The eye itself didn't spawn in any death tyrants, propably due to tactical difficulty:
After completing the Temple of Helm stronghold (the easiest and least interesting one, in my opinion), the party entered the Planar Sphere. No trouble with halflings (outsummoning them is easy with four spellcasters) or demons (protecting chaotic commands against dispels really helps here). Tolgerias was the only enemy mage I encountered so far with an actually huge prebuff-list. However, he was lacking in powerful spell defenses, so true sight, secret word and breach plus some waiting around was still enough to deal with him (and why didn't he have death spell? very strange):
After that one, I buffed up in order to enter the planar prison (both mages dead before their pre-buffs fired, so no trouble with the opening encounter). I out-summoned the warden (which took A LOT of summons), eventually charging in with Graun once I felt he would be save with enrage:
I decided to leave any liches, dragons and mind flayers for later, as well as the Guarded Compound.
Next, I dealt with Bodhi:
After that, I spent a large amount of time swapping in NPCs to do their companion quests, including the new EE NPCs (some great items available, such as an AoP +2, a ring with 3 MI charges/day, a gem of true seeing, two great helms (The Visage and the beholder helm), a robe with 20 to all elemental resistances... propably even forgetting some important stuff). This is the third time I'm doing all of these, so by this point I feel relatively safe with them (I even created a map with all the traps for Neera's Wild Forest).
Perth was backstabbed and Brynnlaw quests completed as the party entered Spellhold. No trouble here, and once again no lich spawn (there should definitely be one considering my experience level, so it seems like tactical difficulty actively removes random lich spawns?). Not much to say here, I took extra care in protecting Constantia's buffs for every significant encounter. Jon was taken down before being able to do anything of significance:
The script here was very strange. No prebuffs at all, instead he went for true sight right away (and I didn't even cast any invisibility spells). Made my way through the City of Caverns, and now the party has just reached the Underdark!
OK, my friends, with the help of my other friend (who is far more skilled with internet technologies/stuff - building/maintaining sites, programming etc.) we've managed to make an archives of both Bioware BG1/BG2 no-reload threads and The Adventurer's Lounge. We made "lite" and "full" versions of no-reload threads. "Lite" are "html only" and occupy 213Mb/198Mb respectively. "Full" are far more fat but have most pictures/screenshots stored locally as well as CSS and JS files (~5.6/5.7Gb respectively). At the moment I've uploaded "lite" versions on my site and they are available online via this links:
Baldur's Gate 1 No-Reload Challenge Arhiv
Baldur's Gate 2 No-Reload Challenge Arhiv
The Adventurer's Lounge: Guidance and Support for No Reload Challengers- Newbie or Veteran Arhiv
Please check if those links work for you and let me know if something is wrong.
If, for whatever reasons, those links became broken once Bioware forums will be closed I'll replace the "lite" versions with "full" ones and post the new links here.
I'll update all archives with most recent versions once Bioware forums will turn "read only" and also try to edit the Hall of Heroes appropriately so it shows the proper links.
This post is from 2016 so apologize for the derailing. I was wondering if there is any way to download the topics in my own computer to read them whenever I like it.
Also, is this content old enough to have people like Frabjous in it? I remember that in the old bioware forums (the one all black with blue titles) there were many personalities that are not active anymore.
@Arthas
There was another bioware forum even before the bioware social network, and the posts of this even older one seem to be forever lost - this is where the first 9 entries into the old hall of heroes would be found (which is why there are no links to them), including runs by Frabjous. As far as I'm aware, Frabjous wasn't active in the next stage of bioware forums (the bioware social network), or at least not in the no-reload thread, which is the one that is archived here, so it seems like some of the very early no-reload runs will only live on in our memories.
Another thing which would make finding specific runs in the oldest forum difficult, even if it was still to be found somewhere: It had a page limit for threads (10 pages, if I remember correctly), so we constantly had to open new no-reload threads; Some runs were even spread out across various threads.
OK, my friends, with the help of my other friend (who is far more skilled with internet technologies/stuff - building/maintaining sites, programming etc.) we've managed to make an archives of both Bioware BG1/BG2 no-reload threads and The Adventurer's Lounge. We made "lite" and "full" versions of no-reload threads. "Lite" are "html only" and occupy 213Mb/198Mb respectively. "Full" are far more fat but have most pictures/screenshots stored locally as well as CSS and JS files (~5.6/5.7Gb respectively). At the moment I've uploaded "lite" versions on my site and they are available online via this links:
Baldur's Gate 1 No-Reload Challenge Arhiv
Baldur's Gate 2 No-Reload Challenge Arhiv
The Adventurer's Lounge: Guidance and Support for No Reload Challengers- Newbie or Veteran Arhiv
Please check if those links work for you and let me know if something is wrong.
If, for whatever reasons, those links became broken once Bioware forums will be closed I'll replace the "lite" versions with "full" ones and post the new links here.
I'll update all archives with most recent versions once Bioware forums will turn "read only" and also try to edit the Hall of Heroes appropriately so it shows the proper links.
This post is from 2016 so apologize for the derailing. I was wondering if there is any way to download the topics in my own computer to read them whenever I like it.
Also, is this content old enough to have people like Frabjous in it? I remember that in the old bioware forums (the one all black with blue titles) there were many personalities that are not active anymore.
The WinRAR file of both BG1&BG2 no-reload threads (full, with all images stored locally so you can browse the topics even off-line) is 10,7 GB. My free Dropbox account is only 2GB and Google Drive is 15GB, but it's half-full already. I could temporally free some space on my Google Drive, place the file there at least for some time (not permanently) and share the link for you to download it. If it suits you let me know.
The increase in difficulty introduced with the Underdark was noticeable, though I had no problem with the kuo-toa caverns or the mind flayer city (no resting required when you have long-lasting stun immunity for everyone twice over, despite the fact that tactical difficulty does give the mind flayers their additional powers):
However, the beholder tunnels did offer a nasty surpise, in the form of my first character death in SoA - kinda. It was a petrification, though I was able to salvage the situation. Here's how it happened:
I had a group of skeleton warriors clear the dungeon with a stealthed Schilling scouting for them. Everything was going fine, I only had to replace the group once after an elder orb used death spell. However, when fighting a large group of beholders in the south-eastern part of the map, the pathfinding of one of them must have gotten confused - I'm guessing the primary tunnel was blocked, so he went the wrong way around, and even though my party was parked far away from the battle, he made his way across half the map and to the unprotected, waiting party instead of the battle going on to the south. He caught everyone in a very bad spot, with no direct path available to completely avoid any eye beam hits. Now, the party does have great saving throws - except for my totemic druid. While this was unlucky, it was also a mistake: It's pretty obvious that a) I should have kept my party hidden under invisibility 10' radius and b) that I could've improved Alexandra's saves by changing a few items around or even drinking a potion of magic shielding while she was running away (even a simple invisibility potion would've saved her). After she got petrified, the others escaped and I had Graun (with enrage and all-negative item-based saves) solo the beholder before using the ring of earth control to save Alexandra:
That was the only setback in the Underdark though, everything else went according to plan. The party also gained access to their first couple of HLAs down there.
Back outside, I started hunting down liches, dragons, mind flayers, the guarded compound and the twisted rune. With the ability to completely protect my buffs on four party members and enrage available for a fifth one, this wasn't really all that difficult, even though these enemies actually started using a significant amount of prebuffs, sequencers, contingencies etc. The city gates lich was pretty much the first arcane spellcaster I faced who was able to go for a complete timestop and get a huge amount of his spells out, but to no avail - my party is rather hard to hurt with magic, and even wishing for mass breach doesn't help all that much:
Physical damage is way more threatening, as a trip to WK lvl 2 showed me - those fire giants almost killed Graun, a 19 con dwarven berserker, before I even noticed he was starting to take damage. In any case, the chromatic demon still fell to various flame arrow sequencers:
Oh, and the battle against the statues on level 1 was fairly long and challenging - it included an enemy mage wishing for control over time, my mage actually losing his stoneskins to a bunch of physical attacks and almost dying to an enemy archer, a potentially dangerous ADHW hit and some required use of healing potions, but we did prevail in the end.
Back to the city: The alhoon is quite threatening with SCS installed, but I forced him to waste his most dangerous spells on a planetar, so he was unable to counter my buffs (don't mind the ettins, I'm still trying out IWD spells):
My approach to the Twisted Rune is usually defensive - after killing the lich with traps, I send in my summons and wait for oppenents to waste their spells and/or come to me. This time, I went all-in right away, feeling confident about my buffs. A successful charge ensued, and the only somewhat well-protected mage fell to Dragon's Breath, concluding the battle in seconds:
I used my established strategy for SCS-Kangaxx: Trap his first form, kill his second form immediately with triple sunrays (though only one was actually needed, strangely enough):
The dragons don't seem to get their SCS hp bonus on tactical difficulty, so these battles were over before they started - I kind of overbuffed, and none of them was able to even use a single breath weapon. Bodhi was not too different - I gave my entire party immunity to cold damage because of her tactics abilities, but none of that mattered, and she didn't even have a spellcaster with her - only a few elder vampires:
The elven city went very well - no trouble here at all, I even decided to kill all the enemies in the temple before summoning the avatar, as I had all my buffs from the dragon battle still going (the insect plague, the only move the dragon was able to initiate, was blocked by SotA). Tree-Irenicus died to traps, and I completed the hell trials the good way.
I prepared traps for the balors and buffed up (including potion buffs, for the first time in SoA). One balor died right away, the second one barely survived, though all demons were taken out before Jon was able to cast his first spell. I had to throw a ton of secret words, spellstrikes and the like at Jon, as he had a lot of spell protections, but this kept him busy constantly refreshing these instead of going for aggressive moves. Still, it turns out this version of the battle turns him into quite the melee fighter - I was unable to have my fighters in melee range for long, so I swapped to ranged weapons and kited him around for a bit. Once he had no protections left, the rest was easy:
Now, time for ToB! Things are getting more difficult. Heavy physical damage could definitely be a problem for this party. I might have to make some significant changes to my spellbooks. In regards to IWD spells, not much has changed, as I wasn't too impressed with most high-level arcane spells added to the game (Mind Blank being an exception - I would certainly use that one all the time if I didn't have so many chaotic commands at my disposal). Still using only emotion: hope/courage, entropy shield, imperviousness of mind (I also have one of the cleric damage immunity spells ready, but never needed it so far) and a few of the new offensive druid spells (though I don't waste time on the lower level ones because Alexandra has more important things to do in combat by now - static charge is still good though, because of the very long duration - it can be used just like a buff, it will stay active for a long time and sometimes randomly deal bonus damage during combat, so why not?).
@Enuhal: I thought the Slayer started out with a Time Stop spell by default, and failing to disrupt him before then would mean he'd start chopping up party members. Does he not always open with Time Stop?
I'm also surprised to see Kangaxx fall to Sunray. Last I checked, he had 100% magic resistance on top of his spell level immunities in SCS, and I was under the impression that all liches had a save vs. spell of 1, preventing the instant death effect from triggering, either--not to mention a standard Protection from Magical Energy pre-buff.
@semiticgod It is entirely possible that I disrupted the slayer (though it wouldn't have been on purpose to disrupt a time stop, since I didn't know he would open with that), as the demons died pretty much right away. Come to think of it, I don't think he ended up completing anything but defensive spells (mostly new spell protections). Could also be that he only opens with timestop on higher difficulty than tactical, but I can't be sure. I still have saves from before the battle, so I can load one and check it out.
As for Kangaxx, I've killed him the same way in my previous SCS run, which definitely had improved Kangaxx/spellcasting demi-liches installed. The post is here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012801/#Comment_1012801 .
Why does it work? Well, sunray simply ignores the magic resistance of undead creatures (note that it doesn't ignore the resistance of non-undead foes). There's no save against the initial 20d6 damage, which is generally enough to kill him (with 3 sunrays it's basically guranteed), so the 1000 insta-kill extra damage in case of a failed save isn't needed (and yes, that one I've never seen work against liches, despite using sunray a lot against them). SCS Kangaxx is, as far as I know, only straight up immune to spell levels 1-5. As for Protection from Magic Energy, as far as I remember the demi-lich form of Kangaxx didn't fire any prebuffs before the first sunray hit (which is basically instantly with the helm of brilliance - that one has no casting time), so I was propably just faster than any potential prebuffs, as they always take a short while to activate (and I think it would be very possible that protection from magic energy wouldn't be included in the prebuffs for tactical difficulty in any case).
We helped Mazzy save her sister then said goodby and returned to the city... J didn't agree with the harpers attacking me but fighting them was a bridge too far.
I looked around for more talent and ended up with Edwina & Haer'Dalis which took the pressure to cast spells off me so I could sneak about doing Bodhi's dirty work
scs Bugs 3&4
both the wildmage and undead thief bugged out due to sloppy scripts... the mage is missing her spells and the thief lossing most of her pips = i had to drop them for better options
@semiticgod I have now loaded up the slayer battle three times, and each time the same has happened: Jon does indeed start casting an alteration spell, most certainly time stop, but upon the death of the second balor (the first one dies to traps immediately, the second one only gets weakend), the balor releases some kind of fireball-effect dealing magic damage. This effect, while dealing no damage to the buffed-up slayer, does seem to always interrupt spellcasting, so essentially, Jon is interrupted by the death of his own ally. Here are two screenshots from two different tests, both time with the exact same result (notice that there also seems to be some kind of spell failure on Constantia, despite the fact that she wasn't casting anything - I can't really explain that one):
Additional tests have shown that this does NOT happen with the SCS difficulty slider on insane - one of the additional prebuffs seems to entirely block this spell disrupting effect. However, running the entire party to the south seems to counter the time stop, as the slayer wasted his entire time attacking my summons instead of following Constantia, so things aren't really that much harder.
I also did some tests on Kangaxx, as I was able to find an old save from right before the battle. I waited for his demi-lich form to fire up pre-buffs on both tactical difficulty and insane difficulty. Both times protection from magic energy wasn't included, both times he died to a single sunray even after his prebuffs fired up:
Also, he seems to use LESS prebuffs on insane difficulty for some reason. Might actually be a bug - only contingencies seem to work, no actual SCS-style prebuffs. Tested this multiple times as well, always the same result.
Edit: I should also add that, as far as I know, in this version of SCS, enemy spellbooks are somewhat randomized at the time of installation, which propably includes prebuffs to some degree (though I'm not entirely sure about that), so others might not be able to replicate my exact results - I can't guarantee that these strategies will work 100% of he time on other installations.
yes scs is full of bugs (many have been there for years) and cheats like a bitch... most of the tactics boil down to this or that script doing something impossible but over the years we just keep adjusting to it
The session started with reporting our success last time in restoring the Druid Grove to normal operation and we quickly followed that up by giving Tiris a helping hand and cleaning out the town tomb.
Next we moved on to Umar Hills to take on the undead there before we got high enough level to cause anything too nasty to spawn. The undead opponents were led by greater mummies, but they were grist to the Azuredge mill.
Downstairs, a dragon took significant trap damage, but still clung on at near death when the continuing poison effect ended. Azuredge initially proved ineffective, but as Crest switched to a melee weapon and headed for the dragon his final throw pierced Thaxy's defenses.
The Shade Lord was an anti-climax after that bit of excitement - both he and his altar being destroyed within a second or so of combat commencing.
The de'Arnise Hold offered the next target, with a specific aim of improving weapons for Drubb and Crest. An axe upgrade for Crest was being guarded by some golems and the iron golem there seemed to have no chance when the attackers filtered back through the doorway and each equipped a +3 throwing weapon. However, Trapper asked Crest to make some space in his inventory so he could be passed some junk - and he foolishly did so by moving weapons around. That resulted in him attacking the golem in melee, while still being in the inventory screen. Luckily Drubb was wise to the potential danger and a quiet voice asking if Crest really intended to be meleeing caused him to pay attention to his surroundings once more and retreat to safety.
TorGal had little chance in melee - and none at all as a result of taking enough trap damage to kill him.
Back in Athkatla Crest became aware of a nasty smell coming from his backpack and hurried over to the Planar Sphere to use what was left of Valygar's body to grease a keyhole. Inside the sphere Kitthix was sent forward to disturb a group of halflings. He was dominated though and turned back to attack us, arriving just in time to guide in a symbol stun that incapacitated Crest - fortunately with no other enemies in sight to take advantage.
Trapper and Drubb didn't want to wait for Crest to recover and pressed the attack with the aid of a couple of skeleton warriors, but found the going quite hard after Trapper was affected by chaos. However, Crest recovered shortly after that and helped finish off the final halfling.
A bit further on, more golems posed a challenge once more. Crest realised he was using a sub-optimal weapon against a clay golem (in other words he had no weapon that could hurt it at all) and chose to retreat a bit. That left Drubb a bit exposed, but he was determined not to retreat - at least until he was down to his final HP .
There were no more scares while finishing off the opponents on the top level, but Tolgerias will await us next time, along with more of those pesky golems ...
Berserker - L13, 125 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 306 kills (+215 in BG1)
Bounty Hunter - L16, 83 HPs, 92 kills (+70 in BG1), 1 death
Fighter/cleric - L10/11, 104 HPs, 167 kills (+185 in BG1), 1 death
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 190 (3rd and final update) Pale (female human cavalier, Grond0); Payea (female human avenger, Gate70)
Previous updates
What do you do when your characters find the opposition too easy? Well, you could always give them a helping hand ...
The start of the session saw us working through some encounters in the city. When going up Ramazith's tower, Payea was out of improved invisibility - so Pale indulged herself by using a rare potion (invulnerability to ensure she would save against any ghastly hits). At the Iron Throne the usual webs were aided by a first use of insect plague - though Payea didn't rampage through the webs in sword spider form that time.
At Candlekeep, Payea provided electricity immunity to add to Pale's natural poison resistance - taking the phase spiders pretty much out of the equation. Prat was webbed and this time Payea did enjoy herself with her 5 APR in spider form (I think Gate70's tongue-in-cheek comment was something along the line of "that's the very definition of a fair fight").
Back in Baldur's Gate, Slythe was pulled away from his friend and hacked down. At the palace Payea hung back initially while casting insect plague, but Pale had taken a full quota of potions and by the time the plague arrived 2 dopplegangers had already been beaten down - the others didn't last much longer.
The Undercity party were more web victims before moving on to what should have been an easy enough outing against Sarevok. That started with Semaj teleporting out in response to a shot at Sarevok. That could have been a problem after he successfully tagged Payea with a chaos. However, a nymph did a good job by holding Semaj - allowing Pale to take advantage of Sarevok's preference for attacking the PC to drag him away from Payea.
Once Payea had recovered, Pale indulged herself a bit by trying to melee Sarevok for a round or two - but without any potion buffs she didn't make much impression and retreated with 18 HPs left. Payea decided to take advantage of her stoneskins to cast insect plague at Sarevok, while Pale attempted to target the big man with her throwing daggers. A first try at that was a bit hasty and I had to quickly click to retreat as Pale rushed towards Sarevok. However, I thought the second attempt had been successful - and was a tiny bit slow to try and reverse direction when Pale again headed into danger rather than starting to throw. Even so, at least 9 times out of 10 things would have been fine as I'd already clicked to retreat as Pale reached Sarevok. However, I noted above his love for attacking the PC and he swivelled instantly as Pale came into range and his sword licked out before she could get away again ...
Our usual start resulted in Shoal the nereid and Neera succumbing to missile damage. At Nashkel we picked up some ankheg armour for Jharrd and a little further on we grabbed a snack for Yifter rescued Samuel.
A polar bear tried and failed to beat defensive stance.
Bassilus reckoned he'd got the better of us. I thought he had too but Yifter was held without being attacked and Jharrd managed to rigidly fend off too many hits despite still having his ranged weapon equipped. Once Jharrd recovered things looked promising and Yifter arrived in plenty of time to help out.
Jharrd grabbed the unidentified magical warhammer (Ashideena) and we returned what was left of Bassilus (his symbol) to a temple for a nice reward. Yifter picked up a stone to flesh scroll and we arrived at the rock garden after visiting the carnival for a protection from petrification scroll. Yifter made short work of the basilisks with Jharrd helping once each basilisk had locked onto the shifter.
Mutamin made a shocking exit after failing to deal with us. From the sky, and from a hammer.
Yifter decided to take fairness to extremes against Kirian. Her three henchmen were individually charmed to come over to look at something, requiring them to switch to their fists. Naturally we took full advantage of this and Kirian found a summoned wild dog wasn't going to keep her alive.
The ankheg nest was cleared without a single injury to us (although a loose one near a child priestess did manage to hit Jharrd once).
We moved on to the sirines at the coast - Jharrd using a potion of clarity against them.
We couldn't remember if shapeshifter paws were regarded as magical enough to hit flesh golems. Looks like they were.
We've headed into Nashkel mine and are part way down so Mulahey has a week or so to pray for help.
The good news is I have my sister back, the bad news is she hit her head and was thinking she is a mage... I took her aside for a chat and its all sorted
The main battle was easy which was a big surprise to me because without J to open with a swam I didn't think we had much of a chance... magic missiles on mass was my tactic so I assume I got lucky to slip in before his defences went up and blocked them?
Vicky tried out a new spell and it really worked a treat against his peons
The WinRAR file of both BG1&BG2 no-reload threads (full, with all images stored locally so you can browse the topics even off-line) is 10,7 GB. My free Dropbox account is only 2GB and Google Drive is 15GB, but it's half-full already. I could temporally free some space on my Google Drive, place the file there at least for some time (not permanently) and share the link for you to download it. If it suits you let me know.
Thanks for the proposal, but it would irk me a bit if you had to mess up your google drive just to comply with my desires. Also I'm without internet connection for a bit, so I would have to wait for that too :P
The WinRAR file of both BG1&BG2 no-reload threads (full, with all images stored locally so you can browse the topics even off-line) is 10,7 GB. My free Dropbox account is only 2GB and Google Drive is 15GB, but it's half-full already. I could temporally free some space on my Google Drive, place the file there at least for some time (not permanently) and share the link for you to download it. If it suits you let me know.
Thanks for the proposal, but it would irk me a bit if you had to mess up your google drive just to comply with my desires. Also I'm without internet connection for a bit, so I would have to wait for that too :P
No problem. I could just make two separate files for both threads and place them one after another when you'll download the first one. This way there will be no need to mess with my GDrive. So when you'll be ready feel free to ask.
The WinRAR file of both BG1&BG2 no-reload threads (full, with all images stored locally so you can browse the topics even off-line) is 10,7 GB. My free Dropbox account is only 2GB and Google Drive is 15GB, but it's half-full already. I could temporally free some space on my Google Drive, place the file there at least for some time (not permanently) and share the link for you to download it. If it suits you let me know.
Thanks for the proposal, but it would irk me a bit if you had to mess up your google drive just to comply with my desires. Also I'm without internet connection for a bit, so I would have to wait for that too :P
No problem. I could just make two separate files for both threads and place them one after another when you'll download the first one. This way there will be no need to mess with my GDrive. So when you'll be ready feel free to ask.
Serg:
Just you know there's a Hightail service - it's not free but it can send any size file or files via a special link in an e-mail.
I've found this service (free, no registration needed). Just e-mail and up to 50GB. So, @Arthas, all it needed is your e-mail and enough space on your mail service.
As we start with ToB, a quick reminder that I don't have Ascension installed for this run, so I will be fighting the SCS-versions of The Five and Mel (which is a first for me). I made this decision in the hopes that the difficulty would be spread out more amongst the entire quadrilogy that way, and not just mainly focused on the very difficult final ascension battle. However, I quickly realized that even standard SCS would turn ToB into by far the hardest part of the run, which is something I'm not really satisfied with, as I don't like ToB gameplay all that much compared to the other parts of the game. I wish SCS would really turn up the BG1 difficulty and relax on some of the crazy ToB stuff, but I can understand that most people instinctively prefer that the game should be getting harder the longer you play.
In any case, SCS-Ilasera isn't the special archer with dispelling arrows her Ascension-counterpart is. A rather trivial encounter, just like her vanilla version. The only potential danger was a fallen planetar, which I decided to take out right away in order to avoid any vorpal hits - no death wards dispelled, no trouble:
However, right after that, we had the first pocket plane challenge to deal with - and if some of you might remember my previous SCS run, that one went very poorly back then. This time, I did buff up to a reasonable degree (I rarely have to the patience to go for full buffs in ToB). Jon started off with a bunch of efreeti via his CC, summoned a fallen planetar and assisted Bodhi, who landed a few hits on Schilling. This is where I made a huge mistake: Because Bodhi was dealing a ton of damage, I withdrew my fighter/thief, and as he was at a safe distance, I thought about healing him up with a RoR charge right away, just in case, but decided against it for no good reason.
This turned out to a terrible decision, because, unbeknownst to me, one of the efreeti was targetting him with a flamestrike at this point. I was mostly concerned with the fallen planetar, because that one had been causing all of the trouble the last time around. With flamestrike having no travel time and Schilling having no fire resistance, the result was a painful and unexpected chunking:
There were so many ways I could've avoided this. Death-spelling the efreeti, healing up Schilling, swapping around fire resistance items, having him drink a fire protection potion etc., but the efreeti just weren't on my radar as a real threat, as I was focused on opponents like Bodhi, Jon and the fallen planetar. And I was just starting to think that I would, for once, have a run without any major chunkings.
Well, I continued the battle, and my own planetar took down Jon with a vorpal hit while the others dealt with the planetar, granting us victory:
Now, I had to decide on a replacement for Schilling from the available NPC pool. Because I still wanted someone with thief abilities, I decided to go with Jan - another character able to protect his buffs. Only having one fighter is quite unusual for me, as I usually don't play spellcaster-heavy parties. I was thinking about maybe swapping out Jan for some encounters, but for now he's been doing a decent job.
Saradush: Some sidequests done, tons of scrolls bought (especially for Jan, who had an almost entirely empty spellbook). Now, picking up the final missing IWD scrolls, I did end up discovering another useful one for my playstyle: Seven Eyes, which is just a great defensive buff with additional security against all types of threats. Killing Gromnir was rather easy, as I was able to take down both of his mages before their prebuffs triggered:
After making my way to the Marching Mountains, I decided to complete the ToB EE companion quests first (not including Hexxat, as her quest can only be started once you get to Amkethran). Neera's was first, and I swapped out my totemic druid for her. This one is actually fairly challenging, as you first have to fight a battle against high level mages without any prebuffs (because the battle starts right after resting) and with Neera's magic disabled (the enhanced bard song is very useful here), fight another battle in an arena most likely again without any buffs and then speed-clear a mansion full of guards/mages before facing off against Vicross, who can gate in infinite balors at will and has a bunch of powerful allies. I've done this quest twice before, so I was kind of prepared for it, but after getting through most of it without major mistakes, I screwed up when fighting Vicross. Simply put, I forgot about the fact that, despite this being EE content, SCS would of course affect these balors as well and turn them into deadly vorpal hitters. Of course, I had death wards going, protected via the usual spells (SI:A, Spell Shield / Entropy Shield, ISOM (impervious sanctity of mind)), so risk was minimal - except, of course, for Graun, my berserker - and guess what. It just so happened that he got his death ward dispelled just before getting hit by a balor:
And now we're already at our second chunking. At this pace, I'll have to swap out the entire party before even getting to Amkehtran. Back to Vicross: I quickly realized that I couldn't stay on the defensive, or she would just spam balors and other summons at me until I was spent (having no fighter left, I had to rely mostly on spells). After taking down the current balor with energy blades, I aggressively used my ruby rays (of which I had a ton), true sight and breach to take down Vicross' protections and kill the red wizard:
Fun fact: This chunking would've been super easy to avoid, as I had JUST picked up the Cloak of the Lich, which grants an item-based permanent death ward. Sadly, I didn't equip it on the one person in the party in danger of losing their spell-based death ward.
With Graun dead, I decided not to replace him permanently just yet, instead picking up Dorn to do his companion quest. Despite this one involving a battle against two silver dragons, I don't find it to be all that difficult compared to Neera's (though its still Nr. 2 in difficulty, followed by Rasaad's, which is quite easy, and Hexxat's, which I find to be undertuned and not appropriate for late ToB at all). Dorn did take some damage, but mostly because I was taking every optional fight in the entire place and was stingy on healing items:
I named Sendai and Abazigal for the scroll of justice in order to gain some assistance for these battles.
Not much to say about the Rasaad quest - as I said, not the most difficult one, no trouble with any of the encounters, the shadow dragon didn't survive for long:
Now, I did the logical thing and replaced Graun's party slot with Korgan, who is basically identical except for his slightly lower dexterity (later on, I would counter this by buffing him with cat's grace from time to time). Instead of dealing with Yaga Shura, I made my way to WK lvl 3, with the maze being randomized in this installation (great fun! I get to make a map by hand, which is something I love to do). The danger here is a) getting from a no magic zone right into a dangerous battle and b) the SCS-improved glabrezo room, as these guys spam summons, dangeroues AoE cloud-spells and PFMW, and they also teleport around. I encountered one no-magic zone pretty much right away, so I still had a fresh 3xADHW-CC going:
The enhanced bard song is also great here, as it doesn't care about no magic or wild magic and provides the most important protections when fighting demons. Still, I did run into big trouble in the glabrezu room (in my opinion, this is the hardest part of "Improved Watcher's Keep", harder than anything in level 4-5). Exiting back through the portal was made impossible when one of the foes teleported right on it, blocking my way. Flaming cloud started hitting my low-hp casters hard and kept interrupting their spells, including the very important breaches and death spells, which are crucial to winning this encounter. More importantly, I entered this area directly from the no magic zone, so... no buffs. Jan, with no stoneskin active (I foolishly used his aura for an improved haste spell), died to a flaming cloud + a fire elemental hit:
Luckily, Carpani was able to successfully complete a death spell, stopping the constant pressure from all of the summons for a short while, and Sigismund started breaching the enemies for Korgan to take them down - it was a hard and laggy fight (my PC can't handle too many cloud spells at once), but we prevailed in the end:
I did encounter the demon wraith relatively early on, but had some buffs going and was able to easily survive his timestop before dispelling his buffs and taking him down:
For Tahazzar, I was once again well prepared (because I fled back through the portal upon encountering him, and returning with quite a few buffs). A fast assault resulted in victory and only some minor burn marks from the rain of fire:
After turning in his heart, I had my scepter stones and was able to find the cambion. Sadly, I had no luck playing his game and didn't win the spectral brand. In level 4, I quickly rushed into the mind flayer lair and was a bit surprised by the sheer number of opponents throwing their psionic force attacks on the party. This had lethal consequences in the southern room - Sigismund still doesn't have a lot of hitpoints, and most of the illithids were invisible, so I wasn't prepared for the amount of damage coming out:
Aside from the initial psionic assault, however, they weren't exactly fearsome oponents. While I was healing up my party, Korgan took down most of them with his 10 APR and 25 strength, and they landed only one hit on the party during the entire battle - having great AC on everyone is helpful sometimes. The gith, on the other hand, were super easy, and so was the red dragon (once again, tactical difficulty doesn't include the SCS boost to dragon hitpoints). Of course, there's also a demi-lich down there. I buffed up quite a bit, making sure to have strong spell protections going, and carefully checked his prebuffs after entering. This one's smarter than Kangaxx - protection from magic energy was included, so I had to get rid of it for my sunray strategy to work. While secret words and spellstrikes were being cast, our foe got to use his timestop + improved alacrity, summoning a fallen planetar, casting ADHW and doing some ineffectual spellcasting blocked by my defenses. Shortly after the time stop ended, the demi-lich also lost his protections:
And Alexandra's helm of brilliance did its thing:
I quickly took down the fallen planetar and celebrated my victory. "But wait", you might say - "Doesn't this demi-lich have the Cloak of Mirroring equipped in SCS? How was sunray able to hurt it?" Well, that is a valid question. The answer is, the Cloak has been moved to Vongothe - which I didn't actually know at the time, so my strategy was technically really stupid and shouldn't have worked. It was only when looting the demi-lich that I realized that the Cloak was missing. Oh, and instead, I found this item, which apparently lets a caster control gated devils and demons directly, with a few downsides:
I'm guessing this is added by the new SCS version? Can't remember seeing it before.
After completing WK4, most of WK5 was not much of an issue. For the three seals, I used a bunch of spike traps to take down specific dangerous enemies right away - such as Azamantes:
For the mixed group, I wanted to take down the hive mother, but hit the succubus instead (still fine) - that one went surprisingly well, with no trouble and no loss of buffs:
And while I didn't quite kill the aurumach rilmani with the traps right away, a quick direct assault provided me with good results:
I shamelessly destroyed Demogorgon with spike traps before returning to the Marching Mountains. A little bit of fun with mordy swords, ranged kiting, protection from fire and the like allowed for a quick clearing of the lower temple area. The dragon, Brimstone, was actually hit with a sucessful PW:Blind, allowing me to take him down last after defeating the various fire giants walking around in the upper area:
The SCS-Version of Yaga Shura turned out to be a bit disappointing, mainly because the lack of his Ascension-protections left him with no defenses and a quick death in less than one round, so I couldn't tell if he had any special abilities:
So, in the end, we did make it to Amkethran with "only" two chunkings. All that WK experience and loot should be helpful in making what's to come a bit easier.
its more that scs cheats and at the start it is important to understand what blocks a magic missile or can that monster hit your character with this much armour on... later on your character has more options | gear and it boils down to tactics more than luck
Comments
The Dwarven Helmites went to larswood and killed the druids there. They are trying to get experience before returning to the Lighthouse area. Watcher did level up as a cleric as a bear was killed just after the second druid.
We killed the spiders in Landrin's home and after getting the reward, just had enough gold to upgrade the girdle of piercing. Just 30 gp left.
EDIT
We killed a mixed party of wolves to the east of Lathander's Temple and went from there to kill basilisks. However, we first dealt with Peter's Party. Once they were dead I took a potion of oil of speed and read a scroll to protect myself from petrification. I then scoured the area killing every basilisk and medusa that I could find, finishing with Mutamin. He started by trying unsuccessfully to charm me, my helmet protecting me from the spell. I used ranged weapons until he cast a blindness spell after which I moved to melee range. He was a bit unwise. If after casting blindness he had moved away for ranged attacks he might have been more successful. Who am I to complain? I killed him and then went in search of my allies.
We then proceeded to Ulgoth's Beard .
All the extra clicks are hard on my hands, so I'm downgrading the restless run to a solo restless run with a simple dwarven Fighter/Thief. It's not quite as exciting and flashy as a party run where the Reform Party trick lets us blast enemies with Special Snares or summon hordes of Spirit Lions or stack Dark Moon Monk Blur bonuses or WoL-boosted Boon of Lathander APR bonuses to, you know, explode everything to death, but all that stuff takes a lot of mouse clicks, and a solo run is easier on my hands.
Although... now that I think about it, a restless solo run with a Fighter/Thief is actually not that much more impressive than a regular solo run with a Fighter/Thief, since a Fighter/Thief doesn't use that many per-day abilities to begin with. I mean, traps and HLAs and Algernon's Cloak and Vhailor's Helm and so forth are going to be more limited, but when I think about the run as a whole, it actually looks almost identical to a normal solo Fighter/Thief run. The "restless" part is barely even relevant. As long as you quick save and quick load after every long-term area transition, you don't have to worry about fatigue and that's the one big drawback for a class that doesn't rely on spells.
Restless runs can be fun if you're using stuff like the Reform Party trick to slip around the limitations of the run, but that really only works if you're playing with a full party. It's just not that interesting for a solo run.
Maybe I should just move on to some other new gimmick.
Upon arrival at the Ice Island we were attcked by mages. We killed two of them without5 too much difficulty, but there was also an invisible one who cast powerful summons spells. I believe what killed me was a Hakashar. (I might have spelled that incorrectly) However, there were goblins and hobgoblins as well.
It was a matter of who died first. I thought we were going to win, but clearly a critical hit finished the run.
Another Trio of dwarves, this time the Champion is a Hammer of Moradin instead of an Everwatch knight, a True Class Cleric of Celemvor instead of a fighter/cleric watcher of Helm whilst the illusionist/thief is identical.
It will be interesting to see how the true class cleric compares with a fighter/cleric.
I haven't played the kits before so it is all new.
Tarnesh did not prove to be a problem.
Well that game didn't last long. The werewolf near high hedge killed Haakon.
I noticed too late, otherwise I could've provided an image of the event itself, but I suppose raising Cernd was the our priority.
Other than that, we sold a bunch of stuff, lost some gold because of Mazzy's fighter stronghold, got some from Jan's stronghold. Once we were out of the Thieves' Guild, Valen spawned. We dismissed her and told Brus we were on our way to meet Gaelan Bayle. We paid him 90k and we're now on our way to see the man himself Aran Linvail.
EDIT
We made our way to the Friendly Arms Inn after wiping out a party of hobgoblins and goblins. They did us some damage, but we survived.
To the north we killed the evil Sonner's party and the dead husband of the woman in the house.
We have returned Joia's ring and are now near High Hedge.
Previous updates:
SoD: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1085092/#Comment_1085092
I've been making good progress in SoA, with a surprising lack of trouble so far. No character got close to dying, the only time I lost control of a character I was able to counter immediately with exaltation. This is certainly in part due to the tactical difficulty setting, which is easier compared to my previous installation (the number of prebuffs for most mages is relatively low - lower level mages won't even have spell protections, and higher level ones will usually only have one, so secret word + breach + true sight is generally enough to destroy every potentially dangerous spellcaster, though often I'm simply able to take down mages before their prebuffs even fire up). Entropy shield and impervious sanctity of mind offer a whole new level of defensive safety for Constantia herself. In fact, 4 out of 6 party members can protect their buffs (making my cleric buffs much more valuable), and Graun has enrage, which is undispellable.
Aside from these defensive buffs, I haven't added many new IWD spells to my arsenal for now, though this is in part due to me not buying a lot of new scrolls. I am using static charge a bit more compared to BG1, though. Otherwise, I mostly go for the usual defensive and offensive buffs - for difficult encounters:
Arcane spellcasters: Shield, blur, MI, spell shield, Stoneskin, SI:A, MMM
Divine spellcasters: Entropy shield, Impervious sanctity of mind, armor of faith, ironskin, Storm Shell, Defensive Harmony, DUHM, sometimes protection from fire
Everyone: The emotion buffs, bless, prayer, recitation, death ward, defensive harmony, chaotic commands, PfE 10' radius, remove fear, haste
Add in true sight, enrage, traps/backstabs, sometimes item abilities such as MI or Breathe Acid (from The Visage) or sequencers (often involving greater malison and a type of crowd control such as slow), a few aggressive spells (insect plague, static charge, sunscorch, alicorn lance, nature's beauty, sunray, power words: silence/blind) and direct counters such as death spell or spell protection removal + breach with some added summons (mostly skeleton warriors, aerial servants, fire elementals - statue summons and spirit animals are usually saved for emergencies) and a careful approach, staying at range if needed. I've yet to find a scroll of improved haste, which will really improve Graun's already incredible damage output. For most encounters, though, I don't need many buffs at all - the skald song and a few summons are often enough, with strategic defensive spells used to counter specific abilities (though Constantia always has at least CC and death ward going).
I don't have anything too exciting to report in terms of activities. After completing the easier Athkatla quests, I started doing stronghold quests (no lich spawns on tactical difficulty, it seems - that could've been interesting). First up was the Druid Grove, an easy task for Alexandra, her spirit animals, defensive buffs and static charge:
Next, I dealt with Bodhi:
Perth was backstabbed and Brynnlaw quests completed as the party entered Spellhold. No trouble here, and once again no lich spawn (there should definitely be one considering my experience level, so it seems like tactical difficulty actively removes random lich spawns?). Not much to say here, I took extra care in protecting Constantia's buffs for every significant encounter. Jon was taken down before being able to do anything of significance:
This post is from 2016 so apologize for the derailing. I was wondering if there is any way to download the topics in my own computer to read them whenever I like it.
Also, is this content old enough to have people like Frabjous in it? I remember that in the old bioware forums (the one all black with blue titles) there were many personalities that are not active anymore.
There was another bioware forum even before the bioware social network, and the posts of this even older one seem to be forever lost - this is where the first 9 entries into the old hall of heroes would be found (which is why there are no links to them), including runs by Frabjous. As far as I'm aware, Frabjous wasn't active in the next stage of bioware forums (the bioware social network), or at least not in the no-reload thread, which is the one that is archived here, so it seems like some of the very early no-reload runs will only live on in our memories.
Another thing which would make finding specific runs in the oldest forum difficult, even if it was still to be found somewhere: It had a page limit for threads (10 pages, if I remember correctly), so we constantly had to open new no-reload threads; Some runs were even spread out across various threads.
The WinRAR file of both BG1&BG2 no-reload threads (full, with all images stored locally so you can browse the topics even off-line) is 10,7 GB. My free Dropbox account is only 2GB and Google Drive is 15GB, but it's half-full already. I could temporally free some space on my Google Drive, place the file there at least for some time (not permanently) and share the link for you to download it. If it suits you let me know.
We were able todefeat both Zargos Flintblade and Greywolf without problems and have now gone in search of Samuel.
RL will now interrupt this game for about a week I think
Previous updates:
SoD: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1085092/#Comment_1085092
SoA Part 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1087371#Comment_1087371
The increase in difficulty introduced with the Underdark was noticeable, though I had no problem with the kuo-toa caverns or the mind flayer city (no resting required when you have long-lasting stun immunity for everyone twice over, despite the fact that tactical difficulty does give the mind flayers their additional powers):
I had a group of skeleton warriors clear the dungeon with a stealthed Schilling scouting for them. Everything was going fine, I only had to replace the group once after an elder orb used death spell. However, when fighting a large group of beholders in the south-eastern part of the map, the pathfinding of one of them must have gotten confused - I'm guessing the primary tunnel was blocked, so he went the wrong way around, and even though my party was parked far away from the battle, he made his way across half the map and to the unprotected, waiting party instead of the battle going on to the south. He caught everyone in a very bad spot, with no direct path available to completely avoid any eye beam hits. Now, the party does have great saving throws - except for my totemic druid. While this was unlucky, it was also a mistake: It's pretty obvious that a) I should have kept my party hidden under invisibility 10' radius and b) that I could've improved Alexandra's saves by changing a few items around or even drinking a potion of magic shielding while she was running away (even a simple invisibility potion would've saved her). After she got petrified, the others escaped and I had Graun (with enrage and all-negative item-based saves) solo the beholder before using the ring of earth control to save Alexandra:
Back outside, I started hunting down liches, dragons, mind flayers, the guarded compound and the twisted rune. With the ability to completely protect my buffs on four party members and enrage available for a fifth one, this wasn't really all that difficult, even though these enemies actually started using a significant amount of prebuffs, sequencers, contingencies etc. The city gates lich was pretty much the first arcane spellcaster I faced who was able to go for a complete timestop and get a huge amount of his spells out, but to no avail - my party is rather hard to hurt with magic, and even wishing for mass breach doesn't help all that much:
Back to the city: The alhoon is quite threatening with SCS installed, but I forced him to waste his most dangerous spells on a planetar, so he was unable to counter my buffs (don't mind the ettins, I'm still trying out IWD spells):
I prepared traps for the balors and buffed up (including potion buffs, for the first time in SoA). One balor died right away, the second one barely survived, though all demons were taken out before Jon was able to cast his first spell. I had to throw a ton of secret words, spellstrikes and the like at Jon, as he had a lot of spell protections, but this kept him busy constantly refreshing these instead of going for aggressive moves. Still, it turns out this version of the battle turns him into quite the melee fighter - I was unable to have my fighters in melee range for long, so I swapped to ranged weapons and kited him around for a bit. Once he had no protections left, the rest was easy:
I'm also surprised to see Kangaxx fall to Sunray. Last I checked, he had 100% magic resistance on top of his spell level immunities in SCS, and I was under the impression that all liches had a save vs. spell of 1, preventing the instant death effect from triggering, either--not to mention a standard Protection from Magical Energy pre-buff.
As for Kangaxx, I've killed him the same way in my previous SCS run, which definitely had improved Kangaxx/spellcasting demi-liches installed. The post is here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1012801/#Comment_1012801 .
Why does it work? Well, sunray simply ignores the magic resistance of undead creatures (note that it doesn't ignore the resistance of non-undead foes). There's no save against the initial 20d6 damage, which is generally enough to kill him (with 3 sunrays it's basically guranteed), so the 1000 insta-kill extra damage in case of a failed save isn't needed (and yes, that one I've never seen work against liches, despite using sunray a lot against them). SCS Kangaxx is, as far as I know, only straight up immune to spell levels 1-5. As for Protection from Magic Energy, as far as I remember the demi-lich form of Kangaxx didn't fire any prebuffs before the first sunray hit (which is basically instantly with the helm of brilliance - that one has no casting time), so I was propably just faster than any potential prebuffs, as they always take a short while to activate (and I think it would be very possible that protection from magic energy wouldn't be included in the prebuffs for tactical difficulty in any case).
The wiki also mentions that sunray bypasses MR against undead: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/Sunray
Edit: I've now also looked on some screenshots of SCS-Kangaxx prebuffing, and didn't see protection from magic energy included in those. This is, I think, also the thread were I originally found the strategy in:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/64786/how-to-kill-scs-kangaxx-in-2-easy-steps/p1
I looked around for more talent and ended up with Edwina & Haer'Dalis which took the pressure to cast spells off me so I could sneak about doing Bodhi's dirty work
scs Bugs 3&4
both the wildmage and undead thief bugged out due to sloppy scripts... the mage is missing her spells and the thief lossing most of her pips = i had to drop them for better options
I also did some tests on Kangaxx, as I was able to find an old save from right before the battle. I waited for his demi-lich form to fire up pre-buffs on both tactical difficulty and insane difficulty. Both times protection from magic energy wasn't included, both times he died to a single sunray even after his prebuffs fired up:
Edit: I should also add that, as far as I know, in this version of SCS, enemy spellbooks are somewhat randomized at the time of installation, which propably includes prebuffs to some degree (though I'm not entirely sure about that), so others might not be able to replicate my exact results - I can't guarantee that these strategies will work 100% of he time on other installations.
Crest - dwarf berserker (Grond0)
Trapper - halfling bounty hunter (Corey_Russell)
Drubb - dwarf fighter/cleric (Gate70)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1082132/#Comment_1082132
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1083853/#Comment_1083853
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1085138/#Comment_1085138
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1086448/#Comment_1086448
The session started with reporting our success last time in restoring the Druid Grove to normal operation and we quickly followed that up by giving Tiris a helping hand and cleaning out the town tomb.
Next we moved on to Umar Hills to take on the undead there before we got high enough level to cause anything too nasty to spawn. The undead opponents were led by greater mummies, but they were grist to the Azuredge mill.
The de'Arnise Hold offered the next target, with a specific aim of improving weapons for Drubb and Crest. An axe upgrade for Crest was being guarded by some golems and the iron golem there seemed to have no chance when the attackers filtered back through the doorway and each equipped a +3 throwing weapon. However, Trapper asked Crest to make some space in his inventory so he could be passed some junk - and he foolishly did so by moving weapons around. That resulted in him attacking the golem in melee, while still being in the inventory screen. Luckily Drubb was wise to the potential danger and a quiet voice asking if Crest really intended to be meleeing caused him to pay attention to his surroundings once more and retreat to safety.
Back in Athkatla Crest became aware of a nasty smell coming from his backpack and hurried over to the Planar Sphere to use what was left of Valygar's body to grease a keyhole. Inside the sphere Kitthix was sent forward to disturb a group of halflings. He was dominated though and turned back to attack us, arriving just in time to guide in a symbol stun that incapacitated Crest - fortunately with no other enemies in sight to take advantage.
Berserker - L13, 125 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 306 kills (+215 in BG1)
Bounty Hunter - L16, 83 HPs, 92 kills (+70 in BG1), 1 death
Fighter/cleric - L10/11, 104 HPs, 167 kills (+185 in BG1), 1 death
Pale (female human cavalier, Grond0); Payea (female human avenger, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1086939/#Comment_1086939
What do you do when your characters find the opposition too easy? Well, you could always give them a helping hand ...
The start of the session saw us working through some encounters in the city. When going up Ramazith's tower, Payea was out of improved invisibility - so Pale indulged herself by using a rare potion (invulnerability to ensure she would save against any ghastly hits). At the Iron Throne the usual webs were aided by a first use of insect plague - though Payea didn't rampage through the webs in sword spider form that time.
At Candlekeep, Payea provided electricity immunity to add to Pale's natural poison resistance - taking the phase spiders pretty much out of the equation. Prat was webbed and this time Payea did enjoy herself with her 5 APR in spider form (I think Gate70's tongue-in-cheek comment was something along the line of "that's the very definition of a fair fight").
Back in Baldur's Gate, Slythe was pulled away from his friend and hacked down. At the palace Payea hung back initially while casting insect plague, but Pale had taken a full quota of potions and by the time the plague arrived 2 dopplegangers had already been beaten down - the others didn't last much longer.
The Undercity party were more web victims before moving on to what should have been an easy enough outing against Sarevok. That started with Semaj teleporting out in response to a shot at Sarevok. That could have been a problem after he successfully tagged Payea with a chaos. However, a nymph did a good job by holding Semaj - allowing Pale to take advantage of Sarevok's preference for attacking the PC to drag him away from Payea.
Jharrd (male dwarven defender, Gate70); Yifter (male half-elf shapeshifter, Grond0)
Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
Our usual start resulted in Shoal the nereid and Neera succumbing to missile damage. At Nashkel we picked up some ankheg armour for Jharrd and a little further on we grabbed a snack for Yifter rescued Samuel.
Mutamin made a shocking exit after failing to deal with us. From the sky, and from a hammer.
The good news is I have my sister back, the bad news is she hit her head and was thinking she is a mage... I took her aside for a chat and its all sorted
The main battle was easy which was a big surprise to me because without J to open with a swam I didn't think we had much of a chance... magic missiles on mass was my tactic so I assume I got lucky to slip in before his defences went up and blocked them?
Vicky tried out a new spell and it really worked a treat against his peons
Thanks for the proposal, but it would irk me a bit if you had to mess up your google drive just to comply with my desires. Also I'm without internet connection for a bit, so I would have to wait for that too :P
No problem. I could just make two separate files for both threads and place them one after another when you'll download the first one. This way there will be no need to mess with my GDrive. So when you'll be ready feel free to ask.
Serg:
Just you know there's a Hightail service - it's not free but it can send any size file or files via a special link in an e-mail.
You can send as many e-mails and clients can download as often as you want. It's just a monthly fee.
Previous updates:
SoD: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1085092/#Comment_1085092
SoA Part 1: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1087371#Comment_1087371
SoA Part 2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1087704/#Comment_1087704
As we start with ToB, a quick reminder that I don't have Ascension installed for this run, so I will be fighting the SCS-versions of The Five and Mel (which is a first for me). I made this decision in the hopes that the difficulty would be spread out more amongst the entire quadrilogy that way, and not just mainly focused on the very difficult final ascension battle. However, I quickly realized that even standard SCS would turn ToB into by far the hardest part of the run, which is something I'm not really satisfied with, as I don't like ToB gameplay all that much compared to the other parts of the game. I wish SCS would really turn up the BG1 difficulty and relax on some of the crazy ToB stuff, but I can understand that most people instinctively prefer that the game should be getting harder the longer you play.
In any case, SCS-Ilasera isn't the special archer with dispelling arrows her Ascension-counterpart is. A rather trivial encounter, just like her vanilla version. The only potential danger was a fallen planetar, which I decided to take out right away in order to avoid any vorpal hits - no death wards dispelled, no trouble:
Well, I continued the battle, and my own planetar took down Jon with a vorpal hit while the others dealt with the planetar, granting us victory:
Saradush: Some sidequests done, tons of scrolls bought (especially for Jan, who had an almost entirely empty spellbook). Now, picking up the final missing IWD scrolls, I did end up discovering another useful one for my playstyle: Seven Eyes, which is just a great defensive buff with additional security against all types of threats. Killing Gromnir was rather easy, as I was able to take down both of his mages before their prebuffs triggered:
With Graun dead, I decided not to replace him permanently just yet, instead picking up Dorn to do his companion quest. Despite this one involving a battle against two silver dragons, I don't find it to be all that difficult compared to Neera's (though its still Nr. 2 in difficulty, followed by Rasaad's, which is quite easy, and Hexxat's, which I find to be undertuned and not appropriate for late ToB at all). Dorn did take some damage, but mostly because I was taking every optional fight in the entire place and was stingy on healing items:
Not much to say about the Rasaad quest - as I said, not the most difficult one, no trouble with any of the encounters, the shadow dragon didn't survive for long:
After completing WK4, most of WK5 was not much of an issue. For the three seals, I used a bunch of spike traps to take down specific dangerous enemies right away - such as Azamantes: