Monk
I've been struggling with restartitis a bit lately. That resulted in me deciding to start a monk run, even though I've got cleric/mage and priest of Talos runs active. The change failed to help me take care though. At the lighthouse I attacked the first group of sirines, using a PfM scroll to fend off their opening charm attacks. After being poisoned by an arrow of biting I withdrew and rested before attacking again. Two of the three sirines were duly killed, but when I found the last one it appeared it hadn't used all its charms previously - and I had no other defenses available against that ...
A second attempt a few days later had a similar sort of ending. I attacked Bentan to try and get his PfM scroll and didn't protect myself or run away when he cast charm person at me ...
Cleric/mage
The cleric/mage run referred to above didn't last much longer. It got to the Underdark, but was lost there as a result of me overwriting my save game - the run was reported on the no-reload thread.
Fighter
As an experiment, I decided to do runs with 7 different characters at once - swapping between them at various points during the games. The intention was to reduce the extent to which I got bored with a particular character and started taking more and more risks. The experiment was pretty successful, with 5 of the 7 being successful. The fighter was the first of the 5 to climb the Throne and meant I finally got a success with the first attempt at a particular character. The runs were reported in detail up to the end of SoD, with summary progress after that.
Afterthoughts
Fighters are one of the easier classes to complete the challenge with, at least as long as you're playing a shorty character (for other races you need to be much more careful to boost saving throws or use equipment granting immunities). With the Cloak of Mirroring it's easy to outlast mage buffs before finishing them off, while good HPs and defences see off melee threats. In this run Kangaxx's transformation bugged and I didn't have the Ring of Gaxx. As I don't allow healing potions (or other item-based healing) that was a significant drawback, but even without that ring my dwarven saving throws and slower regeneration allowed a relatively comfortable run.
Fighter/druid
Another of the 7 different characters chosen referred to above was a fighter/druid. This was one of the 2 unsuccessful attempts, when I failed to finish off the druids at the Grove quickly enough and was dominated by a summoned nymph.
Fighter dualling to cleric
Another new character of those 7 was a fighter dualling to cleric. I chose a berserker for the starting character, which made things significantly easier and this one was successful.
Afterthoughts
As clerics need low XP to progress at higher levels, it doesn't make sense to go for an early dual. I went for level 13, which provided some extra APR and higher HPs, in addition to better THAC0 for much of the game. The lack of APR was still an issue, but clerical buffs and the availability of rage largely offset that. Starting with a different fighter would be slightly more of a challenge, but if you're careful clerical buffs can cover nearly all threats and the relatively high levels available for a solo character make it more difficult for opponents to dispel those.
Thief dualling to mage
A random selection produced another new character. I decided to start it off as a shadowdancer, with the intention of dualling at level 13 (to get the maximum backstab multiple). That will probably mean dualling at the end of Jon's dungeon, allowing me to jump a few mage levels immediately there from the bonus experience.
I started cautiously, attempting to avoid any damage for as long as possible. That worked up until the Bandit Camp, where I got caught out when a defending bandit shot down a bandit I had charmed and then shot at me, despite being out of my sight range.
I didn't worry about the odd bit of damage after that, but had a pretty smooth run through BGEE. I was a bit concerned about the palace fight, so charmed the Flaming Fist guards to fight directly for me - as it happened though I managed to stun two dopplegangers with my darts at the start of the fight and won pretty easily. Sarevok got stuck in his own web trap and didn't survive the experience.
As usual, I skipped most of the content in SoD and completed that pretty quickly. I was trying to finish Belhifet off using exploding arrows (which can't hurt him directly, but he does take a bit of blast damage when someone else is targeted), but Caelar got the final hit in.
SoA was also done reasonably quickly with Jon finding it was third time unlucky in his attempts to stop my progress.
I managed to hold things together sufficiently well to complete ToB as well to gain another success at the first attempt with a character.
Afterthoughts
Basic thief abilities with locks and traps made things a bit more convenient, but those are somewhat wasted given that mages can handle those issues well enough by themselves. Starting as a shadowdancer allowed me to repeatedly disappear while in combat and I felt it was appropriate to use that ability a lot for much of the game - so there was a lot of backstabbling going on. However, even dualling relatively late, my stealth skill was not as reliable as would be expcted from a thief so there was a need for care while doing that. In ToB the ability of many opponents to see through invisibility meant I operated much more like a pure mage, with the thief abilities being much less used. I didn't use simulacrum until nearly the end of the game, but the slightly lower level of the mage class due to dualling (level 28 rather than 31) made that spell noticeably less attractive. Overall I think this particular dual makes things harder to complete the game than using a pure class (though, as both thieves and mages are strong classes, progress was still easy enough).
I'd only completed SoA at the time you commented, but have now successfully finished the run. One of the advantages of playing solo is that it is possible to make very quick progress .
Fighter dualling to mage
Starting a new run immediately, a random choice produced another new class. Having just been playing a thief dualled to a mage, I didn't want to dual early and have another mage dominated run. Instead, I decided I should aim to dual at level 21 - the maximum possible if you want to regain fighter abilities. I started off with a kensai, as that seems to be a good fit in principle with a mage. However, the run ended disappointingly early at the Bandit Camp. I had decided to use a potion of fire breath on Venkt there. That's not a standard tactic for me, but I've done it a few times and expected that to kill him. It did kill the other 3 enemies in the tent, but I was concentrating on moving to get those in the fire stream and was slow to realise that Venkt was still going. When I did notice that, I tried to run out of the tent to avoid his horror spell, but was fractionally too far away to make it out. I duly started running around in terror, while Venkt unloaded his spell book on me. I'm not sure if he was out of those or had one LMD left when the last of my 67 HPs ran out ...
Jester
I haven't played a lot over the last few months, but the attempts I have made have been pretty poor. To try and change that, I decided to try a multiple attempt again - where I run a number of characters in parallel. Last time I did this with 7 characters and it felt like rather hard work keeping track of that - but with 5 of the 7 being successful the overall outcome was pretty good. This time I'm trying with 5 characters, to be a bit more manageable. The randomly chosen characters were undead hunter, druid, jester, shaman and priest of tempus. Disappointingly, the first casualty has occurred without even getting through BGEE. The jester was almost at the XP cap when I visited the lighthouse to get the constitution tome. A couple of webs, followed by a couple of skull traps, failed to kill any of the sirines - but all were almost dead when one of them saved and moved out of the web in my direction. I was keen to kill that one quickly, to get the others while they were still stuck. I initially went invisible. However, seeing it only had 6 HPs, I assumed that a wand scorcher would finish it off. However, the combination of low basic damage rolled, its natural 50% resistance and a successful saving throw resulted in only 5 damage to leave it with still 1 HP. I was slow to recognise it was still alive and only targeted it after it had started casting a dire charm. Unfortunately my initiative roll was not great and its charm was already on the way when I dispatched a killing arrow - and neither saving throw, nor half-elven resistance, could prevent a mutual death.
Priest of Tempus
A bit of carelessness on the way to Sarevok cost me the undead hunter. The disappointment of losing 2 characters led to throwing away the druid as well during the fight with Sarevok. A marginal recovery saw the shaman through BGEE before I finished off with this character, to at least keep the concept of a multiple run going for a bit longer.
It's taken over 3 months, but I have finally got around to continuing this run. It didn't take too long to get through SoD and Belhifet duly got his comeuppance.
Invoker
With only the Priest of Tempus still standing from the previous 5, I decided to put that on hold and begin a new multiple run of 5 characters. A cleric/ranger was the first to complete BGEE before an invoker became the latest new class to join the fray. That was nearly very short-lived when I was lucky to survive a skeleton archer ambush on the first area transition, but I have now managed to go past Sarevok with this one as well. As an invoker it seemed appropriate to make heavy use of chromatic orb for most of the run to date. That's so much less effective than magic missile against Sarevok though that I went for the latter to deal with him.
Shaman (continued from here)
The cleric/ranger and invoker had already safely got through BGEE and things seemed to be going well with the shaman up to entering the Cloakwood Mine. Hareishan spotted me on the way down and, after killing a few guards that chased me as I retreated, I went back to check out where she was. I saw her hiding behind a door frame and drew back immediately. It wasn't clear if she'd noticed me or not and, as she was hidden I couldn't tell if she was casting (I never have the sound on when playing). I had in mind that she might cast horror or confusion and was prepared to use a potion of magic blocking if necessary. Unfortunately she used a lightning bolt and the narrow corridor meant the bouncing bolt proved fatal before my next pause took effect .
Comments
I've been struggling with restartitis a bit lately. That resulted in me deciding to start a monk run, even though I've got cleric/mage and priest of Talos runs active. The change failed to help me take care though. At the lighthouse I attacked the first group of sirines, using a PfM scroll to fend off their opening charm attacks. After being poisoned by an arrow of biting I withdrew and rested before attacking again. Two of the three sirines were duly killed, but when I found the last one it appeared it hadn't used all its charms previously - and I had no other defenses available against that ...
A second attempt a few days later had a similar sort of ending. I attacked Bentan to try and get his PfM scroll and didn't protect myself or run away when he cast charm person at me ...
The cleric/mage run referred to above didn't last much longer. It got to the Underdark, but was lost there as a result of me overwriting my save game - the run was reported on the no-reload thread.
As an experiment, I decided to do runs with 7 different characters at once - swapping between them at various points during the games. The intention was to reduce the extent to which I got bored with a particular character and started taking more and more risks. The experiment was pretty successful, with 5 of the 7 being successful. The fighter was the first of the 5 to climb the Throne and meant I finally got a success with the first attempt at a particular character. The runs were reported in detail up to the end of SoD, with summary progress after that.
Afterthoughts
Fighters are one of the easier classes to complete the challenge with, at least as long as you're playing a shorty character (for other races you need to be much more careful to boost saving throws or use equipment granting immunities). With the Cloak of Mirroring it's easy to outlast mage buffs before finishing them off, while good HPs and defences see off melee threats. In this run Kangaxx's transformation bugged and I didn't have the Ring of Gaxx. As I don't allow healing potions (or other item-based healing) that was a significant drawback, but even without that ring my dwarven saving throws and slower regeneration allowed a relatively comfortable run.
Another of the 7 different characters chosen referred to above was a fighter/druid. This was one of the 2 unsuccessful attempts, when I failed to finish off the druids at the Grove quickly enough and was dominated by a summoned nymph.
Another new character of those 7 was a fighter dualling to cleric. I chose a berserker for the starting character, which made things significantly easier and this one was successful.
Afterthoughts
As clerics need low XP to progress at higher levels, it doesn't make sense to go for an early dual. I went for level 13, which provided some extra APR and higher HPs, in addition to better THAC0 for much of the game. The lack of APR was still an issue, but clerical buffs and the availability of rage largely offset that. Starting with a different fighter would be slightly more of a challenge, but if you're careful clerical buffs can cover nearly all threats and the relatively high levels available for a solo character make it more difficult for opponents to dispel those.
A random selection produced another new character. I decided to start it off as a shadowdancer, with the intention of dualling at level 13 (to get the maximum backstab multiple). That will probably mean dualling at the end of Jon's dungeon, allowing me to jump a few mage levels immediately there from the bonus experience.
I started cautiously, attempting to avoid any damage for as long as possible. That worked up until the Bandit Camp, where I got caught out when a defending bandit shot down a bandit I had charmed and then shot at me, despite being out of my sight range.
Basic thief abilities with locks and traps made things a bit more convenient, but those are somewhat wasted given that mages can handle those issues well enough by themselves. Starting as a shadowdancer allowed me to repeatedly disappear while in combat and I felt it was appropriate to use that ability a lot for much of the game - so there was a lot of backstabbling going on. However, even dualling relatively late, my stealth skill was not as reliable as would be expcted from a thief so there was a need for care while doing that. In ToB the ability of many opponents to see through invisibility meant I operated much more like a pure mage, with the thief abilities being much less used. I didn't use simulacrum until nearly the end of the game, but the slightly lower level of the mage class due to dualling (level 28 rather than 31) made that spell noticeably less attractive. Overall I think this particular dual makes things harder to complete the game than using a pure class (though, as both thieves and mages are strong classes, progress was still easy enough).
Starting a new run immediately, a random choice produced another new class. Having just been playing a thief dualled to a mage, I didn't want to dual early and have another mage dominated run. Instead, I decided I should aim to dual at level 21 - the maximum possible if you want to regain fighter abilities. I started off with a kensai, as that seems to be a good fit in principle with a mage. However, the run ended disappointingly early at the Bandit Camp. I had decided to use a potion of fire breath on Venkt there. That's not a standard tactic for me, but I've done it a few times and expected that to kill him. It did kill the other 3 enemies in the tent, but I was concentrating on moving to get those in the fire stream and was slow to realise that Venkt was still going. When I did notice that, I tried to run out of the tent to avoid his horror spell, but was fractionally too far away to make it out. I duly started running around in terror, while Venkt unloaded his spell book on me. I'm not sure if he was out of those or had one LMD left when the last of my 67 HPs ran out ...
I haven't played a lot over the last few months, but the attempts I have made have been pretty poor. To try and change that, I decided to try a multiple attempt again - where I run a number of characters in parallel. Last time I did this with 7 characters and it felt like rather hard work keeping track of that - but with 5 of the 7 being successful the overall outcome was pretty good. This time I'm trying with 5 characters, to be a bit more manageable. The randomly chosen characters were undead hunter, druid, jester, shaman and priest of tempus. Disappointingly, the first casualty has occurred without even getting through BGEE. The jester was almost at the XP cap when I visited the lighthouse to get the constitution tome. A couple of webs, followed by a couple of skull traps, failed to kill any of the sirines - but all were almost dead when one of them saved and moved out of the web in my direction. I was keen to kill that one quickly, to get the others while they were still stuck. I initially went invisible. However, seeing it only had 6 HPs, I assumed that a wand scorcher would finish it off. However, the combination of low basic damage rolled, its natural 50% resistance and a successful saving throw resulted in only 5 damage to leave it with still 1 HP. I was slow to recognise it was still alive and only targeted it after it had started casting a dire charm. Unfortunately my initiative roll was not great and its charm was already on the way when I dispatched a killing arrow - and neither saving throw, nor half-elven resistance, could prevent a mutual death.
A bit of carelessness on the way to Sarevok cost me the undead hunter. The disappointment of losing 2 characters led to throwing away the druid as well during the fight with Sarevok. A marginal recovery saw the shaman through BGEE before I finished off with this character, to at least keep the concept of a multiple run going for a bit longer.
With only the Priest of Tempus still standing from the previous 5, I decided to put that on hold and begin a new multiple run of 5 characters. A cleric/ranger was the first to complete BGEE before an invoker became the latest new class to join the fray. That was nearly very short-lived when I was lucky to survive a skeleton archer ambush on the first area transition, but I have now managed to go past Sarevok with this one as well. As an invoker it seemed appropriate to make heavy use of chromatic orb for most of the run to date. That's so much less effective than magic missile against Sarevok though that I went for the latter to deal with him.
The cleric/ranger and invoker had already safely got through BGEE and things seemed to be going well with the shaman up to entering the Cloakwood Mine. Hareishan spotted me on the way down and, after killing a few guards that chased me as I retreated, I went back to check out where she was. I saw her hiding behind a door frame and drew back immediately. It wasn't clear if she'd noticed me or not and, as she was hidden I couldn't tell if she was casting (I never have the sound on when playing). I had in mind that she might cast horror or confusion and was prepared to use a potion of magic blocking if necessary. Unfortunately she used a lightning bolt and the narrow corridor meant the bouncing bolt proved fatal before my next pause took effect