The Temple Ruins are a little tougher than I expected. Whether due to the party's increased levels or the difficulty setting, we've got two different batches of Greater Mummies and Skeleton Warriors to deal with, which drain a few of our potions. The Shadows also prove briefly spooky, as they brought Moth Sibula down to 7 Strength once! The Shade Lord falls to a Protection from Undead scroll and Mollyboo's short sword, a time-consuming but safe method.
Back in Athkatla, we try to side with Bodhi, who quickly rejects us--I forgot that Bodhi retracts the offer if the protagonist is a single-classed thief.
Now we have to fight vampires before Chapter 6, one of my least favorite activities. Fortunately we've got Minsc, whose pips in maces and racial enemy choice make him very solid as a vampire slayer as long as he has a Protection from Undead scroll to protect him. We even get an early kill on Tanova, the vampire I fear the most due to her mage spells, but the Clay Golem in the area runs around a lot and we have to use invisibility options and summons to keep it away from Minsc.
Then we have to survive a few moments with Bodhi. It's my understanding that you can get her to end the fight if you run away enough, so I buff up Moth Sibula and have her activate Enrage right before Bodhi hits her with Sepulchral Sleep.
We end up dragging Bodhi all the way to the spider nest area before she turns to mist and escapes.
I plan on dropping Minsc eventually, but we still want the big guy for the De'Arnise Hold. I borrow a strat I read earlier in this thread and take a page out of @Alesia_BH's book, bringing down the yuan-ti mage with the Staff of Striking.
Moth Sibula's backstab modifier is only x3, but she can get a guaranteed critical hit out of Trickery (notice the Mislead clone in the hallway above). Plus, her kit gives her luck bonuses that scale with level, so for any target that doesn't have a helmet, she effectively is doing sextuple damage on backstabs as long as she can cast Trickery.
We ran into a Death Spell scroll by chance earlier, and while we don't plan on keeping Nalia around forever, we still give her the scroll so she can instantly kill basic trolls for us. The golems give us a little grief because the Iron Golem has a poison cloud ability, but our three fighters make the area a safe run as long as we keep our Chaotic Commands up (otherwise a Spirit Troll's Greater Command ability could be game-ending!).
For TorGal himself, I draw him away with invisibility, right into a set of 7 traps. The initial damage only brings him to Injured, but the lingering poison damage and our fighters polish him off.
We still have a lot of enemy bruisers and three mages to deal with. The enemy fighters we overwhelm with our damage output, but the mages are a lot more durable. Thus begins a long, grindy fight in which we use Detect Illusions to clear Mirror Images, Shatter Spell and some magic attacks to debuff one mage at a time, and try to react to the endless stream of spells coming from the enemy. It culminates in a hideous Delayed Blast Fireball that nearly kills multiple party members.
We scrape by without any deaths, but it takes work. One of the things I'm noticing is that a lot of tough fights are very all or nothing: either you break it with some vicious silver bullet, or you end up micromanaging a long, drawn-out grind to victory.
It is time to bid Minsc farewell. He was very useful, but he's not my favorite and I want to conserve XP for our longer-term party members.
I'm strongly considering Haer'Dalis, who I value as a spectacular tank and a source of hard-to-dispel mage buffs for folks like Moth Sibula. But I am terrified of taking on the Planar Prison as we are now.
I haven't died in the Planar Prison in years. But that's due to an extreme fear of the place; I often don't tackle it until late in the game, or even after the Underdark. With a Coiled Cabal in the far east, pits with monsters that are too easy to fall into (and micro-heavy to avoid), and another Coiled Cabal bolstering the Warden himself, a fighter/mage that I have seen cast Time Stop before, all inside an area that you can't leave without first rescuing Haer'Dalis, the Planar Prison offers VERY little margin for error compared to other Chapter 2 quests.
I'm going to test the waters and kill Mekrath, just to get the prerequisite quest out of the way. While we're at it, we opt to do part of the Unseeing Eye quest, just short of fighting any actual beholders. On to the Temple Sewers!
Fun fact: Green Slimes can kill you in a single hit on a failed save vs. death. I have Korgan deal with the slime that greets us beneath the Temple District.
I only found out about the Green Slime instant-death attack when one of them killed Khalid in a past run. I think it even chunks the target, though I have gore disabled and so we shouldn't have that happening to anyone. But because they're so slow and so fragile and they only have one attack per round, at bad THAC0, it's easy to think of Green Slimes as trash mobs and nothing more.
On the way to Mekrath, we fight Draug Fea and the sewer dwellers. Gaius Oracles us, but we slip away, hide, and bop him on the noggin with a stick. Moth Sibula's Special Snares further mess with the enemy, and another backstab cripples them before the rest of our party even moves in for the kill.
There's one hiccup: the Helm of Dumathoin is nowhere to be seen.
The helm is supposed to spawn on one of the dwarves in this fight, but it's completely missing. I even go back to the SoD save I imported into BG2 to double-check, and we did in fact have the helm in our inventory, and not just in a bag of holding. The helm was supposed to spawn--just like the Golden Pantaloons did.
I might Keeper it in at some point, since I'm pretty sure this is a bug, but it's not a key item and so we can go without for a bit. We backstab Mekrath, trap some level-draining shadows deeper into the sewers, and use Aerie to safely grab the loot we want from the Unseeing Eye quest, without having to fight anything further. Turn Undead even lets Aerie push away a crowd of undead blocking our escape.
Aerie might not be a powerful character, but she is profoundly, profoundly useful.
While I'm sketchy about fighting the Warden, Moth Sibula's access to Fire Seed Breaches with Shatter Spell makes me feel confident enough to deal with Lavok and Tolgerias, so we recruit Valygar (a rare choice; normally I kill him) and make our way to the Planar Sphere. As if to reinforce her status as our swiss army knife, Aerie patches up Korgan after a fight with the first Clay Golem using a Remove Curse spell.
Shatter Spell and Fire Seeds prove unnecessary for Kayardi.
Unfortunately, Mogadish comes with Spell Shield, making Shatter Spell useless. But another backstab and a little TLC from Jaheira, Korgan, and Valygar put the rest of the cannibal halflings to bed.
For Lavok, Jaheira summons some beetles and sends them out to hassle Lavok after we tank his opening Horrid Wilting spell. Aerie's Haste ensures that they get there quick, and Moth Sibula launches a Fire Seed at a beetle, dismantling poor Lavok's Absolute Immunity spell and all of his other buffs. Aerie didn't even need to Spell Thrust him; he had no Spell Shield prebuff to protect himself.
We disrupt his next spell with a simple arrow and close in for the kill. Backstabs might render Shatter Spell unnecessary sometimes, and Spell Shield can block it entirely, but for the mage fights where Shatter Spell does come into play, it is devastating.
Tolgerias doesn't put up nearly as much of a fight.
That's Trickery for you. A guaranteed critical hit is a godsend for any backstabber. Our fighters trample the remaining enemies, minus the golems at the power core, and we give Valygar the boot. He's a good guy and a strong fighter, but I never found him interesting.
Moth Sibula's success at the Planar Sphere makes me hopeful for a clean win at the Planar Prison. But I'm not going to walk into that place with just four party members, and I want Moth Sibula to have a durable Chaotic Commands spell in case a yuan-ti mage nails us with a Chaos spell. Aerie just doesn't have the high levels to put up cleric buffs that can resist a level 14 mage's Remove Magic, so we need a dedicated cleric for support.
I decide to snatch up Anomen, one of my less favorite NPCs but an excellent bruiser on top of being a solid cleric. Unfortunately, due to a quirk of how the game deals with timers, the instant that Anomen joins the party, he insists that we hike over to the Windspear Hills to finish the quest we started there--even though he wasn't even there when we dropped off the acorns.
I don't want to risk Anomen leaving the party out of frustration (especially not when he's wearing valuable gear that we gave him), so it's time to take a detour. We're going to fight our way through Firkraag's lair, solely to make sure we have our chosen cleric in store for the Planar Prison.
We grab Edwin on the way. After much thought, I've decided that Edwin's virtually endless spell slots are just too useful to give up, and as long as we never bring him to the Graveyard District, we'll never have to put up with his tedious Nether Scroll questline.
Fun fact: Green Slimes can kill you in a single hit on a failed save vs. death. ... I only found out about the Green Slime instant-death attack when one of them killed Khalid in a past run. I think it even chunks the target, though I have gore disabled and so we shouldn't have that happening to anyone. But because they're so slow and so fragile and they only have one attack per round, at bad THAC0, it's easy to think of Green Slimes as trash mobs and nothing more.
The Green Slime attack: 0 physical damage, save vs death at +4 or get poisoned (1 damage/2 sec) and die after 10 seconds (exploding, so that character is permanently gone if gore is on). Also, you turn green. A poison cure can eliminate the damage, but it won't stop the death effect*. If you get poisoned, only a Death Ward or similar effect can save you.
Fortunately, that +4 modifier makes it really easy to reach a point of safety. Korgan's safe from the moment you get him; his base save of 5 as a level 8 dwarf fighter with 18+ CON is already enough for guaranteed success. Also, poison immunity blocks the effect. Kind of a weird enemy; either they're threatening to kill you in one hit, or they're completely unable to hurt you.
*My tweak mod has a component that lets poison cures completely cure the green slime effect. And it's also going into the EE Fixpack, whenever that gets finished.
@semiticgoddess Do you really need to finish the Planar Prison to keep Haer'Dalis? I thought it's enough to rescue him from Merkrath: He'll complain, but as long as you don't return to the Five Flagons and progress his quest, he won't leave.
Haer'Dalis has dialogue for that last step of leaving the party, but it's dummied out with a False() condition; he'll never actually reach that point.
No, the problem is that if you have the gem but haven't delivered it, dropping Haer'Dalis from the party for even a moment will cause him to take the gem and leave the game entirely, along with Raelis' group. No planar prison for you when that happens. And characters being temporarily dropped from the party happens very easily; it can even happen involuntarily with effects like imprisonment.
Abazigal's Lair - we prepare for Draconis with protection from acid buffs, Corey equips the shadow dragon armor, and we have green scrolls of acid protection at the ready in case we need to renew acid protecions (which should ideally only be needed for Corey). His human form lacked SI:A, so we went for the inquisitor dispel. As expected, though, he did manage to dispel Corey regardless:
Once he got close to death, everyone moved away to avoid getting stuck in his selection circle, as Corey used his green PfA scroll to get to 100% acid resistance again.
We renewed his improved haste while dispelling the dragon - a quick pierce magic spell trigger from Alesia followed by Grim Face's instant breach:
The dragon made an attempt to go invisible, countered by true sight. He moved into a corner and renewed spell deflection + PFMW - we countered immmediately with a secret word sequencer and another breach:
That went well. We used our still-active buffs to clear the opening foes in the lair itself but rested before facing the group with the lizardman shamans. Adding SI:C to our buffs to counter the creeping doom, we open with a timestop on Mollyboo, double dragon's breath, storm of vengeance, and a 3*ADHW CC, which - to our surprise and luck - seems to take out of the shamans before their buffs are active:
The dragon's breaths are really thinning out the enemy lines here - we follow up with summon planetar and spellstrike on the shaman:
Mollyboo uses her timestop to take out all remaining lizardmen, so we only have the shaman to deal with - we just have to breach + kill now:
The yellow dragon has a piercing damage breath weapon, but it seems like it might get blocked by stoneskins? Well, Corey still doesn't take a ton of damage, and we just have to use one of our (renewed) secret word sequencers and a quick breach:
This is definitely the first time I've seen a dragon suffer from morale failure:
Now, all we have to do before returning to Amkethran is taking out Olhydra (with protection from ice) and a few kuo-toans:
We leave 7 spike traps outside of the lair for our return, which end up taking down one of the dragons upon the beginning of the quadruple dragon ambush. The black dragon remains (I'm not sure if this one has/uses an acid breath weapon, but we used our remaining PfA green scrolls either way, it's not like we'll need them later). I had also buffed the party with my remaining 5 protection from poison scrolls in anticipiation of the upcoming green dragon. The black one barely did anything, they didn't even have any notable defenses:
The green tried to use their breath weapon twice and healed back to full health via heal spell twice, but didn't really deal any damage to us at all:
The red one was a bit more dangerous, using spell deflection + PFMW, buffing with improved haste to deal significant damage to Corey, and eventually dispelling him:
Shortly before his death, he even managed to renew his PFMW, forcing us to breach again, and he punched through Alesia's stoneskin, dealing some damage to her in the process - but we were able to take him out just in time:
Entering the lair again, we made sure to take down the two neutral vigilants right away to avoid them trapping us in their selection circle. It seems like I forgot to take a screenshot here as Mollyboo went invisible and took down all three tyrant golems in half of a round with improved haste + greater deathblows, while the others quickly ran in to help with the death tyrants. We got the scroll of reversal via flesh to stone scroll and entered Abazigal's sanctum, laying down a few spike traps for safety in case we had to retreat over there, and returned to pocket plane to memorize lightning protection spells and rest + buff. This was one of the stranger Abazigal fights I ever had. In his human form, our foe activated GWW right away and moved towards us with incredibly speed - I immediatly ran away for a bit, I wanted him to waste this GWW'ed round entirely without hitting anything. However, I ended up running back too far, activating my spike traps on accident (which I would want to save for his dragon form in case I got into trouble there). I wanted to take out all of the little dragons and Tamah first, but the traps immediately made Abazigal transform, kicking away the party in the process. This had the interesting side effect of everyone being out of his sight upon his transformation. We were out of combat.
This gave us the opportunity to buff a little bit more, summon in a planetar + elemental prince and start clearing out the other parts of the room:
Abazigal's mordy sword followed us, even if he did not. We were able to clear everything up except for Tamah, one single other minor dragon and Abazigal himself:
I peeked at Abazigal once to check out the situation, and was able to leave his sight again right away - despite him activating PFMW, it seems like he didn't really spot us - at least, he didn't follow us back to our southern position. I waited a few rounds, called in some spirit animals as additional distractions and renewed a few short-duration buffs (including SI:A and Entropy Shield) before finally attacking the remaining dragons - though one thing I foolishly didn't renew was Corey's hardiness, which ran out just at the wrong time, as our inquisitor took a succession of quick hits from both dragons:
However, I was able to run him away a bit to the east, and Abazigal changed targets as we started to deal serious damage to Tamah, forcing her to go invisible. We made use of our planetar, who can instantly cast the heal spell three times, to get Corey back up and ready:
The planetar and Corey took down the remaining ice drake while Tamah revealed herself again - as our inquistior returned to the front lines, he quickly took some damage again, though we really didn't need to fear any breath weapons at this point:
Mollyboo dealt most of the damage to Tamah with her critical strikes, as Corey had to retreat for a bit once again:
These planetar instant heals are really, really useful - I should definitely use them more often:
As we secret word + breach Abazigal (who stoneskins again right away), the dragon finally takes the opportunity to dispel Corey, who moves away for a bit as a result:
Easy enough to throw on the Cloak of Reflection to get to lightning immunity again - we summon in another spirit lionto distract Abazigal:
The dragon still isn't done killing this spirit animal as Corey activates his GWW to rejoin combat - and victory is soon ours:
I've been underusing the spirit animals recently - they aren't fight-winners by themselves anymore, but they serve as useful distractions given that they can be summoned almost instantly (and without muddeling the aura), and Enuhal really isn't all that busy with spellcasting in combat anyway.
We immediatly return to the pocket plane for challenge four:
A 3*ADHW sequencer does most of the work when fighting Balthazar's guards:
Now, it is vital, if we want to stand any chance at all, to convince Balthazar to join us at the Throne. Luckily, Enuhal has very high wisdom. I don't know exactly how the Balthazar ascension dialogue works, but according to the hints in the readme, I think I went the correct road for a high wisdom character, showing him that Melissan has been using him, and offering a different interpretation of the bhaalspawn prophecy - he was convinced:
I had equipped the ring of human influence here, just in case. Well, now we just have to kill the Ravager. I make sure to pick power-hungy dialogue options while talking with the solar, as this is the only challenge where I want to get the evil bhaalspawn power (damage resistance versus a useless resurrection - I have rods for that). Because I still had lots of buffs going, I decided not to rest here, so we only had 4 instead of 7 spike traps, turning this into an actual battle, though not a difficult one. Mollyboo got her buffs dispelled via ravager hit, but wasn't even able to finish her PFMW before the demon fell:
Well... seems like we made it to the Throne, despite the two chunkings. Abazigal's Lair went surprisingly well considering the trouble I had in Watcher's Keep. However, it could easily be argued that even the first battle at the Throne will propably be the hardest one we've had to face yet. The final one will be in another league entirely. The bugged fallen solars (they are currently not casting their spells, just attacking) are certainly working in our favor, but there are a lot things that can go wrong here, and many of them might result in immediate death.
I returned to Amkethran, recharged my wands of spell striking and bought a few potentially useful scrolls. I made sure that my sequencers and contingencies were all in order. My choice of chain contingencies was kind of bad - I went with 3*ADHW and 3*Mordy Sword, both of which are decent in general, but not for Ascension - the ADHWs will usually just hit Imoen and do no significant damage, the mordy swords ended up not even triggering (I got some kind of error message, "spell failed" - no idea why). I should've known this, because I have used these CC's here in the past and they've always been underwhelming. Well, I also prepared stoneskins (on Corey as well, using gargoyle boots), cat's grace and mind blanks before resting, as all of these will laster much longer than 8 hours.
For my final buffs, I added lightning protection (just because I could - I have the spellslots on Enuhal), ice protection and some potions to my usual fare - fortitude, mind focusing, heroism, invulnerability, speed, defense, storm giant strength - I also handed out potions of magic shielding, ready for use in case of losing crucial buffs. Mass invisibility was our final touch. Grim Face ended up at -21 AC, and I didn't even try stacking AC on him
We face Irenicus, Bodhi, Imoen/Slayer and 2 fallen solars (which are currently bugged and won't cast spells). My plan here relies on Mollyboo - for this battle, we're giving her the AoP + Robe of Vecna (later given to Grim Face again). She also starts with The Reflex equipped so there's no chance that the Fallen Solars will dispel her via arrows. Combat starts, she casts timestop immediately. The other two wizards use PW:Blind on one of the fallen solars each. It's not super likely to work because the solars have 85% magic resistance, but we want to cast spells that will actually hit before Mollyboo's timestop, so we need something with potentially immediate impact. For the same reason, Enuhal goes for spirit animals, summoning one each directly in front of the solars to distract them, maybe get them to hit it instead of one of our party members. Corey opens with true sight to counter Irenicus' II and other illusion buffs. The combat log tells me that one fallen solar is attacking Corey, one Grim Face - I give The Reflex to Grim Face for this attack, because Corey is likely to lose his buffs anyway. One of the solars actually misses - propably the one attacking Corey, because he doesn't end up losing his buffs. I do not activate PFMW's/Divine Protections on the three people who can cast them, because that would make Enuhal the most likely target for solar attacks - he's the only one who can neither use The Reflex nor cast divine protection, so we need to offer up alternative targets. To my surprise, one of the power words actually works:
Everyone has some form of item based level drain immunity - Corey is wielding the Runehammer instead of his usual Foebane, for example. Alesia goes for ruby ray via wand on Irenicus to get his spell trap, Grim Face for divine protection as I return the shield to Mollyboo, Enuhal for a third spirit animal. Corey starts attacking Bodhi, and I make sure to put Balthazar into Lunar Stance (which grants him immunity to timestop). As Mollyboo finishes her timestop, Bodhi's cloud of bats has only affected Corey, and I'm amazed to see that both solars have put away their bows and are using their swords to attack our spirit animals - the distractions have been a success:
Our first priority during the timestop is taking out the solars. Balthazar and Mollyboo get to work - Mollyboo is walking around with 24 strength and 10 APR using the FoA (she ditches the shield for Belm again), so her damage output is substantial. Once we get rid of the first solar, we cast our second timestop:
Our timestopping duo gets to work - they take out not only the second solar, but also Bodhi with the timestop still ongoing:
Imoen is next - and it seems like the double timestop has caused enough time to pass for Jon's absolute immunity to have expired. We do a bit of damage to him and even apply the all-important FoA slow effect:
Time resumes. I cancel Grim Face's divine protection - I might need Grim Face's aura this round to dispel Jon if he's able to re-cast AI or PFMW - he is not. He just dies to our massive barrage of attacks:
We use a death spell scroll to get rid of the magical swords. We check the state of our buffs - it's good. We don't waste time and trigger the first pool. While the demons are far less threatening than the two big battles here, we can not afford to lose our buffs here (which, strangely enough, even Corey has mostly kept so far). While we kill most enemies really quickly, a cambion is able to GWW down Grim Face's stoneskins, so our gnome has to retreat and recast for a bit:
I notice that SI:A is gone, so I have to renew it before facing the second pool - during the second pool battle, entropy shields run out, but none of the demons is able to take advantage of that - I do notice that they have tried to strip us of some buffs with single target dispels - some of us have lost their spell shields:
I renew all spell shield effects and entropy shields (I have also previously renewed prayer because I have spare 3rd level spell slots on Grim Face). Also, new improved hastes are in order - I use the cheetah amulet + darkfire bow in order to save spellslots, though I have to renew one of them during the battle. Alesia also loses her stoneskins due to another dangerous cambion, but is easily able to renew them in time. Corey, who has been hit with dispel a few times, still kept most of his buffs, losing for example the storm giant strength, but it seems like our spellcasting levels are high enough here to keep most things that aren't potion-based:
Alesia gets her final level up here, picking up a fifth timetrap (we're super close to the experience cap - in theory, only two of our party members still can level up and might even do so during the final battle) - she places the traps right away. We're now planning to fish for a wish rest. If we get it, we can relax and re-buff. If we don't, we might be in trouble, because we we're running low on some crucial spells - mostly improved haste and spell shield. Mollyboo and Alesia only have spell shield access vial two scrolls now, and improved hastes are down to 2 casts and 2 scrolls. Last time, we had 6 wish attempts, I think, and got no rest option. Grim Faces drinks a wisdom potion. He has 3 casts and 1 scroll. The casts all get incredibly underwhelming effects - nothing that would even be good as a pre-buff for the battle. The scroll is our last option for a much easier time during the final battle - and we get our rest:
I save and close the session. No need to get impatient. I need to be fully prepared and not forget anything during our re-buff - something best done with a clear head. Part II hasn't been played yet. I don't have any more time today, so it will have to wait until tomorrow.
After a couple of months I finally got around to continuing with the priest of Talos run that had been on pause in SoD. That did reasonably well to get to the Throne, but a movement error against Melissan's 3rd incarnation saw me trapped and killed by her in melee.
That only left the cleric/mage as an ongoing run. I had done a bit more with that since my last update and my notes showed I had just arrived in the Underdark. Unfortunately, when I came to load up the named save this morning, I found that was from significantly earlier - so I clearly forgot to update the named save in recent sessions. That's not surprising as normally I only use quicksaves and this isn't the first time I've been caught out trying to continue with a run after a pause . I think the gap feels too great to continue from the earlier save, so will abandon this run here.
Oh, by the way I'm looking forward (fingers crossed) to the triumph of @Enuhal's Avatars .
I've been finding it difficult in more recent times to sustain enthusiasm for a run. As seen in my last post for a cleric/illusionist though, putting runs on hold in an ad-hoc fashion can cause its own sort of problems. To address those issues, I thought I would try something new to me and deliberately run multiple runs at once, but in a much more structured way.
Hence, I've selected 7 characters from my long-life challenge and will play a session each day with those in turn. If things go well, that variety will keep me interested. The challenge of surviving in multiple runs should help me stay focused, though that may be more difficult if (almost certainly when) runs start falling by the wayside.
The characters chosen were all randomly selected, though I've ended up with a strong bias towards fighters (which suits me). The numbers in curly brackets are the number of attempts made, including the current one, with each class. Three of the characters below will be first-timers and I've not yet completed the long-life challenge with the first attempt by any character, so attempting that will provide a bit of extra incentive with those: Fighter/thief {10}
Fighter/mage/cleric {5}
Fighter/druid {1}
Fighter {1}
Wizard slayer {59}
Enchanter {2}
Fighter dualling to cleric {1}
The Avatars (Enuhal's version) - Update XXXV - Final Update
The question is, to quote Ayreon's "The Two Gates": "Did we pass, or did we fail?"
Let us see.
As a reminder, we got a wish rest last time, so we have all our spells available. 7 time traps in total, because we've been able to lay down 5 before the wish rest. In previous ascension battles, I've placed these traps right in the center. The result has been that they only tend to trigger once the enemies start closing in towards the party. I thought I'd be smarter this time around, placing them near the spawn points. That was, as it turns out, a terrible idea. The time traps, placed that close to our enemies, trigger during the cutscenes/dialogues, but they do not actually work - we get no time stop duration at all. Our primary plan to let Alesia and Balthazar put every one of our enemies to near death during an extended time trap duration has to be heavily adjusted.
Our buffs, btw, are identical to the ones we used upon entering the Throne. The only thing we're missing is potions of mind focusing, because I neglected to bring enough for a second round of buffs. I didn't do any more wishing, instead saving these for a planned mid-combat IA from Grim Face. Alesia drank a wisdom potion as well, because she might use limited wish for timestop. One other addition: Mollyboo casts a simulacrum (which, in turn, buffs itself a bit and summons a planetar, because why not?). Later on, I realized that I had forgotten potions of speed for the non-improved-hasted characters here.
So, plan A has failed. We are starting combat without any trap advantage at all. Timestops are still our plan - Alesia has 3 timestop scrolls, 2 timestop spells and a limited wish with a timestop option available. She equips "The Reflex" to protect herself against Illasera while she casts timestop. Note that she has no AoP or Robe of Vecna (Grim Face has these now, and will hopefully use them later to great effect), so it's going to take a while. We hand a PfM scroll to Grim Face and one to Corey to use on Abazigal and Sendai. We hand Mollyboo a circlet of mind controlling to get Sarevok on our side. Balthazar moves towards Illasera to maybe distract her (though she ends up targeting Grim Face, so I switch around The Reflex to him for a second), Enuhal summons spirit animals directly next to her for the same reason.
Plan B starts to take effect: Before anything dangerous can happen, and after we've applied PfM's and the circlet of mind controlling, Alesia completes her timestop, with Balthazar in his trusty shadow stance:
Alesia and Balthazar start going to town. We need to get everyone to near death, but NOT kill them - not yet - otherwise, Amelyssan will immediately appear, and if she does so during a timestop, we might be in huge trouble. Illasera is invulnerable for a short amount, so we start with Abazigal - after that, Ilasera can be hurt, and Gromnir is next. Alesia does fairly well with Angurvidal + Scarlet Ninja-To (aided by storm giant strength):
By now, Alesia has renewed her timestop, and she does so again before dealing some damage to Yaga-Shura:
With the giant near death, she casts timestop from her spellbook, and we notice that Sendai is still is immune to our weapons/fists - Balthazar uses his dragon fist ability with great success (thanks, Ascension readme!):
Everyone else is near death, so we end up killing Sendai. This calls forth Melissan and brings the timestops to an end:
Our fighters go after Yaga-Shura, Grim Face calls in a colossus golem and our spirit animals kill Illasera, giving us time to breathe as Mel is stunned for a while:
Down goes the fire giant:
Gromnir and Abazigal are quick to follow. As we turn to face Sarevok, we check on the state of our buffs and renew SI:A/Entropy shield, as these are absolutely crucial:
Sarevok starts GWW'ing Corey, who is protected a bit by hardiness. Before we can kill our bhaalspawn brother once and for all, Melissan gets going - she teleports to the north-east, and as I pause the game, I hear the distinct sound of an alteration spell being cast. Enuhal's entropy shield has JUST finished in time, and he is able to cast focus just a second before Mel stops time:
With Enuhal not being a viable target for now, Mel calls in her fallen solars and starts targeting Mollyboo, who is only protected by stoneskins. She activates GWW, and it's a race: Can Enuhal (who casts energy blades to improve his damage) and Balthazar kill Sarevok and thus weaken/disable Mel before she gets through Mollyboo's stoneskins? Luckily, the answer is yes:
Time is still stopped as Amelyssan notices that she's now mortal. Good, because in previous ascension battles, it has sometimes taken quite a while for this trigger to happen.
Time resumes. We pause. Mollyboo is surrounded by Mel and Fallen Solars - there is only one recourse, she casts PFMW (successfully). As Alesia renews improved haste on Corey, Mel calls in more demons. Our new focus is taking down the fallen solars before they can dispel too many party members. Grim Face is still casting his improved alacrity and currently using "The Reflex" to avoid solar fire:
At this point, Balthazar was taking most of the damage. I should have had him activate "Flip Resistances", but didn't really pay too much attention to him - it's hard to care for a party member that isn't actually in your party, you don't see his hp pool, buff status etc. Grim Face finally got his IA going - casting a whole arsenal of spells, renewing improved haste, activating basically all the relavant self-buffs in his spellbook, calling a planetar, casting wish 3 times:
He starts activating basically all of his HLAs as Mel calls demons again - and this time, a ridiculous amount of them. These are, presumably, the five "Gates" she gets on insane difficulty once the five are defeated. I think we got option 1 three times (so 6 cambions, 3 succubi, 3 alu-fiends in total) and option 2 two times (a babau and a nabassu). This is, of course, in addition to her 2 fallen solars. We are utterly unable to deal any damage to Mel herself, because she's stuck in the midst of these demons - we would be unable to even reach her, for the most part - and all of these cambions can use whirlwind attacks, so they will kill us quickly if we don't take them out. Alesia tries casting her own IA - she has ADHWs, which can maybe help in thinning out enemy numbers. Meanwhile, our fighters have taken down one of the fallen solars, and the other one flees to the north as our three wishes start triggering:
I take the 25 in all stats. We follow up with a mass breach on enemies (which doesn't do much at this point) - the final one is quite good - hardiness for all party members:
We split up the party: Corey and Mollyboo follow the fallen solar to take him out, I add Enuhal into the mix as well because I don't want him to be next to all of these demons. The fallen solar is able to dispel a bunch of buffs on both Corey and Enuhal with his attacks before he gets destroyed, but a lot of the crucial ones are still in effect. Corey returns south to help with the demon clearup, his improved haste gets once again renewed by Grim Face (his last one). Grim Face activates divine protection, Alesia goes for PFMW upon finishing IA to avoid all the cambion arrows down there, and she starts unleashing ADHWs. Meanwhile, up north, Enuhal just tries to stay safe, and Mollyboo summons another simulacrum with the Helm of Vhailor, both buff up with stoneskin (I assume her stoneskins are weak after the shots Mel has taken at her during the timestop) and renewed haste. Mel, who has followed the group of three to the north for a bit (having now killed Balthazar, which I only noticed once it was too late, though I did at least have him use his lay on hands before), actually takes a FoA hit from Mollyboo, which is propably why she teleports to the north-west next in order to safely cast divine cleansing to remove the slow effect:
In tandem, Corey and Alesia, using improved hasted Foebane attacks and ADHW's/Dragon's Breath, finally start thinning out the hordes of demons, granting Mollyboo enough experience to actually hit the level cap right here in the final battle (we take another critical strike) - Mel seemingly really wants to kill Enuhal now, she follows him around everywhere. Mollyboo is on her trail, hitting her a few times, while her simulacrum helps with the cambion killing, as does Grim Face with his energy blades:
Enuhal drinks an oil of speed - he's now faster than Mel, so her attempts at hitting have become futile for the moment. The simulacrum calls forth another planetar. Corey, Enuhal and Alesia move to clear up the final few demons while Mollyboo, her simulacrum, Grim Face and the planetar follow Mel to the north-east. The would-be god focuses her attentions on the simulacrum - sadly, it didn't spawn with any PFMWs in the spellbook, but it is still protected by stoneskins, so it's not like this is a quick task - in fact, Mollyboo and the simulacrum start activating critical strikes and deal quite a bit of damage to Melissan:
The cleanup to the south is soon done, mostly thanks to Corey, and Alesia starts casting ruby ray via wand on Amelyssan in case we need to breach her:
The simulacrum is taking quite a lot of damage, but it's able to renew stoneskins. Corey joins in with his own critical strikes. I am a bit freaked out when Alesia casts these ruby rays due to the alteration spell sound playing, thinking Mel will timestop again, but as I check Enuhal's special abilities, he can't even use focus yet, which means that 10 rounds haven't even passed - Mel needs 20 rounds on insane to cast another timestop - Mel's spell protections get removed, but she doesn't even put up her divine mantle again:
Our attacks are in full swing - with 2 fighters and a simulacrum spamming improved hasted critical strikes, and everyone but Corey on full hp, things are looking great:
And it's done. We passed the challenge:
I was, initially, a bit shocked by our timetraps not properly activating. That's certainly good to know. Balthazar did a lot of the heavy lifting with his damage during timestops and tankiness when Mel re-appeared, though Mollyboo (for Irenicus/Bodhi) and Alesia (for The Five) made all this possible. We couldn't have done it without our powerful monk ally, though. The party used every tool at their disposal, and got rewarded for it. I didn't forget any major buffs this time around, except for oils of speed while buffing up for the second time, but that didn't end up mattering too much. Enuhal didn't do too much once Mel appeared, but that was by design - I want my bhaalspawn to keep their aura clear for defensive abilities/potions if needed unless their damage or abilities are absolutely required.
While the two chunkings (and the fact that our final replacement ended up being a fighter/illusionist, certainly one of the most powerful classes in the game with a party that close to the experience cap) plus the fact that we only had to fight against the bugged, non-spellcasting fallen solars might diminish our achievements, I'm still proud of the Avatar's performance. A very well balanced combination of characters, and once we got to the point where spells/items were able to put as past some of the weaker starting attributes, it felt like playing one of the more powerful partys I've ever used.
Some final stats and thoughts for every one of them:
Enuhal - my trusty bhaalspawn totemic druid. As my primary skill in no-reloading seems to be keeping divine spellcasters alive, he used his summons and insect plague to dominate parts of BG1 and early-mid SoA, before the power of these spells somewhat diminished. Later on, his powerful defensive spells kept him safe at all times as he supported the party with more powerful summons, nature's beauty, HLA spells and, of course, a ton of buffs. In the end, he returned to his spirit animal summoning roots, and they ended up being quite useful as quick and easy distractions for even the most powerful foes (plus, they did kill Illasera for us):
Number of deaths: 0
Corey - I expected the nerfed inquisitor dispel to turn him into a relatively weak character in the later parts of the game - how wrong I was! True sight was, of course, consistently powerful and removed the need for all other kinds of anti-illusion/stealth approaches. His dispel ended up being even more powerful, though, because his levels were able to keep up with almost every foe once we got to mid SoA, and while I expected almost all wizards on insane SCS to use SI:A, we found quite a few of them who were missing that spell and quickly got hit by Corey, turning them into easy targets. He was also one of our trusty tanks in BG1 and kept up with the other fighters by dealing great damage once he started dual-wielding Foebane + Kundane:
Number of deaths: 3 (two in BG1 against Ankhegs, one in Watcher's Keep when fighting Tahazzar while coming from a no-magic zone), and 2 imprisonments (one against Kiser's mage, one against the demon wraith in Watcher's Keep).
Grim Face - You know what you get with a cleric/illusionist, and that's flexibility, especially with the addition of IWD spells. Grim Face always had the perfect spell for every situation in his spellbook. I rarely unleashed his full potential, but the Melissan battle with the three instant wishes under improved alacrity showed some of the incredibly power he would propably wield in more capable hands - I'm not that good at making use of the full potential of arcane spellcasting in the endgame. Notably, Grim Face never died during the entire run, an achievement only shared by Enuhal (and Mollyboo, though she was with the group only for a short time). The fact that he could access both arcane and divine protections made it nearly impossible for him to get caught off-guard:
Number of deaths: 0
Alesia - Providing some key backstabs against powerful spellcasters, mostly in SoA and early ToB, Alesia also became a capable fighter later on due to her capability to equip any item in the game and protect herself in various ways. Her traps allowed us some quick and easy victories against many otherwise dangerous opponents, and her timestops saved the day in the battle against The Five.
Number of Deaths: 3 (two against archdruids in Cloakwood, one in Watcher's Keep when fighting Tahazzar while coming from a no-magic zone), 1 Petrification (due to a trap in the demon wraith's room in Watcher's Keep)
Grond0 - Grond0 seemed almost unkillable. With his high hitpoints, incredibly damage resistance, rage and hardiness, he was, for most of the game, our most powerful fighter and damage dealer in direct combat. If I hadn't been blindsided by the fell cats, he might have easily survived until the end. Rest in peace!
Number of deaths: Only 1 - but it was a chunking, due to Brimstone's breath weapon hitting him after getting hit by a bunch of fell cats, who lowered his fire resistance into the negatives.
Jmerry - Coming in as the party was in dire need of an ally, Jmerry wasn't with us for very long, but played a crucial role in taking down Yaga-Shura, defeating Sendai and clearing the ever-dangerous teleported maze. Together with Alesia, she was able to perform many successful double-backstab plays and put out incredible amounts of damage on short notice.
Number of deaths: 2 - One in Watcher's Keep when fighting Tahazzar while coming from a no-magic zone, and the second, permanent one when getting hit by a huge amount of ballistic attacks in the mind flayer compound at Watcher's Keep level 4.
Mollyboo, representing Semiticgoddess - Late to the party, but with a strong impact. A fighter/illusionist will always be great, especially in the very, very late game. She helped us in clearing out the remainder of Watcher's keep, excelled in Abazigal's Lair, but her most important contributions were against Irenicus&Bodhi at the throne, whom she basically took out by herself, and against Mel later on, when she and her simulacrum dealt a majority of the required damage:
Congratulations @Enuhal. I was confident you would succeed, but that just underlines the skill and concentration you've exhibited for quite a while now .
At Anomen's insistence, we enter Firkraag's lair. I've long viewed this area as a lengthy, combat-heavy slog, with two terrifying threats: the Ruhk Transmuter, whose incredible AC, spell level immunities, and damage output can wreck lower-level parties, and the batch of undead near Samia, which can spawn Ancient Vampires.
The Ruhk Transmuter, fortunately, takes an exceptionally heavy hit from Moth Sibula for 132 backstab damage, and the Ring of Energy is enough to finish him off.
Samia doesn't follow us when we open the door, forcing us to trigger the dialog manually and fight in the more confined space of the hallway. It actually gives us a very convenient choke point, however, as Edwin tanks the enemies while Death Fog dissolves them. The enemies who get past Edwin discover Moth Sibula's traps and the combined force of several fighters.
After Moth Sibula backstabs her way past the Guardians, Anomen decides to scold us again despite being midway through the quest he wanted.
It's actually making me nervous that he'll leave the party midway through the dungeon, and steal valuable gear in the process.
The remaining fights are tedious affairs, requiring plenty of prebuffs and potions and still taking many rounds to polish off. Conster falls to a set of traps, Korgan takes ages to kill the Adamantite Golem since he's the only fighter with a +3 weapon, and finally we skedaddle.
Finally, we return to Athkatla and slip into the Planar Prison. It starts out nicely, with a clean Chaos spell on the first enemies and a Shatter Spell on the mage.
I proceed to the lone mage to the east, as I always do in this dungeon before resting up for the Coiled Cabal. But for the first time ever, we lose our chance to rest first.
One of the yuan-ti wanders over, drawing us into a fight we haven't prepared for.
If we had been able to rest, we probably could have dispelled multiple yuan-ti mages at once with a Fire Seed and Shatter Spell, but we no longer have Shatter Spell available. Instead, we send over Korgan, raging and therefore immune to disablers even after the Coiled Cabal launches Remove Magic spells at him. Moth Sibula sneaks over to remove the Coiled Cabal's Mirror Images using Detect Illusions, and Edwin sends a Nishruu out to distract them.
The Nishruu doesn't last, and soon we get several enemies walking past Korgan and approaching the party. Aerie and Edwin fire off magic attacks, allowing the Wand of Fire to get through.
After a lot of micromanagement, we end up with a safe handle on the situation: Edwin manages to confuse one of the mages with Chaos, and the remaining mage succumbs to our fighters, its opening PFMW long since worn off.
The Coiled Cabal is disbanded, the Master of Thralls dies, and we prepare for the Warden. After setting up a suite of traps, we send Aerie over to the Warden under Sanctuary. He rushes at her to tear apart her defenses, but Divine Protection keeps her safe.
The Warden spends two rounds casting Magic Missile and Mordenkainen's Force Missiles at Aerie via sequencer, but Aerie's Shield spell seems to block all of it, as it's supposed to. Aerie hits him with Spell Thrust, then Secret Word. After Aerie renews her Divine Protection, Moth Sibula darts in to shoot an arrow at the Warden, and Shatter Spell's on-hit effect debuffs him.
The Coiled Cabal belatedly spawns behind the Warden, still out of our line of sight, and activates their buffs as the Warden loses his. The party closes in for the kill, stepping carefully so none of us fall into a pit on the way.
The Warden goes down! All that's left is to clean up the second Coiled Cabal. Edwin launches a Death Fog to disrupt their spells, and we more or less just brute-force the remaining fight, confident with the buffs we've got.
Our confidence proves unfounded, as the yuan-ti's magic resistance lets them shrug off Death Fog on some rounds. The mages who survive send a Chain Lighting and a Sunfire our way, nearly killing several party members in the process.
But we scrape by, the last mage dies to Death Fog, and we use Invisibility 10' Radius to hide from the Magical Swords still harassing us. We rest up and recruit Haer'Dalis!
Who puts us in a dangerous situation mere moments after we return to Athkatla and foolishly try to wander around the city without invisibility, or any other kind of buffs. Edwin dies to a backstab out of nowhere, while Haer'Dalis fails a save against Chaos. Worse yet, Aerie loses her opening spell to another thief.
Normally I'd just run, but as long as Haer'Dalis is confused, we can't leave the area--unless we kill him, but if we can't do that quickly, we'll just end up wasting time while the enemy acts uncontested.
Jaheira sends out some beetles, which draw out a Flesh to Stone spell I didn't even know these low-end bandits had. Meanwhile, Korgan, safely under Enrage, jogs out to the twin mages and starts blasting away with the Ring of Energy.
Korgan keeps firing, but the mages refuse to go down. Meanwhile, to the north, Moth Sibula and Aerie try to shrug off the backstabbers. Finally, Haer'Dalis recovers, just in time to watch the rest of the party finish the job.
While Haer'Dalis' failed save was scary, I don't have regrets about recruiting him. I know he has potential. Accordingly, I go to the Promenade and buy him, Aerie, and Edwin a bunch of new mage scrolls, and scribing them all earns Aerie and Jaheira a new level. We're shy of one Spell Immunity scroll, so we go kill Pai'Na (not difficult at this level and with Moth Sibula's Shatter Spell), making sure to temporarily remove Edwin from the party before we enter the Graveyard District.
We now have our endgame party in order! Finally we're equipped to handle heavier challenges. That means the Unseeing Eye.
But I have a bad habit of using SI: Abjuration to buff against beholders, even though only Spell Shield can block an Anti-Magic Ray. Haer'Dalis gets zapped the moment we try to clear the beholder hive.
Notice the three enemies currently in Resilient Spheres. Moth Sibula's Special Snares now cast ORS instead of dealing damage. Haer'Dalis then gets charmed, but Korgan and Jaheira manage to bring down the beholders one by one. By the time the three beholders break free of Moth Sibula's trap, their fellow abominations are not there to defend them anymore.
The Unseeing Eye goes cleanly but odd. Korgan hits it with the Rift Device, the Death Tyrants spawn, and apparently we set our traps in just the right position for the Death Tyrants to trigger them despite the Unseeing Eye itself not being within range. But the trap projectiles reach further, and the Unseeing Eye actually dies to trap damage midway through combat, despite not moving around.
We're almost ready for Spellhold. Before we report back to High Watcher Oisig, we nab the Silver Pantaloons, booting Jaheira and Aerie from the party beforehand so they can't object--I remember trying to hold Lady Elgea or whatever her name is for ransom in a past run, only for Mazzy to free her, costing us the pantaloons. Talking to Oisig and then the soldier outside the circus gets us back to 20 reputation, which we use to grab the Robe of Vecna and the Shield of Balduran.
Moth Sibula backstabs some critters in the North Forest, we use our high levels to deal with the first level of Watcher's Keep (everything except for the Statues, who terrify me), and we finally, finally return to Aran Linvail. Here is the party as we make our way to Spellhold:
We arrive in Brynnlaw and promptly get ambushed by vampires, another reason I generally prefer to side with Bodhi. Haer'Dalis gets charmed and Moth Sibula gets backstabbed for 30 damage (fun fact: vampires are fighter/thieves by class!), but Korgan and Jaheira bash away at the vampires until the fight is won. One of the convenient things about having a fighter-heavy party is that sometimes you can just power your way past setbacks. We backstab Perth, burning another charge from one of our two Staffs of Striking to avoid having to mess with mage buffs.
I fish for the Spell Turning page in the Book of Daily Spell, since all the other options are redundant in this party, but end up hitting the Burning Hands page instead.
We talk our way into Spellhold, set some traps for Bhaal, and dismiss Imoen from the party immediately after recruiting her (this way she doesn't complain). We've got another Coiled Cabal standing in our way, but for the first time ever, we have Shatter Spell prepared for a fight with yuan-ti mages. Moth Sibula chucks a Fire Seed at the group and debuffs several mages at once.
Haer'Dalis follows up with a high-level Remove Magic spell, Moth Sibula sneaks over to use Detect Illusions, and we trample over the yuan-ti mages. In any other situation, their opening PFMW spells, Mirror Images, and Stoneskins would make each of them unassailable for many rounds. Not so with Shatter Spell and 100% in DI.
We have a lich ahead of us now, and while we might be able to debuff the thing with our mages and Moth Sibula's DI and Shatter Spell, I don't feel safe doing so when there are mummies and skeletons and Bone Golems there to harass us. Instead, I give Protection from Undead to Korgan and rush him over to kill Dace with the Mace of Disruption. The Bone Golems, who are not actually undead, chase after him, but the Efreeti Bottle draws enough attention away from him to let him slip away. On the way back, Korgan uses hit-and-fade tactics to dodge the lich's Remove Magic spells until the lich fails a save vs. death.
The rest of the labyrinth is straightforward, requiring only our standard buffs to deal with each fight--save for the Clay Golems, which I kill with a combination of snares from Moth Sibula (the fire damage can still hurt Clay Golems) and some beetles from Jaheira.
One question: has anyone else seen the Ulitharid and Noble Djinni appear outside of their cages in Spellhold? I've seen it happen several times in my last few runs.
On the way out, Jaheira gains a level and takes a second pip in two weapon fighting, finally switching to Belm and Gnasher as her standard setup.
We prepare for Irenicus, who I allow a short grace period to act before I attack him. In other runs, I've found that he'll fail to protect himself properly at the start of the fight, so I want to give him a shot at defending himself.
Amazingly enough, he ruins his own first abjuration spells by trying to cast it within his own Incendiary Cloud.
He isn't even pre-buffed with Protection from Fire.
While Moth Sibula uses Detect Illusions and our fighters deal with the clones, Edwin casts Khelben's Warding Whip and Aerie follows up with a Breach.
Our clones prove very durable (I didn't remove any of our gear before starting the fight, so they should be well equipped), but Irenicus just doesn't put up his defenses. We stomp him and escape to Brynnlaw.
We buff the party very thoroughly before trying to steal Desharik's ship, since I'm afraid of the githyanki's psionic attacks. In City Sushi, we sell off over 130,000 gold in scattered bits of loot from our quests in Athkatla, Breach and backstab the priestess for the Cloak of Mirroring, and trap Ixilthetocal himself.
On the way out, we have Haer'Dalis drink a bunch of Potions of Mastery Thievery, pickpocket Villynaty for the Wave Blade, and charm the now-hostile priestess so we can sell off another 10 grand in Bolts of Biting we picked up from other sahuagin.
In the Underdark, we land a very satisfying Shatter Spell on the drow war band, run around the west until we prompt the mind flayer ambush, and then trap every hostile critter in the imprisonment sphere.
To deal with the Balor safely, we buff Jaheira and Haer'Dalis with Death Ward, since they can protect their buffs with SI: Abjuration and Entropy Shield, and send them out with Korgan, whose save vs. death I can get below zero without buffs. The three of them attacking at once, with a Breach spell after the Balor re-casts Stoneskin, are enough to bring it down, though Korgan takes a beating in the process.
To my great surprise, we actually manage to put the Balor to sleep midway through the fight!
The culprit? The Pixie Prick! I kept the dagger with us solely to be a +3 weapon for Haer'Dalis, but the sleep effect actually disabled something. In the past, I'd always regarded the Pixie Prick as a mediocre weapon because its sleep effect offered a +6 bonus to the save.
The Death Spell and our fighters get us past the Kuo-toa Prince and its cohorts, but the drow band guarding the exit does not prove so easy.
We open with a Shatter Spell on a Fire Seed, but I profoundly overestimate its impact on the fight. To keep our party members safe from the golems and glabrezus, we keep most of the party away from the fray--but with only Korgan present to actually deal damage, Moth Sibula's ability to debuff the enemies doesn't do much. What's the point of Breaching a mage if you just run away and let it restore its buffs?
Plus, Korgan can't exactly solo the group. He might be a spectacular tank, but he's still mortal.
I send out Haer'Dalis to help him out, but I've lost my opportunity to land a fast kill on the enemy wizard. Korgan and Haer'Dalis can't reach the wizard; we've got a bunch of melee enemies blocking the way to it. Edwin launches Horrid Wilting, and mercifully it gets past the wizard's magic resistance.
Edwin tries to fire off another, but he gets cut short.
I've seen this before. The glabrezus' ability to stun mages has come into play in several past runs, often involving Edwin. I knew it was a risk, too. The only reason Edwin isn't buffed with Chaotic Command or Minor Spell Deflection or SI: Conjuration is simple:
I didn't plan on bringing him within range of the glabrezus to begin with. I only brought him forward because I was getting desperate to clear the field before Korgan got overwhelmed.
I bring more party members into the fray, hoping to reclaim the situations. I am having serious doubts about our survival; the enemy just won't go down, and our HP and buffs are only getting lower. I micromanage and micromanage, and Edwin recovers from PW: Stun just long enough for him to finish casting his second Horrid Wilting.
He follows up with another casting, and we're making progress, but then Jaheira loses her buffs and promptly fails a save against Emotion: Hopelessness. She dies in short order.
But the drow wizard is dead. We're clawing our way out of this pit.
Then we run into another setback. Korgan's rage runs out, and because Berserkers, unlike Barbarians, have a cooldown for their rage when they can't reactivate it, Korgan cannot renew his immunities. Then he fails a save and gets charmed.
Jaheira is dead, Korgan is charmed, and the fight still isn't over. Haer'Dalis, knowing that Korgan can butcher us after changing sides, casts PFMW.
Then Haer'Dalis gets Breached.
And a glabrezu hits Edwin with PW: Stun.
And Korgan turns his attention to Aerie.
And Haer'Dalis gets charmed.
We killed a few critters and wounded others, but our party is just disintegrating. Moth Sibula throws another Fire Seed out of desperate, disrupting a spell, but Edwin starts taking hits, losing his Stoneskin and robbing him of any chance to recover from PW: Stun safely. Edwin dies as Aerie struggles to deal damage with a Wand of Fire.
Aerie gets blinded, making the Wand of Fire useless, and Korgan manages to slow her with the Flail of Ages. We are not winning this fight. I fall back, luring Korgan and Haer'Dalis into our own traps. Moth Sibula kills Korgan.
Haer'Dalis' Stoneskins keep him alive, however, and the traps also kill one of the last remaining enemies. Aerie and Moth Sibula manage to down Potions of Invisibility.
Our Skeleton Warriors try to advance, but are immediately slain by a Death Spell. But then, finally, Haer'Dalis recovers from the charm!
He drinks a potion and turns around to exact vengeance. He gets hit with Dire Charm, but fortunately manages to make his save this time.
Haer'Dalis cleans up.
We won, but it was incredibly close and required a ton of micromanagement and work. Trying to combine the high-pressure approach of Shatter Spell with the low-pressure approach of tanking with Korgan was an absolute failure, and our substandard and vulnerable buffs failed to keep us afloat when things went south.
The culprit? The Pixie Prick! I kept the dagger with us solely to be a +3 weapon for Haer'Dalis, but the sleep effect actually disabled something. In the past, I'd always regarded the Pixie Prick as a mediocre weapon because its sleep effect offered a +6 bonus to the save.
You sure about that? Because before any mods, Pixie Prick has no modifier on that save. And the balor has a base death save of 5, so a save at +6 would be a guaranteed success.
The culprit? The Pixie Prick! I kept the dagger with us solely to be a +3 weapon for Haer'Dalis, but the sleep effect actually disabled something. In the past, I'd always regarded the Pixie Prick as a mediocre weapon because its sleep effect offered a +6 bonus to the save.
You sure about that? Because before any mods, Pixie Prick has no modifier on that save. And the balor has a base death save of 5, so a save at +6 would be a guaranteed success.
Wow. I just looked it up and there is no modifier. That makes that weapon DRAMATICALLY stronger than I thought. Because the sleep effect lasts for 2 whole rounds, bypasses magic resistance, and doesn't let the target wake up upon taking damage, which is a very powerful thing to get consistently.
I'm pretty sure I remember looking it up many years ago and being disappointed when I saw a +6 bonus to the save. It's possible EE changed it, but I was pretty sure the Sleeper and Ardulia's Fall had undocumented save bonuses as well in vanilla, and yet both of those weapons do have the save bonuses they always had, and are mentioned in the item descriptions.
I think the Pixie Prick was changed by the EE and is now one of the most powerful weapons in the game. It's biggest drawback is the 0 range for daggers which means you need to both expose yourself in attack and struggle to hit some enemies at all. However, in a party situation, a character like Korgan that is happy to get up close and personal can be devastating with it.
On Pixie Prick. Funny that this has come up. I had given Amara a proficiency point in daggers primarily for the Boomerang Dagger and later Firetooth, but I also intended to play around with Pixie Prick.
On the noble efreeti and ulitharid in Spellhold. I noticed that they had broken free of their cages in Enuhal’s run, which was on insane. I wondered if the same would happen on a lower difficulty setting. It turns out it does. I don’t know if it is an intentional SCS change or if it is an unintended consequence of the general script intersected with that particular game context. In either case, I’m not a fan. I prefer the original behavior.
I think the Pixie Prick was changed by the EE and is now one of the most powerful weapons in the game.
Yes. It was changed. It used to offer a +6 save bonus, as Semiticgoddess suggested.
That and The Victor have really gotten a generous boost from EE. I'm not sold on either change, honestly.
The +6 on Pixie Prick might have benefited from an adjustment, but +3 would have been more suitably balanced. As for The Victor, I don't like that change at all. It was fine the way it was and now it's overpowered, although it's much less of an issue if you don't allow item recharge (I've decided to ween myself off of item recharge after Ayla's excesses with her staffs of striking.)
It's mostly about the way things are implemented, coupled with the abilities SCS gives those creatures. Those creatures gain the ability to teleport, and they're always present even before the doors open, so their scripts activate when you get close enough and they come out to meet you.
Checking the readme ... illithids can teleport at Tactical and up. Teleporting isn't mentioned for genies, but it says they "use all of their magical powers" at Improved and up.
It would be easy to avoid the whole thing, actually; just have those actors start inactive, and only activate them once you use the pictures.
It's mostly about the way things are implemented, coupled with the abilities SCS gives those creatures. Those creatures gain the ability to teleport, and they're always present even before the doors open, so their scripts activate when you get close enough and they come out to meet you.
Makes sense.
It would be easy to avoid the whole thing, actually; just have those actors start inactive, and only activate them once you use the pictures.
I'd prefer that, personally. Have you considered adding that to your tweak/fix collection?
Sure, why not? I'm procrastinating on an update right now, anyway.
Cool, cool. I'm by now sold on your collection, if only for the fireshield feedback loop prevention. Mages keep nixing themselves on Mr. Efreeti's fireshield and I don't love it.
Comments
Part 6
The Temple Ruins are a little tougher than I expected. Whether due to the party's increased levels or the difficulty setting, we've got two different batches of Greater Mummies and Skeleton Warriors to deal with, which drain a few of our potions. The Shadows also prove briefly spooky, as they brought Moth Sibula down to 7 Strength once! The Shade Lord falls to a Protection from Undead scroll and Mollyboo's short sword, a time-consuming but safe method.
Now we have to fight vampires before Chapter 6, one of my least favorite activities. Fortunately we've got Minsc, whose pips in maces and racial enemy choice make him very solid as a vampire slayer as long as he has a Protection from Undead scroll to protect him. We even get an early kill on Tanova, the vampire I fear the most due to her mage spells, but the Clay Golem in the area runs around a lot and we have to use invisibility options and summons to keep it away from Minsc.
I plan on dropping Minsc eventually, but we still want the big guy for the De'Arnise Hold. I borrow a strat I read earlier in this thread and take a page out of @Alesia_BH's book, bringing down the yuan-ti mage with the Staff of Striking.
We ran into a Death Spell scroll by chance earlier, and while we don't plan on keeping Nalia around forever, we still give her the scroll so she can instantly kill basic trolls for us. The golems give us a little grief because the Iron Golem has a poison cloud ability, but our three fighters make the area a safe run as long as we keep our Chaotic Commands up (otherwise a Spirit Troll's Greater Command ability could be game-ending!).
For TorGal himself, I draw him away with invisibility, right into a set of 7 traps. The initial damage only brings him to Injured, but the lingering poison damage and our fighters polish him off.
It is time to bid Minsc farewell. He was very useful, but he's not my favorite and I want to conserve XP for our longer-term party members.
I'm strongly considering Haer'Dalis, who I value as a spectacular tank and a source of hard-to-dispel mage buffs for folks like Moth Sibula. But I am terrified of taking on the Planar Prison as we are now.
I haven't died in the Planar Prison in years. But that's due to an extreme fear of the place; I often don't tackle it until late in the game, or even after the Underdark. With a Coiled Cabal in the far east, pits with monsters that are too easy to fall into (and micro-heavy to avoid), and another Coiled Cabal bolstering the Warden himself, a fighter/mage that I have seen cast Time Stop before, all inside an area that you can't leave without first rescuing Haer'Dalis, the Planar Prison offers VERY little margin for error compared to other Chapter 2 quests.
I'm going to test the waters and kill Mekrath, just to get the prerequisite quest out of the way. While we're at it, we opt to do part of the Unseeing Eye quest, just short of fighting any actual beholders. On to the Temple Sewers!
Fun fact: Green Slimes can kill you in a single hit on a failed save vs. death. I have Korgan deal with the slime that greets us beneath the Temple District.
On the way to Mekrath, we fight Draug Fea and the sewer dwellers. Gaius Oracles us, but we slip away, hide, and bop him on the noggin with a stick. Moth Sibula's Special Snares further mess with the enemy, and another backstab cripples them before the rest of our party even moves in for the kill.
The helm is supposed to spawn on one of the dwarves in this fight, but it's completely missing. I even go back to the SoD save I imported into BG2 to double-check, and we did in fact have the helm in our inventory, and not just in a bag of holding. The helm was supposed to spawn--just like the Golden Pantaloons did.
I might Keeper it in at some point, since I'm pretty sure this is a bug, but it's not a key item and so we can go without for a bit. We backstab Mekrath, trap some level-draining shadows deeper into the sewers, and use Aerie to safely grab the loot we want from the Unseeing Eye quest, without having to fight anything further. Turn Undead even lets Aerie push away a crowd of undead blocking our escape.
While I'm sketchy about fighting the Warden, Moth Sibula's access to Fire Seed Breaches with Shatter Spell makes me feel confident enough to deal with Lavok and Tolgerias, so we recruit Valygar (a rare choice; normally I kill him) and make our way to the Planar Sphere. As if to reinforce her status as our swiss army knife, Aerie patches up Korgan after a fight with the first Clay Golem using a Remove Curse spell.
Shatter Spell and Fire Seeds prove unnecessary for Kayardi.
For Lavok, Jaheira summons some beetles and sends them out to hassle Lavok after we tank his opening Horrid Wilting spell. Aerie's Haste ensures that they get there quick, and Moth Sibula launches a Fire Seed at a beetle, dismantling poor Lavok's Absolute Immunity spell and all of his other buffs. Aerie didn't even need to Spell Thrust him; he had no Spell Shield prebuff to protect himself.
Tolgerias doesn't put up nearly as much of a fight.
Moth Sibula's success at the Planar Sphere makes me hopeful for a clean win at the Planar Prison. But I'm not going to walk into that place with just four party members, and I want Moth Sibula to have a durable Chaotic Commands spell in case a yuan-ti mage nails us with a Chaos spell. Aerie just doesn't have the high levels to put up cleric buffs that can resist a level 14 mage's Remove Magic, so we need a dedicated cleric for support.
I decide to snatch up Anomen, one of my less favorite NPCs but an excellent bruiser on top of being a solid cleric. Unfortunately, due to a quirk of how the game deals with timers, the instant that Anomen joins the party, he insists that we hike over to the Windspear Hills to finish the quest we started there--even though he wasn't even there when we dropped off the acorns.
I don't want to risk Anomen leaving the party out of frustration (especially not when he's wearing valuable gear that we gave him), so it's time to take a detour. We're going to fight our way through Firkraag's lair, solely to make sure we have our chosen cleric in store for the Planar Prison.
We grab Edwin on the way. After much thought, I've decided that Edwin's virtually endless spell slots are just too useful to give up, and as long as we never bring him to the Graveyard District, we'll never have to put up with his tedious Nether Scroll questline.
Fortunately, that +4 modifier makes it really easy to reach a point of safety. Korgan's safe from the moment you get him; his base save of 5 as a level 8 dwarf fighter with 18+ CON is already enough for guaranteed success. Also, poison immunity blocks the effect. Kind of a weird enemy; either they're threatening to kill you in one hit, or they're completely unable to hurt you.
*My tweak mod has a component that lets poison cures completely cure the green slime effect. And it's also going into the EE Fixpack, whenever that gets finished.
No, the problem is that if you have the gem but haven't delivered it, dropping Haer'Dalis from the party for even a moment will cause him to take the gem and leave the game entirely, along with Raelis' group. No planar prison for you when that happens. And characters being temporarily dropped from the party happens very easily; it can even happen involuntarily with effects like imprisonment.
Abazigal's Lair - we prepare for Draconis with protection from acid buffs, Corey equips the shadow dragon armor, and we have green scrolls of acid protection at the ready in case we need to renew acid protecions (which should ideally only be needed for Corey). His human form lacked SI:A, so we went for the inquisitor dispel. As expected, though, he did manage to dispel Corey regardless:
This gave us the opportunity to buff a little bit more, summon in a planetar + elemental prince and start clearing out the other parts of the room:
We immediatly return to the pocket plane for challenge four:
(And btw, I'm oh, so happy that a spirit animal contributed to the kill of Abazigal- very fitting for your crew!)
Cheers,
A.
Ascension Part I:
I returned to Amkethran, recharged my wands of spell striking and bought a few potentially useful scrolls. I made sure that my sequencers and contingencies were all in order. My choice of chain contingencies was kind of bad - I went with 3*ADHW and 3*Mordy Sword, both of which are decent in general, but not for Ascension - the ADHWs will usually just hit Imoen and do no significant damage, the mordy swords ended up not even triggering (I got some kind of error message, "spell failed" - no idea why). I should've known this, because I have used these CC's here in the past and they've always been underwhelming. Well, I also prepared stoneskins (on Corey as well, using gargoyle boots), cat's grace and mind blanks before resting, as all of these will laster much longer than 8 hours.
For my final buffs, I added lightning protection (just because I could - I have the spellslots on Enuhal), ice protection and some potions to my usual fare - fortitude, mind focusing, heroism, invulnerability, speed, defense, storm giant strength - I also handed out potions of magic shielding, ready for use in case of losing crucial buffs. Mass invisibility was our final touch. Grim Face ended up at -21 AC, and I didn't even try stacking AC on him
We face Irenicus, Bodhi, Imoen/Slayer and 2 fallen solars (which are currently bugged and won't cast spells). My plan here relies on Mollyboo - for this battle, we're giving her the AoP + Robe of Vecna (later given to Grim Face again). She also starts with The Reflex equipped so there's no chance that the Fallen Solars will dispel her via arrows. Combat starts, she casts timestop immediately. The other two wizards use PW:Blind on one of the fallen solars each. It's not super likely to work because the solars have 85% magic resistance, but we want to cast spells that will actually hit before Mollyboo's timestop, so we need something with potentially immediate impact. For the same reason, Enuhal goes for spirit animals, summoning one each directly in front of the solars to distract them, maybe get them to hit it instead of one of our party members. Corey opens with true sight to counter Irenicus' II and other illusion buffs. The combat log tells me that one fallen solar is attacking Corey, one Grim Face - I give The Reflex to Grim Face for this attack, because Corey is likely to lose his buffs anyway. One of the solars actually misses - propably the one attacking Corey, because he doesn't end up losing his buffs. I do not activate PFMW's/Divine Protections on the three people who can cast them, because that would make Enuhal the most likely target for solar attacks - he's the only one who can neither use The Reflex nor cast divine protection, so we need to offer up alternative targets. To my surprise, one of the power words actually works:
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1193875/#Comment_1193875
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194527/#Comment_1194527
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194722/#Comment_1194722
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1195661/#Comment_1195661
That only left the cleric/mage as an ongoing run. I had done a bit more with that since my last update and my notes showed I had just arrived in the Underdark. Unfortunately, when I came to load up the named save this morning, I found that was from significantly earlier - so I clearly forgot to update the named save in recent sessions. That's not surprising as normally I only use quicksaves and this isn't the first time I've been caught out trying to continue with a run after a pause
Oh, by the way I'm looking forward (fingers crossed) to the triumph of @Enuhal's Avatars
I've been finding it difficult in more recent times to sustain enthusiasm for a run. As seen in my last post for a cleric/illusionist though, putting runs on hold in an ad-hoc fashion can cause its own sort of problems. To address those issues, I thought I would try something new to me and deliberately run multiple runs at once, but in a much more structured way.
Hence, I've selected 7 characters from my long-life challenge and will play a session each day with those in turn. If things go well, that variety will keep me interested. The challenge of surviving in multiple runs should help me stay focused, though that may be more difficult if (almost certainly when) runs start falling by the wayside.
The characters chosen were all randomly selected, though I've ended up with a strong bias towards fighters (which suits me). The numbers in curly brackets are the number of attempts made, including the current one, with each class. Three of the characters below will be first-timers and I've not yet completed the long-life challenge with the first attempt by any character, so attempting that will provide a bit of extra incentive with those:
Fighter/thief {10}
Fighter/mage/cleric {5}
Fighter/druid {1}
Fighter {1}
Wizard slayer {59}
Enchanter {2}
Fighter dualling to cleric {1}
The question is, to quote Ayreon's "The Two Gates": "Did we pass, or did we fail?"
Let us see.
As a reminder, we got a wish rest last time, so we have all our spells available. 7 time traps in total, because we've been able to lay down 5 before the wish rest. In previous ascension battles, I've placed these traps right in the center. The result has been that they only tend to trigger once the enemies start closing in towards the party. I thought I'd be smarter this time around, placing them near the spawn points. That was, as it turns out, a terrible idea. The time traps, placed that close to our enemies, trigger during the cutscenes/dialogues, but they do not actually work - we get no time stop duration at all. Our primary plan to let Alesia and Balthazar put every one of our enemies to near death during an extended time trap duration has to be heavily adjusted.
Our buffs, btw, are identical to the ones we used upon entering the Throne. The only thing we're missing is potions of mind focusing, because I neglected to bring enough for a second round of buffs. I didn't do any more wishing, instead saving these for a planned mid-combat IA from Grim Face. Alesia drank a wisdom potion as well, because she might use limited wish for timestop. One other addition: Mollyboo casts a simulacrum (which, in turn, buffs itself a bit and summons a planetar, because why not?). Later on, I realized that I had forgotten potions of speed for the non-improved-hasted characters here.
So, plan A has failed. We are starting combat without any trap advantage at all. Timestops are still our plan - Alesia has 3 timestop scrolls, 2 timestop spells and a limited wish with a timestop option available. She equips "The Reflex" to protect herself against Illasera while she casts timestop. Note that she has no AoP or Robe of Vecna (Grim Face has these now, and will hopefully use them later to great effect), so it's going to take a while. We hand a PfM scroll to Grim Face and one to Corey to use on Abazigal and Sendai. We hand Mollyboo a circlet of mind controlling to get Sarevok on our side. Balthazar moves towards Illasera to maybe distract her (though she ends up targeting Grim Face, so I switch around The Reflex to him for a second), Enuhal summons spirit animals directly next to her for the same reason.
Plan B starts to take effect: Before anything dangerous can happen, and after we've applied PfM's and the circlet of mind controlling, Alesia completes her timestop, with Balthazar in his trusty shadow stance:
I was, initially, a bit shocked by our timetraps not properly activating. That's certainly good to know. Balthazar did a lot of the heavy lifting with his damage during timestops and tankiness when Mel re-appeared, though Mollyboo (for Irenicus/Bodhi) and Alesia (for The Five) made all this possible. We couldn't have done it without our powerful monk ally, though. The party used every tool at their disposal, and got rewarded for it. I didn't forget any major buffs this time around, except for oils of speed while buffing up for the second time, but that didn't end up mattering too much. Enuhal didn't do too much once Mel appeared, but that was by design - I want my bhaalspawn to keep their aura clear for defensive abilities/potions if needed unless their damage or abilities are absolutely required.
While the two chunkings (and the fact that our final replacement ended up being a fighter/illusionist, certainly one of the most powerful classes in the game with a party that close to the experience cap) plus the fact that we only had to fight against the bugged, non-spellcasting fallen solars might diminish our achievements, I'm still proud of the Avatar's performance. A very well balanced combination of characters, and once we got to the point where spells/items were able to put as past some of the weaker starting attributes, it felt like playing one of the more powerful partys I've ever used.
Some final stats and thoughts for every one of them:
Enuhal - my trusty bhaalspawn totemic druid. As my primary skill in no-reloading seems to be keeping divine spellcasters alive, he used his summons and insect plague to dominate parts of BG1 and early-mid SoA, before the power of these spells somewhat diminished. Later on, his powerful defensive spells kept him safe at all times as he supported the party with more powerful summons, nature's beauty, HLA spells and, of course, a ton of buffs. In the end, he returned to his spirit animal summoning roots, and they ended up being quite useful as quick and easy distractions for even the most powerful foes (plus, they did kill Illasera for us):
Corey - I expected the nerfed inquisitor dispel to turn him into a relatively weak character in the later parts of the game - how wrong I was! True sight was, of course, consistently powerful and removed the need for all other kinds of anti-illusion/stealth approaches. His dispel ended up being even more powerful, though, because his levels were able to keep up with almost every foe once we got to mid SoA, and while I expected almost all wizards on insane SCS to use SI:A, we found quite a few of them who were missing that spell and quickly got hit by Corey, turning them into easy targets. He was also one of our trusty tanks in BG1 and kept up with the other fighters by dealing great damage once he started dual-wielding Foebane + Kundane:
Grim Face - You know what you get with a cleric/illusionist, and that's flexibility, especially with the addition of IWD spells. Grim Face always had the perfect spell for every situation in his spellbook. I rarely unleashed his full potential, but the Melissan battle with the three instant wishes under improved alacrity showed some of the incredibly power he would propably wield in more capable hands - I'm not that good at making use of the full potential of arcane spellcasting in the endgame. Notably, Grim Face never died during the entire run, an achievement only shared by Enuhal (and Mollyboo, though she was with the group only for a short time). The fact that he could access both arcane and divine protections made it nearly impossible for him to get caught off-guard:
Alesia - Providing some key backstabs against powerful spellcasters, mostly in SoA and early ToB, Alesia also became a capable fighter later on due to her capability to equip any item in the game and protect herself in various ways. Her traps allowed us some quick and easy victories against many otherwise dangerous opponents, and her timestops saved the day in the battle against The Five.
Grond0 - Grond0 seemed almost unkillable. With his high hitpoints, incredibly damage resistance, rage and hardiness, he was, for most of the game, our most powerful fighter and damage dealer in direct combat. If I hadn't been blindsided by the fell cats, he might have easily survived until the end. Rest in peace!
Number of deaths: Only 1 - but it was a chunking, due to Brimstone's breath weapon hitting him after getting hit by a bunch of fell cats, who lowered his fire resistance into the negatives.
Jmerry - Coming in as the party was in dire need of an ally, Jmerry wasn't with us for very long, but played a crucial role in taking down Yaga-Shura, defeating Sendai and clearing the ever-dangerous teleported maze. Together with Alesia, she was able to perform many successful double-backstab plays and put out incredible amounts of damage on short notice.
Number of deaths: 2 - One in Watcher's Keep when fighting Tahazzar while coming from a no-magic zone, and the second, permanent one when getting hit by a huge amount of ballistic attacks in the mind flayer compound at Watcher's Keep level 4.
Mollyboo, representing Semiticgoddess - Late to the party, but with a strong impact. A fighter/illusionist will always be great, especially in the very, very late game. She helped us in clearing out the remainder of Watcher's keep, excelled in Abazigal's Lair, but her most important contributions were against Irenicus&Bodhi at the throne, whom she basically took out by herself, and against Mel later on, when she and her simulacrum dealt a majority of the required damage:
Cheers,
A.
Part 7
At Anomen's insistence, we enter Firkraag's lair. I've long viewed this area as a lengthy, combat-heavy slog, with two terrifying threats: the Ruhk Transmuter, whose incredible AC, spell level immunities, and damage output can wreck lower-level parties, and the batch of undead near Samia, which can spawn Ancient Vampires.
The Ruhk Transmuter, fortunately, takes an exceptionally heavy hit from Moth Sibula for 132 backstab damage, and the Ring of Energy is enough to finish him off.
The remaining fights are tedious affairs, requiring plenty of prebuffs and potions and still taking many rounds to polish off. Conster falls to a set of traps, Korgan takes ages to kill the Adamantite Golem since he's the only fighter with a +3 weapon, and finally we skedaddle.
Finally, we return to Athkatla and slip into the Planar Prison. It starts out nicely, with a clean Chaos spell on the first enemies and a Shatter Spell on the mage.
One of the yuan-ti wanders over, drawing us into a fight we haven't prepared for.
Who puts us in a dangerous situation mere moments after we return to Athkatla and foolishly try to wander around the city without invisibility, or any other kind of buffs. Edwin dies to a backstab out of nowhere, while Haer'Dalis fails a save against Chaos. Worse yet, Aerie loses her opening spell to another thief.
Jaheira sends out some beetles, which draw out a Flesh to Stone spell I didn't even know these low-end bandits had. Meanwhile, Korgan, safely under Enrage, jogs out to the twin mages and starts blasting away with the Ring of Energy.
We now have our endgame party in order! Finally we're equipped to handle heavier challenges. That means the Unseeing Eye.
But I have a bad habit of using SI: Abjuration to buff against beholders, even though only Spell Shield can block an Anti-Magic Ray. Haer'Dalis gets zapped the moment we try to clear the beholder hive.
The Unseeing Eye goes cleanly but odd. Korgan hits it with the Rift Device, the Death Tyrants spawn, and apparently we set our traps in just the right position for the Death Tyrants to trigger them despite the Unseeing Eye itself not being within range. But the trap projectiles reach further, and the Unseeing Eye actually dies to trap damage midway through combat, despite not moving around.
Moth Sibula backstabs some critters in the North Forest, we use our high levels to deal with the first level of Watcher's Keep (everything except for the Statues, who terrify me), and we finally, finally return to Aran Linvail. Here is the party as we make our way to Spellhold:
Part 8
We arrive in Brynnlaw and promptly get ambushed by vampires, another reason I generally prefer to side with Bodhi. Haer'Dalis gets charmed and Moth Sibula gets backstabbed for 30 damage (fun fact: vampires are fighter/thieves by class!), but Korgan and Jaheira bash away at the vampires until the fight is won. One of the convenient things about having a fighter-heavy party is that sometimes you can just power your way past setbacks. We backstab Perth, burning another charge from one of our two Staffs of Striking to avoid having to mess with mage buffs.
We talk our way into Spellhold, set some traps for Bhaal, and dismiss Imoen from the party immediately after recruiting her (this way she doesn't complain). We've got another Coiled Cabal standing in our way, but for the first time ever, we have Shatter Spell prepared for a fight with yuan-ti mages. Moth Sibula chucks a Fire Seed at the group and debuffs several mages at once.
We have a lich ahead of us now, and while we might be able to debuff the thing with our mages and Moth Sibula's DI and Shatter Spell, I don't feel safe doing so when there are mummies and skeletons and Bone Golems there to harass us. Instead, I give Protection from Undead to Korgan and rush him over to kill Dace with the Mace of Disruption. The Bone Golems, who are not actually undead, chase after him, but the Efreeti Bottle draws enough attention away from him to let him slip away. On the way back, Korgan uses hit-and-fade tactics to dodge the lich's Remove Magic spells until the lich fails a save vs. death.
One question: has anyone else seen the Ulitharid and Noble Djinni appear outside of their cages in Spellhold? I've seen it happen several times in my last few runs.
We prepare for Irenicus, who I allow a short grace period to act before I attack him. In other runs, I've found that he'll fail to protect himself properly at the start of the fight, so I want to give him a shot at defending himself.
Amazingly enough, he ruins his own first abjuration spells by trying to cast it within his own Incendiary Cloud.
While Moth Sibula uses Detect Illusions and our fighters deal with the clones, Edwin casts Khelben's Warding Whip and Aerie follows up with a Breach.
We buff the party very thoroughly before trying to steal Desharik's ship, since I'm afraid of the githyanki's psionic attacks. In City Sushi, we sell off over 130,000 gold in scattered bits of loot from our quests in Athkatla, Breach and backstab the priestess for the Cloak of Mirroring, and trap Ixilthetocal himself.
In the Underdark, we land a very satisfying Shatter Spell on the drow war band, run around the west until we prompt the mind flayer ambush, and then trap every hostile critter in the imprisonment sphere.
To my great surprise, we actually manage to put the Balor to sleep midway through the fight!
The Death Spell and our fighters get us past the Kuo-toa Prince and its cohorts, but the drow band guarding the exit does not prove so easy.
We open with a Shatter Spell on a Fire Seed, but I profoundly overestimate its impact on the fight. To keep our party members safe from the golems and glabrezus, we keep most of the party away from the fray--but with only Korgan present to actually deal damage, Moth Sibula's ability to debuff the enemies doesn't do much. What's the point of Breaching a mage if you just run away and let it restore its buffs?
Plus, Korgan can't exactly solo the group. He might be a spectacular tank, but he's still mortal.
I didn't plan on bringing him within range of the glabrezus to begin with. I only brought him forward because I was getting desperate to clear the field before Korgan got overwhelmed.
I bring more party members into the fray, hoping to reclaim the situations. I am having serious doubts about our survival; the enemy just won't go down, and our HP and buffs are only getting lower. I micromanage and micromanage, and Edwin recovers from PW: Stun just long enough for him to finish casting his second Horrid Wilting.
Then we run into another setback. Korgan's rage runs out, and because Berserkers, unlike Barbarians, have a cooldown for their rage when they can't reactivate it, Korgan cannot renew his immunities. Then he fails a save and gets charmed.
Then Haer'Dalis gets Breached.
And a glabrezu hits Edwin with PW: Stun.
And Korgan turns his attention to Aerie.
And Haer'Dalis gets charmed.
Our Skeleton Warriors try to advance, but are immediately slain by a Death Spell. But then, finally, Haer'Dalis recovers from the charm!
Haer'Dalis cleans up.
But we're alive, and that's what counts.
I'm pretty sure I remember looking it up many years ago and being disappointed when I saw a +6 bonus to the save. It's possible EE changed it, but I was pretty sure the Sleeper and Ardulia's Fall had undocumented save bonuses as well in vanilla, and yet both of those weapons do have the save bonuses they always had, and are mentioned in the item descriptions.
Regardless, the lack of a save bonus is good news
I think the Pixie Prick was changed by the EE and is now one of the most powerful weapons in the game. It's biggest drawback is the 0 range for daggers which means you need to both expose yourself in attack and struggle to hit some enemies at all. However, in a party situation, a character like Korgan that is happy to get up close and personal can be devastating with it.
On the noble efreeti and ulitharid in Spellhold. I noticed that they had broken free of their cages in Enuhal’s run, which was on insane. I wondered if the same would happen on a lower difficulty setting. It turns out it does. I don’t know if it is an intentional SCS change or if it is an unintended consequence of the general script intersected with that particular game context. In either case, I’m not a fan. I prefer the original behavior.
Yes. It was changed. It used to offer a +6 save bonus, as Semiticgoddess suggested.
That and The Victor have really gotten a generous boost from EE. I'm not sold on either change, honestly.
The +6 on Pixie Prick might have benefited from an adjustment, but +3 would have been more suitably balanced. As for The Victor, I don't like that change at all. It was fine the way it was and now it's overpowered, although it's much less of an issue if you don't allow item recharge (I've decided to ween myself off of item recharge after Ayla's excesses with her staffs of striking.)
Checking the readme ... illithids can teleport at Tactical and up. Teleporting isn't mentioned for genies, but it says they "use all of their magical powers" at Improved and up.
It would be easy to avoid the whole thing, actually; just have those actors start inactive, and only activate them once you use the pictures.
Makes sense.
I'd prefer that, personally. Have you considered adding that to your tweak/fix collection?
Cool, cool. I'm by now sold on your collection, if only for the fireshield feedback loop prevention. Mages keep nixing themselves on Mr. Efreeti's fireshield and I don't love it.
Great progress @semiticgoddess !
Looking forward for more Avatar updates from @Corey_Russell and @Serg_BlackStrider
@Arvia Information for the Hall of Heroes:
Enuhal, the Totemic Druid: @Enuhal
Notable Mods: SCS + Ascension (insane)
Difficulty: Insane without extra damage
Special: Avatar run, with Corey, Alesia, Grim Face (representing Serg Blackstrider), Grond0/Jmerry/Mollyboo (representing Semiticgoddess)
Start: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1194854/#Comment_1194854
Finish: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1196601/#Comment_1196601