Starting: In BG1EE.
Mods: Full SCS 35.21.
Difficulty: Insane with no difficulty-dependent damage increase.
Protagonist: Necromancer the Necromancer.
Special rules: Random party run, as dictated by the spoiler.
Randomly generate a full party as follows:
1. Generate three Necromancers with INT 18; pick one as protagonist.
2. Generate fifteen additional characters; pick five as the remaining party.
For each character, three stat sets are rolled, along with three sets of initial proficiencies,
three sets of starting Thief skill points, Ranger racial enemies and initial spells (where applicable):
For each character I then select the combination I prefer.
This rule-of-three is used for all choices during level-ups as well:
Hitpoints, proficiencies, Thief skill points, spontaneous caster spell choices and
(eventually) HLA selection is done by randomly selecting three possibilities, from which I may pick one.
In addition, no temporary INT-buffs may be used to aid scroll scribing, only permanent ones
(INT tome from Ramazith's Tower in Baldur's Gate, +1 INT from Machine of Lum The Mad in Watcher's Keep).
Hence why Necromancer forces his INT to be 18; a small allowance towards a less crappy protagonist.
This allows for some cherry-picking, both towards a Necromancer with an actual CON bonus, as well as a much less atrocious party, both in terms of class choices but also stats and proficiencies, while still keeping a fair bit of randomness.
The result:
Protagonist
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Class: Necromancer
Alignment: Lawful Good
Stats:
STR 9 DEX 9 CON 16 INT 18 WIS 16 CHA 11
Proficiencies:
Dart *
Starting spells:
Chill Touch, Find Familiar, Protection from Petrification
Gender: Male
Race: Half-Elf
Class: Sorcerer
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Stats:
STR 14 DEX 15 CON 17 INT 12 WIS 13 CHA 10
Proficiencies:
Dart *
Starting spells:
Charm Person, Shield
Gender: Female
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Cleric / Thief
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Stats:
STR 16 DEX 15 CON 15 INT 9 WIS 16 CHA 8
Proficiencies:
Sling * Sword and Shield Style *
Thieving skills:
Open Locks 10 Find Traps 5 Set Traps 10 Hide in Shadows 5 Pick Pockets 10
Gender: Male
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Barbarian
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Stats:
STR 18/25 DEX 17 CON 8 INT 15 WIS 10 CHA 8
Proficiencies:
Axe ** Bastard Sword **
Gender: Male
Race: Gnome
Class: Cleric / Illusionist
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Stats:
STR 9 DEX 16 CON 12 INT 18 WIS 10 CHA 12
Proficiencies:
Flail / Morning Star * Sling *
Starting spells:
Blindness, Protection from Petrification, Sleep
Gender: Male
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Fighter / Cleric
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Stats:
STR 9 DEX 14 CON 19 INT 8 WIS 13 CHA 13
Proficiencies:
Sling * Quarterstaff ** Two-Weapon Style *
Two very powerful frontliners (granted, the Fighter/Cleric will be equipment reliant) are really all we need, but there's also clerical spell slots in spades, and two primary arcanists; hopefully we'll roll some decent picks on the Sorcerer.
I'll condense the BG1 part of the run into a single post and just cover the highlights.
Let's get on with it.
No-Frills Necromancer: A Random Run, Part 1
Next part found here
Alright, we're off. Plan's the same as always: Some easy experience from the Ankheg Farm first (three Clerics so plenty of Commands), then the areas to the south and west of Beregost.
This all goes without a hitch, but there's a spot of trouble when triggering Dorn's ambush: Necromancer gets cocky and stays in arrow range to cast a LMD, scarcely avoiding an untimely demise.
Rule-of-three for HP saved our bacon there; fully random HP and it'd probably have been back to the drawing board.
We clear the Mine exterior, then head west. Bracers of Dexterity are a must for Fighter/Cleric, after all.
Beyond having to return to Nashkel to raise Cleric/Thief and Cleric/Illusionist (who both ate a Lance of Disruption by an ambushing Ogre Mage), we clear the easy areas to the west of Nashkel without incident.
The CHA tome goes to Cleric/Illusionist, since he can get to 20 CHA (infact 21 CHA) then with Friends and Algernon's Cloak.
We're fairly high-level now so comfortably clear Mutamin's Garden, then advance the plot.
Neither Bounty Hunter ambush is a threat, and once Venkt fails his save against Web, the Bandit Camp Bandits have no recourse; beyond a few stray Arrows of Ice that connect with Barbarian, they do nothing of note.
We go after the western seaboard: Dealing with Droth is no issue, but we have another potentially close call when trying to entice the local Sirines to show themselves.
The situation was actually worse than it looked. That part of the beach is a dead end, so the only way out was by getting past (the Dire Charmed) Barbarian and Fighter/Cleric. As you can see, Cleric/Illusionist also inadvertently pulled some Carrion Crawlers into the mess, and there were three Sirines to the south. Thankfully, we managed to get some Skeleton Warriors up, and in combination with Web, very careful movement, and the fact that Dire Charm only lasts 5 (I think?) rounds, we pulled through.
The rest of the western seaboard is uneventful. Fighter/Cleric gets the CON tome, activating regeneration: Perhaps it would've been better on Cleric/Thief for a small HP gain, but in the very, very long term Fighter/Cleric will gain a handful of HP when his CON gets boosted to 21 in Watcher's Keep. Assuming we make it that far...
We clear up what few areas remain; all that's left is the Red Wizards and TotSC stuff, so we go into the Cloakwood.
Occasionally the triple Giant Spider ambushes cause us worries, what with the Web Tangles, but nobody dies... until we take on Drasus.
Drasus himself drops to ranged fire pretty early on, and we manage to land a Wand of Paralyzation charge on Rezdan (who only had MGoI as spell defenses), but not before the latter lands a Chaos on Cleric/Illusionist... who proceeds to wander halfway across the motte, straight into a bundle of summons and Kysus.
With predictable results.
A few emergency Wand of Monster Summoning charges and some healing potions later, Barbarian does pull through, but Cleric/Illusionist bites the dust, so we trek on back to the FAI and raise him.
There's another dumb episode in the mines proper, where we attempt to engange Hareishan in a more fair manner by attacking from the jail cells to the south, rather than by the secret passage to the east.
We eat a few Enchantment disablers, but ultimately masses of Web sees us through.
Natasha on the other hand is just mobbed to death by summons in un-spectacular fashion.
As for Davaeorn, the whole thing actually goes very smoothly.
Barbarian and Fighter/Cleric chew through the five waves of guards (and the Battle Horrors beforehand) in no time flat, and D himself is summon-mobbed into oblivion.
Onto Baldur's Gate.
In the city itself, Necromancer of course gets the INT tome.
The WIS tome goes to Cleric/Thief, since she gets the most out of it, being the only one with a noticable WIS bonus to begin with.
We annihilate Lothander for his boots, and now both frontliners are zippin' around at warp speed, nice.
The only real close call here is against Sunin, but even then he only manages to seriously injure Cleric/Illusionist (by fair the squishiest party member right now, though that'll change once he begins to properly defend himself with MI/Blur/II).
And that's the city cleared, excepting the Iron Throne itself; we'll come back in a bit, but it's time for some TotSC content first.
Though not before dealing with the Red Wizards. Wands of Paralyzation work spectacularly here, though they do require use of our freshly (successfully) scribed Spell Thrusts beforehand.
We also nip into Firewine to take out Lendarn for his Cloudkill scroll, which Cleric/Illusionist successfully scribes (Necromancer also successfully scribed the one found in a rock to the south of Nashkel).
Double Cloudkill will be supremely useful for early BG2.
While in the area, we also tackle Kahrk.
His haste seems un-dispellable; we wait around for a long time, sending garbage summons at him, but he never slows down, and even a dual Slow (which he fails to save against) has no apparent effect.
Not that it saves him, though the loot is unremarkable since we have no Katana user.
Alright, let's head to Durlag's.
Heading upstairs, the WIS tome does go to Cleric/Thief, just as in Baldur's Gate.
We clear the above-ground levels very quickly, and begin our descent.
Necromancer having (almost) no defenses continues to be a challenge, as Avarice gets a backstab in, though fortunately only dealing 20 damage.
Other than that mishap, we clear the Warders rapidly, and press on.
We have our second truly close call on the chessboard: Necromancer drops to 7 HP!
Two rapid ranged hits from the enemy Rooks for 22 and 24 HP came perilously close to ending things, but we just about manage to scrape by without Necromancer going down.
I should really just have such a vulnerable protagonist quaff a Potion of Invisibility beforehand...
In contrast, the final level poses no real obstacle, and we teleport out courtesy of Islanne without tackling the Demon Knight.
Durlag's, done.
There's not much left to do, but Stoneskin would be a good insurance for the final few battles, and so we take off for Ice Island.
Exercising the utmost caution, this time around nothing untoward occurs, and Necromancer successfully scribes the scroll.
We ascend the Iron Throne next, and actually have our (ultra-buffed) Skeleton Warriors take out Zhalimar first: He alone accounts for about 60% of the enemy combat power here, and so this effectively neuters the opposition.
Sadly, Necromancer fails to scribe Minor Sequencer, but Stoneskin was more important at this stage anyway.
We survive the Candlekeep ambush by Necromancer quaffing a Potion of Invisibility, and descend into the crypts.
Barbarian gets a bump to 19 STR, Cleric/Thief improves her WIS to 19, and Prat gets cut down to size.
We do some final shopping: Magical ammunition for everyone and high-grade potions.
Even so, we've got 100k+ gold remaining, and a fairly significant stash of items at the FAI: I tend to stash them here since they depreciate in sales value, then end up never selling them.
Typically, if we were being optimal about it, I'd go for Balduran's Isle here since the Chain Mail +3 would be nice for Barbarian early on... but I can't be bothered, we're steamrolling BG1 completely and it's time to move on, so we return to the Gate.
Krystin is a real nuisance as always, summoning a bunch of elementals and inexplicably going invisible at random intervals, but down she goes all the same, as does Cythandria.
At the palace, Skeleton Warriors hold the line while we swiftly dismantle the key Dopplegangers: The Assassin is the first to go, the Mage gets a Spell Thrust and is then kept interrupted by Melf's Acid Arrows, and the Shaman just casts some fairly pointless buffs before succumbing.
Both dukes survive, with Liia completely untouched and Belt at Badly Wounded. Off to the maze.
The maze itself is no problem, but we run into a rare issue when dealing with Rahvin and friends (I know, I should've just snuck past them).
Yeah, I forgot Shaldrissa actually has L6 spells... and Barbarian (our invisible scout at the time) is level 8, so doesn't get to save against Death Spell.
A long trek back later, we return with a vengeance, wiping out the enemy party remnants.
We talk Tamoko out of fighting, and prepare for the fight ahead.
This time, we don't go for PfM-warriors doing all the heavy lifting: Instead, we distribute Potions of Magic Shielding and emergency Potions of Magic Blocking to everyone, apply some buffs (potions on frontliners, Bless/Chant/Recitation/PfE/Haste on the entire party), then just do an all-out assault with Skeleton Warriors leading the way.
Barbarian immediately lands an Arrow of Dispelling on Sarevok.
Lacking any real defenses, Tazok and Diarmid are both downed in relatively short order.
We spend some time hacking through Angelo's defenses, but with careful potion application, he can't really hurt us, and so down he goes as well.
Semaj is the last one standing, but eventually fails his save against a Chromatic Orb and is held.
Sarevok is kept busy, as usual, by Wands of Monster Summoning, and ultimately fails to do anything of note.
BG1, cleared.
It was a lot smoother than usual, with two fairly brutal frontliners (yep, melee works just fine in BG1, though it's arguably less efficient than ranged) plowing through most enemies. Fighter/Cleric had a Strength spell on him basically constantly once we got access to L2 arcane spells, and that, in combination with Strength of Stone + DUHM, meant we had 22 (Barbarian Rage) and 23-24 STR... not much in BG1 can withstand that for more than a round.
We end at the experience cap of 161k.
Our luck was fairly mediocre with Thief skill points, reasonable with proficiencies, and arguably quite good both with HP and Sorcerer spell picks; see the spoiler for details on what we ended up with.
Necromancer, L9
Proficiencies:
Dart * Sling *
53 HP
Sorcerer, L9
Proficiencies:
Dart * Sling *
54 HP
L1 spells:
Charm Person, Chromatic Orb, Friends, Shield, Stonefist
L2 spells:
Detect Invisibility, Melf's Acid Arrow, Mirror Image, Web
L3 spells:
Invisibility 10' Radius, Monster Summoning I, Remove Magic
L4 spells:
Secret Word, Stoneskin
Cleric/Thief, L7/8
Proficiencies:
Mace * Sling * Sword and Shield Style *
53 HP
Thieving skills:
Open Locks 45 Find Traps 55 Pick Pockets 45 Move Silently 25 Hide in Shadows 10 Detect Illusions 40 Set Traps 40
Barbarian, L8
89 HP
Proficiencies:
Axe ** Bastard Sword ** Scimitar / Wakizashi / Ninjato * Shortbow *
Cleric/Illusionist, L7/7
39 HP
Proficiencies:
Flail / Morning Star * Sling * Sword and Shield Style *
Fighter / Cleric, L7/7
94 HP
Proficiencies:
War Hammer ** Sling * Quarterstaff ** Two-Weapon Style *
@aldain Looks promising - definitely a pretty strong setup for a mostly random party, and with the various stat bonus items in SoA the potential weaknesses can mostly be removed or at least mitigated.
I'm starting another run to keep busy, trying to get the diviner kit out of the way and into the hall, which is, understandably, not that popular. There are no relevant divination spells that require a saving throw, so you really only get the extra spellslots and lose access to a pretty big and powerful school of spells in conjuration. As the kit isn't that interesting, we're going for another unmodded core rules run; To speed things up, we're starting solo until we get to 32k experience, picking up an NPC party after that. This is our Bhaalspawn:
With no strength bonus on damage for our pitiful attacks, the beginning is a bit painful. Starting with sleep, shield and identify, we mostly use sleep to finish a few early quests and get some crucial early bits of gear, such as Elve's Bane:
With level 1 sleep only lasting for 5 rounds, we often needed to renew the spell, kite, or only take out specific enemies out of a group. Since we're planning to pick up a party later I don't want to sell any gear, and it does take a bit to get the money for the green PfP scroll from the carnival - or at least that's what I thought at the time. Misremembering the price by quite a bit, I did these minor quests using the sleep spell until I had around 2000 gold and 6000 xp - turns out I really only needed about 900 gold for the scroll (and 5k extra xp would have been enough to get to 32k). Well, now we travel east, to the basilisks, in order to meet our new best friend Corax, who is crucial to our progress here as slinging down the basilisks would take pretty much forever without him - he gets the paralyze on Mutamin, the most important part of this approach (and always a pretty big risk, but restarting this early isn't very painful):
Honestly, things do get a bit close here - two greater basilisks switch to melee attacks pretty much right away and put Corax to near death - but our ghoul buddy survives in the end:
And here we are after clearing out the basilisks:
About 1k experience beyond our target (due to the prolonged early questing), but that's just fine. No we go recruiting - we free Branwen, and use her remove fear to help out with Tarnesh:
This allows us to get Jaheira and Khalid, and we also take along Ajantis. Now we just need a thief, and since Imoen is, as per usual in this type of run without any NPC related mods, stuck at level 1, we need to take on Safana, and so we also pick up some arrows/bullets +1 from Beregost (for the flesh golem cave) before moving to the coast. We use Branwen's skeletons to tank the siren dire charms and secure Safana for the party:
Now it's time to go on a big wilderness area questing spree. This party can use all kinds of items, though we focus on getting some good weapons first:
When we face a spellcaster, we throw silence at them and use our arrows of biting in case it doesn't work:
And with Safana getting to level 7 relatively early (which maxes out her find traps/open locks), we can even enter the dungeons relatively early on:
Out final wilderness area is the red wizard forest - at this point Branwen is level 7 and has access to her powerful upgraded skeletons:
At this point we still had Durlag's upper levels to clear out (we're skipping all other TOTSC and SOD content, as per usual in these types of quicker runs), though first we finally got Almira some new spells, going for a big scroll learning session to expand her spellbook - this was needed anyway to get access to PfP for the basilisks at Durlag's. However, at the second level of the tower we got into our first spot of trouble when Safana, due to poor pathfinding, decided to split from the party and take another way forward (or rather backwards) through one of the narrow paths, and ran into some ghasts - she got paralyzed on the very first hit and I didn't notice the situation in time, and with her being so far away from the party, we had no way of saving her life:
Since we needed her to disarm some further traps here, we had to move to the FAI, resurrect her and return. Another bit of trouble happened when facing the ghost on the next level - I was unable to interrupt its initial Chaos spell, and it hit quite a few party members:
Branwen turned on Safana (both confused) - but this time I was able to save our fragile thief with a quick invisibility spell:
And the chaos effect ran out without any deaths:
Well, the tower was certainly not very well played. Aside from that, it's been smooth sailing, despite Almira taking a ton of risks during her early solo time - any bandit ambush or two stray hobgoblin arrow hits would have propably killed her, but we didn't encounter any bandits, and the few hobgoblins who were able to shoot at her never hit. We've left out Kahrk, but otherwise we're done with wilderness areas, so the Nashkel Mines and further main quests are up next.
We may be a little bit overleved for the Nashkel Mines at this point
As a consequence, Mulahey doesn't really get to do anything:
Next, we go on to invade the bandit camp - as long as we're outside, call lightning is always a good time against powerful enemies:
We invade the tent and take out the wizard before he's able to do anything:
Cloakwood, however, doesn't go quite as well. The first two levels are just fine, and we use a protection from poison scroll for the spider/ettercap area. However, the shadow archdruid manages to finish his insect plague cast despite our best attempts. I should have fled downstairs - well, luckily insect plague by itself isn't powerful enough to actually kill the party, and our physical attacks were strong enough to take him down immediately after that:
Almira does have greater malison as one of her very few 4th level spells (all of which are from Ulgoth's Beard at this point). This works really well to improve the already amazing saving throw penalties of silence - Drasus and his guys get absolutely demolished:
However, at the second level, I heavily misjudge the position of the lightning bolt trap near Hareishan - a strange mistake for me to make given how many times I've dealt with that one without any issues. Safana, despite wearing the boots of grounding, dies immediately due to unfortunate bounces:
Once again, we're forced to return to FAI and resurrect her.
Upon our return, we almost get into big trouble once again as Hareishan notices us early and we're not in the position to stop her invisibility/lightning bolt opening. This bolt, luckily, doesn't bounce directly through our party multiple times, getting stuck near the stairs instead, and we're able to take down the wizard and her guards:
That was some pretty dodgy play by me. I should have worked a lot more with my own magical tools and tried to dictate the terms of battle instead of just reacting. Next up is Natasha - for her, we mostly just send 3 skeletons in the room to draw out her most dangerous spells before going in:
Like all ogre mages, the next foe can be hit by command, so he's really no trouble at all. However, we're low and spells and hitpoints - our attempt to rest here gets interrupted by a huge troup of guards, whom we take down with malison + emotion:
I decide to try and rest downstairs instead - here, we only get interrupted by two guards, and the next attempt finally works. Now Safana goes invisible and disarms the traps - we scout Davaeorn and use the detect illusion spell at range to get rid of his MI:
Instead of using a PfM scroll I decide to send in our skeletons first, to see if they can do the job by themselves - they can:
We enter the city, and before we quit, Almira goes for another big scroll learning session.
Questing in the city went a lot better compared to the sloppy play in Cloakwood. No major issues here. Playing things safe, we made sure to lured dangerous enemies such as these ogre magi outside whenever possible:
Fireball did a decent job down in the sewers:
And after being done with about half of the city, we went back outside for some pickpocketing and selling, also taking down Kahrk in the process:
We now have access to all the buffs we will need and can easily continue to push for the lategame. Call lightning gets one last good used out of it before we sadly have to unlearn it due to a lack of upcoming outside battles:
And for our final quest around the city, we take down Degrodel, using some wand charges (heavens, frost) to assist our buffed-up fighters:
As for the Iron Throne HQ, we throw 6 fireballs (3 of them via potions of explosion) and run in to finish the remaining enemies:
Back in Candlekeep, we swiftly move through the library into the crypts, get our hands on some tomes and, for Barg's party, use invisibility purge to avoid getting hit by a potential confusion spell (since silence didn't do the job for once):
Back in the city, we use Spider's Bane and our two free action rings to move against the iron throne mercs and their Hold Person spam:
Cythandria and the two assassins easily fall, and we've already started buffing up with some giant strength and agility potions during those battles. Add in heroism and our buffs, and we're more than ready to take on the ducal palace. The doppelgangers die before our malison + chaos combo is even done:
Time to enter the Undercity. For once we don't firebomb or double-web the hostile party down there, instead buffing with full fire immunity and using chaos to confuse a few of our foes:
Not the best idea because we are, in the end, unable to stop a remove magic from hitting some of the party, but this is the last spell our enemies get to cast:
A quick rest after Tamoko and full buffs, including all useful potions, and Ajantis opens up on Sarevok with a dispelling arrow:
Angelo has spotted his approach and casts remove magic on our paladin. Ajantis separates from the party to take the hit. Luckily, Angelo doesn't follow him, so we only have to deal with Semaj, who teleports in and uses his malison tattoo:
We can't let him cast a follow-up chaos (though we do have magic shielding and magic blocking at the ready if it comes to that), and our dispelling arrows to the trick - without defenses, he doesn't get another cast:
Now we just have to pull Sarevok towards the party - he hasn't followed Ajantis - and victory is soon ours:
And we actually stayed below the BG1 experience cap for once, due to playing with a full party and skipping Durlag's lower levels + Balduran's Island.
After picking up Jaheira, Minsc and Imoen, we leave the opening dungeon, making use of our various magical abilities. With our relatively low experience level, we aren't exactly very strong in the SoA early game, and so I rush to pick up two more party members - Anomen and Jan. In the government district, since we're pretty bad at direct combat right now, we make use of forest beings and Jan's ammo to get in some hold effects:
However, upon our return to the promenade we get hit with a very early Suna Seni ambush, something I wasn't very prepared for (Jan doesn't even have stoneskins at the start of combat due to the lack of funds for a magic license, though I guess I should have entered a building to cast it). However, we do have chaos memorized, which is a bit of a one-spell-wonder for these early battles against humanoids with poor saving throws - and it affects literally every single opponent:
There's some good equipment here for us. We do the circus quest (Jan's detect illusions gets rid of the werewolves) and meet Mencar's party, opening up from invisibility 10' radius, also making use of greater malison + forest being spells - Jan gets a nice opening backstab:
Mencar himself is held, Anomen takes some damage from the berserker and things get a bit dicey for him when the thief hits him with a backstab - though Anomen is able to retreat and survive:
Now we buy ourselves a magic liecense and move to the Copper Coronet, where we free Hendak before entering the sewers. At this point we have kitted out Jaheira to be a pretty decent tank, with full plate, RoP +1, a shield and ironskins. Minsc and Anomen are the most vulnerable party members, and direct combat is still quite dangerous, so we continue to make use of spells like chaos and slow (sometimes combined with malison) - Anomen's holy smite works very well too. We manage to confuse the first big group of slavers:
And we recast invisibility 10' radius and a few buffs for the second group - Jan gets another great backstab here. We had insect plague at the ready, but it turned out not to be needed:
We're done now with the promenade, government district and slums, so the other non-stronghold Athkatla quests will be next. After those Jaheira should hopefully have access to fire elementals, and at that point we want to travel to Imnesvale and pick up Mazzy as our final party member. Minsc has also gained a proficiency point, which I've decided to put in axes; I want to make use of his bonus against vampires and use Azuredge for that this time around.
So the party worked their way through level of two of spellhold. This went mostly to plan but there were a few hiccups.
1) The Yuan-tis had confused Solstice. When he regained control he came back to the fight just to be nearly killed by a lightning bolt.
2) Coreranger and Impish had defeated the spirit troll and for some reason Solstice decided to play a practical joke on his teammates and locked them in...he eventually let us out.
3) Gauth was defeated used shield of Balduran.
There was no more trouble getting out of Spellhold maze. We did have to fight Lonk but Lonk didn't do much before dying. Irenicus didn't do much better. Solstice was stunned so his party had to take on the thieves while he was out of action.
Time for the City of Caverns. Party did well here, with mass of summons and powerful spells from Solstice such as death spell and horrid wilting party made steady progress, but only killed the Prince and his goons.
We finally get to the Underdark and kill the mass of elementals nearby. We don't bother with the mage and a firestorm made short work of a drow party nearby/. We took on a demon threatening a gnome village and there CC on Coreranger and lots of summons, some party members were incapacitated but party did prevail.
We then worked on clearing out the Kua-Toa lair. Most enemies defeated fairly straightforward, but the prince took a while to beat down. We had summons assist us against demon knights. Coeranger nearly died as he had his wrong mace equipped was supposed to be the IMoD to prevent level drain. but Solstice brought up a mordy sword distraction and Coreranger spent the time gulping extra healing potions until he was fit enough to get back into the fight. Phew, made it.
The drow party by the bridge was duly defeated and we talked to Adalon. We bought some goodies from Ust Natha merchants, talked to Soulafein and next session will try to rescue Phaere.
We continue our Athkatla sidequest tour at the docks, with Jan getting another good backstab during the harper quest - he is on fire this run:
Jaheira leaves us for a moment, we steal Daystar and rest, and once she returns she gets to use her insect plague to demolish Galavery's false harpers:
Next, we're moving to the bridge - sorry, rune assassin - you can't hope to match Jan when you try to backstab someone with Almira's magical defenses:
After visiting the graveyard and using our freshly acquired fire elemental to clear out the crypts, I realized that I forgot the bridge district party - we don't have breach yet, but we will get our first scroll here, and even without breach we have the tools to stop this spellcaster here:
Next, the temple district. For the sewer party, we are under time pressure during our opening due to true sight, and end up having to use insect plague to ensure that the enemy wizard dies and can't do anything dangerous to us. With that, malison and chaos, we have enough tools to neutralize all the power this group might've thrown at us:
Our final stop before we are going to turn towards stronghold quests (starting at the Umar Hills to recruit Mazzy) is WKI (mostly for the extra containers) - the only dangerous foes here, since we aren't going to do the second round of statues, are the two vampiric wraiths. We buff up and summon in front of the door leading to them and get a fairly clean battle, with only Almira getting level drained for two levels:
As for purchases, we have gotten the belt of hill giant strength early for Jaheira, Firetooth for Jan, Azuredge for Minsc, and various items from the three main temples in the temple district. Our druid now has gotten her second level 6th spell, which is exactly what I was hoping for before going to Imnesvale (two fire elementals can easily clear out the entire temple ruin dungeon until the final battle).
No-frills Necromancer: A Random Run, Part 2
Previous part found here
Next part found here
We hit the ground running; even though Fighter/Cleric has abysmal offensive stats, Cat's Grace and Strength makes up the difference, and so we push through Irenicus' dungeon mostly unscathed (not a single potion was necessary).
The circus is cleared in short order, the Copper Coronet gets a change of ownership, and some local slavers are eradicated.
Three Clerics means we can always roll with lots of Animate Dead, several full complements of buffs, as well as just about enough healing, which basically means we're almost never in any real danger.
Part of this is because travel is always safe owing to Invisibility 10' Radius from Sorcerer; there's really not much to report, as we completely devastate all the early ambushes since we get to start from an entirely advantageous position every time.
We keep going, clearing the easy Graveyard stuff: Barbarian got a spot of poor luck with a pip in Single-Weapon Style (the alternatives were a single pip in either Sling or Dagger, neither seemed that spectacular...), but makes up for it with some vicious crits.
Next, we trigger the Renfeld ambush; Prebek and Sanasha are actually low-level enough that Sorcerer's Remove Magic strips nearly all their buffs, with predictable results.
We've cleared a lot of the easy stuff in Athkatla, so head into the hills, Umar Hills to be more precise.
Being on Insane means we get some fairly meaty spawns.
Yeah, two Bone Golems, two Mummies, two ranged and one melee Skeleton Warrior.
The spawn before was identical... we muddle through, though it takes quite a bit of spell-works, summons and shuffling to keep from taking catastrophic damage.
We rest up before tackling the Shade Lord: Full buffs, take out the altar and attendant Shadows first (Shade Lord puts up PfMW, and we don't have Breach yet so there's no point going after it early on).
The Darkling Aura is the main issue here, but we keep the backline moving out of its reach, with Barbarian raging and Fighter/Cleric under NPP.
Ultimately, we pull through fine: The Shade Lord wasted several of its big spells like Finger on Death on our lowly Skeleton Warriors.
We return to Athkatla: While it's certainly possible to keep spamming Fighter/Cleric with Cat's Grace until he rolls a 4+ for his boost (so he hits 18 DEX), it's annoying and consumes a lot of slots.
So yes, we're clearing out the Unseeing Eye next.
Necromancer and Sorcerer have both hit L11 by now (yep, we had amazing luck on Sorcerer, as he actually managed to land Animate Dead) and the 7HD Skeleton Warrior version has high enough Magic Resistance to easily chew through even Beholders.
First though, Tarnor, Gaius and the gang get a taste of stacked area-of-effects (as does Barbarian to be fair, but Cleric/Illusionist was able to get Invisibility off on him).
Mekrath also (to his detriment) gets to know our Skeleton Warriors.
In fact, his attendant Yuan-Ti grouping is a lot more trouble than he is: Three (!) Yuan-Ti Mages (one of whom summoned its own Skeleton Warrior), a Greater Yuan-Ti and three regular Yuan-Ti.
We take a few licks in the process, but rest up and head into the sewers proper.
Cleric/Thief still has problems picking some locks, but more importantly cannot always detect every trap (owing to randomized Thief skill points).
This nearly spells disaster when she fails to spot a Lighting Bolt trap.
By what I can only assume to be plain dumb luck, the Lightning Bolt a) did not hit the party more than once and b) somehow narrowly avoided tagging Necromancer.
And this is Cleric/Thief with her Find Traps boosted by 20 DEX (again, Cat's Grace).
I seriously considered trying the Planar Sphere for the Ring of Danger Sense, but given the ignominious end of my Conjurer run thanks to the in my mind slightly odd decision of SCS to completely remove Freedom scrolls from pre-Underdark SoA, thought better of it.
She's slowly, slowly inching her Find Traps up there...
Alright; in Ghoul Town we get an undead spawn the likes of which I've never seen. Two Greater Mummies (requiring +3 weaponry which we do not have), two Bone Golems, the usual Skeleton Warriors both ranged and melee, and a second spawn with three regular Mummies, some Ghasts, Zombies and two Ghoul Lords.
In an uncharacteristic fit of not being a greedy old miser, I shell out some potions: mainly it's Oils of Speed which allows the frontliners to very slowly bring down everything (undead aren't fast on their feet so we get a few hits in here and there) apart from the Greater Mummies, which we have just enough arcane firepower left to destroy.
Yet we must press on: We still have Animate Dead available.
In contrast then, the lair proper goes swimmingly, apart from us having to wait out some Blindness from the Blind Priests.
The Unseeing Eye drops along with its Death Tyrants, as does Ghaal afterwards, and all is well again.
We've yet to take care of Mae'Var, so get that out of the way: By now a bunch of Thieves and a solitary Thief/Mage really pose no threat to us.
Our final act for this session is nipping into Watcher's Keep: Unfortunately, we still lack +3 weaponry and so cannot destroy the Guardian Golems.
First order of business next time will be clearing De'Arnise Keep for the Frostreaver Axe and the Kneecapper, which will sort that out: After that there's not a lot of things left to do beyond Windspear Hills and Trademeet.
I'll probably save the high-profile stuff, i.e. the three Liches, Kangaxx, Twisted Rune, Guarded Compound, Wyrm-slaying, Planar Prison/Sphere, until after the Underdark: I'd like a better arcane spell selection before taking those on.
Things are really starting to pick up now: We're about to solve the final equipment issue for our frontliners (well, almost, I'll probably just tough it out without buying Girdle of Hill Giant Strength for Fighter/Cleric since I'd rather save the cash for scrolls in the Underdark), and once that's fixed, we're looking pretty golden to at least make it through SoA without issue.
Let's hope it all works out; we've also had some good luck with Sorcerer's spell picks, as can be seen in the spoiler.
Until next time.
As planned, Jaheira's double fire elementals did most of the work down in the temple ruins, only needing some help for the bone golem - though we did buff up Minsc a bit and let him use Azuredge to speed up the killing. The vanilla shade lord is notoriously easy to rush down, and so we did just that:
Upon our return to the city, Mazzy won her duel, we bought bracers of ac3 and we travelled to Trademeet, only to be forced into returning back to Athkatla - Jaheira left for harper hold, forcing us to fight our way through to her and back out again:
Now we got to enter the druid grove. Not all that difficult at that point, and we have firetooth + a ton of fire arrows to destroy any trolls. We are using some of our potions from time to time, such as strength buffs on Mazzy or agility buffs on Anomen, just to speed things up a bit. With a few buffs, all the battles here were won, and Jaheira was able to defeat Faldorn with insect plague and two fire elementals:
As for the trademeet follow-up quests, while we were doing the one for Mazzy, Dermin ambushed us - we fled into Mazzy's home, buffed up and went back out - insect plague made sure we didn't get hit by any dangerous spells:
I also did the statues in WKI because I went there anyway to buy the Sword of Mask. We also bought the useful items from the trademeet merchant, though that drained pretty much our entire gold supplies. Now we're moving on to De'Arnise Keep.
There's not too much that can threaten us in De'Arnise keep, since Jan can just backstab the yuan-ti mage. Trolls, yuan-ti and umber hulks are no trouble at this point:
For the thief stronghold questline, Rayic dies to breach:
After that, I decide to pay Gaelan and we quickly deal with Bodhi, using Azuredge + AoP on Minsc to hunt down most of the vampires. Tanova gets breached and her simulacrum destroyed, Bodhi dies to overwhelming numbers:
Now, after forging the iMoD +2, we travel to Windspear Hills. Here, our first actually dangerous situation occurs when we try to destroy some golems - I didn't notice the iron golem hitting Almira and getting through her stoneskins, and he gets an actual non-mitigated hit in, which is incredibly dangerous for our low hp diviner and triggers her contingency (invisibility) - luckily she gets away:
Minsc once again gets to do his vampire hunting thing:
And we use our magical ranged weapons to take down the adamantite golem:
Conster gets breached and dies:
And we use protection from fire to get Samia's treasure (before going for malison + chaos against her group).
Now, we move on to the Unseeing Eye quest. Fairly easy, since we are still relatively low in levels, so we don't get a lich spawn and can just use fire elementals + Minsc against the undead. We have the Shield of Balduran on Jaheira for the beholders and take down the Unseeing Eye with the rift device + a hit:
We also free Haer'Dalis and use our freshly gained level 7 spells for mass invisibility in order to rush down the opening ambush in the planar prison - Jan backstabs one wizard, we team up on the other one:
We have a few chaotic command casts now and other tools against crowd control effects, making it relatively easy to quickly venture east and clear out most of the area in one big charge:
With the orb now available, we move south, rebuff, destroy it and charge towards the warden - he's still busy fighting when we arrive, making it easy to take him down:
The planar sphere and our stronghold quests there still remain.
Walking in on the halflings with mass invisibility and the use of breach, we quickly take out the key spellcasters:
Lavok gets to meet two of our skeleton warriors, who resist all of his spells except for a few magic missles:
As per usual, even with boosted strength from the belt, Jan isn't quite able to kill Tolgerias with a backstab. The damage on our party here came from previous demon battles outside, for which I didn't buff up properly. Well, Jan retreats (using boots of speed) and since he had interrupted true sight with his backstab, we go invisible again after a while and take down cowled ones:
We clear the fire and ice rooms, but now we have to rest in order to take on the golems. Fire elementals, aerial servants, an ironskinned Jaheira and mass ranged weapons with high enchantment levels do the job:
Finally, we get to the mage stronghold quests, making sure all of our students survive. Malison + Slow/Chaos still have their uses here:
Strangely enough Ribald won't talk with us about an option to send home the knights, so we have to send them to the order. Oh well. We buy the few remaining items we can afford with our gold (interestingly enough, unlike most of my runs, we don't actually have enough gold to get everyone we want pre-Spellhold) and take the ship to Brynnlaw.
Brynnlaw and Spellhold:
We get our wardstone via backstab from Jan - nice critical hit here:
At the first level, the pit fiend from the portal gets in a good dispel hit on us, but luckily I had positioned Almira and Jan at the back, so the follow-up fireball didn't hit them:
Interestingly, we didn't get a lich spawn at level 2 - seems our experience levels are just too low. That made it all the easier to clear out the undead:
Working through the asylum areas was easy enough - we also have the most powerful version of skeleton warriors available now, if needed, which will be useful for the underdark. However, we did make a bit of a mistake near the end - I accidentally picked the wrong dialogue option when talking to Lonk, who turned hostile and dispelled the entire party (minus Almira, who had SI:A active):
We took down Lonk and re-buffed with haste immediately when Irenicus turned hostile - damage was still high enough to put Jon into retreat-mode before once his clone spell was finished:
By now we have access to enough chaotic commands and death wards for the entire party, so with those and remove fear added into the mix, very few threats outside of a dispel/remove magic are present (sometimes resistances, such as fire resistance, are added for specific encounters). The city of caverns is easy to clear out, as always, and we move to the underdark, using our buffs against mind flayers, kuo-toans and other, more powerful foes such as the balor:
We move the the kuo-toa caverns, where we use Balduran's Shield for more beholders and fire elementals to help with most of the enemies in here. Fire resistance is added to the other buffs for the demon knights. After a quick rest, we learn protection from petrification to ensure survival in the beholder cave opening ambush:
The rest of this dungeon is mostly done by Jaheira with the shield, and some skeleton warriors:
Finally we move to the mind flayer city, using some potion buffs to speed things up so we can be sure our chaotic commands won't run out:
Next, we enter Ust'Natha and move through the various quests there. When we get to Deirex, we have to face our first lich - we make sure everyone is hasted and run past our foe, so that we're out of sight when his timestop completes. After that, we send one summons so he uses his spell trigger, and after that we're free to move in. He gets in one sunfire, but that's all the damage we take:
Now we use a Mordenkainen's Sword to help in tanking against the army of house Jae'llat:
And after executing the double-cross, we finally leave the Underdark behind us.
So Coreranger thought for sure his run was going to end. But no it continues...first task was to take on the powerful party blocking our path to rescuing Phaere. The party's spells and summons plus ranged attacks was able to carry to the day. And fighting Phaere can be pretty dangerous, however this particular group of enemies are all vulnerable to death spell and so it turned out fine.
The other quests in Ust Natha were solved the usual way:
1) Beholder in the city defeated
2) Gnomes persuaded to give up helmet to convince Phaere we killed them
3) Soulafein "killed" (no not really).
4) Real eggs recovered, watched Phaere and her mother get killed.
5) Party then tried to run for the hills. But no a "fish" wants to talk to Coreranger claiming Coreranger has to do the fish's bidding or be exposed. But Coreranger was able to persuade the fish to drop the idea - easy 12k experience. During these quests we were all starting to get our 1st HLA
6) Party reported to Adalon our success then we went invisible and left the area to the Underdark Exit
Now had a few odds and ends but not many.
1) Went to Waukeen's Promenade and got ambushed by the Githyanki. We don't need their sword so gave it back to them. We recovered a few of our goodies from our chest that use as our "bank". e.g. to hold things we might not need for a while.
2) We finally had a battle with Thaxxy. With our levels, spells and melee power this went smoothly.
3) We skipped Firkraag and the Twisted Rune and Guarded Compound. Forged a few items with Cromwell's help most notable b being the Crom Faeyr which can help us in Suldensslar.
Time to deal with Bodhi. Only thieves helped us to help with traps. This went pretty smooth (Coreranger has GWW + IMoD - not a good combo for Bodhi). We had one hiccup when Impish got charmed and starting attacking party members. Impish refuses to wear a charm helmet when fighting vampires which could have easily prevented that. Or just maybe buff with chaotic commands? But in any case Bodhi was defeated and then we turned in the Lanthorn.
We took a lot of damage in Suldanesslar, but melee power + spells + summons did see us the minions here. For the dragon, Impish wanted to be stylish and use a firestorm. Probably unnecessary but the plan worked and Nizi went down. For the temple we didn't bother to fight but turned in the items to summon Rillifane. Impish appreciated the very nice druid staff we got as a reward.
As for the few minions guarding Irenicus at the Tree of Life we got through these easily enough. The party tried to have summon distractions but Irenicus was having none of that. Then Grond0 apparently wasn't paying attention and died to Irenicus fireshield. Coreranger and Solstice kept up the attacks and finally Irenicus died and then....GAME LOCKED UP. End task was required. We ran out of time here so our last save was just before the last parasite at the Tree of Life so will have to beat up Irenicus again next session.
No-frills Necromancer: A Random Run, Part 3
Previous part found here
Next part found here
Alright, we were on the verge of clearing out the final three major quests outside Athkatla, starting with the De'Arnise Keep.
Bit tricky this: We get massive Troll spawns, where the Spirit and Spectral Trolls of course start out invisible, so we do occasionally have to scramble to keep up, especially when reinforcements come running from halfway across the map...
Still, since we've got three half-Clerics, we have enough Chaotic Commands and Protection from Fire (rendering null and void the incessant Flame Strikes and Greater Commands) to proceed in relative safety, though the sheer physical damage and Strength-drain effect of some of the Trolls remains problematic.
Methodically, the Keep is cleared, and we pick up the by now sorely needed Frostreaver Axe for Barbarian.
We actually manage to clear the whole thing, sans TorGal, in one rest cycle, and so turn invisible and retreat to prepare properly for the final showdown.
... There's just too many enemies and spell effects going off in that battle to pull it off flawlessly, it seems.
We quickly took down TorGal with traps, spells and frontliners under Improved Haste, but his reinforcements literally blocked the doorway, which meant the two Yuan-Ti Mages were free to do as they pleased for several rounds.
Cleric/Thief succumbed to a Troll-casted Greater Command, and then a stray Cone of Cold was all it took to spell her end.
Still, we were never in danger of a protagonist death.
We pick up the pieces, raise Cleric/Thief, and trundle off for our reward.
Windspear Hills is next, which may have been a poor decision.
I roam the map at first, and (I never knew this could happen) get accosted by Garren Windspear at the entrance to Firkraag's dungeon about saving his daughter, apparently loosing out on the experience and loot otherwise gained from taking out the attackers when you rest at his cabin... unfortunate but nothing to be done about it.
The Ruhk Transmuter is a real pain, with its excellent THAC0 and even better AC, but runs out of spells and can't keep up with our potion-gulping.
Once past that, we run into our first serious spawn: Two Stone Golems, two Clay Golems, and one Juggernaut Golem.
My intent here was to quickly blitz down the Clay Golems and then deal with the rest at my leisure; alas, intent and reality rarely coincide.
Yeah, so hasted Golems actually move REALLY fast, and target aggressively... so we ended up cursed and hurt.
Fortunately they can't see through Invisibility, which literally saved our bacon.
We rest invisibly and press on, to the next bloody nightmare: Three Elder and three Ancient Vampires (the latter requiring +3 weaponry to hit).
These are very tricky to deal with, as they'll always try and seek out characters without NPP, they Dominate, summon blocking Rats and Dire Wolves, turn into Bats to regenerate very quickly when injured, sometimes turn into Rats and stealth in plain sight, and drain CON.
With massive buffs, spell damage (carefully applied by casters dipping in and out of line-of-sight), and distracting summons, we do manage to punch through just as our final batch of NPP is expiring... but right after this picture was taken, Barbarian's last Rage expired, meaning his CON dropped to 0, and he dropped with it.
The Skeleton Warriors are just standing there because they're a last resort if we need to flee: They can't hit the Vampires, and they die very quickly, so not much use.
But the fun doesn't stop here. Turns out the (I thought harmless...) Director Beholder here gets a level 9 arcane spell? Or some home-brewed version of it. Whatever it is, it instantly kills Fighter/Cleric.
We have to rest yet again, which was just as well because we were seriously low on everything.
Still, Samia's little troupe is at least reasonably straight-forward to clear:
Cleric/Illusionist's Water Elementals are very potent against anything not immune to poison.
More horrors await as we engage the Air Elemental in the well; apparently it's on good terms with both the local Golems and Orogs, as they scramble to aid it.
Three spawns at once is too much, so it's a good thing we still have plenty of Potions of Invisibility... I'm not very proud of it, but just this once I stoop to utilizing an invisible blocker.
We simply can't handle this many hard-hitting hasted enemies (that are magic-immune, in the case of the Golems) at once.
In contrast, the Adamantite Golem, as well as the Greater Wolfweres, present not nearly so grand an obstacle, and we make our way over to Tazok, clobbering him well and proper.
We've conserved some anti-magic spellworks, so Conster (who was a Necromancer, apparently.. no defensive Illusions) doesn't get to do much to us.
We leave Firkraag for another day, and report in to Garren.
That was seriously difficult, and we came perilously close to loosing several additional party members (though not Necromancer) beyond Barbarian and Fighter/Cleric more than once.
They're no joke, these Insane difficulty SCS spawns.
Let's relax a bit then; off to Trademeet.
We risk a small altercation by pickpocketing the Efreeti bottle, but meet with success.
By now, the rather weak (usually only a bunch of regular Trolls and one Spirit Troll) initial spawns at the Druid Grove aren't much of a concern, and we quickly press on; Kylan Lind gets a Cloudkill, completely preventing him and his fellow Shadow Druids from doing anything meaningful.
It's been so long I've forgotten just how many Spore Colonies there are on the first bridge here (for the record, five), and so we get into a bit of a pickle where Barbarian and Sorcerer are both Confused and in melee range of both Trolls and Myconids.
Fortunately, we had Melf's Minute Meteors available, which prove sufficient to quickly clear a path through the mostly Myconid horde.
We buff to the hilt and enter the cottage; I was very apprehensive about this, but fortunately we don't get a Horrid Wilting to the face.
The Rakshasa are extremely irritating, but we manage to spread the damage around, and take them down without casualties.
We move up to Cernd... who for some bizarre reason starts casting Enchantment spells (Hold Animal/Charm Person or Mammal) at our Water Elemental?
I was worried he'd turn hostile and break the quest, since we have no Druid ourselves to take on Faldorn, so talk to him, at which point he immediately takes us to Faldorn, kills her, and that's it.
Meaning we did NOT get to fight the final Druid group, so no Gnasher +2 for Cleric/Thief to backstab with.
Necromancer does not approve!
Back in Trademeet, we clear the Tomb and finish the Reijek questline, and that's it... Trademeet cleared, and with it, all major areas outside of Athkatla.
There are two strongholds left: The Planar Sphere and the Planar Prison.
As previously indicated, I'll hold off on the Planar Sphere until Freedom scrolls are available, and while I doubt the Warden will have Imprisonment memorized, I can't be sure... so yeah, we'll tackle that post-Underdark too.
Time to go Vampire hunting then.
Unfortunately, I forgot that Azuredge requires a Good alignment, so no easy-mode for us (Barbarian is Neutral).
Same setup as in Firkraag's dungeon: NPP (since Barbarian might not have enough Rages, Fighter/Cleric has AoP now), Chaotic Commands, lots of summons and spell damage, lots of buffs... lots of everything.
Everything goes just fine, but I underestimate Tanova: In my defense, she's a tough nut to crack, what with arcane spells and her bizarre melee abilities.
A 3x Otiluke's Freezing Sphere Spell Sequencer is the end of Barbarian, and I realize that it could've just as easily meant the end of the run had it been directed at Necromancer...
Fighter/Cleric puts her down with the MoD; in comparison, Bodhi is much easier (though Barbarian once again comes quite close to dropping), but Improved Haste tends to simplify things.
A thorough rest later, we embark towards Brynnlaw.
The initial Vampire ambush is easily dealt with, as is indeed the entire town: We harass Perth the Adept a bit with some summons, then just charge him once I'm confident he's out of big bruisers like Telekinetic Storm/Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting.
We did get True Sight as an option from the Book of Many Spells, but I really wanted Spell Deflection... and so ended up with Burning Hands on the last page.
Eh, I'll just sell it in the Underdark then.
Lady Galvena and her ragtag gang are quickly dismantled; even Vadek can do little, since he apparently went heavy on Enchantment spells, which is a poor choice against Skeleton Warriors.
We free Claire, loot the Pirate Lord's holdings, and retreat to the Vulgar Monkey, where the party can presently be found preparing their minds and bodies both for assaulting Spellhold.
One potentially close call (Tanova's Spell Sequencer) that could've meant the end of the run: From now on, Necromancer will never show himself to enemy Mages without some form of spell protection active.
I hope... let's see if I can stick to it.
Other than that, things are proceeding apace.
Cleric/Thief finally has enough Open Locks/Find Traps that she can, with the help of Cat's Grace, handle everything; we had another batch of bad luck with Barbarian on level-up, picking up * in Halberd.
Sorcerer has some odd high-level selections now (Protection from Magical Energy, Spell Turning) which I normally would not go for... but they're not entirely useless at least.
Let's keep up the good (?) work, and power through the rest of SoA: It'll probably be a few weeks before I can squeeze in another update, though.
Party stats in the spoiler for those so inclined.
Good progress despite the deaths - After Spellhold, the impact of the Insane SCS spawns is luckily reduced as spawn sizes are mostly fixed regardless of difficulty level.
I roam the map at first, and (I never knew this could happen) get accosted by Garren Windspear at the entrance to Firkraag's dungeon about saving his daughter, apparently loosing out on the experience and loot otherwise gained from taking out the attackers when you rest at his cabin... unfortunate but nothing to be done about it.
This happened to me twice in a row maybe about a year ago, and since then I've made it my policy to immediately enter Garren's cabin first thing after the initial ambush is over.
We move up to Cernd... who for some bizarre reason starts casting Enchantment spells (Hold Animal/Charm Person or Mammal) at our Water Elemental?
This is a strange bug that has existed for years now (I can't even remember a time where it didn't exist, but I'm pretty sure its an EE thing) - Cernd reacts very oddly to all types of summons near him during this part of the quest; I've never seen him actually turn hostile here, though I don't think he ever succeeded with one of his charm attempts - so I don't know what would happen if he did. I've sometimes just walked past him with my summons and nothing bad ended up happening, but if I happen to remember this bug I generally just don't bring any summons past the bridge.
A 3x Otiluke's Freezing Sphere Spell Sequencer is the end of Barbarian, and I realize that it could've just as easily meant the end of the run had it been directed at Necromancer...
That's a pretty rough way to potentially go out - I've had a similiar death to a 3*Vitriolic Sphere sequencer that I really didn't see coming. I've encountered these types of deadly triple damage spell sequencers with rare damage types that one wouldn't ordinarily protect against very, very rarely, but when they come out they tend to be a huge surprise. It's a pretty tough sell to try and protect the party against literally every damage type for every spellcaster encounter where sequencers could potentially occur; It would take forever and take up tons of other spellslots. But as a consequence of these options existing with the addition of IWD spells into SCS, it might be worth it to make sure the main character is often at least somewhat protected against even the less common types of elements (or direct damage spells in general via spell deflections/reflections). Sadly, wizards can't wear some of the more common items that protect against every element, as they tend to be helmets or shields.
@Enuhal Ah yes, now that you mention it (and I've had time to think), I seem to recall having this Cernd oddity occur before as well. I'll take care next time around, as even though loosing the club isn't a big deal with this party, it'd be very unfortunate if you had for instance Jaheira along.
Also agreed on the protect-protagonist-against-everything when fighting SCS spellcasters in BG2, I've seen triple Cone of Cold, triple Disintegrate/Flesh to Stone... mercifully haven't come across triple Skull Trap yet though.
Now that we've returned from the underdark, it's time to hunt some liches, mind flayers, guarded compound inhabitants, twisted rune members etc. - pretty much all of that worked out just as planned, here are a few screenshots:
Actually, I learned a useful bit of info here: Squeezing in the corner near the entrance in the Twisted Rune building allows us not to aggro any of the enemies there except for the lich.
Anyway, now for the dragons - since they all use remove magic, we send in a summon (magical sword or planetar) first, together with Almira, who's protected by SI:A - after their remove magic is done, we move in for the kill:
Now we go for the newly opened up forest areas, using backstabs for some of the spellcasters:
After that, it's time for Bodhi. With Anomen using the iMoD and Minsc throwing Azuredge, the vampire lair was easy enough to clear out. Sadly, Arkanis stole the Bodhi last hit from us (Mazzy did 99% of the actual damage):
We took our revenge on the shadow thieves after that, taking down Renal for his boots. As a final stop before we're ready for the elven city, we go for Watcher's Keep level 2, where we use various elemental protections and prepare Jan's traps which deal bonus fire damage at this level for the ice form of the chromatic demon:
We're roaming through the elven city, using magical swords to tank golems and a backstab for the drow wizard:
A triple remove magic sequencer helps with a bunch of rakshasa, and Almira sends in a magical sword to help with the dragon - she buffs up with SI:A and SI:C in order to make sure both remove magic and summon insects are gone:
After that, the party moves in to deal the damage:
We summon the avatar of Rillifane and move on to the tree. Jan doesn't have spike traps yet, and we only place our four normal traps, expecting a bit of a fight against Jon, but even those traps are enough to defeat him outright:
In hell, we pick the good options, using a planetar and some skeletons for the beholder path. We encountered some trouble here, for the first time in a while in this run - some of the eye tyrants moved towards our party, which was waiting at the entrance, instead of just focusing on our summons, and they got to use a few eyebeams, even two hitting Almira herself, but none of them ended up doing anything too dangerous (just some cause wounds and slow effects).
We prepared for the final battle against Jon, called in a few summons and made sure to take down the demons first. After double breach, the Slayer was vulnerable and the battle was over very quickly:
A rest and rebuff, and we take down Ilasera. The first pocket plane challenge soon follows, with detect illusions revealing another version of Irenicus, which we, once again, breach and take down:
We get Cespenar to forge a few items for us and will start with Saradush next time.
In Saradush, we do some sidequests and buy a ton of spellscrolls for Almira and Jan (lacking funds for some of the level 9 scrolls for Jan). To take down Kiser's wizard companion, Jan goes for another backstab:
Anomen and Minsc take down the vampires, and we rebuff for an invasion of the sewers. Some breaches for the wizards in the basement, and we move upstairs under invisibility for a quick attack on the group under the throne room. Our buffs are still going as we go for Gromnir - we cast invisibility 10' radius once again and split up the fighters to go after both wizards - they both fall before their defensive buffs are activated:
After that, taking down Gromnir and his remaining allies is easy enough. Now we have the cash we need for the remaining 9th level scrolls.
Almira makes it to the northern forest, taking down the master wraith and its allies with a bunch of sunbeams and her chain contingency:
Now we venture into the Marching Mountains, making sure to keep up fire resistance on the entire party. Magical swords do a great job tanking fire giants while we take them down at range:
Berenn has to be rushed down:
And after we have the two hearts, we return to Nyalee (mostly dealt with via traps) and move to the army camp. Just for fun, we take out the officers first (using true sight and breach for the powerful wizard) before taking down the fire giant:
Now, we travel to the Oasis and clear out the area before buffing up for the second pocket plane challenge, where we take down Semaj and Almira first:
We move on to Amkethran, starting with the various sidequests. Here we have a first for me: Carras, the smuggler merchant, dies pretty much immediately during combat - hit by a monk with quivering palm:
This means that we're going to miss out on 3 very powerful items... too bad. Well, we use traps and anti-undead weapons against Vongoethe and his crew:
And, finally, we make our way to Sendai's, where we clear the outside, destroying the hive mother before she even activates her anti-magic ray:
The party clears the earlier parts of the enclave, but I decide to stop for now when our buffs start running low on duration.
So the party finds themselves at the Tree of Life. We didn't bother with much buffs before dealing with Irenicus except potion of invulnerability. The party used some true sights and insects and Coreranger attacking with melee, healing, attacking, healing, etc. and we won this fight rather cleanly this time (Impish had died our first attempt).
Time for the hell trials:
1) As usual we didn't fight the dragon
2) Coreranger used the dragon sword to be immune to fear and get the 2nd tear
3) Coreranger chose the good paths and made sacrifices to get Impish back. His party suggested he get retribution for some reason (Grond0 had sacrificed Corey_Russell's character and chunked him in a run not too far long ago).
4) Blackrazor given up
Coreranger turned in the tears he had and then engaged Sarevok. Sarevok didn't last long, mainly due to Coreranger's Crom Faeyr.
Time for the main event. Some summons and potion of magic shielding for Coreranger. Party engaged and destroyed the demons. Grond0's energy blades did a number on Irinicus and victory!
But Corey_Russell tried to skip the cut scenes and the game locked up. Luckily auto-save enabled us to start our adventure in ToB. Illsaera was defeated easily. Then we did the pocket plane challenge - it was strangely easy, with not many powerful enemies. Then we fought the initial battle in Saradush - was difficult but we were victorious. Then we did a few odds and ends:
1) We talked to Mateo. Then talked to Santele then Kaiser then the mage on the wall. Then we deal with Kaiser with true sight and horrid wilting and plague of insects.
2) A boy's father is resurrected.
3) We retrieved a spellbook for a local mage shop
4) Key obtained from the temple
5) Then we battled in the jail. With Coreranger leading the way with IMoD this part went very well and fast.
6) Then we summoned some mordy swords and party used ranged fire to deal with enemies - the swords were really effective.
7) We battled to Gromnir's area entering area invisible. The casters tried to get some summons going, but Coreranger was forced to get into melee. Coreranger took tremendous damage and nearly died - but luckily Solstice put up some mordy swords to keep Gromnir busy. Coreranger spent a lot of time to heal this fight but the party did prevail.
We had to spend some time to identify and sell. Then we went to the Forest and dealt with enemies here. With mordy swords keeping fire giants busy this went pretty smooth, except Impish got surrounded but horrid wilting helped save him.
Once we got to Nylee's glade we battled undead. While Coreranger was doing well with IMoD but his team-mates were running around and couldn't cast spells as they were getting hit. But Coreranger was steadily killing the enemies and we won after all.
Mordy swords were the key spell for Yaga's Temple, as long as giants were preoccupied with those, party could range and kill the enemies at will. We had cleared the first level but we did have one hiccup - party got hit with fear and Coreranger's friends ran in fear, so Coreranger had to kill the burning men by himself. Coreranger had prepped with the dragon sword to be immune to fear. We ran out of time so saved our session here, we will do the next level next time.
Further into Sendai's Enclave: We move towards Odamaron, and just leave him alone with a deva - in the vanilla game, this pretty much always works; He can't deal with the celestial and eventually dies to its attacks once his timestop and PFMW is gone. After that, Ogremoch is the next threat - we can't get him to attack our magical sword, but luckily we have enough APR to quickly strip his stoneskins, and while his hits dispel Jaheira's buffs, he is unable to follow up with actual damage:
Diaytha is nex t- we lure some of her allies towards us (and into some traps) before approaching the priestess, making sure Almira and Jan have spell shields going as the Hive Mother is breached and taken down - once again, we kill it before anti-magic ray threatens anyone:
Almira wins her duel under the effect of an oil of speed, and we make sure to take down the mind flayers in the next room. Now, time to forge some gear (some pretty big upgrades, such as the Sword of Mask +5 for Mazzy and Firetooth +5 for Jan), and after that we rest and buff up again for Sendai. The heavy use of Improved Mantle instead of PFMW by enemy wizards here (including the two wizard Sendai clones) means that Almira can just use the Staff of the Magi to strip them of their buffs with a single attack:
The real Sendai appears, and we breach her - she teleports away and goes invisible, we use detect illusions on Jan. Her implosion doesn't do too much (everyone in the party is buffed with fire resistance), and that's just about the only aggressive spell she gets to cast before being taken down:
Next, we will venture into Watcher's Keep levels 3-5.
We enter the teleporter maze, and our ADHW CC helps with the first no-magic zone (contigencies still work). The demon right ahead is luckily not hostile (because Almira is of neutral alignment), though I would have activated the pocket plane spell in time to flee and buff up anyway:
Once again we prepare a CC for the second no-magic zone and also make sure to disarm the nearby trap before moving ahead - that went well:
We use item-based charm immunity for the succubus room, and after that we can finally buff up, making the rest of the level, at least until we meet the demon wraith, not much of a challenge. For the demon wraith, I decide to ignore the traps and rush ahead (trusting in my saving throws with full potions of invulnerabiliy for the party - breach and fighter HLAs do the job:
We failed to win a single game against the cambion, which is a pretty big blow to Jaheira, who would've loved to equip the Spectral Brand.
Now onto level 4. We start with the mind flayers and side rooms before going after the gith. All easy so far. Fire resistance, magical swords, SI:A and we move towards Saladrex, making sure to get rid of his remove magic - he's a bit tougher compared to previous dragons, but not tough enough:
PfM for the demi-lich, and we quickly finish the level. Level 5 is done fairly quickly, green protection from poison scrolls help with the poison dragon (and once again, we make sure to draw out his remove magic before moving in). For the battles at the seal, Jan (who's normal traps still do extra fire damage instead of the final poison version) traps the Aurumach Rilmani:
He uses three of his spike traps for Azamantes - and, strangely enough, as we take down the flaming skulls, their explosion damage kills Jaheira - something I was totally unprepared for, but it was easy enough to pick her back up:
The remaining traps are used for the succubus of the final group, and we rush down the hive mother. Magical swords distract the archer and divine spellcaster, but the fighter uses GWW and does quite a big of damage to us, forcing some quick retreats:
However, it's easy enough to heal Jaheira back up and get the upper hand:
We read the scroll and got our upgrades, The Ravager for Minsc being the most significant one.
I decided to take down Draconis as well, preparing with protection from acid. Sending a planetar forward, we spread out and started with some ranged weapon damage after Draconis' timestop was over. The transformation happened, and our enemy sent his remove magic towards Jan - which was very good, because he had SI:A going:
With true sight going, we just had to use two wand of spell striking charges (our limited 5th level slots didn't allow to memorize breach) and a few fighter HLAs to get the kill:
Fighting our way through Abazigal's Lair is fairly quick compared to Sendai's Enclave, with no major problems to speak of. We buff with lightning resistance for the big dragon himself, call in some Mordenkainen's Swords and a planetar, move around to take out the salamanders - Abazigal in his human form is stuck trying to take down a magical sword, so we easily take him out. Everyone except for Almira (for some reason) gets kicked away upon his transformation into dragon form, so she eats the remove magic, which is perfect as she has SI:A - the others move in and spam fighter HLAs until the dragon is defeated:
The fourth pocket plane challenge is easily done, and we move back to Amkethran after a few final Cespenar upgrades. invisibility 10' radius and some buffs, and we use an ADHW CC for the group in front of the monestary. Now we rush down Balthazar with improved hastes and fighter HLAs - he kicks us away once and heals back up to full, but a second round of assaults brings us the victory:
Since this took only a very short time, leaving most of our buffs still running, I decided to renew improved hastes and take on the Ravager right away (without traps this time). A few breach spells and more fighter HLAs were used, I had to pull back Minsc once due to him taking too much damage, but over all the fight was relatively easy:
We prepare with the full array of buffs, including some additional potions, such as frost protection, storm giant strength, mind focusing etc.
We have two 3*LR spell triggers, which we fire at Mel immediately. Shortly after that, our 3*ADHW CC triggers, and the first battle is ours:
Now, we rush down the guardians of the first pool. No trouble here, and we call in a planetar to help out. Amelyssan appears again, we go for a few fighter HLAs. Jaheira takes some type of dispel and a ton of damage, so she has to retreat for a second - shortly after that, though, Mel has to power up once again:
Almira renews her frost resistance, and with full immunity to ice damage we easily clear out the second pool:
Now, it's time to make use of our traps - Mel the third doesn't get to teleport away, four spike traps and two normal traps do the job:
I am slightly low on timestops for Jan - only 2 scrolls and the limited wish timestop. Hoping that this will still be enough to take down the fallen solar, he starts his approach - however, I forgot to buff him with improved haste, so his damage is severely hindered - after all three timestops are gone, the fallen solar is near death, but still alive - and Jan is now in a dangerous situation:
I decide not to retreat - one more hit could be enough, maybe he will be able to get that one in before the fallen solar dispels him with an arrow - and indeed, since the celestial first tries to build up some range, the attack goes through:
Now Jan can retreat, and the others move in to clear up the pool:
We have enough traps to kill Mel outright, and just to be sure, we cast our three wish spells, getting a full rest through one of them:
Time for one last group of spike traps:
And Almira completes the challenge, adding a diviner into the hall. Now, only Conjurer and Necromancer remain missing.
Introducing Madalena, the Conjurer with a randomized party (SCS, Insane without difficulty-based extra damage)
While I've not had the time to actually start a new run, I have decided on the settings for what I'm going to attempt next. Seeing as @aldain is running a promising necromancer through the game currently, the only logical choice for me is a conjurer. Since this could potentially be the final missing kit in the Hall of Heroes, I wanted this run to be a special challenge, not another vanilla run or just core rules SCS. So, first of all we're back to insane SCS (which I've done before, but it is always a serious challenge). Additionally, we're taking a page out of aldains book in adding randomized party members to the conjurer. My rules are a bit different here, though:
a) The conjurer, Madalena, is not randomized at all and fully created by me:
b) All other party members are fully randomized at character creation, with every single parameter except for thief ability points (too much work to randomize those imo). I have to accept whatever hand I'm initially dealt, there are no rerolls at all.
c) These other characters are considered to be "conjured" by our Bhaalspawn PC. If one of them happens to get chunked (which I will not do on purpose, of course), Madalena can summon a new ally, once again fully randomized, and one level below her own current one.
d) Once character creation is over, randomization is no longer a factor - meaning, I can spend weapon skills and other such things gained on level up however I want to
So, here is the party I rolled up to join Madalena for this first attempt (I am not sure if I will try for another one if I fail, depends on how much fun I have with this concept): Leda, an elven F/M/T:
Notable is the good strength score, though all other scores don't offer any bonus at all. The very low intelligence is somewhat concerning when it comes to learning spells. Level progression will be very slow, of course. Still, this is a fairly strong multiclass. Proficiencies are what we can expect in this creation system, nothing too useful. Nechtan, a half-elven Kensai:
Sadly, this character is just a few points off from any kind of strength/dexterity bonus. A kensai without any stat bonuses will be a tough one for sure, but we can find a slight silver lining here: The profiencies are notably quite good, with two points in one (quite useful) weapon skill - dual-wielding short swords is a very viable option. Madhava, a dwarven Priest of Helm:
This guy has a useful kit, (making our party into a fairly balanced one considering the full randomization) and gets a -3 saving throw bonus due to constitution as a dwarf (also -1 AC due to decent dexterity). 13 wisdom only results in a single extra first level spell. Delia, a dwarven Fighter/Thief:
A good dexterity score here is helpful (maxed out, actually, considering she's a dwarf), though no other bonuses emerge except for the same saving throw bonus we got with Madhava as well. The proficiencies are mediocre, though it seems like staff of striking backstabs might be on the menu if we make it into SoA. Ninisina, a halfling Wizard Slayer:
When I rolled up fighter once again I was really hoping for a berserker with enough strength to equip full plate, since we're lacking an obvious frontliner (lots of fighter-types, but all of them have some kind of downside when it comes to potentially tanking early on). Instead, we get a wizard slayer with terrible strength, which is a really bad combination, since only weapon-based strength increases would work for her... and most of them are not available until super late into the series (Mauler's Arm being the earliest one, but it's not a great weapon all things considered), which kind of seems to force us into a ranged build - the point in crossbows might lead us into Army Scythe/Firetooth, though going into shortbows is another idea. At least we get a decent constitution bonus here.
Sadly, no one in the party has any kind of bow profiency, and we might have to rectify that when we get our first ability points. So, weak points will most certainly be our early damage output, being fairly limited on ranged weapons and with no strong frontliner available, meaning we might have to use our cleric and two arcane spellcasters to disable most early enemies until we can get some more options. Ability boosting potions will be extremely valuable here.
Comments
Mods: Full SCS 35.21.
Difficulty: Insane with no difficulty-dependent damage increase.
Protagonist: Necromancer the Necromancer.
Special rules: Random party run, as dictated by the spoiler.
1. Generate three Necromancers with INT 18; pick one as protagonist.
2. Generate fifteen additional characters; pick five as the remaining party.
For each character, three stat sets are rolled, along with three sets of initial proficiencies,
three sets of starting Thief skill points, Ranger racial enemies and initial spells (where applicable):
For each character I then select the combination I prefer.
This rule-of-three is used for all choices during level-ups as well:
Hitpoints, proficiencies, Thief skill points, spontaneous caster spell choices and
(eventually) HLA selection is done by randomly selecting three possibilities, from which I may pick one.
In addition, no temporary INT-buffs may be used to aid scroll scribing, only permanent ones
(INT tome from Ramazith's Tower in Baldur's Gate, +1 INT from Machine of Lum The Mad in Watcher's Keep).
Hence why Necromancer forces his INT to be 18; a small allowance towards a less crappy protagonist.
This allows for some cherry-picking, both towards a Necromancer with an actual CON bonus, as well as a much less atrocious party, both in terms of class choices but also stats and proficiencies, while still keeping a fair bit of randomness.
The result:
Protagonist
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Class: Necromancer
Alignment: Lawful Good
Stats:
STR 9 DEX 9 CON 16 INT 18 WIS 16 CHA 11
Proficiencies:
Dart *
Starting spells:
Chill Touch, Find Familiar, Protection from Petrification
Gender: Male
Race: Half-Elf
Class: Sorcerer
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Stats:
STR 14 DEX 15 CON 17 INT 12 WIS 13 CHA 10
Proficiencies:
Dart *
Starting spells:
Charm Person, Shield
Gender: Female
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Cleric / Thief
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Stats:
STR 16 DEX 15 CON 15 INT 9 WIS 16 CHA 8
Proficiencies:
Sling * Sword and Shield Style *
Thieving skills:
Open Locks 10 Find Traps 5 Set Traps 10 Hide in Shadows 5 Pick Pockets 10
Gender: Male
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Barbarian
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Stats:
STR 18/25 DEX 17 CON 8 INT 15 WIS 10 CHA 8
Proficiencies:
Axe ** Bastard Sword **
Gender: Male
Race: Gnome
Class: Cleric / Illusionist
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Stats:
STR 9 DEX 16 CON 12 INT 18 WIS 10 CHA 12
Proficiencies:
Flail / Morning Star * Sling *
Starting spells:
Blindness, Protection from Petrification, Sleep
Gender: Male
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Fighter / Cleric
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Stats:
STR 9 DEX 14 CON 19 INT 8 WIS 13 CHA 13
Proficiencies:
Sling * Quarterstaff ** Two-Weapon Style *
Two very powerful frontliners (granted, the Fighter/Cleric will be equipment reliant) are really all we need, but there's also clerical spell slots in spades, and two primary arcanists; hopefully we'll roll some decent picks on the Sorcerer.
I'll condense the BG1 part of the run into a single post and just cover the highlights.
Let's get on with it.
No-Frills Necromancer: A Random Run, Part 1
Next part found here
This all goes without a hitch, but there's a spot of trouble when triggering Dorn's ambush: Necromancer gets cocky and stays in arrow range to cast a LMD, scarcely avoiding an untimely demise.
Rule-of-three for HP saved our bacon there; fully random HP and it'd probably have been back to the drawing board.
We clear the Mine exterior, then head west. Bracers of Dexterity are a must for Fighter/Cleric, after all.
Beyond having to return to Nashkel to raise Cleric/Thief and Cleric/Illusionist (who both ate a Lance of Disruption by an ambushing Ogre Mage), we clear the easy areas to the west of Nashkel without incident.
The CHA tome goes to Cleric/Illusionist, since he can get to 20 CHA (infact 21 CHA) then with Friends and Algernon's Cloak.
We're fairly high-level now so comfortably clear Mutamin's Garden, then advance the plot.
Neither Bounty Hunter ambush is a threat, and once Venkt fails his save against Web, the Bandit Camp Bandits have no recourse; beyond a few stray Arrows of Ice that connect with Barbarian, they do nothing of note.
We go after the western seaboard: Dealing with Droth is no issue, but we have another potentially close call when trying to entice the local Sirines to show themselves.
The situation was actually worse than it looked. That part of the beach is a dead end, so the only way out was by getting past (the Dire Charmed) Barbarian and Fighter/Cleric. As you can see, Cleric/Illusionist also inadvertently pulled some Carrion Crawlers into the mess, and there were three Sirines to the south. Thankfully, we managed to get some Skeleton Warriors up, and in combination with Web, very careful movement, and the fact that Dire Charm only lasts 5 (I think?) rounds, we pulled through.
The rest of the western seaboard is uneventful. Fighter/Cleric gets the CON tome, activating regeneration: Perhaps it would've been better on Cleric/Thief for a small HP gain, but in the very, very long term Fighter/Cleric will gain a handful of HP when his CON gets boosted to 21 in Watcher's Keep. Assuming we make it that far...
We clear up what few areas remain; all that's left is the Red Wizards and TotSC stuff, so we go into the Cloakwood.
Occasionally the triple Giant Spider ambushes cause us worries, what with the Web Tangles, but nobody dies... until we take on Drasus.
Drasus himself drops to ranged fire pretty early on, and we manage to land a Wand of Paralyzation charge on Rezdan (who only had MGoI as spell defenses), but not before the latter lands a Chaos on Cleric/Illusionist... who proceeds to wander halfway across the motte, straight into a bundle of summons and Kysus.
With predictable results.
A few emergency Wand of Monster Summoning charges and some healing potions later, Barbarian does pull through, but Cleric/Illusionist bites the dust, so we trek on back to the FAI and raise him.
There's another dumb episode in the mines proper, where we attempt to engange Hareishan in a more fair manner by attacking from the jail cells to the south, rather than by the secret passage to the east.
We eat a few Enchantment disablers, but ultimately masses of Web sees us through.
Natasha on the other hand is just mobbed to death by summons in un-spectacular fashion.
As for Davaeorn, the whole thing actually goes very smoothly.
Barbarian and Fighter/Cleric chew through the five waves of guards (and the Battle Horrors beforehand) in no time flat, and D himself is summon-mobbed into oblivion.
Onto Baldur's Gate.
In the city itself, Necromancer of course gets the INT tome.
The WIS tome goes to Cleric/Thief, since she gets the most out of it, being the only one with a noticable WIS bonus to begin with.
We annihilate Lothander for his boots, and now both frontliners are zippin' around at warp speed, nice.
The only real close call here is against Sunin, but even then he only manages to seriously injure Cleric/Illusionist (by fair the squishiest party member right now, though that'll change once he begins to properly defend himself with MI/Blur/II).
And that's the city cleared, excepting the Iron Throne itself; we'll come back in a bit, but it's time for some TotSC content first.
Though not before dealing with the Red Wizards. Wands of Paralyzation work spectacularly here, though they do require use of our freshly (successfully) scribed Spell Thrusts beforehand.
We also nip into Firewine to take out Lendarn for his Cloudkill scroll, which Cleric/Illusionist successfully scribes (Necromancer also successfully scribed the one found in a rock to the south of Nashkel).
Double Cloudkill will be supremely useful for early BG2.
While in the area, we also tackle Kahrk.
His haste seems un-dispellable; we wait around for a long time, sending garbage summons at him, but he never slows down, and even a dual Slow (which he fails to save against) has no apparent effect.
Not that it saves him, though the loot is unremarkable since we have no Katana user.
Alright, let's head to Durlag's.
Heading upstairs, the WIS tome does go to Cleric/Thief, just as in Baldur's Gate.
We clear the above-ground levels very quickly, and begin our descent.
Necromancer having (almost) no defenses continues to be a challenge, as Avarice gets a backstab in, though fortunately only dealing 20 damage.
Other than that mishap, we clear the Warders rapidly, and press on.
We have our second truly close call on the chessboard: Necromancer drops to 7 HP!
Two rapid ranged hits from the enemy Rooks for 22 and 24 HP came perilously close to ending things, but we just about manage to scrape by without Necromancer going down.
I should really just have such a vulnerable protagonist quaff a Potion of Invisibility beforehand...
In contrast, the final level poses no real obstacle, and we teleport out courtesy of Islanne without tackling the Demon Knight.
Durlag's, done.
There's not much left to do, but Stoneskin would be a good insurance for the final few battles, and so we take off for Ice Island.
Exercising the utmost caution, this time around nothing untoward occurs, and Necromancer successfully scribes the scroll.
We ascend the Iron Throne next, and actually have our (ultra-buffed) Skeleton Warriors take out Zhalimar first: He alone accounts for about 60% of the enemy combat power here, and so this effectively neuters the opposition.
Sadly, Necromancer fails to scribe Minor Sequencer, but Stoneskin was more important at this stage anyway.
We survive the Candlekeep ambush by Necromancer quaffing a Potion of Invisibility, and descend into the crypts.
Barbarian gets a bump to 19 STR, Cleric/Thief improves her WIS to 19, and Prat gets cut down to size.
We do some final shopping: Magical ammunition for everyone and high-grade potions.
Even so, we've got 100k+ gold remaining, and a fairly significant stash of items at the FAI: I tend to stash them here since they depreciate in sales value, then end up never selling them.
Typically, if we were being optimal about it, I'd go for Balduran's Isle here since the Chain Mail +3 would be nice for Barbarian early on... but I can't be bothered, we're steamrolling BG1 completely and it's time to move on, so we return to the Gate.
Krystin is a real nuisance as always, summoning a bunch of elementals and inexplicably going invisible at random intervals, but down she goes all the same, as does Cythandria.
At the palace, Skeleton Warriors hold the line while we swiftly dismantle the key Dopplegangers: The Assassin is the first to go, the Mage gets a Spell Thrust and is then kept interrupted by Melf's Acid Arrows, and the Shaman just casts some fairly pointless buffs before succumbing.
Both dukes survive, with Liia completely untouched and Belt at Badly Wounded. Off to the maze.
The maze itself is no problem, but we run into a rare issue when dealing with Rahvin and friends (I know, I should've just snuck past them).
Yeah, I forgot Shaldrissa actually has L6 spells... and Barbarian (our invisible scout at the time) is level 8, so doesn't get to save against Death Spell.
A long trek back later, we return with a vengeance, wiping out the enemy party remnants.
We talk Tamoko out of fighting, and prepare for the fight ahead.
This time, we don't go for PfM-warriors doing all the heavy lifting: Instead, we distribute Potions of Magic Shielding and emergency Potions of Magic Blocking to everyone, apply some buffs (potions on frontliners, Bless/Chant/Recitation/PfE/Haste on the entire party), then just do an all-out assault with Skeleton Warriors leading the way.
Barbarian immediately lands an Arrow of Dispelling on Sarevok.
Lacking any real defenses, Tazok and Diarmid are both downed in relatively short order.
We spend some time hacking through Angelo's defenses, but with careful potion application, he can't really hurt us, and so down he goes as well.
Semaj is the last one standing, but eventually fails his save against a Chromatic Orb and is held.
Sarevok is kept busy, as usual, by Wands of Monster Summoning, and ultimately fails to do anything of note.
BG1, cleared.
It was a lot smoother than usual, with two fairly brutal frontliners (yep, melee works just fine in BG1, though it's arguably less efficient than ranged) plowing through most enemies. Fighter/Cleric had a Strength spell on him basically constantly once we got access to L2 arcane spells, and that, in combination with Strength of Stone + DUHM, meant we had 22 (Barbarian Rage) and 23-24 STR... not much in BG1 can withstand that for more than a round.
We end at the experience cap of 161k.
Our luck was fairly mediocre with Thief skill points, reasonable with proficiencies, and arguably quite good both with HP and Sorcerer spell picks; see the spoiler for details on what we ended up with.
Necromancer, L9
Proficiencies:
Dart * Sling *
53 HP
Sorcerer, L9
Proficiencies:
Dart * Sling *
54 HP
L1 spells:
Charm Person, Chromatic Orb, Friends, Shield, Stonefist
L2 spells:
Detect Invisibility, Melf's Acid Arrow, Mirror Image, Web
L3 spells:
Invisibility 10' Radius, Monster Summoning I, Remove Magic
L4 spells:
Secret Word, Stoneskin
Cleric/Thief, L7/8
Proficiencies:
Mace * Sling * Sword and Shield Style *
53 HP
Thieving skills:
Open Locks 45 Find Traps 55 Pick Pockets 45 Move Silently 25 Hide in Shadows 10 Detect Illusions 40 Set Traps 40
Barbarian, L8
89 HP
Proficiencies:
Axe ** Bastard Sword ** Scimitar / Wakizashi / Ninjato * Shortbow *
Cleric/Illusionist, L7/7
39 HP
Proficiencies:
Flail / Morning Star * Sling * Sword and Shield Style *
Fighter / Cleric, L7/7
94 HP
Proficiencies:
War Hammer ** Sling * Quarterstaff ** Two-Weapon Style *
BG2 awaits.
I'm starting another run to keep busy, trying to get the diviner kit out of the way and into the hall, which is, understandably, not that popular. There are no relevant divination spells that require a saving throw, so you really only get the extra spellslots and lose access to a pretty big and powerful school of spells in conjuration. As the kit isn't that interesting, we're going for another unmodded core rules run; To speed things up, we're starting solo until we get to 32k experience, picking up an NPC party after that. This is our Bhaalspawn:
We may be a little bit overleved for the Nashkel Mines at this point
Upon our return, we almost get into big trouble once again as Hareishan notices us early and we're not in the position to stop her invisibility/lightning bolt opening. This bolt, luckily, doesn't bounce directly through our party multiple times, getting stuck near the stairs instead, and we're able to take down the wizard and her guards:
Questing in the city went a lot better compared to the sloppy play in Cloakwood. No major issues here. Playing things safe, we made sure to lured dangerous enemies such as these ogre magi outside whenever possible:
Time to enter the Undercity. For once we don't firebomb or double-web the hostile party down there, instead buffing with full fire immunity and using chaos to confuse a few of our foes:
After picking up Jaheira, Minsc and Imoen, we leave the opening dungeon, making use of our various magical abilities. With our relatively low experience level, we aren't exactly very strong in the SoA early game, and so I rush to pick up two more party members - Anomen and Jan. In the government district, since we're pretty bad at direct combat right now, we make use of forest beings and Jan's ammo to get in some hold effects:
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger - FALLEN (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Solstice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
So the party worked their way through level of two of spellhold. This went mostly to plan but there were a few hiccups.
1) The Yuan-tis had confused Solstice. When he regained control he came back to the fight just to be nearly killed by a lightning bolt.
2) Coreranger and Impish had defeated the spirit troll and for some reason Solstice decided to play a practical joke on his teammates and locked them in...he eventually let us out.
3) Gauth was defeated used shield of Balduran.
There was no more trouble getting out of Spellhold maze. We did have to fight Lonk but Lonk didn't do much before dying. Irenicus didn't do much better. Solstice was stunned so his party had to take on the thieves while he was out of action.
Time for the City of Caverns. Party did well here, with mass of summons and powerful spells from Solstice such as death spell and horrid wilting party made steady progress, but only killed the Prince and his goons.
We finally get to the Underdark and kill the mass of elementals nearby. We don't bother with the mage and a firestorm made short work of a drow party nearby/. We took on a demon threatening a gnome village and there CC on Coreranger and lots of summons, some party members were incapacitated but party did prevail.
We then worked on clearing out the Kua-Toa lair. Most enemies defeated fairly straightforward, but the prince took a while to beat down. We had summons assist us against demon knights. Coeranger nearly died as he had his wrong mace equipped was supposed to be the IMoD to prevent level drain. but Solstice brought up a mordy sword distraction and Coreranger spent the time gulping extra healing potions until he was fit enough to get back into the fight. Phew, made it.
The drow party by the bridge was duly defeated and we talked to Adalon. We bought some goodies from Ust Natha merchants, talked to Soulafein and next session will try to rescue Phaere.
We continue our Athkatla sidequest tour at the docks, with Jan getting another good backstab during the harper quest - he is on fire this run:
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The circus is cleared in short order, the Copper Coronet gets a change of ownership, and some local slavers are eradicated.
Three Clerics means we can always roll with lots of Animate Dead, several full complements of buffs, as well as just about enough healing, which basically means we're almost never in any real danger.
Part of this is because travel is always safe owing to Invisibility 10' Radius from Sorcerer; there's really not much to report, as we completely devastate all the early ambushes since we get to start from an entirely advantageous position every time.
We keep going, clearing the easy Graveyard stuff: Barbarian got a spot of poor luck with a pip in Single-Weapon Style (the alternatives were a single pip in either Sling or Dagger, neither seemed that spectacular...), but makes up for it with some vicious crits.
Next, we trigger the Renfeld ambush; Prebek and Sanasha are actually low-level enough that Sorcerer's Remove Magic strips nearly all their buffs, with predictable results.
We've cleared a lot of the easy stuff in Athkatla, so head into the hills, Umar Hills to be more precise.
Being on Insane means we get some fairly meaty spawns.
Yeah, two Bone Golems, two Mummies, two ranged and one melee Skeleton Warrior.
The spawn before was identical... we muddle through, though it takes quite a bit of spell-works, summons and shuffling to keep from taking catastrophic damage.
We rest up before tackling the Shade Lord: Full buffs, take out the altar and attendant Shadows first (Shade Lord puts up PfMW, and we don't have Breach yet so there's no point going after it early on).
The Darkling Aura is the main issue here, but we keep the backline moving out of its reach, with Barbarian raging and Fighter/Cleric under NPP.
Ultimately, we pull through fine: The Shade Lord wasted several of its big spells like Finger on Death on our lowly Skeleton Warriors.
We return to Athkatla: While it's certainly possible to keep spamming Fighter/Cleric with Cat's Grace until he rolls a 4+ for his boost (so he hits 18 DEX), it's annoying and consumes a lot of slots.
So yes, we're clearing out the Unseeing Eye next.
Necromancer and Sorcerer have both hit L11 by now (yep, we had amazing luck on Sorcerer, as he actually managed to land Animate Dead) and the 7HD Skeleton Warrior version has high enough Magic Resistance to easily chew through even Beholders.
First though, Tarnor, Gaius and the gang get a taste of stacked area-of-effects (as does Barbarian to be fair, but Cleric/Illusionist was able to get Invisibility off on him).
Mekrath also (to his detriment) gets to know our Skeleton Warriors.
In fact, his attendant Yuan-Ti grouping is a lot more trouble than he is: Three (!) Yuan-Ti Mages (one of whom summoned its own Skeleton Warrior), a Greater Yuan-Ti and three regular Yuan-Ti.
We take a few licks in the process, but rest up and head into the sewers proper.
Cleric/Thief still has problems picking some locks, but more importantly cannot always detect every trap (owing to randomized Thief skill points).
This nearly spells disaster when she fails to spot a Lighting Bolt trap.
By what I can only assume to be plain dumb luck, the Lightning Bolt a) did not hit the party more than once and b) somehow narrowly avoided tagging Necromancer.
And this is Cleric/Thief with her Find Traps boosted by 20 DEX (again, Cat's Grace).
I seriously considered trying the Planar Sphere for the Ring of Danger Sense, but given the ignominious end of my Conjurer run thanks to the in my mind slightly odd decision of SCS to completely remove Freedom scrolls from pre-Underdark SoA, thought better of it.
She's slowly, slowly inching her Find Traps up there...
Alright; in Ghoul Town we get an undead spawn the likes of which I've never seen. Two Greater Mummies (requiring +3 weaponry which we do not have), two Bone Golems, the usual Skeleton Warriors both ranged and melee, and a second spawn with three regular Mummies, some Ghasts, Zombies and two Ghoul Lords.
In an uncharacteristic fit of not being a greedy old miser, I shell out some potions: mainly it's Oils of Speed which allows the frontliners to very slowly bring down everything (undead aren't fast on their feet so we get a few hits in here and there) apart from the Greater Mummies, which we have just enough arcane firepower left to destroy.
Yet we must press on: We still have Animate Dead available.
In contrast then, the lair proper goes swimmingly, apart from us having to wait out some Blindness from the Blind Priests.
The Unseeing Eye drops along with its Death Tyrants, as does Ghaal afterwards, and all is well again.
We've yet to take care of Mae'Var, so get that out of the way: By now a bunch of Thieves and a solitary Thief/Mage really pose no threat to us.
Our final act for this session is nipping into Watcher's Keep: Unfortunately, we still lack +3 weaponry and so cannot destroy the Guardian Golems.
First order of business next time will be clearing De'Arnise Keep for the Frostreaver Axe and the Kneecapper, which will sort that out: After that there's not a lot of things left to do beyond Windspear Hills and Trademeet.
I'll probably save the high-profile stuff, i.e. the three Liches, Kangaxx, Twisted Rune, Guarded Compound, Wyrm-slaying, Planar Prison/Sphere, until after the Underdark: I'd like a better arcane spell selection before taking those on.
Things are really starting to pick up now: We're about to solve the final equipment issue for our frontliners (well, almost, I'll probably just tough it out without buying Girdle of Hill Giant Strength for Fighter/Cleric since I'd rather save the cash for scrolls in the Underdark), and once that's fixed, we're looking pretty golden to at least make it through SoA without issue.
Let's hope it all works out; we've also had some good luck with Sorcerer's spell picks, as can be seen in the spoiler.
Until next time.
Barbarian
L11 Barbarian, 106 HP, Axe ** Bastard Sword ** Shortbow * Scimitar * SWS *
Fighter/Cleric
L9/L10 Fighter/Cleric, 123 HP, War Hammer ** Quarterstaff ** Sling * THWS * TWS *
Cleric/Thief
L10/L12 Cleric/Thief, 72 HP, Club * Mace * Sling * SaSS *
60 OL 80 FT 65 PP 30 MS 20 HiS 50 DI 55 ST
Cleric/Illusionist
L10/L11 Cleric/Illusionist, 55 HP, Flail * Mace * Sling * SaSS *
Sorcerer
L12 Sorcerer, 62 HP, Dagger * Dart * Sling *
L1
Charm Person, Chromatic Orb, Friends, Shield, Stonefist
L2
Detect Invisibility, Luck, Melf's Acid Arrow, Mirror Image, Web
L3
Invisibility, 10' Radius, Monster Summoning I, Remove Magic, Spell Thrust
L4
Greater Malison, Secret Word, Stoneskin
L5
Animate Dead, Sunfire
L6
Protection from Magical Weapons
Necromancer
L12 Necromancer, 61 HP, Dagger * Dart * Sling *
Almira, the Elven Diviner - Update 5
As planned, Jaheira's double fire elementals did most of the work down in the temple ruins, only needing some help for the bone golem - though we did buff up Minsc a bit and let him use Azuredge to speed up the killing. The vanilla shade lord is notoriously easy to rush down, and so we did just that:
There's not too much that can threaten us in De'Arnise keep, since Jan can just backstab the yuan-ti mage. Trolls, yuan-ti and umber hulks are no trouble at this point:
Now, we move on to the Unseeing Eye quest. Fairly easy, since we are still relatively low in levels, so we don't get a lich spawn and can just use fire elementals + Minsc against the undead. We have the Shield of Balduran on Jaheira for the beholders and take down the Unseeing Eye with the rift device + a hit:
The Planar Sphere:
Walking in on the halflings with mass invisibility and the use of breach, we quickly take out the key spellcasters:
Brynnlaw and Spellhold:
We get our wardstone via backstab from Jan - nice critical hit here:
By now we have access to enough chaotic commands and death wards for the entire party, so with those and remove fear added into the mix, very few threats outside of a dispel/remove magic are present (sometimes resistances, such as fire resistance, are added for specific encounters). The city of caverns is easy to clear out, as always, and we move to the underdark, using our buffs against mind flayers, kuo-toans and other, more powerful foes such as the balor:
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger - FALLEN (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Solstice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
So Coreranger thought for sure his run was going to end. But no it continues...first task was to take on the powerful party blocking our path to rescuing Phaere. The party's spells and summons plus ranged attacks was able to carry to the day. And fighting Phaere can be pretty dangerous, however this particular group of enemies are all vulnerable to death spell and so it turned out fine.
The other quests in Ust Natha were solved the usual way:
1) Beholder in the city defeated
2) Gnomes persuaded to give up helmet to convince Phaere we killed them
3) Soulafein "killed" (no not really).
4) Real eggs recovered, watched Phaere and her mother get killed.
5) Party then tried to run for the hills. But no a "fish" wants to talk to Coreranger claiming Coreranger has to do the fish's bidding or be exposed. But Coreranger was able to persuade the fish to drop the idea - easy 12k experience. During these quests we were all starting to get our 1st HLA
6) Party reported to Adalon our success then we went invisible and left the area to the Underdark Exit
Now had a few odds and ends but not many.
1) Went to Waukeen's Promenade and got ambushed by the Githyanki. We don't need their sword so gave it back to them. We recovered a few of our goodies from our chest that use as our "bank". e.g. to hold things we might not need for a while.
2) We finally had a battle with Thaxxy. With our levels, spells and melee power this went smoothly.
3) We skipped Firkraag and the Twisted Rune and Guarded Compound. Forged a few items with Cromwell's help most notable b being the Crom Faeyr which can help us in Suldensslar.
Time to deal with Bodhi. Only thieves helped us to help with traps. This went pretty smooth (Coreranger has GWW + IMoD - not a good combo for Bodhi). We had one hiccup when Impish got charmed and starting attacking party members. Impish refuses to wear a charm helmet when fighting vampires which could have easily prevented that. Or just maybe buff with chaotic commands? But in any case Bodhi was defeated and then we turned in the Lanthorn.
We took a lot of damage in Suldanesslar, but melee power + spells + summons did see us the minions here. For the dragon, Impish wanted to be stylish and use a firestorm. Probably unnecessary but the plan worked and Nizi went down. For the temple we didn't bother to fight but turned in the items to summon Rillifane. Impish appreciated the very nice druid staff we got as a reward.
As for the few minions guarding Irenicus at the Tree of Life we got through these easily enough. The party tried to have summon distractions but Irenicus was having none of that. Then Grond0 apparently wasn't paying attention and died to Irenicus fireshield. Coreranger and Solstice kept up the attacks and finally Irenicus died and then....GAME LOCKED UP. End task was required. We ran out of time here so our last save was just before the last parasite at the Tree of Life so will have to beat up Irenicus again next session.
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Bit tricky this: We get massive Troll spawns, where the Spirit and Spectral Trolls of course start out invisible, so we do occasionally have to scramble to keep up, especially when reinforcements come running from halfway across the map...
Still, since we've got three half-Clerics, we have enough Chaotic Commands and Protection from Fire (rendering null and void the incessant Flame Strikes and Greater Commands) to proceed in relative safety, though the sheer physical damage and Strength-drain effect of some of the Trolls remains problematic.
Methodically, the Keep is cleared, and we pick up the by now sorely needed Frostreaver Axe for Barbarian.
We actually manage to clear the whole thing, sans TorGal, in one rest cycle, and so turn invisible and retreat to prepare properly for the final showdown.
... There's just too many enemies and spell effects going off in that battle to pull it off flawlessly, it seems.
We quickly took down TorGal with traps, spells and frontliners under Improved Haste, but his reinforcements literally blocked the doorway, which meant the two Yuan-Ti Mages were free to do as they pleased for several rounds.
Cleric/Thief succumbed to a Troll-casted Greater Command, and then a stray Cone of Cold was all it took to spell her end.
Still, we were never in danger of a protagonist death.
We pick up the pieces, raise Cleric/Thief, and trundle off for our reward.
Windspear Hills is next, which may have been a poor decision.
I roam the map at first, and (I never knew this could happen) get accosted by Garren Windspear at the entrance to Firkraag's dungeon about saving his daughter, apparently loosing out on the experience and loot otherwise gained from taking out the attackers when you rest at his cabin... unfortunate but nothing to be done about it.
The Ruhk Transmuter is a real pain, with its excellent THAC0 and even better AC, but runs out of spells and can't keep up with our potion-gulping.
Once past that, we run into our first serious spawn: Two Stone Golems, two Clay Golems, and one Juggernaut Golem.
My intent here was to quickly blitz down the Clay Golems and then deal with the rest at my leisure; alas, intent and reality rarely coincide.
Yeah, so hasted Golems actually move REALLY fast, and target aggressively... so we ended up cursed and hurt.
Fortunately they can't see through Invisibility, which literally saved our bacon.
We rest invisibly and press on, to the next bloody nightmare: Three Elder and three Ancient Vampires (the latter requiring +3 weaponry to hit).
These are very tricky to deal with, as they'll always try and seek out characters without NPP, they Dominate, summon blocking Rats and Dire Wolves, turn into Bats to regenerate very quickly when injured, sometimes turn into Rats and stealth in plain sight, and drain CON.
With massive buffs, spell damage (carefully applied by casters dipping in and out of line-of-sight), and distracting summons, we do manage to punch through just as our final batch of NPP is expiring... but right after this picture was taken, Barbarian's last Rage expired, meaning his CON dropped to 0, and he dropped with it.
The Skeleton Warriors are just standing there because they're a last resort if we need to flee: They can't hit the Vampires, and they die very quickly, so not much use.
But the fun doesn't stop here. Turns out the (I thought harmless...) Director Beholder here gets a level 9 arcane spell? Or some home-brewed version of it. Whatever it is, it instantly kills Fighter/Cleric.
We have to rest yet again, which was just as well because we were seriously low on everything.
Still, Samia's little troupe is at least reasonably straight-forward to clear:
Cleric/Illusionist's Water Elementals are very potent against anything not immune to poison.
More horrors await as we engage the Air Elemental in the well; apparently it's on good terms with both the local Golems and Orogs, as they scramble to aid it.
Three spawns at once is too much, so it's a good thing we still have plenty of Potions of Invisibility... I'm not very proud of it, but just this once I stoop to utilizing an invisible blocker.
We simply can't handle this many hard-hitting hasted enemies (that are magic-immune, in the case of the Golems) at once.
In contrast, the Adamantite Golem, as well as the Greater Wolfweres, present not nearly so grand an obstacle, and we make our way over to Tazok, clobbering him well and proper.
We've conserved some anti-magic spellworks, so Conster (who was a Necromancer, apparently.. no defensive Illusions) doesn't get to do much to us.
We leave Firkraag for another day, and report in to Garren.
That was seriously difficult, and we came perilously close to loosing several additional party members (though not Necromancer) beyond Barbarian and Fighter/Cleric more than once.
They're no joke, these Insane difficulty SCS spawns.
Let's relax a bit then; off to Trademeet.
We risk a small altercation by pickpocketing the Efreeti bottle, but meet with success.
By now, the rather weak (usually only a bunch of regular Trolls and one Spirit Troll) initial spawns at the Druid Grove aren't much of a concern, and we quickly press on; Kylan Lind gets a Cloudkill, completely preventing him and his fellow Shadow Druids from doing anything meaningful.
It's been so long I've forgotten just how many Spore Colonies there are on the first bridge here (for the record, five), and so we get into a bit of a pickle where Barbarian and Sorcerer are both Confused and in melee range of both Trolls and Myconids.
Fortunately, we had Melf's Minute Meteors available, which prove sufficient to quickly clear a path through the mostly Myconid horde.
We buff to the hilt and enter the cottage; I was very apprehensive about this, but fortunately we don't get a Horrid Wilting to the face.
The Rakshasa are extremely irritating, but we manage to spread the damage around, and take them down without casualties.
We move up to Cernd... who for some bizarre reason starts casting Enchantment spells (Hold Animal/Charm Person or Mammal) at our Water Elemental?
I was worried he'd turn hostile and break the quest, since we have no Druid ourselves to take on Faldorn, so talk to him, at which point he immediately takes us to Faldorn, kills her, and that's it.
Meaning we did NOT get to fight the final Druid group, so no Gnasher +2 for Cleric/Thief to backstab with.
Necromancer does not approve!
Back in Trademeet, we clear the Tomb and finish the Reijek questline, and that's it... Trademeet cleared, and with it, all major areas outside of Athkatla.
There are two strongholds left: The Planar Sphere and the Planar Prison.
As previously indicated, I'll hold off on the Planar Sphere until Freedom scrolls are available, and while I doubt the Warden will have Imprisonment memorized, I can't be sure... so yeah, we'll tackle that post-Underdark too.
Time to go Vampire hunting then.
Unfortunately, I forgot that Azuredge requires a Good alignment, so no easy-mode for us (Barbarian is Neutral).
Same setup as in Firkraag's dungeon: NPP (since Barbarian might not have enough Rages, Fighter/Cleric has AoP now), Chaotic Commands, lots of summons and spell damage, lots of buffs... lots of everything.
Everything goes just fine, but I underestimate Tanova: In my defense, she's a tough nut to crack, what with arcane spells and her bizarre melee abilities.
A 3x Otiluke's Freezing Sphere Spell Sequencer is the end of Barbarian, and I realize that it could've just as easily meant the end of the run had it been directed at Necromancer...
Fighter/Cleric puts her down with the MoD; in comparison, Bodhi is much easier (though Barbarian once again comes quite close to dropping), but Improved Haste tends to simplify things.
A thorough rest later, we embark towards Brynnlaw.
The initial Vampire ambush is easily dealt with, as is indeed the entire town: We harass Perth the Adept a bit with some summons, then just charge him once I'm confident he's out of big bruisers like Telekinetic Storm/Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting.
We did get True Sight as an option from the Book of Many Spells, but I really wanted Spell Deflection... and so ended up with Burning Hands on the last page.
Eh, I'll just sell it in the Underdark then.
Lady Galvena and her ragtag gang are quickly dismantled; even Vadek can do little, since he apparently went heavy on Enchantment spells, which is a poor choice against Skeleton Warriors.
We free Claire, loot the Pirate Lord's holdings, and retreat to the Vulgar Monkey, where the party can presently be found preparing their minds and bodies both for assaulting Spellhold.
One potentially close call (Tanova's Spell Sequencer) that could've meant the end of the run: From now on, Necromancer will never show himself to enemy Mages without some form of spell protection active.
I hope... let's see if I can stick to it.
Other than that, things are proceeding apace.
Cleric/Thief finally has enough Open Locks/Find Traps that she can, with the help of Cat's Grace, handle everything; we had another batch of bad luck with Barbarian on level-up, picking up * in Halberd.
Sorcerer has some odd high-level selections now (Protection from Magical Energy, Spell Turning) which I normally would not go for... but they're not entirely useless at least.
Let's keep up the good (?) work, and power through the rest of SoA: It'll probably be a few weeks before I can squeeze in another update, though.
Party stats in the spoiler for those so inclined.
Barbarian
L14 Barbarian, 115 HP, Axe ** Bastard Sword ** Halberd * Shortbow * Scimitar * SWS *
Fighter/Cleric
L11/L11 Fighter/Cleric, 126 HP, War Hammer ** Quarterstaff ** Sling * THWS * TWS *
Cleric/Thief
L11/L13 Cleric/Thief, 74 HP, Club * Mace * Sling * SaSS *
70 OL 80 FT 70 PP 35 MS 20 HiS 50 DI 60 ST
Cleric/Illusionist
L11/L12 Cleric/Illusionist, 57 HP, Flail * Mace * Sling * SaSS *
Sorcerer
L14 Sorcerer, 64 HP, Dagger * Dart * Sling *
L1
Charm Person, Chromatic Orb, Friends, Shield, Stonefist
L2
Detect Invisibility, Luck, Melf's Acid Arrow, Mirror Image, Web
L3
Invisibility, 10' Radius, Monster Summoning I, Remove Magic, Spell Thrust
L4
Greater Malison, Secret Word, Stoneskin, Vitriolic Sphere
L5
Animate Dead, Lower Resistance, Sunfire
L6
Protection from Magical Energy, Protection from Magical Weapons
L7
Spell Turning
Necromancer
L14 Necromancer, 63 HP, Dagger * Dart * Sling *
Good progress despite the deaths - After Spellhold, the impact of the Insane SCS spawns is luckily reduced as spawn sizes are mostly fixed regardless of difficulty level.
This happened to me twice in a row maybe about a year ago, and since then I've made it my policy to immediately enter Garren's cabin first thing after the initial ambush is over.
This is a strange bug that has existed for years now (I can't even remember a time where it didn't exist, but I'm pretty sure its an EE thing) - Cernd reacts very oddly to all types of summons near him during this part of the quest; I've never seen him actually turn hostile here, though I don't think he ever succeeded with one of his charm attempts - so I don't know what would happen if he did. I've sometimes just walked past him with my summons and nothing bad ended up happening, but if I happen to remember this bug I generally just don't bring any summons past the bridge.
That's a pretty rough way to potentially go out - I've had a similiar death to a 3*Vitriolic Sphere sequencer that I really didn't see coming. I've encountered these types of deadly triple damage spell sequencers with rare damage types that one wouldn't ordinarily protect against very, very rarely, but when they come out they tend to be a huge surprise. It's a pretty tough sell to try and protect the party against literally every damage type for every spellcaster encounter where sequencers could potentially occur; It would take forever and take up tons of other spellslots. But as a consequence of these options existing with the addition of IWD spells into SCS, it might be worth it to make sure the main character is often at least somewhat protected against even the less common types of elements (or direct damage spells in general via spell deflections/reflections). Sadly, wizards can't wear some of the more common items that protect against every element, as they tend to be helmets or shields.
Also agreed on the protect-protagonist-against-everything when fighting SCS spellcasters in BG2, I've seen triple Cone of Cold, triple Disintegrate/Flesh to Stone... mercifully haven't come across triple Skull Trap yet though.
Now that we've returned from the underdark, it's time to hunt some liches, mind flayers, guarded compound inhabitants, twisted rune members etc. - pretty much all of that worked out just as planned, here are a few screenshots:
Anyway, now for the dragons - since they all use remove magic, we send in a summon (magical sword or planetar) first, together with Almira, who's protected by SI:A - after their remove magic is done, we move in for the kill:
We're roaming through the elven city, using magical swords to tank golems and a backstab for the drow wizard:
We prepared for the final battle against Jon, called in a few summons and made sure to take down the demons first. After double breach, the Slayer was vulnerable and the battle was over very quickly:
In Saradush, we do some sidequests and buy a ton of spellscrolls for Almira and Jan (lacking funds for some of the level 9 scrolls for Jan). To take down Kiser's wizard companion, Jan goes for another backstab:
Almira makes it to the northern forest, taking down the master wraith and its allies with a bunch of sunbeams and her chain contingency:
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger - FALLEN (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Solstice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
So the party finds themselves at the Tree of Life. We didn't bother with much buffs before dealing with Irenicus except potion of invulnerability. The party used some true sights and insects and Coreranger attacking with melee, healing, attacking, healing, etc. and we won this fight rather cleanly this time (Impish had died our first attempt).
Time for the hell trials:
1) As usual we didn't fight the dragon
2) Coreranger used the dragon sword to be immune to fear and get the 2nd tear
3) Coreranger chose the good paths and made sacrifices to get Impish back. His party suggested he get retribution for some reason (Grond0 had sacrificed Corey_Russell's character and chunked him in a run not too far long ago).
4) Blackrazor given up
Coreranger turned in the tears he had and then engaged Sarevok. Sarevok didn't last long, mainly due to Coreranger's Crom Faeyr.
Time for the main event. Some summons and potion of magic shielding for Coreranger. Party engaged and destroyed the demons. Grond0's energy blades did a number on Irinicus and victory!
But Corey_Russell tried to skip the cut scenes and the game locked up. Luckily auto-save enabled us to start our adventure in ToB. Illsaera was defeated easily. Then we did the pocket plane challenge - it was strangely easy, with not many powerful enemies. Then we fought the initial battle in Saradush - was difficult but we were victorious. Then we did a few odds and ends:
1) We talked to Mateo. Then talked to Santele then Kaiser then the mage on the wall. Then we deal with Kaiser with true sight and horrid wilting and plague of insects.
2) A boy's father is resurrected.
3) We retrieved a spellbook for a local mage shop
4) Key obtained from the temple
5) Then we battled in the jail. With Coreranger leading the way with IMoD this part went very well and fast.
6) Then we summoned some mordy swords and party used ranged fire to deal with enemies - the swords were really effective.
7) We battled to Gromnir's area entering area invisible. The casters tried to get some summons going, but Coreranger was forced to get into melee. Coreranger took tremendous damage and nearly died - but luckily Solstice put up some mordy swords to keep Gromnir busy. Coreranger spent a lot of time to heal this fight but the party did prevail.
We had to spend some time to identify and sell. Then we went to the Forest and dealt with enemies here. With mordy swords keeping fire giants busy this went pretty smooth, except Impish got surrounded but horrid wilting helped save him.
Once we got to Nylee's glade we battled undead. While Coreranger was doing well with IMoD but his team-mates were running around and couldn't cast spells as they were getting hit. But Coreranger was steadily killing the enemies and we won after all.
Mordy swords were the key spell for Yaga's Temple, as long as giants were preoccupied with those, party could range and kill the enemies at will. We had cleared the first level but we did have one hiccup - party got hit with fear and Coreranger's friends ran in fear, so Coreranger had to kill the burning men by himself. Coreranger had prepped with the dragon sword to be immune to fear. We ran out of time so saved our session here, we will do the next level next time.
Further into Sendai's Enclave: We move towards Odamaron, and just leave him alone with a deva - in the vanilla game, this pretty much always works; He can't deal with the celestial and eventually dies to its attacks once his timestop and PFMW is gone. After that, Ogremoch is the next threat - we can't get him to attack our magical sword, but luckily we have enough APR to quickly strip his stoneskins, and while his hits dispel Jaheira's buffs, he is unable to follow up with actual damage:
We enter the teleporter maze, and our ADHW CC helps with the first no-magic zone (contigencies still work). The demon right ahead is luckily not hostile (because Almira is of neutral alignment), though I would have activated the pocket plane spell in time to flee and buff up anyway:
Now onto level 4. We start with the mind flayers and side rooms before going after the gith. All easy so far. Fire resistance, magical swords, SI:A and we move towards Saladrex, making sure to get rid of his remove magic - he's a bit tougher compared to previous dragons, but not tough enough:
I decided to take down Draconis as well, preparing with protection from acid. Sending a planetar forward, we spread out and started with some ranged weapon damage after Draconis' timestop was over. The transformation happened, and our enemy sent his remove magic towards Jan - which was very good, because he had SI:A going:
Fighting our way through Abazigal's Lair is fairly quick compared to Sendai's Enclave, with no major problems to speak of. We buff with lightning resistance for the big dragon himself, call in some Mordenkainen's Swords and a planetar, move around to take out the salamanders - Abazigal in his human form is stuck trying to take down a magical sword, so we easily take him out. Everyone except for Almira (for some reason) gets kicked away upon his transformation into dragon form, so she eats the remove magic, which is perfect as she has SI:A - the others move in and spam fighter HLAs until the dragon is defeated:
We prepare with the full array of buffs, including some additional potions, such as frost protection, storm giant strength, mind focusing etc.
We have two 3*LR spell triggers, which we fire at Mel immediately. Shortly after that, our 3*ADHW CC triggers, and the first battle is ours:
Introducing Madalena, the Conjurer with a randomized party (SCS, Insane without difficulty-based extra damage)
While I've not had the time to actually start a new run, I have decided on the settings for what I'm going to attempt next. Seeing as @aldain is running a promising necromancer through the game currently, the only logical choice for me is a conjurer. Since this could potentially be the final missing kit in the Hall of Heroes, I wanted this run to be a special challenge, not another vanilla run or just core rules SCS. So, first of all we're back to insane SCS (which I've done before, but it is always a serious challenge). Additionally, we're taking a page out of aldains book in adding randomized party members to the conjurer. My rules are a bit different here, though:
a) The conjurer, Madalena, is not randomized at all and fully created by me:
c) These other characters are considered to be "conjured" by our Bhaalspawn PC. If one of them happens to get chunked (which I will not do on purpose, of course), Madalena can summon a new ally, once again fully randomized, and one level below her own current one.
d) Once character creation is over, randomization is no longer a factor - meaning, I can spend weapon skills and other such things gained on level up however I want to
So, here is the party I rolled up to join Madalena for this first attempt (I am not sure if I will try for another one if I fail, depends on how much fun I have with this concept):
Leda, an elven F/M/T:
Nechtan, a half-elven Kensai:
Madhava, a dwarven Priest of Helm:
Delia, a dwarven Fighter/Thief:
Ninisina, a halfling Wizard Slayer:
Sadly, no one in the party has any kind of bow profiency, and we might have to rectify that when we get our first ability points. So, weak points will most certainly be our early damage output, being fairly limited on ranged weapons and with no strong frontliner available, meaning we might have to use our cleric and two arcane spellcasters to disable most early enemies until we can get some more options. Ability boosting potions will be extremely valuable here.