@aldain Yeah, both of those spells have propably saved Madalena's life at least once by now (one possible example to be found in this upcoming update). Now that we're doing better against spellcasters, though, it seems that golems are a lot of trouble (full preparations, with, for example, Leda tanking with full physical defensive buffs, would certainly make those a lot easier, but I don't exactly want to rest before every golem encounter - I wish I could find a Mordenkainen's Sword spellscroll).
Stronghold 1, The Druid Grove:
This one went very well. Trolls are easy to take down, fire damage is involved in Firetooth anyway, we just have to make sure not to get destroyed by flamestrikes or greater commands (unholy blight, the third spirit troll spell, is not that big of a threat due to our very mixed alignments). For safety, Madalena herself has chaotic commands and protection from fire. Once we make our way to the druids, we're mostly trying to avoid any insect plagues and are quite successful at that. The one spell we're unable to stop is a call lightning on Madalena - a spell that already killed one of us in SoD. However, Madalena wisely had MSD going (so I am a bit surprised she was even the target), but in the case of the multi-round nature of call lightning, MSD doesn't stop the entire spell - only the first 3 hits. But that gave me enough time to drink a potion of absorption (those are a bit rare in SoA, but I just bought one from the trademeet genies because their inventory is going to disappear soon):
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We fight our way towards the final group of druids - suffering one or two confusion effects from time to time thanks to the myconids. Our summons (skeletons and aerial servants) help us win the battle, and while we are unable to stop one of the insect plagues, Leda separates from the entire group as the target, so this is not all that devastating:
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Cernd gets to win the Faldorn battle for us (notably, he also didn't cast any charm spells on our summons this time around), and we return to the rakshasa trio where we use our remaining buffs:
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Stronghold 2, De'Arnise Keep
Since we haven't had too much trouble with the trolls, I decide to visit De'Arnise keep next. Another ambush, another double chaos:
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We almost did get intro trouble here with the most dangerous group of spirit trolls in the center - we're rarely hit by greater command, but this time multiple party members went to sleep, so things got a bit close:
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Soon we're facing our first yuan-ti mage. After checking his prebuffs, we see PFMW but no protection from normal missles, which is the perfect opportunity for a little something I've prepared with Ninisina, our wizard slayer - we've kept the Army Scythe despite having Firetooth now, and we're shooting masterwork bolts at the yuan-ti mage to stack up spell failure rate super quickly - essentially, after a few hits (which are applied extremely quickly) the yuan-ti is locked out of spellcasting:
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We call in our most powerful summons to deal with the golem room and rest before fighting our way to Tor'Gal. The big guy is running out in front of the other enemies as we pull them back towards us, which grants us the opportunity to focus all our damage on him right away and get a quick kill:
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However, the fight is far from over - the two yuan-ti mages are a huge danger, but it turns out the real trouble is that they hasted the entire huge party of trolls and umber hulks. Nechtan, our kensai, is totally caught off guard (thanks to his terrible AC) by the sheer amount of speed and physical damage on the side of the enemy and goes down:
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Luckily, the yuan-ti mages have stayed back and not really engaged yet, and the other party members are able to take down the trolls. We have prepared a few traps near the exit to the basement, which helps to take down one of the wizards. Most importantly, their PFMWs are gone by now, and we're able to get past their physical defenses rather quickly:
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Stronghold 3, Mae'Var's Guild
Well, this one's easy given our access to true sight. Rayic Gethras is the only real obstacle, but he doesn't go hostile quickly enough as we excuse ourselves for just barging in - enough time for our two thieves to set down enough traps to get him with the poison damage:
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Mae'Var himself is no real threat, even with SCS:
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Stronghold 4, Firkraag's Dungeon
This one didn't go too well... We take down the first group of golems relatively easily and Nechtan goes on a solo mission with Azuredge and a protection from undead scroll (plus some potion buffs) to hunt down the various vampires. However, as we run into the second golem group, not exactly very well prepared, they quickly punch their way through our summons and hunt us down. We're partly slowed, ill-prepared and as I make plans to get out of this situation by drinking potions of invisibility, Madhava goes down before being able to drink his potion:
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The others go invisible. However, this is no option for Ninisima, who, as a wizard slayer, can't use any of the sources of instant invisibility that we have available - initially, she gets lucky - the golems end up blocking themselves and she gets away:
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However, this is a bit of a problem - it also means our party can't leave. The golems are blocking our only exit. I thought that the golems would stay locked in position, and my plan was to see if Ninisina could shoot down some stone golems stuck in the backline. However, they quickly were able to resolve their pathing issues and went after our wizard slayer, who had no way to escape at this point:
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The others are revealed here, in part because they were picking up the gear from our fallen. The only reasonable objective was now to get Ninisina's stuff as well, go invisible again (we have enough potions for that, thanks to SCS granting a bunch of them to random enemy thieves) and flee the dungeon - this does end up working - barely:
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We resurrect Madhava at the Trademeet temple, he resurrects Ninisina. That was terrible. Poorly played and a big wakeup call - we really need to take any future golem encounters (I'm thinking about the Planar Sphere here) very seriously. The party returns to the dungeon with full physical buffs and gets their revenge:
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Carefully, we deal with the third golem group before killing Conster with traps and resting. Semia's maze is our final goal here, summons take down the guardians, and traps + full buffs help with the final group of foes:
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Stronghold 5, The Unseeing Eye
Madhava has just reached level 15, so we have the most powerful version of skeleton warriors available - just what we need to trivialize beholder encounters. So, our only big challenge here should be ghoul town, especially the unnamed lich. This one went surprisingly well, but not in the way I intended: As I entered the main building down there, I accidentally moved too far forward before adding in my summons and buffs and triggered the big central group, which, thanks to better calls for help, alerted all remaining undead in the back as well. I saw the lich's buffs in the combat log and heard him casting an alteration spell, and I immediately left the building, expecting it to be timestop - I was able to run just in time and moved towards the exit, with tons of undead, such as two bone golems and two greater mummies, following me. However, the lich stayed put. Otherwise, this could've gone very, very poorly, since we can't exit the area that way. We were able to get in some buffs and summons, with our kensai wielding Azuredge to great effect:
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3-4 undead, aside from the lich, had stayed inside. The battle had taken a while, so I expected short-duration buffs from the undead spellcaster to be gone - usually they have multiple instances of PFMW and will immediately activate another one upon seeing a party member, so I was quite surprised that, when Nechtan went in to test the waters and threw Azuredge at the lich, he didn't cast PFMW and just died:
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Okay, very well. Now our skeletons get to do their thing. The rift device allow us to kill the Unseeing Eye:
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We use our final buffs to charge at Ghaal, getting his (for this party) extremely powerful belt. Finally, Delia can reach the combat stats of a self-created frontliner without arcane buffs:
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Interlude: Bodhi's Lair
Nechtan gets to have more fun. We have improved haste now (we bought those scrolls plus emotion: courage and went for our first scroll learning session), which helps with his performance as an axe-thrower:
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Bodhi flees after getting hit by traps and fully buffed attacks:
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Stronghold 6, The Temple Ruins
Most of this area is mostly done by Nechtan and a few summons. Aside from the Shade Lord, the two liches are the only enemies that matter around here. Luckily, they tend to be pretty stationary. Our strategy for this one is very simple: Send in skeleton summons one after one (after waiting for a short time inbetween) to get them to waste their PFMWs so Nechtan can angle for an Azuredge kill. In the meantime, their undead allies are lured towards the waiting party (staying far back so we can flee if the lich suddenly decides to move) - now that's a nice pile of destroyed undead:
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And there's the Azuredge hit, after 3 PFMWs:
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The second lich really likes summoning demons (some of them getting into battles with his own undead allies) - none of them track down the party, though. Unlike the first one, who had spell trap, we could theoretically try to play wizard chess with this one:
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But the risks seem way too great. We just send in our skeletons (interestingly enough, both of these liches didn't cast death spell, which doesn't track with my previous experiences with them), once again it seems like there are 3 PFMWs to get through. Nechtan goes in and gets the kill once they all have run their course:
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Finally, we have the Shade Lord. The Darkling Aura is a bit concerning, but I know that this guys always pre-buffs with PFMW and Spell Turning, so we just need secret word + breach to get through his defenses:
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Only one tick of the dangerous aura, so no trouble all in all.
Now, the Planar Prison and Planar Sphere remain. Both are rather scary, but we'll try and tackle them as well before going to Spellhold. We're also fully caught up with the run again.
Another break from the Trio allowed us to continue this MP run. The session got off to a pretty sticky start thanks to making a poor fist of dealing with ambush areas while attempting to return to the temple visited last time. The first of the areas was populated by orcs and trolls. They were guarding the Firefly sling, which Brog wanted. We could have just grabbed it and run, but Cria chose to fight. That caused a problem for Brog who was not hasted and was struggling to stay out of the reach of the speedy trolls. He eventually ran out of HPs just before Cria could finish off the trolls.
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After a trip to Mizhaena to raise Brog we hit another ambush area - this time with a bunch of goblins jealously guarding a hole in the ground. Most of those were stuck in a web and things seemed pretty much under control - before an unnoticed witchdoctor produced a Call Lightning spell to take down Brog once more.
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Cria then managed to get stuck in her own web while seeking revenge of the goblins, but broke free quickly enough to survive.
After another trip to our friendly priestess, it proved 3rd time lucky to get back to the temple. Our luck seemed to have changed there with Ziatar immediately stunned by the first dart thrown at her.
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The Neothelid proved almost as easy. Taking several stone form potions each allowed us to resist its spells and it made the mistake of surfacing early on to be hacked down.
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Darskhelin and its party were next. Skeletons lasted long enough to take down the illithid and stinking cloud and stunning darts provided some disabling opportunities to make the fight fairly easy.
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We could have avoided fighting Akanna, but chose to take her on as well. Her aerial servants got a couple of juicy blows in on Brog, but after running and shooting to deal with them Akanna didn't last long.
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We finally made it to Boareskyr Bridge and immediately targeted Vichand there. Brog laid a couple of traps before backstabbing the mage. I expected that to be fatal, but threw in a magic missile from Cria just in case - and in fact that proved to be needed.
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We took the easy way out by surrendering the fort, but still had to negotiate the fight on the bridge. Hasted skeletons got lucky there by landing a blow through the mage's mirrors - disrupting his initial attempt to establish a portal to the elemental plain. Continued attacks duly finished him off and though the guards put up a creditable resistance we prevailed once more.
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We didn't do anything much in the Coalition Camp beyond a bit of shopping, but just headed off to Dragonspear Castle to free Skie and then saved the run there.
Stronghold 7, Planar Prison
A new addition to our arsenal, firestorm, was used by Madhava for one of the cramped rooms in Mekrath's lair - very useful as it goes through everything except for fire immunity:
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One of the surviving yuan-ti mages did manage to dispel some of us, so we moved downstairs - the mage followed, but by now his PFMW was gone and we just surrounded and killed him:
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For Mekrath himself, Delia gets him with a backstab:
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Now we rest, buff up and enter the prison. Sometimes I do this in one go, but I decided to take a rest this time around to get more value out of short duration buffs. Our initial invisible assault, with a surround and a backstab, got rid of the spellcasters at the entrance:
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Some more enemies started coming from the east, and I deployed another firestorm here to disperse and damage our foes over there:
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In the meantime, we got some summons ready for any incoming foes. Firestorm seems to have really messed up the pathing of the enemies here, as they all came at different times, making them easy pickings for us:
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A second round of buffs against the master of thralls, and we rested up before preparing for the warden. We made sure to get our SI:A spells and Entropy Shield at the ready, only getting close to our foe with summons and the three party members capable of protecting their buffs (Leda, Madalena, Madhava) - these are the prebuffs the warden had going:
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This list might look long, but we really only need to get rid of spell shield and minor spell turning before we can breach him. That's easy work for our two wizards with secret words and spell thrusts:
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Breach, and everyone moves in for the kill:
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That all went very well. The warden was strangely mostly busy attacking our skeletons with his sword.... I am noticing a distinct lack of death spells in the spellbooks of my enemies in the SoA portion of this run so far. Very strange.
Stronghold 8, Planar Sphere
I was a bit afraid of this one due to the potential golem encounters and high level wizards, plus the limited resting with the provision system. We start by thinning out the halfling numbers:
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After that, we're essentially flooding in skeleton warriors towards the halfling spellcasters until they have no PFMWs and we can go in. The cleric somehow doesn't get involved into all of these battles, but Nechtan takes them out by himself:
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We send our skeletons towards the second group with two halfling spellcasters, preparing a few traps in the hall - the traps end up doing our work for us as the halflings follow our retreating party. Nice!
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And here we get to a pretty weird event. Some spawns in the game don't always show up, such as the many randomized spawns in BG1, but I have never seen this group of golems in the room next to the furnaces not be there upon entering - I even blindly threw a firestorm towards them because I was sure they would be there:
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However, no golems (I checked the edges of the room as well). Since I didn't want them to appear later and ambush me at some point, I did check the room again from time to time, but eventually moved to Tolgerias. That's an impressive list of pre-buffs:
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Notably, we can't get rid of spell trap yet, so there's no way to breach him. Notice the 1 on an attack roll on the top of the combat log? That's Delia's critical failure on a backstab attempt, aided by a rare storm giant strength potion. After failing that one, we immediately retreated from the area, hoping to return when some of these buffs maybe had expired. Instead, Delia tried her luck with Lavok - I wasn't even sure if we could get the backstab because it's not possible to get perfectly behind him in his starting position, but it worked out:
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That was easy. We move on outside and take down the various demons:
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After another one of my regular checkups on the golem room, these seemingly lost enemies finally turned up! I made sure to get in my aerial servants for the clay golems and prepared as fully as possible, and this time, the golem encounter went very well for us:
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Okay, by now Tolgerias should have lost quite a few of his buffs. We specifically want PFNM to be gone, so we can use our masterwork crossbow bolts - he initially had improved mantle, but SCS enemies rarely have multiple of those, often returning to PFMW as their second protection. This was the case here, and Ninisina blocked his spellcasting with her wizard slayer powers, giving us the time for a breach:
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Now, since the noble efreeti in the fire room has firestorm and greater fire elementals are very powerful with the new SCS versions, we made sure to learn a bunch of protection from fire spells, because we're going to need a rest anyway to face the golems near the core. With the party being fully immune to fire damage, the room was made a lot easier:
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All right. We made sure Madalena and Leda had more physical buffs as they usually do for the golems, and with the help of our aerial servants and some careful positioning we cleared out the core:
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After that, we completed the mage stronghold quests, with the finale at the city gates:
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Now we're on our way to Brynnlaw (just killed the vampires as well, because the game doesn't let me save before taking them down). Soon, we will have to prepare the party for losing all of their equipment in Spellhold, so we will need to remember to heavily change up our spellbooks with stuff like enchant weapon and even more summons.
In Brynnlaw, Delia tries to backstab Perth but rolls another 1 - so she immediately runs out again. Surprisingly, Perth doesn't follow us, so we just leave him alone, and we return after meeting with Golin, once most of his pre-buffs were gone:
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We prepare our spellbook for the Asylum (the limited camping supplies together with the losing all of our gear require for us to be well prepared), and while we send in our skeletons to deal with most of the first level (with two aerial servants for the clay golem), we use our first enchant weapon spell so we can take down the Ruhk:
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However, things go horribly wrong once I clicked on the portal, expecting the werewolf to show up, but I hadn't correctly memorized which gem would summon which foe, and the pit fiend appeared instead. Now, Madalena had her fire protection, but with the skeletons being unable to damage the fiend, we needed Nechtan with his enchant weapon spell (and throwing axes) to actually deal damage to it. However, SCS pit fiends are quite dangerous, being able to teleport at will - of course, they also have dispels and dangerous fire damage spells (even meteor swarm, but we were able to dodge that one), and a deadly fireball after a teleportation towards our party nearly killed several characters:
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Notably, the pit fiend dispelled enchant weapon, and I only had one other cast left. Re-Applying the spell on Nechtan while spreading out with the party to avoid any more AoE fire damage spells catching multiple people, we really had to hope that we would be able to kill the fiend before another fireball or another dispel. Nechtan was able to do the job, much to my relief - this easily could've gone much worse:
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At this point we were forced to rest. Had I prepared for the pit fiend with full buffs and protections against remove magic, I could have delayed resting by quite a bit. Anyway, on to level 2. We make sure to set traps for the mind flayer at the book and use skeletons for the beholder and most other things until we encounter the lich. Aside from skeletons, I also sent in a Hakeashar, something NPC wizards aren't very good at dealing with - and once again, no death spell by the lich:
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Similiar to the liches in the temple ruins, it was relatively easy to lure the various undead guarding this one towards us without the lich actually moving. Despite our small amounts of gear, we already had some +2 ranged ammunition, enough to kill the bone golems at range, and after that Nechtan, with enchanted weapons, and Madhava, with turn undead, took care of everything else:
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After that was done, another group of skeletons moved towards the lich. They were able to finish the job (after 3 PFMWs) without the party actually barging in to help:
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Now, a buffed-up Nechtan took care of the vampire:
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Since we had buffed with spell reflection earlier on, on the next level, we used that one to help in killing a gauth:
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Our small stock of fire arrows, taken from the kobold commandos, was just enough with careful use to take out the trolls on this third level, and we used our last few summons for the yuan-ti mages in the room with the painted doors:
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After taking out most of the monsters, I decided to take my second rest, because I wanted to have access to my aerial servants for the clay golems, allowing for an easy victory hear without any of us getting hit by cursed wounds:
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We didn't need another rest, so with still two sets of camping supplies left, we completed the trials, bribed Lonk and took down Jon:
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Since Jon only starts to activate defensive buffs after summoning the clones, he really stood no chance and retreated right away. After that, we finally got back our gear and sorted out our inventory, rested in Brynnlaw to get a more reasonable spellbook for future battles and fought our way through the city of caverns, with no notable events. Now we're in the underdark, and there are a lot of scary things down here.
With careful use of spirit armor, emotion spells, pfe and recitation, we can get our saving throws temporarily in the safe range against mind flayers even without using invulnerability potions (as has been mentioned in this thread before, SCS mind flayers tend to spam their powerful ballistic attacks/detonate if they detect chaotic commands, which could be devastating with our low constitution scores - meanwhile, their attempts to dominate or stun us are pretty much harmless). Nechtan takes down the first group of these foes by himself:
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As we send our skeletons towards the first drow ambush party, it seems like they are damaging each other? I don't even know how, as I didn't get too close to look:
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Eventually, the outside area is cleared up - no trouble here so far:
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First, we get the spellbook for the imprisoned wizard. This one is dangerous with current SCS versions because of the extra abilities the elementals get, especially the earth elementals - earthquake has a ridiculous saving throw penalty and has been very devastating in my last SCS run. Even here, with me knowing about it, it was pretty dangerous, though I was able to avoid any deaths despite two knockouts:
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The other gates are a lot easier, and we pickpocket a bunch of scrolls from the mage and go for a spell scribing scribing session, mostly to gain ADHW and time stop, which might be available soon.
Now for the kuo-toa caverns. Skeletons do most of the work until we go for the demon knights. The three spellcasters make sure to protect their buffs, we also place down some traps. The ones without SI:A/Entropy Shield hang around in the back initially, but end up joining the battle once it seems like no dispel is going to happen:
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We use the same round of buffs for the guardians at the exit. This time, we do get hit with a dispel, which means Ninisina, Delia and Nechtan are a bit vulnerable, but luckily, they are not in an exposed position:
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After taking down the prince, we get 6*fire resistance in our spellbook, rest, buff up fully again and take on the balor:
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That went well. Sadly Delia had to stay out of combat due to her lack of death ward.
Next up, the beholder cave:
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We mostly let our skeleton warriors handle things, helping out against the drow and the mind flayers. Those were a bit tricky, as they kept teleporting around, going invisible etc., and they ended up killing most of our skeletons, forcing us to rest and return:
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On our return, the skeletons cleared out most of the cave, though one elder orb was able to take them down with some summoned help eventually. However, during this battle Madalena reached HLA levels and gained the ability to call in a planetar (doesn't require a rest with the SCS modification making them special abilities), who promptly finished the job:
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Now for the illithid city, the scariest part until we meet Deirex. Invulnerability potions, spirit armor, emotion buffs and PfE get our saving throws mostly into safe range, Ninisina gets chaotic commands due to her inability to drink potions. From time to time we add in prayer/recitation, because somehow I am not sure if there are any saving throw penalties involved here (I really should have looked this up before going in there. I was kind of banking on the max penalties being -2, but it turns out that ulitharid psi blasts get to -4). Since we don't have too many potions or spirit armor casts, we also drink oils of speed and keep improved haste on Ninisina, so we mostly rush through the area, and things work out fairly well:
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When we face the elder brain, though, Delia does get hit with a stun effect, propably due to a saving throw penalty is wasn't familiar with (it can't really have been the ego whip, as that ones has a save vs. death and she's even better at those):
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However, the others are able to deal enough damage and distract the brain golems and mind flayers to save Delia, or so it seems:
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Victory is ours, though the battle wasn't easy. However, soon after that, a mind flayer I had controlled with the circlet and that got hit with psionic maze (which made me control another one to open the door towards the master brain) apparently both returned from the maze and turned hostile, teleporting right to Delia and int draining her:
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Well, that's annoying, though not really a notable setback, as by now we have lots of options to resurrect her.
All right, next time we're facing Ust'Natha. Shouldn't be too troublesome, except for Deirex, who I am now very afraid of after seeing how he made use of dimension door in aldain's previous run. I wonder if I should drink two potions of genius just to learn the ruby ray scroll I've just bought at the Ust'Natha entrance in case he has a spell trap prepared, as waiting out or just sending summons towards a lich that will just teleport directly next to us is not really an option. Also, I just checked his level - in the vanilla game, Madhava could have hit him with turn undead, but SCS improved his level to 28, so that's not going to happen. Well, we shall see.
@Enuhal The Drow damaging each other is almost certainly Circle of Bones at work (1D6 Crushing+1D6 Slashing to nearby creatures, and those Drow start very close to each other).
Deirex will go swimmingly! My mistake was trying to scrimp on buffs and exploit bad AI, which has worked before but is now a bit iffy in SCS; I recall with some trepidation also the end of Conjurer's run when Lavok Dimension Door'ed into our midst and unleashed Imprisonment.
Adding Ruby Ray sounds like a good idea, it's a bit risky trying to wait out all of his PfMW if you're in visual range, but maybe you can tank most of his spell book...
I decided to learn ruby ray, just in case, and moved on to free Phaere - traps helped me in getting rid of the underdark party, and the mind flayers & umber hulks are easy enough to defeat, despite me not using death spell, which I usually do for this encounter:
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After that, we go for the tavern battles and duels. The mage duels here can be pretty difficult with SCS, so we make sure to send in Madhava before we only can pick mages and make him summon a bunch of allies that will help out Madalena:
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While she doesn't have the spellslots to remove the buffs of three wizards in a row, Madalena's defenses stood fairly strong, especially her spell turning (which is mostly what I use due to the lack of other powerful lvl 7 spells in my spellbook), making some of our foes rely on their own summons, where the death spell that I was supposed to use against the Phaere ambush (but forgot about) came in:
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For the final two foes, we call in a planetar as the deva gets unsummoned, and the final one is vorpaled as soon as their physical protection runs out:
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After all that, we rest up, deal with the beholder and Quile's home - this is where remove magic is starting to become really powerful for Madalena, being a high level single class wizard; big groups of lower level spellcasters that generally don't use SI:A:
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We progress through the main questline until we get to the ritual components. The slime worshippers are dealt with, and we rest up for Deirex.
The Deirex battle
I prepared a chain contingency with ruby ray in it for this one. Deirex' prebuffs included two magical swords (also mass invisibility, which delayed all of my spells because I had to wait for a very late true sight tick), so I moved Madalena as close to Deirex as possible, in the hopes that the CC would still hit the lich, not one of the summons. No spell trap, btw, so other debuffing spells would've done the same job. Meanwhile, I'm spreading out the characters that don't have SI:A/Entropy Shield so not all of them can get hit by one remove magic. Leda starts her own secret word (which does work on SCS liches despite being lvl 4, I looked that one up beforehand - spell thrust doesn't work though), Madalena uses her sequencer (which includes secret word as well) - this should get rid of spell shield and spell turning even if the CC doesn't hit. Deirex starts his time stop, and right after, the CC activates, with the right target:
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Deirex casts one of the new high level nukes towards the party members at the entrance (I simply can not remember which one it was, despite playing this part yesterday evening) - the only one taking damage is Leda, but she's immediately near death. He also call ins a dark planetar and places a remove magic to the north before his timestop ends. Very, very dangerous at this point - My spread of party members wasn't ideal, so there are still two viable targets for the remove. Delia and Nechtan now have to try to avoid this planetar for fear of vorpal hits. Deirex uses a spell trigger to renew physical protections before we can hit him, while Madalena goes for breach - the spell protections are, indeed, gone by now:
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We try to focus down the dark planetar - with two of our most powerful fighters dispelled, it's mostly up to Ninisina, who activates her GWW for the purpose. Deirex, meanwhile, throws a triple lightning bolt sequencer at Leda, whose MSD isn't enough to protect her (propably getting removed by the initial spells, and hit by a bounce afterwards) - she doesn't have notable electricy resistance and dies, luckily no one else shares the same fate:
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Looking back at the screenshots, I'm not 100% sure what happened to Madalena's earlier breach spell here. I don't think there's a way she could've been interrupted, so I would guess that Deirex dodged it by going invisible, being revealed again by Madhava's running true sight. Luckily, Ninisina was able to take down the dark planetar, the biggest direct threat:
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The lich is now trying to get close to Nechtan, so I'm fearing that he might want to cast imprisonment. However, Madalena is finally able to breach him (though it seems strange that the fireshields are still visible in this screenshot):
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Deirex stops going after Nechtan (who is still speedy thanks to his boots), moving towards Madalena instead. Meanwhile, we start our physical attacks, and Nechtan gets the kill with the Azuredge ability:
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Not a very smooth battle, but we fought our first HLA-capable foe in direct combat and survived, despite Leda's death. Well, she is resurrected and we rest before moving on to House Jae'llat. We call in our planetar for that one and once again get tons of value out of remove magic:
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After executing the egg swap, we flee the Underdark and return to Athkatla.
All right - time for the various liches, dragons, the illithid hideout and guarded compound, Bodhi, and the WKI statues/WK2, plus the new forest areas.
I won't go into detail for all of those encounters - most of them are heavily buffed by SCS, especially on insane, so I had to take every one of them seriously. Here's my general buff list:
Very long duration, immediately after resting: Stoneskins, Strength/Cat's Grace for those below 18, ISOM, Belt of Fortitude.
Long duration (active almost always if we anticipate some form of combat):
Chaotic Commands, Death Ward (usually missing Ninisina, I just don't have enough level 4 cleric spells for everything I want), PFE, Protection From Fire (by now usually for everyone), Madalena herself sometimes gets Protection From Ice and PFME as well (no room in my spellbooks for Lightning/Acid Protection for now except for very specific encounters where those are crucial, though they might be added at some point for Madalena), Spirit Armor (at this point usually only for Nechtan, though I would want two more, one for Madalena and one for Leda, ideally), Emotion: Courage/Hope, Remove Fear. For specific encounters such as mind flayers we add invulnerability potions.
Mid and short duration (buffed before notable encounters): Spell Turning/MSD, SI:A/Entropy Shield, Spell Shield, Shield/Blur/MI, Improved Haste (always on Nechtan, others depend on who seems to most valuable), AoF/DUHM, Bless/Prayer/Recitation. Sometimes Madhava adds Shield of the Archons, though the long duration means that we can't rebuff him with some single target stuff such as improved haste, so I sometimes leave it out. Leda often adds vocalize just in case. Hardiness and other potions are options as well.
We usually have 2*MM Minor Sequencers, Contingencies at 50% with stoneskin, and Madalena has a Sequencer that has stuff like Secret Word/Remove Magic in it, a Spell Trigger that also involves Pierce Magic (sometimes Death Spell) and prepares Chain Contingencies as needed - for example 3*ADHW or some with Ruby Ray (Pierce Shield will become part of those once we scribe that one). If Delia, Nechtan and/or Ninisina get dispelled, I sometimes counter that with protective potions or new buffs, or I don't, depending on the situation.
Plans for high level spellcasters depend on their pre-buffs. We have the spellslots now (and many of them are in enclosed spaces, so it wouldn't work anyway) not to rely on sending in waves of summons. Instead, Madalena and Leda just try to get rid of their spell protections as quickly as possible and breach them, sometimes repeatedly, while true sight is running, and the fighters kill them as soon as a breach goes through (in the meantime, they often have summons or other foes to take on). There are many variations depending on pre-buffs and approaches by our foes.
All right, let's start with the city gates lich. He is neutral for a second, and in that time Ninisina actually hits him with firetooth. We dispel (but not breach) him before his timestop. Timestop goes off, wizard slayer spell failure from that one free hit prevents whatever he's attempting. He gates in demons, dispels our fighters, timestop ends and he gets breached and killed:
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We move on to Cromwell and forge The Wave and The Equalizer (no need for the other stuff, also we won't forge Crom Faeyr because that would be a net loss on strength improving items, and we need as many as we can, plus, none of our fighters is trained in war hammers, and it would be a waste just for Madhava). The Githyanki are taken down on the way there:
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Because getting all these buffs going takes a ton of time, we take down the shade lich and elemental lich with traps instead. After that, it's time for the guarded compound. I don't want to walk into the traps so the party holds position for a second while our thieves get busy. While we're waiting we call in a planetar and attack at ranged if possible, though we do get hit by a pretty dangerous ADHW just before the traps are gone:
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We start dispelling Sion, who luckily doesn't have a strong follow-up, while the fighters take down the other foes:
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Soon after the mage is breached and killed, though I have no screenshot of that.
On to the illithid hideout, we're back to our underdark tactics of buffing our saving throws as much as possible. We use traps in the room before the alhoon and lure the final group of illithids inside (most of them eventually teleport to us, though not in a big group as I would have expected):
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We send some summons towards this foe (as there is enough room to do so here, and unlike most high level mages, this one is also deadly in melee combat, and we don't have PFMWs memorized), though he gets rid of them very quickly. As he finally finds us, we start getting rid of his buffs and are able to breach him while he's still chasing us around. Did you know the alhoon is undead? Our deva was happy to find out:
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A quick visit to the graveyard just to get rid of the ambush (so we can rest here, which I like to do sometimes because it's quicker than going to an inn, as you can travel here and immediately click the button) - vampires, even with SCS, are fairly low level, so Madhava just turns them:
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Travelling to the shadow dragon, we get into our first bit of trouble upon our return: The rakshasa ambush going after the Flail of Ages (an SCS addition) means that we have to fight multiple mid level spellcasters/fighters without any buffs on our side going in. We try to get some very basic defensive buffs going, but Madalena is very threatened, with one rakshasa completely locked in on her (and hasted). She is able to shake him for a bit with an invisibility potion but is soon revealed, though another potion gets her to safety:
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Still, I didn't feel good about this encounter. Some kind of aggressive sequencer could've easily killed her at this point. Well, on to the shadow dragon. Leda and Delia are able to lay down one spike trap each at exactly the same time before he goes hostile. Despite the massive HP boost for dragons, the battle is short, as they are generally not that hard to dispel:
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Surprisingly, Firkraag, unlike the shadow dragon (and, I believe, unlike ToB dragons like Saladrex) does let us set up traps without doing anything about it. Strange:
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Still, we don't take full advantage of this, stopping after four traps total. Despite a succesful dispel on Nechtan (who has a ring of fire resistance just in case), he's not long for this world:
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We forge dragonscale armor (notably, the red dragon plate is light enough that Ninisina can use it even without the strength buff, which is what we're looking for in case of a dispel, since armor can't be changed in combat, so she can finally get rid of her ankheg plate). Now we go for the new forest areas. Delia, after a long pause, finally has the opportunity to go for more backstabs here:
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Next, we move to Bodhi. This is the Nechtan + Madhava show - mostly Madhava, to be honest, as he can turn any undead here except for Bodhi herself, while Nechtan is up to his old tricks with Azuredge:
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We rest and prepare cold protection for everyone due to Bodhi's SCS abilities. Downstairs, it turns out that Madhava can even turn the two named spellcasting vampires in Bodhi's room added in by SCS:
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We mostly stay away from Bodhi with anyone vulnerable to level drain, and we have strong ranged options at the ready in any case. Our allies go into melee combat with her, which is fine. Bodhi, after being near death, returns to 100% (part of her SCS script), but since we're protected from cold damage her most damaging abilities never come into play (Madhava turning the vampires means that there's no fear of dispels here). Fittingly, Madhava ends up getting the kill:
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On to the second round of statues in WKI. Here we have two high level spellcasters, both capable of stopping time. As per usual, the fighters take on everything else while the wizards start getting rid of spell protections. As has been the norm, Delia and Nechtan get dispelled (Madhava, fighting mostly at range, often is missed by the remove magic). The first enemy stops time - that's a nice spell trigger to renew some of their lost buffs:
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However, these foes are simply lacking in ways to actually deal damage to us (I think both of them have no access to HLAs yet). We do get hit by a second timestop, but a lot of attention is focused on our planetar (who still survives all that), and we end up hunting both of these mages down without suffering any notable damage:
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And we didn't even have to lure the statues towards the spike traps I had set up in a separate room as an insurance policy
Level 2 is is much easier than the statue battle. We rest once to get lightning protections ready for the northern room, otherwise one cold protection spell is enough for the ice golem, and the other rooms are easy to clear with our standard buffs. While luring the fire elementals to the cold room, we test out the state of our thief traps - Leda still has poison extra damage, but Delia is on fire damage traps, so she plants those down for the chromatic demon, and they kill it in its ice form:
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On to the Twisted Rune. We prepare traps for Shangalar and a 3*ADHW CC that might help with the others, depending on their buffs. The traps do their expected job:
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Vaxall has a bunch of pre-buffs, is well protected against physical damage, but he has no PFME - the ADHW CC ends up taking him (and the fighter) down, and the others go on attacking the vampire while the wizards start with the dispelling:
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I was able to mostly dodge Layene's remove magic, as I saw it coming early enough. Nechtan, the target, in theory, didn't even lose most of his buffs. Layene is supposed to be level 25, so I was a bit surprised by that:
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Well, we take down the efreeti and the vampire, and directly after losing her spell protections Layene stops time:
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She actually unleashes some pretty threatening stuff: A fallen planetar is followed up by improved alacrity, after which she casts improved malison, dragon's breath and meteor. We change our focus towards the planetar - luckily Nechtan still has death ward:
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However, our kesai did lose protection from fire (as the only party member), so we trade him the ring of fire control to get him to 90% fire resistance - dragon's breath and meteor are no threat now:
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After that, her IA is over, and we breach and kill Layene:
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Our final foe is Kangaxx. Traps will kill his first form, so we can focus on the demi-lich. Helm of Brilliance has a very quick Sunray cast that manages to hit before his pre-buffs go up:
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Kangaxx dispels our three fighters (seems like I didn't put Madhava far enough in the back). We respond with two PfU scrolls (meaning the lich needs to dispel again in order to target directly, or so I hope) and invulnerability on Nechtan (he has good enough saving throws that this should mean that "trap the soul" can't maze him in its SCS version). However, looking at the demi-lichs prebuffs, it seems like he has no PFME.... so why not sunray again, this time with Madhava's regular cast from his spellbook?
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Notably, from what I found out, the bonus damage to undead inflicted by sunray ignores magic resistance (the initial 3d6 and blindness effect are blocked by it, which is why you see "magic resistance" in the combat log), and the SCS version of Kangaxx only has out-right immunity against level 1-5 spells, just as normal liches do (exceptions like breach and secret word propably apply here as well). So, that's why sunray is actually quite good against him if he doesn't have PFME.
Well, now that he's near death, why not use a third sunray? Yes, we have one from Daystar as well, it just takes some time to activate as Ninisina's aura was clouded from the PfU scroll, and it has a long cast time unlike the helm. Meanwhile, Kangaxx uses, of all things, a double (why not triple?) chaos spell trigger? I've never seen something like this on a spellcaster of such a high level - granted, it worked, but it only affected Delia, who isn't very important to this battle at all:
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Well, here's our third sunray, granting us victory:
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We were working on the dispel + breach solution while all that was going on just in case, but the sunrays worked out quite well. After that, I travelled around for a bit to buy any useful scrolls and potions I might need in ToB, bringing me down to below 60k gold, which is very low (and will mean that we won't be able to afford all Cespenar upgrades right away, plus a lot of scroll scribing will propably have to wait until Amkethran). While travelling, I encountered something weird I haven't seen before. There is a SECOND rakshasa ambush for the Flail of Ages? Are there an infinite number of those? Has anyone else ever seen this?
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Ninisina has a special trick for two of those rakshasa that don't immediately cast PFMW - Greater Deathblow:
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This time, I had Madalena open with the SOTM spell trap and follow up with stoneskin, so she was a lot safer. Anyway, we ended up winning relatively easily, but I was very surprised by this encounter.
@Enuhal I have a vague recollection of getting that ambush in an earlier version of SCS, yes.
I do not recall getting more than two, though, but this might be because by that point you tend to leave for the end-game quite rapidly.
No-mercy Necromancer: A Random Run, part 2
Part 1 found here
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The Iron Throne party proved no obstacle. As always, the two Thieves start off hostile (unlike the rest), and so are easily dragged into the southern room to be quietly disposed of.
We sent a number of Beetles north after that, they got a nice stun effect off on a few casters, and by that point we felt confident enough to just charge in with barely any buffs.
Cleric/Ranger deflected what Confusion effects there were using the Greenstone Amulet, and while Zhalimar dealt a good bit of damage, so did our ranged cadre. Victory!
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Before departing for Candlekeep, everyone gets to scribe spells for the first time in a long time: We have enough potions remaining that Necromancer and one more arcanist can get another session in before the end, if we find anything interesting enough.
Necromancer quaffs a Potion of Invisibility and runs off while the rest of the party under Remove Fear dismantles the Ogre Magi; they're quite low-level, after all.
One Ogre Magi drops 4 (!) Remove Magic scrolls... the SCS component that yields extra random scrolls does go wonky sometimes.
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We breeze through the crypts: Cleric/Illusionist gets the WIS tome, and Cleric/Ranger the STR tome, so she can now equip Full Plate unaided.
For some reason, Arcanis and... I forget the poor Halfling's name, but anyway! They both follow us into Prat's area, so I decide to be devious and Charm them both using the Nymph's Cloak with 40 charges we picked up in Baldur's Gate.
Arcanis and what's-his-face sadly last not long at all against Prat (and they had nothing interesting that dropped either, just standard non-magical gear), so we avenge them promptly and exit.
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I seem to be the only one that gets this bug: Even after doing a complete wipe of local files and re-downloading, Krystin (and Semaj later on) turn invisible every once in a while without casting a spell or quaffing a potion.
Joke's on Krystin, though: She zones back in next to our Beetles, and get her comeuppance.
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Alright, palace fight: Skeleton Warriors, buffs, MSD and Stoneskin on Necromancer, and we're golden.
Its spell defenses torn down, the Doppleganger Mage fails a save against Chromatic Orb, removing the only real threat here.
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Off after Sarevok. This time I remember that Shaldrissa might have Death Spell, so we keep our distance, instead following up an initial firebombing (that cleared out the grunts) with some Beetles, that yet again prove their mettle in removing the main threat.
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I'll say that the amount of inventory clutter by the time you reach the end of BG1 is indicative of your party's power: We literally have over a hundred good potions just sitting around, and about as many scrolls of various shapes, sizes and colors.
So, every fighter (we have four of them, after all) gets a PfM scroll, topped off with serious potion buffs.
Necromancer just spends the fight hiding in a corner under Invisibility and PfLightning, coming out only once victory is certain; Fighter/Druid had her buffs dispelled once but just reapplied them.
In the end, it's the fastest, most hassle-free Sarevok fight I've ever had; I don't even think it took two turns before S dropped.
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On to BG2! The import refrains from screwing up the max HP of anyone, and we're off.
We have an enormous amount of spell slots already, so most of the dungeon goes well: However, since we're actually able to kill off Ulvaryl this time, the Shadow Thief Mage turns her not-so-tender mercies on us instead, unleashing a Lightning Bolt.
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I think she was only L5 so theoretically that shouldn't have been able to kill Necromancer in one hit.. but a bad bounce might've.
Brrr. We swiftly depart the place.
I don't even have a screenshot of the Circus. We did have some problems since only Fighter/Mage/Thief has a magical weapon at the moment (we imported The Burning Earth), but scrape by with magical damage and Spiritual Hammer/Moonblade.
Next, the Copper Coronet and Slaver Ship are both uneventful: Again, we've so many options for completely shutting down the opposition they barely get to shake a blade/arrow at us.
We swing by the Government district, splurge on a license, and clear out the local Fanatics, also an easy victory.
And now for something completely stupid.
My intent was to go after Mae'Var first: This is a fairly easy stronghold quest, with a huge gold reward at the end, and we do need gold to bribe our reputation up before buying anything.
We get the quest started, but it's not night-time so we can't go grab the amulet from the Temple of Talos.
I don't want to let all our spells go to waste, so decide we'll just take out the Pirates at the Sea's Bounty.
I forgot that the Mage here has, for no apparent reason, a pretty grotesque Magic Resistance. Is it 100%? It is at the least high enough to completely stymie my intended tactic, which was to throw two Cloudkills in his general direction to completely shut down his spellcasting. I was so confident in success I didn't bother with most short-duration buffs, and we didn't initially spread out (that would've entailed walking into our own Cloudkills).
This Mage turned out to be an Enchanter. I'll spare you the gory details as I'm sure you can fill them in: Suffice to say, a low-level party just isn't gonna be that great at making saves against Chaos with a -6 modifier (-2 from the Enchanter bonus).
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Beyond humiliating.
I'll roll up another Necromancer, but if time is a factor, it might be that the onus of the last Mage kit falls squarely upon @Enuhal's shoulders.
@aldain That's rough. I had someone die to that pirate gang as well, courtesy of the mage, thanks to Beltyn's Burning Blood. Luckily he didn't hit us with a huge chaos. I had no idea he has a high magic resistance with SCS, I never noticed that. It's 70% according to the wiki. That is very strange indeed and maybe some kind of mistake, at least I don't see a good justification for it. The pirates will have to be taken a lot more seriously in future runs.
I seem to be the only one that gets this bug: Even after doing a complete wipe of local files and re-downloading, Krystin (and Semaj later on) turn invisible every once in a while without casting a spell or quaffing a potion.
Actually, I did have that happen as well during my current run, at least with Krystin (I don't remember it with Semaj). I didn't mention it because it didn't really impact the battle, especially because I had access to true sight (and I figured she might have been turned into some sort of shadowdancer/wizard dual-class and used hide in plain sight). Now that I am looking into it, Krystin has an undroppable Sandthief's Ring equipped, which propably has multiple charges, so my guess is that she's just using one of these very single round - might not actually fully be a bug. Semaj has a similiar item: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/MAGE01.ITM
Though they propably shouldn't spam those, it makes for very awkward gameplay. They were originally propably just meant to allow them to start combat invisibly.
That MAGE01 ring is not actually a Sandthief's Ring - it just has that name because they made the item by cloning. The only effect of that item is to grant initial invisibility to the creature. But, well, invisibility with "equipped" timing ... if that gets re-evaluated for some reason, it re-establishes that invisibility.
Note that this effect is not illusionary, so you need a Detect Invisibility effect to reveal that creature before they reveal themself. (Detect Invisibility, Invisibility Purge, Oracle, True Seeing/True Sight).
On to the SoA endgame, starting at the elven city. The initial golems converge into a double group, which is a bit tough to take down, even with the help of a planetar - some potions, some shuffling around, and we get the job done, although some injuries are unavoidable:
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Incendiary cloud is a really good spell against this group of rakshasa in front of the temple:
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This was a pretty terrible backstab, but still enough to take down the drow wizard:
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A second group of rakshasa - Madalena uses timestop to grant her the time for 3 ADHWs, which is enough to take down these foes:
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We even move further towards the palance to take kill the balor there:
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Now, we take on the black dragon, buffing up with acid protection first. This battle was a strange one, because the dragon did very little, despite living for a reasonably long time with its hp boost. No remove magic, no insect plague, no entangle, no breath weapon - he used his wing buffet once, buffed with stoneskin once, but that was about it:
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All right! We charge into the temple, take down the guys in there, start the ritual and move to the tree. The elementals there aren't the greater version (though that would be appropriate, since this is the endgame), so they don't get many of the new SCS abilities and are easy enough to kill. Jon at the tree goes down to traps:
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In hell, we do the trials the good way. Incendiary cloud and an ADHW CC help out the planetar and skeletons against the various types of beholders, the only significant battle here:
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We prepare for the final SoA battle, with some traps near what I hope is the balor spawning position and a few summons. Our goal is to take down the demons first:
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Irenicus stops time, calls in a dark planetar and activates improved alacrity. The planetar's globe of blades deals damage despite time being stopped, which nearly kills Delia and Nechtan - both use big healing potions and retreat. Meanwhile, our wizards try dispelling Jon with spell thrust (for spell shield) and spellstrike (for everything else):
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The fighters make their escape and we take down the fallen planetar:
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Now we can breach Jon and start taking him down:
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So... Jon is near death, turns to his human form - and nothing happens. His last line of dialogue doesn't come, the cinematic doesn't start, no matter what I do - I can deal thousands of points of damage to him, I can run around and do nothing, I can just wait, nothing - he also does nothing, doesn't move, doesn't cast, he just stands around:
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This is a fairly common bug (and not the first time I've encountered it). Since I got no results after trying a few things, the only choice remaining seemed to be a reload to re-do the battle, which was a bit of a risk, but on the second try things went just fine as well. It was, in the end, more of the same - We take down the demons, Jon stops time, does some stuff which we eventually counter (this time a dragon's breath - he's better at dispelling us this time around, so two the three dispellable party members have to move away (or, in Necthan's case, swap around a ring to get to 90% resistance)), we get rid of his protections, breach him and start dealing damage:
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This time the bug didn't occur, so we can move on to ToB.
So for the next level of Yaga-Shura's temple, we had mordy swords and planetars lead the way with the party assisting as they could. Coreranger took a good amount of damage but he always was able to run away and heal then come back to the fight. Impish took huge damage in getting the first heart, apparently his fire resistance wore off. We didn't have any trouble in getting the 2nd heart. We left for Nylee's glade. As usual a few summons made the fight pretty simple. After a rest, we then headed for Yaga's camp.
This went surprisingly well. Impish has been using energy blades to very good effect and with GWW from Coreranger, Yaga didn't last long.
Next up was Senda's enclave. We did usually two strategies, either let mordy sword take most of the attention with party assisting or firestorm or going invisible and skipping enemies. For the Captain Coreranger did a duel to take him down.
Time for the main fight with Sendai. This was a long and involved fight and Impish got careless and got himself killed. However a planetar raised him and healed him then he got back into the fight. The party was careful to not get hit with harm by Sendai's cleric forms. The fight was long and drawn out but eventually she dies.
We then do the two pocket plane challenges. Both went fairly straightforward. Then we tried to deal with Draconis. Coreranger used the shadow armor to be protected from acid - firestorm eventually killed Draconis - problem? Coreranger intended to go to pocket plane, rest then come back and save our session but game crashed and we will have to fight Draconis next time again.
Just a headsup: I've rolled up a Necromancer with a pretty powerful party, and am making progress.
It's good fun and I'll keep going with the run even if someone else fancies a stab at the class, will post once I've gotten farther (probably next weekend).
Starting with ToB, I had planned to lay down a few traps for the black reavers with the intention of taking down Ilasera by myself, but it seems like she turns hostile before her allies do - a lot of traps hit her immediately, even if there were many closer enemies, and she died right away:
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The first pocket plane challenge is a serious hurdle with SCS, at least once Irenicus, Bodhi and Sarevok appear. Since it also takes a while, we go for a fresh round of buffs and only weave short-duration buffs in while combat is already ongoing, making especially sure to be a bit later with our SI:A/Entropy Shield spells so they have enough duration left when the real fight begins. The three appear, and while the party was taking down Sarevok, the wizards starti their dispels against Joneleth:
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We retreated a bit in anticipation of Jon's timestop, almost killing Bodhi in the meantime - as seems to be the norm, our foe called in a dark planetar:
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Timestop ends with Jon casting improved alcratiy - luckily out of our range so he had to waste some time walking up to us - and Bodhi dies:
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Jon uses his alacrity to dispel our non-spellcasters and follows up with dragon's breath and meteor - I spread the dispelled party members apart and equipped Nechtan, the primary target, with 90% fire resistance while calling in our own planetar to counter Jon's:
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We focus the dark planetar with ranged weapons and take it down - meanwhile, Jon switches to frost damage, which is quite a bit more dangerous as there are far fewer ways to resist it. At the same time, we finally get rid of most of his buffs:
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And now, the tables turn and the wizard dies within seconds:
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Okay, on to Saradush. First, we do sidequests and get our final pairs of boots of speed. Kiser's mage gets dispelled and killed:
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For the first mage in the sewers, we flex our high level and just cast remove magic, the next one gets backstabbed:
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Next, our cleric + kensai combo clears out the prison, and we meet another wizard in the dungeon - this one pre-buffs even though we don't show ourselves (just being nearby while invisible is enough) - but since she doesn't cast divination spells we just stay away for a while and clear the remainder of the area, so a lot of her buffs are already gone once we fight, making this a quick battle. We use mass invisibility for a final backstab against the mage below Gromnir's throne room:
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Now we rest and buff up again. We go in under mass invisibility and split our party (fully improved hasted) against both wizards - the unnamed one dies before being able to activate his pre-buffs, and our ADHW CC takes down Gromnir:
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Karun the Black is still at large, and as per usual, our fighters take down the remaining foes while Leda and Madalena dispel and breach him - All of that works without any trouble, we don't even suffer a remove magic:
A bit of a shorter update, as progress in ToB is always a bit slower for me, because we need full buffs for almost everything and I also don't enjoy the gameplay as much, so I play in shorter sessions. This is just the temple and the Marching Mountains:
Starting with the master wraith and its allies - we use turn undead, sunray and breach on the main enemy:
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There is very limited info on the skeletons inside the temple on the wiki, so I don't know their levels and if turn undead will be effective - turns out it depends heavily on the type of enemy: The wizard, the most threatening skeleton, is immediately killed. The cleric and two warriors are untouched:
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However, with the only real threat already destroyed, we have more than enough anti-undead tools for the remaining foes in there:
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On to the Marching Mountains. We buff up and start clearing the area, using invisibility to move past the giants. Sending a magical sword in there is not quite as effective as in the vanilla game, since the giants are smarter with SCS and will switch targets, but it was still a decent distraction and allowed me to split the initial group, using a planetar and some HLAs to help out the fighters. Making sure to take down the fel cats as soon as possible (as they can get really dangerous with SCS), we started clearing the side areas. The one with the fire lich is the only dangerous one - the lich wouldn't move out of there, though, so we were able to go back to some of our old summoning tricks. Meanwhile, Delia dealt with two noble efreeti:
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After the fire lich had used its third PFMW, we went in for the kill:
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At this point some of us were hit by dispels and buff durations were getting low, though as our final battle before resting, we used some invisible blocking against the giants at the level 2 entrance (I usually don't use invisible blockers a lot, but the area is just so convenient for that approach):
Spoiler
We go for a rest and buff up again. The red dragon Brimstone reinforces the fire giants here, and we use remove magic against him before activating HLAs to deal the required damage:
Spoiler
A few potions and high-power healing spells (mass heal and heal) had to be used here, and some rotating in and out of the front lines, but in the end Berenn, being a cleric, just wasn't too much a threat, so I wasn't punished by focusing my attentions on the dragon first and took out the fire giant leader right after that:
Spoiler
Nechtan used The Wave to take down the prince of fire in one hit, and we returned to the pocket plane, going to Saradush after that to re-fill our camping supplies (something I had forgotten during my last SCS run at this point).
I have decided to go to Watcher's Keep now, for a very specific reason (though I usually wait until either after Sendai's Enclave or even until just before the Throne): Due to the camping supply system, I want the ability to leave Watcher's Keep entirely via the pocket plane in case I run out of camping supplies in the randomized teleporter maze - unlikely to happen, but possible. If we do this part before going to meet Yaga Shura, the options to teleport directly to Saradush or to the area east of the city are still available, while later on the pocket plane always would return me to the WK zone that I had just left. Maybe this is a bad idea, because a bad sequence of rooms (with a no-magic zone leading directly into a dangerous fight) is propably the most likely thing to end the run at this point, but the camping supply situation shouldn't be entirely underestimated.
Entering the randomized teleporter maze, I decided to take a gamble and buff up first, in hopes of maybe not running into a no-magic zone right away. Of course, the very first zone I ran into was a no-magic zone, the one with the Purifier. Luckily the fiends there are fighting each other, so we can take down the balor at range without risking a vorpal hit. From there on, we find the glabrezu room, which I recognized from the environment, and so I already needed my first return to pocket plane and rest, because I wanted full buffs for that one. With those, a bit of remove magic and a few breach spells, we took down the dangerous foes in there, but we lost our buffs soon again when running into the room with the pit fiend - carefully disarming the traps before moving further inside:
Spoiler
Right after that, we ran into the demon knights - potentially dangerous without our buffs, but they kind of approached us one at a time, making this a lot easier. However, after that our next portal returned us to the entrance, and we tried going into a different direction. There, we run into the tiefling room, and we take our second rest to rebuff. With that, victory is easily achieved. Next up are the quasits, followed by the succubi, and this is the inevitable point with the randomized maze where we don't find any new rooms for a while and just return to already explored ones. After a while, we find Kara'shur, one of the demons with a scepter gem. Since we haven't entered a no-magic zone in the meantime, we still have our buffs, and while neutral alignment gives me the option to negotiate, I decide to fight, since our buffs allow for an easy victory, and this fiend is easier to take down than Tahazzar (since that one is a balor, and has a vorpal attack).
Now it took me a long while to find a new room again, and that happened to be Aesgareth. However, we would need to find the other demon first, so I returned back through the portal I came through - and immediately found myself facing the demon wraith. Notably, I had lost my buffs on the way here, travelling through a no-magic zone. Facing this foe without any buffs is certainly dangerous, and he immediately throws a spell trigger with 2 chain lightnings towards us:
Spoiler
We look through our bags while paused and throw on every bit of lightning resistance we can find. While the fighters use invunerability potions, Madalena casts timestop:
Spoiler
She follows up with improved alacrity and gets some buffs going, throws her sequencer and spell trigger at the demon wraith and starts debuffing him. As timestop ends, Leda suddenly dies. Turns out the slave wraiths have a chance to kill on touch, with a -2 saving throw as the only prevention:
Spoiler
I never knew this. Very strange. Well, At least Madalena can now remove all the remaining buffs with relative ease, and fighter HLAs help us in going on the offensive:
Spoiler
The paladin bracers allow us to resurrect Leda for free after we get the kill, and we obviously have to return to the pocket plane once again to rest up. Eventually, we're able to find Tahazzar and turn in the heart of Kara'shur. Back to Aesgareth - we actually manage to win the second bet and obtain the Spectral Brand, which is nice:
Spoiler
At level 4, we start with the mind flayers. Our strategies from the underdark still prevail:
Spoiler
The githyanki are cleared out, and Saladrex soon follows:
Spoiler
We return to Saradush for a quick camping supply reset and buff up for the demi-lich. This one does have PFME, unlike Kangaxx, so sunrays are not an option, making this a very difficult battle. Under timestop and IA, he casts imprisonment, targetin Delia:
Spoiler
I though I could block the spell with a PFM scroll:
Spoiler
But apparently that doesn't work. I propably should've looked that one up before just trying it:
Spoiler
The demi-lich finally dispels Nechtan and Ninisina, Nechtan counters with invulnerability to get some resistance to "Trap the Soul", but Ninisina is certainly vulnerable. Our foe also casts dragon's breath and comet, but on the plus side, Madalena finally finishes dispelling him, and Daystar's bonus damage goes through PFME:
Spoiler
We swap around some fire resistance gear to avoid major damage, and the demi-lich doesn't stop with the HLAs, adding in a dark planetar - he also renews his buffs:
Spoiler
We focus on taking down the dark planetar first - two us are just very vulnerable to vorpal hits:
Spoiler
Finally, we are able to breach the demi-lich once again (for the third time in total - this foe is really resilient):
Spoiler
And soon after, we achieve victory:
Spoiler
Madalena uses a freedom scroll to get Delia back. Hopefully we don't have to deal with imprisonment again, as this was our only one:
Spoiler
On to level 5. Golems, the colored orbs and the orcs are no trouble. PfP scrolls are added for the green dragon:
Spoiler
Spirit warrior maze time - as per usual we avoid the ghost and the poison, and we start with the first guardian group, in this case Azamantes. Spike traps are placed to ensure a quick victory:
Spoiler
The aurumach rilmani is next. The normal traps aren't quite enough, but the party is able to kill him before he casts any spell:
Spoiler
Spike traps take down the succubus for the third group, and we focus the hive mother with the party. Wizard slayer spell failure is mostly irrelevant at this point, but once in a while I can spot it in the combat log. Surprisingly, no anti-magic rays:
Spoiler
The other foes are easily cleared up, and we read the scroll of helm to finish Watcher's Keep.
A quick return to the temple, some traps, and we've made Yaga-Shura vulnerable. Before that, though, we return to Saradush again to reset camping supplies. Now, a quick visist to meet the giant to make him leave, and we set up some summons, buffs and traps, hunting around the area for his officers. Strangely enough, no foes ever enter the area we've set up our traps in, until Yaga-Shura returns and just happens to walk in there:
Spoiler
That wasn't really the way I intended to kill him, but I'll take it.
After that, a visit to the Oasis, and we buff up for the second pocket plane challenge. Semaj happens to be low enough level that remove magic is able to take down his buffs, making this battle a lot easier:
Spoiler
In Amkethran, Vongoethe dies to traps and we have enough gold for learn some new scrolls, though not all of them yet (we also buy both freedom scrolls). Sendai's Enclave is next, which should get us some amazing upgrades combined with the items we already have from Watcher's Keep.
Starting at Sendai's Enclave, we deal with the outside ambushes, getting a lucky vorpal hit on the most significant threat, the hive mother, with the Axe of the Unyielding:
Spoiler
Traps were prepared for the final group to help out with the spellcasters. Sometimes we just need remove magic for those, sometimes we need to go for more elaborate approaches with spellstrikes and breaches. After entering the enclave, we fight our way to the guard room - a surprising ADHW nearly takes down Madhava and Leda, but both are able to survive and retreat:
Spoiler
We fight our way to Odamaron. This is a big pay-off for having a single class cleric - Madhava is high enough in levels to instantly destroy the SCS-exclusive apprentices, but even more importantly, he can actually turn (not destroy, but force to flee and, most notably, not cast any spells) Odamaron himself:
Spoiler
For the next drow ambush, we use dragon's breath, meteor, storm of vengeance etc. to take down the beholders in there without having to get close in case of anti-magic ray:
Spoiler
The battle against the prince of earth was a bit close - his damage and constant re-casting of stoneskin is really dangerous. We had to use a bunch of healing items and rotate in and out of combat. After that, it was time to rest and get new buffs going for Diaytha. Nechtan gets hit with the hive mother's anti-magic ray, but everything else goes pretty well:
Spoiler
Neither the duel nor the mind flayers are too much of a threat, and we move on to Sendai. The notable challenges here are mostly her wizard clones and her final form - our damage output, with four fighter-types, most of them by now dual-wielding +5 weapons, sometimes with a speed weapon, and improved haste, is high enough that we can easily keep up with the drow groups teleporting into the room. The first wizard Sendai loses her buffs to Madalena's remove magic, so she dies pretty much right away. The second one isn't affected by another remove attempt, so we have to get through her various buffs. In the meantime, she tries a triple remove, but I'm able isolate the target, Ninisina:
Spoiler
The Sendai clone stops time and calls in a dark planetar:
Spoiler
However, we quickly focus down the celestial after timestop ends, and we finally are able to dispel and breach the wizard clone:
Spoiler
The real Sendai appears. It seems like her pre-buffs aren't immediate, and the delay allows us to take her down before we face any resistance:
Spoiler
On to Draconis. Acid resistance gets added, we make sure to renew our SI:A once the human form is close to transforming. As per usual, we spread out at range to avoid getting stuck and to reduce the impact of remove magic:
Spoiler
After spellstriking Draconis, we have to use breach via wand of spell striking (not enough 5th level slots - we needed them for SI:A, Spell Shield and Acid Resistance) - the damage on the dragon quickly adds up:
Spoiler
The dragon heals up once, but we have tons of fighter HLAs and quickly take him back down. The fight is, over all, fairly boring as far as Draconis battles go, and we move inside. A triple ADHW CC turns out to be extremely effective against the lizardmen - both of the deadly shamans, amongst the most dangerous enemies in the entire lair, die instantly:
Spoiler
The yellow dragon is easy enough to take down, and we move through the water elemental area, returning to Amkethran for the rope and to renew camping supplies. Traps are prepared for our return, and they take down one of the black dragons that's part of the quadruple dragon ambush. We have left acid resistance in our spellbooks for the second black dragon, though we lack green PfP scrolls for the green one (I guess I should have remembered to buy more of those in SoA), so we take some damage from its breath weapon - nothing that a few potions won't fix. All the brawling does get to our hitpoints as we now fight a red dragon, but after rotating in and out for a bit - everyone in the party has decent ranged options - we get our victory:
Spoiler
Now we have to fight the tyrant golems, and we have Ninisina with greater deathblow just for them (she has also used it against mind flayers) - she does expose herself to quite a few eyebeams, but ends up not suffering any adverse effects (her saving throws are strong enough that those would've been highly unlikely, if not impossible, aside from direct damage) - meanwhile, Madhava moves in for turn undead against the death tyrants:
Spoiler
We use stone to flesh to get the scroll of reversal and rest up, buffing with lightning resistance for Abazigal. Magical swords and a planetar go into melee combat with Abazigal, the others wait for the transformation:
Spoiler
The dragon's remove is centered on himself and essentially misses us entirely. Spellstrike and a breach wand charge, and Abazigal is vulnerable:
Spoiler
A pretty fast and convincing victory:
Spoiler
We return to the pocket plane for the next two - rather easy - challenges and are now prepared to meet Balthazar.
We're in the endgame now. Since this run is played without Ascension, things are actually not that difficult here - aside from Sendai, the five don't receive extremely notable buffs from SCS, and Amelyssan remains exploitable. First, we have to get past Balthazar - moving invisibly to Saemon, we prepare buffs and a 3*ADHW CC for the guards - both wizards die, so the remaining battle is easy. Inside the monestary, I decide to take on the unnamed monks first before preparing fighter HLAs and taking on Balthazar - a very quick and one-sided battle:
Spoiler
Our next challenge is The Ravager, without traps this time. I've gone for a pierce magic CC here (in hindsight, a strange choice - I should have used an ADHW one and prepared lower resistance spell triggers) with the plan to add ADHWs after it hits our foe. To get in as much magic damage as possible we first cast improved alacrity, but our fighters have already brought our foe to badly wounded:
Spoiler
We're just about able to actually finish our first ADHW before The Ravager goes down, and he doesn't even get hit by it as it's still in flight - our fighters just deal too much damage with all their buffs and high APR:
Spoiler
Now, time to rest up at the Amkethran tavern and prepare a full round of buffs, adding in all the potions I've kept until now. We have 6 spike traps each on both of our thieves, and 4 spike traps will take down an incarnation of Mel every time, so all we really have to do is defeat Amelyssan during our first encounter and clear out the three pools without any major mistakes. Spell triggers with 3*Lower Resistance are prepared, along with a 3*ADHW CC - this is our ticket to take out the first version of Mel right away, together with a quick fighter-HLA-assault:
Spoiler
For the first pool, Madhava runs in with greater divine protection active, turning undead - just a short visit to turn the two vampiric wraiths, in order to avoid any level drain affecting us:
Spoiler
After that, the others go in with their buffs still going strong, aided by a planetar, and take down the prince of air. We lay down our first four spike traps (always adding some normal traps just in case of very bad rolls, though I've never seen 4 traps fail before), Mel comes in and has to leave:
Spoiler
No dispels on us yet, so we still have full frost resistance for the second pool. Improved Hastes are still active as well, only very few short-duration buffs have dropped. We rush down Cryonax first:
Spoiler
After that, it's easy to take down the trolls and salamanders, and we prepare our traps once again, and Mel immediately retreats upon pool acvitation.
Finally, the fallen solar. Delia has 4 timestop scrolls (plus an extra timestop via a limited wish scroll). First, we renew her improved haste, after that she casts limited wish, wishing for control over time, and moves in with 10 APR and Storm Giant Strength:
Spoiler
We go through all of our scrolls, constantly renewing timestop, but by the end, even the mariliths are dead:
Spoiler
Now, we just have to lay down our last traps and wait for victory:
Spoiler
And there we go. I am quite surprised how well this run worked out - despite suffering multiple deaths during almost all phases of the game, the lack of chunkings and the power of the SCS-versions of Strength and Cat's Grace really meant that the powerful classes and balanced nature of the party turned them into very strong characters after the somewhat difficult early game of the respective parts of Baldur's Gate. I think the early availability of true sight thanks to our priest of helm was a key factor as well, with our low HP being quite vulnerable to backstabs otherwise.
The necromancer kit remains as the only one without an entry in the Hall of Heroes. In the next few weeks I propably won't start a run, as there is a big Age of Empires 2 patch and DLC incoming, so I'm going to switch games for a while. I am looking forward to following aldain's run (and anyone else who might want to try their hand at it).
Starting: In BG1EE.
Difficulty: Insane with no difficulty-dependent damage increase, max HP on level-up.
Mods: Full SCS 35.21.
Run rules: Fully random party apart from slightly improved protagonist (a Necromancer) and a requisite to contain a thief; see spoiler for details.
Spoiler
Generate a party of six characters at random.
The party must contain a Necromancer with CON at least 16 and INT at least 18, and at least one Thief of some kind.
All level-up choices (apart from HP, which are maxed) are random.
Our party is... not nearly so dreadful as you'd expect, though I've certainly seen the RNG spit out better, details in spoiler.
Spoiler
Protagonist
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Class: Necromancer
Alignment: True Neutral
Stats:
STR 11 DEX 13 CON 17 INT 18 WIS 17 CHA 11
Proficiencies:
Dart *
Starting spells:
Chill Touch, Expeditious Retreat, Identify
Gender: Female
Race: Dwarf
Class: Fighter / Cleric
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Stats:
STR 17 DEX 10 CON 19 INT 11 WIS 14 CHA 9
Proficiencies:
Single-Weapon Style * War Hammer * Mace * Sling *
Gender: Male
Race: Halfling
Class: Fighter / Thief
Alignment: Neutral Good
Stats:
STR 9 DEX 13 CON 13 INT 16 WIS 16 CHA 9
Proficiencies:
Crossbow * Two-Handed Sword ** Single-Weapon Style *
Thieving skills:
Hide in Shadows +5 Find Traps +5 Pick Pockets +15 Move Silently +10 Set Traps +5
Gender: Male
Race: Gnome
Class: Fighter / Illusionist
Alignment: Lawful Good
Stats:
STR 11 DEX 16 CON 12 INT 14 WIS 9 CHA 17
Proficiencies:
Dagger * Longbow * Bastard Sword * Mace *
Starting spells:
Ice Knife, Shield, Reflected Image
Gender: Male
Race: Dwarf
Class: Priest of Talos
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Stats:
STR 14 DEX 11 CON 14 INT 12 WIS 11 CHA 15
Proficiencies:
Club * Quarterstaff *
Gender: Male
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Priest of Lathander
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Stats:
STR 14 DEX 13 CON 11 INT 12 WIS 15 CHA 13
Proficiencies:
Two-Handed Weapon Style * Two-Weapon Style *
Some comments:
Spoiler
A Dwarven Fighter/Cleric with unmodified 17 STR/19 CON is actually incredibly lucky. It means we'll have a beefy full-plate wearing frontliner with excellent saves who can reach 25 STR in early BG2EE, the CON belt will be available for someone else, and being a Fighter/Cleric she's reasonably likely to pick up at least one weapon specialization under our harsh ruleset given how limited her options are.
A Fighter/Illusionist is always powerful, even though this one's got pretty awful stats (though I'm glad he didn't clock in at single-digit INT). The 16 DEX enforced by being an Illusionist means he'll be almost guaranteed to hit 18 DEX with a single Cat's Grace and so have good AC. STR is bad, CON is bad, INT is mediocre, but the first two we can fix, and the third we can live with. How I wish he would've started with a weapon specialization, although a pip in Longbow will at least be useful for BG1EE. For all this though, he'll be the star of the party come BG2EE.
A Fighter/Thief that is essentially a commoner stat-wise, except oddly intelligent and wise... couldn't those two rolls of 16 had been DEX and CON? Well, whatever. He has specialization in Two-Handed Sword, which isn't a bad weapon, but he lacks the STR to lift one unaided.
We round off with two near carbon copies: Kitted Clerics. They'll be quite powerful throughout the entire game, and we'll never be lacking for necessary buffs, although it would've been nice if they had any kind of stat bonus beyond a middling WIS on the Priest of Lathander... even nicer if they could actually wear Full Plate naturally, but Plate Mail will just have to do.
By now most of BG1EE is beginning to feel a little bit like old hat, so I'll cover the real highlights in detail, and just skim over the more business-as-usual parts.
No-Hope Necromancer: A Random Run, Part 1
Next part found here
Spoiler
With these many Commands available, we swiftly make our way to the FAI.
We do my usual early-game routine: Go north, help Tenya, loot the Ankheg nest under Sanctuary, clear some zombies, then start slowly grinding through the Ankheg population. Even though we've got plenty of Commands, our low APR and damage both means we typically need two, sometimes three casts to take down a single Ankheg, so it's slow going.
There's a bright spot though: We get a random drop of Spell Thrust, which is very valuable (two arcanists, and another will be looted off of Venkt much later, so we'll be able to easily deal with enemy Mages).
We also swing by Ulgoth's Beard and buy some Arrows +2; experience is life, and we have no other safe way to take down Thalantyr's Flesh Golems.
While in the Beregost area, we utilize our Wand of Fire to take down the Wolf Pack, also a nice XP boost this early.
Spoiler
We clear everything in Beregost apart from Silke, and yes, Neera once again tries to assassinate us, this time with two Burning Hands... I'm used to her idiocy by now though, so always stay far away from the direction she's facing.
Down to Nashkel, then loop back around towards Bassilus' area. While doing that, we reach Fighter level 3 on our three warrior-types.
FC gets a pip in Quarterstaff, as does FT (meh...), but FI really lucks out: A 1/24 shot pays off, and he scores a second pip in Mace.
It's not the greatest weapon, sure, but it's not bad either: A solid anti-undead tool, and Storm Star is an acceptable end-game choice. I actually drew a sigh of relief here, as I was prepared to not see another specialization ever.
In celebratory fashion, we go after Bassilus: He fails to save against triple Silence, and then it's only a matter of time, although we must resort to a few Scorcher charges given our pitiful damage output.
Spoiler
Flush with cash, we bribe reputation up to 17, then start handing in reputation quests (which we've hoarded until now).
With the 1/4 reputation gain component, we only make it up to 19, so put off shopping for now.
Still confident in our nascent ability despite poor arcane spell availability, we descend into the Nashkel mines.
Oh yeah: Apparently that damnable Kobold Shaman is immune to Silence. At the least, he failed to saved against it, but just shrugged it off and let loose with a Lightning Bolt anyway. The party was not amused.
Spoiler
I think next time around I will just sacrifice a few extra wand charges to do that fight safely.
We loot Mulahey's chest under Sanctuary, then depart; there's lots of wilderness left to cleanse before we proceed with the plot.
The parts west of Nashkel don't provide much challenge, as we've plenty of buffs, disablers and wands available.
But I did figure something out, which I'm sure everyone else already knew: Dread Wolves are Undead. Hold Undead works on them!
Spoiler
I thought that was kind of nifty. We'll see another interesting follow-up on that later.
There's a few reputation quests left: Bringing Samuel to the FAI finally bumps us up to 20, so we buy some Potions of Genius, some carefully selected spell scrolls, and expand our capabilities.
N gets to go all-out with 24 INT; FI settles for 18 INT, which allows him to scribe Illusion scrolls with 100% success rate (Mirror Image, Invisibility are both important), and with a few tries he manages several useful first-level ones.
We pick up Algernon's Cloak as well: FT has unfortunately gotten a lot of points in Pick Pockets, and that's about all they're good for, in addition to a scroll of PfM and an extra Ring of Freedom of Action.
Apparently, the PoT special doesn't actually protect against non-magical missiles contrary to its description, as we find out nearly to our detriment (yes, those bandits are using Masterwork Arrows).
Spoiler
I'm assuming that's a left-over bug from SCS turning +1 Arrows into Masterwork ones; guessing not many people actually play with PoT's.
We spend some time scouring the map, but as options dry up, I figure we're strong enough to advance the plot.
Mulahey stands no chance by now, of course, and falls to a Stonefist by N.
Spoiler
On our return to Nashkel, a charmed Oublekis no match for Nimbul, yielding a cool 3000 gold.
We swiftly avenge the former, and equally swiftly head north to dismantle Tranzig.
Larswood and Peldvale go by in a blur; the local Druids have no defense against Silence 15' Radius, and they're the only significant treat here, though we do take a bit of a beating by the large spawns of Black Talon Elites.
As always, we set up a kill zone at the south-eastern edge of the Bandit Camp map: Venkt comes charging in pretty early on, but gets snagged by a Web, and the rest is just cleanup.
Spoiler
Cloakwood can be dangerous, so we'll beef up a little more beforehand.
We start clearing the western seaboard: Several Ice Lances help make short work of the Sirenes in Droth's area.
On our way to the Lighthouse, we get ambushed by Molkar and his cronies.
There seems to be a slight bug here, as Halacan starts casting Sleep, but apparently gets interrupted by Molkar initiating dialogue. It doesn't affect anything as Halacan gets Commanded a fraction of a second later and subsequently put down (before his spell would've finished), but still. Of course, the outcome is never in doubt.
Spoiler
We can muster several (3 HD versions, but still) Skeleton Warriors by now, so the two big Siren groups at the Lighthouse can offer little resistance, especially when also confronted with Web and Detect Invisibility.
FI has enough magic arrows to take down the Flesh Golems, and we loot the cave unimpeded.
On our way back to civilization, the Amazons put in an appearance.
The enemy Clerics here are just too low-level to be much of a threat on their own, so we just focus the Thieves down (popping a Detect Invisiblity at the start to prevent any backstabs), and can then take our time with the cleanup.
Spoiler
There's still a few areas left on the eastern side of the map.
Narcillicus fails to put up spell defenses and is easily undone by a single Ice Lance.
We then carefully map out the entirety of Mutamin's Garden, and send in Korax with Skeleton Warrior and Living Warrior (our own fighters...) backup, resulting in a resounding victory. Though by now the experience is barely enough to get anyone a level.
Spoiler
One problem with completely random runs is Thief skill points.
More precisely, your Thief may turn out not to be much of a Thief at all.
This is the case for us, where FT can't pick a lock to save his life, and is equally likely to disarm a trap as step in it.
Unfortunately, this means we can't really do Durlag's yet, since we'd need something like 12 Potions of Perception (probably more like 16...) to clear the whole thing, and I'm not sure there are that many in the game.
We'll have to wait a while and hope for some luck with level-ups, but for now we can at least clear the above-ground areas: The Chromatic Orb trap guarding the balcony deals very little damage, after all, and only induces Blindness for one round on a failed save.
We do leave the Ghost (we still only have 3 HD Skeleton Warriors that can't even hurt him, and our only real melee presence is FI who has no HP to speak of), as well as Kirinhale (who isn't that dangerous but can be difficult to hit) for now.
Here's a picture of FT trying and failing to disarm a Lightning Bolt trap, and coming perilously close to frying himself permanently. Yes... best to return at a later date.
Spoiler
OK! We've gathered quite a bit of experience and gear, so Cloakwood should be a breeze.
Though it is not so much a breeze as a cloying carpet of bugs, given that Senyad has time to finish a spell before our triple Silence 15' Radius lands and stymies further attempts.
Spoiler
That spell is very brutal for our low-HP party: We have to quaff about 2/3 of our potion supply to keep everyone alive, but we do succeed.
We move on to clear out Centeol: FC gets Protection from Fire and the rest is, as they say, fiery history.
Spoiler
Passing through the local Shadow Druid estuary, Silence 15' Radius once again proves its worth; we leave the Archdruid alone for now, since our only Club wielder is PoT (and he's not really expected to contribute much beyond his spellworks).
We clear out the Wyvern cave as well, then turn back around: We're low on supplies, and I want another Wand of Fire before we proceed, just for insurance.
So, I said we'd return to the topic of Undead Wolves. Yep, you guessed it: Wolf of Ulcaster is Undead too. And yep, it is equally vulnerable to Hold Undead as Dread Wolves. Hah!
Spoiler
That little trick really turned an otherwise quite tough fight into a cakewalk.
Fully Wand of Fire-reinforced, we head back into Cloakwood. Can we, for once, deal with Drasus without everything becoming touch-and-go?
Spoiler
Why yes... yes, we apparently can.
Part of it is that our kitted Clerics hit L7 a little while ago, and the 5 HD Skeleton Warriors are no joke: They swiftly take down Drasus on their own.
But another part of it is that this time, our Skeleton Warriors got backup by 2x Web and 2x Stinking Cloud.
I've noticed that Rezdan seems to prefer MSD over MGoI, probably because he's lower-level than Kysus: Sure enough, Rezdan settled for MSD this time around too.
The hopeless plate-wearing axe-thrower whose name escapes me is of course also entirely vulnerable to this approach, and Kysus just can't hold off an Undead army on his own. The worst that happened was a single stray Lightning Bolt which hit PoT wearing the Boots of Grounding, dealing 10 damage. Great success.
We push on into the mines. I forego playing fair: Hareishan and her gaggle of guards feel the full force of a Fireball barrage, all of them dropping instantly, and the Ogre Mage is as vulnerable as ever to Command.
I send in PoT under Storm Shield against Natasha: Natasha doesn't know what to do (Storm Shield means immunity to pretty much all her big spells, like Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Sunfire, Cone of Cold), so she goes for a Slow. Which gives us time to pop in through the door, tear down her protections, then unceremoniously stun her with a Chromatic Orb. Haw-haw.
Spoiler
Alright, Big D awaits.
Same procedure as every time. Send an invisible party member forward until D gives his speech, then withdraw: Hastily kill off the Battle Horrors, then turn around and deal with five waves of guards. Once that's over with, just refuse to fight on D's terms: Let him eat Skeleton Warriors.
Spoiler
Alright... drum roll, please. D gave us just enough experience for our warriors to hit Fighter level 6. Can we repeat the L3 miracle?!
Spoiler
I guess it was too much to hope for.
That depressing screenshot is FC wasting a pip on Sword and Shield Style; she won't see a specialization until a bit into BG2EE at the earliest.
FI got a bit luckier, and put a pip in Axe. Which isn't a bad weapon at all, but I'd have been much happier if he'd managed a second specialization, or even a pip in Two-Weapon Style.
FT got Longsword, which also isn't terrible, but I feel like we have enough non-specialized proficiencies by now...
But that's just the name of the game we choose to play! Stiff upper lip and so on.
We flood the mines, and Baldur's Gate itself is now open to us. N is long overdue for some scroll scribing, having hit L7 but lacking L4 spells, but I'd like to cut back on INT-potion spending if possible: Let's do Ice Island for the Stoneskin scroll first, and get it all in one go.
Again, I see no reason to tangle with Andris' cohorts: They get some Fireballs and drop immediately, while Andris flees the field.
Upon his return, he proves very annoying, and starts summoning Lesser Elementals, which really only FC can tank (moderately) safely... ultimately, Andris goes down, but I have to resort to Wands of Frost, so we loose out on his Remove Magic scroll.
Which is fine, since FI won't have much use of it for a while, and there's another one available for N from the Red Wizards.
Spoiler
I re-apply my tactic from the last run against Garan; as we lack any kind of Ranger or even Druid this time around, we utilize the ring from Cloakwood to charm the Polar Bear. Works swimmingly, though the poor Polar Bear bites it soon after owing to the Ankhegs.
Spoiler
Cuchol is just stripped of his protections via Spell Thrust and treated to a Wand of Paralyzation charge.
Tellan's script goes wonky as usual, in that he tries to kill off the Winter Wolves... tries so hard, in fact, he doesn't bother to do anything against the five Skeleton Warriors chopping him down, and so proves no obstacle whatsoever.
Dezkiel lasts all but two rounds, and that's it: Ice Island cleared, Stoneskin aquired.
On the subject of maxing available spell scrolls before committing to a scribing session, let's also pick up that Remove Magic from the Red Wizards.
The massive spider colony just gets Fireballs, and Denak's followers are treated to a nightmarish combination of Stinking Cloud, Web and Cloud of Pestilence. Denak himself proves a right pain as always, but by the time he disposes of most of the Skeleton Warriors, he's out of big spells, so we just tank a bunch of Acid Arrows and Magic Missiles, and that's all he had left.
Spoiler
There we go. We arrive in Baldur's Gate, and both N and FI get a massive number of new spells.
FI gets the DEX tome (it would've made zero difference for FT, literally no bonus at all to his Thief skills), and is now guaranteed to reach 18 DEX with a single Cat's Grace.
We start clearing the city: To my annoyance, Niemain kills himself and two of his three fellows using his Wand of Fire... he really should be less aggressive with it, or at the least stick with the Scorcher charge (but I'm guessing he'd still roast his friends if he did that).
Most of the city goes according to plan, though Sunin proves more annoying than usual.
Ultimately we resort to several Scorcher to bring him down, since I didn't want to risk more Elementals on the field.
Spoiler
We also manage to stun Lothander before he can bugger off, netting FI a set of boots. Good!
The WIS tome goes to PoL: I debated how to distribute the WIS boosts with myself a bit. PoT would be pointless as he'd only get a few first level spells out of it, but FC would get several second levels (DUHM). Ultimately, I think we'll be getting more use out of another third level slot on a pure Cleric (Animate dead) as well as an extra Recitation/Death Ward/PfE 10' Radius... so I'm aiming for long-term over short-term.
We're almost done with the city, and to finish it off in style, FT for once gets a decent backstab in. That's BG2EE-levels of damage (he didn't backstab with Spider's Bane, I switched weapons right after the backstab).
Spoiler
Just Ramazith to go. He's as underwhelming as ever, only getting off a Summon Shadow before loosing his defences and consequently his life.
Spoiler
A long update, so I'll cap it off here. Next time, we'll deal with some TotSC content for real, probably starting with Balduran's Isle: I want to import the Chain Mail +3 given FT's obscenely low STR score.
If we keep casting Cat's Grace on FT, he'll eventually roll a 7 (out of 8) and get to 20 DEX, which nets him 60 Find Traps... so two Potions of Perception will be enough to handle everything, and we should be able to swing that based on potion availability.
Thus, we will hopefully be able to clear the remaining content absent trap-induced death.
I'd also like some feedback, if anyone feels so inclined: I've yet to use either the CON or INT tome, owing to decision paralysis.
Let's look at the INT tome first, since it's easier.
N would go from 18 to 19 INT: Upside is that he no longer has any limit on number of spells, but still requires two potions to hit 24 INT (though this drops to one come ToB with the Ioun Stone and/or Machine of Lum The Mad).
FI would go from 14 to 15 INT: He would still need three potions for 24 INT, but they can now all be Potions of Mind Focusing in a pinch. He'll also (very, very long-term but still) be able to reach 16 base INT, for slightly improved Mind Flayer resistance.
I'm leaning towards letting FI have it.
The CON tome is trickier.
Giving it to N or PoL is entirely pointless.
PoT: Immediate +10 HP in total, with another possible +10 HP come ToB; you could even have him wear an Ioun Stone for +1 CON and give the Machine-boost to someone else. He already has 14 CON, so (at absolute most) +3 CON won't affect his Shorty saving throws.
FI: Goes from 12 to 13, for no immediate boost. Come ToB, he can go from 13 to 14, to 15, or even 16 (if he gets absurdly lucky and places another pip in Axe for Axe of the Unyielding, which we can absolutely not bank on). He's at least guaranteed to eventually get +1 to all saves since he'll reach the 14 CON threshhold, and if we want to dedicate his head slot to an Ioun Stone, he can get a small HP boost. Then again, he'll probably be using the Belt for all of BG2EE and ToB, so maybe he doesn't need the boost at all?
FT: Same deal as FI really, but he gets +1 to all saves immediately from reaching 14 CON, and gets a slightly more substantial HP boost (long-term).
FC: Activates passive regeneration, and ultimately a very small HP boost.
I can't decide. FI won't really depend so much on saves or for that matter HP once we roll into ToB, so from that perspective it'd be better on FT or FC. But PoT is quite vulnerable, so maybe shoring up his HP would be the right move? Or maybe letting FC reach the cusp of 24 CON (with DUHM) earlier is also worthwhile? And she does get a tiny amount of extra base HP in the long run. Decisions, decisions.
For now, let's just summarize party stats, and think on the above for a while. Next time: Finishing BG1EE and hopefully not dying in ludicrous fashion in early BG2EE.
Spoiler
Protagonist
Necromancer, L8 True Neutral Human Necromancer
STR 11 DEX 13 CON 17 INT 18 WIS 17 CHA 11
Dagger * Dart *
Fighter/Cleric, L6/L6 Lawful Neutral Dwarven Fighter/Cleric
STR 17 DEX 10 CON 19 INT 11 WIS 14 CHA 9
Mace * Quarterstaff * Sling * War Hammer * Single-Weapon Style * Sword and Shield Style *
Fighter/Thief, L6/L7 Neutral Good Halfling Fighter/Thief
STR 9 DEX 13 CON 13 INT 16 WIS 16 CHA 9
Crossbow * Long Sword * Two-Handed Sword ** Quarterstaff * Single Weapon Style *
PP 50 OL 20 FT 45 MS 45 HiS 50 DI 35 ST 30
Fighter/Illusionist, L6/L6 Lawful Good Gnome Fighter/Illusionist
STR 11 DEX 17 CON 12 INT 14 WIS 9 CHA 17
Axe * Bastard Sword * Dagger * Longbow * Mace **
Priest of Talos, L7 Chaotic Neutral Dwarven Priest of Talos
STR 14 DEX 11 CON 14 INT 12 WIS 11 CHA 15
Club * Quarterstaff * War Hammer *
Priest of Lathander, L7 Chaotic Good Half-Orc Priest of Lathander
STR 14 DEX 13 CON 11 INT 12 WIS 16 CHA 13
Flail / Morning Star * Two-Handed Weapon Style * Two-Weapon Style *
@aldain That's a very nice fighter/cleric there! Imo one of the strongest multiclasses with access to IWD spells such as entropy shield. Granted, some of the others have very poor stats, but the party seems viable at least. We shall (hopefully) see how this many clerics will perform in later parts of the game, especially regarding their damage output, which has traditionally been their weakness.
Good going so far!
We start clearing the city: To my annoyance, Niemain kills himself and two of his three fellows using his Wand of Fire... he really should be less aggressive with it, or at the least stick with the Scorcher charge (but I'm guessing he'd still roast his friends if he did that).
Yeah, he did that in my run as well. I was quite surprised, most enemies don't engage in friendly to that degree.
Trio 69 Update 15 - FINAL Update!
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger - FALLEN (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Solstice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
So we had to re-do Draconis and pocket plane challenges #2 and #3 due to a pocket plane lockup last session. First we engaged Draconis. We attempted to do firestorm on him again but he buffetted summons and somehow found Coreranger despite Coreranger being well out of sight. So Coreranger ran and healed. Rest of party was trying summons and spells and Coreranger was trying GWW with his +4 throwing axe when he got a chance - success!
We made sure to quicksave this time (we did quicksaves often to try to prevent loss of progress due to the buggy pocket plane mechanic in multi-player). We carefully made our way through Abizigal's lair, getting the scroll of reversal for the dragon guarding Abby's lair. We used cold resistance and Wave Halberd on the Salamanders. It took a while to get through the human form of Abby but we did. Summons then kept the dragon form distracted while party did spells and range. Coreranger's party members have a vast amount of spells, but poor Coreranger has none due to being a fallen ranger. Success once again.
We then formed the big metal unit with Impish using the scorcher ammunition. Then Saemon took us inside though we ran past the enemies in the way. We prepped for Balthsazar but he was hard. For one, he can kill mordy swords and planetars and also his buffets were causing problems. However through careful play we were victorious once again.
We then dealt with Ravager - we tried to stay at range. Ravager was near death but not before poor Solstice died to summons attacking him. His party killed Ravager shortly thereafter. The planetar was nice enough to raise Solstice and heal him. We tried to go to Melissan but was told we weren't ready! Oh, we do need to do challenges #2 and #3 after all. The key for #2 is kill Coreranger doppleganger quick - if that's done rest of the enemies are usually straight-forard enough and they were. For pocket plane #3 challenge, if the protagonist has good AC (plus Coreranger used hardiness and stoneskin from boots too) then the Slay dies easily enough and this time was no exception.
What's remarkable is in our Trio is the last time we had made it to Melissan was back when we were a QUAD when Dogdancing was playing with us. This proved to be our undoing, as basically we had no practice or experience fighting Melissan together.
So for the 1st fight there was a death tyrant and Melissan. The Death Tyrant was an absolute genius this fight. Almost immediately Impish was taken out of the fight as the Death Tyrant petrified Impish! Uh, oh.
Just as bad somehow Solstice got hit with miscast magic and couldn't cast any spells. So all that was left was for a FALLEN ranger to somehow win, but Coreranger died quickly himself - RIP Coreranger.
While it was a great run, it was also a disappointing finish. Time to roll some new lambs to the slaughter!
No-Hope Necromancer: A Random Run, Part 2
Previous part found here
Next part found here
Spoiler
So, we were set on conquering Balduran's Isle, for the simple reason that FT is a bit of a wimp and just can't handle armor heavier than a light southern breeze.
Having aquired the sea charts, we set sail, and slowly work our way up the Wolfwere ship.
There are so many enemies on some of the levels here that I only dare let FC and FI at them; the former will sometimes swap targets and start running around so we cannot risk the frailer party members.
Having reached the top floor and Karoug, a bit of bad luck: Daese turns completely uninterruptible, and has time for two carefully selected spells before exploding into Wolfwere form. I don't recall the first, probably it was nothing major, but the Confusion that followed certainly was.
Spoiler
She landed it smack-dab in the center of the back line; it was pure luck that both N and PoL made their saves, with PoT not being so fortunate. Now PoT is Confused while wielding a sling (so +4 To Hit and Damage for melee enemies) while in melee range of a Wolfwere.
I realized afterwards that I needn't have panicked so hard: PoT dying would be a huge bother, but we'd just haul him back to the mainland and raise him. Still, we made a concerted effort, and somehow managed to divert the other Wolfweres while killing the one smacking PoT just before the latter would've dropped. With the situation just barely under control, we eventually also brought Karoug down, mostly thanks to FI since FC had no means of injuring a Greater Wolfwere, beyond hoping its Magic Resistance would fail against a Wand of the Heavens.
Spoiler
Oh, for posterity: There are three damage types as regards traps in the Wolfwere ship. Fire, Lightning and a solitary Spike Trap (the latter only dealing about 10 damage so can be effectively ignored).
Might be useful to know if you, as we, lack a Thief that can fulfill his intended role.
Anyway, back on the mainland, we manage to keep Mendas interrupted until he explodes into Loup Garou form, and then it's just a matter of time.
Spoiler
I also found out that there is actually a use for Balduran's Logbook: Sell it at Sorcerous Sundries for 5000 gold (and the Butter Knife for 500 gold).
I always had those pegged as just curiosity/backstory items.
Durlag's yet remains, and we've vacuumed the Sword Coast for Potions of Perception. We should have just about enough to be able to get us through the game, provided we do not waste any, so let's move with purpose.
Clearing the Ghost and Kirinhale is easy enough, as is the Warder level... now for the Warders themselves.
We buff up with everything we've got, including a few STR potions, and have at it.
Fear dies in the first round: We get lucky with some ranged criticals, and everyone is using magical ammunition.
Avarice only has time to go invisible once before being taken down by FI.
Meanwhile, Skeleton Warriors are occupying Pride, and FC has landed several good hits on Love while under the protection of the Greenstone Amulet.
With FI and FT now free to join the melee, Love succumbs almost instantly; and by the time we turn our attention to Pride, he's only managed to down two Skeleton Warriors, and one of them even gets the final blow in.
Spoiler
I realized afterwards this was because the whole fight didn't take more than 5-6 rounds.
Bad stats or not, when properly buffed three warrior-types with good weaponry really hurt.
Next level (the one with all the Dopplegangers) goes by in a blur, as we're pressing a bit to ensure we can clear one whole level per batch of Potions of Perception.
Same goes for the Greater Wyvern level, it's a bit slower owing to huge numbers of enemies but we reliably punch through.
Around here I gave up figuring out the optimal distribution of tomes and just went with CON on FC and INT on FI; I didn't see any way to get an immediate noticable boost out of them anyway.
This time around, there are no unfortunate incidents at the Chess Board: Nearly the entire enemy force drops to a Fireball barrage, leaving us free to take down the King at our leisure.
Spoiler
The final level is also quite simple: You have to watch out for the Greater Ghouls as their damage can really pile up (and Potions of Freedom are nice here), but we use Skeleton Warriors to help us progress rapidly.
With the area cleared, we've attained what we came here for: Krotan's Skullcrusher +2.
There aren't many (any?) good maces available early in BG2, and I don't want to have to pay for Mauler's Arm as our early gold will be severely strained anyway, so I'd rather just import one.
On our way back to Baldur's Gate, we actually take out Kahrk too. I forgot myself and threw an Ice Lance at him when he was nearly dead, and so lost out on the loot. Unfortunate, as I was half hoping he'd defy the odds and drop an Invisibility, 10' Radius scroll.
OK, we're in the endgame. The Iron Throne party is swiftly dismantled: Thieves dragged into the southern room first and disposed of, then hastened and buffed Skeleton Warriors thin out the enemy ranks substantially before we charge in.
Result: FT takes a few arrows from Zhalimar and that's about it.
Spoiler
Back to Candlekeep, and N quaffs a Potion of Invisibility while the rest of the party deals with the Ogre Magi ambush.
We descend into the crypts, where PoL gets the WIS tome, and FC gets the STR tome.
Prat and his gang are quite helpless against a hasted party backed up by Skeleton Warriors, and we exit the crypts unimpeded.
Spoiler
Back in Baldur's Gate, Cythandria actually lands a Sunfire on a few party members: We charged in after she managed to (with able help from Urgh and Argh) dispose of our Skeleton Warriors, and she still had some spells left... but no one even died, much less got chunked, so it's still a win.
We snuck in and out of the Flaming Fist headquarters since I saw no point in risking (though it's not that dangerous) a battle given that we're at the cap; Invisibility on N and FI, Sanctuary on FC/PoL/PoT, and just plain stealth for FT.
Slythe and Krystin were also brought low rather quickly, though Krystin managed to confuse PoL.
We followed him closely with PoT to ensure no innocents got attacked, though it doesn't really matter by now.
And so the palace.
This also goes entirely to plan: We focus down the Shaman almost instantly, then turn our tender mercies on the Mage. Who of course manages to survive a few rounds owing to heavy defenses, but those same defenses give out fairly quickly; all we suffer in return is a single Remove Magic which didn't even strip any of our buffs.
FT took a good lick from the Assassin, but once revealed, the latter didn't last very long.
Meanwhile, Skeleton Warriors dealt with the rank-and-file Greater Dopplegangers, and both dukes handily survived.
Spoiler
With only 3 Potions of Perception remaining, we do navigate the maze successfully.
Time for a bit of a scare, then: Rahvin and cronies.
I thought I'd be brutal about it and just Fireball them all into oblivion. Worked, kind of... except as is usually the case, Shaldrissa somehow lived through it and set about counter-attacking.
Spoiler
... Good thing FT had a clear aura; I deemed it worthwhile to pop a Potion of Magic Shielding on him.
Shaldrissa is no slouch, and stays alive for a bizarrely long time before we're able to bring her down.
Spoiler
Tamoko is talked down, and we prepare for the final battle.
FC, FI and FT apply a PfM scroll, then every potion is brought forth: Agility/Fortitude/Storm Giant Strength/Heroism/Power/Invulnerability/Speed. N makes himself immune, via protection scrolls, to everything (Fire/Cold/Acid/Electricity), and the Clerics will just try to stay alive.
Behind a wall of walking bones, we advance.
Tazok is the first to go, but we get hit by two Remove Magic, one on FC, one on FT. Bizarrely, the one on FC fails to dispel anything, while the one on FT dispels everything.
Spoiler
Angelo keeps hounding the now unbuffed FT, but PfM is running, so there's little the former can really do.
FT runs around and reapplies potions, while FC helps FI finish off Diarmid.
Spoiler
N comes out of hiding to tear down Angelo's defenses, and we exploit the gap adeptly: Two Wand of the Heaven charges, along with Angelo's Stoneskins breaking, are sufficient.
Spoiler
Semaj is being a real pest, frequently going invisible, and even summons an Air Elemental (yes, the L6 arcane version): These are rather nasty now with SCS owing to their Whirlwinds. However, Semaj does not have PfNM up, so an Arrow of Dispelling seems a good choice.
Spoiler
FI being low on buffs is because one of the Skeleton Warriors was packing its own Arrows of Dispelling... in the future, we'll clear each Skeleton Warrior immediately as it appears, since that was a rather unpleasant surprise.
With all other threats gone, we utilize our wands to quickly take down the rogue Air Elemental, then turn on Sarevok.
Who hangs on quite a bit longer than usual, since none of our warriors are specialized in their ranged weaponry... but still, there's nothing Sarevok can really do.
Spoiler
A mostly clean BG1EE run, finished.
Good timing too, as I'll be out of town for the rest of the week; it'll give me a chance to map out the early parts of the BG2 part of the run in detail.
This go-around, I certainly won't use slot-conserving tactics against the bloody Pirates... let's see how it goes come the next update.
Trio 70 - update 1 Deja - human totemic druid (Grond0)
Kerb - dwarf berserker (Gate70)
Corezerk V - dwarf berserker (Corey_Russell)
Previous run
Our run last week had ended with a few minutes of the session remaining and those were put to use by rolling up new characters ready for today's session. The immediate generation of characters was relevant as both Gate70 and Corey_Russell decided independently to relieve the frustration resulting from a near miss at the Throne by breaking a few heads with dwarven berserkers . Meanwhile, I rolled my normal random character - and ended up with the same totemic druid used in the previous run. Oh well, I would say that practice makes perfect but the performance of the Trio over the years suggests that may not be entirely true .
With the starting save already made we were able to dive straight into the action in Candlekeep before heading off to find Shoal. On arrival there we noted that Corezerk had not felt able to afford a helmet in Candlekeep and Deja asked if he felt up to taking one from Ogre Droth. He didn't seem keen on that idea though, so we just shot down Shoal for the easy XP.
Spoiler
Next we did a few chores in Beregost - everyone picking up a first level there by talking down Marl. We also targeted Silke. She survived just long enough to release a lightning bolt, but that was aimed at a spirit snake which was correctly positioned to send the lightning harmlessly off into the distance.
Spoiler
Heading south to Nashkel we shut Noober's mouth permanently before enjoying a bit of action at the Carnival. With 2 berserkers in the party it seemed safe enough to take on Zordral there - his horror sent a spirit summons running, but the berserkers just laughed as they cut him down.
Spoiler
Kerb had already broken at least 2 longswords by this point, so Deja decided to seek out Greywolf to provide a more durable sword. His attacks showed that the berserkers' defences were not yet great and Deja took on the job of running him in circles to be shot down - providing everyone with another level. Kerb was still breaking a dual-wielded sword though, so the next target was Meilum's sword - Meilum managed to see off a spirit, but made no inroads on the berserkers.
Spoiler
A trip through the Cloud Peaks was fairly uneventful, but allowed Deja to push his charisma to 16 and get a small discount from shops. Corezerk already had the ankheg armor and took the bracers from the ogrillons to boost his dexterity (he is the most melee-minded of the group). Dealing with Bjornin's half-ogres provided Corezerk with a magic shield to further boost his chances in melee.
After dealing with a few more chores in Beregost, we headed up to the FAI to show Landrin the size of the spiders found in his house. Purchasing Buckley's Buckler there allowed Kerb and Corezerk the opportunity to regenerate naturally rather than relying on Deja's healing skills.
By this stage I expected that the sirines at the Lighthouse area would be no problem - and that proved to be the case. Corezerk and Kerb used their rage to each tank one of the groups and ensure they didn't resort to firing arrows. Inside the pirate cave the first 2 golems went down pretty easily and the 3rd duly followed, though it managed a couple of weighty blows.
Spoiler
Some more sirines were dealt with in Shoal's area on the way back north to the ankheg area. They were cleared with no real problems and speaking to the farmer there took our reputation up to 20. That prompted a shopping trip, first to Ulgoth's Beard and then Beregost. Corezerk got full plate there to further reinforce him, while Deja decided we had enough money to justify the luxury of purchasing the dagger of venom.
We travelled back south to the Nashkel Mine and will enter that next time.
Totemic druid 6, 55 HPs, 31 kills
Berserker (G70), 68 HPs, 93 kills, 0 deaths
Berserker (CR), 61 HPs, 64 kills, 0 deaths
HPs are excellent so far, with Deja picking up 55 out of a possible 60 and Kerb 68 out of a possible 75 - hopefully that's a good omen for the run .
No-Hope Necromancer: A Random Run, Part 3
Previous part found here
Spoiler
We successfully import into BG2 with correct HP across the board (hooray!), and set about clearing Jon's dungeon.
An issue immediately rears its ugly head, one I imagine we'll keep butting heads with: FT is miserable at everything, but in particular, he's really not much of a Thief.
Spoiler
Sitting pretty at 25 Open Locks and 45 Find Traps since BG1...
There's no way we're going to be able to afford keeping him topped up with Potions of Perception/Master Thievery, so we'll be relying heavily on getting a 7+ roll from Cat's Grace to get him to 20 DEX (requiring spending most of our L2 arcane slots on Cat's Grace since that's a 1 in 4 chance per cast), and even so we'll likely end up sending FC to trigger some traps since we just can't disarm then. Locks we'll have to manage with DUHM/Strength of Stone and bashing, since again, we won't have the L2 arcane slots to fit Knock in there as well... let's hope FT manages some good luck on his next couple of Thief level-ups to mitigate this.
Equally disheartened and annoyed, we proceed. This time I remembered to prepare a few Commands for the Ogre Mage, so there's that at least.
Everything managed to import as expected: Helm of Balduran, Chain Mail +3 and Krotan's Skullcrusher, so at least we have a solitary melee damage dealer (though FI can't take a hit, at all).
Beyond FT tripping a 47 damage Spike Trap, nearly killing himself, the dungeon proceeds smoothly, and we exit to some level-ups.
Normally, I'd be quite adamant about saving every penny for a magic license and then bribing reputation up (while also saving everything we can sell to dump it all at the Priestess of Sekolah later), but given that we're actually trying to survive this one, I'll be a bit more lenient.
Or so I thought... the plan was to buy a Potion of Genius to scribe an Invisibility, 10' Radius scroll on FI to make us essentially immune to the early streak of ambushes.
Except there are no such scrolls for sale in Waukeen's Promenade. This will make things difficult.
We content ourselves with purchasing a few Scroll Cases after clearing the Circus, rest up, and depart for the Slums.
Clearing the local Slavers goes alright (we make sure to buy the Scroll Case from Bernard before freeing Hendak).
We take a lot of damage at times, owing to our poor AC, but when buffed up we do a good job of fending off almost anything; FI sports Wraith Form so is immune to non-magical weaponry when we need him to be.
Spoiler
So, no ambushes yet, and as we make our way to Watcher's Keep, there you have it: Invisibility, 10' Radius is available from Sister Galvena! Three copies in fact, though we are content with purchasing one; since it's an Illusion spell, FI requires only a single Potion of Genius to scribe it with 100% success rate.
Of course, it doesn't do much good if you don't bother scribing and then memorizing it, which I neglected to do straight away since we lacked a Potion of Genius: On our way back it's just N and FT that travel under single-target Invisibility, and we suffer the consequencues of our neglect.
Spoiler
A slightly better roll on that backstab could've spelled the permanent end of FI, an omen of things to come as the battle is actually a very close shave.
N got reduced to 8 HP at one point, owing to Melf's Minute Meteors being very efficient against someone with no DEX bonus and no armor, and then narrowly avoided a possible death by backstab thanks to a critical miss.
Spoiler
Far too close for comfort. We make a beeline for the Temple of Ilmater in the Slums, pick up the requisite potion, and immediately scribe our most vital scroll.
This incident just goes to show how very weak we are, and so we take no risks against Prebek and Sanasha; I find an initial Chaos here is usually a good choice, as typically at least one (with good odds, both) of them will fail their save.
Spoiler
There aren't that many appropriate strongholds for a weak party with a Thief that can't do much thieving, so we settle on Umar Hills as our first major quest. Valygar's Ranger guardians drop a Summon Hakeashar scroll, which is nice.. assuming we live long enough to use it.
We advance towards the temple, clearing the Shadows outside with some arcane firepower.
The interior is more precarious; the first spawn is not so bad, it's just a bunch of regular Shadows/Shade Wolves and two Skeleton Warriors, perfectly doable with light buffs.
Thankfully, we're far too low level to get a Lich in here, and to my surprise, we perform quite well with a full complement of buffs: Even two Bone Golems (the one hiding out to the south will join the fray when you engage the first group) at once doesn't pose a significant obstacle, though we do need to hurry in bringing them down as their damage can really add up otherwise.
The Greater Mummies can be a real pain since they require +3 weaponry, but we came prepared: Flame Strike and lots of Magic Missiles are effective.
Spoiler
OK. Time for some more touch and go: The Shade Lord. We buff with everything we can think of, including Death Ward on all characters that can't protect themselves against spellworks (so everyone but N and FI), since the Shade Lord gets to cast at least one Finger of Death.
Now, SCS Shade Lord is quite nasty, especially since I play with the "Remove all ammunition from containers" compoment: No killing the Shadow Altar with a single Sunstone Bullet, but rather it needs to be ground down.
While doing this, the Shade Lord runs (slowly, but still) amok with Black Blade of Disaster, protected by Blade Barrier, Spell Turning and Mantle (or Improved Mantle even? I forget), which it renews every so often; seems to be about every 6 - 8 rounds?
We don't even know Breach yet, but we can at least tear down the Spell Turning, since N knows Secret Word.
Oh, and there's also the Darkling Aura, periodically level draining everyone in range.
Really, this is a pretty harsh encounter, and even with 2 1/2 Clerics, our divine slots are stretched to the breaking point.
Even so, we manage to take down the Altar without losing anyone, and after quickly clearing out the remaining Shadows, start focusing on the Shade Lord.
Spoiler
A lot of things are working against us: We absolutely need Skeleton Warriors to take pressure off our mostly fragile frontliners, but every time the Shade Lord kills one, another Shadow pops up that we need to deal with (the STR drain can really bork us).
Also, the Shade Lord's Magic Resistance kicks in a few times too many, making it difficult to deal damage... then FT drops to 1 HP from the Blade Barrier and has to retreat, and FI gets level drained since we're out of Negative Plane Protection.
Oh, and the Shade Lord also heals itself using Black Blade of Disaster. Ugh.
I'm starting to think we might have to flee (can you even flee from this encounter?), but our very last Magic Missile finally punches through and ends things in our favour, just as we were on the ropes. Again... way, way too close for comfort.
Spoiler
Still, the monetary reward is decent, and we now (having bought an arcane license first thing we did) have enough cash to bribe reputation up to 17, and so can start handing in reputation quests! None of which net us even a single point. Boh!
At a bit of a loss as to what to do next, we have Mencar and buddies (N is L11 now so we have the 7 HD Skeleton Warriors available, greatly simplifying this encounter) yield a set of Full Plate for FC, though Mencar himself is quite deadly in close combat, dismantling nearly all our summons and putting severe hurt on FC.
Spoiler
We then clear the above-grounds Graveyard and the first part of the below-grounds; I wanted to clear the southern dungeons too, but that would've required a rest, which means returning at night, which means refusing Bodhi's offer, which means Vampires attacking rather than leaving us alone... so no. We return to the Copper Coronet instead.
And here the party can presently be found. Just before returning, our frontliners hit Fighter level 9.
The bad news: FC got a single pip in Club, and FT got a single pip in Warhammer. So... both useless.
The semi-good news: FI got a single pip in Two-Weapon Fighting! I'll take the -2 THAC0 for 1 extra mainhand APR, thank you (he'll be wielding Belm when we get it, so you can pretty much ignore the off-hand attack since it'll be so awful for him).
The question is what to do now. We really need to update our spell selection, but we don't have many good scrolls yet.
My plan is probably to go for De'Arnise Keep: It's fairly easy, excepting the two Yuan-Ti Mages in the cellar, and there's a Breach scroll there, as well as a good deal of gold for the taking.
Clearing the Bridge House Party will then net us another Breach scroll, and I can shell out a little cash for Spell Immunity and Improved Haste off the Bridge Cutpurse... that, along with the scrolls we already have, should set us up nicely.
We'll see how we go; current party stats are in the spoiler, for those interested.
Spoiler
Protagonist
Necromancer, L11 Human Necromancer, 73 HP (12 from Familiar)
Dagger *, Dart *
Fighter/Cleric, L9/L9 Dwarven Fighter/Cleric, 131 HP (5 from Helm of Balduran)
War Hammer *, Club *, Mace *, Quarterstaff *, Sling *, Sword and Shield Style *, Single-Weapon Style *
Fighter/Illusionist, L9/L10 Gnome Fighter/Illusionist, 65 HP
Bastard Sword *, Axe *, Dagger *, Mace **, Longbow *, Two-Weapon Style *
Fighter/Thief, L9/L11 Halfling Fighter/Thief, 76 HP
Long Sword *, Two-Handed Sword **, War Hammer *, Quarterstaff *, Crossbow *, Single-Weapon Style *
Priest of Lathander, L10 Half-Orc Priest of Lathander, 74 HP
Flail/Morning Star *, Sling *, Two-Handed Weapon Style *, Two-Weapon Style *
Priest of Talos, L10 Dwarven Priest of Talos, 74 HP
War Hammer *, Club *, Quarterstaff *, Two-Weapon Style *
Comments
Madalena the Conjurer, Update 18
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
Stronghold 1, The Druid Grove:
This one went very well. Trolls are easy to take down, fire damage is involved in Firetooth anyway, we just have to make sure not to get destroyed by flamestrikes or greater commands (unholy blight, the third spirit troll spell, is not that big of a threat due to our very mixed alignments). For safety, Madalena herself has chaotic commands and protection from fire. Once we make our way to the druids, we're mostly trying to avoid any insect plagues and are quite successful at that. The one spell we're unable to stop is a call lightning on Madalena - a spell that already killed one of us in SoD. However, Madalena wisely had MSD going (so I am a bit surprised she was even the target), but in the case of the multi-round nature of call lightning, MSD doesn't stop the entire spell - only the first 3 hits. But that gave me enough time to drink a potion of absorption (those are a bit rare in SoA, but I just bought one from the trademeet genies because their inventory is going to disappear soon):
Stronghold 2, De'Arnise Keep
Since we haven't had too much trouble with the trolls, I decide to visit De'Arnise keep next. Another ambush, another double chaos:
Stronghold 3, Mae'Var's Guild
Well, this one's easy given our access to true sight. Rayic Gethras is the only real obstacle, but he doesn't go hostile quickly enough as we excuse ourselves for just barging in - enough time for our two thieves to set down enough traps to get him with the poison damage:
Stronghold 4, Firkraag's Dungeon
This one didn't go too well... We take down the first group of golems relatively easily and Nechtan goes on a solo mission with Azuredge and a protection from undead scroll (plus some potion buffs) to hunt down the various vampires. However, as we run into the second golem group, not exactly very well prepared, they quickly punch their way through our summons and hunt us down. We're partly slowed, ill-prepared and as I make plans to get out of this situation by drinking potions of invisibility, Madhava goes down before being able to drink his potion:
Stronghold 5, The Unseeing Eye
Madhava has just reached level 15, so we have the most powerful version of skeleton warriors available - just what we need to trivialize beholder encounters. So, our only big challenge here should be ghoul town, especially the unnamed lich. This one went surprisingly well, but not in the way I intended: As I entered the main building down there, I accidentally moved too far forward before adding in my summons and buffs and triggered the big central group, which, thanks to better calls for help, alerted all remaining undead in the back as well. I saw the lich's buffs in the combat log and heard him casting an alteration spell, and I immediately left the building, expecting it to be timestop - I was able to run just in time and moved towards the exit, with tons of undead, such as two bone golems and two greater mummies, following me. However, the lich stayed put. Otherwise, this could've gone very, very poorly, since we can't exit the area that way. We were able to get in some buffs and summons, with our kensai wielding Azuredge to great effect:
Interlude: Bodhi's Lair
Nechtan gets to have more fun. We have improved haste now (we bought those scrolls plus emotion: courage and went for our first scroll learning session), which helps with his performance as an axe-thrower:
Stronghold 6, The Temple Ruins
Most of this area is mostly done by Nechtan and a few summons. Aside from the Shade Lord, the two liches are the only enemies that matter around here. Luckily, they tend to be pretty stationary. Our strategy for this one is very simple: Send in skeleton summons one after one (after waiting for a short time inbetween) to get them to waste their PFMWs so Nechtan can angle for an Azuredge kill. In the meantime, their undead allies are lured towards the waiting party (staying far back so we can flee if the lich suddenly decides to move) - now that's a nice pile of destroyed undead:
Now, the Planar Prison and Planar Sphere remain. Both are rather scary, but we'll try and tackle them as well before going to Spellhold. We're also fully caught up with the run again.
Cria (female half-elf bard, Grond0); Brog (male half-orc cleric/thief, Gate70)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1212127/#Comment_1212127
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1213450/#Comment_1213450
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214706/#Comment_1214706
Another break from the Trio allowed us to continue this MP run. The session got off to a pretty sticky start thanks to making a poor fist of dealing with ambush areas while attempting to return to the temple visited last time. The first of the areas was populated by orcs and trolls. They were guarding the Firefly sling, which Brog wanted. We could have just grabbed it and run, but Cria chose to fight. That caused a problem for Brog who was not hasted and was struggling to stay out of the reach of the speedy trolls. He eventually ran out of HPs just before Cria could finish off the trolls.
After another trip to our friendly priestess, it proved 3rd time lucky to get back to the temple. Our luck seemed to have changed there with Ziatar immediately stunned by the first dart thrown at her.
Bard 11, 80 HPs, 279 kills
Cleric 8 / thief 9, 66 HPs, 268 kills, 6 deaths
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
Stronghold 7, Planar Prison
A new addition to our arsenal, firestorm, was used by Madhava for one of the cramped rooms in Mekrath's lair - very useful as it goes through everything except for fire immunity:
Stronghold 8, Planar Sphere
I was a bit afraid of this one due to the potential golem encounters and high level wizards, plus the limited resting with the provision system. We start by thinning out the halfling numbers:
Now we're on our way to Brynnlaw (just killed the vampires as well, because the game doesn't let me save before taking them down). Soon, we will have to prepare the party for losing all of their equipment in Spellhold, so we will need to remember to heavily change up our spellbooks with stuff like enchant weapon and even more summons.
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
In Brynnlaw, Delia tries to backstab Perth but rolls another 1 - so she immediately runs out again. Surprisingly, Perth doesn't follow us, so we just leave him alone, and we return after meeting with Golin, once most of his pre-buffs were gone:
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
With careful use of spirit armor, emotion spells, pfe and recitation, we can get our saving throws temporarily in the safe range against mind flayers even without using invulnerability potions (as has been mentioned in this thread before, SCS mind flayers tend to spam their powerful ballistic attacks/detonate if they detect chaotic commands, which could be devastating with our low constitution scores - meanwhile, their attempts to dominate or stun us are pretty much harmless). Nechtan takes down the first group of these foes by himself:
Now for the kuo-toa caverns. Skeletons do most of the work until we go for the demon knights. The three spellcasters make sure to protect their buffs, we also place down some traps. The ones without SI:A/Entropy Shield hang around in the back initially, but end up joining the battle once it seems like no dispel is going to happen:
Next up, the beholder cave:
All right, next time we're facing Ust'Natha. Shouldn't be too troublesome, except for Deirex, who I am now very afraid of after seeing how he made use of dimension door in aldain's previous run. I wonder if I should drink two potions of genius just to learn the ruby ray scroll I've just bought at the Ust'Natha entrance in case he has a spell trap prepared, as waiting out or just sending summons towards a lich that will just teleport directly next to us is not really an option. Also, I just checked his level - in the vanilla game, Madhava could have hit him with turn undead, but SCS improved his level to 28, so that's not going to happen. Well, we shall see.
Deirex will go swimmingly! My mistake was trying to scrimp on buffs and exploit bad AI, which has worked before but is now a bit iffy in SCS; I recall with some trepidation also the end of Conjurer's run when Lavok Dimension Door'ed into our midst and unleashed Imprisonment.
Adding Ruby Ray sounds like a good idea, it's a bit risky trying to wait out all of his PfMW if you're in visual range, but maybe you can tank most of his spell book...
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
I decided to learn ruby ray, just in case, and moved on to free Phaere - traps helped me in getting rid of the underdark party, and the mind flayers & umber hulks are easy enough to defeat, despite me not using death spell, which I usually do for this encounter:
After all that, we rest up, deal with the beholder and Quile's home - this is where remove magic is starting to become really powerful for Madalena, being a high level single class wizard; big groups of lower level spellcasters that generally don't use SI:A:
The Deirex battle
I prepared a chain contingency with ruby ray in it for this one. Deirex' prebuffs included two magical swords (also mass invisibility, which delayed all of my spells because I had to wait for a very late true sight tick), so I moved Madalena as close to Deirex as possible, in the hopes that the CC would still hit the lich, not one of the summons. No spell trap, btw, so other debuffing spells would've done the same job. Meanwhile, I'm spreading out the characters that don't have SI:A/Entropy Shield so not all of them can get hit by one remove magic. Leda starts her own secret word (which does work on SCS liches despite being lvl 4, I looked that one up beforehand - spell thrust doesn't work though), Madalena uses her sequencer (which includes secret word as well) - this should get rid of spell shield and spell turning even if the CC doesn't hit. Deirex starts his time stop, and right after, the CC activates, with the right target:
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
All right - time for the various liches, dragons, the illithid hideout and guarded compound, Bodhi, and the WKI statues/WK2, plus the new forest areas.
I won't go into detail for all of those encounters - most of them are heavily buffed by SCS, especially on insane, so I had to take every one of them seriously. Here's my general buff list:
Very long duration, immediately after resting: Stoneskins, Strength/Cat's Grace for those below 18, ISOM, Belt of Fortitude.
Long duration (active almost always if we anticipate some form of combat):
Chaotic Commands, Death Ward (usually missing Ninisina, I just don't have enough level 4 cleric spells for everything I want), PFE, Protection From Fire (by now usually for everyone), Madalena herself sometimes gets Protection From Ice and PFME as well (no room in my spellbooks for Lightning/Acid Protection for now except for very specific encounters where those are crucial, though they might be added at some point for Madalena), Spirit Armor (at this point usually only for Nechtan, though I would want two more, one for Madalena and one for Leda, ideally), Emotion: Courage/Hope, Remove Fear. For specific encounters such as mind flayers we add invulnerability potions.
Mid and short duration (buffed before notable encounters): Spell Turning/MSD, SI:A/Entropy Shield, Spell Shield, Shield/Blur/MI, Improved Haste (always on Nechtan, others depend on who seems to most valuable), AoF/DUHM, Bless/Prayer/Recitation. Sometimes Madhava adds Shield of the Archons, though the long duration means that we can't rebuff him with some single target stuff such as improved haste, so I sometimes leave it out. Leda often adds vocalize just in case. Hardiness and other potions are options as well.
We usually have 2*MM Minor Sequencers, Contingencies at 50% with stoneskin, and Madalena has a Sequencer that has stuff like Secret Word/Remove Magic in it, a Spell Trigger that also involves Pierce Magic (sometimes Death Spell) and prepares Chain Contingencies as needed - for example 3*ADHW or some with Ruby Ray (Pierce Shield will become part of those once we scribe that one). If Delia, Nechtan and/or Ninisina get dispelled, I sometimes counter that with protective potions or new buffs, or I don't, depending on the situation.
Plans for high level spellcasters depend on their pre-buffs. We have the spellslots now (and many of them are in enclosed spaces, so it wouldn't work anyway) not to rely on sending in waves of summons. Instead, Madalena and Leda just try to get rid of their spell protections as quickly as possible and breach them, sometimes repeatedly, while true sight is running, and the fighters kill them as soon as a breach goes through (in the meantime, they often have summons or other foes to take on). There are many variations depending on pre-buffs and approaches by our foes.
All right, let's start with the city gates lich. He is neutral for a second, and in that time Ninisina actually hits him with firetooth. We dispel (but not breach) him before his timestop. Timestop goes off, wizard slayer spell failure from that one free hit prevents whatever he's attempting. He gates in demons, dispels our fighters, timestop ends and he gets breached and killed:
On to the illithid hideout, we're back to our underdark tactics of buffing our saving throws as much as possible. We use traps in the room before the alhoon and lure the final group of illithids inside (most of them eventually teleport to us, though not in a big group as I would have expected):
Travelling to the shadow dragon, we get into our first bit of trouble upon our return: The rakshasa ambush going after the Flail of Ages (an SCS addition) means that we have to fight multiple mid level spellcasters/fighters without any buffs on our side going in. We try to get some very basic defensive buffs going, but Madalena is very threatened, with one rakshasa completely locked in on her (and hasted). She is able to shake him for a bit with an invisibility potion but is soon revealed, though another potion gets her to safety:
On to the second round of statues in WKI. Here we have two high level spellcasters, both capable of stopping time. As per usual, the fighters take on everything else while the wizards start getting rid of spell protections. As has been the norm, Delia and Nechtan get dispelled (Madhava, fighting mostly at range, often is missed by the remove magic). The first enemy stops time - that's a nice spell trigger to renew some of their lost buffs:
Level 2 is is much easier than the statue battle. We rest once to get lightning protections ready for the northern room, otherwise one cold protection spell is enough for the ice golem, and the other rooms are easy to clear with our standard buffs. While luring the fire elementals to the cold room, we test out the state of our thief traps - Leda still has poison extra damage, but Delia is on fire damage traps, so she plants those down for the chromatic demon, and they kill it in its ice form:
On to the Twisted Rune. We prepare traps for Shangalar and a 3*ADHW CC that might help with the others, depending on their buffs. The traps do their expected job:
Well, now that he's near death, why not use a third sunray? Yes, we have one from Daystar as well, it just takes some time to activate as Ninisina's aura was clouded from the PfU scroll, and it has a long cast time unlike the helm. Meanwhile, Kangaxx uses, of all things, a double (why not triple?) chaos spell trigger? I've never seen something like this on a spellcaster of such a high level - granted, it worked, but it only affected Delia, who isn't very important to this battle at all:
Next time, we shall enter the elven city.
I do not recall getting more than two, though, but this might be because by that point you tend to leave for the end-game quite rapidly.
No-mercy Necromancer: A Random Run, part 2
Part 1 found here
We sent a number of Beetles north after that, they got a nice stun effect off on a few casters, and by that point we felt confident enough to just charge in with barely any buffs.
Cleric/Ranger deflected what Confusion effects there were using the Greenstone Amulet, and while Zhalimar dealt a good bit of damage, so did our ranged cadre. Victory!
Before departing for Candlekeep, everyone gets to scribe spells for the first time in a long time: We have enough potions remaining that Necromancer and one more arcanist can get another session in before the end, if we find anything interesting enough.
Necromancer quaffs a Potion of Invisibility and runs off while the rest of the party under Remove Fear dismantles the Ogre Magi; they're quite low-level, after all.
One Ogre Magi drops 4 (!) Remove Magic scrolls... the SCS component that yields extra random scrolls does go wonky sometimes.
We breeze through the crypts: Cleric/Illusionist gets the WIS tome, and Cleric/Ranger the STR tome, so she can now equip Full Plate unaided.
For some reason, Arcanis and... I forget the poor Halfling's name, but anyway! They both follow us into Prat's area, so I decide to be devious and Charm them both using the Nymph's Cloak with 40 charges we picked up in Baldur's Gate.
Arcanis and what's-his-face sadly last not long at all against Prat (and they had nothing interesting that dropped either, just standard non-magical gear), so we avenge them promptly and exit.
I seem to be the only one that gets this bug: Even after doing a complete wipe of local files and re-downloading, Krystin (and Semaj later on) turn invisible every once in a while without casting a spell or quaffing a potion.
Joke's on Krystin, though: She zones back in next to our Beetles, and get her comeuppance.
Alright, palace fight: Skeleton Warriors, buffs, MSD and Stoneskin on Necromancer, and we're golden.
Its spell defenses torn down, the Doppleganger Mage fails a save against Chromatic Orb, removing the only real threat here.
Off after Sarevok. This time I remember that Shaldrissa might have Death Spell, so we keep our distance, instead following up an initial firebombing (that cleared out the grunts) with some Beetles, that yet again prove their mettle in removing the main threat.
I'll say that the amount of inventory clutter by the time you reach the end of BG1 is indicative of your party's power: We literally have over a hundred good potions just sitting around, and about as many scrolls of various shapes, sizes and colors.
So, every fighter (we have four of them, after all) gets a PfM scroll, topped off with serious potion buffs.
Necromancer just spends the fight hiding in a corner under Invisibility and PfLightning, coming out only once victory is certain; Fighter/Druid had her buffs dispelled once but just reapplied them.
In the end, it's the fastest, most hassle-free Sarevok fight I've ever had; I don't even think it took two turns before S dropped.
On to BG2! The import refrains from screwing up the max HP of anyone, and we're off.
We have an enormous amount of spell slots already, so most of the dungeon goes well: However, since we're actually able to kill off Ulvaryl this time, the Shadow Thief Mage turns her not-so-tender mercies on us instead, unleashing a Lightning Bolt.
I think she was only L5 so theoretically that shouldn't have been able to kill Necromancer in one hit.. but a bad bounce might've.
Brrr. We swiftly depart the place.
I don't even have a screenshot of the Circus. We did have some problems since only Fighter/Mage/Thief has a magical weapon at the moment (we imported The Burning Earth), but scrape by with magical damage and Spiritual Hammer/Moonblade.
Next, the Copper Coronet and Slaver Ship are both uneventful: Again, we've so many options for completely shutting down the opposition they barely get to shake a blade/arrow at us.
We swing by the Government district, splurge on a license, and clear out the local Fanatics, also an easy victory.
And now for something completely stupid.
My intent was to go after Mae'Var first: This is a fairly easy stronghold quest, with a huge gold reward at the end, and we do need gold to bribe our reputation up before buying anything.
We get the quest started, but it's not night-time so we can't go grab the amulet from the Temple of Talos.
I don't want to let all our spells go to waste, so decide we'll just take out the Pirates at the Sea's Bounty.
I forgot that the Mage here has, for no apparent reason, a pretty grotesque Magic Resistance. Is it 100%? It is at the least high enough to completely stymie my intended tactic, which was to throw two Cloudkills in his general direction to completely shut down his spellcasting. I was so confident in success I didn't bother with most short-duration buffs, and we didn't initially spread out (that would've entailed walking into our own Cloudkills).
This Mage turned out to be an Enchanter. I'll spare you the gory details as I'm sure you can fill them in: Suffice to say, a low-level party just isn't gonna be that great at making saves against Chaos with a -6 modifier (-2 from the Enchanter bonus).
Beyond humiliating.
I'll roll up another Necromancer, but if time is a factor, it might be that the onus of the last Mage kit falls squarely upon @Enuhal's shoulders.
Actually, I did have that happen as well during my current run, at least with Krystin (I don't remember it with Semaj). I didn't mention it because it didn't really impact the battle, especially because I had access to true sight (and I figured she might have been turned into some sort of shadowdancer/wizard dual-class and used hide in plain sight). Now that I am looking into it, Krystin has an undroppable Sandthief's Ring equipped, which propably has multiple charges, so my guess is that she's just using one of these very single round - might not actually fully be a bug. Semaj has a similiar item: https://baldursgate.fandom.com/wiki/MAGE01.ITM
Though they propably shouldn't spam those, it makes for very awkward gameplay. They were originally propably just meant to allow them to start combat invisibly.
Note that this effect is not illusionary, so you need a Detect Invisibility effect to reveal that creature before they reveal themself. (Detect Invisibility, Invisibility Purge, Oracle, True Seeing/True Sight).
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
On to the SoA endgame, starting at the elven city. The initial golems converge into a double group, which is a bit tough to take down, even with the help of a planetar - some potions, some shuffling around, and we get the job done, although some injuries are unavoidable:
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger - FALLEN (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Solstice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
So for the next level of Yaga-Shura's temple, we had mordy swords and planetars lead the way with the party assisting as they could. Coreranger took a good amount of damage but he always was able to run away and heal then come back to the fight. Impish took huge damage in getting the first heart, apparently his fire resistance wore off. We didn't have any trouble in getting the 2nd heart. We left for Nylee's glade. As usual a few summons made the fight pretty simple. After a rest, we then headed for Yaga's camp.
This went surprisingly well. Impish has been using energy blades to very good effect and with GWW from Coreranger, Yaga didn't last long.
Next up was Senda's enclave. We did usually two strategies, either let mordy sword take most of the attention with party assisting or firestorm or going invisible and skipping enemies. For the Captain Coreranger did a duel to take him down.
Time for the main fight with Sendai. This was a long and involved fight and Impish got careless and got himself killed. However a planetar raised him and healed him then he got back into the fight. The party was careful to not get hit with harm by Sendai's cleric forms. The fight was long and drawn out but eventually she dies.
We then do the two pocket plane challenges. Both went fairly straightforward. Then we tried to deal with Draconis. Coreranger used the shadow armor to be protected from acid - firestorm eventually killed Draconis - problem? Coreranger intended to go to pocket plane, rest then come back and save our session but game crashed and we will have to fight Draconis next time again.
It's good fun and I'll keep going with the run even if someone else fancies a stab at the class, will post once I've gotten farther (probably next weekend).
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
Starting with ToB, I had planned to lay down a few traps for the black reavers with the intention of taking down Ilasera by myself, but it seems like she turns hostile before her allies do - a lot of traps hit her immediately, even if there were many closer enemies, and she died right away:
Okay, on to Saradush. First, we do sidequests and get our final pairs of boots of speed. Kiser's mage gets dispelled and killed:
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
A bit of a shorter update, as progress in ToB is always a bit slower for me, because we need full buffs for almost everything and I also don't enjoy the gameplay as much, so I play in shorter sessions. This is just the temple and the Marching Mountains:
Starting with the master wraith and its allies - we use turn undead, sunray and breach on the main enemy:
On to the Marching Mountains. We buff up and start clearing the area, using invisibility to move past the giants. Sending a magical sword in there is not quite as effective as in the vanilla game, since the giants are smarter with SCS and will switch targets, but it was still a decent distraction and allowed me to split the initial group, using a planetar and some HLAs to help out the fighters. Making sure to take down the fel cats as soon as possible (as they can get really dangerous with SCS), we started clearing the side areas. The one with the fire lich is the only dangerous one - the lich wouldn't move out of there, though, so we were able to go back to some of our old summoning tricks. Meanwhile, Delia dealt with two noble efreeti:
I have decided to go to Watcher's Keep now, for a very specific reason (though I usually wait until either after Sendai's Enclave or even until just before the Throne): Due to the camping supply system, I want the ability to leave Watcher's Keep entirely via the pocket plane in case I run out of camping supplies in the randomized teleporter maze - unlikely to happen, but possible. If we do this part before going to meet Yaga Shura, the options to teleport directly to Saradush or to the area east of the city are still available, while later on the pocket plane always would return me to the WK zone that I had just left. Maybe this is a bad idea, because a bad sequence of rooms (with a no-magic zone leading directly into a dangerous fight) is propably the most likely thing to end the run at this point, but the camping supply situation shouldn't be entirely underestimated.
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
Entering the randomized teleporter maze, I decided to take a gamble and buff up first, in hopes of maybe not running into a no-magic zone right away. Of course, the very first zone I ran into was a no-magic zone, the one with the Purifier. Luckily the fiends there are fighting each other, so we can take down the balor at range without risking a vorpal hit. From there on, we find the glabrezu room, which I recognized from the environment, and so I already needed my first return to pocket plane and rest, because I wanted full buffs for that one. With those, a bit of remove magic and a few breach spells, we took down the dangerous foes in there, but we lost our buffs soon again when running into the room with the pit fiend - carefully disarming the traps before moving further inside:
Now it took me a long while to find a new room again, and that happened to be Aesgareth. However, we would need to find the other demon first, so I returned back through the portal I came through - and immediately found myself facing the demon wraith. Notably, I had lost my buffs on the way here, travelling through a no-magic zone. Facing this foe without any buffs is certainly dangerous, and he immediately throws a spell trigger with 2 chain lightnings towards us:
At level 4, we start with the mind flayers. Our strategies from the underdark still prevail:
On to level 5. Golems, the colored orbs and the orcs are no trouble. PfP scrolls are added for the green dragon:
A quick return to the temple, some traps, and we've made Yaga-Shura vulnerable. Before that, though, we return to Saradush again to reset camping supplies. Now, a quick visist to meet the giant to make him leave, and we set up some summons, buffs and traps, hunting around the area for his officers. Strangely enough, no foes ever enter the area we've set up our traps in, until Yaga-Shura returns and just happens to walk in there:
After that, a visit to the Oasis, and we buff up for the second pocket plane challenge. Semaj happens to be low enough level that remove magic is able to take down his buffs, making this battle a lot easier:
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
Starting at Sendai's Enclave, we deal with the outside ambushes, getting a lucky vorpal hit on the most significant threat, the hive mother, with the Axe of the Unyielding:
On to Draconis. Acid resistance gets added, we make sure to renew our SI:A once the human form is close to transforming. As per usual, we spread out at range to avoid getting stuck and to reduce the impact of remove magic:
Randomly created party, full insane SCS
Introductory post here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1214615/#Comment_1214615
Updated party stats at the beginning of BG2: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215137/#Comment_1215137
We're in the endgame now. Since this run is played without Ascension, things are actually not that difficult here - aside from Sendai, the five don't receive extremely notable buffs from SCS, and Amelyssan remains exploitable. First, we have to get past Balthazar - moving invisibly to Saemon, we prepare buffs and a 3*ADHW CC for the guards - both wizards die, so the remaining battle is easy. Inside the monestary, I decide to take on the unnamed monks first before preparing fighter HLAs and taking on Balthazar - a very quick and one-sided battle:
Finally, the fallen solar. Delia has 4 timestop scrolls (plus an extra timestop via a limited wish scroll). First, we renew her improved haste, after that she casts limited wish, wishing for control over time, and moves in with 10 APR and Storm Giant Strength:
The necromancer kit remains as the only one without an entry in the Hall of Heroes. In the next few weeks I propably won't start a run, as there is a big Age of Empires 2 patch and DLC incoming, so I'm going to switch games for a while. I am looking forward to following aldain's run (and anyone else who might want to try their hand at it).
I'm particularly impressed you managed to keep a Wizard Slayer in one piece (literally..) all through Insane SCS.
The Necromancer run has made good progress, but some key fights remain. I'll get around to posting a first update this weekend.
Difficulty: Insane with no difficulty-dependent damage increase, max HP on level-up.
Mods: Full SCS 35.21.
Run rules: Fully random party apart from slightly improved protagonist (a Necromancer) and a requisite to contain a thief; see spoiler for details.
The party must contain a Necromancer with CON at least 16 and INT at least 18, and at least one Thief of some kind.
All level-up choices (apart from HP, which are maxed) are random.
Our party is... not nearly so dreadful as you'd expect, though I've certainly seen the RNG spit out better, details in spoiler.
Protagonist
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Class: Necromancer
Alignment: True Neutral
Stats:
STR 11 DEX 13 CON 17 INT 18 WIS 17 CHA 11
Proficiencies:
Dart *
Starting spells:
Chill Touch, Expeditious Retreat, Identify
Gender: Female
Race: Dwarf
Class: Fighter / Cleric
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Stats:
STR 17 DEX 10 CON 19 INT 11 WIS 14 CHA 9
Proficiencies:
Single-Weapon Style * War Hammer * Mace * Sling *
Gender: Male
Race: Halfling
Class: Fighter / Thief
Alignment: Neutral Good
Stats:
STR 9 DEX 13 CON 13 INT 16 WIS 16 CHA 9
Proficiencies:
Crossbow * Two-Handed Sword ** Single-Weapon Style *
Thieving skills:
Hide in Shadows +5 Find Traps +5 Pick Pockets +15 Move Silently +10 Set Traps +5
Gender: Male
Race: Gnome
Class: Fighter / Illusionist
Alignment: Lawful Good
Stats:
STR 11 DEX 16 CON 12 INT 14 WIS 9 CHA 17
Proficiencies:
Dagger * Longbow * Bastard Sword * Mace *
Starting spells:
Ice Knife, Shield, Reflected Image
Gender: Male
Race: Dwarf
Class: Priest of Talos
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Stats:
STR 14 DEX 11 CON 14 INT 12 WIS 11 CHA 15
Proficiencies:
Club * Quarterstaff *
Gender: Male
Race: Half-Orc
Class: Priest of Lathander
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Stats:
STR 14 DEX 13 CON 11 INT 12 WIS 15 CHA 13
Proficiencies:
Two-Handed Weapon Style * Two-Weapon Style *
Some comments:
A Fighter/Illusionist is always powerful, even though this one's got pretty awful stats (though I'm glad he didn't clock in at single-digit INT). The 16 DEX enforced by being an Illusionist means he'll be almost guaranteed to hit 18 DEX with a single Cat's Grace and so have good AC. STR is bad, CON is bad, INT is mediocre, but the first two we can fix, and the third we can live with. How I wish he would've started with a weapon specialization, although a pip in Longbow will at least be useful for BG1EE. For all this though, he'll be the star of the party come BG2EE.
A Fighter/Thief that is essentially a commoner stat-wise, except oddly intelligent and wise... couldn't those two rolls of 16 had been DEX and CON? Well, whatever. He has specialization in Two-Handed Sword, which isn't a bad weapon, but he lacks the STR to lift one unaided.
We round off with two near carbon copies: Kitted Clerics. They'll be quite powerful throughout the entire game, and we'll never be lacking for necessary buffs, although it would've been nice if they had any kind of stat bonus beyond a middling WIS on the Priest of Lathander... even nicer if they could actually wear Full Plate naturally, but Plate Mail will just have to do.
By now most of BG1EE is beginning to feel a little bit like old hat, so I'll cover the real highlights in detail, and just skim over the more business-as-usual parts.
No-Hope Necromancer: A Random Run, Part 1
Next part found here
We do my usual early-game routine: Go north, help Tenya, loot the Ankheg nest under Sanctuary, clear some zombies, then start slowly grinding through the Ankheg population. Even though we've got plenty of Commands, our low APR and damage both means we typically need two, sometimes three casts to take down a single Ankheg, so it's slow going.
There's a bright spot though: We get a random drop of Spell Thrust, which is very valuable (two arcanists, and another will be looted off of Venkt much later, so we'll be able to easily deal with enemy Mages).
We also swing by Ulgoth's Beard and buy some Arrows +2; experience is life, and we have no other safe way to take down Thalantyr's Flesh Golems.
While in the Beregost area, we utilize our Wand of Fire to take down the Wolf Pack, also a nice XP boost this early.
We clear everything in Beregost apart from Silke, and yes, Neera once again tries to assassinate us, this time with two Burning Hands... I'm used to her idiocy by now though, so always stay far away from the direction she's facing.
Down to Nashkel, then loop back around towards Bassilus' area. While doing that, we reach Fighter level 3 on our three warrior-types.
FC gets a pip in Quarterstaff, as does FT (meh...), but FI really lucks out: A 1/24 shot pays off, and he scores a second pip in Mace.
It's not the greatest weapon, sure, but it's not bad either: A solid anti-undead tool, and Storm Star is an acceptable end-game choice. I actually drew a sigh of relief here, as I was prepared to not see another specialization ever.
In celebratory fashion, we go after Bassilus: He fails to save against triple Silence, and then it's only a matter of time, although we must resort to a few Scorcher charges given our pitiful damage output.
Flush with cash, we bribe reputation up to 17, then start handing in reputation quests (which we've hoarded until now).
With the 1/4 reputation gain component, we only make it up to 19, so put off shopping for now.
Still confident in our nascent ability despite poor arcane spell availability, we descend into the Nashkel mines.
Oh yeah: Apparently that damnable Kobold Shaman is immune to Silence. At the least, he failed to saved against it, but just shrugged it off and let loose with a Lightning Bolt anyway. The party was not amused.
I think next time around I will just sacrifice a few extra wand charges to do that fight safely.
We loot Mulahey's chest under Sanctuary, then depart; there's lots of wilderness left to cleanse before we proceed with the plot.
The parts west of Nashkel don't provide much challenge, as we've plenty of buffs, disablers and wands available.
But I did figure something out, which I'm sure everyone else already knew: Dread Wolves are Undead. Hold Undead works on them!
I thought that was kind of nifty. We'll see another interesting follow-up on that later.
There's a few reputation quests left: Bringing Samuel to the FAI finally bumps us up to 20, so we buy some Potions of Genius, some carefully selected spell scrolls, and expand our capabilities.
N gets to go all-out with 24 INT; FI settles for 18 INT, which allows him to scribe Illusion scrolls with 100% success rate (Mirror Image, Invisibility are both important), and with a few tries he manages several useful first-level ones.
We pick up Algernon's Cloak as well: FT has unfortunately gotten a lot of points in Pick Pockets, and that's about all they're good for, in addition to a scroll of PfM and an extra Ring of Freedom of Action.
Apparently, the PoT special doesn't actually protect against non-magical missiles contrary to its description, as we find out nearly to our detriment (yes, those bandits are using Masterwork Arrows).
I'm assuming that's a left-over bug from SCS turning +1 Arrows into Masterwork ones; guessing not many people actually play with PoT's.
We spend some time scouring the map, but as options dry up, I figure we're strong enough to advance the plot.
Mulahey stands no chance by now, of course, and falls to a Stonefist by N.
On our return to Nashkel, a charmed Oublekis no match for Nimbul, yielding a cool 3000 gold.
We swiftly avenge the former, and equally swiftly head north to dismantle Tranzig.
Larswood and Peldvale go by in a blur; the local Druids have no defense against Silence 15' Radius, and they're the only significant treat here, though we do take a bit of a beating by the large spawns of Black Talon Elites.
As always, we set up a kill zone at the south-eastern edge of the Bandit Camp map: Venkt comes charging in pretty early on, but gets snagged by a Web, and the rest is just cleanup.
Cloakwood can be dangerous, so we'll beef up a little more beforehand.
We start clearing the western seaboard: Several Ice Lances help make short work of the Sirenes in Droth's area.
On our way to the Lighthouse, we get ambushed by Molkar and his cronies.
There seems to be a slight bug here, as Halacan starts casting Sleep, but apparently gets interrupted by Molkar initiating dialogue. It doesn't affect anything as Halacan gets Commanded a fraction of a second later and subsequently put down (before his spell would've finished), but still. Of course, the outcome is never in doubt.
We can muster several (3 HD versions, but still) Skeleton Warriors by now, so the two big Siren groups at the Lighthouse can offer little resistance, especially when also confronted with Web and Detect Invisibility.
FI has enough magic arrows to take down the Flesh Golems, and we loot the cave unimpeded.
On our way back to civilization, the Amazons put in an appearance.
The enemy Clerics here are just too low-level to be much of a threat on their own, so we just focus the Thieves down (popping a Detect Invisiblity at the start to prevent any backstabs), and can then take our time with the cleanup.
There's still a few areas left on the eastern side of the map.
Narcillicus fails to put up spell defenses and is easily undone by a single Ice Lance.
We then carefully map out the entirety of Mutamin's Garden, and send in Korax with Skeleton Warrior and Living Warrior (our own fighters...) backup, resulting in a resounding victory. Though by now the experience is barely enough to get anyone a level.
One problem with completely random runs is Thief skill points.
More precisely, your Thief may turn out not to be much of a Thief at all.
This is the case for us, where FT can't pick a lock to save his life, and is equally likely to disarm a trap as step in it.
Unfortunately, this means we can't really do Durlag's yet, since we'd need something like 12 Potions of Perception (probably more like 16...) to clear the whole thing, and I'm not sure there are that many in the game.
We'll have to wait a while and hope for some luck with level-ups, but for now we can at least clear the above-ground areas: The Chromatic Orb trap guarding the balcony deals very little damage, after all, and only induces Blindness for one round on a failed save.
We do leave the Ghost (we still only have 3 HD Skeleton Warriors that can't even hurt him, and our only real melee presence is FI who has no HP to speak of), as well as Kirinhale (who isn't that dangerous but can be difficult to hit) for now.
Here's a picture of FT trying and failing to disarm a Lightning Bolt trap, and coming perilously close to frying himself permanently. Yes... best to return at a later date.
OK! We've gathered quite a bit of experience and gear, so Cloakwood should be a breeze.
Though it is not so much a breeze as a cloying carpet of bugs, given that Senyad has time to finish a spell before our triple Silence 15' Radius lands and stymies further attempts.
That spell is very brutal for our low-HP party: We have to quaff about 2/3 of our potion supply to keep everyone alive, but we do succeed.
We move on to clear out Centeol: FC gets Protection from Fire and the rest is, as they say, fiery history.
Passing through the local Shadow Druid estuary, Silence 15' Radius once again proves its worth; we leave the Archdruid alone for now, since our only Club wielder is PoT (and he's not really expected to contribute much beyond his spellworks).
We clear out the Wyvern cave as well, then turn back around: We're low on supplies, and I want another Wand of Fire before we proceed, just for insurance.
So, I said we'd return to the topic of Undead Wolves. Yep, you guessed it: Wolf of Ulcaster is Undead too. And yep, it is equally vulnerable to Hold Undead as Dread Wolves. Hah!
That little trick really turned an otherwise quite tough fight into a cakewalk.
Fully Wand of Fire-reinforced, we head back into Cloakwood. Can we, for once, deal with Drasus without everything becoming touch-and-go?
Why yes... yes, we apparently can.
Part of it is that our kitted Clerics hit L7 a little while ago, and the 5 HD Skeleton Warriors are no joke: They swiftly take down Drasus on their own.
But another part of it is that this time, our Skeleton Warriors got backup by 2x Web and 2x Stinking Cloud.
I've noticed that Rezdan seems to prefer MSD over MGoI, probably because he's lower-level than Kysus: Sure enough, Rezdan settled for MSD this time around too.
The hopeless plate-wearing axe-thrower whose name escapes me is of course also entirely vulnerable to this approach, and Kysus just can't hold off an Undead army on his own. The worst that happened was a single stray Lightning Bolt which hit PoT wearing the Boots of Grounding, dealing 10 damage. Great success.
We push on into the mines. I forego playing fair: Hareishan and her gaggle of guards feel the full force of a Fireball barrage, all of them dropping instantly, and the Ogre Mage is as vulnerable as ever to Command.
I send in PoT under Storm Shield against Natasha: Natasha doesn't know what to do (Storm Shield means immunity to pretty much all her big spells, like Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Sunfire, Cone of Cold), so she goes for a Slow. Which gives us time to pop in through the door, tear down her protections, then unceremoniously stun her with a Chromatic Orb. Haw-haw.
Alright, Big D awaits.
Same procedure as every time. Send an invisible party member forward until D gives his speech, then withdraw: Hastily kill off the Battle Horrors, then turn around and deal with five waves of guards. Once that's over with, just refuse to fight on D's terms: Let him eat Skeleton Warriors.
Alright... drum roll, please. D gave us just enough experience for our warriors to hit Fighter level 6. Can we repeat the L3 miracle?!
I guess it was too much to hope for.
That depressing screenshot is FC wasting a pip on Sword and Shield Style; she won't see a specialization until a bit into BG2EE at the earliest.
FI got a bit luckier, and put a pip in Axe. Which isn't a bad weapon at all, but I'd have been much happier if he'd managed a second specialization, or even a pip in Two-Weapon Style.
FT got Longsword, which also isn't terrible, but I feel like we have enough non-specialized proficiencies by now...
But that's just the name of the game we choose to play! Stiff upper lip and so on.
We flood the mines, and Baldur's Gate itself is now open to us. N is long overdue for some scroll scribing, having hit L7 but lacking L4 spells, but I'd like to cut back on INT-potion spending if possible: Let's do Ice Island for the Stoneskin scroll first, and get it all in one go.
Again, I see no reason to tangle with Andris' cohorts: They get some Fireballs and drop immediately, while Andris flees the field.
Upon his return, he proves very annoying, and starts summoning Lesser Elementals, which really only FC can tank (moderately) safely... ultimately, Andris goes down, but I have to resort to Wands of Frost, so we loose out on his Remove Magic scroll.
Which is fine, since FI won't have much use of it for a while, and there's another one available for N from the Red Wizards.
I re-apply my tactic from the last run against Garan; as we lack any kind of Ranger or even Druid this time around, we utilize the ring from Cloakwood to charm the Polar Bear. Works swimmingly, though the poor Polar Bear bites it soon after owing to the Ankhegs.
Cuchol is just stripped of his protections via Spell Thrust and treated to a Wand of Paralyzation charge.
Tellan's script goes wonky as usual, in that he tries to kill off the Winter Wolves... tries so hard, in fact, he doesn't bother to do anything against the five Skeleton Warriors chopping him down, and so proves no obstacle whatsoever.
Dezkiel lasts all but two rounds, and that's it: Ice Island cleared, Stoneskin aquired.
On the subject of maxing available spell scrolls before committing to a scribing session, let's also pick up that Remove Magic from the Red Wizards.
The massive spider colony just gets Fireballs, and Denak's followers are treated to a nightmarish combination of Stinking Cloud, Web and Cloud of Pestilence. Denak himself proves a right pain as always, but by the time he disposes of most of the Skeleton Warriors, he's out of big spells, so we just tank a bunch of Acid Arrows and Magic Missiles, and that's all he had left.
There we go. We arrive in Baldur's Gate, and both N and FI get a massive number of new spells.
FI gets the DEX tome (it would've made zero difference for FT, literally no bonus at all to his Thief skills), and is now guaranteed to reach 18 DEX with a single Cat's Grace.
We start clearing the city: To my annoyance, Niemain kills himself and two of his three fellows using his Wand of Fire... he really should be less aggressive with it, or at the least stick with the Scorcher charge (but I'm guessing he'd still roast his friends if he did that).
Most of the city goes according to plan, though Sunin proves more annoying than usual.
Ultimately we resort to several Scorcher to bring him down, since I didn't want to risk more Elementals on the field.
We also manage to stun Lothander before he can bugger off, netting FI a set of boots. Good!
The WIS tome goes to PoL: I debated how to distribute the WIS boosts with myself a bit. PoT would be pointless as he'd only get a few first level spells out of it, but FC would get several second levels (DUHM). Ultimately, I think we'll be getting more use out of another third level slot on a pure Cleric (Animate dead) as well as an extra Recitation/Death Ward/PfE 10' Radius... so I'm aiming for long-term over short-term.
We're almost done with the city, and to finish it off in style, FT for once gets a decent backstab in. That's BG2EE-levels of damage (he didn't backstab with Spider's Bane, I switched weapons right after the backstab).
Just Ramazith to go. He's as underwhelming as ever, only getting off a Summon Shadow before loosing his defences and consequently his life.
A long update, so I'll cap it off here. Next time, we'll deal with some TotSC content for real, probably starting with Balduran's Isle: I want to import the Chain Mail +3 given FT's obscenely low STR score.
If we keep casting Cat's Grace on FT, he'll eventually roll a 7 (out of 8) and get to 20 DEX, which nets him 60 Find Traps... so two Potions of Perception will be enough to handle everything, and we should be able to swing that based on potion availability.
Thus, we will hopefully be able to clear the remaining content absent trap-induced death.
I'd also like some feedback, if anyone feels so inclined: I've yet to use either the CON or INT tome, owing to decision paralysis.
Let's look at the INT tome first, since it's easier.
N would go from 18 to 19 INT: Upside is that he no longer has any limit on number of spells, but still requires two potions to hit 24 INT (though this drops to one come ToB with the Ioun Stone and/or Machine of Lum The Mad).
FI would go from 14 to 15 INT: He would still need three potions for 24 INT, but they can now all be Potions of Mind Focusing in a pinch. He'll also (very, very long-term but still) be able to reach 16 base INT, for slightly improved Mind Flayer resistance.
I'm leaning towards letting FI have it.
The CON tome is trickier.
Giving it to N or PoL is entirely pointless.
PoT: Immediate +10 HP in total, with another possible +10 HP come ToB; you could even have him wear an Ioun Stone for +1 CON and give the Machine-boost to someone else. He already has 14 CON, so (at absolute most) +3 CON won't affect his Shorty saving throws.
FI: Goes from 12 to 13, for no immediate boost. Come ToB, he can go from 13 to 14, to 15, or even 16 (if he gets absurdly lucky and places another pip in Axe for Axe of the Unyielding, which we can absolutely not bank on). He's at least guaranteed to eventually get +1 to all saves since he'll reach the 14 CON threshhold, and if we want to dedicate his head slot to an Ioun Stone, he can get a small HP boost. Then again, he'll probably be using the Belt for all of BG2EE and ToB, so maybe he doesn't need the boost at all?
FT: Same deal as FI really, but he gets +1 to all saves immediately from reaching 14 CON, and gets a slightly more substantial HP boost (long-term).
FC: Activates passive regeneration, and ultimately a very small HP boost.
I can't decide. FI won't really depend so much on saves or for that matter HP once we roll into ToB, so from that perspective it'd be better on FT or FC. But PoT is quite vulnerable, so maybe shoring up his HP would be the right move? Or maybe letting FC reach the cusp of 24 CON (with DUHM) earlier is also worthwhile? And she does get a tiny amount of extra base HP in the long run. Decisions, decisions.
For now, let's just summarize party stats, and think on the above for a while. Next time: Finishing BG1EE and hopefully not dying in ludicrous fashion in early BG2EE.
Protagonist
Necromancer, L8 True Neutral Human Necromancer
STR 11 DEX 13 CON 17 INT 18 WIS 17 CHA 11
Dagger * Dart *
Fighter/Cleric, L6/L6 Lawful Neutral Dwarven Fighter/Cleric
STR 17 DEX 10 CON 19 INT 11 WIS 14 CHA 9
Mace * Quarterstaff * Sling * War Hammer * Single-Weapon Style * Sword and Shield Style *
Fighter/Thief, L6/L7 Neutral Good Halfling Fighter/Thief
STR 9 DEX 13 CON 13 INT 16 WIS 16 CHA 9
Crossbow * Long Sword * Two-Handed Sword ** Quarterstaff * Single Weapon Style *
PP 50 OL 20 FT 45 MS 45 HiS 50 DI 35 ST 30
Fighter/Illusionist, L6/L6 Lawful Good Gnome Fighter/Illusionist
STR 11 DEX 17 CON 12 INT 14 WIS 9 CHA 17
Axe * Bastard Sword * Dagger * Longbow * Mace **
Priest of Talos, L7 Chaotic Neutral Dwarven Priest of Talos
STR 14 DEX 11 CON 14 INT 12 WIS 11 CHA 15
Club * Quarterstaff * War Hammer *
Priest of Lathander, L7 Chaotic Good Half-Orc Priest of Lathander
STR 14 DEX 13 CON 11 INT 12 WIS 16 CHA 13
Flail / Morning Star * Two-Handed Weapon Style * Two-Weapon Style *
Good going so far!
Yeah, he did that in my run as well. I was quite surprised, most enemies don't engage in friendly to that degree.
Coreranger XV - half-elf ranger - FALLEN (Corey_Russell)
Impish- elven totemic druid (Grond0)
Solstice - human dragon disciple (Gate70)
So we had to re-do Draconis and pocket plane challenges #2 and #3 due to a pocket plane lockup last session. First we engaged Draconis. We attempted to do firestorm on him again but he buffetted summons and somehow found Coreranger despite Coreranger being well out of sight. So Coreranger ran and healed. Rest of party was trying summons and spells and Coreranger was trying GWW with his +4 throwing axe when he got a chance - success!
We made sure to quicksave this time (we did quicksaves often to try to prevent loss of progress due to the buggy pocket plane mechanic in multi-player). We carefully made our way through Abizigal's lair, getting the scroll of reversal for the dragon guarding Abby's lair. We used cold resistance and Wave Halberd on the Salamanders. It took a while to get through the human form of Abby but we did. Summons then kept the dragon form distracted while party did spells and range. Coreranger's party members have a vast amount of spells, but poor Coreranger has none due to being a fallen ranger. Success once again.
We then formed the big metal unit with Impish using the scorcher ammunition. Then Saemon took us inside though we ran past the enemies in the way. We prepped for Balthsazar but he was hard. For one, he can kill mordy swords and planetars and also his buffets were causing problems. However through careful play we were victorious once again.
We then dealt with Ravager - we tried to stay at range. Ravager was near death but not before poor Solstice died to summons attacking him. His party killed Ravager shortly thereafter. The planetar was nice enough to raise Solstice and heal him. We tried to go to Melissan but was told we weren't ready! Oh, we do need to do challenges #2 and #3 after all. The key for #2 is kill Coreranger doppleganger quick - if that's done rest of the enemies are usually straight-forard enough and they were. For pocket plane #3 challenge, if the protagonist has good AC (plus Coreranger used hardiness and stoneskin from boots too) then the Slay dies easily enough and this time was no exception.
What's remarkable is in our Trio is the last time we had made it to Melissan was back when we were a QUAD when Dogdancing was playing with us. This proved to be our undoing, as basically we had no practice or experience fighting Melissan together.
So for the 1st fight there was a death tyrant and Melissan. The Death Tyrant was an absolute genius this fight. Almost immediately Impish was taken out of the fight as the Death Tyrant petrified Impish! Uh, oh.
Just as bad somehow Solstice got hit with miscast magic and couldn't cast any spells. So all that was left was for a FALLEN ranger to somehow win, but Coreranger died quickly himself - RIP Coreranger.
While it was a great run, it was also a disappointing finish. Time to roll some new lambs to the slaughter!
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Having aquired the sea charts, we set sail, and slowly work our way up the Wolfwere ship.
There are so many enemies on some of the levels here that I only dare let FC and FI at them; the former will sometimes swap targets and start running around so we cannot risk the frailer party members.
Having reached the top floor and Karoug, a bit of bad luck: Daese turns completely uninterruptible, and has time for two carefully selected spells before exploding into Wolfwere form. I don't recall the first, probably it was nothing major, but the Confusion that followed certainly was.
She landed it smack-dab in the center of the back line; it was pure luck that both N and PoL made their saves, with PoT not being so fortunate. Now PoT is Confused while wielding a sling (so +4 To Hit and Damage for melee enemies) while in melee range of a Wolfwere.
I realized afterwards that I needn't have panicked so hard: PoT dying would be a huge bother, but we'd just haul him back to the mainland and raise him. Still, we made a concerted effort, and somehow managed to divert the other Wolfweres while killing the one smacking PoT just before the latter would've dropped. With the situation just barely under control, we eventually also brought Karoug down, mostly thanks to FI since FC had no means of injuring a Greater Wolfwere, beyond hoping its Magic Resistance would fail against a Wand of the Heavens.
Oh, for posterity: There are three damage types as regards traps in the Wolfwere ship. Fire, Lightning and a solitary Spike Trap (the latter only dealing about 10 damage so can be effectively ignored).
Might be useful to know if you, as we, lack a Thief that can fulfill his intended role.
Anyway, back on the mainland, we manage to keep Mendas interrupted until he explodes into Loup Garou form, and then it's just a matter of time.
I also found out that there is actually a use for Balduran's Logbook: Sell it at Sorcerous Sundries for 5000 gold (and the Butter Knife for 500 gold).
I always had those pegged as just curiosity/backstory items.
Durlag's yet remains, and we've vacuumed the Sword Coast for Potions of Perception. We should have just about enough to be able to get us through the game, provided we do not waste any, so let's move with purpose.
Clearing the Ghost and Kirinhale is easy enough, as is the Warder level... now for the Warders themselves.
We buff up with everything we've got, including a few STR potions, and have at it.
Fear dies in the first round: We get lucky with some ranged criticals, and everyone is using magical ammunition.
Avarice only has time to go invisible once before being taken down by FI.
Meanwhile, Skeleton Warriors are occupying Pride, and FC has landed several good hits on Love while under the protection of the Greenstone Amulet.
With FI and FT now free to join the melee, Love succumbs almost instantly; and by the time we turn our attention to Pride, he's only managed to down two Skeleton Warriors, and one of them even gets the final blow in.
I realized afterwards this was because the whole fight didn't take more than 5-6 rounds.
Bad stats or not, when properly buffed three warrior-types with good weaponry really hurt.
Next level (the one with all the Dopplegangers) goes by in a blur, as we're pressing a bit to ensure we can clear one whole level per batch of Potions of Perception.
Same goes for the Greater Wyvern level, it's a bit slower owing to huge numbers of enemies but we reliably punch through.
Around here I gave up figuring out the optimal distribution of tomes and just went with CON on FC and INT on FI; I didn't see any way to get an immediate noticable boost out of them anyway.
This time around, there are no unfortunate incidents at the Chess Board: Nearly the entire enemy force drops to a Fireball barrage, leaving us free to take down the King at our leisure.
The final level is also quite simple: You have to watch out for the Greater Ghouls as their damage can really pile up (and Potions of Freedom are nice here), but we use Skeleton Warriors to help us progress rapidly.
With the area cleared, we've attained what we came here for: Krotan's Skullcrusher +2.
There aren't many (any?) good maces available early in BG2, and I don't want to have to pay for Mauler's Arm as our early gold will be severely strained anyway, so I'd rather just import one.
On our way back to Baldur's Gate, we actually take out Kahrk too. I forgot myself and threw an Ice Lance at him when he was nearly dead, and so lost out on the loot. Unfortunate, as I was half hoping he'd defy the odds and drop an Invisibility, 10' Radius scroll.
OK, we're in the endgame. The Iron Throne party is swiftly dismantled: Thieves dragged into the southern room first and disposed of, then hastened and buffed Skeleton Warriors thin out the enemy ranks substantially before we charge in.
Result: FT takes a few arrows from Zhalimar and that's about it.
Back to Candlekeep, and N quaffs a Potion of Invisibility while the rest of the party deals with the Ogre Magi ambush.
We descend into the crypts, where PoL gets the WIS tome, and FC gets the STR tome.
Prat and his gang are quite helpless against a hasted party backed up by Skeleton Warriors, and we exit the crypts unimpeded.
Back in Baldur's Gate, Cythandria actually lands a Sunfire on a few party members: We charged in after she managed to (with able help from Urgh and Argh) dispose of our Skeleton Warriors, and she still had some spells left... but no one even died, much less got chunked, so it's still a win.
We snuck in and out of the Flaming Fist headquarters since I saw no point in risking (though it's not that dangerous) a battle given that we're at the cap; Invisibility on N and FI, Sanctuary on FC/PoL/PoT, and just plain stealth for FT.
Slythe and Krystin were also brought low rather quickly, though Krystin managed to confuse PoL.
We followed him closely with PoT to ensure no innocents got attacked, though it doesn't really matter by now.
And so the palace.
This also goes entirely to plan: We focus down the Shaman almost instantly, then turn our tender mercies on the Mage. Who of course manages to survive a few rounds owing to heavy defenses, but those same defenses give out fairly quickly; all we suffer in return is a single Remove Magic which didn't even strip any of our buffs.
FT took a good lick from the Assassin, but once revealed, the latter didn't last very long.
Meanwhile, Skeleton Warriors dealt with the rank-and-file Greater Dopplegangers, and both dukes handily survived.
With only 3 Potions of Perception remaining, we do navigate the maze successfully.
Time for a bit of a scare, then: Rahvin and cronies.
I thought I'd be brutal about it and just Fireball them all into oblivion. Worked, kind of... except as is usually the case, Shaldrissa somehow lived through it and set about counter-attacking.
... Good thing FT had a clear aura; I deemed it worthwhile to pop a Potion of Magic Shielding on him.
Shaldrissa is no slouch, and stays alive for a bizarrely long time before we're able to bring her down.
Tamoko is talked down, and we prepare for the final battle.
FC, FI and FT apply a PfM scroll, then every potion is brought forth: Agility/Fortitude/Storm Giant Strength/Heroism/Power/Invulnerability/Speed. N makes himself immune, via protection scrolls, to everything (Fire/Cold/Acid/Electricity), and the Clerics will just try to stay alive.
Behind a wall of walking bones, we advance.
Tazok is the first to go, but we get hit by two Remove Magic, one on FC, one on FT. Bizarrely, the one on FC fails to dispel anything, while the one on FT dispels everything.
Angelo keeps hounding the now unbuffed FT, but PfM is running, so there's little the former can really do.
FT runs around and reapplies potions, while FC helps FI finish off Diarmid.
N comes out of hiding to tear down Angelo's defenses, and we exploit the gap adeptly: Two Wand of the Heaven charges, along with Angelo's Stoneskins breaking, are sufficient.
Semaj is being a real pest, frequently going invisible, and even summons an Air Elemental (yes, the L6 arcane version): These are rather nasty now with SCS owing to their Whirlwinds. However, Semaj does not have PfNM up, so an Arrow of Dispelling seems a good choice.
FI being low on buffs is because one of the Skeleton Warriors was packing its own Arrows of Dispelling... in the future, we'll clear each Skeleton Warrior immediately as it appears, since that was a rather unpleasant surprise.
With all other threats gone, we utilize our wands to quickly take down the rogue Air Elemental, then turn on Sarevok.
Who hangs on quite a bit longer than usual, since none of our warriors are specialized in their ranged weaponry... but still, there's nothing Sarevok can really do.
A mostly clean BG1EE run, finished.
Good timing too, as I'll be out of town for the rest of the week; it'll give me a chance to map out the early parts of the BG2 part of the run in detail.
This go-around, I certainly won't use slot-conserving tactics against the bloody Pirates... let's see how it goes come the next update.
Deja - human totemic druid (Grond0)
Kerb - dwarf berserker (Gate70)
Corezerk V - dwarf berserker (Corey_Russell)
Previous run
Our run last week had ended with a few minutes of the session remaining and those were put to use by rolling up new characters ready for today's session. The immediate generation of characters was relevant as both Gate70 and Corey_Russell decided independently to relieve the frustration resulting from a near miss at the Throne by breaking a few heads with dwarven berserkers
With the starting save already made we were able to dive straight into the action in Candlekeep before heading off to find Shoal. On arrival there we noted that Corezerk had not felt able to afford a helmet in Candlekeep and Deja asked if he felt up to taking one from Ogre Droth. He didn't seem keen on that idea though, so we just shot down Shoal for the easy XP.
Next we did a few chores in Beregost - everyone picking up a first level there by talking down Marl. We also targeted Silke. She survived just long enough to release a lightning bolt, but that was aimed at a spirit snake which was correctly positioned to send the lightning harmlessly off into the distance.
Heading south to Nashkel we shut Noober's mouth permanently before enjoying a bit of action at the Carnival. With 2 berserkers in the party it seemed safe enough to take on Zordral there - his horror sent a spirit summons running, but the berserkers just laughed as they cut him down.
Kerb had already broken at least 2 longswords by this point, so Deja decided to seek out Greywolf to provide a more durable sword. His attacks showed that the berserkers' defences were not yet great and Deja took on the job of running him in circles to be shot down - providing everyone with another level. Kerb was still breaking a dual-wielded sword though, so the next target was Meilum's sword - Meilum managed to see off a spirit, but made no inroads on the berserkers.
A trip through the Cloud Peaks was fairly uneventful, but allowed Deja to push his charisma to 16 and get a small discount from shops. Corezerk already had the ankheg armor and took the bracers from the ogrillons to boost his dexterity (he is the most melee-minded of the group). Dealing with Bjornin's half-ogres provided Corezerk with a magic shield to further boost his chances in melee.
After dealing with a few more chores in Beregost, we headed up to the FAI to show Landrin the size of the spiders found in his house. Purchasing Buckley's Buckler there allowed Kerb and Corezerk the opportunity to regenerate naturally rather than relying on Deja's healing skills.
By this stage I expected that the sirines at the Lighthouse area would be no problem - and that proved to be the case. Corezerk and Kerb used their rage to each tank one of the groups and ensure they didn't resort to firing arrows. Inside the pirate cave the first 2 golems went down pretty easily and the 3rd duly followed, though it managed a couple of weighty blows.
Some more sirines were dealt with in Shoal's area on the way back north to the ankheg area. They were cleared with no real problems and speaking to the farmer there took our reputation up to 20. That prompted a shopping trip, first to Ulgoth's Beard and then Beregost. Corezerk got full plate there to further reinforce him, while Deja decided we had enough money to justify the luxury of purchasing the dagger of venom.
We travelled back south to the Nashkel Mine and will enter that next time.
Totemic druid 6, 55 HPs, 31 kills
Berserker (G70), 68 HPs, 93 kills, 0 deaths
Berserker (CR), 61 HPs, 64 kills, 0 deaths
HPs are excellent so far, with Deja picking up 55 out of a possible 60 and Kerb 68 out of a possible 75 - hopefully that's a good omen for the run
Previous part found here
An issue immediately rears its ugly head, one I imagine we'll keep butting heads with: FT is miserable at everything, but in particular, he's really not much of a Thief.
Sitting pretty at 25 Open Locks and 45 Find Traps since BG1...
There's no way we're going to be able to afford keeping him topped up with Potions of Perception/Master Thievery, so we'll be relying heavily on getting a 7+ roll from Cat's Grace to get him to 20 DEX (requiring spending most of our L2 arcane slots on Cat's Grace since that's a 1 in 4 chance per cast), and even so we'll likely end up sending FC to trigger some traps since we just can't disarm then. Locks we'll have to manage with DUHM/Strength of Stone and bashing, since again, we won't have the L2 arcane slots to fit Knock in there as well... let's hope FT manages some good luck on his next couple of Thief level-ups to mitigate this.
Equally disheartened and annoyed, we proceed. This time I remembered to prepare a few Commands for the Ogre Mage, so there's that at least.
Everything managed to import as expected: Helm of Balduran, Chain Mail +3 and Krotan's Skullcrusher, so at least we have a solitary melee damage dealer (though FI can't take a hit, at all).
Beyond FT tripping a 47 damage Spike Trap, nearly killing himself, the dungeon proceeds smoothly, and we exit to some level-ups.
Normally, I'd be quite adamant about saving every penny for a magic license and then bribing reputation up (while also saving everything we can sell to dump it all at the Priestess of Sekolah later), but given that we're actually trying to survive this one, I'll be a bit more lenient.
Or so I thought... the plan was to buy a Potion of Genius to scribe an Invisibility, 10' Radius scroll on FI to make us essentially immune to the early streak of ambushes.
Except there are no such scrolls for sale in Waukeen's Promenade. This will make things difficult.
We content ourselves with purchasing a few Scroll Cases after clearing the Circus, rest up, and depart for the Slums.
Clearing the local Slavers goes alright (we make sure to buy the Scroll Case from Bernard before freeing Hendak).
We take a lot of damage at times, owing to our poor AC, but when buffed up we do a good job of fending off almost anything; FI sports Wraith Form so is immune to non-magical weaponry when we need him to be.
So, no ambushes yet, and as we make our way to Watcher's Keep, there you have it: Invisibility, 10' Radius is available from Sister Galvena! Three copies in fact, though we are content with purchasing one; since it's an Illusion spell, FI requires only a single Potion of Genius to scribe it with 100% success rate.
Of course, it doesn't do much good if you don't bother scribing and then memorizing it, which I neglected to do straight away since we lacked a Potion of Genius: On our way back it's just N and FT that travel under single-target Invisibility, and we suffer the consequencues of our neglect.
A slightly better roll on that backstab could've spelled the permanent end of FI, an omen of things to come as the battle is actually a very close shave.
N got reduced to 8 HP at one point, owing to Melf's Minute Meteors being very efficient against someone with no DEX bonus and no armor, and then narrowly avoided a possible death by backstab thanks to a critical miss.
Far too close for comfort. We make a beeline for the Temple of Ilmater in the Slums, pick up the requisite potion, and immediately scribe our most vital scroll.
This incident just goes to show how very weak we are, and so we take no risks against Prebek and Sanasha; I find an initial Chaos here is usually a good choice, as typically at least one (with good odds, both) of them will fail their save.
There aren't that many appropriate strongholds for a weak party with a Thief that can't do much thieving, so we settle on Umar Hills as our first major quest. Valygar's Ranger guardians drop a Summon Hakeashar scroll, which is nice.. assuming we live long enough to use it.
We advance towards the temple, clearing the Shadows outside with some arcane firepower.
The interior is more precarious; the first spawn is not so bad, it's just a bunch of regular Shadows/Shade Wolves and two Skeleton Warriors, perfectly doable with light buffs.
Thankfully, we're far too low level to get a Lich in here, and to my surprise, we perform quite well with a full complement of buffs: Even two Bone Golems (the one hiding out to the south will join the fray when you engage the first group) at once doesn't pose a significant obstacle, though we do need to hurry in bringing them down as their damage can really add up otherwise.
The Greater Mummies can be a real pain since they require +3 weaponry, but we came prepared: Flame Strike and lots of Magic Missiles are effective.
OK. Time for some more touch and go: The Shade Lord. We buff with everything we can think of, including Death Ward on all characters that can't protect themselves against spellworks (so everyone but N and FI), since the Shade Lord gets to cast at least one Finger of Death.
Now, SCS Shade Lord is quite nasty, especially since I play with the "Remove all ammunition from containers" compoment: No killing the Shadow Altar with a single Sunstone Bullet, but rather it needs to be ground down.
While doing this, the Shade Lord runs (slowly, but still) amok with Black Blade of Disaster, protected by Blade Barrier, Spell Turning and Mantle (or Improved Mantle even? I forget), which it renews every so often; seems to be about every 6 - 8 rounds?
We don't even know Breach yet, but we can at least tear down the Spell Turning, since N knows Secret Word.
Oh, and there's also the Darkling Aura, periodically level draining everyone in range.
Really, this is a pretty harsh encounter, and even with 2 1/2 Clerics, our divine slots are stretched to the breaking point.
Even so, we manage to take down the Altar without losing anyone, and after quickly clearing out the remaining Shadows, start focusing on the Shade Lord.
A lot of things are working against us: We absolutely need Skeleton Warriors to take pressure off our mostly fragile frontliners, but every time the Shade Lord kills one, another Shadow pops up that we need to deal with (the STR drain can really bork us).
Also, the Shade Lord's Magic Resistance kicks in a few times too many, making it difficult to deal damage... then FT drops to 1 HP from the Blade Barrier and has to retreat, and FI gets level drained since we're out of Negative Plane Protection.
Oh, and the Shade Lord also heals itself using Black Blade of Disaster. Ugh.
I'm starting to think we might have to flee (can you even flee from this encounter?), but our very last Magic Missile finally punches through and ends things in our favour, just as we were on the ropes. Again... way, way too close for comfort.
Still, the monetary reward is decent, and we now (having bought an arcane license first thing we did) have enough cash to bribe reputation up to 17, and so can start handing in reputation quests! None of which net us even a single point. Boh!
At a bit of a loss as to what to do next, we have Mencar and buddies (N is L11 now so we have the 7 HD Skeleton Warriors available, greatly simplifying this encounter) yield a set of Full Plate for FC, though Mencar himself is quite deadly in close combat, dismantling nearly all our summons and putting severe hurt on FC.
We then clear the above-grounds Graveyard and the first part of the below-grounds; I wanted to clear the southern dungeons too, but that would've required a rest, which means returning at night, which means refusing Bodhi's offer, which means Vampires attacking rather than leaving us alone... so no. We return to the Copper Coronet instead.
And here the party can presently be found. Just before returning, our frontliners hit Fighter level 9.
The bad news: FC got a single pip in Club, and FT got a single pip in Warhammer. So... both useless.
The semi-good news: FI got a single pip in Two-Weapon Fighting! I'll take the -2 THAC0 for 1 extra mainhand APR, thank you (he'll be wielding Belm when we get it, so you can pretty much ignore the off-hand attack since it'll be so awful for him).
The question is what to do now. We really need to update our spell selection, but we don't have many good scrolls yet.
My plan is probably to go for De'Arnise Keep: It's fairly easy, excepting the two Yuan-Ti Mages in the cellar, and there's a Breach scroll there, as well as a good deal of gold for the taking.
Clearing the Bridge House Party will then net us another Breach scroll, and I can shell out a little cash for Spell Immunity and Improved Haste off the Bridge Cutpurse... that, along with the scrolls we already have, should set us up nicely.
We'll see how we go; current party stats are in the spoiler, for those interested.
Protagonist
Necromancer, L11 Human Necromancer, 73 HP (12 from Familiar)
Dagger *, Dart *
Fighter/Cleric, L9/L9 Dwarven Fighter/Cleric, 131 HP (5 from Helm of Balduran)
War Hammer *, Club *, Mace *, Quarterstaff *, Sling *, Sword and Shield Style *, Single-Weapon Style *
Fighter/Illusionist, L9/L10 Gnome Fighter/Illusionist, 65 HP
Bastard Sword *, Axe *, Dagger *, Mace **, Longbow *, Two-Weapon Style *
Fighter/Thief, L9/L11 Halfling Fighter/Thief, 76 HP
Long Sword *, Two-Handed Sword **, War Hammer *, Quarterstaff *, Crossbow *, Single-Weapon Style *
Priest of Lathander, L10 Half-Orc Priest of Lathander, 74 HP
Flail/Morning Star *, Sling *, Two-Handed Weapon Style *, Two-Weapon Style *
Priest of Talos, L10 Dwarven Priest of Talos, 74 HP
War Hammer *, Club *, Quarterstaff *, Two-Weapon Style *