All right - we're heavily outleveling the Nashkel Mines at this point, so clearing them out with a few sleep spells and some of the buffs in our arsenal is easy enough. After that, it's time to hunt down some bandits. Taugosz gets hit with a particularily successful call lightning from Jaheira:
The party clears out the tent and ventures into Cloakwood. Things go very well for the most part - the only minor setback is getting by the shadow arch druid's insect plague:
However, as our foe dies at the same time his spell hits us, there's nothing to really threaten anyone's lives, the damage is bearable and healed after a quick rest. We make it to the Iron Mines, where we throw 2 skull traps towards Drasus and his party, taking down the wizards in the process:
We delve into the mines, where oils of fiery burning, and a charge of both the wand of fire and the necklace of missles, are enough to take down Hareishan and most of her room:
The battle against Natasha turns out a bit weird - we call in some of our summons (we're planning to rest before taking on Davaeorn) and have them walk into the room, and Natasha unleashes her lightning bolt - which bounces in a rather unfortunate way for her, as she effectively takes down herself:
Command takes down the ogre mage, and we go upstairs to level 1 in order to rest. With Davaeorn, I'm trying to see how far our skulltraps can take us - one hit isn't quite enough, but takes the mage to very low health:
So, with him at 10 (out of a total of 45) hp already, we just finish him off with two fireball charges, which is just enough despite his very high fire resistance:
A few skull traps at Sorcerous Sundries upstairs, and we get the spider spawn scroll:
After that, we can go for our second big scroll learning session.
Time for a bunch of city sidequests. No trouble here - we get a bunch of powerful items, experience and consumables for the more significant future battles. Some potions to boost strength and agility come in useful at Degrodel's house - we also use wand of the heavens charges on Jaheira and Branwen plus wand of fire/frost on Eleanor, eventually turning in the helm after surrounding the mage and taking him down before he can disappear - not too difficult, now that we have haste in our arsenal:
After exploring the sewers, we go for Scar's quests and quickly only have the Iron Throne HQ left to do. We buff up, move upstairs and throw in 6 fireballs via potions/wand/necklaces before rushing in and taking on the survivors:
In Candlekeep, we quickly explore the library and get into the crypts. We take the tomes and move to the caverns. Full buffs (at this point: bless, chant, pfe, remove fear, haste and some more individual stuff, including quite a few strength spells or potions) and summons (skeletons and nymphs) help us to deal with Prat, with a manual use of nymph confusion doing a lot of work:
Back to the city - we will cover the BG1 endgame next time.
Back in the big city, we lure some flaming fist guards away from their HQ and enter, avoiding hold person or glyph of warding spells with the right protections or quick takedowns. On to the Iron Throne HQ, where Cythandria quickly falls, and to the Undercellars. Jaheira casts invisibility purge to reveal Krystin, and our buffs make overpowering the assassins rather easy:
We rest up and prepare for the Ducal Palace, once again buffing up fully, including some high-value strength and agility potions, plus heroism. Safana is tasked with targeting one doppelganger after the other with dispelling arrows:
Both dukes survive the battle, and we move into the maze, using PfU scrolls for the skeleton warriors down there and in the Undercity. The hostile party searching for Sarevok succumbs to a barrage of fireballs and some follow-up attacks, with our own party mostly protected from fire via potions:
We take down Tamoko and are now ready to face Sarevok.
Aside from the full array of potion and spell buffs, we call in our skeletons to keep our brother and his allies busy. Khalid carefully approaches, bow in hand, and dispels the haste effect on Sarevok before luring him towards us. Semaj teleports in under invisibility, Jaheira immediately casts invisibility purge again, though not before the mage uses his tattoo of power to hit us with greater malison:
Semaj reveals himself by starting an aggressive spell, but with both Khalid and Safana hitting him with dispelling arrows, he is immediately without defenses and quickly interrupted, preventing the potential chaos followup:
Jaheira hasn't even finished her detection spell yet - once she's done, Semaj is already dead:
Since Sarevok hasn't fully followed us, we aren't under any pressure, so I decide to go for a slight bit of extra experience by taking down Angelo and Tazok down as well - which is not all that difficult:
Sarevok, without friends and without haste, is an easy target, and we're soon done with BG1:
We fight our way out of the opening dungeon, which is easy enough. In the city, we start recruiting our party: Minsc and Jaheira both stick with us, and we add in Jan and Anomen. The final party member I want to add is Mazzy, so we're off to the Umar Hills, only picking up Daystar on the way - otherwise, we've done nothing yet in Athkatla, so our gear and experience levels are a bit lacking. On the way to our target area, we run into the Suna Seni ambush. This is, finally, a good opportunity for our double horror minor sequencer that I had never used in BG1, but have re-prepared in SoA in hopes of it coming in clutch at some point in the early game:
Well, that's a 100% success rate and an easy fight for us. The very important side effect of this encounter: Access to some more magical weapons, which we need to hurt shadows and skeleton warriors. Jaheira, the only one without a magical option, has multiple shillelagh spells at the ready. The party makes it to the temple ruins and picks up Mazzy:
We rotate around our frontliners, make use of arcane defenses, call in summons as much as we can, heal up with forest beings and eventually take down the bone golem, the most signifcant foe in here at our low levels:
Finally, we use our one sunray from Daystar during the battle against the shade lord:
On our way back, we complete the remaining Umar Hill content. As a side note, Minsc randomly dies here when fighting the rangers who guard Valygar's cabin because I didn't rest after taking on the Shade Lord and he got pelted with one too many arrows. This is our first death in the entire run, entirely due to an extreme lack of care by myself. Not good, and I'm quite annoyed with myself for letting that one happen, as it would've been very easy to avoid - luckily, all we need is to rest once and Jaheira can just pick him up with Harper's Call. Now we can move back to the city and start with the many minor sidequests.
The start of the session proper was a bit delayed when the game got a bit confused about whether we were in SoA or ToB. Initially we were concerned the save itself was bugged, but everyone quitting and restarting eventually got things to work properly. We struggled against the fire giants last time, but had done most of the hard work against them then and finishing the last of them off in the lower temple was easy enough. None of the remaining groups there caused much concern.
Climbing the stairs to the upper temple, Deja opened proceedings against the fire giants there with Nature's Beauty and was surprised to see one of the giants actually killed by that.
The large group of giants got stuck in a low doorway and were easy targets for ranged attacks.
After beating up a few more stragglers, Corezerk finished the work in the temple by recovering the Ravager halberd.
Nyalee was never likely to provide significant opposition and didn't do so.
Yaga-Shura was potentially more of a problem and there could have been danger when a Lt Mage successfully cast time stop before Nature's Beauty kicked in. He didn't do much with that opportunity though and with him and Yaga-Shura blinded finishing them off was simple.
At the Oasis we chose to run through invisibly - at least after killing Jamis to get the Answerer long sword for Kerb.
In Amkethran we just fought a few minor battles - including getting access to a shop in the cave. Corezerk got K'Logarath there which saw plenty of use in the rest of the session. He also bought the boots that protect against backstabs - but those disappeared into thin air soon after without ever being used.
Next up was Sendai's Enclave where we set up to kill the drow woodcutter to open up the main entrance. I wasn't watching closely in real time, but noted that Corezerk collapsed during that battle - review of a relevant screenshot there showed he was the victim of a vicious attack by a rabid moose .
The remaining drow were easily enough finished off, with the help of a firestorm (which is particularly useful when dealing with magic resistant enemies).
Deja found he was initially unable to bring Corezerk back to life as he had no rod of resurrection (possibly the quest use to save a young boy's father in the last session had used the last charge). Resting invisibly though gave Deja the opportunity to make use of his relatively newly learned mass raise dead HLA.
Inside the enclave we made easy enough progress through to Odamaron. He resisted an initial assault by Kerb with the iMoD and the berserkers were unable to target him once he had disappeared and buffed. Deja could still see him though and the Firetooth dagger eventually wore through his defenses.
Ogremoch can be a nasty handful for a solo player because he quickly renews lost stoneskins. However, against the massed attacks of 3 of us and summons he was no trouble at all.
The nearby Hive Mother caused quite a bit of damage, largely with her insects, but went down before anyone was critically hurt.
Captain Egeissag then challenged Deja to a duel. He was too slow to be able to get to grips with him though, while energy blades rained in.
With time running out we were unable to complete the final battle with Sendai's statues, but with most of those down we took the opportunity to break the battle up by keeping out of sight of a mage clone - allowing us to go back to the Pocket Plane and rest up for next time.
Totemic druid 25, 109 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 226 kills (95 in BGEE)
Berserker 28 (G70), 168 HPs, 780 kills (263 in BGEE), 4 deaths
Berserker 28 (CR), 177 HPs, 694 kills (220 in BGEE), 3 deaths
Biff {57} - melee sorcerer (update 1)
Previous recorded run
It's been a year or so since I tried this long-running challenge, so thought it was time Biff got back into the action. He is allowed to buff himself, but can't cast any aggressive spells on others or make any use of summons (or actively use a familiar). He's also of course not allowed to use any missile weapons, so has to get up close where it hurts to take down opponents.
A first attempt in this series saw plenty of hard work ended at level 5 when Biff's disappointing total of 18 HPs was exactly matched by a critical from a worg. Restarting, I decided to make things easier by going straight to the basilisk area - though I nearly died in a kobold archer ambush on the way.
On arrival, Korax offered his services (allowed as no spell was involved). He quickly disposed of a first lesser basilisk to give Biff a level and 5 more HPs. A greater basilisk followed to provide 2 more levels and 11 more HPs. The remaining lesser basilisks were just enough for level 5 before Korax successfully killed the last greater basilisk as well. He was badly hurt in the process and did well to paralyze Mutamin before the mage could unleash an acid arrow. After resting up, Korax was given his reward using invisible staff attacks.
With invisibility and ghoul touch, the range of reasonable targets was greatly expanded, with Silke being an early demonstration of that - her staff was then used to kill the golems at High Hedge. After a few minor chores around Beregost, Biff headed down to Nashkel to learn Bhaal CLW - Neira was among the paralytic victims there.
A journey up to the FAI netted a girdle from an ogre. Tarnesh managed to scare Biff, but couldn't do much through his shield protection and was cut down by the guards. By this time Biff was close to another level and helping out against Greywolf provided that and 6 more HPs. Invisibility then meant rescuing Samuel was risk-free.
A trip through the Cloud Peaks to get the charisma tome was pretty uneventful and helped push reputation up to 18. Unsurprisingly, Biff was unable to kill the xvarts quickly enough to save Arabelle. He pushed on to Firewine Bridge to get Meilum's bracers before picking up the final couple of reputation points by beating up Bjornin's half-ogres and then escorting Brage back to Nashkel. He celebrated by purchasing the Dagger of Venom, Robe of the Archmagi and Claw of Kazgaroth. The latter imposed an HP penalty, so Biff headed for the Lighthouse area where he initially sneaked past the sirines into the golem cave to get the constitution tome. The golems were beaten up partly using invisible attacks, though there was also some micro-management to move away to waste golem attacks before nipping in to get his own attack.
A single worg was enough for level 7. In addition to 4 more HPs that gave him MSD and the confidence to take on sirines and he duly cleared the area of those.
Biff went through the Nashkel Mine largely invisibly to find Mulahey. He saved against an initial hit by ghoul touch, but was paralysed by a follow-up and finished off before he could recover. Biff was fully buffed and the support crew Mulahey had summoned needed criticals to hit him - but still managed to take him to single figure HPs, though the use of Bhaal healing allowed him to finish the battle without running away.
Outside the mine, Biff briefly attacked the amazons before running away and going invisible. The purpose of that was to split them up and he successfully picked them off one by one. The tombs in the area were cleared as well, with the same sort of micro-managing retreat and attack used on the revenant as with golems. It did get one nasty blow in when haste ran out at the wrong time, but Biff used invisible attacks to finish it off. Narcillicus's mustard jellies needed a critical to hit him and failed to get any. The mage himself had his first attempted spell interrupted and was paralysed before he could try again.
After reporting in to the mayor, a sneak attack on Nimbul paralysed him. Helpfully, that meant he didn't go hostile, so there was no chance of Rasaad stealing the kill. That took Biff to level 8 and he gained 6 HPs and stoneskin to make him much less vulnerable to physical attacks. Another 6 HPs was gained by summoning a familiar for the passive HP benefit.
With a bit of cash available again, Biff made a few more purchases - including the +3 staff and greenstone amulet. He backtracked to beat up some ankhegs in their nest.
Back in Beregost, Biff went to find Tranzig. He has decent saving throws, so I didn't really expect to paralyse him - but did in fact manage to do so after MSD had turned away an acid arrow. While in town, Biff also beat up some spiders for Landrin. While reporting to him he picked up the pantaloons.
At the Bandit Camp, stoneskin made dealing with the bandit archers easy enough. Taurgosz was more resilient, but eventually failed his 4th or 5th saving throw. Inside the tent, Biff took the precaution of using the Greenstone Amulet, but Venkt was paralysed by his first attack anyway - shortly afterwards all the enemies were paralysed and/or unconscious.
Biff went invisibly through the Cloakwood to reach the mine. On arrival, Biff showed himself to Drasus to pull him away and effectively ended their combat with his first attack. After Genthorne was also pulled away to his doom, the Greenstone Amulet was again used on the mages. This time it proved its worth as, although Kysus was paralysed by an initial blow, Rezdan managed to release a horror before being beaten unconscious.
Inside the mine, Biff made his way to the bottom level. The initiative bonus and speed to retreat from haste and the long reach of his staff combined to allow Biff to get largely unopposed attacks in on the battle horrors and both of those went down without too much trouble. Biff ran away from a lightning bolt and then used invisibility to foil attempted charm and hold spells before Davaeorn tried (and failed) to match him in melee. That took Biff to level 9, with 4 additional HPs. He killed a mustard jelly and did a bit of looting before flooding the mine.
Sorcerer L9, 53 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 172 kills
All right. Time for an Athkatla sidequest montage:
After all that is done, we travel to the Druid Grove in order to finally get Jaheira some magical weapons. Trolls are easy enough to deal with by now, Jaheira has access to fire elementals which allow her to easily take down Faldorn. We continue with Watcher's Keep level 1, even taking on the statues early as they are fairly easy to deal with in the vanilla game:
Back to the city for the thief stronghold - Eleanor has Breach and the Robe of Vecna by now, so enemy wizards (unless they'd be liches) just get breached and die:
The final "easy" stronghold, De'Arnise keep, is the next one to be cleared out. Jan almost manages to kill the yuan-ti mage with a backstab, Mazzy has to step in before it gets any protections ready:
Tor'Gal can do very little against a fully buffed up group with powerful summons at this point. To cap things off, we pay Gaelan to get the AoP and go through Aran's quests, finishing things with Bodhi's Lair. My attempt to take on Tanova with a quick assault is hindered by her simulacrum and invisbility spells, buying her enough time to sunfire and skull trap our party, nearly killing Minsc:
Luckily, Jan's detect illusions does its job and Eleanor finally can breach the second Tanova as well, and we get through the battle without losing anyone. However, there's another bit of trouble when I carelessy open the chest in the cellar, trapped with something like a double lightning bolt trap. Not sure what I was thinking in the moment - I was propably convinced I had already disarmed it, because I'm well aware that it's trapped. Jan and Eleanor were the ones in the room. While Eleanor made all her saving throws and took relatively little damage, Jan went down to 3 hp immediately as I managed to pause the game:
This is especially dangerous because dying from very low hitpoints like this could result in a chunking, not just a death. We don't have any lightning resistance gear to hand to Jan, no potions of absorption either (something I usually buy from Roger fairly early on when playing with SCS, but I sometimes skip that in the vanilla game). He has to drink a healing potion and pray that we don't get too many further bounces. Eleanor makes it out of the room without taking additional damage - Jan drinks the potion, gets hit again, but the bounces stop and he lives as well:
That was sketchy. Poorly played on my part for sure, I don't think I've ever triggered that trap before (well, at least not in recent years). We take down Bodhi before leaving for now:
After upgrading the iMoD for future vampire encounters in the Windspear Hills, it's time to stop for now.
In the City, Biff's first opponent was the ogre mage. An initial attack paralysed that and, with most of the carrion crawlers remaining neutral, Biff was able to finish it off without running away too far. Next up was the poison quest, where Jalantha was paralysed with his first hit, Lothander had just enough room to push him out of the way to escape down the stairs, Larze saved against paralysation several times and worked through 3 lots of stoneskins before eventually being tagged. That all led up to Marek where Biff missed with his initial attack and ran downstairs to avoid confusion. On his return though he got the job done.
Next up was Ramazith's Tower. Ramazith avoided paralysation, but a bit of dodging in and out and use of invisible attacks accounted for him. Biff killed the mustard jellies, but just sneaked past the other guards to loot the tower (though he didn't yet have the ability to get into the locked cabinet).
At the Iron Throne, Biff used the stairs to split the opponents up and started picking them off one at a time. I was a bit careless against Naaman though and didn't notice he was casting horror. Fortunately MSD and shield absorbed enough of his spell attacks to allow Biff to survive until he regained his senses. There were no further problems in finishing the remaining enemies, although Biff was fatigued by this time and had to wait a while to get the critical necessary to tag Gardush.
Reporting to duty back in Candlekeep, Biff avoided the real Iron Throne leaders and was sent to the catacombs. The tombs were looted there using the violet potion. He decided that discretion was the better part of valour and left Prat's gang alone on the way out - though he did pick off the greater basilisks for a bit of bonus XP.
Before returning to Baldur's Gate, Biff made his way to Durlag's Tower. With stone skin, fire shield and protection from fire in his armory, Biff didn't have to bother about using invisibility and breaking off attacks regularly against the battle horrors. After killing some more basilisks and Riggilo, Biff looted the wisdom tome using MSD to protect against the charm trap.
With higher base strength and DUHM, Biff was now able to do a bit more looting and quest work - including picking up the Cloak of Balduran. With that done he showed himself to Slythe and beat him up. Then it was on to the potentially dangerous encounter at the palace. Three of the dopplegangers there attacked Biff, which gave the dukes enough time to help deal with the others before either died.
In the maze, Biff used one of his several PfU scrolls to kill the skeleton warriors - though he could have done that easily enough using just his own abilities. He left the Undercity party alone and went on to the old temple to find Sarevok. Rather than use traps on him, Biff played fair there. An invisibility potion let him break contact with Sarevok after his opening conversation and a PfM scroll then kept him safe while Semaj killed himself. A couple of PfF green scrolls minimised the damage from Angelo's arrows and a potion of regeneration repaired that until Angelo went down. Tazok got his invisible attack in, but was too slow to get any more while Biff finished him off. That just left Sarevok and Biff waited until his PfM scroll wore off to tackle him - so that he could use his own buffs. I made the mistake there though of trying a stand up fight initially and Sarevok's 90% resistance to cold damage allowed him to take minimal damage from fire shield, while reducing the number of stoneskins Biff had available. With Sarevok also being hasted and having a long weapon, Biff could not reliably avoid being attacked by him while running round and had to use another regeneration potion before finally getting a killing blow in.
Biff transferred to SoD with 340k XP, so was able to immediately level up there - getting 6 more HPs and the ability to use shadow door.
Sorcerer L10, 59 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 258 kills
In the SoD dungeon, Biff avoided any conflict on the way to Korlasz. After buffing up he attacked her - and succeeded in paralysing her with his first blow. Switching to chill touch allowed him to kill her without waiting for ghoul touch to expire.
Biff just did some shopping and picked up the Spectacles of Spectacle in Baldur's Gate before heading out. As typical for my solo characters he started off pretty much only doing essential work:
- used invisibility at the Coast Way Crossing to avoid a fight at the bridge. The bonus XP for that allowed Biff to get to level 11.
- ran invisibly through Troll Claw Woods.
- at the Forest of Wyrms sneaked through into the old temple. Ziatar was paralysed by ghoul touch.
I was feeling tired and not concentrating properly though and that led to disaster against the Neothelid. His large range of save or else abilities mean proper buffing is essential there. I did briefly look at my character record and saw negative saves, but overlooked the save vs death was positive (as a result of wearing the Claw of Kazgaroth). The Neothelid gleefully took its chance to hold Biff and invisibility was no defense against its attacks ...
At the Windspear Hills, the most significant threats are vampires and golems. The vampires, however, are easily dealt with by Minsc using the iMoD +2 and the Daystar sunray:
As for the golems, Jan can buff up to become a reliable tank here, and our fire elementals and aerial servants are quite good at dealing damage to them. We take down Conster with breach, use fire resistance spells for Samia's labyrinth and move back to the city after taking down her group with insect plague.
The bard stronghold is next - after killing Mekrath and returning to the bridge district, we buff up and go invisible, taking down the two spellcasters at the ambush site right away, with Jan backstabbing one of them:
Now we fight our way eastwards, throwing down some skulltraps from time to time in order to speed up the killing. Jaheira is usually at the front, which is why she gets a chaotic command buff, so she, for example, wont't be paralyzed by the Master of Thralls. The orb is quickly obtained, and we re-buff before destroying it and charging at the Warden before he can get rid of the remaining thralls:
The Unseeing Eye is a quick one for our party: Balduran's Shield to contend with any beholders and gauths, fire elementals deal with all the undead here (no lich spawn, we're not high enough level for that), we only have to help out with the bone golem and the eyeless priests. The Unseeing Eye itself falls to the rod and a quick barrage of attacks. However, it seems like I didn't take any screenshots of the entire affair.
Finally, we go for the wizards stronghold, the Planar Sphere. A big group of summons is deployed against the halflings, and Tolgerias is approached from invisibility and with a quick breach spell:
We clear the ice and fire room, take down more golems (with summons, Jan, Eleanor or Jaheira tanking) and send some skeletons after Lavok, who can't really deal with them, and once he's out of spells, the party joins in:
With our remaining buffs, we quickly hunt down some demons outside and bring back the Sphere. I think I've done all 8 stronghold quests without any resting during each one of them, which is pretty good, though it is also a very unneeded risk. Now, we get to finish the mage stronghold questline, which doesn't really get us anything aside from experience points, and the party travels to Brynnlaw.
Well the party is almost ready to head to Brynnlaw - though not before tragedy struck! In our battle with Firkraag, traps weren't very effective and April the dwarven fighter/thief was CHUNKED!. Interestingly enough, without lowering Firkraag's magic resistance a single feeblemind worked and then simple attacks avenged April. The Illithid's hideout in the sewers will be our next target.
We quickly do the other Brynnlaw sidequests and enter the Asylum. With the help of our summons, the areas are quite easy to clear out, and we don't even get a lich spawn yet, as our levels are still too low. Nothing of note really happens, and we rush down Irenicus, forcing him to leave as soon as his opening spell is finished:
The City of Caverns is our next stop, another easy one to get through. Most importantly, we're just able to make it to 6 casts of chaotic commands/death ward for Anomen, which is very important for the mind flayer, demon knight or high level spellcaster battles in the Underdark. Here's the balor (Elenoar has to stay in the back, because her death ward, which was cast by Jaheira, not by Anomen, has run out by now):
And here are the demon knights:
We add PfP for the initial beholder ambush in the southern hive:
The remainder of the area is done with the Shield of Balduran, sometimes a few skeleton summons are added in. Chaotic commands and some improved haste spells are enough for the mind flayer city - I'm able to avoid any double hits (having quite a few frontliners with int only at or below 10). Into Ust'Natha - here, we use death spell to rescue Phaere:
We continue on with the various main quests and sidequests. Deirex, our first real lich, has to be taken seriously - we run past him, hasted, and out of his sight to counter his timestop, returning after his PFMW has fallen off. He still has a remove magic, hitting Anomen, Minsc and Mazzy, but without PFMW he just doesn't survive for long enough to cast any dangerous spell:
Now, we execute the egg swap and leave the Underdark.
Picking up another long-running challenge, Beggar is on the warpath again. I've used various installations and tweaks for this, but this run will be the standard one based on the unmodded game and core difficulty. My additional rules for poverty challenges are:
1) You can never buy or sell any items (including any items required for quests).
2) You can never use or equip any items (but can pick things up for quests).
3) You may pay for quests (such as Gaelan Bayle), but not anything else (temples, inns etc) - that means that any character death is tough to recover from .
After leaving Candlekeep, the Opera went straight to the basilisk area in search of quick XP. Korax did his usual good job there and everyone was ready to level up by the time Mutamin and all the basilisks were dead. Minor quests around Beregost accumulated enough XP for everyone except Pauper to level again. However, my normal rule for parties is that everyone has to level up together, so everyone else had to be patient.
Moving down to the Nashkel Carnival, the Opera had a close shave against Zordral. Pauper sneaked into his tent and successfully silenced him, but multiple attempts to disable him then failed and he was able to cast an acid arrow on Aspire. Fortunately all the 3 ticks from that did less than his 10 HPs available and Hardup was able to heal him between each lot of damage. I should really have used pre-set snares there to be safe, but Washout eventually threw in a special snare to finish Zordral off. North of the Carnival Arabelle was saved from some ravening xvarts and an ogre clan all fell asleep. Sarhedra didn't recognise the destruction of the clan, but blinding and disposing of Ioin Gallchobair and his merrie men was enough for the next level.
The next major input of XP came from laying a full complement of traps for an old man - the 26k gained from that getting everyone except Pauper ready to level up again. At the FAI a pre-laid trap for Tarnesh was wasted when a fist backstab (which seems a slightly odd concept ) from Washout caused morale failure while he was still neutral.
While in the mood for trapping innocents (even if those are not exactly helpless) the Opera went to find Drizzt next. It took a while to build up a stack of traps given the regularity of sleep ambushes there, but that was eventually done. However, 4 special and 3 normal traps were insufficient to kill Drizzt and even another special trap thrown in did not get the job done. He was able to use a cure spell on himself, which allowed him to survive another normal trap and the Opera were forced to retreat and rest before another special trap finally proved enough.
They were currently despised by everyone, so set about mending fences by taking advantage of Beggar's high charisma to persuade Charleston Nib he needed help. Blindness and a barrage of magic missiles then accounted for the Doomsayer. Moving on to the Lighthouse area they helped out Ardrouine, but decided not to take on the sirines yet. Back at the mine site they picked up Brage to take back to Nashkel - by which time their reputation had improved sufficiently for the guards not to attack them.
Next up was the Nashkel Mine. In Mulahey's cave everyone was invisible when a series of traps went off - only leaving a few skeletons to deal with. Outside the mine, the amazons were all blinded and sat in the middle of Writhing Fog. The Revenant was blinded, Narcillicus stepped on a couple of traps and some ghasts taken down by magic missiles to clear the area. Samuel was then rescued before the Opera returned to Nashkel, blinded Nimbul and returned a ring to Joseph's widow.
Then it was back to Beregost where Elminster was waiting. He had a new name, but was still worth a cool 26k XP, leaving Pauper once more as the only one holding up the next level. Tranzig survived a couple of traps - but not the follow-up attacks.
At the Bandit Camp an epidemic of sleeping sickness spread across most enemies. Taurgosz was blinded, as were the enemies in Tazok's tent. I had multiple ways of dealing safely with those, but foolishly chose to dance up some spirits to attack Venkt. He was able to shrug off the magic missiles sent in to support the spirits and cast horror at those, which also sent 4 of the opera running. Trying to protect those nearly cost a death before Pauper managed to hold Venkt (and Britik who had gone hostile as a result of Venkt's movements).
Pauper had another close shave at High Hedge when taking on golems. The first died in traps, but Pauper was expecting to do most of the work in killing the second using his Seeking Sword. However, although golems have poor defences, Pauper's aim was poor and the golem survived to kill the attacking spirits. Pauper tried to stick around to finish it off, but a critical of 34 damage put him at death's door. Beggar, using a shillelagh, was able to finish the job though. That took Pauper quite close to a level and he would have received that if Melicamp had survived his transformation - but he didn't. Bassilus and a few minor encounters later though and the level was gained.
They've just travelled back to the Lighthouse area and will be taking on sirines next.
Hmm ran into a major problem - I've done like 10,000 dmg to Irenicus but he won't die - he also won't give his surrender speech either - what do I do? I can't kill him with damage and he won't give his speech what option is left? NOTE: I'm talking about the Irenicus in Spellhold should have made that clear.
EDIT: I think I have a work-around. We got out of sight of Irenicus and rested. Then we just walked upstairs, met Saemon and got teleported out of Spellhold. I believe the game considers Irenicus defeated which means it seems to be operating normally. Will keep at it.
At the Lighthouse, web meant that the first group of sirines only managed to fire a single poison arrow. Sil's group didn't even manage that and summons and traps helped take down the golems in the cave without trouble.
They ticked off the main encounters in the Cloud Peak Mountains next. There wasn't much XP to be gained there though, so they decided to move on to Durlag's Tower. Web + spirit lions (which have free action) made an efficient killing combination for battle horrors outside the tower. Inside, they struggled with the group of ghasts on the first floor due to problems with lines of sight around the doorway initially meaning Hardup was held by the trap. Webs stopped the ghasts from killing him immediately and the ghasts were eventually dealt with. On the roof, some basilisks meant Pauper was once more left as the last to get XP for the next level. Inside, they got some bonus XP by successfully trapping Kirinhale before she could make her escape. They also laid traps to kill the ghost when it teleported. With the upper tower clear of enemies disaster struck though when Washout greedily tried to disarm a few traps for the tiny bit of XP they give. In the basement he successfully disarmed the floor trap hiding loot, then failed to do so with the first of the other two. You normally get a warning message before a failed attempt will trigger a trap and that happened here - so Washout attempted to disarm the other trap, only for it to trigger a lightning bolt. Possibly there's a cooling down period and he didn't wait long enough to do that?
The lightning didn't chunk Washout, but the only possible way to revive him was to get Shoal to do that. If her kiss proves fatal to the first character talking to her (and that is no longer guaranteed in the EE), she can be persuaded to cast a mass raise dead on the party. Skint needed to be 'lucky', to get the 15 required to save against the kiss - and was, so that was a disappointing end to the run.
Now, for some unfinished business - dragons, liches, mind flayers, guarded compound, twisted rune and the like. The main goal here is to not get the entire party dispelled - as long as we keep our buffs, we're most likely going to be fine. The shadow dragon gets to activate one remove magic, but I notice early enough that Anomen is the target and move him away:
For Firkraag, we just send in some summons first to draw out the remove:
We deal with the three new forest areas, and the party turns towards Athkatla, going fully invisible to safely disarm and surprise the enemies at the guarded compound:
For lich encounters, we use a combination of traps and/or sunrays:
We rush down the beholder at the Twisted Rune. Jan doesn't have enough traps to actually kill Shangalar, so we have to deal with two wizards with timestop - we move further into the room, so Shangalar can't see us and doesn't do anything during his timestop. For Layenne's, which happens first, we trust in Eleanor and Jan having fire protection and the others having enough HP to deal with meteor swarm and the pit fiend:
That worked out very well, considering how aggressive our strategy was.
On to Bodhi - Minsc does most of the work here, with the iMoD, his ranger bonus against vampires and improved haste:
Drizzt steals our deathblow experience, as happens quite often. Maybe I should just not recruit him in vanilla playthroughs. Next, Minsc drinks a potion of genius so he can activate a PfM scroll for Kangaxx:
Now, we make it to WK level 2. We have lighting protection spells for the air room, poison immunity via necklace for the acid room, protection from ice for the ice golem and fire protection for the fire giant:
Meanwhile, the chromatic demon dies to regular traps with bonus fire damage:
The party moves on to the elven city, and by now we have our first few HLAs, so we can add in planetars, devas and an elemental prince. Mordenkainen's swords help us with tanking any golems, and Jan backstabs the drow wizard:
Since we didn't bother with protection from acid spells, we're sending our HLA summons towards the black dragon instead, drawing out his remove magic and insect plague:
As we peak in to help out, the summons are actually (barely) able to overwhelm the dragon by themselves, though only because we got the rare double elemental prince summon:
Now, we summon the avatar and clear out the city. Time for the endgame; Also, we've now caught up with my actual gamestate, so updates will be less frequent.
Phantasmic 6 {69} - monks party (update 1)
Previous recorded run:
I wasn't intending to do any more party play after the Beggar's Opera run, but the way that ended felt unsatisfactory and I considered restarting again. Instead though, I thought I would try one of my single-class parties. Looking at the options I had a vague memory I'd tried monks before and duly found this group - last seen 6 or 7 years ago. They were up against an SCS installation then, so may find progress this time a bit easier.
I also found my notes included some descriptive poetry. It feels like a while since I've inflicted any of my doggerel on readers, so decided to pick up that as well - at least I've hidden it in a spoiler though, so it won't come at you without warning .
My party of monks have got up from their hassocks
Wearing no armour, but only their cassocks
They're ready for action - at least I hope so
They've started in Candlekeep and are raring to go.
You're tired of the rhymes already, I know ...
Recruiting of others the monks can't do
Bad for Imoen who they coldly slew
She was shot to ensure she couldn't resist
But Xzar's spells were countered with a first taste of fist.
After some tricky dodging during an ambush escape
They arrived at Beregost still in good shape
A magical sling proved to be cheap
And matching bullets would make golems weep.
While in town they found a new cloak
Losing reputation in the eyes of the folk
The purpose of that I'm sure you will see
Is so that Chimera can learn LMD.
In the dark they gathered making no sound
So Silke would see nothing around
Their fists struck hard but Silke stood tall
Until follow-up missiles led to her fall.
With golems all dead they bought a new case
And moved quickly on to find a new place
They talked there to Brage on the subject of death
And were whisked to Nashkel in the space of a breath.
With new level in hand they felt rather bold
And we all know no-one wants to get old
They approached Zordral in shadows veiled
And fists ensured his spells all failed.
Travelling south a sculptor they found
"Don't interrupt, I'm busy" he frowned
But actually he was in need of help
And a hail of missiles made Greywolf yelp.
Deciding to explore a nearby mine
Many kobolds fell and all seemed fine
But at just second level each hit could hurt
And Wraith stayed too close and hit the dirt.
After coughing up funds to the temple roof fund
They looked for a victim who could be stunned
A cleric was found who failed to save
And a few moments later was in need of a grave.
Nimbul's his name and he can be hard to hit
But fists did the job with no chance to submit
The experience gained made everyone revel
As they burst through a ceiling to get a 3rd level.
I think in at least some of my previous runs with the monks I didn't allow resurrection, but I won't apply that this run - so the monks can continue despite Wraith's death. That was annoying as he'd retreated after being hit by one arrow and I'd thought (obviously wrongly) he was out of range of a follow-up ...
After resting up they backtracked their route
Mainly in search of some Amazons' loot
They expected the battle to go very well
But the monks not the amazons were the ones that fell.
I was thinking that would be a reasonable level of risk to take on, but pretty much everything went wrong in the fight with the monks attacks proving less effective than expected and the Amazons much more so. To test out the extent to which the planning was faulty I loaded the autosave 3 times and used the same tactics. In the first the monks won with barely a scratch. The second was a relatively tough battle, but still no monk casualties. The third was another very easy battle. So at least I have the small consolation that it was Lady Luck telling me not to proceed ...
A short little update for the end of SoA/start of ToB:
Fighting Irenicus at the tree, we prepared a few traps and charged at our foe, with both methods together being enough to kill him befor his protections were activated:
In hell, we go for the good solutions. For the beholder group, we're sending in a planetar and elemental prince. Eleanor also throws in a horrid wilting to speed things up - she got a bit too close to our enemies and actually got hit by the anti-magic ray, but luckily she moved out of sight quickly enough to avoid any follow-up:
A bit of an unneeded risk here.
We prepare traps, HLA summons and lots of buffs for the final SoA battle and focus on taking out the demons first:
Going after Jon, we don't quite manage to breach him (he seems to have some sort of protection against that), but he also doesn't have a PFMW going, so we just have to punch through regular defenses, which is done quickly enough withall of the improved haste spells granting us tons of APR. Jon goes down right as he teleports away for the first time, and I was unable to take a screenshot before the ending cutscene started.
Some traps help us with Ilasera (and I realize that I forgot to kill Bloodscalp in SoA, so we're missing one pair of Boots of Speed... that's annoying), and we start the first pocket plane challenge, where, at the end, we have to face Jon yet again. This time, a deva does pretty much the entire job for us - Jon starts out invisible, and for some reason, Jan's detect illusion does nothing to reveal him across several rounds (so he must have been stealthed instead of invisible? strange...) - However, devas see through invisibility, and the deva just started attacking him, punched through his defenses and eventually killed him by herself:
We talk to Cespenar, forge a bunch of items and are now ready to enter Saradush.
Just a quick note - we (Corecleric and his band of thieves and Mazzy) managed to clear out the dungeons in the Underdark with only one death (not chunked). We got loads of experience down here and we did everything including clearing out the illithid lair. We are on our way back to the City. We will be going almost immediately for Bodhi as we have already done everything before we went to Brynnlaw, so if all goes well next update will be in ToB - we will have to see!
Corecleric XXIX the gnomish cleric/thief Update - Finished SoA
Traveling with: Mazzy, Gabrielle (half-orc fighter/thief), Paja (level 11 bounty hunter dualed to fighter), Sarah (dwarven fighter/thief), Serena (gnomish mage/thief)
We made it through Suldnesslar, though we got two deaths against Nizi. Even using traps and firestorm we still barely won. The Tree of life fight went well. Mazzy was hilarious with her comment when she said "...it was almost too easy..." as in fact we laid down 7 snares, ran away immediately while a skeleton warrior kept Irenicus attention. And then we stayed out of sight while summons kept his attention until he eventually conceded. The party never attacked him in melee or even ranged.
We did all the good routes in Hell - surprisingly no imprisionments against beholders which was nice. While we did have traps, it took a lot of direct attacks to finally make Irenicus concede. Fortunately we didn't get the unkillable Irenicus this time. We are now in ToB. Will keep at it. We are very close to our first HLA.
There was no Trio today, which provided the opportunity to try and make a bit more progress with this long-running (started 9 months ago) MP run - though of course opportunities can be turned down ...
We sneaked into the Underground River complex and poisoned the food and water there. Cria was visible after doing that though and taken down to single figure HPs before the priest arrived to have his conversation and reopen the lift for us to escape.
The siege at the Coalition Camp went well initially with Cria using scorchers on the orcs and trolls; skeletons and dispelling arrows helped the wizard slayers with the mage group and the clerics were easily beaten up after being subjected to a couple of skull traps and a potion of explosions. Cria used exploding arrows to destroy most of the final group, but nearly paid for not using her single 4th level spell to cast stoneskin when Swift Rabbit backstabbed her for 74 of her 80 available HPs. An invisibility potion ensured he would not get another chance at that.
At Dragonspear a single stunning dart cut short a sole combat with Ashatiel to end the siege. Inside, they followed Caelar into hell and quickly worked through the initial opposition there - Cria being rewarded with a +3 sword for correctly identifying that murder was afoot.
After resting and applying long-running buffs we took the Hellevator. Brog picked up a thief level there for reaching 220k experience and moments later another fight gave him a cleric level for 225k. There was no time to rest though as Belhifet was waiting at the top. Cria invited Caelar to join the fight against Belhifet, but we didn't give her any orders or protection and she didn't last long. In those early stages of the fight though, Belhifet was not using improved invisibility and was relatively easy to hit. As a result he was already severely wounded by the time Caelar fell. Cria thought that stoneskins and mirror images, along with fireshield blue, would allow her to take down Belhifet easily enough. However, we got into trouble as the devil was determined to attack Brog and, with him retreating that meant very few more blows were landed on Belhifet. Eventually Cria's buffs ran out and she was held. I expected that to be the end of the fight, but Brog managed to keep things going by casting free action on Cria.
She was also affected by horror, but managed to stay away from opposition sufficiently to recover her senses.
By this time though Belhifet had summoned more devils and regenerated signficantly as well, which meant the odds of success were diminished. Things then took a final swing against us when Cria failed to recognise in time that one of the devils attacking her was a hamatula. If she had quickly gone invisible the hamatula would have wandered away, but she didn't and the devil's barbed defense interacted with fire shield, meaning Cria was hit multiple times in a short space of time - going through her mirrors and stoneskins and taking her down to 28 HPs. She did use a potion of invisibility to break contact, but that meant the devils attacking her went after Brog instead and he soon breathed his last.
It's possible that Cria could still have won the fight if she'd stayed invisible as only one or two of the devils (other than Belhifet) could see through invisibility. However, I suspect she would by then not have had enough resources left to wait for Belhifet to batter himself to death against her fire shield and the point was rendered moot anyway when she launched a final desperate attack - which ended in exactly the way you would expect .
Entering Saradush, we do the various sidequest and take down Kiser, fully buffed and ready to go. Minsc clears out the vampires at the prison:
In the sewers, Jan backstabs the mages:
We also learn all the remaining spellscrolls for Eleanor and Jan (our money is just about enough to do so, thanks to always casting friends before buying anything starting in SoA). In the palace cellar, we fight our way through the hordes of enemies, go upstairs under invisibility to get a good angle on the wizard, and go invisible again before entering the throne room. Both wizards are a bit confused, walk towards us a bit and start casting true sight - we split the party in two groups, each attacking one of them, and both die before being able to finish their spell or activate their buffs:
Now, we go after Gromnir and the fighters and thieves in the room. Jaheira and Minsc get hurt (Gromnir's attacks and a backstab), but in the end, we achieve a pretty clean victory:
A quick visit to the now-unlocked merchant and we clear out the Temple with a bunch of sunrays:
Next up, we will have to make our way to the Marching Mountains.
Another short update: We used magical swords to tank any bigger fire giant groups in the Marching Mountains while attacking them with ranged weapons:
Making sure to keep himself buffed with fire resistance, Minsc used The Wave to clear out the several enemy types here that are vulnerable to its instant death effect. More magical swords helped with tanking everything else, and we called in a planetar upstairs, mostly to get the chance of vorpal sword kills for high HP targets:
Once more, The Wave is unleashed for the prince of fire:
We make Yaga-Shura vulnerable, buff up and attack - he returns after his initial flight very quickly (the fastest I've ever seen him come back, to be honest), and we don't have to deal with a single lieutenant, as they seem to be gathered to the north - we just focus down the isolated giant and end the chapter:
The party also clears out the oasis, and, as a small bonus, goes for pocket plane challenge Nr. 2. Some strange happenings here, as, for a good while, most of the party just didn't react to my attack command and just stood around while taking amage. I would guess that I might have misclicked and just didn't notice at the time, though I was sure I commanded everyone to focus the Eleanor clone. Meanwhile, Semaj was able to cast an unusual number of spells, though luckily his whail of the banshee did nothing with full death wards on the party, and sunfire, while doing some decent damage, failed to kill anyone. Jaheira, who had been HEAVILY level drained (something I only noticed after the battle had ended - I would guess that the alternate bhaalspawn or someone else here can level drain with attacks?), luckily had fire protection active, otherwise this would've been her death, and possibly even a chunking.
Aside from the weird overcommitment with Minsc in the Umar Hills against Valygar's ranger friends, this was propably the worst execution we've had in any single battle during this run so far, which isn't exactly a good sign - luckily I was out of time to continue any further anyway, so we will rest up and explore Amkethran another time, hopefully with a clear head and better attention to detail.
A very short update: We completed the various sidequests in Amekthran. Vongoethe was killed by Jan's traps:
With death ward and chaotic commands, all other dangers, such as monk battles or the banshee's whail, were negated. After forging some more Cespenar upgrades and buying two timestop scrolls, we travelled to Sendai's Enclave, where we will continue next time.
The outside area of the enclave is easy enough to clear - the hive mother is quickly breached and killed, no one gets hit with anti-magic ray. We fight our way through the opening hallway and into the guardroom - Minsc, in a familiar almost-repeat, nearly gets killed by ranged attackers thanks to his relatively poor AC, but we're able to save him this time:
After going invisible, we move past the dwarven tunnel and take down the leader before venturing into the spider tunnel as well for extra XP:
Some more battles, and we reach Odamaron. As per usual in the vanilla game, he just dies to a deva:
Onto Ogremoch - magical swords tank for a bit until the earth elemental prince decides to switch targets, but with enough APR, we quickly hack through his stoneskins and kill him before he can kill Mazzy:
We send a bunch of high level summons into the other room:
Eleanor wins her duel with some hasted kiting, and we return to the pocket plane to forge upgrades and rest. Once again we buff up, taking down the underwhelming illithid compound before adding some short term buffs for Sendai herself. Using the Staff of the Magi, Eleanor dispels improved mantle from the first wizard Sendai clone (saving her breach spells for the drow wizards who use PFMW instead):
The same is repeated for the other wizard clone to the north:
Once the real Sendai appears, we just breach and kill her after Jan detects illusions:
The teleporter maze is, as per usual, the most dangerous part of Watcher's Keep. We enter the first no-magic zone, killing the balor at range so there's no chance we get hit by a vorpal attack:
However, the cornugons here, despite this being a no-magic zone, get to throw around lightning bolts, which bounce around quite a bit. I'm able to pause before anyone dies and swap around some equipment (Jaheira gets the 100% lightning resistance cloak as she's in danger of immediate death):
As we move to the first demon room, our plan is to move to the pocket plane right away so we can buff up - we're able to start the cast, but before we actually leave, a chaos spell hits the party, and, coming from a no-magic zone, we have no protections. This also happened mostly during the teleporting cutscene so I wasn't able to pause and swap in confusion immunity gear. Despite our good saving throws, the save penalty on chaos and some bad luck means that all but Mazzy and Eleanor are affected - we're now "safely" at the pocket plane, but our characters are killing each other:
Eleanor only has remove magic, not dispel magic memorized. We find nothing in our inventory that can help. Basically, we can just watch as both Minsc and Jaheira die:
After that, the confusion effect finally ends. Luckily, no one got chunked, so we resurrect our party, rest and move on. The next challenge is the second no magic room, where we get confronted by some annoying fear effects (though Jan is using the dragonslayer sword to stay unaffected). Jaheira at one point gets close to death, but the fear effect ends and she is able to drink a healing potion:
Moving from no-magic to the succubus room is not as dangerous, since we have 6 items for full charm/domination immunity at the ready. After that, we can finally stay buffed up with no more no-magic zones to come. We make it to the demon wraith, Jan disarms the traps while the others have to stand around doing nothing for a short while, and finally we get to attack, having endured the timestop:
We gamble for Spectral Brand, and actually win for once!
That's a very good upgrade for Jaheira. The second gamble fails, though, and we move on to level 4. This one's quite a bit easier. Saladrex fails to do much to threaten any of us, though Eleanor has to run away from him as he decides she's his favorite target:
A PfM scroll on Minsc, and he takes down the demi-lich:
The illithids are easily taken down, and so are the two minotaurs:
After dealing with the machine, we make it to level 5. A magical sword helps with the north-eastern golems, protection from fire and lightning with the orc shamans, and we use 6*Protection from Poison scrolls for the green dragon:
After the riddle, we deal with the spirit warrior maze, using the safest route (no ghost, no fountain, not opening the poisoned drawer):
The colored orbs are next, and now, for the final seals - the aurumach rilmani, as per usual, is vulnerable to non-HLA traps:
While Azamantes has to deal with the actual spike traps:
Though we have to be very careful when killing the burning skulls, due to their on-death explosion, so after taking down two of them, we stop for a moment to heal up. Our final few traps are used for the third seal succubus, and the party focuses their attention on the hive mother, with summons distracting some of the others:
While we get hit with an insect plague, that is pretty much the only serious damage we take:
Eleanor reads the Scroll of Helm, and we forge a bunch of new powerful items.
I have some extra time, so we decide to also take on Draconis before ending the session. The party buffs up with protection from acid in addition to the usual stuff, and and we approach the human form with a planetar at the front. I go for a bit of an aggressive approach instead of staying at range - only really intending to deal some quick damage before spreading out. However, Draconis dies way faster than I would've imagined and he transforms pretty much immediately, so we aren't able to get away in time. The reason we usually spread out is to avoid getting stuck in his hitbox and to avoid presenting multiple targets for his breath weapon in case he's able to dispel someone. As a result of him transforming right away, all of these worst case scenarios actually occur: Only Eleanor and Jan aren't stuck, the others just can't move. Now, our only choice is to kill the dragon as quickly as possible. He immediately dispels our melee fighters - only Jan and Eleanor (who has SI:A) keep all of their buffs. Luckily, the other don't lose everything, with some cleric buffs staying on, but notably, Anomen is feared (Jan is able to counter this with remove fear), and Anomen, Minsc and Mazzy lose their protection from acid. We activate fighter HLAs and rebuff improved hastes while Eleanor breaches Draconis, who is immediately using his deadly breath weapon:
The breath weapon hits, dealing tons of damage. No one dies immediately, which is good. I am not sure how long Draconis needs to get access to another breath weapon - we can now decide to use the rounds to heal up or to try and kill the dragon before he is able to breathe again. I decide on the latter, we go for more fighter HLAs:
The strategy pays off: Draconis isn't able to go invisible or heal up in time, as he often does - the HLA damage is enough to take him down before he takes another big action:
That didn't go very well. I should not have entered melee combat with the human form at all. However, we survived and are now ready to enter the lair.
Abazigal's Lair - we get the potion of water breathing and enter more kuo-toa caverns - a bit of an underwhelming choice of enemy at this point. With frost protection and improved haste, Mazzy at 10 APR easily and quickly takes out the elemental prince of water:
With the Cloak of Mirroring, the magical eyes are easily dealt with, we free the petrified adventurers, craft our final few Cespenar items (I won't need any of the gear from Abazigal) and move on to the big dragon. Protection from lightning and ice spells cover the entire party, and we first take out the salamanders, sending an invulnerable magical blade towards Abazigal's human form:
In sharp contrast to the rather messy Draconis battle, this might be one of my most convincing performances against vanilla Abazigal so far - he transforms and kicks us away, Eleanor instantly calls in a planetar on his face, which is now the target of his remove magic, keeping the kicked-away party safe - we get to keep all of our buffs. The dragon is still focused on the planetar as the others return and activate fighter HLAs:
The planetar is actually able to heal themselves once, staying alive for our second round of fighter HLAs, which is enough to end the battle in a very quick fashion, with the party taking zero damage except from the initial wingbuffet kickback:
The fourth pocket plane challenge is quickly done while we're still buffed (Mazzy gets hit by a backstab, but survives), and we move back to Amkethran, rest, buff up, go invisible and visit Saemon. A 3*ADHW CC takes out most of the monestary guards, and we add in short-duration buffs for Balthazar. Our plan is to just focus our entire attention on the main monk. True sight is running in case he tries going invisible; Through our burst damage, he is able to use second wind once:
However, just like they were with Abazigal, two rounds of fighter HLAs are enough to do the job:
We rest again and buff up for the Ravager. An ADHW CC and pierce magic spell triggers are prepared, but they end up hitting the enemy bone blades and miss the actual intended target - a mistake I've made before and actually corrected in some past runs by moving my mages directly towards the Ravager, but it seems like I forgot about this:
As our necromancer starts casting ADHWs manually, Jan breaches the Ravager to dispel his blade barrier. The fighters spam their HLAs, and our foe focuses his attention on Jaheira, who quickly loses her ironskins and has to retreat for a bit. Before we can do too much with our magic, though, the other fighters have done their job, and the Ravager falls relatively quickly:
All right. Next up is the Throne, the only thing yet remaining. Also, interestingly enough, I didn't reach Jaheira's druid level 15 or Jan's level 9 spells/wizard HLAs in this run. I thought I would've gotten there in late ToB, as I didn't really skip any significant SoA and ToB content.
Comments
All right - we're heavily outleveling the Nashkel Mines at this point, so clearing them out with a few sleep spells and some of the buffs in our arsenal is easy enough. After that, it's time to hunt down some bandits. Taugosz gets hit with a particularily successful call lightning from Jaheira:
A few skull traps at Sorcerous Sundries upstairs, and we get the spider spawn scroll:
Time for a bunch of city sidequests. No trouble here - we get a bunch of powerful items, experience and consumables for the more significant future battles. Some potions to boost strength and agility come in useful at Degrodel's house - we also use wand of the heavens charges on Jaheira and Branwen plus wand of fire/frost on Eleanor, eventually turning in the helm after surrounding the mage and taking him down before he can disappear - not too difficult, now that we have haste in our arsenal:
The run so far is recorded at Tavern RPG.
I may try the same character solo at a later date, but at present I have proceeded to SoD and reached the Ducal Palace.
Only incident of note was the death of Coran. A Fist healer raised him before I was aware that he was dead!
Back in the big city, we lure some flaming fist guards away from their HQ and enter, avoiding hold person or glyph of warding spells with the right protections or quick takedowns. On to the Iron Throne HQ, where Cythandria quickly falls, and to the Undercellars. Jaheira casts invisibility purge to reveal Krystin, and our buffs make overpowering the assassins rather easy:
Aside from the full array of potion and spell buffs, we call in our skeletons to keep our brother and his allies busy. Khalid carefully approaches, bow in hand, and dispels the haste effect on Sarevok before luring him towards us. Semaj teleports in under invisibility, Jaheira immediately casts invisibility purge again, though not before the mage uses his tattoo of power to hit us with greater malison:
We fight our way out of the opening dungeon, which is easy enough. In the city, we start recruiting our party: Minsc and Jaheira both stick with us, and we add in Jan and Anomen. The final party member I want to add is Mazzy, so we're off to the Umar Hills, only picking up Daystar on the way - otherwise, we've done nothing yet in Athkatla, so our gear and experience levels are a bit lacking. On the way to our target area, we run into the Suna Seni ambush. This is, finally, a good opportunity for our double horror minor sequencer that I had never used in BG1, but have re-prepared in SoA in hopes of it coming in clutch at some point in the early game:
Deja - human totemic druid (Grond0)
Kerb - dwarf berserker (Gate70)
Corezerk V - dwarf berserker (Corey_Russell)
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1215878/#Comment_1215878
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1216120/#Comment_1216120
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1216315/#Comment_1216315
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1216501/#Comment_1216501
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1216656/#Comment_1216656
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1216824/#Comment_1216824
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1216979/#Comment_1216979
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1217113/#Comment_1217113
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1217244/#Comment_1217244
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1217402/#Comment_1217402
The start of the session proper was a bit delayed when the game got a bit confused about whether we were in SoA or ToB. Initially we were concerned the save itself was bugged, but everyone quitting and restarting eventually got things to work properly. We struggled against the fire giants last time, but had done most of the hard work against them then and finishing the last of them off in the lower temple was easy enough. None of the remaining groups there caused much concern.
Nyalee was never likely to provide significant opposition and didn't do so.
At the Oasis we chose to run through invisibly - at least after killing Jamis to get the Answerer long sword for Kerb.
In Amkethran we just fought a few minor battles - including getting access to a shop in the cave. Corezerk got K'Logarath there which saw plenty of use in the rest of the session. He also bought the boots that protect against backstabs - but those disappeared into thin air soon after without ever being used.
Next up was Sendai's Enclave where we set up to kill the drow woodcutter to open up the main entrance. I wasn't watching closely in real time, but noted that Corezerk collapsed during that battle - review of a relevant screenshot there showed he was the victim of a vicious attack by a rabid moose
Inside the enclave we made easy enough progress through to Odamaron. He resisted an initial assault by Kerb with the iMoD and the berserkers were unable to target him once he had disappeared and buffed. Deja could still see him though and the Firetooth dagger eventually wore through his defenses.
Ogremoch can be a nasty handful for a solo player because he quickly renews lost stoneskins. However, against the massed attacks of 3 of us and summons he was no trouble at all.
Totemic druid 25, 109 HPs (incl. 5 from helm), 226 kills (95 in BGEE)
Berserker 28 (G70), 168 HPs, 780 kills (263 in BGEE), 4 deaths
Berserker 28 (CR), 177 HPs, 694 kills (220 in BGEE), 3 deaths
Previous recorded run
It's been a year or so since I tried this long-running challenge, so thought it was time Biff got back into the action. He is allowed to buff himself, but can't cast any aggressive spells on others or make any use of summons (or actively use a familiar). He's also of course not allowed to use any missile weapons, so has to get up close where it hurts to take down opponents.
A first attempt in this series saw plenty of hard work ended at level 5 when Biff's disappointing total of 18 HPs was exactly matched by a critical from a worg. Restarting, I decided to make things easier by going straight to the basilisk area - though I nearly died in a kobold archer ambush on the way.
With invisibility and ghoul touch, the range of reasonable targets was greatly expanded, with Silke being an early demonstration of that - her staff was then used to kill the golems at High Hedge. After a few minor chores around Beregost, Biff headed down to Nashkel to learn Bhaal CLW - Neira was among the paralytic victims there.
A journey up to the FAI netted a girdle from an ogre. Tarnesh managed to scare Biff, but couldn't do much through his shield protection and was cut down by the guards. By this time Biff was close to another level and helping out against Greywolf provided that and 6 more HPs. Invisibility then meant rescuing Samuel was risk-free.
A trip through the Cloud Peaks to get the charisma tome was pretty uneventful and helped push reputation up to 18. Unsurprisingly, Biff was unable to kill the xvarts quickly enough to save Arabelle. He pushed on to Firewine Bridge to get Meilum's bracers before picking up the final couple of reputation points by beating up Bjornin's half-ogres and then escorting Brage back to Nashkel. He celebrated by purchasing the Dagger of Venom, Robe of the Archmagi and Claw of Kazgaroth. The latter imposed an HP penalty, so Biff headed for the Lighthouse area where he initially sneaked past the sirines into the golem cave to get the constitution tome. The golems were beaten up partly using invisible attacks, though there was also some micro-management to move away to waste golem attacks before nipping in to get his own attack.
A single worg was enough for level 7. In addition to 4 more HPs that gave him MSD and the confidence to take on sirines and he duly cleared the area of those.
The Nashkel Mine will be the next target.
Sorcerer L7, 37 HPs, 74 kills
Previous updates
Biff went through the Nashkel Mine largely invisibly to find Mulahey. He saved against an initial hit by ghoul touch, but was paralysed by a follow-up and finished off before he could recover. Biff was fully buffed and the support crew Mulahey had summoned needed criticals to hit him - but still managed to take him to single figure HPs, though the use of Bhaal healing allowed him to finish the battle without running away.
Outside the mine, Biff briefly attacked the amazons before running away and going invisible. The purpose of that was to split them up and he successfully picked them off one by one. The tombs in the area were cleared as well, with the same sort of micro-managing retreat and attack used on the revenant as with golems. It did get one nasty blow in when haste ran out at the wrong time, but Biff used invisible attacks to finish it off. Narcillicus's mustard jellies needed a critical to hit him and failed to get any. The mage himself had his first attempted spell interrupted and was paralysed before he could try again.
After reporting in to the mayor, a sneak attack on Nimbul paralysed him. Helpfully, that meant he didn't go hostile, so there was no chance of Rasaad stealing the kill. That took Biff to level 8 and he gained 6 HPs and stoneskin to make him much less vulnerable to physical attacks. Another 6 HPs was gained by summoning a familiar for the passive HP benefit.
With a bit of cash available again, Biff made a few more purchases - including the +3 staff and greenstone amulet. He backtracked to beat up some ankhegs in their nest.
Back in Beregost, Biff went to find Tranzig. He has decent saving throws, so I didn't really expect to paralyse him - but did in fact manage to do so after MSD had turned away an acid arrow. While in town, Biff also beat up some spiders for Landrin. While reporting to him he picked up the pantaloons.
At the Bandit Camp, stoneskin made dealing with the bandit archers easy enough. Taurgosz was more resilient, but eventually failed his 4th or 5th saving throw. Inside the tent, Biff took the precaution of using the Greenstone Amulet, but Venkt was paralysed by his first attack anyway - shortly afterwards all the enemies were paralysed and/or unconscious.
Biff went invisibly through the Cloakwood to reach the mine. On arrival, Biff showed himself to Drasus to pull him away and effectively ended their combat with his first attack. After Genthorne was also pulled away to his doom, the Greenstone Amulet was again used on the mages. This time it proved its worth as, although Kysus was paralysed by an initial blow, Rezdan managed to release a horror before being beaten unconscious.
Inside the mine, Biff made his way to the bottom level. The initiative bonus and speed to retreat from haste and the long reach of his staff combined to allow Biff to get largely unopposed attacks in on the battle horrors and both of those went down without too much trouble. Biff ran away from a lightning bolt and then used invisibility to foil attempted charm and hold spells before Davaeorn tried (and failed) to match him in melee. That took Biff to level 9, with 4 additional HPs. He killed a mustard jelly and did a bit of looting before flooding the mine.
Sorcerer L9, 53 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 172 kills
All right. Time for an Athkatla sidequest montage:
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1217550/#Comment_1217550
In the City, Biff's first opponent was the ogre mage. An initial attack paralysed that and, with most of the carrion crawlers remaining neutral, Biff was able to finish it off without running away too far. Next up was the poison quest, where Jalantha was paralysed with his first hit, Lothander had just enough room to push him out of the way to escape down the stairs, Larze saved against paralysation several times and worked through 3 lots of stoneskins before eventually being tagged. That all led up to Marek where Biff missed with his initial attack and ran downstairs to avoid confusion. On his return though he got the job done.
Next up was Ramazith's Tower. Ramazith avoided paralysation, but a bit of dodging in and out and use of invisible attacks accounted for him. Biff killed the mustard jellies, but just sneaked past the other guards to loot the tower (though he didn't yet have the ability to get into the locked cabinet).
At the Iron Throne, Biff used the stairs to split the opponents up and started picking them off one at a time. I was a bit careless against Naaman though and didn't notice he was casting horror. Fortunately MSD and shield absorbed enough of his spell attacks to allow Biff to survive until he regained his senses. There were no further problems in finishing the remaining enemies, although Biff was fatigued by this time and had to wait a while to get the critical necessary to tag Gardush.
Reporting to duty back in Candlekeep, Biff avoided the real Iron Throne leaders and was sent to the catacombs. The tombs were looted there using the violet potion. He decided that discretion was the better part of valour and left Prat's gang alone on the way out - though he did pick off the greater basilisks for a bit of bonus XP.
Before returning to Baldur's Gate, Biff made his way to Durlag's Tower. With stone skin, fire shield and protection from fire in his armory, Biff didn't have to bother about using invisibility and breaking off attacks regularly against the battle horrors. After killing some more basilisks and Riggilo, Biff looted the wisdom tome using MSD to protect against the charm trap.
With higher base strength and DUHM, Biff was now able to do a bit more looting and quest work - including picking up the Cloak of Balduran. With that done he showed himself to Slythe and beat him up. Then it was on to the potentially dangerous encounter at the palace. Three of the dopplegangers there attacked Biff, which gave the dukes enough time to help deal with the others before either died.
In the maze, Biff used one of his several PfU scrolls to kill the skeleton warriors - though he could have done that easily enough using just his own abilities. He left the Undercity party alone and went on to the old temple to find Sarevok. Rather than use traps on him, Biff played fair there. An invisibility potion let him break contact with Sarevok after his opening conversation and a PfM scroll then kept him safe while Semaj killed himself. A couple of PfF green scrolls minimised the damage from Angelo's arrows and a potion of regeneration repaired that until Angelo went down. Tazok got his invisible attack in, but was too slow to get any more while Biff finished him off. That just left Sarevok and Biff waited until his PfM scroll wore off to tackle him - so that he could use his own buffs. I made the mistake there though of trying a stand up fight initially and Sarevok's 90% resistance to cold damage allowed him to take minimal damage from fire shield, while reducing the number of stoneskins Biff had available. With Sarevok also being hasted and having a long weapon, Biff could not reliably avoid being attacked by him while running round and had to use another regeneration potion before finally getting a killing blow in.
Biff transferred to SoD with 340k XP, so was able to immediately level up there - getting 6 more HPs and the ability to use shadow door.
Sorcerer L10, 59 HPs (incl. 6 from familiar), 258 kills
Previous updates
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1217550/#Comment_1217550
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1217561/#Comment_1217561
Biff just did some shopping and picked up the Spectacles of Spectacle in Baldur's Gate before heading out. As typical for my solo characters he started off pretty much only doing essential work:
- used invisibility at the Coast Way Crossing to avoid a fight at the bridge. The bonus XP for that allowed Biff to get to level 11.
- ran invisibly through Troll Claw Woods.
- at the Forest of Wyrms sneaked through into the old temple. Ziatar was paralysed by ghoul touch.
I was feeling tired and not concentrating properly though and that led to disaster against the Neothelid. His large range of save or else abilities mean proper buffing is essential there. I did briefly look at my character record and saw negative saves, but overlooked the save vs death was positive (as a result of wearing the Claw of Kazgaroth). The Neothelid gleefully took its chance to hold Biff and invisibility was no defense against its attacks ...
At the Windspear Hills, the most significant threats are vampires and golems. The vampires, however, are easily dealt with by Minsc using the iMoD +2 and the Daystar sunray:
The bard stronghold is next - after killing Mekrath and returning to the bridge district, we buff up and go invisible, taking down the two spellcasters at the ambush site right away, with Jan backstabbing one of them:
Finally, we go for the wizards stronghold, the Planar Sphere. A big group of summons is deployed against the halflings, and Tolgerias is approached from invisibility and with a quick breach spell:
Traveling with: Gabrielle (half-orc fighter/thief), Mazzy, Paja (human bounty hunter level 11 dualed to fighter - bounty hunter abilities regained), Sarah (dwarven fighter/thief), Serena (gnomish mage/thief)
Well the party is almost ready to head to Brynnlaw - though not before tragedy struck! In our battle with Firkraag, traps weren't very effective and April the dwarven fighter/thief was CHUNKED!. Interestingly enough, without lowering Firkraag's magic resistance a single feeblemind worked and then simple attacks avenged April. The Illithid's hideout in the sewers will be our next target.
Jan: Meet Perth. Perth: Meet Jan:
Picking up another long-running challenge, Beggar is on the warpath again. I've used various installations and tweaks for this, but this run will be the standard one based on the unmodded game and core difficulty. My additional rules for poverty challenges are:
1) You can never buy or sell any items (including any items required for quests).
2) You can never use or equip any items (but can pick things up for quests).
3) You may pay for quests (such as Gaelan Bayle), but not anything else (temples, inns etc) - that means that any character death is tough to recover from
After leaving Candlekeep, the Opera went straight to the basilisk area in search of quick XP. Korax did his usual good job there and everyone was ready to level up by the time Mutamin and all the basilisks were dead. Minor quests around Beregost accumulated enough XP for everyone except Pauper to level again. However, my normal rule for parties is that everyone has to level up together, so everyone else had to be patient.
Moving down to the Nashkel Carnival, the Opera had a close shave against Zordral. Pauper sneaked into his tent and successfully silenced him, but multiple attempts to disable him then failed and he was able to cast an acid arrow on Aspire. Fortunately all the 3 ticks from that did less than his 10 HPs available and Hardup was able to heal him between each lot of damage. I should really have used pre-set snares there to be safe, but Washout eventually threw in a special snare to finish Zordral off. North of the Carnival Arabelle was saved from some ravening xvarts and an ogre clan all fell asleep. Sarhedra didn't recognise the destruction of the clan, but blinding and disposing of Ioin Gallchobair and his merrie men was enough for the next level.
The next major input of XP came from laying a full complement of traps for an old man - the 26k gained from that getting everyone except Pauper ready to level up again. At the FAI a pre-laid trap for Tarnesh was wasted when a fist backstab (which seems a slightly odd concept
They were currently despised by everyone, so set about mending fences by taking advantage of Beggar's high charisma to persuade Charleston Nib he needed help. Blindness and a barrage of magic missiles then accounted for the Doomsayer. Moving on to the Lighthouse area they helped out Ardrouine, but decided not to take on the sirines yet. Back at the mine site they picked up Brage to take back to Nashkel - by which time their reputation had improved sufficiently for the guards not to attack them.
Next up was the Nashkel Mine. In Mulahey's cave everyone was invisible when a series of traps went off - only leaving a few skeletons to deal with. Outside the mine, the amazons were all blinded and sat in the middle of Writhing Fog. The Revenant was blinded, Narcillicus stepped on a couple of traps and some ghasts taken down by magic missiles to clear the area. Samuel was then rescued before the Opera returned to Nashkel, blinded Nimbul and returned a ring to Joseph's widow.
Then it was back to Beregost where Elminster was waiting. He had a new name, but was still worth a cool 26k XP, leaving Pauper once more as the only one holding up the next level. Tranzig survived a couple of traps - but not the follow-up attacks.
At the Bandit Camp an epidemic of sleeping sickness spread across most enemies. Taurgosz was blinded, as were the enemies in Tazok's tent. I had multiple ways of dealing safely with those, but foolishly chose to dance up some spirits to attack Venkt. He was able to shrug off the magic missiles sent in to support the spirits and cast horror at those, which also sent 4 of the opera running. Trying to protect those nearly cost a death before Pauper managed to hold Venkt (and Britik who had gone hostile as a result of Venkt's movements).
Pauper had another close shave at High Hedge when taking on golems. The first died in traps, but Pauper was expecting to do most of the work in killing the second using his Seeking Sword. However, although golems have poor defences, Pauper's aim was poor and the golem survived to kill the attacking spirits. Pauper tried to stick around to finish it off, but a critical of 34 damage put him at death's door. Beggar, using a shillelagh, was able to finish the job though. That took Pauper quite close to a level and he would have received that if Melicamp had survived his transformation - but he didn't. Bassilus and a few minor encounters later though and the level was gained.
They've just travelled back to the Lighthouse area and will be taking on sirines next.
Beggar, Totemic Druid - L6, 55 HPs, 2 kills
Pauper, Priest of Helm - L6, 44 HPs, 36 kills, 0 deaths
Hardup, Shaman - L5, 37 HPs, 4 kills, 0 deaths
Washout, Bounty Hunter - L6, 43 HPs, 26 kills, 0 deaths
Aspire, Sorcerer - L5, 28 HPs, 19 kills, 0 deaths
Skint, Sorcerer - L5, 28 HPs, 24 kills, 0 deaths
EDIT: I think I have a work-around. We got out of sight of Irenicus and rested. Then we just walked upstairs, met Saemon and got teleported out of Spellhold. I believe the game considers Irenicus defeated which means it seems to be operating normally. Will keep at it.
Previous updates
At the Lighthouse, web meant that the first group of sirines only managed to fire a single poison arrow. Sil's group didn't even manage that and summons and traps helped take down the golems in the cave without trouble.
They ticked off the main encounters in the Cloud Peak Mountains next. There wasn't much XP to be gained there though, so they decided to move on to Durlag's Tower. Web + spirit lions (which have free action) made an efficient killing combination for battle horrors outside the tower. Inside, they struggled with the group of ghasts on the first floor due to problems with lines of sight around the doorway initially meaning Hardup was held by the trap. Webs stopped the ghasts from killing him immediately and the ghasts were eventually dealt with. On the roof, some basilisks meant Pauper was once more left as the last to get XP for the next level. Inside, they got some bonus XP by successfully trapping Kirinhale before she could make her escape. They also laid traps to kill the ghost when it teleported. With the upper tower clear of enemies disaster struck though when Washout greedily tried to disarm a few traps for the tiny bit of XP they give. In the basement he successfully disarmed the floor trap hiding loot, then failed to do so with the first of the other two. You normally get a warning message before a failed attempt will trigger a trap and that happened here - so Washout attempted to disarm the other trap, only for it to trigger a lightning bolt. Possibly there's a cooling down period and he didn't wait long enough to do that?
The lightning didn't chunk Washout, but the only possible way to revive him was to get Shoal to do that. If her kiss proves fatal to the first character talking to her (and that is no longer guaranteed in the EE), she can be persuaded to cast a mass raise dead on the party. Skint needed to be 'lucky', to get the 15 required to save against the kiss - and was, so that was a disappointing end to the run.
Now, for some unfinished business - dragons, liches, mind flayers, guarded compound, twisted rune and the like. The main goal here is to not get the entire party dispelled - as long as we keep our buffs, we're most likely going to be fine. The shadow dragon gets to activate one remove magic, but I notice early enough that Anomen is the target and move him away:
On to Bodhi - Minsc does most of the work here, with the iMoD, his ranger bonus against vampires and improved haste:
The party moves on to the elven city, and by now we have our first few HLAs, so we can add in planetars, devas and an elemental prince. Mordenkainen's swords help us with tanking any golems, and Jan backstabs the drow wizard:
Previous recorded run:
I wasn't intending to do any more party play after the Beggar's Opera run, but the way that ended felt unsatisfactory and I considered restarting again. Instead though, I thought I would try one of my single-class parties. Looking at the options I had a vague memory I'd tried monks before and duly found this group - last seen 6 or 7 years ago. They were up against an SCS installation then, so may find progress this time a bit easier.
I also found my notes included some descriptive poetry. It feels like a while since I've inflicted any of my doggerel on readers, so decided to pick up that as well - at least I've hidden it in a spoiler though, so it won't come at you without warning
Wearing no armour, but only their cassocks
They're ready for action - at least I hope so
They've started in Candlekeep and are raring to go.
You're tired of the rhymes already, I know ...
Recruiting of others the monks can't do
Bad for Imoen who they coldly slew
She was shot to ensure she couldn't resist
But Xzar's spells were countered with a first taste of fist.
After some tricky dodging during an ambush escape
They arrived at Beregost still in good shape
A magical sling proved to be cheap
And matching bullets would make golems weep.
While in town they found a new cloak
Losing reputation in the eyes of the folk
The purpose of that I'm sure you will see
Is so that Chimera can learn LMD.
In the dark they gathered making no sound
So Silke would see nothing around
Their fists struck hard but Silke stood tall
Until follow-up missiles led to her fall.
With golems all dead they bought a new case
And moved quickly on to find a new place
They talked there to Brage on the subject of death
And were whisked to Nashkel in the space of a breath.
With new level in hand they felt rather bold
And we all know no-one wants to get old
They approached Zordral in shadows veiled
And fists ensured his spells all failed.
Travelling south a sculptor they found
"Don't interrupt, I'm busy" he frowned
But actually he was in need of help
And a hail of missiles made Greywolf yelp.
Deciding to explore a nearby mine
Many kobolds fell and all seemed fine
But at just second level each hit could hurt
And Wraith stayed too close and hit the dirt.
After coughing up funds to the temple roof fund
They looked for a victim who could be stunned
A cleric was found who failed to save
And a few moments later was in need of a grave.
Nimbul's his name and he can be hard to hit
But fists did the job with no chance to submit
The experience gained made everyone revel
As they burst through a ceiling to get a 3rd level.
Wraith - L3, 27 HPs, 11 kills, 1 death
Spectre - L3, 26 HPs, 8 kills, 0 deaths
Phantom - L3, 24 HPs, 20 kills, 0 deaths
Spook - L3, 29 HPs, 14 kills, 0 deaths
Spirit - L3, 26 HPs, 15 kills, 0 deaths
Chimera - L3, 27 HPs, 20 kills
I think in at least some of my previous runs with the monks I didn't allow resurrection, but I won't apply that this run - so the monks can continue despite Wraith's death. That was annoying as he'd retreated after being hit by one arrow and I'd thought (obviously wrongly) he was out of range of a follow-up ...
Previous updates:
After resting up they backtracked their route
Mainly in search of some Amazons' loot
They expected the battle to go very well
But the monks not the amazons were the ones that fell.
I was thinking that would be a reasonable level of risk to take on, but pretty much everything went wrong in the fight with the monks attacks proving less effective than expected and the Amazons much more so. To test out the extent to which the planning was faulty I loaded the autosave 3 times and used the same tactics. In the first the monks won with barely a scratch. The second was a relatively tough battle, but still no monk casualties. The third was another very easy battle. So at least I have the small consolation that it was Lady Luck telling me not to proceed ...
A short little update for the end of SoA/start of ToB:
Fighting Irenicus at the tree, we prepared a few traps and charged at our foe, with both methods together being enough to kill him befor his protections were activated:
We prepare traps, HLA summons and lots of buffs for the final SoA battle and focus on taking out the demons first:
Some traps help us with Ilasera (and I realize that I forgot to kill Bloodscalp in SoA, so we're missing one pair of Boots of Speed... that's annoying), and we start the first pocket plane challenge, where, at the end, we have to face Jon yet again. This time, a deva does pretty much the entire job for us - Jon starts out invisible, and for some reason, Jan's detect illusion does nothing to reveal him across several rounds (so he must have been stealthed instead of invisible? strange...) - However, devas see through invisibility, and the deva just started attacking him, punched through his defenses and eventually killed him by herself:
Traveling with: Mazzy, Gabrielle (half-orc fighter/thief), Paja (level 11 bounty hunter dualed to fighter), Sarah (dwarven fighter/thief), Serena (gnomish mage/thief)
We made it through Suldnesslar, though we got two deaths against Nizi. Even using traps and firestorm we still barely won. The Tree of life fight went well. Mazzy was hilarious with her comment when she said "...it was almost too easy..." as in fact we laid down 7 snares, ran away immediately while a skeleton warrior kept Irenicus attention. And then we stayed out of sight while summons kept his attention until he eventually conceded. The party never attacked him in melee or even ranged.
We did all the good routes in Hell - surprisingly no imprisionments against beholders which was nice. While we did have traps, it took a lot of direct attacks to finally make Irenicus concede. Fortunately we didn't get the unkillable Irenicus this time. We are now in ToB. Will keep at it. We are very close to our first HLA.
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1217112/#Comment_1217112
There was no Trio today, which provided the opportunity to try and make a bit more progress with this long-running (started 9 months ago) MP run - though of course opportunities can be turned down ...
We sneaked into the Underground River complex and poisoned the food and water there. Cria was visible after doing that though and taken down to single figure HPs before the priest arrived to have his conversation and reopen the lift for us to escape.
The siege at the Coalition Camp went well initially with Cria using scorchers on the orcs and trolls; skeletons and dispelling arrows helped the wizard slayers with the mage group and the clerics were easily beaten up after being subjected to a couple of skull traps and a potion of explosions. Cria used exploding arrows to destroy most of the final group, but nearly paid for not using her single 4th level spell to cast stoneskin when Swift Rabbit backstabbed her for 74 of her 80 available HPs. An invisibility potion ensured he would not get another chance at that.
At Dragonspear a single stunning dart cut short a sole combat with Ashatiel to end the siege. Inside, they followed Caelar into hell and quickly worked through the initial opposition there - Cria being rewarded with a +3 sword for correctly identifying that murder was afoot.
After resting and applying long-running buffs we took the Hellevator. Brog picked up a thief level there for reaching 220k experience and moments later another fight gave him a cleric level for 225k. There was no time to rest though as Belhifet was waiting at the top. Cria invited Caelar to join the fight against Belhifet, but we didn't give her any orders or protection and she didn't last long. In those early stages of the fight though, Belhifet was not using improved invisibility and was relatively easy to hit. As a result he was already severely wounded by the time Caelar fell. Cria thought that stoneskins and mirror images, along with fireshield blue, would allow her to take down Belhifet easily enough. However, we got into trouble as the devil was determined to attack Brog and, with him retreating that meant very few more blows were landed on Belhifet. Eventually Cria's buffs ran out and she was held. I expected that to be the end of the fight, but Brog managed to keep things going by casting free action on Cria.
By this time though Belhifet had summoned more devils and regenerated signficantly as well, which meant the odds of success were diminished. Things then took a final swing against us when Cria failed to recognise in time that one of the devils attacking her was a hamatula. If she had quickly gone invisible the hamatula would have wandered away, but she didn't and the devil's barbed defense interacted with fire shield, meaning Cria was hit multiple times in a short space of time - going through her mirrors and stoneskins and taking her down to 28 HPs. She did use a potion of invisibility to break contact, but that meant the devils attacking her went after Brog instead and he soon breathed his last.
Entering Saradush, we do the various sidequest and take down Kiser, fully buffed and ready to go. Minsc clears out the vampires at the prison:
Another short update: We used magical swords to tank any bigger fire giant groups in the Marching Mountains while attacking them with ranged weapons:
A very short update: We completed the various sidequests in Amekthran. Vongoethe was killed by Jan's traps:
The outside area of the enclave is easy enough to clear - the hive mother is quickly breached and killed, no one gets hit with anti-magic ray. We fight our way through the opening hallway and into the guardroom - Minsc, in a familiar almost-repeat, nearly gets killed by ranged attackers thanks to his relatively poor AC, but we're able to save him this time:
We will move to Watcher's Keep next time.
The teleporter maze is, as per usual, the most dangerous part of Watcher's Keep. We enter the first no-magic zone, killing the balor at range so there's no chance we get hit by a vorpal attack:
I have some extra time, so we decide to also take on Draconis before ending the session. The party buffs up with protection from acid in addition to the usual stuff, and and we approach the human form with a planetar at the front. I go for a bit of an aggressive approach instead of staying at range - only really intending to deal some quick damage before spreading out. However, Draconis dies way faster than I would've imagined and he transforms pretty much immediately, so we aren't able to get away in time. The reason we usually spread out is to avoid getting stuck in his hitbox and to avoid presenting multiple targets for his breath weapon in case he's able to dispel someone. As a result of him transforming right away, all of these worst case scenarios actually occur: Only Eleanor and Jan aren't stuck, the others just can't move. Now, our only choice is to kill the dragon as quickly as possible. He immediately dispels our melee fighters - only Jan and Eleanor (who has SI:A) keep all of their buffs. Luckily, the other don't lose everything, with some cleric buffs staying on, but notably, Anomen is feared (Jan is able to counter this with remove fear), and Anomen, Minsc and Mazzy lose their protection from acid. We activate fighter HLAs and rebuff improved hastes while Eleanor breaches Draconis, who is immediately using his deadly breath weapon:
Abazigal's Lair - we get the potion of water breathing and enter more kuo-toa caverns - a bit of an underwhelming choice of enemy at this point. With frost protection and improved haste, Mazzy at 10 APR easily and quickly takes out the elemental prince of water: