Eleanor Cobham, Necromancer, Update 17 - Final Update
All right, let's bring this to an end. We buff up, adding full protections against ice, stuff like storm giant strength, invulnerability and another round of pierce magic spell triggers for Eleanors 3*ADHW CC. As we enter combat, the spell triggers are immediately deployed, now we just have to wait for the AHDWs to fire:
However, with all of their buffs, our fighters simply deal too much damage - Mel has to flee even before the ADHWs are able to hit her (though at least we get to see them in the combat log in the moment of her retreat):
All right - we didn't get dispelled, so all our buffs are still running. We immediately move to the first pool and clear it without any issues. While Eleanor gets ready to activate it, Jaheira calls in an elemental prince (we get lucky, and two of them appear). Time for round two. Jaheira has to be a bit carefuly, as she's lost her ironskins while fighting at the pool:
Jaheira retreats for a bit, the others finish the job in quick fashion - our foe retreats yet again:
I haven't been hesitant using traps in this run (see, for example, WK level 5), so why do the second Amelyssan battle at all? Well, the reason is that Jan just doesn't have enough spike traps for that - only 7 in total, which guarantees 2 (or rather 1,9) victories against the final boss, not it's not enough for three reliable ones. I've picked up the bonus wizard spells as HLAs early on, and I gained fewer levels than I would've expected in total.
We still have our buffs, and this includes full protection against frost damage, so the second pool is rather easy to clear:
This is where we use our first 4 spike traps - Mel's third incarnation is her most dangerous one. We also add in one normal trap for extra safety. She appears and has to retreat immediately, just as expected - no teleporting away, no slayer shadows. Now, Jan equips some one-handed weapons for dual-wielding and casts timestop via limited wish, with 3 more timestop scrolls at the ready, and goes after the fallen solar (with improved haste, at 4 APR):
That was the crucial target here, the others aren't too much of a threat and quickly cleared out by the party:
We place our final 3 spike traps and 4 normal traps. This is likely to be enough for Mel, but I've seen 3 spike traps not do the job before, so we do call in a few summons and renew some buffs just in case. We also try to go for a wish-rest, but fail to get one with 2 uses of the spell (I forgot I also had a third use via spellscroll) - still, this preparation is looking bad for Mel:
And indeed, the traps do the job - we are able to get in a few melee hits as well right before the battle ends, but they were propably not needed. Victory is ours.
Finally, we have all classes and kits represented in the Hall of Heroes. Congrats to everyone in the no-reload community for this achievement, which took at least 16 years to get to
Well done @Enuhal, you've shown amazing skill and perseverance. If you still feel a need for more BG, how about trying to get a solo victory with a druid? That's the only class that I'm not confident has the ability to beat Mel ...
Great job!
I have tried a few times myself, but I always slipped up somehow or got stuck with life and never continued the run necause I forget what each fight will do once I get there. You all have amazing skill and knowledge of the game and encounters.
@Grond0 I have tried the solo druid run a few times (with a totemic druid), though it's been a while, and I was able to get to Mel in the best of these runs, but while eventually I found a way to beat her with an exploit and many reloads, I didn't find even the slightest chance to do it reliably and without reloading with my set of tactics/game knowledge. Some have suggested that it might actually be easier with Ascension instead of the vanilla final battle, even though usually Ascension is a lot harder. However, I am not a very experienced or skilled solo player - there are others who are more likely to potentially find a way. Currently, I don't see one for myself, so I would expect the best case scenario of another attempt to be the same - get to Mel (if I can get past Draconis, Abazigal and The Ravager, who were some other potentially big hurdles - Draconis was very tough and took a long time until I finally found an approch that worked (involving double energy blades with a helm-simulacrum), and for both Abazigal and The Ravager, I didn't feel like my methods were reliable, and there was a certain amount of luck involved) and die there.
I am not sure when I will start another run and what it might be - though without the need to get any missing kits into the hall, it's likely to be some kind of modded challenge run with some significant restrictions. I really miss the Hard Times mod, which isn't available for the EE. I think I would prefer to do something that heavily increases the challenge for the BG1 part of the game - Item Randomizer, Hard Times, SCS, maybe with a randomized or otherwise restricted party would've been a really tough early game experience.
@Grond0 I have tried the solo druid run a few times (with a totemic druid), though it's been a while, and I was able to get to Mel in the best of these runs, but while eventually I found a way to beat her with an exploit and many reloads, I didn't find even the slightest chance to do it reliably and without reloading with my set of tactics/game knowledge. Some have suggested that it might actually be easier with Ascension instead of the vanilla final battle, even though usually Ascension is a lot harder. However, I am not a very experienced or skilled solo player - there are others who are more likely to potentially find a way. Currently, I don't see one for myself, so I would expect the best case scenario of another attempt to be the same - get to Mel (if I can get past Draconis, Abazigal and The Ravager, who were some other potentially big hurdles - Draconis was very tough and took a long time until I finally found an approch that worked (involving double energy blades with a helm-simulacrum), and for both Abazigal and The Ravager, I didn't feel like my methods were reliable, and there was a certain amount of luck involved) and die there.
There's a pillar you can hide behind against Draconis (at least in the unmodded game), making that encounter pretty safe and easy. Similarly, you can keep away from Abazigal by retreating into an alcove - that only leaves his ranged maze attack as a real threat, so you just need to protect against that with something not affected by dispel magic. The Ravager can be killed by sling while running round and round avoiding the bone blades - that's tedious, but reliable, if you're careful. I don't though have any similarly even semi-reliable strategies for Mel. Fighters and cleric types can use the reflection shield to good effect, bards and thieves have the easiest time with use of scrolls and traps, mages and sorcerers have multiple options, while monks can use their great AC to win a missile battle. Druids though, while they have resources giving them a decent chance of taking down a couple of Mel's incarnations, need some sort of edge to give them a realistic chance of final victory - I'm just not sure where that edge is ...
We had a few problems with connectivity early on, but were able to dispose of Sendai's last few statues without much difficulty. Sendai herself initially looked easy enough as well, but she managed to evade attempts to disable her with insects and Nature's Beauty and successfully touched Kerb with Harm. He withdrew and attempted to avoid the various summons in the arena, but was hit and killed by one of those just before the missile fire from Deja and Corezerk finished off Sendai.
We inadvertently teleported away to the enclave entrance before Kerb could be resurrected and had to make our way back there. In doing that we found the game appeared to have created there a full bag of holding with lots of goodies inside - which makes a change from MP glitches removing our items . Kerb resisted the temptation though to make use of most of the ill-gotten gains (like a second Helm of Balduran).
At Abazigal's Lair, Kerb went to confront Draconis in human shape. He and Corezerk were handicapped by not being able to see the enemy, but Deja was able to target him and eventually did enough damage to bring out the dragon form. It duly chased the berserkers round and did plenty of damage to them. That though gave Deja the opportunity to use the Resist Magic spell on it to reduce its magic resistance and his ironskins then allowed him to stick around long enough to cast a successful Nature's Beauty - and a blinded dragon is essentially a dead dragon.
Unfortunately, I attempted to go back to the Pocket Plane to rest without saving the game - and when the transition bugged out that meant having to fight Draconis again. While the intention in the fight was similar, this time a summoned deva was caught in the dragon's death field when transitioning form and then Deja got caught by a draconic dispel magic and lost his ironskins. As a result he quickly got taken down to dangerously low HPs and was unable to stay close to Draconis in an attempt to blind him. The delay that caused gave the dragon time to chase down the berserkers and an acid breath attack chunked Corezerk.
Corezerk's ghost wailed that he wanted revenge and, even though they didn't much feel like continuing the fight, the others did manage to take revenge on Draconis - but that only constituted a minor delay to the end of the run ...
You understand @Grond0 that it's the principle of the thing - we shouldn't let our enemy profit by our deaths, and if we abandoned the run as soon as I got chunked, then probably yet other adventurers would have fallen to the dragon.
I've got a couple of existing runs in Amn, but as usual I've been suffering from restartitis and decided to begin another. I've played quite a bit with characters not allowed to use ranged weapons, but don't remember disallowing all melee weapons and thought I would try that with an archer. In this run I will not be allowed to even equip any melee weapons, thus ruling out some passive benefits as well as their attacking potential and improved defenses.
After leaving Candlekeep, I shot down some gnolls at High Hedge on the way to Beregost. There, I shot Neera for her gem bag, Algernon for his cloak and Karlat before returning a sword to Perdue. After finding a book for Firebead and calming down Marl that was just enough to get me to level 2 - getting a maximum 14 HPs there.
I initially bought 10 +1 bolts thinking that might be enough to kill the High Hedge golems. However, it took 7 of them to kill the first golem so I went back to Beregost to get some more. Of course Sod's Law then meant that the original 3 remaining proved enough to kill the other golem - gaining me 13 more HPs for another level.
A trip to Nashkel allowed me to learn Bhaal CLW before returning to Beregost to hand in Mirianne's letter and Zhurlong's boots - the latter getting me to level 4 with 11 more HPs.
Some spiders were dragged out of their house for easy disposal before I went up to the FAI, collecting an ogre's belt on the way. I've forgotten the pantaloons a few times in recent runs, so collected them early this time.
I decided to go for an early (by my standards) trip to the Nashkel Mine. Stealth was used to avoid bothering with kobolds, but I killed the odd higher XP enemy on the way. The ghoul was a nice demonstration of the power of switching weapons. I was using a heavy crossbow, which had an APR of 1.5 - that meant the ghoul would probably be able to reach me before I could fire twice. Rather than running round (particularly with lots of kobolds near by), I switched to darts immediately after firing the first bolt. Their higher APR meant they could still attack in the initial round after the bolt and I was able to throw 3 of those before the ghoul reached me - the third of those proving fatal.
Inside Mulahey's cave, I didn't want to risk giving numerous opponents the advantage of attacking me in melee - so intended to shoot down Mulahey without allowing him close enough to talk. However, attacking him initially from stealth (rather than allowing his 'follow' script to activate on seeing me) triggered his conversation anyway and I was badly hurt just getting out of the cave again.
After coming back in under stealth, Mulahey's army all moved to join him - making it easy enough for me to pick them off one at a time. Once Mulahey was alone darts successfully interrupted all his spells without requiring me to retreat.
Outside the mine, it didn't take too long for stealth shots to account for the Amazons.
I cleared a couple of the tombs, but didn't have any weapons that could hurt the Revenant at the moment. Similarly, I couldn't deal with mustard jellies, so just shot Narcillicus without talking to him - that took me to level 5, with 13 more HPs.
Back in Nashkel I reported in to the mayor before stealth-shooting Nimbul. In Beregost, Tranzig got the same treatment in order to open up access to the Bandit Camp.
Before going to the Bandit Camp, I decided to power-up a bit more. At Firewine Bridge I sneaked through to find Meilum and shot him down for his bracers. Then it was on to the basilisk area where following Korax round accounted for the basilisks and Mutamin - gaining a level and 11 more HPs. Korax did well to paralyze Kirian's mob as well before being the final victim of the area.
I purchased a PfP scroll at the Carnival and some bolts of lightning at High Hedge before heading for Durlag's Tower. While mundane bolts can't hurt battle horrors, they do hit them and any elemental damage therefore still takes effect. It took 64 bolts to kill 3 battle horrors and a doom guard. That was expensive, but left me close to level 7 - and the basilisks quickly provided the necessary boost. The 10 extra HPs was on the low side, but the extra 0.5 APR was the real attraction. While there, I freed Kirinhale and shot down Riggilo. I also sacrificed the potion of clarity picked up in Candlekeep to get the tome - even though that's of no real use to me.
Finally at the Bandit Camp, the archers there proved no match for the real thing. In the tent, Venkt was poisoned by one of the darts taken from the Amazons. However, he still managed to cast horror when I ran out of the tent and failed to immediately hide and followed that up with a successful acid arrow before dying of poison. Mulahey's boots made it harder for Raemon and Hakt to hit me, but they were lucky with their attack rolls - getting at least 4 criticals in a short space of time. Even though Britik never managed to get an attack in that was still enough to prove fatal before I recovered my senses.
Trio 71 following the end of Trio 70
Tar (Gate70)
Omen (Grond0)
Coreheal VII (Corey_Russell)
Grond0 briefly considered cheating a specific class or kit to avoid a long run of druids and mages, reluctantly deciding to return to his spreadsheet. He'd rather fancied a Dwarven Defender so was disappointed to see Excel throw out a Dwarven Defender
Meanwhile our unannounced decisions showed sign of consistency again.
- Grond0 and I were both dwarves
- Corey_Russell and I both have enquiring fingers with thiefly properties
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As we raced around Candlekeep Coreheal suggested he should focus on traps/locks, leaving Tar free to concentrate on stealth. A splendid idea although setting snares will be the primary leadership responsibility, along with picking on easy targets such as the 5 rats in Reevor's warehouse
We hunted down Shoal the nereid, netting Tar her first level-up, then returned to High Hedge where a trio of gnolls found their luck had ended. Tar went to purchase the potion case while a flind turned up to attack the others. Tar can't remember much of this but thinks Omen took a hit or two and ran, while the flind turned towards Coreheal and used the illusionary spell (multiplayer lag) to arrive and hit while the cleric / thief was unaware and still had his sling equipped
We finished off the flind and dragged the body of Coreheal through Beregost (take a good gawp everyone, nothing to see here) and to the temple. 100gp later all was good other than Coreheal only having splint armour and us having lost his extra studded leather armour. Being a stoic little gnome he might have mentioned that he appeared to be the squishy one this time. Hold onto that thought
Back to Beregost where Tar tested out snares. A 50% success rate with no self-inflicted damage saw her confidently take on Silke. Coreheal threw a cautionary "one trap won't be enough" call while Tar expected it to prevent her casting a spell and giving time for us to get closing attacks in. No such need, as the trap proved decisive after an unexpected backstab landed
Omen levelled up from this, meaning we felt Karlat's time had come, and indeed it had. Tar tried a backstab but ultimately Karlat panicked himself into a corner and a variety of objects were duly flung at him. Down he went and we celebrated by realising Perdue's sword had vanished out of Omen's backpack. Never mind
Flush with success we went to relieve Neera of her gembag and her life but she valiantly fought back by dodging and asking for help. Tar decided we could handle whatever trouble was incoming and that turned out to be a mage and his two guards. The mage managed to kill Coreheal (Melf's acid arrow I believe) but Omen was on form and killed both guards, while Tar used the shadows to hunt the mage twice, and deliver a brace of bullets
The temple were still raising Coreheal for 100gp so we took advantage of that
Tar decided the agenda for the remainder of the day would be
- South via ogrillions and Zhurlongs boots. Intended for Coreheal but he graciously suggested Tar take them
- Continuing south to Nashkel for Omen to pick up ankheg armour and Noober to inspect our weapons
- To the Carnival for a rest and our first Bhaalspawn power (cure light wounds)
- Across to help Hulrik's cow from xvarts
- A wandering mystery tour finally getting us to Brage; returning him to Nashkel
- As we had left Neera alive previously we decided Neira should be eliminated
- Picking up Samuel and returning him to the Friendly Arm Inn. No rests but I did an extra journey south of the inn and back but he survived
- Picking up the girdle of piercing. While ultimately due for Tar, she suggested Coreheal take it for the time being
We then headed for the ankheg nest, but Tar asked how we were doing for time (no watch today) and it turned out we were 1 minute over our session end so Omen can wait until next week for an acid bath
@Grond0@Gate70 If you guys notice the screenshot, I still am wearing chain mail as Grond0 sold his splint mail rather than give it to me. What does a guy have to do get some hand-me-downs? There is only one splint mail in Candlekeep so couldn't get one there.
Also Grond0 for your archer with issues with Mulahey's minions can't you use something like a potion of explosion/necklace of missiles on yourself to wipe those out or were you not allowing use of items that run?
@Grond0@Gate70 If you guys notice the screenshot, I still am wearing chain mail as Grond0 sold his splint mail rather than give it to me. What does a guy have to do get some hand-me-downs? There is only one splint mail in Candlekeep so couldn't get one there.
If you really want to front up to the ankhegs next time you can have the ankheg armor ...
Also Grond0 for your archer with issues with Mulahey's minions can't you use something like a potion of explosion/necklace of missiles on yourself to wipe those out or were you not allowing use of items that run?
That was relatively early on and I didn't have anything like that. I did know LMD, so could have used that, though there would have been a small chance of interruption. A hit with darts would be an automatic kill on kobolds though and with 4 APR I expected to get past the single kobold blocking me a bit quicker than I actually did.
In their last outing, less than a year ago, I suggested the Crew were unlikely to adventure together again following their success against Mel. However, after an early failure with a ranged-only archer, I thought it might be nice to see how they fared with the same restriction, i.e. not being allowed to equip or use any melee weapons. I've adjusted their starting proficiencies to match this restriction. During our Trio yesterday, we also had a brief discussion of the extent to which we explored maps. While I've done an awful lot of completionist runs in the past, it's a little while since I've done that so thought I would require the Crew to fully explore all areas and undertake all encounters.
After leaving Candlekeep the Crew fully cleared the opening area after burying their mentor. Next they travelled south of Beregost where clearing that area included inheriting plate mail from 3 Flaming Fist soldiers. By that stage Bugsy had nearly been killed by a couple of hobgoblin archers, but he survived with 2 HPs left and, after resting up, the Crew continued south to Nashkel. Picking up the ankheg armor and killing Neira there meant everyone had metal or better armor to wear.
Back in Beregost the Crew did a number of minor chores. That should have included calming Marl down, but instead they absent-mindedly shot him instead . That's no great loss though (except to him) as it doesn't cost reputation. The shooting of others, like Silke, was fully intentional.
With still some way to go to get a first level-up, Al decided to lead the way to the basilisk area. Korax provided the protection there to allow them to quickly get the required XP, with level 3 coming just a couple of minutes later. Korax and weight of shot made short work of Kirian's party.
With the +1 arrows from Baerin, Al shot down the golems at High Hedge. Vast numbers of missiles were also used to deal with a number of groups of skeletons while vacuuming the area there. That took the Crew fairly close to another level and a sirine at the coast provided the necessary XP. Vito was only rendered unconscious by Shoal's kiss, to keep the Crew's record of no deaths to date. Shoal then called Ogre Droth into action to be shot down. Shoal herself was also killed as that gives much more XP than accepting her quest reward.
A trip through the Cloud Peak Mountains proved easy, with no-one taking any significant injuries. Carrying on in the south, they tackled the Nashkel Mine next and got their next level just before entering Mulahey's cave. Mulahey himself just survived an opening salvo of shots, but was convinced the Crew were emissaries from Tazok and paid for his misunderstanding a second later.
Outside the mine Lamalha managing to complete a glyph spell was the only resistance offered by the Amazons. The Revenant needed magic weapons to hit and was fairly resistant even to magical arrows - but not resistant enough. It was a similar story with Narcillicus' mustard jellies and the Crew used all the stocks of +1 arrows, +1 bullets and arrows of fire gained during their journeys to deal with those. In the last of the southern areas they picked Samuel up and travelled with him to the FAI for the first time. They bought Buckley's Buckler there which can trigger regeneration in any of the Crew to greatly improve their rate of healing when resting or travelling. They also handed in Landrin's goods and picked up the pantaloons.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul discovered his missile defences were not quite as good as he'd thought. Then it was on to the Lake area where they came across Drizzt. He ran circles round the Crew - which wasn't very healthy for him. I should really have prioritised going there before to reduce the 8 reputation lost, but Oh well the 12k XP gained was nice anyway.
At the mine site fire arrows did a tiny bit of damage to the Doomsayer. The magic missile wand taken from Imoen's body got it to injured status, but I didn't think that would be enough for a couple of oils of fiery burning to finish it off. The Crew attempted to do more damage with their fists, but Bugsy failed to retreat enough after being injured and racked up the first death of the run. Al was next in line and, once more, the sword of the Doomsayer was able to hit from what seemed like too far away - and this time the casualty was final.
@Grond0 Tough break there. But to be fair, trying to do all encounters with just missile weapons was probably pushing it. There is, after all a good reason that ancient armies weren't just bowmen, but had other melee fighters like cavalry and phalanxes.
Corey's view seems much too pessimistic to me. While there are a few enemies that are difficult to deal with using missiles, there are other options available without using melee weapons. To test that out I thought I would give the Crew another chance - but this time speed things up considerably by not requiring them to thoroughly clear all areas.
This more XP-focused run meant an early visit to the basilisk area, where they picked up a couple of levels. The next major injection of XP was from running Drizzt round and got them all up to level 4.
After acquiring Meilum's bracers the Crew had a moment's worry when ambushed by a basilisk. They had no defense against its gaze, but fortunately it started in melee mode and was shot down before it could change.
Touring various areas allowed the Crew to greatly improve their reputation before they went to the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey tried placating the Crew there, but to no avail. The Crew then got their next level after exiting in the Valley of the Tombs by laboriously shooting down the Revenant.
The ankheg nest was cleared with no trouble (their strength allowing them to take 14 shells for sale) before the Crew headed for the coast. None of the sirines managed to complete a single spell (and left behind all their poison arrows). The golems fared no better inside the pirate cave. Vito saved against Shoal's kiss, allowing everyone to show the power of missiles to Ogre Droth. The Crew decided they needed to take revenge against the Doomsayer and that that should be done entirely with missiles. That wasn't easy, but they thought buying 80 acid darts apiece should be plenty. However, the Doomsayer has decent AC, so is not easy to hit in the first place. When hit, it's immune to missile damage and decent spell saves meant that most of the time it took no acid damage either. Even when it did take damage, that was reduced by 50%, so in the end it took 422 of the darts purchased to get the kill - not an economic venture, but quite satisfying.
At the Bandit Camp, the one (very) slim chance the defenders had was for Venkt to scare several of the Crew. However, he failed to survive the initial volley of shots and none of the others managed to cause any damage. Then it was on to the Cloakwood where the Crew got to level 6 courtesy of various ettercaps and spiders. They celebrated by recovering Spider's Bane - pity they're not allowed to use it of course.
Drasus & co fell easily on the way to the Cloakwood Mine. Fists were used there for the first time in the run to deal with the battle horrors after a charmed guard fell. Some of their remaining acid darts then accounted for Davaeorn. They were not able to kill the mustard jelly, so just looted the chests and ran.
The Crew will be going to Baldur's Gate next. There are lots of things they would like to buy and with reputation and charisma at 19 each they will soon be able to get the best prices to stretch out their current fortune of 130k or so.
Best of luck, @Grond0 . While only missile weapons doesn't work in ancient armies, BG isn't real life but a game, so maybe just missiles will work. It will be fun to try, and that's the main thing right? It's the journey and not the destination, yes?
Best of luck, @Grond0 . While only missile weapons doesn't work in ancient armies, BG isn't real life but a game, so maybe just missiles will work. It will be fun to try, and that's the main thing right? It's the journey and not the destination, yes?
Indeed. I'm much better at journeying than arriving .
In Baldur's Gate, Jardak was shot for his helm - allowing Vito to get to 20 charisma. Returning Nester's dagger maximised reputation and prompted a shopping spree. The only problem with their quests was forgetting to talk to the priest before killing Jalantha and hence missing out on the possibility of acquiring a better shield. Al bravely took on the duty of running Degrodel's guards around while the others threw elemental darts at them. It took 474 of the 480 darts they had to kill the first group of 4 that chased them outside. Rather than go back to High Hedge to buy more, they finished off the other guards with elemental arrows and bolts.
Lothander was beaten to death to provide another pair of boots of speed and Marek had no realistic chance against a group attack. By the time they got to the Iron Throne they had 4 fully-charged Necklaces of Missiles and numerous exploding potions. Rather than create a fire storm though they just dragged opponents down a floor and shot them - Zhalimar was the only one to land a blow in return. The Crew were now close to levelling up again and I thought dragging a group of ogre magi outside would do the trick - but Vito ended up 2 XP short. However, one of them had stayed inside and going in after him did the trick.
Back at Candlekeep, Al used a fire giant strength potion, topped up by DUHM, to loot the tombs. Prat's opening spell was disrupted by fireballs before missiles cleaned things up. Once more in Baldur's Gate the Crew did a few things I don't normally bother with - like rescuing Duke Eltan and sorting out Cythandria.
Before going after Slythe I went to Durlag's Tower. While there I realised that I had in fact forgotten to loot the tomb with the wisdom tome - annoying, but no great loss in reality. The Crew didn't bother dealing with the trap-ridden underground levels, but did clear the upper levels - including ambushing the teleporting ghost.
Slythe was stopped in his tracks by a first use of stunning darts. At the palace the Crew didn't bother with potions, but their weight of damage using magical ammunition was still much too great for the dopplegangers.
After a final bit of ammunition purchasing they passed through the maze, without bothering to clear all its inhabitants. In the Undercity they circled around Rahvin in order to set up a torrent of fireballs. Rahvin survived the first lot, but died to the second before he could fire off his exploding arrows.
In the final battle, Vito activated Sarevok and then used a potion of invisibility to disappear in a corner. Semaj teleported out to be met by dispelling arrows and died before he could do anything. Tazok managed an invisible hit on Al before being shot down. Angelo recovered from the stinking cloud trap just too late and was finished off as he attempted to cast a spell. That just left Sarevok, who was no threat after being dispelled.
They transferred to SoD with just 105k, which reflects how much content they skipped. Still they should still be high enough level to mean progress in SoD is not too difficult.
Trio 71 Session 2 (links to session 1
Tar (Gate70)
Omen (Grond0)
Coreheal VII (Corey_Russell)
Our second week of survival, hours 3-4, started with us at the ankheg nest. With 50hp available to Omen it felt achievable. It was, sort of, although we had to rest twice. Thirteen minutes of our allotted time ticked away here
Next we picked up the tome of leadership for Omen (charisma 16 > 17) and gauntlets of dexterity for Tar before picking up boots of the north for removing a bear from a bridge
Tar felt Omen needed gauntlets, and Meilum failed to stagger to a second snare meaning his were free. We wandered around, dealing with a revenant and Zal + Vax. Coreheal could not use the bracers of archery so he swapped them for Omen's gauntlets
The Beregost spiders had their legs plucked, and then we raced around the basilisk map. Mutamin and his horror were no match for Coreheal and his resist fear, while Kirians party were struck dumb before a special snare slowed them and hold person was added as a final insult
Time for Nashkel Mine. A brief stroll through there culminated in Mulahey being silenced and battered. The amazons outside turned hostile after an oil of fiery burning was shared with them, meaning they all took special snare damage. We arrived in Beregost so we could sell many items and deal with Tranzig
We had time to deal with sirines and flesh golems near the lighthouse, meaning Omen now has natural regeneration with a constitution of 20. We had 10 minutes left but felt the bandit camp should be achievable in that time. Omen upgraded to full plate armour and Coreheal finally got the ankheg armour (he had waylaid Flaming Fist mercenaries south of Beregost previously to sate his desire for better armour, as per his comment from the previous week)
This leaves us ready to investigate Cloakwood next week unless we can think of a suitable diversion. Omen has almost 60% of party kills, with Tar and Coreheal lagging far behind despite traps on rest helping our tally
The Crew moved swiftly through the opening SoD dungeon. Korlasz's protection were dispelled and he tried to surrender - but fatal fireballs were already on the way. They did little beyond shopping in the City, but the quest XP for leaving there was still enough to get them to level 8.
Once out of town they headed for the Coast Way Forest where they shot down Ikros & Isabella in order to get the regeneration ioun stone - although they're unlikely to actually need to use that (very unlikely after they accidentally sold it for 1 gold piece when trying to identify it). On the way back to the Coast Way Crossing they found an ambush area and made short work of some orcs and trolls - as well as picking up an improved sling. After a bit of exploration they went to the bridge where a round of fireballs helped kill all the enemies before they tried to make peace.
Troll Claw Woods was fully explored. One incident of note there saw Mad Dog webbed by a Gargantuan Spider. The other spiders will target any webbed enemies so quick action was needed to equip quality ammunition and stun or kill the attackers.
On the way to the Forest of Wyrms they came across another ambush area with a big hole in the ground. They made pretty short work of the myconids there. At the Forest they cleared the external area before exploring a cave full of spiders and beetles. Bugsy made use of the ring of free action to spring web traps and kite enemies while the others stayed back picking off attackers. No-one took any damage there.
In the temple they rested several times to heal damage from traps and invisible backstabbers. Ziatar tends to struggle against a single opponent throwing stunning darts, so had no real chance against a whole group of them. The Neothelid was a potential problem because it has many disabling abilities that can be used from below ground and protecting everyone would have been a lot of resources. To try and avoid that Al just buffed himself and went into the room invisibly. That allowed him to avoid the expected summoned magical swords until the Neothelid surfaced. However, the Neothelid made a mistake in attacking earlier than usual - and died before it was able to take cover again. Mad Dog took a nasty backstab from the Shadow Aspect, but got his revenge with a killing shot - fortunately just before the Shadow Aspect's darkness spell blinded most of the Crew. They used exploding arrows for the first time to make short work of Darskhelin and his gang. A round of fireballs then killed Akanna. On the way out Al put a single throwing dagger through Morentherene's heart.
Another dragon appeared on the way to Boareskyr Bridge - it was mercilessly shot down after revealing the location of some treasure. On arrival the Crew went to find Vichand. Attacking him will alert the camp if he is not killed quickly, but I felt the Crew should be able to do that without trouble - and they did. The smith made shields from the dragon and beetle scales as well as forging some bullets from voidstones - he also supplied the last of them with full plate to wear in place of ankheg armor. That just left the mage on the bridge. He can be hard to hit with missiles for a single character, but I thought the Crew should be safe enough without buffing. In the event both the archers missed with their first arrows, but the seconds hit and dispelled him before he could finish summoning a portal - and the end came swiftly after that.
At the Coalition Camp the Crew did some shopping after selling various bits of junk to Nazramu for more than 100k. Then they were off again, clearing Dead Man's Pass. There are lots of enemies there, but all were dealt with reasonably safely. On the way to Dragonspear Castle they came across a dead magic zone. Fortunately this only affects spells and not item use and a full round of fireballs killed the Shadowy Figure before he could come in for a backstab. One of the gains from that encounter was 20 +3 arrows - I'm not sure of anywhere else accessible to this group to get those, so that could be a significant help against Belhifet.
After a brief exploration at Dragonspear, they nipped back to the camp to get a pair of bearskin boots made to beef up Al's saving throws. Then it was off to the Underground River. After clearing the surrounding area they took on the guards to the underground entrance - the animals summoned by the druids in the area making that easy. They didn't bother with most of the content in there - particularly as they gained their 9th level when placing the Bwoosh (everyone gaining grand mastery with their main weapon there). There are several containers with +3 ammunition in the basement of Dragonspear, but none of them can be kicked open, even with 25 strength. With solo characters I normally just poison the food and water and run, but chose to fight this time - using lots of potions for the first time. Hephernan had physical mirror and blade barrier up for a while, making him difficult to handle. Once the mirror had gone though he was subject to attack and forced to teleport away and the remaining enemies were no trouble. After poisoning the food and water invisibility potions allowed them to escape without battling through more hordes.
Back in Camp they prepared for a series of invasions. With 4 of them shooting exploding arrows, those were pretty short-lived.
Al cut through the siege of Dragonspear by stunning Ashatiel in single combat. They made short work of the devils on the way to Thrix and gained a helm from answering his riddle. Before going onto the Hellevator everyone used protection against fire, electricity and poison as well as general combat buffs. I didn't though use buffs of 1 hour or less, which was a mistake as Baby Face was affected by demon fear by the final group - his MR of 100% not helping him as the fear was 'natural'. He recovered before the Hellevator reached the top, but didn't have time to take the same short-term buffs as the others. That scarcely mattered though as, with Al, Carlo and Vito all firing +3 ammunition Belhifet died quickly - before even managing to gate in any additional devils to help him.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L9, 99 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 347 kills
Baby Face - L9, 104 HPs, 257 kills, 0 deaths
Bugsy - L9, 115 HPs, 241 kills, 0 deaths
Carlo - L9, 106 HPs, 314 kills, 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L9, 118 HPs (inc. 10 from ring), 236 kills, 0 deaths
Vito - L9, 121 HPs, 257 kills, 0 deaths
As with BGEE I missed out a lot of content in SoD. That meant I was mainly doing encounters I know well, but even so avoiding any deaths thus far is pretty good by my standards.
When importing the PC to BG2EE his HPs are rerolled. That can be annoying if HPs were high, but Al had very poor rolls in BGEE, so was glad to accept the additional 17 HPs on arrival in Jon's dungeon. With no missile weapons immediately available the Crew made use of fists on the way to find some goblins armed with bows. They had no way to kill the Jailkeep golem, but cleared out everything else without any trouble.
The Crew decided to risk an immediate assault on Mencar's gang and their attack immediately got into trouble when Pooky survived an initial volley of missiles and launched a confusion - affecting Vito and Bugsy. Mad Dog took Smaeluv for a walk outside and Carlo was aiming to do the same with Mencar when Brennan took advantage of confused movement and escaped from his corner to try and run away. Carlo took more damage when trying to finish him off, but he managed to escape with 5 HPs left. That was a shame, but the others were finished off without further trouble and Al inherited the Crew's first set of full plate - they missed out on the mage's equipment though when I absent-mindedly rested to heal up before going back upstairs for it.
After reporting in to Gaelan Bayle they helped Hendak take control at the Copper Coronet. That allowed them to buy Azuredge to help deal with any little undead problems that might arise - and it quickly proved its worth at the Graveyard. Underneath there they recruited Kitthix as a first summons. Coming back they made short work of Suna Seni's attempted ambush.
They now had the cash to pay Gaelan Bayle and doing that got everyone to level 10. Then they went to the Docks to pick up a +2 ring. Officer Dirth provided them with some more full plate there and they saw Lassal off with a single volley. A nymph cloak was purchased to boost Vito's charisma on the way to sign up with Mae'Var. On leaving the Docks they rescued Renfeld, so came straight back again to return him and loot the harpers (after shooting Prebek & Sanasha).
At the Bridge District Kitthix absorbed one Rune Assassin's backstab and Vito successfully revealed the other without hurt by moving away just as he was beginning to attack. Dracandros and his cronies were lured out of their hideout to their doom. Vito survived a petrification trap and endured a maze trap to get a second summons. Pushing his luck he tried out a second petrification trap, but this time his saving throw of 3 was not good enough and he waited patiently for a stone to flesh scroll to be bought at the temple next door. Once the party was back together they sought out the kidnappers and swapped their hostage for some pantaloons. The reputation loss from that was repaired by temple donations. Further quick reputation gains came from reporting the skinner murders to Lt Aegisfield, dealing with the circus, handing in Neb's head and slaughtering the Fallen Paladins. While in the Bridge District they also sorted out the Guild Contact.
They'd twice had to pay for restoration at a temple, so decided they needed a source of protection against level drain. Hence they returned to the Graveyard. The Grimwarders there could be beaten unconscious with fists and finished with a magic missile. They had no means of killing the clay golem though and decoyed that away using the berserk warrior and Kitthix. Al picked up the mace of disruption, but then remembered that no-one is allowed to equip that so it can't be used as a source of level drain protection .
Leaving Athkatla for the first time, they went to de'Arnise Hold. The trolls there were easy enough and they picked up another set of full plate from Glaicus. Once again they led away the clay golem and shut it in a room while they took care of TorGal. Al agreed to run the place in future and the Crew gained a level for their trouble.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L11, 122 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 85 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L11, 110 HPs, 33 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L11, 121 HPs, 69 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L11, 112 HPs, 63 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L11, 114 HPs, 69 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L11, 127 HPs, 49 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
At Umar Hills they did a few minor quests before heading for the old temple. With them still being pretty low level they only had to face skeleton warriors leading the undead groups there. They picked up the pearly white ioun stone to get a useful general source of regeneration. It felt a bit too dangerous to try and take on Thaxy at the moment, but they did shoot down the Shade Lord before his buffs could fire. They picked up Valyar's body on the way back to report to the mayor.
Moving on to Trademeet, Kitthix and the berserk warrior provided protection against efreeti petrification spells. The reward of the Shield of Harmony provides useful protection against several status effects. They had no problems in the Grove and watched on as Cernd had a light snack with Faldorn. While in the area they picked up a couple more reputation points by helping Tiris and clearing the tomb.
Back in Athkatla they went to the Slums to open the door to the Planar Sphere - but didn't go in yet. Instead they went into the sewers to deal with the slavers. Neither of the wizards there managed to complete a spell. Reporting their success to Hendak got them to level 12 and reputation 20 - prompting a shopping spree to spend the 100k+ amassed thus far. One of the places visited was Watcher's Keep to get the Firetooth crossbow and they took the opportunity to clear the top level there and acquire an ammo container, case of plenty, quiver of plenty and Crimson Dart. Another purchase made in Athkatla had been the Ring of Air Control and the saving throw benefit from using that allowed Al to brave the Finger of Death trap without risk. Everyone now had access to a +3 weapon or above, which made shooting down the golems and statues very quick.
Back in Athkatla the Crew decided to get on with Mae'Var's quests. Rather than the typical amulet, they were tasked with getting a statue from Lathander's temple. The attempt to get that was apparently spotted and the temple all went hostile - forcing the Crew to make a run for it. They spent a number of days charming the guards and getting them to kill each other until the area was safe to move in again. Then it was back to Mae'Var's tasks - with Rayic Gethras next on the list. He managed to kill the berserk warrior, but hadn't finished off Kitthix when his PfMW ran out. Shortly after that it was Mae'Var's turn for the chop.
The Crew had not yet been to the Temple sewers and going there next allowed them to acquire a new(ish) cloak. Mekrath and Tarnor's gang were other victims in the area - the latter made easy after Gaius was webbed by Kitthix at the start of combat. The Crew had already bought the Shield of Balduran and used that to go and deal with the Unseeing Eye. Killing the Blind Priests there meant all the Crew now have full plate. Just after that they were able to celebrate taking their 13th level and another APR upgrade before closing the Eye for good.
Back in the Bridge District they slaughtered Capt Dennis and his gang before turning their attention to the Planar Prison. They managed to kill the bounty hunter mage there before he could buff and the rest of the greeting party didn't fare much better. Working their way round, the Master of Thralls lasted only a second or so and the Warden didn't last too much longer.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L13, 128 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 199 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L13, 116 HPs, 116 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L13, 128 HPs, 123 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L13, 118 HPs, 134 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L13, 120 HPs, 172 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L13, 133 HPs, 133 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Still in the mood for exploring other planes, the Crew went next to the Planar Sphere. They were still not confident about killing clay golems (Firetooth's fire damage being blocked by its magic resistance), so locked the one near the entrance back into its room after looting that. They made pretty quick progress round, including clearing out some demon spawn to pick up a heart. Tolgerias tried to delay them by using improved mantle, but with two +5 weapons available that was only partly successful. In the engine room, 3 clay golems in close quarters could easily have been a major problem. To occupy those, Mad Dog used the Helm of Vhailor for the first time to produce a simmy and both Mad Dogs then took rat shape to keep damage to manageable levels. They picked up a level for bringing the Planar Sphere home.
The ioun stone is a helpful source of regeneration to reduce resting, but no real help in a combat situation. To improve things I thought it was about time to get the Ring of Gaxx. Mad Dog killed the Shade Lich with a single throw of his axe and the same fate befell the Elemental Lich. The City Gates lich managed to survive the first attack, but not the next. Everyone was protected against undead for Kangaxx and, with Firetooth and the Sling of Everard, it didn't take long to wear him down.
The last major chapter 2&3 area to explore was Windspear Hills and they went there next. There were the usual issues with clay golems, but nothing too difficult to manage. Samia's gang were overmatched before the Crew went to find Firkraag. Conster failed to deal with the weight of shot before the dragon was dragged upstairs, where he couldn't attack them directly, and used for target practice.
Returning to the vampire hideout there was no sign of the clay golem, so they had an easy enough time to work through the remaining vampires before duly sending Bodhi on her way. Reporting back to Aran Linvail was enough for level 15.
They took ship to Brynnlaw immediately and did a few minor quests there before exposing Perth's slow reactions to being attacked. His book of infinite spells proved to be a one-page wonder and they didn't bother holding on to it. Moving on to Spellhold, Al shot down Bhaal in a dream sequence - regrettably losing his Bhaal powers in the process.
In Spellhold the Crew finally killed a clay golem. I'd wondered about using the efreeti to do that before and tried it successfully this time. Although the animation shows a sword, the efreeti actually uses a crushing weapon that counts as magical. It's a bit of a pain constantly having to override its script, but the golem is easy to hit and the efreeti comfortably killed it in its turn of existence (while the golem was concentrating on hitting a rat). They were still a bit below 2m XP, so there was no lich to worry about on the first level. They cleared most of the second level without problems and used a machine to produce boots defending against electricity and cold. The room with 3 clay golems in though was a potential death trap. There was no way the efreeti could kill all 3 of them before it unsummoned and I'm pretty sure the door would remain closed until they were all dead (or rather until the Crew were all dead). To try and get round that, Mad Dog attacked from outside the room. None of the golems had time to get out before the door closed though and it couldn't be forced even using storm giant strength. Regrettably therefore the Crew had to give up on the intention to make the Gesen bow. Leaving the second level got them past the 2m XP mark with another level gained.
In the final battle Jon was reduced to 1 HP by the initial volley, but as always took a while to realise he should run away. The murderers only managed a single backstab on Mad Dog (his AC of -12 is not easy to hit even with the bonus for not having a melee weapon equipped). They took ship and have just arrived in Fish City.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L16, 137 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 273 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L16, 125 HPs, 229 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L16, 136 HPs, 172 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L16, 127 HPs, 220 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L16, 129 HPs, 302 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L16, 142 HPs, 212 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Despite the relatively slow speed of his weapon, Mad Dog has taken the kills lead as a result of typically being at the front of the party when fighting and getting bonus undead kills from Azuredge.
In Fish City the Crew took advantage of the higher selling prices to unload their junk. They essentially killed all comers there - picking up the Cloak of Mirroring in the process. The king was betrayed first, but the prince got his come-uppance soon afterwards.
In the Underdark I almost never bother to kill all the elementals spawning from the portals. However, as this party won't reach the XP cap I decided to do so - getting them up to level 17 in the process. They waited a bit for physical mirrors to dissipate before shooting down some drow, then cleared the giant soul gem - the lich being Azuredged just before he could get his buffs up. The Crew killed a balor for some deep gnomes before heading into the Western Tunnels. The kuo-toa prince found even his super-fast regeneration was insufficient to stand up to the Crew.
Their next target was the beholder hive. Entering there they rapidly shot down the elder orb at the entrance, though it just had time to do a bit of damage with a fireball. Most of the area was cleared by Baby Face on his own using the Shield of Balduran, though the other elder orb was subject to a group attack.
The nearby illithids were also invaded. The illithids themselves were easy enough, but the brain golems were another enemy that had to be separated so the efreeti could bludgeon them to death. Killing the Master Brain took the Crew to level 18.
After getting a disguise from Adalon, it was time to enter the drow city. Their first major task was rescuing Phaere and, while that was no problem, I mistook the position of the berserk warrior after the fight and hence did not stop it from attacking Solaufein. He went hostile and was shot down in response. That meant no opportunity to do further quests, but the Crew were still able to re-enter the city. The population were all hostile though, so were systematically slaughtered - regeneration keeping HPs up while doing that. By that stage the Crew had already done their shopping in the City and Al was able to use the Firetooth dagger as an alternative way of killing clay golems - through the 1 fire damage they took per hit. To escape from the Underdark they now needed to kill Adalon - though they probably would have done that anyway . She got one painful breath away, but collapsed before she could try another.
On the way back to Athkatla the Crew were stopped by Drizzt and deliberately provoked a fight. The missile attacks from Drizzt's companions were better than I expected and Mad Dog (who as usual was attempting to draw fire) had not used a good shield to defend against those - so he used an invisibility potion to disappear. Even after Vito took over kiting duties I found that Cattie-Brie's shots bypassed the reflection shield. Still, the Crew eventually got the job done.
After a final round of shopping to pick up yet more potions, the Crew set about finishing off various odds and sods. That included various stronghold quests, ending with the defeat of Lord Roenall; shooting down Thaxy and forging the dragon scale armor; forging the human skin armor and punishing those that made it; cleaning out the illithid from the temple sewers; dragging the inhabitants of the Guarded Compound downstairs for easy disposal and sacrificing a storm giant strength potion to thwart the Twisted Rune's evil plans. Just writing this reminds me that I could also have a go at the Cowled Wizards by making use of the Ring of Air Control to annoy them - I'll have to try and remember to do that before going to Suldanesselar.
The final target for the session was another visit to the vampire hideout. The Crew did well to avoid anyone being drained while clearing the hordes of vampires upstairs and got to level 19 as a reward. Bodhi then suffered from the effects of holy water and never managed an attack. On exiting they found Malchor Harpell wishing to recover Drizzt's items, but his pickings were pretty slim as nearly all had already been sold.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L19, 146 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 352 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L19, 134 HPs, 304 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L19, 145 HPs, 218 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L19, 136 HPs, 294 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L19, 138 HPs, 384 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L19, 151 HPs, 305 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Trio 71 Session 2 (links to session 12)
Tar (Gate70)
Omen (Grond0)
Coreheal VII (Corey_Russell)
Having looted the bandit camp last time we left the area. Rather than follow the trail, Coreheal wanted to pick on the remaining sirines at the coast so we did that followed by making our way to Durlags Tower. Coreheal insisted on a potion of mirrored eyes, not wanting to rely on sanctuary, stealth and skeletons against the basilisks. Instead he died to the thief inside, Riggilo. We hauled his corpse back to civilisation, paid 800gp and returned to finish the job
Back to Cloakwood, Tar deciding to retrieve Gurke's cloak and hand it down to Coreheal. We didn't bother with Centeol and her pets, not needing the Spidersbane sword. Tar enquired if Omen felt like using a shield instead of dual-wielding, and Omen just knew this meant investigating a wyvern cave. Tar stealthed inside to lay snares but Omen was too quick and followed before any could be laid. Tar told Omen to run further inside so she could throw a pair of bountyhunter snares in. With the battle won, Omen started adjusting his inventory
Meanwhile Tar drew out the last baby wyvern and hid behind Omen. She could see he was unaware but decided the wyvern deserved some chance. Eventually Omen became aware of his attacker and rapidly sorted it out
Drasus used his uncanny observation skills to detect Tar who had carelessly stepped into his view. Hence battle started before we were fully prepared but one snare and a trio of skeletons made it an easy victory for us. We cleared out the nearby room to loot a few potions and then rested before entering Cloakwood mine
With a hardy dwarven defender and two sneaky characters we were soon down with Davaeorn. He dodged a backstab and teleported away, landing on four traps from Tar and one from Coreheal. Down he went and we were free to go to Baldur's Gate with 50 minutes of time remaining. How much damage could we do
First we sold lots of stuff at Sorcerous Sundries. Then we cleared out the upstairs room of a mage infestation, and the sewers of their ogre mage and crawler problem. The two warring mages Arkion and Nemphre experienced a common enemy, and ennui claimed Desreta and Vay-ya (although the last of these managed to confuse Tar who promptly killed a local and halved our reputation to 10)
The half height horde continued their mischief with the warehouse basilisk, killing Marek and Lothander, returning Nestors dagger to his friend and an extremely rapid (snares galore) takedown of the mountain maulers. Omen gleefully picked up the +2 axe from the floor
We multiplayer-lost a tome of wisdom so Coreheal could not stretch his wiseness over the rest of us too far today
Time was catching up with us, but we pushed on and cleared out Ramaziths tower and Jardaks house. Here we are with new gear and a bit to sell at a store (unless Coreheal wishes to open a footwear store)
The Crew ranged through a few new areas they saw on the map. There wasn't anything of interest in the Wild Forest and even less in the Hidden Refuge (given the Crew are not allowed to recruit any NPCs, including Neera). The Small Teeth Pass was similarly uneventful. The opposition was significantly greater in the North Forest, but still nothing to really trouble the Crew. The Forest of Tethir was a more substantial area and the Crew had their hardest battle in a very long time when entering Coran's cabin to find large quantities of spectral undead. Baby Face was level drained and he and Vito were confused and had to be kept separate, while Al was badly injured in the forefront of the battle. Once damage was regenerated the Crew cleared the remainder of the area without trouble.
I'd reminded myself to leave the City safe from the scourge of the Cowled Wizards and took them on next. Al made himself the target there. With the Cloak of Mirroring, improved invisibility and, after borrowing the Ring of Gaxx, good saving throws, the wizards failed to make any impression on him.
Finally it was time for Suldanesselar and the Crew celebrated their arrival by getting to level 20 and learning Whirlwinds. They made good early progress with rat form allowing them to take down a number of golems quickly and easily. There was a bit of trouble though when they ran into a group of rakshasa and elven mages and Vito was scared by a symbol. The others had to follow him and deal with various enemies, including Raamilat, before Vito recovered. The Crew also found it a bit harder than I expected to hit Nizi and it was a bit of relief when they found a fatal hit. At the temple, they killed the opponents themselves for a bit of extra XP before placing a few artifacts on the altar to summon Rillifane.
On the Tree of Life a few elementals were no challenge. Kitthix was left behind to absorb Jon's opening attacks before a WW persuaded him to run away. In hell, Al talked nicely to the dragon to get some elemental resistance. He initially used a clarity potion to avoid fear and get some weapon immunity - but then decided, what the hell, and a round of WWs killed the elder orbs nearby. He didn't want to spoil the no-deaths record to date, so reluctantly gave up some HPs, dexterity and XP to save Baby Face and gain a bit of MR. I'm fond of Blackrazor as a weapon but, as the Crew are not allowed to use it, there was no sacrifice to giving it up in exchange for a saving throw benefit (they did though kill the genie after doing that, so still actually had the sword available if they'd been able to use it). After cashing in the other tears, Al was immune to Sarevok's attacks while taking out his wrath on him. After killing the demons, the Crew waited for a while to regenerate some lost health before going after Slayer-Jon. For some solo characters it can be hard to out-pace his regeneration, but that was no problem for the Crew.
The Crew moved on to ToB. They still had had no deaths, although some of the later SoA encounters had felt more dangerous. Illasera though offered a nice simple introduction to ToB. Arriving in the Pocket Plane they upgraded the case and quiver of plenty before taking on the first PP challenge. Ellesime was the only significant character to challenge them there and she was no threat on her own.
The walked into an ambush in Saradush, but handily defeated that. Most of the Crew would have gained another level in the process, but Al was holding everyone up as a result of the XP he lost in hell. I found a spellbook for Lazarus and bought a few things from him and redistributed equipment so that all the Crew had a spell saving throw of -1 or better to minimise the occasions when someone fails a saving throw. Since they were looking to maximise XP they invaded the barracks (no-one could kick the door down naturally and I didn't want to use one of the better strength potions, but hazarded a fire giant strength one and that proved sufficient). I don't normally do other quests here either, but completing the one with Kiser Jhaeri netted me a Shakti figurine - which unfortunately the Crew are not able to use.
Exploring the sewers provided a bit more XP and enabled the Crew to level up once more. They couldn't kick open a door leading to the exit there though, so retreated to try their luck in the jail. A couple of them were level drained by vampires there, but they were never in danger. They gradually worked through various thieves and fighters and a mage or two to get into position to attack Gromnir. I considered going in invisibly to make things easier, but decided to play fair. However, not that fair! Before their GWW had finished only Karun the Black was not stunned - with the other mage already dead. Karun's use of improved mantle left him vulnerable to +5 weapons and another round or so saw the job done.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L21, 150 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 419 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L21, 140 HPs, 357 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L21, 151 HPs, 270 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L21, 142 HPs, 355 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L21, 144 HPs, 440 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L21, 157 HPs, 379 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
The Crew quickly cleared the North Forest before moving on to the Temple of Mir. They did well to avoid anyone being drained in the initial encounter there before clearing up. On to the Fire Temple where the enemies were numerous and hard-hitting. That resulted in regular retreats to heal up, but they also gained plenty of XP and were able to take another level before finishing the lower floor. On the Upper Floor a number of giants got stuck in a doorway to make dealing with them easy before Imix was filled full of holes.
Back at the Forest of Mir, Nyalee had a change of heart and attacked. The Crew were all protected for the first time by hardiness anyway, but in the event no-one actually took any damage there.
Moving on to the Siege Camp they wounded Yaga-Shura. When he returned they had the opportunity for a quick kill, but chose not to take it so they could pick up some extra XP from his supporters. That nearly cost them though when I forgot about potential backstabs and a thief almost killed Mad Dog. After that things were relatively straight-forward though and they finally shot down Yaga-Shura after fully exploring the camp - gaining another level as a result.
The second Pocket Plane challenge took a bit longer than expected. After a round or so only Semaj was left, but he cast Tenser's Transformation on himself and then appeared to be too scared to use it - remaining invisible for several rounds until finally appearing to be shot down.
The Oasis offered the opportunity to wreak slaughter with no real danger. They picked up a bit of loot there from force of habit although they've already got more cash than they could spend in the remaining game.
In Amkethran they had another tougher fight than expected - this time with Vongoethe. Al was trying to draw his fire, but the different heights in the area made distances difficult to judge and the others got targeted a couple of times with spells before Vongoethe went down. Even after that the skeleton archers did a fair amount of damage, though without any real risk of killing anyone.
Moving on to Sendai's Enclave they shot the drow woodsman and his companions to open access to the tunnel. I had a vague memory there was some sort of beholder in the area, but the Crew only found a few more drow before moving into the Enclave proper. They made steady progress there, though it took a while to get through the berserker area, thanks to the amount of respawning (I felt entitled to only move forward when there were no enemies attacking). At some point during that the Crew were able to take their 24th level, though I didn't notice the exact moment they earned that. They did eventually reach the Slavemaster though and turn off the respawning.
They hit a hiccup after arriving in Odamaron's quarters. They used the berserk warrior to trigger him and were just waiting for PfMW to wear off when a drow appeared from nowhere (must have followed from outside somewhere) and cast a lightning bolt. That should have done little damage, but Baby Face was wearing the Cloak of Reflection and that appeared to continually refresh the lightning on each bounce - over time that severely damaged Carlo, who was also in the same path. Moving out of the way was difficult due to being so near to the door and Odamaron still being active just out of sight. I could have moved a number of pieces of equipment round to make them both 100% resistant without using the Cloak of Reflection, but made a mistake by just giving that cloak to Carlo to prevent further damage. That had the effect of multiplying the number of bolts of lightning and Baby Face was rapidly down to 41 HPs. I still had the option of moving equipment around (Baby Face himself was actually carrying the Boots of Talos, but didn't put them on) or even making a very rare use of a potion. However, I chose to just try and leave the area. Sometimes when you do that with multiple characters selected they interfere with each other and I'd already decided I would take further action if they didn't leave immediately. However, they did depart instantly - sort of . One problem with using moving between maps to escape attacks is that the transfer animation for some areas is slower than others. Thus, although they started to leave the area instantly, it took a bit of time to actually get out - and that allowed Baby Face to be hit several more times and become the first casualty of the run.
After a visit to Watcher's Keep to raise Baby Face the Crew returned to try and settle affairs with Sendai. Odamaron was finished off once his PfMW wore off. Ogremoch's stoneskins evaporated like spit on a griddle in the face of 6 GWWs. They were able to take another level and also go back to the Pocket Plane to rest prior to the final statue - ensuring they had full health and a GWW available to deal with Sendai. It was a good job that they were prepared as Al again was unable to draw her fire and the others took quite a bit of area damage as well as 2 of them failing a saving throw against a symbol:fear after being malisoned. To cut short the battle, Al made a rare use of a dispelling arrow and follow-up GWWs stopped Sendai in her tracks and pushed the Crew up to level 25.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L25, 162 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 509 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L25, 152 HPs, 441 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bugsy - L25, 163 HPs, 335 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L25, 154 HPs, 441 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L25, 156 HPs, 501 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L25, 169 HPs, 481 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
With 3 pairs of boots of speed in the party, Mad Dog is less often the front man and Al has retaken the kills lead - though Vito is making a late charge to take the honours.
Comments
All right, let's bring this to an end. We buff up, adding full protections against ice, stuff like storm giant strength, invulnerability and another round of pierce magic spell triggers for Eleanors 3*ADHW CC. As we enter combat, the spell triggers are immediately deployed, now we just have to wait for the AHDWs to fire:
We still have our buffs, and this includes full protection against frost damage, so the second pool is rather easy to clear:
Finally, we have all classes and kits represented in the Hall of Heroes. Congrats to everyone in the no-reload community for this achievement, which took at least 16 years to get to
I have tried a few times myself, but I always slipped up somehow or got stuck with life and never continued the run necause I forget what each fight will do once I get there. You all have amazing skill and knowledge of the game and encounters.
Congratulations on a great run!
@Grond0 I have tried the solo druid run a few times (with a totemic druid), though it's been a while, and I was able to get to Mel in the best of these runs, but while eventually I found a way to beat her with an exploit and many reloads, I didn't find even the slightest chance to do it reliably and without reloading with my set of tactics/game knowledge. Some have suggested that it might actually be easier with Ascension instead of the vanilla final battle, even though usually Ascension is a lot harder. However, I am not a very experienced or skilled solo player - there are others who are more likely to potentially find a way. Currently, I don't see one for myself, so I would expect the best case scenario of another attempt to be the same - get to Mel (if I can get past Draconis, Abazigal and The Ravager, who were some other potentially big hurdles - Draconis was very tough and took a long time until I finally found an approch that worked (involving double energy blades with a helm-simulacrum), and for both Abazigal and The Ravager, I didn't feel like my methods were reliable, and there was a certain amount of luck involved) and die there.
I am not sure when I will start another run and what it might be - though without the need to get any missing kits into the hall, it's likely to be some kind of modded challenge run with some significant restrictions. I really miss the Hard Times mod, which isn't available for the EE. I think I would prefer to do something that heavily increases the challenge for the BG1 part of the game - Item Randomizer, Hard Times, SCS, maybe with a randomized or otherwise restricted party would've been a really tough early game experience.
There's a pillar you can hide behind against Draconis (at least in the unmodded game), making that encounter pretty safe and easy. Similarly, you can keep away from Abazigal by retreating into an alcove - that only leaves his ranged maze attack as a real threat, so you just need to protect against that with something not affected by dispel magic. The Ravager can be killed by sling while running round and round avoiding the bone blades - that's tedious, but reliable, if you're careful. I don't though have any similarly even semi-reliable strategies for Mel. Fighters and cleric types can use the reflection shield to good effect, bards and thieves have the easiest time with use of scrolls and traps, mages and sorcerers have multiple options, while monks can use their great AC to win a missile battle. Druids though, while they have resources giving them a decent chance of taking down a couple of Mel's incarnations, need some sort of edge to give them a realistic chance of final victory - I'm just not sure where that edge is ...
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
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1217542/#Comment_1217542
We had a few problems with connectivity early on, but were able to dispose of Sendai's last few statues without much difficulty. Sendai herself initially looked easy enough as well, but she managed to evade attempts to disable her with insects and Nature's Beauty and successfully touched Kerb with Harm. He withdrew and attempted to avoid the various summons in the arena, but was hit and killed by one of those just before the missile fire from Deja and Corezerk finished off Sendai.
We inadvertently teleported away to the enclave entrance before Kerb could be resurrected and had to make our way back there. In doing that we found the game appeared to have created there a full bag of holding with lots of goodies inside - which makes a change from MP glitches removing our items
At Abazigal's Lair, Kerb went to confront Draconis in human shape. He and Corezerk were handicapped by not being able to see the enemy, but Deja was able to target him and eventually did enough damage to bring out the dragon form. It duly chased the berserkers round and did plenty of damage to them. That though gave Deja the opportunity to use the Resist Magic spell on it to reduce its magic resistance and his ironskins then allowed him to stick around long enough to cast a successful Nature's Beauty - and a blinded dragon is essentially a dead dragon.
Unfortunately, I attempted to go back to the Pocket Plane to rest without saving the game - and when the transition bugged out that meant having to fight Draconis again. While the intention in the fight was similar, this time a summoned deva was caught in the dragon's death field when transitioning form and then Deja got caught by a draconic dispel magic and lost his ironskins. As a result he quickly got taken down to dangerously low HPs and was unable to stay close to Draconis in an attempt to blind him. The delay that caused gave the dragon time to chase down the berserkers and an acid breath attack chunked Corezerk.
Corezerk's ghost wailed that he wanted revenge and, even though they didn't much feel like continuing the fight, the others did manage to take revenge on Draconis - but that only constituted a minor delay to the end of the run ...
I've got a couple of existing runs in Amn, but as usual I've been suffering from restartitis and decided to begin another. I've played quite a bit with characters not allowed to use ranged weapons, but don't remember disallowing all melee weapons and thought I would try that with an archer. In this run I will not be allowed to even equip any melee weapons, thus ruling out some passive benefits as well as their attacking potential and improved defenses.
After leaving Candlekeep, I shot down some gnolls at High Hedge on the way to Beregost. There, I shot Neera for her gem bag, Algernon for his cloak and Karlat before returning a sword to Perdue. After finding a book for Firebead and calming down Marl that was just enough to get me to level 2 - getting a maximum 14 HPs there.
A trip to Nashkel allowed me to learn Bhaal CLW before returning to Beregost to hand in Mirianne's letter and Zhurlong's boots - the latter getting me to level 4 with 11 more HPs.
I decided to go for an early (by my standards) trip to the Nashkel Mine. Stealth was used to avoid bothering with kobolds, but I killed the odd higher XP enemy on the way. The ghoul was a nice demonstration of the power of switching weapons. I was using a heavy crossbow, which had an APR of 1.5 - that meant the ghoul would probably be able to reach me before I could fire twice. Rather than running round (particularly with lots of kobolds near by), I switched to darts immediately after firing the first bolt. Their higher APR meant they could still attack in the initial round after the bolt and I was able to throw 3 of those before the ghoul reached me - the third of those proving fatal.
Outside the mine, it didn't take too long for stealth shots to account for the Amazons.
Back in Nashkel I reported in to the mayor before stealth-shooting Nimbul. In Beregost, Tranzig got the same treatment in order to open up access to the Bandit Camp.
Archer L5, 65 HPs, 79 kills
Previous updates
Before going to the Bandit Camp, I decided to power-up a bit more. At Firewine Bridge I sneaked through to find Meilum and shot him down for his bracers. Then it was on to the basilisk area where following Korax round accounted for the basilisks and Mutamin - gaining a level and 11 more HPs. Korax did well to paralyze Kirian's mob as well before being the final victim of the area.
I purchased a PfP scroll at the Carnival and some bolts of lightning at High Hedge before heading for Durlag's Tower. While mundane bolts can't hurt battle horrors, they do hit them and any elemental damage therefore still takes effect. It took 64 bolts to kill 3 battle horrors and a doom guard. That was expensive, but left me close to level 7 - and the basilisks quickly provided the necessary boost. The 10 extra HPs was on the low side, but the extra 0.5 APR was the real attraction. While there, I freed Kirinhale and shot down Riggilo. I also sacrificed the potion of clarity picked up in Candlekeep to get the tome - even though that's of no real use to me.
Finally at the Bandit Camp, the archers there proved no match for the real thing. In the tent, Venkt was poisoned by one of the darts taken from the Amazons. However, he still managed to cast horror when I ran out of the tent and failed to immediately hide and followed that up with a successful acid arrow before dying of poison. Mulahey's boots made it harder for Raemon and Hakt to hit me, but they were lucky with their attack rolls - getting at least 4 criticals in a short space of time. Even though Britik never managed to get an attack in that was still enough to prove fatal before I recovered my senses.
Tar (Gate70)
Omen (Grond0)
Coreheal VII (Corey_Russell)
Grond0 briefly considered cheating a specific class or kit to avoid a long run of druids and mages, reluctantly deciding to return to his spreadsheet. He'd rather fancied a Dwarven Defender so was disappointed to see Excel throw out a Dwarven Defender
Meanwhile our unannounced decisions showed sign of consistency again.
- Grond0 and I were both dwarves
- Corey_Russell and I both have enquiring fingers with thiefly properties
---
As we raced around Candlekeep Coreheal suggested he should focus on traps/locks, leaving Tar free to concentrate on stealth. A splendid idea although setting snares will be the primary leadership responsibility, along with picking on easy targets such as the 5 rats in Reevor's warehouse
We hunted down Shoal the nereid, netting Tar her first level-up, then returned to High Hedge where a trio of gnolls found their luck had ended. Tar went to purchase the potion case while a flind turned up to attack the others. Tar can't remember much of this but thinks Omen took a hit or two and ran, while the flind turned towards Coreheal and used the illusionary spell (multiplayer lag) to arrive and hit while the cleric / thief was unaware and still had his sling equipped
We finished off the flind and dragged the body of Coreheal through Beregost (take a good gawp everyone, nothing to see here) and to the temple. 100gp later all was good other than Coreheal only having splint armour and us having lost his extra studded leather armour. Being a stoic little gnome he might have mentioned that he appeared to be the squishy one this time. Hold onto that thought
Back to Beregost where Tar tested out snares. A 50% success rate with no self-inflicted damage saw her confidently take on Silke. Coreheal threw a cautionary "one trap won't be enough" call while Tar expected it to prevent her casting a spell and giving time for us to get closing attacks in. No such need, as the trap proved decisive after an unexpected backstab landed
Flush with success we went to relieve Neera of her gembag and her life but she valiantly fought back by dodging and asking for help. Tar decided we could handle whatever trouble was incoming and that turned out to be a mage and his two guards. The mage managed to kill Coreheal (Melf's acid arrow I believe) but Omen was on form and killed both guards, while Tar used the shadows to hunt the mage twice, and deliver a brace of bullets
The temple were still raising Coreheal for 100gp so we took advantage of that
Tar decided the agenda for the remainder of the day would be
- South via ogrillions and Zhurlongs boots. Intended for Coreheal but he graciously suggested Tar take them
- Continuing south to Nashkel for Omen to pick up ankheg armour and Noober to inspect our weapons
- To the Carnival for a rest and our first Bhaalspawn power (cure light wounds)
- Across to help Hulrik's cow from xvarts
- A wandering mystery tour finally getting us to Brage; returning him to Nashkel
- As we had left Neera alive previously we decided Neira should be eliminated
- Picking up Samuel and returning him to the Friendly Arm Inn. No rests but I did an extra journey south of the inn and back but he survived
- Picking up the girdle of piercing. While ultimately due for Tar, she suggested Coreheal take it for the time being
We then headed for the ankheg nest, but Tar asked how we were doing for time (no watch today) and it turned out we were 1 minute over our session end so Omen can wait until next week for an acid bath
Here's how we ended the session
Also Grond0 for your archer with issues with Mulahey's minions can't you use something like a potion of explosion/necklace of missiles on yourself to wipe those out or were you not allowing use of items that run?
That was relatively early on and I didn't have anything like that. I did know LMD, so could have used that, though there would have been a small chance of interruption. A hit with darts would be an automatic kill on kobolds though and with 4 APR I expected to get past the single kobold blocking me a bit quicker than I actually did.
Previous run:
In their last outing, less than a year ago, I suggested the Crew were unlikely to adventure together again following their success against Mel. However, after an early failure with a ranged-only archer, I thought it might be nice to see how they fared with the same restriction, i.e. not being allowed to equip or use any melee weapons. I've adjusted their starting proficiencies to match this restriction. During our Trio yesterday, we also had a brief discussion of the extent to which we explored maps. While I've done an awful lot of completionist runs in the past, it's a little while since I've done that so thought I would require the Crew to fully explore all areas and undertake all encounters.
After leaving Candlekeep the Crew fully cleared the opening area after burying their mentor. Next they travelled south of Beregost where clearing that area included inheriting plate mail from 3 Flaming Fist soldiers. By that stage Bugsy had nearly been killed by a couple of hobgoblin archers, but he survived with 2 HPs left and, after resting up, the Crew continued south to Nashkel. Picking up the ankheg armor and killing Neira there meant everyone had metal or better armor to wear.
Back in Beregost the Crew did a number of minor chores. That should have included calming Marl down, but instead they absent-mindedly shot him instead
With still some way to go to get a first level-up, Al decided to lead the way to the basilisk area. Korax provided the protection there to allow them to quickly get the required XP, with level 3 coming just a couple of minutes later. Korax and weight of shot made short work of Kirian's party.
With the +1 arrows from Baerin, Al shot down the golems at High Hedge. Vast numbers of missiles were also used to deal with a number of groups of skeletons while vacuuming the area there. That took the Crew fairly close to another level and a sirine at the coast provided the necessary XP. Vito was only rendered unconscious by Shoal's kiss, to keep the Crew's record of no deaths to date. Shoal then called Ogre Droth into action to be shot down. Shoal herself was also killed as that gives much more XP than accepting her quest reward.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L4, 57 HPs, 48 kills
Baby Face - L4, 52 HPs, 31 kills, 0 deaths
Bugsy - L4, 48 HPs, 28 kills, 0 deaths
Carlo - L4, 55 HPs, 39 kills, 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L4, 59 HPs, 15 kills, 0 deaths
Vito - L4, 53 HPs, 30 kills, 0 deaths
Previous updates:
A trip through the Cloud Peak Mountains proved easy, with no-one taking any significant injuries. Carrying on in the south, they tackled the Nashkel Mine next and got their next level just before entering Mulahey's cave. Mulahey himself just survived an opening salvo of shots, but was convinced the Crew were emissaries from Tazok and paid for his misunderstanding a second later.
Outside the mine Lamalha managing to complete a glyph spell was the only resistance offered by the Amazons. The Revenant needed magic weapons to hit and was fairly resistant even to magical arrows - but not resistant enough. It was a similar story with Narcillicus' mustard jellies and the Crew used all the stocks of +1 arrows, +1 bullets and arrows of fire gained during their journeys to deal with those. In the last of the southern areas they picked Samuel up and travelled with him to the FAI for the first time. They bought Buckley's Buckler there which can trigger regeneration in any of the Crew to greatly improve their rate of healing when resting or travelling. They also handed in Landrin's goods and picked up the pantaloons.
Back in Nashkel, Nimbul discovered his missile defences were not quite as good as he'd thought. Then it was on to the Lake area where they came across Drizzt. He ran circles round the Crew - which wasn't very healthy for him. I should really have prioritised going there before to reduce the 8 reputation lost, but Oh well the 12k XP gained was nice anyway.
At the mine site fire arrows did a tiny bit of damage to the Doomsayer. The magic missile wand taken from Imoen's body got it to injured status, but I didn't think that would be enough for a couple of oils of fiery burning to finish it off. The Crew attempted to do more damage with their fists, but Bugsy failed to retreat enough after being injured and racked up the first death of the run. Al was next in line and, once more, the sword of the Doomsayer was able to hit from what seemed like too far away - and this time the casualty was final.
Corey's view seems much too pessimistic to me. While there are a few enemies that are difficult to deal with using missiles, there are other options available without using melee weapons. To test that out I thought I would give the Crew another chance - but this time speed things up considerably by not requiring them to thoroughly clear all areas.
This more XP-focused run meant an early visit to the basilisk area, where they picked up a couple of levels. The next major injection of XP was from running Drizzt round and got them all up to level 4.
After acquiring Meilum's bracers the Crew had a moment's worry when ambushed by a basilisk. They had no defense against its gaze, but fortunately it started in melee mode and was shot down before it could change.
Touring various areas allowed the Crew to greatly improve their reputation before they went to the Nashkel Mine. Mulahey tried placating the Crew there, but to no avail. The Crew then got their next level after exiting in the Valley of the Tombs by laboriously shooting down the Revenant.
The ankheg nest was cleared with no trouble (their strength allowing them to take 14 shells for sale) before the Crew headed for the coast. None of the sirines managed to complete a single spell (and left behind all their poison arrows). The golems fared no better inside the pirate cave. Vito saved against Shoal's kiss, allowing everyone to show the power of missiles to Ogre Droth. The Crew decided they needed to take revenge against the Doomsayer and that that should be done entirely with missiles. That wasn't easy, but they thought buying 80 acid darts apiece should be plenty. However, the Doomsayer has decent AC, so is not easy to hit in the first place. When hit, it's immune to missile damage and decent spell saves meant that most of the time it took no acid damage either. Even when it did take damage, that was reduced by 50%, so in the end it took 422 of the darts purchased to get the kill - not an economic venture, but quite satisfying.
At the Bandit Camp, the one (very) slim chance the defenders had was for Venkt to scare several of the Crew. However, he failed to survive the initial volley of shots and none of the others managed to cause any damage. Then it was on to the Cloakwood where the Crew got to level 6 courtesy of various ettercaps and spiders. They celebrated by recovering Spider's Bane - pity they're not allowed to use it of course.
Drasus & co fell easily on the way to the Cloakwood Mine. Fists were used there for the first time in the run to deal with the battle horrors after a charmed guard fell. Some of their remaining acid darts then accounted for Davaeorn. They were not able to kill the mustard jelly, so just looted the chests and ran.
The Crew will be going to Baldur's Gate next. There are lots of things they would like to buy and with reputation and charisma at 19 each they will soon be able to get the best prices to stretch out their current fortune of 130k or so.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L6, 68 HPs, 147 kills
Baby Face - L6, 78 HPs, 75 kills, 0 deaths
Bugsy - L6, 77 HPs, 72 kills, 0 deaths
Carlo - L6, 75 HPs, 112 kills, 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L6, 71 HPs, 65 kills, 0 deaths
Vito - L6, 80 HPs, 102 kills, 0 deaths
Previous updates:
In Baldur's Gate, Jardak was shot for his helm - allowing Vito to get to 20 charisma. Returning Nester's dagger maximised reputation and prompted a shopping spree. The only problem with their quests was forgetting to talk to the priest before killing Jalantha and hence missing out on the possibility of acquiring a better shield. Al bravely took on the duty of running Degrodel's guards around while the others threw elemental darts at them. It took 474 of the 480 darts they had to kill the first group of 4 that chased them outside. Rather than go back to High Hedge to buy more, they finished off the other guards with elemental arrows and bolts.
Lothander was beaten to death to provide another pair of boots of speed and Marek had no realistic chance against a group attack. By the time they got to the Iron Throne they had 4 fully-charged Necklaces of Missiles and numerous exploding potions. Rather than create a fire storm though they just dragged opponents down a floor and shot them - Zhalimar was the only one to land a blow in return. The Crew were now close to levelling up again and I thought dragging a group of ogre magi outside would do the trick - but Vito ended up 2 XP short. However, one of them had stayed inside and going in after him did the trick.
Back at Candlekeep, Al used a fire giant strength potion, topped up by DUHM, to loot the tombs. Prat's opening spell was disrupted by fireballs before missiles cleaned things up. Once more in Baldur's Gate the Crew did a few things I don't normally bother with - like rescuing Duke Eltan and sorting out Cythandria.
Before going after Slythe I went to Durlag's Tower. While there I realised that I had in fact forgotten to loot the tomb with the wisdom tome - annoying, but no great loss in reality. The Crew didn't bother dealing with the trap-ridden underground levels, but did clear the upper levels - including ambushing the teleporting ghost.
Slythe was stopped in his tracks by a first use of stunning darts. At the palace the Crew didn't bother with potions, but their weight of damage using magical ammunition was still much too great for the dopplegangers.
After a final bit of ammunition purchasing they passed through the maze, without bothering to clear all its inhabitants. In the Undercity they circled around Rahvin in order to set up a torrent of fireballs. Rahvin survived the first lot, but died to the second before he could fire off his exploding arrows.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L7, 76 HPs, 212 kills
Baby Face - L7, 87 HPs, 109 kills, 0 deaths
Bugsy - L7, 88 HPs, 122 kills, 0 deaths
Carlo - L7, 82 HPs, 147 kills, 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L7, 84 HPs, 105 kills, 0 deaths
Vito - L7, 92 HPs, 148 kills, 0 deaths
Tar (Gate70)
Omen (Grond0)
Coreheal VII (Corey_Russell)
Our second week of survival, hours 3-4, started with us at the ankheg nest. With 50hp available to Omen it felt achievable. It was, sort of, although we had to rest twice. Thirteen minutes of our allotted time ticked away here
Next we picked up the tome of leadership for Omen (charisma 16 > 17) and gauntlets of dexterity for Tar before picking up boots of the north for removing a bear from a bridge
Tar felt Omen needed gauntlets, and Meilum failed to stagger to a second snare meaning his were free. We wandered around, dealing with a revenant and Zal + Vax. Coreheal could not use the bracers of archery so he swapped them for Omen's gauntlets
The Beregost spiders had their legs plucked, and then we raced around the basilisk map. Mutamin and his horror were no match for Coreheal and his resist fear, while Kirians party were struck dumb before a special snare slowed them and hold person was added as a final insult
Time for Nashkel Mine. A brief stroll through there culminated in Mulahey being silenced and battered. The amazons outside turned hostile after an oil of fiery burning was shared with them, meaning they all took special snare damage. We arrived in Beregost so we could sell many items and deal with Tranzig
We had time to deal with sirines and flesh golems near the lighthouse, meaning Omen now has natural regeneration with a constitution of 20. We had 10 minutes left but felt the bandit camp should be achievable in that time. Omen upgraded to full plate armour and Coreheal finally got the ankheg armour (he had waylaid Flaming Fist mercenaries south of Beregost previously to sate his desire for better armour, as per his comment from the previous week)
This leaves us ready to investigate Cloakwood next week unless we can think of a suitable diversion. Omen has almost 60% of party kills, with Tar and Coreheal lagging far behind despite traps on rest helping our tally
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218157/#Comment_1218157
The Crew moved swiftly through the opening SoD dungeon. Korlasz's protection were dispelled and he tried to surrender - but fatal fireballs were already on the way. They did little beyond shopping in the City, but the quest XP for leaving there was still enough to get them to level 8.
Once out of town they headed for the Coast Way Forest where they shot down Ikros & Isabella in order to get the regeneration ioun stone - although they're unlikely to actually need to use that (very unlikely after they accidentally sold it for 1 gold piece when trying to identify it). On the way back to the Coast Way Crossing they found an ambush area and made short work of some orcs and trolls - as well as picking up an improved sling. After a bit of exploration they went to the bridge where a round of fireballs helped kill all the enemies before they tried to make peace.
Troll Claw Woods was fully explored. One incident of note there saw Mad Dog webbed by a Gargantuan Spider. The other spiders will target any webbed enemies so quick action was needed to equip quality ammunition and stun or kill the attackers.
On the way to the Forest of Wyrms they came across another ambush area with a big hole in the ground. They made pretty short work of the myconids there. At the Forest they cleared the external area before exploring a cave full of spiders and beetles. Bugsy made use of the ring of free action to spring web traps and kite enemies while the others stayed back picking off attackers. No-one took any damage there.
In the temple they rested several times to heal damage from traps and invisible backstabbers. Ziatar tends to struggle against a single opponent throwing stunning darts, so had no real chance against a whole group of them. The Neothelid was a potential problem because it has many disabling abilities that can be used from below ground and protecting everyone would have been a lot of resources. To try and avoid that Al just buffed himself and went into the room invisibly. That allowed him to avoid the expected summoned magical swords until the Neothelid surfaced. However, the Neothelid made a mistake in attacking earlier than usual - and died before it was able to take cover again. Mad Dog took a nasty backstab from the Shadow Aspect, but got his revenge with a killing shot - fortunately just before the Shadow Aspect's darkness spell blinded most of the Crew. They used exploding arrows for the first time to make short work of Darskhelin and his gang. A round of fireballs then killed Akanna. On the way out Al put a single throwing dagger through Morentherene's heart.
After a brief exploration at Dragonspear, they nipped back to the camp to get a pair of bearskin boots made to beef up Al's saving throws. Then it was off to the Underground River. After clearing the surrounding area they took on the guards to the underground entrance - the animals summoned by the druids in the area making that easy. They didn't bother with most of the content in there - particularly as they gained their 9th level when placing the Bwoosh (everyone gaining grand mastery with their main weapon there). There are several containers with +3 ammunition in the basement of Dragonspear, but none of them can be kicked open, even with 25 strength. With solo characters I normally just poison the food and water and run, but chose to fight this time - using lots of potions for the first time. Hephernan had physical mirror and blade barrier up for a while, making him difficult to handle. Once the mirror had gone though he was subject to attack and forced to teleport away and the remaining enemies were no trouble. After poisoning the food and water invisibility potions allowed them to escape without battling through more hordes.
Al cut through the siege of Dragonspear by stunning Ashatiel in single combat. They made short work of the devils on the way to Thrix and gained a helm from answering his riddle. Before going onto the Hellevator everyone used protection against fire, electricity and poison as well as general combat buffs. I didn't though use buffs of 1 hour or less, which was a mistake as Baby Face was affected by demon fear by the final group - his MR of 100% not helping him as the fear was 'natural'. He recovered before the Hellevator reached the top, but didn't have time to take the same short-term buffs as the others. That scarcely mattered though as, with Al, Carlo and Vito all firing +3 ammunition Belhifet died quickly - before even managing to gate in any additional devils to help him.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L9, 99 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 347 kills
Baby Face - L9, 104 HPs, 257 kills, 0 deaths
Bugsy - L9, 115 HPs, 241 kills, 0 deaths
Carlo - L9, 106 HPs, 314 kills, 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L9, 118 HPs (inc. 10 from ring), 236 kills, 0 deaths
Vito - L9, 121 HPs, 257 kills, 0 deaths
As with BGEE I missed out a lot of content in SoD. That meant I was mainly doing encounters I know well, but even so avoiding any deaths thus far is pretty good by my standards.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218157/#Comment_1218157
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218245/#Comment_1218245
When importing the PC to BG2EE his HPs are rerolled. That can be annoying if HPs were high, but Al had very poor rolls in BGEE, so was glad to accept the additional 17 HPs on arrival in Jon's dungeon. With no missile weapons immediately available the Crew made use of fists on the way to find some goblins armed with bows. They had no way to kill the Jailkeep golem, but cleared out everything else without any trouble.
The Crew decided to risk an immediate assault on Mencar's gang and their attack immediately got into trouble when Pooky survived an initial volley of missiles and launched a confusion - affecting Vito and Bugsy. Mad Dog took Smaeluv for a walk outside and Carlo was aiming to do the same with Mencar when Brennan took advantage of confused movement and escaped from his corner to try and run away. Carlo took more damage when trying to finish him off, but he managed to escape with 5 HPs left. That was a shame, but the others were finished off without further trouble and Al inherited the Crew's first set of full plate - they missed out on the mage's equipment though when I absent-mindedly rested to heal up before going back upstairs for it.
After reporting in to Gaelan Bayle they helped Hendak take control at the Copper Coronet. That allowed them to buy Azuredge to help deal with any little undead problems that might arise - and it quickly proved its worth at the Graveyard. Underneath there they recruited Kitthix as a first summons. Coming back they made short work of Suna Seni's attempted ambush.
They now had the cash to pay Gaelan Bayle and doing that got everyone to level 10. Then they went to the Docks to pick up a +2 ring. Officer Dirth provided them with some more full plate there and they saw Lassal off with a single volley. A nymph cloak was purchased to boost Vito's charisma on the way to sign up with Mae'Var. On leaving the Docks they rescued Renfeld, so came straight back again to return him and loot the harpers (after shooting Prebek & Sanasha).
At the Bridge District Kitthix absorbed one Rune Assassin's backstab and Vito successfully revealed the other without hurt by moving away just as he was beginning to attack. Dracandros and his cronies were lured out of their hideout to their doom. Vito survived a petrification trap and endured a maze trap to get a second summons. Pushing his luck he tried out a second petrification trap, but this time his saving throw of 3 was not good enough and he waited patiently for a stone to flesh scroll to be bought at the temple next door. Once the party was back together they sought out the kidnappers and swapped their hostage for some pantaloons. The reputation loss from that was repaired by temple donations. Further quick reputation gains came from reporting the skinner murders to Lt Aegisfield, dealing with the circus, handing in Neb's head and slaughtering the Fallen Paladins. While in the Bridge District they also sorted out the Guild Contact.
They'd twice had to pay for restoration at a temple, so decided they needed a source of protection against level drain. Hence they returned to the Graveyard. The Grimwarders there could be beaten unconscious with fists and finished with a magic missile. They had no means of killing the clay golem though and decoyed that away using the berserk warrior and Kitthix. Al picked up the mace of disruption, but then remembered that no-one is allowed to equip that so it can't be used as a source of level drain protection
Leaving Athkatla for the first time, they went to de'Arnise Hold. The trolls there were easy enough and they picked up another set of full plate from Glaicus. Once again they led away the clay golem and shut it in a room while they took care of TorGal. Al agreed to run the place in future and the Crew gained a level for their trouble.
Al (PC) - L11, 122 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 85 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L11, 110 HPs, 33 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L11, 121 HPs, 69 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L11, 112 HPs, 63 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L11, 114 HPs, 69 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L11, 127 HPs, 49 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218157/#Comment_1218157
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218245/#Comment_1218245
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218263/#Comment_1218263
At Umar Hills they did a few minor quests before heading for the old temple. With them still being pretty low level they only had to face skeleton warriors leading the undead groups there. They picked up the pearly white ioun stone to get a useful general source of regeneration. It felt a bit too dangerous to try and take on Thaxy at the moment, but they did shoot down the Shade Lord before his buffs could fire. They picked up Valyar's body on the way back to report to the mayor.
Moving on to Trademeet, Kitthix and the berserk warrior provided protection against efreeti petrification spells. The reward of the Shield of Harmony provides useful protection against several status effects. They had no problems in the Grove and watched on as Cernd had a light snack with Faldorn. While in the area they picked up a couple more reputation points by helping Tiris and clearing the tomb.
Back in Athkatla they went to the Slums to open the door to the Planar Sphere - but didn't go in yet. Instead they went into the sewers to deal with the slavers. Neither of the wizards there managed to complete a spell. Reporting their success to Hendak got them to level 12 and reputation 20 - prompting a shopping spree to spend the 100k+ amassed thus far. One of the places visited was Watcher's Keep to get the Firetooth crossbow and they took the opportunity to clear the top level there and acquire an ammo container, case of plenty, quiver of plenty and Crimson Dart. Another purchase made in Athkatla had been the Ring of Air Control and the saving throw benefit from using that allowed Al to brave the Finger of Death trap without risk. Everyone now had access to a +3 weapon or above, which made shooting down the golems and statues very quick.
The Crew had not yet been to the Temple sewers and going there next allowed them to acquire a new(ish) cloak. Mekrath and Tarnor's gang were other victims in the area - the latter made easy after Gaius was webbed by Kitthix at the start of combat. The Crew had already bought the Shield of Balduran and used that to go and deal with the Unseeing Eye. Killing the Blind Priests there meant all the Crew now have full plate. Just after that they were able to celebrate taking their 13th level and another APR upgrade before closing the Eye for good.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L13, 128 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 199 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L13, 116 HPs, 116 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L13, 128 HPs, 123 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L13, 118 HPs, 134 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L13, 120 HPs, 172 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L13, 133 HPs, 133 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218157/#Comment_1218157
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218245/#Comment_1218245
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218263/#Comment_1218263
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218305/#Comment_1218305
Still in the mood for exploring other planes, the Crew went next to the Planar Sphere. They were still not confident about killing clay golems (Firetooth's fire damage being blocked by its magic resistance), so locked the one near the entrance back into its room after looting that. They made pretty quick progress round, including clearing out some demon spawn to pick up a heart. Tolgerias tried to delay them by using improved mantle, but with two +5 weapons available that was only partly successful. In the engine room, 3 clay golems in close quarters could easily have been a major problem. To occupy those, Mad Dog used the Helm of Vhailor for the first time to produce a simmy and both Mad Dogs then took rat shape to keep damage to manageable levels. They picked up a level for bringing the Planar Sphere home.
The ioun stone is a helpful source of regeneration to reduce resting, but no real help in a combat situation. To improve things I thought it was about time to get the Ring of Gaxx. Mad Dog killed the Shade Lich with a single throw of his axe and the same fate befell the Elemental Lich. The City Gates lich managed to survive the first attack, but not the next. Everyone was protected against undead for Kangaxx and, with Firetooth and the Sling of Everard, it didn't take long to wear him down.
The last major chapter 2&3 area to explore was Windspear Hills and they went there next. There were the usual issues with clay golems, but nothing too difficult to manage. Samia's gang were overmatched before the Crew went to find Firkraag. Conster failed to deal with the weight of shot before the dragon was dragged upstairs, where he couldn't attack them directly, and used for target practice.
They took ship to Brynnlaw immediately and did a few minor quests there before exposing Perth's slow reactions to being attacked. His book of infinite spells proved to be a one-page wonder and they didn't bother holding on to it. Moving on to Spellhold, Al shot down Bhaal in a dream sequence - regrettably losing his Bhaal powers in the process.
In Spellhold the Crew finally killed a clay golem. I'd wondered about using the efreeti to do that before and tried it successfully this time. Although the animation shows a sword, the efreeti actually uses a crushing weapon that counts as magical. It's a bit of a pain constantly having to override its script, but the golem is easy to hit and the efreeti comfortably killed it in its turn of existence (while the golem was concentrating on hitting a rat). They were still a bit below 2m XP, so there was no lich to worry about on the first level. They cleared most of the second level without problems and used a machine to produce boots defending against electricity and cold. The room with 3 clay golems in though was a potential death trap. There was no way the efreeti could kill all 3 of them before it unsummoned and I'm pretty sure the door would remain closed until they were all dead (or rather until the Crew were all dead). To try and get round that, Mad Dog attacked from outside the room. None of the golems had time to get out before the door closed though and it couldn't be forced even using storm giant strength. Regrettably therefore the Crew had to give up on the intention to make the Gesen bow. Leaving the second level got them past the 2m XP mark with another level gained.
In the final battle Jon was reduced to 1 HP by the initial volley, but as always took a while to realise he should run away. The murderers only managed a single backstab on Mad Dog (his AC of -12 is not easy to hit even with the bonus for not having a melee weapon equipped). They took ship and have just arrived in Fish City.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L16, 137 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 273 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L16, 125 HPs, 229 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L16, 136 HPs, 172 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L16, 127 HPs, 220 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L16, 129 HPs, 302 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L16, 142 HPs, 212 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Despite the relatively slow speed of his weapon, Mad Dog has taken the kills lead as a result of typically being at the front of the party when fighting and getting bonus undead kills from Azuredge.
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218157/#Comment_1218157
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218245/#Comment_1218245
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218263/#Comment_1218263
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218305/#Comment_1218305
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218352/#Comment_1218352
In Fish City the Crew took advantage of the higher selling prices to unload their junk. They essentially killed all comers there - picking up the Cloak of Mirroring in the process. The king was betrayed first, but the prince got his come-uppance soon afterwards.
In the Underdark I almost never bother to kill all the elementals spawning from the portals. However, as this party won't reach the XP cap I decided to do so - getting them up to level 17 in the process. They waited a bit for physical mirrors to dissipate before shooting down some drow, then cleared the giant soul gem - the lich being Azuredged just before he could get his buffs up. The Crew killed a balor for some deep gnomes before heading into the Western Tunnels. The kuo-toa prince found even his super-fast regeneration was insufficient to stand up to the Crew.
Their next target was the beholder hive. Entering there they rapidly shot down the elder orb at the entrance, though it just had time to do a bit of damage with a fireball. Most of the area was cleared by Baby Face on his own using the Shield of Balduran, though the other elder orb was subject to a group attack.
The nearby illithids were also invaded. The illithids themselves were easy enough, but the brain golems were another enemy that had to be separated so the efreeti could bludgeon them to death. Killing the Master Brain took the Crew to level 18.
After getting a disguise from Adalon, it was time to enter the drow city. Their first major task was rescuing Phaere and, while that was no problem, I mistook the position of the berserk warrior after the fight and hence did not stop it from attacking Solaufein. He went hostile and was shot down in response. That meant no opportunity to do further quests, but the Crew were still able to re-enter the city. The population were all hostile though, so were systematically slaughtered - regeneration keeping HPs up while doing that. By that stage the Crew had already done their shopping in the City and Al was able to use the Firetooth dagger as an alternative way of killing clay golems - through the 1 fire damage they took per hit. To escape from the Underdark they now needed to kill Adalon - though they probably would have done that anyway
On the way back to Athkatla the Crew were stopped by Drizzt and deliberately provoked a fight. The missile attacks from Drizzt's companions were better than I expected and Mad Dog (who as usual was attempting to draw fire) had not used a good shield to defend against those - so he used an invisibility potion to disappear. Even after Vito took over kiting duties I found that Cattie-Brie's shots bypassed the reflection shield. Still, the Crew eventually got the job done.
After a final round of shopping to pick up yet more potions, the Crew set about finishing off various odds and sods. That included various stronghold quests, ending with the defeat of Lord Roenall; shooting down Thaxy and forging the dragon scale armor; forging the human skin armor and punishing those that made it; cleaning out the illithid from the temple sewers; dragging the inhabitants of the Guarded Compound downstairs for easy disposal and sacrificing a storm giant strength potion to thwart the Twisted Rune's evil plans. Just writing this reminds me that I could also have a go at the Cowled Wizards by making use of the Ring of Air Control to annoy them - I'll have to try and remember to do that before going to Suldanesselar.
The final target for the session was another visit to the vampire hideout. The Crew did well to avoid anyone being drained while clearing the hordes of vampires upstairs and got to level 19 as a reward. Bodhi then suffered from the effects of holy water and never managed an attack. On exiting they found Malchor Harpell wishing to recover Drizzt's items, but his pickings were pretty slim as nearly all had already been sold.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L19, 146 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 352 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L19, 134 HPs, 304 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L19, 145 HPs, 218 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L19, 136 HPs, 294 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L19, 138 HPs, 384 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L19, 151 HPs, 305 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Tar (Gate70)
Omen (Grond0)
Coreheal VII (Corey_Russell)
Having looted the bandit camp last time we left the area. Rather than follow the trail, Coreheal wanted to pick on the remaining sirines at the coast so we did that followed by making our way to Durlags Tower. Coreheal insisted on a potion of mirrored eyes, not wanting to rely on sanctuary, stealth and skeletons against the basilisks. Instead he died to the thief inside, Riggilo. We hauled his corpse back to civilisation, paid 800gp and returned to finish the job
Back to Cloakwood, Tar deciding to retrieve Gurke's cloak and hand it down to Coreheal. We didn't bother with Centeol and her pets, not needing the Spidersbane sword. Tar enquired if Omen felt like using a shield instead of dual-wielding, and Omen just knew this meant investigating a wyvern cave. Tar stealthed inside to lay snares but Omen was too quick and followed before any could be laid. Tar told Omen to run further inside so she could throw a pair of bountyhunter snares in. With the battle won, Omen started adjusting his inventory
Meanwhile Tar drew out the last baby wyvern and hid behind Omen. She could see he was unaware but decided the wyvern deserved some chance. Eventually Omen became aware of his attacker and rapidly sorted it out
Drasus used his uncanny observation skills to detect Tar who had carelessly stepped into his view. Hence battle started before we were fully prepared but one snare and a trio of skeletons made it an easy victory for us. We cleared out the nearby room to loot a few potions and then rested before entering Cloakwood mine
With a hardy dwarven defender and two sneaky characters we were soon down with Davaeorn. He dodged a backstab and teleported away, landing on four traps from Tar and one from Coreheal. Down he went and we were free to go to Baldur's Gate with 50 minutes of time remaining. How much damage could we do
First we sold lots of stuff at Sorcerous Sundries. Then we cleared out the upstairs room of a mage infestation, and the sewers of their ogre mage and crawler problem. The two warring mages Arkion and Nemphre experienced a common enemy, and ennui claimed Desreta and Vay-ya (although the last of these managed to confuse Tar who promptly killed a local and halved our reputation to 10)
The half height horde continued their mischief with the warehouse basilisk, killing Marek and Lothander, returning Nestors dagger to his friend and an extremely rapid (snares galore) takedown of the mountain maulers. Omen gleefully picked up the +2 axe from the floor
We multiplayer-lost a tome of wisdom so Coreheal could not stretch his wiseness over the rest of us too far today
Time was catching up with us, but we pushed on and cleared out Ramaziths tower and Jardaks house. Here we are with new gear and a bit to sell at a store (unless Coreheal wishes to open a footwear store)
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218157/#Comment_1218157
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218245/#Comment_1218245
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218263/#Comment_1218263
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218305/#Comment_1218305
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218352/#Comment_1218352
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218381/#Comment_1218381
The Crew ranged through a few new areas they saw on the map. There wasn't anything of interest in the Wild Forest and even less in the Hidden Refuge (given the Crew are not allowed to recruit any NPCs, including Neera). The Small Teeth Pass was similarly uneventful. The opposition was significantly greater in the North Forest, but still nothing to really trouble the Crew. The Forest of Tethir was a more substantial area and the Crew had their hardest battle in a very long time when entering Coran's cabin to find large quantities of spectral undead. Baby Face was level drained and he and Vito were confused and had to be kept separate, while Al was badly injured in the forefront of the battle. Once damage was regenerated the Crew cleared the remainder of the area without trouble.
I'd reminded myself to leave the City safe from the scourge of the Cowled Wizards and took them on next. Al made himself the target there. With the Cloak of Mirroring, improved invisibility and, after borrowing the Ring of Gaxx, good saving throws, the wizards failed to make any impression on him.
Finally it was time for Suldanesselar and the Crew celebrated their arrival by getting to level 20 and learning Whirlwinds. They made good early progress with rat form allowing them to take down a number of golems quickly and easily. There was a bit of trouble though when they ran into a group of rakshasa and elven mages and Vito was scared by a symbol. The others had to follow him and deal with various enemies, including Raamilat, before Vito recovered. The Crew also found it a bit harder than I expected to hit Nizi and it was a bit of relief when they found a fatal hit. At the temple, they killed the opponents themselves for a bit of extra XP before placing a few artifacts on the altar to summon Rillifane.
On the Tree of Life a few elementals were no challenge. Kitthix was left behind to absorb Jon's opening attacks before a WW persuaded him to run away. In hell, Al talked nicely to the dragon to get some elemental resistance. He initially used a clarity potion to avoid fear and get some weapon immunity - but then decided, what the hell, and a round of WWs killed the elder orbs nearby. He didn't want to spoil the no-deaths record to date, so reluctantly gave up some HPs, dexterity and XP to save Baby Face and gain a bit of MR. I'm fond of Blackrazor as a weapon but, as the Crew are not allowed to use it, there was no sacrifice to giving it up in exchange for a saving throw benefit (they did though kill the genie after doing that, so still actually had the sword available if they'd been able to use it). After cashing in the other tears, Al was immune to Sarevok's attacks while taking out his wrath on him. After killing the demons, the Crew waited for a while to regenerate some lost health before going after Slayer-Jon. For some solo characters it can be hard to out-pace his regeneration, but that was no problem for the Crew.
The walked into an ambush in Saradush, but handily defeated that. Most of the Crew would have gained another level in the process, but Al was holding everyone up as a result of the XP he lost in hell. I found a spellbook for Lazarus and bought a few things from him and redistributed equipment so that all the Crew had a spell saving throw of -1 or better to minimise the occasions when someone fails a saving throw. Since they were looking to maximise XP they invaded the barracks (no-one could kick the door down naturally and I didn't want to use one of the better strength potions, but hazarded a fire giant strength one and that proved sufficient). I don't normally do other quests here either, but completing the one with Kiser Jhaeri netted me a Shakti figurine - which unfortunately the Crew are not able to use.
Exploring the sewers provided a bit more XP and enabled the Crew to level up once more. They couldn't kick open a door leading to the exit there though, so retreated to try their luck in the jail. A couple of them were level drained by vampires there, but they were never in danger. They gradually worked through various thieves and fighters and a mage or two to get into position to attack Gromnir. I considered going in invisibly to make things easier, but decided to play fair. However, not that fair! Before their GWW had finished only Karun the Black was not stunned - with the other mage already dead. Karun's use of improved mantle left him vulnerable to +5 weapons and another round or so saw the job done.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L21, 150 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 419 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L21, 140 HPs, 357 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Bugsy - L21, 151 HPs, 270 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L21, 142 HPs, 355 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L21, 144 HPs, 440 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L21, 157 HPs, 379 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Previous updates:
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218157/#Comment_1218157
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218245/#Comment_1218245
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218263/#Comment_1218263
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218305/#Comment_1218305
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218352/#Comment_1218352
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218381/#Comment_1218381
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/1218402/#Comment_1218402
The Crew quickly cleared the North Forest before moving on to the Temple of Mir. They did well to avoid anyone being drained in the initial encounter there before clearing up. On to the Fire Temple where the enemies were numerous and hard-hitting. That resulted in regular retreats to heal up, but they also gained plenty of XP and were able to take another level before finishing the lower floor. On the Upper Floor a number of giants got stuck in a doorway to make dealing with them easy before Imix was filled full of holes.
Back at the Forest of Mir, Nyalee had a change of heart and attacked. The Crew were all protected for the first time by hardiness anyway, but in the event no-one actually took any damage there.
The second Pocket Plane challenge took a bit longer than expected. After a round or so only Semaj was left, but he cast Tenser's Transformation on himself and then appeared to be too scared to use it - remaining invisible for several rounds until finally appearing to be shot down.
The Oasis offered the opportunity to wreak slaughter with no real danger. They picked up a bit of loot there from force of habit although they've already got more cash than they could spend in the remaining game.
In Amkethran they had another tougher fight than expected - this time with Vongoethe. Al was trying to draw his fire, but the different heights in the area made distances difficult to judge and the others got targeted a couple of times with spells before Vongoethe went down. Even after that the skeleton archers did a fair amount of damage, though without any real risk of killing anyone.
Moving on to Sendai's Enclave they shot the drow woodsman and his companions to open access to the tunnel. I had a vague memory there was some sort of beholder in the area, but the Crew only found a few more drow before moving into the Enclave proper. They made steady progress there, though it took a while to get through the berserker area, thanks to the amount of respawning (I felt entitled to only move forward when there were no enemies attacking). At some point during that the Crew were able to take their 24th level, though I didn't notice the exact moment they earned that. They did eventually reach the Slavemaster though and turn off the respawning.
They hit a hiccup after arriving in Odamaron's quarters. They used the berserk warrior to trigger him and were just waiting for PfMW to wear off when a drow appeared from nowhere (must have followed from outside somewhere) and cast a lightning bolt. That should have done little damage, but Baby Face was wearing the Cloak of Reflection and that appeared to continually refresh the lightning on each bounce - over time that severely damaged Carlo, who was also in the same path. Moving out of the way was difficult due to being so near to the door and Odamaron still being active just out of sight. I could have moved a number of pieces of equipment round to make them both 100% resistant without using the Cloak of Reflection, but made a mistake by just giving that cloak to Carlo to prevent further damage. That had the effect of multiplying the number of bolts of lightning and Baby Face was rapidly down to 41 HPs. I still had the option of moving equipment around (Baby Face himself was actually carrying the Boots of Talos, but didn't put them on) or even making a very rare use of a potion. However, I chose to just try and leave the area. Sometimes when you do that with multiple characters selected they interfere with each other and I'd already decided I would take further action if they didn't leave immediately. However, they did depart instantly - sort of
After a visit to Watcher's Keep to raise Baby Face the Crew returned to try and settle affairs with Sendai. Odamaron was finished off once his PfMW wore off. Ogremoch's stoneskins evaporated like spit on a griddle in the face of 6 GWWs. They were able to take another level and also go back to the Pocket Plane to rest prior to the final statue - ensuring they had full health and a GWW available to deal with Sendai. It was a good job that they were prepared as Al again was unable to draw her fire and the others took quite a bit of area damage as well as 2 of them failing a saving throw against a symbol:fear after being malisoned. To cut short the battle, Al made a rare use of a dispelling arrow and follow-up GWWs stopped Sendai in her tracks and pushed the Crew up to level 25.
Stats:
Al (PC) - L25, 162 HPs (inc. 5 from helm), 509 kills (+347 in BGEE/SoD)
Baby Face - L25, 152 HPs, 441 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 1 death
Bugsy - L25, 163 HPs, 335 kills (+241 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Carlo - L25, 154 HPs, 441 kills (+314 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Mad Dog - L25, 156 HPs, 501 kills (+236 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
Vito - L25, 169 HPs, 481 kills (+257 in BGEE/SoD), 0 deaths
With 3 pairs of boots of speed in the party, Mad Dog is less often the front man and Al has retaken the kills lead - though Vito is making a late charge to take the honours.